Datasets:

cfli
/

ssss

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

train · 73.3k rows

question stringlengths 18 1.2k	facts stringlengths 44 500k	answer stringlengths 1 147
Bluto is the arch enemy of what animated character?	Top 10 Cartoon Villains - Listverse Top 10 Cartoon Villains Listverse Staff January 24, 2008 Cartoons would not be cartoons without an evil villain! Presented below are ten of the worst from cartoons throughout the ages. If you feel that there is a villain missing from the list, be sure to speak up! Onwards… the top 10 cartoon villains: 10. Bluto Popeye Bluto is the arch enemy of Popeye and, like Popeye, wants to do the dirty with Olive Oyl. Despite having a superior strength to Popeye, he is usually beaten because of the super strength Popeye gains through eating spinach. There are some cartoons that show Popeye and Bluto as friends and Navy buddies, with Bluto usually turning on Popeye when an object of interest (usually Olive) is put between them. 9. Dishonest John Beany and Cecil Dishonest John is dressed like a Simon Legree character, and he is constantly scheming to foil Beany and Cecil’s adventures. His catch phrase is a sinister “Nya ha ha!”. Whenever Dishonest John’s schemes are revealed to the heroes, Cecil tends to respond with an aghast “What the heck! D.J., you dirty guy!”. Not only is he evil as Dishonest John – but he becomes the supervillian Bilious Beetle who has a big stinger and can fly under his own power! He also occasionally appears in the mechanical squid “Billy the Squid” which he uses to trick Beany and Cecil. Dishonest John was the inspiration for the AC/DC song “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”. 8. Cruella de Vil 101 Dalmations Elegant she may be… attractive she is not! The evil Cruella spends all of her time trying to catch the 101 Dalmations required to make herself a beautiful Dalmation fur coat. She always has the left half of her hair white and the right half black. Cruella’s name is a play on the words cruel and devil, an allusion which is emphasized by having her country house nicknamed “Hell Hall”. 7. Dick Dastardly Wacky Races In Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly was one of the racers who competed in every episode for first place in a long and hazard-filled cross-country road rally. As his name implies, Dastardly aimed to win solely through cheating and trickery. His race car, named “The Mean Machine,” featured all sorts of devious traps for him to use against his opponents. Dastardly was always accompanied by his dog Muttley who has a very distinctive emphysemic laugh. 6. Magneto X-Men Magneto is one of the most powerful mutants in the Marvel Universe, possessing the ability to to generate and control magnetism. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, his actions are driven by the purpose of protecting the mutant race from suffering a similar fate. He is most often shown as an uncompromising militant and has engaged in acts of terrorism when he felt it was for the benefit of mutantkind. 5. The Joker Batman The Joker is a master criminal with a clown-like appearance, including bleached white skin, red lips, and green hair. Initially portrayed as a violent sociopath who murders people and commits crimes for his own amusement, the Joker, later in the 1940s, began to be written as a goofy trickster-thief. The Joker is considered to be Batman’s arch-enemy. 4. Wile E. Coyote Roadrunner Wile Ethelbert Coyote seems to have an endless supply of Acme tools that he can use against the innocent Roadrunner. In every episode he attempts to destroy the Roadrunner with a bag of tricks that would make any terrorist envious. Thankfully he usually fails and blows himself up (something else the terrorists are probably familiar with). 3. Skeletor Masters Of The Universe is the arch-enemy and main antagonist of He-Man. Tagged “The Evil Lord of Destruction” he is the greatest threat to present day Eternia. He seeks to conquer Castle Grayskull so he can learn all of Eternia’s ancient secrets, which would make him unstoppable, and enable him to conquer and rule all of Eternia. 2. Gargamel The Smurfs Gargamel the sorcerer is the sworn enemy of the Smurfs. He is an evil wizard, though his powers appear very limited; he actually seems to be more of an alchemist as his main ability is to create magic potions. His main goal in life is to destroy the Smurfs. He is perpetually stooped, his robe is worn and patched, and his teeth are rotten. I guess we shouldn’t be too harsh on Gargamel though… he did create smurfette after all! 1. Shredder Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a villainous ninjutsu master called Oroku Saki. He is the archenemy of the turtles who, at one point or another in every incarnation of the TMNT franchise, has been the main enemy of Splinter and the Turtles. He is also the leader of the Foot Clan. He wears armor which consists of blade-covered metal plaques on his shoulders, forearms, hands (sometimes just his left hand), and shins; he wears a purple, gray, blue, or red robe that variously appears to be simple fabric or a form of chainmail. Afterword Use the comments to decide amongst yourselves which five extra villains I should add to extend this to a top 15 list. Notable Omissions: Too many to note! This article is licensed under the GFDL . It uses material from Wikipedia.	Popeye
Whos the black private dick thats a sex machine to all the chicks?	Animation & Cartoons : Free Movies : Download & Streaming : Internet Archive personSIGN IN Animation & Cartoons Whether you want to watch classic cartoons from a bygone era, Brick Films made with your favorite building toys, Machinima patched together from video games, or the artful computer animations selected for the 2001 SIGGRAPH competition, this library of free animated films and movies has something to keep you entertained! Many of these videos are available for free download. 19.8 M This collection contains short format cartoons and animation (full length animated movies can be found in the Feature Films section). 12.5 12.5 M Watch classic animated cartoons from the 1930's and 1940's! These cartoons are from the Film Chest collection, a leading source of film and video programming and stock footage. All these cartoons have been transferred from original 35 film prints and digitally remastered. The collection includes classics such as Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Porky Pig, The Three Stooges, and others. Click for more information about Film Chest . Topic: Moving Images by How They Got Game Project (Stanford Humanities Lab) collection 4.4 M The Machinima Archive is dedicated to the academic investigation and historical preservation of the emerging art form known as machinima. Machinima is filmmaking within real-time, 3D virtual environments, often appropriated from existing video game engines. High-quality new machinima of all kinds are regularly added to the archive for your enjoyment. The Machinima Archive is a collaborative effort of the Internet Archive, the How They Got Game research project at Stanford University, the... Topics: Game Videos, video game, video games, videogame 2.4 2.4 M Commonly called "LEGO Movies," Brick Films are dedicated to the art of stop motion animation. The focus of these films is the animation of plastic building toys, or bricks (including LEGO, Mega Bloks, Best-Lock, and more). Many of these films are also available on the Brick Films website. Click for more information about the Brick Films website. Topic: Moving Images 1.9 M SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre stands alone in curating and showcasing the very best of computer animation since its inception. Every year, highly respected jurors choose from among hundreds of submissions to select the year's best comptuer animations, to be shown at the SIGGRAPH annual conference. SIGGRAPH and the Internet Archive have collaborated to bring online pieces from the 2001 collection whose owners agreed to be included in SIGGRAPH's web archive. We hope it provides an enjoyable and... Topic: Moving Images favorite 38 comment 8 Popeye and Bluto are both running for president. They are tied with exactly the same number of votes, but Miss Olive Oyl has yet to cast her ballot. Which candidate will be able to impress her the most and earn her precious vote? favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 8 reviews ) favorite 34 comment 9 Popeye's nephews want to play with fireworks on July 4th, but Popeye tries to dissuade them. They manage to light some off and get into trouble. Popeye saves the day. Animation by Tom Johnson and Frank Endres. Story by Caryl Meyer. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1957. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 9 reviews ) favorite 32 comment 6 Olive Oyl is the femme fatale with a valuable, green, glowing jewel in need of protection. Popeye plays private eye and saves the day. Animation by Tom Johnson and Frank Endres. Story by I. Klein. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1954. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 6 reviews ) favorite 28 comment 9 Popeye the Sailor snores while he sleeps, which disturbs Mouse, who is also trying to sleep. A war breaks out between Popeye and Mouse which Mouse eventually wins. Animation by Al Eugster and George Germanetti. Story by Irving Spector. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1952. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 9 reviews ) favorite 17 comment 4 Popeye and Olive have finally decided to get married. But that doesn't mean that Bluto is through trying to stop them. You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 4 reviews ) favorite 10 comment 5 From The Public Domain Movie Database: Bluto plays all sorts of gags on Popeye and Olive on April Fool's Day. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 5 reviews ) favorite 17 comment 2 Bluto bullies Popeye and attempts to sabotage Popeye's date with Olive. Animation by Tom Johnson and Frank Endres. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1956. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews ) You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favoritefavoritefavorite ( 4 reviews ) favorite 43 comment 19 The following concise, informative description was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org: Flip the Frog was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first sound cartoon. It is about a happy-go-lucky, needy frog, named Flip the Frog. This cartoon was created by Ub Iwerks in 1930. He had drawn a frog and his girlfriend in "Night'", one of the last Silly Symphonies short films he drew while working for Walt Disney. After leaving Disney, Ub Iwerks began the Flip cartoon series with the help of Pat Powers. The... favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 19 reviews ) favorite 20 comment 1 This collection include 5 previously posted Betty Boop cartoons converted from DivX to QuickTime: Betty Boop: A Song a Day (1936), Betty Boop: Is My Pam Read (1932), Betty Boop: More Pep (1936), Betty Boop's Ker-Choo (1932), Betty Boop: The Candid Candidate (1937). favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 13 reviews ) by Orange Open Movie Project Studio movies favorite 35 comment 1 From the official website : "Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect. Elephants Dream is the world’s... favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) favorite 15 comment 3 Sintel is an open movie from the Blender Foundation licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 3 reviews ) Memorable rendition of "St James Infirmary" by Cab Calloway favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 21 reviews ) favorite 38 comment 12 Little Boy Blue and Scarecrow sing and dance, Little Bo Peep and her sheep join in. Black Sheep cries "wolf", which causes problems when a real wolf shows up. Animation by U. B. Iwerks. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 12 reviews ) favorite 61 comment 24 Weatherby Groundhog predicts a cold winter and advises all the birds to fly south. But Woody Woodpecker decides to stay, and nearly starves. Animation by Alex Lovy and Lester Kline, story by Ben Hardaway and L.E. Elliott, music by Darrell Calker. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 24 reviews ) favorite 15 comment 3 A Home Front cartoon by Tex Avery. Release date: 7 April 1945. Quicktime version. Plot taken from IMDb: The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock and found a colony. A very large number of Pilgrims can be seen standing in line... for their cigarette rations. A Pilgrim goes hunting for Thanksgiving dinner. He meets a black market turkey. favoritefavoritefavorite ( 3 reviews ) favorite 28 comment 3 The classic tale of Sinbad the Sailor, adapted for Popeye and Olive. Featuring memorable appearances by Wimpy, Olive, and the singing two-headed monster. You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . More information is available from the Wikipedia article here . favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 3 reviews ) favorite 38 comment 9 The classic Arabian adventure, adapted for Popeye and Olive Oyl. Cartoon originally produced in 1937 by Fleischer Studios, now in the public domain. More information is available from the Wikipedia article here . favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 9 reviews ) favorite 79 comment 28 A mad scientist unleashes robots to rob banks and loot museums. Superman saves the day. Animation by Steve Muffati and George Germanetti. Music by Sammy Timberg. Produced in 1941. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 28 reviews ) favorite 51 comment 16 Little Bo Peep and her free-range sheep are threatened when Wily and Jazzy wolves attempt to capture them. But Mighty Mouse saves the day. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 16 reviews ) favorite 5 comment 3 From The Public Domain Movie Database: Bluto is suing Popeye for assault. They both show the judge some scenes from some of their cartoon to prove their case. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 3 reviews ) favorite 25 comment 5 Popeye and Bluto both run a taxi service. Bluto bullies Popeye and gets him to turn over all of his cab fares. Popeye eventually gets the better of Bluto. Animation by Tom Johnson and Frank Endres. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1954. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 5 reviews ) favorite 38 comment 10 An animated version of the Mother Goose Story of Little Miss Muffet, using what is called "3 dimensional" animation. Part of the Nursey Rhyme Review series. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 10 reviews ) A late Popeye cartoon, available at Public Domain Movie Torrents. Topic: Popeye favorite 50 comment 20 Caspar makes friends with a little fox. Animation by Myron Waldman, Morey Reden and Nick Tafuri. Scenics by Anto Loeb. Story by Bill Turner and Larry Reilly. Music by Winston Sharples. Narrator is Frank Gallop. Produced in 1948. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 20 reviews ) favorite 10 comment 2 THE BRAVE TIN SOLDIER very closely follows the original story by the Brothers Grimm. A one-legged tin soldier is cruelly mocked by other toys because of his deformity. The soldier falls in love with a toy ballerina who is desired by the toy king. The king exercises his military power to get the girl for himself. The tale ends tragically, with a surprisingly graphic execution by firing squad. This is probably too violent and weird for little kids. The cartoon itself is very nicely animated,... favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews ) by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising movies favorite 33 comment 5 Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising in 1927 and the first recurring character in the Leon Schlesinger cartoon series Looney Tunes. "Although Harman and Ising based Bosko's looks on Felix the Cat, Bosko, like Mickey, got his personality from the blackface characters of the minstrel and vaudeville shows popular in the 1930s. Whereas Disney masked Mickey by making him a mouse, Harman and Ising made Bosko a genuine black boy. Keeping with the... favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 5 reviews ) favorite 27 comment 8 A Cinderella like tale in which Olive is the princess and Popeye is the prince. Bluto is the shopowner brute who bullies Olive, only to get taught a lesson by a buff, spinach-eating Prince Popeye. Animation by Al Eugster and William B. Pattengill, story by Irving Spector, scenics by Robert Connavale, and music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1952. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 8 reviews ) favorite 69 comment 18 A mad scientist attempts to blow up Manhattan. Lois Lane investigates and Superman saves the day. Animation by Steve Muffati and Arnold Gillespie, story by Seymour Kneitel and Isadore Sparber, music by Sammy Timberg. Produced in 1942. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 18 reviews ) favorite 26 comment 8 Popeye takes nephews to the Nautical Museum and tells them a story about how he "knocked the tar out" of Sinbad, the greatest sailor in the world. Animation by Tom Johnson and William Henning. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1952. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 8 reviews ) favorite 11 comment 2 From The Public Domain Movie Database: Popeye tells his four nephews the story of his great Uncle Hercules in order to get them to eat spinach. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews ) favorite 32 comment 13 Newly-wed flies go to stay at the Cobweb Hotel which is run by a hungry spider. Animation by David Tendlar and William Sturm. Music by Sammy Timberg and Bob Royhberg. Produced in 1936. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 13 reviews ) favorite 48 comment 19 Felix's goose, who lays golden eggs, is goose-napped by none other than Captain Kidd. Felix saves the day. A nice swashbuckling cartoon. Produced in 1936. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 19 reviews ) favorite 8 comment 1 From The Public Domain Movie Database: Popeye tries to rid his garden of a gopher, in the end the gopher saves Popeye from a bull. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) favorite 23 comment 8 Gabby tries to put a diaper on a cranky baby. Animation by David Tendlar and William Nolan. Music by Sammy Timberg. Produced in 1941. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 8 reviews ) favorite 19 comment 2 Popeye the Sailor and his arch enemy Bluto fight over Olive Oyl on Halloween. Animation by Al Eugster and William B. Pattengill. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1954. favoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews ) You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) favorite 62 comment 20 Superman is responsible for several acts of sabotage at the Yokohama Navy Yard in Japan. Lois Lane is held hostage but Superman saves the day. Animation by William Bowsky and William Henning. Music by Sammy Timberg. Produced in 1942. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 20 reviews ) You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 6 reviews ) favorite 16 comment 2 Tom and Jerry go fishing. Van Beuren's "Tom and Jerry" series was renamed "Dick and Larry" in the 1950s. That's why the title card presents this cartoon as a "A Dick and Larry Carton". favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews ) favorite 65 comment 42 In this SINGLE from a VIDEO ALBUM, all instruments are played by steel balls shot out of PVC tubing. From the producer of the original ''musical fountain'' in More Bells and Whistles, SIGGRAPH 1990.Two years in the making, the full video album is comprised of 7 pieces, each by a completely different instrument configuration. Proprietary animation software analyzes the music, and automatically drives the movement of the instruments for highly accurate and efficient animation. Essentially no... favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 42 reviews ) favorite 2 comment 0 Join Larry Lobster under the ocean as he teaches the letters of the alphabet and how to use them in words. This short educational film is perfect for downloading to an iPod or watching in a classroom. We'll continue the series of films as Larry Lobster takes us through the alphabet. This learning video was produced by Candlelight Stories, Inc. and is available at our web site, http://www.candlelightstories.com. Topics: alphabet, learning, words, abc, education, school, kids, students, writing, reading, animation,... favorite 9 comment 1 Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, I know) lists all the Fleischer/Famous Studios Popeye cartoons in the Public Domain, These five haven't been uploaded yet. I checked the later ones with USCO, but I don't have the wherewithal to check the earlier ones. If I'm in error, let me know so I can take the offenders down. favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) favorite 23 comment 13 A messy family dog is told by its owner that it will be thrown out in the cold, after three puppies show up on the doorstep, complicating the dog's life. The owner, thinking the dog is responsible for the mess, finally discovers the puppies and all ends well. Animation by George Germanetti and Steve Muffatti. Story by Joe Stultz and Larry Riley. Scenics by Robert Connavale. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1948. favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 13 reviews ) favorite 9 comment 1 A 1930s cartoon where a group of South Pole animals build a snow man. Then they begin to throw snowballs at him. This makes him come to life, and he wants revenge. In the end he is stopped the way creatures of his kind are stopped in myths and folktales. - Downloaded from Public Domain Movie Torrents. favoritefavoritefavorite ( 1 reviews ) favorite 21 comment 13 A stop motion LEGO short by Spite Your Face Productions Ltd, commisioned by Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios/The Lego Group to accompany the release of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. Watch as Lego versions of Spider-Man and Doc Ock battle it out across New York. Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock and all associated images are copyright 2004 The LEGO Group favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite ( 13 reviews ) You can find more information regarding this film on its IMDb page . favorite ( 1 reviews ) by (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen) movies favorite 6 comment 2 Description by Luke Bubb (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m735o_eEwgg): THIS IS PUBLIC DOMAIN Corny Concerto is an American animated short produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and distributed by Warner Bros. It was directed by Bob Clampett, written by Frank Tashlin, animated by Robert McKimson and released as part of the Merrie Melodies series on September 25, 1943. A parody of Disney's 1940 feature Fantasia, the film uses two of Johann Strauss' best known waltzes, Tales from the Vienna... ( 2 reviews ) by Strange Company / Hugh Hancock movies favorite 1 comment 2 The Blooded are cursed to carry magic in their blood - when their blood is spilled, the magic comes out, whether to heal, summon or destroy. They are hunted by the Church of the Angels, whose Black Monks hunt them through the nights and the slums to deliver them to the Angels. One young Monk-in-training, Jered, leads the Monks to stop a human sacrifice. But both the Monks and the Blooded have secrets he does not know, and the outcome of his first mission will be very different to his... favoritefavoritefavorite ( 2 reviews )	i don't know
In what 80s arcade game were you armed with a lance and mounted upon an ostrich or a stork?	Joust (Video Game) - TV Tropes WMG Prepare to joust, buzzard bait! Joust is an arcade game produced by Williams Electronics in 1982, created by John Newcomer with art by Python Anghelo . The player controls a knight armed with a lance, mounted on either an ostrich (player 1) or a stork (player 2), who battles waves of computer-controlled enemy knights mounted on giant buzzards. These knights have three different speed and agility levels. The game screen is static; its only features are five platforms hanging in mid-air (some wrapping around the screen), the ground, and a pit of lava beneath. The simplicity of its controls are a factor in the game's wide appeal. A joystick moves the mount left and right, and a "Flap" button flaps the mount's wings once. Pressing "Flap" in rapid succession will produce a gain in altitude until simulated gravity drags the mount downward. Each wave begins with enemy knights appearing on the screen at one of four "spawn points". The three types of knights, from weakest to toughest, are: Bounder (red, 500 points), Hunter (gray, 750 points), and Shadow Lord (blue, 1,000 points). To destroy a knight and collect its point value, the player must collide with the knight while the player's lance is vertically higher than that of the knight. If the player's lance is vertically lower, he or she loses a life and is awarded 50 points. After a knight is destroyed, an egg will fall to the ground. The player must touch the egg to destroy it before the egg hatches to produce another, more powerful knight. This hatchling is harmless and may also be destroyed by touch before the knight mounts a new buzzard. The award for destroying eggs and hatchlings progresses with each one collected, from 250 to 1,000 points in 250-point increments. This progression starts anew upon the death of the player or the beginning of another wave. Players are further rewarded with 500 bonus points for each egg caught before it touches the ground. A wave is cleared when the player destroys all enemy knights and eggs. Survival Waves reward a player who avoids death during the round with 3,000 bonus points. If too much time has elapsed during a wave, a pterodactyl will appear from one side of the screen and fly around until it collides with and kills the player, the player clears the wave, or the player destroys it by hitting the pterodactyl directly in the beak with his lance, earning 1,000 points. If the player takes too much time, more pterodactyls appear. There can be up to three pterodactyls in a wave. Two players can play Joust simultaneously, and each player earns points for destroying enemy knights as well as his human opponent. Cooperative play is possible by agreement, but accidental kills through collision remain possible. Completion of Team Waves award 3,000 bonus points each to players who successfully avoid killing one another. Gladiator Waves encourage players to kill each other by similarly offering 3,000 bonus points to the first player to do so. During the first two waves, flooring at the bottom of the screen covers a lava pit, which is uncovered on the third wave as the floor burns away. On the fourth and subsequent waves, a troll inhabits the lava pit; if any player or enemy knight flies too close to the lava, the troll's hand will emerge and tug the mount down toward the lava. Players can escape the troll's grip by repeatedly pressing the "Flap" button. A little-known sequel was produced, with the new ability to transform your mount into a flying unicorn (very heavy and difficult to keep in the air, but easier to kill enemies with) but it saw very limited distribution. The game also received a pinball adaptation , which was unique in that it was a two-sided machine in keeping with the "joust" motif; two players could go head-to-head for the high score. In 2007, it was announced that CP Productions of Hollywood was actually going to try to adapt this game as a movie (something creator John Newcomer had wanted to do for some time). Sadly or mercifully, the idea appears to have been scrapped . Joust has examples of:	Jousting
What does a cruciverbalist like doing?	Son of 101 Worlds! - Page 5 - Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group 101 Worlds. Less Filling or Tastes Great? Less Filling! Your vote has been cast. Message #81 Post by terrywhisenant » Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:51 am Savage Psycho Setting: Any at all The players are all personalities of the single character that they all share. The girl scout, serial killer, clown, hobo, psychic, boxer all take turns being in charge of their shared body. Each individual can have widely varying stats and skills that determine how they act when THEY are in charge. Anytime ANYTHING that the gamemaster determines is 'stressful' occurs, every personality can roll a d20 (which can ace) to determine which personality takes over. This 'setting' is muchos fun at conventions! Terry Joined: Mon May 26, 2003 11:14 am Location: New Jersey #82 Post by MadTinkerer » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:02 pm Low Life: Generation 0 Genre: Post-Apocalyptic, A Bit Less Wacky Than Low Life (but still a little bit) Background: Shortly after "Back in the Day" but before the worst of "The Flush", the Hoomanrace was still hanging in there. In fact, this is so long ago that Hoomans still called Oith "Earth"! A few of the oldest surviving Hoomans can remember what their parents told them Earth was like before It All Done Got Blowed Up. Many young folk don't beleive them. In any case, life is harsh. Hooman tribes still control most of the Coast* and claim to control the whole world. Croaches and Werms showed up a few decades ago and some Hooman settlements accept them and some don't. Animen (Tizn'ts) are generally accepted, especially those who claim to simply be Muties who look like animals. Oofos showed up recently, warning the Hoomans and other assorted savages that their less nice cousins are trying to take over the Earth with their Magic Flying Machines. Since everyone knows that large metal objects can't fly except in fairy stories, most Oofos were treated like crazy muties who had been out in the sun too long. Then Junkopolis (the only nearby settlement that could be called a "city" with a straight face) was taken over by the Probers. Probers are a lot like Oofos but really, REALLY mean. It's no wonder the Oofos left those nutjobs. The Probers haven't bothered with the smaller settlements at all, but have enslaved nearly everyone who lived in Junkopolis. The Elders of the Settlements won't stand for this kind of treatment, so they've formed a temporary (for now) coalition currently named the United Settlements (U.S.). An Elder has been going around recruiting Young Uns to scout out the Junkopolis situation, and guess who's a part of the latest team? *Which Coast? East, West, South or North? I dunno. A pity all the Joggraffy books were burned to keep the original survivors warm. Ask the GM where he thinks your Hero thinks they are. In any case, the "Known World" is only a few hundred miles tall and wide. Playable Races: Animen(Tizn'ts), Croaches, Oofos, Werms and Hoomans. Boduls haven't evolved/devolved from Hoomans yet, Cremefillians and Piles haven't been brought to life by the massive cataclysms at the end of The Flush, and Horcs and Smelfs haven't been dumped on Earth yet. Animen use the same racial stats as Tizn'ts, but instead of being odd collections of animal parts, they resemble humanoid animals. Some Animen claim to be Muties who are just very mutated, while others claim to be "evolved" or "uplifted" animals, while others don't have any idea. In any case, all Animen look like they are combinations of Hoomans and one or two animals at the most. Hoomans use the same racial stats as Boduls, but may only take one extra Background Edge by taking extra Hindrances. Many Hoomans are also Muties, though Mutie is a relative term these days (usually literally, and pun quite intended). As a result, there is hardly any "racial tension" in most Hooman settlements. In fact, most Hoomans are a laid-back bunch, and if non-Hooman weirdos want to help out with the chores, they're welcome to a slice of the pie. Most Hoomans, Mutie or not, look pretty Hoomanlike (as opposed to Boduls) and have just one or two "mutation" Background Edges at the most. Croaches, Oofos and Werms are generally unchanged. Oofo Heroes don't have any direct connection to the Probers in Junkopolis unless I come up with an Edge for it. That's it for now. I might come up with a bit more and actually run it or I might not. I was inspired in part by d20 Apocalypse, which has some very nice system-generic tables for trading and survival in a post-apocalyptic setting. That's also where the "Generation 0" name came from. The rest is pure Low Life with the craziness turned down just a few notches. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne #83 Post by CJ » Mon Oct 09, 2006 11:43 pm Glam Reaper: The Rocking Dead Genre: Goofy 80's style supernatural schlock-fest Background: Welcome to America through a mirror darkly. For the past few decades a war has been raged against personal spirit and self-expression. The FBI raided woodstock. Some of the greatest musicians of all time have either been thrown in jail or even executed for crimes against decency and corruption of the young. They thought they could bury rock and roll. But the teenagers of America remember the dead, and they won't stay buried... Maybe a metal-head should of never been made Grim Reaper, but oh what a thrill it has been to see the very grateful dead heroes of America's rebellious youth return to rawk the earth! I'd imagine you'd need Arcane Background: Rock and Roll Necromancer, and perhaps some racial packages for different types of undead. Sincerely, President Raygun P.S. Secret Cheat Code is up, up, down, down, left, right, A, B, start at menu screen. Utilisingu Savage Worrds rules, the GM puts alien invaders on table. Players move ships and roll dice to destroy alien invaders. Many good exciting action battles! Rasers everywhere! When invaders are destroyed, battle is over. But rolepraying is needed too! Ships need to refuel between battles. Landing in various places on Earth, Earth colonies, and alien planets, Heroes must need to talk to people and investigate occulences. Peaceful end to conflict may be possible if Heroes save life of alien embassadors and promote peace with wolds as well as raser cannons. Players are rolepraying excellent Engrish phrases like: "Invaders are to be coming in five minutes! Launch every ship!", "Hostage ship is big one on left! Shoot it not!", "Embassador, perhaps humans and aliens learning to get along with peace. War is not needed. Please invasion be calling off." Brilliant and extremely clean new Savage Worrds book coming in 1987. Purchase it also for Tanuki Entertainment System. Fry with honor! Congrat! You make first post I must be reading out loud. Fry with honor! #86 Post by CJ » Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:15 pm Glam Reaper: UK Tour If you thought the American rock ban was tough, you haven't been to merry old London town in a while. During the Queen's Jubilee the Sex Pistols took a boat on the Thames to play "God Save the Queen" in protest of recent fascist policies by the government. Their ship was sunk with a torpedo and Johnny Rotten and the rest were blown to bits. Ever since then the punk underground has been the main target of Thatcher regime, which continues on strong even now in the 2000's. France would be even worst had it not been for them throwing out Jim Morrison from his Parisian crypt in 1991. His body made it's way around France's own rock underground until he was eventually ressurected. The Lizard King waged a successfull war and turned France into the only first world nation Free Rock zone. Many English rock refugees have fled to the Lizard's mainland kingdom, but others stay to fight for their native soil and the right to rock out. In general the English punk rebellion has been forced into more of a state of open war than the rocking youth of America. They'v developed guirella tactics and their underground clubs are really underground, for fear of getting busted by the blackshirts of the Thatcher regime. But while the war may be tougher in merry old England, the dead seem to be rising faster there. The Old World must have stronger mojo because there are more rock and roll undead among the English punk underground than among the entire and far more numerous rock and rollers of America. The head of the English Punk Resistance is zombie Sid Vicious, who is one of the few on the island who gets regular correspondence with the Lizard King across the Channel. #87 Post by CJ » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:36 pm Return of the Attack of the Toxic Radioactive Ooze Genre: 80's and early 90's B-Movies and Saturday Morning cartoons, specifically the cartoons Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Creepy Crawlers, Toxic Crusaders, and a dash of Ghostbusters. Bassically the 80's take on 50's atomic monster flicks, with radioactive superheroes and whacky volunteer commando forces like a poorman's G-Force (the team that always went against Godzilla and failed miserably almost every single time) Background: The Northern California city of San Santa Berdino. Sunny, green, and glowing from the radioactive toxic waste dumped in the picturesque hillside overlooking the valley. The time, as best as we can tell, is sometime circa the 1980's. The uncertaintity comes from the fact that a television or radio broadcast, newspaper, or phone call from the outside world hasn't reached San Berdino in nearly a decade. It took about five times a woodland creature or underlooked person got mutated into a giant radioactive beast and rampaged across the nation before the Army finally decided to cut off San Santa Berdino for good and let it deal with the ooze it's own way. And so it has. Ever since then the city has been soley protected from the radioactive menace by the most elite civilian volunteer taskforce this side of the Rocky Mountains: the San Santa Berdino Citizen's Action Brigade, colliquially referred to as the Action Pack! ----------------------- This genre is just begging for monsters of the week, cute radioactive animal mascots, and off the wall characters like scuba experts who never take off their frog suits or sword wielding paratroopers who drag their parachutes behind them. #88 Post by CJ » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:20 pm CLASS OF RADIOACTIVE HIGH Genre: 80's rebel teenager movies mixed with B-movie atomic schlock. See Class of Nuke Em High. Background St.Geiger High is your typical New Jersey highschool a quarter of a mile from a nuclear power plant. Between the toxic waste leaking into the water supply, the irradiated weed grown at the power plant, and the Science Lab's new microwave laser there's enough radiation to give Godzilla cancer, and it's started to have an effect on the student body. Or should be say, bodies. Those who aren't falling down from radiation burns or fallout poisoning are being mutated. The lucky ones are turning aggressive and evil, like the entire Honor Roll Society, but the less fortunate wind up as atomic Subhumanoids from direct exposure to the toxic waste or too much of that nuclear weed. So inbetween sex, drugs, and rock and roll you might also want to watch out for the mutant creepazoid and dodge the only mildly irradiated gang as they start to turn into atomic zombies. #89 Post by Patrick » Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:45 pm Hollow War Genre: Weird Science, Fantasy, Weird War Two July 16th 1945: In an effort to develop a weapon to bring the War in the Pacific to an end, The U.S. tests the Atomic Bomb in a remote area of New Mexico. The detonation blasted a hole in the Earth’s crust reveling that the planet was a Dyson Sphere, hollow in construction with a mico-star (100 mile diameter) at its center. Living within the Earth were several cultures, races, and nations who had achieved a level of technology equal to that of the surface dwellers. Chief among these Dyson cultures was the draconian Pompeii (human) Empire which had ruthlessly established hegemony over the other inner Earth peoples. The Pompeians, refugees from the Imperial Roman city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, had adapted to their new world and in true Roman fashion played one inner world faction against another, attacked at the appropriate times, and quickly established their Empire. Over several generations, the surface world had become little more myth lost to the ages. Unfortunately for the United States, with the bulk of her armed forces overseas, the hole blasted into the Earth’s crust was only a few hundred miles from the Supreme Pompeian Capital. Perceiving the Atomic test as an attack, the Emperor sent legions of Pompeians, Sssizzamura (Lizard-men), and Jzilk-Chak (Giant Ant-Men) through the Atomic Breach, invading the surface. The American Southwest was quickly overrun. 1950: With its forces scattered throughout the world, the US recalled its military from the Pacific, granting the Japanese a reprieve from their inevitable defeat. In Europe, America has been forced to maintain its garrison against the Soviet Union seeking to take advantage of America’s troubles. Also the U.S. refuses to use any more atomic weapons for fear of breaching the Earth’s crust again. Japan is in the process of recovering and has actually made contact with the Pompeians with the hope of establishing an alliance. Around the globe the Pompeians have sent expeditions and raids to the surface, while holding the Southwest from the American counter attack. Player Roles: PC’s can be soldiers fighting the Pompeian hordes, spies and scholars trying to learn more about this new enemy, or one the many subjugated inner races trying to throw-off the yoke of Pompeian domination. #90 Post by MadTinkerer » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:59 am Law & Order: Paranormal Victims Unit Genre: Law & Order crossed with Heroes and X Files. When crimes are committed by those who aren't exactly human, the City of New York turns to the Paranormal Victim's Unit. The PVU is a special police unit charged with investigating bizarre crimes and apprehending metahuman, semi-human, ex-human, post-human, and non-human perpetrators. Fortunately such crimes are relatively rare, and happen only about once a week. Each adventure involves actual investigation: Was it a metahuman? Was it an alien, ghost, werewolf, or mad scientist? Who else was involved? Could it have been a Normal setting up a Paranormal to take the blame? What was the perp's motive? How exactly is the PVU going to capture/contain the perp? Et cetera. Members of the PVU can be Normals or Paranormals as per normal Hero creation. All Arcane Backgrounds are allowed, most Powers are allowed (detect arcana is routinely used alongside normal forensic evaluation, but zombie is less legal than heroin). PVU officers are expected to act like police, not monster exterminators, even if the perp barely qualifies as "human". Even (intelligent) Space Lizards have Miranda Rights. Man, I wish I had time to run this along with what I'm already running... "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne #91 Post by feuer_faust » Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:37 pm OK, here goes... Razor's Edge Tokyo, 2089. The world at large is a lawless dystopian stereotype, with the major cities being some of the few bastions of relative normalcy and calm. Even then, gangs roam the streets, and the average man is at risk getting caught in the middle of the latest sport: illegal bike racing. Not only do the competetors fly through the highways and side-streets at break-neck speeds, but dirty tricks and even fighting is openly encouraged for a better show! The big stars make millions, the losers end up on the curb, or worse. Will your players indulge in the seedy underworld of tomorrow, or try to reform a corrupt industry in a world where nobody cares anymore... Rampaging Apocalypse The end of days has come! Nuclear testing in the early 40's has wrought horrible mutations on nature's creatures, who have taken a liking to wreaking global havok! 30-storey gorillas battle 600-ton lizards over the ruins of New York, while military forces sramcble to stop the titanic squirrel-monster from devouring the Planter's factory. Are your players out to save the world, or take part in some wholesale mayhem? [Table 1-1: Signature] D6: 1 (nothing) 2 (quote) 3 (image) 4 (WLD record: relevant game [table 1-2]) 5 (internet meme) 6 (Critical Sig: roll 2 more times) Rolled a 2: #92 Post by skathros » Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:08 am Jousting Ostrich Knights In a nutshell: Ostrich (or sometimes stork) flying noble knights help liberate the land from tyrannical evil knights. Genre: Fantasy...with flying ostriches! Inspiration: Joust the arcade game produced by Williams Electronics (1982). Description: Players take the role of flying ostrich riding knights waging war upon the vast army of giant-buzzard mounted Evil Knights. Although vastly outnumbered, the ostrich-riders fight a valiant battle to hopefully rid the land of the tyrannical rule of the Evil Knights. The Setting: The world doesn't possess a large amount of habitable earth-bound land-masses, the majority of the land mass being covered in deadly lava. Tiny islands can be found jutting out from the flowing oceans of lava, but the more numerous habitable areas are the floating islands which hang suspended above the deadly, burning lava oceans below. Spawn Points: Travel to and from the various islands can be achieved through teleporting Spawn Points. This allows easy travel for those without a flying mount. Combat: The most common form of combat waged between knights is the Arial Joust. Arial Jousting consists of knights (good or evil) taking to the skies upon their flying mounts wielding deadly lances. Army of Evil Knights: The evil, buzzard-riding knights are divided into three orders. The red-armored Bounders are the common troops of the Evil Knights. The second order, the white-armored Hunters, are less numerous yet more powerful than the Bounders. The final order, the blue-armored Shadow Lords, are the elite of the Evil Knights. All Evil Knights ride ferocious giant buzzards. Other Evil Denizens of the World: The Pterodactyls-these massive, vicious beasts enter an area in a blood-lust frenzy, wrecking havoc upon any sky-bound creatures in the area. The Trolls-the gargantuan trolls inhabit the lava oceans which make up the majority of the world. They often rise from the burning oceans to snare flying passerby. Don't make me go Zelda on you Concept: A Space Rock Opera In a Nutshell: Saving the universe with rock! Genre: Sci-fi/Mystery/Action/Comedy Inspirations: Black Heaven (I think that's what it was called), Star Wars, Bill and Ted, with maybe a hint of Spinal Tap Description: In this world, the players are all members of insert ridiculous band name here, a struggling insert made-up rock sub-genre name here band attempting and failing to gain recognition in the local music scene. Then one night after screwing up a big gig, the bandmate are all abducted by aliens. The aliens tell them there from the Galatic Confederation of Planets (GCP), and ask them for a startling favor, "Help us save the galaxy." The GCP is currently losing a war with the Plague, a monster-like race apparently bent on the destruction of all sentient life. There only known weakness, music, more specifically, earth music. From there, the band goes on a planet-hopping adventure/music-tour, encountering action and mystery along with space roadies and alien groupies. What are the Plague? Why are they weak to music? Why did the GCP choose this band over thousands of other bands on Earth? The band will learn this and more in their adventures. This is the most brilliant thing I've ever heard. With your permission, I'd like to start writing something up, possibly for inclusion in a future edition of Shark Bytes... #95 Post by LittleAlex » Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:01 pm Direct 2 Video Land In a nutshell: The players biological creations who are play roles in the recreations of various bad crime/horror/fantasy movies of the early 1980’s to the present. Genre: Any really, but mostly modern crime + horror + cheesy fantasy Inspiration: Steven Segal movies, Ator the Fighting Eagle, Leprechaun 4, Big Trouble in Little China, Heroes Die by Matt Stover Description: Earth, 2555: After nearly 350 years of non-stop toil the need for work was made obsolete by technology which people of today would declare “magic”. Sadly, this didn’t bring about an era of peace and joy. Rather, the human race almost became extinct due to boredom. During this mad push to become a people of leisure, mankind forgot how to relax. Then in the year 2549 a discovery was made that changed the course of human history. An archeologist uncovered what is thought to be a “Video Store”. Though the contents of the movies themselves are lost to the ravages of time, there was one room that contained thousands of movie posters. Of course, these posters are from the direct to video releases of the 1980’s and 1990’s. In an effort to stave off the eventual death of the human race, a council was formed to recreate what must have been the greatest entertainment known. The players are the results of this effort. Biological entities (called Actors) grown for such purposes they are placed into environments created as best guesses from the depictions on the posters themselves. Actors are expected to recreate the excitement and adventure these movies must have provided, even if it kills them. The actors are not alone, however. An advanced AI called a director is used to keep the plot going and to keep the Actors in line. Notes: I have been working on a couple of additional systems to get the above up and running. I am hoping to have experience point rewards based on how successful the movie is. This would be influenced by the genre of the movie being recreated. #96 Post by philth » Wed Feb 25, 2009 12:06 am The Earth Chronicles Genre: High Fantasy with Sci-Fi Elements Inspiration: Zecharia Sitchin Description: The heavens are falling. The gods have sent an expedition to Earth in order to obtain the one thing that will prevent that from coming to pass, gold! The sentient beings of the planet were however very suspicious and reluctant to share there wealth. Many have chosen to defie the gods, and have hoarded, and hid there treasure in underground complexes. Laboriously the gods began to slowly ferret out the required mineral, but the going was slow and many of the gods fell, wounded while battling the Earth creatures. Desperate for an answer, some of there scientist offered a radical solution. They would create their servant race, Humans, and train them to do the hard work of obtaining the gold. Meanwhile, tension grows between the gods whom find themselves trapped on the planet, unable to return home. War is in the air as the god Marduk challenges his Uncle Enlil for ultimate supremacy on Earth. Notes: I'd probably only let the players be humans, and that the gods would have trained and armed them in the typical fantasy tropes. Thinking the players could have been trained in Marduk's camp. Start slowly with a basic dungeon crawl, and eventually bring in the politics and have the players working against other gods and such. I was originally thinking the true Earth Race's could be orcs or goblins, but dwarfs actually work really well. First, they are small ( I want part of the issue the gods had in getting there own gold to be that they are giants and cannot easily invade the enemy dungeons). Second they love gold (yes I'm stereotyping a fictional race). Third, I see hem as mistrusting ( I'm not a racist, really, I have some Dwarf friends ). And finally, who builds a dungeon better than a dwarf. Kill those bearded bastards and take there gold to god so that he might stop the heavens from falling. Mine is the one and true god, Hail Marduk!	i don't know
Polly is a nickname for what popular girls name, spending 46 of the last 100 years as the most popular girls name in America?	200 Most Popular Baby Girl Names With Meanings 200 Most Popular Baby Girl Names With Meanings January 19, 2017 Image: Shutterstock The US Social Security Administration baby name results are in! While Emma retained the top spot, Madison failed to make in the top ten names. The rhythmic name Alaina gained 14 spots, but Jasmine lost 12. Elsa, the name of one of our favorite Disney princesses, slipped from 286th to 653rd spot. Below is MomJunction’s complete list of the most popular baby girl names. Have a look! Meaning ‘universal’, Emma made a surprising return, thanks to the legion of Emma heroines. 2 Olivia Latin This graceful and old-fashioned name, meaning ‘olive tree’ has zoomed past the old favorites like Ashley and Sarah. 3 This lovely and sweet name means ‘wise’. 4 This moniker, meaning ‘bird’, carries the glitz and glamor of Ava Gardner, the raven-haired siren. 5 Isabella Hebrew Meaning ‘god’s oath’, Isabella has been one of the top five names for several years. 6 Mia, meaning ‘mine’ is one of the most popular names in America. 7 The classic and innocent Abigail means ‘father’s joy’. 8 This one can never go out of style. It means ‘industrious’. 9 This moniker, with several literary ties and pop culture references, means ‘strong’. 10 Harper English This smart name has the twang of Harper Lee, one of the most celebrated authors of our time. It means ‘harpist’. 11 Madison English Madison, meaning ‘son of Matthew,’ originated as a boy’s name, but is used more for girls now. 12 Amelia is a gracious and timeless name with the option of the contemporary nickname Amy. 13 Elizabeth Hebrew Elizabeth, meaning ‘God’s oath,’ has been one of the top 20 names in the US for over a century. 14 Sofia or Sophia means ‘wise’. 15 This elegant name has an artsy ring to it. It means ‘hazelnut’. 16 This trendy and sophisticated name means ‘elf counselor’. 17 Meaning ‘blooming’, this moniker epitomizes the feminine chic. 18 Movie stars, in particular, have been opting this name lately. It means ‘beautiful fairy’. 19 This moniker exudes a mystical sense of elegance and calm. It means ‘graceful’. 20 Queen Victoria of England gave this name an air of upper-class stoicism. It means ‘victorious’. 21 Aubrey English The meaning of Aubrey is ‘elf ruler’. It has been in the top 50 names list for four years. 22 The meaning of Scarlett is ‘deep red’. 23 Zoey is one of the most popular forms of Zoe. It means ‘life’. 24 Addison English After spending decades on the boy’s side, this name has tipped over to the girl’s territory. It means ‘son of Adam’. 25 The name represents the lily flower. 26 Lillian Latin This old-fashioned name has zoomed back to the popularity charts as the formal version of Lily. It means ‘lily flower’. 27 Natalie Latin This one reminds us of the 50s, fresh-faced actress, Natalie Wood. It means ‘born on Christmas day’. 28 Hannah Hebrew Sweet and angelic, this one has been one of the top names for a decade. It means ‘gracious’. 29 This light and airy name means ‘air’ or ‘lioness’. 30 Layla Arabic The meaning of this lyrical name is ‘night’. Music fans would recognize this name from the Eric Clapton’s song. 31 Brooklyn English This name has been climbing up the charts after being chosen by the Beckhams. It refers to a borough in New York City. 32 Alexa Greek Alexa is the shorter and snappier version of the name Alexandra. It means ‘defender of mankind’. 33 Zoe Greek This soft and gentle name has become a favorite as girl’s name over a decade. It means ‘life’. 34 Penelope Greek This classic name, meaning ‘weaver’, has been topping the popularity charts, thanks to actress Penelope Cruz. 35 This Irish surname is one of the hottest names for girls. It means ‘valiant’. 36 Leah Hebrew This Biblical name needs no fancy embellishment to stay on the popularity charts. It means ‘weary’. 37 This name, meaning ‘noble strength’, will never go out of style. 38 Savannah Spanish Savannah is one of the most popular geographical names. It means ‘treeless plain’ and refers to a plain ecosytem. 39 Allison is the diminutive of Alice and means ‘noble’. 40 A sleek name with an appealing nickname (Sam). Samantha means ‘asked of God’. 41 Nora is the diminutive of Honora and means ‘light’. 42 This spelling variation of Schuyler means ‘scholar’. 43 This fast rising Latin name means ‘young ceremonial attendant’. 44 This affectionate name means ‘grace’. 45 Paisley brings to mind the rich patterned fabric. It means ‘church’. 46 Arian is the Italian variation of Ariadne and means ‘most holy’. 47 This diminutive of Ellen and Eleanor means ‘bright shining one’. 48 This ethereal sounding name means ‘ascender’. 49 Meaning ‘clear’, Claire is one of the most popular one-syllable names. 50 This soft and sweet color name is far from shrinking. It means ‘purple’. 51 This beautiful Latin name means ‘star’. 52 Sadie is a diminutive of Sarah and means ‘princess’. 53 Mila is the short form of several European names, including Milena. 54 Gabriella is a graceful and intelligent name, meaning ‘god is my strength’. 55 Lucy is the variation of Lucia and means ‘light’. 56 This winsome name, meaning ‘holy’ has become increasingly popular over the years. 57 This attractive surname- turned-name means ‘helmeted chief’. 58 This name invokes wholesome sweetness. It means ‘princess’. 59 Sitting pretty at #59, Madelyn means ‘woman from Magdala or high tower’. 60 Eleanor is a variation of Alienor. 61 Kaylee is the American variation of Kayla and means ‘laurel or crown’. 62 This moniker is as sweet as strawberry pie. It means ‘small and strong’. 63 Hazel refers to the hazelnut tree. 64 Hailey is an English and Scottish clan name and means ‘Hay’s meadow’. 65 Genesis Word Name This name isn’t as original as you think. It was given to 4,000 babies last year. 66 This name is a variation of Kyle and means ‘boomerang’. 67 Autumn is ideal for a baby born in October. 68 Piper is a bright and beautiful name, meaning ‘pipe player’. 69 This name reflects the new global culture. It means ‘illusion’. 70 Nevaeh English This one came out of nowhere and managed to make its place in the top 100. It’s Heaven spelled backwards. 71 The ‘peaceful’ virtue of this name has made it extremely popular. 72 This name means ‘a fighting man’s estate’ or ‘royal’. 73 Mackenzie is a strong and serious name, meaning ‘child of a wise leader’. 74 Bella is a diminutive of Isabella and means ‘beautiful’. 75 Eva is the Latin form of the Hebrew name Eve and means ‘life’. 76 Taylor is an English occupational name and means ‘tailor’. 77 Naomi is an Old Testament name and means ‘pleasantness’. 78 Aubree is the spelling variation of Aubrey and means ‘elf ruler’. 79 It’s the name of the Roman goddess and means ‘dawn’. 80 This name is full of charm. It means ‘dark-skinned’. 81 This Greek name means ‘woman from Lydia’. 82 Brianna is a delicate and feminine name with an Irish flavor. It means ‘strong’. 83 This vibrant and sassy gem name has appeared in a number of musical compositions. 84 This worldly, sophisticated and elegant name means ‘pure’. 85 The meaning of Ashley is ‘ash tree meadow’. 86 Alexis is a female derivative of Alexander and means ’defender of mankind’. 87 This classic name means ‘noble’. 88 Cora is an old-fashioned name, meaning ‘maiden’. 89 The meaning of this ancient name is ‘youthful’. 90 This lovely name with a delicate image means ‘woman from Magdala or high tower’. 91 This English word name got popularity via R&B singer Faith Evans. 92 It’s a combination of Anna and Belle and means ‘loving’. 93 This is one of the most loved names and means ‘noble’. 94 Isabelle is an ultra-feminine name and means ‘God’s oath’. 95 Meaning ‘life’, Vivian is one on the rise. 96 Gianna is a radiant name, meaning ‘God is gracious’. 97 This Irish name, meaning ‘descendent of Conn’ would make a strong and attractive choice. 98 Clara is a Latin name, meaning ‘bright and clear’. 99 This regal name means ‘little king’. 100 Khloe is a variation of Chloe and means ‘young green shoot’. 101 One of the most majestic female names, Alexandra means ‘defender of mankind’. 102 The meaning of Hadley is ‘heather field’. 103 This rhythmic name means ‘my God has answered’. 104 A warm and inviting name, meaning ‘wise’. 105 This capital of the UK would make an attractive name for your girl. 106 This Spanish variation of Helen means ‘bright’ or ‘shining light’. 107 It’s a polished and refined name, meaning ‘ruler’. 108 An outgoing and positive name, meaning ‘bailiff’. 109 Marian is the medieval variation of Marie and means ‘bitter’. 110 This Roman goddess name means ‘moon’. 111 The name of an ancient tree featuring in several texts. 112 Best known for the Disney princess, Jasmine refers to a sweet-smelling white flower. 113 This classy, yet cute, name means ‘king’s meadow’. 114 Valentina is the feminine variation of Valentine and means ‘strength’. 115 Kayla is a sassy name, meaning ‘laurel’. 116 This name is loved for its melodic and feminine qualities. It means ‘to flirt’. 117 Andrea is the feminine version of Andrew and means ‘strong and manly’. 118 This Russian name means ‘birthday of the Lord’. 119 A lovely alternative to the old-fashioned Laura. It means ‘laurel tree’. 120 This dignified Welsh name means ‘seashore’. 121 This spelling variation of Riley has been popular since decades. It means ‘decade’. 122 Sydney is a French name, meaning ‘white meadow’. 123 This one has its namesake in Chris Daughtry’s daughter Adalynn Rose. It means ‘noble’. 124 Mary Hebrew Mary is the most simple and classic of all the baby girl names. It means ‘bitter’. 125 This Spanish name is hugely popular in the Latino community. It means ‘listener’. 126 Jade is a beautiful gem name, meaning ‘stone of the side’. 127 Lilian is the melodious and feminine variation of Lilian. 128 Brielle is the short form of Gabriela and means ‘God is my strength’. 129 Ivy English This quirky and offbeat botanical name is enjoying a revival. It refers to a woody climbing plant. 130 Trinity Latin This ethereal name has spiritual qualities. It refers to the ‘holy trinity’ – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 131 Josephine is the feminine variation of Joseph and means ‘May Jehovah give’. 132 This variation of Adalia means the ‘noble one’. 133 This moniker, meaning ‘joyous,’ is appealing. 134 Adeline is the French diminutive of Adele and means ‘noble’. 136 Jordyn is a smooth, hipster name, meaning ‘descending’. 137 This Biblical name means ‘lion of God’. 138 One of the boldest names in the list, it means ‘wild boar in woodland clearing’. 139 Lilly is the secondary spelling of Lily. 140 Isla is a Scottish place name and means ‘island’. 142 A lovely variation of Lila, it means ‘night’. 143 Makayla is the flipped pronunciation of Michael and means ‘one who is like God’. 144 This adorable name means ‘bitter’. 145 This feminine variation of the name Emil means ‘rival’. 146 Mya is a variation of Maya and means ‘illusion’. 147 Kendall is an English name, meaning ‘valley of the river Kent’. 148 Indeed a melodious pick! It means ‘song’. 149 Isabel is the Spanish variation of Elizabeth and means ‘pledged to God’. 150 Women with this name tend to be gracious, elegant and successful. It means ‘small stream’. 151 Mackenzie Irish Once a masculine name, Mackenzie has now become one of the most used names for girls. It means ‘child of a wise leader’. 152 A lovely and lissome name, meaning ‘victorious people’. 153 This English name means ‘a fighting man’s estate’. 154 This rich and classic name means ‘pearl’. 155 One of the most preferred pronunciations of Maria. It means ‘bitter’. 156 This attractive and serene name means ‘place of pleasure’. 157 Athena is the name of Zeus’ daughter. 158 Amy is a short and sweet name, meaning ‘beloved’. 159 Norah Latin Norah Jones, the singer, is the reason behind the popularity of this name. It means ‘woman of honor’. 160 This spelling variation of London has a high possibility of surpassing the original. 161 It is a beautiful Latin name meaning ‘strength’. 162 A streamlined and modern form of the name Sarah. 163 A spelling variation of Aaliyah, meaning ‘highborn’ or ‘exalted’. 164 The Greek variation of Angela, meaning ‘angel’. 165 A recently revived short form of Grace. 166 One of the most used floral names, it refers to a flower. 167 A delicate and demure name meaning ‘female sheep’. 168 This regal name is actually a feminine variation of the name Julian and means ‘youthful’. 169 An exotic and lilting variation of Lyla. It means ‘night’. 170 The extra ‘n’ adds pizzazz to this name. 171 The Spanish accent to this name gives it a sophisticated vibe. 172 A globally popular name meaning ‘bright and beautiful’. 173 Reese Witherspoon single-handedly propelled this name to popularity. It means ‘ardor’. 174 Elise is the French variant of Elizabeth and means ‘pledged to God’. 175 Eliza is the diminutive of Elizabeth and means ‘pledged to God’. 176 This variation of Alana sounds way more distinctive than the original. It means ‘harmony’. 177 Raelynn Modern Name It’s the name’s first year in the Top 200. As it is a combination two sounds Rae and Lynn, it doesn’t have any specific meaning. 178 A lovely Hawaiian name, meaning ‘a heavenly flower’. 179 One of the most consistently used girl’s names. It means ‘pure’. 180 A lovely German name, meaning ‘son of Emery’. 181 A lacy and delicate name, meaning ‘blind’. 182 A perfect pick for parents who want a gen-sounding name. It means ‘tribe woman’. 183 A name with a host of literary associations. 184 A moniker that’s likely to spread harmony in your child’s life. 185 This name oozes sensual charm. It means ‘butterfly’. 186 A lovely ‘a’ ending name meaning ‘woman of Adria’. 187 The meaning of Presley is ‘priest’s meadow’. 188 This moniker represents the beauty in the Bible. It means ‘servant of God’. 189 Of all the word names, this one is the most popular. 190 One of the successful names on the block, Hayden means ‘heather-grown hill’. 191 This spelling was popularized by actress Julianna Margulies. It means ‘young’. 192 Michelle French This dainty name has been in vogue since the Beatles sang about it. It means ‘who is like God’. 193 This variant of Adeline has rocketed up the list. It means ‘noble’. 194 An elegant ‘elle’ ending name, meaning ‘yielding to prayer’. 195 A name full of sunshine. 196 A sleek and stylish name meaning ‘beautiful’. 197 A contemporary name meaning ‘pure’. 198 Another well-used form of Riley. 199 One of the double l sound names that have caught on. It means ‘blue’. 200 Daniela is the female variant of Daniel. It means ‘God is my judge’. Four Unique Ways To Choose A Name For Your Baby Girl: Whether you want to go the traditional way or have something unique, we’ve gathered great ideas on how to choose a name for your daughter. Read on! 1. Sound: Sponsored Think about how the name will sound on your daughter. Is the name pleasant to hear or does it sound harsh? Most importantly, think if it will go well with the last name. 2. Uniqueness: Parents often look for a unique name to make their child stand out. But sometimes, an unusual name can bring your child’s name unwanted attention. Think about the mispronunciations of the name your daughter might be subjected to! 3. Significance: Research the meaning of the name to find a perfect one for your daughter. Several names are hugely popular, but have unpleasant meanings. 4. Pick A Name That Ages Well: When you are thinking of a name for your daughter, imagine her at a job interview, in a professional situation or giving a presentation to a client. The name might sound cute at her preschool years, but may seem annoying in the adulthood. Common Mistakes While Selecting A Baby Name And Ways To Avoid Them: 1. Experimenting With The Name’s Spelling: You could be less creative with the spelling of your baby’s name. The US National Bureau of Economic Research states that teachers expect less from students who have names with creative spellings. They also give less attention to them. 2. Starting With The Middle Name: This is one of the silliest mistakes ever. The middle name should be in the middle and not in the first place, no matter how much you love it. 3. Keeping It A Surprise: There’s absolutely no reason for keeping your baby girl’s name a surprise. We’d suggest you to get your list run through your friends and families, but not too many people. 4. Quirky: If you are thinking of selecting a quirky name, think how the name will age. What sounds cool might be dated in 10 years’ time. So take your time and think what you want your daughter to be known as! And do not forget to share your picks below! Recommended Articles:	Mary
Minnesotan Walter "Fritz" Mondale, born on Jan 5, 1928, was the vice president for which US President?	Top 200 Most Popular Names in England and Wales in 1900 - British Baby Names British Baby Names 21/08/2012 Top 200 Most Popular Names in England and Wales in 1900 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the name data for England and Wales is somewhat on the sparse side. These days we are given full listings for every name given to three babies or more each year — but this has only been the case since 1996. Before that the official statistics only provide us with one Top 100 list for 1904, 1914, 1924, 1934, 1944, 1954, 1964, 1974, 1984 and 1994. My long-term aim has been to compile more complete rankings for the 19th century. Starting with the year 1900 (I shall be working backwards) I have been busy ranking all the names from the original scanned pages from the England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 for that year. . It should be noted that the data is not without its flaws. Births were originally recorded by a registrar (in their own handwriting) which were later typed up into the register. Some names are invariably recorded incorrectly but in most cases they are easy to identify. I found one Gwenlliam, for example, which is clearly meant to be Gwenllian. It is impossible to know where the mistake was made. Did the registrar mishear the parents? Was their handwriting misread? Or did the typist make a typo? We'll never know, but we can see that there were many opportunities for human error. On the whole, however, this does not affect the rankings a great deal. . The Top 200 names in England and Wales in 1900: . Statistics compiled by Eleanor Nickerson at britishbabynames.com No unauthorised copying without credit or permission. . Much like today, there was a greater number of individual names given to girls than boys. Just over 22,000 girls were given the most popular name Mary; half the number of the almost 55,000 boys who were given the most popular boys' name, William. The same was true of the second most popular names: 18,000 girls were named Florence; 38,000 were named John. The year 1900 saw many interesting cultural and political events, many of which had a notable effect on the choice of names parents chose that year. The Boer War was in progress that year and its impact on nomenclature is very apparent. Many of the battle names (Mafeking, Bloemfontien, Colenso, Tugela, Ladysmith, Paardeburg, Transvaal, Glencoe, Kimberley) and word names (Peace, Surrender) were give as middle names. Notable military heroes and leaders also provided name inspiration. Victoria (#88) — Victoria was at a peak in 1900, when it was given to 800 babies. Despite being the name of the monarch, it was not especially high ranking during the 19th century, except at notable points. In 1885, for example, it was only given to 100 babies. The count in 1895 was 163, and 397 in 1899. The name, however, was popular in 1897 (the year of the Diamond Jubilee) and 1901 (the year of the queen's death).The most likely explanation for this peak in the name is the patriotism created by the Boer War, especially given that many of the Victorias born that year had "battle" middle names -- Mafeking, Ladysmith, Colenso, Tugela. Pretoria (#116) — This was one of the Boer War "battle names" that saw quite a lot of popularity as a first name as well as a middle name. Unlike the other battle names, Pretoria was given almost exclusively to girls: most likely because of it similarity to Victoria. Hector (#42) — Hector shot up in popularity in 1900 thanks to Major-General Sir Hector MacDonald, who was a notable soldier and knighted for his efforts in the Boer War. Many boys were given the name "Hector MacDonald" for their first names. Redvers (#50) — Redvers was given to nearly 12,000 boys in 1900 in honour of Major-General Sir Redvers Buller, a popular military leader. Baden (#51) — Almost as many boys that were named Redvers were named Baden, in honour of Robert Baden-Powell who was regarded as the hero of the Seige of Mafeking. Several boys were given "Baden Powell" as their first names, others just had Baden. Roberts (#110) — Frederick Roberts (Lord Roberts), was another notable war-hero who recieved many honours when he returned to England. Over 300 boys were given the name Roberts in 1900 and 28 were named Bobs, which was apparently Lord Roberts' nickname. Many boys were also called "Lord Roberts" or, in the case of a few boys whose surname was Roberts, simply Lord (#200).	i don't know
What product is advertised with the slogan: "The best a man can get"?	Gillette Co. \| AdAge Encyclopedia of Advertising - AdAge Adage Aleady a member? Sign in Get More From Ad Age Register to become a member today. You'll get the essential information you need to do your job better, including 7 free articles per month on Ad Age and Creativity Ability to comment on articles and creative work Access to 9 custom e-newsletters like Ad Age Daily, Ad Age Digital and CMO Strategy To get unlimited content and more benefits, check out our Membership page Register Now Want more Access, Content & Connections? We are glad you are enjoying Advertising Age. To get uninterrupted access and additional benefits, become a member today. Already a member? Log in or go back to the homepage . Hey, there. It looks like you're using an ad blocker. The news and features are funded in part by our advertisers. To support Ad Age and the industry we cover please either: . Most Popular In September 1901, King Camp Gillette founded the American Safety Razor Co., which was renamed the Gillette Safety Razor Co. in 1904. By the end of that year, in which Mr. Gillette received a U.S. patent for the safety razor, his company had produced more than 90,000 razors and 120,000 blades. Sales expanded both domestically and overseas, with Gillette opening units in London and Paris, as well as Canada, Germany and, in 1906, Mexico. Gillette's blades were sold wrapped in green paper with Mr. Gillette's picture on the wrapper. Thanks to Mr. Gillette's easily recognizable face and signature adorning every package, the company established one of the first brands known worldwide. For the "civilized man" Early Gillette ads targeted men exclusively; they appeared principally in newspapers and general circulation magazines, and stressed the civilizing aspect of shaving. "The country's future is written in the faces of young men," one blurb from 1910 declared, continuing, "The Gillette is a builder of regular habits. Own a Gillette—be a master of your time—shave in three minutes." Another ad from the same year indicated that Gillette's razors separated independent, civilized men from brutes and effeminate males: "Woman is the great civilizer. If it were not for her, man would revert to whiskers and carry a club. . . . " Many early ads criticized barbers, who posed a threat to the popularity of home shaving. But such combative ads disappeared once the marketer enticed barbers into selling Gillette products by giving them a percentage of each home kit they sold. Gillette first attempted to create a profitable women's market in 1915, with an extensive national ad campaign promoting the Milady Decollette as the "safest and most sanitary method of acquiring a smooth underarm"; the campaign proved only marginally successful. During World War I, the marketer weathered the loss of its European sales offices and factories with help from the U.S. military market. Since 1910, Gillette had asserted that its razor was a "godsend to a sailor" and equated clean-shaven cheeks with manly military discipline. The U.S. military reinforced that message in 1918, when it began issuing each soldier a Gillette shaving kit. That helped Gillette's sales rise from 1.1 million razors in 1917 to 3.5 million razors and 32 million blades in 1918. When the war ended, millions of U.S. servicemen returned home to ads that suggested a Gillette shave was a symbol of civilization and a universal imprimatur of masculinity: "There are some things that all big-brained, red-blooded men agree on. And the Gillette Safety Razor is one of them. Twenty million men of all breeds, all classes, in every country on earth are using Gillettes every day of their lives and liking them," read one 1920 ad. Gillette continued its efforts to reach the women's market during the Roaring Twenties, introducing the slightly undersized Bobby Gillette razor in 1924, but it met with limited success. The marketer took an early shine to radio. Beginning in 1929, listeners could tune in every Friday night to NBC for music by the Gillette Blades Orchestra; the voices of the Gay Young Blades, accompanied by a pair of pianists called the Original Double Blades; and a five-minute sports summary. A costly merger with the Auto-Strop Razor Co., completed in 1930, combined with the onset of the Great Depression to cut into Gillette's advertising budget; the NBC radio broadcasts were also curtailed early in the decade. The blade maker's woes continued after Gillette delivered inferior blades to the market in 1930. Following complaints from consumers, Gillette admitted its error in a 1932 ad headlined "We made a mistake." The same ad also announced the marketer's first major product and marketing innovation in 30 years: the Gillette Blue Super-Blade, later renamed the Blue Blade. After reasoned appeals stressing the new blade's lower cost per shave failed, Gillette returned to scare tactics, claiming that a close shave was the difference between prosperity and poverty. The new ads echoed a 1931 effort that played on the widespread fear of joblessness: "He's careless about shaving-frequently leaves a repulsive growth of stubble on his face. Can he expect an employer to overlook this fault?" In the midst of these corporate stresses, Mr. Gillette, who had remained active in the company, became ill and died on July 13, 1932, at the age of 77. While Gillette's profits declined during the Depression, many American men proved unwilling to forego their daily shave. Despite the proliferation of rival products and the increased tendency of consumers to reuse blades, Gillette remained profitable through the 1930s. Still, by 1938, the company held only an 18% share of the blade market. The sports connection Gillette's most notable advertising successes came after Joseph P. Spang Jr. took over as president in December 1938 and increased the company's ad budget by 50%. Despite mixed success with earlier efforts to involve the marketer in sports, Gillette in 1939 became the exclusive sponsor of baseball's World Series on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Gillette committed 20% of its annual advertising budget (more than $200,000) for exclusive radio rights, radio time and a "World Series Special" promotion during baseball's showcase series. The campaign proved remarkably successful, and Gillette sold about 2.5 million World Series Specials—more than twice its projected goal. (In fact, the World Series promotion proved so successful that Gillette remained the event's primary or sole sponsor until 1964.) Gillette also began pouring an increasing amount of money into other sports broadcasts, sponsoring the Kentucky Derby, college football bowl games and the professional football championships. Gillette furthered its involvement in sports in 1941 when it introduced the "Cavalcade of Sports" radio series. For the next quarter-century, Gillette's sponsorship of most of the premier sporting events under the "Cavalcade" banner made the blade maker's name synonymous with sports. Indeed, broadcast sports became such a productive marketing venue for the company that by the mid-1950s, nearly 85% of its total annual ad budget went to the "Cavalcade of Sports." Maxon Inc. handled the marketer's sports efforts. Televised boxing also drew Gillette's advertising dollar. The company touted the benefits of its blades to boxing's male-dominated audience, starting with local telecasts in New York in 1944 and culminating in the famous "Friday Night Fights" (on NBC through 1959, then on ABC until 1963). Despite ventures into other sports, baseball continued to be Gillette's primary promotional venue throughout the 1950s, especially after the marketer paid a then-staggering sum of $7.37 million for six years of exclusive radio and TV rights to the All-Star Game and the World Series in December 1950. The company used the 1952 World Series as a platform for the revised "Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp" campaign (originally used during the 1946 series broadcast) and its "How're ya fixed for blades?" spots. The latter took off with a popular series of animated spots featuring Sharpie the talking parrot. Gillette also broke racial barriers with its advertising in the '50s, featuring black ballplayers such as Willie Mays in TV spots. (The spots proved highly lucrative for the company, which by 1960 controlled about 60% of the blade market.) Postwar years Gillette began to diversify in the postwar era, tapping into the female market in 1948 by purchasing Toni Co., a marketer of home permanents. Under Gillette's ownership, Toni sponsored the TV hit "Arthur Godfrey & His Friends" beginning in 1950 and became a sponsor of the Miss America Pageant in 1958. Gillette's Super Blue Blade, the marketer's first new blade in nearly three decades, debuted in late 1959. It was designed to offset inroads made by rival Schick and electric razor marketers, and was promoted with ads that stressed performance. The muted campaign marked a sharp detour from the strongly masculine character of Gillette's previous advertising, setting the tone for a more low-key ad approach that lasted for almost 30 years. The Super Blue Blade, however, was replaced in 1963, when Gillette became the last major razor marketer to introduce stainless steel blades. Maxon continued to produce Gillette's advertising, which seemed increasingly stale for the times. Gillette used the 1971 World Series served as a launching pad for its new Trac II razor and blades, notable for the slogan hyping improved performance: "It's one blade better than whatever you're using now," claimed TV spots in the $10 million ad push handled by Benton & Bowles. As Gillette capitalized on the popularity of disposable razors between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, however, its marketing strategy shifted from emphasizing quality to stressing convenience. With profits waning in the late 1980s, Gillette returned to an emphasis on the quality shave afforded by its steel blades. Under Chairman Colman Mockler and John Symons, president of Gillette's Blade & Razor Group, the advertising budget for disposables such as Good News and Micro-Trac was slashed from $9.9 million in 1987 to zero in 1990. BBDO Worldwide, Boston, created a new campaign for Atra and Contour Plus razors centered around the slogan "The best a man can get." It was designed to reinforce the traditional image of the Gillette brand, bonding masculinity to high-quality products. Commercials positioned shaving as an emotional rite of passage and showed men as devoted family members as well as successful corporate leaders. "The best a man can get" was launched during Super Bowl XXIII in January 1989, kicking off an $80 million international campaign that used the same visual imagery (and, in broadcast media, the same music) in 19 North American and European nations in which it ran. The slogan, translated into 14 languages, remained in widespread use for a decade. The Sensor and Mach III In 1990, Gillette again initiated a major ad campaign on the Super Bowl. Preceded since October 1989 by teaser ads promising "Gillette is about to change the way men shave forever," the Sensor razor campaign used the "best a man can get" slogan to pitch the Sensor's new type of blades. In support of its first synchronized worldwide product launch, nearly all Gillette's $175 million multinational advertising budget was devoted to Sensor. The campaign, handled by BBDO, proved successful enough that Gillette had to pull some ads in April 1990 when demand exceeded supply. With its corporate profile and market share rebounding, Gillette again pursued the women's shaving market, introducing Sensor for Women in 1992. Supported by a $14 million ad budget, TV spots touting the razor aired during prime time in the U.S., and the female market seemed suddenly receptive. In 1998, Gillette launched its $40 million "Are you ready?" campaign, which positioned the marketer's products as a necessary part of a modern woman's physical and psychological beauty regimen. Gillette's final major marketing development of the 1990s came in July 1998, when the marketer unveiled the Mach 3 razor. Gillette backed the Mach 3 with a $300 million promotional campaign that stressed the aerodynamic design of the razor, using jet planes and sonic booms in conjunction with the by-then familiar "best a man can get" slogan. In 2001, Gillette launched the Venus women’s razor, built off the Mach 3 platform, but for the first time with an entirely different look, feel and brand from the men’s system it sprang from. Backed with ads featuring Bananarama’s “Venus” and the ad line “Reveal the goddess within,” the system quickly catapulted to the top of the category. Faced with a newly invigorated competitor in Energizer Holdings’ Schick, which launched the four-bladed Quattro in 2003, Gillette responded in May 2004 with the vibrating, battery-powered Mach 3 M3 Power system. Gillette ranked No. 66 on Advertising Age's list of leading national advertisers in 2002. It had total U.S. ad spending of $495 million, up 6.8% over the previous year. In 2002, Gillette had U.S. sales of $3.76 billion, up 1.1% over the year earlier, and operating income of $952 million, up 78.6%. Gillette had worldwide sales of $8.45 billion in 2002, up 4.6%. In January 2005, Procter & Gamble Co. announced that it planned to acquire Gillette for $57 billion in stock in a move that would allow it to leapfrog Unilever as the world's largest consumer products company and put it ahead of General Motors Corp. as the top U.S. advertising spender. The deal was expected to close in six to nine months. In this article:	Gillette
January 4, 2010 saw the official opening of the worlds tallest building, at 2717 feet (828 meters). In what country is it built?	Slogans - TV Tropes Slogans You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share YMMV One of the first ways developed to hook a customer and make him remember a product was to associate a short phrase or sentence with it — in effect creating a Catch Phrase linked to a product rather than a character. Like a Catch Phrase , a slogan needs to be short and punchy if it's to work optimally, but long(er) ones are not unknown — during the 1980s, it seemed like some companies were trying to cram an entire feel-good mission statement into their products' slogans. The best slogans have almost no inherent meaning but are memorable enough that they bring their product immediately to mind. Particularly good slogans can be used for decades and become permanently associated with their product. Other products change their slogans with monotonous regularity. Slogans can be incorporated into a Jingle for a double punch. Sometimes the punchline of a commercial can become a slogan, intentionally or not. Slogans do not necessarily translate well into other languages — see Bite The Wax Tadpole . See also Our Slogan Is Terrible (for bad examples of slogans, some of which may be intentional ) and Slogan-Yelling Megaphone Guy . Examples: "Call for Philip Morris!" (Better known for its use on radio, but was heard on TV in its early days, particularly on I Love Lucy .) The same goes for a rival tobacco company's slogan: "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." Lucky Strike had several, including "Be happy, go Lucky," "It's toasted!" and "L.S./M.F.T." (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco). The latter two are still printed on their packaging. "Winston tastes good like a clap clap cigarette should!" "The Stronger Soaker-upper!" and "The Quicker Picker-upper!" (Bounty paper towels) Coca-Cola is one of the best examples, as it's had dozens, starting with the straightforward "Drink Coca-Cola" in 1886; it unveils a new slogan every few years. Some of the more memorable ones during the last few decades include "Coke is it", "I'd like to buy the world a Coke", "Coke adds life", "The pause that refreshes", "Have a Coke and a smile", "Always Coca-Cola", "Red, white and you", "Can't beat the feeling" "Can't beat the real thing", and the elegantly simple "Enjoy". Previously "Taste the Coke Side of Life", recently it's "Open Happiness". General Electric: "We bring good things to life." Now "Imagination At Work". Burger King's most famous slogan was "Have it your way". In Australia, where the affiliated (but not identical) company is called Hungry Jack's, the slogan is "The burgers are better at Hungry Jack's". The BK Kids Meal's successor, the BK Crown, has "Imagination Is King". McDonald's, as of 2006, is using "i'm Lovin' it!". They've also used "Did somebody say McDonald's?" and "It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's", among others; one promotion in the 1970s turned the entire ingredients list for a Big Mac into a slogan/jingle that many Baby Boomers can still recite today. "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun." Or, as it was usually said "TwoAllBeefPattiesSpecialSauceLettuceCheesePicklesOnionsOnASesameSeedBun." "You deserve a break today." Maxwell House Coffee: "Good to the last drop!" The company used to claim the phrase originated from a comment Theodore Roosevelt made while drinking a cup of their coffee; they later admitted the slogan was actually a fabrication of their advertising department. deBeers: "A diamond is forever." Wendy's: "Where's the beef?" Smith Barney brokerage: "We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it." "Pork — the other white meat." "Beef — it's what's for dinner." "The American Express Card — don't leave home without it." Also "That'll do nicely!" - created by Salman Rushdie . Visa—It's Everywhere You Want to Be." "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard" "Budweiser — the King of Beers." "This Bud's for you." Motel 6: "We'll leave the light on for you." Nike: "Just do it." "Radioshack: The Technology Store." "Does she or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure." Wheaties: "Breakfast of Champions" (Another slogan that dates back all the way to radio. At least.) Paul Masson Winery: "We will sell no wine before its time." Alka Seltzer: "Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is." (which was also a Jingle ) "It's Shake-and-Bake, and I helped." Dunkin' Donuts: "Time to make the donuts." "America runs on Dunkin'." "Fahrvergnugen" for Volkswagen. In The US by recent times, it's "Das Auto." Subversion leading to a change: DuPont's "Better Things For Better Living ... Through Chemistry" was shorn of its last two words after the phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" was subverted by the drug culture. "Do you have any Grey Poupon?" "But of course!" "Everybody needs a little KFC." Kentucky Fried Chicken, we do chicken right! Jingle: "so S O... G double-O D Good." The "SOGOOD" one is still used outside of the US, but there the current slogan is "How do you KFC?" "Every kiss begins with Kay." "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard." (NOTE: parodies of the "priceless" gimmick wore out their welcome years ago, but that hasn't yet stopped anyone from making them) Captain Morgan's Rum: "Got a little Captain in ya?" (This is pretty disturbing when taken out of context.) GEICO parodies this with their "So easy, a caveman can do it" commercials, in which cavemen take offense at the slogan. L'Oreal: "Because I'm/you're worth it." L'Oreal Kids: "Because we're worth it too." Maybelline: "Maybe she's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline." CoverGirl: "Easy, breezy, beautiful. CoverGirl." A digital pregnancy test: "The most sophisticated piece of technology you'll ever pee on." (That sounds like a challenge, frankly.) Gillette: "The best a man can get." "Have you driven a Ford... lately?" The definition of "lately" must be pretty flexible as this slogan was first used in 1982 and appears in commercials for the 2007/2008 models. Ford seems to suffer from slogans prone to Fridge Logic . They also have "Built Ford tough", which if one thinks about it, is always true even if the Ford were made of paper mache. Chuck E. Cheese's, "Where a kid can be a kid." Also used by its predecessor/former competitor, Showbiz Pizza. Polaner All-Fruit spread: 'Could you please pass the jelly?': You always had a bunch of 'upper-crust' (or stuck-up rich people, take your pick) asking 'Could you please pass the Polaner All-Fruit?' and then some 'country' or such person go 'Could you please pass the jelly?' and cause everyone to faint since he called All-Fruit 'jelly'. Used similarly with Pace's picante sauce, with cowboys being served salsa made in NEW YORK CITY?! followed by some sort of punishment, including an implied hanging. "Fosters: Australian for beer." Naturally, this slogan is not used in Australia itself. "It's Pimms'o'clock!" Amusingly enough the United States Army has been recruiting for years with increasingly shorter slogans. From 1981 through today it's gone through "Be All that you Can Be" to "An Army of One" to "Army Strong." On the subject of military services, the Marines have had the slogan "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." for some years. Some television channels: "I dreamed I ______ in my Maidenform bra." Miller Lite: "Great Taste. Less Filling." Chevrolet: "The Heartbeat of America" and now "Open New Roads". "Like a Rock" for Chevy's trucks. Audi has had "Vorsprung durch Technik" ("progress through technology") since The '70s , and notably used it in most markets except the USA untranslated. It's well-known enough to have been quoted by bands like blur and U2 and given Shout Outs in films like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels or TV shows like Only Fools and Horses . The US slogan is "Truth in Engineering". British Anthology Comic The Beano used to have a slogan "Never be without a Beano". Sony had three international slogans (five, if you include the US slogans "The One and Only" - late 1970s and 1980s - and "Research Makes The Difference - 1960s to early 1970s): "It's a Sony", "like.no.other", "make.believe", and the recent one, "BE MOVED". "It's a Sony" only shows up in the US in a few commercials from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. "Poof! There goes perspiration!" This is pretty dated since roll-on deodorants made Stopette and its squeeze bottles obsolete, as MAD noted back in 1962. Rodgers and Hammerstein alluded to it in a Me and Juliet song. "Do you remember a time when you heard this slogan? Pepperidge farm remembers." Every [day] at [time], Cartoon Network / [adult swim] is building you a better cartoon show. We call it Toonami . Also owned by Cartoon Network: "Boomerang: it's all coming back to you." During the late 90s/early 00s, Cartoon Network itself was "The Best Place for Cartoons". It's first slogan in 1992 was "We're talkin' toon here!". One of its other slogans was "Check It". It's current slogan is "Are you CN what we're sayin'?". Kellogg's (Sugar) Frosted Flakes/Frosties: Tony the Tiger says "They're GRRRRRRREAT!" Disney Theme Parks : "Where dreams come true." Disneyland: "The happiest place on Earth." Walt Disney World: "The vacation kingdom of the world." (1970s) Magic Kingdom: "The most magical place on Earth." Disney's Animal Kingdom: "The imagination of Disney gone wild." Disney Cruise Line: "Discover uncharted magic." Energizer: "It keeps going and going and going..." "Have a break. Have a KitKat." The US Military's various branches: Army: Get An Edge On Life Be All That You Can Be An Army Of One	i don't know
What is the preferred food type of a frugivore?	What is Frugivore: Are People Frugivore? - WildDonna What is Frugivore: Are People Frugivore? Previous Next What is Frugivore: Are People Frugivore? A frugivore /fruːdʒᵿvɔːr/ is a fruit eater. It can be any type of herbivore or omnivore where fruit is a preferred food type. Because approximately 20 percent of all mammalian herbivores also eat fruit, frugivory is considered to be common among mammals. Since frugivores eat large volumes of fruit, they are highly dependent on the abundance and nutritional composition of fruits. A carnivore /ˈkɑːrnɪvɔər/ meaning ‘meat eater’ is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging. The difference between a carnivore (i.e. a tiger) and a frugivore (i.e. a human) is: 1. Carnivores don’t have teeth made to tear through raw flesh, cartilage and veins and carnivores don’t have molars. 2. Frugivores don’t have a desire to catch and kill prey to eat, carnivores do. 3. Frugivores are appealed to the look and smell of fruit. 4. Frugivores jaws moves in a circular motion (more like a cow) rather than simply up and down 5. Carnivores have claws to tear open flesh and bone. Frugivores don’t. 6. Carnivores have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest animal flesh, blood, bone, etc.. Frugivores don’t. 7. Perhaps most importantly by nature a human (frugivore) has a conscience around killing, it is in our nature to care for animals which are why big news can be a saved kitten from a tree, a lost dog returned to his person or the birth of a bear in a zoo. We have the ability to chose to contribute to the killing of animals for food or to not. This is perhaps the only thing that makes a human special, choice.	Fruit
If a male ass is a jack, what is a female called?	A NEW LOOK AT VEGETARIANISM Vegetable that Heals: Health Benefits of Okra (Hibiscus esculentus), RECIPES, and more Natural Human Diet according to Biological and Evolutionary Evidence The foods and influences to which a species is biologically adapted are those deemed "natural" to its disposition as derived by the sum total of their biological heritage from millions of years of evolution. Cumulative adaptations in each species over eons of time determines their natural dietary needs. For instance: The koala bear of Australia is adapted to eating a variety of gum leaves. The giraffe's long neck allows it to feed on the foliage of trees. The lion's fangs and claws allow it to kill and render animals for food. The eagle's keen eyesight and powerful claws make it a formidable predator of ground rodents and small game. Carnivores have become adapted to eating other animals. Non-carnivorous animals have adapted to eating vegetable matter as food. Dietary adaptations more than anything else determine the features and characteristics of all creatures. Table: Animal species classified on the basis of their natural biologically evolved diets. {Dietary terms associated with vegetarianism} Term Humans Are Not an Exception It is a basic premise of Natural Hygiene that humans, like all other creatures in nature are provided with all the materials and conditions required to maintain health. Species throughout nature intuitively restrict themselves to a limited variety of foods to which they are specifically adapted. We must conclude that humans are also intended to partake only of those foods to which we are physiologically adapted in order to live healthfully. Humans should be studied as a member of the whole biological community, and compared anatomically and physiologically with other species to ascertain our true dietary requirements. When considering the character of human anatomy and physiology relative to our natural diet we must do so within the context of nature, rather than in the artificial environment of modern life. In this way, we consider our natural foods as those that are consonant with our physiological faculties, rather than those that we have "acquired a taste for". Determining Our Natural Diet is Not a Matter of Belief. Tradition and popularity are the poorest ways to determine a proper diet. Recent changes in our external environment do not alter our biological adaptations, our internal makeup, or our natural needs in order to establish optimum well being. Biological adaptations have been spurred on by stress over eons of time and by the need to adapt. They are slow to develop requiring extremely long periods of time to evolve. Our highly industrialized environment involves more social adaptations or accommodations, and not physical or anatomical changes. By living according to our natural adaptations we can actually withstand the stress of modern life far better than if we transgress our biological needs. The only authority we should rely on when it comes to determining what foods are best to eat is the human body. It is anatomy and physiology that decrees whether food is "acceptable" or "harmful". Determining our natural diet is not a matter of belief: its basis lies in scientific fact regarding our biological, biochemical, anatomical, and physiological features. The first question in forming a scientific opinion about our natural diet is: What is our natural food? Are we true carnivores who secure their nutrient needs not only from raw flesh, but also from raw blood, bones etc, as tigers and wolves? Are we true herbivores (grazers) who thrive on lettuce, grasses, raw grains, celery, etc., as do horses, cows and sheep? Are we granivores like birds who thrive mostly on raw seeds of grasses and grains? Are we natural omnivores who thrive in health regardless of the foodstuffs consumed? Or are we frugivores who can thrive on a diet of raw fresh bananas, grapes, apples, oranges, or melons meal after meal? The human digestive system and physiology determines our optimum diet. By understanding the physiological processes that accompany food digestion and absorption, proper dietary habits can be scientifically determined. Teeth Comparison Most "nutritionists" assert that we have definite carnivorous leanings, and some have even termed our incisor teeth "fangs" in defense of their erroneous position that humans are natural meat-eaters! If you look at the various species in the animal kingdom, each is equipped with teeth that are ideally suited to masticate a particular type of food. Herbivores (like the cow) have 24 molars, eight jagged incisors in the lower jaw and a horny palate in the upper jaw. Their jaws move vertically, laterally, forward, and backward, enabling the herbivore to tear and grind coarse grasses. Omnivores (like the hog) have tusk-like canines allowing them to dig up roots. Frugivores (like the chimpanzee) have 32 teeth: sixteen in each jaw including four incisors, two cuspids, four bicuspids, and six molars. The cuspids are adapted for cracking nuts, and the uniform articulation of the teeth enables the frugivore to mash and grind fruits. On the contrary, carnivores (like the cat family) have markedly developed canines that are long, sharp, cylindrical, pointed, and set apart from the other teeth. Fangs and sharp pointed teeth that penetrate and kill, that rip and tear flesh, are a feature of all true carnivores (except certain birds). The powerful jaws of the carnivore move only vertically, and are ideal for ripping and tearing flesh that is swallowed virtually whole and then acted upon by extremely potent gastric juices. Human teeth are not designed for tearing flesh as in the lion, wolf or dog, but rather compare closely with other fruit-eating animals. Human teeth correspond almost identically to the chimpanzees and other frugivores. The complete absence of spaces between human teeth characterizes us as the archetype frugivore. The "canine" teeth of humans are short, stout, and slightly triangular. They are less pronounced and developed than the orangutan's, who rarely kills and eats raw flesh in its natural environment. Human canines in no way resemble the long, round, slender canines of the true carnivore. Human teeth are not curved or sharp like the wolves or tigers, nor are they wide and flat like the grass and grain-eating species. Human teeth are actually like the fruit-eating monkeys, and the human mouth is best suited for eating succulent fruits and vegetables. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for humans to eat raw flesh without the aid of fork and knife. To term our incisor teeth "fangs" or even to liken them as such is outrageous. Comparative Anatomy Natural carnivores have the inherent anatomical equipment provided as their birthright with which to apprehend, capture, kill, and rend their quarry. Dogs have powerful jaws that inflict fatal wounds to their prey. Humans however, have no sharp claws for tearing; no sharply pointed fangs for slashing; nor are our eyes or olfactory senses well developed for hunting. Nor is the human body designed to run fast enough to capture prey. Humans cannot grab animals in their mouth as do dogs, coyotes, wolves, jackals, lions, tigers, or cats. We instead inflict more damage with our hands and brute strength. Humans do however, have marvelous fingers, thumbs, and limbs for reaching, climbing and grabbing. Our natural food gathering capacity is very similar to the chimpanzees. Fruitarians of the primate order also have revolving joints in their shoulder, wrist, and elbow joints that allow for free movement in all directions. Frugivores have soft pliable, sensitive hands and fingers with opposable thumbs and flat nails that are perfect for grasping and gathering fruit. Regarding the extremities of the other species, herbivores possess hooves allowing them to walk easily about grassy plains, and carnivores possess sharp claws allowing them to violently attack their prey. Tree-dwellers and fruit-gatherers also have stereoscopic binocular vision that makes vision precise enough to ascertain the position of tree limbs and objects. Another anatomical comparison among species in the animal kingdom involves the structure of the skin. All vegetarian animals have abundant sweat glands. In carnivores, their sweat glands are atrophied and inactive. They are exempt from profuse sweating in order to prevent a large fluid loss that would cause concentrated precipitation of nitrogenous wastes (from flesh-eating). This explains why meat-eaters suffer in hot weather while vegetarians remain relatively comfortable. Comparative Digestive Physiology Among the various species throughout nature, the length of their particular alimentary canals also differs greatly in relation to their natural food. The gut of the carnivore is 3-6 times the length of their body. They require a short, smooth, fast-acting gut since their natural flesh diet becomes quite toxic and cannot be retained within the intestine for long without poisonous putrefaction taking place. The gut of the herbivore is sacculated for greater surface area, and is 30 times the length of their body. Its herb and grass diet is coarse and fibrous, requiring longer digestion to break down cellulose. The length of the omnivore's alimentary canal is generally 6 times its body trunk size. The gut of the frugivore (like humans) is also sacculated and is 12 times the length of its body. The human digestive tract is about four times as long as the carnivores. The intestine of the carnivore is short and smooth in order to dissolve food rapidly and pass it quickly out of the system prior to the flesh putrefying. The human digestive tract is corrugated for the specific purpose of retaining food as long as possible until all nutriment has been extracted, which is the worst possible condition for the digestion and processing of flesh foods. Meat moves quickly through the carnivore's digestive tract and is quickly expelled. The human lengthy intestine cannot handle low-fiber foods including meat and dairy very quickly at all. As a consequence, animal foods decrease the motility of the human intestine and putrefaction almost invariably occurs (as evidenced by foul smelling stools and flatulence), resulting in the release of many poisonous by-products as the low-fiber food passes through, ever so slowly. In humans, eventual constipation may develop on a meat-centered diet. Colon cancer is also common, both of which are rare or non-existent on a high-fiber diet centered around raw fruits and vegetables. Stomach, Kidney and Liver! Stomach form and size among various species also vary markedly. In the carnivore the stomach is a small, round sack designed to dissolve flesh quickly and then pass it on for removal. In plant eaters (particularly ruminants) stomachs are complicated adjoining sacks with ring-like convolutions. The frugivore stomach (including humans) is oblong and is characterized by folds called rugae which serve to retain food for relatively long periods. Organ sizes of various species also markedly vary. The liver and kidneys in the carnivore are much larger than in vegetarian animals. A lions kidney is twice the size of a bulls, and not much smaller than the elephants. This allows the lion to handle large amounts of protein and nitrogenous waste products contained in its natural flesh diet. The carnivores huge liver secretes larger amounts of bile into the small intestine than does the herbivores liver. There is a direct relation between the quantity of meat eaten and the amount of bile secreted. Meat-eating therefore, places a strain on the small liver of humans which impairs the organ's function over a long period of time. When you place humans on a diet for which they are NOT naturally adapted, this places unnatural stress on the organs of elimination. Humans have never adapted to the carnivorous diet that is high in animal products. The human liver is smaller than the carnivores and as a result, we cannot detoxify the poisonous products inherent within animal foods such as uric acid (discussed below). Our kidneys are also smaller and become diseased from overwork caused by a diet high in animal protein. Comparative Digestive Enzymes The hydrochloric acid concentrations of various species are an additional determinant of their natural diet. A carnivores gastric juice is highly acidic, serving to prevent putrefaction while flesh undergoes digestion. Plant-eaters however, secrete a much less concentrated and less abundant quantity of hydrochloric acid that does not curtail the bacterial decomposition of flesh: a process that begins at the animals moment of death. Flesh is digested in an acid medium within the stomach. Humans secrete a very weak concentration of hydrochloric acid relative to the carnivore, and little of the protein-splitting enzyme pepsinogen. Carnivorous animals have concentrations of these flesh-digesting secretions 1100% greater than do humans. Lions can rip off and swallow your hand whole and quite readily digest it. Uric Acid: Toxic Component of Meat to Humans About 5% of the flesh volume of all animals consists of waste material called uric acid that is normally eliminated by the kidneys. Uric acid is a poison to humans because it is toxic and non-metabolizable. Nearly 100% of Americans suffer some form of osteoporosis which is due in large part, to the acidic end-products of meat (and grain) eating. All carnivorous animals however, secrete the enzyme uricase that breaks down uric acid so it can be readily eliminated. Humans do not generate this enzyme. Instead, we ABSORB uric acid when meat is eaten. As a result, calcium-urate crystals form and concentrate in joints, feet, and in the lower back. These deposits lead to arthritis, gout, rheumatism, bursitis, and lower back pain. Humans are physiologically unsuited to utilizing meat as food. Natural carnivores swallow hunks of carrion almost unchewed, and the flesh is digested in the stomach with ease and facility. If humans were to do the same, we would digest very little of it before putrefaction set in and illness ensued. For humans, meat is a pathogenic and nutritionally deficient food. Saliva pH Varies Widely Among Species The saliva pH of various species is another determinant of their natural diet. In carnivores, their saliva glands are small and secrete an acidic saliva having little or no effect on starch, which makes sense since flesh is virtually starch-free. Omnivores (like pigs) have tremendous salivary glands that secrete copious quantities of starch-splitting enzymes. Humans only have one starch-splitting enzyme, versus a multitude of them in omnivores and other natural starch-eating animals. Our ptyalin is very limited. This rules us out as being true granivores (starch-eaters) which includes grains and cereals. Frugivores have salivary glands that secrete alkaline saliva, containing only moderate amounts of ptyalin, which initiates starch digestion. This tells us that humans and other frugivores can easily digest the small amount of starch contained in fresh fruits, nuts, and leafy greens, and that humans are not intended to subsist on a diet of highly starchy grain foods as many currently do. (Diabetes mellitus is largely the result of consuming large amounts of refined sugars and starches. Even eating predominantly of whole grains and natural legumes as dietary staples can be injurious because of the need for excessive starch digestion). Science Verifies That Human Ancestors Were Frugivores Dr. Alan Walker, an anthropologist of John A NEW LOOK AT VEGETARIANISM By Jonathan Reed With vegetarianism getting so much good and bad press, test your knowledge about the myth and reality of a vegetarian diet before you consider buying this guide. QUIZ ON MYTH AND REALITY OF VEGETARIANISM Answer the following questions as myth (M) or reality (R) and check your answers at the end. Vegetarian foods cannot provide complete protein. People become vegetarians due to religious and humanitarian reasons only, and the vegetarian movement is a kind of cult. Over 75% of deaths in the U.S. that occur from heart ailments, stroke, and cancer can be reduced by adopting a vegetarian diet. Green and yellow vegetables are helpful against cancer related to smoking. Living exclusively on vegetables and fruits may cause deficiency of vitamins B12 and D. Vegetarian foods are almost completely lacking in fat and cholesterol. Vegetarians cannot compete in sports with meat eaters. Our digestive tract and teeth are more suitable for plant foods. Appropriate consumption of vegetarian foods can meet calcium requirements. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains provide an excessive amount of carbohydrates which fatten us. ANSWERS: (1) M; (2) M; (3) R; (4) R; (5) R; (6) R; (7) M; (8) R; (9) R; (10) M. This guide will provide scientific explanations to the above and 40 more questions. In addition, it describes what is vegetarianism and why one should consider a vegetarian diet for health and disease control. The guide also contains vegetarian meal plans and sample menus. You will have a fresh insight towards fruits and vegetables and will be able to enjoy a long disease-free life, full of health and vigor. P.S. Remember, when you buy any one of these guides, you will receive FREE information on how to make THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS each and every month, LEGALLY and AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU!!	i don't know
The counterpart to Tokoyo Rose, what was the common name given to Mildred Gillars, the American born radio personality who broadcast propaganda for the Germans during WWII?	Tokyo Rose - TV Tropes Tokyo Rose You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share YMMV A wartime broadcaster who transmits propaganda to the enemy in order to undermine their morale. "Tokyo Rose" was the nickname given to Japanese female propaganda broadcasters by allied servicemen during the second global unpleasantness . The broadcasts were in generally excellent English, and appealed to Allied troops to give up their hopeless and unnecessary war against the mighty and invincible empire of Japan. You know, standard propaganda stuff.note And perhaps deliberately so, since the broadcasts were written and produced by coerced Allied prisoners under threat of torture. Imperial Japan , in direct contrast to modern Japan, had become so isolationist and parochial during the era of militarism that they did not have enough citizens with sufficient English skills to produce the broadcasts on their own. In spite of the single name, there were multiple Roses, as the voice was not the same each time. At least four women (three Americans and one Canadian) have been identified, three who broadcast from Tokyo and one from Manila. To the best of our knowledge nobody has done voice-analysis to ascertain if there were any others, and it is probable that adequate recordings do not exist. Famously vanished aviator Amelia Earhart was considered a prime candidate during the war, but her husband listened to some recordings and denied they sounded anything like her. Tokyo Rose was actually pretty popular with Allied servicemen. Either out of the comedy value of the obvious propaganda , or because it was a female voice to people that might not have heard another for quite some time (and might not live to hear one again). Probably both. The moniker "Tokyo Rose" itself almost certainly orginated with the servicemen themselves, since it does not appear in any of the surviving broadcast scripts or documentation. The surviving scripts also show that rumors that she was remarkably well informed about Allied intentions, units and movements were purely apocryphal. Only one person was ever prosecuted for these broadcasts: Iva Toguri D'Aquino , an American daughter of Japanese immigrants who was stranded in Japan while visiting relatives there at the begining of the war, admitted to broadcasting under the name "Orphan Ann". Though neither the occupation authorities nor the FBI could find sufficient evidence to prosecute her in Japan she was prosecuted on multiple counts of treason upon her return to the United States in 1948. Her prosecution was a pet project for politicians seeking to make a name for themselves with help from some particularly unscrupulous journalists. Despite the complete lack of credible evidence against her and considerable evidence that she'd risked her life aiding the allied prisoners forced to write and produce the broadcasts (Japanese society looked down on American-born Nisei like her, and the Kempei-tai would have taken a dim view of her smuggling food and medical supplies into POW camps—which she did a lot), she was convicted on only one count in 1949 and served six years of a ten year sentence. Still, she was forcibly separated from her husband, an Italian national who was denied entry to the United States, and was warned that if she left the country she would not be allowed back in (made even worse when you remember that the stress of her wrongful prosecution caused her to miscarry their baby). She received a full pardon in 1977 due to the proven unreliability of her key accusers (who both claimed they'd been coerced into perjuring themselves) and the lack of any proof that she had actually said anything treasonous. An FBI case study found that her effect on Allied morale was, if anything, positive, and in a crowning irony the US World War Two Veteran's Committee gave her their highest award for her bravery and patriotism in aiding Allied POWs at the risk of her own life shortly before she died in 2006. In the European theater, the Axis employed two American women as broadcasters who were both given the nickname "Axis Sally" by American troops. Rita Zucca broadcast from Rome and used the on-air name "Sally," while Mildred Gillars broadcast from Berlin and usually called herself "Midge." Both served prison terms for treason after the war. The Germans also employed a male version, " Lord Haw-Haw ," the host of a regular program entitled Germany Calling. Though the program had several hosts, the name "Lord Haw-Haw" eventually became associated with a single individual: Englishman William Joyce, who held the job beginning in 1940. He had a nasal drawl and so his opening line sounded like "This is Jairmany calling". Joyce was captured in Germany in 1945 and put on trial for treason in Britain, after some legal debate over whether an American citizen (as came out during the trial) could be charged with betraying the Crown. The ruling was that since he'd got a British passport (he'd lied about his citizenship to get it), he was supposed to have loyalty to the King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He was convicted and hanged in 1946. Incidentally enough, he was the last person imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Japanese equivalent was an Australian named Reggie Hollingsworth, about whom little is known but who has been described as sounding like "Churchill broadcasting from Tokyo". Fascist Italy partially subverted this trope by foregoing an alias personality all-together and getting noted American poet and mentor to T. S. Eliot , Ezra Pound, to voluntarily give pro-fascist/anti-semetic/anti-American broadcast until his eventual capture by the Allies following the Italian Campaign . American Robert Henry Best was a Lord Haw-Haw wanabee who also worked for the Germans. He had the dubious distinction of being taken off the air by the Germans in 1942 because his antisemitic propaganda became too strident! "Tokyo Rose" or "Axis Sally" recordings are occasionally featured in war movies to establish atmosphere. Unfortunately, this is sufficiently obscure these days that it almost qualifies as a Genius Bonus . Note that the Axis powers were not the only users of this trope: A recent search of the BBC archives turned up a series of concerts recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1944 for broadcast to Germany, all hosted by a German speaking woman known only as "Ilsa". Sadly, Ilsa's identity has been lost to time. The most subtle and effective Allied propaganda broadcast was probably Britain's Soldatensender, which convincingly mimicked an official Wehrmacht propaganda station but gave out rather more information about the problems plaguing the German war effort than the German high command would have wanted to divulge. Jane Fonda , who made propaganda broadcasts for the North Vietnamese during a visit to Hanoi in 1972 , acquired the nickname "Hanoi Jane" as a reference to Tokyo Rose and Hanoi's own female propaganda broadcaster "Hanoi Hannah". During both wars in the Persian Gulf, stories circulated in the American media about a broadcaster nicknamed "Baghdad Betty" whose research was a little shaky ("Remember boys, back home in America movie stars are seducing your wife. Burt Reynolds is seducing your wife. Bart Simpson is seducing your wife.") These may have been influenced by Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, AKA "Baghdad Bob", the Iraqi information ministry official whose farcically inaccurate statements (culminating in the proclamation that "There are no American troops in Baghdad" while two American tanks were clearly visible maneuvering behind him) amused and perplexed media observers. Examples in media:	Axis Sally
In the nursery rhyme “The Farmer in the Dell,” what does the child take?	Hollerscholar's Blog \| Just another WordPress.com site \| Page 2 Hollerscholar's Blog How about demons?: possession and exorcism in the modern world I honestly found Goodman’s book both profoundly interesting and, at the same time, a bit unsettling. Because I am a 3rd generation Pentecostal – I found what she wrote about speaking in tongues interesting in a very intimate way. I read with great interest what she wrote about in terms of what she described as a ‘Neurobiology of Ecstasy’ and found it to be very intriguing; especially the studies of what she defined as the ‘suprasegmental elements in linguistics’ of glossolalia, which she described as having carefully studied in a phonetics laboratory (6-7). I admit that the clinical laboratory scientist in me has thought about doing some form of scientific analysis on recordings of glossolalia – though my own training in no way extends into the realm of linguistics and phonetics. Even when I was a child, I quickly learned that you could tell when someone was ‘really talking in tongues’ vs. when they were faking it. It is referred to as ‘being in the flesh:’ when somebody stands up and merely acts like they are speaking in tongues. When I was a teenager, my brothers and I would play around with each other and sometimes smack each other and say “yaye-son-ah-mah-hoe” – a lighthearted reference to a characteristic phrase that a gentleman in our church often repeated when he was speaking in tongues. We would laugh and make fun of it – but always outside of church. When Vernon McClain would stand up and actually say it – the atmosphere changed and there was a profound power behind his words. I admit to a degree of disappointment that in her discussion of the history of Azusa Street (55), Goodman left out the issue of Racism. Parham was a strict segregationalist and would not teach Seymour – at least directly. History records that Seymour often actually sat outside the sanctuary and listened to Parham’s teaching from there. Parham was actually instrumental in the founding of the KKK. The services that were later held by Seymour were criticized in the papers for the “scandalous intermixing of races” because when glossolalia broke out – people seemed to forget they were worshiping along with people of another color. This inclusion would have helped to underscore how profoundly the experience shaped both emotions and attitudes of those involved. Goodman also seems to speak ambiguously on page 88 where she seems to allude that Pentecostals invite ‘spirits’ into their bodies. Orthodox Pentecostal doctrine expressly teaches that only the Holy Spirit (of the Trinitarian understanding of God) is both worshiped and invited. Coleman’s “soul hypothesis” (2) provides an interesting introspective into the folk studies project that her book purports to cover and her further stories and doctrines from a variety of other cultures related to spirit possession provide a fascinating backdrop to the exploration. Again, as a practicing Pentecostal, I felt that there was a lot more that could have been told that would have made significant contributions – such as the doctrine of being given a supernatural spiritual gift after experiencing glossolalia for the first time. Goodman recalls the pain and the anguish of being possessed by self-described demons (96) and my own experience with the Pentecostal gift of prophecy has in fact caused me at times to have only what I could describe as anguished and tormented experiences – the full scope of which I cannot relate here given space constraints. Possession by another can be both a beautiful (9) and seemingly horrific occurrence (113). At least I can personally speak to the truth of this. Posted on August 28, 2012 by hollerscholar Considerations Regarding M. Scott Peck’s Proposed Multidisciplinary Psychiatric Approach, as Described in The People of the Lie: A Defense for Peck’s Inclusivity of the Metaphysical, with reference to a proposed critical necessity for a self-reflectivity in the doubt of the materialist-atheist skeptic. The inclusion of an arguable caution against any conflation of dynamics and/or assumptions related to a given topic at hand is intrinsic to the process of ensuring an adequate exploration of any given topic. Any forbearance of such a tendency is non-concomitant to a standard of academic integrity – especially when regarding the inadvertent and/or purposeful inclusion and/or exclusion of presuppositional, psycho-existential, secular/religious ideological frameworks. A radical teleological inclusivity in this regard does presuppose a greater degree of complexity in the scale of a resultantly greatly expanded ontological continuum of possibilities – but it does not ensure, contrary to the insistences of some Secular Fundamentalists (such as so-called ‘New Atheists’ Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens – to name just a few [1] ), any impossibility in terms of a proposeable, practical and coherent methodology on the part of the mental health practitioner. Relative Skepticism [2] directed either towards strictly materialist viewpoints or – alternatively – religious/spiritual ones is acceptable, but any skepticism that is – ultimately – nonself-reflective (incapable of doubting the potential inadequacy of its own totality) is at best hypocritical – and at worst, capricious. Thereby consequential to the necessity of such an included Universal Doubt of any Totalizing Sufficiency in a completely materialist, physical/scientific, conventionally non vs, neurotypical diagnostic and interventional psycho-pharmacologic treatment, the possibility of a spiritual/metaphysical approach can at least be hypothetically posited. Peck’s Methodology Peck argues that an immutable delineation between a scientific and a religious understanding of psychology is no longer fully tenable (Peck 40), but that rather a multidisciplinary approach must be employed (Peck 38-39). Peck goes though several case histories – which begin seemingly innocuous, and then grow in both their descriptive and argumentational capacity. Peck employs the concept of Love throughout his narrative in terms of it being crucial to an understanding of the general operations of his understanding of what might be considered the ‘dynamics of a theology of “General Metaphysics,”’ which he unapologetically outlines as being contextually grounded within the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Peck 11). Peck explores both macro (Peck 218) and micro (62, 106, 150) models of Personal and Social/Cultural/National Evil as well as the potential pitfalls intrinsic in an unbalanced and irresponsible misapplication of either science (Peck 259) or religious perspectives (Peck 262). [1] These before-mentioned authors propose a radical exclusivity in terms of a Materialist Atheism, which disavows any use of metaphysical or necessarily spiritual understandings. [2] For purposes of this argument, it is assumed on the part of the reader that a position of Absolute Skepticism is understood as being an intrinsically self-contradictory state – more appropriately described as Nihilism or a variant thereof, by nature of its non-reflective (non-self doubting) state. Personal Journeys and Reflections into Monasticism with general reference to the Benedictine Rule. The purpose of monastic renewal and reform is to find ways in which monks and sisters can remain true to their vocation by deepening and developing it in new ways, not merely sacrificing their lives to bolster up antique structures, but channeling their efforts into the creation of new forms of monastic life, new areas of contemplative experience. This is precisely the monk’s chief service to the world: this silence, this listening, this questioning, this humble and courageous exposure to what the world ignores about itself – both good and evil. An Unfolding Path This is not a traditional paper. Rather then being the fruits of a measure of research and then the subsequent detailing of the finer aspects of a given theological or philosophical concept, it is – in contrast – a description of a journey. It has often been said by theologians and laypersons alike, that Christianity is not as much a religion – as it is a relationship. If one is to therefore frame Christianity within the terms of such a definition – it is arguable that a path of growth/advancement in the knowledge & practice of such, represents less a necessarily advancing knowledge of precepts or dogmatic history – but rather it is marked, more so, by a further walk upon an ongoing path: a continued exploration around the corner on the footpath of faith; a journey not just into the known – but the unknown as well. In the proceeding pages I hope to relay the journeys, thoughts, and experiences of several members The Company of Jesus [2] , a third order Monastic community that operates under the auspices of the Anglican Church. As well as – but to a much lesser degree – my own. The individuals referenced herein responded to an invitation to participate by way of questions posed by myself to them regarding their monastic experience, spiritual growth, and thoughts on the Rule of St. Benedict in relation to both of these before mentioned aspects of their spiritual journey and associated church ministry. Where a name was not expressly given, I have referenced them by their myspace.com accounts. [3] An attempt will be made to explore their experiences in light of the Rule of St. Benedict. But it must be noted – there is considerable variance and openness in its interpretation and application; and this aspect itself must be considered in light of the subject. This is not a hard science. It is process and a journey. And more so – it is all about the steady unveiling and deepening of a faith in Christ in the lives of those involved. Consecrated Yet Integrated; A ‘Third Order’ is Born When St. Benedict wrote his rule circa 500 A.D., it eventually became the guiding force behind virtually all Latin monasteries outside Ireland. More then just an organizational template – it came to serve as the guiding force behind an emerging communal dichotomy which would serve to guide what it meant to live a ‘monastic life’ for centuries to come. [4] The essence of the Benedictine Rule is essentially Cenobitic in nature [5] ; meaning – in the words of St. Benedict himself – “those who live in monasteries and serve under a rule and an abbot.” [6] It was through the efforts St. Francis of Assisi, though, that the monastic community was expanded to include individuals who desired to be a part of the monastic experience – but who either needed to or willingly desired to remain embedded in the outside world, and not removed away to the confines of a monastery. Because of the charismatic influence of St. Francis, he began to attract ever-larger numbers of people expressing interest in monasticism. St. Francis argued that people should be able to potentially stay were they were in society, and yet learn from the values of the monastics and more importantly, the Gospel in the process. St. Francis wrote an exhortation to the monastic hopefuls who were in situations such as this, which consisted in an encouragement to engage themselves in a lifestyle of penance and the concurrent strict observance of the mandates and assertions made during the reforming council of Lateran IV. [7] It was from this exhortation that the concept of a “Third Order” emerged. Today, many monastic-centric ecclesiastical organizations continue to grow, essentially out of this ‘charter’ or concept. Taking the ideas of the faith of the monastic community that they represent – and not just manifesting them, but influentially radiating their values and ideas, beliefs and hopes – far from the ancient stone walls of their origin and into the hustling and bustling cubical farms and dusty, driven street corners of the modern world. A Need For Cohesion & Community The purpose of a participation in such a community is not to develop, what is referred to in the German language as Weltanschauung – or a philosophical view of the Cosmos and Life therein; [8] it is more then just finding an assemblage of rational assertions and guiding understandings. It is, rather, about being a part of a community larger and more important in it’s purpose then one’s own self. This awareness of the importance of community is a foundational precept in Monasticism. The aspect of community is what draws many into the monastic tradition. In his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, [9] Robert D. Putnam argues that modern, technologically-driven life and it’s ‘know everything’, ‘explain everything’ aspects has not just taken the mystery out of life – but communal collaboration as well. We are isolated and unfulfilled, despite the plethora of ever expanding knowledge all around us. Monasticism offers its explorers both community and mystery, as an alternative to societal alienation and doctrinal searching; binding them together, just as it did in generations past. Michael [10] , a member of The Company of Jesus, writes In the most simple of terms, the two things that have drawn me to where I am are mystery and community. In other churches I’ve been in, these seemed to be lacking. It’s hard to accept something our mind can’t completely wrap itself around, so we build these boxes and try to make them fit. In some ways, some theology, defining and naming something is crucial to trying to comprehend it. But in other ways it can place limits on something that is beyond limits. And community. All churches preach this and extol its virtue, and yet they seem to be quite individually focused. I’ve seen it a lot in the more contemporary worship services. It seems to be all about the individual instead of the whole. Michael echoes the contrast between so called “modern” or “contemporary” Protestant worship and it’s alternate – “liturgical” or “meditative” worship. Monastic worship is tied back into a more Catholic or meditative style of worship; one that seeks a revelation or authentication of self, the Divine, and the relationships of the two, through an introspective thought process inhering back into the Divine. Whereas a criticism of Protestant or Evangelical worship is that it is sometimes more-so purely communal and either reservedly or outwardly expressed through a state of exuberance – worship for the Monastic starts with the Divine and the self and works back into the larger aspect of what “the self” is a part of; that of not just a definable congregation or denomination – but the much greater body of Christ. This process is not just a blindly acknowledged fact, but one that is actively wrestled with. Most Protestant congregations will sing and worship through a worship leader and then listen to what a pastor says about this or that. It is no small mystery that so many “Rock Star” Evangelists and T.V. preachers are littered across cable television. A great number of personalities are ready and willing to show you how to get to God through them – or ‘their’ ministry. The dichotomy of liturgical worship – or worship through the elements or sacrements – stands in sharp contrast. A monk is viewed less as a leader and more of a servant; the worship inherent in a monastic-style assembly is decidedly introspective vs. the often potentially personality-driven/centric, extroverted style so prevalent in many churches today. Contemplation as the Seed of Community The “Rock Star [11] ” of meditative monks – Thomas Merton – expressed what individuality was in terms of a Monastic worship dichotomy. The monk who is truly a man of prayer and who seriously faces the challenge of his vocation in all its depth is by that very fact exposed to existential dread. He experiences in himself the emptiness, the lack of authenticity, the quest for fidelity, the “lostness” of modern man, but he experiences all this in an altogether different and deeper way then does man in the modern world, to him this disconcerting awareness of himself and of his world come rather as an experience of boredom and of spiritual disorientation. The monk confronts his own humanity and that of his world at the deepest and most central point where the void seems to open out into black despair. The monk confronts this serious possibility, and rejects it, as a Camusian man confronts “the absurd” and transcends it by his freedom. The option of absolute despair is turned into perfect hope by the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer. The monk faces the worse and discovers in it the hope of the best. From the darkness comes light. From death, life. From the abyss there comes, unaccountably, the mysterious gift of the Spirit sent by God to make all things new, to transform the created and the redeemed world, and to re-establish all things in Christ [12] It is through this radically transcendent introspection, through the gateway of existential dread – that one is potentially brought onto a new foundation, of not just community – but also spiritual discipline. Community does not originate as a “genus;” merely another cultural epistemological stratification; I am not a part of a community because I attend such and such a church – rather it becomes the embodiment and natural fruit of an authentic personal spiritual maturity; I am a follower of Christ – therefore it is natural that I am a part of this part of the Body of Christ. Matthew Byce, a member of The Company of Jesus [13] writes I come from an evangelical background for the most part so I wasn’t exposed to much monasticism growing up. Having opportunity to read a little about it, and make some decisions personally simply as a Christian, I think it’s goals, and purposes make for amazing disciplines which every Christian, simply as a matter of daily practice should incorporate, at least if you’re serious about obedience. I wonder how many Christians we’d have if everyone were a part of a monastic community though. I’m glad for it’s part in the body, but glad too that the whole body isn’t comprised of monastics. Rev. Br. Joe Parise C.J. [14] writes I am a Franciscan but I definitely love the rule of Benedict. What I like the most about it is emphasis on normalcy and stability. It’s not radical. It’s essentially easy to follow and very well balanced. That is needed in every Christian’s life. When I made my vows it was a very intense experience for me. I knew I could only keep them with God’s grace and I have failed many times! My theology hasn’t changed much at all since I became a friar. I was already at odds with much of today’s theology before I became a monk. Particularly the preaching about money that is a favorite of the charismatic church. Give me a break with that crap! In his book, The Springs of Contemplation, Thomas Merton tells the story of being asked by a shopkeeper what kind of toothpaste he wanted. When he told the shopkeeper “I don’t care,” the shopkeeper was aghast. Merton writes, “He almost dropped dead. I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or something with five colors. And they all have a secret ingredient. But I did not care about the secret ingredient.” Merton concluded his observation of the bewildered shopkeeper, that “the worst thing you can do is not care about these things.” [15] Against the hustle and bustle of an ever expanding plethora of choices, direction, and concern; the accumulative din of which seemingly eventually presses not just against the sanity of society – but the denizens therein, Benedictine Monasticism issues a calming alternative: Normalcy and Stability -through a personal mediation of what’s really important; the cogitory authenticity of which is naturally expressed in the dimension of a community that is concerned with more then just the select aspects of individuals, but with the whole of their care, both physical and spiritual. A monk with the moniker ‘forrestdweller’ [16] – who is a part of The Company of Jesus, writes, Monks have evolved throughout the centuries to meet the needs of the society in which they live. I believe one of the most devastating misconceptions the general public has about monks is that they live apart from society. That is not true. Even the Carthusian order, whose monks live in complete austerity and near solitude, are very passionate about the world and are in constant contemplation of the need for our Lord’s mercy in the world. The monks at the abbey to which I belong as an Oblate are very involved in the community in a variety of functions. Monasticism is not about austerity and silent contemplation in itself. At its core it is about drawing nearer to Christ with the assistance of your brothers and sisters through a daily routine of carefully balanced prayer and work. In that regard, it is merely a different expression of the nuclear family. With that in mind, there are many traditions and practices in monasticism that descend from ages past, but none of which are practiced out of legalism – they are retained because they are useful for living a Christian life. When something no longer serves the Christian life it is discarded. As such, most monks are very practical and have allowed change, albeit reluctantly, if careful discernment and contemplation has led them to believe it will be for the greater good of the church. It is this inward authenticity in a faith made real and pushed past the ‘Cultural Christianity’ of today’s religious/political/societal marketplace – that creates what Thomas Merton referred to as a “prophetic community [17] ” which speaks past and through the religious consumerism which plagues us today. [18] This timeliness and capacity to speak to the disorder and confusion of the present is evident. Just as it was when St. Benedict answered the call to speak to a different time, which is not all that unlike our own. And just as in his own time, the “Benedictinism that stabilized Europe, that gave a center to it’s villages and a spiritual glue to it’s systems,” truly, “has never been need more.” [19] Contemplation Towards Consecration & Ecclesiology In the Benedictine Monasticism, authentic community is birthed through contemplative mediation and an inward, deepening desire for spiritual integrity and authenticity. It is a further fruit of this process, that the dynamics of an ecclesiological mindset (openness to other church/denominational systems), as well as a desire for sacredness and consecration as something to be applied to the whole of one’s experience – not just inside the church walls, but without them as well, is expressed and affirmed in the mind of the monastic practioner. Rev. Br. Joe Parise C.J. [20] writes of coming from a non-denominational background, and being essentially a Pentecostal or Charismatic monk; integrating into his ministry both the tenants of Benedictine Monasticism, but also the Gifts of the Spirit, as would be understood by non-cessationist evangelicals who refer to themselves as being “Spirit-Filled.” Blending old traditions with new is something that I feel strong about. I love the ancient church and it’s practices but I also love the different aspects of Christianity. I believe that we need the old but we also need the gifts of the spirit at work in the church as well as charismatic worship incorporated into the liturgy. The traditions are fine but we must have the spirit flowing and moving in his church. I did come from a non-denominational background but the Lord led my path here. I learned allot from that group but God’s will for my life and ministry definitely is rooted in monasticism and a more catholic theology. I still consider myself a protestant as Anglicans are, but they are still rather catholic as well. A study of church history will help educate believers on the history of the Christian church and most find that they believe essentially the same things. Basically I am a Franciscan friar, Anglican deacon who prays in tongues, prophesies, moves in words of knowledge, studies church history, preaches through blues music believes in healing and goes to an Anglican church because it is where God has planted me. It is rather a potpourri of things but it is all Christianity. Forrest Dweller [21] adds, Within my life, the hardest realization was my need for moderation. I am prone to excess, and even in Christian living such excess can be counter-productive or even destructive. St. Benedict demands moderation and balance in everything – in the work/prayer schedule of the monks to how simple tasks like kitchen details are to be handled. Tempering my spirituality with such moderation so that I lead a well-rounded life was very challenging for me. Further Contemplations: Celibacy, the Cerebrality, Cordiality, and Contemporanity The thesis of this paper precludes any in-depth examination of Modern Monasticism; as the unfortunate endeavor of any essayist – when dealing with a complex subject – is to present information with pursuant sparkable interest for the reader, in such as way that is yet concise and still readily perusable. That’s hard when it comes to this subject. To attempt to cover all the bases and yet not write a very lengthy tome; especially in regards to this subject matter; is, for one both interested and journeying into it, a very frustrating endeavor. In a concluding summary of aspects of Modern Benedictine Monasticims, in addition to those already covered – four subjects remain; though other well-deserving aspects can easily be argued for presentation as well. These are, Celibacy, Cerebrality, Cordiality, and Contemporanity. In regards to Celibacy – sex is always a hot topic. It is generally accepted in 3rd orders that Celibacy is interpreted as chastity until marriage and faithfulness therein. But some old school monks argue that you cannot be a monk and be married and sexual, [22] and that such a discipline in one’s life represents more a state of humility then just an abstinence from sex. [23] Another unmistakable component of Benedictine Monasticism is it Cerebrality. It is unmistakably oriented towards establishing a pattern of not just meditation, but also study and research. St. Benedict sets aside guidelines for the traditional lectio divina; which is traditionally understood and interpreted as ‘spiritual reading.’ This ‘directive’ towards a life of study appears in The Rule of Benedict (R.B 48.4) and is generally understood to pertain to a time of memorization and study of scripture. R.B. 48.17-21 warns monks not to play around with or otherwise waste this part of the day. Many churches do not take seriously the idea of committing scripture to memory – and rather just substitute 45-minute sermons on a doctrinal aspect. Benedictine Monasticism reminds us that it is not enough to merely think about doctrine but it must be hidden in our hearts. [24] Otherwise it is just another bit of data floating around in our heads, and may have as much opportunity to influence both us and the lives of those around us as the price of rice in China overheard in a CNN news broadcast. Thomas Merton writes, “They [writers like Peter of Celles] see, quite realistically, and altogether in the spirit of St. Benedict himself, that all life on earth must necessarily combine elements of action and rest, bodily labor and mental illumination.” [25] Another aspect of Benedictine Monasticism is hospitality. In truth, you cannot really understand the lifestyle of a monk until you understand the goal and the essence of how a Benedictine monk is taught to interact with the outside world, especially, any guest of the monastery. While some may make the assumption that a monk who has chosen to live an ‘enclose life’ – or life inside the confines of a monastery – may be like the odd man at the end of the proverbial suburban block, who never married, has 20 cats, and harasses neighborhood kids who dare trespass his property to get an a forbidden apple from one of his trees, the true essence of a Monk is the exact opposite. Far from disdaining visitors, the reception of guests is actually seen as sacramental act. [26] , [27] The Rule of St. Benedict goes to great length to elaborate the reception and treatment of guests; suggesting that prayer be immediately offered up, to place them in the ‘presence of Christ.’ [28] Guest are to be treated as Christ and served with a heart geared towards such an understanding of the sacredness of such an act. [29] As in introduction to this paper, I chose a Thomas Merton quote; because it embodies a central element to the essence of Benedictine Monasticism. The Coat of Arms of Monte Cassino – the epicenter of the Benedictine Universe – contains the words “Successa Virescit,” – Cut down, it ever grows again. In the tapestry of the history of Christianity – there are many threads that end; many colors that fade onto unanimity. But Benedictine Monasticism, continues its storied and diverse weavings, and continues to be a part of many past, present, and arguably future movements. When I began the research for this paper, one of the things that impressed me most was the diversity of the backgrounds and present denominational affiliations of many monastic practioners. Many were Southern Baptist or Church of God – and many still continue to attend those same churches. They speak in tongues – believe they move in prophetic gifting and wear robes reminiscent of the centuries of service and piety that they have grounded themselves in. It may be true that many movies and works of literature may ‘shoebox’ a monk – but the truth, in reality and practice, is far from any such perceivable or assumed constraints. They are Blues musicians, Southern Baptist Sunday school teachers, and quiet unassuming housewives who have made vows and followed through with them to serve not just their own family – but the entirety of the Body of Christ. They are people just like you and me – and you might never know it until you saw them in their habit. Conclusions Somewhere in the cannon of conventional wisdom; there is an almost universally accepted truth; sometimes – to go forward, you have to go back. In my own spiritual walk, I found myself growing restless – if not, thought it might be a poor and inadequate term: bored. How could I deepen my own existing roots and yet find the further authenticity that I craved? Could I and would I be willing to look for it in potentially unexpected ways? Once I accepted the potential that what I was looking for could potentially be found outside my own ‘denominational sandbox’ – I made earnest efforts to be both jurisprudent and yet open to unexpected opportunities for spiritual awakening and ministry. Many people go searching and get lost literally and figuratively; both emotionally and spiritually. But the proverbial Tolkienian proverb, not all who wander are lost, does hold true; as well as not all who meditate, still have not figured out what they want to really think about. Perhaps these essences might frame the monastic essence of spirituality: searching for authenticity, and mediating upon the work and mind of Christ. The issues of piety, consecration, service, celibacy, cerebrality, cordiality, community, and any other tag words that you could attach to Benedictine Monasticism, or it’s associated kindred traditions, are essentially all tied back to the acts of searching and introspection. Perhaps it is through this ‘language of intent’ that gives Monasticism the continued capacity and authority to speak to past, present and future ecclesiastical generations. The necessity for such never goes away, and in times of flux and instability; the need goes forth as a clarion call for their return. Perhaps it is through this dynamic that both Monasticism and it’s associated Rule of St. Benedict are discovered, explored, and appropriated freshly for each present and encroaching generation. Newly interpreted for a present people – yet ancient in purpose and intent: the strength of generations past finds it’s fiber and glue in the ever present generation – they realize the new and the innovative; the technological and the cultural can never be the summation and foundation for everything. In the end – there has to be more, and Monasticism offers a framework for the discovery of older truths that other previous generations in their own ‘modernity’ found a need to rediscover and reappropriate. You can never be so new – that the old is no longer of any use; especially when the subject is spiritually. For all the strength to be found in forging ahead – the true strength is anchoring oneself in the bedrock of generations prior. This, arguably, is the intent for each new monastic convert, when they don their habit for the first time – and when they make their vows. What was once old – is new again; and what was once thought to be outmoded – is ever essential, if not infinitely practical and potentially desperately needed. The hope of future generations may not lie in the fanciful new technologies of worship or ministry that each in their own time, will discover and try to implement. Every generation prior found itself at the mercy of untried potentials that offered previously unthought-of dynamics. And each, without fail – found more strength in the past – then they did in the future. And so, as the body of Christ moves forward, it will surely almost always continue to do so with a deep meditative intent, and the soft rustle of the habits of a multitude of monks; lost in the contemplative labyrinth of the mercy and justice of God; the reality of an omnipotent God – revealed to a broken and frustrated humanity. The foolish things of God will continue to confound the wise men of the world; and God will continue to use the weakness of those who have given themselves to His work to accomplish His most illustrative, important, and spectacular works. Rev. Br. Joe Parise C.J. [30] writes, Monasticism helps keep me grounded on what matters in life. It is also a definite call from God. It’s not for everyone. Most of my friends don’t understand it. I felt the leading of God to it for 10 years before I pursued it. I love it. It suits me and I don’t think I could ever walk away from it. How does it translate in today’s world? It’s the gospel of Christ. The gospel will always be relevant even in these end times. Monastic practice is always in vogue because the gospel always is.I think because of the worldliness of today’s church that monasticism is very much needed today. Desperately so even. I hope this has helped you brother and may God’s peace be upon you. “May God bring us all together to everlasting Life” (Rule of St. Benedict, 72). Circumnavigating ‘The Circuit of the Different;’ exploring Proclus’ assertions and contestations in relation to Iamblicus & Plotinus – with reference to The Will, Happiness of the Individual, and The Charioteer analogy. Submitted for Final Exam, Ancient Philosophy 351, Dr. Phillips, UTC, 12.3.07 The idea of Free Will is indeed a vexing one. A considerable argument can be made that those who do not struggle with it, as a concept, may in fact arguably be engaging themselves in a subtle form of intellectual/philosophical sophistry, possibly even self-deception. Whether the context is one of humanistic philosophy or Christian dogmatics – or even a combination thereof – it is a deeply contested issue that expresses itself within the dialogs of each successive generation’s thinkers. Before Calvin vs. Arminus, and Augustine vs. Pelagius; the luminaries of generations prior, found themselves very busy affirming and contesting one another’s views on the subject. Reaching back into the early foundations of philosophic thought, we find this same enterprise at work within the school of Neoplatonism. In this paper, we will explore the contestations of Proclus against Iamblicus, in his thoughts and interpretations of Plotinus in regards the Descended vs Undescended soul, free will, the nature and connection of the soul with an understanding of The One, and it’s relations with the allegory of The Charioteer. To understand the framework of the discussion, it is necessary to understand Plotinus’ understanding of the “Undescended Soul.” Within the Neo-Platonist philosophic tradition, the Soul has its beginning, or Hypostasis, in the Intellect, which in turn comes from The One. The Intellect is the causual effect of the self-awareness of The One within the expression of the Soul. The Undescended Soul is the essence or part of the One that has not been fully removed or abrogated in the subsequent, concurrent phase changes referred to as the Hypostases that The One has progressed through – from it’s highest expression/state, to the lowest. The stages of Hypostasis are The One (the highest), The Intellect, The World (Universal Soul), The Soul of the Universe, Individual Souls, Nature, and then Matter it’s self. Within the discussion, there are three objections that are given in response to Iamblicus. They are the issue of Free Will, The question of why are people not always happy, and the illustration of the Charioteer. In regards to the question of the Free Will, in relation to his discussion of Iamblicus, Proclus affirms that The One does in fact have Will and that it cannot error, and that the intellect (supposedly) cannot error because it does not come down; but he affirms that it does in fact do this, thus exposing a flaw in the cogency of the argument. Proclus argues that what is passed down through the subsequent stages of Hypostases it is the manifestation of the previous Hypostasis and not a direct connection back to The One. The Passions, the descended part of the soul, are what are “roused” and perpetrate a state of error; but because the soul is a reflection of The One and not a direct component or identical material substance, it has intrinsic capacity to fail. Proclius refers to the error of those who “follow impressions without reflections” – alluding to those who understand a direct connection back to The One and disavow the Intellect to potentially pervert itself as a result. The potential for a Free Will essentially comes from this fact: we are satisfactorily removed from the One, yet connected through subsequent reflections, back it. There is a component that is undescended but the essence and nature of that connection is of a reflective nature and not an actual consistency of essence. A comparison between this and a modern philosophical application, within the Christian theological sphere – for example, is the idea of Christians being supposedly being unable to sin because of the presence of the Divine nature in their lives. If one were to argue that sin couldn’t be present in the posted substrate of the soul, because it is also elementally composited as being, in part, intrinsically divine in it’s literal substance and essence, a comparison in the two presuppositional thought structures could be aptly made. The Judeo-Christian Orthodox view, however, is that we are made in the image of God – but not the substance; we are like Him (Christ), but we are not as He is. This critical difference of image/reflection vs. connection/identical substance allows for the potential for error, thus Free Will. Contentions for this reality in light of counter assertions have been historically occurent in both respective philosophical/theological traditions. In regards to the question of ‘why are people not always happy;’ it coincides with an understanding of the essence of our relation to the Divine or the One. If we were in substance divinity or The One, we would, in concept, continually personify the characteristics thereof. But being that our connection back to the Divine or the One is of a reflective essence, it is possible, arguably, to, for example, “turn off the lights” and end the reflective relationship/communion. With no lights, as it were, the communicative relationship breaks down. The essence of our connectedness has intrinsic contingencies; the potential abruption of which necessitates a contingent, therefore potentially transient state. This is a concept that is a part of Platonic philosophy itself; that we are not inherently connected, nor can we potentially always be immovably fixed upon the Divine or the best of intentions, as it were; however these are described: as the Divine, as The One, or The Forms, as they are in Aristotle also. We strive for that state and may achieve it – momentarily, by some sense of accumulated, purposeful momentum – but as a relation and/or position, it is not sustainable. The understanding/argument that the state of the connection to the One is one of reflection, and not same state essence, is tied into this understanding. The last contention is that of the Charioteer, which is taken from Phaedrus. In this allegory, the Intellect is represented by a charioteer attempting to command two horses. One horse is the rational and noble (The White); our reflection of the Undescended reflection of The One – and the other, the embodiment of the irrational and inferior (the Black); the descended parts of our soul, or the Passions. As the charioteer commands the carriage, one horse is pulled towards enlightenment, the other horse, towards things of a base nature: potential error and irrationality. Try as the Charioteer may, sometimes he is pulled towards heaven, the other times downward. Because there is an ongoing contention, the chariot may reach desired heights, but it cannot perpetually remain there. It cannot always be above- because the other renegade horse precludes a sense of stability. In light of this allegory, Plotinus’ conception of the Undescended Soul and his assertion that the highest part of the soul (intellect) does not descend, is shown as flawed and inadequate. The discussion of Free Will in connection to the nature of our compositional state and the essence of it’s assumed connection back to The One – or the Divine (to invoke a Christian theological context) – extends well beyond just the Platonic/Neoplatonic traditions. Both the Stoics and The Epicureans also express philosophic beliefs as proposed answers to these fundamental and often fervently contested questions of Free Will and relation to the Divine/The One. In the study group that was convened in the interest of working on this exam paper collectively, one of the member of the group was complemented on his ability to remember and understand some of the concepts that others, such as myself, were at the time struggling with. His understanding, combined with a capacity for cogent explication earned him several gracious complements from several people in the group for his contributions and patience with the rest of us. The conjecture was made, in context to the position held by the Epicureans, in reference and in complement to him; “you must have good atoms.” This was a reference to the belief that an Epicurean viewpoint would preclude any allegory of horses or connections back to a “One” or even the Divine; rather the context of such would be prefaced upon the understanding that the soul of a person was composed of ‘Atoms’ being of either good quality or bad quality. In regards to the Will, there are no dynamics beyond the inherent capabilities/propensities of the atoms involved in the composition of the individual/thing in question. In regards to the questions of a permanence or transience of any assumed state of happiness on the part of the proposed individual, the Epicureans would related this to the adherence or disavowal of a life lived under the guidelines of established ethics. Epicureans will essentially argue, that this is “your shot” and there is no “descended” vs “undescended” or, for that matter, any substantial meaning to anything – beyond that qualities of atoms and their continual movement. It is all about Atoms and Pleasure, neither are there any assumed moral or divine behavioral/relational contingencies/connections or reflections. There is essentially no Teleology. It is “all about” doing the best you can, with what you have, and feeling the best you can in the ways you have opportunity. Ethics themselves are not assumed as being static but are themselves dynamic and relative to the nature/propensity of the atoms in question. Being happy is not really a conducive ideal either – rather achieving happiness is a result of an understanding of having achieved authentic pleasure, by express virtue of a correctly appropriated understanding of the surrounding atomistic propensities, relative to the given interplay of the person, the time, and the situation. A second school – which presents an alternate viewpoint to the preceedingly discussed schools/notions of Compositional natures in regards to our connection back to the Divine/The One, the permanence/transience of our happiness, and the dynamics of The Will – is the Stoics. In relation to the Charioteer allegory, Stoics rather preferred Zeno’s “Dog and Cart” analogy. It is put forth that there is a cart which represents the Cosmos, and it is being pulled by a horse which is Fate. We are dogs, and we can either get in the car and ride in it, or we can stop and be eventually be dragged by it. We essentially have the choice to either resist or accept our fate, and it is this dichotomy which essentially governs our lives; which comes from a rational, immortal God – but the idioms and outworking of which we are powerless to change and effect. The highest virtue is an acceptance embracement and quality of our relations to this dichotomy, basically, fully following the expectations and capabilities of nature – to pursue this is to essentially strive to achieve the highest good. So – to return to the chariot example – whether you are going up or down, sorta to speak, is not based on the inherent natures of a analogically posited horse, but the nature of the course of the fate as it is provided by God. Happiness is finding and flowing that trajectory and not making assumptions of the good or the bad, descended vd undescended, or even happiness or despair inherent to an such predisposed flight pattern. Happiness, “the good,” and the undescended, are revealed to be going with the flow of wherever that horse; in this case fate; pulls you, and being content and stratified where ever that might be. Where the charioteer might strive to make the good horse the dominant, the Stoics would see disallowing the good or the bad to go farther into either direction; which is referred to as The Lazy Argument; or that is is bad to try hard at either direction, but the best approach to anything is moderation. Future generations of writers, dreamers, philosophers and followers of various and diverse forms of religions, traditions and/or philosophical thoughts/schools will no doubt eternally posit, affirm, contextualize and even reimagine the preceding generations conceptualizations of their relation to either the essence of things as they are, ‘The wholly Other’ – be that a higher form or virtue, The One, or the Divine; and the context and our action and the essence of our choices – be they predetermined or of volitional capacity in relation to all the assumptions of the preceding. This story, past present, and future – is the story of Humanity’s ongoing and contiguous struggle to understand both itself and the forces/realities around it and how they interact. There is no doubt that regardless of where one chooses to place oneself; this story – either on the personal level or the macro socio-historical level – is neither complete, nor is it anywhere near being exhausted. Time and ongoing revelation; should this very element be born out to be a participating dynamic – will continue to deepen, simplify and expand the understanding of not just ourselves – but our world. The irony of which; the driving force behind such ongoing endeavors may, in the end and in essence, be found to be brought about by the Will of not just of ourselves, but of all of Humanity. Propaganda & Persuasion, 4/7/2011 ‘This is Berlin Calling, Dear, Speaking to one American Boy;’ Consequences and Sexual Recontextualizations, subsequent to the Employment of the Feminine Essence in The Battle for the Soldier’s Masculine Mind: Women in Radio Propaganda in WWII In wartime, most propaganda is centered on the public. This is, however, only one dimension of the equation. Whereas the public is responsible for ideally voting in and out politicians who then set both domestic and international policies (of which war is an integral part) it is, however, the soldier who actually fights. The public’s attention and opinion may change like the weather – but the soldier who represents the ‘boots on the ground’ plays an integral part of a war’s ideological dichotomy. This paper will explore some of the more unique dimensions of sexuality, as it related to the common soldier during World War II and the two principle female radio personalities that soldiers fighting on the Allied side were exposed to: “Tokyo Rose” -whose radio broadcasts represented the Japanese propaganda attempts to dissuade Allied soldiers from fighting and “Axis Sally” -Tokyo Rose’s German counterpart. This paper will make an attempt to explore various aspects of each, as they related to the media and strategies of WW II and as they related to the wartime propaganda efforts directed towards the sexual pathos and the psychological well being of the American soldier. World War II represented – in many ways – the largest, most technologically advanced [1] war that has ever been fought, with respect to both its size and its use of technology – especially when contextually compared with previous conflicts. Many of the nations involved were, in and of themselves, the most advanced among peers in regards to culture, music, and technology. The lessons of WW I were still very much on the minds and hearts of military strategy planners. For example, the lessons of the Battle of Verdun (where over 700,000 causalities were incurred on both sides [in a battle that both military historians then and now both agreed had little or no strategic importance]) still reverberated through the conscience of military men everywhere as a place were men died for no other purpose then to chase the illusive goal of maintaining the respective prestige amoung the nations fighting a given battle to be the victor of it. [2] This and many other aspects of the previous conflict embodied what came to be seen as a sense of pervasive wastefulness and futility in terms of the management of the previous war’s resources and their ineffectual use of either strategy or modern technology. It became, therefore, a foregone conclusion that the next war would be waged in a more intelligent fashion. Instead of trench warfare – missiles, special operations, and eventually even nuclear weaponry would be employed. [3] Along with the advanced role of these technologies, an appreciation for ‘the technology of rhetoric’ emerged. The role of propaganda rose to the forefront among these as a crucial tool of war – very much seen as equally important to supply lines, troop numbers, and weaponry capabilities. No longer would men just march at each other and die by the scores – but ideas and speeches against one another would be seen to be just as affective as the chemical warfare and rifles that were used against each other at Verdun. An integral cog in the Nazi propaganda machine was Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was the only formally educated doctorate in higher echelons of Nazi leadership – and he brought a systemized, academic-minded efficiency to the usually brute-force wielding Nazi apparatus. [4] The propaganda machine that Goebbels built and ran had many facets and dimensions. One important aspect that was not overlooked, however, was the Nazi propaganda efforts towards the demoralization of the American soldier. The ways and means of this were both innovative and ground breaking – and would (ironically) take on the form of the voice of a woman. On the German side – she came to be known “Axis Sally;” on the Japanese – “Tokyo Rose.” The reason behind using a woman instead of a man was integral to the notion of gender presuppositions as they related to propaganda dynamics. For the first time, the employment of a ‘Feminine Essence’ would be strategically employed in ongoing propaganda efforts. There would never be a ‘German Joe’ speaking – at least with the presumed efficacy of the soft, sultry voice of “Axis Sally,” as she sought to sooth the American soldier out of their wartime patriotism and dedication. The sexuality of the female voice – as either an anti- or pro-war stance – was reproduced into other venues beyond just the German’s application of it, as the infamous voice of “Tokyo Rose” also lit up the airwaves; a sweet, young voice who extolled the virtues and noble intentions of the Japanese Imperial army. Meanwhile, the Americans knew that they simply would not be outdone in this venture – by any means. They found a secret weapon in the sultry, German expatriate – Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich was an outspoken opponent of Nazism and was well equipped in both body and in intellect to make use of her own Feminine Essence – once remarking that “In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it’s a fact.” [5] Her arrival in Hollywood for the filming of Morocco [6] with American actor Gary Cooper, in 1930 earned her official disdain from the ruling Nazi party. [7] When she became an American citizen, it was greatly welcomed by those who were seeking to find a way to counter the German propaganda machine. [8] Dietrich threw herself fully into the American war effort, once ironically commenting that The Germans and I no longer speak the same language. [9] Dietrich began to record songs for a wartime propaganda effort entitled Soldatensender. In 1944 Dietrich recorded Lili Marlene [10] , [11] which was actually part of a black propaganda effort on the part of the American Forces. It tells the sad story of a young woman leaving her soldier as he goes to the battlefield. German soldiers were forbidden to listen to Soldatensender broadcasts and the songs like Lili Marlene that played on it. [12] Love had become the new bullet in the new war. As Dietrich heated up the airwaves – Axis Sally continued her own radio work. Her trademark call was “this is Berlin calling” – and indeed it was Berlin, and more importantly Goebbels – masterfully speaking though her sultry inflections. The German Axis Sally was really a woman named Mildred Gillars – a middle-aged, former showgirl from Ohio – who had gone to Germany to study music. Gillars began her wartime propaganda work for the Germans by participating in a program entitled Home Sweet Home – which was designed by the Germans to induce a sense of homesickness on the part of American GI’s. [13] Also known as the “Bitch of Berlin” – she still prominently figures into the collective wartime imagination. A female radio host, with bright red lips is used in an advertising promo for the video game Brothers in Arms, Hell’s Highway [14] and she makes an appearance as a veritable vixen in [15] Spike Lee’s WWII movie Miracle at St. Anna. [16] Axis Sally always made gratuitous references to the Jews and to the “kikes,” who she claimed were responsible for the war. As one American to another – do you love the British? Well of course the answer is no. Do the British love us? Of course – I should say not. But we are fighting for them. We are shedding our good, young blood for this kike war, for this British war – oh girls, why don’t you wake up. [17] I love America – but I do not love Roosevelt and all of his kike boyfriends who have thrown us up into this awful turmoil. [18] A defeat for Germany means a defeat for America… [19] Sally’s Japanese counterpart, Tokyo Rose, stayed equally busy. Tokyo Rose was actually voiced by several different women – the best known of whom was Iva Toguri. Her sultry opening words “Hello there Enemies . . . how’s tricks?” [20] opened up her broadcasts – which usually consisted of subtle discouragements and supposedly requested music. Ann: And now that [?]. The second request is sent in by a roaming bonehead of an orphan, request number twenty-nine. He wants Tony Martin, of all people, to help him forget the mosquitoes and dirty rifles. Well, you know obliging Annie. Tony Martin and “Now It Can Be Told.” (music) [21] Kokyo Rose had an almost amusing quality, referring to her listeners as “enemies,” herself as “Orphan Annie,” all the while reminding her listeners to “be good.” That’s all for now, enemies – but there will be more of the same tomorrow night, but until then, this is orphan Annie, your number one enemy, reminding you G.I.’s to always be good – goodbye now!” [22] I know that you still hate us – but don’t let that hate infect you, it poisons the whole system. [23] Tokyo Rose not only attacked the patriotism of American soldiers, but also used her Feminine Essence to instill the fear of sexual impotence upon her listeners. Many listeners no doubt, at the mention of sex, would nervously wonder where exactly the truth really ended and the lie seriously began. You poor little Marines, I wish you could spend the night with me. I am a little Japanese pin-up girl. But it wouldn’t be any use. Your officers won’t tell you because they want you to take these atabrine pills every day. . . . Your officers don’t dare tell you—but I will—that when you swallow those bitter little pills, they will not only turn you yellow for the rest of your life, but they will also prevent you from ever being able to make love again. [24] Kokyo Rose and Axis Sally represented a unique form of propaganda in a war, which raised the bar in terms of its level of technological sophistication and ideological complexity. In addition to the white and grey propaganda that the state department was creating with Marlene Dietrich, attempts at outright black propaganda were employed though their own created character of “Operation Annie” – whose final on air sign off was a carefully scripted act that seemed to show that the Allied Forces had finally found where she was broadcasting, and were seemingly overrunning the studio – while she was still broadcasting. This was intended to instill fear in the enemy – that there was simply no way to tell how quickly the Americans could barge in at any moment, anywhere. “Radio Annie broadcast for 127 nights. It finally signed off by pretending that Allied troops had caught up with the rebel broadcasters. Listeners suddenly heard shouting in English and sounds of a scuffle. The German announcer cried out for someone to play a record. Then Annie’s theme song rolled, and abruptly fell silent.” [25] Propaganda was no longer merely someone trying to convince you that you were merely right or wrong in terms of your support for the military agendas of the Axis powers or the Allied response to them [26] – but the entire enterprise was given a distinct, inescapable sexual dimension. The sweet and sultry ladies that populated the radio airtime of American soldiers could not be written off as easily as those of a ranting officer or fellow shipmate. The sexuality and sensuality that their voices represented marked an attempted penetration into the psyche of the soldier that a man’s voice could not otherwise accomplish. There were radio personalities that engaged in propaganda that did use men, such as James Joyce – otherwise known as Lord Haw Haw – who worked for German radio propaganda efforts against Great Britain, and who was hanged after the war for treason, [27] but they lacked the attention that Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose garnered – at least in terms of the traction that they held in the soldier’s imagination. It can be argued that this was because of the unique sexual dynamics that the female voice employed over and above the rhetorical dynamics intrinsic to that of the male archetype. Regardless of the arguments or the claims made by the female voice, as a general rule, because of the disarming vulnerability concomitant with the archetypical Feminine Essence – the male listener would archetypically find the medium of the feminine voice to incorporate a disarming essence; an aspect intrinsic to its presentation. Regardless of what was being said – if the voice was beautiful and feminine (especially in the sexual sterility of the battlefield and military life in wartime) it served to ensnare his imagination and his sexuality. Sexuality is an extremely important motif, one that must be considered when examining the psychology of the male soldier in wartime. One movie that explored this was the movie Enemy at the Gates. [28] , [29] Enemy at the Gates features the issues of both propaganda, love and sexuality as central themes to its plot. Jude Law plays a famous sniper, Vassilli Zaitsev, who is used by the desperate Soviet military to create a propaganda story around him that will help rally their desperate troops against the German juggernaut – in a bid to keep the strategic city of Leningrad from falling into enemy hands. Based on a true story, it contains a famous love scene – in which mutual love interests Jude Law and Naomi Weiss (who plays Tania Chernova) have sex – one that is arguably a cinematic masterpiece in terms of its portrayal of the stark contrast between sexual intimacy and the brutal loss of all privacy because of an exceptionally stark and brutal wartime situation. In the film, Vassili and Tania silently and surreptitiously make love in the middle of an underground bunker, dirty and disheveled from combat operations – whilst surrounded by their sleeping comrades. [30] Here, the passion and intimacy of the human spirit finds a way to express itself – even amidst the horror and confines of the battlefield. Even on a larger scale – with the entirety of their civilization literally crashing down around them; depriving them of the security and concomitant consolations of all its structures, rituals and assurances – the insurance of any sense of stability (such as a marriage would represent) is unattainable in present or any perceivably immediately forthcoming circumstances for them. In this sense – the furtive, illicit passions they share embody this stark disillusionment with any kind of normalcy; aptly illustrating these stark configurations on a meta-level for the viewer, following the arch of their story, as it is told in the movie. The passion of the characters of Vassili and Tania still find expression and release – even in the stark realities of day-to-day survival and death. There is no white wedding or marriage bed. There is only a soiled cot, surrounded by fitfully sleeping men – many of whom will themselves be dead in the following days. While such an event might very well light up the fantasies of the lonely, male soldier – deprived of any love interests, or even females otherwise and likewise staring death in the face daily – the story of the force and power of their love and their innate and subsequently repressed sexuality, still seeking release, and searching for expression and subsequent interpenetrative vulnerability – equally provides an adequate background to the sexual imagination of the soldier – who though turned into a killing machine, remains inescapably vulnerable via his own undeniable sexuality. In what might be termed an existential counterpunch – Vassili and Tania make love and in doing so, build an island of refuge and beauty over and against the horror and chaos surrounding them. The creative essence of sexuality – no doubt serving as a vehicle for renewal and refuge within the traumatized imagination of the soldier – would find great traction in such illusive but deeply cherished metanarratives. This is important, for in the case of the beautiful voice on the radio, she became a proxy for all of this: a non-existent physical intimacy, masquerading as one capable of emotional or intellectual connection and escape where (outside of a wartime script writer’s Hollywood imagination and cinematic license) any actual physical, or even relational intimacy, or presumed standard of sexual moral conduct was simply beyond the conceivable. In lieu of any female interrelation at all – the base nature of human sexuality will force a vulnerability – or at least a very deeply engrained enjoyment of her communication – regardless of what was being said by her – or even how geographically or geopolitically detached she might be. These powerful sexual forces served to empower the seemingly innocuous and innocent playfulness of the females taking their positions behind enemy microphones. But far from being innocent – these female voices echoed not only across the airwaves, but also through the unconscious sexual drives of millions and millions of men who would hear them and in doing so, be exposed to their subtle but inescapably powerful dichotomy as it radically impacted the dynamics of ethos, pathos, and logos as they related to the propaganda they represented. But how? – one must ask. The utilization of the Feminine Essence and its employment within propaganda efforts represents a veritable unchaining of Eros within the masculine psyche of the soldier. And through this, as Freud might argue, the unpredictabilities of the impulsivity of human nature are potentially unmoored from their Apollonarian, steadfast, logically-mediated anchors. [31] By virtue of this tapping into this unbundled sexual essence of the sexually repressed and isolated soldier – each of rhetorical modalities are subsequently irrevocably transfigured by the earthiness of the Chithulian. Or are they? Or could this transfiguration-reconfiguration (taking place either on such a high meta-level, or at such a deep subconscious, foundational level) be such as that its own effects are as equally hidden to the degree that the preexistent, innately repressed sexuality was predisposed to hide itself to, to begin with. Perhaps soldiers who were predisposed to a degree of promiscuity already – would by virtue of this fact, thereby be more so prone to preternaturally ‘go rogue’ ideologically, consequent and subsequent to it? Those with a disciplined sexuality already – would they merely continue on in a likewise equally disciplined state? Or is it that these guidelines of discipline and control are merely stressed in such a way as to tempt some sort of sublimated sexual rebellion? Regardless of its exact form – this destabilization metanarrative prefigures any sense of assured and fully confident sense of infallibility. Perhaps it is this secondary effect: the thrill of such a dangerous, rhetorical engagement – that serves as the essence for a ‘thrill ride’ on the part of the soldier in listening to her to begin with. Could she be a kind of sublimated ‘sexual fling’ with a tinge of the excitement – but none of the assumed consequences? It may have been this specific essence that made her so enjoyable to listen to: that she was kind of a forbidden kiss that the soldier could sneak and not suffer a consequence, as he would – as if he were kissing the German beer hall girl on the cheek behind his commanding officer’s back. Either out of a destabilzation process, or the procurement of a seemingly risk-free thrill – to listen to her was to listen to the voice of one’s own sexuality – speaking out of one’s own psyche and though the radio’s speaker – and in doing this – the soldier could potentially receive (either consciously or unconsciously) a third dichotomatic aspect: that of sexual release. This itself – may be the most potent and powerful dynamic that compelled many a soldier to listen. Though many soldiers would certainly have done anything to be in the arms of their own loved ones – many would also have certainly fantasized about taking the proverbial German beer hall girl to the proverbial hayloft themselves. Certainly this did happen – but certainly not as often, as to the degree that it was fantasized about. And while listening to a sultry German or Japanese girl toy with your sexuality might not have the full affect of toying with her in the hayloft or rice paddy would – it did offer, nonetheless, some degree of release. And amid the horror, death, and the sense of the whole of civilization and its concomitant societal archetypes of order, all equally seeming to be crashing down around them at all points – it was, nonetheless, some degree of both release – and distraction. But was this what the enemy had intended? Was a beneficent ‘sexual release’ and ‘emotional distraction’ what Goebbels would have intended or even wanted? Probably not. But it must be said – that such an unwelcomed aspect of the employment of the Feminine Essence in military propaganda would fall under the rubric of its own intrinsic, sexual-Chitulian unpredictability: neither friend, nor foe, would ever be able to be full recipients of its benefits. For her war efforts, Marlene Dietrich was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the most prestigious and highest kinds of awards a citizen could be given. Dietrich described the accomplishment of being awarded it as one of the greatest things she has ever done in her life. [32] Her love for her own native country never abated, however – and many believe they can hear her love speaking for Germany when they hear her sing, I still have a suitcase in Berlin. [33] , [34] Her love for her country indeed never waned – and she described the pain that she had experienced in leaving her beloved homeland in tearful descriptions, “The tears I have cried over Germany have dried. I have washed my face.” [35] When Germany finally fell – everyone started looking for the ‘bitch of Berlin’ – and the wanted posters went up everywhere. Eventually, she was found and arrested. Mildred Gillars was tried for treason – and eventually served two and half years at the Frankfurt-am-Main Allied prison camp in Germany, and then 12 years at the Alderson Reformatory for Women in West Virginia. She was paroled in 1961, and became a teacher at a Roman Catholic convent. She died in 1988 – and was buried in an unmarked grave among the graves of the WW II veterans – many of whom, no doubt, had heard her voice wooing them to an altogether different place in life, in their own past. [36] Tokyo Rose’s fate would ironically also lead her into the arms of the Americans as well. Ikuko Toguri would also be put on trial for treason, and likewise convinced for her actions during the war. She served six years and two months of a ten year sentence in the same penitentiary as her counterpart in propaganda, Mildred Gillars, in the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She then returned to Chicago and worked in her father’s shop. She was pardoned by President Gerald Ford on January 19, 1977 and passed away in 2006. [37] The lessons of the usefulness of the female voice and its inescapably attendant Feminine Essence – as well as the consequences and ramifications that it has within both within Propaganda and the Masculine Conscience, as it relates to human sexuality, were not lost when WWII ended. Indeed – as later conflicts erupted – the soothing voices of women returned to the airwaves once again. American soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam heard their own modern day itineration of Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose when Hanoi Hannah lit up their radios. Just like Sally and Rose had played big band music, Hannah brought her own twist to playing Rock and Roll –songs that had themselves been forbidden by the United Armed Services from being listened to or played. Against the wishes of many a commanding officer the refrains of We Gotta Get Out of This Place [38] was often heard echoing through the camp. There is no doubt – that wherever there is a war – and men are there fighting; somewhere there will be a radio, and without a doubt – the enemy will be speaking on it. It won’t be the voice of a skilled propagandist. He will be sitting in the shadows, guiding the broadcast – and perhaps even writing out its content. Before the mike, there will be a soothing, beautiful voice…one of a woman – offering beautiful, softly spoken lies. Another Nickel in the Machine. The Execution of Lord Haw Haw at Wandsworth Prison in 1946. Another Nickel in the Machine. 11 April 2011 < http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2010/02/the-execution-of-lord-haw-haw-at-wandsworth-prison-in-1946/&gt ;. Central Intelligence Agency. A Look Back…Marlene Dietrich: Singing for a Cause – Central Intelligence Agency. 11 April 2011 < https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2008-featured-story-archive/marlene-dietrich.html >. diffen.com. World War I vs World War II . 11 April 2011 < http://www.diffen.com/difference/World_War_I_vs_World_War_II&gt ;. FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation – Iva Toguri d’Aquino and “Tokyo Rose”. 11 April 2011 < http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/tokyo-rose/&gt ;. Gortemulder, Anneke. The Battle of Verdun 1916 – the greatest battle ever . 11 April 2011 < http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm&gt ;. Gutenberg-e.org. Miss Yourlovin: Chapter 5. Gutenberg-e.org. 11 April 2011 < http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pfau/chapter5.html&gt ;. Historynet.com. Axis Sally: The Americans Behind That Alluring Voice >> HistoryNet. 11 April 2011 < http://www.historynet.com/axis-sally.htm/1&gt ;. IMDB – The Internet Movie Database. Marlene Dietrich – Biography. 11 April 2011 < http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000017/bio&gt ;. Internet Movie Database. Enemy at the Gates (2001) – IMDb. IMDb. 11 April 2011 < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215750/&gt ;. —. IMDb Video: Enemy At The Gates Trailer. IMDb. 11 April 2011 < http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2163409689/&gt ;. —. Morocco (1930) – IMDb. Internet Movie Database. 11 April 2011 < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021156/&gt ;. Last.fm. Marlene Dietrich – Lili Marlene (3:05). 11 April 2011 < http://www.last.fm/music/Marlene+Dietrich/_/Lili+Marlene&gt ;. Lee, Spike. axis sally movie clip from Miracle at St. Anna. Spike Lee. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBraIulf1OM&NR=1&gt ;. —. Miracle at St. Anna – New Movie by Spike Lee (iHD). Spike Lee. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ-XtII4SdQ&feature=fvwrel&gt ;. Militaryimages.net. Neville_Chamberlain_and_Adolf_Hitler_Peace_in_our_time.jpg 535×757 pixels. Militaryimages.net. 11 April 2011 < http://www.militaryimages.net/photopost/data/612/Neville_Chamberlain_and_Adolf_Hitler_Peace_in_our_time.jpg&gt ;. National Archives. Youtube – “TOKYO ROSE”, TOKYO, JAPAN, 09/20/1945. National Archives. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfR9OXQywE&gt ;. Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Pfau, Ann Elizabeth. Miss Yourlovin – GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II. http://www.gutenberg-e.org . 11 April 2011 < http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pfau/detail/8-14-44transcript.html&gt ;. Squidoo.com. Dietrich or Marlene, Falling in Love Again. 11 April 2011 < http://www.squidoo.com/marlenedietrichbio&gt ;. The German Way. Marlene Dietrich – Biography \| The German-Hollywood Connection. The German Way. 11 April 2011 < http://www.german-way.com/cinema/bio-marlene-dietrich.html&gt ;. Ubisoft Games. Axis Sally – Brothers in Arms, Hell’s Highway. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2woZPf8oaoI&feature=grec_index&gt ;. WGBH Boston, PBS. The American Experience. America and the Holocaust. People & Events \| Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) \| PBS. 11 April 2011 < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX98.html&gt ;. Williams, Beth. Marlene Dietrich: Not My Germany. 11 April 2011 < http://www.williamswebfolio.com/DietrichBio.html#Hello&gt ;. Yourtube.com. Axis Sally (Mildred Gillars) – Home Sweet Home 18-05-1943. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4INW7fgSqXQ&gt ;. Youtube.com. Berlin Calling – Axis Sally. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FV-njfp5s&gt ;. —. Enemy at the gates sex scene. Youtube.com. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi9cYU_k-tc&gt ;. —. Marlene Dietrich sings Lili Marleen in German. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0lUXnAs-U&gt ;. —. Peace in our Time September 1938. Youtube.com. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmH5A6QsqRY&gt ;. —. Tokyo Rose WWII Japanese Radio Propaganda. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfthhdvbSDw&gt ;. —. Youtube.com – Eine Koffer in Berlin – Marlene Dietrich. Youtube.com. 11 April 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-BLoI-0aFc&gt ;. [1] It should be pointed out that wars have been fought on a more technologically advanced scale – but nowhere near the scale of WW II. (Please note, this includes a ‘supplemental resources’ section, along with footnotes and the bibliography) Matthew Lipscomb Dr. Heather Palmer Propaganda & Persuasion, 3/10/2011 2nd Paper: Moving the Mountains – A post-Propagandized View of the Socio-political & Economic-ecological dialogues involving Mountain Top Removal Mining (Corrected Version) “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.” – Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972) [1] Few issues supercharge the emotions as much the issue of Mountain Top Removal. Hailed as a cost-effective [2] and safe way [3] to retrieve the coal necessary for the continued sustenance of the American national economic infrastructure, [4] as well that the creation of suitable areas for economic development [5] (especially in places such as the seemingly ever-contiguous mountain-filled state of West Virginia [6] ) – it is thoroughly demonized by most environmentalists, seemingly without any kind of allowable exception [7] . This paper will attempt to deconstruct the propaganda dynamics intrinsic to the ongoing conversations regarding the issue as well as make an attempt to undertake an exploration of the way that it is related through different sectors of the media, respective to both size and general political inclination. Is it a practice that has any proper place at all in the ‘cannon’ of acceptable mining practices [8] , [9] – or – is it a mind-numbingly horrific and irredeemably destructive practice that irreparably destroys Mother Nature? [10] This paper will make an attempt to find an objective standard for the interpretation of the facts. The reason for this is based on the assertion that to gain an introspective analysis of the dynamics of the conversation – the message must be decoded, in terms of the biases relative to the sources of the respective articles of information and their related conjectural assertions. In this sense, this paper will attempt to find a ‘post-propaganized’ or non-propaganda influenced position – while also attempting to cast a light on the propaganda dynamics of each side. The goal, therefore, is essentially two-fold – in that an examination will be made of the propaganda dynamics, but also the importance of the issues that serve as their respective ideological motifs. In the battle for the minds and hearts of ideological constituents – there are rarely those who can rise above the cacophony of the war of ideas: the tug of war between the ‘deep frames’ that battle for legislative protection and action. Is such a thing possible – without devolving into the world of academic ivory tower-speak? Or can we arrive at a non-demagogical conclusion? It is an established fact that procuring energy is a costly endeavor. In truth, there are no ‘good’ or ‘easy’ solutions. [11] , [12] Wind power – though highly touted as an alternative – remains both costly [13] , [14] and ineffective. [15] Hydroelectric power is equally problematic, as it is fraught with potential destruction for the environment for the areas that they encompass. [16] The future viability of nuclear power is being aggressively questioned everywhere. [17] Everyone wants a solution that creates zero discomfort for all involved. It is an incontrovertible fact that this option simply does not exist. This results in a veritably intolerable situation, due to the fact that the questions, implications, and decisions loom both large and offensively against the hopes, dreams, and visions; assumptions, politics, and ideologies of everyone involved. This is commonly referred to as a ‘stasis problem’ [18] , [19] – and it is the resultant ‘search for stability’ that is the driving force behind the fervor and intensity between competing ideologies and their concomitant propaganda efforts. It is certainly true are that there are in fact some issues that one can afford to ignore. For instance – it is quite possible to detach oneself from any thought towards the civil war going on in Libya, [20] especially if one has no friends or relatives either living there or in the United States Arms forces. Electrical power generation, however, is an issue that, without question, affects everyone. Unless you are a hermit living in the woods – electrical power is critical to your day-to-day life. Something that some people fail to remember is that, even in the years of its early implementation, electrical power proved to be extremely controversial. As talk radio personality ‘professor’ Micho Kaku stated in a recent NPR interview, early critics of electrical power argued that electricity would burn down people’s homes and that people would be unexpectedly electrocuted in their own living rooms. Kaku points out that these outlandish assertions were exactly right – and that all these things really do happen, literally somewhere to someone, every day – but that despite this, we cannot imagine life without electricity. [21] A neighbor’s house burning down and a mountain being forever destroyed may seem like completely incongruent events – but it can be argued that they are, in essence, like-in-kind in their respective ways as well: each was forewarned as potentially inevitable, transpired, and in the collective societal consciousness of some people – accepted as perfectly reasonable, given the relative tradeoff: plenty of electricity. In this sense – this dire warning of the past – seemingly echoes into the future: the cost of continued energy production will be immensely costly to us – but will continue to pay it, without ever even blinking? Will we agree to burn down our own homes in a figurative sense? It is arguable, that the larger perspective of mainstream media adheres to this collective sense of there being a sense of an ‘immanent domain against the permanence of nature’ – or that sacrifices have to be made against our environment in the name of progress: we have to be willing to have a few houses burn down; willing to lose a few mountains. This is the consistent backdrop to the majority of discussions in the main stream media about any and all forms of energy procurement and their attendant affects: they are necessary evils – regardless of how evil they in fact are. Many argue that such an argument is representational of the fallacy of special pleading; [22] when someone makes an argument for something claiming objectivity and neutrality – yet still operates from a guiding ideological presupposition. If traditional media suffers from a ‘group think’ in terms of overlooking the personal and environmental cost of mountain top removal – then there is, in fact, a dynamic within the media that does serve to naturally evolve and exert itself as an antithesis to it. This dynamic is often expressed by way of the so-called ‘new media’. Whereas ‘old media’ has seemingly been comfortable with this potential for of contradictions [23] – the new abhors it. [24] The tendency to embrace the pain and cost in lieu of attaining a subsequent aggregate benefit, along with necessary pain – is owing, perhaps, to the possible platonic ideal that ‘there is a sacrifice to be made to participate in modern culture’. We are understood to give up certain freedoms to enjoy others. This dynamic has been criticized as a veritable totalitarianism-enabling substrate by many political thinkers such as Karl Popper. [25] One reason that the new media is more reactionary, may owe to the fact that it is generally made up of networks who are smaller both in organizational and purpose-related dimensions – whereas traditional media creates content for the express purpose of filling its pre-ordained, time-slotted moment of dispensation within the larger organizational structure. NBC News, for instance, is a part of a larger organization and shares both resources and potential agendas along with those who would also be behind the production of any given number of their network-related shows. This potentially vast collection of individuals and potentially conflicting, collaborating, or otherwise co-mediating ideologies represents a ‘veritable soup of thought’ that can give expression to a variety of ideological expressions, at any given time, or even imposed financial situation. The ontologically-smaller organizational unit of the New Media stands in contrast with this. Some entities in new media (such as bloggers) can even be considered ‘lone wolves’ because many are essentially ‘one-man ideological shops;’ and have radical freedom to pursue esoteric and even obscure ideological tangents and presuppositions for as long as they can hold their respective pursuer’s fascination. Such inclinations would rarely ever be encouraged by a news desk editor. In fact – in Old Media, reporting assignments are often assigned, and many reporters spend considerable time pursing news reports that they have no personal interest or fascination with at all. Some may argue that this is representational of the strength of the Old vs. the New Media – whereas others will argue that having a passion for ideological presuppositions brings clarity and intensity to both the creation and delivery aspects of media content. But how does the new media tend to operate from an ideological perspective? owHowThe so-called ‘new media’ however – is less egalitarian in relation to a cost-benefit dynamic, and less bourgeois in their utilization of it. In this understanding, they are certainly more proletarian; more ‘working man’: more focused on what the experience is like for the blue collar worker in his or her respective working environment; furthermore, without any consideration, one might argue, for the burden of all the technological resource management that must go into the sustainment of literally everything behind their job: electricity. This potentially conflated, pedestrian view might be considered a non-dialectical understanding of cost-of-fuel-acquisition/generation vs. benefits of the availability of cheap and pervasive electricity; and by this nature – potentially has a singular focus that potentially permeates the whole of its ideological perceptual-interpretive continuum. This archetypical essence plays out through various concepts of this socio-economic demographic – as it relates to their sometimes-myopic concerns. New media may endorse windmills – as long as they are ‘not in my backyard’ – because of the noise pollution they create [26] . They will tout hydroelectric power – as long as no trout are being blocked from seasonal upstream migration. [27] The benefits of this – is that they can provide a laser-like focus on the gravity of the issue(s). The drawbacks are that they sometimes offer no solution other then ‘something else, somewhere else:’ the often derided ‘nimby’ [28] mentality. If the voice of ‘nimby’ looms large and pervasively in the discussion between mountain top removal and other alternate forms of energy – those both traditional and those innovative/renewable – the intensity of the New Media voice – whether it is speaking potentially in a constructive manner – or a relatively myopic & selfish one, owes its power to distinct and relatively recent changes in the ontologies of media power. No longer does one need a million dollar video editing system – once owned only by news companies and their regional affiliates. Now, all you need is couple thousand dollars and you can buy an HD video camera, a Mac Book Pro laptop, and a video editing suite. A few more hundred dollars buys the html/website builder Dreamweaver – and fifteen dollars a month buys a website where videos and editorials can be posted online for others to see. In the old model – the entire world tuned into one of a handful of nightly news desks. Now – the world browses facebook accounts, thousands of blogger websites, twitter feeds, or whatever new modality that the internet has recently spawned: social media, news parodies [29] and other ever-evolving, innovative expressions. It is also very important to point out the grass-roots oriented, even ‘lone wolf’ new media entities are not exclusive denizens of any particular block of the ideological-political spectrum. Indeed – they show up all along its continuum, sometimes focuses on all types of issues, both singular and those multidimensional. But in what ways does mass media function as propaganda? The older, larger news aggregates generally, arguably function from the before-mentioned Platonic Social Principle. In terms of issues – they might even be described as Aristotelian (in terms of their thought processes as they would relate to complicated issues) – as Aristotle was understood to have once said “the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” [30] These dynamics of allowable compromise for the purposes of creating a mutually held social contract (Social Platonism) and allowable contradictions in ideas discussed within it (Aristotelian Intellectual Diversity) informs both the function and power of mass media in terms of that which is generally larger and more established (such as the traditional networks). Because of the grass-roots nature of the “new media” – and especially owing to their own self-sufficiency (in terms of ownership and direction) – they are sometimes ‘the rouge agents’ in shaping political discourse and the control of politics. This same contradiction – in terms of huge differences between Old/New Media expressions (both in power-ontologies [31] and ideological-content derivitatives [32] ) – is, in a sense, sublimated into the whole of the larger discourse; as for those who hold to the Aristotelian view of the inevitable consideration of opposed/oppositional positions [33] (if not the crucially necessity thereof) – diversities of power and ideology make for a greater strength in terms of the political and ideological integrity and sustenance of the whole. To others – however – this is just sophistic, ivory tower, academic double-speak; engineered for the rich, powerful, technocratic bourgeois to foist their agendas upon the unsuspecting proletariat. It might be argued that, because of this – the ‘old media’ is more comfortable alongside the ‘new’ then the ‘new’ is alongside the ‘old’. Whereas the old may see the new as being conducive and informing – the new may see the old as, at best, merely being in the way – and at worst; deceptive, manipulative and intrinsically evil. Mountain Top Removal activists incorporate a distinct dimension of emotion into their efforts. As most mainstream coverage will provide a dichotomatic (intrinsically two-sided)/dialectical [the two extremes guide and form a new synthesis/path]) approach [34] – their manner of presentation almost always appeals directly to the heart; [35] a technique which is often accused of being an Emotional Appeal Fallacy. [36] Indeed- when they are at their very best – Mountain Top Removal documentaries literally pull at the heartstrings. [37] But is this a viable approach? What of the spate of accidents and deaths in underground mines? [38] Can these issues merely be resolved to poor safety and compliance [39] on the part of mining operators? [40] Despite its environmental impact – is it safer – regardless of the efficiency and affectivity of any reform of present mining safety law? [41] In addition to this – the recent earthquake in Japan and the subsequent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, [42] have caused a tremendous backlash against both present and future nuclear power generation ambitions. [43] As a backdrop against all of this, Coal Advocacy remains in high gear. [44] Most fatalities come from deep mining efforts. A new ‘reality show’ by Spike TV gives a nitty, gritty in-your-face reality television-oriented picture of life in the mines. [45] , [46] Surface mining has proven to be much safer. If it is imperative that coal be acquired, as it obviously is (at least for now – environmental/political/economic realities aside) then is it worth endangering (and thusly, eventually losing) more lives to save more mountains? Some may argue that this represents an Appeal to Fear or Scare Tactic [47] Fallacy. Others would argue that deep mine fatalities have and will continue to be incurred – even in the face of thorough mine safety regulation, arguing that the only way to get coal with maximum potential safetly is to stay out of deep mines and that the idea of surface mining being much safer for those mining it is in no way an Inductive Leap Fallacy – or the product of Non Sequitor or Hasty Conclusion [48] thinking. Everyone who has spent a degree of time in the American workplace has eventually (at least once) been in a meeting with a supervisor or upper management, where multiple problems and respective solutions were presented. Sometimes such a meeting goes well – and all parties agree on the beneficence of adopting a certain, agreed upon approach. However – sometimes, no one agrees on how to properly deal with the situation – and the supervisor responds with arbitrary heavy-handedness; I simply just don’t care how it gets done – it just has to get done, regardless. There is no doubt, that this is the backdrop to the current situation regarding the acquisition/mining of coal and its use for power generation. The prospects for a unified front, in terms of a mutually agreed on energy policy is becoming ever more elusive. The voices for and/or against virtually every dimension of energy creation/provision – are sounding more and more shrill. This only adds the divisiveness and the frustration that the issue provokes. Regardless of how present choices can positively influence the long-term or even short-term future – the present situation is unchangeable. Coal must be mined – and mined in vast quantities. It is desperately needed now and right now. If disparate ideological groups can find a presently illusive consensus, then there can be a choice. Perhaps – a choice sooner – rather then one much later. But continued bickering and ideological intransigence potentially only serves to exacerbate the problem and delay potential solutions. With an ever-increasing demand and a dearth of innovation – supply will potentially diminish exponentially – and unless Americans are prepared for radical or even catastrophic event inducing-like power reduction scenarios, then more and more desperate and even drastic measures will be employed. When rolling blackouts are being employed to conserve energy – it is less likely that anyone will care about any mountains anywhere being destroyed in whatever way. Much of the old/mainstream media remains pragmatic and solutions-driven. Much of the new media, because of its grass-roots and emotionalism, remains bound to a single-issue mindset. ‘Nimby’ [49] becomes ‘Notnaom’ [50] or even ‘Nehnae’. [51] It is my honest opinion that great fault lies on both sides. Both are committed to a no-nonsense, no-compromise approach to the ideological opposition. It is unlikely that this will ever fully change into a different kind of arraignment. This may truly prove to be one of the great American Tragedies; it is fearful to consider how far down a self-destructive path we will literally fall – before we start to make necessary and critical decision toward a better, more truly responsible future regarding both our energy consumption and our acquiring of respective sources. But how does this intractability, in terms of a relational rapprochement, resolve back to their respective roles as ‘forums for public debate’? Is there actually any dialogue taking place? Or is one merely ignoring the other – while still shouting out its own agenda? It is likely that the issue of Mountain Top Removal suffers from a very real stasis problem: the task of finding solid, defendable definitions/positions is and will remain extraordinarily difficult. Part of this problem owes to the essentially situational dynamics. Another part owes to the people involved themselves. Both people and businesses often operate on presuppositional metanarratives that inform their respective ideological orientations – which function outside of and regardless of secondary, specific situational contexts. There are businessmen and women who believe that the only force that should ever guide a business is the search for the ‘almighty dollar’. On the environmentalist side, there are activists who unashamedly co-opt the environmental discussion for the purposes of an advancement of their own political ideologies/power quests. Potentially, they care absolutely nothing about the environment – and only see it as a tool to advance their way of seeing things. In recent years, many Socialists and Marxist-oriented thinkers have openly become self-referential in this regard; openly calling themselves ‘watermelons:’ [52] green [environmentally-oriented] on the outside, red [Socialist/Marxist/Leftist/Progressive] on the inside. [53] In this regard, such behavior is counterproductive to any constructive public debate. When manifest in such forms, there is little room for any actual discussion, only the pursuit of foreordained and previously adopted positions and agendas. Furthermore – the ‘co-opting’ of such issues by political parties – who see them only as representing means-to-power ontologies – represents a profound abuse of them. When the issue is something that is an essentially sacred public trust (as is the intrinsic nature of such things, regardless if the public is cognizant of the reality or not) – then it inflicts even more ruthless damage to the dichotomy of public involvement and awareness. If – for instance – Global Warming were proven to be a systematically orchestrated fraud on the part of corporate and/or political opportunists; engineered with the express purpose of creating opportunities to exert more control over and corporate financial beneficence from the common public, then when a real and credible threat evolves – it will be readily dismissed by those who were previously victimized by those they would then see warning them. It is not a question of whether or not political ideologues and corporate interests have in fact employed subterfuge to advance ideological and financial objectives. Rather it is only a question of how many, and if that number has been significant enough to actually be of any influence in terms of any global or national corporate/political power ontologies. There is, however, also a multiplicity of dynamics that potentially supersede such ideological ‘hardheadedness’ on the part of those who disdain any actual conversation betwixt oppositional parties. In terms of the larger public discourse, such entities may inadvertently and non-purposefully advance the conversation out of no willingness [54] to do so on their own part. No one person or agency can possibly control, coordinate or predict all possible outcomes. There is always the potential for an independent dialectic to emerge in the imagination of the public, one beholden to the ongoing ‘firefight’ [55] – which, potentially, can serve as a sort of archeological tool, in terms of its excavation of ideas and explorations of past, present and future possibilities. Even if all who are doing the talking refuse to listen to each other – those in the public sphere, existing on the periphery of the conversation, can and often do listen in on what is said. And it can be argued that it is these passions and imaginations that most genuinely (and appropriately) guide the conversations forward and potentially create new solutions. This ‘meta-level dialectic’ is perhaps the most unpredictable, yet most crucially important dynamic in both the issue of Mountain Top Removal, a host of other thorny issues. A second reality is that not everyone genuinely dislikes hearing what the opposition has to say. Within some vectors of the conversation, a true inter-relational, communication can spark the dialectical light, in such a way that it actually can cast an innovative light into the shadows. The how and when such a dialectic is present – when it is inadvertent (and embodied within the imagination of the peripherally observant public) and when it actually is a shared experienced between parties openly and aggressively seeking a mutually beneficial synthesis [56] between their respective Hegelian thesis/antithesis counterparts – cannot be accurately predicted. In fact, it is very likely that any attempts on the part of a strong-armed agency acting as a ‘fairness agent’ to force such parties to create a dialectic synthesis/degree of communication, would probably force it (the dialectic) to only manifest only on a larger meta-level: only as a tool to be embraced or rejected, on the part of the potentially ‘disinterested observers’/the public watching the gridlock from a distance. For this reason – it is likely that any use of a ‘Fairness Doctrine’ would merely degenerate into ‘fairness procedures’ weighing heavily either to the thesis or the antithesis sides – and not into the desired ‘synthetic mean;’ where they actually meet together and create something genuinely new. It is the opinion of this observer, that the only real foundation that can be found, in terms of continual ontological assurity, is a genuine dialogue between the two. In terms of any media bias, I was unable to locate any resources that purported to be able to consistently demonstrate where any mainstream newspapers consistently demonstrated bias. I did find an article where the allegations were made against a newspaper, but after a couple of days, the page on the site that made the accusation seemed to have gone down mysteriously. [57] For several weeks, I did make an effort to carefully look for any references to “Mountain Top Removal” in the local papers. On Wednesday, March 23, 2011 the Chattanooga News Free Press did run an article from the Associated Press entitled U.S. opens coal area to mining. The article appeared on page A9. It does not reference Mountain Top Removal specifically – but rather eluded to the area as being in the Powder River Basin. It stated that 40 percent of the nation’s coal comes from Wyoming, that the area is expected to yield 758 millions tons of coal, and that it will subsequently take 10 to 20 years to fully mine. The article references the current Japanese nuclear crisis and “coal’s own baggage – especially when it comes to climate change,” further stating that coal from the Wyoming’s Powder River Basin accounts for 14 percent of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. [58] The article makes no reference to any local environmental impacts. Online research revealed several websites detailing the nature and history of the Powder River Mines, both governmental, [59] and apparently advocacy-oriented. [60] There is apparently some degree of concern among local Indian tribes regarding water quality issues, [61] and an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Sierra Club [62] Executive Director Michael Brune, wherein he describes the recent licensures as “giveaways,” [63] and references research related to mercury poisoning that claims that coal results in 300,000 otherwise preventable birth defects. [64] Another article by Earthworks states that the EPA has “confirmed drinking water contamination by toxins” [65] because of ‘fracking’ [66] efforts at the Powder River Mines. Efforts to contact local activist groups, such the Sequatchie Valley Institute [67] did not yield any results. This, of course, may be owing to the limited amount of time during which this project was carried out. In closing, my family traces much of its own history along with the history of West Virginia. [68] , [69] A part of this history is that of the brutal, and savage logging that took place in the past. [70] Those who never had a chance to ever even see them, can only imagine what the virgin forests of timber would have looked like. They can only be dreamed about in terms of their immeasurable beauty. They are gone forever. [71] Recent studies submitted and published online by the West Virginia Forestry Association contend that “Forestry as profession” has been wrongly villainized [72] and that many of the topics related the state’s logging history have been misrepresented and inappropriately contextualized. [73] Will this eventually also be the story of West Virginia’s mountains? Will they be relegated to an explanation that they were appropriately done away with – in the name of progress? We cannot afford any knee-jerk reactions when it comes to any form of energy production – or the way that it is respectively procured. [74] Environmentalism must have sincere [75] and unadulterated passion. Anything less cannot be tolerated. It is intellectually disingenuous to claim that all mining in any form is a form of rape. If Mountain Top Removal is to be considered, then it must be considered and weighed in terms of all its benefits and costs thoughtfully and thoroughly. If the past provides any clue towards the future – the future depends on it more then we can know today. Bibliography West Virginia Coal Association & Walker Cat. Mountaintop Mining Viewpoint –. 2011, 28-March < http://www.wvcoal.com/attachments/909_WALKER%20MMV%20LOW%20RES.pdf&gt ;. ABC News. Japan Nuclear Crisis Close to Stabilizing, U.S. Official Says – ABC NEWS. 2011, 21-March. ABC NEWS. 2011 йил 28-March < http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/japan-nuclear-crisis-close-stabilizing-us-official/story?id=13184684&gt ;. Alternative Energy Sources. Disadvantages of Hydropower – Not Just Water Over the Dam. 2011, 28-March < http://www.alternative-energy-resources.net/disadvantages-of-hydropower.html&gt ;. Anti-Defamation League. Ecoterrorism: Extremism in the Animal Rights and Environmentalist Movements. ADF. 2011, 28-March < http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/ecoterrorism.asp?learn_cat=extremism&learn_subcat=extremism_in_america&xpicked=4&item=eco&gt ;. Brune, Michael. The Powder River Basis: A big coal giveaway : Michael Brune : Bright Lights. San Francisco Chronicle. 2011, 28-March < http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbrune/detail?entry_id=85773&gt ;. Buchanan, Christopher R. 1 May 2011 < http://people.emich.edu/cbuchanan/rhetoric/stasis.html&gt ;. Chattanooga News Free Press. “U.S. Opens coal area to mining.” Chattanooga News Free Press 2011, 23-March. Clean Energy Ideas. A Wind Turbines Impact On The Surrounding Environment. 2011, 28-March < http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/articles/wind_turbines_impact.html&gt ;. CNN Politics. Protesters arrested outside the White House – CNN. 2010 йил 27-September. CNN Politics. 2011, 28-3 < http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-27/politics/white.house.protest_1_mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-protesters?_s=PM:POLITICS&gt ;. CNN. The battle over Coal River Mountain. 2011, 7-October. CNN. 2011 йил 28-March < http://articles.cnn.com/2008-10-07/us/coal.river_1_coal-river-mountain-watch-mountaintop-removal-coal-miners?_s=PM:US&gt ;. Coal Comfort – Margaret Palmer – The Colbert Rerport – 1/18/10 – Video Clip \| Comedy Central. 2010, 18-January. Comedy Central. 2011, 28-March < http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/261997/january-18-2010/coal-comfort—margaret-palmer >. Coal River Mountain Watch. Save Coal River Mountain! \| Coal River Mountain Watch. 2011, 28-March < http://www.crmw.net/crmw/savecoalrivermountain&gt ;. Democracy Now! The Struggle Against Mountain Top Removal: Leading Activist Mike Roselle Continues Fight Against Destructive Coal Mining. 2009 йил 9-April. Democracy Now! 2011, 28-March < http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/8/the_struggle_against_mountaintop_removal_leading&gt ;. Dr. Robert Peltier, PE and Ken Wicker. http://www.prbcoals.com . PRB Coal Group. 2011, 28-March < http://www.prbcoals.com/pdf/PRBCoalInformation/Power-Oct03-PRBCoal.pdf&gt ;. Earthworks. Earthworks – EPA Confirms Drinking Water Contamination by Toxics Used in Hydraulic Fracturing. 2009, 14-August. 2011, 28-March < http://www.earthworksaction.org/PR_EPApavillionDrinkingWater.cfm&gt ;. EPA.gov. EPA.gov. 2011, 2011-March < http://www.epa.gov/mercury/exposure.htm&gt ;. Forbes.com. Massey’s Long History of Coal Mine Violations. 2010 йил 6-April. 2011, 28-March < http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/04/06/masseys-long-history-of-coal-mine-violations/&gt ;. Fossil Fuel Resources. Fossill Fuel >> Featured >> Coal Frequently Asked Questions. Fossil Fuel Resources. < http://fossil-fuel.co.uk/coal-frequently-asked-questions&gt ;. Fox News Corporation. Obama Defends Military Mission in Libya, Says U.S. Acted to ‘Prevent a Massacre’. 2011 йил 28-March. 2011, 28-March < http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/28/obama-delivers-address-nation-libya-intervention/ >. Green Left. ecosocialist manifesto << Green Left. 2001, September. 2011, 28-March < http://thewatermelon.wordpress.com/homepage/&gt ;. Haney, Bill. The Last Mountain. Bill Haney. 2011, 28-March < http://thelastmountainmovie.com/&gt ;. Hansen, F. Thomas and David Houle. “Evolvability Stabilizing Selection and the Problem of Stasis.” http://www.scribd.com . http://www.scribd.com . 1 May 2011 < http://www.scribd.com/doc/5384052/evolvability-stabilizing-selection-and-the-problem-of-stasis&gt ;. Hilz, Andy. Logging the Virgin Forests of West Virginia. 2011, 28-March < http://www.patc.us/history/archive/virg_fst.html&gt ;. http://www.sierraclub.org/ . http://www.sierraclub.org/ . 2011, 28-March < http://www.sierraclub.org/&gt ;. Huffington Post. Mountain Top Removal. Huffington Post. 2011, 28-March < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/mountaintop-removal >. Jeff Biggers: Governor’s Sit-In Day Two: Why Kentucky Can’t Wait. 2011, 12-February. Huffington Poset. 2011, 28-March < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/governors-sit-in-day-two_b_822327.html >. Jr., Robert L. Bradley. RENEWABLE ENERGY Not Cheap, Not “Green” – The Problems of Wind Power. 1997, 27-August. Cato Policy Analysis No. 280. 2011, 28-March < http://www.mensetmanus.net/windpower/cato/probwind.shtml&gt ;. Lazere, Donald. Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy, The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005. —. Facebook. < http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=408838679932&set=a.431504849932.219248.662019932&theater >. Missoulian.com. Northern Cheyenne Tribe wants water pollution limits in Powder River Basin. Missoulian.com. 2011, 2011-March < http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_4566099e-8772-11de-8a85-001cc4c03286.html&gt ;. MSNBC. Mine owner ran up serious violations Massey Energy and its CEO center of political controversy. 2010, 6-April. MSNBC.com. 2011, 28-March < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36202623/ns/us_news-life/&gt ;. NPR. Is Nuclear Energy The Best Alternative? NPR. 2011, 23-March. 2011, 28-March < http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134794862&gt ;. —. Are Nuclear Plants Safe? Environmentalists Are Split. 2011, 28-March < http://www.npr.org/2011/03/28/134863507/are-nuclear-plants-safe-environmentalists-are-split >. —. Imagining the U.S. Without Nuclear Power. 2011, 24-March. NPR. 2011, 28-March < http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134827595/imagining-the-u-s-without-nuclear-power&gt ;. —. No Flying Car, But How About An Invisibility Cloak? : NPR. 2011 йил 28-March. 2011, 28-March < http://www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134600339/no-flying-car-but-how-about-an-invisibility-cloak&gt ;. Page, The Quotations. Quote Details: Aristotle: It is the Mark… – The Quotations Page. The Quotations Page. 2011, 28-March < http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1152.html&gt ;. Planet Energies. The future of coal: disadvantages and advantages of coal. 2011, 28-March < http://www.planete-energies.com/content/coal/future.html&gt ;. Popper, Karl. Whenever a theory appears to you…(Karl Popper). 2010 йил 30-9. 2011, 28-3 < http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=433737&gt ;. PSFK. What the frack? US natural gas drilling method contaminates water – PSFK. 2011, 28-February. PSKF. 2011 йил 28-March < http://www.psfk.com/2011/02/what-is-fracking.html&gt ;. SBA Office of Advocacy. Stream Buffer Zone and Related Rules. 2009. SBA Advocacy. 2011, 28-March < http://archive.sba.gov/advo/laws/comments/doi09_1216.html&gt ;. Sequatchie Valley Institute. Sequatchie Valley Institute – research and education is sustainable living. 2011, 28-March < http://svionline.org/&gt ;. Show, Diane Rehm. Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and Its Impact on the Nuclear Industry. 2011, 17-March. 2011, 28-March < http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-17/japans-nuclear-crisis-and-its-impact-nuclear-industry-0&gt ;. Spike TV. COAL \| Thom Beers Reality Show About Coal Miners \| Full Episodes \| Spike. SPIKE. 1 May 2011 < http://www.spike.com/shows/coal&gt ;. SPIKE TV. Youtube – Coal Trailer. YouTube. 2 May 2011 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk4PB8rHjq4&gt ;. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Plato’s Ethics and Politics in The Republic (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 2009, 31-August. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2011, 28-March < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/&gt ;. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT. Powder River Basin Coal. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT. 2011, 28-March < http://www.blm.gov/wy/st/en/programs/ energy/Coal_Resources/PRB_Coal.html>. United States Department of Labor. Coal Mine Safety and Health. United States Department of Labor. 2011, 2011-March < http://www.msha.gov/programs/coal.htm&gt ;. USA Today. “ Knee-jerks and nukes, Cal and Bob agree that despite the chorus of hand-wringers, it would be foolish to give up on nuclear power plants in the wake of Japan’s tragedy. USA TODAY, Thursday, March 24, 2011, pg. 11A. .” USA Today 2011, Thursday, 24th-March. —. “What ‘Earth Hour’ backers don’t have: a real vision.” USA Today 2011, March. Watkinson, Jane. Ed Miliband’s speech and politial fruit making (progressive watermelons). 2010, 20-September. 2011, 28-March < http://janespoliticalramblings.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/ed-milibands-speech-and-political-fruit-making-progressive-watermelons/&gt ;. West Virginia Coal Association. 2010 Coal Facts. 2010. West Virginia Coal Association. 2011, 3 < http://www.wvcoal.com/201012182463/2010-coal-facts.html&gt ;. —. Mining Symposium 2011 Draws Huge Crowd \| Latest \| News. 2011 йил 11-February. 2011, 28-March < http://www.wvcoal.com/201102112644/Latest/mining-symposium-2011-draws-huge-crowd.html&gt ;. West Virginia Forestry Association. 2001. West Virginia Forestry Association. 2011, 28-March < http://www.wvfa.org/pdf/factsheets/FACT%20SHEET%20%20No.%201.pdf&gt ;. —. West Virginia Forestry Association – Forestry Fact Sheets. 2011, 28-March < http://www.wvfa.org/forestry-facts-sheets.html&gt ;. West Virginia Humanities Council. e-WV \| Mountain Top Mining. 2011, 28-3 < http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1530&gt ;. Wild Trout and Salmon Genetics Laboratory, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812. 2010. LUKAS P. NERAAS and PAUL SPRUELL. 2011, 28-March < http://golab.unl.edu/teaching/Lindoia/ Neraas2001_FragmentationRiverine.pdf>. Windustry® & Great Plains Windustry Project. How much do wind turbines cost? \| Windustry. Windustry® & Great Plains Windustry Project. 2011, 28-March < http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost&gt ;. wordnetweb.princeton.edu/. WordNet Search 3.0. WordNet Search – 3.0. 2011, 2011-March < http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nimby&gt ;. Youtube.com. Youtube.com – Mountaintop-Removal Mining CNN LOVES BIG COAL. 2008, 8-June. 2011, 28-March < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqeqVx29DMc&gt ;. Supplemental References Photography of Mountain Top Removal projects in process. Launch statement of Green Left (From http://thewatermelon.wordpress.com/headcorn-declaration/ ) Green Left has been launched as a network for socialists and other radicals in the Green Party of England and Wales. It will act as an outreach body that will communicate the party’s radical policies to socialists and other anti-capitalists outside the party. Green Left (GL) is based on the assumption that capitalism is a system that wrecks the planet and promotes war. A green society must be based on economic, political and social justice. GL in short works to promote ecosocialism as a solution to our planetary ills. GL supports the democratic structures in the party and encourages transparency, accountability and engagement in all organs of the party. We also see the Green Party as a ‘bottom up’ political organization where the principles of the membership are paramount and not a ‘top down’ one where a self-designated political elite decide on policies and principles. GL aims to increase and improve the international links of the Green Party, building links with radical greens and ecosocialists across the planet. It will work closely with members of other European Green Parties to reform the workings of the European Green Party structures that must be democratised. Green politics must realise the slogan ‘think globally, act locally’ by linking practical local campaigns to global issues of ecology, democracy, justice and liberation. GL aims to act within the Green Party so as to raise Green Party politics to meet the demands of its radical policies. Green politics needs to be based on dynamic campaigning and hard intellectual groundwork to create workable alternatives. GL aims to build regional campaigns and contribute to coalition-building through coherent alignments and open discussion with progressive anti-capitalists. The movement that is required to address the issues across Britain, Europe and the world will not be the sole preserve of one party. The movement requires the development of united action by progressive forces including organisations formed by working people to defend their interests in the workplace. Within this diverse movement GL will stand firmly in favour of the libertarian and democratic traditions of ecosocialism. It is vitally important that the Green Party works to develop the continuing peace, environmental and social movements. An orientation to organised working people through the Green Party Trade Union Group (GPTU) also requires maximum support from GL, with the emphasis on supporting radical and rank and file currents in the unions. Likewise, GL should seek to promote organisation and solidarity amongst currently unorganised and marginalised groups. GL will work to enhance Green Party contributions to demonstrations, marches and other solidarity events. Greens must be active on issues that affect ordinary working people in their everyday lives and aim to be known as amongst their strongest defenders. While GL is keen to build links with members of faith communities, and to fight alongside them against intolerance and discrimination, it will not compromise on human rights – including issues concerning women, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, and people with disabilities. Since the activism of William Morris in the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League in the late nineteenth century, there has been an ecosocialist tradition in Britain. Green Left believes that ecosocialism provides an alternative to a society based on alienation, economic exploitation, corporate rule, ecological destruction and wars. Our analysis demands that in the best tradition of the historic left we ‘agitate, educate and organize’ to build such an alternative. The time has come for drawing together forces that can present a serious challenge to the disastrous neo-liberal project. We believe that ‘another world is possible’, based on ecological and socialist values. In conclusion, Green Left would work to enable you to live in a society based on peace, ecological balance, economic equality and inclusion. [1] Karl Popper, Whenever a theory appears to you…(Karl Popper), 30 9 2010, 28 3 2011 < http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=433737&gt ;. [2] Fossil Fuel Resources, Fossill Fuel >> Featured >> Coal Frequently Asked Questions, Fossil Fuel Resources, < http://fossil-fuel.co.uk/coal-frequently-asked-questions&gt ;. [3] Fossil Fuel Resources, Fossill Fuel >> Featured >> Coal Frequently Asked Questions, Fossil Fuel Resources, < http://fossil-fuel.co.uk/coal-frequently-asked-questions&gt ;. [4] West Virginia Coal Association, 2010 Coal Facts, 2010, West Virginia Coal Association, 3 2011 < http://www.wvcoal.com/201012182463/2010-coal-facts.html&gt ;. [5] West Virginia Humanities Council, e-WV \| Mountain Top Mining, 28 3 2011 < http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1530&gt ;. [6] According to Mountain Top Mining: Viewpoint, published by Walker Cat, previous mountain top removal projects have resulted in numerous economic developments such as Twisted Gun Golf Course, Logan County Airport, Mylan Park Baseball Fields, Boone County Wetlands, Southern WV Recreation Area, Southwestern Regional Jail, Mount Olive Prison, and the community shopping Mall in Bridgeport, WV. Are all projects that resulted from the land reclaimed for development, which prior to mining was unusable for any developmental potential. West Virginia Coal Association & Walker Cat, Mountaintop Mining Viewpoint –, 28 March 2011 < http://www.wvcoal.com/attachments/909_WALKER%20MMV%20LOW%20RES.pdf&gt ;. [7] CNN Politics, Protesters arrested outside the White House – CNN, 27 September 2010, CNN Politics, 28 3 2011 < http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-27/politics/white.house.protest_1_mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-protesters?_s=PM:POLITICS&gt ;. [8] SBA Office of Advocacy, Stream Buffer Zone and Related Rules, 2009, SBA Advocacy, 28 March 2011 < http://archive.sba.gov/advo/laws/comments/doi09_1216.html&gt ;. [9] Planet Energies, The future of coal: disadvantages and advantages of coal, 28 March 2011 < http://www.planete-energies.com/content/coal/future.html&gt ;. [10] Coal River Mountain Watch, Save Coal River Mountain! \| Coal River Mountain Watch, 28 March 2011 < http://www.crmw.net/crmw/savecoalrivermountain&gt ;. [11] NPR, Are Nuclear Plants Safe? Environmentalists Are Split, 28 March 2011 < http://www.npr.org/2011/03/28/134863507/are-nuclear-plants-safe-environmentalists-are-split >. [12] Diane Rehm Show, Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and Its Impact on the Nuclear Industry, 17 March 2011, 28 March 2011 < http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-17/japans-nuclear-crisis-and-its-impact-nuclear-industry-0&gt ;. [13] Windustry® & Great Plains Windustry Project, How much do wind turbines cost? \| Windustry, Windustry® & Great Plains Windustry Project, 28 March 2011 < http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost&gt ;. [14] Robert L. Bradley Jr., RENEWABLE ENERGY Not Cheap, Not “Green” – The Problems of Wind Power, 27 August 1997, Cato Policy Analysis No. 280, 28 March 2011 < http://www.mensetmanus.net/windpower/cato/probwind.shtml&gt ;. [15] Clean Energy Ideas, A Wind Turbines Impact On The Surrounding Environment, 28 March 2011 < http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/articles/wind_turbines_impact.html&gt ;. [16] Alternative Energy Sources, Disadvantages of Hydropower – Not Just Water Over the Dam, 28 March 2011 < http://www.alternative-energy-resources.net/disadvantages-of-hydropower.html&gt ;. [17] NPR, Is Nuclear Energy The Best Alternative? NPR, 23 March 2011, 28 March 2011 < http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134794862&gt ;. _______________________________ *Author’s note – * This is an essay which was written and submitted as a letter. The stated goal of the assignment was to write a letter describing my experience in the class and then to also subsequently employ the various elements of propaganda and persuasion that had been covered in the class. I felt compelled to make this clear – that in light of these requirements, this writing is more of an act of creative writing then an actual personal letter, therefore, there is a degree of artistic licensure at work here; which (to some) may be very obvious – and to others, less so. The things I write about myself may or may not be true explicitly or relatively; and there may or may not be some very personal subjective or objectives things related. But don’t read too much into it – because I won’t comment here those things that I just pushed farther out in a creative reach – if not for anything else, then to just have some fun, for no other reason then that I could. I will say – however – that all the footnotes are actual, and the research and history related to Tillich are also factual. Thanks for reading – and I hope you enjoy it! -mbl Dear Dr. Palmer, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the questions that you asked of me in terms of the writing of this letter. It presupposes as degree of introspection to reflect upon the quality of one’s own writing, and – as it as turned out – this semester has in fact entailed a much greater amount of writing then has been required of me in previous semesters – which had, in turn, honestly already affected a significantly reflective consideration of the process of my writing. And while I am confident that I have written more papers and longer papers between Propaganda and Persuasion & Satanism, Witchcraft, and Spirit Possession then I have ever had to before, I am also confident that when you are pushed to your limits – that this is the place wherein you will generally, authentically find both your own strengths and your limitations: when discipline structures and capabilities are strained, and even – at times – altogether systematically fail. It is somewhat of a cultural idiom that ‘that which does not kill you – only makes you stronger.’ Many a comedian and burnt-out college student has issued an earnest corollary: that ‘all that is a lie – it does not make you stronger – it just leaves you somewhere between dead and alive.’ I think that the truth really does lie somewhere in between the two. It may not be a stretch to argue that – in a true Hegelian sense – they may both be true, and that the truth between them is something altogether different in its own nature, itself. Perhaps it is in this ‘half-deadness’ that we find more life – or what we might speak over ourselves in more confident moments, as some kind of existentially grounded strength that does come – only when a part of you really does die. Writers – and the present soul is certainly no exception – are most prone to this dance toward a self-styled sense of self-delusive self-absorption. Our own worlds flow out of the Rumpelstiltskin that is our own creativity; our own demon-driven muses – wherever they may be, in whatever form they may take. We cannot always tell our own straw – or the gold that we have in fact spun – from the same. Many a writer has lost their moorings to alcohol and other self-medications in their quests to either keep their mental looms threshing – or to painstakingly try to separate the gold from the straw. For some, it truly is easier to write a 60-page paper – then it is to trim a mere 10 pages from it. How then can one find the strength to edit one’s own words – when we are ourselves are most blind to their quality? If the editing is the praxis – then the theory that precedes it must certainly be The Muse. And to properly engage and tame the practice – you have to have some grasp of the rudimentary nuts and bolts that transfer the creative power from imagination to worlds [1] upon a page. Any creativity-mediating adjudicatory rubric necessarily resolves backward to its own creative foundations for the writer. To best edit – I must better know my own muse. I have to go back to the source. Some may argue that this is an archetypical tautology – and not an authentic teleological root. It does entail a risk to assume this creational ontology – but it is a risk I am quite willing to take. If to speak of the Muse is to speak of something real- then it is nothing less then the ultimate propagandist of the soul. It is an argument and a persuasion that should be sought – even at the risk of accepted, outright self-detriment and deception. The alternatives for the deeply creative soul – are without a doubt – much far worse. There is a gentle irony – that the birthplace of many muses is nothing less then the womb of eros. In her paper “Woman” and the “Primitive” in Paul Tillich’s Life and Thought, Some Implications for the Study of Religion, Tracy Fessenden agues that all of the esteemed Christian theologian’s work may actually be his own attempt at being a veritable King Midas [2] with his own renegade, perpetually libertine and overt sexuality. Fessenden quotes Rollo May, from his book Paulus: Reminiscences of a Friendship, “One of the qualities with which [Tillich] endow[ed] eros, and the loved woman, [was] the capacity to constitute him as a being,” and Tom Driver, from an article in New Republic that he wrote in 1973 – Tillich’s pursuit of women was a search for the Eternal Feminine. Whether he was exclaiming over the “10,000 women’s legs” in Berlin, whether he was reading pornography, or whether he was seducing the latest woman of his life, he pursued the image of La femme éternelle, the shadow side of the Christian God, so deep in shadow that she cannot even be mentioned in systematic doctrine. Fessenden goes on to unpack – not necessarily attempting to understand the entirety of the reason behind it – the seldom spoken, but albeit true nature of one of Christianity’s most respected theologians; that in a very real sense –he was literal the embodiment of a dirty old man. If properly framed – Tillich may perhaps be properly understood in a two-fold way; that he understood the propaganda of his own muse and secretly abdicated any sense of self-control to the rule and reign of what he must have felt was his one, true, and sincere ground of all creative being. Indeed – the fact that a fellow theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once sent a student of his to see Tillich – only to have them return, saying that Tillich had overtly sexually groped them – seems to be stuff of wild and crazy gossip. That it happened – has been substantiated. [3] Fessenden points out that Driver argued that the “lurid details” of Tillich’s “secret sexual life” certainly had “no place at all in his theology,” [4] but argues against him, writing I argued that Tillich the connoisseur of prostitutes and pornography and Tillich the systematic theologian might be seen to converge in, for example, the musings on the erotic resonance of “woman” in The Socialist Decision, the image of the ground being as life-giving and life-extinguishing womb in Systematic Theology, or the sexualizing of primitive ritual and art in The Demonic. [5] According to Tillich biographers Wilhelm and Marion Pauck, Tillich regarded his overt sexuality as a “…means to productive intellectuality…he did not want to pay the high price of the loss of nature, the demonic, the world of art, intuitive truth, and mysticism….deprived of the experience of the erotic, whether actual or sublimated…he could not produce.” [6] Brevity and the personal nature of my own search for my own muse precludes a protracted discussion of its nature and my own historical searches for it – misadventures included. I will say that I do someday hope to write something of it – in what may evolve under the title of The Firefly Effect: Capturing and Being Captured by the Muse/Power of Love – but it is an extended conversations that I will save for space elsewhere. I must concede, however, that throughout the duration of the semester, the dynamics of my own muse, and the constant creative output that was required of me were constantly on my mind. Concomitant to this – was the irony of the mysticism (and perhaps the seeming ‘witchiness’ of my own convictions of the dynamics of what might be considered an ontology of muses – but also how all of these resolve back to the very basic elements and tenants of Propaganda and Persuasion themselves. Unfortunately – at this time, I am unable to find any documentation or transcripts of a program that I heard online, while listening to NPR. The host was interviewing the director (I believe) of one of the national zoos, and the topic of her discussion was “Sex at the Zoo.” She argued – very convincingly, I might add – that almost all of the relationship dynamics that are observed in the sexuality of humans, can, surprisingly enough, be found “almost in spades” to use her exact words – in the animal kingdom. Perhaps this is the most amazingly pervasive, profoundly disturbing and immensely powerful element that I have taken away from this Propaganda & Persuasion; that all of our abstract and lofty philosophical extrapolations and endless terminologies may be rooted much less in cultural phenomena and societal potential – but more so in the functional nuts and bolts of our life itself. In my presentation – I made the short exclamation that Life was Propaganda. I stand by this assertion. In his book The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul, argued that as part of the ongoing evolution of our own society – we are increasingly subjugated by the technical and standardization of the ‘routine’-ized. The terms “routinization of charisma” is a terms synonymous with German Sociologist Max Weber [7] – but for Ellul, it means much more then the charisma of a leader being made predicable and safe for a culture and the movement behind it – but more so (potentially) the very creative essence of culture itself. Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the supernatural. The individual who lives in the technical mileu knows very well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But man cannot live without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred to the very thing, which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself. In the world itself, technique has become the essential mystery, taking widely diverse forms according to place and race. Those who have preserved some of the notions of magic both admire and fear technique. [8] I think that there is a critical truth here. I believe that it is possible to cogently argue that the one defining characteristic the embodies any approximation of what one might remotely consider “American Exceptionalism” is necessarily contingent upon a responsible and jurisprudent acceptance and (furthermore, for that matter) practice of a ‘mystical heart’ on the level of the individual citizen – collectively expressed as a whole. There is a whole fleet of contingencies that I would argue should be articulated – for a full defense of this; which are beyond the fully and acceptable expectation of this letter – but I nonetheless assert it to be true. I assert that this is our one and only salvation to save us from ruinous and mindless adherence to mind-numbing, spirit-crushing, existentially-abusive totalitarianism: that there is and will always be some form of a foundation ‘beyond ourselves’ that we may not be able to always understand or even subjectively appropriate – but we necessarily – simply must honor and celebrate. I believe that this is Tillich’s theologically fabled “ground of all being:” the foundation that can never be shaken – when everything else is shaken. [9] It is also expressed in Kierkegaard’s ‘Knight of Faith.’ [10] I believe that the greatest power in society rests upon the level of the individual. I believe that democracy, propaganda, and ethics form a trifecta – the unifying power of which has always been, and must always be, an individualistic mysticism that is not a form of blind fideism [11] neither an all-encompassing rationalism. If these two things can be approximated as extremes – then again, the truth is in the dance between: the dialectic that forms when they are thrust together. My own work, has traditionally revolved around these presumptions. I believe that these cannot be proven directly – but only (as Kierkegaard argued) by indirect subjective exploration. [12] Kierkegaard, in some of his early works, employed what he referred to as ‘indirect communication’ – or, essentially ‘deceiving a person into the truth.’ [13] Kierkegaard would write a book about something and purposefully fail (as a technique of Propaganda and Persuasion) at making a case for a given point. Having failed (or appeared to have failed) the reader would then be implied to provisionally accept the opposite dichotiomatic position; where Kierkegaard would want them to be, in terms of his true agenda. Kierkegaard was, more or less, my ‘gateway drug’ into the world of Philosophy – and then subsequently later Theological studies. It should be added – that in many aspects, the idea of theological studies can not be separated from the art of persuasion and ideological assertion. Apologetics [14] is the artful term for what would otherwise be considered religious propaganda. I confess that I struggle with the idea of writing from an ‘apologetic’ standpoint – and that the general spirit of my writing, seems to more naturally flow from what might be considered a ‘prophetic’ or ‘corrective’ dimension. The passion that drives my writing – is built more so on the desire to rebuild a foundation, as it were – then to try to argue for its existence to begin with. Though it may sound inexcusably non-pastoral to say it – I am not as much interested in arguing or persuading those who do not believe to do so – but rather my passion to it speak to those who already do – and to help them find a way to either take it to the next level – or get back on the level that they should be on to begin with. I feel that I have made efforts to be more ‘multidimensional’ in my writing – because I know that there are moments in time when the writing can and should seek to write towards the audience. I know that I have enjoyed what I felt was a degree of rhetorical freedom in writing for this class – as I have been able to employ ideas and frameworks which I could assume to be already understood, and I did not allocate extra space to their ‘unpacking.’ One weakness – however – in my writing, is that I took too much liberty in this regard, and over-assumed. This is represented in the corrections that I have made. In terms of writing to you of the grade that I feel that I potentially deserve – I will take a radical chance and I will admit to the following: that I believe that A’s are all too often given out. An “A” should represent an uncommon meta-intelligence; capable of asserting a degree of stasis, in an otherwise unpredictable pedagogical relation. For instance – I once read that Kierkegaard, when he was a young school boy, was told by his sternly patriarchal father, that he did not want him to be first in his class – but that he wanted him to in fact to be third place in the allotted grade positions. This meant that the young Kierkegaard did not only have to know how good of a student he had to be (to be number one) but he had to selectively ‘scale’ back his demonstrated academic performance, not just by one degree, but by two – respective to the perceived pedagogically-adjudicated positions of two of his classmates. He had to know how smart they were – and then subsequently play “adequately dumb” insofar as he would place just below them. This is a form of intelligence that extends beyond the classroom textbook – and into a knowledge of how and in what way one’s own intelligence compares in capability to select other individuals. I believe that an “A” should be awarded to students who can demonstrate a ‘meta-capability’ in terms of interelatory persuasional dynamics. I will further take a radical risk – and assert that if I have adequately demonstrated an appropriate form of ‘meta-capability’ – then, potentially, I might be deserving of an A. For your consideration – I will likewise make a bold assertion, and ask the question – have I influenced you? Perhaps in an even bolder statement – have I been able to be a form or expression of a muse unto you? Have I pushed your own creativity or spirituality into new places by virtue of giving you the book on mysticism or creating the posters for you – have I demonstrated an ability to recognize and then subsequently harness your creational energies, and then concomitantly with responsibility, persuade them to advance to a greater level? I do not believe that one need always know that their muse is in fact functioning in that given capacity. A muse has an intrinsically felicitous nature by virtue of what it is to begin with. If I have been a great asset to you, as a student, in addition to above average quality work – then I would humbly ask for an A. Otherwise – I know if you have not received a benefit in our teacher-student dichotomy- that I am only deserving of a B.	i don't know
According to the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, the group that determines the elegibility of subjects to be commemorated on a stamp, how long must a person be dead before they can be honored on a stamp (and then only the anniversary of their	SOMOS PRIMOS [email protected] ï¿½ I assume you are referring to the response I prepared on February 15, 2007 to the Office of Personnel Management's "Sixth Annual Report to the President on Hispanic Employment in the Federal Government." If so, I have attached the file containing my brief analysis of that report. Thank you for continuing the fine work that you do. Your publication is important because it serves as a vital clearinghouse of current Hispanic issues taking place across the country. Please keep up the good work and I look forward to staying in touch with you. Gilbert Sandate Editor: Gilbert Sandate recently retired from Director of Workforce, Library of Congress. He has written a report which summarizes the deplorable lack of Latinos in government employment. Click to the article. ï¿½ I So enjoy the articles and stories of our ancestors. I just love the pictures. They tell so much. We have your Somos Primos on our website. Our Hispanic Roots: What History Failed to Tell Us by Carlos B. Vega Under-representation of Hispanic/Latinos Evident throughout Government One: Military Service: DoD Personnel Procurement Data, Incomplete Two: Federal Employment Report Inaccurate Three: PBS produced THE WAR, No Latinos included Four: Latino Museum Bill Receives Senate Hearing, Still in Limbo Civil Rights Giants: Hector P. Garcia, George I. Sanchez, Gustavo Garcia Letter to U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson, January 10, 1949 Honoring Cesar Chavez by Mercy Bautista Olvera About the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday Coalition New Book: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers Life and accomplishments of Chï¿½vez observed in California Education Beating the Odds: Dr. Ronald Navarro Action Item: To Honor DEA Agent Enrique Camarena Coyote Teaching Window of Opportunity for Latinos: Catholic Universities in the Americas Flat Stanley Educational Fun "One of the heroic figures of our time." -Robert F. Kennedy Cesar Chavez was born Cesario (Cesar) Estrada Chavez on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona. Cesar, the son of Librado Chavez and Juana Estrada-Chavez, immigrants from Chihuahua, Mexico, was named after his paternal grandfather. The family lived on a farm in an adobe house where Cesar was born and grew up. His father Librado agreed to clear acres of land and in exchange believed he would receive the deed of land that adjoined his home. The agreement was broken by dishonest landowners and sadly, the family lost their home. The mistreatment of his father caused young Cesar to learn of the many social injustices that exist. Cesar Chavez later would say "the love for justice that is in us, is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature." Left, Cesar Chavez and one of his sisters (Photo courtesy of the Cesar Chavez Foundation) During the depression, when Cesar was eleven years old his parents and family moved to San Jose, California. The family worked on the fields, and in towns such as Delano, Salinas, and many others. When Cesar Chavez attended school he struggled with the English language as Spanish was his first language and the only one spoken at home. He was often physically punished with a ruler for speaking Spanish at school. Around this time Cesarï¿½s father Librado was injured in a car accident and unable to work, so Cesar decided to quit school and work full time as a migrant worker to help his family. Cesarï¿½s early education years were not the best, but he knew that education was very important. Years later the walls of his office were filled with books on philosophy, economics, unions, and biographies on Mohandas Gandhi and John F. Kennedy. In 1943 sixteen-year-old Cesar in attempt to prove that each citizen shared in this countryï¿½s civil rights was arrested in a segregated movie theater for sitting in the "Whites Only" section in Delano, California. In1944 at seventeen years of age Cesar joined the Navy and served two years as a deck hand in the Western Pacific. Discrimination was visible wherever he went. In 1946 Cesar was discharged from the U.S. Navy and returned to work in the farm fields of California. (Photo courtesy of the Cesar Chavez Foundation) n 1948 Cesar married Helen Fabela. They settled in Delano and started their family; Fernando, Sylvia, Linda and five other children. It is here where he met Father Donald McDonnell, a Catholic priest from San Francisco who was sent to educate the farm laborers and Braceros, on labor organizing and social justice. Cesar and Father McDonnel talked often about farm workers and strikes. During this time Chavez began reading about Gandhi and came to see him as a role model in how Gandhi helped his people survive the injustices of his county. Below, Cesar Chavez and wife Helen with six of their eight children In the 1950ï¿½s a young Chavez would meet a community organizer, Fred Ross. While working in the apricot orchards outside San Jose, Ross recruited Chavez into the community. During this time Helen Fabela-Chavez worked side by side with her husband Cesar, to see his dreams of improved social conditions fulfilled. Together they began a teaching program to help Mexican farm workers become literate in order to be eligible for American citizenship exams. Helen also supported her husbandï¿½s efforts at organizing a union by working in the fields to earn extra money. During this time the Community Service Organization (CSO) helped Latinos become citizens, registered voters, battled police brutality, and pressed for community improvements. Together, Chavez and Fred Ross organized 22 CSO chapters across California. In the 1950ï¿½s, under Chavezï¿½s leadership the CSO became an effective civil rights group. After working nearly 10 years for the CSO, Chavez resigned and moved his family to Delano to begin organizing farm workers. Chavez and the UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta worked under the slogan "Si se puede" and the paronage of the Virgin, "She is a symbol of faith, hope, and leadership," says Huerta n 1962 Cesar Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association. He was joined by Dolores Huerta, who created the slogan "SI SE PUEDE" (It can be done). The same year Richard Chavez designed the UFW Eagle and Cesar chose the black and red colors. Cesar made reference to the flag by stating, "A symbol is an important thing. That is why we chose an Aztec eagle; it gives pride . . . when people see it they know it means dignity." Mexican Independence Day September 16, 1965 the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a union of comprised of 1,200 members, voted to strike against Delano area grape growers. After a 340 mile march from Delano to the steps of the State Capitol to bring awareness to the suffering of farm workers and after a four month boycott, Stanley vineyards negotiated and came to an agreement with NFWA ï¿½ the first genuine union contract between a grower and a farm workerï¿½s union in United States history. While Cesar and his wife Helen worked in the fields, Cesar was determined to improve the living conditions of farm workers. During this time there were endless farm labor strikes. The farm workers and supporters carried banners with the black eagle imprinted with the words; HUELGA (strike) and VIVA LA CAUSA (Long live our cause). These labor strikes demanded higher wages, better living conditions, and fair hiring practices from the grape growers. United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy conducted subcommittee hearings on agricultural labor. Kennedy had supported the National Farm Workers Assn., the grape strike, and boycott. In the Spring of 1968 Chavez fasted for 25 days to rededicate his movement to nonviolence. In March of 1968 U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy joined 8,000 farm workers and supporters at a mass where Chavez broke his fast, and called him "One of the heroic figures of our time." Martin Luther King Jr., also supported Cesar Chavez. In a telegram to Chavez, King wrote "Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom for dignity, and humanity." Cesar later stated "Our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are." Left to right: Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King and Dorothy Day at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine, New York City, February 20, 1973. Photo: Chris Sheridan/Catholic News Service; courtesy Marquette University Archives Dr. Ron Navarro was nominated for a feature story in Peninsula People Magazine, a monthly magazine for residents of the Palos Verdes Peninula: Beating the Odds: Dr. Ronald Navarro Peninsula People Magazine Harbor area kid knuckles down to become leader in sports injury care by Randy Angel Thirty years ago, people snickered at young Ronald Navarro when he told them that someday he would become a doctor. After all, he was Hispanic. He and his twin brother, Randy, were the youngest of five boys. His father was a longshoreman. And, he was growing up in the tough harbor area of Wilmington. The odds certainly were not in Navarro's favor. For most of Navarro's peers in the mid '70s, just making it through the twelfth grade and earning a diploma from Banning High School would be a major accomplishment. But to obtain an education from a four-year university and enter the highly competitive field of medicine? Fat chance. But Navarro proved to himself--and his skeptics--that he knew what he was talking about as a youth and demonstrated how perseverance pays off. Surely it would have been easier to give into the daily temptations faced by teenagers in the much maligned public Los Angeles Unified School District. But Navarro had one goal in mind, bypassing the rolled joints sold on local street corners and focusing on other types of joints--those in the human body. "By the time I was in high school, I knew what I wanted to do," Ronald Navarro, M.D. said. "When I said I'm going to be a doctor, most people said 'Yeah, right.'" Today, Navarro is living the life of his dreams. The Rolling Hills resident is proudly serving the area of his roots as Chief of the Department of Orthopaedics and Director of Orthopaedic Sports Medicine at Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center in Harbor City. He recently accepted a position to become the Assistant to the Medical Director in charge of Surgical Services at the same facility, effective January 2008. An author of numerous articles pertaining to knee and shoulder surgeries in athletes, Navarro participates in research that has been presented nationally and abroad. He recently returned from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in San Diego where he presented his research on venous thromboembolism (blood clots) in shoulder arthroplasty, instructed a course on knees which have been previously operated on, and served as moderator in a session where other researchers presented their findings on knee and cartilage topics. As one of the top surgeons in his field and a specialist in knee and shoulder surgeries, Navarro could easily earn more money by going into private practice, but finds it much more rewarding by giving back to the local community and spending quality time with Jennifer, his wife of 16 years, and their two daughters Isabella (7) and Beatrice (18 months) in their Peninsula home. "I'm not driven by the money," Navarro said. "My motivation is healing people. The most rewarding thing in orthopaedics is that when you do an operation, you know that you are returning a function the patient has lost. The beauty of orthopaedics is a lot like construction. You build a home, the people love it, and the constructors move on to the next home. A surgeon has rebuilt or improved something that benefits the recipient, and in the majority of cases we don't see the client again." Navarro attributes his work ethic and rise in the medical profession to his family, especially his parents Jesus and Amelia. A strapping man, Jesus migrated from Mexico in his mid-teens and worked laying rail ties from California to Oregon. He took his earnings back to Mexico and attempted to start a business, but returned to the South Bay when he was 19, worked on the docks and married Amelia, who was born in Wilmington. Amelia made the best of being the only woman filled with a house full of men. "Some people might have thought of it as a curse, but I think my mom enjoyed being surrounded by six men who loved her," Ronald quipped. "My parents were not big on rewards, but big on expectations," Ronald explained. "It created a loving, supportive family. I wish there was more of that in society today. There seems to be too much worry about self-esteem, but self esteem is something that has to be built." Although Navarro's two older brothers are very successful--the oldest working for Northrop and the other involved in international banking and living in Singapore--it was middle brother Steve who was the first in the Navarro family to graduate from a four-year university and the person who piqued Ronald's interest in sports medicine. "Steve was athletic trainer at Cerritos College at the time of my pre-teen youth," Navarro said. "We would go to the football games on Saturdays and I would watch him and it looked like fu. He told me 'You do well in school and then what you want to do is take it a step further and get into orthopaedic surgery, because those are the guys I interface with.'" As a student at Banning High, Navarro played wide receiver on the Pilot's City Championship team in 1979, an experience that he recalls with great fondness. "When I was growing up in Wilmington, we had a nice life because I had a loving family and was supported by older brothers," Navarro recalls. "But once you stepped outside of the home it could be tough. It was a rough place and you really had to watch what you said and watch who you looked crossways at. You learned to appreciate and respect other people, because if you didn't, many would react in a very violent way. You kept your head down, watched your P's and Q's and got your business done. There wasn't a lot of small talk with strangers, so you became very close with the people you knew. "But one great thing about Wilmington back then was that the community really got behind the football team and provided a lot of local spirit. Being involved in the football program back then was like you see on Friday Night Lights and the image of football in Texas. The stadiums we played in (Gardena High, El Camino College) would be packed. There would be 10,000 people at high school games. It was an event every Friday night. The Valley teams always thought they could beat us, and every time we would go through the pass of the 405 freeway, we knew it was winning time. We knew someone was going to take a whooping and it wasn't going to be us. "Along with my loving wife and parents, being involved with football at that time was a major inspiration to me and made me realize that I could do whatever I wanted to do." Navarro has renewed his strong ties to the community by volunteering his time as a team physician for Banning's football team and serving on the board of directors of Team Heal, a non-profit organization aimed at increasing medical care of athletes in inner city high schools. With the support of his parents and financial aid, Navarro began his college career at Stanford. But Ronald began to miss his twin brother, who was attending UC Santa Barbara, and during the first quarter of his junior year, went south to visit Randy. Ronald enjoyed the lifestyle--and companionship--in Santa Barbara, transferred and earned his bachelor's degree in biology before moving to Illinois to continue his education in medicine. It was at the University of Illinois College of Medicine where Navarro met his future wife while earning his medical degree and Jennifer was obtaining her degree as a registered nurse. "We are both left-handed, which drew me to her," Navarro said, jokingly. "Once I was in med school, I unlinked my parents from the financial weight and took out a lot of loans myself. Jennifer has been a great, loving wife who has made numerous sacrifices. She was burdened with a fair amount of debts--both financially and emotionally--just by getting to know me." With two young children, Jennifer has put her nursing career on hold to be a stay-at-home mom and is active in PV Juniors, AYSO and Chadwick School, where Isabella is a first grader. "Ronald's success in his profession, as a husband and as a father, stems from his strong family upbringing," Jennifer said. "He never gives up. If he wants something, he goes and gets it. It hasn't been easy for him and he's had to overcome many obstacles in his life, but he's always searching for ways to make himself and his family better." Ronald knew that after college he would return to Southern California to continue his medical career. "People who are raised here appreciate other places, but appreciate the South Bay even more. It's a great place to live." Navarro began with a general surgery internship at Harbor General/UCLA Medical Center. "It's very hard to get into orthopaedic surgery, so I spent two years doing research at UCLA to improve my resume and eventually got in. The program at Harbor General is a fine one that teaches how to become a top surgeon. My experiences there were incredible. They taught us how to take care of patients." Along with serving as a clinical instructor to Harbor General/UCLA Medical Center internal medicine residents, Navarro has completed fellowships in shoulder, arthroscopy and sports medicine from the University of Pittsburgh, in joint replacement from UCLA/Sepulveda VA Medical Centers, Dan has served as assistant clinical professor at the University of Southern California. Navarro joined Kaiser Permanente in 1997 and thoroughly enjoys his affiliation. "My partnership with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group has been so supportive in all the things I have done. They've encouraged excellence, they've encouraged and helped fund research for me, and they've encouraged me to help make this the best orthopaedic facility in the region, bot in the Kaiser system and abroad. "The people I hire are the best in the business. We just finished a new operating room which will open in four or five months and we're going to build a whole new orthopaedic department in the next couple of years. This will be the Taj Majal of sports medicine in the area, both in the operating room and clinically. I'm really excited about it. "We run our practice at Kaiser much like an academic practice. I can specialize on knees and shoulders. I probably do more shoulder surgeries than anyone in the area because I don't have to do trigger fingers, ankles or hip replacements. That factor has catapulted my experience level. An analogy would be: Do people want to get their clutch fixed by a clutch specialist or the guy pumping gas at the gas station?" Despite the many hours spent in the operating room and doing research, Navarro has served as Medical Director of the LPGA Office Depot Championship, the Long Beach Marathon, the Lion's Club High School All-Star Game and on the Minority and Medical Advisory boards for former U.S. Congressman Steve Kuykendall of the 36th District--he finds time to keep in shape by snow skiing, running marathons, enjoying neighborhood walks with his family, and this past season, coaching Isabella's soccer team. "It was hard for me not to be competitive," Navarro said. "But those five-and six-year-old girls are so cute and sweet." His increasing involvement and numerous activities has made Navarro a well-known--and popular--figure in the community. "He is genuinely a nice guy," Jennifer said. "It's hard for us to go out without someone coming up to him to say hello. Having a quiet dinner alone in a restaurant is next to impossible." Navarro's work with young people keeps the doctor on his toes in the ever-evolving field of sports medicine. "Kids are maturing earlier now," Navarro claims. "Who knows what kind of hormones are being fed to the animals that we eat and we in turn are passing them on. I've never seen so many young kids now with gigantic feet. It's almost abnormal." Navarro notes that the most common injuries in young athletes today are Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tears in female soccer players and elbow injuries in boys who play baseball, particularly pitchers. "When you consider boys beginning to play baseball at five years old, by the time they're 15 they might have played in two leagues a year for 10 years. Throwing breaking balls and the number of pitches without the proper rest take their toll. Competitive nature pushes a player's body, but it needs time to recover." While the majority of youth leagues maintain rules as to the number of innings a player can pitch, Navarro believes a pitch count would be a more effective way of preventing serious arm injuries. In older populations, ACL reconstructions are increasing. Where a 3-, 40- or 50-year-old person used to be considered too old for the procedure, it is becoming more commonplace. "I think a lot of older people have shoulder problems that they just deal with," Navarro said. "We're trying to get them in earlier before there is significant tissue damage and degeneration." Navarro is a strong proponent of fitness programs that include stretching and a focus on core strength, believing that a strong core will help prevent injuries--especially in the limbs--during everyday activities as well as athletic participation. Light weight training is also suggested, with more repetitions being safer than lifting heavier weights, particularly in young kids whose growth plates are still developing. "Bone degeneration happens a lot earlier in life now than we think," Navarro said. "A lightweight strengthening program is a good way to keep the bones stimulated. The medical profession is now suggesting light-weight strengthening for the elderly in order to keep their bone mass at a higher level and prevent bone mass loss. Navarro states that the average recovery time for a simple knee arthroscopy is 6-8 weeks, while an ACL reconstruction is six months at the earliest to a return to normal activities. Shoulder--most commonly rotator cuff--surgeries take 4-5 months, but a labial tear on a young person who is involved in an overhand-throwing sport usually takes six months. Navarro notes, however, that the athlete's velocity won't be the same for 1 to 2 years as the athlete must redevelop the mechanics and accuracy of throwing. With the increasing number of athletes in the South Bay--both young and old--Navarro realizes there will always be patients to mend and research to develop as he continues to give back to the community by improving lives. "By God's grace, I'm doing something I've always wanted to do," Navarro said. "I went ahead and did it and most importantly, I really enjoy it. To live the life of a surgeon and be able to operate on the human body, fix it and make a patient's life better is an amazing, fulfilling thing." www.camarenastamp.com The Federal Drug Enforcement Agent: Enrique Camarena Stamp Petition Mrs. Holly's 5th grade class at Lugonia Elementary School in Redlands, California is proposing a concept of a stamp to honor Enrique Camarena. A U.S. Federal Drug Agent who was murdered in Mexico in 1985 for having come dangerously close to unlocking a multi-billion dollar drug pipeline, which he suspected extended into the highest reaches of the Mexican Army, Police and Government. Their stamp proposal is -To Honor Enrique Camarena-A Hero Against Drugs. They would like to generate public awareness of Enrique Camarenaï¿½s dedication to the fight against drugs. It is their hope that with your support they can get as many signatures as possible to present to our Citizensï¿½ Stamp Advisory Committee endorsement. Why a "stamp"? To educate children and adults about how Red Ribbon Week began and to generate awareness in the fight against drugs. To honor a Key figure for his dedication in trying to decrease substance abuse. in our lives, and to keep alive the memory of F.D.E.A Enrique Camarena-A Hero. Please, help the Fifth grade Students at Lugonia Elementary School to make this proposal a success. Let's get Our Stamp Campaign Approved We need to send in more signatures and letters to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee in order to persuade them that a stamp to honor Enrique Camarena would be the highest tribute paid to this great man who fought against drugs, and lost his life in the process. You Can Help: By adding your name to the signature campaign. Get groups involved, like your church, neighborhood, schools etc. Drugs are so available and so damaging to our youth. We must raise awareness about Enrique Camarena, the commitment he made to his work, sacrificing his entire life, for a safer world. His death should not be in vain, but a celebration of a drug-free future for all. Help us keep Enrique Camarena alive forever. Generate petition or write your own letter. Send it to: 475 L' Enfant Plaza, SW Room 4474EB www.camarenastamp.com Coyote Teaching Coyote teaching is a method of teaching and mentoring made popular by Tom Brown, Jr. and Jon Young. A coyote teacher never gives direct answers, and answers questions with questions, inspiring the student to dig deeper into the lessons and search for embedded or connected lessons. A successful coyote teacher inspires the student to learn on his/her own until the student no longer depends on the coyote teacher. Naturally, when a student is trained by a coyote teacher, the student becomes adept to the style of teaching and can, in turn, mentor more students in this method. A common saying among coyote teachers and students is, "When raised by a coyote one becomes a coyote". Sent by Chris Glavin [email protected] A New Window of Opportunity for Latinos: Catholic Universities in the Americas. By Michael Hogan HispanicVista March 1, 2007ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ As tuitions rise at universities in the United States and scholarship funds pay for an even smaller percentage of costs, many parents are finding college education for their children beyond their financial reach. For some, the answer has been to mortgage the home, or for the student to take out prohibitive loans. For others, the choice has been a community college or even to forego college entirely, and for the student enter the work force as untrained labor. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ A program begun in 2004 now offers students another alternative. The College Boardï¿½s University Recognition Initiative is engaged in the process of identifying those outstanding universities abroad which accept U.S. studentsï¿½ Advanced Placement (AP) and SAT grades, have affordable tuitions, and are highly ranked academically. In Latin America, there are now over 90 such universities in 18 countries, including the premier Catholic universities which have convenios or agreements with U.S. colleges such as Norte Dame, Trinity, Loyola, Boston College, and others. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ For Latino students who are able to converse and read in Spanish this is a wonderful option. Not only do most of these universities give credit and/or advanced standing for AP grades, but several offer scholarships. The cost of tuition for a year at a Catholic university in Latin America is under $10,000 on the average, and that figure includes housing and fees. All of the listed universities are fully accredited and their degrees are recognized world-wide. For more than two decades there have been a few thousand American students studying abroad, including over 800 in medical schools (due to the cap on enrollment in the United States). Recently, with rising costs, that figure has increased more than 145%, and students with careers other than medicine in mind have begun to enroll in foreign universities. There are now over 26,000 U.S. students studying in Latin America alone, and over 170,000 world-wide. Not all study abroad for financial reasons, of course. Many chose to do so to gain a larger perspective on the world, to immerse themselves in a different culture or language, or to broaden their opportunities in a competitive global economy. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ While language requirements curtail some studentsï¿½ efforts to attend a university in another country, that limitation does not extend to Latino students, many of whom have the requisite language skills and are attracted to studying in Latin America. In addition, the widening of their cultural perspective as they learn about the history of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile or Mexico, the commitment to service (which is a requirement at universities in Latin America), provides them with valuable skills in the international marketplace. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Many parents are attracted to this option as well. Catholic universities in Latin America are characterized not only by rigorous academics, but also by traditional values, a commitment to working with others, and a positive world-view which is absent in many secular institutions. Many of the Catholic universities are Jesuit institutions and are part of la red jesuita (the Jesuit Web) sharing resources, libraries and professors from Europe and Canada as well as the United States. Among those listed below are ITESO and Iberoamericana in Mexico. Others are what are called Pontifical universities which are essentially authorized by the Holy See to provide quality Catholic education, some dating back to the 1600s such as Universidad del Rosario in Colombia. Finally, some are Opus Dei-associated universities such as the Universidad de Montevideo in Uruguay. What all of them have in common is that they provide a safe place to learn, a rigorous curriculum, a commitment to service to the community, and strong moral values. Since many college counselors are unaware of the opportunities for studying abroad, the College Board has created a site where students and parents can visit each of these recommended universities on-line. It can be found at www.collegeboard.com/apintl Over the past three years College Board staff have traveled to 18 countries in Latin America and visited over 140 universities.ï¿½ They have personally confirmed the information that appears on the web page listed above, and continue to make follow-up visits to these universities throughout the year. Recently I interviewed two students who had just graduated from a Jesuit university in Mexico: Paulina Julian and Gabriela Silva. Among the questions I asked them were: What was the most significant aspect of your education at a Catholic university in Latin America? Gabriela replied: ï¿½It helped me grow, especially the community service, because I was able to come in contact with other social classes and understand Mexico from a different angle. It is alarming to me that so many students in the U.S. are living very sheltered lives and they are going to make important decisions that have a direct effect on the world while actually knowing very little about that world outside of books.ï¿½ Paulina said, ï¿½It helped me develop as a spiritual person. The caring environment, the way people looked after each other, was very nourishing to my spirit. And when my spirit is nourished I am better at what I do. I am in touch with a part of me which is wise, kind, friendly, and that reflects directly on my relationships with other people and with what I do.ï¿½ Paulina, who studied for a career in education, is now an assistant to the director of international education at a major university. Gaby, who studied for a career in psychology, works for an American school as an on-call psychologist. Both are people who have profited enormously from their education. They are not only successful in their chosen fields but they are also well-rounded and caring people.ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½I donï¿½t know what would have happened or where Iï¿½d be today if I had studied in the U.S.,ï¿½ Gaby told me. ï¿½But I am glad that I chose to study in Latin America which seems to me less closed-off and more welcoming than other places.ï¿½ Paulina noted, ï¿½In the long run I believe it is not really about where we study, if our university is open to other cultures and promotes the love of learning. But, I am glad that I chose Latin America. It is a part of the world that right now is most hopeful in terms of world peace. It is a place where there is little talk of war or enmity to other cultures.ï¿½ List of top Catholic universities in Latin America recommended for U.S. students studying abroad: 1. Pontificia Universidad Catï¿½lica de Chile. 2. Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). 3. Universidad del Rosario (Colombia). 4. ITESO (Mï¿½xico). 5. Pontificia Universidad Catï¿½lica Argentina. 6. Universidad Catï¿½lica Andrï¿½s Bello (Venezuela). 7. Universidad Catï¿½lica de Santa Marï¿½a (Perï¿½). 8. Universidad Catï¿½lica de Uruguay. 9.ï¿½ Universidad Iberoamericana (Mï¿½xico). 10. Pontificia Universidad Catï¿½lica de Puerto Rico. 11. Universidad Santo Tomï¿½s (Colombia). 12. Universidad Catï¿½lica de Valparaï¿½so (Chile). 13. Universidad Catï¿½lica Santa Marï¿½a La Antigua (Panamï¿½). 14. Ave Maria College of the Americas (Nicaragua). 15. Universidad Catï¿½lica de Honduras. 16. Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Colombia). 17. Universidad Catï¿½lica de Cï¿½rdoba (Argentina). 18. Pontificia Universidad Catï¿½lica Madre y Maestra (Repï¿½blica Dominicana). 19. Universidad de Montevideo (Uruguay). 20. Universidad Panamericana (Mï¿½xico). NOTE: As more Catholic universities submit their policies for international students and the College Board has an opportunity to visit their campuses, this list will continue grow. It may be that several quality Catholic universities currently recognize AP and SAT scores from U.S. students and have rigorous programs, but have not yet contacted the College Board and for that reason do not appear on this list. MICHAEL HOGAN is an author and educator living in Mexico. Email: [email protected] Flat Stanley Educational Fun Flat Stanley is an international project that encourages children to write, learn about other cultures. It was introduced to me by Karla Galindo during my February trip to Texas Our Flat Stanley arrived in the mail to us on February 14th from the daughter of Karlaï¿½s first cousin in Winnie Bilingual Education "Mendez v. Westminster" The "Mendez v. Westminster" lawsuit led to the end of school segregation in California and was the forerunner of the U.S. Supreme Court "Brown v Board o Education" decision which ended school segregation throughout the nation. There are three dates to be considered: April 14, 1947 (the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal "Mendez v. Westminster" Opinion) August 1, 1947 (the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal "Mendez v. Westminster" Correct Opinion, and September 19, 1947 (when Legislative Repeal of the last California school segregation statutes took effect). What happened: the first "Mendez" opinion found that - - while there wee state laws (Education Code 8003, 8004) about segregated schooling for California children of Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian descent -- there were no state laws about segregated schooling for children of Mexican parentage The Corrected "Mendez" Opinion reported the State Legislature had recently acted to repeal these the last of California' school segregation laws. The repeal went into effect on September 19, 1947, 90 days after it had been signed into law. Growing up in a Hispanic community in South Texas by [email protected] Growing up in a Hispanic community in South Texas, I spoke only Spanish when I entered the first grade.ï¿½ I attended a rural school.ï¿½ During those years, we were not allowed to speak Spanish because we would be expelled.ï¿½ I did not speak a word from September until January of the following year.ï¿½ Wheneverï¿½I wanted to go to the bathroom, I would either cry or I would raise my hand and with tears in my eyes, the teacher knew that I needed to go to the bathroom.ï¿½ My aunt who was in the fifth grade would be called and she would take me to the bath room.ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ Teacherï¿½ often complained to my parents about my crying so one day my mom insisted that my dad handle the situation and ensure that I stop crying at school.ï¿½ At my mom's insistance, ï¿½so he took me outside and spanked me a few times.ï¿½Before he spanked me, he said that it was going to hurt him more than it would hurt me but I needed to understand that I had to not cry at school Needless to say, I stopped crying at school.ï¿½ That was also the only time in my life that I remember my dad spanking me.ï¿½ From that day forward, all my dad had to say was that heï¿½ was disappointed with my behavior and his words were more than I could handle to know that I had dissappinted him.ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ Growing up during the years when racism was prevalent, I remember watching the 1957 Little Rock 9 desegration march on our little seven inch TV.ï¿½ As I watched TV, I cried and felt the saddness theseï¿½chilren were enduring.ï¿½ I asked my dad why this was happening. I remember my dad's response to me:ï¿½" Whenï¿½ you grow up and leaveï¿½Laredo, you will be faced with the same treatment fromï¿½those who do not see us as equals.ï¿½ He stated that I needed to remember that no matter the situations that I faced in later life, I was to remember that I was as equal, as good and better than anyone else.ï¿½ It was very important that I remember thisï¿½ no matter what situations I would be faced with in life. ï¿½ Sure enough, when I left laredo after high school, I learned about racism when I couldn't rent a house to live, when my people made comments such as "I couldn't tell you were one of them but I know there was something wrong with your chilrdren, when my ex-husband was not allowed to go into a regular barbershop becasue he had curley hair.ï¿½" It was during these times thatï¿½ I never forgot what my dad told me at the age of seven.ï¿½ ï¿½ Going back to the day that my dad spanked me, I remember making up my mind thatï¿½I had to learn to speakï¿½English toï¿½make it in school and not rely on my aunt to help me.ï¿½ It was theï¿½integrity, honesty and the values that Iï¿½learned from my parents that have allowed me to be who I am now.ï¿½ I obtained higher education degrees,ï¿½a professional career, and have taught my chilren the same values of equality, integrity and love.ï¿½ï¿½It has taken years of growth to learn to let go of the pain and treatment of inequalityï¿½that I grew up with.ï¿½ Yet I am a better person for the things that I have learnedï¿½from these experiences.ï¿½ Sent by Johanna De Soto [email protected] Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907. "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt 1907 MEXICAN FILM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN LOS ANGELES NOTES FROM LA LA LAND by Dr. Neo LARE-DOS COL. 11--- FEB. 2007 Sent by Elsa Herbeck [email protected] [Dr. Neo is a Ph.D. in Dance & Related Fine Arts, Senor Int'l de Beverly Hills 1997, and Tiger Legend 2002. In Los KAngeles ontact [email protected].) [email protected]] If you want to know what the world thinks of American and world-wide films in general, watch the Golden Globes Awards, sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. If you want to know what Americans think of the same topic, watch for the Academy Awards, aka the Oscars. And shine Mexico did at this past January's Golden Globes ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Not only did Latinas America Ferrera and Salma Hayek fare very well for their work in tv's new hit, "Ugly Betty," but the best film of the year honors went to Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, for his incredible job in the movie "Babel," starring Brad Pitt. I remember watching the movie a few months back, wondering for the first two hours how Inarritu was going to pull it all together, to end the film. Made in five languages and shot in three continents, the film consists of what seems a hodge-podge of unrelated stories in different parts of the world, about unrelated people. But lo and behold, with the stroke of true genius, at the end director Inarritu pulls it all together, and the movie makes perfect sense. The film received the most nominations at the Golden Globes, a total of seven, including best dramatic picture, best director and best screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga. The international nature of the movie really appealed to the Hollywood Foreign Press. The movie is about globalization and the world we live in. "Babel" is a perfect example of multinational movie productions, a perfect example of the movie business today. The Golden Globes celebrates Hollywood's borderless production frontier. Inarritu said: "I think culturally the world is getting bigger. Now we are iving in the world, we are not living anymore in a country or a society. We are part of the whole....we have a lot in common beyond the borders, beyond the ideologies. We are getting the sense that we are truly one world." Never mind that Inarritu also provided the best one-liner of the whole night of Golden Globes celebration, when his first sentence in his acceptance speech was directed at Califas Governator Ahhnold: "I want to assure the Governor that my papers are in order." Known by the nickname of "el negro" to his close friends, Inarritu is over six feet tall and posses movie star good looks. From his biography, we learn that he was born in M?xico City in 1963. Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu started his show-business career in 1984 as a DJ at top-rated Mexican radio station WFM. At the same time he studied filmmaking and theater. From 1988 to 1990 he composed music for six Mexican features, including Garra de tigre (1989). In the 1990s he became one of the youngest producers in Mexican TV when he was in charge of the production of Televisa, Mexico's most important TV company. After leaving Televisa he started Zeta Films, his own company. He began writing and shooting TV advertising for Mexican television (some of them can be seen in his first feature, Amores perros (2000)). However, for him those commercials were just rehearsals for a future movie. At the same time he continued his studies of filmmaking in Maine and Los Angeles, under Polish director Ludwik Margules. His first half-length feature, "Detras del dinero", was produced in 1995 for Televisa and starred Spanish actor Miguel Bos?. Looking for good stories, he read a lot of scripts and one day was introduced to Guillermo Arriaga, a screenwriter, and they planned to make 11 shorts to show the contradictory nature of Mexico City. After three years and 36 drafts, they ended up settling on only three stories and expanding them. That movie, "Amores Perros", became a major hit at its release at the Festival de Cannes 2000, where it received the award of the best film by the Semaine de la Critique, and went on to huge worldwide success. It also earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign movie. In 2002 Gonz?lez I??rritu was one of the directors involved in the making of 11'09''01 - September 11 (2002), a film about the influence of the terrorist attack of 9/11 on the world. Also participating in the film were such major filmmakers as Wim Wenders, Ken Loach, Mira Nair, Amos Gitai and Sean Penn. The success of those films opened the doors of Hollywood to Alejandro. His second feature, 21 Grams (2003), was also written by Arriaga, was shot in English and starred Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. All received Academy Award nominations for their participation. At present Gonzalez Inarritu is collaborating with Arriaga in the writing of a third movie that will form a trilogy about death with his other two first pictures. Almost by divine coincidence, as Hollywood celebrates Inarritu, the Oscars org, known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is celebrating 100 years of Mexican film. (Mexican movies have really come a long way since, as a kid, I used to religiously go to the old Royal Theater in Laredo, where I would watch Mexico's best for 9 cents admission price, 1 penny for candy, and 15 cents for three bags of popcorn. There went the 25 cents allowance for the week.) Upon visiting the Academy's beautiful headquarters near where I live now, I learned that the important role of Mexican filmmakers working in Hollywood and the influence of international filmmakers working in Mexico are all explored in the Academy's Fourth Floor Gallery exhibition ?Made in Mexico: The Legacy of Mexican Cinema.? This remarkable history is brought to life through movie posters, behind-the-scenes photographs and star portraits, costumes and costume design sketches, fan magazines, original scripts, letters, documents, and other artifacts pertaining to the Mexican film industry?s vibrant past and compelling present. Also on display are video clips showcasing key performances and productions from a century of Mexican film. Since the advent of public film projection in the late 1890s, Mexican audiences have proved enthusiastic, and Mexican filmmakers have been actively involved in documenting their country's history and culture. As narrative filmmaking in the silent era gave way to the early sound era of the 1930s, stories that spoke to audiences from Spanish-speaking cultures literally found their voice. At the same time, Mexican performers became popular Hollywood stars, and important international filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein (and later Luis Bu?uel, Fred Zinnemann and John Huston) traveled to Mexico to make films. Mexican cinema enjoyed a ?Golden Age? in the 1940s, widespread commercial success in the 1950s, and a remarkable string of three consecutive Academy Award? nominations for Best Foreign Language Film in 1960, ?61 and ?62. The international profile of Mexican cinema has recently been raised once again by the Oscar?-nominated films Amores Perros, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and El Crimen Del Padre Amaro, directed by Carlos Carrera. Exhibition highlights include costume design sketches for stars Dolores del Rï¿½o and Ram?n Novarro, documents and photographs relating to the early sound recording system invented by the Rodrguez brothers for use on the groundbreaking film Santa (1932), and marketing materials for some of the Golden Age's biggest hits, including the films of Mario Moreno, better known as Cantinflas. Complemented by items related to the most current Mexican releases, the displays feature, for the first time, captions and explanatory text in both English and Spanish. For more information: http://www.oscars.org/events/past/2006/madeinmexico Every year when I watch the Golden Globes, housed at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, I always remember the year when The Golden Spurs, Laredo dance team under the direction of Mrs. Estela Zamora Kramer, stayed at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when they came on a dance tour to Califas.That year they danced at BevHillsHS, Dodger Stadium, Disneyland, and Universal Studios. I also remember I managed to get the Beverly Hilton room cost down to about $15 per night per student, 4 in a room. And when a group of 4 was assigned to a poolside cabana, so the girls could have access to a room right by the swimming pool, the girls turned it down because they wanted to be together with the rest of the group. And this is when room rates were at about $500+ per night. Asi como lo oyen. And all of this came back to me because of all the Golden Globes action on tv....que recuerdos tan sabrosos.... Upon closing, I must send happy birthday greetings to our beloved MHS English teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Nye Sorrell, who is 98 and living happily and still writing in San Antonio. Don't forget the Oscars Feb. 25, and I promise to try not to hate Simon Cowell of "American Idol," for the way he exploits disadvantaged American youth, as he laughs with million$ all the way to the bank. And Britney Spears, American pop princess at 25, has purchased a new home in a gated Beverly Hills community for $7.2 million. As of this time it has not been reported whether or not she was wearing underwear when she signed the house papers. And with that it's time for, as Norma Adamo would say: TAN TAN ! Study Finds Americans Cooked With Chili Peppers 6,000 Years Ago by John Roach for National Geographic News, February 15, 2007 Sent by John Inclan [email protected] Domesticated chili peppers started to spice up dishes across the Americas at least 6,000 years ago, according to new research tracing the early spread of the crop. Peppers quickly spread around the world after Christopher Columbus brought them back to Europe at the end of the 15th century, but their ancient history had been poorly known until now. The new research is based on the discovery that domestic chili peppers leave behind telltale starch grains.The findings shed light on the origins, domestication, and dispersal of the fiery fruits. "We're excited to be able to finally trace this spice," said Linda Perry, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. Perry and colleagues report the finding in today's issue of the journal Science. Pepper Trail: The researchers were intrigued by starch grains they found on artifacts collected at seven sites ranging from the Bahamas to southern Peru. The grains look like tiny jelly doughnuts squished in their middles and didn't match those from obvious starchy foods such as potatoes, cassava, and other roots. "It was only by accident that I figured out their source," Perry said. She recalled hearing that peppers cause intestinal distress. But that was odd, because the condition usually results from undigested starches, and Perry didn't think peppers contained starches. "Then the light bulb lit upï¿½maybe they do have starchesï¿½and I decided to take a look," she said. She found the match on her first try. The chili pepper starch grains found in domestic strains, the researchers note, are distinct from any other plant starches as well as from wild-pepper starches. The ancient pepper grains were almost always found with corn and often associated with yams, potatoes, squash, beans, and fruits. This suggests that they belong to systems of "sophisticated agriculture and complex cuisine," Perry said. In some sites this advanced cultivation and palate predated pottery, which contradicts the popular theory that pottery and sophisticated agriculture spread together, the researchers note. Spicy Origins. The earliest chili pepper starch grains were found at two sites in southwestern Ecuador that are dated to about 6,100 years ago. Perry and her colleagues point out that Ecuador is not considered a center of domestication for any of the five cultivated chili pepper species, suggesting they were brought to the region via migration or trade. "The initial domestication must have occurred earlier than this," Perry said. Scientists believe chili peppers, which gain their distinct zest from the powerful irritant chemical capsaicin, arose in what is now Bolivia. (Related: "Tarantula Venom, Chili Peppers Have Same 'Bite,' Study Finds [November 8, 2006].) But they were first cultivated and domesticated in Mexico, the southern Andes, and the Amazon lowlands, according to the theory (South America map). "What's going to be interesting, I think, is to go back to older sites and see if we can document the transition from wild to domesticated chilies using these microfossils," Perry said. Sandra Knapp is a botanist at the Natural History Museum in London. In a Science commentary, she writes that the new findings indicate more ancient cultivation and more widespread use of peppers than previously believed. "It also opens up new avenues of research into how the peoples of the Americas transported and traded plants of cultural importance." (Editor's note: Perry has received funding from the National Geographic Society for unrelated research. National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.) Romï¿½ntico, a documentary views the life of undocumented Carmelo Muniz who washes cars during the day, but at night he performs norteï¿½o and ranchero music. Please go to the website for more on the subject of his life, trying to support a ailing mother and two daughters living in Mexico. Producer Mark Becker says The Romantico DVD can be ordered from the website. Official release is April 3rd. Becker says the DVD includes an interview with me, a couple of deleted scenes,ï¿½ the theatrical trailer, and a Q&A from the IFC Center in New York. www.meteorfilms.org http:// www.dfwinternational.org 972-661-2764 Dallas, TX ï¿½ DFW International Community Alliance announces the Scholarship Guide for New Americans. The 28 page directory, made possible by support of Citigroup and Ernst & Young, is now available at libraries in Dallas, Irving, and Plano, and global community organizations. A second and updated printing of the Guide to English (ESL) Classes for Adults, sponsored by Verizon, was also recently produced. The Guides are FREE and available from the Dallas, Irving, and Plano Public Libraries, from the Mexican Consulate, and from La Paloma Taquerias. These directories are among the six titles currently available in the series of Guides for New Americans. According to DFW International Community Allianceï¿½s 2005 report, 40% of North Texas residents are immigrants (foreign-born and their children). In addition to distribution through libraries and community organizations, all the titles are available as downloads from the DFW International Community Alliance website at www.dfwinternational.org/resource_center/ . Citigroup has been a major supporter of DFW International Community Alliance for over 3 years. Debbie Taylor, Director of Corporate Affairs, states that ï¿½Citigroup feels that our greatest responsibility as a society is the education and protection of our children.ï¿½ As new sponsor of the project, Rita Shankel, Director of Human Resources for Ernst & Young, says "We share DFW International's commitment to social responsibility in the Dallas Fort Worth community." "Literacy is one of Verizon Foundation's major funding priorities due to its enormous impact on education and economic development," said Steve Banta, Verizon Southwest Region President. "Verizon is pleased to partner with DFW International to provide new residents with access to literacy and educational services." The Guides are FREE and available from the Dallas, Irving, and Plano Public Libraries, from the Mexican Consulate, and from La Paloma Taquerias. DFW International Community Alliance is the portal for global North Texas, a network of 1,600 of the regionï¿½s ethnic and internationally focused civic, community and educational organizations. The organization promotes and links North Texas ethnic and immigrant groups through its website and cultural calendar at www.dfwinternational.org , that receives over ten million hits a month. DFW International Community Alliance also produces the Dallas International Festival and International DFW Month (March 6 to April 8, 2007). Sent by Ricardo Valverde [email protected] Kaiser Family Foundation Launches Free News Report on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities on www.kaisernetwork.org Webcasts of interactive panel discussions, interviews, and policy-oriented conferences and events featured in new online report Washington, D.C. - Recognizing the need for greater awareness and understanding of racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, the Kaiser Family Foundation announced today the launch of a news summary report - the Kaiser Health Disparities Report: A Weekly Look at Race, Ethnicity and Health. The report is available through a free weekly email, with stories updated daily online on http://kaisernetwork.org/disparitiesreport , Foundation's news information service. Cristï¿½bal Colï¿½n by Rubï¿½n Sï¿½laz Sent by Ruben Salaz [email protected] Christopher Columbus, was one of the greatest and most influential personalities in world history. He changed the history of the world by discovering the Americas in 1492. In the Europe of his day the aristocracy controlled everything worth controlling. In America, personal initiative, not birth, would often decide success. Anyone could have opportunity to make his fortune, despite his rank at birth. This would never have been possible without Columbus and the discovery of the Americas. It should also be pointed out that while writers have promoted a "European Age of Discovery", most discoveries were made by Spaniards or other Europeans sailing for Spain. For example, Magellan (Magalhaes, 1480-1521) circumnavigated the globe in 1519-1522.The age was actually one of Spanish discovery. [See Stewart Udall's Majestic Journey.] LETTERS TO THE L.A. Times EDITOR: On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 "Ruben Salaz" [email protected] writes: The article by Gregory Rodriguez is almost correct historically. Oï¿½ate led and paid for the first European-based settlement in what is now called the Southwest. But, like so much of Spanish/Mexican history in the Southwest, the brief Acoma War of 1599 has been misrepresented by American writers and historians. Such misrepresentation is nothing new of course, merely part of what Philip Wayne Powell (UC-Santa Barbara) wrote about in his TREE OF HATE. Let me correct the record as briefly as possible. The Acoma War was instigated by the Acomas and started because Spaniards who were invited up to the Sky City to trade were ambushed by warriors who had their weapons ready to kill when the trading ruse was over. Around 13 soldiers were killed by the warriors. When word got back to Oï¿½ate he had to declare war, fearing that his little colony of some 500 Christians would be wiped out by the estimated 40,000-60,000 Indians. When the Spaniards were ready for war with some 70 soldiers, Acoma Pueblo was conquered in two days of fierce fighting. One of the unpublicized facts of the war is that when the Acomas saw they had lost the battle, they started killing their women and children to prevent them from being taken prisoners. This added immensely to the death toll. Some Acoma adults were sentenced to 20 years of servitude and 24 warriors were to suffer the dismemberment of toes, puntas de pies in Spanish, not feet, as is usually publicized. Historian John Kessell has asserted that the document proving the dismemberment sentence had been carried out was never found by his researchers on the Vargas Project at the University of New Mexico. Further, Acoma Pueblo was being rebuilt within five years, negating the servitude sentence meted out to some survivors. It is likely the dismemberments never took place at all because what kind of servitude could a man render on one foot? There is no doubt the Acoma War was terrible, as was the ambush that caused it. But the Acomas were not wiped off the face of the earth as the English did on the east coast and Acoma survivors were not deported to Oklahoma as did the USA with Indians living east of the Mississippi. Further, how does the harsh sentence of dismemberment of toes compare with the atomic bombing of the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Be careful when you decide to talk Indian history, especially with the American record including Sand Creek in Colorado, Camp Grant in Arizona, the Washita in Oklahoma, the Council House murders in San Antonio, and the most brutal of extermination of Indians in California. Spanish/Mexican people have always been "handy villains" in American historiography but it is more subterfuge than valid history. Former Director of EOP &Ethnic Affairs San Diego State University - Retired U.S. Navy Veteran Fact: President Bush's new budget calls for a $145 million cut of the PBS budget for next year. I don't think PBS can afford to have a Latino WWII veterano problem on top of the proposed budget cut. Military and Law Enforcement Heroes William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower Army Sgt. Hector Hernandez What is a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT)? Catholic War Veterans, San Jose Post 1805 The Devil's Brigade Ancestry.com Is Looking for Stories About Your Veterans Hispanic Medal of Honor Recipients, Part III DFAS Retired Pay Newsletter: Learn More About Your Retired Pay William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower, rescued more than ten people with his own hands, and saved hundreds of lives by using his master keyï¿½the only one availableï¿½to open stairwell doors for fire department rescue crews. He exited the North Tower just as it was beginning its explosive collapse, dove under a fire truck, and lived to tell the tale. Rodriguez is recognized worldwide as THE 9/11 hero. He has spoken to tens of thousands of people in the U.K., Venezuela, Malaysia, and other countries, and has repeatedly appeared before millions of viewers on all the major Spanish-language TV networks. His harrowing account may be the most compelling of all the survivorsï¿½ stories; it often moves audiences to tears. The founder and President of the Hispanic Victims Group, Rodriguez was among the Families Advisory Council for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Along with the Jersey Girls featured in 9/11: Press for Truth, Rodriguez was instrumental in shaming Congress into finally setting up the 9/11 Commission. Army Sgt. Hector Hernandez, of San Antonio, Texas in Iraq. Published in San Antonio newspaper. Source: San Antonio newspaper. Hi I was reading over your newsletter. My father Henry Gerlach Bazurto is a FIRST SPECIAL SERVICE FORCE MEMBER, Devil's Brigade, he fought in the World War 2 in the Pacific Theatre. I believe I heard at the 60th FSSF reunion held at Helena, Montana this past August that there were only 12 Mexicans that were part of a 2000 unit. My father is Mexican and German. In the musseum in Helena is a big display of my father's unit and in one of the glass displays is a huge photo (front cover of the book, Devils Brigade) my father is part of the photo...I was so over whelmed seeing the display in such a way. My father is 89 yrs old. He has a sharp mind. He Has a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart under his belt. I just wanted to share this with you. Ancestry.com Is Looking for Stories About Your Veterans For Honor and Freedom "Over There" With less than twenty-five World War I veterans living today, are the American servicemen who sacrificed for freedom in danger of being forgotten? Ancestry.com wants to know the stories of the Great War veterans in your family tree. How do you honor and remember them? How has your family history work increased your understanding of their service and sacrifices? We're also interested in stories about soldiers who served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and more recent conflicts. Send entries of approximately 250 words to [email protected] by 17, March 2007. Even though the date is passed, it is worth sending. Please include your name and phone number with entries. Veteran Information Overseas ï¿½ By Valerie Cumming [email protected] Just to add to the discussion about sources of information for veterans (see http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/review/2007/0221.txt and that you shouldn't forget to check out local sources in the locations where your veterans were based overseas. For example, I live near what was a small U.S. Air Force base during WWII and which is now a private airfield with a flying club. The owners and members have researched the history of the base and set up a small museum full of photos, names, flight details, mission details, etc.--all of them about U.S. Air Force veterans. RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 07 March 2007, Vol. 10, No. 10 (c) 1998-2007 RootsWeb.com, Inc.ï¿½ http://www.rootsweb.com Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients Part 3 California: My First Lifetime Ended in El Valle by Elvira Prieto That Time in the Snow by Melissa Lopez From My Doll to Midol by Ben Romero Garcia family, out of 7 siblings who survived to adulthood, 6 were physicians. [Editor: I was privileged to meet both Dr. Cleo and Dr. Dahlia.] Photo by permission of: Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers, Special Collections & Archives, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Bell Library. From the left, seated, Dr. Cleo Garcia, (me) Daisy Wanda Garcia, Wanda F. Garcia (my mother) Wyona Garcia (Dr. Jose Antonio Garcia's wife) and Yolanda DeLeon Garcia (Dr. Xico Garcia's wife). On the floor next to Dr. Cleo is Cecilia. At my mother's feet is Susie Garcia, my sister, and to her right are Bobby and Yolette Garcia. Behind Dr. Cleo are Mila's sons 3 and then Tony Garcia, Dr. Jose Antonio's son, Tony Canales, Dr. Hector P. Garcia, Jules Garcia (Dr. Jose Antonio's youngest son) , Dr. Jose Antonio, C.P. and Xico. Couch, from left to right, Tita Garcia, Dr. Jose Antonio's daughter, Elizabeth Garcia, Dr. C.P.Garcia's wife, Mila, Dr.'s sister, Dahlia, Dr.'s sister Mila, and La Chata, Mila's daughter. The birth sequence: Jose Antonio, Hector, Cleo, C.P., Mila, Xico, Dalia. FAMILY TRADITIONS THAT TIME IN THE SNOW By Melissa Lopez Dedicated to my brother, John I was ten the year we had one of the biggest snowstorms in Truchas history. All night and day it snowed, drifts piling on top of each other in the front patio, making my mountain village town sparkle with a white glare. It was just a few days after Christmas. Weï¿½d stuffed ourselves with biscochitos, and empanaditas; all the stuff my grandma made like no one else could. She continued praying over her dough, a tradition her mother, Juanita, practiced before her, and the result was heavenly. Oh, but the snow! My brother and I just couldnï¿½t contain ourselves. "Mama, when can we go play? Please!" We lamented at my motherï¿½s lack of compassion. Her only concern was staving off an onslaught of runny noses and floors flooded with melted snow. I have to say in retrospect, that she wasnï¿½t all that wrong to hold us off as long as she could. Having to drink more than a few cups of home brewed remedio tea from my grandma, made from ocha, or manzanilla, was reason enough to try and stay wellï¿½but we were little kids! All the regalitos (gifts) from Christmas were no match for what we could do outside. A day in the snow was like paradise! Finally, she relented. "Okay, okay, go," she sighed, bundling us up under piles of clothes, none of them waterproof or insulated, like they have now. Special clothes for the snow? Orale (Get real)! No no, back then, you acted as though you could defy the snow by virtue of quantity, not quality. Nothing was snow proof. You wore three shirts and two pants, a jacket and gloves, and maybe Your dadï¿½s flannel shirt for good measure. You couldnï¿½t move, but you sure werenï¿½t gonna get cold anytime soon. "What should we do first?" I asked my brother, who was four years my junior and the instigator of most of our adventures. We smiled at each other, both molachos (gap-toothed), and stepped out into the pile of nieve (snow) at our doorstep. It was so deepï¿½and cold! Sable, our black Lab, came over and jumped all over us, pushing us down and breathing in our faces. My brother reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of candy -- the old-fashioned ribbon kind that my grandma always had this time of year. "Letï¿½s go to the acequia (irrigation ditch), to see if itï¿½s frozen," he suggested. We trudged out of the yard, towards my grandmaï¿½s house, pushing the snow with our feet. Sable walked alongside of us, a black swath against the white. My grampa was outside, preparing to get on the tractor, and move the snow. "Hey muchachos (kids)!" He called out to us, "what are you doing?" "Hi Grampa," we giggled, on our way to the back of the house, past the abandoned gallinero (hen house), beyond the "pool" that my mom and her brothers and sister thought they could dig in the backyard when they were kids. When we got to the ditch, it was white with ice, although you could see little bubbles of water underneath. We just looked at it, afraid to step closer. Everything was silent around us. Then my brother picked up a handful of snow and threw it in my face ï¿½ PAS! "Youï¿½re gonna get it!" I yelled, as he tried to run, and fell just a few yards away. I picked up a huge ball of snow and dumped it right on top of his cabeza (head). We rolled in the snow, making angelitos (snow angels) until my brother saw the big snow shovel my grampa used earlier. "Hey," he said, "letï¿½s see if Sable will pull us!" "Pull us? Okay!" Sable was always doing amazing things. My dad could pick up a rock, let the dog smell it and then throw it as far as he could down the caï¿½on across from our house, and Sable would take off, and bring back the exact same rock hours later. We could throw a rock on top of the roof of the garage, and he would climb the ladder, get the rock and then jump off the roof. So of course he could pull two mocositos (snot-nosed kids) on the back of a snow shovel! We went to my grampaï¿½s garage and got some rope and the shovel and tied one end to the dog. We sat on the shovel and Sable pulled us all over the place! We held on and laughed the whole time, tipping over and getting back on, pretending he was a racehorse. My grandma came outside. "Mija," she called, "you guys come in. I have cookies." My brother and I hopped off, and went inside for a biscochito, warm and sweet, savoring the anise, and the cinnamon on top. Her Christmas tree twinkled in the corner, filled with ornaments that were old, but beautiful. The angel on top had a macaroni head that someone, maybe my mom, made years ago when she was a kid. When we finished our cookies, she told us "Vayanse, go home and get cleaned up. Weï¿½re going to Espaï¿½ola, and weï¿½re taking your gramita with us." My great grandma, Juanita, was then in her 90ï¿½s and a trip to Espaï¿½ola, for whatever reason, was a big deal. We trudged home and got cleaned up (runny noses and all) and piled into the red Datsun. Mom was at the wheel, ready to navigate the roads that curved like a snake covered in ice. I sat next to my great grandma. I still remember her soothing smell, and the way she held my hand in hers. We made our way down the road, slowly, and just at the big curve that they call "el alto Juachin", it happened. We slid on the ice, in a wide arc straight into a snow-covered hill. I donï¿½t remember if anyone screamed, but I do remember my gramita, with her rosary in one hand, holding onto me with the other, praying in a whisper. The Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, reverberated in my ears as she steadfastly held onto her faith and me in the same breath. When we finally got free of the snow, with the help of someone who knew my dad, or my tio, or my grampo, someone, we decided to call it a day and just head back home, abandoning our trip to town. My brother and I looked at each other, smiling gap-toothed grins and sucking on pieces of candy we just couldnï¿½t resist, and both asked in unison, "Can we go play outside again? Please!" Melissa Lopez is a native of Truchas, a small town in Northern New Mexico. A descendant of settlers from the 1700's, Melissa has been writing poetry for ten-plus years and is now branching out into short story fiction. Her two daughters, Analise, ten and Adriana, eight, are both artists. Analise is also a dancer and Adriana a poet. Melissa enjoys writing about her culture and wrote her first poem in second grade. FROM MY DOLL TO MIDOL By Ben Romero She was beautiful from the start, but I canï¿½t take the credit. My daughterï¿½s stunning looks were inherited from her mother. ï¿½She looks like a little doll,ï¿½ people would say, when I carried her in my arms, pushed her on her stroller, or took her for rides on her pony. Her smile was so big, that even after all her teeth came in, we could clearly see her gums. She seldom spoke, preferring to point and laugh. But when she was unhappy, her irritating cry was enough to cause her siblings and relatives to cover their ears. Then she mastered speech, although much later than most children. It was constant chatter, first in English, then in Spanish. First words, then songs. And through it all, she remained Daddyï¿½s little doll. ï¿½Iï¿½m cute, arenï¿½t I Dad? Admit it.ï¿½ How could I deny it? Sheï¿½d dress herself up like a cowgirl, then Iï¿½d go outside to work in the yard and come back in to find her dressed like a gypsy or a Mexican dancer. An hour later sheï¿½d be dressed like an Indian girl, long braids and all, and later like a rock star. It was amusing and kept me guessing. Which Rebecca will she be the next time I come in? It was her ability to change personalities from one minute to the next that distinguished her from other children, including her two older brothers and sister. But it didnï¿½t matter. Each was amusing. It was as though I had several Rebeccas, one rambling in English, another in Spanish, and others alternating from happy to grumpy and back to happy. Sometimes Iï¿½d leave her inside taking a nap while I worked in the garden and come back inside to find the furniture re-arranged. I donï¿½t know where she found the strength in her tiny body to move the large dressers, but sheï¿½d do it, and laugh about it. One day, when she was reaching adolescence, the moods suddenly changed. There was no laughter, no singing, no dancing, no endless talking. None of her personalities was happy. She yelled at everyone for no reason. When my wife got home from work, I gave the kids a chance to take turns drawing her attention, then took her aside. ï¿½Somethingï¿½s wrong with Becca,ï¿½ I told her. ï¿½Sheï¿½s mad at the world. She doesnï¿½t want to talk about it, either. Believe me, I tried. She hasnï¿½t dressed up in the whole day. In fact, she doesnï¿½t even look like a doll today.ï¿½ My wife must have noticed my concern, because she sent the kids outside and sat on the couch, motioning for me to sit next to her. ï¿½Sheï¿½s not sick.ï¿½ ï¿½Oh?ï¿½ ï¿½She growing up, Ben. Youï¿½ll have to face it the way you had to face Victoria getting married. Itï¿½s going to be like this at least one week per month from now on.ï¿½ In the blink of an eye, my little girl had gone from being my doll to needing Midol. XICOTENCATL The little army of Cortes came to a porthole in the great wall of Tlaxcala that defended the eastern frontier of the indomitable republic. The soldiers paused to look with astonishment upon the gigantic ramparts that Prescott called "the display of impressive power and force of the people who erected it." But on this occasion, the ramparts, which had been assigned to the Otomies, were left unguarded. The Spanish general put himself at the head of his cavalry, and looking back upon his soldiers exclaimed, full of faith and enthusiasm, "Soldiers, forward! Below the Cross and our flag we will be invincible," and the Spanish warriors stepped upon the soil of the free republic of Tlaxcala. The Spanish army and its Zempoalan allies walked in orderly manner with Cortes and his horsemen in the vanguard and the Zempoalans the rear. Passing the desert plain the column came across a monstrous snake with the head adorned with brilliant metal shine and a body covered with painted feathers. Cortes proceeded pensively; his wrinkled brow indicating deep thought. A thousand conflicting ideas and disordered thoughts competed in the soul of the brave Capitaine, who with but few men had thrust himself into an enterprise of a scale unmatched in the annals of history. A profound silence overcame the column, and the only sound heard was the breathing of the horses. Now and then Cortes spurred his horse ahead and gazed attentively eager to discover something in the distance. He would pause for a moment to take in the view, then return silently into meditation. What hope, what fear did the leader expect fulfilled in his gaze into the distance? He hoped for the return of his ambassadors and feared the response of the government of the Republic of Tlaxcala. * * * * When Cortes decided to march with his army to the capital of the Empire of Moctezuma, he vacillated over which road to take.. He initially intended to leave aside the Republic of Tlaxcala and take the more direct route through Cholula, a country that had submitted to the Empire of Mexico, and in which he hoped to encounter a favorable reception which could enhance the prospects for his reception with Emperor Moctezuma. But his Zempoalan allies, who joined him against the Aztecs rule, advised another path. Tlaxcala was a free and independent republic. Its people were bellicose and indomitable never having consented to the yoke of the Aztec Empire, having beaten Potyautlan in battle, beaten Zaxayactl, and later beaten Moctezuma. The love of nationhood had made them invincible and constituted them as irreconcilable enemies of the Mexicanos. The Zempoalans advised Cortes that to procure an alliance with the Tlaxcalans would bring him the bravery and loyalty of a people of valor. Cortes agreed that his allies had good arguments. He took the road to Tlaxcala and sent four Zempoalans ahead as his ambassadors to the senate of Tlaxcala, with a military gift consisting of a crimson helmet, a sword, and a bow. There was also a message. It acknowledged the valor of the Tlaxcalans, their perseverance, their love of country, and concluded by proposing an alliance, with the objective to humiliate and punish the ruling Emperor of Mexico. The ambassadors went forth and Cortes continued his path, passing through the great Tlaxcalan walled ramparts and penetrating into the land of the republic, without the ambassadors having returned with their report. * * * * The Spanish army advanced rapidly, the general following each moment with greater worry, but he finally gave in to impulse and galloped forward, a move imitated by his horsemen, and some of the footmen accelerated trying to accompany him. They slowed to a walk as Cortes explored the terrain. Suddenly they saw ahead a small band of armed Indios, who chose to flee when they saw the Spaniards coming. The horsemen galloped in pursuit and soon were upon the fugitives; but these, in stead of being terrorized by the strange sight of the horses, turned about against the Spaniards and prepared for combat. The handful of valiant warriors were about to be trampled by the horsemen when powerful reinforcements came to their aid. The Spaniards stopped, and Cortes sent a messenger to urge the foot soldiers to hasten their march. Meanwhile, the Indios flooded the Spaniards with arrows which managed to break the shielding of the horses, leaving two of them dead. Their heads were cut off for trophies. The battle was going bad for Cortes and might have gone worse had not the remainder of his troops arrived, the infantry charging into the lines and the musketeers discharging their weapons, that for the first time were heard in this region, and convinced the enemy to retire. They did so in orderly fashion, without giving the slightest sign of fear. The Christians were thus the holders of the battle field. The Spaniards chose the site for their camp, and they celebrated their triumph. Then there appeared two Tlaxcalans and two of the ambassadors Cortes had sent. They said that the senate, in the name of the republic, had disavowed the attack upon the Spaniards and informed them that they would be well received in the capital city. Cortes believed them, or feigned to believe in the good faith behind their words, and the army prepared for the coming of night, but without losing a moment of vigilance. Dawn of the following day, 2 of September 1519, the army of the Christians, accompanied by three thousand allies, put itself in march, after attending devotedly a mass celebrated by the priests. Breaking from the march were the horsemen, three taking the rear and the rest, as always, in the front with Cortes. They had not advanced far when they encountered the two other Zempoalan ambassadors of Cortes. They announced that general Xicotencatl awaited them with a powerful army determined to block their path at any cost. Indeed, moments later a great mass of Tlaxcalans appeared brandishing arms and giving warrior shouts.Cortes wished to negotiate, but these men would hear nothing of it. Darts, arrows and rocks rained upon the Spaniards, who though wavering, were little injured thanks to protection from their coats of mail. "For Santiago and King," shouted Cortes in a rough roar, and the horsemen lowered their lances and charged upon the multitude. The Tlaxcalans retreated, and the Spaniards, blind with the heat of battle, pursued until they found themselves in a narrowing arroyo where neither the horsemen nor the artillery could operate. Cortes realized the situation and called for an exit to the plain from this tightening throat of a canyon. But then his darting eye caught the sight of Tlaxcalans who appeared to have multiplied their forces. It was the army of Xicotencatl, who had anxiously awaited the moment of combat. Over the confused mass of fighters there was hoisted the banner of the young general. It carried the design of the house of Tittcala, a heron over a rock, with feathers and insignias of combatants, yellow and red, further indications that these were the warriors of Xicotencatl. The trumpets sounded, and in the clash of war their came the terrible combat. * * * * It was Xicotencatl, the leader of this army, a young son of one of the most respected of the elders who composed the Tlaxcalan senate. Of Herculean form, it was said that he walked majestically, had an agreeable countenance, and his brilliant black eyes seemed to penetrate. He was given to meditations of hidden signs of the future. Self-assured and dedicated, the general was one of whom no one could ever imagine a thought of treason, no more than a night bird would chose to fly high in the sky to be lit by the light of dawn.. Xicotencatlï¿½s appearance was made more impressive by his attire. Over his barrel chest, covered with a tight and thick coat of cotton, he wore an armor plate of gold and silver. Protecting his head was a helmet covered with precious stones and shaped to imitate the head of an eagle. Over this there waved a regal plume descending to near the knees and consisting of red and yellow in a species of cotton cloth bordered with feathers. His thin muscular arms showed rich bracelets, and from his sturdy back hung a small shawl, formed in a weave of exquisite feathers. On this day, he held aloft in his right hand a heavy wooden staff, its end bristling with points of "iztli," and his left arm held a shield painted with diverse arms of the house of Tittcala, and from which hung an elaborate plume of feathers. Xicotencatl could have been taken for one of the demigods of Greek mythology, considering his fantastical and beautiful appearance.. All the army of Tlaxcala obeyed him, and through him flowed the warrior heart of his republic, the incarnation of its patriotism and its bravery. It was he who scorned the fabulous tales about the Spaniards, that they were divine, invincible and children of the sun. He led the army of the republic to confront these strangers, disregarding the cowardly counsel of the elder Maxixcatzin, who wished for peace with the Christians. Unintimidated, the general marched to the line to face the monstrous forces, and the unknowns. The collision was terrible: an entire day of battle, and Xicotencatl, who lost eight of his most trusted Capitaines, had to retreat, but without believing that he had been defeated, and waiting the new day to give anew the contest. Cortes collected his wounded and wasted little time before continuing his march, until arriving at Tzomatachtepetl mountain. On the summit his men constructed a small church and rested for the night. The Christian soldiers and their allies celebrated their victory, but Cortes understood it was an ephemeral triumph. Worry filled his thoughts, and he toyed with giving his troops a day of rest. Xicotencatl camped quite close to Cortes, and prepared for a new combat as did the Spaniards. None-the-less, the Spanish general wanted to test the chance for peace, and ambassadors carrying messages of conciliation were sent to Xicotencatl to propose an armistice. The ambassadors returned with the answer of the young leader. It was a challenge to the death and a promise of attack the next day. Cortes reflected that his reputation was endangered and he decided to set out promptly the next morning toward the Tlaxcalans. A bright dawn marked the 5 of September 1519. The sun soon appeared pure and serene, and light fell upon the Spanish generalï¿½s soldiers and horsemen. The march was orderly and in silence, the custom of soldiers who await combat one moment to the next. All well knew that their bold general was leading them to an attack from the army of Xicotencatl. They had scarcely marched a quarter a league when that army appeared, and the view filled the horizon. The surprising spectacle featured an ocean of feathers of a thousand colors. They undulated in the fresh wind of the morning, and the light of the new day gave the gold, silver and precious jewels of their coats the phosphorescence of a tempestuous sea. On the horizon, appearing in the haze of flags of the distinct Otomi and Tlaxcalan caciques, and dominating all, proudly, was the gold eagle, its wings open, emblem of the unconquerable republic. At the sight of the army of Cortes, this multitude gave a terrifying bellow that was carried on the wind and echoed in the mountains in repeating confusion. The monotonous sound of the trumpets answered the shout of war: The Indio warriors, stood agitated for a moment, then as a torrent over flowing the banks, the multitude threw itself upon the Spaniards.There wasnï¿½t a soul among the valiant Castillians who did not experience a shudder of awe. The rapid advance of the army of Xicotencatl created an immense cloud of dust, that soon floated over both armies, as a canopy , through which crossed sad and yellow rays of the sun. Such was the boiling waterfall of men, weapons, feathers, jewels and standards. A roar arose in the tempest, the shouts of combatants who felt for themselves each moment more close, who mixed themselves with the clatter of fire arms, the whistling of arrows, the sounds of trumpets and fifes and drums. The two armies entwined, became groping fighters, and the scene became horrifying, indescribable Neither horsemen nor infantry could maneuver. There came the silent blows of the steel swords of the Spaniards upon the thinly protected chests of the Indios, and the noisy hailstorm of rocks, and blows of arrows on the iron shields of the soldiers of Cortes. The extent of the slaughter can not be explained nor comprehended. The canon balls and the muskets created a broad mural of human meat, and the blood flowed as water in the streams. The combat became a human boiling of fighters who fell, one upon the other creating a bloody mud.Treason came to the aid of the Spaniards. A cacique of one of the militia under the orders of Xicotencatl fled, taking with him ten thousand fighters, and the victory was decided for the Christians. The defeat discouraged the people and senate of Tlaxcala. But Xicotencatl reminded himself of the enthusiasm and love of the patria in his heart, and he met with the priesthood and the priests said to the people and the senate that the Christians protected themselves by the sun and ought to be attacked at night. The people and the senate agreed. That night Xicotencatl conducted his troops in an attack on the camp of the Spaniards The night watch of Cortes saw through the shadows the black masses of the approaching Tlaxcalan army, and the Spanish soldiers were soon on foot. Xicotencatl rushed at the fortifications of the Spaniards. A small distance still separated them when suddenly a band of red light flashed from the camp, and the sound of fire arms caused echoes in the mountains. The Tlaxcalans attacked furiously, but on this as on other occasions the canons and the muskets gave victory to Cortes. The senate of Tlaxcala blamed the loss of life on the insistence for battle by the young leader, who was forced to give up his struggle. As Spaniards entered triumphant into Tlaxcala, the eagle of the republic gave a cry of pain and flew to the mountains. The senate of the republic, that had yet to act toward the invaders in favor of the nation, and fearful of the anger of the conquistadors, stripped their young Capitaine of his rank. But the great spirit of Hernan Cortes was awakened and he felt the conduct of the senate was a profound ingratitude, and he gave his strong opinion that Xicotencatl should reclaim his honors. * * * * It was the first days of March 1521. Cortes was returning to the capital of the Aztec Empire, from which he had fled, almost defeated in the celebrated Noche Triste, dragging now a powerful army composed of Spaniards and allies, including Tlaxcalans, among whom alarming news circulated. Xicotencatl had disappeared from their camp. It was the widely believed that his exit was caused by the bad treatment the Spaniards had given his fellow allies, and above all because of the hatred Xicotencatl professed against the alliance. The order as given for the Tlaxcalans to proceed to Tlacopan to begin the siege of the capital, and the Tlaxcalans took to the road. Leaving the city of Texcoco they viewed, without being given explanation, the construction of a large scaffold, which caused shivers in their ranks. * * * * In Texcoco the sun began to fall behind the mountains and formed a crystalline setting on the waters of the lake on the serene and pleasant afternoon. Along the road from Tlaxcala came a group of soldiers and horsemen conducting in the middle of their ranks a prisoner, who walked so proudly one might expect he was leading this troop. The prisoner looked the scaffold and understood the fate that awaited, but without a shudder. Because this man was Xicotencatl, and Xicotencatl didnï¿½t know how to fear death. The Spaniards notified him of his sentence; he was to die for having abandoned his flags, and thus given a poor example to the loyal Tlaxcalans. Xicotencatl, who had begun to learn Spanish, answered his sentence with a smile of depreciation. Then he was hoisted and tied. The pale and melancholy light of the moon shown on the horizon, and tracked over the tranquil surface of the lake to light the scene of death. The commander of Tlaxcala, the hero of the republicï¿½s fight for independence, expired suspended from the gallows, contemplated from below with admiration by soldiers of Cortes. In the distance were a group of Tlaxcalans, who fled in terror, because there on scaffold was the freedom of the nation. XICOTENCATL Atravesaba el pequeï¿½o ejï¿½rcito de Hernï¿½n Cortï¿½s la soberbia muralla de Tlaxcala que defendï¿½a la frontera oriental de aquella indï¿½mita Repï¿½blica. Los soldados se detenï¿½an mirando con asombro aquel monumento gigantesco, que segï¿½n la expresiï¿½n de Prescott (tan alta idea sugerï¿½a del poder y fuerza del pueblo que le habï¿½a levantado). Pero aquel paso, aquella fortaleza cuya custodia tenï¿½an encargada los otohomï¿½s, estaba entonces desguarnecida. El general espaï¿½ol se puso a la cabeza de su caballerï¿½a, e hizo atravesar por allï¿½ a sus soldados, exclamando lleno de fe y entusiasmo: (Soldados, adelante, la Cruz es nuestra bandera, y bajo esta seï¿½al venceremos): y los guerreros espaï¿½oles hollaron el suelo de la libre Repï¿½blica de Tlaxcalan. El ejï¿½rcito espaï¿½ol y sus aliados los Zempoaltecas ordenadamente; Cortï¿½s con sus jinetes llevaba la vanguardia; Zempoaltecas la retaguardia. Aquella columna atravesando la desierta llanura, parecï¿½a una serpiente monstruosa con la cabeza guarnecida de brillantes escamas de acero, y el cuerpo cubierto de pintadas y vistosas plumas. Cortï¿½s caminaba pensativo: el tenaz fruncimiento de su entrecejo, indicaba su profunda meditaciï¿½n: mil encontradas ideas y mil desacordes pensamientos debï¿½an luchar en el alma de aquel osado capitï¿½n, que con un puï¿½ado de hombres se lanzaba a acometer la empresa mï¿½s grande que registra la historia en sus anales. 8] Reinaba el silencio mï¿½s profundo en la columna, y sï¿½lo se escuchaba el ruido sordo y confuso de las pisadas de los caballos. De cuando en cuando, Cortï¿½s se levantaba sobre los estribos y dirigï¿½a ardientes miradas, como intentando descubrir algo a lo lejos: asï¿½ permanecï¿½a algunos momentos, nada alcanzaba a ver, y volvï¿½a silenciosamente a caer en su meditaciï¿½n. ï¿½Quï¿½ esperaba, quï¿½ temï¿½a aquel hombre que procuraba asï¿½ sondear los dilatados horizontes? -Esperaba la vuelta de sus embajadores: temï¿½a la resoluciï¿½n del gobierno de la Repï¿½blica de Tlaxcala. Cuando Cortï¿½s determinï¿½ pasar con su ejï¿½rcito a la capital del imperio de Motecuzï¿½ma, vacilï¿½ sobre el camino que debï¿½a llevar; era su intenciï¿½n dejar a un lado la Repï¿½blica de Tlaxcala y tomar el camino de Cholula, paï¿½s sometido al imperio de Mï¿½xico y en donde esperaba encontrar favorable acogida, por las relaciones de amistad que le unï¿½an ya con el emperador Motecuzï¿½ma. Pero sus aliados los Zempoaltecas le aconsejaron otra cosa. Tlaxcala era Repï¿½blica independiente y libre; sus hijos, belicosos e indomables, no habï¿½an consentido nunca el yugo del imperio Azteca, vencedores en las llanuras de Poyauhtlan: vencedores de Axayacalt, y vencedores despuï¿½s de Motecuzï¿½ma, el amor a su patria les habï¿½a hecho invencibles y les constituï¿½a irreconciliables enemigos de los mexicanos: los Zempoaltecas aconsejaron a Cortï¿½s que procurase hacer alianza con los de Tlaxcala, abonando encarecidamente el valor y la lealtad de aquellos hombres. Comprendiï¿½ Cortï¿½s que sus aliados tenï¿½an razï¿½n, y tomï¿½ decididamente el camino de Tlaxcala, enviado delante de sï¿½ como embajadores a cuatro Zempoaltecas para hablar al senado de Tlaxcala, con un presente marcial que consistï¿½a en un casco de gï¿½nero carmesï¿½, una espada y una ballesta, y portadores de una carta en la que encomiaba el valor de los Tlaxcaltecas, su constancia y su amor a la patria, y concluï¿½a proponiï¿½ndoles una alianza con objeto de humillar y castigar al soberbio emperador de Mï¿½xico. Los embajadores partieron, Cortï¿½s continuï¿½ su camino, atravesï¿½ la gran muralla tlaxcalteca y penetrï¿½ en el terreno de [9] la Repï¿½blica, sin que aquellos hubieran vuelto a dar noticia de su embajada. El ejï¿½rcito espaï¿½ol avanzaba con rapidez; el general seguï¿½a cada momento mï¿½s inquieto: por fin no pudo contenerse, puso al galope su caballo, y una partida de jinetes le imitï¿½, y algunos peones aceleraron el paso para acompaï¿½arles; asï¿½ caminaron algï¿½n tiempo explorando el terreno: de repente alcanzaron a ver una pequeï¿½a partida de indios aislados que echaban a huir cuando vieron acercarse a los espaï¿½oles: los jinetes se lanzaron en su persecuciï¿½n, y muy pronto alcanzaron a los fugitivos; pero ï¿½stos, en vez de aterrorizarse por el extraï¿½o aspecto de los caballos, hicieron frente a los espaï¿½oles y se prepararon a combatir. Aquel puï¿½ado de valientes hubiera sido arrollado por la caballerï¿½a, si en el mismo momento un poderoso refuerzo no hubiera aparecido en su auxilio. Los espaï¿½oles se detuvieron, y Cortï¿½s enviï¿½ uno de su comitiva para avisar a su ejï¿½rcito que apresurase la marcha. Entretanto los indios disparando sus flechas se arrojaron sobre los espaï¿½oles, procurando romper sus lanzas y arrancar a los jinetes de los caballos; dos de ï¿½stos fueron muertos en aquella refriega, y degollados para llevarse las cabezas como trofeos de guerra. Rudo y desigual era el combate, y mal lo hubieran pasado los espaï¿½oles que allï¿½ acompaï¿½aban a Cortï¿½s, a no haber llegado en su socorro el resto del ejï¿½rcito: desplegose la infanterï¿½a en batalla, y las descargas de los mosquetes y el terrible estruendo de las armas de fuego que por primera vez se escuchaban en aquellas regiones, contuvieron a los enemigos que retirï¿½ndose en buen orden y sin dar muestra ninguna de pavor, dejaron a los cristianos dueï¿½os del lugar del combate. Sobre aquel terreno se detuvieron los espaï¿½oles, acampando, como seï¿½al del triunfo, sobre el mismo campo de batalla. Dos enviados tlaxcaltecas y dos de los embajadores de Cortï¿½s se presentaron entonces para manifestar, en nombre de la Repï¿½blica, la desaprobaciï¿½n del ataque que habï¿½an recibido los espaï¿½oles, y ofreciendo a ï¿½stos que serï¿½an bien recibidos en la ciudad. Cortï¿½s creyï¿½ o fingiï¿½ creer en la buena fe de aquellas palabras: cerrï¿½ la noche y el ejï¿½rcito se recogiï¿½, sin perder un momento la vigilancia. Amaneciï¿½ el siguiente dï¿½a, que era el dos de Setiembre de 1519, y el ejï¿½rcito de los cristianos, acompaï¿½ado de tres mil aliados, se puso en marcha, despuï¿½s de haber asistido devotamente a la misa que celebrï¿½ uno de los capellanes. Rompï¿½an la marcha los jinetes, de tres en fondo, a la cabeza de los cuales iba como siempre el donado Cortï¿½s. No habï¿½an avanzado aï¿½n mucho terreno, cuando salieron a su encuentro los otros dos Zempoaltecas, embajadores de Cortï¿½s, anunciï¿½ndole que el general Xicotï¿½ncatl les esperaba con un poderoso ejï¿½rcito y decidido a estorbarles el paso a todo trance. En efecto, a pocos momentos una gran masa de tlaxcaltecas se presentï¿½ blandiendo sus armas y lanzando alaridos guerreros. Cortï¿½s quiso parlamentar, pero aquellos hombres nada escucharon, y una lluvia de dardos, de piedra y de flechas, vino a rebotar, como ï¿½nica contestaciï¿½n, sobre los fï¿½rreos arneses de los espaï¿½oles. (Santiago y a ellos), gritï¿½ Cortï¿½s con ronca voz, y los jinetes bajando las lanzas arremetieron a aquella cerrada multitud. Los Tlaxcaltecas comenzaron a retirarse: los espaï¿½oles, ciegos por el ardor del combate, comenzaron a perseguirlos, y asï¿½ llegaron hasta un desfiladero cortado por un arroyo, en donde era imposible que maniobrase la artillerï¿½a ni los jinetes. Cortï¿½s comprendiï¿½ lo difï¿½cil de su situaciï¿½n, y con un esfuerzo desesperado logrï¿½ salir de aquella garganta y descender a la llanura. Pero entonces sus asombrados ojos contemplaron allï¿½ un ejï¿½rcito de Tlaxcaltecas, que su imaginaciï¿½n multiplicaba: era el ejï¿½rcito de Xicotï¿½ncatl que esperaba con ansia el momento del combate. Sobre aquella multitud confusa se levantaba la bandera del joven general; era la enseï¿½a de la casa de Tittcala, una garza sobre una roca, y las plumas y las mallas de los combatientes, [11] amarillas y rojas, indicaban tambiï¿½n que eran los guerreros de Xicotï¿½ncatl. Don Fernando Muï¿½oz Altea Fernï¿½ndez y Bueno nombrado Cronista Rey de Armas Index to the Enciclopedia Herï¿½ldica Hispano-Americana of Alberto and Arturo Garcï¿½a Carraffa Cronista Rey de Armas Casa Real de Borbon Dos Sicilias (Italia) y de la Orden de San Lï¿½zaro. Don Fernando Muï¿½oz Altea Fernï¿½ndez y Bueno fue nombrado como Cronista Rey de Armas de la Real Casa de Borbï¿½n y Dos Sicilias desde el aï¿½o 1962. ï¿½Desde entonces Don Fernando ha estado a cargo de las funciones inherentes a su cargo registrando blasones y emitiendo certificaciones genealï¿½gicas a las personas que asï¿½ lo soliciten de conformidad con los procedimientos que tradicionalmente se han seguido para el efecto. Don Fernando se desempeï¿½a tambiï¿½n como Cronista Rey de Armas de la Orden Militar y Hospitalaria de San Lï¿½zaro de Jerusalï¿½n desde 1974. "Estoy gustoso de pertenecer a ese grupo. Soy licenciado en historia, investigador con mï¿½s de 50 aï¿½os de experiencia y tengo los nombramientos de Rey de Armas de la Real Casa de Borbï¿½n Dos Sicilias (Italia) y de la Orden de San Lï¿½zaro. He de advertirles que soy profesional en el campo de ï¿½stas disciplinas y extiendo certificaciones de armas y genealogï¿½a, e investigo en toda latinoamerica, -principalmente en Mï¿½xico donde resido-, Espaï¿½a, Portugal e Italia. Ello no obsta para contestar pequeï¿½as preguntas, gratuitamente, si estï¿½n a mi alcance. Un cordial saludo, Fernando Muï¿½oz Altea" Index to the Enciclopedia Herï¿½ldica Hispano-Americana of Alberto and Arturo Garcï¿½a Carraffa The Library of Congress, Hispanic Reading Room Members of the Granaderos and Damas of San Antonio met with the Texas Connection to the Revolution agreeing to seek Honorary United States Citizenship for General Bernardo de Galvez Photo by Rosemarie Fernandez, Randolph Air Force Base, February 18, 2007 Alphabetical: Jack Cowan, Susan Cowan, Joel Escamilla, Maria Escamilla, Angela Fernandez, Carlos Fernandez, Tito Fernandez, Frank Galindo, Karla Galindo, Lila Guzman, Ph.D., Margaret Hensley, Rosemarie LaPenta, Richard LaPenta, Mimi Lozano, Mary Beth Lyons, Corinne Staake, Robert Thonhoff, Vicky Thonhoff, and Richard Whynot The following list are the names of individuals that have shown an interest in promoting a knowledge of the contributions of Bernardo de Galvez to the general public.ï¿½ The focus of our combined efforts will be to obtain an honorary U.S. Citizenship for Galvez.ï¿½ Most of the activities will be within our own circle of influence, and through contacts with elected governmental officials.ï¿½ Please feel invited to support this goal and let us know what you are doing, or how you can help. Eliud Bonilla [email protected] ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Bill Carmena:ï¿½ [email protected] , Paul Newfield: [email protected] ,ï¿½ Maria Angela O'Donnell Olson: [email protected] ,ï¿½ Michael Perez:ï¿½ï¿½ [email protected] , Angel Custodio Rebollo: [email protected] ,ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Mario Robles del Moral: [email protected] ,ï¿½ï¿½ Steven Rubin: [email protected] ,ï¿½ï¿½ Robert Thonhoff:ï¿½ [email protected] ,ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Carlos Vega:ï¿½ [email protected] ,ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Roland Vela Muzquiz: [email protected] , Reaching Out to the Community Lila Guzman, Ph.D. has been enjoying sharing the fun of history directly with young people. LOS FRESNOS ISD: Los Cuates Middle School and Resaca Middle School MISSION CISD: Mims Elementary McALLEN: Jefferson Elementary and North San Juan Elem. In the presentations (about 45 mins. long) the students and I discuss the American Revolution and Spanish involvement in it (supplies, cattle drives, battles fought by Bernardo de Galvez). We trace the route of supplies from Spanish New Orleans to General Washington. I also act out a mock small pox inoculation with two students. The Lorenzo series is ideal for students studying American history. There are 3 books in the series at present. LORENZO AND THE PIRATE is due out in 2008. LORENZO AND THE TURNCOAT (2006) won the Arizona Authors Literary Award. The publisher offers a special discount for classroom sets. Hard covers are available from Sagebrush and other book binders. [[Editor: I thoroughly enjoyed the Lorezno series, adventures of a youthful hero who displays high values and great ability. He is a mestizo with mulato lines, great model.]] For information on the series, please email Lila Guzman , [email protected] 8:00 A.M. TO 5:00 P.M April 13: 9th Annual Latina Conference April 14-15th The ï¿½Mexicanï¿½ OC, 2-act Play Orange county United Mexican American Veterans Association Did SHHAR hold a quarterly meeting in San Antonio, or not? Save the date: May 26 SHHAR Quarterly A great opportunity for to start or get help in doing family history research. This is the 23rd annual Orange County Family History Fair offered by the LDS Church to the community at at large. There is no charge for attending the conference. A wide variety of classes is offered all day long, from beginning to advanced. I have highlighted in yellow those classes specifically for Spanish language or indigenous research. I also highlighted classes in blue which would be very helpful. The ï¿½Mexicanï¿½ OC An original play in two acts, directed by Sara Guerrero and includes a cast of local Orange County actors. Back by popular demand, this production is a special presentation at Chapman University in honor of the 60th Anniversary of the landmark Mexican American Desegregation Case, Mendez vs. Westminster of 1946. The ï¿½Mexicanï¿½ OC is a funny and poignant collection of stories based on oral histories and archival research that seeks to entertain, educate and eliminate the stereotypes of Orange Countyï¿½s Mexican community. Debi Murillo, a pocha real estate agent and Yolanda Gomez, a chicana crossing guard, guide you through everything from Orange Countyï¿½s first felon, the segregation era, La Habraï¿½s first Latina mayor, and much more. The performance will run for one weekend only, Saturday April 14th & Sunday, April 15th free of charge. Reservations are encouraged. The ï¿½Mexicanï¿½ OC, written in collaboration with Heather Enriquez, Sara Guerrero, Cristina Nava, Apolonio Morales, and Elizabeth Szekeresh, was made possible through a California Council of the Humanities California Story Fund Grant . The performance will take place at: Chapman University To make your reservation please call: (714) 540-1157 or e-mail: [email protected] For more info: www.TheMexicanOC.org A brief post-show Q & A to promptly follow after each show Saturday, April 14, 2007 @ 7:00 p.m. Sunday, April 15, 2007 @ 2:00 p.m. Orange County's United Mexican American Veterans Association Meets the 3rd Saturday from 9-11 a.m. Kidworks, 902 W. Chestnut Ave. Santa Ana January meeting: Nick Sandoval,Stuart Dickinson, Sal Lujan, Isidro Gauna, Robert Collin, Ralph Colin De leon Ben Hernandez Henry, Lozano Mimi, Councilmen David Benavides, Nelida Yanez, Human Relation Commissioner and MAVA Executive Board Secretary Cecilia Aguinaga, Harvey Reyes, Alfonso Alvarez, Frank Luna, and Fred Bella. For information, contact secretary: Margaret Cruz "Little Giant of the Mission District" Message from photographer Andre Gladden Moreno: These photos were taken at the Margaret Cruz Memorial at St. Finn's Catholic Church in San Francisco. The late Margaret Cruz who died at her home in San Francisco on Feb. 6 was a long time friend of my mom, Dorinda Moreno. Cruz was hailed as the "Little Giant of the Mission District" for her small physique but big political fights; she rose in profile in 1960 when co-founded the Mexican American Political Association. <Photo: Frank and Margaret Cruz In addition to celebrating her life, the memorial offered an opportunity for my mom and me to be reunited with old friends, including many of her classmate from San Francisco State University. I'm enjoying my time in San Francisco with my mom and her/our friends. Margaret Cruz was a big loss for us as she was meaningful fixture in our family and nation. Among Mom's friends that attended were Ray Balberan (Film, Back in the Streets), Miguel Barragan (National Concilio's of America, Composer/Singer "Mujer Valiente", Mr & Mrs Lorenzo Dill, Denhi Donis and son Emiliano, Marine Dominguez (Film Maker, Hispanic Media Group), Marcos Gutierrez, Roberto Hernandez, Dorinda Moreno, Ray Rivera,Margo Segura (Cada Cabeza es un Mundo, Curriculum), Gene Royale, Sadie Williams (Building Alliances Coaching), Gladys Sandlin, (Dir. Mission Neighborhood Health Center), and Victoria (Author, Book on Women). I'm probably remembered most by these folks for causing trouble on campus. One time I marched into one of her classrooms and barked, "I wanna dollar!" Another time it took several of my mom's friends to pull her out of class because I was stuck in a tree. Once they got her, she scolded me from below the tree saying, "You figured out how to get up there, now you have to figure out how to come down! Anyway, I'm enjoying my time in San Francisco with my mom and her/our friends. Margaret Cruz was a big loss for us as she was meaningful fixture in our family and nation. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://picasaweb.google.com/andregladden/MargaretCruzMemorial02 ?authkey=1T9_6z52eOo To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account. Red CalacArts Collective, 3rd annual Chicano Park Day Fundraiser Upcoming Chicano Park Day, April 21st, San Diego Sent by Dorinda Moreno [email protected] Calacamig@s- On behalf of the Red CalacArts Collective we would like to thank all who performed, contributed, and attended our 3rd annual Chicano Park Day Fundraiser this past Saturday March 24. Especially Los Romanticos, Acteal, and Chunky and Ricardo Sanchez for the beautiful music. Antonieta Manrï¿½quez for the wonderful menudo. All who donated items for the raffle, including but not limited to: Guillermo Aranda, Sal Barajas, Chicano Park Steering Committee, Carmen Kalo, Annie Ross, Mario Torero, Jim Moreno, Adrian Hernandez, Loca, Ricardo Islas, Pepe Villarino, and Endy Bernal. The event would not have been a success without the help of these fine people. After expenses over $1200 was raised to help organize this year's 37th anniversary of Chicano Park. Since we started the fundraiser three year's ago the Redz have raised over $3000 for the Chicano Park Steering Committee. We look forward to many future Chicano Park fundraisers. The Redz are planning another fundraiser on May 12. This time to help out Calaca artist Berenice Badillo who is recovering from hip replacement surgery. This silent art auction will feature many of San Diego's finest Chican@ artists. Save the date! More info to come. Los Romanticos kicked off the fundraiser. Diego, Betty, Octaviano and his wife enjoyed the menudo and the show. Without a drummer or bass player Acteal still rocked it. Brent E. Beltrï¿½n and Consuelo Manrï¿½quez de Beltrï¿½n Artist Teresa Yolanda Lopez and los hermanos Baza came out to support. Las Redz (Mariajulia, Annie and Marisa) relax for a minute to take aï¿½ pic. Chunky and Ricardo of Los Alacranes closed out the show. Southern California Students About once a year I remind the researchers of Southern California families to take a look at my web site: www.4dw.net/socal . Search for your parents or grandparents in the yearbook listings. I have not been able to post weekly as I did when the page was young, but I try to upload graduating classes at least monthly. All classes listed are at least 50-years-old and all are from Southern California. No ads and strictly non-profit. Hope you find your ancestors. Karla in Bakersfield [email protected] Visit the California-Spanish website at http://www.sfgenealogy.com/spanish Mimi, Here follows the bit from TESTIMONIOS to which I referred. Here from pp. 127-128 are the recollections of Juana Machado: The change of flags in 1822 was as follows. . .(in San Diego). . . The infantry, cavalry, and a few artillerymen were ordered to line up in formation in the presidio plaza. . .A corporal or a soldier held the Spanish flag in one hand and the Mexican flag in the other. Both flags were attached to little sticks. In the presence of Officer Don Jose Maria Estudillo, Commander Ruiz gave the cry "Long live the Mexican Empire!" Then the Spanish flag was lowered and the Mexican flag was raised amidst salvos of artillery and fusillade. After this, the soldiers received nothing. The next day, the soldiers were ordered to cut off their braids. This produced a very unfavorable reaction in everyone--men and women alike. The men were used to wearing their hair long and braided. At the tip of the braid there would be a ribbon or a silk knot. On many men, the braid went past their waist. . . The order was carried out. I remember when my father arrived home with his braid in his hand. He gave it to my mother. His face showed such sorrow. My mother's face was not any better. She would look at the braid and cry. . . " A delightful book. It brings history alive. " Published in collaboration with the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley "Testimonios is a pioneering work of scholarship and critical interpretation by two of the finest Hispanicists active in early California studies. It is also a deeply moving act of liberation in which thirteen women are called forth from the tomb of neglected history so that they might at long last speak to us of their lives and times and the California they helped bring into being."ï¿½Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California. From the editors of the highly influential Lands of Promise and Despair , here are thirteen womenï¿½s firsthand accounts from the time California was part of Spain and Mexico. When in the early 1870s historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent interviewers out to gather oral histories from the pre-statehood gentry of California, he didnï¿½t count on one thing: the women. When the men werenï¿½t available, the interviewers collected the stories of the women of the householdï¿½almost as an afterthought. These were eventually archived at the University of California, although many were all but forgotten. Having lived through the gold rush and seen their country change so drastically, these women understood the need to tell the full story of the people and the places that were their California. Some of their words are translated here into English for the first time. Advance Praise: "Testimonios is a pioneering work of scholarship and critical interpretation by two of the finest Hispanicists active in early California studies. It is also a deeply moving act of liberation in which thirteen women are called forth from the tomb of neglected history so that they might at long last speak to us of their lives and times and the California they helped bring into being."ï¿½Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California About the Editors: Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz teach Spanish and history, respectively, at Santa Clara University. Together they are the authors of Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535ï¿½1846 and the editors of Guide to Manuscripts Concerning Baja California in the Collections of the Bancroft Library. They translated and edited The History of Alta California by Antonio Marï¿½a Osio, and they are also co-editors of Boletï¿½n: The Journal of the California Mission Studies Association. The couple lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. RECIBIDO DE LA PEï¿½A ANDALUZA EN CALIFORNIA Informaciï¿½nï¿½de la Peï¿½a Andaluza para nuestros socios y amigos: Sent by Maria Angeles O'Donnell Olson [email protected] Fiesta del Caballo Espaï¿½ol: 5 de Mayo Burbank, California La Peï¿½a Andaluza participarï¿½ un aï¿½o mï¿½s en este faboluso despliegue de exhibiciones y concursos de caballos de pura sangre espaï¿½ola y andaluza. Montaremos un "stand" con los colores de Espaï¿½a y Andalucï¿½a con publicidad y artï¿½culos de nuestras provincias andaluzas y espaï¿½olas. Nuestro agradecimiento a la Oficina de Turismo de Espaï¿½a en Los ï¿½ngeles por su aportaciï¿½n cada aï¿½o al esfuerzo de nuestra organizaciï¿½n para difundir nuestra cultura. El grupo flamenco de la Peï¿½a amenizarï¿½ esta fabulosa fiesta en la que se presentan mï¿½s de 400 caballo y a la que asisten miles de personas. Para los detalles, visita la pï¿½gina: http://www.fiestaspanishhorse.com Party/fundraiser organized by Amigos de El Salvador.ï¿½ The dance was held in Concord, California.ï¿½ The young prettyï¿½lady is Leyla Perez of Nicaragua, but who also has a Salvadoran and Middle Eastern background.ï¿½ Sheï¿½works for the U.S. Post Office in Antioch, California.ï¿½ In one photo she is sitting next to my mother Eva Cader, and in another photo she is dancing with her friend from Veracruz, Mexico. The California Genealogical Society and Library has moved to new quarters. The new address is: California Genealogical Society 2201 Broadway, Suite LL2 Oakland, CA 94612-3017 Volunteers are working hard to reopen CGS in the new location as soon as possible. The books are on the new shelves awaiting shelf-reading, and supplies are being unpacked. The expected date for reopening is 8 March and an informal open house for members is planned for 10 March, with a formal gala open house to occur at a later date. More details will become available on the society's website: www.calgensoc.org RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine 07 March 2007, Vol. 10, No. 10 (c) 1998-2007 RootsWeb.com, Inc.ï¿½ http://www.rootsweb.com LOS CALIFORNIANOS HERITAGE CALENDAR, April Please send info on upcoming events to: Mike Ford, 2123 Brutus St, Salinas, CA 93906 or phone (831) 262-7393 or Email [email protected] Through APRIL 22: Exhibition of paintings & etchings, "Romance of the Bells", depicting the California Missions (courtesy The Irvine Museum), at Hudson Museum, Ukiah. www.gracehudsonmuseum.org To arrange group tour, (707) 467-2836 or [email protected] APRIL The Carmel Mission in Art at Jo Mora Chapel Gallery, Carmel Mission. 1st phase through September = Photography. Curator Julianne Burton-Carvajal will add Painting phase in October and Print/Drawing phase April (2008). http://www.carmelmission.org 21st Presidio of Santa Barbara Founding Day 225th Anniversary - Traditionally, activities have included a procession and reenactment of the founding by Los Soldados. 20th - 22nd Los Californianos meeting in Pomona, Visit to Alvarado Adobe Information: Jane Cowgill [email protected] Dr. Pet Dimas Post 41 played a critical role in eliminating local discrimination. WHAT: Phoenix College liberal arts instructor and director of Southwest studies, Dr. Pete Dimas will unveil Los Veteranos of World War II: A mission for social change in Central Arizona, a documentary written by him. Los Veteranos of World War II: A mission for social change in Central Arizona tells the history of Phoenix through the eyes of local Mexican-American veterans of the United States Military. The ceremonies for this premier will include the Color Guard of American Legion Post 41. Dr. Dimas considers this as Episode 1 to an extensive video history project of this area as experienced through the Hispanic veterans from World War II to the present. The families of some of the World War II veterans were part of the early history of Phoenix. Their story reveals the pre-war social conditions and how these veterans used their unity to challenge adverse conditions and the status quo of Phoenix during a critical time. From eliminating local discrimination in public housing, VA and FHA financed housing, educational institutions, and public facilities to creating a health clinic for their community, members of Thunderbird American Legion Post 41 were instrumental in the fight for equality. Ultimately, the story of Post 41 serves to clarify much of the mythology and history of Phoenix. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (602) 285-7181. WHEN: Thursday, May 5, 2005 (7 p.m.) WHERE: Phoenix College - Bulpitt Auditorium WHY: Membership of Post 41, "an essentially all Chicano Legion Post," according to Dimas, played a critical role in challenging long established racial inequities in Phoenix. Many of the Mexican-American veterans experienced overwhelming scrutiny and discrimination; however, their conviction and cohesive unity truly shaped local history, a history told in Los Veteranos of World War II: A mission for social change in Central Arizona. WHO: Dr. Dimas is a professor of history in the Liberal Arts Department at Phoenix College and is also Director of Southwest Studies for the college. A life-long resident of Phoenix, Arizona, Dr. Dimas is a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, has served as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the area encompassing South Phoenix, and is a former member of the South Mountain Village Planning and Zoning Committee for the City of Phoenix. He currently serves on the state board of the Arizona Historical Society and is a board member of the Braun-Sacred Heart Center, Inc. Phoenix College News Story Contact:ï¿½Christyï¿½Skeenï¿½ï¿½ Sent by Rafael Ojeda [email protected] Cecilia's Year - an historical novel set in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico just after the Great Depression. The novelï¿½s title character struggles to balance the demands of life on her familyï¿½s farm with her ambitions of education and a life in the big cities she reads about in magazines and novels. Deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of the American Southwest, Ceciliaï¿½s Year is also strongly reminiscent of YA classics like Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie. Cinco Puntos Press Recovered History: The First Major Black Theater Freedom's Journal Tips from the Pros: Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy Florida's Forgotten Rebels What is to be done about Latino prejudice against Blacks? Five historical perspectives RECOVERED HISTORY: THE FIRST MAJOR BLACK THEATER In 1910 the largest theater catering to a black audience, built with black capital, opened in Washington DC nearly two decades before the Apollo began offering black entertainment. For decades, the Howard would feature such acts as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan and Lionel Hampton. So important was this institution to a community isolated in segregation that students from nearby high schools would periodically cut class to attend an afternoon performance. "After recess, there wasn't anybody at the school," recalls Lillian Gordon, once a dancer at the Howard. On at least two occasions, a principal or assistant principal showed up at the Howard, halted the show, turned up the lights and ordered their charges back to class - one without saying a word, just pointing to the exit. But as Elissa Silverman reported in the Washington Post, "The 1968 riots spurred a decline in the U Street corridor known as Black Broadway, and the Howard Theatre closed its doors two years later. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Comedian Redd Foxx and others attempted revivals but, for years, the building has remained vacant and crumbling. Now that the area around the Howard has been revitalized with condominiums, restaurants, and retail shops, developer Chip Ellis wants the Howard to come back to life, too." Ellis, a black Washingtonian, has enlisted the programming aid of Blues Alley, one of America's clubs that musicians like the most. Last weekend your editor enjoyed an event pulled together by his social historian wife - Kathryn Smith, who co-chairs the Historical Society of Washington - at which more than 200 people gathered to hear anecdotes from the Howard's past. While many of the names and some of the stories were familiar to one who had been among the young white guys who also went there in the fifties, I was reminded again of the theater's role in holding the community together. The Howard was part of a self-sufficiency the U Street area developed that moved the neighborhood beyond survival towards pride and growth. The theater also provided a shared story that cut across class in the community. Once when the Mill Brothers performed, the crowds were so large, they had to make T Street one way. Decades later, it still is. Bertell Knox - a longtime drummer in the house band and later backup for Charlie Byrd - recalled how important the Howard band's leader had considered dress. If you weren't in 'full tux' you would have to provide a bottle of whiskey for the other members of the band. The players would look around to see which of the group had left on their brown socks as they rushed to get dress. The musicians were also role models for the young; Saxophonist George Botts remembered that it was how well the performers were dressed that made him think as a young man that this was the path he should follow. He did and would evetnually accompany Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Witherspoon, Etta Jones, Redd Foxx, Betty Carter, T-Bone Walker, Benny Goodman, Anita O'Day, and John Coltrane, just to mention a few. In a revealing way, the program became somewhat anarchistic towards the end. As some members of the audience were telling their stories, other spectators got up and started socializing in the back. A nice confirmation not only of the importance of this story, but of the importance of people having a place to tell their stories. Everyone owned a piece of the history. One of the reasons that history feels dull to many is because it is so often confined to the past. Among the prices of literacy has been to imprison history in a timeline. In cultures dependent upon oral tradition, however, the past often become a partner of the present just as it did last weekend. It occurred to me while headed to the event that we are all history; it's just that some people got a head start on us. And as I watched the young members of a jazz quartet that played for the event talking with the panelists, I wondered what stories they would tell a few decades down the road. SLIDE SHOW OF THE HOWARD TODAY http://www.nbc4.com/news/11097676/detail.html# Sent by Dorinda Moreno [email protected] Freedom's Journal Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper puts out is premiere weekly issue in New York City, March 16, 1827. The paper pleads "our own cause" to readers in 11 states, covering such noted African-Americans as shipowner Capt. Paul Cufee, and decrying slavery, until the paper's end in 1929. Smithsonian March2007, page 28. The Generations Network, Inc. 05 March 2007 Afro-Hispanics' Rich History Often Overlooked by Bessy Reyna [email protected] February 15 2002 Inspired by the celebration of African American History Month, I decided that it was time for me to learn more about Afro-Hispanics, their history and contributions to Latin American culture. However, I must confess that trying to remedy my own ignorance on this subject has been very frustrating. This information has not been easy to find. Part of the problem I encountered is a lack of books about Afro-Hispanics, and the Internet, usually overloaded with information on any possible topic, had relatively few useful references. I was very excited when I finally located the book "Extraordinary Hispanic Americans" by Susan Sinnott at the Park Street Branch of the Hartford Public Library. Unfortunately, this author limited her study to Hispanics in the United States. Of the more than 60 people featured, only two are Afro-Hispanics: Puerto Ricans Arthur Alfonso Schomburg and Roberto Clemente. Schomburg, a historian, was an avid collector of books and documents on black history. His collection was purchased by the New York City Public Library and is now archived in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Roberto Clemente was an extraordinary baseball player who died in 1972 in a plane crash trying to bring help to the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. Inspired by the celebration of African American History Month, I decided that it was time for me to learn more about Afro-Hispanics, their history and contributions to Latin American culture. However, I must confess that trying to remedy my own ignorance on this subject has been very frustrating. This information has not been easy to find. Part of the problem I encountered is a lack of books about Afro-Hispanics, and the Internet, usually overloaded with information on any possible topic, had relatively few useful references. I was very excited when I finally located the book "Extraordinary Hispanic Americans" by Susan Sinnott at the Park Street Branch of the Hartford Public Library. Unfortunately, this author limited her study to Hispanics in the United States. Of the more than 60 people featured, only two are Afro-Hispanics: Puerto Ricans Arthur Alfonso Schomburg and Roberto Clemente. Schomburg, a historian, was an avid collector of books and documents on black history. His collection was purchased by the New York City Public Library and is now archived in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Roberto Clemente was an extraordinary baseball player who died in 1972 in a plane crash trying to bring help to the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. As well-intentioned as this book might be, it is also an example of the omissions in literature dealing with Hispanics. The biographical notes about Schomburg quote one of his teachers in Puerto Rico who told him that "black people had no history, no heroes, no great moments." Sinnott compounds the teacher's error by failing to include other Afro-Hispanics in her book, including well-known contemporary actors and performers. Those of us who grew up in Latin America are very aware of the socioeconomic and racial differences that exist between ethnic groups. We know that in most of our countries, the native Indian and black populations are still marginalized. This is true even in countries such as Brazil, where the population is more racially mixed. A few days ago, I was listening to an interview on WHUS radio with Brazilian singer and songwriter Tania Maria, who was in Connecticut to present a concert at the University of Connecticut. Tania Maria mentioned that she left her country because she knew that as a black woman it was going to be very difficult for her to become the musician she wanted to be. So she did what many black artists from the United States and Latin America had done: She moved to Paris. Rediscovering the most successful slave revolt in American history Amy Sturgis \| April 2007 Print Edition http://www.reason.com/news/show/119079.html John Horse's story feels like an answer to every Hollywood studio's wish list: a mix of Spartacus, Braveheart, Amistad, and Glory, with just a pinch of Dances With Wolves. A sweeping tale of a decades-long struggle against oppression, the movie would show how Horse and the Black Seminoles created the largest haven for runaway slaves in the American South, led the biggest slave revolt in U.S. history, won the only emancipation of rebellious North American slaves before the Civil War, and formed the largest mass exodus of slaves in U.S. history. In the 1830s Horse's people journeyed from the Florida Everglades to what is now Oklahoma and then across the border to Mexico, where they ultimately secured title to their own land. What is perhaps most amazing about this story is how it has been overlooked so consistently, not just by filmmakers and popular audiences but by almost every historian of slavery. Now a nonprofessional historian-- J.B. Bird, an administrator at the University of Texas--has written and produced an engrossing multimedia Web documentary, Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery. (To see it for yourself, go to johnhorse.com.) In the process, Bird has illustrated not just an important part of the American past but also one of the ways cyberspace is changing how history is studied and taught. Bird's narrative begins in Spanish Florida in the early 18th century, when two groups fled from the colonial South: Seminoles migrating from Alabama and Georgia to escape white encroachment and blacks fleeing the bonds of slavery. Both were welcome in Spanish Florida. The escaped slaves, in fact, were offered their freedom if they would defend the Spanish crown. Both the Catholic Church and Spanish law treated slavery as an unnatural condition, and both recognized blacks and American Indians as human beings (if not equals). More practically, offering sanctuary to English slaves created a human buffer zone and a free fighting force against the British colonists. The mixed society that emerged in Florida produced "maroons" or "Indian negroes"--today known as Black Seminoles, people of Seminole cultural traditions and full or partial African descent. Mose, north of St. Augustine, was soon established as "the first legally sanctioned free black town in North America." By the start of the American Revolution, Great Britain controlled Florida. The Seminoles and blacks living there overwhelmingly sided with the British during the conflict, as they had no love for the colonists who had dispossessed and enslaved them. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Versailles returned Florida to Spanish rule in 1783. The Southern states did not rest easily with free and armed blacks living nearby and welcoming runaway slaves--especially since those communities were allied with thousands of equally free and armed Indians. From George Washington onward, presidents tried to deal with the "problem." In 1818, during the Monroe administration, Gen. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, ostensibly to pursue justice against those who had attacked Fort Scott in Georgia. In the process he seized the peninsula for the United States, executing those who opposed him and "cleaning out" many Seminole and Black Seminole villages to make Florida more suitable for annexation. The United States formally purchased the peninsula from Spain the following year. When Jackson became president, he decided to drive the remaining communities out of Florida by force. The result was the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the largest and most costly of the Indian Wars. By this time, 45 percent of Florida's population was enslaved. Not surprisingly, given the close links between the territory's black and Indian populations, the Seminole struggle spawned a slave revolt. As Bird explains, "Maroon warriors and plantation slaves played integral roles in the uprising. By April of 1836, the Black Seminoles and their Indian allies had sparked the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history, as more than 385 plantation slaves fled their masters and joined in the wholesale destruction of Florida's sugar mills--at the time some of the most valuable plantations in all of North America." One Seminole leader at this time was the legendary chief Osceola, who drew much of his support from the Black Seminoles and was reputed to have a black wife. During the war, another leader emerged: the former slave John Horse, half black and half Indian, who was destined to lead the Black Seminoles on a long, complex exodus in pursuit of freedom. In 1838 the Black Seminoles agreed to cease fighting and move to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in exchange for legal recognition of their freedom. Once relocated, though, Horse and his people were threatened repeatedly with re-enslavement--by Indians as well as whites--with little or no protection from the law. In 1848 U.S. Attorney General John Y. Mason announced that the United States never had the power to free the Black Seminoles, and that they therefore were still legally slaves. With no security in the Indian Territory, Horse and his Seminole ally Coacoochee promptly led their people to Mexico, where slavery had been outlawed for two decades. There Horse became a famed colonel in the Mexican army. When slavecatchers from the Republic of Texas attempted to capture the Black Seminoles in Mexico, they met resistance from Mexicans as well as Black Seminoles. In the 1850s, Horse and his people finally gained a legally recognized Mexican homeland in Nacimiento. Although Bird is careful not to assign too much nobility or heroism to Horse or any other actors in the story--he acknowledges, for example, Horse's duties as "professional Indian killer" while guarding the border of Mexico--he is not above celebrating the tale he has recovered and preserved. "As a nation," he writes, "we have dimly remembered the failed black militants of prior centuries but have completely forgotten our most successful black freedom fighters. We celebrate the founding fathers for taking up arms against the oppressor, yet nowhere in American history books will students find an example of a community of armed black rebels who successfully fought the tyranny of slavery." Bird argues that several factors combined to "bury" the tale of John Horse and his people. One is the inherent difficulty in separating the intertwined threads of the Native American conflict, "maroon war," and slave rebellion that made up the Second Seminole War. Many scholars simply did not attempt to extricate one story from another. But Bird believes there is also an ideological reason most schoolchildren do not know the name John Horse. Citing the Marxist historian Eugene Genovese's work as an example, Bird notes how the distinguished scholar concluded "broadly, that after Nat Turner's uprising in 1831, southern Americans effectively co-opted their slave-proletariat by improving living conditions and offering them the feeble hope of emancipation through peaceful means, a naive dream that was easier for slaves to accept than the brutal consequences of leading a failed rebellion." Such an interpretation is hard to maintain when the largest slave uprising took place after Nat Turner's rebellion--and was at least partly successful. But when the giants in the field hold such positions, Bird suggests, it poisons the well, since many others tend to draw on these giants' work. (More recently, Genovese and his scholarship have turned from Marxism toward conservatism. But Bird's point still stands.) By bringing together the lesser-known insights of revisionists and adding his own significant original research, Bird seeks to repair oversights such as Genovese's. With its cross-referenced sources and attention to detail, Rebellion offers a compelling case for Web documentaries as a significant new medium for the writing, dissemination, and revision of history. Bird originally conceived of his project as a film, and he still is pursuing that goal, but the Rebellion site is an impressive accomplishment in itself. The site's interactive structure and varied contents are useful to scholars and educators as well as interested laypeople. From the interactive map of John Horse's life, for example, visitors may click on any location for images of and additional information about that place. Or they can leap directly to the specific page among the 370 multimedia panels that explores the relevance of that place to the website's larger narrative. Bird also sets a good example by clearly distinguishing his verifiable facts from his personal musings: It would be difficult, for instance, to confuse the "Why does any of this matter?" section of his Frequently Asked Questions (where he notes that "America never was the lily white nation of Pat Buchanan's dreams") with the heavily documented academic journal articles located in the "Essays and Articles" page. He also takes special care to document his research, while presenting information in a variety of formats appropriate for different skill sets and interests, from the introductory to the scholarly, the brief to the in-depth, all labeled in a clear, user-friendly manner. Does it matter that Bird is not a professional, credentialed historian? Not really. He knows the difference between primary and secondary sources, and his citations open the door for additional research by interested parties of all backgrounds. In some ways, it may be a blessing that Bird is not a professional. His website manages to be both comprehensible and comprehensive, neither lost in the self-serving jargon of too many monographs nor myopic and overspecialized to the point of irrelevance. Bird communicates his message clearly and never loses sight of why it is important to the "bigger picture." In so doing he offers a welcome and edifying example to many in the field. That said, his greatest accomplishment lies in what he has done, not how he did it. In Bird's own words, "Readers seeking a politically correct indictment of American history may be disappointed in Rebellion, but so will those who are uncomfortable learning the darker sides of the American tradition." He has told a thrilling and disturbing tale, forgotten for far too long, about people who were committed to seeking freedom and ultimately successful in finding it. ------------------------------ Amy H. Sturgis (amyhsturgis.com) teaches Native American studies at Belmont University and is a member of the Scholarly Board of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Her newest book is The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal (Greenwood Press). _____________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. Submit via email: [email protected] Response to an article that appeared in the L.A. Times (12-7-04) Longtime prejudices, not economic rivalry, fuel tensions. By Tanya K. Hernandez, January 7, 2007 Tanya K. Hernandez is a professor of law at Rutgers University Law School. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-hernandez7jan07,1,414328.story Sent by Alva Moore Stevenson [email protected] THE ACRIMONIOUS relationship between Latinos and African Americans in Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although last weekend's black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately not an aberration, the Dec. 15 murder in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly by members of a Latino gang, was shocking. Yet there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August, federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino. For example, one African American resident was murdered by Latino gang members as he looked for a parking space near his Highland Park home. In another case, a woman was knocked off her bicycle and her husband was threatened with a box cutter by one of the defendants, who said, "You niggers have been here long enough." At first blush, it may be mystifying why such animosity exists between two ethnic groups that share so many of the same socioeconomic deprivations. Over the years, the hostility has been explained as a natural reaction to competition for blue-collar jobs in a tight labor market, or as the result of turf battles and cultural disputes in changing neighborhoods. Others have suggested that perhaps Latinos have simply been adept at learning the U.S. lesson of anti-black racism, or that perhaps black Americans are resentful at having the benefits of the civil rights movement extended to Latinos. Although there may be a degree of truth to some or all of these explanations, they are insufficient to explain the extremity of the ethnic violence. Over the years, there's also been a tendency on the part of observers to blame the conflict more on African Americans (who are often portrayed as the aggressors) than on Latinos. But although it's certainly true that there's plenty of blame to go around, it's important not to ignore the effect of Latino culture and history in fueling the rift. The fact is that racism ï¿½ and anti-black racism in particular ï¿½ is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily), whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of Africans) ï¿½ the largest concentration in all of Spanish America. The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility. White supremacy is deeply ingrained in Latin America and continues into the present. In Mexico, for instance, citizens of African descent (who are estimated to make up 1% of the population) report that they regularly experience racial harassment at the hands of local and state police, according to recent studies by Antonieta Gimeno, then of Mount Holyoke College, and Sagrario Cruz-Carretero of the University of Veracruz. Mexican public discourse reflects the hostility toward blackness; consider such common phrases as "getting black" to denote getting angry, and "a supper of blacks" to describe a riotous gathering of people. Similarly, the word "black" is often used to mean "ugly." It is not surprising that Mexicans who have been surveyed indicate a disinclination to marry darker-skinned partners, as reported in a 2001 study by Bobby Vaughn, an anthropology professor at Notre Dame de Namur University. Anti-black sentiment also manifests itself in Mexican politics. During the 2001 elections, for instance, Lazaro Cardenas, a candidate for governor of the state of Michoacan, is believed to have lost substantial support among voters for having an Afro Cuban wife. Even though Cardenas had great name recognition (as the grandson of Mexico's most popular president), he only won by 5 percentage points ï¿½ largely because of the anti-black platform of his opponent, Alfredo Anaya, who said that "there is a great feeling that we want to be governed by our own race, by our own people." Given this, it should not be surprising that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism. Nor that this facet of Latino culture is in turn transmitted, to some degree, to younger generations along with all other manifestations of the culture. The sociological concept of "social distance" measures the unease one ethnic or racial group has for interacting with another. Social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African Americans. And although the social distance level is largest for recent immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States also show a marked social distance from African Americans. For instance, in University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola's 2002 survey of 600 Latinos in Houston (two-thirds of whom were Mexican, the remainder Salvadoran and Colombian) and 600 African Americans, the African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so. One typical foreign-born Latino respondent stated: "I just don't trust themï¿½. The men, especially, all use drugs, and they all carry guns." This same study found that 46% of Latino immigrants who lived in residential neighborhoods with African Americans reported almost no interaction with them. The social distance of Latinos from African Americans is consistently reflected in Latino responses to survey questions. In a 2000 study of residential segregation, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups. In addition, in the 1999-2000 Lilly Survey of American Attitudes and Friendships, Latinos identified African Americans as their least desirable marriage partners, whereas African Americans proved to be more accepting of intermarriage with Latinos. Ironically, African Americans, who are often depicted as being averse to coalition-building with Latinos, have repeatedly demonstrated in their survey responses that they feel less hostility toward Latinos than Latinos feel toward them. Although some commentators have attributed the Latino hostility to African Americans to the stress of competition in the job market, a 1996 sociological study of racial group competition suggests otherwise. In a study of 477 Latinos from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, professors Lawrence Bobo, then of Harvard, and Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan found that underlying prejudices and existing animosities contribute to the perception that African Americans pose an economic threat ï¿½ not the other way around. It is certainly true that the acrimony between African Americans and Latinos cannot be resolved until both sides address their own unconscious biases about one another. But it would be a mistake to ignore the Latino side of the equation as some observers have done ï¿½ particularly now, when the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens. This conflict cannot be sloughed off as simply another generation of ethnic group competition in the United States (like the familiar rivalries between Irish, Italians and Jews in the early part of the last century). Rather, as the violence grows, the "diasporic" origins of the anti-black sentiment ï¿½ the entrenched anti-black prejudice among Latinos that exists not just in the United States but across the Americas ï¿½ will need to be directly confronted. Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times Cherokees Pull Memberships of Freed Slaves By Sean Murphy AP OKLAHOMA CITY (March 4) - The Cherokee Nation vote this weekend to revoke the citizenship of the descendants of people the Cherokee once owned as slaves was a blow to people who have relied on tribal benefits. Charlene White, a descendant of freed Cherokee slaves who were adopted into the tribe in 1866 under a treaty with the U.S. government, wondered Sunday where she would now go for the glaucoma treatment she has received at a tribal hospital in Stilwell. "I've got to go back to the doctor, but I don't know if I can go back to the clinic or if they're going to oust me right now," said White, 56, a disabled Tahlequah resident who lives on a fixed income. In Saturday's special election, more than 76 percent of voters decided to amend the Cherokee Nation's constitution to remove the estimated 2,800 freedmen descendants from the tribal rolls, according to results posted Sunday on the tribe's Web site. Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, said the election results undoubtedly will be challenged. "We will pursue the legal remedies that are available to us to stop people from not only losing their voting rights, but to receiving medical care and other services to which they are entitled under law," Vann said Sunday. "This is a fight for justice to stop these crimes against humanity." Cherokee Nation spokesman Mike Miller said Sunday that election results will not be finalized until after a protest period that extends through March 12. Services currently being received by freedmen descendants will not immediately be suspended, he said. "There isn't going to be some sort of sudden stop of a service that's ongoing," Miller said. "There will be some sort of transition period so that people understand what's going on." In a statement late Saturday, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith said he was pleased with the turnout and election result. "Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation," Smith said. "No one else has the right to make that determination. It was a right of self-government, affirmed in 23 treaties with Great Britain and the United States and paid dearly with 4,000 lives on the Trail of Tears." The petition drive for the ballot measure followed a March 2006 ruling by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court that said an 1866 treaty assured freedmen descendants of tribal citizenship. A similar situation occurred in 2000 when the Seminole Nation voted to cast freedmen descendants out of its tribe, said attorney Jon Velie of Norman, an expert on Indian law who has represented freedmen descendants in previous cases. "The United States, when posed the same situation with the Seminoles, would not recognize the election and they ultimately cut off most federal programs to the Seminoles," Velie said. "They also determined the Seminoles, without this relationship with the government, were not authorized to conduct gaming." Ultimately, the Seminole freedmen were allowed back into the tribe, Velie said. Velie said Saturday's vote already has hurt the tribe's public perception. "It's throwback, old-school racist rhetoric," Velie said. "And it's really heartbreaking, because the Cherokees are good people and have a very diverse citizenship," he said. Miller, the tribal spokesman, defended the Cherokees against charges of racism, saying that Saturday's vote showed the tribe was open to allowing its citizens vote on whether non-Indians be allowed membership. "I think it's actually the opposite. To say that the Cherokee Nation is intolerant or racist ignores the fact that we have an open dialogue and have the discussion, he said. Indigenous Baja By John P. Schmal ï¿½ Published in HispanicVista, March 1, 2007 The Baja California Peninsula is located in the northwestern portion of the Mexican Republic. This body of land extends approximately 775 miles (1,250 kilometers) from Tijuana in the north to Cabo San Lucas in the south and is separated from the rest of Mexico by the Gulf of California (also called the sea of Cortï¿½s). Occupying the northern half of the peninsula, the state of Baja California shares its northern boundary with two American states, California and Arizona, and is also bordered on its northeast by the Mexican state of Sonora.ï¿½ On its western flank, the state also shares a long coastline with the Pacific Ocean. Baja California occupies a total area of 69,921 square kilometers (26,990 square miles), which makes up 3.7% of Mexicoï¿½s national territory. On Baja Californiaï¿½s southern border is another Mexican state, Baja California Sur, which occupies a total area of 71,428 square kilometers (25,751 square miles), taking up 3.7% of the national territory. The story of the indigenous peoples of the Baja Peninsula is a sad one.ï¿½ Living in an arid environment, their susceptibility to the ravages of war and disease was accentuated by their already marginal existence.ï¿½ The vast majority of the Baja Indians have disappeared and those that have survived in the north are represented by as few as a dozen individuals or as many as a few hundred. Ironically, most of the Mexican indigenous languages spoken in the two Bajas are actually tongues brought to the Peninsula by migrant workers from other states, in particular Oaxaca. Early Contacts Between Spaniards and Indigenous Inhabitants In 1532 ï¿½ a decade after the destruction of the Aztec Empire ï¿½ the Spanish conqueror Hernï¿½n Cortï¿½s sent an expedition commanded by his cousin, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, to explore the Baja California Peninsula and other locations along the Pacific coastline of northwest Mï¿½xico. A second expedition to the area left Santiago, Colima, on October 29, 1533. The voyage was a disastrous failure, but mutineers from this expedition explored the area now called La Paz. In April 1535, Cortï¿½s himself led a third expedition of three ships that landed near present-day La Paz on May 3, 1535, where he formally took possession of the land for the King of Spain. Cortï¿½s founded a small colony in the area, but the local Indians remained very hostile towards the visitors. By November 1535, more than 70 of Cortï¿½sï¿½ men had died from starvation or skirmishes with the indigenous population. Early in 1536, Cortï¿½s posted 30 Spaniards to man the small colony and sailed back for Mexico. A fourth expedition led by Francisco de Ulloa in June 1539 found that the small colony had been destroyed. ï¿½Other expeditions followed, but they frequently encountered large groups of natives who strongly resisted their intrusions.ï¿½ For this reason, the colonization and settlement of the Baja Peninsula was a very slow process, complicated by the hostility of the indigenous groups and the great distance from sources of supply, as well as by inhospitable weather conditions. Indigenous Groups at Contact At the time of contact, Baja California Norte was primarily inhabited by several indigenous groups belonging to the Yuman language branch of the Hokan linguistic family.ï¿½ Most of these early inhabitants lived by hunting and fishing, but some of them also gathered acorns, seeds, prickly pears, apples, pine nuts and other small edible plants found in the harsh desert environment.ï¿½ The northernmost aboriginal Baja Californians spoke several closely-related Yuman languages, most notably the Kiliwa, Paipai, Kumeyaay (Kumiai), and Cocopï¿½ (Cucapï¿½) tongues. Using the controversial technique of glottochronology, it has been estimated that the initial separation of the Yuman family into different languages occurred perhaps 2,500 years ago. The Cocopï¿½ and Kumiai languages are believed to be very closely related to each other, separated by perhaps about one thousand years of independent development. Pai Pai he Pai Pai Indians ï¿½ also known as Akwa'ala ï¿½ occupied the northern Sierras in the interior of the northern Baja California Peninsula.ï¿½ Their original territory included the lower Colorado River Valley in the present day municipios of Ensenada and Mexicali, as well as adjacent areas in western Arizona, southern California, and northwestern Sonora.ï¿½ Kumeyaay (Kumiai) The Kumiai (Kumeyaay) Indians were hunters, gatherers and fishers who inhabited coastal, inland valley, and mountain regions along the present-day Baja California border region with the United States.ï¿½ The traditional Kumeyaay territory originally extended from around Escondido in California to the northern part of the present day municipio of Ensenada. Occupying the southern section of present-day San Diego County in California, the Kumeyaay inhabited the region near the San Diego Presidio when it was founded in 1769. The Kumeyaay in the vicinity of San Diego were also referred to as the Diegueï¿½o by the Spaniards. Cochimï¿½ The Cochimï¿½ Indians inhabited a considerable part of the central Baja Peninsula, from north of Rosario to the vicinity of Loreto in east central Baja California. Like many of the other Baja tribes, the Cochimï¿½ Indians survived by fishing in the coastal areas and gathering fruits and seeds for sustenance in other areas. ï¿½ Cucapï¿½s (Cocopï¿½) The Cucapï¿½s, living in the desert region along the Colorado River in the frontier zone of Baja California Norte and Sonora, fished and hunted deer, rabbit, moles, mountain lion and coyote. They also collected a wide variety of desert products, including cactus flowers, potatoes, and wild wheat. Kiliwa The Kiliwa Indians were hunters who inhabited northeastern Baja California. The Kiliwa lived along the eastern slope of the Sierra San Pedro Mï¿½rtir and ranged down the Gulf Coast. Their habitat also extended into the Colorado Desert. Guaycura (Guaicura or Waicuri) The Guaycuras lived in the middle part of the lower Baja peninsula, inhabiting the Magdalena Plains from Loreto down to and including the La Paz area. Pericï¿½ The Pericï¿½ occupied the southern tip of the peninsula around San Josï¿½ del Cabo and several large Gulf islands, including Cerralvo, Espï¿½ritu Santo, San Josï¿½, and Santa Catalina. The Colonization of Baja California Sur In 1596, King Felipe II of Spain ordered the colonization of the Baja California Peninsula.ï¿½ Six years later, Sebastiï¿½n Vizcaï¿½no made his famous voyage to Baja, exploring the present-day site of Cabo San Lucas, where he was confronted by a force of 800 native warriors.ï¿½ Vizcaï¿½no managed to build a fort at La Paz, but after a skirmish with local natives, the post had to be abandoned by the Spaniards. In 1683, Admiral Isidro Atondo y Antillï¿½n led a state-sponsored expedition to Baja and established a settlement at La Paz.ï¿½ However, according to Mr. Laylander, the settlement ï¿½was abandoned after a few months because of escalating conflicts with the native inhabitants.ï¿½ï¿½ Another post was established at San Bruno, north of Loreto, but was also abandoned in 1685 ï¿½because of meager local resources and uncertain outside supplies.ï¿½ In October 1697, Jesuit missionaries started arriving in the southern Baja peninsula with the intention of establishing missions. On October 19, 1697, Father Juan Marï¿½a de Salvatierra established the first permanent mission in Baja California Sur, dedicating it with the name of Our Lady of Loreto de Concho, near present-day Loreto, Baja California Sur. Between 1697 and 1767, Jesuit missionaries would establish sixteen missions throughout the length of the Baja Peninsula. The Jesuit missions played an integral role in the Christianizing of the indigenous peoples.ï¿½ However, to accomplish their objectives, the missionaries resettled and congregated many of their converts in rancherï¿½as that were located close to the missions.ï¿½ Although this practice was effective in enforcing religious instruction, tribute collection, and the organization of a work force, the concentration of the natives had a devastating effect on the aboriginal groups and made them more susceptible to smallpox, typhus, measles and other infectious diseases. Don Laylander, in ï¿½The Linguistic Prehistory of Baja California,ï¿½ has written that ï¿½the linguistic map of Baja California underwent dramatic changes during the historic period, culminating in the extinction of many of its aboriginal languages. Before extinction, prehistoric lifeways were altered in a myriad of ways, through such factors as externally-introduced epidemic diseases, military conflicts, and the relocation of populations to mission settlements.ï¿½ The most serious epidemic was the typhus epidemic of 1742-1744, which probably killed 8,000 Indians. During the following decades, entire tribes disappeared, while small bands of Pericï¿½, Guaycura, and Cochimï¿½ ï¿½ struggled to survive in the south. The Revolts of 1734-1744 The most serious rebellion in the southern part of the Baja Peninsula took place in 1734-1737.ï¿½ This uprising of the Pericï¿½ and Guaycuras engulfed several missions in the southern part of the peninsula, most of which had to be abandoned. In January 1735, indigenous forces ambushed the Manila Galleon that had stopped at San Josï¿½ del Cabo for supplies. ï¿½The revolt and its subsequent suppression,ï¿½ according to Don Laylander, ï¿½hastened the disorganization and declines of the southern aboriginal groups.ï¿½ To suppress the revolt, the Jesuits were forced to call in outside military assistance.ï¿½ In 1742, King Felipe V authorized the use of royal funds to suppress the revolt. The arrival of a military force from Sinaloa helped to restore order and reestablish control of the southern Baja lands. The last scattered resistance to the Spaniards did not end until 1744.ï¿½ The Expulsion of the Jesuits In June 1767, King Carlos III of Spain expelled all the Jesuit missionaries from Mï¿½xico. Eventually, the Dominicans continued the missionary efforts of the Jesuits, especially in the territories of the Cochimï¿½, Kiliwa, Paipai, and Kumeyaay. However, by this time, southern Bajaï¿½s indigenous populations had declined to the point of no return. Don Laylander explains that ï¿½in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of aboriginal peoples in the peninsulaï¿½s history has become increasingly marginal. In the central and southern portions of the peninsula, culturally distinct aboriginal populations had disappeared before 1900.ï¿½ The Kiliwa were one of the few Baja groups that was able to hang on, albeit precariously. In 1840, ï¿½the Kiliwa, who lived in Bajaï¿½s northeast corner, successfully rebelled against the Dominicans and fled into quiet isolation. This seclusion enabled the Kiliwa to survive into the Twentieth Century. In 1938, University of California Berkeley anthropologist, Peveril Meigs, searched the entire Baja Peninsula for surviving bands. At that time, he located and did studies on a small band of about fifty Kiliwa living in the east-facing canyons of northern Bajaï¿½s mountains. Political Chronology In January 1824, after the Mexican Republic was constituted, the central government organized and oversaw the Territory of Baja. Twenty four years later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ï¿½ which ended the Mexican-American War ï¿½ divided the territory of California, with the northern half, called Alta California, being ceded to the United States, while the southern half remained with Mexico as Baja California. On April 26, 1850, two partidos (secondary administrative divisions) were created as Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur.ï¿½ On December 14, 1887, the status of both partidos was changed to distritos (districts), and on January 1, 1888, the northern part of the peninsula became known as the Northern District of Baja California. On December 30, 1930, the separate territories of Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur were created, effective February 7, 1931.ï¿½ The northern territory became a state on January 16, 1952, while the southern Baja State achieved statehood on October 24, 1974. Indigenous Groups of the Twentieth Century By the end of the Nineteenth Century, the aboriginal population of the entire Baja Peninsula had been severely depleted. Up until the 1910 census, the population statistics for Baja California Sur and Baja California Norte were tallied together as one jurisdiction. According to the 1895 Mexican census, some 2,150 individuals spoke indigenous languages in Baja California. However, this tally dropped to 1,111 at the time of the 1900 census. The indigenous speaking population for the Baja territories dropped further in 1910 to 711, representing only 1.36% of the total population. Although most of the indigenous speakers spoke languages indigenous to other states, 96 Cochimï¿½ speakers were counted. Yaqui-speaking individuals (primarily from the state of Sonora) were tallied at 65, while Otomï¿½ speakers from central Mï¿½xico numbered 40. The 2000 Census According to the 2000 census, the population of persons five years of age and more in the northern state of Baja California who spoke indigenous languages amounted to 37,685 individuals. These individuals spoke at least forty-five languages from Mexico and United States but represented only 1.87% of the total state population 5 years of age and older (2,010,869). Interestingly, the great majority of the indigenous-speakers in Baja California Norte in 2000 were actually transplants from other parts of the Mexican Republic.ï¿½ The largest language groups represented were the Mixteco (11,962 speakers), Zapoteco (2,987), Nï¿½huatl (2,165), and Purï¿½pecha (2,097), and Triqui (1,437), all languages that are indigenous to other parts of the Mexican Republic. ï¿½ Transplanted Languages As a matter of fact, 2000 census statistics indicate that 1,025,754 of the 2,487,367 residents of Baja California Norte were, in fact, natives of other entities, representing a total migrant population of 41.2%. In the 2000 census, 41,014 persons in Baja claimed Oaxaca as their birthplace, and it is likely that most of the 11,962 Mixtecos and 2,987 Zapotecos living in the state were probably natives of that state. Already, in the 1970s, Baja had become a major zone of attraction for Mixtec farm laborers, with Ensenada and Tijuana as their primary destination points.ï¿½ Baja California growers almost exclusively recruited Oaxacans laborers for their agricultural labor needs. An additional 89,083 residents of Baja claimed Michoacï¿½n de Ocampo as their birthplace, possibly explaining the substantial number of Purï¿½pecha-speaking individuals living in the state (2,097). Native Baja California Tribes in 2000 Unfortunately, the Indian groups indigenous specifically to Baja California never recovered from their initial declines of the Seventeenth Century and are few in number. The primary native speakers of indigenous languages in Baja California Norte in the 2000 census were the Pai-Pai (193 speakers); Kumiai (159); Cucapï¿½ (82); Cochimï¿½ (80), and Kiliwa (46 people). All of these tribes were of the Yuman Linguistic family whose ancestors had probably migrated to the Baja Peninsula thousands of years earlier. The Pai Pai, living in the Santa Catarina community of the Ensenada municipio in the north, had become bilingual and concerns have been expressed that their language is nearly dead. Estimates of the Kumiai population in Mexico at the end of the Twentieth Century put their numbers at 600. However, by 2000, the Mexican census recorded only 159 persons five years of age and older who actually spoke the Kumiai language in the state and all but 13 of these also spoke Spanish and were thus bilingual. Most of the Kumiai lived near Tecate. The Cochimï¿½ culture ï¿½ located primarily in the central and southern parts of Baja California ï¿½ also declined dramatically by beginning of the Nineteenth Century. By 2000, only 80 Cochimï¿½ speakers were registered as inhabitants of the northern Baja state, most of them living in the municipios of Ensenada, Mexicali, and Tecate. In the 2000 census, only 46 persons were classified as speakers of the Kiliwa language. Readers who are interested in studying more detailed information about the nearly extinct indigenous languages of Baja California can learn more by accessing the Ethnologue website at the following link: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=MX Indigenous Speakers of Baja California Sur In the 2000 census, the government classified 5,353 inhabitants 5 years of age or more as speakers of more than fifty Indian languages. However, these indigenous speakers represented a mere 0.22% of the total population of the same age group.ï¿½ï¿½ The primary groups were the Mixteco (1,955), Nï¿½huatl (987), Zapoteco (606), and Amuzgo (126), Trique (113), and Purï¿½pecha (106), all imports from the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Michoacï¿½n and Guerrero. Oaxaca Migrants In the same census, it was reported that 137,928 of the residents of Baja Sur (out of the total population of 424,041) were born in other political entities, indicating that migrants represented 32.5% of the total population of the state. Today, the Mixteco and Zapoteco Indians are the only significant indigenous languages spoken in Baja California Sur. It is likely that most of the 1,955 Mixtecos and 606 Zapotecos living in Baja were probably born in Oaxaca.ï¿½ In the 2000 census, 8,083 persons in Baja Sur claimed Oaxaca as their birthplace, while another 8,564 listed Michoacï¿½n as their birthplace, the original home of the Purï¿½pecha language. The use of Oaxacan migrant labor in Baja California Sur has been a well-established practice since the 1970s. For more than thirty years, many Baja California growers have recruited Oaxacans almost exclusively, with La Paz as a major destination for most Mixteco laborers. Copyright ï¿½ 2007, by John P. Schmal. All Rights Reserved. Sources: Homer Aschmann, ï¿½The Central Desert of Baja California: Demography and Ecology,ï¿½ Ibero-Americana 42 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959). Don Laylander, ï¿½The Linguistic Prehistory of Baja California,ï¿½ in Gary S. Breschini and Trudy Haversat, ï¿½Contributions to the Linguistic Prehistory of Central and Baja California,ï¿½ Archives of California Prehistory Number 44 (Salinas, California: Coyote Press, 1997). William C. Massey, ï¿½Tribes and Languages of Baja California,ï¿½ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, V (Autumn 1949): 272-307. William C. Massey, ï¿½Brief Report on Archaeological Investigations in Baja California,ï¿½ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, III (Winter 1947): 344-359. Peveril Meigs, ï¿½The Kiliwa Indians of Lower California,ï¿½ Ibero-Americana, 15 (Berkeley, California: University of California, 1939). ï¿½ John Schmal was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.ï¿½ He attended Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, where he studied Geography, History and Earth Sciences and received two BA degrees.ï¿½ Mr. Schmal has been a life-long history buff and is also a skilled genealogist. His genealogical specialties including tracing lineages in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Southwestern U.S.A.ï¿½ He is the coauthor of "Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (Heritage Books, 2002).ï¿½ He has also coauthored six other books on Mexican-American themes, all of them published by Heritage Books in Maryland. He is an Associate Editor of www.somosprimos.com and a board member of the Society ofï¿½Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research (SHHAR). Presently, in addition to writing weekly columns for HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com),ï¿½ he is writing a bookï¿½about the ports of entry along the Mexican-US border.ï¿½ Mr. Schmal has a passionate love of Mexican history and is intrigued by the linguistic and cultural diversity of its indigenous peoples. For the last few years, he has been writing short histories of each state, which are being compiled at the following link: http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/states.html Around April, John Schmal will publish "The Journey to Latino Political Representation," about the struggle for Hispanic representation in California, Texas and the U.S. Congress.ï¿½ The preface to this book was written by his friend, Edward Telles, a professor at UCLA and the author of an award-winning book about race in Brazil and who is preparing to publish a book about Mexican-American assimilation. Contact at: [email protected] ï¿½ Three Sisters' Defense of a Cemetery by: Henry Van Brunt, Friday June 7, 1946 Sent by Carlos Ray Gonzalezï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ [email protected] ï¿½ Recent Death of Miss Lyda Conley Recalls Long Series of Outbreaks and Defiance of Law by Women Who Built Shack on Indian Burial Ground in Heart of Kansas City, Kansas and Lived beside Graves of Ancestors. The death on May 28 of the most aggressive of the three Huron park Conley sisters -- Lyda Burton Conley -- at the age of 72 sent the writer on an adventurous trek through the files of the Star, picking up the back trail of what you might call the 1-woman Indian mutiny of Kansas City Kansas. The file of clippings arranged chronologically, measures more than half aninch in thickness and covering a period of forty years, come October, represents the reportorial activity of perhaps scored of reporters, many of whom, obviously had no realization of the venerable tenure of the subject they were handling. For instance, it was hardly fair to refer to Miss Conley in 1928 as having "recently cause trouble in Huron cemetery" when that stubborn champion of Indian burial rights had then been at it for nearly a score of years. Trouble was her prerogative; she thrived on trouble... And, as far as the writer is concerned, they can take all the clippings and file them in the Zane family lot as an enduring monument to pertinacity and publicity. Old Indian Tragedy Recalled As background for the Conley epic, it is necessary to bring up the Wyandotte migration and the big rain of 1844. The Wyandottes came to the confluence of the Missouri and Kaw rivers... and settled in the Westport area until the Delaware sold them thirty six sections and gave them three sections in memory of friendship in what is now Wyandotte County. Records are lacking, but it is reliably reported to have rained forty days and forty nights in 1844. Floods filled the whole area of what is now the Central Industrial district, an epidemic of smallpox followed and between 200 and 300 Indians died. They were buried in the Huron Park Cemetery That is the basis for the Conley sisters; defense of the Indian burial ground. Their mother was buried there and, they say, ancestors further back. The revolt of the three sisters, started in the summer of 1907 as a result of plans broached the previous year for purchase by the city of the Huron Cemetery, Congress, having authorized its sale by the secretary of the Interior in 1905. Built Shack in the Cemetery As soon as the Conley sisters realized that the sale was pending they announced that they would protect the graves of their ancestors, if necessary, with shotguns. Forthwith, they marched to the cemetery and threw up a 6 by 8 1 room frame shack hard by the ancestral resting place and moved in. H.B. Durant, Indian commissioner commented that it was a unique situation and washed his hands of it, suggesting that it was up to the Department pf Justice and Federal troops. Troops never were called to eject the sisters, who defended their cemetery fort through 1907. 1908. 1909. and through the summer of 1910. Throughout this period, Lyda prepared herself for legal action by an assiduous study of law books, the better to contest the government order. When the battle began the new Carnegie library stood in the center of the square, the new Brund hotel stood at one corner, and on another preparations were being made for the reconstruction of the Masonic Temple, destroyed by fire. It was William Rodekepf, paving contractor, who won the distinction of the first actual encounter with the sisters by tearing down a fence which the Conleys erected between the cemetery and the temple site. The sisters rebuilt the fence, and the contractor's men tore it down again. Again Lyda rebuilt it in defiance of an injunction obtained by the Masonic bodies, and it was again laid low. The writer took a pencil and tried to figure the number of times the fence was destroyed and rebuilt during a fortnight in the winter of 1907, but gave it up. On one occasion the sisters defended their fence with sticks and stones. Through this early period, the rightful ownership of the cemetery remained in doubt -- unless it could be said that the Conleys owned it by right of possession. There was a federal order to remove the bodies to Quindaro Cemetery, but it was qualified in such a way as to leave grounds for suits in the federal courts, and Lyda Conley took full advantage of this opportunity, supported by women's clubs and others with whom sentiment outweighed commercialism and twentieth century progress. Helena Hold The Fort And while Lyda fought her battle in the courts, her sister Helena, who prefers the name Helene, guarded the fort, keeping things trim in the burial ground, felling dead trees with an ax while awed bystanders admired the play of her muscles, resenting intrusion by roaming holiday makers. Because of the intrusions, the sisters finally wired the cemetery gates together and put up a sign: "You Trespass at Your Own Peril." None disregarded it. Lyda Conley was admitted to the Kansas bar in 1910 and in the course of her fight against removal of the Indian graves, made several trips to Washington. She is said to have been the first woman lawyer to plead before the United States Supreme Court. On July 29, while Lyda and her sisters were in Wyandotte County District Court Hearing arguments in the last legal step they took to hold the cemetery, the United States marshal and his deputies entered the cemetery and destroyed the "fort" and an injunction was issued forbidding the sisters to rebuild it. Finally, in August, 1912, the HOuse Indian affairs committee in Washington favorably reported a bill prohibiting the removal of the cemetery--the first ray of hope the sisters had in their fight. However, they did notefinitely settle the affair, and the sisters still held their ground among the graves. There is a little item in May of 1918 recording the fact that Lyda pulled up some stakes driven near the the cemetery by city surveyors, bruised and scratched three detectives (!!??) who dragged her to policeeadquarters. She was fined $100 for destroying city property. In the intervening years, Lyda -- her case won insofar as sale of the property was concerned -- the government having agreed to keep the cemetery "improved" confined her activities to a watchful guardianship, which included care of the birds and squirrels in the cemetery. On the coldest winter days she would leave her home at 1816 North Third street and carry water and nuts to the squirrels. Then in June, 1937, wielding a broomstick, she chased some people from the cemetery. A young judge, perhaps not cognizant of the fact that Lyda had never been in jail in all the twenty-six years of her defiance of the authorities, gave her choice of a $10 fine for disturbing the peace or a 10 day jail sentence. Proudly she served the sentence. The item of June 16, 1937 headed "Miss Lyda Conley Leaves Jail," was the last printed appearance of Lyda until the notice of her death and of her burial on May 31. For more information about the Huron Indian Cemetery and the Conley Sisters visit the Huron Indian Cemetery Site. Copyright ? 1946 Kansas City Times American Indian Dad-Daughter Study A lot of American Indian dads are married to Latino women. American Indian Dad-Daughter Study Colorado State University is conducting a survey of American Indian/Alaskan Native Dads and Daughters. American Indian fathers, step-fathers or adoptive-fathers, 18 years or older, with at least one American Indian daughter can participate. A web-based version of the survey is available by clicking on the AI-DADS link at http://www.colostate.edu/programs/EAC . It takes 15-30 minutes to complete. Very little research-based data currently exists regarding the relationships between American Indian fathers and daughters. This study will collect such data and compare it with results of a 2004 Roper Poll http://www.dadsanddaughters.org/our-work/topics-for-research.aspx conducted on behalf of Dads &Daughters organization, which focused on fathers in general. For more information, contact Dr. Martin Reinhardt at [email protected] Ricardo J. Valverde [email protected] (714) 834-8559 Robert W. Young, 1912-2007 - Linguist helped create Navajo dictionary Linguist Robert W. Young, whose collaboration with a Navajo linguist resulted in dictionaries of the native language, has died. Young died Feb. 20 at age 94. As he requested, no service was planned. He became an adjunct linguistics professor at The University of New Mexico when he retired from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971. He taught Navajo language classes and was co-director of The Navajo Reading Study. Young is known for his Navajo dictionary and lexicon work, including The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary, published in 1980, Analytical Lexicon of Navajo, published in 1990, and The Navajo Verb System -- An Overview, published in 2000, all by UNM Press. 17th Annual Conference Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Jews in Arab Countries 1948 and Now Extract: Technology creates extreme genealogists By MATT CRENSON, AP National WriterSun Mar 4,2007 Sent by John Inclan [email protected] New technologies have made it possible to achieve incredible genealogical feats with relatively modest effort. Dick Eastman, who writes an online genealogy newslettersays the Internet is great for the United States, especially New England. And it's pretty good for Britain and Ireland. But if your ancestors came from Southern Europe, Africa, Asia or even Canada in some cases, the Internet can be pretty useless. "If I want to go look up my French-Canadian ancestors there's almost nothing to help me more than two or three generations back," Eastman said. "It's not going to be as rosy an experience as some of the online services would like you to think." Herbert Huebscher, a retired electrical engineer from Franklin Square, N.Y., found himself in that kind of situation when he went looking for his ancestors. The most distant ones he could identify were Ukrainian Jews who were living in small village near the Romanian border around 1830. "In general, Jewish paper trail genealogy tends to hit a brick wall around 1800, give or take 50 years," Huebscher said. To push farther into the past, he turned to DNA. DNA testing has made it possible for people to make connections when the paper trail fades into tatters. The technology was used several years ago to show that Thomas Jefferson ï¿½ or one of his male relatives ï¿½ fathered a child by his slave Sally Hemings. It has also shown that a significant proportion of men in modern Ireland can trace a direct male descent from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a legendary 5th-century king. Huebscher had his own genetic profile tested by a Houston-based company called Family Tree DNA. He found that he matched one other individual in the company's database, a South African-born Londoner named Saul Isseroff. It turned out the two had some very distinctive anomalies in their DNA profiles, which allowed them to identify other matches as new Family Tree DNA customers joined the company's database. They have now found more than 40 closely matched families. Nearly all of the families were Jewish, and nearly all of them trace their heritage back to Eastern Europe ï¿½ though oddly enough, one family traces its roots to Puerto Rico. A statistical analysis of the genetic data showed that whether they were named Huebscher or Isseroff, Wolinsky or Rosa, all of the families must have shared a single common ancestor who probably lived four or five centuries ago, long before most Jews even had surnames, much less written vital records. Though his research is not yet conclusive, Huebscher believes the common genetic ancestor may have been descended from Sephardic Jews who lived in Spain before the Inquisition. For some lucky people, the techniques of extreme genealogy make it possible to trace their origins back not just centuries, but a millennium or more. All they have to do is link themselves to a royal line, Drew explained, and ride it back as far as it goes. "We're all related to royalty," Drew said. The trick is to prove it. But thanks to the power of extreme genealogy, it can be a lot easier than you might think. 17th Annual Conference Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Albuquerque, New Mexico August 5-7 2007 CALL FOR PAPERS The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies will be holding its 17th Annual Conference from August 5 through 7, 2007, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We invite papers on crypto-Judaism from any discipline (e.g., anthropology, history, sociology, philosophy, literature, music, etc.) and from any geographic location or time period. We also welcome papers on other aspects of the Sephardic experience and other communities whose historical or sociological experience is similar to that of the crypto-Jewish community. All interested scholars and professionals, including advanced graduate students, are invited to submit proposals for papers, presentations or workshops. Proposals are also welcome from individuals with personal stories and genealogical or other research relating to crypto-Judaism. Proposals may be for individual papers/presentations or for complete sessions on specific topics. Please indicate if presentation represents completed research, or work in progress. Proposals must include a 200-word abstract and a brief bio. Please send proposals or inquiries to Seth Ward, Religious Studies, University of Wyoming, at: [email protected]. Proposal Deadline: May 1, 2007 For more information, see the SCJS website at: www.cryptojews.com. Sent by [email protected] Jews in Arab Countries 1948 Now Algeria 140,000 0 April 25,Ken Burns to explain exclusion April 4: Tribute to Artist Luis Jimenez April 7: Alamo Plaza Project April 27/28: Symposium Dallas"Hispanic Genealogical Research - Basics" Tejano Oral History Project Texas Launches New Award Humanities Land Grants Given by Spanish Royal Commission in 1767 Those interred in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery Tejano Mounument, Inc. Supporters of the Tejano Monument can now own a part of this important Tejano legacy. Artist Armando Hinojosa has produced a miniature version of the central bronze horseman that will sit on the top of the Tejano Monument entitled "El Tejano". El Tejano is an elegant work of art that is historically accurate and highly detailed description of the Tejano horsemen of the late 1700s to early 1800s. The outstanding sculpture has been produced an limited edition of 300. For more information, to to www.Tejano.com or write 501 Mocking Bird Lane, McAllen, Texas 78501. Information, SAGA CC Newspaper, Issue 1 President, Sara Duenas Flores, [email protected] 104 Joaquin de la Garza Falcon 105 Josï¿½ de Ynojosa 106 Miguel Perez 107 Juan Josï¿½ Solis 108 Francisco Antonio Villarreal Information taken from Guide to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in South Texas. Austin: Texas General Land Office, 1988. Those interred in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery Submitted and Researched Art Garza My goal is to eventually get a current list of individuals interred in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery since the 1800's, and maintain it as current as possible. In this issue are some of the people whose surname begins with the letter A or B that are buried in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery. Included are people who have passed since I first started my list. It is difficult to maintain a current list, but this is a start. In the next newsletter, I will provide a list of individuals who are buried in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery whose surname begins with C and D. In the meantime, if you are doing research and would like to find out if an individual is buried in the San Diego, Texas Cemetery, contact me and I'll search the list I have. General Meeting: Third Tuesday of the month at Casa View Library - Joaquin and Ferguson, Dallas Contact person: Dorina Thomas [email protected] http://home.earthlink.net/~hogardedallas EAST COAST National Archives April Schedule The following is a list of some of the events taking place at the National Archives during the month of April, 2007. For more information, respond to this email or call Katie Wilmes at 202-357-5127. Wednesday, April 11, at noon Jefferson Room The Summer of 1787 David O. Stewart will discuss his new book, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution. George Washington presided; James Madison kept the notes; Benjamin Franklin offered words of wisdom at crucial times. The Summer of 1787 traces the struggles within the Philadelphia Convention as the delegates hammered out the charter for the world's first constitutional democracy. Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m. William G. McGowan Theater Slavery and Freedom in Washington, D.C.: Show Me the Evidence! The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the National Archives host a panel discussion to observe the 145th anniversary of the District of Columbia's Compensated Emancipation Act. On April 16, 1862, before slaves were freed elsewhere in the United States, President Abraham Lincoln signed the law freeing 3,100 slaves in Washington, DC. The panel will explore the lives of free and enslaved African Americans in the nation's capital, documentation from that period, and the impact the act had on the region and the nation. The panel will feature Lerone Bennett, Jr., executive director emeritus, Ebony; Elizabeth Clark Lewis of Howard University; and Walter Hill, senior archivist in African American history. John W. Franklin of the NMAAHC will moderate. For further information on DC Emancipation Week programs, visit www.os.dc.gov/os/site. Family Day Celebration Sunday, April 15, 11a.m.2p.m. William G. McGowan Theater and Lobby "Presidential School Days" Join us for a day of fun family activities featuring themes that helped shape the Presidents' young lives as schoolchildren. Presented in partnership with the Foundation for the National Archives. "Listen to Tunes" In the spirit of our Presidents' varied musical talents, listen to area high school choral and instrumental ensembles. "Lead a Cheer" Create a spirit pennant and learn a cheer to motivate the team! Meet Screech, mascot of the Washington Nationals, from noon to 1 p.m.! "Use Your Noodle" Participate in a Quiz Bowl to test your knowledge about American history and Presidents. "Enjoy a Treat" Sample some of the Presidents' favorite snacks from their younger years. See if your favorite food matches theirs! "Preserve a Memory" A conservator will teach you how to care for special documents and pictures so that they will last a lifetime. Wednesday, April 18, at noon Jefferson Room Jackie Robinson's First Season Author Jonathan Eig discusses his book, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. April 15, 1947, is perhaps the most memorable date in baseball. When the Brooklyn Dodgers opened their season on that day, an African American man took the field in a major-league baseball for the first time. Amid death threats, isolation, and segregation, Robinson broke the color barrier, all while being the most scrutinized ballplayer on the planet. Eig offers an intimate and surprising portrait of a true baseball legend and an enduring symbol of civil rights. Sunday, April 22, at 7 p.m. William G. McGowan Theater Reflections of a Biographer-Historian Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein hosts Pulitzer Prizewinning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The conversation will examine Goodwin's career of more than three decades. She has been an aide and confidante to President Lyndon Johnson, a Harvard University professor, a Presidential biographer, and a commentator on issues from baseball to the American Presidency. Goodwin has written numerous articles on politics and baseball and has been a participant on television news programs and documentaries. Her books include Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; Lyndon Johnson &The American Dream; No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor RooseveltThe American Home Front During World War II; and Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. alute to Documentary Filmmakers Robert and Anne Drew William G. McGowan Theater Friday, April 27, at 6:30 pm Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963) Featuring remarkable candid footage of President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, this film chronicles the confrontation between the Kennedy administration and Governor George C. Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama. (52 minutes.) The National Archives Experience Constitution Avenue between 7th and 9th Streets, NW, Washington, DC All events listed in the calendar are free unless otherwise noted; reservations are not required unless noted. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue. The National Archives is fully accessible. If you need to request an accommodation (for example, a sign language interpreter) for a public program, please e-mail [email protected] or call 202-357-5000 at least two weeks prior to the event to ensure proper arrangements are secured. For information or to be placed on the mailing list, call 202-357-5000 or e-mail [email protected]. National Archives and Records Administration Center for the National Archives Experience Operations and Public Programs Division 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Rm G-9 Washington, D.C. 20408 Jerezanos in the history of Torreï¿½n, Coahuila By Mercy Bautista-Olvera CENTURY 1907- 2007 The Genealogy of the Llamas and Escobedo: The surnames Llamas and Escobedo united themselves on the 5th and 7th generations with the Cabral family tree, that followed Llamas Escobedo to Bertha Cabral Escobedo, married to Fernando Escobedo de la Torre, and for better understanding I would start with the Generations: 1st Generation, Domingo Cabral, born in Jerez in 1610 married Catalina Ana Pinedo Caldera 2nd Generation, Juan Cabral Pinedo, baptismal on March 16, 1649 Jerez, Zacatecas Married to Gertrudes de los Reyes Rodarte 3rd Generation, Juan Cabral Rodarte, born in Jerez in 1674, married Felipa de Ubillos Garcï¿½a 4th Generation, Josï¿½ Cabral Ubillos, born in Jerez, married Maria Guadalupe Andrea Vï¿½zquez Carrillo. 5th Generation, Juan Josï¿½ Cabral Vï¿½zquez, born in 1745, married to Juana Josefa Escobedo del ï¿½rbol Bonilla 6th Generation, Mucio Cabral Escobedo, born in Jerez on May 22, 1769 married to Marï¿½a Guadalupe Rufina Refugio Rodrï¿½guez. 7th Generation, Josï¿½ Marï¿½a Cabral Rodrï¿½guez married to Pantaleona Llamas Escobedo, 8th Generation, Josï¿½ Nisandro Cabral Llamas baptized in Jerez November 7, 1851, married Juana Escobedo Escobedo 9th Generation, Bertha Cabral Escobedo, born in Jerez, married to Fernando Escobedo de la Torre Fernando Escobedo de la Torre maternal ancestors: 1st Generation : Licenciado Diego (Pï¿½rez) de la Torre born in Almendralejo de Extremedura, Spain in 1482, who came with permission from Real de Carlos V in 1536, as Nuï¿½o de Guzmï¿½n, residential judge and governor of Nueva Galicia Licenciado (Lawyer) Diego Pï¿½rez de la Torre married Marï¿½a ï¿½lvarez 2nd Generation, Marï¿½a de la Torre ï¿½lvarez married Captain Hernan Fuentes Flores 3rd Generation, Juan (Flores) de la Torre, born in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1542 married Isabel Caldera, daughter of Captain Miguel Caldera, (2nd wife was a Valdes (first name unknown). 4th Generation, Captain Roque de la Torre Valdï¿½s, born in Jerez in 1597 married Juana Gamboa y Valdï¿½s 5th Generation, Captain. Cristï¿½bal de la Torre Gamboa y Valdï¿½s married Marï¿½a Rodrï¿½guez, 2nd wife Marï¿½a Copelo.) 6th Generation, Andrï¿½s de la Torre y Gamboa was born in Juanchorrey, Tepetongo, Zacatecas in 1710 married Marï¿½a Guadalupe Carlos, died in Juanchorrey in 1795, 7th Generation, Josï¿½ Rafael de la Torre Carlos married Juana Pascuala Ortiz, second wife Maria Pioquinta Gonzï¿½lez. 8th Generation, Juan Josï¿½ de la Torre Gonzalez married Marï¿½a Petra Borrego Escobedo 9th Generation, Francisco Borja de la Torre Borrego, born in El Salitral, Tepetongo on October 9, 1836 married Dolores Miranda ï¿½vila 10th Generation, Francisca de la Torre Miranda married Aurelio Escobedo Gonzï¿½lez 11th Generarion, Fernando Escobedo de la Torre and his wife Bertha Cabral Escobedo. The coupleï¿½s children Amalia Escobedo Cabral, born in Jerez in 1922: Adolfo Escobedo Cabral born on August 26, 1923 married to Camelita Valdï¿½s Romo, Fernando Escobedo Cabral, Eduardo Escobedo Cabral, Joaquin Escobedo Cabral, Ernesto Escobedo Cabral and Aurelio Escobedo Cabral Finding Your Mexican Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide is essential to any researcher looking to trace their heritage across the Rio Grande. In it, authors George and Peggy Ryskamp show how easy Mexican American research can be by providing detailed descriptions of parish records, civil records, and other types of records common in Mexico. This book makes it clear that Mexicans kept very good records, and outlines where to find such resources, and how to use them. In addition, it provides a basic introduction to the Spanish vocabulary researchers are likely to encounter in their research, and includes useful Mexican historical and geographical context as well. Filigranas, Fundaciones Y Genealogias/Jerez, Susticacan and Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas Sent by Mercy Bautista Olvera [email protected] Personajes de la historia / JEREZANOS EN TORREï¿½N Y LA COMARCA LAGUNERA Por: Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles De La Torre Portada de mi libro No. 27, cuya ediciï¿½n acaba de salir a la luz y prï¿½ximamente serï¿½ presentado. Contiene muchas familias laguneras, cuyas raï¿½ces son zacatecanas, y particularmente de Jerez. 13 de febrero de 2007 QUE HAN CONTRIBUIDO AL ENGRANDECIMIENTO DE TORREï¿½N A LO LARGO DE SU HISTORIA Muchos ï¿½rboles han extendido su ramaje genealï¿½gico en Torreï¿½n y la Comarca Lagunera a lo largo de su historia y que hoy con motivo del Centenario de la ciudad de Torreï¿½n, 1907-2007, aparecen en mi nuevo libro que tiene 405 pï¿½ginas tamaï¿½o carta, a doble columna, con unas 150 fotografï¿½as y 32 ï¿½rboles genealï¿½gicos y que irï¿½ dando a conocer en prï¿½ximos artï¿½culos periodï¿½sticos. ï¿½A raï¿½z -dice mi libro citado-, de la fundaciï¿½n del Instituto Municipal de Cultura en 1988, por el R. Ayuntamiento presidido por el Lic. Heriberto Ramos Salas para que funcionara con el patrocinio del Estado, del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y la Presidencia Municipal, quedando al frente la seï¿½ora doï¿½a Sonia Salum Chï¿½vez, ahora de Garrido, comenzï¿½ por organizar el Festival de Torreï¿½n y sus Grupos ï¿½tnicos, logrando, en principio, participar las colonias chinas, alemanas, inglesas, norteamericanas, japonesas y muchas mï¿½s. Ademï¿½s, se organizaron los grupos nacionales de los estados, que de muchas maneras han contribuido al engrandecimiento de Torreï¿½n, hasta lograr lo que ahora es. Se ha formado un mosaico de actividades que comprenden todas las ramas del quehacer humano: agricultores, ganaderos, escritores, mecï¿½nicos, obreros, industriales de la masa y la tortilla, estableros, mï¿½dicos, cientï¿½ficos, artistas, mï¿½sicos, etc., etc., muchos de los cuales procedï¿½an del Estado de Zacatecas, que mezclados con los grupos ï¿½tnicos extranjeros y de otros estados del paï¿½s, se ha formado una fuerte raza lagunera capaz de vencer al desierto y convertirlo en un jardï¿½n florido. Y como un botï¿½n de ese gran campo florido, citarï¿½ algunas personas que desde que Torreï¿½n era rancho a partir de 1848, despuï¿½s Villa en 1893 y Ciudad en 1907 han contribuido al crecimiento y desarrollo de esta gran ciudad que ahora es. Asï¿½ veremos, por ejemplo, que el matrimonio de don Francisco Gonzï¿½lez y su esposa doï¿½a Rita Castaï¿½eda, se radicaron desde 1809, en el Real y Hacienda de Jimulco, segï¿½n asienta el escritor Profr. don Roberto Martï¿½nez Garcï¿½a; el profesor don Manuel N. Ociedo, que fuera Presidente Municipal de Torreï¿½n en 1911. Familias Correa Valdï¿½s, que vinieron a Lerdo, y despuï¿½s a Gï¿½mez Palacio, Dgo., desde 1872, que fue doï¿½a Valeria Valdï¿½s Sï¿½nchez, con su hijo Antonio Correa Valdï¿½s, padre de don Anacleto Correa Burciaga, doï¿½a Olallita Valdï¿½s Valdï¿½s, nacida en Jerez y madre de la numerosa familia de los doctores Ramï¿½rez Valdï¿½s, ampliamente conocidos. Familias Llamas, Escobedo, Cabral, Alatorre, De la Torre, Robles, Sï¿½nchez y otras como la abuelita del Dr. Alfonso Garibay Fernï¿½ndez, que era jerezana. La abuela del Dr. Luis Maeda Villalobos, era jerezana y su bisabuela doï¿½a Severa del Refugio de la Torre Valdï¿½s, que era de Tepetongo, Zacs., la familia del Arq. Samuel Alatorre Morones, tambiï¿½n era jerezana y otras muchas mï¿½s de las que irï¿½ publicando artï¿½culos especiales de cada una de esas ramas que teniendo su tronco en el Estado de Zacatecas, ya echaron nuevas raï¿½ces y ramajes en La Laguna. If your are interested in buying this book please deposit $55.00 dollars, shipment included to the order of Jose Leon Robles de la Torre, at El BANCO BANORTE de Torreon. The author would send you the book by mexpost to your address, upon him receiving the deposit he would send you the book. If you want to contact the author his e-mail address is: [email protected] Investigation on Translation from original source by: Mercy Bautista-Olvera El director general del Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genï¿½mica, Doctor Gerardo Jimï¿½nez- Sï¿½nchez revelï¿½ que luego de dos aï¿½os de investigaciï¿½n, el genoma humano de los mexicanos estï¿½ listo. los genes de la poblaciï¿½n mexicana son el resultado de una mezcla de 35 grupos ï¿½tnicos, distintos por lo tanto a los de Europa, Asia y ï¿½frica. Agregï¿½ que el 65% del componente genï¿½tico de los mexicanos es ï¿½nico y se le ha denominado ï¿½amerindioï¿½, lo que significa que cuando un connacional enferma y, como consecuencia, padece dolor, su cura deberï¿½a ser atendida, en la mayor parte de los casos, por medicamentos elaborados de manera especial, y no por los importados, que fueron fabricados para atender los genomas de otros pueblos. La diabetes mellitus, las enfermedades cardiovasculares y diversos tipos de cï¿½ncer (de mama, tiroides, leucemia infantil y prï¿½stata), son algunos e los padecimientos a los que estamos predispuestos los mexicanos, dijo Jimï¿½nez-Sï¿½nchez. El mï¿½dico seï¿½alï¿½ que conocer el mapa genï¿½mico del mexicano permitirï¿½ cambiar el paradigma de la atenciï¿½n mï¿½dica en el paï¿½s porque podrï¿½ ser mï¿½s individualizada, predictiva y preventiva. El genoma humano es el nï¿½mero total de cromosomas que tiene el cuerpo, los cuales son los responsables de la herencia y su estudio permite conocer quï¿½ enfermedades podrï¿½ sufrir una persona durante su vida. Para conocer el mapa genï¿½tico de los mexicanos, fuï¿½ necesario que los especialistas recolectaran muestras de sangre de 140 personas mestizas -50% mujeres y 50% hombres- de siete estados de la Repï¿½blica: Sonora, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Yucatï¿½n, Veracruz, Guerrero y Tamaulipas. Los requisitos que tuvieron que cubrir los voluntatrios fueron: que no existiera ningï¿½n parentesco entre ellos, que fueran mayores de 18 aï¿½os, con padres y abuelos originarios del estado en cuestiï¿½n y que no hubieran inmigrado en aï¿½os recientes. Source: Ser Empresario Generation No. 1 1. PRESIDENT OF MEXICO BENITO-PABLO2 JUAREZ-GARCIA (MARCELINO1 JUAREZ) was born 21 Mar 1806 in Santo Tomas Ixtlan de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, and died 18 Jul 1872 in Mexico City, D. F., Mexico. He married MARGARITA-EUSTAQUIA MAZA-PARADA 31 Oct 1843 in Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, daughter of ANTONIO MAZA and PETRA PARADA. She was born 28 Mar 1826 in Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, and died 02 Jan 1871 in San Cosme, Mexico City, D. F., Mexico. Children of B ENITO-PABLO JUAREZ-GARCIA and MARGARITA-EUSTAQUIA MAZA-PARADA are: i. MARIA-MANUELA-JUANA 3 JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 19 May 1844, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. ii. MARIA-F ELICITAS-TEODORA JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 01 Apr 1847, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. iii. MAGARITA JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 1848, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. iv. MARIA-GUADALPE J UAREZ-MAZA, b. 1849, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico; d. 10 Oct 1850. v. SOLEDAD JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 1850, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. vi. BENITO-LUIS-NARCISO JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 02 Nov 1852, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. vii. JOSEFA JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 30 Jan 1854, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. 2. viii. MARIA-DE-JESUS JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 30 Jan 1854, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. ix. JOSE-MARIA-MELECIO JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 06 Dec 1856, Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico; d. 1865. x. FRANCISCA JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 1859, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. xi. ANTONIO JUAREZ-MAZA, b. 13 Jun 1864, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico; d. 01 Aug 1865. Generation No. 2 2. MARIA-DE-JESUS3 JUAREZ-MAZA (BENITO-PABLO2 JUAREZ-GARCIA, MARCELINO1 JUAREZ) was born 30 Jan 1854 in Sagrario Metropolitano, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. She married JOSE SANCHEZ-RAMOS. Child of M ARIA-DE-JESUS JUAREZ-MAZA and JOSE SANCHEZ-RAMOS is: i. ANDRES 4 SANCHEZ-JUAREZ, b. 08 Jul 1878, Mexico City, D. F., Mexico; d. 21 Feb 1949, Mexico City, D. F., Mexico; m. VICTORIA CORONA; b. 19 Oct 1881, Madrid, Spain; d. 1962, Mexico City, D. F., Mexico. Descendientes de Victoriano Barrï¿½n(1) GENERACION No. 1 1. VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1) naciï¿½ cerca de 1779 en San Juan de los Ahorcados, Zacatecas1, y muriï¿½ el 24 de junio de 1849 en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila2. Se casï¿½ con CECILIA TREVIï¿½O-HERNANDES?. (El apellido de Cecilia es indiscriminadamente escrito como Treviï¿½o y TREBIï¿½O). Los hijos de VICTORIANO BARRï¿½N(1) y de CECILIA TREVIï¿½O-HERNANDES? eran: 2. i. CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila; muriï¿½. Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 3. ii. JUAN BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila; muriï¿½ en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 4. iii. BENIGNO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O. 5. iv. FRANCISCO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O. v. RAMONA BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O. 6. vi. FRANCISCA BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O. GENERACION No. 2 2. CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O (VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1))4,5 naciï¿½ en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila, y muriï¿½ en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con MARGARITA MUNGARAY-SATARAï¿½S, hija de JOSE-MARï¿½A MUNGARAY y MARï¿½A-JOSEFA SATARAï¿½S. Los hijos de CALIXTO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O y MARGARITA MUNGARAY-SATARAï¿½S son: 7. i. PONCIANA3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY. 8. ii. MA.-MERCED BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY. 9. iii. CATARINA BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, naciï¿½ en 1832 en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 10. iv. PEDRO BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, naciï¿½ en 1840 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; muriï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. v. MARï¿½A-DARï¿½A BARRï¿½N-MUNGARRAY, naciï¿½ en 1844, La Punt de Santo Domingo, Municipio de Viesca, Coahuila; se casï¿½ con MACARIO Sï¿½NCHEZ, el 8 de marzo de 1862, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 11. vi. JOSï¿½-CARMEN BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, naciï¿½ el 16 Juio de 1848 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. vii. JOSï¿½-JOAQUIN BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, naciï¿½ el 18 de agosto de 1850 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. viii. MA.-PORFIRIA BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, b. 21 May 1854, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 3. JUAN2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O (VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila, y muriï¿½ en La Punta de santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con MARï¿½A-PATRICIA CALDERï¿½N9, hija de JOSï¿½-MARï¿½A CALDERï¿½N y de CONCEPCIï¿½N (RELLES) REYES. Los hijos de JUAN BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O y de MARï¿½A-PATRICIA CALDERï¿½N eran: I. MA.-GUADALUPE3 BARRï¿½N-CALDERï¿½N, naciï¿½ en 1839, en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; se casï¿½ con JULIï¿½N CAMACHO-DE-LOS-REYES. Mas de MA.-GUADALUPE BARRï¿½N-CALDERï¿½N: Bautizada en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. ii. MARï¿½A-CONCEPCIï¿½N BARRï¿½N-CALDERï¿½N, naciï¿½ el 8 de diciembre de 1852, en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 4. BENIGNO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O (VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1) Se casï¿½ con MARIA-CENOVIA (Cenona Aguirre) AGUIRRE-SOLIS, la hija de FRANCISCO AGUIRRE y de SINFORIANA SOLIS. Los hijos de Benigno Barrï¿½n-TREVIï¿½O and MA.-CENOVIA AGUIRRE-SOLIS are: I. LEANDRO3 BARRï¿½N-AGUIRRE, naciï¿½ el 28 febrero de 1848, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. ii. FRANCISCA BARRï¿½N-AGUIRRE, naciï¿½ el primero de febrero de 1851, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 5. FRANCISCO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O(VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)).11 Se casï¿½ con PETRA AGUIRRE-SOLï¿½S, la hija de FRANCISCO AGUIRRE y de SINFORIANA SOLIS. (br> El hijo de FRANCISCO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O y de PETRA AGUIRRE-SOLï¿½S fuï¿½: I. DIONICIO3 BARRï¿½N-AGUIRRE, naciï¿½ en septiembre de 1852 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 6. FRANCISCA2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O(VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)).12 El hijo de FRANCISCA BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O fuï¿½: I. GALDINO3 BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ el 18 de abril de 1853 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. GENERACION No. 3 7. PONCIANA3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY (CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½OO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)).13 El Hijo de PONCIANA BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY is: I. Jï¿½SE-PAZ4 SATARAï¿½S, se creï¿½ naciï¿½ en 1858. 8. MA.-MERCED3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY (CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)). Conociï¿½ a NICOLAS ESPINO. Los hijos de MA.-MERCED BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY y de NICOLAS ESPINO fueron: I. TIMOTEO4 BARRï¿½N, se creï¿½ naciï¿½ en 1860. ii. BASILIA BARRï¿½N, se creï¿½ naciï¿½ en 1867. 9. CATARINA3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY (CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1))naciï¿½ en 1832 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con (1) FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ. Se casï¿½ con (2) FRANCISCO CAMACHO el 2 de julio de 1856. El hijo de CATARINA BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY y de FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ fuï¿½: I. MA.-EUSTAQUIA4 HERNï¿½NDEZ-BARRï¿½N, Se creï¿½ naciï¿½ en 1857. 10. PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY (CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1))14 naciï¿½ en 1840 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila15, y muriï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Conociï¿½ a (1) MAGDALENA (DE LA CRUZ?) RUIZ?. Tambiï¿½n a (2) EMILIA AVITIA-G. Se casï¿½ con (3) MARï¿½A-PAULA CASTRUITA-Dï¿½AS el 15 de junio de 1862 in La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila con la hija de ANASTACIO CASTRUITA and MA.-NICOMEDES Dï¿½AS. El hijo de PEDRO BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY y de MAGDALENA RUIZ? fue: 12. I. VIDAL4 DE LA CRUZ. El hijo de PEDRO BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY and EMILIA AVITIA-G fue: ii. JOSï¿½-BARRï¿½N-AVITIA4, se creï¿½ naciï¿½ en 1919. Los hijos de PEDRO BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY y de MARï¿½A-PAULA CASTRUITA-Dï¿½AS fueron: 13. iii. CARLOTA4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila? y muriï¿½ en El Tanque Aguilereï¿½o, Coahuila. iv. NABORA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA. v. JOSï¿½-CARMEN BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA. 14. vi. TOMï¿½S (1) BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ el 30 de Septiembre de 1863, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 15. vii. SEBERA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ el 1ro. de Febrero de 1864, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 16. viii. CIPRIANO BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ el 17 de Septiembre de 1865, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; muriï¿½ por el 24 de Septiembre de 1947, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. ix. MARï¿½A-BLAS BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ el 3 de Febrero de 1877, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Municipio de Viesca, Coahuila16; muriï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Municipio de Viesca, Coahuila. 17. x. FELIPE BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA,naciï¿½ el 23 Enero de 1878, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 6 de Febrero de 1965, La Joya, Municipio de Torreï¿½n, Coahuila. xi. ANSELMO BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA, naciï¿½ el 21 Abril de 1880?. xii. LADISLADO BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA,naciï¿½ el 18 Agosto de 1884, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coah.?. 11. JOSï¿½-CARMEN3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY (CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ el 16de Julio de 1848 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con MA.-RICARDA CHICA ZALAZAR-MORILLO el 22 de Octubre de 1875, hija de MARCOS ZALAZAR-PICHARDO y MA.- CANDELARIA MORILLO. Los hijos de JOSï¿½-CARMEN BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY y MA.-RICARDA ZALAZAR-MORILLO eran: I. JOSE-MARï¿½A4 BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR,naci2 el 21de Marzo de 1877 en, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. ii. JOCE-DE-LA-CONCEPSION BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR, b. 1877. iii. JOSï¿½-ENCARNACIï¿½N BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR, naciï¿½ en Junio de 1876, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 8 de Diceiembre de 1877, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 8 months. 18. iv. LORENZO BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR,naciï¿½ el 4 Septiembre de 1878, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila; muriï¿½ en Mexicali, Baja California, Mï¿½xico. GENERACION No. 4 12. VIDAL4 DE LA CRUZ (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)). Se casï¿½ con DIONICIA HERNANDEZ. El hijo de VIDAL DE LA CRUZ y DIONICIA HERNANDEZ es: 19. i. MARGARITO5 DE-LA-CRUZ-HERNï¿½NDEZ, naciï¿½ el 27 de Octubre de 1927, Santa Cruz del Orï¿½gano, Durango. 13. CARLOTA4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N- FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila?20, y muriï¿½ en El Tanque Aguilereï¿½o, Coahuila21. Se casï¿½ con (1) GUILLERMO (2) Sï¿½NCHEZ. Conociï¿½ a (2) GUILLERMO (1) Dï¿½AZ. Se casï¿½ con (3) JAQUEZ. Conociï¿½ a (4) MIGUEL LUNA, el hijo de NATIVIDAD LUNA. Conociï¿½ a (5) ANDRES ALVARADO en San Juan de Guadalupe, Durango. Se casï¿½ con (6) CARLOS DIAZ. Los hijos de CARLOTA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y GUILLERMO Sï¿½NCHEZ eran: 20. i. RITA5 Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ en 1927, Hacienda (rancho) Santa Rosalia, Durango. 21. ii. GABINO Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N. 22. iii. GUADALUPE "LUPE" Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ en El Tanque Aguilereï¿½o, Coahuila?; muriï¿½ en El Paso, Texas. iv. Fï¿½LIX Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N. v. FRANCISCO Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N. 23. vi. CONCEPCIï¿½N "CHONA" Sï¿½NCHEZ-BARRï¿½N. Los hijos de CARLOTA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y GUILLERMO Dï¿½AZ eran: 24. vii. PEDRO5 (Dï¿½AZ)-BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ se crï¿½e que en 1901, El Tanque Aguilereï¿½o, Coahuila. viii. CARLOTA (2) BARRï¿½N-. ix. Niï¿½o BARRï¿½N-. 25. x. ATANASIA BARRï¿½N-?, muriï¿½ en Estaciï¿½n Juan Eugenio, Coahuila Municipio de Coahuila. xi. MARï¿½A-JOSEFA BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ en 1900. El hijo de CARLOTA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y JAQUEZ era: xii. VICTORIANA5 JAQUEZ-BARRï¿½N. El hijo de CARLOTA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y MIGUEL LUNA es: 26. xiii. BAUDELIO5 (LUNA)-BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo,Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 20 de Diciembre de 1982, La Joya, Coahuila, a la edad de 92 aï¿½os. El hijo de CARLOTA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y ANDRES ALVARADO es: xiv. BICTORIANA5 ALVARADO-BARRï¿½N, naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 14. TOMï¿½S (1)4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ el 30 de Septiembre de 1863 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con FELICIANA?. Los hijos de TOMï¿½S BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y FELICIANA? eran: I. BERNARDO5 BARRï¿½N. ii. BEATRï¿½S BARRï¿½N. iii. FELIPE BARRï¿½N. 15. SEBERA4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N- FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ el 1ro. De Febrero de 864 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con GUADALUPE ALVARADO. El hijo de SEBERA BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y GUADALUPE ALVARADO es: I. ZENOBIO5 ALVARADO-BARRï¿½N. 16. CIPRIANO4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ el 17 de Septiembre de 1865 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila, y muriï¿½ se crï¿½e el 24 de Septiembre de 1947 en La Punta de Santo Domingo y ELEUTERIA ALVARADO. Se casï¿½ con (2) MARï¿½A REYES en La Punta De Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Se casï¿½ con (3) PETRA RETï¿½S-(GONZï¿½LEZ)23 el 21 de Abril de 1913 en San Juan de Guadalupe, Durango. Los hijos de CIPRIANO BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y MA-DEL-REFUGIO TREVIï¿½O-ALVARADO eran: 27. i. ALVINO5 BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en 1891, El Zacate, Durango; muriï¿½ el 20 de Mazo de 1975, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Cohuila. 28. ii. MARï¿½A BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, muriï¿½ el 19 de Junio de 1989, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. 29. iii. PEDRO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en El Tanque Aguilereï¿½o, Coahuila; muriï¿½ se crï¿½e en 1949, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 30. iv. ETANISLAO BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en 1900, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Municipio de Viesca, Coahuila?. v. ZACARIAS BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en San Jose de Barrones, Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 11 de Septimbre , San Jose de Barrones, Coahhuila 31. vi. PETRA BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O, naciï¿½ en 1905, El Zacate, Durango?. vii. ALBINA BARRï¿½N-TREVIï¿½O?. El hijo de CIPRIANO BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y PETRA RETï¿½S-(GONZï¿½LEZ) era: viii. ANGELA5 BARRï¿½N-RETï¿½S, m. RITO RODRï¿½GUEZ-AGUILAR. 17. FELIPE4 BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA (PEDRO3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N- FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1))24,25 naciï¿½ el 23 Enero de 1878 en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila26, y muriï¿½ el 6 de Febrero de 1965 en La Joya, Municipio de Torreï¿½n, Coahuila27. Se casï¿½ con (1) MAGDALENA FRAIRE. Se casï¿½ con (2) JUANA Lï¿½PEZ-ESCOBEDO el 3 de Junio de 1901 en San Juan de Guadalupe, Durango?, la hija de CIPRIANO Lï¿½PEZ-RODRï¿½GUEZ y MA.-TRINIDAD ESCOVEDO-RENTERï¿½A(1). La hija de FELIPE BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y MAGDALENA FRAIRE es: I. JULIA5 RUIZ, naciï¿½ en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila. Los hijos de FELIPE BARRï¿½N-CASTRUITA y JUANA Lï¿½PEZ-ESCOBEDO son: 32. ii. ANTONIA5 BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ en 1907, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; muriï¿½ en San Juan de Guadalupe, Durango. 33. iii. TOMï¿½S BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ el 7 de Marzo de 1904, en La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 13 de Febrero de 1990, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila. 34. iv. CIRILO BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ el 9 de Febrero de 1910, en La Punta e Santo Domingo?, Municipio de Viesca, Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 4 de Mayo de 1986, Juï¿½rez, Chihuahua, Mï¿½xico. v. JOSï¿½ BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ se crï¿½e en 1911, La Punta de Santo Domingo, Coahuila; muriï¿½ se crï¿½e en 1927. 35. vi. JUAN-ANTONIO BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ el 13 de Junio de 1912, Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila?; murio ?. 36. vii. VENUSTIANO BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, naciï¿½ el 30 de Diciembre de 1916, Matamoros (El Refugio), Coahuila; muriï¿½ el 30 de Mayo de 1992, Torreï¿½n, Coahuila. viii. JUAN BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ, b. 1926, La Punta de Santo Domingo. Coahuila; muriï¿½ en 1932, San Juan de Guadalupe, Durango a la edad de 6 aï¿½os. 37. ix. MAURO BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ. 38. x. JOSï¿½-Fï¿½LIX BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ. 39. xi. TOMASA BARRï¿½N-Lï¿½PEZ 18. LORENZO4 BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR (JOSï¿½-CARMEN3 BARRï¿½N-MUNGARAY, CALIXTO2 BARRï¿½N-FRESNILLO, VICTORIANO1 BARRï¿½N(1)) naciï¿½ el 4 de Septiembre de 1878 en Santo Domingo de la Punta, Coahuila (29), y muriï¿½ en Mexicali, Baja California, Mï¿½xico ((30)). Conociï¿½ a (1) ANSELMA Cï¿½RDOBA. Conociï¿½ a (2) ANIZETA TREVIï¿½O. Conociï¿½ a (3) ATANASIA ADAME. La hija de LORENZO BARRï¿½N-ZALAZAR con ANSELMA Cï¿½RDOBA es: I. MARTA ((5)) FLORES*. Estas son las peticiones que tenemos hasta ahora. Angel Custodio Rebollo [email protected] - Gloria Ballistreri, esta interesada en conocer antecedentes del apellido CORNEJO, que era el apellido de su madre. Contactar: [email protected] - Juan Morales Castillo, desea informaciï¿½n sobre los Morales Castillo de Guatemala y sobre los Villavicencio, tambiï¿½n de Guatemala. Contacto: [email protected] - Jose Alvarez-Sala, tiene mucho interï¿½s en conocer el origen de su apellido, que al parecer viene de Asturias, en Espana. Contacto: [email protected] - Sergio Morro, de Argentina, estï¿½ en la bï¿½squeda de donde es originario su apellido, MORRO, que al parecer arranca en la zona de Mallorca, Espana. Contacto: [email protected] - Reinaldo Antonio, estï¿½ interesado con contactar con personas que lleven el apellido FALCON. Contacto: [email protected] Hispanic Genealogy Blogspot This new blog will have new articles posted primarily for research in Spain and Latinoamerica. You will be able to read, comment, and share. Sent Lynn Turner Spain, the United Kingdom and the Junta of Andalucï¿½a Agree to Sussex Shipwreck Archaeology Project Sent by Bill Carmena [email protected] The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has Issued a Press Release indicating the successful conclusion of negotiations relating to HMS Sussex Tampa, FL, March 26, 2007 - Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. (AMEX: OMR), a leader in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, is pleased to publicly announce the conclusion of diplomatic negotiations for the archaeological project related to the shipwreck of HMS Sussex lost in 1694. A meeting of experts from the United Kingdom, the Junta of Andalucï¿½a and Odyssey Marine Exploration last week convened in Seville, Spain to discuss the archaeological plan related to HMS Sussex. After the meeting's successful conclusion, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release, the English translation of which follows. [Original Spanish version of the document: http://shipwreck.net/official_mfa_release.pdf Discover the "panoramic flight": a new geographical navigation tool that makes www.spain.info an ever more interactive website. From now on you can fly over Madrid from your own computer, and ''land'' at the city's museums, monuments and buildings. Besides the useful information you will receive, you can also make on-line bookings at the accommodation of your choice. Map proves Portuguese discovered Australia: new bok By Michael PerryWed Mar 21, 6:26 AM ET Sent by Bill Carmena [email protected] A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia. The book "Beyond Capricorn" says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia's east coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 -- almost 250 years before Britain's Captain James Cook. Australian author Peter Trickett said that when he enlarged the small map he could recognize all the headlands and bays in Botany Bay in Sydney -- the site where Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770. "It was even so accurate that I found I could draw in the modern airport runways, to scale in the right place, without any problem at all," Trickett told Reuters on Wednesday. Trickett said he stumbled across a copy of the map while browsing through a Canberra book shop eight years ago. He said the shop had a reproduction of the Vallard Atlas, a collection of 15 hand drawn maps completed no later than 1545 in France. The maps represented the known world at the time. Two of the maps called "Terra Java" had a striking similarity to Australia's east coast except at one point the coastline jutted out at right angles for 1,500 km (932 miles). "There was something familiar about them but they were not quite right -- that was the puzzle. How did they come to have all these Portuguese place names?," Trickett said. Trickett believed the cartographers who drew the Vallard maps had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts they were copying from. It is commonly accepted that the French cartographers used maps and "portolan" charts acquired illegally from Portugal and Portuguese vessels that had been captured, Trickett said. "The original portolan maps would have been drawn on animal hide parchments, usually sheep or goat skin, of limited size," he explained. "For a coastline the length of eastern Australia, some 3,500 kms, they would have been 3 to 4 charts." "The Vallard cartographer has put these individual charts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Without clear compass markings its possible to join the southern chart in two different ways. My theory is it had been wrongly joined." Using a computer Trickett rotated the southern part of the Vallard map 90 degrees to produce a map which accurately depicts Australia's east coast. "They provided stunning proof that Portuguese ships made these daring voyages of discovery in the early 1520s, just a few years after they had sailed north of Australia to reach the Spice Islands -- the Moluccas. This was a century before the Dutch and 250 years before Captain Cook," he said. Trickett believes the original charts were made by Mendonca who set sail from the Portuguese base at Malacca with four ships on a secret mission to discover Marco Polo's "Island of Gold" south of Java. If Trickett is right, Mendonca's map shows he sailed past Fraser Island off Australia's northeast coast, into Botany Bay in Sydney, and south to Kangaroo Island off southern Australia, before returning to Malacca via New Zealand's north island. Mendonca's discovery was kept secret to prevent other European powers reaching the new land, said Trickett, who believes his theory is supported by discoveries of 16th century Portuguese artifacts on the Australian and New Zealand coasts. Copyright ï¿½ 2007 Reuters Limited Everything You Wanted to Know About the Canary Islands Heritage Societies Published: March 5, 2007 Sent by Johanna De Soto [email protected] Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the countryï¿½s western and northern fringes. But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticistï¿½s point of view, seems likely to please no one. The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins. That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historiansï¿½ account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimerï¿½s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of todayï¿½s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque. The British Isles were unpopulated then, wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years and forced the former inhabitants into southern refuges in Spain and Italy. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north. The new arrivals in the British Isles would have found an empty territory, which they could have reached just by walking along the Atlantic coastline, since there were still land bridges then across what are now English Channel and the Irish Sea. This new population, who lived by hunting and gathering, survived a sharp cold spell called the Younger Dryas that lasted from 12,300 to 11,000 years ago. Much later, some 6,000 years ago, agriculture finally reached the British Isles from its birthplace in the Near East. Agriculture may have been introduced by people speaking Celtic, in Dr. Oppenheimerï¿½s view. Although the Celtic immigrants may have been few in number, they spread their farming techniques and their language throughout Ireland and the western coast of Britain. Later immigrants arrived from northern Europe had more influence on the eastern and southern coasts. They too spread their language, a branch of German, but these invadersï¿½ numbers were also small compared with the local population. In all, about three-quarters of the ancestors of todayï¿½s British and Irish populations arrived between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, when rising sea levels finally divided Britain and Ireland from the Continent and from one another, Dr. Oppenheimer calculates in a new book, ï¿½The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Storyï¿½ (Carroll & Graf, 2006). As for subsequent invaders, Ireland received the fewest; the invadersï¿½ DNA makes up about 12 percent of the Irish gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer estimates, but it accounts for 20 percent of the gene pool in Wales, 30 percent in Scotland, and about one-third in eastern and southern England. Still, no single group of invaders is responsible for more than 5 percent of the current gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer says on the basis of genetic data. He cites figures from the archaeologist Heinrich Haerke that the Anglo-Saxon invasions that began in the fourth century A.D. added about 250,000 people to a British population of one to two million, an estimate Dr. Oppenheimer notes is larger than his but considerably less than the substantial replacement of the English population assumed by others. The Norman invasion of 1066 A.D. brought not many more than 10,000 people, according to Dr. Haerke. Other geneticists say Dr. Oppenheimerï¿½s reconstruction is plausible, though some disagree with details. Several said that genetic methods did not give precise enough dates to be confident of certain aspects, like when the first settlers arrived. ï¿½Once you have an established population, it is quite difficult to change it very radically,ï¿½ said Daniel G. Bradley, a geneticist at Trinity College, Dublin. But he said he was ï¿½quite agnosticï¿½ as to whether the original population became established in Britain and Ireland immediately after the glaciers retreated 16,000 years ago, as Dr. Oppenheimer argues, or more recently, in the Neolithic Age, which began 10,000 years ago. Bryan Sykes, another Oxford geneticist, said he agreed with Dr. Oppenheimer that the ancestors of ï¿½by far the majority of peopleï¿½ were present in the British Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. ï¿½The Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much less than some of the medieval historical texts would indicate,ï¿½ he said. His conclusions, based on his own genetic survey and information in his genealogical testing service, Oxford Ancestors, are reported in his new book, ï¿½Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.ï¿½ A different view of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has been developed by Mark Thomas of University College, London. Dr. Thomas and colleagues say the invaders wiped out substantial numbers of the indigenous population, replacing 50 percent to 100 percent of those in central England. Their argument is that the Y chromosomes of English men seem identical to those of people in Norway and the Friesland area of the Netherlands, two regions from which the invaders may have originated. Dr. Oppenheimer disputes this, saying the similarity between the English and northern European Y chromosomes arises because both regions were repopulated by people from the Iberian refuges after the glaciers retreated. Dr. Sykes said he agreed with Dr. Oppenheimer on this point, but another geneticist, Christopher Tyler-Smith of the Sanger Centre near Cambridge, said the jury was still out. ï¿½There is not yet a consensus view among geneticists, so the genetic story may well change,ï¿½ he said. As to the identity of the first postglacial settlers, Dr. Tyler-Smith said he ï¿½would favor a Neolithic origin for the Y chromosomes, although the evidence is still quite sketchy.ï¿½ Dr. Oppenheimerï¿½s population history of the British Isles relies not only on genetic data but also on the dating of language changes by methods developed by geneticists. These are not generally accepted by historical linguists, who long ago developed but largely rejected a dating method known as glottochronology. Geneticists have recently plunged into the field, arguing that linguists have been too pessimistic and that advanced statistical methods developed for dating genes can also be applied to languages. Dr. Oppenheimer has relied on work by Peter Forster, a geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, to argue that Celtic is a much more ancient language than supposed, and that Celtic speakers could have brought knowledge of agriculture to Ireland, where it first appeared. He also adopts Dr. Forsterï¿½s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, that English is an ancient, fourth branch of the Germanic language tree, and was spoken in England before the Roman invasion. English is usually assumed to have developed in England, from the language of the Angles and Saxons, about 1,500 years ago. But Dr. Forster argues that the Angles and the Saxons were both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule. They did not bring their language to England because English, in his view, was already spoken there, probably introduced before the arrival of the Romans by tribes such as the Belgae, whom Julius Caesar describes as being present on both sides of the Channel. The Belgae may have introduced some socially transforming technique, such as iron-working, which would lead to their language supplanting that of the indigenous inhabitants, but Dr. Forster said he had not yet identified any specific innovation from the archaeological record. Germanic is usually assumed to have split into three branches: West Germanic, which includes German and Dutch; East Germanic, the language of the Goths and Vandals; and North Germanic, consisting of the Scandinavian languages. Dr. Forsterï¿½s analysis shows English is not an off-shoot of West Germanic, as usually assumed, but is a branch independent of the other three, which also implies a greater antiquity. Germanic split into its four branches some 2,000 to 6,000 years ago, Dr. Forster estimates. Historians have usually assumed that Celtic was spoken throughout Britain when the Romans arrived. But Dr. Oppenheimer argues that the absence of Celtic place names in England ï¿½ words for places are particularly durable ï¿½ makes this unlikely. If the people of the British Isles hold most of their genetic heritage in common, with their differences consisting only of a regional flavoring of Celtic in the west and of northern European in the east, might that perception draw them together? Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences. The Celtic cultural myth ï¿½is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,ï¿½ said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286. Dr. Oppenheimer said genes ï¿½have no bearing on cultural history.ï¿½ There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said. As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, ï¿½It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it wonï¿½t.ï¿½ Slavery An Integral Part of Nation's Shared Ancestry By Jay Bookman [email protected] Let me tell you a story. My father's people come from western Virginia, near the headwaters of the James River. For 250 years they have lived in that valley, making their living as hunters and frontiersmen, then as farmers, later as railroad workers and tradesmen. The first of our line to settle there was Jacob Persinger. As a child of two or three, he had been kidnapped by the Shawnee and raised as a tribe member, adopted by a mother who had lost a son of her own. But in 1763, a treaty ending the French and Indian War required the Shawnee to return all white captives. Jacob, then a teenager, was handed to authorities, given a white name and told to live as a white man. He wasn't having it. Twice, young Jacob ran back to the Shawnee, traveling alone more than 200 miles on foot from Virginia to Ohio; each time, he was returned to the white settlement by Shawnee elders afraid of violating the treaty. "If you care for your Indian mother, you will not cause trouble for us again with the white man," the great chief Cornstalk told Jacob as he banished him the final time. Or so the story goes. Over the years I had heard bits and pieces of that tale, but when I started looking a little deeper, the story got richer. Among other things, I discovered that Jacob later owned two slaves, a female kitchen worker and a field hand known as Blue. We cannot judge the past by the standards of today, but I imagine Jacob knew slavery was wrong. The contrast between the way white Americans treated captured Africans such as Blue, and the way Jacob had been embraced by the Shawnee, would have been hard to ignore. Later, when the Civil War came, the Persinger family took the Union side. And in Jacob's will, he stipulated that both of his slaves were to be freed when they turned 31. Blue never knew that freedom. One year during haying season, the 22-year-old slave got into a dispute with Jacob's son, John. (Both parties are rumored to have been sipping from the family still.) Blue grabbed a sickle and slashed John behind his knee, cutting an artery and killing him. Surprisingly, Blue was given a trial with a semblance of fairness. The state of Virginia even hired a lawyer to defend him. After his conviction, on Aug. 12, 1842, he became the first man legally hanged in that county, riding to his execution on a coffin he built himself. The state then paid our family $320, compensation for destroying our property when it killed Blue. But first, it deducted $15 to pay the lawyer. Recently, the state of Virginia has tried to make amends of a different sort, passing a resolution formally apologizing for the enslavement of Blue and many others. A similar resolution has been proposed here in Georgia, but judging from comments by legislative leaders, its chances are slim. In following the debate, you get the sense that for some white Southerners, an apology will cost them something they can't quite articulate, but know they aren't willing to surrender. So let me take a stab at explaining it. Irrational beings that we are, we humans like to believe that stories about our ancestors in some way reflect who we are today. Sure, it's romantic claptrap, but we're all susceptible. That's why I went poking into Jacob's history ï¿½ I liked the idea that an ancestor had been raised by Indians. Likewise, when white Southerners boast of ancestors who fought so well and so stubbornly in the War of Northern Aggression, they too bask in their forefathers' glory. But when they are asked to apologize for the slavery those ancestors defended, that pride is in some way diminished. I speak as an outsider, but it would only be natural if at a deep level black Americans felt something similar ï¿½ not a sense of pride but a gnawing sense of shame that their ancestors had been held so long in slavery and treated as inferior. If so, that shame would be no more rational than the pride felt by members of the Daughters of the Confederacy, but it would feel just as real. That may be why, for many black Americans, slavery is still something raw between us. On the two occasions that I've mentioned the story of my slaveholding ancestor to black friends, their instinct has been to recoil and try to change the topic. It's not something to be comfortably discussed. A couple of years ago, I took my children to Jacob's grave, on a hill overlooking the Persinger homesite. I pointed out the emblem on his gravestone marking him as a veteran of the Revolutionary War, but I also pointed out the spot where Blue killed John, and I told them that story, too. Because, in the end, our history really is like DNA. We inherit it all, the good with the bad. If I embrace Jacob Persinger as a symbol of family pride, if I want to think that in some way his story says something about me, well, that story turns out to be complicated. (Atlantic Journal-Constitution/Common D) Family History Web sites, and New Services "What's in an Address?" by Juliana Smith Power Point Presentation of a Family Tree Websites Recommended Free Online Genealogy Database Hits 150 Million Names SALT LAKE CITY, Utah ï¿½ FamilySearchï¿½ announced today that the Pedigree Resource File (PRF) database has exceeded 150 million searchable names. Along with the milestone achievement, a new feature has been added that allows users to view genealogical and extended information for deceased individuals in a familiar pedigree (family tree) format. Users can search or contribute their personal genealogies to the free database at www.familysearch.org . The PRF database is a popular destination for family historians seeking to find missing branches of their family tree and then preserve or share family histories online. People from around the world can submit their genealogies online at FamilySearch.org. Using a genealogy software program (such as the free Personal Ancestral File program found at FamilySearch.org), users can easily donate a copy of their personal family histories to the Pedigree Resource File. Details can be found online by clicking the Share tab on FamilySearch.org. Since its launch in 1999, the database has grown at a rate of about 19 million names a year. Today, it boasts more than 150 million searchable names. To respect privacy, only information about deceased individuals is displayed online. "Prior to this latest search improvement, users didn't always realize that there was additional information available for an ancestor found in the database. We also wanted to display search results for an individual in the more familiar context of a family tree," said Steve Anderson, Marketing Manager for FamilySearch. "This new feature allows them to do just that." The Pedigree Resource File can be found on the advanced search page on FamilySearch.org: http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp FamilySearch is the public channel of the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU), a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch maintains the world's largest repository of genealogical resources accessed through FamilySearch.org, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, and more than 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries. Figuring Out Family Relationships At Genealogy.com, we get asked about how to determine relationships all the time. Here, you'll learn how to figure out the relationships between family members using a simple chart. If someone walked up to you and said "Howdy, I'm your third cousin, twice removed," would you have any idea what they meant? Most people have a good understanding of basic relationship words such as "mother," "father," "aunt," "uncle," "brother," and "sister." But what about the relationship terms that we don't use in everyday speech? Terms like "second cousin" and "first cousin, once removed"? We don't tend to speak about our relationships in such exact terms ("cousin" seems good enough when you are introducing one person to another), so most of us aren't familiar with what these words mean. Relationship Terms Sometimes, especially when working on your family history, it's handy to know how to describe your family relationships more exactly. The definitions below should help you out. Cousin (a.k.a "first cousin") Your first cousins are the people in your family who have two of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles. Second Cousin Your second cousins are the people in your family who have the same great-grandparents as you., but not the same grandparents. Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins Your third cousins have the same great-great-grandparents, fourth cousins have the same great-great-great-grandparents, and so on. Removed When the word "removed" is used to describe a relationship, it indicates that the two people are from different generations. You and your first cousins are in the same generation (two generations younger than your grandparents), so the word "removed" is not used to describe your relationship. The words "once removed" mean that there is a difference of one generation. For example, your mother's first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. This is because your mother's first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents. This one-generation difference equals "once removed." Twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother's first cousin are first cousins, twice removed. Relationship Charts Simplify Everything Now that you have an idea of what these different words mean, take a look at the chart below. It's called a relationship chart, and it can help you figure out how different people in your family are related. It's much simpler than it looks, just follow the instructions. Instructions for Using a Relationship Chart Pick two people in your family and figure out which ancestor they have in common. For example, if you chose yourself and a cousin, you would have a grandparent in common. Look at the top row of the chart and find the first person's relationship to the common ancestor. Look at the far left column of the chart and find the second person's relationship to the common ancestor. Determine where the row and column containing those two relationships meet.	10
Who's missing: Greg Knapp; Bill Lazor; Kasey Dunn; Robert Prince; Mike DeBord; Mike Solari; Chris Beake	Roman Mars no Host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about their favorite "Mini-Stories." These are little anecdotes or seeds of a story about design and architecture that can't quite stretch into a full episode, but we love them anyway. Roman talks concrete arrows, Sam squares Circleville, Kurt teaches us how to get out of a car, Emmett discovers the Big Zero, and Delaney listens for a little chirp. Host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about… Host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about their favorite "Mini-Stories." These are little anecdotes or seeds of a story about design and architecture that can't quite stretch into a full episode, but we love them anyway. Roman talks concrete arrows, Sam squares Circleville, Kurt teaches us how to get out of a car, Emmett discovers the Big Zero, and Delaney listens for a little chirp. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/297796519 Roman Mars no The urban grid of Salt Lake City, Utah is designed to tell you exactly where you are in relation to Temple Square, one of the holiest sites for Mormons. Addresses can read like sets of coordinates. “300 South 2100 East,” for example, means three blocks south and 21 blocks east of Temple Square. But the most striking thing about Salt Lake’s grid is the scale. Blocks are 660 feet on each side. That means walking the length of two football fields from one intersection to the next. By comparison, nine Portland, Oregon city blocks can fit inside one Salt Lake block. The urban grid of Salt Lake City, Utah is designe… The urban grid of Salt Lake City, Utah is designed to tell you exactly where you are in relation to Temple Square, one of the holiest sites for Mormons. Addresses can read like sets of coordinates. “300 South 2100 East,” for example, means three blocks south and 21 blocks east of Temple Square. But the most striking thing about Salt Lake’s grid is the scale. Blocks are 660 feet on each side. That means walking the length of two football fields from one intersection to the next. By comparison, nine Portland, Oregon city blocks can fit inside one Salt Lake block. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/296580915 Roman Mars no In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, making it the largest marine preserve in the world at the time. The expansion closed 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining. The preserve is nowhere near the mainland United States nor is it all in close range to Hawaii. Still, President Obama was able to protect this piece of ocean in the name of the United States. To understand how the U.S. has jurisdiction over these waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, one has to look back to the 19th Century when, for a brief period, the U.S. scoured the oceans looking for rock islands covered in guano. That is: seabird poop. In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Rem… In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, making it the largest marine preserve in the world at the time. The expansion closed 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining. The preserve is nowhere near the mainland United States nor is it all in close range to Hawaii. Still, President Obama was able to protect this piece of ocean in the name of the United States. To understand how the U.S. has jurisdiction over these waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, one has to look back to the 19th Century when, for a brief period, the U.S. scoured the oceans looking for rock islands covered in guano. That is: seabird poop. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/295378888 Roman Mars no The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in broadcasting. Originating in the 1920s, the three key sequential notes are familiar to generations of radio listeners and television watchers. Many companies have tried to trademark sounds but only around 100 have ended up being accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office -- and NBC's iconic chimes were the first. This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz features the last person to play the NBC chimes on the NBC radio network, broadcaster Rick Greenhut, as well as radio historian John Schneider. Twenty Thousand Hertz is an audio program that tells "the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds." The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in br… The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in broadcasting. Originating in the 1920s, the three key sequential notes are familiar to generations of radio listeners and television watchers. Many companies have tried to trademark sounds but only around 100 have ended up being accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office -- and NBC's iconic chimes were the first. This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz features the last person to play the NBC chimes on the NBC radio network, broadcaster Rick Greenhut, as well as radio historian John Schneider. Twenty Thousand Hertz is an audio program that tells "the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/294177514 Roman Mars no Dollar stores are not just a U.S. phenomenon. They can be found in Australia and the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Mexico. And a lot of the stuff—the generic cheap stuff for sale in these stores—comes from one place. A market in China, called the International Trade Market, or: the Futian market. Dollar stores are not just a U.S. phenomenon. The… Dollar stores are not just a U.S. phenomenon. They can be found in Australia and the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Mexico. And a lot of the stuff—the generic cheap stuff for sale in these stores—comes from one place. A market in China, called the International Trade Market, or: the Futian market. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/293239389 Roman Mars no Through a combination of passive and active acoustics, architects and acousticians can control the sounds of spaces to fit any kind of need. With sound-proofing and selective-amplification, we can add reverb or take it away. We can make churches sound like clubs and clubs sound like opera houses. This degree of acoustic control, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Up until the early 1900s, designers and engineers knew very little about the effects of architecture on sound. Architectural acoustics were pretty much a roll of the dice in any given project. Until Wallace Sabine. Through a combination of passive and active acous… Through a combination of passive and active acoustics, architects and acousticians can control the sounds of spaces to fit any kind of need. With sound-proofing and selective-amplification, we can add reverb or take it away. We can make churches sound like clubs and clubs sound like opera houses. This degree of acoustic control, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Up until the early 1900s, designers and engineers knew very little about the effects of architecture on sound. Architectural acoustics were pretty much a roll of the dice in any given project. Until Wallace Sabine. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/292024985 Roman Mars no People who write the White House know that the president himself will most likely not see their message. Many of their letters start with phrases like, "I know no one will read this." Although someone does read those letters. And sometimes that person is Fiona Reeves, Director of Presidential Correspondence at the White House. She and a group of 45 staffers, 35 interns, and 300 rotating volunteers read thousands of letters sent to Barack Obama, who has specifically requested to receive ten letters to read every night. People who write the White House know that the pr… People who write the White House know that the president himself will most likely not see their message. Many of their letters start with phrases like, "I know no one will read this." Although someone does read those letters. And sometimes that person is Fiona Reeves, Director of Presidential Correspondence at the White House. She and a group of 45 staffers, 35 interns, and 300 rotating volunteers read thousands of letters sent to Barack Obama, who has specifically requested to receive ten letters to read every night. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/291428497 Roman Mars no Every now and again, a truly great athlete shatters all previous assumptions about what’s possible to achieve in a sport. When this happens, opposing teams scramble to find ways to stop them or slow them down. In basketball, teams tried to to stop Shaquille O’Neil by immediately fouling him (the “hack-a-shaq” strategy); in soccer opposing teams continuously foul the great Argentinean player, Leo Messi, before he can dribble through the defense. But in baseball, the solution for stopping the greatest hitter of all time was to actually redesign the game itself. And it started in the 1940s with Ted Williams. The solution was "The Shift." Every now and again, a truly great athlete shatte… Every now and again, a truly great athlete shatters all previous assumptions about what’s possible to achieve in a sport. When this happens, opposing teams scramble to find ways to stop them or slow them down. In basketball, teams tried to to stop Shaquille O’Neil by immediately fouling him (the “hack-a-shaq” strategy); in soccer opposing teams continuously foul the great Argentinean player, Leo Messi, before he can dribble through the defense. But in baseball, the solution for stopping the greatest hitter of all time was to actually redesign the game itself. And it started in the 1940s with Ted Williams. The solution was "The Shift." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/289937648 Roman Mars no In the summer of 1961 the upper stage of the rocket carrying the Transit 4A satellite blew up about two hours after launch. It was the first known human-made object to unintentionally explode in space, and it created hundreds of fragments of useless space junk. Some of these pieces were pulled into the atmosphere where they burned up but around 200 of them are still up and orbiting today. At the time, people were not all that concerned about a few bits of metal floating around in the vastness of space. But like the ocean and other frontiers, space isn’t endless as it first appears. In the summer of 1961 the upper stage of the rock… In the summer of 1961 the upper stage of the rocket carrying the Transit 4A satellite blew up about two hours after launch. It was the first known human-made object to unintentionally explode in space, and it created hundreds of fragments of useless space junk. Some of these pieces were pulled into the atmosphere where they burned up but around 200 of them are still up and orbiting today. At the time, people were not all that concerned about a few bits of metal floating around in the vastness of space. But like the ocean and other frontiers, space isn’t endless as it first appears. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/288174095 Roman Mars no Few forms of contemporary architecture draw as much criticism as the McMansion, a particular type of oversized house that people love to hate. McMansions usually feature 3,000 or more square feet of space and fail to embody a cohesive style or interact with their environment. Kate Wagner, architecture critic and creator of McMansion Hell, is on a mission to illustrate just why these buildings are so terrible. Few forms of contemporary architecture draw as mu… Few forms of contemporary architecture draw as much criticism as the McMansion, a particular type of oversized house that people love to hate. McMansions usually feature 3,000 or more square feet of space and fail to embody a cohesive style or interact with their environment. Kate Wagner, architecture critic and creator of McMansion Hell, is on a mission to illustrate just why these buildings are so terrible. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/287195488 Roman Mars no On the night of February 27th, 2010, a magnitude of 8.8 earthquake hit Constitución, Chile and it was the second biggest that the world had seen in half a century. The quake and the tsunami it produced completely crushed the town. By the time it was over, more than 500 people were dead, and about 80% of the Constitución's buildings were ruined. As part of the relief effort, an architecture firm called Elemental was hired to create a master plan for the city, which included new housing for people displaced in the disaster. But the structures that Elemental delivered were a radical and controversial approach toward housing. They gave people half a house. Support the Radiotopia annual drive today! On the night of February 27th, 2010, a magnitude … On the night of February 27th, 2010, a magnitude of 8.8 earthquake hit Constitución, Chile and it was the second biggest that the world had seen in half a century. The quake and the tsunami it produced completely crushed the town. By the time it was over, more than 500 people were dead, and about 80% of the Constitución's buildings were ruined. As part of the relief effort, an architecture firm called Elemental was hired to create a master plan for the city, which included new housing for people displaced in the disaster. But the structures that Elemental delivered were a radical and controversial approach toward housing. They gave people half a house. Support the Radiotopia annual drive today! tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/286080352 Roman Mars no On September 11, 1973, a military junta violently took control of Chile, which was led at the time by President Salvador Allende. Allende had become president in a free and democratic election. After the military coup, General Augusto Pinochet took power and ruled Chile as a dictator until 1990. The military regime dissolved the congress, took control of the media and went about dismantling the socialist and democratic institutions that Allende’s government had built. In the midst of this takeover, the military discovered a strange room in a nondescript office building in downtown Santiago. The room was hexagonal in shape with seven white fiberglass chairs arranged in an inward facing circle. This “operations room” (or: opsroom) was the physical interface for a complex system called Cybersyn. On September 11, 1973, a military junta violently… On September 11, 1973, a military junta violently took control of Chile, which was led at the time by President Salvador Allende. Allende had become president in a free and democratic election. After the military coup, General Augusto Pinochet took power and ruled Chile as a dictator until 1990. The military regime dissolved the congress, took control of the media and went about dismantling the socialist and democratic institutions that Allende’s government had built. In the midst of this takeover, the military discovered a strange room in a nondescript office building in downtown Santiago. The room was hexagonal in shape with seven white fiberglass chairs arranged in an inward facing circle. This “operations room” (or: opsroom) was the physical interface for a complex system called Cybersyn. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/283860646 Roman Mars no Who decides that the color this season is “mint green” or that denim jackets are “back?” Of course, there’s top-down fashion, where couture houses and runway shows set a trend that trickles down through the rest of the industry. Then there’s bottom-up - where street photographers hunt down grassroots ways that people are wearing clothes, which then comes to influence popular fashion. But these two methods are for the relatively cutting-edge. For the mass market, for retailers, designers, and marketers working in major clothing chains, there’s a middle path to determine what’s “in.” And often times, it is through a company called WGSN. Who decides that the color this season is “mint g… Who decides that the color this season is “mint green” or that denim jackets are “back?” Of course, there’s top-down fashion, where couture houses and runway shows set a trend that trickles down through the rest of the industry. Then there’s bottom-up - where street photographers hunt down grassroots ways that people are wearing clothes, which then comes to influence popular fashion. But these two methods are for the relatively cutting-edge. For the mass market, for retailers, designers, and marketers working in major clothing chains, there’s a middle path to determine what’s “in.” And often times, it is through a company called WGSN. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/282351973 Roman Mars no Large portions of San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Seattle, Hong Kong and Marseilles were built on top of human made land. What is now Mumbai, India, was transformed by the British from a seven-island archipelago to one contiguous strip of land. The most extraordinary example of land reclamation and manufacture may be the Netherlands. As early as the 9th century A.D., the Dutch began building dykes and pumping systems to create new land in places that were actually below sea level. But the historic scale of land manufacture is minuscule compared to the rate at which it is taking place today. Large portions of San Francisco, New York City, B… Large portions of San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Seattle, Hong Kong and Marseilles were built on top of human made land. What is now Mumbai, India, was transformed by the British from a seven-island archipelago to one contiguous strip of land. The most extraordinary example of land reclamation and manufacture may be the Netherlands. As early as the 9th century A.D., the Dutch began building dykes and pumping systems to create new land in places that were actually below sea level. But the historic scale of land manufacture is minuscule compared to the rate at which it is taking place today. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/281715646 Roman Mars no Infrastructure makes modern civilization possible. Roads, power grids, sewage systems and water networks all underpin society as we know it, forming the basis of our built environment ... at least when they work. As Henry Petroski documents in The Road Taken: The History and Future of America's Infrastructure, physical infrastructure in the United States is in an ongoing state of crisis. Infrastructure makes modern civilization possible… Infrastructure makes modern civilization possible. Roads, power grids, sewage systems and water networks all underpin society as we know it, forming the basis of our built environment ... at least when they work. As Henry Petroski documents in The Road Taken: The History and Future of America's Infrastructure, physical infrastructure in the United States is in an ongoing state of crisis. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/279605683 Roman Mars no In many ways, the built world was not designed for you. It was designed for the average person. Standardized tests, building codes, insurance rates, clothing sizes, The Dow Jones - all these measurements are based around the concept of an "average." Todd Rose wants us to re-examine our concept of the average and find new ways to accommodate all the people who aren't average, which, it turns out, is everyone. In many ways, the built world was not designed fo… In many ways, the built world was not designed for you. It was designed for the average person. Standardized tests, building codes, insurance rates, clothing sizes, The Dow Jones - all these measurements are based around the concept of an "average." Todd Rose wants us to re-examine our concept of the average and find new ways to accommodate all the people who aren't average, which, it turns out, is everyone. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/278579551 Roman Mars no Founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus school in Germany would go on to shape modern architecture, art, and design for decades to come. The school sought to combine design and industrialization, creating functional things that could be mass-produced for the betterment of society. It was a nexus of creativity in the early 20th century. Most now-famous designers and artists who were in Europe during the 1920s and '30s spent time at the Bauhaus. The popularity and influence of the Bauhaus beyond Germany, however, owes a great deal to a lesser-known photographer: Lucia Moholy. Her photographs are some of the finest documents of the Bauhaus's architecture and its products, but when she lost control of her negatives during the war she was written out of the history. Founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the … Founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus school in Germany would go on to shape modern architecture, art, and design for decades to come. The school sought to combine design and industrialization, creating functional things that could be mass-produced for the betterment of society. It was a nexus of creativity in the early 20th century. Most now-famous designers and artists who were in Europe during the 1920s and '30s spent time at the Bauhaus. The popularity and influence of the Bauhaus beyond Germany, however, owes a great deal to a lesser-known photographer: Lucia Moholy. Her photographs are some of the finest documents of the Bauhaus's architecture and its products, but when she lost control of her negatives during the war she was written out of the history. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/277542870 Roman Mars no The largest body of water in California was formed by a mistake. In 1905, the California Development Company accidentally flooded a huge depression in the Sonora Desert, creating an enormous salty lake called the Salton Sea. The water is about twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean. The ground beneath the southern end of the sea is volcanic and water bubbles to the surface in muddy pools. The only fish that can live in Salton Sea are tilapia, but even they struggle to survive. This sea—this gurgling, sometimes stinky, accident of a sea—is actually in danger of drying up and disappearing. And you may be thinking: "good riddance!" It doesn’t sound all that nice. But the Salton Sea needs us. And we need it. The largest body of water in California was forme… The largest body of water in California was formed by a mistake. In 1905, the California Development Company accidentally flooded a huge depression in the Sonora Desert, creating an enormous salty lake called the Salton Sea. The water is about twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean. The ground beneath the southern end of the sea is volcanic and water bubbles to the surface in muddy pools. The only fish that can live in Salton Sea are tilapia, but even they struggle to survive. This sea—this gurgling, sometimes stinky, accident of a sea—is actually in danger of drying up and disappearing. And you may be thinking: "good riddance!" It doesn’t sound all that nice. But the Salton Sea needs us. And we need it. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/276533475 Roman Mars no In 1996, President Bill Clinton and the Congress undertook a reform effort to redesign the welfare system from one that many believed trapped people in a cycle of dependence, to one, that in the President’s words, would give people "a paycheck, not a welfare check .... Today, we are ending welfare as we know it." Many of the key components implemented by Clinton can be traced back to a bureaucrat named Larry Townsend and a pilot program he operated in California called GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence). Head of the welfare office in Riverside County, Townsend didn’t have much patience for the education-and-training route of existing welfare programs—the ones which helped welfare recipients gain more skills so they would fare better in the job market. Townsend's approach was much more straightforward: get people into jobs as fast as possible. Krissy Clark from Marketplace's The Uncertain Hour has the story. In 1996, President Bill Clinton and the Congress … In 1996, President Bill Clinton and the Congress undertook a reform effort to redesign the welfare system from one that many believed trapped people in a cycle of dependence, to one, that in the President’s words, would give people "a paycheck, not a welfare check .... Today, we are ending welfare as we know it." Many of the key components implemented by Clinton can be traced back to a bureaucrat named Larry Townsend and a pilot program he operated in California called GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence). Head of the welfare office in Riverside County, Townsend didn’t have much patience for the education-and-training route of existing welfare programs—the ones which helped welfare recipients gain more skills so they would fare better in the job market. Townsend's approach was much more straightforward: get people into jobs as fast as possible. Krissy Clark from Marketplace's The Uncertain Hour has the story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/275521637 Roman Mars no The United States Marine Corps buys a lot of foam ear plugs. Visit any military base and you’ll find them under the bleachers at the firing range, in the bottoms of washing machines. They are cheap and effective at making noise less ... noisy. But there’s a problem with earplugs on the battlefield. Soldiers won’t wear them. If they do wear them, they may miss other important (softer) noises happening around them. The result is lots of service members coming home from battle with tinnitus or hearing loss. In fact, for as long as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has reported such statistics, tinnitus and hearing loss have remained the number one and two most common injuries of service members. The United States Marine Corps buys a lot of foam… The United States Marine Corps buys a lot of foam ear plugs. Visit any military base and you’ll find them under the bleachers at the firing range, in the bottoms of washing machines. They are cheap and effective at making noise less ... noisy. But there’s a problem with earplugs on the battlefield. Soldiers won’t wear them. If they do wear them, they may miss other important (softer) noises happening around them. The result is lots of service members coming home from battle with tinnitus or hearing loss. In fact, for as long as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has reported such statistics, tinnitus and hearing loss have remained the number one and two most common injuries of service members. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/274432344 Roman Mars no In 1943, the Army Corps of Engineers began construction on a scale model that could test flooding in all 1.25 million square miles of the Mississippi River. It would be a three-dimensional map of nearly half of the continental United States, rendered to a 1/2000 horizontal scale, spanning more than 200 acres. It was so big that the only way to see all of it as once was from a four-story observation tower. In 1943, the Army Corps of Engineers began constr… In 1943, the Army Corps of Engineers began construction on a scale model that could test flooding in all 1.25 million square miles of the Mississippi River. It would be a three-dimensional map of nearly half of the continental United States, rendered to a 1/2000 horizontal scale, spanning more than 200 acres. It was so big that the only way to see all of it as once was from a four-story observation tower. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/273415282 Roman Mars no In the late 1950s, the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research embarked on a mission to study the personalities of particularly creative scientists and artists. Researchers established categories, grouping analytical creatives together (including scientists and mathematicians) as well as artistic creatives (including painters and writers). At the intersection, there was a hybrid type: architects were seen as representing both groups. The hope was that studying architects and their creative habits could yield lessons applicable across a variety of creative fields. The researchers recorded the conversations of some of the most prominent architects of the era. This is the first time these recordings have been heard publicly. In the late 1950s, the Institute of Personality A… In the late 1950s, the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research embarked on a mission to study the personalities of particularly creative scientists and artists. Researchers established categories, grouping analytical creatives together (including scientists and mathematicians) as well as artistic creatives (including painters and writers). At the intersection, there was a hybrid type: architects were seen as representing both groups. The hope was that studying architects and their creative habits could yield lessons applicable across a variety of creative fields. The researchers recorded the conversations of some of the most prominent architects of the era. This is the first time these recordings have been heard publicly. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/272373999 Roman Mars no Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters and other public places are meant to offer seating, but only for a limited duration. Many elements of such seats are subtly or overtly restrictive. Arm rests, for instance, indeed provide spaces to rest arms, but they also prevent people from lying down or sitting in anything but a prescribed position. This type of design strategy is sometimes classified as "hostile architecture," or simply: "unpleasant design." Gordan Savičić and Selena Savić, co-editors of the book Unpleasant Design, are quick to point out that unpleasant designs are not failed designs, but rather successful ones in the sense that they deter certain activities by design. Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters an… Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters and other public places are meant to offer seating, but only for a limited duration. Many elements of such seats are subtly or overtly restrictive. Arm rests, for instance, indeed provide spaces to rest arms, but they also prevent people from lying down or sitting in anything but a prescribed position. This type of design strategy is sometimes classified as "hostile architecture," or simply: "unpleasant design." Gordan Savičić and Selena Savić, co-editors of the book Unpleasant Design, are quick to point out that unpleasant designs are not failed designs, but rather successful ones in the sense that they deter certain activities by design. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/271251788 Roman Mars no It started with a place called the Stonewall Inn. Gay bars had been raided by police for decades. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people had been routinely arrested and subjected to harassment and beatings by the people who were meant to protect them. But one night, in this place called the Stonewall Inn, when the police stormed in to continue their abuse, the clientele fought back. "Remembering Stonewall," produced by Dave Isay of Sound Portraits and StoryCorps, was was first broadcast in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the riots. It was the first documentary, in any medium, to explore what happened that night, and it weaves together the perspectives of survivors, historians, and people who were deeply affected by the events that night. It started with a place called the Stonewall Inn.… It started with a place called the Stonewall Inn. Gay bars had been raided by police for decades. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people had been routinely arrested and subjected to harassment and beatings by the people who were meant to protect them. But one night, in this place called the Stonewall Inn, when the police stormed in to continue their abuse, the clientele fought back. "Remembering Stonewall," produced by Dave Isay of Sound Portraits and StoryCorps, was was first broadcast in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the riots. It was the first documentary, in any medium, to explore what happened that night, and it weaves together the perspectives of survivors, historians, and people who were deeply affected by the events that night. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/270254892 Roman Mars no In 1968, an Italian industrialist and a Scottish scientist started a club to address what they considered to be humankind’s greatest problems—issues like pollution, resource scarcity, and overpopulation. Meeting in Rome, Italy, the group came to be known as the Club of Rome and it grew to include politicians, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the world. Together with a group of MIT researchers doing computer modeling, The Club of Rome concluded that sometime in the 21st century, earth would reach its carrying capacity—that resources would not keep up with population—and there would be a massive collapse of global society. In 1972, the Club of Rome published a book outlining their findings called The Limits to Growth. The book became a bestseller and was translated into more than two dozen languages. It had its critics and detractors, but overall The Limits to Growth was incredibly influential, shaping environmental politics and pop culture for years to come. There was a growing sense that limits would need to be put in place in order to regulate populations and economic growth. But in the midst of the debate, a physicist named Gerard (Gerry) O’Neill suggested a solution—one that would ask us to look beyond planet earth and into outer space. In 1968, an Italian industrialist and a Scottish … In 1968, an Italian industrialist and a Scottish scientist started a club to address what they considered to be humankind’s greatest problems—issues like pollution, resource scarcity, and overpopulation. Meeting in Rome, Italy, the group came to be known as the Club of Rome and it grew to include politicians, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the world. Together with a group of MIT researchers doing computer modeling, The Club of Rome concluded that sometime in the 21st century, earth would reach its carrying capacity—that resources would not keep up with population—and there would be a massive collapse of global society. In 1972, the Club of Rome published a book outlining their findings called The Limits to Growth. The book became a bestseller and was translated into more than two dozen languages. It had its critics and detractors, but overall The Limits to Growth was incredibly influential, shaping environmental politics and pop culture for years to come. There was a growing sense that limits would need to be put in place in order to regulate populations and economic growth. But in the midst of the debate, a physicist named Gerard (Gerry) O’Neill suggested a solution—one that would ask us to look beyond planet earth and into outer space. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/269107023 Roman Mars no In 1968, the police department in Menlo Park, California hired a new police chief. His name was Victor I. Cizanckas and his main goal was to reform the department, which had a strained relationship with the community at the time. Cizanckas wanted to rebuild trust with the community — and he made a number of changes to improve the department’s image. One of the most ground-breaking and controversial was the new blazer-style uniform he implemented. In 1968, the police department in Menlo Park, Cal… In 1968, the police department in Menlo Park, California hired a new police chief. His name was Victor I. Cizanckas and his main goal was to reform the department, which had a strained relationship with the community at the time. Cizanckas wanted to rebuild trust with the community — and he made a number of changes to improve the department’s image. One of the most ground-breaking and controversial was the new blazer-style uniform he implemented. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/267834794 Roman Mars no September 3rd, 1967, also known as H-Day, is etched in the collective memory of Sweden. That morning, millions of Swedes switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. The changeover was an unprecedented undertaking, involving both national infrastructural overhauls, extensive educational campaigns and pop music. September 3rd, 1967, also known as H-Day, is etch… September 3rd, 1967, also known as H-Day, is etched in the collective memory of Sweden. That morning, millions of Swedes switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. The changeover was an unprecedented undertaking, involving both national infrastructural overhauls, extensive educational campaigns and pop music. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/265782750 Roman Mars no Sub Pop Records has signed some of the most famous and influential indie bands of the last 30 years, including Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, and Beach House. Over time, the stars and hits have changed and the formats have evolved as well, from vinyl to CDs to MP3s. In recent years, however, the label has started releasing new albums on a medium few thought would ever see a comeback: the cassette. But there's one big user group that never entirely stopped using the old school technology. The United States prison system has the largest prison population in the world and many of its inmates listen to their music on tape. For this group, cassettes aren't necessarily the cheapest or hippest way to listen to music; in some cases, it's the only way. Sub Pop Records has signed some of the most famou… Sub Pop Records has signed some of the most famous and influential indie bands of the last 30 years, including Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, and Beach House. Over time, the stars and hits have changed and the formats have evolved as well, from vinyl to CDs to MP3s. In recent years, however, the label has started releasing new albums on a medium few thought would ever see a comeback: the cassette. But there's one big user group that never entirely stopped using the old school technology. The United States prison system has the largest prison population in the world and many of its inmates listen to their music on tape. For this group, cassettes aren't necessarily the cheapest or hippest way to listen to music; in some cases, it's the only way. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/264656409 Roman Mars no "Für Elise" is one of the world's most widely-recognized pieces of music. The Beethoven melody has been played by pianists the world over, and its near-universal recognition has been used to attract customers for companies as big as McDonald's and as small as your local ice-cream truck. But if you hear the song playing on the streets of Taiwan, accompanied by the low grumble of an engine, the only ice-cream you'll find if you follow the tune will be the soupy remains of a neighbor's Häagen-Dazs. In Taiwan, "Für Elise" means it is time to take out your trash. Directly out to the truck. Yourself. "Für Elise" is one of the world's most widely-rec… "Für Elise" is one of the world's most widely-recognized pieces of music. The Beethoven melody has been played by pianists the world over, and its near-universal recognition has been used to attract customers for companies as big as McDonald's and as small as your local ice-cream truck. But if you hear the song playing on the streets of Taiwan, accompanied by the low grumble of an engine, the only ice-cream you'll find if you follow the tune will be the soupy remains of a neighbor's Häagen-Dazs. In Taiwan, "Für Elise" means it is time to take out your trash. Directly out to the truck. Yourself. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/263507199 Roman Mars no Neighborhoods are constantly changing, but it tends to be the people with money and power who get to decide the shape of things to come. New York City has an especially long history with change driven by landlords and real estate investors. Today, change is taking the form of gentrification, but in the 1960s, the neighborhood of East New York became a nexus of what has since become known as white flight. Turf Wars is an episode from the series There Goes The Neighborhood from WNYC Studios and The Nation Magazine. Neighborhoods are constantly changing, but it ten… Neighborhoods are constantly changing, but it tends to be the people with money and power who get to decide the shape of things to come. New York City has an especially long history with change driven by landlords and real estate investors. Today, change is taking the form of gentrification, but in the 1960s, the neighborhood of East New York became a nexus of what has since become known as white flight. Turf Wars is an episode from the series There Goes The Neighborhood from WNYC Studios and The Nation Magazine. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/262407350 Roman Mars no The Bellevue-Stratford opened in 1904 and quickly became one of the most luxurious hotels of its time, rivaling the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The building was an incredible work of French Renaissance architecture. It was 19 stories high, had over a thousand guest rooms, light fixtures designed by Thomas Edison, and what was said to be the most lavish and magnificent ballroom in the United States. It hosted guests from around the world, including royalty, world leaders, and the magnificently wealthy. The hotel came to be known as “The Grand Dame of Broad Street." The hotel went through some hard times during the Great Depression and then again in the 1950s and 60s, losing some of its luster from the early days. But it was always considered one of the nicest places to stay in Philadelphia. That is, until 1976, when the Bellevue-Stratford found itself at the epicenter of a series of mysterious deaths that terrified the country and stumped everyone trying to find answers. The Bellevue-Stratford opened in 1904 and quickly… The Bellevue-Stratford opened in 1904 and quickly became one of the most luxurious hotels of its time, rivaling the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The building was an incredible work of French Renaissance architecture. It was 19 stories high, had over a thousand guest rooms, light fixtures designed by Thomas Edison, and what was said to be the most lavish and magnificent ballroom in the United States. It hosted guests from around the world, including royalty, world leaders, and the magnificently wealthy. The hotel came to be known as “The Grand Dame of Broad Street." The hotel went through some hard times during the Great Depression and then again in the 1950s and 60s, losing some of its luster from the early days. But it was always considered one of the nicest places to stay in Philadelphia. That is, until 1976, when the Bellevue-Stratford found itself at the epicenter of a series of mysterious deaths that terrified the country and stumped everyone trying to find answers. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/261082374 Roman Mars no Humans form cities from concrete, metal and glass, designing structures and infrastructure primarily to serve a single bipedal species. Walking down a familiar city street, it is easy to overlook squirrels climbing in trees, weeds growing up through cracks in the concrete, and pigeons pecking along the sidewalk. Those creatures that do manage to live all around us, thriving alongside humans, are rarely celebrated for their ingenuity. In many cases, however, such synanthropes (from the Greek syn ["together with"] + anthro ["man"]) tell fascinating stories of urban fortitude. Author and amateur naturalist Nathanael Johnson began digging into some of these everyday urban species, leading him to write Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness. The book uncovers weeds that are tastier than you imagined and small mammals smarter than you suspected. The author researched various plants and animals, including that most infamous species of urban bird so many people love to hate, sometimes referred to as a "flying rat." Humans form cities from concrete, metal and glass… Humans form cities from concrete, metal and glass, designing structures and infrastructure primarily to serve a single bipedal species. Walking down a familiar city street, it is easy to overlook squirrels climbing in trees, weeds growing up through cracks in the concrete, and pigeons pecking along the sidewalk. Those creatures that do manage to live all around us, thriving alongside humans, are rarely celebrated for their ingenuity. In many cases, however, such synanthropes (from the Greek syn ["together with"] + anthro ["man"]) tell fascinating stories of urban fortitude. Author and amateur naturalist Nathanael Johnson began digging into some of these everyday urban species, leading him to write Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness. The book uncovers weeds that are tastier than you imagined and small mammals smarter than you suspected. The author researched various plants and animals, including that most infamous species of urban bird so many people love to hate, sometimes referred to as a "flying rat." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/259942893 Roman Mars no Starting in the late 1990s, the government of Taipei began looking into how they could turn global attention to their city, the capital of the small island of Taiwan. The initial idea was to create two 66-story office towers, which would be the tallest in Taiwan's capital and one of the tallest in the country. The city government then raised its aspirations, targeting 88 stories, the same number as the twinned Petronas Towers in Malaysia (which, at the time, were the tallest in buildings in the world). Then they had another idea to go even higher than the tallest buildings in the world, and make their building a perfectly round 100. In the end, they decided to go above and beyond, settling on hundred and one floors. Starting in the late 1990s, the government of Tai… Starting in the late 1990s, the government of Taipei began looking into how they could turn global attention to their city, the capital of the small island of Taiwan. The initial idea was to create two 66-story office towers, which would be the tallest in Taiwan's capital and one of the tallest in the country. The city government then raised its aspirations, targeting 88 stories, the same number as the twinned Petronas Towers in Malaysia (which, at the time, were the tallest in buildings in the world). Then they had another idea to go even higher than the tallest buildings in the world, and make their building a perfectly round 100. In the end, they decided to go above and beyond, settling on hundred and one floors. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/258727485 Roman Mars no In 1939, an astonishing new machine debuted at the New York World’s Fair. It was called the “Voder," short for “Voice Operating Demonstrator.” It looked sort of like a futuristic church organ. An operator -- known as a "Voderette" -- sat at the Voder's curved wooden console with a giant speaker towering behind her. She faced an expectant audience, placed her hands on a keyboard in front of her, and then played something the world had never really heard before. A synthesized voice. In 1939, an astonishing new machine debuted at th… In 1939, an astonishing new machine debuted at the New York World’s Fair. It was called the “Voder," short for “Voice Operating Demonstrator.” It looked sort of like a futuristic church organ. An operator -- known as a "Voderette" -- sat at the Voder's curved wooden console with a giant speaker towering behind her. She faced an expectant audience, placed her hands on a keyboard in front of her, and then played something the world had never really heard before. A synthesized voice. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/257531361 Roman Mars no In the late 1960s, a civil rights leader named Floyd B. McKissick, at one time the head of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) proposed an idea for a new town. He would call this town Soul City and it would be a place built for and by black people—a land of black opportunity in rural North Carolina. In the late 1960s, a civil rights leader named Fl… In the late 1960s, a civil rights leader named Floyd B. McKissick, at one time the head of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) proposed an idea for a new town. He would call this town Soul City and it would be a place built for and by black people—a land of black opportunity in rural North Carolina. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/255968825 Roman Mars no Israeli buses regularly make international headlines, be it for suicide bombings, fights over gender segregation, or clashes concerning Shabbat schedules. One particular ill-fated megastructure, however, has been at the nexus of various lesser-publicized conflicts: a building in Tel Aviv designed to be the largest bus station in the world. This episode was originally produced for Israel Story, the English-language version of the popular Israeli radio program Sipur Israeli, which is distributed by PRX and produced in partnership with Tablet. Israeli buses regularly make international headli… Israeli buses regularly make international headlines, be it for suicide bombings, fights over gender segregation, or clashes concerning Shabbat schedules. One particular ill-fated megastructure, however, has been at the nexus of various lesser-publicized conflicts: a building in Tel Aviv designed to be the largest bus station in the world. This episode was originally produced for Israel Story, the English-language version of the popular Israeli radio program Sipur Israeli, which is distributed by PRX and produced in partnership with Tablet. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/254351906 Roman Mars no Of all the ads you see on TV or on billboards or the sides of buses, an overwhelming number of them seem to be for food: icy cokes in frosted glasses; fajitas sizzling on the grill; a guy biting into the perfect hamburger on a sesame seed bun. But of course, you know: in real life, these foods do not look like they do in the ads. Of all the ads you see on TV or on billboards or … Of all the ads you see on TV or on billboards or the sides of buses, an overwhelming number of them seem to be for food: icy cokes in frosted glasses; fajitas sizzling on the grill; a guy biting into the perfect hamburger on a sesame seed bun. But of course, you know: in real life, these foods do not look like they do in the ads. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/252094403 Roman Mars no Centuries ago, Germany came up with a way to keep books that contained "dangerous" information without releasing them to the general public: The Giftschrank. The word, a combination of "poison" and "cabinet," has a variety of meanings in different contexts. At its most literal, a Giftschrank is a space for storing controlled substances in places like pharmacies. Colloquially, it can refer to spaces reserved for all kinds of hidden and forbidden objects, ideas or stories. Centuries ago, Germany came up with a way to keep… Centuries ago, Germany came up with a way to keep books that contained "dangerous" information without releasing them to the general public: The Giftschrank. The word, a combination of "poison" and "cabinet," has a variety of meanings in different contexts. At its most literal, a Giftschrank is a space for storing controlled substances in places like pharmacies. Colloquially, it can refer to spaces reserved for all kinds of hidden and forbidden objects, ideas or stories. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/249743671 Roman Mars no Situated in the middle of the Mojave desert, over a dozen miles from the nearest pavement, a lone phone booth sat along a dirt road, just waiting to become an international sensation. The piece was produced by Joe Rosenberg and originally broadcast on Snap Judgment. Situated in the middle of the Mojave desert, over… Situated in the middle of the Mojave desert, over a dozen miles from the nearest pavement, a lone phone booth sat along a dirt road, just waiting to become an international sensation. The piece was produced by Joe Rosenberg and originally broadcast on Snap Judgment. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/248602869 Roman Mars no The middle of the 20th Century was a golden age for road travel in the United States. Cars had become cheap and spacious enough to carry families comfortably for hundreds of miles. The Interstate Highway System had started to connect the country’s smaller roads in a vast nationwide network. That freedom and mobility, however, was not equally available to everyone. Some African-American tourists would drive all night instead of trying to find lodging in an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous town. They would pack picnics so they could avoid stopping at restaurants that might refuse to serve them. But in 1936, a man named Victor Hugo Green started a travel guide to make life on the road easier and safer for black motorists. The middle of the 20th Century was a golden age f… The middle of the 20th Century was a golden age for road travel in the United States. Cars had become cheap and spacious enough to carry families comfortably for hundreds of miles. The Interstate Highway System had started to connect the country’s smaller roads in a vast nationwide network. That freedom and mobility, however, was not equally available to everyone. Some African-American tourists would drive all night instead of trying to find lodging in an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous town. They would pack picnics so they could avoid stopping at restaurants that might refuse to serve them. But in 1936, a man named Victor Hugo Green started a travel guide to make life on the road easier and safer for black motorists. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/247438115 Roman Mars no All around the country, there stands a figure so much a part of historical architecture and urban landscapes that she is rarely noticed. She has gone by many names, from Star Maiden to Priestess of Culture, Spirit of Life to Mourning Victory. Now nearly forgotten, Audrey Munson was once the most famous artist's model in the United States. In and beyond her time, she has represented many things, including truth, memory, seasons, the stars, and even the universe itself. Immortalized in iron, marble and gold, Audrey remains perched on high, quietly watching over cities from coast to coast. All around the country, there stands a figure so … All around the country, there stands a figure so much a part of historical architecture and urban landscapes that she is rarely noticed. She has gone by many names, from Star Maiden to Priestess of Culture, Spirit of Life to Mourning Victory. Now nearly forgotten, Audrey Munson was once the most famous artist's model in the United States. In and beyond her time, she has represented many things, including truth, memory, seasons, the stars, and even the universe itself. Immortalized in iron, marble and gold, Audrey remains perched on high, quietly watching over cities from coast to coast. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/246297666 Roman Mars no In the mid-1800s, decades before home refrigeration became the norm, you could find ice clinking in glasses from India to the Caribbean, thanks to a global commodities industry that has since melted into obscurity: the frozen water trade. In the cold Northeast of the United States, workers would cut ice from frozen ponds, haul it to port, put it on a ship and send it around the world on voyages that could last for months. In the mid-1800s, decades before home refrigerati… In the mid-1800s, decades before home refrigeration became the norm, you could find ice clinking in glasses from India to the Caribbean, thanks to a global commodities industry that has since melted into obscurity: the frozen water trade. In the cold Northeast of the United States, workers would cut ice from frozen ponds, haul it to port, put it on a ship and send it around the world on voyages that could last for months. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/243965453 Roman Mars no The Iron Curtain was an 8,000-mile border separating East from West during the Cold War. Something unexpected evolved in the "no man's land" that the massive border created. In the absence of human intervention and disruption, an accidental wildlife refuge formed. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, conservationists from both sides of the divide realized this long-unused space could become the core path of a "European Greenbelt" connecting habitats across countries, including national parks and nature preserves. Such wildlife corridors can be found around the world at a range of scales, from mountain lion freeway overpasses and crab bridges to squirrel wires and fish ladders. Then, of course, there's the fish cannon. The Iron Curtain was an 8,000-mile border separat… The Iron Curtain was an 8,000-mile border separating East from West during the Cold War. Something unexpected evolved in the "no man's land" that the massive border created. In the absence of human intervention and disruption, an accidental wildlife refuge formed. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, conservationists from both sides of the divide realized this long-unused space could become the core path of a "European Greenbelt" connecting habitats across countries, including national parks and nature preserves. Such wildlife corridors can be found around the world at a range of scales, from mountain lion freeway overpasses and crab bridges to squirrel wires and fish ladders. Then, of course, there's the fish cannon. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/242752459 Roman Mars no In September 1958, Bank of America began an experiment - one that would have far reaching effects on our lives and on the economy. They decided after careful consideration to conduct this experiment in Fresno, California. The presumption was that no one was paying much attention to Fresno, so if the plan failed, it wouldn’t get a lot of media attention. Bank of America sent out 60,000 pieces of mail to people in Fresno. Inside was a little plastic object that has become in equal parts emblematic of opportunity, convenience, and debt, a card featuring a $500 line of credit. In September 1958, Bank of America began an exper… In September 1958, Bank of America began an experiment - one that would have far reaching effects on our lives and on the economy. They decided after careful consideration to conduct this experiment in Fresno, California. The presumption was that no one was paying much attention to Fresno, so if the plan failed, it wouldn’t get a lot of media attention. Bank of America sent out 60,000 pieces of mail to people in Fresno. Inside was a little plastic object that has become in equal parts emblematic of opportunity, convenience, and debt, a card featuring a $500 line of credit. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/241714704 Roman Mars no Date labels ("use-by", "sell-by", "best-by", "best if used by," "expires on") are on a lot of products. Forty-one states require a date label on at least some food product but there are huge inconsistencies, not just in the wording, but in the meaning of these labels. Some states require them only on dairy, some on shellfish, some on any perishable foods. It's become complicated to decipher these dates, or to know how to act on them, for large retailers and individual consumers alike. And despite what many people assume, they are not about food safety, and were actually never meant to be. Date labels ("use-by", "sell-by", "best-by", "bes… Date labels ("use-by", "sell-by", "best-by", "best if used by," "expires on") are on a lot of products. Forty-one states require a date label on at least some food product but there are huge inconsistencies, not just in the wording, but in the meaning of these labels. Some states require them only on dairy, some on shellfish, some on any perishable foods. It's become complicated to decipher these dates, or to know how to act on them, for large retailers and individual consumers alike. And despite what many people assume, they are not about food safety, and were actually never meant to be. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/238732846 Roman Mars no In 1950s Soviet Russia, citizens craved Western popular music—everything from jazz to rock & roll. But smuggling vinyl was dangerous, and acquiring the scarce material to make copies of those records that did make it into the country was expensive. An ingenuous solution to this problem began to emerge in the form of “bone music.” In 1950s Soviet Russia, citizens craved Western p… In 1950s Soviet Russia, citizens craved Western popular music—everything from jazz to rock & roll. But smuggling vinyl was dangerous, and acquiring the scarce material to make copies of those records that did make it into the country was expensive. An ingenuous solution to this problem began to emerge in the form of “bone music.” tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/237768838 Roman Mars no The skyline of beautiful downtown Oakland, California, is defined by various towers by day, but at night there is one that shines far more brightly than the rest: the neon-illuminated Tribune Tower. Each side of the tower says "Tribune" in bright red letters, and has a neon-illuminated clock with neon hands. Neon this prominent and well-maintained stands out for its brightness, of course, but it also has become a rarity in the 21st century city. The skyline of beautiful downtown Oakland, Califo… The skyline of beautiful downtown Oakland, California, is defined by various towers by day, but at night there is one that shines far more brightly than the rest: the neon-illuminated Tribune Tower. Each side of the tower says "Tribune" in bright red letters, and has a neon-illuminated clock with neon hands. Neon this prominent and well-maintained stands out for its brightness, of course, but it also has become a rarity in the 21st century city. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/236705249 Roman Mars no For Americans, the sight of pagoda roofs and dragon gates means that you are in Chinatown. Whether in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, the chinoiserie look is distinctive. But for those just arriving from China, the Chinatown aesthetic can feel surprisingly foreign. For Americans, the sight of pagoda roofs and drag… For Americans, the sight of pagoda roofs and dragon gates means that you are in Chinatown. Whether in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, the chinoiserie look is distinctive. But for those just arriving from China, the Chinatown aesthetic can feel surprisingly foreign. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/235713023 Roman Mars no Many material trifles, such as Silly Putty, started as attempts at serious inventions, but in rare cases, the process works in reverse: something developed as a gag gift can turn into something truly heroic. Invented by high school prankster Alan Whitman using a home chemistry set, the "worst smell in the world" began as a novelty but eventually came to serve a higher purpose. Amy Standen co-host of the new podcast The Leap tells the story. Many material trifles, such as Silly Putty, start… Many material trifles, such as Silly Putty, started as attempts at serious inventions, but in rare cases, the process works in reverse: something developed as a gag gift can turn into something truly heroic. Invented by high school prankster Alan Whitman using a home chemistry set, the "worst smell in the world" began as a novelty but eventually came to serve a higher purpose. Amy Standen co-host of the new podcast The Leap tells the story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/234578504 Roman Mars no Superhero costumes for TV and film used to be pretty cringe-worthy. Lately, however, super outfits are looking much better. Costume designers are learning new tricks, and using better technology, but there has also been a change in attitude. They are now constantly going back to the source material and incorporating that knowledge into the practice of designing with real materials on real bodies. Producer Eric Molinsky spoke with costume designers Michael Wilkinson (Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman), Sammy Sheldon Differ (X-Men: First Class, Ant-Man) and James Acheson (Spider-Man trilogy) about the evolution of superhero costume design. Imaginary Worlds is a bi-weekly podcast about sci-fi and other fantasy genres, how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. Superhero costumes for TV and film used to be pre… Superhero costumes for TV and film used to be pretty cringe-worthy. Lately, however, super outfits are looking much better. Costume designers are learning new tricks, and using better technology, but there has also been a change in attitude. They are now constantly going back to the source material and incorporating that knowledge into the practice of designing with real materials on real bodies. Producer Eric Molinsky spoke with costume designers Michael Wilkinson (Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman), Sammy Sheldon Differ (X-Men: First Class, Ant-Man) and James Acheson (Spider-Man trilogy) about the evolution of superhero costume design. Imaginary Worlds is a bi-weekly podcast about sci-fi and other fantasy genres, how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/233567524 Roman Mars no On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened in London and thousands of people came out to celebrate it. Women wore their finest clothing. Men were in suits and top hats, and children clamored to get a glimpse...of the very first public drinking fountain. On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened… On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened in London and thousands of people came out to celebrate it. Women wore their finest clothing. Men were in suits and top hats, and children clamored to get a glimpse...of the very first public drinking fountain. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/231443231 Roman Mars no Ballots are an essential component to a working democracy, yet they are rarely created (or even reviewed) by design professionals. Good ballot design is mainly a matter of following good design principles in general—familiar territory for graphic designers, but not necessarily so for election officials. It helps, for instance, to keep fonts large and legible, and tie candidates clearly to their associated boxes or bubbles. Running usability tests before deployment can also help catch mistakes early. Ballots are an essential component to a working d… Ballots are an essential component to a working democracy, yet they are rarely created (or even reviewed) by design professionals. Good ballot design is mainly a matter of following good design principles in general—familiar territory for graphic designers, but not necessarily so for election officials. It helps, for instance, to keep fonts large and legible, and tie candidates clearly to their associated boxes or bubbles. Running usability tests before deployment can also help catch mistakes early. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/230396821 Roman Mars no Households tend to take pantry food for granted, but canned beans, powered cheese, and bags of moist cookies were not designed for everyday convenience. These standard products were made to meet the needs of the military. Reporter Tina Antolini, host of the podcast Gravy, tells the story. Households tend to take pantry food for granted, … Households tend to take pantry food for granted, but canned beans, powered cheese, and bags of moist cookies were not designed for everyday convenience. These standard products were made to meet the needs of the military. Reporter Tina Antolini, host of the podcast Gravy, tells the story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/229930520 Roman Mars no The phrase 'from Central Casting' has become a kind of cultural shorthand for a stereotype or archetype, a subject so visually suite to its part it appears to have been designed for that role. Search the news for 'straight out of Central Casting' and you will find examples referring to athletes, executives, politicians and philanthropists. Not everyone who uses the reference realizes that there is an actual Central Casting, located in Burbank, California (with additional offices in New York and New Orleans). Nor do most people realize that this company is the single biggest source of extras for Hollywood productions. The phrase 'from Central Casting' has become a ki… The phrase 'from Central Casting' has become a kind of cultural shorthand for a stereotype or archetype, a subject so visually suite to its part it appears to have been designed for that role. Search the news for 'straight out of Central Casting' and you will find examples referring to athletes, executives, politicians and philanthropists. Not everyone who uses the reference realizes that there is an actual Central Casting, located in Burbank, California (with additional offices in New York and New Orleans). Nor do most people realize that this company is the single biggest source of extras for Hollywood productions. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/228311673 Roman Mars no 99% Invisible is honored to accept a 2015 Third Coast International Audio Festival award for Structural Integrity, a story of architectural engineering gone wrong, and then covertly made right. When it was built in 1977, the 59-story CitiCorp Center had a potentially fatal flaw that could have caused the building to collapse during a sever storm, and take out the entire Midtown Manhattan skyline with it. This flaw (and the plan to fix it) was so secret, that even the person who found the problem only discovered the full story decades later. 99% Invisible is honored to accept a 2015 Third C… 99% Invisible is honored to accept a 2015 Third Coast International Audio Festival award for Structural Integrity, a story of architectural engineering gone wrong, and then covertly made right. When it was built in 1977, the 59-story CitiCorp Center had a potentially fatal flaw that could have caused the building to collapse during a sever storm, and take out the entire Midtown Manhattan skyline with it. This flaw (and the plan to fix it) was so secret, that even the person who found the problem only discovered the full story decades later. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/227262083 Roman Mars no Indian philosopher and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a vision: he would build a Utopian city from the ground up, starting with 64,000 acres of muddy ranchland in rural Oregon. Purchased in 1981, this expanse was to become both a fully-functional urban center and a spiritual mecca for his followers from around the world. For this plan to work Rajneesh and his red-clad devotees (known as "sannyasins") needed autonomous authority with which to construct their paradise. Circumventing local land use restrictions was not a problem so long as their city of Rajneeshpuram was incorporated, which would allow them to issue their own building permits. Fortunately for them, the main requirement for incorporation at the time was a population of 150 people, which they met easily by importing more followers. Funding flowed in to support construction from a global network of lucrative communes, as well as sannyasins who sold their earthly possessions and donated the proceeds toward the effort. These devotees were also taught that labor was a form of meditation, and willingly worked long hours to make Rajneeshpuram a reality. Indian philosopher and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajne… Indian philosopher and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a vision: he would build a Utopian city from the ground up, starting with 64,000 acres of muddy ranchland in rural Oregon. Purchased in 1981, this expanse was to become both a fully-functional urban center and a spiritual mecca for his followers from around the world. For this plan to work Rajneesh and his red-clad devotees (known as "sannyasins") needed autonomous authority with which to construct their paradise. Circumventing local land use restrictions was not a problem so long as their city of Rajneeshpuram was incorporated, which would allow them to issue their own building permits. Fortunately for them, the main requirement for incorporation at the time was a population of 150 people, which they met easily by importing more followers. Funding flowed in to support construction from a global network of lucrative communes, as well as sannyasins who sold their earthly possessions and donated the proceeds toward the effort. These devotees were also taught that labor was a form of meditation, and willingly worked long hours to make Rajneeshpuram a reality. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/226204916 Roman Mars no When something is lost in the mail, it feels like it has disappeared into the ether, like it was sucked into a black hole, like it no longer exists. But, it turns out, a lot of the mail we think is lost is actually in a designated place. The USPS Mail Recovery Center is the contemporary name for the Dead Letter Office. It's where our lost mail ends up. And eventually, if our mail doesn't find its way back to its rightful owner, it's auctioned off to the highest bidder. Samara Freemark is reporter at APM's American RadioWorks. She tweets @sfreemark. When something is lost in the mail, it feels like… When something is lost in the mail, it feels like it has disappeared into the ether, like it was sucked into a black hole, like it no longer exists. But, it turns out, a lot of the mail we think is lost is actually in a designated place. The USPS Mail Recovery Center is the contemporary name for the Dead Letter Office. It's where our lost mail ends up. And eventually, if our mail doesn't find its way back to its rightful owner, it's auctioned off to the highest bidder. Samara Freemark is reporter at APM's American RadioWorks. She tweets @sfreemark. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/225152056 Roman Mars no On the night of March 30, 2005, the Powerball jackpot was 25 million dollars. The grand prize winner was in Tennessee, but all over the United States, one hundred and ten second-place winners came forward. Normally just three or four players guess all but the last digit and claim a secondary prize, but this time something was clearly different. Lottery officials were flustered, unsure if there was a computer glitch or a hack in the system, but when they asked the winners how they picked their numbers each had the same response: from a fortune cookie. What we call Chinese food (including the fortune-filled cookies) has become an integral part of the American culture and cuisine, with a complex history that dates back to the 19th Century. On the night of March 30, 2005, the Powerball jac… On the night of March 30, 2005, the Powerball jackpot was 25 million dollars. The grand prize winner was in Tennessee, but all over the United States, one hundred and ten second-place winners came forward. Normally just three or four players guess all but the last digit and claim a secondary prize, but this time something was clearly different. Lottery officials were flustered, unsure if there was a computer glitch or a hack in the system, but when they asked the winners how they picked their numbers each had the same response: from a fortune cookie. What we call Chinese food (including the fortune-filled cookies) has become an integral part of the American culture and cuisine, with a complex history that dates back to the 19th Century. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/224040846 Roman Mars no On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual paper route. A short time later, his parents were awakened by a phone call–it was a neighbor—their paper hadn't come. When the Goschs went looking for Johnny they found only his red wagon full of newspapers, abandoned on the sidewalk. Johnny Gosch was 13 when he disappeared. He had blue eyes and dirty blond hair with a small gap between his front teeth. And his would be the first face of a missing child ever printed on a milk carton. Reporter Annie Brown spoke with Noreen Gosch, mother of Johnny Gosch and author of the Johnny Gosch Bill; Barbara Huggett of the National Child Safety Council; Paul Mokrzycki-Renfro, historian at the University of Iowa; and Bonnie Lohman, who was found through the milk carton campaign. On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa,… On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual paper route. A short time later, his parents were awakened by a phone call–it was a neighbor—their paper hadn't come. When the Goschs went looking for Johnny they found only his red wagon full of newspapers, abandoned on the sidewalk. Johnny Gosch was 13 when he disappeared. He had blue eyes and dirty blond hair with a small gap between his front teeth. And his would be the first face of a missing child ever printed on a milk carton. Reporter Annie Brown spoke with Noreen Gosch, mother of Johnny Gosch and author of the Johnny Gosch Bill; Barbara Huggett of the National Child Safety Council; Paul Mokrzycki-Renfro, historian at the University of Iowa; and Bonnie Lohman, who was found through the milk carton campaign. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/223004073 Roman Mars no There are around 6,000 cargo vessels out on the ocean right now, carrying 20,000,000 shipping containers, which are delivering most of the products you see around you. And among all the containers are a special subset of temperature-controlled units known in the global cargo industry, in all seriousness, as reefers. 70% of what we eat passes through the global cold chain, a series of artificially-cooled spaces, which is where the reefer comes into play. For this story, Nicola Twilley, reporter and founder of Edible Geography, spoke with Barbara Pratt, Director of Refrigerated Services at Maersk. There are around 6,000 cargo vessels out on the o… There are around 6,000 cargo vessels out on the ocean right now, carrying 20,000,000 shipping containers, which are delivering most of the products you see around you. And among all the containers are a special subset of temperature-controlled units known in the global cargo industry, in all seriousness, as reefers. 70% of what we eat passes through the global cold chain, a series of artificially-cooled spaces, which is where the reefer comes into play. For this story, Nicola Twilley, reporter and founder of Edible Geography, spoke with Barbara Pratt, Director of Refrigerated Services at Maersk. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/221959808 Roman Mars no In 1860, a chance find at sea forever changed our understanding of marine habitats, sparking an unprecedented push to explore a new world of possibilities far below the surface of our planet's oceans. Deep sea life, previously thought possible down to a maximum depth of 1,800 feet, was found in the form of creatures attached to a transatlantic telegraph cable. Raised for repair from its resting place some 6,000 feet down on the ocean floor, the line was covered with marine species. This paradigm-shifting revelation sparked the public's imagination, fueled global scientific research and propelled the eventual development of new submarine vessels, including the record-breaking Bathysphere. In 1860, a chance find at sea forever changed our… In 1860, a chance find at sea forever changed our understanding of marine habitats, sparking an unprecedented push to explore a new world of possibilities far below the surface of our planet's oceans. Deep sea life, previously thought possible down to a maximum depth of 1,800 feet, was found in the form of creatures attached to a transatlantic telegraph cable. Raised for repair from its resting place some 6,000 feet down on the ocean floor, the line was covered with marine species. This paradigm-shifting revelation sparked the public's imagination, fueled global scientific research and propelled the eventual development of new submarine vessels, including the record-breaking Bathysphere. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/220933438 Roman Mars no Stirling, Scotland is the home of Stirling Castle, a truly marvelous place that I love to visit, that sits atop a giant crag, or hill, overlooking the whole town of Stirling. There has been a castle on the hill since the 12th century at least, and maybe before, but the current buildings date from the 15th and 16th centuries. When we think of medieval castles we usually picture a grand structure, with subdued, dark stone masonry. But when you gaze upon Stirling Castle today from the town below, you will notice that one of the buildings is different from the others. Since 1999, after a decade long restoration effort that altered the building inside and out, the Great Hall of Stirling Castle has been a bright, cheery yellow. But not everyone in Stirling is happy about that. Stirling, Scotland is the home of Stirling Castle… Stirling, Scotland is the home of Stirling Castle, a truly marvelous place that I love to visit, that sits atop a giant crag, or hill, overlooking the whole town of Stirling. There has been a castle on the hill since the 12th century at least, and maybe before, but the current buildings date from the 15th and 16th centuries. When we think of medieval castles we usually picture a grand structure, with subdued, dark stone masonry. But when you gaze upon Stirling Castle today from the town below, you will notice that one of the buildings is different from the others. Since 1999, after a decade long restoration effort that altered the building inside and out, the Great Hall of Stirling Castle has been a bright, cheery yellow. But not everyone in Stirling is happy about that. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/219879155 Roman Mars no In communities across America, lawns that are brown or overgrown are considered especially heinous. Elite squads of dedicated individuals have been deputized by their local governments or homeowners’ associations to take action against those whose lawns fail to meet community standards. Call them—lawn enforcement agents. There’s a paradox to the lawn. On the one hand, it is the pedestal on which sits the greatest symbol of the American Dream, the home, which people can ostensibly govern however they wish. And yet—homeowner often have almost no control over how they should maintain their lawn. Grass may be a plant, but a lawn is a designed object. In communities across America, lawns that are bro… In communities across America, lawns that are brown or overgrown are considered especially heinous. Elite squads of dedicated individuals have been deputized by their local governments or homeowners’ associations to take action against those whose lawns fail to meet community standards. Call them—lawn enforcement agents. There’s a paradox to the lawn. On the one hand, it is the pedestal on which sits the greatest symbol of the American Dream, the home, which people can ostensibly govern however they wish. And yet—homeowner often have almost no control over how they should maintain their lawn. Grass may be a plant, but a lawn is a designed object. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/218855416 Roman Mars no No matter which James Bond actor is your favorite, it's undeniable that the Sean Connery films had the best villains. There’s Blofeld, who turned cat-stroking into a thing that super-villains do, and then there's Goldfinger—Bond’s flashiest nemesis. Fun fact: the author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming, named Goldfinger for a real person—an architect by the name of Ernő Goldfinger, who made giant, hulking, austere concrete buildings. Fleming disliked these buildings so intensely that he immortalized their architect as villain in pop culture. This divide—this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects, tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfinger’s. Which is to say, gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete. No matter which James Bond actor is your favorite… No matter which James Bond actor is your favorite, it's undeniable that the Sean Connery films had the best villains. There’s Blofeld, who turned cat-stroking into a thing that super-villains do, and then there's Goldfinger—Bond’s flashiest nemesis. Fun fact: the author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming, named Goldfinger for a real person—an architect by the name of Ernő Goldfinger, who made giant, hulking, austere concrete buildings. Fleming disliked these buildings so intensely that he immortalized their architect as villain in pop culture. This divide—this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects, tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfinger’s. Which is to say, gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/217839820 Roman Mars no The Bowery, in lower Manhattan, is one of New York’s oldest neighborhoods. It’s been through a lot of iterations. In the 1650s, a handful of freed slaves were the neighborhood's first residents. At the time, New York was still a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam, and the Lower East Side was farm land. In the early 1800s, The Bowery had become a bustling thoroughfare with elegant theaters, and taverns, and shops. But by the late 1800s it had become a much seedier place, full of saloons, and dance halls, and prostitution. By the 1940s, The Bowery had become New York’s skid row—a place where down-and-out men could go and rent a cheap room for the night in one of the neighborhood’s many flop houses. Now, of course, the Lower East Side affords no room for a skid row. The Bowery, like the rest of that area, is full of expensive places to live, and fancy grocery stores. But back in 1998, before the last of the flop hotels closed their doors, David Isay and Stacy Abramson spent months documenting one of the last of these places: The Sunshine Hotel. The Bowery, in lower Manhattan, is one of New Yor… The Bowery, in lower Manhattan, is one of New York’s oldest neighborhoods. It’s been through a lot of iterations. In the 1650s, a handful of freed slaves were the neighborhood's first residents. At the time, New York was still a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam, and the Lower East Side was farm land. In the early 1800s, The Bowery had become a bustling thoroughfare with elegant theaters, and taverns, and shops. But by the late 1800s it had become a much seedier place, full of saloons, and dance halls, and prostitution. By the 1940s, The Bowery had become New York’s skid row—a place where down-and-out men could go and rent a cheap room for the night in one of the neighborhood’s many flop houses. Now, of course, the Lower East Side affords no room for a skid row. The Bowery, like the rest of that area, is full of expensive places to live, and fancy grocery stores. But back in 1998, before the last of the flop hotels closed their doors, David Isay and Stacy Abramson spent months documenting one of the last of these places: The Sunshine Hotel. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/216824343 Roman Mars no In 1933, delegates from the United States and fourteen other countries met in Montevideo, Uruguay to define what it means to be a state. The resulting treaty from the Montevideo Convention established four basic criteria for statehood—essentially, what is required to be recognized as a country. The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: 1. A defined territory 2. A permanent population 3. A government 4. Capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Over time, some people got to thinking that the criteria for becoming a state seemed surprisingly simple. So simple that some attempted to declare their house an independent country. So-called "micronations" popped up around the world. Most of these micronations aren’t expecting anyone to take them seriously, and many don't even meet all four criteria laid out at the Montevideo Convention. These are micronations like Molossia, which is basically one guy's house in Nevada. It's fairly easy to most micronations as just some dude’s crazy project. But one micronation, The Principality of Sealand, cannot be dismissed so easily. In 1933, delegates from the United States and fou… In 1933, delegates from the United States and fourteen other countries met in Montevideo, Uruguay to define what it means to be a state. The resulting treaty from the Montevideo Convention established four basic criteria for statehood—essentially, what is required to be recognized as a country. The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: 1. A defined territory 2. A permanent population 3. A government 4. Capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Over time, some people got to thinking that the criteria for becoming a state seemed surprisingly simple. So simple that some attempted to declare their house an independent country. So-called "micronations" popped up around the world. Most of these micronations aren’t expecting anyone to take them seriously, and many don't even meet all four criteria laid out at the Montevideo Convention. These are micronations like Molossia, which is basically one guy's house in Nevada. It's fairly easy to most micronations as just some dude’s crazy project. But one micronation, The Principality of Sealand, cannot be dismissed so easily. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/212759319 Roman Mars no More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error, for some car industry people, a fully-automated car is a kind of holy grail. However, as automation makes our lives easier and safer, it also creates more complex systems, and fewer humans who understand those systems. Which means when problems do arise—people can be left unable to deal with them. Human factors engineers call this “the automation paradox.” More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all… More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error, for some car industry people, a fully-automated car is a kind of holy grail. However, as automation makes our lives easier and safer, it also creates more complex systems, and fewer humans who understand those systems. Which means when problems do arise—people can be left unable to deal with them. Human factors engineers call this “the automation paradox.” tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/211560219 Roman Mars no On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants boarded an Airbus 330 in Rio de Janeiro. This flight, AirFrance 447, was headed across the Atlantic to Paris. The take-off was unremarkable. The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The passengers read and watched movies and slept. Everything proceeded normally for several hours. Then, with no communication to the ground to the ground or air traffic control, flight 447 suddenly disappeared. On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, t… On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants boarded an Airbus 330 in Rio de Janeiro. This flight, AirFrance 447, was headed across the Atlantic to Paris. The take-off was unremarkable. The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The passengers read and watched movies and slept. Everything proceeded normally for several hours. Then, with no communication to the ground to the ground or air traffic control, flight 447 suddenly disappeared. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/210700812 Roman Mars no Sigmund Freud’s ground-breaking techniques and theories for therapy came to be called “psychoanalysis," and it was embodied, in practice and popular culture, by a single piece of furniture: the couch. Producer Ann Hepperman explores the role of this canonical object in the theory of the mind that changed the world. Sigmund Freud’s ground-breaking techniques and th… Sigmund Freud’s ground-breaking techniques and theories for therapy came to be called “psychoanalysis," and it was embodied, in practice and popular culture, by a single piece of furniture: the couch. Producer Ann Hepperman explores the role of this canonical object in the theory of the mind that changed the world. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/209654706 Roman Mars no People who make horror movies know: if you want to scare someone, use scary music. Some of the most creative use of music and sound to evoke fear and anxiety is on the TV show Hannibal. Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder spoke with evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein, Hannibal executive producer David Slade, and composer Brian Reitzell. Bonus: To celebrate the addition of Song Exploder to Radiotopia, we're playing Roman's favorite episode of the program, featuring John Roderick of The Long Winters "exploding" his masterpiece "The Commander Thinks Aloud." People who make horror movies know: if you want t… People who make horror movies know: if you want to scare someone, use scary music. Some of the most creative use of music and sound to evoke fear and anxiety is on the TV show Hannibal. Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder spoke with evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein, Hannibal executive producer David Slade, and composer Brian Reitzell. Bonus: To celebrate the addition of Song Exploder to Radiotopia, we're playing Roman's favorite episode of the program, featuring John Roderick of The Long Winters "exploding" his masterpiece "The Commander Thinks Aloud." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/208546490 Roman Mars no This week on 99% Invisible, we have two stories about the early days of broadcasting and home sound recording, produced by Radio Diaries and the Kitchen Sisters. The sounds that came out Frank Conrad's Garage in 1919 and 1920 are gone. There were no recordings made, and everyone who participated in his audio experiments have died. In this piece, Radio Diaries uncovers what might have happened in Frank Conrad’s garage, where some people say modern broadcasting began. The first portable audio recorder was made in 1945 by a man named Tony Schwartz. He moved the VU meter from inside of the unit to the top, so he could see the recording volume. And, he put a strap on it so that he could hang the device over his shoulder. Armed with his recorder (and sometimes a secret microphone attached to his wrist), Schwartz chronicled every sound in his Manhattan neighborhood. He recorded children singing songs in the park, street festival music, jukeboxes in restaurants, vendors peddling vegetables, and more than 700 conversations with cab drivers, just to name a few examples. The Kitchen Sisters have his story. This week on 99% Invisible, we have two stories a… This week on 99% Invisible, we have two stories about the early days of broadcasting and home sound recording, produced by Radio Diaries and the Kitchen Sisters. The sounds that came out Frank Conrad's Garage in 1919 and 1920 are gone. There were no recordings made, and everyone who participated in his audio experiments have died. In this piece, Radio Diaries uncovers what might have happened in Frank Conrad’s garage, where some people say modern broadcasting began. The first portable audio recorder was made in 1945 by a man named Tony Schwartz. He moved the VU meter from inside of the unit to the top, so he could see the recording volume. And, he put a strap on it so that he could hang the device over his shoulder. Armed with his recorder (and sometimes a secret microphone attached to his wrist), Schwartz chronicled every sound in his Manhattan neighborhood. He recorded children singing songs in the park, street festival music, jukeboxes in restaurants, vendors peddling vegetables, and more than 700 conversations with cab drivers, just to name a few examples. The Kitchen Sisters have his story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/207410609 Roman Mars no On January 3rd, 1961, Che Guevara suggested to Fidel Castro that they go play a round of golf. They drove out to what was then the ritziest, most elite country club in Havana. It was empty—almost all the members had fled during the revolution—and Fidel and Che romped around the bucolic green acres while their official photographer snapped publicity shots. As they played, they realized that the grounds of the country club were spectacular. They knew they had to do something with the property. There, with golf clubs in hand, they decided they would build an art school. On January 3rd, 1961, Che Guevara suggested to Fi… On January 3rd, 1961, Che Guevara suggested to Fidel Castro that they go play a round of golf. They drove out to what was then the ritziest, most elite country club in Havana. It was empty—almost all the members had fled during the revolution—and Fidel and Che romped around the bucolic green acres while their official photographer snapped publicity shots. As they played, they realized that the grounds of the country club were spectacular. They knew they had to do something with the property. There, with golf clubs in hand, they decided they would build an art school. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/206319099 Roman Mars no The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland is a busy place. Anyone who dies unexpectedly in the state of Maryland will end up there for an autopsy. On an average day, they might perform twelve autopsies; on more hectic day, they might do more than twenty. But there’s one room on the fourth floor that sits apart from the buzz of normal activity. It feels a bit like an art gallery. This room houses the “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.” The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Balti… The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland is a busy place. Anyone who dies unexpectedly in the state of Maryland will end up there for an autopsy. On an average day, they might perform twelve autopsies; on more hectic day, they might do more than twenty. But there’s one room on the fourth floor that sits apart from the buzz of normal activity. It feels a bit like an art gallery. This room houses the “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.” tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/205233932 Roman Mars no We live in a post-billiards age. There was an age of billiards, and it has been over for so long, most of us have no idea how huge billiards once was. For many decades, starting in the mid-19th Century, billiards was the one of the most popular amusements. A hundred years ago, there were 830 pool halls in the city of Chicago. Today, there are ten. Billiards is not what it used to be—but we continue to live in a world affected by its former prominence. The growth of billiards led to the development of a material that would come to define the modern world. Without billiards, we might never have discovered plastic. We live in a post-billiards age. There was an age… We live in a post-billiards age. There was an age of billiards, and it has been over for so long, most of us have no idea how huge billiards once was. For many decades, starting in the mid-19th Century, billiards was the one of the most popular amusements. A hundred years ago, there were 830 pool halls in the city of Chicago. Today, there are ten. Billiards is not what it used to be—but we continue to live in a world affected by its former prominence. The growth of billiards led to the development of a material that would come to define the modern world. Without billiards, we might never have discovered plastic. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/204125179 Roman Mars no Retail spaces are designed for impulse shopping. When you go to a store looking for socks and come out with a new shirt, it's only partly your fault. Shops are trying to look so beautiful, so welcoming, the items so enticingly displayed and in such vast quantity, that the consumer will start buying compulsively. This is the Gruen Effect. Retail spaces are designed for impulse shopping. … Retail spaces are designed for impulse shopping. When you go to a store looking for socks and come out with a new shirt, it's only partly your fault. Shops are trying to look so beautiful, so welcoming, the items so enticingly displayed and in such vast quantity, that the consumer will start buying compulsively. This is the Gruen Effect. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/202980580 Roman Mars no According to legend, Sarah Winchester's friends advised her to seek the services of a Boston spiritual medium named Adam Koombs. As the legend goes, Koombs put Mrs. Winchester in touch with her deceased husband—but William had bad news. He told Sarah Winchester that she would always be haunted by the spirits who had been killed by Winchester rifles. Speaking through Koombs, William Winchester instructed Sarah to placate the spirits by building a structure that would perpetually grow to shelter the ever-increasing number of Winchester rifle victims. And if she did this, Sarah Winchester would gain immortality. According to legend, Sarah Winchester's friends a… According to legend, Sarah Winchester's friends advised her to seek the services of a Boston spiritual medium named Adam Koombs. As the legend goes, Koombs put Mrs. Winchester in touch with her deceased husband—but William had bad news. He told Sarah Winchester that she would always be haunted by the spirits who had been killed by Winchester rifles. Speaking through Koombs, William Winchester instructed Sarah to placate the spirits by building a structure that would perpetually grow to shelter the ever-increasing number of Winchester rifle victims. And if she did this, Sarah Winchester would gain immortality. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/201975876 Roman Mars no During World War II, a massive recruitment effort targeted students from the top art schools across the country. These young designers, artists, and makers were being asked to help execute a wild idea that came out of one the nation's most conservative organizations: the United States Army. The crazy idea was this: The United States Army would design a “deception unit”: a unit that would appear to the enemy as a large armored division with tanks, trucks, artillery, and thousands of soldiers. But this unit would actually be equipped only with fake tanks, fake trucks, fake artillery and manned by just a handful of soldiers. During World War II, a massive recruitment effort… During World War II, a massive recruitment effort targeted students from the top art schools across the country. These young designers, artists, and makers were being asked to help execute a wild idea that came out of one the nation's most conservative organizations: the United States Army. The crazy idea was this: The United States Army would design a “deception unit”: a unit that would appear to the enemy as a large armored division with tanks, trucks, artillery, and thousands of soldiers. But this unit would actually be equipped only with fake tanks, fake trucks, fake artillery and manned by just a handful of soldiers. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/200869480 Roman Mars no The pursuit of lock picking is as old as the lock, which is itself as old as civilization. But in the entire history of the world, there was only one brief moment, lasting about 70 years, where you could put something under lock and key—a chest, a safe, your home—and have complete, unwavering certainty that no intruder could get to it. This is a feeling that security experts call “perfect security.” Since we lost perfect security in the 1850s, it has has remained elusive. Despite tremendous leaps forward in security technology, we have never been able to get perfect security back. The pursuit of lock picking is as old as the lock… The pursuit of lock picking is as old as the lock, which is itself as old as civilization. But in the entire history of the world, there was only one brief moment, lasting about 70 years, where you could put something under lock and key—a chest, a safe, your home—and have complete, unwavering certainty that no intruder could get to it. This is a feeling that security experts call “perfect security.” Since we lost perfect security in the 1850s, it has has remained elusive. Despite tremendous leaps forward in security technology, we have never been able to get perfect security back. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/199845353 Roman Mars no A month is hardly a unit of measurement. It can start on any day of the week and last anywhere from 28 to 31 days. Sometimes a month is four weeks long, sometimes five, sometimes six. You have to buy a new calendar with new dates every single year. It's a strange design. A month is hardly a unit of measurement. It can s… A month is hardly a unit of measurement. It can start on any day of the week and last anywhere from 28 to 31 days. Sometimes a month is four weeks long, sometimes five, sometimes six. You have to buy a new calendar with new dates every single year. It's a strange design. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/198624741 Roman Mars no Eighty years ago, New York City needed another tunnel under the Hudson River. The Holland Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge could no longer handle the mounting traffic between New Jersey and Manhattan. Thus began construction of the Lincoln Tunnel. But this is not a story about the Lincoln Tunnel. This is about the men who made it. The Sandhogs. Eighty years ago, New York City needed another tu… Eighty years ago, New York City needed another tunnel under the Hudson River. The Holland Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge could no longer handle the mounting traffic between New Jersey and Manhattan. Thus began construction of the Lincoln Tunnel. But this is not a story about the Lincoln Tunnel. This is about the men who made it. The Sandhogs. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/197577351 Roman Mars no United States paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. Pull a greenback out from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns... It’s just dreadful. United States paper currency is so ubiquitous tha… United States paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. Pull a greenback out from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns... It’s just dreadful. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/196396236 Roman Mars no In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans had ever been west of the Mississippi. When Frederick Law Olmstead visited the west in the 1850s, he remarked that the plains looked like a sea of grasses that moved "in swells after a great storm.” Massive herds of buffalo wandered the plains. Cowboys shepherded cattle across long stretches of no man's land. It was truly the wild and unmanaged west, but it was all about to change, due, in large part, to one very simple invention that would come to be known as "the devil’s rope." In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans… In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans had ever been west of the Mississippi. When Frederick Law Olmstead visited the west in the 1850s, he remarked that the plains looked like a sea of grasses that moved "in swells after a great storm.” Massive herds of buffalo wandered the plains. Cowboys shepherded cattle across long stretches of no man's land. It was truly the wild and unmanaged west, but it was all about to change, due, in large part, to one very simple invention that would come to be known as "the devil’s rope." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/195262958 Roman Mars no The United States Military is not known for being touchy-feely. There's not much hugging or head-patting, and superiors don't always have the authority to offer a serviceman a raise or promotion. When a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard wants to show appreciation, love, sympathy, or professional connection, they can use challenge coins. The United States Military is not known for being… The United States Military is not known for being touchy-feely. There's not much hugging or head-patting, and superiors don't always have the authority to offer a serviceman a raise or promotion. When a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard wants to show appreciation, love, sympathy, or professional connection, they can use challenge coins. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/194124792 Roman Mars no To understand why someone would want to steal a palm tree, we need to understand their value—which has a lot to do with the space they occupy in our collective imagination. We don’t plant palms for any of the normal reasons we want other trees around. They produce little shade, are difficult to climb, and don't, for the most part, produce edible fruit. Palm trees, it seems, do something else. They’re evocative. They’re transportative. They inspire us to dream big. To understand why someone would want to steal a p… To understand why someone would want to steal a palm tree, we need to understand their value—which has a lot to do with the space they occupy in our collective imagination. We don’t plant palms for any of the normal reasons we want other trees around. They produce little shade, are difficult to climb, and don't, for the most part, produce edible fruit. Palm trees, it seems, do something else. They’re evocative. They’re transportative. They inspire us to dream big. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/192867371 Roman Mars no A few months before the end of the world, everyone was saying their goodbyes. The world that was ending was The Sims Online, an online version of The Sims. Even though The Sims was one of the most popular computer games ever made, the massively-multiplayer online version did not do well. Despite rebranding the game as EA-Land, sales did not improve, and EA Games decided to pull the plug. A few months before the end of the world, everyon… A few months before the end of the world, everyone was saying their goodbyes. The world that was ending was The Sims Online, an online version of The Sims. Even though The Sims was one of the most popular computer games ever made, the massively-multiplayer online version did not do well. Despite rebranding the game as EA-Land, sales did not improve, and EA Games decided to pull the plug. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/190543261 Roman Mars no At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, or poorly painted marker on the road. Mostly, when we see these things, we grumble on the inside, and then do nothing. But not Richard Ankrom. At some point in your life you’ve probably encoun… At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, or poorly painted marker on the road. Mostly, when we see these things, we grumble on the inside, and then do nothing. But not Richard Ankrom. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/189340553 Roman Mars no The idea of the mascot came to America by way of a popular French opera from the 1880s called La Mascotte. The opera is about a down-on-his luck farmer who’s visited by a girl named Bettina; as soon as she appears, the farmer's crops start doing well and his life turns around. The word "mascotte" is a play on the French slang word "masco," meaning "witch." Hence, "mascotte" (or the anglicized "mascot") came to mean a person or thing that brings good luck. The idea of the mascot came to America by way of … The idea of the mascot came to America by way of a popular French opera from the 1880s called La Mascotte. The opera is about a down-on-his luck farmer who’s visited by a girl named Bettina; as soon as she appears, the farmer's crops start doing well and his life turns around. The word "mascotte" is a play on the French slang word "masco," meaning "witch." Hence, "mascotte" (or the anglicized "mascot") came to mean a person or thing that brings good luck. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/188233396 Roman Mars no In 1885, Austin, Texas was terrorized by a serial killer known as the Servant Girl Annihilator. The murderer was never actually found, but he claimed eight victims, mostly black servant girls, all attacked in the dark of night. The very, very dark night of Austin in 1885. After night fell, Austin only had moonlight. The city had no outdoor lighting until 1894, when Austin decided to buy more moonlight, in the form of towers. They were fifteen stories tall, each crowned with a circle of six lights, soaring way up above the city. In 1885, Austin, Texas was terrorized by a serial… In 1885, Austin, Texas was terrorized by a serial killer known as the Servant Girl Annihilator. The murderer was never actually found, but he claimed eight victims, mostly black servant girls, all attacked in the dark of night. The very, very dark night of Austin in 1885. After night fell, Austin only had moonlight. The city had no outdoor lighting until 1894, when Austin decided to buy more moonlight, in the form of towers. They were fifteen stories tall, each crowned with a circle of six lights, soaring way up above the city. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/187075752 Roman Mars no If you are looking at a computer screen, your right hand is probably resting on a mouse. To the left of that mouse (or above, if you're on a laptop) is your keyboard. As you work on the computer, your right hand moves back and forth from keyboard to mouse. You can't do everything you need to do on a computer without constantly moving between input devices. There is another way. If you are looking at a computer screen, your rig… If you are looking at a computer screen, your right hand is probably resting on a mouse. To the left of that mouse (or above, if you're on a laptop) is your keyboard. As you work on the computer, your right hand moves back and forth from keyboard to mouse. You can't do everything you need to do on a computer without constantly moving between input devices. There is another way. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/185954573 Roman Mars no The first trademark for a sound in the United States was issued in 1978 to NBC for their chimes. MGM has a sound trademark for their roaring lion, as does 20th Century Fox for their trumpet fanfare. Harley Davidson tried to trademark the sound of their motorcycles, but after years of litigation, they finally withdrew their application. Right now there are fewer than two hundred active trademarks for sounds. A surprisingly small number, considering sound has the power make—or break—a brand. The first trademark for a sound in the United Sta… The first trademark for a sound in the United States was issued in 1978 to NBC for their chimes. MGM has a sound trademark for their roaring lion, as does 20th Century Fox for their trumpet fanfare. Harley Davidson tried to trademark the sound of their motorcycles, but after years of litigation, they finally withdrew their application. Right now there are fewer than two hundred active trademarks for sounds. A surprisingly small number, considering sound has the power make—or break—a brand. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/184838467 Roman Mars no As you probably know, 99% Invisible is a show about the built world, about things manufactured by humans. We don't tend to do stories about animals or nature. But our friend Jon Mooallem writes stories about the weird interactions between animals and humans, interactions that are becoming ever weirder and more designed. Mooallem is a writer with the New York Times Magazine and for Pop -Up Magazine, the live magazine in San Francisco, which is where we first heard these two stories. You might remember them as episodes #40 and #91 respectively, but now we present them together in a radio special we're calling Mooallempalooza. As you probably know, 99% Invisible is a show abo… As you probably know, 99% Invisible is a show about the built world, about things manufactured by humans. We don't tend to do stories about animals or nature. But our friend Jon Mooallem writes stories about the weird interactions between animals and humans, interactions that are becoming ever weirder and more designed. Mooallem is a writer with the New York Times Magazine and for Pop -Up Magazine, the live magazine in San Francisco, which is where we first heard these two stories. You might remember them as episodes #40 and #91 respectively, but now we present them together in a radio special we're calling Mooallempalooza. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/181871299 Roman Mars no If you want to follow conversation threads relating to this show on social media—whether Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, Tumblr—you know to look for the hashtag: #99pi. In our current digital age, the hashtag identifies movements, events, happenings, brands—topics of all kinds. The "#" didn't always have this meaning, though. It's had a few different lives. If you want to follow conversation threads relati… If you want to follow conversation threads relating to this show on social media—whether Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, Tumblr—you know to look for the hashtag: #99pi. In our current digital age, the hashtag identifies movements, events, happenings, brands—topics of all kinds. The "#" didn't always have this meaning, though. It's had a few different lives. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/180813888 Roman Mars no Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Livermore, California, there’s a small, pear-shaped light bulb. It is glowing right now. This lightbulb has been glowing, with just a couple of momentary interruptions, for 113 years. You can see it glow in real time. The bulb is a genuine heirloom from the dawn of electric illumination, built by one of its pioneers: Adolphe Chaillet. Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Liver… Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Livermore, California, there’s a small, pear-shaped light bulb. It is glowing right now. This lightbulb has been glowing, with just a couple of momentary interruptions, for 113 years. You can see it glow in real time. The bulb is a genuine heirloom from the dawn of electric illumination, built by one of its pioneers: Adolphe Chaillet. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/179737050 Roman Mars no You see them on street corners, at gas stations, at shopping malls. You see them at blowout sales and grand openings of all kinds. Their wacky faces hover over us, and then fall down to meet us, and then rise up again. Their bodies flop. They flail. They are men. Men made of tubes. Tubes full of air. You see them on street corners, at gas stations, … You see them on street corners, at gas stations, at shopping malls. You see them at blowout sales and grand openings of all kinds. Their wacky faces hover over us, and then fall down to meet us, and then rise up again. Their bodies flop. They flail. They are men. Men made of tubes. Tubes full of air. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/178685255 Roman Mars no There’s a little trophy shop called Aardvark Laser Engraving down the street from our office in Oakland. Its small but bustling, and its windows are stuffed to the brim with awards made of all kinds of materials and in any shape you can imagine. Chalices, orbs, golfers, gavels, apples, and plaques. Plenty of plaques. Engraved to award the Club DJ of the Year, the newest member of a local Freemason branch, one mysterious trophy that just says "Rifle Expert," and plenty of heartfelt engravings to spouses, family members, and retiring co-workers. There’s a little trophy shop called Aardvark Lase… There’s a little trophy shop called Aardvark Laser Engraving down the street from our office in Oakland. Its small but bustling, and its windows are stuffed to the brim with awards made of all kinds of materials and in any shape you can imagine. Chalices, orbs, golfers, gavels, apples, and plaques. Plenty of plaques. Engraved to award the Club DJ of the Year, the newest member of a local Freemason branch, one mysterious trophy that just says "Rifle Expert," and plenty of heartfelt engravings to spouses, family members, and retiring co-workers. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/177616944 Roman Mars no This week on the show we're presenting one of our favorite radio features, "Three Records from Sundown," about singer Nick Drake. Neither the devastating beauty of Drake's music, nor the amazing craftsmanship of the documentary itself are going to come through in this web article—so we suggest you stop reading this and just listen. The documentary, by producer Charles Maynes, retraces the roots of Drake's legend through interviews with Drake's producer, Joe Boyd. Boyd signed Nick Drake to Island records when Drake was just 20 years old. The first album they recorded together was Five Leaves Left, released in 1968. This week on the show we're presenting one of our… This week on the show we're presenting one of our favorite radio features, "Three Records from Sundown," about singer Nick Drake. Neither the devastating beauty of Drake's music, nor the amazing craftsmanship of the documentary itself are going to come through in this web article—so we suggest you stop reading this and just listen. The documentary, by producer Charles Maynes, retraces the roots of Drake's legend through interviews with Drake's producer, Joe Boyd. Boyd signed Nick Drake to Island records when Drake was just 20 years old. The first album they recorded together was Five Leaves Left, released in 1968. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/176524315 Roman Mars no Vexillologists—those who study flags—tend to fall into one of two schools of thought. The first is one that focuses on history, category, and usage, and maintains that vexillologists should be scholars and historians of all flags, regardless of their designs. The other school of vexillology, however, maintains that not all flags are created equal, and that flags can and should be redesigned, and improved. Ted Kaye of the Portland Flag Association—the largest subnational flag organization in the country—is one such vexillologist. Kaye has a word for these activist vexillologists of his ilk who go out into the world and lobby for more beautiful flags: "vexillonaires." Vexillologists—those who study flags—tend to fall… Vexillologists—those who study flags—tend to fall into one of two schools of thought. The first is one that focuses on history, category, and usage, and maintains that vexillologists should be scholars and historians of all flags, regardless of their designs. The other school of vexillology, however, maintains that not all flags are created equal, and that flags can and should be redesigned, and improved. Ted Kaye of the Portland Flag Association—the largest subnational flag organization in the country—is one such vexillologist. Kaye has a word for these activist vexillologists of his ilk who go out into the world and lobby for more beautiful flags: "vexillonaires." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/175375741 Roman Mars no “A Chair is a difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier.” — Mies van der Rohe. The chair presents an interesting design challenge, because it is an object that disappears when in use. The person replaces the chair. So chairs need to look fantastic when empty, and remain invisible (and comfortable) while in use. “A Chair is a difficult object. A skyscraper is a… “A Chair is a difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier.” — Mies van der Rohe. The chair presents an interesting design challenge, because it is an object that disappears when in use. The person replaces the chair. So chairs need to look fantastic when empty, and remain invisible (and comfortable) while in use. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/174266099 Roman Mars no The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it looks like it comes from another time, or maybe another realm. The game is not as ancient as it was designed to look, but those two arched rows of letters have been spooking people for over 125 years. Actually, the roots of the board go back even farther, according to Ouija historian Robert Murch. To understand where Ouija boards (generically called "talking boards") come from, you have to go back to middle of the 1800s, to three sisters in New York. The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it l… The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it looks like it comes from another time, or maybe another realm. The game is not as ancient as it was designed to look, but those two arched rows of letters have been spooking people for over 125 years. Actually, the roots of the board go back even farther, according to Ouija historian Robert Murch. To understand where Ouija boards (generically called "talking boards") come from, you have to go back to middle of the 1800s, to three sisters in New York. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/173285753 Roman Mars no The first print advertisement for Wonder Bread came out before the bread itself. It stated only that “a wonder” was coming. In a lot of ways, the statement was true. Wonder Bread was the perfect loaf. "Slow food" advocates have pronounced industrial white bread of any brand a symbol of a modern grocery problem: consumers don't know where our food comes from. The funny thing is that industrial white bread—that evenly sliced, squishy, moist, perfectly white and wondrous loaf—was once a highly designed solution to that very same problem. The first print advertisement for Wonder Bread ca… The first print advertisement for Wonder Bread came out before the bread itself. It stated only that “a wonder” was coming. In a lot of ways, the statement was true. Wonder Bread was the perfect loaf. "Slow food" advocates have pronounced industrial white bread of any brand a symbol of a modern grocery problem: consumers don't know where our food comes from. The funny thing is that industrial white bread—that evenly sliced, squishy, moist, perfectly white and wondrous loaf—was once a highly designed solution to that very same problem. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/172133801 Roman Mars no On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electricity transmission line in New York City, causing the line's automatic circuit breaker to kick in. The electricity from the affected line was diverted to another line. This was fairly normal and everything was fine—until a second bolt of lightening struck. Electric lines started shutting themselves off. As more and more lines were shut off, the system started to shut itself down. Eventually, the largest power generator in the area, known as Big Allis, turned itself off. And then all of New York City went dark. On that evening, DJ Grandmaster Caz, a Bronx native, was spinning records in a park. Caz recalls the evening: "The record just started slowing down, you know what I mean? So, quite naturally, we thought, it was us. We thought we had drained too much power and we shorted out the electricity. So we're frantic, we're looking around, we're checking buttons, were checking switches, we're seeing what's up." "It was chaos that night," says Grandmaster Caz. "And it was exciting afterwards. But while it was going on, it was scary." But Caz also believes that the the 1977 blackout may have accelerated the burgeoning Hip Hop movement. His theory: the looting that occurred during the blackout enabled people who couldn't afford turntables and mixers to become DJs On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electric… On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electricity transmission line in New York City, causing the line's automatic circuit breaker to kick in. The electricity from the affected line was diverted to another line. This was fairly normal and everything was fine—until a second bolt of lightening struck. Electric lines started shutting themselves off. As more and more lines were shut off, the system started to shut itself down. Eventually, the largest power generator in the area, known as Big Allis, turned itself off. And then all of New York City went dark. On that evening, DJ Grandmaster Caz, a Bronx native, was spinning records in a park. Caz recalls the evening: "The record just started slowing down, you know what I mean? So, quite naturally, we thought, it was us. We thought we had drained too much power and we shorted out the electricity. So we're frantic, we're looking around, we're checking buttons, were checking switches, we're seeing what's up." "It was chaos that night," says Grandmaster Caz. "And it was exciting afterwards. But while it was going on, it was scary." But Caz also believes that the the 1977 blackout may have accelerated the burgeoning Hip Hop movement. His theory: the looting that occurred during the blackout enabled people who couldn't afford turntables and mixers to become DJs tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/171429209 Roman Mars no Everyone has tried it at some point. The authorities started turning a blind eye years ago, but it wasn't officially legalized until the summer of 2014. Finally, after more than 80 years of illegitimacy, the City of Oakland has legalized...pinball machines. Pinball’s design history can help explain why it was illegal for so long. Everyone has tried it at some point. The authorit… Everyone has tried it at some point. The authorities started turning a blind eye years ago, but it wasn't officially legalized until the summer of 2014. Finally, after more than 80 years of illegitimacy, the City of Oakland has legalized...pinball machines. Pinball’s design history can help explain why it was illegal for so long. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/170092800 Roman Mars no Straight lines form the core of our built environment. Building in straight lines makes predicting costs and calculating structural loads easier, since building materials come in linear units. Straight lines might be logical, predictable, and efficient, but they are also completely "godless"—at least according to Austrian artist and designer Tausendsassa Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (which translates to "Multi-Talented Peace-Filled Rainy Day Dark-Colored Hundred Waters” in German). Hundertwasser made a name for himself, so to speak, with his psychedelic, whimsical paintings and his public speaking engagements that he would sometimes deliver completely naked. As a proponent of radical human expression, Hundertwasser sought to create structures that were free from straight lines, which he saw as constricting and devoid of organic elements. Straight lines form the core of our built environ… Straight lines form the core of our built environment. Building in straight lines makes predicting costs and calculating structural loads easier, since building materials come in linear units. Straight lines might be logical, predictable, and efficient, but they are also completely "godless"—at least according to Austrian artist and designer Tausendsassa Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (which translates to "Multi-Talented Peace-Filled Rainy Day Dark-Colored Hundred Waters” in German). Hundertwasser made a name for himself, so to speak, with his psychedelic, whimsical paintings and his public speaking engagements that he would sometimes deliver completely naked. As a proponent of radical human expression, Hundertwasser sought to create structures that were free from straight lines, which he saw as constricting and devoid of organic elements. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/169113206 Roman Mars no There’s a photograph we have tacked to our studio at 99% Invisible HQ. The photo, taken 1899, shows three men, all looking very fashionable, suspended mid-air on the lifted arm of a giant dredging machine. There are plenty of images like this from this era— scenes of people standing around proudly as they shaped the earth. And in these old photos there seems to be a real sense of awe and reverence for the marvels of civil engineering. The above photo is a scene from the reversal of the Chicago River (see episode episode #86, true believers!). The reason that photo is famous—or at least famous enough for us to have seen it—is because the reversal of the Chicago River was an enormous engineering project that was successful. But you have to figure that there were countless other photographs depicting similarly-awe-inspiring feats of engineering prowess that we have never seen— because those feats turned out to be failures. Failures like the Port of Dallas. There’s a photograph we have tacked to our studio… There’s a photograph we have tacked to our studio at 99% Invisible HQ. The photo, taken 1899, shows three men, all looking very fashionable, suspended mid-air on the lifted arm of a giant dredging machine. There are plenty of images like this from this era— scenes of people standing around proudly as they shaped the earth. And in these old photos there seems to be a real sense of awe and reverence for the marvels of civil engineering. The above photo is a scene from the reversal of the Chicago River (see episode episode #86, true believers!). The reason that photo is famous—or at least famous enough for us to have seen it—is because the reversal of the Chicago River was an enormous engineering project that was successful. But you have to figure that there were countless other photographs depicting similarly-awe-inspiring feats of engineering prowess that we have never seen— because those feats turned out to be failures. Failures like the Port of Dallas. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/167947425 Roman Mars no On the southwest corner of Central Park West and 106th Street in New York City, there's an enormous castle. It takes up the whole east end of the block, with its red brick cylindrical turrets topped with gleaming silver cones. All the stained glass windows and intricate stonework make the building looks like something out of a fairytale. This building’s past, however, is not very fairytale-like at all. When it was built in 1887, this castle was the country’s first hospital devoted solely to the treatment of cancer. In the late 1800s, cancer was known to start as a tumor, but they didn’t know a whole lot beyond that. In the back of the castle, was a smoke stack that used to lead out from the crematorium. That smokestack was smoking pretty often. On the southwest corner of Central Park West and … On the southwest corner of Central Park West and 106th Street in New York City, there's an enormous castle. It takes up the whole east end of the block, with its red brick cylindrical turrets topped with gleaming silver cones. All the stained glass windows and intricate stonework make the building looks like something out of a fairytale. This building’s past, however, is not very fairytale-like at all. When it was built in 1887, this castle was the country’s first hospital devoted solely to the treatment of cancer. In the late 1800s, cancer was known to start as a tumor, but they didn’t know a whole lot beyond that. In the back of the castle, was a smoke stack that used to lead out from the crematorium. That smokestack was smoking pretty often. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/167103180 Roman Mars no In the beginning, there was design. Before any other human discipline, even before the dawn of mankind its self, design was a practice passed down from generation to generation of early humans. Today, everything that has been designed–space ships, buildings, pyramids, weapons, clothing , artwork, everything–can be traced back to a single designed object. The first designed object: the Acheulean hand axe. This episode features designer William Lidwell and UC-Berkeley anthropologist Terrence Deacon. In the beginning, there was design. Before any ot… In the beginning, there was design. Before any other human discipline, even before the dawn of mankind its self, design was a practice passed down from generation to generation of early humans. Today, everything that has been designed–space ships, buildings, pyramids, weapons, clothing , artwork, everything–can be traced back to a single designed object. The first designed object: the Acheulean hand axe. This episode features designer William Lidwell and UC-Berkeley anthropologist Terrence Deacon. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/165867229 Roman Mars no Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all over the community which had once been mostly single family homes and small businesses. Around this time, developers offered a woman named Edith Macefield $750,000 dollars for her small house, which was appraised at around $120,000. They wanted to build a shopping mall on the block where Macefield had lived for the last 50 years. Macefield turned down the money. Developers went forward with the shopping mall anyway. The mall enveloped her house on three sides. Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballar… Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all over the community which had once been mostly single family homes and small businesses. Around this time, developers offered a woman named Edith Macefield $750,000 dollars for her small house, which was appraised at around $120,000. They wanted to build a shopping mall on the block where Macefield had lived for the last 50 years. Macefield turned down the money. Developers went forward with the shopping mall anyway. The mall enveloped her house on three sides. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/164860546 Roman Mars no Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process, bits and pieces that get left behind. Vestiges. Just as humans have tailbones and whales have pelvic bones, cities have doors that open into a limb-breaking drop, segments of fences that anyone can walk around, and pipes that carry nothing at all. Most of the time, these architectural leftovers rust or crumble or get taken down. But other times, these vestiges aren’t removed. They remain in the urban organism. And sometimes—even though they no longer serve any discernible purpose—they’re actually maintained. They get cleaned and polished and re-painted just because they’re there. These urban vestiges first caught the attention of an artist in Japan named Akasegawa Genpei. One day, in 1972, he was walking to lunch, and he came across a staircase that went up and then back down but had no door at the top. Then Akasegawa noticed that a piece of the railing that had been recently fixed. That's when something clicked. Akasegawa started noticing similar urban leftovers, and treasured them as artistic byproducts of the city. He photographed all the things he could find that were both vestigial and maintained. He began publishing his findings in a magazine column, accompanied by musings about each object. People began to send Akasegawa pictures of similar architectural leftovers that they found, and in his column, Akasegawa would judge all submissions on two criteria: 1. Were they truly, completely useless? 2. Were they regularly maintained? In 1985 Akasegawa published a book of these collected photographs and writings, in which he coined a term for these kinds of urban leftovers. He called them, “Thomassons.” Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over ti… Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process, bits and pieces that get left behind. Vestiges. Just as humans have tailbones and whales have pelvic bones, cities have doors that open into a limb-breaking drop, segments of fences that anyone can walk around, and pipes that carry nothing at all. Most of the time, these architectural leftovers rust or crumble or get taken down. But other times, these vestiges aren’t removed. They remain in the urban organism. And sometimes—even though they no longer serve any discernible purpose—they’re actually maintained. They get cleaned and polished and re-painted just because they’re there. These urban vestiges first caught the attention of an artist in Japan named Akasegawa Genpei. One day, in 1972, he was walking to lunch, and he came across a staircase that went up and then back down but had no door at the top. Then Akasegawa noticed that a piece of the railing that had been recently fixed. That's when something clicked. Akasegawa started noticing similar urban leftovers, and treasured them as artistic byproducts of the city. He photographed all the things he could find that were both vestigial and maintained. He began publishing his findings in a magazine column, accompanied by musings about each object. People began to send Akasegawa pictures of similar architectural leftovers that they found, and in his column, Akasegawa would judge all submissions on two criteria: 1. Were they truly, completely useless? 2. Were they regularly maintained? In 1985 Akasegawa published a book of these collected photographs and writings, in which he coined a term for these kinds of urban leftovers. He called them, “Thomassons.” tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/163879573 Roman Mars no IKEA hacking is the practice of buying things from IKEA and reengineering—or "hacking"—them to become customized, more functional, and often just better designed stuff. The locus of the IKEA hacking movement is a website called IKEAhackers.net. It’s a showcase for people who have tricked out their KALLAXES, their ARKELSTORPS and their FLÄRDFULLS . Would-be hackers can gather tips from other hackers, and once they're ready, post pictures and how-to guides of their own hacks. Producer Sean Cole spoke with Jules Yap of IKEAhackers.net, and academics Daniela Rosner and Jonathan Bean (the latter of whom helped him hack an IKEA storage-bed out of KALLAX bookcases and some doors that can be found at any big-box home improvement store). IKEA hacking is the practice of buying things fro… IKEA hacking is the practice of buying things from IKEA and reengineering—or "hacking"—them to become customized, more functional, and often just better designed stuff. The locus of the IKEA hacking movement is a website called IKEAhackers.net. It’s a showcase for people who have tricked out their KALLAXES, their ARKELSTORPS and their FLÄRDFULLS . Would-be hackers can gather tips from other hackers, and once they're ready, post pictures and how-to guides of their own hacks. Producer Sean Cole spoke with Jules Yap of IKEAhackers.net, and academics Daniela Rosner and Jonathan Bean (the latter of whom helped him hack an IKEA storage-bed out of KALLAX bookcases and some doors that can be found at any big-box home improvement store). tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/162750218 Roman Mars no Way back in October 2011 (see episode #38, true believers!), we broadcast a short excerpt of a radio documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews about faking the sounds of sports on TV broadcasts. It was one of our most popular and provocative programs ever, primarily because people were shocked that any aspect of a sporting event might be faked. Since then, I've received several requests from the audience asking where they can hear the full-length documentary. Well today, my friends, you are in luck. When we think of the sound of sports on TV or radio, it's generally commentary. But sports broadcasts would be nothing without all the sounds that are behind the commentary-- the crowds, the kicks, the thwacks, and the grunts. During the World Cup of 2010, the constant noise of Vuvuzelas made many people realize that the sound of a sports event, something they took for granted, does matter. Dennis Baxter's job is to design the sound of sports, and he is our guide in this documentary. For nearly 20 years he's worked on the Olympics, defining how the broadcast will sound, always trying to increase drama and excitement. For him, closer is generally better. If he can put a microphone on an athlete, he will. At the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, the TV coverage is enhanced by microphones on the cox in each boat. Wimbledon has a special sonic drama all of its own, as we learn from Bill Whiston who mixed the sound of the 2008 finals. When good sound isn't available, it's not uncommon for a prerecorded sound to be added to cover the shot. The experience of "live" events can be highly produced, very different from the experience of being there. Is this enhanced sound so very different from that of a film or a video game? We meet a Hollywood sound effects specialist and a video game sound designer to find out what they do to create a sense of authenticity and excitement. Are they raising our expectations of how "real" sport should sound? "The Sound of Sport" was produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions and originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011. Way back in October 2011 (see episode #38, true b… Way back in October 2011 (see episode #38, true believers!), we broadcast a short excerpt of a radio documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews about faking the sounds of sports on TV broadcasts. It was one of our most popular and provocative programs ever, primarily because people were shocked that any aspect of a sporting event might be faked. Since then, I've received several requests from the audience asking where they can hear the full-length documentary. Well today, my friends, you are in luck. When we think of the sound of sports on TV or radio, it's generally commentary. But sports broadcasts would be nothing without all the sounds that are behind the commentary-- the crowds, the kicks, the thwacks, and the grunts. During the World Cup of 2010, the constant noise of Vuvuzelas made many people realize that the sound of a sports event, something they took for granted, does matter. Dennis Baxter's job is to design the sound of sports, and he is our guide in this documentary. For nearly 20 years he's worked on the Olympics, defining how the broadcast will sound, always trying to increase drama and excitement. For him, closer is generally better. If he can put a microphone on an athlete, he will. At the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, the TV coverage is enhanced by microphones on the cox in each boat. Wimbledon has a special sonic drama all of its own, as we learn from Bill Whiston who mixed the sound of the 2008 finals. When good sound isn't available, it's not uncommon for a prerecorded sound to be added to cover the shot. The experience of "live" events can be highly produced, very different from the experience of being there. Is this enhanced sound so very different from that of a film or a video game? We meet a Hollywood sound effects specialist and a video game sound designer to find out what they do to create a sense of authenticity and excitement. Are they raising our expectations of how "real" sport should sound? "The Sound of Sport" was produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions and originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/161724028 Roman Mars no As humans have developed cities and built environments, we have also needed to develop ways to find our way through them. Sam Greenspan went on a wayfinding tour with Jim Harding in the Atlanta airport. Harding is one of the expert "invisibles" that do critical, but generally unrecognized work profiled in a new book by David Zweig. As humans have developed cities and built environ… As humans have developed cities and built environments, we have also needed to develop ways to find our way through them. Sam Greenspan went on a wayfinding tour with Jim Harding in the Atlanta airport. Harding is one of the expert "invisibles" that do critical, but generally unrecognized work profiled in a new book by David Zweig. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/160834669 Roman Mars no The best knock-offs in the world are in China. There are plenty of fake designer handbags and Rolexes but China's knock-offs go way beyond fashion. There are knock-off Apple stores that look so much like the real thing, some employees believe they are working in real Apple stores. And then there are entire knock-off cities. The best knock-offs in the world are in China. Th… The best knock-offs in the world are in China. There are plenty of fake designer handbags and Rolexes but China's knock-offs go way beyond fashion. There are knock-off Apple stores that look so much like the real thing, some employees believe they are working in real Apple stores. And then there are entire knock-off cities. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/159750306 Roman Mars no Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas Moore first coined the term "Utopia," people have been thinking about how to design their ideal community. Maybe it's one that doesn't use money, or one that drops traditional family structures and raises children collectively. For a community of people on the outskirts of the small Arizona town of Snowflake, "utopia" is just a place where they won't be physically sick. That's because everyone in this community is suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS. Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas Moor… Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas Moore first coined the term "Utopia," people have been thinking about how to design their ideal community. Maybe it's one that doesn't use money, or one that drops traditional family structures and raises children collectively. For a community of people on the outskirts of the small Arizona town of Snowflake, "utopia" is just a place where they won't be physically sick. That's because everyone in this community is suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/157865336 Roman Mars no When designing a commercial structure, there is one safety component that must be designed right into the building from the start: egress. “Egress” refers to an entire exit system from a building: stairs, corridors, and evacuation routes outside the building. Each state’s building code specifies a certain number of means of egress, depending on the size and purpose of the structure. Simply put, there have to be enough doors, corridors, and stairs for every occupant to exit in an orderly manner in the event of an emergency. When designing a commercial structure, there is o… When designing a commercial structure, there is one safety component that must be designed right into the building from the start: egress. “Egress” refers to an entire exit system from a building: stairs, corridors, and evacuation routes outside the building. Each state’s building code specifies a certain number of means of egress, depending on the size and purpose of the structure. Simply put, there have to be enough doors, corridors, and stairs for every occupant to exit in an orderly manner in the event of an emergency. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/156864654 Roman Mars no During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various moments in the cold war in which we came frighteningly close to engaging in actual war with the Soviets—President John F. Kennedy vowed to identify spaces in "existing structures both public and private that could be used for fallout shelters in case of attack." After JFK's speech, a fallout shelter economy sprung up overnight in the U.S. There were door to door bomb-shelter salesmen, shelter displays at malls and county fairs, and pamphlets for sale on every magazine rack. But by the time Kennedy made that speech, one small town in Southern New Mexico had already broken ground on a unique shelter that would double as an elementary school. During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various … During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various moments in the cold war in which we came frighteningly close to engaging in actual war with the Soviets—President John F. Kennedy vowed to identify spaces in "existing structures both public and private that could be used for fallout shelters in case of attack." After JFK's speech, a fallout shelter economy sprung up overnight in the U.S. There were door to door bomb-shelter salesmen, shelter displays at malls and county fairs, and pamphlets for sale on every magazine rack. But by the time Kennedy made that speech, one small town in Southern New Mexico had already broken ground on a unique shelter that would double as an elementary school. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/155741114 Roman Mars no The term "Hijacking" goes back to prohibition days, when gangsters would rob moonshine trucks saying "hold your hands high, Jack!" However, in the early days of commercial air travel, the idea that someone would hijack a plane was scarcely even considered. When the government started to oversee aviation in 1958, the congressional law did not even make hijacking a crime and the early design of airport terminals reflected this mentality. Airports were once more like train stations, where you walk through the terminal and onto the tarmac, and sometimes straight onto the plane itself, without flashing a ticket or showing anyone your identification. Then in 1961, an epidemic of hijackings began. For this story, Roman spoke with Brendan Koerner, author of The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. (Ed. note- This is the ultimate non-fiction page turner; I read it in one day. Loved it! -RM) The term "Hijacking" goes back to prohibition day… The term "Hijacking" goes back to prohibition days, when gangsters would rob moonshine trucks saying "hold your hands high, Jack!" However, in the early days of commercial air travel, the idea that someone would hijack a plane was scarcely even considered. When the government started to oversee aviation in 1958, the congressional law did not even make hijacking a crime and the early design of airport terminals reflected this mentality. Airports were once more like train stations, where you walk through the terminal and onto the tarmac, and sometimes straight onto the plane itself, without flashing a ticket or showing anyone your identification. Then in 1961, an epidemic of hijackings began. For this story, Roman spoke with Brendan Koerner, author of The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. (Ed. note- This is the ultimate non-fiction page turner; I read it in one day. Loved it! -RM) tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/154802219 Roman Mars no As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel shoe is weighted with meaning. It’s also weighted with the wearer’s entire body weight. The stiletto might be one of the only designs that is physically painful but has somehow has persisted for centuries. At their origins, high heeled shoes were originally worn by men. As early as the tenth century, many horseback riding cultures wore heels on their boots and on their shoes, because heels help you stay in the stirrups (which is why cowboy boots have heels). 99% Invisible Producer Avery Trufelman spoke with Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator at the Bata Shoe Museum; Emily and Jessica Leung of Hey Lady shoes; industrial designer Martha Davis; and All Things Considered host Audie Cornish. Avery also wore a pair of heels for research purposes while reporting this story. As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel sho… As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel shoe is weighted with meaning. It’s also weighted with the wearer’s entire body weight. The stiletto might be one of the only designs that is physically painful but has somehow has persisted for centuries. At their origins, high heeled shoes were originally worn by men. As early as the tenth century, many horseback riding cultures wore heels on their boots and on their shoes, because heels help you stay in the stirrups (which is why cowboy boots have heels). 99% Invisible Producer Avery Trufelman spoke with Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator at the Bata Shoe Museum; Emily and Jessica Leung of Hey Lady shoes; industrial designer Martha Davis; and All Things Considered host Audie Cornish. Avery also wore a pair of heels for research purposes while reporting this story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/153213746 Roman Mars no A song is a product of design. It's difficult to create an original melody, but that's only the blueprint. Every element of a piece of music could be produced any number of ways, depending on which instrument plays at what time, for how long, and with what what kind of effect. The architecture behind a piece of music can be much more involved than meets the ear, and this is what inspired Hrishikesh Hirway to start a podcast called Song Exploder, where musicians "take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made." A song is a product of design. It's difficult to … A song is a product of design. It's difficult to create an original melody, but that's only the blueprint. Every element of a piece of music could be produced any number of ways, depending on which instrument plays at what time, for how long, and with what what kind of effect. The architecture behind a piece of music can be much more involved than meets the ear, and this is what inspired Hrishikesh Hirway to start a podcast called Song Exploder, where musicians "take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/152658760 Roman Mars no In just about every movie set in New York City in the 1970s and 80s there's an establishing shot with a graffiti-covered subway. For city officials, train graffiti was a sign that they had lost control. So, starting in the early 70s, mayors of New York vowed to eradicate graffiti. First, Mayor John Lindsey formed the first anti-graffiti task force. He also re-classified graffiti from a nuisance, like littering or loitering, into a crime. In 1984 David Gunn became President of the New York City Transit Authority. Systemically, train line by train line, Gunn took the subways off the map for graffiti writers. While they were fixing it, they didn’t allow any graffiti on it. If graffiti artists “bombed” a train car, the MTA pulled it from the system. Even during rush hour. May 12, 1989 was declared the official day of the city's victory over train graffiti. But of course train graffiti has never stopped. There is still subway graffiti—it just never leaves the train yards. Artists—many of them from abroad—paint subway cars knowing full well that they will get cleaned before they're ever seen by the public. In just about every movie set in New York City in… In just about every movie set in New York City in the 1970s and 80s there's an establishing shot with a graffiti-covered subway. For city officials, train graffiti was a sign that they had lost control. So, starting in the early 70s, mayors of New York vowed to eradicate graffiti. First, Mayor John Lindsey formed the first anti-graffiti task force. He also re-classified graffiti from a nuisance, like littering or loitering, into a crime. In 1984 David Gunn became President of the New York City Transit Authority. Systemically, train line by train line, Gunn took the subways off the map for graffiti writers. While they were fixing it, they didn’t allow any graffiti on it. If graffiti artists “bombed” a train car, the MTA pulled it from the system. Even during rush hour. May 12, 1989 was declared the official day of the city's victory over train graffiti. But of course train graffiti has never stopped. There is still subway graffiti—it just never leaves the train yards. Artists—many of them from abroad—paint subway cars knowing full well that they will get cleaned before they're ever seen by the public. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/151547554 Roman Mars no When I go into a bank, especially if I have to stand in line waiting to make a deposit, my mind wanders. And one of the first place it wanders to is: how I would rob the place. How could it be done? Most of the time, buildings are our friends. But it's fun to recast the building as the enemy. The obstacle we have to overcome. When I go into a bank, especially if I have to st… When I go into a bank, especially if I have to stand in line waiting to make a deposit, my mind wanders. And one of the first place it wanders to is: how I would rob the place. How could it be done? Most of the time, buildings are our friends. But it's fun to recast the building as the enemy. The obstacle we have to overcome. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/150449343 Roman Mars no The westernmost part of Manhattan, between 34th and 39th street, is pretty industrial. There’s a bus depot, a ferry terminal, and a steady stream of cars. But in the late 19th early 20th centuries, this was cow country. Cows used to be ferried across the Hudson River from New Jersey, herded across Twelfth Avenue (now the West Side Highway), and brought to this part of town to be made into beef. You’ve heard of the meat packing district. This was like the meat hacking district. It was nicknamed "Abattoir Place." It was a hive of bone boilers and hide stretchers and lard renderers. There was a disassembly line for every single part of a cow. As more and more cows were ferried to the slaughterhouses in Manhattan, it became impossible for passing herds to to coexist with Twelfth Avenue traffic. Not only did the number of cows increase, but so too had the number of carriages, and trains, and, eventually, cars. Cows were in the way. There were reports of epic cow jams on Twelfth avenue. That’s why people invented cow tunnels. Or at least the story of cow tunnels. At one point there might have actually been tunnels made expressly for cows to march underneath Twelfth Avenue to the abattoir. Or people might have just invented this crazy story about cow tunnels because everybody loves a good, vaguely plausible urban myth. We have tunnels for cars, for subways, electrical cables, and the internet. Could there be subterranean infrastructure for cows, too? The westernmost part of Manhattan, between 34th a… The westernmost part of Manhattan, between 34th and 39th street, is pretty industrial. There’s a bus depot, a ferry terminal, and a steady stream of cars. But in the late 19th early 20th centuries, this was cow country. Cows used to be ferried across the Hudson River from New Jersey, herded across Twelfth Avenue (now the West Side Highway), and brought to this part of town to be made into beef. You’ve heard of the meat packing district. This was like the meat hacking district. It was nicknamed "Abattoir Place." It was a hive of bone boilers and hide stretchers and lard renderers. There was a disassembly line for every single part of a cow. As more and more cows were ferried to the slaughterhouses in Manhattan, it became impossible for passing herds to to coexist with Twelfth Avenue traffic. Not only did the number of cows increase, but so too had the number of carriages, and trains, and, eventually, cars. Cows were in the way. There were reports of epic cow jams on Twelfth avenue. That’s why people invented cow tunnels. Or at least the story of cow tunnels. At one point there might have actually been tunnels made expressly for cows to march underneath Twelfth Avenue to the abattoir. Or people might have just invented this crazy story about cow tunnels because everybody loves a good, vaguely plausible urban myth. We have tunnels for cars, for subways, electrical cables, and the internet. Could there be subterranean infrastructure for cows, too? tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/149275352 Roman Mars no In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. They were there on a mission. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation's only permanent underground repository for nuclear waste. Eventually, WIPP will be sealed up and left alone. Years will pass and those years will become decades. Those decades will become centuries and those centuries will roll into millennia. People above ground will come and go. Cultures will rise and fall. And all the while, below the surface, that cave full of waste will get smaller and smaller, until the salt caverns swallow up all those oil drums and entombs them. Then, all the old radioactive gloves and tools and little bits from bombs –all still radioactive– will be solidified in the earth's crust for more than 200,000 years. Basically forever. The problem that the aforementioned panel was convened to address was how to convey this information to people 10,000 years in the future, when language and symbols may be so different as to make direct communication impossible. In 1990, the federal government invited a group o… In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. They were there on a mission. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation's only permanent underground repository for nuclear waste. Eventually, WIPP will be sealed up and left alone. Years will pass and those years will become decades. Those decades will become centuries and those centuries will roll into millennia. People above ground will come and go. Cultures will rise and fall. And all the while, below the surface, that cave full of waste will get smaller and smaller, until the salt caverns swallow up all those oil drums and entombs them. Then, all the old radioactive gloves and tools and little bits from bombs –all still radioactive– will be solidified in the earth's crust for more than 200,000 years. Basically forever. The problem that the aforementioned panel was convened to address was how to convey this information to people 10,000 years in the future, when language and symbols may be so different as to make direct communication impossible. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/148137492 Roman Mars no About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, off of interstate 93 there’s a little island with a great, big monument on it. The monument depicts a woman who is holding a hatchet in her right hand and bunch of scalps in her left hand. When it was erected in 1874, this was the first monument to honor a woman in the United States. But despite this historic status, the monument is controversial because of the woman it memorializes and what she did. The woman in the monument is Hannah Duston and in 1697 she was living in Haverhill, Massachusetts when she, her infant daughter and her nurse-maid, Mary Neff were kidnapped by a band of Abenaki Native Americans. The three were marched north, and at some point, Hannah’s infant daughter was killed by the Abenakis. They stopped for the night in Boscawen, New Hampshire (on the island above with the monument) and while the Abenaki families slept, Hannah and her companions killed ten of them – including six children – and then scalped each victim before making their escape back to Haverhill. About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, … About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, off of interstate 93 there’s a little island with a great, big monument on it. The monument depicts a woman who is holding a hatchet in her right hand and bunch of scalps in her left hand. When it was erected in 1874, this was the first monument to honor a woman in the United States. But despite this historic status, the monument is controversial because of the woman it memorializes and what she did. The woman in the monument is Hannah Duston and in 1697 she was living in Haverhill, Massachusetts when she, her infant daughter and her nurse-maid, Mary Neff were kidnapped by a band of Abenaki Native Americans. The three were marched north, and at some point, Hannah’s infant daughter was killed by the Abenakis. They stopped for the night in Boscawen, New Hampshire (on the island above with the monument) and while the Abenaki families slept, Hannah and her companions killed ten of them – including six children – and then scalped each victim before making their escape back to Haverhill. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/147069689 Roman Mars no If you've wandered around Machu Picchu, or Stonehenge, or the Colosseum, or even snuck into that abandoned house on the edge of town, you know the power in a piece of decrepit architecture. And even if you don't want to leave your house, the internet is littered with evidence of the human love affair with all things abandoned. People flock to remainders of ancient civilizations, but people also flock to things that just look like they’re ancient. The combination of decomposition and romance makes a perfect cocktail of repulsion and allure. And for San Franciscans, this place is Sutro Baths. At the northwestern edge of San Francisco, right on the Pacific Ocean, is a curious jumble of concrete ruins. You wouldn't know just looking at it, but this ruin is quite young. It's what's left of Sutro Baths, a palatial indoor swimming pool and amusement park built in 1898. If you've wandered around Machu Picchu, or Stoneh… If you've wandered around Machu Picchu, or Stonehenge, or the Colosseum, or even snuck into that abandoned house on the edge of town, you know the power in a piece of decrepit architecture. And even if you don't want to leave your house, the internet is littered with evidence of the human love affair with all things abandoned. People flock to remainders of ancient civilizations, but people also flock to things that just look like they’re ancient. The combination of decomposition and romance makes a perfect cocktail of repulsion and allure. And for San Franciscans, this place is Sutro Baths. At the northwestern edge of San Francisco, right on the Pacific Ocean, is a curious jumble of concrete ruins. You wouldn't know just looking at it, but this ruin is quite young. It's what's left of Sutro Baths, a palatial indoor swimming pool and amusement park built in 1898. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/145971052 Roman Mars no Uniforms matter. When it comes to sports, they might be the only thing to which we're actually loyal. Sports uniforms are packaging. But unlike any other packaging, if the product inside changes or degrades, we remain loyal. Players come and go, but change the uniform, and you'll hear about it. There are very few ways for players to put their own personal style into their uniforms. In baseball, in the face of huge opposition from curved-brim loyalists, some players take the bold stance of wearing a straight brim, like George Sherrill who is nick-named "The Brim Reaper" for his flat-brimmed style. But for people who really geek out about baseball uniforms (like Paul Lukas from Uni Watch) the space below the knee may be the most interesting. It is here that players have the most choices, can make the biggest statement, and be, in the words of Lukas, masters of their own "uni-verse." Most players today choose to wear their pants long, but if you truly want to honor baseball's hosiery heritage, you should wear your pants up over your calves and a sharp pair of stirrups. Paul Lukas of Uni Watch (and creator of the zine Beer Frame, to which 99% Invisible owes a considerable debt) talked with Jesse Thorn, host of the NPR show Bullseye, owner of Maximumfun.org, and life-long SF Giants fans, even though it's really hard to wear the cap out because black and orange doesn't go with anything. Uniforms matter. When it comes to sports, they mi… Uniforms matter. When it comes to sports, they might be the only thing to which we're actually loyal. Sports uniforms are packaging. But unlike any other packaging, if the product inside changes or degrades, we remain loyal. Players come and go, but change the uniform, and you'll hear about it. There are very few ways for players to put their own personal style into their uniforms. In baseball, in the face of huge opposition from curved-brim loyalists, some players take the bold stance of wearing a straight brim, like George Sherrill who is nick-named "The Brim Reaper" for his flat-brimmed style. But for people who really geek out about baseball uniforms (like Paul Lukas from Uni Watch) the space below the knee may be the most interesting. It is here that players have the most choices, can make the biggest statement, and be, in the words of Lukas, masters of their own "uni-verse." Most players today choose to wear their pants long, but if you truly want to honor baseball's hosiery heritage, you should wear your pants up over your calves and a sharp pair of stirrups. Paul Lukas of Uni Watch (and creator of the zine Beer Frame, to which 99% Invisible owes a considerable debt) talked with Jesse Thorn, host of the NPR show Bullseye, owner of Maximumfun.org, and life-long SF Giants fans, even though it's really hard to wear the cap out because black and orange doesn't go with anything. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/144857717 Roman Mars no When it was built in1977, Citicorp Center (later renamed Citigroup Center, now called 601 Lexington) was, at 59 stories, the seventh-tallest building in the world. You can pick it out of the New York City skyline by its 45-degree angled top. But it's the base of the building that really makes the tower so unique. The bottom nine of its 59 stories are stilts. This thing does not look sturdy. But it has to be sturdy. Otherwise they wouldn't have built it this way. Right? The architect of Citicorp Center was Hugh Stubbins, but most of the credit for this building is given to its chief structural engineer, William LeMessurier. According to LeMessurier, in 1978 he got a phone call from an undergraduate architecture student making a bold claim about LeMessurier's building. He told LeMessurier that Citicorp Center could blow over in the wind. When it was built in1977, Citicorp Center (later… When it was built in1977, Citicorp Center (later renamed Citigroup Center, now called 601 Lexington) was, at 59 stories, the seventh-tallest building in the world. You can pick it out of the New York City skyline by its 45-degree angled top. But it's the base of the building that really makes the tower so unique. The bottom nine of its 59 stories are stilts. This thing does not look sturdy. But it has to be sturdy. Otherwise they wouldn't have built it this way. Right? The architect of Citicorp Center was Hugh Stubbins, but most of the credit for this building is given to its chief structural engineer, William LeMessurier. According to LeMessurier, in 1978 he got a phone call from an undergraduate architecture student making a bold claim about LeMessurier's building. He told LeMessurier that Citicorp Center could blow over in the wind. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/143735361 Roman Mars no The name is important. It’s the first thing of any product you use or buy or see. The tip of the spear. You are bombarded by thousands of names every day. In this daily barrage, only the names that are most interesting and most pleasant on the tongue can survive in your memory. So it's no surprise that companies—especially large ones like Sony or Procter & Gamble—hire naming companies. That is, there are companies that come up with names for things. Cars, lines of yogurt, iPhone apps, small businesses, sodas, movies, and even theories have all been named by professionals. There are really only a handful of businesses that deal exclusively in names, and their services can cost thens of thousands of dollars. In addition to coming up with names, they also determine what names are available for trademark, which URLs are available, and they conduct linguistic checks to ensure that potential names are pronounceable, unique, and appropriate in languages around the world. The name is important. It’s the first thing of an… The name is important. It’s the first thing of any product you use or buy or see. The tip of the spear. You are bombarded by thousands of names every day. In this daily barrage, only the names that are most interesting and most pleasant on the tongue can survive in your memory. So it's no surprise that companies—especially large ones like Sony or Procter & Gamble—hire naming companies. That is, there are companies that come up with names for things. Cars, lines of yogurt, iPhone apps, small businesses, sodas, movies, and even theories have all been named by professionals. There are really only a handful of businesses that deal exclusively in names, and their services can cost thens of thousands of dollars. In addition to coming up with names, they also determine what names are available for trademark, which URLs are available, and they conduct linguistic checks to ensure that potential names are pronounceable, unique, and appropriate in languages around the world. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/142596472 Roman Mars no When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn't tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. "My husband here's the one who invented that barcode," she'd occasionally say. And the check-out people would look at him like, "you mean there was a time when we didn't have barcodes?" A time without barcodes is hard to imagine now. But it wasn't that long ago, and the story doesn't start with George Laurer. It starts with an engineer named Joseph Woodland. In 1948 Woodland was trying to come up with simple symbol that, when scanned, would translate to a number that a computer could use to identify a product. Legend has it that he came up with his design while sitting on the beach in Miami. He was puzzling over the whole thing, thinking about Morse Code and tracing circles in the sand. When finally, bulls-eye! The very first barcodes were in the shape of a bulls-eye, though they weren't called "barcodes" yet. Woodland's invention was patented in 1952 as a "Classifying Apparatus and Method." But Woodland's "apparatus" would gather dust for 20 years —the scanners and other equipment needed to put the system in place were too expensive. Finally, in 1973, a group of supermarket executives led by Alan Haberman decided they needed to get some kind of scannable symbol in place to move people through checkout lines faster. They laid out a list of specifications that their ideal symbol would have and asked 14 companies, including IBM, to come up with a solution. That's where George Laurer comes into the story. When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he … When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn't tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. "My husband here's the one who invented that barcode," she'd occasionally say. And the check-out people would look at him like, "you mean there was a time when we didn't have barcodes?" A time without barcodes is hard to imagine now. But it wasn't that long ago, and the story doesn't start with George Laurer. It starts with an engineer named Joseph Woodland. In 1948 Woodland was trying to come up with simple symbol that, when scanned, would translate to a number that a computer could use to identify a product. Legend has it that he came up with his design while sitting on the beach in Miami. He was puzzling over the whole thing, thinking about Morse Code and tracing circles in the sand. When finally, bulls-eye! The very first barcodes were in the shape of a bulls-eye, though they weren't called "barcodes" yet. Woodland's invention was patented in 1952 as a "Classifying Apparatus and Method." But Woodland's "apparatus" would gather dust for 20 years —the scanners and other equipment needed to put the system in place were too expensive. Finally, in 1973, a group of supermarket executives led by Alan Haberman decided they needed to get some kind of scannable symbol in place to move people through checkout lines faster. They laid out a list of specifications that their ideal symbol would have and asked 14 companies, including IBM, to come up with a solution. That's where George Laurer comes into the story. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/141401878 Roman Mars no When it's three o'clock in the morning and everything is going wrong in your life, there's a certain kind of ad you might see on basic cable. Lawyers–usually guys–promise to battle the heartless, tight-wad insurance companies on your behalf. There's disaster footage and stiff readings off of cue cards. The ads look like they were made in a high school A.V. class. Believe it or not, lawyer ads are actually tightly regulated. There was an era before ads like these were allowed–and a big bang after which they couldn’t be contained. And now, the legal world is in a subtle, possibly endless civil war over how attorneys should advertise their services (and whether they should advertise at all). This story was produced by contributor Sean "The Hammer" Cole. Sean spoke with On the Media host (and former Advertising Age critic) Bob Garfield; Elizabeth Tarbert, who is on the ethics council for the Florida Bar; divorce attorney Steve Miler; Lucien Pera, an attorney who advises nationwide law firms on their ads; personal injury attorneys Matt Hardin and Lowell "The Hammer" Stanley. When it's three o'clock in the morning and everyt… When it's three o'clock in the morning and everything is going wrong in your life, there's a certain kind of ad you might see on basic cable. Lawyers–usually guys–promise to battle the heartless, tight-wad insurance companies on your behalf. There's disaster footage and stiff readings off of cue cards. The ads look like they were made in a high school A.V. class. Believe it or not, lawyer ads are actually tightly regulated. There was an era before ads like these were allowed–and a big bang after which they couldn’t be contained. And now, the legal world is in a subtle, possibly endless civil war over how attorneys should advertise their services (and whether they should advertise at all). This story was produced by contributor Sean "The Hammer" Cole. Sean spoke with On the Media host (and former Advertising Age critic) Bob Garfield; Elizabeth Tarbert, who is on the ethics council for the Florida Bar; divorce attorney Steve Miler; Lucien Pera, an attorney who advises nationwide law firms on their ads; personal injury attorneys Matt Hardin and Lowell "The Hammer" Stanley. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/140142752 Roman Mars no Quatrefoil is the name of the four-lobed cloverleaf shape. It's everywhere: adorning Gothic cathedrals, more modern churches, Rhode Island mansions, mission-style roofs in California, and decorating victorian homes from coast to coast. It's embroidered on bedding, plastered on wallpaper, and patterned on public garbage cans. The quatrefoil has been re-interpreted and re-contextualized in a phenomenon called "iconographical drift.” The associations with the shape are constantly shifting depending on where it’s used, who is using it, and the purpose for which it is used. But no matter where it’s turns up, it always implies the same thing: fanciness. Quatrefoil is the name of the four-lobed cloverl… Quatrefoil is the name of the four-lobed cloverleaf shape. It's everywhere: adorning Gothic cathedrals, more modern churches, Rhode Island mansions, mission-style roofs in California, and decorating victorian homes from coast to coast. It's embroidered on bedding, plastered on wallpaper, and patterned on public garbage cans. The quatrefoil has been re-interpreted and re-contextualized in a phenomenon called "iconographical drift.” The associations with the shape are constantly shifting depending on where it’s used, who is using it, and the purpose for which it is used. But no matter where it’s turns up, it always implies the same thing: fanciness. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/138996249 Roman Mars no A few years ago, reporter Sean Cole was working on a radio story and needed to interview the rapper Busta Rhymes. Sean was living in Boston at the time, so he did a Google search for “Busta Rhymes” and “Boston” to see if Busta had any upcoming shows that Sean could stake out. Google didn't return any relevant tour dates. But it did give Sean a map, centering on a tiny speck of land in a neighboring suburb called Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. The tiny speck of land was labeled Busta Rhymes Island. A few years ago, reporter Sean Cole was working o… A few years ago, reporter Sean Cole was working on a radio story and needed to interview the rapper Busta Rhymes. Sean was living in Boston at the time, so he did a Google search for “Busta Rhymes” and “Boston” to see if Busta had any upcoming shows that Sean could stake out. Google didn't return any relevant tour dates. But it did give Sean a map, centering on a tiny speck of land in a neighboring suburb called Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. The tiny speck of land was labeled Busta Rhymes Island. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/137966139 Roman Mars no At its peak, the Berlin Wall was 100 miles long. Today only about a mile is left standing. Compared with other famous walls in history, this wall had a pretty short life span. The Great Wall of China has been around for 2500 years. So have the walls of ancient Babylon—although its most famous part, the Ishtar Gate, is actually in a museum in Berlin. But even though the wall dividing Berlin into East and West was only up for 30 years, it had a huge impact on the psyche of the city. It broke families in two. In the decade that followed, more than 2 million people fled from east to west. East Germany was losing its most skilled workers as they sought jobs--and to reunite with their families--across the border. And East Germany was losing face with every East Berliner who chose to defect. And that’s why, in 1961, East Germany closed its border to West Berlin with a wall. But this isn’t a story about the design of the Berlin Wall. This is a story about one design to get through it—or really, underneath it. Ralph Kabisch, then a 20-something-year-old university student, was there. At its peak, the Berlin Wall was 100 miles long. … At its peak, the Berlin Wall was 100 miles long. Today only about a mile is left standing. Compared with other famous walls in history, this wall had a pretty short life span. The Great Wall of China has been around for 2500 years. So have the walls of ancient Babylon—although its most famous part, the Ishtar Gate, is actually in a museum in Berlin. But even though the wall dividing Berlin into East and West was only up for 30 years, it had a huge impact on the psyche of the city. It broke families in two. In the decade that followed, more than 2 million people fled from east to west. East Germany was losing its most skilled workers as they sought jobs--and to reunite with their families--across the border. And East Germany was losing face with every East Berliner who chose to defect. And that’s why, in 1961, East Germany closed its border to West Berlin with a wall. But this isn’t a story about the design of the Berlin Wall. This is a story about one design to get through it—or really, underneath it. Ralph Kabisch, then a 20-something-year-old university student, was there. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/136744928 Roman Mars no It started with some Pittsburgh humor. Pittsburgh-based comedian Tom Muisal does a bit about a GPS unit that can give directions in "Pittsburghese." Because in Pittsburgh, no one calls it "Interstate 376," it's "The Parkway." It's not "The Liberty Tunnel," it's "The Liberty Tubes." And directions are often given by way of what used to be there. One day Tom was trying this routine out on his friend, Mike Neilson. Mike is not from Pittsburgh--he grew up on the other side of the state. When he moved to the Steel City, he had a hard time figuring out how to get around. Because Pittsburghers are always telling him to turn left at something that isn't there anymore. And then, as Mike was listening to Tom's Pittsburgher GPS routine, he noticed that in in one iteration of the joke he said, "turn left at the place that used to be a Pizza Hut." This resonated with Mike. He realized that, because the architecture of a Pizza Hut is so distinctive, he could easily identify any building that used to be a Pizza Hut. The former Pizza Hut was thus a beacon of light shining through a thick fog of impossible directions. Here, in his friend's comedy routine, was the one Pittsburghese direction he could give that anyone, regardless of where they're from, could comprehend: turn left at the place that used to be a Pizza Hut. And from there, Mike created a global atlas of all the places that used to be Pizza Huts. It started with some Pittsburgh humor. Pittsburg… It started with some Pittsburgh humor. Pittsburgh-based comedian Tom Muisal does a bit about a GPS unit that can give directions in "Pittsburghese." Because in Pittsburgh, no one calls it "Interstate 376," it's "The Parkway." It's not "The Liberty Tunnel," it's "The Liberty Tubes." And directions are often given by way of what used to be there. One day Tom was trying this routine out on his friend, Mike Neilson. Mike is not from Pittsburgh--he grew up on the other side of the state. When he moved to the Steel City, he had a hard time figuring out how to get around. Because Pittsburghers are always telling him to turn left at something that isn't there anymore. And then, as Mike was listening to Tom's Pittsburgher GPS routine, he noticed that in in one iteration of the joke he said, "turn left at the place that used to be a Pizza Hut." This resonated with Mike. He realized that, because the architecture of a Pizza Hut is so distinctive, he could easily identify any building that used to be a Pizza Hut. The former Pizza Hut was thus a beacon of light shining through a thick fog of impossible directions. Here, in his friend's comedy routine, was the one Pittsburghese direction he could give that anyone, regardless of where they're from, could comprehend: turn left at the place that used to be a Pizza Hut. And from there, Mike created a global atlas of all the places that used to be Pizza Huts. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/135516394 Roman Mars no There is a beauty to a universal standard. The idea that people across the world can agree that when they interact with one specific thing, everyone will be on the same page-- regardless of language or culture or geographic locale. If you're in Belgrade or Shanghai or São Paulo, you can look at a sign and know instantly, without speaking a word of the local language, that this floor is slippery. That the emergency exit is over there. That that substance is poisonous, and you should not eat it. The group behind those internationally recognized logos is called the International Organization for Standardization.One of the most recognizable ISO symbols in the International Symbol of Access. You might not know it by that name, but you've seen it. The International Symbol of Access is everywhere--on parking spaces, on buttons that operate automatic doors, in bathrooms, on seats on the bus or at movie theaters. Anywhere there’s an indication of special accommodations made for people with disabilities. The logo was created through a design contest in 1968, coordinated by an organization now called Rehabilitation International. The logo would have to be readily identifiable from reasonable distance, self-descriptive, simple, unambiguous, and practical. The winner was a Danish designer named Susanne Koefed--though her original design didn't have a head! As the logo got absorbed into the built environment, and the politics of (dis)ability became more nuanced, some people started finding it a little lacking. And so one group, the Accessible Icon Project, has created a new logo that they hope will ultimately replace ISO standard. There is a beauty to a universal standard. The id… There is a beauty to a universal standard. The idea that people across the world can agree that when they interact with one specific thing, everyone will be on the same page-- regardless of language or culture or geographic locale. If you're in Belgrade or Shanghai or São Paulo, you can look at a sign and know instantly, without speaking a word of the local language, that this floor is slippery. That the emergency exit is over there. That that substance is poisonous, and you should not eat it. The group behind those internationally recognized logos is called the International Organization for Standardization.One of the most recognizable ISO symbols in the International Symbol of Access. You might not know it by that name, but you've seen it. The International Symbol of Access is everywhere--on parking spaces, on buttons that operate automatic doors, in bathrooms, on seats on the bus or at movie theaters. Anywhere there’s an indication of special accommodations made for people with disabilities. The logo was created through a design contest in 1968, coordinated by an organization now called Rehabilitation International. The logo would have to be readily identifiable from reasonable distance, self-descriptive, simple, unambiguous, and practical. The winner was a Danish designer named Susanne Koefed--though her original design didn't have a head! As the logo got absorbed into the built environment, and the politics of (dis)ability became more nuanced, some people started finding it a little lacking. And so one group, the Accessible Icon Project, has created a new logo that they hope will ultimately replace ISO standard. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/134264736 Roman Mars no You know the saying: you can’t judge a book by its cover. With magazines, it’s pretty much the opposite. The cover of a magazine is the unified identity for a whole host of ideas, authors, and designers who have created the eclectic array of stories and articles and materials within each issue. And, some would argue, this identity extends to the reader as well.So if, say, you're seen with an issue of Vogue, you're don't just own that copy--you become a Vogue reader. Magazine covers are a challenge to design, since they have to be both ever-changing and also consistently recognizable. For this reason, most publications stick to a standard set practices. You know the saying: you can’t judge a book by it… You know the saying: you can’t judge a book by its cover. With magazines, it’s pretty much the opposite. The cover of a magazine is the unified identity for a whole host of ideas, authors, and designers who have created the eclectic array of stories and articles and materials within each issue. And, some would argue, this identity extends to the reader as well.So if, say, you're seen with an issue of Vogue, you're don't just own that copy--you become a Vogue reader. Magazine covers are a challenge to design, since they have to be both ever-changing and also consistently recognizable. For this reason, most publications stick to a standard set practices. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/132959865 Roman Mars no Like the best of these stories, the two bitter rivals started out as best friends: William Van Alen and Craig Severance. They were business partners. Van Alen was considered the artistic maverick and Severance was the savvy businessman. It's unclear why they broke up, but at some point, Severance decided he could do better on his own. The two parted ways and set up separate practices. At the time of their breakup, New York City was undergoing a boom like nothing ever seen before. Massive wealth turned Manhattan into some of the most valuable property in human history. And when property gets valuable, we build up. Late in 1928 Walter Chrysler, founder of the Chrysler car company, came to New York and bought a plot of land and decided to build, what he referred to as, "a monument to me." Van Alen had already been working on plans for the previous owner of that plot and Chrysler decided to hire him to develop that plan into what would become the Chrysler Building. Walter Chrysler was a great fan of art and architecture and felt a real kinship with the Beaux-Arts trained William Van Alen. Meanwhile, downtown at 40 Wall Street, Craig Severance was planning the Manhattan Company Building. It was funded primarily by the young, Wall Street hot shot, George Ohrstrom. The two towers had different goals. Severance's building was being constructed to make money. The Chrysler Building was intended to be a monument to Chrysler, but it also aimed to be a beautiful and innovative structure. At the time, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth building was the tallest building in New York City and both Van Alen and Severance intended to take its crown. What followed was an epic back and forth struggle for the glory of ruling the New York City skyline. Like the best of these stories, the two bitter ri… Like the best of these stories, the two bitter rivals started out as best friends: William Van Alen and Craig Severance. They were business partners. Van Alen was considered the artistic maverick and Severance was the savvy businessman. It's unclear why they broke up, but at some point, Severance decided he could do better on his own. The two parted ways and set up separate practices. At the time of their breakup, New York City was undergoing a boom like nothing ever seen before. Massive wealth turned Manhattan into some of the most valuable property in human history. And when property gets valuable, we build up. Late in 1928 Walter Chrysler, founder of the Chrysler car company, came to New York and bought a plot of land and decided to build, what he referred to as, "a monument to me." Van Alen had already been working on plans for the previous owner of that plot and Chrysler decided to hire him to develop that plan into what would become the Chrysler Building. Walter Chrysler was a great fan of art and architecture and felt a real kinship with the Beaux-Arts trained William Van Alen. Meanwhile, downtown at 40 Wall Street, Craig Severance was planning the Manhattan Company Building. It was funded primarily by the young, Wall Street hot shot, George Ohrstrom. The two towers had different goals. Severance's building was being constructed to make money. The Chrysler Building was intended to be a monument to Chrysler, but it also aimed to be a beautiful and innovative structure. At the time, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth building was the tallest building in New York City and both Van Alen and Severance intended to take its crown. What followed was an epic back and forth struggle for the glory of ruling the New York City skyline. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/129592213 Roman Mars no On July 28, 1945, an airplane crashed into the Empire State Building. A B-25 bomber was flying a routine mission, chartering servicemen from Massachusetts to New York City. Capt. William F. Smith, who had led some of the most dangerous missions in World War II in the European theatre, was the pilot. The day was foggy. Smith called LaGuardia Airport and requested a clearance to land. With nearly zero visibility, the tower suggested that Smith stay in the air. He ignored air traffic control and started a descent that took him over midtown Manhattan. Just as he straightened out, the clouds broke up enough for him to realize he was flying among skyscrapers. The bomber crashed into the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time. The collision killed Smith, two others on the plane, and eleven people who worked inside the building. When the plane hit, parts of the engine flew ahead and severed the lifting cables of two elevators on the 79th floor. The elevators crashed to the sub-basement. In one of the elevators was a 19-year-old elevator operator named Betty Lou Oliver. She broke her pelvis, back and neck — but she survived. This story was produced by Joe Richman and Samara Freemark for Radio Diaries. The Radio Diaries podcast is produced by Sarah Kramer. On July 28, 1945, an airplane crashed into the Em… On July 28, 1945, an airplane crashed into the Empire State Building. A B-25 bomber was flying a routine mission, chartering servicemen from Massachusetts to New York City. Capt. William F. Smith, who had led some of the most dangerous missions in World War II in the European theatre, was the pilot. The day was foggy. Smith called LaGuardia Airport and requested a clearance to land. With nearly zero visibility, the tower suggested that Smith stay in the air. He ignored air traffic control and started a descent that took him over midtown Manhattan. Just as he straightened out, the clouds broke up enough for him to realize he was flying among skyscrapers. The bomber crashed into the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time. The collision killed Smith, two others on the plane, and eleven people who worked inside the building. When the plane hit, parts of the engine flew ahead and severed the lifting cables of two elevators on the 79th floor. The elevators crashed to the sub-basement. In one of the elevators was a 19-year-old elevator operator named Betty Lou Oliver. She broke her pelvis, back and neck — but she survived. This story was produced by Joe Richman and Samara Freemark for Radio Diaries. The Radio Diaries podcast is produced by Sarah Kramer. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/127617272 Roman Mars no Elevators are old. They would have to be. Because it is in our nature to rise. History is full of things that lift other things. In ancient Greece, and China, and Hungary, there were systems of weights and pulleys and platforms designed to bring nobility--or their meals--to new heights. And somewhere below were draft animals, or even people, tasked with turning a wheel to bring these early elevators up and down. One man even spent the year of 1743 in a chimney in order to turn a lever to raise King Louis XV on a platform so the king wouldn't have to walk up a single flight of stairs. These elevators were dangerous. Ropes would snap, and then anything getting raised or lowered would plummet to the ground. Fall one story and you break your leg--fall two stories you break your neck. And this fear of falling kept building heights low. People only wanted to ascend as high as they could walk. The tallest buildings for most of the 19th century were churches, or lighthouses--buildings made up primarily of empty space. And then came Elisha Otis. Nate Dimeo from the memory palace provides our stories today. It's a fantastic monthly program everyone should subscribe to. Elevators are old. They would have to be. Because… Elevators are old. They would have to be. Because it is in our nature to rise. History is full of things that lift other things. In ancient Greece, and China, and Hungary, there were systems of weights and pulleys and platforms designed to bring nobility--or their meals--to new heights. And somewhere below were draft animals, or even people, tasked with turning a wheel to bring these early elevators up and down. One man even spent the year of 1743 in a chimney in order to turn a lever to raise King Louis XV on a platform so the king wouldn't have to walk up a single flight of stairs. These elevators were dangerous. Ropes would snap, and then anything getting raised or lowered would plummet to the ground. Fall one story and you break your leg--fall two stories you break your neck. And this fear of falling kept building heights low. People only wanted to ascend as high as they could walk. The tallest buildings for most of the 19th century were churches, or lighthouses--buildings made up primarily of empty space. And then came Elisha Otis. Nate Dimeo from the memory palace provides our stories today. It's a fantastic monthly program everyone should subscribe to. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/125788032 Roman Mars no If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you might stumble across a voice reciting an endless stream of numbers. Just numbers, all day, everyday. These so-called "numbers stations," say nothing about where they are transmitting from or who they are trying to reach, but they can be heard in Spanish, Thai, German, Russian, Chinese, and any number of other languages from around the world. These mysterious shortwave transmissions caught the attention of producer David Goren when he was just a kid. His piece, Atencion! Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero: The Mystery of the Shortwave Numbers Stations, aired in 2000 as part of the series Lost and Found Sound. In tuning into these weird little broadcasts, Goren joins a curious community that has been listening to numbers stations for decades, some suspecting that the stations are run by intelligence agencies sending encrypted messages to individual agents in the field. If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you migh… If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you might stumble across a voice reciting an endless stream of numbers. Just numbers, all day, everyday. These so-called "numbers stations," say nothing about where they are transmitting from or who they are trying to reach, but they can be heard in Spanish, Thai, German, Russian, Chinese, and any number of other languages from around the world. These mysterious shortwave transmissions caught the attention of producer David Goren when he was just a kid. His piece, Atencion! Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero: The Mystery of the Shortwave Numbers Stations, aired in 2000 as part of the series Lost and Found Sound. In tuning into these weird little broadcasts, Goren joins a curious community that has been listening to numbers stations for decades, some suspecting that the stations are run by intelligence agencies sending encrypted messages to individual agents in the field. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/122994134 Roman Mars no Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apartment. He's not an astronaut. He's not even an engineer. Cameron Smith is an archaeologist--on faculty in the anthropology department at Portland State University in Oregon. But Cameron is an explorer by nature. He’s been diving in Puget Sound, survived arctic winters in Iceland and Alaska and summited Oregon’s Mount Hood more times than he can count. Now he wants to take on outer space. And since Cameron doesn't have an entire space program behind him, that means doing it on the cheap. His homemade space suite costs $2,000. A standard issue suit from NASA runs about $12 million. The space suit has been a 3 years in the making. Eventually, Cameron will put on the suit and step into a gondola and a balloon (also homemade) will take him up 50,000 feet in the air. At that point, he'll be depending on his own craftiness to keep himself alive. This episode is based off an episode of the public radio program and podcast, Destination DIY. Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apa… Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apartment. He's not an astronaut. He's not even an engineer. Cameron Smith is an archaeologist--on faculty in the anthropology department at Portland State University in Oregon. But Cameron is an explorer by nature. He’s been diving in Puget Sound, survived arctic winters in Iceland and Alaska and summited Oregon’s Mount Hood more times than he can count. Now he wants to take on outer space. And since Cameron doesn't have an entire space program behind him, that means doing it on the cheap. His homemade space suite costs $2,000. A standard issue suit from NASA runs about $12 million. The space suit has been a 3 years in the making. Eventually, Cameron will put on the suit and step into a gondola and a balloon (also homemade) will take him up 50,000 feet in the air. At that point, he'll be depending on his own craftiness to keep himself alive. This episode is based off an episode of the public radio program and podcast, Destination DIY. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/121168793 Roman Mars no We have seen the future, and the future is mostly blue. Or, put another way: in our representations of the future in science fiction movies, blue seems to be the dominant color of our interfaces with technology yet to come. And that is one of the many design lessons we can learn from sci-fi. Designers and sci-fi aficionados Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff have spent years compiling real-world lessons that designers can, should, and already do take from science fiction. Their new book, Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons From Science Fiction is a comprehensive compendium of their findings. All music (after pledge preamble) is by OK Ikumi. https://soundcloud.com/ok-ikumi We have seen the future, and the future is mostly… We have seen the future, and the future is mostly blue. Or, put another way: in our representations of the future in science fiction movies, blue seems to be the dominant color of our interfaces with technology yet to come. And that is one of the many design lessons we can learn from sci-fi. Designers and sci-fi aficionados Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff have spent years compiling real-world lessons that designers can, should, and already do take from science fiction. Their new book, Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons From Science Fiction is a comprehensive compendium of their findings. All music (after pledge preamble) is by OK Ikumi. https://soundcloud.com/ok-ikumi tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/119857161 Roman Mars no There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the utopian, futuristic transports, the impossibly tall skyscrapers, even the horrible highways, all capture our imagination with what could have been. Whether these never built structures are perceived as good or bad, they still had an effect on the environment that does exist. We talk with Allison Arieff, John King and Andrew Lynch about the amazing things we missed out on and the bullets we dodged in the history of the unbuilt in San Francisco and New York City. Season 4 Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the uto… There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the utopian, futuristic transports, the impossibly tall skyscrapers, even the horrible highways, all capture our imagination with what could have been. Whether these never built structures are perceived as good or bad, they still had an effect on the environment that does exist. We talk with Allison Arieff, John King and Andrew Lynch about the amazing things we missed out on and the bullets we dodged in the history of the unbuilt in San Francisco and New York City. Season 4 Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/118805291 Roman Mars no The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel hated chivalry. There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a building, and locking horns with other men in a game of "oh you first, I insist." But most of all, Theophilus Van Kanel hated opening doors for women. He set about inventing his way out of social phobia. And that's how, 1888, Theophilus Van Kannel was awarded US Patent #387571 A for a "Storm-door structure," which would soon become known as the revolving door. The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel h… The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel hated chivalry. There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a building, and locking horns with other men in a game of "oh you first, I insist." But most of all, Theophilus Van Kanel hated opening doors for women. He set about inventing his way out of social phobia. And that's how, 1888, Theophilus Van Kannel was awarded US Patent #387571 A for a "Storm-door structure," which would soon become known as the revolving door. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/117576340 Roman Mars no I love those moments when you're walking in your neighborhood and suddenly nothing is familiar. In a good way. Sean Cole began seeing his neighborhood, actually the whole city of New York, with new eyes because of one artist who is trying to do nothing less than draw all the buildings in New York. James Gulliver Hancock's drawings are intricate, but still a little cartoony. Little squiggles and dots hover above the roofs, as though they're saying "look out!" or maybe "ta-da!" Cole became infected with Hancock's worldview and began to appreciate all the tiny details the artist would highlight. I love those moments when you're walking in your … I love those moments when you're walking in your neighborhood and suddenly nothing is familiar. In a good way. Sean Cole began seeing his neighborhood, actually the whole city of New York, with new eyes because of one artist who is trying to do nothing less than draw all the buildings in New York. James Gulliver Hancock's drawings are intricate, but still a little cartoony. Little squiggles and dots hover above the roofs, as though they're saying "look out!" or maybe "ta-da!" Cole became infected with Hancock's worldview and began to appreciate all the tiny details the artist would highlight. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/117166505 Roman Mars no http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly We’re taking the show weekly in 2014 with your help. Join us! There are lots of very cool thank you gifts on the Kickstarter page, but we're just looking for people to give us a signal that you want the show to expand and produce more. 10,000 backers at any level will tell us we're on the right track. Pledges of $1 welcome and appreciated. The beauty of the system is you just pitch in what you can. Thanks! In this mini-episode, we revisit John Marr’s story that started a tiny 99% Invisible movement: “Always Read the Plaque.” http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99… http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly We’re taking the show weekly in 2014 with your help. Join us! There are lots of very cool thank you gifts on the Kickstarter page, but we're just looking for people to give us a signal that you want the show to expand and produce more. 10,000 backers at any level will tell us we're on the right track. Pledges of $1 welcome and appreciated. The beauty of the system is you just pitch in what you can. Thanks! In this mini-episode, we revisit John Marr’s story that started a tiny 99% Invisible movement: “Always Read the Plaque.” http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/99-invisible-season-4-weekly tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/115370506 Roman Mars no We have one cardinal rule on 99% Invisible: No cardinals. Meaning, we deal with the built world, not the natural world. So, when I read Jon Mooallem’s brilliant book, Wild Ones: A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America, I didn’t think we'd ever do an episode of 99% Invisible about it. I just read it for fun. But then I saw Jon perform stories from the book live with musical accompaniment from the band Black Prairie. And that changed everything. What you need to know about Wild Ones is that it's not a book about nature. It’s a book about how we fit nature into our lives. Wild Ones is about the cutesy stuffed animals, the eco-tours, and the byzantine methods of conservation that evolve when our experience with wild life goes from something natural to something designed. Human-animal interaction has become a designed experience and the story of that transition, as the title of the book suggests, is sometimes dismaying and weirdly reassuring. We have one cardinal rule on 99% Invisible: No ca… We have one cardinal rule on 99% Invisible: No cardinals. Meaning, we deal with the built world, not the natural world. So, when I read Jon Mooallem’s brilliant book, Wild Ones: A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America, I didn’t think we'd ever do an episode of 99% Invisible about it. I just read it for fun. But then I saw Jon perform stories from the book live with musical accompaniment from the band Black Prairie. And that changed everything. What you need to know about Wild Ones is that it's not a book about nature. It’s a book about how we fit nature into our lives. Wild Ones is about the cutesy stuffed animals, the eco-tours, and the byzantine methods of conservation that evolve when our experience with wild life goes from something natural to something designed. Human-animal interaction has become a designed experience and the story of that transition, as the title of the book suggests, is sometimes dismaying and weirdly reassuring. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/113572374 Roman Mars no If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor's wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has been diverting business calls meant for you to her husband, you have three potential courses of action: (1) Contact the telephone company and try to get the operator fired. (2) Take the operator and her husband to civil court and try to sue for damages. (3) Revolutionize the entire telephone system by inventing an automatic telephone switching system that allows people to dial each other directly, thereby eliminating any need for a telephone switchboard operator. Almon Brown Strowger went with (3). If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and… If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor's wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has been diverting business calls meant for you to her husband, you have three potential courses of action: (1) Contact the telephone company and try to get the operator fired. (2) Take the operator and her husband to civil court and try to sue for damages. (3) Revolutionize the entire telephone system by inventing an automatic telephone switching system that allows people to dial each other directly, thereby eliminating any need for a telephone switchboard operator. Almon Brown Strowger went with (3). tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/113571938 Roman Mars no Last July, we told the story of the Purple Hotel. Here's the original story, with an update at the end. -- What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent corner of Touhy and Kilbourn Avenues in Lincolnwood, Illinois used to be the town’s most famous building: The first Hyatt hotel in all of Chicagoland, premiere accommodations, top-notch restaurant. It was swank! Roberta Flack stayed there. Barry Mannilow stayed there. Perry Como. Michael Jordon stayed there on his first night in Chicago. Every thirteen-year-old in the area had their bar mitzvah there. Then, slowly, over time, it became Lincolnwood’s most infamous building. Changed hands, got seedy and run down. It was the home of the Midwest Fetish Fair and Marketplace convention. There were drug-fueled sex parties attended by shady Chicago politicians later convicted of things like extortion. And of course there was the convicted mobster Alan Dorfman, who was gunned down in the parking lot. It’s now dilapidated and empty. But even if you know nothing about the history, everyone in the area knows this hotel. Because it’s purple. Really, really purple. Last July, we told the story of the Purple Hotel.… Last July, we told the story of the Purple Hotel. Here's the original story, with an update at the end. -- What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent corner of Touhy and Kilbourn Avenues in Lincolnwood, Illinois used to be the town’s most famous building: The first Hyatt hotel in all of Chicagoland, premiere accommodations, top-notch restaurant. It was swank! Roberta Flack stayed there. Barry Mannilow stayed there. Perry Como. Michael Jordon stayed there on his first night in Chicago. Every thirteen-year-old in the area had their bar mitzvah there. Then, slowly, over time, it became Lincolnwood’s most infamous building. Changed hands, got seedy and run down. It was the home of the Midwest Fetish Fair and Marketplace convention. There were drug-fueled sex parties attended by shady Chicago politicians later convicted of things like extortion. And of course there was the convicted mobster Alan Dorfman, who was gunned down in the parking lot. It’s now dilapidated and empty. But even if you know nothing about the history, everyone in the area knows this hotel. Because it’s purple. Really, really purple. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/110869311 Roman Mars no If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff. Neff wasn't just an architect--he was a starchitect. One of his most famous projects was the renovation of Pickfair, the estate owned by the iconic silent film actress Mary Pickford, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks. When the couple moved into Pickfar, the house sat on a nameless street in an empty neighborhood called Beverly Hills. If you were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at Pickfair you might find yourself seated next to Babe Ruth, the King of Spain or Albert Einstein. Life magazine called Pickfair “only slightly less important than the white house, and much more fun.” Neff designed estates for Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Groucho Marx. His Libby Ranch is now owned by Reese Witherspoon. But at the end of his life, Wallace Neff lived in a 1,000 square foot concrete bubble. And Neff believed that this simple dome was his greatest architectural achievements. Los Angeles-based reporter David Weinberg spoke with historian Jeffrey Head, author of No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff. David also spoke with Kathy Miles, who grew up in Igloo Village; Steve Roden, an artist and current resident of the last remaining bubble house in the US; and architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who has his practice in a classic Spanish/Mediterranean-style Wallace Neff building. We also hear from Dakar-based producer Juliana Friend, who was nice enough to go check on the bubbles over there. A different version of this story originally aired on KCRW as part of their Independent Producer Project. David Weinberg is also the brains behind Random Tape, an audio experiment in, well, random tape. If you were a movie star in the market for a mans… If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff. Neff wasn't just an architect--he was a starchitect. One of his most famous projects was the renovation of Pickfair, the estate owned by the iconic silent film actress Mary Pickford, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks. When the couple moved into Pickfar, the house sat on a nameless street in an empty neighborhood called Beverly Hills. If you were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at Pickfair you might find yourself seated next to Babe Ruth, the King of Spain or Albert Einstein. Life magazine called Pickfair “only slightly less important than the white house, and much more fun.” Neff designed estates for Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Groucho Marx. His Libby Ranch is now owned by Reese Witherspoon. But at the end of his life, Wallace Neff lived in a 1,000 square foot concrete bubble. And Neff believed that this simple dome was his greatest architectural achievements. Los Angeles-based reporter David Weinberg spoke with historian Jeffrey Head, author of No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff. David also spoke with Kathy Miles, who grew up in Igloo Village; Steve Roden, an artist and current resident of the last remaining bubble house in the US; and architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who has his practice in a classic Spanish/Mediterranean-style Wallace Neff building. We also hear from Dakar-based producer Juliana Friend, who was nice enough to go check on the bubbles over there. A different version of this story originally aired on KCRW as part of their Independent Producer Project. David Weinberg is also the brains behind Random Tape, an audio experiment in, well, random tape. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/108696335 Roman Mars no There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you literally can’t get out of your car. Inside of a driveway moment, time becomes elastic--you could be staring straight at a clock for the entire duration of the story, but for that length of time, the clock has no power over you. But ironically, inside the machinery of public radio--the industry that creates driveway moments--the clock rules all. Reporter/producer Julia Barton explores the design of the broadcast clock, the pie diagram that determines what you listen to when. There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio prod… There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you literally can’t get out of your car. Inside of a driveway moment, time becomes elastic--you could be staring straight at a clock for the entire duration of the story, but for that length of time, the clock has no power over you. But ironically, inside the machinery of public radio--the industry that creates driveway moments--the clock rules all. Reporter/producer Julia Barton explores the design of the broadcast clock, the pie diagram that determines what you listen to when. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/106564258 Roman Mars no By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the letter I. He draws a heart. And then an N, and then a Y. Right away he knows he's got something. This is it, he thinks. This is the campaign. The man was a designer named Milton Glaser. The City was New York. The year was 1977. The city needed a miracle. And it kind of got one in three letters and a symbol: I ♥ NY The I ♥ NY campaign was so successful that it became part of the built environment. So people started doing with I ♥ NY the same thing that humans have always done when encountering something in nature: they started imitating it. By now, the story is well known. A man sits in th… By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the letter I. He draws a heart. And then an N, and then a Y. Right away he knows he's got something. This is it, he thinks. This is the campaign. The man was a designer named Milton Glaser. The City was New York. The year was 1977. The city needed a miracle. And it kind of got one in three letters and a symbol: I ♥ NY The I ♥ NY campaign was so successful that it became part of the built environment. So people started doing with I ♥ NY the same thing that humans have always done when encountering something in nature: they started imitating it. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/104636402 Roman Mars no Chicago's biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a remnant of the natural landscape. But it isn't natural, not really. It’s hard to tell when you see the river, but it’s going the wrong way. It should flow into Lake Michigan, but instead fresh water from Lake Michigan flows backwards, into the city. The Chicago River is, in large part, a carefully-designed extension of the city’s sewer system. Reporter Dan Weissmann talked with Richard Cahan (author of "The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond") about the amazing lengths the city went to, over the course of several decades, to carry away the sewage that threatened to drown Chicago. Chicago's biggest design achievement probably isn… Chicago's biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a remnant of the natural landscape. But it isn't natural, not really. It’s hard to tell when you see the river, but it’s going the wrong way. It should flow into Lake Michigan, but instead fresh water from Lake Michigan flows backwards, into the city. The Chicago River is, in large part, a carefully-designed extension of the city’s sewer system. Reporter Dan Weissmann talked with Richard Cahan (author of "The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond") about the amazing lengths the city went to, over the course of several decades, to carry away the sewage that threatened to drown Chicago. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/103140304 Roman Mars no If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you might remember seeing the name Chuck Jones in big letters in the opening credits. Chuck Jones directed cartoons like Looney Tunes from the 1930s until his death in 2002. He was also an animator, and brought the world characters like Elmer Fudd. But part of what makes his characters so memorable is the world that they inhabit. Part of what’s so striking about Looney Tunes is that they are recognizable as Looney Tunes even without characters in the foreground. The backgrounds were done primarily by one layout artist: Maurice Noble. If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons,… If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you might remember seeing the name Chuck Jones in big letters in the opening credits. Chuck Jones directed cartoons like Looney Tunes from the 1930s until his death in 2002. He was also an animator, and brought the world characters like Elmer Fudd. But part of what makes his characters so memorable is the world that they inhabit. Part of what’s so striking about Looney Tunes is that they are recognizable as Looney Tunes even without characters in the foreground. The backgrounds were done primarily by one layout artist: Maurice Noble. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/101175715 Roman Mars no 99% Invisible and Planet Money team up and we talk to commodities traders to answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places? We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world? Also on the show: The "Eddie Murphy Rule" that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010. Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Overture, Marriage Of Figaro" and The Silhouettes' "Get A Job." Yes, there's a spoiler in this post. But the movie came out 30 years ago. Deal with it. 99% Invisible and Planet Money team up and we tal… 99% Invisible and Planet Money team up and we talk to commodities traders to answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places? We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world? Also on the show: The "Eddie Murphy Rule" that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010. Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Overture, Marriage Of Figaro" and The Silhouettes' "Get A Job." Yes, there's a spoiler in this post. But the movie came out 30 years ago. Deal with it. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/99403717 Roman Mars no Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found Heyoon. The only way to find out about Heyoon for someone to take you there. It was like there was this secret club of kids who knew about it. Alex got initiated when he was fifteen. To find Heyoon, you'd drive out into the middle of nowhere, deep in the country, and park alongside a dirt road. A fence ran along the property line, with signage explicitly telling passers by to keep out. Once over the fence, a path behind a white farmhouse led to a thin line of trees, and then to a huge field. And there was something else there in the field. Something man-made. Something really big. Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman w… Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found Heyoon. The only way to find out about Heyoon for someone to take you there. It was like there was this secret club of kids who knew about it. Alex got initiated when he was fifteen. To find Heyoon, you'd drive out into the middle of nowhere, deep in the country, and park alongside a dirt road. A fence ran along the property line, with signage explicitly telling passers by to keep out. Once over the fence, a path behind a white farmhouse led to a thin line of trees, and then to a huge field. And there was something else there in the field. Something man-made. Something really big. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/97719817 Roman Mars no I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I might be wrong about the entire premise of this story, but Superman has never really worked for me as a character. I preferred the more grounded Marvel Comic book characters, like Spider-man, who lived in real cities and had human thoughts and feelings. Superman is basically invincible, not relatable, and oozed “establishment.” And even though I really love the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie, it contains a perfect example of why I don’t really dig the character. Just so you know, this is a 25 year-old spoiler alert, but at end of the 1978 movie, all of the greatness of that film is nearly undone by the fundamental flaw in having a character that is all-powerful. Superman flies around the earth backwards and turns back time! My problems with the character aside, Superman is an extremely successful and important design. Glen Weldon, author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography talks me through the iconography of our first superhero and why Supes has managed to stay relevant for 75 years. I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I mig… I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I might be wrong about the entire premise of this story, but Superman has never really worked for me as a character. I preferred the more grounded Marvel Comic book characters, like Spider-man, who lived in real cities and had human thoughts and feelings. Superman is basically invincible, not relatable, and oozed “establishment.” And even though I really love the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie, it contains a perfect example of why I don’t really dig the character. Just so you know, this is a 25 year-old spoiler alert, but at end of the 1978 movie, all of the greatness of that film is nearly undone by the fundamental flaw in having a character that is all-powerful. Superman flies around the earth backwards and turns back time! My problems with the character aside, Superman is an extremely successful and important design. Glen Weldon, author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography talks me through the iconography of our first superhero and why Supes has managed to stay relevant for 75 years. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/95818768 Roman Mars no There’s something about rebar that fascinates me. If nothing else because there are very few things that invoke a fear of being skewered. My preoccupation with metal reinforcement bars dovetails nicely with a structure in San Francisco I’ve kind of become obsessed with-- a tiny bridge on the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park called the Alvord Lake Bridge. Ernest Ransome, the father of modern rebar, constructed the bridge in 1889. Today, it is a dumpy, cracked and neglected structure. The inside is a surreal tunnel of phony stalactites. But the Alvord Lake Bridge is, quite literally, the bridge to the modern world. It is one the oldest reinforced concrete structures still standing. The twisted iron bars embedded in the bridge served as the model for the all the rebar containing structures that followed. It is the ancestor to an endless number of reinforced concrete buildings, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, and foundations. Ransome major innovation in rebar was to twist the square bar so that it bonded to the concrete better. Concrete has incredible compression strength, but it does not have much tensile strength. So if you want concrete to span any significant distance, you need to embed metal reinforcement. There are plenty of candidates for the most overlooked, most invisible part of the built world, but reinforced concrete has a good claim to being the most invisible of all. Because if it’s made right, you never see the steel skeleton underneath the all the concrete structures that you work in, drive over, and walk under. The problem with steel reinforcement is that it rusts. When the steel begins to rust, the bond with the surrounding concrete is broken. The rusted metal also swells and breaks the concrete apart. Because of this, most of the reinforced concrete structures that are constantly exposed to the elements (like our highway system) were only designed to last 50 years. More advanced concrete mixtures and epoxy coated rebar increase the longevity, but without regular maintenance, entropy eventually wins out. Ernest Ransome left San Francisco soon after he completed the Alvord Lake Bridge. In his book “Reinforced Concrete Buildings” published in 1912, you can detect a tinge of bitterness in Ransome’s text as he describes how his twisted rebar was “laughed down” by the Technical Society in California. He left for the east thinking that his revolution of reinforced concrete would have a better chance out there. He left thinking that no one here would fully appreciate his Alvord Lake Bridge, his bridge to the modern world. And looking at it today, I’m sad to say, he was right. Thanks to CCA Senior Adjunct Professor of Architecture, William Littman (he of the Forgotten Monument) for first telling me about the Alvord Lake Bridge and showing me around. I spoke with Robert Courland, author of Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World’s Most Common Man-Made Material (a great book!) and Bob Risser of the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute (a great person to talk to!). There’s something about rebar that fascinates me.… There’s something about rebar that fascinates me. If nothing else because there are very few things that invoke a fear of being skewered. My preoccupation with metal reinforcement bars dovetails nicely with a structure in San Francisco I’ve kind of become obsessed with-- a tiny bridge on the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park called the Alvord Lake Bridge. Ernest Ransome, the father of modern rebar, constructed the bridge in 1889. Today, it is a dumpy, cracked and neglected structure. The inside is a surreal tunnel of phony stalactites. But the Alvord Lake Bridge is, quite literally, the bridge to the modern world. It is one the oldest reinforced concrete structures still standing. The twisted iron bars embedded in the bridge served as the model for the all the rebar containing structures that followed. It is the ancestor to an endless number of reinforced concrete buildings, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, and foundations. Ransome major innovation in rebar was to twist the square bar so that it bonded to the concrete better. Concrete has incredible compression strength, but it does not have much tensile strength. So if you want concrete to span any significant distance, you need to embed metal reinforcement. There are plenty of candidates for the most overlooked, most invisible part of the built world, but reinforced concrete has a good claim to being the most invisible of all. Because if it’s made right, you never see the steel skeleton underneath the all the concrete structures that you work in, drive over, and walk under. The problem with steel reinforcement is that it rusts. When the steel begins to rust, the bond with the surrounding concrete is broken. The rusted metal also swells and breaks the concrete apart. Because of this, most of the reinforced concrete structures that are constantly exposed to the elements (like our highway system) were only designed to last 50 years. More advanced concrete mixtures and epoxy coated rebar increase the longevity, but without regular maintenance, entropy eventually wins out. Ernest Ransome left San Francisco soon after he completed the Alvord Lake Bridge. In his book “Reinforced Concrete Buildings” published in 1912, you can detect a tinge of bitterness in Ransome’s text as he describes how his twisted rebar was “laughed down” by the Technical Society in California. He left for the east thinking that his revolution of reinforced concrete would have a better chance out there. He left thinking that no one here would fully appreciate his Alvord Lake Bridge, his bridge to the modern world. And looking at it today, I’m sad to say, he was right. Thanks to CCA Senior Adjunct Professor of Architecture, William Littman (he of the Forgotten Monument) for first telling me about the Alvord Lake Bridge and showing me around. I spoke with Robert Courland, author of Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World’s Most Common Man-Made Material (a great book!) and Bob Risser of the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute (a great person to talk to!). tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/94334223 Roman Mars no Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American Institute of Architects (AIA): "Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors." A group called Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has taken the stance that there are some buildings that just should not have been built. Buildings that, by design, violate standards of human rights. Specifically, this refers to prisons with execution chambers, or prisons that are designed keep people in long-term isolation (or as prison officials call it, "segregation"). The latter kind of prison is called a "supermax," or "security housing unit" (SHU). There is no legal definition for solitary confinement, so it's up for debate as to whether the SHU constitutes solitary confinement. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding one SHU at a Northern California prison called Pelican Bay. Life inside of the SHU at Pelican Bay means 22 to 23 hours a day inside of 7.5 by 12 foot room. It's not a space that's designed to keep you comfortable. But it's not just these architectural features, that concern humanitarian activists and psychiatrists. It's the amount of time many prisoners spend in that cells, alone, without any meaningful activity. Some psychiatrists, such as Terry Kupers, say there is a whole litany of effects that a SHU can have on a person: massive anxiety, paranoia, depression, concentration and memory problems, and loss of ability to control one's anger (which can get a prisoner in trouble and lengthen the SHU sentence). In California, SHU inmates are 33 times more likely to commit suicide than other prisoners incarcerated elsewhere in the state. There are even reports of eye damage due to the restriction on distance viewing. Terry Kupers says that a SHU "destroys people as human beings." Compared with some other prisons in the California system, the Pelican Bay SHU has some redeeming architectural features. Inmates can get natural light from skylights outside of their cells, which drifts in through doors made of a perforated metal. These porous doors also allow for inmates to communicate with each other, even though there are no lines of sight to any prisoner from within the cell. But on the other hand, cells don't have windows. Inmates never get to see the horizon. The only times prisoners get to leave the cell is to visit the shower, or the exercise yard--which is an empty, windowless room not that much bigger than a cell, with twenty-foot high concrete walls. Again, there is no universally accepted definition of solitary confinement. But some groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have gone beyond calling the SHU solitary confinement--they call it torture. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture said anything over 15 days in solitary confinement is a human rights abuse--which other sources have interpreted as torture. So if it is the ethical code of architects to promote human rights...what is their responsibility to the people who are incarcerated in their buildings? Enter Raphael Sperry, a San Francisco-based architect and president of ADPSR. He believes it's up to architects to lead the charge against these buildings. Sperry and the ADPSR are trying to get the American Institute of Architects to adopt an amendment to their ethics code: "Members shall not design spaces intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement." This episode is a special collaboration between 99% Invisible and the podcast Life of the Law. Find out about their show at lifeofthelaw.com Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an … Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American Institute of Architects (AIA): "Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors." A group called Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has taken the stance that there are some buildings that just should not have been built. Buildings that, by design, violate standards of human rights. Specifically, this refers to prisons with execution chambers, or prisons that are designed keep people in long-term isolation (or as prison officials call it, "segregation"). The latter kind of prison is called a "supermax," or "security housing unit" (SHU). There is no legal definition for solitary confinement, so it's up for debate as to whether the SHU constitutes solitary confinement. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding one SHU at a Northern California prison called Pelican Bay. Life inside of the SHU at Pelican Bay means 22 to 23 hours a day inside of 7.5 by 12 foot room. It's not a space that's designed to keep you comfortable. But it's not just these architectural features, that concern humanitarian activists and psychiatrists. It's the amount of time many prisoners spend in that cells, alone, without any meaningful activity. Some psychiatrists, such as Terry Kupers, say there is a whole litany of effects that a SHU can have on a person: massive anxiety, paranoia, depression, concentration and memory problems, and loss of ability to control one's anger (which can get a prisoner in trouble and lengthen the SHU sentence). In California, SHU inmates are 33 times more likely to commit suicide than other prisoners incarcerated elsewhere in the state. There are even reports of eye damage due to the restriction on distance viewing. Terry Kupers says that a SHU "destroys people as human beings." Compared with some other prisons in the California system, the Pelican Bay SHU has some redeeming architectural features. Inmates can get natural light from skylights outside of their cells, which drifts in through doors made of a perforated metal. These porous doors also allow for inmates to communicate with each other, even though there are no lines of sight to any prisoner from within the cell. But on the other hand, cells don't have windows. Inmates never get to see the horizon. The only times prisoners get to leave the cell is to visit the shower, or the exercise yard--which is an empty, windowless room not that much bigger than a cell, with twenty-foot high concrete walls. Again, there is no universally accepted definition of solitary confinement. But some groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have gone beyond calling the SHU solitary confinement--they call it torture. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture said anything over 15 days in solitary confinement is a human rights abuse--which other sources have interpreted as torture. So if it is the ethical code of architects to promote human rights...what is their responsibility to the people who are incarcerated in their buildings? Enter Raphael Sperry, a San Francisco-based architect and president of ADPSR. He believes it's up to architects to lead the charge against these buildings. Sperry and the ADPSR are trying to get the American Institute of Architects to adopt an amendment to their ethics code: "Members shall not design spaces intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement." This episode is a special collaboration between 99% Invisible and the podcast Life of the Law. Find out about their show at lifeofthelaw.com tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/91317896 Roman Mars no For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical creatures who sang out to passing sailors from rocks in the sea. Their music was so beautiful, it was said, that the sailors were powerless against it--they would turn their ships towards these sea nymphs and crash in the impassable reefs around them. In Homer's Odyssey, there's a story where Odysseus and his men are traveling near an area that Sirens are known to inhabit. Odysseus knows that if he hears the siren's song, his ship is going to sink. But he still wants to hear what they sound like. So he comes up with a plan: Odysseus has his men tie him to the mast of his ship so that he can't give commands. And then Odysseus has his men fill their own ears with beeswax so they can't hear anything. They set sail in striking distance of the sirens' call. The plan works: Odysseus gets to hear the music, his men don't, and they sail on to safety--with Odysseus pleading with his crew to crash the boat the whole way. And for the next 2000 or so years, that's what a siren was: a creature that makes a beautiful sound. But that all changed in 1819, when a French engineer named Charles Cagniard de la Tour decided to call the artificial noisemaker he was working on--the siren. And this new, mechanical siren became one of THE signature sounds of the turn of the Century. Sirens warned people about immanent bombing raids during World War I. Sirens announced incoming fire engines, and ambulances, and police. Thanks in part to the siren, the world of the the early 20th Century had become a lot louder than any time in human history. And we can probably assume that these sirens that people heard in cities all over the world--sounded NOTHING like the siren songs of Greek myth. At least to most. One man, a composer, named Arseny Avraamov heard music in the cacophony of the modern world. And he tried to create a composition--a symphony-- from the clatter of the newly formed Soviet Union. Moscow-based producer Charles Maynes investigated the legend of Avraamov and his forgotten masterpiece. This is The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited. This story was part of the Global Story Project, presented by PRX with support from the Open Society Foundations. Plus, we hear a rebroadcast of "The Unsung Icons of Soviet Design." For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical crea… For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical creatures who sang out to passing sailors from rocks in the sea. Their music was so beautiful, it was said, that the sailors were powerless against it--they would turn their ships towards these sea nymphs and crash in the impassable reefs around them. In Homer's Odyssey, there's a story where Odysseus and his men are traveling near an area that Sirens are known to inhabit. Odysseus knows that if he hears the siren's song, his ship is going to sink. But he still wants to hear what they sound like. So he comes up with a plan: Odysseus has his men tie him to the mast of his ship so that he can't give commands. And then Odysseus has his men fill their own ears with beeswax so they can't hear anything. They set sail in striking distance of the sirens' call. The plan works: Odysseus gets to hear the music, his men don't, and they sail on to safety--with Odysseus pleading with his crew to crash the boat the whole way. And for the next 2000 or so years, that's what a siren was: a creature that makes a beautiful sound. But that all changed in 1819, when a French engineer named Charles Cagniard de la Tour decided to call the artificial noisemaker he was working on--the siren. And this new, mechanical siren became one of THE signature sounds of the turn of the Century. Sirens warned people about immanent bombing raids during World War I. Sirens announced incoming fire engines, and ambulances, and police. Thanks in part to the siren, the world of the the early 20th Century had become a lot louder than any time in human history. And we can probably assume that these sirens that people heard in cities all over the world--sounded NOTHING like the siren songs of Greek myth. At least to most. One man, a composer, named Arseny Avraamov heard music in the cacophony of the modern world. And he tried to create a composition--a symphony-- from the clatter of the newly formed Soviet Union. Moscow-based producer Charles Maynes investigated the legend of Avraamov and his forgotten masterpiece. This is The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited. This story was part of the Global Story Project, presented by PRX with support from the Open Society Foundations. Plus, we hear a rebroadcast of "The Unsung Icons of Soviet Design." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/90074493 Roman Mars no Americans have always had an uneasy relationship with gambling. To circumvent anti-gambling laws in the US, early slot machines masqueraded as vending machines. They gave out chewing gum as prizes, and those prizes could be redeemed for cash. That's where the fruit logos come from. In fact, in the UK, slot machines are called "fruit machines." Despite outward appearances, slot machines have evolved dramatically since they first appeared in 1895. To play the first slot machines, you slipped in a coin and pulled the lever to set the machine's wheels in motion. The slot machine's crank-action operation (and the way it took your money) earned it the nickname of the "one-armed bandit." But today, those hand-crank levers are uncommon, and where they do exist they are known as "legacy levers," because they have zero relation to how the machine actually works. Everything inside a slot machine has been computerized and automated--from how you enter money, to how you bet, to how you play, to how you win and lose, and even to how you feel when leave. At first, gambling machines existed at the fringes of casino culture--both figuratively and literally. The real money was in tabletop games--or so it was thought--and the slots were set up around the edges of the casino to give gamblers' wives something to do while they waited. But then video technology expanded what slots could do. Now a machine could have more rows and columns than the standard three-by-three, and allowed you to place multiple bets on a single spin. A penny slot machine could let you place a hundred different one-cent bets per spin--so even if you win 40 cents on one line, and the machine congratulates you with flashing lights and chimes, you still lose 60 cents. And that's how video slots have become the most lucrative--and addictive--game in a casino. Our guest this week is Natasha Dow Schüll, an MIT-based anthropologist who has been studying Las Vegas and the culture of gambling for more than fifteen years. Schüll is the author of Addiction by Design. Americans have always had an uneasy relationship … Americans have always had an uneasy relationship with gambling. To circumvent anti-gambling laws in the US, early slot machines masqueraded as vending machines. They gave out chewing gum as prizes, and those prizes could be redeemed for cash. That's where the fruit logos come from. In fact, in the UK, slot machines are called "fruit machines." Despite outward appearances, slot machines have evolved dramatically since they first appeared in 1895. To play the first slot machines, you slipped in a coin and pulled the lever to set the machine's wheels in motion. The slot machine's crank-action operation (and the way it took your money) earned it the nickname of the "one-armed bandit." But today, those hand-crank levers are uncommon, and where they do exist they are known as "legacy levers," because they have zero relation to how the machine actually works. Everything inside a slot machine has been computerized and automated--from how you enter money, to how you bet, to how you play, to how you win and lose, and even to how you feel when leave. At first, gambling machines existed at the fringes of casino culture--both figuratively and literally. The real money was in tabletop games--or so it was thought--and the slots were set up around the edges of the casino to give gamblers' wives something to do while they waited. But then video technology expanded what slots could do. Now a machine could have more rows and columns than the standard three-by-three, and allowed you to place multiple bets on a single spin. A penny slot machine could let you place a hundred different one-cent bets per spin--so even if you win 40 cents on one line, and the machine congratulates you with flashing lights and chimes, you still lose 60 cents. And that's how video slots have become the most lucrative--and addictive--game in a casino. Our guest this week is Natasha Dow Schüll, an MIT-based anthropologist who has been studying Las Vegas and the culture of gambling for more than fifteen years. Schüll is the author of Addiction by Design. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/88020299 Roman Mars no Regardless of how you feel about basketball, you’ve got to appreciate the way it can bring groups of strangers together to share moments of pure adulation and collective defeat. That moment when time is running out, the team is down by one, a player arcs the ball from downtown just as the buzzer sounds—and sinks it. It’s exhilarating. It’s heart breaking. And most of all, it’s good design. But it’s not the way basketball was originally designed. During pro basketball’s infancy in the 1950s, nothing forced a player to shoot the ball. If a team was winning, and they wanted to keep their lead, the team could literally hold on to the ball for ten minutes and run the clock out. But in 1954, Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone had crunched some numbers, and he believed that some simple arithmetic could save basketball. Reporter Eric Mennel, from the radio show BackStory with the American History Guys, spoke with Dolph Schayes—who played on the Syracuse Nationals both before and after the advent of the shot clock—about how Biasone’s contribution to the game shaped basketball into what it has become today. Regardless of how you feel about basketball, you’… Regardless of how you feel about basketball, you’ve got to appreciate the way it can bring groups of strangers together to share moments of pure adulation and collective defeat. That moment when time is running out, the team is down by one, a player arcs the ball from downtown just as the buzzer sounds—and sinks it. It’s exhilarating. It’s heart breaking. And most of all, it’s good design. But it’s not the way basketball was originally designed. During pro basketball’s infancy in the 1950s, nothing forced a player to shoot the ball. If a team was winning, and they wanted to keep their lead, the team could literally hold on to the ball for ten minutes and run the clock out. But in 1954, Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone had crunched some numbers, and he believed that some simple arithmetic could save basketball. Reporter Eric Mennel, from the radio show BackStory with the American History Guys, spoke with Dolph Schayes—who played on the Syracuse Nationals both before and after the advent of the shot clock—about how Biasone’s contribution to the game shaped basketball into what it has become today. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/86277243 Roman Mars no On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.” And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year. Many viewed the car as a death machine. One newspaper cartoon even compared the car to Moloch, the god to whom the Ammonites supposedly sacrificed their children. At first, pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. Parades were held in dozens of cities to commemorate the dead children. Cities built monuments. Mothers of children killed in the streets are given a special White Star to honor their loss. The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than they are today. A street functioned like a city park, or a pedestrian mall, where you could move in any direction without really thinking about it. The only moving hazards were animals and other people. But automotive interests wanted to claim the streets for cars. So they put forth a radical idea--cars weren't to blame, it was human recklessness. They found that they could exonerate the machine by placing the blame on individuals. They also coined a new term: "Jaywalking." On the streets of early 20th Century America, not… On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.” And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year. Many viewed the car as a death machine. One newspaper cartoon even compared the car to Moloch, the god to whom the Ammonites supposedly sacrificed their children. At first, pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. Parades were held in dozens of cities to commemorate the dead children. Cities built monuments. Mothers of children killed in the streets are given a special White Star to honor their loss. The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than they are today. A street functioned like a city park, or a pedestrian mall, where you could move in any direction without really thinking about it. The only moving hazards were animals and other people. But automotive interests wanted to claim the streets for cars. So they put forth a radical idea--cars weren't to blame, it was human recklessness. They found that they could exonerate the machine by placing the blame on individuals. They also coined a new term: "Jaywalking." tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/84186088 Roman Mars no Wherever there is sufficient demand to move between two points of differing elevation, there are stairs. In some hilly neighborhoods of California--if you know where to look--you'll find public, outdoor staircases. The large number of hidden public staircases is part of what makes California so great. Charles Fleming is one of the world experts of coastal California's public stairs. He has documented and mapped walking routes through nearly every useable public staircase in San Francisco's East Bay, as well as in Los Angeles (where he lives). Charles published his findings in two walking guides, appropriately titled Secret Stairs. Producer Sam Greenspan met with Charles in the Pacific Palisades, where people from all over Los Angeles had gathered to attend one of Charles' monthly stair walks. Wherever there is sufficient demand to move betwe… Wherever there is sufficient demand to move between two points of differing elevation, there are stairs. In some hilly neighborhoods of California--if you know where to look--you'll find public, outdoor staircases. The large number of hidden public staircases is part of what makes California so great. Charles Fleming is one of the world experts of coastal California's public stairs. He has documented and mapped walking routes through nearly every useable public staircase in San Francisco's East Bay, as well as in Los Angeles (where he lives). Charles published his findings in two walking guides, appropriately titled Secret Stairs. Producer Sam Greenspan met with Charles in the Pacific Palisades, where people from all over Los Angeles had gathered to attend one of Charles' monthly stair walks. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/82305465 Roman Mars no There was a time when every street sign, every billboard, and every window display was made by a sign artist with a paint kit and an arsenal of squirrel- or camel-hair brushes. Some lived an itinerant lifestyle, traveling from town to town, knocking on the doors of local shops, asking if they could paint their signs. This was the way things were until as recently as the 1980s, when everything was upended by the vinyl plotter. Now, sign-making was faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before. Moreover, vinyl signs didn’t require any skill to make. But over time, they created an environment of anonymity and impermanence. Hand painted signs began to disappear. But not completely. Our contributor Benjamen Walker spoke with Faythe Levine and Sam Macon about their new book and documentary film, Sign Painters, which profiles more than two dozen contemporary sign painters keeping the tradition alive. Benjamen also spoke with sign painter and cartoonist Justin Green, who draws the comic series Sign Game (among others). Sam Greenspan also visited New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco to get their take on the sign painting scene. There was a time when every street sign, every bi… There was a time when every street sign, every billboard, and every window display was made by a sign artist with a paint kit and an arsenal of squirrel- or camel-hair brushes. Some lived an itinerant lifestyle, traveling from town to town, knocking on the doors of local shops, asking if they could paint their signs. This was the way things were until as recently as the 1980s, when everything was upended by the vinyl plotter. Now, sign-making was faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before. Moreover, vinyl signs didn’t require any skill to make. But over time, they created an environment of anonymity and impermanence. Hand painted signs began to disappear. But not completely. Our contributor Benjamen Walker spoke with Faythe Levine and Sam Macon about their new book and documentary film, Sign Painters, which profiles more than two dozen contemporary sign painters keeping the tradition alive. Benjamen also spoke with sign painter and cartoonist Justin Green, who draws the comic series Sign Game (among others). Sam Greenspan also visited New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco to get their take on the sign painting scene. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/79593163 Roman Mars no There comes a time in the life of a modern city where it begins to grow up--literally. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has been going through a tremendous growth spurt since its economic boom of the mid 1990s. It happened fast. In just a few years, single family homes all over the city were replaced with high rises. A man named Rodrigo Rojas played a small part in Santiago’s "upward mobility"--which wouldn’t be that remarkable if he were an engineer, a real estate developer, or an architect. But Rodrigo Rojas is a poet. This is how it worked: A developer bought an old house, tore it down, and had an architect draw up plans for a high rise. And then Rodrigo stepped in to give the building a name. Rodrigo even fabricated whole stories in the service of building an identity. He came up with one story about a ship called the Zanzibar, a luxury liner built with the Titanic, but slightly smaller. You've never heard of it, he explained, because the Zanzibar never sank. Our reporter this week is Daniel Alarcón, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante. There comes a time in the life of a modern city w… There comes a time in the life of a modern city where it begins to grow up--literally. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has been going through a tremendous growth spurt since its economic boom of the mid 1990s. It happened fast. In just a few years, single family homes all over the city were replaced with high rises. A man named Rodrigo Rojas played a small part in Santiago’s "upward mobility"--which wouldn’t be that remarkable if he were an engineer, a real estate developer, or an architect. But Rodrigo Rojas is a poet. This is how it worked: A developer bought an old house, tore it down, and had an architect draw up plans for a high rise. And then Rodrigo stepped in to give the building a name. Rodrigo even fabricated whole stories in the service of building an identity. He came up with one story about a ship called the Zanzibar, a luxury liner built with the Titanic, but slightly smaller. You've never heard of it, he explained, because the Zanzibar never sank. Our reporter this week is Daniel Alarcón, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/77994058 Roman Mars no Like many cities in Central Europe, Warsaw is made up largely of grey, ugly, communist block-style architecture. Except for one part: The Old Town. Walking through this historic district, it’s just like any other quaint European city. There are tourist shops, horse-drawn carriage rides, church spires. The buildings are beautiful--but they are not original. During World War II, Nazi forces razed more than 80% of Warsaw. After Soviet troops took over, much of the city was rebuilt in the with communist style: fast, cheap, and big. They built apartment blocks, wide avenues, and heavy grey buildings. It was communist ideology in architectural form. But when it came to the historic district of Warsaw-- the Old Town and a long connecting section called the Royal Route--they decided not just to rebuild, but to restore. Builders would use the same stones, and use special kilns to make special bricks to preserve its authenticity. After six years of reconstruction, the new Old Town was opened. Poles were ecstatic to have it back. Even in the West, it was seen as a triumph of the human spirit. But here's the thing: Warsaw’s historic Old Town is not a replica of the original. It’s a re-imagining. An historic city that never really was. Reporters and producers Amy Drozdowska and Dave McGuire talk with social anthropologist Michael Murawski about the fake recreation of Old Town and what it means to modern Warsaw. Like many cities in Central Europe, Warsaw is mad… Like many cities in Central Europe, Warsaw is made up largely of grey, ugly, communist block-style architecture. Except for one part: The Old Town. Walking through this historic district, it’s just like any other quaint European city. There are tourist shops, horse-drawn carriage rides, church spires. The buildings are beautiful--but they are not original. During World War II, Nazi forces razed more than 80% of Warsaw. After Soviet troops took over, much of the city was rebuilt in the with communist style: fast, cheap, and big. They built apartment blocks, wide avenues, and heavy grey buildings. It was communist ideology in architectural form. But when it came to the historic district of Warsaw-- the Old Town and a long connecting section called the Royal Route--they decided not just to rebuild, but to restore. Builders would use the same stones, and use special kilns to make special bricks to preserve its authenticity. After six years of reconstruction, the new Old Town was opened. Poles were ecstatic to have it back. Even in the West, it was seen as a triumph of the human spirit. But here's the thing: Warsaw’s historic Old Town is not a replica of the original. It’s a re-imagining. An historic city that never really was. Reporters and producers Amy Drozdowska and Dave McGuire talk with social anthropologist Michael Murawski about the fake recreation of Old Town and what it means to modern Warsaw. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/76154574 Roman Mars no Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable. But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding. As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world--even though skateboarding was officially banned there. Skateboarder and radio producer Andrew Norton takes us for a ride through the surprising history of LOVE Park, and pulls back the curtain on a decades-old battle over public space in Philadelphia and beyond. Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open s… Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable. But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding. As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world--even though skateboarding was officially banned there. Skateboarder and radio producer Andrew Norton takes us for a ride through the surprising history of LOVE Park, and pulls back the curtain on a decades-old battle over public space in Philadelphia and beyond. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/74532118 Roman Mars no When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept hearing this story about a bygone transportation system called the Red Car. The Red Car, he was told, had been this amazing network of streetcars that connected the city--until a car company bought it, dismantled it, and forced a dependency on freeways. But like most legends, the one that Eric heard about the Red Car is not entirely accurate. It's true that Los Angeles did have an extensive mass transit system called the Red Car, which at one time ran on 1,100 miles of track--about 25 percent more more track mileage than New York City has today, a century later. But the Red Car wasn't the victim of a conspiracy. The Red Car WAS the conspiracy. When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept … When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept hearing this story about a bygone transportation system called the Red Car. The Red Car, he was told, had been this amazing network of streetcars that connected the city--until a car company bought it, dismantled it, and forced a dependency on freeways. But like most legends, the one that Eric heard about the Red Car is not entirely accurate. It's true that Los Angeles did have an extensive mass transit system called the Red Car, which at one time ran on 1,100 miles of track--about 25 percent more more track mileage than New York City has today, a century later. But the Red Car wasn't the victim of a conspiracy. The Red Car WAS the conspiracy. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/73204012 Roman Mars no So if you’re not from California, or missed this bit of news, the University of California has a new logo. Or rather, had a new logo. To be more precise they had a new “visual identity system,” which is the kind of entirely accurate, but completely wonky description that gets met with sarcastic eye rolls from anyone who isn’t a designer, but there it is. But they don’t have a new logo. Because of a massive public backlash, the UC system actually suspended the monogram logo while we were reporting this story. In this episode, we talk to the Creative Director of the UC Office of the President, Vanessa Correa, who led the team that created this short-lived brand identity and Christopher Simmons, principal of MINE, who waded into the UC logo fight with a brilliant blog post called “Why the UC Rebrand is Better Than You Think.” This piece was reported by Cyrus Farivar, who also produced the 99% Invisible episodes about Bonn, Germany and Westvleteren beer. So if you’re not from California, or missed this … So if you’re not from California, or missed this bit of news, the University of California has a new logo. Or rather, had a new logo. To be more precise they had a new “visual identity system,” which is the kind of entirely accurate, but completely wonky description that gets met with sarcastic eye rolls from anyone who isn’t a designer, but there it is. But they don’t have a new logo. Because of a massive public backlash, the UC system actually suspended the monogram logo while we were reporting this story. In this episode, we talk to the Creative Director of the UC Office of the President, Vanessa Correa, who led the team that created this short-lived brand identity and Christopher Simmons, principal of MINE, who waded into the UC logo fight with a brilliant blog post called “Why the UC Rebrand is Better Than You Think.” This piece was reported by Cyrus Farivar, who also produced the 99% Invisible episodes about Bonn, Germany and Westvleteren beer. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/70982406 Roman Mars no I want you to conjure an image in your mind of the white stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How long are the stripes and the spaces between them? You can spread your arms out to estimate if you want to. Over the course of many years, a psychology researcher named Dennis Schafer at Ohio State asked students from many different parts of the country this question and the most common response was that the white stripes are two feet long. Tom Vanderbilt, author of the brilliant book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), reveals the real answer and some of the other perceptual countermeasures that are designed to make you feel comfortable going way faster than your brain can adequately process. We also talk about how this design language of exaggerated scale and wide vistas is great for limited access highways, but it’s problematic when these features are grafted onto suburban landscapes where they don’t belong. All the music in this episode is courtesy of my favorite new label, the Utah based, Hel Audio. Specifically, we played the bands OK Ikumi and Mooninite. Hel Audio focuses on physical releases of electronic and experimental music. I just bought myself the full Hel Audio catalog on four glorious cassette tapes, along with less glorious but more versatile (and free) digital downloads of the same songs. The tape deck in my twelve-year-old Golf has never been happier. http://www.helaudio.org/ I want you to conjure an image in your mind of th… I want you to conjure an image in your mind of the white stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How long are the stripes and the spaces between them? You can spread your arms out to estimate if you want to. Over the course of many years, a psychology researcher named Dennis Schafer at Ohio State asked students from many different parts of the country this question and the most common response was that the white stripes are two feet long. Tom Vanderbilt, author of the brilliant book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), reveals the real answer and some of the other perceptual countermeasures that are designed to make you feel comfortable going way faster than your brain can adequately process. We also talk about how this design language of exaggerated scale and wide vistas is great for limited access highways, but it’s problematic when these features are grafted onto suburban landscapes where they don’t belong. All the music in this episode is courtesy of my favorite new label, the Utah based, Hel Audio. Specifically, we played the bands OK Ikumi and Mooninite. Hel Audio focuses on physical releases of electronic and experimental music. I just bought myself the full Hel Audio catalog on four glorious cassette tapes, along with less glorious but more versatile (and free) digital downloads of the same songs. The tape deck in my twelve-year-old Golf has never been happier. http://www.helaudio.org/ tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/69370710 Roman Mars no http://99percentinvisible.org/post/36839932084/episode-67-broken-window When Melissa Lee was growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small town in upstate New York, there were only so many fun things to do. One was buying geodes and smashing them apart with a hammer. (You know geodes, right? Those dull-looking brown rocks that you break open to reveal crystalline structures inside?) One day, when Melissa was thirteen, she and her friend Liz bought some geodes. They didn't want to wait to get home to crack them open, so they decided to throw them against the wall of an apartment building. Liz's aim went wild, and the geode went through a window. Melissa and Liz tried to find person whose window they had broken, but they couldn't figure out which door in the apartment building lead to the unit with the window in question. Eventually they gave up. Melissa would have probably forgotten about the incident had it not been for one inexplicable thing: the window didn't get fixed. Ever. It was clear that someone lived there. Melissa would walk by the window and see the apartment lit up by a TV. Someone was opening the window in the summer, and closing it in the winter. But the hole remained. Melissa finished middle school, then high school, then went away to college. And when she came home and saw the window still broken, it had this effect of making her feel like the nervous, insecure thirteen year old she was when she broke the window. This became a pattern for Melissa: she'd leave home, do some growing up, come home, see the window, and feel like a teenager. Melissa traveled the world. She went to graduate school, She moved to Washington, DC, She got married. And every time she'd come home, she'd see the window. "As much as I was changing, this part of my past was completely frozen," Melissa says. "As soon as I saw the window I was brought right back to those middle school days when we had broken it." So in 2011, 22 years after the incident, Melissa went to go find the person who left the window broken for so long. She brought along a tape recorder. http://99percentinvisible.org/post/36839932084/ep… http://99percentinvisible.org/post/36839932084/episode-67-broken-window When Melissa Lee was growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small town in upstate New York, there were only so many fun things to do. One was buying geodes and smashing them apart with a hammer. (You know geodes, right? Those dull-looking brown rocks that you break open to reveal crystalline structures inside?) One day, when Melissa was thirteen, she and her friend Liz bought some geodes. They didn't want to wait to get home to crack them open, so they decided to throw them against the wall of an apartment building. Liz's aim went wild, and the geode went through a window. Melissa and Liz tried to find person whose window they had broken, but they couldn't figure out which door in the apartment building lead to the unit with the window in question. Eventually they gave up. Melissa would have probably forgotten about the incident had it not been for one inexplicable thing: the window didn't get fixed. Ever. It was clear that someone lived there. Melissa would walk by the window and see the apartment lit up by a TV. Someone was opening the window in the summer, and closing it in the winter. But the hole remained. Melissa finished middle school, then high school, then went away to college. And when she came home and saw the window still broken, it had this effect of making her feel like the nervous, insecure thirteen year old she was when she broke the window. This became a pattern for Melissa: she'd leave home, do some growing up, come home, see the window, and feel like a teenager. Melissa traveled the world. She went to graduate school, She moved to Washington, DC, She got married. And every time she'd come home, she'd see the window. "As much as I was changing, this part of my past was completely frozen," Melissa says. "As soon as I saw the window I was brought right back to those middle school days when we had broken it." So in 2011, 22 years after the incident, Melissa went to go find the person who left the window broken for so long. She brought along a tape recorder. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/68061726 Roman Mars no Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the world, ever. By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That's a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan. To put it another way, think about living in a 1,200 square foot home. Then imagine yourself living with 9 other people. Then imagine that your building is only one unit of a twelve-story building, and every other unit is as full as yours. Then imagine hundreds those buildings crammed together in a space the size of four football fields. We can't really imagine it, either. Kowloon Walled City began as a military fort in Kowloon, a region in mainland China. In 1898, China signed a land lease with Great Britain, giving the British control of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other nearby territories. But the lease stipulated that the fort in Kowloon would remain under Chinese jurisdiction. Over time, the fort became abandoned, leaving the area subject to neither Chinese nor British authority. This legal gray zone was attractive to displaced and marginalized people. Thousands of people moved there after the war with Japan broke out. Even more people moved there after the Communist Revolution. It attracted gangsters, drug addicts, sex workers, and refugees. And it also drew a lot of normal people from all over China who saw opportunity there. They built the city building by building, first blanketing the area of the fort, then building vertically. Buildings were packed together so tightly in the Walled City that the alleys were nearly pitch-black in the day time. Electricity and water were brought in by illegal or informal means. The Walled City gained a reputation as a sort of den of iniquity--there were high levels of prostitution, gambling, mafia activity, and, for some reason, rampant unlicensed dentistry. But an order did emerge. The Walled City had no schools, but there was an informal kindergarten. A resident's organization settled disputes. And there was lots of industry: a fishball factory, a noodle factory, metalworking shops, a textile mill. There were stores, restaurants. You could even receive mail in the Walled City. Kowloon Walled City was torn down in 1993. Today, it's a park, and most traces of the city are gone. But the memory of the city lives on. It was featured in the non-verbal film Baraka, plays a cameo role in Bloodsport. It's also served as the setting in a number of video games, including most recently Call of Duty: Black Ops This week's episode was produced by Nick van der Kolk. He spoke with photographer Greg Girard and architect Aaron Tan, who both spent time in the Walled City. Nick also talked to as Brian Douglas, who helped design Call of Duty: Black Ops. Nick is the director of the award-winning podcast, Love + Radio. You can also hear him over at Snap Judgment. Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the … Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the world, ever. By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That's a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan. To put it another way, think about living in a 1,200 square foot home. Then imagine yourself living with 9 other people. Then imagine that your building is only one unit of a twelve-story building, and every other unit is as full as yours. Then imagine hundreds those buildings crammed together in a space the size of four football fields. We can't really imagine it, either. Kowloon Walled City began as a military fort in Kowloon, a region in mainland China. In 1898, China signed a land lease with Great Britain, giving the British control of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other nearby territories. But the lease stipulated that the fort in Kowloon would remain under Chinese jurisdiction. Over time, the fort became abandoned, leaving the area subject to neither Chinese nor British authority. This legal gray zone was attractive to displaced and marginalized people. Thousands of people moved there after the war with Japan broke out. Even more people moved there after the Communist Revolution. It attracted gangsters, drug addicts, sex workers, and refugees. And it also drew a lot of normal people from all over China who saw opportunity there. They built the city building by building, first blanketing the area of the fort, then building vertically. Buildings were packed together so tightly in the Walled City that the alleys were nearly pitch-black in the day time. Electricity and water were brought in by illegal or informal means. The Walled City gained a reputation as a sort of den of iniquity--there were high levels of prostitution, gambling, mafia activity, and, for some reason, rampant unlicensed dentistry. But an order did emerge. The Walled City had no schools, but there was an informal kindergarten. A resident's organization settled disputes. And there was lots of industry: a fishball factory, a noodle factory, metalworking shops, a textile mill. There were stores, restaurants. You could even receive mail in the Walled City. Kowloon Walled City was torn down in 1993. Today, it's a park, and most traces of the city are gone. But the memory of the city lives on. It was featured in the non-verbal film Baraka, plays a cameo role in Bloodsport. It's also served as the setting in a number of video games, including most recently Call of Duty: Black Ops This week's episode was produced by Nick van der Kolk. He spoke with photographer Greg Girard and architect Aaron Tan, who both spent time in the Walled City. Nick also talked to as Brian Douglas, who helped design Call of Duty: Black Ops. Nick is the director of the award-winning podcast, Love + Radio. You can also hear him over at Snap Judgment. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/66244358 Roman Mars no When most people think of camouflage they think of blending in with the environment, but camouflage can also take the opposite approach. It has long been hypothesized that stripes on zebras make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one zebra from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage. When it comes to humans, the greatest, most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle. Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats. England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the Atlantic Ocean. They needed a way to fend of the torpedoes. Conventional high-similarity camouflage just doesn't work in the open sea. Conditions like the color of the sky, cloud cover, and wave height change all the time, not to mention the fact that there's no way to hid all the smoke left by the ships' smoke stacks. The strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility. It was about disruption. Confusion. Torpedoes in the Great War could only be fired line-of-sight, so instead of firing at where they saw the ship was at that moment, torpedo gunners would have to chart out where the ship would be by the time the torpedo got there. They had to determine the target ship's speed and direction with just a brief look through the periscope. The torpedo gunner's margin of error for hitting a ship was quite low. Dazzle painting could throw off an experienced submariner by as much as 55 degrees. Our expert this week is Roy Behrens, a professor graphic design at the University of Northern Iowa. He's published several books about camouflage, and also runs the Camoupedia blog. When most people think of camouflage they think o… When most people think of camouflage they think of blending in with the environment, but camouflage can also take the opposite approach. It has long been hypothesized that stripes on zebras make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one zebra from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage. When it comes to humans, the greatest, most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle. Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats. England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the Atlantic Ocean. They needed a way to fend of the torpedoes. Conventional high-similarity camouflage just doesn't work in the open sea. Conditions like the color of the sky, cloud cover, and wave height change all the time, not to mention the fact that there's no way to hid all the smoke left by the ships' smoke stacks. The strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility. It was about disruption. Confusion. Torpedoes in the Great War could only be fired line-of-sight, so instead of firing at where they saw the ship was at that moment, torpedo gunners would have to chart out where the ship would be by the time the torpedo got there. They had to determine the target ship's speed and direction with just a brief look through the periscope. The torpedo gunner's margin of error for hitting a ship was quite low. Dazzle painting could throw off an experienced submariner by as much as 55 degrees. Our expert this week is Roy Behrens, a professor graphic design at the University of Northern Iowa. He's published several books about camouflage, and also runs the Camoupedia blog. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/64805776 Roman Mars no In the Cape Cod town of Woods Hole, buildings are not usually dome-shaped. Producer Katie Klocksin was pretty surprised when she came across one. Katie started asking around about the dome. She found it was built by the late Buckminster Fuller, who called himself a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," out to solve the problems confronting "Starship Earth" by changing the way we make buildings. "Bucky" Fuller invented and patented the geodesic dome, a spherical structure made from small triangles. The design is based on a lot of complicated math, but the idea is that by relying on the strength of of the triangle, these buildings could be made from cheaper materials, like plastic and aluminum instead of steel and concrete. In 1953, Fuller was commissioned to build a dome in Woods Hole by architect (and aspiring restauranteur) Gunnar Peterson. The dome would become the posh Dome Restaurant. Diners could gaze through the building's triangular windows out on onto the sea. A zither player named Ruth Welcome entertained guests. Despite its Utopian aspirations, the building had some structural problems. The glass windows heated the restaurant up like a greenhouse, so the owner installed fiberglass over most of the dome, blocking the ocean views. It leaked constantly, and was difficult to maintain. Even though the Woods Hole dome did not radically change the world, Bucky Fuller would go on to become one of the most influential thinkers in design and architecture of the 20th Century. Today, the Dome Restaurant lies vacant. A new development project could lead to the dome's restoration, but for now, it remains a decaying curiosity, inviting exploration from microphone-wielding out-of-towners. In the Cape Cod town of Woods Hole, buildings are… In the Cape Cod town of Woods Hole, buildings are not usually dome-shaped. Producer Katie Klocksin was pretty surprised when she came across one. Katie started asking around about the dome. She found it was built by the late Buckminster Fuller, who called himself a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," out to solve the problems confronting "Starship Earth" by changing the way we make buildings. "Bucky" Fuller invented and patented the geodesic dome, a spherical structure made from small triangles. The design is based on a lot of complicated math, but the idea is that by relying on the strength of of the triangle, these buildings could be made from cheaper materials, like plastic and aluminum instead of steel and concrete. In 1953, Fuller was commissioned to build a dome in Woods Hole by architect (and aspiring restauranteur) Gunnar Peterson. The dome would become the posh Dome Restaurant. Diners could gaze through the building's triangular windows out on onto the sea. A zither player named Ruth Welcome entertained guests. Despite its Utopian aspirations, the building had some structural problems. The glass windows heated the restaurant up like a greenhouse, so the owner installed fiberglass over most of the dome, blocking the ocean views. It leaked constantly, and was difficult to maintain. Even though the Woods Hole dome did not radically change the world, Bucky Fuller would go on to become one of the most influential thinkers in design and architecture of the 20th Century. Today, the Dome Restaurant lies vacant. A new development project could lead to the dome's restoration, but for now, it remains a decaying curiosity, inviting exploration from microphone-wielding out-of-towners. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/63195436 Roman Mars no On this special edition of 99% Invisible, we joined forces with Andrea Seabrook of DecodeDC to investigate all the thought that goes into the most miniscule details of a political campaign. Andrea reveals seven (and a half) secrets about the staging of events along the campaign trail. Like how every campaign has an "Advance Team" that flies in ahead of a candidate and makes everything from a campaign rally to a 20-minute media appearance run smoothly. Andrea spoke with Advance guys John Seaton and Donnie Fowler, who have been directing this very American brand of political theatre for years. On this special edition of 99% Invisible, we join… On this special edition of 99% Invisible, we joined forces with Andrea Seabrook of DecodeDC to investigate all the thought that goes into the most miniscule details of a political campaign. Andrea reveals seven (and a half) secrets about the staging of events along the campaign trail. Like how every campaign has an "Advance Team" that flies in ahead of a candidate and makes everything from a campaign rally to a 20-minute media appearance run smoothly. Andrea spoke with Advance guys John Seaton and Donnie Fowler, who have been directing this very American brand of political theatre for years. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/61960748 Roman Mars no Benjamen Walker had a theory that priority queues are changing the American experience of waiting in line. So he visited amusement parks, highways, and community colleges to find out how these priority queues work and who is using them. What started as an episode of 99% Invisible became a half-hour radio documentary for the BBC. Along the way Walker met the man that may be responsible for the reason why many Americans know the word “queue” at all: Neil Hunt from Netflix. He has been trying to abandon the word ever since he introduced it into the DVD service over a decade ago. Walker also met up with Susan Crawford and she is a net neutrality advocate who thinks that queues are a good way to examine the pitfalls with what she calls the “cablelization” of the internet. Comcast has taken the lead in providing high-speed internet to consumers, but people like the CEO of Netflix have been critical of how Comcast favors its own video content over video from third party services like Netflix and HBO Go. Crawford’s concerns go way beyond streaming video to the heart of the net neutrality debate: is a market without any meaningful competition a safe place to determine the future of communications in this country? Maybe we should all move to Kansas City. Benjamen Walker had a theory that priority queues… Benjamen Walker had a theory that priority queues are changing the American experience of waiting in line. So he visited amusement parks, highways, and community colleges to find out how these priority queues work and who is using them. What started as an episode of 99% Invisible became a half-hour radio documentary for the BBC. Along the way Walker met the man that may be responsible for the reason why many Americans know the word “queue” at all: Neil Hunt from Netflix. He has been trying to abandon the word ever since he introduced it into the DVD service over a decade ago. Walker also met up with Susan Crawford and she is a net neutrality advocate who thinks that queues are a good way to examine the pitfalls with what she calls the “cablelization” of the internet. Comcast has taken the lead in providing high-speed internet to consumers, but people like the CEO of Netflix have been critical of how Comcast favors its own video content over video from third party services like Netflix and HBO Go. Crawford’s concerns go way beyond streaming video to the heart of the net neutrality debate: is a market without any meaningful competition a safe place to determine the future of communications in this country? Maybe we should all move to Kansas City. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/60489621 Roman Mars no Pneumatic (adj.): of, or pertaining to, air, gases, or wind. In the world before telephone, radio, and email, the tasks of transmitting information and moving material objects were essentially the same challenge. The way you sent someone a message was pretty much the same process as sending someone a package--you had to send a piece of physical media through the post, or on a ship. It was really the telegraph that divided telling someone something from giving someone something. But every day people didn't speak morse code (or have telegraph equipment). The message had to be deciphered, written on a slip of paper, and then that was delivered to the recipient. It's no surprise that electronic communication eventually killed most of the need for pneumatic tubes. But you may not know that it was the telegraph itself that also put pneumatic tubes into widespread use. Architectural historian and pneumatic tube aficionada Molly Wright Steenson leads us through the rise and fall (but not disappearance of) pneumatic tubes in Paris, and beyond. Pneumatic (adj.): of, or pertaining to, air, gas… Pneumatic (adj.): of, or pertaining to, air, gases, or wind. In the world before telephone, radio, and email, the tasks of transmitting information and moving material objects were essentially the same challenge. The way you sent someone a message was pretty much the same process as sending someone a package--you had to send a piece of physical media through the post, or on a ship. It was really the telegraph that divided telling someone something from giving someone something. But every day people didn't speak morse code (or have telegraph equipment). The message had to be deciphered, written on a slip of paper, and then that was delivered to the recipient. It's no surprise that electronic communication eventually killed most of the need for pneumatic tubes. But you may not know that it was the telegraph itself that also put pneumatic tubes into widespread use. Architectural historian and pneumatic tube aficionada Molly Wright Steenson leads us through the rise and fall (but not disappearance of) pneumatic tubes in Paris, and beyond. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/59324611 Roman Mars no Season 3 starts on September 19! From then on you’ll get a new episode every nine days. This is only possible because of your generous support in making 99% Invisible the highest-funded journalism project in Kickstarter history. In the meantime, I still want you to listen to good stories, so I’m showcasing a piece from another podcast I think you’ll really like. I only recently started listening to BackStory with the American History Guys, but it’s already earned a top spot in my crowded weekly rotation. With great stories and lively discussion, the “History Guys” connect our history to the present day. They’ll also help you win your next argument about the causes of the War of 1812. Be prepared. This happens. In this piece, BackStory producers Eric Mennel and Nell Boeschenstein visit Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia to tell the story of a monument in honor of Heyward Shepherd, a “free black,” and the first man killed during John Brown’s 1859 raid. Always Read The Plaque: The text on and around this monument is stunning. I nearly fell down when I read this quote by the United Daughters of the Confederacy from 1905 (inscribed on the nearby Harper’s Ferry History marker) stating that the monument to Heyward Shepherd would “prove that the people of the South who owned slaves valued and respected their good qualities as no one else ever did or will do.” Rarely have I read a sentence that made me want to fall down laughing and punch someone in the face at the same time. Season 3 starts on September 19! From then on you… Season 3 starts on September 19! From then on you’ll get a new episode every nine days. This is only possible because of your generous support in making 99% Invisible the highest-funded journalism project in Kickstarter history. In the meantime, I still want you to listen to good stories, so I’m showcasing a piece from another podcast I think you’ll really like. I only recently started listening to BackStory with the American History Guys, but it’s already earned a top spot in my crowded weekly rotation. With great stories and lively discussion, the “History Guys” connect our history to the present day. They’ll also help you win your next argument about the causes of the War of 1812. Be prepared. This happens. In this piece, BackStory producers Eric Mennel and Nell Boeschenstein visit Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia to tell the story of a monument in honor of Heyward Shepherd, a “free black,” and the first man killed during John Brown’s 1859 raid. Always Read The Plaque: The text on and around this monument is stunning. I nearly fell down when I read this quote by the United Daughters of the Confederacy from 1905 (inscribed on the nearby Harper’s Ferry History marker) stating that the monument to Heyward Shepherd would “prove that the people of the South who owned slaves valued and respected their good qualities as no one else ever did or will do.” Rarely have I read a sentence that made me want to fall down laughing and punch someone in the face at the same time. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/57205234 Roman Mars no Two Storeys: Language Bites and the memory palace While we’re gearing up for season 3, we present two pieces from two shows we love: First up, Language Bites from RTE Choice in Ireland. Language Bites is a series of 1-minute programs exploring the origins of popular phrases in the English language. It’s presented by Colette Kinsella and sound designed by Lochlainn Harte. This episode is about the origin of the word “storey” (or in American English “story”) when used to refer to a level of a building. There are 80 episodes in the series and I just adore them. They are in heavy rotation on the radio stream/station I curate for PRX called Public Radio Remix. Our second selection is from Nate Dimeo’s brilliant show, the memory palace. Each episode of the memory palace features pointedly short, surprising stories about the past. It’s sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hysterical, and often a wonderful mix of both. It was also a huge inspiration in the creation of 99% Invisible. This episode is about the beautiful sculpture and star map commemorating the Hoover Dam. Two Storeys: Language Bites and the memory palace… Two Storeys: Language Bites and the memory palace While we’re gearing up for season 3, we present two pieces from two shows we love: First up, Language Bites from RTE Choice in Ireland. Language Bites is a series of 1-minute programs exploring the origins of popular phrases in the English language. It’s presented by Colette Kinsella and sound designed by Lochlainn Harte. This episode is about the origin of the word “storey” (or in American English “story”) when used to refer to a level of a building. There are 80 episodes in the series and I just adore them. They are in heavy rotation on the radio stream/station I curate for PRX called Public Radio Remix. Our second selection is from Nate Dimeo’s brilliant show, the memory palace. Each episode of the memory palace features pointedly short, surprising stories about the past. It’s sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hysterical, and often a wonderful mix of both. It was also a huge inspiration in the creation of 99% Invisible. This episode is about the beautiful sculpture and star map commemorating the Hoover Dam. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/55402713 Roman Mars no New Public Sites is an investigation into some of the invisible sites and overlooked features of our everyday public spaces. These are the liminal spaces within cities that are not traditionally framed as “public space” because, quite frankly, they are often ugly and unpleasant, the leftover scraps of urban design centered on the automobile. By giving these places succinct, fun and poetic names and leading people on playful walking tours, Graham Coreil-Allen says we can help start a discourse about our public spaces and how we want to envision them for the future. The New Public Sites walking tours will be included in Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, the official U.S. presentation at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale. Stay tuned for at the end of the episode for a message from 99% Invisible producer, Sam Greenspan, on the side of I-40 on his way to his new job with me Northern California. New Public Sites is an investigation into some of… New Public Sites is an investigation into some of the invisible sites and overlooked features of our everyday public spaces. These are the liminal spaces within cities that are not traditionally framed as “public space” because, quite frankly, they are often ugly and unpleasant, the leftover scraps of urban design centered on the automobile. By giving these places succinct, fun and poetic names and leading people on playful walking tours, Graham Coreil-Allen says we can help start a discourse about our public spaces and how we want to envision them for the future. The New Public Sites walking tours will be included in Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, the official U.S. presentation at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale. Stay tuned for at the end of the episode for a message from 99% Invisible producer, Sam Greenspan, on the side of I-40 on his way to his new job with me Northern California. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/54085590 Roman Mars no Episode 59- Some Other Sign that People Do Not Totally Regret Life Sean Cole is a poet and he knows what you think of that. He is also a radio producer. One night, drunk and stumbling around the Hudson River with his friend Malissa O'Donnell, he discovered a monument -- two of them actually -- to two of his poetry heroes. Apropos of the name of this show, the tribute wasn't very obvious. In fact, he and Malissa nearly walked right past it. Still, embedded in the architecture of a 25 year old plaza were the words of Walt Whitman and Frank O'Hara. And weirdly, Sean had he'd been reciting from O'Hara's Lunch Poems just minutes before. Thus began Sean's quest to talk to the people whose idea this was -- forging a largely unloved art form into a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. Along the way he talks with urban landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, former Battery Park official Richard Kahan and none other than Frank O'Hara's younger sister, Maureen O'Hara. Sean Cole and Malissa O'Donnell both work for WNYC's Radiolab. And Sean is also a 99-percentilist from way back. Episode 59- Some Other Sign that People Do Not To… Episode 59- Some Other Sign that People Do Not Totally Regret Life Sean Cole is a poet and he knows what you think of that. He is also a radio producer. One night, drunk and stumbling around the Hudson River with his friend Malissa O'Donnell, he discovered a monument -- two of them actually -- to two of his poetry heroes. Apropos of the name of this show, the tribute wasn't very obvious. In fact, he and Malissa nearly walked right past it. Still, embedded in the architecture of a 25 year old plaza were the words of Walt Whitman and Frank O'Hara. And weirdly, Sean had he'd been reciting from O'Hara's Lunch Poems just minutes before. Thus began Sean's quest to talk to the people whose idea this was -- forging a largely unloved art form into a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. Along the way he talks with urban landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, former Battery Park official Richard Kahan and none other than Frank O'Hara's younger sister, Maureen O'Hara. Sean Cole and Malissa O'Donnell both work for WNYC's Radiolab. And Sean is also a 99-percentilist from way back. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/52755279 Roman Mars no What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent corner of Touhy and Kilbourn Avenues in Lincolnwood, Illinois used to be the town’s most famous building: The first Hyatt hotel in all of Chicagoland, premiere accommodations, top-notch restaurant. It was swank! Roberta Flack stayed there. Barry Mannilow stayed there. Perry Como. Michael Jordon stayed there on his first night in Chicago. Every thirteen year old in the area had their bar mitzvah there. Then, slowly, over time, it became Lincolnwood’s most infamous building. Changed hands, got seedy and run down. It was the home of the Midwest Fetish Fair and Marketplace convention. There were drug-fueled sex parties attended by shady Chicago politicians later convicted of things like extortion. And of course there was the convicted mobster Alan Dorfman, who was gunned down in the parking lot. It’s now dilapidated and empty. But even if you know nothing about the history, everyone in the area knows this hotel. Because it’s purple. Really, really purple. Gwen Macsai grew up nearby and she always thought it was really, really ugly. Lots of people did. To be fair, lots of people didn’t. But everyone has an opinion about it. But Gwen Macsai, host of Re:sound from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, has a secret about the Purple Hotel. Gwen talks to the original architect of the Purple Hotel, plus critic Lee Bey, developer Jack Weiss, and the new architect, Jackie Koo, who’s looking to bring the Purple Hotel back to its former glory. What’s the difference between what the public see… What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent corner of Touhy and Kilbourn Avenues in Lincolnwood, Illinois used to be the town’s most famous building: The first Hyatt hotel in all of Chicagoland, premiere accommodations, top-notch restaurant. It was swank! Roberta Flack stayed there. Barry Mannilow stayed there. Perry Como. Michael Jordon stayed there on his first night in Chicago. Every thirteen year old in the area had their bar mitzvah there. Then, slowly, over time, it became Lincolnwood’s most infamous building. Changed hands, got seedy and run down. It was the home of the Midwest Fetish Fair and Marketplace convention. There were drug-fueled sex parties attended by shady Chicago politicians later convicted of things like extortion. And of course there was the convicted mobster Alan Dorfman, who was gunned down in the parking lot. It’s now dilapidated and empty. But even if you know nothing about the history, everyone in the area knows this hotel. Because it’s purple. Really, really purple. Gwen Macsai grew up nearby and she always thought it was really, really ugly. Lots of people did. To be fair, lots of people didn’t. But everyone has an opinion about it. But Gwen Macsai, host of Re:sound from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, has a secret about the Purple Hotel. Gwen talks to the original architect of the Purple Hotel, plus critic Lee Bey, developer Jack Weiss, and the new architect, Jackie Koo, who’s looking to bring the Purple Hotel back to its former glory. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/51190261 Roman Mars no Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on flashy spots like Apple or Nike or Gatorade. Do you know what wasn’t flashy? Insurance. Which is why when a company called Geico became a client everyone hoped the campaign wouldn’t end up on their desk. Noel ultimately got stuck with Geico. His job was help them somehow figure out a clever, not painfully boring way to explain how simple it was for people to sign up for their insurance online. Maybe you see where this is going. But you don’t know where it came from. Starlee Kine guides us back the surprising, culturally rich path of inspiration that ultimately resulted in a commercial for an insurance company. This story originally appeared at Pop Up Magazine #6 in San Francisco. Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. … Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on flashy spots like Apple or Nike or Gatorade. Do you know what wasn’t flashy? Insurance. Which is why when a company called Geico became a client everyone hoped the campaign wouldn’t end up on their desk. Noel ultimately got stuck with Geico. His job was help them somehow figure out a clever, not painfully boring way to explain how simple it was for people to sign up for their insurance online. Maybe you see where this is going. But you don’t know where it came from. Starlee Kine guides us back the surprising, culturally rich path of inspiration that ultimately resulted in a commercial for an insurance company. This story originally appeared at Pop Up Magazine #6 in San Francisco. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/49685825 Roman Mars no Goethe said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I like that. Of course that was before audio recording, so now, for the most part, music is frozen music. It’s only very recently in the history of music that we’ve been able to freeze music into an object. In my life, the form of this object mattered a lot. I once bought vinyl albums and cassette tapes, where there were two first songs per album, Side A and Side B. The energy of a first song makes it stand apart, at least in my head it does. Then the CD came along and eliminated Side B and there was only first song, and the actual number of a track (that you see prominently on the UI) became my index for sorting songs. Then MP3s jumbled my sense of track order, and albums began to feel more like a loose grouping of individual pieces rather than a conceptual whole. I could name hundreds more examples like these, and I welcome you to chime in, but my point is: the form of the thing matters. But no effect has been as world changing as that original innovation: freezing music in time onto a recording, where a single version of a song, a single performance of a song, became the song. An inherently mutable method of communication was fundamentally changed. I heard a radio broadcast several years ago that really affected the way I thought about all this. Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot are the hosts of a radio program I’m a huge fan of called Sound Opinions (subscribe now). The songwriter, composer, and producer, Jon Brion came to WBEZ in Chicago to talk to Sound Opinions in 2006. At the time, Brion has just co-produced Kanye West’s album Late Registration and he was also already a renowned film composer. In this interview, Brion talks about the difference between what he calls “performance pieces” and “songs” and how recorded music has changed the way we appreciate the different art forms. Special thanks to Sound Opinions for allowing me to rebroadcast this segment. Extra special thanks to SoOps producers, Robin Linn and Jason Saldanha, for being two of my favorite people in public radio. Goethe said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I li… Goethe said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I like that. Of course that was before audio recording, so now, for the most part, music is frozen music. It’s only very recently in the history of music that we’ve been able to freeze music into an object. In my life, the form of this object mattered a lot. I once bought vinyl albums and cassette tapes, where there were two first songs per album, Side A and Side B. The energy of a first song makes it stand apart, at least in my head it does. Then the CD came along and eliminated Side B and there was only first song, and the actual number of a track (that you see prominently on the UI) became my index for sorting songs. Then MP3s jumbled my sense of track order, and albums began to feel more like a loose grouping of individual pieces rather than a conceptual whole. I could name hundreds more examples like these, and I welcome you to chime in, but my point is: the form of the thing matters. But no effect has been as world changing as that original innovation: freezing music in time onto a recording, where a single version of a song, a single performance of a song, became the song. An inherently mutable method of communication was fundamentally changed. I heard a radio broadcast several years ago that really affected the way I thought about all this. Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot are the hosts of a radio program I’m a huge fan of called Sound Opinions (subscribe now). The songwriter, composer, and producer, Jon Brion came to WBEZ in Chicago to talk to Sound Opinions in 2006. At the time, Brion has just co-produced Kanye West’s album Late Registration and he was also already a renowned film composer. In this interview, Brion talks about the difference between what he calls “performance pieces” and “songs” and how recorded music has changed the way we appreciate the different art forms. Special thanks to Sound Opinions for allowing me to rebroadcast this segment. Extra special thanks to SoOps producers, Robin Linn and Jason Saldanha, for being two of my favorite people in public radio. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/48184203 Roman Mars no If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a beer nerd, you’ve heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the 200 Belgian breweries, there’s a very specific sub-type: Trappist beers. According to our reporter Cyrus Farivar (also from Episode #36 “Super Bonn Bon”), there are two things you need to know about Trappist beers. First, they’re amazing. Second, they’re made by Trappist monks. These monks trace their roots to a monastery in 17th century France, and have since spread out to all over the world. The main concept behind the Trappist lifestyle is that the abbey should be economically self-sufficient. In other words, the monks should make something and sell it to the public as a way to fund the operations of the abbey itself. Some make cheese. Some make spirits. There’s even one in Germany that makes lentil soup. But none of the Trappist products are as famous as the beer. The beer that is considered the best of the best is Westvleteren 12. With its plain brown bottle, no label, the only writing is on the cap- the beer is super cool. It’s quite rare and year after year it’s rated the best beer in the world. But here’s the thing about Westvleteren. You can’t just go there and have as much beer as you want. You can’t even have it shipped from the abbey. If you want to buy beer to take with you, you have to look up the beer reservation phone number on the abbey’s website. Then, you call certain phone number during certain hours, on certain days. If you’re lucky enough to talk to a monk to take your reservation, you have to give your license plate number and be available to come pick up your crate during the appointed time that weekend. You’re limited to one crate per person per car, maximum two per car. And, you can’t buy more than one crate during a 60-day period. You also have to agree not to resell the beer. This sort of thing is not unheard of: velvet ropes and random reward have long been imposed to create artificial scarcity to heighten demand, but the mainstream trend today seems to be more geared toward greater access and accommodation for customers. The new ideal is that everything is available, at all times, no matter where you live. Yet the Westvleteren Trappists are trying to make it as difficult as possible. Jef van den Steen, author of a book called “Trappist: The Seven Heavenly Beers” and an acclaimed brewer himself, says that’s not the case, “Before, Westvleteren was only well-known was in Belgium. And now it’s worldwide, and that’s the problem. They decide we will brew the same amount as the last 40-50 years, and they have enough for that, so why must they brew more? Because you want? No. They live between the walls of the abbey, so for them it’s not a problem.” The “customer service” is not designed to provide convenience for the consumer of their beer, it is designed for monks themselves. Their “customer” is God. They have a mission, and making beer is only a fraction of that. The Head of the Abbey says, "We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks." Cyrus Farivar recently returned to California after having lived in Bonn, Germany for two years. These days, he can be found frequenting The Trappist bar in downtown Oakland. He plans on presenting a bottle of Westvleteren 12 to his favorite bar owners. His book, "The Internet of Elsewhere," was published last year. If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a b… If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a beer nerd, you’ve heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the 200 Belgian breweries, there’s a very specific sub-type: Trappist beers. According to our reporter Cyrus Farivar (also from Episode #36 “Super Bonn Bon”), there are two things you need to know about Trappist beers. First, they’re amazing. Second, they’re made by Trappist monks. These monks trace their roots to a monastery in 17th century France, and have since spread out to all over the world. The main concept behind the Trappist lifestyle is that the abbey should be economically self-sufficient. In other words, the monks should make something and sell it to the public as a way to fund the operations of the abbey itself. Some make cheese. Some make spirits. There’s even one in Germany that makes lentil soup. But none of the Trappist products are as famous as the beer. The beer that is considered the best of the best is Westvleteren 12. With its plain brown bottle, no label, the only writing is on the cap- the beer is super cool. It’s quite rare and year after year it’s rated the best beer in the world. But here’s the thing about Westvleteren. You can’t just go there and have as much beer as you want. You can’t even have it shipped from the abbey. If you want to buy beer to take with you, you have to look up the beer reservation phone number on the abbey’s website. Then, you call certain phone number during certain hours, on certain days. If you’re lucky enough to talk to a monk to take your reservation, you have to give your license plate number and be available to come pick up your crate during the appointed time that weekend. You’re limited to one crate per person per car, maximum two per car. And, you can’t buy more than one crate during a 60-day period. You also have to agree not to resell the beer. This sort of thing is not unheard of: velvet ropes and random reward have long been imposed to create artificial scarcity to heighten demand, but the mainstream trend today seems to be more geared toward greater access and accommodation for customers. The new ideal is that everything is available, at all times, no matter where you live. Yet the Westvleteren Trappists are trying to make it as difficult as possible. Jef van den Steen, author of a book called “Trappist: The Seven Heavenly Beers” and an acclaimed brewer himself, says that’s not the case, “Before, Westvleteren was only well-known was in Belgium. And now it’s worldwide, and that’s the problem. They decide we will brew the same amount as the last 40-50 years, and they have enough for that, so why must they brew more? Because you want? No. They live between the walls of the abbey, so for them it’s not a problem.” The “customer service” is not designed to provide convenience for the consumer of their beer, it is designed for monks themselves. Their “customer” is God. They have a mission, and making beer is only a fraction of that. The Head of the Abbey says, "We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks." Cyrus Farivar recently returned to California after having lived in Bonn, Germany for two years. These days, he can be found frequenting The Trappist bar in downtown Oakland. He plans on presenting a bottle of Westvleteren 12 to his favorite bar owners. His book, "The Internet of Elsewhere," was published last year. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/46620117 Roman Mars no US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture one online) and just take really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it’s just dreadful. Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar Rede$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism. The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UF4j3x6PJM0 It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency. But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note. Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone. US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really… US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture one online) and just take really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it’s just dreadful. Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar Rede$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism. The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UF4j3x6PJM0 It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency. But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note. Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/45000323 Roman Mars no What happens when we build big? Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas’s then-new city hall when she was teenager. The building, designed by I.M. Pei, is a huge trapezoid jutting out over a wide plaza. Julia found the view from the top pretty fantastic, especially when munching on a Caramello bar from the City Hall vending machines. But once she went to a protest in the plaza below. And those same windows, now hulking over her, made her feel small, and the whole event insignificant. Texans have a fondness for big structures—big arenas, big houses, big freeways. Julia wasn’t sure if their hidden message wasn’t simply this: I’m important, you’re nobody. For people who distrust the big project, Edward Tenner’s 2001 essay “The Xanadu Effect” is some comfort. Tenner, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, ponders the ways in which obsession with bigness can presage hard times for a business or even a nation. Tenner named his essay not for Olivia Newton-John’s anthem or even the Coleridge poem, but for the palace Xanadu built in the movie “Citizen Kane.” That Xanadu, of course, was based on a real-life palace that newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst built in his waning days of empire: On its 24,000 acres were a 354,000-gallon swimming pool, a private zoo and four main buildings with a total of 165 rooms. Along with other such extravagances, the estate helped send Hearst into trusteeship late in life. The cavernous halls of Welles' gloomy cinematic Xanadu seemed to film-goers -- as the real, happier building must have appeared to many Hearst Corp. public investors -- the very image of the pride that goes before a fall. The downside of the Xanadu Effect has seen itself play out in other places—the Empire State Building, for example, was conceived in the 1920s but completed during the Great Depression, when it was known as “the Empty State Building.” Tenner’s not arguing that big things shouldn’t be built; he’s saying bigness is a gamble. It pays off when it it uplifts people, gives them a sense of grandeur and purpose. It fails when it crushes them or just makes life a pain, as in the big-built city of Moscow, where pedestrians have to scurry under the wide avenues in tunnels. On a recent reporting trip to Russia for PRI’s “The World,” Julia travelled to Sochi, Russia’s southern-most city and upcoming host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is Europe’s biggest construction site right now, with Xanadu-like ice-palaces going up right on the Black Sea. All the construction—including billions of dollars of infrastructure—is good news for the Russian state and shoring up its presence in the Caucasus. It’s not necessarily good news for the locals. Julia interviewed a Sochi resident, Alexei Kravets, who’s been in a stand-off with authorities about the fate of the home he built by the Black Sea. Kravets’s court case to save his home has been standing in the way of a new railway complex. Construction workers have been throwing rocks through his windows, scraping his walls with backhoes, and hauling away his storage units. Kravets has been confronting them on film. It’s a dramatic example of big vs. small, but this type of conflict often happens in the face of massive development. Edward Tenner says beyond just governments or private developers, we all need to think more carefully about the costs and benefits of building big. “Bigness is a strategy that just about always fails, unless it succeeds. Or you could say it always succeeds except when it fails. And there really is no one way that you can regard it. You have to see it as a very powerful, easy-to-misuse, but also tempting way to go about things in life,” he says. What happens when we build big? Julia Barton rem… What happens when we build big? Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas’s then-new city hall when she was teenager. The building, designed by I.M. Pei, is a huge trapezoid jutting out over a wide plaza. Julia found the view from the top pretty fantastic, especially when munching on a Caramello bar from the City Hall vending machines. But once she went to a protest in the plaza below. And those same windows, now hulking over her, made her feel small, and the whole event insignificant. Texans have a fondness for big structures—big arenas, big houses, big freeways. Julia wasn’t sure if their hidden message wasn’t simply this: I’m important, you’re nobody. For people who distrust the big project, Edward Tenner’s 2001 essay “The Xanadu Effect” is some comfort. Tenner, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, ponders the ways in which obsession with bigness can presage hard times for a business or even a nation. Tenner named his essay not for Olivia Newton-John’s anthem or even the Coleridge poem, but for the palace Xanadu built in the movie “Citizen Kane.” That Xanadu, of course, was based on a real-life palace that newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst built in his waning days of empire: On its 24,000 acres were a 354,000-gallon swimming pool, a private zoo and four main buildings with a total of 165 rooms. Along with other such extravagances, the estate helped send Hearst into trusteeship late in life. The cavernous halls of Welles' gloomy cinematic Xanadu seemed to film-goers -- as the real, happier building must have appeared to many Hearst Corp. public investors -- the very image of the pride that goes before a fall. The downside of the Xanadu Effect has seen itself play out in other places—the Empire State Building, for example, was conceived in the 1920s but completed during the Great Depression, when it was known as “the Empty State Building.” Tenner’s not arguing that big things shouldn’t be built; he’s saying bigness is a gamble. It pays off when it it uplifts people, gives them a sense of grandeur and purpose. It fails when it crushes them or just makes life a pain, as in the big-built city of Moscow, where pedestrians have to scurry under the wide avenues in tunnels. On a recent reporting trip to Russia for PRI’s “The World,” Julia travelled to Sochi, Russia’s southern-most city and upcoming host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is Europe’s biggest construction site right now, with Xanadu-like ice-palaces going up right on the Black Sea. All the construction—including billions of dollars of infrastructure—is good news for the Russian state and shoring up its presence in the Caucasus. It’s not necessarily good news for the locals. Julia interviewed a Sochi resident, Alexei Kravets, who’s been in a stand-off with authorities about the fate of the home he built by the Black Sea. Kravets’s court case to save his home has been standing in the way of a new railway complex. Construction workers have been throwing rocks through his windows, scraping his walls with backhoes, and hauling away his storage units. Kravets has been confronting them on film. It’s a dramatic example of big vs. small, but this type of conflict often happens in the face of massive development. Edward Tenner says beyond just governments or private developers, we all need to think more carefully about the costs and benefits of building big. “Bigness is a strategy that just about always fails, unless it succeeds. Or you could say it always succeeds except when it fails. And there really is no one way that you can regard it. You have to see it as a very powerful, easy-to-misuse, but also tempting way to go about things in life,” he says. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/43557714 Roman Mars no Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisseiff to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was that the 25 foot lattice of stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings, were replaced with 8 foot solid steel plate girders. The new solid girder along the side in Moisseiff’s design made for a much lighter and more flexible bridge-- it also caught the wind like a sail-- but they didn’t know that. Moisseiff’s design was also 2/3 the price of the original Eldridge design and that fact ultimately won the day. Motorists who used the bridge found out first hand why it got the name Galloping Gertie, and during the four months while the bridge was open, many traveled from far away just to ride the undulating waves as they crossed high above Puget Sound. The thrill ride didn’t last long. On November 7, 1940 stiff winds caused the road deck to twist violently along its center axis. The center span endured these brutal torsional forces for about an hour and finally gave way. The collapse of the twisting suspension bridge is one of the most dramatic images caught on film. I talked to John Marr from the seminal zine Murder Can Be Fun for this story and I’d like to give a shout out to Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting for independently suggesting Galloping Gertie and publishing a great, much more detailed account of the disaster on his site. Even during the construction of the original Taco… Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisseiff to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was that the 25 foot lattice of stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings, were replaced with 8 foot solid steel plate girders. The new solid girder along the side in Moisseiff’s design made for a much lighter and more flexible bridge-- it also caught the wind like a sail-- but they didn’t know that. Moisseiff’s design was also 2/3 the price of the original Eldridge design and that fact ultimately won the day. Motorists who used the bridge found out first hand why it got the name Galloping Gertie, and during the four months while the bridge was open, many traveled from far away just to ride the undulating waves as they crossed high above Puget Sound. The thrill ride didn’t last long. On November 7, 1940 stiff winds caused the road deck to twist violently along its center axis. The center span endured these brutal torsional forces for about an hour and finally gave way. The collapse of the twisting suspension bridge is one of the most dramatic images caught on film. I talked to John Marr from the seminal zine Murder Can Be Fun for this story and I’d like to give a shout out to Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting for independently suggesting Galloping Gertie and publishing a great, much more detailed account of the disaster on his site. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/41946746 Roman Mars no "Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart" Daniel D'Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners. Cities are great. They have movement, activity and diversity. But go to any city and it’s pretty clear, a place can be diverse without really being integrated. This segregation isn’t accidental. There are design elements in the urban landscape, that Daniel D’Oca calls “weapons,” that are used by “architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists, neighborhood associations, and individuals to wage the ongoing war between integration and segregation.” Daniel D'Oca is an urban planner with Interboro Partners, an architecture and design firm based in New York City. Over the past few years, D'Oca, along with colleagues lTobias Armborst and Georgeen Theodore have been cataloguing all the stuff inside of a city that planners use to increase or restrict people's access to space. They're publishing their findings in a book called The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion: 101 Things That Open And Close the City (Fall 2012). D’Oca took our own San Greenspan and Scott Goldberg on a tour of Baltimore to demonstrate the subtle ways different neighborhoods are kept apart. "Cities exist to bring people together, but citie… "Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart" Daniel D'Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners. Cities are great. They have movement, activity and diversity. But go to any city and it’s pretty clear, a place can be diverse without really being integrated. This segregation isn’t accidental. There are design elements in the urban landscape, that Daniel D’Oca calls “weapons,” that are used by “architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists, neighborhood associations, and individuals to wage the ongoing war between integration and segregation.” Daniel D'Oca is an urban planner with Interboro Partners, an architecture and design firm based in New York City. Over the past few years, D'Oca, along with colleagues lTobias Armborst and Georgeen Theodore have been cataloguing all the stuff inside of a city that planners use to increase or restrict people's access to space. They're publishing their findings in a book called The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion: 101 Things That Open And Close the City (Fall 2012). D’Oca took our own San Greenspan and Scott Goldberg on a tour of Baltimore to demonstrate the subtle ways different neighborhoods are kept apart. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/40659395 Roman Mars no The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it’s the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture. Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and for the last 3 years, they’ve re-thought principles of architecture with one question at the forefront: how do deaf people communicate in space? Unlike hearing people, the deaf have to keep sightlines in order to maintain conversations. So when deaf people walk and talk, they’ll lock into a kind of dance. Going through a doorway, one person will spin in place and walk backwards to keep talking. Walking past a column, two deaf people in conversation will move in tandem to avoid collision. Spaces designed for the hearing can also give the deaf a great deal of anxiety – when you can’t hear footsteps from around the corner or behind you, you can’t anticipate who or what is around you. Robert Sirvage is a deaf designer, researcher, and professor at Gallaudet, and in collaboration with Hansel Bauman -- who is not deaf – they’ve developed a project called DeafSpace. Reporter Tom Dreisbach took a tour through the new building at Gallaudet that is incorporating the innovations of DeafSpace to create an environment more pleasing to everyone, both hearing and deaf. The acoustics of a building are a big concern for… The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it’s the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture. Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and for the last 3 years, they’ve re-thought principles of architecture with one question at the forefront: how do deaf people communicate in space? Unlike hearing people, the deaf have to keep sightlines in order to maintain conversations. So when deaf people walk and talk, they’ll lock into a kind of dance. Going through a doorway, one person will spin in place and walk backwards to keep talking. Walking past a column, two deaf people in conversation will move in tandem to avoid collision. Spaces designed for the hearing can also give the deaf a great deal of anxiety – when you can’t hear footsteps from around the corner or behind you, you can’t anticipate who or what is around you. Robert Sirvage is a deaf designer, researcher, and professor at Gallaudet, and in collaboration with Hansel Bauman -- who is not deaf – they’ve developed a project called DeafSpace. Reporter Tom Dreisbach took a tour through the new building at Gallaudet that is incorporating the innovations of DeafSpace to create an environment more pleasing to everyone, both hearing and deaf. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/39173779 Roman Mars no In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue. My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of queue violence. This preoccupation led him to find a man known as “Dr. Queue.” Richard Larson is a queue theorist at MIT and he talks us through some of the logic behind the design of queues. Whereas US companies like Wendy’s and American Airlines once prided themselves on their invention of the single serpentine, first-come first-served queue, more and more companies are instituting priority queues, offering different wait times for different classes of customers. Benjamen Walker is the host and producer of Too Much Information from WFMU. TMI explores the issues and conflicts of life in the digital era and regularly features some of the leading sages of the information age as well as original fiction and radio drama. It’s very important that you subscribe to this podcast. He is also the host and producer of Big Ideas, a monthly philosophy program from The Guardian UK. Again, it’s just too good to miss. In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s of… In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue. My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of queue violence. This preoccupation led him to find a man known as “Dr. Queue.” Richard Larson is a queue theorist at MIT and he talks us through some of the logic behind the design of queues. Whereas US companies like Wendy’s and American Airlines once prided themselves on their invention of the single serpentine, first-come first-served queue, more and more companies are instituting priority queues, offering different wait times for different classes of customers. Benjamen Walker is the host and producer of Too Much Information from WFMU. TMI explores the issues and conflicts of life in the digital era and regularly features some of the leading sages of the information age as well as original fiction and radio drama. It’s very important that you subscribe to this podcast. He is also the host and producer of Big Ideas, a monthly philosophy program from The Guardian UK. Again, it’s just too good to miss. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/37925518 Roman Mars no “I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” -Andrea Seabrook, NPR Congressional Correspondent In the eight years Andrea Seabrook has been reporting on Congress, she has made it a point to get to know the whole Capitol building. "The members of the House Republican Caucus--and sometimes the Democrats--meet in the basement for their closed door secret strategy sessions," Andrea says. "And it's really good place to get a tip from members that you know about what’s going on." One day, after getting the info she needed for her story, she decided to press further on into the depths of the Capitol. That's when she found the marble bathtubs. The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers--like most Americans at the time--didn't have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement--three on the House side, three on the senate. Today, only two tubs remain on the Senate side, in a room which now stores the building's heating and cooling equipment. But evidence of room's former grandeur remains. “I have this habit of walking into any door that’… “I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” -Andrea Seabrook, NPR Congressional Correspondent In the eight years Andrea Seabrook has been reporting on Congress, she has made it a point to get to know the whole Capitol building. "The members of the House Republican Caucus--and sometimes the Democrats--meet in the basement for their closed door secret strategy sessions," Andrea says. "And it's really good place to get a tip from members that you know about what’s going on." One day, after getting the info she needed for her story, she decided to press further on into the depths of the Capitol. That's when she found the marble bathtubs. The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers--like most Americans at the time--didn't have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement--three on the House side, three on the senate. Today, only two tubs remain on the Senate side, in a room which now stores the building's heating and cooling equipment. But evidence of room's former grandeur remains. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/36137744 Roman Mars no "Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work." -Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services Stamps design takes, on average, a year to a year and a half, from conception to execution. Unfortunately, most of the stamps we encounter on a day-to-day basis are the rather predictable flag, bell, and love stamps, but there are some really fantastic commemorative stamps, which are supremely functional and affordable tiny works of art. To determine what should go on a US stamp, the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee combs through nearly 50,000 suggestions per year offered by the general public. Once the subjects are chosen and approved by the Postmaster General, they are assigned to a handful of art directors to be designed. There are loads guidelines to help stamp subject selection, but one of the big rules recently changed. In 2012, the first living person will be commemorated on an official USPS stamp. If you were the Postmaster General, whom would you pick? Julie Shapiro, Art Director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival, produced this episode. Julie spoke with Terry McCaffrey, the retired manager of stamp development for the USPS Stamp Services Office, and Ethel Kessler, an Art Director who’s been working with Stamp Services for over 15 years. "Somebody might be able to do a great painting th… "Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work." -Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services Stamps design takes, on average, a year to a year and a half, from conception to execution. Unfortunately, most of the stamps we encounter on a day-to-day basis are the rather predictable flag, bell, and love stamps, but there are some really fantastic commemorative stamps, which are supremely functional and affordable tiny works of art. To determine what should go on a US stamp, the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee combs through nearly 50,000 suggestions per year offered by the general public. Once the subjects are chosen and approved by the Postmaster General, they are assigned to a handful of art directors to be designed. There are loads guidelines to help stamp subject selection, but one of the big rules recently changed. In 2012, the first living person will be commemorated on an official USPS stamp. If you were the Postmaster General, whom would you pick? Julie Shapiro, Art Director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival, produced this episode. Julie spoke with Terry McCaffrey, the retired manager of stamp development for the USPS Stamp Services Office, and Ethel Kessler, an Art Director who’s been working with Stamp Services for over 15 years. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/34681257 Roman Mars no Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very hard, very painful and very expensive material, like gold or ivory. They were a luxury item. The invention of Vulcanite hard rubber changed everything. It was moldable, it could be precisely fitted, and it was relatively cheap. Everyone began making dentures with Vulcanite bases. But in 1864, a long disputed patent application, originally filed in 1852, was awarded and then acquired by the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. It was an outfit created to collect fees, or very often, sue dentists who already used vulcanite, and there were plenty of dentists to go after. The person in charge of pursuing the violators was Josiah Bacon, the treasurer of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. The patent was enforced with extreme prejudice, despite the protestations of the US dental profession. To quote the secretary of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company, Ernest Caduc: “Many dentists…relying upon the secret nature of the business, prefer to steal this property rather than buy it…” It all came to a head on Easter Sunday in 1879. A Vulcanite denture patent violating dentist named Samuel Chalfant went to settle his business with his pursuer, Josiah Bacon, in his San Francisco hotel room. Chalfant brought a gun. A print version of this story originally appeared in the fanzine Murder Can Be Fun by John Marr. Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very … Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very hard, very painful and very expensive material, like gold or ivory. They were a luxury item. The invention of Vulcanite hard rubber changed everything. It was moldable, it could be precisely fitted, and it was relatively cheap. Everyone began making dentures with Vulcanite bases. But in 1864, a long disputed patent application, originally filed in 1852, was awarded and then acquired by the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. It was an outfit created to collect fees, or very often, sue dentists who already used vulcanite, and there were plenty of dentists to go after. The person in charge of pursuing the violators was Josiah Bacon, the treasurer of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. The patent was enforced with extreme prejudice, despite the protestations of the US dental profession. To quote the secretary of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company, Ernest Caduc: “Many dentists…relying upon the secret nature of the business, prefer to steal this property rather than buy it…” It all came to a head on Easter Sunday in 1879. A Vulcanite denture patent violating dentist named Samuel Chalfant went to settle his business with his pursuer, Josiah Bacon, in his San Francisco hotel room. Chalfant brought a gun. A print version of this story originally appeared in the fanzine Murder Can Be Fun by John Marr. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/33816448 Roman Mars no Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to be Afraid) and their last album, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, came out in 2004. In the interim, the singer/guitarist/producer for Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, got very sick and nearly died. That can be enough to make anyone stop making music, but in Clark’s case, he continued to make music, but he just never felt the need to release a record or play live. His music was just for him and his friends, and that was OK. But a strange confluence of opportunity, desire and architecture knocked Beauty Pill out of their unforced exile. The curators at a new multimedia art center called Artisphere invited Chad Clark to come in and do something musical in the space. While they were showing him around, he saw the angled, 2ndfloor window overlooking the Black Box Theater and it reminded him of the window in Abbey Road Studio 2, made famous by The Beatles. Months later, the Black Box Theater was transformed into a very public recording studio, capturing the sounds and energy of the band, onlookers and guests over the course of a couple weeks. They called the project Immersive Ideal. Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington… Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to be Afraid) and their last album, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, came out in 2004. In the interim, the singer/guitarist/producer for Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, got very sick and nearly died. That can be enough to make anyone stop making music, but in Clark’s case, he continued to make music, but he just never felt the need to release a record or play live. His music was just for him and his friends, and that was OK. But a strange confluence of opportunity, desire and architecture knocked Beauty Pill out of their unforced exile. The curators at a new multimedia art center called Artisphere invited Chad Clark to come in and do something musical in the space. While they were showing him around, he saw the angled, 2ndfloor window overlooking the Black Box Theater and it reminded him of the window in Abbey Road Studio 2, made famous by The Beatles. Months later, the Black Box Theater was transformed into a very public recording studio, capturing the sounds and energy of the band, onlookers and guests over the course of a couple weeks. They called the project Immersive Ideal. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/32550961 Roman Mars no The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the 1950’s were supposed to solve the impending population crisis in inner city St. Louis. It was supposed to save the urban poor from the indignities of the downtown slums that lacked natural light, water and fresh air. And for a short while, it worked. It was a housing marvel. But when conditions started to decline, everything got very bad, very fast. It got so bad, only two decades after it was built; the housing authority blew it up. The image of the first Pruitt-Igoe controlled implosion circled the globe. The implosion footage became the unassailable proof that Modernist architecture and federal housing just didn’t work. Chad Freidrichs is the director of the new documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth and in the film he examines all the reasons people cite for the demise of Pruitt-Igoe. In this episode of 99% Invisible, we focus on the popular idea that the architecture was to blame. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis beca… The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the 1950’s were supposed to solve the impending population crisis in inner city St. Louis. It was supposed to save the urban poor from the indignities of the downtown slums that lacked natural light, water and fresh air. And for a short while, it worked. It was a housing marvel. But when conditions started to decline, everything got very bad, very fast. It got so bad, only two decades after it was built; the housing authority blew it up. The image of the first Pruitt-Igoe controlled implosion circled the globe. The implosion footage became the unassailable proof that Modernist architecture and federal housing just didn’t work. Chad Freidrichs is the director of the new documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth and in the film he examines all the reasons people cite for the demise of Pruitt-Igoe. In this episode of 99% Invisible, we focus on the popular idea that the architecture was to blame. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/31021709 Roman Mars no “There's a secret jazz seeping from Washington's aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?” -Chris Richards, “Move along with the soundtrack of Metro's screechy, wailing escalators” Washington Post Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours. And if you think that a “slightly broken” escalator can’t be lovable, then our own Sam Greenspan would like to introduce you to Chris Richards. Chris Richards is a music critic for the Washington Post, and after years of ignoring the wailing and screeching of the much maligned, often broken escalators in the DC Metro, he began to hear them in a new way. He began to hear them as music. “There's a secret jazz seeping from Washington's … “There's a secret jazz seeping from Washington's aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?” -Chris Richards, “Move along with the soundtrack of Metro's screechy, wailing escalators” Washington Post Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours. And if you think that a “slightly broken” escalator can’t be lovable, then our own Sam Greenspan would like to introduce you to Chris Richards. Chris Richards is a music critic for the Washington Post, and after years of ignoring the wailing and screeching of the much maligned, often broken escalators in the DC Metro, he began to hear them in a new way. He began to hear them as music. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/30128741 Roman Mars no Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who… have been variously described as hackers, hacktivists, free-expression zealots, Internet troublemakers, and assorted combinations thereof.” But when Anonymous came up against the Church of Scientiology, a small, non-hierarchical collection of Anons decided to take the disparate phrases, images and ideas circling around the 4Chan /b/ message board (where Anonymous has its roots) and combine them into a very engaging and effective “brand identity” (for lack of a better word). The over-the-top, ominous voice of Anonymous was codified by an online video and manifesto directed at the Church of Scientology. The Anonymous logo is comprised of a headless man in a suit, with a question mark where the head should be, juxtaposed against a UN flag. According to Walker, the logo is “a cleverly subversive, and ironic, appropriation and exploitation of paranoia about Big Brother-style faceless power.” And then there’s the mask. Appropriated from the graphic novel and movie “V for Vendetta,” the V mask has become the de facto public face of Anonymous, and it serves as such a powerful image that it has skipped over into other street protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this episode, Rob Walker explores the origins of the meme-like images in the Anonymous “visual brand” and explains why these icons so powerfully define a phenomenon that eschews definition. This piece was produced by me and Rob Walker based on his article “Recognizably Anonymous” in Slate. Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization… Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who… have been variously described as hackers, hacktivists, free-expression zealots, Internet troublemakers, and assorted combinations thereof.” But when Anonymous came up against the Church of Scientiology, a small, non-hierarchical collection of Anons decided to take the disparate phrases, images and ideas circling around the 4Chan /b/ message board (where Anonymous has its roots) and combine them into a very engaging and effective “brand identity” (for lack of a better word). The over-the-top, ominous voice of Anonymous was codified by an online video and manifesto directed at the Church of Scientology. The Anonymous logo is comprised of a headless man in a suit, with a question mark where the head should be, juxtaposed against a UN flag. According to Walker, the logo is “a cleverly subversive, and ironic, appropriation and exploitation of paranoia about Big Brother-style faceless power.” And then there’s the mask. Appropriated from the graphic novel and movie “V for Vendetta,” the V mask has become the de facto public face of Anonymous, and it serves as such a powerful image that it has skipped over into other street protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this episode, Rob Walker explores the origins of the meme-like images in the Anonymous “visual brand” and explains why these icons so powerfully define a phenomenon that eschews definition. This piece was produced by me and Rob Walker based on his article “Recognizably Anonymous” in Slate. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/29591475 Roman Mars no “There’s a whole universe in every single object when put in relationship with a human.” – Paolo Antonelli Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent blockbuster show, Talk to Me, explored the communication between people and objects: from chairs that talk to subway kiosks. It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated by all the human-object interactions in the modern world. I’ve never used a “coin return” button on a vending machine that worked and there is interesting criticism of the increasingly common “pictures under glass” type of interface on the iPhone and iPad. But as Paola Antonelli explains to producer Benjamen Walker, the evolution of communication design is pointing to a world that minimizes human-object interfaces and leaves us to free to focus on real human habits and needs. “There’s a whole universe in every single object … “There’s a whole universe in every single object when put in relationship with a human.” – Paolo Antonelli Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent blockbuster show, Talk to Me, explored the communication between people and objects: from chairs that talk to subway kiosks. It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated by all the human-object interactions in the modern world. I’ve never used a “coin return” button on a vending machine that worked and there is interesting criticism of the increasingly common “pictures under glass” type of interface on the iPhone and iPad. But as Paola Antonelli explains to producer Benjamen Walker, the evolution of communication design is pointing to a world that minimizes human-object interfaces and leaves us to free to focus on real human habits and needs. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/28789617 Roman Mars no It’s totally unfair. Hydrox cookies came out four years before the introduction of Oreos, but Hydrox could never shake the image that it was a cheap knock-off, an also-ran. As a consumer product, it’s completely out of your hands if you’re deemed a mighty Transformer, or a loathsome Gobot. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense at all. But sometimes it does. This is the tale of two toys with two very different fates. The Teddy Bear, named after the charismatic president Theodore Roosevelt, was a sensation in the early twentieth century. It even displaced baby dolls as the top toy in all of the United States, but no one thought it would last.The burgeoning mass-market toy industry thought the bear was a novelty that would die out once Teddy Roosevelt left office in 1909. So the powers that be went on the search for the next cuddly companion that America’s children would adore. It was completely logical that they looked at the next president for inspiration, Roosevelt’s handpicked successor, William Howard Taft. In 1909, the toy makers of America placed their bets on the Taft presidency’s answer to the Teddy Bear: the Billy Possum. This story comes to us from the insanely talented Jon Mooallem. He first presented a version of this story at Pop-Up Magazine #5 in San Francisco (which I totally had tickets for, but was too sick to attend). He’s working on a book about people and animals for Penguin Press. He’s my favorite person to follow on twitter (@jmooallem) because he regularly posts strange animal facts that he comes across in his research. It’s totally unfair. Hydrox cookies came out four… It’s totally unfair. Hydrox cookies came out four years before the introduction of Oreos, but Hydrox could never shake the image that it was a cheap knock-off, an also-ran. As a consumer product, it’s completely out of your hands if you’re deemed a mighty Transformer, or a loathsome Gobot. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense at all. But sometimes it does. This is the tale of two toys with two very different fates. The Teddy Bear, named after the charismatic president Theodore Roosevelt, was a sensation in the early twentieth century. It even displaced baby dolls as the top toy in all of the United States, but no one thought it would last.The burgeoning mass-market toy industry thought the bear was a novelty that would die out once Teddy Roosevelt left office in 1909. So the powers that be went on the search for the next cuddly companion that America’s children would adore. It was completely logical that they looked at the next president for inspiration, Roosevelt’s handpicked successor, William Howard Taft. In 1909, the toy makers of America placed their bets on the Taft presidency’s answer to the Teddy Bear: the Billy Possum. This story comes to us from the insanely talented Jon Mooallem. He first presented a version of this story at Pop-Up Magazine #5 in San Francisco (which I totally had tickets for, but was too sick to attend). He’s working on a book about people and animals for Penguin Press. He’s my favorite person to follow on twitter (@jmooallem) because he regularly posts strange animal facts that he comes across in his research. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/28310780 Roman Mars no In the center of San Francisco, there is a plaza with no benches. Its central feature at the entrance of the plaza is a unique fountain that was designed by Lawrence Halprin in 1975.The water shoots out at various angles, from inside a sunken pit, filled with large granite slabs. It’s a design that kind of pulls you in and invites you to take the steps down to the water and climb in between the hulking stones. And that’s part of the problem. In 2004, radio producer Ben Temchine, created a really fantastic documentary of UN Plaza, called “The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet” that first aired on my first radio program called Invisible Ink in May of 2004. (Yep another "invisible" show) The documentary really takes a hard look at UN Plaza when it was really at its worst and asks the question, is there a point where good the intentions and idealism of a design become so removed from reality, that it actually borders on negligence? In the center of San Francisco, there is a plaza … In the center of San Francisco, there is a plaza with no benches. Its central feature at the entrance of the plaza is a unique fountain that was designed by Lawrence Halprin in 1975.The water shoots out at various angles, from inside a sunken pit, filled with large granite slabs. It’s a design that kind of pulls you in and invites you to take the steps down to the water and climb in between the hulking stones. And that’s part of the problem. In 2004, radio producer Ben Temchine, created a really fantastic documentary of UN Plaza, called “The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet” that first aired on my first radio program called Invisible Ink in May of 2004. (Yep another "invisible" show) The documentary really takes a hard look at UN Plaza when it was really at its worst and asks the question, is there a point where good the intentions and idealism of a design become so removed from reality, that it actually borders on negligence? tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/26631987 Roman Mars no It's hard to imagine a place where more desperate and depressing drama unfolds on a daily basis than a family courthouse- custody battles, abuse, divorce- and if you were to design a place to reflect and amplify that misery, not mitigate it, it'd probably take the form of the old New York County Family Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. The original shiny black cube, built in 1975, was referred to as the “Darth Vader building” by court employees (presumably after 1977). The foreboding and intimidating structure is primarily criticized in relation to its function as a family courthouse, which should strive to inspire a feeling of trust, authority, and (one hopes) inclusion. The building was remodeled in 2006. The bones are largely the same, but the shiny, black cladding is gone, replaced by a more conventional grey/beige. The problematic entrance to the building has been completely opened up, making ingress and egress a much less daunting proposition. To quote our 99% Invisible reporter this week, Brett Myers, “walking into the building is no longer like being consumed by a beast.” But a little something was lost in the facelift. The original building was definitely not boring and commanded your attention. I don’t know if the same can be said for the current design. Modern design principles and cultural preservation are not necessarily at loggerheads, but when they do come into conflict, it’s not always easy answer which ideology should win. It's hard to imagine a place where more desperate… It's hard to imagine a place where more desperate and depressing drama unfolds on a daily basis than a family courthouse- custody battles, abuse, divorce- and if you were to design a place to reflect and amplify that misery, not mitigate it, it'd probably take the form of the old New York County Family Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. The original shiny black cube, built in 1975, was referred to as the “Darth Vader building” by court employees (presumably after 1977). The foreboding and intimidating structure is primarily criticized in relation to its function as a family courthouse, which should strive to inspire a feeling of trust, authority, and (one hopes) inclusion. The building was remodeled in 2006. The bones are largely the same, but the shiny, black cladding is gone, replaced by a more conventional grey/beige. The problematic entrance to the building has been completely opened up, making ingress and egress a much less daunting proposition. To quote our 99% Invisible reporter this week, Brett Myers, “walking into the building is no longer like being consumed by a beast.” But a little something was lost in the facelift. The original building was definitely not boring and commanded your attention. I don’t know if the same can be said for the current design. Modern design principles and cultural preservation are not necessarily at loggerheads, but when they do come into conflict, it’s not always easy answer which ideology should win. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/25417538 Roman Mars no If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their job right, you probably don’t notice that they’re doing their job. But they are so good at doing their job, that you probably don’t even know that their job exists at all. They are sound designers for televised sporting events. Their job is to draw the audience into the action and make sports sound as exciting as possible, and this doesn’t mean they put a bunch of microphones on the field. This episode of 99% Invisible is produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions. It is an extract from a much longer, and really stunning doc called “The Sound of Sport.” If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their… If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their job right, you probably don’t notice that they’re doing their job. But they are so good at doing their job, that you probably don’t even know that their job exists at all. They are sound designers for televised sporting events. Their job is to draw the audience into the action and make sports sound as exciting as possible, and this doesn’t mean they put a bunch of microphones on the field. This episode of 99% Invisible is produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions. It is an extract from a much longer, and really stunning doc called “The Sound of Sport.” tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/24388850 Roman Mars no If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the action of using one of the simple human interfaces of everyday life, you could probably do it. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and pretend push a button, and that action would accurately reflect the action of pushing a real button. The same goes for flipping a switch or turning a door knob. If you closed your eyes and faked the movement, it would sync up with its real world use. Now if I asked you to do the same with a car’s steering wheel, you’d think you’d be able to describe steering accurately and mime the correct movements with your hands in the air, but you’d be wrong. Very, very wrong. You’d probably kill a bunch of imaginary people. Our friends at Humans in Design, Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson, bring us this story about how our brain knows how to steer without really knowing how to steer and what that means for steering wheel design. They interviewed Dr. Steve Cloete, from The University of Queensland, who conducted the blind driver studies. If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the a… If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the action of using one of the simple human interfaces of everyday life, you could probably do it. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and pretend push a button, and that action would accurately reflect the action of pushing a real button. The same goes for flipping a switch or turning a door knob. If you closed your eyes and faked the movement, it would sync up with its real world use. Now if I asked you to do the same with a car’s steering wheel, you’d think you’d be able to describe steering accurately and mime the correct movements with your hands in the air, but you’d be wrong. Very, very wrong. You’d probably kill a bunch of imaginary people. Our friends at Humans in Design, Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson, bring us this story about how our brain knows how to steer without really knowing how to steer and what that means for steering wheel design. They interviewed Dr. Steve Cloete, from The University of Queensland, who conducted the blind driver studies. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/23453410 Roman Mars no Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to survive even when put under tremendous stress and strain. Local industries rise and fall, people immigrate and emigrate, but most of these changes happen over decades. What happens to a city when its purpose is stripped away virtually overnight? Bonn was the quiet, unlikely capital of West Germany and then the newly unified Germany for 50 years, and then the Cold War ended and the seat of government was moved back to its historic home of Berlin. Ten years after the move, Bonn is finding its new identity and purpose, but hidden clues in the urban landscape remind us of the city it used to be. Cyrus Farivar takes us on a tour of his neighborhood in what used to be the diplomatic quarter of Bonn with local historian and tour guide Michael Wenzel. Farivar is the science and technology editor at Deutsche Welle English and the author of The Internet of Elsewhere – about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world. Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to … Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to survive even when put under tremendous stress and strain. Local industries rise and fall, people immigrate and emigrate, but most of these changes happen over decades. What happens to a city when its purpose is stripped away virtually overnight? Bonn was the quiet, unlikely capital of West Germany and then the newly unified Germany for 50 years, and then the Cold War ended and the seat of government was moved back to its historic home of Berlin. Ten years after the move, Bonn is finding its new identity and purpose, but hidden clues in the urban landscape remind us of the city it used to be. Cyrus Farivar takes us on a tour of his neighborhood in what used to be the diplomatic quarter of Bonn with local historian and tour guide Michael Wenzel. Farivar is the science and technology editor at Deutsche Welle English and the author of The Internet of Elsewhere – about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/22400305 Roman Mars no I want to be careful not to overstate what it means for a building to die. A building’s worth is an infinitesimal fraction of the worth a person’s life. Even two buildings don’t even move the needle in comparison to real human loss. But a building is still a living thing in a way. It breathes and it moves. This movement makes a sound. Les Robertson, the structural engineer of the World Trade Center, says that the people working inside the tower couldn’t feel this movement, but they could hear it. This episode of 99% Invisible was produced with the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, and the creaking “Buildings Speak” section was mixed by Jim McKee of Earwax Productions. It’s comprised of extracts and outtakes from the Peabody Award Winning Sonic Memorial Project produced in 2002. A new, tenth anniversary edition of the Sonic Memorial Project, which is narrated by my literary hero Paul Auster, is going to be playing on public radio stations around the country. Find out where and when it’s playing on your local public radio station and make an appointment to listen. I want to be careful not to overstate what it mea… I want to be careful not to overstate what it means for a building to die. A building’s worth is an infinitesimal fraction of the worth a person’s life. Even two buildings don’t even move the needle in comparison to real human loss. But a building is still a living thing in a way. It breathes and it moves. This movement makes a sound. Les Robertson, the structural engineer of the World Trade Center, says that the people working inside the tower couldn’t feel this movement, but they could hear it. This episode of 99% Invisible was produced with the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, and the creaking “Buildings Speak” section was mixed by Jim McKee of Earwax Productions. It’s comprised of extracts and outtakes from the Peabody Award Winning Sonic Memorial Project produced in 2002. A new, tenth anniversary edition of the Sonic Memorial Project, which is narrated by my literary hero Paul Auster, is going to be playing on public radio stations around the country. Find out where and when it’s playing on your local public radio station and make an appointment to listen. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/21425743 Roman Mars no Last year, Steve Burrows CBE (Principle at the engineering consulting firm Arup) spent several weeks in Egypt studying the pyramids through the eyes of a modern day structural engineer. The result, which was presented in a documentary for the Discovery Channel and published in an article for Design Intelligence, presented fascinating insights into the design of the pyramids and offers some lessons in how we may think about sustainability through longevity in modern architecture. Burrows’ research reveals that some of the same practical considerations that structural engineers and architects contend with today, may have driven all the major decisions about the design and construction of the Giza Pyramids. Last year, Steve Burrows CBE (Principle at the en… Last year, Steve Burrows CBE (Principle at the engineering consulting firm Arup) spent several weeks in Egypt studying the pyramids through the eyes of a modern day structural engineer. The result, which was presented in a documentary for the Discovery Channel and published in an article for Design Intelligence, presented fascinating insights into the design of the pyramids and offers some lessons in how we may think about sustainability through longevity in modern architecture. Burrows’ research reveals that some of the same practical considerations that structural engineers and architects contend with today, may have driven all the major decisions about the design and construction of the Giza Pyramids. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/20452641 Roman Mars no If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line- this simple marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line- and not to oversell it, but this elegant graphic design has saved thousands of lives. Tristan Cooke (http://Humansindesign.tumblr.com) tells us the history of the Plimsoll line and explains why it's one of his favorite examples of design. If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships… If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line- this simple marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line- and not to oversell it, but this elegant graphic design has saved thousands of lives. Tristan Cooke (http://Humansindesign.tumblr.com) tells us the history of the Plimsoll line and explains why it's one of his favorite examples of design. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/19925519 Roman Mars no When I spoke with Allison Arieff about the design of airports she said to me, if all airports simply played Brian Eno’s album Music for Airports over the speakers, every airport would be better. I say this to serve not only as an introduction to Allison Arieff, but also so you’ll know that she is someone whose judgment is perfectly true. Using the new T2 terminal at SFO as an example, Allison Arieff of the New York Times talks us through some of the considerations that go into designing an airport terminal, how the priorities have changed since 9/11, and how architects struggle to keep pace with ever-changing technology. When I spoke with Allison Arieff about the design… When I spoke with Allison Arieff about the design of airports she said to me, if all airports simply played Brian Eno’s album Music for Airports over the speakers, every airport would be better. I say this to serve not only as an introduction to Allison Arieff, but also so you’ll know that she is someone whose judgment is perfectly true. Using the new T2 terminal at SFO as an example, Allison Arieff of the New York Times talks us through some of the considerations that go into designing an airport terminal, how the priorities have changed since 9/11, and how architects struggle to keep pace with ever-changing technology. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/19006893 Roman Mars no Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunning graphs and maps and created concise infographics that detail that year’s activities. The results were originally intended for his friends and family, but the “personal annual reports” have found an audience with fellow designers and people that really geek out on seeing lots of data, beautifully presented. In 2010, Nicholas Felton’s father passed away, and Felton decided to turn his annual report into a full biography of his father. He took 4,348 of his father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man using only the data he left behind. I produced this story with Nate Berg, who is an awesome freelance journalist and blogger at Planetizen (a site you should add to your daily routine). Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since… Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunning graphs and maps and created concise infographics that detail that year’s activities. The results were originally intended for his friends and family, but the “personal annual reports” have found an audience with fellow designers and people that really geek out on seeing lots of data, beautifully presented. In 2010, Nicholas Felton’s father passed away, and Felton decided to turn his annual report into a full biography of his father. He took 4,348 of his father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man using only the data he left behind. I produced this story with Nate Berg, who is an awesome freelance journalist and blogger at Planetizen (a site you should add to your daily routine). tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/18177307 Roman Mars no In 1998 Dr. Gary Kaplan, the CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle received some bad news about his hospital. It was losing money. So Dr. Kaplan started studying how other hospitals were being run to see if there was a better way to manage his hospital. He scoured the country, looking for a hospital with a management system worth adopting, but he never found one. Instead he ended up in Japan. At a Toyota factory. When Dr. Kaplan told his staff they would be changing everything about the way they operate and the changes were based on a car company and that doctors and nurses should refer to their new teachers as “sensei,” the response was less than ideal. This entire, multiyear overhaul started with a ball of blue yarn. The staff met with a Toyota Production System sensei and he took out the ball of blue yarn and a map of the hospital and told the staff to trace the path a cancer patient would take on a typical visit for chemotherapy treatment. When they were finished, it was an immensely powerful visual experience for everyone in the room. They all stared at this map with blue yarn snaking all over the place, doubling back on itself and making complicated twists and turns from one end of the building to the other. They understood for the first time that they were taking their sickest patients, for whom time was their most precious resource, and they were wasting huge amounts of it. In 1998 Dr. Gary Kaplan, the CEO of Virginia Maso… In 1998 Dr. Gary Kaplan, the CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle received some bad news about his hospital. It was losing money. So Dr. Kaplan started studying how other hospitals were being run to see if there was a better way to manage his hospital. He scoured the country, looking for a hospital with a management system worth adopting, but he never found one. Instead he ended up in Japan. At a Toyota factory. When Dr. Kaplan told his staff they would be changing everything about the way they operate and the changes were based on a car company and that doctors and nurses should refer to their new teachers as “sensei,” the response was less than ideal. This entire, multiyear overhaul started with a ball of blue yarn. The staff met with a Toyota Production System sensei and he took out the ball of blue yarn and a map of the hospital and told the staff to trace the path a cancer patient would take on a typical visit for chemotherapy treatment. When they were finished, it was an immensely powerful visual experience for everyone in the room. They all stared at this map with blue yarn snaking all over the place, doubling back on itself and making complicated twists and turns from one end of the building to the other. They understood for the first time that they were taking their sickest patients, for whom time was their most precious resource, and they were wasting huge amounts of it. tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/17734026	i don't know
Executed in 2005, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stanley “Tookie” Williams co-founded what L. A. gang?	SACRAMENTO / Execution for Nobel nominee killer set - SFGate SACRAMENTO / Execution for Nobel nominee killer set Greg Lucas, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, October 25, 2005 Photo: AP Close Image 1 of 1 FILE This undated photo provided by the family of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, shows Williams in the visiting area of San Quentin State Prison in California. A judge signed a death warrant Monday, Oct. 23. 2005, and set December 13, 2005, as the date Williams will be executed, for four murders he committed in 1979. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Williams Family) Ran on: 10-25-2005 Stanley &quo;Tookie&quo; Williams was convicted in the murders of four people in the Los Angeles area. less FILE This undated photo provided by the family of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, shows Williams in the visiting area of San Quentin State Prison in California. A judge signed a death warrant Monday, Oct. 23. ... more Photo: AP SACRAMENTO / Execution for Nobel nominee killer set 1 / 1 Back to Gallery 2005-10-25 04:00:00 PDT Sacramento -- Convicted killer and Crips co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams , a Nobel Prize nominee for his Death Row anti-gang writings, received his death warrant Monday from a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Williams is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13 at San Quentin Prison for the 1979 murders of a Whittier convenience store clerk and the owners of a Los Angeles motel and their daughter. "This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," Superior Court Judge William Pounders said. "That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that." Lawyers for Williams, 51, sought a nine-day postponement of Williams' execution to Dec. 22 so they could have more time to seek clemency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger . Williams asserts he is not guilty of the murders which occurred during two robberies within two weeks of each other. At 16, Williams co-founded the Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles. After eight years on Death Row, Williams renounced gangs and wrote the first of nine books warning children against the gang life. Admirers have nominated him five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize in literature. His first nomination for the peace prize came in 2000 from a member of Switzerland's parliament. Williams has received tens of thousands of e-mails from around the world from parents, teachers and even law enforcement officials, saying his writings had changed and saved lives. Although it rejected Williams' appeal in February, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco noted that his "good works and accomplishments since incarceration" might be grounds for clemency from the governor. No California governor has exercised that power since Ronald Reagan in 1967. With the Dec. 13 execution date, lawyers for Williams have until Nov. 8 to submit a clemency request to the governor. A spokeswoman for the governor said Williams notified the governor's office of his intention to seek clemency Oct. 21. This is the third request for clemency Schwarzenegger has reviewed. In February 2004, Schwarzenegger denied a clemency hearing to Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper , whose execution was eventually put on hold by the courts so lawyers could examine evidence that the defense says may exonerate Cooper in the murders of four people. Early this year, the governor rejected clemency for double murderer Donald Beardslee . Beardslee was executed by lethal injection Jan. 19 Clemency requests are routinely referred to the state Board of Parole for investigation and a recommendation Williams' final appeal, to the U.S. Supreme Court, was denied Oct. 11. Latest from the SFGATE homepage: Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.	Crips
What is the weight, in lbs, of a US gallon of water?	Judge says reformed gang boss must die \| The Times Judge says reformed gang boss must die From Chris Ayres in Los Angeles Published at 12:00AM, October 26 2005 A DATE has been set for the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a Nobel-prize nominee who co-founded the Crips street gang in 1971 but has since been praised by President Bush for his good deeds. Williams, 51, is a convicted murderer who has written children’s books disavowing gang violence while on death row. He once negotiated a peace treaty between rival gangs and has been nominated five times for a Nobel Peace Prize and four times for a Nobel Prize for Literature. He is to be executed on December 13. The judge rejected a lawyer’s request for more time to Subscribe now	i don't know
Jan 4, 1966 saw a military coup take place in the African country Upper Volta. By what name do we know the country now?	14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization \| SiliconAfrica 14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization By: Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 at 3:41 pm. Did you know many African countries continue to pay colonial tax to France since their independence till today! When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from french colonization. Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything that which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned. The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high. Slowly fear spread trough the african elite, and none after the Guinea events ever found the courage to follow the example of Sékou Touré, whose slogan was “We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.” Sylvanus Olympio , the first president of the Republic of Togo, a tiny country in west Africa, found a middle ground solution with the French. He didn’t want his country to continue to be a french dominion, therefore he refused to sign the colonisation continuation pact De Gaule proposed, but agree to pay an annual debt to France for the so called benefits Togo got from french colonization. It was the only conditions for the French not to destroy the country before leaving. However, the amount estimated by France was so big that the reimbursement of the so called “colonial debt” was close to 40% of the country budget in 1963. The financial situation of the newly independent Togo was very unstable, so in order to get out the situation, Olympio decided to get out the french colonial money FCFA (the franc for french african colonies), and issue the country own currency. On January 13, 1963, three days after he started printing his country own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. Olympio was killed by an ex French Foreign Legionnaire army sergeant called Etienne Gnassingbe who supposedly received a bounty of $612 from the local French embassy for the hit man job. Olympio’s dream was to build an independent and self-sufficient and self-reliant country. But the French didn’t like the idea. On June 30, 1962, Modiba Keita , the first president of the Republic of Mali, decided to withdraw from the french colonial currency FCFA which was imposed on 12 newly independent African countries. For the Malian president, who was leaning more to a socialist economy, it was clear that colonisation continuation pact with France was a trap, a burden for the country development. On November 19, 1968, like, Olympio, Keita will be the victim of a coup carried out by another ex French Foreign legionnaire, the Lieutenant Moussa Traoré . In fact during that turbulent period of African fighting to liberate themselves from European colonization, France would repeatedly use many ex Foreign legionnaires to carry out coups against elected presidents: – On January 1st, 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa , an ex french foreign legionnaire, carried a coup against David Dacko , the first President of the Central African Republic. – On January 3, 1966, Maurice Yaméogo , the first President of the Republic of Upper Volta, now called Burkina Faso, was victim of a coup carried by Aboubacar Sangoulé Lamizana , an ex French legionnaire who fought with french troops in Indonesia and Algeria against these countries independence. – on 26 October 1972, Mathieu Kérékou who was a security guard to President Hubert Maga , the first President of the Republic of Benin, carried a coup against the president, after he attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970. In fact, during the last 50 years, a total of 67 coups happened in 26 countries in Africa, 16 of those countries are french ex-colonies, which means 61% of the coups happened in Francophone Africa. Number of Coups in Africa by country Ex French colonies TOTAL 22 As these numbers demonstrate, France is quite desperate but active to keep a strong hold on his colonies what ever the cost, no matter what. In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said: “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power” Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterand already prophesied in 1957 that: “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century” At this very moment I’m writing this article, 14 african countries are obliged by France, trough a colonial pact, to put 85% of their foreign reserve into France central bank under French minister of Finance control. Until now, 2014, Togo and about 13 other african countries still have to pay colonial debt to France. African leaders who refuse are killed or victim of coup. Those who obey are supported and rewarded by France with lavish lifestyle while their people endure extreme poverty, and desperation. It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renouncing to serve their own people or nations’ interests. African leaders would work in the interest of their people if they were not constantly stalked and bullied by colonial countries. In 1958, scared about the consequence of choosing independence from France, Leopold Sédar Senghor declared: “The choice of the Senegalese people is independence; they want it to take place only in friendship with France, not in dispute.” From then on France accepted only an “independence on paper” for his colonies, but signed binding “Cooperation Accords”, detailing the nature of their relations with France, in particular ties to France colonial currency (the Franc), France educational system, military and commercial preferences. Below are the 11 main components of the Colonisation continuation pact since 1950s: #1. Colonial Debt for the benefits of France colonization The newly “independent” countries should pay for the infrastructure built by France in the country during colonization. I still have to find out the complete details about the amounts, the evaluation of the colonial benefits and the terms of payment imposed on the african countries, but we are working on that (help us with info). #2. Automatic confiscation of national reserves The African countries should deposit their national monetary reserves into France Central bank. France has been holding the national reserves of fourteen african countries since 1961: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. “The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities. The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse. In short, more than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually. The earnings of the investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to be added to the pool but no accounting is given to either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or the central banks of the African states .” Wrote Dr. Gary K. Busch It’s now estimated that France is holding close to 500 billions African countries money in its treasury, and would do anything to fight anyone who want to shed a light on this dark side of the old empire. The African countries don’t have access to that money. France allows them to access only 15% of the money in any given year. If they need more than that, they have to borrow the extra money from their own 65% from the French Treasury at commercial rates. To make things more tragic, France impose a cap on the amount of money the countries could borrow from the reserve. The cap is fixed at 20% of their public revenue in the preceding year. If the countries need to borrow more than 20% of their own money, France has a veto. Former French President Jacques Chirac recently spoke about the African nations money in France banks. Here is a video of him speaking about the french exploitation scheme. He is speaking in French, but here is a short excerpt transcript: “We have to be honest, and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks come precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.” #3. Right of first refusal on any raw or natural resource discovered in the country France has the first right to buy any natural resources found in the land of its ex-colonies. It’s only after France would say, “I’m not interested”, that the African countries are allowed to seek other partners. #4. Priority to French interests and companies in public procurement and public biding In the award of government contracts, French companies must be considered first, and only after that these countries could look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if the african countries can obtain better value for money elsewhere. As consequence, in many of the french ex-colonies, all the majors economical assets of the countries are in the hand of french expatriates. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, french companies own and control all the major utilities – water, electricity, telephone, transport, ports and major banks. The same in commerce, construction, and agriculture.	Burkina Faso
What college football bowl is known as The Grandaddy of them all, having been continuously played since 1916?	Worldwide Stamp-Issuing Entities Reference Guide \| Linns.com Get Link Since Great Britain issued the Penny Black and Two-Pence Blue in 1840, postage stamps have been issued in the name of more than 700 geopolitical entities. This has resulted in an array of stamps that may bewilder the beginning stamp collector, especially the collector whose study of history has somehow not included such areas as Alaouites or Trebizond. In the following listing, we have attempted to provide a compilation of the nations, provinces, cities, armies and other entities that have, at one point or another, issued postage stamps. For the purposes of this listing, we have limited listings of stamp-issuing entities to those authorities exercising de facto political control of an area or territory, which have issued stamps for other than strictly local use. We have omitted issues produced purely for municipal or private use. We have attempted to provide brief geographical and historical sketches for each of these entities, so that the reader may obtain a general idea of where the country issuing a given stamp is located and its general circumstances and background. We have not attempted to give complete philatelic background of all stamp-issuing entities. All entities are listed as active or inactive, the dates in the parentheses following the name of the country indicating the period of time during which stamps have been issued. A perusal of any of the leading catalogs and general non-philatelic reference sources will supply additional information, and is highly recommended. We have also attempted to indicate population where possible, including the most current figures we could find for territories that are now issuing stamps. For so-called dead countries, those entities no longer producing stamps, we have tried to supply the latest population estimate available from the period during which stamps were issued. A Abkhazia (1995-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 537,000 (1989). An autonomous region of the republic of Georgia, located on the Black Sea. Since 1995, many pictorial sets and souvenir sheets, offered as local issues, have appeared on the market. These are bogus, issued by private individuals for sale to collectors. Abu Dhabi (1964-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 25,000 (1971 estimate). A sheikhdom in the former Trucial States in eastern Arabia, bordering on the Persian Gulf. Under British protection 1862-1971, Abu Dhabi joined with the other Trucial States to form the independent United Arab Emirates on Dec. 2, 1971. Long undeveloped, with few resources, Abu Dhabi's medieval existence began to change dramatically with the discovery of oil in 1958. By the 1970s, it had become a major oil exporter and today enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Aden (1937-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 220,000 (1964 estimate). Former British colony and protectorate in southwest Arabia. The colony of Aden was attached to India 1839-1937, and Indian stamps were used. Stamps of the colony were first issued in 1937, being used in most of the Aden protectorate area, as well as within the Aden colony itself. In 1963, the two districts, except for the eastern Kathiri and Qu'aiti states, united to form the Federation of South Arabia. Aden stamps were replaced by those of the Federation on April 1, 1965. Aegean Islands (individual islands' issues) (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A number of Italian issues were overprinted with names of the various Aegean islands, including Calchi, Calino, Caso, Coo, Fero, Fisso, Nisiro, Patmo, Piscopi, Rhodes (Rodi), Scarpanto, Simi and Stampalia. Aegean Islands (Dodecanese) (1912-47) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 130,855 (1931). A group of 14 islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea. Under Turkish rule since the early 16th century, the islands declared their independence in 1912, during the Italo-Turkish War, but were soon occupied by Italy. Greece recognized Italian control of the islands in 1920, and Turkey formally ceded them to Italy in 1923. The Aegean Islands were occupied by Germany from 1943-45 and by British forces from 1945-47. In 1947 they were annexed by Greece. Italy issued a large number of stamps for use in the islands from 1912-43, while the Germans overprinted a few issues from 1943-45. During 1945-47, stamps of the British Middle East Forces were used. In 1947, specially overprinted Greek stamps were used, and regular Greek issues have been used since 1947. Afars and Issas, French Territory of the (1967-77) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 150,000 (1974). A French overseas territory in northeast Africa bordering on the Gulf of Aden. Formerly the Somali Coast, a French colony. On June 27, 1977, the territory became an independent republic, and its name was changed to Djibouti. Afghanistan (1871-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 22,664,136 (1996). A republic in central Asia, bordering on Iran, India and Turkestan. Long divided and ruled by neighboring states, Afghanistan emerged as a unified state in the mid-18th century. During the 19th century, Afghanistan became a battleground in the competition between Russia and Great Britain for influence in Central Asia. During 1881-1919, the country was dominated by the British. Afghanistan regained its autonomy in 1907 and its independence in 1919. In 1973, the monarchy was replaced by a republican government. The republic was overthrown in a pro-Soviet coup in 1978. The new regime was unable to unify the country or to quell conservative resistance in the countryside. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, establishing what it hoped would be a more effective government. The resulting civil war lasted a decade, as U.S.-supported rebels and the Soviet-supported regime fought to a bloody stalemate. During 1989-92, the Soviet Union and the United States withdrew their support, and by mid-1992, the Marxist regime had been ousted, and the various rebel groups began fighting among themselves. One of these groups, the Taliban, gained predominance during 1996 and by 1997 had occupied most of the country. Former seminarians, the Taliban have established a fanatically Islamic regime in Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan began issuing postage stamps in 1871, it did not join the Universal Postal Union until 1928. Until then, Afghani stamps were valid only within the country and required British Indian stamps to be carried abroad. Aguera, La (1920-24) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. District in the western Sahara on the Atlantic coast of Africa. A Spanish possession, La Aguera issued its own stamps until 1924, when it was attached to the Spanish Sahara. Aitutaki (1903-32, 1972-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,000. One of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. A dependency of New Zealand, Aitutaki issued its own stamps until 1932, when these were replaced by those of the Cook Islands. In August 1972, Aitutaki resumed issuing its own stamps. Ajman (1964-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 4,400. One of the Trucial States in eastern Arabia. A sheikhdom under British protection from 1892-1971, Ajman joined the independent United Arab Emirates on Dec. 2, 1971. During 1964-71, Ajman issued 6,000-7,000 different stamps, all designed with worldwide collectors in mind. UAE issues replaced those of Ajman in 1972. Subsequent Ajman issues came onto the philatelic market after 1972, but these were not recognized as valid by the government. Aland (1984-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 21,211 (1978). A group of 6,554 tiny islands, with a combined area of 572 square miles, in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden. On Feb. 5, 1982, the Finnish government gave the self-governing territory of Aland the right to propose stamps and denominations to Finnish postal authorities. The first Aland issues appeared on March 1, 1984. Although Finnish stamps remain valid for use on the islands, and mixed Finnish and Aland frankings do occur there, Aland stamps may not be used in Finland. Alaouites (1925-30) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 278,000 (1930). A district of Syria, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Alaouites was a Turkish territory until 1918, when it was occupied by the French. During 1920-41, it was ruled by France under mandate from the League of Nations. In 1930, the name of the province was changed to Latakia, and stamps so inscribed came into use. In 1941, Latakia was annexed by Syria, and its issues were replaced by Syrian stamps. Albania (1913-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,249,136 (1996). A republic in southeast Europe, bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Under Turkish rule from 1478-1912, Albania became independent after the first Balkan War. Overrun by German, Serbian, Montenegrin, Greek, Bulgarian, Italian, French and Austrian troops during World War I, foreign forces remained in Albania until 1921. An Albanian state was established in 1920, existing first as a republic and, after 1928, as a monarchy. In 1939, the country was occupied by Italy and, later, Germany. In 1944, British-supported communist guerrillas, led by Enver Hoxha, drove the Germans from the country and established a provisional government. In 1946, a communist people's republic was proclaimed. At first it appeared that Albania would become a satellite of Yugoslavia, but it maintained its independence, under Hoxha's repressive regime. In 1960, because of the Soviet Union's de-Stalinization campaign, Albania broke with the Soviet Union and aligned its foreign policy with that of the People's Republic of China. In 1978 China's liberalization brought a break between that country and Albania. From 1978 to 1991, Albania was one of the most economically undeveloped nations in Europe and one of the most isolated nations in the world. Since 1991, with the collapse of communism in Europe, Albania has instituted a democratic republican government. Economic reverses in 1997 threatened the country with a return to the anarchy that has characterized so much of its history. Alderney (1983-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,086 (1981 estimate). A small English Channel island just off the French coast, near the tip of the Cherbourg peninsula. Alderney is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which has been a British crown territory since the mid-13th century. After it began issuing stamps in 1969, Guernsey handled Alderney's postal affairs. Alderney's request to produce separate issues was rejected by Guernsey in 1975, but a later compromise allowed Alderney to issue occasional sets of stamps. Alderney's issues – typically about one set each year – are produced under the aegis of the Bailiwick of Guernsey Post Office in consultation with Alderney's parliamentary finance committee. Aledschen (Alsedziai) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Lithuania. In 1941, the local German military commander overprinted Russian stamps "Laisva/Alsedziai/24-VI-41" for use in the area. Alexanderstadt (Bolschaja Alexan-drowka) (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Ukraine. During 1941-42, the local German military authorities issued Russian stamps surcharged with a "16.8.41/B.ALEX." swastika overprint and surcharged with new values for use in the district. Alexandretta (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of southern Turkey, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandretta was part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire for several hundred years, until its occupation by the French in 1918. It was administered as part of the French mandate of Syria until 1938, when it became autonomous from Syria, its name being changed to Hatay. Stamps of Hatay replaced those of Alexandretta. In 1939, the territory was returned to Turkey, and Turkish stamps have since been in use. Alexandria (1899-1931) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 699,400 (1937 estimate). An Egyptian port on the Mediterranean Sea. The French Post Office in Alexandria operated from 1830 through March 31, 1931. Regular French issues were used until 1899, when separate issues were created for Alexandria. Algeria (1924-58, 1962-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 28,133,082 (1996). A republic in Northern Africa. Algeria was a territory of the Ottoman Turkish Empire from 1518-1830 and during this period was one of the centers of the Barbary pirates. France seized the coastal region in 1830 and during the 19th century expanded its rule inland. After World War II, Algerian nationalism increased, and French efforts to retain control resulted in a bitter civil war. In 1958, Algeria became an integral part of France, and French stamps replaced those of the colony. This effort to maintain the territory's association with France failed, and in 1962 Algeria became independent and resumed issuing its own stamps. Since independence, Algeria has been ruled by socialist and military governments. The first democratic elections in 1991 produced a victory for Islamic fundamentalists, and the military acted to nullify the electoral results. This provoked a bloody terrorist campaign by the fundamentalists, which continues and has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives. Allenstein (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 540,000 (1920 estimate). A district of East Prussia, Allenstein was one of those territories administered by the Allies until 1920, when a local plebiscite resulted in the area's return to Germany. German stamps overprinted for Allenstein were used during the plebiscite period. Since the end of World War II, Allenstein has been a part of Poland. Alsace and Lorraine (1870-72, 1940-41) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Two districts lying between France and Germany. Long disputed between the two powers, Alsace and Lorraine were annexed by Germany in 1871, retaken by France in 1918, again occupied by Germany in 1939, and finally reoccupied by France in 1945. German occupation issues for Alsace and Lorraine were used throughout occupied France during 1870-71 and in the two provinces during 1870-72, after which regular German issues were used until 1918. Individual overprints on German stamps were produced for Alsace and for Lorraine in 1940. On Jan. 1, 1942, they were replaced by regular German stamps. Altai Region (1993) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2,820,000 (1989). A Russian territory in southwestern Siberia, bordering Kazakstan. Several local issues, consisting of overprints on Soviet stamps, appeared during 1993. They were not recognized by the Russian authorities and are probably philatelic creations. Alwar (1877-1902) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in Northern India, southwest of Delhi. Separate issues were used until 1902, after which they were replaced by Indian stamps. Amiens (1909) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 93,207 (1914). A city in northern France. During a May 13-19, 1909, strike by postal employees, local provisionals were issued by the Chamber of Commerce. Amur Province (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Between February and April 1920, a People's Revolutionary Committee ruled at Blagoveschensk, in southeastern Siberia. The Amur Province was absorbed by the Far Eastern Republic, when that state was formed on April 6, 1920. Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1942) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: about 21,000 (1936). Located in the Indian Ocean, these islands were first settled by the British in 1789. Subsequently, they fell under the administration of the governor-general of India and now form part of the Indian republic. During World War II, the islands were occupied by the Japanese. At this time, contemporary British Indian stamps were crudely surcharged for use in the islands. Andorra (1928-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 72,766 (1996). An autonomous enclave in the Pyrenees Mountains, since 1278 jointly administered by France and the Spanish bishop of Urgel. Stamps are issued by both France and Spain for use in the principality. Angola (1870-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,342,899 (1996). A republic in southwestern Africa. The Angolan coast came under Portuguese control in the 16th century, and the interior was conquered during the late 19th century. Angolan nationalist groups waged a guerrilla war against the Portuguese during 1961-74, and on Nov. 11, 1975, Angola became an independent nation. With the withdrawal of Portugal, the three largest of the nationalist groups quickly fell out over the composition of the new government. The ensuing civil war caused most of the whites remaining in Angola to emigrate and brought the economic collapse of the country. The Soviet-supported faction, with the aid of Cuban troops, controlled the central government and the western portion of the country, while a South African supported faction (Unita) controlled much of the interior. An agreement ending the civil war was implemented in 1997 but soon fell apart. Hostilities continue, with the Unita forces controlling much of the country. Angra (1892-1906) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An administrative district of the Azores, in the central Atlantic. Angra's stamps were replaced by those of the Azores in 1906. Since 1931, regular Portuguese stamps have been used in the district. Anguilla (1967-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,424 (1996). A small island in the Caribbean, formerly attached to St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. In September 1967, Anguilla declared its independence from both that state and Great Britain. In 1971 direct British control was re-established. Anjouan (1892-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 20,000 (1912). One of the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. The sultanate of Anjouan came under French protection in 1886, and separate stamp issues began in 1892. Stamps of Anjouan were replaced by those of Madagascar in 1914. In 1950, issues of the Comoro Islands came into use. Annam and Tonkin (1888-92) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 14,124,000 (1890). Roughly, the area of Tonkin and Annam Protectorates corresponds with modern Vietnam. From 1892, regular issues of French Indochina were used, although in 1936, Indochina issued a separate set for Annam. After 1945, stamps of the People's Democratic Republic of Vietnam were used in the north, while those of the republic of Vietnam were used in the south from 1954-75. Antequera (1936) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the province of Malaga, in southern Spain. Contemporary Spanish stamps were overprinted for local use on the authority of the Falangist military commander in October 1936. Antigua (1862-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 65,647 (1996). A state in association with Great Britain, comprising the island of Antigua and several smaller islands in the eastern Caribbean, southeast of Puerto Rico. Under British rule since 1632, Antigua became a separate colony in 1956. In 1967 Antigua became self-governing and became the independent state of Antigua-Barbuda in 1981. Arad (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 63,166 (1914). A district of pre-World War I Hungary, occupied by France in 1919, at which time overprinted Hungarian stamps were issued. The district is now a part of Romania. Arbe (Rab) (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Mali Kvarner, off the northwestern coast of Yugoslavia. During d'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume, issues were overprinted for Arbe. Argentina (1858-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 34,672,997 (1996). A republic in southern South America. Independent from Spain in 1816, Argentina was torn by regional separatism through much of the 19th century. This is reflected in the issuing of separate stamps by several Argentine provinces during 1858-80. Large-scale European immigration and investment after the 1880s made Argentina the most economically advanced nation in South America. Since 1930, Argentina has, more often than not, been ruled by authoritarian military regimes. During World War II, the government was sympathetic to the Axis, and after the war, a large number of ex-Nazis found sanctuary in Argentina. In 1946, Juan Domingo Peron was elected president, and he dominated the country's political life until his death in 1974, although he was in exile 1955-73. Chronic, unresolved economic and social tensions erupted into virtual civil war during 1976-80. Both leftist guerrillas and the military government used terror and violence to further their ends, and thousands died in the conflict. During this period, the Argentine economy deteriorated badly. High unemployment and spiraling inflation provoked intense popular dissatisfaction with the ruling junta. Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in early April 1982 was, at least in part, an attempt to unify the nation. Since 1983, Argentina has been ruled by a succession of civilian regimes. Since 1991, the government has been working to deregulate and stimulate the economy, with mixed results. Argyrokastron (Gjinokaster) (1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Southern Albania. Turkish stamps were surcharged for use during the area's occupation by Greece. Armavir (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern Caucasus, Russia. Two Russian stamps were surcharged by the local authorities. Armenia (1919-23, 1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,463,574 (1996). The southernmost area of the Caucasus. Long under a vague Turkish suzerainty, Armenia was conquered by the Russians during the 19th century. During World War I, Armenia was occupied by Turkish and German forces. Between May 1918 and December 1920, and again between February and April 1921, it existed as an independent republic, issuing its own stamps. In 1923, it joined the Transcaucasian Federation of Soviet Republics. Transcaucasian issues were soon superseded by those of the Soviet Union. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia again became an independent republic. A long-standing dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory completely encircled by Moslem Azerbaijan but populated mostly by Christian Armenians, has led to hostilities between the two countries in recent years. Army of the North (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1919, the Army of the North, under Gen. Rodzianko, fought against the Soviet forces in the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) area. The Army of the North was subsequently incorporated into Gen. Nikolai N. Yudenitch's Army of the Northwest. Army of the Northwest (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An anti-Bolshevik force under the command of Gen. Yudenitch, which operated in northwestern Russia around the city of Pskov. Between June and November 1919, this army threatened the Soviets in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). In November it was defeated by the Red Army and dissolved. Army of the West (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Western Army was formed in Courland in 1919 to maintain German influence in the Baltic States. It was primarily an instrument of the German High Command, which was forbidden to operate directly in the region. The Army of the West was concerned less with the threat of the Bolsheviks in Russia than with restoring the domination of German landholders, and so refused to cooperate with Yudenitch in fighting the Russians. In November 1919, the army attacked Riga but was thrown back by an Anglo-Latvian counteroffensive, which brought about the force's dissolution. Artsaki (Karabakh Republic, Berg Republic) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 188,000 (1989). An Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, this area, also known as Nagorno Karabakh, has been the object of military hostilities between the two countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A number of local issues of undetermined status have appeared on the collector market. Aruba (1986-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 66,404 (1996). Southwesternmost of the six islands in the Netherlands Antilles of which it was formerly a part, Aruba is an island of 69 square miles, located east of Curacao and north of Venezuela's Paraguayana Peninsula. Aruba enjoys a separate status within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and began issuing its own stamps Jan. 1, 1986. Ascension (1922-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,700. An island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Occupied by the British in 1815, Ascension was attached to the crown colony of St. Helena in 1922. Asch (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 22,943 (1937). A city in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). Local authorities overprinted Czech stamps in 1938, upon the area's cession to Germany. Aunus (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Aunus, the Finnish name for Olonets, a Russian town, was occupied by Finnish forces in 1919. Finnish stamps overprinted with the town name were used during the occupation. Australia (1902-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 18,438,824 (1997). An island continent between the Pacific and Indian oceans, southeast of Asia. British settlement began in the late 18th century, with six colonies developing — New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Each of these states initially issued its own stamps. These colonies united to form the Commonwealth of Australia on Jan. 1, 1901, although each continued to issue its own stamps for a number of years. Australia has rich natural resources and, since World War II, has developed into one of the major economic powers of the region. It has maintained close ties with the United States since 1945, although in recent years Japan has replaced the United States as Australia's main economic partner. Australia administers a number of island groups in the South Pacific and plays a leading role in the region. Australian Antarctic Territory (1957-) Stamp-issuing status: active. A large portion of Antarctica is claimed by Australia, which maintains scientific research stations there. Stamps of the Australian Antarctic Territory are also valid for postage in Australia. Austria (1850-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 8,047,000 (1997). A republic in central Europe, Austria was the center of the Hapsburg Empire, which during the 16th to 19th centuries controlled (at one time or another) Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands and large portions of Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Italy and Germany. After 1815, Austrian power declined with the growth of nationalism among its subjects. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy was created to appease Hungarian nationalists, but the government resisted similar concessions to other national groups. The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914, began the series of events that quickly led to World War I. During World War I, Austrian troops were active in the Balkans, Romania, Poland, Russia and Italy, but by October 1918, Austria's armies were routed, and the monarchy collapsed. The empire dissolved rapidly, and Austria emerged much reduced in size, representing the German-speaking area of the empire. In 1918 the republic of "German Austria" was formed, and there was considerable sentiment for union with Germany. By the Treaty of St. Germain (1922), such a union was expressly forbidden, and the country's name became simply "Austria." During the 1930s, an Austrian fascist regime attempted to maintain independence, but in March 1938, Germany invaded and quickly occupied the country, merging it into the Third Reich with only a token protest from the Allies. After Germany's defeat in World War II, the Austrian Republic was re-established, and the country was divided into zones of occupation by the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. In 1955, foreign troops were withdrawn, and Austria proclaimed its political neutrality. Austria maintains close economic ties with much of western Europe. Austrian Offices in Crete (1903-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Like several other European nations, Austria maintained its own post offices in Crete, using stamps valued in French centimes and francs. Although intended for use in Crete, these issues were available for use at Austrian post offices throughout the Turkish Empire. Austrian Offices in the Turkish Empire (1867-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Austria began using special stamps for its offices in the Turkish Empire in 1867, having previously used its issues for Lombardy-Venetia for these offices. Austrian post offices in the Turkish Empire were closed Dec. 15, 1914. Avila (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital city of the province of the same name, in central Spain. A Nationalist overprint was applied to contemporary Spanish stamps by the local authorities. Azerbaijan (Iranian) (1945-46) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in northwestern Iran. Occupied by Soviet forces during World War II, a puppet government was established in May 1945, at which time contemporary Iranian stamps were overprinted for use. In March 1946, Soviet troops withdrew, and Azerbaijan became an "autonomous" government. In December 1946, full Iranian administration was restored. Azerbaijan (Russian) (1919-24, 1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 7,735,918 (1997). The eastern portion of the Caucasus. Occupied by Russia in the 19th century, Azerbaijan declared its independence in 1917, after the Russian Revolution. Turkish and British occupation was followed by the establishment of a communist regime in 1920. Azerbaijan was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Federated Republic in 1923. Soviet stamps were used from 1924-91. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan again became independent and resumed issuing its own stamps. An ongoing war with neighboring Armenia has drained the country, but its large oil reserves promise eventual economic development and prosperity. These reserves, and its strategic location in the region make Azerbaijan the object of international attention, as it is courted by Turkish, Iranian and Western interests. B Baden (1851-71, 1946-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former grand duchy in southwestern Germany on the Rhine River. In 1870, it joined the German Empire. After World War II, Baden was included in the French zone of occupation, and separate issues were again in use from 1945-49, with some issues valid for use in the German Federal Republic until March 31, 1950. Baena (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the province of Cordoba in southern Spain. In July 1937, contemporary Spanish stamps were overprinted to commemorate the anniversary of the Nationalist landing at Cadiz and the Nationalist occupation of Baena. Bahamas (1859-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 262,034. A scattered group of some 700 islands and 2,000 islets in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida. One of the Bahamian islands, San Salvador (Watling Island) was the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World. After Columbus, the Bahamas were largely bypassed by Europeans until British settlement began in 1647. In 1783, the Bahamas became a British colony. The Bahamas became self-governing in 1964 and fully independent in 1973. International banking and tourism are the country's major industries. Bahawalpur (1945-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state of Pakistan. In 1947, the Moslem emir declared independence from India and joined Bahawalpur to Pakistan. Bahrain (1933-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 603,318. An archipelago in the Persian Gulf. Under British protection 1861-1971, Bahrain used a variety of stamps: Indian stamps from 1884 to 1933, overprinted Indian issues 1933-48, overprinted British issues 1948-60 and its own designs from 1960. Oil was first discovered in 1932 and, until the depletion of reserves in the 1970s, brought enormous wealth to this tiny country. Today, Bahrain is a center of international banking. Tensions between the Sunnite majority (60 percent) and Shi'ite minority (40 percent) have grown since the establishment of the fundamentalist Shi'ite regime in Iran. Violence in 1996 by Shi'ite dissidents brought a crackdown by the Sunni-led government. Bamra (1888-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A feudatory state in eastern India. Bamra issued separate stamps until 1894, when its issues were replaced by those of India. Banat, Bacska (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of south central Europe, formerly under Hungarian rule. In 1919, postal authorities at Temesvar overprinted Hungarian stamps, which were used largely to pay the salaries of postal workers. The area is now divided between Yugoslavia and Romania. Bangkok (1882-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of Thailand. During 1855-85, Britain exercised extraterritorial privileges in Bangkok, which included the right to use its own stamps. Straits Settlements stamps overprinted "B" were used until July 1, 1885. Bangladesh (1971-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 125,340,261. A republic in the Bengal region of south Asia. In the partition of British India in 1947, Moslem Bangladesh comprised East Pakistan. Years of resentment with the domination of the country by West Pakistan finally erupted in a bitter civil war in March 1971. Indian intervention in December 1971, after the deaths of an estimated 1 million Bengalis, resulted in a quick Pakistani defeat, and Bangladesh became an independent republic. Since independence, Bangladesh has suffered continuing economic problems and political instability. In foreign affairs, it is closely linked to India. Before the issue of Bangladesh's first definitive set (and for some time thereafter), existing stocks of Pakistani stamps were overprinted locally, creating thousands of varieties that are not listed in the major stamp catalogs. Banja Luka (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 22,177 (1943). A city in northern Bosnia. During World War II, two Yugoslavian stamps were overprinted by the local partisans for use in the area. Baranya (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Hungarian district briefly occupied by Serbia after World War I. Barbados (1852-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 257,731. An island in the West Indies, Barbados was a British colony from 1628-1966. On Nov. 30, 1966, Barbados became an independent state within the British Commonwealth. Barbuda (1922, 1968-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,250. A small island in the Leeward group in the West Indies, Barbuda is a dependency of Antigua. Barwani (1921-48) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in western India. Barwani stamps were replaced by those of India on July 1, 1948. Base Atlantica (1943-44) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During World War II, the Supreme Commander of Italian submarine forces authorized the overprinting of a number of Italian stamps for use by Italian military personnel stationed in Bordeaux, France. Basel (1845) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Capital of the canton of the same name, in northern Switzerland. Basel is situated on the Rhine and borders on both France and Germany. In 1845 the famous "Basel Dove" was issued. Now regarded as one of the most beautiful of the classic issues, the stamp was not popular among the townspeople and was soon withdrawn. Basutoland (1933-66) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 750,000 (1964 estimate). A former British crown colony surrounded by South Africa. Under British control after 1871, Basutoland became the independent state of Lesotho on Oct. 4, 1966. Stamps of the Cape of Good Hope were used 1871-1910 and those of the Union of South Africa 1910-33, when the colony began to use its own issues. Batum (1919-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 30,000 (1914). A Georgian port on the Black Sea, Batum was annexed by Russia from Turkey in 1878 and became a major Russian naval base. During World War I, Batum was occupied by the Germans and the Turks, and in December 1918 by British forces. The port was evacuated by the British in July 1920. During the British occupation, three series of lithographed stamps (two overprinted "British Occupation"), as well as a number of Russian stamps overprinted and surcharged, were in use. After the British evacuation, stamps of Georgia were used, these being replaced by Russian stamps in 1923. Georgian issues replaced those of the Soviet Union in 1990. Since 1994, a large number of pictorial sets and souvenir sheets, described as local stamps, have appeared on the market. They are bogus, issued for sale to collectors, and have seen no postal use in Batum. Bavaria (1849-1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 7,150,146 (1919). Former kingdom in southern Germany. Bavaria joined the German Empire in 1870, retaining its own monarchy. The country was briefly independent following World War I. Bavarian stamps were replaced by German issues in 1920. Bechuanaland Protectorate (1888-1966) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 540,400 (1964). District in south-central Africa, directly north of the Republic of South Africa. A British protectorate was established over the region in 1885, ending with the area becoming independent as the Republic of Botswana in 1966. Beirut (1909-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 210,000 (1914). The capital of Lebanon. Prior to World War I, a number of European nations maintained their own postal systems in Beirut. The Russian post office used stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted "Beyrouth" after 1909. In January 1905, the French authorities overprinted a contemporary French Offices in Turkey stamp for provisional use in Beirut. In July 1906, a similar provisional was used by the British authorities in Beirut. Both are scarce. Bejuma (1854) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A small town near Valencia, Venezuela. In 1854, the postmaster issued local stamps to frank mail to Valencia. Belarus (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,439,916. A republic in eastern Europe. The area of Belarus was part of the Lithuanian-Polish state during the Middle Ages and was conquered by Russia in the 18th century. Belarus, then called White Russia, was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution but was reunited after WWII as the Belyorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, within the Soviet Union. In 1991, Belarus became an independent state. During 1996-97, Belarus signed several accords with Russia, closely linking the two countries politically and economically. Belgian Congo (1886-1960) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 12,660,000 (1956). A former Belgian colony in central Africa. In 1885, the Congo Free State was established under the personal rule of Leopold II. Abuses of the colonial administration, harsh even by contemporary standards, prompted the Belgian government to assume administration of the region, renamed the Belgian Congo. In 1960 the Belgian Congo became independent, as the Republic of the Congo. Belgium (1849-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,203,683. A constitutional monarchy in northwest Europe, bordering on the English Channel. Conquered by Julius Caesar in the first century B.C., Belgium was ruled by a succession of foreign nations for nearly 2,000 years. In 1830, Belgium became independent from the last of these foreign rulers, the Dutch. Because of its strategic position, Belgian independence and neutrality was guaranteed by the major European powers. In 1914, Germany occupied most of the country, although Belgium's spirited resistance throughout the war earned worldwide respect. Germany again occupied Belgium during World War II. After 1945, Belgium aligned itself with the West and is a member of both NATO and the Common Market. Its prosperity is built on its foreign trade. Belize (1973-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 224,663. An independent republic in central America. Belize was formerly the British colony of British Honduras. The name "Belize" was adopted in 1973. Belize became independent on Sept. 20, 1981. Neighboring Guatemala has long claimed Belize, although tensions between the two countries has eased in recent years. Benin (1892-99, 1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,902,178. The coastal area of Dahomey, on the Gulf of Guinea, Benin was occupied by the French in the 19th century. Separate stamps were issued from 1892. In 1895, the area was grouped with recently conquered inland territories to form the French colony of Dahomey. In November 1975, Dahomey changed its name to the People's Republic of Benin. Bequia (1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Bequia is the nearest neighbor of St. Vincent and the northernmost in a group of small subsidiary islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Following the proliferation of Grenadines of St. Vincent issues that began in the early 1970s, stamps began to be issued for Bequia in 1976. Bergedorf (1861-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in northern Germany, originally owned by Hamburg and the Free City of Lubeck (1420-1867). In 1867, it passed into the sole possession of Hamburg. Bergedorf began issuing stamps in 1861, these being replaced by those of the North German Confederation in 1868. Berlin (1948-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.8 million. The capital of Prussia and, after 1871, of Germany. Surrounded by the Soviet Zone of Occupation, Berlin was divided into U.S., British, French and Soviet sectors in 1945. In 1948, political tension brought the creation of the zones of West (Allied) Berlin and East (Soviet) Berlin. The two zones each issued separate series of stamps, the East Zone in 1945 (the "Berlin Bears") and the West Zone from 1945 until 1990. Stamps of West Berlin were discontinued in 1990, with the reunion of the two Germanys, and they became obsolete December 31, 1991. Bermuda (1848-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 62,569. A group of islands in the west-central Atlantic Ocean. A British colony since 1609, Bermuda was granted internal self-government in 1968. In 1995, in a referendum on independence, voters chose by a wide margin to retain their colonial status. Bhopal (1876-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in central India. Bhopal issued separate stamps for ordinary use until 1908, when they were replaced by Indian stamps. Bhopal continued to issue its own official stamps until 1950, when these, too, were replaced by Indian issues. Bhor (1879-1902) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in western India, Bhor issues were replaced by those of India in 1902. Bhutan (1955-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,865,191. Kingdom in the eastern Himalayas between India and Tibet. Bhutan was under Tibetan rule from the 16th century. In 1910 it became a British protectorate. In 1949 it became independent, although it continues to be guided in foreign relations by India, with whom it carries on 99 percent of its commerce. Since 1966, Bhutan has issued large numbers of attractive (and philatelically inspired) stamps. Among the novel forms these issues have taken are: gold, silver and steel foil, designs printed on silk, 3-D plastic stamps and souvenir sheets, miniature plastic records, plastic bas-relief and designs printed on rose-scented paper. Biafra (1968-70) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 14 million (1968 estimate). The eastern region of Nigeria, in which is concentrated the Ibo tribe. On May 30, 1967, the Ibos proclaimed the independent Republic of Biafra, and on Feb. 5, 1968, the first Biafran postage stamps were issued. On Jan. 9, 1970, after a bitter civil war, Biafra surrendered to armies of the central government. Since that time, stamps of Nigeria have been in use. During 1968-70, some 68 major varieties were issued, as well as several overprinted sets that appeared on the market after Biafra's defeat. Bialystok (1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 76,500 (1914). A city and province in northeastern Poland. In 1916, the local German military commander issued stamps for use in the area. Bijawar (1935-39) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in central India. Bijawar issued stamps from 1935-39, after which they were replaced by Indian stamps. Bilbao (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 185,898 (1937). The major port of northern Spain, located on the Bay of Biscay. Spanish stamps were overprinted in July 1937 to celebrate the occupation of the city by Franco's Nationalist forces. Bohemia and Moravia (1939-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A German puppet-state created from the western provinces of Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. Bohemia and Moravia were reincorporated into Czechoslovakia following the war. Bolivia (1867-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population 7,669,868. A land-locked republic in South America, Bolivia was part of the Inca empire during the 13th-16th centuries. It was conquered by Spain in the 1530s and, as the Presidency of Charcas, was attached to the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata. Notable primarily for its rich silver mines, which were exploited and depleted by the Spanish, Bolivia was an imperial backwater for three centuries. In 1825, the Spanish were expelled, and Bolivia, taking its name from the Great Liberator Simon Bolivar, became independent. Bolivia has been beset by numerous wars and revolutions. In the first 100 years of its independence, Bolivia lost territory to Chile, Brazil and Paraguay, three of its four neighbors. Its only coastal territory was lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879-84). Chronic internal instability has given Bolivia one of the lowest standards of living in Latin America. Its government has been a bewildering succession of military dictatorships. In recent years, anti-American feeling has grown because of the government's efforts, under U.S. pressure, to limit the traffic in coca, the raw material for cocaine. Because of frequent shortages of regular postal issues, revenues, postage dues and bisects frequently are used provisionally by Bolivian post offices. Bophuthatswana (1977-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of South Africa's so-called Bantustans or Bantu homelands, a scattering of nominally semi-autonomous states for otherwise disenfranchised black South Africans, located on the sites of reserves set up under the policies of the white-run apartheid government prior to World War II. Bophuthatswana was in fact made up of seven small independent tracts of territory within the eastern half of South Africa, six of which were in the northern part of the nation near the border with Botswana. Although not accorded international recognition as a sovereign state, Bophuthatswana's stamps were generally accepted on international mail. Bophuthatswana ceased to exist April 27, 1994. Bosnia and Herzegovina (1879-1918, 1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,607,734. Located in southwestern Yugoslavia, the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were long ruled by their various neighbors. After nearly five centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule, they were placed under Austrian protection in 1878, and a year later their first separate stamps appeared. In 1908, Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, arousing the fears of Serbian nationalists, who sought to add the area to the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1914, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the aging Austrian emperor, was assassinated at the capital, Sarajevo, by agents of the Serbian secret police, setting off the series of events that culminated in World War I. After World War I, Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During World War II, ancient ethnic antagonisms were renewed and reinforced as Croats, Serbs and Muslim Bosnian forces fought one another. In 1991 the Bosnia and Herzegovina parliament declared the states sovereign and in early 1992 declared independence from Yugoslavia. This was bitterly opposed by ethnic Serbs, and a three-way civil war broke out, with the loosely allied Croat and Muslim factions, backed by Croatia and later NATO, fighting the Bosnian Serbs, supported by Yugoslavia, which was by now reduced to the core Serbian state. This civil war was marked by atrocities and by the Serbs' ruthless policy of ethnic cleansing, the expulsion or execution of non-Serb minorities in the areas they controlled. In 1995 a peace agreement divided the country between the Croat-Muslims and the Serbs and created a collective government. Since then, a shaky peace has been maintained by a large international peace-keeping force. Botswana (1966-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,500,765. A republic in central southern Africa, directly north of the Republic of South Africa. Formerly the British Bechuanaland Protectorate, the republic became independent as Botswana on Sept. 30, 1966. Many Botswanans are migrant workers in South Africa, with which Botswana is closely linked. Brac (Brazza) (1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Yugoslavia. In 1944, Yugoslavian stamps were overprinted by the German military authorities for use in the island. Brazil (1843-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 164,511,366. A large republic, occupying nearly half of South America. Brazil was discovered by Europeans in 1500, and Portugal soon began colonizing the coastal areas. During 1808-21, after Napoleon had occupied Portugal, Brazil was the seat of the Portuguese empire. In 1821 the Portuguese king returned to Lisbon, leaving his son, Dom Pedro, to act as regent in Brazil. In 1822 Dom Pedro declared the independence of the Empire of Brazil. Although Dom Pedro and his son, Dom Pedro II, were popular, the feeling grew that an American monarchy was an anachronism, and in 1889 a bloodless coup established the republic. Since 1930, Brazil has often been ruled by various military regimes. A civilian government was in power 1956-64, and civilian rule was re-established in 1985. Ambitious industrial and agricultural programs since 1930 have capitalized on the country's enormous natural resources, and Brazil has become the leading industrial nation of Latin America. Economic growth has been slowed in recent years by income maldistribution and inflation. Bremen (1855-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 122,402 (1871 estimate). A major German seaport in northwestern Germany, Bremen was a free city and a member of the German and, later, the North German Confederations, joining the German Empire in 1870. Bremen used its own stamps from 1855-68, after which issues of the North German Confederation came into use. British Antarctic Territory (1963-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 300. A British territory in the south Atlantic Ocean, forming part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies. British Bechuanaland (1886-98) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 84,210 (1904 estimate). Located in southern Africa, British Bechuanaland was a British crown colony until 1895, when it was annexed to Cape Colony. It is now part of the Republic of South Africa. Overprinted stamps of Cape Colony were in use from 1886 to 1898, when they were replaced by regular Cape Colony stamps. Since 1910, stamps of South Africa have been used, although most Cape Colony stamps remained valid until 1937. British Central Africa (1891-1908) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.6 million (1907 estimate). A former British territory in central Africa. In 1907, British Central Africa adopted the name Nyasaland Protectorate, which subsequently became independent as the Republic of Malawi. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (1860-71) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 650,000 (1869 estimate). A Canadian province on the northwest coast of North America, bordering on the Pacific Ocean. The two British colonies of Vancouver (established 1849) and British Columbia (established 1858) united in 1866 and joined the Canadian Confederation in 1871. British East Africa (1890-1903) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Territories originally under control of the British East Africa Co., after 1895 directly under British administration. In 1903 the area was reformed as the East Africa and Uganda protectorates. During 1895-1903, this area used overprinted stamps of Britain, India and Zanzibar, as well as its own issues. In 1903, East Africa and Uganda issues came into use. British Guiana (1850-1966) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 630,000 (1966 estimate). A former colony on the northern coast of South America, British Guiana became an independent republic in 1966, assuming the name Guyana. Early issues of British Guiana include a number of major rarities, among them "The World's Most Valuable Stamp," the 1¢ black on magenta of 1856. This stamp is unique and has passed through the hands of some of the giants of philately. British Honduras (1866-1973) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 135,000 (1973 estimate). Located in Central America on the Caribbean Sea, this area was contested by the British and Spanish until 1798, when British authority was secured. In 1862 it became a British colony under Jamaican administration and in 1884 became a separate colony. In 1973, British Honduras changed its name to Belize. British Indian Ocean Territory (1968-76, 1990-) Stamp-issuing status: active. A group of British-owned coral atolls in the Indian Ocean. Formerly dependencies of Mauritius and the Seychelles, the atolls and three islands were organized as a crown colony on Nov. 8, 1965. On June 29, 1976, Aldabra, Farquhar and DeRoches islands were returned to Seychelles. The terrritory today comprises the Chagos Archipelago (Diego Garcia is the largest of five atolls). British Offices in China (1917-30) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Britain long maintained post offices in various Chinese cities. Stamps of Hong Kong were used in these offices until Dec. 31, 1916, after which Hong Kong stamps overprinted "China" were used. On Nov. 30, 1922, all British post offices in China were closed, except in the leased territory of Wei-hai-wei, which used British Offices in China issues until Sept. 30, 1930. British Offices in Morocco (1898-1957) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. British post offices in Morocco used overprinted contemporary stamps of Gibraltar (1898-1906) and Great Britain. Separate issues were used in the Spanish Zone, the French Zone and Tangier, as well as the general issues used throughout the country. Regular British stamps were also often used. British Offices in the Turkish Empire (1885-1914, 1919-23) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Until 1885, regular British stamps were used by British post offices in the Ottoman Empire. After that date, British stamps surcharged in Turkish currency or overprinted "LEVANT" were used. British post offices in the area were closed Oct. 1, 1914, reopened March 1919, and finally closed Sept. 27, 1923. British Virgin Islands (1866-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 13,367 (1997 estimate). A group of islands in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. The western portion of the Virgin Islands was under Danish rule until 1917, and under the United States since. The 30 eastern islands, which make up the British Virgin Islands, were under Dutch control until 1666, when they passed to Britain. Until 1956, they were administered as part of the Leeward Islands colony. In 1956 the British Virgin Islands became a separate crown colony and in 1967 became an Associated State, with Britain retaining control of foreign affairs and defense. Brunei (1906-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 307,616. A sultanate on the northwest coast of Borneo, situated between the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. The state of Brunei was a regional power in the 16th century but, after a long decline, came under British protection in 1888. Brunei secured full self-government in 1971 and became fully independent in 1984. Its oil and natural gas industry has made the country quite wealthy in recent years, and the Sultan of Brunei is one of the world's richest men. Brunswick (1852-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former duchy in northern Germany, joining the German Empire in 1870. Brunswick's issues were used from 1852-68, when they were replaced by those of the North German Confederation. Buenos Aires (1858-64) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Buenos Aires, long the chief port and commercial center of Argentina, was independent from the rest of the country at various times in the 19th century. Since 1862, however, it has formed a province of Argentina, whose stamps have been in use since 1864. A British post office in the city used regular British stamps (canceled "B-32") from 1860 to 1873. Bulgaria (1879-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 8,652,745. During the 10th and 12th centuries, the Bulgars ruled much of the Balkan peninsula but subsequently declined in power, falling under Turkish control in 1396. In 1878, Bulgaria became an autonomous principality under nominal Turkish rule. In fact, Bulgaria was independent — more closely aligned with Russia than with Turkey — and this independence was formalized in 1908. The Treaty of San Stefano (1878) established a "Greater Bulgaria," which included all Bulgars and encompassed territory that now forms parts of Macedonia, Greece, Romania and Turkey. The powers, fearing the expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans through such a large client-state, overturned that treaty at the Congress of Berlin later in the year. Bulgaria's foreign policy from 1878 through 1944 was based on the creation of this Greater Bulgaria. In 1885, Bulgaria absorbed Eastern Rumelia, and in the Balkan Wars (1912-13) further expanded its borders. Its defeat by the Allies in World War I cost Bulgaria its Aegean coastline, and its defeat in World War II brought the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a communist regime. In 1990 the Bulgarian Parliament ended the monopoly of the Communist Party on political power in the country, and the communist leadership was replaced by democratic opponents. Bulgaria's economy is going through a wrenching transition, as the country works to overcome years of neglect, to modernize and integrate with the rest of Europe. Bundi (1894-1948) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in northwestern India, Bundi issued stamps from 1894 to 1902 and from 1915 to 1948. During 1902-15 and after 1950, stamps of India were used. From 1948-50, stamps of Rajasthan were in use. Burgos (1936-38) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in north-central Spain. Burgos was occupied by the Nationalists early in the Spanish Civil War, and a large number of overprinted Spanish postage and fiscal stamps were used in the province during this period. Burkina Faso (1984-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,891,159. A poor, landlocked republic in the Savannah region of West Africa, formerly the French colony of Upper Volta, bounded by the states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. Following a 1983 coup d'etat, Upper Volta's name was changed to Burkina Faso on Aug. 4, 1984. The name is a transliteration of indigenous words meaning "country of incorruptible men." The first stamps bearing the new name were in an airmail set issued on May 23, 1984. Burma (1937-89) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 36 million. A republic in southeast Asia. Burma was a part of British India until 1937, when it became a separate territory under Britain. Occupied by Japan 1942-45, Burma was reoccupied by Britain, which granted independence on Jan. 4, 1948. Following independence, Burma maintained a nationalistic policy of socialism, restricting the economic and political freedoms of its people, especially non-Burman minorities. In 1989 the name of the country was changed to Myanmar. Burundi (1962-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6,052,014. A republic in Central Africa. As Urundi, it was part of German East Africa 1899-1914 and was then administered by Belgium, under a United Nations mandate, until it became an independent kingdom in 1962. In 1966, the monarchy was overthrown by a military coup. Traditionally, Burundi has been ruled by the Tutsi (Watusi) tribe, which comprises only 14 percent of the population. In 1972-73, the Bantu Hutus, who make up 85 percent of Burundi's population, revolted, sparking a genocidal civil war in which 150,000 Hutsi and 10,000 Tutsi were killed. Another 100,000 Hutsi fled to Tanzania and Zaire. Attempts to reconcile the two groups have failed, and a 1993-96 civil war resulted in the deaths of at least 150,000 Burundians. Bushire (1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An Iranian port on the Persian Gulf. Bushire was occupied by British forces from Aug. 8, 1915, to Oct. 16, 1915. During the British occupation, Persian stamps were overprinted and used in Bushire. Bussahir (Bashahr) (1895-1901) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Bussahir was a former feudatory state in northern India. Bussahir stamps were replaced by those of India. With the closing of the state post office, large numbers of remainders and reprints were released to the philatelic market. These exist both unused and canceled "19 MA 1900." C Cabo Gracias a Dios (1904-12) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A cape and seaport in the extreme northeast of Nicaragua. The circulation of two radically different currencies in the country necessitated the overprinting of Nicaraguan stamps for use in the province. Cadiz (1936-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 78,986 (1937). A major Spanish port on the Atlantic Ocean, located in southern Spain. Contemporary Spanish stamps were overprinted by the Nationalist local authorities during the Spanish Civil War. Caicos Islands (1981-) Stamp-issuing status: active. The northwesternmost six principal islands of the Turks and Caicos Islands, located in the West Indies, south of the Bahamas. Stamps overprinted "Caicos Islands" appeared in mid-1981, followed by purpose-inscribed issues in 1983 and since. These have been accompanied by a continuing steady flow of emissions from Turks and Caicos Islands. Calimno (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Calimno was under Turkish rule from the 16th century. It was occupied by Italy in 1912. Italian stamps overprinted "Calimno" were used from 1912-29, when they were replaced by Aegean Islands' general issues. Sets overprinted with the island's name were released in 1930 and 1932. Cambodia (Kampuchea) (1951-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 11,163,861. A constitutional monarchy in southeast Asia. It lies in Indochina and borders Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. During the 9th-13th centuries, Cambodia was the center of the Khmer empire, which ruled Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and southern Vietnam. By the 19th century, Khmer power had long been declining, and in 1863 a French protectorate was established over Cambodia. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1941. In 1951, Cambodia became a separate member of the French Union, and in 1955 it became fully independent. During the Vietnamese War, Cambodia attempted to maintain its independence and neutrality. In 1965, relations were broken with the United States, after ARVN forces attacked Viet-Cong bases in Cambodia. By 1969, the Viet-Cong-supported Khmer Rouge rebels posed such a threat that relations were restored. In 1970, the monarchy was deposed, and a pro-western republic was established. In 1971, the name Khmer Republic was adopted. There followed several years of intense fighting between the North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and the U.S.-backed forces of the republic. More than 100,000 died during 1971-75. The communists quickly defeated government forces after the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam. There followed one of the more bizarre and horrifying episodes in recent history. The Khmer Rouge broke with their Vietnamese allies and began a systematic reign of terror that claimed one million lives during 1975-78. During this period (1977-78), Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea. In 1978, border skirmishes with Vietnam erupted into war, and in January 1979, a Vietnamese-backed regime was established. During 1983-89 Vietnam effectively occupied Cambodia, reducing the Khmer Rouge to guerrilla resistance in remote rural areas. In 1993 U.N.-sponsored elections led to the restoration of the monarchy. Khmer Rouge resistance to the new government continued through most of the 1990s. Cameroun (1897-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,677,510. A republic in West Africa. Cameroun was a German protectorate until 1915, when it was occupied by the British and French. In 1922, it was mandated to these countries by the League of Nations. The French portion became the independent State of Cameroun in 1960, with the southern portion of the British mandate joining it in 1961. The northern portion of the British mandate joined Nigeria. In 1972, Cameroun changed its official designation to the United Republic of Cameroon. Politically stable, Cameroon has enjoyed considerable development in agriculture and transportation since independence. Campeche (1876) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Mexican state occupying the western part of the Yucatan peninsula. Provisional stamps were produced for use there during the struggle by Juarez against Emperor Maximilian. Campione D'Italia (1944-52) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A small Italian enclave in Switzerland, which for a time issued stamps valid for postage to Switzerland and Italy. These issues were used during the period when northern Italy was controlled by the Italian Social Republic, while Campione remained loyal to the royalist government, from which it was unable to secure supplies of stamps. Canada (1851-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 29,123,194. An independent state within the British Commonwealth, occupying the northern part of North America. Under French rule until 1763, when it was transferred to Britain, modern Canada was formed with the union of the various individual British colonies in North America in 1867. British Columbia and Vancouver Island were added in 1871, Prince Edward Island in 1873, and Newfoundland in 1949. Canada possesses rich natural resources. The majority of the population is English-speaking and of British descent, while in Quebec 80 percent are of French descent. Canal Zone (1904-79) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A strip of land 10 miles wide lying on either side of the Panama Canal, from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans, dividing the Republic of Panama into two parts. Thwarted by Colombia from building the Panama Canal through its territory, the U.S. supported the Panamanian revolution of 1903, and almost immediately received a perpetual lease to the territory. In 1978, the United States and Panama agreed to a revised treaty, allowing for the gradual transfer of control of the Canal to Panama by the end of the century. On Sept. 30, 1979, the U.S. Canal Zone Postal Service ceased operation, and on Oct. 1, the Panamanian Postal Service took charge. Canary Islands (1936-39) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, located off the northwestern coast of Africa. Under Spanish rule since the 15th century, the Canary Islands have normally used regular Spanish issues. During the Spanish Civil War, however, a large number of overprinted stamps were used on mail carried by a provisional airline service linking Las Palmas with Seville, where it was linked to the rest of Europe. These issues were in use until the re-establishment of the Spanish state service in May 1938. Canouan Island (1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active. One of the Grenadines of St. Vincent, a group of small islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Cape of Good Hope Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2,564,965 (1911). Located at the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope was originally a Dutch colony, passing to the British after the Napoleonic Wars. Conflict between English immigrants and established Dutch settlers (Boers) led to the withdrawal of the Boers into the interior after 1836. These tensions, intensified by the discovery of rich diamond and gold deposits, increasing English immigration and Britain's imperialistic policy, resulted in the Boer War of 1899-1902, which ended with British occupation of the formerly independent Boer republics. In 1910, Cape Colony joined with Natal, Transvaal and the Orange River Colony to form the Union of South Africa. During the Boer War, a number of provisionals appeared, the most famous of which were issued at Mafeking, where the defending British force was commanded by Gen. Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, who later established the Boy Scouts. Cape Juby (1916-48) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 9,836. A Spanish possession in the western Sahara on the Atlantic coast, opposite the Canary Islands. Secured by agreement with France, Spanish troops occupied Cape Juby in 1916, at which time overprinted stamps of Rio de Oro were issued. From 1916 to 1919, stamps of Rio de Oro and Spanish Morocco were used in the area. In January 1919, overprinted stamps again appeared, and these remained in use until 1948, when they were replaced by those of the Spanish Sahara. Cape Verde (1877-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 393,843. A group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Senegal. Cape Verde was uninhabited when first discovered by the Portuguese in 1456 or 1460. The first Portuguese settlers arrived in 1462, and black slaves were introduced soon thereafter. The modern Cape Verdeans are descendents of the two groups. In 1975, Cape Verde became independent, with close ties to Guinea-Bissau (the former Portuguese Guinea). Drought and famine in recent years have created major difficulties for this already impoverished nation. Caroline Islands (1900-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 40,000 (1915 estimate). A large group of islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The Carolines were purchased by Germany from Spain in 1899. They were captured by Japan in 1914 and subsequently administered by the Japanese under a mandate from the League of Nations. In 1944, they were occupied by the United States and after 1947 were administered by the United States, under a mandate from the United Nations, as part of the Pacific Islands Trusteeship. The western portion of the Caroline Islands became the autonomous republic of Palau in 1981, and the rest of the group became the Federated States of Micronesia in 1986. Japanese stamps were used from 1914 to 1944, and U.S. issues 1944-84. Carpatho-Ukraine (1939, 1944-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The easternmost province of pre-Munich Czechoslovakia. It was created as an autonomous state and swiftly annexed by Hungary in 1939. With the Axis withdrawal in 1944, the area became independent for a brief time, reverting to Hungary in 1945. In 1949, it was annexed by the Soviet Union. Carchi (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Turkish Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Carchi was occupied by Italy in 1912. Italian stamps overprinted "Karki," "Calchi" or "Carchi" were used until 1929, when the general Aegean Islands issues came into use. Two sets overprinted with the island's name were issued in 1930 and 1932. Carupano (1902-03) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A port of Venezuela, near Trinidad. During the Anglo-German-Italian occupation of La Guaira, Carupano was isolated and soon ran out of stamps, necessitating the issue of provisional issues until regular stocks could be obtained. Caso (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Caso was under Turkish rule from the 16th century. It was occupied by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian issues overprinted "Caso" were placed in use. These were replaced in 1929 by the general Aegean Islands issues, although two sets overprinted for the island were issued in 1930 and 1932. Castellorizo (1920-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2,238 (1936 estimate). Small island in the Mediterranean off the southwest coast of Turkey. Occupied by France in 1915, Castellorizo was transferred to Italy in 1920. After World War II, the island, along with the rest of the Dodecanese Islands, passed to Greece. Cattaro (1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Croatian province on the Adriatic, occupied by the Italians from 1941-43, and Germans, 1943-45, during World War II. In 1944, Italian and Yugoslavia issues were overprinted for use in Cattaro by the German Occupation Authorities. Cavalla (1893-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in northern Greece. The French post office in Cavalla used unoverprinted French stamps (canceled "5156" within a diamond-shaped grid of dots) after 1874. During 1893-1914, it used stamps overprinted or inscribed "Cavalle." Seized by Bulgaria from Turkey in 1912, Cavalla was taken by the Greeks in 1913. Bulgarian stamps overprinted by the Greek occupation authorities were used pending the arrival of regular Greek stocks. Cayman Islands (1901-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 36,153 (1997 estimate). Three islands in the Caribbean Sea, northwest of Jamaica. The Cayman Islands have been a British colony since its settlement in the 18th century. During the 1970s, the Caymans became a tax-free haven for banking, and many Western banks have branches in the colony. Cayes of Belize (1984-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of sparsely populated islands in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Belize. During 1984-85, a number of sets were released, primarily for sale to collectors. Regular Belize stamps have always been used in the territory. Central African Republic (1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,342,051. A landlocked nation in central Africa, surrounded by Chad, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire and the Sudan. Formerly the French colony of Ubangi-Shari, the Central African Republic was established Dec. 1, 1958, and became fully independent Aug. 13, 1960. Although possessed of substantial mineral resources, the country has been unable to develop economically and has been politically unstable since independence. During 1960-65, the CAR was a center of Chinese influence in Africa. In 1965 the pro-Chinese regime was overthrown, and Jean-Bedel Bokassa came to power. On Dec. 4, 1976, Bokassa proclaimed the country the Central African Empire, with himself as Emperor Bokassa I. Bokassa's rule was marked by almost unrelenting cruelty and barbarism, characterized by rumors that the emperor himself practiced cannibalism. On Sept. 20, 1979, Bokassa was overthrown in a bloodless coup supported by French troops, flown in from bases in Gabon and Chad. In the years since, Central Africa's political turbulence has continued, with periodic French intervention to restore or to maintain order. Central Albania (1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During World War I, Albania was overrun by various foreign armies. From January 1914 to February 1916, the central portion of the country was controlled by a provisional regime under Essad Pasha. Essad was supplanted by the Austrians in 1916. Central China (1949-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Communist Central Chinese Liberation Area included the provinces of Honan, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsi. Separate issues for the region were used after the occupation of Hankow from the Nationalists. Central Lithuania (1920-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Historically a part of Lithuania, this territory was under Russian rule until 1915, when it was occupied by the Germans. German stamps overprinted for Lithuania were used until December 1918, when regular Lithuanian stamps were issued. In October 1920, the area was occupied by Polish forces, who established an autonomous state, which issued its own stamps during 1920-22. In 1922, it was annexed by Poland, but in 1939 it was occupied by Soviet forces and returned to Lithuania. Cephalonia and Ithaca (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Two of the Ionian Islands, off the western coast of Greece. The islands were occupied by Italian forces in 1941, when Greek stamps were overprinted for use in the two islands by local Italian military authorities. These were soon superseded by the general occupation issues for the Ionian Islands. Ceylon (1857-1972) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 12,670,000 (1971). Island in the Indian Ocean, off the southeast coast of India. Much of the island was ruled by Portugal during the 16th and 17th centuries, and later by the Dutch. From 1795, the British ruled Ceylon. In 1948, it became a self-governing dominion, and in 1972, it became independent as the Republic of Sri Lanka. Chad (1922-36, 1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 7,166,023. A republic in central Africa. A former dependency of Ubangi-Shari, Chad was occupied by the French during 1897-1914, after defeating fierce native resistance. In 1920, Chad became a separate colony, joining in French Equatorial Africa in 1934. In 1958, the Chad Republic became an independent state in the French Union, and in 1960, it became fully independent. Following independence, Chad retained close ties with France, which provided economic aid and support in the government's civil war with Libyan-backed Arab guerrillas after 1966. In 1981, Libyan forces occupied Chad at the request of a coalition government. Libya's efforts to merge the two nations, however, alarmed even the pro-Libyan elements of the regime, and international pressure brought a rapid Libyan withdrawal. Libyan forces remained in the northern part of the country until 1987, and Libya continued to claim the mineral-rich Aozou strip until 1994. After years of civil war, of foreign invasions, and of coups and counter-coups, Chad adopted a new constitution and held its first multiparty elections in 1996. Chamba (1886-1950) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 168,908 (1941 estimate). A state in northern India, Chamba became independent of Kashmir in 1846. In 1886, its postal service was joined to that of India, and overprinted Indian stamps came into use. These overprinted issues were replaced by Indian stamps April 1, 1950, although they continued to be postally valid until Jan. 1, 1951. Charkari (Charkhari) (1894-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in north-central India, Charkari's stamps were replaced by those of India on May 1, 1950. Chechen Republic (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active. An autonomous territory in the central Caucasus. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Muslim Chechnya resisted Russian authority and pressed for full independence. From December 1994 to January 1997, Russian troops attempted to suppress Chechnyan resistance, without success. Several Chechnyan stamp issues appeared after 1992, which may have been legitimately issued and used in the country. More recently, a number of attractive pictorial sets and souvenir sheets have been offered by a philatelic promoter as Chechnyan local stamps. These are probably bogus. Checiny (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southern Poland. Local stamps were issued in 1919 under the authority of the municipal authorities. Chelyabinsk (1920-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 45,000 (1914). A city in southwestern Siberia. Russian stamps were overprinted for local use by the municipal authorities during 1920-22. Chiapas (1866) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state of southern Mexico, bordering on Guatemala and the Pacific Ocean. Chihuahua (1872) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital city of the State of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. Chile (1853-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,508,168. A republic in southwest South America. Chile was settled by Spain as early as 1540, although Indian resistance in the south was not overcome until the late 19th century. During 1817-18, Chile secured its independence, with the aid of Argentine forces under San Martin. During the 19th century, Chile aggressively expanded its borders, acquiring nitrate-rich northern districts from Peru and Bolivia during the War of the Pacific, 1879-84, and subduing Indian resistance in the south. After 1891, Chile was a liberal republic, but economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s produced social unrest and radical regimes, both Leftist and Rightist. Since 1989, Chile has prospered under restored civilian rule. Chimarra (Himera) (1914, 1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city on the southern coast of Albania. Philatelically inspired issues were released during the Greek occupation of the port. China (1878-) Stamp-issuing status: (People's Republic) active, (Empire and Republic) inactive; Population: (People's Republic) 1,210,004,956, (Empire and Republic) 462,798,093 (1948). An ancient country occupying a large area in eastern Asia, between Turkestan and the China Sea and stretching from Siberia to Indochina. Chinese civilization appeared in the 3rd millennium B.C., producing one of the earliest sophisticated cultures. China was long divided into numerous states, within a feudal system. China was unified under the Chin and Han dynasties (255 B.C.-220 A.D.), but again broke into contending states after the fall of the Hans. Unification was achieved under the Sui and T'ang dynasties (589-907), but internal division again appeared. In the early 13th century, the Mongols overran China, establishing the Yuan dynasty, which at its height (circa 1300) ruled China, Turkestan, Korea and Indochina. In 1368, the Ming dynasty expelled the Yuan and inaugurated a period of dynamic growth. In 1644, the Manchu dynasty overthrew the Ming and created a vast and powerful empire. During 1840-1900, China was defeated in a series of wars, which secured for the European powers numerous concessions within the Chinese empire. In 1892, Dr. Sun Yat-sen founded the Regenerate China Society, which began to foment revolution. In 1911, the empress-dowager was deposed, and a republic proclaimed. A period of civil war and internal division under local warlords ensued, until Chiang Kai-shek, commanding the Nationalist armies, was able to re-establish some unity during the 1920s. In 1927, Chiang moved against Soviet influence in the Nationalist government, and the communists split with the regime, launching a guerrilla war against the central government. In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria and began to expand into China, openly invading the country in 1937. The Nationalists and communists maintained an uneasy truce during World War II, but with the defeat of Japan and the occupation of Manchuria by the Soviets, the civil war began in earnest. By 1949, the Nationalists had been defeated and driven to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Since that time, the Chinese People's Republic on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan have both claimed to represent the rightful government of China. The Chinese People's Republic was closely linked with the Soviet Union during the 1950s, but by the 1960s this relationship had deteriorated. Conflicting nationalisms became identified with ideological differences, and the two nations each came to regard the other as its principal enemy. U.S. relations with the mainland regime, broken in 1950, became increasingly close after 1972. On Dec. 15, 1978, the United States formally recognized the People's Republic as the sole legal government of China. Under Mao Zedong, China was thoroughly communized, and all political opposition suppressed. Ongoing economic miscalculations and brutal attempts to bring about economic progress based on Maoist principles were unsuccessful. In 1975 Mao died, and by 1978 Deng Xiaoping had established himself as "paramount leader." Deng pursued a far more liberal, and far more successful, policy. While political expression remained tightly controlled, there were no more wholesale purges, and ideology was adapted to market realities. As a result, China has advanced dramatically, and in the 1990s, its economy has been one of the fastest growing in the world. The Nationalist regime on Taiwan has been politically isolated in recent years. In 1971, it was expelled from the United Nations, in favor of the People's Republic, and in 1978, the United States, its principal ally and supporter, severed formal diplomatic relations. Taiwan has been able, however, to maintain extensive informal contacts abroad through its active international commercial operations. China Expeditionary Forces (1900-21) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A total of 33 stamps of British India overprinted "C.E.F." were used by the British Expeditionary Force in China in 1900-21. Chinese Treaty Ports (1865-97) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Before establishment of the imperial posts in 1897, a number of Chinese treaty ports issued local stamps. These include Chungking (1894), Foochow (1895), Hankow (1893), Ichang (1895), Kewkiang (1894), Nanking (1896), Wuhu (1894) and Shanghai (1865). Chios (1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Aegean Sea, Chios was captured by Greece from Turkey in 1912. In 1913, an overprinted Greek stamp was issued. Stamps of Greece have since been used. Christmas Island (1958-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 813. An island in the Indian Ocean. Under the British colony of Singapore from 1900-58, Christmas Island was transferred to Australian administration in 1958. Cilicia (1919-21) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of southern Turkey, northwest of Syria. Cilicia was occupied by the British and French from Turkey in 1918. In 1919, France assumed sole control and in 1920 received the territory as a mandate from the League of Nations. In 1921, however, Turkish forces expelled the French, and in 1923 France gave up its claims to the area. During 1919, Cilicia used Palestinian stamps, and during 1919-21, the French regime issued overprinted stamps of Turkey and France. Ciskei (1981-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of South Africa's so-called Bantustans or Bantu homelands, a scattering of nominally semi-autonomous states for otherwise disenfranchised black South Africans located on the sites of reserves set up under the policies of the white-run apartheid government prior to World War II. Ciskei was the most southerly of these, consisting of a wedge of coastal territory southwest of the city of East London. Although not accorded international recognition as a sovereign state, Ciskei's stamps were generally accepted on international mail. Ciskei was dissolved as a separate administrative unit April 27, 1994. Coamo (1898) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Puerto Rico. U.S. forces issued a stamp for provisional use in August-September 1898, after the city was wrested from Spanish control. Cochin (1892-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Early a center of foreign traders, the Portuguese established a trading station at Cochin, a port city in southern India, in 1502. The British followed in 1635 but, along with the Portuguese, were expelled by the Dutch in 1663. In 1795, the area passed to the British. Cochin issued its own stamps until 1949, when it joined with Travancore and the coastal towns of Tangasseri and Anjengo to form the United State of Travancore-Cochin, whose issues then came into use. Indian stamps replaced these issues on April 1, 1951. Cochin China (1886-92) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The southernmost area of Vietnam. Occupied by France from 1863-67, Cochin China served as the base for French expansion in the region. In 1887, Cochin China was incorporated into French Indochina, whose stamps were used after 1892. Cocos Islands (Keeling Islands) (1963-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 609. A group of tiny islands in the Indian Ocean under Australian administration. Stamps of the Cocos Islands are also valid in Australia. Colombia (1859-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population 37,418,290. A republic in northwest South America. The seat of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada after 1718, Colombia declared its independence in 1810, finally ousting the Spanish in 1824. Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador made up the State of Greater Colombia until 1830 when the three nations separated. In 1903, the northern province of Panama broke away from Colombia and, with U.S. support, became independent. Colombia is one of the few democracies in Latin America, although it has been plagued by chronic violence and disorder. "La Violencia" of 1948-58 claimed 200,000 lives, and political violence, albeit much abated, continues. Colombia has been officially named the Republic of New Granada (1831-58), the Grenadine Confederation (1858-61), the United States of New Granada (1861), the United States of Colombia (1861-85) and the Republic of Colombia (since 1885). Colombia-States Issues (1863-1904) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Until 1885, the various Colombian states were sovereign, possessing the right to issue their own stamps. In 1886, a national convention abolished most of the states' rights, transferring sovereignty to the central government. The states, however, retained the right to issue stamps, and did so as late as 1904. The states that used their own stamps, along with national issues, were Antioquia, Bolivar, Boyaca, Canca, Cundinamarca, Panama, Santander, the city of Cucuta and Tolima. Comoro Islands (1950-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 589,797. A group of islands in the Mozambique Channel between Mozambique and Madagascar. Under French rule since the 19th century, the Comoros were attached to Madagascar from 1911-46, being reorganized as an Overseas Territory in 1946. Since 1950, the Comoros have issued their own stamps. The Comoros became independent in 1975, except for Mayotte, which voted to remain French. A coup soon after independence placed a leftist regime in power, but its increasingly eccentric rule brought another coup in 1978, which replaced it with a pro-French government. Confederate States of America (1861-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 9 million (1865 estimate). The southern states of the United States, seceded from the Union in 1861 and attempted to establish an independent confederation. After initial successes against the U.S. forces, the Confederacy was on the defensive after 1863. By early 1865, the rebellious areas had been overrun, and the states were reincorporated within the United States. Confederate States of America-Provisional Issues (1861) In the early months of the Civil War, many southern post offices were without regular stocks of stamps. U.S. stamps in rebel territory were demonetized after June 1, 1861, and general Confederate issues were not available until October 1861. During the interim, many local postmasters issued provisional stamps and postal stationery. Occasionally, such provisionals appeared later during the war, when regular Confederate stamps were unavailable. Congo Democratic Republic (1960-71, 1997-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 47,440,362. In January 1960, Belgium agreed to grant independence to the Belgian Congo, and general elections were held May 31. On June 30, the country became independent. The Congo was immediately torn by domestic violence, causing most whites to flee and two of the richest regions, Katanga and South Kasai, to secede. In August, Belgian troops were replaced by United Nations forces, which gradually restored order and suppressed the independence movements in the south. In 1963 Katanga was reunited with the Congo, and on June 30, 1964, its president, Moise Tshombe, became president of the Congo. Within months of the U.N. withdrawal (June 1964), yet another separatist movement broke out, when leftists proclaimed a people's republic in Stanleyville. The central government suppressed this uprising, with the support of Belgian and white mercenary troops. In 1965, General Joseph D. Mobutu became president. He began an Africanization program, wherein all Congolese with Christian names were required to adopt African names (he became Mobutu Sese Seko), Congolese place names were changed and, in 1971, the Congo itself was renamed the Republic of Zaire. After more than two decades of corrupt and inefficient rule, Mobutu was overthrown in 1997, and Zaire again became the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Congo Republic (1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,583,198. A republic on the north bank of the Congo River, in west central Africa. The former French colony of Middle Congo, the Congo became a member state in the French community in 1958 and gained independence in 1960. After 1963, the Congo government alligned itself with both the Soviet Union and China. U.S. relations, severed in 1965, were restored in 1977. In 1990, Maoism was renounced, and opposition parties were legalized. The official name of the country, changed to the People's Republic of the Congo in 1970, was changed back to the Republic of the Congo. A democratically elected government came to power in 1992. During 1997, the country was torn by ethnic and regional civil war. Constantinople (1909-14, 1921-23) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1,200,000 (1914). The capital of the Ottoman Empire, situated on the Hellespont between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. During 1873-81, Turkish stamps were overprinted for local use within the city, and a number of private posts issued stamps. Italian stamps overprinted "Constantinopoli" were used by the Italian post in the city from 1909-14. These issues were again used from 1921-23 by the Italian garrison in Constantinople. Stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted with the name of the city were used by the Russian postal service in Constantinople from 1909-14. During 1919, Romanian forces in the city used contemporary Romanian stamps overprinted "Posta Romana Constantinopl" with the emblem of the Romanian PTT. Cook Islands (1892-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 19,776. A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. In 1901, the Cook Islands became a dependency of New Zealand, gaining internal self-government in 1965. Cordoba (1858-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in central Argentina, Cordoba issued its own stamps from 1858 to 1865, when they were replaced by the issues of the central government. Corfu (1923, 1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The major island of the Ionian Islands, off the western coast of Greece in the Ionian Sea. Corfu, under Greek control since 1864, was occupied by Italy in 1923 and 1941-43. Stamps of Italy and Greece were overprinted by the Italians for use on the island. Corrientes (1856-80) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The northeast province of Argentina, Corrientes issued its own stamps until 1880, when they were replaced by regular Argentine issues. Cos (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Cos was under Turkish rule from the 16th century. It was occupied by Italy in 1912, at which time overprinted Italian stamps were issued. These were superseded by the general Aegean Islands issues in 1929, although two sets overprinted "Coo" were issued in 1930 and 1932. Costa Rica (1863-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,534,174. A republic in Central America, located between Nicaragua and Panama. Under Spain until 1821, Costa Rica's subsequent history has been mostly peaceful, enabling it to develop a relatively high standard of living. Still chiefly an agricultural country, Costa Rica finds tourism an increasingly important industry. Coudekerque (1940) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern France, near Dunkerque. For a time after the German occupation in World War II, overprinted French stamps were used in the city. Courland (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In October 1944, German forces in the Courland peninsula were cut off from Germany by the advancing Soviet army. In April 1945, the local German commander overprinted four German stamps for use in the area. Crete (1898-1910, 1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 335,000 (1910 estimate). A large island in the Aegean Sea, Crete was a province of Turkey from the 15th century. Continuous religious civil strife between the Christian and Muslim natives provided an excuse for the Great Powers to intervene in the island's affairs in 1898. In 1899, the island was declared an autonomy under Prince George of Greece. In 1908, the Cretan Assembly voted for union with Greece, which finally occurred in 1913. Crete used Turkish stamps until 1899. Stamps of Crete were used until 1913, when Greek stamps came into use. During 1898-1914, various stamps were issued by the Powers for use in their districts of Crete, including Britain (1898-99), Russia (1899), Austria (1903-14), France (1903-13) and Italy (1900-12). During World War II, German military air parcel post stamps were overprinted "Inselpost" for use by German troops on Crete and nearby islands, after their isolation following the German withdrawal from Greece. Crimea (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A large peninsula on the Black Sea, south of the Ukraine. From the Crimea, the Krim Tatars ruled a powerful state in southern Russia during the 15th-17th centuries. They later came under Turkish rule, which was supplanted by Russian rule in 1783. During World War I, the Crimea was occupied by the Germans, who in June 1918 set up a Tatar government in the area. With the German withdrawal in November, a provisional government was established and several stamps were issued. The Crimea was subsequently occupied by the French, the Bolsheviks, Gen. Denikin's Volunteer Army, and finally by the Bolsheviks a second (and final) time. During World War II, the Crimea was again occupied by the Germans and was included in the Ukraine administrative district. Since 1992, a large number of purported local issues have appeared on the market. A few are dubious; most are bogus. Croatia (1941-45, 1991-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,026,995. A district of northern Yugoslavia, bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Croatia was a province of Hungary until 1918, when it became a part of Yugoslavia. In 1941, a German puppet state was created in Croatia. Nominally a kingdom under an Italian prince, in fact the state was ruled by the Croat fascist party. Croatia was overrun by Russian and Yugoslavian partisan forces in 1945 and re-incorporated into Yugoslavia. In 1991 Croatia declared its independence, and there followed a civil war between ethnic Serbs and Croats. Initially, the Serbs, with Yugoslav support, controlled about one-third of the country, declaring their territory the republic of Krajina, which issued its own stamps. By 1995, the Croatian government had recaptured almost all of the Serb-held areas. Cuautla (1867) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in the State of Morelos in central Mexico, a simple provisional issue was produced there during the struggle against Emperor Maximilian. Cuba (1855-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,999,041. The largest island of the West Indies, located south of Florida. Under Spanish rule from 1511-1898, Cuba was the scene of intense revolutionary activity after 1868. In 1898, the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor precipitated the Spanish-American War, which ended with the U.S. assuming trusteeship of the island. In 1902, the Cuban republic became independent, although the United States actively intervened in Cuban affairs until the 1930s. In 1959 a liberal guerrilla movement, led by Fidel Castro, overthrew the repressive government of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba since 1952. Castro, influenced by his brother Raul and Che Guevera, soon began to purge the revolution of its non-Marxist elements. The regime nationalized foreign holdings and began the program of collectivization that took most of the agricultural sector out of private hands. A large number of Cubans preferred exile to the new order, and many hundreds of thousands have fled the island, most settling in the United States. Castro linked Cuban policy closely with that of the Soviet Union, which soon established a strong military presence on the island. U.S.-Cuban relations deteriorated rapidly. In 1961, the United States backed an abortive invasion by a Cuban exile force, and in 1962 the discovery of nuclear missiles at Soviet bases in Cuba brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The United States imposed a total trade embargo on Cuba in 1962, which was supported by the Organization of American States in 1963. In the years since, the Castro regime has improved the standard of living in Cuba and has largely overcome illiteracy. Long dependent on massive Soviet economic support, the Cuban economy was badly shaken when the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s ended economic aid. Tightened U.S. trade restrictions in 1992 and 1996 have made matters worse. Increasing popular discontent has forced the government to take steps to liberalize the economy and to loosen some restrictions on emigration. The U.S. Treasury Department prohibits the importation of Cuban postage stamps into the United States through the mail. Cuernavaca (1867) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital city of the State of Morelos in central Mexico. A simple provisional issue was produced there during the struggle against Emperor Maximilian. Cyprus (1880-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 752,808. A large island in the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus was a Turkish possession from 1571 to 1878. In 1878, the British occupied the island, formally annexing it in 1914. Tension between Greek and Turkish elements, each of which sought union with their respective mother country, erupted into violence in 1955. An agreement between Britain, Greece, Turkey and Cypriot leaders provided for the creation of an independent republic, with guarantees to the Turkish minority, and in 1960 independence was achieved. Continuing conflict between Greek and Turkish factions led to the intervention of a United Nations peace-keeping force in 1964, which has since remained on the island. On July 15, 1974, a pro-Greek coup, led by Greek army officers deposed the elected government. Five days later, Turkey invaded Cyprus and quickly occupied the northeastern 40 percent of the island. In 1975, Turkish Cypriots in the occupied area voted to establish a separate state. In 1983 this government declared its independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Cyrenaica (1923-35, 1950-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 225,000 (1934 estimate). A district of North Africa, west of Egypt. Cyrenaica was under Turkish control until 1912, when it was ceded to Italy and incorporated with Tripolitania to form the colony of Libia. In 1942, it was occupied by the British and became part of the independent kingdom of Libya in 1951. Czechoslovak Legion Post (1918-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During World War I, many Czech nationalists fought against Austria on the Russian front. After the Russian Revolution, these units attempted to move across Siberia to sail to the western front to continue fighting, but clashes with the Bolsheviks en route to Vladivostok led to the Czechs' involvement in the Russian Civil War. The Czechs achieved notable successes, for a time holding large areas along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. News of these successes created sympathy for the cause of Czechoslovak independence. During this period, the Czech Legion issued a number of stamps for use by its forces in Russia. Czechoslovakia (1918-93) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 15.5 million (1986). A former republic in central Europe. Czechoslovakia comprised the medieval kingdom of Bohemia, which came under Austrian Hapsburg rule in 1526, and Slovakia, long a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. During the 19th century, as nationalism became a potent force throughout Europe, the desire for independence from Austro-Hungarian rule grew. With the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I and the subsequent breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Czechoslovakia became independent. Tensions between the major ethnic groups were never entirely overcome, and by the mid-1930s there was considerable sentiment for autonomy in Slovakia, while the German minority in the Sudetenland sought union with a resurgent Germany. In 1938, Czechoslovakia lost border territories to Germany, Hungary and Poland, and in 1939 the balance of the country was occupied by Germany. During World War II, both Slovakia and the truncated Czech state, renamed Bohemia-Moravia, were under German control. In 1945, the country was liberated by Allied forces and the Czechoslovak republic was re-established, with the easternmost region, Carpatho-Ukraine detached and absorbed into the Soviet Union. In February 1948, the communists seized power and by September had effectively suppressed opposition. There followed a long period of violent repression and purges of liberal party leaders. In January 1968, Alexander Dubeck replaced Antonin Novotny as party leader and launched a program aimed at establishing a democratic communist system. The Soviet Union feared that the success of such reforms would weaken its control over its Eastern European satellites, and relations between the two governments became increasingly cool. In August, Soviet, Polish, East German, Hungarian and Bulgarian forces invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the liberalization. Nearly a third of the Czechoslovak Communist Party members were expelled, and some 40,000 Czechs fled the country. The government thereafter maintained a repressive, staunchly pro-Soviet policy. In 1989, a democratic government was established, and in 1990, the country was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. In July of that year, Slovakia declared sovereignty, and an agreement was quickly reached to dissolve the Czech and Slovak union. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Czech Republic (1993- ) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,318,958. A republic in central Europe, comprising the Czech portion of the former Czechoslovakia, corresponding to the historic Bohemia. The Czech Republic became a separate independent state on January 1, 1993, and has continued the steady progress toward a free-market economy begun in 1989. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. D Dahomey (1899-1945, 1960-76) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3.1 million (1975 estimate). A former republic in West Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea, situated between Togo and Nigeria. During 1863-92 France occupied the area, consolidating its holdings as the colony of Dahomey in 1899. In 1904, it became part of French West Africa. In 1958, Dahomey became an autonomous republic within the French Community, and in 1960 it became an independent republic. In 1974, Dahomey assumed the name Benin. Dalmatia (1919-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Area on the coast of Croatia around the port of Zara. Dalmatia was occupied by Italy in 1918 and became part of Yugoslavia after World War II. Danish West Indies (1855-1917) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 27,500 (1917 estimate). A small group of islands east of Puerto Rico. Having passed through the hands of Spain, France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, the Knights of Malta and Brandenburg (Prussia), the islands finally came under Danish rule in 1733 and 1754 (St. Thomas). In 1916, the colony was sold to the United States, which took possession on April 1, 1917. They were renamed the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. stamps replaced those of the colony. Danube Steam Navigation Company (1866-80) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. This company carried mail along the Danube, serving all countries through which the river passed, as well as the Russian port of Odessa on the Black Sea. Danzig (1920-39) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 407,000 (1939 estimate). A port on the Baltic Sea. Part of Prussia until after World War I, Danzig and adjacent territory was made a "Free City and State" under the protection of the League of Nations in 1920. In 1939, the district was occupied by Germany and, in 1945, was annexed by Poland. Dardanelles (1904-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A port on the strait of the same name between the Aegean and Mamara Seas. Issues of the Russian Levant were overprinted for use at its post office at Dardanelles. Debrecen (1919-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Hungarian district occupied by Romania after World War I, but later returned to Hungary. Dedeagatch (1893-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A seaport in northern Greece. The French post office in Dedeagatch used unoverprinted French issues (canceled "5155" in a diamond-shaped grid of dots) from 1874-93 and stamps overprinted or inscribed "Dedeagh" from 1893 until August 1914. During the first Balkan War (1912), Dedeagatch was occupied by Bulgaria from Turkey. In 1913, Greece occupied the city from Bulgaria. Overprinted Bulgarian stamps, along with a typeset provisional issue, were used pending the arrival of regular Greek stamps. Denmark (1851-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,268,775. A kingdom in northwestern Europe, located strategically between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Denmark was one of the chief Viking centers and for centuries was one of the leading powers in northern Europe. At one time or another during the Middle Ages, Denmark ruled Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and England. During the 17th-19th centuries, Danish power declined, and defeats by Sweden, Britain and Prussia forced it back to, roughly, its present boundaries. After 1815, Denmark adopted a policy of neutrality, which it maintained for 130 years. This policy was abandoned after World War II, during which the country was occupied by Germany. Denmark was a charter member of NATO and joined the Common Market in 1960. A rich country agriculturally, Denmark has undergone an industrial boom since 1945. A long tradition of democracy and social cooperation mark the country's political life. Dhar (1897-1901) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in west-central India, Dhar issues were replaced by those of India on April 1, 1901. Diego-Suarez (1890-96) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 12,000 (1896). A port at the north end of Madagascar, Diego-Suarez was a French colony and naval base from 1885 to 1896, when it was attached to Madagascar. Djibouti (1977-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 434,116. The former French overseas territory of Afars and Issas in northeast Africa became independent on June 17, 1977. Somali Coast and Obock issues also received Djibouti overprints and surcharges in 1894-1902. Djibouti is supported by French aid, and a French garrison remains in the country. Dobrudja (1916-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Romanian territory on the Black Sea, comprising the area south of the Danube River. Dobrudja was occupied by Bulgaria during World War I, during which time overprinted Bulgarian stamps were used in the district. Dodecanese Islands (1947) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The former Italian Aegean Islands, occupied by Greece after World War II. Overprinted Greek stamps were used until their replacement by regular Greek issues. Dominica (1874-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 83,226. An island in the Caribbean southeast of Puerto Rico. Dominica was a British Crown Colony 1833-1968 and an Associate State 1968-78. On Nov. 3, 1978, it became independent. Dominican Republic (1865-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population 8,228,151. A republic occupying the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. The Dominican Republic was ruled by Spain until c.1800, thereafter falling under periods of Spanish, French and Haitian rule until 1844. In 1861-65, the republic was again occupied by Spain. A Dominican request for annexation by the United States was rejected in 1865. The first stamps used in the country were Spanish colonial issues for Cuba and Puerto Rico. After the Spanish withdrawal, the Dominican Republic began issuing its own stamps. The rest of the 19th century was marked by political instability. From 1916 to 1922, the country was under U.S. military administration, and U.S. troops remained until 1924. In 1930, Gen. Rafael Trujillo Molina came to power and ruled the country for the next three decades. Trujillo maintained order (at the expense of individual liberties) and brought a degree of economic development. Increasing popular dissatisfaction with Trujillo's repressive regime brought his assassination in 1961 and the fall of his designated successor the following year. Free elections were held in 1962, but the president was deposed in 1963. In 1965, the ousted leader's followers staged a revolt, and U.S. troops occupied the country to restore order, remaining, along with small contingents from five South American countries, as a peacekeeping force until September 1966. Since that time, the Dominican Republic has enjoyed relative stability and economic progress. Don Cossack Government (1918-19) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. On June 5, 1918, the Don Cossacks established a republic at Rostov, in southern Russia. Allied with Gen. Denikin's Volunteer Army, the government fell to the Soviets after Denikin's withdrawal from Rostov in February 1920. Dubai (1963-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A sheikhdom in the Trucial States in east Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Dubai was under British protection from 1892-1971 when it became a part of the independent United Arab Emirates. Dunkerque (1940) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 31,017 (1943). A French port on the English Channel. During July 1-Aug. 9, 1940, 15 French stamps overprinted locally by the German military authorities were in use in the area around Dunkerque. Durango (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the province of Vizcaya in northern Spain. A 16-value set was overprinted by local authorities in 1937 to commemorate the occupation of the city by the Nationalists. Durazzo (1909-11, 1916-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An Albanian port. Italian stamps overprinted "Durazzo" and surcharged in Turkish currency were used by the Italian post office in the city from February 1909 to 1911. Duttia (Datia) (1893-1921) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in north-central India, Duttia's stamps were replaced by Indian issues in 1921. E East Africa Forces (1943-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A total of nine British stamps were overprinted "E.A.F." or "Somalia" for use in Italian Somalia under the British occupation. East Africa and Uganda Protectorates (1903-21) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 6.5 million. A former British administrative unit in eastern Africa, comprising Kenya and Uganda. East China (1938-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Communist East China Liberation Area included the provinces of Shantung, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei and Fukien. Fourteen postal districts within East China issued stamps during 1938-49. Eastern Rumelia (1880-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Bulgarian district in the southeast Balkan Peninsula. After Turkey's defeat by Russia in 1877-78, Eastern Rumelia became autonomous. In 1885, a coup overthrew the vestiges of Turkish control and South Bulgaria was established. Eastern Silesia (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former Austrian territory in central Europe. After World War I, it was disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland, being divided between the two countries in 1920. Ecuador (1865-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 11,690,535. Republic on the western coast of South America. Ecuador was the site of a number of early Indian cultures and was the center of the northern Inca empire at the time of its conquest by Spain (1533). In 1822, Ecuador became independent as part of Bolivar's Great Colombia. In 1830, it withdrew to form a separate nation. Despite substantial petroleum deposits (it is an OPEC member), Ecuador remains an underdeveloped nation. A series of military and civilian regimes have alternated control in recent years. Since 1979, a democratic civilian government has ruled the country. A long-standing border dispute between Ecuador and Peru remains unresolved. Armed hostilities occasionally erupt between the two countries, most recently in January 1995. Egypt (1866-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 64,791,891. A republic in northeast Africa. Egypt was one of the centers of the development of western civilization. The dominant power in the region for 3,500 years, Egypt passed through periods of strength and weakness until 330 B.C., after which it was ruled by foreign states and dynasties until modern times. After 1517, Egypt was under Turkish control. In 1882, Britain occupied Egypt, although a nominal Turkish suzerainty remained until 1914. Egypt was a British protectorate until 1922, after which time it was virtually independent. British troops remained until 1951, when Egypt became completely independent. The corruption and extravagance of the monarchy brought the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 and the establishment of a republic in 1953. In 1954, Lt. Col. Gamel Abdel Nasser, one of the leaders in the 1952 coup, came to power and ruled until his death in 1970. Nasser pursued a pan-Arab policy and attempted to unite the Arab world under his leadership. The United Arab Republic joined Egypt and Syria 1958-61, but attempts to maintain the union or to include Iraq and Yemen during this period failed. Nasser's foreign policy, technically neutral, was in most instances aligned with that of the Soviet Union, and by the time of his death, thousands of Soviet advisors were in Egypt. Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, who expelled Soviet advisers in 1971 and who pursued an increasingly pro-Western policy after 1974. Egypt fought wars with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. In each instance, Israel won. In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a formal peace treaty, establishing formal diplomatic relations, setting a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory occupied since 1967, and providing for the establishment of a Palestinian state. In October 1981, Sadat was assassinated. He was quickly succeeded by his vice president, Hosni Mubarak. Mubarek has resisted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt during the 1990s. Elobey, Annobon and Corisco (1903-09) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3,000 (1910 estimate). A group of islands near the Guinea coast off west Africa. The islands were acquired by Spain in 1778. Stamps of Fernando Po were used from 1868 to 1903. In 1909, the islands were attached to Spanish Guinea, now the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. Elwa (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Estonia. Some 58 Russian stamps were provisionally overprinted "Eesti Post" by the German military authorities for use in the city. Epirus (1914-16) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A region in southeast Albania. Inhabitants set up a provisional government in February 1914, and were united with Greece in December 1914. In 1916, Franco-Italian forces occupied the area, giving it to Albania after World War I. Equatorial Guinea (1968-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 442,516. A republic in the Gulf of Guinea, in West Africa, comprising the former Spanish colonies of Fernando Po and Rio Muni. Equatorial Guinea became independent Oct. 12, 1968. In 1972, Masie Ngeuma Biyogo became president for life. He ruled by terror, reviving slavery, killing some 50,000 people and driving tens of thousands more into exile. The United States suspended relations with the Biyogo government in 1976. The Soviet Union, China and North Korea maintained close relations, and Cuba maintained a military advisory mission in the country. On Aug. 5, 1979, Masie was overthrown, and a junta assumed power. The coup halted the production of vast numbers of brightly colored stamps (perfs, imperfs, souvenir sheets, gold-foil sheets) that were issued by Equatorial Guinea in the 1970s. Erseka (1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southeastern Albania, occupied by Greece in 1914. During the Greek occupation, the local authorities issued a set of seven stamps for use in the area. Eritrea (1892-1937, 1948-52, 1991-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,589,687. A republic in northeast Africa, bordering on the Red Sea. Long under general Ethiopian domination, the area was occupied by Italy during 1870-85. In 1890, Italian possessions in the region were consolidated into the colony of Eritrea. In 1936, Eritrea was absorbed into Italian East Africa. It was occupied by the British in 1941, and overprinted British stamps were used. In 1950, Eritrea became an autonomous part of Ethiopia, and in 1962 was annexed as a province. Eritrea never accepted Ethiopian rule, and after a 31-year civil war, became an independent republic in 1993. Estonia (1918-40, 1991- ) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,444,721. A republic in northern Europe bordering on the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. Estonia was for centuries a Swedish possession. Conquered by Russia in 1721, it was under Russian rule until 1917, when it became independent. In 1939, Soviet forces occupied the country, absorbing it in 1940. Occupied by Germany from 1941-44 and administered as part of Ostland, Estonia was re-occupied by the Soviet Union. after World War II. In 1990, Estonia declared itself an "occupied nation" and on August 20, 1991, declared its independence. Russia accepted Estonia's declaration in September, and the last Russian troops were withdrawn in 1994. Ethiopia (Abyssinia) (1894-1938, 1942-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 58,732,577. A republic in northeast Africa. Ethiopia was an ancient empire, isolated from the rest of the Christian world after the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. Although Ethiopia subsequently broke up into several petty states, it maintained its unique culture and its political independence for centuries, as surrounding nations were conquered, first by the Arabs, Turks and Egyptians, later by the various European imperial powers. During the 19th century, the country was again united. An Italian invasion was crushed in 1896, but many outlying areas were gradually lost to the British, French and Italians. In 1935-36, Ethiopia was defeated by Italy, and in 1936, with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, it was organized into the colony of Italian East Africa. Italy's East African empire was short-lived, and in 1941, Ethiopia was liberated with the help of British forces, and independence was restored. In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie I, who had reigned since 1922, was deposed, and a socialist military regime assumed power. The new government abolished the monarchy, curbed the powers of the ancient Coptic Church, launched radical land reforms and violently suppressed political opposition. In 1978 Soviet advisers and 20,000 Cuban troops helped Ethiopia defeat Somalia in a border war in the Ogaden. By the early 1980's, chronic civil war, the upheaval caused by the displacement of farmers in collectivization programs, and a disastrous drought created a devastating famine in the country. The death of as many as a million Ethiopians brought a massive international relief effort, beginning in 1984. In 1991, a coalition of rebel armies overthrew the socialist military regime and created a transitional government. In 1994, a new constitution was adopted, and in 1995 Ethiopia's first multiparty national elections were held. Eupen and Malmedy (1920-25) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Two towns in western Germany annexed by Belgium after World War I. A total of 68 overprinted stamps of Belgium were used until 1925, when regular Belgian issues came into use. F Falkland Islands (1878-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,317. The Falkland Islands (with its dependencies) comprise some 200 islands off the southeastern coast of South America. Only the two main islands, East and West Falkland, are inhabited. Ninety-eight percent of the Falklanders are of British descent and have British nationality. The Falklands were discovered by the British in 1592 but were uninhabited until a French settlement was established in 1764 and a British settlement in 1765. The two countries disputed sovereignty until 1770 when France sold its claim to Spain. Spain and Britain disputed ownership of the islands until 1806, when the Spanish withdrew their settlement. Although Spain ceased pressing its claim at that time, the newly independent United Provinces of Rio de la Plata claimed the Falklands after 1816. A settlement was maintained 1820-33, when the British re-occupied the islands and peacefully expelled the Argentine garrison. Argentina has maintained its claim to the Falklands and, on April 2, 1982, seized the islands. A British fleet was immediately dispatched to oust the Argentines, and successfully recaptured the islands. Falkland Islands Dependencies (1946-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Several island groups in the South Atlantic Ocean and the British sector of Antarctica. In 1944, Graham Land, South Georgia, the South Orkneys and South Shetlands received separate stamp sets, overprinted on Falkland issues, and in 1946, general issues for the territory began. In 1962 this area was reorganized as the British Antarctic Territory, with South Georgia remaining attached to the Falklands. In October 1985, two of the principal dependencies, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, ceased to be dependencies of the Falkland Islands and began to issue their own stamps. Far Eastern Republic (1920-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.5 million (1920 estimate). The Far Eastern Republic, comprising eastern Siberia from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, was formed on April 6, 1920, to act as a buffer between the Soviet Union and Japan. The state was immediately beset by intrigues between pro- and anti-Bolshevik factions, with the former finally gaining the upper hand. Japanese forces were forced to withdraw from Vladivostock in November 1922, and soon thereafter the Far Eastern Republic joined the Soviet Union. Faridkot (1879-1901) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former principality in the Punjab area of India. Faridkot issued stamps and maintained its own postal system until Jan. 1, 1887, when it signed a postal convention uniting its postal system to that of India. Overprinted Indian stamps were used until March 31, 1901, when they were replaced by regular Indian issues. Faeroes (1919, 1940-41, 1975-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 43,057. A group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Faeroes, long a Danish possession, are now a self-governing part of the kingdom of Denmark. The islands were occupied by Britain during World War II, after Denmark's occupation by Germany. Separate stamp issues have been released by the Faeroes since 1975. Fernando Po (1868-1909, 1929, 1960-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 63,000 (1968 estimate). An island in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa. Fernando Po was acquired by Spain in 1778 and was incorporated into Spanish Guinea in 1909. In 1960, it became an overseas province of Spain, but in 1968 united with Rio Muni to form the independent republic of Equatorial Guinea. Fezzan-Ghadames (1943-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Districts in the interior of Libya, occupied by French forces during 1942-43, Fezzan and Ghadames were transferred to the kingdom of Libya in December 1951. Fiji (1870-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 792,441. A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Fiji was a British colony from 1874 to 1970 when it became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth. Since independence, tensions have run high between native Fijians and the descendents of Indians brought to the islands as contract laborers in the 19th century. A 1990 constitution favored native Fijians, who comprise 49 percent of the population, but who control 83 percent of Fiji's land. In July 1997, it was amended to afford more equitable rights to the Indian Fijians. Finland (1856-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,109,148. A republic in northern Europe. Under Swedish rule 1187-1809, Finland became a grand duchy with the Russian tsar as grand duke in 1809. In 1899, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire, but in July 1917, the Finnish Diet proclaimed independence. After several years of warfare, Russia accepted Finnish independence in 1919. In 1939, Finland was invaded by the Soviet Union and, in 1940, was compelled to cede extensive eastern territories to the Soviets. Finland subsequently allied itself with Germany in an attempt to regain these lands, but its defeat cost even further concessions. Although economically and culturally oriented toward the West, after World War II Finland pursued a policy of acquiescence to the Soviet Union. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Finland has strengthened its ties with the West, and in 1995 joined the European Union. Fiume (1918-24) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 44,956 (1924 estimate). A city on the Adriatic Sea. A former Hungarian port, Fiume was disputed by Italy and Yugoslavia after World War I. An Italian private army occupied the city in 1919, and a free state was subsequently established during 1920-22. A fascist coup brought Italian occupation in 1922. In 1924, Fiume was annexed to Italy, while adjacent territory was annexed to Yugoslavia. In May 1945, Fiume was occupied by Yugoslav partisans. Italian stamps were overprinted for use in the area during 1945-46, after which regular Yugoslavian issues came into use. France (1849-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 58,040,230. A republic in western Europe. After five centuries of Roman rule, the province of Gaul, which generally corresponded to modern France, was overrun by the German Franks in the 5th century. During the 8th century, the Frankish kingdom stopped the Arab advance into Europe, and by c. 800 A.D. the Frankish Empire, under Charlemagne, ruled most of western and central Europe. In 843, the empire was partitioned, and the western kingdom became the foundation of modern France. During the Middle Ages, France lacked any strong central government, being divided among numerous feudal states. The English dominated much of the area during the 11th-15th centuries, but they were finally expelled after 1453. France emerged from a century of warfare with England as a major power. The French Revolution (1789) began a series of wars in Europe that lasted until the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. During the second half of the 19th century, France built a far-flung overseas empire, in competition with Britain overseas and with Germany and Austria on the continent. France was defeated by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and lost the disputed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German state. During World War I, France suffered greatly, and most of the bitterest fighting was on French soil. France emerged from the war the pre-eminent power on the continent, but in the 1930s it lost ground to a re-emerging Germany. France quickly crumbled before Germany's invasion in May and June 1940. The northern and western portions of the country were occupied by Germany, and a German puppet regime was established in the south. A Free French government, based in Africa, continued the war against the Axis overseas. Following World War II, France rapidly rebuilt its economy and again played a major role in world affairs. During 1958-70, Gen. Charles de Gaulle's policies of economic and technological development and independence in foreign affairs were aimed at re-establishing France's greatness. De Gaulle disengaged France from its colonial commitments, and during 1958-62, most of French Africa became independent. France, however, retains close economic and political ties with many of its former colonies. French Colonies (1859-1906, 1944-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1859-92, general French colonial issues were used in French possessions not issuing their own stamps. General postage dues were in use until 1906 and during 1944-45. The French colonial semipostal issues of 1943-44 were intended for use in the colonies, but were actually used in parts of France occupied by the Free French. French Congo (1891-1906) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The territory occupied by France, north of the Congo River, at times including Gabon, Ubangi and Chad, as well as the area now included in the Congo People's Republic. The French Congo issued stamps from 1891 until 1906 when the administrative area was broken up into the separate colonies of Gabon and Middle Congo. French Equatorial Africa (1936-58) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 4.5 million (1958 estimate). The French possessions north of the Congo River, formerly included in the French Congo. Stamps inscribed French Equatorial Africa were used from 1936 to 1958, when the area was divided into four republics — Chad, Congo, Gabon and Central African Republic — which have since issued their own stamps. French Guiana (1886-1946) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 29,000 (1947 estimate). A former French colony on the northeastern coast of South America, north of Brazil. Separate issues were used in French Guiana from 1886 until 1946, when the area became an overseas department of France, using regular French issues. French Guinea (1892-1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 5.8 million. A former French colony on the western coast of Africa. During 1892-1944, French Guinea used its own stamps. In 1944, these were replaced by those of French West Africa. In 1958, the colony became independent as the republic of Guinea, and again began issuing its own stamps. French India (1892-1954) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 400,000 (1954 estimate). Several French enclaves on the east coast of India, dating from the period of French domination of the region in the 18th century. Separate stamp issues were in use from 1892 until 1954, when the last of the French holdings were transferred to India, and Indian stamps came into use. French Morocco (1891-1956) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 8.3 million (1956 estimate). Former French protectorate in northwest Africa. The greater part of Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912. In 1956, the French and Spanish zones were united as the independent kingdom of Morocco. French Offices in China (1894-1922) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Until Dec. 31, 1922, France maintained an extensive postal system in China. In addition to a general series of stamps for these offices, individual issues were used at French post offices in Canton, Hoi Hao, Mongtsen, Pakhoi, Tch'ong K'ing (Chunking) and Yunnan Fou (Kunming). In addition, stamps were issued for Kwangchowan, a leased territory administered by French Indochina. French Offices in Crete (1902-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. France issued two series of stamps for use in its post offices in Crete during the period of that country's autonomous regime. French Offices in Egypt (1899-1931) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Until April 1, 1931, France maintained post offices in Alexandria and Port Said, issuing stamps for use in both cities. French Offices in Turkey (1885-1914, 1921-23) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Like many other European nations, France maintained its own postal services within the Ottoman Empire. Aside from a general issue, individual issues were used in Cavalle (Cavalla), Dedeagh (Dedeagatch), Port Lagos and Vathy (Samos). French Offices in Zanzibar (1894-1906) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During the late 19th century, France competed with England for influence in East Africa, including Zanzibar. French post offices in Zanzibar were closed in 1906 when Britain assumed direct control over the sultanate. French Polynesia (1892-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 233,488. After 1842, France expanded its holdings in the South Pacific, consolidating these into the Oceanic Settlements in 1885. This group was renamed the French Oceanic Settlements in 1903. In 1957, the colony was renamed French Polynesia and in the following year became an Overseas Territory of the French Republic. French Southern and Antarctic Territories (1955-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 200. The French overseas territory comprising its holdings in the Antarctic area. Formerly dependencies of Madagascar, this administrative unit was established in 1955 to strengthen France's claims in the region. French Sudan (1894-1943) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3.8 million (1941 estimate). Former French colony in northwest Africa. Separate issues were in use from 1894-1943, when they were replaced by those of French West Africa. In 1959, this area joined with Senegal to form the independent republic of Mali. French West Africa (1943-59) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 18 million (1959 estimate). Former French administrative unit comprising the African colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, French Sudan, Mauritania, Niger and Upper Volta. Although French West Africa was formed in 1895 as an administrative unit, the various colonies continued to issue their own stamps until 1943, when French West African issues came into use. These, in turn, were replaced by the separate issues of the territories as they became republics during 1958-59. Fujeira (1964-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the sheikhdoms that comprised the Trucial States in southeast Arabia, in the Persian Gulf. Fujeira was under British protection from 1892 to 1971, when it became a member of the independent United Arab Emirates. From 1964 to 1972, Fujeira produced a huge number of gaudy topical stamps for sale to collectors. Funafuti (1984-88) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Islands group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Funafuti issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British Royal Family in the mid-1980s. Funchal (1892-1905) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 150,000 (1905 estimate). City in the Madeira island group in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Funchal issues were replaced by those of the Azores in 1905. Since 1931, regular Portuguese stamps have been in use. G Gabon (1886-1936, 1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,190,159. Republic in western Equatorial Africa, north of the Congo region. Gabon was one of the four French colonies making up French Equatorial Africa. In 1958, Gabon became a republic and, in 1960, gained independence from France. Gabon possesses abundant natural resources, and through foreign aid and government development, it has become one of the most prosperous Black African nations. Galapagos Islands (1957-59) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands in the eastern South Pacific Ocean. Ecuador issued stamps for this province from 1957 to 1959. Although intended for use in the Galapagos, these issues were commonly used throughout Ecuador. Gambia (1869-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,248,085. Republic in West Africa. Gambia became Britain's first African colony in 1588. In 1902, the inland territory, along the Gambia river, was occupied. In 1965, Gambia became independent, and in 1970, it became a republic. Early in 1982, following a period of political instability, Gambia formed a federation, Sene-Gambia, with Senegal, which, except for a small length of coastline, surrounds it. This union was dissolved in 1989. Geneva (1843-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A canton of Switzerland, almost surrounded by France. Geneva issued several stamps, which were used until the issue of national Swiss stamps in 1850. Georgia (1919-20, 1993-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,174,642. A region in the western Caucasus, south of Russia and north of Turkey. Long under Turkish influence, the region of Georgia was conquered by Russia during 1810-78. In May 1918, following the withdrawal of German forces that had occupied the area during World War I, Georgia declared its independence. Georgia was recognized by the League of Nations, but on Feb. 25, 1921, it was occupied by Soviet forces. The Georgian Soviet Republic was merged into the Transcaucasian Federation of Soviet Republics in March 1922, and issues of the federation replaced those of Georgia on Oct. 1, 1923. Georgian nationalist sentiment remained strong under Soviet rule, provoking repression and massive purges after 1972. Despite this, illegal private enterprise and nationalism remained potent forces and brought further Soviet attempts at repression in 1989. Georgia declared its independence in April 1991. Its recent history has been marked by civil war during 1991-92 and by a rebellion in the province of Abkhazia, on the Black Sea. Supported by Russia, Abkhazia became autonomous in 1994. German East Africa (1893-1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 7.7 million (1916 estimate). A former German colony in eastern Africa, on the Indian Ocean. The area was long dominated by the Arab Sultanate of Zanzibar, but German influence in the region was recognized after 1886. Stamps for the colony were in use from 1893 to 1916. After World War I, the colony was divided into Tanganyika (British), Ruanda-Urundi (Belgian) and Kionga (Portuguese). German New Guinea (1888-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 600,000 (1919 estimate). A former German protectorate, comprising the northeastern portion of New Guinea and the adjacent islands. Regular German stamps were used from 1888 to 1898 when they were replaced by separate issues. In 1914, the area was occupied by Australian forces, and stamps of New Guinea replaced those of the German administration. German South-West Africa (1897-1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 95,000 (1919 estimate). A former German colony on the southwestern coast of Africa. Regular German stamps were used from 1888 to 1897, and stamps of the colony from 1897 to 1915. In 1915, South African forces occupied the area, and stamps of the Union of South Africa came into use. In 1919, South Africa was granted a mandate over the territory. Since 1923, stamps of South-West Africa have been used. Germany (1872-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 84,068,216. State in central Europe. Traditionally divided into numerous petty sovereignties, German unification began with the growth of Prussian power in the 19th century. French occupation during the Napoleonic Wars brought the dissolution of many of the smaller states and stimulated German nationalism, which looked more and more to Prussia for leadership. The German Confederation (1815-66) and North German Confederation (1867-71) paved the way for unification. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 brought the German states (except Austria) together to defeat France, and the German victory saw the creation of the German Empire with the Prussian king as emperor. Germany quickly emerged as the dominant military power on the continent. In August 1914, after many years of tension, war between the major powers finally erupted, with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary; later including Bulgaria and Turkey) pitted against the Allies (Britain, France and Russia, later joined by many other nations, including the United States and Japan). Both sides anticipated a short war and quick victory, but stalemates arose on all major fronts, and years of trench warfare ensued. During 1916-17, the Central Powers advanced in Russia, and the Russian front collapsed. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918) gave Germany large areas of European Russia and much of the country's industry and mineral resources. The Central Powers were less successful elsewhere: during the fall of 1918, Turkey surrendered to advancing British and Arab forces, Bulgaria surrendered and Austria-Hungary collapsed. By this point, Germany itself was near economic collapse. The kaiser abdicated in November 1918, and a republic was established, soon after which Germany surrendered unconditionally. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) stripped Germany of its overseas empire and transferred German European territories to France, Belgium, Poland and, after plebiscites, to Denmark and Lithuania. The harshness of the treaty's terms and the economic dislocation following the war provided fertile ground for political extremism, which culminated in the naming of Adolph Hitler as chancellor in 1933. Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party quickly suppressed all political freedoms and began openly to re-arm Germany. In 1936, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, and in 1938, Austria and the Sudetenland (German-speaking Czechoslovakia) were annexed. In 1939, Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, and on Sept. 1, German forces invaded Poland, precipitating World War II. Through 1942, Germany enjoyed an almost unbroken string of military successes. The entry of the United States into the war, however, shifted the balance in favor of the Allies, and during 1944-45, Germany was on the retreat. In April 1945, soon after Hitler's suicide, Germany surrendered unconditionally. Germany lost all territory acquired after 1919, as well as much of that which had been left to it after its defeat in World War I. The country was divided into four zones of occupation, administered by the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. In 1949, the German Federal Republic was formed from the three western zones, and the German Democratic Republic was created out of the Soviet zone. The German Federal Republic became fully independent in 1955. During the 1950s and 1960s, West Germany underwent an economic boom and became one of the world's major industrial powers. During the 1970s, West Germany normalized relations with its communist neighbors and dramatically expanded its trade with Eastern Europe. Reunification of the two Germanys was always the highest priority of the West German government. With the fall of the East German communist regime in 1989, reunification proceeded rapidly, and by the end of 1990 the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic had again become one nation. German Democratic Republic (1949-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 16.7 million. During 1945-49, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern zone of Germany, which included the provinces of Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Thuringia. On Oct. 7, 1949, the Russian zone was united as the German Democratic Republic. Although East Germany became fully independent in 1954, some 400,000 Soviet troops remained in the country. The East German economy was held back by heavy-handed central planning until the mid-1960s. A relaxation of controls brought rapid industrialization, and by the early 1970s, East Germany was the ninth ranked economic power in the world. Economic progress stalled during the 1970's, and many young East Germans emigrated to the West. East Germany's communist regime was always among one of the most repressive in the Soviet Bloc, and it resisted the Soviet policy of glasnost in the late 1980s. Popular demonstrations forced the resignation of the unpopular government of President Erich Honecker in October 1989. Within a month the new government had opened its borders with Czechoslovakia and West Germany, and East and West Germany began negotiations for reunification. On October 3, 1990, formal reunification took place. Germany (Soviet Zone Local Issues) (1945-46) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1945-46, the Soviet-occupation postal authorities authorized issues for a number of localities – Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin Postal Administration); Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern); Saxony (Hall Postal Administration); East Saxony (Dresden Postal Administration); Thuringia (Erfurt Postal Administration); and Western Saxony (Leipzig Postal Administration). German Offices in China (1898-1917) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Germany maintained post offices in various Chinese cities after 1886, with specially overprinted German stamps in use from 1898 to 1917. German Offices in Morocco (1899-1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. German post offices in Morocco began using overprinted German stamps in 1899. In 1914, these offices were closed in the French zone and, in 1919, in the Spanish zone. German Offices in Turkey (1870-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. German post offices began operating in Turkish cities in 1870, using unoverprinted stamps of the North German Postal District. In 1872, these were replaced by regular German issues, and in 1884, overprinted German stamps came into use. Ghana (1957-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 18,100,703. A republic in west Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea. Formed from the former British colony of the Gold Coast and the mandated territory of British Togoland in 1957, Ghana became fully independent in 1960. During 1957-66, Ghana was ruled by Kwame Nkrumah, one of the leaders of its independence movement. Nkrumah launched major economic projects but, in the process, built up a huge foreign debt. His economic mismanagement and repression of political opposition created popular dissatisfaction, and in 1966, he was overthrown in a military coup. The new regime expelled Chinese and East German advisers, and in 1969 civilian government was restored. During 1972-81, there were a number of military coups, and from 1981 to 1992 the military ruled the country, suspending the constitution and outlawing political parties. A new constitution providing for a democratic multiparty system was adopted in 1992. Gibraltar (1886-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 28,913. A fortified promontory on the European side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Strategically located, Gibraltar has passed under a number of rulers over the centuries. Britain occupied the area in 1704 and has held it since, although Spain maintains its claim to the colony. United Nations resolutions in 1967 prompted a referendum that overwhelmingly endorsed the continuation of British rule. Gilbert Islands (1976-79) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 52,000 (1973 estimate). A group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia. Formerly part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the Gilberts became a separate British crown colony in 1976. The Gilbert Islands became the independent Republic of Kiribati on July 12, 1979. Gilbert and Ellice Islands (1911-75) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 58,000 (1975 estimate). Two groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia. A British colony after 1915, the groups were separated in 1975, the Ellice Islands renaming themselves Tuvalu. Gold Coast (1875-1957) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3.1 million. Former British colony in Africa on the Gulf of Guinea. Originally held by a variety of European powers, control of the coastal area was consolidated by Britain by 1871. The interior was conquered by 1901. In 1957, the Gold Coast became the independent state of Ghana. The first separate stamps for the Gold Coast were issued in 1875. Gold Coast issues continued in use until their replacement by Ghanan stamps in 1957. Granada (1936) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 118,179 (1937). A city and province in southern Spain. During the siege of Granada in July 1936, the Nationalist administration issued a stamp for local use. After the siege was lifted, this stamp was used in other parts of Spain occupied by the Nationalists. Grand Comoro (1897-1911) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Comoro Islands in the Mozambique Channel near Madagascar. In 1911, it was attached to the French colony of Madagascar, whose stamps were used until 1947 when the Comoro Islands were separated, issuing their own stamps in 1950. Great Britain (1840-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 58,610,182. Kingdom in northwest Europe comprising England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. After the accession of the Tudor dynasty (1485), Britain became unified and began to develop into a world power. British overseas expansion began in the late 16th century, and in the following 200 years, Britain emerged as the dominant European naval and colonial power, supplanting the Spanish and Dutch. After its victory in the Napoleonic wars, Britain was the dominant world power, building an empire that, by 1900, included large areas throughout the world. Although victorious in World War I, Britain suffered severe losses in manpower and resources. The postwar period saw the loss of Ireland (1921) and the development of nationalism in India. During World War II, Britain again suffered terribly. For a year following the fall of France (June 1940), Britain was the only major power to stand against Germany. After Germany's invasion of Russia (June 1941) and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941), it gained powerful allies but continued to bear the brunt of German air attacks. Britain emerged from World War II again victorious, but battered and exhausted. Industrial growth has continued, although it has lost its former predominant economic position. The two decades following World War II saw the dissolution of the empire, and Britain's overseas dominion today mostly consists of small scattered island possessions in the West Indies and in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Britain issued the world's first regular adhesive postage stamp in 1840. Great Britain-Regionals (1958-) Stamp-issuing status: active. In 1958, Britain began issuing regional definitive issues for various areas within the country. Such regionals are sold only at the post offices within the respective regions, but are valid for postage throughout the country. Regional issues have been released for Guernsey (1958-69); Jersey (1958-69); Isle of Man (1958-73); Northern Ireland (1958-); Scotland (1958-); and Wales and Monmouthshire (1958-). Greece (1861-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,583,126. Republic in southeastern Europe. Greece was the center of the Minoan civilization of Crete during the 2nd millennium B.C., and of the Hellenic civilization after c. 800 B.C. After the 7th and 8th centuries B.C., Greek colonies were established throughout the Mediterranean, producing a civilization that greatly influenced subsequent European development. The conquests of Alexander the Great spread Greek culture throughout western Asia, and Alexandrine successor states maintained Greek cultural dominance in the Middle East and northern India for two centuries. By 146 B.C., Greece was conquered by Rome, although the Romans soon became thoroughly Hellenized and so perpetuated Greece's cultural influence. Greece remained a part of the Eastern Roman Empire until it was occupied by the French and Italian crusaders. In 1456, the country was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. Greek nationalism began to emerge in the late 18th century, culminating in revolution in 1821. By 1832, Greece had become an independent kingdom. Greece has since expanded to include Greek-speaking territories in the southern Balkans, as well as Crete and the Aegean Islands. The period 1912-19 saw the rapid expansion of Greece's borders, producing many occupation issues. Greece successfully resisted an Italian invasion in 1940, but German intervention in 1941 brought the country's rapid defeat and occupation by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. Communist elements, defeated by the royalist government and Britain in 1944-45, waged a guerrilla war against the regime during 1947-49. The communists were suppressed, with U.S. assistance. In the postwar years, Greece experienced rapid economic growth. Increasing tension between liberal and conservative factions, however, brought a military coup in 1967. After unsuccessfully attempting to moderate the harshness of the regime, King Constantine and the royal family fled the country. In 1973, this government was overthrown in a second military coup. The new government, in turn, was overthrown in 1974, and democratic civilian government was restored. Greenland (1905-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 58,768. The world's largest island, located in the Arctic, northeast of Canada. Greenland was occupied by the Norsemen during the 10th-15th centuries, but the deteriorating climate and increasingly aggressive Eskimo inroads finally wiped out the European settlements. In 1721, Denmark again began colonization. In 1953, the colony became an integral part of the kingdom of Denmark. In 1979, home rule was extended to Greenland, and a socialist-dominated legislature was elected. Native place names have come into use, and the official name for Greenland is now Nalatdlit Nunat. Greenland was a U.S. protectorate from 1940-45, during the German occupation of Denmark. Grenada (1861-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 95,537. An island in the West Indies. A British colony since the 18th century, Grenada became an independent state in 1974. A military coup in 1983 prompted an invasion by the United States, with the participation of six neighboring Caribbean nations. Cuban military advisers were expelled, and civilian government was restored. Allied forces withdrew in 1985. Grenada-Grenadines (1973-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6,000. A small group of islands in the West Indies administered by Grenada. Since 1973, Grenada has issued more than 2,000 different stamps for the Grenadines. There is no postal need for these issues. Although postally valid, they are issued primarily for sale to collectors. Griqualand West (1874-80) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Located in South Africa, north of the Orange River, this territory was occupied by the British in 1871, and established as a British crown colony in 1873. It was annexed to Cape Colony in 1880 and since 1910 has been part of South Africa. Griqualand West issued one provisional at Kimberley in 1874 and many varieties of the overprint "G" on various Cape Colony stamps during 1877-78. From 1871 to 1877 and after 1880, Cape Colony stamps were in use. Grodno (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 44,000 (1914). A city in Belarus, formerly part of Poland. After World War I, the German military commander issued stamps overprinted on Ukrainian and Russian stamps. Guadalajara (1867-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the state of Jalisco in northwestern Mexico. Guadalajara is one of the major cities of the country and, during the war against French-supported Emperor Maximilian, issued a number of provisional postage stamps. Guadeloupe (1884-1947) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the West Indies, under French rule since 1635. From 1775 to 1946, Guadeloupe was a French colony and since 1946 has been an overseas department of France. French stamps replaced those of Guadeloupe in 1947. Guam (1899-1901, 1930-31) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 9,500. The largest of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, Guam was ceded to the United States by Spain in 1898, after its capture by U.S. forces during the Spanish-American War. Occupied by the Japanese in 1941, the island was recaptured and served as a base for U.S. bomber attacks on Japan during the last months of World War II. Guam is now administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior. U.S. stamps overprinted "GUAM" were used from 1899 to 1901, when they were replaced by regular U.S. stamps, although the overprinted stamps remained in use for several years. During 1930-31, Philippine stamps overprinted "GUAM GUARD MAIL" were used by the local military forces. Guanacaste (1885-91) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of Costa Rica. During 1885-91, the government granted a substantially larger discount on stamps purchased by this province, in order to encourage additional sales to offset the high transportation costs to the area. Stamps used in the province during this period were overprinted to prevent their purchase in Guanacaste and resale elsewhere. Guatemala (1871-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 11,558,407. Republic in Central America on the southern border of Mexico. The center of the Maya-Quiche Indian civilization, Guatemala was conquered by the Spanish in the early 16th century. The center of the Audiencia of Guatemala, which included all of Central America and the Mexican state of Chiapas, Guatemala remained under Spanish rule until 1821 when it declared its independence. During 1822-23, it was part of Mexico, and during 1823-39, it formed part of the Republic of the United States of Central America. Since 1839, Guatemala has been completely independent. Guatemala's economy is land-based, with ownership concentrated in the hands of a relatively small Spanish-descended oligarchy. Most menial labor is done by Indian laborers. Since independence, Guatemala has been ruled by an almost unbroken succession of military dictatorships. During 1961-96, the country was torn by a bloody civil war, in which more than 100,000 people died and a million more became refugees. In recent years, civilian governments and military regimes have alternated. Guayana (1903) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state in eastern Venezuela. In 1903, a revolutionary group issued stamps for use in the area. Guernsey (1941-45, 1958-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 54,500. An island in the English Channel. A bailiwick under the British crown, Guernsey was occupied by Germany from 1940-45, during which time bisected British issues and locally printed stamps were used. During 1958-69, regional issues, valid throughout Britain but sold only in Guernsey, were in use along with regular British stamps. On Oct. 1, 1969, the Guernsey postal administration was separated from that of Britain, and the bailiwick has issued its own stamps since that time. Guidizzolo (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern Italy. Overprinted Italian stamps were used provisionally, following the collapse of the Italian Social Republic. Guinea (1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 7,405,375. Republic in West Africa. Formerly the colony of French Guinea, Guinea became independent on Sept. 28, 1958. After independence, Guinea was aligned with the Soviet Bloc. Since 1984, it has been ruled by the military, although some efforts toward democratization have been made. Guinea-Bissau (1974-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,178,584. Independent republic on the coast of Africa, bordered by Senegal and Guinea. Guinea-Bissau was formerly Portuguese Guinea, becoming independent Sept. 10, 1974. After a decade of one-party rule, Guinea-Bissau began to liberalize in the mid-1980s, and the first multiparty elections were held in 1994. Gutdorf (Moisakula) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Estonia. Overprinted Russian and Estonian stamps were used for a time during the German occupation in World War II. Guyana (1966-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 706,116. A republic on the northeast coast of South America. Formerly the colony of British Guiana, which became independent in 1966. The republic was established in 1970. Guyana's boundaries with Venezuela, which had claimed half of the country, were settled in 1989, but Guyana's boundary with Suriname remains in dispute. Since 1981, Guyana has issued a bewildering variety of stamps. Some 4,000 issues (through 1998), including a large number of provisional overprints on obsolete stamps, as well as the productions of several different agents, have been created for sale to collectors. Gwalior (1885-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state in north-central India, Gwalior united its postal system with that of India through a postal convention. Overprinted Indian stamps were used 1885-1950 when they were replaced by regular Indian issues. H Hadhramaut, Kathiri State in (1967) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A region in southwestern Arabia, formerly part of the Aden Protectorate. A number of large, colorful pictorial sets and souvenir sheets were released to the collector market in the months preceding the territory's absorption by the People's Democratic Republic of Southern Yemen. Haiti (1881-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6,611,407. A republic occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. The Spanish occupied the island after its discovery by Columbus in 1492, enslaving the Indian population, which was soon exterminated. In time, the Spanish partially abandoned the island, and the western portion became a base for pirates. This area gradually came under French control, which was recognized by Spain in 1697. Under the French, African slaves were imported to work the sugar plantations, which were the mainstay of the colony's economy. In 1804, the descendants of these slaves expelled their French masters. The Republic of Haiti split into two parts in 1811, but in 1820, it was reunited and enlarged by the conquest of the eastern portion of the island (lost in 1844). During the 19th century, anarchy and foreign indebtedness increased, finally bringing U.S. occupation in 1915. U.S. troops withdrew in 1934, and the last U.S. controls ended in 1941. From 1957 to 1986, Haiti was ruled by the Duvaliers, first by Dr. Francois Duvalier ("Papa Doc") and, after his death in 1971, by his son, Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc"). After a period of popular unrest, Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti in 1986, and the country's politics since have been chaotic. U.S. troops interceded in 1994-96 to restore the popularly elected president, who had been overthrown by the Haitian military. A small contingent of U.N. peacekeeping troops remain in Haiti. Hamburg (1859-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A seaport and former Free City in northern Germany. Hamburg's stamps (1859-67) were replaced by those of the North German Confederation on Jan. 1, 1868. Hanover (1850-1866) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former kingdom in northern Germany. United with Britain from 1714 to 1837 through a common monarch, Hanover supported Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and was annexed by Prussia. Hanover's stamps were first issued in 1850, being replaced by those of Prussia in 1866. Hatay (1939) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. As a semi-autonomous district of Syria under French mandate, this area issued stamps as Alexandretta. In 1938, it was renamed Hatay, and in 1939 it was absorbed by Turkey. Hawaii (1851-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 150,000 (1900 estimate). An island group in the north-central Pacific, Hawaii became a united kingdom in the late 18th century. During the late 19th century, American immigrants became increasingly influential in Hawaiian economic and political affairs and sought union with the United States. After a period of constitutional unrest fomented by American interests, the native monarchy was overthrown in 1893. The provisional government, initially unsuccessful in joining the United States, proclaimed Hawaii a republic. In 1898, the area was annexed by the United States, and the Territory of Hawaii was established in 1900. In 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States. Hawaiian stamps continued in use after the islands' annexation, being finally replaced by regular U.S. stamps in 1900. Hejaz (1916-25) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Located on the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula, Hejaz includes the Moslem holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In 1916, the grand sherif of Mecca proclaimed the Hejaz independent of Turkish rule and joined the British against Turkey in World War I. After Turkey's defeat, the Hashemite family, which had long ruled the Hejaz, provided rulers for the new states of Iraq and Trans-Jordan. After World War I, the independence of the Kingdom of the Hejaz was confirmed, but in 1924, it was invaded by the Hashemite's traditional rivals, the Wahabbis of eastern Arabia, led by Ibn Saud. The Hejaz was quickly conquered and absorbed into the Wahabbi kingdom. In 1932, the united kingdoms were renamed Saudi Arabia. Hela (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A peninsula on the Gulf of Danzig in northern Europe. German forces on the peninsula were cut off by the advancing Russians and issued a provisional stamp for use on mail to be carried back to Germany proper. This "U-Boat" stamp was used briefly, although it never actually became necessary to use U-boats to carry this mail. Helsingfors (Helsinki) (1866-91) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of Finland. Stamps were issued by the local postmaster and were valid throughout the district. Heligoland (1867-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 12,307 (1900 estimate). A strategically located island in the North Sea, Heligoland was ceded to Great Britain by Denmark in 1807. Britain transferred the island to Germany in 1890, in exchange for some German claims in East Africa. Heligoland was the site of a major German naval base, destroyed by the British after World War II. Heligoland was returned to Germany in 1952. Stamps of Hamburg were used in Heligoland from 1859 to 1867, when separate issues came into use. These were among the most attractive of British colonial issues. The plates used in printing Heligoland's stamps passed into private hands after the island's transfer to Germany, and many reprintings were made. Since 1890, German stamps have been used. Honan (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in central China. Overprinted Chinese stamps were issued by the Japanese during World War II. Honduras (1866-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,751,384. Republic in Central America. Honduras was part of the Maya homeland, one of the centers of that pre-Columbian culture. Spanish explorers arrived in 1502, and within a few decades Honduras was conquered by Spain and ruled as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Until 1838, its history follows that of Guatemala. In 1838, it became independent. Honduras' chief export is bananas, and the country has been the stereotypical "banana republic" since the last century. In 1975, Gen. Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, president since 1963, was ousted by the army over charges of widespread bribery. Since that time, the Honduran government has pursued a number of ambitious social programs, and free elections were held in 1981. Honduras remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Honduras fought a brief war with its neighbor, El Salvador, in 1969, and continuing tensions prompted border clashes in 1970 and 1976. During the 1980s, Honduras cooperated with the United States in supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, provoking Sandinista incursions in 1988. Hong Kong (1862-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6.4 million. A peninsula and island at the mouth of the Zhu Jiang River in southeast China. Hong Kong was a British dependency from 1842 to 1997. On July 1, 1997, it was transferred to China, which administers it as a Special Administrative Region. Under British rule, Hong Kong became one of the most active seaports in the Far East. The colony's economy boomed after World War II, as its light manufacturing and banking industry flourished. During the 1970s, Hong Kong came to enjoy one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. In 1984, Britain and China agreed upon Hong Kong's return to China and began a process of transition, with guarantees of the territory's political and economic freedoms. Since Hong Kong's return to China, political opposition has been curtailed and the number of voters reduced. A degree of autonomy remains, however, and Hong Kong continues to maintain its own currency and issues its own stamps. Hopei (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in northern China, surrounding Peking and Tientsin. Regular Chinese stamps were overprinted by occupying Japanese forces during World War II. Horta (1892-1905) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 49,000 (estimate). A district of the Azores. From 1868 to 1892 and from 1905 to 1931, stamps of the Azores were used. Since 1931, regular Portuguese stamps have been in use. Hungary (1871-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,935,774. A republic in East Central Europe. This area of flat plains and grasslands, bisected by the Danube River, was a favorite route of eastern tribes invading southern and western Europe. From the 4th to the 9th centuries, succeeding immigrations of Germans, Huns, Avars and other peoples passed through the region. Toward the end of the 9th century, Hungary was settled by the Magyars, who established a kingdom that embraced what is now Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, and large parts of Serbia, Bosnia and Romania. For nearly a century the Magyars raided throughout central Europe, but under Stephen I (977-1038), they were converted to Christianity. For the next 500 years, Hungary served as Europe's eastern bulwark against the Asian tribes. In the early 16th century, the Ottoman Turks destroyed Hungarian power. Most of the country was conquered by the Turks, and the remaining northern and western fringe came under the rule of Hapsburg Austria. During 1686-1718, the Austrians expelled the Turks from Hungary. Austria completely dominated Hungary until the mid-19th century. Magyar nationalism forced the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867, after which Hungary was an equal partner with Austria. Having achieved its own nationalist goals, Hungary denied similar nationalist ambitions among its subject peoples. The Dual Monarchy's defeat in World War I brought the disintegration of the empire and of the Kingdom of Hungary. During 1918-20, the country was overrun by Serbian, French and Romanian armies and was torn by civil war between royalist and Bolshevik factions. Hungary emerged in 1920 as a nationalist state, having lost 50 percent of its population and 75 percent of its territory to Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In 1938, Hungary participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and, during World War II, joined the Axis, regaining much of its former territory. In 1944-45, it was defeated by the Soviet Union and reduced to its pre-1938 boundaries. On Feb. 1, 1946, a republic was established, but in 1947, the communists ousted the president and purged noncommunist elements from the government. Demonstrations in October 1956, turned into open revolt against the regime. In early November, some 200,000 Soviet troops crushed the uprising, and a hard-line regime was re-established. Some 40,000 Soviet troops remained in Hungary, and Hungarian forces participated in the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Always one of the most liberal of the East Bloc nations, the Hungarian communist government allowed considerable economic freedom, at least by Soviet standards. As a result, Hungary was more economically developed and has enjoyed a smoother, more rapid conversion to a free market economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Communist Party was dissolved, and in 1991, the last Soviet troops left the country. Wary of a revived Russian threat in the future and desiring to integrate its economy with Western Europe, Hungary has sought firm ties with the rest of Europe. In 1999, it joined NATO. Hvar (Lesina) (1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Yugoslavia. In 1944, Yugoslavian stamps were overprinted for use on the island by the German military commander of the Dalmatian Province. Hyderabad (1869-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 16.3 million (1941 estimate). The largest of the princely states, Hyderabad (Deccan) was the most powerful of the native states in southern India. Hyderabad became independent from the Mogul Empire in the early 18th century and allied itself to Britain after c.1760. After Britain's withdrawal from the subcontinent in 1947, the Moslem rulers of the state resisted domination by Hindu India, but Indian authority was firmly established in September 1948. Hyderabad maintained separate stamp issues until April 1, 1950, since which time Indian stamps have been used. I Icaria (Nicaria) (1912-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Aegean Sea. In July 1912, Icaria declared its independence from Turkey. In November, the island was occupied by Greece, and Icarian issues were replaced by overprinted Greek stamps, which, in turn, were replaced by regular Greek stamps. Iceland (1873-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 272,550. A large island in the North Atlantic. Iceland was colonized from Norway after c. 870, and after 1380 was under Danish rule. In 1918, Iceland became independent, united with Denmark only in the person of the Danish monarch. In 1944, Iceland severed this last tie with Denmark and became a republic. Since 1949, Iceland has been a member of NATO, and the United States maintains a sizable base on the island. Idar (1939-44) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 262,660. A former feudatory state in western India. Ifni (1941-69) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 52,000 (1968 estimate). A Spanish enclave on the western coast of Morocco. Ceded to Spain in 1860, Ifni was occupied in 1934. In 1969, Spain returned the area to Morocco, whose stamps replaced those of the colony. Ili Republic (1945-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A short-lived state established by the Uighurs in northwestern Sinkiang. At the end of 1949, the state was integrated into the Chinese People's Republic. India (1854-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 967,612,804. Republic in south-central Asia, occupying the greater part of the Indian subcontinent between the Himalaya Mountains and the Indian Ocean. One of the world's earliest civilizations was located in the Indus valley after c. 4000 B.C. This culture was overrun by the Aryans who conquered India 2400-1500 B.C. During most of its history, India has been divided into many independent, frequently warring states. In 1498, the Portuguese reached India and quickly began building a commercial empire that dominated the coastal areas for a century. The Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch in the early 17th century, who in turn were succeeded by the British in the late 17th century. Anglo-French rivalry for influence over the local princes was intense until Britain's military defeat of the French forces in 1760. During the next 100 years, the British East India Co. constantly expanded Britain's holdings in the subcontinent. In 1857, the British government took over the governing of India directly. In 1877, the empire of India was proclaimed with Queen Victoria as empress. In the early 20th century, Indian nationalism became an increasingly powerful force. After World War I, Mohandas K. Gandhi organized the All-India Congress Party, which assumed the leadership of the Indian independence movement. Later, the Moslem nationalists withdrew from the predominantly Hindu Congress Party to form the Moslem League under Mohammed Ali Jinnah. After years of agitation and negotiation, the British gave up control of India on Aug. 15, 1947, and the country was partitioned into Hindu (India) and Moslem (Pakistan) states. Religious riots and war between the two nations began almost immediately. Settled only with great difficulty, war has erupted several times since, most recently in 1971-72. Tensions among India's many racial and religious groups remains high, especially between Hindus and Muslims and between the Hindus and the Sikhs. India absorbed the remaining French holdings in 1956 and seized Portugal's Indian territory in 1961. In 1962, communist Chinese forces occupied disputed areas in the north. India Convention States (1884-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1864-86, six Indian states joined their postal services to that of British India, using overprinted Indian stamps. The states entering into such postal conventions were Chamba, Faridkot, Gwalior, Jhind, Nabha and Patiala. The stamps of the convention states were valid throughout India. They were replaced by those of the Republic of India on Jan. 1, 1951. India-Feudatory States (1864-1951) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. After 1862, many rulers of the semi-autonomous native princely states began to establish modern public postal systems, utilizing their own stamps. These systems existed alongside that of British India, with the stamps normally valid only within the state where they were issued. The Indian feudatory states issuing their own stamps were: Alwar (1877-1902); Bamra (1888-94); Barwani (1921-48); Bhopal (1876-1950); Bhor (1879-1902); Bijawar (1935-39); Bundi (1894-1920, 1940-48); Bussahir (1895-1901); Charkhari (1894-1950); Cochin (1892-1949); Dhar (1897-1901); Duttia (1893-1921); Hyderabad (1869-1950); Idar (1939-44); Indore (1886-1950); Jaipur (1904-49); Jammu and Kashmir (1866-94); Jasdan (1942-50); Jhalawar (1887-1900); Jhind (1874-85); Kishangarh (1899-1949); Las Bela (1897-1907); Morvi (1931-50); Nandgaon (1892-95); Nawanagar (1875-95); Orchha (1913-50); Poonch (1876-94); Rajasthan (1948-50); Rajpeepla (1880-86); Saurashtra (1864-1950); Sirmoor (1879-1902); Travancore (1888-1949); Travancore-Cochin (1949-51); and Wadhwan (1888-95). Indian Expeditionary Forces (1914-22) During and after World War I, Indian forces fighting with the Allies used 10 stamps of British India overprinted "I.E.F." An "I.E.F. D/i" overprint was similarly applied to eight Turkish stamps used by the British during the occupation of Mesopotamia. Indochina (1889-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 27 million (1949 estimate). Former French administrative unit in southeast Asia, comprising Cochin-China, Cambodia, Annam and Tonkin, and Kwangchowan. The area broke up in 1949 to form the states of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, within the French Union, with the issues of the separate states replacing those of Indochina. Indonesia (1945-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 209,774,138. A republic occupying most of the Malay Archipelago in southeastern Asia; formerly the Netherlands East Indies. Portugal dominated this region during the 16th century but was supplanted by the Dutch after 1595. Except for a period of British occupation during the Napoleonic wars (1811-16), the area remained under Dutch control until its occupation by Japan in 1942. After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Indonesian nationalists under Achmed Sukarno proclaimed the independent Republic of Indonesia in central Java and throughout most of Sumatra. The ensuing civil war was finally ended by the withdrawal of the Dutch in December 1949. In 1950, Indonesia was unified as a republic. In 1963, Western New Guinea (West Irian), which had remained under Dutch control, was seized by Indonesia. During the early 1960s, Indonesia was aligned with the Soviet Union, but an abortive communist uprising in 1965 brought massive retaliation by the military. President Sukarno, who had ruled as a dictator since 1960, was deposed, and some 300,000 communists were executed. The new regime, under Gen. Suharto, restored peaceful relations with Indonesia's neighbors, restored popular elections and has actively promoted economic development. Oil exports drove the country's economic growth during the 1970s and '80s, and Indonesia became one of the most dynamic Pacific Rim economies. The corruption centering around President Suharto's family and friends, and the regime's authoritarian rule, brought increasing opposition. Matters came to a head with the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Violent domestic unrest forced Suharto's resignation in 1998, after the collapse of the rupiah in January. The Indonesian economy, always vulnerable because of a weak banking system and widespread corruption, remains battered, while ethnic and religious unrest further divides the country. In 1975, Indonesia invaded the Portuguese colony of Timor and in 1976 annexed the territory. Since that time, Timorese nationalist resistance has been brutally suppressed. The current economic and political turmoil in Indonesia has brought the issue of Timorese independence back into the headlines. Indore (Holkar) (1886-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in west-central India. Indore used its own stamps from 1886 to 1949. With its merger into Rajasthan, stamps of that state were used from 1949 to April 1, 1950. Stamps of India are now in use. Inhambane (1895-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 248,000 (1917 estimate). A district of southern Mozambique. Its stamps were superseded by those of Mozambique. Inini (1932-46) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 5,024 (1941 estimate). The interior of French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. During 1930-46, this area was separated from French Guiana, being reunited when the area was reorganized as an Overseas Department of France in 1947. Ionian Islands (1859-64, 1941-43) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands off the western coast of Greece. Occupied at various times by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Turks, French, Russians and British, the islands were united with Greece in 1864. Three stamps were issued by the British (1859-64), and an additional 13 during World War II by the occupying Italian forces (1941-43). Iran (Persia until 1935) (1870-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 67,540,002. Islamic republic in western Asia. Iran was the seat of the ancient kingdom of Elam (c. 3000-640 B.C.), which competed with the Mesopotamian states to its west. The area was settled by the Iranians, an Aryan people, c.1800 B.C., from whom arose the Medes, Persians and Parthians. At various times from the 7th century B.C. to the 7th century A.D., Persian states dominated the Middle East, at times ruling territory from Egypt and Thrace to India. Debilitating wars with Rome weakened Persia, making it easy prey to the Arabs in the 7th century. With the decline of the caliphate after 1040, Persia was torn by centuries of war and anarchy, complicated by Turkish immigration and Mongol invasions (13th-15th centuries). National unity was re-established under the Safawid dynasty (1502-1722), and Persia re-emerged as a dominant power in the region. After the mid-18th century, Persia weakened, losing its outlying provinces (Afghanistan, the Caucasus, etc.) and gradually fell under European influence. Russia and Britain carved out spheres of influence in the 19th century and occupied portions of the country in World War I and World War II. In 1921, Riza Pahlavi, a military chief, led a coup and assumed virtual control of the government, becoming shah in 1925. He began to radically modernize Persia, a program continued by his son and successor, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi. Mohammed Riza Pahlavi attempted to modernize Iran rapidly and used the country's substantial oil revenues toward this end. While his policies brought a social and economic transformation of Iran, the shah ruled absolutely, and political opposition was suppressed. Increasing dissatisfaction with the regime brought the coalition of many disparate elements in Iranian society. Anti-government riots brought martial law in September 1978, but the government's position deteriorated rapidly. On Jan. 16, 1979, the shah left Iran, and in mid-February, the caretaker regime of Shahpur Baktiar, a longtime opponent of the shah, was overthrown amid popular demonstrations by supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. On April 1, the Ayatollah declared Iran an Islamic republic and immediately set about creating a theocratic regime, reflecting staunchly conservative Islamic values. Khomeini accused the United States, which had strongly supported the shah, of being the source of most of the country's problems. Relations between the two countries quickly deteriorated, and in November 1979, student demonstrators seized U.S. embassy personnel in Tehran. The embassy staff was held hostage, pending the return of the shah to Iran, where he was to be tried by revolutionary courts. The death of the shah in July 1980 did not bring a resolution of the problem, which continued until the captives' release in January 1981. In September 1980, Iraq attacked Iran, beginning a bitter war that drained the resources of both nations, until a cease-fire ended hostilities in 1988. Political and economic instability became the norm in Iran. Political terrorism and government repression, as bad or worse than under the shah, were institutionalized by the Muslim clerics. In the 1990s there has been some movement toward liberalization, driven by increasing popular discontent with the repressive fundamentalist regime. In 1997, Mohammed Khatami, a moderate Shiite Muslim cleric was elected president, leading many in the West to hope for a gradual moderating of the Iranian government's policies. Iraq (1923-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 22,219,289. A republic in western Asia, occupying the Tigris and Euphrates valley, north of Arabia. Mesopotamia, which corresponds with the modern area of Iraq, was the center of the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations for thousands of years, until its conquest by Persia in the 6th century B.C. For the next 24 centuries, the region was ruled by a succession of foreign powers: Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, Arabs, Mongols and Turks. In the early 16th century, it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, and its first stamps were those of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. During World War I, Mesopotamia was occupied by British forces, and it became a British mandated territory in 1920. In 1921, a kingdom was established under Faisal I, son of King Hussein of Hejaz and leader of the Arab Army in World War I. Britain withdrew from Iraq in 1932, although it intervened during World War II to overthrow a pro-Axis ministry. In 1958, the monarchy was deposed, and a pan-Arab, pro-Soviet republic was established. The new regime nationalized most Iraqi industry and broke up large land holdings. Iraq maintained close ties with Syria, which is ruled by another branch of the same Baathist political party that overthrew the monarchy and with the Soviet Union. In 1973, Iraq sent troops to support Syria in its war with Israel. In 1975 it brutally repressed Kurdish nationalist agitation in the north. In 1978, relations with the Soviet Union cooled, and a number of communists were executed. In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president, quickly establishing his power in a bloody purge. In September 1980, Iraq, prompted by a long-standing border dispute and by the new Iranian regime's attempts to foment revolution among Iraq's Shi'ite minority, invaded Iran. Strong Iranian resistance soon brought the war to a standstill, despite periodic heavy fighting. Both nations suffered terrible losses, both human and financial, in the course of an eight-year war. In 1988, a cease-fire was negotiated. Determined to establish Iraqi preeminence in the region, Saddam attacked and quickly occupied its oil-rich southern neighbor, Kuwait, in August 1990. This prompted an international crisis and the rapid creation of a coalition of nations, led by the United States, aligned against Iraq. A massive allied build-up followed, and in January 1991, heavy strategic bombing of Iraq began. In February, allied forces liberated Kuwait and invaded Iraq, which was soundly defeated within four days. To the surprise of most Americans and Westerners, the allied force stopped short of deposing Saddam. In the months following his defeat, Saddam was faced with numerous revolts throughout the country. These were suppressed ruthlessly, especially those of the Shi'ites in the south, who have traditionally sought union with their co-religionists in Iran, and the Kurds in the north. The two groups, given half-measures of protection by the allies, have continued to be the victims of Iraqi persecution, including poison gas attacks against civilians in rebellious areas. In 1993 and 1996, the United States targeted Iraqi sites for missile attacks, following Saddam's involvement in a plan to assassinate President Bush and in retaliation for his attacks against Kurds in a protected neutral zone in the north. As a part of the cease-fire agreement, the Iraqi government agreed to discontinue its nuclear weapons program, which was only a few years away from development of effective nuclear devices. It also agreed to halt its huge chemical and biological weapons program. Since then, it has almost certainly continued chemical and biological weapons development, and has prevented United Nations teams from inspecting its research and storage sites. This prompted a crisis in early 1998, as the United States moved forces into the region and threatened military enforcement of the agreement. An eleventh-hour agreement to allow U.N. inspectors free access to all sites halted U.S. military action for the time being. The Iraqi economy has been hurt by an embargo linked to the regime's honoring of the 1991 cease-fire, and the Iraqi people have suffered badly, as food and medical supplies are often in short supply. The Iraqi government has continued to maintain large military budgets, however, and Saddam has managed to erect many presidential palaces throughout the country. Ireland (1922-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,555,500. An island in northwestern Europe, west of Britain. After the Celtic conquest of the British Isles in the 4th century B.C., Ireland was a center of Gaelic culture in Western Europe. After its conversion to Christianity by St. Patrick in the 5th century A.D., it was a center of Christian scholarship and an outpost of Christian culture, amidst pagan German and, later, Norse, incursions in Northwest Europe. In the 12th century, England began invasions of Ireland and eventually conquered the island. The Irish never accepted the harsh English rule, and there was constant pressure for independence. Open revolution during 1916-19 brought freedom to most of the country in 1921, as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Commonwealth. In 1937 the name Eire was adopted and independent sovereignty was proclaimed, following a national plebiscite. In 1948-49 full independence was proclaimed and recognized by Great Britain. A continuing source of tension is the status of Ulster, the six counties of Northern Ireland, which has remained part of the United Kingdom. There, the Protestant majority resists union with the Catholic Irish republic, and centuries of antagonism between Protestants and Catholics continue in bloody terrorist acts from extremists on both sides. Negotiations on the future status of Ulster are ongoing. Israel (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,534,672. Republic in western Asia, comprising the former British mandated territory of Palestine. Under the British mandate, Jewish and Arab elements in Palestine came into bitter conflict over the future of the nation. The Jews wished to create a homeland for their people, while the Arabs advocated the creation of a secular Palestinian state in which the rights of the Jewish minority would be respected. On May 14, 1948, British troops were withdrawn from Palestine, and the Jewish National Council immediately proclaimed the state of Israel in areas of the country under Jewish control. Israel was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors but defeated their forces, emerging from the 1949 cease-fire with its territory approximately 50 percent larger than that initially allocated for it by the U.N. partition plan. In 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and barred Israeli shipping. Israel invaded Egypt and occupied Gaza and the Sinai. After U.N. intervention, Israel withdrew. In 1967, after a year of Arab guerrilla raids from Jordan and bombardment of Israeli settlements from Syria, war again broke out. Israel defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War, occupying the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and Sinai and Gaza from Egypt. On Oct. 6, 1973, after several years of failure to negotiate a settlement, Arab forces attacked Israel again, re-occupying some lost territory in the Sinai. After initial Arab gains, Israel counterattacked quickly, occupying territory on the west bank of the Suez Canal and advancing in Syria. A cease-fire was negotiated Oct. 24. Peace negotiations proceeded very slowly during 1973-77, but began to move rapidly after November 1977, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem in an attempt to break the deadlock. On March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a formal peace treaty, ending hostilities and establishing diplomatic relations. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. Relations between Israel and its neighbors continue to be strained, although a 1993 agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which led the terrorist resistance to Israel, makes an eventual settlement possible. Israel and the Palestine authority, the autonomous Palestinian state created under PLO direction, maintain a strained negotiation for the eventual creation of an independent Arab Palestine alongside a Jewish Israel, recognized by its Muslim neighbors. Istria-Slovene Coast (1945-47) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former Italian provinces on the Adriatic Sea, occupied by Yugoslavia after World War II. Italian Colonies (1932-34) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1932-34, a series of general issues was released for use in all Italian colonies. Italian East Africa (1938-41) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 12 million (1941 estimate). A former Italian colony in East Africa, formed from Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia. It was occupied by the British in 1941 and, after World War II, was dissolved. Italian Offices Abroad (1861-1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Italy maintained many post offices abroad, utilizing a general overprint on Italian stamps (1874-90), overprints for specific cities or territories, and unoverprinted stamps distinguishable only by their cancellations. Italian post offices were maintained in Egypt, Tunisia, Tripolitania, Eritrea, China, Crete, and many cities in the Turkish Empire and Albania. Italian Offices in Albania (1902-09) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During the 19th century, Italy operated its own post offices in a number of Albanian cities, using regular Italian stamps. In 1883, the Turkish government suppressed these offices, but in 1902, they were reopened using Italian stamps overprinted "Albania" and surcharged in Turkish currency. In 1909, these issues were replaced by those of the various cities where Italian post offices were in operation. Italian Offices in China (1917-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1901-17, Italian troops in China, as well as legation and consular personnel, were permitted to use unoverprinted Italian stamps. From September 1917 to Dec. 31, 1922, Italian stamps overprinted for Peking and Tientsin were used. Italian Social Republic (1943-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Italian puppet state under Mussolini, which nominally ruled those areas under German occupation during the final days of World War II. Italy (1862-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 57,534,088. A republic in western Europe. Italy was the center of the Roman Empire, which until the 5th century ruled southern and western Europe, North Africa and much of the Middle East. After the collapse of Rome, Italy was ruled by a succession of foreign powers: Ostrogoths, Lombards, Franks, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Spanish, Byzantines and French. By 1815, the country was roughly divided into several spheres: the Sardinian kingdom, which ruled the island of Sardinia and northwestern Italy; the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, which was ruled by Austria, in the north; the Papal States, which controlled the central portion of the peninsula; and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south. During the 19th century, Italian nationalism grew in strength, and there was increasing sentiment for unification. During 1859-61, nationalist uprisings deposed local rulers and united most of Italy with Sardinia. On March 17, 1861, the united Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed under the House of Savoy. Italy acquired several African colonies during the late 19th century and, in the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12) and World War I, acquired territory from Turkey and Austria. Domestic unrest after World War I brought the Fascist party to power in 1922, although the monarchy was retained. The Fascists, under Benito Mussolini, built up Italy's military forces and pursued an aggressive foreign policy, conquering Ethiopia (1935) and Albania (1939). Italy entered World War II in 1940 as an ally of Germany, but military reverses brought German domination and, in 1943, the invasion of Italy by the Allies. Mussolini was deposed in 1943, although he was put in charge of the northern Italian Social Republic, a German puppet-state until its collapse in 1945. The royalist government, in the meantime, declared war on Germany and fought with the Allies to free Italy from German occupation. In 1946, the monarchy was abolished, and Italy became a republic. After World War II, Italy enjoyed dynamic industrial growth, and its standard of living improved greatly. A member of NATO and the European Union, Italy is prosperous and democratic, but has long been prone to a chronic political instability, with frequent changes in government. Ivory Coast (1892-1944, 1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,986,218. A republic in West Africa, bordering on the Gulf of Guinea. French influence was strong along the coast from 1700, and after 1842, France began to occupy territory in the area. The boundaries of the colony were fixed between 1892 and 1898, and native resistance was crushed by 1919. During World War II, the Ivory Coast remained under control of the Vichy regime until November 1942. After 1944, it used stamps of French West Africa. In 1958, the Ivory Coast became a republic, achieving independence in 1960. The Ivory Coast is the most prosperous of the tropical African nations, reflecting decades of a moderate economic policy emphasizing farming for export, the encouragement of foreign investment and continued close ties with France. In 1985, the official name of the country was changed to Cote d'Ivoire. J Jaffa (1909-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 50,000 (1914). Israeli port on the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to World War I, a number of European nations maintained their own postal systems in the city. After 1909, the Russian post used 10 stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted "Jaffa." Jaipur (1904-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in north-central India. Jaipur merged into the United State of Rajasthan in 1948. Jaipur's issues were replaced by those of Rajasthan in 1949, which were in turn replaced by those of India on April 1, 1950. Jamaica (1860-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,615,582. A self-governing dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations occupying the island of Jamaica in the West Indies, south of Cuba. Jamaica was discovered by Columbus in 1494 and was occupied by Spain until 1655, when it became a British possession. The original Arawak inhabitants soon died out under the Spanish, who began the importation of African slaves to work the sugar plantations. Jamaica became an independent republic on Aug. 6, 1962. Economic dissatisfaction brought a socialist regime to power 1972-80. Attempts to expand Jamaican ownership in bauxite mining operations and to expand welfare programs failed to improve the economy, and a more conservative government came to power. This has resulted in improved relations with the United States and in economic growth since the 1980s. Jammu and Kashmir (1866-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. These north Indian states were united in 1846. From 1866 to 1878, each state issued its own stamps. Common issues began in 1878. From 1894 to 1948, Indian issues were used. Since Indian independence, this predominantly Moslem area has been disputed between India and Pakistan, and stamps of these nations have been used in the territories under their control. Janina (1902-11, 1913-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 30,000 (1914). A city in northwest Greece. Janina was part of the Turkish province of Albania until occupied by Greece in 1913. During 1902-11 and 1913, an Italian post office, utilizing overprinted Italian stamps, operated in the city. Japan (1871-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 125,716,637. A group of islands off the eastern coast of Asia. Japan pursued an isolationist policy until 1854, when a U.S. fleet forced it to admit limited foreign trade. In 1867, internal dissension caused the restoration of imperial power and centralization within the country. Japan embarked on a program of rapid modernization and, by the early 20th century, was a world power. During 1871-1910, Japan expanded its territory through an aggressive imperialistic foreign policy, gaining Formosa, Korea, etc. Its victory over Russia in 1905 established it as a major military power and encouraged the growth of nationalism throughout Asia. During World War I, Japan sided with the Allies, acquiring former German Pacific holdings after the war. During 1918-25, Japan occupied portions of Russian Siberia and Sakhalin and, in the 1930s, began to aggressively expand at the expense of China, which was invaded in 1937. In 1940, Japan joined the Axis and invaded French Indochina and, in 1941, attacked British and U.S. territories in the Pacific. After initial successes, the tide turned against Japan in 1943, ending with its defeat in 1945. All territory, except the home islands, was taken from it by the Allies, who occupied Japan until 1952. After World War II, Japan has enjoyed an economic boom, making it one of the world's great industrial powers. Since 1947, Japan has integrated many Western ideas into its traditional culture, creating a dynamic society that, in many ways, is a successful blending of European and Asian values. Japanese Offices in China (1900-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Unoverprinted Japanese stamps were used at a number of Japanese post offices in China from 1876 to 1900. From Jan. 1, 1900, through Dec. 31, 1922, 49 overprinted Japanese stamps were used. Japanese Offices in Korea (1900-01) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. For a short time, Japanese post offices in Korea used 15 overprinted Japanese stamps. These were withdrawn in April 1901. Jasdan (1942-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in western India. Indian stamps replaced Jasdan's single issue in 1950. Jersey (1941-45, 1958-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 75,000. An island in the English Channel united with the British Commonwealth. Local issues were used during the World War II German occupation, regional issues from 1958-69, and issues of the independent Jersey Postal Administration since Oct. 1, 1969. Jerusalem (1909-14, 1948) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of Palestine and a holy city of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Prior to World War I, a number of European nations maintained their own postal systems in Jerusalem. Separate issues were made for their posts in the city by Italy (1909-11) and Russia (1909-14). In 1948, the French consulate operated a postal service in Jerusalem, utilizing overprinted French Consular Service stamps. Jewish Republic-A region in eastern Siberia, established by Stalin in the 1930s as a "homeland" for Soviet Jews. Although only a small proportion of the territory's population was Jewish by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, stamp promoters recognized an opportunity when they saw one, and a number of overprinted stamps have appeared on the market. They are bogus. Jhalawar (1887-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former princely state in western India. Jhalawar's stamps were replaced by regular Indian issues on Nov. 1, 1900. Jhind (1874-1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in the northern Punjab of India. Jhind issued 32 stamps from 1874 to 1885, when a postal convention united its postal system to that of India. From July 1885 to April 1, 1950, 220 different overprinted Indian stamps were used. Regular Indian issues replaced these overprinted issues on April 1, 1950, although the overprinted stamps remained valid until Jan. 1, 1951. Johore (1876-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1 million (1960 estimate). A former nonfederated British Malay state. Johore was under British protection from 1914 to 1957. The area joined the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Jordan (1920-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,324,638. A kingdom occupying the territory east of the Jordan River in western Asia. Under Turkish control from 1516 to 1918, the area was occupied from 1918 to 1946 by Great Britain. Abdullah, second son of King Hussein of Hejaz, became amir of the Trans-Jordan in 1921 and king when the area became independent in 1946. Jordan seized a large territory on the western bank of the Jordan River in 1948, but the area was occupied by Israel in 1967. By 1970, the growing power of Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan provoked a reaction by King Hussein and his Beduoin supporters. A bitter campaign ensued, and Palestinian strength in the country was broken by mid-1971. In 1990-91, King Hussein, long regarded as a moderate in the Arab world, was among the few in the region who did not oppose Iraq, following its invasion of Kuwait. In 1994, Jordan and Israel formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948. K Karelia (1922, 1941-43) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 270,000 (1923 estimate). A Soviet district east of Finland. During 1921-22, an autonomous government briefly issued stamps until its suppression by the Soviets. During 1941-43, the area was occupied by Finland, at which time overprinted Finnish issues and one semipostal were used. A number of overprinted Soviet stamps appeared on the market in the early 1990s, supposedly local overprints for Karelia. They are private productions. Karlsbad (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). In 1938, the local authorities overprinted 68 Czechoslovakian stamps to commemorate the area's cession to Germany. Katanga (1960-63) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The southernmost province of Zaire. When Belgium granted independence to the Belgian Congo in 1960, Katanga seceded from the new state. After a bitter struggle, the Katangan regime was defeated by the central government with U.N. support. In early 1977, Katangan forces, based in Angola, launched an invasion of the province. After a rapid initial advance, the Katangese were defeated by forces of the Zairian government, with the support of Moroccan troops and aid from the United States and other Western powers. Kazakstan (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 16,898,572. The northern portion of Turkestan, in west-central Asia, the territory of Kazakstan was conquered by Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries. In December 1991, it became an independent republic. Kedah (1912-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 752,700 (1960 estimate). A sultanate in southwest Malayan peninsula. Kedah was under British protection from 1909 to 1942, Japanese occupation 1942-43, Siamese occupation 1943-45, British administration 1945-57. Since 1948, Kedah has been a member of the Federation of Malaya. Kelantan (1911-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 545,600 (1960 estimate). A sultanate in northeast Malaya peninsula. The area was under British protection after 1909, and was occupied by Japan (1942-43) and Siam (1943-45) during World War II. Kenya (1963-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 28,803,085. Republic in East Africa. Under British control from the late 19th century, a nationalist Kenyan revolution began in 1959. After years of fighting, Great Britain agreed to grant Kenyan independence, which was declared Dec. 12, 1963. During 1968-72, the government mounted a campaign against Asians with British passports, who controlled the commerce of the nation, and many were forced to leave the country. Kenya has shown steady economic growth since independence and enjoys a relatively free political life. During the 1980s and 1990s, tension between various opposing ethnic and political groups has shaken Kenyan stability. Kenya and Uganda (1922-35) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The postal union comprising the colony of Kenya (coastal area), the protectorate of Kenya (inland) and Uganda, all British colonial territories. Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika (1935-64) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 42.7 million (1976 estimate). Postal union of Kenya, Uganda and the mandated territory of Tanganyika, British possessions in East Africa. The area was renamed Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, after Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania in 1964. Kerassunde (1909-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Turkish port on the Black Sea, now Giresun. After 1909, the Russian post office in Kerassunde used stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted with the name of the city. Khor Fakkan (1965-69) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A dependency of the sheikhdom of Sharjah in the Trucial States of eastern Arabia. Kiauchau (1900-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 190,000 (1909 estimate). Former German colony on the southern side of the Shantung peninsula in China. The area was seized by Germany in 1897 and subsequently leased to Germany by China. It was occupied by Japan in 1914 and returned to China in 1922. Kiev (1918, 1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Capital of the Ukraine. Kiev issued stamps during the confused period of the Russian Civil War. In 1918, Russian stamps were overprinted with the trident device of the Ukraine. In 1920, Kievan authorities issued surcharged Russian savings stamps for provisional postage use. In 1992, Kiev authorities issued a set of overprinted Soviet stamps for local use, using a trident device reminiscent of the 1918 issues. Although these stamps seem to have been official, the hundreds of similar overprints issued soon after in the names of other Ukrainian municipalities were not. Kilis (1921) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 34,000 (1914). A city in southern Turkey. After World War I, this area was included in the French-occupied territory of Syria. It was restored to Turkey in 1923. In 1921, a shortage of regular stamps necessitated a single provisional issue. King Edward VII Land (1908) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1908, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton led a British expedition to explore King Edward VII Land in Antarctica. A contemporary New Zealand stamp was overprinted for use by the members of the expedition. Kionga (1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A small area in northern Mozambique in the Indian Ocean. Kionga was part of German East Africa until World War I, when it was occupied by Portuguese forces from Mozambique, to which it was joined by the Treaty of Versailles. Kiribati (1979-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 82,449. The British protectorate of the Gilbert Islands became the independent republic of Kiribati on July 12, 1979. Kirin and Heilungchang (1927-31) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of Manchuria. After 1927, Chinese stamps were overprinted for sale in the area. These issues were replaced by those of Manchukuo in 1931, after Japanese forces overran Manchuria. Kishangarh (1899-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former princely state in northwestern India. In 1948, it joined Rajasthan, whose stamps were used from 1949 to 1950. Since 1950, Indian issues have been used. Konstantinsbad (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). In 1938 the municipal authorities overprinted 35 different Czechoslovakian stamps to commemorate union with Germany. Korce (Korytsa, also Korytza, Korca, Koritsa or Coritsa) (1914-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The center of the short-lived Eastern Albanian Republic during World War I. Supported by French troops, the republic collapsed upon their withdrawal in 1918. During its existence, however, the Korce regime issued a number of stamps, which are listed under "Albania" in the standard U.S. catalogs. Forgeries of the 1917-18 issues abound, and collectors should use caution when buying them. Korea, Democratic People's Republic of (North Korea) (1946-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 24,317,004. A communist state occupying the northern half of the Korean peninsula. After World War II, Korea was occupied from Japan, with U.S. forces holding the southern half of the country. Soviet troops occupied the north. In 1948, this partition was made permanent, and separate regimes were established in the two zones. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established on May 1, 1948, under the leadership of Kim Il Sung. In 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea, but three years of fighting, with United States, United Nations and Chinese intervention, ended with a cease-fire that left the boundary between the two Koreas essentially unchanged. The greatest part of Korea's resources and prewar industry were in the north, and the North Korean government has actively developed these into a substantial industrial plant. North Korea is one of the last truly totalitarian states, built upon a personality cult centered around Kim Il Sung, a cult that has been maintained, though with some difficulty, in his son, Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father in 1994. The regime's xenophobic foreign policy and chronic economic mismanagement have brought famine internally and largely isolated its dealings abroad. It continues to support a large military force and to develop nuclear weapons, so its increasing instability is grounds for grave concern. North Korean stamp issues are subject to U.S. Treasury Department restrictions and cannot be imported through the mail. Korea, Republic of (South Korea) (1946) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 45,648,811. After the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948, the Republic of Korea was established in the southern portion of the peninsula occupied by the United States. The regime in the south was recognized as the legal government of Korea on Dec. 12, 1948. On June 25, 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea, quickly pushing the South Korean forces back to a small pocket of resistance in the southeast. Massive U.N. intervention brought a North Korean rout, but the invasion of the North by communist China brought the retreat of the U.N. forces to below the 38th parallel. On July 10, 1951, after renewed U.N. advances, peace talks began, and on July 27, 1953, an armistice was achieved. A technical state of war continues between the two Koreas, and a large number of U.S. forces remain in the south. From 1948 to 1960, Dr. Syngman Rhee was president of South Korea. The corruption of the regime alienated many South Koreans, and in 1960 Rhee was forced to resign. In the following year, a military coup brought Gen. Park Chung Hee to power. Park expanded his power and ruled dictatorially until his assassination in 1979. In 1980, the head of South Korean military intelligence established martial law and suppressed political opposition. Popular demonstrations in 1987 led to popular elections, and in 1993 the first civilian president since 1960 took office. Despite South Korea's political turmoil, a dynamic, modern manufacturing economy has developed over the past three decades, and it is one of the most prosperous of the East Asian nations. Korea (1884-85, 1895-1905, 1946) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 22.8 million (1938 estimate). A peninsula in east Asia, surrounded on three sides by the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea and bounded on the north by Manchuria and the Soviet Union. Korea was united in the seventh century and at times was under Chinese control. In 1895, it passed under Japanese influence, and in 1910, Japan annexed Korea. After World War II, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation — the north under the Soviets and the south under the United States. In 1948, separate regimes were established in the two zones. Kuban Cossack Government (1918-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In late 1917, the Kuban Cossacks in southern Russia established a republic, which in the spring of 1918 declared its independence. They were recognized by the White Russian government of Gen. Denikin, but after his withdrawal from the area in March 1920, the republic was quickly occupied by the Red Army. A number of Russian stamps were surcharged by this regime. Kurdistan (1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The region of western Asia occupied by the Kurds, divided between Iraq, Iran and Turkey. In 1923, stamps were issued by rebel forces in northern Iraq. Kurland (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Four German stamps were overprinted for use in Kurzeme in April 1945, by German forces cut off by the Soviet advance. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Soviet stamps overprinted "Kurlandia" appeared on the market. They are bogus. Kustanai (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Kazakstan. In 1920, the local authorities overprinted Russian stamps for use in the area. Kuwait (1923-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,076,805. A sheikhdom at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait was under British protection from 1899 to 1961, becoming independent June 19, 1961. Kuwait is rich in oil and one of the more active members of OPEC. During the 1970s, Kuwait led the push for increasing petroleum prices and became extremely wealthy. Education, medical care and social security are free to Kuwaiti citizens, and internal taxation has been abolished. During the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-88), Kuwait supported Iraq, which brought Iranian attacks against its oil tankers in the Gulf. On August 2, 1990, Kuwait was attacked and quickly overrun by Iraq. A coalition of nations, led by the United States, reoccupied Kuwait in February 1991. The government has since spent billions of dollars repairing oil fields set ablaze by the retreating Iraqis. Kwangchowan (1906-44) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Chinese port south of Canton leased by France from 1898 to 1945. Kwangchowan was administered as part of French Indochina. Occupied by Japan during World War II, the city was reoccupied by China after the war. Kwangtung (1942-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in southern China, centered around its capital, Canton. Japanese forces occupying Kwangtung overprinted 60 Chinese stamps for use in the province from 1942 to 1945. Some 10 regular Chinese (Nationalist) issues were used during 1945-49. In October 1949, Canton, which had briefly become the Nationalist capital, fell to the communists, and communist issues for South China came into use, to be replaced by national issues in 1950. Kyrgyzstan (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Population: 3,858,736. Republic in central Asia, situated between Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. Kyrgyzstan, long the home of the Turkic Kyrgyz people, was conquered by Russia in the late 19th century. Russian colonization in the early 1900s provoked an unsuccessful Kyrgyz rebellion in 1916, and Russian/Soviet rule continued until the breakup of the Soviet Union. Kyrgystan declared its independence on August 31, 1991, and joined the United Nations in 1992. Since independence, the government has moved forcefully to implement economic reform. L Labuan (1879-1906) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island off the northwest coast of Borneo. Labuan was ceded by Brunei to Britain in 1848 and administered by the British North Borneo Company from 1890 to 1906. In 1907, Labuan was attached to the Straits Settlements and, after 1945, to British North Borneo (Sabah). Lagos (1874-1906) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A territory in south Nigeria. Lagos was occupied by Great Britain in 1861 and, during 1886-1906, was a separate protectorate. The territory merged with the Southern Nigerian Protectorate in 1906. Laos (1951-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,116,959. A state in northwestern Indochina. Formerly a kingdom of some influence, by the early 19th century Laos was under Siamese rule. In 1893, Siam renounced its claims, and in 1899, Laos became a French protectorate. During 1941-45, Laos was occupied by Japan. After World War II, Laos was reestablished as a kingdom (1947), under French protection. In 1953, it became independent within the French Union, and in 1956, it became fully independent. During the Vietnamese War, Laos maintained a precarious neutrality, with troops of both sides active within the country. With the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina, the neutralist regime collapsed, and in May 1975, the Lao Democratic People's Republic was established. During the past decade Laos has received substantial amounts of foreign investment and in 1997 joined ASEAN. Las Bela (1897-1907) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 63,000. A former feudatory state of India, now a part of Pakistan. Latakia (1931-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 280,000 (1936 estimate). This area, originally called Alaouites, was a district of western Syria under French mandate. Its stamps were replaced by those of Syria in 1937, after its merger with Syria in December 1936. Latvia (1918-41, 1991-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,437,649. A republic on the Baltic and the Gulf of Riga. Although the majority of Latvians are Slavic, the area was long dominated by a German land-owning class, descendants of the Knights of the Tuetonic Order, who conquered the region during the Middle Ages. Latvia was ruled by Poland and Sweden until Russia occupied the territory in the 18th century. During 1917-18, Latvia was occupied by Germany, and in 1918 it declared its independence from Russia. During 1919, the Latvian government fought both the Red Army, which sought to reestablish Russian control, and the Army of the West, which sought to maintain German influence. By the end of 1919, Latvia was able to secure its independence. In 1939, as part of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, the Soviet Union established military bases in Latvia. In June 1940, Soviet forces seized the country, and in July it was absorbed into the Soviet Union. In July 1941, Germany occupied the country, and many cities overprinted their stocks of Russian stamps for provisional use. In November, German "Ostland" issues were introduced, replacing the many local issues. During 1944-45, Soviet forces again occupied Latvia, and ordinary Russian stamps were again placed into use. Latvia declared its independence on August 21, 1991, and in September, Russia recognized its sovereignty. The last Russian troops were withdrawn in 1994. Lebanon (1924-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,858,736. A republic in western Asia, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Under Turkish rule until 1918, Lebanon was occupied by the French after World War I under a League of Nations mandate. It was declared independent in 1941, and in 1944, its independence was implemented. Lebanon's population is 57 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian, and from 1943, the two groups co-existed through a constitutional apportioning of key government posts. During 1969-75, Palestinian commando groups became increasingly powerful in Lebanon, which they used as a base for raids against Israel. Efforts of the government to restrain Palestinian activities, with which many Lebanese Muslims sympathized, and after 1970 Israeli counterattacks against Palestinian bases in southern Lebanon destabilized the Lebanese government. During 1965-76, these tensions erupted in civil war. Generally, Arab nations supported the Palestinians and leftist Muslim factions, while Israel supported the various Christian groups. In 1976, Syria intervened, suppressed PLO activity and attempted to mediate the conflict. The civil war resumed in 1981, and the country disintegrated into chaos between numerous Muslim and Christian groups, variously backed by Syria and Israel. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in an effort to finally suppress Palestinian terrorist activities, withdrawing, under U.S. pressure, to a security zone in the south in 1983. Continuing terrorist operations in southern Lebanon brought Israeli raids in 1993 and 1996. Leeward Islands (1890-1956) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 109,000 (1954 estimate). A group of islands in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. The Leeward Islands was a former administrative unit of British island possessions in the Caribbean — Antigua, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, and Dominica (until 1940). Leeward Islands issues were used throughout the colony, while the issues of the individual presidencies were valid only within their own territories. Lemnos (1912-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Lemnos utilized 38 overprinted Greek stamps during its occupation by Turkey. Leros (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Leros was claimed from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Leros" were issued. In 1929, these were superseded by general issues for the Aegean Islands, although two sets overprinted "Lero" were released in 1930 and 1932. Lesotho (1966-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,007,814. A kingdom in southern Africa, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. Until it became independent as Lesotho in 1966, this territory was the British crown colony of Basutoland. Lesotho is completely surrounded by South Africa, and the majority of its work force is employed in that country. Liberia (1860-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,602,068. A republic on the west coast of Africa, Liberia was colonized after 1822 by freed slaves from the United States. In 1847, Liberia was proclaimed independent. Liberian political and economic life was long dominated by the descendants of these freed slaves, who constitute less than 3 percent of the country's population. In 1980, a military coup led by Sgt. Samuel Doe overthrew the establishment government. Doe's harsh rule prompted an assassination attempt in 1985 and rebellion in 1989. In 1990, he was captured and executed. A chaotic civil war lasted until 1996, claiming more than 150,000 lives. Libya (1912-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,648,359. A republic in northern Africa, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Occupied until 1912 by Turkey, the area that is now Libya passed to Italy after its victory in the Turko-Italian War of 1912. The colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were united into Libya in 1934. During World War II, the colony was occupied by the Allies with Tripolitania and Cyrenaica under British administration, using "M.E.F." stamps (Middle Eastern Forces), while Fezzan-Ghadames was under French administration, using its own issues. On Dec. 24, 1951, the independent Kingdom of Libya was established. In September 1969, the monarchy was overthrown, and the Libyan Arab Republic was established. The new regime, under Col. Muammar al-Qadaffi, espoused a pan-Arab, socialist and Muslim fundamentalist philosophy that has led to ongoing conflicts with Libya's neighbors. During 1977, it fought several clashes with Egypt, and during 1977-87, it occupied portions of Chad, until driven from that country. Libya has been an active supporter of terrorist organizations throughout the world. In 1986, the United States imposed economic sanctions and froze Libyan assets in the United States. In 1992, the United Nations imposed limited economic sanctions, strengthened in 1993, in retaliation for Libya's refusal to extradite two terrorists believed to be responsible for the bombing of airplane flights over Scotland and Niger. Liechtenstein (1912-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 31,461. A principality in central Europe between Switzerland and Austria. Liechtenstein, founded in 1719, became a sovereign state in 1806, and became independent in 1866. Until 1918, it retained close ties with Austria, which until 1920 operated the Liechtenstein postal service. Since 1920, it has been associated with Switzerland, its post office having been under Swiss administration since 1921. In 1868, Liechtenstein abolished its army and has since remained free of foreign entanglements. Liechtenstein is one of the major tax havens of the world, and many international corporations have headquarters there. The country's major exports include postage stamps and plastic postage stamp mounts. Lisso (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Lisso was occupied by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Lipso" were issued. In 1929, Lisso's issues were superseded by the general issues for the Aegean Islands, although two sets overprinted "Lisso" or "Lipso" were released in 1930 and 1932. Lithuania (1918-40, 1990-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,635,932. A country of eastern Europe, northeast of Poland and south of Latvia. Lithuania ruled a large empire in the later Middle Ages, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas. In 1385 it was united with the Kingdom of Poland. Initially the dominant partner, Lithuania was gradually eclipsed by Poland. It was absorbed by Russia in 1793 and remained under Russian control until World War I. In 1915, the country was occupied by Germany, which supported its declaration of independence from Russia in 1918. German troops remained in Lithuania until the end of 1919. In 1920, the border district of Central Lithuania was lost to Poland, but this was somewhat offset by Lithuania's seizure of the German port of Memel from the Allies in 1923. In October 1939, Lithuania reoccupied Central Lithuania, in return for which it allowed the Soviet Union to establish military bases. In June 1940, Lithuania was seized by Soviet forces and in July was annexed to the Soviet Union. In June 1941, German forces occupied the country, and a number of local overprints on Russian stamps were used, as well as general overprints for Lithuania as a whole. From November 1941 to 1944, German issues overprinted "Ostland" were used. In 1944, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Lithuania was one of the first nations to declare its independence, on March 11, 1990. This independence was recognized by Western nations in August 1991, and by Russia in September. The last Russian troops were withdrawn in 1993. Lithuania has since pursued membership in the European Union. Livorno (1930) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Liguria, Italy. On May 11, 1930, Mussolini visited Livorno, and a local stamp, valid only on that day, was issued by the municipal authorities to commemorate Il Duce's visit. Ljady (1942) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Russian city near St. Petersburg. The German military commander surcharged two stamps of Germany and Ostland for use in the area. Ljubljana (Lubiana, Laibach) (1941-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Western Slovenia, separated and established as an Italo-German puppet state during World War II. Logrono (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the province of Logrono in north-central Spain. In 1937, a set of stamps was issued by the local Nationalist authorities. Lombardy-Venetia (1850-66) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom was created in 1815, comprising northeastern Italy, under the Austrian emperor. In 1859, Milan was conquered by Sardinia, and in 1866, Austria relinquished Venetia to the Kingdom of Italy. The Austrian administration issued separate stamps for this state, inscribed in Italian currency, which were also used in Austrian post offices in the Ottoman Empire. Since 1866, Italian stamps have been in use. Long Island (1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island (Cheustan or Makronsi) in the Gulf of Smyrna. Long Island was occupied by British forces in 1916, at which time the British commander issued Turkish fiscal stamps overprinted "G.R.I. Postage" and provisional typewritten stamps, used until the British withdrawal from the island. Lorient (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In February 1945, 27 French stamps were overprinted by the German military authorities for local use. Lourenco Marques (1895-1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 474,000. A district of southern Mozambique. Its stamps were replaced by those of Mozambique in 1920. Lubeck (1859-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 136,413. A former Free City and State in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. Lubeck's stamps were replaced by those of the North German Confederation. Luboml (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southern Poland. The local authorities issued a series of stamps during the German occupation. This issue was very speculative and may be found with many so-called errors. Luga (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northwestern Russia, south of St. Petersburg. Surcharged Russian stamps were issued by the German military commander. Luxembourg (1852-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 422,474. A grand duchy in western Europe, strategically located between Germany, France and Belgium. Until 1890, Luxembourg was ruled by a succession of foreign powers, although from 1815, it was technically independent, joined in personal union with the Netherlands. With the death of William III, king of the Netherlands and grand duke of Luxembourg, the country became completely independent. Luxembourg was occupied by Germany in both world wars. In 1949, it abandoned its traditional neutrality to become a charter member of NATO. It is a member of the Common Market and is an enthusiastic promoter of European cooperation. Luxembourg is a prosperous, highly industrialized nation. M Macau (1884-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 502,325. A Chinese port occupied by Portugal since 1557. In 1849, Portugal assumed full sovereignty over the territory, which includes two small, adjacent islands. In 1976 Macau was given considerable autonomy. In 1987, Portugal agreed to return the territory to China in 1999, under conditions similar to those accompanying Hong Kong's 1997 return to China by the United Kingdom. Macedonia (1944, 1991-) Stamp-issuing status: active. A republic in the central Balkans, Macedonia became part of Serbia after 1913, and so became part of Yugoslavia when Serbia merged into that nation. Bulgaria annexed the territory in 1941. On Sept. 8, 1944, Macedonia declared its independence from Bulgaria. After withdrawal of German troops in November 1944, the area was returned to Yugoslavia. Overprinted Bulgarian stamps were in use for a few weeks before the collapse of the German puppet government. On September 8, 1991, Macedonia declared its independence and in 1993 was admitted to the United Nations. A United Nations peace-keeping force, including U.S. troops, remains in Macedonia to prevent the spread of instability from other areas of Yugoslavia. Relations with Greece, which refused to recognize Macedonia's right to use its name, were normalized in 1995, and relations with Yugoslavia were normalized in 1996. Madagascar (Malagasy Republic) (1889-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10.28 million (1986 estimate). A large island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa. During the 19th century, most of the island was united under the Hova tribe, which was placed under French protection in 1885. In 1896, the native monarchy was abolished and Madagascar became a French colony, at times administering French island possessions in the area. In 1958, Madagascar, renamed the Malagasy Republic, became autonomous within the French Union. In 1960 it became fully independent. French influence remained strong until a 1972 coup brought a socialist regime to power. The new government nationalized French holdings, closed down French military bases and a U.S. space-tracking station, and obtained Chinese aid. In 1990, multiparty politics, banned in 1975, were again legalized. France and the United States remain the country's chief trading partners. Madeira (1868-98, 1928-29, 1980-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 290,000. A group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean northwest of Africa. Madeira's stamps were replaced by those of Portugal in 1898. In 1928-29, a special series of stamps was issued for use on certain days, when their use was obligatory. On Jan. 2, 1980, separate issues again appeared for Madeira. Mafia (1915-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A small island off the coast of German East Africa, occupied by the British in December 1914. In January 1915, 32 German East African stamps were overprinted for use on the island. Later, German fiscal stamps and Indian issues overprinted "I.E.F." were overprinted "Mafia" or "G.R.I.-Mafia" for local use. In August 1918, the island was transferred to Tanganyikan administration, and issues of Tanganyika (Tanzania) have since been used. Mahra (1967) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A sultanate in the Aden Protectorate in southwest Arabia. Mahra briefly issued stamps before its absorption into the People's Republic of Southern Yemen. Majorca (1936-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The largest of the Balearic Islands, in the western Mediterranean Sea. Two sets of overprinted Spanish stamps were issued in 1936 and 1937 under the authority of the Nationalist Civil Governor of the Balearic Islands. Majunga (1895) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Province and seaport on the coast of Madagascar. Stamps of France provisionally surcharged were used briefly in February 1895. Malacca (Melaka) (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 318,110 (1960 estimate). Formerly part of the British colony of Straits Settlements. Malacca was under British control since the early 19th century, except for Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945. The area is now a part of Malaya within the Malaysian Federation. Stamps currently issued for use there are inscribed "Melaka." Malaga (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of southern Spain, located on the Mediterranean Sea. Two sets of stamps, overprinted on Spanish issues, were issued by the Nationalist Civil Governor in 1937. Malawi (1964-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,609,081. A republic in south-central Africa. Until it became independent on July 6, 1964, Malawi was the British Nyasaland Protectorate. Malawi is closely linked economically with Zimbabwe and South Africa. Malaya, Federation (1957-63) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 7.4 million (1961 estimate). A formerly independent federation comprising the Malayan states in the southern part of the Malayan Peninsula. The federation merged with Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah to form Malaysia in 1963. Malaya-Federated Malay States (1900-35) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of native states in the south portion of the Malayan Peninsula in southeast Asia, under British protection. The federated states were Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang. In 1935, the federation issues were replaced by those of the individual states. In 1945, the Federated Malay States were incorporated into the Malayan Union. Malaysia (1963-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 20,376,235. Federation within the British Commonwealth. Malaysia was formed Sept. 16, 1963, with the union of the former British territories of the Federation of Malaya, Singapore (until 1965), Sarawak and Sabah (North Borneo). Malaysia is rich in natural resources and has enjoyed substantial industrial development since independence. Maldive Islands (1906-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 280,391. A group of islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Ceylon. The Maldives came under British protection in 1887 and were attached to the Ceylon colony until 1948. During 1948-64, the islands were closely associated with Great Britain, becoming completely independent in July 1965. In 1968, the 800-year-old sultanate was abolished, and a republic was established. Although the Maldives have issued some 2,000 stamps since independence, the country is not economically developed and is among the world's poorest nations. Mali (1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,945,383. A republic in West Africa. Formerly the French Sudan, Mali joined Senegal in 1959 to form the independent Federation of Mali. Senegal withdrew from the federation in 1960, and Mali, which called itself the Sudanese Republic during its union with Senegal, proclaimed its independence as the Republic of Mali. Mali maintained a carefully neutralist policy until 1968, accepting economic aid from both the Western and communist blocs. After 1968, Mali followed a pro-communist foreign policy under President Amadou Toumani Traore, until his ouster in 1991. Famine in 1973-74 and drought in the 1980s have plagued the country. Malta (1860-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 379,365. A group of islands in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily. Strategically located, Malta has been ruled by a long succession of foreign powers, from the Phoenicians through the British, who occupied the islands during the Napoleonic Wars. Malta became independent in 1964 and a republic in 1974. In 1979, the last British military personnel were withdrawn. Man, Isle of (1973-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 74,504. An island in the Irish Sea, west of Britain. A self-governing crown possession, the Isle of Man used British stamps, along with its own regional issues after 1958, until July 5, 1973, when its postal administration separated from that of Britain. Manama (1966-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A dependency of the sheikhdom of Ajman in the Trucial States of eastern Arabia. Manchukuo (1932-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 43.2 million (1940 estimate). A former Japanese satellite, comprising Manchuria and Jehol. Established in 1932 under Henry Pu-yi, who as Hsuan Tung had been the last Manchu emperor of China. In 1934, Pu-yi became Emperor Kang Teh of Manchukuo. The area was occupied by the Soviets in July 1945, and was turned over to the Chinese communist regime in May 1946. Nationalist forces held the southern portion of Manchukuo until November 1948, and during 1946-48 issued stamps for this area (North-Eastern Provinces). Mariana Islands (1899-1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 40,000 (1919 estimate). A group of islands in the western Pacific. Under Spanish rule from 1668-1898, when, except for Guam, they were sold to Germany. Japan occupied the Marianas in 1914, and Japanese stamps replaced those of the German colony. In 1945, U.S. forces occupied the islands, which were mandated to the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Marienwerder (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former Prussian district, which was occupied by the Allies after World War I. A plebiscite in 1920 returned the area to Germany. It was occupied by Poland after World War II. Marino (1930) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of northeastern Venezuela, which was controlled by a revolutionary group for a short time during 1903. Marshall Islands (1889-1916; 1984-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 15,000 (1916 estimate), 60,652 (1997). The easternmost island group in Micronesia, consisting of two roughly parallel chains of coral-capped islets and atolls in the western Pacific. Totaling only 70 square miles, the principal atolls are Majuro, Jaluit and Kwajalein. Spain sold the Caroline Islands in 1898 to Germany, which renamed them the Marshall Islands and issued stamps for use there. The islands were seized by the Japanese during World War I and administered by them under a 1919 League of Nations mandate. Invaded and conquered by United States forces in World War II, the Marshall Islands were made part of the United Nations-mandated U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific in 1947. On May 1, 1981, the Marshall Islands received its own constitution, president and legislature. Stamps ascribed to the island appeared that October, but these originated privately in Japan. The Marshall Islands began issuing its own stamps in May 1984, although its mail continued to be handled by the U.S. Postal Service. The Marshall Islands became fully independent in 1991. Martinique (1886-1947) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 261,595 (1946 estimate). A former French island colony in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. The island became an integral part of the French republic on Jan. 1, 1947. French stamps are now used. Maturin (1903) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the state of Monagas in northeastern Venezuela. A revolutionary group in control of the region issued stamps for a short time during 1903. Mauritania (1906-44, 1960-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,411,317. A republic in northwestern Africa, bordering on the Atlantic Ocean. A former French colony, Mauritania was part of French West Africa from 1904 to 1958 and used French West African stamps 1945-49. In 1958, Mauritania, as the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, became autonomous within the French Union, and in 1960 it became fully independent. At one time, the territory of Mauritania was ruled by Morocco, and Morocco claimed the area until 1970. In 1976, the mineral-rich Spanish Sahara was divided between the two countries. In 1980, Mauritania, after four years of war with the Polsario Front, renounced its share of the former Spanish Sahara, which was then occupied by Morocco. Mauritius (1847-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,154,272. An island in the Indian Ocean. Mauritius was a British colony after 1810 and became independent in 1968. Mauritius enjoys a free political life and a high literacy rate. The country's economy has expanded since independence. Mayotte (1892-1914, 1997-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,000 (1912 estimate), 104,715 (1997). One of the Comoro Islands, Mayotte was occupied by France in 1841 and attached to the colony of Madagascar in 1911. The Comoros were separated from Madagascar in 1947 and began issuing their own stamps in 1950. Mayotte is claimed by the Comoros but administered by France. In 1976, the territory voted to become a territorial collectivity of France. Mayreau Island (1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active. One of the Granadines of St. Vincent, a group of small islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1856-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former grand duchy in northern Germany, bordering the Baltic Sea. In 1868, issues of the North German Confederation came into use. Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1864-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former grand duchy in northern Germany, divided into two parts by Mecklenburg-Schwerin, with which it was joined until 1701. Its stamps were replaced by those of the North German Confederation in 1868. Melilla (1936) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A port in northern Morocco. Occupied by Spain since 1470, Melilla was a military stronghold administered separately from Spanish Morocco, which was not occupied by Spain until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Melilla, along with Cueta, remains a part of metropolitan Spain. In 1936, the military authorities in Melilla overprinted two Spanish stamps for local use. Memel (1920-24, 1939) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district in northern Europe, on the Baltic Sea. German until after World War I, when the area was occupied by the French, who issued 123 surcharged and overprinted stamps. In 1923, frustrated by the League of Nations' failure to decide the disposition of sovereignty over the area, Lithuania seized Memel. They created 11 occupation issues. In 1924, this was approved by the League of Nations. In 1939, Germany reoccupied Memel, and briefly, four Lithuanian stamps overprinted "Memelland/Ist/frei" were used. After World War II, the area was reincorporated in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. Meng Chiang (Inner Mongolia) (1941-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Regular Chinese stamps were overprinted by the Japanese in 1941, and separate issues for this area continued until the end of World War II. This area was held by the communist forces at the end of the war and was included in the North China postal district, which issued stamps from 1946 to 1949. Regular issues of the central government came into use after 1950. Merano (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern Italy, formerly under Austrian rule. Local stamps were issued by the authorities in 1918, while the area was still a part of Austria. Merida (1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the state of Yucatan in southern Mexico. A single issue received a 25-centavo surcharge for local use there in 1916. Mesopotamia (1917-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population 2.85 million (1920 estimate). Former Turkish province in western Asia. Mesopotamia was occupied by British forces during World War I. It became the kingdom of Iraq under British mandate in 1921. Mexico (1856-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 97,563,374. A republic in North America, situated between the United States and Central America, bordering on the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Mexico was the center of a number of Indian cultures dating from c. 800 B.C. By the 15th century, the central portion of the country was ruled by the Aztec Empire, which was conquered by the Spanish in 1519-21. Mexico, as the viceroyalty of New Spain, was the center of Spain's North American Empire for 300 years. The Mexican revolution against Spain began in 1810 and finally succeeded in 1821. The Mexican Empire of 1822-23 included Central America, but this area soon became independent. The republican government that succeeded the empire was marked by instability and strife. The weakened condition of the country cost it Texas (1836) and the large northern area that now comprises the southwestern United States (1848). An additional area in the north was sold to the United States in 1853. During 1861-67, Mexico was torn by a civil war between the aristocracy, supported by France, and the lower classes, led by Benito Juarez. The French were finally expelled from Mexico, and Juarez came to power. During most of the period between 1877 and 1911, the country was ruled by the dictator Porfirio Diaz, who restored stability and secured foreign investment. After Diaz's death, Mexico entered a period of civil war, which lasted from 1913-20. During this period, the United States intervened in Veracruz (1914) and sent a punitive expedition into northern Mexico (1916-17). Since 1929, Mexico has been ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI is a broad-based political confederation, encompassing a wide political spectrum. Mexico has rich natural resources, including what may be the world's largest petroleum reserves, but its rugged topography and arid climate have been major obstacles to economic development. Considerable economic and social progress has been made since 1940. The Mexican economy has improved greatly, although setbacks in the 1980s have left continuing employment and banking problems. In the 1990s, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which has controlled the country since 1920, saw gains from hitherto powerless opposition parties. Nevertheless, the PRI elite continues to maintain a tight hold on political power in Mexico. Mexico-Revolutionary Overprints (1914) With the seizure of power in 1913 by Gen. Huerta following the assassination of President Madero, a group of Madero's former supporters launched a revolution. This group, led by Carranza and including such leaders as Obregon, Villa and Zapata, called themselves the "Constitutional Government." During 1914, a number of Mexican cities and states under Constitutionalist control, provisionally overprinted stocks of regular Mexican stamps — Acambaro (Guanajuato State); Aguascalientes (Aguascalientes); Chihuahua (Chihuahua); Colima (Colima); Culiacan (Sinoloa); Guaymas (Sonora); Juarez (Chihuahua); Leon (Guanajuato); Lower California; Coahuila; Gonzales (Guanajuato); Matehuala (San Luis Potosi); Monterrey (Nuevo Leon); Queretaro; Salamanca (Guanajuato); San Juan de Allende (Coahuila); San Luis Potosi (San Luis Potosi); San Pedro; Sinaloa (Sinaloa); Sonora; Torreon (Coahuila); Tuxtla; Viezca; Yucatan; and Zacatecas. Micronesia (1984-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 127,616. A group of more than 600 islands totaling only 270 square miles, located in the western Pacific Ocean north of the equator. These islands, along with what is now Palau, were part of the Spanish Caroline Islands until 1899, when they were sold to Germany, which issued stamps for use there. The Caroline Islands were seized by the Japanese during World War I and administered by them under a 1919 mandate of the League of Nations. Invaded and conquered by United States forces in the Pacific campaigns of World War II, the islands were made part of the United Nations-mandated U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific in 1947, using U.S. stamps since that time. The islands were proclaimed the Federated States of Micronesia and began issuing stamps in July 1984. Mail continues to be handled by the U.S. Postal Service. Micronesia became fully independent in 1991. Middle Congo (1907-36) Stamp-issuing status: inactive: Population: 747,000 (1933 estimate). Former French colony on the northern side of the Congo River. Created from existing French territory in 1907, it was confederated with Gabon, Ubangi-Shari and Chad to form French Equatorial Africa. After 1936, issues of French Equatorial Africa replaced those of the individual colonies. Middle East Forces (1942-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During World War II, British and New Zealand forces occupied Italian colonies in East Africa, North Africa and the Aegean Sea. British stamps overprinted "M.E.F." were used in these areas until 1950, after which the remainders were used in Great Britain. Milan (1897) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern Italy. For a time, local stamps were issued by the municipal authorities. Minorca (1939) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Balearic Islands, in the western Mediterranean Sea. Locally typeset stamps were used provisionally after the occupation of the island by the Nationalists in February 1939. Modena (1852-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former duchy in northern Italy. In 1859, the duchy was overthrown, and in 1860 the area merged with Sardinia, whose issues came into use. Moheli (1906-12) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 4,000 (1916 estimate). One of the Comoro Islands in the Mozambique Channel near Madagascar. Moheli was attached to Madagascar in 1911 and was again separated, as one of the Comoro Islands, in 1947. Comoro stamps have been in use since 1950. Moldavia (1858-61) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former principality in northeastern Romania. Under Turkish suzerainty after the 16th century, Moldavia united with Wallachia in 1861 to form the Kingdom of Romania. Moldavia-Wallachia (1862-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The united principalities that came to form Romania. Moldova (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Historically the eastern half of the Grand Duchy of Moldavia, the territory that is now the republic of Moldova was under Ottoman Turkish control from the 15th century, until its annexation by Russia in 1812. In 1918, it was reoccupied by what had become Romania. It was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939, and in 1940 was organized as the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Moldova was again rejoined to Romania 1941-44, but in 1944 passed back to the Soviets. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova declared its independence on August 27, 1991. During 1992-97 a civil war raged in the Trans-Dnestr Region, between the Moldovan government and ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, who feared that the Moldovan majority would unite the country with Romania. In 1994, a national plebiscite supported independence, and in 1997 a peace accord was signed. Monaco (1885-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 31,892. A principality on the southern coast of France. Long autonomous under the protection, at various times, of France, Spain and Sardinia, Monaco is independent, except for the right of France to approve the successor to the throne. By the treaty of 1918, Monaco will be annexed by France should the ruling Grimaldi family fail to provide an heir. Monaco has long been a popular tourist resort, and its beautiful postage stamps have given it a prominence among collectors much greater than one might expect from its small (1.95 square miles) size. Mongolia (1924-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,538,211. A republic in central Asia, located between China and Siberia. The homeland of the Mongol Empire that in the 13th-14th centuries stretched from Poland to Korea. By 1689, Mongol power had declined to the point where the region came under Chinese control. In 1911, Mongolia declared its independence but, in 1921, was occupied by Soviet troops. In 1924, a pro-Soviet republic was established, and in 1945, after China renounced all claims in the country, the Mongolian People's Republic was established. From the 1970s, the Mongolian government carried out an active program to transform the country's economy from nomadic to a more modern, settled form. In 1990, the communist government gave up its monopoly on power, and the country has moved quickly to democratize and to liberalize its economy. Montenegro (1874-1918, 1941-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 516,000 (estimated). A former kingdom in the Balkans, situated north of Albania. Montenegro became independent in 1452 and for centuries successfully resisted the Turks, who held the rest of southeastern Europe. In January 1916, the Austrians occupied Montenegro, and the government fled to Bordeaux, France, where overprinted French stamps were used for a time. In November 1918, King Nicholas was deposed in a pro-Serbian coup, and Montenegro was united with Serbia. During World War II, Montenegro was re-established as an Italian protectorate. In 1943-44, it was occupied by Germany, which overprinted Yugoslavian stamps and issues of the Italian administration. After the German defeat, Montenegro was again occupied by Yugoslavia, which initially overprinted issues of the Italian Montenegrin regime. Since 1945, regular Yugoslavian stamps have been used. With the breakup of the Yugoslav state in the 1990s, Montenegro has remained in partnership with Serbia as part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, declared in 1992. Montserrat (1876-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,200. An island in the Leeward group in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. Montserrat was under British control after 1632 and attached to the Leeward Island colony until 1956, when it became a separate crown colony. Morocco (1956-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 30,391,423. A kingdom in northwestern Africa, bordering on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Once a powerful state embracing much of Spain and North Africa in the 12th century, Moroccan power declined thereafter. European encroachment led to the division of the country into French (southern) and Spanish (northern) protectorates in 1912, although tribal resistance continued for two more decades. In 1956, the two zones were reunited and Morocco again became independent. Morocco has since expanded by absorbing Tangier (1956), Ifni (1969), the northern two-thirds of the Spanish Sahara (1976) and the southern portion of the Spanish Sahara in 1980. Morocco waged a bitter war in the former Spanish Sahara against the Polisario Front, which claims independence for the region, until 1990. A United Nations-sponsored referendum on self-determination for the region has not yet taken place. Morvi (1931-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former feudatory state in western India. Morvi's issues were replaced by Indian stamps in 1950. Moschopolis (1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in southern Albania. Stamps were issued by local authorities during the Greek occupation of the area. Mount Athos (1909-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The holy mountain of the Orthodox Church, located in northern Greece, near Salonika. In 1909-13, 17 Russian Levant stamps were overprinted "Mount Athos" in French or Russian for use in the Russian consular post office at Daphne, the seaport at the foot of the mountain. This post office was closed when Greece occupied the area in 1913. Mozambique (1877-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 18,166,476. A republic on the southeast coast of Africa. Portuguese settlements began in the 16th century, and the colony remained a Portuguese possession until June 25, 1975, when it became independent as the People's Republic of Mozambique. The pro-communist Frelimo Party, which controlled Mozambique after independence, was handicapped by the flight of white Mozambicans, a South-African supported guerrilla war and, in the 1980s, a drought that, with the civil war, brought heavy loss of life. In 1989, Frelimo renounced communism and accepted a multiparty, free-market system. In 1992, the civil war was ended, and in 1995, nearly two million refugees were repatriated. Mozambique Company (1892-1942) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 368,000 (1939 estimate). A private company that, by royal charter, acquired extensive rights in the Mozambique districts of Manica and Sofala. Most rights, including the direct administration of the territories and the issuing of stamps, reverted to Portugal in 1942. Mustique Island (1976) Stamp-issuing status: active. An island in the Grenadines of St. Vincent, a group of small subsidiary islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Myanmar (1989-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 46,821,943. In 1989, the military government renamed Burma the Union of Myanmar. In 1990, the country's first multiparty elections in 30 years resulted in a clear victory for the opposition, but the military refused to step down. The regime has continued to harass its opponents and is under U.S. economic sanctions. Mytilene (1909-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The chief port of the Greek island of Lesbos in the eastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Turkey. The Russian post office in Mytilene used stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted "Metelin" after 1909. In 1912, Mytilene was occupied by Greece, and 20 overprinted Turkish stamps were used, being superseded by regular Greek issues in 1913. N Nabha (1885-1951) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 340,044 (1941 estimate). A convention state of British India. Nabha's issues were used concurrently with those of India after April 1, 1950. On Jan. 1, 1951, they were replaced by Indian stamps. Namibia (1999-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,648,270 (1999 estimate). Namibia was established in 1990 from South-West Africa, which had been administered by South Africa under a mandate of the League of Nations. Nandgaon (1892-95) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 182,380. A former feudatory state in central India. Nandgaon's issues were replaced by those of India in July 1895. Nanumaga (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Nanumaga issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Nanumea (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Nanumea issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Natal (1857-1909) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.2 million (1909 estimate). A former British crown colony on the southeast coast of Africa. A short-lived Boer republic, Natal came under British control in 1843. It was incorporated into the Union of South Africa in 1910. Nauru (1916-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,390 (1997 estimate). An island in the west-central Pacific Ocean. Nauru was a German possession from 1888-1914 and was occupied by Australian forces during World War I. From 1920-68, Nauru was a mandate under Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. It became an independent republic on Jan. 31, 1968. This 8-square-mile island is rich in phosphates, giving the Naureans one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Nawanagar (1875-95) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 402,192. A former feudatory state in western India. Nawanagar's issues were replaced by those of India in December 1895. Neapolitan Provinces (1861-62) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In October 1860, Garibaldi deposed the ruling Bourbon dynasty in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the country was annexed to Sardinia. Sardinia issued a separate series of stamps for the Neapolitan Provinces in 1861, similar to contemporary Sardinian stamps but inscribed in Neapolitan currency. This set was superseded by regular Italian issues in 1862. Negri Sembilan (1891-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 401,742 (1960 estimate). Sultanate on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Placed under British protection in 1891, the sultanate was occupied by Japan 1942-45. Negri Sembilan joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and is now part of the Malaysian Federation. Nejd (1925-26) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A region in central Arabia united by the puritanical Wahhabi Moslem movement, led by the Saud family, in the 18th century. During 1914-25, Nejd conquered the Hasa, Asir and Hejaz regions and expanded the kingdom to include most of the Arabian Peninsula. In 1925, the Kingdom of Hejaz, Nejd and Dependencies was formed, and in 1932, the kingdom was renamed Saudi Arabia. Nepal (1881-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 22,641,061 (1997 estimate). Kingdom in the Himalaya Mountains between India and Tibet. United in 1768, Nepal remained independent during the British occupation of India and has since maintained that independence, enjoying good relations with both India and China. Netherlands (1852-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 15,653,091 (1997). Constitutional monarchy in northwest Europe, bordering on the North Sea. A part of Charlemagne's empire, the area of the Netherlands was long ruled by outsiders: Burgundy, the Austrian Habsburgs and, by the 16th century, Spain. Political and religious repression led to a revolt in 1658, and in 1679 the seven northern provinces became independent as the Republic of the United Netherlands. During the 17th century, the Netherlands became one of the predominant naval and commercial powers, controlling a far-flung empire in the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, India and the East Indies. Conflict with England weakened Dutch power and in 1794 the country was annexed by France. The Netherlands again became independent in 1815, and the Congress of Vienna reconstituted the state to include Belgium and Luxembourg, which later became independent themselves. The Netherlands remained neutral during World War I, successfully avoiding participation in that conflict. Its neutrality in World War II, however, was disregarded by Germany, which occupied it 1940-1945. The last major remnant of the Netherlands' once vast overseas empire was lost in 1950, when Indonesia became independent. The Dutch held West Irian until 1962, when that territory was seized by Indonesia. The Netherlands abandoned its policy of neutrality after World War II and aligned itself with the West. It is a member of NATO and of the Common Market. Although it has undergone substantial industrialization since World War II, the agricultural sector of the country's economy remains strong. Netherlands Antilles (Curacao) (1873) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 211,093 (1997). Two groups of islands in the West Indies, north of Venezuela. They were originally occupied by Spain, but have been in Dutch possession since 1634. In 1954, the colony was made an integral part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Aruba separated from the Netherlands Antilles and began issuing its own stamps at the beginning of 1986. Netherlands Indies (1845-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 76 million (1949 estimate). A former Dutch colony occupying the greater portion of the East Indies. The area was originally dominated by Hindus, who were supplanted by Moslems after the 14th-15th centuries. From the early 16th century, Portugal dominated the region but was gradually supplanted by the Dutch and British. After the 17th century, the Dutch ruled most of the area. The Netherlands Indies were occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945, during which time a great variety of occupation issues were used. Two days after Japan's surrender, Indonesian nationalists declared independence, starting the revolution that ended with Dutch withdrawal in 1949. Netherlands New Guinea (1950-62) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 923,440 (1973 estimate). The western half of the island of New Guinea, retained by the Dutch after Indonesian independence. After the Indonesian invasion in 1962, the United Nations assumed temporary executive authority in the area, which was transferred to Indonesia in 1963. The UNTEA (United Nations Temporary Executive Authority) overprinted the existing Dutch definitive issue in 1962, and Indonesia maintained separate issues for the territory, as West Irian, from 1963 to 1970. Nevis (1861-1890, 1980-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 11,864 (1883 estimate). One of the Leeward Islands, southeast of Puerto Rico. From 1861 to 1890, separate issues were made for Nevis. From 1890 to 1956, stamps of the Leeward Islands were used. Issues of St. Kitts-Nevis were also used 1903-1952, replaced by St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla issues after 1952. Nevis again began to issue its own stamps in 1980. In 1983 it became independent, in federation with St. Kitts but still continues to maintain its own stamp issues. New Britain (1914-15) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 50,600. An island off the northeast coast of New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean. Formerly part of German New Guinea, the island of Neu-Pommern was renamed New Britain, when it was occupied by Australia in 1914. During 1914/1915, German New Guinea and Marshall Islands issues, overprinted "G.R.I." and new values in sterling were used. In 1915 these issues were replaced by those of the North West Pacific Islands. After World War I, it became part of the mandated territory of New Guinea. New Brunswick (1851-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 286,000 (1871 estimate). Former British colony, now a province of Canada. New Brunswick was originally part of the French colony of New France, but it was transferred to Britain in 1713 and was incorporated into the British colony of Nova Scotia. The infusion of Tory emigres from the southern colonies during the American Revolution increased its population dramatically, and it became a separate colony in 1784. In 1867 it united with Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia to form the Confederation of Canada, and Canadian stamps have been used since 1868. New Caledonia (1859-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 191,003 (1997 estimate). An island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,000 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia. New Caledonia was annexed by France in 1853 and administered from Tahiti until 1860, when it became a separate colony. In the years following, a number of smaller surrounding islands were added as dependencies. During World War II, New Caledonian authorities were early supporters of Free France, and, later, U.S. air bases were established on the island. In 1984 France granted internal autonomy to New Caledonia, with the possibility of eventual independence. This provoked a confrontation between native Melanesians, who now make up less than half the population, who demanded immediate independence, and European New Caledonians, about one-third of the population, who wanted continued French administration. After increasing tension and violence between the two sides, direct French authority was reestablished in 1988, with the promise of a referendum on self-government being held in 1998. Newfoundland (1857-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 320,000 (1945 estimate). An island off the eastern coast of Canada, under British rule from the 16th century. With the mainland territory of Labrador, Newfoundland formed a British dominion until its incorporation into Canada in 1949. New Greece (1912-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The districts of Turkey occupied by Greece in the First Balkan War. Overprinted Greek issues and one specially printed set were used in Chios, Icaria, Lemnos, Mytilene, Samos, Cavalla, Dedeagatch and other occupied Turkish territory, until they were replaced by regular Greek stamps. New Guinea (1925-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 676,500 (1948 estimate). The territory formerly constituting German New Guinea, the northeast portion of the island of New Guinea, in the South Pacific Ocean. New Guinea was occupied by Australia in 1914 and administered by Australia under a mandate from the League of Nations and, after 1947, under a mandate from the United Nations. New Guinea joined with Papua in 1949 to form the territory of Papua and New Guinea. The name later was changed to Papua New Guinea. New Hebrides (1908-1980) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 100,000 (1980 estimate). A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, north of New Caledonia. New Hebrides was declared neutral by Great Britain and France in 1878 and was administered jointly by the two nations from 1906 to 1980. On July 30, 1980, the islands became independent as the Republic of Vanuatu. New Republic (1886-88) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A short-lived Boer republic in southern Africa. It was absorbed by Transvaal in 1888. New South Wales (1850-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.5 million (1906 estimate). Former British crown colony in southeast Australia. In 1901, New South Wales merged into the Commonwealth of Australia. New Zealand (1855-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,587,275 (1997). Two large islands and a number of smaller islands in the South Pacific Ocean. New Zealand was settled by Polynesians, beginning in the 14th century, and discovered by Europeans in 1642. It was annexed by Great Britain in 1840 and, since 1907, has been a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations. New Zealand has a number of dependencies in the South Pacific, among them the Cook Islands, Niue, the Tokelau Islands, and Ross Dependency in the Antarctic. Nicaragua (1862-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,386,399 (1997). A republic in Central America. Nicaragua was conquered by Spain in 1522 and was attached to the Captaincy-general of Guatemala for four centuries. Briefly under Mexican rule (1822-1823), Nicaragua became independent of Spain as a member of the Central American Confederation. In 1838 Nicaragua became an independent republic. Its subsequent political history has been turbulent. The British controlled the eastern coast from the 17th century until 1893, and the United States effectively controlled the country from 1912 to 1933. During 1934-79, the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua. The Somoza regime brought order and considerable economic progress to the country. It also brought widespread corruption and ruthless political repression. In 1974, in response to the activities of the Marxist Sandinista guerrillas, the government imposed martial law. The subsequent excesses of the National Guard alienated virtually all elements of Nicaraguan society, and in August 1978, civil war erupted. The United States, which had unsuccessfully attempted to moderate the Somoza regime's policies, withdrew its support. In May 1979, a Sandinista force invaded Nicaragua and, by July, had overthrown the Somozas. The Sandinista regime maintained close ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union and supported leftist rebels in neighboring El Salvador. In 1981 anti-government rebels, the Contras, began a war to overthrow the Sandinistas. Covert U.S. support of the Contras brought an intensification of the civil war in 1986-1987, and in 1989 an accord between the two sides ended hostilities and led to a free election in 1990. Violetta Chamorro, owner of the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, led a broad anti-Sandinista coalition to victory in this election, ending more than a decade of Sandinista rule. She soon encountered opposition from both the right, which criticized the slow pace of reform, and the left, which felt that positive Sandinista reforms were being thrown out in a rush to privatization. The continuing presence of Sandinista officials throughout the government and in the military, as well as charges of corruption in the new regime created conflict within the government. In 1996 a new government was elected, committed to continuing reform, while investigating the previous regime. Niger (1921-45, 1959-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,388,859 (1997). A republic in northern Africa, directly north of Nigeria. Under French control after 1890, Niger underwent several administrative incarnations, finally emerging as the Niger Territory in 1920. The Niger Territory became the Niger Colony two years later. Niger became part of French West Africa in 1904 and used French West African stamps during 1944-59. In 1958, Niger became an autonomous republic and became fully independent in 1960. It has since maintained close ties with France. Since independence, it has been ruled by a series of dictators, except for a brief period of popular-elected government from March 1993 to January 1996. Niger Coast Protectorate (1892-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former British holdings in southern Nigeria. The area was absorbed into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate in 1900. Nigeria (1914-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 107,129,469 (1997). Republic in West Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea. Nigeria was discovered by the Portuguese in the 15th century and was an early center of the African slave trade. By the end of the 18th century, British influence was tantamount in the coastal areas. Britain expanded its holdings in the area after 1861 and consolidated its holdings into the protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria, which were united to form Nigeria in 1914. Nigeria became an independent federation in 1960 and a republic in 1963. Inter-tribal tensions have been strong since independence. A period of political strife during 1966-67 brought the secession of Biafra, which comprised the mineral-rich southeastern portion of the country. In the ensuing civil war, one million people died, most of them Biafran Ibos. In January 1970, Biafra surrendered and was reabsorbed into Nigeria. Nigeria has rich petroleum deposits and is a member of OPEC. The massive oil price increases of the 1970s enabled Nigeria to launch an ambitious campaign of economic development. Drastic cutbacks in oil exports during 1981-82, however, made it increasingly difficult to maintain these programs. Nigeria has been ruled by the military since 1966, except for a period of civilian rule during 1979-1983. Niklasdorf (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). In 1938 the municipal authorities overprinted a large number of Czechoslovak stamps to commemorate the union with Germany. Nisiros (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Nisiros was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Nisiros" were issued. These were superseded by the general Aegean Islands issues in 1929, although two sets overprinted "Nisiro" were released in 1930 and 1932. Niuafo'ou (1983-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 900 (1983 estimate). A volcanic rim island of six square miles, Niuafo'ou is part of the kingdom of Tonga, located in the southern Pacific Ocean between Fiji and Samoa, 400 miles north of the Tongatupa island group. The island is better known as Tin Can Island, famed for the pickup and delivery of mail in sealed cans by swimmers and canoes to and from ships waiting offshore in the 1930s and '40s. Niuafo'ou began to issue its own stamps in mid-1983. Niue (1902-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,837 (1995 estimate). Island in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. The area was annexed to New Zealand in 1901. In 1974, Niue became self-governing, although New Zealand retains responsibility for defense and foreign affairs. Niutao (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Niutao issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Norfolk Island (1947-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,756 (1995). Island in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Australia, under Australian administration. The inhabitants of Norfolk Island are largely descendants of the Bounty mutineers, whose ancestors immigrated to Norfolk from the Pitcairns in 1856. North Borneo (1883-1964) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 460,000 (1962 estimate). Former British colony, occupying the northeast portion of the island of Borneo in the Malay Archipelago. The area of North Borneo was ruled by the sultans of Brunei from the 16th century, until the reigning sultan ceded it to American and British traders in 1872. In 1881 the British North Borneo Company was established to administer the region. North Borneo was occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945, and after its reoccupation by Britain, it was reorganized as a colony. Renamed Sabah, British North Borneo joined with Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore to form the Malaysian Federation in 1963. North China (1937-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The North China Liberation Area comprised Chahar, Hopeh, Shansi and Suiyan. Seven postal districts issued stamps during this period. Northeast China (1946-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Communist administrative area comprising the provinces of Liaoning, Kirin, Jehol and Heilungkiang and, after 1948, all of Manchuria. In 1951, the issues of the regional postal administration were replaced by the general issues of the People's Republic of China. North Epirus (1914-16, 1940-41) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. That portion of southern Albania occupied by Greece in 1914-16 and 1940-41. During 1914-16, 32 issues of Epirus and Greek stamps overprinted "Northern Epirus" were used, and in 1940-41, some 37 overprinted Greek stamps were issued. North German Confederation (1868) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A confederation of German states, formed under the leadership of Prussia in 1868, after Austria's defeat in the Austro-Prussian War. On Jan. 1, 1868, the stamps of all member nations were replaced by those of the confederation, with the area forming the North German Postal District. North Ingermanland (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district in Russia, lying between the Neva River and Finland. In 1920, the area revolted, established a provisional government and sought union with Finland. Soviet troops quickly suppressed the revolt, but not before the rebels were able to issue two seven-value sets of stamps. Northern Nigeria (1900-13) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former British protectorate comprising holdings in northern Nigeria. Northern Nigeria merged with the Southern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria on January 4, 1914. Northern Rhodesia (1925-64) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3.6 million (1963 estimate). Former British protectorate in southern Africa. Northern Rhodesia became the independent republic of Zambia in 1964. Northwest China (1946-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The northwestern area of China proper, which after the "long march to Yenan" was the center of the communist revolution in China. It included the provinces of Kansu, Ninghsia, Tsinghai and, after 1949, Sinkiang. General Chinese issues replaced those of the region in 1949. Northwest China (Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia) (1935-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The center of the communist revolution in China after the "long march to Yenan." In 1949, Sinkiang was added to the region. The regional issues were replaced by the general issues of the People's Republic of China in 1949. North West Pacific Islands (1914-24) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 636,563. During World War I, Australian forces occupied the German possessions in New Guinea and the adjacent islands. Australian stamps overprinted "N.W. Pacific Islands" were used on Nauru from 1915 to 1916 and in former German New Guinea from 1915 to 1924. Norway (1855-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,404456 (1997 estimate). A constitutional monarchy occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula in northern Europe. A powerful kingdom in the Middle Ages, Norway later came under the domination of Denmark and, after 1814, Sweden. In 1905, Norway became completely independent. The country was occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1945. Following World War II, Norway abandoned its traditional neutrality and joined NATO. The country's abundant hydroelectric resources have produced an ongoing economic boom that has given Norway one of the highest standards of living in the world. Nossi-Be (1889-98) Stamp-issuing status: inactive: Population: 9,000 (1900 estimate). An island in the Indian Ocean, lying off the northwestern coast of Madagascar. Nossi Be was a French protectorate until 1898, when it was attached to the colony of Madagascar. Nova Scotia (1851-1868) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 387,000 (1871 estimate). Former British colony in east Canada. Settled by the French in 1607 and British in 1613, the area was disputed, until France ceded its claims to Britain in 1713. Prince Edward Island was separated from Nova Scotia in 1769, New Brunswick in 1784. Nova Scotia joined with Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick to form the Canadian Confederation in 1867, and Canadian stamps have been used since 1868. Nuggen (Noo) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Estonia. During July-Aug. 13, 1941, five Russian stamps were surcharged in red, in green and in black for use in the city by the German military commander. Nui (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Nui issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Nukufetau (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Nukufetau issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Nukulaelae (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Nukulaelae issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Nyasaland Protectorate (1907-54, 1963-64) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3 million (1964 estimate). Former British protectorate in south-central Africa. Established as British Central Africa in 1890, the name Nyasaland Protectorate was adopted in 1907. During 1953-63, it was a member of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Nyasaland became independent in 1964, changing its name to Malawi. Nyassa (1897-1929) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3 million (1923 estimate). A district in northwestern Mozambique. Nyassa was administered by the private Nyassa Co. until 1929, when the company's rights reverted to Portugal. O Oaxaca (1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state in central Mexico, which issued its own stamps during the Mexican Civil War. Obock (1892-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A seaport in eastern Africa, on the Gulf of Aden. Acquired by France in 1862 and actively occupied after 1884, it was merged with other French holdings in the area to form the French Somali Coast in 1902. Odenpah (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Estonia. In 1941, the German military commander issued two stamps for use in the city. Odessa (1918-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Russian port on the northern coast of the Black Sea. In 1918, Odessa overprinted Russian stamps with the Ukrainian trident for use in its postal district. During 1919, the Polish Consulate at Odessa overprinted contemporary Polish stamps "ODESA" for use on mail carried from Odessa to Poland through the cooperation of Gen. Denikin. This postal agency was closed Jan. 31, 1920. Oil Rivers Protectorate (1892-93) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former British protectorate in southern Nigeria. In 1893, the name of the territory was changed to Niger Coast Protectorate. Oldenburg (1852-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 483,042 (1910 estimate). A former grand duchy in northern Germany. Oldenburg's issues were replaced by those of the North German Confederation in 1868. Oltre Giuba (1925-26) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district in eastern Africa, northeast of Kenya. In 1924, Britain ceded the area to Italy, and in 1926 it was incorporated into Italian Somaliland. Oman (Muscat and Oman) (1944-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,264,590 (1997 estimate). Independent sultanate on the southeast coast of Arabia. From 1508 to 1648, Oman was ruled by Portugal. The Portuguese were expelled in 1648, and the area was ruled by Persia until 1741, when the present dynasty assumed control. During the first half of the 19th century, Oman ruled an empire stretching from the coasts of Persia and India to Zanzibar, but its power declined until it came under British protection in the late 19th century. Rebellious tribesmen in the interior fought the central government in the 1950s but were suppressed with British support. Later uprisings were quelled by 1975, with Iranian help. In 1964, petroleum was discovered and has since become Oman's major export. In 1979, leftist guerrilla activities resumed in the southwestern portion of the country, supported by the South Yemen People's Republic. Accords signed with the United States in 1980 give American forces access to bases in Oman, which has become one of the cornerstones of U.S. military policy in the region. Since 1970, the regime has modernized the country and liberalized the government, but membership in the Shura Council, Oman's consultative body, while elective, remains subject to the sultan's approval. In June 1997, women were given the right to be elected to the Shura Council. Opatow (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southern Poland. Local stamps were issued by the municipal authorities in 1918. The series was philatelically inspired and very speculative. Orange Free State (1868-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 528,174 (1911 estimate). A former independent republic in South Africa. The Orange Free State became the British Orange River Colony in 1900 and was incorporated into the Union of South Africa in 1910. Orchha (1913-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population 363,405 (1941). A former feudatory state in the Bundelkhand agency in central India. On May 1, 1950, Orchha's issues were replaced by those of India. Orense (1936) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of northwestern Spain. In October 1936, two sets of overprinted Spanish stamps were issued under the authority of the National Civil Governor of the province. Orleans (1953) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern France. During a postal strike, in August 1953, the Orleans Chamber of Commerce issued stamps for use in the city. Ostland (1941-43) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The German military district comprising Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and adjacent portions of occupied Russia. German issues overprinted "Ostland" where used in the district. Ostrova (Mahrisch-Ostrau) (1939) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Moravia (Czechoslovakia). In 1939 the municipal authorities overprinted 64 Czechoslovakian stamps to commemorate union with Germany. P Pahang (1889-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 338,210 (1960 estimate). The largest Malay state, under British protection after 1888. Pahang was occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945 and joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948. It is now a part of Malaysia. Pakhoi (1903-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A port in the province of Kwangtung in southern China. France maintained a post office in Pakhoi from 1902 to 1922, using overprinted stamps of French Indochina after 1903. Pakistan (1947-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 132,185,299 (1997 estimate). Republic in south-central Asia. Pakistan was formed in 1947 from the predominantly Moslem areas of India. In April 1971, Eastern Pakistan seceded and, in December 1971, after the Indo-Pakistani War, became independent as the Republic of Bangladesh. Tension with India has remained at a high level since the two countries became independent, and a number of wars have resolved little. Both nations maintain relatively large military forces and effective, if rudimentary, nuclear arsenals. Palau (1983-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 17,240 (1997 estimate). A republic comprising about 100 islands and islets at the western end of the Caroline Islands chain in the western Pacific Ocean. Palau is about 800 miles east southeast of the Philippine Islands. These islands were part of the Spanish Caroline Islands until 1899, when they were sold to Germany, which issued stamps for use there. The Caroline Islands were seized by the Japanese during World War I and administered by them under a 1919 mandate of the League of Nations. Invaded and conquered by United States forces in 1944, the islands were made part of the United Nations-mandated U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific in 1947. Palau became a republic in 1981 and began to issue its own stamps in 1983, although its mail continues to be handled by the U.S. Postal Service. Palestine — British Military Administration (1918-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1918, British and Arab forces occupied the Turkish Asian provinces bordering on the eastern Mediterranean. Britain's military administration issued stamps inscribed "E.E.F." (Egyptian Expeditionary Forces) that were used in Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and in parts of Cilicia and northeast Egypt. Palestine — British Administration (1920-47) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1920, British civil administration was established in Palestine, the southernmost of the formerly Turkish provinces bordering on the Mediterranean. In 1923, the League of Nations formally placed the territory under a British mandate. The Zionist Movement brought increasing Jewish immigration into Palestine, causing an increasingly bitter rivalry between Jewish Palestinians seeking to recreate the ancient Jewish homeland and Arab Palestinians, who wished to create an independent Arab Palestinian state. In 1948, Britain partitioned the country between the two groups and withdrew its forces, precipitating the first Arab-Israeli War. Palestine — Palestinian Authority (1994-) Stamp-issuing status: active. By the terms of the 1994 Oslo Accord, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to a graduated process of Palestinian autonomy and Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Although the process itself has not gone smoothly, as Israel continues to build Jewish settlements on the West Bank while the PLO maintains the destruction of Israel as its ultimate goal, some areas have been transferred to the Arab Palestinian Authority. Panama (1878-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,693,417 (1997 estimate). A republic occupying the Isthmus of Panama, between North and South America. The area was a department of the Republic of Colombia until 1903 when U.S. intervention enabled the Panamanians to secure their independence. The new Panamanian government immediately conceded to the United States a 10-mile wide strip of land bisecting the isthmus. Construction of the Panama Canal began the following year and was completed in 1914. While the Panamanian economy benefited greatly from the Canal, the presence of a foreign sovereignty on their soil was a constant irritant to Panamanians' national pride. During 1964-77, U.S.-Panamanian relations deteriorated over the status of the Canal, which became an emotionally charged issue throughout Latin America. In 1978 a revised Canal treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. Implemented in 1979, this treaty provides for the gradual transfer of authority, with full Panamanian ownership by December 31, 1999. Panama assumed political sovereignty in the Canal Zone on Oct. 1, 1979. During the 1980s, Panama was under the control of Gen. Manual Noriega. Noriega's repression of political opposition and involvement in drug trafficking led to increasing conflict with the United States during 1986-1989. U.S. forces invaded Panama, deposed Noriega, who was returned to the United States for trial, and installed a government led by the Noriega opposition. Papua New Guinea (1952-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,496,221 (1997 estimate). Independent state occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, in the western Pacific Ocean, north of Australia. The southern portion of the country, Papua, was united administratively with the northern U.N. mandate of New Guinea in 1949, as Papua and New Guinea. In 1972, the name of the territory became simply Papua New Guinea. In 1974, it achieved self-government under Australian authority and, in 1975, became independent. The country retains close ties with Australia. Papua New Guinea has numerous tribal divisions, with 750 local languages, so the maintenance of the country's territorial integrity is a major priority. A secession movement in Bougainville brought violent outbreaks, beginning in 1973. The Bougainville rebels declared independence in 1990, although government forces reoccupied the island in 1991, and the rebels have been on the defensive since 1994. Indonesian incursions from West Irian occurred in 1978. Paraguay (1870-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,651,634 (1997 estimate). A land-locked republic in central South America, surrounded by Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. Long a border region, disputed between Spain and Portugal, Paraguay was ruled by Spain and attached at various times to the viceroyalties of Peru and La Plata (Buenos Aires), Paraguay declared its independence from Spain in 1811 and from La Plata in 1813. In 1865, its territorial ambitions precipitated the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70), in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay united to defeat Paraguay, annexing large areas of the country. In 1935, Paraguay defeated Bolivia in the Chaco War, securing most of the disputed Gran Chaco region, although at a cost in manpower that took generations to replace. Paraguay was ruled by Gen. Alfredo Stroessner from 1954 to 1989. His regime was one of the most repressive in Latin America. In 1989 he was overthrown by the army, which oversaw a transition to civilian government by 1993, when the country's first democratic presidential election was held. Since 1961, Paraguay has issued a huge number of attractive, philatelically inspired stamps and souvenir sheets. Parma (1852-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive: Population: 500,000 (1860 estimate). Former duchy in northern Italy. Parma was annexed to Sardinia in 1860. Parnu (Pernau) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Estonia. Overprinted Russian stamps were issued by the German military commander. Patiala (1884-1951) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1,936,259 (1941 estimate). A former convention state of British India. Patiala's issues were used concurrently with those of India after April 1, 1950. They were replaced by those of India on Jan. 1, 1951. Patmos (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. The area was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Patmos" were issued. In 1929, Patmos' issues were superseded by the general Aegean Islands issues, although two sets overprinted "Patmo" were released in 1930 and 1932. Peking (1917-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of China. Italian post offices in the city used 38 Italian stamps overprinted "Pechino." Penang (Pulau Pinang) (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 616,254 (1960 estimate). A former British possession on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Penang has been a member of the Federation of Malaya since 1948. Recent stamps used there are inscribed "Pulau Pinang." Penrhyn Island (1902-32, 1973-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,050. A small island in the South Pacific Ocean, administered by New Zealand as part of the Cook Islands. Penrhyn was annexed by Britain in 1888 and placed under New Zealand in 1901. Cook Islands stamps were used in Penrhyn prior to 1902 and from 1932 to 1973. Since 1973, stamps inscribed "Penrhyn Northern Cook Islands" have been in use on the island and on six neighboring islands. Perak (1878-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1.33 million (1960 estimate). A sultanate on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Under British influence after 1795, Perak was incorporated into the Federated Malay States in 1895. Perak joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948. Since 1963 it has been one of the members of the independent Federation of Malaysia. Perlis (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 97,645 (1960 estimate). Former Siamese tributary state in the south Malay Peninsula. Perlis was under British control after 1909, joining the Federation of Malaya in 1948. With the rest of the Malay states, it is now part of the Federation of Malaysia. Petit St. Vincent (1976) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Grenadines of St. Vincent, a group of small islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Peru (1857-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 24,949,512 (1997 estimate). A republic on the west coast of South America. Peru was the center of numerous early Indian cultures. During the 14th-15th centuries, the Inca tribe, expanding from its heartland in southeastern Peru, created an empire stretching from northern Ecuador to central Chile, including Bolivia and northwestern Argentina, as well as Peru. In 1532-33, Spanish adventurers overthrew the Incas, and for three centuries, Peru was the center of Spanish power in South America. Peru became independent from Spain in 1824, although independence did little to improve the condition of the lower classes of the country. A few wealthy families, along with foreign mining interests, controlled the economic life of Peru until recent years, often ruling through military juntas. During 1968-80, Peru was ruled by a socialistic military regime, which pursued an arduous program of nationalization and social reform. This program slowed after 1976, when popular dissatisfaction with the regime's economic policies brought a new military government to power. In 1980, democratic civilian rule replaced the military dictatorship. During the 1990's, presidential powers were expanded in response to widespread drug trafficking and corruption and to better combat the long-running rebellion of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement. Peru-Provisional Issues (1881-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During the Chilean-Peruvian War of 1879-84, Lima and Callao, the two chief cities of Peru, were occupied by Chile. Since stamps were supplied from these cities, outlying areas soon ran out of regular stamps and were forced to issue provisional stamps. The post offices that issued such provisionals were Ancachs, Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Chachapoyas, Chala, Chiclayo, Cuzco, Huacho, Moquegua, Paita, Pasco, Pisco, Piura, Puno and Yca. Petah Tiqva (1908-09) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Israel, near Tel-Aviv. Jewish National Fund labels were used for a time by the Austrian post office in the city. Petrovsk (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Caucasus, southern Russia. Russian stamps surcharged with new values were issued by the local authorities. Philippines (1854-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 76,103,564 (1997 estimate). A large group of islands in the Malay Archipelago, north of Borneo. Occupied by Spain from the 16th century, the Philippines were ceded to the United States in 1899. Nationalist resistance was suppressed by the United States by mid-1902, but local self-government was steadily expanded. In 1935 the Philippine Commonwealth was established, and a plan leading to full independence in 1946 was adopted. During World War II, the Philippines were occupied by Japan. Following the defeat of the Japanese in September 1945, prewar plans for independence were resumed, and on July 4, 1946, the Republic of the Philippines was declared. Communist Huk guerrillas fought the central government after 1946 but were defeated by 1954. Moro resistance in the southern islands, which had continued from the days of Spanish rule, culminated in peace talks in 1996/97, aimed at permitting greater autonomy in Moro areas. Increasing leftist terrorism and student riots during 1970-71 led to a declaration of martial law by President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos continued to rule by decree until he was ousted from the Philippines following a hotly contested election by Corazon Aquino in 1986. The Aquino regime survived several coup attempts by right-wing elements, and was succeeded by a democratically elected slate in 1992. Tension between the Philippines and the United States over U.S. naval bases in the country were defused in 1991/92, when the United States abandoned Clark Air Force Base, damaged by the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, and turned over the Subic Bay naval base. Piscopi (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Piscopi was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Piscopi" were issued. Piscopi's issues were superseded by those of the Aegean Islands in 1929, although two sets overprinted for the island were issued in 1930 and 1932. Pitcairn Islands (1940-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 73 (1995 estimate). A group of small islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Originally settled in 1790 by mutineers from HMS Bounty, Pitcairn, the only inhabited island in the group, has been a British colony since the 19th century. Pola (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia. Stamps of Italy and the Italian Social Republic were surcharged for use under the authority of the Yugoslavia military forces. Poland (1860-65, 1918-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 38,700,291 (1997 estimate). A republic in eastern Europe, between Germany and Russia. During the Middle Ages, Poland was the dominant Christian power in eastern Europe, but after about 1700, its power declined. Between 1772 and 1795, it was absorbed by Russia, Prussia and Austria and did not reappear as an independent nation until 1918. In the aftermath of World War I, Poland fought both Germany and Russia, acquiring large territories from both, as well as from Austria and Lithuania. During this period, many local stamps were used. In 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union, igniting World War II. The two powers divided Poland between them, Germany occupying all of the country after its invasion of Russia in 1941. During the war, Poland suffered terribly, and some six million Poles, half of them Jews, were killed. A Polish Government in Exile was established in London and was recognized by the Western Allies, but after Soviet forces occupied Poland during 1944-45, a more malleable government was established by the Russians. After World War II, the Soviet Union's 1939 acquisitions were recognized by the new Polish regime. In return for this loss of about 70,000 square miles in the east, Poland was awarded about 40,000 square miles of German territory in the west. In 1947, the communist regime was finally established and began a thorough program of socialization. Declining farm production and harsh working conditions sparked riots in 1956, which brought a moderation of government policy. In 1970, a new series of riots brought a change of government and increased emphasis on the production of consumer goods. In the summer of 1980, the Polish labor movement, Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, launched a series of strikes that brought major concessions from the government. Increasing democratization brought intense Soviet pressure to bear on the Polish leadership, resulting in a government crackdown in late 1981. During the 1980s, Solidarity continued to agitate for reform. Nationwide strikes in 1988 forced the government to allow open elections, and in 1989 Solidarity candidates were swept into office. In 1990 Walesa was elected president, and in 1991 Poland's first free elections since World War II were held. Poland is one of the most successful of the former communist republics to privatize its economy and reestablish democratic government. It became a member of NATO in 1999. Polish Corps in Russia (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1917, Polish prisoners of war, captured by the Germans, were formed into the Polish Corps to fight, under German command, against the Russians. A number of Russian stamps were overprinted for use by this unit. Polish Government in Exile (1941-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. After the German-Soviet invasion of 1939, the Polish Government in Exile operated from London. During 1941-45, stamps were issued for use on letters posted from Free Polish merchant vessels and warships fighting against the Axis powers. Polish Military Post in Russia (1917-18) After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Polish forces fighting with the Russian army regrouped into a separate army corps. Contemporary Russian stamps were overprinted for their use. Polish Offices Abroad (1919-21, 1925-39) Poland maintained post offices in Constantinople from 1919-21 and in Danzig from 1925-39, overprinting 36 and 19 Polish stamps, respectively. Ponce (1898) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in Puerto Rico. U.S. forces issued a provisional stamp for use after the occupation of the city from Spain in August 1898. Ponewesch (Panevezys) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in central Lithuania. A total of nine overprinted Russian stamps were issued by the German military commander. Ponta Delgada (1892-31) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 125,000 (1905 estimate). An administrative district of the Azores. Stamps of Ponta Delgada were replaced by issues of the Azores in 1905, which in turn were replaced by regular Portuguese issues in 1931. Pontevedra (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of northwestern Spain, bordering the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal. The Nationalist authorities overprinted contemporary Spanish stamps for use in the province in 1937. Poonch (1876-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 287,000 (estimated). A former tributary state of Jammu and Kashmir in northern India. Poonch's issues were replaced by those of India in 1894. Port Arthur and Dairen (1946-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Port and peninsula in southern Manchuria, bordering on the Strait of Pohai. Under Japanese rule from 1895-1945, the area was occupied by the Soviets after World War II and turned over to the Chinese communists in 1946. In 1951, the regional issues were overprinted by the general issues of the People's Republic of China in 1951. Port Lagos (1893-98) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A port in northern Greece. Unoverprinted French stamps were used by the French post office in the city after 1870. During 1893-98, stamps of France, overprinted "Port-Lagos" and new values in Turkish currency, were used. Port Said (1899-1931) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A major Egyptian port on the Mediterranean Sea. The French post office in the city operated from 1867 through March 31, 1931. Portugal (1853-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,867,654 (1997 estimate). A republic on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula in southwest Europe. Independence was established in 1095, and during the next two centuries it was expanded to its present borders. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese navigators and merchants led European overseas expansion. Portugal built an overseas empire that included Brazil and colonies in Africa, Arabia, India and the Far East. Portuguese power declined rapidly after 1580, although Portugal maintained much of its colonial empire until 1975. Portugal was a kingdom from 1139 until 1910 when the republic was established. From 1932 to 1968, Portugal was ruled by Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, an authoritarian dictator. After 1968, Salazar's policies were continued by his successors. The regime became increasingly unpopular, largely because of the country's debilitating wars against nationalist movements in the African colonies. In 1974, a military coup overthrew the government, and the new liberal regime quickly granted independence to Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome-Principe. Autonomy was granted to Macau, Madeira and the Azores. The collapse of authority in Portuguese Timor brought that territory's occupation by Indonesia in 1976. The government moved increasingly to the left during 1975, and the communists, despite setbacks at the polls, increased their influence. In November, a counter-coup halted this trend, and free elections in 1976 gave Portugal a socialist government. Portugal's swift change from a rigidly controlled rightist dictatorship, through a flirtation with communism, to a socialist democracy brought enormous economic strains. In recent years, though, there has been considerable progress. Portuguese Africa (1898, 1919, 1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Three general issues were released by Portugal for use in its African colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, Portuguese Guinea, St. Thomas and Prince Islands, and Mozambique). These were used concurrently with the issues of the separate colonies. Portuguese Congo (Cabinda) (1893-1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of Angola lying north of the Congo River, separated from Angola by Zaire. It was administered as the Portuguese Congo until its incorporation with the colony of Angola. Portuguese Guinea (1881-1974) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 565,000 (1973 estimate). Former Portuguese colony in West Africa. The area was explored by the Portuguese in the 15th century but was not colonized until the 19th century. In the 1960s, an independence movement in the interior of the colony began a guerrilla war that culminated in the country's independence in 1974. Portuguese India (1871-1962) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 650,000. Portuguese India comprised a number of Portuguese holdings on the west coast of India, including the districts of Goa, Damao and Diu. Occupied by Portugal since the 16th century, these territories were seized by India in 1961 and absorbed into the Indian republic. Existing stocks of Portuguese Indian stamps were sold for about 10 days following the invasion and were valid until Jan. 7, 1962. Two sets for the colony were issued in early 1962 by Portugal, which did not recognize India's action. The stamps were never used in the territories. Prague (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Capital city of Czechoslovakia. During November 1918, the Czech Revolutionary Committee operated a local postal service in Prague, staffed by Boy Scouts. Priamur and Maritime Provinces (1921-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A region in southeastern Siberia, west of Manchuria. In May 1921, a monarchist, anti-Bolshevik regime was established, with Japanese support. This government was never secure, and with the Japanese withdrawal from Siberia in October 1922, it collapsed. Prince Edward Island (1861-73) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 90,000 (1872 estimate). An island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in northeastern North America. Prince Edward Island was a British colony until 1873 when it joined the Canadian Confederation. Prussia (1850-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 40.17 million (1910 estimate). Former kingdom in northern Germany. By the early 18th century, Prussia was a major European power, and by 1870, it occupied most of northern Germany and ruled two-thirds of the German population. Prussia dominated the German Empire established in 1870. Stamps of Prussia were issued from 1850-67 and were replaced on Jan. 1, 1868, by issues of the North German Postal District. Przedborz (1917-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in south-central Poland. Several series of stamps were issued during World War I by the municipal authorities under the authority of the Austrian military commander. Prune Island (1976) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Grenadines of St. Vincent, a group of small islands in the lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. Pskow (Pleskau) (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northwestern Russia. During World War II, 17 stamps were issued for the district by the German military commander. Puerto Rico (1855-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 955,000 (1900 estimate). A large island east of Hispaniola in the West Indies, Puerto Rico was discovered by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. Puerto Rico remained a Spanish colony until 1898, when it was occupied by the United States during the Spanish-American War. The island was subsequently ceded to the United States and, since 1952, has been a commonwealth in association with the United States. Puerto Rican issues of 1855-73 were issued in Cuba as well as Puerto Rico. Separate issues appeared after 1873. In 1898, two provisional stamps were issued by the U.S. military forces in Puerto Rico, followed by 10 overprinted U.S. stamps during 1899-1900. Since 1900, regular U.S. issues have been in use. Q Qatar (1957-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 665,485 (1997 estimate). An Arab sheikhdom on the Persian Gulf. Long under Persian rule, Qatar became independent in the 19th century. It was occupied by the Ottoman Turks from 1871 to 1913 and came under British protection in 1916. In 1971, Qatar declared its independence, after considering and rejecting a plan to join in a federation with the United Arab Emirates. Qatar is oil-rich, and its sole economic weakness is a lack of skilled labor. Its oil earnings give it one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Qu'aiti State (1942-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former British protectorate in south Arabia. The Qu'aiti sultan was recognized as ruler of the entire Hadhramaut, Shirh and Mukalla, although the Kathiri State of Seiyun maintained a measure of autonomy. The region was absorbed by the People's Republic of Southern Yemen in 1967. Queensland (1860-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 500,000 (1909 estimate). A state in northeast Australia. A British crown colony from 1859-1901, Queensland joined with five other British colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Quelimane (1914-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 877,000 (estimate). A province of Mozambique. Quelimane issues were superseded by those of Mozambique in 1922. R Rajasthan (1948-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 13.1 million. A state in northern India created by the merger of 18 Rajput states, several of which had hitherto issued their own stamps. Rajpeepla (1880-86) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 206,086. A former feudatory state in western India. Ras al Khaima (1964-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A sheikhdom in the Trucial States, in eastern Arabia, bordering on the Persian Gulf. Under British protection from 1892-1971, Ras al Khaima joined the United Arab Emirates in 1972. Ras al Khaima was one of the Trucial States, which during 1964-71 issued a large number of stamps, designed for and marketed to stamp collectors. Raseiniai (Rossingen) (1919, 1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in central Lithuania. A local stamp was issued by the municipal authorities in January 1919. For a period after the city's occupation by Germany in June 1941, 11 overprinted Russian stamps were used. Redonda (1979-91) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 0. A steep, guano-covered rock one-half mile square in the eastern Caribbean between Montserrat and Nevis, owned by Antigua. Antiguan stamps overprinted "REDONDA" were introduced in 1979, with purpose-designed issues on a variety of popular topics following later that year. These were postally valid on Antigua, since Redonda has neither postal service nor inhabitants. Reichenberg-Maffersdorf (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Two cities in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). In 1938 they overprinted 147 Czechoslovakian stamps to commemorate union with Germany. Reunion (1852, 1885-1974) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 490,000 (1974 estimate). An island in the Indian Ocean. Reunion was a French colony from the 17th century until 1947, when it became an integral part of France. On Jan. 1, 1975, Reunion's stamps were replaced by those of France. Rhine Palatinate (1947-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of western Germany occupied by France after World War II. Rhineland (1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The area of Germany lying west of the Rhine River. After World War I, France attempted to establish a satellite state in the region, which contained rich mineral deposits and much of Germany's heavy industry. An abortive Rhineland Republic (October 1923-January 1924) produced a number of overprints on contemporary German issues. Rhodes (1912-45) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The largest of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. The center of a prehistoric civilization from c. 3500 B.C., Rhodes' strategic position in the eastern Mediterranean area brought many foreign masters, including the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders and, after 1522, the Turks. In 1912, Rhodes was obtained from Turkey by Italy, and Italian stamps overprinted "Rodi" were issued. Rhodes continued to issue its own stamps, which were used throughout the Dodecanese Islands concurrently with the general issues of the Aegean Islands. During 1943-45, Rhodes was occupied by the Germans. Occupied by British forces in 1945, Rhodes, along with the rest of the island group, was annexed to Greece in 1947. Rhodesia (1890-1924, 1965-78) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 10 million (1978 estimate). Rhodesia was a former British administrative unit in southeastern Africa. The area was under the British South Africa Co. until 1924, when Rhodesia was divided into Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, under direct British rule. During 1953-63, these two colonies were united with the Nyasaland Protectorate to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. With the dissolution of the federation, the three colonies were again separated. Northern Rhodesia became independent as Zambia in 1964, and in 1965, Southern Rhodesia assumed the name Rhodesia and declared its independence from Great Britain. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe on Dec. 31, 1978. Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1954-63) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; 8.51 million (1961 estimate). A former federation comprising the British territories of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in southeast Africa. Rio de Oro (1905-24) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 24,000 (1922 estimate). A former Spanish colony on the northwest coast of Africa. Rio de Oro was incorporated into the Spanish Sahara in 1924. Rio Muni (1960-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 185,000 (1968 estimate). Former Spanish colony on the Gulf of Guinea, bordering on Cameroon and Gabon. Rio Muni was claimed by Spain in 1885 and formed part of Spanish Guinea from 1909 to 1959. In 1959 it became an overseas province of Spain. In 1968 it merged with Fernando Po to form the independent Republic of Equatorial Guinea. Riouw Archipelago (1954-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands in Indonesia, south of Singapore. Because of differing rates of exchange between the currency used in the islands with that used in the rest of Indonesia, 41 Dutch Indies and Indonesian stamps were overprinted for use in the area. Rizeh (1909-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Turkish port on the Black Sea. After 1909, nine stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted "Rizeh" were used by the Russian postal service in the city. Rokiskis (Rakischki) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Lithuania. Seven overprinted Russian stamps were issued by the German military authorities after Rokiskis' occupation in June 1941. Romagna (1859-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1,341,091 (1853 estimate). A territory in north-central Italy, under papal rule after 1503. In 1859 a provisional government replaced the papal authorities, and in 1860 Romagna was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Roman States (1852-70) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3.12 million (1853 estimate). The greater part of central Italy, over which the pope acted as temporal and religious ruler. During 1859-61, most of the area joined Sardinia. The districts around Rome remained under papal control, which was maintained by French troops. In 1870, the French withdrew, and Italy absorbed the remaining papal territory, except for the enclave of Vatican City. Romania (1865-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 21,399,114 (1997 est.). A republic in southeastern Europe, bordering on the Danube River and the Black Sea. Under Turkish rule since the 15th century, Romania was formed from the union of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1861, under Ottoman suzerainty. In 1878, as a result of the Russo-Turkish war, Romania became independent. Although ruled by a Hohenzollern dynasty, related to the ruling family of Germany, Romania did not enter World War I until August 1916, and then joined the Allies. After initial successes, Romanian forces were routed, and by January 1917 almost all of the country had been overrun by Germany, Austria and Bulgaria. Romania enjoyed considerably greater military success after the armistice, overrunning a large part of Hungary and occupying territories from Austria, Russia and Bulgaria. By the final peace (1920), Romania doubled in size. During the 1930s, the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist movement, gained control of the government, and in 1941, Romania entered World War II as an ally of Germany. In 1944, the regime was overthrown by King Michael, with Soviet support, and Romania joined the Allies. Soviet troops occupied the country after World War II, forcing Michael to abdicate and establishing the people's republic on Dec. 30, 1947. From the 1950s, Romania pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy. In 1959, Soviet troops were refused entry into the country, and during the 1960s, political ties were strengthened with China, Israel and the West. From 1965 to 1989, Romania was ruled by Nikolae Ceausescu, whose repressive and sometimes bizarre regime finally provoked a popular uprising in December 1989. Ceasescu and his wife were tried and executed. In May 1990, the provisional government was replaced by elected representatives. Romania has made the transition to democratic government but is proceeding slowly in transforming its economy to a free market model, as it attempts to balance reform with social stability. Romanian Offices in Turkey (1896-1914, 1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1896-1919, Romania maintained a post office in Constantinople, surcharging or overprinting 11 regular issues for use there. Ross Dependency (1957-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The sector of Antarctica under New Zealand administration. New Zealand closed its post office there and withdrew Ross Dependency stamps from sale at the end of 1987. Rouad, Ile (1916-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Latakia. Ile Rouad was occupied by the French from Turkey in 1916, after which stamps of the French offices in Levant were overprinted "Ile Rouad." The area was attached to Syria in 1920. Ruanda-Urundi (1924-62) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 4.7 million (1958 estimate). Two areas of central Africa, between Zaire and Tanzania. Formerly part of German East Africa, they were occupied by Belgian Congo forces during World War I and subsequently were administered by Belgium under a League of Nations (later U.N.) mandate. They became independent in 1962 as the Republic of Rwanda and the Kingdom of Burundi. Rumberg (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia). Municipal authorities overprinted Czechoslovakian stamps to commemorate the union with Germany. Russia (1857-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 147,987,101 (1997 estimate). A country comprising the greater portion of eastern Europe and northern Asia. The northern and central portions of European Russia was ruled by Norse dynasties until the Mongol conquest in the 13th century. The southern areas were ruled by a succession of Central Asian peoples. After the 16th century, Muscovy (Moscow) became the center of a resurgent Russian state, which for several hundred years steadily expanded its borders. A major European power after 1700, Russian strength deteriorated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mounting frustrations with the autocratic rule of the tsars and military defeats in World War I brought the fall of the monarchy in March 1917. In November, the liberal Kerensky regime was overthrown by the Bolsheviks (communists) who made peace with Germany and began expanding their power. Anti-Bolshevik forces (the "White Russians") quickly formed throughout the country. White Russian regimes were established in western and southern Russia and throughout Siberia. Bolshevik control was limited to northern and central Europe and Russia. Britain, France, Japan and the United States became involved in the civil war, but the inability of the various White Russian governments to cooperate with each other, or to meet the legitimate needs of the people, made it possible for the Bolshevik Red Army to have generally established Soviet authority by the end of 1920. During the Civil War, these warring governments, along with many municipalities, issued distinctive stamps. During 1920-23, the government consolidated its position. Although a number of border provinces (Poland, Finland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia) were lost, the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics included almost all of the territory of the old empire. Lenin's death in 1924 precipitated a power struggle within the communist leadership, with Josef Stalin ultimately emerging as the absolute ruler of the country. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin exiled his opponents within the party. From the mid-1930s through 1953, he purged any suspected opposition through show trials and executions. Millions of Russians died. Following World War I, when both Germany and Russia were ostracized by the powers, the two countries worked closely and secretly, the Russians supplying Germany with armaments forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, while German officers trained the Red Army. Alarmed by the German threat after Hitler's rise to power, the Soviet Union at first attempted to take a strong stand against German expansionism in the 1930s. By 1938, however, Russia was convinced that the Allies would not fight, and in 1939 the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was signed. A few months later, Germany invaded Poland, while the Soviets occupied southern Poland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia. In 1941, Germany attacked Russia, and the Soviet Union joined the Allies. At first successful, the Germans were pushed back after the end of 1942, and during 1944-45, Soviet forces occupied most of Eastern Europe. With the peace, the Soviets retained their 1939-40 acquisitions, and Soviet troops forced the establishment of satellite regimes in the rest of the region during 1945-48. After World War II, the Soviet Union concentrated on economic and military development. It exercised an aggressive foreign policy and focused its energies on developing a modern industrial base. After 1956, the brutal policies of Stalin were officially denounced, and under his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, the government was less harsh. Khrushchev was himself deposed in 1964, and his successors were more rigid and totalitarian. Increasingly, though, the Soviet system began to show strain. During the 1980s, an unsuccessful and unpopular intervention in Afghanistan, the inability of a Second World economy to support a First World military machine, and the great and growing gap in standards of living between Western and communist societies undermined the Soviet regime. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev, a younger and more liberal communist, became premier. He quickly set about liberalizing the party and the government, hoping to transform the rigid Soviet state along more liberal and flexible lines. Ironically, his goal was to create the sort of humanistic communism that had been attempted by Czechoslovakia in 1968, an experiment that had been cut short by Soviet tanks. In any case, the party soon split between reactionary elements, alarmed by the prospect of loosening government control, and a radical wing, led by Boris Yeltsin, which urged faster reform. Yeltsin's group resigned from the party in 1991 and in July of that year, Yeltsin was elected Russian president. An attempted coup by communist hard-liners in the following month was unsuccessful and discredited the party. Gorbachev resigned as general-secretary of the Communist Party and recommended that its Central Committee be disbanded. Yeltsin had led resistance to the plotters and emerged a national hero. He initiated the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union. In 1992 he launched a program to rapidly privatize the Russian economy and pushed through a new constitution to remove the last traces of the Soviet system. With the support of the military, he overcame armed resistance by supporters of the old legislature. Russia is struggling to emerge from the effects of decades of Soviet rule. It has enormous natural resources and a highly educated populace but lacks the basic economic infrastructure and experience to move easily into a free market system. This has resulted in wrenching economic adjustments for the average Russian, while a small number of entrepreneurs, mafiosi and former Soviet officials have become quite wealthy from the dispersal of state assets. Opponents of reform range from unredeemed communists, eager to restore the old system, to reactionary right-wing parties, whose politics would be at home in pre-revolutionary tsarist Russia. While the government, directed by a sometimes ineffective and unpopular Yeltsin, remains committed to maintaining democracy and creating a free-market economy, the political situation in Russia remains unstable. Russia — Army of the Northwest (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Overprinted Russian stamps were used briefly in 1919 by Gen. Nicolai N. Yudenich's White Russian Army operating in the Baltic area, southwest of Leningrad. Russian Company for Steam Shipping and Trade (Ropit) (1865-68) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The offices of this private company were used as postal branches under agreement with the Russian government. The company issued several stamps for this service, which were supplanted by official issues for the Russian Levant in May 1868. In 1918, a number of the company's agencies in the Turkish Empire were reopened. Anticipating the revival of business following World War I, ROPIT overprinted its stocks of Russian Levant stamps with its initials and new values. The collapse of Gen. Denikin's South Russian government, however, brought the closing of the agencies, and the overprinted stamps were never placed in use. Russian Offices in China (1899-1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1899-1920, Russia maintained post offices in a number of Chinese cities. Russian stamps overprinted "China" in Russian or surcharged in cents and dollars were used for these post offices. Russian Offices in the Turkish Empire (1863-1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Russia, along with many other European nations, maintained post offices in the Ottoman Empire until the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) abolished their extraterritorial postal privileges. Rwanda (1962-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 7,737,537 (1997 estimate). A republic in East Africa. Until 1916, part of German East Africa, Rwanda, along with Burundi, was administered by Belgium under a League of Nations (later U.N.) mandate as the Trust Territory of Ruanda-Urundi. For centuries, Rwanda was a monarchy, in which the majority Hutu tribe, comprising 80% of the population was ruled by the minority Tutsi tribe. In 1959 the Tutsi king was overthrown in a Hutu uprising, and 1961 referendum under United Nations' auspices established a republic, controlled by the Hutu party. On July 1, 1962, Rwanda became independent. In 1990 rebel Tutsi forces invaded from Uganda, igniting a civil war that lasted until 1992. In 1994 the death of the Hutu president in a plane crash, widely believed to have been engineered by Tutsis in the military, provoked a bloody anti-Tutsi pogrom by the Hutu regime, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Rebel Tutsi forces retaliated, driving the Hutu government, and some 1.7 million refugees, across the border into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). The civil war lasted through 1995, but in 1996 efforts began to repatriate refugees. The effort continues, as Rwanda attempts to repair the devastation of the conflict. Ryukyu Islands (1947-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 950,000 (1972 estimate). A chain of islands located between Japan and Taiwan, the Ryukyus were under Japanese rule until 1945, when they were occupied by the United States after one of the bloodiest campaigns in the Pacific Theater of World War II. They remained under U.S. administration until May 15, 1972, when they reverted to Japan. Japanese stamps, overprinted by local postmasters, and one crudely printed provisional were used until 1948, when the occupation authorities began issuing stamps for general use. Since the return of the islands to Japan, regular Japanese stamps have been in use. S Saar (1920-35, 1947-59) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.4 million (1959 estimate). A coal-rich district in western Germany, southeast of Luxembourg. The Saar was occupied by France after World War I and was placed under League of Nations administration, with France controlling the mines as part of the German war reparations. In 1935, a plebiscite resulted in the reunion of the area with Germany. The Saar was occupied by France in 1945 and was returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. Saar stamps continued to be used until their final replacement by German issues in 1959. Sabah (1964-) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 700,000 (1979 estimate). A state in northeastern Borneo. Formerly British North Borneo, the territory assumed the name Sabah in 1963 when it joined with Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore to form the Federation of Malaysia. St. Christopher (1870-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 18,500 (1890 estimate). An island in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. Formerly a presidency of the Leeward Islands, St. Kitts was united with Nevis in 1903 to form the presidency of St. Kitts-Nevis. In 1952, this designation was changed to St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla. St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla (1952-80) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 52,000 (1996 estimate). An associated state in the British Commonwealth, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla came into being in 1952. Stamps of St. Kitts-Nevis and Leeward Islands continued in concurrent use there until 1956. In 1967, Anguilla separated unilaterally and began issuing its own stamps, although "Anguilla" continued to appear on St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla issues for 13 years thereafter. Nevis and St. Kitts (St. Christopher) parted company in 1980. St. Helena (1856-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6,803 (1997 estimate). An island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, about 1,100 miles off the west coast of Africa. Under British rule since 1673, St. Helena is noted chiefly as the site of Napoleon's imprisonment 1815-1821. The colony includes the dependencies of Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. St. Kitts (1980-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 35,104 (1980). One of the Leeward Islands, located in the eastern Caribbean, southeast of Puerto Rico. As St. Christopher, St. Kitts used its own issues 1870-90. These were replaced by general Leeward Islands issues 1890-1956, used concurrently with stamps inscribed "St. Kitts-Nevis" 1903-52 and "St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla" 1952-80. St. Kitts is an Associated State in the British Commonwealth, federated with Nevis but maintaining its own stamp issues since 1980. St. Kitts-Nevis (1903-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands in the West Indies, southeast of Puerto Rico. Formed in 1903 as a presidency of the British Leeward Islands colony, the designation of St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla was adopted in 1952. In 1956, this became a separate British colony, securing independence in 1967 as St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. Soon after independence, Anguilla seceded from the union, declaring its independence from both St. Kitts-Nevis and Great Britain. St. Lucia (1860-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 159,639 (1997 estimate). An island in the West Indies. The island was disputed between France and Britain from 1627-1803, with Britain acquiring control after 1803. On March 1, 1967, St. Lucia became an independent associated state in the British Commonwealth. It became fully independent on Feb. 22, 1979. Funded by foreign aid, St. Lucia is pursuing an ambitious economic development program. St. Nazaire (1945) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern France, at the mouth of the Loire River. In 1945, Allied advances cut St. Nazaire off from the rest of German-occupied France. During this period, the local Chamber of Commerce issued three provisional stamps for local use. St. Pierre and Miquelon (1885-1976, 1986-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6,862 (1997 estimate). Two small islands off the southern coast of Newfoundland. Originally occupied by the French in 1604, they are the only remnants of a once-vast French North American empire. Separate stamps issued for St. Pierre and Miquelon were discontinued in late 1976, but were reintroduced in 1986. St. Thomas and Prince Islands (1869-1978) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 88,000. Two small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, in the Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of Africa. Portuguese possessions after 1490, St. Thomas and Prince became the independent Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe on July 12, 1975. St. Vincent (1861-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 119,092 (1997 estimate). An island in the West Indies. St. Vincent was a British colony from 1763 to 1969. On Oct. 27, 1969, St. Vincent became an independent associated state in the British Commonwealth. It became fully independent on Oct. 27, 1979. St. Vincent-Grenadines (1973-) Stamp-issuing status: active. A small group of islands administered by St. Vincent, including Bequia, Mustique, Canouan and Union Island. A host of expensive topical issues were produced for the Grenadines, Bequia and Union Island during 1984-88, almost exclusively for consumption by stamp collectors. Ste. Marie de Madagascar (1894-98) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 8,000 (1894 estimate). An island off the east coast of Madagascar. Occupied by the French in the 17th century, it was a French colony until 1898, when it was attached to Madagascar. Salonica (1909-13, 1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A major port in northern Greece, on the Aegean Sea. The Russian post office in Salonica used overprinted Russian Levant stamps after 1909, along with the general issues of the Russian offices in Turkey. The Russian set was quickly followed by a similar series issued by Italy for its post office in Salonica. During 1916, British issues overprinted "Levant" were used by the British forces in Salonica. During the last stages of World War II, Italian stamps were overprinted by the German military commander for use in the city. Salvador, El (1867-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,661,827 (1993 estimate). A republic in Central America, bordering on the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador was conquered by the Spanish in the 1520s and was ruled as part of the captaincy-general of Guatemala until 1821. It came under Mexican rule briefly, then formed part of the Central American Confederation until 1839. Since independence, El Salvador's history has been marked by political instability. Coups, countercoups, inequitable land ownership and a long-running civil war between Marxist guerrillas and right-wing elements of the military marked the country's history until recent years. In 1992 the civil war was ended, and an economic liberalization program was implemented in 1993. Samoa (Western Samoa) (1877-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 219,509 (1997 estimate). A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Fiji. The native kingdom of Samoa was under the influence of the United States, Britain and Germany until 1899 when the islands were partitioned between the United States and Germany with Great Britain withdrawing its claims. The eastern islands were ceded to the United States by the local chiefs from 1900-04. American Samoa has since been administered by the United States, using regular U.S. stamps. Western Samoa was seized from Germany by New Zealand forces in 1914, and New Zealand subsequently administered the western islands under a mandate from the League of Nations (later the United Nations). Western Samoa became independent on Jan. 1, 1962. In 1977 the country's name was changed to Samoa. Ties to New Zealand remain strong. Samos (1878-1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the Aegean Sea. Under Turkish rule since the 15th century, Samos became an autonomous principality in 1832, under British, French and Russian protection. France overprinted and surcharged a set of nine stamps "Vathy" for use in 1894-1900. In September 1912, a provisional government was established, and Turkish troops withdrew. The government issued two stamps. In 1913, Samos was united with Greece. San Marino (1877-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 24,714 (1997 estimate). A tiny independent republic in central Italy. Surrounded on all sides by Italy, San Marino has maintained its independence since the 4th century A.D. It is the world's smallest republic and claims to be Europe's oldest state. Postage stamps and tourism are the country's major industries. San Sebastian (1936-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the province of Guipuzcoa in northern Spain. Nationalist authorities overprinted a number of Spanish stamps for use in the city during the Spanish Civil War. Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of Spain in the Canary Islands. A set of overprinted Spanish stamps was issued in 1937 by the Nationalist authorities. Santa Maria de Albarracia (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the province of Teruel in northern Spain. Two overprinted Spanish stamps were issued in 1937 under the authority of the Nationalist Inspector-General of Posts. Sao Tome and Principe (1975-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 147,865 (1997 estimate). The Portuguese colony of St. Thomas and Prince became the independent Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe on July 12, 1975. It now issues large numbers of topically oriented stamps primarily intended for stamp collectors. Sarawak (1869-) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 975,918 (1970). A state on the northwestern coast of Borneo. In 1893, the area was ceded to Sir James Brooke by the sultan of Brunei. Sarawak remained an independent state until 1888, when it accepted British control of its foreign affairs. The Brooke dynasty ruled until 1946, when the last rajah ceded Sarawak to Britain. In 1963, the colony joined with Malaya, Singapore and Sabah (North Borneo) to form the Federation of Malaysia. Sardinia (1851-62) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former kingdom in northwestern Italy. The Sardinian House of Savoy led the Italian nationalist movement, absorbing most of the many Italian states during 1859-61. In 1861, the Sardinian kingdom became the Kingdom of Italy, which began to issue stamps in 1862. Sarny (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the western Ukraine. After the German occupation of the city in 1941, six stamps were issued by the German military commander. Saseno (1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A small island off the coast of Albania, occupied by Italy in 1914. Eight Italian stamps were overprinted for use there in 1923. Saseno was formally returned to Albania in 1947. Saudi Arabia (1932-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9.6 million. Nejd, in northern Arabia, was long the center of the fundamentalist Wahabbi Moslem sect. Under Turkish control until 1913, Nejd was freed by Ibn Saud, a warrior king who immediately set about the enlargement of his domain. He conquered the Turkish province of Hasa in 1913, the Kingdom of the Hejaz in 1925, and most of Asir in 1926. In 1932 the kingdom adopted the name Saudi Arabia. Oil was discovered in 1936, and petroleum soon became the country's major export and economic mainstay. Saudi Arabia has played a leading role in OPEC. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, ruled by the Saud family. Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam, are within the country, and the Koran is the law of the land. Saudi Arabia has been an active force in the Arab movement for a Palestinian state. Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, it has given annual subsidies to the Arab frontline states, as well as to the various Palestinian political groups. The Saudis were among the leaders in the 1973-74 oil boycott of the West. Saurashtra (Soruth) (1864-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 670,719. A former feudatory state, actually named Junagadh, in western India. Its stamps were replaced by those of the United State of Saurashtra in 1949. Saurashtra, United State of (1949-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state formed in 1948 with the merger of over 400 states and territories in western India. Indian stamps have been used in the state since April 1, 1950. Saxony (1850-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2.5 million (estimate). Former kingdom in central Germany. Saxon issues were replaced by those of the North German Confederation in 1868. Scarpanto (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Greek island of Karpathos in the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. The island was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912. At that time, Italian stamps overprinted "Scarpanto," the Italian name for the island, were issued. Scarpanto's issues were superseded by those of the Aegean Islands in 1929, although two sets were overprinted for the island in 1930 and 1932. Schleswig (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An area of the central Jutland Peninsula, in Germany and Denmark. Under German rule from 1864-1918, the province was divided into two districts after World War I. A plebiscite in 1920 resulted in the northern portion voting to join Denmark and the southern district voting for reunion with Germany. Schleswig-Holstein (1850-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.52 million (estimate). Former duchies in northern Germany, forming the southern portion of the Jutland Peninsula. Under Danish control until 1864, the duchies were seized by Austria and Prussia, who subsequently fought the Austro-Prussian War (1866), after which they were absorbed by Prussia. A plebiscite in 1920 resulted in northern Schleswig being returned to Denmark. Scinde (1852-54) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district on the lower Indus River, bordering on the Arabian Sea. Scinde is now part of Pakistan. The Scinde was occupied by Great Britain in 1850 and separate stamps were used until their replacement by the first Indian issue in 1854. Scutari (1909-11, 1915-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A seaport in northern Albania. The Italian post office in Scutari used 10 overprinted Italian stamps from 1909-11 and during the World War I Italian occupation. In December 1918, the Italians withdrew and Scutari was placed under an international commission to protect it from Serbia. Until March 1920, various stamps were issued specifically for use in Scutari, after which time the city was placed under Albanian administration. Segovia (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of north central Spain. Contemporary Spanish stamps were overprinted by the National Civil Governor in October and November 1937. Seiyun, Kathiri State of (1942-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former British protectorate in south Arabia. The area was autonomous until its incorporation into the People's Republic of Southern Yemen. Selangor (1881-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1 million (1960 estimate). Sultanate in the south Malay Peninsula. Selangor was under British protection after 1874 and joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948. Senegal (1887-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 6.4 million. A republic on the west coast of Africa. The first French settlement began in 1626, and the area remained under either French or (temporarily) British rule. After 1854, France used Senegal as its base for expansion in West Africa. In 1904 French West Africa was established, with its capital at Dakar, Senegal's capital. French West African stamps were used 1944-59. In 1958, Senegal became an autonomous state within the French Union, and in 1959 it joined with the French Sudan to form the Federation of Mali. Senegal withdrew from the union in 1960, and on June 26, 1960, became independent. It retains close ties with France. Senegambia and Niger (1903-06) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A French African administrative unit (1902-04) comprising French holdings in the Senegal and Niger area. In 1904, the area was renamed Upper Senegal and Niger, and in 1906, stamps of this new entity were released. Serbia (1866-1918, 1941-44) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 3 million (1920 estimate). A former state in the Balkans, now part of Yugoslavia. Serbia was a powerful kingdom until its conquest by the Turks in 1389. Serbia gained autonomy in 1829 and independence in 1878. Serbia assumed leadership of the movement to unite the southern Slavs in the early 20th century, especially after the defeat of Turkey during the Balkan Wars (1912-13). The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown by a Serbian nationalist in 1914 led to an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia, which escalated into World War I. By the end of 1915, Serbia was occupied by German, Austrian and Bulgarian forces, while the Serbian government and army retired to Corfu. Another 42 stamps were overprinted for use during this period. With the collapse of Austria-Hungary in the autumn of 1918, Serbia became the nucleus of the Yugoslav state. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established on Dec. 1, 1918, under the Serbian monarchy. In 1929 the state was renamed Yugoslavia. During 1941-44, Serbia was recreated as a German puppet state. An additional 126 stamps were issued during the war years. Seville (1936-38) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in southern Spain. During the Civil War, a large number of contemporary Spanish Republican stamps were overprinted under the authority of the local Nationalist military commander. Seychelles (1890-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 77,000. A group of 86 islands in the western Indian Ocean. Formerly occupied by France, the Seychelles have been under British rule since 1810. The Seychelles were ruled as part of Mauritius until 1903. During 1903-76, the islands were administered as a separate colony. Although the ruling party preferred to continue the Seychelles' association with Britain, sustained pressure from the Organization of African Unity and United Nations forced it to declare independence on June 29, 1976. In 1977, the government was overthrown in a coup, and a socialist regime came to power. In 1979, opposition political parties were abolished. The Soviet Union actively attempted to establish its influence in the country. Shan States (1943) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1942-43, the Shan States of eastern Burma were separated from the puppet Burmese government established by the Japanese. In December 1943, the region was reincorporated into Burma, and its stamps were overprinted for use throughout the country. Shanghai (1865-98) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the major cities and ports of China. Shanghai was opened to European settlement in 1843. In 1864, dissatisfied with the high charges of the Chinese private postal agencies, Shanghai organized a postal system under the Municipal Council. Agencies of the Shanghai Local Post eventually operated in 16 cities within China. In 1898 the service was integrated with those of the Chinese government. Shansi (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in northern China, west of Peking. Regular Chinese stamps were overprinted by occupying Japanese forces during World War II. After 1945, the area was in communist hands, using the stamps of North China (1946-50) and then of the Peking regime. Shantung (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of northern China, for which overprinted Chinese stamps were issued under the Japanese occupation. Sharjah (1963-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A sheikhdom in eastern Arabia on the Persian Gulf. One of the Trucial States under British protection from 1892-1971, Sharjah joined in the United Arab Emirates in 1971. During 1963-71, Sharjah issued a large number of colorful stamps and souvenir sheets, aimed at the collector market. Sibenik (Sebenico) (1944) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia. After Italy joined the Allies, the area was occupied by Croatian partisans, who overprinted Italian stamps for use in the region. Siberia (1919-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In November 1918, anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia formed a moderate socialist government under Adm. Kolchak. The armies of this regime soon occupied most of Siberia and invaded European Russia. At one point, they threatened Moscow, but they were eventually routed by the Red Army in late 1919. The Red counteroffensive overthrew Kolchak in January 1920, and the Siberian state rapidly disintegrated. Ten Russian stamps were surcharged and used in the territory under the regime's control. Sierra Leone (1859-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,891,546 (1997 estimate). A republic in west Africa. The coastal area was occupied by Great Britain after 1791, the hinterland coming under British protection in 1896. In 1961, Sierra Leone became independent. Long one of the most progressive of Britain's west African colonies, Sierra Leone's early political stability and economic growth have given way to coups, countercoups, rampant corruption and an economy heavily dependent on foreign aid. Simi (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. The area was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time Italian stamps overprinted "Simi" were issued. These issues were superseded by the general issues for the Aegean Islands in 1919, although two sets, overprinted with the name of the island, were released in 1930 and 1932. Sinaloa (1929) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A state of northern Mexico bordering on the Pacific Ocean. Sinaloa issued stamps briefly in 1929, during a revolution against the central government. Singapore (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,461,929 (1997 estimate). An island off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. Singapore was a British territory administered as part of the Straits Settlements from 1826 to 1942. It was under Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945. In 1946, Singapore became a separate crown colony, joining with Malaya, Sarawak and Sabah in 1963 to form the Federation of Malaysia. In 1965, Singapore withdrew from the federation and proclaimed itself an independent republic. Singapore has a dynamic economy and is an economic leader in Southeast Asia. Sinkiang (1915-49) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The westernmost province of China. Because the currency used in Sinkiang differed in value from that used in the rest of China, the province used overprinted Chinese issues until 1949, when the communists assumed control. Sirmoor (1879-1902) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 148,568. A former feudatory state in northern India. Slovakia (1939-45, 1993-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 5,393,016 (1997 estimate). Republic in central Europe. A part of the homeland of the Slavic Moravian Empire in the middle ages, Slovakia was conquered by the Magyars in the early 10th century and remained under Hungarian rule until 1918. With the defeat of Austria-Hungary in 1918, Slovakia united with the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia to form the Republic of Czechoslovakia. When the country was occupied by Germany in 1939, Slovakia was established as a separate German puppet-state. The Soviet army liberated the country in 1945 and it again became part of Czechoslovakia. The post-war communist republic was dominated by Czechs, and old ethnic rivalries were revived. When Czechoslovakia began to democratize in 1989, Slovakia began to pursue an increasingly nationalist course. In 1992 Czech and Slovak political leaders agreed to dissolve the union, and on January 1, 1993, the two republics formally separated. Slovenia (1919-21, 1941-45, 1991-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Population: 1,945,988. A republic in central Europe, bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Slovenia was a part of Hungary through the Middle Ages and was ruled by Austria after 1526. After World War I, it became part of the independent Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Slovenia issued stamps until 1921, when the first Yugoslav national issues were released. During World War II, Slovenia was divided between Germany and Italy, both of which issued separate stamps for their zones. After the war, the province was reoccupied by Yugoslavia, and overprinted stamps of the German occupation (Ljubljana), Germany proper, and Hungary were used, until replaced by regular Yugoslav issues. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Although Yugoslav military forces initially attempted to suppress independence, they soon withdrew. Because it does not abut Yugoslavia and does not have the religious heterogeneity of other former Yugoslav territories, Slovenia has been free of the warfare that marked the area in the 1990s. Slovenia quickly began to integrate with the economy of Western Europe, and in 1997 all political parties announced their support for the country's membership in NATO. Smilten (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Latvia. Russian stamps were surcharged by the municipal authorities for local use in 1919. Smolensk (1922) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in western Russia. Surcharged Russian stamps were issued for local use by the city authorities in 1922. Smyrna (1909-14, 1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The major port of western Turkey. The Italian and Russian post offices in the city used stamps of Italy and the Russian Levant, respectively, overprinted with the name of the city. During the Greek occupation of 1919-22, overprinted Greek stamps were issued for the area. In 1922, a similar overprint was applied to contemporary Italian stamps for use by the Italian forces occupying the port, but this set was never released. Solomon Islands (1907-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 426,855 (1997 estimate). A group of islands in the western South Pacific. The islands were a British protectorate designated as the British Solomon Islands until 1975, when, as the group approached independence, the "British" was dropped. The Solomons became self-governing in 1976 and fully independent in 1978. Somalia (1903-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,940,232 (1997 estimate). An area on the eastern coast of Africa, bordering on the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. The northern coastal area was under the influence of the Turks from the 16th century and Egypt during the 19th century. The southern coast was under a vague Arab suzerainty after the mid-18th century. In 1905 the area was constituted as the Italian colony of Somaliland. In 1936, Somaliland was merged with Eritrea and Ethiopia to form Italian East Africa. In 1941, the area was occupied by Great Britain, which held it until 1950, using overprinted British stamps. In 1950, the area was returned to Italy, under a U.N. trusteeship. In 1960, the area became independent, merging with the former British Somaliland Protectorate to form the Republic of Somalia. In 1970, the nation's name was changed to the Somali Democratic Republic. A military coup in 1969 brought an increasingly socialistic regime to power. Relations with the Soviet Union strengthened, and a major Soviet naval base was established at Berbera. Soviet-Somali relations cooled when Moscow switched its support to Ethiopia in the two nations' dispute over the Ogaden, a large eastern region of Ethiopia populated primarily by Somalis. In 1977, Soviet advisers were expelled from Somalia. In 1978, Somali forces were expelled from the Ogaden by Ethiopian and Cuban troops. Over one million Somali refugees from the region fled to Somalia. The government survived this defeat but collapsed in 1991, after which Somalia disintegrated into a chronic anarchy, in which numerous warring clans vied for power. The northern portion of the country, formerly the British territory, separated from the rest of Somalia to form the independent Somaliland Republic. Somali Coast (1894-1967) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 86,000 (1967 estimate). A former French African colony on the Gulf of Aden. In 1967, the colony's name was changed to the French Territory of the Afars and Issas. In 1977, it became independent as the Republic of Djibouti. Somaliland Protectorate (1903-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 650,000 (1960 estimate). A former British protectorate in eastern Africa, bordering on the Gulf of Aden. The area was occupied by Italy from 1940-41. On June 26, 1960, the territory became independent as part of the Somali Republic. In 1991, local leaders took advantage of anarchic conditions within Somalia to establish the independent Somaliland Republic. Sopron (1956-57) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in western Hungary. During the 1956 anti-communist uprising, contemporary Hungarian stamps were overprinted for use in the area held by the rebels. Sosnowice (1916) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southern Poland. Local stamps were issued by the municipal authorities during the World War I Austrian occupation. South Africa (1910-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 42,327,458 (1997 estimate). Republic occupying the southernmost portion of Africa. In 1910, the British colonies of Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River Colony united to form the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth. In 1961, the republic was established. After 1948, South African internal policy was based on apartheid, a program of separate development of the races. This policy reserved for the white minority (17.5 percent of the population) the best jobs, political control of the government, and much higher wages than those of other ethnic groups. The plan aimed at the eventual creation of a large number of independent ethnic states. Four black states (Bantustans) were created: Transkei (1976); Bophuthatswana (1977); Venda (1979); and Ciskei (1981). None received international recognition, although each issued stamps that were routinely used within their borders. The South African government began to liberalize its policies during the 1980s, and in 1990 the chief black nationalist party, the African National Congress, was legalized. Negotiations between the regime and the ANC led to the removal of apartheid the following year. During 1992/94 events moved rapidly toward majority rule, which was effected with the ANC's April 1994 election victory. South Arabia (1959-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former federation of British territories in southwestern Arabia. South Arabia became independent in 1967 as the People's Republic of Southern Yemen. South Australia (1855-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 360,000 (1901 estimate). A state of Australia, occupying the south-central part of the continent. South Australia was a British colony from 1836 to 1901, when it joined with five other colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. South Bulgaria (1885-86) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The former province of Eastern Rumelia in the southeast Balkans. In September 1885, a coup overthrew the nominally Turkish administration and established South Bulgaria, uniting with Bulgaria. Bulgarian stamps replaced those of South Bulgaria in 1886. South China (1949-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Communist South China Liberation Area included the provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Regional issues were used after the occupation of Canton. South Georgia (1963-79) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 25 (1975 estimate). An island in the South Atlantic Ocean. In 1962, when neighboring areas were detached from the Falkland Islands to become the British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia remained a Falklands' dependency. South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (1986-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 500 (1987). Two groups of islands in the extreme south Atlantic Ocean, South Georgia is about 875 miles east southeast of the Falkland Islands and about 1,000 miles equidistant from Cape Horn and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The even more remote and southerly South Sandwich Islands are uninhabited. The last remaining component of the Falkland Islands Dependencies, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands assumed its new title in 1985 and issued stamps beginning the following year. South Kasai (1961) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of Zaire that declared itself autonomous after the Congo became independent from Belgium. This revolt was subsequently suppressed by the Belgian Congo central government. South Moluccas (1950) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A group of islands in the Indonesian archipelago, west of New Guinea. During 1950, the South Moluccas revolted against the Indonesian central government and overprinted 17 Dutch Indies and Indonesian stamps "Republik Maluku Selatan." These stamps were apparently placed into local use. The main island, Amboina, was occupied by Indonesian troops in November 1950, although Moluccan resistance continued in the outer islands until 1955. During 1951-54, a long series of South Moluccan issues was marketed in the United States, but there is no evidence that these were ever actually used in the areas under Moluccan control. Some 35,000 South Moluccans emigrated to the Netherlands, and among this group nationalist sentiments still run high. Moluccan separatism again emerged, with the Indonesian economic crisis of 1997-98. In 1999 local riots and brutal Indonesian police repression revived local agitation for independence or autonomy from Indonesia. South Russia (1919-21) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In October 1918, the Volunteer Army, composed primarily of veterans of the Russian Imperial Army, was formed under the command of Gen. Denikin. Denikin soon assumed leadership of almost all of the anti-Bolshevik elements in southern Russia and, in the summer of 1919, directed a major offensive against the Reds. By October, South Russian forces had occupied much of European Russia and threatened Moscow. A vigorous Red Army counteroffensive, the withdrawal of British and French support, and generally poor leadership brought the rapid collapse of Denikin's command in late 1919. In April 1920, having overseen the loss of all the region except the Crimea, Denikin resigned. Command was then assumed by Baron Peter Wrangel, probably the most effective of the White Russian leaders. Wrangel's administration of the Russian territories reflected an understanding of the economic goals of the revolution. Unfortunately, his superiors kept him from assuming a leadership position that equaled his talents, until the White Russian cause had been lost by less able leaders. Wrangel consolidated the Volunteer Army and held the Crimea until November 1920, when the army and its dependents were evacuated. The remnants of the South Russian forces temporarily settled in a number of refugee camps in Turkey and the Balkans, and a large number of Russian, Ukrainian and South Russian stamps were overprinted and surcharged for use in the camps. These issues were used until the camps were shut down in June 1921. Southern Nigeria (1901-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 8.5 million (1912 estimate). A former administrative unit comprised of British holdings in southern Nigeria. In 1914, it was merged with Northern Nigeria to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Southern Rhodesia (1924-53, 1964-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 4 million (1964 estimate). A former British colony in southeastern Africa. Administered as part of Rhodesia until 1923, Southern Rhodesia was ruled as a separate colony from 1923 to 1953. The territory was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953 to 1964, and again became a separate colony from 1964 to 1965. In 1965, the controlling white minority declared Southern Rhodesia independent of Great Britain. South-West Africa (Namibia) (1923-90) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A territory in southwestern Africa. South-West Africa was a German colony until 1915, when it was occupied by the Union of South Africa. It was administered by South Africa, originally under a mandate from the League of Nations, until 1985. After years of attempting to absorb the territory, provoking intense internal and international opposition, South Africa permitted the establishment of a multi-racial regime in that year. In 1989 free elections resulted in a landslide for the South-West Africa People's Organization, the primary black opposition party, and in 1990 South-West Africa became the independent Republic of Namibia. Southwest China (1949-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The Communist Southwest China Liberation Area included the provinces of Kweichow, Szechwan, Yunnan, Sikang and Tibet. Spain (1850-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 39,244,195 (1997 estimate). A kingdom in southwestern Europe, occupying the greater part of the Iberian Peninsula. Part of the Roman Empire from the second century B.C. until the fourth century A.D., Spain was subsequently overrun by Germanic tribes, which formed the Kingdom of the Visigoths (West Goths) until 711. The Arabs invaded Spain in that year, soon occupying all of the peninsula except a few Christian enclaves in the north. During the Middle Ages, Spain was reconquered by the Christians, who gradually pushed the Arabs south in a series of wars lasting from the 9th century until 1492, when the Arab stronghold of Granada fell. During this period, the states of Aragon and Castile came to include most of modern Spain, and the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile brought the union of the two states and the beginning of modern Spain. Spain's conquest of Granada in 1492, and the discovery of America by Columbus in the same year, brought Spain rapidly into the position of a great power. During the 16th century, Spain built a vast American empire and dominated western European affairs. Spanish power peaked c. 1580, when the Spanish king became king of Portugal as well, bringing that nation's empire under Spanish rule. The rise of The Netherlands, which overthrew Spanish rule in the late 16th century, along with the growing power of Britain on the seas and France on the Continent, marked the beginning of a long decline for Spain. Although it continued to rule a huge American empire, by 1700 Spain had become a second-class power. During the Napoleonic Wars, Spain was conquered by France, and Napoleon's brother, Joseph, was placed on the Spanish throne. Spain's colonies refused to accept Joseph's rule and proclaimed their allegiance to the legitimate monarch, Ferdinand VII. Because of this instability, Spain's American colonies were, in effect, self-governing for most of two decades. With Ferdinand's restoration in 1815, Spain attempted to regain control of its American colonies. Unwilling to return to their subservient status, the colonies revolted, and by the mid-1820s, Spanish rule had been overthrown on the American mainland. Lacking the wealth of its empire, Spain was thereafter a cipher in European affairs. In 1898-99, Spain was defeated by the United States in the Spanish-American War, losing its last American (Cuba and Puerto Rico) and Pacific (the Philippines and Guam) colonies. In 1931, the monarchy was ousted by a leftist republican movement, which instituted many liberal reforms but was unable to restore order in the country. On July 18, 1936, a conservative army officer, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, led a mutiny against the regime in Morocco, beginning the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Franco was supported by Germany and Italy, while the Republicans were supported by the Soviet Union. The Spanish Civil War was in effect a dress rehearsal for World War II. The efficacy of modern weapons, the emphasis upon aircraft as a primary combat tool, and the principle of total war (against civilian as well as military personnel) were tested here. After a bloody war in which one million died, the Nationalists defeated the Republicans, and Franco assumed complete control of the country. During World War II, Spain remained neutral, much to the disgust and frustration of Franco's German and Italian allies. Despite this, in 1946, because of the regime's close fascist associations, Spain was expelled from the United Nations. It was readmitted in 1955. In 1947, Franco declared Spain a monarchy and provided for his succession by an heir to the Bourbon dynasty, overthrown by the Republicans in 1931. Upon his death in November 1975, Prince Juan Carlos assumed the crown. Juan Carlos immediately dissolved the harsher institutions of the Franco regime, and in June 1976, free elections brought moderates and democratic socialists to power. A right-wing coup in February 1981 failed, when the army remained loyal to the government. Since then, Spain has moved swiftly to rejoin the mainstream of Western Europe. Its economy is thoroughly integrated with those of its neighbors, and it is a member of the European Union and the Schengen Accord. Spain — Carlist Government (1873-75) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1833, King Ferdinand VII abrogated the Salic Law (requiring succession through the male line), so that his daughter, Isabella, could succeed him on the Spanish throne. Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, who would otherwise have assumed the throne, refused to accept this, and upon Ferdinand's death in 1834 pressed his claim. This brought the First Carlist War of 1834-39. In 1872, Don Carlos' grandson, also named Don Carlos, reasserted his family's claim and soon controlled large areas in northern Spain. The establishment of a republican regime in Madrid in 1873 brought many Spanish monarchists into his camp. In December 1875, the Spanish monarchy was restored, and the Carlists rapidly lost ground. By February 1876, the Carlist movement had collapsed completely. Spain — Civil War Municipal Issues (1936-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During the Spanish Civil War, many cities and districts on both sides issued provisional overprints on Spanish postage and fiscal issues. These were used as propaganda, as controls to distinguish regular stocks of stamps from looted stocks, and as profit-making philatelic productions. Among those overprints legitimately used are those of Burgos, Cadiz, the Canary Islands, Malaga, San Sebastian, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Seville. Spanish Guinea (1902-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 210,000 (1959 estimate). Former Spanish colony in western Africa, bordering on the Gulf of Guinea. The territory comprised Rio Muni, Fernando Po (after 1909), and Elobey, Annobon and Corisco (after 1909). Fernando Po and Rio Muni were separated in 1960, reuniting in 1968 to form the independent Republic of Equatorial Guinea. Spanish Morocco (1903-56) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1 million (1955 estimate). The northern portion of Morocco, administered by Spain until 1956, when it was merged into the independent Kingdom of Morocco. Spanish Sahara (Spanish Western Sahara) (1924-76) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 76,000 (1975 estimate). A former Spanish possession in northwestern Africa, comprising Cape Juby, La Aguera and Rio de Oro. A large (100,000 square mile), sparsely populated (12,793 in 1960) area, the Spanish Sahara is mostly desert and was of little interest to outsiders until the discovery of rich phosphate deposits. From the 1960s, Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria all pressed claims to the area. In November 1975, thousands of unarmed Moroccans crossed into the territory (the "Green March"), and in February 1976, Spain withdrew from the colony. The Spanish Sahara was divided between Morocco and Mauritania, although a nationalist group, Polisario, declared the area independent and, with Algerian support, continued to wage a guerrilla war against Morocco and Mauritania. In 1980, Mauritania made peace with Polisario and gave up its portion of the area to Morocco. Fighting between Polisario and Morocco continues. Spanish West Africa (1949-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 95,000 (1951 estimate). The former administrative unit comprising the Spanish colonies of Ifni, Spanish Sahara and southern Morocco. Spassk (1920-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in central Russia. Russian stamps were overprinted with new values by the local authorities. Sri Lanka (1972-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 18,762,075 (1997 estimate). Island republic in the Indian Ocean, off the southeast coast of India. Formerly the British Dominion of Ceylon, which became independent in 1972 as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Stampalia (1912-32) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The westernmost of the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. Now the Greek island of Astipalaia. Stampalia was obtained from Turkey by Italy in 1912, at which time 10 Italian stamps overprinted "Stampalia" were issued, with an additional surcharge added in 1916. The island's stamps were superseded by those of the Aegean Islands in 1929, although two sets totaling 15 stamps were overprinted for use in Stampalia in 1930 and 1932. Stellaland (1884-85) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A short-lived Boer republic in southern Africa. Independence was suppressed by Great Britain in 1885 and Stellaland was incorporated into British Bechuanaland. Straits Settlements (1867-1946) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.44 million (estimate). Former British colony in Malaya, comprising Singapore, Penang, Province Wellesley and Malacca, along with the dependencies of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island and Labuan. Prior to 1867, unoverprinted British Indian stamps were in use. The colony was occupied by Japan in 1942-45 and dissolved in 1946. Sudan (1897-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 32,594,128 (1997 estimate). A republic in northeastern Africa, south of Egypt. Home of the ancient Kingdom of Dongola, the Sudan converted to Christianity and resisted Muslim pressure until the 14th century. Thereafter, it was divided into numerous petty states and was in Egyptian control from 1820 to 1885. The Sudan became united and independent after the Mahdi, a local religious leader, led a jihad against foreigners from 1881 to 1885. In 1898, the area was conquered by the British, and an Anglo-Egyptian condominium was established. In 1954, the Sudan became self-governing and, on Jan. 1, 1956, became an independent republic. Since its independence, Sudan has fought a prolonged civil war in the southern third of the country, where the predominantly black, pagan population seeks independence from the Arab, Moslem north. In 1969, a military coup brought a socialist regime to power, and in 1970, the government nationalized a number of businesses. In 1971, an abortive communist coup brought a temporary break in relations between the Sudan and the Soviet Union. Relations later improved, but after 1975 the Sudan moved away from the Soviet Union and strengthened ties with the United States. In 1992 the government imposed militant Islam throughout the nation, and the Sudan has since become a haven for Arab terrorists. Sudan is one of the few countries where legal slavery continues to exist. Sudetenland (1938) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The western border area of Czechoslovakia in which the majority of the population is German-speaking. After the Munich Agreement of Sept. 21, 1938, which transferred this region to Germany, local Nazis seized control of Sudentenland, pending formal German annexation on Oct. 1. A host of Czechoslovakian stamps overprinted "Wir sind frei" (We are free) were used during this brief period in Asch, Karlsbad, Konstantinsbad, Niklasdorf, Reichenberg-Maffersdorf, Mahrisch-Ostrau and Ramburg. Suez Canal (1868) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During 1859-69, the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez constructed the Suez Canal in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and Red seas. Until 1867, the company transported mail between Port Said and Suez for free. The company then began charging for this service, and in July 1868 special stamps were issued. The stamps were not popular and were withdrawn from sale Aug. 16, 1868. They were demonetized Aug. 31, and the service was taken over by the Egyptian government. Sungei Ujong (1878-95) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former Federated Malay State under British protection. The territory was incorporated into Negri Sembilan in 1895. Supeh (1941-42) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province of central China, for which overprinted Chinese stamps were issued during the Japanese occupation. Suriname (1873-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 443,446 (1997 estimate). A republic in northern South America. Disputed by Great Britain, France and the Netherlands during the 17th-18th centuries, Suriname became a Dutch possession after 1815. In 1954, Suriname, along with the Netherlands Antilles, became an integral part of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. In 1975, it became fully independent at the initiative of the Netherlands. Some 40 percent of Suriname's population (mostly East Indians) emigrated to the Netherlands in the period immediately prior to independence. Since independence, Suriname has been plagued by political coups and economic instability. Swahililand (Witu) (1889) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Until the late 19th century, the Sultan of Zanzibar controlled much of the coast of East Africa. Germany secured concessions from the sultan in the area around Lamu, Kenya, which in 1890 were ceded to Britain as part of the settlement for the British transfer of Heligoland to Germany. Prior to this (July-August 1889) the German postal agent at Lamu printed and issued stamps for use in the region. Swaziland (1889-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,031,600 (1997 estimate). A kingdom in southern Africa, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa and Mozambique. The kingdom was formed by the Bantu tribes in the area in the 19th century, partly in defense against the warlike Zulu Kingdom. In 1881, Great Britain and the South African Republic (Transvaal) guaranteed Swaziland's independence. During 1894-99, the state was under the protection of the Transvaal and, after 1902, came under British administration. In 1963, it was recognized as a British protectorate and, on Sept. 6, 1968, became independent. Swaziland is a constitutional monarchy, and its first democratic elections were held in September 1993. Its fertile lands and abundant mineral resources have made significant economic growth possible. It is closely linked with South Africa. Sweden (1855-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 8,946,193 (1997 estimate). Constitutional monarchy in northern Europe, occupying the eastern portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Militaristic expansion in the 17th century made the Baltic Sea a Swedish lake, but after 1709, a series of defeats stripped Sweden of most of its empire. In 1813, Sweden joined in the war against Napoleon, receiving Norway (independent 1905) as compensation. Sweden has since maintained a policy of armed neutrality and has devoted its energies to social and industrial development. Sweden has long pioneered social and welfare policies, and its social support system is quite extensive. In 1976, 44 years of socialist government ended with the election of a conservative coalition. Conservatives and Social Democrats have since alternated in power, attempting to maintain the high quality of life in Sweden, while reducing the less affordable and economically dysfunctional aspects of the system. In 1994 voters approved joining the European Union. Switzerland (1850-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 7,248,984 (1997 estimate). A land-locked federation in central Europe, situated between France, Germany, Austria and Italy. The country has three official languages: German, French and Italian. The nucleus of modern Switzerland appeared in the late 13th century, and in 1648, the Confederation became independent. Switzerland has not been involved in a foreign war since 1515 and, learning the lesson of Napoleon's seizure of the country, has since 1815 maintained a policy of armed neutrality. Switzerland has no military alliances and does not belong to the United Nations, although it participates in a number of U.N. programs and has U.N offices in Geneva. In 1986 the Swiss electorate rejected membership in the United Nations but in 1992 approved application to the European Union. The stability of the Swiss government and economy and of the Swiss franc — along with Switzerland's policy of banking secrecy – has made the country one of the world's financial centers. Syria (1919-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 16,137,899 (1997 estimate). A republic in western Asia, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Under Turkish control after 1516, Syria was occupied by the Allies late in World War I. British and French forces occupied the coastal areas, while the interior was taken by an Arab army, led by T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") and Faisal, son of King Hussein of the Hejaz. Lawrence and Faisal established an independent government, which claimed authority over Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq, as well as Syria. This regime was recognized by a Syrian congress, but France soon overthrew the government and occupied the country. During its brief existence in 1919-20, the Syrian Arab Government issued over 100 stamps, mostly overprints on Turkish issues. Faisal was compensated by being made king of Iraq, which his family ruled until 1958. In 1922, France assumed formal control of Syria under a League of Nations mandate. In 1941, a republican government was established, and the country became independent, although French troops remained until 1946. Syria was united with Egypt during 1958-61. Since 1963, it has been ruled by the Baathist party, a socialist, pan-Arab group. Hafez al-Hassad assumed power in a 1970 coup and has since ruthlessly repressed all political opposition. Syria has participated in each of the four Arab-Israeli wars since 1948. After the 1967 war, the Golan Heights, a strategic position commanding the plains of northern Israel, was lost to the Israelis. In 1973 additional territory was lost, but it was returned in a U.S.-brokered settlement in 1974. Syrian forces entered Lebanon in 1976 as part of an Arab peacekeeping force, and since the 1980s Syria has dominated that country. In 1991 Syria was the first Arab state to condemn the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and sent troops to help defend Saudi Arabia. Hopes for a permanent peace settlement between Syria and Israel rose in the general atmosphere of good feeling after Iraq's defeat the following year but soon foundered. Szechwan (1933-36) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in southern China. For a time, surcharged Chinese issues were used in the province because of the devaluation of the local currency. Szeged (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in southern Hungary. Between May and November 1919, Szeged was the seat of the anti-Bolshevik Hungarian National Government, under Admiral Horthy. The occupying French forces prevented Horthy from attacking the Bolsheviks, but after the fall of the regime, the Nationalists occupied Budapest and established the National Republic. In June 1919, the Horthy government overprinted 49 Hungarian issues for use in the area under its authority. T Tahiti (1882-93, 1903, 1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island in the South Pacific. A former French colony, Tahiti merged into French Polynesia in 1893. Except for the issues of 1903 and 1915, stamps of French Polynesia have been in use since 1893. Taiwan (Formosa) (1886-95, 1945-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 21,655,515. Island off the coast of China, in the west Pacific Ocean. Originally populated by an aboriginal people of Malaysian origin, substantial Chinese settlement began in the 1600s. Taiwan was conquered by China in 1683 and remained a Chinese province until 1895, when it was ceded to Japan. Local Chinese inhabitants objected and proclaimed an independent republic, which was soon suppressed by Japanese forces. Between August and October 1895, the Formosan regime issued eight locally printed stamps. In 1945, it was reoccupied by China and, in December 1949, General Chiang Kai-shek withdrew the Nationalist Army to Taiwan, after the communists had conquered the mainland of China. The Nationalists maintained the policy that their regime was the only legitimate Chinese government and planned, with increasing futility as the years went by, their reconquest of the mainland. In the meantime, they ruled Taiwan as the Republic of China, with the 15% mainland Chinese minority ruling the country. United States support averted a Chinese invasion from the mainland in 1953 and kept China's United Nations seat in the hands of Taiwan until 1971. During the 1960s rapid manufacturing development increasingly created a prosperous and, by the 1970s a predominantly industrial, economy. Political controls began to loosen after Chiang's death in 1975. In recent years, Taiwan has become a democratic nation, and control of the country has gradually shifted from the old Nationalist mainland Chinese families to the native Taiwanese. While a significant minority favor long-term independence, the majority of Taiwanese prefer an eventual reunion with the mainland, at a time when economic and political liberalization there permits them to maintain their identity and way of life. Tajikistan (1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Population: 6,013,855. Republic in central Asia, bordering on Afghanistan, China, Kirghizia and Uzbekistan. The Tajiks were long ruled by the Persians or the Afghans and came under Russian control in the late 19th century. In 1990 Tajikistan declared its sovereignty and in 1991 joined in the Commonwealth of Independent States. A parliamentary republic was declared in 1992. Since 1992 the country has been torn by civil war between the government, dominated by ex-communists and an anti-government coalition consisting of pro-Western intellectuals and Muslims. Tammerfors (1866-81) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in west-central Finland. Several issues were made by the local postmaster for use within his district. Tanganyika (1921-35, 1961-64) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 9.5 million (1962 estimate). The major portion of the former German East Africa colony, placed under British administration after World War I. A part of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika after 1935, it became independent on Dec. 9, 1961. In 1964, it merged with Zanzibar to become the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, renamed Tanzania in 1965. Tangier (1927-57) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. In 1923, Great Britain, France and Spain declared Tangier, in northern Morocco, an international zone. Stamps of French Morocco and Spanish Morocco, as well as special British, French and Spanish issues for Tangier, were used. In 1957, the city was annexed by Morocco. Tanzania (1965-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 29,460,753 (1997 estimate). A republic in southeastern Africa, bordering on the Indian Ocean. Tanzania was formed with the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964 as the United Republic of Tanganyika. In October 1965, the name was changed to the United Republic of Tanzania. Tanzania has maintained socialist policies at home and neutrality in its foreign affairs. Its relations with its two northern neighbors, Kenya and Uganda, have been strained. During 1978-79, clashes occurred with Uganda, culminating in a successful Tanzanian invasion, which overthrew Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The infusion of large numbers of refugees from the civil war in Rwanda have taxed Tanzanian resources since 1994. In 1995 Tanzania had its first multiparty elections. Tannu Tuva (1926-34) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 306,300 (1994). An area in northern Asia between Mongolia and Siberia. Long disputed between Russia and China, the district was established in 1926 as an independent republic under Soviet protection. During the 1930's, Tannu Tuva issued several sets of large pictorials, primarily for the collector market. In 1944, it was absorbed into the Soviet Union and was designated an Autonomous Republic in 1961. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tuva, renamed Tyva in 1993, has become autonomous in fact, as well as name. In 1993 a new constitution was adopted, establishing a governing parliament, maintaining the primacy of Tyvan laws enacted by the parliament, and asserting the nation's right to conduct an independent foreign policy. A number of stamps have appeared on the market in recent years, purportedly issued by Tyva, but these are bogus. Tyva hasn't yet begun issuing its own stamps again. Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land) (1853-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 172,000 (1901 estimate). Island off the southeastern coast of Australia. A dependency of the British colony of New South Wales from 1803 to 1825, the island became the colony of Van Dieman's Land in 1825. In 1856, the name of the colony was changed to Tasmania, and in 1901, it joined with the mainland colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Telsiai (Telschen) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northwestern Lithuania. A total of 25 different overprinted Russian stamps were issued by the German military commander of the area during July and August 1941. Temesvar (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district of the Banat, occupied by Serbia after World War I. After the Serbian evacuation, Romanian forces occupied the area, and Temesvar was subsequently annexed by Romania. Both Serbian and Romanian forces overprinted a total of 16 Hungarian stamps for use in the area. Teruel (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A province in northeastern Spain. Overprinted Spanish stamps were issued in 1937 by the local Nationalist authorities. Tete (1913-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 367,000 (estimate). Formerly a district of Zambezia in the colony of Portuguese East Africa, Tete now is part of western Mozambique. Tetuan (1908-09) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern Morocco, formerly part of Spanish Morocco. The city name was handstamped on 15 Spanish and Spanish Offices in Morocco stamps for use there in 1908. Thailand (Siam) (1883-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 59,450,818 (1997 estimate). A kingdom in southeast Asia. For centuries, Thailand was the dominant power in the Malaya-Indochina region. European encroachments in the 19th century reduced this influence dramatically, although Thailand, alone among the native states of the region, was able to maintain its independence. An ally of Japan during World War II, Thailand was able to reoccupy some of its lost territories. These were given up when, in 1945, the Thai government repudiated its declaration of war against Great Britain and the United States. After World War II, Thailand aligned itself with the West. During the Vietnamese War, Thai troops were active in South Vietnam (until 1972) and in Laos (until 1974). With the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina, Thailand established diplomatic relations with China and attempted to reestablish peaceful relations with its communist neighbors. Border incursions by warring factions in Laos and Cambodia continued in the 1980s, as did the movement of hundreds of thousands of Laotian and Cambodian refugees. In recent decades, Thailand has been one of the leaders in the economic development of East Asia. Its political stability, however, has been upset by coups and the political influence of the Thai military. In 1997, after years of mismanagement and corruption, the Thai economy collapsed, creating a financial crisis throughout the Far East. Thessaly (1898) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. During the Turko-Greek War of 1898, a set of five octagonal stamps was issued for use by the Turkish forces in Thessaly. Thrace (1913-20) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A district in the southeastern Balkans, bordering on the Aegean and Black seas. Under Turkish rule from the 14th century, the western portion of Thrace was occupied by Bulgaria in 1912. In 1913, an autonomous Moslem regime briefly ousted the Bulgarians. During its ephemeral existence, this regime issued lithographed stamps, as well as overprints on Turkish, Greek and Bulgarian issues. In 1913 western Thrace was incorporated into Bulgaria, using regular Bulgarian issues. In October 1918, this area was taken from Bulgaria by the Allies, who overprinted Bulgarian stamps for use in the zone. In May 1920, western Thrace was mandated to Greece, and in August, Greece annexed the territory. Eastern Thrace remained in Turkish hands until 1918, when it, too, was occupied by the Allies. Like the western portion of the province, it was turned over to Greece in 1920. After the Greek defeat in the Graeco-Turkish War (1922), it was returned to Turkey. Thurn and Taxis (1852-67) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A princely house that maintained a postal monopoly in central Europe from the 16th century until 1806. After 1815, it operated postal services in parts of western Germany. In 1867, its rights were purchased by Prussia. Tibet (1912-65) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2,290,000 (1993 estimate). Former theocracy in the Himalaya region of central Asia. An independent kingdom from the 7th century, Tibet was under Mongol influence after 1270. In the 17th century, the grand lama of the Red Hat Lamaistic order secured both spiritual and temporal power, and Tibet remained a more or less independent state under the grand lamas until 1904, after which British influence was strong. During 1910-12, a pro-Chinese regime was in power, but Chinese troops were withdrawn following the 1912 Revolution, and Tibet again became independent. In 1950, eastern Tibet was seized by China, and in 1953, a communist government was installed in Tibet itself, supplanting the theocratic regime of the Dalai Lama. In 1956, a Tibetan revolt within China spread to Tibet, resulting in the dissolution of the Tibetan government in 1959. Although the uprising was crushed ruthlessly (charges of genocide were made against the Chinese in 1961), Tibetan nationalism remains a powerful force. Tientsin (1900-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. City in northern China. A diagonal "China" handstamp was added to German stamps to furnish a seven-value issue for use in the German post office in Tientsin in 1900. The Italian post offices in Tientsin used 32 Italian stamps overprinted with the name of the city in 1917-21. Tiflis (1857) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital city of Georgia (Soviet Union). In 1857, the Russian viceroy of the area issued a stamp for local use. Timor (1885-1975) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 660,000 (1976 estimate). An island in the Malay Archipelago. Divided between the Dutch and Portuguese since the 17th century, Timor was formally partitioned in 1919. After the liberal Portuguese revolution in 1974, the Portuguese portion of Timor declared itself independent of Portugal, but was soon disputed by internal factions. Indonesia intervened to restore order and occupied the territory, organizing it as the province of Timor Timur. The Indonesian occupation was not recognized by the United Nations, and local resistance continued, provoking increasingly brutal repression by the Indonesian authorities. Responding to international pressure, Indonesia agreed in 1998 to grant East Timor a large measure of autonomy, but in an August, 1999, referendum, the great majority of Timorese voted for independence. This provoked another round of bloody fighting, as local Muslim militias, supported by the Indonesian army, attacked independence supporters. Finally, United Nations military intervention reestablished order, and in an August, 2001, referendum, the Timorese again overwhelmingly voted for complete separation from Indonesia. East Timor became independent on May 20, 2002, as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of (2002-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 983,000 (1999). The eastern portion of the island of Timor, along with the enclave of Oscussu-Ambeno in West Timor. Formerly the Portuguese colony of Timor, under Indonesian occupation 1975-99. After years of resistance to Indonesian authorities, Timor-Leste became independent on May 20, 2002. Tlacotalpan (1856) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A village in the state of Veracruz in eastern Mexico. A single extremely scarce ½-real handstamp issue was produced there in 1856. Tobago (1879-96) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 25,358 (1889 estimate). An island in the West Indies, north of Trinidad. In 1889, Tobago was united with Trinidad to form the colony of Trinidad and Tobago. Togo (1897-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 4,735,610 (1997 estimate). A republic in West Africa, bordering on the Gulf of Guinea. Togo was a German protectorate until 1914, when it was occupied by Anglo-French forces. After World War I, the territory was divided between Britain and France, under League of Nations mandate. The British portion subsequently became part of Ghana, while the French zone became the present republic (1958). Togo became fully independent in 1960. Its stamp issues since that time have been voluminous, including a host of colorful stamps and souvenir sheets on every conceivable topic. Togo's first president was assassinated in 1963 and his successor was deposed in coup in 1967. From 1967 to 1994, Togo was ruled by a repressive military dictatorship but made significant economic progress. Progress toward multiparty government has been made in the past several years. Tokelau Islands (1948-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,503 (1995 estimate). A group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. Attached to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Tokelau Islands were placed under Western Samoan administration in 1926. On Jan. 1, 1949, they became a dependency of New Zealand. Tomsk (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in western Siberia. During the Russian Civil War, the local authorities issued a surcharged Russian stamp for use in the area. Tonga (1886-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 107,335 (1997 estimate). A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, south of Samoa. United during the mid-19th century, Tonga came under British protection in 1900. On June 4, 1970, Tonga again became fully independent. Tonga's economy has traditionally depended on copra and bananas. The discovery of offshore oil in the 1970s and government efforts to develop tourism bode well for the country's economic future, although it still continues to rely on foreign aid. Since 1992 efforts have been made to democratize the country, but power remains in the hands of the king and aristocracy. From the late 1960s to the early '80s, Tonga issued a host of unconventional stamps, including garish self-adhesive and foil productions embossed and die-cut into many unusual shapes. Beginning in about 1981, however, Tonga returned to more traditional designs. Transbaikal Province (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Shortly after the fall of the Kolchak regime in January 1920, a local warlord in eastern Siberia, the Ataman Semenov, proclaimed himself ruler of Siberia. Four Russian stamps were surcharged for use in his short-lived domain. He maintained control of the area around Chita and Lake Baikal until October, when his government was overthrown by partisans of the Far Eastern Republic. Semenov fled to Mongolia. Transcaucasian Federated Republics (1923-24) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 5.9 million (1923 estimate). A former Soviet administrative district in the Caucasus, comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In 1917, a short-lived independent Transcaucasian Republic was proclaimed, but this state soon fell to invading German, Turkish and British forces. After considerable turmoil, the area was occupied by Soviet forces in 1922. In that year, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was proclaimed. In the following year, it joined the Soviet Union. In 1936, this unit was dissolved, and its three component states were separated. Transkei (1976-1994) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of South Africa's so-called Bantustans or Bantu homelands, a scattering of nominally semi-autonomous states for otherwise disenfranchised black South Africans located on the sites of reserves set up under the policies of the white-run apartheid government prior to World War II. Transkei was the largest and most populous of these, consisting of a large tract of coastal territory on the Indian Ocean between Durban and East London and a number of smaller disjointed tracts nearby. Although not accorded international recognition as a sovereign state, Transkei's stamps were generally accepted on international mail. Transkei ceased to exist April 27, 1994. Transvaal (1870-1910) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.26 million (1904 estimate). Former Boer republic (officially, the South African Republic) and British colony in southern Africa; now a province of the Republic of South Africa. Boer settlements north of the Cape Colony were recognized as the independent South African Republic in 1852, but during 1877-82, British forces occupied the area. In 1881, the Transvaal again became independent, but increasing tension with the British led to the Boer War of 1899-1902, after which the country became a British colony. In 1910, the Transvaal joined with Natal, Cape Colony and the Orange River Colony to form the Union of South Africa. Transylvania (1919) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A principality annexed from the Turks by Hungary in the 18th century, Transylvania was occupied and absorbed by Romania after World War I. Two issues of a distinctive (and frequently counterfeited) round overprint were applied to a total of 122 Hungarian stamps for use during 1919. During 1940-44, it was reoccupied by Hungary, finally being returned to Romania after World War II. Travancore (1888-1949) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 6.1 million (1941 estimate). A former feudatory state in southern India. In 1949, it merged with Cochin to form Travancore-Cochin, which issued stamps for use in the new territory. Travancore-Cochin (1949-51) Stamp-issuing status: inactive: Population: 7.5 million. The United State of Travancore-Cochin was formed on July 1, 1949, by the merger of Travancore and Cochin, along with the formerly British-held towns of Tangasseri and Anjengo. Indian stamps have been used since April 1, 1951. Trebizonde (1909-14) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A Turkish port on the Black Sea. The Russian post office in the city used 10 stamps of the Russian Levant overprinted "Trebizonde" after 1909. Trengganu (1910-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 302,171 (1960 estimate). Former non-federated Malay state under Siamese influence until a British protectorate was established in 1909. Trengganu joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and is now part of the Federation of Malaysia. Trieste (1947-54) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 263,000 (1954 estimate). A former Italian territory at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea. After World War II, it was occupied by Allied forces and, in 1954, was partitioned between Italy (the northern portion of the seaport of Trieste) and Yugoslavia (the southern section). These two zones, A and B respectively, issued stamps during 1947-54, while Trieste was a free territory – zone A being under Allied administration, while zone B was administered by Yugoslavia. Trinidad (1851-1913) Stamp-issuing status; inactive; Population: 387,000 (1889 estimate). An island in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela. Taken from Spain by Great Britain in 1797, Trinidad was united with Tobago in 1889 to form the colony of Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago (1913-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,273,141 (1997 estimate). Two islands in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela. The two British colonies were united in 1889, Tobago becoming a ward of the united colony in 1899. From 1958-1962, the colony was a member of the West Indies Federation, becoming independent in August 1962. Trinidad has long been an oil-refining center and has begun exploiting recently discovered oil reserves of its own. It is one of the most prosperous of the Caribbean states. Tripolitania (1923-35, 1948-50) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 570,716 (1921). Former Italian colony in North Africa. Tripolitania was occupied by Italy in 1912 and merged with Cyrenaica in 1934 to form the colony of Libia. During World War II, Libia was occupied by Anglo-French forces, and Tripolitania was occupied by the British until 1950, when it was incorporated into the independent Kingdom of Libya. Tristan da Cunha (1952-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 260. A group of islands in the mid-South Atlantic Ocean. A British possession since 1816, Tristan da Cunha became a dependency of the colony of St. Helena in 1936. Trucial States (1961-63) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 86,000. A group of Arab sheikhdoms — Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujeira, Manama, Ras al Khaima, Sharjah and Kalba, and Umm al Qiwain — in eastern Arabia, bordering on the Persian Gulf. These states were under British protection from 1892-1971, joining to form the United Arab Emirates in 1971. In June 1963, Trucial States issues were replaced by those of the individual states, which, in turn, were superseded by those of the UAE in 1972. Tunisia (1888-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 9,183,097 (1997 estimate). Republic in North Africa. Tunisia was under Turkish rule from 1574 until 1881, when it became a French protectorate. After World War II, nationalist feeling increased, and in 1955, France granted Tunisia internal autonomy. In March 1956, Tunisia became independent. Turkey (1863-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 63,528,225 (1997 estimate). A republic in southeastern Europe and western Asia. The area now occupied by Turkey was the center of a number of ancient civilizations, and it remained the center of the Eastern Roman Empire for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome. During most of this period, it was the dominant power of the region. The Byzantine Empire, weakened by the inroads of Crusaders who found it easier to ransack Christian lands than to fight infidels, rapidly lost ground in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Ottoman Turks conquered the outlying provinces, and in 1453 they occupied Constantinople, which became their capital and the center of their own empire. During the next century, the Turks conquered southeastern Europe, North Africa and much of the Middle East. At its apex (1550-1683), the Turkish Empire stretched from the borders of Poland and the Russian steppes to the Sahara, and from Algeria to Arabia. From the late 17th century on, the Turkish Empire became increasingly weak and poorly administered, and its military power declined rapidly. During the 19th century, the territorial integrity of the state was maintained only because the European powers could not agree upon the division of the spoils. In a series of generally unsuccessful wars during 1878-1913, most of Turkey's outlying provinces became independent or were lost to its more powerful neighbors. In 1914, the Turks joined the Central Powers. Their defeat cost Turkey most of its remaining territory, and by 1919 only Asia Minor remained. At that point, it became apparent that the Allies intended to dismember Turkey altogether. In reaction to this threat, a nationalist Turkish government was formed in Ankara in 1920, with Mustafa Kemal as president. The Nationalists defeated the Greeks, whom they expelled from Western Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace and compelled the Allies to withdraw from the Dardanelles and Cilicia. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) confirmed Turkish independence and established its borders along roughly ethnic lines. Kemal established the republic and launched an ambitious program of social reform and industrialization. Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II, declaring war on the Axis in February 1945. Since that time, it has been aligned with the West and has been a member of NATO since 1952. Tension with Greece, a fellow NATO member, over the status of Cyprus, has at times threatened to estrange Turkey from its Western allies. During the 1990s, Turkey has been plagued by ongoing armed resistance from its Kurdish minority and by the rise in recent years of a fundamentalist Islamic opposition. Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (1974-) Stamp-issuing status: active. The northern and northeastern 40 percent of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, occupied by Turkey following its 1974 invasion. A buffer zone manned by United Nations peacekeeping forces separates it from the predominantly Greek southern portion of the island. Stamps were issued prior to the invasion, though an independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was only proclaimed in November 1983. Although its legitimacy is not recognized by other countries, its stamps have been regularly accepted as valid on international mail. Turks Islands (1867-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2,000 (1894 estimate). A group of islands in the West Indies, south of the Bahamas. In 1848, along with the Caicos Islands, they were transferred from Bahamian to Jamaican administration, first as a separate colony (1848-73) and later as a dependency of Jamaica (1873-1959). Stamps inscribed "Turks and Caicos Islands&quto; replaced those inscribed "Turks Islands" in 1900. Turks and Caicos Islands (1900-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,631 (1997 estimate). Two groups of islands in the West Indies, south of the Bahamas. Ruled by Great Britain from the Bahamas after the early 18th century, the Turks and Caicos were separated as a colony in 1848 and became a dependency of Jamaica in 1873. In 1959, they became part of the Federation of the West Indies. When the federation dissolved in 1962, the Turks and Caicos again became a British crown colony. Tuscany (1851-60) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2.89 million. A former grand duchy in west-central Italy. In 1859, the duke was deposed, and in 1860 Tuscany was united with Sardinia. Tuvalu (1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 10,297 (1997 estimate). The nine islands previously making up the Ellice Islands, Tuvalu is located in the central South Pacific south of Kiribati, north of Fiji and northeast of Australia. The islands chose independence from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in a 1974 referendum, and Tuvalu's first stamps appeared at the beginning of 1976. In the early 1980s, Tuvalu stepped up what had been a moderate stamp-issuing program, reaching a climax in 1984-88 with the release of about 100 stamps by each of the component islands of Funafuti, Nanumaga, Nanumea, Niutao, Nui, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Vaitupu. Only Niulakita, population 74, lacked its own issue. Most of these issues displayed popular topics largely unrelated to the islands. Two Sicilies (1858-62) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former kingdom comprising southern Italy and Sicily. First created by the Normans in the 11th century, the kingdom passed through various hands until the Bourbon dynasty was overthrown by Garibaldi in 1860. The area was united with Sardinia in 1860, and Italian stamps have been used since 1862. U Ubangi-Shari (1915-37) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 833,916. Former French colony in central Africa. Occupied by France during 1887-98, Ubangi-Shari was established as a colony in 1904. In 1910, it joined Gabon, the Middle Congo and Chad to form French Equatorial Africa. From 1936 to 1960, French Equatorial African stamps were used. In 1958, Ubangi-Shari became the autonomous Central African Republic. It became fully independent in 1960. Udine (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northeastern Italy, occupied by Austrian forces during World War I. During this period, the municipal authorities issued a stamp for local use. Uganda (1895-1902, 1962-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 20,604,874 (1997 estimate). An independent state in East Africa. Formerly a British protectorate, Uganda became independent in 1962. In 1971, Gen. Idi Amin seized control of the government. His administration was erratic and blood-thirsty. Some 45,000 East Indians were expelled in 1972, disrupting the economy, since much of the commerce had been in their hands. In 1973, the United States broke relations with Uganda, and most Western nations suspended aid, which was replaced by Soviet and Libyan support. During the next few years, some 300,000 Ugandans were killed, all opponents or suspected opponents of the regime. This reign of terror, along with generally poor government administration, reduced the Ugandan economy to a shambles. In March 1979, after a period of increasing tension, Uganda was invaded by a Tanzanian force, supported by Ugandan exiles. In April, Amin was forced to flee the country, and found asylum in Libya, one of the few nations with whom he had remained on friendly terms. A provisional government was established to administer the country and to normalize Ugandan affairs. There followed a decade of political instability and civil war. In recent years, conditions have stabilized under a popular regime, which has liberalized the economy and restored a measure of prosperity. Ukraine (1918-23, 1941-43, 1992-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 50,684,635 (1997 estimate). A republic in eastern Europe, located between Russia and the northern coast of the Black Sea. Ukraine was the heartland of medieval Russia and the center of the Kievan Rus state. Kiev dominated much of the territory of European Russia during the 9th-13th centuries, and it was through Kiev that Eastern Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet came to Russia. The 13th century Mongol invasion destroyed Kievan power, and for the next 400 years the country was dominated by Poland in the north and west and by the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea in the south. In 1654, Ukraine requested protection from Muscovy, and Russian conquest soon followed. During World War I, Ukraine was occupied by Germany, and in January 1918 an independent republic was declared. The local postmaster overprinted existing stocks of Russian stamps with the Ukrainian national emblem, the trident, creating hundreds of different stamps. During the Russian Civil War, Ukraine was the battleground of both Red and White armies, as well as Poland and the Allies. In 1920 it was reconstituted as a Soviet republic. Stamps were used by a variety of regimes in the region. Ukraine was again occupied during World War II, and the Hitler Head German definitive set, overprinted "Ukraine," was used. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine again became independent. Independence was declared August 24, 1991, and in December became a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Since regaining independence, Ukraine has faced hyperinflation and wrenching economic changes, as it attempts to liberalize its economy. It has disposed of its nuclear arsenal and reestablished its control over the Crimea, which had been transferred to Russian administration in 1954 and had become locally autonomous with the breakup of the Soviet Union. During the first year or two of Ukrainian independence, large numbers of overprints on Russian stamps appeared on the market, identified as locals. Patterned after the 1918 Trident overprints, most of these modern creations are bogus, created solely for sale to stamp collectors. Umm al Qiwain (1964-72) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 5,700. A sheikhdom in the Trucial States in eastern Arabia. Under British protection from 1892-1971, Umm al Qiwain joined the independent United Arab Emirates on Dec. 2, 1971. During 1964-72, it issued a large number of colorful thematic stamps, usually accompanied by souvenir sheets and imperforate varieties, aimed at the collector market. Union Island (1976-) Stamp-issuing status: active. Union Island is the southernmost significant island in the St. Vincent Grenadines, a group of small subsidiary islands in the Lesser Antilles, north of Trinidad and South America. United Arab Emirates (1972-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 2,262,309 (1997 estimate). A union of sheikhdoms in eastern Arabia. Formed Dec. 2, 1971, by Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujeira, Sharjah and Umm al Qiwain. Ras al Khaima joined the UAE in February 1972. In August 1972, general UAE issues superseded those of the individual states. This region was long extremely poor, but in recent years the exploitation of large petroleum reserves has given the U.A.E. one of the highest per capita gross national products in the world. In recent years, concerns over threats from Iran and Iraq have caused the U.A.E. to signed military defensive agreements with the United States (1994) and France (1995). United Nations (1951-) Stamp-issuing status: active. The United Nations is an organization for the maintenance of international security and peace. Established in 1945, the United Nations now includes virtually every sovereign nation in the world. U.N. stamps are used on all mail handled at U.N. post offices in New York, Geneva, and Vienna. Separate issues are released for the use of the Geneva and Vienna offices. United States of America (1847-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 248,709,873 (1990). Republic occupying the central portion of North America, along with Alaska, Hawaii and a large number of island possessions in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The United States was formed from the union of the 13 British mainland North American colonies south of Canada in 1783, after an eight-year war against Great Britain. During 1803-53, the United States expanded rapidly westward, increasing its territory through conquest, purchase and negotiation. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867, and in 1898, Hawaii was annexed, at the request of its inhabitants. In the following year, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were acquired from Spain, following the short Spanish-American War. The United States long avoided involvement in foreign affairs, except in the Western Hemisphere, where U.S. interest was concentrated. In 1917, the United States entered World War I and played an instrumental role in the defeat of the Central Powers. Following the war, it reverted to its normal isolationalist policy. During the first two years of World War II, the United States resisted involvement, although its sympathies were strongly with the Allies, to whom it supplied economic aid. The Japanese attack on the major U.S. Pacific naval base at Pearl Harbor forced the country into the war. Again, the United States played the decisive part in defeating Germany and its allies. Following World War II, the United States realized that it could not avoid international problems by ignoring them and embarked on a policy of active involvement in the regions where its interests were paramount. U.S. economic aid sparked the European postwar economic boom, and its administration of Japan saw the rapid expansion of Japanese industry. U.S. stamps were first issued in 1847, although a number of local postmasters had been issuing provisional stamps since 1845. U.S. issues have been used in many nations throughout the world, reflecting, in most cases, the presence of American troops. Most U.S. possessions use regular U.S. stamps. United States Post Office in China (1919-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. From 1867-1922, the United States maintained a post office in Shanghai, China. During 1867-1919, unoverprinted U.S. stamps were used, and during 1919-22, a total of 18 surcharged issues were used. This post office was closed on Dec. 31, 1922. United States Postmasters' Provisionals (1845-47) In 1845, the postmaster of New York City began using postage stamps for mail handled by his office. Other postmasters' provisionals appeared during the next two years. In 1847, the U.S. Post Office, convinced of the desirability of utilizing postage stamps, began issuing stamps for nationwide use. These general issues replaced the provisionals. Postmasters' provisionals were used by Alexandria, Va.; Annapolis, Md. (envelope); Baltimore, Md. (both stamps and postal stationery); Boscawen, N.H.; Brattleboro, Vt.; Lockport, N.Y.; Millbury, Mass.; New Haven, Conn. (postal stationery); New York, N.Y.; Providence, R.I.; and St. Louis, Mo. During 1846, the New York provisionals were used experimentally on New York-bound mail from Boston, Albany and Washington. Upper Silesia (1920-22) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former German territory on the Polish border. A plebiscite in 1920 was indecisive, and in 1922 the League of Nations partitioned the district between Germany and Poland. After World War II, the German portion of the area was annexed by Poland. Upper Volta (1920-32, 1959-84) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 6.7 million (1984 estimate). A republic in West Africa, north of Ghana. A French colony from 1919-32, Upper Volta was subsequently divided between the French Sudan, Ivory Coast and Niger. In 1947, it was reconstituted within French West Africa, and in 1958, was established as a republic within the French community. In 1960, Upper Volta became independent. In 1984 it was renamed Burkina Faso. Uruguay (1856-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 3,261,707 (1997 estimate). A republic in South America, on the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina. During most of the colonial period, Uruguay was disputed between Spain and Portugal, finally passing into Spanish control in 1778. In 1811 it revolted against Spain and, after passing back and forth between Argentine and Brazilian occupation, Uruguay became an independent republic in 1828. Uruguay's history during the 19th century was one of anarchy and civil war, with occasional armed intervention by Argentina and Brazil. After 1900, a stable government enabled the country to make considerable economic and social progress, and Uruguay was a pioneer in creating the welfare state. The rise of radical terrorism by the leftist "Tupamaros" during the 1960s, however, disrupted the country, which was already straining to maintain a large and expensive bureaucracy and system of social programs. A military coup in 1973 brought into power a brutal military dictatorship. Civilian rule was reestablished in 1985. V Vaduz (1918) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of Liechtenstein. During World War I, the Austrian War Office disrupted the ordinary postal system, necessitating the issuance of a provisional stamp in Vaduz. This stamp was valid for local use and for transmittal to Sevelen, Switzerland. Vaitupu (1984-87) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of nine small islands in the Tuvalu Islands, formerly the Ellice Island group in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The island chain is located east of the Solomon Islands and north of Fiji in the southeastern central Pacific Ocean. Like the other Tuvalu Islands, Vaitupu issued a flurry of stamps depicting such diverse subjects as cars, locomotives, cricket players and the British royal family in the mid-1980s. Valenciennes (1914) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northern France, near the Belgian border. Soon after the city's occupation by German forces at the beginning of World War I, the Chamber of Commerce issued a stamp for local use. This stamp was in use from Sept. 3 to Oct. 30, 1914. Valona (1909-11, 1914-18) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Albanian seaport. The Italian post office used eight overprinted Italian stamps from 1909-11. In October 1914, Moslem revolutionaries issued a series of stamps, used briefly before Valona was occupied by Italian troops. During the Italian occupation, two surcharged Italian stamps were again used in the city. Vanuatu (1980-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 181,358 (1997 estimate). A Y-shaped chain of volcanic southwestern Pacific islands about 250 miles northeast of New Caledonia, southeast of the Solomon Islands. These islands were administered as the joint Anglo-French condominium of the New Hebrides from 1906 until 1980, when independence was granted to the new republic of Vanuatu. Vatican City (1929-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 1,000 (1995 estimate). A tiny (108.7 acres) enclave in Rome, the Vatican City is the sole remnant of the once-extensive papal state in Italy. During 1870-1929, the papacy and Italy disputed sovereignty, but the Lateran Pact of 1929 restored normal relations, with temporal authority of the pope recognized in the Vatican City, which became an independent state, subject to certain limitations. Since 1929 the Vatican has maintained an active stamp-issuing policy, commemorating and publicizing a great range of Christian religious events and themes. Veglia (Krk) (1920) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. An island off the northwestern coast of Yugoslavia. During d'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume, regular Fiume issues were overprinted for Veglia. Venda (1979-94) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. One of South Africa's so-called Bantustans or Bantu homelands, a scattering of nominally semi-autonomous states for otherwise disenfranchised black South Africans located on the sites of reserves set up under the policies of the white-run apartheid government prior to World War II. Venda was the most northerly of these, located in the northern portion of what was Transvaal, near the border with Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Although not accorded international recognition as a sovereign state, Venda's stamps were generally accepted on international mail. Venda ceased to exist April 27, 1994. Venezia Giulia (1918-19, 1945-47) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Former Austrian territory at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea, including the port of Trieste. The area was occupied by Italy after World War I, during which time 40 overprinted Austrian stamps were used. After World War II, the area was occupied by the Allies, and 31 overprinted Italian stamps were issued from 1945 to 1947 (Trieste zone A). Yugoslavia occupied part of the territory (zone B), issuing stamps for use there. Venezia Tridentina (1918-19) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A territory in northern Italy, also known as Trentino. The area was occupied by Italy from Austria after World War I, at which time 21 overprinted Austrian stamps were used. Venezuela (1859-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 22,396,407 (1997 estimate). Republic on the northern coast of South America. Under Spanish rule after 1546, Venezuela was one of the first Latin American colonies to declare its independence, and from 1821 to 1830 it formed part of Bolivar's Great Colombia, which also included Colombia and Ecuador. Venezuela's history during the 19th century was marked by a succession of military dictatorships and chronic internal disorder. During 1907-45, Venezuela saw significant economic growth, and in 1945, democratic government was established. Several military coups followed, but since 1959 Venezuela's governments have been progressive and democratically elected. One of the founding members of OPEC, Venezuela benefited enormously from the massive increases in oil prices during the 1970s. Oil revenues funded major economic expansion and public-works projects during the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years, banking failures and inflation have put serious strains on the nation's economy. Victoria (1850-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 1.2 million (1901 estimate). A state in southeastern Australia. Detached from New South Wales in 1851, Victoria joined the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Victoria Land (1911) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A region of Antarctica. In 1911-12, Robert Falcon Scott organized his ill-fated South Pole Expedition, and two New Zealand stamps were overprinted "Victoria Land" for use by the expedition members. Scott and four members of his party reached the South Pole on Jan. 18, 1912, but died on the return trip to their base. Vietnam (1945-54) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 22.6 million (1949 estimate). Country in Southeast Asia, occupying the eastern half of the Indochinese Peninsula. Vietnam comprises Annam, Tonkin and Cochin China, which have been under Chinese control or influence for most of their history since 111 B.C. In 1854, France began to extend its control in the area, which was completed by 1884. During World War II, Vietnam was occupied by the Japanese, who supported the regime of Emperor Bao Dai of Annam. The Vietminh League, a union of nationalists aiming for an independent Vietnam, grew up in opposition to the Japanese, and in 1945, deposed Bao Dai, declaring Vietnamese independence. During 1946-54, France fought the Vietminh, hoping to preserve its Indo-Chinese Empire. In July 1949, the State of Vietnam was established under Bao Dai, in association with the French Union. The defeat of France by the Vietminh forces, which had come under communist control, brought the partition of the country in 1954. The northern half became the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and in the following year, the southern portion became the Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam, Democratic Republic of (1954-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 75,123,880 (1997 estimate). A republic occupying the eastern half of Indochina. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established in 1954, after the defeat of French forces by the nationalist Vietminh. The North continued to support the communist Vietcong in the South against the South Vietnamese regime, increasing its aid after 1959. In 1964, North Vietnamese troops began to fight in the South, bringing the United States actively into the war. During 1965-69, the war was largely a stalemate, with neither side able to achieve any permanent success. Growing domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the war brought a cease-fire in January 1973, after which U.S. forces were withdrawn, and U.S. aid to the South was reduced. In early 1975, a renewed communist offensive brought about the rapid collapse of the South Vietnamese regime, and a communist government was installed in the South. In 1976, the two countries were merged into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Millions of South Vietnamese were forcibly resettled in the countryside, and hundreds of thousands fled the country. After its 1975 victory, Vietnam effectively controlled Laos and, in 1978-79, established a client regime in Kampuchea. A Chinese invasion of Vietnam in February 1979 brought heavy fighting but did not escalate into a full-blown war. Chronic economic problems began to improve when Vietnam began to liberalize its economy in 1986. In 1988 it began to withdraw some of its forces from Laos and Cambodia. During 1975-94, the United States maintained a trade embargo (which included postage stamps) against Vietnam, but this ended in 1994, and in 1995 full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established. During the past few years, political controls have been relaxed, and Vietnam is pursuing a policy of economic growth by encouraging foreign investment. Vietnam, Republic of (South Vietnam) (1955-75) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 16.5 million (1975 estimate). After the loss of the northern half of Vietnam to the communists in 1954, the southern portion of the country withdrew from the French Union and deposed its ruler, Bao Dai. On Oct. 26, 1955, the Republic of Vietnam was established. After 1956, fighting with the communists continued, the southern communist Vietcong being supported and supplied by North Vietnam. The United States supported the South with aid and, after June 1965, with troops. After 1969, because of growing opposition to involvement among Americans, the United States began to reduce its involvement, and in January 1973, a cease-fire between the United States, North Vietnam and the Vietcong provided for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The United States reduced aid to the South, weakening that regime's position, so that in early 1975, a North Vietnamese invasion, in violation of the cease-fire, quickly brought the South Vietnamese collapse. A Provisional Revolutionary Government, under North Vietnamese direction, assumed control of the South in May 1975, and the country was reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 2, 1976. Vilnius (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in Lithuania. Vilnius was occupied by German forces from 1941 to 1944. During the early stage of the occupation, nine overprinted Russian stamps were used. Vitoria (1937) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of the province of Alava in northern Spain. The Nationalist authorities overprinted contemporary Spanish stamps for use in the area in April 1937. Vryburg (1899-1900) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A town in British Bechuanaland, occupied by the Boers in November 1899 and reoccupied by the British in May 1900. Both forces overprinted one another's stamps for use in the town. W Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 44,259. A former feudatory state in western India. Wallis and Futuna Islands (1920-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 14,817 (1997 estimate). Two archipelagos in the South Pacific Ocean, under French protection since 1888. In 1961 Wallis and Futuna became an Overseas Territory of France. Warsaw (1915) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The capital of Poland. During World War I, 14 stamps were issued or surcharged by the Warsaw Citizens Committee under the authority of the German military commander. A number of World War II German occupation of Poland issues were overprinted and two new designs were issued during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. These are scarce, desirable and often forged. Warwiszki (1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in northeastern Poland. Formerly part of Lithuania, the city was occupied by Polish forces in 1923, at which time Polish stamps were overprinted for local use. Wenden (Livonia) (1862-1902) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A former district of the Russian province of Livonia that issued stamps until 1902, when Russian stamps replaced those of Wenden. The area was divided between Latvia and Estonia in 1918. Western Australia (1854-1913) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 190,000 (1912 estimate). A large state of western Australia. Formerly a separate colony, Western Australia joined in forming the Commonwealth of Australia in January 1901. Western Hungary (Lajtabanat) (1921) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. Following World War I, the Allies assigned the formerly Hungarian province of Burgenland to Austria because of its proximity to Vienna and its predominantly German population. Hungarian irregulars were in occupation of the province, however, and refused to evacuate. Through Italian mediation, a plebiscite was held in December 1921. The district around Odenburg (Sopron) was awarded to Hungary and the rest of the province to Austria. During the Hungarian occupation, overprinted Hungarian stamps and a locally produced set were in use. Western Ukraine (1918-19) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A briefly independent state in central Europe. Formed in October 1918 from the Austro-Hungarian territories of central and eastern Galicia and Bukovina in an attempt to unite the region with the Ukraine. In November 1918, Romania occupied Bukovina, and in January 1919, the balance of the Western Ukraine united with the Ukrainian National Republic. In July 1919, the area was occupied by Poland, which, in 1939, lost it to the Soviet Union. West Irian (1962-70) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 923,440 (1973 estimate). Formerly Netherlands New Guinea. Under U.N. administration from 1962 to 1963, West Irian was placed under Indonesian administration on May 1, 1963. Wilayah Persekutuan (1979-) Stamp-issuing status: active; Population: 937,875. Federal territories (as distinct from the states) of Malaysia, comprising the capital, Kuala Lumpur, since 1974, and the island of Labuan beginning in 1984. Issues for use in these territories, but uninscribed as such, were produced in 1979 and 1983-84. The first purpose-inscribed stamps did not appear until late 1986. Wilkomir (Ukmerge) (1941) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in central Lithuania. During the early months of the German occupation during World War II, five different overprinted Russian stamps were used in the area. Wosnessensk (1942) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. A city in the southern Ukraine. During World War II, a provisional issue of two stamps was made by the German military commander. Wrangel Issues (1902-21) Stamp-issuing status: inactive. The last major White Russian (anti-Soviet) commander during the Russian Civil War, Baron Peter Wrangel, was forced to evacuate his forces and followers to refugee camps in Turkey and the Balkans in 1920. Stamps of Russia, Russian Offices in Turkey, South Russia and the Ukraine were overprinted for use in these camps. Over 300 different stamps were issued. They have been extensively counterfeited. Wurttemberg (1851-1923) Stamp-issuing status: inactive; Population: 2.58 million. Former kingdom in southern Germany. Wurttemberg joined the German Empire in 1870. Its regular issues were replaced by those of Germany in 1902, although its official issues continued in use until 1923. X	i don't know
Who is the current Speaker of the House?	About Speaker Paul Ryan \| Speaker.gov About Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Ryan \| Speaker of the House \| Wisconsin’s First Congressional District Representative Paul Ryan is the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Now serving his tenth term in the House, he represents Wisconsin’s First Congressional District. Paul, his wife, Janna, and their three children, Liza, Charlie, and Sam, live in Janesville, Wisconsin. Son of Janesville A fifth-generation Wisconsinite, Paul is the youngest of four children born to Paul Sr. and Betty Ryan. When he wasn’t in school, he helped make ends meet by doing all sorts of odd jobs: painting houses, landscaping, mowing lawns. He graduated from Joseph A. Craig High School and later earned a degree in economics and political science at Miami University in Ohio. The Conservative Movement In 1992, Paul moved to Washington, D.C., where he learned from a number of conservative mentors. His first job was working as an aide to Senator Bob Kasten (R-WI) on the Senate Small Business Committee. After a disappointing election for Republicans, he left the Hill to do policy analysis at the think tank Empower America for former Congressman Jack Kemp (R-NY). (He met Kemp while waiting tables at the Capitol Hill restaurant Tortilla Coast.) In November 1994, Republicans won a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years. The next year, Paul returned to the Hill as legislative director to then-Congressman Sam Brownback (R-KS). Wisconsin’s First District In 1998, after moving back to Janesville, Paul won his first election to the House at the age of 28. He was the youngest member of his freshman class. While serving in Congress, he met his wife, Janna. In April 2000, he proposed at a favorite fishing spot, Big St. Germain Lake in Wisconsin. They were married in Oklahoma City later that year. Today, they live on the same block Paul grew up on, and they have three children: Liza, Charlie, and Sam. They are parishioners at St. John Vianney Catholic Church. Setting the Agenda In 2008, Paul received national attention for writing “The Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan to spur economic growth by fixing the tax code and pay off the national debt by reforming Medicare and Social Security. In 2011, he became chairman of the House Budget Committee, where he incorporated many of the roadmap’s ideas into his budget proposal, “The Path to Prosperity.” The House of Representatives passed his budget proposal every year he was chairman—or four years in a row. In 2012, Paul was the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States. In 2013, he and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) negotiated the first budget agreement in a divided Congress since 1986. Getting the Job Done In 2015, Paul became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In the spring of that year, he led the effort to renew trade promotion authority for the first time since 2002. Paul also played an important role in the first significant Medicare reform in years. In October 2015, after then-speaker John Boehner retired from Congress, Paul was elected speaker of the House. A committed conservative and public servant, Paul has spent his life advocating for real solutions that will expand opportunity for all Americans. And to the speakership, he brings that same passion for getting results. Email Updates	John Boehner
Newspaper editor Britt Reid, along with his sidekick Kato and their well appointed car Black Beauty, dons a mask and fights crime under what name?	List of Speakers of the House \| US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives List of Speakers of the House List of Speakers of the House Congress and Years Footnotes 1Resigned from the House of Representatives on January 19, 1814. 2Elected Speaker on January 19, 1814, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker Henry Clay. 3Resigned as Speaker of the House of Representatives on October 28, 1820. 4Elected Speaker on November 15, 1820, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker Henry Clay. 5Resigned from the House of Representatives on March 6, 1825, to serve as Secretary of State in the presidential administration of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts. 6Resigned from the House of Representatives on June 2, 1834. 7Elected Speaker on June 2, 1834, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker Andrew Stevenson. 8Was not a candidate for renomination to the House of Representatives in 1868, having become the Republican nominee for Vice President and successfully elected to that office. 9Elected Speaker on March 3, 1869, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker Schuyler Colfax, and served one day. 10Died in office, August 19, 1876. 11Elected Speaker on December 4, 1876, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Speaker Michael Kerr. 12Died in office, August 19, 1934. 13Died in office, June 4, 1936. 14Elected Speaker on June 4, 1936, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Speaker Joseph Byrns. 15Died in office, September 15, 1940. 16Elected Speaker on September 16, 1940, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Speaker William Bankhead. 17Died in office, November 16, 1961. 18Elected Speaker on January 10, 1962, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Speaker Samuel Rayburn. 19Resigned as Speaker of the House of Representatives on June 6, 1989. 20Elected Speaker on June 6, 1989, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker James Wright, Jr. 21John Boehner resigned as Speaker of the House on October 29, 2015. 22Paul D. Ryan was elected Speaker on October 29, 2015, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Speaker John Boehner. Office of the Historian: [email protected] Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk: [email protected] , [email protected]	i don't know
What is the most abundant metallic element in Earths crust?	Most Abundant Metal in the Earth's Crust - Some Interesting Facts WRITE FOR US Most Abundant Metal in the Earth’s Crust Aluminium – It’s the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, yet it entirely escaped our notice until 1825. You might say it was hidden in plain sight. Aluminium is a highly reactive metal, meaning it readily undergoes chemical reactions with other elements and compounds to form different substances. As a result, nearly all of the naturally occurring aluminium atoms on Earth ended up tucked away in the molecules of more than 270 different minerals, including gemstones like emeralds and rubies. So, while it’s actually 8.2 per cent of the Earth’s crust, making it the most common metal and third-most common element (behind oxygen and silicon), you would never know it’s there without investigating on the chemical level. The search was on in the mid-1700s, when chemists began experimenting with alum, a class of abundant chemical compounds. Alum compounds, such as potassium aluminium sulphate, were well known, going back at least to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, who used them as an astringent to close wounds and a mordant to bind dye to cloth. Early chemical investigation of alum suggested that the compound included an unknown metal. The trouble was that 18th-century chemists had no way to separate the mystery element from the rest of the atoms in the compound. In 1825, the Danish chemist Hans Christian 0rsted finally devised a chemical reaction that could extract it, but his process could only yield minuscule amounts at a time, making thorough experimentation difficult. Following up on 0rsted’s discovery, the German chemist Friedrich Wohler developed a more effective process, and by 1845, he had produced enough aluminium to demonstrate its basic properties. However, the method of extraction was still far too troublesome and slow to support wide-scale production. In 1854, the French chemist Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville refined the process further, reducing the price from USD 1,200 per kilogram to USD 40, which was a huge drop, but still very expensive. That all changed in the 1880s, thanks to two key technological leaps. In 1886, American chemist Charles Martin Hall and French chemist Paul LT Heroult both independently invented a process for extracting aluminium from aluminium oxide. The Hall-Heroult process relies on electrolysis, a means of breaking down chemical compounds into component elements using an electric current. The basic idea is to conduct electricity from a positive terminal (an anode) to a negative terminal (a cathode) via liquid or molten material. Each terminal attracts and repels charged atoms (ions). The positively charged anode attracts negative ions and repels positive ions, and the cathode vice versa. Scientists had tried to produce aluminium through electrolysis since the 1800s, but had no luck. Hall and Heroult’s breakthrough was first dissolving aluminium oxide in molten cryolite (sodium aluminium fluoride). Applying an electric current to this material draws the positive aluminium ions to the cathode, which is typically the vat itself, made from iron lined with graphite. Hot on their heels in 1888, Austrian chemist Karl Josef Bayer found a way to extract aluminium oxide from bauxite, a naturally occurring ore found in abundance in layers Just below the Earth’s surface. Geologists drill core samples in likely areas and, on locating bauxite, they clear the ground above with bulldozers. Australia leads global bauxite mining, producing one-third of the total ore. Together, the Hall-Heroult cost-effective process and the Bayer process, both still in use, ushered in what could be called the “Aluminium Age’. The metal’s properties made it an instant hit. It’s lightweight – about a third the weight of steel – but still strong. It’s also very ductile, meaning it’s easy to draw into a wire or flatten into a sheet, and it’s malleable, making it relatively simple to bang it into just about any shape. Add to that exceptional conduction of heat and electricity, and you’ve got an incredibly versatile metal. But aluminium’s greatest trick may be its resistance to corrosion. Like iron. aluminium is highly reactive to oxygen in the air, but the result of the oxidation reaction is very different. Oxygen and iron react to produce a flaky layer of rust, which falls away, revealing a lower layer of iron, which then oxidises to form yet more rust. In contrast, when aluminium encounters oxygen, the oxidation reaction produces an incredibly hard transparent oxide compound that essentially surrounds the aluminium with a shield that protects it from oxygen and other elements. And best of all, if this protective layer happens to get damaged, it will very quickly reform, reconstructing the shield. Most aluminium products are actually made from an aluminium alloy – a combination of two metals. The combinations accentuate and amplify certain properties. For example, alloying aluminium with copper improves strength, while an alloy of aluminium and manganese improves resistance to corrosion. You can turn aluminium into an infinite variety of products, through a number of manufacturing processes. You can cast it into any shape that you want by pouring it into a mould and then letting it cool. You can roll it into malleable sheets, up to a minuscule 0.15 millimetres (0.006 inches) thick. You can forge it to make it super-strong. You can machine it (cutting away material) to produce screws, bolts and other hardware. Finally, you can force it through a die to extrude it into a particular shape, including thin wire. Aluminium also boasts another major superpower over many other metals: recyclability. Recycling programmes use old aluminium cans to make new ones, at about 30 per cent the cost of making them from scratch. They shred old cans into pieces, melt them in a furnace, form rectangular blocks called ingots, then roll out the ingots into thin sheets from which new cans are cut; believe it or not, this whole process can take just 60 days. Old car parts can undergo a similar process. Thanks to recycling, two-thirds of the aluminium ever produced is still in use today. Aluminium extraction step-by-step 1. Bauxite mining – When prospecting reveals bauxite ore, miners bulldoze the land, set off explosive to loosen the soil, scoop up the bauxite and earth, and bring it all to the processing plant. 2. Crusher – A crusher breaks the ore into smaller pieces, in preparation for the Bayer process, which separates an aluminium compound from the bauxite. 3. Digester – The digester mixes the bauxite with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), which dissolves the aluminium oxide to form liquid sodium aluminate. Clarification, or filtering, enables impurities to be removed from the solution. 4. Precipitation – The addition of aluminium hydroxide causes the sodium aluminate to precipitate into a solid. 5. Heating – The last stage of the Bayer process is heating the solid sodium aluminate. This removes the water, forming aluminium oxide – a fine white powder better known as alumina. 6. Smelting – The first step of the smelting – extracting the pure aluminium – is dissolving the alumina with molten sodium aluminium fluoride, also called cryolite, at 1,000″C (1,832″F). 7. Electrolysis – Running a current through separates the component chemicals in the molten material. The negative cathode terminal attracts positively charged aluminium ions, which are reduced to pure aluminium metal. Where you can find aluminum? Rocket fuel – While you might not be surprised to hear that NASA’s space shuttles are made mainly from aluminium, what you may not have realised is that they are also powered by aluminium inside the solid rocket boosters (SRBs). When burned with oxygen, atomized aluminium powder makes for a great fuel. Aluminium powder accounts for about 16 per cent of SRB fuel. ASM Space Lattice – Aluminium’s high strength-to-weight ratio makes it an excellent dome material. Geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller designed this 76m (250ft)-diameter, 80-ton aluminium structure for the American Society for Metals headquarters in Ohio, USA. Airstream trailers – The quintessential camping trailer took its design from Twenties aeroplane fuselages. Inventor Wally Byam opted for malleable aluminium which he could shape into a fuel-efficient, aerodynamic form. Ravensbourne College building – Aluminium’s weather resistance and sculptural flexibility make it a popular material for building facades. Ravensbourne’s building on London’s Greenwich peninsula is covered in 28,000 aluminium tiles. Top of the Washington Monument – When the monument was approaching completion in 1884, the lead engineer selected the novel, relatively rare aluminium for its 23cm (9in) lightning rod pyramid. ISS – Built by Boeing, the US Destiny Laboratory module is a major component of the ISS. The 8.5m (28ft) pressurised unit is made from aluminium and represents the heart of the space station. Aluminium forms part of the outer debris shield too, which is tough enough to vaporize small particles of space junk. Airbus A380 – Aluminium has become the most important material in aerospace history. The world’s largest commercial aircraft is 61 per cent aluminium alloy! Burj Khalifa hotel – The world’s tallest manmade structure is also the highest installation whose architectural cladding consists of an aluminium and glazed facade. The total weight of the aluminium used is the same as five Airbus A380s, and the surface area of the curtain wall is 132,190m2 (1,422,880ft2). Morning coffee – Nespresso’s airtight coffee capsules are made of aluminium to keep the product fresh, away from air, light and humidity. Pots and pans – Much modern cook ware includes aluminium, which boasts excellent thermal conductivity. But possible links to neurodegenerative disease have made it somewhat controversial. Automobiles – Aluminium keeps this all-electric car lightweight, while still strong and rigid. Each car begins life as a 9,072kg (20,000lb) aluminium coil, which is stamped into sections. Computers – Many of Apple’s devices are made of anodized aluminium, which not only polishes and toughens a product, but also provides a way of adding colour via oxidation, as seen in multicolored iPods. Kitchen foil – As a natural barrier to light, oxygen, moisture and just about anything airborne, including bacteria, flexible aluminium sheets are great food protectors. Drinks cans – On top of being light and cheap, the king of aluminium products is 100 per cent recyclable. 113,204 cans are recycled every minute.	Aluminium
What part of your body is inflamed if you have encephalitis?	The Eight Most Abundant Elements in the Earth's Crust \| Sciencing The Eight Most Abundant Elements in the Earth's Crust By Doug Donald Scott Rothstein/iStock/Getty Images Elements are the simplest form of matter. They are substances made from one type of atom that cannot be broken down or separated into a simpler form. All other matter is made from compounds or combinations of these fundamental substances. An example is water, a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. The outermost surface of Earth is called the crust. The Earth's crust contains some elements in abundance and only trace amounts of others. Oxygen (O) Keith Brofsky/Digital Vision/Getty Images Oxygen is by far the most abundant element in the earth's crust. Scientists estimate oxygen comprises nearly half of the mass of the crust. It also accounts for 21 percent of Earth's atmosphere. Oxygen is a highly reactive element capable of combining with most other elements. For example, oxygen and iron (Fe) form various compounds we know as iron ore. Silicon (Si) Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images As the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, silicon accounts for over 28 percent of its mass. Combined with oxygen, silicon dioxide is the most common compound in the crust. Most people know silicon dioxide as common sand, but it can also take the form of quartz and other crystalline rocks. Silicon is also an essential material in the manufacture of electronics and computer chips. Aluminum (Al) wavebreakmedia/iStock/Getty Images Aluminum is the third most common element in the Earth's crust. Aluminum is the crust's most abundant metal, but all the earth's aluminum has combined with other elements to form compounds, so it is never found free in nature. Aluminum oxide is a common aluminum compound. Aluminum and aluminum alloys have a variety of uses from kitchen utensils to aircraft manufacturing. Iron (Fe) Keith Brofsky/Photodisc/Getty Images Iron is one of the most common and cheapest of all metals and accounts for over 5 percent of the Earth's crust, making it fourth on the list of abundant elements. Iron combined with carbon makes steel. There is archaeological evidence that humans have used iron for thousands of years. Calcium (Ca) kyoshino/iStock/Getty Images Calcium is the fifth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Calcium makes up over 4 percent of the crust.. Calcium is another reactive element that is not found free in nature because it readily forms compounds with oxygen and water. Manufacturers use calcium compounds in many applications including gypsum board (drywall), chalk and toothpaste. Sodium (Na) Benjamin Miner/iStock/Getty Images Sodium may be best known as part of the compound that makes table salt, or sodium chloride, but it also composes over 2 percent of the Earth's crust, making it the sixth most abundant element. Sodium is never found free in nature due to its high reactivity. It is an ingredient in many useful compounds such as baking soda, caustic soda, and borax. Sodium lamps produce a bright yellow-orange light and are widely used to light roads and parking lots. Magnesium (Mg) StockTrek/Purestock/Getty Images Magnesium makes up over 2 percent of the Earth's crust. In nature, magnesium is found in compounds with other elements. It is never found free. Magnesium has many applications in industry and the home. It is the essential ingredient of Epsom salts and is also used as an antacid and laxative. Magnesium-aluminum alloy is used in the construction of aircraft and other applications where strong, light metals are required. Potassium (K) Valentyn Volkov/iStock/Getty Images About 2 percent of the Earth's crust is composed of potassium. This extremely reactive element is never found free in nature. Potassium forms many useful compounds that are used in the manufacture of fertilizer, soaps, detergent and some types of glass. References	i don't know
In the TV and computer game franchise, ACME detective agency members are always asking the question "Where in the World/Time/Earth is" who?	Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (Series) - TV Tropes Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share Series / Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? × Hang on tight! We've got a very big mission but very little time! "We're on the case and we're chasing her through history!" The second game show in the Carmen Sandiego franchise, and the successor to Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? on PBS , Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? challenged kids with history instead of geography. The action took place aboard The Chronoskimmer, a massive floating Time Machine powered by knowledge and dancing crew members. The gumshoes were renamed "Time Pilots", host Kevin Shinick was their "Squadron Leader", and "The Chief" Lynne Thigpen from World had a much less prominent role. And for the first (and, to date, only) time, a live actress played the lady in red herself. The format was virtually identical to that of World. Three contestants answered trivia questions to earn "Power Points" (instead of "ACME Crime Bucks") and track one of Carmen's crooks through time. Eventually, the contestant with the lowest score was sent home with a Consolation Prize package, and the remaining contestants played a mini-game that had them place historic events in reverse chronological order. The winner moved on to the Bonus Round , "The Trail of Time", to try to capture Carmen and win the grand prize. The show lasted for two seasons on PBS and a total of 115 episodes which aired from October 7, 1996 to December 12, 1997 (with reruns airing until October 2, 1998). We're on the case and we're troping her through history! Game Show tropes: Bonus Round : "The Trail of Time". The contestant went through six stations and answered a question at each one. For a correct answer, the door opened and the contestant moved on to the next station; an incorrect answer meant that the contestant had to open the door manually using a pulley, a pump, or whatever was there. Golden Snitch : The reverse chronological order game. The contestant with the most Power Points got to choose who went first, but it was just a matter of luck and memory as far as who won. So a contestant could do poorly on the trivia rounds and still make it to the Bonus Round by winning this game. Losing Horns : The time buzzer in the Trail of Time round was a type A. Carmen herself laughed as well. Personnel: Game Show Host : Kevin Shinick Other tropes: Accidental Misnaming : In Season 2, Episode 44, Kevin Shinick quickly gets frustrated when Thomas Edison comes onboard the Chronoskimmer and repeatedly refers to the former as Wishbone . Without asking the obvious question, of course. How in God's name does Thomas Edison know about ''Wishbone'' years before even the invention of the television? Acme Products : Sort of. Acme Timenet appears to be a spiritual successor or branch of the Acme Detective Agency. Ambiguous Syntax : Jacqueline Hyde: I was just playing catch with my uncle. (switches to Hyde mode) Boy, is he hard to throw! Bad Boss : The episode where Jacqueline Hyde stole the unions was motivated by Carmen worrying what would happen if her minions revolted. Call a Contestant a Time Pilot The Cameo : One episode had the World Chief suddenly appear on the ship as it traveled around 1991, and as you'd expect she wondered where Greg Lee and Rockapella were. Thigpen wore her World costume, and even got to speak with her equally confused future incarnation . (Considering that the whole reason Time existed was because World's budget was slashed, this cameo may fall squarely into Biting-the-Hand Humor and/or Self-Deprecation .) Canon Immigrant : All the Season 2 villains appeared in the 1997 version of the video game, along with four additional villains (Baron Grinnit, Jane Reaction, General Mayhem, and Dee Cryption). Note Baron Wasteland isn't in the video game, but they put a different character with the title "baron" in it. Cardboard Prison : You'd think they'd have fixed it by now with all that fancy technology. Card-Carrying Villain : Carmen, as portrayed in the show's opening, as well as all her crooks. Very much the opposite of her portrayal in the Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? cartoon. (She didn't have any characterization to speak of in the World game show, aside from being annoyed by her crooks' incompetence .) Cartoon Bug-Sprayer : Carried by Buggs Zapper. Perhaps a way to give him some kind of weapon in lieu of an actual gun . He is a gangster, after all. "At ACME Time Net, history is our job! The future is yours!" Carmen: "There's something very special I want you to steal." This was usually followed by: Season 1: "This Info Beam will give you all the details." Season 2: "Bring it back to me in this Loot Orb when you have it." The Chief: "Time Pilots, [a member of Carmen's gang] just stole something from the past! You've got twenty-eight minutes to get it back, or history will change forever!" Kevin: "Let's warp to the time of the crime!" Celebrity Paradox : In the episode on computing, one of the items in the reverse chronological order game is the debut of the first Carmen Sandiego computer game in 1985. Another episode had a clue about what year did "Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?" debut (even having Lynn Thigpen past and present see each other). It was 1991. Couch Gag : What the thief-of-the-week says after being summoned by Carmen at the start of the show. In the second season only, the goofy thing Kevin is doing in his bedroom before he's summoned on stage. Deadpan Snarker : Kevin had some good lines about the villains. Kevin: (on Medeva) Wow. She's like a cross between Dr. Seuss and, like, The Exorcist. Token Good Teammate : Jacqueline Hyde's good "Jacqueline" side. Fully-Clothed Nudity : In the episode where the sewing machine is stolen, the "clue finder" is a tailor who accidentally steals Kevin's clothes, leaving him in Goofy Print Underwear . Game Over Woman : When the clock hit zero in the Trail of Time, the viewers were treated to a scene of Carmen escaping with an Evil Laugh . I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You : Usually at some point in the show in the second season, the villain-of-the-week breaks into ACME communications to gloat about how the Time Pilots will never find them. By describing the time period where they're hiding in great detail. Might also count as Criminal Mind Games . Justified when there was a Data Boost round after that clue, as those were caused by the crook attacking the Chronoskimmer, implying such gloating was likely trying to bait the Time Pilots into a trap. It Runs on Nonsensoleum : The Chronoskimmer runs on "fact fuel" generated by kids answering history questions (right or wrong provides the same amount of power). It's a game show. Just take it. Jekyll & Hyde : Jacqueline Hyde switches between sweet and scary in every sentence, though both side of her are loyal to Carmen. Kick the Dog : In the Mirror Universe skits, the ACME members did things like pouring acid on flowers. Large Ham : Pretty much the whole cast. Laughably Evil : All of Carmen's gang, especially Baron Wasteland. Long Bus Trip : Baron Wasteland, replaced by Buggs Zapper in Season 2. They were played by the same actor. Mirror Universe : In one type of skit, the ACME Agency was evil and V.I.L.E. was good. Kevin always announced the skit by saying, "Oh no! We're being sucked into a parallel universe!" Monumental Theft : It wouldn't be Carmen Sandiego without one. Nintendo Hard : The Trail of Time wasn't this in theory, but it became this in execution. The time pilot would stand in one of six gates and be asked a history question with two answers (Example: It's 1939, what epic movie has its premiere in Atlanta: Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments ?) If they got the answer right, the gate opened, but if they didn't, they had to perform some time-consuming task such as pulling up a rock with a rope. It became downright maddening when they decided to scatter the gates in a big mess, and didn't put any type of trail on the ground (the Engine Crew would point them where to go with airport flashlights). It's led some to believe that PBS deliberately made the whole thing confusing to avoid paying out the grand prize. A number of the questions relate to some of the clues given in the main game. So, it's possible to win with a lack of knowledge if you've been paying attention all game. The Omniscient : Omniscia. Punny Name : It wouldn't be a Carmen Sandiego game without it, although a couple of the puns on the villains' names were less obvious in this show than in World. Buggs Zapper, Baron Wasteland and Jacqueline Hyde were obvious enough. Dr. Belljar and Sir Vile were more obscure, and Medeva was an interesting three-layered pun of Madea, Medieval and Diva. The guides in the computer game were even worse: Ann Tiquity (for adventures in ancient times), Ivan Idea (for anything involving inventors), and Polly Tix are just a few. Real Time : The Chief's dire instruction "you've got 28 minutes to get it back or history will change forever!" referred to the remaining runtime of the episode itself - it was on PBS so there were no commercial breaks. . Rhymes on a Dime : Medeva. "Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme and Sage... What's up, boss? I got your page." Screen Shake : When the Chronoskimmer got hit by something. Self-Deprecation : During a clue, Kevin is prompted by a woman about the new technology of Television. Kevin then describes possible shows one could watch on this new device, including "....a host and three kids chasing an imaginary crook thru time." After the Q&A, Kevin laments that if they don't stop the criminals antics, the show "might not exist." Robot Chicken did a spoof of the show , with Kevin actually doing the voiceover of his character having marital problems while taping an episode of the show. San Dimas Time : The entire point of the series. Every episode has The Chief tell us, "Time Pilots, (name of Carmen's henchman of the episode) just stole something from the past. You've got 28 minutes to get it back or history will change forever!" Shoot the Fuel Tank : The V.I.L.E. villains would sometimes do it to drain the Chronoskimmer's "fact fuel". Of course, it wouldn't explode. Speed Round : While not timed, the "Data Boost" segments served this purpose. They consisted of either/or questions on the buzzers at 5 points each, up or down ( 10 points for the final, "Ultimate Data Boost" ). Similarly, the "Global Pursuit" segment, which was triple choice for 5 points up or down. Suspiciously Similar Substitute : Buggs Zapper, who replaced Baron Wasteland in Season 2. Justified, in that they were played by the same actor. Being a teenager and a Token Good Teammate (well, when her "good" half was dominant, anyway ), not to mention having blond hair in season one (it got redder in season two) and wearing a somewhat similar outfit, Jacqueline Hyde is one for World's Patty Larceny. Techno Babble : A lot of it. What exactly is a "temporal sequencer"? Temporal Paradox : "You have 28 minutes to get it back, or history will change forever!" Timed Mission The "Trail of Time" bonus round was played in 90 seconds. Between the fact that each question chewed up six seconds of your time and you had to work off any wrong answers by opening the gate manually, you needed 4 out of 6 to even have a fighting chance, and that's if you could work the device quickly enough. Five or six, on the other hand, more or less guaranteed a win...although see Nintendo Hard , above. The contestants ostensibly had 28 minutes to recover the object. Given that that's the length of an episode, it's more of a Continue Your Mission, Dammit! , because the structure of the show guarantees that they'll recover the object with enough time to spare to put it back, then attempt a Trail of Time campaign.	Carmen Sandiego
January 15, 1967 saw the first ever Super Bowl as the Kansas City Chiefs lost to whom, by a score of 35-10?	Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (Series) - TV Tropes Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share Series / Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? × Hang on tight! We've got a very big mission but very little time! "We're on the case and we're chasing her through history!" The second game show in the Carmen Sandiego franchise, and the successor to Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? on PBS , Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? challenged kids with history instead of geography. The action took place aboard The Chronoskimmer, a massive floating Time Machine powered by knowledge and dancing crew members. The gumshoes were renamed "Time Pilots", host Kevin Shinick was their "Squadron Leader", and "The Chief" Lynne Thigpen from World had a much less prominent role. And for the first (and, to date, only) time, a live actress played the lady in red herself. The format was virtually identical to that of World. Three contestants answered trivia questions to earn "Power Points" (instead of "ACME Crime Bucks") and track one of Carmen's crooks through time. Eventually, the contestant with the lowest score was sent home with a Consolation Prize package, and the remaining contestants played a mini-game that had them place historic events in reverse chronological order. The winner moved on to the Bonus Round , "The Trail of Time", to try to capture Carmen and win the grand prize. The show lasted for two seasons on PBS and a total of 115 episodes which aired from October 7, 1996 to December 12, 1997 (with reruns airing until October 2, 1998). We're on the case and we're troping her through history! Game Show tropes: Bonus Round : "The Trail of Time". The contestant went through six stations and answered a question at each one. For a correct answer, the door opened and the contestant moved on to the next station; an incorrect answer meant that the contestant had to open the door manually using a pulley, a pump, or whatever was there. Golden Snitch : The reverse chronological order game. The contestant with the most Power Points got to choose who went first, but it was just a matter of luck and memory as far as who won. So a contestant could do poorly on the trivia rounds and still make it to the Bonus Round by winning this game. Losing Horns : The time buzzer in the Trail of Time round was a type A. Carmen herself laughed as well. Personnel: Game Show Host : Kevin Shinick Other tropes: Accidental Misnaming : In Season 2, Episode 44, Kevin Shinick quickly gets frustrated when Thomas Edison comes onboard the Chronoskimmer and repeatedly refers to the former as Wishbone . Without asking the obvious question, of course. How in God's name does Thomas Edison know about ''Wishbone'' years before even the invention of the television? Acme Products : Sort of. Acme Timenet appears to be a spiritual successor or branch of the Acme Detective Agency. Ambiguous Syntax : Jacqueline Hyde: I was just playing catch with my uncle. (switches to Hyde mode) Boy, is he hard to throw! Bad Boss : The episode where Jacqueline Hyde stole the unions was motivated by Carmen worrying what would happen if her minions revolted. Call a Contestant a Time Pilot The Cameo : One episode had the World Chief suddenly appear on the ship as it traveled around 1991, and as you'd expect she wondered where Greg Lee and Rockapella were. Thigpen wore her World costume, and even got to speak with her equally confused future incarnation . (Considering that the whole reason Time existed was because World's budget was slashed, this cameo may fall squarely into Biting-the-Hand Humor and/or Self-Deprecation .) Canon Immigrant : All the Season 2 villains appeared in the 1997 version of the video game, along with four additional villains (Baron Grinnit, Jane Reaction, General Mayhem, and Dee Cryption). Note Baron Wasteland isn't in the video game, but they put a different character with the title "baron" in it. Cardboard Prison : You'd think they'd have fixed it by now with all that fancy technology. Card-Carrying Villain : Carmen, as portrayed in the show's opening, as well as all her crooks. Very much the opposite of her portrayal in the Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? cartoon. (She didn't have any characterization to speak of in the World game show, aside from being annoyed by her crooks' incompetence .) Cartoon Bug-Sprayer : Carried by Buggs Zapper. Perhaps a way to give him some kind of weapon in lieu of an actual gun . He is a gangster, after all. "At ACME Time Net, history is our job! The future is yours!" Carmen: "There's something very special I want you to steal." This was usually followed by: Season 1: "This Info Beam will give you all the details." Season 2: "Bring it back to me in this Loot Orb when you have it." The Chief: "Time Pilots, [a member of Carmen's gang] just stole something from the past! You've got twenty-eight minutes to get it back, or history will change forever!" Kevin: "Let's warp to the time of the crime!" Celebrity Paradox : In the episode on computing, one of the items in the reverse chronological order game is the debut of the first Carmen Sandiego computer game in 1985. Another episode had a clue about what year did "Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?" debut (even having Lynn Thigpen past and present see each other). It was 1991. Couch Gag : What the thief-of-the-week says after being summoned by Carmen at the start of the show. In the second season only, the goofy thing Kevin is doing in his bedroom before he's summoned on stage. Deadpan Snarker : Kevin had some good lines about the villains. Kevin: (on Medeva) Wow. She's like a cross between Dr. Seuss and, like, The Exorcist. Token Good Teammate : Jacqueline Hyde's good "Jacqueline" side. Fully-Clothed Nudity : In the episode where the sewing machine is stolen, the "clue finder" is a tailor who accidentally steals Kevin's clothes, leaving him in Goofy Print Underwear . Game Over Woman : When the clock hit zero in the Trail of Time, the viewers were treated to a scene of Carmen escaping with an Evil Laugh . I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You : Usually at some point in the show in the second season, the villain-of-the-week breaks into ACME communications to gloat about how the Time Pilots will never find them. By describing the time period where they're hiding in great detail. Might also count as Criminal Mind Games . Justified when there was a Data Boost round after that clue, as those were caused by the crook attacking the Chronoskimmer, implying such gloating was likely trying to bait the Time Pilots into a trap. It Runs on Nonsensoleum : The Chronoskimmer runs on "fact fuel" generated by kids answering history questions (right or wrong provides the same amount of power). It's a game show. Just take it. Jekyll & Hyde : Jacqueline Hyde switches between sweet and scary in every sentence, though both side of her are loyal to Carmen. Kick the Dog : In the Mirror Universe skits, the ACME members did things like pouring acid on flowers. Large Ham : Pretty much the whole cast. Laughably Evil : All of Carmen's gang, especially Baron Wasteland. Long Bus Trip : Baron Wasteland, replaced by Buggs Zapper in Season 2. They were played by the same actor. Mirror Universe : In one type of skit, the ACME Agency was evil and V.I.L.E. was good. Kevin always announced the skit by saying, "Oh no! We're being sucked into a parallel universe!" Monumental Theft : It wouldn't be Carmen Sandiego without one. Nintendo Hard : The Trail of Time wasn't this in theory, but it became this in execution. The time pilot would stand in one of six gates and be asked a history question with two answers (Example: It's 1939, what epic movie has its premiere in Atlanta: Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments ?) If they got the answer right, the gate opened, but if they didn't, they had to perform some time-consuming task such as pulling up a rock with a rope. It became downright maddening when they decided to scatter the gates in a big mess, and didn't put any type of trail on the ground (the Engine Crew would point them where to go with airport flashlights). It's led some to believe that PBS deliberately made the whole thing confusing to avoid paying out the grand prize. A number of the questions relate to some of the clues given in the main game. So, it's possible to win with a lack of knowledge if you've been paying attention all game. The Omniscient : Omniscia. Punny Name : It wouldn't be a Carmen Sandiego game without it, although a couple of the puns on the villains' names were less obvious in this show than in World. Buggs Zapper, Baron Wasteland and Jacqueline Hyde were obvious enough. Dr. Belljar and Sir Vile were more obscure, and Medeva was an interesting three-layered pun of Madea, Medieval and Diva. The guides in the computer game were even worse: Ann Tiquity (for adventures in ancient times), Ivan Idea (for anything involving inventors), and Polly Tix are just a few. Real Time : The Chief's dire instruction "you've got 28 minutes to get it back or history will change forever!" referred to the remaining runtime of the episode itself - it was on PBS so there were no commercial breaks. . Rhymes on a Dime : Medeva. "Parsley, Rosemary, Thyme and Sage... What's up, boss? I got your page." Screen Shake : When the Chronoskimmer got hit by something. Self-Deprecation : During a clue, Kevin is prompted by a woman about the new technology of Television. Kevin then describes possible shows one could watch on this new device, including "....a host and three kids chasing an imaginary crook thru time." After the Q&A, Kevin laments that if they don't stop the criminals antics, the show "might not exist." Robot Chicken did a spoof of the show , with Kevin actually doing the voiceover of his character having marital problems while taping an episode of the show. San Dimas Time : The entire point of the series. Every episode has The Chief tell us, "Time Pilots, (name of Carmen's henchman of the episode) just stole something from the past. You've got 28 minutes to get it back or history will change forever!" Shoot the Fuel Tank : The V.I.L.E. villains would sometimes do it to drain the Chronoskimmer's "fact fuel". Of course, it wouldn't explode. Speed Round : While not timed, the "Data Boost" segments served this purpose. They consisted of either/or questions on the buzzers at 5 points each, up or down ( 10 points for the final, "Ultimate Data Boost" ). Similarly, the "Global Pursuit" segment, which was triple choice for 5 points up or down. Suspiciously Similar Substitute : Buggs Zapper, who replaced Baron Wasteland in Season 2. Justified, in that they were played by the same actor. Being a teenager and a Token Good Teammate (well, when her "good" half was dominant, anyway ), not to mention having blond hair in season one (it got redder in season two) and wearing a somewhat similar outfit, Jacqueline Hyde is one for World's Patty Larceny. Techno Babble : A lot of it. What exactly is a "temporal sequencer"? Temporal Paradox : "You have 28 minutes to get it back, or history will change forever!" Timed Mission The "Trail of Time" bonus round was played in 90 seconds. Between the fact that each question chewed up six seconds of your time and you had to work off any wrong answers by opening the gate manually, you needed 4 out of 6 to even have a fighting chance, and that's if you could work the device quickly enough. Five or six, on the other hand, more or less guaranteed a win...although see Nintendo Hard , above. The contestants ostensibly had 28 minutes to recover the object. Given that that's the length of an episode, it's more of a Continue Your Mission, Dammit! , because the structure of the show guarantees that they'll recover the object with enough time to spare to put it back, then attempt a Trail of Time campaign.	i don't know
Who starred along side Glen Campbell in the 1969 movie True Grit, based on a 1968 novel by Charles Portis?	True Grit (1969) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A drunken, hard-nosed U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn teenager track down her father's murderer in Indian territory. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 40 titles created 31 Mar 2011 a list of 28 titles created 15 Oct 2011 a list of 37 titles created 03 May 2013 a list of 43 titles created 11 months ago a list of 38 titles created 6 months ago Search for " True Grit " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 7 nominations. See more awards » Videos Marshal Rooster Cogburn unwillingly teams up with Eula Goodnight to track down the killers of her father. Director: Stuart Millar A senator, who became famous for killing a notorious outlaw, returns for the funeral of an old friend and tells the truth about his deed. Director: John Ford Ranch owner Katie Elder's four sons determine to avenge the murder of their father and the swindling of their mother. Director: Henry Hathaway A dying gunfighter spends his last days looking for a way to die with a minimum of pain and a maximum of dignity. Director: Don Siegel A Civil War veteran embarks on a journey to rescue his two nieces from an Indian tribe. Director: John Ford 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X Cole Thornton, a gunfighter for hire, joins forces with an old friend, Sheriff J.P. Hara. Together with an old Indian fighter and a gambler, they help a rancher and his family fight a rival rancher that is trying to steal their water. Director: Howard Hawks A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a cripple, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy. Director: Howard Hawks A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn teenager track down her father's murderer. Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Stars: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Hailee Steinfeld After the Civil War, Cord McNally searches for the traitor whose perfidy caused the defeat of McNally's unit and the loss of a close friend. Director: Howard Hawks In 1909, when John Fain's gang kidnaps Big Jake McCandles' grandson and hold him for ransom, Big Jake sets out to rescue the boy. Directors: George Sherman, John Wayne Stars: John Wayne, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Hara When his cattle drivers abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his drivers in order to get his herd to market in time to ... See full summary » Director: Mark Rydell Wealthy rancher G.W. McLintock uses his power and influence in the territory to keep the peace between farmers, ranchers, land-grabbers, Indians and corrupt government officials. Director: Andrew V. McLaglen Edit Storyline The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy, Mattie Ross, (Kim Darby), on a mission of "justice", which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, "Rooster" Cogburn (John Wayne), because he has "grit", and a reputation of getting the job done. The two are joined by a Texas Ranger, La Boeuf, (Glen Campbell), who is looking for the same man (Jeff Corey) for a separate murder in Texas. Their odyssey takes them from Fort Smith, Arkansas, deep into the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) to find their man. Written by John Vogel <[email protected]> [edited] A Brand New Brand Of American Frontier Story See more » Genres: 21 June 1969 (Japan) See more » Also Known As: Temple de acero See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Jim Burk doubled for John Wayne in the final jumping fence stunt at the end. See more » Goofs Rooster mentions that he lived for some years in Cairo, Illinois, but he mispronounces the name of the town. The local pronunciation is KAY-row. See more » Quotes Frank Ross : Little Frank... You take care of your mama. Little Frank: I will. (Tunbridge Wells, England) – See all my reviews "True Grit" deals with one of the classic Western themes, indeed one of the classic themes in all literature- revenge. A teenage girl, Mattie Ross, is looking for someone who will help her track down Tom Chaney, the man who murdered her father. The man Mattie chooses is Rooster Cogburn, a US Marshal. Cogburn is elderly, fat, one-eyed and a heavy drinker, but Mattie chooses him because she has heard that he has "true grit". The two of them set out into the Indian Territory in search of Chaney, accompanied by La Boeuf (shouldn't that be Le Boeuf?), a Texas ranger who wants to arrest him in connection with another murder. This is perhaps best remembered today as the film for which John Wayne won his only Oscar. Halliwell's Film Guide rather ungraciously refers to it as a "sentimental Oscar, for daring to look old and fat", but there is more to Wayne's performance than that. The Academy, in fact, had tended to overlook Wayne, just as they overlooked the Western genre which provided him with most of his roles; well over a hundred films had only brought him two previous nominations. Cogburn, however, was one of his best roles. On the surface a hard-bitten, irascible old man, he has hidden depths to his character- not only the courage and determination implied by the phrase "true grit", but also a sense of humour and a capacity for tenderness. Cogburn is a lonely man, divorced from his wife and alienated from his only son, and his only friends are a Chinese storekeeper (a rare acknowledgement from Hollywood that not every inhabitant of the West was either white or an Indian) and his cat. A close relationship, however, grows up between him and the orphaned Mattie, for whom he becomes a substitute father. In turn, she becomes the daughter he never had- or perhaps even a substitute son. Mattie is a complex character. There is much about her that is androgynous- her tomboy looks, her short hair, even her name, which can be short for Matthew as well as Matilda or Martha. She is brave and determined (there is a suggestion that the phrase "true grit" applies to her as well), but can also be a pain in the neck, especially to Cogburn. She is at times wise in the ways of the world and at others strangely innocent. She is part avenging angel, part bookish intellectual (shown by her rather formal language) and part vulnerable child. It is a role that called for an outstanding performance and got one from Kim Darby who was able to bring out all the various facets of Mattie's character. (This is the only film of hers that I have seen, but it seems strange on the strength of this that her subsequent cinema career has been so patchy). Unfortunately, Glenn Campbell, a singer with little previous acting experience, made a weak La Boeuf. It is probably as well that John Wayne did not get his way when he wanted Karen Carpenter, a singer with absolutely no previous acting experience, to play the role of Mattie instead of Darby. Great actors do not always make great casting directors. "True Grit" does not perhaps have the depth of meaning of some of the truly great Westerns, such as "High Noon", "Unforgiven" or Wayne's last film, "The Shootist", but it is a very good one. It is a fast-moving and exciting adventure, notable for some beautiful photography of mountainous landscapes (although it is ostensibly set in relatively flat Oklahoma, it was actually filmed in Colorado and California), for one of the great iconic moments of the Western (the scene where Cogburn gallops alone into battle, guns blazing, against four opponents) and for two excellent performances in the two main roles. 7/10 48 of 70 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes	John Wayne
What radio station do you find at 710 on your local AM dial?	The Believer - Like Cormac McCarthy, But Funny The Believer LIKE CORMAC MCCARTHY, BUT FUNNY CHARLES PORTIS, AUTHOR OF TRUE GRIT, GOT JOHN WAYNE HIS ONLY OSCAR. HE ONCE HAD KARL MARX’S OLD GIG (AS THE LONDON BUREAU CHIEF FOR THE NEW YORK HERALD-TRIBUNE). HE’S WRITTEN FOUR OTHER NOVELS, THREE OF THEM MASTERPIECES, THOUGH WHICH THREE IS UP FOR DEBATE. HERE’S 7,000 WORDS ABOUT A GUY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF. BUT SHOULD, WE SAY. DISCUSSED: Dr. Slaughter, Gringos, The Dog of the South, Turnip Greens, a Japanese Napkin-Folding Club, Ink-Stained Wretchdom, Gore, True Grit, the Old Testament, Glen Campbtell, the Covered Path, Occult Mischief, Ambidextrous Romanians, Pure Nitro. I. AMONG THE JOURNALIST ANTS In 1964, in the midst of so-called Swinging London, Charles McColl Portis had Karl Marx’s old job. Portis (who turns seventy this year) was thirty at the time, not yet a novelist, just a newspaperman seemingly blessed by that guild’s gods. His situational Marxism would have been hard to predict. Delivered into this world by the “ominous Dr. Slaughter” in El Dorado, Arkansas, in 1933, Charles Portis—sometimes “Charlie” or “Buddy”—had grown up in towns along the Arkla border, enlisted in the Marines after high school and fought in the Korean War. Upon his discharge in 1955, he majored in journalism at the University of Arkansas (imagining it might be “fun and not very hard, something like barber college”), and after graduation worked at the appealingly named Memphis Commercial Appeal. He soon returned to his native state, writing for the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock. He left for New York in 1960, and became a general assignment reporter at the now defunct New York Herald-Tribune, working out of what has to be one of the more formidable newsroom incubators in history—his comrades included Tom Wolfe (who would later dub him the “original laconic cutup”) and future Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham. Norwood’s titular ex-Marine, after a fruitless few days in Gotham, saw it as “the hateful town,” and Portis himself had once suggested (in response to an aspersion against Arkansas in the pages of Time), that Manhattan be buried in turnip greens; still, he stayed for three years. He apparently thrived, for he was tapped as the Trib’s London bureau chief and reporter—the latter post held in the 1850s by the author of The Communist Manifesto (1848). (More specifically, his predecessor had been a London correspondent for the pre-merger New York Herald.) Recently, in a rare interview for the Gazette Project at the University of Arkansas, Portis recalls telling his boss that the paper “might have saved us all a lot of grief if it had only paid Marx a little better.” [ 1 ] Indeed, as Portis notes in his second novel, the bestselling True Grit (1968), “You will sometimes let money interfere with your notions of what is right.” If Marx had decided to loosen up, Portis wouldn’t have gone to Korea, to serve in that first war waged over communism, and (in the relentless logic of these things) wouldn’t have put together his first protagonist, taciturn Korea vet Norwood Pratt, in quite the same way. Perhaps the well would have run dry—fast. Instead of writing five remarkable, deeply entertaining novels (three of them surely masterpieces, though which three is up for debate), Portis could be in England still, grinding out copy by the column inch, saying “cheers” when replacing the phone. In any event, Portis left not only England but ink-stained wretchdom itself—“quit cold,” as Wolfe writes in “The Birth of the New Journalism: An Eyewitness Report” (1972), later the introduction to the 1973 anthology The New Journalism. After sailing back to the States on “one of the Mauretania’s last runs,” he reportedly holed up in his version of Proust’s cork-lined study—a fishing shack back in Arkansas—to try his hand at fiction. These journalists work pretty fast, and the slim picaresque Norwood appeared in 1966, to favorable notice. Portis’s signature drollery and itinerant protagonist (Norwood Pratt, auto mechanic and aspiring country singer, ranges from Ralph, Texas, to New York City and back, initially to recover seventy dollars loaned to a service buddy) are already in place. The supporting cast includes a midget, a loaf-groping bread deliveryman and a sapient chicken, and a looser hand might have plunged the tale into mere chaos or grotesquerie. But Portis’s sense of proportion is flawless, and the resulting panorama, clocking in at under 200 pages, stays snapshot-sharp throughout—a road novel as indispensible as On the Road itself. [ 2 ] With reportorial precision, and without condescension, Norwood captures all manner of reflex babble, the extravagant grammar of commercial appeal—stray words bathed in the exhaust of a Trailways bus. This omnivorous little book has a high metabolism, digesting everything from homemade store signs (“I Do Not Loan Tools”) and military-base graffiti to actuarial come-ons and mail-order ads for discount diamonds. Appropriately enough, the characters are constantly chowing down. On one leg of the journey, Edmund B. Ratner (formerly the “world’s smallest perfect man,” before he porked out) and Norwood’s new sweetheart, Rita Lee Chipman, are described as having eaten their way through the Great Smoky Mountains. Norwood’s decidedly humble (call it American) menu nails the country’s midcentury gastronomy with a precision that today takes on near archaeological value: canned peaches, marshmallows, Vienna sausages, cottage cheese with salt and pepper, a barbecue sandwich washed down with NuGrape, a potted meat sandwich with mustard, butter on ham sandwiches, biscuit and Br’er Rabbit Syrup sandwiches, an Automat hot dog on a dish of baked beans, Cokes and corn chips and Nabs crackers, a Clark bar, peanuts fizzing in Pepsi, a frozen Milky Way. * No bloat for Portis, and no sophomore slump, either: In 1968 The Saturday Evening Post serialized True Grit, a western that both satisfies and subverts the genre. (The only title of his to have remained almost continuously in print, True Grit has just been republished by Overlook, joining that press’s recent paperback reissues of the author’s four other books.) The novel, published later that year by Simon & Schuster, could hardly seem more out of step with the countercultural spirit of ’68. [ 3 ] Writing in 1928 (i.e., on the eve of the Great Depression), a spinster banker named Mattie Ross revisits the central chapter in her life: the winter of 1873, when, as a fourteen-year-old from Yell County, Arkansas, she hunted down her father’s killer, Tom Chaney, with the help of a tough U.S. marshal that she hires (the “old one-eyed jasper” Rooster Cogurn) and a young Texas Ranger (the cowlicked LaBoeuf). “Thank God for the Harrison Narcotics Law,” Mattie declares, in what might have read as a sort of antediluvian rebuke to the era of one-pill-makes-you-listen-to-Jefferson-Airplane. “Also the Volstead Act.” Mattie never minces words or judgments—she’s not from Yell County for nothing—and the poles of wrong and right are firmly fixed. Unlike Huck Finn, to whose narrative hers is sometimes compared, Mattie knows the Bible back to front, handily settling spiritual debates by citing chapter and verse. To those men of the cloth, for example, who might conceivably take issue with her belief that there’s something sinister about swine, she says: “Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26–33.” [ 4 ] (Portis’s father was a Scripture-studying schoolteacher, and his mother—whose name he gives to the steamer Alice Waddell—was the daughter of a Methodist minister.) Her steadfast, unsentimental voice—Portis’s sublime ventriloquism—maintains such purity of purpose that the prose seems engraved rather than merely writ. When Roy Blount, Jr., says that Portis “could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he’d rather be funny,” he may be both remembering and forgetting True Grit, which for all its high spirits is organized along a blood meridian, fraught with ominous slaughter. Blood literally stains the book’s first and last sentences, and Rooster, though admirable in his tenacity and his paternal protectiveness of Mattie, has a half-hidden history of trigger-happy law enforcement and less defensible acts of carnage. Indeed, the Overlook reprint provides a necessary corrective for latter-day Portis enthusiasts, a prism for the acts of violence in his other books: the cathartic fistfight punctuating Norwood’s homecoming and Gringos’ startlingly gory if swift climax. (The latter novel’s narrator, Jimmy Burns, is also a Korean War vet, and Norwood reveals to Rita Lee that he killed two men “that I know of” in that conflict.) Portis’s current reputation as a keen comedian of human quirks, though well-deserved, is limiting. Put another way: After cars, Portis is most familiar with the classification and care of guns. (Even Ray Midge, the ever-observant milquetoast who tells his story in 1979’s The Dog of the South, knows his firearms.) Not that True Grit stints on comedy—in one of the funniest set pieces to be found in all of Portisland, Rooster, LaBoeuf, and a Choctaw policeman suddenly break into an escalating marksmanship contest, pitching corn dodgers two at a time and trying to hit both, eventually depleting a third of their rations. Mattie’s precocious capacity for hard-bargain-driving (selling back ponies to the beleaguered livestock trader Stonehill) is revealed in expertly structured repartee, and her rock-ribbed responses to distasteful situations amuse with their catechism cadences. (When Rooster, in his cups, offers sick Mattie a spoonful of booze, she intones, “I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains”). But Mattie also re-creates, poignantly and despite herself, her stark discovery of a world gone suddenly wrong, and what had to be done to set it right. Old Testament resonances are always close at hand: Her father’s killer bears a powder mark on his face, a Cain figure to say the least, and not to be pitied, and her own taste for frontier justice will lead her into a pit of terror, biblically populated by snakes. The price that Mattie pays may be greater than she knows. True Grit’s fame, of course, extends well beyond the book itself. The phrase has lodged in the culture, somewhere below catch-22 and above nymphet. And Henry Hathaway’s enjoyable if foreshortened film version (1969) firmly yokes the story to John Wayne, who at sixty-two won his only Oscar for his portrayal of Rooster. Alas, the movie (which also stars Kim Darby as Mattie and Glen Campbell as LaBoeuf) doesn’t capture the retrospective quality of Mattie’s voice, as she fixes on the events over the widening gulf of years (“Time just gets away from us,” she writes, in the book’s penultimate and heartbreaking line). Wayne, in a full-bodied performance, draws the focus away from his employer/charge, so that the title refers far more to Rooster than Mattie. [ 5 ] Some see the book as Portis’s albatross. Ron Rosenbaum, whose enthusiasm for the novelist’s lesser-known works was instrumental in their republication, found it necessary (in a 1998 Esquire piece) to distance Portis from his most famous creation (“too popular for its own good”), in order to make his case for the true gems of the Portis canon. But the novel occupies a position similar to that of Lolita in relation to Nabokov’s works: Though it might not be your personal favorite, it cannot be subtracted from the oeuvre; nor can his other writings fall outside its shadow. [ 7 ] it’s possible that True Grit is the genuine article—a book so strong that it reads as myth. As Wolfe notes of Portis’s enviable success: “He made a fortune… A fishing shack! In Arkansas! It was too goddamned perfect to be true, and yet there it was.” And here it is—here it is, again. * In The New Journalism, Wolfe invokes the original laconic cutup, who happened to sit one desk behind him at the Trib office south of Times Square, as stubborn proof that the dream of the Novel—with its fortune-changing, culture-denting potential—never really died, even at a time when journalists were discovering new narrative ranges, fiction-trumping special effects. There was only one trophy worth typing for, one white whale worth the by-line and fishing wire, the Great, or even just the Pretty Good, American Novel, and Charlie Portis was going to try and snag it. Or maybe the scoopmonger’s life just bugged him. In “Your Action Line,” a two-page lark published in The New Yorker at the end of 1977 (still in the eleven-year no-novel zone between True Grit and The Dog of the South), Portis addressed such pressing queries as “Can you put me in touch with a Japanese napkin-folding club?” (If a similar peep had emerged from Camp Salinger, it would scan as Zen koan.) The exchange ends with encyclopedia-caliber dope on a heretofore obscure insect: Q—My science teacher told me to write a paper on the “detective ants” of Ceylon, and I can’t find anything about these ants. Don’t tell me to go to the library, because I’ve already been there. A—There are no ants in Ceylon. Your teacher may be thinking of the “journalist ants” of central Burma. These bright-red insects grow to a maximum length of one-quarter inch, and they are tireless workers, scurrying about on the forest floor and gathering tiny facts, which they store in their abdominal sacs. When the sacs are filled, they coat these facts with a kind of nacreous glaze and exchange them for bits of yellow wax manufactured by the smaller and slower “wax ants.” The journalist ants burrow extensive tunnels and galleries beneath Burmese villages, and the villagers, reclining at night on their straw mats, can often hear a steady hum from the earth. This hum is believed to be the ants sifting fine particles of information with their feelers in the dark. Diminutive grunts can sometimes be heard, too, but these are thought to come not from the journalist ants but from their albino slaves, the “butting dwarf ants,” who spend their entire lives tamping wax into tiny storage chambers with their heads. If Portis had long since escaped the formicary, his books nevertheless continued to draw on his previous work environment. Here and there, fixed in amber, his former fellow ants appear. Heading the London bureau, Portis kept getting entangled in “management comedies,” expending too much precious time trying to stamp out unscrupulous freeloaders; he describes (for the Gazette Project) setting up a small sting operation to nab a writer who was using a tenuous Trib association—a single review, written years prior—to score theater tickets gratis. But Portis’s fictional portraits of the less-upstanding members of the trade are not without a certain affection. The rogues are legion: Norwood breaks bread in Manhattan with Heineman, a freelance travel writer (supposedly on deadline for a Trib piece) who writes articles on Peru from his Eleventh Street digs and frankly aspires to the freeloading condition. (Laziness, he confesses, holds him back.) In Masters of Atlantis, hack extraordinaire Dub Polton, commissioned to compose the biography of Gnomon Society head Lamar Jimmerson, has a formidable reputation (“He wrote So This Is Omaha! in a single afternoon,” says one awed Gnomon), and is so confident in his vision for Hoosier Wizard that he doesn’t take down a single note. The master of this subspecies of charlatan might be overweening travel writer Chick Jardine. In Portis’s jaunty 1992 story for The Atlantic, “Nights Can Turn Cold in Viborra,” the consummate insider confesses to his readers, “I seldom reveal my identity to ordinary people,” while taking pains to mention his “trademark turquoise jacket”—perhaps a gentle dig at the dapper Wolfe. Chick has also devised a product called the Adjective Wheel, which he sells to his fellow (well, lesser) travel writers at $24.95 a pop. [ 8 ] More abusive than even writers, of course, are editors. In the Gazette Project interview, Portis mentions a job in college for a regional paper, where he edited the country correspondence: …from these lady stringers in Goshen and Elkins, those places. I had to type it up. They wrote with hard-lead pencils on tablet paper or notebook paper, but their handwriting was good and clear. Much better than mine. Their writing, too, for that matter. From those who weren’t self-conscious about it. Those who hadn’t taken some writing course. My job was to edit out all the life and charm from these homely reports. Some fine old country expression, or a nice turn of phrase—out they went. Perhaps as penance for these early deletions, he created Mattie Ross, whose idiosyncratic style is most immediately identifiable by her liberal, seemingly arbitrary use of “quotation marks”—as if to let a phrase “stand alone” was to risk having it “fall by the wayside” at the whim of some “blue pencil.” (A brief list of Mattie’s punctuated preferences would include “Lone Star State,” “scrap,” “that good part,” “moonshiners,” “dopeheads,” “Wild West,” “land of Nod,” “pickle,” and “night hoss.”) The punctuation not only highlights the phrases in question—some of them perhaps “old country expressions” of the time—but also comes to reflect her thriftiness. If True Grit is Mattie’s true account, meant for publication, then the quote marks act as preservatives—insurance that her hard work will not be weeded out by some editorial know-it-all. Quotation marks mean the thing is true—to the degree that someone said it, or that it had some currency then. [ 9 ] For Mattie has, apparently, tried her hand at the freelance game. An earlier experience with the magazine world came to grief. She has written a “good historical article,” based mostly on her firsthand observation of a Fort Smith trial, prior to meeting Rooster Cogburn. Though the piece has a rather vivid (or as she would say, “graphic”) title—“You will now listen to the sentence of the law, Odus Wharton, which is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead dead! May God, whose laws you have broken and before whose dread tribunal you must appear, have mercy upon your soul. Being a personal recollection of Isaac C. Parker, the famous Border Judge”—the magazine world “would rather print trash.” As for newspapers, the cheapskate editors “are great ones for reaping where they do not sow”—always hoping to short-change contributors, or else sending reporters around to get an interview gratis. Ever the banker, Mattie means for her story to make money—which True Grit went ahead and did. * Totting up his fee sheets, a struggling Rooster opines that unschooled men like himself have a raw deal. “No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home.” A century hence, this orthographical ace might be Raymond E. Midge, the twenty-six-year-old ex–copy editor and perpetual college student who narrates The Dog of the South (1979). That Portis effortlessly makes Midge, a nitpicking, book-burrowing cuckold, as indelible and appealing as the battle-scarred man of action (or strong-willed girl revenger) is ample proof of his scope and skill. Thanks to a few wizards of international fiction, the proofreader has had some pivotal roles—Hugh Person in Nabokov’s Transparent Things (1972), Raimundo Silva in Jose Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1996). Denizens of the copy desk have not enjoyed a similar literary profile. Though the professions bear some resemblance, the latter’s task is more Sisyphean and perhaps more conducive to despair—sweating the details on something as disposable as a newspaper, in most cases gone inside a week, if not a day. No novel captures the occupation’s particular brand of virtues and neuroses as well as The Dog of the South; it’s the perfect job (or former job) for a character so constitutionally driven to remark on deviations from the norm. (At twenty-six, he’s lived as many years as there are letters in the alphabet.) Ray Midge sets out for British Honduras to recover his car and perhaps Norma, his wife [ 10 ] —both stolen by his former co-worker, the misanthropic Guy Dupree. Dupree’s errant behavior—he’s finally investigated for writing hostile letters to the president—and burgeoning anarcho-communist tendencies reflect a harsh if hysterical world view possibly aggravated by his days in the newspaper office: “He hardly spoke at all except to mutter ‘Crap’ or ‘What crap’ as he processed news matter, affecting a contempt for all events on earth and for the written accounts of those events.” [ 11 ] Midge, conversely, pays enormous attention to all events on earth, and The Dog of the South, his written account of them, allows the reader to share his pleasure. “In South Texas I saw three interesting things,” he writes, and then lists them. Indeed, he’s inordinately proud of his better-than-average vision, noting that he can “see stars down to the seventh magnitude.” Perhaps it is something to boast about, but in compensation for his assorted failings, he seems to have attributed to his eyesight super-hypnotic powers: I watched the windows for Norma, for flitting shadows. I was always good at catching roach movement or mouse movement from the corner of my eye. Small or large, any object in my presence had only to change its position slightly, by no more than a centimeter, and my head would snap about and the thing would be instantly trapped by my gaze. * A military history buff with “sixty-six lineal feet” of books on the topic (he would know the exact dimensions), Midge sees himself on a mission, and in his hilarious, unconscious self-inflation, he makes vermin sound like Panzer units trying some new formation. Freed from copy editing, then, Midge proceeds to read the world at large, the way any good Portis protagonist would—but his job training means his observations are that much more acute. He contemplates spelling errors (a strange man hands him a card that reads, inscrutably, “adios AMIGO and watch out for the FLORR!”), the abysmal Spanish-language skills of his traveling companion, Dr. Reo Symes, and the bizarrely mangled locutions of the chummy Father Jackie (e.g., wanter instead of water). Encountering an emergency flood relief effort, Midge fervently pitches in, but is nevertheless distracted when a British officer reprimands someone “to stay away from his vehicles ‘in future’—rather than ‘in the future.’” It’s funny enough the first time; when a similar omission occurs twelve pages later, after Midge discovers Norma in the hospital (“I would have to take that up with doctor—not ‘with the doctor’”), the repetition alleviates, if just for an instant, the unspoken sadness that’s dawning on him. In British Honduras, Midge meets Melba, the friend of Dr. Symes’s mother. At Symes’s insistence, he reads two of her stories, and like an amateur Don Foster, he notes certain compositional tendencies: Melba had broken the transition problem wide open by starting every paragraph with “Moreover.” She freely used “the former” and “the latter” and every time I ran into one of them I had to backtrack to see whom she was talking about. She was also fond of “inasmuch” and “crestfallen.” Like all good copy editors, Midge is something of a pedant; nevertheless he seems more to relish than disdain such human details. He may debate, at length, some nicety of Civil War lore, but he rarely passes judgment on the people he meets, even when they forget his name: Dr. Symes calls him Speed; an addled Dupree mistakes him for Burke (yet another copy editor); for some reason, Father Jackie thinks his name is Brad. But names are important, as a character asserts in Masters of Atlantis. Midge notes the nominal errors with exclamation points, but no real outrage, until the end of his quest, when a dazed Norma calls him by Dupree’s first name—not just once, but repeatedly. It’s the only slip that really hurts. “I was interested in everything,” Midge confesses early on, and in the book’s final paragraph, right before his quietly devastating revelation which colors all that has come before, Midge notes that upon his return to Little Rock he finally received his BA, and is contemplating graduate work in plate tectonics. He wants to literally read the world, to study its layers and its lives. II. THE BALLOONIST At age nine, a daydreaming Portis conducted underwater breathing experiments at Smackover Creek—a life-saving measure, rehearsed in the eventuality of pursuit by Axis nasties. The toponym, he explains in “Combinations of Jacksons” (published in the May 1999 Atlantic), is “an Arkansas rendering of ‘chemin couvert,’ covered path, or road.’” Few could have predicted that after the brisk gestation of Norwood and True Grit, eleven years would pass before The Dog of the South emerged, a period that constitutes a chemin couvert of sorts. Silence, with side orders of cunning and exile, can lend luster to a writer’s work. Deep processes are afoot, some calculus of genius or madness, penury or plenty. Given the Central American trail of Dog and Gringos, and the occult mischief of Masters, one imagines Portis hitting the road, unearthing pre-Columbian glazeware, eavesdropping in hotel bars—and reading, reading, reading: Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis and Colonel James Churchward’s Lost Continent of Mu, special-interest magazines like the ufological Gamma Bulletin, dense books “with footnotes longer than the text proper,” to say nothing of the whole of Romanian fiction, which contains “not a single novel with a coherent plot.” That earlier Portisian lag, alas, is now officially smaller than the one between 1991’s Gringos and whatever he’s currently working on. In Portis’s last book to date, Jimmy Burns observes of a fellow expat: Frank didn’t write anything, or at least he didn’t publish anything… The Olmecs didn’t like to show their art around either. They buried it twenty-five feet deep in the earth and came back with spades to check up on it every ten years or so, to make sure it was still there, unviolated. Then they covered it up again. Is a new cycle of Portisian activity on the horizon, at the end of a decade-and-change? The recent magazine appearances of “Combinations of Jacksons” (1999) and “Motel Life, Lower Reaches” (2003), memoiristic pieces that bookend the Overlook reprint project, is enough to make one wonder whether (or if you’re me, pray that) Portis is writing at length about his life. Maybe he’ll fill in the blanks, reveal what he’s been up to all these years, though if anyone understands the character of silence, the value of secrets, it’s Charles Portis. The Dog of the South contains its own Portis doppelgänger—its own commentary on authorial mystique—in the figure of John Selmer Dix, MA, the elusive writer of With Wings as Eagles, which he penned entirely on a bus, a board across his lap, traveling from Dallas to L.A. and back again for a year. His whereabouts remain a mystery; assorted reported sightings, like those of Bigfoot or Nessie, cannot be taken at face value. Dr. Reo Symes, the most vigorous, wildly comic jabberjaw in all of Portisland, is Wings’s unlikely champion (“pure nitro,” he calls it)—a huckster on the skids who maintains an unlikely reverence for what appears to be nothing more than a salesman’s primer and its reticent creator. Symes’s limitless patter circles the indissoluble truths contained in this criminally overlooked document, and his earnest-rabid claims for With Wings as Eagles sound not unlike those of Portis fanatics to the uninitiated: “Read it, then read it again. … The Three T’s. The Five Don’ts. The Seven Elements. Stoking the fires of the U.S.S. Reality. Making the Pep Squad and staying on it.” All else in the world of letters is “foul grunting.” When Midge modestly counters that Shakespeare is considered the greatest writer who ever lived, the doctor responds without hesitation, “Dix puts William Shakespeare in the shithouse.” Midge, “still on the alert for chance messages,” reads a few pages of Symes’s copy of Wings, but finds its dialectical materialism a touch opaque: He said you must save your money but you must not be afraid to spend it either, and at the same time you must give no thought to money. A lot of his stuff was formulated in this way. You must do this and that, two contrary things, and you must also be careful to do neither. * As important to Symes as the visible text is what happened after its publication, the story behind the story, during the time when Dix “repudiated all his early stuff, said Wings was nothing but trash, and didn’t write another line, they say, for twelve years.” Symes has an alternate theory: He believes Dix continued writing, at greater length and with even more intense insight, but “for some reason that we can’t understand yet he wanted to hold it all back from the reading public, let them squeal how they may.” Thousands of pages repose in Dix’s large tin trunk—which, of course, is nowhere to be found. * Portis’s trunk resurfaces, after a fashion, in his next book, Masters of Atlantis (1985), which sustains its seemingly one-joke premise through tireless comic invention and an ever-shifting narrative focus. At once the oddest ball among his works and a full-vent treatment of themes common to Dog and Gringos, a clearinghouse of obscurantist scribblings and a satire that skewers without malice, Portis’s sprawling third novel loosely follows the life of Lamar Jimmerson, whose eventual sedentary existence is in perverse contrast to the typical Portis rambler. Jimmerson’s destiny crystallizes after the First World War, when a grateful derilect gives him a booklet crammed with Greek and triangles—an Nth-generation copy of the Codex Pappus, containing the wisdom of lost Atlantis. Portis’s inspired tweaking of subterranean belief systems touches on alchemy, lost-continent lore, and reams of secret-society mumbo-jumbo. The original codex, written untold millennia ago, survived its civilization’s destruction in an ivory casket, which eventually washed ashore in Egypt, to be decoded after much effort by none other than Hermes Trismegistus (the mythical figure deified by the Egyptians as Thoth, the Greeks as Hermes, and the Romans as Mercury). Hermes became the first modern master of the Gnomon Society, which counts among its elite ranks Pythagoras, Cagliostro, and, as it happens, Lamar Jimmerson of Gary, Indiana. That the document is bunk is the obvious joke, but Portis wraps it in antic bolts of faith and failure. Indeed, Masters of Atlantis works as a thoughtful, whimsical companion to Frances A. Yates’s Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), a study of the magical and occult reaches of Renaissance thought. Yates lays her cards on the table, explaining that the “returning movement of the Renaissance with which this book will be concerned, the return to a pure golden age of magic [i.e., the supposed era of ancient Egyptian wisdom], was based on a radical error of dating… This huge historical error was to have amazing results.” The amazing result in Masters is an alternately deadpan and high-flying pageant of secret sharers, unreadable tracts, [ 12 ] and highly dubious theories, determining the rise and fall—and rise?—of an institution insulated from the American century unfolding outside by nothing more than the unshakeable belief of its adherents. The adepti cultivate their secrecy and self-regard by maintaining rules against dissemination to outsiders, or “Perfect Strangers,” a code as strict as it is arbitrary. For instance, the Romanian-born alchemist Golescu, a caretaker at the Naval Observatory, would seem a shoo-in for Gnomonic acceptance. His achievements read like a variation on Symes’s catalogue of Dixian wisdom: Through Golescuvian analysis he had been able to make positive identification of the Third Murderer in Macbeth and of the Fourth Man in Nebuchadnezzer’s fiery furnace. He had found the Lost Word of Freemasonry and uttered it more than once, into the air, the Incommunicable Word of the Cabalists, the Verbum Ineffabile. The enigmatic quatrains of Nostradamus were an open book to him. He had a pretty good idea of what the Oracle of Ammon had told Alexander. But Golescu doesn’t make the cut. He knows too much—or at least says too much. His strident claims betray an insufficiently covered path. The point of the Verbum Ineffabile—the unspeakable word— is that you don’t say it. Most mortals, it seems, are doomed to remain Perfect Strangers, but at least there’s the possibility of writing something oneself, a validating work of comprehensive greatness. In Gringos, freelance bounty hunter and former antiquities dealer Jimmy Burns journeys to the Inaccessible City of Dawn, bringing along his friend Doc Flandin, an ailing Mexico hand. Doc is ever on the lookout for the Mayan equivalent of Dix’s tin trunk or the Hermetically unsealed casket—a fabled cache of lost libros that would provide further pieces to the puzzle of that vast and vanished civilization. Burns doubts any such books even exist. In any case, Doc claims to be nearly finished with his own “grand synthesis” of Mexican history, a scholarly tour de force explaining the truth behind myths and answering ancient riddles; among other things, Doc’s book would “tell us who the Olmecs really were, appearing suddenly out of the darkness, and why they carved those colossal heads that looked like Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers.” Somewhere in limbo, apart from or behind the printed ephemera—confession magazines and pre-1960 detective novels and something called Fun With Magnets—that crop up in Portis’s novels more frequently than any work of high literature, is a dream library stocked entirely with vanished books and unwritten ones, impossible genius texts that tantalize from across the void. Chances are that Doc’s unfinished manuscript will join the rest of those ghostly titles. But time doesn’t always run out, and at least once the dream becomes manifest. Mattie Ross waits half a century to write True Grit, and during those years the factual grit of her life story at last forms a pearl. Though Portis’s compositional timeframe isn’t quite as long as Mattie’s, his periodic absences from the thrum of publication help give each one of his books what those Burmese journalist ants call a “nacreous glaze,” a shimmering coat of perfect strangeness. * Portis has published a single work of fiction since Gringos—“I Don’t Talk Service No More,” a spare, haunting short story that appeared in the May 1996 Atlantic. The unnamed narrator, an institutionalized Korean War veteran, sneaks into the hospital library every night to make long-distance calls to his fellow squad members, participants in something called the Fox Company Raid. He remembers their names, though some other details have grown hazy. At the end of this call, his fellow raider “asked me how it was here. He wanted to know how it was in this place and I told him it wasn’t so bad. It’s not so bad here if you have the keys. For a long time I didn’t have the keys.” Instead of closure, the last sentence casts a pall over the story, and the mention of keys conjures the great locked enigmas drifting through Portis’s last three books. In Dog, Symes disputes an alleged Dix sighting, musing, “Where were all his keys?”(According to Dixian lore, the great author, wise with answers, never went anywhere without a jumbo key ring on his belt.) The “Service” narrator’s resounding isolation connects with the loneliness found in so many Portis characters. Norwood Pratt and Jimmy Burns, wry loners capable of brute force, wind up married and in more or less optimistic situations. But happiness eludes the other protagonists. Lamar Jimmerson and most of the Gnomons in Masters of Atlantis can’t form mature emotional attachments; Jimmerson barely notices as his wife leaves him and his son avoids him. And how is it that The Dog of the South, Portis’s finest comic achievement, subtly shades into melancholy? When Midge finds Norma, by chance, in the hospital, he calls it a “concentrated place of misery”; his earlier angst-free, even chipper take on his cuckoldry suddenly shifts, in her presence, to a terrible feeling of rejection. The mere fact of his being strikes her as wearisome: “I don’t feel like talking right now.” “We don’t have to talk. I’ll get a chair and just sit here.” “Yes, but I’ll know you’re there.” Dog’s last two lines erase miles of cheer that have come before. True Grit’s matter-of-fact final sentence (“This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground”) harbors a more cosmic sadness; as pathetic fallacy, it feels like an American cousin to the faintly falling snow that closes Joyce’s “The Dead.” Portis carries over this precipitous finish to his own life in “Combinations of Jacksons.” A “peevish old coot” himself now, he peers back over the years to when his Uncle Sat showed him scale maps of tiny Japan and the immense U.S., to dispel his boyhood fears of a protracted war. The last lines run: “I can see the winter stubble in his fields, too, on that dreary January day in 1942. Broken stalks and a few dirty white shreds of bumblebee cotton. Everyone who was there is dead and buried now except me.” Portis is careful to keep the tears at bay with laughter; to borrow the impromptu skeet targets from Rooster and company, he’s a literary corn dodger. In Dog, Dr. Symes’s mother, a missionary, periodically grills Midge on his knowledge of the Bible, a knowledge he repeatedly professes not to have. “Think about this,” she says, pointedly fixing his thoughts to the matter of last things. “All the little animals of your youth are long dead.” Her companion Melba promptly emends the truism: “Except for turtles.” The statement, at once hilariously random but completely realistic, neutralizes the threat of gloom; it’s the sort of bull’s-eye silliness that pitches Portis’s reality a few feet above that of his fellow page-blackeners. Significantly, he gives Lamar Jimmerson some experience with skyey matters: Masters of Atlantis opens with the young man in France during the First World War, “serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope.” The truth is up there—well, maybe. (Gringos, among its other virtues, navigates UFO culture with more than cursory knowledge and without easy condescension.) Of all the moments when Portis’s prose turns lighter than air, my personal favorite involves the aforementioned Golescu, whose chaotic turn in Masters of Atlantis gives the book an early-inning jolt. In addition to claiming membership in various sub rosa brotherhoods, some of them seemingly contradictory, Golescu possesses the talents of a “multiple mental marvel,” to borrow magician Ricky Jay’s term. Asking for “two shits of pepper,” he takes pencils in hands and demonstrates for a bemused Lamar Jimmerson his ambidexterity and capacity for cerebral acrobatics, in a rapid-fire paragraph of undiluted laughing gas. It’s what Dr. Symes would have called pure nitro. “See, not only is Golescu writing with both hands but he is also looking at you and conversing with you at the same time in a most natural way. Hello, good morning, how are you? Good morning, Captain, how are you today, very fine, thank you. And here is Golescu still writing and at the same time having his joke on the telephone. Hello, yes, good morning, this is the Naval Observatory but no, I am very sorry, I do not know the time. Nine-thirty, ten, who knows? Good morning, that is a beautiful dog, sir, can I know his name, please? Good morning and you, madam, the capital of Delaware is Dover. In America the seat of government is not always the first city. I give you Washington for another. And now if you would like to speak to me a sequence of random numbers, numbers of two digits, I will not only continue to look at you and converse with you in this easy way but I will write the numbers as given with one hand and reversed with the other hand while I am at the same time adding the numbers and giving you running totals of both columns, how do you like that? Faster, please, more numbers, for Golescu this is nothing…” Read it, then read it again—at a spittle-flecked rush, with a mild Lugosi accent—and observe how everything turns into nothing, how all that is solid melts into air. Many of the biographical details about Portis in this piece have been gleaned from this leisurely interview, conducted by Roy Reed on May 31, 2001. ↩ Whereas Kerouac was said to have been more passenger than driver, Portis knows his cars inside out, and his oeuvre overflows with automotive asides. Even the Gazette interview is graced with these vehicular discursions: Speaking of his stint at the Northwest Arkansas Times, Portis conjures up the vehicle he drove to work in, a 1950 Chevrolet convertible, “with the vertical radio in the dash and the leaking top,” and notes the species-wide “gearshift linkage that was always locking up, especially in second gear.” ↩ The new Portable Sixties Reader, ed. Ann Charters (Penguin, 2003), does not mention Portis at all. ↩ Mattie also has strong opinions on particular political matters, but the issues could not be at a more distant remove for the general reader in 1968 (or today), lending an air of comedy and verisimilitude. On Grover Cleveland: “He brought a good deal of misery to the land in the Panic of ’93 but I am not ashamed to own that my family supported him and has stayed with the Democrats right on through, up to and including Governor Alfred Smith, and not only because of Joe Robinson.” ↩ If the film of True Grit somewhat revises the book, the less-known screen adaptation of Norwood (Jack Haley, Jr., 1970), also scripted by Marguerite Roberts, scrambles both Norwood and True Grit. Glen Campbell (Grit’s LaBoeuf) here plays Norwood, and Kim Darby (Mattie) is Rita Lee Chipman; Mattie’s unacknowledged teenage longing for LaBoeuf (“If he is still alive and should happen to read these pages, I will be happy to hear from him,” Mattie writes at the novel’s close) becomes consummated in Norwood, or just about. Roberts’s Grit script shunted Mattie in favor of the bigger-than-life Rooster; for this film the screenwriter dilutes some of Norwood’s cool by revealing that Rita Lee has been made pregnant by another man before they meet—a significant, possibly feminist tweak of the original plot. (Incidentally, the contra-hippie theme that runs through Portis, made more explicit in Gringos, is elaborated in this film, most notably when Campbell-as-Norwood takes the stage after a numbing sitar exhibition. He sings a good-timey country number presciently called “Repo Man” to the uncomprehending, wigged-out crowd, until a more lysergically inclined combo unseats him.) As it’s unlikely I’ll ever have the chance to write about this film again, let it be noted that the date of Norwood’s theatrical release, a year after Midnight Cowboy won the Academy Award for Best Picture, lends Campbell-as-Norwood a certain Voightian frisson during the scenes in New York, where he sticks out like a Stetsoned sore thumb. Which makes the bit in Cowboy where Voight regards himself in the mirror and says approvingly, “John Wayne,” a sort of anticipatory gloss on Wayne co-star Campbell’s future appearance in Gotham. (The celluloid True Grit also spawned a 1975 sequel, Rooster Cogburn, starring Wayne and Katharine Hepburn.) ↩ Toward the end of Norwood, a conversational non sequitur seems to anticipate True Grit’s heroine. Someone mentions a Welsh doctor to the British-born midget Ratner: “Cousin Mattie corresponded with him for quite a long time. Lord, he may be dead now. That was about 1912.” ↩ In books and in blood, as in this analysis from Masters: “One’s father was invariably a better man than oneself, and one’s grandfather better still.” ↩ Travel writers, not to say homo britannicus, get ribbed by Portis again in “Motel Life, Lower Reaches,” part of the Oxford American’s relaunch issue (January-February 2003). Describing a cheap motel in New Mexico, he notes a small population of “British journalists named Clive, Colin, or Fiona, scribbling notes and getting things wrong for their journey books about the real America, that old and elusive theme.” ↩ Portis is well aware of the seemingly disproportionate effects of punctuational caprice. In Masters of Atlantis, Whit and Adele Gluters’ suitcase bears their surname in caps and quotes, leading to this flight of fancy: “Babcock wondered about the quotation marks. Decorative strokes? Mere flourishes? Perhaps theirs was a stage name. Wasn’t Whit an actor? The bag did have a kind of backstage look to it. Or a pen name. Or perhaps this was just a handy way of setting themselves apart from ordinary Gluters, a way of saying that in all of Gluterdom they were the Gluters, or perhaps the enclosure was to emphasize the team aspect, to indicate that ‘THE GLUTERS’ were not quite the same thing as the Gluters, that together they were an entity different from, and greater than the raw sum of Whit and Adele, or it might be that the name was a professional tag expressive of their work, a new word they had coined, a new infinitive, to gluter, or to glute, descriptive of some new social malady they had defined or some new clinical technique they had pioneered, as in their mass Glutering sessions or their breakthrough treatment of Glutered wives or their controversial Glute therapy. The Gluters were only too ready to discuss their personal affairs and no doubt would have been happy to explain the significance off the quotation marks, had they been asked, but Babcock said nothing. He was not one to pry.” ↩ Midge himself, with his rules against record playing after nine p.m. and aversion to dancing, is a deviation from the norm, or from Norma—at least in the eyes of his mother-in-law, who calls him a “pill.” ↩ At a small museum in Mexico, Midge finds Dupree’s comments in the guestbook: “A big gyp. Most boring exhibition in North America.” ↩ Many years after the publication of Gnomonism Today, a sharp-eyed disciple discovers that the printers have omitted every other page. ↩	i don't know
What comic strip character’s favorite interjection was “leapin’ lizards!”?	"Frasier" Leapin' Lizards (TV Episode 1995) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Bulldog, with Kate's encouragement, plays a series of practical jokes on Frasier. Frasier tries to retaliate, but his first and last attempt sends Kate to the emergency room. Director: a list of 2124 titles created 01 Jan 2012 a list of 9737 titles created 08 Jan 2012 a list of 24 titles created 25 Aug 2012 a list of 1896 titles created 22 Apr 2013 a list of 24 titles created 6 months ago Search for " Leapin' Lizards " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Title: Leapin' Lizards (31 Oct 1995) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Add Image Add an image Do you have any images for this title? Edit Storyline Bulldog, with Kate's encouragement, plays a series of practical jokes on Frasier. Frasier tries to retaliate, but his first and last attempt sends Kate to the emergency room. 31 October 1995 (USA) See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The title is the expression of shock or surprise by the comic strip character Little Orphan Annie. Leapin' Lizards! See more » Goofs Niles refers to an exhibition of "netsuke" and mispronounces it "net-SOO-kay" (Frasier doesn't correct him). But the erudite Drs. Crane would surely know that the correct pronunciation puts the emphasis on the first syllable, almost elides the second, and softens the vowel of the third: NETS-(ih)-keh. See more » Quotes Bob 'Bulldog' Briscoe : [Bulldog carries on with his show] I asked the Raiders defensive line to describe their tackling skills and here's what they said: Dr. Frasier Crane : [recording plays] Three little maids from school are we, three little maiddddds from school! See more » Crazy Credits When the title "Frasier" and the usual silhouette of Seattle are on screen, several lights are being lit in the "windows" of the buildings. See more » Connections	Little Orphan Annie
January 11, 2008 saw the death of what New Zealand explorer, who along with Tenzing Norgay became the first known people to reach the top of Mt. Everest?	Behind the scenes: a first look at the making of Annie at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre! - YouTube Behind the scenes: a first look at the making of Annie at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre! Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Nov 27, 2013 Leapin' Lizards! Step behind the scenes to catch the making of Annie at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre (December 3 -- 22) as America's favorite comic-strip orphan comes to life in the Tony Award-winning musical set in the Great Depression. This adventure-filled musical arrives just in time for the holiday season and will delight kids of all ages. You'll cheer as Annie escapes from her "Hard-Knock Life" but don't wait until "Tomorrow" to get your tickets. This one will sell out fast! There are many ways families can see Annie, including School Spirit Night, Student Previews and more. Sponsored by the John MacDonald Company and Admiral's Cove Cares. Visit www.jupitertheatre.org for showtimes; tickets start at $52. Phone: (561) 575-2223. Category	i don't know
The Chukchi, Beaufort, and Barents are all seas in which ocean?	Chukchi Sea \| sea, Arctic Ocean \| Britannica.com sea, Arctic Ocean Alternative Titles: Chukchee Sea, Chukotskoe Sea, Chukotskoye More Similar Topics Caspian Sea Chukchi Sea, also spelled Chukchee, Russian Chukotskoye More, part of the Arctic Ocean , bounded by Wrangel Island (west), northeastern Siberia and northwestern Alaska (south), the Beaufort Sea (east), and the Arctic continental slope (north). It has an area of 225,000 square miles (582,000 square km) and an average depth of 253 feet (77 m). The sea is navigable between July and October both eastward and westward from the shallow Bering Strait , and ice-bearing currents flow southeastward along the Siberian coast. Seals of several species and walrus are indigenous , and whales and many seabirds are summer visitors. Learn More in these related articles: in Arctic Ocean: Oceanography ...side of the Arctic Ocean is of a normal width (approximately 40 miles), the Eurasian sector is hundreds of miles broad, with peninsulas and islands dividing it into five main marginal seas: the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, and Barents. These marginal seas occupy 36 percent of the area of the Arctic Ocean, yet they contain only 2 percent of its water volume. With the exception of... 1 Reference found in Britannica Articles Assorted Reference marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean (in Arctic Ocean: Oceanography ) Article History Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: July 20, 1998 URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Chukchi-Sea Access Date: January 18, 2017 Share	Arctic
A known anti-oxidant and a co-factor in at least 8 enzymatic reactions, what vitamin is known as L-ascorbic acid?	Shell gives up on all but one Chukchi Sea lease \| The Independent Barents Observer The Independent Barents Observer Shell vessels in Alaska. Photo: Shell.com Shell gives up on all but one Chukchi Sea lease Royal Dutch Shell has decided to give up all but one of its federal offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea, bringing what appears to be an anticlimactic end to its multibillion-dollar effort to turn those icy Arctic waters off northwestern Alaska into a new oil-producing frontier. By Alaska Dispatch News May 11, 2016 “After extensive consideration and evaluation, we have made the decision to relinquish all but one of our federal offshore leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. This action is consistent with our earlier decision not to explore offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future,” company spokesman Curtis Smith said in an email on Monday. The company had spent over $2 billion acquiring Chukchi leases in a record-breaking federal lease sale held in 2008. The company conducted two drilling seasons, in 2012 and 2015, that were fraught with mishaps and legal and public-relations challenges. Drilling in 2015, at a well in a prospect called Burger, yielded what Shell characterized as disappointing results, and the company announced in September that it had decided to shelve its entire offshore Alaska program . The decision to relinquish leases “reflects the outcome of the Burger J well and the high costs associated with the project,” Smith said, referring to the well drilled last year. “While we support regulations that enforce high safety and environmental standards, the unpredictable federal regulatory environment for the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf also made it difficult to operate efficiently.” The Chukchi Sea leases were scheduled to expire in 2020. Evaluations of future leases The one lease that Shell intends to retain holds the now-plugged Burger J well that was drilled last summer. Shell still holds leases in the Beaufort Sea off northern Alaska that were acquired for a combined $84 million in federal sales held in 2005 and 2007. Shell also holds leases in Alaska state territory, some of them transferred when the Anglo-Dutch oil giant bought the BG Group for nearly $70 billion last year. Those leases might be dropped as well. “Separate evaluations are underway for our federal offshore leases in the Beaufort Sea. We also are evaluating our state leases and our interest in the Alaska Foothills acreage we acquired from BG earlier this year,” Smith said in his email. Gov. Bill Walker lamented the latest Shell decision. “The news that Shell will be relinquishing all but one of its offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea is disappointing. With a pipeline that is three-quarters empty and a $4 billion budget deficit, it is absolutely critical that we find safe and responsible opportunities to drill for more oil both on-shore and off-shore in Alaska,” he said in a statement. “I will continue to work with local stakeholders, the federal government and industry to develop our state’s rich natural resources in order to bring more jobs and revenue to Alaska.” But a critic of Shell’s offshore operations said the company’s decision to give back the leases was good news. “Today we are an important step closer to a sustainable future for the Arctic Ocean. After spending more than a decade and billions of dollars, even Shell has had to recognize that offshore oil exploration in the Arctic is not worth the environmental or economic risks,” Michael LeVine, senior Pacific counsel for the environmental group Oceana, said in a statement. Alaska operations LeVine noted that other companies — ConocoPhillips, Iona, Statoil, Total, EnCana and Armstrong – have also given up offshore Arctic leases, and that of the more than 480 tracts auctioned off in 2008, only about a fifth will be active. Relinquishment of Shell’s leases has occurred in stages. As of Monday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Alaska office had not received notice about Shell’s latest decision to give up all but one of its Chukchi leases, said John Callahan, a spokesman for the federal agency. But Shell had given up leases on 36 tracts in March and another 125 in April, leaving 114 in active status after those two relinquishment phases, Callahan said. Shell reported that it spent over $7 billion in its overall Alaska exploration program but managed to drill only one well to full depth – Burger J. The program was fraught with setbacks, including the 2012 grounding of Shell’s Kulluk drillship , an event that caused so much damage that Shell decided to forego repairs to the vessel. Still, Shell is not completely done with its Alaska operations. It still has to retrieve anchors that were left at now-capped wells it drilled in 2012. That activity is forthcoming, Smith said. “In the summer months of 2016, we will remove the remaining equipment from the drilling sites in Alaska,” he said in his email. “We continue to believe offshore Alaska and the broader Arctic have strong exploration potential and are areas that could ultimately be important sources of energy to the State of Alaska, the United States, and the world.” Smith also said Shell has not dropped its appeal of an October decision by the federal government that denied the company’s request for an effective extension on Chukchi and Beaufort leases. That decision was issued by BOEM’s sister Interior Department agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. This story is posted on Independent Barents Observer as part of Eye on the Arctic , a collaborative partnership between public and private circumpolar media organizations. Sections	i don't know
Who achieved a certain level of international celebrity when his wife Lorena severed half his penis, tossing said member into a field, which was later surgically reattached?	David Kamp.com - Vanity Fair Archives Vanity Fair Archives American Communion (Vanity Fair, October 2004) An upbeat story about death. There had already been tons of articles published about Johnny Cash’s unlikely late-in-life artistic alliance with Rick Rubin, which began in the early 1990s and ended with Cash’s death in 2003. But no one had really explored Cash and Rubin’s relationship in depth. A few months after Cash died, I approached Rubin about talking intimately, slowly, patiently, about all that went on between him and the Man in Black. He agreed and let me spend hours with him in his Buddhist-surf-Gothic décor house in the Hollywood hills, and played me raw tapes of Cash’s final recordings. To my surprise and delight, there was so much more to the Cash-Rubin story than music. For this article, I shed much of my reflexive, Spy-magazine-trained cheekiness and just told the story. P.S.: The ostensible peg of this piece was the supposedly imminent release of the album of Cash’s final songs, American V. Because of label politics, the album did not come out until July 2006, with the subtitle A Hundred Highways. The last song that Johnny Cash ever wrote is called “Like the 309.” Like the first single he ever recorded, “Hey Porter,” from 1955, it’s a train song. Cash loved trains—he made two concept albums about them in the early 1960s, Ride This Train and All Aboard the Blue Train, dangled his legs from atop a boxcar on the cover of his ’65 album, Orange Blossom Special, and, in the liner notes to his 1996 album, Unchained, listed “railroads” second in his litany of favorite song subjects, right after “horses” and just before “land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and love. And Mother. And God.” Trains resonated with Cash, and no wonder. He spent his first years in a house hard by the railroad tracks in Kingsland, Arkansas. He counted among his earliest memories the image of his father, Ray, a Depression-era cotton farmer who rode the freights in search of work when there wasn’t cotton to pick, jumping out of a moving boxcar and rolling down into a ditch, coming to stillness only as he lay before the family’s front door. Trains were in Cash’s veins, insinuating their boom-chicka-boom rhythms into his early records for Sam Phillips’s Sun label (in fact, he later recorded a nostalgic album harking back to his Sun years called Boom Chicka Boom) and serving him lyrically as metaphors for adventure, progress, danger, strength, lust, and American Manifest Destiny. Read More » But “Like the 309” is less lofty than all that. “See everybody, I’m doin’ fine / Load my box on the 309,” he sings. “Put me in my box on the 309 ... Asthma comin’ down like the 309.” Yielding to a fiddle solo, Cash stops singing and starts ... wheezing—tubercularly, hammily, on purpose; he’s conflating the groaning, hacking sounds of his dying body with those of an old locomotive. It’s “Hey Porter” turned on its ear, the boxcar interment of the brazen, respiratorily robust young buck who sang in the earlier song, “Tell that engineer I said thanks a lot, and I didn’t mind the fare / I’m gonna set my feet on Southern soil and breathe that Southern air.” And Cash is playing it for laughs. Every time Cash does one of his comic wheezes, the fellow to the left of me on the couch chuckles but keeps his eyes closed. He listens to the playback intently, legs folded in the lotus position, arms relaxed, feet unshod, his body rocking back and forth in time to the music, lending him the air of a shaman communing with the other world—or, given his untrimmed beard, a Lubavitcher rebbe in the throes of Sabbath davening. When the song ends, the bearded fellow snaps to and says, “Let me play you another one.” The next recording, also from the final weeks of Cash’s life, is of a folk song called “The Oak and the Willow,” which begins, “He once was as strong as a giant oak tree / Now he bends in the wind like a willow ... ” Another song about death, but this time dead serious, and beautiful. Sung from the point of view of a dying man’s son, the lyrics conclude, “A part of my heart will forever be lost when the oak and the willow are gone.” As the song ends, the bearded fellow, Rick Rubin, still has his eyes closed, but that doesn’t keep the tears from running down his face. In the decade they knew each other, from their first meeting in 1993 to Cash’s death on September 12 of last year, Rubin produced five studio albums for Cash. From the moment their collaboration was announced, it caused a stir—at first, just for the odd-couple novelty of their pairing: the Man in Black, confirmed citizen of Nashville, and the inscrutable ZZ Top–lookin’ dude who founded the hip-hop label Def Jam records in his New York University dorm room with Russell Simmons and later made a name for himself as a producer of hard-rock acts such as AC/DC, Slayer, and Danzig. But no one was less fazed by the seeming incongruity of the new alliance than Cash—“I’d dealt with the long-haired element before and it didn’t bother me at all,” he commented, drolly adding that he found “great beauty in men with perfectly trained beards”—and it didn’t take long for people to look past the Bard-Beard angle and get stirred up by the music itself. The first fruit of their collaboration, American Recordings, released in 1994, reconnected Cash with his fundamental Johnny Cash–ness, featuring just him and his guitar, playing the rootsy, heartfelt material that he longed to play but that achy-breaky 1980s Nashville had wanted no part of. The subsequent albums of the American series—so named because all the sequels except Unchained have “American” in their title (American III: Solitary Man; American IV: The Man Comes Around) and because Rubin’s label also happens to be called American Recordings—were even better, mixing the rootsier material with Rubin-suggested, idiomatically unlikely songs that, once Cashified, came to be celebrated in the rock world: Soundgarden’s high-grunge yowler “Rusty Cage” re-done as a bluegrass shuffle; Depeche Mode’s aloof synth-pop song “Personal Jesus” as a swamp blues; and, most celebratedly, Nine Inch Nails’ drug-addict confessional “Hurt” as an old man’s devastating appraisal of his life, with the most stunning climax in a pop song since the orchestral glissando in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” As for “Like the 309” and “The Oak and the Willow,” they’ll appear on the as-yet-unsubtitled American V, most of which was recorded last year in the four-month span between the May 15 death of Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, and his own passing—a raw, grief-stricken period during which Cash kept his loneliness at bay by writing and recording at a furious pace, as often as his strength would allow. American V comes out this fall. Seldom in the annals of modern music, where snuffed promise and blown opportunities are a requisite part of the Behind the Music drama, has something turned out as right as the Cash-Rubin partnership. Everybody won: Cash, re-energized and alight with inspiration, was afforded a happy ending to the recording career he’d effectively given up on, and the world was presented with a late-period chunk of Johnny Cash music that, on its own merits—divorced from sentimentality and the wishful thinking that typically surrounds comeback efforts by older artists—stands with the best work he ever did. “It’s like Matisse doing the jazz dancers when he was in his 80s, you know?” says Rosanne Cash, the eldest of Cash’s children and a fine singer-songwriter herself. “Like a whole new level of art and depth and mastery and confidence. Rick came at just the right time, and Dad was just the right age that that could be unlocked in him. He got all his old confidence back. Only it was kind of a mature confidence—it wasn’t that kind of punky, rebellious confidence of his early years.” For Rubin, the personal experience of getting to know Cash was even more edifying than the satisfaction he took in reconnecting the old-timer with his muse. The two men wound up enveloped in something more intense than a friendship, a deep kindredness that greatly moved Cash’s family and friends, and, frankly, kind of freaked them out. “You could see that their connection went back into the mists of time somewhere,” says Rosanne. “Like these guys didn’t just meet 11 years ago.” As Rubin progressed from his 30s to 40s, and Cash from his 60s to 70s, the two became confidants and sounding boards on matters spiritual as well as musical—a sort of Tuesdays with Morrie scenario without the slush and hokum, and with a more reciprocal exchange of wisdom between the dying man and the younger man. Plus really cool tunes. Rubin is not what you think he is. The long hair, the Hell’s Angels beard, and the wraparound shades he wears in public suggest a standoffish, substance-abusing ogre who speaks, if he speaks at all, in noncommittal grunts—a grouch savant fluent only in the visceral language of rawk. In fact, he’s chatty and thoughtful, with the dulcet speaking voice and gentle mien of a divinity student. He adheres to a vegan diet and seldom wears shoes. He claims never to have taken drugs, and to have been drunk only once in his life, when he took a mixology class while attending a Harvard summer program in his teens, “and for the final, we had to mix, like, 30 different drinks and taste them all, and I got really drunk and I hated it.” The shelves of Rubin’s library, in his home just above the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, are crammed with religious texts and path-to-enlightenment guides: the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, The Great Code (Northrop Frye’s definitive lit-crit companion to the Bible), how-tos on both raja and hatha yoga, Listening to Prozac, Mind over Back Pain, something called The Knee of Listening, by someone called Adi Da. Just off the library, in the south end of the living room, stands a tableau that, at first blush, seems comic—an enormous stone Buddha statue, flanked by two nearly-as-enormous stereo speakers. But this is pretty much Rubin in a nutshell: an earnest spiritual quester who finds deliverance in both meditation and loud music. “I used to be a magician, from the time I was 9 years old till I was 17 years old,” he says. “When you’re that age, you can’t really tell the difference between magic and spirituality and the occult. They were all kind of part of this same other world. And I honestly find the same thing in music. It’s this other magic world, and it takes me away.” Cash, though a devout Christian, didn’t dismiss Rubin’s patchwork spirituality as hooey. A fellow bibliophile and comparative-religion junkie, the antithesis of the stereotypical southern rustic with a suspicion of fancy book learnin’, he delighted in his producer’s pan-theological curiosity. Out of their frequent discussions of religion developed an odd custom, certainly unprecedented in producer-artist relations: for the last few months of Cash’s life, he and Rubin took Holy Communion together every day, even if they weren’t physically in the same place, and even though Rubin, who was born Jewish and doesn’t profess allegiance to any one faith, is not technically eligible to receive the sacrament. At an appointed time, Rubin would call Cash and Cash would “officiate,” instructing Rubin to visualize the wafer and wine. “I’d close my eyes,” Rubin says, closing his eyes, “and he would say [Long pause, intake of breath], ‘And they retired to a large upper room for the Passover feast, and Jesus picked up the bread, took a piece of the bread, and passed the bread around. And he held up the bread and he said, “This is my body, which is broken for you. Eat, and do this in remembrance of me.”’ [Eyes open.] Then Johnny would say, ‘Visualize the eating, swallow. Feel it. Wait a minute.’ And then he would say [Eyes closed again], ‘ ... and then he picked up the jug of wine. He poured the wine, and he said, “This is my blood, which is shed for the remission of your sins. Drink, and do this in remembrance of me.” And they all did drink.’” “Even after he passed away,” Rubin says, “I continued doing this with him. I would say that, for between probably four and five months, it felt exactly the same, his presence was much more available—I could get quiet and I could hear him say it. After that, for some reason, it started changing a little bit. I don’t know enough about the afterlife to know why that would be, but something changed. As time has gone on, it’s a little harder to do. But I still do it.” It’s strange to reconcile this tender admission with the demo CDs by Slipknot and Audioslave that are strewn about the floor—and stranger still to think that this is the same man who wore a hellion’s black leather jacket and took a pie to the face in the goofily raucous 1986 video for the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right (To Party)”—but there’s no doubting Rubin’s sincerity, or the solace he finds in Cash’s flickering, fading presence. In darkness, having spent several hours in Rubin’s incense-scented library, I return to my hotel, down the road, and turn on MTV. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s Rubin in another hip-hop video, a new one, by another of his production clients, Jay-Z. Decked out in those wraparound shades and a skullcap, Rubin rides shotgun in Jay-Z’s car, bobbing expressionlessly to the beat while Jay raps, “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” In the early 1980s, Johnny Cash was trapped in a kind of pre-iconic limbo, having not died young enough for his legend to be burnished by the romance of early flameout, having not grown old enough to bask in the warmth and reconsideration of a sentimental public. Though he remained a decent live draw, his record sales were in the tank, and his longtime label, Columbia, couldn’t be bothered with him, focusing its energies on younger country acts. Sensing his label’s lack of interest, Cash became uninterested himself, going through the motions on his new albums because he suspected they wouldn’t get played or promoted anyway—a chicken-and-egg cycle of indifference for which, he admitted, he bore some blame. The chicken metaphor is apt, because in 1984, in a frustrated act of self-sabotage, he recorded an “intentionally atrocious” single, in his words, called “Chicken in Black.” Though he didn’t write the song himself, “Chicken in Black” parodied his Man in Black image by inventing a scenario in which an ailing Cash undergoes a brain transplant, receiving the brain of a bank robber called the Manhattan Flash, while Cash’s original brain is implanted in a chicken, who goes on to wow them at the Grand Ole Opry, and ... well, it’s really not worth going into any more detail. Columbia took the bait; in 1986, after 28 years, he was dropped from the label. “It was a sad reflection on where country music had come,” says Kris Kristofferson, one of Cash’s closest friends. “When I was growing up, the big stars of country, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb—once they made it, they were there forever. It wasn’t like pop music: Here today, gone tomorrow. But when country music got so much bigger, largely through Cash, who was a bridge to Bob Dylan and Neil Young and people like that, it became more like pop music. And Columbia—which he built—did something awfully cold.” Cash found a deal in 1987 with Mercury-Polygram, but no further commercial success. The only thing that sustained his public profile in any meaningful way was his participation in the Highwaymen, a part-time supergroup of crinkly country outlaws whose other members were Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kristofferson. By 1991, Cash wrote in his 1997 autobiography, Cash, “I’d given up. I’d already started thinking that I didn’t want to deal with record companies anymore. Saying goodbye to that game and just working the road, playing with my friends and family for people who really wanted to hear us, seemed very much like the thing to do. I began looking forward to it.” Which was fine—Cash was financially well-off, with homes in Tennessee, Virginia, and Jamaica, and didn’t need hit records to put food on the table. But still, it was an ignominious end to a recording career that had caught fire at Sun in 1956 with “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” and reached its apex in the late 60s with two electrifying jailhouse-concert albums for Columbia, At Folsom Prison (1968) and At San Quentin (1969). The prison albums had been especially validating to Cash, in that their success won him the respect of the counterculture and sealed the deal on his first comeback. Just a few years earlier, he’d been hooked on barbiturates and amphetamines, had detonated his first marriage, to Vivian Liberto (the mother of Rosanne and his three other girls), and acquired an image as Nashville’s most temperamental star, notorious for having kicked out the footlights of the Opry stage in a fit of pique. By ’68, though, he had gotten religion, gotten off pills, and married the woman who facilitated both processes, June Carter, his soul mate, stage-mate, and a scion of country’s legendary Carter Family. Cash’s 1970s were pretty good, too, particularly in the early going, when he had his own variety series on ABC, The Johnny Cash Show, and established his enduring persona on the title song of his album Man in Black: the oaken-voiced troubadour who “wear[s] the black for the poor and the beaten down / Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.” But by the 1980s, alas, as country coifs crept mullet-ward and Nashville became enamored of line dancing, it was Cash who was feeling beaten down. Rick Rubin, by contrast, had had a very good 1980s—so good, in fact, that by 1985, when he was only 22, he was already starring as himself in a barely fictionalized movie account of the rise of Def Jam records, Krush Groove. A year earlier, while he was still an undergraduate studying film at N.Y.U., he and Russell Simmons, a Queens-born promoter and manager of the rappers Run-D.M.C. (and the older brother of Run, a.k.a. Joey Simmons), had started up the label, and that same year Def Jam scored its first big hit, “I Need a Beat,” by the 16-year-old LL Cool J. Two years later, Rubin produced the first rap album ever to go to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, and engineered hip-hop’s signal moment of crossover into the white-rock world, pairing Run-D.M.C. with Aerosmith on a remake of the latter’s “Walk This Way.” By the early 90s, Rubin had amicably parted ways with Simmons, moved to Los Angeles, and started his own label, the more rock-oriented Def American, while also moonlighting as one of rock’s busiest producers-for-hire, working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Mick Jagger. In 1993, having decided that the word “def” had become passé, he dropped it from the name of his label. With that change came a desire in Rubin to sign a different kind of act to his roster. “At my current label, I had only ever worked with new bands,” he says. “But as a producer, I had gotten to work with grown-up artists. And I just thought it’d be nice to find the right grown-up artist who, maybe, is in the wrong place, who I could really do something great with. And the first person who came to mind was John. He already had legendary status, and maybe had been in a place where he hadn’t been doing his best work for a while.” The late 80s and early 90s saw a lot of veteran artists pulled from the shelf and dusted off—it was popular music’s era of re-reckoning, a time when CD reissues and the advent of the “classic rock” radio format inspired music fans to halt their relentless pursuit of the new and reconsider the old-timers they’d consigned to the nostalgia circuit. A consensus suddenly arose that, wait a minute, Tony Bennett and Burt Bacharach aren’t elevator-music practitioners but elegant masters of songcraft, and that such dormant architects of 60s pop as the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn might have something new to offer. Then there were scrappers such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young, who never disappeared or fell off the A-list but went through serious creative funks, and who managed to will themselves back to fighting form without anyone’s help. Cash had made a few stabs at artistic resurrection in the 1980s, covering two Bruce Springsteen songs on his 1983 album, Johnny 99, and an Elvis Costello tune on his first Mercury album, Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town, but he floundered when it came to sustaining any kind of compelling vision for the length of an entire album. “I knew he was looking around for some fresh inspiration and enthusiasm,” says Rosanne Cash. “But he’s the kind of guy who needs somebody to provide the keyhole. And he didn’t have that.” As it happened, Rubin was not the only person with Cash revivalism on the brain. U2 had already enlisted Cash to sing lead on “The Wanderer,” the final song of the band’s 1993 album, Zooropa, and, around the same time, Cash was getting feelers from the organizers of Lollapalooza, the alternative-music festival, about joining their ragtag road show of pierced, tattooed youthquakers. But Rosanne, protective of her father, feared that he would be turned into some kind of cute artifact-mascot for the Lollapalooza kids. “I just said, ‘Dad, please don’t do it,’” she says. “I didn’t want him to put himself in a situation where he wouldn’t get the kind of respect he deserved.” Rosanne was equally dubious when her father announced to her in the summer of ’93 that he was signing up with Rick Rubin and American Recordings. “I thought, This is odd. I wonder how this is gonna work,” she says. “Just knowing the acts Rick had worked with, it did cross my mind: Is he gonna try to make some kind of parody out of Dad?” Acting quickly after his brainstorm to sign Cash, Rubin had gotten in touch with Lou Robin, Cash’s manager since the early 70s, to arrange a meeting. Robin wasn’t all that clued-up on Rubin’s oeuvre—his bookings for Cash were strictly for “45 and up” audiences, he says—but he decided there was no harm in having Rubin come visit backstage the next time Cash was performing in the Los Angeles area. And so it came to pass that, one night early in 1993, Rubin drove south to Santa Ana, in Orange County, to see Cash play a show with his backup band and his wife, plus June’s two sisters, Helen and Anita, at a dinner theater. “Other than the fact that it was packed and the audience was going crazy, it would have been depressing,” says Rubin of the show’s setting. “But it was, in fact, a great show—more of a revue than a concert, a family show. A lot going on. June’s sisters came out and they sang Carter Family songs. As soon as I saw it, I was thinking, Wow—I imagine that him playing in theaters would be a much better experience. And my goal was to make that transition happen as quickly as possible.” Backstage after the show, Cash rose from his seat to shake the hand of his unusually comported visitor, who was dressed, the singer later recalled, in “clothes that would have done a wino proud.” They exchanged hellos ... and then stared at each other, silently, for a solid two minutes. “I’m thinking, What do I say? How do I break the ice here?” says Lou Robin. “They were just kind of sizing each other up.” Eventually, both men overcame their intrinsic shyness and got to talking. “I said, ‘What’re you gonna do with me that nobody else has done to sell records for me?’” Cash recalled in a 1997 interview with Terry Gross of National Public Radio. “He said, ‘Well, I don’t know that we will sell records. I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones and just sing to your heart’s content, everything you ever wanted to record.’ I said, ‘That sounds good to me.’” And thus began Johnny Cash’s revival. For several weeks that autumn, Rubin sat in his living room like the musicologist Alan Lomax on a Mississippi porch, listening and recording intently while a gnarled, authentic article of Americana banged away at his repertoire. From about two o’clock in the afternoon to eight each night, Cash, with just an old Martin acoustic for accompaniment, did spirituals, love songs, hillbilly songs, old originals, favorites by Jimmie Rodgers and Kris Kristofferson—dozens of songs, all of which Rubin got on tape. “A lot of the material on the first album, and on the first disc of the box set that we put out [Unearthed, a collection of outtakes released last year], is material recorded during those first meetings, of just getting to know each other, and him playing me songs,” Rubin says. “You know, ‘This is a song that I remember, when I was picking cotton, that we used to sing.’ Or ‘This is one that my mom used to sing to me.’ Or ‘This is one that I used to hear on the radio.’ Or ‘This is one that I recorded in 1957 and no one really ever heard it, but it always meant a lot to me.’” “It gave me a profound sense of déjà vu,” Cash told the journalist Sylvie Simmons in an interview shortly before his death (published in the book that accompanies Unearthed). “It very much reminded me of the early days at Sun Records. Sam Phillips put me in front of that microphone at Sun Records in 1955 for the first time and said, ‘Let’s hear what you’ve got. Sing your heart out,’ and I’d sing one or two and he’d say, ‘Sing another one, let’s hear one more’ ... ” For Rubin, it was as much an education as a get-to-know-you exercise, because, truth be told, he hadn’t been a studious Cash fan before signing him. Like any American kid growing up in the non-South, outside the sphere of Opry influence—in Rubin’s case, in Long Beach, New York, an upper-middle-class suburb in the Buttafuoco belt of Long Island—he absorbed Johnny Cash by osmosis, simply because Cash was one of those figures who were ubiquitous in the formative years of people born in the 60s, forever on TV variety shows and in the collective cultural consciousness. “I thought of the image of the Man in Black,” says Rubin. “The Man in Black was a big part of who he was in real life, as well as a mythical image associated with him. I would always try to find songs that were suited for that.” Of the songs that emerged from the living-room sessions, there was none more black than “Delia’s Gone,” an old traditional that Cash had performed years before but forgotten the words to, forcing him to come up with some of his own. A twisted psycho-ballad about a remorseful jailbird who done killed his woman (“Delia, oh Delia / Delia all my life / If I hadn’t shot poor Delia / I’d have had her for my wife”), “Delia’s Gone” set the tone for what became American Recordings, a solo acoustic set of mostly dark songs, worlds away from “Chicken in Black.” Rubin had originally imagined that these songs would be fleshed out with a band, and brought in various musicians, including Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers and Chad Smith and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to back Cash on the new material. “But after going through that process, after trying a lot of things, the acoustic demos were the most exciting to me,” says Rubin. “Once we decided that that’s what the album was going to be, I suggested, ‘How would you feel about getting up in a little club and doing some of these songs acoustically? Just to see what it’s like playing them in front of an audience, by yourself?’ And he said he was open to it, but he was clearly nervous about it.” Remarkably, Cash had never performed solo in his long career. Even at the very beginning, in the boom-chicka-boom days of “Hey Porter” and “I Walk the Line” at Sun, it was not Johnny Cash, but Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, his buddies Luther Perkins on lead guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. But on a Monday late in 1993, Rubin called the Viper Room, Johnny Depp’s tiny Sunset Strip club, just down the hill from Rubin’s house, to see when it next had an open night for a simple solo set. That Thursday, before an invited audience, Depp stepped onstage and said, “You know, I never thought I’d get to say this, but here’s Johnny Cash!” Cash, by himself, took the microphone and went right into “Delia’s Gone.” “He was really nervous about it, never having relied on his own guitar, and I was nervous watching him,” says Tom Petty, a good friend of both Cash and Rubin. But Cash held the audience rapt, and with each eruption of applause after a song, he gained confidence in himself and in Rubin’s plan. American Recordings was released in the spring of 1994, its cover a stark, sepia-tone photograph by Andrew Earl of Cash in a preacherman’s black frock coat (which really was the coat that he wore regularly) standing in a wheat field, flanked by a black dog and a white dog. There was no title on the cover, just the word CASH in enormous block letters above his head—a conscious attempt to reinforce Cash’s mythic status; it might as well have said GOD. Martyn Atkins, who was American Recordings’ creative director at the time and designed the cover, says, “I told Rick, ‘Let’s make a statement, let’s make it as bold as possible.’ Johnny had been a bit Vegas-y, a bit Branson, for a while, and we needed to take people back to what he truly was, to the character of the early days.” The produced–by–Rick Rubin angle won American Recordings the most attention a new Johnny Cash album had received in more than two decades, and the praise was unanimous; Rolling Stone gave it five stars, and the LP went on to win a Grammy for best contemporary folk-song album. MTV even gave some airplay to the video for “Delia’s Gone,” the album’s opener and first single, which featured Kate Moss as Delia, lying motionless as the bloodstains from Cash’s bullets spread across her sundress. Johnny Cash was officially hippified. ‘Out on the road it started feeling like 1955 again,” Cash wrote in his autobiography. “I began playing young people’s places like the Fillmore [and] discovered all over again how it felt to play for a crowd of people with no chairs or tables, standing on their feet, jammed together, energizing each other.” Still, Cash had dates to fulfill at the oldster venues, too, putting him in a situation tantamount to that of the ’66 Beatles, whose touring obligations had them playing their old mop-top hits to screaming-girl audiences even as they already had the progressive, psychedelic music of Revolver in the can. “He was kind of living in two worlds musically at that point,” says Tom Petty. Indeed, the Nashville machers and programming directors of country radio didn’t know quite what to make of American Recordings. “It just wasn’t their flavor of what country was,” says Lou Robin. “They weren’t gonna play ‘Delia’s Gone.’ But pretty soon Americana radio picked up on it, and they liked it very much.” Even Cash’s buddies in Nashville were perplexed, if accommodating. “That first record caught us off guard,” says David Ferguson, Cash’s longtime recording engineer. “We never imagined John singin’ just naked, with no reverb or echo. We didn’t know what to think. But we found out Rick was good for John. Here’s this new young rich guy that’s into his music and wants to turn him into even more of a superstar than he is!” Unchained, the 1996 follow-up to American Recordings, was even more outré by country standards, in that it contained songs by Beck and Soundgarden. The first album had some songs on it by non-country songwriters, such as Tom Waits’s “Down There by the Train,” Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire,” and, most eyebrow-raising, the heavy-metalist Glenn Danzig’s “Thirteen,” but all these songs, even in their original form, fit comfortably into Rubin’s Man in Black schematic. However, there was absolutely nothing about Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage,” with its swirling, air-raid-siren electric guitars and screamy vocals by Chris Cornell, that suggested it was a natural for Johnny Cash. Except to Rubin. “When I played Johnny the Soundgarden version, he was horrified. He thought I was insane,” Rubin says. “He just looked at me like ‘What are you thinking? Have you really gone off the deep end? I don’t think I can sing that.’” Unwilling to give up, Rubin recorded a demo version of what he heard in his head, with him singing and the guitarist Dave Navarro on backup. “Rusty Cage,” needless to say, sounded just like a Johnny Cash song when it was finished, with Cash singing the climactic line “Gonna break my rusty caaaage ... ” about 12 octaves lower than Cornell had (or so it seemed), and then intoning, rather than singing, the kicker, “ ... and run!” As he gained Cash’s trust, Rubin began burning rock-pop compilation CDs and overnighting them to Cash’s home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, allowing Cash to pick and choose which songs he wanted to have a go at. Sometimes, Cash would politely leave certain songs uncommented upon; the same compilation that had Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” on it, for example, also included two untried songs by the Cure, “Lovesong” and “Never Enough.” But at other times, as in the case of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” Cash was so impressed as to say, “I wish I’d written that song myself.” Picking non-country songs for Cash was a fraught business, for there was a fine line between the bold reach and the humiliating exercise in kitsch. During the Unchained sessions, Cash and the Heartbreakers tried out Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” a what-the-hell juxtaposition that Rubin was initially convinced could work. “We recorded a basic track of it, and it was hard to stop from laughing,” says Mike Campbell, the Heartbreakers’ guitarist. “But the thing is, Johnny wasn’t laughing. He was totally caught up in it, trying to learn it and find a way into it. [Imitating Cash’s grave basso] ‘Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love ... ’” More often than not, though, Cash demonstrated a gift for making any song his own. American III: Solitary Man, released in 2000, opened with a cover of Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” a song that, in its author’s original, 1989 version, was a casual, poppy affair, its defiant lyrics more of a premise than a statement. But when Cash sang, “You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down,” it took on a whole new resonance, evoking an image of the singer robed, sandaled, and stoic, clutching a staff in a Cecil B. DeMille movie. “When I heard his version, it was like I’d never done it,” says Petty. “It dropped my jaw—something about the authority his voice carried. When the army and C.I.A. people called me and asked me to use it in their training programs, they wanted to use the Johnny Cash version. I guess it sounded more American.” Unchained is the most “up” of the American albums, its full-band sound a reaction to the sparseness of American Recordings. After it won the 1997 Grammy for best country album, Cash and Rubin took out a full-page ad in Billboard that reprinted the famous 1970 photograph of Cash jovially flipping the bird to the camera during a concert at San Quentin State Prison, with the accompanying text, “American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.” Something went horribly wrong with Cash’s health between the making of Unchained and American III. He had never looked young, even in youth, but he started to age unnaturally fast, like Keir Dullea in the final weird-out sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey—his hair falling out, his forehead veins bulging, his body stooped, his hands trembling. In truth, Cash had been a physical wreck from the get-go of his collaboration with Rubin, “in a tremendous amount of pain since the day I met him,” the producer says, most noticeably from a medical procedure on his jaw in the 80s in which some facial nerves were severed, leaving him with a pronounced droop on the left side of his mouth. He’d also had bypass surgery in 1988, was a diabetic, was prone to bouts of pneumonia, and had ravaged his digestive system with booze and painkillers. (A relapse had landed him in the Betty Ford Center in the early 80s.) “He was very stoic,” says Rosanne Cash. “He was from the old school, where you suffered, and it was, you know, like an art. You just did it—you didn’t talk about it.” But around ’96, he started demonstrating Parkinson’s-like symptoms—shakes, disorientation, dizziness, a general weakness—that couldn’t be ignored. “It was like he was holding a team of wild horses at bay, for as long as he could, and then he just didn’t have the strength to hold it at bay anymore,” says Rosanne. Late in ’97, Cash nearly died, his doctors unable to rouse him from a medically induced coma. As Rosanne explains it, “He had pneumonia, and his lungs were so weakened that they had to put him on a ventilator. And because they put him on a ventilator, he couldn’t be conscious the whole time. So they put him under with medication, to keep him sedated and give his lungs a chance to heal. And they tried to bring him out, but he wouldn’t come out.” June, a devoted “prayer warrior,” in her husband’s words, turned to the johnnycash.com Web site to exhort all his fans to pray for Cash on a specific Tuesday night, 12 days into his coma. Rubin, for his part, hired a “professional pray-er, a woman in New York who was a Christian who had some kind of powerful ability,” to join in the vigil. That night, the Cash family gathered around his hospital bed and clasped hands, “and within a matter of hours,” June later recalled, “he just started squeezin’ my hand.” Eventually, Cash was assigned the vague diagnosis of diabetic autonomic neuropathy, which is not a disease but a collection of symptoms caused by nerve damage. Essentially, his nerves were so shot that involuntary functions like blood pressure, respiration, and vision were badly affected. Cash was forced to give up touring, which left him with just the recording studio as a creative outlet. Whereas Unchained was recorded mostly in Los Angeles, American III and American IV were recorded largely at Cash’s studio in Tennessee, a little cabin on his compound in Hendersonville, north of Nashville. When his strength permitted, Cash made brief trips to L.A. to finish the tracks. It’s a measure of Rubin’s respect for Cash that he was willing to record in Tennessee, because, truth be told, the place put the normally beatific producer in a state of unease. Cash paid no mind to Rubin’s eccentricities and appearance, and the effervescent, compulsively hospitable June adored him, relishing the challenge of preparing him vegan meals and dragging him along on her frequent antiquing trips in the countryside. But in the larger context of the Nashville recording community, “I felt alien,” Rubin says. “You know, ordering a pizza with no cheese and getting laughed at.” In one instance, the Cashes decamped from their main home in Hendersonville for a weekend getaway to their place in Virginia, completely forgetting that Rubin, who was due back in L.A. that day, was still asleep in their guest room. Rubin awoke to find himself locked in and unable to get out. When he finally was able to yank a door open, he set off the alarm system, which prompted the police to arrive and discover what they took to be an unkempt vagrant who had broken into the Cash home. Rubin protested, “No, I’m really Johnny’s producer, I’m supposed to be here,” but was held on suspicion, missing his flight. It was only after he found a copy of John L. Smith’s The Johnny Cash Discography in Cash’s library and demonstrated to the cops that he had indeed produced Johnny Cash albums, holding out his driver’s license for corroboration, that they let him go. Perhaps because the specter of death loomed, Cash and Rubin’s discussions of their shared enthusiasm, religion, intensified in the later years. Until they got to know each other, neither man had ever found anyone else in the music industry as curious as he was about matters spiritual—though they couldn’t have come about this curiosity in more different ways. Cash’s story, as one would expect, is biblically dramatic: One day in 1967, strung out on drugs and in a nihilistic funk, he wandered into a Tennessee cavern called Nickajack Cave and crawled as far as he could, for two or three hours, until his flashlight batteries wore out and he lay down, presumably to die. But then, lying there in pitch-darkness, he had an epiphany that God, rather than he, controlled his destiny and would choose his time to die. Cash resumed crawling, blindly, until he felt a breeze, followed it, and writhed his way out of the cave’s mouth—where he found his mother and June waiting with a basket of food, having discovered his Jeep at the entrance. Rubin, on the other hand, never had any particular epiphany. Though he got no kick from the rote, ritualistic Judaism practiced by his family and was expelled from Hebrew school for goofing off, he says he always felt some sort of “yearning” and a sense that, somehow, his life was a continuation of a previous one. Whereas his fellow Def Jam veterans went through knucklehead phases before maturing into fine spiritual men—Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys is now a practicing Buddhist, Joey Simmons is now an ordained minister known as Reverend Run—Rubin found his laid-back, Zen demeanor early, meditating and lighting incense even as he went through his punk-rock phase. (The hard-ass appearances in the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z videos are mere comedy, he says, “theater of the absurd, like pro wrestling.”) The ritual of taking Communion together arose out of a theological discussion Cash and Rubin were having one night in April of 2003. Rubin was staying with the Cashes in Hendersonville, having planned to accompany them to the Country Music Television channel’s big night of the year, the Flameworthy Awards, at which Cash was to receive a special-achievement award. But Cash was too ill to go, so June agreed to accept the award in his stead while he and Rubin stayed home and watched the ceremony on TV. Some months earlier, in a previous theological discussion, Rubin had told Cash of his fascination with Dr. Gene Scott, a white-bearded, cigar-smoking televangelist who broadcasts out of a cathedral in Los Angeles. “He’s this old, eccentric, really smart, crazy person,” says Rubin. “He’s often belligerent to his audience. But at the same time, when he actually teaches, the teaching is unbelievable—just scholarly, brilliant, more like a university class than like a typical sermon. He did all these shows about Communion, and it really moved me. I was brought up Jewish and had never done a Communion. I made a copy of the tapes and sent them to Johnny. At first he was wary, because the guy’s really bonkers. But at the end of it, he was crying, and said, ‘I’ve heard 50 sermons on this topic, and that was, by far, the best teaching of that that I’ve ever heard.’” Somehow, as they were sitting there watching the Flameworthy Awards, the topic of Communion came up again. “And I said, ‘You know, I would love to try it sometime,’” says Rubin. “And he said, ‘Let’s do it together, right now.’ He called and had someone on his staff get his Communion kit, and we did Communion for the first time.” With the TV still blaring in the background, Cash performed the priest’s role, speaking the words and presenting the offering of wafer and wine—“crackers and grape juice,” Rubin says, “because that’s what happened to be in the house. After that, I suggested that we start doing it together every day. We continued on doing it right up until the end.” Cash was in and out of the hospital regularly in his final years, yet he kept on recording when his health permitted, mostly in his cabin in the woods, and, when he wasn’t up to even that, while sitting on the bed in what used to be his son John Carter Cash’s room in the main house. His voice on American III and American IV is noticeably more quavery and unsteady, a circumstance of which he was conscious and, at times, embarrassed, but it lent the songs a poignancy and drama that even he couldn’t have pulled off in his physical prime. Never was this clearer than in tracks one and two of American IV, “The Man Comes Around” and “Hurt”—a wham-bam mortality diptych that represented the summit of the American series. “The Man Comes Around” was a brand-new Cash original, inspired by a bizarre dream he had in which he walked into Buckingham Palace and found Queen Elizabeth sitting on the floor. Taking notice of Cash, Her Majesty pronounced, “Johnny Cash, you’re like a thorn tree in a whirlwind!” “It kept haunting me, this dream,” Cash told Larry King in November 2002, around the time of American IV’s release. “I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it’s biblical.” Sure enough, Cash found the thorn-tree reference in Job and spun the dream into a song based on the book of Revelation. “My song of the apocalypse,” he called it. With its spoken introduction—“And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder ... ”—“The Man Comes Around” sounds as ancient and scary as any of the old rural ballads collected by Harry Smith on The Anthology of American Folk Music, and was praised as Cash’s best new song in years. ‘Hurt” was another of Cash’s Rubin-provoked radical departures, a song by Trent Reznor, who, in his guise as the band Nine Inch Nails, traffics in spookerama atmospherics and songs about alienation and despair. (Reznor recorded his version of “Hurt” in the Los Angeles house where the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate.) Cash’s youngest child and only son, John Carter, a burly, bearded, metal-loving guy who was in his 20s when his father started working with Rubin and often acted as a sounding board for his dad on Rubin’s heavier suggestions, said even he was taken aback by the concept of his father doing “Hurt.” “I was a little wary about it, because I sort of cut my teeth on Nine Inch Nails, so to speak,” he says. “The aggression and the hopelessness of it seemed almost like a little bit too much.” Unlike Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” wasn’t blaringly loud or electrified. The issue was the words. “It’s a strange song,” says Rubin. “I mean, the opening line is ‘I hurt myself today.’ It’s such a strange thing to say. And then the next line is ‘To see if I still feel ... ’ So it’s self-inflicted. It’s such a strange thought to open a song with.” In Reznor’s hands, the song was sung by a junkie clear-eyed enough to recognize the ruin he’d made of his life: “What have I become / My sweetest friend / Everyone I know goes away in the end.” In Cash’s version, with his pitch wobbling uncertainly over the words “What have I become,” the singer became an old man lamenting his mortality and frailty, feeling he’s outlived his usefulness. The song’s power made it an obvious candidate for a single and, therefore, a video. Rubin enlisted his friend Mark Romanek, the virtuoso visualist behind the best videos of Nine Inch Nails, Lenny Kravitz, and Madonna, to direct the clip. “The initial conception was to do a somewhat stylized piece—in Los Angeles, at a soundstage—and it was going to be based very loosely on imagery from Samuel Beckett plays,” says Romanek. “We were going to have some cameos of people like Beck and Johnny Depp.” But logistics sent that highfalutin plan out the window. At the time, autumn of 2002, Cash wasn’t willing to travel to Los Angeles, and he was headed in a matter of days to his home in Jamaica, where he always went when the Tennessee weather turned colder and tempted pneumonia. Romanek and his crew had no choice but to go to Tennessee and come up with something on the fly. Rubin suggested that maybe they could film in the House of Cash, a roadside building in Hendersonville where Cash kept his offices, and where his mother, who died in 1991, used to run a small museum of his memorabilia. “The museum was in a state of some disrepair, because there had been some flood damage, and it had been closed for, I think, a good 15 years,” Romanek says. “When I saw the state it was in I went, ‘Wow, this is great, this is really interesting.’ And the idea of showing the museum without prettifying it or fixing it back up kind of led me to the idea that, well, you know, let’s just show Johnny in the state that he’s in.” The resulting video was shocking in the exact opposite way from how videos are usually shocking—not because it featured explicit images of sexuality and gunplay, but because it featured explicit images of mortality and infirmity. Romanek discovered a trove of archival films at the House of Cash—home movies, TV appearances, promo films, all of Cash in his pompadoured, virile prime—and intercut them with new scenes of the messy, uncatalogued jumble of stuff in the House of Cash and of the feeble, tremoring Cash himself, seated in his dark living room, surrounded by his collection of bronze Remington sculptures. At one moment during the filming, June descended the stairs above the living room to watch the proceedings. “I glanced over and I saw June on the stairs,” says Romanek, “looking down at her husband with this incredibly complex look on her face—filled with love and earnestness and pride, and a certain amount of sadness.” With her permission, Romanek included a couple of shots of June as she looked on, and these shots, of her stricken, loving gaze at her dying man, are the most devastating part of the whole film. The “Hurt” video was a sensation upon its release in early 2003, a “Have you seen it?” word-of-mouth phenomenon that elicited both praise and concern that Johnny and June had gone too far, revealed too much of their pain and frailty. The Cash children burned up the phone lines discussing it, wondering if it was such a good idea. “I cried like a baby when I saw it, I was sobbing,” says Rosanne. “June was just sitting there, just watching it, patting me. See, they had a kind of an unflinching eye. They weren’t sentimental in that way. It’s like, they’re artists—they use their life for their work.” Romanek’s film of “Hurt” would go on to be nominated for video of the year and best male video at MTV’s 2003 Video Music Awards (and would lose in the latter category to “Cry Me a River,” by Justin Timberlake, who rightly labeled his victory “a travesty”). Cash was reveling in all the attention the video was getting when, in early May of last year, June was admitted to the hospital for what was expected to be routine gallbladder surgery. But her doctors unexpectedly discovered a severe problem with a heart valve, and her health quickly deteriorated. She predeceased her husband, dying on May 15. “It was so shocking to think—you know, all of our anxiety had been focused on Dad for 10 years, and the whole time she was slipping away,” says Rosanne. “I think my mother knew very well that she was a lot sicker than everybody else thought she was,” says John Carter, Cash’s sole child with June. “I think she knew. And I think I had a perception that she believed that she was not long for this world.” Rosanne remembered, in retrospect, a time in the summer of 2001 when the family had gathered at her father’s place in Virginia for a Vanity Fair photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz. At one moment, June took Rosanne aside and said, furtively, “I just want you to know that your daddy and I have had a wonderful life together. We’ve had so many adventures. We’ve been so happy together, and we’ve just loved every minute of it.” “I was just so taken aback,” says Rosanne. “It was unlike her, ’cause she was usually very light and very chattery. I said, ‘It’s not over, June.’ And then I forgot about it, because, you know, she was a little crazy. I thought, ‘Oh, she just had a cuckoo moment.’” But June was usually “fun crazy,” says Rosanne, and this time, she realized after the fact, June had been serious and on the level—she knew she was dying but kept mum for the sake of her ailing husband. “I spoke to Johnny maybe a half-hour or an hour after she passed away,” says Rubin, “and he sounded, by far, the worst I’d ever heard him. He sounded terrible. He said that he’d experienced so much pain in his life and that nothing came anywhere near to how he was feeling at that moment. Normally, it was easy to be optimistic and make him feel better. But on this call I just didn’t know what to say. I just listened, and tried to send loving energy and support to him, and really take it all in and try to share what he was going through. At some point I asked him, ‘Do you think you could look inside, somewhere, and find some faith?’ And when I said that, it was like he became a different person. He went from this meek, shaky voice to a strong, powerful voice, and he said, ‘MY FAITH IS UNSHAKABLE!’” Cash wasted little time in getting back to work on music. “It actually got more intense after June died,” says Rubin. “Because before, we always worked kind of casually, either whenever we had a song or whenever he felt like recording. Now he said to me, ‘I want to work every day, and I need you to have something for me to do every day. Because if I don’t have something to focus on, I’m gonna die.’” Rubin cues up a recording that Cash made and sent to him shortly after June’s death. It’s a gospel song by Larry Gatlin called “Help Me.” Elvis Presley did a version in the early 70s, but, like lots of Elvis’s 70s work, the song was gunked up with excessive, 700 Club–style orchestration and choir vocals, the soul and emotion schmaltzed right out of it. Cash’s version of “Help Me” is pure, naked grief, almost too private to listen to. “I never thought I needed help before,” Cash sings to God; “I thought that I could do things by myself.” And then—this is the chorus, the part where Elvis unfurled the words in an unctuous croon—Cash stops the guitar, and all you hear is playback hiss and his cracked, worn voice, pleading rather than singing: “With a humble heart, on bended knee, I’m beggin’ you—please—help me.” “He was just dismantled with grief,” says Rosanne. “And so he was just working as much as he could. But it was heartbreaking.” The Cash children were resigned to the idea that their father didn’t have long, that, as John Carter puts it, “he yearned so much to be with my mother that he wanted to just go with her.” But Rubin wasn’t having any of this. Since he’d only ever known Cash to be an unwell man, miraculously rebounding from one severe health crisis after another, he thought this, too, was surmountable. In his endless hunger for books about health and enlightenment, Rubin had come across the works of a doctor named Phil Maffetone, a performance expert and kinesiologist who specialized in devising comprehensive nutrition and exercise programs for extreme athletes, people who compete in triathlons, ironman competitions, and ultra-marathons. “I’ve never been one for exercise in my life, but I read his book, and it got me inspired,” says Rubin. Via e-mail, he got in touch with Maffetone, who promptly informed Rubin that he had given up his practice and wasn’t seeing patients anymore. But Rubin persuaded Maffetone, who turned out to be a music enthusiast, to treat Cash. Cash, at that point, was wheelchair-bound and barely able to see because of diabetes-related glaucoma. But within a short time Maffetone had Cash walking unaided again—“no walker, no cane, nothing,” Rubin says—and improving in general. He called Rubin one day and announced, “I’m gonna come out to L.A. for a month, and we’re gonna work, and we’re gonna continue doing all the stuff on my program. And when I get back home, I’m gonna have a party on the lawn of my house, invite all of my friends over, and I’m gonna push my wheelchair into the river!” Rubin flew to Nashville for the last time in the summer of 2003 to work with Cash on American V. “I was supposed to be there for two or three days,” says Rubin, “but we were really doing good and making progress, kind of on a roll. So I extended my stay. And then, the next morning, when I woke up, I got the call that he was back in the hospital.” Nevertheless, Cash rallied with Maffetone’s help, and was intent on attending MTV’s Video Music Awards on August 28, since “Hurt” was nominated in six categories (it won in one, best cinematography). However, his doctors—his regular ones, not Maffetone—pronounced him insufficiently healthy to make the trip from Tennessee to New York, and by early September he was hospitalized again. This time it was pancreatitis, yet another complication of the diabetes. Cash spoke to Rubin once more on the phone, promising that he would be out to L.A. soon to work on the album. But he didn’t pull through, passing away on September 12, at the age of 71. “Rick seemed to be more shocked about it than we were,” says Rosanne. The Cash children had endured their father’s struggles long enough to see the writing on the wall, but Rubin, who had gotten just 10 years of Cash’s companionship, had a hard time accepting the finality. “The way I saw it,” he says, “we were going to go on for at least another 10 years.” There’s still lots more from the American sessions in the vaults, and therefore the potential for Rubin to issue posthumous Cash albums in near perpetuity, à la Tupac Shakur. But Rubin insists that American V will be the final word, “’cause there’s something that doesn’t feel good about the Tupac-ing.” Cash’s presence is down to embers now, making the Communion ritual a different experience for Rubin, a solitary one. But he keeps at it, and stays in touch with the Cash clan. A few months ago, he received an unexpected package from John Carter. Inside it was a little leather case holding a flask, a cup, a snippet of Scripture (John 6:35), and some instructional notes written in Johnny Cash’s hand (“Open the bread. Give thanks. Eat. Pour wine”)—it was Cash’s personal Communion kit. Included was a note: Rick: One of my father’s greatest joys in life was spreading his faith, and I never saw him more joyous than when he shared it with you. He cherished, as I know you did, the daily Communion with you. It seems only fitting that you should have this. You were many things to my father in the last decade of his life—mentor, defining inspirator, producer—but, most of all, a friend. My father learned to believe in your vision, and, in doing so, reawakened his own. His vision lives on, as does the faith he instilled in so many. May your heart grow in faith and peace. Blessings, Vanity Fair The Hit Factory An oral history of the Brill Building, written for the November 2001 issue of Vanity Fair. And the most fun set of interviews I’ve ever conducted. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (“Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock”) were authentic hepcats, exuding tons more cool than people a third of their age. I arrived at Leiber’s house in Venice, CA, to find Stoller in the kitchen, preparing pastrami sandwiches for their lunch: a lovely glimpse of their unbroken partnership. Deli sandwiches, as you’ll see in the text that follows, were a big part of Brill Building culture. As I say in my 2001 intro below, the Brill gang had a surprisingly low mortality rate for music people, though, in the years since, we’ve lost Leiber, Ellie Greenwich, Hal David, and Gerry Goffin. What a privilege it was, I realize now, to sit in Carole King’s home as she and Gerry, long divorced but still familial and friendly, reminisced. I supplemented my own interviews with those conducted by a brilliant young documentary filmmaker named Morgan Neville, who, at the same time I was preparing this article, was filming a series of Brill mini-docs for A&E’s Biography program. Morgan generously gave me his transcripts, which included interviews with a few people (such as Little Eva and the Shangri-Las’ Mary Weiss) who I didn’t get to. Morgan has since gone on to produce many wonderful films, including the Oscar-winning Twenty Feet from Stardom. The early 1960s exuded bigness and tidiness. Bigness of outlook, of ambition, of Impala tail fins, of turbine beehives atop ladies’ heads. Tidiness of sensibility and appearance: the decade hadn’t yet gone all pubic and patchouli-scented, and a hat-wearing populace still thronged the city streets. The Brill Building sound, as heard in such songs as “On Broadway,” “Up on the Roof,” “Be My Baby,” and “This Magic Moment,” was the sound of bigness and tidiness, of exuberance underpinned by professionalism—the fulcrum between the shiny craftsmanship of Tin Pan Alley and the primal energy of 60s soul and rock. It represented the last great era of assembly-line-manufactured pop—before the success of the Beatles and Bob Dylan lent a stigma to not writing your own material, and before prefab pop’s current comeback as joyless song-product written and produced by reclusive Swedes for Orlando-farmed hunks and totsies. The amazing thing about the Brill Building milieu was that its songs, which week in and week out dominated America’s Top 10, were by and large written by a small clutch of young men and women working out of warrenlike offices in Midtown Manhattan, and that most of these songwriters were Jewish kids from Brooklyn—an awesome concentration of cultural power in a few knish-eating precincts. Three of the most prominent songwriting teams happened to be young married couples barely into their 20s: Carole King and Gerry Goffin (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” “Up on the Roof”), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (“On Broadway,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”), and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich (“Be My Baby,” “Chapel of Love”). Another young team in this crowd was Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield (“Calendar Girl,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”). A schoolmate of Sedaka and Greenfield’s, Mort Shuman, paired up with a writer in his 30s, Doc Pomus, to create such songs as “This Magic Moment” and “A Teenager in Love.” Younger than Pomus but older than the rest were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who in the 50s were Elvis Presley’s favorite songwriters (“Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock”) and in the early 60s functioned as mentors to the younger set while continuing to write hits for the Coasters (“Poison Ivy,” “Little Egypt”). More grown-up in age and songwriting style, but nevertheless in the same close quarters, were Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the team behind “Walk On By” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” among dozens of other hits. Read More » The Brill Building itself, at 1619 Broadway, was a squat Art Deco edifice completed in 1931. It took its name from a clothing store, Brill Brothers, that had originally occupied its ground floor, but rapidly became better known as a home for music-publishing companies. As the 20th century advanced, Tin Pan Alley, as the popular-music business used to be known, inched its way up Broadway from its original location around 14th Street, and by the 1950s the Brill Building, at 49th Street, was the epicenter, its 11 floors packed with dozens of music publishers, and its ground floor occupied by two music-business hangouts, the Turf on the south side and Jack Dempsey’s on the north. Two blocks up from the Brill and across the street was 1650 Broadway, where King, Goffin, Mann, Weil, Sedaka, and Greenfield actually worked, for a young music publisher named Don Kirshner. Music publishers still held significant power in those days, before artists routinely wrote their own songs. The publishers employed or contracted out work to songwriters, whose songs were then shopped to the record companies, who paired the compositions they liked with the artists in their stables, using house producers, arrangers, and engineers to get the records made. It was a remarkably rapid-fire process, and a remarkably localized one, too—the record labels were mostly in Midtown, as were the studios of choice, Bell Sound and Mira Sound. (There was even a little demo studio right in the Brill Building where songwriters could cut acetates of their songs to play for the labels.) The whole business had an exhilarating seat-of-the-pants aspect then, for teen music was still a relatively new phenomenon, as was, indeed, the very concept of “teenagers” as a consumer demographic. Yet the music that resulted was as sophisticated and urbane as youth pop would ever get—the antithesis of the deflavorized contemporaneous recordings of Pat Boone and Fabian, with which the Brill stuff is sometimes unfairly lumped. Its quality is the reason the Brill music has lasted, why these songs have been covered ad nauseam, why the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” is the most played song in radio’s history. By pop-music standards, the Brill gang has been blessed with an unusually low mortality rate; of the aforementioned songwriters, all are alive save Pomus and Shuman, who died within months of each other in 1991, and Greenfield, who died of H.I.V.-related illness in 1986. Here, the remaining songwriters, along with some of their co-conspirators in the hit-making process—albeit not the elusive Phil Spector, who, characteristically, did not respond to an interview request—tell the story of the Brill Building era. We begin in an uncertain, transitional time, the mid-1950s, when the legitimate theater is starting to lose steam and the big bands have died out. Records, once a luxury, are becoming an affordable commodity, and rock ’n’ roll is on the march. But had you visited the Brill Building during this period, you’d have found it inhabited largely by old-timers: alter kockers from the sheet-music era, middle-aged men writing for Broadway and Your Hit Parade ... HAL DAVID: Who would I see there? Harry Woods. Harry Woods wrote great songs, like “Red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along” and “Four Leaf Clover.” MIKE STOLLER: There was Bennie Benjamin. He wrote with George David Weiss, things like “Cross over the Bridge” and “I’ll Never Be Free.” And, of course, Irving Caesar, who was considerably senior in age to everybody. He wrote “Tea for Two.” BURT BACHARACH: Irving Caesar! And I’m trying to think of the guy [Haven Gillespie] that wrote “You Go to My Head.” I used to go to the racetrack with him. MIKE STOLLER: It was like Guys and Dolls. The old-time songwriters and the publishers and the gamblers—they all had the track in common. JERRY LEIBER: We liked these guys. We were not combative or competitive in terms of who we were. We weren’t holding up any banners saying, You’re all dead—we’re rock ’n’ rollers here! That wasn’t it at all. In fact, it was the contrary. We really admired those guys—the Tin Pin Alley guys that wrote the standards, like Julie Styne and Sammy Cahn. HAL DAVID: I think once rock ’n’ roll broke through—by the mid-50s, give or take—[the old-timers] were finding it very, very difficult. And, more importantly, they thought rock ’n’ roll was a fad, and they were just gonna wait it out. And, of course, they’re still waiting. David was himself a transitional figure, already in his 30s in the mid-1950s, a dad of two commuting by Long Island Rail Road from the suburb of Roslyn. He had been bouncing around the Brill Building since 1949, making a decent living as an unaffiliated lyricist, running the Brill drill of working one’s way downward from the 11th floor, publisher by publisher. By 1956 he had enough of a reputation to earn a staff position with Famous Music, on the sixth floor, one of the building’s bigger firms. HAL DAVID: And that’s where Burt and I met each other. We were both there independently. He wrote for some people and I wrote with other people. Burt and I wrote our first hits in 1957, which was shortly after we got together. BURT BACHARACH: Hal and I would send out for lunch—a liverwurst sandwich on rye with tomato and mustard, from Carnegie or the Stage. These are the things I remember. The window that didn’t open in the room that we worked in. With an upright piano that was beat-up. And Hal smoking all the time. Like David, Bacharach, who turned 30 in 1959, had a lengthy C.V. in the pre-rock world, having studied music theory under the avant-garde composer Darius Milhaud and worked as an accompanist with the Ames Brothers and Vic Damone. Unconvinced that songwriting would pay the bills, Bacharach accepted a position as Marlene Dietrich’s touring conductor in ’58, and he and David wrote together only intermittently over the next few years—their heyday postponed until the early 1960s. Leiber and Stoller, by contrast, were a musical force the moment they set up shop in New York City in 1957. A pair of 24-year-olds, they had established themselves as Los Angeles’s hottest young songwriters, scoring West Coast hits with “Riot in Cell Block No. 9” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” both performed by a black vocal group called the Robins. Self-styled white Negroes who dated black girls and immersed themselves in black culture, Leiber and Stoller had attracted national attention when their song “Hound Dog,” originally a hit in the Negro market for the 300-pound lesbian belter Big Mama Thornton in 1953, was covered in 1956, to countrywide mouth-agapedness, by one Elvis Aron Presley. Commissioned to write the songs for the Elvis film Jailhouse Rock that same year, they spent six months in New York and developed a taste for the life there. When offered a production deal at Atlantic Records, the New York–based R&B label run by Ahmet Ertegun, his brother, Nesuhi, and Jerry Wexler (an ex-journalist who’d actually coined the term “rhythm and blues”), Leiber and Stoller seized the opportunity. MIKE STOLLER: Initially, it was very exciting. Because once you got to the area, everything was happening. The Turf was where everything was going on. It had a clam bar, a hamburger bar, and a bar bar. And then it had seats in the back, and sheet music on the walls that had been shellacked over. If you had to do a demo, and you didn’t have a drummer or bass player, you could just run over to the Turf and grab somebody. You could pick ’em for 10, 15 bucks. Leiber and Stoller hit the ground running with the Coasters, essentially Bobby Nunn and Carl Gardner of the Robins augmented by new singers. With Leiber writing the lyrics, Stoller the music, and both handling the production, the Coasters scored a succession of comedic hits—“Young Blood,” “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” and “Poison Ivy,” among others—for Atlantic in the late 50s. MIKE STOLLER: When we rehearsed the Coasters in the Brill Building, people on the street knew that they were there because of the order that was placed at the Gaiety Delicatessen. JERRY LEIBER: Pastrami and mayonnaise. MIKE STOLLER: We ordered our pastrami with either mustard or Russian, on rye. And [Coaster] Billy Guy, who was with a Jewish lady, had his with mustard on rye. But Carl Gardner had his with ketchup on white bread. And there were two pastramis on whole-wheat with mayonnaise. That was Dub Jones and Speedo Carroll. Leiber and Stoller soon became as well-known for their studio prowess as for their songwriting ability. Among their greatest productions for Atlantic were two Latin-tinged songs by the Drifters—another great black vocal group—that were to become standards: “This Magic Moment” (1959) and “Save the Last Dance for Me” (1960). Both songs were written by the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. Pomus, heavyset, goateed, and rendered paraplegic by a childhood bout with polio, was a beloved character in the Brill milieu: a Jewish guy, real name Jerome Felder, whose disability had made him identify with downtrodden blacks, and who had reimagined himself, quite convincingly, as a gutbucket-blues singer, performing in Harlem clubs while propped up on his crutches. RAOUL FELDER, attorney, brother of Doc Pomus: My family was pretty much ashamed that he was doing this to try to make a living. Most people spend their lives trying to get out of the slums. Instead of getting out of our slum, he was going to a worse slum, an African-American slum. SHARON FELDER, daughter of Doc Pomus: But being a white guy on crutches and braces, singing in black clubs, was probably not gonna support a family. RAOUL FELDER: He had a semi-hit record that was taking off, and RCA or some other major company wanted to buy the rights. They never thought to interview him and see what he looked like physically. As the song was taking off on the charts, they suddenly found out that he was handicapped. And they killed the record. That’s when he decided to become a songwriter. Pomus impressed Ahmet Ertegun sufficiently to get a job at Atlantic and an office of his own in the Brill Building. He quickly made an impact, coming up with such R&B hits as Ray Charles’s “Lonely Avenue” and “You Better Leave That Woman Alone.” SHARON FELDER: And then he slowly introduced Mort Shuman into the picture, because a cousin of ours was dating him. NEIL SEDAKA: I went to school with Mort Shuman. We were the same age. He was always the lead in the plays, and I was the pianist in the pit. He was the star of Lincoln High School; he was the president of the class. A great, outgoing personality. RAOUL FELDER: “Save the Last Dance for Me” tells the story of somebody taking somebody to the dance and maybe not getting them. And look: [Pomus] was a man who couldn’t dance, and he wrote music the whole world was dancing by. Another Atlantic hit in the late 50s was “Splish Splash,” a breakthrough song for a struggling Bronx kid in his early 20s named Bobby Darin, who was managed by another kid in his early 20s, Donny Kirshner of upper Manhattan’s Fort Washington neighborhood. DON KIRSHNER: It really all started when I was in my local candy store at 187th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, and this girl I knew came in with a very interesting character. He was disheveled. He was down-and-out, cleaning latrines. And his name was Walden Robert Cassotto. And he eventually became, after I discovered him, Bobby Darin. I couldn’t believe all his talent. And I said to him, “Let’s team up, and we’ll be the biggest thing in entertainment.” I couldn’t even get arrested at the time. I didn’t know anybody. Kirshner, emboldened by the success of “Splish Splash” in 1958, talked his way into a music-publishing partnership with Al Nevins, a distinguished gent 20 years his senior who’d made his name as the leader of the Three Sons, a long-running, schlockola guitar-organ-accordion combo that was Mamie Eisenhower’s favorite act. Nevins and Kirshner called their company Aldon, pronounced “All-din.” JERRY WEXLER: Now, there’s a strange pairing: Al Nevins, a curator and a nurturer of cosmic schmaltz, and Donny Kirshner, an enunciator and a herald of the new music. And it really worked. DON KIRSHNER: I think, just to keep me quiet, we opened an office at 1650 Broadway. It was the size of maybe a little bigger than a closet. Meanwhile, out in Brighton Beach ... NEIL SEDAKA: I had a lot of drive. I was from a very poor family—my father was a taxi driver—and I wanted desperately to be a success. I was not a jock. And the only way to get popular in Lincoln High School, which was a very tough high school, was to play pop music. One day, Howie Greenfield’s mother heard me playing classical music in the Catskill Mountains—I was practicing—and she said, “My son writes lyrics. Why don’t you try writing something together?” We lived in the same apartment building in Brighton. He was overweight, an introvert, not popular in school. He knocked on my door on October 11, 1952, when he was 16 and I was 13, and said “Hi.” I just thought, Oh, it’s fat Howie. He said, “I hear you’re a pianist, and I’m a lyricist. Do you want to write songs?” And we wrote a terrible song called “My Life’s Devotion.” But we continued to write every day, and I was mesmerized by it. I took the subway, as a teenager, to the Brill Building. Howie and I went to all the publishing firms to sell our songs. We went to [the major publishing firm] Hill & Range, and we had a song called “Stupid Cupid,” and Hill & Range passed—they didn’t like it. So I saw Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus there that day, and they said, “There’s a new publishing firm opening up across the street at 1650 called Aldon Music.” And we went in, and Don Kirshner opened the door. DON KIRSHNER: So in walks Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and they said, “We want to talk to the publisher.” And I said, “You’re looking at him.” And they said, “Oh, come on, get serious.” I mean, I probably looked like an 18-year-old kid that was taking out the garbage. NEIL SEDAKA: I played 8 or 10 songs, including “Stupid Cupid,” and they said, “Where did you steal these songs?” Because we were pitselehs—we were kids. DON KIRSHNER: I really thought either Bobby was playing a joke on me or somebody was putting me on, because I couldn’t believe that nobody would take that talent. NEIL SEDAKA: So Howie and I were the first to be signed to Aldon Music. “Stupid Cupid,” the first song Aldon published, became a No. 14 hit for Connie Francis. The preternaturally peppy Sedaka, who had been in a doo-wop group called the Tokens at Lincoln High—the same Tokens who would later record “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”—soon took to performing his and Greenfield’s songs himself. Signing a recording contract with RCA in 1959, he scored hits with “The Diary,” “I Go Ape,” and “Oh! Carol,” which was named for Carole Klein, a doe-eyed Brooklyn girl he knew from Lincoln High’s rival school, James Madison. NEIL SEDAKA: We were introduced in Brighton Beach, and we used to sing on street corners and on the beach. We never wrote together, but we dated for a year. We danced to “Earth Angel,” and did the Grind and the Bump. Her mother didn’t like me. CAROLE KING: I went out on one date with him! Anything you hear to the contrary did not come from my camp. But I did admire what he was doing with his fellow school members, who turned out to be the Tokens. And I started a little group in my school, doing something similar. That’s kind of what I was doing until I got to college, and then I met Gerry. In 1959 the 17-year-old Klein began her freshman year at Queens College, where she met a chemistry major and would-be playwright three years her senior named Gerry Goffin, a rangy, intense type who was working on a musical about Beatniks. GERRY GOFFIN: She was interested in writing rock ’n’ roll, and I was interested in writing this Broadway play. So we had an agreement where she would write [music] to the play if I would write [lyrics] to some of her rock ’n’ roll melodies. And eventually it came to be a boy-and-girl relationship. Eventually I began to lose heart in my play, and we stuck to writing rock ’n’ roll. One of Goffin and King’s first songwriting efforts was a jokey answer song to Sedaka’s “Oh! Carol” called “Oh! Neil.” Recorded by Klein herself—as Carole King—it included Goffin’s sarcasm-steeped line “I’d even give up a month’s supply of chewin’ tobacky / Just to be known as Mrs. Neil Sedacky!” NEIL SEDAKA: Gerry and I were in competition, because we were both then going out with Carole, or I had just stopped, and then he started dating her. He scared me, Gerry. JACK KELLER, Aldon staff songwriter: All the music exploded from “Oh! Carol,” because Carole King wrote an answer song called “Oh! Neil” and played it for Epic Records’ A&R man. He calls Donny, because Donny’s the publisher, and says, “I want to do this answer record, can we have permission?” Donny says, “Send her over, let me hear the song.” DON KIRSHNER: Neil introduced me to Carole. She played me, like, five notes, and I fell in love. I just heard all that raw talent and said, “I’ve got to sign her.” It was a fortunate break, because Goffin and King, growing up fast, were married in 1960 and expecting their first child. GERRY GOFFIN: We decided we had to quit school. So Carole got a job as a secretary, and I got a job as an assistant chemist at Argus Chemicals in Brooklyn. We moved from Queens to Sheepshead Bay. We continued our songwriting, and for a year and a half we wrote very bad songs. Before long, Kirshner had another songwriting couple on his hands, composer Barry Mann and lyricist Cynthia Weil. Mann, a nice-looking kid who’d been three years ahead of King at James Madison High School, was an architecture-school dropout who’d bounced around the Brill world for a couple of years before getting a staff job at Aldon. Weil, a slender blonde Manhattanite from a well-to-do family, was an aspiring Broadway lyricist who worked in the office of the great Frank Loesser, of Guys and Dolls renown. One day in 1960 she was collaborating on a song with Teddy Randazzo, an Italian-American heartthrob singer of the era, when Mann came into Randazzo’s office to pitch a song he’d written with Howie Greenfield. Smitten with the visitor, Weil found out from a friend that Mann worked for Kirshner, and made an appointment to show her lyrics to the Aldon boss. CYNTHIA WEIL: So I went up there—I was stalking Barry, I guess; they didn’t have a name for it in those days. Kirshner looked at my lyrics, and he said, “You know, I know just the person that you should write with.” So I thought, Oh! He’s gonna fix me up with the cute guy! And in walks this little girl. And he said, “Play the piano for her.” So she sits down and plays and sings, and she’s really great. I remember she had scabs on her knees and she looked around 12. And it was Carole. Kirshner said, “Well, she’s writing with her husband, but he’s working as a chemist, and he works during the day, so they can only write at night—and she should be writing during the day too. So you could write with her during the day.” The Weil-King partnership never panned out, but Weil succeeded in hooking Mann as both a romantic partner and a professional one; they would marry in 1961. And soon enough the Mann-Weils and the Goffin-Kings were the best of friends—albeit friends in a constant state of competition. MANN: It was very difficult. CYNTHIA WEIL: It was having a best friend, and then competing with them for something you both wanted. And feeling really guilty you wanted your best friend to lose. Carole was the least competitive of all of us. BARRY MANN: Gerry was very competitive. GERRY GOFFIN: On the surface, we got along well. But you could feel a little bit of jealousy between Barry and Cynthia and Carole and me—you know, about who was gonna get the next record. There was a little tension. CYNTHIA WEIL: Gerry was always writing. We rented a ski house in Massachusetts, and we would all go up there together. We didn’t want to leave them for a weekend—partially because they were our pals, and partially because we knew they’d be writing their asses off if they weren’t skiing with us. BARRY MANN: We were happy when Carole would get pregnant, ’cause at least she’d be in the operating room, giving birth. CYNTHIA WEIL: For three or four hours. But Carole’d be writing on the way out! BARRY MANN: She was like a Chinese laborer: give birth in a rice paddy, but still be writing at the same time. Goffin and King were the first to hit pay dirt. GERRY GOFFIN: Before Louise was born, we wrote almost every day at the piano, until Carole got so pregnant it became impossible. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” came at just the right time, because Carole had to quit her job, because she was— CAROLE KING: —throwing up into the wastebasket. So one night, not long before little Louise Goffin was born ... GERRY GOFFIN: It was my night out with the boys and Carole’s night out with the girls. I went bowling, and she went to play mah-jongg. How Jewish can you get? I get home about nine o’clock, and I see a note on this huge Norelco tape recorder: “Went to play mah-jongg. Donny needs a lyric for the Shirelles by tomorrow. Please write.” So I turn on the tape machine and I listen to the melody, and it was something new, something different—it really sounded good. And the lyric came out so easy. We went in [to Aldon] the next day, and Luther Dixon, who was the producer of the Shirelles, picked that song to do. CAROLE KING: When “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” sold a million, we went, “Bye-bye, day job!” GERRY GOFFIN: Carole and Donny arrived in Donny’s limousine at the chem factory and told me I didn’t have to work anymore. And he gave us a $10,000 advance and we got credit cards, and I’ve never had to do an honest day’s work since. And so began Aldon’s extraordinary run of 1961–63. Goffin and King’s hits in this period would include “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva, “Chains” by the Cookies, “One Fine Day” by the Chiffons, and “Up on the Roof” by the Drifters. Mann and Weil’s hits would include “Uptown” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” by the Crystals, “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” by Eydie Gorme, and “On Broadway” by the Drifters. Sedaka would chart with his and Greenfield’s songs “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” NEIL SEDAKA: There were always at least two or three Aldon songs in the Top 10. It did wonders for Howie: he lost weight; he started having boyfriends. He really came out of his shell. Kirshner, not content to be merely a music publisher, launched his own label in 1962, Dimension Records, and deputized Goffin and King to be its A&R chiefs, and Goffin to be its house producer. The first Dimension release was the Goffin-King song “The Loco-Motion.” CAROLE KING: You know the very first thing you hear on “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva? You think it’s the drum, right? Wrong. It’s [exhalation sound], “Hehhhhh ...”—eight layers of hiss. That was a demo. GERRY GOFFIN: It was done as a demo for [singer] Dee Dee Sharp. It just was done on mono. Eva Boyd was an aspiring singer who had met Goffin and King when she was trying to scrounge up session work. LITTLE EVA: I wanted to be a recording artist—that was my dream. Carole had one daughter, Lulu, and she was pregnant at the time [with her second daughter, Sherry Goffin, born in 1963]. And she asked me did I want to baby-sit. So I said, “Well, yeah, because in between sessions I’m gonna need some money.” GERRY GOFFIN: She would always sing along to the songs we were writing in our little apartment. I came up with the idea [to have her sing on the demo]. Ethnic voices were what was in. Unsophisticated voices. CAROLE KING: Eva sang, and I sang background with her. And it was the first in a long line—right up to and including my next album—of demos that become masters. LITTLE EVA: Gerry already thought that it would be a hit with me singing. So he took it in to them to listen, Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. And they listened to it, and, you know, it just hit ’em. GERRY GOFFIN: For a while [after the song became a hit], she said, “Don’t worry, I’m still gonna work for you, I’m not gonna think about being a star.” And then, two weeks later, she’s touring. Two of the Brill era’s greatest New York City songs, Goffin and King’s “Up on the Roof” and Mann and Weil’s “On Broadway,” both Drifters singles, were Leiber-and-Stoller productions. By 1961, Leiber and Stoller, after several years of itinerant office-hopping, had opened up their own suite of offices on the ninth floor of the Brill Building, where they frequently took meetings with the Aldon writers. GERRY GOFFIN: Jerry Leiber helped me a lot on “Up on the Roof.” I had almost the whole lyric, but for some reason I had a mental block—I couldn’t think of a rhyme for “roof” in the last verse. I had “There’s room enough for two up on the roof”—which brings it all into a love-song context. And I said, “What can you rhyme with ‘roof’?” And he said, “How about ‘proof’?” And so, “I found a paradise that’s troubleproof.” CYNTHIA WEIL: We had written “On Broadway” for a girls’ group. The thrust was a girl coming to New York, to make it on Broadway, from a small town. We went up to play it for Jerry and Mike, and obviously it was an inappropriate lyric for the Drifters. But they liked the take on it musically, and they loved the title. BARRY MANN: My concept was to write a Gershwinesque melody. A little jazzier. And Mike Stoller changed it when we all got together to write. It was a good change, very commercial. Leiber and Stoller also catalyzed the ascent of Bacharach and David. In 1962 the Drifters were recording a song Bacharach had written with lyricist Bob Hilliard, “Mexican Divorce.” BURT BACHARACH: Dionne Warwick was in the background group. It was a Leiber-and-Stoller date, so Jerry asked me to work out the girls’ parts. He worked with the Drifters in the office for a week, and the background group worked with me for a week. That group had Cissy Houston, Dionne, Myrna Utley, and Dionne’s sister Dee Dee. A killer group. MIKE STOLLER: That’s where Burt first heard Dionne and said, “Would it be all right if I ... ?” BURT BACHARACH: She had a special thing about her. A special look. There was a star quality about Dionne. Those high cheekbones, the bone structure. And then you factor in that voice. So Dionne came in a couple of weeks later to sing something for Hal and myself. And she was astounding. Warwick sang the demo for a Bacharach-David song called “Make It Easy on Yourself,” thinking it would be her first single. When the song was instead given to the singer Jerry Butler, Warwick, feeling betrayed, told the songwriters, “Aw, man, don’t make me over!” Which prompted Bacharach and David to write “Don’t Make Me Over,” a hit in 1962. Bacharach and David would go on to write a succession of great songs for Warwick, among them “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “Walk On By,” and for the remainder of the 60s worked as songwriting partners—though Bacharach, astonishingly, continued to go out on the road with Marlene Dietrich. BURT BACHARACH: Marlene was very much on my side—you know, the more successful, the more well-known I was, the less likelihood that I was going to be able to do these dates with her anymore. But she was nice about it. Backstage at the Edinburgh Festival or something, 50 fans were waiting for her: “Marlene, can we have your autograph?” And she said, “You don’t vant my autograph. You vant his!” Another major talent to come up through the Leiber-and-Stoller ranks was a gnomish little fellow from Los Angeles named Phil Spector. Spector had briefly tasted success as the producer, songwriter, and co–backing vocalist of the Teddy Bears, a white-bread group that had a No. 1 hit in 1958 with “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” But by 1960 the Teddy Bears were no more, and Spector had no career momentum. He had, however, forged a connection to a man named Lester Sill, an L.A. label boss who had introduced Leiber and Stoller to the music business in their West Coast days and functioned as the duo’s mentor. MIKE STOLLER: Lester called us: “I got this kid. He’s talented. But he wants to move away and hang with you guys—like, apprentice.” And since it was Lester making the request, we couldn’t refuse. We sent Phil a ticket, and he came to New York. JERRY LEIBER: Phil was very bright. MIKE STOLLER: But he was eccentric. JERRY LEIBER: A lot of shadows playing at the same time. Some of the things are just theater. He’s very theatrical and knows how to draw attention to himself—either by the way he looks at you or the way he dresses. He used to wear those George Washington ruffled blouses. Leiber and Stoller initially kept the 19-year-old Spector busy with make-work: playing percussion or fifth guitar on their sessions, signing him to a writer’s agreement but not paying much heed to his output. But one day, grudgingly, the duo agreed to write a song with him. MIKE STOLLER: We had a writing session scheduled for the three of us, but I had been missing dinners with my children. And my ex-wife said, “You can’t disappoint them again.” So I told Jerry, “I’ll try and come up later.” And I called after dinner, and I was told the song was finished. But I did participate to some degree. I wrote, “Dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee”… …meaning the famous marimba part that opens the song that Leiber and Spector had completed, “Spanish Harlem,” the first solo hit for Ben E. King of the Drifters. Spector’s rapid ascent as a songwriter and producer paralleled Aldon’s—in 1961 he produced the Paris Sisters’ “I Love How You Love Me,” co-written by Barry Mann, and the following year he founded his own label with Lester Sill, Philles Records (pronounced “Phillies”), for which he handled all production. Philles struck quickly in 1962 with a succession of hit singles by the Crystals, among them Gene Pitney’s “He’s a Rebel” and Mann and Weil’s “Uptown” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love.” But Spector’s truly magical, do-no-wrong year was 1963, the year of the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You”—the chiming, cavernous, massive-sounding productions that established his reputation as Mr. Wall of Sound. Though these songs were recorded in Los Angeles’s Gold Star Studios, they were written in the Brill Building by the husband-and-wife team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Barry was born Joel Adelberg and raised in New Jersey and Brooklyn, where he attended Erasmus Hall High School. Six feet six, long-faced, and fond of western-style fancy dress— MIKE STOLLER: He used to dress like the Marlboro man—you know, like a Brooklyn cowboy. JEFF BARRY: People’d say, “Hey, where’s your horse?” —he briefly studied engineering at the City College of New York, but dropped out to become a rock ’n’ roll singer. That dream went unfulfilled, but he soon found success as a songwriter, co-writing “Tell Laura I Love Her,” a Top 10 hit for Ray Peterson in 1960. As for Greenwich, she was a bubbly, accordion-playing sorority girl from Long Island—the Spring Queen of Hofstra in her college days—with labor-intensive makeup and the most extraordinary blond bouffant this side of Dusty Springfield. ELLIE GREENWICH: I had so much hair spray. Love teasing! I remember standing on a street corner during a major, major storm, and I thought everybody was looking at me ’cause I’m so cute. And I see a reflection across the street in a glass window. And not one hair was moving, but the whole thing was literally just tilting. Greenwich and Barry had met through a family connection: one of her uncles was married to one of his cousins. By autumn of 1962, a few months after her graduation from Hofstra, they were married and living in Lefrak City, a homely apartment complex overlooking the Long Island Expressway. By 1963 they were writing songs together, under the aegis of Leiber and Stoller’s publishing company, Trio Music, and were even recording hits themselves—“What a Guy” and “The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget”—as the studio group the Raindrops. ELLIE GREENWICH: I thought it was so cool—married to this guy, doing, literally, everything together. How wonderful could this be? I’m 22 years old, barreling along like [girlish singsong], “Dee-dee-dee-deeee.” With the white cotton-candy hair and the fake eyelashes. People are saying, “Isn’t she adorable?” and pinching my cheeks. PHIL RAMONE, engineer, Bell Sound Studios: Jeff and Ellie were all over the place, the most gregarious people you’d ever work with. Jeff was this gigantic guy, kind of thin and tall, who had a way about him. He loved to hand-clap; it was part of their enjoyment of their own records. And Ellie would be the dancer in the studio. ELLIE GREENWICH: “Be My Baby” and “Then He Kissed Me” were written in part in Lefrak City, and in the city—the Brill Building, Leiber and Stoller’s office, or with Phil Spector in his office. We just got Phil. I think he really appreciated Jeff’s and my humor. We made him laugh. And we understood him. We accepted his idiosyncrasies. We let him carry on. We let him conduct his Wagner things, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger—everything as big as life. And we would take him on a boat ride around Manhattan Island—where he stayed inside, holding his head because he didn’t want his hair to blow. I think he just felt safe with us. Plus, we turned out some really good stuff. JEFF BARRY: Phil would usually be at the piano. He would be the musical leader—certainly in the chord progression. I was more lyric and melody, Ellie was more chords and structure. I liked to write the part the singer sings. Ellie had more musical, technical experience. ELLIE GREENWICH: We never thought much about, like, was it gonna be idiotic to have “Be My Baby,” then “Baby, I Love You”? Baby, baby, baby. JEFF BARRY: “Baby”—it’s a good word. JERRY LEIBER: Jeff Barry was more of a “doazy doats and liddle lamzy divey” kind of—you know, nonsense rhymes and jokes and things. JEFF BARRY: I’m just not a metaphor kind of guy. I say it very directly. Growing up with a blind father and a retarded sister, communicating with two-thirds of my family had to be simple for my sister, and succinct and visual for my father. And I was always aware that I was trying to entertain kids, not adults. Nineteen sixty-three was the high-water mark for the Brill Building sound, with all three husband-and-wife teams in their prime. But just as everything was humming along nicely, the young tunesmiths of Aldon got the shock of their life when Kirshner and Nevins sold the company outright to Columbia Pictures, the movie-and-TV studio. Nevins bowed out, Kirshner was installed as the head of the studio’s music division, Screen Gems, and the whole operation moved from 1650 Broadway to Columbia’s swanky offices on Fifth Avenue. CYNTHIA WEIL: When Aldon Music was sold, we read about it in the trades. We didn’t even know that they were going to sell this company and that we were like ballplayers—we were going to be sold with it. GERRY GOFFIN: I knew it was the beginning of the end. CAROLE KING: I’m sure Donny got a pile of money for it. BARRY MANN: Three million dollars. DON KIRSHNER: If I want to look back now and say, “Hey, schmuck, those copyrights are worth a billion dollars today; you sold them for $3 million; you’re not too bright”—you know, you can’t torture yourself about that. Obviously I sold too early, at the top of my game, and I sold too short. But they will always be my baby, they will always be my songs, whether my name’s on them or not. CAROLE KING: I think what Donny parroted back to us, what I imagine he was told, was, it’s a great opportunity, because we’ll have a connection to movies and TV. It was a very seductive argument for him, and he tried to sell it to us, and, not having any choice in the matter, we said O.K. DON KIRSHNER: I thought I was opening up new horizons for them, because, effectively, they were stars already. They had every hit with the Drifters—they could continue with that. I thought they would go for maybe an Academy Award song, or a TV show. The Aldon songwriters were now assigned to write theme songs for such TV shows as The Farmer’s Daughter and Redigo, and to write pop vehicles for Columbia-contracted actors with singing aspirations. But even with the burden of schlock weighing heavily on their heads, the Aldon writers—now Screen Gems writers—still came through with great pop singles. Mann and Weil’s finest hour came in 1964, when Phil Spector summoned them to Los Angeles and set them up in the Chateau Marmont to write a song for the Righteous Brothers. BARRY MANN: When we wrote “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” I remember Phil Spector saying, “This is going to be probably the biggest song you’re ever going to have.” CYNTHIA WEIL: And I said, “Phil, any song with ‘whoa-whoa-whoa’ in it is not important.” And that was my Broadway theater bitch coming out. BARRY MANN: We knew that Bill Medley had this really low voice and Bobby Hatfield had the great high voice. But when Phil finally cut the record, we were back in New York, and he started to play it over the phone for me. And because Bill sang so low, and it was coming through this little speaker—[imitating Medley’s basso croon] “You never close your eyes anymore ... ”—I started to yell, “Phil! You got it on the wrong speed!” Leiber and Stoller, renowned for their shrewdness in business, took a Kirshner-like misstep of their own in this period, when their accountants advised them to commission an independent audit of their dealings with Atlantic Records. JERRY LEIBER: We thought about it, and we said, “Don’t do it—Ahmet, Nesuhi, and Jerry are like brothers, and they’re going to think we’re questioning their honesty.” But the accountants talked them into it. The move totally backfired. Though the audit revealed that they were owed $18,000—not a huge sum even in the early 1960s—the Erteguns and Wexler were indeed furious, and not only pressured Leiber and Stoller into signing a document waiving the debt, but dropped them from Atlantic and kept the acts that the pair had brought to the label. A subsequent deal with United Artists disintegrated quickly, and in the spring of 1964, Leiber and Stoller found themselves in deep trouble, down to, ironically, $18,000 in cash and a small stack of masters that they themselves owned. Despairing, Leiber headed out to Al and Dick’s on 54th Street, the music bigwigs’ watering hole, on a Thursday night. JERRY LEIBER: It was mobbed, eight deep at the bar. Everybody was there: the hustlers, the grifters, the gamblers, the pimps. So I walk in, and Hymie Weiss is there. Hymie owned Old Town Records, the label that Arthur Prysock was on. He was one of the toughest monkeys I ever met in my life. He calls me over and says, “Hey, siddown! I want you to meet a friend of mine.” And there’s a guy sitting between me and Hymie. Very, very good hotel haircut. And nails done. Looked like Adolphe Menjou. It was golden-eared George Goldner, a man renowned for starting up enormously successful record companies—such as Tico, Gee, and Roulette—and invariably losing them to the Mob because he was a compulsive gambler. JERRY LEIBER: Hymie said, “This is the infamous George Goldner. He’s even more successful than you are. He didn’t write the songs—he stole ’em. And he didn’t make the records—he hired these little colored boys to make them, and he didn’t pay ’em. To make it all whitewash, he gives, like, maybe $10,000 out of the $10 million he stole last year to the synagogue in Westchester, where he lives. And the rest of the money he lost at the track.” Occasionally, to punctuate a sentence, Hymie blows cigar smoke in George’s face. And Goldner’s saying, “Hey, cut it out, man—I’m tired.” Hymie says to me, “Leiber, you’re a smart guy. Would you give this schmuck $350 a week to go on the road for you?” I said, jokingly, “I’ll think about it.” And Hymie says, “Well, while you’re thinking about it, I’m gonna take a leak.” And I lean over and say, “George, are you really looking for a job for $350 a week?” I’m thinking, Eighteen thousand—$350 a week into $18,000. How many weeks? How much time? And George said, “Yeah, I’ll take it. You’re on. Gimme the keys to your office.” I give him the keys. He said, “You just go home, and I’ll see you in the morning.” I said, “You’re just gonna go up there and stay all night?” And he said, “I’m gonna play your acetates until I decide which one’s a hit.” So out comes Hy, partially zipping his fly. He says, “Hey, you guys made a deal yet?” George says, “Yeah, I’m gonna work for him.” Hy says, “You cocksucker!” And he turns to me and he says, “What kinda friend are you, Leiber? I call you over here, I buy a drink, and you stab me in the back!” The following morning Leiber entered his office to find Goldner sitting behind his desk. JERRY LEIBER: Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle in his starched white shirt. Nothing. And he picks up this 10-inch acetate and says, “See this? On my father’s grave.” And I put it on: [singing, snapping fingers] “Goin’ to the chapel and we’re gonna get maaaaar-ried ... ” It was the Barry-Greenwich-Spector song “Chapel of Love,” performed by a New Orleans girl group called the Mel-Tones and produced, in a rare instance, by just Stoller, because Leiber couldn’t stand the song. It was the first release of Leiber, Stoller, and Goldner’s new label, Red Bird, and it was a smash for the Mel-Tones, whom Stoller renamed the Dixie Cups ... MIKE STOLLER: ... because I kept thinking of little brassieres! JERRY LEIBER: Coming to little points. MIKE STOLLER: It was the first American record to come in at No. 1 after I don’t know how many months of nothing but English records. Indeed, the British Invasion had begun by ’64. But Red Bird held its own that year, thanks to both “Chapel of Love” and the emergence of the Brill era’s last great auteur: a Brooklyn-born, Long Island–bred juvenile delinquent named George “Shadow” Morton. JERRY LEIBER: One of the best-looking kids I’ve ever seen. He made James Dean look like Porky Pig. JEFF BARRY: Little nose and big hair. Very strong hair. I think he’s very talented, and very bizarre. ELLIE GREENWICH: I knew him from Long Island. But not well. SHADOW MORTON: We just ... knew one another. She went to Memorial High School, I went to Bethpage. My group would go onstage at high-school dances to sing. And then she would come on with her accordion and sing and play, and occasionally we would back her up. ELLIE GREENWICH: And when I started making it big, he happened to call me and say, “Hi, remember me?” And I went, “Kind of.” And he goes, “Congratulations on your success. I have some acts, and I have some songs. And I was wondering if I could see you.” He came in, tripping over this long raincoat. SHADOW MORTON: Ellie was being very nice to me. Jeff had his back to me. And he was sitting at the piano. But rather than me understand the fact that this guy sitting at the piano with his back to me was working on a song, my Brooklyn alcoholic paranoia kicked in, and I saw a guy sitting with his back to me, ignoring me—and being very impolite. As I started to get up and leave, that’s when Jeff turned to me and said, “Just what is it you do for a living?” So I said, “Well, most people would say I’m a bum. But, really, I’m a songwriter—like you.” So he said, “What kind of songs do you write?” I said, “Hit songs.” And he said [condescending tone], “Why don’t you bring me one?” I said, “Do you want a fast hit or a slow hit?” He said, “Make it slow.” So began Morton’s first great con; he couldn’t read music or play an instrument, and had never written a proper song in his life. He called up a Long Island friend with a modest basement studio in his home. He called another friend who was a bassist and said he needed a four-piece band for a recording session. And he called yet another friend to round up a group of high-school girls from the Cambria Heights section of Queens who were performing around the area as the Shangri-Las. In a matter of days after his testy exchange with Barry, Morton had all the ingredients in place for a recording session. Except one thing. SHADOW MORTON: It was on my way to the studio that I realized I didn’t have a song. So I pulled the car over on a place called South Oyster Bay Road, and wrote the song. Then I went downstairs in the basement, everybody hollering, “You’re late, you’re late!” And then I told the piano player what to play. This little kid was sitting at the piano, and he kept playing everything complicated, and I said, “No, these two fingers. If you use more than these two fingers, you’re overplaying. Do like this [thudding descent of notes]: Dom-dom-dom ...” The kid piano player was a young Billy Joel. The piano notes were the ominous opening bars of “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” a strange, gothic, free-form soap operetta about virginity loss and betrayal, complete with finger snaps and creepy seagull sound effects. A couple of days after recording it in one marathon session, Morton brought Greenwich and Barry an acetate of the song, which at that point was seven minutes long. SHADOW MORTON: Jeff responded right off. I don’t think it was more than 60 seconds when he stopped it and said, “Do you mind if I play this for somebody else?” After about 5 or 10 minutes of idle chitchat with Ellie, the door opened up, and this weird guy, a blue eye and a brown eye, stuck his head in the door and waved the record at me. And he said, “Did you write this?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Did you produce this?” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “Did you tell everybody how to play, and what to play, and how to sing?” “Yeah.” He said, “You want a job here?” I had a dollar to my name! I said, “I’ll take it.” He said, “We’re gonna rework this record, and it’s coming out in three weeks.” Then he just closed the door. And Ellie looked at me and smiled. I said, “Is he for real?” She says, “Oh, yeah. That’s Jerry Leiber—that’s my boss.” Per Leiber’s instructions, Barry and Greenwich set to work editing and rerecording the song with the Shangri-Las. As if Morton’s song wasn’t strange enough, the Shangri-Las themselves were mesmerizingly bizarre: a gorgeous, flaxen-haired, 16-year-old lead singer, Mary Weiss, flanked by Marge and Mary Ann Ganser, twin Lewinskys trussed up in cat suits. (Mary’s big sister, Betty, occasionally augmented the other three.) They were a subversion of the girl-group norm: a clique of tough white chicks instead of virginal, altar-bound black gals. MARY WEISS: I used to buy my clothes on Eighth Street in the Village, in a men’s store. I wore man-tailored slacks and high-heeled boots and suede and leather vests and things like that. People would write me letters and ask me how old I was and how many children I had. And I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. It’s a hell of a way to grow up. ELLIE GREENWICH: We had some fights. Because here I am, Miss Bouffant, and they come in [imitates tough-chick gum-snapping] with the runs up their stockings and making like, “Yeah, whaddya want me to sing?” Ooh, we had a big thing in the ladies’ room! I was like, “Don’t you talk to me like that! I can be just as down as you can!” And then it was fine. When the dust cleared, “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” was a No. 5 hit, the Shangri-Las were new stars, and Morton was a new Brill Building star, albeit an erratic one. JEFF BARRY: I named him Shadow Morton. I could be talking to him, and I’d look away—and he’s gone. And he may not show up for days or weeks. Morton did not understand the urgency of crafting a follow-up to “Remember” until Leiber asked him what he had planned next. SHADOW MORTON: He says, “Do you have anything? Because if you don’t, I’m gonna get Jeff and Ellie to start working on something [for the Shangri-Las].” And when I heard that, I said, “I got a song.” He said, “What’s it about?” What he didn’t know was, a week before, I had gotten my first big royalty check. And I was up on 11th Avenue that morning, looking at motorcycles. So I said, “It’s about ... a motorcycle!” He said, “A motorcycle? What about a motorcycle?” I said, “It’s ... about this guy who rides a motorcycle. The whole story is really about this guy—and he rides a motorcycle into this little town ... and this girl sees him, and she falls in love with him.” Leiber said, “Is that it? It doesn’t sound right to me.” I said, “Why?” He says, “You’re talking about a Hell’s Angel–type guy driving into town and falling in love with this little girl. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Disc jockeys aren’t gonna play that.” I said, “It gets better.” He says, “It gets better? How does it get better?” I said, “He ... dies.” From this off-the-top-of-his-head bluff began Morton’s second great con: “Leader of the Pack,” a gory melodrama in which the girl protagonist’s biker amour crashes to his death shortly after their tearful breakup. Written by Morton with the help of Barry and Greenwich, and sung with resolutely convincing despair by Mary Weiss, it shot to No. 1. Barry and Greenwich soon found a new protégé in Neil Diamond, yet another Brooklynite, who’d attended both Erasmus Hall and Lincoln High Schools. As a pre-med student at New York University in the late 50s, Diamond had taken to skipping classes to go up to Tin Pan Alley to hustle his songs. He occasionally made a sale, but never a hit. NEIL DIAMOND: Carole King, Burt Bacharach—these people were geniuses. I was just a normal nonprodigy. By 1964 he’d long since given up on school and been knocking around the business for six years. He was also married, with a baby, and though he landed the occasional contract with a music publisher, he was having a rough time of it—almost literally. NEIL DIAMOND: The publishers were tough sons of bitches—either the publishers or the money behind the publishers. You know, if you expected to be paid what the contract called for, they had guys who’d beat the shit out of you. I walked into an office one day, and one of these guys was working over some writer who kind of had a philosophical disagreement with not being paid and not being able to pay his rent. After a couple of times of seeing your friends get the crap beaten out of them, you just toed that line. Greenwich, meanwhile, had become almost as well-known for her sideline as a demo singer and background vocalist as for her songwriting. ELLIE GREENWICH: I did a lot of demos then. I became known as the Demo Queen. I was quick and I could overdub parts, so they would automatically hire me as a “group.” That’s how I met Neil Diamond. Diamond harbored hopes of making it as a performer as well as a songwriter, so whenever he received an advance from a publisher to make a demo of one of his songs, he sang the lead and backing vocals himself. But when he received an advance from a firm called Pincus Music in 1965, he decided ... NEIL DIAMOND: ... “I’m gonna really do this right this time—instead of doing the background parts myself, I’m gonna get Ellie Greenwich!” And she was willing to do it; she had nothing to do for that hour. When we finished she said, “You know, I think you’re pretty good—maybe you’d like to meet my husband, and we could sit and talk.” Jeff liked something about what I did, and she liked another thing about what I did—he liked the song, she liked the voice. And they got me a contract, as a writer, with Leiber and Stoller’s Trio Music. Diamond proved every bit as luckless with Trio as he had been with other publishers—none of his songs became hits, and when his contract expired, Leiber and Stoller did not renew it. But Barry and Greenwich remained enamored of Diamond’s voice and his own interpretations of his songs, and were interested in producing him as an artist. NEIL DIAMOND: Here I was, free of the yoke of working for another music publisher, and I was handed two of the most creative people in the music business to produce the records. Jeff went to his friend—I think it was Jerry Wexler over at Atlantic, or Ahmet—and said, “I want to produce this kid.” And they said, “O.K., but we can’t really take him on Atlantic. But we have a little independent label, called Bang, that we’ve opened with [industry veteran] Bert Berns.” Diamond’s first two singles with Bang, the Barry-and-Greenwich-produced “Solitary Man” and “Cherry, Cherry,” both released in 1966, were Top 40 hits and established Diamond as a star. But Diamond grew dissatisfied with Bang, feeling they were hampering his artistic growth, and his flight from the label resulted in threats and tangles of lawsuits that would enmesh him, Barry, and Greenwich for years, even as his singing career achieved liftoff. NEIL DIAMOND: When I left Bang, it was a very scary time. I was contacted by my lawyer, who said, “The F.B.I. has some word that there’s a hit out on you because of this fight that you’re having with Bang.” My Farfisa player used to have a gun, so I borrowed it. And I carried around a loaded .38 for four months. Had no idea how to use it, to load it, to aim it, to do anything like that. But, man, I carried this piece around with me! Morton and the Shangri-Las were also getting bound up in messy legal situations at this time, a circumstance not helped by the fact that their run as hit-makers had fizzled out. By the mid-60s, as Brit-beat flourished and psychedelia’s tendrils were creeping into the pop picture, the polished, exuberant Brill Building sound had fallen out of fashion, and the songwriters were discovering that there was less demand for their work. In this same period, two of the songwriter marriages, Barry and Greenwich’s and Goffin and King’s, were running into problems. Barry and Greenwich’s split came even before Diamond’s first record was released; they divorced in December of 1965. ELLIE GREENWICH: It all came together, the professional and the personal: “Oh, dear, the British Invasion is here—what to do, what to do?” I was a little panicky. And Jeff, he didn’t want to talk about it; he was like, “Don’t want to go there.” We hadn’t talked about personal stuff in three years, because we were so busy with the music. We almost didn’t know how. Even though they had split up, Barry and Greenwich got back together in 1966 for one last writing session at the behest of Phil Spector, who was fighting his own rearguard action against the British Invasion. He was taken with Tina Turner’s voice, and was convinced that the right song and the right production would put him back at the top. ELLIE GREENWICH: Phil, I don’t think, was aware that we were divorced. So we told him, “We’re not together anymore.” I mean, Jeff and I wouldn’t have gotten together without Phil saying, “I really want to try.” It was the first time I was writing in Jeff’s apartment, on 72nd Street. It was a weird little get-together. “River Deep, Mountain High,” the result of that writing session, was a furious din, featuring the most outré lyrics Barry had ever written (“When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll ... Now I love you just the way I love that rag doll”) and great masses of strings, horns, and basses that conspired to make Turner sound as if she were singing in the midst of an air raid. The single went to No. 1 in Great Britain, but stiffed in America, emphatically ending Spector’s reign as, in Tom Wolfe’s words, the First Tycoon of Teen. The ever shrewd Don Kirshner granted the Aldon-Brill writers a reprieve of sorts when he commissioned them to come up with songs for the prefab TV band the Monkees, whose creators, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, had asked him to handle the music for their program. Barry and Goffin got work producing Monkees sessions. Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer.” Goffin and King came up with the Beatles-ish “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Another Goffin-King tune, “The Porpoise Song,” written for the Monkees’ movie Head, was full-blown psychedelia, both gorgeous and disturbing—the sound of the once squeaky-clean Brooklynites Gerry and Carole going all trippy. GERRY GOFFIN: That was the whole thing that led to Carole’s and my breakup. I wanted to be a hippie—grew my hair long—and Carole did it modestly. You know, we smoked some grass together once in a while— CAROLE KING: —but I never inhaled. GERRY GOFFIN: She never wanted to go overboard. And then I started taking LSD and mescaline. And Carole and I began to grow apart because she felt that she had to say things herself; she had to be her own lyricist. But in 1967, at the instigation of Jerry Wexler, Goffin and King came up with one last great song while they were still married. JERRY WEXLER: In the old folk mythology, and in the blues, the term “natural man” keeps coming up. So this notion occurred to me: What about “You make me feel like a natural woman”? GERRY GOFFIN: I was coming out of the Oyster Bar, and Jerry Wexler’s driving by in his limousine. And he says, “C’mere! I got a title for you! I want you to write it for Aretha Franklin.” He says, “Natural Woman!” So I went home and wrote it with Carole. But such triumphs as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” were by now infrequent for the old gang; the bloom was off. By the time two naïve kids from Bard College named Walter Becker and Donald Fagen entered the Brill Building to sell their songs in 1969, the place was no longer the musical wonderland it had been at the beginning of the decade. WALTER BECKER, Steely Dan: You could tell already that this was something that was a bit down on its heels. The people we had contact with were clearly people who were proposing to make this sort of difficult transition from one pop-music era to another, and you could see how ridiculous it was, what they were trying to do. That reflected itself in all sorts of ways, including the way they looked and the cheesy musical stuff they were doing, trying to capture the psychedelic momentum of the day. Perhaps it was according to this logic that longhaired Becker and Fagen got staff jobs as songwriters for JATA Enterprises, the publishing company of the past-its-prime pop group Jay and the Americans, who also employed the duo as touring musicians. JAY BLACK, Jay and the Americans: We had these two kids sing some stuff for us, and they were so talented, I said, “Would you like to play for us?” And they worked for us. Now they’re Steely Dan. So I wonder why they left—I was paying them a hundred dollars apiece! WALTER BECKER: The songs we had were utterly bizarre songs. There was no chance that anybody would record any of them. I remember us going down to Jeff Barry’s office and playing a tune for him and, you know, having him get impatient before the chorus came in. He could tell pretty quickly that these weren’t hit tunes. Jerry Leiber compared our music to German art music or something like that. Becker and Fagen proved to be the last great Brill Building songwriting team—in a delayed-reaction sort of way. In their year plus with JATA Enterprises, they managed to use the dilapidated old demo studio in the building to record 15 to 20 songs, a few of which would later emerge, in rerecorded form, as Steely Dan songs. WALTER BECKER: I think we did a demo of the song “Brooklyn.” “Barrytown” was another one of those demos—and there were a lot of songs that we did at that time that were rewritten or scrapped for parts. It was a period of time that helped us hone our style from the ultra-ridiculous to the merely ridiculous. Becker and Fagen moved to the West Coast in 1971, just as most of the older Brill stalwarts had done or would do in this period. The music-industry locus had shifted to Los Angeles, and New York City—formerly the vibrant, sparkly inspiration for many of their songs—had entered its run-down Kojak period. CAROLE KING: Gerry and I both moved west in 1968. That was the year that we knew that our marriage was pretty much not gonna work. We moved separately. A lot of the music business was happening out West. CYNTHIA WEIL: Suddenly you realized that everyone you wanted to talk to was on the West Coast: a producer, an A&R person. And New York was going through a bad period—it was at its dirtiest and crummiest. Right before we left, I went to say good-bye to Bloomingdale’s, my favorite place. And all of a sudden a bus came barreling down Third Avenue and screeched to a halt in front of where I was standing, and a guy jumped out with a knife, and dropped the knife and ran down the street; he had held up the bus driver. I thought, Oh my God! There’s nothing sacred! They’re dropping knives in front of Bloomingdale’s! I gotta get outta here! After the Brill scene deteriorated, a mixed bag of fates awaited its former inhabitants. Most went through periods of identity crisis, but each, to varying degrees, went on to later success, even if it wasn’t as consistent as it had been in the Brill days. King made the biggest splash with her 1971 album Tapestry, the best-selling LP of the 1970s, and continues to record. Goffin has written the words to such hits as Whitney Houston’s “Saving All My Love for You” and Diana Ross’s “Do You Know Where You’re Going To (Theme from Mahogany)”; he and King continue to collaborate from time to time. Sedaka came back big in the 1970s, writing “Love Will Keep Us Together” for the Captain and Tennille and having his own hits with “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood”; he continues to perform. Mann and Weil, who remain happily married, have written such hits as Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again” and Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch.” Barry, the least ruffled by the end of the Brill era, wrote “Sugar Sugar” for the Archies, the biggest-selling single of 1968, and co-wrote “I Honestly Love You” with Peter Allen for Olivia Newton-John. Greenwich, after recovering from what she calls a “nervous breakdown,” put together a hit stage retrospective of her songs entitled The Leader of the Pack. Leiber and Stoller pulled a similar trick with their show Smokey Joe’s Cafe, a long-runner on Broadway, and still write songs together. Diamond flourished as a solo artist. Morton went on to produce Vanilla Fudge and the New York Dolls, and is getting back to producing after a long period spent in an alcoholic wilderness. Bacharach and David, the beneficiaries of a warm re-appraisal in recent years (with Elvis Costello and Mike Myers at the forefront), are writing together again, having overcome a long estrangement. Kirshner oversaw the Monkees and Archies records, and went on to produce and host the Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert TV series, memorably lampooned by Paul Shaffer on Saturday Night Live. Yet there’s no getting around the fact that a majority of these people will forever be regarded, first and foremost, as Brill Building people—a fact that may have rankled them in earlier days, but now is a fate to which they are happily reconciled. ELLIE GREENWICH: You want to hear my best story? This was about two years ago. Right next door to here [in Greenwich’s Manhattan apartment building] there’s a tailor, and I had to go in to get some things altered. It was a Saturday morning—no makeup, no hair spray. The radio’s on, and “Be My Baby” comes on. So this woman is pinning as she’s singing along. I don’t say anything, but it’s kind of exciting, because she’s singing it and she knows all the words. And then the Raindrops come on, “What a Guy.” I’m semi-beside-myself. Wow! After that, they play “Cherry, Cherry,” Neil Diamond. Now I can hardly control myself. And this woman walks in off the street and she goes, “Oh! [Gasps.] He’s my favorite! I love Neil Diamond so!” I’m now like, That’s it! I go, “Excuse me? You hear that? [Singing.] ‘She got the way to move me ... ’ That’s my ex-husband and I! We’re doing those backgrounds! I produced that record with my husband! And I was with the Raindrops, the song before that! And ‘Be My Baby’—I was one of the writers of that song!” And this woman just backs up ... looks me up and down ... and she goes, “Right, lady.” Read More » Someone behind us honks—a disapproving noncruiser. “Fuuuck you,” says Valentine, though not with the combustive anger of the salty and aged, more the sighing bemusement of an enlightened old-timer who’s thinking, Jeez, loosen up, kids; you see more when you take it slow. This is a man who first arrived in Los Angeles via freight car and upturned thumb—he was 14, it was the Great Depression, and after the hobo trains got him as far as San Francisco from his hometown of Chicago, he hitchhiked the rest of the way downstate. Up on the right comes the Comedy Store, formerly Ciro’s, the crown jewel of the Strip’s glorious 1940s champagne-in-a-bucket epoch. Valentine explains that Ciro’s reconstituted itself as a hip 60s rock club just long enough to launch the Byrds, but, unable to secure a liquor license, morphed into a short-lived teenybop haven with the risible name It’s Boss. Moving along, Valentine points out an undistinguished building on the plot where Dino’s Lodge was, “Dean Martin’s place, where Kookie worked in 77 Sunset Strip.” The next site of note is an empty lot across the street from the ersatz mid-century greasy spoon Mel’s Diner, formerly the genuine mid-century greasy spoon Ben Frank’s. “That’s where I had the Trip,” says Valentine. The Trip was a tiny but chic rock club Valentine opened in 1965 in the space vacated by the Crescendo, a jazz club; one of its gimmicks, devised by Valentine’s music-mogul buddy Lou Adler, was that the names of the current Billboard Top 10 singles were displayed on its façade. But the highlight of Valentine’s tour comes a few blocks later, after we’ve passed the spot where the Classic Cat topless club used to be (now the Tower Records classical annex) but before we’ve hit the former sites of Gazzarri’s (now the Key Club) and the very first Hamburger Hamlet (now Beverly Sunset Motors). “There it is,” says Valentine adoringly, as if proffering a school photo of a granddaughter. Behold, at the northwest corner of Sunset and Clark, the most famous club in the history of rock music, the Whisky à Go Go—its façade currently painted in a queasy alternation of yellow and pastel-purple rectangles. “Aww, I’m proud of it,” Valentine says. “It was just so popular, right from the very first night. I tell you, I was just lucky. It was easy. You know what? It was easy.” Valentine opened the Whisky à Go Go in January of 1964. Johnny Rivers, later famous for the song “Secret Agent Man,” was the headliner. The club was an instant smash, a cultural trendsetter from the outset; we have Valentine to thank for introducing the terms “à go go,” “go-go girl,” and “go-go cage” into our vernacular, and, more significantly, for helping launch the careers of some of the best rock ’n’ roll bands ever. “Once the Whisky started to happen, then Sunset Boulevard started to happen,” says Lou Adler. “L.A. started to happen, as far as the music business—it blew up.” Indeed, the mythologizing of psychedelic San Francisco and Brill Building–era New York often obscures Los Angeles’s status as the seat of American pop in the 60s, the city that gave us not only the explicitly California-identified Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, but also the Doors, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Sonny & Cher. (To say nothing of the fact that Phil Spector, a man often presumed to be a New Yorker, was actually an L.A. kid who recorded the bulk of his celebrated Wall of Sound output at Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard.) Today, the words “Sunset Strip” may automatically summon a mental montage of sleaze— cocaine, skull tattoos, breast implants, hamburger grease—but 35 years ago there was no place more sunshiny and brimming with possibility. “It was an amazing time,” says Gail Zappa, who met her future husband, Frank, when she was 21 and working as Valentine’s secretary. “In those days [on the Strip], people with long hair who had cars waved to each other—long hair was a mark, a signifier. Like ‘Wow: there’s another one! We’re actually making progress!’” The Strip offered the Aquarian good vibes of Haight-Ashbury with a Hollywood difference: better-looking people and no body stink. As Gene Clark, the handsomest Byrd and the one with the best Beatles-cum-Prince-Valiant haircut, remarked upon his return from a trip to San Francisco in the mid-60s, “Long hair is all right, but they look like girls out there. I mean, you don’t even know if it’s clean, man.” Roger McGuinn, Clark’s then bandmate, remembers apologizing to his San Franciscan friends for L.A.’s shortcomings—the smog, the traffic, the lookism—but adds, “I liked L.A. It was an amazing music town then, almost more than it was a movie town.” The Whisky was the hub of this remarkably fertile scene, a place for the aforementioned acts to perform and/or hang out, and for these acts’ fans to share in the rapture. Valentine was the scene’s unlikely paterfamilias—an ex-cop and jazz aficionado from Chicago who was already past 40. “Back then, we really believed in ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ but Elmer was different,” says Cher. “He was the one older person we trusted.” The kids loved Valentine not only for his peaceable demeanor and soft, jowly mug—Jack Nicholson has described him as looking like “all seven of the dwarves”—but also because he genuinely enjoyed their music and their company. “You didn’t know who owned Ciro’s, you didn’t know who ran Ciro’s,” says Adler. “But Elmer was a face, someone you could connect to, a celebrity in his own right.” Which makes his obscurity today, in our relentlessly archival Behind the Music-slash-E! Hollywood True Story culture, all the more curious. Valentine has retreated so quietly into retirement that few people realize he’s still around. He says he has seen himself referred to in print as “the late Elmer Valentine,” and several people I interviewed for this story made a point of asking me when he died. Still others, L.A. music scenesters who pride themselves on being in the know, said they’d heard that Valentine “isn’t doing so well,” and is a shut-in befogged by Alzheimer’s. In fact, Valentine is hale and vigorous and contends, “I’m better than I ever was.” Though he doesn’t get out much socially anymore, he walks several miles a day and bides his time happily at his house up in the Hollywood Hills, smoking herb and listening to jazz CDs in the company of two dogs (a boxer and a pit bull), two tankfuls of tropical fish (“I think of fish as living art”), and two greenhouses full of orchids. His legendary lovability is apparent from the moment he appears in his doorway. He has a snuffly Doc/Sneezy speaking voice to match the face, a jolly cast to his features, and the sturdy build of a benevolent protector: good height, broad shoulders, large hands, an air of latent strength; picture Fred Mertz if he grew his hair out and acquired a predilection for cheeba. Up in his bedroom, he shows me, in the most unassuming, nonboastful way, concrete evidence of his charm and continuing vigor: bountiful home snapshots, held fast under plate glass on top of his dresser, of the young lovelies he’s walked out with over the years—women 40, 50 years his junior, including Gia Carangi, the doomed, heroin-addicted 80s model whom Angelina Jolie played in a TV movie, and the knockout Polish model in her 20s he happens to be dating now. “I know I’m pushing 80,” he says. “The wonderful thing is, with all these girls, music is the common bond. With music as the common bond, they look beyond the physical.” Adler, more succinctly, says, “Elmer is a wolf.” Is this man still alive? Is he ever. What’s more, his recall is better than that of the rock stars who spent the 60s in his club. Johnny Rivers, the Whisky’s star attraction for the first year of its existence, recalls the state of the Strip before his arrival on it as “pretty dead, really.” The early 1960s were something of an interregnum on Sunset. Old-Hollywood nightspots such as Ciro’s, the El Mocambo, and the Trocadero were either dead or dying, having lost their action to the big rooms of burgeoning Vegas, and rock ’n’ roll hadn’t yet stormed in to the rescue. Small clubs like the Crescendo and the Renaissance did good business with jazzers and Beatniks, but the closest thing there was to a cohesive youth movement in Hollywood was off the Strip, in the folk clubs. At the Ash Grove on Third Street and the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard, young folkies were able to bask in mutual admiration and earn better money than they did in, say, Greenwich Village, where Roger McGuinn had been making “three to ten dollars a night after they passed the basket around.” Among those who met for the first time on this circuit were McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark, who formed the Jet Set, the precursor to the Byrds. Valentine, meanwhile, was running a restaurant-nightclub at the corner of Crescent Heights and Santa Monica called P.J.’s. Named in homage to P. J. Clarke’s, the New York pub, it was more a lounge-act kind of place than a folk club, but it gained a measure of national fame thanks to the quasi-folkie Trini Lopez, whose 1963 live album, Trini Lopez at P.J.’s, featured a hit cover of Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer.” Valentine had moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in 1960. (That first trip to California, in 1937 on the freight trains, was merely a youthful escapade.) “I left Chicago because my wife dumped me, and I was flipped out,” he says. He was also having a little career trouble. When I ask him what kind of cop he was—meaning detective, beat cop, or whatever—he cheerfully responds, “Corrupt!” In the grand tradition of Chicago law enforcement, Valentine was on the take from the Mob. “It was a way of life,” he says unapologetically. One Chicago old-timer from that milieu remembers Valentine as a “real sharp dresser, a nice-looking fellow,” who worked as a so-called Captain’s Man, “collecting the filthy lucre on behalf of the captain.” But the authorities caught on to him, and he was indicted for extortion. Though he was never convicted, it was in Valentine’s best interests to get out of town. Fortunately, he had picked up another vocational skill while on the Chicago force. “I used to moonlight running nightclubs for the outfit,” he says. “For gangsters.” So it was that Valentine found himself trying his hand at full-time nightclub management, overseeing operations at P.J.’s, which he co-owned with some fellow ex-Chicagoans. The club did well, and Valentine took instantly to his new line of work, but he wasn’t yet convinced that his future lay in L.A. In 1963 he traveled to Europe with the intent of opening a club in one of the cities there and beginning a new life as an expatriate. But while he was in Paris, he happened to visit a discotheque that was called the Whisky à Go Go. “They had these kids, young people, dancing like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. “So I came back to Los Angeles, and I wanted to open a discotheque. I wanted that badly. ’Cause I saw what was happening—the frenzy and the people and the lines.” Valentine had made $55,000 by selling his share in P.J.’s. He re-invested $20,000 of this money in the refurbishment of a failing club whose lease he’d taken over, a place at the corner of Sunset and Clark called the Party, in an old Bank of America building. The club’s new name was nicked straight from Paris: the Whisky à Go Go. Now he needed an act. One night, he happened to see Johnny Rivers performing at Gazzarri’s, a tiny, non-descript Italian restaurant on La Cienega. Rivers, a 21-year-old guitar phenom hired out of expediency by Bill Gazzarri—whose previous booking, a jazz trio, had bailed out on him—had unexpectedly turned the place into a word-of-mouth hot spot. Three times a night, Rivers, a slight, wiry, pompadoured kid from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, played an upbeat set of blues, R&B, and rock ’n’ roll covers—“Jimmy Reed and Ray Charles, some Bobby Darin stuff, Chuck Berry,” he says—accompanied only by a drummer. Unremarkable as this sounds now, no one in circa-1963 L.A. had ever seen anything like it. “Johnny was like the Pied Piper,” says Valentine. “People were waiting in line to go in and dance. When I saw that, I said, ‘I gotta get this guy.’” Another person enamored of Rivers was a new acquaintance of Valentine’s named Lou Adler. Though he was only in his late 20s, Adler, a young hustler from East L.A.’s working-class Boyle Heights section, had already established himself as a music-industry operator—running the West Coast office of Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music publishing company, producing Jan & Dean’s hits, starting up Dunhill Productions (which would evolve into the Dunhill Records label), and dating Ann-Margret and The Donna Reed Show’s Shelley Fabares. Like Valentine, Adler had stumbled upon the Johnny Rivers phenomenon—in his case, while killing time before a Don Rickles show down the street—and felt the same shock of recognition. “When I first saw Rivers, part of what interested me was the audience that I saw,” he says. “Because they were adults dancing to rock ’n’ roll—people in sport coats and ties. That showed the audience was getting really broad.” It had previously been presumed that rock ’n’ roll was strictly for American Bandstand teenyboppers, and was therefore unsuitable for nightclubs, where the real money was in the liquor tabs. But now, all of a sudden, a white guy playing Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” and “Maybellene” on an electric guitar was a viable grown-up attraction—for young grown-ups, anyway. Adler advised Valentine to sign Rivers to a one-year contract as the Whisky’s marquee act. Rivers agreed, the deal being that he’d play three sets a night, with a drummer and a bassist. Between sets, the audience would dance to records spun by a D.J.—but not just any D.J.: a girl D.J., suspended high above the audience in a glass-walled cage. This faintly ridiculous idea was Valentine’s pragmatic response to the room’s space limitations: the Whisky was not a big club, and the only way he could fit the D.J. booth was to mount it on a metal support beam that ran alongside the performing area. Making the most of the situation’s public-relations potential, Valentine asked one of his early partners in the Whisky, a P.R. man named Shelly Davis, to run a public contest for the new girl-D.J. position. But on the very night of the Whisky’s opening, January 15, 1964, the contest winner called Valentine in tears, explaining that her disapproving mother wouldn’t let her take the job. So Valentine pressed his reluctant cigarette girl, a young woman named Patty Brockhurst, into action. “She had on a slit skirt, and we put her up there,” he says. “So she’s up there playing the records. She’s a young girl, so while she’s playing ’em, all of a sudden she starts dancing to ’em! It was a dream. It worked.” Thus, out of calamity and serendipity, was born the go-go girl. Valentine acted fast to formalize the position, installing two more cages and hiring two more girl dancers, one of whom, Joanie Labine, designed the official go-go-girl costume of fringed dress and white boots. Just about the only person who didn’t care for the go-go girls was Johnny Rivers. When they danced during his sets, he let Valentine know how peeved he was: “I said, ‘When I’m playing, I want people to listen to my music. I don’t want any sideshows.’” It was agreed that the girls would contain their enthusiasm while the star artiste played, though Rivers turned out to be the only Whisky act ever to make such a demand. Generally, everyone involved in the Whisky’s first year reveled in the exhilaration of instantaneous success. Rivers’s built-in following ensured that the Whisky drew sellout crowds from the night it opened. The novelty of rock ’n’ roll on the Strip, plus the added novelty of the girls, attracted national media attention and Hollywood stars. Within months of the Whisky’s debut, Life magazine had written it up, Jack Paar had broadcast an episode of his post-Tonight weekly program from the club, and Steve McQueen and Jayne Mansfield had installed themselves as regulars, Watusi-ing away on the dance floor almost every night while flashbulbs popped. “Everybody was there,” says Rivers. “I mean, you’d look up, and there was Cary Grant dancing.” When the Beatles arrived in Los Angeles that year on their first American tour, they let it be known that the Whisky was the place they wanted to see. Valentine took it upon himself to personally chauffeur John Lennon and Paul McCartney to the club—and brought Jayne Mansfield along for the ride as a bonus. “John was putting Jayne on,” says Valentine. “‘Jayne, those aren’t really your tits, are they?’ ‘Yes they are!’ ‘No, no, I can tell ... ’ He got her to show them to him.” In a not dissimilar episode involving a randy Englishman, James Mason joined Valentine in a booth one night and stared in wonderment at the go-go girls. “I remember this exactly,” says Valentine. “He said [clipped English diction], ‘Oh, my gosh—how those girls jiggle so much with their titties while they’re dahn-cing.’” Shrewd businessman that he was, Adler wasted little time in seizing the opportunity to record a live album at the club. Johnny Rivers at the Whisky à Go Go was released in May of ’64, its back cover laden with celebrity testimonials: “JOHNNY CARSON: ‘At 12:00 o’clock I kissed my wife, I thought it was New Year’s Eve! Johnny Rivers is the Pied Piper of The Watusi Set.’ SAM COOKE: ‘Nothing is more exciting than talent on the rise, and Johnny is going all the way.’ YOGI BEAR: ‘Johnny is my Bobo.’ george hamilton: ‘Johnny Rivers’ beat is magic. You can’t help but dance.’ JAN: ‘Johnny turns Sunset Boulevard into an adult Dick Clark Show.’ DEAN: ‘Right!’” “I think I wrote all of those myself,” says Adler now, smiling sheepishly. “But some of ’em actually were there.” A similar degree of jiggery-pokery was involved in the actual recording. Though the album sleeve says, “Recorded Live—Very Live—At the Whisky à Go Go,” Adler admits, “it was all enhanced. I took the basic tracks into the studio ... and had about maybe 75 to 100 people there,” the visitors functioning as his “audience,” offering fake-spontaneous commentary on Johnny’s show and breaking out into sing-alongs. In any event, the album is a convincing approximation of the ramalama ambience of the early Whisky—an aural picture of hips shaking in shiny suits and kneecaps straining through tight shifts—and it did terrific business, charting at No. 12 and yielding a No. 2 hit in “Memphis.” Just two months later, a follow-up album, Here We à Go Go Again, yielded a No. 12 hit in “Maybellene.” But the runaway success of Rivers and the Whisky was not without its consequences. When Valentine’s mobster associates in Chicago caught wind of their old buddy’s gangbusters business, they swooped in, looking for a piece of Rivers’s action. One night, Adler recalls, he was summoned to Rivers’s dressing room. There, he found the terrified guitarist quaking in the presence of some very large gentlemen. “He said, ‘These guys want me to sign these papers,’” says Adler, meaning documents turning over a percentage of Rivers’s earnings. “I said, ‘You’re not gonna sign any papers.’ And the guy said to me something like ‘How would you like me to rip off your arms and choke you to death with ’em?’” Adler managed to stall long enough to get Valentine involved, but Valentine had to travel all the way back to Chicago to get his friends to call off the goons for good. An implicit part of the respect accorded Valentine and his partners by the under-30 crowd was the widespread perception that the Whisky was a Mafia-run club. Even now, the Byrds’ Chris Hillman shudders as he says, “Whoever financed Elmer, I don’t want to know.” Frank Zappa was more explicit in his memoir The Real Frank Zappa Book, dryly asserting that the Trip and the Whisky were “owned by the same ‘ethnic organization.’” This perception was only encouraged by the fact that Valentine was half-Italian—“My father was a Wop and a greenhorn named Valenti”—and the fact that his most prominent early partner was an L.A. gambler and cardplayer named Phil Tanzini, who, says Valentine, was “involved in the gin-rummy scandal at the Friars Club—he was the eye in the sky, looking at players’ hands through a hole in the ceiling.” (“Tanzini was a nightmare—sleazeball-desperate,” says Gail Zappa, a victim of his roving hands in her secretarial days.) With his customary blithe candor, Valentine cheerily explains that, while he was not necessarily of the Chicago Mafia, he was certainly friendly with its members. He even had some gangsterish tendencies of his own in the old days. There’s an extraordinary photograph on his bedroom wall that captures him in his 20s, sitting in a restaurant booth flanked by two ugly mugs straight out of Little Caesar. “That’s right after we held up a gambling joint,” Valentine says. Given that he was a cop, I take this to mean they’d all just staged a vice raid. No, he says, that’s him with two of his gangster friends: “We held ’em up! We said we’d fuckin’ shoot ’em if they didn’t hand over the money!” Did Elmer ever actually fuckin’ shoot anyone? “That’s personal,” he says. One “very close friend” of Valentine’s in his Chicago days was Felix Alderisio, also known as Milwaukee Phil, who was arguably the most feared hit man in the country in the 1950s and 60s, carrying out at least 14 murders for Sam Giancana and other Chicago bosses. “Milwaukee Phil would chin himself on the go-go cage as it was being built,” Valentine remembers. His friendship with Alderisio came in especially handy when Bill Gazzarri decided to voice his displeasure that Valentine had poached Rivers from his place. Gazzarri, calling in connections of his own, sicced another famous Chicago gangster on Valentine, Charles Carmen Inglesia, better known as Chuckie English, who was Giancana’s top lieutenant in the early 60s (and who met his end when he was shot between the eyes on February 14, 1985—the 56th anniversary of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre). One day, Chuckie English paid Valentine an unexpected visit and announced, “Johnny Rivers back to Gazzarri’s or you’re a dead motherfucker.” “So I got Milwaukee Phil to come in from Chicago, and it was straightened out,” Valentine says. (Gazzarri didn’t exactly suffer anyway—he relocated his club to the Strip, where it persisted well into the 1990s as a heavy-metal showcase.) Few people outside of Valentine’s inner circle were cognizant of these behind-the-scenes shenanigans, though. For most of America, the Whisky was one of the bossest things going in 1964. It quickly spawned imitators, complete with hit-spewing Rivers-alikes and hastily hired go-go girls frugging in hastily erected cages; even the Whisky itself spawned two short-lived satellite franchises, in San Francisco and Atlanta. Patty Brockhurst’s unthinking little shimmies of joy were reverberating throughout popular culture: from the Strip to the soundstages of Shindig and Hullabaloo to prom halls to the White House, where First Teen Luci Baines Johnson was shakin’ her ample thang Whisky-style before the year was out. If there were dissenting voices, people who found it all a bit corny, no one in the mainstream paid them any mind. But certainly the voices were there—the voices of the folkies, loons, and freaks looming on the horizon. People like Frank Zappa, who reflected in his memoir, “During this period in American Musical History, anything with ‘Go-Go’ pasted on the end of it was really hot. All you were required to do, if you were a musician desiring steady work, was to grind your way through five sets per night of loud rhythm tracks, while girls in fringed costumes did the twist, as if that particular body movement summed up the aesthetic of the serious beer drinker.” And over in L.A.’s Westwood section, two U.C.L.A. Film School students with intellectual pretensions, Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, were duly unimpressed with the goings-on a few miles off to the east. “The Whisky was for Hollywood swingers,” says Manzarek. “When you were at U.C.L.A., it was the antithesis of everything artistic that you could imagine. Everyone derided it. It was slick and Hollywood and Sunset Strip—a rock ’n’ roll version of the Rat Pack.... And then we wind up being the house band there. How ironic life is.” Ed Ruscha, the L.A.-based artist, recalls “an abruptness, a cultural jump,” transforming the Strip in 1965 and ’66. Ruscha lived in Hollywood throughout the 1960s and made a habit of photographing the various establishments on the Strip in a cold, reportorial deadpan—as the truth-in-advertising title of his 1966 photo book, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, suggests. “I liked the plastic glamour of the place,” he says of the Strip in its early-60s incarnation. “But suddenly there was this changeover to the hippie thing. What I remember most is that you could stand anywhere on the Sunset Strip and see cars going down very slowly, always with someone in the backseat tapping on a tambourine—going tap, tap, tap.” While Rivers had been tearing up the Whisky, the folkies in the Jet Set—McGuinn, Clark, and Crosby, now augmented by bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke—had become enamored of the Beatles. They hit upon the idea of electrifying their sound, achieving a folk-rock synthesis that no one had yet essayed, and grew their hair out into mushroom-cap dos even more luxuriant than the Beatles’. Changing their name to the Byrds and securing a residency at the down-at-its-heels Ciro’s, they honed their sound and built up a following. When the very first Byrds single, their famously jangly version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” went to No. 1 in May of 1965, it ratified the notion of the Strip as a progressive music scene, and the notion of folk-rock hippiedom as a way of life. “From ’64 into ’65, the focus shifted from Johnny Rivers east to Ciro’s—on us,” says Hillman. “And when ‘Tambourine Man’ became a hit, everything suddenly went from Jay Sebring hairdos”—he smooths his hair back tightly on the sides to simulate a neat, sticky quiff—“to a more bohemian atmosphere.” “The Byrds were the catalyst—they brought all the kids to the Strip,” says Terry Melcher, the band’s producer, who was then something of a boy wonder: an A-list producer, a Columbia Records executive, and the son of Doris Day. “They took the Dylan songs, we electrified ’em and rock ’n’ rolled ’em, and kids came from everywhere. It just happened. One day you couldn’t drive anymore. It was, like, overnight—you couldn’t drive on the Strip.” The Strip became a magnet for all sorts of budding hippies, runaway teens, and oddballs without portfolio—Hollywood freaks on the Hollywood scene, to borrow a phrase from an L.A. music star of much later vintage, Beck. The greatest freak of them all was Vito Paulekas, a bearded, longhaired, middle-aged sculptor with a fondness for flowing robes, saturnalian dancing, and comely young girls. “Vito was an art instructor. When I was in high school, we’d go to his art studio because he had naked models,” says Melcher, a 1960 graduate of Beverly Hills High. “I’d just pop in and say, ‘Hi, I’m thinking of taking some art lessons.’” Now it was Vito’s turn to sponge off of the scene Melcher was part of, sashaying from Ciro’s to the Whisky to the other Strip clubs now showcasing rock acts—the Galaxy, the Action, the Sea Witch, Pandora’s Box, and Valentine’s new joint, the Trip—with several whacked-out acolytes in tow, all swaying exotically to the ragas in their heads. “Vito would come in every night with an entourage—mostly four or five really great-looking girls,” says Adler. “It’s a weird parallel, but it was like a nonviolent Manson situation, a little cult.” Among Vito’s male disciples was Kim Fowley, a six-foot-five, whippet-thin Strip scenester who’d produced the Hollywood Argyles’ 1960 novelty hit “Alley-Oop,” and who was the son of actor Douglas Fowley, Doc Holliday on TV’s Wyatt Earp. “Vito had people from 17 to 70 following him,” says Fowley. “I was particularly notorious for my interpretive dancing—I did kicks, jumps, martial-arts moves, the Watusi.” “I remember Kim dancing at the Whisky with a very short girlfriend,” says Ed Ruscha. “He was so tall, and he’d hold a five-dollar bill in his teeth. She would try to grab the money, and he would shift so she couldn’t catch it. Kim made a whole dance out of that. I was impressed.” Another sometime member of the Vito contingent was Pamela Des Barres, a cute Valley teenager who’d discovered with her high-school friends that meeting pop stars was as easy as getting a ride over the hills, knocking on the dressing-room doors of the Whisky or Ciro’s, and batting one’s eyelashes. “We would wear almost nothing—little bits of lace and stuff—and just be wild girls,” says Des Barres, who would go on to chronicle her groupie adventures in her 1988 memoir, I’m with the Band. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we had a lot of sex. For instance, I would see Jim Morrison sometimes, and we would just make out.” John Densmore, the Doors’ drummer, says his favorite Vito dancer was Rory Flynn, “Errol Flynn’s daughter. Real tall and”—wolf whistle—“a looker. I’d be playing and getting off on Rory Flynn in her sheer negligee, dancing. And then I’d notice guys in suits trying to be cool and acting like they didn’t see.” As in the Johnny Rivers days, the dinner-jacketed denizens of old Hollywood emerged from their Beverly Hills and Bel Air homes to see what all the fuss was about. The cabaret singer Bobby Short, in an E! documentary on the Sunset Strip that aired last year, recalled, “A sort of social thing had developed in Beverly Hills. After dinner, you put your friends in your car, took them for a ride down the Sunset Strip. That was the floor show.” “It was slumming for the Hollywood of the 40s and 50s,” says Fowley. “Ed Begley Sr. would come in with a pack. Paul Lynde would come in with a pack. I’d be dancing and I’d bump into Ed Begley, and he’d smile and say, ‘Oh, you’re just great.’” With all things hippie and freaky taking hold on the Strip, Valentine, with the plugged-in Adler serving as his informal musical adviser, began booking more outré acts after Rivers’s residency ended—starting with the Young Rascals, followed by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, who even played luncheon dates (wearing derbies for some reason). “Ciro’s was the catalyst, but Ciro’s couldn’t maintain the energy,” says Hillman. “So the energy went back to the Whisky and the Trip, because Elmer knew what he was doing.” The go-go dancers stayed, but their undulations became stranger. Roger McGuinn’s homemade 16-mm. psychedelic films were used as background projections during shows. (“I filmed Lava lamps and sloshing oil and stuff,” he says.) Valentine turned a blind eye to the dealers selling acid in the parking lot behind the club, while the Whisky’s new manager, an old Chicago acquaintance of Valentine’s named Mario Maglieri, kindheartedly looked after the mongrel kids who now littered the club’s doorstep, offering them friendly (if unheeded) anti-drug lectures and free bowls of soup. The Whisky reasserted its dominance. Not only did Valentine get prestigious U.K. acts like the Who, the Animals, the Kinks, and Them, he also instituted a policy of showcasing local bands in support slots and on the off nights when big-name acts weren’t available. The roster of bands who played in the Whisky’s “house band” slot—among them Love, Buffalo Springfield, and the Doors—is a testament to the wealth of great young talent milling around Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. And why shouldn’t this have been the case? If the summer of 1965 proved anything to aspiring pop stars, it was that L.A. was the place to make it. The Byrds were already huge. Next up were Sonny and Cher, who had labored anonymously through the early 60s under Phil Spector’s wing—Sonny Bono as a minion, Cherilyn Sarkisian as a backup singer—before hitting it big in ’65 with “I Got You, Babe.” (Cher insists that she and Bono were a huge influence on the sartorial revolution taking place on the Strip. “The bobcat vests—we absolutely started it,” she says. “There was a guy on La Cienega, a boot-maker, and we saw the bobcat vest hanging outside his store on display, blowing around in the wind. I wanted it, but it didn’t fit me, so Sonny wore it.”) On the heels of Sonny and Cher came Barry McGuire, a New Christy Minstrel turned Dunhill Records solo artist, who went to No. 1 in late summer with his Lou Adler– produced debut single, “Eve of Destruction.” Two people paying particular attention to these rapid-fire developments were John and Michelle Phillips, a husband-and-wife folksinging team living in near destitution in New York City. “We were astonished that the Byrds got a record deal, let alone a hit,” says Michelle Phillips. “We thought, ‘If the Byrds can do it, anyone can.’” Through their sloggings on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit, the Phillipses had gotten to know both the Byrds’ McGuinn and Barry McGuire, and couldn’t believe what they were missing out on; they would later capture this sense of yearning and envy in their 1967 song “Creeque Alley,” with its famous line “McGuinn and McGuire just gettin’ higher in L.A., you know where that’s at.” “We arrived in L.A. at the end of the summer of ’65, and we were living with a friend, three blocks from the Whisky à Go Go,” says John Phillips. “Elmer was one of the first people we met. He let us in for free, let us stand in the back for a couple of sets. We were nobodies, and we had no bodies, we were so starved. Elmer just took a liking to us.” But it didn’t take long for the Phillipses, along with their singing partners, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty, to hit the same heights as their old Village friends. A month after their arrival in Los Angeles, they had a record deal with Dunhill—McGuire had brokered the introduction to Adler—and by May 1966 the Mamas and the Papas’ first album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, was No. 1 in the country, with two Top 5 singles, “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday,” to its credit. Buffalo Springfield’s ascent was hatched under similarly informal circumstances. Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and company hadn’t even spent much time together as a band when Hillman caught on to them and asked Valentine to give them a tryout. “I remember Chris coming up to me, saying, ‘Listen, I got a band, I think they’re gonna be really big stars, would you put ’em in?’” Valentine says. “And it was the Buffalo Springfield! It just fell into my lap.” Less remembered now but equally important then was the band Love. “We started playing the Whisky five nights a week, and we had crowds lined up around the block to get in,” writes Love’s enigmatic front man, Arthur Lee, from California’s Pleasant Valley State Prison, where he is 4 years into a 12-year sentence for illegal firearm possession. “Before Love started, they were thinking of closing because business was bad.... We helped keep the Whisky alive!” That’s stretching things, but certainly the group sustained the scene’s momentum, bridging the L.A.-pop divide between the optimistic Byrds and the sinister Doors. Lee, a handsome black mod with straightened hair and a tightfitting Carnaby Street–style wardrobe, was striking enough by himself, but his multiracial band’s ingenious fusion of wildly disparate styles—garage-punk, lounge music, English psychedelia, mariachi—is what made them a sensation. Their reputation for chaotic live shows didn’t hurt, either. “We had no stage presence,” the group’s guitarist, Bryan Maclean, recalled in an interview shortly before his death in 1998 (conducted by Des Barres for her own as-yet-unpublished memoir of the Whisky). “We would stop in mid-song, Arthur would say, ‘Your guitar is too loud, motherfucker!,’ and I’d run off in a huff. One time I ran offstage and into one of Elmer’s hoods.... He looked like a kneecapper to me—a sweet guy, but the real deal.... We were the Jerry Springer Show of the 60s.” (Lee’s drug use and hot temper are what have landed him in the clink. In 1995 he allegedly fired a gun into the air during a dispute with a neighbor, a charge he is appealing. With a drug offense already on his record, he opted to go to trial rather than cop a plea, and lost; hence the inordinately harsh prison term.) As these bands got famous and the royalty checks began to come in, an L.A.-pop aristocracy began to take shape—the various members of these groups forsaking their squatty rentals near the Strip for roomy houses in Laurel Canyon, up in the hills above Crescent Heights. The de rigueur splurge for the newly minted male pop star was a Triumph motorcycle, which you’d use to bomb down the Canyon to your gig at the Whisky or the Trip. (Always taking Fountain Avenue, says John Densmore. The incongruously quiet street just a block south of Sunset was invariably traffic-free, whereas the Strip had become so crowded with tambourine rattlers as to be unnavigable.) And if you weren’t performing yourself that night, you’d settle into one of the tufted, comfy booths in the Whisky. “It was tough to get a booth,” says Adler. “There weren’t that many, and the place was packed to the walls.” The booths—“wonderful red Naugahyde, like a Mob restaurant,” says Hillman—offered a terrific vantage point for people-watching, both because they were a few feet higher than the dance floor and because they were near the entrance, so you could check out who was coming through the door. Adler, V.I.P. that he was, had his own booth, which he regularly occupied with John Phillips and Terry Melcher, occasionally augmented by Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty. Valentine held court in another booth with Steve McQueen, with whom he’d become best friends. Groupies such as Des Barres prided themselves on being invited into the booths of visiting Brits like Mick Jagger or Keith Moon. The loose, ad hoc nature of the scene—the way nobodies could collide with somebodies and have their lives changed as a result—contributed to the general feeling of bonhomie and anything-is-possible. “There were no laminated passes, no boundaries, and you could be just a kid and walk up to Lou Adler, and he’d talk to you,” says Harvey Kubernik, a music producer and journalist who, as a teenager in the mid-60s, found it delightfully convenient that the Whisky was just “two hitchhikes up the Strip” from his school, Fairfax High. Gail Zappa remembers an incident in which she and a girlfriend found themselves being ticketed by a cop for jaywalking on the Strip, only to be rescued by two heroic young strangers who zoomed to the scene on motorcycles and spirited them away. “And it was Hillman and David Crosby,” she says. “My friend told me later that evening, ‘I’m gonna marry that guy,’ meaning Chris. And she did.” An air of sexual possibility charged the room, too. “I was a creep, an ugly guy, and suddenly even creeps could get laid,” says Fowley. “For a pretty girl, going out with a creep was revenge against your parents. You’d find beautiful girls just lying in the street next to the gutter, sleeping under lice-covered blankets, and you’d take them home, clean them off, and you had a girlfriend for the night.” Virtually every man interviewed for this story marveled about the uncommon beauty and availability of the girls at the Whisky in the 60s, and offered words to the effect that “I never went home alone.” Valentine fondly recounts how Duane Allman remarked to him shortly before his death following a motorcycle crash, “Elmer, I’ll always come back here—you’ve got the best dope and pussy in this country!” He repeats Allman’s words with a disarming unfilthiness, like a resort owner pleased that a fat-cat visitor has written “Great golf! Will return soon!” in the guest book. As for Valentine himself, he’d found his Nirvana; any remnants of Chicago toughness left in his makeup had been vaporized by the good vibes and the high-quality pot McQueen had turned him on to. “Elmer was a romantic, a guy who moved from the Midwest and loved California. He saw the Whisky à Go Go as this paradise,” says Fowley. “I ran into him once and he gave me this, like, five-minute chamber-of-commerce speech about how great we have it in Los Angeles.” But then, that’s how everyone felt. Even crazy Arthur Lee, whose lyrics tended toward the menacing and oblique, wrote an upbeat, relatively straightforward song called “Maybe the People Would Be the Times, Or Between Clark and Hilldale”—the Whisky’s block—which he today describes as “a panoramic picture of the Strip circa ’66–’67.” Thinking back on this scene now, Lee writes from his prison cell, “It’s like a psychedelic movie in technicolor!! That my mind rewinds and plays if I blink real hard. It’s an endless montage of beautiful people.” The Doors were always different—never schmoozer-socialites in the John Phillips vein, nor folkies like the other bands had once been. As late as mid-1966, they were still considered something of a loser-outcast band, playing in a seedy dive next door to the Whisky called the London Fog, which came complete with indifferent drunken sailors and a B-grade go-go dancer. “Her name was Rhonda Lane, and she was a little, as the Japanese say, genki—meaning substantial,” says Ray Manzarek, the band’s keyboardist. Densmore remembers peering forlornly through the door of the Whisky—which he couldn’t afford to get into—and seeing Love playing to adulation. “I really wanted to be in Love—they were making it,” he says. “But I was in the demon Doors.” But they got a break when Ronnie Haran, a young woman working as Valentine’s promotions director, sauntered into the London Fog one evening and liked what she saw. “She saw Jim, and that was it—she was smitten,” says Manzarek. “The arrows of Eros went flying and struck her directly in the heart.” “That’s bullshit,” says Haran, who now goes by the name Ronnie Haran Mellen. “Jim was too rough-trade for me. I was smitten with the group. The poetry of the words—I’d never heard lyrics like that.” Whatever the case, Haran Mellen confirms that she launched an all-out campaign to sway her boss. “Ronnie said, ‘You’ve gotta put this band in,’ and she told her friends to call and ask for the Doors,” says Valentine, who admits he was skeptical. “Well, I got so many goddamned calls, so I put them in. The 60s! I couldn’t go wrong. I didn’t have to know shit!” Actually, it wasn’t quite that smooth a trip to stardom for Morrison and company. Though their residency at the Whisky in the summer of 1966 afforded them a fantastic opportunity to workshop the now famous songs that would form their first album—songs such as “Break On Through,” “Light My Fire,” and “The End”—the flower-power kids didn’t always get Morrison’s Baudelaireisms or the band’s jazz-odyssey explorations. As Densmore says, “We were darker. We were not folk-rock. We would scare people.” And Morrison was even then a loose cannon, prone to scream unprompted “Fuck you, Elmer!” from the stage when drunk or otherwise chemically altered. Nevertheless, they became the toast of the Strip as the summer went on, their music proving to be particularly conducive to the Dionysian swaying of Vito’s dancers, whom Densmore admired for their ability “to Martha Graham-ize what they were hearing.” One night, however, the Doors’ fierce experimentalism proved too much to bear even for the indulgent Valentine, and it finished them off as a Whisky band for good. A Doors set had traditionally ended, appropriately enough, with “The End.” “It had started off as a little two-and-a-half-minute love song, a good-bye to a girl: ‘This is the end, beautiful friend,’” says Manzarek. But through repeated improvisatory explorations at the London Fog and the Whisky, the song had grown into a 10-minutes-plus epic, a literal showstopper: Morrison would extemporize some Beat poetry, Densmore, Manzarek, and guitarist Robbie Krieger would noodle around experimentally on their instruments, and they’d bring it home for a big finish. On the night in question, though, it looked as though they wouldn’t even get to play “The End”: Morrison had failed to show up for work. The other three made do playing jazz and blues instrumentals, and would have done so for the second set had Phil Tanzini, still a presence at the club in ’66, not made plain that he was paying for a four-man band, and that the singer had better show up or else. Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore piled into Densmore’s Volkswagen bus and drove to the Tropicana, the Sandy Koufax–owned motel where Morrison happened to be living at the time. They found him in his room, “eyes blazing, wearing underwear and cowboy boots,” says Manzarek—totally gone on acid. Hastily, they dressed him, packed him into the van, and drove back to the Whisky. “He seemed to revive in the dressing room,” says Manzarek. “He had a beer and went back to normal. But his eyes still had that strange LSD blazing intensity about them.” Just three songs into the set, Morrison called for “The End”—way prematurely, since they had about 40 minutes of performance time left. But the band obeyed and kicked in. As usual, they played a few verses before transitioning into the improvisatory section, where the instruments undulated in a raga style, leaving space for Morrison to freestyle on top. The musicians vamped and vamped, waited and waited ... until Morrison finally spoke up. “The killer awoke before dawn,” he said. “He put his boots on ... He took a face from the ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hallway ... ” It was the lead-up to the famous Oedipal climax that everyone now knows from the recorded version of “The End.” But that night in 1966, no one had ever heard it before—including the other three Doors. Morrison’s recitation was so mesmerizingly bizarre that the room fell silent—even the ambient nightclub hum was extinguished. The band continued to vamp quietly, perplexedly, as Morrison got to the part where he says, “‘Father?’ ‘Yes, son?’ ‘I want to kill you.’” “At that point, I realized, My God, he’s doing Oedipus Rex!” says Manzarek. “And then I thought, My God, I know what’s coming next!” Sure enough, Morrison, after a dramatic pause, came forth with “Mother ... I want to FUCKYOUMAMAALLNIGHTLONGYEAAHHHH!” The band instinctively erupted into a cacophonous frenzy, and the audience broke out in furious free-form dance—proto-moshing. The crowd, evidently, had loved it. But to the old-fashioned, Runyonesque fellas in Valentine’s crew, this was way, way outta line. An appalled, disbelieving Maglieri summoned Tanzini as the drama unfolded to witness the scene for himself. After the show, says Manzarek, “Phil Tanzini came running up the stairs [to the dressing room] saying, ‘You filthy motherfuckers! You guys have the dirtiest fuckin’ mouths I’ve ever heard in my life! Morrison, you can’t say that about your mother—“Mother, I want to fuck you.” What kind of pervert are you? You guys are all sick with that crazy, loud music! You’re fuckin’ fired!” Tanzini had already called Valentine, who was at home, and reported, “You got this fuckin’ Jim Morrison singing a song about fucking his mother! What are you gonna do?” Valentine responded, “Pull him off the stage and break his fuckin’ legs!” “I was serious!” says Valentine. “I was a redneck ex-policeman from Chicago! Catholic boy. Fuck your mother? That’s the worst thing I could ever ... ” The Doors were allowed to finish out the week, but were then sent packing. Though they would become only more famous in the following year as their debut album came out, they never played the Whisky again. Ironically, though, Valentine and Morrison subsequently struck up an intimate friendship. As the fame got to Morrison and he began to self-destruct, he used Valentine’s house as a hideaway when he felt like shirking his responsibilities. “He had four or five guys like me, people he’d hide out with,” says Valentine. “He couldn’t handle being that big. Remember how he got arrested in Miami for indecent exposure? He was up here in the house one night, and he said, ‘Would you like to hear what really happened? You don’t know what it’s like to be a pop star. They think I have a 12-inch dick. I wanted to show that I have a little one’—and he did have a small dick—‘so that they’ll leave me alone.’” In 1969, by which time Morrison was an alcohol-bloated mess alienated from the rest of the band, Valentine tried to get the singer into acting—his buddy McQueen was involved in the production of a picture called Adam at 6 A.M., about a young college professor, and maybe Morrison could star in it. He persuaded Morrison to cut his hair and shave the beard he’d grown, the better to impress McQueen’s co-producers at a lunch meeting, but it was to no avail. Michael Douglas got the part. The same summer of the Doors’ residency, the police and the local merchants on Sunset Boulevard grew increasingly alarmed by the throngs of young folk on the Strip. The NO CRUISING ZONE policy took effect, and Sheriff Peter Pitchess’s force bore down on the clubs, enforcing curfews and rounding up kids into paddy wagons. (“‘Vagrancy’—that’s what everybody got busted for,” says Gail Zappa.) The city’s sudden announcement that it needed to demolish Pandora’s Box in order to widen the road at the Crescent Heights–Sunset intersection seemed spurious to the smarting longhairs, and thus began a series of demonstrations characterized in the national press as the “riots on Sunset Strip.” “Sonny and I were right in the middle of it,” says Cher. “We were in a huge protest when they tore down Pandora’s Box.” Adler insists that the events of that summer and fall were “nothing more than a major crowd that was controllable,” but Des Barres remembers that a bus got overturned, and Valentine, Sonny, Cher, and David Crosby all lent their names to an advocacy organization called CAFF (Community Action for Facts and Freedom). The so-called riots also inspired Stephen Stills to write Buffalo Springfield’s most famous song, “For What It’s Worth” (“There’s battle lines being drawn / And nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”), and Hollywood to make the tut-tutting teensploitation flick Riot on Sunset Strip, featuring a truly awful title track by the also-ran Strip band the Standells (“Long hair seems to be the main attraction / But the heat is causin’ all the action”). More consequentially, the Whisky’s dance license was revoked by the city of Los Angeles. “Because they felt if the kids couldn’t dance they wouldn’t come in. It’s like cutting my legs off,” says Valentine. He successfully sued to get his license back, and counterpunched with a scheme of his own. As Gail Zappa tells it, “Elmer decided, ‘O.K., I’m only gonna book black acts.’ Which, by the way, were extremely popular. But overnight the Strip was black. The merchants really got nervous then. And Elmer thought it was a great joke.” “It’s fuckin’ true!” says Valentine of Zappa’s recollection. “It was out of spite, but also because I loved the music.” Indeed, it was no skin off Valentine’s back to “go black.” He was close to Otis Redding and loved Motown acts such as the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, and Marvin Gaye, and was already booking them into the Trip anyway. But the merchants, mindful of the Watts riots of ’65, found throngs of Negroes even scarier than throngs of white longhairs. The point was made, and a more integrated booking policy resumed at the Whisky. The intimacy of the scene started to come undone in 1967, a victim of the L.A. groups’ success—bands were touring rather than hanging around the Whisky, and as their wealth grew greater, some of the musicians left tight-knit Laurel Canyon for ritzier neighborhoods. (John and Michelle Phillips, for example, bought Jeanette MacDonald’s old house in Bel Air.) Compounding matters was the Monterey Pop festival, held in June of that year. Organized primarily by Adler and John Phillips, the festival brought together the L.A. groups, San Francisco acts such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, British bands such as the Who and the Animals, plus Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and Ravi Shankar, among others. The massive exposure the festival provided to its performers, and the presence of contract-brandishing record-company executives from the East Coast, marked Monterey as the moment when rock music grew up and became a business. “Monterey completely turned the music industry around,” says Adler. “The groups all got better contracts. The record companies that were aware of what was happening all of a sudden became bigger. You know, Clive Davis started signing groups.” David Crosby’s virtual defection from the Byrds to Buffalo Springfield at Monterey—he played with Springfield for most of their set—was symbolic of the death of jingle-jangle Strip pop, and indicative of where rock music was headed. Soon he and Springfield’s Stills would team up with Graham Nash to form the first big-money supergroup (which would occasionally be augmented by Neil Young), and the loose, hangin’-at-the-Whisky days would take on a cast of juvenile naïveté. “If I had to, I’d blame it all on David Crosby,” says Melcher, only semi-facetiously. “He broke up the Byrds and joined Buffalo Springfield, and broke them up. And then formed C.S.N. I’d have to say that, personally speaking, Crosby was worse for the good feelings of [L.A.] rock ’n’ roll than Manson was.” There’s a devilish glint in Melcher’s eye as he says this, for his name is inextricably linked to Charles Manson’s—it was his house on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon that Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate, were renting in 1969, and it was there that Manson’s “family” murdered Tate, hairdresser-to-the-stars Jay Sebring, and three others on August 9 of that year. Manson, sprung from prison in 1967 after having run a prostitution ring, was an aspiring rock singer who had managed to insinuate himself into the L.A. music community, befriending the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. He’s generally remembered more as a desert presence and a Malibu presence than a Strip presence, but Mario Maglieri recalls a late-60s incident in which he fielded a desperate daytime call from his secretary at the Whisky, who reported that a menacing punk had installed himself in one of the booths. “I came in from my house in Canoga Park,” says Maglieri. “He was sitting in the booth, writing—whatever he was writing. I said, ‘What are you doing here? We’re closed. You can’t be there.’ He looked at me and says, ‘I can have you killed.’ And I fuckin’ grabbed him. Threw him out. Threw him out the fuckin’ door.... I shoulda strangled that son of a bitch.” The interloper was, of course, Manson. The news of Tate’s and Sebring’s gruesome deaths was chilling enough to people in Hollywood—Valentine was friends with both, and Adler was an investor in Sebring’s salon—but the subsequent implication of bearded, longhaired Charlie Manson and his similarly styled acolytes was especially disturbing. “It changed the tenor of the scene a lot,” says Melcher. “Because they looked like all the other runaway kids on the Strip. So there was an obvious loss of trust.” As it turned out, the lead killer of the bunch, Charles “Tex” Watson, was a regular patron of the Whisky, a wide-eyed college dropout from Texas who cruised the Strip in his yellow 1959 Thunderbird convertible. “I went there often,” writes Watson, now a born-again Christian, from his cell in a California prison. “It was so laid back in those days that you could go by in the afternoon when they were not even open, walk in the door, and watch a practice. One afternoon, I recall, the Fifth Dimension was practicing. My friend and I were welcomed to watch.” It was one of his Strip adventures, Watson says, that led to his “family” induction: “I picked up Dennis Wilson hitchhiking on Sunset, took him home, and he introduced me to Manson. I did what a lot of kids did, dropped out of society, so to speak.... [Manson’s] philosophy took over my mind as the drugs made me gullible to his influence. Pretty soon, his drugged, crazed philosophy became mine, although I did not totally understand it.” Valentine insists that business at the Whisky never suffered in the aftermath of the Manson murders—the street-level kids who just wanted to hear music “didn’t care about that shit,” he says—but the paranoia wrought by the killings was the final nail in the coffin of a cohesive L.A.-pop nightclubbing brigade. “That was it—that’s when our innocence was shattered,” says Michelle Phillips, who took to carrying a loaded gun in her purse. “The social fabric was completely torn by the murders.” Before Manson was implicated, says John Phillips, “Roman Polanski suspected me. And I suspected him.” (The hard drugs that Phillips and his friends had gotten into didn’t exactly help in tamping down the paranoia.) Polanski even went so far as to hold a cleaver to Phillips’s neck and demand, “Did you kill Sharon? Did you?” Melcher, for his part, had to weather the charge that he was in some way responsible for the deaths, since he hadn’t signed Manson to Columbia and was therefore the murderers’ target that night—a charge that miffs him to this day. “I should probably put the record straight,” he says. “The Manson family knew I did not live in my house. They knew I’d been living in Malibu for a year.” Even with the old in-crowd staying away, the Whisky lost little of its luster in the late 60s, remaining the premier venue for any band passing through Los Angeles—Valentine recalls with particular fondness Led Zeppelin’s 1969 engagement, “five straight nights with Alice Cooper as the opening act.” But as the decade turned and rock spread to ballrooms, arenas, and stadiums, the Whisky did begin to struggle. And when Valentine changed strategy in the early 70s, briefly turning the club into a legit theater and cabaret, the glorious heyday of L.A. pop was emphatically over. There’s no tragic, gutter-ball ending to this story, no vacant, weedy lot where the Whisky once stood. The place is still there and still turns a profit, and has enjoyed two significant renaissances as a scene nexus since its original run: first in the late 70s, when L.A. punk blossomed with such bands as X, the Germs, the Dils, the Weirdos, and Black Flag, and then in the 80s, when spandex metal took hold with Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses. Today, the Whisky is in the hands of Maglieri and his son Mikeal, to whom Valentine sold out just a year ago, as did Adler, who’d bought into the club in 1978. Valentine and Adler still own the Roxy, a larger club farther west on the Strip that they opened in 1973; and Valentine and Maglieri, despite a falling-out, are still partners (along with Adler) in the Rainbow Bar & Grill, the dark, beery-smelling rock ’n’ roll pub up the block from the Roxy. Sitting at a café table outside the Rainbow, where the spirit of 80s metal rocks on—the walls are covered with candid snapshots of David Lee Roth, Pamela Anderson, and members of Poison—Mario Maglieri puffs on a cigar and talks about how good life has been to him. “The Whisky used to be a Bank of America,” he says, smiling. “It’s still a Bank of America. Generates a lot of money.” Maglieri is, above all else, a businessman. As he holds forth, talking about “Ozzy” and “Blackie from W.A.S.P.” as warmly as he does about Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark, you’re happy for his success, but there’s no escaping a feeling of lost magnitude, of cultural fizzle. “As far as crossing the lines of music and culture and social, it was those early years,” says Adler. “Up until ’68—those were the really great years of the Whisky.” The Whisky today, he says, is “pretty much a space that acts are booked into. Other than the name, which remains, it doesn’t really have a personality.” The booths and cages are gone. Right now, the club gets a lot of the angry-white-boy bands currently in vogue—Slipknot, Papa Roach, Corrosion of Conformity—and, like a lot of places on the Strip, does a percentage of its business as a “pay to play” venue, where aspiring bands actually put up money to stage a concert. Valentine could easily play the crank, blathering on about how it’s not how it was, but that’s not his nature. He asserts his belief that, above all, fortune smiled upon him. When he was a child, he says, a teacher said to him, “Elmer Valentine, when you grow up, they’re gonna send you to the electric chair!” Even his beloved mother, when he announced his intention to leave Chicago for California, responded, “You’re going to California? No, you’re going to 26th and California—the county jail!” So the way he sees it, he’s come out way ahead. “It was easy,” he reiterates. “You know why it was easy? How the fuck could anyone miss? Being on Sunset Boulevard in the 60s! I’m not being humble. Fuckin’ idiots that I had for competition!” Read More » The Sarasota police had no idea what they had on their hands—no idea that they’d arrested a celebrity, and no idea that they’d supplied this decade with its little Archduke Ferdinand moment, a flash point from which all manner of Sturm and Drang would ensue. They were just doing their job: a vice-squad sweep of the triple-X South Trail Cinema, where, had you bought a ticket and walked in on July 26, 1991, you would have taken in a bill of Nurse Nancy, Turn Up the Heat, and Catalina Five-O Tiger Shark. The cops apprehended four suspects that day, all on the usual charge: indecent exposure, i.e., masturbating in public. Among those arrested was a 38-year-old male with long, lank hair and a goatee. He identified himself as Paul Reubens. As he sat in the back of a squad car, one of his cop captors turned the name over in his mind. Paul Reubens. Damned if it didn’t sound…familiar. OH, PEE-WEE! —New York Post, front page, July 30, 1991 And so the fun began. Pee-wee Herman’s offense, if he was even guilty of it, was not so much newsworthy as irresistibly reportable: freak kiddie-TV star in porn-wank shocker. It was a victimless crime, a misdemeanor, not even close to Fatty Arbuckle territory, and it was hardly the first big tabloid story of the 1990s—the year before, Marion Barry had been busted for smoking crack, and Donald and Ivana had split over Marla. But something about the Pee-wee situation was new: the immediate Topic A–ness of his arrest, the countrywide mirth at his humiliation, the play the story got in proportion to its significance, the phony undercurrent of parental concern, the veritable carnival the whole thing mushroomed into. With Saddam Hussein vanquished, Pee-wee was the story of mid-1991. For the balance of the summer, there was no getting away from him—no getting away from those baleful mug shots, which made Reubens look like a John Cazale greaseball in an old Sydney Lumet caper, and no end to the jokes, headlines, updates, and dewy child psychologists who’d been enlisted by news organizations to counsel parents on how to help their kids cope with the “crisis.” It was, in retrospect, the beginning. It was also an ending, in that Reubens, unlike later disgraced celebrities of the 90s such as Hugh Grant, Marv Albert, George Michael, and President Clinton, never attempted a rapid-response, stage-managed display of contrition. Instead, he withdrew from the public eye and refused to talk about what had happened to him. His publicist released a statement that read, in part, “Paul, who is emotionally devastated by the embarrassment of the situation, is currently in seclusion with friends.” He was embarrassed by the situation; he secluded himself. To this day, Reubens maintains an extremely low profile and has never directly commented on the matter. [DK Note: A year or so after this piece ran, he finally did talk about his arrest, to Vanity Fair’s Bruce Handy.] He was the last celebrity to be shamed into exile. After Pee-wee, things snowballed. The Clarence Thomas hearings took place that autumn, presaging the Starr Report in their public airing of humiliating sexual details about a high-ranking government official (Long Dong Silver, “Who has put public hair on my Coke?”). Then, in December, came the William Kennedy Smith trial, memorable for its pantsless-Teddy allegations and the big blue dot over Patricia Bowman’s face. The following three years, 1992 through 1994, were particularly fertile, offering up the Mondo Trasho trilogy of low-life extravaganzas—Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly—along with Gennifer Flowers, the Menendez trials, Heidi Fleiss, Rodney King, Woody versus Mia, Michael Jackson’s child accuser, the Branch Davidian inferno, and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Finally, mid-decade, came the culmination, the story that these stories were building up to: the O.J. Simpson epic, whose protractedness, unseemliness, and sheer heft posited it as a grand finale to a particularly lurid chapter in American history. But even O.J. turned out to be just another stop along the way; the decade kept topping itself. If it wasn’t enough to witness the vertiginous convergence of two separate thriller narratives—the murder of Gianni Versace and the joyride of “gay serial killer” Andrew Cunanan—then how about the car-crash death of Princess Diana, the world’s most famous woman, or the intimate details of the extramarital sex life of the president of the United States? To say nothing of Susan Smith, Louise Woodward, JonBenét Ramsey, Colin Ferguson, Dick Morris, Richard Jewell, Anna Nicole Smith, Mike Tyson’s ear-biting incident, Joe Kennedy’s ex-wife’s tell-all, Michael Kennedy’s alleged affair with his kids’ under-age babysitter, Michael Kennedy’s abrupt ski-football death, the Heaven’s Gate cult, the non-Monica Clinton scandals (Paula Jones, Vince Foster, Webb Hubbell, the McDougals), and anything to do with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Plus all the genuine news stories that had sensationalist dimensions to them, such as the L.A. riots, the Unabomber case, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the impeachment-eve blitz of Iraq. The tabloidification of American life—of the news, of the culture, yea, of human behavior—is such a sweeping phenomenon that it can’t be dismissed as merely a jokey footnote to the history of the 1990s. Rather, it’s the very hallmark of our times; if the decade must have a name—and it must, since decade-naming has become a required public exercise in the second half of the 20th century—it might as well be the Tabloid Decade. Each of the four decades preceding the 90s has found its identity in some crystallizing event or upheaval, some moment that gave the times their meaning. For the conformist 50s, it was the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings; for the revolutionary/countercultural 60s, it was John F. Kennedy’s assassination; for the jaded, cynical 70s (also known as the Me Decade), it was Richard Nixon’s resignation; for the go-go 80s, it was the economic boom that followed the ’83 recession; and for the 90s, God help us, it was the O.J. saga, a prolonged Hollywood Babylon spectacle that confirmed the prevailing national interest in sex, death, celebrity, and televised car chases. Hence, the Tabloid Decade: the years when America reveled, as Matt Drudge likes to say, in “going where the stink is.” Virtually nothing and no one has been left unaffected by tabloid’s sweep, whether it’s The New York Times running the word “fuck” in its pages for the first time (last September 12, as part of the Tripp-tapes transcripts) or Bob Dole, the decent, four-square man who’d be running this country right now if people still cared about moral values, goddamnit, appearing on Larry King Live to extol the restorative powers of Viagra. It’s as if the Fates chose to wind down the century with one of those frenetic John Waters–movie endings where everyone emerges more trashy and libertine—grandmas frugging, golf-shirted dads embracing rough trade, scowly diesel dykes finding their smiles—only without the warmth and uplift. “I see the parallels,” says Waters, whose first feature was actually called Mondo Trasho, “but ultimately I don’t think anyone describes tabloid as joyous or hopeful, as my movies are.” Waters knows whereof he speaks, being a longtime subscriber to the big three of the supermarkets, the National Enquirer, the Star, and the Globe, whose editorial policies he characterizes, respectively, as “We hate you because you’re famous,” “We hate you because you’re on TV,” and “We hate you because you’re famous and have sex.” One thing he notices is that these papers seem, for the first time, outflanked. “My sense,” he says, “is that they hate the Monica story, because they’ve been robbed of it. They feel gypped. It should be theirs, and it’s everyone’s.” Indeed, Newsweek reported in October that over the first six months of 1998—the first half of Year Monica—all three tabloids suffered precipitous declines in circulation: 18.8 percent for the Enquirer, 14.4 percent for the Star, and 18.9 percent for the Globe. Meanwhile, two-and-a-half-year-old 24-hour news channel MSNBC, now know colloquially as the “Monica network,” discovered its editorial identity. At this point there’s no knowing whether the Tabloid Decade has reached its conclusion—if, much as people argue that the 60s began with J.F.K.’s assassination and ended with, say, the Tate-LaBianca murders, we can argue that the “true” 90s are bracketed by Pee-wee’s arrest and Ken Starr’s great document dump. Certainly it would make for a nice symmetry: from tremulous newspaper reportage of a comic’s masturbating in a movie house to lawyerly, federally funded reportage of the president’s masturbating in the office of Nancy Hernreich, his appointments secretary. But who can be sure? On one hand, the revulsion with which the public greeted the Clinton-Lewinsky-Tripp files suggests that the jig may be up, that maybe we’re all Drudged out and wish a return to the quiet refuge of Jim Lehrer. On the other hand, virtually no one would be surprised, given this decade’s track record, if one or two more mega-shock narratives unfolded before the year 2000: a suicide in the Oval Office, perhaps, or a murder involving stars huger than O.J. Simpson (Demi shoots Bruce, Letterman garrotes Leno, Warren offs Jack). If the 90s have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is beyond imagination anymore. The most astounding facet of the Tabloid Decade is how wholly unanticipated it was. At the close of the previous decade there was a loose consensus that the 1990s were going to be a “reaction” to the 1980s, which is to say a reaction against materialism, mergermania, and crassness—a sort of new, sanitized 1960s where one-worldism and spirituality would reign, minus the hard drugs and free love. “There’s a lot of pent-up idealism around,” said Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 1989. “I believe the nineteen-nineties will be much like the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-sixties.” The professional trend spotter Faith Popcorn hawked a similar line, describing a coming “cleanup decade” when “the sins of the ’80s” would be redeemed by a “consciousness that changes from me to thee.” And Peggy Noonan, channeling her ideas through George Bush, spoke of a “kinder, gentler nation” in which “a new breeze [was] blowing.” For a brief moment, these forecasts seemed to be accurate: the Eastern Bloc crumbled, kids started growing their hair long again, tie-dye and Day-Glo were the prevalent fashion motifs, Václav Havel had Frank Zappa to tea, Nelson Mandela was a free man, and Ivan Boesky and Mike Milken were in lockup. It was a fortunate time to be alive, “right here, right now,” as the 1991 hit by the pop group Jesus Jones went, “watching the world wake up from history.” But while the 1990s would see significant strides in tastes and values in America’s private life—the rediscovery of the nuclear-family ideal, the moral worth of volunteerism, the muted palettes of Prada and latter-day Banana Republic—America’s public life was something else altogether. In a nutshell: Oh, Pee-wee! “From a thousand adjectives which fairly clamor for a chance to describe the Great American Mentality, there immediately stands forth one adjective in which our epoch finds its perfect portrait…in which the U.S.A. shimmers in all the unmitigated splendor of its great-and-only-ness. This adjective is: infantile. By no circumstance the least important, and certainly the most obvious, example of the strictly infantile essence of America’s all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily…in the guise of the tabloid newspaper.” The words are E.E. Cummings’s, and they appeared in this very magazine—in 1926. Any discussion of tabloid America inevitably summons assuaging arguments that it has always been thus, that a century ago Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were tripping over each other to get the scoop on headless-body stomach turners such as the gruesome Guldensuppe murder of 1897, compared with which Amy ’n’ Joey looks like an NBC white paper. And there’s no denying that the 1950s scandal rag Confidential, a precursor to today’s supermarket tabs, was far nastier than anything on the newsstands or airwaves now. To cite just one example, here’s an excerpt from a 1955 Confidential piece that not only outed the weepy pop crooner Johnny Ray as a pervy swish, but also recounted an incident in which Ray, nude, drunk, and wandering the corridors of London’s Dorchester hotel, knocked on the door or a neighboring guest’s room and propositioned the guest, who turned out to be the movie star Paul Douglas: He’d been in the big-time show business long enough to know that Douglas was strictly for girls. But Ray was determined to be convinced the hard way. Lunging inside the room he made a determined grab for Douglas. An instant thereafter, the guy who made crying a business had the best reason in years for weeping. There were a couple of resounding smacks, as a strong hand met bare flesh and Ray came flying out of 417 to land in a heap in the corridor… All over London there were hundreds of thousands of sleeping bobby-soxers who wouldn’t have believed their eyes had they witnessed the incident. For two weeks they’d mobbed The Weeper during his record-breaking engagement at the Palladium. Their idol…the tenor with a million tears…making a pass at a man? Never!... But this story needs to be seen in context. Confidential, in its heyday, had a circulation of three million, more than that of the Enquirer today, but its content was almost never amplified elsewhere. You didn’t get mainstream-media overlap unless a story was unignorably huge, such as the Lana Turner–Johnny Stompanato case in which Turner’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, confessed to killing Stompanato, her mother’s boyfriend. Similarly, the city tabloids and broadsheets led a segregated coexistence, the latter doing whatever they could to avoid entering the turf of the former. The novelist James Ellroy says that when he was researching his seventh book, The Black Dahlia, about the notorious 1947 Los Angeles murder case of that name, he discovered that “the story was never on the front page of the L.A. Times. It was all inside, in the ‘Metro’ section. They kept it in there for three weeks, and they would’ve shitcanned it sooner were it not for the [tabloid] Herald, which was all over the case and selling papers like crazy.” Ellroy’s most recent novel happens to be called American Tabloid. He says he chose this title, “because the book is about the most outré, scandalous, scabrous aspects of the time it’s set in,” the late 1950s and early 1960s. The aspects he’s talking about are precisely the kind of juicy stuff that was respectfully ignored by the upscale media: the inner workings of the Kennedy-C.I.A.-Mob triangle—the boozing, doping, whacking, whoring, and quid pro quo that went on. “Jack Kennedy had the benefit of coming along in the pre-public-accountability America,” Ellroy says. “The time of the well-heeled press—as in ‘Heel, dog!’” Cut to the present, and American tabloid has outpaced American Tabloid; so, for that matter, has American broadsheet. Ellroy says he couldn’t pull off a similar takeout on our current epoch, because everything’s already on the table: the backroom deals, the blow jobs, the sleazoid flunkies who do the big shots’ bidding. “I would argue that at this point I would eliminate ‘tabloid’ from our vocabulary—it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” says John Terenzio, who was executive producer of the pioneering tabloid-TV program A Current Affair in the early 90s. “I was the one who put Gennifer Flowers on TV to tell her story. Now I turn on Good Morning America and the Today show, and there she is—Gennifer Flowers!” What set the 1990s apart from any previous yellow-tinged epoch are two factors: advanced technology and increased vulgarity. It’s the dance between these factors, the downloadable and the down-and-dirty, that has led to the Tabloid Decade’s particularly explicit brand of tabloidism. That has enabled us to learn not only that the president was a philanderer but also that he inserted a cigar into the vagina of a young lady named Monica S. Lewinsky; not only to discover that Prince Charles had an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles but also to hear a recording of him stating his wish to be her tampon; not only to read reports that John Wayne Bobbitt had his penis sliced off but also to click here to see the reattached member. As the Tabloid Decade dawned, the telecommunications was in the throes of an androstenedione growth spurt: from 8 cable-TV channels in 1978 to 78 in 1988. (By April 1998 there would be 171 such channels.) On the horizon were the Internet, with its tendrils that would extend all over the world, and satellite-subscription services such as EchoStar and DirecTV, which would allow viewers to receive as many as 500 channels in their homes. At the same time, the vulgarization of the United States was accelerating. A general coarsening trend had been afoot since the 1960s, the era of the sexual revolution and the rise to predominance of the youth culture, but it wasn’t until the late 80s that the process went into overdrive and got scary. Much of this was attributable to the sudden vogue for reactionary inflammateurs such as Morton Downey Jr., Andrew Dice Clay, and Rush Limbaugh. But the decidedly unconservative Geraldo Rivera was as guilty as anyone; his chaos-TV scrums, like Downey’s, alerted television producers to the commercial possibilities of rage, paranoia, and confrontation. In the same period, that inveterate Australian tabloidist Rupert Murdoch, lord of the Sydney Daily Mirror and the London Sun, decided to become a television mogul. He launched the Fox Network in 1986, and staked out its territory by aiming lower than the Big Three networks ever had, with flatulent sitcoms such as Married…with Children and ass-kicking “reality” shows such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted. This combination—more media outlets and more vulgarity—created a harsh, logorrheic early-1990s landscape where the competition for television viewers, not to mention newspaper readers and radio listeners, was unprecedentedly fierce. Even the old-line outfits lowered themselves, resorting to gimmickry, increased entertainment coverage, and cheap tricks to hold on to their audience. New Yorkers got an early jolt of this phenomenon in 1990, when the veteran WNBC-TV anchorman Chuck Scarborough, long revered in the city as an institution and pillar of probity, teased the 11-o’clock news during a broadcast of L.A. Law by stating that a “star” of that program was dead by his own hand. Scarborough didn’t name the star, and viewers were left to watch the remainder of L.A. Law wondering which of the actors before them—Susan Dey? Harry Hamlin? Jimmy Smits?—was no longer alive. WNBC continued to tease the dead-actor report right through to the end of its newscast, only to reveal in the final minutes that the deceased was not a “star” of the program but David Rappaport, a midget actor who had appeared in a few episodes as an attorney who defends a tavern’s right to hold dwarf-tossing competitions. Here began the “blurring of distinctions” that would be much lamented by whither-civilization moralists such as Frank Rich for years to come: distinctions between news and entertainment, between gossip and reporting, between tabloid news and “straight” news. The New York Times, Rich’s employer, was as caught up in the mess as any other organization. Shortly after the William Kennedy Smith story broke in the spring of 1991, the Times ran an article that named Kennedy’s alleged rape victim, Patricia Bowman, and quoted a former acquaintance of hers as saying Bowman “had a little wild streak.” The NBC Nightly News had already identified Bowman on the air, but the Times was the first major print organ to do so, astonishing and appalling the rest of the journalistic firmament, which did not follow the paper’s lead. The Bowman episode was all the more eyebrow-raising in that it came just two weeks after another Times controversy: the paper’s publication, and executive editor Max Frankel’s subsequent repudiation, of Maureen Dowd’s front-page preview of Kitty Kelley’s new Nancy Reagan biography, which breezily aired Kelley’s assertions that the First Lady had carried on a long-term affair with Frank Sinatra. But these experiences proved to be mere growing pains in the Tabloid Decade’s development. In a matter of months Pee-wee would come along, Jerry Springer would be on the air, and the lamenters would be outnumbered by the hooked and inured. “I remember vividly the stupid ice-skater story,” says Oliver Stone. “I’d been away in Thailand making Heaven & Earth, and I came back, watched some TV news, and was shocked by the volume and aggression. Buttafuoco and the penis lady had already happened, but they were still around, too. Natural Born Killers was a response to that.” Stone’s Natural Born Killers is to the 1990s what his Wall Street is to the 1980s: a heavy-handed but nevertheless astute encapsulation of the era in which it was made. It’s a bloody, hallucinogenic road movie about young white-trash lovers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) who embark on a murderous cross-country rampage and in the process become electronic-age folk heroes—Bonnie and Clyde through a Fox-network filter. The jump cuts and stylized violence make for queasy viewing, but then, so did much of what was on television in 1994, the year of the film’s release. That year was probably the peak of the tabloid-TV era, with the Mondo Trasho trilogy still going strong, the Menendezes unavoidable, and the O.J. saga just under way. In many broadcast markets, the prized “access” slots between the evening news and prime time were given over to syndicated tab shows such as A Current Affair, Hard Copy, and Inside Edition. Harrelson and Lewis’s most ardent tabloid-TV suitor, played by Robert Downey, Jr., was modeled on A Current Affair’s star reporter, the barmy Australian Steve Dunleavy. Tabloid TV had been invented in 1986 by a man named Peter Brennan, like Dunleavy an Australian and longtime lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch’s. (Together, the three men had started up the Star in the early 1970s.) For his fledgling Fox network, Murdoch wanted a saucier brand of newsmagazine that the old-line networks were offering with 20/20 and 60 Minutes. Brennan obliged with A Current Affair, which was tabloid rethought audiovisually: Hollywood exposés, gratuitous T&A stories, and raw true-crime tales, all enhanced by re-enactments, jumpy camera work, and incriminating mood music (a synthesizer apparently fixed permanently on the “ominous didgeridoo” setting). The format was a nearly instant success, delivering decent ratings at low costs—virtues especially valued in the fragmented new world of multichannel America. Soon enough, A Current Affair had imitators (including Hard Copy, another Brennan start-up), and not long after that, the networks and local-news shows began to pay unsubtle tribute, duplicating the tab shows’ subject matter and borrowing their methodology, as when ABC’s 20/20 used a handheld camera to re-create Lorena Bobbitt’s feverish flight from her home. The tabloid sensibility’s infiltration of television had a profound impact. For most of this century, tabloid had been exclusively the preserve of print, and mostly an urban phenomenon, tailored for the rough-and-tumble working class of the cities. It had also been an active choice: you went down to the newsstand and decided if you wanted to read the salty Mirror or the staid Times. But suddenly tabloid was suburbanized, ubiquitous, and passively received—not a smudgy read on the subway ride home, but something that “more or less comes with the house, like running water or electricity,” as the novelist Thomas Mallon wrote in GQ. The consequences of this change were particularly palpable in the first half of the Tabloid Decade, when the common goal of the media seemed to be to demonstrate how far they could take a story of negligible news import (whereas the goal of the decade’s second half has been to see how low they can take a story of genuine news import, namely, the independent counsel’s investigation). In a not-much-earlier time, the sagas of Amy Fisher and Lorena Bobbitt would have been evanescent little news blips, minor stories. Even the O.J. case, though undeniably sensational, was, stripped to its news core, relatively small-time: has-been celebrity involved in domestic homicide. (Fatty Arbuckle, by contrast, was at the peak of his fame when he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman with a Coke bottle, and Lana Turner had just come off her Oscar-nominated performance in Peyton Place when her daughter stabbed Johnny Stompanato to death.) But with the aid of tabloid TV and its parade of paid interviewees, each of these stories became its own cottage industry, with a near-eternal shelf life. “Amy Fisher, to me, was huge, second only to O.J.,” says John Terenzio, who became executive producer of A Current Affair in 1991. “When a story has that kind of legs—inspiring not one but three TV movies—it’s something special. You have to stay with it. To use a trite expression, it had all the elements.” (It must be said that the allure of the Mondo Trasho stories was further enhanced by a kind of onomatopoeic serendipity: it was helpful that the lecherous auto mechanic was named Buttafuoco, the eunuched ex-Marine was named John Wayne Bobbitt, and the idiot ex-husband was named Gillooly, just as it had been helpful in the 50s that Turner’s murdered playboy-hoodlum boyfriend was named, of all things, Johnny Stompanato.) The constant presence of cameras and reporters and checkbooks produced another effect: the media-savviness and theatricality of each new story’s participants, who correctly sensed that they were now entertainers, not merely figures in the news. Whereas Pee-wee Herman, a bona fide celebrity, had been shamed into seclusion by scandal, the new scandals were notable for creating celebrities—Joey Buttafuoco moved to L.A. to take up acting, Bobbitt became a porn-movie curiosity, and Harding attempted a career as a singer. In this kind of environment, it became grimly inevitable that Natural Born Killers, intended by Stone as satire—“a Swiftian/Voltarian caricature of our worst nightmare,” as he wrote in the film’s production notes—would instead be mistaken for a Tabloid Decade how-to manual. The film, a bigger hit on video that in theaters, was name-checked by several youthful suspects picked up on murder charges in the mid-90s. Though the consequences were seldom this extreme, the celebrity dividend undoubtedly added new timber to the Tabloid Decade bonfire, in that it legitimized and rewarded atrocious behavior, which in turn encouraged average Americans to act more like the tabloid characters they saw on TV. By the mid-90s, any minimum-wager with exhibitionistic tendencies could be a tabloid curiosity for a day, if not on Geraldo, then certainly on one of the other human-cockfight talk shows that were proliferating at the time: Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Richard Bey, Charles Perez, Ricki Lake, Carnie, Leeza, Rolanda, Real Personal, The Gordon Elliott Show, The Maury Povich Show, The Montel Williams Show, The Jane Whitney Show. It was a mass recapitulation of Roseanne Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas’s dream gone sour: one moment you’re the exhilarating voice of the too-long-voiceless hoi polloi, the next you’re a mortifying freak show, hooked on attention and compulsively revealing too much about yourself. (Roseanne, a key Tabloid Decade figure, has a keen self-awareness of her tabloidiness. Promoting her new daytime program last fall, she told Harper’s Bazaar, “I am the person most qualified to host a talk show: I have five kids from three different marriages; I come from a trailer park; my sister and brother are both gay; I have multiple personalities; and the National Enquirer reunited me with my daughter, who I had given up for adoption.” That she and Geraldo are both trying to reinvent themselves as classier, more contemplative TV personalities is another sign that the Tabloid Decade’s days may be numbered.) It wasn’t just white-trash schemers who were hoping for the celebrity dividend, either. If anything, the attorneys and advisers and assorted opportunists who attached themselves to the Tabloid Decade’s major figures were, collectively, a far more toxic presence. Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Kato Kaelin, Paula Barbieri, Leslie Abramson, William Ginsburg, Susan Carpenter-McMillan—no one would shed a tear if the ocean rose up and claimed them. Even Fred Goldman seemed an ignoble figure, trying to parlay his newfound gift for public speaking into a talk-radio job, a far less honorable response to tragedy than Representative Carolyn McCarthy’s in similar circumstances. Compounding the press and the citizenry’s rush into depravity was the rise of a generation that, rather than getting angry at or repulsed by what was transpiring before it, merely became amused. To America’s Watergate babies—those irony-armored folks in their 20s and 30s, people who have never had to endure a generational hardship like a depression or a major war—the Tabloid Decade has been little more than a colossal joke, a series of occasions to slum inuredly through the muck of humanity. (An entire television program, the E! channel’s Talk Soup, has thrived on this premise.) There has indeed been a death of outrage, and though that phrase’s author, William Bennett, uses his coinage to his usual biased, blowhard ends, he makes a good point when he argues, “Defenders of both Richard Nixon and of Bill Clinton forget that the cost of raising the threshold of moral outrage is paid out over generations—and with compound interest. How much of the political cynicism that today says ‘they all do it’ can be laid at the feet of actions committed twenty-five years ago during the Watergate scandal?” While tabloid TV’s heyday was relatively short-lived—A Current Affair is now off the air and Hard Copy and Inside Edition are buried in obscure time slots—its influence lives on in every local newscast, every network newscast, every breakfast program, all five Datelines, all three 20/20s, and both 60 Minuteses. Likewise, every broadsheet in America is palpably more tabloidlike in content than it used to be. The “blurring of distinctions” has really been more of an engulfment, since the influence has gone in just one direction: not only have the major news organizations appropriated tabloid techniques, but they’ve also placed a greater emphasis on tabloid material at the expense of genuine hard news; a new JonBenét development trumps a Hague war-crimes tribunal every time. (Or, to use a nonhypothetical example, a sex scandal trumps a Papal visit to Cuba every time.) These changes have as much to do with financial pressures as they do with a shift in sensibility. “It goes back to Larry Tisch making the news division for-profit when he owned CBS,” says Oliver Stone. “And when The New York Times had Tonya Harding on the front page for, like, five or six days in a row. Obviously they were chasing money, too—going after the story to keep up with everyone else.” (This would appear to be dicey territory for Stone, since he himself has been accused of being a headline-hunting sensationalist—first with films such as JFK and The Doors, and more recently with Oliver Stone’s Declassified, a spiked ABC special that was to have credulously entertained the theory that land-launched missiles cause the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. Stone argues simply that he’s not a journalist but a filmmaker, who uses his craft to raise questions—to “do the onion skin, to peel it away to examine what is really reality.”) John Terenzio, though a tenured Murdochian who now runs Fox’s Sports News division, doesn’t totally disagree with Stone’s point about for-profit news. He got his professional start working for ABC News in what he calls “the Roone Arledge golden years, ’79 to ’89,” and characterizes that operation as having been “almost philanthropic” in its mission. “Network news divisions could take losses, and it was O.K.,” he says. “I grant you, it is sad that there have been cutbacks in CBS’s documentary unit, and there is a need for more of that kind of reportage, but maybe ABC and CBS simply aren’t the place for it anymore. Maybe the place is somewhere else, like this wonderful new world of cable TV.” In other words, if it’s serious new you’re in the mood for, you should tune in to the Serious News Channel—you know, right up there in the 120s on your dial, between the Outlet Mall Network and the Lottery Channel (both of which really exist). Much has been made of the liberating effects of the media glut, how the 24-hour news cycle and the vast new assortment of channels and Web sites have enabled us to assemble our own newscasts and thereby be better informed than ever. The problem is, so far this hasn’t been true. The proliferation of media outlets has instead led to mind-muddle, an infotainment surplus, and ridiculously excessive Beltway Kremlinology—for 10 months, MSNBC had a program called The White House in Crisis, on nightly at 11, just like Seinfeld reruns. All the while, the average consumer is drawn still further away from Cronkite-ian hard news. The distractions are many. Calvin Trillin has expounded at length on the plague of “Sabbath gasbags,” the public-affairs-show pundits who have invested themselves so heavily in the Lewinsky story that they are compelled to perpetuate it beyond its natural dimensions. Trillin is wrong in just one respect: the “Sabbath” part is irrelevant. Thanks to CNBC, MSNBC, CNNfn, and all the other consonant clusters with which our broadcasting conglomerates have sought to spread their influence, the gasbag biz is a 24-7 operation; the notion of a punditocracy that restricts its work to the Sabbath became anachronistic around 1995, the year of the O.J. Simpson trial. Even nontabloid media outlets contribute to the morass. Court TV, whose July 1991 launch coincided rather suspiciously with the spiritual beginning of the Tabloid Decade, is a good example. Its founder, Steven Brill, now the media-kvetch editor of Brill’s Content, argues that the channel has been an oasis of solemnity in a cacophonous environment, and that televising trials has generally had a de-sensationalizing effect. “Without the cameras,” he says, “the William Kennedy Smith trial would’ve been the story of how a rich guy bought justice. But the cameras showed he won the case legitimately.” A fair point, but by the same token, the national televising of the Menendez trials is what boosted a routine Hollywood potboiler into a national obsession, and turned Lyle, Erik, and Leslie Abramson into vivid, three-dimensional characters who would one day be played by bad actors in a TV movie. Similarly, it’s doubtful, had cameras not been present, that Marcia Clark would have gotten her Allure-style makeover, and transformed herself into a TV gasbag, filling in for Geraldo on his CNBC program. To which Brill says, raising another pertinent Tabloid Decade point, “Don’t blame Court TV. Blame the news standards that put Marcia Clark on TV. She’s on TV because she lost the case that most people on the planet would say was the easiest case to win in history. She’s on TV simply because she’s famous, and this is a decade that worships fame itself, regardless of what you’re famous for.” The Internet, meanwhile, has this far functioned less as the ultimate informational tool that as a clearinghouse for gossip: the coup de grace of the Tabloid Decade. Rumor and innuendo are no longer spread orally but electronically—meaning, in effect, that every shaky, spurious half-truth put forth by some troublemaker somewhere can now gain instant credence by being circulated worldwide, in writing. The Internet has created the possibility for every citizen with a computer to become a one-man tabloid; Matt Drudge is only the most dogged and famous example. The Net has further contributed to the decade’s tabloid tenor by fanning paranoia and conspiracy fever. To visit its various news sites is to enter a free-for-all of relativism where there is no truth, only the “so-called-truth.” When Drudge was profiled by Brill’s Content, he explained that he includes links to the A.P. and U.P.I. in his Web site so that “the average Joe can get the fill picture—see what newspaper and broadcast editors are leaving out. That’s going to change everything because we don’t have to wait for Dan Rather to get his makeup on and read to us.” While there is undeniably a bit of politics and fairy dust to the way the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather determines its lineup, or to the way The Washington Post chooses what will run on its front page, few people ever ascribed anything sinister to these processes until relatively recently. This signals another undercurrent of the Tabloid Decade—if not a mainstreaming of paranoia, then at least an amplification of paranoia, a means through which paranoiacs can link up and make one another even more paranoid. Who ever worried that Walter Cronkite had an agenda? The MTV folks made no bones about why they were seating Laetitia Thompson front and center in the studio audience: she was young, blonde, attractive, and female. It was April 19, 1994, and Thompson, a 17-year-old junior at Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, was one of the lucky kids who’d been selected to spend the day at the Kalorama Studios in Washington, D.C., at which Bill Clinton was fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to reappear on MTV as president. There had been a run-through of the program the night before with the producers “trying to figure out the theatricality of the whole thing,” Thompson, now a senior at Princeton University, recalls. The premise of Clinton’s appearance was a youth forum on crime entitled Enough Is Enough, and the audience members, mostly high-school and college students, were supposed to ask worthy questions about school violence, gangs, drugs, and gun control. But MTV wanted to end the program with a lightning round of short, sharp questions intended to elicit quickie answers from the president and leaven the mood a bit. So when Thompson’s turn came at the run-through, where Clinton was not present, she tossed off the silliest inquiry she could think of: “Mr. President, the world’s dying to know: Is it boxers or briefs?” The line got a big laugh. It was given clearance to be redeployed. Amazingly, Clinton answered the question the next day. He blushed, but he answered: “Usually briefs. [Audience laughter.] I can’t believe she did that.” It was one of the defining Tabloid Decade moments: a teenager (a) feeling that it was perfectly appropriate and not at all disrespectful to ask the president of the United States about his underwear preference, and (b) getting a response. Today, however, Thompson feels that, in light of 1998’s events, “probably it was not such a good idea for American society for him to answer the question.” Time magazine’s Lance Morrow has suggested that Clinton should have replied, “Well, I have been accused of not having a sufficiently dignified approach, so maybe I’d better not answer that.” But, of course, Bill Clinton had to answer. It’s in his nature three times over, a function of his eagerness to please, his boomer aversion to seeming square, and his Astroturf-in-the-back-of-the-El-Camino swinginess. Which brings up an important point: for all the ways in which Clinton has been genuinely victimized by an unprecedentedly large and tabloidified American press corps, he happens to have been a tabloid character to begin with. He’s lived his life by his rogue mama’s credo, articulated so memorably in her brilliant autobiography, Leading with My Heart: “Too many people seem to think life is the tablecloth, instead of the messy feast that’s spread out on it…. That’s not life. Done right, life leaves stains.” In all likelihood, the occupant of the White House from 1993 to 1997 would have been the most raked-over president ever no matter who he was; the media beast, engorged and inflamed, was ready to tee off. It’s not inconceivable that even Bush, had he won a second term, would have endured a new wave of zealous press and Internet inquiries into his alleged infidelities. (Dirt digging is not solely a right-wing pursuit: the San Francisco–based online magazine Salon has lately forged a rather more Australian path, dredging up Henry Hyde’s long-ago extramarital affair.) But it was providential that the person who did end up president of the 90s was the most hittable piñata possible, overstuffed with scandal stories and moral conflicts and undiscovered half-siblings and risible P.C. turns of phrase. Bill Clinton was fate’s gift to the Tabloid Decade: the Karmic convergence of individual and Zeitgeist. “Tabloid” is not an inherently pejorative word, and in some respects the Tabloid Decade has been a great ride; you’d have to be a humorless prig not to enjoy the goofier revelations of the Starr Report, or the gossip columns of the revivified New York Post, which revels in its villainy with the wicked élan of Joan Crawford in The Women. But cumulatively the Tabloid Decade has been a downer: a meal of potato chips, a guilty pleasure that’s been overindulged in and now leaves the stomach sour. It’s not just the sheer pervasiveness of the tabloid sensibility, but also what the 1990s have done to it. James Ellroy, writing about his Chandleresque 1950s parents in My Dark Places, refers to them as “a great-looking cheap couple.” Alas, there’s no such thing today—your cheap couples are overfed, surly, and sweat-suited. The gabardines have been replaced by polyesters, the fedoras by ball caps, the saloons by “gentlemen’s clubs,” the Jilly Rizzos by Bobby Kardashians, the Judy Campbells by Monica Lewinskys, the Louis Primas by Michael Boltons, the long Weegee shadows by the klieg-light glare of Jerry Springer’s studio. The Tabloid Decade has sucked the noir romance right out of tabloid. “You had a sense of living in a morally constrained time—‘you want it but you can’t have it.’ It was tremendously seductive,” says Ellroy. “But it’s all explicit today, not implicit. Everything has a name now.” And as the Tabloid Decade draws, at least numerically, to a close, you can’t help but wonder what’s been lurking the whole time in that ignored parallel universe known as reality. You wonder if whatever’s lurking there (perhaps the situation in Russia, currently doing its best imitation of the Weimar Republic) is going to rear up and demand our penance for ignoring it. Let’s just hope the ending isn’t too heavy. Lively as the Tabloid Decade has been, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if it uncharacteristically just dribbled out, bereft of new material. Read More » With that ringing directorial endorsement, the four-hour epic Cleopatra unspooled before the public for the first time. It was a crack-up to Carson and company because poor Parks was evidently the only man in town willing to keep up appearances, to pretend that the world had trained its cameras on the Cleopatra premiere because it heralded the arrival of a spectacular new filmed entertainment in Todd-AO with color by DeLuxe. The truth was that everyone had come to see the train wreck. Everyone knew that Cleopatra was an extraordinarily botched production that had cost $44 million—an unheard-of sum for 1963 which was all the more astounding considering that Hollywood’s previous all-time budget record setter, Ben-Hur, had only four years earlier cost a mere $15 million, chariot race and all. Everyone knew that Cleopatra had nearly gutted the studio that made it, Twentieth Century Fox. Everyone knew that it had taken two directors, two separate casts, two Fox regimes, and two and a half years of stop-start filmmaking in England, Italy, Egypt, and Spain to get the damned thing done. Above all, everyone knew that Cleopatra had given the world “Liz and Dick,” the adulterous pairing of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, irresistibly cast as Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Never before had celebrity scandal pushed so far into global consciousness, with Taylor-Burton pre-empting John Glenn’s orbiting of the Earth on tabloid front pages, denunciations being sounded on the Senate floor, and even the Vatican newspaper publishing an “open letter” that excoriated Taylor for “erotic vagrancy.” When she signed on for the role, Taylor had already been four times a bride, once a widow, and once a purported home wrecker, but it was during the making of Cleopatra that she truly transcended the label of mere “movie star” and became, once and for all, Elizabeth Taylor, the protagonist in a still-running extra-vocational melodrama of star-crossed romance, exquisite jewelry, and periodic emergency hospitalizations. “It was probably the most chaotic time of my life. That hasn’t changed,” says Taylor, who has seldom discussed the Cleopatra experience publicly. “What with le scandale, the Vatican banning me, people making threats on my life, falling madly in love ... It was fun and it was dark—oceans of tears, but some good times too.” For old Hollywood, Cleopatra represented the moment when the jig was up. No longer would anyone buy the studio system’s sanitized, pre-packaged lives of the stars, nor would the stars and their agents bow in obeisance to the aging moguls who’d founded the place. It was the moment when every schnook on the street became an industry insider, fluent in Varietyese, up to speed on Liz’s “deal” ($1 million against 10 percent of the gross), aware that a given film was x million dollars overbudget and needed to earn back y million dollars just to break even. Heaven’s Gate, Ishtar, Waterworld—the modern narrative of the “troubled production” began here, though none of these films would come close to matching Cleopatra for sheer anarchy, overreach, and bad Karma. Here, too, originated the mixed-blessing concept of “the most expensive movie ever made”: in strict economic terms, Cleopatra still holds the title. Last year Variety estimated Cleopatra’s cost in 1997 dollars to be $300 million, a full $100 million more than Titanic’s. Even if you perform a straightforward consumer-price-index conversion of the $44 million figure, Cleopatra’s adjusted-for-inflation budget comes out at $231 million. Mankiewicz called Cleopatra “the toughest three pictures I ever made,” and his epitaph for the film—that it was “conceived in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in a blind panic”—is one of filmdom’s most famous quotes. Even now the movie’s survivors talk of its making almost as if they’re discussing a paranormal experience. “There was a certain ... madness to it all,” says Hume Cronyn, who played Sosigenes, Cleopatra’s scholarly adviser. “It wasn’t anything as clear as ‘Richard Burton is moving out on his wife, Elizabeth is leaving Eddie Fisher.’ It was much more complicated, more levels than that.... Paparazzi in the trees.... We were weeks behind.... Hanky-panky going on in this corner and that.... There were wheels within wheels within wheels. God, it was a messy situation.” Although it ended up turning a small profit and winning modest critical acclaim, Cleopatra had grim aftereffects on many of its principals. Mankiewicz would never again attain the brilliance and prolificacy of his late-40s-to-late-50s peak, during which he pulled off the still-unmatched feat of winning four Oscars in two years: for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). “Cleopatra affected him the rest of his life,” says his widow, Rosemary, who worked as his assistant on the film. “It made him more sensitive to the other blows that would come along.” Mankiewicz would make only three more features, concluding with the minor gem Sleuth in 1972, and then spend his final 21 years disillusioned and idle, “finding reasons not to work,” in the words of his son Tom. Taylor and Burton, in Cleopatra’s aftermath, would marry each other twice, make one good movie together, Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and otherwise fritter away their acting careers on a series of blowsy, drink-sodden exhibitions of international jet-set filmmaking: The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, Dr. Faustus, The Comedians, Boom!, Divorce His, Divorce Hers. As for the film’s producer, the 68-year-old legend Walter Wanger, he would never make another movie. He had meant for Cleopatra to be a happy culmination of a distinguished career that had begun in 1921, when he persuaded Paramount to put Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik. Instead, he was forced on premiere night to sit queasily through a movie he hadn’t seen, having been aced out of Cleopatra’s postproduction phase by Twentieth Century Fox president Darryl F. Zanuck, who targeted him as a prime suspect in the whole mess. And though the concept had been his in the first place, Wanger stood outside the ropes with the hoi polloi, watching as Mankiewicz, Zanuck, Rex Harrison (who played Julius Caesar), and Roddy McDowall (who played Octavian) made their entrances. And where on this magical night at the Rivoli were the two people everyone wanted to see, Taylor and Burton? In England, where Burton was filming Becket. “We’d just had it with Cleopatra by then,” says Taylor. “The whole thing. It was years of my life.” A few weeks later, however, Taylor reluctantly hosted a London screening of the film. She dutifully sat through the picture, mortified by the memories it evoked and the butchery, as she perceived it, of Mankiewicz’s vision. Immediately afterward, she hurried back to the Dorchester Hotel, where she was staying—and threw up. An Inauspicious Beginning: New York, Los Angeles, 1958–59 “He would never have pulled the plug on >Cleopatra. That would have been like giving up a child.” —Stephanie Guest, daughter of Walter Wanger Everyone in the movie business loved Walter Wanger—he spoke well, was Dartmouth-educated, wore Savile Row suits, and was reliably couth and hail-fellow-well-met, the antithesis of the shouters who ran things. Wanger had wanted to do a Cleopatra picture for years. There had been others—a 1917 silent version with Theda Bara; the opulent Cecil B. DeMille version of 1934, featuring Claudette Colbert; and, in 1946, a soporific British adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh. But Wanger hoped to surpass them all with an intelligent treatment and a star in the lead who was, in his words, “the quintessence of youthful femininity, of womanliness and strength.” He found his ideal Queen of the Nile in 1951, when he saw Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun. But that year Wanger was not in the best position to do a deal. After a couple of decades as one of Hollywood’s more successful independent producers, responsible for such films as Queen Christina, with Greta Garbo, and John Ford’s Stagecoach, he’d fallen upon a hitless period, the ignominy of which was compounded by the discovery that his wife, the actress Joan Bennett, was having an affair with her agent, Jennings Lang of MCA. On December 13, 1951, in an act that froze Hollywood in disbelief, Wanger staked out Bennett and Lang in the MCA parking lot, pulled out a pistol, and shot Lang in the groin. That Wanger got off as lightly as he did—serving only a four-month sentence at a Southern California “honor farm” in mid-1952—was in large part a testament to how well liked he was: Samuel Goldwyn, Harry and Jack Warner, Walt Disney, and Darryl Zanuck contributed to his legal fund. By 1958, Wanger’s comeback was in full swing (he had recently produced Don Siegel’s thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Robert Wise’s I Want to Live!, for which Susan Hayward would win the 1959 Academy Award for best actress), and his thoughts returned to his dream project. On September 30 he took his first meeting about Cleopatra with Spyros Skouras, then the president of Twentieth Century Fox. Skouras, a snow-haired contemporary of Wanger’s, was amenable, but he envisioned something more modest than what Wanger had in mind. During their meeting, Skouras had a secretary excavate the ancient script for the soundless 1917 Cleopatra—produced by the Fox Film Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox’s progenitor—and said, “All this needs is a little rewriting. Just give me this over again and we’ll make a lot of money.” Fox was not a well-run operation in the late 50s. All the studios were suffering from the rise of television and the court-ordered dissolution of the studio system, but Skouras and company were having a particularly rough time of it—an internal report published in 1962 reported a four-year loss of about $61 million. “We were the only people who could put John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe in movies and not have them do any business,” says Jack Brodsky, a Fox publicist during the Cleopatra years. One reason for Fox’s weak programming was the departure in 1956 of its founder and resident genius-dynamo, chief of production Darryl Zanuck, who, burned out after 23 years on the job, quit to become an independent producer. Zanuck’s replacement was Buddy Adler, who had produced From Here to Eternity and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing but proved to be an ineffectual executive. As long as Zanuck had been in place, the New York–based Skouras, a Greek immigrant who’d worked his way up from owning a single movie theater in St. Louis, had kept his distance from Los Angeles and the filmmaking process. With Adler, however, Skouras felt no such inhibitions, and began to meddle heavily. Skouras was no creative genius, but he had made one important strategic move that temporarily “saved” the industry from television—namely, he kicked off the wide-screen era by making The Robe, a 1953 biblical epic starring Richard Burton, with the studio’s new CinemaScope technology. That film’s success ($17 million gross on a budget of $5 million) made Skouras a hero in Hollywood, and soon every studio was rushing out mastodonic sand-swept period epics in rival wide-screen processes such as WarnerScope, TechniScope, and VistaVision. But by the time Wanger was trying to get Cleopatra off the ground, the bloom of CinemaScope had withered. The budget-minded Adler envisioned a modest back-lot picture, costing perhaps a million dollars or two, starring a Fox contract player such as Joan Collins, Joanne Woodward, or Suzy Parker. Wanger continued to argue his case for Taylor, whom Skouras didn’t want, because “she’ll be too much trouble.” On June 19, 1959, Wanger received his first preliminary operating budget for Cleopatra: 64 days’ shooting at a cost of $2,955,700, exclusive of cast and director salaries—expensive by melodrama standards, but a piddling amount for an epic. The decade had seen one record-setting mega-production after another, starting with Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis (1951, $7 million) and continuing on with Richard Fleischer’s Jules Verne fantasy, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954, $9 million), Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956, $13 million), and William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959, $15 million). By late summer, a reputable British writer named Nigel Balchin had been hired to put together a script, a $5 million budget was deemed acceptable, and the names of Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and Susan Hayward were being discussed for the title role. On September 1, Wanger made his first formal overture to Taylor, who was in London filming Suddenly Last Summer with Joseph Mankiewicz. Over the telephone, she demanded—half-jokingly, she would later say—a million dollars, something no actress had ever been paid for one movie. Finally, on October 15 Fox staged a photo opportunity at which Taylor pretended to sign her million-dollar contract. The wire services sent out the photo to newspapers across the country, and now Wanger’s idea was the world’s: Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. Getting Nowhere: New York, Los Angeles, London, 1959–60 “Gentlemen: You are wasting money on Liz Taylor. Nobody wants to see her after the way she treated that sweet little Debbie Reynolds. Everyone loves Debbie. She is what the teenagers call a doll. Ginger Rogers is still popular, but Liz is not liked anymore. I heard a group of teenagers talking about Liz. They said, ‘She is a stinker.’ They’re right.” —Letter sent to Buddy Adler and Walter Wanger by a woman in Beaumont, California, October 1959 It is the wisdom of those who consider themselves experts on the subject that Mike Todd, the producer-showman behind Around the World in 80 Days, was “the love of Elizabeth Taylor’s life.” But less than six months after Todd died in a plane crash outside Albuquerque in March 1958—leaving the 26-year-old Taylor alone with an infant daughter, Liza, and the two sons she’d had with her second husband, Michael Wilding—she was seen stepping out with her late husband’s friend and protégé, Eddie Fisher. Fisher, a pompadoured, haimish 30-year-old pop idol, was famous for his shrewdly publicized union with Debbie Reynolds; together they had two children and were known as “America’s sweethearts.” But by the time Taylor and Fisher married in Las Vegas in May of 1959, the public goodwill both had built up had evaporated, and they were the target of constant moral dudgeon and tabloid surveillance. Skouras’s intuition that Taylor would be “trouble” wasn’t entirely unfounded, in that she had a predisposition toward illness, and alarmed moralists. Then again, she had soldiered on through Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the film she was in the midst of making when Todd died, fulfilled her obligation to Butterfield 8, the last film she owed to MGM under her contract there, and delivered a first-rate performance in Suddenly Last Summer. Reaching over Wanger’s head, Skouras tapped an old friend, Rouben Mamoulian, to be Cleopatra’s director. The 61-year-old Mamoulian was a gifted visualist, was accustomed to policing large groups of people, and had directed the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma!, and Carousel, as well as the films Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Becky Sharp, and Silk Stockings. But he had a reputation for being temperamental, and his filmmaking skills were rusty—apart from Silk Stockings, from 1957, he had made only one movie in the last 17 years. The screenwriter Nunnally Johnson (The Grapes of Wrath), whom Fox had hired to write additional dialogue for Balchin’s screenplay, was skeptical. “I bet Walter Wanger that [Mamoulian] would never go to bat,” Johnson wrote to his friend Groucho Marx. “All he wants to do is ‘prepare.’ A hell of a preparer. Tests, wardrobe, hair, toenails.... [But] if you make him start this picture, he will never forgive you to his dying day. This chap is a natural born martyr.” Late in 1959, the Fox hierarchy committed its first howler of a mistake: deciding, despite obvious meteorological evidence to the contrary, that England was an ideal place to shoot a sunbaked Egyptian-Roman epic. The decision was money-driven—the British government offered generous subsidies to foreign productions that employed a certain percentage of British crew. Adler died of cancer the following July. His death created even more of a power vacuum at the studio, but the movie’s chief detractor at Fox was out of the way. On July 28, 1960, Taylor finally signed a real contract. The film was to be shot not in CinemaScope but in Todd-AO, a rival wide-screen process developed by Mike Todd, which meant that Taylor, as Todd’s beneficiary, would receive additional royalties. It was announced that Peter Finch would play Caesar and that Stephen Boyd, Charlton Heston’s co-star in Ben-Hur, would play Antony. At the Pinewood Studios, located just outside London, John DeCuir, one of the best art directors in the business, began construction on a gorgeous, $600,000 Alexandria set covering 20 acres, featuring palm trees flown in from Los Angeles and four 52-foot-high sphinxes. Right from the start, Mamoulian’s Cleopatra was a farce. The first day of shooting, September 28, saw two work stoppages by the movie’s British hairdressers, who took issue with the presence of Taylor’s specially imported American stylist, Sidney Guilaroff. Only after several weeks of negotiation by Wanger was a fragile truce arranged—Guilaroff would style Taylor at her double penthouse suite in the Dorchester, but would not set foot in Pinewood. Not that Taylor’s presence at Pinewood ever became much of an issue. She called in sick on the third day of shooting, saying she had a cold. The cold grew into a lingering fever, and for the next few weeks she remained ensconced in her suite—attended by her husband and several doctors, including Lord Evans, Queen Elizabeth’s physician. Physically and spiritually, the Eddie Fishers were not a healthy couple at the time. Fisher missed the singing career he’d largely forsaken for Taylor, and knew the $150,000 he was being paid by Fox for vague junior-producer duties was really for being Taylor’s professional minder. Furthermore, he was strung out on methamphetamine, having gotten hooked in his grueling touring days on “pep” shots administered by Max Jacobson, the notorious “Dr. Feelgood” who provided similar services to John F. Kennedy. Taylor was in a continual funk because of her ill health, residual grief over the death of Mike Todd, the grim English weather, and the correct intuition that she’d lent her star power to a doomed, disorganized production. In response, she took to drinking and taking painkillers and sedatives. “She could take an enormous amount of drugs,” Fisher told Brad Geagley, a senior producer at Walt Disney, in an unpublished 1991 interview for a never completed book concerning Cleopatra. “She’s written up in medical journals somewhere—that’s what she’s always told me, and I believe her.” (Fisher declined to be interviewed for this story, on the grounds that he wants to save his “explosive, blockbuster stuff” for a memoir he’s working on.) While Taylor spent the autumn shuttling between the Dorchester and the London Clinic, where she was variously diagnosed with a virus, an abscessed tooth, and a bacterial infection known as Malta fever, Mamoulian was having his own troubles. Balchin’s script remained unsatisfactory to him, and in the rare moments when the sky was clear, the illusion of Egypt was nevertheless shattered by the steam visibly emanating from the actors’ and horses’ mouths. Production ground to a halt on November 18, when there was simply no more Mamoulian could do without Taylor and an improved script. The plan was for shooting to resume in January, by which time Taylor would presumably be well and Nunnally Johnson would have finished another script polish. Back in New York, Skouras sent a copy of the current shooting script to Joseph Mankiewicz, who had made his two Oscar-winning pictures for Fox, and asked the director for a frank critique. Mankiewicz was merciless: “Cleopatra, as written, is a strange, frustrating mixture of an American soap-opera virgin and an hysterical Slavic vamp of the type Nazimova used to play ... ” On January 18, 1961, with production resumed but still moving at a glacial pace, Mamoulian, bitter and frustrated, cabled his resignation to Skouras. He left behind about 10 minutes of footage, none of it featuring Taylor, and a loss of $7 million. A Near-Death Experience: London, 1960–61 “I began to look at my life, and I saw a tough situation. In the hospital all the time—I mean, I became a nurse. I was giving her injections of Demerol. I didn’t want the doctors to come. I felt sorry for the doctors. I did it for two nights, and whooo-ee.... After two nights I said, ‘This is crazy.’ I actually faked appendicitis to get away.” —Eddie Fisher, recalling the winter of 1960–61 A couple days after Skouras accepted Mamoulian’s resignation, a desperate voice broke through the static on Hume Cronyn’s telephone in the Bahamas, where he owned a remote island with his wife, Jessica Tandy. “Hume?” said the voice. “Where the hell is Joe?” It was Charles Feldman, Joe Mankiewicz’s Hollywood agent. Mankiewicz was staying with the Cronyns, preparing the screenplay for Justine, his planned follow-up to Suddenly Last Summer. Feldman told Mankiewicz that Skouras was offering the moon for him to rescue Cleopatra. The director was skeptical, but that didn’t stop him from flying immediately to New York to meet Skouras for lunch at the Colony. “Spyros,” he said, “why would I want to make Cleopatra? I wouldn’t even go see Cleopatra.” Indeed, gifted as he was, Mankiewicz seemed the last person qualified (or inclined) to helm a big-budget spectacle. “His movies were dialogue-based and staged like plays, like All About Eve, where most of the action, where there is action, is people coming down stairs or going in and out of doors,” says Chris Mankiewicz, the director’s older son, who took time off from college to work on Cleopatra. Skouras recognized, however, that the elder Mankiewicz was a great writer and skilled diva-wrangler, having finessed the egos of Taylor and Katharine Hepburn on Suddenly Last Summer, and Bette Davis on All About Eve. Mankiewicz consented to take over the project when Skouras made an offer he couldn’t refuse: Fox would not only place him on salary, but also pay $3 million for Figaro, the production company he co-owned with NBC. For a 51-year-old man whose glorious career had never quite made him rich, the prospect of overnight millionairedom was irresistible. “He was seduced by the opportunity,” says Chris Mankiewicz. “He never saw a penny from All About Eve. Now, for once in his life, they were all coming to him. All of a sudden you’ve got the ‘Fuck you’ money.” Cleopatra seemed, for a flicker of a moment, to be in good, sane hands. Mankiewicz, citing as his inspirations Shaw, Shakespeare, and Plutarch, set about creating a totally new script for the movie. He enlisted two writers to help him, the novelist Lawrence Durrell (whose Alexandria Quartet was the basis for Mankiewicz’s Justine script) and the screenwriter Sidney Buchman (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Wanger, elated by Mankiewicz’s “modern, psychiatrically rooted concept of the film,” thought he was at last getting the upscale Cleopatra he’d dreamed of. Alas, this period of promise was when Taylor suffered what probably still qualifies as her nearest near-death experience. Late in February she returned to London from a vacation on the Continent with what her doctors described as “Asian flu,” caught while rushing back to attend to her suddenly “appendicitis”-stricken husband. By March, the Asian flu, or whatever it was, had complicated itself into double pneumonia, and Taylor was sedated and prone in an oxygen tent in the Dorchester. On the night of March 4, 1961, she fell comatose. She was rushed once again to the London Clinic, Fisher at her side screaming, “Let her alone! Let her alone!,” as paparazzi leaned in to get photographs of her unconscious. The diligence of the Fleet Street press ensured that within hours an international deathwatch was in place, some papers already reporting that Taylor was dead. “I was pronounced dead four times,” says Taylor. “Once I didn’t breathe for five minutes, which must be a record.” Doctors performed an emergency tracheotomy to alleviate congestion in her bronchial passages. The operation saved her life, and by the end of the month she was back home with Fisher in Los Angeles, convalescing. Several months later she underwent plastic surgery to conceal the incision mark at the base of her throat, but it wasn’t successful; the scar is visible in the finished film. Calamitous as the whole episode was, it produced two seemingly serendipitous effects. First, it bought Mankiewicz six months to get his Cleopatra together while Taylor recovered. Second, Taylor’s public image was overnight transformed from home-wrecking pariah to heartstring-pulling survivor; the London Clinic received truckloads of flowers and sympathetic fan mail, even a get-well telegram from Debbie Reynolds. “I had the chance to read my own obituaries,” says Taylor. “They were the best reviews I’d ever gotten.” During her convalescence, she collected a sympathy best-actress Oscar for Butterfield 8, a movie she hated. Mankiewicz decided to junk Mamoulian’s footage and reconstruct the movie from scratch—only Taylor, Wanger, and John DeCuir, the art director, would carry over to the new incarnation of Cleopatra. To replace Finch and Boyd, Mankiewicz pursued Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, the latter of whom had played Mark Antony in the director’s 1953 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But neither actor was available, so Mankiewicz set his sights on Rex Harrison, whom he had directed in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Richard Burton, then starring on Broadway in Camelot. Skouras hated both choices. Harrison, he said, had never made a profitable movie for Fox, and Burton “doesn’t mean a thing at the box office.” Indeed, Burton, the 36-year-old product of a dirt-poor Welsh mining family, was perceived in Hollywood to be a great stage actor whose film career had never really taken off. But grudgingly, after strenuous lobbying from Mankiewicz, Skouras gave in. Fox bought out the remainder of Burton’s Camelot contract for $50,000, signed the actor for $250,000, and got Harrison for $200,000. If you had to peg one of Cleopatra’s two male stars as a potential troublemaker on the set, it would be Harrison; Wanger later expressed surprise that he had turned out to be “the good boy.” Described by several of his surviving castmates as “the Cunt,” Harrison was known for being tetchy, difficult, and condescending. Burton, by contrast, was a charmer, adored by his peers for his erudition, basso speaking voice, Welsh-barroom raconteurship, and sexual magnetism. Though notorious for his philandering—he had romanced such co-stars as Claire Bloom, Jean Simmons, and Susan Strasberg, and had shown up at his first meeting with Wanger, at New York’s ‘21’ Club, with a Copacabana dancer on his arm—he invariably returned to his wife, the dignified, mumsie-looking Sybil Burton. One of the few people who remained oblivious to Burton’s charms, in fact, was Elizabeth Taylor. She had met him years before Cleopatra at a party at Stewart Granger’s house, back when she was a contract player at MGM. “He flirted like mad with me, with everyone, with any girl who was even remotely pretty,” she says. “I just thought, ‘Ohhh, boy—I’m not gonna become a notch on his belt.’” “England All Over Again”: Rome, 1961 “It appears that the responsibility for increased costs in connection with the production falls into four categories, namely Elizabeth Taylor	John and Lorena Bobbitt
Heavy metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio first gained major fame after replacing vocalist Ozzy Osbourne in what band?	This Shit Is Fucked Up LEAD STORIES * Dangerous Minds: In the same week in September, Southwest Elementary School in Lexington, N. C., suspended a six-year-old boy for kissing a girl on the cheek ("sexual harassment") and the New York Supreme Court disallowed the suspension of a 15- year-old boy who was carrying a loaded gun at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx. * Wayward Principals: On September 3, the principal of Sylvia Elementary School in Beckley, W. Va., George S. Meadows, 55, was suspended after being arrested for prostitution. (He was wearing a wig and dressed as a woman at the time.) On September 4, the principal of Charles Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, Walter Conte, 50, was arrested and charged with clandestinely videotaping 16 cheerleaders as they changed into swimsuits for a party at his lakefront home. * In August, the Copenhagen (Denmark) Zoo added an exhibit to its primate collection, amidst the baboons and chimpanzees: a Homo sapiens couple who will go about their daily business in a Plexiglas-walled natural habitat consisting of kitchen, living room, bedroom, and workshop, as well as a computer, television, telephone, stereo, and fax machine. Said a Zoo official, "We are all . . . monkeys in a way, but some people find that hard to accept." LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGES * The Lazarus Society in Cologne, Germany, recently released a "Confession by Computer" CD, with a menu of the 200 most- frequent sins and a separate program to allow the particularly iniquitous to customize the sins to which they will confess. Appropriate penances are prescribed, as well as a link to priests via the Internet. The German Conference of Bishops quickly denounced the disk. And in June, Rev. David E. Courter of the Independent Catholic Church International told an Associated Press reporter he would soon say Mass online and allow people to take Communion via computer by placing unleavened bread in front of their monitors. * In April, Eastern Orthodox monks in the former Soviet republic of Moldova signed a contract with the Exiton corporation, one of the leading builders of the severely-depressed Moldovan economy. Under the contract, Exiton would help support a monastery and assist the monks in recovering lost icons, and the monks would pray for Exiton's bottom line. * Completely separate police investigations began in August in Lake Helen, Fla., and Woburn, Mass., after parents complained that their children had been baptized without permission at local churches (Central Fellowship Baptist in Florida and Anchor Baptist in Massachusetts). Anchor allegedly lured housing- project kids with a promise of pizza, which the kids say they never received. * In May, Social Security Commissioner Shirley Chater went against an agency policy by reassigning a social security number based on a religious complaint. Eric and Maria Bessem's toddler had been assigned a number containing 666 (the biblical "mark of the beast") and protested by refusing to claim the child on income tax forms. A Pentecostal pastor near the Bessems' home in Orange County, Calif., has a zip code of 92666 but says he accepts it because it is not a personal identifier like the social security number. * Recently, the All-Merciful Saviour Russian Orthodox Monastery realized it needed to raise money through an entrepreneurial venture. Since the order is located on Vashon Island near Seattle, Wash., it decided to make and market four blends of gourmet coffee, at $20-$30 a pound, including its signature blend, Abbot's Choice. WELL, WHAT DID THEY EXPECT? * At a preliminary hearing in July in Guthrie, Okla., a woman said Jimmy Don Branun assaulted her in his mobile home and then changed into black pantyhose, a garter belt, women's underpants, a training bra, and white, high-heeled shoes. The victim ran out the door and escaped when Branun was not able to keep up with her in his high heels. * Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh, Pa., sold his 30 homing pigeons last year after an injury left him unable to care for them. Two were sold to buyers in Amarillo and Austin, Texas. In August, the two escaped and flew back to Murphy, making the 1,500 miles in about five days. * In August at the Loyal, Wis., Corn Fest, Steven Schiller, 24, and Kevin Froba, 25, won prizes at the familiar strength game in which a contestant slams a mallet onto a device that causes a weight to ascend and ring a bell. However, they later complained to the game operator about the quality of their prizes, and an altercation ensued. Schiller and Froba were hospitalized after the operator hit each of them in the head with the mallet. UH-OH * In May, Karen Watson, 20, gave birth to a baby boy in Albany, Ore., which she said took her completely by surprise, though she said she had been suffering from anemia. Of course, this was not the first case of a woman's unexpectedly giving birth, but Watson is a pre-med biology major at the University of California, Davis, with plans to go into family practice. * Latest Postal Service-Firearms News: In August in New Egypt, N. J., letter-sorter Rodger Johnson, 44, was arrested after a search of his booby-trapped home revealed explosives, gas grenades, 85 guns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. And in Paterson, N. J., two days later, Postal Service mechanic Danny Isku was arrested for shooting his supervisor in the hand, and news reports indicated Isku was a member of a Paterson postal workers' gun club. * In May, an unidentified co-pilot on a Danish Maersk airlines flight from Birmingham, England, to Milan, Italy, with 49 passengers aboard had an anxiety attack over France because he was afraid of heights. He later resigned. THINNING THE HERD * In September, a man was crushed to death on a stairway at the Sammis Real Estate and Insurance office in Huntington, N. Y., in the process of stealing the office's 600-pound safe; he apparently violated the cardinal rule of stairway-safe-hauling by standing on a step lower than the one the safe is on. (And, it turned out the safe was empty.) And in Tucson, Ariz., a man intending to commit suicide in September is still alive. He turned on the gas in his trailer home and sat down to go in peace, but then decided to smoke a last cigarette. An explosion followed, and he was hospitalized with first- and second-degree burns. LEAD STORIES * On September 19, a branch of the large, financially-troubled Czech Republic bank Agrobanka was robbed of about $8,000. The next day, Agrobanka head Jiri Klumpar praised the robbery as a sign of public confidence, signifying that people now believe the bank actually has money in it. * More Anal-Retentive Suspects: Charinassa Fairley was charged in July with killing her husband in Baton Rouge, La., after police found a checklist that included the notations "Make a prank call to him; offer food and love; make him take a bath with you. Put on gloves" and "Make love like never before for the last time. Lay down after he falls asleep. Pop him." And in September, former Navy Ensign Dana R. Collins, 35, was convicted of the murder of a colleague after police found a to-do list that included the items "Take him out," "Cut him up/take head/fingers and toes," "Put him in 2 bags," and "Drive body to Pennsylvania. Keep head and fingers and toes--scatter on way back." And after Gary Lynn Davis, 43, was arrested in July and charged with sexual assaults on several children around Adrian, Pa., police found in his home a neatly printed, three-page list of 125 "Boys and Girls I've Been With" that included abbreviations for the acts committed with each. * The New York Attorney General's office announced in September that a new state law banning prison inmates from throwing bodily fluids at guards did not cover one pressing problem: Some inmates recently mailed their semen in plastic pouches to their wives or girlfriends as an expression of love, and the envelopes squished open when run through mail-sorting machines, splattering workers. However, since the inmates did not intend to splatter them, the law does not apply. THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY * In July, artist Victoria Baldwin prevailed in her lawsuit against the Sydney, Australia, salon Synergy over a bad haircut she got last year. She won $750 plus $234 to compensate her for the hats she had to buy to disguise the cut, which she described as so bad that she looked like Hillary Clinton. * Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit in Lufkin, Tex., against the Walt Disney Co., objecting to three recent films marketed to family audiences that they say actually contained subliminal sexual messages: "The Little Mermaid" supposedly has a scene in which a minister has an erection; a voiceover in one scene in "Aladdin" whispers "Take off your clothes"; and "The Lion King" contains a scene in which the word "sex" is formed with clouds, grass, and flower petals. * Scott Byron Morrison, 47, in jail awaiting trial for the 1995 murder of his ex-wife, filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Calgary (Alberta) General Hospital in August. Morrison claims that if the hospital had properly treated him for a mental illness, he would not have been released and would not, four days later, have killed the woman with a shotgun blast. * Earlier this year, unsuccessful Puyallup, Wash., school-board candidate Dale Washam filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Washington state Republican party, and others because, he said, the Republicans stole the 1994 "Contract with America" idea from him. Washam said he originated the concept of holding political candidates to their promises when he ran in 1991, 1992, and 1993. * Customer Jerry Merich filed a lawsuit against the Starbucks Corp. in July over a 1995 injury in which a Starbucks employee in the company's Littleton, Colo., shop greeted him with a "high five" slap of the hand and caused a shoulder injury which left Merich unable to work for six months. THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT * In August, Chris Bowdish's Chevron gas station in Lake Oswego, Ore., offered free mammograms administered by local hospital personnel. Said Bowdish, "You can tune up your body while you're having your car tuned up." * A Minneapolis firm is marketing an electronic device that allows people to see whether they have the proper temperament to become parents in that it "cries" at random intervals (more often on the "cranky" setting than on the "easy" setting) and stops only when the "parent" reacts properly. To stop the crying, a probe must be held in place for up to 35 minutes to simulate the time required to feed, bathe, and comfort the crying infant. Shaking or tilting the device causes it to register an "abuse" signal. * At a trade fair in Vienna, Austria, in August, body-paint artist Karl Machhamer demonstrated his design for a skin-tight latex condom, custom-painted onto a penis. He plans to market bottles with enough paint for three applications, along with instructions, for about $8. The main drawback is the seven-minute wait while the paint dries. * In July Philadelphia, Pa., inventor Bill Killian introduced the Lawn Buddy message machine, in which a 5-inch-tall mechanical animal arises from a flower pot placed by the front door, announces that the resident is away, and invites the visitor to say a message. Killian says it will be on the market in early 1997 for about $30. * Earlier this year and backed by $100,000 in federal, state, and private grants, Kodiak, Alaska, photographer Marion Stirrup developed PlanTea, a nutrient-rich mix of kelp, fish bone meal, dried beet root powder, and other ingredients, which she touts as a superior plant food. Stirrup says the list of ingredients came to her telepathically from her 16-inch palm plant, georgiane (which prefers its name spelled with a lower-case G, Stirrup said). NO LONGER WEIRD * Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (7) The person believed to be missing and dead but who attends his own funeral and shocks the mourners, as did Dulal Chandra Das, who turned up in October after having merely gone off from his home in Calcutta, India, to pray for a while. And (8) the episodes of just-deserts shootings in hunting season, as when Clifford Shellman allegedly shot to death another hunter in May near Blooming Grove, N. Y., after the two inadvertently coaxed each other closer together by sounding their turkey lures. UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS * In August, a 60-year-old stray-dog-caretaker was killed in Los Angeles when four large sacks of dog food fell on top of her in her home. And in August, the Ontario Labour Ministry issued a warning after two professional divers drowned in June and July in ponds while searching for golf balls for Sports Quest, Inc., which runs a $500,000-a-year business of reselling "experienced golf balls." And Basilio Re died in the village of Vigogna, Italy, in July, during a party to celebrate his 100th birthday, when a gust of wind blew off his hat and he suffered a heart attack chasing it. * COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Chuck Shepherd's new paperback, The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics, is at bookstores everywhere ($6.95). Clerks are standing by right now begging you, please to walk in and ask them to get a Concrete Enema! LEAD STORIES * Italian Justice (Continued): Italy's highest appeals court ruled in September that "occasional episodes of wife-beating," "interspersed with moments of [marital] harmony," did not amount to illegal domestic violence, which it said requires "systematic and deliberate" overpowering. The lucky husband got a new trial. * Overcoming Disabilities: In September, wheelchair-using men in Frankfurt, Germany (no legs), and Pompano Beach, Fla. (missing part of a leg and one eye), attempted bank robberies but were thwarted when a customer and a cop, respectively, rushed in and tipped over the wheelchairs. Also in September, police in East Providence, R. I., arrested Bronna-Jo Carmody for drug trafficking out of her apartment, where she is confined because of her use of crutches and an oxygen machine. * On October 3, self-described virgin Doreen Lioy, 41, exchanged vows in San Quentin Prison's waiting room with 13- time murderer Richard Ramirez (California's notorious "Night Stalker"). It is the first marriage for both. She wore white; he wore blue. She was raised a Roman Catholic; he is a Satanist. His side of the aisle was crowded with three relatives; her family refused to attend. After the ceremony, she returned to her houseboat in San Rafael; he returned to death row. Lioy said Ramirez proposed in 1988 but that it wasn't until recently that she thought he was ready to settle down (presumably because he just got out of several years' solitary confinement). Said one observer, "Doreen brings out the best in Richard. They complement each other." THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY * Nancy Ho Belli, who wed lawyer Melvin Belli three months before his July death, filed a lawsuit in August in San Francisco against another Belli relative for improperly keeping the skeletal remains of a man named Elmer, which Mr. Belli purchased in the 1940s. A spokesman said the relative would "go to jail before revealing Elmer's whereabouts." * Lynne Plaskett, 46, running for re-election as a county councilwoman in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., said on TV's "Maury Povich Show" in September that she was cured of the often-fatal T-cell lymphoma 20 years ago by a small UFO disk that hovered over her bed and scanned her body before disappearing. * Stock-car racing legend Richard Petty, running for North Carolina secretary of state, paid a $65 fine in September for improperly bumping a car that wouldn't let him pass in the left lane on Interstate 85. According to a state trooper, Petty said if the driver got in front of him again, he was going to knock his "rear end" off the road. Petty told a reporter, "Now if it had been a NASCAR showdown, [the driver] would have been over in the ditch somewhere." * Robert Dorton barricaded himself in his residential motel room in Billings, Mont., in August and held police off for more than 30 hours, firing dozens of shots at them, because he feared authorities were about to take away his 15 pet rats, some of which were reported to be the size of cats. Before the siege, according to animal-control officer Mary Locke, Dorton kissed one of the rats and referred to them as "my brothers." Right then, she said, "I knew what I was up against." * An unidentified woman who refused to give her name was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean, about two miles out, near Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in September, dressed in street clothes. She told one of the rescuers, "I'm fine, my family is here," and said she had been eating seaweed for the three days she had been in the water. She said she was "in transition," that she had just come up to get some air. She was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital. * School bus driver Kerri Lynn Patavino, 28, was convicted of statutory rape in Bridgeport, Conn., in August for having sex with a 14-year-old passenger, who said she put a spell on him and made him lick her blood. According to the boy, the two had sex more than a dozen times, and she sent him love letters signed in blood. Patavino admitted that she is a follower of Wicca, an ancient, witchcraft-practicing religion. * Mr. Esyededeea Aesfyza, 46, was sentenced to six months in jail in Washington, D. C., in June for having painted swastikas at more than 100 public places in town in the previous three years. In court, Aesfyza, dressed in a long white robe with a green sash, expounded on his love of swastikas, said he prayed to them and said they are a symbol against circumcision. GOVERNMENT IN ACTION * According to documents obtained by a Canadian magazine in August, Canada's military representative in the United States, Major-Gen. Donald Williams, billed taxpayers improperly to have his house cleaned and for ordinary civilian clothing and golf course green fees, and Mrs. Williams charged off about $100 for armpit-waxing. * In August, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that hundreds of former pro athletes, some of whom like Joe Montana and Bo Jackson earned millions of dollars a year, were also paid worker compensation benefits under California's lenient law that makes such payments for injured workers an absolute entitlement. Some other states, by contrast, restrict pro athletes' claims. * In June, the government of Saskatchewan said it was unsuccessful in trying to return to the manufacturer almost 1,000 five-inch-long "wooden demonstrators" designed for school condom-education classes. Schools refused to use them, and opponents of the program called for disposal via a "weenie roast." UPDATE * Wayne Dumond made News of the Weird in 1988 when he won $110,000 in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against an Arkansas sheriff. Vigilantes had castrated Dumond as an alleged rapist, and the sheriff had displayed Dumond's privates in a jar on his desk as a souvenir, which a jury said was unnecessary ridicule. In 1990, the Parole Board recommended Dumond be freed based on DNA evidence that showed it unlikely he had committed the rape, but then-Gov. Bill Clinton, who was a friend of the rape victim's mother, rejected the recommendation. In September 1996, Gov. Mike Huckabee ordered Dumond released, based on that DNA evidence. FIRST THINGS FIRST * Jimmy Hogg, 77, collapsed and died of a heart attack in September on the first hole of a Fife, Scotland, golf course. His four partners paused briefly as an ambulance took the body away, then resumed their round, with one making the required statement, "I'm sure Jimmy would have wanted us to do that." And earlier in the month, Arthur Mooney, 67, similarly died in the Spirit Mountain Casino in Grande Ronde, Ore., but customers continued to play slot machines while the body lay nearby on the floor for an hour. LEAD STORIES * Right Place, Right Time: In Pittsburgh, during the Steelers- Ravens football game in September, Allen E. Adams was picked up on a previous arrest warrant when a police officer recognized Adams's name as a winner in the halftime field-goal kicking promotion and waited for him to come down onto the field. And a few days later, in Victoria, British Columbia, a federal tax agent heard the announcement of the winner of radio station CKKQ's song-identification contest, recognized him as a prominent tax delinquent, and within an hour had the winner's $1,000 signed over to the government. * Within two days of each other in August, in the Kansas towns of Lawrence and Dodge City, runaway tourist-attraction stagecoaches crashed. The Lawrence coach veered into a ditch, injuring one man. A horse on the Dodge City coach slipped down on the street, then took off, carrying the coach into a parked car, after which it overturned and bloodied five elderly passengers. * Opponents of Thailand's prime minister Banharn Sipla-archa said he lied about his birthday this year when he claimed it was August 19 and not July 20, and they claimed that he changed the date on the advice of an astrologer so he could be a Leo and thus a better leader. And in June, India's new prime minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, said he moved into his official residence a week ahead of schedule because his astrologers said it would be better for him. CULTURAL DIVERSITY * A Washington Post story in May on marital abuse in central and southern African nations found that among certain ethnic groups, only 3 per cent of wives think they should report a beating to the police. Said one social worker, "A lot of men--and women--think that beating your wife is something you do if you really care about her." In some groups, said another, if a man's wife dies without his having beaten her, he rehabilitates his manhood by beating the corpse. * The New York Times reported in September on Tokyo's trendy "host clubs" which feature young men as servers and dance partners and which cater only to women--largely middle-aged women who say such clubs are virtually the only places in the country in which they can be treated well and not be expected to wait on men. And the Los Angeles Times reported in August on the success of the longstanding, 370-female Takarazuka Revue, whose most successful production number has its women crossdressing and portraying the kind of man many Japanese women do not often get to see, according to them: the suave, romantic, affectionate, considerate male. * In August, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported on the modernization of the traditional Mongolian meal of boodog, which is goat broiled inside a "bag" (which is merely the carefully cut and tied skin of the goat): The goat is no longer barbecued over an open fire; it is now typically cooked with a blow torch. * The Islamic Court that sets rules for the northern half of Mogadishu, Somalia, announced in September that men must have beards, as did the prophet Mohammed. Said the Court chairman, "Those who shave like Elvis Presley, Sylvester Stallone, and the U. S. Marines will not go unpunished." Two weeks later, Afghanistan's new ruling Taleban leadership made a similar decree for male government employees. * In September, Peggy-Sue Khumalo, 23, the recently-crowned Miss South Africa, said she would soon sacrifice a goat to her ancestors in gratitude for her success. She also said that if she won the Miss World title in India in November, she would step up her spiritual gratitude to slaughter a cow and 10 oxen. * By custom in the mountain region of northern Albania, a teenage daughter whose father passes away may make a lifetime commitment to dress and behave and conduct business as a male so as to assure that her family is not left unprotected by the absence of a man. According to a July Knight-Ridder report, other males in the villages know about the transformation and generally accept the new "men" with full male privileges. LATEST SURGES OF TESTOSTERONE * The Latest in Pervert Technology: Police in Toronto, Ontario, arrested a 62-year-old retired school teacher in September for allegedly videotaping under the skirts of about 30 women via a "shoe cam" pinpoint-sized lens connected by wires to a camera hidden in his waist pouch. And in July, Portland, Ore., police accused Jess Mitchell Townsend, 36, of rigging a "toilet cam" in public ladies' rooms over the last two years with the wide-angle lens barely visible from inside the tank. * In August, Tennessee became the latest state to recognize the inadequacy of its anti-perversion statutes when it charged an Eagleville man only with indecent exposure because the state has no law against what police really believe he did, which was to have sexual intercourse with a miniature horse. But on September 30, a previous oversight in Florida was corrected when its first-ever anti-necrophilia law took effect. * Physicians writing in the February 1996 issue of the journal Genitourinary Medicine reported having to prescribe surgery for a man with genital pain. The man reluctantly admitted that about 12 years before, during sex play, his wife had inserted a mascara brush into his urethral opening and that the tip of the brush broke off. Doctors found that fibrous tissue had covered the brush piece, trapping it. * This year as usual, summertime brought out foot fetishists, including a man described as age 25 and husky, who posed as a national shoe company representative in August and got at least one woman in Parsippany, N. J., to remove her shoe so he could inspect it nasally, and including a Boston high school teacher who was suspended in June for allegedly sucking the toes of a female student after school. UPDATE * For at least the fifth time in News of the Weird's nine years, a girl or young woman has been convicted of dressing as a male for the purpose of improving her chances of dating another girl or young woman. A 17-year-old girl was convicted in Kingsport, Tenn., in September of three counts of sexual assault by fraud against another 17-year-old girl. WORKPLACE TRAGEDIES * A 28-year-old expert mountain climber fell to his death near Redding, Calif., in September as he was demonstrating safety techniques to a group of teenagers. He had severed his main line to demonstrate the security of the second line, but the second line failed. And two racehorses with eight victories between them died at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., in August, when they crashed into each other head-on during a morning workout. LEAD STORIES * Several news services reported in October on the growing number of "telephone clubs" in Tokyo in which men (mostly middle-aged and older) talk sex with junior-high and high school girls, who use mobile phones for privacy from parents and teachers. According to the Wall Street Journal, perhaps 8 per cent of schoolgirls participate at least occasionally. Many of the calls lead to dates and actual sex because of the serious money the girls can make to feed their habits of expensive designer clothing and accessories. The age of consent in the city of Tokyo is 12, and prostitution is illegal only if procured through a pimp. * Hiding Place of Choice: In September in Mound Bayou, Miss., Robert L. Johnson, 42, was captured after a three-hour foot chase during which he managed to elude police while rolling a spare tire containing about six pounds of marijuana. Said police chief Richard Crowe, "That's the fastest runner I've ever seen, of somebody rolling a tire." And back in February, in Kanab, Utah, Germain Berrelleza, 18, was arrested for marijuana possession hours after his car broke down. He aroused the suspicion of the tow-truck operator when he insisted on taking the spare tire out of the car before it was towed and carrying it with him to a nearby motel. * Exotic dancer Pamela Harrison complained in October that she was wrongfully fired by the Kat Tales club in Stuart, Fla., because of a disability. Harrison said that fellow dancers had complained of a health hazard because surgery forces Harrison to wear an ostomy bag tucked into her G-string, into which body waste can flow during her performance. An expert cited by the Associated Press said there is no health hazard to others. THE CONTINUING CRISIS * In August, Reuters news service reported that Brian Howson, 51, of Perth, Australia, repaired his single-engine plane's landing gear, in flight, while dangling out the door at 4,000 feet with three passengers holding his legs. * In September, Michael Potkul, 33, won a $400,000 malpractice award against surgeon Dominic A. Brandy in Pittsburgh, Pa. Brandy had convinced Potkul that he could give him a nearly full head of hair by surgically (in six operations) grabbing the hairy back of his scalp and stretching it over the thin-haired top of his head. Potkul suffered such pain and depression by the fifth operation that he attempted suicide. * Mean Business: In July, in Cape Town, South Africa, four cab drivers were killed and several customers wounded as gunfire erupted again in a continuing war over competition among taxi companies. And in September in Los Angeles, police said that four of six recently missing boarding house residents had actually been kidnapped by a rival boarding house; stealing patients apparently is an increasingly common competitive tactic to land other houses' customers in order to get access to their government checks. * In July in Japan a 4-year-old boy drowned while frolicking unattended as his mother played Pachinko, a pinball/slot-machine craze sweeping the country. More than two dozen toddler deaths have been attributed to parents' obsession with the game. Also in July, the New York Times reported that the Russian government is cracking down on various gambling manias, including "one purely Russian refinement--virtual-reality cockroach races," in which images of the insects scurry competitively across video screens. * The Providence Journal-Bulletin reported in August on the environmental-regulation troubles of Manuel and Ana Martins of Swansea, R.I. Because their house is built on fill dirt in a wetlands, their septic tank cannot be installed very deep. In fact, it is largely above ground, covering their front yard in a mound of dirt 30 feet by 50 feet, rising five feet high, almost concealing the house from passersby. * In July, researchers at Utah State University and other schools announced that they had solved the problem of how to mate sheep to produce the mutation known in the animal genetics community as "beautiful buttocks," which means the lamb will have about 30 per cent more meat. Answer: The trait will be passed on only if the ram has the gene and the ewe does not. FAMILY VALUES * The parents of 4-year-old Sarah Engstrand filed a $1.2 million lawsuit in New York City in September against the girl's grandparents because the elder couple's Akita dog, Becky Bear, bit and deeply scarred Sarah's nose and cheek during the girl's birthday party in 1994. The grandparents are heartsick at being sued by their own son, who not surprisingly is a lawyer, as is his wife. * In May, Maria da Conceicao Dos Reis, 66, married British citizen David Ian Harrad, 38, in Rio de Janeiro. She agreed to the marriage only to help her son Toni, who is Harrad's lover and who would lose Harrad to deportation unless Harrad got married. * Quality Time: In July, a 33-year-old woman in Stone Mountain, Ga., was arrested and charged with hitting her 15- year-old son on the wrists with a meat cleaver after he broke the TV remote control unit. And in July, police in Newark, N. J., said a woman pushed her 9-year-old daughter through a department store window after learning that the girl had left the family's $900 on a city bus. And in July, police in Tunbridge Wells, England, arrested a couple in their 20s who were lying on the ground outside a sports shop having sex in the middle of the day, with the woman using one of their two kids as a pillow for her head. * The Jakarta (Indonesia) Post reported in August that a Sumatran woman and her two grown children ganged up on a neighbor, who had allegedly been spreading rumors of her 21- year-old daughter's non-virgin status, with all three viciously biting the neighbor "all over her body." UPDATE * Apparently little has been done about the alarming report in News of the Weird in 1988 that an ingredient in barnacle- resisting boat paint was causing spontaneous sex changes in a snail called the dog whelk. A British biologist reported then that female dog whelks were developing sperm ducts and growing penises "of alarming lengths." A Canadian government biologist said in September 1996 that similar findings were reported in the country's Atlantic provinces. In Halifax (Nova Scotia) Harbor, his team found 50 female dog whelks with penises. THE DIMINISHING VALUE OF LIFE * Recent Reasons for Killing People: Wouldn't stop playing the piano (a Highland Park, Ill., boy allegedly chased his father out of the house, into the street, and stabbed him to death); Upset about being scolded for high America Online bills (a California, Mo., boy shot his mother to death and then himself); Dispute over method for paying off a water bill (a Kamloops, British Columbia, man allegedly strangled his wife of 28 years). LEAD STORIES * According to an Associated Press report, a nighttime "Oprah Winfrey"-type TV talk show in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept. 26 featured an actual gynecological exam of a woman, conducted on stage before a studio audience. The host, Lotta Aschberg, said she personally was "fascinated." * A New York Times report on the first day's rescue operations for TWA Flight 800 in July mentioned a man in an Army uniform who showed up at the crash site command center and helped direct helicopter traffic for about 12 hours before those in charge realized they had no idea who he was. Though authorities agreed that the man had done a fine job, he was escorted from the area. In October, the man, David Williams, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized practice of a profession and was sentenced to six months in jail. Previously, he had impersonated a physician diagnosing medicare patients for a private firm and teaching physician seminars, and in both cases, employers were pleased with his work despite the fact that he is not a doctor. * In October, Linda Pugach bailed her husband Burton, 69, out of jail after his arrest for threatening to kill his mistress of five years. Linda and Burton go way back. In 1959, she was blinded in both eyes by a lye attack arranged by Burton after she spurned his marriage proposal. He was released from prison in 1974 and went on a TV-show campaign to win her heart, and a few months later, she married him. Asked by a reporter her reaction to Burton's current paramour, Linda responded, "Did you call Hillary and ask her how she feels?" COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS * An Indonesian prison guard, identified only as S. M., on trial in September for helping inmate Eddy Tansil escape, testified that Tansil did give him about $400 but denied it was a bribe. He said he was good at his job as a jailer, and "I only took the money as a tip." * A Winnipeg, Manitoba, court ordered accused wife-killer Dean Eric Wride to undergo routine psychiatric tests in September, despite his lawyer's protest that such pre-trial treatment might actually cure him and thus hurt his insanity defense. * Ohio University Prof. Dwight Pugh was officially reprimanded in October by his dean for having filled out and submitted his own course evaluations, for six consecutive quarters, as if done by students. (He rated himself very high.) When confronted with the charges, Pugh said his work was all part of an experiment to test the evaluation process. * Pro football player Mark Carrier told a Greensboro (N. C.) News Record reporter in September that the presence of evangelist Billy Graham at the Carolina Panthers' stadium during a practice session was inspirational. "Even after we battle on the football field and beat each other's heads in," said Carrier, "we come together and thank God for just being able to do that." * The Romanian soccer federation fined the junior team Atletic Bucarest about $16,000 in October for grossly violating rules by walking out of a recent game before it was over. The players, who were losing 16-0 at the time, said the only reason they left was that a group of their fans were screaming that if they gave up two more goals in the final two minutes, the fans would charge onto the field and strip the players naked. CHUTZPAH * According to their lawsuit in Salt Lake City, two US West telephone company technicians admitted they were paid a $70 per diem allowance for more than two years for working away from home when they had never moved and were actually working in the same place they had always worked. Still, when the company discovered its error and cut off the per diem, Charles Mangrum and Alan Montierth filed lawsuits challenging the cutoff and also sued their union for not helping them fight it. In September, a federal judge granted summary judgment for the company. * Arrested for murder in central Georgia in 1992 and briefly left unsupervised in a police car, Melissa Leslie Burgeson discussed the crime with her boyfriend, including how they should have done some aspects of the murder differently. A hidden tape recorder captured the discussion, which was introduced against Burgeson in her trial. She challenged its use, claiming that an arrestee has a constitutional expectation of privacy sitting in the back seat of the police car. In September 1996, the Georgia Supreme Court said no. (The boyfriend is on death row for the murder.) * Arturo Sanchez, a former Texas transit commission chairman who had been convicted of sexually harassing an employee, filed a counterclaim in June against the employee to recover some of the money she stands to gain in a civil lawsuit making the same sexual harassment charge against the transit agency itself. The San Antonio Express-News reported in June that Sanchez figures the woman needs his testimony about how the agency was lax in its sexual harassment policy, and he figures his help is worth part of her winnings. UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT * In a September Washington Post report on a legal, marijuana- serving cafe in the harbor town of Dalfzijl, Netherlands, manager Ernst Gunst boasted of his establishment's rejection of cannabis grown with artificial pesticides or other impurities. "We think that's important. That's why we sell no soft drinks. Coca-Cola is just sugar and water. It's not healthy." * According to a Canadian Press report in September, a customer at the Napierville, Quebec, pet shop Animalerie Napierville threatened to report the shop to the government's French- language monitoring office because she was shown a parrot that spoke only English. * In April, a 48-year-old woman from Mill Valley, Calif., survived a suicide plunge in her car off of a seaside cliff in Sonoma County. Witnesses said she was traveling 45 mph and fell 350 feet but emerged with only minor injuries, probably because she had neglected to unfasten her seatbelt before hitting the accelerator. NO LONGER WEIRD * Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (9) The miscreant funeral home owner who either neglects or mixes up bodies, as the Lanford-Pollard Funeral Home of Spartanburg, S. C., allegedly did in September, dressing one body with another man's suit, glasses, and teeth. And (10) the disgruntled consumer who calls the police to report being sold either bogus or very weak illegal drugs, as did Linda Marie Davis, 41, in August in Houston, Tex. (Unfortunately for Ms. Davis, it was weak, not bogus, crack cocaine, and she was arrested for possession.) LEAD STORIES * Denny Constantine revealed to the San Jose Mercury News in October that he was part of a team that almost got the go-ahead to drop flying-bat bombs on Japan in World War II. The plan: Tiny incendiary devices would be attached to millions of bats, which would be put into egg-carton-like trays in a bombshell. When the bats were released, they would roost in Japan's wood-and-paper buildings, and fires would start all over the country. That would "frighten, demoralize, and excite the prejudices" of the Japanese, according to team member Jack Couffer. President Roosevelt was said to have really liked the idea, but he apparently liked the atom bomb even more. * In October, Ecuadoran President Abdala Bucaram (1) released his first rock and roll CD, "Madman in Love," (2) lunched with one of his most famous countrywomen, the former Mrs. Lorena Bobbitt (and found it an "extremely high honor"), and (3) endured a public outburst by his Energy Minister Alfredo Adum, who said he would like to live naked and prey on women like a caveman, grabbing them by the hair and "devouring" them. * For the last year, Allen Fahden has operated the READundant bookstore in Nicollet mall in Minneapolis, set up like a traditional bookstore (sections on sports, religion, history, etc.) but its 5,000-book inventory consisting of only one title-- Fahden's own management book, Innovation on Demand. Fahden said his store is based on one of his management principles: the use of opposites to generate creative thoughts. The store's in-house best-seller list shows Innovation on Demand occupying each of the ten slots. CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE * The Washington Post reported in September that several self- described members of the Moorish Science Temple in Washington, D. C., had smuggled cocaine and prostitutes into the District's Lorton Correctional Complex and at one point made a 10-minute video of prisoners and women having sex in the prison chapel. The Temple "members" had taken advantage of Lorton's lax procedures for religious visitors. And convicted murderer Claude Robinson freely operates a pornography vending business inside the Edmonton (Alberta) maximum- security prison, according to a September dispatch from the Canadian Press, ordering such magazines as Swank and Gallery from the outside and selling them for about $6 each. * A Spanish man visiting Stockholm on business stood to inherit about a million dollars, according to an October newspaper account in Germany's daily Bild. Eduardo Perez had stopped off to pray at a Roman Catholic church and signed the guest book of a man whose body lay there in a coffin. Perez was later notified that the deceased, real-estate developer Jens Svenson, had died without heirs and had specified that "whoever prays for my soul gets all my belongings." * In July, after arriving at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the daughter in a family of four was refused boarding on American Airlines. Mother, father, and son presented driver's licenses as ID to satisfy new FAA rules, and the daughter presented a student ID from the University of Maryland. However, the American Airlines clerk refused to accept the card, saying that even though it was issued by a state university, it didn't meet the requirement of being issued by a "government." On the basis of this denial, the family meekly gave up their already-arranged vacation in Las Vegas and drove home. NOT MY FAULT * Patrick L. Bark, 59, pleaded guilty in September in Kansas City, Mo., to selling more than 1,300 guns illegally over a two- year period, including many to juveniles and felons. Said Bark at his sentencing, "I blame half of it on the [government] for letting me go as long as they did. How was I to know [the guns] would be used in [crimes]?" * Burglary suspect Wesley Shaffer, 57, said in November that he was temporarily insane the night he allegedly hit a home in West Palm Beach, Fla., because he had just eaten too much cotton candy. And in a Montgomery County, Md., court in October, accused hit- man hirer Charles S. Shapiro said that tranquilizers, plus an entire bottle of extra-strength Tums ingested in the days before his guilty plea, caused impaired judgment and that he should thus be allowed to withdraw the plea. * In August, the Hong Kong High Court referred a 50-year-old man to a psychiatric center for treatment after he was charged with indecent assault on his son's 20-year-old girlfriend. A medical report said the man suffered from a post-concussional disorder, which was blamed on a car accident in 1962. FIRST THINGS FIRST * In July, the New York Post reported that Vivid Video, which produces pornographic movies and which had just signed actor Steven St. Croix to an unprecedented 33-picture deal, became so concerned when St. Croix bought a motorcycle that it purchased a $1 million Lloyd's of London policy insuring St. Croix's genitals. Said a Vivid spokeswoman, "He's an incredible talent and we don't want to lose him--or any part of him." * In May, about 40 eighth-grade students from Hartford, Conn., on a class trip were stranded for a day in Washington, D. C., after their charter-bus driver suddenly disappeared. The kids said that, just before dropping them off at the hotel around 11 p.m., the man had picked up a prostitute in the bus and that the two of them had ridden away into the night. * In August Abilene, Tex., prosecutor Sandy Self abruptly ended the murder trial of Frank Ramos, who had been charged with bludgeoning a woman with a baseball bat, and sought a new indictment against him. Self wanted to protect his case against error and worried that an appeals court would notice that the bat Ramos allegedly used was actually an aluminum softball bat and not a baseball bat. UPDATE * Ray Bell of Tallahassee, Fla., said in October that he holds the patent for a condom which belts onto a man's leg to prevent what Bell believes is the common problem of the condom's unrolling during use. But in 1992, News of the Weird reported that Merlyn Starley of San Francisco said he had the patent for such a device, which he called "condom suspenders." UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS * On the nights of Sept. 12, in St. Louis, Mo., and Nov. 3, in Minneola, Fla., women were accidentally run over by friends and killed as they had gotten out of trucks in order to urinate on the side of the road. Driver Randy G. Phillips in St. Louis was charged with reckless homicide though he said he was merely moving his pickup truck to try to shield his companion from passing traffic. Florida driver Chad Eric Willis said he was playfully trying to discourage his companion from squatting in front of his tractor-trailer instead of at the side. LEAD STORIES * In October, officials at Calgary (Alberta) Correctional Centre discovered that a 20-year-old man due to be released in mid- November had used newspapers to compile a list of over 150 homes as targets he intended to burglarize once he got out. And in November, the Minnesota Department of Corrections discovered 52 pages' worth of demographic data on girls aged 3- 12, recently gathered from hometown newspapers, in the computer of a convicted pedophile who works in a prison- sponsored telemarketing business inside the Lino Lakes correctional facility. * On October 21, the CBS Evening News aired a confidential videotape of an Iraqi wedding reception in which members of a cult of Sunni Muslims performed a series of severe self- mutilations to demonstrate their devotion to Saddam Hussein. While Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai looked on approvingly, the men stabbed themselves in the abdomen with swords and impaled themselves on long skewers, and one man tore a hole in his stomach with a gunshot. CBS's Middle East experts said the footage was authentic. * Michael McLean began a 14- to 42-year prison sentence in New York in September for a string of 14 burglaries in posh neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Staten Island, including the homes of several crime family leaders. The daughter of the late Gambino family boss Paul Castellano was at one time so alarmed about the burglaries that she hosted a neighborhood crime-watch meeting in the Castellano home. McLean was arrested at about the time the families had pieced together his identity through informants and had notified him that they wanted their stuff back; McLean now claims not to be concerned about whether he will be killed in prison. ELECTION RECAP * Republican Mark Althouse, 24, lost his bid for the state legislature from York, Pa., despite promising voters that he would regard a victory as a mandate to end his virginity and marry his girlfriend Michelle Taylor. And Michael Gubash lost his state senate bid in Minnesota, though he had had the foresight to create a fallback position in his campaign ads stating that, by the way, he was "also seeking a faithful, devoted, obedient, God- fearing woman to be my wife." * In September Frederico the Goat, who as a protest candidate had been leading in public opinion polls in the race for mayor of the northern Brazilian town of Pilar, was mysteriously poisoned, allegedly, according to his owner, by a political opponent. * In October in Stuttgart, Germany, shortly before a televised mayoral debate, candidate Udo Bausch, who had not been invited because he had no realistic chance of winning, walked into the debate auditorium and severed the television cable with an axe. * Voter apathy registered 100 percent in a ballot question in northern Florida to determine whether Dutton Island would be annexed to the city of Atlantic Beach: Only one person was eligible to vote, and he stayed home. * At least six women in the eastern Noakhali district of Bangladesh, who voted for winning candidates in the June 12 elections against the will of their husbands, reported a few days later than their husbands had sent them back to their parents' homes and had begun divorce proceedings. * In September, Mickey Kalinay, 43, was defeated in the Democratic primary for the U. S. Senate in Wyoming, despite his tantalizing proposal to make the space program more efficient by constructing a 22,000-mile-high tower so that space stations can be accessed by electromagnetic rail cars. * Colorado Senate candidate Laurie Bower, after weeks of bashing her opponent, incumbent Dave Wattenberg, abruptly changed her mind on the Saturday before Election Day, quit the race, and endorsed Wattenberg, saying he would do a better job than she would. * Democrat Teresa Obermeyer lost a U. S. Senate race in Alaska to incumbent Ted Stevens with a campaign performance that some journalists liken more to stalking than to running for office. The bulk of Obermeyer's platform was the role Stevens allegedly played in keeping Obermeyer's husband from becoming a lawyer, for example blaming Stevens for Mr. Obermeyer's failing the bar exam 22 times. NAMES IN THE NEWS * In May, U. S. District Judge Howard McKibben ruled that lawyers would not be able to use nicknames in the presence of the jury in the Reno, Nevada, case against Joseph Martin Bailie for attempting to blow up the Reno IRS building. Bailie is well- known locally as "Crazy Joe" and "Psycho Joe." He was convicted. * Name Fits: In a Washington Post story in October on postnatal nursing programs, one of the local experts cited was "lactation consultant" Anna Utter. And explaining to reporters in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, in September how an International Nickel plant exploded was company spokeswoman Bambang Susanto. And Grundy, Va., prosecuting attorney Sheila Tolliver said in September she had come under surveillance once again by the man who pleaded guilty to stalking her in 1995, Mr. Dorsey Looney. UPDATE * Mike Marcum, the Missouri guy who made News of the Weird in 1995 after he stole six power company transformers he said were necessary to make his time machine (so he could find out the winning lottery number and come back and buy a ticket), called a radio show from Nevada in October 1996 and said he was only 30 days away from finishing his invention. His Missouri landlord had evicted him for various electrical misadventures in his apartment. THE ONLY WAY OUT * Kathleen Chang, 46, bikini-favoring world-peace activist, died in Philadelphia, Pa., of self-immolation on October 22, hoping her death would spread her message to a larger audience. And Mr. Suresh Kumar, 25, died similarly on November 14 in Madurai, India, protesting his country's hosting the Miss World beauty pageant later in the month. And Clinton Warner, 22, miscalculatedly shot himself to death in Fullerton, Calif., on October 14 because he was despondent over a predicted lengthy prison term under the state's three-strikes law. (Actually, his was only a misdemeanor drug charge, and he didn't even have the required number of "serious felony" predicates for three strikes, anyway; he would most likely have received a short sentence.) LEAD STORIES * In a procedure denounced by the Association of Professional Piercers, Phoenix, Ariz., piercer's apprentice Joe Aylward recently had a plate implanted just under the skin of his skull so that he can screw decorative spikes into his head, which Aylward believes will improve his appearance. Another man reportedly plans to have devil-type horns made of coral similarly implanted. * Incriminating Fingers: In Amsterdam in August and Miami, Fla., in June, men were arrested based on fingerprints from their own severed (bitten off and shot off, respectively) fingers that they abandoned at crime scenes. And Victor Arreola, 23, was arrested at the Scripps Hospital in Chula Vista, Calif., in November, where he had gone after losing his finger in a slammed door in what police say was a carjacking. (According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the police asked Arreola if the finger they had was his. When he said yes, they arrested him. Arreola then asked to take another look at the finger and decided, no, come to think of it, it does not look like his finger--thus allowing the time to expire when the finger could have been grafted back onto his hand.) * Los Angeles County authorities decided not to charge Texan Robert Salazar in the death of his employee Sandra Orellana, who fell from the 8th floor balcony at the Industry Hills Sheraton, where the two were staying during a business conference. Salazar said Orellana fell accidentally as the two were having sex braced on a handrail and she changed positions. POLICE BLOTTER * In October, U. S. Customs agents stopped a Somerton, Ariz., man coming from Mexico at the border town of San Luis, Ariz., because he had an ice chest containing 12,700 dead scorpions. Customs didn't know immediately whether importing dead scorpions was illegal and so turned over the cache to another agency. * In August, 12 men were arrested near Szczecin in northern Poland as they were digging up a road because they had heard a rumor that it was built with a large stockpile of police-confiscated hashish. The hashish had been sold to a chemical plant to be incinerated into ash for road construction. * In August, three teenage boys were arrested for allegedly writing vulgar graffiti on several buildings in Hallsville, Mo. Police chief Pete Herring said the crimes were particularly serious because they frightened the elderly, and city attorney John Whiteside agreed, saying that the slurs were "mean-spirited" because one of the targets, Casey's convenience store, was the "psychic center" of Hallsville. * In August, Pembroke Pines, Fla., police Det. Earl Feugill foiled a robbery at a fast-food restaurant by disguising himself and his shotgun as a tree (using a camouflage outfit, strips of burlap, and black face paint) alongside the drive-thru window. He had staked out the restaurant because of a string of similar robberies. * If Only They Put Their Minds to It: In the 10-week period before the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, federal, state, and local police arrested 765 career criminals (including 14 wanted for murder and 57 for bail violations in violent felonies) in that city and the Olympic venues of Macon, Ga., and Birmingham, Ala., and thus created one of the most drastic short-term reductions in crime rate ever reported for major cities. * In July, police in Dayton, Ohio, said Janet Denise Hailey, 40, was the one who climbed into a Wells Fargo Armored Services truck and had such excellent sex with driver Aaron McKie that he did not immediately notice that she left clutching a bag containing $80,000. * Police in Sanger, Tex., said four kids, including the police chief's son, broke into a funeral home in September intending to steal embalming fluid so they could smoke cigarettes dipped in it, but when they couldn't find any, they cut off the finger of a corpse and took turns trying to smoke that to draw out the absorbed fluid. CAN'T STOP MYSELF * Paul Carthy, 25, pleaded guilty in Exeter, England, in September to theft subsequent to his original charge of shoplifting from a liquor store. In the second theft, he had stolen the magnetic letters off the name board that was held up to his face when his mug shot was taken. * In October, police in Tokyo arrested Ms. Teruko Hamakawa, 52, for illegal interference with a man's business, charging her with calling him on phone at work and then hanging up--16,000 times in a one-year period. She was angry that, after they had exchanged photos seeking a romantic introduction, he failed to call, which she thought was "impolite." * In September, according to police in Junction City, Kan., David Bell, 30, just released from jail for car theft, walked out the door and stole another car to get home. And in October, William B. Singleton, 24, just released from jail in Belton, Mo., on a larceny charge, allegedly broke into a vending machine in the lobby of the police station and stole a 60-cent Strawberry Twisteroo while he waited for his ride to arrive. UPDATE * News of the Weird previously reported in March 1994 and July 1995 on unlucky men who were ordered to continue child-support payments despite DNA tests that revealed the kids were other men's responsibilities. In the latest case, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in July 1996 that because Darryl Littles failed to get a court- ordered blood test in 1982 (he said he was indigent and not represented by a lawyer), he would be permanently regarded as the father of 15-year-old Brandi even though a 1994 test showed he could not be. UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS * In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off of a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run. And in September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing headfirst through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys. And in September, a 7-year- old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near Ozark, Ark., after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990. LEAD STORIES * In October, Mr. Ferenc Kovacs, who recently invented a singing condom that plays Communist marching songs, opened a laugh kiosk in Budapest, Hungary (widely regarded as one of the most morose cities on Earth). His fee ranges from about 2 cents to provoke a smile to about 35 cents for a laugh. (Sample: Kovacs dons matching black armbands and explains, "I was talking to my brother yesterday, and it turns out his mother died, too."). * People Getting Too Much Sleep: Michele G. Phebus, 27, and Tony A. Phebus, 29, were arrested in Lafayette, Ind., in August after they fell asleep in their car between the microphone and pick- up window at a White Castle drive-thru; police found numerous marijuana butts in the car and a brick of it in the trunk. And Brian K. Costa, 27, was found asleep in his car in the middle of an on- ramp to the Henderson Bridge in East Providence, R. I., in September, with five bags of cocaine in his lap. * Nude Gardeners: In August Robert Norton, 73, was arrested for at least the 13th time since 1981 on public nudity charges while out working in his yard in Pekin, Ill. And in Brooksville, Fla., in August, Carolyn Sparks, 48, received a citation for raking topless in her front yard. (In November, a jury said her behavior did not amount to disorderly conduct.) GREAT ART * An October Associated Press story reported on the formaldehyde-saturated museum housing works of Mr. Honore Fragonard, an 18th-century French anatomist who sculpted in cadavers, carefully skinned, preserved, and posed. Visitors to the Maisons-Alfort, France, structure (just down the river from the Charenton insane asylum, which is where some say Fragonard belonged) nowadays are struck by how much his works resemble the "Alien" and other creatures from modern horror films. * Fred Sandback's works at the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis in April consisted only of string or wire laid out to the walls and floors of the gallery. According to the St. Louis Post- Dispatch critic, Sandback's tying string in a triangle shape "brings with it the illusion of weight" and is the "most dramatic" of four new pieces done specially for the show. Finishing a close second in the critic's mind was tying two parallel lengths of string from the floor to the ceiling, a "work" "that can be experienced as columns or as a restatement, in the air, of notions [of canvas-based artists]" and which provided "succor." * A show by the feminist sculptor Louise Bourgeois in Toronto in May included a retrospective of her works featuring bizarre, severed penises and huge testicles hanging singly or in pairs or in bunches, including "No Exit" (a stairway with two huge testicles restricting egress at the bottom) and "Untitled (with Foot)," in which an innocent baby is crushed by a large, pink testicle. * In August, Boyd and Barbara Miller, working for 30 hours with 1,500 pounds of colored gravel, completed a life-sized mosaic of the car of racer Dale Earnhardt in their yard, complete with all Earnhardt's various product endorsements legible on the body. * Among the works displayed at the premiere of the Hugo Boss Gallery at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in November was Janine Antoni's "Slumber," consisting of a bed, a loom, and an electroencephalograph (EEG) unit. Antoni sleeps in the bed at night, hooked up to the EEG, and during the day weaves a blanket with patterns in the shapes of her EEG readings. The New York Times critic called it a "deft mix of public and private, dream and reality" with a "fine poetic spin." * Unknown painter Victor Ruiz Roizo, 39, obtained space in the famed Prado museum in Madrid, Spain, in October by sticking his canvas on the wall with super glue when no one was looking. It stayed for four days until a visitor inquired about it. Roizo said later that he just thought it would be good to show his work, called "Afterwards," featuring a human skull with worms, along "with Rembrandt and all those guys." PEOPLE WITH TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS * In August, Texas A&M graduate Michael Kelly filed a request under the state's Public Information Act for a copy of the 1996 confidential football playbook of the Aggies' arch-rival University of Texas. (The request was denied, and in November, of course, A&M lost to UT.) * From a paper delivered in August at the Second Annual International Conference on Elvis Presley by Professor Joel Williamson of the University of North Carolina, claiming that the screaming girls who tried to rip Elvis's clothes off in the 1950s were an early part of the women's movement: "[A]n Elvis performance provided a venue in which young women could publicly and all together claim ownership of their bodies, declare themselves loudly, clearly, and explicitly to be sexual as well as spiritual characters." * Two New York dermatologists told the Wall Street Journal in September that five to ten of their face-lift patients a month opt also to tighten what they believe are their droopy ear lobes, at about $750 a pair. Said Dr. Bruce Katz, some patients tell him they want lobes similar to those of Demi Moore, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Sting. Said one extremely satisfied, 52-year-old Katz patient, "I have the ear lobes of a teenager." * According to a New York Times article in August, the student handbook at The Citadel requires first-year cadets to memorize standard, quirky responses to traditional questions posed during shakedowns by upper-classmen. For instance, the answer to the question, how much milk is left in the carton (which is expressed by the upper-classman as "How is the cow?") must be answered, "Sir, she walks, she talks, she's full of chalk, the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the X degree, sir! (with X representing the number of glassfuls left)." (Any other answer by a cadet would be punishable.) UPDATE * In September 1996, News of the Weird listed an array of vicious criminals who happened to have the middle name Wayne. More: In November, Georgia executed Ellis Wayne Felker for the 1981 murder of a college student. Also in November, the suspected rapist of a 12-year-old girl in Petaluma, Calif. (two miles from where Polly Klaas was abducted in 1993), Larry Wayne Cole, apparently died of natural causes while on the lam. And in October, the Oregon Parole Board turned down the latest bid by Richard Wayne Godwin, serving a life sentence for the 1979 rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl. NO LONGER WEIRD * Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (11) Parents who run afoul of laws even in modern democracies that prohibit their giving their children certain names, such as the Guillot family, who lost a 13-year court battle in October in France to name their daughter "Fleur de Marie" (Flower of Mary) because it did not appear on the list of Roman Catholic saints' names and also because forenames cannot have prepositions. And (12) the needy drug user so oblivious of reality that when he comes upon a large-scale, loud, chaotic police raid in progress at his dealer's home, he nonetheless insists on purchasing from one of the officers, as Tomano Summa, 36, was accused of doing in Boston in July. LEAD STORIES * The New York Post revealed in October that the New York City Police Department has spent more than $260,000 since 1992 on overtime pay for nightshift officers waiting for a flow to start for their urine tests. Drug testing of randomly selected officers is done only during the day shift, and the average overtime claim is for 3.5 hours. * In October, Miriam Flores, serving six years for robbery in Mexico City, was selected Miss Mexico Jailhouse in a pageant that featured 14 of the city's foxiest female inmates. A week later, Ms. Pham Ngoc Tam won first place in a nationwide beauty contest of female jail guards held near Hanoi, Vietnam. (A press report said Pham is "probably best described as 'handsome.'") * In October, Richard Evans, a member of the Australian Parliament, proposed that the country eliminate all cats within 25 years. Evans offered evidence that cats have killed off nine native species of wildlife and proposed that a fatal virus to be released on feral cats. He said also that domestic cats should be neutered until they die out and that in the interim, cat curfews and a registry should be put in place. AWESOME, DUUUDE!!! * Construction worker Sidney de Queiroz was hospitalized in Sorocaba, Brazil, in October when a barroom fight left a 5-inch- long knife blade partways inside his brain after he was stabbed close to his right eye. The blade remained in his head for a week while doctors pondered how to get it out without causing more damage. Finally, in nine hours of surgery on November 2, the knife was removed. * In Huntsville, Ala., in November, Justin Lee McKinney, 24, whose truck rammed a chain-link fence, was impaled on a 3- inch-wide, 20-foot-long steel pipe, which went completely through his chest. Surgeons successfully removed it, but, said Dr. Russ Jaicks, "If anyone [at the accident site] had pulled that pipe out, he would've died [of blood loss]." * In November, a Calgary, Alberta, man collapsed and fell face- first in his office while brushing his teeth. The bristles end of the toothbrush penetrated about an inch into his eye socket below the eyeball, but ophthalmologist Rob Mitchell said the man would suffer no permanent injury. * In July, in Denver, Colo., a machine that packs explosive devices into car air-bag detonators blew up in the face of Nicolas Villarruel, 29, leaving one explosive lodged in his nose, sending him to the hospital. The device was removed by surgeons in lead-lined gowns and with Villarruel's head under water because the explosive is activated by air. * In July, Jessie James Taylor, 32, drove himself to the Pikeville (Ky.) Methodist Hospital emergency room with a meat cleaver stuck in his head and part of a butcher knife in his back, as the result of a fight with his girlfriend's 16-year-old son over rent money. After surgery, he was released the following day. OOPS! * Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter- stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 a.m., the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed. * Among the latest highway truck spills: a load of frozen french fries on I-70 in Columbia, Mo., in July; a pickup-truck full of ricotta cheese in Providence, R. I., in July; 21 tons of large plates of glass in Davenport, Iowa, in July; 30,000 cans of Milwaukee's Best beer in Belpre, Ohio, in August; 12,000 roofing nails (that punctured tires of about 50 cars) in Baton Rouge, La., in September; and 103,000 eggs on Highway 92 near Winterset, Iowa, in July. * Jimmy "Jim Dog" Williams, Jr., was arrested in New Haven, Conn., in October and charged with taking the life of a 19-year- old man in a brawl. Police were drawn to Williams when they found a set of gold-plated teeth inscribed "Jim Dog" at the scene of the fight. SPORTS NEWS * To assure that she would not be disqualified in this summer's Olympic Games, Brazil's female heavyweight judo champion Edinanci Fernandes da Silva, 19, underwent surgery in May to remove partially-formed testicles that were responsible for her abnormally high levels of testosterone. "I'm a normal woman," said da Silva. * A company called Polo International, from Switzerland, announced in October that it would introduce "snow polo" to the U. S. on December 28, in Aspen, Colo. It is regular polo, played on a frozen lake, on horses outfitted with shoes with 2- inch spikes. UPDATE * Perhaps America's most dysfunctional family, the Sextons of Ohio and Florida, made News of the Weird in May 1994, when sex abuse charges were filed against Mom Estella in Canton, Ohio, alleging that she sexually assaulted one or more of her kids, either acting alone or with husband Eddie, who is now on death row in Florida. Son Jamie Sexton, 20, was charged in November 1996 with aggravated murder in Canton after allegedly setting a fire to kill a former friend. The month before, Jamie had testified against Estella, helping to convict her on those 13 sex-abuse counts. Eddie is still on death row, convicted of killing a son-in-law who knew that Eddie had smothered the man's baby for excessive crying. (However, the paternity of the deceased baby is in dispute, in that one or more of the Sexton kids say that their sister's baby was actually fathered either by Eddie or by one of the kids.) THINNING THE HERD * Benjamin Arley Ortega suffocated in October in Napa, Calif., when his head got stuck between a wall and the ceiling of a storage shed he was burglarizing. And Rafael Miettunen drowned near Cleveland, Tenn., in April as he was making a getaway on a Jet-Ski he had stolen. And Rex C. Stark, 36, drowned in a pond near New Castle, Ky., in November where he had sought refuge from a state trooper, who had chased him after a car accident. LEAD STORIES * Officials at the Central Penitentiary in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, revealed in October that they are encouraging male inmates to marry each other in order to hold down HIV infections. Eight couples have taken the plunge so far and received a certificate in which they pledge mutual fidelity. The marriages are valid only in prison because Honduran law does not recognize same-sex marriage. * Ontario College of Art student Jubal Brown told the Associated Press in November that it was he who vomited publicly on two masterpieces this year and that he plans a third episode. At the Art Gallery of Ontario in May, he regurgitated red food coloring on a Raoul Dufy work, and at New York City's Museum of Modern Art on November 2, he threw up in blue on a Piet Modrian painting. His third work will be in yellow. His goal, he said, is "to liberate individuals and living creatures from [art's] banal, oppressive representation." * Roberto Alomarism in the News: In September, East Pittsburgh, Pa., school custodian Anthony DePaulo spit on the car of a city councilman he did not like; in October, Robert Cossia in Belleville, Ill., spit on the truck of Gregory Brown (and allegedly on Brown himself), after a dispute over a bounced check; in November, British doctors reported in The Lancet that meningitis was passed to a man when another spit in his face; and also in November, according to U. S. News & World Report, the National Spit Tobacco Education Program happily reported that televised tobacco chewing and spitting during the 1996 World Series was down 80 percent from the average over the last 10 years. LATEST RIGHTS * In August, the parents of Alexandra Taylor, 5, received an undisclosed settlement from Continental Airlines because the airline permitted another customer to bring a 6-foot-long python into the cabin of a 1994 flight, which allegedly caused Alexandra to have severe nightmares. The snake's owner had brought along her companion as a "support snake" prescribed by her therapist to help her overcome the trauma of being sexually harassed by a professor. * In June, a federal magistrate ordered physician Susan J. Powers to pay the government $292,000 for breaking her contract to provide medical care to underserved rural areas in exchange for the government's having funded her medical education. Powers tried to get out of the contract by claiming that she could not leave her "support network" of friends in the San Francisco Bay area, or she would become despondent and possibly suicidal. * The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union was successful in gaining the right to vote in the November elections for three diagnosed "sexual psychopaths" confined by law to a hospital in St. Peter but who have no pending criminal sentences. One was escorted to a polling place, but the other two were not permitted out and had their ballots brought to the hospital by an election monitor. * Charles Murphy, who is bald-headed, filed a lawsuit in August against Lisa Aune, the manager of the federal building in Eugene, Ore., after he was dismissed as security officer. He claims Aune fired him for violating a neat-grooming rule merely because he has too much chest hair, which bulges out in the summertime when rules permit him to wear open-necked shirts. * After four months of increasingly violent attacks on them by vigilantes, South African criminal gangs began lobbying for police protection in November. More than a thousand gangsters stood outside the gates of Parliament in Cape Town, begging for "justice" and "peace" in the wake of news that one gang leader was shot 72 times by a vigilante and his body set on fire. The gang members claim they are basically good people and that their own murdering, thievery, and drug-dealing were merely attempts to cope with apartheid. * In November, a federal appeals court turned down Albert Johnson's lawsuit against the Cook County (Ill.) Jail to reassign female guards away from the showers and toilet areas, saying their presence was "humiliating" to his religious belief in "Christian modesty." A dissenting opinion agreed with Johnson that permitting the monitoring by females was "cruel and unusual" punishment. WEIRD SCIENCE * British doctors, writing in The Lancet in November, announced they were stumped and asked for help worldwide in diagnosing a man's infected hand that has for five years carried an incredibly putrid odor. A finger was nicked while the man was dressing chicken carcasses, with the cut yielding an "overpowering" odor that is "almost intolerable" in a closed examination room. * China's Xinhua news agency reported in September that Ms. Lui Yuxue, 16, had successfully undergone tongue-reduction surgery to snip off several inches' worth that extended outside her mouth. * German physicians from Eberhard-Karls University in Tubingen reported in a November New England Journal of Medicine that a 53-yr-old surgeon accidentally transplanted a patient's malignant tumor cells into his own hand when he nicked it during surgery on the patient. * In an October issue of The Lancet, pediatrician Andrea Scaramuzza and his colleagues at the University of Pavia in Italy reported that boys aged 10-14 who train intensely in soccer tend to have smaller testicles and less blood circulation to their testes than their less-athletic peers. UPDATES * Knoxville, Tenn., dentist Stephen Cobble, who made News of the Weird a year ago when patients and former employees described alleged unorthodox treatments (such as transferring C- section scar tissue to treat a jaw disorder and prescribing a diet of beef, salt, and at least two eggs and a quarter pound of butter daily), had his license revoked in November by the state Board of Dentistry after protracted hearings over whether his unconventional anesthesia methodology might have contributed to a patient's death. And retiring U. S. Rep. Wes Cooley of Oregon, who made News of the Weird in March 1996 over accusations of serial lying, was indicted in December for falsely claiming on his official state voter's guide biography that he had fought in Korea during the Korean War. Cooley apparently was done in when he offered as verification the name of his Army supervisor who he thought was dead but who turned up alive and revealed that Cooley spent the war in Georgia. GOD'S WILL * At least 25 religious pilgrims drowned in November when an overcrowded ship sank in the Acara River in northern Brazil; the boat was headed to the town of Acara to celebrate the Virgin of Nazareth. And in August, at least 113 Hindu pilgrims, nude and smeared with ash, died in a snowstorm in the Himalayas as they were en route to worship a stalagmite believed to be the phallus of the god Shiva. LEAD STORIES * The township supervisors in East Marlborough, Pa., proposed an ordinance in November to ban offensive smells within the town, requiring that a panel of people who possess "ordinary and reasonable sensibility" be convened to determine which odors are not acceptable. The issue arose when one supervisor complained about the smell from a Chinese restaurant. * On December 5, for the 17th consecutive year, hundreds of Thai men underwent free vasectomies to honor King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 69, on his birthday. The day-long festivities included free food and drink and a condom-inflating championship. The king has been praised by family-planning organizations for cutting Thailand's population growth rate by two-thirds over the last 25 years. * The Sanctity of Heterosexual Marriage: In September, Painesville, Ohio, judge Fred V. Skok issued a marriage license to Paul Smith and Debi Easterly, even though he was aware that Paul describes himself as a lesbian, usually dresses in women's clothes, and is on a three-year regimen toward a complete gender change. Judge Skok, mindful that he could not under Ohio law approve a female-female marriage, merely required a doctor's certificate that Paul currently still has male sex organs. COURTROOM ANTICS * In the Tasmanian Supreme Court in November, Martin Bryant pleaded guilty to the April murders of 35 people at a tourist attraction in Port Arthur, Australia, but he couldn't stop laughing. Wrote the Associated Press, "Bryant laughed so much he had trouble saying the word 'guilty' and had to be hushed by his own lawyer." And convicted child molester Francis Robinson, 76, at a September bail hearing on a charge of sexual abuse of an infant in Markham, Ill., had to be admonished by the judge because he chuckled while prosecutors described how Robinson allegedly fondled the girl. * In October, a court in Kerrville, Tex., granted Darlie Router's request (she's on trial for the Susan Smith-like murder of her two small children) to have her hair done in jail at taxpayer expense. Router had convinced the judge that if she arrived for her trial with dark roots, the jurors might infer that the reason she hadn't taken care of her hair was because she is locked up, and thus they might not give her the presumption of innocence. * At an October re-trial in Leeds, England, jurors took about an hour to acquit police officer Andrew Whitfield, 30, of stealing a calculator worth about $4. The cost of the trial, plus the original mistrial, plus keeping Whitfield on paid suspension for 14 months as required by law, was about $158,000. * In September, Barbara Monsky filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in Danbury, Conn., against local Superior Court Judge Howard J. Moraghan for permitting his dog to roam the courthouse, especially since Moraghan should know that the dog habitually sticks his snout under women's skirts and allegedly did so to Monsky. Monsky's attorney, Nancy Burton, said the dog had sniffed her, also. Burton analogized to the traditional "one free bite" rule for determining whether a dog is legally "vicious," arguing that Moraghan long ago knew that the dog had had his one free sniff. * Rodney L. Turner, 55, called his office on October 2 in Kansas City, Kan., and said he wouldn't make it to work that day, as a result of his 2 a.m. arrest for DUI that resulted in his detention until 5 a.m. Turner, a lawyer, is a part-time municipal judge and on October 2 had been scheduled to hear a full day's docket of DUI cases. COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS * At the trial in his racial harassment lawsuit against Pitney Bowes in Los Angeles in September, black salesman Akintunde I. Ogunleye testified that he had been addressed by one co-worker as "Akintunde, ooga-booga, jungle-jungle." The co-worker, who is of French-Canadian ancestry, later testified that he was misunderstood, that what he said was "Bonjour, bonjour." The jury awarded Akintunde $11.1 million. * In September, Roy T. Moore was convicted of exposing himself while seated in his car at a gas station in Goderich, Ontario, despite his explanation that what a witness saw was actually only a half-eaten cookie from a bag he was holding in his lap. The judge refused to admit the cookie as evidence but did allow Moore's lawyer to wield a tape measure to illustrate to the jury the size of the alleged cookie. * Philippines army logistics officer Brig. Gen. Rolando Espejo told a senate hearing in Manila in September that the 4,500 weapons captured in coups against then-President Corazon Aquino have been stolen from two armories and can never be recovered because all documents referring to them are missing. The general said the documents were all eaten by termites. * Orlando, Fla., Juvenile Court judge Walter Komanski was caught by office workers making printouts of pornography in the courthouse in October and of keeping pornographic videos and magazines in an office cabinet. He said he kept them at work only because he had teenage boys at home and that, as a responsible parent, he didn't want them to find his stash. Also, he said he had surfed Internet sex sites only to research how to restrict them from his kids. (He was reassigned to finance cases.) * According to a report in the Wilmington (N. C.) Morning Star in November, a dog was briefly, though improperly, admitted to the local Kenan Auditorium with its owner to take in a performance of the opera The Barber of Seville. (The owner took the dog away after it started to bark.) Manager Don Hawley said one of his staff members had allowed the woman to bring the dog in after she said she was hearing-impaired and that the dog was a "hearing-ear dog." In retrospect, said Hawley, "That was silly." * Singer Stevie Nicks's lawyer told the Internal Revenue Service in November that the reason she spent (and tax-deducted) so much for clothing in 1991 was that she had to throw away each outfit after one use because of "the energy levels of her performances and the heat generated on stage from lights and physical exertion." UPDATE * Imprisoned Kentucky child molester Lou Torok announced in July 1995 that he had persuaded the governors of six states to proclaim October 7 of that year as "Love Day." Despite the attention that Torok's petition drew from News of the Weird and other news outlets at that time, Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton okayed the "Love Day" designation again for October 7, 1996 (though he later said he should not have). Torok complained that America is "not a forgiving country" and said that he is "in a cesspool of negativism [in prison] and is just "trying to make the world a little better." LEAD STORIES * Can't Hold It In: The school board in Durham, N. C., suspended a substitute teacher at Hillside High School in November after she urinated into a trash can during class, allegedly because of a medical condition. And 5th-grade teacher Dow Ooten, 36, was suspended in Charleston, W. Va., in December after he brought his soiled trousers to a school board meeting to show what he was forced to do because the faculty restroom door was locked. And in November, a similarly-soiled Tom Pak won a $45,000 settlement from Los Angeles County, whose property tax office clerks made him wait at a desk, without a restroom break, in retaliation for his having arrived 15 minutes before closing to make payments on more than 200 properties. * Latest Ear Technology: In November, police in Independence Township, Mich., arrested a 45-year-old man and charged him with peeping into windows at the Clarkston Motor Inn, basing the arrest on the earprints he allegedly left on the windows. And one month later, in Vancouver, Wash., Judge Robert L. Harris ruled that the prosecutor could use an earprint found on the bedroom door of a murder victim in the trial of his suspected killer. * Actress Anya Pencheva announced in November a plan to divert her fellow Bulgarians' attention from grim economic problems: She would have a plaster cast made of her breasts, to display in the National Theater in Sofia. Said Pencheva, "It is a pity to focus everything on [budget cuts] when there are such beautiful breasts around." THE CONTINUING CRISIS * According to a September report in Toronto's Globe and Mail, the University of Toronto's medical school employs actors and other people for $12 to $35 per hour to be practice patients for its students. Bob LeRoy, 45, commands the top pay because he is a rectal-exam patient. Said LeRoy, "I always hope the student with the biggest finger goes first." * The Wall Street Journal reported in September that about 100 "laughing clubs" had sprung up in India in the last year based on the philosophy of Dr. Madan Kataria, who says the ancient yoga breathing and laughing exercises can help people shed inhibitions, build self-confidence, stop smoking, alleviate high blood pressure and arthritis, and stop migraine headaches. After conventional stretching, adherents engage in silent laughs, out-loud laughs with their lips closed, and the roaring "Bombay laugh." Dr. Kataria worries only that some day, the government might try to tax laughter. * Suicide Chic: A September story in London's Sunday Times described Venice, Italy, as a new trendy site for unhappy Europeans' and Americans' suicides, inspired by the movie "Death in Venice." (About 50 people attempted suicide in the past year; all but a half dozen were unsuccessful, usually because the canals into which they leap are deceptively shallow.) And the San Francisco Examiner reported in September that 11 people in the previous 18 months had rented handguns at local gun ranges and killed themselves on the premises. * According to an August dispatch by Britain's Guardian News Service, the family of Chiang Kai-shek (the Chinese ruler who was chased out by the communists, to Taiwan, in 1949 and who died in 1975) is growing weary of the "temporary" storage of his skeleton in Taiwan, where it has been kept in preparation for its triumphant return to the mainland upon the fall of the communist government. According to practitioners of the art of feng-shui, the spirits are upset that the skeleton is kept in a box in the living room of the family estate instead of being buried in China. * Students rioting in August at South Korea's Yonsei University apparently found weapons in short supply and used whatever was available. When police finally quashed the protest, the geology department faculty discovered that about 10,000 rare rocks, collected over 30 years and considered irreplaceable, were missing. A few were recovered from the streets, chipped or broken. * In September, David Cook of Caledonian University (Glasgow, Scotland) told the British Psychological Society's annual conference that his three-year study shows that politicians have significant behavior patterns in common with criminal psychopaths. Cook said that criminals were relatively easy to analyze but that he did not have as much data as he would like on politicians: "[They] don't like to be studied." * In October, Miss Canada International, 20-year-old Danielle House, was removed from further competition after being charged in St. John's, Newfoundland, with punching out her ex- boyfriend's current girlfriend in a bar. Ms. House said she had been in counseling recently for "low self-esteem." * In Santa Fe, N. Mex., Christine Bodman announced in November that a group of massage therapists has formed the Massage Emergency Response Team to minister for free to stressed-out firefighters, police officers, and paramedics. * Latest Bobbittizations: On the evening of November 17, Ms. Renu Begum, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Ms. Raquel Nair Lucio, in Tiete, Brazil, at about the same hour on the clock (but 10 time zones apart) severed their respective husbands' genitals in jealous rages. * In August, a federal judge in Springfield, Mo., dismissed the lawsuit of Jennifer Stocker Jessen, now 24, who had claimed that repressed memories of childhood abuse by her step-grandfather returned to her in 1988. The triggering mechanism, she said, was her hitting an opossum in the road with her car. THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY * In September in East Orange, Vt., Christie's auction house sold almost $2 million worth of automobiles (including 33 Stutz Bearcats) that belonged to eccentrics A. K. Miller, who died at 87 a few years ago, and his wife Imogene, who died in 1996. The couple left millions more in gold and silver and other valuables but lived like paupers, sometimes eating dog food or bread made of flour they had swept off the floor, sometimes shopping at yard sales, sometimes dressing in rags. As treasurer of his church, Mr. Miller had once refused to accept a small increase in electricity rates and converted the entire church to kerosene lamps. The Millers paid property taxes but no other ones, and the federal and state governments are now claiming $8.2 million. NO LONGER WEIRD * Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (13) The gun expert who accidentally shoots himself while demonstrating safety techniques, as did Constable Randy Youngman, who took a shotgun blast in the leg while teaching a safety class in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in December. And (14) the periodic warnings about global warming caused by excessive methane production by flatulent livestock, as was announced in a European Commission strategy paper released in November in Brussels. LEAD STORIES * The New York Police Department disclosed in December that it has been stepping up the enforcement of a little-known ordinance that makes it illegal for a subway passenger to occupy more than one seat (such as by putting a package or his feet on an adjacent seat), even if no one else is in the car. NYPD said more than 31,000 summonses (carrying $50 fines) were issued in 1996, compared with 1,800 in 1993. * After a trial in Alesund, Norway, in December, a 34-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for repeatedly molesting seven boys he was baby-sitting. Before now, no child molester in Norway had ever be sentenced to longer than six years, and no one has ever been sentenced for longer than 21 years for any crime. * Balaclava Blues: Police in Grand Rapids, Manitoba, in December said a woman, who had chased down a thief who had stolen her group's bingo receipts, ripped off his balaclava and discovered it was her 15-year-old son. And Barry George Paquette, 40, was arrested in November for the robbery of a convenience store in Edmonton, Alberta--a collar made easier because he was halfway through the robbery before he realized he had forgotten to pull down his balaclava. (He halted the robbery momentarily to pull it down, but the store's surveillance camera had already captured his face clearly.) THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT * In October, veteran San Francisco beauty-salon owner Carla Blair opened another one, a full-service salon called "Crossers," catering exclusively to cross-dressing men. Blair said she got the idea when she sensed more and more men were not being taken seriously at women's clothing and cosmetic counters. (She said the big tip-off for her was the number of men who claimed to be looking for something for their wives and habitually said, "She's about my size.") * Janet Merel of Deerfield, Ill., recently introduced Diet Dirt (sterilized soil that can be sprinkled over french fries, cake, etc., to make them taste repugnant). Order $10 bags from 1-888-Diet Dirt. * Sherry Dubois and Peggy Freemark recently opened a licebusters business in Barrie, Ont., to pick through people's hair for $30 per hour, which they say is a bargain because nonprofessionals miss about half of any resident head lice. Lice has become a major problem in school because infested kids sometimes purposely share their hats to pass lice to classmates so they can get a few days off. * A December Associated Press dispatch touted the male baldness remedy of cosmetic surgeon Anthony Pignataro of West Seneca, N. Y.: hairpieces with tiny gold screws that snap on to titanium sockets implanted in the top of the skull, which fuse to the bone in about 12 weeks. Pignataro said he has about 100 customers and got his idea from what he said were commonplace (in his profession) snap-on eyes, ears, noses, and fingers. * The Chicago Tribune reported in October on Woodland Hills, Calif., sculptor Mark Maitre, who for two years has been creating casts of body parts of his clients (many of them Hollywood celebrities) at $1,500 to $4,000 per product, which includes mounting on marble. Actress Marlee Matlin had her breasts cast into a bust for her husband, and another celebrity had the small of his back and his buttocks cast into a fruit bowl. SCHEMES * Huntsville, Tex., prison inmate Steven Russell escaped in December when he walked past guards after having colored his prison whites with a green marking pen so they resembled hospital scrubs. He was soon recaptured. However, David A. Neel, 48, serving a life sentence at a prison in Point of the Mountain, Utah, did not even make it out the gate in his December escape attempt because a guard thought something looked funny about the United Parcel Service box into which Neel had had himself sealed. * In James City, Va., in September, Robert Pablo Montez, 46, at first showed up at the public assistance office with dark glasses and a white cane, claiming to be blind, but left when a social worker told him he'd need a doctor's certificate. A week later, he returned minus the cane and glasses and soon was arrested when he threatened to blow up a social worker's car if she didn't sign him up. * Ronnie Wade Cater, 39, was arrested in Hampton, Va., in October and charged with calling in a bomb threat. According to detectives, he was sitting at a bar, drunk, and had the idea to tell police there was a bomb at another bar, hoping to divert enough officers to that bar so that he might drive home undetected. However, probably because he had been drinking, he lingered on the phone a little too long while talking to the dispatcher, and the call was traced. * In St. Paul, Minn., in December, well-to-do dentist Gerald Dick, 58, his wife Gretchen, 56, and their two adult children were charged with receiving up to $250,000 in stolen luxury consumer goods that they had allegedly "ordered" from a personal shoplifter who was given detailed lists of which upscale goods to procure. (In a refreshing departure from suspects' usual denials, Mrs. Dick was reported to have said to the police, "You caught us red-handed. Now what?") * In September, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems (the company founded, and later sold, by Ross Perot) won the contract to collect the unpaid parking tickets for the city of Madrid, Spain. A few weeks later, the city treasurer accused the company of creating as many as 73,000 bogus tickets in order to collect more money on its contract. UPDATE * Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously in 1989. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. In March 1989, sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted. On January 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death row but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet. UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS * Wilmetta Billington, 68, an inveterate collector of trash, which she stored in her home in Metropolis, Ill., asphyxiated in December when she stumbled and fell into one of her many stacks, causing debris to fall on top of her. So jam-packed was the room that it took authorities 20 minutes to unstack the debris from the top of her body. And British tourist Stephen John Pepperell, 39, lost his balance as he was tossing a melon off a second-floor balcony into a trash can in Nicosia, Cyprus, in October and fell to his death. LEAD STORIES * The Brooklyn, N. Y., organization Shalom Bayis ("Household Peace" in Hebrew) closed down its 24-hour mistress hotline in January after an unfavorable New York Daily News story. A Shalom Bayis spokesman said the hotline's purpose was to place its 40 volunteer mistresses with unsatisfied husbands in order to stop the "plague of divorce" menacing Jewish couples. Although Shalom Bayis claimed to take no fee for its services, it did admit that after the Daily News story, most of the hotline callers were single men and happily married men who just wanted sex. * One Man, One Vote: Because of an obscure state constitutional amendment that few voters and politicians noticed, the terms of office of the four incumbents on the Loretto, Ky., City Council automatically expired in November without their having had an opportunity to campaign for re-election. Travis Greenwell, 23, voting by absentee ballot, was perhaps the only person in town (population 800) who read the voting literature and thus cast the only votes in the election. For the four slots, he wrote in the names of his mother, his uncle, a friend, and a local character who runs a hardware store. (All except the hardware store guy declined to serve.) * Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Phoenix, Ariz., cosmetic surgeon Steven Locniker, on the lam for avoiding child-support charges, was arrested in September after he called attention to himself as Cosmopolitan magazine's "Bachelor of the Month." And Thomas Georgevitch, 22, on the lam for impersonating a police officer, was arrested in Bay Shore, N. Y., in October after a detective heard him call in to a radio station to make a song request (Johnny Rivers's "Secret Agent Man"). And Tom Tipton, 63, wanted on two warrants in Minneapolis, was arrested in November when a sheriff's officer recognized his name as the man singing the national anthem before the Vikings-Broncos game. THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY * Chris Morris filed a $1 million lawsuit against the state of Michigan in November, claiming that he caught a cold in the rotunda of the state Capitol while viewing an art exhibit there earlier in the year. * Dale L. Larson's $41,000 trial-court award was upheld by a Wisconsin appeals court in October, which agreed with the trial court that the Indianhead golf course in Wausau was 51 percent responsible for Larson's needing nine root canals and 23 dental crowns. Larson tripped on his golf spikes and fell hard on his face on a brick path outside the clubhouse, and he argued that he wouldn't have fallen if it had been a smooth concrete sidewalk rather than a brick path. The trial court had found that only 49 percent of the accident was due to Larson's having consumed 13 drinks that evening, which left him with a blood-alcohol level of 0.28 90 minutes after the fall. * Andrew Daniels filed a $500,000 lawsuit against M&M/Mars Company and an Cleveland, Ohio, retailer because one of the M&M Peanuts he bit down on had no peanut in it, and as a result, his teeth bit through his lip, which required his hospitalization and various surgery bills. One claim against the retailer is under the legal theory of "failure to inspect" the candy. * In August, Julie Leach filed a lawsuit in Macomb County, Michigan, seeking at least $10,000 from the owners of a beagle named Patch, which Leach said was constantly enticing Leach's German shepherd Holly to chase him. In 1995, during one of Patch's escapades, the pursuing Holly was run over by a car and killed. Leach says Patch's owners should pay for permitting their dog to harass Holly. * Jamie Brooks, 18, filed a $5 million claim against Kiowa County, Okla., in June, asserting that it is the county's fault that she became pregnant six months earlier while housed in the jail awaiting her murder trial. She said the father is inmate-trusty Eddie Alonzo, who had access to the hallways and who she said impregnated her through the bars of her cell. * In July Alex Alzaldua filed a $25,000 lawsuit against Dennis Hickey in Raymondville, Tex., alleging injuries caused by his "suddenly without warning" having tripped over Hickey's dog in the kitchen of Hickey's home. According to the lawsuit, Hickey should have warned Alzaldua that he was walking around in the kitchen "at his own risk" and that Hickey had failed to warn Alzaldua of "the dog's propensity of lying in certain areas." CLICHES COME TO LIFE * Trucker Franciszek Zygadlo was committed to a mental institution in Rochester, N. Y., in November after he led police on a 280-mile, high-speed chase in his trailerless cab through three states in September. According to police, after finally driving the truck into Irondequoit Bay, Zygadlo ran toward the officers and proclaimed himself a hero for defusing a bomb on the truck that he said would have exploded if he had ever slowed to less than 40 mph. * On October 17 firefighters took two hours to extinguish a fire at the Cal-Compack Foods plant in Las Cruces, N. Mex., that started when a silo full of red chile powder grew so hot that it began to smolder. * In August, the Caron family of Sandown, N. H., was granted an extension of time to file a quarterly federal tax return after they discovered that their home had been ransacked by the family's pet pygmy goats while they were on vacation. Among the items the goats had eaten were toilet bowl cleaner, a lampshade, a telephone directory, and all of the family's income tax paperwork. * Jeen Han, 22, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder in Irvine, Calif., in November, against her twin sister, Sunny. According to a police lieutenant, the "evil twin" was angry that the "good twin" had snitched on her regarding stolen credit cards and thus wanted to kill her and assume her identity. THINNING THE HERD * In November, a 60-year-old Polish man in the village of Kosianka Trojanowka, identified only as "Czeslaw B," was accidentally shot to death by two homemade guns he had mounted on his garage door to ward off trespassers (just 2 of 28 booby traps in his house). And in Slidell, La., in December, Jason Jinks, 20, decided to open his car door and back up at 25 mph in order to look for his hat that had just fallen off; when he hit the brakes, he fell out on his head and, three days later, died. CONTEMPORARY WISDOM * Veteran Belleville, Ill., jail inmate Kelvin Lewis, asked by the Belleville Journal in January to evaluate the jail's new black-and- white, thick-horizontal-striped uniforms, graded them an 11 on a 10-scale: "I like their style. The younger generation will like [the rolled-up cuffs]." LEAD STORIES * Clarence Mulloy, weary of doctors who don't keep their appointments, filed a lawsuit in November against one of them, Dr. Lawrence Amato of Round Lake Beach, Ill., and won $10 plus court costs. Mulloy claimed that Dr. Amato once canceled merely because his nurse was away and he didn't want to have to hook Mulloy up to a heart monitor all by himself. * In December, McDonald's opened restaurants in its 100th country, Belarus, amid about 4,000 eager customers and 500 protestors, and a few days later, in its 101st, Tahiti. According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, no two countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever gone to war against each other--because, as Friedman theorizes, countries prosperous enough to support a McDonald's are surely stable enough to resist most provocations. * Texas A&M student Jonathan Culpepper and his fraternity Kappa Alpha were indicted in College Station, Tex., in December on a criminal hazing charge because of a severe "wedgie." The grand jury found that fraternity members lifted a candidate, unnamed in news reports, off his feet by the waistband of his briefs, causing the man to require the surgical removal of a testicle. CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE * The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in December that a female inmate at the Yell County Jail in Dardanelle had been receiving regular shipments of methamphetamines via Federal Express. Jail officials had finally become suspicious and obtained the necessary search warrant to check her frequent deliveries. * During the Christmas Handicap race at a track in Melbourne, Australia, the horse Cogitate threw its rider and bumped the horse Hon Kwok Star sending Hon's jockey, apprentice Andrew Payne, into the air. To break his fall, Payne grabbed the neck of Cogitate and then climbed into the stirrups and rode that horse across the finish line (though the official records would show that both horses were disqualified). * The Miami Herald reported in September that David McAllister, 77 and blind, a nursing-home invalid in North Miami Beach, Fla., receives daily visits from Chris Carrier, 32, who reads to McAllister from the Bible. Their only previous relationship occurred during a few days in December 1974, when McAllister kidnapped young Carrier at a bus stop and left him for dead in the Everglades with cigarette burns on his body, icepick holes in one eye, and a gunshot wound that left him blind in the other eye. Said Carrier, "I don't stare at my . . . potential murderer. I stare at a man, very old, very alone and scared." * In November, ballroom dancing champion Michael Keith Withers was convicted in Perth, Australia, of the attempted 1994 murder of his wife-dance partner, Stacey Larson. He had said it was an accident, but the jury found that he had doused her with gasoline (set aside to use in a Whipper Snapper lawn trimmer he had borrowed from a neighbor) and set her afire, burning 70 percent of her body. Larson testified that she had not seen Withers since the incident, but under cross-examination finally admitted that she had slept with him 15 times since then, and another witness said Larson had bought Withers Christmas gifts in 1995, including his very own Whipper Snapper. * Results of a University of Minnesota study, announced in July and pertinent to the dispute between large animal feedlots and their neighbors who object to the smell, showed that home values nearer the feedlots were higher than those further away. (No explanation was given by researchers, but some experts interviewed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune said increased employment opportunities at feedlots had driven up demand for housing.) * A 1985 lease fixed the annual rent the U. S. pays for its Moscow embassy at 72,500 rubles. That was worth about $60,000 at the time, but now with nine years to go on the lease, the devaluation of the ruble has reduced the rent to the equivalent of $22.56 a year. In August, the Russian government stepped up its demands to renegotiate, but the U. S. continues to resist. INEXPLICABLE * The New York Times reported in December on a Jordanian company that employs veiled Palestinian women stitching together women's exotic underpants for Victoria's Secret stores and catalogs. Adding to the irony is that the products, which in 1997 will also include brassieres, are sold with a "Made in Israel" label in order to take advantage of Israel's favorable trade status with the U. S. * In December, Frederick Lundy was to report for a court hearing in Akron, Ohio, in which he had been told: Plead not guilty to a parole violation and be released until trial, or plead guilty and go to jail immediately. Lundy pleaded guilty and was abruptly led away. That decision could be explained, perhaps, by Lundy's desire to get on with his punishment. What was not explained was why he had come into the courtroom under the circumstances with 41 rocks of crack cocaine in his pocket, which were discovered in a routine, pre-incarceration search. * In November at the Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, Anthony Valencia and Fitzgerald Vandever, both age 20, were arrested and accused of roaming the Intensive Care Unit, looking to steal patients' food off warming carts. (Said a hospital spokeswoman, "Actually, we've got some pretty good [food] down there." * In December in London, England, the first fraud cases against the parent company of Hoover vacuum cleaners went to trial, four years after the company's disastrous giveaway campaign in which it promised two free air fares with all vacuum cleaners, which retailed for as little as about $165 in Great Britain. The company sold over a half million units during the campaign and has so far paid out about $72 million in airline tickets to about a third of the purchasers. UPDATE * In 1995 News of the Weird listed four cities in which entrepreneurs had begun businesses to fly couples around for an hour so that they could have sexual intercourse while airborne. In December 1996 several homeowners near Van Nuys (Calif.) Airport complained vociferously to the Los Angeles Daily News that one of the four, Mile High Adventures (whose flights now start at $429), flies so frequently and low that they are extremely irritating. Said one homeowner, "What people do in their own bedroom is their business. What they do over our heads is the community's business." THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY * In January, disbarred Parsonburg, Md., lawyer Paul Bailey Taylor, 61, finally snapped after years of erratic behavior and barricaded himself inside a church, armed with a rifle, for five hours before police convinced him to surrender. When he was working, Taylor ran his law practice from the bathroom of his unheated rural trailer, where he had set up a desk over the toilet so that he could sit for long periods of time because of an intestinal disorder. A social worker once described the place as "clean," in that Taylor's 12 cats were neatly housed in cardboard boxes and his legal papers were filed in an orderly fashion in the bathtub. LEAD STORIES * An ancient fear of penis-shrinking sorcery periodically surfaces in Ghana, the latest instance in December. Mobs beat seven men to death in Accra and injured others in Tema, all on rumors that the men had the power to make others' genitals disappear by a mere touch. Police said the rumors were spread by criminal operatives so that crowds of hysterical men would gather, making it easier for the criminals to pickpocket wallets. * Japanese researchers at Tokyo University and Tsukuba University said they will begin in February testing a project to surgically implant microprocessors and electrode sets, and eventually microcameras, into American cockroaches for a variety of possible missions, including espionage surveillance and searching for victims in earthquake rubble. The equipment, which can also receive remote-control signals to command the cockroach's movements, weighs a tenth of an ounce, twice a typical roach's weight but still only a tenth of what it potentially can carry. * In December, the Idaho High School Activities Association rejected a proposal by the superintendent of public instruction for extracurricular firearms competition in junior high schools. But in January in neighboring Wyoming, a House committee approved a bill that would lower the minimum age for big-game hunters to 12. SEEDS OF OUR DESTRUCTION * The New York Times reported in January that the Taliban movement in Afghanistan is presiding over such a bankrupt economy that a viable career field now has men (women are forbidden to work at all) raiding cemeteries of human bones, which are then sold to dealers in Pakistan as animal bones to be fashioned into cooking oil, soap, chicken feed, and buttons. Skulls must first be broken up to preserve the ruse that only animal bones are involved. * Recent Inappropriate Nudity: In September, dozens of schoolteachers from the state of Bihar stripped in front of the Indian parliament to protest low wages. And the Defense Intelligence Agency, in a memo disclosed by the Washington Post in October, reported the emergence of a Liberian leader known as "General 'Butt Naked,'" "from his propensity for fighting naked," which he "probably believes terrorizes the enemy and brings good luck." And Meaux, France, high school philosophy teacher Bernard Defrance was suspended in January for his pedagogical game in which he removes an article of clothing each time a student stumps him with a riddle (sometimes losing everything). * In a July soccer game in Tripoli, Libya, a team sponsored by the eldest son of Muammar Qaddafi suffered a questionable referee's call and began beating the official and the other team. After spectators jeered, Qaddafi and his bodyguards opened fire on them, and some spectators shot back. The death toll was somewhere between eight and fifty, including the referee, and Muammar Qaddafi declared a period of mourning, the hallmark of which was that Libyan TV was to be in black and white only. * Role Model Gains: In October, Marcia Fann, 37, won the prestigious Bass'n Gal Classic Star XX bass-fishing tournament in Athens, Tex. Fann cheerfully discloses that she was formerly a man, having been surgically changed sometime in the 1980s. * In December, the entire 300-man paramilitary police force of the 83-island, South Pacific nation of Vanuatu was arrested for kidnaping a visiting Australian official in order to increase its leverage in an overtime-pay dispute with the government. The force had been suspended in November for kidnaping Vanautu's deputy prime minister for the same purpose, and in October, several members of the force had kidnaped Vanautu's president and held him for almost a day before releasing him because of the populace's seeming indifference. * A July Wall Street Journal story reported that the city jail (capacity 134) in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Wash., does a brisk business charging petty criminals from around the state $64 a day to serve their sentences of up to 40 days in comfortable settings. Reservations are recommended, and the policy is cash only. * A United Nations spokesman in Sarajevo disclosed in November a recent marital quarrel that escalated out of control "in classic Bosnian style" and reflected the war-saturated quality of life. During an argument, the wife of Pero Toljij fled to a neighbor's home, but Toljij chased her with a bazooka he happened to have on hand, fired at her, missed, and hit the couple's own house. He was arrested. BOTTOM OF THE GENE POOL * In October in Massapequa Park, N. Y., four men, ages 19-21, intending to follow a recipe in the Underground Steroid Handbook, failed to wait patiently until the Drano-like concoction had reached a satisfactory pH level to make it milder. The four were hospitalized with bad internal burns, and the concoction also burned rescuing police officers when the four men vomited on them. * In November in Santa Maria, Tex., Luis Martinez, Jr., 25, was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle by his uncle, allegedly to punish Martinez for not sharing his bag of Frito's. In October a 20-year-old man was hospitalized in Guthrie, Okla., after encouraging his friend Jason Heck to kill a millipede with a .22- caliber rifle; after two ricochets, Heck's bullet hit the man just above his right eye, fracturing his skull. * Phillip Johnson, 32, was hospitalized in Prestonburg, Ky., in December with a gunshot wound just above his left nipple, which he inflicted upon himself because, as he told paramedics, he wanted to see what it felt like. When the paramedics arrived, said the sheriff, they found him "screaming about the pain, over and over." I DON'T THINK SO * David S. Peterson filed a lawsuit against New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in August for racketeering, seeking three times the sum of money that Peterson had given his girlfriend to buy him clothes but which she had lost gambling at an Indian tribal casino. Peterson said Gov. Johnson was so much a supporter of the Indian gaming industry that it was his fault Peterson was out the money. NO LONGER WEIRD * Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (15) The burglar with poor planning skills who attempts to enter a building after hours through a chimney or vent and gets stuck, as Baltimore, Md., police say Dwayne Terry, 33, did at a convenience store on Christmas morning. And (16) certainly the thousands of times a year (about 50 the past year in Fremont, Calif., alone) that trial-bound defendants and others cheerfully place their belongings on the X-ray machines at the entrances of courthouses, only to have their illegal drugs detected. LEAD STORIES * Still More Italian Justice: In November, a judge in Rome ruled that a 24-year-old man was entitled to live with his mother even though she doesn't want him to. Said the woman, "If he comes home then I'm [leaving]." In a 1996 case reported by the Associated Press in December, Italy's Supreme Court refused to convict several of a 6-year-old girl's relatives who had had sex with her, citing the strangeness and "particular[ity]" of the family environment. The court said the family's ordinary relationships were wild, "dominated uniquely or almost always by instinct." * In January, Jack Petelui, 43, claiming to hear God, stripped down to his underwear, climbed the ornate facade of the Ansonia Hotel in New York City, resisted police efforts for more than an hour to talk him down, and finally jumped. Cynical New Yorkers were said to be astonished at the dozens of bystanders who were actually yelling "Don't jump!" (Petelui was spared serious injury when he landed on a police department rescue airbag.) * Life Imitates Crime Movies: In January, six inmates, including two convicted murderers, tunneled out of the maximum security state prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., 15 feet below ground, using tools from the prison machine shop. And in January, the Banco Credito Argentino in Buenos Aires was robbed of about $25 million by a gang that had made a 165-foot-long tunnel under a street over the previous several months. It was Buenos Aires's 55th tunnel-related bank robbery since 1990. POLICE BLOTTER * Police in Allentown, Pa., discovered in September that a man who was recently arrested at the bus station with 280 small bags of heroin in his luggage had chewed off the skin of seven fingertips after being jailed. Said a police sergeant, "It certainly is a strong indication that somebody somewhere is looking for him." * Armed and Dangerous: A man robbed a variety store in Guelph, Ontario, in December wielding only a three-foot-long tree branch. And in Columbia, Mo., in December, Eric O. Criss, 31, fortified only with a socket wrench, failed in his alleged attempt to rob a grocery store. And in Calgary, Alberta, in December, a man brandishing only a bottle of household cleaner robbed a Bank of Nova Scotia. * A 21-year-old, allegedly intoxicated man was spotted by police on an Austin, Minn., street in January urinating on a car but was let go with a warning when he persuaded police it was his own car. A few minutes later police returned and arrested the man for DUI, having figured out that he was urinating on the car's door lock to melt the ice so that he could get in and drive away. * Roger Augusto Sosa, 23, was charged with burglary early on Christmas morning in Chevy Chase, Md. Scott Kane and his wife had heard a prowler in the house and called 911. Despite the clamor of several squad cars arriving and seven officers rushing into the living room with guns drawn, Sosa by that time reportedly was seated under the tree, blissfully opening the Kanes' presents. * In October in Great Falls, Mont., Tina Rae Beavers, 19, was arrested on the lawn separating the jail and the courthouse and charged with indecent exposure. According to a sheriff's deputy, she was energetically complying with her jailed husband's request to remove her clothes, lie down in the grass, and make suggestive movements so that he could see her from his cell window. * Slaves to Love: In December in Hong Kong, Yuen Sai-wa, 33, pleaded guilty to bank robbery but said the only reason he did it was that he felt challenged to keep his girlfriend, who was about to leave him. And in San Diego, Calif., in January, Michael William Smith, 26, and Danny Mayes, 20, were charged with arson for fires they said they set at the behest of Tammy Jo Garcia, 27, who they said became sexually aroused by the fires, to their benefit. (She was also charged.) GOVERNMENT IN ACTION * The New York Daily News reported in January that a fire hydrant had recently been installed at the busy intersection of Tremont Avenue and Boston Road in the Bronx but that it was installed in the street, five feet from the curb, requiring all traffic to go around it. A city spokesman said the hydrant was installed properly and that eventually a sidewalk would be built in what is now the curb lane, but because of engineering delays and bad weather, construction has not yet been scheduled. * Helen Stanwell, a 23-year-veteran park ranger in Seattle, Wash., was suspended for 6 days in November because she worked after hours without pay to help a historical society member look for a local site. (It is illegal in Washington to work more than 40 hours without claiming overtime.) And in January, Wallingford, Conn., city employee Millie Wood, 72, was suspended for one day because she voluntarily trimmed the town's Christmas tree during Thanksgiving holiday. (It is illegal to be in the building after hours.) * In March Amy Howe, 25, was the victim of a hit-and-run driver in Washington, D. C., and suffered a broken leg. Three witnesses immediately supplied police with the car's tag number, and shortly afterward Howe's husband used public records to identify for police the car that was assigned that tag. In September 1996, upon inquiry by the Washington Post, a police spokesman said that despite having the pertinent information virtually handed to it, the department was only then almost ready to begin its investigation. * In October, the Associated Press uncovered several military construction projects that continued to be fully funded by the Pentagon long after the facilities on which they are housed had been designated for permanent closing. Included were a $5 million Navy chapel in San Diego, a $3 million Army classroom building near Chicago, a $13 million Navy dining hall in Orlando, and a $5 million Air Force fire station and training facility in Indianapolis. Said a Navy spokesman in San Diego, "[The taxpayers] are going to have to pay for it anyway, so why not complete [it]?" * The town of Colma, Calif., just south of San Francisco, has a population of 1,000 in an area of about 2.2 square miles, but three-fourths of the land consists of cemeteries in which a million people are buried. In October citizen Robert Simcox announced he would gather signatures to secure a ballot referendum for 1997 that would impose a municipal tax on the dead, in the form of a levy on cemetery owners of $5 per grave per year. UPDATE * In August 1996, News of the Weird reported on a group of New York City police officers who had availed themselves of expensive and hokey tax-resistance kits that would allow them to be regarded as nontaxable aliens while still being law- enforcement officers. Six subsequently pleaded guilty, but in January 1997, in the first case to go to trial, Officer Adalberto Miranda testified that he owed no tax because New York was merely a geographic area, not a government entity, and a short ways into his testimony, Miranda took it upon himself to disqualify Federal Judge Denny Chin because Chin seemed "upset" and then to "arrest" Chin from the witness stand and to give Chin his "Miranda [no relation] warning." LEAD STORIES * The Associated Press reported in January on the three-year-old anti-smoking policy of Kimball Physics of Wilton, N. H., which not only forbids lighting up at work but subjects each employee and visitor to a sniff test of his breath and clothing performed by receptionist Jennifer Walsh. Those with an odor so strong that it is likely they smoked within the last two hours or so are not allowed in. * In February, Schenectady, N.Y., patrolman Robert J. O'Neill reportedly retired. He had been on sick leave since 1982, at full salary that now has reached $508,000, because of psychological problems related to his Vietnam Marine experience that allegedly made him a danger to the public. * Modernday Stagecoach Robberies: Reuters news service reported in January that the 400-mile route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Russia, is being worked by gangs of armed thieves who rob and hijack cargo trucks. And in August on the runway at the airport in Perpignan, France, gunmen halted a taxiing Air France airliner that had just landed with 167 passengers and stole moneybags containing about $800,000. CULTURAL DIVERSITY * In a November Associated Press dispatch from Payiir, Sudan, a reporter described the local competition among unmarried Dinka men to gorge themselves (and refrain from exercise) to become fat, which is regarded as a way to win females because it demonstrates that the man's cattle herd is large enough for him to consume extra milk and meat. The typical Dinka is tall and reed- thin--former basketball player Manute Bol is a Dinka--and some men gain so much unfamiliar weight so quickly that they have been known to topple over. * The hottest selling computer software in Japan in November was a "love simulation" game in which boys try to get a virtual 17-year-old girl, Shiori, to fall in love with them. There is even a magazine, Virtual Idol, devoted to supplying fictional biographical tales of Shiori and other virtual girls. Wrote one young man, Virtual Idol "is just the right kind of magazine for a person like me who's not interested in real girls." By January, several news services had reported on an equally popular Japanese computer craze, the Virtual Pet, a $16 electronic "bird" the size of an egg that responds to nurturing instincts in many teenage girls. By pushing buttons, the owner can feed it, play with it, clean up after it, and discipline it. * According to an October Associated Press story, young mothers in large Japanese cities have adopted the city park as a forum for vying for status. Some young mothers interviewed claimed they were "scared" to take their toddlers to the parks (to make their "park debut") because of the established cliques of mothers who dominate the facilities. Guidebooks teach the proper "park behavior"; department stores feature the proper "park clothing"; and a recent satiric movie depicted a park ruled by 50 authoritarian mothers. * In Singapore, which is so pristine that even public gum-chewing is illegal, police expressed concern in February about the recent crisis of apartment-dwellers in high-rise buildings who casually toss their belongings out the window. Fifty-one people were arrested last year for throwing objects ranging from TV sets to tricycles to flower pots. * The Times of London reported in December that Bombay (whose name was recently changed to Mumbai) became the first city in India to ban public spitting, which the reporter described as "one of the two most ubiquitous of male habits" in India (the other being public urination). According to the Times, "Boys barely old enough to walk can be heard practicing guttural sounds, which is regarded as macho." * A September Los Angeles Times story described what Argentine writer Tomas Eloy Martinez called the country's obsession with "emotional" necrophilia toward its prominent citizens. Frequently, corpses of luminaries such as Juan Peron are dug up and either celebrated or desecrated, to excite national pride. (The hands of Peron's corpse were sawed off by a zealous grave robber in 1987 and have not been recovered; last fall, a judge ordered Peron's body to be disinterred yet again so that a DNA sample could be taken as evidence in a woman's claim that she is Peron's illegitimate daughter.) * According to a June China Daily story, 40 million Chinese live in caves, but many are leaving for regular houses, putting a strain on the available arable land in some areas. Thus, architects working for the government are designing futuristic cave homes in Gansu, Henan, and Shanxi provinces to encourage the cave dwellers to stay put. ANIMALS * A team of Chinese surgeons from Zhengzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen reported in January that, in a 17-hour operation three months earlier, they had reattached an elephant's trunk that had been severed in an accident and that the elephant was now feeding itself again, though the trunk was 16 inches shorter. * In October, Annie Wald and a partner opened Total Dog, Los Angeles's first canine fitness center. For a fee of up to $800 a year from owners too busy to walk their dogs, the pooches work out on treadmills, in swimming pools, and on an obstacle course, and massages are available. * In August firefighters in Kelso, Wash., listed the official cause of the fire at Matthew Gould's home as Sadie's playing with matches. Sadie, a 5-month-old German shepherd mix had probably gnawed into a box of matches but failed to drool enough to douse the sparks. And in Spencer, Ind., in December, James E. Baker was shot in the heel by his Akita, Boo Boo, which had jumped on the trigger of a 20-gauge shotgun on the floor of Baker's pickup truck as he sat in the driver's seat. UPDATE * In December 1996 News of the Weird reported that Los Angeles County authorities had decided not to charge Texan Robert Salazar in the death of his employee Sandra Orellana, who fell from an 8th floor hotel balcony railing on which the two were, according to Salazar, having sex. In January, after dropping mannequins from the railing to see how they fell and examining the wounds on Ms. Orellana's body, the county coroner called the death a homicide, and police sought Salazar for more questioning. CRIES FOR HELP * In an eight-day period in January in towns less than 100 miles apart (Bakersfield and Fresno, Calif.), police found the corpses of elderly mothers that continued to be treated as integral parts of the family by their adult sons. The Bakersfield woman, who died at age 77 around September, was thought by her son to be merely "demonically depressed" and therefore liable to wake up at any minute and thus had been propped up on the sofa. LEAD STORIES * In January, the owners of KZZC-FM, Tipton, Calif., ended 18 consecutive months of being an all-"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" station, playing various versions of that song all day, 7 days a week (except once, when it played the Eagles' "New Kid in Town" for a whole weekend). The station was pending sale, and the owner needed just to keep the frequency occupied, but negotiations dragged on much longer than expected. * Life Imitates Lawyer Jokes: Because of overcrowding at the Chilliwack, British Columbia, courthouse, jury selection in a January manslaughter case was removed to a local community center, but because of other court business taking place there, jury- selection was further removed to the center's men's room. Said prosecutor Henry Waldock, "When you start holding hearings in a bathroom, I fear it may diminish the respect for the justice system in the eyes of the public." And in Miami, Fla., the gargoyles on the 24th floor of the Dade County courthouse have been suffering since November the dreaded swallows-at-Capistrano-like invasion of several thousand migrating vultures. * The Associated Press reported in January that many handicapped and deformed kids from the village of Murshidabad, India, were being sold by their parents to middlemen who would place them in Saudi Arabia cities as street beggars. For those who didn't have such children but still wanted a piece of the action, the traffickers took on private investors, offering a 50 percent return within a few months. COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS * David Schames, a founder of the Association of Coupon Professionals, explaining to columnist Martin Sloane in November why so many companies have switched from overseas processors to prison-labor processors: "Employee stability is always an issue overseas, but most of the inmates [working for coupon companies] are serving long terms." * Palm Harbor, Fla., elementary school teacher Patricia Locke beat a DUI rap in November, and was reinstated by the school board as a result, when she argued successfully that the reason she appeared disoriented while driving was that a silicone breast implant ruptured and poisoned her nervous system. * In December, Dr. William D. Cone, 71, went on trial on 19 counts of sexual assault in West Plains, Mo., allegedly committed against a 37-year-old female patient. According to the patient, Cone's "re-parenting theory" of counseling (i.e., regressing the patient to the age when parental flaws are prominent and then overcoming them) required him to play the role of her mother and to allow her to suckle him to compensate for her not having been breastfed. * A state Appellate Division court In Albany, N. Y., ruled in January that a trial judge was correct in denying as irrelevant the request of accused rapist Edward Hendrix Jr. to enter into evidence the size of his penis. Hendrix said he thought that size was an important consideration to the issue of whether the woman consented to sex. * Darlie Routier, recently convicted in Kerrville, Tex., of murdering her 5-year-old son, but indignantly insisting that she is innocent: "If I had [killed him], I would be the first person to stand up and say, 'Oh, my gosh!'" * In October, a University of New Hampshire business major, in a letter to the school newspaper, blamed his recent drunken driving on a police crackdown on underage drinking in the University's home of Durham. Because he has to drive to another city to drink, the student wrote, "[I] can expect to be doing a lot more drunk driving." SMOOTH REACTIONS * In November in Lancaster, Pa., comedy club customer Judy K. Strough, seething at insults about where she is from (Arkansas) by comedian Al Romero, walked to the stage and slugged him. Two weeks earlier, comedian Timothy Ward filed a lawsuit in New York City against Prince Ranier of Monaco, who Ward says slapped him during a 1995 show in which he was making fun of the Prince's son's bald spot. * In December, Bowling Green (Ohio) State University instructor Patrick Stearns, 32, was suspended after allegedly punching a 25- year-old student who showed up late for Stearns's class. And in January, the Medical Board of California issued a public reprimand against Dr. Edward A. Thistlewaite of San Marino, Calif., for slapping a 9-year-old boy he was treating for Attention Deficit Disorder. * In September, world-renowned composer Jon J. Polifrone, 59, sent a letter to 2,500 colleagues in classical music announcing he was abruptly quitting the business and limiting the availability of his work, solely because administrators at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (where he is a professor) told him he needs to spend more time on his teaching. (Colleagues interviewed by the Roanoke Times said the VPI review was merely a suggestion and that he was not in danger of losing his job.) * In October in Leonia, N. J., Maria Graef became so enraged that her next-door neighbor's sprinkler was forming a puddle in her yard that she rammed his garage with her car and then barricaded herself in her home for 20 hours in a standoff with police. After attempting several schemes to get her out, police got the idea to turn on Graef's own sprinkler, which enraged her so much that she came running out of the house in her nightgown and was captured and charged with several crimes. UPDATE * In June 1996 News of the Weird reported that the federal government had indicted the sellers of a box with a car-radio- antenna-like device (the Quadro Tracker) that was being sold as a divining rod, for up to $8,000 each, to school officials and small- town law enforcement officers as an aid to finding illegal drugs. The FBI showed that the Tracker was merely a piece of plastic (and besides, it had been offered to golfers as a device to help them find lost balls). In January, after a trial in Beaumont, Tex., the sellers were found not guilty of fraud. UNDIGNIFIED DEATHS * Weight Problems: In January, Michigan state security officer Canute Findsen, 43, was shot to death in Lansing by fellow officer Virginia Rich, 51, but then he shot Rich to death just before he died; police believe Rich was upset that Findsen had made one comment too many about her being overweight. And in January in Providence, R. I., Ricardo Guerrero killed himself rather than face prison for shooting and wounding Johanny Urbaez at a nightclub; according to police, Urbaez had precipitated the incident by referring to Guerrero as "fatso." LEAD STORIES * In 1978 the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum made a "clothesline" hit on New England Patriots' receiver Darryl Stingley's neck, causing permanent paralysis. At the time, Tatum arrogantly defended the play as legal and warned other opponents that they could expect the same. In January 1997, Tatum applied for disability benefits of $156,000 a year from the NFL Players' Association, pointing to the mental anguish he has suffered having to live with the incident. (The $156,000 "catastrophic injury" category is the NFLPA's highest; it is the same category that Stingley is in.) * Dick Shields made the Pittsburgh, Pa., newspapers on his 75th birthday on January 11 for his remarkable recuperative powers. Among the medical traumas from which he has recovered: in a coma near death for a week after a burst appendix; three times a broken neck (once while falling out of bed during recuperation from a previous broken neck); a broken back; triple-bypass heart surgery; a grapefruit-sized blockage of a blood vessel; a fungus that ate the skin off his feet; and duty during World War II that included hand-marking of active mines. Said Shields, apparently without irony: "I'd have to say I've been truly blessed." * Beyond Fingerprints and Earprints: Lavelle Davis, 23, was convicted of murder in Geneva, Ill., in February. Prosecutors showed how Davis and an accomplice rehearsed the murder at the scene just beforehand, including how the accomplice placed duct tape over Davis's mouth just as they would later do to the victim. Davis was linked to the crime scene when his lip prints were found on the piece of tape. THE CONTINUING CRISIS * Member of the First Husbands Club: In October, welfare workers found a 50-year-old man living alone in a cave in Ifsahan province in Iran. According to the workers, he had moved there 30 years ago when his wife dumped him. * Reuters news service reported in October that seven women and eight newborn babies were being held in the King Baudoin Hospital outside Kinshasa, Zaire--some for as long as three months--because they could not pay their maternity bills. Said a hospital official, "We are obliged to use unusual means to force the patients to find the money." * In January, the wife of Dr. Michael Baden--he is the head of the New York State Police's forensics unit--filed papers in her divorce action against him in New York City. (Baden testified on behalf of O. J. Simpson that the victims' knife wounds probably were caused by more than one assailant.) According to his wife's papers, Baden once performed a pair of autopsies on the couple's dining room table, once asked her permission to impregnate his girlfriend, and once told her he could kill her and make it look like a natural death. * In October, a court in Fort Worth, Tex., awarded former patient Jeannie Warren, 23, $8.4 million in her lawsuit against the now-defunct Psychiatric Institute of Fort Worth because of its "rage reduction therapy." The treatment involves restraining the patient and creating a rage "in a controlled and loving environment," said the Institute, so that any underlying anger will be exposed. Warren said that, in two dozen lessons, Institute personnel pinned her down, punched her in the abdomen and ribs, and demanded continually to know what she was angry at. Said Warren, "I couldn't think of anything except, 'You!'" * Pro wrestler Don Harris, 36 (6'6", 275 lbs.), who with twin brother Ron performed as the Bruise Brothers, went to trial in Nashville in January in his lawsuit against plastic surgeon Glenn Buckspan. Harris had wanted his pectorals tightened but wound up with misplaced nipples such that he now says he is mortified every time he takes his shirt off in public and now wrestles only in a vest. * The University of Arizona turned down a $250,000 scholarship gift in November that was to be available to female American Indians. Four-year Sally Keith scholarships would be given on the basis of personality rather than grades, and preference would be given to virgins, a point that caused the University to balk because, said a University official, "We can't dictate morals." * A woman in Seoul, South Korea, identified only as Mrs. Lee, age 35, was granted a divorce in November on the ground that her husband frequently called out his mistress's name while asleep, and made what were described as "diverse" expressions used in lovemaking but which Mrs. Lee said he had never used with her. * Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand morons." * Randy Farmer of a Houston, Tex., suburb was one of the millions of people around the world who felt compelled to welcome in 1997 by firing off a few gunshots just after midnight. Farmer shot at a backyard tree, but then the gun jammed, and he went back inside to unjam it. He mishandled his gun and accidentally shot and killed his 7-year-old daughter. Said Farmer, "God had a hand in this. He had to. It was like God called my baby home to be with him, and God used me as a tool to bring her to him." * On February 21, the Court of Appeal of Singapore ruled that oral sex is illegal as a substitute for "natural" intercourse but permissible if it is merely foreplay leading to such intercourse. The ruling came as part of a decision against a 47-year-old man who had convinced a 19-year-old woman that the only way to disgorge poisons in her system was to perform oral sex on him. THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY * Buffalo State University professor Scott Isaksen, 44, was arrested in December, allegedly in connection with his coursework, which is described in the University's bulletin as "original thinking" and "approaching situations with innovative techniques." According to police, he had given a truant male student the option of writing a paper on stress or actually meeting with Isaksen in private for a series of stress exercises, and the student chose the latter, which included allowing Isaksen to handcuff him and to put a rope around his neck in a motel room. UPDATE * Convicted child molester Lou Torok, who made News of the Weird in 1995 from his Kentucky prison cell for persuading several governors to declare Oct. 7 as "Love Day," has written a "powerful new screenplay," he says, about the Salem witch trial. "One of the main characters, who is believed to have innocently incited the famous trials and eventual hangings of 19 accused witches, is a Carib Indian woman from Barbados, modeled after the personality of Whoopi Goldberg." Torok also says he is working on a second script, "The Burley Boys," "the story of comedian Bob Hope's sponsoring a home for troubled boys in Cincinnati." LEAD STORIES * Medical Breakthroughs: In February, surgeons removed a cataract from the eye of the National Zoo's 6-foot-long Komodo dragon "Muffin" in the hope that she could better see how studly the male "Friendty" was and thus would mate with him. And in January, doctors in Johannesburg, South Africa, performed spinal surgery on a 10-foot-long python, which had been run over by a car. (Contrary to what one's eyes tell us, the python has 306 vertebra and 268 ribs.) And in Jackson, Mich., in February veterinarian Timothy England fitted a stray rooster with artificial legs after he had to amputate his natural ones because of frostbite. * Gas in the News: Janesville, Wis., police responded to a 911 call in December over a domestic disturbance begun, said the wife, when the husband inappropriately passed gas as they were tucking their son into bed. And in January in Perth, Australia, John Douglas Young, 47, was convicted of a child-abuse charge for attempting to hire two boys for $5 each to pass gas in his face so that, according to the man, he could later masturbate to the "mental picture" of the encounter. (Young's unsuccessful defense was in part to recite a long list of movies, literature, and TV shows in which gas-passing was a popular theme, e.g., "Benny Hill.") * In March, Ms. Nadean Cool won a settlement of $2.4 million in her lawsuit in Appleton, Wis., against her former psychotherapist Dr. Kenneth Olson. She claimed that he had first persuaded her that she had a Multiple-Personality Disorder (120 personalities, including Satan and a duck) and then billed her insurance company for "group" therapy because he said he had to counsel so many people. (Olson, seeking greener pastures for his psychotherapy business, had since moved to Montana.) CREME DE LA WEIRD * In October, the Washington Supreme Court reversed on a technicality the conviction of Benjamin R. Hull, who had been found guilty of defrauding the state worker compensation office. Hull admitted that he gpt a friend to help him blast a hole in his left leg below the knee with a shotgun, but insisted it was not to get compensation (he received $96,000) but because the knee has been so painful to him since 1973 after it was injured in an accident. (Five years earlier, he had tried to take the leg off with a chain saw, but got only part-way through because the saw kept malfunctioning.) * In January, the Australian Medical Journal reported a case of lead poisoning by an electrician who chewed electrical cable to satisfy his nicotine urge when he was forced to work in no- smoking buildings. The man said he chewed almost a yard of cable a day for nearly ten years because it had a sweet taste, especially near the center. * Larry Doyen, 22, was hospitalized in December after chaining himself to a tree just outside the town of Mexico, Maine. He was rescued by the state Warden Service after spending two weeks with the tree. It was the third time he had done that in recent months. * In November, a 50-year-old man was arrested in Albuquerque, N. Mex., on a complaint by his 13-year-old stepdaughter that he made her perform a series of bizarre acts written out on index cards and which were supposedly to toughen her in her quest to get a learner's driving permit. According to the complaint, the girl was allowed to drive the truck until the man turned up an index card with an instruction, which she had to follow before driving some more. Among other things, the cards called for her to pour shampoo and dirt into her hair; wear a dog collar; do sit- ups; stand naked in the glare of the truck's headlights; and stand tied to a bar and with a ball in her mouth. FEUDS * Continental Airlines filed a lawsuit in November in Newark, N.J., against Deborah Loeding, who the airlines said endangered passengers in order to get revenge on her ex-husband/pilot. Ms. Loeding had baked him some bread, but unknown to him, had laced it with marijuana so that he would fail the airline's drug test and get fired, which did happen, although he was later reinstated when Continental learned what happened. * In October, a judge in Baton Rouge, La., abruptly called a mistrial in the 8-year-old lawsuit filed by Mary Ann Turner, now 56, against ex-husband (and anesthesiologist) Alan Ostrowe, proclaiming that her testimony was overly theatrical. According to Turner, when she was hospitalized for birth-canal surgery in 1972, Ostrowe, without her permission, persuaded the surgeons to remove her clitoral hood because, according to the couple's eldest son, his father needed to "control my mother's sexuality in order to compensate for his sexual inadequacies." * In Jakarta, Indonesia, in January, Reuters news service reported that a 29-year-old woman, upset with her unfaithful boyfriend (identified only as Tu), went to the crowded karaoke bar where he works and released a half dozen cobras onto the premises. FIRST THINGS FIRST * On an Israeli TV program in January, Hamas militant Rashid Saqqer, who was captured by the PLO last year before he could carry out a scheduled suicide bombing in Israel, waxed rhapsodic about his love of soccer. He said he was such a fan that "I couldn't [kill myself] in [an Israeli] soccer stadium. Yes, they are Zionists [and] unbelievers. But I couldn't do it [there]." * According to Vladimir Zelentin, 40, testifying in January in New York City against his cousin Rita Gluzman, 47, Rita planned the murder of her husband, talked Zelentin into being the hit man, and calmly bought all the murder supplies at Home Depot. However, according to Zelentin, when he went to light up a victory cigarette in her kitchen after the ax-slaying, she screamed at him, "No smoking [in here]!" * The New York Times reported in November on the project by the Picatinny Arsenal in Rockaway Township, N. Y., to create more environmentally friendly bullets while still maintaining the bullets' killing power. (Three years ago, the federal government closed a nearby firing range because spent, leaded bullets were contaminating the soil so as to endanger people and animals.) UPDATE * In 1995 the Brazilian government's AIDS-awareness campaign made News of the Weird because several men named Braulio had complained publicly of their humiliation that the main character in the advertising spots--a talking penis--was named Braulio. In January 1997, the campaign re-emerged with the main character an unnamed, variously-costumed turkey (which is itself a double entendre). LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINAL * In January, Michael Coulter, 32, was arrested for shoplifting in Cookstown, Ireland, having made off with shoes, socks, and boxer shorts. Coulter was not difficult to spot during his getaway. He is reported to be the tallest man in Ireland, at 7- foot-5. Said one officer, "Everyone knows him, and you can see him coming a mile away." LEAD STORIES * Former Gotti crime-family hitman Sammy "The Bull" Gravano cooperated on author Peter Maas's Gravano biography, "Underboss," to be published in April. Despite the fact that Gravano's testimony helped send Gotti to prison for life without parole, and 36 others to the slammer, and despite the fact that he admits to making 19 hits for the Gotti family, Gravano reportedly quit the Witness Protection Program and said he'll take his chances on the street. Though he had plastic surgery after he went underground, he agreed to show off his new face in the book, perhaps, said Maas, because the recently divorced Gravano would like to hear from any interested ladies. * Unclear on the Concept: The Multnomah County, Ore., school system was scheduled to begin in March test-marketing the idea of paying parents of chronic truants to help their kids get to school ($3 if they stay the whole day, $1 for a half day). And in February, the University of Maryland's Student Honor Council, crusading against academic dishonesty, offered local-merchant discount cards to students who pledged in writing not to cheat. (Said a critic, "By the time you get to bribing, you're already pretty far gone.") * Despite a lengthy development period and a year on the market, the Reebok shoe company realized only in February that its new line of Incubus athletic shoes for women was named for a mythological demon who raped slumbering females. And Walgreen's drug stores distributed discount-coupon books nationwide in February to honor Black History Week; among the product specials was skin-bleaching cream directed to the African-American market. FAMILY VALUES * In Woodbridge, Va., in January, a 35-year-old woman was charged with sexual abuse of her son, age 9, and according to police, she also arranged at least one sex instruction session between herself, the son, her daughter, 15, and her boyfriend, 34. According to the boyfriend, she was motivated by wanting to spare her kids from having to learn about sex on the street. (A year ago, she became a grandmother as a result of the boyfriend- daughter liaison.) * Raymond Taylor was sentenced to 40 years in prison in El Paso, Tex., in March after his conviction for attempted murder of his ex-wife. According to trial testimony, Taylor ordered his two kids, ages 10 and 12, to set his ex-wife's house on fire and instructed them how to do it and how to disable the home's smoke detectors. * Parenting License Revocations: According to police in Cairo, Egypt, Ibrahim Mohei Eddin, 40, pushed his 7-year-old son under a moving train and left him for dead at the behest of his brand-new, 23-year-old second wife. (The boy survived, but lost both legs.) And in January, in Williamsport, Pa., David W. Crist, 38, was convicted of pushing his deaf 9-year-old daughter into an oncoming truck in order, said prosecutors, to collect on an insurance policy. (He is also charged with trying to electrocute another daughter in 1990 and hiring a hit man to kill his brother in 1982, all allegedly for insurance money. Both kids survived; the brother didn't.) IRONIES * In October, Richard E. Clear, Jr., 32, was arrested in Tampa, Fla., for shooting his gun toward a neighbor who had complained about Clear's barking dog. Clear runs a martial-arts studio and advertises his experience in "stress management." * In October, the Des Moines Register reported that Daniel Long, 35, had been fired from his job as a greeter at a local Wal- Mart. According to records in the state unemployment appeals agency, Long had called one customer a "snob," told another she had to be "smarter than the cart" to get two carts unstuck, and called another a "fat elephant." * In November, retired police department custodian Jay Pfaff, 73, was fired from his job as school crossing guard because, said a police spokesman, "a number of parents" complained that they were uncomfortable because he was too nice to their children. * Sascha Rothchild, 20, known on campus at Boston College for her trademark five-inch-high platform shoes, clomped hurriedly down the platform at Providence (R.I.) Station in December and leaped unsteadily for her just-departing train. She slipped and suffered a broken pelvis. PEOPLE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME * In October, sewage truck driver Ricky Walter, 19, collided with another vehicle in Waukesha, Wis., pinning Walter inside and sending his load directly into the cab of his truck. Walter was forced to marinate for half an hour before rescue workers got to him. * In Lincoln, Neb., in February, two men attempted to shoplift shoes from an Athlete's Foot store, but a clerk and the manager ran them down outside. Clerk Dave Olson is captain of the University of Nebraska men's track team, and manager Robb Finegan is an Olympics-class marathoner. And two weeks earlier, near Warsaw, Poland, highway robbers forced off the road a car in which the coaches of the Belarussian and Russian biathlon (skiing and shooting) teams were riding. Following right behind, however, was the teams' bus, and as all of the athletes grabbed rifles, the robbers quickly scurried away. * On September 29 in rural northeast Vermont, the car in which Michael O'Keefe, 44, was riding was hit by a 700-lb. moose. O'Keefe was taken for treatment of cuts and returned to the road a few hours later in his own truck, which was then hit by another moose. UPDATE * In 1995 News of the Weird reported that the European Court of Human Rights had agreed to examine whether Britain's assault convictions against three men for engaging in consensual sado- masochism orgies (in which severe pain was inflicted on the genitals of apparently grateful recipients) were oppressive. In February 1997, the Court decided not to intervene, saying Britain had a right to protect its citizens from themselves, analogizing to the requirement of motorcyclists to wear helmets. THINNING THE HERD * Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger. And in February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles. LEAD STORIES * In February, a California Court of Appeal upheld the 1995 ruling of a judge in Marin County that admitted to probate the will of Sam Zakessian, leaving $2 million to his girlfriend rather than to relatives. The lower court was persuaded that scribblings on a 4"x 4" piece of paper contained the deceased's instructions, despite their being hard to read in the first place and then overwritten with what appear to be obliterations. The court said the overwrites were Mr. Zakessian's initials written 21 times (some rotated, some sideways, some upside-down), three different dates (one sideways over three lines of text), and two signatures written diagonally. The appeals court conceded that the will "is not easily described." * In March, the New York Times reported on a recent spate of what it called really bad Japanese TV shows, among them one in which bikini-clad young women attempt to crush aluminum cans by squeezing them between their breasts and another in which a young child was brought on stage and told that his mother had just been shot to death--for the purpose of seeing how many seconds would elapse before he started crying. Said a leading TV critic, "The more nonsensical [the programs] are, the more interesting I find them." * The Los Angeles Times reported in February on a dramatic business success: the astute marketing decisions by Colombian drug cartels to increase their market share in U. S. heroin sales. The cartels at once reduced price, to bring in more retail customers, and increased quality, so that HIV-phobic customers could achieve an adequate high by smoking rather than risk disease from injecting with sometimes-dirty needles. The U. S. government estimates the Colombians have now captured two-thirds of the East Coast market despite producing only 2 percent of the world's heroin. OBSESSIONS * Larry Bottone, a coach, teacher, and private tutor of kids for almost 20 years in Norwalk, Conn., pleaded guilty in October to a charge of child pornography based on a videotape of himself with a teenage boy. According to the police, other videos showed Bottone whipping nude, blindfolded boys, sticking objects under their fingernails, and rubbing their bodies with hot olive oil. Bottone contended that he was conducting serious research into how much punishment someone could endure when asked by an authority figure. * Jason Christopher Zepeda, 19, in a holding cell following his arrest for graffiti vandalism in Fremont, Calif., in February, was re- arrested when sheriff's deputies noticed on a TV monitor that he was writing his name all over the walls of the cell. * Michael Ronson, 23, was sentenced to five months' probation in Brantford, Ontario, in October for violation of a previous probation by again smearing an unsuspecting woman with shaving cream. He is once again forbidden to possess any "compressed-air- impelled shaving cream container." * Carlton Bradley, 56, was indicted in November in Plattsburgh, N.Y., for stealing underwear from a certain neighbor woman. According to police, over a three-year period and stealing one item at a time, he had amassed 42 bras, 41 pairs of underpants, and 14 negligees. * In a radio interview in February, a woman in London, England, said treatment at the Great Ormond Street children's hospital had finally cured her 7-year-old son of his three-year habit of eating nothing but jam sandwiches (strawberry or raspberry, on white bread). His fear of other foods was such that he would tremble and sweat and become nauseous at the sight of them. * In February in Charlotte, N.C., skydiving instructor J. C. Cockrell lost by default a lawsuit filed by a former student, Erin Crabtree, 21, who had accused him of fondling her breasts during a tandem jump in which he is harnessed to her and she must hold on to the parachute lines above her head. NOT MY FAULT * In February, credit union manager Cathleen Byers, charged with 83 counts for embezzling $630,000 over a six-year period, told a Eugene, Ore., jury, through her lawyer, that her hands may have taken the money but that her "heart, mind, and spirit" were innocent, because some other personality within her did it. According to the prosecutor, only a handful of multiple-personality cases have ever been diagnosed in Europe, versus "tens of thousands" in the U. S. * Kurt Irons, 28, was arrested in December in Wausau, Wis., and charged with vehicular homicide. Reportedly, Irons was driving a stolen truck and had been drinking and crashed head-on into another truck, killing a 37-year-old woman. According to the Marathon County Sheriff's report, Irons was surprised that he was arrested, saying, "Dudes, it's just a girl, man. It's a girl, nothing but a girl." * Jeremy Dean and his parents, of Burney, Calif., filed a lawsuit in January against Shasta County for at least $700,000 for Jeremy's total disability that resulted from a car crash. Dean and some friends had been out drinking. Dean was in the back seat of a car and had stuck his head out the window to vomit just as the driver veered off the road ramming Dean's head into a tree. The lawsuit claims that it was the county's fault that the tree was so close to the road. * In November, Gallup, New Mexico, high school football player Gilbert Jefferson, 18, was arrested after he reacted to his ejection from a game (two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties) by tackling a referee, causing the man to flip over and land on his head, knocking him unconscious. Four days later, Jefferson's mother Darlene told reporters it was the referees' and coaches' fault: "[Gilbert] has no bad temper. My son has never been that type of boy." It's just that he "was tired and frustrated." CAN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE * According to a recent Walt Disney World newspaper advertisement, an Ashland, Ohio, couple, Bill and Vicky Meredith, have been journeying to the park since 1974 and spend 10 days of every month there, staying in the same room at the Caribbean Beach Resort. UNDIGNIFIED DEATH * According to police in Dahlonega, Ga., ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flak vest Berrena was wearing. LEAD STORIES * Saddam Hussein filed a libel lawsuit in February in Paris against the magazine e Nouvel Observateur for its September 1996 story in which he was described by other Arab leaders as stupid and incompetent and referred to, among other things, as an "executioner," a "monster," a "murderer," "a perfect cretin," and a "noodle." * In March, a judge in York, Pa., sentenced a woman to a first- offender rehabilitation program for assaulting her 10-year-old son by giving him what she called a "titty twister." According to a police report, she asked the boy, "What's worse than a tornado?" and then pinched and twisted his nipples, causing soreness and noticeable damage. * In February, the electric co-op in the Philippine province of Illocos Norte shut off power to the refrigerated crypt of former president Ferdinand Marcos because his wife, now a member of the legislature, is about $215,000 behind in the electricity bill. The government will not permit Marcos to be buried in Manila because he was suspected of having appropriating billions of dollars during his 20-year reign that ented in 1986. Shutting off power, said Mrs. Marcos, was "the ultimate harassment, the harassment of the dead." THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT * Each December for four months, the Ice Hotel residential igloo opens in the Lapland region of Sweden, housing about 40 people at about $130 a night for a double room, and with a bar, restaurant, conference facilities, and a bridal suite. Room temperatures range from 27-45 degrees F, and sleeping bags are used, cushioned by spruce boughs and reindeer skins. * According to a trade association of prostitutes in Harare, Zimbabwe, massive layoffs in the economy have led to an oversupply of women taking up prostitution and a reduction in men's spending power, causing them either to ignore prostitutes or to visit bars only to drink and flirt before going home to the wife. To save their jobs, the association recommended in January that prostitutes raise their price from about $2.80 to about $4.60 but also requested that wives loosen the pursestrings to allow husbands to spend more when they go out. * The Associated Press reported in February on the Time Machine lounge in Tokyo, and the "relief room" at the Yamanakako resort, in which stressed-out workers pay from about $80 to $125 for a few minutes of satisfaction by smashing fake ceramic antiques in a museum-like sitting room. Often, say the proprietors, the names of tyrannical bosses or unfaithful spouses will be yelled out as the destruction takes place. * A February Associated Press story described how two mid- career, Berkeley, Calif., professionals (nurse Raphaela Pope, 52, and lawyer Sam Louie, 36) became prosperous telepathic "pet psychics." Pope charges $40 per half-hour by telephone, which sometimes includes talking directly to the pet. Said one of her customers, "I learned [from Pope] that Scarlette [the cat] thought I didn't want her around. Scarlette changed immediately after talking [sic] to Raphaela, and we're happy again." * Locksmith Harley Hudson filed a claim for damages against the city of Wenatchee, Wash., in November, saying that he is due about $250,000 in damages for lost business because the friendly police department helps for free motorists who lock themselves out of their cars. Hudson calls this kindliness an "unconstitutional gift of public funds." I'VE GOT MY RIGHTS * In February, the Palm Springs (Calif.) Regional Airport Commission issued hygiene rules for cab drivers serving the airport, including requiring drivers to shower daily with soap, brush with toothpaste, and eat breath mints. After vociferous complaints, the Commission softened the specifics on "fresh breath" and "pleasant body odor." Said cabbie Ken Olson to the Commission, "You're not my mother." * Six nurses at a government health care for the disabled facility in Barrie, Ontario, were fired in December for disobeying new countywide rules that required them to provide sexual assistance to their patients (e.g., helping them masturbate, positioning couples for sex, assisting to put on a condom). In January, the agency said it would reconsider the rules, but the women remain jobless and have filed a lawsuit. * In November, the European Commission on Human Rights rejected the appeal of Manuel Wackenheim, aka "The Flying Dwarf," whose stage show was banned in France because it consisted of allowing customers to pay to toss him around. Wackenheim said his show "is part of a French dwarf tradition," but authorities said it "damages human dignity." * According to an October Chicago Tribune report, Illinois and most other states interpret the federal "motor voter" law to require mental health agencies to help all clients register and vote in national elections, even those with mental ages down to 5 or 6. The only ones who cannot vote are clients formally declared by a court to be mentally incompetent (about half of Illinois agencies' clients). One woman in the Tribune story, now qualified to vote, took 20 minutes to write her first name at the registration desk; another was registered despite the fact that his only communication ability seemed to be to repeat the last words he hears. Relatives fear the clients will be ridiculed at the polls and that agencies' personnel, while "assisting" them to vote, will simply complete the ballots as they wish. * In February, the staff of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission found that The Cafe, a gay and lesbian bar, had illegally discriminated in an August incident in which a straight man and woman were ushered out the door for smooching too heavily. According to a witness, the bartender told the couple, "What you're doing is very offensive to people here," even though gays and lesbians freely make out on the premises. (The Cafe says it has since adopted a policy barring heavy kissing by anyone.) CHUTZPAH * In November, attempting to influence an Arlington, Va., jury to give him a light sentence for 20 counts of credit card fraud, Oludare Ogunde, 28, at first asked for mercy but then said the jury should keep him out of prison because if he were locked up, he would just teach other inmates--the "hardened criminals"--how to commit credit card fraud. "And," he reminded the jury, "we're trying to prevent crime in America." UNDIGNIFIED DEATH * In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, Calif., as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the large flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) crammed against the base of his skull as he hit the floor.	i don't know
Mixing yellow and blue paint produces what color?	��ࡱ�>�� qs��jkr��q` �� bjbjqPqP 48:: ��@@@T<<<<4p,TI'�� &�&�&�&�&�&�&$ )hs+p�&@ �0 �&��)' 4�l�@��& �& V�%@,@D&�� f쀵w�<5 L�% �&'0I'�%x�+� ��+D&�+@D&� �&�& I' TTTX�TTTXTTT�� Mixing Colors Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if there were no colors? What if there were only a few colors? It would probably be a very boring world compared to the one we live in now. Everyday you are surrounded by many different colors that come in different shades and hues. These are the results of color mixing. Today, we are going to learn about two different types of color mixing: additive color mixing and subtractive color mixing. Mixing Color Lights Mixing color light is called additive color mixing because the combined colors are formed by adding light from two or more light sources, which will give more illumination than any of the lights by themselves. In other words, the brightness of the lights is added together. For example, adding green light and blue light produces cyan light, which is brighter than its two components. Like in painting, all colors of light can be made from mixing three primary colors. Do you know the primary colors for light? In painting, the three primary colors are yellow, blue, and red, but for light they are RED, GREEN, and BLUE. Red and green light make yellow light. Green and blue light make cyan light. Blue and red light make magenta light. What do you think Red + Green + Blue light make? What is the brightest color of light Mixing color lights is used in theatre performances to create a dramatic effect. It is also used in television and computer monitors to create the full range of colors that give you the colorful cartoons or video games that you see and play. Mixing Paint Mixing paint is a kind of subtractive color mixing because different colors of paint absorb different colors of light. Any color that is not absorbed or subtracted from the light will reflect off the paint. We can only see the reflected color. For example, cyan paint alone will subtract red light. Yellow paint alone will subtract blue light. A mixture of cyan and yellow paint will then subtract both blue and red light. Because the primary colors of light are red, blue, and green, we will see the reflected green light if we mix cyan and yellow paint. Black paint absorbs all light and white paint reflects all light. Subtractive painting also allows us to see the difference in shade, such as the difference between red and dark red. Remember that dark red paint is made from black and red paint. Black light absorbs all light so it subtracts green, blue, and red light. Red paint subtracts only green and blue light. So, dark red paint will subtract green, blue, and some red light so will look darker than red paint alone. Can you explain why if we mix green and white paint, we get a lighter green? What do you think the primary colors of mixing paint is? Surprisingly, it is not the yellow, red, and blue that we expected. It is actually cyan, magenta, and yellow. Your color printer at home actually uses these three colors to make the colorful pictures that you print out! How do you see color? In our eyes are color receptors that get triggered when a certain light is reflected into our eyes. These color receptors are called �cones,� and we have green, red, and blue sensitive cones that help us see colors in this world. Experiments: Today, we will be working with subtractive color mixing through mixing paint and also through mixing colors with the color sensitive cones in your eyes. Mixing Paint What you need: Paper Plate Paintbrush Cup with water Red, Yellow, Blue, White Paint What you do: Get a some red, yellow, blue, white paint. On a blank spot on your plate, add a little Red paint to Yellow Paint. What color do you get? (Make sure to use the water to clean your paint brush so you don�t get other colors on your stock colors) On another blank spot, mix a little of Red and Blue paint. What color do you get? Now mix a little of Blue and Yellow. What do you get? Mix all three together. What color do you expect to get? Can you explain why you get this color? Now mix some white to one of your colors. What happens? Why? Try to make your favorite color with the given colors. Mixing Colors With Your Eyes What you need: CD with a penny Paper Scissor Crayons/Markers What you do: Take the paper and cut out a circle as big as the CD. Divide the circle into 8 sections by straight lines from the edge through the center of the circle. Choose two colors and color in the eight sections in alternating order. After you are done coloring, cut a small slit in the center of the circle big enough to fit in the penny on the CD. Slide the paper onto the CD with the penny. Spin the CD. What do you see? Now try it with two different colors. What do you expect to see? Now try it with three different colors. What do you expect to see? Benham�s Disc Now, let�s try something really cool. This pattern is called the Benham�s Disc and only uses black and white colors. Cut it out and cut a small slit in the center to fit it onto the CD with a penny and spin it. What do you see? Unfortunately, scientists are still trying to explain this phenomena. No one really knows why we see the colors that we do, but it shows how color mixing is really cool! Questions 1. What are the three primary colors in the additive color mixing system? What are the three primary colors in the subtractive color mixing system? 2. Why do you make black if you mix all the paint? 3. Why do colors become lighter if you add white paint and darker if you add black paint? 4. What are the color sensitive receptors in our eyes? > ] � � � � � � � � o p q � � � ^ / 0 (/4��򶧘�y�k�k�k�kYJ hb>OJPJQJnHtH#h�.lh�.l>OJPJQJnHtHh�.lOJPJQJnHtH hENGhENGOJPJQJnHtHhENGOJPJQJnHtH hI�>OJPJQJnHtH hENG>OJPJQJnHtHjh�F�UmHnHu#hI�hI�5�OJPJQJnHtHh� 6OJPJQJnHtHh�:OJPJQJnHtHhI�OJPJQJnHtH� � � p a 1 '(7�� $��`��a$gd�N� $��`��a$gdENG$a$gdENG$a$gdENG ��46789@Ek\��õ��ͧ�ygY�E&h�N�h� 65�>OJPJQJnHtHh�N�OJPJQJnHtH#h�N�h�F�>OJPJQJnHtH#h�N�h�N�>OJPJQJnHtHh�:OJPJQJnHtHh�F�OJPJQJnHtHhbOJPJQJnHtHh�.lOJPJQJnHtHh�.lPJnHtHjh�F�UmHnHu#h�.lhI�>OJPJQJnHtH#h�.lhENG>OJPJQJnHtH��pq~�� (_�� $ & Fa$gdENG $ & Fa$gd��$a$gd�F $a$gdENG��'Gdopqx}~�� 7:��<@z��г��vhZv�vhvhvhvhvhvLh�"OJPJQJnHtHh�F OJPJQJnHtHh�y�OJPJQJnHtHh��OJPJQJnHtH h��>OJPJQJnHtH h3m�5�OJPJQJnHo(tH h� 65�OJPJQJnHtH h3m�5�OJPJQJnHtHhc�OJPJQJnHtHh�N�OJPJQJnHtHh� 6OJPJQJnHtH&h�N�h�F�5�>OJPJQJnHtH ��+789:WYik\|}��ȷ��o[M8)jh�;�>OJPJQJUmHnHuh�F�OJPJQJnHtH&jh�9OJPJQJUmHnHu#h�F�h�F�>OJPJQJnHtH)jh��5�OJPJQJUmHnHu#h�F�h�F�5�OJPJQJnHtH h��5�OJPJQJnHtH h�;�h�;�OJPJQJnHtHh�;�OJPJQJnHtHh�"OJPJQJnHtHh�y�OJPJQJnHtHh3m�OJPJQJnHtH9:Wi\|��H�1S��$a$gdZH� $ & Fa$gd�F�$a$gdENG $ & Fa$gdENG}~��S�� ޾��veދWF1)j�h#ph�EIOJPJQJUnHtH h�F�h5y�OJPJQJnHtHh5y�OJPJQJnHtH h�F�h�-OJPJQJnHtH)jh#ph�-OJPJQJUnHtHh�-OJPJQJnHtH&h�EIh�-5�>OJPJQJnHtH h�N�5�>OJPJQJnHtHhZH�OJPJQJnHtH#h�F�h�F�>OJPJQJnHtHh�F�OJPJQJnHtH&jh��OJPJQJUmHnHu�� $ % & ' ( ) + , - . / d e f g h i j k l ��$a$gd5y�$a$gdENGl m n � � � � � � � ��$a$gdKg4 $�h^�ha$gd5y�$a$gd5y� ��베뜋 h�F�h5y�OJPJQJnHtHhKg4#h�Lh�EI>OJPJQJnHtH,j�h#ph�EI>OJPJQJUnHtHh�;�h�EIPJnHtH)j�h#ph�EIOJPJQJUnHtHh�EI h<~h�EIOJPJQJnHtH 21�h:p�D� ��/ ��=!��"��#��$��%�� Dd �!��0� � # � A��b�~�Ls݉#Ũ]��Ѝ��Z�D� n �R�Ls݉#Ũ]��Ѝ��PNG IHDR��͆�sRGB�� IDATx^��w�M] ~?&�D 1��PD��^Dz�H�]��T�Dzｋ��;H)R,H,(�$�D��2��9{f�i�� uΞ�i;s�5�6_��-��K,=��L=��f�g�f遥� Xz�=��2� Xz`�9{`A�9{s�k遥� XPuK,=��=��ꜽ��K\|�b� ��/��'��?W��گ�ڌկ��q� �8ǿ��0k��\| n� ��=�A��_��?�g��/.r��グ��.�� p�_��4��?��K�NP,�z�^��j�g��Ї>tb��y�s~۷}P��%/�-��-��~ы^�,g9��o��M��M��<��Z=��2$� ��>��r��+��\|��+\� `��7�!!��-R��;�f��)\|��g�yf��6��J7��$�Q!g�w��Y)�~��_�W<�y��}��}��_K-�T=�W�T��>�~��-@��io��Fۃ��OP� �� ĵ�9�y��{��{��]^��`"��=��joD�[wֳ��W��կ~u_�{� ]��;c�KV'��z2�� lE�;h�8h&��h��e龲,�)��m��#�o��o>�� s��7��M?��O� n�.5�I,\u'ݼ2�v�U��n�_��_� _�[��[i��q�k �s��sD=��U�{��ޘ`$�>\Е!�G��u�{�K]��GJ@�u��)n킪�� v� W�I�:�H��l�� np��_��ZkgMX �K,��n_ �� Ǹ�S��'u�s��3/��:׹�mo{[[s�w��Pz`A�CyK=Z=�{��{�@t�ċ��Qt#��=��=�?��~겗�l\��'�U��Mo��U�H�P�� T-��U/��f<�ٓ1�T=�� _� �� #m�}?��. �n ��u�k��ַ��?��\��oݖ�'��;py\|[=��?�? �TM��n\|��m+A ��z`Aգ{e��GY W=-��GVN2�l��mns�Y��'�� x[1�� `�7v��w~�w^��ٟ�Y1��5=viT=��aE��o��[��Q��gA�� u�=��!��S]7�U�"��G< �m�� a�r��v��$��DW9��Ơ��g��M��d��r��.P��\|�$ie�D��޽�١�è߂�� Ztz��?�Dt��t�� Ώ�q�{ ��ԧNI� Q3T=��u��c��"��d�<�)��%�p�;�� U�� t��: ��ק?�闻�� G��o��X2 � ��呥� ��?��<�B��u��gA��R�� u\ 4Z^1��iQ��_��/4-�qu�I�킪'�m��PR�%��N�5��AB�� [ ��ǋ��<��,OM�U��{��j�ɮ��~�o�'��?�� ^��{Z��ˠ8� �Dtt�G-jO �X׻��^�W�k �>q�Z\|�N�+=�ѱ�Q��bJU�m��~Md��i͡ה�� K^�K<�m��U��ç.�h��u�"�:�YG�K ��WBRi>��AH�8��\|a�~trխ��"ʁ�볟��%��v��1�V+�d~�=��'��~�}�k�M( U�P��j�Sn�: R˸��o�v��O}�S�Ϳ�7�8�� W=�wtp5�e��g>��o��M��w��_��_��_昩uh~)a��?��? y�R�I�&k��\|�i��~��;�Ј��W��љ�� .pA��]v� @B��\|'�D9��>�� !�m��m R�� Rf//��կ~uw��?�Y��# ��H��6N��+0��̰Nۨ�j{T�j� k�X� ��o��w�k��[��[��~��7��ցKp0�-��l��ߋ$��?��ּm�xJ�_P��f�� x�[��G�hS��< %a��B�9��k_��}�GNW��D �Ї~��x�C�O^��X�mq�+_�y�{�M�ĺ-��UO�0�7�F_򒗈)��~�s�+=b��"�� n@�v��ټc�;8L�{r�I}UC5QC�W��e�׽�g��͕�,�V��'g`\|�K_zֳ��x� ) }�ހ��ݳvj�0��^��d�&��E.r��G��_��K>{��E/zQD�4W�/��(�lE�e��\U�W��?�%9̷� :��ş��'x�C \��_:�h�}4@%�eQ��'R�ۏS� �m�� ICZҠ�g?��QQ:}�\|�+\��>Ma��O��)��dX?�� .~�#^ĔG��=�i7�� qݸp�q�� aT�ir�DFY, �s��<��x�ǿ��җ��R��8�~�� !i�#��i�P��bI�eFQ�z��@� �� T�RQ�� =��4��5۩�� B}�� �3��dlHK�;��4�X�5�y�{��^�f�8��/{�� u�J�$��o��f�R��F�:��G?�� i�J++E�i�Y@�.�$;��T�}~>+��~�n��^�ɪ�U��w�3l=Y��zkT�z�X\{��׼ƶ��hr�s�ֵ�%��9� �� `��Ħ�� ixm�L ˁn�� ;��SV��ǭi� i R�)��]� �׬Aso�hbP�',1�x��c��1o{��R�S�"~��<)�SUh�� &PE�Þ��>�y+~��"vN��9S�)P�,��\|U�P��/ ��P��a��Ԭ.�,�zիv? ��U�e��F7��Ŷ�g��s�8��i,��;��N�m{cD��M ` ߜxr��TP"I B��i�r�b��S�� 8�qrc�U�U��o�9i��^��R?:}��4d�/�i哟�d{7��L��6g��<�1l��&vc�v�ʂ�M��oS��q�%.��wD<�'2ŏ��E~ʒ�^H�h��g5ŏ�N��9�L�zjψ�W~�W<��e` ��J�Ha��Щ� �'��݋��о��z��o�G�H��n{��_�W�W�%<}�+_�(7H��>`�V�h X�2�g�� ]��,�~��;]��R�?� W=IH4�-5� R ��=�q>�v\�Uw��8��܍�i�DI6a(�� `+� {5�H��V��j́�)Oy ��b�{kꨂY�ND��,��益\|2 ZPu��վ��'�O��ƥ/}i��A=�K �hQF1�g��&A�ʺ��_��p��Md�C�`�ݦ�We�{:A�[�U��Tw=��Uw�B� I�m8W�8�2�f ��>�@E!l�\xJ��]��s�~��~��ܻk�vJ?��,��y։L��pL�.��35J�De��]�/��-�c �L@�`�u��[9�^�(xj��&ފ )v��3~��yw��C�XPu#�J�+��/��\|��(sZPu��)� 95�D��$��8�-�� xJ�݋��w?~�v��DWA')Y��HM��qm��E/ ,�F�w ��Mռ �%�}9� e[I��V��dj��j�;�y��:̒�~�H%�)�)P��"��z�[޲N~�ى@ �K2��v�{��mo{[챑SZ)6�Mq$�RZqR��-��U�� y �T��RK�R�p��"��mns�{��֟N8�6��Zlt˃z�f��F�cypA��H�uT�#��pJ�D��)��$���Mozӕ!Q�Y1�xC��LE��?/ �֗��D�Ke6�T��>�j��:�@��g�F��ָ`(��4��a�j�3̷��bAթ�Od �v��%GSJ��/��>a�B� &+ƧI,��~�5�a7IęZ�� taq%P��;�6 (�"Y�� ЛZ�U�� \|� ^� �X� ��"�O�)A}��w-��Ĭr�e��.֦�ߓ �+hK&��+V8�Sp�o�A>IPps^mU?� � i=�d2�� q�UjAՑ]ik��4Z)s��O��{�'/ ��yh(C�w��+ ��P�볝��wI�N�W �� Ox���:�\Bt�@�gK�E��`h#R/{��7�� [Pu�[bZO��{3��xD�E�~��7�t�3��Z�o �M}��QW��C�e�9:��k�cjy��0G��L��G��ݥV"c��Ǒ�ܶF'&g[`�# �k��7+��T�� {�g<�6�a@➬[��A͋��"SⓜʁJ�I\|��']�WZ`p�� ׍- ��h��:+x]��YPuFX��_?�QYU�U��$�W�ZF��$��7�'��9�� @�55s�C��f��Q��$ �� <�)�u�kX�NPj U"�{�j]tkn盠�R��\|\|��˵� �B��g��1�OMYP��NqF;n��r9��m��z��Ŕ�� =�a��>�)�T_Ֆ?^�\|� " Ֆ��#O8v��SE�Z]F�j/"&ny6��B�../ n1�h�VYy��}�CzAկ�AVMd�~�� )� =��a_^6�i�SC��m�AE��< =9��\|FT��8i�s��%6��zs�N�Ԝ�-Tm=^��+�� PC�֡��غ ��u��8r��iGUV��hX��Y?�O�{�x�BO��%H��n� �R�M�-ͳ��}�;<]�W]8��P8� �D[� w��He�W��:M��$�Y /v�� (�T��ৎ!�.�Ǚ��ԜkS��y�s��~��nR.]��w�v 8FBں��2�ʎ�0��6�W ��:�4/��?;�� XJeb�^&LM� �/\|� v+�ʈ4"k�I/zы��:f��j��K�UITb�փ[��Q5�Ļd�5cã�� T��5��~��q�:T%K=�9Α��b�杽�կ΋�[G]9��) ��O�v+ ,Qi�� CX,�_F'��pʈW��$EIv�h%�� 3�B��6�� z�X�rǠ9oŘ�B Տ��<-��#O"%!�Y��!��>�9�q'6��SR�('��w�c��CHY��}��ī�!�� ;Dz/CWm�W ��kfr Ŧs�f-�Ng�}��4d�(9��l ��̍�� T�.��t /��,S�+w�R=�2�3`e��>J\|6X�$��]? �WnB[�Ysԍî&A$A��"�e��D"��G _T�M��t��H�-xmeEL�%#�֪��M�^�yj{�爫hD5��Ҝ\|TE��J�� ?5�i��\�S��s� G��E>Q��y�q�3�8#ӘەsSᥞ�:{��A1G͝^��L�y]X�S�K�f�hƺO��D��8D��)�zֳ ��' U�B�rB�lc~�;ܡ�Tw�9��Q��(u\|� �Pj��e.s�� D-��\|6�� wh� @a��c��e_Y��C��CA 㚠��aοTͫ��d8�v��>ٞ=�ǣp�>ɨ: Hy^�5�q��ԯ�h��_��^�"w��7]�{8� UE&K��hOqo��h�W��S��0AJ�f��T4[�&<��W�D�.�l�&�-�7_�\|� �+��K�Z�ZY� ��r�ȣ��/�b��6o�'UY�s9E$�I.:�\|��a��z�� yŦʼes�<�V��t��o�T�r��y�A��<�j��t s��=�yu;#b] �C��`hS�tk��Z� a+E-(i��>��)z�3X�2^��L�� A՚�a (�L)��u��'U�; ��(p_��r)T]9=�,U �~��h�-�Q��k�P�X �P!TUqSpf-O��^=��yA��Y�RR��XIl�l�]5�ZH�� 1\|�PU Nv}�C�8=�s��P R�7�e^$J�l�"K-�N�N�rf%�5օ!�YU�W%UX��;��\|�4��&�j�l%[�3��9��xZ��f�\|��$��6 p�}Ϯ�x��y��x�W�{ H�D�R�"l\|\| Ӝ�_��;�f��䠪��Bg�� \|�sG�� <¸�9��y�n�Ґ@abS��3�7a��w��;R L��e��d��\�� 3�{�wwh�u �؛��I@U� @��Y��2�Ѕ� �M�svXEZZ�o�R��A ��f� v V� � ��:k G=q��<�=��-��K�_?5�� qzVn� �J)M+Z+�S��:��dUpj ��=S�y��+ӗ~��%��N/��8 ��I@�'?��^$��Ѕ.$B�^ 5Ǣ@�8P��2��۽��֊�D�A�(�e��M��"d��a�"�� U ��xڄ��`48;z��<��1MMz��/Y��&YM��B�B�m�g��ͯ��,izx1��{��q��dG��"Ka4�gTOP�D?�4�z~V��R �mu�訤��h�D�fbG��j� W��\n�fE�% �JYj��r>��q?RʜMn�YD��g�M=�E�65/9�p��{��k�Ly\��MV��4 ��p 7�:�D<�Q<��[�ٟ�ǧ��@��~ꧼ'�T�l��!��P�ǧ�o%K��k�.�� u��UYV��&⌞��{&s ��#h �6�m��Kqm{��-�J�>K�� g ��Ѡj�� %� -\|��BJ_��7� �"9-��Z��TvW�-�a��~��)kd� ��/��{�GG��,E%R�� ׺ֵrG�S �c��}�� u�s��~ ��q��R�D��?H�:�7,�Eu��NI��h�� pt�V��iQ�`�l��]��Ǡ�%�܌t55)�[�8'�w ik=�A�u�\��5l�&��5��ȇ3�XQ��w\|�wP��7a� Mz�� {��^�CR�v��@m�VK,�!KZ� �Z6��G�?w�R��ŋ��\�n��җ�$��w�7��3ϼ�5��f7�3"s�eS�D�L��̺�4V� J�9~��" �X0%�"�m��g��mlݺ�)�K�Y����5��se�C� %��Q��XA��5��a:�'qj���q�T��6?�,� ��\���i�nw��RM�\|�+sa��ɇP��\|��c�e�^�i9?�_/ќ��m�m&�f[��2�R�r l,U��dDf��G x�+c/�$�ٴ% �3��9��Az��\p��E �ڕ�~� ��"5ܜ�J��26� x��=�q�pR�\|��o}�L�Qՠ��o��o~��bN�lP[�䀖rH͐B��T�Є�4{T\|��eD�rIj�3��1 [�ގ鑔>��D3��Y�-��se��d��Ks�'��p��NP�U}��:XP/`]j��qp��QuK�\�b�Kf��7"��WQS�DEy"C�LwvQ~�]ڭCX(y��޶eo!��B�$p�m> ��o2?�яNqu�-R i��4ߢ��8X��~/}�Ku��7�QB�\|љ��_$�j��\|�n�w��D_�w�v��5ᣥ^ 7{�[��c�BZWs? ��fj{S� `�i��@��s\!��J��VW��H] ��3P�7��=2T��xM5!NM\|�K_��9��Oz�Ǜí%ˌ��^(��! ��& �@^Eب �q3� M>��X� ��L�#�� P��a�� S�3؊��=�/��ɵ�j�h�]��k�gsگ܁ʼe�_��EߺYq�L�� ;�փ- ��j��l�[я�~��] ݥ�]�]�KCӔ��ڮ�a.�]��1��uL��،�!�g<�� 4d��Q�]� ΢99��\�1�^��o�o��&7 �ڷFtR�Ru.x'p�N��>닝TwQ!�fY��P��K�ҫ��>a��f ʣ�q��]{՞ٸ S��3?�z��)��[�Q'DP�.R��S+��k��DJP��+l݈Y��Ǉ��jh��5��\>T�A��ofr��L�n��~ 4�`f�Q.�z�\|d�ݽg��3?�3 Ո�ԥ.+ԧ=�i6�.��뉿�wN��i��E��?��6�C�K�)Oy r��["H�� f�%=!�]�\C��[ �ԏ��<�eCZ�.oq�[�v��IoK�{?��C��g�^��i`�`]��}��ma��x� ��\ϕ�� e��Rb�ע�M��n� ��FTme�^�ǇB�D��=D� � X��\)�UMH�ށ��(�P2��`�uT��(X��9��6�^�� A]�"p4��l/ ��U�zU��`�N��]m��VX�2�MH؇�� {mm�U��P/bE�c��`pӥ�[��u󤉆�x͔-��iٟ�IHKJ7{��'�Ol6g#�oLЬ^�-�<�V��Z��I�D��7��9 ��BgLBG�Ĕ�`4A��?�S@X�؊Em�K q�=�yO��A��<\��&q�1��k�A)�2a�ẻE��u,� �pҏ�7��w�� 1��i ��ŬQVE� ��aZ�;��7��M� �$��wD��2f��L��+9f�$��@��S��V�zPքV�Wv{�s��ֈk{�2�� :��Je�Kp�ĶQ�J�nĦbs�s��-�Qe�S��v�}O ��D�X��A�]�d׸�5v��m�� 85��k)oѰN�� u�6J�/�F��uJ9��d��b,W���X%[��`��ꭌ�fyc��L΂P��.k&dkI�앐�f�¥c�Yj�� :��A�urƕN�ದ[�&C�'�:T�/bƔ ��Q�>��J�D��S�s��J��s+�d˅7EZ�cweJ��/VT^��ִG�O��?�0�mnD�BBrы^��.]��Dw�$��.�SpLHB�İ��['7M��F�B�eKᓲ�C ��vZ^QOs�m��s��u҆�Ƽ�L��[��G�A��Y��@G��_�f��q>�.�" 4��a[C+e hH�Jb�-��;� D�:e 2'�J��g=�Y�S�� X�v��-�0�uŅ��w�l)�MAv�t���7�2~��OQE�2�9�N N�EυTZ�Q]�+]8�\|l�ٽ�^��/X�v,�[7�\|�+�O��J�n}� mW��#i��wJ9\Tl�ޟ{��H��M1oA1\�P�ju��Luc:J@V�1e�/N2ą�O�� AA6��ۚ�9�+��~��S��T�#��a��z�mS?��˓a/�-\|:ӂD jI#�F�g�Ǟ3V��Z��ek�� n�W�Bo �O� q�װ�y�VS��#;�� (��C�;F�П�O�E�9��{��@�T�i�]?k��{L?mx��֕XvH��"� 3��9:,6��H��CoH�x2]W7̂͋��ϱWu!�\|1�:� �۸�UI$L˦c��oU��D�i=�S��ަ � �A��6֧�/N��@��y��ʆ��uQg�z�[݊DV�W�J� �c��u � He��0Sb�a�� ɂ��NL�?~M��-�?�j^9y��ZxJA�X�B�n��`� �DZ��g��-��l�� ^tii0"3�g7�q�MLPU5iFW�>��ѵ:��B�~n�:PT��RqՄM��1߮{��ڼ��:�y�p 4)�ݧ��AӉ]M�B�c'K�Њf��R�H%ő ˘��m�c"F��)�v,�V��U�,<��Y��vg��7As"�YIHWR��N즎~�(c��7�z`�VM�}��` "�Rw�;�tQح� S˝h��K�[ �l�Az�C %zE(%�� 8�q�e��L'�_h��Nĉ�M�G�na&�/?��e� $ڵRޣ�$�O�� 6�� }��9{�А��TevC�_T�\�@ �`&� l��'m �N�"h��A�~�Q��F�bA�3{h��&��՞�M��P%��3�o(g��h��j�,��(�K��L? AT�&��w�.�(:'W�2��~6?��g(=,B̡vA�F�c(9���% �V�=��=IK��?5�"e�� j�3J��bw�A�X�q�zի^��M�O6a[$��e��m��ao��@��O� ��:�}R�ğ�q[�WΪ$��OS�)1Y�ڮ��S��p�� x S�� j5j��vP'L��Ϛ2"�nu �UyC��4Nٞ�B��Pϲ�e�c>KP�9��&-��?��Ǹ�� 8��\|�ͷڭseΛ��{� ��!��hV )��Jwee��ɗ�q�'N�%��s��y)�� Ga�s��' ��U��G%Us2oܒ��] �+�% =`�ou��U��ݽ��a@��MoؗS��m�YM��' ��4]-4{�k �ó ��,�� %� �� D o�4��[!"��[g��:D� :l��zfUR�K�i\��Z�W��"��@n�M��X�f�5䊅l7Bs��~��hRd=Y�s��k��]��ʫ��Ǡ��b��'�Jp��9(��N`��Ps&��OP𲗽�_ ��G��q��G ��\�.!Qh �A'-��%�-� B��٫f� �j��A�ݔ2# Wv�ѵe�n�Q�4��x]31h��,��%!c��}z��+?! "��o�m�,',� 0?�D��,eN"��O)�ԉ3f��Ғ� A�Ŷ�!�Ġ�bk�I�v> �L�)�ݚ��x�+��2a<�/�Ğ WͅA��5�Xu�I�2��ARZ�{渳n�5�˜�b�]�� P�(� ��JC =�$�PBv)��4F��?�j�L�Y� ��n?�� 8ݲ�9�3�mҋ�EȒh��:�M��n�%�3��sb#Z~D/C��i�5Q��A��=�3 �l�vq5�2K �" ��5]44 ��)�sݳ{@U�R�B�q I�3�IPt/T޴(xk��a��B�� b� b��r��x��%<ֳ��1O�t�ϰ(1� ��Х��>7�\|��$�X߄�@d��E��dvY�P{��#��uY ܏�lsr6-X�Iؗ��'�b�;��E�1�{��&/�F�^{@UǙ��R +�T ��>= ��2�o�p�ѽP�Ki�L��u�?;Q�?�sS8�F��e{n��˟1� �&�-#H-R��&��8�yo�B-,��}��"��>w6�^�Q+qP5x�j"iUw6ԃ�떁 �j?�W��~8��q�r�6��Uc0DFT&P ��V"�L��B��\|=��j�~��q�Q��ǘ�푟d ��!��2]��Mi�2 7"��w��+e>A�Rp��Y�Y�zԣȦ��x��V`ĸ��#��r��F�� <�r o�^�6�ɠ;��92�ST%�ns�h�;�48ؙ�8��H�E�po�K��kA��s��6��e �/�X#�,[hT9�J C�� nZ�4� Ӯ��b'Pb��(jyO��`7YRv ��W��UU��g�bʬ�]��LaD�Am�W�1c+�1��v�΅��3L<Ԟ4��`"b �)�&�~Rs�X�2S�q�Cq�O��f�ʺֵ��j��;\uŎ ��P5C�꒐ҚRsS�V�OQ�I�4��Ħʑ-��z�$a��O��t\z��(�� 4�pɪI�>{��yc�� ;T��&ذ��n��?Y� sA�� K��V��)��'%R��>�-��QV��%�Qi@��rj�Ƞ�s�I�>�(�q�.�@c��b��X/t� m<�jK- �-�]�� Rl� �V�d��n��s%�쨹��3cf��Q�}pw��p�QM�E��}q�"�#6�Eu��Pv ; �m8X�aV�[��S�f��N�v6��iw�� 3 m�#,&w&��M&�h^�1��]��]�5�� ˺=��x��.b��o��&�.I� m#�ʎ�Fѳ�9�-E��8Av��#\|�{T4X��]ڶ×�,q!�y�� <�f��4�1&�ʱ��g�弽�� SZ�إb�vtJُ��M � ^��hV��>��ON�Q!�镰~�kіr�FY��'N��ώ �3 k��lK�ˁ��w)�̐�� I��v5�$��\|�c��)��'֑ɂf�+! ��H8d%hE �G�j2�r�+�cN�S��6�L v�˿9 � �� l�KE,�Ȕ`�'��&�J�j�V�ա��n�/�Ad��uV�EU�M�}��ڤ�x��M��G9Q�A'w��?5�H��Og�p�0��ׁKA�&��h�"�N%��~��T�D�ja��Y��x�ȩ<�.��rE��r�Ƽu�ĵa/�3��'�l��!��8��y�`3Y ?� H�)�vQ�I? �jJ�S��(�66�U�@��Gy��k��?�8�~⧸��㳴� ށT0�p��2xt@V�s�6�j��\|��_ߪ�Ј1'2o��g8���O��FW �k,��<�u��0�tҒ4<��Q��!�� {U`�V�[DUa�]��+�O$#V�\`[ebN�~s��#��HT��6V�T�j��v�=�� c-�8U�Sˌq_��$Д]\|��&��ŠՐ,3.'��ՙ��s�^��t\�v�T��ul Iܪ��AQ�q�s 輗�O ��ET}� ^�T�[30�� mG�Gm�TR��O��>s��J10� RqI�n�d��뻭 �P1p��Կ ,!q��v�k��j^ԑ��V��?� R'.$�V�Z�/�؜�+6z,��@7,�P�T��} �v:�!��ET�)�v��* Gm�{�s�+�>Ƙ$�� G~)�C�.`�&7� �MD5�E<8g�;��X7��ƨ�$ ��'1($� � ��lN�I�@9�Uw�� .z2'C$dm2��\��#�p��M�3$b��j�u�0 Y�v��Q��)� ��ܫ�X��ӿVa�C�IicL0�FO�P��?v�&!n��YS}�WU)��#�1��2�ji�pX��]��rG�s�,��\|l�8�q�� ѢB��~��$>k @K��Fi��]�ވ�N{9V$�}� �h紮��_l��z!�Pܬ$�{G�=V��]��P�~YPv�aFsxPT��M[AU@`'�=]�2��1��V=�g�,�-V�ɽ�%�- O��$��R�T�V��zt߭{e��5�J�T֩~R�Q�u{��(oR��a�i��CSO�H͘��Ė�d\� ��So�"��$� ®�~:�GޚG6�ۡ(�~+�JH� I;J�&�@��,��9�� u��Oy��KC?�H-s� K0-A �x1�V\��-ꁄ@%�H�)��83�K@w��$&>�N䎈_a�@�X�v�[��E��D̼u PH�a�-ƢXHh�}��&e��H��rm�d ��3��l��?��6� 4�^TS:�Cze�� B��b7��1��L��\� �HC�s� -���DC���L � :\ s!FF} �1��0w��@S�L��Crt� F��=��o{��"gԇ� &V~{�[\�d��xj��cA��nޛ��4�/�u�}(-�� Ԡ��4= <m� ��c�s��'�� `�@��O1V��삩�p� % � �\|b`�nI�6��"� ��i�W��P�>w(�r_� s��AzP��mF9�N"��K\��B�e. V�Y{��"څȀ]�l�c��E��g��XdOg��3f5��YCY�k�'� ��2A�GU�6��}�s�]�0�YLA :@��>��� ��U�$mDc-,D��JA��N�dV o�;��C��OW= CN �4{��ך��ꛔy�H�k �&1��^3��Lh�o��,�(d��'$�b=%tSMu�� sڝ�5Ŗ ��fF�uv5�h�qJv�҃��K2Ӭ {ATv�� K��F�� %0ր�p�`�x��}�I< �Cy�o��,d3_k趽r�̛Ls�y��{ny;+8��[�ZW=f<�� fFU6@��TU�UՃ4 qO�F�� SiI��G��X�%`��'�" ε�éX ��Y��曟��T�MAf#�9�3tL�F�� 1 �a]�~^3�h�� !á�� 9�^� �n\|/��9�/�]96 F�gN�j�v��@��w�$�5��(�+��kfTEА5ƪ� bT�mf�1"�a�:�T��CEf��/�Y��T�n�$�A"�A}�M�� "Ź-��r��ϊ Kb1@�[��]D��Qq^x�3��6K�cHp �R�bJ�u��P�.n�o��q2֛#�9�"�(��A�5�V�v��Z�]qwPh)�)p��J9F�x ��Dը�Q��{sh��䦉��xFU^��6�1! ��P5�\�8�i7WܢO�A<l�O�X ��r'Sr��W��4+��a�#�B�p�< ��M�3�nڸ�R��Q��Z��:��8�[9�ٔ�5��~ I:᷑��: x��/w��V`�[k�Gw9+�;s�D��>Z � w@F�V^�� 5T��`�4 ��Tđ`7ћvsk��S�LZ�� $0Ξ�H0t��e�@6�� ]p>T�� w�v��n)z;F�e�_GC� �;�g��a��u�zS�_9��U��^P��^� �V_A��O�g �P{�9Q�^��U\|ҡފ�%F5L��/@�EEC��B�r�3T�K��43]��n.�Bᦻ�7U� ��' O��1�w��¬XZ� 0�f%��(t;'o�uq�,��Ϣ��B�� 9��;UZ��t%]-��4��%��Uj�cY��-9CW�n��w[��O}v#fi��Fw�\|2��Fל U�Pl�� Ĺ��PL�iS�ωf��X-�� #�$��V�ߊ1� ��`�� Kq�F�H$��U�zU��r�1� bGoE��hJ��8MY$��rȊ�,��X� z�:a�QCy�\�6�.<��>�R��O�� ص� �~ C��"Yk�7� �9��X��?��R�,�� C!�l�� n:���C��CA�9(��V��J�<�U��$Z��I�� \��>fO� �0м�id$��~\|��n��C� pk�� 3f�W9�:�4`z/c.q��x1�-�הc�q�R�_<^p��YQ� סj�Ft Tfuy��O�~�ԭg�� 5-]Y�AJ �4��C��8Jy�T�v]� p R��'�_ϕc��sʁT ��W�� g�j��J5��S d�A�k�P� 8�R�4H��n��2��҄�n+J�富��D>V��"��v�t׈lw�Hy�+�v7u8�Rx9��R=��D��KF��p��[cd��GB��@A �� 19�e�X��T��d($�f�q��O@��% j��SaH(�jU;� K� _։��<�F�{�~T-.��b��E�RP�u��ZKF�d��q~��+{��j��?=i��W� 0 �@�#��@�W � 4�T=��p ��M�qKEZ�3�9�� W�Dނ�v�0O�h�I��K�$��U��LTVk��r��Q�;�,W�IR� #��B�u�.ɢ:kJuW�q׉Rn��v#4Tv��\|-�Im׼��^��]Wg�؞'�=�'es.�g��3!P�,!ieS1mjqS�;�G�C�H�d�Yɐm,�I�;�(�u��V Ad�^�~��j��b��V%�y�%xU+wU �1�а��̊f;��[)��r�Jy܋�H�{)E甊y� B��E'�&.� ^z�nemKO �{ťZ흾��8h��j�;�KFu��xM�3�U�<�I�i�Sߓ?��D��~��B�`��Q}�O��j��G, �L��\�}a�l�L]{s�Ø��_��s@ �╱�� ߗ�^J> '��u �.Z�&s�bͺb��ژR�,ğ��{T1�3ΊMU+��0ڂ��ĥ ɶ5��7�(S�η�-h��ܔ��uX?��qZ��9o\|��zcݫ_YJ��{oȺ~��֔� �UPP՟��p��b��l��zJ?��}�ʂ�^8j��Z�XaĲ ��"�߃L_+�^�L�(��+!c�_�?� ��8=%ꉢbd4fgJ�H��NN$��V/ YM�(�9P/[��lbG��]T��G��8;�HH�lz#�Vͥ5�� uQā<�r�;(g<��Y3�rU��f��CUP�!��&b��r��q�W��"p$�8X�B7k�(M�l��N�XL9� �{�h��b `�wP_}BV�F�!��9=�� t�r�O�s ��~� 7�+i�� B�$2�϶b��M~��Գ_G-Ӣuܪ;KK��W�O�>�G�ߝ=2��ﬆS �x�S��TTe�D��>�W�� E-� v�ڰ��/o��$�� (��ay� � p�z#��%�$P�h��D��̭� uQNK� /[{m��"�(V�: f��><��!y.<� ��h�P��4��3�Κ��J��)�gsf �S�� \��$ ��:4��˞��c��ڸ�Ry��8��SQՖ�W1$�,��6�TI�G�� 묹�z[�� \�� =Cm�A6�y�#c��mb�O��&'�0��A�E�]Z�݇J�;��Bo-E ��>�f�e��&��>��J��A��:H)��x�-:�_\J�gE}��3��S��Z$�� A�V@\|#.TR�A� u�z�q��,�[Џ�՛��TI��Ŏخ �Q2�cS�� J�X Uc�D��=��.6U<�%0�i�66lz�� g̹�4ov��f�O� �I�iϸ{�V��h � �{=⧥�r��S�8���F��Z�؛�νk��t�В~�� T�-u�P�d�]��6nd� O��L�.��F0�� SJ�׳5{�}խ�\^�OB�(�M�X�A�b�~� � u�� 2�A��c��Ʋ��?��ذ� D5��-oyK��/=�9ϱ��S�/�J�a��{�,��> �p�B��U0wK�#QEV܈Ye��n� �X�[�ֳ �º�)$t]U7�n�b.ּ6��K �C{rI�� (��I� h�a��=_���h�K��/�d\|^%f�)@�J�sΝ��@��'�e��+�4�T��8��כ7��C��-BeB2��T�Bd��6.ga٪QI��uk��ܶ��+�1&Y�Z�n�6�}�%hޏAn��!��S+YpO�� _� �فA!d�?�I��D-)� �H��Dڪ� [Eq:r�s��BOdn� 1��" �̥��jf�!z9�uPI� ��uq@��f�^}���4\|k�,�� j<�/�`~:�l��J��%ɹ� ��׳Z�ס��U�d�7X/��j��=`�n\|��P��:A�R� 4d-&pXw��֚+�-��n �x0��l��/�M�1j#3��zr��h�� EP��J<_e��Ȗ��<��F�. �Xs��o��oĩAĭ٢J8��e`c52 �� nΓ\|O 7� z��x�ɳe ��=�6��GU��Zܫ��7^ �(�DV ��3�w!�,�䀸A �;6U U!��H�z�l�6p�bԅL�bL�1�e��[0�[Lyh�s��CYxp҄��f��w��vFufb�#�l�~P �`SIU��A� R�» �+�j��JҊ��W��n �{�KY�C(��=�xT��ڈ�w��)_�� )Z�J<��2��j? /��%f+��G�@�Ў��X�8>a�,�r��@�J`͸��.W?��{l�� 4�o��pC�^)�`�G��/� y�qj�V� �6+��ĕ�P��cnfU(5�ȩS��[z�T%(��a��dȦ~NT�>��`��؁BF�G8,� z��p3��&z��Y�<�3��^��X�`LG1F4+�z�D{��2/}�K�ʪÚJgj7B��б��-I+`�x�� FM��G�U�I�)c��_%�\|)��y6nD^ V"o?��%��G ROD��l� � � U,��3��5��_\|U3=Q��#bx��C.��G�'�P��n�.J , iÖ�ƭ>"�4 T>�� U�� E-;�z7\ �J� `Hn �tN2a� �I�� +�HW��S5 ��zPf{=F�jإ� 1��sh�k�J��5,�lue�׶�r��E�4�t�#�:͏��~k�N�.���>�rGوQKH��l�#!��l�]rHDa�cӸ�T�$��M��Еih��~�NOe�0�I��6hlXs�E~ �^ yǻi��ST�oO!O�>r�y/j1�jI��"Z>H@� Nx_7��$k]Āz�^�2��X�T�pի�iP_�� ȩ7��>�� E^�� nr~Q<ό?�1��a'��݈�� L�C��O̔0� U��ѯ�n,�b{`!�p��OhXBj��?f��b_��$��C�{[2o��e{��J�Z"ճX�7�9i�BO}gvS0]��#�9`%-��jJÇ>�j��غ��n T72�Lyq�t��M$�,{ �#�;�z���N�[�́2��27s�\��za��݈��)p��L�� R琟hfΣ��j;��+�JM��pW{��0��^ �g`��z�V�z�2庠Pw[1�b��zP��&�vI�� `�>�&�JF��UTU� d3.ᗺԥlf�x�;k.�o�&1��C�"^l�a � 0�x��+Μ�J�&P��Fq��!^�5��ľ��,Q ��e1�M �3�b�U�a}�'Qͱ�H�ϰt�%�wf}��m�6�2��6��n_�� mz^��%��=@8��u@=��2��t��@��1�� D�v�7�b ��b�$��4Ȇ�X��3 �t�� $CQ1��.�Ȫ��g��䐳U��3�չ�)V��xM�{a��UB��L��j��J��H �Uv��jlL0bE��ے�z�ͫ��2�'�c ��&'��$4�q1/�gv:h��xʳ�`4��5�V��m�,R�A�W��U�E� � \|à!lZ��bL�� 0Ķ�rVt� �sz ��e�<��wb��Se�40��A{�c�٬��ە� ��$��uҵ %𓨚�ּ-bF�M� �!��YW��ɺp�.�r�6��Ѝ@��ݛ�7��X��P��t�E�V��a-�b�1{�_ �R$ ��"��=F5I��.�,M((��l� �� jҔ 4��]��Y��V=[?��Y߱�ο�&G��GxR��t\��p7��M�Y�}� ��%�$�?D3��U�� iHGsB��Pa�$ ��񠥬'$��rLaW߽�(�)i��)�z6�g$ �tG�0�%�4��:��u��& g�ЪR��m�➆ B�u��%��A��;KCR��kj D:�bs��䣫#[�n�ar�U��9�O��hl ��C7��J�'�l╽U�M��c:1bV�,��s]�� w�� /��=�ŀ�V�OO�-0�DR�ywy�ҹ�:��A�n�[QDs�p�g��i+O��K��H��+64+q�� P��lt�GB��U# @ �u�F��}ӯL<�<؝��/�ˁ�\��-y`��6_�9/\|��3k5I+M=KP�F�)Mp� PfB/ gV�-a�tc �3�L&6��ޢ��ա��.��> \V6pO��ԡɑ��w�:Tv�\� �w��~��l�ٝW�h�\�4��K� �Y4�:~��zGۣ�L�Y^� 8_X��o�N�ps�I��8�Z6�`��?� OΑ�>�� \|.iFވ�!,�� @� ��96��A��Ը�ZOY�V��V"�ţ�4p��q��Ae&�3��P��ϖܕ��b��Zz �zx��d3�\|I�Uo�@��?�R��[m@�ru�Ё( M]4�e��,W�-�4�r��@�9!j7S Һ5Q( 0��d.��cI�� W�[�͍��ɖ��I�ʚT�j�� Qb_"a��>�!}p3t K�Mt��u'��Y$��L)��%@�;r�A��F�Ż��n4Q"�"�E�2�`7�@V �M+��G��!2Ǎ��"�)�d�)@�5��\�"�썕(�.��a'� K+�EY��<mp��%H"�d��,} (dn��g(g\W+(FX�!4�Zgw/svTv��R�&G\�Tx��?��̛�=� 3�!��ZhiB\|�T��W��D� QP�X L�� Ni�Y��'�ef] և 8=oa��F�fT��f��Ҷ��`h��E�0a�� '^t_��F\|Y�~b��iF\�� 5��՜X��8f�J-Fġ��Q�Y-ٚ��1��2��>%� }�:�ۍ�o��xl��'(��Q�ݼ{v��zy �<�ƣVE[��IT@��w� �� ~��7�� \ؔ6µ�l��6��̏ -˪�+�g��X�i��F�Ӵ2EӇ"��['��q��q�4d{ҽ�`^�J� R��:��yq� �Ir6s��$�)`�4��si��qO>�� ӄ��>r܀�� 6T�Ȃr�粋� ��%T @`4� +n��VP@��Z�c3��[� >��˗��- <��%ee��Q��g�f�\LL��:�Ě;e��qv�P��h��A�YJ)(�S�U��\|�'U��5�� V��6d��@qTp0]�P&�aI��3T��L��(��\|A��r\|Q�2�Q�M��X��%�tK ��X��"�;��n&^T�Ma�ɜ�i��>f��l}Ftz�Ͼ�\|��C�M��g� �� 7>��^�Q5{"�CN�ʀs�XE��)�˳� � �ɟ�!��~��_�b��@'qH�%h�<�Iw�x�eo.��%=�6jTJ��嚫�uM5�;(MM�q��^��1��5v�O��\nFU5 ! ��f'�>��9 ��r�>�G�B��TV ��Q[ӕFS��5Dq �S\��&^Yd��O�� +.�jW:v:��+�J��5��U��5��j�)��d8�� Ƹ��r��,�4ۨ��<��:sb�� F��3A � ]����o�&� /��7�� I���3�,{�lƃA�z��,#oFP�ir� K5� �Ͳ�Y{��tX��7�q�n��̲�M׃r�⺍1S�cP�6d��A]��6ˆ��u㤊�f��d�T��y��jz��Ԧ pѭr�O/�0�Ā4R�,��`U�\� h��}� f��}��8�]�^�DS�\|�+��v6&�R��zVWl�V�`3�f\�7��[��}��6�.ǫp ��m� �Ͳ�Ѐ�2�B�F��&�t���V��AFa� ��1 �xi ��"r�v0E(��@ݜx�!�^�)=��Z�� _��V/ώ�u �f��w��єMa�K��O@p�}MBR�ՅA̞b��K&,��wYR��#􉟌Ig9��p� ��Ō{�yJ��D5S�pxʔv��ٌ��u��aK��lӢ��mM��4�%04�i��Op�CP��ZDZ�10�)��I2�T�g�}zY�9x��-M�6bֹvj��b�EO#و�!�)��x��N�]Wz�>Z�,]7q0T֡�5��U=�d�}��Xƙ/ٽR�zmj�uP�:t��3�X��B��Y6�{��%��,�̓U��#;�Z�D?c�5ąU�\u�Z=P:��(��2��A��Y��"�;��V�l7�Cnc��Ű�T� �d� ��\|j��5�b��w�&��U(�6�BARg��Ϲ&R�J�a��9��1h �9Q �v�-nu�X� MW}��z{{��=]:gb �!��?��?W_n��jd�� ;W�`��e�1\k�iK�:�&�pC�z��z¸%h �6� ~�j��(ǒ ��vEF��ֽ�h;+g��ye��ggL��;sY�#y�Q5��ސ87aP�s��C+�ed� ̝k� O+� ��×�\�4��&�B� ��S?�W��"��{��Ǘ��R�r��R�f\��Od(�sXI�ڌ�Q A��h��HF�4q��:%��3L[t<�8i�U��\�DY�?��>�d�怃J]�O\|\|z�n5��w�M�@m��̷�a�cP5ʖ�� D�U�$�ds��e��:w�q]Vxh��"E��5d(+0��AX�&W�E�5�-y�,�q\φl��+>#�o,kIp8=@��%6s�@@��牨K�Z��P19��"bxP�-E�"��O�L5�/�E80�@�� {�\|�� s 坡S^4��,rF��Yo��\|�=Pv��nٌ��vHeN�q`�k�l�2��qSYs�� :eQ�-t��ӇQ�s�a�O�N�ʊ�"&��&� r3��9Ll��ꍮ@��,/��bte��Ò�� (��G>GH��)�U�ϳPHyf_ }�B�� 7��f�j ��5�̏%@�kz�_��W?�y�+�w�� , ¬�c��a��r�bM��sh��p��jLޕ��C736�U��P�E�<�wq��9�5�Q �w�t�ï��p�I� _D� ~�� I/2�C�N��7�r�4��>!��F�2�,��aĲ{�mY��A��}݂6��o��oĤANe��<�� 9� � �8��f�#��bQ?�8Σ ��d�0+w��cW�_�0��Req�X�,�0�[}\|e�:�{ �@�M^I^fQHn�{?�Y�ۼ�t�� fTʹ�T��?��P��_F'�;�)�6��ߋ�HV�Y5'��ɜkJ)y�f� 9�Q��B-��"� 9-��T ��O~rJ�N��] y��HU��{��씷�<{P=�nތ��3�"Ų��g��͸�Э ��U�ڪ ��=[fE�Ŗ_� z�[ߚ�G�Y8x��mSE RC�� v�� }J��z�~wLa�S�=%/�44s��~3�Fܩ��'�p�� l�O�@3��H3�Y��zի^�$w��w��bc]��\�8bb�<^xq`T��d�Rb��t]�,�$Lo�nrX�k��h��Fw�f��\�42Yءø(��(�l��p�΂k�u N�x+ g5�qU�ď��ӨD��K '�x��Q!)�0 �Rm�o��qsDú[��_يz��O��X�lL�$8� X��^m4� �T9_��:�ժR�_�('W˟ @s�LŮ��T��V��'(Gɧ�W��?�� b"��'S��jt�d磟==��E� a�MR�Y��Ռ��{��.�^�?U��X4H� Θ#Of�T�� ֗�I�`v�G3�4E��}�N�� Q ��Bu__��M)�<�ޠi��ej��N��_��_�H6�q�k�R�ӜI�w��4N�_�(`��q�;Z��،��A�D�9�?��8=}�$ ��S]b��j�s��rehњ�Ά�dE�{Q�i�t��i�ܐ�7�� ~2G�)"j�cY�" ڐf��ώ��~� �˶T^_��~X��6��~�K_�҆Zl��/� ��۾�� R9��'~�'@� c�� o�[��x%M�d��, e�p�nʊ�a.�N#0R�&ԍ ��X�L;�%��C�6D԰\Sz`#hNܼ/�:�� Գ�UY�>��5 �h�r�$AD�<4it��y�s��7��2A�\��$� �Y�Fc sp&�� g�g�(k.�J�T�\|��5I�A�PW�8x��6�i��R/�IyJҌ��#a��{J:�47�o��o� 3��I\;�U��"�,r�"��N�9�/Vz��K�Մ�r�� W(Y'�OR��ߝŶA��F/w��g?��"��?��׾��}�s�o��_��O�TI�L��k�lk��E��=�>�S��%ƣj�'�d�%�Jr��@5-ɪ�h�r�� %^��%/)g�A:�"\|�';YT�ڕ�6�Y��E�� d i��w�׼&�ŉ�> X��8bh3��YV� ��b&5t��뀨��첇�&��U�.u3��I��nzӛ��8��P�y�,/&+� _��dnz4mT�Q]y��e �t�$��:׹�qR]��jAXp`��=�#1�?�e\|�66W�9 ��A��b�Կ_�3qu��;��Y��U�${Ud�M�ı�1�B'�v��7��ԥ�� t0��v��<��E��?� _"\|��n��P/Vӯ��2��覈�ak�p��П��?�i�Ñ��\|�e�ꕯ\|�R��"1� �ʡ ��L� ��8D7&�WL)�D6jJ��:��� :�sJ�� }��p��] <��Y�_�� P�nq1H��Ѕb<4ˮ\�U��H +?_��$u�ޖfV��%�{��"�P rJ�E G�qq�=,b�;��Ρո�e/[5��0�u��_�0��K�.�{��U`��S�&�)��ISlP�� ĐK�+�[x (��K�H�0��(��_��~Q e��J�e��7�K��e�ȂA��eh�3�E]A�;��?�c?��cA?� -��/��^g$�<�9��jT�j\9��:��(��24��\|�U�>�J�� ne��øi�\|!ܔ̮ �D��b�l��1, ��"��1��˪�Vy -�N�W��֯�Y�Ղ)�[ꗢ�Ȳ� :>OR��Uz�p��l �\��׵c5��xA��0� ��QY;R��>��4˻I�G4'"��~��!��+ [�Ÿ�[��Xa��ō�Moz!�K$!�r#��0ڳ#I!g��%��N\|�x WqU0g�$[�3G�� ;�cn9�d�� C�̓鉬�gt> �BxSOe�yq��Tp�w��F�\|<P �..!]��w��]��t�X#��r�d��6=��6��`�\IKG�ۃm�R�A=�CV�P5RT��4� ��\|ϙK䏳� m�!��/˜� ��kQ�D< �"� q��?��? ��:�$�$�S]�� oͩ�� ǌ(��ȋ?��# ��W�J2�렫�u��.rm�6 ꁉ��؁��q�PQ2w�T5�lQ��\|9ZJ��-�`�X��&��7F��M��f٭��gq[��>��W�� X@��i��k�b�c��Mo]3"�c�ZJ��]��YT��Kj��_�85�\^�F��E�eD�2��_ߎ��ؔ��̔BO��;��ֵ� U=̪�[a��ȳu�G�ֵ�e��&���<�x� ��]�(��t�qo�U��pb2L܂Dxr�gʊ��iI��Yl�k8k�]��WЃ T-��N�F�V6�@$��:'��2_��~�5UƉ.��Hv��r�ّ$�r@v��W��9Z � "r"� _4��#@m y�K_J�JÅ��C�F��k8�R�V?��F�s�5��7�� ']�B�k��o G��՛ ��i��Z��~@}�K�=�֕��3�Y��7��Ų��2E��<�$HD 0�h�Yc��3ֲP��r��~֟�j��2��V�W �$��8M#��׀My�0=1�� N�0!U& ed�&<>n Q�u��w��r�ǄGN@�l~+ol��[S zAK��~Y��+K��UY�� _eWHb��E `�B7b�m��0�sAv��)��G��l�n��b�6m�arPm�rx�� k\| �'�ƾJ�w��]"�x��0� `��b�$^��{��R�=�T/ɋ��#r-��;� ��!Q�\|��}陹�� / ��h c��:l@U��~�� =r�:�J:lT�0�h?��^�2�V�b�q��h0��&a�2�U��t>�j��Aͳ�SCO��Q��PۂQ�[��bT��D�4�IOz��W�'�� zY$��V�r8��b�^��s(5 ڮ-��>-uΒ��H��h�� g>S~�~�)�曟�.��_�z�SL>��&c�h@�@y�GM ~�O�O}A� �wcZ��]��7�e#\�K� �`k}�SR�U]��?]>1xp ��' 2lE$ (�/�(��9A��L�Y2陮��A��{�޸n�@3VGY��p��H�e�E�H��4.%@7��7�#��bø q�\�AOvǉ XsY ��򖷌ʋ��8�� \D(�jB� �IZX�Z�� ^�> [��C/��xD �RX�FabMA�d�Sи��ź1�/뮣zԼ�%ͺ �6�o ��ms�3��N ��W1�Y�侭^8r�1#u 3U#8V�2U��g��)y� �Ħj��)U{�!R �� \� ��h��w��r��}�s _ ��伀�� F��8B��]��&�]��5$&��G��{9��6��6�%�S� w�K�� Û�d{��'?��0��>lՁ (O,�rFc�z� ��o fA�꩛��&��lv��n.\;�e5�B�i��?��C,O]Ĭ�xUmR�4��z�c � � Úe�o� �R�%��z�41�'�? �ѓQ2�QEY��9s�0Ξ��w�{�\|��EM �� 1+��,�e䚱TeA�#qx%��PH�L�4�$d�fLԘ� '&#߈i��͗��x0k��w�3[��u�Lʚ�̱��3�@ue��=�:K5 Lܝz�͖U<Ll��0��@�'�-3KOe��s�J�d�# ��:I7b� c��wb�Z މ�VD� �y4"��(�� Y<�D�� I.��S�4� � �k?��Va��1 �xY�H9(� �}v7�žjcn' �:�˴��U��@C��ld7$�1y�^�/x$B��'� Lin��Ƭ&&��<�4��SV/\|� �� 2&. ��/(��f�M��'!��br��q�vF��w�� gK��%a��Z�l�-� XYI`yK��mg�U��S�0<#bY ,vl��[��V3? �9=51=7N��q=��9O��'�5Y$��W�bca�D��cq �W��0]�D��@FQ_P�ww��<��׽N�\�_Y�[Q��91%� �̼��z>��W��>��1/�:��9��t�3�-�J��M�5W#V� �XP��h��}�ی��u�s � �%�É��"�# H��?�� }��=rKP+��O��'dpZY�FKꟓ��,!i�� d�u�{Uf8K2�7��G?��2�:b�`t�;N�]��=��'�.��ϭ�$��k�:/B��z�`�H?�q~mFUY��#2�,��׾��6�h,2�$��f�� H<� 0G��ӿ� ��'�!�� ʲXV9��W>2�T�E<�8�&#��/T�9=�Ӫ�a6:�J&�r�5����V� ��Ǫ@&PY�L�x��`^�6on�fi��X�A�Zo�L8@�6N�T�s�s� �Ӽۄ �䧽3'� dcy�Ұ: �� hm��'��8 �믗�bD��7W&?��?m ��%5�� je�Bd��^�E�� F�#sg��qs��<�rm A��7��[�^O��9��й��> Z�%}pթ�VU��d'�\|LVQT�� xe�,�4@A�j��8�� qV�bi�( H&@�VYqAb�X��Rh \�-�͵A ݝ]�(�1�$� uQ.1h�Ж8�}�C% ��8�3+D�Ŏ�pa��J�� :X\pm��;UOe�m��P�/�8�t�D��W�0�� 7�7=��C)��QFu��=�O��<�9�e�#Z#�(~�}��ַ�� Ii#O�PD� ��i;f��rS7�&e��UD�Ed�ԯ�jw��ڨ[��`S6 �V+�`�V�w�̉=+}m�P��V��Φ��f=,R?�dXO�L �� N_�~"�~�؁E�Xy k��4��Qaeib�Xt�򊊿\Y�� %F .��G>2w��?��~��J,�LV_��R�^��^�^��g�ǝTZ.֢�$ ՘KD%�!�� (�D[]9��$�7�O�G��Io��F�&y+Z]Y �F�a �lQaE�@��~��8� ��n��/�@M�@ r�b�Z�i�Ym'9� F"ѴX9\|W"��5z�hE�;��j�c��N��ǲ� �ښZTٓ/��l��J5��"}��ШTn�\|$ڳ'<� ʢ4˶��_/�V_V�QV_zJCX��=u1��v��K�jd �W��z� �:/M��Z3UCT��2�X�t�h2;0mo§�>�6d��J��͏$a�O��<�(�+�Q-�b@��U��9��yk�i��;R�Nd�\|�{߻��)��P�� C(u��S�o�� .�a&ix��Ra��)��, ȗw�E�_g&�Q��JLd �'1��:Q� %��6�d��5��P�5��i�:Tm�t��'O�%�m��UΣZT� �il� ;s2G��1�xf��3x�T�,{J��v�I��Yw��Y��D��5��?�8�$y�f�%Sd1-��~��d��!��e�k�;7BXS:A�]d 1�h^A�ңI/pӓ��Y�_��^뤟]mUM�k� �ޒx/=� ��T��挿[��`x9�OB�\�;�ZU ���{� g9�I ��+��D� ��L,0u��_ư��T�8:.�_`��W,��e�W�zr��E܈h�L��J��m��6A��b��0t��GgX��%{2o @�M��u� �,��ў/q%���FEm�}��d�"�Cϣ0a��g?��)�� 3��x�?�B�(Oe\,b��+� Ec"� o��Xi�Jb[�UY�d(j9�<a^P�ju��q�eb�� h' &Zvg:��:aa��:��i��.�kF��\G��F�� (�D�E�ڸ~V�5e��w71C��t}�o}�[��RM�A$�� & @%� VR?��Y�c뀕iW��A}�CS��ڞx��e�[�� m��S�@ ^�j4��5nV� ��SN��T^�P�s'�B ��4�(7��Q԰׸Tn�b��,�G�� !"�� ?+/��JW��f&,а�+�1!Y�y��s��X�ڌ��M�TeQ�1�+Gp%��Vs� �� y�c�{p��9��U�T`ʳ^�Jn>.Oe܃��S��xR _y CUn�b��8M�Y���~��a�� ifeEW&��5��9�\|�� ;��5Cy!��Ka+�jW��`�� y?�p8�Y��[&��E̛�ږ�x��0�R�sʮ ��Y1Bƪ�\��yX}�Ϯ�p�S�gk4^��pV D�W��:L��?{͌&��5��O,�D}��R��ٙ��P��I�+ZSZ"ac�_t5�_y!e��fEQ��(��dן�]� ��v�<+��h�ߖ3˘H��ʴ��D�V-W��Hw "��"�=d@��М��Q͛3��݃�RbMdX FU��&�X�pR-��6��1O�}A����U�4&e��@WZܙu� ��D�bB/ο1�M�n안@$��X�?��5�y�Lu��F�\tJ^V�l��ť5K㸋�6�=-��~ �Tu%�n$/��L�qi�uG�7�q\��@��n�5��h+�DW��C��T?�A&넹��D ��Ĕ��7#�h��=D2��$�?`��쩘7��}��h& ]7+�%�\�p�(�?ׅ/\|�bYU��v� ��eo��/yt��zbk��C��c�4q6�� 9�n�Sh�� 2UMW.L��i��$D����<"�+NC+44��Y�]�U�U��9k>��q��S�2s>2bd�Ԟ:6L� �� Z��чp�V�{��L�9�j��?��Q�a�o~�c��"�W��\|/��Cy%� �� x�- ��I�� QU��RT.�Q<@#�N�,6��3��:%��/�Q��D�~&�3�V�;�`�� A��!� �@��@��EOI��yEB��@ �F��۫K3�j��ԍy�Ѕ��9�a��gdo�k^,�]=�v��Y��þ�,y8�� ̏\|�#C��Te�j��w��g�y��tD��lg�G�W��N�Kk�� ^�'kyf��à�� n��GU8��1Mux��w�7P��gB`��O��J rȃĩ6�\|��L�uP�Y9�%�D�n?�vLۆ��v� �"�aSR� \��ds��c��> �8�3s�n��!(�b�M�Z�.��Q� ��W#�8ʶ��#D ��:��օ\�� Dd ?��)~ XK$��5�/�p�Ϡ#�G4��>FF�g��h�"��j8(�6S�0&��<�j)�&�y�c��5�IP�5�'�0f��:��xh`�� 1�U�{��;c��^b�B�S�;�FC؈9Y��Ո�,��z@\��x<� B if#$�c$�� %\�.� ��S�@9c��2��9��E/z��GѱD�S�5��x[U ��m't<��˚��.� �hYr�:�$s X.�&�� ۬a �-`�M��V��o p��#��ݲ�q wMBUn�@ʶ:HNߋt��npU��!yȸʍxJt��Cf�E�x��;�R�k��n<#��XUH @��LXna�4�l�IG}ɳl-�Vp��m��g��3lM��0��j�Ҵ��r�(��oV� ��e ��F�Zi �c��/�L��n�y�$��'�$Te(J�k��ix�y1��G`�t��t��N�q� ,�L��Y�S��=(ql��ּ[c ��A m�Ɲ��A]1(1��-�bIh�2 9�e֪2ɬ�[�v�WўW�T��G��ֿ���2!h��0�=��m T�9�6��}��y˅`4��$TUj�!S E��[��5J�$Ok�Ƙ7��X�]��_�Ȕ5�%��~��#��:)�w�,yy᧔`�g辳ec�}h�� P �� r�m�@ }=�� 9��&X�S�2y�h�ڲu�Tl�͵n>��]�w��uk\��wQ�e�Ւx��W�P#G:˔�(2f1~�ّi��7�� o�S �CRBU\��>�"]�^#�+}��ey��p1��A4�L�g<�#�z��s0�h��>e��e��>7�L \D"<�f?'��n� ��M��ߜ�sq��X�1��P��vY�ݵ2+X1(�wOEU�[N��o�zC4P�<ά��ө��ហ��Y�F�Oj( ��1��L+> M�U!f� �;2��:қ4c��\|�+%�U�Й�CL��$D(��rZ��l��8��dA6 TI%~��lN%��9JH�\ȸ(aq�%�M8}��M�vY�%��S��9�yNq�c��c]��P��`2�2�Y��`AՖ��F�ףYJ�f�u�ɾ�q4 ��]�q=�AC��x T͹IP)�Ud�y+q��k��x�O�n��ep n��51�� Nt�W�I��P��WZ�i� @{Cuy�& �ɳ9C��]tVb ��}�a�.�{E��vwH`�@�i�� B�S�]V�t�h��u�� \)�I�sV�JX�q�� ҍ�M��jNv=L�9�Ca\"�V8�� >��\�s�Gr� �B��F"�C�x� �mm��Ua��boTt��[��b�V'N�I�tE\-�Cߢ�2�SBgZ�٢�D- qR��,�b%��n ,��1��d��hK��1}�~N�g��,tb�L\|��4��<� Al�� s��&=N�vʉLj�D _Dr; �}�໐��Qz�'sK"Q �,b� ^39E�h�𖷼e�k� �:.�ߝ��:B�捤��T��k��@�\��^�`��ՈZ��q�%}7 ���Z��a�� ٻ��El�%�� .7h"�K<�"�QRE�æ��枟6��p�U�\��S��˄D��3}WO��~��ӊhoKa kܫl`=��v�� u�X�Ih&�r\{�/ �P�Nϋ uy�ӟ.� �-��&NW��:={SnНo&�%7(�b �n�]T�!�ƧN9��b�>�� U��e��HP��Q�3rNM07��^�� f�n~��~ h�PcL��O �#M"��{�� '.h��#T h�W�m��r��;�8��p ��l�!$c�:%¬�C?`��Z��X��.kb��5�Ԣ��Jf��3F�Pq Д B��u益^j�۸�ol�a&h5�s�?Us&Ά�2erf��N��I��㴳��%U5(\|9ݚ�y�.慙 ��m��9�\t2l�2�s(��-Q ��~$1�m�t= k��1�k"T�A�_�]��u��D�{��#�=Q ��EH p'��į��&p�,ל�JЛ#�} F� ��.]� �>�{� r�6 �!r,�� S:�u�i?�X1n�ڦ��j3� Oe��Po�LB繺#�^� �:�C��o��\|a��ɖi_\鉳 ��ì��&��L%� ��e�H�\�O?� �z0��ea+m��"sM�9QU��R�1D�v��1VH)��E��d\Q��!�!��Tm�j��BF&A��8�� %td�8ol�2��9�P�{\| =E��\�9sZs��+ `uS�Sbc>>c}F`��G�z5��nD�Uft��U�p��چ:g\� t}7 Ew��ڝ�D�\iq U��B�Ķ��T�+�L�C�M��$��M�d�c��1'��Dg��W��o4�)�xՑ]6�Y��Q��tf�ރ�giϳE��L�R�P�TܒxDt�(6��N�[7�gFU��BH!T��7��c7 �'=�I�Lv�ۛ�59��M�Tv��"�F2��S�t��V\|(����5$��b!�w��,6� ��l��JK�n��U�}:�6��u�RĬyp��Pxk�y��j�/��t ��lC�Q_�a�} ͚q�͏�o}�[��Jui�M 皨7<�uC��x��JU�ij�"a��1�t'!b3Z��jcw W�D�9E�G��V'�.��إ�-�x�?xښ�+1�`+)W�9 �1��2�o��a��kU^e��GU��?FT�O�qXc\|��:#�wX�� /�윂� �fw�&�Q4�0g��S�;�F��}��&evyi��Ʒ�}�f�a�I�'�N�5��%�{�U�ж \|��S�c�F��s��㹲:�.��Gϕ%��T�n�� U\|!�G�; �J�.�)lb��+��&�-X�$/�F>��m�s��V+��bQЁ�,!P �I{c�� R3��j�+㲥�(��z��v��d�#"�Y��A2�u�wl�4bI8�^5��q�[AUvTĩ��&N�U��D��]��J4�NZ��詈&� 1h��̪`#O��5 ��3�$&rE=`�4Y$X�d�&�"��Ύ� ��H�U��[ � }jlUI ��4`}��E/ t }��3�Os��~/�dF�ZM��2W[sU��ԍ�k�:�~+�-͕��ծ��r�@� �M�>A�# �r4�~�j��[}u`��Ă ��u(֚�- -��V��X`]�u��̡Ֆm��P ��: `��a#�ϖF�Q��<�Z�[��Q �Q�/ƪ`ĸ(��.]U� jmЇ>sap(�-?��T.��/$��4-�%0��ϱ�1�C9"�p g�8��p؈��hd~6��BK H�ȦG@�%wV��MJ�B��[d�A��WbG��vDuAՕ怒��Y)A��qmUU��R�U�� '�%BbJ-��Q[�C5��MA&@�Rd��dK��b'�x=��J�� Z9^�җ��FN^r18KP ��ٺ�C��Xs�˪uW>��f��%YO}��yӳe V��d=2��w��3�A�5k2H��T��h7��Z��^ ��q@��$~��Q�`��ʜ��g�e��s�5?t5��2�P +�5A-0Q��-��M��4)�I:��q�h�[�`��4�MWήq�rC?[��~ ȿ��{%�lLF 46fx v��M��mʒH��tm Ua ��f[ S�U�+&�oN��P��%�ubQ;�o��pP=�x4�m�i2�#%2ժ��_��+V�H]�<̶�� \��Y��EMl�T�fo�d.��m�+ŵ'��;Ʃ5��M�\� ��mu�o U՞1� 1w��2��D�G� wQ[��n��C��)HTQ� g�DZa��&�a+��I]3�0�ĵbf��\�� !��x l�M i��{M��L֧��\|j�� 1]'J�r��n��a�kB�2%�w�U�c� 8.\|� C(;��V�8p^ ��lw��(�#`��U ak85�ƭPU�3��/lT%�4qh�r��KĬDȎˀ;Vg;��E�U�Qu��9b�r%��O]��4ߛ��,hf8��V�Ij[>[$z��nl&��H� ~�R�U� \� �MhXܙ��9��hr0 ��l� %��:'��V.�y� �bk�I�~�n��җ�t�s�Mxlư92�u��\�3��D�q:�� =nm�)>1�o�!��`t%�5�+��jS�_��er�4� ��呢�jVu��Vq'�R��l�t5m��T�e�U�� v��=o��׫^�?a�!峏A:o"Ǆ��B�"��0W�ձ�� a/q�K`�7��䳹) V0�9�y��:�� hn�Y?=�ѐ��ҕY��y�I'�,Ɣ��;BUeTo��a��4["]�}�r��.�� +�K�ǟ��j�Ƽ��b��U[�Ac��_�U9)�W+�ր��@0�X�b��U �V;m��_��ꨕJ��CC$�pٳ \�W��-f�.�{ܛo��0 ��9l"I � �+s� ��:��d��$��]��#��Sr�5��̆!BO��t[!�b}��G��>�� պE�=�GU 2h�hZJG~e��}lD�O�#�($t#��L�\C�dW��)�#��qڗ�ll㌅��")�6�� j ��h��#pSx�<�� O#�c� � f�Ԁ�\O��U��(UsD��)��"r-g�]MHl�4Z�Mȫh��if�vֻC�j��Us��k ��^�� h�f~��Q��f(�u�w ��w��#Y>R�c�?��w6�v��XN�I��׺ֵ�5��8k��Vw��{�~߁�9��Q�Za A��mE�-Ё�B��8[ⴚ3�h! ^8ӛ!�6��x�\|�ߘ~nڊµp� �k �y%�C��)��xe�5� )�Mi�n�}�7!%w6 �� )�(M,絊��U��Ԣ�b� љ_T��^��>�T7A@\r� +�O��. ��蟻��.��t/�&$T�r�J\|U�Ua��-�-��Xs�Ef�aM�+Xv�MT�ź��!v�8K�즥� ��]N��m>�OD��X"��I.ɋ�OV�tAd�t5-��]v�Ʋ�3FQ>mK��+�� 6�I��d��=���PX��bj^��F$ݍ <��8��-�t� �ŀ)��@s�υ�bw��9�\|(�tY��{�Jo��@RO)C{c�֥��7�Н]ﭣ�ư��B�Nw��<�9�,ac�\��.?��{R�XV��tGq��G�o�1ȍ��ʹ,a[�q��zW&��I��oU��y��na��ɼ.�s,�t��۵{�{��ݬ��<��.�� ;��gg�+)�F!n�l4[UD)�q ��0�xp���:+gvť C�FkI�LJ��+il�]�l��W+<��ĉ��>�G��0�WM>�� :l�AP�ͭ��rkLk�7�u�ՔLV�9�B5�Vy�\ pvy�U��t�8�rj� OM� mv'0�:�� S�삡e��j&yD��<ᕛ�(��8`R��?��b��֛��y��n�G��ٍ�)W-��)c-�[��jb�օ�f�ASt��`�(��.�t� !�^�6w��L�?N��h�QuL&[b�Ż�� )SSA��aL�o��An+��=��v��/�j(��I`׏�%��I�R\|:/ n�G]��Q�m X�Hj�I[� ��iݚ �ੲE[J6�OК�rv\|�U�ݸ��r�c ��Ȱr&�aW��?�+J'�&D�J/��?��Y��c�+��R�6��+��mJV"�� X��u��z�m�5�`[:�� 7�M~E��I�>^_ɡ�7�&��qY�~��W�L��8��;T�6�� E��C�>:Z��;��;��r��Ш��ꏱڿg��?��?7�s�Z�Y��.i�&b�]V�l7�O��$�ٜ9��D�n�B?�S��J�V�6>n�]Yb=�n,�'Xٓ7��M�%:�)�j$�1Ѫ��.�� ѾD&ݽ�nZ ��(�E�՚�Q��]�r�o��o,��Y"�(QW �Ėg��}eƭ{�Ԍ�Y )g�6gN�\|��i�WM��)�K�� x� ��Ңm�g��o�� U��7g�C3�)��I��3��n�}��nh󶝞��LMI��gn� # >��Ǆmm],��J8�:�\�-R[��)�U��4\�4��U��ע��`b%ƹ��=�ʭb�n_ŭ�_;�/�FU ��+g�P�s��a�O}�S��t��k� �g�R��r�� g��u@��O��\˳hol�\|�^�7=.i�i�k�� Z$��S&��m+�ӅԨ��)��IM��׸��~.ϒr�2S�?��xR�� w��;� �.�3K;�� j��@SP��q2\|s�@�<��ˇ��WZu��bB�B+i�o9�J �r��zn� vR�rnU�=@�X'�Z�� q��$� ��(��x�U��'��#N��֡��U�l�VJ��w� TY4�0��@I��/K(D��:��&�J��X��u��XsH- ^<�œb��Tv�6�il:��q:�[!��3��-�J�� <��k��Cif��n� �j �!�Ҵ T5��Ss��Q��9�(�W$��ޜ�q3v�<�0@�L��R7妋�ە� �@b��""X�ga\|�j].�V�<�z��<�[.i,K� EatWU�A�� J`u?>�ͫ�ao"K=ʴR��\`Q(pɰ[�u�hbh��je��[]:\|�fn; ��v�gH� U� 90sX�"�U�A�d��5zZ��Ab�r��)���"Jc��'{u�@j%��en�G�+��@�b��0b-��py��A`�-��h�;��U�7 � u�j��&�#��1B��R�<��q�n[Ƶnh��IH{��Z. ��\Xȕр�9U� ��-��}N� ��JI��A�' �m^L�,<�$�N�l��R��qm��\%�� 9�¡ e��7�dc��`#�v�[ֺ�Z=Y~�[��N�ӭ��v8C}��^��-o��)��ԧ�T%+�8U�ބ�=�S�!&K� �bYE��X�; 1�W��g�p�ei��u�� 8��NF$z,� �LsU�҇��խ�E$�nJķ�l��}��,ơ9�摍yv'��' �\��違i6��O��{�9��Q(p��đ��G�S aJl��bxm��,M�j�hҵ� ]��`�h,��u� ��n��lZ�y��]�zW��+JK��߷�+��`H!��uHs�6H7�+ٖ��s�;��'\|�� W��7��\|$;��z��D��^��R�0��կ�� O7֐�?d��7U����^ �VP�27H��,p�g��3�<��d_"dm��"��.x_��;d] �p�dg��5 hM�.��Ɣ+۲�b�f�ߚVl�Enlc3�h��W�+1=�fyp�\5��&��/�� Jb��<Ɲ�+ Ԟ�8��.ʼ�U�zUzCl��U�bӺU�$wNJ 蠗G>��"mn�cE�~�L?��>��X �6>zB�Y=" c�x��A�o/UIZ�}��m ݢA0:KbVC��o��CAU[]�D��6��(u9� ��nw� �dw ��p��8��׬��d�E0��ls��VF�� X��C"=��K^�Сu]f�K��5�"�XVk��@0:�� l�[ U��Z� L#��e`��j&%� �CAU��"�$�H �(pL!��q �D�j ��$I<�� W '{3�/��,�D̶�� ,:se�K��{��Fr�V.��Ч��"1�t2v3�� 0/d ̳j�gp֚o�Pu贜��͕O�_��g�]A��Quh�1�qk vP�Y��BU53�s$��s��;2��3��a��{ ƶ�$�h� ?-�{̔4� ��覴�=�@�V��~��,(�,�!�0� �Ї2��7��6�� (��fw�o�G9��ܜ��Cs葫�D��CC�f�;@[k��B�� W��"��o,�� i 0KZZ��;}c݈�s\|K.�#��٧�"({\|��D7�`)�L�0�� &��&��Y�)��}�k �\�p�AP{� �ך��pm�Q_��&lLP_V�o��y�>�� э3h� U��ā��/ΝL>Wq('Hۺ&��I��kr�#r��ۿ��i#�� X��(-+מS�X8��)o%Bѷ$��(�� ;4�U�U��#�`�##b�#�=��A�6�rQ�A��3��5_U�:��L�EU Ħ=�y�+])��٫2E"]uk�+=OA��5\|�~��_�b� �5� �+s��~�J<@��#��:{) @gbs� g��t�!Xp�=��ٜɕS��Ԗ�\|��e2�� U��Y��_'IAۨy�<�eS�q1�I�� r��ᢪ��ʠ��$?-g"nٽ�P :� :�Q�� R�gq��&`�P��US^��ru%�-J�C��t�\|+��.�� \X��p��s jפ�A�� "R�L��F�O��' H�ڥ�S��)]�h�.ڛ��j�?��ES q#��8} it˛��&aʸd�k)� Ѐ1��U��g��2iJ��^��iM��j��v܃�V�#2 d�:�-mghKӰߡX_�A��f��N� ox�;D�섌6;�8� � �##�a�AQ��7Q�R��T��>�&�B��5�� ͌5�05�lPzP��_��P�[�9^m��'�Xg![S�)i� ��{�Ԕ-ԠC��U��4�[�u��^Puě�-B�� Uub6+��8��M��if<��'?�I�� O�IG��I��]�[5Y�� z�T�3� ?��X돮" �xmf�%�J&V�� vF@l��xԓÈ^r��\pV_�f��v�6rf�~h�S�g��p]��bNg��U��9֘w�I��)� �rN��d�T\|��E�\|��g�.��9� ��tis^� 2aP��G=�VV�[�Jcˋ��[`є7k��d顊� r��aY�Qt��y\/��9��@�8{ ��ƈR ��<�p�eG A�a$��RpF�x�#�1��z�C�L�!�T2;E9K+�j!'I��L9]� 0'�l�K��^�S�-V��8�9� ayd9�J �� i��֝��)h�Y�o��$��~]ej�gPCIZG�kP��l�qk{t\SRm�UiW~�G~$/㶷�m:ڔ a��r��pl<��PG�VU�7�N�u�m>G�lձWܓ�s�� Ħ� ��\�aX��%h� p�Ɗ߈ #�Β�1�Hm�Ȍ��nD�� 6>��ڶ�=�jl��¡�Oo�%��Ѡ��eb�x��(8�'mq�U 6i�s�(G� �g�� D��LF�oc��s��;��@"�Q �Ќ\eY�J%��8��D��=γE�۝c譨�L�d<"=�Y�^ �h�:�v�� l����,Ԓ 3��!K��+��V�L�F��g� ��-K9�xӐ<��\|�x.�<��7��'>��XL�C]s��-�x�@��癵�Ú�l��Sk�� b2F��!�W #��Ʊ� 9!uF (?m�-@��Y%҃�@��'�F� ��C��V��e�bYSEwK\ys]n�t��+0!M�fsM�z��q��4 �e�2�n��u��l�ݸ�9�Rl�a��m�!Ã��M�v�� lHr�eVQqXl��\|�k_+&'W��27�z�� ĩ�^�x�s]��Di-�� \��sэ�Dլ��i}�K_�qX� ��Y��؉p܋` G&3�x �E=]j��Ӓ[f{둁U��>H)�EK5ZE׷zh��Y�KY�W��f��)�IPZK� �e�f��MH��kN ��! +��)��A3�#ʄ��g-�� d�Np�Ua��4�e��akjBe�@�&V;/��[-��D� #d_ T͂Y�(gahx�.��p��4.}��Ug�4�n�W��-nq cf:��1�#��®�t��!Q��<��We��" �� Ela�qpb�G� 'cM�`�H�"�b2haX��V�4ږ 0��+�X�ɾJ�צ+�Ўʾϛ"+�k��?^ \�\��.x ��޳�%��b��@��=01}i�� n>��y��x͐c+��&ȳ�4�� ;XѽzD��D#��Tsb��q�Q�� V�3��wa,��/��Ā�e Գ��+l�,�(��zfH��m<8�f�m�,��n-�"7�q�+"�if+M�(s%1/�L� �DE�\|��QJJ��_��( '��݇�\6�Q�x�r�L$lױh��b#�;��+��6�Jį,��hNl�Cs��<�>E�KaE!6��!�AbB��d"�d��do��g�%9�q�U�+� s��@��XA�:�w��q��n�(dGEsŉ(�F(XXM��6 XQ�8��,Ν;��QB�l�� K��x��d�!">K��ַ�wE��H�.h�ǎ��@� �Ge�]io̓�J�M�<��4�:�؛��ir�r��@?��R�)�J�j�K�-��My%ړΜӹ��2�`%r�1��;�"�e��pf�v � ��W�4ʹ�$66B�k�PU�Ox rchE�FV ��-�E��>ڭ��{~�ťbޕ��yJ��r��ĞI� H��:=�� X �R��(fa�\|�\| �DN.)g �7g�,�� T[l3pR��a�eԏu �z��:Hu�G�� )��o�Ĕ�N�"�&��J��RV@�la�>��U�}� QAX�dPm3PĚ\��$�/_u�3El`��7>cqFj�b2}\.9� �h1�@i��m�_�� ^��6�`ߪ�m'��L;n�\��j�$�^\��Dy��b8aV�?��i��~��GU��,�n��F)��[�c%]�U�j �Đ��$4`0�Պ-�7{�tb�e��;��Qm� �'I�9I��4�13��Y�j��+a�T�'��5qw�m�� y�p��M��A1��aGE z��9��J��z��~eն'u�s2� i ��sy � @�)Ob� IcnE�N��}L7�ov��乸r��Xׇ0�F��S��T񦝈N��:��WB��&l�۲(�}� Ɉ�p,��@T�>v�} T�[ {�e�Hr��1�9�3ܔ����;��N��X��)�'9��M56BFU��A�J<�z+�aeU7�P�/H=v�ԍS��j��2q�1V�U��!x�1 �>AYe &��8��ءK�y{�\|�e��:a�n��[��%O(N� �1bQU;E�+�}z��s1$��j љ[��p9��V�:#̛��d��s��֡�� ໳��N2��5fU��3�YPf�O�̔2ц8�S1� L �r`{}��<��Up��iN�l��c�� n0�� #' U��#+�ܮ��tS�&h�q��G��#}'��P�u�k�lߙ{k}�&��h{?1�~q�<7�� aJ�\|T�HH2� [YYQ+�� R�� <��#�16pJt�u�m> ��ְ[��U�G̝c xS�\|P5j�1ǎJ��U4G��5�~��)�i�N�� R{2i`1^l ^�� K��m��󴠪��_p�8��H�+�#F��g�,�j��{9�e�:1xZi��L� ��\|�A��U��j��xE\|u,�� H�� X�C��91w��%��ɶ��&��V��+�&=��W�� !7��<��W�� `P�[Uv�-��Z��+��\ ֑�uՕ��\|�9�7��S�`A�z�lnr��dT!�kI4�ɜQe�㾣O��oc��/:4pt��Ǝ2�W��0�&�0e�Mu'Ȃ��O��<�Ln�[v��7� �G�g�v�k\c��V�R�#XZ�Z3�7��bh�aA�V�W�(m�J��n��p��g�G�r -��ҀDc1�^�4��w�� 8��~� (�\��:�� ۀ�Ap�L4 ��:#��1�I�˵�j��ֵ�a U�C ��@Q�s��>�G��t�6F��=��I[5,�)��nlԔQ��c�}��>!�.\u��43��ݜ�S� OxB�iq��?b t��[��[��Jp�=��~�+��\|]�m4��ַ��s�q�/��E�z׻8d�ARq2��O�� ƾ^��g$�J�?}0T��h{&�-l�^C��` nv�Zͧ�O-��ꆎ2��~��SUe� j�S"�Y�`�lc��aW�� 5v�f#JnL0��܊i��"��_��]t��vAժ�"�� 0V��=�q�m�я~��l�L��ŖxWU Z�H��i�)A�.E��VPuP�]E� w�� - O�Y��?��?��\9S�� xH��S�PB^��ii�B�L>��O&r��^].��d��5q��׾�U��A=�p��}kq�4=��OV9��~p�X�%�+� ,r��&)us� ��jb��Pu�ܶKK��珝u�n+m�>�;�U��9��~��W�r��s\k14��I�(��b ��e/\��@��U��q��Ѱ��K�JH� ��ke�fV�mo��K��e�2n��UG��3�� <\ ��}�{��u��5��wd1��B�A��m��R ��`�N׋ �Fl ��o��ԏ�I ��#l�p��ܥ�� 4 �"��(��[��[p��e`D_��^�p�j=��e��\�W C��l��J�h��dA�f��b�D 1D��,�:�a�o��o��[�c�)X"��_��beG�z�;�Qp�IE��y0_[ d�8c���1KX��%4��U��8A��Q=��`� �m5wA�z��3�a�s[?��>�y��&PF?ì�<�9��P�)Ȣh�j0�_(9� ��6�푱6w��C)9(��)J�k₪��5��{�'c�x� _�� ?�\|�;_�¹,f�{��:F��v�� Q��h�z��&�V�uި��/�1k�L�� C{`Aա=�!=�)��H� h�Y�W~%�,�W�~��~��w�+l]�=} Us`�^�Mn 47��@vcA�\|]k��x�<�u(�'�l ��15��?�-�:ǲ�{�k^S��8��/]6Y�)WW��&� �s��82k1n]�&x�}�w}W��Dl#��N0;@�2,ĳ D��%B��־�k�R{��I�Kz!,"�Z�-��[�د ��'=��F9��)�f��\|f�� =�3(g�U��̷��jBIO��x�C�KqS0��/{��y�㻓8)��@�Q�D%e��F��s, M�T���2W z��\|�#��`~Y�x�#��K��~ ��s��r}�3� �o]�L��o��-d,ˉV nB�� T��k"Xr`YF�z`A� t�W�Y/w��9;�"8��-1��RX a�e�� vPu]\|��\GiW>�Q��`��6��&M'm��p�$��r�ߘ�a��U�Uw�:�'>� V,fQ�;ն#�� ]�,QZH�2��/�b N�%] +a{PuKxW ��ɺ�,XYq�45�['��z��O;��!=��BU�T\|XE`)U� R�5�il��o_��o� �׉��3V��)��&e��zL_��cM�RU �S��oo��)��z`AՃz �T��W�b�� >�я��_��l�QW-wm1 Ye�� `��L ��4+Ӵ��W��>%��ENI�ou�[9S��R�쁯�_]�C��=b 2�S�(<��u��_��9O� 6L2� �\|�mV/�j�r;ܠ�^��8�{r��\|]��w��G3�N~j�O�h��׿��Q�o��o��%�^z`��K�O[�vy � %��~��_�T��=�y��=a�C���"hbe �j�.��gkr+��Ԫ&��4᪥�I�D��=�q�� V� )�r�h�J��WǕs� Tʲ7��T��d~�<�/; rR !r��#=B1u�K^�a<��Dn;ƽ�c\|jA�c\|k�O��L��$�C��r�iσ {E\|�t�+��2�ށ�_p�� T�,��WX^��4-��q��]y�= C�JZ�B5�L�5�o�,�?o��ǭ�%��z}�k��t�܃�z-�zիD� � q3� ��7�J޻�R}��bp�jy$PX��) :��uxSn�N��Z�5��L��1��쁅� �{�T+�`��<��4��H c\|��\�"�H3�ˤR��p�I��d�� Z�,��AFW�5��J�W��\|)p ��L�K"n ��dNrz�"��7��a�q�s0!��v��{�0x�AX^ � �n��6SjfWN�6�KJ)!ő�&��Ӏ~ ��P:C��d/{�ϥ;�Uw��W��>��W��3{AJ8D��ea�-�}7�@�vyT��(��EF��澻��[��0�&.�$x�#�4��h+��gjJ�u�2��_�U�� NhA4��W��l��/�+46�C��/u<� ��@�PR�ӓ&Td��o�ǜ��̻yvQ��e� ��O+сN��pRGC��j7��KYP�_�ު��$��y�;�AK��Eg ^�\|( ��p�+�g�gl�u�s ��d�r��T��KM�h�@ѤsH�i�y�k��U�� }Ō�hɪ� �.�am0��`(;-q��"+h=��AU� h��ⶡrACȋ�"qC�-oyK�j$Tq.��_��h ��8Kh��fO��N$��j, NO,�zz��ԖB4��4H�b�&�H��e��@��`�q ��p��B��ȓ��y }f�� z�� @��O0�i��UJ<�f�'�MX�� W�]0U�OG�BC�]��w�)�ZP�n0 �J��1� s�"��M{��_��ZWE�0�d�1��M=s�e__��4�U��0gSb��V4N�E�Y8��2 ��S�� kٞ?�Ab��M�ύ��[�\��z��??�Fcp\�l��c�� _,�z\|��nw��/�؁�J_\%�(�8"޽��.�s��3�"��x�G0hG{ ��i{�� \|�mt�J�I`��81�f ��E�t�/�D�~A��F,=��W��Zz`遥� ��T��'�\|� Xz`遯��8Xz`遥��U��%�� Xz`A�e ,=��s��s��K,=��t�.��IEND�B`��Dd ] ��0� � # � A��b� �;��С�� /�P�ú��F�� n ��;��С�� /�P�ú��PNG IHDR��8�ZsRGB�� IDATx^�-\��U�K]+��ZGe�cݮ;Hp��Hց�:�-nq�8�Nee�Z�8�3�&�4�m&�$�9=� �d>��y�+��Ǉe��@��O�9� �� y��j,`ȫ��&��i�A��L[�� a �vcN��o�ۍ��9��# �ء ��F�E��Ҽ�1η̨)dv�+;#~jZ�.�d$��b�eT�jl9��W2 %g�ئռb��U�A%�j�RM+^yM��&H&�B�0kM��H �򶯼 o�j�g�m��Do4)��Q\͍�g[�r�"��Ji���I��)3�Ih+ �2�� `��W "嬱� �f�+��M%�ً��W%Ed�J 2-�M?�� H3 ye�ǰ;xN ��Ey��+�O�~'�� }T�"�� z@�>�%�ü�t\f�]�D�ʻ},��I��S�Һ%���?b`G��O�a�� %��C^ �dNT��]�K��5��p8�!��ən�fe�s�B�vh�r.ع�� mۦ\|w�//y��^z�iL� \|��#�j��r�Zv��8�V��#��<GX�"ziҘ��Z)�xyy��f`n�^�� A �c�wtt� ��C� \|:�Gj��9ȣ��[:��)B��v:�v�M\&��� ��_�Ù�� h�N�q��߿��݁E��h��@�\��C� \|e´U^��ZxUr�r�� E\|�� ܵ �� E7a��q\|?��C 12�.��J�)cF��<�%��pq��!:\|�@��F_�#�@ ̀##%D��&��X��AqT," i ��J@K襉h�)�7bx��Ƌ�"�\|ڑg�˂E9q��9t�@:y� bT m��\]]a��}HA�OG� \|倕��?��#+ ��19��st��l`�ES� \|��L˲�a��B��򑘥�� ⇫�q��R[��_�~ �j� u�D� ǐ=�29��"�p�Z�g�+��V��2ŧ�[y�@٣kE"8֝<_ �E�ɓs!�d�K-F��j��J �3𥶫�� yJE�Y�V� �`��65�\|� �%��NEz[�犸 KjS��5�<��O=\|Q��\��~�H��b��m��)f.�@^��.��a�fa ."�yF�r!� p��=��Ȕ��. N�ӎѺj �۸�� 8J�t< ,t �=s�G ��`�Y?�3�e�nW��Ts�l'��J�Q�X�T'��v�p#}n��ʆ��Q��6X)p"��P��訁B 2�8�=@�ˁ]�G��i��\|ʁ�3��T~�M��a 4�� X�� ډ��#\|G�m�H �\|�X�\|00' ��k21��z{[Q�}��P�Ț;�\|<�8 ��Y��Y�Fmy ��\ >�� ?�� _i��aG�!{��0@��ϟ�p~�Cyo�\|U��k\|%� ;�=�`N�`:s��$$�wzz _6��W p��4�CZ��9ly�r��"�k y5��B�Ď�c��qn�{�h�2 v��}��8��v+n'��"h � �Sz�D7�v�v�?��o �.p�v�X��} y~ ?j%��"ӣh8��S�i8y��.m��]� %?��?�U#Ю��fhꝡ$Be�i\'��-D"� alTv�Om �R� ĆA�]N��<ب �4N�� y�W �4�n��+>U=9�.5� �p��ϓ[A��)8��nＭ��z�JNW��V _��i��ϗ�v+No��8��w� ��r��~��=�#^�L�W��_i6��٣�d��Q��業44��`��1�\w�[ �K�6�5�Za�8�v�� O�>>/��U7Y]C�jN�j�� Փ<��Yߨ �5��Պ�"�KXl姴��Ձ���p ;a:�'��.F��M �Q�͛~��K��$r��߼��k�l�sM��3��h�rZkb�_�\|\|Cyb`��( ��8X៶s��\| �gOc��a�Z�2VSWܹ��(� X{�]� ;�Wr�y��-� �ح�\�h��"��d_��\/��}�O�X�^��C�m��`x��3��h�+H @�;9}p��3�N��RM�ۥάwwo�{5� �sy��Am�զ�m烡/PL��ѥo�Rp�lH}Z�e�m�}�5�h;�E�b��z�� ֺ��/p�ٰ�3�]1>�\|� ��Z�'� ��yt��?��,��~G�&;�.��Hw%��Y��v= o2��: ��<��{� ��ˆN�e�`�\Z^�B��a�AdC� xl��si�WL�-K\|�ߐ G��C��ß��}=zx��3>a��A��!89YR;��7B��>J�pY��ܝ��&�� X0 �l�7p 1��9V��:6��{�=;�ȁI#��Vz��ǃ��N@kι��q �؜ ��v��%%�3�,��Kb"S1��.�ۀ�6J4t�\|^�a~ӯ糖n ��%��x��7��os�� PD �J��M�v��[2��W��RB�6�\|=�t�}V�Maܐ�e!@\+��C� ̗lS� �F�7�q��+�X?�+y)�z-�}��z1�f3��>�B��\P��nq�/f��F��1 4�7��M�η�U��v�Bc���Y"rR"�8X)�M,��鿆�n�z�~}A �ͧW��l��O�� Q��;��X^׳0ȶç�W�e� pR��<~��]�k�� n }��\| �z��q\|y[lJ ��A�S5Q�@��R�BI�V��' R�� B ��{>8 ��-v(1�^��s�YI��MR��-I��`v�O� v(�;C{zs�~y �.�t.R�hE��<�c�L�Nφ�bn�;��k1�x �Wo�B�G��%-� !pJ�S̮�1�X��ے��/][�.�,��D��2��t�dp��?�R��h>e��z��:p�h�"1��Y�}r�=>�c��g�� yHezq�~��,��!-�lc��A��1\�40��+��n]�<]]��w� h `GCW�i��.��n�kr�.�Y�N�Sᆱ��_�Ję\|��̱5^�k�c׉�x�f�;a�ߞ)#�H���N߶�gg��˸֔W��&ea[ ^ ��ơ�� 9S��P n&�O�?R��X�R�~��\|��0H��M K:�� .�1��tΘb��\|��v��JnPh��z΁��+�&܃�[M&��_�� l��9�%f�z��>ۺ�sr�w$��x �[o/-�� 1�G'��b�C��cUU��Er�s�7v��/ 29 �Wṑk�<��ۭ �0��m�Ԯ��]��ʘ�N&�ٿ��7�$�#�<�l��a�J��pa�) /c3�m�� +w��N1�"�X��Q�;py��Xu��5�mk��3 ��l[��v� �2��N��2��"O��Zc�8 � �X��¥�� IEND�B`�XDd � ��0� � # � A��b��MT��j� f?R��[�� n ��MT��j� f?R��[��PNG IHDR��%sRGB�� QIDATx^�/x�HƷ�j 8��v�"��:�G ��c ��ZG Hp��W ��{�� Ν��Lf&��S�r��_�{�$��]^^�a�Y`��h[n 7 ,,��H��jͿi�chi��S[�`��P�4Y ��8�)�� `v��A�u�Agra��8/p�c?��C�fN�4� Ћ!4xh\|M� �d�Np\|i�hMf��ّ�G�ru�$`� Hp��T:�A�T�<)�Xg�b�P'�U�e�� 'g(y��H�} Bp�}��M��g��4cʬ��7��엵j.�$8+�˪1s(y?= N�~k��-`ϝ�� ν�>g�wfؤ�6t�} �mV�Y��Fp��,E�0�s k[��fY��-`�<:ֶf ��6�9[��yt�m�0��md)r��Xۚ-�Cp�ˎdؤ�1�>�!ا^�kc#8� ��T0�SY�� cO��;�jL��R-�Ipc��/v�V_: ��-�!��鈊]�?��[ܲ>��ƞ,��e��+-1��Ng��!%�x�j��ͨO)M(��d�d l�A�x0�V ��$2��T�5��Em ��K��3qXElDX�cB��핗��I_Up��@��w��ŮA� �D-�}r��Ʈ�W��-��^�v�j�T/��0B��e��v\|M��`0�R�`��N�B,�֔x��4=�>NE��>#?\|ޏ ?:�lmm�6&��0��@��ׯ_(r}}��8��;ά=K�@��ŏ ?�/7@\|�ƍ�� By��=a$��9��'Q��e��P� ��ʈ�G�r��܉A��P(��~�� 3'0=88��!�"ʷo߾u��͛7ɷ� M��ߤ�(�.v��s~P{vvV�/�{��٫W��4�E2$�F��\��0��%��p\|5�(� ��x��L��A0�w��-[4!� �c>@2�W�R0]U ��[�1\|� M��q��_�:�@:��U��;w��!F:��S��9v��7�� \|�0 ��Y $��`[��4�&1��~��Jq4l��#j��2��NJ (A�͋� S⾘��.�"�/!��h� ��ZQ$.��Rw��#��s2�f��!�0%n�F�4��7�� D�j ��Ӡ�9� ��FU� �.�6��#�{��Q1��m5��d�2A.xQ� nɂ_2�p��rnW��9 3�V��6�B��6%�k�b>��(��K ��ip8Kv,� �h�� <� ӑ(�%��f�B!�Z"�,�F2c�b �^f+f�ÛQqdA37 4��,l\|Pفo{'8 ��o�h !��h"<% �\&�15@̇:�q�W��1f\|K�� p:��Y$j�X��yȥ�H�<@L�CP��,tRU��ں:�F�I bڣ�-��D��H$ ��w� �Gp�DǊN�k��Η�T�EMeW��,�"s1�-�St�`��ݻw� (�_g��-qՍ A��# ��%��=F/# NpQ��`�T�.��Uo�� #�Pj]q! �\|@ � ��k~p�9?7�;��(��IB��`��:Yc��ip��e>{�[��aV��_qY�kd�fb�Q䮾� w#��,��K�B�y�B�� `��L� � ��<�ݐ�b(�J��2v�b�=�5�[�>I��1�~�� \)<�hZ�LkM �� Y��nS򉧂/�- ��WR"=��\�fOߤ�ѓ�E���͎ச�&�x!� �Fp�S`�O_#�/��7.�'��A�� .�F� ��x��g��5�C�-�3�7k�3��1�8�<�͑�\�� 5��!�6'\|S��!�F}��xf��&��x~��!�%�F�`G��_#xH��A �a_2� ��1p��ݍ�v��V�;��!L��y��5C@ _#��k ��tF�L"a��VM#�~�z!�"�H�r��x�LG<b�ndr;c� 3��\|��{\|��&i��8�"�ۛ��A �"P� ��%��܀'[��u g7��"SK�' �s�/��8�6� ��1ԁ�n�f� �^� � 7cfF�f5(��_lbC��6�� !ע,Β��,oV�6�{�� R9�Yw��`x�Q�/��9\Inrz�VJ>ۅ�gl�N D��֠��%.�<��ֱ6�>�P�� hSaC��iwX�9n�}��~�a��쟞�d1��-̹5�}�+k��M��!��k��d2�&L�@��;�a�x2[&"c��xd�Zk[�z�^L�u��[:��B?�� Y��5�[�}k댽�im�J��`Cd?��M�,�o�M�m.� ��m��;��t��,jL�j�d܌�I��nz��~w�LB��n\�(��b�0 ��ըL��ΠHh�2��N�&� M�#�"f� .V� ��r�m��'��A pφ�K�Zӟ�H� ?x��]szv�a�7�KD��R0�0 �S(3/s��7~M��Z&ƌ��$@��;��Y="��R�͞��.�X+k��X��]��#��jRI QU_�?�w��P��1+@��XS�)L��z�3xR�n\��wh�%]~�w�{~��>�P�c�n��i��:dN�O�(�'��E�_�x8�~�4%�(�_�(�Fd�e�`raQ�V�N▂@Q��𖝸s�)��3�1��9�Y�ǛM�,t� �� {K�1G�-��i�T�$�Kv�I?Jb[^ �� E�'� �)�.1K�a��x�`"fJ�jCUa>4�ހ�`7��6��A�׼��2�6��F�^]� �Dfi�'��ҡ��W?�1�A�Mw�2#�t`Ϫ!�PyiR�80S�J]�K��I� 4ی�%�� 5�� V)��p��oY,�E"(��:��V�R�xb�eC�Tj��ėld�A��s�u�°p��Uin�H�z͵��a�>`��U�,�8I"��Ë�YfQ�ȲZ ��1% � ��o��˶a�в��Pl� S�;��ƨ kճb6�B�J�!x�<��w8��[~x4�� C��}O��׃��ALKUwpE �� 3w�af��1 ��Ԟ��F�Eڽ�s��H�`��En�Tr�4,rl��j��)l:/i��vz䖯.�{�/�� ?}��p�b��V_�ѱ?f@�G�:�b�3�v��k��p4ȓ2h,"ۙ 軧yUs0 �tri�#H��L�c��6�.N��\ �E��۞�N ��`�Nf��jv��Ҕ�_�+�D��S��5fiQ5m�a�_�/�׉b�Q�� M�C J`�NH�$C±��&[�U(��x #�z �g\F;�$��e �J&�%��0��o��}�/��d�"�AԠ̨ʤ03 �k��2��~�H�%ySbw��%�a�� e��<��B��2q��H�[dw.xs��?2��^ t��N�fՕ\|h��#�jy��i��n%1�#��e��\|Y�@�y��U�V�f��I�T 3F�H+!A�w Y oz�>4]�� z� ��?l�]��N��E.4�/ ^{�xi}18٘B��G�i��2��t�� _�L[�RX4�LRZ���p+� ��\^�J��]pK2��.y�� x�� y�3�d�tem._�F($��֞" ��A��'�� \|��W��Ǡ��H��HRz�F�vx�^P��(�&3�i��K�n�^�ewB�� x�6��@X�$�{��$~�~�!{5�'�N"�d�LL��Se!��y�f��̃�ޞ�v��x � ��4��\|�` ��a��JF��p��I AV��6+�c ��Uuld팪�o�!��,DײSmz�Z4 9�pZU+H0k��h��d��df.k[��h�lV� ��N;��^�J#��/ i]��q� �EqR�>)J�]�~�)�0�NK�� 1��iD��'�yq��c^�(�U��[��b��жJ�e��Q��q��j ��̋��G�< ��F�.o��e��y�&2PQK�@��"��>��+ԂjT8x\\� u-S�)��QنUW<��ƾ��#k[9M ��z[��B��7�6p��\|��n%��N��$��/ J�K�L��p4@\|��R&��Ac� )�$dP̧/�f�y��F�j��=�y��,IM;tC'��a�5u�'��iH����\|�Qo����(��trpO;�$8e،\|$E? �.׌� 2Py�&"��!��̺�C.��Z�� p�QEW�Z�/V59�z3@�:h�m�%� �Y��\|M��%�p�9\|�a��cBwb��k� x��}��.�3e�j� \0��8��F��<�x'd��G�! ��v��ŀ��5��0�M* ^W�pv�_��M� ��]^�ח ��y��^#�"RME�S]7��xǡ!�p��t��J:��#�I�eg�0� @k�Ҷ� �N�� 7_J�ȶ4��ө.�:F��j��z�!v6��ce�� >��g��43C��r�$��ʒ�{0�� 8I��0~��2��2P�#o��'�M�fy��KQ�OZ.��[�v �\|�}9n ɲ�^��0s-%�^p�t��j"�6v�(�M�=��ra��fC�$�B��5s��Է�bL�`�O� HU�J��D�\�"��2�_��4�'�'IIQ�� (�:��D1��M��w �{��J#��m3:n\|�� 皇��m_��g�� {S2V+��vj�Iz6�H��9#YȨ��ߴ�V�1^��EQ��HsdI��1��$�� !r�؟ Y��؛��\|�c�f�Z��2� ��.D�E�� ]X�O�gx��:?�1�#�� (XlN��C^��3yUu�sW�ռ �]��זN�}A�'q�2�Q ��]A�nm��ᓞ��繝^N�ŔE�mʜ�3�wѢn��Ew�}�� ο<�TFI�+�&��0!��u��"@�� eh��~V��Znӏ�-6V��H04�c�0%�m�z�� S��AI��C� �Hm��^��1��xF�I�Y��Ď 8��f��-h�en%1+�Mmx�Pܕߦ��d��I�4�4�[��Z�H3@B�0�ar�5@+��l�JB�]��0y�%UxW��`Pl4�s;=��WW�t z9l�$n�(n��<��1� 3��0��a��L"��k�sͪ�(:�ٲ:Q ��M��%y��Ѐ��iY�zq��t�jΫ� ��gke�І7J�s)�:���d� �p�n��5��t��g~��?I??� ,p =�=�'�f ��+�2D�°=��T�y�By��a��9��q�:��N�ȃ1�Y>4��o�}��.b��E��b�'N�gW3�a8o�k��vF��&�D�"�R9��?�gh�� 4á`�s f�cby��DBȰG�6�dn)[9�:Ygމ::�Q� �~2z˨3 ��je҆sR�+�� V ka��7;.ǣ��fP� �lb�8�cͥ�7�dT� ��U5��5�\|(��i�� R"�Y�, a��2��E�/ 㚫3�.NݟU�d�XT�~�a$��<�,��^�5XZ��G�M&b��,��_hՙ:]F��f,��Ǚ�Np�x%�m�MQ� �&4I��4�Nh�phc�s�JZ�)U@��u�֎Ul�e�vz\| n��O ��j��SmPI~�Lۨo7�$�TQ�K�7�Ͳ�UMN޻��3��Y�g�� J��"K�8`�5\| yP��Ҝ�� /��\��4��D\|��W�h[��9�=��w��h��:w�3 �� m��-�ޝ�3h2�� Ƈ��l��S�<�Z� ,rYea��NA!��I2 ζ�&�x!Ns��>�c&K ��w��f'FJ��m��'�`�5>�hD\"IՇY�)[ �%��M��}��!�O�$I6�֝��>:��" E�g /~�(��+�T� �TD]��e5�&f�U�+�>pY��C�-ZH�u�kKV7�oC�4-g��Ġ&70ɬ�$��E ��k��\��⑟��F�.�6�M�B�Bt�H�"��q�}�[�j{-�Sڝ}+v�_�no^�S�$jy�h�!��,ԣ��Yl��j Y�'k�zl�@�e�� h~'Y\�9�܏B�,g҄u�x��[��l� +�C�ޖ5�rzϻ�Ioy�_�-fS��WY�&�^�>4�Yv:��W��Hs�Ot�:F:�A�X�'�� ?� "B�$#e��=,��&�\|B��8}��ĲFv�T��0,�=H E4^��.��Wo}��tf� �? _J�I��\|Eױ�#V$4�:�Nǟ�o,��8�͵��{��G�q��`89��Y"�"iZFd;�V�׫� ��3e �<�N W�X��-�ߣ�\�B� ��C��J��j� �Gj1F�Oi��@0!��X�� `U��peF!�b�M.N�j�?I��m�E��t�(��(�J�zV�\� �l�il�}"6�� %9�㬧�7�nǵ�^o+ ǭ��a_�� ǁ�O ��ގ��8Y�z�G��r-7�屢��^{q�jv��G-Z�(�D�gD>��Ϣ 8C �$��g�i� �L �a��񞨑�LgA��yq�S:�� H��q6&��;v ��ʭ�]�ջ��_�ӆS�v�Ζ�Sܺ��Z�u��^aMNZÓ�憵1��'��u�Yh��k�uW0��lտsf3vq��o4��ry� ?�kw��ߢGȺƑ��و��yf2�f7�U�h��x� �`Ť��{�u-rV f Y:!��&C�� N2]�� h�� eR�F��ޚ ~��o��^2a��:��#L��2��nY�S�b!� � FT�h�.d�fRl{ �@Fʦݸ��M�0��k�Y�k!n�Y�G�� w4%���Q�޶a�A� �2�nBCY�h��M�MA \| ~�J)fH �j��I)T�Jm��_ P�q� ��&uإ�d��>"~��{wnl��w6d��^oRt�O5C��K!��L� �V�S5;ESSUNo�[��9��{��Wmda��i N=��&03qe�L�^���։�£�x�ɣ79�9p��I�'��N�7a�&{/�}�l�S�o7[t�'o��嗾��3\|�\��ǥ� �" ��j�N��^�+�"hr�ܡ�5I��_��P+(YA� ��Ne�g�;��Fc8�j�%��֢Wq�=w9��a ��C [�N3-V��Q�D��䔢��e��ί_�#��CZAmf��h)�+%�(0��j.�u��(;�oc;iz��-�� 8��F�B��":�UD[TW�ޑ��(�� X�@~"�O�b��[$�<�d5�fP�D��{� ��H\,��c��H25��; �� (ۭ-X?o0{Cf~[��4!��}ڗ�4hkv��$��$� Ӵ��}q6�,'��$ŁΕh;BMG��,(g�fT�� 2D1b,:�(acc�d� i��1��4 �,؉k�<�$�l"5?�ϳQ<��ȥ�똅�RRKU �+�4�@Z�p��cy# ��H��:��3�� I�%n5G�Z!Z�\�=!�8��Y�� >q��hIb\|��be�-��T��-L�V��R��:5��c�4�� [ R-}��/&�Q�0�@�4� �`] p��f��&�qU㋋hT��6��4ǡ��j"`��"�� vg��� 釐�j�\TH�w�@��\Q��8.H��DeUf��rk��&��0��ԏ�8�A�\|�&�S3�V��;��Խ@YВh�gx[(VT�\|�v(��4�hp�p�DPzhP��M�8��V�raLJ��Z9��{�7MT�r"0��'�>=��faP��,��;�Kk�Y۝b Q�$�Ŧ\|x�y�>�4��t�3jo� ��8M.�,��d�:猧w@ũ&��X9�� !�ؓ��k��BXR��.��%� ,'�)�ؙ��Q��ܲ�#g�oMg�d��ŘQ�4�� L��t�(?��! )Z�tZ�� qcIv�Ɉ��P�f@t�e�hq��A��@��⒰NJ\|;�;`� ����H��TЏ��;�HB��q�&��)\�f+O��U��u��yV>�a��CP�M�\|HM~� O�e��tU�ݫ ��\8fr5+j6��B�8��3�M ��Cm�i>�6��-{}�� l0t��н$E�TNQ�ǳ�-u��<��9o�0��xsT�I���k�6�I T�E�� /�%0�턜y�^��Qn5.��9�Z\|��H\|IaD��o��9 �S�<��9�>�+��s�f�\|AvF��S��{/��/'��QL��ϛ��4��^g��:x 9��`��rvv�N��c��@�"� �qH�Y ��K�P-6��@n¾��\|o��w��V��@a�A1�� q��&��O��ʟm�� Ӥ~b�c+�[�!t3CmĚ�V�c� ��(��b0��3�ԫ��H ��m�k�ܫ^��L�uz\|<Ɗ!/��h�1�K�7�\|�uȍ�Vޞ$�5=y4��jE�^��U[c��^�.�֪H��19��d1sjF�� ʤZ��x�Sg8��C�A��󜉴.�i-�+z��fN+Zt��بMӎS ��;��ɔi��;��5}бfȢ,� �l��D�NC��C�-��;H�� ]��fn��oo��A2�g3�Sw' ��x�O�� i�)��T 6� �C ��(Ԅ %��e�,� �/�lI��3?u%j��Kk-ŁB��ޯ��f�^EH3��ys��V/�� i�<;��p��,��..��ٶ3�# �O:$��p�Y�8�ތ�֢��j�v>.qչ��S�0z4[L��t6�LnCw�0�&;��\>��~4�n��T9I o�du�S��,шu�4 V.��4^�;�l�ov�� F�F��hB�m�P�I��Ʌ��k�f��K��j ��( �) Ț��A1 nF� �!L6� ��҅YFs�� ~�4%9��:Kv�8 ��u��ɷ��3��/�y�)+a�L��%��0k�v��{~�f� 1s��ڍ�DE�(譴K�>�� KY��K�t��v'(j0�\��ʛ��+-!��T�$�Bݘ�i��3��d��_KH��8�d@"�� OΪ�6Jt�մ!�gĜ�%�h �58�+�=��,��i� ��6ڴd��O)\��Ѷ:-��A@�Χ��(��V.�.n'>� }�I�̻�HCP̈��)rc�P ��-��r�M��_<ݾj��T tT��+��X!�849��[�BT�e��f�X��{�!] �4A�^��^m]��Y��c�p!��e� K�)�& $ %�uf��ߤMͮpj�d4��j �� u�h�HIH��L��E��W�SPG�yl ��9a��w�V�Χ]�b<�N�5��{n�O��w#tQ��m��j��Q�[R��?�j��̉S�4�� \ CET�Z��R��L@��BZvbݒȡ�L�P�qJi$@bv��s ��ҫ&q'N+1B�0�&��[3믙e�@��Ӵ�a�>��+���A�?׷��aD�Z2��(ď0��l)J�� f��1 <�M66�8�~�� (4��O v��]� �hC�)�� 1��3�AT^��֕�.I�#� �iPS�� ^m��.��l�W�Ѱ�ò�5Xt��m��sѰ %t�1:�M0���&&d ןG ��>sc�D��Q$��xԢH�jA(֔��3{C��Sh�.��E�� 033��4"k�k��)�"�߆��L�}�]fw�{{��: ��L��4N��;��1 �A[��`r��`�Z�&��L�]o�R�K�5��B��$ ˵� 7B�B� ¢1k�e#cxW5 ې��b�/w��ܬ�UG� ��z��^��Ѩ��&8�� 6D��(z��W��N�.$��Y:cg�V��ԙN��ĳ$�mm�� u��PN��m�cErU��%�`� �>��0��ư�s HǌW@B� �T��2)�b�b3E�-k:(vև��xȉc� "4��A�\|;�Tm��Z��P܀�� Ț��A��+�u{D��o ��k�&��`��LgZ��%#�,�f)�k�n>�E?�MZ"T�8N�3e ��w1aO�7�X7wS�zF��8 �X�t�ɤ��b�X[n&c��h#�$��4��5��,��/33w�R2K��9�=�e72��:�� R�UN;WRQS�T��%\�4�j�\�� \�(��e��`O)[g,k��W)K6��dV�� Ҭ��J��\�8� �n�0Rf̎ �mЉT7��G�p��z��VI!��(1�6բ^�h Ud��A�53^��^E��ꍦ�xĚy ��u3S �͆53,[�v��q ]��Bdn�.C8�\|5�i~� Y��ٕ�)�t�`eC�44� X۠ HS�Ѵ�D�ԳH륒�Z+Ѣ�\# ��}�� fɉ�.��t�ETKM�!ȣ_��6$��7ŔŚ��\|� ��N � ߽v`��%�E5��F7P5��1�=T�E4�aj��)�o �C��tt��-� S�kY��Rf�!��b��4�틵��2S�j� ;�� X[ɦ��աH��<��7U�Ǖ�U��Fu��]YH�2� ۺ��(�۳j;����;�w0MsԦ�Gev?�U�� ΋0\�ŔѪ�$��,ۜg�P:��# � � O��qb�Y��j��Z�z.y4U�H�VLZ¤߰]Ɠ���ό��FR��<GGJ�b��v��̖$��F��QpɃ K<�kP0�8�n \|�U>��b� J�i�m�@�\|��␭��O~�#�B�c rHā�NH̎Bkb�Ҭ��j�N�{H�l� `�`��X��9o$Y�I�,9��W+l�L�t+?f0��%i�XE�i�P$��2�3�B�=Jјc+F�y�s��CnȺ�";�� 6�VC��1��T��"�e�B�ހ� �H�%�e%�.Y7Փ0}�H����y�� ,+�q�Y��k��Bb��L�˴�t$�I3y ɵ��вtq�o��\|�PN�~��Z�)T]��=��ʛ�J��:�5�?�yh(8 1�k��A� ��} �� 2,�CJI��}� L�U�]�E�<��I�BW�&W��I�ރx.`�� <�q ��r6��3T6`D3��F��a� ��l��>��Lր>e �܊6��)��8q��)6��Ƕ�9_��Ή��:�� c�Yc�ڜ�:���nHK�C��\�=�$�c�>��à�Y�g�}# n ��#�n��L�Sx�z�!2=ub�`Sg{E�W0ݤ nq��^q��&8 �G��G�?/��͌��Y�Aڨ�mh��MdQϒ��6��K$G�7k�E�� D@p�>&�v�bE؋��3ˣ3�8ߓS�.Ȑ�4-�=�6=�� U?�L�(h�f�� 5��\r�֒5�8�{ł"D}c��j��,��.s��d�"v��" � �[�J�+�޹q��y�8 ��t��j��{ޞ`�\|��z��2��k{�យ�� }S�iTՈ��qf#%�iu��Lc�G��Z�-�4�ć{h� �e��$��f �,�yҾG<�҅w�� °e��a�d+�t$c��u �� η��O��7�:��߸�Mٽ v�6��DwFp�ޔ" i�j��~��/��+\xl��%�� y��0��Z�ˮ�Py�n��7q��s� ��G��;��A�5>:�Y�J�c%��5�� ĺb�/S��;��&��'öV�! ѵ��KӇd_Ĺ#�r�f��n<�yw./�o�o5:�x��h ��}U��t��͠�\)�@��+��o'YB�96��c�\|3��ᚅ�F�P]�j��\ Nܦj�K�?��q:�>�jxӜ#a��7�It},�?{��ٺ��[ �r�i }\|�`zp�S��(b��y\|� ��? �&�!n�LY�6i��&�8u��b��4�%��wk��ri�V��`�2�r�S�?<4�W��>��7m�HB��kJ�R��L��M 2w{6�� ?�" ?��O~��t��_��\|�kG�=�Ƨ��O�.�� 2� 7�y��={J2��'Nz�^��3O�m�e��\� � ��?v� �W��Ag�� ��Ik��2�� 2Lh +�W#hM�!�# ��F%�{�O^��g�-�; {��t5h�$KI$Qy8��4kο��CP +��R5$;��]f?܆V?1��,��Sb%�C��l�g޺yǭ1�!E¼FoS&iS�h 3�� 3<0��m_Ѿf9�; s��yeU�/HOE��ڥ��o�R�Q�v��N�ݣM\|�5(�� fe T�C��5m[�_ �!tM�Z_��/Ȩ]�Q�=�{Я}��;� �� 8N>�W��6�kͩ��%�AR�Wi �0T� ,F3�� VOi�5=� �^0�¾�v�GNؕ4��xσ��~�/[�p[{�� >J�Y��&��A�"�ԪU�,n0ZR��d�h��g?n?�6.��W}l_��.׿��}�\s�? 9yr`�]<߳f��B�foAk��ߵ�xΡ�ũ�{ާt{�>��ܿ��_��V�՟�t�r&�� @�v�+QS ��\��h.�H�K{��j�^��j�G�> �J�ZS8L�c#��@Iw�v��w��$�r֨�n��E��8} �� ޲F�t��t �oLX �J �J��H�"��T%�^9��[M�L�"L �'U�ƈ��7^�b��̚Y`V-P�d{\|�z��c��RB��[/z�"�ѿ� !W"�54f:��T��3,G�f�l� ��"9yߏ��>+�g�@{��B<�_MvkdN�j͜�� {&��A�:6,t��5 �� )D�r�0��k_�_"U�o�#�6� V~�G�~hyu�8��.V�~�C��lS/�I�q��M��-�Ï��ߺ��\|ӕvt\|�:[a��v��w.�}��KG�c}��#7Κ��u�W��9��-o��;Y/=��#�Nv��,K�� J��zg��Ț��L �}zz�r�on-��(A#��I��yy��_ȝ�e�S��L�� @��{�5OE��0�Y��K̳��zm��4E��︥� ،7 # B���dثVw�lQ �@��J�O��%��r��Fɻ�JzM%"��s&��<�W��/��QaY� ��2��X��\�d�@��D`4p�j��'�/�f�L��q�,�� +�Fq.ž��z��6#�Z �/`��f��\$�B��R��MIR\�_RU�O��W1y�W�+F�o�[�C��ۿH��o�J��(�P�6��W�n� B�S?�i��EQN� ��v3>�ɧ >�?�C?�x��b�u��q��b��_�"�6��x4 Y)�q�r��_p�?��?d5V �m 8:i\|y��Nc�Q� c��6+�uC��PQ�ج��JM��g�v2`6�Wn��fE�C4PgK��cU�fl Ê�F�N�8��o\|�w�L��<,7��dS��r��x�_�V/@�,3j�5^;��;w!-�I�@?��ݠʻ��m�NtL�5�.��PD��RB� �uS��9��_�؁�� n�D�� P��I[�Ȣ �#@�V��1:?��Fu�� &�`ּ�e�^�?�՛?��s�6+��\�0q�F� ;�5dRMi��&Q�UA`&6�B��N}�M��T� ��ox��_��/}�e��!/:�/D�Sm��E��9��7��޹��x� 7�y�� X:��o��\|�]�~��ɣ7~�?wo{��ɜ�S�Fk�~ (�@ ��%� ��l{��h�ۿ��ы��a��S�% g��a՗� .�g�w}cר��r1�àT\|� p�L,V��w�'��?yL�(�t�r/`6 Ky�D��sghVچ�2T#W�A�oUGBؘ��8.�4 �n��^&�X�@)��l�=U llDkN��1��K�XC�j\c�"/��Q �� b�� ?��Xڊ�ɣ⠽v�c��Q��/��gV��_Q��Ĭ��:yq�k��u5-AA$ ��U��K�I�M&�1限-�d7 �-��밝%��EW�t�ߵ�x� �g�H�^w�� A�hI_Y�˸6�o4�o��Q+�P�i'��F�]m��j��i�{��Kλ��CL��\|��dPm߭��u�<(��k� z��/��g�\��S?dCi�G4p v��Z��2��\|�v�rW�4�W.4�D��EI��ݩ;��b7��g��5~� ��6]�)e N�:Z�v�y�V��a�~�O��ܴ��!kZ�`xJ�Oma�FR�ń�� ۑ>��P��Q��3�(-ԍKU�e�� Q@zF�A &3�� _��v�P��]MAX�� j�6�C�Y��J�_��x�� Sh�a��# N��֞x�Ӟ�p�m� �g��0/el,o2�%3! ]A��fB;��1�E��!��ȞU ��8�2�T��ŋ۝�_Ȃ�?��c�Vh�悾�B�P0�66ӭ��> 23��11�a��v9Zȑ��ϣ�G\|��O��Ͼ{p�m� �R dvje�?v�m7��Z�`�#� �;']X+��5�w��x�{~��D�1y8��U��/w�y�s�_�p�<=92�-�sY\|y"��ͳqJ��`��D�z��R�Ⲝ�׋�ٲ�� Z�z�3�� &��"�Pz �[[�?��G� E��rd�"0��~��5�� F�^�lǮ�C�%.7��I��@�q��}�D��Y��4��>�V $b��Q�1�c!?��W8媺��r�h��bG~� :0Q@"��P��P?.�1��C/2��:��c��A��QӂI 7 �j��`[U�`�q8 ܅mvz��C��o�ŭ�z�s��%�:W��Z��U�1��>LV�uB&��@i-&�i�B��,J?�k ,��V6�;��u�~��HM�&m�h\� �� 4,�y &�q~hӡ��D0ڎ��d��3�OO�?��7�_ak>l�KLG5#o==s�ڇx7�=k�vƓ�� h Xo�a4�!/x� ��4�ڝ�}� ��-��ۿX=��c��XN�G�zh`�B�k �� h4u�h_�� :� �J��`O�o�{�\|ߓL`�@g�� i���n��,�a4��d��G��L=�)�d�ƞG=��$aw��Zs�� Z��Q��5h �ܛ�~w�E� u�G~�7�3C\|C��.�� 'T�U��рG�9��l��I,��ͨ��I� .��Y�s&զA�Ll1?�Q��u彔Rd1N:�Sh��`��T�ބ�"韸��?�3�۝SW~d D �v� �� ު��E�u}W;YQ��ZwFeN�&Ԩ^��/��A� DÝ8��α�L;�VQR�џ��R��ka r8ڹ �,G�� F�W3��4iT�q܌H��@a��O�n��k>4�-G��y� :��t��}b6� �$8w�86��M� ��;��ރ~��o��\|��F�?�G�\�^��(JZEw; 6��(��[IW��tYP�� n�d[��L�q�w�!�Ж{�گ�C�͙� ̼a��]�} ËҢ5+�e$&�qu��Y�\|_W�>��G�x�ǲ�E�o ��qoy{.��PN�I��%��ƚ7N�B�Kp��4��$��2�q�W�q�`�aMH)K ��)��}�~��L�4 �n��%�wވ�B5�` GK�MMn濙��&��\|K��b��L�z'� ��a��t�ܤ�E��7N6I3�j��-� ��ꧮ�ܗ{��\�4�%�iN1zj́yӾ�q��:ĵ��1�#�n樟h ؈��3g�1� �H܁��=��{�� z��0�S"�E� �Ο�K(~Ph�^��>pF�~Lhغ��"c�+��#:�%��`��ҽ��~�ǿq�_<�i��=�c_=2=Ѻs��cG�nL��lu�7s��ڙ��G?��{��/��Fu�w��Z{��n \|�W�qΡ�/�ắ��pj��h�h3K�}$�Zƭꋴ�� \�$"4�h � M$�5�V45ZUM��O/�tD�r�Ba�P��$��4��2u�� (� �`��2,�<^(�D�K��q��II>��ǋ�$�lJɀ�h=��7J\#oi�'��H��_)��q�Ӭ(As��A�)shw��O�ژV��Q%��=��U ��.�t�\| �}rP��ju[�� b�H,��7��\|5G�hd� g�o��M$�n/+��9��nq��˱�&<�;V �ÕX&/��K�@ �A�ꄼ��b��b�h��v�� y�/ <0?�Vz "/2��a��kt? ��S��X<�\|��, ��f��c��CkW={)�~k��/x�� ҃?��\|q��䑷�W��އ��ι��ۭG^��5�'�G�^\|��m;s��~Xp�g>��;��9w�^d4�5w�� 5\Fb��^��=�D�"�+"�Q#�6��@��2vNM.��׭�TT�y�˒�lx��Ƀ!��)��l��3��%��G]ya��㹜i��;_�\|�o^G߈ l��n:�L#��[��q��cDD�D �&��ZxcY�� ;�5��3$eZnҢJPk��$�:)�R��T��R0 [v a��0�ƴ� -N�ǭ��p �TR?�WO�iV �M<Q�1��G�S}�99w<\|�U]�� -��PL� ��aq��IŌ8�nE��FѹU_�8]�ob=(v��AOzԋ��9;=��c�V�4B�J�R� �QӐ/J-AKVK��`�P A�, /R H�� Ew B��̏V~��O_� ��=��_ >�#_��wd׎��o��P� ��;��5�� ߵ��Y�?��7��;��>��?��7��a��gӥ)iqEq�bj3{"}�\�� ibK? b ˑas�`�X�7�Q��8�Ҙh��'~:`))� �� b�Y�s9SY�Y�Ɛu�LF�V�4] y�4�l ��/\|棏��i�)$r�b�Э7�1<;g�Bc��%dE�iw�� 1I�� MI �LLZi�� =��j��#)> 2�B3�� <�6 I\|b�L muӶEȏآz"V��VG<��g�vj�� Z`�L�e�3�;%�4��j�P0[Z��S��tZ"�^I�d:�rJ�d�83iL�L�HΨ��ɬ�2S]�2M��Sȅ �%�5��%O}��?�'��wK�� -�Q(��s�ёB��T1J;r��b:��.-�) #E^X��D -�R��iSN˫N\|��_��ίt��6� @��4�Q�!_K4��#��ڎ�6iB�Ͽ%;��?о��w�.{�╿u�u�{� ��Cn19�Y}l3-�ff��ȋM#g��Sۉ��L+L K��q̠�Q)\xJ�b��^x�܁��.P��Mp�"�P�Ԉ�?��Q��ؖ:�5��Z>��l�W9��$#oF��a�\|� ��l�\�\��Ma�F(�:V�=@��V�`�+�/C��5 � ^乊��[��$xmk��6��B��㪦O�. '�5�v��P!��ƥ��թ��" PaL�Lm�m�60��z ��ě��[z�n�A��~��[��8�� JID<]}� ��C }b4 ��{��=�^q�?՝+��Kfݼ܌�qV�[c��y`}p ÒmDD}.HI6�,�hE<Y#m0]ي�qf/k��Pt6~'oB��<>d�x�S\|r�_��D��ٸp� � �� 6;��Ÿ��Y�aG��B�ֿ�� {��W��5O~��R�bcmt�d��{�<5�6a�"��H/��lW`;M��zK �r39��r�M�"��K��XOV��њ8�� !ӈ9oN��#� ��u�g�m�F\|_"b�p��{(��W-��"+q=�xtN��R3�Ib��A�F!TѼ �2H�uA�K�2L�sƵ5��AG�}��vao��Vu��7� �qd�3�$��FCJi��Y�ѡ��[6yS��\� ��L)�V�l�T�$�� 3��q��ԋ~I�B.��0�c�%bD��s�� l~�C�?�M�;Z�8�] �b��0I+�F��iN �RDqyX�n��g�� .��4d�˛�39UWzؘa�)��%ePF��<��<��\v��w�\|�[�+Y�� ι�\�;?��_x�$}6Aa P��\B5S[䛜yt��c3/m��3c�d f$�$��C��l�zŭ_z�~�o�av��1�V��(�xA)k��಩�#�s��IK�'(Ά)�6�=�oh6��D�tN�{N܎��Z�JA�7 �k��noȌ��m#F��0�͚f�6�3_�Y/��,�.y��. A��/��Z�P�(f�ēI�S�9 2l�U�5� y�8�0� ��[��M�V3��rl�q�%�ȑ�j/DY��]��3#(�mִ��vc�b:yәݜ�\��KV�\s��1ܸ�m�� 7�q ^�~?�`3@�=d}��@�\|�T�w��R!��P#��!��o�慯�{��o5�?��)�[�J�Zff'dvR/y��q� �F$�� jO5��J�Bf��;��ps�X��t�&�ٝ��k+I��9�tnOg�a(��#�wVva)��E�]�v� ��i�\FP&�ݱ)��(a=* UTC��$�x��)o/�;m�e��4?�M�� (�1�T��uO�7��P��z��qN��5�b'F?B� tK��W�h��d�Aя��hDy�E�!� �R�wq�XV�VۛǋS��{�m��Ys4}� �ö��tR�]��t��E�BWp@�:��} (��x�}^̀�X�K��O�oM�i�a�\k��񖶭��sZ��V>W:��T�֐]a̩�-��,�c8`�b`v^�\|�;��Ы� T+eD��o�҂pY��$ M�&H�DG �% �S�?�\Q޲m��M�f8�Y =��k ��}�+�o�+Lv��Dg�� ٜU�Y� �Γz1��z�" g�\ > )� ��-�6� T�� =Q�>�N��t"�p3lMo>u�IZp��3s�� ۞Q�J�\�&�X��ͭ�0I��1�)��Y�� _B�Ԟ�^�\|6�L�Mvf��Wx�_��_�eV+V-��00 �� H�a�N�E��!eƘhlV,�r��گ�.T��F�4�$�m�0�M��!�A�_Q�� V�U��;W/��V��44Q��m�b��,I!Q��y]v��6N#�J�C�C� }�æK��c"r�� Z� �䪚��ѕ@\��ie.� ��Y�eV��uȔ;��7>t�?�%��hk��a��,�G��xk ��S��4,� �N��.NW�7Jx�V��I�]D �&�K� ��o��?taw ��a�)OCY�:�י�Pp��0��a � j;J��$��.~��}�&�d.n[�8��ĩӚn!e$O�� -U �b�xj��F+TK��ѡ�l l]�\eP�#��-Y��t�%c��@��`�Y�Xi��7�PP vۭ�u�@\|p�$��%��h)�g�^q��cUH�m��6#؃�%"��/��L�O� `DDS��G$f�ΞP')�R�h�P�R��l�~I�Ekh�R8s�Zc�@�Rk�0 y@�%��G��8hK�L�bB� Gu$Ї�G�� B�K�3T�h�%��I1Mb��qA�`�I�a)�xD��~U�(`��$a��c&�Y�\|�4hs��9��g"�0��G� �Ԕ:��\$A��f\|\��uFȺ $sa'��<&��@镕$O�>��[��e��ܚ�X��L��xgR��NYcD�`$�$��b��;�E��Qgv��+��V9,��s�e�x� ޢ\��0��D��'Aа�t( o_�\�\��`ɴ�7'F�54y�f̕4�J0��Kc^�[�Ct`ۨhj�R�ӓ�8�$l��OX̛۰n�c�~kJ �H�Fd�fG�D;a8��NR4�� (��QfC��$�,?JA��K�) ��l}�K�� v(p��Z)�\|D��V��旙�5�b�S�E^ǚ��@�w����&<��[�v ��l�t�թ��B��h�F�(%��`�:s�y��b��NV��`�� [ �t9�r�8�ae��^��Xv�e<��OCm��?o�M�a�� nl iXq�gv�sG��+�kwzҋϏ�&t��l��x�S3ƭ��1RtL6�� Y�U�Z��w�kXC6�D.�a��<&��4�4��!��o�(�i\�>=5 �b�n$�%�+��7\��+~�!��Z�i�� WM�P��ɰ>��\|j��,jj�t��Y�}��4�VCV�s�` m> �K��Zh�W �R 0EI^��3�;��2�nM�搠s��%V�!��~>��<� ��N��/�$��ș��X�%e�� x �z�a�8}.�i�z�� 11��_�t��!�n6��S��?nT�]N�� u�HO-�Gk�(�G��'�BoG�29�zǈ�1e C�k磉h r�fq� o0 ��ko��bPM��Ug�[`��$8� � �J�,�� u�#�E��H))��-!�DX ��pWDMޒHڀ��`s��FY��..r,�T�V� wl\V�K� �U�v�ĽСѪ èQ��ɂT �S��o�� kV�i�N�9��0 9m�"��vh&��i�Jb,��H�P t)�P�nXo� ΄ZmH��Ҭ�r�:�,��Һ�g��AZ&�R6��VI_@gy牏� ��7��Q'3˒Т�q+�Fm��V90:%`w CY��a��7m��W�^"~Q ��I��9��k��@��f ��3��+!a��Q�]V�$K�S��H�{��8{�:m�\|$7}�+/^~aQ-�#��ax#�j�N�p�(<i��J^�9 �~潽��<�1v6x��x��_܃� ��c!�3 �M�4� U �?�t��w��#2�f�J��,��{�}��٧��?��3�LϠ"�`�N�S��IYtހ��-P(��`�W^�� G��Y�#��q�C� �� hL �� {�xG?�E�$h-�&��ZT:.�P-��V�6�^�3&$��NG��C7s�Q%P�{�+��0%�ijv�w��K� LM�s� ��}��coz~�A�7J�f%��B� T��H��Z��y)_�~�;c��3��k\|�Wϝ�I�>ڭ ��4J"w۟�B��ګa�_Fh�.I � � �xV�Nէ�= Z^��]��7�Qq�0� Zn5cuPUO��1��b�@q$β��Kd.�F:8&f��P2v;x:s�^��`�3S%k�@� DĦ�L^��{�k_zrus;�}��F�Y�Kj�3�&H�&;��_$��٥c�s��ѭv��W=��.��k�~��v.)N��?z�� &O8�~q��Nwm{�>��.� y��M��?��+�9c�w�k_�g�`��.��(x��&�� Nh-��r��VTƘ� MK4��n��lL � ��V��xK�J�� U�f��wy��,�`�5'f��kfC@�g�E��ty]w�^߉ Q/�Fי$L��F#Ld6� Y�H\|!y�b�2��[N#c��V��f?�s��x8��A{He��W��tg�!Q�� T�7� ,��;�K��(�W�� #Ͼ�$s4+�� ۳,�P�� h�s�%:.7�L1Y9K6��p��5:F{N�ӿ��\};�v~T��lG�� R�3��B��Jen �څ-�� {=� ��I�[��_&�1�"��WWZ+��-��h��q��^��ߓ�{[�� A�K,g��+�&c��r��eҤ1s� NܬN��W�#��g]��/��h��wޔ�l�J��S�z[x��ҭ�Fg6��Z�>��ڷ�~�g��a�jp��{ȕ�l��R�� /:b\�y8܉�B�5�f0$� �3��iY� �ZE[C;��㿩�)>�&^}RZ}S��^��jO�q��sT� ��Ue&�߮��!��V8��b�twzX���i B�T��I!}\�]�ۦ'�E`e�C-�U 4�k�� Y�ܙ�w��҅�}��_�M7= S�wdM[�7FM��E�9G�U��a5U�G pHu��;c��8� �o��`!{�s�� 7��c��G�eS�z5��<�wת�ԥ��!~zƶ�(q�پ��ػ-x��q�~x��o�� ,��[�1��̐8�慚L�ϔ+�B��#Ⓓ��D#��ZT�5�Ң�}Ͱ��o�)I �� 8%Z�U�=��\|p�~SӶ��C:[�k��l�#t5�� :�$ 8��dN�յc�=��X%=w�{��7_��}��lcݹ꺯��F�Ē� �M�mtI��K�=��Ž plqŽ��k�W�7�7�K���Go]{� �0�U� ��1]��6f�D�1�PC�4.r�T��F�\��G�D�� ZԚ� �wX��p6\|I~E��Vb&��9� \|��ʕ[�7�� fN��&�G&f�m��efr�,�� b�C7�Ρ� 8 ^�CAK�Y��۝r��>�{�:��'��_�x�B ��`�� [��A��#T�G)��Qt��v��B�ͮ��K�S�rjn��q{>��#�� ?X��&�6��tQw�y�` ��t)y�M& �a��F�<��o��0�n2c�< ��J� ��Jh;QTʗ�&�S�kՈ@�I�[52$��ܗz��b[39�Y=c��ļ�b�B��Z�(��?<�=��4�3y�])Qa ��J�h&�1"�KT�_�O��?}�8{� �Wfņ��7G>?& =��-�?t�ǋ�cD�O��f�ݟ�>��,��- �+3E��`o&,�� FR\B 4�CDb)"UA�̱��n�ܡ��!8��l�0;g��-��m�}Ĕ6�W��i�Q�Sp��E�+�XU�(�&˵�L��慏}ϗ��\�{+K��q� 3�Q�6��Fu�� ?g�!Cs(L��Z:;\�,'�0�؟"Q��<��Q�\|�� s�� l#�� e��@�� k� �q#��i�� #?q诸3�k�� w�>�=C��5IU��Jv��5�0OQ��,i1j��rTBɼ Ӈ)/�a~ap�e�`�2 Z�� ^��kj��jӷŷ�� =e�˛��:9�MH��Ɂ��3Pl��J�Dcw(W.��;\|�W��?��?�� G_��Ӄ[��y�uo��vۍW]qݕ~��?X=��?x�[v��G��U?:�,�fw~��ʝ/��ｾ.m}F 4/"� ( p, ��AVS ��ܲdq��2Q4�_U�>�El��h�ڲg�x"�H�@s�`�ڴi^[k��_,�"y�z͢RE�{jNň�Y�!UI��1A�� HOP\ ��Slk, �`#�"y��RZ�w�.�I\�� \>��Q�4��U��?�\|խ��{�C�plḻ�$it�IK��Ls${�� R��ʧTE�{�x��?^�?5�}�'_zd��`c��8c8��R�'0�&c�@��d�N��x��'��0ĩ��L�xDƕ�84ga�4�! �\ ��Ч7�F�?��A�-J���5j@�H ��LAI#�WPN�- � ��`rm�gm�7�<�� !�'X�. 8`�Y ,��d-zy��, ��'D�g��7�/x��E ��l'{��g��}��̭��?��n��2[��T\|۬�Y�N��l�x�G��ˊ7_��a'��Ȏ!� �T��P��ᙓr��b2��o8�Β�%��h@�p��h�U�^uS� ��)��op#1�TBik�ʅ��S�-n� ��Y5\��[X�k��rBr(��M �!��F��Ě��\|n/��JN�z�K�PjP�"ۥ_��s��^ _�ר�O5Y��B��ϊ�2kKw��;�y��e�~���� 9��\w�� &��1��ݩ5��ֈ� ��hgk�dή6wG�� o�ɿ��;�o�>��W��N�~�j� �Y��+b1�H�z��0�F<w�ǫt��qI [$g"6��>"�2`0s�2zU��#o`m8R�tx��RZm>�{�+�q�,��x ��XAq�� QKj/s�`? �'8�l�7��}��8� ��뎜�aû� ?ߎ�z�`��w60��q��~��cg�� m��\\��\|��W_p ��ٙ��}��&p�iIhU��-�8\�De��[%� ��O��Q�F�9mAuf}�p� Uub��}�0�G^g��bpK4�,��&��ʒM��9�2��N!/kFkpc\O��hY�ՠ1��>J�W�x~��o�6��>o��~�{��EwN�.y� �}��q�6{۷��e��!,��N�d�Ls��\��?&�>��]�}إ]�2�4�bG^ci� �� N��(m�V3�&�D 򼃔�7��U��g��:��c�F�6�ꊎ��c��eM@Y ��c�b&l�+Z��K5^Tg��}E��&!�g F�� % ��n��F�7Z �~�焣��&WI�q��?��Q�1�\�$c�O]} 5 �i��e�5�t�VG'7��W��Ĺ��=gϊ7B��ɢ��"�w��Ӧ�8=ẋ�ԢN��؈�3�ڻ��?_tp��n�'T^l ��^�� ~�R>�:�) �&�LH��ނz�8d�7\��xx~� J-�V��X�}��Vvd�ldQ ]�R��a��ϳ�DMR�� \|�Va�v��Z��N�~��3ީ3\�3�?Y�R� ��-~q�y�� E��R�� oǨ��q?��a��\��'��,$�lH;��N�O.y��7_{�Uާ6��o�̑I��?��_]��{b��ߚ�� Ή�d�koÙ^�o�i��bk��Ͽ�8ub�Єی�R4�� g�� >b3,`�PE�. U��[jg�p8�;�4� n x��%�nd^��%K�!��~I �4 4�R�-ȯ)L�ed��z1Ҩ�;"�/�7��d� ��pߤwR�_l��C��ys�� Y��^�v��q6�[I�oe��[y< {>�&��'>��>�{`��n{{r�,ޚͲ��T>�ٹs�]�o�U�8��2�S��+�G?{/f��5�>��\|��Gx��Y��0 V��\؝d8F rQ�PDH𵴼�Hw�ጫ�F� rY�K�3dJ��j�EK�Mk_��ثqMmXf�� [u�-��cr�hX"$_��ʙ0]`13:yI��2��E�� k ��1� Rϓ��>b9G�?s�&�a emĲ�Og(��e��X]��'ﵳ�o\|�/�8`�� Vo��Ǯ�E��Sz%� � �S�j��S��Z��ӫz��.\|�s�Myq�g?}΁��,"��@��q�5� ��8e�<5 �qVK[��0j6�0!;�W��t� .e��ߎV��$R�{X�Fʾ��3k��l�>�8�d��c�@5�;��`KV��4/��=,�h\|esB�^t]��']��M@G�ž�O N��?�Yk��.��q=�d��Į�� J$ۤ'ܔ�^$u��Sn%��Jz�-��?�x��#��\��h�Β)�/�0��v�� *��ιO��9;�V�;^��@R�l�_��?��^znc2@D��`a��ab�b�6�^L1��76U��?�l�y��k?�MP$3f!�hTB2��̿��!X��$� :1��"d ��}��.�� A� ]Z ]-R��V� �lwFl�� ڎ�l�&��3�܈�eb��[ ��u4]��Hc�ډz��;��Ҿ��g��/��7�_��o:w��7��aц[�t��5{0�� m��+�� ٳg� ��{�MO�m��w�\|�)�p��kd ��@�TI� '�&��'pB�H�W!��!͂��;�z�9��/�W؋_ �,�7��L�u�'̑�9��[N��忚��O��Vӝ�;��v�g��n�6n��K:��ha �^��࢟Z��4y��;'��k�� \C��ß��X9w��e��n��?t~\|�l}9�7M�� <�R�z�@�t7ض ��6 @��~��N��~�ϫ# ��7W�6��ҋ �� C�+0q��l��e ("xQ ��k�-�+(��n�/]�z�?}5RZ^�O� �p�\�K�Q L�)�c�N!W��Z ��7ZE��_/��m�_��o5.��0ۙ �T֕�WsP4&_k@YX�f�r�"�� t ) -y��鱖;��<�~��Yl 1VBI+�v[-�bڽ��Y�k#�� l2�� g��̅#��3޾��/��rV��s��W>�V��d��K��,lÂ�!c VZO��s{~p�s�k��ůcgs�� O èj�� +�g�ߘ�� 1�%Y�h�� ZV: 6��r�vg��_�� y��6H�Jh\rPJ�e��Ϭ-z1��?��{��R��v e܊�Z��r+�eX='?u��g�\��KG�l�j�ɶ�UWb>��v� GթX7�@��z�� p� �� '� ��;w ��W��,J}��lk�б0�\|��^��9 ��_�d��[�r�� ~�}��q˄94�^w{k李 �^�'Jg ��7��^x��͋�j��/;��'�tti�Ճ։��m$!w�e�Q��Z�f]%�MA��p��tk�-=T��G��QT��f��.�-˯�i�=�5�m.�$��1:��=�CG�%�M�%ì�xP� ��#� A�+��l�PA��zT�?TMhiSy[�͕=�� �K��S��7��W9gS�k ��i�B��=h�eB�=>��k>� ��{��~.=��/��ƍ��[��^8�� Aw��'�m X�`�F�Va�K Ex��p��÷��;��[�� {��3%2��9ڣ��Y7b�Z� s"�6�6��>�GZ^//7��@Ƴc�; �^��󛩽H�I��L�c�i�M;�� i�P�� '�~�ۂiV�R`�E�{i��&��M �R�Y%�6F�0f��n��_Iso�\|�Ѽ��H�ؙQak܍O=��~��}�mg}�� w=�k�� ?Z��{_��p�x/=ywȌjd��M�G�wL �q;�eM.��[`��Wn�@��`w��x�m��=�o{�-A�` ��T�:��"��@�Ù.J�-� �%��ix�x��w�h>=}�;��E��=��u0 pׇ�S�2V8k+�b�0��H�D�\|` �Yk6m��\|}�}{��?��ï��C��K��B��L��&CY�� ƅ~ ��TN}� ^�,�U�%�Q?�[��.��u�U� @�Ar3:�9t{�� Iq��sz\8X8-=�a��J�y��p��AJ� d2︑��Kz% Q4(��h1P��v��$\�z�@�S>E-��E��H:��#�A��#M>�J��e��J��YQʰiQB)M�rZ^�1�K��OB��4�I�O��J�@��N+��L�Q ��`��6F��?�ck�׼�+ ��z�o��w E��U�+��YP>8-&��ʰ��vZ�j�d�̟��s?�Y��[z��{�<��.?_se���ɸޣL A0_��U�,q�o��!H m��xޙ��q{�I 5��]x �{�h��q�C��)P{��k��֟��b�]4�S�pگ�2l<(��>��d�(��֏��\W�k,�v(��/�(�� p�L��n��LCj��0��+ k .N�_,�c��?��_��M+eP9�榥^��G^1 2'n��0 �R��K� �.3��ߙD��3�a�X:ow\|l�� ~c��_�W��L&7�?y_z�J��f?�Mw� �-�0b �c C ^#�d�=ؠBD%xajH��,��ȱD� ��A�]�8z?K �ȳ,�Z�_� �^�ta� �\h�u�E��IA�y�d)�A��A��@za��A � eM0\#�G 9��$m�4yj��d�@��,.��9ON7Nx+�t��?�^�ŧ��[^�Ο��'��=�I�z��~��Ӟ��G�{�cO;�ه\x֞'=z��O;��y��y�w;�o,v~L��:n��4��O[� �Qr�2I�U�C��'T2�t�#?h��x��\��a��+޸'�� ��VN� ��E �L�L�.T�;�/3�e��-�N��+�{�[�Ӥ��}g��W�Ag��\�P�ô�no0<�Fsｔ6?� ��A��aaEϴ4���B�� R�qKTk��I�I�R�@�.x�(,��٠��;i,L��4��)T�� C8-��6��A6�Ϩ1LkǤq\|�^�(.�E��K�i�� 6~��CXk4 � �f��S��4�.��BƬC��N!N�ޜM� ��7f�: )'�d�30��)�J2ޒ\�LgYFL78�{W{�U��ڭ��Fs��67Ӧ2��_֐ ��@J��Jp5��Ѧk_�)yq��iM�wg�;�:��wt@ٱ��q�� 箏��&��$��߾��?��)��?}��{7��SXZ��e�U��i�W�9=�� ?��u�ᑸ8�vO(O��_��񨻶S�ø�>�U[��kӵc��4�>^�l��p��W��9)��z�s,菋A� _�n�ȃ- ��@ds��d��ӰǓ��eK��䐝N�e�7�t�֛_��j�_��oe��P��CŶ:ԅ�2�,�{�� �3�U�TfM�hj�O��m��}��f ��2�@n��C:�ۯ~��ɾ��M��q��?�)��LN�g� Kt9#�C�MI�x�w�9�!}c�0j� ;��P��s H+ 5�V��b�\��A�H��lShp�sE�еA-��'�?�&�δ�K��N��q?��{k�Ɇ�a��#T!?�� r\� F�/PQH2u�ǜ��ҩ�ak4#��X �E�b ��:�7�� #y0�fP��f�m�̳�ep]I1#��@ �}3\|4�y��4eh��h�r8� �� U[�V��{��>�=v��;�ժ��ʽ�;+E�R� ��\|Ʈ�PP+1�l��ʥ!��,�wΞ[��)�_; z�w�R��_�Ż��(D2 ��+��6��r��g�n�B\��]��J��:#6�AB0��Ϝ�w �s^��T��q�c $�b�@��H%c��>� ��~�7�e�b�Y��_>�=��W1�.nU�{F�@� ��V0��sɞ��&jl��̵� d]�6("肇;�hY�T ��"n�b�b񋳚W>e��=��`m��.0�DԢK�/kt��P�@c��"G/(��N��vO?��g(Z�c ��\|��d�8�!O}R�$�}ψ �Jd� �X�"��s-�;IGu�%8 o��r�@��V�E�=5A�(��z�S�-1��S(Q��%��FD��I#�(v�[�V�0�g#��]�7�í�k%�}�/ 0��tk� Q��P�44qi��J�w� ��Nr0)l��vo�>~�M�b�ݛ�1 �U[^�� /!��Q� `鸰�,M�5�ߗj��Ii%��:۹3��޻�2�u��J��4��7�2,��D�K�b�=��3��!?M��MW��e�-�ް݇��FmG]��8��Gۿ��p��5A�Q�x��çn�1�� ~�F�S��͸"�[z�/�.{\|��.��P�� Ȋe5��>^ٜuJdVrkh��މ$ �C�b!�/x�ս�F��G��~'Y��% ��`�C�<��#��1 �#e�g��U��Cf {EXL8Di�&;��.��i��]��m��=hUM��~��ӄewQc\�w68&p�D�¦jy;#��0�,l��de�qag��hr3�T�a ��o�C�Iq(C�')���l�R��-��s��Q��ʊJR+��X�D)�� ~��/T��vTg��US"g� ?C�M~��Z�Q�ye��'�L��كa�,xK~��Eoz�ײ`��S��B�PL� Ws�a��9�W��ҬX�y�݋��ȃ�ť��=jg��Fp��nx�7�� l ��V�M�!��i%,"=� D�{h�W_u�W��A�_�q �U��Cr'��B ��hii�iRH2�Q��4��(0��2��I9`�S\|� ��p� ��Dw9��8aqRټap�E��D�T�; �Umf%JJ "S��5�}� ƸCs�a�Sd\|��2$a� ��F�̰b��T�< �c,����`p�"mo��0��2��aF�N�� >~Y@�J�"�9�mn 3(�B��R��S�[�RV��J��O�W��c��Z�b2W1?�8�>�B�k�R@�<�+�M#p�68WN��-F�b��4�j��/�@ܕ��R��@m�c�;IT'O�q D�~�O� -��B�C:Q��h��ٱAՁAe <�bO!� :��D��S@�Ѩ\|��&�)K��E8�M�)�+�DF99�4�qcC�ߙ��G��oy[kGg�B��o� \�'~��p�)I 8�e��\8�4�� \|��򳻋�bW��\� ��dt�!�ʫ��_8��0 ��E�U#�` \|�~ �2�.8�}�×_�Q T�K��PE��!��Ls� �. \|8p �>�a��AU`� �g�4:�2O�P�7��/%Q� �@l��%k�K�7 OF��o]�d'��Z��xx��1z �U.T��o� ��\@�8�4�}FC=�GBe�a��`jn4�%Y��W+D�7V "h�E�=�&��q"��"� z�\��Y��L� �n�ǌ��e�&�� � ��[�˝쭍�-��n��]dKE,h�&�9��Q^�6ef�g��-��R ��1��(��Vsq9�W$(�)B��X7/[RLL`� �%t0 �4~�(�4lF�<u׍R��J��d4e��0 �q��#��i�)}�.��L�� Xi�� u�h�q�4��!�C��@��X�E�46��~�їQ��D�_].� ��Ȏ�ċH��\�ɣ#�?Mج0X"/��9��f5��r�,qG��YXx륏��INdK� ˎ�]��5T"R�%/~bn{J=A$�g��O,��+�2�i6��c��~�O��sP�,��x ; �� Y�o��ѭc >\|��"�@��V�Q:#?{�K� ZB w�vo��a T��Y��M�� )Y�Z,#v�?�_N�ws��[��6�`�� =M:Pq�{��9�_�� ߰�UR c��h~�bS��C��C�w��$B -Z��x!zTh��5x�Qnx��=��YT��U�=r Q�`��8=r]�_y�G�>cy!��t'�_\|t��$x�q�� ӏ1E&%j��&�܅0�� Y47�^�Q i]M��$H d�)b�x,�a� � R��0�� :\|��>"?f��Jn!s�� l��a� �e� ��. ��:�O��}�,�-��g�}�l"��3�� g��U��#�S+�cM�ߨ�i�y�q�0Kˡ�I>"!jt&�h:2��\|(a�HC��Y2��6P(M1�/�å�XYb?��H� eF�pW��F\|,Uq��,� �1��MK!d�1nzU/�n T�L�3�7u �>�� CLB�A�� a]9��k ��_ƽ�Mg�6)$��}MиX� )=\|6�ׯ�1��2؀X1D�ԯ2Ӑ� h�dk�3H�t��)��Й��M5� o��PFna��$ lw�~��g��펂~.J��{��V��Ko��P�� ^w��C�N �6N� �Ӵ�. ��XŦ��G��2n�� lbMm��w~�D�� d a��.v��q��EƖ��\|�+�׼��j�_�i(��X�W��&�� M�I�)V:�X��0≥��dXI� �& � N�q��l��P��؞n�8��)��A��Fk��za x� w ��&X(wp�a� �A�;��cl�{'��[ɆTkr��c��δ�b`ߐ�s�1�=L��[��Z{�9J��Ǜ s��>f5��! i� �^ ��(��Z��~�"r:! ��Y�� /�թ(�^#�-��%�EqE�,�@��e6�l�� (��>=��8ۃ�s!h�zţ%S��%oa!�.x�zV�3p��+�@�S�\|ٌ�t��x�_B�K/��"��b�8(�ED_1�%�i[ɸ �ņ��R��P��D�� k{�RLG�fU ��a��_:�t�/��s�i�7�� .\|��̲��(��f�q><;�fK!W��w��]o�0��-R��UZ �SCX�� <�ܰ͝U��p�$^ȻS<�@�Pm �\|��R��`�BZ�h^��0ݥ��o�+� Ӝ}g9��G8�L��"�c��B��<�M��r�4T�q��}��"�q�\��xi��(�'i4 ��b��]��jXm�U��\�� fx?�1ƥ"�ġ6��\\E�]Σ(V2K��l�\�`L �A" �a�f�"^�^�Z�4�ŲW�sc( i�4�z��T �A��WK 6A8v��\5�Sf�$��1��@ћ1��c��yA(U� �s/Q��cN�-k>�P^�� ~��!'��¹f-YEg��o��2b�K��Q�6Z<��Ր��K��eSD���`O�tza��jq�9�$ ��с��0� �[q=k"��`�i��!�-��OD��X�ԕ`�N�/��\|��j��/+=j ��Z�Ǵ��crB%�&Q��Ѯשm�;��\��G�J z��q5c��o^��w��Ӑť�4�+�)��J�ϣ�� M��x� � [�5/�w��4d,^�-��kN[+Ql��0�3�� s 24� �]��2z��\|��޽�\��Y ±�O7��V�Hf[��=Ew��9��(��,"��t�2\|ȧc̩$0!'�y'z��} ��ry�h�#L5�e�%�rş��θ=R6D�M,��~�=�"2�e�\Z��X�2�6W��Z� Ԙ� F8��r�n� ��R.W�k6}��`�@�,�zvdqV�:�hV�!O�t4 �r�_��(� ��((�DY /.$�ʤZ&"dώ!��Bn�6� �δEo�k㒇��;;�u��p;.��a�\��< D��@+ f0H2xz�8��CL~��]��@��~�� Χ��@<5 �� Ղ,�훟�uc�nxP �F# �ʧ@�Rn�`�`I�}3>�Al��H��\|� B��-�� @�8��^��s��Cv ��Y�#B'�ݧ��[��+�\|&> �YxЧ10[b^N�G��_{0{h�� J=3�5��+�+��Ԯ MF�T�Jel�:�Fd�Q��ȯ��\|��+ ��5N;˃��z3�ŭ��K�vX�PC6�Hc)^�:��0��{�2t�`�h��#�D�U��Ɨ�� aT��\|Y �r�@�BZ-{�� j��9��ݨfx\|�)��1vB�0'v��΄�#C� �L�(&m,��X�"\ ��M��V%U��e{0Ƀ!� �O bQPc��c� ��p�j��f��D�A^ƞfB��Q��Q��F D� 8 �-�wg��¬רV��W6�D)׽�"�HЏ)��^��N �i\|@��'�?��'��4 �)1s��"��eI��=�'k(��Q�F��#��S#�>��m��`�f��OU��񅟸A%L]��w3ȇ��c��<%��O/pP� �w�A ��8A�滇��Ǥ\��#�$(Ab$�4��n}��Ht�M1g}�� `��i�yS��j<`�tq"R)� ��Ki�9�r��R�V ��7~�˭�� W7_��>��x�ңϼ��'`[�7.>"hP�z�vP�B�V�=��Rj�V� �U�7� ��oN��v��s�,׺�V/ W�u6 2�i��0��j��t�`h�`À4k�2l��=Uu�&�U4��fǈ{hn6.�4 H& p%U�(' 5�x��"�Mٴ!��9 ��'҆C΋PJ"&�w�բ W��3\|�`�R��tҟ0Gs��ϙ�:�XÊ$ڧI@�$�f��x�^S��7̗�4~� \�� ;�9��L��c)�9Mq�жX7�Q�� C�.b@�� t�;hG�芯<:��i��bfˌ 8��D��lW�g��ӑ�#B^25�Ѵ7l��F/zE>��q�ϖ��q[( I��?�S~�m��n� � T6�}e�O��7n M�i0�]��3�� q��i��Ӟ�E�.��,wPCh��M�j�� 4��Q�$m6�� ~��8���/~��N;Q��/?�7��_� ��~ �(< �$��.!��zi҃��چ��K��w��R�[}�i�α�� 0��=A�D�C��;%%9�4��y+��8\|��((O+�� 8�Q�G�監�"$�VZ��+^�o��>\�f+��K:�Y�X2l<4�J� �g�z+^_��/JaD��Ҕ��7?L��q�rR��+��1C5� H�\g�e�α_D�/�N��8C�g�;��3-�bfri��^c�\p�Wh�ށ��B�12�S��-wݵ��W>��>�qOy�y�x�� ?� ��ѹg<�?�!�9�� w��3��J��W ��(F��q�+��:�� .M��<��b��s� ��` {��PG~C'�v1��z�koH�rYR� l�5ic��&�Y�K�Z��C�A��0S� ��N3L�j��Z"$��dͫl��pw���h��6�\|�D M��{��Eu_ �p��d1 ɖ LD��U�aR�/��Q-w��[X�ǭ� �dl/7m��qy��K�&W\ �e�K d�u��gُ��؁n}#L�~��'l�2Ȇ�R̠�� '�baRhA�ǆ�a N& �4h��t��[2J�[�b�N�ԏ ն ڢ�ϔ�� _r��l��@�,o��y�Hyy^�k�u:5�& ��_y_�o�U\|A�Ӥ�ͤ��c4d<\�3��k>��k��Z'�q ��1��9e s��V8��ϱ��y�Be��^��o\��_��5?��߿�G��z��\w�O��;�8��l�+u��8��~�¿��tϕ��X�-�V)��7H Y �� x�Z�J�f�2��y��G ��ɖ��P��ġ��'`� ͚q��v9��o��0x�[K�{r��i�c��c��Vxd-܄ �� O��\|� F�\|2�=(�f�y�!�w��Z%@�$Ф{\|�qOr��]��n D;�E�Ԓi4��V�� _ �Rg��}��nv��{�w�3�L�( �O751�� k'G'�6F��V?i�\|f��i�w\|��Qs-N��&��E��7 �[�ݐ�]Qo��H�H0�gR��& F�� t�+�D�ԓ֫�� 6�w��[�I 9�xH�j��7��O�]ٺ��[�<63�6e�� W�r�K�7�lM�Y�D�ȕ��g�}a��=\��6�Tw� )��OV?��u�H$�!lP��a� ,c�r&26��&��!� �f� IT�{�jk�y� ��]�A��cņwc��]jE��K�a)��,��n�w@܃\|ew��Z�ߛ`�4��؃� �z�� hq�s�n�g�@9��@�^ܝl�>�>>8:��`j~ߝ��Dk�I.ɔP3��pY��/K��\9UL0I�;<ƴ�û�BUYn �y��i�� g��6�l�:�DX�t4�0q�B�o�}qP a ��E�P�k��>�~�H�_�X.��g��TLh\|1�Ff�F��گ��W�\|�;��^��'5�/e�P��v � �5]��hQ\�K`� �HY��Q�X_�{�Й�x��{�7�,�Z��^��DB�w~qe;.4��Z��Ũ�zfe/GC5,3{ �k�1�/��2Ч�p2��Έ]P�Pqca��+�虾� �h��Ry2Y�Ts��B��no�uy�?��r�;��?,2�� E�W��(��_ ~v#��T��M_�C��d$�8�P��2J�0O"$M��l�&�`�\|�XdZ'�ԨD��^�J�N��oݷz��^��s �R7%�J��A��/˓��k�e�as�(/ \9�V8��o.T� �9��ٙ��k��ݹܱ�V�W��N�7J A��a��/U`a�r\�m)�W4L��@�d�p5O� }6 xa�� l+�d��x:=�,O�Gfb��R�C0�#�3��@�f 3d�%� �S"��lN�]L�ŧ2M��.FI (��.�cq��K T~��d�E�[�X�Q\�]��'��?ν�)]�o�P�+��V�hܽk�>��u��v3@"q��!� �ݗ��vy��c'n� qx�?�߭��(k+tҧ�v��>�e��ȕg�vT�j�$X��#͔ �& ��&�H��פWH�b&'��Q��Vq#l��Gƻ`��^�\|��~i�3J~�7��3S�=�Q`7/{�KN?�� q�k^�� oZޮ��o\|v@�K <�� q}h ��T�� Qȃ��H耣O�E�)�d�!��x �]ϫlm�^ ��dV`t �G��r�C�a4;�6��d��u��u��8��n��W�� IimV�Mo�Ώ��u��NFM2έ ~֛tF� d=����<� l&iS8�f\|4�I��)�δŌ_��e��ԃ\|��J7��HXu�x� �n&Ӑ��\|�.�� ,(��l��Q�!f��X��e�`i�\S��87I$�25�d@�� &��i.t$4Ϥ��;wf��68�]��?8c��n� 8�t��x?Y�,�YV~Ë:�]B�� ޿��v�\_��g��l��/l�� S O\��)�.%z�Xe&˞h�}�x�_F!��b�<� ذ�0 <�3>� i��lHC�hg��-�ka;]�{�� O�� l��L��ny��tw=�8.eӭ�_��k��;��o = �T�/��,�ŭK�-�\|ٙ!��2(baw(�و)�ml�uU<�^�gN N��:GYi��g:^{�3_��V�t��Ë��~×��_��'�Q5+�S��Kݰ#~:� l�a�I)]ڿ:X<��W ��K ��W9o1=<�ͤ� =��n��ON�� 3��x~=�d�"�{��:��P��Y�)�[ �;"�毿��e!8m&�jX�Ą� �y��5�N��5i e�T��B�䝸.�]0aKOn�fWk��,��x�\�(N��ޜ��lZ͚�"�4��ФB�Npģ2,m$��x��\|��//Ҡ MgՀ�)l�e2$zF�A �.��~J�NfL�^b �Af�N��c�T��G?y��39 rK�P ֦�M�O��{�H ��K��9 c�^�P�B�� ��.c_S ��4�b��Ǭ<��OLׂ�l �[��D_� �ʰ��èD��3fW��F#D�(_�C�SJ(׀��M� ��#�?��4��7`��lB7�?��z�WF�;ꧬ�� bW�:_>�P��Ұ��K�d��fe?�w�=^�s�ُ\�LK�<��?s�� (᪸�sY��l�֑��!��I��Fc��sBbd�1��?W�� Ҍ ��4H}�ăx��G��@�Pd-�WZ�)�d%ΎsԲ��֬.��c�O�WLF ��A�v �X ^,E�� !��Eּ�l��;�cx��ِ�l�? Bu�� v��-(m��W�Ά�x`��v�Epn�F��`��Sn϶&� bO�.U �=�GyI��!� ޚ�Y�?�{��`��un��rH?ô��ls��GՀҠI&�9-�Y\2� +{�H�;��t��N�P��F�bk��"b�hzֲ��P�:Ha��w?�/��a��:�mF��⬃Y�x��㱴W�E��G�xKѠ[�Zǳ� T��kئQ��W����4R��ou��o��R�ï '"Bz)),͕_}��_D�#w�f�'��px>�#��?�[�9rW\��7�nwG ��q��wOi��O�??�L�# �u�=^Sp�?��+>��u� ��ʳV�`�C@ �� (9fX,��t2�%�[T~��h��O~�j�=$i��P#��a� ��,v��;^�@,x� ��\|%H��E��15} O��"��,+@\|(��\|B�t� R T�� 0��㸣��9��-$�c�Aw;��;m�r��گ��w��ҝw�x�!s0�qǺ5��0� 4לIT/��6�0��Frػ�s�E�_�� {,k��N` ^��~��:�� F�S��ܕd��~��P�~��+�RE^�_��40��n��r;�~��C�`�3�VQ q4��ѭ!I�s�F?@��)_�z�էx��- m��A�(v�(]�.�aU\B.M��F��l�y � �U� w�Bm��Y/��t��J��?􎧯L��_��q�E��/0�y� �,� �a�ѹzf��A��t��(zzv�I��u��?��c{/\|��?�=�Ȕ��&�uJsa��q�p��Z�� Ab��<��3 \|] �i��v�͘rN�FӲ@a} u�x��@L1%�CM��qXϘ�� !�v��QQm-�b��Xt�R,Lҝ&M�.��#�f�Ӭ]��p��qd��5�^ �7[�2�>/s��N��v0 n��o�F�rQUX䜽p�� n #�IZ��* iR#�B�E �\|�-ii�}b�O�S��F�h�3ё��ԉ�L4��ʱDb� �뷮�5� @ qS�`��6�� {w ׎]sѳ,��.N�\|� �dũ�?�1�� (��~��; ��x5m \|�� a^��x��>:/��Oj�HTA�� ke�`bh��WT��Z�. S&�Ekr4��4��?�� z��w��d�� {r�={�-_:�'��~��M?��:��ֺ��n��0:��}+y��Y�K��!� ��3I�S��Q�;_�� M��qn��GK ��׌C�MVZ4B��&��=��`Q]KĜP� �9~�_tPuV6�Q��q��§'�W��o(U�k8N��$�[����ePvz:;UzN�T��i\��C��!R�&a&h2Z�@��r\|۞�n�� p�� 8:}�(��c��$��i�1��x5�vK�ڰ Vx qx� ��`�~k��p�9Ϟ��B�X~��/� _��v�P��B�/��O�.��"UM�y�� A5V$B�b5#R¶A��,ƞ 1Ο�gT�P��q��޾�}�_(z1lx�M��ixW!Y闓ʠ D5��j:dWV>��)��A��]�w��`R�4��K�a��<��_�ȋ�wꬍ�O;�� ;o�7C˄ "lw�]<8NMW&p�iD��Z��\n7��y g؏�A ��r�M�\�<��-��:��"5!��g��ʜ��\_��`㯾��]�>T��ոRb��`��[�� >��eU�k5�V�Uz���f9�zI��3� $��ny��:8�W��:�ˏ�\|�\}��h\�?� 7� �pҘK:J�y�: ��{W7 }�c�s.G��c�,� �ePx��Ѳ��4X��h,֘?tϩ�\��Wކ~��=_]�C�LM��0��h �r-�{iᒧ��Hr�� ha)�6�D{2��Wd�}��{H\f Y.�]��r 5��p3Z[� �__��e_\~t�\� ܜt��7<� \|�� z��'��^��n�)��r��(�@��mLM1f��o�Fͫ��"0��;�W��~��"~%=�p�7m}~3-��Qe�g�'�y \|�I�K��}��><�1�)C XxE��,If k>�!Y�� _�S�R��Hs��UZEo�$��͆?�M z�μ�o�8�c�!=�af�s�cY��[�ۭ.�� e',� l\|�U��W��E�\|��\|G �c�/Ջ��u�_�c~�!��ß��Ǚl��I��5!��"(�\|��d��T(�%�5�p�G��D��R��[�Ԋ�4�[�^��^dy E�O� l�� 2}�� 5. 0��J)I�,�R��4_V�$��Kǚ�b.I��rN?+uDS��Q(�J�x��{zz��ށ�ēm��ʩ��'�.�}�Y��zv�z��LY��{��#�﷊�֯��;GFP�Q�� :�f}a�� ,Z;�\|�/�rr\| ��L��ᘓ�-h�U�λ�� F��z� Cb��c��r��o� [��o'��l0)?��6��WS��+x�f,i!_��W��#l@��x(q�`;�/��݇o޸u�cr 2�=�t�� 4�h�;4��\|�D��F#�� B��X��Y_��[��(�D��>�f(��$[� ��a 8��& i3SX�a eAއ��He�i�3�YH��2�R�$1@��SPt� �ܓ��D �5�(ة(�Qc�dn�o>�&n�H�� .k��2��R�9��pL��'7)�D�gF3 �h�0�SO�;]��,M�X؞&��_�ҧ�z>�FR��W ��{�� ~ }��8�� ,�_$2��T�w/w��O�z{��/��SO Fy��p� ��ʰ�Q��D��~�-�y�9�V��:5�@��z��`k��r}�9C��ü�s�s�J80��Н �ź��T�e�� ;}@�߉��h��N�8��9-�E�64O��wT&� S�#Xj&��g�_-ey1A��`�_ z��[/��C�� 8� ��]2�ʈ ��"�r��b�W!�߬, ��Q�`�VX�3j��/�� g� ��P��F ��`X�! ��-C�%��f��4�ӱ�4�� I�-Sx��JJO\�䨇o�L��)H�h�xYu��e��?�Z1FX�-0��l��-��Z�� 29��iv]��,נvyX�(-V�l��au�G ��[�LqT�GY�-!�� n�{�o��W;�=��A�}�89�D�(��Fi��/y�ϸ�^q��.?�̕$hxǋ+�� "}��Y��T��;_�� ߩMKh0 �L >hG�$L��Ճ�z�#~�&�>?j�ED��Yp!0�\|��\`(!5�bR�#�I/;�G��@��\��җ��k^�[��\��3�Z��r����S�~�� N�'YEC�Oj�3Jn�.2�b�x)~��:a<��\uԈ�]o�(��^�!�Ú��j9� �͏ 8+ �Ģki�W�$ ��ɨ��gx��Kp%�#!�E �Q��G��̘qÛ�p�y�ݒ`�G9�BEB��.�M�ԯ�.� �1�/$QV��\��"+3��?��(��6 �>��^��3��rO��נ��&�b.��Q�:�8�T�YcV ��K�%�;h��>��c��{��.��$�$��: R>��$G.�Zu��5��6NZ��3. �}�S� �Nִp5'��%4�X��]�[��D<�+eΣfF�V��:Zv�-��1V� ��1��7�.'� ,��6Լ�W F �� \�ɺw�� 5,�p��@�_aӶ��ŧ��h��\|�vA-MHa П��B��8p'ؠ�8�%W�w��W^�W��O!�D�E��[@��G��ut��!g3�)�d��F��:4a�Ǝ��{E��X5�ﱞ/�� k11+�ؘ��8 IDAT��F��j�?�d� ��ZOM/- �Ţl�X4%&���\|v�K��>�S��=�=��'x��z��ql.�� K��U��,^ �g�iX]�:M��~�d��!� �f� U��Mp7ʏ�=�\|j&��1��Ӊ�U��(g�'�F��\$��~�� j4�N��W��;��'7~Pm��D9�O��_X��yp6�KA��f�� s?��W9>lt�,��-b kOu�K 0��(KZP�0�bPe9⏇%�J��Vb)�9t�&��#p��f \|H+7�1ސ%��߽\>0�0��-/G��d��g�Τ�/(J�d�� r�K�v�G��B��B��۾��z�HBjͰ�A;Z�vX��}��w^w��p�Dݜz��I�:Zn�F�6K��E "i��@�Q̾�M�Ŭ7��d� :��d!h\|�K�\|�ŽG�;�C��ʀ�gG��wM��;8K�sO�_ �D��$_vC< �b4XU�JXex��X$��gD��q�1Vʵ2-�o�a�4UJ˝��Ʊp�1m n��P% �;��Oru�;CC+�)�<�x�;-��Qs�FWn��:�7˅�6��R��yNJ ��`��wU�J�ca�?��(�(%��βΰC W��\|�܏��se��֬�)B�n,��y-J� �H�F�� @Y�\�$`k^ �"�t& g�,`F0 o>��=��S�j��Q/ο�d@0�Q�;�KMW��j�%�S8��3�&�exƁ �5A H-�B��F@�tÍu��AV��I��/%ՠY-u"3͕��\@�<��Y � �(�پੈ�q-�}��L]N�b=e��WY\��sǶ�S��-��4�Ad��d��`P!��\rqr�g�p�YHAl�1�N�3Ǖ�7�"��å �t�\��\|a��qIe��13 �A�K��E�bg!R �(׈DH\|��-'gXbs�9� !�c� ��Wy�_��,��#\|m�xH {y�k��2��V�q��tQ�e��.��FpV;4[iBR/5��b�YX,�b�!p`^�Ex��M�D'�F>r�`!��k�a� ?��RF��"�?@�� Ů��"�=e`q��v��5�=��ҕh9)��y�B8O�Jw�gV�;r��T�� `�J2 "K��]�;��u�t�H4�p��e �"B�.�9 ǭt ��2�Ha��˃ �Ks��ىKJ�q{7 �>g� jx 3�בy�u��c� �ؼ O��d��@�w�^2L�� "7��Vw�Q��-�iy;,� l��~r�9�� Io��Qw�F/�g�\g��}��CDp�1Q ��p�V��n8d��g!M�N�Y�F�{�'��L/y�>�+��ۥ��{:�7�،ȄPL��XJ�l��)�L��4� � ��2ꠘ�K�� w�:% �Yk�"}t��2>��d�� F��4��.>�YwY��f ��^�u6�.A�Y�0�Q#�c�Ҟt� ��ɬz��k:5�֔a�� %$�^�Q)k�u��4��,����`ڤ�J�p\|�j��Ɉ��kO�Z�tj�Rr��ٺ�Br7Ҏ5kz��Ѣa`[��C%e��u��`y��HCG5�(h��Lm��g � ��k8��N��%Qe�J1��C� M�k^U��M�#��Pԁ�� $��)��I ��"��m��Tת�pe�� a�R��oJ�)n�?�jP��:��b��1�~�e/��F�,�� Pn2\�g-�",�[��Z!�E��\|�8�� ^r�� a�,��\�`! ��}��dae��?�?.�{�,pL�vv�7L_�6:�R ҌEŧ)ՠ�R��$b ��Q8[$7�zZ��_[��a��}�~xؓ[ED�5d��u��[�K�ˬ-��In�,4}�>��x��@1,I�z�b��'��.�pvF ��Ds��I��fuk��y�r��H �ߔ� �_!�CS!5%�_��F��z�x��9��L&�3%/��EL��O}B�;x �G]�¶g�i� ��䚷��˘^Ð �� $x ��eb�k�{�2g��4��ݧ�X��H�sX��o9 ��~ ��S�5k��T�F� ��!�#�磫�yr cQ��c��&��?�p�;n��a��d�'�_9��7��pFܛ�0e+ \|�� tP��9��YF��z��LÕ��W�Ǎ��aP�n� ��}�_��N��c�!�� b�� E7�A��F ��C��c2�̗v��{�[^r��?n�[��f8��p_.�M�e�4��s�1�1?7��D�N��:��]V��k�L��c�e��<�(Vv�DZS< ��72��3Ӕ�=7�%���<��[F�KE�J U�� J�N�� ~\|�e�V��Z�)��V��R� �[��pS`A@��KVo��C�GM��F��S ��ể ��eSr��`�j��-�c�6:o1۾�h�pm��lg�-o��&(�q�0��d�/: ��Q�`y�LɊ��o�X@�i2`��F�~Jr�A��e��y��,��g��X��v�n�� ?9�yϞ��B�1ѡ��8b"gOK�߂7G�R��ȣ5K8�0 �S��q��{��=�uN/��g ��%�\|��ǖ�=p�C$ Oc�"R��DF·��B�`��v�(��W��0�v��󈕋?tɞ�޳��=�MWak�T�&�"�'��; c�#� d5QW�N4pZ��2� +(�8��?�b��&��c��=�yi H�d�j��3NS�7�P,$��v�O\|�M�d�W�� îU��y��Phs��5N�NiɊ8��(7t�K�`��T�p'\�ǿU��O�8ԏ¥q�ݻSZ�2�#8�P�EwB� �)0�Dg< �ő3w�) �"�ŸN�K�s��e5h`�� ~�)~�`�}�G�s�S��1��BH8�P��$�iS#�� y�Ca��MOb�Z}��48��R�G��T�K�a�=w~��?�J�6ۙy�� P�NP�� SNc �0�+ R��ˬ�Ψ[_�4��X��1^� ��k� 0]�{ս��ǯ��oz�uc� ��=ST��.��IxSY�o:��4k 3�N�:W;ك��O{��\�0i��m�Q��?l��p>��s�J����f�)�\1୐k"�� ӽ�9Vk� �� D�ƽ�� O ([:�k^�X+�ըLs��=� �h%�s��#dh ±&��z٭��L)X\|[3�UPc��+>%� �� ǷP�i�SЭ�&ATΩƸ k4H��>�U+8Ag=� ��g3B�� A�� ^�I�a��-�t@0��!F�c�C[�2�/ԕ�hXƬ��05�{ѡB[��l] T]]�tqJwE_�P$5��~�W"�tA�Ӥ�\|�Ld�e+ǖj��-��,�%�O�rI�a�ϳb_Q��@/�,-�W�;�� ]ֹ��S.��XYF��q~i�ߋ � ��hav�}�� m��cӧ�I� ��Yl��O�XJÝ�?��g��\w�+��)5��Ɂ>7\|�� r~e�?��~�)��c� !c��sQ�a�h��t��a��+G�X� �Z�j;iT�� G�&��5S��i\|�0W;2��ʬ�ϲ��!�֫r_"5�2}6��:��&�\s)��j��`��cq{� ��U���"�8}��w]�O��)&��$�2� B�W�ZZ� ��c T�d� G�I7�U ��F;rZ��A'KT��Ղ�bX��M�JE�� z �!��d��&&�3D I��@�_�cY+�4 dH��x�X�L�LˁyG3lw'�&2�O0R f��`�) ��o��S�.�r�@ǿ7��[VZlT��򥫒{ �^�z�,�1�U5O8�&�$?�,��0wfku�%��:�<��'��.��Yߛ,�� \�U�b�j�才�l}.;��x�`�:+�R��A@�,��6�;��)��at�m�i?� @�E��`�ke;�� XeD�(��= fd�\3xB� j'��Ы�ɭՊ';��.c�=� K��B�#�� =HBx�s�_�V�y\|�Q� 24KE�[&Z.u<$��A�i.�"��1Q�dD'6�0�!�n�Y�L��A7� )Dނ��r�0�ܿ��_�dx0��Ԟ�`�f�d��-�}�)Qs�)G�g5� ��B�� b;�J�a��Ϛ��M��X�is�U(�ĝbZ�7��UaG��o��"�h�%�5�� V�Gq�q��k4tH=�%��)�(\|�4�q�L�Mߝ�ς��> )m6q��c�,�7e"g}V��X� �$��je�� M@( �]"n2� �%��M](�؈�\|:�S��<�Y�C�R� ��X �� \�{OQ�_YL(}�(��xB?�E��J�/ H ��^7�0l��B!I, �� @�oBt5>��8��L2�[0��?�Q�-�� >[�0P]6]\|��Uz��AHz� �EK_N9�4�_��%�'�>�ƪ��T�ڮԴ��<5�KIgvtN�l;ԉ�T��< ��)�h,"��5��(O׊�k�R�+�κ�а7��Z'B�[�W^��n�!�@;�=2��Vh̴<�m){lp��jT�k��Zƨ:5T9𬺄��T�b�� \|�XoA,C.ޛ~ à`�r� ��<��V�@��$H5#m��h; bDEm�J�S�P�@�B� �֖�)yb�]�x.�N� ;� �d�{( ��t60D\� ZT �:�� ]��VO��3�I{�' =�׎&�+S��eU�v� ��< �>E��0��^&ڡQ�! �(��?5�Nk l�k�u׏�M�ޖ��U?jM�_��:� ��5��a�z�� ss)C��m�1�?p��׵s��tB�-ipэ�/��_{�8�jq� E�C�Γ�0R��/s]��d � ��U' ��{�?� �� l��)�Α��%�I��g`�um��j.��ă0�:# �5U&"x)G��▔ml��y�MrOA$��B��5;I-#����E �,ࢥ��ò�lr�ԣr�Q�7)��l��N�=�� gag�E[e? q�O��c/֭Sp� ��W�݇�e�ݮQg��A]��v��ؙz,~�db�k��Ղ�Gj)��8��a��q�u�ְ�ӛ?�!I:l�hŹe��V̱]=Y�U5�l��=tP7�-<��S�;�ϵ֟�1��4 +w�d�}�A�~ )�"�/eu�{'� �~q��g�$��[�@��N#�:LԐ3��"�T4�ͺ�v��m��d5I�㸣&�c ˿�V��s��ݞ�� ;�d_��q�4��v� �ǣN�\&��^Y� ��w��9��4ҟ X��=2�Vn�T� !v�s�s�"+��]Qn�_��ѡe�M�� ƸBq�}Eam:!\:f�U �ւ��n��c��42�}�~��� 6�=My,J�{�5�[:��\�O#�AjR�5��h��9��ևS�;�ؽJz��"��.��ݭ��m��b�G��Qӏ�Q��%�j<��c��#�C4�� ӻ��s�6��TU\�}k��{D)��]G1�v��8��VM��H,�h�0ٛ֓k˨��=� WNP��H��.Z��Uk[Q%��O�˘��( �c�XY�(P`�K"\ 16�a B3]�_Q�_��v`f��)��t��ꋼb{��E�Cn�N�] r� m0s}��?��b�k�"�n�pcy윑�Cvg��=I�֤&��'��t�A��p-za�bR�-���s^C��g��(>TN�-�F��6H��u��CF/k�T��J ��=��v�`m��wST��Ȝ+��0B��p�kFj��BaB�ȑ��,�V� �c#�&�J � H��f�XK��tu��g Mޟƽՙ�iTJ�,��a�z��I�/�� \��1}��~Ȅ,��t׈��QB�l�>�;��B}Ų)`k��C5@Q��7�s�v�t�h��/�7��o��&8��b �l��k��'��aјw oG�� 2��}��)F ��˲,%`�&��C��&E�o�"Ƃ��%l��!y��"0�qƐ�7f�#��9�Q2��Z,p!�� V.�vH됴�bI{ �xF�c�?"��)^0,9� cx��f��"lb��0l��PzC��J݉'j��؄�"��{�� 9ûl��N,m�Z��V��Z8� �<�U��]�т��'Tb!��N;e��$&�FvrZ��:�K� ��1� ��^��Ó��jU传W��7ZF8��$y�֐ǟ�J�� �S�,�t�JY]��b�r��G��)��P�w(L�?�b5+�7ͣ�MV��d��l �z��P- f��O��.p�� ֭�}ikI O�ǋ�@W �� R �,��U K�9+�;њw�@tcC8�S�XQ:�W�e��Q��\��6��J+�m��+��)��A ��R�� f�Ü�W��B`] KUw8.�k��b�k��/�ƻ�n�V�A��=2d�VEa����"q�N�AF��;��X� �i��w$U��;:��!�Zٜ��;'a�ؤsL�U�.A�GC� +աe��t7vsD ��"��dv��"�j3,ܸ�~� 8b��,�(�ԡ�Q_��b��v%?S��Y]T䐄y!%R�c!�gv��->�-�f��;u ��=� ��4�s��+��D ��12��:X�(q�Uh��R��X��r?\,?� N�m5��VWAo'��P�\�>�46 M��j�zvb�D��C�?oM�zb- c1�� Km��bW��l�=>�K}y6��We��1��Wqnَ�jl��?WeT+�-^�{�:,�J�@T.�:�dUn�9�S�ֻ; �$/9hu��j��n͒��<��H�� ZfV�Z�akO��怀{s�X'� H_�^� �J1�TM�d��Z�2)�6��En��u�(s0ɥ�پ��b��tZ�� 9ѐ2# IحƂ!/�M N�Գe��1\� ��#�@��c�N-;X�x(�сB��y,��Pv1�=��0B ��e��f^. �YC��f@� $�4+�lr��X�\y�/j ��b�O+�u ��k��eZ~��8�=�s�$�� &X`�hOA��=2��N"EB� \�t�A�pL0�@�\|9lk :YZ��D"��[0��@_g��ե��5� ��Y��Ob�)��Z瘩v��U��4��:��E/;Hl� �RNP��<~K��c��ā��c8�0��ej+��Km��?��6��I��}�^N��h�@ ��LBR 2��v��Tl �1��o�𝕦��}')\|��Q̴ �� (�א�K2�y�� d�)�`#��ڸ�� R�t��Ɠ��z��}[.�rU'�0E1��b�3� 6��y~AZ�Q�2�p��l��󮑥e�dq�� qѣ�7�C]��6�+��u�`�EV�kB�RU��<.]}�Oޓ��pR��dF3Aؑi��/�g$ �Z�j�ik� �=n� t93�Si��O��J�j(��z�$�� Tv��[Է�bO�d�yr��U��P��`%�(=Oi?E�� u I�4hNf� ��.,e�k�ϯQ��v�)ɚ��2y� 1@S��<��6z�yts��𽻤Pc��t�t1u��Ao\|� �b㽐��`��j̈m��Rt�M�f��Y`'��,B��uc��d+"GUz5o�D��811�e�(�;��dYI��y�jDnid�l�w6"�+�f�XA� �l �\|L�Ź-�E�5̲��F�. �<��Y�`� �ʪ��%��!�˫��i�B:�й`�Gٲv�P-�D&p��f�%& :��E)q��na��4Ł��A�e�s�2Ѝ�#�sP�� Ɠ�'�FE��z�� L�@!=R ��3�G��P�hū��4hJe ��N� �6�Q$��1t�] N8��\6<� C�S��0E�p�!o%F�4g�?x�%��qa� e��x�q�{oy��8��xL�{�4Ɖe`>��2�ŬK��Y�X1L`�N�w��J,R��-�#D��X gSV� yL��U"נÈ��M�Z��Ц ��d�&�"��5t�㸞 n:el\zb�_�Mw��O�5Jɹ�A�ǰs��A7��@��6� %�j2�ȕ��7��4&� ȁ� �e=� ,Y��.:)��~��+,� � '��kƢ�ECZ )�q�M Q�e��m�Ƽ��e4�$��L�Y��b��O�/��6��@A��ح'垢�UN�q��ς��$��')v ��~�QA�v��-��%�\��n�KW��`��l��3��Z[ ހE�!\|��tsm��B�Y��Z9��Й�ɕ,{`�q��%�]�RQ!�Y@��z�H:��z�Dr�5f�c�� jՊ�9�"\|��z�ho�& ��8�ZZ�ԉ��S=y;Ǭ�Q\|4�%�7�� A=�u�R�%�.-R�e�K�n��og�+(�>��!ͻ�V�>��R�Jإf��ĵdDu׷��Q� �̊�1_NK;�i�Q�(KK O#0��O3� &e�y)%�#ѪKg\:d�8n�hmeB��e��'t1k��k�� c�T�Ua�F+˔CJ��H�;�pM�l�"� �z� �{��h�sW!�xJ-�� I>i F� ��^��s��Fkђ�O<�7B�8��齃/��j�Sޏ��}�[_jH3�� c��-�Ev��q��'�ϼD��"�[�r �NR��5� Ǿ�� /�wk�}�-)��=T޸�� 5g��w��8��<�8��n��?��P%1_��s:>��Z�E�.�{�F�� <��M�k!G+K��:��H�5��}�!��D��ϭ ��4�^�I��1l�@�u>��T�q�ʹX�BK�� t_M��.X\|\eF�胋2�p]��.�XVF�BN�G(@[ ǽDbD-87oi��?yh��h� 4�T �]:Q�:G�t8��T��?��dL&��9iSw�� 𚛽񭯞��&�� rx�3�Էv��P�W� �u,��-\��a�.T(sUz��9� �:��<��x�7Д�":N��D��g�2-}gE��)I 4�L2��l%i��<��WlS��v9�m��{�� u?� ��Zy�^��~��~\K�D${��Lԥ�ov��K�>�F"��]Z�J�O �q7��,��Lm%ǭ�m�CE9�4�Z�u�10�R�,}zg+��7��m�Ũ#Z�H�C��S��B��k��Rp�ov�j��pg#�ȱb~Wݶai�dV��\� �ր��=@.�kZQ�=tM s�dUA4��q-��WZg�>r"��X(�]�p��8]�p4�3�Q[��z� �t�ξ�\|�%�T�`W�G]C��m,r��,�ؒv{H�ƿ��!��0�ӱG�1?��7'�a�m~�(2�B��p�)oN�f-$�%O�Ѽ�{��kg�֊��U��f�C�9�}� �2j��u��r��nw�$��ǹH1? �� 6'듏\_w~��-��%2��C�m6��4�� .��J�U��N�6F��~Z��L�4YS�r32�l]{��ͳ^�jD�3�_F +��z�3��ڶ{e�zL��T�p��dZoz��R� ��x��mv?��w��y �^o/0 �]�Qص��bi��җh/4g��֭7�IJ�� EYkp��St#/�i�X�� vZ�f�� :�NI$�Pl��]��s�A L�r�b��@T���R2�V��A��Y��n3;�+� <��M��9�u۔��e��o�ؤ0�5��>ݾ�;=� ��j�Ǟ��A �d-��0��{�!挓�q�� @��=/��\'�R ._� �?6��5��u�t �TZ��q��ky �z�FnO�8��Jo~˥�>2/�� x��WɃF qAư��M�!q��z Z^v9�t��i�$&��v�V�̈��Ĝ3�l��Q��^�8��]00U�K�_�9R��Ǩ�5� u��q#,��ݷ��KC��L�b=dA��Oi�ٚ��Ebr�S�<�ū/�%@ ��ؾ�/�<[_��fh�AyM�[ ��N�LJ� �S7 ��u��h,��`g �Μ� �'�WoN��vc�5�%�T)�D1jp��&�Y��FE��)��aY��T:-w��yC!��Bh��.?<0�b�Y5V�r-��,.��W�Y��S@�a�u�ì'�4еJ$3��+A�� M�Ȣ�G ;��h�A �L�}�S��Q�ev�8+�Zv�v��>Ɇ��7��H��v'�m# ��q/ph��5��=QM�6��IEND�B`��D@��D Normal CJ_HaJmH nHsH tHDA@��D Default Paragraph FontRi@��R Table Normal �4� l4�a� (k@��(No List �� 8��pa1'(7�� p q ~ � � � � � � � �(_�9:Wi\|��H�1S��$%&'()+,-./defghijklmn�� 0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0�� 0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��0��@0��0��0��0��0�0��0��0��0��0��1'(7�� $%&()+,-./dK�00 K�00 �K�00�K�00 �K�00 �K�00 `-�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�K�00�2K�00K�00�0��@0��@0��K�00 �K�00K�00�0��@0��@0��@0��@0��@0��@0��4��} ��l �8� @ �� ~�( � ��b� � C ��"��`�� b� � C ��"��`�� b� � C ��"��`�� (2 � ��HB � C �D��HB � C �D�� HB � C �D��HB �@ C �D��HB � C �D��HB � @ C �D��B �S � �� ?��7�WXij\|}��%� T�� Tpf�$� T�1��T�1`�T (��T(��T8��T 8��T �`T��,4�� /� � � � HL 33333�� 2(7q ~ ?R��~ �T N��l2<�j��3D�\D�hs��^��`��o(.� ��^��`��h�H.� �p�L��p^�p`�L��h�H.� �@ ��@ ^�@ `��h�H.� ��^�`��h�H.� ��L��^��`�L��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� �P�L��P^�P`�L��h�H.��^��`��o(.� ��^��`��h�H.� �p�L��p^�p`�L��h�H.� �@ ��@ ^�@ `��h�H.� ��^�`��h�H.� ��L��^��`�L��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� �P�L��P^�P`�L��h�H.��^��`��o(.� ��^��`��h�H.� �p�L��p^�p`�L��h�H.� �@ ��@ ^�@ `��h�H.� ��^�`��h�H.� ��L��^��`�L��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� ��^��`��h�H.� �P�L��P^�P`�L��h�H.�l2~ �3D�\�� -�:b�9�F �"Kg4� 6ENG�EIg\|Y�.l�qI��;��F��y��N��D��5�� "M��5y�c�3m�ZH��@��5��P@��Unknown��G��z ��Times New Roman5��Symbol3&� �z ��ArialCF��Comic Sans MSC�� .PMingLiU�e0}fԚG5�� h�MS Mincho-�3� f g;��SimSun�[SO"q��hYm��Ut��I� 'I� '!��x��24��2�Q�HX)��?��:2�� Mixing Colors Yvonne Chan Yvonne Chan ��Oh��+'��0\|�� 8 D P\dlt� Mixing Colors Yvonne Chan Normal Yvonne Chan 8 Microsoft Office Word@�^�:@v�\w�@~Hq�w�I��՜.��+,��0 hp�� Stanford University' �� Mixing Colors Title �� !"#$%&'()+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{\|}~�� !"#$%&'()+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABC��EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY��[\]^_`a��cdefghi��n��Root Entry�� F@��w�p�Data �� L1Table��D�+WordDocument��48SummaryInformation(��ZDocumentSummaryInformation8��bCompObj��q�� F Microsoft Office Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.8�9�qRoot Entry�� F��߬�w�uData �� L1Table��D�+WordDocument��48 !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABC��EFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY��[\]^_`a��t��SummaryInformation(��ZDocumentSummaryInformation8��\|CompObj��q�� F Microsoft Office Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.8�9�q��՜.��+,��D��՜.��+,��H hp�� Stanford University' �� Mixing Colors Title4 $�,�	Green
January 11, 1843 saw the death, in Baltimore, Maryland, of what American lawyer, author, and poet, who wrote the classic poem The Defence of Fort McHenry?	visible light - Why does mixing every paint colour produce gray instead of white? - Physics Stack Exchange Why does mixing every paint colour produce gray instead of white? 5 I'm trying to reconcile these facts, If I had paints of the primary colours and I mixed them together, I would produce gray. White light contains every colour. My most convincing attempt to answer the question: The colours of objects that don't produce light are the colours those objects don't absorb. A white object doesn't absorb any colour, a blue object absorbs all colours but blue, a green object absorbs all colours but green, etc. So by mixing paints of the primary colours I mix influences that collectively absorb all colours and reflect all colours; whereas, if I had paint that only absorbed all colours I would have black paint, and if I had paint that only reflected all colours I would have had white paint. Gray is a combination of white and gray, so I found this answer intuitively satisfying. However, I don't know if it's an accurate explanation of the observation. Why does mixing every paint colour produce gray instead of white? Thank you. up vote 6 down vote accepted You are confusing additive and subtractive colour mixing. If you mix paints together you should get black, not white. In additive mixing (as used in TVs and monitors), you create light, which is then mixed. When you mix the three primary colours (red, green and blue), you produce white. Other mixes produce other colours, for example red and green combine to produce yellow. When you use paints, you are using an external light source (the sun or a light bulb) and each paint reflects some of the wavelengths and absorbs others. For example, yellow paint absorbs the blue wavelengths, leaving red and green, which mix to yellow. This is called subtractive mixing , and the primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow; when you mix paints of these colours, the result is black. Adding additional colours to this mix keeps the result black, as there is no more light to reflect. Other colours are made up by mixing the primaries. With both additive and subtractive mixing, the result of mixing colours depends on the purity of the primaries. No paints are "perfect" cyan, magenta or yellow, and as a result the mix will not be completely black. You may get a dark brown or purple, depending on the paints you use. This is one (of several) reasons why printers use black as well as CMY. The same goes for monitors: you never get "pure white" - which is typically defined as light with a colour temperature of 5500K, about the same as sunlight. Some monitors can be set for different temperatures. Some are set to 9000K, giving white a bluish cast. Interestingly, the colours that can be displayed on a monitor do not match those of a printer (or paint). A monitor can display colours that a printer cannot print, and vice versa. Every device has its own colour gamut , usually smaller than the eye's gamut, so with any device there are colours we can see but which the device cannot produce. The reason why all this mixing occurs is because our retina has sensors for red, green and blue, and the brain mixes these inputs to tell us what colour we are seeing. This is why the primaries are RGB, or CMY. Combinations of dyes will yield a subtractive color mix, since dye molecules absorb light of some wavelengths while passing others. If one has dye with particles which absorb everything but green, adding particles which absorb everything but red won't help any light get through. Paint, however, often has particles which reflect certain wavelengths while absorbing others. If one has paint with particles that only reflect green, adding particles that reflect red will allow some red light which would have been absorbed by a green particle... – supercat Feb 17 '14 at 19:54 1 ...to get reflected by a red particle first. Since some light that reflects off a red particle will hit (and be absorbed by) a green particle before bouncing clear of the paint, the behavior of mixed paints isn't exactly additive, but it isn't subtractive either. Note that many paints include dyes, which do behave in subtractive fashion; two kinds of "blue" paints may appear identical, but yield very different results when combined with a "yellow" paint. Some kinds of yellow, mixed with true "blue" (not cyan) will yield green--not consistent with additive or subtractive color rules. – supercat Feb 17 '14 at 19:58 And then there are metallic paints. There is a huge chasm between colour theory and actual colour work. Hopefully we've given @Hal the incentive to investigate further. – hdhondt Feb 18 '14 at 9:36 Simplified color theory works nicely when when combining lights to achieve a certain look, or when combining dyes whose absorption spectra are largely non-overlapping, so as to achieve a certain look under some particular illuminating spectrum. The way materials' colors interact, though, depends upon their behavior at individual wavelengths. I wonder how hard it would be to construct a telescope-like device which would clearly show the spectral content of a spot at the center of the view field, marked with a cross-hairs or other indicator. That could assist understanding of "real" color. – supercat Feb 18 '14 at 16:21 If you mix paints together you should get black. No, because paints are pigments. Each non-black pigment particle in the mix reflects some fraction of light. The only way the paint could look black (i.e., reflect none of the light) is if all of the particles are black. – james large Jul 1 '15 at 20:43	i don't know
Including sections describing legislative, executive, and judicial powers, how many articles does the US Constitution have?	Congress for Kids: [Constitution]: The Three Branches of Government The Three Branches of Government Women - The Right to Vote Receive information about any changes to Congress for Kids and the other seven sites in The Dirksen Center's Web suite! Our government has three branches. Imagine a triangle. At the top is the Executive Branch. The two bottom corners are the Judicial Branch and the Legislative Branch – also called Congress. Each part of the government is connected to the other. Each has its own responsibilities and powers. A system of checks and balances prevents one branch from gaining too much power. So how does this all work? How have the three branches of government changed over time and what are their present day challenges? The Duties of the Three Branches of Government The Three Branches of Government Delegates at the Constitutional Convention also wanted to divide power within the federal government. They did not want these powers to be controlled by just one man or one group. The delegates were afraid that if a small group received too much power, the United States would wind up under the rule of another dictator or tyrant. To avoid the risk of dictatorship or tyranny, the group divided the new government into three parts, or branches: the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Executive Branch: Headed by the president. The president carries out federal laws and recommends new ones, directs national defense and foreign policy, and performs ceremonial duties. Powers include directing government, commanding the Armed Forces, dealing with international powers, acting as chief law enforcement officer, and vetoing laws. Legislative Branch: Headed by Congress, which includes the House of Representatives and the Senate. The main task of these two bodies is to make the laws. Its powers include passing laws, originating spending bills (House), impeaching officials (Senate), and approving treaties (Senate). Judicial Branch: Headed by the Supreme Court. Its powers include interpreting the Constitution, reviewing laws, and deciding cases involving states' rights.	seven
January 10, 1883 saw the death of what American physician, who was convicted in 1865 for aiding and conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of U. S. President Abraham Lincoln?	National Constitution Center Article II. The Executive Branch, Annenberg Classroom Article II. The Executive Branch, Annenberg Classroom By Annenberg Classroom Article II, Section 1 establishes that the president and vice president are to be elected at the same time and serve the same four-year term. Until 1951, presidents could serve for as many four-year terms as they could win. But after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for four terms, Congress passed and the states ratified Amendment XXII, which limits a president to two terms (eight years) in office. In the rare case that a vice president (or other official) takes over for a president who has stepped down or died in office and serves more than two years of the remaining term, he or she is limited to one new term. Rather than being elected directly by the people, the president is elected by members of the Electoral College, which is created by Article II, Section 1. It is not really a “college,” but a group of people who are elected by the states. Each state is entitled to the number of electors equal to the combined number of their representatives and senators in Congress. Neither members of Congress nor other federal officials may serve as electors. Each state legislature decides how members of the Electoral College are to be selected and how they are to vote. For example, some states select electors at primary elections or at caucuses. In most states, electors vote for the presidential candidate who won the vote in their state. But in a few states, state law specifies that electors cast their votes according to the percentage of votes received by each candidate. If the Republican candidate receives 55 percent of the vote, he or she receives the votes of 55 percent of the electors. The creation of the Electoral College gives more power to the smaller states, rather than letting the people in the most populous states control who becomes president. Additional rules were added in 1804, when Amendment XII was adopted. For example, the amendment creates the way a president is selected when neither candidate obtains a majority of votes in the Electoral College. There are three minimum requirements to be elected president: one must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years, and must be at least 35 years old. Although Article II, Section 1 originally provided who should become president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, Amendment XXV, added in 1967, modified the line of succession. The president’s salary is set by Congress. To avoid allowing Congress to punish or reward the president while he or she is in office, the Constitution prohibits any change in salary during the president’s term. The president also is prohibited from receiving any other type of compensation or perks while in office. Before assuming office, the president must swear or affirm to do his or her best to serve as the nation’s leader and to uphold the United States Constitution as the law of the land. Article II, Section 2 – What It Means The president serves not only as the head of the executive branch of government, but also as the commander in chief of the armed forces (including state national guards when they are called on to serve with the federal armed forces). As chief executive, the president runs the different executive agencies, such as the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Health and Human Services. The president has the power to pardon (let free) any person who has committed a federal crime, except in cases of impeachment. With permission from two-thirds of the senators present, the president can make treaties (agreements) with other countries. With the approval of a majority of senators, the president makes a number of key appointments. These include U.S. ambassadors and foreign consuls, Supreme Court justices and federal judges, U.S. attorneys, U.S. marshals, Cabinet officers, independent agency heads, and members of regulatory commissions. To ensure that the president can fill vacancies when the Senate is not in session, the president can make any of these appointments without Senate approval, but these “recess appointments” end at the end of the next Senate session. Congress may choose to require Senate approval of other presidential appointments or let the president, courts or department heads appoint staff and agency employees without approval by the Senate. Article II, Section 3 – What It Means During his or her term, the president must report to Congress about how things are going in the country. Every president from Jefferson to Taft fulfilled this duty with a written statement submitted to Congress. But in 1913, Woodrow Wilson resumed George Washington’s practice of directly addressing a joint session of Congress. This “State of the Union” speech, a tradition that continues to this day, usually occurs in January or February each year. The president also has the power, in extreme cases, to call both the House of Representatives and the Senate together for a special session. The president is given the power to meet with representatives from other nations on behalf of the United States and to otherwise run the country by enforcing the laws and directing officers and staff. Article II, Section 4 – What It Means The Constitution provides that the president, vice president, and other federal officers can be removed from office upon impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate of treason, bribery, or other serious crimes. The process was begun only three times in U.S. history against a president — against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon (although he resigned before Congress could formally act) and Bill Clinton. The impeachment process begins in the House of Representatives with a vote to impeach. Then the president (or other accused government official) stands trial for the accusations in the Senate. The Chief Justice of the United States presides at an impeachment trial of the president. In all impeachment trials, members of the House serve as prosecutors and the full Senate sits as the jury. The accused official must be convicted by a two-thirds vote of the Senate to be removed from office. Annenberg Classroom Commander in Chief Clause By Michael D. Ramsey and Stephen I. Vladeck The Commander in Chief Clause of Article II, Section 2 provides that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” As Justice Jackson put it in the Steel Seizure case ( Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)), “These cryptic words have given rise to some of the most persistent controversies in our constitutional history,” with Presidents at various points claiming that it “vests power to do anything, anywhere, that can be done with an army or navy.” At a minimum, all agree that the Clause has two separate but related purposes: First, in response to the charge in the Declaration of Independence that the King had “affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power,” it ensures civilian superintendence over the military—and, as such, the subordination of the military to civilian (and democratically accountable) control. Second, and in contrast to the experience under the Articles of Confederation, it places such civilian superintendence in the hands of a single person. As David Barron and Martin Lederman’s definitive academic study of the Clause explains, “the textual designation of the President as the Commander in Chief was intended to ensure that that officer, and no other, would be ultimately responsible for performing that role, whatever it was to entail.” To that end, they continue, the Clause “suggests that, at least with respect to certain functions, Congress may not (by statute or otherwise) delegate the ultimate command of the army and navy . . . to anyone other than the President.” Although that principle, read narrowly, would only prohibit Congress from literally placing someone other than the President atop the U.S. military hierarchy, it presumably also means that Congress cannot insulate parts of the military from the President’s superintendence or interfere with the President’s supervisory role, lest Congress have the power to effectively undermine the President’s command authority—and, in Justice Jackson’s words, convert the Clause into an “empty title.” Thus, as a case in point, Congress likely violated the Clause in an 1867 appropriations rider that sought to insulate Ulysses S. Grant—then the commanding general of the U.S. Army—from President Andrew Johnson by, among other things, requiring all orders to go through Grant (and voiding all orders that didn’t); precluding Grant’s removal by Johnson without Senate approval; and fixing Grant’s headquarters in Washington (where, presumably, he would be closer to Congress). As a result of this superintendence principle, when Congress authorizes military operations (such as through a declaration of war), it necessarily puts the President in charge of them. Thus, as Chief Justice Chase explained in his concurring opinion in Ex parte Milligan (1866), the Commander in Chief Clause enshrines the President’s authority not just over “the command of the forces,” but also over “the conduct of campaigns.” And as Barron and Lederman explain, “more than 200 years of usage and court precedents reflect the view that the Commander in Chief Clause does confer broad substantive war powers on the President.” A more difficult question is how much authority the Clause gives the President beyond operations approved by Congress. In the debates at Philadelphia, James Madison said that giving Congress the power to declare war would leave the President with power to repel sudden attacks. Presumably this power arises from the Commander in Chief Clause, read to convey independent substantive power to the President to direct the military on matters not related to war initiation. On this basis, Presidents have claimed authority over a range of military actions, including attacking pirates, rescuing U.S. citizens abroad, and making military deployments, although this authority is presumably circumscribed by other provisions of the Constitution and perhaps, some have argued, by international law. In the Steel Seizure case, the Court rejected the President’s argument that the Clause empowered the President to seize steel mills in the United States to support the Korean War, and in Milligan, the Court rejected the argument that the Clause allowed the President to use military commissions to try civilians in areas where civilian courts were still operating. These cases indicate that the independent authority conveyed to the President by the Clause generally does not extend to interference with the rights and duties of U.S. civilians, at least outside the battlefield. The most controversial aspect of the Clause is whether it limits Congress’s ability to enact statutes directing how military operations are conducted. For example, multiple Presidents have claimed that the War Powers Resolution, which limits the President’s ability to deploy troops into hostilities without Congress’s approval, is unconstitutional on this ground. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Executive Branch argued that, because of the Commander in Chief Clause, various statutory limits on the President’s authority were unconstitutional insofar as they, among other things, forbade the torture of detainees, warrantless surveillance, or the detention of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. As a controversial 2002 government memorandum argued, Congress can no more interfere with the President’s conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield. Just as statutes that order the President to conduct warfare in a certain manner or for specific goals would be unconstitutional, so too are laws that seek to prevent the President from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Supreme Court appeared to reject this argument in invalidating military tribunals created by President Bush to try non-citizen terrorism suspects. As Justice Stevens wrote for the majority, “[w]hether or not the President has independent power, absent congressional authorization, to convene military commissions, he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers.” However, the scope of Hamdan remains unclear, and in 2015 President Obama suggested that a statute completely limiting his ability to transfer detainees from the military prison at Guantánamo might unconstitutionally infringe his Commander in Chief powers. In sum, the Commander in Chief Clause gives the President the exclusive power to command the military in operations approved by Congress; it probably gives the President substantial independent power to direct military operations so long has the President does not infringe exclusive powers of Congress or other provisions of the Constitution; and it may (but may not) limit Congress’ power to pass statutes directing or prohibiting particular military activities. Michael D. Ramsey Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law and Director, International & Comparative Law Programs, University of San Diego School of Law Stephen I. Vladeck Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law Matters of Debate Michael D. Ramsey Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law and Director, International & Comparative Law Programs, University of San Diego School of Law The President's Exclusive Power to Direct Military Operations by Michael D. Ramsey If the United States undertakes military operations, either by authorization from Congress or under the President’s independent powers, the Constitution makes the President Commander in Chief of all U.S. military forces, and Congress cannot give command to any other person. The President's Exclusive Power to Direct Military Operations by Michael D. Ramsey The President's Exclusive Power to Direct Military Operations By Michael D. Ramsey If the United States undertakes military operations, either by authorization from Congress or under the President’s independent powers, the Constitution makes the President Commander in Chief of all U.S. military forces, and Congress cannot give command to any other person. But can Congress itself direct how the President exercises that command by requiring or prohibiting certain military actions? Scholarly opinion is sharply divided on this question. One view, principally associated with Professor John Yoo, holds that attempts by Congress to control the military contrary to the President’s desires infringe the Commander in Chief Clause by in effect depriving the President of the full ability to give commands. An opposing view, developed by Professor Saikrishna Prakash in a series of articles and an important 2015 book on executive power, sees Congress as having complete power over the military through various clauses of Article I, Section 8 , with the President’s substantive command authority operating only where Congress has not provided specific direction. Both views seem to overstate. Contrary to the first view, the Constitution expressly gives Congress significant power over the military. Most notably, Congress has power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Nothing in the Constitution requires these “Rules” to be consistent with the President’s desires (although of course the President can resist them using the veto power). Further, Congress has a long history of regulating the military, including the articles of war (precursor of the modern Uniform Code of Military Justice) enacted in the immediate post-ratification period. Thus, for example, rules regarding how prisoners are to be treated, whether civilians may be targeted and how intelligence may be gathered by the military seem fully within Congress’s enumerated power. If the President’s Commander in Chief power overrode these rules, the Government-and-Regulation Clause would seem almost meaningless. In addition, Congress’s power to declare war likely includes power to set wartime goals and to limit a war’s scope. Prior to the Constitution, other nations routinely issued goal-setting declarations and fought limited wars. And Congress’s power to define the scope of a war seems confirmed by Congress’s statutory limits on the 1798 Quasi-War with France and by the Supreme Court’s approval of those limits in Bas v. Tingy (1800) and Little v. Barreme (1804). However, contrary to the second view, the Constitution’s enumeration of Congress’s specific military powers indicates that Congress does not have plenary authority over military operations. In particular, although Congress can make general rules regarding military conduct and can define wartime objectives, it lacks enumerated power to direct battlefield operations—a point demonstrated by examining Congress’s powers under the Articles of Confederation. In contrast to the Constitution, the Articles gave Congress the powers of “making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and of directing their operations” (emphasis added). The former power is carried over directly into the Constitution’s list of congressional powers, but the latter is not. This strongly suggests that Congress’s Government-and-Regulation power does not include power to “direct [military] operations.” Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Commander-In-Chief Clause with Stephen I. Vladeck, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law. Read the full discussion here. The brief war powers debate at the Philadelphia Convention confirms that this omission was intentional and substantive. As is well known, the Convention’s draft at one point gave Congress the power to “make” war. James Madison proposed changing this to “declare” war— principally, he said, to leave the President with power to repel sudden attacks. Rufus King of Massachusetts then made a related point: “that ‘make’ war might be understood to ‘conduct’ it which was an Executive function.” The Convention adopted the proposed change, suggesting that the delegates did not want Congress to have the power to “conduct” war. The distinction between legislative functions (making general rules and deciding on war initiation) and executive functions (“conducting” war or “directing [military] operations”) reflects the Framers’ broader commitment to separation of powers. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist No. 74 , [T]he direction of war peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority. Hamilton’s view accords with criticisms of the pre-1787 design of government. The national government prior to the Constitution lacked separation of powers, combining legislative and executive power in a single multi-member entity, and it was thought defective on that ground. Among other perceived problems, Congress meddled in the tactical direction of the Revolutionary War. For example, when George Washington’s forces retreated from New York City in 1776, Washington wanted to burn the city to deny shelter to the British; Congress directed that “no damage” be done in the retreat—an order Washington resented but followed (although shortly afterward a fire of unknown origin destroyed most of the city). Federalist No. 74 likely had this problem in mind in calling for “directing . . . the common strength” by a single person. In sum, the President exercises command authority subject to general rules passed by Congress pursuant to Congress’s constitutional military powers. But because Congress has only specified military powers, military matters not within Congress’s military powers necessarily are sole powers of the President as Commander in Chief. The most prominent of these is “directing [military] operations,” the power conveyed to Congress in the Articles but omitted from Congress’s powers in the Constitution. To be sure, it may often be difficult to draw a clear line between legislative “Rules” for the conduct of the military, on one hand, and executive “direction” of military operations on the other. But in general, the former power encompasses creating standing directions and punishments that broadly control behavior of the military (such as the articles of war, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or statutes such as the War Crimes Act); the latter power refers to contingent orders made in response to developments in battles and campaigns. Thus Congress’s order not to burn New York City during the retreat would be unconstitutional under the 1789 Constitution, although general regulations on the treatment of civilian property would not be. Michael D. Ramsey Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law and Director, International & Comparative Law Programs, University of San Diego School of Law Common Interpretation Next Perspective Matters of Debate How the Militia Clauses Inform the Scope of the Commander in Chief’s Inherent Power by Stephen I. Vladeck How the Militia Clauses Inform the Scope of the Commander in Chief’s Inherent Power By Stephen I. Vladeck Disputes concerning the scope of the President’s unilateral authority under the Commander in Chief Clause—particularly of late—have tended to neglect the potential significance of other constitutional provisions in understanding the Constitution’s separation of emergency powers. Perhaps no provision has been more neglected in this discourse than the so-called “Calling Forth” Clause of Article I , which empowers Congress “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” As Justice Jackson explained in his Steel Seizure concurrence, Such a limitation on the command power, written at a time when the militia rather than a standing army was contemplated as the military weapon of the Republic, underscores the Constitution’s policy that Congress, not the Executive, should control utilization of the war power as an instrument of domestic policy. And yet, except as it pertains to debates over the original understanding of the Second Amendment and the authority to deploy National Guard units overseas, Congress’s constitutional power to provide for the use of the militia during these three types of domestic crises has been overlooked in almost every contemporary assessment of the President’s inherent war powers, to the point where scholars too numerous to count have accepted without qualification the argument that the President possesses at least some independent authority to use military force in domestic emergencies—assuming that such power derives, most naturally, from the Commander in Chief Clause. In fact, since 1792, Congress has provided specific statutory authorization for military deployments in the cases contemplated by the Calling Forth Clause, first through the militia (which President Washington called forth to help put down the Whiskey Rebellion) and subsequently through the “regular” federal army (as the unreliability of the militia became increasingly clear). And even in the Prize Cases (1863), in which the Supreme Court famously recognized the President’s power to repel sudden attacks, it attributed at least some of that authority not to the Commander in Chief Clause, but to these statutes, by which “he is authorized to call[] out the militia and use the military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations, and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States.” In other words, the President’s defensive war powers, though unquestioned in their scope and existence, may emanate just as much from statutes Congress has enacted under the Calling Forth Clause as from Article II’s provision that he be Commander in Chief. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Commander-In-Chief Clause with Michael D. Ramsey, Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law and Director, International & Comparative Law Programs, University of San Diego School of Law. Read the full discussion here. The more interesting question is why the Calling Forth Clause has disappeared from our modern view of how the Constitution separates war powers. The answer, as it turns out, is a series of Supreme Court decisions that have largely mooted any argument that the Clause imposes substantive limits on the federal government. Thus, in a pair of 1918 Supreme Court rulings—the Selective Draft Law Cases and Cox v. Wood —the Justices concluded that the Calling Forth Clause does not in fact limit the circumstances in which the government may call out the militia, upholding the constitutionality of a draft designed to recruit soldiers to fight in World War I, a purely foreign conflict. Thus, although the Framers may well have intended the Calling Forth Clause both to cement the militia’s exclusive role in responding to domestic emergencies and to prevent their federalization for other purposes, the 1918 decisions largely vitiated that structural reading by concluding that the militia could also be called forth to fight in foreign wars. More recently, in Perpich v. Department of Defense (1990), the Supreme Court held that members of the National Guard are, for constitutional purposes, federal regulars when called into the active service of the United States—and, like the militia in the 1918 cases, may therefore be deployed for purposes other than those outlined in the Calling Forth Clause. Perpich therefore suggests that, at least under the Guard’s dual enlistment system, the Calling Forth Clause is effectively a non-starter; the constitutional text simply doesn’t matter because there is virtually no situation today when the “militia,” at least as the Supreme Court has interpreted the term, is actually being “called forth,” and federal regulars may be called forth even in those contexts in which the Calling Forth Clause might otherwise have been read to require utilization of the militia. But whereas the Supreme Court has largely vitiated the Calling Forth Clause’s potential role as a structural check on other uses of military power, the Clause remains relevant today in helping to cement Congress’s constitutional authority to circumscribe the President’s domestic war powers—authority it has exercised in a number of circumstances, including through the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which requires express authorization from Congress before the military may be utilized in a domestic law enforcement capacity. After all, if the militia was initially intended to be the primary (if not exclusive) response force for a domestic emergency, and if Congress was given the power to provide for their calling forth (and, through the other Militia Clause, their regulation), then the Constitution appears to resolve in Congress’s favor any argument that such statutory limitations unconstitutionally infringe upon the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief. So construed, the Calling Forth Clause undermines the ever-more-visible arguments in favor of strong and unilateral domestic presidential war powers. Of course, there can simply be no question that the Constitution empowers the federal government, acting in concert, to act decisively—and expeditiously—during domestic emergencies; the Constitution, after all, “is not a suicide pact.” But it is not nearly as straight a line from accepting that point to accepting a sweeping and potentially preclusive domestic Commander in Chief power. To the contrary, the reality is that the Constitution expressly envisions a role for Congress to play in providing for governmental responses to even the most existential crises at home, however lost to modern eyes. This dramatically undermines arguments evoking a broad and unilateral authority for the Commander in Chief in the circumstances contemplated by the Calling Forth Clause, i.e., “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” Stephen I. Vladeck Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law Article II, Section 2: Treaty Power and Appointments Article II, Section 2: Treaty Power and Appointments By John O. McGinnis and Peter M. Shane I. Treaty Power The Constitution provides, in the second paragraph of Article II, Section 2, that “the President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Thus, treaty making is a power shared between the President and the Senate. In general, the weight of practice has been to confine the Senate’s authority to that of disapproval or approval, with approval including the power to attach conditions or reservations to the treaty. For instance, the authority to negotiate treaties has been assigned to the President alone as part of a general authority to control diplomatic communications. Thus, since the early Republic, the Clause has not been interpreted to give the Senate a constitutionally mandated role in advising the President before the conclusion of the treaty. Also of substantial vintage is the practice by which the Senate puts reservations on treaties, in which it modifies or excludes the legal effect of the treaty. The President then has the choice, as with all treaties to which the Senate has assented, to ratify the treaty or not, as he sees fit. The question of whether the President may terminate treaties without Senate consent is more contested. In 1978, President Carter gave notice to Taiwan of the termination of our mutual defense treaty. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the President did have authority to terminate the treaty, but the Supreme Court in Goldwater v. Carter (1979), vacated the judgment without reaching the merits. The treaty termination in Goldwater accorded with the terms of the treaty itself. A presidential decision to terminate a treaty in violation of its terms would raise additional questions under the Supremacy Clause, which makes treaties, along with statutes and the Constitution itself, the “supreme Law of the Land.” There remains the question of how the Treaty Clause comports with the rest of the system of enumerated and separated powers. Missouri v. Holland (1920) suggests that the Treaty Clause permits treaties to be made on subjects that would go beyond the powers otherwise enumerated for the federal government in the Constitution. In Reid v. Covert (1957), however, the Court held that treaties may not violate the individual rights provisions of the Constitution. A still-debated question is the extent to which the Treaty Clause is the sole permissible mechanism for making substantial agreements with other nations. In fact, the majority of U.S. pacts with other nations are not formal “treaties,” but are sometimes adopted pursuant to statutory authority and sometimes by the President acting unilaterally. The Supreme Court has endorsed unilateral executive agreements by the President in some limited circumstances. For instance, in United States v. Belmont (1937), the Court upheld an agreement to settle property claims of the government and U.S. citizens in the context of diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. In Dames & Moore v. Regan (1981), the Court upheld President Carter’s agreement with Iran, again concerning property claims of citizens, in the context of releasing U.S. diplomats held hostage by Iran. The Court has never made clear the exact scope of executive agreements, but permissible ones appear to include one-shot claim settlements and agreements attendant to diplomatic recognition. With so-called congressional-executive agreements, Congress has also on occasion enacted legislation that authorizes agreements with other nations. For instance, trade agreements, like the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have often been enacted by statute. In contrast, the Senate objected strenuously when President Jimmy Carter appeared intent on seeking statutory approval, rather than Senate concurrence (which would have required a two-thirds vote) for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II) treaty. It is sometimes argued in favor of the substantial interchangeability of treaties with so-called congressional-executive agreements that Congress enjoys enumerated powers that touch on foreign affairs, like the authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations. But, unlike legislation, international agreements establish binding agreements with foreign nations, potentially setting up entanglements that mere legislation does not. Since Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Foster & Elam v. Neilson (1829), the Supreme Court has distinguished between treaties that are now called self-executing and treaties that are non-self-executing. Self-executing treaties have domestic force in U.S. courts without further legislation. Non-self-executing treaties require additional legislation before the treaty has such domestic force. In Medellín v. Texas (2008), the Court suggested there may be a presumption against finding treaties self-executing unless the treaty text in which the Senate concurred clearly indicated its self-executing status. II. Appointments The remainder of Paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article II deals with the subject of official appointments. With regard to diplomatic officials, judges and other officers of the United States, Article II lays out four modes of appointment. The default option allows appointment following nomination by the President and the Senate’s “advice and consent.” With regard to “inferior officers,” Congress may, within its discretion, vest their appointment “in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.” The Supreme Court has not drawn a bright line distinguishing between inferior officers who might be appointed within the executive branch and inferior officers Congress may allow courts to appoint, provided only that, for judicial appointees, there be no “‘incongruity’ between the functions normally performed by the courts and the performance of their duty to appoint.” Morrison v. Olson (1988). Buckley v. Valeo (1976) confirms that the Article II variations are Congress’s sole options in providing for the appointment of officers of the United States. The text, however, raises the questions: Who counts as an “officer” of the United States, as opposed to a mere employee? And what characterizes an officer’s status as “inferior,” as opposed to “superior” or “principal?” The Court’s definition of “officer” in Buckley entails a degree of circularity. In general, “any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States” is an “officer of the United States.” By contrast, a federal employee is not an “officer” if performing “duties only in aid of those functions that Congress may carry out by itself, or in an area sufficiently removed from the administration and enforcement of the public law as to permit their being performed by persons not ‘Officers of the United States.’” A later case, INS v. Chadha (1983), may implicitly have given the Buckley formulation more substance. Chadha held that the enactment of legislation is Congress’s only permissible means of taking action that has the “purposes and effect of altering the legal rights, duties and relations of persons . . . outside the legislative branch.” Importing Chadha’s holding into the Buckley holding implies that, at a minimum, any administrator Congress vests with authority to alter the legal rights, duties and relations of persons outside the legislative branch would have to be an “officer,” and not an employee, of the United States because that officer would be performing a function forbidden to Congress acting alone. Distinguishing inferior from principal officers has also sometimes proved puzzling. Morrison v. Olson, which upheld the judicial appointment of independent counsel under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, applied a balancing test focused on the breadth of the officer’s mandate, length of tenure, and limited independent policymaking. A later decision, however, provided an additional or perhaps substitute bright-line test, defining “inferior officers” as “officers whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by Presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Edmond v. United States (1997). Perhaps the greatest source of controversy regarding the Appointments Clause, however, surrounds its implications, if any, for the removal of federal officers. The Supreme Court has held that Congress may not condition the removal of a federal official on Senate “advice and consent,” Myers v. United States (1926), and, indeed, may not reserve for itself any direct role in the removal of officers other than through impeachment, Bowsher v. Synar (1986). Those cases do not determine, however, whether Congress may limit the President’s own removal power, for example, by conditioning an officer’s removal on some level of “good cause.” The Supreme Court first gave an affirmative answer to that question in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which limited the President’s discretion in discharging members of the Federal Trade Commission to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Morrison v. Olson reaffirmed the permissibility of creating federal administrators protected from at-will presidential discharge, so long any restrictions on removal do “not impermissibly interfere with the President’s exercise of his constitutionally appointed functions.” Although this formulation falls short of a bright-line test for identifying those officers for whom presidents must have at-will removal authority, the doctrine at least implies that presidents must have some degree of removal power for all officers. That is, presidents must be able at least to secure an officer’s discharge for good cause, lest the President not be able to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The Court has since held, in that vein, that officers of the United States may not be shielded from presidential removal by multiple layers of restrictions on removal. Thus, inferior officers appointed by heads of departments who are not themselves removable at will by the President must be removable at will by the officers who appoint them. Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board (2010). The Recess Appointments Clause was included in Article II in the apparent anticipation that government must operate year-round, but Congress would typically be away from the capital for months at a time. Over the ensuing decades—and extending to modern times when Congress itself sits nearly year-round—the somewhat awkward wording of the Clause seemed to pose two issues that the Supreme Court decided for the first time in 2014. First, does the power of recess appointments extend to vacancies that initially occurred while the Senate was not in recess? Second, may a period of Senate adjournment trigger the President’s recess appointment power even if that period of adjournment occurs during a Senate session, rather than between the adjournment of one session sine die and the convening of the next? Finding the text ambiguous, the Court answered both questions affirmatively, provided that the relevant “intra-session” recess lasted ten days or longer. (As a result, in the particular case, the Court ruled against the President, because the relevant recess was too short.) The majority rested its analysis on what it took to be a relatively consistent pattern of behavior by Congress and the executive branch, effectively ratifying the President’s power as thus construed. NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014). John O. McGinnis George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University School of Law Peter M. Shane Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Matters of Debate An Originalist Reading of Article II, Section 2 by John O. McGinnis An Originalist Reading of Article II, Section 2 By John O. McGinnis The practice and jurisprudence of the Treaty and Appointments Clauses err when they depart, as they too often do, from the original meaning of the Constitution. The original meaning is the meaning that would have been most likely embraced by a reasonable person at the time of the Framing. Because the Constitution is written in the language of the law, the original meaning is constituted by the text in its historical and legal context. Courts are obligated to use the interpretive methods at the time of enactment to find the better-supported meaning, even if an ambiguous text can yield more than one meaning. The results of an originalist reading of these Clauses would at times favor the President, but at other times disfavor him, but they would more generally promote accountability. They would also create more bright line rules and limit the discretion of the Supreme Court to make decisions according to opaque balancing tests that maximize its own power. Appointments Clause. The Appointments Clause must be read against the background of "the executive power" granted to the President. That authority included the traditional powers of an executive, not simply enumerated powers as those specified in Article I. Article II then qualifies that understanding by expressly giving some of the executive's traditional powers to Congress. In the Appointments Clause, the Senate is given the power to advise and consent to nominations. Because the Constitution does not change the executive's power to dismiss subordinate officers, the President retains that unqualified power, as it was part of the traditional executive authority. This view reflects the majority view of the First Congress after a deliberate debate when they did insulate the President's authority over the Secretary of State. See Saikrishnah Prakash, New Light on the Decision of 1789 , 91 Cornell L. Rev. 1012 (2006). Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Treaty and Appointments Clauses with Peter M. Shane, Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Read the full discussion here. The contrary decisions of the Court are both wrong and unclear. In Morrison v. Olson (1988), for instance, the Court did not offer a rule for determining when Congress could insulate the President's power, but made instead the question depend on such factors as the scope and authority of the office at issue. This aggrandized the Court's power and unsettled an established framework for government. Similarly, the Court is wrong to permit courts to appoint executive officials so long as there is no "'incongruity' between the functions normally performed by the courts and the performance of their duty to appoint." Morrison v. Olson (1988). It is true that the Appointments Clause allows "courts of law" to appoint "inferior officers." But just as the President's authority under the Appointments Clause must read against the background of Article II, so the courts' authority must be read against the background of Article III that defines their own powers. There the judicial power is defined as "extending to cases." The authority of courts of law in appointments matters is thus more naturally read as ancillary to their defined powers. Accordingly, courts of law can appoint the officers ancillary to their own work of deciding cases, like law clerks and bailiffs, but not executive officials. Once again, the Supreme Court has replaced a relatively clear line with a murky test that exalts the judiciary's own powers. Similarly, Morrison's balancing test for what is an inferior officer wrongly focused on the breadth of the officer's mandate, length of tenure, and limited independent policy making. The appropriate test for inferior officer flows directly from the term's obvious meaning: such an officer must be subordinate to a principal officer; one who has been confirmed by the Senate. It also provides a bright line rule. Happily, the Court may be moving to embrace this test. See Edmond v. United States (1997). The Court has also failed to follow the original meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause. (For an excellent discussion of the original meaning, see Michael B. Rappaport, The Original Meaning of the Recess Appointments Clause , 52 UCLA L. Rev. 1487 (2004)). First, the power of recess appointments extends only to vacancies that initially arose while the Senate was not in recess. This "arise interpretation" is much better supported than an interpretation that makes the Clause applicable to vacancies that exist whenever there is a recess. The phrase "happen during the recess" naturally implies an event that occurred during the recess, not a state of affairs. Indeed, not reading the Clause in this way deprives the word "happened" of any independent function. The "arise" interpretation was also the meaning of the Clause embraced even by the executive in the early Republic. Second, the term "recess" applies only to intrasession recesses. That conclusion flows from the use of the terms adjournment and recess, the former of which in the Constitution seems to be used to refer to intrasession and the latter of which to intersession recesses. In contrast, the Supreme Court's functional rule of ten days cannot be found or inferred anywhere from the text. Moreover, the Court's suggestion in NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014) that its judge-made rule may not even apply in extraordinary circumstances, once again arrogates power to itself. The Treaty Clause. Just as the President can fire executive officials pursuant to executive power that was not limited by the Appointments Clause, the President can terminate treaties according to their terms, because that traditional executive power was not limited by the Treaty Clause. However, he cannot terminate treaties in violation of their terms, because the Supremacy Clause makes treaties the supreme law of the land. The Supreme Court is correct that President and the Senate can make treaties beyond the enumerated powers. The Treaty Clause is an executive power in Article II, and does not come with the limitations of Article I. Moreover, as Alexander Hamilton noted, its abuse is carefully guarded by a substantial supermajority rulemdash;one that does not apply to legislation. While the Court's decisions upholding executive agreements are not incorrect, the practice of executive agreements needs to be more clearly circumscribed. The high hurdle posed by advice and consent under a supermajority rule was meant to prevent foreign entanglements. Thus, purely executive agreements should be permitted only when they are one-shot agreements, like prisoner exchanges or claim settlements, or when they are based solely on independent presidential authority, like the authority to recognize foreign nation states. See Michael B. Ramsey, The Constitution's Text in Foreign Affairs 191-217 (2007). For similar reasons, the notion that Congress and the President together can strike international deals so long as they make a congressional-executive agreement is wrong, and would deprive the Treaty Clause of much of its force. Perhaps the practice in some areas of congressional-executive agreements, like trade agreements, is so settled that it should not be reversed. But practice has never embraced the complete interchangeability of treaties and executive agreements, and such interchangeability cannot be squared with the Constitution's express requirements for making treaties. John O. McGinnis George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University School of Law Delphic Article II By Peter M. Shane Article II of the U.S. Constitution is plainly critical to establishing two fundamental institutional relationships: the President's relationship with Congress and the President's relationship to the remainder of the executive establishment, which we would now call "the bureaucracy." Despite the text's seeming specificity on some key points -- e.g., the President's role in the appointments process -- the Constitution's silences and the ambiguity of the text in other respects have fueled spirited arguments through the centuries for very different concepts of the American presidency. To paraphrase Justice Robert Jackson, Americans may "be surprised at the poverty of really useful and unambiguous authority applicable to concrete problems of executive power as they actually present themselves." Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). With regard to the legislative-executive relationship, the Washington Administration set institutional precedents that have been followed with such consistency over the centuries that they now dominate our understanding of Article II. To the uninitiated reader, the Treaty Clause might be thought to imply that treaties represent the sole permissible instrument for formalizing the nation's international obligations, or that the Senate, because of its "advice and consent" role, would be a full partner with presidents in the negotiation of treaties. Neither is the case. The Washington and Adams Administrations used executive agreements, without Senate consent, both in arranging for the international delivery of mail and in settling claims arising from the seizure of a U.S. ship by a Dutch privateer. Such agreements, sometimes pursued unilaterally and sometimes with statutory authority, now far outnumber treaties as instruments of international commitment. As for actual treaties, when the Senate failed to provide Washington prompt advice concerning the negotiation of peace between Georgia and the Creek Indians, he established the now-uniform practice of presenting to the Senate for its consent only treaties that have already been completed. The first Congress and the Washington Administration also began filling in some of the constitutional silences regarding their respective powers. Congress first asserted its unstated power to investigate the executive branch by establishing a special committee to look into the bloody defeat of the U.S. Army by a confederation of Indian tribes in the Northwest Territory. Washington, for his part, provided the committee with those executive branch documents it sought to inform its investigation, but only after determining with his cabinet that the disclosure decision was discretionary on his part and that presidents might constitutionally withhold information that ought, in the public interest, not be disclosed. He later implemented his view by withholding from the House of Representatives documents it sought in connection with negotiations over the Jay Treaty. This laid a foundation for future claims of executive privilege, a phrase nowhere found in Article II. Text, even aided by history, however, shines less light on constitutional requirements for the President's relationship to those other instrumentalities of government that Congress creates but which are not part of the federal judiciary -- that is, to the plethora of "departments," "agencies," "administrations," "boards," and "commissions" comprised within the executive branch. Recent decades have seen much ardent advocacy on behalf of the so- called "unitary executive" idea -- specifically, the view that Article II, by vesting law execution power in the President, forbids Congress from extending any such authority to individuals or entities not subject to presidential control. Adherents to this unitary executive reading of Article II insist that the Constitution guarantees the President plenary powers, which Congress may not limit, both to discharge unelected executive administrators at will and to direct how those officials shall exercise any and all discretionary authority that they possess under law. To take but one quotidian example, a Justice Department opinion from the Reagan Administration argued that a statute requiring the Director of the Centers for Disease Control to arrange for the mass mailing of AIDS information fliers, free from any executive branch supervision, violated separation of powers by "unconstitutionally infringing upon the President's authority to supervise the executive branch." Statute Limiting the President's Auth. to Supervise the Dir. of the Centers for Disease Control in the Distribution of an AIDS Pamphlet, 12 U.S. Op. Off. Legal Counsel 47 (1988). Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Treaty and Appointments Clauses with John O. McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University School of Law. Read the full discussion here. With regard to most of what the executive branch does -- namely, implementing domestic statutes with no close connection to foreign affairs or military command -- this interpretation is not persuasive. The clauses that supposedly ground unitary executive theory are the Executive Power Vesting Clause, the Faithful Execution (or "Take Care") Clause, and the Written Opinions Clause. Independently or all together, these clauses are thought to create two constitutional imperatives. The first is that the President is entitled to execute the laws personally and may take upon himself or herself the prerogative of making any administrative decision that Congress has assigned to any officer within the executive branch. The second is that the President is entitled to remove at will any officer of the United States who serves in the executive branch. The first problem with this interpretation is that the relevant clauses viewed either independently or together did not originally have the semantic implications that unitary executive theorists imagine. These kinds of clauses were prevalent in early state constitutions that also established relationships between governors, as chief executives of the states, and state agencies. Rather than giving governors unitary executive control over state administration, they nearly all split supervision of the bureaucracy among the different branches of government -- the governor, the legislature, and, in some states, the courts. Originalist defenders of a unitary executive reading of the federal Constitution often dismiss the interpretive significance of pre-1787 state constitutions on the ground that these early texts paid only lip service to separation of powers principles, while presenting the Framers chiefly with examples of government structure to avoid. The problem with this stance is that state constitutions written in the first decades after 1789 persisted in using the same clauses, by that time found also in Article II, to describe state governments in which governors continued to lack unitary control. Close study of the state constitutions and state administrative practice under them thus belie any "unitary executive" reading of Article II that purports to be based on contemporary understandings of the text alone. Nor is the argument borne out by a history of institutional practice. The First Congress's handiwork regarding the structure of the initial administrative departments is inconsistent with the idea that the Framers intended a unitary executive. Congress accommodated presidential control at different levels, from seemingly complete, as with the Department of State, to essentially non-existent, as with the boards and commissions authorized to oversee the Mint, to buy back debt of the United States, and to rule on patent applications. Unitary executive advocates may point to a variety of presidential statements over the years asserting the existence of a comprehensive presidential supervisory authority. But again to quote Justice Jackson, who wrote in 1952 about constitutional debates on the scope of presidential power: "A century and a half of partisan debate and scholarly speculation yields no net result but only supplies more or less apt quotations from respected sources on each side of any question." Youngstown Sheet Tube v. Sawyer (1952). Unitarian arguments based on presidential statements simply cannot overcome Congress's conspicuous eclecticism from its first session forward in fashioning different administrative structures with different lines of accountability to different sources of supervision. Finally, the argument for the unitary presidency makes the mistake of anachronism. The managerial presidency extolled in the late eighteenth century was just not conceptualized in the policy terms now understood by modern presidentialists. Even if the original presidential office had been intended to be unitary in some administrative sense, the President's originally designed managerial powers cannot logically add up to the contemporary version of unitary power urged upon us by twenty-first century presidentialists, who interpret the Constitution as putting the President personally in charge of the exercise of any or all policy making discretion that Congress may delegate to anyone within the executive branch. A better view is fully reconcilable with the text and truer to both relevant Supreme Court opinions and our institutional history. It holds that outside those particular subjects that are independently within the President's inherent powers, such as issuing pardons or making treaties, the degree of policy control the President may exercise over subordinate officers is up to Congress. Congress is limited, in turn, only by the Constitution's constraints on the scope of national legislative authority and the President's entitlement to dismiss officers of the United States who are breaking the law or negligent in the execution of their duties. For this reason, there is an intimate connection between the President's relationship with Congress and the President's relationship to the remainder of the executive establishment. Specifically, the latter is significantly determined by the former. The Constitution gives Congress the political discretion to defer substantially to the pleas of the executive for highly centralized control over administrative agencies, but only if Congress chooses to do so. The bare framework of Article II leaves presidents with the task of persuading Congress that authorizing such control over any particular agency is in the public interest -- a judgment of policy, not constitutional interpretation. Peter M. Shane Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law The Vesting Clause By Saikrishna B. Prakash and Christopher H. Schroeder Article II, Section 1 begins: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” At a minimum, this Vesting Clause establishes an executive office to be occupied by an individual. At the Founding, the creation of a separate executive was hardly obvious. The Articles of Confederation created no separate executive; duties that we associate with the executive were handled first by congressional committees and then by “Secretaries” or “Boards” under congressional direction. Nor was it self-evident that one individual would stand at the apex of the executive. Several states had plural executives (executive committees) and the notion of a plural executive had its backers at the Philadelphia Convention. Few could disagree that the Vesting Clause establishes a unitary executive in the sense that it creates a single executive President. Throughout our Constitution’s history, some politicians, judges, and scholars have argued that this minimal sense exhausts the content of the Clause. Others have argued that the Clause does more and actually grants the President “the executive power.” In recent years, advocates of this latter view have identified their position with the label “Unitary Executive.” But this label is a bit misleading, for we would do well to remember that the idea that the Constitution establishes a unitary executive is perhaps universally shared, at least in the minimalist sense outlined above. In this disagreement, two issues predominate. First, does the term “executive power” identify a set of powers beyond those expressly identified in the Constitution, but which are nonetheless given to the President by virtue of the Vesting Clause? Vesting Clause minimalists often claim there was no settled meaning to the term at the time of the Founding and that “the executive power of the United States” refers only to those powers elsewhere assigned to the President. The Unitary Executive position is that at the Founding “executive power” referred to a suite of powers, such as the powers to execute the law, appoint officers, communicate with foreign governments, formulate foreign policy, wage war, and the like. The Vesting Clause grants this entire suite to the President, subject to express limitations in the Constitution. The President may not appoint without securing the Senate’s consent, for instance, and Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 provides that the Congress shall declare war, with the implication that the President cannot. Second, by “vesting” powers in a singular executive, does the Vesting Clause establish that the President may exercise those powers by himself, without interference by Congress, and, concomitantly, does it give the President the authority to direct and supervise any federal official involved in such matters? Advocates of the Unitary Executive position often assert that the President can exercise his constitutional powers without congressional interference and that he may direct executive officers. For their part, Vesting Clause minimalists tend to claim that Congress, through the exercise of its legislative powers including the Necessary and Proper Clause, can qualify or regulate the President’s exercise of powers that have not been clearly assigned to his sole discretion so long as Congress does not impede the President’s ability to discharge his constitutional duties. Notice that neither the two Unitary Executive positions nor the two minimalist positions are necessarily linked to one another. One could conclude that the Vesting Clause minimalists have the better case on the first question while the Unitary Executives have the better view on the second, for example. Yet in practice, people often adopt one pair of related views or the other set. These questions matter. In their purest forms the two understandings of the Vesting Clause—the minimalist and the Unitary Executive—imagine quite different allocations of power and institutional arrangements. If the Unitary Executive stance were to prevail, perhaps all of the independent agencies of the federal government, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Federal Reserve, would be unconstitutional because of congressional restrictions placed on the President’s authority to remove members of their commissions or boards. After all, these restrictions would be seen as unduly inhibiting the President’s ability to supervise and control. But if minimalists have the better reading of the Vesting Clause, what prevents Congress from granting removal protections to the entire bureaucracy, including such officials as the Secretary of State or the Attorney General? So long as it leaves the President the ability to ensure faithful execution of the laws, Congress might be able to radically refashion his relationship to departments long thought of as executive and under his supervision. Judicial doctrine on these questions is mixed. The Court has, from time to time, endorsed the idea that the Vesting Clause vests powers independent of the rest of Article II. In a case involving presidential dismissal of a postmaster, Myers v. United States (1926), the Court claimed that the Vesting Clause granted authority to execute the law and to remove executive officials. In a decision from the late nineteenth century, In re Neagle (1890), the Court upheld the authority of the President to assign a federal marshal to protect a Supreme Court justice who had been threatened by a disgruntled litigant, despite the absence of any statute granting that authority. In United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp . (1936), the Court famously announced that the President was the “sole organ of the nation in its external relations.” In the twenty-first century, the Court observed in American Insurance Ass’n v. Garamendi (2003) that the “historical gloss” on the executive power conferred upon the President the vast share of foreign affairs powers. Yet in a series of removal cases, the Court has also approved congressional authority to insulate public officials from executive control. In a case involving the Federal Trade Commission, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Court held that Congress could limit the President’s ability to remove a commissioner. Similarly, in Morrison v. Olson (1988) the Court sustained a law that said the executive could remove independent prosecutors for just cause only. The law gave the President sufficient authority to ensure faithful execution, or so the Court held. And, it should be noted, the Court sometimes avoids resolving questions about the meaning of the Vesting Clause, choosing to rest its decisions on other grounds. Arguments about the Vesting Clause surface whenever the government takes actions that might not fit squarely within existing understandings of how the Constitution separates powers. Can the President unilaterally terminate a treaty? Can the President resolve international disputes through agreements negotiated by him and then submitted to Congress for implementing legislation as needed, thus operating outside the Treaty Clause? It is much more likely that the branches will reach provisional understandings on many of the disputed questions through the normal processes of politics than that the Supreme Court will cleanly and, once and for all, declare one or the other view correct. In part this is because similar results in many cases can be reached through statutory construction or reliance on other constitutional provisions, without reaching difficult Vesting Clause issues. In part it is because separation of powers questions often rely heavily on historical practices for their resolution. Saikrishna B. Prakash James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law Christopher H. Schroeder Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, Co-Director of the Program in Public Law, Duke Law School Matters of Debate The Significance of “Executive Power” By Saikrishna B. Prakash The Significance of “Executive Power” By Saikrishna B. Prakash Article II’s modest list of specific powers might lead one to suppose that the President was meant to have but few authorities. He can pardon people, is Commander in Chief, and, with the Senate’s consent, can appoint to office. Though he has an express duty to ensure faithful execution, one could read the Constitution as never granting him any authority to execute the law in the first instance. Moreover, he seems to have but a slender connection to foreign affairs, with a duty to receive ambassadors and a power, subject to a substantial Senate check, of making treaties. The familiar, powerful Presidency of today may seem surprisingly unconnected to the Constitution’s actual text. Yet from the Constitution’s inception, the Presidency has been a powerful institution. Early Presidents, from Washington on, assumed a host of powers—over law execution, foreign policy, and executive officers. In particular, Washington and his successors controlled correspondence with foreign countries, directed American ambassadors, ousted foreign ambassadors, executed federal laws, directed prosecutors, and regularly commanded and removed executive officers. No statute authorized these actions. Rather their common foundation arose from the Constitution, which granted the President “the executive Power of the United States.” Presidents continue to exercise such powers, all without statutory warrant. Grants of “executive power” were familiar, primarily because most extant state constitutions expressly granted such authority in contexts where it was clear that the provisions granted a suite of powers. The Constitution replicated that system. As Alexander Hamilton put it, the Constitution’s “general doctrine” is that the “Executive Power of the Nation is vested in the President; subject only to the exceptions and qualifications which are expressed in the” Constitution. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Vesting Clause with Christopher H. Schroeder, Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, Co-Director of the Program in Public Law, Duke Law School. Read the full discussion here. If that is the “doctrine” of the Constitution, what are we to make of the particularized grants? Hamilton again had the answer: “The enumeration [of particular authorities] ought rather therefore to be considered as intended by way of greater caution, to specify and regulate the principal articles implied in the definition of Executive Power; leaving the rest to flow from the general grant of that power, interpreted in conformity to other parts of the constitution and to the principles of free government.” This structure—a general grant, followed by clarification and limitation—was hardly unusual. As James Madison put, “[n]othing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.” Article II followed that natural structure. Two vital constraints hem in the Vesting Clause’s rule that the President enjoys those powers traditionally vested with chief executives. First, the Vesting Clause never grants to the President the powers granted elsewhere to Congress. Hence our President cannot regulate foreign commerce or declare war. Stripping away these traditional executive powers helps ensure that the Presidency is not too formidable. Second, specific constitutional checks restrain executive authority. Despite the grant of executive power, the President cannot appoint or make treaties without the Senate’s advice and consent. Nor can he pardon impeachment convictions or violations of state law. Executive power minimalists make some respectable arguments. Yet none of them can overcome text, history, and longstanding practice. First, their claims disregard the eighteenth-century meaning of executive power. “Executive Power” was not an empty phrase. Rather it encompassed control of law execution, foreign affairs, and executive officers. Second, rules of interpretation oblige us to heed the differences across the first three Articles. Article I, Section 1 (“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress . . . .”) evidently means to vest no powers separate from those specifically enumerated in Article I. In contrast, Article III, Section 1 (“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may . . . establish”) clearly vests the federal courts with “judicial” authority. The Executive Vesting Clause has the structure of its Article III counterpart, in contrast to the Article I Clause. Third, although minimalists sometimes say they wish to avoid redundancies, their theory generates that very problem. The rest of Article II makes abundantly clear that there would be only one executive, styled the “President” (Article II repeatedly mention a “President” and use the pronoun “he”). Hence minimalists would have us read the Vesting Clause as if it served no purpose. From time to time, the Supreme Court has embraced the idea that the Vesting Clause grants powers beyond those specifically enumerated in Article II. In Myers v. United States (1926), the Court cited the Clause as the source of removal and supervisory powers over executive officers. Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982) unambiguously cited the Clause as a source of three powers—law enforcement, foreign affairs, and a supervisory power over the executive branch. In a 2003 case touching upon foreign affairs, American Insurance Ass’n v. Garamendi , the judiciary affirmed that the Vesting Clause grants foreign-affairs authority. In a rather recent case, Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board (2010), the Supreme Court repeatedly declared that certain removal protections for commissioners were inconsistent with the grant of executive power, thereby grounding the President’s removal power in the Vesting Clause. Though the Court has read the Clause as granting power, its decisions also have limited its reach. Post-Myers, the Supreme Court essentially sanctioned the creation of a fourth branch of government in the form of numerous independent agencies that simultaneously exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers. The most notable such case, Morrison v. Olson (1988), acknowledged that the Vesting Clause granted the President control over prosecutions. Yet the Court concluded that the good-cause removal restriction imposed by statute (the executive could not remove at his discretion) did not “unduly trammel on executive authority.” That framework encapsulates the Supreme Court’s case law on the Vesting Clause: while the Clause grants the President substantive powers not found elsewhere in the Constitution, Congress may regulate, to some uncertain extent, the exercise of those powers. Saikrishna B. Prakash James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law The Most Compelling Reading of the Vesting Clause By Christopher H. Schroeder The Most Compelling Reading of the Vesting Clause By Christopher H. Schroeder The opening sentence of Article II states that “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” The most natural reading of this Vesting Clause is that it establishes a unitary presidency with the power to execute the laws of the United States. Some would read it more narrowly, simply as a signifier that the office of the Presidency will be held by a single person. There is less difference between these two options than meets the eye. The narrow reading does not alter the overall allocation of presidential authority, because the presidential duty in Article II, Section III, to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” should be taken to imply the power to accomplish what is necessary to discharge that duty. What I have called the most natural reading of the constitutional text comports with the widespread Founding-era understanding that the executive officer or officers of government had responsibility for executing the laws. On the other hand, reading the Clause more expansively to encompass unstated or residual powers—perhaps powers that are insulated from any ability of Congress to regulate via duly enacted laws—would substantially alter the Constitution’s allocation of powers. It would also be inconsistent with the historical and political context of the Founding. Such a reading would give to the President powers akin to the “prerogatives” of British kings of which the Founders were highly suspicious. To be sure, the experience of the United States under the Articles of Confederation and the individual state constitutions between 1776 and 1787 led to significant dissatisfaction with government dominated by the legislature, and to considerable interest in a federal government with a stronger executive. But “stronger” did not translate to “monarchical.” The antipathy toward monarchy and monarchical prerogatives remained, and in 1787 the political climate likewise remained inhospitable to the idea of an Executive holding substantial unstated, unenumerated, or residual rights. This antipathy was most strongly expressed against potentially oppressive authorities over which the President claimed unilateral sway, the common understanding of prerogative. Justice Jackson’s view from Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) that the President’s powers are at their lowest ebb when they are asserted to be exclusive of legislative regulation comports more nearly with the Founding era mood. The Constitution’s defenders asserted that it established a government of enumerated powers, as well as one that set ambition against ambition. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Vesting Clause with Saikrishna B. Prakash, James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law. Read the full discussion here. What I have called the natural reading of the text is supported by the ratification convention debates. One of the recurring criticisms of the Constitution argued that it assigned powers to the President that would produce a return to monarchy. Opponents seeking to articulate these concerns pointed to a number of features of the Constitution’s provisions to support the claim of monarchical powers, but they never drew attention to the unstated or residual powers supposedly encompassed by the phrase “executive power.” Likewise, the Constitution’s defenders did not feel compelled to demonstrate that any such residual powers were reasonable, even though they did respond to their critics by taking each of the stated powers of the President one-by-one to show each was reasonable and would not produce a bad result. Particularly prominent was Hamilton’s discussion of presidential powers in The Federalist No. 67 and No. 69 , in which he reviewed each of the President’s enumerated powers, never mentioning the residual powers supposedly contained within the term “executive power.” Thus neither opponents nor proponents of the Constitution asserted that “executive power” had any larger meaning than that conveyed by the natural reading of the Vesting Clause. In 1793, after the Constitution was ratified, Hamilton, writing as Pacificus, asserted that the Vesting Clause did have a broader meaning when he defended President Washington’s neutrality declaration. Various public officials, including the opinion for the Supreme Court in Myers v. United States (1926), have subsequently also given voice to it. The Pacificus essay, however, leaned more heavily on other arguments based on specific and stated presidential powers, which were more than sufficient to carry the defense. As for Myers, much of the opinion can be read consistently with the Vesting Clause’s natural reading, because at least some ability to control and remove some executive branch officials is fairly implied as necessary to discharge the President’s take care responsibilities as well as the President’s law execution authority. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether that presidential power needs to be unfettered with respect to all executive branch officials. Myers’ apparent holding that it did was the controversial dimension of the decision, and the Supreme Court rather quickly walked this part back, first in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) and later in Morrison v. Olson (1988), which held that an independent counsel could be protected from removal through a good cause requirement, because that protection did not impermissibly burden the President’s ability to control or supervise the independent counsel. Both President Richard Nixon and President George W. Bush in his first term provided glimpses into the implications of a very strong reading of the Vesting Clause. President Nixon and his representatives claimed an array of exclusive and preclusive powers. In President Nixon’s case, these included the authority not to spend congressionally allocated funds, the right to decide what presidential communications would be made public, the right to prevent any executive official from disclosing information to Congress, and the right to render legal acts of subordinates that would be illegal absent presidential direction. President Bush’s lawyers argued for similarly broad authorities to ignore acts of Congress regulating presidential actions, relying after 9/11 on the President’s duties as Commander in Chief as well as on the allegedly expansive content of the Vesting Clause. These presidencies show that giving the Vesting Clause a reading more broad than its natural meaning, and especially finding there what Justice Jackson in Youngstown termed “conclusive and preclusive” powers, would place an enormous repository of authority outside of the system of checks and balances that animates our Constitution. As Jackson noted, because such claims put “at stake . . . the equilibrium established by our constitutional system,” they must be “scrutinized with caution.” Neither Nixon’s nor Bush’s aggressive assertions of such authorities were vindicated by the Supreme Court. By and large, the decisions of the Supreme Court have adhered to the Jackson approach, declining to read more into the Vesting Clause than the text’s natural reading, the Constitution’s overall structure, and the Clause’s historical and political context justify. Christopher H. Schroeder Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, Co-Director of the Program in Public Law, Duke Law School Article II, Section 3 By William P. Marshall and Saikrishna B. Prakash Article II, Section 3 both grants and constrains presidential power. This Section invests the President with the discretion to convene Congress on “extraordinary occasions,” a power that has been used to call the chambers to consider nominations, war, and emergency legislation. It further grants the President the authority to adjourn Congress whenever the chambers cannot agree when to adjourn, a power that no President has ever exercised. Section 3 imposes obligations on the President that are varied and significant. The President must provide information on the “state of the union” from “time to time.” This seems to require the President to share information with Congress. The President shall “recommend” measures to Congress, a soft duty that necessarily cedes discretion. The President “shall receive” all foreign ambassadors, a duty that many suppose grants Presidents authority over whether to recognize foreign nations and their governments. The President “shall Commission all the officers of the United States,” a Clause that forces the President to authenticate the status of federal officials. Finally, and most significantly, Section 3 contains the Faithful Execution Clause, commonly known as the Take Care Clause. The Take Care Clause is arguably a major source of presidential power because it seemingly invests the office with broad enforcement authority. Yet, at the same time, the provision also serves as a major limitation on that power because it underscores that the executive is under a duty to faithfully execute the laws of Congress and not disregard them. The Take Care Clause has played a central role in momentous constitutional disputes. Legislators have discussed it in many debates regarding the scope of presidential power, including whether the President has a constitutional power to remove federal officers. Two Presidents, Andrew Johnson and William Clinton, were impeached by the House, at least in part, for allegedly violating their Take Care Clause duties. Famous Supreme Court cases, like Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952) and Myers v. United States (1926), relied upon particular claims about the Clause. More recently the Clause played a central role in the debates and litigation surrounding President Barack Obama’s enforcement of federal immigration laws. The Clause traces back to the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution and the 1777 New York Constitution. Both granted their executives “executive power” and also required them to execute the laws faithfully. Early constitutional discussions shed some light on its meaning. Though the Clause is found amidst a sea of duties in Article II, Section 3, some, including Alexander Hamilton, spoke of the “power” of “faithfully executing the laws.” While President, George Washington observed, “it is my duty to see the Laws executed: to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to” that duty. At a minimum, the Clause means that the President may neither breach federal law nor order his or her subordinates to do so, for defiance cannot be considered faithful execution. The Constitution also incorporates the English bars on dispensing or suspending the law, with some supposing that the Clause itself prohibits both. Hence the Constitution itself never grants the President authority to either authorize private violations of the law (issue individualized dispensations) or nullify laws (suspend their operation). Beyond these constraints, the Clause raises a number of vexing questions. For instance, must the President enforce even those laws he or she believes to be unconstitutional? Some scholars argue that Presidents must enforce all congressional laws, without regard to his or her own constitutional opinions. Yet modern Presidents occasionally exercise a power to ignore such enactments on the grounds they are not true “laws” subject to the faithful execution duty. In so doing, they somewhat mimic the arguments and practice of President Thomas Jefferson, who refused to enforce the Sedition Act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. There is also the related question of whether the President must honor statutes that purport to limit his or her authority over law execution. Can Congress decree by statute that the President must allow others to implement certain statutes without regard to presidential supervision or oversight? Again, some suppose that the Congress can insulate execution from presidential control while others insist that the Congress cannot strip away the President’s duty. Finally, the sweep of contemporary federal law ensures that federal law enforcers have tremendous enforcement discretion. In particular, resource constraints coupled with numerous violations often preclude a policy of total enforcement. Given the inevitable tradeoffs, modern Presidents weigh the costs and benefits of investigation, apprehension, and prosecution, and sometimes create rules for allocating scarce resources across the range of possible investigations and prosecutions. In this context, judging what counts as faithful execution is laden with value judgments about the relative merits of certain enforcement priorities over others. Moreover, contentious disputes about the scope of discretion invariably revolve around claims that the President has violated his or her duty of faithful execution by failing to adopt a particular enforcement policy or strategy. William P. Marshall William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, UNC School of Law Saikrishna B. Prakash James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law Matters of Debate Article II, Section 3 and the Limits of Presidential Power By William P. Marshall Article II, Section 3 and the Limits of Presidential Power By William P. Marshall At the time of the Framing it was assumed that the most powerful branch of government was the legislature. That is one of the reasons why Congress was made bicameral while the executive was unitary—so that legislative power and executive power could be effectively balanced. Today, however, any notion that Congress is twice as powerful as the Presidency would be dismissed as fanciful. The Presidency is the most powerful branch. Article II, Section 3 has not played a major role in presidential power expansion (although as discussed below, it should be interpreted in light of that expansion). Rather the scope of presidential power has been determined more by how executive power has actually been exercised than by constitutional text. As Justice Jackson observed over 50 years ago in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952), “[t]he Constitution does not disclose the measure of actual controls wielded by the modern presidential office. . . Vast accretions of federal power . . . have magnified the scope of presidential activity [so that] the centers of real power . . . do not show on the face of the Constitution.” There are a number of reasons why the President has become so dominant. First, the Presidency has become the focus of national power and culture, giving the President the unique ability to set the political agenda. In Justice Jackson’s words: “[e]xecutive power has the advantage of concentration in a single head in whose choice a whole nation has a part, making him the focus of public hopes and expectations. In drama, magnitude and finality his decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public eye and ear.” Second, presidential power has expanded because each successive President is able to rely on the actions of their predecessors in justifying their own use of power. In this way, the use of presidential power works as a one-way ratchet with each President building on the actions of those that came before. Third, presidential power has grown because the size and jurisdiction of the federal government have expanded. The President directs an administrative state that oversees everything from prescription drugs to smoke stack emissions to college sports and from economic development to workplace safety to national parks management. As a result, the President has the ability to make decisions that reach almost every aspect of American life. Further, as head of the federal government, presidents have unparalleled resources to use in advancing their political agenda. This includes access to military and civilian intelligence, the expertise and assistance of countless federal agencies, and the command of the most powerful military in the world. No other branch has such resources at its disposal. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about Article II, Section 3 with Saikrishna B. Prakash, James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law. Read the full discussion here. Fourth, presidential power has expanded because of the need for exigent decisionmaking in the modern world. The suddenness with which contemporary events demand government response inevitably invests power in the only branch capable of reacting immediately—the Executive. Fifth, presidential power has increased because of the changed nature of politics. In the current political environment, those elected to Congress often see their political duty as supporting their party rather than protecting their institutional concerns as legislators. For that reason, many are unwilling or unable to check the President’s power when their party is in the majority. Further, and paradoxically, contemporary politics has served to increase presidential power even when the Presidency and the Congress are controlled by different parties. In those circumstances, Congress has at times so rigidly opposed a President’s agenda that Presidents have been able to claim that their use of unilateral executive power is necessary to overcome Congress’s “obstructionism.” It is against this recognition of presidential power dominance that specific issues raised by Section 3—and particularly the Take Care Clause—should be analyzed. Given that the Constitution was designed to allow branches to check other branches, one should be cautious in interpreting particular provisions in a manner that would add to the current imbalance. Some have argued, for example, that the Take Care Clause should be interpreted to prevent the creation of independent agencies because protecting the officers in those agencies from removal at will by the President interferes with the latter’s ability to execute the law as they see fit. But given the scope and breadth of the administrative state, there are often strong reasons for insulating particular agencies from political control in order to foster independent, nonpartisan decisionmaking. Concerns with centering too much power in the Presidency also arise in relation to whether Presidents must comply with and defend laws that they believe are unconstitutional. Some contend that the Take Care provision grants Presidents wide discretion to disregard laws that they believe are unconstitutional even when there are substantial arguments to the contrary. Others suggest that Presidents may only refuse to comply with or defend laws when there is absolutely no credible constitutional defense of those provisions. Given that reasoned constitutional interpretation varies so widely, the latter may be the better route. Otherwise, Presidents may be able to end-run the actions of Congress too easily. Similar concerns arise with a President’s refusal to enforce laws on policy grounds. Presidents have, and should have, wide-ranging discretion on how to enforce particular laws. As Professor Prakash points out in his essay, enforcing every federal law against every offender would be impossible. Further, there seems to be little doubt that Presidents may take policy considerations into account when setting enforcement priorities. But when Presidents use their enforcement power to essentially invalidate or re-write statutes with which they do not agree, serious questions arise as to whether they are meeting their “take care” obligations. The problem, of course, is determining when a President’s actions are legitimate uses of enforcement discretion and when they are, in effect, illegitimate usurpations of legislative authority. To this point, the courts have not yet come up with an answer to this question. But at some point, they will be forced to. William P. Marshall William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, UNC School of Law Presidential Duties By Saikrishna B. Prakash Presidential Duties By Saikrishna B. Prakash Most of Article II, Section 3 has been inconsequential. Yet there are notable changes in practice that bear on that section. Despite the State of the Union Clause, the executive is increasingly unwilling to share information with Congress. Citing “executive privilege” (the right to keep secrets from the courts and Congress, endorsed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974)), the executive often withholds information from Congress. Another revolution concerns the extent of the President’s leadership in legislation. When Presidents “recommend . . . measures,” they now do so as the de facto head of their party and with the predictable support of a good portion of the two chambers. As a result, Presidents are often the primary driver of legislation and legislative agendas, particularly in the first months of their first term (the period of “100 days”). The Take Care Clause has the most modern resonance. By virtue of his “executive Power,” the President may execute federal laws and control executive officers who execute those laws. The Take Care Clause modifies that grant, requiring the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” At the Founding, the President’s power over law execution was praised as ensuring prompt and vigorous implementation of laws, something lacking under the Articles of Confederation. As one opponent of the Constitution noted, law execution was best entrusted “to the direction and care of one man.” A single executive seemed “peculiarly well circumstanced to superintend the execution of laws with discernment and decision, with promptitude and uniformity.” The chief executive would ensure wise, prompt, and uniform law execution by “direct[ing]” subordinate executives. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about Article II, Section 3 with William P. Marshall, William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, UNC School of Law. Read the full discussion here. The Take Care Clause is the focus of several ongoing disputes. First, consider restrictions on the removal of officers. In a series of unfortunate cases, the Supreme Court has sanctioned the creation of independent agencies, which operate as a fourth branch of government. These agencies execute various federal laws (communications, banking, securities) by investigating and prosecuting alleged violations. Congress has protected these agencies from executive influence by imposing “for cause” restrictions on the removal of their top officers. It is hard to escape the conclusion that such statutes are unconstitutional. They violate the grant of executive power and interfere with the Take Care Clause duty. In creating mini-fiefdoms, Congress has essentially stripped away the President’s executive power and granted it to these agencies. Moreover, Congress has erected statutory obstacles making it rather difficult for the President to judge whether the law is being faithfully executed. Second, there are continuing disagreements about whether the President must abide by, defend, and enforce laws that he regards as unconstitutional. Presidents sometimes declare that because they believe parts of a law to be unconstitutional, they will ignore those provisions. Some scholars have argued that the Take Care Clause prohibits the President from refusing to honor, defend, and enforce federal laws. Once a bill becomes law, the President must enforce it. A contrary (and better) view supposes that unconstitutional laws are void from the beginning and thus not subject to the Clause. Though the Supreme Court has never held that the President may decline to enforce unconstitutional statutes, numerous Justices have hinted at such authority. Moreover, the practice goes back to Thomas Jefferson, when he refused to continue prosecuting individuals for violations of a statute he believed to be unconstitutional. Jefferson said that the alleged statute (the infamous Sedition Act) was no law at all and hence not subject to the Take Care Clause. Lastly, there are recurring clashes about when and whether the President may decline to enforce statutes based on policy reasons. The Constitution never conveys any power to decline to enforce (to suspend) a statute. That much is clear. Yet despite this constraint, Presidents will almost necessarily enjoy a great deal of enforcement discretion. To begin with, using his constitutional power to pardon, the President can forgive offenses even before trial or conviction, meaning that executive officers need not investigate and prosecute every offender of federal law. Moreover, resource constraints coupled with innumerable violations of federal law preclude complete enforcement of all federal laws. There are too many laws, too many scofflaws, and but limited resources. Given the inevitable tradeoffs, Presidents may allocate scarce enforcement resources after weighing the costs and benefits of investigation, apprehension, and prosecution. Recognizing that it would be highly impolitic to assert a constitutional power to decline to enforce statutes, modern Presidents carefully avoid embracing such a power. Instead, they invariably argue that the laws implicitly or explicitly convey enforcement discretion. Critics of these presidential measures deny that the statutes in question grant discretion and argue that in declining to enforce a law the President has violated his Faithful Execution duties. Discerning the truth of the matter requires a careful consideration of the relevant statutes, including enforcement resources. Sometimes there are no easy answers. Saikrishna B. Prakash James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law Article II, Section 4 By Neil Kinkopf and Keith E. Whittington Article II, Section 4 By Neil J. Kinkopf and Keith E. Whittington The final section of Article II, which generally describes the executive branch, specifies that the “President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States” shall be removed from office if convicted in an impeachment trial of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Two clauses in Article I lay out the role of the House of Representatives and the Senate in impeachments and in trials of impeachment. In practice, impeachments by the House have been rare, and convictions after a trial by the Senate even less common. Two Presidents, one Senator, one cabinet officer, and fifteen judges have been impeached, and of those only eight judges have been convicted and removed from office. This sparse history has given Congress relatively few opportunities to flesh out the bare bones of the constitutional text. The Impeachment Clause was included in the Constitution in order to create another check against abuses by government officials and to give Congress the ability to remove from power an unfit officer who might otherwise be doing damage to the public good. Unsurprisingly, most “civil officers of the United States” who have found themselves damaged by scandal have preferred to resign rather than endure an impeachment. The House and Senate have refused to act on impeachment charges against individuals who were not then holding a federal office. The Senate early on decided that members of Congress should be expelled by their individual chambers rather than be subjected to an impeachment trial. Presidents have acted quickly to remove problematic members of the executive branch. As a practical matter, judges and Presidents have been the primary targets of impeachment inquiries. Much of the controversy surrounding the Impeachment Clause has revolved around the meaning of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” a phrase that is unique to the impeachment context. The Clause seems to rule out the possibility of Congress impeaching and removing officials simply for incompetence or general unfitness for office. Impeachments are not a remedy for government officials who are simply bad at their jobs. It is a remedy for abuses of public office. But the line between general unfitness and abuse of office can be blurry. The first Senate conviction in an impeachment trial was of a federal judge, John Pickering, who was charged with issuing rulings that were “contrary to his trust and duty as a judge” and “in violation of the laws of the United States,” as well as appearing on the bench “in a state of total intoxication” in a manner “disgraceful to his own character as a judge and degrading to the honor of the United States.” The judge’s son filed a petition with the Senate explaining the “real situation,” that his father “has been, and now is, insane.” The judge no longer had the mental capacity to commit high crimes. While the Senate preferred not to delve into that question in detail, it was uncomfortable voting on a resolution stating that the judge was “guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.” The senators simply concluded that he was “guilty as charged,” and voted to remove him from office. The Senate was not anxious to say that Pickering had committed a crime, but neither was it willing to leave him on the bench. While the Pickering case was idiosyncratic and awkward, it raised issues that remain unresolved about the scope of the impeachment power. Can a government official be impeached and convicted for innocent mistakes, or must they have bad intentions? Is it sufficient to justify an impeachment and conviction if a government official commits acts that are “disgraceful,” contrary to the “trust and duty” of their office, or “degrading to the honor of the United States,” or can impeachment only be justified when an official has committed criminal acts? Do “high crimes” include only criminal offenses for which one could be prosecuted in a court of law, or can they include other forms of misconduct? Are some violations of the law too trivial to be considered “high crimes” that would justify an impeachment? Can private misdeeds justify an impeachment, or must the actions in question be connected to the conduct of the office that an individual holds? While still serving as a member of the House of Representatives, Gerald Ford once said that impeachable offenses are whatever a majority of the House considered them to be. The burden is on those who want to bring impeachment charges to persuade a majority of the members of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the members of the Senate that an act is so serious as to justify removing an individual from office. The impeachment power is a tool that most members of Congress are unwilling to use if it can be avoided, but they have also wanted to preserve it as a tool that is flexible enough to be used in any exceptional circumstances that might arise. Neil J. Kinkopf Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law Keith E. Whittington William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University Matters of Debate Neil J. Kinkopf Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law The Scope of the Impeachment Power: What are “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”? By Neil J. Kinkopf What sort of conduct is so harmful that Congress is justified in impeaching and removing an officer who commits it? The Scope of the Impeachment Power: What are “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”? By Neil J. Kinkopf The Scope of the Impeachment Power: What are “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”? By Neil J. Kinkopf What sort of conduct is so harmful that Congress is justified in impeaching and removing an officer who commits it? The Constitution’s answer is “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Treason and bribery are clear enough, but the concluding phrase “other high crimes and misdemeanors” is anything but clear. It is open-ended for the reason many constitutional provisions are vague and open-ended. In the words of the great Chief Justice John Marshall, the “constitution [is] intended to endure for ages to come and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.” In the context of impeachment, this means that the Constitution cannot be expected to specify in detail every ground on which impeachment is or is not permissible. If it attempted to do so, an individual who should be impeached might evade this punishment because the officer’s conduct does not meet some technical element of the definition even though the officer’s conduct had so harmed the nation that all agree the officer should be removed. Instead, the Constitution sets forth the general principle of impeachment and leaves its more specific definition to be developed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. In this light, then-Representative Gerald Ford’s claim that the House could impeach an officer on any ground it wishes may seem plausible. But the Ford position goes too far. It ignores the Constitution’s text and structure. If the Constitution means to allow impeachment on any ground whatsoever, then why would the Constitution bother to set forth that impeachment and removal may be based only on conduct that rises to the level of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”? In fact, the Framers debated this phrase and settled on this formulation precisely to prohibit Congress from impeaching officers for any reason at all. The Framers were determined to limit the grounds on which an officer could be impeached in order to safeguard another constitutional principle: the separation of powers. It is clear that, in our constitutional system of government, the executive branch (the President, the cabinet, and other officers subordinate to the President) and the judiciary (the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts) are to be independent from the legislature (the House of Representatives and the Senate). The Framers recognized the potential for impeachment to undermine this principle. It is a well-established legal principle that the power to remove is the power to control. The President, for example, can control the agencies of the executive branch principally because the President can remove the heads of the agencies (such as cabinet secretaries) for any reason at all, including for not following an order from the President. They are said to serve at-will because the President can remove them at will. If Congress can impeach and remove the President or Supreme Court Justices for any reason at all, then these officers serve at the will of Congress and are subject to its control. An early draft of the Constitution gave Congress the power to impeach and remove officers for “maladministration.” James Madison objected to this because the term was so vague that it would allow impeachment for any reason at all. As he put it, “so vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during the pleasure of the Senate.” The term “maladministration" was then deleted from the draft and replaced by the phrase “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” This shows that the Framers meant for the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” to signify only conduct that seriously harms the public and seriously compromises the officer’s ability to continue. If the phrase is given a less rigorous interpretation, it could allow Congress to influence and control the President and the courts. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Impeachment Clause with Keith E. Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Read the full discussion here. There is a second constitutional principle at stake in defining the scope of the impeachment power: our commitment to democracy. Allowing Congress to remove Presidents, and executive officers who serve under them, has the effect of thwarting the will of the people. After all, the President is elected to serve a four-year term. How, in a democracy, can we justify giving Congress (or anyone other than the people, for that matter) the power to overrule a presidential election? This can only be justified on the ground that the President has committed acts so dangerous to the public that the President may not be allowed to remain in office until the next election. Imagine, for example, if it were discovered that a President was secretly a spy and agent for a foreign power. In that sort of case all would agree that the danger to our constitutional system of government, indeed to our nationhood, is such that it is impractical to wait for a presidential election to remove the President. The Framers agreed on this point too. But this emphasizes just how important it is to limit the power to truly egregious conduct and serious harms to the public. Otherwise, this narrow and speculative potential could undermine our basic commitment to democracy. The constitutional commitment to democracy could explain an interesting feature of the history of impeachments in the United States: no President or executive officer has been removed from office through impeachment (though the threat of impeachment and conviction hastened the resignation of Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 on charges of financial corruption). Each of the eight officers to be impeached, convicted, and removed has been a judge. Federal judges are appointed, not elected, and enjoy life tenure—that is, unlike a President who serves a four-year term, federal judges serve until they die or decide to retire. To remove a federal judge, then, does not raise the same sort of concerns about overruling an election that removing an executive branch officer does. Two Presidents—Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—have been impeached by the House of Representatives. Neither was convicted by the Senate. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, the last year of his term. One important factor in his acquittal was the reluctance of several Senators to vote for impeachment with a presidential election so close at hand. Best, they thought, to let the voters have their say. Similarly, when the Senate met to try and deliberate on the impeachment of President Clinton, many argued that removing him from office would repudiate the judgment of the people who had reelected him. Impeachment is a powerful tool. It must be closely limited to situations of conduct that inflicts serious harm on the public and that seriously compromises the officer’s ability to function in office. Otherwise, it could undermine our constitutional system of separation of powers and thwart our fundamental commitment to democracy. The Framers wisely recognized these dangers and added the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” precisely to limit the scope of the impeachment power to these most egregious circumstances and to prohibit its use beyond them. Neil J. Kinkopf Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law Balancing Independence and Accountability in Impeachable Offenses By Keith E. Whittington Balancing Independence and Accountability in Impeachable Offenses By Keith E. Whittington The impeachment power exists at the far margins of American constitutionalism. The Founders sought to create three branches of government, each independent of the others and enmeshed in a system of checks and balances. They thought that if government power collapsed into a single set of officials, civil liberty and political effectiveness would be compromised. Each branch of government was armed with its own set of powers and responsibilities and given sufficient tenure and resources to be able to act on its own judgment. But the desire for independence had to be balanced against a concern with accountability. Government officials needed to be independent enough to be able to act in the public interest, but not so independent as to be able to exercise unchecked power. When the Founders wanted to ensure accountability, they mostly relied on elections and the voters to hold government officials responsible for their actions. But for cases in which abusive behavior could not be tolerated until the next election, they provided for the possibility of impeachment and removal. That power they were only willing to entrust to the most democratic branch of the government, the legislature. If the impeachment power is going to serve its purpose, it needs to be flexible. When drafting the Impeachment Clause, the delegates in Philadelphia rejected the proposal that officials could be removed for “maladministration.” They preferred language that emphasized abuses and crimes; impeachment in cases of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But what might fall into the category of “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was still quite unclear. There are risks associated with either a narrow or broad reading of impeachable offenses. A narrow reading of the Clause risks making the impeachment power inflexible and unable to respond to unanticipated bad behavior on the part of government officials. A broad reading of the Clause risks creating a partisan weapon that can be used by legislators to undermine the independence of other government officials. If the examples of treason and bribery are taken to be characteristic of the full scope of impeachable offenses, then government officials might only be removable if they commit criminal acts involving their public office. That is an important class of misdeeds, but it seems unlikely that it would capture the full range of behavior that might put the public good in immediate jeopardy. Merely “private” offenses like tax evasion, perjury, sexual assault and obstruction of justice have been deemed worthy of impeachment investigations precisely because they call into question that ability of a judge or executive officer to continue to properly perform their duties and maintain the dignity and respect of the office that they hold. Even some instances of non-criminal misbehavior by a high government official might be regarded as too intolerable to allow them to continue to exercise their public responsibilities. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Impeachment Clause with Neil J. Kinkopf, Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law. Read the full discussion here. The broader the category of impeachable offenses is understood to be the easier it is for mere political disagreements to become grounds for impeachment investigations. It is all too common for partisans to believe that their political foes are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, not just mistaken but willfully mistaken, not just erroneous but abusive. If the impeachment power is used to settle political scores, then the independence of the separate branches of government will be undermined. If routine impeachments became a tool for overcoming policy disputes and political obstructions, then political power would gradually be centralized in Congress, with the judiciary and the executive reduced to being little more than extensions of the legislative will. The Constitution was not designed to have Presidents and judges sit only at the pleasure of the Congress. In practice, three factors have discouraged Congress from abusing the impeachment power. First, the House and the Senate have built up precedents over time that give some substantive content to the scope of impeachable offenses. The House is more comfortable pursuing an impeachment and the Senate more comfortable in convicting in the case of an impeachment if the alleged actions are similar to the kinds of behavior that have led to impeachments and convictions in the past. Second, the Constitution not only sets a substantive standard for impeachable offenses; it also creates procedural barriers for removing government officers. The House must muster a majority to sustain an impeachment effort, and the House managers must be able to persuade two-thirds of the Senators to win a conviction. Especially in the Senate, that hurdle necessitates building a coalition that crosses party lines. A narrowly partisan impeachment effort is unlikely to result in a conviction and removal, and so House leaders have rarely thought impeachments are worth the effort unless members of the minority party are in agreement that impeachable offenses have been committed. Third, the members of Congress are ultimately accountable to the voters for their actions. If the public is not convinced that an impeachment is justified, legislators are disinclined to risk their own reelection by tilting at windmills. The Founders left a powerful weapon in the hands of Congress in the form of the impeachment power. Like all powers, the impeachment power is subject to misuse and abuse. The ultimate check on how that power is used is public sentiment. The burden is on those who think that an impeachment is appropriate to persuade others that the circumstances warrant taking such drastic measures. Exercising the impeachment power requires the ability to reach across the political aisle and forge a political consensus that the danger of leaving an individual in power is too great to be risked. In the absence of that consensus, legislators are forced to rely on the more mundane tools that they have at their disposal to check abuses of power and advance the public welfare. Keith E. Whittington William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University	i don't know
In what casino card game is the goal to get the sum of the cards in a hand, modulo 10, to be as close to 9 as possible. The 10, jack, queen and king are each worth 0 points, and the ace is worth 1 point. The rest of the cards are worth their face value of 2 through 9. If the player has an initial total of 6 or 7, the player does not draw additional cards, while the banker follows a complex set of rules to determine if he draws additional cards.	MrCasino.co.uk your one stop casino, bingo, poker, - How to play, Tips and strategies How to play, Tips and strategies These articles are copyright and may not be copied or reproduced, we use copyscape to catch offenders We allow small excerpts (maximum 100 words) from these notes, providing you paste a link to our site Going loco over casino Casino games are called as such because they are mostly played in casinos as permitted by law. However, they can also be played outside of the casinos for entertainment purposes, some on machines that simulate gambling. The latest craze is playing online casino games which can be done right in the privacy of the home or office. While playing casino games provide endless hours of fun and excitement to gamblers and to beginners, a player should realize that he can only get as much from his winnings. Winning in the casino is usually short-lived because a player always has to contend with the casino or house advantage or edge. There are three basic categories of playing casino games. 1. The Gaming machines (slot machines and pachinko). These gaming machines are usually played by one player at a time, involving a machine and do not require the involvement of casino employees. 2. The Random Number Game which, as the term suggests is based upon the selection of random numbers which is taken from a computerized random number generator. It can also be sourced from other gaming equipment. Random number games may be played at a table and this includes the Roulette. It can also be played through the purchase of paper tickets or cards, such as Keno or Bingo. 3. The common table games which includes Asian Stud, Baccarat, Blackjack, Casino War, Red Dog, and many more. CASINO GAMES Casinos usually have slot machines everywhere. More than half of most casino floors are covered by slot machine games. The most popular of the slots are progressive jackpot games and video poker slots. There are literally hundreds of different themed slot machine games and dozens of slot machine versions, including traditional reel slots, video slots, single line slots, multi-line slots, progressives and more. Because of their popularity, tons of new-themed versions are released every year. The draw of the slot machines is the chance to win big from a relatively small amount of money. Slot costs range from one cent – penny slots - to machines that play $100 or more a spin. One of the best tips to keep in mind when playing the slots is to realize that, in the long run, the casino always wins. People win all the time at slot machines and, in the end, come away with breaking even or even down because they're not satisfied when they win. They continue playing, trying to get that dream jackpot and end up losing instead. A player who is way ahead must know when to quit. Another popular casino game is Blackjack (21). It is the most popular casino table game in the world today. An enticing blend of skill, strategy and luck, there's no wonder that blackjack is the most played casino table game around the globe. In contrast to most casino games, players with knowledge and strategy can obtain an edge over the house. This makes Blackjack one of the few 'beatable' casino games. There are different forms of blackjack but all have the same basic premise – a player must have a hand value higher than the dealer's, without going over a value of 21 points. The foremost objective of the game is not to bust, or reach a hand with a higher total than 21. Only then can you still be eligible to vie with the dealer and be in the running to collect winnings. Card values are the following: Two through ten are worth their face value and face cards (jack, queen, king) are worth 10. The ace’s value is 11 unless such a value would bring the player’s hand to a bust, in which case it is worth 1. The ways to reach that cherished 21 are varied: if in the player’s two-card hand he has accumulated 21 through an ace plus a ten-value card, his work is done, for he’s an automatic winner (except for the rare cases that the dealer also has a blackjack, in which case nobody wins). If this is not his luckiest day and he has to work towards his win, the player can do so by requesting additional cards beyond the two dealt to him to get as close as possible to 21 without going over. The player’s only competitor in this game is the dealer. He is bound by a set of rules that guide how he will play and represent the house. It is the player’s aim to gauge the dealer’s position throughout the game and make his moves accordingly. There is no reason why several players on the table can’t win simultaneously on the same hand. Another common casino game is Backgammon . The layout of the backgammon board is one with 24 triangular shapes, or points on which each player spreads his fifteen checkers (or “men”) at the beginning of play. The goal of the game is to progress one’s checkers from their original places to the other side of the board. Once this is done, the checkers must be hauled out one by one before the opposing player manages to get his men off the board. The first player to rid the board of all his checkers is declared the winner. The game board of the backgammon consists of two players, each with his own home or inner board. This is the area with the lowest point on the board. The player should strive to get all his men as quickly as possible. When all of them (the checkers) are on the home board, they can already be completely taken off the board. STRATEGIES and WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Aside from having lady luck on your side, you need some strategy to be successful in playing casino games. A long term casino game strategy is not something quick and dirty, not some secret hint (like to always bet on black during a full moon.). A long term strategy is not some quick list tips that have nice bullets in front of them and that one can print out and bring with him when he plays. However, a long term strategy is an understanding and appreciation of the science of odds and risk and how one can increase the chance of coming out ahead over the long term. Even if a player is just playing for enjoyment, a good casino game strategy can help him play longer, for a more satisfying gaming experience. When a player is about to play a casino game, he should be aware that he is taking a risk. In very simple terms, he is risking losing money in order to gain some. While he can never eliminate the risk completely he can learn to manage the risk. One way is through diversification. A player must learn how to play several different games. Just because he is having bad luck at the roulette wheel, that doesn't mean that he can't make money at the poker tables. Some gamblers think there is such a thing as a "bad day." Not true, the odds of rolling seven on the come out roll are one in six. It is important to make use of strategies to enable risk management especially when playing internet casino games. You can try link wagering, which simply means that the amount you will bet on the game is linked to the amount of money in the previous bet and also to the fact that you won or lost the game. A common reaction among gamblers especially if they lose a game is t even play at a higher stake. You can do this if you have a secret wish to dispose or all your cash. Try to bet less than the amount you wagered if you lose and try to bet a slightly higher amount if you win. In due time, you will see the wisdom of this strategy. TIPS ON WINNING There are some important tips in playing casino games. • When making a bet with another person one must remember that he is putting his honor on the line. If a player loses, he must pay. • A player must expect to lose. Even with good rules and strategy the odds are still usually in the casino's favor. Thus, a gambler must not get mad if he loses. He must think of it as the price he has to pay for entertainment. • A player should trust the odds, not the hunches. If he wants to maximize his odds then he must believe in mathematically proven strategies, not hunches. • Another important tip is for a player not to over-bet by bankroll. Before one gambles, he must determine what he can safely afford to gamble with - as entertainment money. He should stick to his limits and not gamble with money he needs for basic necessities. • He must not hedge his bets. Hedge bets usually carry a high house edge. For example, never take insurance in blackjack and never bet the any craps or any seven in craps. Exceptions can be made for insuring life changing amounts of money. • Finally, a player must have good gambling etiquette. Gambling is a lot more fun when people are polite and respect each other. It is also good etiquette to tip for good service. Casino gaming is one of the top legalized gambling activities in the United States and the industry has provided lots of work opportunities to a lot of people. Thanks to the millions of people who patronize casino games (whether they actually play in the casino), government earnings from casinos are also on the rise. No one can explain the attractions of casino games to people of all ages and economic status. Suffice it to say that the enjoyment, albeit temporary, one gets from playing casino games is enough to make one come back for more. The Thrill of Playing Bingo Once called as the community lotto, the game Bingo was in fact derived from lottery, albeit with a very strong group dynamics built around it. You cannot play Bingo by your lonesome; you must always have a group of people to play with in order to fully appreciate the fun of the game. Bingo is very popular among the senior folks and was once deemed as a game for the elderly alone. But in recent years, it has hit the mainstream audience in an unexpected way, especially with the emergence of online Bingo game sites. Its appeal has attracted not only those above 50 years old but people from all age brackets. Bingo is played with a card that is labelled with the letters B, I, N, G, O across it and under the letters are random numbers. The objective of a Bingo game is to successfully cover these numbers in a certain pattern on the Bingo cards before any other player does it. The most popular version of Bingo is patterned after the American or Canadian type but Australia, United Kingdom and India also have their own versions and sets of play cards which are slightly different from the North American counterparts. Bingo is traditionally played in halls. It comprises different sets of rules and variations to the game, which makes Bingo a lot more exciting and enjoyable. Prizes can be anything from money to household appliances, gift certificates, showcases or a brand new car. In some countries, Bingo is a recognized form of legal gambling and is popularly played at the casinos. Other games may also be linked to Bingo especially when played commercially and thereby increasing the chances of winning bigger prizes. However, Bingo may also be played for charity or for fund-raising activities. Many churches host Bingo Bonanzas especially during the holiday season. Playing Bingo brings a very wholesome, relaxed easy-going, family-friendly atmosphere. HOW TO PLAY BINGO The concept of playing Bingo is very easy to follow; even children will be able to understand it. First, players will need to have the Bingo cards; these cards are sold at the start of every game and carry different sets of numbers unique to one card only. There are no duplicate cards in the Bingo game. However, this does not mean there is only one sole winner per round. You can play one round on Bingo with as many cards as you like. As stated, Bingo cards are marked with letters and numbers in 24 boxes: • Under the first column B are random numbers between 1 and 15 • The second column I contains numbers between 16 and 30 • The third column N contains numbers between 31 and 45 • The fourth column G contains numbers between 46 and 60 • The last column O contains numbers between 61 and 75. The middle box in the card does not usually carry any number or is already marked out. When you have your cards and have settled into the game, someone then picks a chip or paper with the corresponding letter-number combination and calls it out or shows it to the audience (e.g. B-12 or I-24 or N-75). In today’s modern setting however, numbers may be drawn via computers and reflected on a computer screen. But in the traditional Bingo game, the person responsible for announcing the drawn combination is the “Caller”. He or she also serves as the host of the game. As the numbers are called, you then have a few seconds to locate the combinations into your cards. When you do find it, you have to mark your card with a dabber or a marker (which would be provided to you at the start of the game) to indicate a pattern. Now, before each game, the Caller will have to announce what particular pattern everyone needs to form in order to win this round of Bingo. If you have successfully completed the pattern, you should loudly say, “Bingo!” in order for the caller to hear you and recognize you as the winner of that particular round. There are plenty of possible combinations and patterns to a Bingo game and below are just some of it: BLACKOUT BINGO – Blackout is the most popular way to enjoying Bingo. The object of the game is to become the first to block or cover all the numbers in your Bingo cards. It is usually the last game of the night and carries one of the biggest prizes. In some cases, this game may end up having multiple winners. If this happens, the prizes then would have to be evenly divided among them. PATTERN BINGO – Pattern Bingo is played by following certain figures as determined by the Caller: • Six Pack Bingo – When you have to cover six numbers in two rows of three, horizontally or vertically. • Nine pack Bingo - When you have to cover nine numbers in three rows of three, horizontally or vertically. • Postage stamps Bingo – When you have to cover the four numbers on each of the edges of your cards. • Kite and Tail Bingo – When you cover the numbers diagonally. • Top and bottom Bingo – When you cover only the numbers on the top row and bottom row. • T pattern Bingo – When you cover the numbers that falls into the T-pattern of your card; for example, the top row and the center column. • U pattern Bingo – When you cover the numbers that form a U-shape, even if it is upside down; for example the right and left most columns and the bottom row. • Square pattern Bingo – When you cover the numbers on the top and bottom rows plus the left and right side most areas of your card. Other patterns and variations may be invented or thought of by the organizers. In addition to this, bonus prizes may also be given away for special combinations determined also by the organizers. Las Vegas high stakes include different games and variations such as the X Pattern Bingo. Special patterns or combinations may meet prizes as high as $10,000 in just one game. Playing in an Online Bingo Setting If you are playing the game online, the cards you receive are randomly selected by a computer. You will normally be given less than four cards. Each card should cost less than $0.25 on average. Numbers drawn are displayed automatically and blocking out or marking your cards will also be courtesy of the computer. You basically also follow the same rules and concepts as a traditional Bingo by finding patterns in order to win a round of game. Online Bingo can be played anywhere where there is a computer. And as much as the game is traditionally active and alive because of the presence of a group dynamics or a community, online Bingo also connects you to virtual players all over the world. You are still able to make friends with people even if you are sitting at home and logging in to the Bingo site. This is one of the reasons why Bingo is a game that appeals to a wide audience – the community aspect of it; or having someone else to enjoy the games with. STRATEGIES and WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW In the Bingo halls, the strategy is quite simple. Sometimes, the caller will keep the momentum going by calling numbers out in succession. So yes, numbers are called out rather quickly. Pay very close attention to it and then immediately mark this on your cards. The caller only slows down when someone shouts “Bingo!” The game will temporarily be on hold while this is being verified. If the person did indeed get a Bingo, a new game is played. If not, the same game will continue until someone actually wins it. If you have plenty of cards with you, secure these on the table with an adhesive tape for easier tracking and marking. In an online setting, the dynamics are much simpler and you can play with as many cards as you can handle. Because the game is computerized, you can opt to turn on a feature (we suggest that you do) and have the machine immediately block off the numbers for you. This way, there is nothing you should miss when the numbers are called out. TIPS ON WINNING • To increase your chances of winning, don’t play just one card. Have at least four per round. But if you find other players with more than fifteen cards, that is not extraordinary. • Listen, listen, and listen. If you are playing online, pay close attention. • Do not be overly eager to yell “Bingo!” Make sure you have the actual winning card. • Enjoy the game. Bingo is a fun activity that should be relished and enjoyed with enthusiasm. No longer just a game purely catering to the elderly, Bingo is something everyone can enjoy in their pastime, whether you are playing for fun, for charity or for money. Why Playing Keno Can Bring Excitement To Any Gathering Like Lotto, Keno is a popular game that originated in China many years back and which was later brought to the USA in the mid 1800’s by Chinese immigrants who came to work in the mines and on the railroad. This new form of lottery was created to recover funds for the government, and may also have been used to help fund the Great Wall. Keno was one of the first games to be introduced when Nevada legalized gambling in 1931 and still ranks as one of the state's most popular games. In the past, Keno was regarded by the big Las Vegas casinos as a blue-collar game and was mostly left to the downtown establishments. These days however, many casinos all over Las Vegas have replaced old entertainment lounges with a keno lounge, complete with rows of seats with armrests facing the keno counter, with convenient ashtrays, and cups holding crayons for marking the keno tickets. Restaurants and other public areas in most casinos also have keno runners collecting keno tickets from patrons to the keno counter. Keno is the casino version of the lottery, and, as such has similar odds as the lottery. Keno is usually played in the lounges of various Casinos specifically allocated for the game, but there are so called 'Keno runners' who will collect your ticket and deliver the winnings if the player wants to play from outside the lounge area. There are many television monitors spread all over the Casino halls to keep players informed of the winning numbers. Almost all Nevada casinos have keno lounges, where numbered balls are forced out through an air blower to determine the winners. Some tribal casinos in the upper Midwest also have live keno lounges; Atlantic City began offering live keno in 1994. On riverboat casinos, keno enthusiasts play video versions, which have grown in flexibility and even offer bonus rounds in the video slot age. HOW TO PLAY KENO The keno numbers can be found printed on each of the 80 ping-pong balls, which are spun around in a bird cage (made of wire), or blown around in a large clear plastic sphere. As each ball is selected, the winning number is electronically highlighted on the keno boards throughout the casino. The house draws 20 numbers out of the field of 80. To play Keno, a player must select a minimum of 4 but no more than 10 numbers between 1 and 80. Each selection is called a 'Spot', so if the player selected 10 numbers, he is playing a 10 Spot game. Keno tickets are located at tables throughout the Casino and in the Casino's Keno lounge. The Casino provides a 'Keno crayon' for this purpose. A player must mark a blank Keno ticket with the numbers of the player’s selection and present the ticket to the Keno desk with the wager and the clerk will give the player a duplicate ticket. In a few minutes, twenty numbered Keno balls will be drawn at random from a barrel containing 80 numbered balls, and if enough of the player’s selected numbers are drawn, he is a winner. The results are displayed on screens, called Keno boards, throughout the Casino. Keno rate cards indicating the various payoffs can usually be found throughout the casino. Players must make bets before new numbers are drawn, and must also collect winnings before the calling of the next game. Players can either collect the winnings themselves or give the winning ticket to a keno runner, who will bring back the payoff. If a player wants to use identical numbers in more than one game, they can return the ticket to the keno writer who will then write out a duplicate for the next game. The keno writer and the operator sit behind the keno counter. The keno writers handle the tickets turned in, mark down the numbers, and take care of the financial transactions. The keno operator sits above and behind the writers and starts the keno game by pressing a button to begin mixing the numbered ping-pong balls in a large transparent bowl. The balls are then drawn up by air and out of the "goose," a long, transparent tube extending up from the bowl. The operator calls out every number (juts like in bingo) while it is drawn. The said numbers are then shown on an electronic board in the front of the lounge as well. Once all twenty numbers have been drawn and called, the game is over. Keno is similar to Bingo in many ways except that a keno game is over when all numbers are called, whether or not there is a winner. STRATEGIES and WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW There is also a video version of Keno. The video version plays like casino keno but players mark a touch screen rather than using a keno ticket. Players view a field of the numbers 1 through 80 and mark between one and 15 of these numbers. While in the casino version, of 80 numbered Ping-Pong balls get blown around and 20 are randomly blown into winning-number tubes. In the video version, a random-number generator performs the same function. The edge of percentage allowed by the house on video keno is lower than that allowed by the house on casino keno. While the percentages differ for each casino and depending on the number of spots marked by the player, casino keno generally has a 25 percent to 30 percent house edge and video keno a house edge of 8 percent to 12 percent. There are several ways of betting. A player may get a straight ticket. Betting the numbers marked as a single wager is called betting a straight ticket. It's the simplest way to play, but many players like to bet more combinations. Another type is the King Ticket wherein a number circled by itself is the king, which is used in all combinations marked. Lastly, a player may get a combination ticket by marking several number groupings and plays combinations of them. The payouts for keno are based on how many numbers the player chose and how many numbers are "hit" multiplied by the player's original wager. The more numbers a player chooses, and the more numbers hit, the greater the payout. Payouts vary widely from casino to casino. Some casinos allow the player to pick up to 20 numbers, but most limit the choice to only 15 or 10. The probability of a player hitting the "jackpot" 20 numbers from 20 chosen is approximately 1 in 3.5 quintillion (1 in 3,535,316,142,212,180,000 to be exact). If every person who ever inhabited planet Earth played one keno game every single second of their lives, there would be about one jackpot-winning ticket to date. If all these possible keno tickets were laid end to end, they would span the Milky Way galaxy -- and only one of them would be a winner. TIPS ON WINNING Though a game of chance, the Keno game has also strategies that may be helpful in winning the game. To really play Keno strategy, a player would need to be an expert in hyperactive geometric mathematics. There are charts and books out there that outline systems for winning Keno however; the problem with practically using them in a real or online casino is that looking all this stuff takes too much time. Most casinos have a five-minute period between each game or less. One classic strategy is what is known as “chasing the old man”. If a player noticed that the same numbers keep coming up repeatedly on the Keno board then the logic would be that he should play those numbers. However before he falls into the delusion that this constitutes some kind of winning system, he must keep in mind that there is also a fifty-fifty chance that these numbers will not come up again. Those numbers could come up for another 133 rounds or they could never come up for another 500. There is just no way of telling. Another strategy which is commonly used in this game of chance is to play or choose the numbers that never showed or never come up. The theory is that it is that number’s time and that it has to come up eventually. Once again, there is no real statistical theory that says this is true. Playing keno is a lot like playing the lottery. One important tip is picking numbers that sound good to the player and the left is up to chance. While there is little he can do to drastically improve his chances of winning keno there are a few tips one should be aware of that may lead him to his winning streak. When playing keno a player should always bet the maximum number of coins allowed because this will increase his payout if he does win. Another good keno tip is to play with patterns. Choose number patterns instead of randomly choosing numbers for each consecutive hand. This is because computers use algorithms to randomly pick their numbers. When playing keno , one should be aware of the amount of his winnings. Winnings should be below the amount that a player would have to start paying taxes on. The next time you play Keno, imagine the excitement felt by those playing the same game during the Han Dynasty. And even if you are living in the 21st century, you will surely feel the same way. Getting the hand in Poker Poker is another popular casino game that has an objective of winning the pot like a collection of money, chips or bets made by the players. A player may win the game by having the highest ranking hand or by bluffing the other players into folding by making them believe that you have the winning hand. There are different types of poker. In a No-Limit poker, there is no limit to the maximum bet that one can make in any betting round. However, there is a minimum bet that is equivalent to the big blind. The minimum raise amount must be at least as much as the previous bet or raise in the same round. For example, if the first player to act bets $10 then the second player must raise a minimum of $10 (total bet of $20). There is no maximum raise; one can raise any amount to as much as he wants. However, if he wish to call a bet but don't have the chips to cover it, the player will be 'all-in'. At this point, he can only win the portion of the pot covered by his chips. Pot-limit is the most popular variety of poker game in Europe. It is quite similar to no-limit poker but there are certain key differences. In pot-limit poker, players may bet any amount from the size of the blind to the size of the pot. The pot includes the sum of all bets and raises made during the current round. Here's an example: The pot in the center of the table contains $100. On a subsequent round, one player bets $20, and two following players each call this $20 bet. The fourth player could call the $20 bet and then raise by a maximum of $180. This raise matches the $100 in the pot, the first $20 bet, the two additional $20 calls and the player’s own $20 call, which together add up to a $180 raise. Poker works like most casino games when it comes to rules that players have to abide with. What makes poker different is that the player has to know the specific hierarchy order as well as how these are ranked. A player who is able to lower the possibility of getting the hand will have a greater chance of winning the pot. Each pack basically has 52 cards with the following (high to low) ranking: • Ace HOW TO PLAY POKER The game starts with the dealer handing out the cards clockwise from his or her left. As soon as the cards are dealt, the players are left with four options. The dealer (if he's playing) always deals to himself last. The dealer deals everyone their first card, and then goes back around the circle to deal the second, and so on. As soon as everyone has five cards, the remainder of the deck is placed in the middle of the table, and play begins. Players have several options as far as the first round of betting goes. If no one has made a bet yet, you have two choices: opening by making the first bet or checking. When a player checks, it means that he or she doesn't want to open the betting, but doesn't want to quit either. It basically means "I'm not going to open the betting, but I'll stick around and see what happens." Here are the possible positions that a player can choose from: • The player may check the bet (bet nothing but still remain in the game) • Call the previous bet (bet the same amount as the previous bet) • Raise the previous bet (increase the amount of the previous bet) • Fold (giving up a chance to win the pot by not matching a bet). One can only check when no other players have made any bets and it's your turn in that round. As a matter of practice, only three betting rounds are allowed when playing casino poker. Thus, once a player has made his bet, the player next to him can choose to call, raise or even fold. If he wants to stay in the poker game he should match the bet made by the previous player. If he chooses to forfeit his chips then he can always fold or give up by placing his poker cards on the table, face down. A player who does this (which is usually the case if he believes his hand is too weak and does not have a chance to compete) will lose any bet he has made. The other players who have not folded or given up early can take new cards if they want to change their cards (a player can give up three unwanted cards at most and he can also receive three new cards at most). One this is done, the betting starts again. A player can opt to open or check and one this is done a player can also opt to see, raise or fold. If every decides to fold then the game is over and the winner is the player who has the highest hand. STRATEGIESand WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Some strategies should be learned by any poker player. Learning the discipline of when to fold cards will save you a lot of money over the course of your poker career. A good player will fold far more hands than he plays and does so with the understanding that playing mediocre cards or cards out of position will only end up in lost bets. A player may pre-flop or folding any cards that are not listed in the Hand Selection groups and ensuring that he is playing the correct hands in accordance with his position. Deciding whether or not to fold a hand on the Flop is one of the most important decisions one will make during the course of each and every hand. A player should only proceed with his hand past the Flop if one of the following scenarios exists: a pocket pair, paired one of your two cards (preferably the highest), paired both of cards and made two pair, flopped two cards to a straight or a flush, or have three of a kind. Checking one’s hand is a play that has both advantages and disadvantages as it gives the player a chance to continue in a hand without risking any more bets, but it also indicates to other players that he is potentially weak. One should often consider raising or folding rather than checking. Another important strategy in poker is “bankroll”. It is very important in poker to have the right bankroll for the limit at which the player wants to play. A bankroll is typically the total amount of money one has set aside to play poker with, and allows him to survive a potential run of cold cards while also giving him the flexibility to move up in limits quickly when he is running well. TIPS ON WINNING Unlike the other games, poker definitely involves more skills than luck. If you want to always win in poker then make sure you know who your competitors are and make sure they are weak players. The ability to measure up your opponent will come in handy when choosing which tables to play at. If you are able to choose a table with players less skilled than you then you can expect to earn a profit. Since poker is more of a game of skills than luck, you can still win or minimize the odds against you even if you are dealt bad cards; this is provided you know how to place your bet. You must also learn how to keep a poker face. Yes, this figure of speech does trace its origin in the game of poker. This means you are able to control your emotions and you play the game without letting your opponents know your hand. It is best to keep them guessing as to what you have or do not have against them. Next, never be scared to fold. One of the more intimidating aspects of the game of poker is how much or how little one should bet. Eventually, as a player develops a feel for the game, he will become more knowledgeable about when to bet and when to fold. As a general rule, if a player has nothing in his hand, he must not expect that later cards will remedy that situation. Feel free to fold frequently. It is better to sacrifice his small early bets then to rope himself into a betting war with a seasoned pro. In playing poker, alcohol is a no-no. When it comes to betting, alcohol can be a player’s worst enemy. While beer and cigars tend to go hand in hand with poker night, alcohol is not recommended if a player is going to play in a casino, especially if the stakes are a little higher. Alcohol makes one lose his inhibitions. Playing is also a matter of concentration. It is important to watch who's playing in an aggressive or loose way and who's playing tight, try to play the loose players and avoid the tight players, unless you've got a strong hand. Another good technique is playing with pairs (7-7, 9-9), two face cards (K-Q, Q-J), or hands that can make both a straight and a flush (8-9, 6-7 of the same suit). A player must be patient and fold other hands, unless he’s in the blind. Finally, the biggest mistake most players make is to act too quickly. When a player is making an important decision, he must pause to think about how the betting has gone and what your opponent might have. Playing The Famous Roulette In American casino games, roulette has one of the smallest followings, with nowhere near the popularity of slot machines, video poker, blackjack, or craps. It draws more players than baccarat, mostly because the baccarat pits have traditionally been closed to low-budget players. But roulette is in danger of being passed in popularity by newer games such as Caribbean Stud Poker and Let It Ride. In Europe, on the other hand, roulette draws big crowds. It is one of the mainstays of Monte Carlo and other European resorts. The game of Roulette which literally means small wheel is perhaps the most popular game of its kind in Europe. It appeals even to intellectuals, maybe because it has been introduced by Blaise Pascal (famous French scientist during the 17 century) in relation to his theory on perpetual motion devices. Pascal’s roulette was a bit on the primitive side however. Incidentally, the single “0” game of roulette was invented by two Frenchmen in 1842. It is ironic that while roulette has been invented by the French, it gained popularity in Hamburg, Germany. One of the reasons cited for this is the illegal status of gambling in France. However, one of the inventor Francois Blanc and his son Camille brought roulette back to France specifically for Prince Charles II of Monaco. HOW TO PLAY ROULETTE Roulette is usually played by up to eight players; all against the house played by the croupier also known as the dealer. The dealer spins the roulette wheel and handles the wagers and payouts. The roulette wheel has 37 slots representing 36 numbers and one zero. Each player buys-in different colored chips so their bets don't get mixed up. At the end of play, if a player won, he could exchange back the colored chips with cash chips. These are special chips with the value amount imprinted on them. There are several denominations in various colors. These chips are taken to the cash desk where actual money is given in return. The basic rule in playing roulette is to place one’s bet or bets on numbers (any number including zero) in the table layout or on the outside, and when everybody at the table had a chance to place their bets, the croupier starts the spin and launches the ball. Just a few moments before the ball is about to drop over the slots, the croupier will say 'no more bets'. From that moment no one is allowed to place or change their bets until the ball drops on a slot. Only after the croupier places the dolly on the winning number on the roulette table and clears all the losing bets that one can then start placing new bets while the croupier pays the winners. The winners are those bets that are on or around the number that comes up. Also the bets on the outside of the layout win if the winning number is represented. STRATEGIES and WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW If you want to win in this game of chance then you better have good predicting skills especially as regards the place where the roulette ball will land. But analysis has no place in this game because it is after all a game of chance where luck plays a pivotal role. Here are some tricks up the sleeves of some roulette players in choosing which numbers to bet on (although you need lots of luck to get the right trick!): • Choosing hot numbers, which are the numbers that regularly come up in the game • Choosing numbers that were a no-show for quite sometime and hoping this is the time when they will show up • Choosing as many numbers as you can bet on hoping that one of them will come up after a spin If you are not so familiar with roulette, it uses a felt long table with a wheel on one end. There are numbered boxes (for numbers 1 to 36) and a numbered wheel as well (up to the number 38), both with corresponding background color. Modern roulette now makes use of a plastic hard ball instead of the original ivory hard ball. The dealer spins the wheel in one direction, and then spins the ball in the opposite direction around a track on the bowl-shaped recess that holds the wheel. When the speed of the ball decreases, it falls off the track toward the wheel itself, and bounces around until it settles in a numbered slot. There are different kinds of bet that a player could make. • the straight bet which pays 35:1 • split bet is betting on two adjacent number and pays 17:1 • street bet is on three numbers on a horizontal line and pays 11:1 • a corner bet or a block of four numbers and pays 8:1 • line bet is on six numbers in two adjacent rows and pays 5:1 There are different procedures for roulette played in the European and the American tables. European croupiers make use of a rake (a long stick) to sweep all the best while American croupiers make use of their arms to do that. Unlike their American counterparts, European players use the casino chips. It is thus advisable to make sure you are playing it right if you play roulette in Europe. Unlike the bingo game that needs mathematical skills and deep concentration, roulette is a game of pure chance. It is believed that no strategy can overcome the built-in house percentage. Betting on one’s birthday, anniversary, last week's winning lottery numbers; it makes no difference at all. For most players, roulette has no element of skill. TIPS ON WINNING However, there are times that a dealer gets tired or bored and so he releases the ball at exactly the same angle and velocity nearly every time. A very small number of players can spot what numbers are passing as the dealer releases the ball. With that knowledge, they can predict at a better-than-chance rate approximately where the ball will fall. The player then either bets or signals a partner to bet accordingly. Another instance that a player can take advantage of is when the wheel itself shows a bias. Perhaps the wheel is off balance, or a slight track has been worn on the wood leading down to the numbers, or the metallic walls, or frets, between numbers are of slightly different heights or tensions. This is rare, for most casinos check the wheel carefully on a regular basis. And spotting a truly biased wheel means tracking play for thousands of spins -- the same number showing up three times in half a dozen spins does not mean the wheel is biased. There are several betting systems followed by most players. However, no betting system can change the game's percentages, and some systems can be financial disasters for the player. One common bet is what is known as “martingale”. The player doubles his bet after each loss. When a win eventually comes, it leaves the player with a profit equal to his original bet. That is, if the player bets $5 on black and loses, he then bets $10; if that loses, he bets $20, and so on. A win at the $20 level overcomes the $5 and $10 losses and leaves the player with a $5 profit. The player then goes back to the original bet level. Much worse system of betting is the grand martingale. It is even a faster way to lose money. Instead of merely doubling the bet, after a loss the player doubles the bet and adds another unit. Not as dangerous as the Martingales, but no solution, either is what is known as “cancellation”. The player starts with a number or series of numbers and bets the total on either end. If he wins, he crosses off -- cancels -- the numbers just played. If he loses, he adds the total just played to the end of the series. When all numbers have been canceled, the result is a profit equal to the sum of the original numbers. Important tips before starting to play Roulette: 1. Setting one’s financial limits by considering the possibility of profiting from it or losing from it. A player must decide how much he is prepared to win or lose at Roulette and stick to that limit. 2. A player must be knowledgeable on the terms of the Roulette casino prior to starting the game. He must know the maximum bets and the maximum payouts. 3. Most of all, the player must be sure if the casino he’s playing in is well-respected and is reputable. It is also recommended for anyone to practice playing the game before playing for money. This will make one used to how the Casino system runs when playing Roulette. One must not gamble a huge amount of money on one roulette spin unless the player is prepared to lose it all. Overall winning is what is important in playing Roulette or any other Casino game. If a player made a loss in one session, he must not try to play it until he gets back his money. There is always tomorrow. Playing Blackjack to Win The most popular casino game is blackjack because gamblers believe it is the one game that can be beaten by card counting strategies. Even though the house has become adept at circumventing these strategies, the belief persists, and more people play blackjack today than all other card games put together. History of blackjack When the game vingt-et-un (twenty-one) was first introduced in the US circa 1960s, casinos had to promote it to uninterested players by offering bonus payouts. One type of pay-out was 10-to-1 if the winning hand was an Ace and a Jack of spades or clubs, or a “black” Jack. Thus the hand was called a blackjack and it has since become the name of the game. A book by Edward O. Thorpe which described how one could win at Blackjack with a card counting strategy was released in 1963 entitled Beat the Dealer! which spurred public interest in the game, and the rest is history. The Rules of Blackjack Blackjack is a very simple card game to play. The goal of the game is to come as close to a card value of twenty-one without going over. Going over is called a “bust”. Face cards have a value of 10 and each of the number cards retains their face value. Aces can have the value of 11 or 1, depending on whether the hand is over twenty-one or not. There are two kinds of blackjack games played in casinos, which can use up to eight decks. One is the single or two-deck game where the dealer holds the cards and deals them out face down to each player. In multi-deck games, a card shoe is employed which uses up to eight decks and shuffles the cards after each game. The cards are dealt out face up in front of the player and each player is not allowed to pick them up. A hand in either type is also dealt to the dealer, only one of which is face up in the initial deal, the face down card is called the hole, and the object of the game is to beat the dealer’s hand. In some Blackjack games, the hole is not drawn until all the players have played their hands. No matter how many players are on the table, the hand to beat is the house or dealer hand. A player always goes first when deciding either to get hit (get more cards) or to stand (stay with the present hand) at each turn, and the dealer will draw more cards until someone comes up with a twenty-one (blackjack) or goes bust. All players who go bust automatically lose, whether the dealer goes bust or not. The dealer must draw if his cards are on 17 with an ace in the hand (called a “soft” hand because the Ace could have a value of 1 or 11) or 16 or less, and must stand at a hard (meaning no aces) 17 or more. If the dealer goes bust, all players who have not will win. In casinos, the blackjack table is typically a half-moon shaped table with up to seven players possible for each game. Each player faces the dealer who is on the inside part of the arc. At each player’s place, the table is marked with circles where bets can be placed and the payout is usually even money, except for insurance bets. At one side of the table, a card is placed which may declare the house rules on blackjack, such as minimum and maximum wagers, splitting pairs and double down. Splitting pairs gives Blackjack players the option to split a pair of identical value cards i.e. 2 sevens into two separate hands and a second bet to cover additional hand. The player who splits plays the original game until he wins or goes bust, in which case he can start playing the second hand. Some houses allow up to four splits and four bets in one round for each player. A double down is when a player has the option to double the original bet prior to the deal and receives one more card. In a face down game, the cards must be revealed at this point. Some houses allow players to double down regardless of total hand value, while others restrict it to a hand value of 10 or 11. Another Blackjack bet that may be allowed is insurance, in which a player bets the odds that a dealer’s hand, in which the face up is an Ace, has a 10-value card in the facedown card. The bet may be up to 50% of the original bet. The bet is placed on the insurance block of the table and must be placed after the initial hand is dealt and pays 2 to 1 if the player wins. Most dealers will advise places to take out insurance if the player already has a blackjack by calling out “Even money” because in case the dealer has a blackjack as well, the pay out would be the same as when the dealer has no blackjack. However, taking insurance in this case is not advisable because the probabilities of a 10-value card being in the face down card is only 30.8% as opposed to a 33.8% if the player hand has no 10-value card. In all games, the Blackjack player is allowed the choice to ask for one or more cards depending on the value of the initial hand. This is called a hit. Blackjack players are not allowed to verbally call for a hit, but must merely wave towards himself or tap the table with the cards or his hand. The player can also elect to keep to the original cards and hope it beats the dealer’s hand. This is called a stand. The Blackjack player indicates a wish to stand by placing his hand flat on his cards in a face up game or sliding the cards under the bet in a hand held game. Combination of cards The best total is a two-card hand twenty-one, meaning an Ace and any face card, still called a blackjack or a natural regardless of suit. The pay out for a blackjack hand that wins is 3 to 2 instead of the usual even money, meaning the player wins 50% more than the original bet. If the dealer also holds a two-hand 21, this is a tie and the player just gets his money back. If the dealer’s hand is made up of three or more cards to make 21, the two-card hand still wins. All other card combinations that is less than or equal to 21 will win even money if the dealer goes bust or has a lower card value. The suit of the cards has no bearing to the value of the hand. In a multi-deck game, up to seven cards can make up a hand (e.g. seven aces add up to a soft 17) Variations to blackjack Some games of blackjack allow different combinations of options that may or may not benefit the player. Double downs after splitting reduces the house edge by 0.13%. Not so dramatic is allowing resplitting of aces, which cuts the house advantage down by .03%, although if the house allows yet another resplitting, the house advantage goes down by 0.14%. Early surrender allows players to half their bet before the dealer reveals the hole, and this reduces the house advantage by 0.624%. Late surrender allows players to half their bet after the dealer reveals the hole, and the house advantage loses .07% and .02% in a multi-deck and single deck game respectively. House rules that work against the Blackjack player includes limiting the double down options of a player to a 10 or 11 hand, which increases the house advantage by 0.28%. Blackjack pay outs of 6 to 5 i.e. the player only wins $6 with a $5 bet increase the house advantage by 1.4%. Strategies in Blackjack The basic strategy in winning in Blackjack is making calculated guesses on the probable outcomes of the cards by considering the player’s hand and the card revealed by the dealer. This is the most reliable of strategies and most consistently favors the player. Because face cards comprise a significant percentage of the deck, the probabilities of it turning up in the hole is high. The simplest rule in Blackjack is that if the face up card of the dealer is 7or higher, the player must consider it likely the hole is a 10-value card, and must hit if the player hand is 16 or less. If, however, the dealer’s face up card is 6, and the player hand is 16, it would be best to stand. In deciding to hit or stand, the Blackjack player has to consider whether the hands involved are soft or hand, meaning if aces are present. In a purely hard hand, certain generalizations may be followed: • If the player hand totals 9 and the dealer reveals 2 or 7 and above, the player should hit. If the dealer hand is 3, 4, 5 or 6, the player should double down • If the player had totals 10 and the dealer reveals a 2 up to 9, the player should double down. With a dealer hand of 10 or Ace, the player should hit. • If the player hand is 11, and the dealer face up card is 2 through 10, the player should double down. A player should hit if an ace is the dealer card. • If the player hand total 12, and the dealer has a 2, 3 or 7 and higher the player should hit. However, if the dealer shows a 4, 5 or 6, the player should stand. • A player hand with a total of 13 through 16 should stand if the dealer shows a 2 up to 6, but should hit if the card is 7 and above. • With a player hand of 17 to 21, stand at all times regardless of the dealer card. The Hows, Dos and Don’ts of Craps Craps is often referred to as the noisiest game in the house (meaning the casino). It is a quick-paced game where the bettors and stickmen (the guy with a stick who controls how fast the game goes) compete with each other calling out bets or urging people to bet before the dice roll. It is a dice game wherein players bet against the house. For someone who has no idea how craps is played, it seems that people are yelling or groaning over the same roll of the dice, but craps is a game of timing and sequence, and if you keep an ear and eye open, you should not have a problem following the game or even betting successfully on it. Basics of Craps The first thing a craps player needs to know is where to place a bet on the craps table. There are several options open (with about 40 possible combinations depending on what part of the game you are betting in) but the easiest to remember are the line bets, which are also the safest types of bet in Craps. The most common line bet is the Pass bet. The Pass line is a section of the table where you place a bet before the first toss of the dice in the round, called a come out toss. The one doing the tossing is the shooter. In making a Pass bet, you are betting that the shooter will either roll a seven or eleven. If he does, you and the shooter wins and the round is over. If the shooter rolls a craps (which is 2, 3 or 12) both you and the shooter loses and the round is over. If any other number is rolled (4,5,6,8,9,10) then this is called a point number and the dealer puts a marker (it resembles a hockey puck) on the number. The shooter must then roll the point number before a seven comes out. The shooter tries again and again until either the point number or a seven comes out, whichever comes first. If the point is made, which means the point number came out before the seven, the round is over and you win even money. If the seven comes out first, this is called Out 7 which means you lose and the dice is then passed to another shooter. The opposite of the Pass bet is the Don’t Pass bet, which also has space on the table. Don’t Pass is the opposite of a Pass bet, except in some casinos you only automatically win if the craps is 2 or 3. A 12 gives you a draw or push to keep the house edge. It is considered a bad faith bet because it operates counter to the rules of the normal game. Another type of the craps line bet is the Pass Odds or Odds bets, which is allowed for players who bet on the pass line first. Craps players simply move their bet outside the pass line and they are allowed to take odds on the possibility of the point number appearing before a seven is rolled by as much as 5 times the original Pass bet and they get true odds based on the point number. A 4 or 10 point number gets 2-1 odds, 5 or 9 gets 2-3 and 6 or 8 gets 5-6. The opposite of this bet is the Don’t Pass Odds. The Come bet is a line bet that can be made anytime after the come out roll by placing money on the Come bet box on the table. It operates along the same rules as the Pass bet except that it takes precedence over any Odds bet on the table unless the player tells the craps dealer his odds are on, in which case both Come and Odds bets win or lose at the same time. There are also single roll bets, also called proposition bets for single shooter rolls where bettors place their faith on ace-deuce (3), snake eyes (2), or craps (12). There is also the Big Red or Any 7 (7). Or, they could have a combined bet, C (craps) or E (eleven, also known as yo for some reason) or hi-lo (2 or12). There is also the Field bet, where the player bets that any of the numbers except 7 and 11 will come out, with a 2 or 12 carrying 2 or 3:1 odds while even money is offered for the other numbers. The Horn involves betting on four numbers at the same time (2, 3, 11, 12), typically one unit each, although in Horn High, one number carries an extra unit i.e. $2 for 11, $1 each for the other numbers. Multi-roll bets in craps are on the numbers that appear prior to a roll of a 7 excluding 2 and 3. In Hard way bets, the number bet upon (4, 6, 8,10) must come out in identical values i.e. two 3s is a Hard 6. In Easy way bets, the numbers appear with different dice values i.e. 1 and 3 make an Easy 4. The Place and Buy is specifically identifying a number that will appear before a 7 is rolled (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10). Placing a number is offered at lower odds while buying a number offers true odds but winning bets are charged a percentage by the house. Otherwise, the mechanics are the same. The Big 6 or Big 8 bets are place/buy bets at even money. And finally in the Lay bet, the player places his money on the chance that the 7 will come out before the number laid (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10). It pays true odds but winning bets are normally charged a commission. These are the most popular bets in craps, and they are statistically weighed based on the house advantage. The safest craps bets, meaning the bets with the smallest house advantage are Pass and Come bets at 1.41%. Don’t Pass and Don’t Come bets are actually 1.36%, but they are not considered sporting bets and most serious craps players avoid them for as part of etiquette. The bet with the highest house advantage is the Any 7 single roll bet at 16.67%. The average craps player is expected to lose because the odds paid is lower than the actual odds, and since it is a completely random game, no strategy for winning will be successful for an extended period. Betting Systems Nevertheless, there are some systems in craps more popular than others even if they are inherently flawed. The Martingale system aims for a one unit net win for every eventual win by starting with $1 bets and doubling this after every loss and goes back to $1 upon winning. The gambler’s fallacy in craps is based on the false assumption of the correlation of the probabilities between past and future dice rolls. Yet another is the parity hedge system, which is actually not a system but a hoax spread by a gambling website to gullible and hopeful craps players. Player Etiquette As in any endeavor where you deal with other people, generally accepted rules of behavior must be observed to promote a harmonious environment. Here are some behaviors a craps player should observe to avoid becoming a pariah in the house. • Keep to the spot assigned you by the dealer. With many craps players around, it would be hard for the dealer to keep track of the bets if you keep moving it around. • Tip the craps dealers often, especially if you go to one house all the time. • Place money you need to change in front of you instead of trying to hand them directly to a craps dealer. They are barred from doing this. Make sure you make your intentions clear or it may be taken for a bet. • Wait for everyone to cash in after each round before putting a new bet on the table. • Always speak politely and calmly to the craps dealer and make your intentions clear to the stickman regarding your bets. No need to hurry because the stickman will wait for you. • Avoid coming in contact with the dice if you are not the shooter, especially when the stickman sweeps it across the table for the next roll. If it comes up bad, you will get blamed for it. • When it is your turn to shoot, use only one hand to roll the dice and keep it in plain sight of everybody at the craps table. • Try to hit the other side of the craps table because this is expected. The worse thing that could happen when throwing a little too hard is the dice will fly off the table, which would be declared a “no roll.” It is okay as long as you do not make it a habit. Superstitions Perhaps because no one system is guaranteed, many superstitious beliefs abound among craps players. They need all the help they can get. Here are a few of them: • Changing the dice in the middle of a round is unlucky • Never say “seven” when a player is rolling. • A penny under the table is lucky. • Don’t speak to or touch a person on a good roll. • Throwing both dice in the air before shooting is bad luck. • When a die or the dice falls off the table, the next roll is a 7. • A “virgin” woman roller will have a hot roll, while a “virgin” man will have bad ones. • Never open a table; the dice are cold and will give bad rolls. Baccarat Demystified Baccarat sounds so exotic, especially since most people associate it with champagne, high stakes and glittering jewels. But in fact, Baccarat is perhaps one of the simplest of casino games, and requires very little actual skill. History of Baccarat Some history is attached to the card game. Baccarat was first in Europe during the late 15th century. Back then, faro and basset were most popular and baccarat is very similar to these games. Baccarat was derived from the French word for zero, referring to the value of face cards. There were three kinds of baccarat played: the baccarat chemin de fer or railway; the baccarat banque; and the punto banco. In baccarat chemin de fer, the game favored by James Bond, and baccarat banque the players are allowed choices in the play which increases the variability in the card games’ outcomes. Although baccarat chemin de fer was the first game to be introduced in Las Vegas, the rules were perhaps too complicated for the general population to latch on to successfully. The most popular form of baccarat is the North American baccarat, or the punto banco which is a much simpler game. The Rules of the Game The rules of punto banco or baccarat as it will be referred to from this point onward are simple: the player who comes closest to a value of nine from the sum of two or three cards wins. There are only two options for customers to bet on, referred to as the Player and the Banker. In baccarat, the Banker does not refer to the house (casino) nor does the Player refer to a particular customer. The two are merely the sides which bettors can back as the possible winner. The house makes money from commissions on the winnings of the Banker, typically 5%. The values of the cards are as follows: 2 to 9 retain their numerical value; the 10, Jack, Queen and King cards have a value of zero, while Aces have a value of 1. In calculating the value of the hand, the cards are totaled. If the sum is greater than 10, the 10 is subtracted from the total, leaving a single digit value for the hand. This is called modulo. At this point, a distinction should be made between the full 14-player game of baccarat and the smaller 7-player game of mini-baccarat. In the full game, the card shoe is retained by the Banker, who always makes a banker bet and takes the cards out of the shoe to either hand it to the dealer, who hands it to the Player or retains the card meant for the Banker. This means the three dealers in attendance do not actually deal the cards. In mini-baccarat, the shoe stays with the dealer, who deals the two hands. For either type of baccarat game, the Player is the customer with the largest player bet in the round. The designation of Player and Banker only makes a difference when a tie or egalite is the outcome of the round, because the tie bettors win and the bets of the Player and Banker are untouched. The table is marked with bettor numbers as well as slots for Banker, Player or Tie outcomes. All customers must place their bets in the Player, Banker or Tie boxes before the game can start. The game begins when the croupier or the dealer hands first one card, always face down, to the Player first then the Banker alternately until both hold two cards. This is the initial hand. The hands are then turned over and the points announced. Getting a third card for either Player or Banker depends on established conditions: 1. If an 8 or a 9 total, referred to as a “natural” hand, is drawn by either the Player or the Banker, or both, no other cards are dealt. There is no exception to this rule. 2. If the Players total is 5 or less, he draws another card. If the total is 6 or 7 at this point, the Player will stand. 3. The Banker draw or stand is guided by the following: a. The Player did not draw, the Banker draws if his hand totals 5 or less, and stands if the hand is 6 or 7 b. The Player draws a 2 or 3, the Banker draws if his hand totals 4 or less, and stands if the hand is 5 to 7 c. The Player draws a 4 or 5, the Banker draws if his hand totals 5 or less, and stands if the hand is 6 or 7 d. The Player draws a 6 or 7, the Banker draws if his hand totals 6 or less, and stands if the hand is 7 e. The Player draws an 8, the Banker draws if his hand totals 2 or less, and stands if the hand is 3 to 7 f. The Player draws a 9, 10 and Ace or other face card, the Banker draws if his hand totals 3 or less, and stands if the hand is 4 to 7. And that is it. The croupier will announce the winning hand or a tie and the winning bets are paid. Odds are normally 1:1, but in case of a tied round, tie bets are given odds of 9 or 8 for 1. Strategies for winning at baccarat Baccarat is not really a game that would respond effectively to any mathematical system, unlike most card games. It is purely a matter of guesswork determining who will win a particular wound, or if a tie is imminent. The skill of a particular Banker or Player does not even come to play because of the guidelines in drawing additional cards. But because the chances are pretty close to 50-50, baccarat is one of the few card games that give the customer an even chance of not losing his shirt. This is where judicious betting should come in. Since the odds are pretty even, it would be unwise to place all your money in one round. Place a small amount in every round, keeping track of your bankroll whether it is dwindling, growing or staying on an even keel. Use your gut feel freely; it is just as effective as any other strategy, but do not go overboard with the amount you bet. While most players stay away from a tie bet because of the long odds, placing a small one now and again should be okay. You never know. The most important thing is to know at what point to stop, whether you are winning or losing. A good rule of thumb is stopping when you have lost half of the money you walked in with and when you have won that amount as well. A wining streak is capricious in baccarat; it can go wrong very quickly if you are not careful. Baccarat etiquette Because baccarat can be a pretty fast-paced game, it is important that bettors observe the rules of etiquette in order to avoid disrupting the flow of the game. These are relatively few: • Dealers in most table games are not allowed to handle cash directly, so it would be polite to simply lay down the money you want to exchange for chips and signal to the dealer your intentions. • In the event that you are the largest player bettor and are handed the Player hand, wait for the dealer to finish dealing out both hands before turning over your cards. There is no need to hurry, the Banker will have to wait for you, and the card values will not change if you are a bit slow in turning them over. • Listen to the dealer when he calls either “Card to the Player” or “Card to the Banker” so you know where you are at. • Make use of the score sheets and pencils to keep track of your wagers so there is a clear record of what your winnings or losses should be and to avoid any unpleasant arguments. Superstitions There are very few superstitions attached to the game of baccarat aside from the absence of the number 13 in a traditional 14-player baccarat table. However, gamblers are notoriously superstitious, which may also apply to baccarat bettors in a general way: • Entering and leaving the casino through the same door will bring good luck (provided you left of your own volition and not thrown out). Some maintain it brings bad luck. • Wearing black is bad luck. • Lucky objects should be worn, such as rabbit’s foot (not so lucky for the rabbit) or a four leaf clover. • Dropping a card would mean bad luck for the player (in baccarat that could go either way, depending on whose luck is at issue). There is no real reason why baccarat should be confined to the upper echelons of society. It is a fun, simple game that anyone can learn to play (although the amateur dealer should have a table of Banker draw or stand rules nearby) and can be just as exciting as poker and blackjack. Perhaps even more exciting because the chances are so even that you just never know how the hand will pan out. SLOT MACHINES Table players in most casinos see slot machines in a different way, as opposed to casino first timers. To them this is just like child’s play and does not truly embrace what casino gambling is all about. True, slot machines may offer less in terms of hits and payback percentage, but in many establishments, playing the slot machine is most preferred and is commercially viable. Anyone who has ever been to the casino has tried to play the slots at some point during their visit. It is that popular. The slot machine was first developed in the late 1800’s based on a game of poker. It was played by simply inserting coins and pulling a lever that would then trigger spinning the cards held inside it, to randomly come up with a good poker hand. It became very popular amongst the people and was soon housed inside bars in the city of New York. Prizes were in the form of free drinks or cigarettes only, never cash pay-outs. A few years after that, the crude slot machine was simplified to its better form and works similarly to how it is today. It contains three reels with pictures and symbols. It also included a mechanism that allows players to receive nickels from the slot machine once the player is able to form symbols of three. In 1964, the very first mechanical/electronic slot machine was developed and released by the Bell-Fruit Gum Company. Initially devised as a way to market their chewing gum products, this type of slot machine was the basis for how the modern-day slot machine works today. Today, slot machines found in casinos offer other incentives to players in that any other winnings may be used as casino credits or as tickets to get additional spinning chances. More successful casinos offer $100.00 winning credit but this is limited to mostly high rollers who still prefer to play the slots. To raise the stakes of the game, slot machines in major casinos are usually linked together, thanks to computer capabilities. Each slot machine contributes a portion to one collective jackpot which may be taken by the player who generates a special combination (as determined by the casino). Of course, the cash out for this is relatively bigger than usual. In some cases, the linking may even happen in casinos across town --- which means a bigger jackpot prize. Some casinos also offer conditional bets and other surprises that should delight the player and encourage them to play some more. However, the use and availability of slot machines is regulated by the government’s gaming commission. Therefore many restrictions may apply with the use of these gambling machines, whether in public or private. HOW TO PLAY It is a fairly simple game to play and the objective is to win as much money as possible. All the player has to do is pull the handle or push the button in order to trigger the right symbols in the slot machine. Symbols that match naturally correspond to a prize. Games have different winning combinations, so no one really loses in the slots, regardless of what value in prizes a person receives. The combinations one can play to win are usually posted on the front of the machine. The slot machine works through what is called the Random Number Generator (RNG) technology. Simply put this works via a computer that generates the numbers that you see on the slot machine at a very fast rate, usually between seconds. When the player pulls a lever or presses the play button, the RNG spins it and determines the numbers. Some players believe that the numbers actually carry a pattern (as opposed its randomness) and have even devised strategies to circumvent this. There are two kinds of slot machines - the straight slot machine, which basically pays based on an already determined schedule and gives the same amount each time a certain combination is drawn out; and the progressive slot machine, which has stands to increase the jackpot prize as you play along (usually in combination with other slot machines). How to Play Online Slot Machines Online slot machines come in a variety of games and works similarly as a land-based slot machine. Each slot contains an RNG as well. The great thing about online gaming is that you can keep track of all your wins and loses into one account or membership, even as you jump through different machines. Payouts are also higher than the average Las Vegas casino. WHAT TO BE AWARE OF Tips and Strategies to playing slot machines • Read the rules carefully and follow the instructions specifically. Know what you are playing. Each slot machine has different sets of rules. If there is a chance for you to try the games for free first, take it. • If this is your first game, start small… and then increase your investments as you go along. • Play as fast as you possibly can. This increases your chances of getting a better spin. • Have very realistic expectations from your game play and chances of winning. • Have a strategy. While playing slot machines may look like a mindless game, you still have to do some money-management in order to take the best out of the game. • Because slot machines operate via the RNG, no once can actually determine when the machine is due to give out the big prizes. It may even go for days without actually giving big payouts or give three of these in succession. • This happens quite often --- you leave and give up playing the slot machine and just as you have done that, the machine you just played on suddenly spews better winning combinations for the one playing next to you. Again, do not assume there is a secret to this somewhere. This is still the RNG at work. • You can pull the handle or hit the button; the result will have no difference. It is still dependent to the RNG the machine has generated. • Slot machines are said to be loose if they give pay-offs often. If you are looking for just a chance to win something, then go for this. You can usually find “loose machines” among large crowds, by the front desk or entrance. You can also find them where there are usually lines at the casino (the buffet, restaurant or show entrance). This is because people can kill time playing slot machines while waiting to be seated. Do not play the loose machines if you are bent on winning sizeable prizes, including the jackpot. • A slot machine with one payline usually gives the best percentage of winnings. • A slot machine that needs higher denomination for you to play it usually means bigger percentage also. • Study the slot machines carefully. Try and determine the pay-off tables for this. You can usually tell the percentage of the pay-outs the machine gives when you become familiar with how it works. • You may notice a couple of people lurking while you play, they could be your competition, believing everything against the credibility of the RNG. • You can also try and remember which slot machines are most advantageous. They could also prove useful to you later on. Slot machines that have recently been left or vacated are examples of this one. • Remember that the money you put into those machines is yours to spend. Do not listen to those who think they can give you better winning chances. If you feel comfortable with your moves and do not wish to spend maximum coins, then go ahead. First and foremost, you should not be pressured with playing. Have fun and relax. • If you are playing land-based slot machines, the casino provides you a player card before playing the slot machines; do not forget to insert that. Do not also leave the slot area without it. • If you need to take a break from the game, ask the attendant to cap your machine while you go to the restroom. Do not forget to bring your winnings with you. • Decide when to give up. If after 4 spins you still have not taken anything, take that as a sign to get up and try another machine or even a different casino game. • Bankroll only what you can afford. Keep a bigger part of your prize in your pocket or savings. • Quit while you are ahead. You may be on a winning streak, but if you think you have enough, you can retire from the game and enjoy the rest of the evening. Testing the machine’s limits may backfire on you. You could end up losing what you have already won. • Make sure the slot machine does not underpay you and seek assistance from the attendant when it does. Why slot machines are very appealing is because of the fact that you can bet on a very small investment and stand to win big cash-outs, especially if you have luck on your side. But as with most anything having fun while trying your luck is still the best way to enjoy this game. Created by Mr Casino.co.uk techonology.	Baccarat
The females are known as nannies, the males billies and the offspring as kids of what type of animals?	rec.gambling.misc FAQ: General - Google Groups rec.gambling.misc FAQ: General This is the General section of the rec.gambling.misc Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. I wish to thank Frank Irwin for helping to compile much of the information that appears in this list. I also wish to thank those who contributed information, as well as those who spent countless hours running blackjack simulations in order to help answer many of these questions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S1 Martingale betting systems -- just double your bet until you win S2 The Inevitable Monty Hall S3 How much would you pay to play this game? Section G: General Gambling Topics G1 What casino game has the best odds? G2 What are comps? G3 How do you get comps? G4 What is the Casino Host Department? G5 What comps are available? G6 How do I get a casino credit line? G7 How are "markers" used? G8 A walk through on getting comps. G9 Where can I get casino quality chips? G10 Are chip colors standardized? G11 What are matchplay chips G12 What are "pit critters"? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These questions come up occasionally, causing a lot of heated discussions and wasted bandwidth. The rec.gambling regulars are pretty sick of seeing these questions, and they would appreciate it if you just didn't ask them. If you do ask, we'll probably just say "see the FAQ list". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S1 Martingale betting systems -- just double your bet until you win A:S1 (Frank Irwin, Steve Jacobs) From: "The Eudaemonic Pie" by Thomas A. Bass The word comes from the French expression "porter les chausses a la martingale," which means "to wear one's pants like the natives of Martigue," a village in Provence where trousers are fastened at the rear. The expression implies that this style of dress and method of betting are equally ridiculous. The betting scheme merely states that you would want to double your bet after each loss. Beginning with one unit, you would bet two units if you lost the first. Then four, then eight, until you win a bet. You would then revert to a one unit bet. The theory is that with each win you will win all that you lost since the last win, plus one unit. The reality is that you will quickly come to a betting ceiling, governed by either your bankroll or the house limit, above which you may not increase your bet. After 9 straight losses (it's happened to me) you would be betting 512 units. In practice, a lot of people get sucked into betting this way because it gives the illusion of really working. This is because most of the time, you will end a string of bets with a win. However, on those rare occasions when you do lose, you will lose a lot of money. So, the end result is that you win a small amount almost always, but when you lose you will lose more than all of your little wins combined. The important point to realize is that most games simply cannot be beat in the long run. In games such as craps, roulette, and non-progressive slot machines, it is mathematically impossible to gain an advantage over the house. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S2 The Inevitable Monty Hall A:S2 (Steve Jacobs) You are a contestant on "Let's Make A Deal", and Monty Hall offers you your choice of three doors. One door has a prize, and the other two doors are empty. Monty knows in advance where the prize is, and no matter which door you pick, Monty will open one of the other doors to show you that it is empty. Monty then offers to allow you to trade your door for the other unopened door. What should you do? My best advice is to grab Monty around the neck and strangle him :-) The short answer is that you should switch doors, because it increases your chance of winning from 1/3 to 2/3. The odds are not 50/50, because the probability that the prize is behind the door you originally picked is 1/3, and this probability never changes until the prize is revealed. This can be seen by considering what happens if you decide to never switch doors -- in this case you will win one time in three, since you will win only if your original pick is correct. So, if you always switch you will win 2/3 of the time, since you win whenever your original pick was wrong. Since Monty can (and will) always show an empty door, it is as if he is saying "you can keep your door, or you can trade it for BOTH of the other doors, and to confuse you I will show you that one of the other doors is empty, even though you already knew that". Some of you won't believe that this is correct. You will say "after Monty opens a door, there are only two choices so you have an equal chance of winning whether you switch or not". This is wrong. The fact that there are only two choices does NOT imply that the two choices have equal probability. Still not convinced? Suppose there are 100 doors, and only one prize. You pick a door, and Monty shows you 98 empty doors (he can always do this, since he knows where the prize is), and offers to let you switch. The chance that your original pick was right is 1/100. If you never switch, you will almost always lose. Therefore, if you always switch you will almost always win. Not convinced? Try it yourself, but try playing the role of Monty in order to help see how it works. Don't ask rec.gambling, because we'll know you didn't really try it yourself. The confusion caused by this question shows that probability problems often go against human intuition. This question appeared (several times) in the "Ask Marilyn" column of the "Parade" insert that appears in many Sunday newspapers in the United States. Many people with Ph.D.'s in mathematics claimed in wild disbelief that Marilyn's answer [2/3] was wrong, and that it was a sad commentary on the American education system. Indeed it is, because the mathematicians were wrong. [Note: there has been some discussion as to whether Marilyn phrased the question correctly and/or unambiguously in her column. This report is based on (possibly flawed) memory. Slight changes in the wording of the question can result in much different answers, which obviously adds to the confusion. --SRJ] Q:S3 How much would you pay to play this game? A:S3 (John P. Nelson) I flip a coin until it comes up tails. If it comes up tails the first time, you get $2; if the second, $4; if the third time, $8. That is, if I flip the coin N times, you get 2^N bucks. [How much would you pay to play this game?] The problem is, of course, that the "expected value" of this game is an infinite series that does not converge: The "expected" win appears to be infinite. However, in any REAL implementation of this game, there would have to be an upper limit to your liability: It would be unreasonable to expect you to really pay off a win of trillions of dollars. If you put an upper limit on the number of flips, then the expected value of the game converges, and it is quite easy to calculate the "break even" wager. If we limit the game to N flips, and you pay me $2^M if tails comes up on the M'th flip and if N flips occur with no tails, you pay me 2^(N+1), then the expected value of each game is simply N+2. (A variation on the rules: If you pay me 0 if N flips occur with no tails, then the expected value of the game is $N). This is fairly easy to calculate: On each independent trial, the chance of a tails is 1/2. Clearly, the chance of a tails on the second trial is 1/4 (1/2 chance of heads on the first trial, times 1/2 chance of tails on the second trial). The odds of a tail occurring on the Nth flip is 1/(2^N). The payoff at that point is 2^N. So we have the series: 1/2 * payoff-1flip + 1/4 * payoff-2flip + 1/8 * payoff-3flip or: $2 $4 $8 $(2^N) -- + -- + -- ... ------ 2 4 8 $(2^N). Given a maximum of N flips, the expected win is 1+1+1..., N times. Given a $0 payoff on N heads in a row, that is the total expected win: N. If you pay off 2^(N+1) after N tails, the final term is $(2^(N+1)) Which explains where the +2 in (N+2) comes from. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Section G: General Gambling Topics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G1 What casino game has the best odds? A:G1 (Steve Jacobs) In general, blackjack is the most favorable game in the casino. The house edge for blackjack ranges from about 0.15% to 0.45%, depending on the house rules and number of decks. Occasionally, single deck games can be found which give a slight edge to the player. The house edge for other casino games is listed below. In games involving skill, these numbers assume that an optimal betting and playing strategy is used. Note that many forms of video poker are favorable to the player, although these machines are often difficult to find. Video Poker (Jacks or better): 0.5% to -0.7% Video Poker (Deuces Wild): 4% to -1.7% Progressive Video Poker ("8/5" payoffs): 2.2% to -2% Craps line bets with single odds: 0.8% Craps line bets with double odds: 0.6% Baccarat "bank" bet: 1.06% Roulette, double zero wheel: 5.26% Roulette, single zero wheel (rare): 2.7% Keno (estimate): 20% to 25% State Lottery: 50% or more ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G2 What are comps? A:G2 (Carla Regon) A comp is a reduced room rate or a meal. Sometimes it is a free stay in the casino's hotel. A comp that is described as RFB means that the casino is giving you free room (R), food (F) and beverage (B). "Comps" or complimentaries should be looked at as if they were intangible discounts. Comps are not gifts. Can you picture a casino giving you a gift? Get real! A comp usually takes the form of a chit that you take to the coffee shop or the buffet and hand to the hostess who gives it to the waitress. The comp shows them that the casino is paying for your meal and one or two drinks. By the way, a comp is always for two people, at the minimum. A comp never includes the tip ("toke" in Vegas language) so don't forget to leave one or you risk a lap of coffee the next time. If the casino is comping you to dinner in the gourmet room or the show room they will make the reservation for you and they will deliver the chit directly to the Maitre 'd. Oh yes, if you are comped you go to the "casino guest" line and don't have to wait around with the peons. A comp is given to you because the casino wants you to play in their casino. They are not given to you because they like you. They may, in fact, like you, but, and I'm sorry to burst your bubble, they like, and want, your money more. So, if you are comped look on it as a reward for your play at the tables and in anticipation of your future play. If you budgeted $500 for the weekend for you and your wife as follows: $300 room, $200 food; and the hotel gave you casino rates (one-half off), which is a type of comp, a chit for lunch at the coffee shop one day ($25) and the buffet for dinner another ($25) think of it as having received discount certificates for $200. It's just like those super market coupons that you get in the Sunday paper. The game of comps is just like looking for a super market that gives you double coupons. (Double coupons? Guys, ask your wives or girl friends.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G3 How do you get comps? A:G3 (Frank Irwin, Abdul Jalib M'hall, Dave Everett, Carla Regon) The first thing that you must remember about casinos is that there is NO free lunch. If you want to get a comp, any kind of a comp, you must gamble at the casino and then ask for a comp. Come on don't be shy - ASK!! Also, ask before you are ready to leave the casino. Do you really think the casino will pay for your room as you are wait ing to check out, suitcase in hand? Of course not. They'll tell you all about what they'll do for you the next time you are there, but, oh, so sorry, not this time. So you must guide yourself accordingly. Second thing that will make your quest for comps easier is to remember that anyone can get a comp, from the dollar slot player to the thousand dollar a hand baccarat player. The only difference is the amount of the comp. A two bedroom suite versus a single room with bunk beds or a coffee shop breakfast versus a champagne dinner in the gourmet room. So don't think that just because you are betting three dollars on the pass line you can't get comped. In the next section, What Comps Are Available, there is an excellent chart showing the differences based on casino gambling action. The prerequisite for getting comped is to let the casino know who you are and how much you are betting. This is called "getting rated." You let the casino know who you are and how much you are gambling by telling the pit floorman or pit boss that you want to be "rated." To do this you should have a handy form of identification such as a slot club card or a marker privilege card (more about these cards in the sections below on casino credit and markers). Your driver's license will also do. When you arrive at the table just tell the floorman that you'd like to be rated. If your buy-in (the amount of money you initially put down on the table in exchange for chips) or your action (the amount you bet) is high enough, he will fill out a rating slip on you. Sometimes, the floorman will approach you and ask you if you want to be rated. Always say "Yes." Heck it's their computer and you may want to get some comps later that day. The rating slips are compiled at the end of the day and the information entered into the casino's computer. In many casinos, you give the floorman a card, much like a credit card, as you approach the table. He will either just fill out a rating slip, as in Vegas, or he will swipe the card through a reader. When you leave, ask for your card back. The floormen will keep track of your buy-in, your initial bet, your average bet, and your win/loss ratio. Notwithstanding anything that you have heard to the contrary a casino does NOT care if you leave a winner. Happy winners tell their friends and return to lose their winnings. So, really, don't bother trying to hide chips from the dealer, it's a waste of time and only shows that you are not that sophisticated in your gambling. If you don't believe what you've just read let me give you a good example. If you win a super jackpot at a casino they will comp your room and give you a big dinner in the gourmet room. Sometimes they will fly you home in the casino's private jet. Why? Because happy winners TALK and talk is called word of mouth publicity. You are happy and you will return with your friends. So stop trying to hide your winnings. It will not effect your comps. The comps will be offered anyway. If you're a winner the casino will comp you because they want you back. They want you back to lose what you have won. If you play in the afternoon and get a comp for dinner it is the casino's hope that you will play after dinner and lose what you won during the afternoon or continue to lose if you were doing so that afternoon. Besides that, the casino knows exactly how much you've won, they simply can't be fooled. The amount of your comp worth is generally half of your average bet per hour. In most Las Vegas casinos (except places such as the Mirage and Caesars) you are expected to play for 4 hours a day at an average $25 bet to qualify for a room. A sample comp chart, from the Stardust Casino, follows. [The amount of the comp is worth some constant fraction times the average bet per hour, that constant depends upon the casino management's evaluation of their advantage per decision, and the number of decisions per hour. Half is high. A quarter is more likely for blackjack out of a shoe. --Dave Everett] The value of your comps depend not only on your play, but on the casino where you are playing and whether you have credit there. In a later section I'm going to walk you through a complete weekend's procedure for getting comps the very first time, whether you've been rated or not. To get a comp, after you have followed all the above, you must ask a casino host or the floorman in the pit where you are playing for a comp for lunch in the coffee shop or dinner in the buffet. He'll check your play, i.e., rating, and either give it to you or say that he can't. If you get a "no" don't get angry. Just put him on the defensive. You'll be surprised how quickly a "Fine, I can go next door tonight" will work. By the way, that will not work too well if you are only playing dollar chips. If a casino floorman or host comes by to introduce himself and asks you if there is anything you want, ask him, right then and there, for that lunch or dinner comp or a reduced rate for your room. Don't take "no" for an answer. If your action has stimulated their interest they are already prepared to comp you. Go for it. Learn not to let them off the hook. If they have approached you don't let them do the "later" routine. Get your comp right there. Most casino floormen have comping authority for the coffee shop or the buffet. The gourmet room or the hotel room may take a pit boss or higher to approve. After you have played at a few casinos you will learn the worth of your action and be able to gauge the value of the comps you deserve. A side note - If you ever call a casino or ask an employee for something, be it a comp or whatever, and he says something like, "Let me see if you rate that," stomp all over him. It is insulting and degrading to be told by anyone that you don't "rate" something. Just remember that casino employees are notoriously under paid and this may be that person's way of getting one-upmanship. Bull donkeys. Q:G4 What is the Casino Host Department? A:G4 (Carla Regon) One of the casino departments that you should get familiar with is the Casino Host Department. They have employees called, obviously, Casino Hosts. There are table game hosts and slot hosts and even a keno host in one hotel. Their job is to get your name and address, make you comfortable, see that you enjoy yourself and get you to return. They can and do pass out comps. Get as many cards of casino hosts as you can. Give them your card. Say hello to them when you see them. Get them to remember you. It is their job and they will do so. Get one host in particular that you like and stick to her. Ask her when you want a comp. Use casino hosts for your return trip. Make your reservations by calling the host department and asking for your chosen host. She will assist you and you will often get more then you deserve in the host's hope that you will play more then the last trip. Hosts make their career by cajoling nice players into good players and then up to great players or by finding and keeping good players. A good casino host relationship should always guarantees a fruit basket in your room when you arrive. Also, if the casino does not have a host, then use your favorite pit boss for the same services. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G5 What comps are available? A:G5 (Frank Irwin) The following is a listing of the comp schedule for the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. This can be considered typical for a Las Vegas casino (casinos such as the Mirage or Caesars may require more action). In the table below, "Player line" is the player's established line of credit, and "Front money" is money deposited in the casino cage against which the player can write markers. Player Line or Average Hours Complimentaries Front Money Bet Played Extended $25 4 Comp. Room $5,000 $75 4 Room, Food & Beverage $10,000 $125 4 RFB & $250 Airfare Reimburse $20,000 $250 4 RFB & $1000 Airfare Reimburse A. These requirements are based on four hours play per day. Excess playing time reduces the average bet requirement and higher average bets reduce the playing time requirement. For Example: A $200 bet for 2 hours is equal to a $100 bet for 4 hours. B. Airfare reimbursements are based on a minimum of 12 hours playing time. C. Complimentary food and beverage are to include the player and one guest. D. Size of bet in dice is the sum of all flat, place, proposition, field, come and buy bets. E. Excessive RFB usage reduces airfare reimbursement amounts. F. Please let our friendly floor staff know who you are when you initiate play at any table. Q:G6 How do I get a casino credit line? A:G6 (Frank Irwin, Carla Regon) This is easy. Just call up one of the casinos and ask for the credit department or a casino host. Tell him that you would like to set up a line of credit. Either he'll ask you some questions, or send you to someone who will. They just take down your name, address, phone number, place of business, what you do and a bank account number. You can ask for any particular credit line, but what they give you will depend on how much you have in your account. If you have a savings account that contains more than your checking account, give them both numbers. When you apply for credit the casino will also check your past history with Central Credit, the TRW of the casino industry. By the way, if you ever stiff a casino you will be marked a bad risk with Central Credit and will not be able to get credit at any casino in North America or the Caribbean. So, as a side point, no matter what your beef is with the hotel or the casino always pay your markers. PERIOD! Also, casinos are required to comply with Federal law on credit approvals, but they never do so don't expect a notice with your past credit history. The way they get around complying is to issue credit for $10. You can also ask them to send you a credit application which you can fill out at home. When you get it and fill it out return it with photo copies of your driver's license and a check from the account you are using as a reference. That will save you time when you get to the casino because they will want to make copies of these anyway. It will also make you appear quite experienced. No matter what the casino's cover letter to you may say, most casinos will not notify you about your credit so I suggest calling about two weeks after you have sent in the application to see if your line was established. Your application will also be noted in the files of Central Credit so if you have $25,000 in your account but apply around town in eight casinos for $5,000 each you may not get what you request because you are showing a total potential loss of $40,000 and have only $25,000 available. As you get more experienced this will not be a problem because the record will show your gaming and payback experience. Q:G7 How are "markers" used? A:G7 (Frank Irwin, Dave Everett) At the beginning of your first trip to a casino after establishing credit, you will be required to go to the cage to sign some papers and let them copy your driver's license. You will also indicate how you wish to pay for any outstanding markers upon your departure. If it's your first trip, they may want you to settle before you leave. Later, you may be able to work our some sort of payment plan. When you walk up to a table, ask the floorman for a marker. He'll get your name and go away for a little while. When he comes back, he'll give you a bank check to sign. This is a counter check, which is a form of bank draft, and has the legal force of a regular check. They may take money out of your account on this check. Additionally, these markers may require manual intervention and attention when presented to your bank for processing. If you don't want your banker to know where your money is going, don't leave behind a marker; pay it up with a regular bank check. If you win at the table (and don't squirrel chips away :-), the floorman may ask you to buy back your marker. This is exactly what you do; you give the dealer chips equal to your marker, and the floorman gives you your bank check. In many casinos, markers are not redeemed at the table, but the player must go to the cashier's cage to buy back the marker. In order for you to establish a credit line, Atlantic City casinos commonly have you sign a statement in which you agree, more or less, not to "walk" with chips when you owe them money for a marker. This also means that you are not supposed to convert chips to cash while they hold your marker. This is usually not interpreted as being on a daily basis, but rather on a trip basis. That is, if you've signed markers for $1000, and have 7 black chips in your possession, they do not want you to cash the 7 chips, and walk with their $700 while you owe them $1000. They want you to turn in the chips, and owe them $300. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G8 A walk through on getting comped. A:G8 (Carla Regon) OK - You've read the above advice and have decided to go to Las Vegas and see how many comps you can get. I'm going to walk you through a complete weekend and the preliminaries. The following always assumes you and another person (a friend, your wife, girl friend, man friend). I'm going to assume that you are a complete novice at obtaining complimentaries so for you more advanced players, please bear with me. Heck, I hope that you'll all learn something. Also if you've already been rated at the casino I'll discuss your procedure which is a bit different from the unrated player. You decide that in about six weeks you want to go to Las Vegas. As you've read rec.gambling.* and the FAQs you know about comps and you decide that you want to get comped as much as possible during your trip. Pick a half a dozen hotels where you feel you can be comfortable remembering the value of your play will determine how many comps you get. Then write down the following: * Your average bet, * Your average time playing. Let's see what you get - A budget of $2,500, an average bet at black jack of $10 to $15 a hand and up and you usually stay at the tables 5 hours a day. Your realistic approach will let you know that you are not going to get comped at Caesars or the Mirage. So why not try the following hotels: Downtown: Lady Luck and Fitzgeralds; Off the Strip: Palace Station and the Rio; Near or on the Strip: Maxim and the Aladdin. A note - A $25 a hand and up blackjack player or a $75 a hand crap shooter should be able to get full RFB comps at any of the better hotels. Not the Mirage, of course, but the other better hotels. With your list in hand and the telephone numbers from the FAQ start calling. Ask for the Casino Credit Department. Ask the person who answers to send you a credit application. Now recall the casino and ask for the Casino Host Department. Ask for a host. Some casinos give the preliminary introduction to a clerk, but ask for a host. When he or she gets on the line introduce yourself and ask him what their comp arrangements are. He'll ask you if you have a line of credit and have you been rated before. In other words he's asking you if he should look you up on the computer to see your history. If you've been to the casino before and have been rated tell the host that you were there on such and such a date and did ask to be rated. He'll look you up on the computer and tell you something like, "Gee, Jack, I can get you in on casino rates. If you play four hours a day at $15 a hand I'll comp the coffee shop and the buffet too." You might want to ask him what he will comp for $25 or $50 a hand just to see the way they pass out comps. Tell him thank you and you'll check on the dates your (wife, etc) wants to go and will call him back. Now check all the other choices until you find a deal you like. No, they do not compare notes over drinks that night. Now, if you never been rated then call, just like above, and say you've not been rated. You'll get an answer like, "Jane, I can give you RFB for $25 a hand with four hours of play." Thank him and check the others. OK, now that you've got a feel for the way comps are offered, remembering that you are actually testing for single or double discount coupons, make a choice. Take that credit application you received for the casino you chose, fill it out, copy your driver's license and a blank check on one page and return them together to the casino in the envelope supplied. I would suggest that you fill out credit applications for one or two casinos to start and then fill out more as your gaming progresses. Check about two weeks later and see how much credit they authorized. A tip - Don't bother asking for $1,000. You can get that anywhere. Be realistic and remember that the higher your line, the better your initial offer of comps will be, i.e., a $25,000 line will guarantee you a suite on the strip but you should be able to play at that rate. OK, let's assume that you've been approved for a line of between $5,000 and $10,000. Call back the casino host at the hotel you chose. Remind him that you spoke before. Tell him when you want to visit. Tell him how much you line is. He'll make the reservation for you. By the way, if you don't have time for a credit check you can bring funds with you and deposit them in the cage (front money) against which you can draw markers. If you see advertised specials in your newspaper you can get the host to bring you in on one of these, but with a better class of room. Sometimes these specials are much less then casino rates. If the trip is your first you may get a reservation under a "will qualify" theory. That means that you will be comped only if you play up to the agreement that you made with the host, i.e., you must qualify for the comps. Just charge everything to your room as instructed and read the rest of this section. OK, you arrive. Go to the cage and get your credit finalized by proving that you are you, signing a couple of ledger pages and getting your ID card. Find and meet the host. Glad hand him - He'll glad hand you. If you haven't had lunch he'll give you a starting comp. Now, whenever you go to a table show the floorman your card and make sure you are being rated. They will do it automatically if you take a marker, but you should ask. You'll be amazed how quickly they will recognize you and start calling you, "Hey, Miss R, How are you." Charge everything to your room. Breakfast, lunch and room service. Ask your host to make reservations (use the word "reservations") if you want the gourmet room. Remember that tips are NOT included in comps. I always sign the check and pay the tip in cash directly to the waiter. That way the total of the room bill does not include tips. At the end of your trip you should find your comps deducted from your statement at check out time. If it is not immediately call for your casino host. If he's off insist on a casino representative. You will find that your play is on the computer so any host or shift manager can get your comps straightened out. Be nice. If they stonewall you, well, you've been the subject of a group of jerks. Write the casino manager, threaten to write to the travel editor of your local paper. You will probably find a credit forthcoming. No casino wants to be marked as a bunch of crooks. If it is your first trip to that hotel I suggest that you try to check out with time to spare just to avoid a last minute hassle. Also see Carla's special recommendation on comps below. Now some hints: * About the middle of the second day check with your host to make sure you are getting what he promised. Also, remember this - If you win, keep on asking for markers and getting rated even though you've got the cash to pay them back immediately. That way you show your playing time in the casino. If I win I deposit the money in the cage for two reasons. I don't want to carry the money with me and it pays back already drawn markers. * If you have never been seriously comped before, why not start at one of the less exclusive hotels and casinos where you don't have to play like a Maharajah. Try the Lady Luck or Fitzgeralds down down or Sam's Town or the Maxim. They want your action and they will comp you at $10 or $20 a hand black jack. That way you can learn how its done before you move up to Bally's or the Sahara. * The way to never get a comp again is to take advantage. Don't order a bottle of 25 year old scotch and expect the casino to comp it. Don't take your cousin and his three kids to lunch and expect the casino to comp the check. Be realistic and remember what your discount includes. * Play at the casino. Sure, you can go elsewhere, but remember that you have an obligation if you want to get comped. Carla's Special Recommendation: I really hate having to beg for comps so I refuse to do so. My gimmick is to tell the host at a casino I am not known at that I have specific requirements and I don't give a flying folly for their policy. I insist on being picked up at the airport and a suite with a few amenities in it waiting upon my arrival. Though I look forward to meeting the host I will not seek her out when I'm going to depart. My comps are not a subject for discussion or argument. I expect the casino to credit my account on the night before my departure with what my play warrants and I let them know that I know exactly what my play does warrant. In other words I expect the casino to treat me like a pro. This works for me and for others that I know. What it does is avoid that little scene where the host tells you all he can do for you is comp the coffee shop when you thought you deserved the gourmet room and then you start begging and whining. I will neither whine nor return if I am treated shabbily. Gourmet room tips: If you are comped in the gourmet room it is expected that you will tip at a higher rate then if you were in the coffee shop. I hate tipping the waiter, the captain, the wine steward, the maitre d', etc., separately so I have devised a way to leave one tip. I call over the captain and tell him that my tip, in cash, covers the whole room. Most captains understand this. In the gourmet room I always tip 25 percent of a comped meal. I thank the maitre d' and tell him that the tip I left includes every one. It works for me. Carla's few special words for the ladies: Most gamblers are men, most high rollers are men, most people getting comps are men. So, ladies, please, do yourselves and all of us a favor, do not get pushed around in Las Vegas. If you are playing with your money, and I don't give a flying fig how you got it, demand to be treated well. Demand the same comps the men get. Don't put up with rude dealers and floormen and casino hosts who don't have time for the "little lady." If you stand up for your rights by giving your complaint directly to the shift manager or the casino manager you will be surprised how well you will be treated. Remember that your money is as good as a man's money. I have walked out of hotels and casinos and been called by the casino manager apologizing. I take a hard attitude and I get away with it. I insist on being picked up at the airport by limousine, I insist on a one bedroom suite (never a "junior" suite), I insist on a fruit basket and beer and wine in the room (I'm now also getting a bottle of Irish whisky). Sure, I'm loud and a bit brassy, but I expect to be treated like a lady all the time. I demand it and I get it. I insist on having my chair pulled out for me when I arrive to play baccarat or for dinner. I once stood by a chair in the baccarat room until the floorman asked if I needed something. I looked over at him, smiled, and said, "Why, yes, an employee of the casino who is gentleman enough to pull out my chair for me." He huffed and walked over, pulled out the chair, I sat down, stood up, smiled at him and told him I was walking until he learned some manners. I got an apology from the room manager within ten minutes. Truthfully, ladies, they won't learn unless we teach them. So, please, don t get pushed around. Well, I hope that you will now be able to start on your career as a full fledged Las Vegas schnorer. Enjoy yourself!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G9 Where can I get casino quality chips? A:G9 (Abdul Jalib M'hall) CHIP SUPPLIER CITY, STATE PHONE REGULAR PERSONALIZED ================= ============== ============== ============== ============= The Poker Store Stanton, CA (714) 895-3783 ? $55/100 Paul Son Las Vegas, NV (702) 384-2425 $.35/each $.40/each " ???, NJ (609) 348-8771 $.35/each $.40/each " Reno, NV (702) 786-2465 $35/100 $40/100 Bud Jones Company Las Vegas, NV (702) 876-2782 ? 1 color:$25/100 " " ? 2 color:$40/100 Gamb. Gen. Store Las Vegas, NV (800) 322-CHIP ? $40/100 Note that the chip prices above are for CASINO QUALITY, which means they're heavy clay and thus rather expensive. The suppliers also have lighter clay chips and cheap-o plastic chips. One reason you might want personalized chips, other than for vanity's sake, is to have dollar amounts put on them. Several places said they can put your initials on one side and the dollar amount on the other, which is kind of neat. For their unpersonalized chips, you had a choice of a starburst or a horseshoe insignia. Paulson was the most flexible, since they'd let you order any quantity (not just multiples of 100) with no minimum order. All of the suppliers had a wide variety of colors. Bud Jones Company had solid one color chips as well as the two colored chips that many casinos use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:G10 Are chip colors standardized? A:G10 (Dave "4" Everett) In the United States, almost all casinos use red for $5 chips, green for $25, and black for $100. In Las Vegas, other denomination chips can be any color whatsoever, though $1 chips are generally white or blue. In Atlantic City, they use the Munsel Color Code system, and is a matter of regulation. In addition the "inserts" or edge marks used by each casino must be different in color(s) than those used by all other A.C. casinos for the same denomination. $2.50 pink Used for paying blackjacks $5 red $1000 orange larger diameter than those above $5000 gray same diameter as o... This is the Miscellaneous section of the rec.gambling Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. V1 Is it possible to gain an advantage at Video Poker? V2 What is the "basic strategy" for Jacks or Better Video Poker? V3 What is the "basic strategy" for Deuces Wild Video Poker? Section M: Miscellaneous M1 How is Baccarat played? M2 How is Red Dog played? M3 How is Caribbean Stud Poker played? M4 Can the lottery be beat when the jackpot gets high enough? M5 How is Pai Gow Poker played? M6 How is Let It Ride played? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:V1 Is it possible to gain an advantage at Video Poker? A:V1 (Steve Jacobs) The video poker strategy discussed here is for the common "8/5" machines (called 8/5 because of the 8-for-1 payoff for a full house and 5-for-1 payoff for a flush). "Joker's Wild" and "Deuces Wild" machines will require a much different strategy. In order to have an advantage over the house, you must find a machine with a progressive jackpot that is larger than about 1750 maximum bets. ($8750 for $1 machines, $2200 for $.25 machines, $440 for $.05 machines). This level only makes the game even with the house. The jackpot must be higher than this in order to gain an advantage. The player's edge increases by about 1% for each addition of 350 maximum bets into the progressive jackpot. In order to have a 2% edge, the jackpot must be about 2500 max. bets. ($12,500 for $1 machines, $3125 for $.25 machines, $625 for $.05 machines). The main difficulty with playing video poker is that it takes an average of 60 hours of rapid play to hit a royal flush, and it takes a _huge_ bankroll to survive long enough to win. During this time, the casino enjoys an advantage of approximately 5%. Straight flushes can be expected about once every 6 hours on average, but these contribute only about 0.5% to the player's return. 4-of-kind hands occur only about once per hour, and these hands account for about 5% of the player's return. What this all means to the video poker player is that you will be playing with about a 10% disadvantage while waiting for an occasional "boost" from a 4-of-kind or straight flush. On average, it will take a bankroll about as large as the progressive jackpot to survive long enough to hit the royal flush (and this assumes that the jackpot is large enough to give the player a reasonable edge over the house). The following table shows the relative frequency of each hand, and the resultant effect on the expected return, assuming the given strategy is used. The table shows that you can expect to get nothing back about 55% of the time, and hit either a high pair, two pair, or three of a kind another 41% of the time. Hands of higher value occur only about 3.6% of the time. This means that the house has a whopping 31% edge most of the time. return % rate frequency variance 5.308 -> 0.00306 -> 1/32680 91.90 --=<ROYAL FLUSH!!!>=-- 0.492 -> 0.00984 -> 1/10163 0.246 STRAIGHT FLUSH!!!! 5.878 -> 0.235 -> 1/425 1.469 FOUR OF A KIND!!! 9.183 -> 1.148 -> 1/87 0.735 FULL HOUSE!! 5.584 -> 1.117 -> 1/89.5 0.293 FLUSH! 4.512 -> 1.128 -> 1/88.7 0.180 STRAIGHT! 22.227 -> 7.409 -> 1/13.5 0.667 THREE OF A KIND 25.780 -> 12.890 -> 1/7.76 0.516 TWO PAIR 21.053 -> 21.053 -> 1/4.75 0.211 HIGH PAIR ------------------------------------------ Q:V2 What is the "basic strategy" for Jacks or Better Video Poker? A:V2 (Steve Jacobs) Strategy based on the following payoffs: high pair 1 for 1 two pair 2 for 1 3 kind 3 for 1 straight 4 for 1 full house 8 for 1 4 kind 25 for 1 str flush 50 for 1 royal flush 2500 for 1 (expected return 102%) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simplified strategy (find first hand that matches, keep only needed cards). Best draws are listed in order of decreasing expected value. Expected value of each draw is shown, in units of one max. bet. Numbers in () vary, depending on progressive jackpot (value shown is for jackpot of 2500 max. bets). 1 ( 54) 4/royal (break up KQJT9 str-flush) [1] 0 50 straight flush 2 ( 2.9) 3/royal (break up pairs) [2,3] 1 2.51 two pair 1 0.809 QJT9 4/straight (outside, two high cards) 1 0.745 JT98 4/straight (outside, one high card) 2 0.699 QJ9 3/str-flush 3 ( 0.69) 2/royal (both non-tens) 1 0.681 4/straight (outside, no high cards) 2 0.599 3/str-flush (one high card, spread 4) 2 0.597 3/str-flush (spread 3) 3 ( 0.59) 2/royal (10 + one high card) 1 0.596 AKQJ straight (4 high cards) 1 0.532 AKQT/AKJT/AQJT/KQJ9 straight (3 high cards) 2 0.515 KQJ unsuited 2 0.502 3/str-flush (one high card, spread 5) 2 0.500 3/str-flush (none high cards, spread 4) 3 0.48 3 unsuited high cards (keep lowest two) 3 0.48 2 unsuited high cards 4 ( 0.48) high card 2 0.402 3/str-flush (none high cards, spread 5) 5 0.360 garbage (draw 5 new cards) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Keep KQJT9 straight flush if progressive jackpot is below 2282 bets. [2] Keep two high pair if progressive jackpot is below 2100 bets. [3] Keep high pair plus paired 10's if progressive is below 2175 bets. The following draws should NOT be taken, since drawing 5 new cards gives a greater expected gain. 1 0.340 4/straight (inside, no high cards) --> keep none 2 0.305 3/flush (no high cards) --> keep none 2 0.275 3/straight (no high cards) --> keep none ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:V3 What is the "basic strategy" for Deuces Wild Video Poker? A:V3 (Derek Franks) Based upon the following payout schedule: Royal Flush 800 The following strategy yields an average profit of 350 units per average royal cycle of 45,278 hands. #d Hand Type Expected Value 4 Four deuces 200 2 Royal Flush 4 4.606 2 Straight Flush 4 3.340 2 deuces alone 3.260 1 Royal Flush 4 3.501 1 Full House 3 1 Straight Flush 4 2.209 1 3-of-a-Kind 2.018 1 Flush or Straight 2 1 Straight Flush 4 i 1.974 1 Straight Flush 4 di 1.698 1 Straight Flush 4i ace 1.421 1 Royal Flush 3 1.098 1 Straight Flush 3 1.091 1 deuce alone 1.029 0 Royal Flush 4 19.626 0 Straight Flush 9 0 Flush or Straight 2 0 Straight Flush 4 1.643 0 Straight Flush 4i 1.370 0 Royal Flush 3 1.325 0 Straight Flush 4i ace 1.106 0 one pair ** .561 0 Straight Flush 3 .520 0 Flush 4 or Straight 4 .511 0 Straight Flush 3 i .438 0 J-10 suited .362 0 Straight Flush 3 di .355 0 Straight 4 i .340 0 Q-J or Q-10 suited .332 0 garbage - draw 5 .322 * Don't break up 5-of-a-kinds of tens through aces. The removal of those 2 cards reduces the wild royal possibilities. OTOH, discarding two low cards makes 3 deuces alone worth 15.06. ** Never draw to 2 pair. Discard either pair and draw 3. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How is Baccarat played? A:M1 (Steve Jacobs, Steve Brecher) Baccarat is a card game that is dealt from a shoe that holds 6 or 8 decks of cards. Two hands are dealt by the house dealer, the "banker" hand and the "player" hand. Before the hands are dealt, bets may be placed on the banker hand, on the player hand, or on a tie. Winning bets on banker or player are paid 1:1, but a commission of 5% is charged on bank bets making the net odds on such bets 0.95 to 1. Some casinos may charge a lower commission (e.g., at this writing, Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas charges 4%.). Some sources report that tie bets are paid 8:1, while others claim that tie bets are paid 9:1, so this may vary from casino to casino. If there is a tie, bets on the banker or player are returned. Once a bet has been placed, there are no opportunities for further decisions -- both the banker hand and the player hand are dealt according to fixed rules, resulting in final hands of either two or three cards for each. The value of a hand is determined by adding the values of its individual cards. Tens and face cards are counted as zero, while all other cards are counted by the number of "pips" on the card face. Only the last digit of the total is used, so all baccarat hands have values in the range 0 to 9 inclusive. The hand with the higher value wins; if the hands have the same value, the result is a tie. A game is started by dealing two cards for the player hand and two cards for the bank hand. An initial hand with a value of 8 or 9 is called a "natural." If either hand is a natural, its holder must expose it and the game ends. Otherwise play continues, first with the player hand and then with the banker hand, according to the following rules. Rules for the player hand: If the player's first two cards total 6 or more, then the player must stand without drawing a card. If the player's first two cards total 5 or less, the player must draw one additional card. Rules for the banker hand: If the banker's first two cards total 7 or more, then the banker must stand without drawing a card. If the banker's first two cards total 0, 1, or 2, then the banker must draw one card. If the banker's first two cards total 3, 4, 5, or 6, then whether the banker draws is determined by the whether the player drew, and if so the value of the player's draw card, as shown by the table below. Bank Drawing vs. player's draw Bank N 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 <--- player's draw card ------------------------------------------ 5 D - - - - D D D D - - 4 D - - D D D D D D - - 3 D D D D D D D D D - D 2 D D D D D D D D D D D 1 D D D D D D D D D D D 0 D D D D D D D D D D D ------------------------------------------ D = draw, N = no card drawn by player The probability distribution for a hand dealt from a complete shoe is as follows: of bank win of player win of tie ---------------------------------------------------------- 6 decks 0.458652719 0.446278570 0.095068711 8 decks 0.458597423 0.446246609 0.095155968 This implies the following house advantages: Bet bank Bet bank Bet player Bet tie Bet tie decks 5% vig. 4% vig. 9:1 8:1 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 6 1.05585% 0.59720% 1.23741% 4.93129% 14.43816% 8 1.05791% 0.59931% 1.23508% 4.84403% 14.35963% Edward O. Thorp and others have determined that card counting is not effective in overcoming the house edge at the baccarat tables. Compared to blackjack, card counting is about 9 times less effective when used against baccarat. See Thorp's "The Mathematics of Gambling" for details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:M2 How is Red Dog played? A:M2 (Steve Jacobs) "Red Dog" is also known as "Acey-Deucey" or "between the sheets". It is a card game that is usually dealt from a shoe containing four or five decks, although single deck games can be found occasionally, as can games with 6 or 8 decks. After the players bet, two cards are dealt face up on the table. If the two cards are adjacent, it is a tie. If the two cards are not identical, the player is allowed to place a "raise" bet, up to the size of the original bet. If the third card drawn is _between_ the first two cards, the player wins. If the first two cards are identical the player is not allowed to raise, and if the third card matches the first two, the player is paid 11:1. Payoffs are at even money unless the first two cards are a pair or the "spread" is 3 or less. Spread Payoff pair 11:1 (w/ matching 3rd card) pair push (w/ non-matching 3rd card) 0 (adjacent) push The number of players at the table is totally irrelevant, since all players win or lose simultaneously. The only strategy decision that the player is allowed to make is whether or not to double the bet. With these payoffs, the bet should be doubled only when the spread is 7 or greater. The house edge for Red Dog is about 3%, and decreases slightly as more decks are used. Q:M3 How is Caribbean Stud Poker played? A:M3 (Steve Brecher) The player antes, and is then dealt a five-card hand; the dealer is also dealt five cards of which only one is exposed. The player now either folds, losing his ante, or bets an additional amount equal to exactly twice the ante. The dealer then reveals his remaining four cards. If the dealer's hand is not Ace-King or better, the player is paid even money on the ante and nothing (i.e., a push) on the bet. If the dealer's hand is Ace-King or better it is said to "qualify" (for play against the player). In that case if the dealer's hand is better than the player's, the player's ante and bet are collected by the house. If the dealer's qualifying hand is worse than the player's hand, the player is paid even money on the ante and an amount on the bet according to the player's hand as follows: three of a kind 3:1 straight 4:1 four of a kind 20:1 straight flush 50:1 There is an optional independent side bet of $1.00 available for which the player is paid for being dealt premium hands (flush or better); the payoff of this side bet is based on a progressive jackpot for straight flushes (10% of jackpot) and royal flushes (100%), although some places cap the straight flush payoff (e.g., $5000 max). The jackpot bet is extremely unfavorable except for the case of a very large jackpot. If the jackpot payoff is $50/75/100 for flush/full house/quads and there is no straight flush cap, then the expected return per $1 jackpot bet is approximately $0.23 plus 2.924 cents for each $10,000 in the jackpot; if the flush/ full house/quads payoff is $100/250/500, the expected return is approximately $0.68 plus 2.924 cents for each $10,000 in the jackpot. Examples: Jackpot Expectation per $1 bet ------- 50/75/100 100/250/500 --flush/full/quads payoffs If the jackpot payoffs are different, you can calculate the expectation from the following formula: 0.0019654flush$ + 0.0014406fullHouse$ + 0.00024010quads$ + f(0.00000013852straightFlush%JP, straightFlushCap$) + 0.0000015391JP --where * denotes multiplication, JP is the size of the jackpot, and f(x,y) is equal to the smaller of x and y if there is a cap on the straight flush payout or equal to x if there is no cap. My analysis of the basic game: When the dealer doesn't qualify the player's bet wins the ante and the dealer's payoff on the ante. In other words, if the dealer doesn't qualify the player is paid even money on the bet. However, in the long run the dealer will qualify 56.3% of the time. A bluff is always an unfavorable bet. Even the best possible bluff--where the player holds an Ace or King, another card which matches the dealer's upcard, and a four-flush of the same suit as the dealer's upcard--is unfavorable. This means that a player who always folds hands worse than Ace-King will lose less in the long run than one who sometimes bluffs. A pair or better should always be bet. A bet on even the worst possible pair--deuces, with no Ace nor King, no card matching the dealer's upcard, and no card of the same suit as the dealer's upcard--yields an expected profit. This means that a player who always bets a pair of deuces or better will lose less in the long run than one who sometimes folds such hands. The dealer will fail to qualify 43.7% of the time, and will qualify with an Ace-King (no pair) 6.4% of the time. The player who holds an Ace-King and bets will win even money more than 43.7% of the time (because the player's holding Ace-King reduces the chance of the dealer qualifying), and will be paid two to one (1:1 bet payoff plus 0.5:1 ante plus 0.5:1 ante payoff) when the player's Ace-King beats the dealer's. Therefore, there are some player Ace-King hands which should be bet, depending on what other cards the player holds. For example, if the player holds a card having the same value as the dealer's upcard, the chance of the dealer having a pair is reduced. The optimum strategy is to bet when the player holds: (1) AKQJ or better (including any pair or better) or (2a) AKQxx with any card in player's hand matching dealer's upcard; or (2b) with both x cards having higher value than dealer's upcard; or (2c) with a four flush of the same suit as dealer's upcard and: at least one of the x cards being either: 8 or better (i.e., 8, 9, or 10) or of higher value than dealer's upcard. or (3) AKJ with any card in player's hand matching dealer's upcard or (4) AKxxx with any x card matching dealer's upcard The results of this strategy and two simpler strategies are shown below, each based on computer simulation of 200 million deals. "Expected loss per ante amount per hand" is the average amount that the player will lose per hand in the long run as a percentage of the ante amount. "Payback per $1 risked" is the average long run total payback on each dollar wagered--on antes plus bets. Expected loss per Strategy Bet frequency ante amount per hand Payback per $1 risked Optimum 52.0% 5.23% $0.9743 Bet any pair or better 49.9% 5.48% $0.9726 Bet Ace-King or better 56.3% 5.75% $0.9729 For the casual player, "Bet any pair or better" is the recommended strategy. The expected difference in total loss versus the optimum strategy over a couple of hundred hands is about half of one ante. "Bet Ace-King or better" provides more betting action at the cost of another half an ante per couple of hundred hands. Q:M4 Can the lottery be beat when the jackpot gets high enough? A:M4 (David Guercio) If "beating" the lotto means having a payback/risk ratio of greater than 1, I would say that state lottos are definitely beatable. In Texas Pick-6 lotto, you pick 6 mutually exclusive numbers from 1 to 50. That gives you approximately 1/16,000,000 chance of winning. Many people do not play until the lotto jackpot goes over $16,000,000, as a result. It's a little more complicated than that though, because the money is paid out over 20 years, and you have to account for inflation. The actual value of the money you get paid is (assuming constant %5 inflation) is the jackpot divided by 20 times the sum from 0 to 19 of (.95)*N, where N is the summation index. The sum is 12.83, in this example, so you really need to wait until the lotto is (20/12.83)16,000,000, or approximately $25 million. Texas Pick-6 frequently exceeds this total, but resets to $3 million when somebody wins. Of course, all this is predicated on being the sole winner of a $25 million lotto, or at least, say, winning $75 million and splitting with at most two other people. You can reduce the number of people that you split with by picking the numbers that nobody else does. I use this formula in picking numbers: 1. People tend to play birthdays. Don't pick any number less than 32. 2. People sometimes will play geometric sequences on the card, such as rows, and columns, and diagonals. Don't pick these either. 3. Even educated people will refuse to play a numeric sequence, such as 32-33-34-35-36-37, because they think that it isn't "random enough". Sequences are good to pick, as long as they do not occupy a single row or column. Q:M5 How is Pai Gow Poker played? A:M5 (John F. Reeves) Pai-gow poker is a banking poker game played in Las Vegas and some of the California card clubs. The object of pai-gow poker is to make two poker hands that beat the banker's hands. The player is dealt 7 cards that he makes into a five card hand (high hand) and a two card hand (low hand). The hands are played and ranked as traditional poker hands (with one exception: A2345 is the second highest straight), and the 5 card hand must be higher than the 2 card hand. If both hands are better than the banker's hand, you win, if both lose, you lose, otherwise it's a push. The banker wins absolute ties (i.e. K Q vs K Q). The game is played with a 52 cards plus one joker. The joker can be used as an Ace or to complete a flush or straight. The table layout has 7 spots one in front of the dealer and 6 for players, like this: Dealer Each player spot has spaces for a bet, low hand, high hand and sometimes the house commission. The dealer deals 7 7-card hands in front of the chip tray. The banker can be a player, but is usually the house. The banker designates which hands go to which player by shaking a dice cup with three dice; the banker's position is either 1, 8 or 15 and the hands are passed out counterclockwise. So, if the dealer is the bank and the dice total to 6, player 5 gets the first hand, player 6 gets the second, the dealer gets the third and so on. The dice mumbo-jumbo appears to be ritual stuff --- you don't need to worry about anything until you get your hand. The player puts the two card hand face down in the box closest to the dealer, and the five card hand face down in back. Once everybody has set their hand, the dealer turns over and sets the bank's hand. The dealer goes counterclockwise around the table comparing the banks hand to the players, and taking, paying, or knocking. There is a 5% commission on winning bets that you can either put out next to your winning bet, or the dealer will subtract from your payoff. The lowest minimum bet is $5, seen at the Imperial Place and Four Queens. In pai-gow poker, the only strategic decisions are how much to bet and how to set your hand. The simple basic strategy for setting your hand is to make the highest 2-card hand that is less than your five card hand. If you can't figure out what to do, you can show your hand to the dealer and they will tell you how the house would set it. Since pairs generally win the 2-card hands, and two-pair wins the 5-card hands, the only difficult decisions are when to split two pairs. The house rules at the Four Queens were not to split low pairs (<= 6) and not to split pairs <= 10 if there was a Ace high two card hand. So the house would set A 10 10 6 6 5 3 => A 5 / 10 10 6 6 3 K Q 10 10 6 6 3 => 6 6 / 10 10 K Q 3 A ``Pai-gow'' is a hand with no pairs, such as Q J / K 7 8 6 2. Things get a little weird if a player wants to be the bank. To quote from the IP house rules: ``The House Dealer or the player may be the ``BANKER.'' The Bank wagers against all players. The bank will alternate between the house and the player (the House Dealer will at least take the bank every other hand). The BANKER will be signified by a white plastic marker. A Bank Player must either cover half or all wagers against him/her. The House will co-bank at 50/50 only at the Bank Player's request. The hand will be set according to house way and the table limit will apply if the House acts as a co-banker. In order to bank, a player must have played the previous hand against the House. The House will wager a sum equal to that player's wager against the house the previous hand. The player may request that a smaller amount be wagered. A Banker must be bank at the same spot of the hand he previously played against the house.'' Got that?? In the CA card clubs, all wagering is between players, so the option to be the bank rotates among the active players. The rule differences from the IP rules are that the Joker is wild, and the house commission is a flat $1 per hand ($10 minimum bet). Pai-gow poker is an easy game to play, and since each hand takes a while to play (dealer has to shuffle for each game) and most hands push, you can play on $20 at a $5 table for quite a while. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:M6 How is Let It Ride played? A:M6 (Steve Brecher) Each player puts up three bets of identical size and is dealt three cards; two more cards are dealt face-down in front of the dealer. After examining his three cards, the player may elect to have one bet returned or to "let it ride." One of the down cards is then turned over, and then the player may again elect to have one bet returned -- this election is independent of the prior election. Up to this point players are not allowed to disclose their three-card hands to each other. Now the second down card is turned over; the player's three cards and the two common cards in front of the dealer comprise a five-card poker hand. The player is paid on each of his one, two or three remaining bets according to the following schedule: Pair of 10s or better 1:1 Two pair 2:1 Three of a kind 3:1 Straight 5:1 Four of a Kind 50:1 Straight Flush 200:1 Royal Flush 1000:1 Being able to have up to two of the three bets returned by the dealer is logically equivalent to starting with one bet and being allowed to put out up to two more. I surmise that the game is structured as it is because it would otherwise be too easy for players to covertly press bets -- the bet circles on the layout are quite close together. The optimal strategy for this game is as follows. On the first three cards, take back a bet unless one holds: --a pair of 10s or better, or three of a kind; or --three cards to a straight flush, provided: --contiguous and 543 or higher, or --one "hole" and at least one card is 10 or higher, or --two "holes" and at least two cards are 10 or higher. On the fourth card, take back a bet unless one has: --a pair of 10s or better, two pair, or three or four of a kind; or --a four-flush; or --an open-ended straight including a 10 or higher. The following bets are optional, i.e., expected return = 1.000... --an open-ended straight not including a 10 or higher; or --all cards 10 or higher (an inside A-to-10 straight). Playing this strategy provides an expected return of 0.971352 per unit bet. The average bet per hand is 1.223707 units (where one to three units are bet per hand and no optional bets are made), and the average unit cost per hand is 0.035057. Frequently Asked Questions about Sports Betting This is the rec.gambling.sports Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. Most of the information in the FAQ was taken from the Art Manteris book "Superbookie". Published by Contemporary Books Inc. Copyright 1991. Changes or additions to this section of the FAQ should be submitted to: S1 Where can I bet legally on Sports? S2 What sports can I bet on? S3 What is "the spread"? S4 Why do I have to bet $11 to win $10? S5 What are all of the different types of bets? S6 Can I make a million dollars with one bet? S7 Who makes the odds? S8 Do I have to be over 21 to bet on sports? S9 What is the minimum bet that must be reported to the IRS? S10 Are there any good books or articles on sports gambling topics? S11 What internet resources and sports computer data services are available to those interested in sports gambling? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S1 Where can I bet legally on Sports? A:S1 (Philip Galanter) Leaving aside various forms of (animal) racing, there are at least four ways to bet on sports in the US, and of these two are legal, one is illegal, and one is ambiguous. You can bet legally at licensed Nevada Sports Books, and illegally with bookies in virtually every town. Most of the following describes the ins and outs of gambling at sports books. There are two points worth noting here. First, Nevada Sports Books can set up phone accounts, but will not accept wagers across state lines. Second, odds with illegal bookies are often worse than those one can get in Nevada. Betting with offshore (international) sports books seems to be on the rise, and promises to spread from phone services to internet based online services. From the point of view of bets and odds offered, these books are similar to licensed Nevada Sports Books. The legality of these services is, at best, ambiguous. There are claims and opinions on all sides of the argument, but few legal precedents. In addition, some offshore books are run by old trustworthy firms, some are fly-by-night scams, and many are somewhere in between. Cavaet Bettor. The last way (and other than in state Nevada betting the only other clearly legal way) to bet on sports in the US is the Oregon Lottery. This was described as follows in a rec.gambling post: The Oregon lottery is alive and well as far as football betting. The game is called sports action. The line is set by Jim Feist. It is set and printed on Wednesday and does not change. This can work to the bettor's advantage due to changes in team lineups due to injuries and such. The minimum wager is $2.00 and the minimum number of games bet is 3. The payoffs for a three game win is $5.00 per dollar wagered. Four games gets $10.00 per dollar wagered. All other wagers are paid on a paramutual fashion. For example, a seven game winner usually pays around $160 to $350. The maximum number of games that can be bet have a winner. A week or two ago $14,000 carried over in the 14 pool. There are also some games that are called special play games with over/under total score. The line seems to be fairly consistent with the Vegas line on the Wednesday that it is set. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S2 What sports can I bet on? A:S2 You can bet on any sport the Sports Book you are wagering with covers. At most books, this includes professional and college football and basketball, professional baseball, professional hockey, and horse and dog racing. Every now and then Sports Books will offer proposition bets (see below) on events like professional golf tournaments and the Indy 500 and the like, but not on a regular basis for other events in those sports. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S3 What is "the spread"? A:S3 The spread is a point advantage given to a weaker team that is expected to lose by X number of points. This is the odds makers way of making even bets possible for a Sports Book. Usually if you bet against the spread you make an 11-10 bet. This means that you win $10 if you bet $11 for a total of $21 if your team covers the spread. A team covers the spread if it wins the game with the score modified by the spread. If Dallas and Washington are playing and the spread is (Dallas -7), then Dallas has to win by at least 8 points to cover. Half-point spreads are also possible. Q:S4 Why do I have to bet $11 to win $10? A:S4 This is one of the many ways the Sports book makes it's money. In an ideal situation, the same amount of money will be bet on both sides of the line and the Sports Book will take it's 10% from the losing side. If $55000 ($50000 and an addition $5000 to make the bets) was bet on Washington and $55000 bet on Dallas, no matter who wins the game the SB will make $5000. In case of a tie, all money is refunded. This is a rather simplified version as the spread moves when one side becomes more heavily bet on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S5 What are all of the different types of bets? A:S5 Proposition bet A prop bet is a bet the SB offers at odds and conditions of it's choosing. Prop bets can be exotic bets like which team will score the most touchdowns, which team will shoot the most three pointers, which running back will rush for the most yards, etc. Most prop bets are offered at 11-10 odds, but some of the exotics will be offered at better or worse odds, depending on the bet. Money Line Bets A money line bet is a bet on the straight up total of an event or the odds for a straight up prop bet. There are two totals given for either side on a money line bet. A negative and a plus side. Dallas -170 Washington +150 What this means is that for every $17 you bet on Dallas, you win $10 if they win. For every $10 you bet on Washington, you win $15 if they win. This is the way SB's make money off games by not giving points. Spread Bets These are the standard bets to make. Basically a proposition bet at 11-10 odds where the conditions are you give or take points on the team you are betting on hoping that the modified total of your teams score beats the other teams straight score. Bets on the spread are often know as straight bets because they pay even money (minus the 10% vig). Tampa Bay +19 1/2 Miami -19 1/2 This means that if you bet on Miami, Miami needs to score at least 20 more points than Tampa to cover. If you bet on Tampa, the score must be at least within 19 for you to win. The bottom team is almost always the home team. Over/Under Bets These are also 11-10 bets on what the total of the game will be. If the total posted on a game is 39 1/2 points, then you can wager that the total score of both teams added together will be either over or under the posted total. Betting the over is known as "betting on the ball", betting under is known as "betting on the clock". Chicago -5 1/2 -180 1:00 pm Atlanta +5 1/2 +150 42 1/2 This gives the money line, the point spread, and the total for the game. It also tells you that Atlanta is the home team, and the game starts at 1:00 pm. As far as I know, this is the standard posting at mosts Books. Parlays A parlay bet is betting on the outcome of two or more events, and getting higher odds than betting on the outcome of both events. The drawback is that the odds aren't right and that you must win all of the events to win the parlay. # of plays Standard Odds True Odds ---------- ------------- --------- 7 plays 80-1 127-1 The more events parlayed the worse the odds shift in the casinos advantage. The advantage for the player for parlays lies in the fact that he can bet more on the same game (spread and over/under) and he can bet more on two teams who are playing at the same time. In order to be competitive, some casinos offer ties-win parlay cards. This greatly helps the player. The Las Vegas Hilton SB is one of these. Teasers A teaser bet is a bet where you can move the spread by a set amount, but have to pay to do it. You must bet at least two teams like a parlay and win both. You can move the spread by on all the games by the set amount. Football Teasers # of teams 6 pts 6 1/2 pts 7 pts ---------- ----- --------- ----- 2 teams 11-10 5-6 5-7 3 teams 8-5 3-2 6-5 4 teams 5-2 2-1 9-5 5 teams 4-1 7-2 3-1 6 teams 6-1 5-1 4-1 Basketball Teasers # of teams 4 pts 4 1/2 pts 5 pts ---------- ----- --------- ----- 2 teams 11-10 5-6 5-7 3 teams 8-5 3-2 6-5 4 teams 5-2 2-1 9-5 5 teams 4-1 7-2 3-1 6 teams 6-1 5-1 9-2 Buying a half point You can shift the spread a half point in your favor by laying 6-5 odds instead of the standard 11-10. This is called buying a half point. You usually want to stay away from this bet except on three point spreads on football games. This is also know as "buying the hook". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S6 Can I make a million dollars with one bet? A:S6 Sure. Bet $1,100,000 straight up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S7 Who makes the odds? A:S7 (Philip Galanter) Las Vegas Sports Consultants Inc., establishes the odds for about 75% of the licensed Sports Books in Nevada, as well as for the Oregon State Lottery. It is run by Michael 'Roxy' Roxborough. He also operates as a consultant on gaming strategies, management, marketing, and personnel. Most illegal books in and out of Nevada draw their odds from what is posted at the various casinos. Transmitting gambling information across state lines for the purpose of placing or taking bets is illegal. News items about point spreads and the like can be reported for informational and entertainment purposes only. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S8 Do I have to be over 21 to bet on sports? A:S8 Q:S9 What is the minimum bet that must be reported to the IRS? A:S9 Well all gambling wins and losses are supposed to be reported to the IRS at the end of the year, but if you bet more than $10,000 at once, you must fill out some IRS paperwork at the ticket counter. All money won must be reported to the IRS. Q:S10 Are there any good books or articles on sports gambling topics? A:S10 (Philip Galanter) Here are some sports gambling related books I've found to be useful, in suggested reading order for beginners. The obscure ones I've purchased from the Gamblers Book Club, although I don't know if they are still in print. I tend to like writers that are objective and more interested in your winning than being a fan. Orkin, Mike. "Can You Win?", W.H.Freeman and Co., 1991. IBSN 0-7167-2155-4 (soft) Presents a general overview of gambling presenting the real odds of various games. It only assumes a high school level of mathematics understanding. The 32 page section on sports betting doubles as a guide to the various betting options available, and there is also a 16 page section on horserace betting. A brief treatment on Kelly betting as applied to sports gambling is included. An overview concentrating on the question posed by the title, the author concludes the sports section with the observation: "If you're going to gamble, which games should you play? I recommend sports betting. There are two reasons for this: 1 - Unlike in roulette, craps, and keno, it's impossible to prove that you can't win in the long run. 2 - When you win, it's because you're smart, and when you lose, it's because somebody fumbled." Sugar, Bert Randolph. "The Caesars Palace Sports Book of Betting", St. Martin's Press, 1992. IBSN 0-312-05058-5 (paper) The author is a well known sports writer and Las Vegas insider. A good popular introduction to sports betting with equal amounts of information on betting terms, options, odds, and the like, various considerations for each major sport; advice on handicapping based on matchups, streaks, injuries and stat.s; history and color; and money management. Manteris, Art, (with Rick Talley). "SuperBookie - Inside Las Vegas Sports Gambling", Contemporary Books, 1991. IBSN 0-8092-4430-6 (cloth) 0-8092-3845-4 (paper) A good second book to read, after perhaps the Sugar or Orkin books as an introduction, Manteris shares his observations as the Director of the Hilton Race and Sports Organization...aka the SuperBook. Interesting stories about the early days, why the house doesn't always win, how point spreads are set and moved as a practical matter, how the house calculates its take, scams, mob involvement (now mostly not) and more. Peter Asch and Richard E. Quandt. "Racetrack Betting - The Professors' Guide to Strategies", Praeger Publishers, 1986. IBSN 0-275-94103-5 (paper) Written by 2 academics from Rutgers and Princeton, this book seems to be a trustworthy analysis of betting at the horseraces. Included is an overview and analysis of popular strategies, subjective and objective analysis of available information and statistics, utility functions as applied to the public and wagering behavior (important given the paramutual basis of the odds), and the bottom line on some complex systems by the authors, Ziemba, and Quandt which seem to actually work. Bob Carrol, Pete Palmer, and John Thorn. "The Hidden Game of Football", Warner Books, 1988. IBSN 0-446-39091-7 (paper) While addressing sports betting only in passing, this book concentrates on innovative methods for detailed sports statistics analysis leading to accurate predictions. "Scientific" handicappers will find this book very stimulating. Miller, Colonel J.R. "How Professional Gamblers Beat the Pro Football Pointspread - a step by step textbook guide", Flying M Group, 1993. IBSN 0-9636500-0-9 (spiral bound) This is a self published specialty book available from Gamblers Book Club or by mail order. While the quality of most spiral bound gambling editions are suspect, this book is reasonably good. It provides a detailed analysis of how a serious gambler factors in pointspreads, power ratings, injuries, motivations, weather, and statistics to win over the long haul. The section on money management should be taken with a grain of salt, as it proposes flat betting as almost optimal, a modified plateau system as even better, and the "Kelly system" as a formula for disaster, in a rather unqualified way. Michael Roxborough and Mike Rhoden. "Race and Sports Book Management - a guide for the legal bookmaker", (publisher not noted) 1991. IBSN 0-31-53873-6 (spiral bound) Written by "Roxy" Roxborough, the provider of the spread and other services to most major sports books in Nevada via his Las Vegas Sports Consultants Inc. This book covers in moderate detail the mechanics of running a legal sports book, including setting and moving the spread, various economic measures such as the handle and practical hold percentage, overlays, parlays, limits, the law and regulations. Pascual, M. "Bankroll Control - the mathematics of money management", (publisher not noted) 1987. No IBSN noted. While poorly published (xeroxed, white-out corrections, hand written corrections and page numbers) this odd and perhaps difficult to find spiral book is a treasure trove of practical analysis applying Kelly betting to sports and racing gambling. Theory is light and presented with (hand drawn) graphs where possible. The book presents a numerical recipe approach to even complicated betting scenarios such as simultaneous games, simultaneous single and multiple parlay plays, win-show-place betting, and more. Also included are some useful tables (variables include % of wins, number of teams, variations to include parlays or not) showing optimal bets, risk and expectancy. Also included are some program listings in BASIC for (now mostly obsolete) hand calculators that may be useful as pseudocode. The cosmetics do not, however, inspire trust. It would be nice if a r.g math weenie would review it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:S11 What internet resources and sports computer data services are available to those interested in sports gambling? A:S11 (Philip Galanter) where sports information is kept within the rec.gambling FAQ. (The entire rec.gambling FAQ is at http://www.conjelco.com/faq/ ) where Jim Feist provides useful sports gambling information (intro, rules, lines, LV sports books) as well as ads for his tout services. a good "jump site" with links to all manner of football information, including betting info. used to manage an NFL Pool, but also has links to sports gambling information. provides general sports information including schedules and team statistics some might find useful in handicapping. provides power ratings, statistics, and other information of interest to NFL handicappers. Sports International's on-line sports betting service. E-Mail Lists has offered an NFL handicapping contest for several years. The weekly results are posted in rec.gambling so only potential contestants need contact him directly. can be contacted for what is by most accounts the best resource for racing fans. Join the list-server for all manner of discussion and information for the beginner and the advanced handicapper/gambler. can be contacted to join a list-server which provides lines and discussion of popular sports such as football and basketball. provides periodic line and pick information along with information about their tout service. all anonymous ftp sites in support of the Derby mailing list noted above. Commercial BBS's provides raw historical and current data for sports and race fans, as well as analysis software for computerized handicapping. CSW also provides other related information services. seems to be a (the?) definitive resource for racing information used in handicapping. Frequently Asked Questions about Craps This is the rec.gambling.craps Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. Changes or additions to this section of the FAQ should be submitted to: C1 What special terminology is used at the Craps table? C2 How is Craps played? C3 What are "Odds?" C4 What is the house advantage on 10x odds? C5 What are "Come" and "Don't Come" bets? C6 What are all those other bets? C7 What are the odds for all these bets? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:C1 What special terminology is used at the Craps table? A:C1 (Steve Jacobs, Ken Elliott III, Dave Everett) Craps Terminology: any craps a bet that the next roll will be 2, 3, or 12. This bet pays 7:1 and has a house edge of 11.1%. 3-way craps a bet made in units of 3 with one unit on 2, one unit on 3, and one unit on 12. This is a horn bet without the bet on 11. any seven a bet that the next roll will be 7. This bet pays 4:1 and has a house edge of 16.7%. big 6 a bet that a 6 will be rolled before a 7 comes up. This bet pays even money, and has a house edge of 9.1%. A place bet on 6 pays 7:6 but is identical otherwise. The place bet is preferred, having a house edge of 1.5% big 8 a bet that an 8 will be rolled before a 7 comes up. This bet pays even money, and has a house edge of 9.1%. A place bet on 8 pays 7:6 but is identical otherwise. The place bet is preferred, having a house edge of 1.5% buy bet giving the house a 5% commission in order to be paid correct odds for a place bet. The buy bets on 4 and 10 allow the player to reduce the house edge from 6.67% to 4% on these bets. Some casinos collect the commission only on winning bets, while others collect it at the time the bet is made. come bet A "virtual pass line bet"; a bet made after the come out roll but in other respects exactly like a pass line bet. See question C5 for more details. come out roll the first roll of the dice in a betting round is called the "come out" roll. Pass bets win when the come out roll is 7 or 11, while pass bets lose when the come out roll is 2, 3, or 12. Don't bets lose when the come out roll is 7 or 11, and don't bets win when the come out roll is 2 or 3. Don't bets tie when the come out roll is 12 (2 in some casinos; the "bar" roll on the layout indicates which roll is treated as a tie). dice pass The dice are said to "pass" when the shooter rolls a 7 or 11 on the come-out roll. The dice "don't pass" when the shooter rolls a 2, 3, or 12 on the come-out. If the come-out roll is a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10, this roll sets the "point", and the shooter continues to roll until the point is rolled again or a 7 is rolled (see "seven out"). If the shooter rolls the point before rolling a seven, the dice pass. If the shooter sevens out, the dice don't pass and the shooter loses control of the dice. NOTE: in this context, "pass" does NOT mean that the dice to given to the next player. Control of the dice is transferred only when the shooter "sevens out" or when the shooter has completed a game and no longer wishes to roll the dice. A "virtual don't pass bet"; a bet made after the come out roll but in other respects exactly like a don't pass bet. See question C5 for more details. a bet that the dice will not pass. This bet can be placed only immediately before a "come out" roll. One result (either the 2 or the 12, depending on the casino) will result in a push. House edge on these bets is 1.40%. A don't pass bet can be taken down, but not increased, after the come-out roll. an odds bet that is about twice as large as the original pass/come bet. Some casinos offer higher odds, such as 5X or even 10X odds. field bet a bet that the next roll will be 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, or 12. This bet pays even money for 3, 4, 9, 10, and 11, and usually pays 2:1 for 2 or 12. Some casinos pay 3:1 for either the 2 or 12 (but not both), and some casinos may make the 5 instead of the 9 a field roll. hard way a bet on 4, 6, 8, or 10 that wins only if the dice show the same face; e.g., "hard 8" occurs when each die shows a four. hop bet a bet that the next roll will result in one particular combination of the dice, such as 2-2 (called a "hopping hardway") or 3-5. 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, and 5-5 are paid the same as a one-roll 2; other hop bets are paid the same as a one-roll 11. horn bet a bet that the next roll will be 2, 3, 11, or 12, made in multiples of 4, with one unit on each of the numbers. horn high bet a bet made in multiples of 5 with one unit on 3 of the horn numbers, and two units on the "high" number; e.g., "$5 horn high eleven": $1 each on 2, 3, 12, and $2 on the 11. lay bet a bet that a particular number (4,5,6,8,9, or 10) will NOT be rolled before a 7 comes up. The casino takes 5% of the winnings on these bets. The 5% commission is usually taken up front, but some casinos take the commission after the bet wins. lay odds after a point has been established, the don't pass bettor can place an additional odds bet that will win if the original don't pass bet wins. The odds bet is paid at the correct odds for the point, and is a fair bet with no house edge. This also applies to a don't come bet. Making this bets is referred to "laying the odds" for your don't bet. line bet a bet on the "pass line" or the "don't pass line" is called a "line" bet. These bets are placed at the beginning of the game, before the "come out" roll. The shooter is required to make a line bet in order to shoot the dice. odds bets that are "not working". Odds bets can be called "off" by the player at any time, but are left on the felt until the bet is resolved. Also, come odds bets are usually "off" during the come out roll, unless the bettor asks to have the odds bets "working". Come odd bets that are "off" will be returned to the player if the line bet loses on the come out roll. Don't come odds generally work on the come-out roll. pass bet a bet that the dice will pass, also known as a "pass line" bet. This bet is generally placed immediately before a "come out" roll, although you can make or increase this bet at any time. House edge on this bets is 1.41%. place bet (to win) a bet that a particular number (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10) will be rolled before a 7 comes up. These bets are paid at slightly less than correct odds, giving the house an edge of 1.52% on 6/8, 4% on 5/9, and 6.67% on 4/10. a bet that a 7 will be rolled before the number you are placing (4,5,6,8,9, or 10) comes up. The casino requires you to lay slightly more than the correct odds, giving the house an edge of 3.03% on 4/10, 2.5% on 5/9, and 1.82% on 6/8. point if a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10 is rolled on the come out roll, then this number becomes the "point". The shooter must roll the point again, before rolling a seven, in order for the dice to "pass". A "come point" is just the number that is serving as a point for a come bet. put bet 1. A bet made on the pass line after the come out roll. This is allowed in Las Vegas and at Turning Stone, but not in Atlantic City and not at Foxwoods. This is not recommended, as 45% of your pass line wins are made on the come-out roll. 2. A bet made directly onto a come point number. E.g., "Put $5 and $10 odds on the six." Not recommended for the same reasons given in 1. a player who bets that the dice will pass. seven out when the shooter rolls seven after a point has been established. Control of the dice is transferred to the next shooter. Another term for this is "miss out." You will sometimes hear players call this something else, but we can't print those things here. This is often incorrectly called "crap out." the player who is rolling the dice. The shooter must place a "line" bet ("pass" or "don't pass") in order to be eligible to roll the dice. Of course, the shooter can place other bets in addition to the required "line" bet. Most shooters (and players) tend to play the "pass" line. Note that shooters who make "don't pass" bets are not betting against themselves, they are simply betting that the dice will not "pass". single odds an odds bet that is about as large as the original pass/come bet. Some casinos allow "double odds", or even larger odds bets. take odds after a point has been established, the pass/come bettor can place an additional odds bet that will win if the original pass/come bet wins. The odds bet is paid at the correct odds for the point, and is a fair bet with no house edge. a phrase appended to a hardway or proposition bet to indicate that the player is betting one chip for the dealers along with his own bet. A $2 bet two ways is $1 for the player and $1 for the dealers; a $6 bet two ways is $5 for the player and $1 for the dealers; a $10 bet two ways is $5 for the player and $5 for the dealers. E.g., "Hard 6, two ways" or "Two-way hard 6." bets that are "live" (i.e., can be resolved with the next roll) are said to be working. Generally, place bets, buy/lay bets, and come odds bets do not work on the come-out unless you tell the dealers to "make them work." All other bets (e.g., hardways) work unless you call them "off" (i.e., tell the dealers you do not want them to "work"). world bet a bet that the next roll will be 2, 3, 7, 11, or 12, made in multiples of 5, with one unit on each of the numbers. wrong bettor a player who bets that the dice will not pass. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:C2 How is Craps played? A:C2 (Dave Decot, Frank Irwin, Alan Mintz, Ken Elliott III, Jeffrey Osier) Casino craps is played completely against the casino, on a big felt layout set inside a large table with high rails around the side so you can bounce the dice off 'em and still keep 'em on the table. Up to between 12 and 16 people can play at once, depending on the size of the table (obviously). The layout looks something like: Dealer stands Boxman sits Dealer stands here here here ####################################################################### # __ ____________________ $$$$$$$$$$$$$ ____________________ __ # # \| d\|\|DC\| 4\| 5\| 6\| 8\| 9\|10\| +---------------+ \| 4\| 5\| 6\| 8\| 9\|10\|DC\|\|d \| # # \|Po\|\|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\| \|any seven 4-1\| \|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\|__\|\|oP\| # # \|An\| ____________________ +===============+ ____________________ \|nA\| # # \|St\|\| C O M E \| \|hard 4 \| hard 6\| \| C O M E \|\|tS\| # # \|Sp\|\|____________________\| \|-------+-------\| \|____________________\|\|pS\| # # \|La\| ____________________ \|hard 10\| hard 8\| ____________________ \|aL\| # # \|Is\|\|2 3 4 9 10 11 12\| +===============+ \|2 3 4 9 10 11 12\|\|sI\| # # \|Ns\|\|_______FIELD________\| \|two \| three\| \|_______FIELD________\|\|sN\| # # \|E \|_____________________ \|-----HORN------\| _____________________\| E\| # # \| don't pass bar 12 \| \|eleven \| twelve\| \| don't pass bar 12 \| # # \________PASS_LINE______\| +===============+ \|________PASS_LINE______/ # here Each player bets a minimum amount determined by the table. Each die has six sides, each side with a different number of spots from one to six. Two such dice are rolled by one player called the "shooter". The shooter must place a "pass" bet or a "don't pass" bet in order to be eligible to roll the dice. Exception: the shooter can let his Hot Babe (TM) roll the dice for him if he has a pass or don't pass bet down. The total number of spots on the tops of the dice after the shooter has rolled is called the "roll". A game consists of a series of rolls. A roll of 2, 3, or 12 is called "craps". The first roll by the shooter during a game is called the "come-out roll". If the come-out roll is 7 or 11, the game is over: Bets on the "Pass line" win 1:1. Bets on the "Don't Pass line" lose. If the come-out roll is craps, the game is over: Bets on the "Pass line" lose. Bets on the "Don't Pass line" win unless: The "Don't Pass" line says "Bar " and the roll is the indicated value, in which case the bet pushes. Otherwise, the come-out roll becomes the "point", and a large white marker is placed on the number representing the point (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10). For each roll in a game subsequent to the come-out roll: If the roll is the point, the game is over: Bets on the "Pass line" win 1:1. Bets on the "Don't Pass line" lose. If the roll is 7, the game is over: Bets on the "Pass line" and lose. Bets on the "Don't Pass line" win 1:1. The turn of the "shooter" is over. Otherwise, the game continues and the shooter rolls again. During a game, bets on the Pass line cannot be removed; they can, however, be increased. Bets on the Don't Pass line may be decreased or removed, but not increased. When a game is over: If the game was over on the come-out roll, or because the point was rolled again, the shooter may continue to be the shooter for another game, or pass the dice on to the player just clockwise, who becomes the new shooter. Otherwise, the shooter must pass the dice on to the player just clockwise, who becomes the new shooter. Note: The other bets that can be made and resolved are not detailed above for purposes of saving space. A description of when these bets win or lose is given in question C1. A:C3 (thunk, Ken Elliott III) Casinos allow a player to place "odds" on pass, don't pass, come, and don't come bets after a "point" has been established. If the bet on which odds are placed wins, the odds bet is paid fairly. This means the odds on pass and come bets are paid 2-1 for the 4 and 10, 3-2 for the 5 and 9, and 6-5 for the 6 and 8. The odds for don't pass and don't come bets are paid 1-2 for the 4 and 10, 2-3 for the 5 and 9, and 5-6 for the 6 and 8 (this is called "laying" odds). The player should make odds bets that can be paid exactly, or the dealer will pay off by rounding down. Odds on the pass line and come bets should be a multiple 5 if the point is 6 or 8 and a multiple of 2 if it's a 5 or 9. (Don't betters can figure this out themselves.) Casinos advertise the maximum odds bets they allow as the maximum amount "times" the original bet the odds bet may be (for don't pass and don't come bets, it's the maximum amount "times" the expected win). You can increase your odds bet over this advertised maximum only enough to allow you to make an odds bet that can be paid exactly. A player can modify his odds bets at any time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:C4 What is the house advantage on 10x odds? A:C4 (Ken Elliott III, David Escoffery) The following table lists the house advantage for a pass bet and don't pass bet with the indicated odds. Remember, the house advantage indicates (mathematically) the percentage of your bet handle that the casino will win in the long run. Be aware, too, that higher odds often means a higher bet handle, which in turn leads to higher "variance;" that is, your bankroll may exhibit greater swings if you're used to betting $15 a hand ($5 pass bet at double odds) and suddenly start betting $55 a hand ($5 pass bet at 10x odds). HOUSE ADVANTAGE odds pass bet don't pass bet 0x 1.4141% 1.4026% Q:C5 What are "Come" and "Don't Come" bets? A:C5 (Dave Decot, Frank Irwin, Alan Mintz, Ken Elliott III) Other bets can be made during the game after the come-out roll by anyone, called "Come" and "Don't Come" bets. These are made by placing the bet on the "Come" box or the "Don't Come" box; these bets are regarded as Pass (Don't Pass) bets, but as if the very next roll of the dice were the "come-out" roll of a new game. For example, if a come bet is made and if the next roll is 7 or 11, the Come bet wins immediately; if the next roll is 2, 3, or 12, the Come bet loses immediately; otherwise, the number rolled is the point for that Come bet (called a come point). Such a Come bet is moved onto the area of the table where its point appears, awaiting a roll of either its point or seven. The game for a Come bet always continues until this happens, even though the shooter rolls the point for the Pass line, even though the shooter begins a new game for the Pass line, even though another shooter begins rolling, as long as the termination conditions for that Come bet have not yet occurred. Note that rolling a seven always terminates all Pass, Come, Don't Pass, and Don't Come games on the table; since it results in immediate win or loss. The payoffs for Come and Don't Come bets are the same as for Pass and Don't pass bets. It is possible to place odds bets on the points of your own Come and Don't Come bets by handing the bet to a dealer and stating that you want "odds on my ". Unless you specify otherwise, odds bets on Come are declared "not working" on a come out roll after a point is made. However, odds on Don't Come bets are usually working by default. Q:C6 What are all those other bets? A:C6 (Dave Decot, Frank Irwin, Ken Elliott III) Other bets are possible: Bets that an indicated number will be rolled before 7 is rolled (come-out rolls are ignored for the purpose of determining this, unless otherwise specified by the player making the bet). Place bets (to lose): Bets that a 7 will be rolled before the indicated number is rolled (come-out rolls are ignored for the purpose of determining this, unless otherwise specified by the player making the bet). One roll bets: Bets that a certain roll, or a certain pair of dice faces, or one of several rolls, will appear on the next roll of the dice. Such bets may be made before any roll. These all pay higher than 1:1, This includes "Any craps", "eleven", "seven", "Horn", and "field" bets. Field: A special case of one-roll bet. This pays 1-1 whenever 3, 4, 9, 10, or 11 is rolled, and possibly higher amounts when 2 or 12 is rolled. Hardways: Bets that a certain pair of dice faces will appear before 7 is rolled, and before any other pair of dice faces with the same total value are rolled. For example, a bet on "hard 4 (2 and 2)" loses when (1 and 3) is rolled, because this is an "easy way" to roll 4. A bet on "hard anything" loses when 7 is rolled. Bets that a certain pair of identical dice faces will appear on the next roll. These all pay 30:1 (or sometimes higher or lower). Horn bets: Basically, just betting on the 2,3,11, and 12 at once. This requires 4 units, since you are really making 4 bets. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:C7 What are the odds for all these bets? A:C7 (["Winning Casino Craps" by Edwin Silberstang], Ken Elliott III) Note that some casinos offer different payouts for prop bets, lower (promotional) commission on buy/lay bets, and collection of buy/lay bet vigorish only on winning bets, all of which change the "Casino Advantage" listed below. The numbers below represent those most commonly seen in Las Vegas. Bet Casino Payoff Casino Advantage Pass-Line 1:1 1.41% With Single Odds 1:1 + odds 0.8 With Double Odds 1:1 + odds 0.6 Come 1:1 1.41% With Single Odds 1:1 + odds 0.8 With Double Odds 1:1 + odds 0.6 Don't Pass 1:1 1.40% With Single Odds 1:1 + odds 0.8 With Double Odds 1:1 + odds 0.6 Don't Come 1:1 1.40% With Single Odds 1:1 + odds 0.8 With Double Odds 1:1 + odds 0.6 Place Numbers (to win) 4 or 10 9:5 6.67% 4 or 10 (bought) 2:1 (-5% commission) 4.76 5 or 9 7:5 4.0 6 or 8 7:6 1.52 Place Numbers (to lose) 4 or 10 5:11 3.03% 4 or 10 (laid) 1:2 (-5% commission) 2.44 5 or 9 5:8 2.5 6 or 8 4:5 1.82 Big 6 and Big 8 1:1 9.09% Field With 2 and 12 paying 2:1 1:1 except 2 & 12 5.55% With 2 pay 3:1, 12 pay 2:1 1:1 except 2 & 12 2.77% With 2 pay 2:1, 12 pay 3:1 1:1 except 2 & 12 2.77% In practically all casinos, odds on proposition bets are quoted as "x for y", which means that the casino takes your winning "x" bet and pays you "y", in contrast to what is done for other winning bets (e.g., if the "Any 7" bet is "5 for 1", when making a $1 bet and winning the casino will take your $1 and give you $5, for a "real" payoff of "4 to 1"). The numbers below are quoted as "x:y", not "x for y". Proposition Bets Bet True Odds Casino Payoff Casino Advantage Any 7 5:1 4:1 16.67% Any Craps 8:1 7:1 11.1 2 or 12 35:1 30:1 13.89 29:1 16.67 3 or 11 17:1 15:1 11.1 14:1 16.67 4 or 10 8:1 7:1 11.1% 6 or 8 10:1 9:1 9.09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frequently Asked Questions about Blackjack This is the rec.gambling.blackjack Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. Changes or additions to this section of the FAQ should be submitted to: B1 What do these funny acronyms mean ... B2 What special terminology is used by blackjack players? B3 What special terminology is used by card counters? B4 Why is there so much talk about blackjack in rec.gambling? B5 Is casino blackjack a "beatable" game. B6 How much of an advantage can card counting give? B7 Is card counting illegal? B8 Can the casino ban card counters? B9 What is the correct basic strategy for single deck Blackjack? B10 What is the correct basic strategy for Atlantic City blackjack? B11 What is the house edge when playing basic strategy? B12 Why are single deck games better than multi-deck games? B14 Do 'bad' players at third base have any effect on expected gain? B15 Where is the best place to sit at a blackjack table. B16 How is card counting done? B17 What counting system is "best"? B18 What counting system is easiest to use? B19 What BJ counting system is most effective? B20 Does penetration have any effect on basic strategy expectation? B21 What is the correct strategy for late surrender? B22 What is the correct strategy for "multi action" blackjack? B23 What is "Over/Under" Blackjack? B24 What is the counting strategy for Over/Under blackjack? B25 What are some good/bad books on Blackjack? B26 What are some other sources of blackjack/gambling information? B27 Is Ken Uston Dead? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B1 What do these funny acronyms mean ... A:B1 (Adbul Jalib M'hall) The acronyms that are often used in rec.gambling.blackjack are listed below. Abbreviations: H17 = Hit soft 17 (dealer must hit) S17 = Stand on any 17 (dealer must stand) DOA = Double On Any first two cards D10 = Double on 10 or 11 only DAS = Double After Splitting is allowed RSA = Re-Splitting Aces is allowed ESR = Early Surrender O/U = Over/Under 13 side bets are allowed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B2 What special terminology is used by blackjack players? A:B2 (Steve Jacobs, Dave Everett) Blackjack Terminology: a playing strategy that is designed to minimize the house edge as much as possible without using techniques such as card counting, shuffle tracking, or dealer tells. Basic strategy is used as a foundation for card counting, but is also used by many non-counters. burn card(s) cards that are discarded without being dealt to the players. After the cards are shuffled by the dealer and cut by one of the players, one or more cards are "burned" before any cards are dealt to the players. bust after a "hit", the player is said to "bust" if the new card causes the player's total to exceed 21. card counting a system for improving the player's edge by assigning "weights" to each card face and summing the card weights as each new card is turned face up. The "count" indicates when the game is favorable for the player, so that the player can place larger bets and/or make changes in playing strategy. cut card a (usually colored plastic) card that is used to cut the cards after they have been shuffled by the dealer. double down to double the initial bet and receive exactly one more card. The option to double is often allowed on the players first two cards only, although some casinos allow doubling after splitting a pair. Many Northern Nevada casinos allowing doubling only with a two-card total of 10 or 11. It is very rare to find games that allow doubling of hands that have more than two cards. to double down with less than 2X the original bet. Generally, when doubling is allowed, the player does not have to actually double his bet, but may increase it by any amount up to (but not more than) the original bet. surrender which is allowed even when the dealer has a natural. Very valuable to the player, but rarely offered by the casinos. even money taking insurance when holding a blackjack results in a net gain of one bet. Some casinos will allow the player to be paid without actually placing the insurance bet. This is called "taking even money". (See "insurance") first base the first player at a table to act on his/her hand is said to be sitting at "first base". to bet the same amount on each successive hand. hard hand any hand that is not a soft hand. heads up playing at a table that has no other players. hit drawing a new card to add to the player's or dealer's hand. hole card the dealer's card that is placed face down. insurance a side bet, of up to 1/2 the original bet, that is offered when the dealer's upcard is an ace. This bet pays 2:1 if the dealer has a natural 21. (Also see "even money") late surrender surrender which is only allowed when the dealer does not have a natural. If the dealer has a natural 21 (blackjack), the player's bet still loses in its entirety. If the dealer does not have a blackjack, the player loses half the bet and doesn't play the rest of the hand. natural a hand that totals 21 on the first two cards. over/under a rare bet that the first two player's cards will total over 13, or under 13, when aces are counted as one. preferential shuffling shuffling when the deck is favorable to the players, while avoiding a shuffle when the deck is unfavorable to the players. push a tie hand, the original bet is returned to the player. shoe a "box" for holding the undealt cards, usually used in multi-deck games. soft hand any hand that includes an ace that can be counted as 11 without having the value of the hand exceed 21. It is always possible to draw one card to a soft hand without busting. split hand hands that start with two cards of the same rank can be split to form two independent hands. This option is exercised by adding a new bet to the second hand, and these hands are played independently. spread to place more than one bet before the cards are dealt. stand any hand that has a small chance of winning regardless of how the hand is played (usually 12 - 16). the option to give back the player's first two cards in exchange for a refund of 1/2 of the original bet (rarely allowed). Some hands, such as 16 vs. dealer's 10, are so bad that surrender is less costly than playing the hand. third base the last player at a table to act on his/her hand is said to be sitting at "third base". the dealer's first card, dealt face up. The correct playing decision often involves some consideration of the dealer's upcard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B3 What special terminology is used by card counters? A:B3 (Steve Jacobs) a measure of how well the card weights correlate to the change in the player's favorability when the cards are seen by the player and removed from the deck. This gives an estimate of the accuracy of the card counting system. counting cards and waiting for the count to become favorable before sitting down to play. Usually done standing in back of the players. balanced count any counting system that has a count starting at zero when the cards are shuffled, and ending at zero when all cards in the deck(s) have been exposed. Most counting systems use a balanced count. bet spread the ratio between maximum and minimum bet size. A player who uses $20 maximum bets and $5 minimum bets is using a 4:1 bet spread. card weight the "value" assigned to each card face. This weight is added to the "count" as each new card is exposed. Weights are usually small integer values like -1, +1, or +2. count (noun) -- a number that represents the player's estimate of how favorable or unfavorable. a bet (usually large) placed at the "wrong" time, in order to fool the pit critters into thinking that the player is not counting cards. insurance correlation a measure of how well the card weights correlate to the change in the player's favorability for placing insurance bets. This gives an estimate of the accuracy of the card counting system for predicting when to take insurance. the number of cards that are dealt before the cards are shuffled. Penetration is usually expressed as a percentage of the cards, as in "75% penetration". Good penetration is extremely important to card counters. playing efficiency effectiveness of strategy variations in tracking the optimal playing strategy as the deck composition changes. Efficiency is given by E = AG / PG, where AG is the actual gain from making the strategy changes, and PG is the possible gain that could be made by using a playing strategy that is "computer perfect". the total of the weights of all cards that have been exposed since the cards were shuffled. a system to predict which sections of the deck/shoe will be favorable to the player, based on the locations of favorable sections of the previous deck/shoe, and on studying the method used to shuffle the cards. side count a count in addition to the "main" count, usually involving a single card face, as in "ace side count". strategy variations varying from basic strategy when the count indicates that it is profitable to do so. a deck that has a lower than average density of tens and face cards. ten rich a deck that has a higher than average density of tens and face cards. true count a count that is adjusted according to the number of undealt cards, usually by dividing the running count by the number of undealt decks (or half-decks). any counting system that has a count that starts or ends on a non-zero value (see "balanced count"). Red 7 is an example of an unbalanced count. wonging improving the player's edge by placing bets only when the count is favorable for the player, and "sitting out" when the count is unfavorable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B4 Why is there so much talk about blackjack in rec.gambling? A:B4 (Steve Jacobs) Blackjack is the most popular table game in American casinos, and the abundance of blackjack articles in rec.gambling is a reflection of this popularity. Unlike many other casino games, skillful play in blackjack allows the player to gain a slight advantage over the casino. However, there is no single form of the game that is found in all casinos, and it is often possible to find several slightly different forms of blackjack within the same casino. When playing blackjack, the "correct" strategy to use will depend on the number of card decks used and on the particular "house rules" that are in effect during play. All of these factors combine to make blackjack a very complicated topic. [Note: this question is obsolete now that rec.gambling.blackjack is a separate group. This question will eventually be deleted from the rec.gambling.blackjack FAQ] Q:B5 Is casino blackjack a "beatable" game. A:B5 (thunk) Background: Many books have been written that claim that BJ is beatable. Answer: Simulations performed by rec.gamblers show different amounts of potential player advantage in theory in BJ, depending on strategies, exact rules, and playing conditions. These numbers typically approach 1% (an average penny gain for every dollar bet) though in certain particular, ideal circumstances this can get somewhat higher. There is disagreement on the net about how much advantage this translates into in "real-world" casinos, but it's generally believed that players can play with a small, long-run advantage in BJ. The variance is very high in this game, however, which makes the slight advantage in BJ far from a sure thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B6 How much of an advantage can card counting give? A:B6 (Steve Jacobs) A typical card counter will have an edge of 1.5% or less, depending on the counting system used, the skill of the player, and the particular house rules that the player is fighting against. It is quite unusual to find playing conditions that allow the player to get more than a 2% edge against the house, even against single deck games. The player's edge against multi-deck games is generally less than 1%. Q:B7 Is card counting illegal? A:B7 (Steve Jacobs) No. The casinos would like you to believe that card counting is illegal, immoral, and fattening, but the fact is that card counters are simply using a greater level of skill than the typical blackjack player. The Nevada courts have ruled that blackjack players are free to use any information that is made available to them, provided that there is no collusion between a player and casino personnel. For example, if a dealer accidentally handles the cards in such a way that a player can see the dealer's hole card, the player can make use of this information without breaking the law. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B8 Can the casino ban card counters? A:B8 (Steve Jacobs) This depends on where you play. In Atlantic City, where games of skill are not permitted, the casinos are not allowed to ban skillful players. In Nevada, casinos are allowed to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason. Players are routinely "barred", usually by being asked to leave or by being told that they are welcome to play any game other than blackjack. If you are barred but persist in trying to play, the casino can have you arrested for trespassing. Q:B9 What is the correct basic strategy for single deck Blackjack? A:B9 (Steve Jacobs) The following basic strategy is for single deck games without DAS (double-after-splits). V 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X A <------- dealer's upcard ---+------------------------------- XX \| S S S S S S S S S S never, ever, ever split 99 \| PS PS PS PS PS S PS ps s s split if (d <= 9), except 7 88 \| Ps Ps Ps Ps Ps Ph ph ph ph ph always split 77 \| ps ps Ps Ps Ps ph h h s h split if (d <= 7), stand against 10 66 \| ph ps ps Ps ps h h h h h split if (d <= 6) 55 \| DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH H H never split, treat like hard 10 44 \| h H H DH DH H h h h h never split, double against 5, 6 33 \| h h Ph PH PH ph h h h h split if (d >= 4) and (d <= 7) 22 \| h ph Ph PH PH ph h h h h split if (d >= 3) and (d <= 7) AA \| PH PH PH PD PD PH PH Ph Ph Ph always split ---+------------------------------- A9 \| S S S S S S S S S S always stand A8 \| S S S S DS S S S S S double against a 6 A7 \| S DS DS DS DS S S h h h double 3-6, hit against 9, 10, A A6 \| DH DH DH DH DH H h h h h double low, hit high A5 \| h h DH DH DH h h h h h \ A4 \| h H DH DH DH H h h h h \ double against 4,5,6 A3 \| H H DH DH DH H H h h h / A2 \| H H DH DH DH H H h h h / ---+------------------------------- 21 \| S S S S S S S S S S always stand 20 \| S S S S S S S S S S always stand 19 \| S S S S S S S S S S always stand 18 \| S S S S S S S s s s always stand 17 \| s s s s s s s s s s always stand on HARD 17 or above 16 \| s s s s s h h h h h \ 15 \| s s s s s h h h h h \ 14 \| s s s s s h h h h h > hit if dealer might stand, 13 \| s s s s s h h h h h / stand if dealer might bust 12 \| h h s s s h h h h h / (special case against 2, 3) 11 \| D D D D D D D D D D always double 10 \| D D D D D D D D H H double if (d < 10) 9 \| DH DH DH DH DH H H h h h double if dealer might bust 8 \| h H H DH DH H h h h h double only against 5, 6 7 \| h h h H H h h h h h 6 \| h h h H H h h h h h (4-2) 5 \| h h h H H h h h h h (3-2) 4 \| h h h H H h h h h h (2-2 pair if no more splitting allowed) ---+------------------------------- S=stand H=hit D=double P=pair(split) DH= double if allowed, otherwise hit DS= double if allowed, otherwise stand [uppercase] = "strong" hand, favorable to player [lowercase] = "weak" hand, favorable to house () notes: Playing A7 against dealer's ace: hitting gains 4.08% if dealer must hit on soft 17 standing gains 0.74% if dealer must stand on soft 17 Playing A8 against dealer's 6: doubling gains 1.96% if dealer must hit on soft 17 doubling gains 0.03% if dealer must stand on soft 17 (this rule may be ignored to simplify the strategy) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B10 What is the correct basic strategy for Atlantic City blackjack? A:B10 (Steve Jacobs) The following basic strategy is for typical Atlantic City rules. HOUSE RULES: Cards are dealt from 6 decks. Dealer must stand on any 17. Double-down allowed on soft hands. Pairs may be split only once. Player may double-down after splitting pairs. Surrender is not allowed. \|---might bust---\| \|---might stand---\| <---- dealer possibility ---+---------------------------------------- 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X A <---- dealer's up card ---+---------------------------------------- Pairs XX \| S S S S S S S S S S 99 \| PS PS PS PS PS S PS ps s s 88 \| Ps Ps Ps Ps Ps Ph ph ph ph ph 77 \| ps ps Ps Ps Ps ph h h h h 66 \| ph ph ps Ps Ps h h h h h 55 \| DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH H H 44 \| h H H PH PH H h h h h 33 \| ph ph Ph Ph Ph ph h h h h 22 \| ph ph Ph Ph PH ph h h h h AA \| PH PH PH PH PDH PH PH Ph Ph Ph ---+---------------------------------------- Soft Hands AX \| S S S S S S S S S S A9 \| S S S S S S S S S S A8 \| S S S S S S S S S S A7 \| S DS DS DS DS S S h h h A6 \| H DH DH DH DH H h h h h A5 \| h H DH DH DH h h h h h A4 \| h H DH DH DH H h h h h A3 \| H H H DH DH H H h h h A2 \| H H H DH DH H H h h h AA \| H H H H DH H H h h h ---+---------------------------------------- Hard Hands 21 \| S S S S S S S S S S 20 \| S S S S S S S S S S 19 \| S S S S S S S S S S 18 \| S S S S S S S s s s 17 \| s s s s S s s s s s 16 \| s s s s s h h h h h 15 \| s s s s s h h h h h 14 \| s s s s s h h h h h 13 \| s s s s s h h h h h 12 \| h h s s s h h h h h 11 \| DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH H 10 \| DH DH DH DH DH DH DH DH H H 9 \| H DH DH DH DH H H h h h 8 \| h H H H H H h h h h 7 \| h h h H H h h h h h 6 \| h h h h h h h h h h 5 \| h h h h H h h h h h 4 \| h h h h H h h h h h ---+---------------------------------------- S=stand H=hit D=double P=split Q=surrender NOTES: 1) If more than one option is listed, options to the left are preferred over options to the right. Options less favorable than STAND or HIT are not shown. 2) Use the "Hard Hands" table only when the other tables do not apply. 3) If splitting Aces is not allowed, use the "Soft Hands" table. 4) Uppercase options favor the player, lowercase options favor the house. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B11 What is the house edge when playing basic strategy? A:B11 (Steve Jacobs) The expected gain for basic strategy play depends on the house rules and the number of decks. The following table summarizes the player's expectation for a variety of games. All numbers are in units of percent of initial bet. <-- number of decks --> \| 1 \| 2 \| 4 \| 6 \| 20 \| 100 \| ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ AC \| .1541 -.2228 -.3991 -.4569 -.5368 -.5638 \| AC + LSR \| .1761 -.1717 -.3323 -.3843 -.4552 -.4790 \| AC + ESR \| .7694 .3952 .2265 .1721 .0968 .0714 \| ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ strip \| .0409 -.3214 -.4889 -.5437 -.6245 -.6447 \| strip + LSR \| .0707 -.2685 -.4239 -.4744 -.5429 -.5659 \| strip + DAS \| .1809 -.1795 -.3472 -.4021 -.4779 -.5034 \| strip + ESR \| .6511 .2927 .1320 .0801 .0084 -.0157 \| ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ vegas \|-.1527 -.5257 -.7015 -.7590 -.8445 -.8663 \| vegas + LSR \|-.1095 -.4594 -.6221 -.6747 -.7469 -.7713 \| vegas + DAS \|-.0103 -.3813 -.5570 -.6146 -.6951 -.7223 \| vegas + ESR \| .5403 .1720 .0046 -.0493 -.1245 -.1500 \| ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ reno \|-.4291 -.7400 -.8906 -.9404 -1.0154 -1.0337 \| reno + LSR \|-.3858 -.6737 -.8113 -.8560 -.9178 -.9387 \| reno + DAS \|-.3121 -.6176 -.7658 -.8151 -.8840 -.9073 \| reno + ESR \| .2639 -.0423 -.1846 -.2307 -.2307 -.3174 \| ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ "AC" rules: (typical of Atlantic City) dealer stands on soft 17 double down on any two cards double after splits "strip" rules: (typical of Vegas Strip) dealer stands on soft 17 double down on any two cards (but not after splits) "vegas" rules: (typical of Vegas Downtown) dealer hits soft 17 double down on any two cards (but not after splits) "reno" rules: (typical of Reno, northern Nevada) dealer hits soft 17 double down allowed on two card total of 10 or 11 only DAS = Double After Splitting ESR = Early Surrender (no longer available) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B12 Why are single deck games better than multi-deck games? A:B12 (Adbul Jalib M'hall) There are some surface differences, such as single and double deck usually being hand-held, while four or more decks are dealt from a shoe, but there are fundamental mathematical differences too. Single deck blackjack is usually better than multiple deck blackjack for card counters, basic strategists, and the clueless. Additional decks make busts less likely, since one can draw to hands like 2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2 (for 18) which are improbable/impossible in single deck. Busting less often helps the dealer's hand more than yours, since the dealer is forced by the rigid rules to hit more often than you. Blackjacks are also less frequent, which is bad since you get paid 3 to 2 for those. All in all, multiple decks will cost a basic strategist nearly 0.5% in advantage, which is more than all but the very best package of favorable extra rules will give you. This was an intuitive explanation; a complete mathematically sound (albeit huge) proof can be generated by a combinatorial analysis program. Card counters face the additional problem that the count is less volatile with multiple decks and hence offers less frequent opportunities for large favorable bets. Consider the difference between an urn with 1 black and 1 white marble versus an urn with 100 black and 100 white marbles. Draw half the marbles: what is the probability that all the remaining marbles are white? In the 1 and 1 case, there is a 1 in 2 chance. In the 100 and 100 case, there is only a 1 in 100,891,344,545,564,193,334,812,497,256 chance! Q:B14 Do 'bad' players at third base have any effect on expected gain? A:B14 (Steve Jacobs) No. It is a common misconception that incorrect plays by the player at third base will "take the dealer's bust card" or "leave the dealer a good card". As long as the shuffle is sufficient to randomize the cards, improper play of other players will be just as likely to help as it is to hurt. However, bad players can cause frustration and anxiety which may increase the likelihood of making mistakes. It is best to avoid the temptation to strangle bad players. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B15 Where is the best place to sit at a blackjack table. A:B15 (Steve Jacobs) It depends. For basic strategy players, seat position has no significant effect on the player's expected return. For card counters who use strategy variations, it is probably best to sit at third base in order to see as many cards as possible before playing the hand. When playing against a "front loading" dealer, the best seat is whichever seat gives you the best shot at getting a glimpse of the dealer's hole card. When playing at the Rio, the best seat is the one that gives the best view of the cocktail waitresses. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B16 How is card counting done? A:B16 (Steve Jacobs) The card counting system described below is an unbalanced 10 count that is 100% accurate for determining when to take insurance. As a general purpose card counting system, it is relatively weak and not particularly recommended, but it illustrates many of the principles behind card counting. This is intended only to give a feel for how card counting is done, and is not recommended for actual practice, although I've used it because of its simplicity. This counting strategy is listed as "Unbalanced 10 Count" in other parts of the FAQ list. For single deck games: 1) Start the count at -4 when the deck is shuffled. 2) Count -2 for 10, J, Q, K 3) Count +1 for everything else (including aces) 4) Bet low when the count is negative, high when the count is positive (actually, simulations show that you can bet high for a count of -2 or above). 5) Take insurance when the count is positive. 6) Play basic strategy at all times. --------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Start the count at (-4 N). 2) all other rules are the same. --------------------------------------------------------------- The unique feature of this counting method is that it is perfectly accurate for dealing with insurance. When the count is positive, the player has the advantage when taking the insurance bet. When the count is negative, the house has the advantage, so insurance should not be taken. Counting is best done by counting several cards at once. It is easy to practice this counting method in the following way: 1) Count through a deck of cards, counting one card at a time. Start at -4, and count through the entire deck. After all of the cards have been seen, the count should be ZERO. If it is not zero, a mistake has been made somewhere. Repeat counting through the deck one card at a time, until you can do it quickly without making mistakes. 2) Count through the deck, counting two cards at a time. Look for the following patterns, adding the correct amount for each pattern (X = 10, N = non-ten) Again, the count should be zero after all cards have been seen. Repeat until you can do it efficiently. 3) Count through the deck, counting three cards at a time. Look for the following patterns, adding the correct amount for each pattern. (X = 10, N = non-ten) XNN 0 (this pattern is common) XXN -3 Practice against a computer blackjack game. When I play, I usually count the cards by counting an entire hand (player's or dealers) at once. If there are more than three cards in the hand, I mentally break it up into groups of 1, 2, or 3 cards (I usually look for "XNN" patterns and ignore those cards, since they add up to zero). I usually count the cards just before the dealer picks up the hand (exception: for insurance, you should count your cards and the dealer's up card immediately). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B17 What counting system is "best"? A:B17 (thunk) This has been answered by rec.gamblers using different approaches. The first approach is to evaluate different systems by simulation. This approach obscures the particular advantages of each system, but it's easy to see how a system will perform in one particular realistic casino playing situation, and not hard to judge the tradeoff between performance and ease of use (see Q/A B18 for more details). The second approach estimates several performance parameters of each system that collectively approximate the system's inherent potential. This allows the strengths of different BJ systems to be studied in detail, which should allow better, more precise comparison of different systems and aid efforts to improve a particular system. This approach gives results which may be used to determine which counting system is theoretically most profitable, but does not address the issue of how easy it is to use the counting system under actual playing conditions (see Q/A B19 for more details). It's not yet clear how these two studies relate, and no rec.gambling.blackjack consensus has emerged as to how the more sophisticated performance parameters actually translate to advantage at the tables as in the simulations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B18 What counting system is easiest to use? A:B18 (thunk) Background: Lots of systems are available. There is an important tradeoff between complexity and theoretical power, as more complex systems are harder to use and more error-prone. Answer: You pick 'em. A rec.gambling.blackjack study was accomplished that compared different systems, and here a summary of what came out: Complexity is a subjective measure with guidelines described in the results paper. Power is the integer closest to p/0.05%, where p is the % advantage of the strategy one-on-one in a single deck, dealer hits on soft 17, no DDAS, resplitting-allowed game that's dealt down to 20 cards and using a 1-4 betting spread. 15,000,000 hands guarantee correctness to within 1 point 99% of the time. name complex power card weights reference A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BASIC 0 -5 Steve Jacobs UNBALANCED 10 2 13 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -2 Steve Jacobs SUPER-SIMPLE OPT-I 2.5 16 1 1 1 1 -1 WGBJB (1) REVERE PM 3.5 16 -1 1 1 1 1 1 -1 PBaaB RED SEVEN 3.5 19 -1 1 1 1 1 1 R:1 -1 BiB OPT1-6+6 5 18 1 1 1 1 -1 WGBJB WONG HIGH-LOW 5 19 -1 1 1 1 1 1 -1 PB ZEN 5 19 -1 1 1 2 2 2 1 -2 BiB HORSESHOE 6 14 1 2 2 3 2 2 1 -1 -3 MDB (2) REVERE POINT COUNT 6 17 -2 1 2 2 2 2 1 -2 PBaaB OPT1-6+6 W/ ACE 7 23 1 1 1 1 -1 WGBJB ANDERSEN 9.5 16 -2 1 1 1 2 1 1 -1 -1 TtToLV USTON APC 10 22 1 2 2 3 2 2 1 -1 -3 MDB WGBJB: "World's Greatest BlackJack Book" by Humble and Cooper PBaaB: "Playing Blackjack as a Business" by Lawrence Revere BiB: "Blackbelt in Blackjack" by Arnold Snyder PB: "Professional Blackjack" by Stanford Wong TtToLV: "Turning the Tables on Las Vegas" by Ian Andersen MDB: "Million Dollar Blackjack" by Ken Uston (1) with modifications by 'thunk' (2) with modifications by Paul C. Kim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B19 What BJ counting system is most effective? A:B19 (Adbul Jalib M'hall, Jeff Jennings) The playing efficiency, betting correlation, and insurance correlation is listed below for several counting systems. These numbers give an indication of the effectiveness of the counting system. When two numbers are listed, the second number results from adding an ace side count in addition to the "main" count. See answer B3 for definitions of "betting correlation", "playing efficiency", and "insurance correlation". =========================================================================== COUNTING COUNTING VALUES "BEST" EFFICIENCY CORRELATION SYSTEMS 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X A SOURCE PLAY+ace BET+ace INSURE -------- ---------------------------- ------ -------- -------- ------ Griffin 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 -1 0 Griffin 64-64+ .85-.95 .85 Hi-Opt I 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1 0 Humble 61-63 .88-.97 .85 Hi-Opt II 1 1 2 2 1 1 0 0 -2 0 Humble 67-67+ .91-.99 .91 High-Low 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1 -1 Wong 51-63 .97 .76-.85 Ita 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 -1 -1 -1 Sys.Res. 53-63+ .96 .69-.76 Red 7's 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 -1 -1 Snyder 54-64+ .98 .78-.87 Unbal 10's 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -2 1 Roberts 61-61+ .73-.94 1.00 Uston +- 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 -1 -1 Uston 55-64+ .95 .76-.85 Uston APC 1 2 2 3 2 2 1 -1 -3 0 Uston 69-69+ .91-.99 .90 Wong Halves 1 2 2 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -2 Wong 57-67+ .99 .72-.85 Zen 1 1 2 2 2 1 0 0 -2 -1 Snyder 63-67+ .97 .85-.91 red 7's +1, black 7's 0 Note: Playing efficiencies have a practical maximum of about 0.7. "Unbal 10's" is short for "Unbalanced 10 Count" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B20 Does penetration have any effect on basic strategy expectation? A:B20 (Steve Jacobs) Probably not. Unless the dealer is cheating, the cards will be in a random order after the shuffle. If the player is not counting cards or using other techniques to gain an advantage, it will not matter if there are several rounds or only a single round between shuffles. But, if the dealer if using preferential shuffling, this will hurt the basic strategy players as well as the card counters. Q:B21 What is the correct strategy for late surrender? A:B21 (Adbul Jalib M'hall) Basic strategy for late surrender in AC multi-deck games is: Surrender hard 16 (but not 8-8) vs. 9, 10, ace Surrender hard 15 vs. 10 If you are the least bit risk-averse, you should also: Surrender hard 15 vs. ace At some casinos you can surrender your first two cards. You lose half your bet in return for not having to play through the hand. With early surrender, you get back half your bet even if the dealer has blackjack, while with late surrender you lose anyway when the dealer has blackjack. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B22 What is the correct strategy for "multi action" blackjack? A:B22 (Steve Jacobs) Multi Action blackjack allows the player to place up to three bets simultaneously on the same blackjack hand. The player is dealt a single hand, and the three bets are played out against the same dealer upcard, but with different "drawn" cards for each bet. Many players feel nervous about hitting stiff hands against a high dealer's upcard (7 or higher), since they will lose all three bets if they bust. However, basic strategy is COMPLETELY UNCHANGED for this game, and the correct strategy is no different than if the player had only a single bet at risk. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B23 What is "Over/Under" Blackjack? A:B23 (Steve Jacobs) Caesar's Tahoe introduced the Over-13 and Under-13 side bets that are allowed at some blackjack tables. These bets are based on the player's total for the first two cards, when aces are counted as one. Over-13 bets win when the player's cards total 14 or higher, while under-13 bets win when the player's cards total 12 or under. Either bet will lose when the player's total is exactly 13. These bets are placed at the same time as the blackjack bet, and usually the side bet can be no larger than the bet on the blackjack hand. Over/under games are usually dealt from a 6 or 8 deck shoe, and the player's first two cards are always dealt face up. Although these are "sucker" bets for basic strategy players, with a house edge of 6% to 10%, special card counting strategies can be used to give the player a significant edge on these bets. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B24 What is the counting strategy for Over/Under blackjack? A:B24 (Steve Jacobs) The card weights used for the Over/Under count are as follows: count +1 for Ace, 2, 3, and 4, and count -1 for tens and face cards. The deck becomes favorable for counts of +2 and above, and for counts -4 and below. Over-13 bets should be placed when the count is +3 and above. Under-13 bets should be placed when the count is -4 and below. When playing Over/Under blackjack with this counting scheme, virtually all of the player's profit comes from the over-13 and under-13 side bets. This counting scheme is very poor for playing the blackjack portion of the bet, and will only allow the player to play about even with the house on the blackjack bets. However, the over/under bets can be very profitable if the game has good penetration. A 6-deck over/under game with good penetration can give the player an advantage of 1.5% or more. Single deck over/under games with good penetration (very rare) can give the player an edge of over 4% when using the over/under count. Snyder's "Over/Under Report" discusses the over/under game in detail, and is available from RGE at an outrageous price. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:B25 What are some good/bad books on Blackjack? A:B25 The individual book reviews given below are grouped according to the person doing the review. If you have an opposing view or wish to express another view of any of these books, write your own review and send it to the maintainer of the FAQ list, and it will be included. Reviews of books that are not mentioned here are especially welcome. There are undoubtedly many good books that are not listed here, as well as many terrible books that are not listed here. These reviews are only the opinions of the reviewers, and your mileage may vary. Review by Michael Dalton (as reported by Adbul Jalib M'hall) Dalton, Michael. Blackjack: A Professional Reference. Spur of the Moment Publishing, PO BOX 541967, Merritt Island, FL; 1991. (1964 pages) Written by a NASA computer systems engineer, this book is a comprehensive reference to the game of blackjack. Over 1000 entries listing books, magazines, publications, newsletters, articles, reports, videos, software and other products available for serious players of the game twenty-one. Also included is the most comprehensive blackjack dictionary ever compiled explaining blackjack terminology, system and strategy descriptions, rules, and miscellaneous blackjack trivia. Complete basic strategy charts that cover most blackjack games in the world are also presented. Fully cross-referenced with recommendations. Blackjack Video: Winning at Blackjack with Bobby Singer, JCI Video, 1987, 103 minutes. This video is a tape of a sales pitch/introduction to card counting seminar hosted by Bobby Singer, billed as the "World's biggest winner at the game of Blackjack" on the back cover. The tape covers 5 areas: Basic Strategy, Card Counting, Money Management, Team Play and Casino Awareness. Unfortunately, the information is incomplete. For example, the basic strategy section only covers hard and soft hands and the card counting section only covers the card values for the Hi-Lo count, but no bet sizing or strategy adjustments. The rest of the information is available for $149.00. For this price, you get a set of notebooks with lessons and audio tapes covering the Hi-Lo count and an 800 number you can call to find out where the best games are in the city you plan to play. I rented the tape for $1.50 and maybe got my money's worth. One interesting point covered in moderate detail is team play. Singer advocates playing 4 deck or up shoes with the "Big Player" approach pioneered by Uston and others. He advised using a counter at one or more tables who flat bets and uses hand signals (i.e. scratching the head) to call in a big money player. The current count is signaled to the Big Player by the stacking of chips in fr... Frequently Asked Questions about Poker This is the rec.gambling.poker Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. This document contains material copyrighted by various authors; reproduction in print or electronic form is prohibited. Specific permission is granted to Usenet FAQ archive maintainers to store this document, in HTML or text form, only in its entirety. Changes or additions to this section of the FAQ should be submitted to: [email protected] . Include the word "FAQ" in the subject to be noticed amid the spam. Sections that have been added or modified recently are marked with the tag [NEW]. P1What are the basic rules of poker? What are the hand rankings? P2 What are some fun home poker games? P3 How is Texas Hold'em played? P4 How is Omaha Hold'em played? P5 What should I expect the first time I play poker in a casino or card room? What etiquette should I follow? P6 What are some good books about poker? P7 What are some good magazines about poker? P8 What computer poker programs are best for my PC or Mac? P9 What is IRC poker and how can I play? P10 What skills are important for Texas Hold'em? P11 What is a good preflop strategy for Texas Hold'em? P12 What is a good third street strategy for Seven Card Stud? P13 Why are poker hands ranked the way they are? P14 Why are ace-hi flushes ranked highest, when it's much harder to get a seven-hi flush? And similarly for two pairs? P15 What is the correct ranking for 3-card poker hands? P16 What are my chances of sucking out on my opponent in Hold'em? What are my odds in Stud? P17 What does pot-limit mean? What is half-pot-limit? P18 What is a kill pot? What is a game with a kill? What is a half kill? What is a straddle bet? P19 What is a poker tournament? How does one work? What is a chip race? What is a satellite? P20 How does tournament strategy differ from that of regular games? P21 What is the World Series of Poker? What is the Tournament of Champions? P22 What the hell is Rumple Mintz? P23 What is a burn card and why is it dealt? P24 What happens if there aren't enough cards in the deck to deal the final card in 7-card stud? P25 What is the difference between a shill and a proposition player? What skills are needed to be one? P26 What cards are in the Dead Man's Hand? P27 What are the Las Vegas poker room phone numbers? P28 What poker games are spread in certain Las Vegas casinos? P29 What do all these poker terms mean? P30 When can I meet and play poker with fellow r.g.pers? What are BARGE, FARGO, etc? P31 Where can I play online poker against real people for real money? Is it legal? Is it safe? P32 How do you play no-limit seven-card stud? What is Mississippi Stud? P33 Can one overcome the rake at low limit poker games? P34 What is Hi-Lo declare? How is it played? [NEW] P35 How many fundamentally different Omaha or Omaha-8 starting hands are there? [NEW] ConJelCo (home of this FAQ) -- http://www.conjelco.com Big Annual Rec.Gambling Excursion -- http://www.barge.org [NEW]World Rec.Gambling Poker Tournament -- http://www.quizkids.com/wrgpt/ [NEW]IRC Poker -- now offline, in search of new home [NEW]IRC Poker Database -- now offline, in search of new home, but excerpt Web sites - maintained by r.g.p individuals: [NEW]Dan Kimberg's Poker Page -- http://www.seriouspoker.com/ Ken Churilla's Poker Page -- http://www.gocee.com/poker/ Jazbo's Poker Page -- http://www.jazbo.com Abdul's Pos. E.V. Poker Page -- http://www.posev.com/poker/index.html Jim Geary's Poker Page -- http://jimgeary.com/poker/POKER.HTM [NEW]Steve Badger's PlayWinningPoker -- http://www.playwinningpoker.com David Zanetti's Mississippi Stud Page -- Q:P1 What are the basic rules of poker? What are the hand rankings? A:P1 [Michael Maurer] Most variants of poker satisfy the following definition, but in a home game of course you are free to modify the rules as you see fit. Poker is a card game in which players bet into a communal pot during the course of a hand, and in which the player holding the best hand at the end of the betting wins the pot. During a given betting round, each remaining player in turn may take one of four actions: 1. check, a bet of zero that does not forfeit interest in the pot 2. bet or raise, a nonzero bet greater than preceding bets that all successive players must match or exceed or else forfeit all interest in the pot 3. call, a nonzero bet equal to a preceding bet that maintains a player's interest in the pot 4. fold, a surrender of interest in the pot in response to another player's bet, accompanied by the loss of one's cards and previous bets Betting usually proceeds in a circle until each player has either called all bets or folded. Different poker games have various numbers of betting rounds interspersed with the receipt or replacement of cards. Poker is usually played with a standard 4-suit 52-card deck, but a joker or other wild cards may be added. The ace normally plays high, but can sometimes play low, as explained below. At the showdown, those players still remaining compare their hands according to the following rankings: 1. Straight flush, five cards of the same suit in sequence, such as 76543 of hearts. Ranked by the top card, so that AKQJT is the best straight flush, also called a royal flush. The ace can play low to make 5432A, the lowest straight flush. 2. Four of a kind, four cards of the same rank accompanied by a "kicker", like 44442. Ranked by the quads, so that 44442 beats 3333K, and then ranked by the side card, so that 4444A beats 4444K(). 3. Full house, three cards of one rank accompanied by two of another, such as 777JJ. Ranked by the trips, so that 44422 beats 333AA, and then ranked by the pair, so that 444AA beats 444KK(). 4. Flush, five cards of the same suit, such as AJ942 of hearts. Ranked by the top card, and then by the next card, so that AJ942 beats AJ876. Suits are not used to break ties. 5. Straight, five cards in sequence, such as 76543. The ace plays either high or low, making AKQJT and 5432A. "Around the corner" straights like 32AKQ are usually not allowed. 6. Three of a kind, three cards of the same rank and two kickers of different ranks, such as KKK84. Ranked by the trips, so that KKK84 beats QQQAK, and then ranked by the two kickers, so that QQQAK beats QQQA7(). 7. Two pair, two cards of one rank, two cards of another rank and a kicker of a third rank, such as KK449. Ranked by the top pair, then the bottom pair and finally the kicker, so that KK449 beats any of QQJJA, KK22Q, and KK445. 8. One pair, two cards of one rank accompanied by three kickers of different ranks, such as AAK53. Ranked by the pair, followed by each kicker in turn, so that AAK53 beats AAK52. 9. High card, any hand that does not qualify as one of the better hands above, such as KJ542 of mixed suits. Ranked by the top card, then the second card and so on, as for flushes. Suits are not used to break ties. ( Such matchups are only possible in games where there are wild cards or where community cards are shared, such as Texas Holdem.) Suits are not used to break ties, nor are cards beyond the fifth; only the best five cards in each hand are used in the comparison. In the case of a tie, the pot is split equally among the winning hands. Several variations are possible when playing for low. Some games permit the ace to play low and ignore straights and flushes, making 5432A the best possible low, even if it makes a straight flush. Other games just reverse the order used for high hands, making 75432 of mixed suits the best possible low. Still others count straights and flushes against you but let the ace play low, making 6432A best. Note that in most games in which the ace plays low, a pair of aces is lower than a pair of deuces, just as an ace is lower than a deuce. When a joker is in play, it usually can only be used as an ace or to complete a straight or flush. It cannot be used as a true wild card, for example, as a queen to make QQ43X play as three queens. When playing for low, the joker becomes the lowest rank not already held, so 864AX is played as 8642A, with the joker used as a deuce. Although true wild cards are rarely seen in a casino, they are a popular way to add excitement to a home game. Wild cards introduce an additional hand, five of a kind, which normally ranks above a straight flush. They can also cause confusion when two players hold the same hand composed of different wild card combinations. The standard rules of poker do not distinguish between such hands, but some players prefer to rank hands using fewer wild cards above less "natural" versions of the same hand. Another explanation of poker is at These comprehensive poker rule books are suitable for use in cardrooms or at home: Poker variants differ in the amount of skill they admit. Some, like 7-card stud high/low with declare (no qualifier), provide skilled players many opportunities to gain an edge. Others are a virtual crap shoot. In general, the crazier games are designed to discourage folding and minimize the influence of skill on the outcome. They accomplish this through a betting structure that requires a large investment before the value of one's hand is known. The level playing field that results is ideal for many informal social groups. Q:P3 How is Texas Hold'em played? A:P3 [Michael Maurer] Texas Hold'em is a "community card" game, meaning that some cards are dealt face-up in the middle of the table and shared by all the players. Each player has two down cards that are theirs alone, and combines them with the five community cards to make the best possible five-card hand. Play begins by dealing two cards face down to each player; these are known as "hole cards" or "pocket cards". This is followed by a round of betting. Most hold'em games get the betting started with one or two "blind bets" to the left of the dealer. These are forced bets which must be made before seeing one's cards. Play proceeds clockwise from the blinds, with each player free to fold, call the blind bet, or raise. Usually the blinds are "live", meaning that they may raise themselves when the action gets back around to them. Now three cards are dealt face up in the middle of the table; this is called the "flop". A round of betting ensues, with action starting on the first blind, immediately to the dealers left. Another card is dealt face up (the "turn"), followed by another round of betting, again beginning to the dealer's left. Then the final card (the "river") is dealt followed by the final round of betting. In a structured-limit game, the bets on the turn and river are usually double the size of those before and on the flop. The game is usually played for high only, and each player makes the best five-card combination to compete for the pot. Players usually use both their hole cards to make their best hand, but this is not required. A player may even choose to "play the board" and use no hole cards at all. Identical five-card hands split the pot; the sixth and seventh cards are not used to break ties. Q:P4 How is Omaha Hold'em played? A:P4 [Michael Maurer] The rules of Omaha are very similar to those of Texas Hold'em. There are only two differences: * Each player receives four hole cards, instead of two. * One must use exactly three community cards and two hole cards to make one's hand. The second difference is confusing for most beginners. These examples show how it works. Board Hole Cards Best High Hand ===== ========== ============== As Kc Qc 8d 2d Ac 2c Jd Th Jd Th makes ace-hi straight. As Kc Qc Jh Td Ac 2c Jd 8h Ac Jd makes ace-hi straight. As Kc Qc Jh Td 3c 2c Jd 8h Jd 8h makes pair of jacks. No straight is possible using two hole cards. As Ks 8h 9d 2s Qs 4h 4d 4s Qs 4s makes AKQ42 "nut" flush. As Ks 8s 9s 2s Qs 4h 4d Qd Qs Qd makes pair of queens. No flush is possible using two hole cards. As Ts 8s 8h 4d Td Tc Ad 9c Td Tc makes TTT88 full house. As Ts 8s 8h 4d Td 8c Ad 9c Ad 8c makes 888AA full house. As Ac 8s 8h 4d Ah 2h 3h 5h Ah 5h makes trip aces AAA85. No full house is possible using two hole cards. As Ac 8s 8h 4d Ah 2h 3h 4h Ah 4h makes full house AAA44. Omaha is often played high/low, meaning that the highest and lowest hands split the pot. The low hand usually must "qualify" by being at least an 8-low (the largest card must be 8 or lower). One can use a different two cards to compete for the high and low portions of the pot, and the game is played "cards speak" rather than "declare". Aces are either low or high, and straights and flushes don't count for low. Since everybody must use two hole cards to make a hand, the board must have three cards 8 or lower for a low to even be possible. Players often tie for low, and the low half of the pot is divided equally among them. Some more examples: Board Hole Cards Best Low Hand ===== ========== ============= As Kc Qc 8d 2d 8c Jc Jd Th Jd Th makes the low hand JT82A, which does not qualify as 8-or-better. 3d 5h 8d Tc Ts Ac 2c Jd Th Ac 2c makes the "nut low" 8532A. 3d 5h 8d Tc Ts Ac 3c 4d Th Ac 4d makes 8543A. 3d 5h 8d Ad Ts Ac 3c 5d 8h Any two make T853A, not qualifying. Ac 2c 3d 4h 5s Ad 2d Th Td Ad 2d makes "nut low" 5432A. Ac 2c 3d 4h 5s 4d 5d Th Td 4d 5d makes "nut low" 5432A. 5h 7h 8d Ac 2c Ad 2d Th Td Ad 2d makes 8752A, but the nut low is 5432A with a 3 and 4. On the flop we had the best possible low, but the turn and river "counterfeited" us. As in all split-pot games, the real goal of playing any hand is to win both halves of the pot, or "scoop". Thus, hands that have a chance to win both ways are far superior to those that can only win one way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q:P5 What should I expect the first time I play poker in a casino or card room? What etiquette should I follow? A:P5 [Michael Maurer] Many people are intimidated on their first visit to a public cardroom. Knowing what to expect and some simple rules of etiquette will help the first-time visitor relax and have a good time. Any cardroom with more than a few tables will have a sign-up desk or board for the various games being played. Usually someone will be standing here to take your name if a seat is not immediately available. This person can explain what games are offered, the betting limits, special house rules and so on. This is the moment of your first decision: which game and for what stakes? Choosing a game is fairly easy; you already know which game is most familiar to you. You may be surprised to find that your favorite home games are not spread in public cardrooms. Most will offer one or more of Texas Hold'em, Seven-Card Stud, and Omaha Hold'em (usually hi/lo split, 8-or-better for low). Sometimes you will find California Lowball (5-card draw for low), Seven-Card Stud hi/lo, or Hold'em variations like Pineapple. You will rarely find High Draw (5-card draw for hi), and will never find home game pot-builders like Anaconda, Follow-the-Queen, 7-27 or Guts. Except for the joker in draw poker, cardrooms never use wild cards. Choosing a betting limit is a bit harder. It is best to start playing at a limit so small that the money is not important to you. After all, with all the excitement of your first time playing poker there is no need to be worried about losing the nest egg to a table full of sharks. Betting limits are typically expressed as $1-$5 or $3-$6, and may be "spread-limit" or "structured-limit". A spread-limit means one can bet or raise any amount between the two numbers (although a raise must be at least as much as a previous bet or raise). For example, in $1-$5 spread-limit, if one person bets $2 the next person is free to call the $2 or raise $2, $3, $4, or $5, but cannot raise just $1. On the next round, everything is reset and the first bettor may bet anything from $1 to $5. In structured-limit like $3-$6 (usually recognizable by a factor of two between betting limits), all betting and raising on early rounds is in units of $3, and on later rounds is in units of $6. One only has a choice of whether to bet or raise; the amount is fixed by the limit. One usually doesn't have a choice between spread and structured betting at a given limit. Keep in mind that it is quite easy to win or lose 20 "big bets" (the large number in the limit) in an hour of play. Also, since your mind will be occupied with the mechanics of the game while the regular players consider strategy, you are more likely to lose than win. In other words: choose a low limit. If the game you want is full, your name will go on a list and the person running the list will call you when a seat opens up. Depending on the cardroom, you may have trouble hearing your name called and they may be quick to pass you over, so be alert. Once a seat is available, the list person will vaguely direct you toward it, or toward a floorman who will show you where to sit. Now is the time for you to take out your money and for the other players to look you over. A good choice for this "buy-in" is ten to twenty big bets, but you must buy-in for at least the posted table minimum, usually about five big bets. Most public poker games are played "table-stakes", which means that you can't reach into your pocket for more money during the play of a hand. It also means that you can't be forced out of a pot because of insufficient funds. If you run out of money during a hand you are still in the pot (the dealer will say you are "all-in"), but further betting is "on the side" for an additional pot you cannot win. Between hands, you are free to buy as many chips as you want, but are not allowed to take any chips off the table unless you are leaving. This final rule gives opponents a chance to win back what they have lost to you. If you bust out, you may buy back in for at least the table minimum or leave. Once you have told the dealer how much money you are playing, the dealer may sell you chips right away or call over a chip runner to do so. You may want to tell the dealer that you are a first-time player. This is a signal to the dealer to give a little explanation when it is your turn to act, and to the other players to extend you a bit of courtesy when you slow down the game. Everyone will figure it out in a few minutes anyway, so don't be bashful. You may even ask to sit out a few hands just to see how it all works. There are three ways that pots are seeded with money at the beginning of the hand. The most familiar to the home player is the "ante", where each player tosses a small amount into the pot for the right to be dealt a hand. The second way, often used in conjunction with an ante, is the "forced bring-in". For example, in seven-card stud, after everyone antes and is dealt the first three cards, the player with the lowest upcard may be forced to bet to get things started. The third way, often used in games without upcards like Hold'em or Omaha, is a "forced blind bet". This is similar to the bring-in, but is always made by the person immediately after the player with the "button". The "button" is a plastic disk that moves around the table and indicates which player is acting as dealer for the hand (of course, the house dealer does the actual dealing of cards, but does not play). A second or even third blind may follow the first, usually of increasing size. Whichever seed method is used, note that this initial pot, small as it is, is the only reason to play at all. If the game has blinds, the dealer may now ask you if you want to "post". This means, "do you want to pay extra to see a hand now, in bad position, and then pay the blinds, or are you willing to sit and watch for a few minutes?" Answer "no, I'll wait" and watch the game until the dealer tells you it's time to begin, usually after the blinds pass you. Finally, it is your turn to get cards and play. Your first impression will probably be how fast the game seems to move. If you are playing stud, several upcards may be "mucked" (folded into the discards) before you even see them; if you are playing hold'em, it may be your turn to act before you have looked at your cards. After a few hands you should settle into the rhythm and be able to keep up. If you ever get confused, just ask the dealer what is going on. When playing, consider the following elements of poker etiquette: Acting in Turn Although you may see others fold or call out of turn, don't do it yourself. It is considered rude because it gives an unfair advantage to the players before you who have yet to act. This is especially important at the showdown when only three players are left. If players after you are acting out of turn while you decide what to do, say "Time!" to make it clear that you have not yet acted. You may find it awkward at first to peek at your own cards without exposing them to others. Note that the other players have no formal obligation to alert you to your clumsiness, although some will. Watch how the other players manage it and emulate them. Leave your cards in sight at all times; holding them in your lap or passing them to your kibitzing friend is grounds for killing your hand. Finally, if you intentionally show your cards to another player during the hand, both your hands may be declared dead. Your neighbor might want to see you declared dead :) if this happens! Protecting Cards In a game with "pocket cards" like Hold'em or Omaha, it is your responsibility to "protect your own cards". This confusing phrase really means "put a chip on your cards". If your cards are just sitting out in the open, you are subject to two possible disasters. First, the dealer may scoop them up in a blink because to leave one's cards unprotected is a signal that you are folding. Second, another player's cards may happen to touch yours as they fold, disqualifying your hand and your interest in the pot. Along the same lines, when you turn your cards face up at the showdown, be careful not to lose control of your cards. If one of them falls off the table or lands face-down among the discards your hand will be dead, even if that card is not used to make your hand. Accidentally Checking In some fast-paced games, a moment of inaction when it is your turn to act may be interpreted as a check. Usually, a verbal declaration or rapping one's hand on the table is required, but many players are impatient and will assume your pause is a check. If you need more than a second to decide what to do, call "Time!" to stop the action. While you decide, don't tap your fingers nervously; that is a clear check signal and will be considered binding. String Bets A "string bet" is a bet that initially looks like a call, but then turns out to be a raise. Once your hand has put some chips out, you may not go back to your stack to get more chips and increase the size of your bet, unless you verbally declared the size of your bet at the beginning. If you always declare "call" or "raise" as you bet, you will be immune to this problem. Note that a verbal declaration in turn is binding, so a verbal string bet is possible and also prohibited. That means you cannot say "I call your $5, and raise you another $5!" Once you have said you call, that's it. The rest of the sentence is irrelevant. You can't raise. Splashing the Pot In some home games, it is customary to throw chips directly into the pot. In a public cardroom, this is cause for dirty looks, a reprimand from the dealer, and possibly stopping the game to count down the pot. When you bet, place your chips directly in front of you. The dealer will make sure that you have the right number and sweep them into the pot. One Chip Rule In some cardrooms, the chip denominations and game stakes are incommensurate. For example, a $3-$6 game might use $1 and $5 chips, instead of the more sensible $3 chip. The one-chip rule says that using a large-denomination chip is just a call, even though the chip may be big enough to cover a raise. If you don't have exact change, it is best to verbally state your action when throwing that large chip into the pot. For example, suppose you are playing in a $1-$5 spread-limit game, the bet is $2 to you, and you have only $5 chips. Silently tossing a $5 chip out means you call the $2 bet. If you want to raise to $4 or $5, you must say so before your chip hits the felt. Whatever your action, the dealer will make any required change at the end of the betting round. Don't make change for yourself out of the pot. Raising Forever In a game like Hold'em, it is possible to know that you hold "the nuts" and cannot be beaten. If this happens when all the cards are out and you get in a raising war with someone, don't stop! Raise until one of you runs out of chips. If there is the possibility of a tie, the rest of the table may clamor for you to call, since you "obviously" both have the same hand. Ignore the rabble. You'll be surprised how many of your opponents turn out to be bona fide idiots. The Showdown Hands end in one of three ways: one person bets and everyone else folds, one person bets on the final round and at least one person calls, or everybody checks on the final round. If everybody folds to a bet, the bettor need not show the winning cards and will usually toss them to the dealer face down. If somebody calls on the end, the person who bet or raised most recently is supposed to immediately show, or "open", their cards. They may delay doing so in a rude attempt to induce another player to show their hand in impatience, and then muck their own hand if it is not a winner. Don't do this yourself. Show your hand immediately if you get called. If you have called a bet, wait for the bettor to show, then show your own hand if it's better. If the final round is checked down, in most cardrooms everyone is supposed to open their hands immediately. Sometimes everyone will wait for someone else to show first, resulting in a time-wasting deadlock. Break the chain and show your cards. Most cardrooms give every player at the table the right to see all cards that called to a showdown, even if they are mucked as losers. (This helps prevent cheating by team-play.) If you are extremely curious about a certain hand, ask the dealer to show it to you. It is considered impolite to constantly ask to see losing cards. It is even more impolite if you hold the winning cards, and in most cardrooms you will forfeit the pot if the "losing" cards turn out to be better than yours. As a beginner, you may want to show your hand all the time, since you may have overlooked a winning hand. What you gain from one such pot will far outweigh any loss due to revealing how you played a particular losing hand. "Cards speak" at the showdown, meaning that you need not declare the value of your hand. The dealer will look at your cards and decide if you have a winner. As a final word of caution, it is best to hold on to your winning cards until the dealer pushes you the pot. If the dealer takes your cards and incorrectly "mucks" them, many cardrooms rule that you have no further right to the pot, even if everyone saw your winning cards. Raking in the Pot As you win your first pot, the excitement within you will drive you beyond the realm of rational behavior, and you will immediately lunge to scoop up the precious chips with both arms. Despite the fact that no other player had done this while you watched, despite the fact that you read here not to do it, you WILL do it. Since every dealer has a witty admonition prepared for this moment, maybe it's all for the best. But next time, let the dealer push it to you, ok? Don't. Only touch your own cards and chips. Other players' chips and cards, discards, board cards, the pot and everything else are off-limits. Only the dealer touches the cards and pot. Tipping Dealers make their living from tips. It is customary for the winner of each pot to tip the dealer 50 cents to a dollar, depending on locale and the stakes. Sometimes you will see players tip several dollars for a big pot or an extremely unlikely suckout. Sometimes you will see players stiff the dealer if the pot was tiny or split between two players. This is a personal issue, but imitating the other players is a good start. Correcting Mistakes Occasionally the dealer or a player may make a mistake, such as miscalling the winning hand at the showdown. If you are the victim of such a mistake, call it out immediately and do not let the game proceed. If your opponent is the victim, let your conscience be your guide; many see no ethical dilemma in remaining silent. If you are not involved in the pot, you must judge the texture of the game to determine whether to speak up. In general, the higher the stakes, the more likely you should keep your mouth shut. Taking a Break You are free to get up to stretch your legs, visit the restroom and so on. Ask the dealer how long you may be away from your seat; 20 or 30 minutes is typical. It is customary to leave your chips sitting on the table; part of the dealer's job is to keep them safe. If you miss your blind(s) while away, you may have to make them up when you return, or you may be asked to sit out a few more hands until they reach you again. If several players are gone from a table, they may all be called back to keep the game going; those who don't return in time forfeit their seats. Color Change If you are in the happy situation of having too many chips, you may request a "color change" (except in Atlantic City). You can fill up a rack or two with your excess chips and will receive a few large denomination chips in return. These large chips are still in play, but at least you aren't inconvenienced by a mountain of chips in front of you. Remember the one chip rule when betting with them. Leaving Leave whenever you feel like it. You never have an obligation to stay at the table, even if you've won a fortune. You should definitely leave if you are tired, losing more than you expect, or have other reasons to believe you are not playing your best game. Depending on the cardroom, you can redeem your chips for cash with a chip-runner or floorman or at the cashier's cage. House Charges Last but not least is the matter of the house take. Somebody has to maintain the tastefully opulent furnishings and pay the electric bill. The money taken by the house is called the "drop", since it is dropped down a slot in the table at the end of each hand. The house will choose one of three ways to charge you to play. Time Charge A simple "time charge" is common in higher limit games and at some small games: seats are rented by the half hour, at rates ranging from $4 to $10 or so, depending on the stakes. This method charges all players equally. Other cardrooms will "rake" a percentage of the final pot, up to some maximum, before awarding it to the winning player. The usual rake is either 5% or 10%, capped at $3 or $4. If the pot is raked, the dealer will remove chips from the pot as it grows, setting them aside until the hand is over and they are dropped into a slot in the table. This method favors the tight player who enters few pots but wins a large fraction of them. A simpler method is to collect a fixed amount at the start of each hand; one player, usually the one with the dealer button, pays the entire amount of the drop. Depending on house rules, this "button charge" of $2-$4 may or may not play as a bet. If the chips do play as a bet, this method also favors the tighter players, but not nearly as much as the rake does. Regardless of the mechanism, a cardroom will try to drop about $80-$120 per hour at a $3-$6 table. The exact amount is most dependent on the local cost of doing business: Nevada is low, California and Atlantic City are high. Since there are 7-10 players at the table, expect to pay somewhere from $7 to $14 per hour just to sit down. Add $2-$4 per hour for dealer tips and you see why most low-limit players are long-run losers. More information on cardroom play and etiquette can be found in George Percy's "Seven-Card Stud: The Waiting Game" and Lee Jones' "Winning Low-Limit Holdem". Beginning players may also want to watch for special cardroom promotions to draw new players; many offer free lessons followed by a very low-stakes game with other novices. Since everyone is a beginner, much of the tension is relieved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q:P6 What are some good books about poker? A:P6 [Michael Maurer, December 1994] All thinking poker players should have this book on their shelf: David Sklansky, "The Theory of Poker" (formerly titled "Winning Poker"), Two Plus Two Publishing, 1992, $30. ISBN 1-880685-00-0. Beginners will benefit from the following: Daniel Kimberg, "Serious Poker", ConJelCo, 2002, $20. ISBN: 1-886070-16-4 Lou Krieger and Richard Harroch, "Poker for Dummies", IDG Books Worldwide, 2000, $15. ISBN 0-764552-32-5. Mason Malmuth and Lynne Loomis, "Fundamentals of Poker", Two Plus Two Publishing, 1992, $4. ISBN 1-880685-11-6. This classic in the field is an advanced but slightly out-of-date work covering a wide range of games, including an excellent section on no-limit Hold'em: Doyle Brunson et al., "Super/System: A Course in Poker Power", B & G Publishing, 1978/1989, $50. ISBN 0-931444-01-4. The most recommended book for medium-limit Hold'em is David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, "Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players", Two Plus Two Publishing, 1988/1993, $30. ISBN 1-880685-01-9. These works by fellow rec.gamblers have received favorable reviews: Lee Jones, "Winning Low-Limit Holdem", ConJelCo, 1994, $25. ISBN 1-886070-15-6. Lou Krieger, "Hold'em Excellence", ConJelCo, 2000, $20. ISBN 1-886070-14-8 . Beginning Seven Card Stud players must read this small spiral-bound gem: George Percy, "7 Card Stud: The Waiting Game", GBC Press, 1979, $9. ISBN 0-89650-903-6. More experienced stud players may benefit from David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth and Ray Zee, "Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players", Two Plus Two Publishing, 1992, $29.95. ISBN 1-880685-02-7. Finally, in a different vein is the following book about reading your opponents and preventing them from reading you: [NEW]Mike Caro, "Caro's Book of Tells - The Body Language of Poker", Mike Caro University Press, 2000, $30 (paperback), $40 (hardback), ISBN 1-880069-01-6 (paperback), ISBN 1-880069-02-4 (hardback). Many of these books are available to rec.gamblers with an Internet discount from ConJelCo. See Dan Kimberg's Poker Reading Page at http://www.seriouspoker.com/reviews.html for other publishers and for some unsolicited reviews that have appeared on the net. Nick Christenson reviews an amazing number of books at Q:P7 What are some good magazines about poker? A:P7 [Michael Maurer] Card Player is the best established periodical for poker players. Each issue has several columns specifically about poker strategy, including regular features by Mike Caro and other household names. It lists schedules for small daily and weekly tournaments in the U.S. and Europe and reports large tournament results. Other sections cover gambling and the law, cardroom management, sports betting and general gambling news. Because it is financed largely by casino industry advertisements, it does not print unfavorable casino news and is not a good place to find a balanced review of a cardroom. It is available free in most cardrooms and offers subscriptions at first-class and bulk-mail rates. Q:P8 What computer poker programs are best for my PC or Mac? A:P8 [Hans Ruegg, John Salmom 1996; 2002 updates thanks to Zbigniew] Commercial Programs There are many poker programs available but the quality of them ranges from terrible to fairly good. The following are worth considering: Wilson Software Turbo Series Separate games are available for Texas Holdem, 7-card stud, Omaha-8 and Omaha High. There are both ring-game and tournament versions. Computer players are driven by large tables describing each decision point. These tables can be modified by the user to create new players. Play against the computer or let the computer players play each other in a fast mode. Check resulting statistics for the various strategies. [NEW]Acespade If you want to write some of your own poker software, a fast poker hand evaluator is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pokersource . It is in C but uses some Gnu C extensions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q:P9 What is IRC poker and how can I play? A:P9 [Michael Maurer, February 1998] [Nov 2002 status: IRC poker is offline while it is in search for a new home.] IRC poker is a real-time network poker game that allows people from around the world to play poker with each other via the Internet. The stakes are "etherbucks", which is to say imaginary. Each player's imaginary bankroll is recorded from session to session, and rankings of both bankroll and earning rate inspire competitiveness. An automatic program serves as the dealer and controls the action. World Wide Web users can find out more about the dealer program by looking at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/mummert/ircbot.html . The game uses the Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, to arrange communications amongst the players and with the dealer. IRC is normally a sort of global cocktail party, with several thousand people from around the globe engaged in small pockets of conversation on various "channels". Within each channel, anything one person types appears on the screens of all the other people tuned in to th...	i don't know
The Gremlin, Matador, Pacer, and AMX were models produced by what car company?	amc-collector-toys AMC Toys, Diecasts, Models, Promos This page is dedicated to American Motors miniature toys, models, diecasts from various manufacturers from 1960s to current. In the 2000s, we saw a explosion of miniature AMC vehicles built and on shelves in stores. Hot Wheels, Johnny Lightning (RIP), Green Light, Matchbox, Flying Cherries, Yat Ming, to name a few, and old standbys like Pilen, Juguinsa, Jo-Han (RIP), AMT, and the popularity rose each time with movies like Pixar's CARs series with Grem the Gremlin & Acer the Pacer. There has been a number of "new releases" out of you build it type models, so keep watch on sheves for those at hobby stores like Hobby Lobby or ebay. From small 1.64th scale (Hot Wheels) to larger 1.18th scale (American Muscle) there seems to be something for everyone with Matador coupes, Hornet Hatchbacks, Pacer coupes & station wagons, Super Stock AMXs, Rebel Machines, Hurst SC/Ramblers and the most popular Javelins & AMXs. Not all models, diecasts, promotional dealer kits are listed, nor will all of them ever be known. I will not list a degree of difficulty of finding them as some were impossible to get when new like the red, white, blue Johan promotional models, (68 Trans Am Javelin & 70 Trans Am Mark Donohue) only available thru your friendly AMC dealers. Others not available in the USA, so have to find thru country of origin. I do NOT sell my models, so don't ask, nor do I build them. Many I have been collecting since 1960s. The American Motors Owners Association (AMO) has a extremely active "model building" bunch of people that include built models that are highly detailed and dioramas. They award trophies at their AMC National events also, so if you want to show off your handiwork with a miniature, bring it along. Some of you are familiar with my hand built, one of a kind,"Miniature AMC Dealerships & Kenosha Points of Interest" thru the years. If you like the next photo, and wish to see more, CLICK HERE. My "Kenosha Main Street" with factory, dealers, gas stations, diners above. 02 Rambler Model by Revell Mixed AMC Models & Paint Kits circa 1962 AMC Willys Army Jeep Metal Toy (possibly Tonka) 40s Nash 'Canadian' Statesman Metal Bank, manufacturer unknown Nash 50th Aniversary Bronze Bank 50's Nash Ambassador Friction metal toy Made in Japan, manufacturer unknown 50's Hudson metal diecast by Dinky 59 Rambler American Metal Wagon by Dinky 61 Rambler Classic Station Wagon by Johan 61 AMC Rambler Classic Station Wagon (Friction drive wheels) by Johan 61 AMC Rambler American 3 in 1 Custom by Johan 62 Rambler American 400m Convertible Model by Johan 63 Rambler Wagon Metal Toy by Dinky 66 Rambler Marlin by Johan 66 Rambler Marlin by Johan 66 Marlin model by Johan 68 Grant Rebel SST Funny Car by Johan 67 Ambassador Custom convertible by Johan 68 Ambassador convertible by Johan. *Worth noting is AMC never built a 1968 Ambassador convertible, Johan jumped gun & didn't realize AMC had stopped production on 68 Ambassador convertibles (68 Rebels were made, last year AMC made a ragtop) but the models ended up out there anyways. 68 AMX First Issue by AMT 68 AMX in Matador Red by Johan 68 AMC Javelin Grant Funny Car by MPC 68 AMX Nurburgring track model by MPC 68 AMX "390" by Revell 68 AMX "Speedy" model by Lindbergh Toys 68 Trans Am Javelin by Johan. This was a "built" promomotional (promo) model given out (and sold) at AMC Dealerships. 68 Javelin Super Funny Car by Johan, Rod & Custom Magazine, Grant Industries 68 Javelin in Scarab Gold by Johan 69 AMX Street Magic by Matchbox 1:43rd scale 69 AMX The Yankee Clipper by MPC 69 AMX Snap Together 1:43rd model by AMT 69 AMX Craig Bredlove #1 model by MPC 69 AMX EXpress by AMT AMC 69 Javelin MOD in Ascot Gray. I have never seen a real AMX or Javelin in this 1969 only color.Note "MOD" fake scoops. 69 Pro Street Rambler by Johan 69 Pro Street Rambler by Testors 70 AMX Lightning Bolt by MPC 70 AMX by Palmer 70 Hornet Funny Car The Green Hornet by Johan 70 Rebel Machine Super Stock Drag Car by Johan 70-71 Gremlin Grabber by Lindberg 70 Trans Am Javelin Mark Donohue by Johan 70 Trans Am Javelin Mark Donohue red, white & blue promotional by Johan (dealers only) 70 AMX 3 way model by MPC 71 AMX Super Funny Car by Johan 71 Trans Am Javelin AMX George Follmer by Johan (Roy Woods Racing Team issue) 71 AMC Hornet Funny Car The Stinger by Johan 71 AMC Hornet by Johan 71 AMC Hornet by Johan 71 AMC AMX by Johan 71 Gremlin "Grremlin" Funny Car by Monogram 72 AMC AMX by Johan 72 Javelin AMX Hurst AMX Racing Team by Johan 72 Javelin AMX Pro Stock by Johan 72 AMC AMX Javelin by Johan 73 Javelin AMX by AMT 74 Gremlin X Mini Musclecar by AMT 74 Gremlin X Funny Car by AMT 74 Hornet Hatchback Funny Car Potluck by Johan 74 Hornet Hatchbackl Funny Car Draggin Fly by AMT 74 NASCAR Matador by AMT 74 NASCAR Matador Team kit by AMT. This included all seen including towing van, trailer. 75 Matador X by AMT 75 NASCAR Bobby Allison Matador by AMT 76 Pacer X model by MPC. This is actually a three in one model, you can build it 3 different configurations. 70s Metal Red Jeep by Tonka 77 Gremlin Stocker model by AMT 77 Matador Coupe Custom model by AMT 77 Pacer Custom wagon model by AMT 78 Pacer X by MPC. Could build this stock or custom. 78 Pacer X model by MPC. Could build this stock or custom. 76-77 AMC Jeep CJ7 model by Monogram 70's AMC Jeep Metal Cement Truck by Tonka 70's AMC Jeep Metal CJ5 by Tonka AMC Mixed Toys & Models (Everyone has a model junkyard) AMC Eagle SX/4 McDonalds Happy Meal Stomper Toy (released 1980) AMC Travel Bed Mattress also a Group 15 Accessory. These originally appeared with Nash models with the "den of sin" fold down seats in early 1950s many of use were conceived in which the seats folded down into a bed. But they were sold well into 1970s. Popular with campers, fishermen & I guess prostitutes, above legendary comedian Bob Hope is shown by Nash in 1974 where he was made a man in the bed. The caption from ym PRESS PHOTOS: 1947 Nash Ambassador Twin Beds Bob Hope This was a specially built Nash Ambassador '47 for shows and events. There was no passenger side door, it was to specifically 'sell' the unique Nash feature of TWIN BEDS that could sleep 3-4 people inside the vehicle. So it was a big draw at shows, which in turn, would translate into Nash sales. In this rare photo, the late, great comedian Bob Hope is checking out the interior, and chances are cracking a few jokes, we miss & love you Bob! The fellow on the far right and far left are as yet (by me) unidentified. Look closely, that passenger side area is sealed shut, and has plexiglas over it! We miss your service to the USO Bob. Rare item & while i know it was offered into 1970s, not sure how many made...or sold. Way ahead of it's time, this was a Autotronic "third brake light" system for 1970s cars, they just happened to use a Matador coupe on cover, but was made for any brand cars. The kit I have has never been installed. Decades later many automakers would add a 3rd brake light on rear spoiler, inside back glass, on trunk lid, on in line of view. AMC offered 8 tracks thru their "AMC Merchandising Aids" catalog to dealers starting about 1971. These pop up for sale at big AMC meets, and ebay. While not really a top 40 anything, they did put together some good tunes for listening to while driving your new AMC. A AM/8track player sold for about $179 until 1974 when AM/FM/8track players appeared in Matador, then Pacer (75) & those sold new for $250. They are worth buying even if you don't own a 8 track player. This is a rare one of a kind painting, artist unknown to me, that used to hang in Kenosha. If anyone knows the artist, let me know. Earlier it used to hang in AMC's Cobo Hall in /detroit. I should have bought it, it eventually sold for $190.00 on ebay. Made by RUPP. AMC offered thru dealers (and other places like magazines!) a Gremlin & Pacer Go Cart. You can see these sometimes cruising the grounds at big AMC events when owners bring them out to play. Hard to find, would like to see someone fab them and drop on modern go carts. You had to order these thru the dealerships you know, just could not go out and buy one. This is a extremely rare AMC Dealership "Traffic Builder" packet for these. Hells Drivers American Thrill Shows poster. These featured new 1972 Javelins that many remember from the stunt in Houston Astrodome with the Javelin driven by Chick Galliano, doing a 360 on ramps. This later would be done in 'The Man With The Golden Gun' in the canal scene, see it on youtube. You can see some great still images press photos in my AMC PRESS PHOTOS also. These cars were based in Buffalo, NY and several of them are still in warehouses up there. Would be great to see some restored. A matador red AMX appears on cover of a Star Trek comic book. Nice drawing! To bad the story line really sucks! The story is called A BOMB IN TIME: THE PSYCHOCRYSTALS. You can find this on ebay every now and then, usually under $20. Check vintage comic book stores too. Intercars 68-69 AMX "Javelin" 1:43rd scale diecast. Not uncommon with toy makers back then to label the AMX a Javelin either due to confusion of two different, but similiar looking models. Matchbox Superfast Brazilian 71-74 AMX Pilen 70 AMX Starsky & Hutch. These were actually sold with little diorama. Most of us have gotten used to unwashed masses thinking Mad Max cars were American Motors cars, they weren't but millions still think so. Well, this is a new take on a AMX as it sported a 70 Javelin grille, maybe they could not find a obsolete 70 AMX grille? But the Starsky & Hutch thing is wrong on so many levels. They drove a Ford in the series. And they solved crimes Barnaby Jones & Kojak could not sole in a hour. Hard to find. Not reruns of Starsky & Hutch, but this 1:43rd scale metal AMX import by Pilen. Playart AMC 68-69 Javelin & AMX. Playart based in Hong Kong had some good little 1:64th scale toys. Granted, when they cast them it looked like someone drug the mold thru sand after a bottle of swigging saki. You have to remember that some 4 year old working part time for Playart from his real job at Nike making your shoes, sniffing the lead based paint on these (no shit!) was not a skilled craftsman. He was a 4 year old. Ill fitting shit, but if you closed one eye after smoking a joint (medicinal purposes) and looked at the toy, you could tell, barely, that it was SOMETHING AMC. Uber rare to find with original box, which includes Klingon writing of some sort in upper left, not sure if Korean, Chinese, Japanese or Hong Kong Phooese. The red car is the Javelin, the blue car is the AMX. Hard to find. What Happens In A Car Factory by Arthur Shay. Published by Chicago, Reilly & Lee in 1968, this (to me at least!) historical book takes a look at how a auto is built. And of course it is our favorite automaker involved, AMC, and you take a tour of the Kenosha plants. Extremely rare book to find (hardbound, long out of print) these usually sell in the $100/beat to $300/mint range. Go ahead and google it, some antique bookstores might have one, even Amazon occasionally. suggestion? The photos are timeless from design studios, to production lines, to offices with big computers, a inside look at American Motors in 1968/69. This is a children's book but a must for anyone's collection. Jump on it if found for sale. Kenner Light Beam Solar Powered AMX. Like AMC, way ahead of it's time, these came out in 1969 and were solar powered with two small solar cells on the top of the car! There was also a Dodge Charger. But the little AMX, battery powered, would move when you shined the flashlight (which came in the box) on the roof of the car! Pretty amazingly little car, 1:20th scale, about a foot long. High degree of difficulty to find used or new, not sure Kenner still even in toy business. Some of these came with a 1970 ram air hood, not sure how or why that happened, but makes them more rare than the ones with 69 hoods. The rear license plate also reads 1969. My dad brought home 2 of these from the AMC Dealership he was working at in 1969. I still have them. Kenner Light Beam MORE PHOTOS. This is a NOS Kenner Solar Light Powered AMX in box, this one has the "third wheel" which was a stuipd snap on wheel in front (in red) so your front tires never touched ground and car could turn. The problem with this is these easily snapped off. The above car was picked up by Hemmings Blog's Dan Strohl in a blog. What AMC or NASCAR fan or Bobby Allison fan would NOT sleep better with a authentic NASCAR AMC Matador pillow? I do not know what company made these but these have all the sponsors on it, top to bottom, Penske Racing Team, Bobby Allison driver, Coca Cola, and are really well made. And rare. The NASCAR pillows were made by Success Promotions Route 3, Box 621, Randleman, North Carolina. There were "other" NASCAR pillows made same time I believe the company was owned by Roger Penske Enterprises, someone correct me if wrong, might have been Allison family. Here are some others from same time frame to keep eyes out for in case you collect NASCAR vintage stuff! Tyco! If you owned and like Tyco HO Scale racing and trains, they did not forget American Motors. Here are a few neat Tyco items you can still find for sale if you have a good eye. TYCOscene: featured a number of tiny 68-69 AMXs. This setup was for your rail road set and what a nice compliment it would add. To add a realistic touch to any train layout, you could add a number of Tyco railcars also known as Autoloaders. This Tyco Autoloader featured six vehicles, three AMX, three Camaro. In the business they were called 'Trailer Trains'. In your massive layout, everyone would need a authentic Tyco Union 76 Gas Station with AMXs. And if you were like many of us, you had a TYCO Pro Trans Am Javelin Racing Game. Many HO scale train layouts featured some sort of car track, simply because Tyco kept adding new items you could continually build. One of those was a railroad/car crossing. I still have mine and can't tell you how many AMXs went flying across the room when hit by a row of Burlington Northern locomotives. Some spectacular crashes happened at this intersection when we were kids. AMC License Plate Game from 1969: which was a US map, and featured stamps you would stick on the state of which you saw those plates in traffic. This would take away from talking on the cell phone, painting your nails, picking your nose, text messaging, and applying makeup now so this game would be dangerous! Actually it was for the kids. I would say 99% of them never saw a Hawaii and Alaska license plate so cheated and stuck the stamp on there anyhows. Rare item. Some of the rarest literature out there is original AMC DATA BOOKS. These were usually tossed away by dealerships after only a few years. So few exist. These had all the information you would need if you were a salesman, like actual pieces of paint in charts, real pieces of vinyl, leather and corduroy and other seat materials and vinyl roof materials. Why? Because when you, as a customer, asked questions about a color of a car, or what the seats felt like, the salesman could answer your questions thoroughly, and by that, would lead to more sales. Above is a 69 AMC Data Book, with actual seat materials you could feel there at dealership, options, accessories, ect. Above is a 1969 AMC Data Book.When a salesman brought this out, he was pulling out stops to make the sale. Hard to find any year and expensive if found, especially pre-1975. Data Book for AMC Year 1972. Seat Materials for new 72 Gremlin, Javelin, AMX Series, and look closely, there is actual seat fabric from the 1972 Gucci Hornet Sportabouts in tri-color. Besides that AMC also had paint chip charts, and salesmen commonly would take prospective buyers outside to look at the colors ina ctual sunshine, a novel idea. Data Book for AMC Year 1973. You could now get Levi's interior in your Gremlin. Look closely here, in your AMX or Javelin besides the usual interiors, Domino fabric but on the left, Pierre Cardin interiors which was first introduced in 1971 for 1972 mid year models, was available also on AMX, not only Javelin. Yes, tough it, feel it, order it, it feels like a Scotchguard material. Not a whole lot of people did from 72 thru 74 however. Learn more about Cardin Javelins & AMXs on the Cardin Registry. And of course, the big winner here, Buyer Protection Plan, had other automakers playing catchup! Nash AC systen Thermador: Not for AMX, Javelin, or anything after the 1950's this is still worth showing. Why? Simply because no matter how old or young you are, few see them. This was a early AMC (and other automakers) attempt at Air Conditioning. Called a Thermador, you filled it with ice and drove. And the wind did the rest. I find some odd shit on ebay. This is one of them, a print with a AMX in background, some girl on meth scolding a teddy bear in street. I don't understand it either but bought a print and framed in office creepy as it is. The seller, or artist, has a number of prints they sell with American Motors cars in background, I don't understand those either like the freaked out chick with flames near a Matador cop car, what is all that about, stay on the meds. AMC Dealership NOS Clock. At one time, you could find these in damned near every American Motors dealerships, some of them sported 2-5 of them. Offices, showrooms, parts department. This one above popped up on ebay and was NOS in 2007, but bidding sailed past my $300 bid. Chances are it was the last remaining NOS AMC Dealership clock in the world though. AMC Tool Kit sometimes appeared in Group 15 Accessories catalogs, other time in AMC Dealer Merchandising Aids catalogs. About $10 in 1973 at your friendly AMC Dealership. AMC AMX Dealership posters. The AMX at Monte Carlo one was given out at Auto Shows in US, but the AMX at Elkhart Lake & AMX at Nurburgring you had to order thru dealers or write to AMC HQ in Detroit. There was three different issues of these posters, earliest ones had script on bottom: "DREAM! TAKE A FREE AMX POSTER" and only a limited amount of these given out at auto shows in US in early 1968. The paper on the early ones is flimsy, but what the hell, they were free. The legendary auto artist Walter Gotschke penned them and the artwork would later appear on MPC model boxes. This is what the 1967 ones looked like: The text at bottom removed, and a larger set of these prints were circulated to dealers. I have never seen a set of the large ones, but several AMC people in the know tell me they do exist. Those also made on crackly paper. The fits run above and last run below were 18" x 23" almost a matted finish. Then the final run of the posters were run in 1969. This is the ones I sell mentioned in the AMC LITERATURE section: "The Story Of American Automobiles" was a interesting small booklet produced by American Motors. It was almost like it was geared towards children (sort of like Arthur Shay's book way above!).....then however went into a hard sell on the new 1968 AMX and Javelin, touting performance, options and accessories! But the beginning of the book starts out with minerals used to make a vehicle, from Africa, Europe and around the world. Then traces how the materials are used by auto manufacturers to create a car. It is extremely informative, and make no mistake about it, the book is filled with wonderful photos of inside the Kenosha Assembly Plant to boot. The title is a little misleading, as it implies I guess all automakers, however, this is ALL AMC and no one else. Like the larger book "What Happens In a Car Factory" mentioned way above, and even the 1969 release of "THE STORY OF AMERICAN AUTOMOBILES" (which was a condensed version with more photos...and updated with mention of the 1970 model line) both of these are a must for the serious AMX and Javelin collector. This is the 1968 edition: This is the 69 edition: If I have any of these left for sale they will still be listed in the AMC LITERATURE section: AMC AMX Peter Max Dick Teague poster. When Dick Teague the legendary stylist (see last photo above, that is him with Javelin on forehead) decided to retire after a long, and glorious career at AMC, they honored him with a poster of which while he was responsible for many, many designs that made it to production from AMX, Gremlin, Hornet, Matador coupe, with his epic design team, AMC came out with this poster seen below, which was available at dealerships afterwards. Rumor has it Peter Max had something to do with it, but unfounded so far. Dick Teague was a workaholic and his designs can be seen on many non AMC cars to this day and will always remain timeless. Should you want one of these posters, see AMC LITERATURE & POSTERS section . AMC AMX Playboy Bunny Poster. These were supposed to be only for dealers but eventually got into the hands of salsemen, and maybe even kids much to the chagrin of moms & pops. I'm sure pop didn't mind and plastered her on garage wall, along with girlie calenders. There is a whole file dedicated to American Motors complex relationship with Playboy which went on many, many years. A good thing unlike Hugh Hefner's marriages. Should you want a AMC AMX Playboy poster for your collection see AMC LITERATURE & POSTERS section Want to learn more about AMC & Playboy? AMC Trans Am Javelin AMX X-Ray poster. Team Roger Penske, driver Mark Donohue. AMC never offered this poster. I do. You can get one for your collection, see the AMC LITERATURE & POSTERS section of my site to order one of these LIMITED PRODUCTION posters. Eldon Intelligent car. Looks like a AMC Pacer crossed with Deora. From about 1968. These foot long battery powered cars or truck, you place these small triangular pieces in the back and turn it on. It would follow the commands of the signs in back of the car! The plastic pieces look like the controls Superman had in his Fortress of Solitude or the crystals that controled the doomsday bomb in Beneath The Planet Of the Apes, on back they are all different designs, and when they hit the rotating motor inside, it would turn right, left, back up, u turn, quite intelligent for late 1960s. Compare it to modern Roomba. COX AMC Matador Stocker (NASCAR) Gasoline powered! Yes, runs on real gas. These big COX AMC Matador Stockers not only ran on real gasoline (back when it was 29 cents a gallon, but also had pneumatic steering, real rubber tires. Patterened off the successes of American Motors efforts in NASCAR (Team Penske) these wore red, white and blue paint. The two here, one is NOS, other used, both from my collection. They made a pppfffffffttttt sound and the LONG steering wheel tube used to get in way, but as you walked along with the car, you were driving a REAL GAS powered car. As a kid. These could really scoot along at a good clip I may add. Nowhere does it mention 'adult supervision' or like toys now, warn you not to do shots of unleaded gas and light a lighter to mouth like Gene Simmons of KISS. I'm sure some kids thought about it, but was more fun to cruise up and down street with a REAL GAS powered car. At least it was for me. Dad never realized the gas came from otr 62 Rambler wagon anyways, hee hee. Mattel Hot Wheels Supercharger 1968. When these came out, they were the bomb. Put some D cell batteries in them, and hook them up to a oval track, and let the cars do the rest. You simply counted how many times certain cars could go around, the cars would come screaming out of this, propelled by two rubber/foam wheels. Some cars did better than others and like Hot Wheels modern tracks, some cars left wheels, headers, and other pieces behind. The longest "run" was a Cadillac Custom Eldorado in Spectraflame Blue which did 1102 laps before batteries on Supercharger gave out. This is my original unit and I drew fans and for some reason scissors on it, giving it a personal touch only 9 year old boy can do. Why is this pictured here? Hot Wheels released a POSTER about same time if you were in their club (or mail away) which showed a AMX screaming out of a Hot Wheels Supercharger! Possibly one of the best toys Mattel ever made to go with Hot Wheels cars, you can easily find these vintage units all over ebay. Artwork by legendary Otto Kunhi who did much of the artwork on Hot Wheels blister packs, boxes for decades, even into the 1990s, then back again in 2000s, that is 50-60 years (from 1962!!!) of stunning artwork. The original box is shown here with AMX, a 2010 poster with chrome AMX is last photo, you can find them on ebay, amazon also. Jo-Han AMC Radio..Jo-Han models released a series of their AMC models with actual functioning AM Radios inside them. The last ones I believe they did was for 1968 like this Ambassador. AM was king of the dial back then with FM spotty except down here where you could pull Wolfman Jack out of Mexico. These are actual AMC promotional models with a AM radio, so could take to beach, anywhere like people do phones now. Except this Ambassador was about as large as a early 1980s cell phone. Still fun stuff. Like most AM radios with little if any, reception, my radio car will never play any more songs as the battery has been in it since 1970 and the Corpus Christi, Texas humidity did the rest. You can see the dial and speaker inside car. I was inseperable with this for awhile in late 1960s, & my dog Bootsie and me listened to it when there was actually music on AM side of dial. Eldon AMC AMX 69-70 steerable air car. Battery powered, this like the big Matador by COX above, had 'pneumatic' steering that is, a small hand held bellows that would turn wheels right or left. Of you got good at it, you could steer it straight ahead but took some practice. The license plate read 1970 BUT it was a 69 AMX. Eldon toys rocked and this was no different. A battery in this could last whole day! It was like walking the dog, except it was a AMX. Not as neat as the 'gas' powered Matador but same effect. And years BEFORE the Matador came out. The photos below is of a NOS unit I have, and have a used one in collection, both from 1969. I am guessing that Eldon used a 1970 license plate on them thinking AMC would not change design on the two seater for 1970, after all Jo Han had released a "convertible" 68 Ambassador which never saw production. Cragstan AMX. Cragstan used to make a lot of tin metal toys back in the 50s/60s. All sorts with lots of movement, like that damned monkey that hits cymbals while slapping drum, really innovative stuff. The little AMC AMXs like this that were friction powered had a little grindy wheel inside (at least the ones I had) that when you push the toy, the wheel on bottom would spin with a hypnotic effect, not that anyone was looking at it (we used to hold it in hand to look at it) but inside the car, tiny sparks would fly, lighting up inside of car like bad Cheech & Chong movie. My brother & me took one apart in late 1960s to see what made it work, there was little thin piece of metal slat that would rub against the wheel to make it spark while friction did it's job. Quite neat, Cragstan made a number of US car models that did this including Olds, Buick and Chevrolet. Building and customizing a model yourself is fun as seen with this detailed red, white & blue Hayden Proffitt 68 Grant Rebel SST Funny car coming to life. This is a AMX Phaze 2 metal Chapparal type racecar by Politoys some of the boxes shows it to be a AMX/2 and has a 343V8. I have two of these and sometimes things made overseas baffle me like the Starsky & Hutch Javelin see way up above. The box actually shows this as a AMX although looks more like a Chapparal. Original AMC 3 spoke steering wheel watches sold thru dealerships. These were really well made and you would find them in the AMC Merchandising Catalog. I have been asked thru years to reproduce them, they were SWISS made! Some AMC UAW badges picked up in Kenosha & a AMC Rambler Dealer keychain This AMC Matador coupe dartboard has never been out of bag. These were given to dealers to take pot shots at the competition, of course the new Matador coupe was the ONLY ALL NEW American car released in 1974, everything else was just cosmetic recycled shit. I can just imagine salesmen sitting in offices, bored, gambling for after work beers, or spare change in pocket of smokes with this board. This is actaully a Group 15 item but figured would put in this file also. AMC had a variety of suppliers who made thei rcompasses thru decades, I have 5 different ones. This is possibly the oddest, a flat, lighted Rambler on actual logo inside glass. Most of the others have the usual AMC or Rambler decal on them, not this baby. This is extremely well made and shaped like pie pan UFO. This is a AMC Dealers stamp for I would guess invoices, letters and such. It is SOLID METAL, about 1 inch x 1 inch. Back when ink was cheap this could soak up a lot of ink, possibly to fade thru several order sheets or invoices, it does use a LOT of ink, as have tried it several times. Ink is expensive as hell now, so this would be a expensive stamp! I have saved this little NOS AMC logo since 1973 as I have often wonder who in the hell was asleep at Windsor Plastics at the time this was made. Yes the AMC logo is UPSIDE DOWN. How in the hell did this get past all the quality control? Who cares, it has been in my collection since Nixon was president. AMC bought Windor Plastios & Mercury Plastics in early 1970s, both companies supplied a hoard of plastic injection moldings, interior hard and soft pieces, emblems and the like to AMC before AMC simply bought both places. AMC stamp, these are real stamps one can use to mail stuff. This is a AMX stamp from island of St. Lucia. There are other countries that died this including some eastern Europe (Lavtia or Estonia) that had actual American Motors postage stamps, now if we could just get sorry ass collasping US postal system to do a AMC stamp. Falling into the "ART" category, depends on how you look at it, are these custom tables, front clips, one is a 68 Ambassador. The 68 Ambassador with 56,000 miles original owner car was going to be hauled to scrap before a Houston artist who does custom work stepped in. I called about the 290 no one wanted and asked if he would 'sell the remainder of the car' as I hate to see shit wasted, in this case, uber rare parts off a low mileage car. Remember this car was headed to CRUSHER by original owner. So I bought 'remainder of car' and parted it out on spot where you see it sitting in his driveway in Heights. He cut off front clip and you see the finished product below for $2500. He has done a number of these out of 'real cars' including Corvettes, Hudsons, Chevies, and I am sure some who whine about lack of parts groan when they see shit like this but what the hell, alternative was whole car would be gone by now. I do not know how many man hours Doc the artist had into this. The other is a custom Hornet hatch BAR B QUE pit. Not sure how it keeps the tail lights from melting, however a guess here is that it is heavily insulated behind that with heat shield. Quite nice I am sure all the que tastes better cooked on a Hornet ass. From Russia with love comes this small metal diecast, 1:64th scal Pacer. Like most Russian toys, it has sharp edges for the kiddies and nice Chernobyl lead based paint that glows when the lights go dim weekly in Soviet Union.Even on it's worst day still better than owning a Soviet Lada. Original metal license plate frames, it seems most of them were for west of Mississippi dealers, AZ, NV, CA, OR and WA. Rarely do you come across the METAL license plate frames from 1960s and 70s in other regions, but they do appear on ebay. The nicer, the more expensive, but usually top out at $200. Trenfel Rambler I bought at local swap meet for $10, while Randall AMC is sort of priceless, they were home of the Randall XR-401 Gremlins of AMC folklore. American Motors "AMC" logoed clothes. These were available from the AMC Merchandising Catalog for AM Dealers, abd AMC's NASCAR Team commonly wore them at events. This is some of the NOS ones from collection. There is no truth that I jogged up Stone Mountain, Georgia in a AMC logoed thong and the mountian was evacuated and Hazmat called. I had some ";fun" in 1999 at at Regional there, that is about it...... LEFT TO RIGHT: Bellbottoms, chef apron, chef hat; two different sizes of ladies halter tops, a number of AMC logoed pants, bellbottom and straight leg, on my fence, set of XL sized shorts, a original tag inside a pait of pants (note no manufacturer) and whole NASCAR Team at Southern 500, that is Bobby Allison with trophy, Linn barton on left holding flag, Crew Chief Wood Woodard in upper right and the late little Davey Allison with cast on arm, note the guys pants! I'd Rather Be Driving My AMX. These iconic bumper stickers first appeared in middle of 1970s. They were paper and didn't last long unless you didn't affix them to car. So not best drawing, font, or bumper sticker. In 2015 I reproduced a limited number of them but in vonyl, same AMX, font, just vinyl. Black & white if you want one $5 each. While they last. You can stick it on your other AMC or brand x car or truck. 9 1/4" x 3 1/2". Mattel released a Hot Wheels poster years ago which featured a Hot Wheels silver AMX. The art is by legendary Otto Kuhne, the poster shows a AMX flying thru the air, with a tow truck, a US Mail vehicle, some black car & a Cadillac in the photo. The 2nd photo is close up of the AMX. These sometime appear for sale on ebay but also at swap meets where Hot Wheels are sold. A real tough poster to find is the long, colorful AMC Dealership issued AMC NASCAR Matador poster. Features Penske, Winston smokes & more. Sponsored by Coca-Cola, I have never seen one for sale at any AMC national or regional, nor ebay. The first photo is whole poster, the 2nd photo is left then right sides.	AMC
Since the US Mint has completed their state quarters program, what series of special coins, 4 per year, is the mint producing now?	06: AMC Gremlin - World's 15 Ugliest Cars - Pictures - CBS News World's 15 Ugliest Cars Next 15: Volkswagen Thing You can't say you don't know what you're getting into when the car's actual name is "Thing." On the one hand, whatever you needed, this 1960s car would get the job done. On the other, it was a bit like driving inside of a cardboard box. Though perhaps it could be considered a bit more retro and cool these days. Credit: Wikimedia Commons 14: Tatra T603 This is the Tatra T603 - a very odd-shaped car that was made in Czechoslovakia and sold throughout Europe from the 1950s through the '70s. While not known for having any major problems like some of our others, it kind of makes you look like you're driving inside of an egg. But maybe that's the look you're going for? Credit: Wikimedia Commons 13: Nissan S Cargo This retro-style, commercial van was sold by Nissan from 1989-1992. Did it get the job done in terms of hauling stuff? Probably. Did you look a bit ridiculous while you were driving it? You tell us. Credit: Wikimedia/Mike Sorokowski 12: 1957 Fiat 600 Multipla Marinella The Fiat Multipla was a series of cars with multiple variations (like the one pictured here) manufactured from 1956-1965, and was Fiat's first-ever car to feature a rear-engine. It also featured a very distinctive look, the kind we associate with hauling you around an amusement park rather than hauling the kids to school. Credit: exfordy/Flickr 11: Bond Bug It may be called the Bond Bug, but actually has nothing at all to do with secret agent 007. The two-seat and three-wheeled car was made in the 1970s after Reliant purchased the Bond Motor Company and wanted to build a "fun car." Are you having fun yet? Credit: Phil_Parker/Flickr 10: AMC Matador In the 1970s, American Motor Company (AMC) produced many variations on the Matador, from station wagon to coupe. Each one of them could have made our ugly list. But that doesn't mean the car didn't earn respect in its day. James Bond tooled around in a flying version of the car. And fashion designer Oleg Cassni was called in to develop a special luxury model. But times and tastes change. And although the Matador has made a small resurgence amongst collectors' circles, we surmise for many drivers its design sensibilities remain stuck in reverse. Credit: Christopher Ziemnowicz/Wikimedia 09: Trabant Four decades ago, East Germany tried to create its own version of the Volkswagen Beetle. To say this experiment failed would be something of an understatement. Poorly designed and a terrible aesthetic, the only thing that looks good on this particular car is the Rolling Stones logo on the hood. Credit: AP Graphics Bank AMC Pacer When the AMC Pacer came out in 1975 it was the toast of the automotive press, which called it "futuristic," "bold" and "unique." AMC even produced an electric version to respond to the gasoline crisis of the 1970s. But over time, what seemed futuristic started to look downright strange, and the Pacer's unorthodox looks fell out of favor. In the last few years, car collectors have come back to it, but not enough for the Pacer to escape the gravitational pull of our ugliest list. Credit: Charles01/Wikimedia 07: Pontiac Aztek The Pontiac Aztek was made from 2001 to 2005, and actually only sold a bit more than the years listed during each year of its production. Credit: IFCAR/Wikimedia 06: AMC Gremlin Though it sounds like a scary movie from the 1980s, this 1970s subcompact car became somewhat legendary for its small size and unique appearance. And by unique we mean it has a really great "personality." Credit: roger4336/Flickr 05: Nissan Cube There are no gimmicks or bells and whistles behind the Nissan Cube. Still manufactured and sold today, you get exactly what you pay for when you purchase one - a dependable, utilitarian, drivable lesson in geometry. Credit: Stradablog/Flickr 04: Aston Martin Lagonda Aston Martin is a name synonymous with luxury and style - unless you're talking about the Lagonda, of course. This 1970s-era model was a design disaster for the brand, and if that weren't bad enough, the interior electronic systems were known for having major problems. Credit: Wikimedia Commons 03: Subaru Brat The term Brat is actually an acronym that stands for Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter. The acronym seems much more apt, though, for this peculiar car manufactured by Subaru in the 1970s. Credit: Wikimedia 02: Corbin Sparrow We have to give the Corbin Sparrow a lot of credit. It's an all-electric vehicle that's really more motorcycle than car, and dates its eco credentials back to 1999. It was said to go more than 150 miles on one charge. But when you get a look at its snout nose, jelly bean body, and pizza butt shape, you may want to keep it in the garage to charge your iPhone. Credit: AustinEV/Wikimedia 01: Ford Pinto The Ford Pinto - a name that became synonymous for a rather bland appearance. But even beyond the aesthetic problem, it became legendary for the bigger issue of sometimes exploding with a rear collision impact. Just a tiny problem, but worthy of our number one spot. Credit: AP Graphics Bank	i don't know
What is the common name for Fairy Floss, which William Morrison and John Wharton dreamed up in 1897 and introduced to the world at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904?	Facts Recycling 1 glass jar can save enough energy to watch tv for 3 hrs! Lightning strikes the Earth about 6,000 times per minute. Owls are the only bird that can see blue It was once against the law to slam your car door in Switzerland Honeybees have hair on their eyes A jellyfish is 95% water. In Bangledash a kid as young a 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals. A katydid hears through holes on it's hind legs A company it Tiawan makes dinner ware out of weat so you can eat your own plate. BR> More monopoly money is printed a year than real money A starfish os one of the only animals that can turn it's stomach inside out. The pengiun is the only bird is the only bird that can fly but not swim. Q is the only letter of the alphabet that doesn't appear in any of the states. 1/4 of the bones in your body are in your feet America once issued a 5 cent bill!( I have one!!) Like fingerprints everyone's tounge print is different. Babe Ruth used to put a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep him cool which he changed every 2 innings. Fortune Cookies were invented in America by Charles Jung. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years. A giraffe can clean it's ears with it 21 inch long tounge. Chewing gum prevents you from crying when cutting onions and from your ears popping when on a plane. 166,875,000,000 pieces of mail were delivered in 1997 1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire were strung in 1997 123,000,000 cars are being driven on highway right now. 85,000,000 tons of paper are used each year in the US. 56,000,000 people go to Major league baseball each year. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave. The prayinh mantis is the only insect that can turn it's head. In Tokyo they sell toupees for dogs. There are over 58 million dogs in the US. Dogs and cats consume about $11 million in food every year. Fingernails grow 4 times faster than toenails. Dairy products increase the growth of fingernails and toenails. You blink over 10,000,000 times a year. Robins eat over 14ft in Earthworms a day In England around the 1880's, pants was considered a dirty words. Dust particals are made from dead skin cells The average person laughs about 13 times a day. Men are 6 times more likely to be hit by lightning than women. It is estimated that over 1million trees are accidently planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they put them Earnest Vincent wrote a novel called Gadsby which contained over 5,000 words none of which had the letter E. The word set had 162 definitions, yet how often do we use that word? A toothpick is the object ost often chocked on. Every 45 seconds a house catches fire in the US. E is the most common and Q is the least common letter used in the alphabet. There are more than 50,000 earthquakes every year. A butterfly used to be a flutterby The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven. Nose prints are used to identify animals, just like fingerprints. Apples are more efficient at keeping people awake than coffee. SMELLING banana's will help you lose weight. The average iceberg weighs 20,000,000 tons. The pioson arrow frog has enough pioson to kill about 2,200 people. A lump of pure gold, the size of a matchbox, can be flattened into a sheet larger than a tennis court. After eating a housefly regurgitates it's food and eats it again. Log Point, Elliot Key, Florida and Kure Island, Hawaii, which are the two farthest pionts in the US, are exactly 5,859 miles apart. The Cell Phone was invented by Martin Cooper, who at that time was a vice-president at Motorola. He made the first cell-phone call on April 3, 1973, on a street corner in New York. Using the first working prototype of a cellular phone, the Motorola Dyna-Tac, he called his rival Joel Engel, research director at Bell Labs. Motorola introduced its cell phone in 1983 after five generations, 15 years, and $90 million. Cooper built a small radio telephone which could be carried by a person. It is not clear that he developed the concept and the mechanism for automatically switching over when a phone went from one cell to another, so the true inventor is the person or company which developed the automatic switchover system. Today, there are over 107 million cell phone users in the United States. The first cell phone, a Motorola Dyna-Tac, was nine incheslong, five inches wide, 1.75 inches tall, weighed 2.5 pounds,had a talk time of 35 minutes, and a recharge time of ten hours. Czechoslovakia, in 1969, was the first country to require theuse of seatbelts in cars. Hair grows about 1/72nd of an inch per day, or about 1/2-inchper month. Age affects the growth of hair--the fastest growth is between ages 15 and 30, with a sharp decline between ages 50 and 60. In 1477, Archduke Maximilian of Austria presented a diamond to Mary of Burgundy, and that is how the tradition of offering a diamond ring got its start. Currently, Canada has the highest diamond-engagement-ring acquisition rate in the world, as 85 percent of all Canadian brides received diamond engagement rings in the year 2000. In the United States, it was 74 percent. The word pogonip is a meteorological term used to describe an uncommon occurrence--frozen fog. It was coined by Native Americans to describe the frozen fog of fine ice needles that occur in the mountain valleys of the western United States. According to Indian tradition, breathing the fog is injurious to the lungs. Yuma, Arizona averages 339 days sunny days a year, more than any other city in the United States. It averages only three inches of rainfall annually. Eagles can see eight times better than any human. A bald eagle can make out another flying eagle 12 miles away. In December of 1946, "Arizona Highways" magazine was the first nationally circulated consumer magazine to publish an all-color issue. The magazine's first issue in April of 1925 sold for $0.10, and its initial function was to inform its readers of the state's road building efforts. Today, as "Arizona Highways" magazine begins its 76th year, it boasts of subscribers in every state in the United States, plus two-thirds of all other countries in the world. It is a one-of-a-kind magazine, as it contains NO advertising. The creosote holds status as the longest living plant. The creosote bush spreads out from a stem crown, sharing the root system of its neighbors. When the crown dies, it leaves sur- viving plants, which break up into expanding circles. All of the plants originating from the stemcrown are identical to each other--clones of the original bush. The king clone in the Mohave Desert, sometimes called the world's oldest plant, started from a seedling more than 12,000 years ago. During its lifetime, the last major period of glaciation in North America (Wisconsin Glaciation) came to an end, the great Egyptian and Mayan pyramids were built, the first human walked on the moon, routine satellites and manned spaceships orbited the earth . . . and the shrub is still living. In 1908, Melitta Bentz, a 35-year-old housewife from Germany, had the idea to use paper to filter out unwanted residues. She punctured the bottom of a brass pot and lined it with blotting paper taken from the notebook of her oldest son. Perfectly filtered coffee--without bitterness and grounds--dripped out of the bottom. Melitta realized the value of her invention and registered it with the Patent Office in Berlin. On July 8, 1908, Melitta Bentz received a patent registration for her "Filter Top Device lined with Filter Paper". There are about 500 different kinds of ladybugs in the United States, and nearly 5,000 world wide. They come in all different colors--Reds, yellows, orange, grey, black, even blue and pink. The first 12-ounce aluminum soda can was introduced in 1964 by Royal Crown Cola. Coke didn't start using aluminum until three years later, and that same year Pepsi came out with a seamless can. More turkeys are raised in California than in any other state in the United States. More than 675 million pounds of turkey will be consumed at Thanksgiving. Lincoln Highway, the nation's first coast-to-coast highway, spans 3,389 miles from New York City to San Francisco. The first mile of Lincoln Highway was paved in October of 1914. 6,315,324 visitors had the chance to walk up 704 steps to the second level, or could opt to take the pulley elevator that ascends and descends the legs of the structure. On a clear day, the view from the Eiffel Tower offers 42 miles of visi-bility. Dolphins find food and orient themselves by emitting a series of clicks, up to 2,000 a second, from an internal nasal sac called a "melon". There are 30 species of dolphin (25 saltwater and 5 freshwater) and six species of porpoise. Dolphins have round, cone-shaped teeth, and porpoises have flat, triangular-shaped teeth. The dorsal fin of a porpoise is triangular, while that of a dolfin is crescent-shaped. Porpoise snouts are shorter than dolphin snouts. President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, setting the date as the last Thursday of November, following an intense campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of a ladie's magazine. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date up one week, supposedly to stimulate the Depression economy. Congress then passed a law establish- ing the fourth Thursday in November as the official holiday. Until 1872, the Marine uniform included a high leather collar. The idea for monkey helpers occurred to Dr. M.J. Willard, a behavioral psychologist, while she was assisting an individual who was then recently paralyzed from the shoulders down in a car accident. Willard thought that an animal with hands, such as a capuchin or "organ grinder" monkey, could perform the simple tasks that a quadriplegic could no longer do for him or herself. Known for their manual dexterity and friendly disposition, capuchin monkeys are particularly well suited to be trained as monkey helpers. Judi Zazula, an occupational therapist and rehabilitation engineer, joined Willard in pursuing the idea. Hellion, the first monkey helper was placed with Robert in 1979. Judy Zazula, who is now Executive Director of Helping Hands, has focused her attention on developing the foster family, training, and placement programs that allow capuchin monkeys to successfully assist disabled individuals. The first nylon bristles were introduced in 1938 and soon replaced the natural swine bristles. The natural bristles of early toothbrushes were taken from the necks and shoulders of swine, especially pigs living in colder climates like Siberia and China. Rabbits have teeth that grow continuously throughout their lives--in the middle-size breeds, about five inches per year for the upper incisors (front teeth) and about eight inches for the lower ones. The teeth abrade away against one another, giving the rabbit a constantly sharp edge. Rabbit teeth are self-adjusting, given an adequate supply of chewing material. There are 1.5 million nursing-home residents in the U.S. Eighty percent of these residents suffer from dementia, depression, or other mental illnesses. Yet most homes do not provide the care needed to treat these problems. In the colonial days, debtors were shipped from Europe to America to work as servants. Instead of signing a contract, they sealed their agreement by leaving their dental imprint in wax. Many of Macy's employees were first generation immigrants, eager to celebrate their new American heritage with inspir- ation from festivals of their native lands. What better way than to hold public celebration on Thanksgiving Day? The first parade borrowed 25 animals from the Central Park Zoo, and a giraffe had to be scratched at the last moment when Macy's employees realized he was too large to clear the elevated trains. Also, a white steed from the Ben Hur float disappeared. In 1948, the parade was presented on nationwide television for the first time with Milton Berle as Grand Marshall. Due to the Second World War in 1942, for the first time in 19 years, the parade was cancelled. Helium and rubber were scarce commodities, and 650 pounds of scrap rubber from the deflated balloons were donated to the war effort. In 1980, Superman debuted as the largest balloon ever at 100 feet in length. Needed solid organs include the heart, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, liver and intestines as well as bone marrow. Tissue that can be donated include the eyes, skin, bone, heart valves and tendons. Whether individuals can donate organs and tissue depends on their physical condition, not their age. Newborns as well as senior citizens have been organ donors. However, individuals under the age of 18 who wish to donate must obtain the consent of an adult who is legally responsible for them, such as a parent or guardian. William Perry (the Refrigerator) has a size 23 Superbowl ring for his part in the Bears� 1986 victory. The League pays for up to 125 rings at $5,000 per ring (plus adjustments for increases in gold and diamonds). League also pays for 125 pieces of jewelry for the losing team, which may not cost more than one-half the price set for the Super Bowl ring. Mandarin is most-spoken language in the world, spoken by 1.07 billion people, followed by English, spoken by 514 million p eople. Third is Hindi, spoken by 496 million, and Spanish, by 425 million people. Canada has more donut shops per capita than any other country-- one for every 9,000 of its 30 million residents. That compares with one U.S. shop for every 26,000 Americans. Of three leading chains, Tim Hortons has 2,047 stores in U.S. and Canada, Dunkin Donuts, Inc. has 5,146 stores in 39 countries, and Krispy Kreme Donuts, Inc. has 192 stores in 32 states. To build this new airport, the island of Chek Lap Kok was blasted level. The resulting Hong Kong International Airport covers five square miles. The passenger terminal alone covers 137 acres. In 3000 BC Egypt, yellow-red henna was used to color nails and lips in popular shade of orange. In Roman times, sheeps fat was used to color nails. One out of 17 school children may suffer from a food allergy that could affect their nutrition and school performance. The foods children are most allertic to, in descending order of prevalence, are milk, peanuts, egg, tree nuts, soy, wheat, celery, mango, and garlic. The average woman in the United States uses four to nine pounds of lipstick in her lifetime. Lipstick is also one of the most commonly shoplifted items. Lipstick is made by first combining castor oil with powdered pigments for a liquid fudge that is then mixed with melted wax and poured into moulds. There are three lipstick shapes: the fishtail, the teardrop and the wedge. The American flag was left behind by the first visitor, Neil Armstrong, although by now, probably only the pole remains. The first Apollo landing crew left a commemorative plaque. The remains of seven unmanned lunar probes, Surveyors 1 through 7, are there, plus three lunar rovers. There are six long-term scientific stations on the Moon, which include seis- mometers to measure tremors in the Moon's crust and some re- flectors to bounce back light beams are sent up there. The Russians left several unmanned probes and assorted lunar ro- vers on the Moon as well. The phrase "charlie Horse" may have originated with a common occupational hazard of constables. Constables were called "Charleys" in 17th cen- tury England, and aching legs were a part of the job. Or it may have come into usage after a lame horse named Charley pulled a roller across a Chicago White Sox ballpark in the 1890s, and the term stuck to described a common malady among baseball players. The drought of 1988 ranks as the most costly wather disaster with total loss at $39 billion. Drought spreads farthest, lasts longer, and touches more lives than any other natural disaster. South Florida's Hurricane Andrew in 1992 ranks second at $26.5 billion, and the 1993 Mississippi River flood ranks third with a damage toll of $22 billion. Even when dollar losses are infla- tion-adjusted, U.S. weather disasters are becoming more costly because, with a growing population, the nation's valuation is greater now than ever before. In the 1920s, deaf players on the football team at Gallaudet College invented the football huddle to prevent opposing teams from being able to read their signals. Truck driving tops the list for low back pian due to injury at work, followed by 1) construction equip- ment and heavy machine operators, 3) construction workers, 4) janitorial and building maintenance workers, 5) firefighters, 6) police officers, 7) heavy equipment mechanics, 8) health care therapists, 9) physicians, dentists, and nurses, and 10) people involved in agriculture, forestry, and commercial fishing. Low back pain affects more than 20 million Americans and is the leading cause of disability among people ages 19 through 45. It is the Number One leading cause of missed work days, costing Americans $60 billion a year in treatments and American businesses about $15 billion annually. A year is a leap year if it is divisible by four, but century years are not leap years unless they are divisible by 400. So, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but the year 2000, as of course you now know, was a leap year. Why do we have leap years? The actual length of a year (the rotation of Earth around the Sun) is 365.2422 days. If we didn't have leap years, the seasons would shift about a quarter of a day every year, and after 100 years the seasons would be off by 25 days. The extra leap day adjusts this drift. Ash, red oak, and hickory are on the list of firewood with the highest heat value, where one cord = 200 to 250 gallons of fuel oil. The other woods on this list are American beech, apple, ironwood, sugar maple, white oak, and yellow birch. Any one of these woods provides an economical way to heat your home in the winter The Great Slave Lake with a depth of 2,015 feet is the deepest lake in Canada, located in the east-central Fort Smith region, Northwest Territories, near the Alberta border. Compared to the same period last year, first class mail volume has increased by 104 million pieces in fiscal year 2001, and total mail volume has increased 1.8 billion pieces so far this year. Thunder and lightning can occur during a snowstorm, although it is very rare. The biggest snowstorms are those marked by thunder and lightning, a phenomenon meteorologists call "thunder snow." It's unusual because snowstorms are cold, and cold air doesn't rise and create thunderclouds as warm air does. But if there is enough energy in the atmosphere and a lot of moisture, thunderclouds can form and drop snow instead of rain when the temperature is just below freezing. Thunder- storms with snow are more likely to occur near the coast be- cause the storm can form over the comparatively warm water of the ocean and move inland, meeting much colder conditions. A queen termite seems to top the list for an insect with the longest life span at about 50 years, while tarantulas can live 30 years. Some wood beetles can take up residence in a tree and emerge 40 years later, while the 17-year locusts may be the most well-known long-living species. But,overall, most insects live less than a year. When horseradish root cells are crushed, the enzyme activity caused by the crushing releases highly volatile oils in the roots. This effect is enhanced the more the roots are crushed. The reaction can be stopped by adding white vinegar to the roots. The earlier the vinegar is added, the milder the crushed horseradish will be. Corn snow is characterized by large, loose granules during the day, which freeze together at night, then loosen up again the next day. This kind of snow is usually found in the spring, and you hear the term often in ski reports. It originated in Old English, most likely coming from the appearance of the snow. 1 litter of kittens can have more than one father. In fact, any of the species that have litters and can be bred multiple times during one heat cycle can have offspring with different sires. The scientific term for such breeding is superfecundation. Female cats need to be bred before they re- lease eggs from their ovaries. In general, they engage in the act of mating several times before they ovulate, so there could be sperm from different males in the reproductive tract before the eggs are released. But having multiple sires is uncommon. Determining the sires of a litter of kittens would require paternity testing involving their DNA. The average person in Italy eats more than 51 pounds of pasta every year, compared to the average North American, who eats about 15.5 pounds per year. At 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound produced by any animal. � � Cats are the only domestic animals that walk directly on their claws, not on their paws. This method of walking is called "digitigrade." When cats scratch furniture, it isn't an act of malice. They are actually tearing off the ragged edges of the sheaths of their talons to expose the new sharp ones beneath. Elsie, Michigan is the home of the world's largest registered Holstein dairy herd. Nevada is the state with the all-time largest temperature spread--the highest temperature to lowest temperature in one year. In 1984, the temperature spanned from 50 degrees below zero F in January, to 125 degrees F in June, a range of 180 degrees that year. South Dakota is next with a span of 177 degrees. A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime. Strangeray Springs cattle station in South Australia is the largest ranch in the world. Its area covers 30,029 square kilometers, and is only slightly smaller than the European country of Belgium. In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London.� More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month. The number one U.S. city that has the most days over 90 degrees F is Yuma, Arizona, which has 175 days a year above 90 degrees. Second is Phoenix, with 167; and third is Tucson, with 140. Also on the list are Las Vegas, Nevada; Fort Myers, Florida; and the Texas cities of Brownsville, San Antonio, Austin, San Angelo, and Corpus Christi. The Bactrian camel is the only land mammal on Earth that can survive on salt water. Michigan, USA, is the only place in the world with a floating post office. The J.W. Westcott II is the only boat in the world that delivers mail to ships while they are still under- way. This "post office" has been operating for 125 years. The Great Lakes contain six quadrillion gallons of fresh water, one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. They have a combined area of 94,230 square miles which makes them larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont combined. In the Falkland Islands there is a human population of under 2,000 but a sheep population of 700,000, making 350 sheep for every person.� In New Zealand, there are approximately 20 sheep per human and in Australia, there are around ten. The 7,000 ton, 112 year old Eiffel Tower was built by Gustave Eiffel in 1889 for the world exhibitions being held in Paris that year for the centennial of the French Revolution. 300 steelworkers used 18,038 steel pieces and 2,500,000 rivets in its construction. The Eiffel Tower requires a new coat of paint, 50 tons of it, every seven years. Canada has the longest coastline than any other country, because of its many bays, inlets, and islands. The union of England, Scotland, and Wales formed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain" in 1707. The "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" was formed in 1801. But not until 1945, after most of Ireland had gained its independence, did Great Britain's official name become the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." The speed at which Heinz catsup travels as it leaves the bottle is a blistering 25 miles per year. The Bible has been translated into 2,018 languages, with countless more partial translations, and audio translations (for unwritten languages). By comparison, Shakespeare, con- sidered by many to be the master writer of the English lan- guage, has only been translated into 50 languages. First Lieutenant Arthur MacArthur (Civil War) and General Douglas MacArthur (WWII) are the only father and son in his- tory to each receive a Medal of Honor.� The award has been presented to five sets of brothers. The first translation of an English Bible was initiated in the 7th century. Of course, it was not the English of today: it was Anglo-Saxon. As English developed and new writing styles were introduced, the Bible, or portions of it, often was the first to represent the new language. As of April 8, 2001, the postal deficit was $270 million. This is $10 million less than the $280 million given in management bonuses. Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol," three other alliterative names were con- sidered by Charles Dickens. They were Little Larry, Puny Pete, and Small Sam. Screenwriter Sidney Howard won a Posthumous Oscar for "Gone With The Wind" in 1939.� Howard had died in a tragic tractor accident on his New England farm prior to "Gone With The Wind's" film premier. "All Along the Watchtower" peaked at number twenty in October, 1968. While other Hendrix recordings became popular after his death, none broke through the number fifty spot.� Hendrix died of a barbituate overdose on September 18, 1970 in London at the age of twenty-seven. Kyu Sakamoto, whose song, "Sukiyaki" won a gold record and was number one in June, 1963. Sakamoto was a famous televi- sion and movie star in his native Japan. On August 12, 1985, he was among the 520 passengers killed in the worst airline crash in Japan's history. 22% of U.S. families choose an artificial tree. The National Christmas tree was not lit except for the top ornament in 1979 in honor of the American hostages in Iran. In 1963, the National Christmas tree was not lit until December 22nd because of a national 30-day period of mourn- ing following the assassination of President Kennedy. The tallest living Christmas tree is believed to be the 122- foot, 91-year-old Douglas fir in the town of Woodinville, Washington. Yasuo Hamanaka, a Japanese copper trader, pleaded guilty in 1997 to forgery and fraud in connection with illicit trading that cost his employer, Sumitomo, an estimated $2.6 billion dollars over ten years. Noxema, the skin cream invented in 1914 by Baltimore pharm- acist George Bunting, was originally sold as "Dr. Bunting's Sunburn Remedy". Mr. Bunting changed the name to Noxema after a customer enthusiastically told him the cream had "knocked out his eczema". Thus, the cream that "knocks eczema" became "Noxema". Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel was experimenting in his father's factory, seeking a safe way to use nitroglycerin, when he created the new explosive dynamite, whose name comes from the Greek word for power. He wanted the profits to reward human ingenuity, so his will established a fund to give annual prizes to those whose work most benefits mankind. The initial list of Prizes in chemistry, literature, medicine/physiology, physics, and peace were first awarded 100 years ago, and an economics prize was added in 1969. The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle, which was made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time, the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was con- sidered more valuable than gold.�� Not everyone getS a better aim with one eye closed, but those who do, do so because of a phenomenon called binocular rivalry. If you look through a gun sight with the left eye, what you see is not identical with what you see with the right, and the two images compete rather than blend. Some people can mentally suppress the competing image, but some find it uncomfortable, so they close one eye. In aiming, most people tend to use the dominant eye, which generally but not always has better vision. If the eyes differ in focal length, (that is, the distance away from your eye at which what you see comes into the best focus n the retina), some may use one eye for long distances and the other for short distances. The world's greatest temperature extreme--the range between record high and low temperature-is found in Verkhoyansk, Siberia: 36.7 degrees C (minus 98 degrees F) to minus 76.8 degrees C (minus 90 degrees F). That is a 113.5 C degree (188 degree F) difference. Camp David, the official retreat of the President of the U.S., is near Thurmont, Maryland. It is administered by the Military Office of the White House and is operated by the United States Navy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the camp in 1942, as a retreat where he could escape the summer heat of Washington. Roosevelt called the camp Shangri-La, the name of a perfect mountain kingdom in Lost Horizon, a famous novel by the English author James Hilton. In 1945, President Harry S. Truman made Shangri-La the official presidential retreat. Pres- ident Dwight D. Eisenhower renamed the camp in 1953 in honor of his father and grandson, David Eisenhower. An estimated 24 million Americans afflicted with migraines lose more than 157 million work days per year. The average spent per child in North America was $328, and the average worldwide was $32. The front and back windows of the car are more horizontal than the sides. When they lose their heat, it goes straight up into space, which means they cool down more than the side windows. Therefore, any condensation that forms on the front and back windows freezes more quickly than that on the side windows. Scandinavia has the world's highest per capita annual coffee consumption, which is 26.4 pounds. Monsooned Coffee is coffee deliberately exposed to monsoon winds in an open warehouse to increase body and reduce acidity. There are several claimants to the honor of inventing the coffee percolator but the one that seems to be most likely is Benjamin Thompson, 1753-1814 (also known as Count Rumford). He is also credited with the invention of the double boiler, range stove, pressure cooker and thermos bottle. Thompson's experiments and inventions occurred in Bavaria in about the 1780s. The first patent for an electric coffee percolator was taken out by James H. Nason for Franklin, Mass. U.S. in 1865. Caffeine is not a direct stimulant; instead, it blocks the action of another chemical, naturally present in the human body, that has a calming effect on the activity of cells, especially those in the brain and spinal cord. Caffeine, found in tea, coffee and cocoa, is one of a class of chemicals called methylxanthines that temporarily occupy the same cell receptors as adenosine, a chemical produced by the body's energy metabolism. Caffeine enters the brain very rapidly and stays active for several hours. The time needed for caffeine concentrations in the bloodstream to drop by half is about three to six hours in a healthy adult. Though it was developed to be a toy, other applications for the Slinky� have been discovered. The Slinky� has been used as an antenna by soldiers in Vietnam, as a therapy tool, and for coordination development. The possibilities are endless. The largest snowflake ever observed was 15 inches (38 cm) across, observed at Ft. Keough, Montana on January 28, 1887. Snowflakes that were 3.75 inches (9.52 cm) across and 0.25 inch (0.64 cm) thick fell in 1888 at Shirenewton, England The Slinky� has even made it to the silver screen. Slinky's� appearances include: Ace Ventura-When Nature Calls; Demolition Man; Other People's Money; and Hairspray. In Disney's digitally- animated feature Toy Story, the Slinky� Dog played an important role. It takes about 65 feet of wire to make a slinky! In 1897, William Morrison and John C. Wharton, Tennessee can- dymakers from Nashville, invented the world's first electric machine that allowed crystallized sugar to be poured onto a heated spinning plate, then pushed by centrifugal force through a series of tiny holes. They proudly took their "Fairy Floss" to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (otherwise known as the St. Louis World's Fair) and sold the product in chipped- wood boxes. Though they sold each box for a whopping 25 cents (half of the fair admission price), they sold 68,655 boxes. (That same fair also introduced the world's first ice-cream cone.) To answer that we have to divide books into paperbacks and hardcover, because the lists are very different. Generally, the paperback best-sellers are the more recent books on the market, while the hardcovers go back to earlier in the 20th century. The top five paperbacks, and their authors, are, in order: Charlotte's Web (White); The Outsiders (Hinton); Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Blume); Shane (Schaeffer), and Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Blume). In the hardcover list, however, none of these appear. The hardcover top five bestsellers are: The Poky Little Puppy (Lowrey); The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Potter); Tootle (Crampton); Saggy Baggy Elephant (Jackson); and Scuffy the Tugboat (Crampton). The first jigsaw puzzle was produced around 1760 by John Spilsbury, a London engraver and mapmaker. Spilsbury mounted one of his maps on a sheet of hardwood and cut around the bor- ders of the countries using a fine-bladed marquetry saw. The end product was an educational pastime, designed as an aid in teach British children their geography. The idea caught on and, until about 1820, jigsaw puzzles remained primarily edu- cational tools. The word "Yuletide" originated from the word "Yule", which was recorded In Latin writings as early as A.D. 726. At that time, the form of the word was "guili". Both terms refer to a 12-day pagan feast celebrated around the time of year that has come to be known as the Christmas season. This abbreviation for Christmas is of Greek origin. The word for Christ in Greek is "Xristos". During the 16th century, Europeans began using the first initial of Christ's name, "X" in place of the word "Christ" in Christmas as a short- hand form of the word. Although the early Christians under- stood that "X" stood for Christ's name, later Christians who did not understand the Greek language mistook "Xmas" as a sign of disrespect. Poinsettias are native to Mexico, and they were named after America's first ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett. He brought the plants to America in 1828. The Mexicans in the eighteenth century thought the plants were symbolic of the Star of Bethlehem. Thus the Poinsettia became associated with the Christmas season. The actual flower of the poinsettia is small and yellow. But surrounding the flower are large, bright red leaves, often mistaken for petals. On February 18, 1979, snow fell in the Sahara Desert. There are no records to indicate if it had snowed there before or since. Not surprisingly, the 1979 snowfall quickly melted. January and February both date from about the time of Rome's founding. They were added to a calendar that had been divided into ten month-like periods whose lengths varied from 20 to 35 or more days. A winter season was not included, so those period lengths are believed to have been intended to reflect growth stages of crops and cattle. When introduced, January was given 29 days and put at the beginning of the calendar year. February was given 23 days and put at the end. Then, for an undetermined period shortly after Rome's founding, months were said to have begun when a new moon was first sighted. At some later time, month lengths were separated from lunations and again became fixed. At that time, February's original length was extended by five days which gave it a total of 28. Romans always reconciled differences between calendar and solar year lengths during the "Month of Purification." Whenever and however Roman calendars were modified to correspond to year length, it was always done after the 23rd day of February, tra- ditionally the last day of the year. Even in our time, leap year is observed with a 29-day February. To purists, "leap day" is February 24, not the 29th. The song, "Auld Lang Syne," is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year. At least partially written by Robert Burns in the 1700's, it was first published in 1796 after Burns' death. Early variations of the song were sung prior to 1700 and in- spired Burns to produce the modern rendition. An old Scotch tune, "Auld Lang Syne" literally means "old long ago," or simply, "the good old days. The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was begun in Greece around 600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine, Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth. The use of an image of a baby with a New Years banner as a symbolic representation of the new year was brought to early America by the Germans. They had used the effigy since the fourteenth century. The tradition of making New Year's resolutions dates back to the early Babylonians. While popular modern resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking, the early Babylonians' most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment. The Tournament of Roses Parade dates back to 1886. In that year, members of the Valley Hunt Club decorated their carriages with flowers. It celebrated the ripening of the orange crop in California. Although the Rose Bowl football game was first played as a part of the Tournament of Roses in 1902, it was replaced by Roman chariot races the following year. In 1916, The football game returned as the sports centerpiece of the festival. In the late 1800's a candy maker in Indiana wanted to express the meaning of Christmas through a symbol made of candy. He used a plain white peppermint stick (white to symbolize the purity and sinless nature of Jesus). Next, he added three stripes to represent the Holy Trinity. Then a bold stripe was added represent the blood Jesus shed for mankind. When looked at with the crook on top, the candy cane looks like a shepherd's staff. Turned upside down, it becomes the letter "J" for "Jesus". Two hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Druids used mistletoe to celebrate the coming of winter. They would gather this evergreen plant that is parasitic upon other trees and used it to decorate their homes. They believed the plant had special healing powers for everything from female infertility to poison ingestion. Scandinavians also thought of mistletoe as a plant of peace and harmony. They associated mistletoe with their goddess of love, Frigga. The custom of kissing under the mistletoe probably derived from this belief. The early church banned the use of mistletoe in Christmas celebrations because of its pagan origins. Instead, church fathers suggested the use of holly as an appropriate substitute for Christmas greenery. This indentation is called a punt, and was originally the result of old-time glassblowing techniques. The blowpipe was attached to the neck of the bottle. After the glass was blown, the bottle was transferred to a tool called a punty. An inden- tation in the bottom was the result. Bottles were probably made this way to improve stability, since hand-manufacturing was subject to error. Today's manufacturing techniques make it pos- sible to create stable, flat-bottomed bottles, but punts are still used for finer wines, perhaps because people have come to expect them and also to make the bottles look bigger. On the average, 675,000 birthdays occur each day worldwide. First Footing is celebrated in Scotland on December 31st. It states that the first foot inside your door after midnight will fortell of the next year's future. It is also custom to walk the boundaries of your property in Scotland. In remote areas, Scottish dances, or ceilidhs take place, as well as fire ceremonies. Hogamany is the Scottish New Year, celebrat- ed on December 31st. In the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Stirling, it has become a huge festival, with kissing and singing and flame and fire, which symbolize the bringing of the light of knowledge from one year to the next, lighting the way into the next uncharted century, putting your dark- ness past, but carrying forward its sacred flame of hope and enlightenment into a better world. Estimates from the U.S. Bureau of the Census claim that there are 108,000 people over age 100 living in the United States now. This number will probably double by the year 2010. "Jobbe" means "mouthful." Sometimes we forget that one of the main reasons for having a job is to feed ourselves and our families. On August 12, 1990, Typhoon Winona, combined with the summer holiday rush, created the longest traffic jam in Japan's his- tory, an 84-mile-long chaotic mess. About 15,000 vehicles were involved. Father's Day is the holiday on which there are the greatest number of collect calls made in the United States. The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament. The first minimum wage, $0.25, was established by Congress in 1938. Rain falls at an average of seven miles per hour. THIS DAY IN HISTORY The King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley, in 1935 Physicist and author Stephen Hawking in 1942 (age 60) Singer David Bowie in 1947 (age 55) A giant squid has two long tentacles that make up much of the total length of the animal. Each tentacle terminates with a flattened club that has several hundred suckers on one side. The tentacles grab prey and transfer it to the eight arms where the squid�s muscular, beak-like mouth bites out chunks to swallow. The food then travels down the esophagus, which runs through the squid�s brain. 36% of americans believe NASA is keeping secrets about alien life. The largest giant squid ever measured was discovered at Timble Tickle Bay, Newfoundland, on November 2, 1878. Three fisherman were working not far off shore when they noticed a mass float- ing on the ocean they took to be wreckage. They investigated and found a giant squid had run aground. Using their anchor as a grappling hook they snagged the still-living body and made it fast to a tree. When the tide went out the creature was left high and dry. When the animal died, the fishermen measured it and then chopped it up for dog meat. The body of the squid was twenty feet from tail to beak. The longer tentacles measured thirty five feet and were tipped with four inch suckers. It weighed two tons. THIS DAY IN HISTORY Singer Joan Baez and actress Susannah York, both in 1941 (age 61) Basketball player Tyrone Curtis Muggsy Bogues and actress Joely Richardson, both in 1965 (age 37) Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band in 1967 (age 35) The euro is equal to about 90 cents U.S. The sign for the new single currency looks like an "E" with two clearly marked, horizontal parallel lines across it. It was inspired by the Greek letter "epsilon", in reference to the cradle of European civilization and to the first letter of the word "Europe". The parallel lines represent the sta- bility of the euro. The euro sign is easily recognizable and in a few years' time it will be as well known as the dollar sign ($). More than 15 billion notes and 52 billion coins worth 646 billion euros, or $568 billion have been produced for the switchover. The 12-nation euro zone represents one-sixth of the world's economy. THIS DAY IN HISTORY January 10th 1878 - A constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote was introduced into the U.S. Senate. It wasn�t until 42 years later that the amendment was signed into law. 1901 - Oil was discovered at the Spindletop claim near Beaumont, Texas, launching the Southwest oil boom. 1984 - The United States established full diplomatic rela- tions with the Vatican for the first time in 116 years. 2000 - America Online announced it had agreed to buy Time Warner for $165 billion, in what would be the biggest merger in history. **** Singer Rod Stewart in 1945 (age 57) Boxer George Foreman in 1949 (age 53) Singer Pat Benatar in 1953 (age 49) Fruitcake originated in ancient Egypt and was considered an essential food for the afterlife. Claxton, Georgia and Corsicana, Texas claim to be the "Fruit- cake Capital" of the U.S. Cashew nuts are expensive, and never have shells because the shell and skin of the cashew nut contains extremely caustic oil that can painfully blister the skin. This dangerous oil must be completely removed before the nut can be touched or eaten. A week before the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival begins, the Kitchen God returns to heaven to report on a family's behavior during the previous year. A negative report by the Kitchen God means a family will suffer bad luck during the year to come. Legend has it that a beggar named Zhang leaped into a fireplace to escape being seen by his former wife, embarrassed by the way he had mistreated her. His wife tried in vain to put out the fire, but was ultimately forced to watch her former husband's ashes fly up the chimney. Upon hearing the story, the Jade Emperor decided to reward the man for admitting to his wrongdoings by making him Kitchen God, charged with watching over everyone's behavior. In order to ensure a favorable report from the Kitchen God, the custom evolved of feeding him Sticky Cake, which is a type of fruit- cake. THIS DAY IN HISTORY January 11th 1935 - American aviator Amelia Earhart Putnam became the first woman to fly across the Pacific from Hawaii to Cali- fornia. 1993 - Doctors in Pittsburgh performed the second ever baboon-to-human liver transplant; the 62-year-old recipient did not survive long. 1996 - The Japanese Diet elected Ryutaro Hashimoto, head of the Liberal Democratic Party, as the new premier. 2000 - The British government declared Chile�s Gen. Augusto Pinochet medically unfit to stand trial in Spain. The ruling cleared the way for the former dictator to avoid charges of crimes against humanity. ****	Cotton candy
Brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice (before his untimely death on Jan 12, 2003) Gibbs were better known as what band, who hit their peak during the disco era?	New Writers' Ink Publishing New Writers' Ink Publishing "A new multifaceted business of books, travels, family history and Sicilian tours as never seen . . . ." Andrew J. Montalbano, Author / Publisher NEW WRITERS' INK PUBLISHING COMPANY 3727 N. I-10 Service Road, West ~ Metairie, LA 70002-7030 USA Telephone: 504.455.4337 / FAX: 504.888.8315 "The wise man must be wise before, not after." "We’re All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" Tutti siamo fatti della stessa pasta! My Travels and Reflections Throughout Sicily . . . Book Specifications: Non-Fiction Travel, 6x9, 356 Pages, Softback A Year To Always Remember ~ In Honor of My Father's 100th Birthday ~ And the Circle Continues . . . Traditions From Where They Came, To Where They Went Officials, citizens and friends, Even though I was not born in this land, I feel as one of you, and I am most grateful. I always come back to my father's land, which I feel to be my own, because my roots are deep! It has been experience of a lifetime that I will keep in my heart forever!! Autorita, cittadini e amici Pur non essensdo nato in questo luogo mi sento uno di voi e ve ne sono infinitamente grato! Ritorno sempre con piacere nella terra di mio padre alla quale sento di appartenere perche profonde sono le radici. E stata un'esperienza di vita che portero nel mio cuore per sempre!! In a way, it's truly amazing how Andrew J. Montalbano's first book signing turned into a wonderful family reunion. "Come along with me, come grow older with me, come along and grow older with me . . . for the best of times is yet to be." Afterward, it was a catalyst to planning and taking another trip to Sicily to celebrate his book in his father's hometown of Bisacquino, Sicily. Two years later in 2000 Montalbano takes the opportunity and makes plans to live in Sicily for one month to honor his father's 100 birthday. What wonderful encounters. Following in 2001, Montalbano spends a six week summer adventure in Sicily. From March until the first week in May 2002, again, he lives the life of a Sicilian to savor the many different Sicilian foods and feste. On all of his trips to Sicily from 1998 to 2002, Montalbano details all of his aventures meeting the people, seeing the interesting sights, exploring the different towns and getting to know what life is all about on a day-to-day basis. For him, they were all wonderful and remarkable life experiences! Regardless, the Sicilians/Italians who left to come to America (our heros) and those who stayed, each considers themselves unique and one-of-a-kind. But after you get to meet and know them, accordingly, Montalbano concludes that you can boil it all down to one fact "We're all made out of the same pasta!" Isola In Un Mare di Luce Island in a Sea of Light Going to Sicily any time soon? Either way, you’ll enjoy "We're All Made Out of the Same Pasta!" This informative book of Sicilian travels will enlighten the reader with the many beautiful sights that Sicily offers its visitors. The Island of the Sun beckons you, for dreams do come true there. Andrew J. Montalbano has visited Sicily many times. He always discovers something new to see or experience. Follow and join him on his many adventures to this largest and most beautiful island in the Mediterranean Sea. Visit many of the major Sicilian cities, and view some of the smaller ones - those that aren’t on the usual tour. Read about his exciting daily activities and his many wonderful quests throughout the island. Meet the people and share his thoughts and reflections. And savor the delicious foods he eats - all in 356 pages! The many Italian immigrants who came especially from Sicily through the Port of New Orleans settled in their new home called America. The author contrasts those who came and those who stayed. It’s amazing how "we’re all made out of the same pasta!" When you finish reading Montalbano’s exciting travel tales, there is no doubt you will start to plan a Sicilian holiday you have dreamed of for many years. Only until the moment you arrive will you truly believe what you have read about Sicily with its endless treasures. Buon Viaggio! In Memory of Leo Luke Marcello August 6, 1945 ~ March 30, 2005 LEO LUKE MARCELLO Leo Luke Marcello was born August 6, 1945, in DeRidder, Louisiana, to Dr. Luke M. and Bert DiGiglia Marcello, both descendants of Sicilian immigrants. He was the eldest of five children - two sisters, Ann Elizabeth Governale and Mary Jane Doise, and two brothers, Sam Thomas and Charles Christopher Marcello. Leo received a B.A. from Tulane University, a M.A. and a Ph.D from Louisiana State University. He studied philosophy and pre-theology at the University of Dallas and theology at Catholic University of America. He has taught at Howard University, for the University of Maryland in Wales, and at McNeese State University, where he held both the first Shearman Professorship in Humanities and the Shearman Professorship of Liberal Arts. I count one hundred years as I enter. My young grandparents in the bloom of life had not yet left their homes and crossed the sea. They had not yet entered into marriage when they last stood within this holy place. Everywhere I look the images flood my eyes, swirling with familiar faces, the cousins who have brought me to their church, the painted shapes of saints above altars, the countenances known from holy cards my nonna touched to lips from her sickbed. Everything fits this candle-lit darkness. Assembled at the side altar for Mass, women are whispering their ancient prayers. Stone in-laid floors and the painted ceiling guide me through the pale blue light of the nave. We stand before the marbled baptistery, the floor covered with thousands of petals, flowers reconfigured into designs, roped off in preparation for the feast of Corpus Domine three days from now. On Sunday I will see the procession. Rose petals will be scattered in the streets. I will pray in the church of my patron saint, after whom many children are named. He lived a thousand years ago, and I for this brief hour have passed the same way. Traduzione di Dora De Martino Fiorillo Chiesa Madre Conto cent’ anni da come entro. I miei giovani nonni, nel fiore della vita non avevano ancora lasciato le loro case e attraversato il mare. Non si erano ancora sposati quando si fermarono in questo luogo sacro. Ovunque guardo, immagini fluttuanti di volti familiari, affollano i miei occhi i cugini che mi hanno condotto nella loro chiesa, figure di santi dipinte sopra l’altare, volti riconosciuti su cartoline sacre, mia nonna, inferma nel suo letto, le baciava. Tutto é a posto nell’oscurità in questa luce di candela, sistemata al lato dell’altare, per la messa, le donne bisbigliano le loro preghiere antiche. Pavimenti di pietra ben allineati e soffitti dipinti mi guidano attraverso la pallida luce celeste della navata. Siamo in piedi davanti al battistero marmoreo, il pavimento coperto di mille petali, fiori riconfigurati in disegni, cintati in preparazione della festa del Corpus Domini fra tre giorni. Domenica vedró la processione. Si spargeranno petali di rosa sulle strade. Pregheró nella Chiesa del mio santo patrono dal quale molti bambini hanno preso nome. Visse mille anni fa, ed io per questa breve ora ho percorso lo stesso cammino. Parrocchia di S. Martino di Corleone Sede: Corleone (Palermo) Intestazioni: Parrocchia di S. Martino di Corleone, Corleone (Palermo), 1419-, SIUSA Corleone, è il centro più importante dell'alto Belice sinistro e del San Leonardo, sui quali si innalza la Rocca di Busambra e alle cui pendici si estende il bosco della Ficuzza. Dalle opere di numerosi autori corleonesi, si apprende che il centro era già sviluppato sotto gli arabi. Sotto i Normanni, Corleone venne assegnata alla Diocesi di Monreale, e le chiese esistenti erano quella di Sant'Andrea (che oggi non esiste più), la chiesa della Maddalena dell'annesso convento delle benedettine, di San Pietro. Nel 1282, Corleone fu il centro dal quale si propagò la rivolta dei Vespri Siciliani, che portò alla cacciata degli angoini dalla Sicilia. Sotto gli Aragonesi divenne città demaniale, e la libertà veniva strenuamente difesa dai corleonesi, soprattutto contro la Diocesi di Monreale che richiedeva il pagamento delle tasse. Corleone era un centro religioso molto importante, numerosi furono infatti i personaggi eminenti come San Leoluca patrono del paese e quella del Beato Bernardo, al secolo Filippo Latino, nato nel 1605 e morto nel 1667, venerato come un santo dalla comunità di Corleone. La struttura religiosa più importante era quella della Collegiata dei sacerdoti, che officiavano la messa nella Chiesa Madre ed avevano la cura delle anime di tutta la popolazione. L'origine della Collegiata di Corleone è ignota. La prima testimonianza solenne risale ad una bolla di Papa Gregorio XIII, del 1579, riportata in una lapide nella cappella dello Spasimo, nella Chiesa Madre. Nel 1599, venne nominato il primo arciprete di Corleone. La Chiesa Madre di Corleone rimase per secoli l'unico punto di riferimento della vita religiosa dei corleonesi. Possedeva un ingente patrimonio, fatto di lasciti e rendite, chiamato "Maramma" che veniva speso per officiare le messe e per il pagamento degli addetti al culto. Nella seconda metà del 1700, la vecchia chiesetta Madre crollò e si pose mano alla sua ricostruzione che terminò dopo una lunga serie di peripezie nel corso del XIX secolo. Chiesa Madre in Corleone, Sicily Leo's poem was printed in "We're All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" We met a couple of times in New Orleans and Lake Charles. He was the only person I ever met who had the exact same birthday as mine. Pace, mio amico! ORDER DIRECTLY A COPY OF "We're All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" Book Specifications: Non-Fiction Travel, 6x9, 356 Pages, Softback, ISBN: 0-9656710-1-1 Price: In-State: $25.00 (includes all taxes) + $5.00 (only if postage is necessary) Out-of-State: $30.00 New Writers' Ink Publishing Company 3727 N. I-10 Service Road, West Metairie, LA 70002-7030 "We’re All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" by Andrew J. Montalbano New Writers’ Ink - ISBN: 0-9656710-1-1 356 Pages - Softback - $25.00 Looking for an inexpensive trip to Sicily? There is no way you will find one for less than $20, but for that amount of money however, you can travel to Sicily and back in "We’re All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" New Orleanian, Andrew J. Montalbano uses a similar venue as the German writer, Goethe, by describing his adventures in Sicily though his daily dairy entries. Some times you may feel you have read something already, but the reinforcement of repetitions from his many trips certainly drives home the significance of the what is seen and done there. Montalbano does an expert job of taking the reader to all the major Sicilian cities and many of the smaller towns, off the beaten tourist trail. And of course, you will learn every square inch of Bisacquino, Sicily, where his beloved father, Gioachino Montalbano, was born. And all the people he met and knows there. "The author has visited Sicily many times. He always discovers something new to see or experience each time. Follow him on his last four journeys to this largest and most beautiful island in the Mediterranean Sea . . . . Read about his full and exciting daily activities and his many wonderful adventures throughout the island. Meet the local people who became his friends. Shares his thoughts and reflections. And savor the delicious foods he ate - all in 356 pages!" Interestingly, the author uses the last chapter to contrast the many people who immigrated to the United States, especially those Sicilians who came from the Western side of Sicily through the Port of New Orleans. These immigrants either stayed in the New Orleans area or later relocated to Birmingham, Alabama, Houston, Texas and other parts of the United States. Cleverly, it’s quite a simple conclusion. "When you finish reading these delightful travel tales, there is no doubt you will start to plan a Sicilian holiday you have dreamed of for many years. Only until the moment you arrive will you believe what you have read about Sicily in this book . . . with its endless treasures." So either go pack your bags and purchase your ticket or go buy a copy of "We’re All Made Out Of The Same Pasta!" and read away. Buon Viaggio on whatever you decide! ISBN: 0-9656710-0-3 Book Specifications: Non-Fiction Travel Essays, Biographies & Genealogies, Hardcover, 8x11 size, 815 pages, 224 photos, 93 documents Sicilian Sun has a rich burgundy red fabric with gold lettering. It is a beautifully designed book for your library or coffee table. 1 HONOR THY FATHER, THY MOTHER 2 I AM MY FATHER'S SON 3 THE FIRST TRIP TO EUROPE ~ 1978 4 THE DREAMS OF DREAMS ~ THE FIRST TRIP TO SICILY ~ 1981 5 THE SECOND TRIP ~ HANDY ANDY TOURS ~ 1984 6 RITTORNO A LA SICLIA ~ A RETURN TO SICILY ON MY OWN ~ 1987 7 THE REUNION VISIT TO SICILY ~ 1990 REFLECTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS ON BISACQUINO SICILY EPILOGUES 8 THE MONTALBANO FAMILY OF BISACQUINO SICILY ~ 1750-1864 9 THE MONTALBANO FAMILY WHO IMMIGRATED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THEIR PRESENT FAMILIES 10 THE LATINO FAMILY OF BISACQUINO SICILY ~ 1750-1864 11 THE LATINO / DICHIARA FAMILIES WHO IMMIGRATED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THEIR PRESENT FAMILIES 12 THE DICHIARA FAMILY OF BISACQUINO SICILY ~ 1750-1864 MAJOR EVENTS IN ITALY APPENDICES Appendix A Madonna del Monte Triona dei Bisacquinesi di New Orleans, Louisiana - List of Officers and Membership Appendix B Societa' Italiana di Mutura Beneficenza San Giusepppe di New Orleans, Louisiana - 1926 - List of Officers and Membership Apendix C Societa' Italiana di M.B. Madonna del Balzo Bisacquino di New Orleans, Louisiana - 1931 - List of Officers and Membership Andrew J. Montalbano was born on August 6, 1945, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the same day the United States of America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. "America dropped 'little boy' at 8:15 a.m. on Hiroshima, Japan, and my dear mother dropped a 'little boy' at 6:51 a.m. at Charity Hospital in New Orleans." What else was happening in the world in 1945? The City of New Orleans & the Mississippi River New Orleans (pronounced /nuː ˈɔrliənz/ or /nuː ɔrˈliːnz/ , locally [nuː ˈɔrlənz] or [ˈnɔrlənz] ; French : La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛl ɔʀleɑ̃] is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana . The city is named after Philippe II, Duc d'Orléans , Regent of France, and is well known for its distinct French architecture, as well as its cross cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz ), and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras . The city is often referred to as the "most unique"city in America. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River . The boundaries of the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous . The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south) and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain , part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north and Lake Borgne lies to the east. La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company , under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville , on land inhabited by the Chitimacha . It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans , who was Regent of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans . The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763) and remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted to French control. All of the surviving 18th century architecture of the Vieux Carré ( French Quarter ) dates from this Spanish period. Napoleon sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles , Irish, Germans and Africans. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. Early in the morning on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb blast was detonated at the Trinity Site. The actual explosion produced a blast equivalent to eighteen thousand tons of TNT. The resulting fireball that scorched the desert formed a depressed crater 800 yards in diameter, glazed with a light olive green, glass-like substance where the sand had melted and solidified again. The following excerpt is from Time Magazine, Sept. 17, 1945: “Seen from the air, the crater itself seems (looks like) a lake of green Jade shaped like a splashy star, and set in a sere disc of burnt vegetation half a mile wide. From close up the lake is a glistening encrustation of blue-green glass 2,400 feet in diameter, formed when the molten soil solidified in air.” Chemical tests have confirmed that it is nearly pure melted silica with traces of Olivine, Feldspar, and other minerals which comprise the desert sand. The crater was buried for security reasons not long after the explosion and, as a result, Trinitite has remained relatively difficult to obtain. This material was, of course, collected many years ago. A copy of a one page report, taken from “Minerals of New Mexico”, S. A. Northrop (1959) is available covering Trinitite, and a copy of this information will be supplied with each sample ordered, if requested. Each specimen has the light olive green, glass-like, fused top surface, with interesting rounded form. The bottom of each piece exhibits the rough texture of the sandy desert surface, which remained untouched by the blast. While the Trinitite was highly radioactive in 1945 when it was formed, more than fifty years have passed and at the present time, the radioactivity is very low. The Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb , code-named " Little Boy ," to be used in war , by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the attack on Hiroshima , Japan on 6 August 1945, just before the end of World War II . The B-29 was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Paul Tibbets . The Enola Gay gained additional national attention in 1995 when the cockpit and nose section of the aircraft was exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, D.C. The exhibit was changed due to a controversy over original historical script displayed with the aircraft. In 2003, the entire restored B-29 Enola Gay went on display at NASM's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center . The Hiroshima mission had been described by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts in Enola Gay book as tactically flawless, and Enola Gay returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare on the base. The first atomic bombing was followed three days later by another B-29 ( Bockscar ) (piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney ) which dropped a second nuclear weapon, " Fat Man ," on Nagasaki . The Nagasaki mission, by contrast, had been described as tactically botched, although the mission had met its objectives. The crew encountered a number of problems in execution, and Bockscar had very little fuel by the time it landed on Okinawa. On that mission, Enola Gay, flown by Crew B-10 (Capt. George Marquardt, aircraft commander, see Necessary Evil for crew details), was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura. "Little Boy" was the codename of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay , piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 393d Bombardment Squadron, Heavy , of the United States Army Air Forces . It was the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon. The second, the " Fat Man ," was dropped three days later on Nagasaki . The weapon was developed by the Manhattan Project during World War II . It derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium 235 . The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test , and the first uranium -based detonation. Approximately 600 milligrams of mass were converted into energy. It exploded with a destructive power equivalent to between 13 and 18 kilotons of TNT (54 and 75 TJ) (estimates vary) and killed approximately 140,000 people. Its design was not tested in advance, unlike the more complex plutonium bomb ( Fat Man ). The available supply of enriched uranium was very small at that time, and it was felt that the simple design of a uranium "gun" type bomb was so sure to work that there was no need to test it at full scale. (Small-scale experiments were used to determine the critical mass and other properties). Image overlay of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome, taken in 1945. The atomic bomb hit the city on Aug 6, 1945, and killed more than 140,000 people on the day, 240,000+ listed as of now. During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After six months of intense strategic fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities the Japanese government ignored an ultimatum given by the Potsdam Declaration . By executive order of President Harry S. Truman the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon " Little Boy " on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of " Fat Man " over Nagasaki on August 9. These are the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare . Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day. The Hiroshima prefectural health department estimates that, of the people who died on the day of the explosion, 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness , and other injuries, compounded by illness. A plausible estimate of the total immediate and short term cause of death, 15–20% died from radiation sickness, 20–30% from flash burns , and 50–60% from other injuries, compounded by illness. Since then, more have died from leukemia (231 observed) and solid cancers (334 observed) attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians. Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers , signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, officially ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II. Germany had signed its unavoidable Instrument of Surrender on May 7, ending the war in Europe . The bombings led, in part, to post-war Japan adopting Three Non-Nuclear Principles , forbidding the nation from nuclear armament. Newspaper Headline: Dropping of the Bomb on Hiroshima Charity Hospital was one of two teaching hospitals which were part of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans (MCLNO) . Three weeks after the events of Hurricane Katrina , then Governor Kathleen Blanco said that Charity Hospital would not reopen, even though the military had scrubbed the building to medical-ready standards. The Louisiana State University System , which owns the building, has stated that it has no plans for reconstruction. Charity Hospital was one of several public hospitals around the state of Louisiana administered by the Louisiana State University System at the time of Hurricane Katrina . Charity Hospital and the nearby University Hospital were both teaching hospitals affiliated with the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans (LSUHSC-NO) . University Hospital and the adjacent Tulane Medical Center remain open. The Charity Hospital building is located in the New Orleans Hospital District . It is on the opposite side of I-10 from the LSU Health Sciences Center. The address is 1532 Tulane Avenue, New Orleans , Louisiana 70112-1352. Charity Hospital was founded on May 10, 1736, by a grant from the French sailor and shipbuilder Jean Louis, who died in New Orleans the year before. His last will and testament was to finance a hospital for the indigent in the colony of New Orleans from his estate. His hospital has served the poor in New Orleans for over 250 years. Charity Hospital was originally named the Hospital of Saint John or L’Hôpital des Pauvres de la Charité (Hospital for the Poor). The first Charity Hospital was located on the intersection of Chartres Street and Bienville Street in what is now the French Quarter . The hospital was founded 18 years after the city was founded by France in 1718. It was the second oldest continually operated public hospital in the United States at the time of its demise. Only Bellevue Hospital in New York City is older, having been founded a month earlier, on March 31, 1736.Charity Hospital quickly outgrew its original facility, and a second hospital was built at the edge of the colony on Basin Street in 1743. A third hospital was built nearby in 1785. It was renamed the San Carlos Hospital in honor of King Charles III, King of Spain, after the New Orleans was ceded to Spain in 1763. The old Charity Hospital building at the start of the 20th century A fire destroyed this hospital in 1809. Without a building, a temporary hospital was established at the Cabildo for a month, then at the Jourdan residence in the Faubourg Marigny for 6 months, then the dilapidated De La Vergne plantation for 5 years while a fourth hospital was built. This new hospital was built at the edge of the city on Canal Street where the Fairmont Hotel is currently located. The hospital was completed in 1815, but this hospital was widely criticized as inadequate and underfunded. A fifth hospital was built within Girod, Gravier, St. Mary, and Common Streets in the Faubourg St. Marie in 1832. This hospital came under the administration of the Sisters of Charity , who would run the hospital for the next century. Under their care, Charity Hospital, partnered with the Medical College of the University of Louisiana would become a celebrated institution of healing in the city. By the 20th century, the city of New Orleans was rapidly expanding, and the demand for indigent medical services again exceeded the capacity of the existing Charity Hospital. A sixth hospital was built on Tulane Avenue in 1939. At the time it was the second largest hospital in the United States with 2,680 beds. New Orleans Charity Hospital listen ) ; Louisiana Creole : Léta de la Lwizyàn) is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America . Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans . Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes , which are local governments equivalent to counties . The largest parish by population is Jefferson Parish , and the largest by land area is Cameron Parish . Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural , multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by an admixture of 18th century French , Spanish , Indian and African cultures that they are considered to be somewhat exceptional in the U.S. Before the American influx and statehood at the beginning of the 19th century, the territory of current Louisiana State had been a Spanish and French colony. In addition, the pattern of development included importing numerous African slaves in the 18th century, with many from the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana In Italiano, La Louisiana (in italiano meglio Luisiana) è uno stato degli Stati Uniti . Confina con Texas , Arkansas , Mississippi , mentre a sud è bagnata dal Golfo del Messico . La capitale è Baton Rouge , la città più grande (e famosa) è New Orleans . Lo stato ha due lingue ufficiali: inglese e francese .Origine del nome: Questo stato prese il nome da René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle che reclamò il territorio dove sfociava il Mississippi e lo chiamò La Louisiane (Louisiana) ovvero la Terra di Louis . Una volta il territorio della Louisiana, quando era assoggettato alla Francia arrivava dalla foce del Mississippi fino al Québec canadese ; da esso si sono formati in parte, o del tutto, 15 stati. Geografia: La superficie dello stato può essere divisa in 2 parti; una regione collinare, e una pianeggiante alluvionale. Quest'ultima copre un'area di 52.000 km quadrati situata lungo il fiume Mississippi , che attraversa lo stato da nord a sud per un tratti complessivo di 1000 km sfociando nel Golfo del Messico , lungo il Red River , il Ouachita River e altri fiumi più piccoli come il Pearl River , il Tensas , il Calcasieu , il Mermentau , il Vermilion , il Teche , l' Amite ecc. La regione collinare si estende nella parte nord e nord-orientale dello stato, occupa un'area di 65.000 km² e raggiunge un'altezza massima di soli 163 metri sul livello del mare; vi si possono trovare boschi e praterie. He is the youngest of eight children to Gioachino (Jake) and Josephine Latino Montalbano. As a youngster, he grew up in the Mid-City Section of New Orleans during the late 40's and early 50's. He experienced the New Orleans-way-of-life with all of its uniqueness that it offered (as you can see below.) When he was young, one of his favorite pastimes was playing marbles. He also lived in an environment enriched with wonderful stories. His favorite childhood storybook was Pinocchio: Pinocchio (pronounced [piˈnɔkːjo] in Italian) is a fictional character that first appeared in 1883 , in The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi , and has since appeared in many adaptations of that story and others. Carved from a piece of pine by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a small Italian village, he was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamt of becoming a real boy. The name Pinocchio is a Tuscan word meaning " pine nut " (the standard Italian term is pinolo pronounced [piˈnɔːlo] ). Pinocchio is known for having a long nose that becomes longer when he is under stress (first half-dozen chapters), especially while telling a lie . Carlo Lorenzini (November 24, 1826 – October 26, 1890), better known by the pen name Carlo Collodi, was a Florentine children's writer known for the world-renowned fairy tale novel , The Adventures of Pinocchio . Carlo Lorenzini (November 24, 1826 – October 26, 1890), better known by the pen name Carlo Collodi, was a Florentine children's writer known for the world-renowned fairy tale novel , The Adventures of Pinocchio . Carlo Collodi During the Wars of Independence in 1848 and 1860 Collodi served as a volunteer with the Tuscan army. His active interest in political matters may be seen in his earliest literary works as well as in the founding of the satirical newspaper Il Lampione. This newspaper was censored by order of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1849 but re-emerged in May 1860. Lorenzini had won fame as early as 1856 with his novel In vapore and had also begun intense activity on other political newspapers such as Il Fanfulla; at the same time he was employed by the Censorship Commission for the Theatre. During this period he composed various satirical sketches and stories (sometimes simply by collating earlier articles), including Macchiette (1880), Occhi e nasi (1881), Storie allegre (1887). In 1875, he entered the domain of children's literature with Racconti delle fate, a translation of French fairy tales by Perrault . In 1876 Lorenzini wrote Giannettino (inspired by Alessandro Luigi Parravicini 's Giannetto), the Minuzzolo, and Il viaggio per l'Italia di Giannettino, a series which explored the re-unification of Italy through the ironic thoughts and actions of the character Giannettino . Lorenzini became fascinated by the idea of using an amiable, rascally character as a means of expressing his own convictions through allegory. In 1880 he began writing Storia di un burattino ("The story of a marionette "), also called Le avventure di Pinocchio , which was published weekly in Il Giornale dei Bambini (the first Italian newspaper for children). Lorenzini died unaware of the fame and popularity that awaited his work; as in the allegory of the story, Pinocchio eventually went on to lead his own independent life, distinct from that of the author. It has been said that this was one of the inspiring themes of Luigi Pirandello 's Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore ( Six Characters in Search of an Author ). Lorenzini died in Florence in 1890 and is interred at San Miniato al Monte Basilica . Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pi nocchio by Carlo Collodi . The second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics , it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 7, 1940. The plot of the film involves a wooden puppet named Pinocchio (voice of Dickie Jones ) being brought to life by a blue fairy ( Evelyn Venable ), who tells him he can become a real boy if he proves himself "brave, truthful, and unselfish". Thus begin the puppet's adventures to become a real boy, which involve many encounters with a host of unsavory characters. The film was adapted by Aurelius Battaglia , William Cottrell , Otto Englander, Erdman Penner , Joseph Sabo , Ted Sears , and Webb Smith from Collodi's book. The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske , and the film's sequences were directed by Norman Ferguson , T. Hee , Wilfred Jackson , Jack Kinney , and Bill Roberts . Roberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (born 27 October 1952) is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film , theatre and television . As a director, his 2002 film Pinocchio , one of the costliest films in Italian cinema, performed well in Italy but bombed in North America. Pinocchio In the 1950's Televison arrrived in our house. First, the pictures were in black & white and then color came along! Forget about the clouds when we're together Just sing a song and bring us sunny weather Happy trails to you Till we meet again... "Happy Trails," by Dale Evans Rogers , was the theme song for the 1940s and 1950s radio program and the 1950s television show starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, always sung over the end credits of the program. Happy Trails was released in 1952 as a 78 RPM and 45 RPM by Rogers and Evans with the Whippoorwills and Orchestra on RCA Victor Records. It was re-issued in 1957 as a 45 RPM record on RCA Victor/Bluebird. In 1951, Foy Willing wrote a song titled "Happy Trails" for the Republic Pictures movie, "Spoilers of the Plains," starring Roy Rogers with Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage . Subsequently, the first three notes of Foy's song and the title were used by Dale Evans in writing her version of "Happy Trails" for both the original The Roy Rogers Show and the short-lived The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show , which aired on ABC in 1962. Dale's is the version that is popularly played and sung today, albeit no credit being given to Foy Willing. Quicksilver Messenger Service released an album called Happy Trails in 1968, on which the song appears. The song was later covered by Van Halen on their 1982 album, Diver Down , and was usually the way the band would end live performances they did with their first lead singer, David Lee Roth . It was played on the 1993 debut album of bluegrass band Nickel Creek , back when they were children. It is a common goodbye song. Link (to hear song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcYsO890YJY The title character is a masked Texas Ranger in the American Old West , originally played by George Seaton (radio), but more famously by Clayton Moore (television), who gallops about righting injustices with the aid of his clever, laconic Native American companion, Tonto played by (amongst others) John Todd , Roland Parker, and (in the television series) Jay Silverheels . Tonto usually referred to the Lone Ranger as his " quimo sabe ," meaning "trusty scout" or "trusted friend." Departing on his white horse Silver, the Ranger would shout "Hi-yo, Silver, away!" The horse would then gallop toward the setting sun, followed by someone asking, "Who was that masked man, anyway?" Someone else would respond, "Why, he's the Lone Ranger." The sayings, as well as the theme music from the William Tell Overture , are indelibly stamped in the memories of millions of Americans (and Britons) who came of age during the decades of the show's initial popularity or viewed the television series run nearly continuously for past fifty years. Reruns of the Lone Ranger as portrayed by Clayton Moore were still being transmitted as of August of 2010, sixty-one years after their production and initial broadcast. The character has become an icon of American culture. A marble is a small spherical toy usually made from glass , clay , or agate . These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about ½ inch (1.25 cm) in diameter, but they may range from less than ¼ inch (0.635 cm) to over 3 inches (7.75 cm), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of children's games , and are often collected , both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors. Marbles are often mentioned in Roman literature, and there are many examples of marbles from ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass and commonly referred to as a "Glass alley." Ceramic marbles entered inexpensive mass production in the 1870s. A German glassblower invented marble scissors in 1846, a device for making marbles. The first mass produced toy marbles (clay) made in the US were made in Akron, Ohio by S.C Dyke in the early 1890s. The first US glass marbles were also made in Akron by James Harvey Leighton. In 1903, Martin Frederick Christensen of Akron, Ohio made the first machine made glass marbles on his patented machine. His company, The M.F. Christensen & Son Co. manufactured millions of toy and industrial glass marbles until they ceased operations in 1917. The next US company to enter the glass marble market was Akro Agate. This company was started by Akronites in 1911, but was located in Clarksburg West Virginia. Today, there are only two American based toy marble manufacturers: Jabo Vitro in Reno, Ohio and Marble King, in Paden City West Virginia. Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, Louisiana Self-taught how to ride a bicycle; thanks to EJ (brother's friend) who let me use his bike. How many miles skated is beyond immagination! Mr. Bingle is a fictional character , a snowman assistant to Santa Claus . Originating as a mascot of the Maison Blanche department store in New Orleans, Louisiana , the character was later marketed by Dillard's and remains part of the pop-culture of the Greater New Orleans area. Mr. Bingle was created and designed by Emile Alline , an employee of Maison Blanche, in 1947. Mister Bingle shared the initials of his home, "M.B.", as the store was often called. Mr. Bingle first appeared in puppet form at the Canal Street Maison Blanche in 1950s, puppeteered by Edwin "Oscar " Isentrout (who also played the voice of Mr. Bingle). These puppet shows occurred each day for the few weeks leading up to Christmas for about 15 minutes at a time, and were a favorite of local children. Mr. Bingle also appeared in musical radio and television commercials. The puppet shows ended in 1985 when Isentrout died. Later Dillard's bought the Maison Blanche chain and the Mr. Bingle trademark. Today, many locals consider Mr. Bingle a cultural icon , fondly remembering the times when Mr. Bingle's shows were one of the most anticipated activities of the Christmas season. Mr. Bingle was also displayed as a large paper mache figure on the front of the flagship Maison Blanche store on Canal Street, first standing next to Santa Claus and later in a flying form. The flying figure was displayed at the Metairie, Louisiana Maison Blanche Store and later at a Dillard's Metairie location when the Canal Street store was closed. Dillard's donated the large display (in disrepair) to New Orleans City Park and it was refurbished and made its return for the 2005 Christmas season at their "Celebration in the Oaks" light display. Mr. Bingle outside New Orleans: For a short time, Mr. Bingle also appeared in Memphis at the department store Lowenstein's and was used in Christmas advertising nationwide at various regional department stores owned by Mercantile Stores (which acquired MB a few years before itself being acquired by Dillard's). According to the official Mr. Bingle website , merchandise featuring the character was available at 21 Dillard's locations in 10 states during the 2007 holiday shopping season, in addition to the Dillard's website. Ironically, the locations did not include any stores in New Orleans itself, where the character originated. (The items were available, however, in four New Orleans suburbs.) Mr. Bingle "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, here comes Mr. Bingle . . . with another message from Kris Kringle. Time to launch the Christmas Season, Maison Blanche makes Christmas pleasin.' Gifts galore for you to see, each a gem from . . . MB." Once during his lifetime Andrew's parents made a St. Joseph Altar with the help of their friend, Angelina Culotta, who's family annually made altars. In New Orleans , Louisiana , which was a major port of entry for Sicilian immigrants during the late 19th century, the Feast of St. Joseph is a city-wide event. Both public and private St. Joseph's altars are traditionally built. The altars are usually open to any visitor who wishes to pay homage. The food is generally distributed to charity after the altar is dismantled. There are also parades in honor of St. Joseph and the Italian population of New Orleans which are similar to the many marching clubs and truck parades of Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day . Tradition in New Orleans also holds that by burying a small statue of St. Joseph in your yard, your house will sell more promptly. See more information on Web Page entitled: Family History - Montalbano, Latino & DiChiara Pontchartrain Beach was an amusement park located in New Orleans, Louisiana , on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain . It was founded by Harry J. Batt Sr. and later mananged by his son, Harry J. Batt Jr. It opened in 1928, across Bayou St. John from an existing amusement resort at Old Spanish Fort . Pontchartrain Beach's original location is the present-day lakefront neighborhood of Lake Terrace . In the early 1930s, subsequent to the construction of a seawall extending from West End to the Industrial Canal that created a new shoreline for Lake Pontchartrain, Pontchartrain Beach was moved to a new location at the lake end of Elysian Fields Avenue , a location formerly offshore of Milneburg . The park was originally racially segregated and earmarked for "Whites Only;" another lakefront resort was reserved for "Coloreds", Lincoln Beach . Pontchartrain Beach was integrated in the early 1960s, leading to the closure of Lincoln Beach. Pontchartrain Beach included a beach , amusement rides (including a large roller coaster , The Zephyr ), and concession stands. The park featured live music concerts, including many local musicians and touring national acts such as Elvis Presley . Other rides included the Zephyr Junior, Smoky Mary, The Wild Maus, Musik Express, Log Ride, The Ragin' Cajun (a modern, looping steel coaster), The Bug, Paratrooper, Calypso, "The Airplanes," Haunted House, Ghost Train, bumper cars, Ferris wheel , the Monster, Trabant, Sky Ride, Hard Rock, Galaxie, Laff in the Dark, Magic Rainbow, Red Baron, and many others. In addition to rides, there were also the summertime shows which changed every few years (Skipper & Dolly dolphin show, Great American High Dive Show, Merlin's Magic Rainbow Show). For a few years there was also a fairly large petting zoo with many farm animals and a huge red barnhouse. Just outside of "The Beach" gates was the "Bali Hai" south seas "Tiki" style restaurant. Another popular restaurant was the Ship Ahoy, which featured hamburgers and seafood. Pontchartrain Beach was closed September 23, 1983, due to decreasing attendance, rising insurance costs, pollution concerns in the lake, and the impending competition of the 1984 World's Fair . Several of the rides ended up in Gulf Shores, Alabama , at a small amusement park - including The Airplanes and many Kiddieland rides - which was subsequently wiped out by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.The land formerly housing the park is now occupied by the University of New Orleans Research & Technology Park , home to the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) and the UNO Advanced Technology Center office building. Pontchatrain Beach Jackson Square, also known as Place d'Armes, is a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana . It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960. The design of Jackson Square was modeled on the famous Place des Vosges in Paris , France . The square was originally designed by architect and landscaper Louis H. Pilié , although he is only given credit for the iron fence. Jackson Square is roughly the size of a city block (GPS +29.95748 -090.06310). Early New Orleans was originally centered around what was then called the Place d' Armes (Spanish: Plaza d'Armas). After the Battle of New Orleans , in 1814, the Place d' Armes was renamed Jackson Square after general Andrew Jackson . In the center of the park stands an equestrian statue of Jackson erected in 1856, one of three in America by sculptor Clark Mills . From the 1920s through the 1980s the square was famous as a gathering place of painters of widely varying talents, including proficient professionals, talented young art students, amateurs, and caricaturists. However, while still a haven for artists, in the early 1990s tarot card readers began to tell fortunes on St. Peter and St. Ann Streets. Chartres Street passing in front of Saint Louis Cathedral, the Presbetyre and the Cabildo with its accompanying benches is shared amongst artists, musicians and varied street performers such as jugglers and magicians. Saint Louis Cathedral ( French : Cathédrale Saint-Louis, Roi de France), also known as the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France , is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans ; it has the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating cathedral in the United States. The first church on the site was built in 1718; the third, built in 1789, was raised to cathedral rank in 1793. The cathedral was expanded and largely rebuilt in 1850, with little of the 1789 structure remaining. Saint Louis Cathedral is in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana , USA , on the Place John Paul II ( French : Place Jean-Paul II), a promenaded section of Chartres Street (rue de Chartres) that stretches one block between St. Peter Street (rue Saint-Pierre) on the upriver boundary and St. Ann Street (rue Sainte-Anne) on the downriver boundary. It is located next to Jackson Square and facing the Mississippi River in the heart of New Orleans, situated between the historic buildings of the Cabildo and the Presbytère . It is one of the few Roman Catholic churches in the United States that fronts a major public square. The cathedral was designated as a minor basilica by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral in September 1987. Jackson Square / St. Louis Cathedral The New Orleans Museum of Art (often referred to as NOMA) in New Orleans, Louisiana , was established in 1911 as the Delgado Museum of Art with a bequest from Isaac Delgado . It is the city's oldest fine arts institution, located within City Park a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue . In addition to the main museum building the museum also includes the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, a landscaped 5-acre (20,000 m2) outdoor site with 50 sculptures set beneath live oaks, pines and magnolias amidst footpaths and lagoons. E. John Bullard, Executive Director of the Museum since April 1973. Renoir 's "Seamstress at the Window" NOMA's permanent collection is particularly strong in French and American art, particularly in regards to the Rosemonde E. and Emile Kuntz Collection, and in photography, glass, and African and Japanese works. Its comprehensive collection of French art includes works by Degas , Picasso , Braque , Dufy and Miró . Other artists also featured in the permanent collection include Monet , Renoir , Pissarro , Jackson Pollock , Gauguin and Rodin . NOMA also has an extensive collection of art of the Americas (North America, Central America, and South America), with works from the pre-Columbian period through the Spanish Colonial era. Of particular note are the Maya and Cuzco items. Notable exhibitions have included treasures from Tutankhamun 's tomb, relics of Alexander the Great and his times, a retrospective of Edgar Degas 's time in Louisiana, "Carneval!" focusing on the pre- Lenten festivals held in various cities and cultures in Europe and the Americas (including New Orleans Mardi Gras itself), and images and art related to the Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans . The Museum's collection was fortunately elevated high enough to escape the flooding in the disastrous post-Katrina levee breaches , with most of the damage restricted to office space in the basement. Bourbon Street ( French : Rue Bourbon) is a famous and historic street that spans the length of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana . When founded in 1718, the city was originally centered around the French Quarter. New Orleans has since expanded, but "The Quarter" remains the cultural hub, and Bourbon Street is the street best known by visitors. The most popular section of Bourbon Street is "Upper Bourbon Street," an eight-block section of popular tourist attractions. Bourbon Street begins at Canal Street (across Canal is Carondelet Street in the New Orleans Central Business District ). The straight street continues downriver, southwest to northeast a few blocks from and roughly paralleling the Mississippi River , and comes to its terminus at Pauger Street in the Faubourg Marigny . (In the 19th century, Pauger was named as a continuation of Bourbon Street.) Bourbon Street was named in honor of the House of Bourbon , the ruling French Royal Family, at the time of the city's founding. The street is home to many bars, restaurants, strip clubs , as well as t-shirt and souvenir shops. The upper end of Bourbon Street towards Canal Street is home to many of the French Quarter's strip clubs. These include Rick's Cabaret, Temptations, and Larry Flynt 's Barely Legal Club. Towards the central section of Bourbon Street one can find many famous bars including Johnny White's, The Famous Door, Razzoo and The Cat's Meow. Only in New Orleans, which is unique in so many ways, could cemeteries be major tourist attractions. However, because the city is built on a swamp, the deceased have to be buried above ground here in elaborate stone crypts and mausoleums. Over time the cemeteries, with elaborate sculptures and other decorative artwork embellishing the tombs, have come to come to resemble small villages. They are known by the nickname of “Cities of the Dead.” The most famous cemetery, St. Louis Cemetery #1, is walking distance from the French Quarter and the Downtown area. Located on historic Basin Street, it is the burial place of Marie Laveau, the legendary “voodoo queen.” Believers and non-believers alike make pilgrimages to her tomb to make offerings to her spirit in return for what they hope will be blessings. The many “X’s” scrawled on the tomb attest to the power she is believed to wield, even long after her death. Many other New Orleanians who achieved world fame are buried there as well, including 19th century chess champion Paul Morphy, Homer Plessy of the landmark Supreme Court segregation decision Plessy vs. Ferguson, and members of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas’ New Orleans-based family. The Roman Candy Company began as a family treat with a recipe that dates back at least four generations. My great grandmother, Angelina Napoli Cortese, made the candy for family and friends at social and special events like Christmas and St. Joseph's Day. Her son, Sam Cortese, who was a street vendor by trade since the age of 12, would on occasion bring the left over candy on his fruit and vegetable wagon to sell the next day. Roman Candy always sold very well and people began to ask for it, so Sam decided to try to sell candy on a regular basis. The problem however was that his mother didn't have time to make candy everyday and still tend to her other children and do all the things that mothers do. Sam realized he would have to find a way to make his Roman Candy as he rolled along and sold it. In 1915, he went to a wheelwright named Tom Brinker and together they designed the wagon that is still used today. The Roman Candy gourmet taffy initially sold for 5 cents a stick and stayed at that price until 1970. After his death in 1969, Sam's grandson took over the business and it continues to this day. The wagon and mule can be seen rolling through the streets of New Orleans, uptown, downtown and occasionally even in the suburbs on an almost daily basis. A po' boy (also po-boy, po boy, or poor boy) is a traditional submarine sandwich from Louisiana . It almost always consists of meat or seafood , usually fried, served on baguette -like Louisiana French bread. A key ingredient that differentiates po' boys from subs , gyros , and grinders is the bread. Louisiana French bread is different from the traditional American baguette, in that it has a flaky crust with a soft, airy center. This is generally attributed to the high ambient humidity causing the yeast to be more active. It also differs from the bread usually used for sub-style sandwiches in the rest of the country, which has a soft exterior. The crust of Louisiana French bread is very crispy--so much so that it is difficult to eat without leaving crumbs. But the interior is very light and airy, often less dense than regular white bread. Typically, the French bread comes in two foot long "sticks." Standard sandwich sizes might be a half po' boy, about six inches long (called a "Shorty" at Uglesich's ), and a full po' boy at about a foot long. But they can be prepared in longer and shorter versions for group events. The traditional versions are served hot and include fried shrimp and oysters . Soft shell crab , catfish , crawfish , Louisiana hot sausage , roast beef , and french fries are other variations frequently served. The latter two usually are served with roast beef gravy . A "dressed" po' boy has lettuce , tomato and mayonaise ; pickles and onion are optional. Non-seafood po' boys will also usually have mustard , but the customer is expected to specify whether he or she wants "hot" or "regular" - the former being a coarse grained Creole mustard (such as that produced by Zatarain's ) and the latter being American yellow mustard. Mother's Restaurant, a popular lunch stop in New Orleans on Poydras St., uses shredded green cabbage rather than lettuce for its dressed sandwiches. The sandwich was featured on the PBS special Sandwiches That You Will Like . There are countless stories as to the origin of the term po' boy. One theory claims that "po' boy" was coined in a New Orleans restaurant owned by Benny and Clovis Martin, a former streetcar conductor. In 1929, during a four-month strike against the streetcar company, Martin served his former colleagues free sandwiches. Martin’s restaurant workers jokingly referred to the strikers as "poor boys," and soon the sandwiches themselves took on the name. In Louisiana dialect, this is naturally shortened to "po' boy." In his book The Art of the Sandwich , Jay Harlow suggests that the name "po' boy" comes from the French pour boire or "peace offering," which stems from when men would come home after a night on the town, bringing an oyster loaf as a peace offering. An oyster loaf -- a whole loaf of French Bread, split, hollowed out, and buttered, loaded with fried oysters and garnished with lemon juice and sliced pickles is still often referred to as a Peace Maker. The Harlow account is questionable since "pour boire" means a tip or gratuity. Harlow's account seems to conflate two other stories about the origins of the term "poor boy". The French phrase "pour boire" literally means "for drink" and translates as the tip one leaves a serving person or a delivery boy. These tips could be used to buy a small sandwich, which became known as poor boys. A variation on this story is that the tips were "for the boy" rendered in a Franglais mixture as "pour le boy." One restaurant in Bay St. Louis, MS, Trapani's, insists that the name "po' boy" came from a sandwich shop in New Orleans. If one was new to a bar and bought a nickel beer, then he got a free sandwich thrown in. This was sometimes called a "poor boy's lunch," which came to mean just the sandwich itself. Another version stems from the many sandwich carts in poor neighborhoods throughout the '20s and '30s. Many would offer hot beef or pork sandwiches, or for only a nickel you could get a po'boy sandwich which was the sandwich minus the meat, but with the bread soaked in the meat juices. The national and international reputation of New Orleans cooking is largely based on its grand restaurants (see Louisiana Creole cuisine ). But it is the po' boy that has had the greatest day-to-day impact on the local diet, even in the era of modern fast food. Many people still have it at least once or twice a week--it is eaten for lunch more than any other single dish. Po' boys are made at home, sold pre-packaged in convenience stores, available at deli counters and make up a sizable percentage of the menu options at most neighborhood restaurants. The most basic New Orleans restaurant is the po' boy shop. In theory, it need not be much different than a sandwich shop in any other city, with little or no on-premise cooking. The debris gravy for roast beef needs to be kept hot, but that could be done in an electric warmer. Classic examples are Frank's on Decatur Street, which for many years just sold muffalettas and po' boys. But these same basic offerings were also available at most corner grocery stores. Thus the next step up for a shop was to offer seafood po' boys and this meant having a stove (or fryer) and having someone who could fry seafood. And if you were frying fish, and shrimp, and oysters for sandwiches, it didn't take much extra to fry them for seafood plates. And if you had a stove for cooking seafood, it didn't take much extra to also offer Red beans and rice and Jambalaya . Many of the classic New Orleans neighborhood restaurants are in this mold offering po' boys, seafood platters, and a number of basic Creole dishes: Parkway Bakery, Maspero's, Liuzza's, Domilise's, Parasol's, Frankie and Johnnie's, and Casamento's. Two restaurants in this tradition merit special attention. The first is Dooky Chase's , which originally opened as a po' boy shop. Over the years, Miss Leah's cooking evolved and the restaurant expanded. The second was Uglesich's, a small, more-or-less falling down corner store in New Orleans Central City . Only ever open for lunch, it was for many years a workingman's restaurant serving po' boys and fresh shucked oysters. But the fried seafood (cooked to order in cast iron kettles on a stove) was considered some of the best in the city[ citation needed ]. Over time Mr. Uglesich began to draw on his Yugoslavian heritage combining it with inspiration from other restaurants in the city to create new dishes such as Trout Muddy Waters, Shrimp Uggie, and Fried Mirliton with Shrimp Remoulade . The restaurant closed on May 6, 2005 with the retirement of Anthony and Gail Uglesich. Poor Boy Sandwich Central Grocery is a small, old-fashioned Italian-American grocery store with a sandwich counter located at 923 Decatur Street , in the French Quarter of New Orleans , Louisiana . It was founded in 1906 by Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant. He operated it until 1946 when he retired and his son-in-law, Frank Tusa, took over the operation. Today it is owned by Salvatore T. Tusa, Salvatore's grandson and two cousins. The store was one of many family owned, neighborhood grocery stores during the early 20th century, when the French Quarter was still predominantly a residential area. Though tourists are more common in Central now, it has retained much of its old world market feel. It is famous as the home of the New Orleans muffuletta sandwich invented by Salvatore Lupo, to feed the Sicilian truck farmers who sold their produce at the Farmer's Market on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. The Muffuletta was only locally known until the late 1960s. Now, it has international fame. The Central sells not only the sandwiches as take-out or eat-in, but also the ingredients of the muffuletta—including olive salad by the jar—for people who want to make the sandwich at home. Because of the muffuletta, they were featured on the PBS special Sandwiches That You Will Like and "The Today Show" [five best sandwiches series]. Central Grocery also sells Italian, Greek, French, Spanish, and Creole table delicacies. They also carry less mainstream selections, such as chocolate covered grasshoppers and bumble bees in soy sauce, which are perennially displayed in the store front windows. Marie Lupo Tusa, Salvatore's daughter is author of the cookbook, "Marie's Melting Pot" which has hundreds of Sicilian, French and Creole style recipes. Muffuletta Praline is a family of confections made from nuts and sugar syrup . As originally inspired in France at the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte by the cook of the 17th-century sugar industrialist Marshal du Plessis-Praslin (1598-1675),early pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar, as opposed to dark nougat , where a sheet of caramelized sugar covers many nuts.French settlers brought this recipe to Louisiana , where both sugar cane and pecan trees were plentiful. During the 19th century, New Orleans chefs substituted pecans for almonds , added cream to thicken the confection, and thus created what became known throughout the American South as the praline. The praline (originally spelled prasline) is generally accepted as being named after the French soldier, diplomat, and sugar industrialist Marshal du Plessis-Praslin (1598-1675), whose cook supposedly invented it at the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte . [13] [14] Praline is pronounced like "praw-leen" by most people of Louisiana. In Texas and in Georgia, one might find the pronunciation "pray-leen." Stories surrounding the praline's origin: The actual creator of the praline is believed to be Clément Lassagne, the chef of Marshal du Plessis-Praslin , but there are several rumored accounts of the actual creation on the candy itself. Some versions have Lassagne getting the idea from children who were scavenging for scraps in the kitchens, nibbling on almonds and caramel left over from one of his pastry creations. In another tale, the children were discovered stealing almonds from the kitchens when Lassagne followed the delicious smell to find them caramelizing the almonds in sugar over a candle. Yet one more version has Lassagne getting the idea from a clumsy young apprentice who knocked over a container of almonds into a vat of cooking caramel. An even more playful account paints du Plessis-Praslin as a notorious ladies man, who asked his chef to come up with an irresistible treat he could present to the women he would court. It is said that he would put the sweet sugary nuts into little parcels marked with his name, which is why people began to call the sweets after him. Praline Bread pudding is a dessert popular in British cuisine , Puerto Rican cuisine , Mexican cuisine , Argentina , Louisiana Creole and that of the Southern United States , as well as Belgian and French cuisine . The French refer to it by the English name "pudding" without the word "bread" and the Belgians call it Bodding or broodpudding, which literally translates as bread pudding. In Spanish it is also referred to as "Capirotada," "Migas" and "Pudín de Pan." It is made using stale (usually left-over) bread , suet , egg , sugar or golden syrup , spices , and dried fruit . The bread is soaked (often overnight), squeezed dry, and mixed with the other ingredients. The mixture is transferred into a dish and baked. It may be served with a sweet sauce of some sort, such as whiskey sauce, rum sauce, or caramel sauce, but is typically sprinkled with sugar and eaten cold in squares or slices. In Malaysia , bread pudding is consumed with custard sauce. In Hong Kong, bread pudding is usually served with Vanilla Cream Dressing New Orleans Seafood: Oyster (Fresh & Grilled) ~ Crab (Boiled & Stuffed) ~ Boiled Crawfish The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified. Jonathan Swift is quoted as having said, "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster," but evidence of oyster consumption goes back into prehistory, evidenced by oyster middens found worldwide. Oysters were an important food source in all coastal areas where they could be found, and oyster fisheries were an important industry where they were plentiful. Overfishing and pressure from diseases and pollution have sharply reduced supplies, but they remain a popular treat celebrated in oyster festivals in many cities and towns. Health benefits of eating oysters: Oysters, especially 'wild,' are excellent sources of several minerals, including iron, zinc and selenium, which are often low in the modern diet. They are also an excellent source of Vitamin B12. Oysters are considered the healthiest when eaten raw on the half shell. Oysters can be eaten on the half shell, raw, smoked , boiled , baked , fried , roasted , stewed , canned , pickled , steamed , broiled or used in a variety of drinks. Preparation widely varies. It can be as simple as opening the shell and eating the contents, including juice. Butter and salt are often added. In the case of oysters Rockefeller , preparation can be very elaborate. They are sometimes served on edible seaweed, such as brown algae . Oysters are low in food energy ; one dozen raw oysters contain approximately 110 kilocalories (460 kJ), and are rich in zinc , iron , calcium , and vitamin A . Unlike most shellfish, oysters can have a fairly long shelf-life : up to two weeks; however, their (decreasingly pleasing taste reflects their age. Oysters should be refrigerated out of water, not frozen and in 100% humidity . Oysters stored in water under refrigeration will open, consume available oxygen and die. Care should be taken when consuming oysters. Purists insist on eating them raw, with no dressing save perhaps lemon juice, vinegar (most commonly shallot vinegar), or cocktail sauce . Upscale restaurants pair raw oysters with a home-made Mignonette sauce , which consists primarily of fresh chopped shallot , mixed peppercorn , dry white wine and lemon juice or sherry vinegar . Like fine wine, raw oysters have complex flavors that vary greatly among varieties and regions: sweet, salty, earthy, or even melon. The texture is soft and fleshy, but crisp on the palate. North American varieties include: Kumamoto and Yaquina Bay from Washington State, Malpeque from Prince Edward Island , Canada , Blue Point from Long Island , New York , and Cape May oysters from New Jersey . Salinity, mineral, and nutrient variations in the water that nurtures them influence their flavor profile. Non-local oysters are generally expensive. In the United States, oysters are most often cooked, but there is also a high demand for raw oysters on the half-shell (shooters) at oyster bars . Canned smoked oysters are also widely available as preserves with a long shelf life. Raw oysters are still found in many temperate areas bordering a sea or ocean. Oysters are commonly eaten raw in France in bars and as a 'bar fast food' but the home use tends to be mixed with a large usage in cooking - steamed or in paella or soups. It was once assumed that oysters were only safe to eat in months with the letter ‘r’ in their English and French names. This is a myth whose basis in truth is that in the northern hemisphere oysters are much more likely to spoil in May, June, July, and August. Oysters must be eaten alive, or cooked alive. The shells of live oysters are normally tightly closed or snap shut given a slight tap. If the shell is open, the oyster is dead, and cannot be eaten safely. Cooking oysters in the shell kills the oysters and causes them to open by themselves. Oysters that don't open were dead before cooking and are unsafe. Oysters can contain harmful bacteria . Oysters are filter feeders and will naturally concentrate anything present in the surrounding water. Oysters from the Gulf Coast of the United States, for example, contain high bacterial loads of human pathogens in the warm months, most notably Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus . In these cases, the main danger is for immuno-compromised individuals, who are unable to fight off infection and can succumb to septicemia , leading to death. Vibrio vulnificus is the most deadly seafood-borne pathogen , with a higher case-to-death ratio than even Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli . Oysters are sometimes cited as an aphrodisiac . It is disputed whether this is true. A team of American and Italian researchers analyzed bivalves and found they were rich in rare amino acids that trigger increased levels of sex hormones . Also oysters have a high zinc content, a mineral that aids in the production of testosterone. Alternatively, the oyster's erotic reputation may only be due to its soft, moist texture and appearance. Opening Oysters Special knives for opening live oysters, such as this one, have short and stout blades and the best have a downward curve at the tip. Fresh oysters must be alive just before consumption or cooking. There is a simple criterion: the oyster must be capable of tightly closing its shell. Open oysters should be tapped on the shell: a live oyster will close up and is safe to eat. Oysters which are open and unresponsive are dead and must be discarded. Some dead oysters, or oyster shells which are full of sand may be closed. These make a distinctive noise when tapped, and are known as clackers. Opening oysters requires skill. The preferred method is to use a special knife (called an oyster knife, a variant of a shucking knife ), with a short and thick blade about 5 centimetres (2.0 in) long. Insert the blade, with moderate force and vibration if necessary, at the hinge between the two valves. Then twist the blade until there is a slight pop. Then slide the blade upward to cut the adductor muscle which holds the shell closed. Inexperienced shuckers can apply too much force, which can result in injury if the blade slips. Heavy gloves are necessary: apart from the knife, the shell itself can be razor sharp. Professional shuckers require less than 3 seconds to do the deed. If the oyster has a particularly soft shell, the knife can be inserted instead in the sidedoor, about halfway along one side where the oyster lips widen and there is a slight indentation.Opening, or "shucking" oysters has become a competitive sport. Oyster shucking competitions are staged around the world. Widely acknowledged to be the premiere event, the Guiness World Oyster Opening Championship is held in September at the Galway Oyster Festival, in Galway Ireland. Café du Monde is a coffee shop on Decatur Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans , Louisiana . It is best known for its café au lait and its French -style beignets . In the New Orleans style, the coffee is blended with chicory . The location at the upper end of the French Market was established in 1862. For over a century it was one of two similar coffee and beignets places in the market, the other being Morning Call , which was established in 1870 and moved out of the Old French Market in 1974 to the suburb of Metairie, Louisiana . Starting in the late 1980s, Café du Monde opened up additional locations in shopping malls . While it once expanded as far away as Atlanta, Georgia and Sarasota, Florida , in recent years the company has restricted its operation to the greater New Orleans metro area. Café du Monde locations can also be found throughout Japan . It is open 24 hours, 7 days a week, except for Christmas Day (and days when "the occasional hurricane passes too close to New Orleans," according to the shop's web site), and is patronized by both locals and visitors. Due to Hurricane Katrina , the shop closed at midnight on August 27, 2005. Although it suffered only minor damage, it remained closed for nearly two months. Owners took advantage of the low traffic time afterwards to refurbish the eating areas and kitchens. The French Quarter location re-opened on October 19, 2005 to national media attention. ~ Cafe du Monde ~ Morning Call Coffee Stand, New Orleans’ “most famous coffee drinking place,” has been serving café au lait and beignets to generations of locals and visitors since 1870. Founded by Joseph Jurisich and operated by succeeding generations this venerable establishment is best described as “one of the world’s great coffee houses” and recognized nationwide in numerous publications and periodicals. Appealing to an eclectic and colorful clientele, Morning Call offers a unique and traditional experience. The rich chicory coffee is brewed using the time tested “french drip method” which allows the coffee to build intensity and body. Whole milk is heated to a near boil then mixed with the coffee to form the quintessential café au lait. The beignets, also referred to as “French market donuts” are hand rolled and cut before being plunged into hot oil. The result is a light, delicate treat that is liberally dusted with powdered sugar and is well-known as an irresistible New Orleans creation. Originally located on Decatur Street in the world famous French Quarter, Morning Call, prospered for over 100 years before moving to its present location in the burgeoning parish of Jefferson, in 1974. Bon Appetite! ~ Morning Call ~ A beignet (pronounced [bɛ.ɲɛ] (which is the French word for fried dough )) in American English refers to a pastry made from deep-fried dough and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar . It is a kind of French doughnut . Savory versions of beignets are also popular as an appetizer , with fillings such as crawfish and shrimp . In France, beignet is an umbrella term for a large variety of pastries made from deep-fried dough with fruit or vegetable filling. They may contain other fillings, as well: potatoes, mushrooms, or even meat . The tradition of deep-frying fruits for a side dish dates to the time of Ancient Rome . Names for beignet recipes vary throughout France - beignets, bugnes, merveilles, oreillettes, beignets de carnaval, bottereaux, tourtisseaux, corvechets, ganses, nouets, vautes and others. The term beignet can be applied to two varieties, depending on the type of pastry. The French doughnut beignet in the United States is simply a deep-fried choux pastry ; this variety is very similar to Italian zeppole or the German spritzkuchen. Also, beignets can be made with yeast pastry , which might be called boules de Berlin in French , referring to Berliner doughnuts which have a spherical shape (i.e. they do not have the typical doughnut hole) filled with fruit or jam. This variety is similar to the Polish pączki and to the Portuguese Bola de Berlim . The western parts of Germany use the term beignet for variants having a fruit filling while referring to other variants as Krapfen . In the US, beignets are associated with the city of New Orleans, Louisiana . They are also served at restaurants such as Cafe du Monde , and at theme park resorts such as Disney's Port Orleans Resort . Beignets are the official state doughnut of Louisiana. ~ Beignet ~ New Orleans Coffee & Donuts / Beignet ~ Personal Family Story ~ How my family got into the hot tamale business probably will never be known today. I have no real memory of the early, early days - only what I heard and remembered. My Uncle Joe & Aunt Mary were always known to have made hot tamales. They sold them on a corner in the French Quarter and Uptown around Palmer Park. And my father and mother made them after his arrrival in America (apparently learned from his brother) and his marriage to my mother. He said he sold them two for a nickle then. Once he traded two hot tamles for a kitten to give to my mother. He also sold his hot tamales from his wagon around Palmer Park. His sister's family, the Governale's, and his cousin, Vincent Cataldo and his wife, Virgina, were also known to make hot tamales. We called them "Hot Tamales" because they were hot tasting. Others just called them tamales. My family always prided themselves that they had to have corn shucks to wrap them in, not paper - to give them that good, delicious flavor. Later, my parents just made them for the family on special occassions since it was an all day process. But I have only good memories . . . in making and then later eating them . . . . The day Hurricane Katrina boomed into town, the freezers at Manuel's Hot Tamales at 4709 S. Carrollton Ave. held 250 pounds of meat and about 85 cases of prepared tamales, each with 12 dozen tamales inside, ready to ship to wholesale customers across the region. They were the last Manuel's Hot Tamales ever made. The levee failures pushed nearly 6 feet of water into the first-floor factory, which had cranked out around 16,000 tamales a week. Frances Schneider, the daughter of founder Manuel Hernandez, lived in the house above the tamale factory. Her father, who was born in Mexico, started the business in 1932, selling hot tamales from a pushcart at Carrollton Avenue and Canal Street. Today, three years after the storm, the future of Manuel's remains in limbo. Schneider was forced by the financial hardships brought on by the storm to sell the factory. The buyers of the property, Mike and Lori Bettencourtt, wanted to carry on the Manuel's tradition, but Schneider isn't ready to give up the family recipe and trademark. Hot Tamales Hubig's New Orleans Style Pies are fruit or sweet-filled fried pies , similar in construction to a turnover . They are made in the heart of New Orleans, Louisiana , and are considered a local delicacy, available at retail in over 3500 locations in southern Louisiana . They are baked fresh daily which gives them a shelf-life of approximately seven-to-twelve days. While they may be eaten straight from the glassine wrapper, local lore dictates that they are best after 25 seconds in the microwave . They are available in a variety of flavors, including Apple, Lemon, Peach, Pineapple, Chocolate, Coconut & Sweet Potato - however, at least 50% of available pies at the majority of locations are Apple or Lemon. Before Hurricane Katrina , in addition to the famous turnover-style pie, Hubig's also made individual and family-sized pies . Founded in Fort Worth, Texas at the beginning of World War I by Simon Hubig, the Simon Hubig Pie Company expanded to nine locations throughout the Southeastern United States , including the current New Orleans location in 1922, which was managed by Henry Barrett. During the Great Depression , all of the locations failed except the New Orleans warehouse, which survives to this day at 2417 Dauphine St. in the Faubourg Marigny . In the 1950s, the Ramsey family became majority owners of the company, eventually bringing in the Bowman family during the 1970s. The Orleans Parish jail has traditionally been one of the largest buyers of pies. When the city of New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina , the ventilation system, an exterior wall, and the roof of the Dauphine St. location were damaged. Production of Hubig's pies was halted and did not start again until January 4, 2006, after the neighborhood had clean water, reliable electricity, and sufficient gas pressure. Currently run by the Bowman and Ramsey families, both now in their second generation of ownership, Hubig's pies have increased slightly in cost since the storm, and the variety of flavors offered seems to have changed. The bakery is open Sunday through Thursday for Monday through Friday delivery. While they had over sixty employees over Katrina, as of November 29, 2006, they still have fewer than thirty employees, many gathered from Red Cross shelters with bus tickets, and now produce only the famous turnovers. The factory is still largely un-automated and relies on factory workers rather than machines. About 30,000 pies are made a day to be delivered on the next day. They offer a 100% guarantee on all their merchandise and buy back compromised pies to maintain quality, and frequently donate fresh products to charitable organizations in the area. Gumbo is a stew or soup originating in Louisiana which is popular across the Gulf Coast of the United States and into the U.S. South . It consists primarily of a strong stock , meat and/or shellfish, a thickener, and the vegetable " holy trinity " of celery , bell peppers , and onion . The key ingredient is okra, the African plant okingumbo, from which the dish (and in some regions the plant) takes its name. Gumbo is traditionally served over rice . There is also a traditional meatless lenten variety called gumbo z'herbes (from the French gumbo aux herbes), essentially a gumbo of smothered greens thickened with roux . Having originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, created by the French, but enhanced by additions from other cultures, gumbo is the result of the melting of cultures in Louisianan history. For example, the dish itself is based on the French soup bouillabaisse , along with the "Holy Trinity," which is of Spanish origin—the ingredients are similar to a sofrito —and the use of filé powder (ground sassafras leaves) which is Native American. But the dish got its name from the French interpretation of the West African name of okra . Currently the dish is very common in Louisiana , Southeast Texas , Mississippi ,southern Arkansas and Alabama , and the Lowcountry around Charleston, South Carolina , near Brunswick, Georgia and by native Louisianians wherever they live. It is eaten all through the year, but more often in winter. A typical gumbo contains one or more kinds of poultry , shellfish , and smoked pork . Poultry used is typically chicken, duck, or quail. Local shellfish such as the freshwater crawfish and crab and shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico are frequently used. Tasso and andouille provide a smoky flavor to the dish. Gumbos can be broadly divided between those that use okra as a thickener, and recipes using filé powder . This goes back to the days when okra was available only in season. When okra was not in season, file powder was used. As a consequence of this, authentic gumbos never contain both okra and file. Roux may be added to either. Another division in types of gumbo is between Creole and Cajun styles. Creole gumbos generally use a lighter (but still medium-brown) roux and include tomatoes, while Cajun gumbos are made with a darker roux and never contain tomatoes. Tomatoes are used in Creole gumbo due to the influence of Italian immigrants to the city. Gumbo has been called the greatest contribution of Louisiana kitchens to American cuisine . The dish has its origins in the meeting of cultures that occurred in Louisiana during the 18th century. French cooking techniques provided the beginning with bouillabaisse . The native Choctaw 's filé powder and local seafood were a major addition to the local cuisine. West African slaves' imported okra found its way into the Louisiana kitchens, and provided gumbo with its name. Bell peppers, tomatoes and cooked onions were brought to the table by Spanish colonists.The first written references to gumbo appear in the early 1800s. In 1885, the division between filé and okra-based gumbos was documented in La Cuisine Creole. The cookbook contained many gumbo recipes, some made with filé and some with okra, but none with roux. Okra, filé powder, and roux: Gumbos can be broadly divided into three categories: those thickened with okra, those thickened with filé powder , and those thickened exclusively with roux. Modern recipes of both okra and filé categories generally call for a roux that provides additional thickening and flavoring. Okra and filé powder are, at least historically, not used together in the same dish. You may, however, see a lighter roux combined with roped (sautéed plain to remove the 'stringy' effect) okra and topped with filé after cooking for the sweet flavor. Filé powder , ground dried sassafras leaves, was in wide use by the native Choctaws when European colonists arrived. In modern recipes, filé gumbos use roux as their primary thickener, with filé powder added as preferred at the table by the eater. A dark roux as used in a Cajun gumbo is cooked until extremely dark. Butter will burn if used to make this type of roux, so lard or oil are the fats of choice. If the roux is to be used with okra, a lighter color may be desired, as the flavor of a dark roux is quite overpowering. Most Creole gumbos do not use as dark a roux as the Cajuns, but a medium reddish-brown type roux; the word roux is a french word that means "russet-red." The "holy trinity" of onion, celery, and bell pepper will often be cooked in the hot roux itself before the stock is added. The traditional practice of using okra in the summer (in season) and filé in the winter has played a role in defining the kinds of gumbo usually associated with each. These associations are not hard and fast rules, but more of a general guide. For example a purely seafood gumbo is usually not thickened with filé, while one that is purely meat and game would usually not have okra. This reflects traditional practices of fishing and crabbing in warmer weather and hunting and butchering in cooler weather. Typical combinations: The following are some common combinations of ingredients that are included in gumbo: Seafood gumbo, with crab, shrimp, crawfish, and/or oysters. Often supplemented with tasso or andouille Filé Gumbo (Often seafood or Chicken & Sausage) Chicken and sausage gumbo Beef gumbo, a variant from the Carolinas, rare in Louisiana Turkey and sausage gumbo, popular after Thanksgiving Duck and Oyster (or Shrimp) Gumbo Squirrel Gumbo Rabbit Gumbo Greens (with or without seafood and/or meat; see Gumbo Z'Herbes below) Andouille is the traditional sausage, but other smoked pork sausages are used. The sausage can be removed and replaced with fresh sausage which has not lost flavour to the liquid at the end of the cooking period. Rice steamed or boiled rice is usually eaten with gumbo. The ratio of soup to rice is a matter of personal taste, and varies from "damp rice" to a little rice in a bowl of broth. Traditional side dishes include potato salad (sometimes instead of rice, from the influence of German immigrants in the 19th century), fresh New Orleans style French bread, crackers, and baked sweet potatoes. Gumbo z'herbes (IPA [gəmbou zæ:b]), meaning "greens gumbo" (literally "gumbo w'herbs"), is a variation of the dish usually associated with the Lenten season and particularly Holy Thursday or Good Friday . It was originally spelled in standard French, "gumbo aux herbes." It consists of the standard roux and stock plus a combination of several greens, such as collard , mustard , turnip , cabbage , spinach , lettuce , chard , parsley , scallions , etc. In different family traditions the dish, usually served only at the Holy Thursday or Good Friday evening meal, had to have a set number of different greens, usually seven or nine, and it would be referred to simply as, for example, "nine kinds of greens" gumbo. Cooks might snip off a few nasturtium or other edible flower from their gardens make the required number. Presumably this variation was devised in traditionally Roman Catholic New Orleans in keeping with the Lenten spirit of austerity, and may have originally consisted of greens only. But the penchant of the region's cuisine for embellishment led inevitably to the addition of local seafood (shrimp, oysters, crabmeat, and sometimes fish)—which were permitted under the Catholic Church's abstinence guideline—and eventually meats (ham, sausage, bacon, even beef), which were not. It Must be Monday in New Orleans . . . Red beans and rice is an emblematic dish of Louisiana Creole cuisine , (not originally of Cajun cuisine ) traditionally made on Mondays with red beans , vegetables (bell pepper, onion and celery), spices ( thyme , cayenne pepper, and bay leaf) and pork bones as left over from Sunday dinner, cooked together slowly in a pot and served over rice . Meats such as ham, sausage (most commonly Andouille ) , and Tasso ham are also frequently used in the dish. It is an old custom from the time when ham was a Sunday meal and Monday was washday. A pot of beans could sit on the stove and simmer while the women were busy scrubbing clothes. Similar dishes are common in Latin American cuisine , including moros y cristianos and gallo pinto . Red beans and rice is one of the few New Orleans style dishes to be commonly cooked both in people's homes and in restaurants. Many neighborhood restaurants continue to offer it as a Monday lunch special, usually with a side order of either smoked sausage or a pork chop. And while Monday washdays are largely a thing of the past, Red Beans remains a staple for large gatherings such as Super Bowl and Mardi Gras parties. Red beans and rice is also an important staple in Central America, where it is known "arroz con habichuelas". They are important in Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Haitian and Jamaican cuisine. They are usually accompanied with any form of plantain snack (including "tostones" and "fritos"), chicken, or meat. In the Dominican Republic it is common to pour olive oil on top of the dish. This dish is very similar to the vegetarian dish Rajma chawal, which also literally means Red beans and rice, popular in North India . When the slave rebellion in Haiti (or Saint Domingue as it was called before) started off, many of the rich White sugar planters fled to the other main possession of France in the New World at the time. They brought with them beans from the Caribbean . The beans they brought were red beans. The dish came into creation in the kitchens of New Orleans' French Quarter . The dish spread quickly and became part of the cuisine of New Orleans. Preparation: Red kidney beans or small red beans are used and they are usually (but not always) soaked beforehand. Onion, celery, and usually a bit of garlic are sautéed briefly. Some people choose to include bell pepper, thus completing the trinity . The vegetables should be diced finely so that they will melt away once the dish is done. The beans and water are added as is a ham bone. Diced ham may also be included. Seasoning includes salt, thyme, bay leaf and cayenne pepper. While Cajun (and to a lesser extent Creole ) cooking is often thought of as being very spicy, red beans are prepared on the mild side and are usually served with a bottle of hot sauce nearby. The beans take about two hours to cook. The best versions of the dish offer an interesting contrast in texture. The overall effect should be creamy. But the beans themselves should be firm (not mushy and certainly not crunchy). To increase the creaminess of the beans, some cooks choose to mash up to a quarter of the beans in the last half hour or so of cooking (smash the beans against the side of the pot using the back of a large spoon). To get an even creamier texture, some chefs will gradually incorporate butter into the beans during the last ten minutes. Some people will cook smoked sausage with the beans. But traditionally, the sausage or pork chops were cooked on the side. Presentation: White rice is cooked separately. Sausage may be cooked and served separately or may be sliced and incorporated into the beans during cooking. When being served buffet style for a party, the rice and beans should be kept apart and assembled as needed by the guests. When served on a plate, the rice is usually mounded in the center, pehaps with a bit of parsley. The beans are spooned all around the rice, and if sausage has been prepared separately a piece is placed on one side. Chopped green onion is an optional garnish, and a bottle of hot sauce should always be available. Gumbo & Red Beans & Rice ICE CREAM Brocato's sumptuous Italian ice cream, made daily on the premises, uses only the freshest and purest ingredients. For the best-seller, lemon ice, fresh lemons, white granulated sugar, and clear water are expertly combined and precisely frozen to create a refreshing dessert untainted by preservatives or additives. The more than 24 flavors of ice cream and ices, the spumoni, and the cassata, also depend on the tradition of quality ingredients including fresh cream and fruit. Imitations and substitutions are, of course, never permitted. For the true connoisseur, Brocato's offers a complete selection of "gelato" (Italian for ice cream) featuring all natural imported Sicilian flavorings from chestnut to moka to amaretto. COFFEE Stop in for a cup of hot or iced Espresso or Cappuccino, or try our Cafe Au Lait or Cafe Latte. PASTRIES Brocato's valued old iron ovens and an adherence to Mrs. Angelo Brocato, Sr.'s original Sicilian recipes guarantee an incredible aroma and taste! A long-standing favorite is cannoli - a crisp, cone-shaped shell filled with ricotta cheese and a sugar mixture of half vanilla and half chocolate dipped in crushed pistachio nuts. Although the delicacy is time-consuming to create, the unsolicited "oohs" an "aahs" of customers are a tribute to its incomparable taste. See our Products Page for more Italian confections. Brocato's Ice Cream and Biscotti Cotton candy ( American English ) or candyfloss ( British English ) or fairy floss ( Australian English ) is a form of spun sugar . Since it is mostly air, servings are large. Cotton candy is often served at fairgrounds or circuses . Food coloring is used to change the natural white color. A typical serving on a stick is at least one ounce and contains about 105 to 115 calories per ounce. It is sometimes sold in bags containing several servings. A similar confectionery is the Persian Pashmak , and the Turkish Pişmaniye , although the latter is made with flour in addition to sugar. Cotton candy was first recorded around Mid-18th Century. At that time, spun sugar was an expensive, labor-intensive endeavor and was not generally available to the average person. Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by William Morrison and John C. Wharton and first introduced to a wide audience at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 as "Fairy Floss" with great success, selling 68,655 boxes at the then-high $ 0.25, half the cost of admission to the fair. Fairy floss was renamed to "cotton candy" in the 1920s. Tootsie Roll of Canada Ltd. has a bagged product called "Fluffy Stuff" that it claims was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. The United States celebrates National Cotton Candy Day on December 7. Production: The machine used to make cotton candy consists of a small bowl, into which sugar is poured and food coloring is added. The sugar reserve bowl is spun at high speed while heaters near the rim melt the sugar, which is squeezed out through tiny holes by centrifugal force . The molten sugar then solidifies in the air and is caught in a large metal bowl surrounding the central sugar reservoir bowl. The operator of the machine twirls a stick, cone, or their hands around the rim of the large catching bowl, gathering the sugar strands into portions. Modern cotton candy machines work in much the same way as older ones. Texture: Sticky and sweet, it dissolves quickly in the mouth (due to its amorphous nature) although it feels like wool to the touch. It does not have much of an aroma although the machine itself has a cooked sugar smell when in operation. It is soft and fluffy when dry. When it comes in contact with moisture, it becomes sticky and damp. Because the sugar is hygroscopic , and has a very large surface area , it will become coarser, harder and generally less "flossy" once exposed to the atmosphere. Cotton Candy The ice cream man ( American ) was a person who sold ice cream from a bicycle on the street, usually during the summer. Now Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or near parks , beaches , or other areas where people congregate. Ice cream vans often travel near where children play — outside schools , in residential areas, or in other locations. They usually stop briefly before moving on to the next street . Ice cream vans are often brightly decorated and carry images of ice cream, or some other adornment , such as cartoon characters . They may have painted-on notices, which can serve a commercial purpose ("Stop me and buy one!") or a more serious one ("Watch that child!" - serving as a warning to passing motorists that children may run out into the road at the sight of the van, or appear without warning from behind it). Along the sides, a large sliding window acts as a serving hatch, and this is often covered with small pictures of the available products, with their associated prices. A distinctive feature of ice cream vans is their melodic chimes, and often these take the form of a famous and recognizable tune, usually " Turkey in the Straw ", " The Entertainer ," [1] or " Music Box Dancer "; or, in the United Kingdom , " Whistle While You Work " in Crewe and Nantwich , " You Are My Sunshine " in Vale Royal , and " Greensleeves "and " Match of the Day " in other places. Most ice cream vans tend to sell both pre-manufactured ice lollies ( American English : popsicles ) in wrappers, and soft serve ice cream from a machine, served in a cone, and often with a chocolate flake (in Britain) or a sugary syrup flavoured with, for example, strawberry . Soft serve ice cream is served topped with sprinkles for a slight extra charge. Other vans tend to be run by small businesses, selling their own variety of ice cream. n some locations, ice cream van operators have diversified to fill gaps in the market for soft drinks , using their capacity for refrigerated storage to sell chilled cans and bottles. Early vans used relatively primitive techniques: their refrigeration was ensured by large blocks of dry ice so the motor was always turned off when the van was stopped for sales. The chimes were operated by a hand driven crank or a take-off from the motor, so they were not heard as often. The Ice Cream Man & Ice Cream Cone {In Memory of "Mr. Jingles," the neighborhood ice cream man} A snowball is soft shaved ice mixed with flavored syrup contained in a styrofoam cup or Chinese takeout container . The quality of the ice is important. It should be like soft fresh snow. If it is the right consistency it will mix with the flavoring and be like an icy drink rather than a crunchy sweet. In 1934, inventor Ernest Hansen designed an "ice block shaver" in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was inspired to create a more refined and hygienic version of the popular Italian ice sold from push-carts in the city. His wife Mary created many flavors of fresh syrups to flavor his finely shaved artificial "snow." The primary reason for this distinction goes back to 1939 with Ernest and Mary Hansen's invention of the first ice shaving machine. Seventy years later, Hansen's Sno-Bliz on Tchoupitoulas Street–run by Mary and Ernest Hansen's granddaughter, Ashley–is still one of the most popular and indulgent ways to cool down from the relentless heat of summertime in New Orleans. Basically, the great difference is this: A snowball from Hansen's is a masterpiece of fluffy, fine shaved ice doused in meticulous layers with one of Mary Hansen's famous homemade syrups, while a snowcone is a careless product with chunky ice and common syrup. Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits (sometimes named Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen or Popeyes Chicken & Seafood; often referred to as just Popeyes) is a chain of fried chicken fast food restaurants, owned since 1993 by the Sandy Springs, Georgia -based AFC Enterprises , which was originally America's Favorite Chicken Company. According to a company press release dated June 29, 2007, Popeyes is the second-largest "quick-service chicken restaurant group, measured by number of units," with more than 1,800 restaurants in more than 40 states, the District of Columbia , Puerto Rico and 20 countries worldwide including Turkey , China , Hong Kong , Iraq , Jordan , Kuwait , United Arab Emirates , Japan , Malaysia , Saudi Arabia , South Korea , Singapore , Canada , Jamaica , Mexico , Trinidad , Honduras , Vietnam and Panama . About thirty locations are company-owned, the rest franchised . Early logo History: Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken first opened in Arabi, Louisiana , a suburb of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish , in 1972 as "Popeye Family Fried Chicken," owned by Al Copeland . As the company's official history states, they sold "traditional mild fried chicken [but] business was slow, and the chicken team realized they'd have to sell a spicier alternative to their standard chicken recipe if they wanted to impress flavor-seeking New Orleanians. Copeland began franchising his restaurant in 1976, beginning in Baton Rouge, Louisiana , and added approximately five hundred outlets over the next ten years. B.P. Newman of Laredo , Texas , acquired various franchises in Texas and surrounding states. Two hundred additional locations were added during a period of slower expansion. In 1989, Popeyes, then the third-largest chicken chain, merged with Church's Chicken , the second largest, though parent company AFC Enterprises operated the two chains separately. On December 29, 2004, AFC sold Church's to Arcapita , formerly Crescent Capital Investments, retaining Popeyes. On October 30, 2006, AFC announced that Popeyes planned to introduce a trans fat -free biscuit as well as french fries containing one gram of trans fat by year-end. On March 23, 2008, Copeland died from a malignant salivary gland tumor . Name: Copeland claimed he named the stores after the fictional detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in the movie The French Connection and not the comic character Popeye the Sailor . Copeland would claim facetiously that he was "too poor" to afford an apostrophe . The chain later acquired rights to use Popeye the Sailor for marketing. The company's early brand became deeply tied to the comic character with its sponsorship of the "Popeye & Pals" children's show in New Orleans, and the character appeared on items from packaging to racing boats. Popeyes Fried Chicken Hurricanes are a normal part of life in Southern Louisiana, and Andrew has lived through a lot of them over the years. Hurricanes in the Past: Fort Lauderdale Hurricane - The 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane with winds of 125 mph (195 km/h) directly hit Metairie. Much of the community was under six feet of water. Hurricane Betsy - Hurricane Betsy , a category three storm, hit the area in 1965, causing extensive wind damage and moderate flooding. Flood of 1995 - The May 8th 1995 Louisiana Flood , which dumped upwards of twenty inches of rain into Metairie in a twelve-hour period, flooded some parts of the region, especially areas south and west of Metairie, including Kenner , Harahan , and River Ridge. The intersection of Clearview and Veterans the day after Katrina Evacuees at Causeway and I-10 waiting to leave several days after the storm On August 29, 2005, Metairie was hit hard by the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina , including widespread wind damage and flooding . There were 29 reported deaths related to Katrina in Metairie. According to satellite images and flood maps, upwards of 75% of Metairie flooded. Initial insured damages in Metairie are between 3 and 5 billion US dollars. The death toll and damage were less in Metairie than in bordering Orleans Parish , largely because the Metairie side of the 17th Street Canal did not breach. Residents were given a mandatory evacuation on August 28, 2005, the first time one has ever been ordered. Residents were not allowed to return until September 4. However, residents were only allowed to quickly visit their homes or business between 7AM and 6PM. Residents were not allowed to return after that until September 15, 2005. This period of over two weeks in exile angered many residents, especially those whose homes flooded. As they were unable to empty the houses of water, they suffered more damage. Metairie was used as a staging area to evacuate people from New Orleans. The most organized effort took place where Causeway intersects I-10 . There evacuees gathered or were brought to wait for buses. The flooding in Metairie had three causes: Lake Ponchartrain backflow into canals: Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard evacuated all pumping station operators from their posts to Washington Parish (seventy-five miles away) in anticipation of the hurricane. Normally, the machines would be on, not only preventing the Lake from flowing into the drainage canals, but also pumping the rain waters out. Lack of pumping led to severe flooding of Metairie in most areas north of Interstate 10. Rain waters: Because almost all of Metairie is between two and seven feet below sea level, all rain water was captured in the Metairie "bowl." Unable to return for nearly two days, the pump operators could not turn the pumps on to pump out any of the rain water or backflow. 17th Street Canal breach: There was no breach on the Metairie side of the canal; however, water crept into Metairie through Airline Highway. The narrow high ground of Metairie Road and some elevated railroad tracks partially contained the area of flooding. This water chiefly caused the flooding in the southern part of Old Metairie. There was a breach alongside the Lake Villa canal located in Metairie, Where water poured over the top of the levee alongside thepumping station. Many Metairie residents are joining a class action lawsuit against A. Broussard because of his removal of pump operators. Other residents have attempted to recall and remove Broussard as Parish President for what they see as negligence, but they failed to get the support and signatures needed. Broussard resigned his position on January 8, 2010 in the face of a grand jury investigation of his staff. Hurricanes New Orleans experiences snowfall only on rare occasions. A small amount of snow fell during the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm and again on Christmas (December 25) when a combination of rain, sleet, and snow fell on the city, leaving some bridges icy. Before that, the last white Christmas was in 1954 and brought 4.5 inches (11 cm). Snow fell again on December 22, 1989, when most of the city received 1–2 inches (2.5–5.1 cm). The last significant snow fall in New Orleans was on the morning of December 11, 2008. There were two local public schools named in honor of New Orleans native Frank Turner Howard (1855-1911). Frank T. Howard No. 1, located in Mid-City, was dedicated in 1901 while Frank T. Howard No. 2, located Uptown, was dedicated in ’03. McDonogh died in 1850, five years before Frank Turner Howard’s birth. Howard’s financial generosity made possible the public schools dedicated in his name. The civic-minded Howard also headed and supported the Fisk Free Library, the New Orleans Public Library and the Louisiana Historical Association. In addition, he raised funds and helped acquire land for Confederate Memorial Hall (now Louisiana’s Civil War Museum at Confederate Memorial Hall). In recognition of his exemplary community service, the Daily Picayune awarded Howard its first Loving Cup. Sacred Heart of Jesus School Where I went to catechism S. J. Peters Jr. High {1958 - 1960} GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY - CLASS OF 1963 In my senior year, I worked on the Old Purple & Gold newpaper. What a wonderful experience! Warren Easton Senior High School {1961 - 1963} Mid-City is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans . A subdistrict of the Mid-City District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: City Park Avenue, Toulouse Street, North Carrollton and Orleans Avenues, Bayou St. John and St. Louis Street to the north, North Broad Street to the east, and the Pontchartrain Expressway to the west. It is a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places . In common usage, a somewhat larger area surrounding these borders is often also referred to as part of Mid-City. Mid-City is located at 29°58′19″N 90°05′49″W / 29.97194°N 90.09694°W / 29.97194; -90.09694 and has an elevation of 0 feet (0.0 m). According to the United States Census Bureau , the district has a total area of 1.66 square miles (4.3 km) 1.66 square miles (4.3 km) of which is land and 0.00 square miles (0.0 km) (0.0%) of which is water. Mid-City is located, as the name indicates, in the middle of New Orleans on what was once the backslope of the Mississippi River natural levee , a gradually declining section of the river's flood plain . As such, it was not settled as early as adjacent neighborhoods and was called the "back of town"—the city ended at the swamp, unlike today, when the city reaches the lake. The Esplanade Ridge and the adjoining Metairie Ridge formed a natural spur from the River; but what is now Mid-City, surrounded by these higher-elevated sections, was part of the "backswamp" until development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As of the census of 2000, there were 19,909 people, 5,830 households, and 2,939 families residing in the neighborhood. The population density was 11,993 /mi² (4,630 /km²). Landmarks: Mid-City is the home of a number of city landmarks. Canal Street , one of the most important thoroughfares of the city, bisects the neighborhood down the middle; the streetcar route follows Canal to Carrollton Avenue , another prominent New Orleans street that passes through Mid-City. Tulane Avenue, which is the terminus of U.S. Route 61 , also runs just upriver from Canal Street; before the interstate highway system, this was the primary route into New Orleans from Baton Rouge . An important cross-street is Jefferson Davis Parkway, named for the president of the Confederate States of America , who died in New Orleans's Garden District during an 1889 visit. The Orleans Parish Criminal Court, the Dixie Brewery , Jesuit High School , Warren Easton High School , and the now-vacant Falstaff Brewery are physically among the most prominent buildings scattered across Mid-City, in addition to a number of churches and large houses along Canal Street. Tulane Avenue in particular shows some remnants of the area's industrial past. However, more characteristic of Mid-City today are the many shotgun houses and larger houses that make up most of this primarily residential neighborhood. Culture: Mid-City is a generally local, middle-class neighborhood in that it contains fewer tourist destinations than other parts of the city. Restaurants and bars rely heavily on local clientele, giving the area a quirky local flavor. Mid-City Section of New Orleans 3100 Banks Street, New Orleans, LA 70119 United States Status: The Escorial Theater dates back to at least 1919 when a Moller organ was installed. The Escorial Theater is still listed in 1955 with 785 seats. 814 Hagan Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70119 United States) Unknown The Imperial Theatre was located on Hagan Avenue at St. Ann Street. The theatre opened in the early 1930's with seating listed at 500. The Imperial Theatre closed sometime in the mid-1950's and has since been demolished. Any further information on this theatre would be appreciated. 4710 S. Carrollton Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118 United States Unknown The old Carrollton Theater, on Carrollton Avenue at Canal Street, was a classic Art Deco style house. It was unfortunately renovated in the 1960's thus destroying the classic 1930's entrance. (Why did people think this was progress?) It eventually ended its run as an off the wall college house showing Marx Bros. movies until the wee hours. Before Katrina, it was a banquet/wedding reception hall. This theater took between eight and ten feet of water after Katrina passed. The fate of this building was then in doubt. It has since been refurbish as a banquet hall. In Town: Joy, Lowes, Saenger Theaters Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday in French ) in New Orleans, Louisiana , is a Carnival celebration well-known throughout the world. The New Orleans Carnival season, with roots in preparing for the start of the Christian season of Lent , starts after Twelfth Night , on Epiphany (January 6). It is a season of parades , balls (some of them masquerade balls ), and king cake parties. It has traditionally been part of the winter social season; at one time "coming out" parties for young women at débutante balls were timed for this season. Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French), the day before Ash Wednesday . Usually there is one major parade each day (weather permitting); many days have several large parades. The largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the season. In the final week of Carnival, many events large and small occur throughout New Orleans and surrounding communities. The parades in New Orleans are organized by Carnival krewes . Krewe float riders toss throws to the crowds; the most common throws are strings of plastic colorful beads, doubloons (aluminum or wooden dollar-sized coins usually impressed with a krewe logo), decorated plastic throw cups, and small inexpensive toys. Major krewes follow the same parade schedule and route each year. While many tourists center their Mardi Gras season activities on Bourbon Street and the French Quarter , none of the major Mardi Gras parades has entered the Quarter since 1972 because of its narrow streets and overhead obstructions. Instead, major parades originate in the Uptown and Mid-City districts and follow a route along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street , on the upriver side of the French Quarter. To New Orleanians, "Mardi Gras" specifically refers to the Tuesday before lent, the highlight of the season. The term can also be used less specifically the whole Carnival season, sometimes as "the Mardi Gras season." The term "Fat Tuesday" or "Mardi Gras Day" always refers only to that single day. Mardi Gras / Carnival ~ New Orleans, LA Carrollton is the section of New Orleans that is at the far end of Uptown from the French Quarter . It is often considered part of Uptown, but it has its own history and traditions (including being a separate city in the 19th century), so it will be treated on its own here. The high ground of the "Carrollton Spur" was fortunately above the great flood which devastated much of the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, leaving this charming neighborhood intact. It is at the far end of the St. Charles Streetcar line (the green cars) whose other end is on Canal Street in the Central Business District . (All the St. Charles streetcar line has been restored post-Katrina.) Carrollton is near Tulane and Loyola Universities, and many students and professors live here and patronize the local businesses. It is a mixed residential/commercial neighborhood, with urban advantages where the trees are taller than most of the buildings. Carrollton has many small business and good restaurants. The food and shopping make it an attractive place for visitors to spend half a day in between streetcar tours. The streetcar runs through Carrollton on Saint Charles, then turns on to Carrollton Avenue at a place known as The Riverbend. You see a cluster of restaurants, shops and businesses here. There are more a walk up, beyond the one bit of late 20th century architecture visible, the mini-strip mall with the Walgreens, behind which you'll find a pleasant small park, or "parkette," surrounded by Victorian houses made into specialty shops and restaurants. The two other parts of Carrollton the visitor should know about are Maple Street, which parallels St. Charles, intersecting with Carrollton just inland from the Riverbend, with row of businesses running a pleasant 6 blocks down to Cherokee. The other business street is Oak Street, four blocks further inland (away from the river and St. Charles) than Maple extending on the opposite side of Carrollton Avenue. Long less upscale than Maple, in recent years many trendy shops and restaurants have opened on Oak as well. Walk around enjoying the Victorian residential architecture and plentiful flowering plants, sip coffee or eat a meal at an outdoor table on Carrollton Avenue while the old streetcars rumble by. While hardly as historic as the French Quarter, Carrollton does have a couple of historic monuments: Old Carrollton City Hall. The neoclassical building on Carrollton between Maple an Hampson is now a school John Kennedy Toole's House: Fans of the novel "A Confederacy of Dunces" can take a walk by the Pulitzer Prize winning author's former home on Hampson at the downtown river corner of Adams. There's a historic marker out front. Look from the sidewalk; it's still a private home. Palmer Park, at Carrollton & Claiborne Avenues and the end of the streetcar line. The last Saturday of each month it hosts the Arts Market of New Orleans from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with tents of arts and crafts vendors, refreshments, and free live music. Oak Street - Carrollton Section / Uptown Andrew dreamt of the day of growing up and being able to travel the world. When the opportunities came Andrew fulfilled his boyhood dream of going to Sicily and to his father's hometown - Bisacquino - to see for himself what his father talked about practically everyday of his life. And he finally saw "the church built on the mountain" - St. Maria del Balzo - which he has seen on his father's old picture card. And it was all bellisimo! In Italiano: Di importanza religiosa, oltre che artistica, è il santuario della Madonna del Balzo (sec. XVII) posto sul più arduo dirupo (balzo) del monte Triona, a 950 metri d'altezza. E' continua meta di pellegrinaggi della Sicilia occidentale e dal suo spiazzo si può godere uno veduta meravigliosa. Il complesso si compone di una chiesa e dell'annesso eremo. Un'edicola marmorea posta sull'altare maggiore custodisce l'immagine ad alto rilievo della Madonna del Balzo, testimoniandone il luogo del ritrovamento e del primo portentoso miracolo. Andrew attended Southeastern Louisiana University from 1963 - 1967 where he received his B. A. Degree in Political Science. During his senior year he was inducted into Pi Gamma Mu, the International Honor Society in Social Science. Later, he attended Louisiana State Law School, but he decided law was not what he really wanted to persue in life. He also attended The University of New Orleans Graduate School right after his four years in the Air Force, but dropped the idea of getting a graduate degree to pursue full time employment with the State. Southeastern Louisiana University is a state-funded public university located in Hammond , Louisiana . It was originally founded in 1925 by Linus A. Sims , the principal of Hammond High School , as Hammond Junior College , located in a wing of the high school building. Sims succeeded in getting the campus moved to north Hammond in 1928, when it became known as Southeastern Louisiana College. It achieved university status in 1970. There are approximately 15,000 students representing 43 states and 66 countries enrolled. During the 1990s Southeastern was the fastest-growing college in the United States, despite the presence of Louisiana State University (flagship of the LSU system) only 45 miles (72 km) west of Hammond along Interstate 12 in the state capital of Baton Rouge , and the presence of several universities 55 miles (89 km) to the southeast in New Orleans . 'Pi Gamma Mu or ΠΓΜ (from Πολιτικές Γνώσεως Μάθεται) is the oldest and preeminent honor society in the social sciences . It is also the only interdisciplinary social science honor society. It serves the various social science disciplines which seek to understand and explain human behavior and social relationships as well as their concomitant problems and issues. Pi Gamma Mu's constitution defines the social sciences to include the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, international relations, criminal justice, social work, social philosophy, history of education, and human geography. Membership is also extended to interdisciplinary social science fields that build on the core social science disciplines, such as business administration, education, cultural and area studies, public administration, and organizational behavior. The mission of Pi Gamma Mu is to encourage and recognize superior scholarship in social science disciplines and to foster cooperation and social service among its members. Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA The Louisiana State University Law School was founded in 1906 as a whites -only institution. It was ordered desegregated in 1951 by Judge J. Skelly Wright . The Law Center was renamed in honor of Dean Paul M. Hebert (1907-1977), the longest serving Dean of the LSU Law School, serving in that role (with brief interruptions) from 1937 until his death in 1977. One of these interruptions occurred in 1947-1948 when he was appointed as a judge for the United States Military Tribunals in Nuremberg . The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is a law school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana , part of the Louisiana State University System and located on the main campus of Louisiana State University . Because Louisiana is a civil law state, unlike its 49 common law sister states, the curriculum includes both civil law and common law courses, requiring 94 hours for graduation, the most in the United States. In the Fall of 2002, the LSU Law Center became the sole United States law school, and only one of two law schools in the Western Hemisphere, offering a course of study leading to the simultaneous conferring of a J.D. ( Juris Doctor ), which is the normal first degree in American law schools, and a B.C.L. ( Bachelor of Civil Law ), which recognizes the training its students receive in both the Common and the Civil Law. As of June 2008, the LSU Law Center will no longer confer the B.C.L., but will confer a Graduate Diploma in Civil Law instead. This is due to a conflict with the Southern Association of Colleges (SACS) over the requirements of a bachelor degree. The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is an autonomous campus of, rather than a dependent college of, its larger university. This structure has been criticized for impeding the development of joint degree programs and indirectly lowering the university's rankings due to a lowering of aggregate aid to the university system. Its designation as a Law Center, rather than Law School, derives not only from its campus status but from the centralization on its campus of J.D. and post-J.D. programs, foreign and graduate programs, including European programs at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 School of Law, Lyon , France , and University of Louvain Belgium, and the direction of the Louisiana Law Institute and the Louisiana Judicial College, among other initiatives. Tiger Mascot - "Mike The Tiger" LSU Law School, Baton Rouge, LA The University of New Orleans, often referred to locally as UNO, is a medium-sized public urban university located on the New Orleans Lakefront within New Orleans , Louisiana , United States . It is a member of the LSU System and the Urban 13 and is currently headed by Chancellor Timothy P. Ryan. The University of New Orleans, originally called Louisiana State University in New Orleans, was legally established by Act 60 of the 1956 Louisiana Legislature, in the wake of a citizens’ movement to bring tax-supported higher education to the metropolitan area. Greater New Orleans , with more than a fourth of the state’s population, was without a public college or university until that time. As a branch campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LSUNO was conceived as a liberal arts college for commuting students, which might within a few years develop into a true urban university. An ideal campus site became available on New Orleans' Lakefront when the US Navy relocated its air station on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in late 1957. The Orleans Levee Board leased the closed base to the LSU Board of Supervisors. A quick renovation of barracks, service clubs, and other existing facilities made it possible to begin classes in September 1958, a year ahead of the original schedule. The inaugural convocation was held in a vacant aircraft hangar. This event marked the opening of the first racially integrated, public university in the South. A total of 1,460 students, all freshmen and double the number originally anticipated, arrived for this occasion. By September 1961, when the new school had become a full four-year institution, the enrollment exceeded 3,000, and the faculty had grown from the original 63 to 150 members. A Junior Division had been established for the academic administration of freshmen, and senior academic divisions had been established in liberal arts, in sciences, and in business administration. Dr. Homer L. Hitt , the first employee and the chief administrative officer, had been promoted from Dean of LSUNO to Vice President of LSU in Charge of LSUNO. The campus' first permanent buildings, the Liberal Arts Building and the Sciences Building, along with a central utilities plant, were completed and in operation by the time of the first commencement in the spring of 1962. The architectural style, established by campus master planners and initially featuring numerous open galleries, covered balconies and breezeways, was described as a modernist adaptation of traditional Louisiana architecture. The first commencement was held in a circus tent temporarily erected on the campus for that purpose. The initial class of graduating seniors numbered 115. In the summer of 1962, the senior academic divisions were designated colleges. In 1963, a school of education was established, as well as an evening division and a graduate division. The Vice President in Charge was designated Chancellor, following the establishment of an LSU System of Higher Education. This signaled the end of LSUNO’s status as a branch of the Baton Rouge campus. The school of education became the College of Education in 1964. In 1966, the graduate division became the Graduate School. To the original 178-acre (0.72 km2) site, a 17.5-acre (71,000 m2) strip along its western boundary was added in 1963. This land was also acquired from the Orleans Levee Board, and it brought the total campus area to 195.5 acres (0.791 km2). Still more land was obtained in 1964, half a mile (800 m) east on the Lakefront, when the United States Army abandoned its Camp Leroy Johnson facility and the Levee Board made this site, too, available to the University. A 50-acre (200,000 m2) parcel of this 150-acre (0.61 km2) site was released to the Gulf South Research Institute in 1965. The remaining 100-acre (0.40 km2) East Campus subsequently became the location of a Special Education Center, various outdoor sports facilities, and the multipurpose Senator Nat G. Kiefer UNO Lakefront Arena. In September, 1969, when the enrollment exceeded 10,000, LSUNO became the second-largest university in Louisiana. By this time it had developed into a large academic complex embracing multiple colleges, schools, and institutes, offering graduate work in many different fields and awarding both masters and the Ph.D. degrees. Moreover, a residence hall for both men and women had been completed. In February, 1974, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved a name change, and LSUNO became the University of New Orleans. The new name more accurately defined the institution as the metropolitan campus of the LSU System. By the fall of 1983, UNO had an enrollment exceeding 16,000 and had five senior colleges: Liberal Arts, Sciences, Education, Business Administration, and Engineering, in addition to its Junior Division and Graduate School. It also had a School of Urban and Regional Studies; a School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration; a School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering; and various centers, institutes and divisions for specialized research. A new Metropolitan College offered courses at off-campus locations in the evening hours, as well as credit and non-credit work in the evening on the campus. It also administered the nation’s largest summer program in Europe, UNO Innsbruck, which had been a continuing success since the early 1970s. In an administrative reorganization in 1988, the Junior Division was replaced by a system that enrolled all incoming students in one of the senior colleges or schools. Currently, the UNO main campus contains twenty-three permanent buildings plus a dormitory, a housing complex for married students and a complex of contemporary, apartment-styled, student-housing units. Land has been set aside for a new dormitory complex and fraternity and sorority houses. The Chemical Sciences Building opened in 1997, a state-of-the-art Recreation and Fitness Center opened in 2001, and the Homer L. Hitt Alumni and Visitors Center (named for UNO's founding Chancellor) opened in 2003. The Alumni Center is built around a red brick smokestack, one of the few reminders of the naval air base that became the UNO main campus. Completion of Kirschman Hall, which will house the College of Business Administration, is expected in Spring 2005. A six building, University-sponsored Research and Technology Park is adjacent to the main campus. The East Campus, approximately one mile from the main campus, houses athletic fields, the Alumni and Development Center, and the Senator Nat G. Kiefer UNO Lakefront Arena, and is the location for a planned Teleplex Building that will house both of New Orleans’ public television stations, a public radio station, and video broadcast training space for UNO students. UNO owns satellite campuses in downtown New Orleans , in suburban Jefferson Parish, Louisiana , and in Slidell , in neighboring St. Tammany Parish . UNO’s Ogden Museum of Southern Art is located in the Warehouse/Arts District within downtown New Orleans. UNO is in the process of revising its Master Plan to include additional, state-of-the art student housing, a new University Center, Phase Two of the Research and Technology Park, new landscaping and student-centered outdoor learning spaces. The University of New Orleans has grown to become a major urban research university. Categorized as an SREB Four-Year 2 institution, as a Carnegie Doctoral/Research University-Intensive, and as a COC/SACS Level VI institution, its students now enjoy a broad range of academic programs nearly one-quarter of which are at the masters or doctoral level. In addition, extracurricular activities, including NCAA Division One intercollegiate athletics, an extensive program of intramural sports, and frequent exhibits and programs in music, drama, ballet, and the fine arts round out the student experience. Culturally, socially, economically, and intellectually, the University of New Orleans is one of the major assets of the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana . The University has conferred over 66,000 degrees since the first graduating class of 118 in 1962. University of New Orleans (UNO) Graduate School He then briefly worked in education, but eventually accepted a postion with the State of Louisiana, Department of Social Services, Office of Community Services, as a social worker. It wasn't long after that he received his "Draft Notice." Draft Notice Vietnam War President Kennedy's decision to send military troops to Vietnam as "advisors" was a signal that Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey needed to visit the Oval Office. From that visit emerged two wishes of JFK with regard to conscription. The first was that the names of married men with children should occupy the very bottom of the callup list. Just above them should be the names of men who are married. This Presidential policy, however, was not to be formally encoded into Selective Service Status. Men who fit into these categories became known as Kennedy Husbands. When President Lyndon Johnson decided to rescind this Kennedy policy, all across the country there was a last minute rush to the altar by thousands of couples. Many early rank and file anti-conscription protesters had been allied with the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. The completion in 1963 of a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty left a mass of undirected youth in search of a cause. Syndicated cartoonist Al Capp portrayed them as S.W.I.N.E, students wildly indignant about nearly everything. The catalyst for protest reconnection was the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Consequently, there was some opposition to the draft even before the major U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began. The large cohort of Baby Boomers who became eligible for military service during the Vietnam War also meant a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. This was the source of considerable resentment among poor and working class young men, who could not afford a college education. As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more young men were drafted for service there, and many of those still at home sought means of avoiding the draft. For those seeking a relatively safer alternative to the Army , Marine Corps , Navy , or the Air Force , the Coast Guard was an option (provided one could meet the more stringent enlistment standards). Since only a handful of National Guard and Reserve units were sent to Vietnam, enlistment in the Guard or the Reserves became a favored means of draft avoidance. Vocations to the ministry and the rabbinate soared, because divinity students were exempt from the draft. Doctors and draft board members found themselves being pressured by relatives or family friends to exempt potential draftees. Some conscientious objectors objected to the war based on the theory of Just War . One of these, Stephen Spiro , was convicted of avoiding the draft, but given a suspended sentence of five years. He was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford . According to the Veteran's Administration, 9.2 million men served in the military between 1964 and 1975. Nearly 3.5 million men served in the Vietnam theater of operations. From a pool of approximately 27 million, the draft raised 2,215,000 men for military service during the Vietnam era. It has also been credited with "encouraging" many of the 8.7 million "volunteers" to join rather than risk being drafted. If the nearly 16 million men not engaged in active military service, 96% were exempted (typically because of jobs including other military service), deferred (usually for educational reasons), or disqualified (usually for physical and mental deficiencies but also for criminal records to include draft violations). Draft offenders in the last category numbered nearly 500,000 but less than 10,000 were convicted or imprisoned for draft violations. Finally, as many as 100,000 draft eligible males fled the country. During the 1968 presidential election , Richard Nixon campaigned on a promise to end the draft. He had first become interested in the idea of an all-volunteer army during his time out of office, based upon a paper by Professor Martin Anderson of Columbia University . Nixon also saw ending the draft as an effective way to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement, since he believed affluent youths would stop protesting the war once their own possibility of having to fight in it was gone. There was opposition to the all-volunteer notion from both the Department of Defense and Congress, so Nixon took no immediate action towards ending the draft early in his presidency. Instead, the Gates Commission was formed, headed by Thomas S. Gates, Jr. , a former Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower administration . Gates initially opposed the all-volunteer army idea, but changed his mind during the course of the 15-member commission's work. The Gates Commission issued its report in February 1970, describing how adequate military strength could be maintained without having conscription. The existing draft law was expiring at the end of June 1971, but the Department of Defense and Nixon administration decided the draft needed to continue for at least some time. In February 1971, the administration requested of Congress a two-year extension of the draft, to June 1973. Senatorial opponents of the war wanted to reduce this to a one-year extension, or eliminate the draft altogether, or tie the draft renewal to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Vietnam; Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska took the most forceful approach, trying to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, shut down conscription, and directly force an end to the war. Senators supporting Nixon's war efforts supported the bill, even though some had qualms about ending the draft. After a prolonged battle in the Senate, in September 1971 cloture was achieved over the filibuster and the draft renewal bill was approved. Meanwhile, military pay was increased as an incentive to attract volunteers, and television advertising for the U.S. Army began. With the end of active U.S. ground participation in Vietnam, December 1972 saw the last men conscripted, who were born in 1953, and reported for duty in June 1973. In 1973, the Selective Service randomly selected 25 numbers or birthdays in case the draft was extended. Louisiana Department of Social Services Office of Commuity Services Andrew decided instead of going into the U.S. Army for two years, he elected to join the U.S. Air Force for four years. He went to Lackland AFB in San Antonio Texas, to complete his Basic Training. Afterward, he went "On-The-Job-Training" (OJT) to Lowry AFB in Denver, Colorado, as an "Administrative Specialist" (702). Not only did he live a regular military life, but he also learned to snow ski while there. Once he even sold hot dogs at Mile High Stadium one Sunday at a Brocos football game. Eventually, he achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant within four year. After three years at Lowry AFB, he was transferred to Phu Cat AB, in South Vietnam. July 15, 1968 ~ June 26, 1972 The City and County of Denver (pronounced /ˈdɛnvər/ ) is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado . Denver is a consolidated city-county , located in the South Platte River Valley on the High Plains , just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains . The Denver downtown district is located immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River , approximately 15 miles (24 km) east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Denver is nicknamed the "Mile-High City" because its official elevation is exactly one mile, or 5,280 feet (1,609 m) above sea level . The 105th meridian west of Greenwich passes through Union Station , making it the reference point for the Mountain Time Zone . The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Denver was 598,707 in 2008, making it the 24th most populous U.S. city . The 10-county Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2008 population of 2,506,626 and ranked as the 21st most populous U.S. metropolitan statistical area and the 12-county Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area had an estimated 2008 population of 3,049,562 and ranked as the 16th most populous U.S. metropolitan area . It is also the second-largest city in the Mountain West after Phoenix . Denver is the largest city in the Front Range Urban Corridor , an urban region stretching across eighteen counties in two states. The population of the Front Range Urban Corridor is estimated at 4,251,663. The city has the tenth-largest central business district in the United States by population. Breckenridge Ski Resort, or just Breckenridge or Breck, is a ski resort located in Summit County , Colorado near the town of Breckenridge . The resort is owned and operated by Vail Resorts which also operates three other resorts in the state ( Vail , Beaver Creek , and Keystone ) and Heavenly Ski Resort at Lake Tahoe . Breckenridge has been the most popular ski resort in North America for the past few years. In the 2007-2008, it boasted an astounding 1.63 million skier visits, making it the most popular ski area in North America. Breckenridge is also highly favored among out-of-state and international travelers. Breckenridge was named one of the top five ski locations in the world by the BBC in October 2006 and was ranked as the ninth best resort in the U.S. by SKI Magazine in 2008. The view from Peak 8 at the top of the T-Bar lift. Peak 10 is the southernmost part of Breckenridge, servicing mainly difficult and a substantial amount of intermediate terrain. Peak 9 services mostly intermediate terrain, with a significant number of beginner runs on the lower part of the mountain, though it can also access expert runs such as Devil's crotch and the Windows hike to terrain that leads down to E-chair on the north side of Peak 9. Peak 8 is accessed from the Colorado SuperChair, Rocky Mountain SuperChair and the Peak 8 SuperConnect. The lower part of Peak 8 accesses mostly intermediate runs with some advanced runs. The back bowl on Peak 8 can be accessed via 6 chair or the T-Bar, both can be used to access the Imperial Express lift and the northernmost (Peak 7) and westernmost bowls (Lake Chutes), which include some very difficult terrain with slopes up to 55 degrees. The lower part of Peak 7 can also be accessed from the Independence SuperChair which accesses intermediate terrain. Invesco Field at Mile High (commonly known as Invesco Field or Mile High) is a stadium in Denver , Colorado . Invesco Field at Mile High replaced the identically sized, but commercially obsolete Mile High Stadium (named for the fact that Denver is exactly one mile above sea level) in 2001 . The stadium is best known as the home of the Denver Broncos of the National Football League . Invesco paid $120 million dollars for the naming rights. Denver, Colorado ~ Breckinridge Ski Area ~ Mile High Stadium Lowry Air Force Base (1938–1994) is a former United States Air Force base located in the cities of Aurora and Denver, Colorado . Its primary mission throughout its existence was Air Force technical training and was heavily involved with the training of United States Army Air Forces bomber crews during World War II . It was also the home of the United States Air Force Academy from 1954 to 1958, until the Academy's permanent site in Colorado Springs was completed. Lowry was permanently closed by actions of the 1991 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC II) commission in 1994. The land is now being used for commercial and residential development, though many of the old military buildings are still in use. Pages 45-51. ~~~ Thank you very much for (your kind introduction or the invitation to your school today). With a sincere and humble heart, I thank you for this wonderful opportunity to address (the mayor, other city officials and all of you who are here this evening - the people of Bisacquino or the students and faculty of this school). I want to introduce my family and friends who are with me this (morning / evening): my sister, Anna Montalbano Graham; my brother, Gioachino (Jake) Montalbano and his wife and my sister-in-law, Peggy; my cousin, Sandra Johnson and her husband, Wayne; my cousin, Sam Governale, Jr.; my niece, Carol Graham Beck (the oldest daughter of my sister here) and my friends, Jane Mulla Martin and Barbara Cusimano Cavallino. Also, we have David Diliberto and Lisa Bogan of Caravella Italia, our new friends, with us. Grazie per la sua gentile introduzione. Con un cuore umile e sincero, vi ringrazio per questa meravigliosa opportunità di potermi presentare al sindaco, agli amministratori ed alle persone che sono qui strasera cioè la gente di Bisacquino. Vorrei presentarvi la mia famiglia che é qui con me questa sera: mia sorella, Anna Montalbano Graham, mio fratello Gioachino (Jake) Montalbano e sua moglie Peggy; mia cuggina Sandra Johnson e suo marito Wayne; mio cuggino Sam Governale, Jr., mia nipote Carol Graham Beck, la figlia maggiore di mia sorella qui presente, i miei amici Jane Mulla Martin and Barbara Cusimano Cavallino. Abbiamo anche con noi David Diliberto e Lisa Bogan dell ‘agenzia Caravella Italia. I come to speak to you this (morning / evening), not to receive praise, but to say thank you - to thank all the people of Bisacquino. For this is where my father, Gioachino Montalbano, was born 98 years ago. He was a very proud Sicilian who was never one to forget where he came from. He was a loving and faithful husband to my mother, Giuseppina Latino, and a loving and wonderful father to all of his eight children. Sono qui per parlarvi questa sera, non per ricevere ammirazione ma per ringraziarvi e ringraziare tutta la gente di Bisacquino. Perché é quí che mio padre Gioacchino Montalbano nacque 98 anni fa. Era un Siciliano molto orgoglioso che non dimenticò mai le sue origini. Lui era un amorevole e fedele sposo a mia madre, Giuseppina Latino, ed un padre meraviglioso per i suoi 8 figli. My father grew up in Bisacquino, living for a while on the Inglese Ranch next to St. Maria del Bosco. When he was 18 years old, he went into the Italian Army. After serving his country well, he left Sicily to come to America. He was 22 years old then. His two older brothers, Michele and Giuseppe Montalbano and one older sister, Giovanna Montalbano Governale, and their families were already living there. After two years, he married my mother who was born in Hammond, Louisiana. Her parents - Gioachino Latino and Rose DiChiara - were born in Bisacquino, too. So the blood of my ancestors from Bisacquino on both sides of my family flows through my veins . . . . Mio padre é cresciuto a Bisacquino, e per un po nella tenuta della Famiglia Inglese presso S. Maria del Bosco. Quando aveva 18 anni entró nell‘esereito Italiano. Dopo il servizio militare lasció La Sicilia per venire in America. Lui aveva 22 anni. I suoi due fratelli maggiore Michele e Giuseppe Montalbano e sua sorella maggiore Giovanna Montalbano Governale, con le coro famiglie vivevano gia li. Dopo due anni sposó mia madre che era nata ad Hammond, Louisiana. I suoi genitori Gioacchino Latino e Rosa DiChiara erano anche poro, nati a Bisacquino. Cosí il sangue dei miei antenati e di Bisacquino su entrambi, lati della mia famiglia. Gioachino Montalbano came to America with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. And he spoke no English. But he quickly learned to speak the language. He worked very hard at various jobs during his lifetime. He was a hot tamale maker and vendor, a strawberry farmer and a shoe repairman. Eventually, he owned his own successful business - a shoe repair shop in New Orleans, Louisiana. Gioacchino Montalbano andò in America con niente, solo con gli abiti che aveva adosso, non parlava inglese ma inparó velocomente. Lavoro duramente in diverse attività dal venditore all agrigoltore al calzolaio. Fino ad possedere una sua attivitá commerciale il suo negozio di calzocaio a New Orleans, Louisiana. My father loved people. Whenever he met someone, he told them stories about the time he lived in Sicily and, of course, in Bisacquino. He had a tremendous sense of humor. If he didn’t have a real life story, he was sure to make one up. He was also a musician. He played the trombone, the drums, the guitar and the mandolin - all self-taught. And he loved the opera. Mio padre amava le persone. Quando incontrava qualcuno, gli raccontava quando viveva in Sicilia ed ovviamente a Biascquino. Aveva un grande senso umoristico. Se non aveva una vera storia da raccontare, era sicuro che la poteva inventare. Era anche un musicista, suonava il trombone, la batteria, la chitarra ed il mandolino. Era un auto didatta ed amava l’opera. My father loved my mother and all his children. When he died in March of 1976 at the age of 75, he left a fortune - not in money, but in a big, wonderful family. At their 50th wedding anniversary celebration, my father was asked who all the people were. He quickly replied: ‘‘I made all of this’’ - while moving his hands over the crowded room filled with his entire family of eight children, 24 grandchildren. . . and now 26 great-grandchildren. Yes, my father was a proud husband, a proud father and a proud Sicilian. Mio padre amava sua moglie ed suoi figli. Quando mori nel mese di marzo del 1976 all’ etá di 75 anni, lasció una fortuna, non in denaro, ma in una grande e meravigliosa famiglia. Durante le celebrazioni del suo 50 anniversario di nozze a mio padre fu chiesto chi fossero tutti gli invitati. E lui rispondeva velocemente "Io ho fatto tutto questo" mentre indicava con la mano tutta la sua famiglia composta dai suoi 8 figli, 24 nipoti e 26 pronipoti. Ecco mio padre era un marito orgoglioso, un padre orgoglioso ed un Siciliano orgoglioso. Applause occurred here. Unfortunately, my father never returned to Bisacquino. Yes, he would have loved to have come back here to see his native land again. But he couldn’t. He got very busy working hard and raising a family. So now it is his children and grandchildren who do that for him in his name. But let me tell you, a piece of Bisacquino will always be with him. A rock from St. Maria del Balzo was placed in his tomb after my mother died and was buried with him three years ago. Bisacquino was always with him in spirit, but now it will be with him forever . . . . Sfortunatamente, mio padre non ritornó mai piú a Bisacquino. Avrebbe amato ritornare a rivedere la sua terra nativa. Ma non ha potuto. Era molta impegnato a lavorare duramente ed a crescere la sua famiglia. Cosí adesso sono i suoi figli e nipoti che lo fanno per lui. Pero lasciatemi dire che un pezzo di Bisacquino sará sempre con lui. Una pietra dalla Madonna del Balzo é stata messa nella sua tomba dopo che mort mia madre e fu seppellita tre anni fa con lui. Bisacquino era sempre stato con lui nello spirito ed adesso sará con lui per sempre. I am the youngest of his eight children. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. It seemed like every day of my life I heard my father talk about this town of Bisacquino. He had a small postcard with a picture of St. Maria del Balzo on the front. From time to time he showed me this special card. For the longest that was the only picture I had of Bisacquino. So I dreamed all of my life that one day I would travel here. I wanted to see for myself what Bisacquino was like. Io sono il piú giovane dei suoi 8 figli. Sono cresciuto a New Orleans, nello stato della Louisiana. Mi sembra che ogni giorno della mia vita mio padre mi parlavava di Bisacquino. Aveva una piccola cartolina con la foto del Santuario della Madonna del Balzo. Ogni tanto mi mostrava questa cartolina molto speciale. Per un lungo periodo di tempo questa era l’unica immagine che io avevo di Bisacquino. Cosi ho sognato per tutta la vita che un giorno avrei voluto visitare personalmente Bisacquino per vedere com’ era. Before I started to travel on my own, I first had to get my education. I have a college degree - a B.A. in Government from Southeastern Louisiana University. Also, I was in the U.S. Air Force for four years, and served six months in Vietnam. Presently, I am employed as a District Supervisor for the Office of Community Services for the State of Louisiana. I have worked for them for the past 30 years. And I am looking forward to my full retirement on January 1, 2000. Prima di iniziare a viaggiare per conto mio ho finito i miei studi ottenendo una laurea in scienze politiche all’universita della Louisiana. Sono stato per 4 anni nell’aviazione degli stati uniti con 6 mesi di servizio nel Vietnam. Attvalmente sono un ispettore distrettuale per i servizi comunitari dello stato della Louisiana. Ho gia prestato servizio per 30 anni e spero di ritirarmi il 1 Gennaio del 2000. However, in 1981, my life’s dream was fulfilled. On my first trip to Sicily I came to Bisacquino with my niece, Janet Graham, who just recently had her first baby, named Sophie. Thus, I became the first generation, and she, the second generation, to return to Bisacquino since my father left in 1922. During our first visit here we met some wonderful people, especially Sig. Pietro Giammona who became a very good friend of mine. Then in 1984, I returned with my brother Jake and his wife, Peggy, who are with us here. Also, in 1984, my cousin, Mary and her husband Wayne Woolard from Nevada came with us. Mary’s father, whose name was Vincenzo Cataldo, was also born in Bisacquino. Then in 1987, I came back to Sicily alone, and toured the whole island. It was very, very exciting for me! And again in 1990, I returned with my niece, Janet, for a reunion visit to see everyone again, especially Teresa Giammona. What wonderful memories I have of ALL my visits here. Comunque nel 1981, il mio sogno si é avverato. Durante il mio primo viaggio sono venuto a Bisacquino con mia nipote Janet che da paco é diventata mamma cosi. Io sono la prima generazione e lei la seconda che ritornano a Bisacquino da quando mio padre la lasció nel 1922. Durante la nostra prima visita abbiamo incontrato delle persone meravigliose specialmente il Sig. Pietro Giammona recentemente scomparso che divenne un mio caro amico. Poi nel 1984 ritornai con mio fratello Gioacchino e sua moglie Peggy che sono quí con noi, nel 1984 c’ erano anche mia cugina Mary e suo marito Wayne Woolard del Nevada. Il padre di Mary si chiamava Vincenzo Cataldo ed era nato a Bisacquino. Nel 1987 ho visitato la Sicilia da solo ed é stato un esperienza molto eccitante. Ancora nel 1990 sono ritornato con mia nipote Janet per rivedere tutti i nostri amici sopratutti Teresa Giammona. Ho dei ricordi meravigliosi dei miei viaggi quí. As you can hear, I fell in love with Sicily, especially Bisacquino . . . just like my father! And that is why I wrote a book entitled Sicilian Sun. My book contains stories of my father’s life and of my own. It includes all of my travels throughout Europe and Sicily. And I especially describe and talk about Bisacquino, and all the things I discovered and learned here. To be very truthful with you, this is my heaven on earth! My father described it that way to me, and he certainly did not disappoint me. But it is even more beautiful than I expected. To me the view from atop St. Maria del Balzo are just breathtaking. You may not appreciate what you have here, but in my opinion, you have a piece of heaven right here in Bisacquino. Come avrete capito, mi sono innamorato della Sicilia, e specialmente di Bisacquino, come mio padre. Per questo ho scritto un libro dal nome "Sole Siciliano". Il mio libro contiene storie che raccontano la vita di mio padre e la mia. Sono incluse i miei viaggi attraverso l’Europa e la Sicilia. Soppatutto parla e deserive Bisacquino e di tutte lo cose che ho scoperto ed inparato. Per essere sincero questo é il mio paradiso sulla terra. Mio padre me lo descrisse cosi, e certamente non mi ha deluso anzi l’ho trovato piu bello di quanto mi immaginavo. Le vedute dal Santuario della Madonna del Balzo tolgono il fiato. Forse voi non valorizzate quello che avete quí, ma la mia opinione e che voi avete un pezzo di paradiso qui a Bisacquino. Applause occurred here. So today I want to donate a copy of Sicilian Sun (to the mayor and to the school library). I hope the many people (students) of Bisacquino will enjoy reading and seeing all the pictures in Sicilian Sun as much as I enjoyed writing it. It is my extreme honor to present my book, Sicilian Sun, to you, Mr. Mayor and to the City of Bisacquino (or to the principal and to the school library). Cosi oggi voglio donare una copia del "Sole Siciliano" al sindaco ed alle biblioteche scolastiche. Spero che tante persone di Bisacquino avranna piacere nel leggere e vedere le foto contenute nel libro quanto i0 ho avuto il piacere di scriverlo. É un grande onore per me presentare il mio libro il "Sole Siciliano" a lei Sig. Sindaco ed alla cittadinanza Bisacquinese. Applause occurred here. One more note to say. This coming Monday on October 12, we still celebrate Columbus Day in America. It is a holiday all citizens, especially Italian-Americans, celebrate in honor of Christopher Columbus who discovered America in 1492. Like Columbus, my father, Gioachino Montalbano, discovered his America in 1922. He dreamed of a better life in America, and with his hard work, he achieved his dream. America gave him that opportunity, but he never forgot Sicily or Bisacquino. But it was through his hard work and his dedication to his family that he was to fulfill his dreams in life. There is still that opportunity in American. And you still have to work hard to fulfill your dreams there. Un altra cosa da dire. Questo Lunedí 12 Ottobre, noi Festeggiamo La Giornata di Cristoforo Colombo in America. È un giorno di festa per tutti i cittadini, specialmente per gli Italo-Americani festeggiano Cristoforo Colombo che scopri l’America nel 1492. Come Colombo, mio padre Gioacchino Montalbano, scoprí la sua America nel 1922. Sogno una vita migliore in America ed attraverso il suo duro lavoro, realizzó il suo sogno. L ’America gli ha dato questa opportunitá, ma lui non dimentico mai la Sicilia o Biasacquino. Ma e’ stato attraverso il suo duro lavoro e la sua dedizione alla sua famiglia che gli é stato possibile realizzare il suo sogno nella vita. Questa opportunitá c’é ancora in America. Ma deve lavorare duramente per realizzare i tuoi sogni. Everyone is aware that the roots of our ancestors are long and curving - they go on and on. In my particular family research I have gone back to the 1750's on three branches of my family. In addition, the passion we have for Sicily and Bisacquino stays with us for a lifetime. It did for my father, and it is the same for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is in our blood. . . and it lasts forever! Siamo tutti consapevoli che le nostre radiei sono lunghe e si perdono nel tempo. Nella mia ricerca familiare sono riuscito a risalire fino al 1750 su tre rami della mia famiglia. In piú, la passione che noi abbiamo per la Sicilia e Bisacquino rimane con noi per tutta la vita. E stato cosí per mio padre, ed é cosi per i suoi figli, nipoti e pronipoti. E nel nostro sangue e durerá per sempre. Applause occurred here. From my heart, I thank you very much for listening to me this evening (morning). It has been a pleasure of a lifetime for me to speak to you. And I want to publicly thank another new friend for putting everything together for us here in Bisacquino. Mille grazie a tutti Bisacquinesi! Dal mio cuore, vorrei ringraziarvi per avermi ascoltato questa sera. É stato un piacere parlare con voi. E vorrei ringraziare pubblicamente un nostro nuovo amico per avere organizzato tutto questo quí a Bisacquino. Mille grazie a tutti Bisacquinesi! Applause occurred here. As I read aloud and looked into the eyes of the people off stage, everyone in the audience sat silently listening to every word I spoke. I could feel the connection. And after I completed the last word, and it was translated, everyone applauded graciously and warmly. I knew then and there I had achieved my goal on this visit. And it was a marvelous feeling! Standing up, I formally presented to the Mayor of Bisacquino, Filippo Contorno, a copy of my book, Sicilian Sun. And I thanked him for allowing me to speak to the town tonight. My father was proud, and I was proud to be called a son of a Bisacquinese. My sister, Anna, then came on stage to deliver a few remarks of her own (with an Italian translator winging it). Her words follows: "I’m very happy to be here tonight, and I want to thank the people for being here for us. I have a favorite saying - "bloom where you are planted." My father learned many things here as a child and a young man, and he used those resources to grow in a new country he chose for himself. And we, his eight children, profited from it. Applause occurred here. I want to thank you for this warm welcome. I enjoyed meeting you all in the square, and the children in the schools. I’m a school teacher so I’m a people oriented person, and I can appreciate why my father enjoyed Bisacquino so much because I have enjoyed it, too. Applause occurred here. I’m also a newspaper reporter, and I plan to write the story. I’m looking forward to writing the story." After all the applause died down, there was a little banter between the mayor and myself. I informed him that if Bisacquino was to remain number one, the city needed a hotel. Without hesitation, the mayor stated, with translation: "I just got into office, give me time." All laughed.	i don't know
An NBA basketball game is 48 minutes long. How long is an NCAA college basketball game?	How long does a college basketball game last? \| Reference.com How long does a college basketball game last? A: Quick Answer A college basketball game lasts a minimum of 1.5 hours, including 40 minutes of playing time. There are nine media timeouts and up to five timeouts per coach for a total of 30 minutes of timeouts. There is also a halftime break. Full Answer Media timeouts last from two to three minutes, and coach timeouts last from 30 seconds up to a full timeout. Fouls, traveling and other calls stop the game clock and extend the total time of the game. During the regular season, halftime is 15 minutes, and it is 20 minutes during tournaments. Overtime also adds to the length of the game. While the total time of most games is close to two hours, the record for second-longest game in NCAA history is almost four hours due to six overtimes.	40 time
How long does a US president have to consider a bill before he must either sign it into law or return it to Congress as a veto?	NBA vs. College Basketball: I am the Decider \| Bleacher Report NBA vs. College Basketball: I am the Decider Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse more stories (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) 6.7K 12 Comments This argument comes down to one thing: In the NBA, players play for the name on the back of the jersey; in college, the players play for the name on the front. Too simple? Yes. True? I think so. Quality arguments can be made to point out the positives and negatives on whether the NBA or college basketball is superior. Even after this article, you will still have a preference, and that is good. Yet I believe that a vast majority of sports lovers assume that the NBA is “better” because the talent is stronger and the players are more mature—last point is debatable. One disclaimer: Everything in the NBA is about money, and a good portion of college ball is as well, but the NCAA can’t admit that. With that said, I will not need to breakdown the “Why do they play?” because we all know. Let’s break it down by certain factors. I will decide the winner of those categories, and the side with the most “points” wins. Jerseys NBA—Every team in the NBA has at least three different jerseys (if you are the LeBrons, you have 17). The jerseys range from classics with the Lakers and Celtics, to the WNBA-ish with the Timberwolves and the Kings. And you will always know the players because the names are always on the back. When the average fan purchases, a jersey they are usually supporting the individual, not the team. College—The college jerseys are not as visually creative and rarely do you have “throw back night,” but I have not seen a jersey that makes me wonder if they accidentally put on the girls team jerseys. Certain schools will never put the names on the back, and some have removed the players name to drive the point home that we are one team—not just players. When the average fan (or alumni) purchases a jersey, they are usually supporting the school, not the individual. Also, you can just buy a jersey with any number and unless the player is incredible and the number is retired, you might be able to use it again and again. Winner = Tie, both are sweet. Arenas NBA—The NBA is full of teams with new stadiums that are shiny, glitzy, and in HD. Now, name two famous/historic stadium? Madison Square Garden, and, huh, wait, there has to be at least one more…nope. That’s it. College – Unlike the pros, the undergrads study in historic buildings. Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Hoosier Dome, Williams Arena (Minnesota), etc. And there are many more. So this comes down to personal preference. Do you like the old or new? Winner = College. I think everyone needs a reminder of those who have been there before. Cheerleaders NBA—They have many costume changes and get to perform a ton, and might even get to be on a calendar or two. The downside is that there are probably more implants in the NBA than in college. College—The cheerleaders are typically less “dancy,” and there is more traditional cheer leading. Sometimes co-ed, so pyramids and flips are frequent. But my wife thinks it is weird—and a little creepy—that the fans are gawking at teenagers. Good point. Winner = NBA. At least they get paid, and they are legal. Rules NBA—Six fouls, 48 minutes, 24 second shot clock, eight seconds to get over half court. The rules in the NBA lean towards the one-on-one game. The introduction of the “zone” has made it better. College—Five fouls, 40 minutes, 35 second shot clock, 10 seconds to get over half court. The college game leans towards team play and strategy. If the college game would increase the foul limit to six and increase minutes, this would not be a contest. But they have yet to do it. Winner = NBA. Sometimes five fouls just isn't enough. Referrees NBA—I am not even going to factor the case of a certain ref named Tim into this equation; that would be unfair. Some experts say that refs control the games in the NBA more than any other element, and can then pick a winner and it becomes obvious in the way they call the game. The league has been calling touch fouls on anyone in the area of their stars for years, but now, anyone can get ticky-tack fouls on their way to the basket and on the perimeter. Prime example—hand checks. College—Every time a player steps on the court, they have to be ready to adjust to whomever calls the game. The same is true in the NBA, but I think the refs are a little more consistent. Plus, the way the game is called usually allows the players to play a little more, which is why we watch. Winner = College. Give the players a chance to play. Coaches NBA—The coaches on certain teams are more high school counselor than NBA coach. Teams are made up of grown men who are trying to make a living and have egos as big—or bigger than most of their second homes. In the association, unless you are a top-tier coach, you are more expendable than the worst players on their teams. Coaches rarely get credit for wins, but always get the blame for loses. Breaking into the ranks of head coach is more difficult in the NBA than any other sport, but once you are in the coaching carousal, even if you are fired, you stay on the ride. College—Coaches are the face of the program. And everyone is very aware of that. Some would say that coaches in college have bigger egos and need to be the center of attention than their counterparts in the league. A college coach's duties are pretty year round and always changing with the different roster that appears each season. You have recruiting and players leaving early, which means the ability to adjust on the fly is very important. There is a better chance for coaches to get their “break” and land a good job. Winner = NBA. Longer season, but recruiting is not in the job description. And you don’t have to deal with alumni. Crowds NBA—One could swear that the mute button is on until halfway through the fourth quarter. College—The stadiums are always full with students and alumni. They sing their school songs and go nuts even at 11 a.m. Winner = College. This really wasn’t a contest—the NBA didn’t stand a chance. Style of Play NBA—The NBA has long been a league that allows for individuals to showcase their ability to beat defenders one-on-one. The idea of team defense is all about weak side help, doubling the post and a little zone. The NBA is quicker at times, but comes down to players making plays in crucial, end-of-game situations. College—Each squad has to establish their own style and the ability of that team to dominate tempo. Each possession means more because there's fewer throughout the game. There are more swings in the success of the team and the crowd can really affect how teams play. Winner = NBA. Systems are good, but players should decide games. And in the NBA they do, if the refs let them. Postseason NBA—Finally. I always feel that way. Getting through the regular season can be like getting teeth pulled, but the playoffs are magical (see Bulls vs. Celtics). Many feel the playoffs are too long, the seeding needs to get reworked and that good teams are left out. But that last point happens in every sport. College—There are upsets and underdogs making runs deep into the tournament, players can take their lead their team over better teams and make names for themselves. The only issue is that many times really good get left out on selection Sunday. Winner = College. From the brackets to watching the games online at work, every game matters. Acquisition of Players NBA—The NBA draft is fun to watch. It is short and you usually have a good idea of who is going where. Free agency is a toss-up. It can help a team rebuild really fast (the Spurs are experts at this), but it also decreases the amount of players that stick with teams their whole careers. Even all stars Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter have played for at least two different teams (T-Mac has played for three, the Raptors, Magic and Rockets). College—Recruiting is interesting to follow and you can keep busy all year round. With coaching changes and kids changing their minds, it is a very fluid situation. I understand the “sit-out-a-year” rule when you transfer from one D1 school to another, but think it should be changed if their is a coaching change or family hardship. Winner = College. Money is not involved, at least I hope not. Oh wait. Final Tally I think I have covered the majority of important issues that make each game unique unto itself. Even after this extremely logical argument, there will be some that will disagree, and that is OK. Because you are wrong, or least “less-right.” Winner = College 6 - NBA 4.	i don't know
In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” what was the name of the computer that took control of the spaceship Discovery?	2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) HAL 9000 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) HAL... Introduction of the HAL 9000 computer (voice by Douglas... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) HAL 9000 Introduction of the HAL 9000 computer (voice by Douglas Rain) and the two not-hibernating members of the Jupiter mission on the spaceship Discovery One, Dave (Keir Dullea) and Frank (Gary Lockwood), in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.> Ben Mankiewicz Intro -- 2001: A Space Odyssey... Ben Mankiewicz introduces 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Ben Mankiewicz Intro -- 2001: A Space... Ben Mankiewicz Intro -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Ben Mankiewicz introduces 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. > Ben Mankiewicz Intro -- 2001: A Space Odyssey... Ben Mankiewicz introduces 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Ben Mankiewicz introduces <B>2001:... Ben Mankiewicz Intro -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Ben Mankiewicz introduces 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. > The Story Of Film: An Odyssey (2011) -- (TCM... TCM's Original Promo for the 15-part documentary by film... The Story Of Film: An Odyssey (2011) -- (TCM Promo) TCM's Original Promo for the 15-part documentary by film historian Mark Cousins, The Story Of Film: An Odyssey, premiering Monday, September 2nd at 10pm ET.> 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Moon... Set piece for director Stanley Kubrick, four million years... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Moon Mission Set piece for director Stanley Kubrick, four million years since the "Dawn Of Man" sequence, astronauts on the surface of the moon investigate a mysterious monolith identical to the ones the apes saw, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, from Arthur C. Clarke's novel and screenplay.> 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip)... Second stanza of Stanley Kubrick's "Dawn Of Man" sequence,... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Monolith Second stanza of Stanley Kubrick's "Dawn Of Man" sequence, the apes awaken one morning to find what will become known as "the monolith," early in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.> 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip)... Dave (Keir Dullea) and Frank (Gary Lockwood) instruct their... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Famous Last Words Dave (Keir Dullea) and Frank (Gary Lockwood) instruct their mission-control computer "Hal" to leave them where the computer cannot listen-in, as they discuss a disturbing system-error, in Stanly Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. > 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip)... Just a portion of the trippy part, Dave (Keir Dullea) has... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Jupiter And Beyond Just a portion of the trippy part, Dave (Keir Dullea) has left the mother-ship in an "EVA" pod, after hearing secret instructions, and sees weird stuff as he approaches Jupiter, late in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.> 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Fight The ending of director Stanley Kubrick's "Dawn Of Man"... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) -- (Movie Clip) Fight The ending of director Stanley Kubrick's "Dawn Of Man" sequence, the apes have become carnivorous and homicidal, and a bone thrown in the air leads to one of the most famous edits in film history, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968.> Model Shop -- (Movie Clip) Opening Opening title sequence for Jacques Demy's Model Shop, 1969,... Model Shop -- (Movie Clip) Opening Opening title sequence for Jacques Demy's Model Shop, 1969, features music by Spirit, a long camera move by Michael Hugo, and Gary Lockwood in his big post 2001: A Space Odyssey role. > 2001 (TCM brand campaign) - (A TCM Promo) TCM shows how not all computer upgrades... 2001 (TCM brand campaign) - (A TCM Promo) TCM shows how not all computer upgrades are in your best interest.>	HAL 9000
According to the nursery rhyme, if Polly put the kettle on, who took it off?	2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) \| Hollywood Subliminals Hollywood Subliminals Breaking the Spell 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke’s short story The Sentinel. The story deals with a series of encounters between humans and mysterious black monoliths that are apparently affecting human destiny, and a space voyage to Jupiter tracing a signal emitted by one such monolith found on the moon. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood star as the two astronauts on this voyage, with Douglas Rain as the voice of the sentient computer HAL who “seems human” and has full control over their spaceship. Financed and produced by the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was made almost entirely in England, using both the studio facilities of MGM’s subsidiary “MGM British” (among the last movies to be shot there before its closure in 1970) and those of Shepperton Studios, mostly because of the availability of much larger sound stages than in the United States. The film was also co-produced by Kubrick’s own “Stanley Kubrick Productions”. Kubrick, having already shot his previous two films in England, decided to settle there permanently during the filming of Space Odyssey. Though Space Odyssey was released in America several months before its release in England, and Encyclopædia Britannica calls this an American film, other sources refer to it as an American, British, or American-British production. Thematically, the film deals with elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. It is notable for its scientific accuracy, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue. The film has a memorable soundtrack—the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss II, and the famous symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical evolution of Man theorized in Nietzsche’s work of the same name. Despite initially receiving mixed reviews, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time. In addition, in 2010 it was named the #1 greatest film ever made by The Moving Arts Film Journal. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. PLOT SUMMARY The film consists of four major sections, all of which, except the second, are introduced by superimposed titles. The Dawn of Man A tribe of herbivorous early humans is foraging for food in the African desert. A leopard kills one member, and another tribe of man-apes drives them from their water hole. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater, and awake to find a black monolith has appeared in front of them. They approach it shrieking and jumping, and eventually touch it cautiously. Soon after, one of the man-apes (Daniel Richter) realizes how to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon, which they later use to kill prey for food. Later they reclaim control of the water hole from the other tribe by killing its leader. Triumphant, the tribe’s leader throws his weapon-tool into the air as the scene shifts (via match cut) from the falling bone to an orbital satellite millions of years in the future. TMA-1 A Pan Am space plane carries Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) to a space station orbiting Earth for a layover on his trip to Clavius Base, a US outpost on the Moon. After making a videophone call from the station to his daughter (Vivian Kubrick), he encounters his friend Elena (Margaret Tyzack), a Russian scientist, and her colleague Dr. Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter), who ask Floyd about “odd things” occurring at Clavius, and the rumor of a mysterious epidemic at the base. The American politely but firmly declines to answer any questions about the epidemic. At Clavius, Floyd heads a meeting of base personnel, apologizing for the epidemic cover story but stressing secrecy. His mission is to investigate a recently found artifact—”Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One” (TMA-1)—”deliberately buried” four million years ago. Floyd and others ride in a Moonbus to the artifact, a black monolith identical to the one encountered by the apes. The visitors examine the monolith, and pose for a photo in front of it. While doing so, they hear a very loud radio signal coming from the monolith. Jupiter Mission Eighteen months later, the American spaceship Discovery One is bound for Jupiter. On board are mission pilots and scientists Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), and three other scientists who are in cryogenic hibernation. “Hal” (voiced by Douglas Rain) is the ship’s HAL 9000 computer, which runs most of Discovery’s operations. While Bowman and Poole watch Hal and themselves being interviewed in a BBC show about the mission, the computer states that he is “foolproof and incapable of error.” Hal also speaks of his enthusiasm for the mission, and how he enjoys working with humans. When asked by the host if Hal has genuine emotions, Bowman replies that he appears to, but that the truth is unknown. Hal asks Bowman about the unusual mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission, but interrupts himself to report the imminent failure of a device which controls the ship’s main antenna. After retrieving the component with an EVA pod, the astronauts cannot find anything wrong with it. Hal suggests reinstalling the part and letting it fail so the problem can be found. Mission control concurs, but advises the astronauts that results from their twin HAL 9000 indicate the ship’s HAL is in error predicting the fault. When queried, Hal insists that the problem, like all previous issues with the HAL series, is due to “human error”. Concerned about Hal’s behavior, Bowman and Poole enter one of the EVA pods to talk without the computer overhearing them. They both have a “bad feeling” about Hal, despite the HAL series’ perfect reliability, but decide to follow his suggestion to replace the unit. As the astronauts agree to deactivate the computer if it is proven to be wrong, they are unaware that Hal is reading their lips through the pod’s window. While attempting to replace the unit during a spacewalk, Poole’s EVA pod, controlled by Hal, severs his oxygen hose and sets him adrift. Bowman, not realizing the computer is responsible for this, takes another pod to attempt a rescue, leaving his helmet behind. While he is gone, Hal terminates the life functions of the crew in suspended animation. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole’s body, Hal refuses to let him in, stating that the astronaut’s plan to deactivate him jeopardizes the mission. Bowman manually opens the ship’s emergency airlock and bodily enters the ship risking death from lack of oxygen. After donning a helmet, Bowman proceeds to HAL 9000’s memory core intent on disconnecting the computer. Hal first tries to reassure Dave, then pleads with him to stop, and finally begins to express fear—all in a steady monotone voice. Dave ignores him and disconnects each of the computer’s memory modules. Hal eventually regresses to his earliest programmed memory, the song “Daisy Bell”, which he sings for Bowman. When the computer is finally disconnected, a pre-recorded video message from Floyd plays. In it, he reveals the existence of the four million-year-old black monolith on the Moon, “its origin and purpose still a total mystery”. Floyd adds that it has remained completely inert, except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter. Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite At Jupiter, Bowman leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod and finds another monolith in orbit around the planet. Approaching it, the pod is suddenly pulled into a tunnel of colored light, and a disoriented and terrified Bowman finds himself racing at great speed across vast distances of space, viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange alien landscapes of unusual colors. He finds himself, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, standing in a bedroom containing Louis XVI-style decor. Bowman sees progressively older versions of himself, his point of view switching each time, alternately appearing formally dressed and eating dinner, and finally as a very elderly man lying in a bed. A black monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light. The new being floats in space beside the Earth, gazing at it.	i don't know
The axiom that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" is commonly known as what?	Murphy Laws Site - Murphy Laws If anything can go wrong, it will Corollary: It can Corollary sent by Dr. Allen Roberds Corollary: It should Corollary sent by Earl R. Johnson Extension: it will be all your fault, and everyone will know it. Extension sent by Dean A. Izett If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong Extreme version: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST to go wrong Extreme version sent by Neal Miller If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop Corollary: It will be impossible to fix the fifth fault, without breaking the fix on one or more of the others Corollary sent by Sean Cheshire Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something Nature always sides with the hidden flaw Corollary: The hidden flaw never stays hidden for long. Corollary sent by Dave M. Mother nature is a bitch Addendum: and not an obedient one at that Addendum sent by Paul Kekanovich Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics Things get worse under pressure. The Murphy Philosophy Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse. Quantization Revision of Murphy's Laws Everything goes wrong all at once. Murphy's Constant Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value Murphy's Law of Research Enough research will tend to support whatever theory. Research supports a specific theory depending on the amount of funds dedicated to it. In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right ... something is wrong. More Laws Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer. Corollary: Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem. Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than you think. Everything takes longer than it takes. If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first. Every solution breeds new problems. The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance. no matter how perfect things are made to appear, Murphy's law will take effect and screw it up. Sent by Mitch You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. Sent by Paul Breen The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. More Laws of Selective Gravitation. A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage. A shatterproof object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried). A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot). If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example) - or into the garbage disposal while it is running. If you use a pole saw to saw a limb while standing on an aluminum ladder borrowed from your neighbor, the limb will fall in such a way as to bend the ladder before it knocks you to the ground. If you pick up a chunk of broken concrete and try to pitch it into an adjacent lot, it will hit a tree limb and come down right on the driver's side of your car windshield. More Laws of Selective Gravitation were sent by Jack from the Classic CKLW Page The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the cat will throw up on it. You will always find something in the last place you look. If your looking for more than one thing, you'll find the most important one last. Sent by Alegna It is never in the last place you look. It is in the first place you look, but never discovered on the first attempt. Sent by Peter After you bought a replacement for something you've lost and searched for everywhere, you'll find the original. Sent by [email protected] No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper. The other line always moves faster. In order to get a personal loan, you must first prove you don't need it. Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought. If you fool around with a thing for very long you will screw it up. If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly. Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it. Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work. In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence, and then remains there. There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate. Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening. Murphy's golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. A Smith & Wesson beats four aces. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing. Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. No good deed goes unpunished. Sent by John Cougar and by getalife who asks "who wrote that?". Illustrious Blackbird knew the answer, it was Samuel L. Clemens also known as Mark Twain. Where patience fails, force prevails. Heisenberg indetermination principle applied to ill luck: The better you know the amount of ill luck that will strike you, the worse you know when this will happen, and vice-versa. and Relativistic correction of Murphy's law: Whether things can go wrong or not, it depends on your frame of reference. Corollary (otherwise said: ill luck is actually absolute): Regardless of your frame of reference, things will go wrong anyway. Were sent by Simone Penzavalle . If you want something bad enough, chances are you won't get it. If you think you are doing the right thing, chances are it will back-fire in your face. When waiting for traffic, chances are that when one lane clears the other is congested. Just when you think things cannot get any worse, they will. Remember the "Boomer-rang" effect; Whatever you do will always come back. If you re-act to actions, you've acted on actions. He who angers you controls you, there-fore you have no control over your anger. The last SEVEN laws were sent by Leesa , Thank you. Any time you put an item in a "safe place", it will never be seen again. Your best golf shots always occur when playing alone. The worst golf shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress. No matter how hard you try, you cannot push a string. (getting everyone in the family to the car at the same time for example) The fish are always biting....yesterday! You will never leave a parking space without someone in an adjacent space leaving at the same time. The cost of the hair do is directly related to the strength of the wind. Great ideas are never remembered and dumb statements are never forgotten. The clothes washer/dryer will only eat one of each pair of socks. EIGHT laws were sent by Charles L. Mays , Thank you. Being dead right, won't make you any less dead. and Having the right of way, won't make you any less dead. Sent by anonymous Whatever you want, you can't have, what you can have, you don't want. Whatever you want to do, is Not possible, what ever is possible for you to do, you don't want to do it. Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or are going to be. The complexity and frustration factor is inversely proportional to how much time you have left to finish, and how important it is. The four last laws were sent by Joe Crespins law of observation: No degree of acceptance can ever change the facts. Translation: You may come to terms with being screwed, but nevertheless you're still screwed. Hunter's Corollary to Murphy's Law: Things always go from bad to worse. Hunter's Observation on Beauty: Beauty is only skin deep, fashion even shallower. Hunter's Observation on Experts: An expert is someone with an opinion and a word processor. Hunter's Observation on Sugarcoating: All pornography is air-brushed or computer-enhanced. Hunter's Observation on hypocrites: A person without values or standards can never be a hypocrite. Hunter's Observation on Education and Oz: "We can give you a diploma, but we can't give you a brain." The last six laws were sent by Hunter Sgt. Murphy's Law Don't get into a pissing contest with a skunk. Sent by Bird Waring The Law of Stupid Tricks Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD. Garbage abhors a vacuum. It will grow to fill available space. Corollary: The more space you have, the more junk you'll have. Paper is always strongest at the perforation. Sent by Mike Sent by Ken Kaplan Uffelman's Razor: [Given Murphy's law, ...] One should not attribute to evil design any unfortunate result which can be attributed to error. A mistake (or series of mistakes) is the simpler and more likely explanation. Conspiracy Corollary to Uffelman's Razor: Nothing should be attributed to conspiracy that can be explained by error or a succession of errors. Example 1: The alleged conspiracy to "fake" the Apollo moon landing. Such an undertaking would be so likely to result in multiple glitches that it would be nearly impossible to pull off. Thus, conspiracy is an unlikely explanation of events. Accordingly, the "evidence" of the "faked" landing is more likely a result of the errors of those interpreting the evidence than of the evil design of the alleged conspirators. Example 2: The Warren Report. Any open questions in the Warren Report are more likely the result of the errors of the Warren commission, or the errors of those interpreting the Warren Report, than the result of a conspiracy to cover up the true facts.	Murphy's law
What do the 3 little pigs build their houses out of?	Risks of General Anesthesia - Liposuction.com Liposuction.com » Risks of General Anesthesia for Liposuction Surgery Risks of General Anesthesia for Liposuction Surgery Systemic Anesthesia and Liposuction Deaths Liposuction surgery can be accomplished safely by general anesthesia or by local anesthesia. However, general anesthesia is more dangerous. Virtually all liposuction deaths that have ever been reported have been associated with systemic anesthesia. In most cases the systemic anesthesia was not directly involved, but it permitted the surgeon to do an excessive amount of liposuction, or to do multiple unrelated surgical procedures on the same day. This includes all five of the deaths recorded by the New York Medical Examiner from 1993 to 1998 and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Rao RB, et al. Deaths related to liposuction. N. Eng. J. Med. 340:1471-1475,1999). Local Anesthesia Local Anesthesia is defined as the infiltration of local anesthesia directly into the tissues targeted for surgery, with or without outpatient oral medication for analgesia, sedation, or to reduce anxiety. This definition of local anesthesia does allow for the use of medications which are approved for patient self-administration at home. Systemic Anesthesia Systemic Anesthesia is defined as any anesthetic technique, with or without local anesthesia, that has a significant risk and potential for impairing the protective airway reflexes or for suppression of the respiratory drive. Thus, systemic anesthesia includes general anesthesia by inhalation of a volatile gas, total intravenous (IV) general anesthesia, and local anesthesia plus IV analgesia-sedation also known as monitored anesthesia care (MAC). The greatest risks of systemic anesthesia are the dose-dependent impairment of protective airway reflexes and respiratory depression. Modified Tumescent Technique Liposuction by the combination of tumescent infiltration and systemic anesthesia is commonly known by any of the following names: Superwet Technique or Modified Tumescent Technique for liposuction. These names refer to the same liposuction technique which consists of the following: 1) a relatively small volume of tumescent infiltration, 2) some form of systemic anesthesia, and 3) significant volume of IV fluid supplementation. Tumescent liposuction totally by local anesthesia does not use systemic anesthesia nor infusions of large volumes of IV fluids. Murphy's Law and Systemic Anesthesia Systemic anesthesia is quite safe when delivered by a board certified anesthesiologist. But according to Murphy's Law, nothing is perfect. Murphy's Law states that, "If something can go wrong, it will." When Murphy's Law is applied to the use of systemic anesthesia, it can be stated as, "If something can go wrong with systemic anesthesia, it will; and when it does go wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic." The greatest danger of systemic anesthesia is not any intrinsic pharmacologic property of systemic anesthesia, but rather human error and poor clinical judgment by those who use it. To Error Is Human Several studies have found that approximately 80% of serious complications associated with anesthesia are the result of human error. Lack of attention, haste, fatigue, stress, information overload, worries about pressure to cut costs, and failure to communicate can all lead to inattention and failure to recognize problems. Types of human error that lead to anesthesia related catastrophes include improper interpretation of monitoring device data, failure to check equipment properly, inadequate experience with equipment, incorrect drug dose, and wrong drug given. An undetected accidental disconnection from a ventilator can be fatal in patients unable to breathe without assistance. Anesthesia Monitoring There are anesthesiologists who assert that modern anesthesia is extremely safe, and that this safety is largely attributable to widespread use of modern anesthesia monitoring equipment. No amount of monitoring can overcome poor clinical judgment or human error or carelessness. Systemic Anesthesia The greatest danger of systemic anesthesia is its tendency to release the surgeon from common sense restraints and to permit too much liposuction. In other words, it is not the systemic anesthesia, but the consequences of using systemic anesthesia that is dangerous. Marathon surgery of up to 8 or more hours duration, involving multiple diverse cosmetic procedures, or mega-volume liposuction of more than four or five liters of fat or liposuction of too many areas of the body are examples of doing surgery far beyond the bounds of commonsense-safety. Succumbing to the urge to do too much cosmetic surgery on one occasion is the greatest risk of systemic anesthesia. Excessive Surgery Alert With liposuction under local anesthesia, the patient can inform the surgeon when there are symptoms of excessive surgery such as lightheadedness, dizziness, difficulty breathing, or unusual pain. With liposuction under systemic anesthesia, an unconscious patient cannot give an alert when the degree of surgical trauma exceeds the safe limits. Prolonged and excessive surgery significantly increases the risk of blood clots in the lung, fluid overload, excessive bleeding, and serious infections. The true danger of systemic anesthesia is that surgeons find it more difficult to detect when a patient has had too much surgery. How Much Surgery Is Safe? If a patient requests several different cosmetic surgical procedures, the surgeon must choose between two situations: 1) divide multiple surgeries into separate days (safer but more expensive because of the extra time required), or 2) do multiple cosmetic surgeries on the same day (more dangerous because of prolonged exposure to anesthesia and excessive surgery, but less expensive). These two alternatives must be carefully evaluated. Using general anesthesia complicates the analysis. Multiple exposures to systemic anesthesia increase the risks of anesthetic procedures and anesthetic toxicity. On the other hand, exposing the body to excessive surgical trauma increases the risks of infection, increases the need for dangerous postoperative narcotics, and prolonged bed rest increases the risk of pulmonary embolism. When financial considerations or personal convenience are allowed to outweigh safety concerns, the final choice is often in favor of marathon surgery. Delayed Diagnosis of Injury There are some unique hazards associated with the combination of systemic anesthesia plus liposuction that are not as well known. The greatest danger associated with a penetration of the abdominal cavity with a liposuction cannula is the consequence of a delayed diagnosis. Under general anesthesia, it is more likely that the surgeon will be unaware an intestinal wound and even dismiss complaints of abdominal pain until there are signs of serious infection. Under local anesthesia, such an injury would cause immediate pain and prompt immediate hospitalization and a consultation by a general surgeon without delay. Similarly, general anesthesia will contribute to a delay in the diagnosis of a punctured lung, or fluid overload because of too much IV fluids. Some liposuction surgeons tell their patients that they can expect liposuction by local anesthesia when in fact the anticipated anesthetic technique will rely upon significant doses of IV sedation-analgesia. General anesthesia and IV sedation-analgesia are similar in terms of both risks and requirements for monitoring patients. Liposuction under systemic anesthesia should only be done in an accredited or state licensed surgical facility.	i don't know
Sweet Polly Purebred is the girlfriend of what cartoon superhero?	Sweet Polly Purebred \| Heroes Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia Share Sweet Polly Purebred in the Live Action movie. Sweet Polly Purebred is a female anthropomorphic dog TV news reporter who is Underdog's love interest, and she often serves as the damsel-in-distress of most episodes. When being pursued by an antagonist, Polly is apt to start singing, "Oh where oh where has my Underdog gone," in a whiny voice, hoping for the object of her affections to come and rescue her. Polly's face is slightly similar to that of Underdog's with a large muzzle and nose, and she has platinum blonde hair styled in a pageboy, and her wardrobe consists of a black skirt, a white shirt, a red sweater, and black high-heels. In a few episodes it is hinted that Polly shows her love for Underdog. In the episode "March of the Monsters" she is caught by a robot and calls for Underdog. He then saves Polly but after Underdog uses his sci-fi noise and breaks all the glass the towns people complain about his noise. However Polly defends the hero and tells the people that they should thank him for saving everyone from the robots. She then goes to reward Underdog with a big kiss but the hero backs away and flies away. Also in the episode "The Vacuum Gun" she is caught by Simon Barsinister's vacuum gun so then she calls for Underdog which her song annoys Simon. Later in the episode she retrieves Underdog's ring.In the live-action film, Polly is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel owned by a girl named Molly. She is based upon Superman's romantic interest Lois Lane.She was voiced by Norma MacMillan in the cartoon and voiced by Amy Adams in the live-action film.	Underdog
Muhammed Ali described his unorthodox fighting style as "float like a butterfly" then what?	Underdog \| Luthar.com (Pictures in this article come from www.toontracker.com/totaltv/underdog.htm ) Underdog and Sweet Polly Purebred Do you remember that cartoon show “Underdog”? You might have watched it as a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s. Underdog was a “humble and lovable Shoeshine Boy” who had a secret identity. Whenever there was a serious world crisis or threat to the city, Underdog would turn into a superhero after taking a special vitamin pill from the secret compartment in his watch. Underdog had a girlfriend named Sweet Polly Purebred. Sweet Polly was sweet on Underdog. Sweet Polly was a reporter, who seemed to get into trouble with the bad guys in every show. When in crisis mode, she would yell, help, help, help, Underdog, help. Sometimes Sweet Polly would actually sing despondently when Underdog was late in arriving. “Oh where, oh where has my Underdog gone?” Underdog was probably the best boyfriend Sweet Polly Purebred ever had. No matter how far away and how deeply engrossed in shining shoes of his customers, Underdog could always hear Sweet Polly calling out his name. The “humble and lovable Shoeshine Boy” would slip into a phone booth and emerge as the champion of justice and protector of Sweet Polly. Underdog had super sensitive hearing, at least when it came to Sweet Polly. No doubt this would have resulted in a happy marriage if they had ever tied the knot. Underdog would often say, “When Polly’s in trouble I am not slow, it’s Hip, Hip, Hip and away I go !” Underdog always came to Sweet Polly’s rescue, yelling, “Never fear, Underdog is here!” Sometimes Underdog took his time and Sweet Polly had to yell help for a long time. This was not easy on our ears as kids. But we hung on. We strongly suspected that Underdog would indeed arrive at some point. When Underdog finally came, it was a great consolation. We did not really want Sweet Polly to get roughed up by the bad guys. Unfortunately, Underdog was no muscle dog. He had a small chest and a big belly. He was a heart attack waiting to happen according to modern medical standards on waist to chest ratio (which were probably not well known when the show started in the 1960s). In fact, Underdog often became exhausted within a few minutes in his fight with the bad guys and looked for his vitamin pill to get his vitality back. Not being able to locate the magical nutrition pill in time posed a serious problem to Underdog’s health. It was awful to watch and we were full of tears as Sweet Polly looked for Underdog’s backup energy pill in her purse while Underdog was beaten to a pulp by the bad guys. Sweet Polly always found the needed vitality tablet for Underdog at the last minute, but not before giving everyone the distinct impression that she was very disorganized. The magic pill, once found, was a life giving elixir. As soon as Underdog put it in his mouth, the effect was immediate. The vitality pill always seemed to bypass Underdog’s digestive system and go straight into his muscles. Typically Underdog swallowed the pill in one gulp and regained his energy the next instant. Then he would beat the surprised bad guys quickly before the show ended. Underdog always saved the day including, of course, Sweet Polly. I was recently thinking that in real life, some people are like Underdog (who don’t have a Sweet Polly), and some are like Sweet Polly (but without their own personal Underdog). Sometimes we want to act as saviors to people who do not wish to be saved. Other times, we need desperately to be saved but no one except mom seems interested in the job. That perfect match of being the savior and being saved that Underdog and Sweet Polly had is seldom achieved for most people. Underdog and Sweet Polly were made for each other. We certainly lack that magic vitamin pill that Underdog had in the secret compartment of his watch. But even for Underdog, the effect of the magic vitamin pill was only temporary. He had to keep taking those pills to maintain superhero status. One wonders where Underdog got his supply and the money to pay for those pills. After all, he could not have made much as a shoeshine boy. Perhaps he got big tips from his customers. Maybe Underdog had really good health insurance and there was low co-pay for those very strong vitality pills. I wish that there had been some closure to the Underdog show. Underdog could have proposed to Sweet Polly Purebred in the final season of the show. If Underdog was too shy to do it, maybe Sweet Polly could have proposed to Underdog. Given the number of times Underdog saved her, that’s the least Sweet Polly could do. It would have been nice to have a big wedding for Underdog and Sweet Polly Purebred at the end of the final season. I can just see Sweet Polly saying to Underdog before they went off on their honeymoon, “Underdog darling, make sure to pack some extra energy pills for the next two weeks.” Maybe there will be an Underdog movie which will show that Underdog and Sweet Polly Purebred got married and lived happily ever after. If they did it right, the Underdog movie would be blockbuster! Underdog and related characters are © 1997 GBPC, a subsidiary of Golden Books Family Entertainment.	i don't know
We all knew him as Radar, but was the actual first name of the pride of Ottumwa, Iowa, Corporal O'Reilly on the TV series MASH?	MASH (Series) - TV Tropes After-Action Healing Drama : The essence of the unit. After Show : The show's spin-off AfterMASH is the trope namer. All Are Equal in Death : The episode "Follies of the Living - Concerns of the Dead" is told from the POV of a dead soldier. At the end of the episode he walks down the road toward the afterlife along with all the other dead - U.S. soldiers of various ranks, North Korean soldiers, civilians, etc. The Alleged Boss : Lt. Col. Henry Blake was supposed to be in charge of the 4077th but outside of the Operating Room most of his time was spent boozing, recreating, or philandering. His Hyper-Competent Sidekick , Radar, was well understood to be the person actually running the camp. Also, the dueling doctor factions who were supposed to be Henry's subordinates were frequently overstepping or walking all over him in order to carry out their zany schemes. Blake's replacement, Col. Potter, was able to command a lot more respect and thus appear (and be) more in charge. Henry was a bit of a mix between varieties 1 and 4 of this trope: He was a genuinely nice guy most of the time, and meant well, but had no idea how to run things, and would openly defer to his subordinates whenever any administrative decision had to be made. He was very competent and authoritative as a doctor, however, and several of his subordinates felt true affection and comradeship towards him, knowing that he was trying his best. Aluminum Christmas Trees : Spearchucker Jones. There were, in fact, black doctors in Korea, and Spearchucker was based on a doctor Richard Hooker heard about at the 8055. Too bad the executives didn't look into it first. Ambiguously Jewish : Sidney Freedman Anachronism Stew : Although the show tends to be good about actual history, there are times that the research breaks down. In one episode, both Godzilla and The Blob (1958) are referenced. Neither of those movies were released during the Korean War (Gojira: 1954/Godzilla, King of the Monsters: 1955, The Blob: 1958). Another borderline case of this is with The Moon Is Blue : The movie was released on July 8, 1953 and was still in first-run release in the US by the time the war "ended" on July 27, 1953. While it's within the realm of possibility that the unit could have seen it, it seems highly unlikely given two reasons: The episode revolved around the MASH wanting to see the movie to see what all the fuss was about, which most likely wouldn't have happened till the film was very close to release or already released; and transit times for movies to the Korean Front. If by plane, it might be plausible. In the episode "Der Tag," Radar is shown sleeping with a copy of The Avengers comic book on his chest, with the 1970s logo. One shot later, it switches to another issue of the same comic with the '60s logo. Either way, the Avengers weren't around during the Korean War (in fact, none of the major characters from the Marvel Universe had even been created, other than Captain America ). The "points" system referenced in some episodes was no longer current for rotation of personnel, nor was it ever used for surgeons. BJ's latter-seasons hairstyle was much longer than what any professional man in the 1950s, military or civilian, would have worn. (This may be excusable, since the whole point was that BJ was rebelling against the Army.) Several times, Korean soldiers are shown with AK-47-type rifles ( actually stand-ins ) before any communist nation even issued them yet. In one episode Klinger hands out Hershey bars with UPC symbols on the back wrapper to recovering patients. A pinball machine from the 1970s appears in the Officers' Club, along with a poster on the wall with an illustration of a Vietnam-era helicopter. In one episode Henry uses a bullhorn that wasn't invented until after the war. In "Officer of the Day," Flagg appears wearing the branch insignia for military intelligence. This insignia wasn't used by the Army until 1962. Medics are always shown wearing helmets with the Red Cross painted on the front. This practice was stopped in early 1951 because North Korean snipers were using them as targets. General MacArthur is almost constantly referred to as the Allied Commander. MacArthur was relieved of command in April 1951 for insubordination, after less than a year in command. In the episode "War of Nerves", Sidney Freedman asks Radar, "Do you know how many people...think I Love Lucy is real?" I Love Lucy premiered in October of 1951. Given when the characters were supposed to have been in Korea, there is no way that either of them would have ever seen the show. Possibly justified in that Sidney was stationed in Seoul, where he enjoyed a considerably higher standard of living than those at the 4077 and may well have had access to a television. And even if they hadn't watched the show they probably would have still been aware of it from newspapers, letters from home, etc. In one episode, Klinger, the surgeons, and Margaret are all playing poker. Margaret buys Klinger's hoop earrings off him so he can stay in the game, and Klinger mentions he'd wear hula hoops in his ears if he thought it'd get him out of the Army. Later in the series, he technically invents the hula hoop (or at least decides to patent it so he can make money). The hula hoop wouldn't be officially invented until 1958. You know that wool cap that Radar always wears? It's called a Jeep Cap, and it's actually a uniform accessory from World War II , not the Korean War; in fact, Patton and other American officers hated the Jeep Cap because it looked "sloppy" and "unmilitary" that it was eventually replaced with the standardized field cap before WW2 ended. It was only after Radar made the Jeep Cap famous that the U.S. Army started to issue them again as surplus, though they look nothing like they used to. Perhaps his Uncle Ed fought in WW2 and gave him the cap when he joined up. In one episode Hawkeye can be seen wearing bright blue '70s tennis shoes while walking through the compound. Noted in MAD 's parody "MUSH" (not to be confused with the one mentioned below) when Luke-Warm Lips's appearance is commented on thusly: "This is 1950 and she's wearing a hairdo that won't even be invented until 1981!" Animated Parody : Filmation's MUSH, a segment of the Saturday Morning Kid's Show Uncle Croc's Block . Anonymous Benefactor : Charles, in "Death Takes a Holiday". The Anticipator : Radar has the uncanny ability to appear at the side of his commander before he even asks for him, as well as finish his sentences. A bevy of other sensing talents makes him this trope. Anyone Can Die : Henry's death was as shattering and it was unexpected for all the deaths and injuries of one-shot characters. Apocalypse Anarchy : In one episode when they think that they are all about to be killed, several of the officers get together for a high-stakes poker game. Trapper asks, "So, what are the stakes again?" Hawkeye explains that the values are $5,000 for the white chips, $10,000 for the red, and $25,000 for the blue. He then clarifies, "And if we don't die, whites are 25¢, reds are 50¢, and blues are a dollar." Apology Gift : Happens several times over the course of the series. In one episode, Hawkeye and Trapper try to butter Frank up with a handful of wild flowers, after they secretly drew a pint of blood from him to give to a wounded POW; Frank is touched, but then they kill the moment when Hawkeye says, "Glad there's no hard feelings Frank, because there's a new heart procedure we'd like to try, and you're just the right type." During a company picnic, Margaret gives Frank the cold shoulder since he won't loan her money to buy her sister a wedding present; Frank tries to butter her back up with a balloon, only for her to pop it with a hairpin. In another episode, Frank tries to make peace with Margaret (this after she had gotten engaged earlier in the season), by presenting her with an American-made Japanese umbrella; of course, Frank isn't able to curb his lust, and Margaret throws it at him as he runs out of her tent. In "The Winchester Tapes", Charles apparently had upset Radar, and insincerely brings him an entire case of grape nehi to butter him up in order to contact his former commanding officer to get him transferred back to Tokyo General Hospital. When Radar refuses, Winchester takes the case back. And then he takes the one bottle that Radar had opened. In one Christmas episode, most of the staff have been giving Charles the cold shoulder for his unwillingness to donate to the Christmas potluck. When Klinger finds out why—Charles had been carrying on a family tradition of anonymous charity by leaving expensive chocolates at the local orphanage—he brings Charles a plate of leftover food and they share a heartfelt moment over it. April Fools' Plot : The episode "April Fools." Arc Words : Sidney Freedman's advice in an early appearance and the final episode: "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice. Pull down your pants and slide on the ice." An Arm and a Leg : Several episodes deal with patients who lost limbs in battle and are coming to grips with the results. One episode showing Charles' better side dealt with a patient who didn't actually lose a limb, but sustained nerve damage to several fingers that, since he was a gifted, Juliard-trained pianist, he believes is just as bad as losing the limb outright. Happens to Hawkeye in a nightmare in which a Medical School Professor ordering the removal of his arms symbolizes his frustration at not being able to save every patient. Armed Farces : It's a comedy set in a military camp, so it's to be expected. Artistic License ï¿½ Awards : Several: Frank once browbeats Henry into approving a Purple Heart citation and another time he receives a Purple Heart by mistake. Neither time was he eligible. The first, "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", he receives a Purple Heart for throwing out his back while dancing, which was not a direct result of combat and, more importantly, would cause him to be discharged; back problems were an automatic medical disqualification from service. The second (based on an incident in Vietnam), "The Kids", he gets a Purple Heart for getting a bit of eggshell in his eye, and putting it in a report as "shell fragment". Neither time does he send back the undeserved medal. In the first case, Hawkeye steals it and gives it to an underage Marine with appendicitis who lied about his age to enlist (which would put him in worse trouble, as he has been reported for identity theft and now has stolen property), in the second, Hawkeye steals it and gives it to a baby who was grazed by a bullet that went through his mother's abdomen shortly before she gave birth. But if Frank could have gotten the medals legitimately, stealing them would have done nothing; he would have been on record as a two-time recipient of the Purple Heart, and could have had them replaced. In "Change of Command", Potter reveals he received a Good Conduct Medal as an enlisted soldier. However, he served in the First World War, became a doctor in 1932 and served in the Second World War as a surgeon, while the GCM was established in 1941 and retroactive dates only go to 1940. In "Bombshells", BJ receives a Bronze Star for helping a medivac chopper escape while under fire, but decides to hand it off to a patient for "getting out in one piece". However, every Bronze Star has the recipient's name engraved on the back and comes with a certificate. As with the Marine, this would put him in possession of an undeserved award that belonged to someone else. Artistic License ï¿½ Cars : In the season three finale, Henry gives Radar the keys to a Jeep, and in "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" Wendel tries to hotwire a Jeep. Because Jeeps would need to be operated by anyone at any time, all Jeeps had a simple ignition switch instead of a key, something shown somewhat extensively through the series' run. In "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye asks Radar if a Jeep is olive drab and made in Detroit. Korean War-era Jeeps were made in Toledo, Ohio. Artistic License ï¿½ Geography : Several references to Korea being in South East Asia, and jungles in Korea. In "Iron Guts Kelly", Radar finds a sector under fire and lists the position as, "North of Inchon, latitude 27, longitude 70." Those coordinates are in extreme western India, near the border with Pakistan, over 3000 miles west of Korea. In ''Abyssinia Henry", Henry's plane is reported as shot down over the Sea of Japan, well beyond where any North Korean or Chinese fighter pilots operated, especially in 1952. Artistic License ï¿½ Gun Safety : see Juggling Loaded Guns . Averted at least once in a deleted scene. In "It Happened One Night," Klinger has just introduced Hawkeye to a new private going on guard duty for the first time. After the discussion, Klinger stands. The private picks up his rifle and inadvertently points it in Klinger's face. Klinger is quick to nudge it away, having anticipated the eventuality upon seeing him pick it up. This trope gets played straight later on when (offscreen) the gun goes off, and Klinger is brought into Post-Op, trying to ham up being fatally shot when the bullet barely nicked him. Hawkeye: [as Klinger collapses onto the bed] Would you at least bleed? Hawkeye in "Hawkeye Get Your Gun." The fact Potter cocks the hammer before Hawkeye starts firing means he must carry it loaded and hammer-down. This is the least safe way to carry a 1911. John Browning specifically designed it to be carried loaded with the hammer cocked (Situation One), and included a sear disconnect, a grip safety, and a manual safety (which can't be activated unless the hammer is cocked). This means for it to fire, the manual safety must be deactivated, the grip must be held, and the trigger must be pulled. This isn't that surprising, given Hawkeye's attitude to guns; see Doesn't Like Guns below. Frank Burns is a walking example of how to not handle a firearm. Highlights include shooting BJ in the leg, shooting himself in the foot, and shooting out a light while chambering a round. Artistic License ï¿½ Military : Too many to count, but a few stand out above the others: Frank demands and receives a Purple Heart for getting an eggshell in his eye during an artillery barrage (he claimed he was hit by shell fragments, and omitted the part about the shell in question being an eggshell). In real life, he would have been denied as the injury wasn't directly caused by enemy action. He earlier demanded a Purple Heart for "slipping" on the way to the "shower" (actually a back spasm while dancing with Margaret). Potter is correct in stating that the Army Good Conduct Medal is only for enlisted soldiers. He's wrong in insisting that his status as a prior-service enlisted soldier entitles him to wear the medal, which he is seen wearing from time to time and he has his medal framed on his wall. What he (or the writers) failed to realize is that the medal was awarded long after Potter was an enlisted soldier and that the retroactive dates don't go back to when he was enlisted and eligible for the award. As a Chaplain, Mulcahy would have entered the military as a Captain, not a Lieutenant. Doctors didn't automatically enter service as a captain. There were plenty of surgeons in the war that were lieutenants. The Points system was never used for rotation of doctors. It was never used in the Korean War at all. Most of the doctors and nurses spent 12-16 months in Korea, then were sent to Japan or a Stateside Army hospital to finish up their military obligation. Aside from Henry Blake earning enough Points to be discharged, the Point System was a plot point in a later episode, where the peace talks had failed again, but Potter reminds everyone if they receive enough Points, they would be rotated home. Although Hawkeye gripes the most, Charles points out he actually has the least amount of complaining to do as he has more Points than the rest of them. Later still, when Potter breaks the news that the Army upped the number of rotation Points to get transferred back to the states, Hawkeye loses it. In one episode, the doctors think it's ridiculous that Frank has made them pack up the unit and move it across the road, and in another, General Steele makes them move 20 miles closer to the front. Part of the reason for the unit's existence was to follow the troops into battle so the wounded could be taken care of as quickly as possible. In the early part of the war, MASH units were quite mobile, and it was only in the latter part of the war, when the battle lines stabilized, that they tended to stay put. While Frank's reasoning was absurd, Steele's wasn't, and moving the entire unit quickly wasn't out of the question; in fact it was one of the functions of a MASH. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just about every character could be charged with a plethora of very serious offenses, and being a doctor would not have saved anyone. Truth in Television , but only somewhat. It's likely a case of The Main Characters Do Everything , but the administrative section of a MASH would have consisted of two Medical Service Corps officers (non-doctors), a warrant officer, a first sergeant, and numerous enlisted men ranging from master sergeant to private, not just one guy named "Radar". Granted, in any military organization there are "go to" guys like Radar that can get stuff done that no one else can, but a unit run by the hospital commander and one company clerk would have fallen apart fairly quickly. It's implied in several episodes that Radar does have underlings, and his chief job is to negotiate and barter with other clerks, though we never see any. Ascended Extra : Klinger started out as a one-shot guest character, and by the fourth season was a series regular. Father Mulcahy, a minor character in the novel and film, initially only appeared every few episodes until he was made a regular. Ascended Meme : The cast frequently had William Christopher sound-alike contests between takes. In "Movie Tonight" everyone takes turns impersonating Father Mulcahy. This contest contains a bit of Beam Me Up, Scotty! , as several of the attempts include the word "jocularity" (and Potter's consists of just that word, twice). But Mulcahy had never used that word at any time in the series up to that point. He did afterward, however. For instance, in the episode where Margaret and Donald get married, the men have a bachelor party to celebrate. Mulcahy, while quite intoxicated, exits the Swamp, saying "Even the jocularity is jocular!". Towards the end of the show's run, he used the term more frequently. Asian Speekee Engrish : This was much more prelevant in the earlier episodes, where the humor was much more sitcomy and hadn't quite matured yet. A few specific examples: "To Market, To Market" has Hawkeye and Trapper doing business with a black marketeer, whom they bring back to camp in the guise of an ROK General so he can see Henry's new desk for himself before deciding to seal a deal. "General" Lee: So very grand to meet you, Ker-ner Brake! This is an Invoked Trope on Lee's part, as he's shown to have a fluent accent in the rest of the episode. One of the P.A. announcers from the first season must have been a local working within camp (as was Ho-Jon), because we have some announcements that sound like this: "The Gree Crub wir meet in the Mess Tent at 18:00 hours. The first number on tonight's schedure is Father Murcahy's soro, 'I'm Confessin' That I Rove You.'" "Attention! Would Captain Jonathan S. Tuttre prease report to Ker-ner Henry Brake on the doubre!" In an interesting inversion, the doctors have trouble understanding a local mother carrying a baby with her, asking for a, "Labbi fo' bliss," until Hawkeye examines a paper she has with her and realizes she's looking for a rabbi to perform a bris (circumcision). Frank attempting to call Margaret on R&R in Tokyo apparently has problems with the operator mistaking the Hollywood Hotel for the Harrywood Hotel. As Long as It Sounds Foreign : Though Charles is certainly not a foreign character, David Ogden Stiers took this mindset somewhat for Charles's accent, reasoning that the accent would distinguish the character's aristocratic demeanor and upbringing. With the Korean characters, on the other hand, that's an entirely different story. There are a number of cases where the characters don't even speak actual Korean, but instead are speaking Chinese. In fact, in two different episodes, the word "Stop" has a completely different translation ("Kuchio" in one episode, "Chung-ji" in another). In another, a Chinese soldier pulls a grenade in the OR and speaks Japanese. Attending Your Own Funeral : Done twice, once when a Luxembourg officer is presumed dead, and again when Hawkeye is mistakenly declared dead by the army. The latter was a wake thrown as a joke. Attractive Bent-Gender : Averted with Klinger, although he had some fantastic legs. Babies Make Everything Better : Averted with Margaret, who at one point believes she's pregnant but knows that a baby will only exacerbate the problems she's already having with her husband, not to mention end her Army career. It turns out she's not, but Margaret and Donald later divorce anyway. Also averted in the finale, the staff is returning from visiting a beach for the 4th of July when they pick up some civilians and wounded soldiers. They stop to avoid an enemy patrol, and one of the civilians smothers her baby to stop it crying and giving the bus' position away. Bad Dreams : "Dreams", one of the most popular episodes. Interestingly, the core of Hawkeye's and Winchester's dreams are the same: Both have a deep fear of being unable to help someone, Hawkeye because he cannot use the instruments, and Winchester because he just isn't good enough. Hawkeye deals with both these and sleepwalking in "Hawk's Nightmare". Badass Preacher : Father Mulcahy, who seemed rather quiet, unassuming, and largely ineffective, was credited by many in the unit as being the driving force behind any sense of sanity or morality in the camp, frequently dealt with the black market ("You'd be surprised what a priest can get away with"), disarmed a soldier who had a gun on him at point-blank range, talked Klinger out of using a live grenade on Frank Burns, performed an emergency tracheotomy under fire, ran to a POW compound under heavy shelling to free the prisoners who were sitting ducks (which cost him his hearing), and had a right hook like a brick house . Batman Gambit : Potter's April Fool's joke requires a visiting inspector, Col. Tucker, to enrage the doctors so much that they'd try to pull a major prank on him; then he'd lose his temper and fake a heart attack, making the doctors think they'd killed him. If they didn't try to prank Col. Tucker, the gag wouldn't work, but Potter knew they would. Hawkeye's prank on the general is a Batman Gambit of its own: It requires knowing not only that the general would come to the Officers' Club that evening, not only what table he'd sit in, but which seat at that table he'd sit in. Beef Bandage : Trapper sports one in one of the very first episodes, "Requiem for a Lightweight". Benevolent Boss : Describes Henry, and especially Potter, who is even more tolerant of his subordinates' antics because he understands their need to blow off steam. Don't tell Hawkeye they're serving liver and fish in the mess tent yet again. Don't even suggest that BJ would ever cheat on his wife. Whatever you do, don't ever, ever ever insult the state of Iowa within earshot of Radar. More importantly, never ever insult Radar's mother. He once comes within a hair of attacking Hawkeye for that! Don't even think of telling latter-seasons Margaret that women aren't as tough/smart/worthy/whatever as men. Particularly don't suggest that she's somehow not a real Major. Don't insult people who stutter in front of Charles. Don't talk about people eating horses in front of Potter. Don't deny Father Mulcahy his promotion...four times. Don't insult the Irish. Don't interrupt his bath. Don't replace his bathrobe with a flowery nightgown. Don't be mean to Radar. Don't steal from Hawkeye. Don't be Charles Winchester. Just...don't. The Bet : One episode features Hawkeye being wagered that he go an entire day without snarking. That day is filled with an absurd amount of things that a man can make wisecracks about . Finally, after keeping his mouth shut the entire day, Hawkeye finally lets it all out in a massive snark-fest over the PA at 12:01 AM the next day. In another episode, Hawkeye bets that BJ can't prank the entire main cast. He puts a snake in Charles' bed, shaving cream in Potter's toothpaste, cuts the back off of Margaret's bathrobe, poisons Mulcahy, and blows up Klinger's office. Hawkeye then spends the night outside in a barbwire enclosure. It's then revealed that everyone lied about the pranks/did it themselves, and it was all a Kansas City Shuffle , and Hawkeye was the real victim . Although he still didn't win the bet, because pranking just Hawkeye wasn't the bet. During "MASH Olympics" Hawkeye and BJ, the captains of the two teams, arrange a side bet that the losing captain would push the winning one around on a wheelchair for a week. In the first Dear Dad episode Hawkeye bets Trapper that he could walk into the mess tent wearing nothing but boots during lunch and no one would notice due to the general malaise about the camp. He loses as one soldier notices and alerts everyone else by dropping his tray. Better Than Sex : In the episode "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye tries to get a case of barbecued pork ribs from a Chicago restaurant shipped to Korea. When Radar asks if these ribs are as good as Hawkeye says they are, Hawkeye answers, "Better than sex." Radar then grouses, " I wouldn't know how good that is, sir. " In "The Light That Failed", after BJ finally lets a bored Hawkeye start reading the mystery novel Peg sent, Hawkeye declares that reading just might be better than sex. Charles: It certainly takes longer around here. BJ: How would you know? Big Eater : Hawkeye reminisces about once eating twelve banana sandwiches (and spending a week in the bathroom afterwards). Any time a real meal is to be had in camp, Trapper somehow finds a way to eat the whole thing himself. Radar especially, his heaping portions in the Mess Tent are often the butt of a joke. Hawkeye even suggests that their side could possibly win the war if Radar would simply eat North Korea. Klinger: How can you eat this slop? Radar: My mouth is tone-deaf. Then there was the time Klinger tried to eat his way out of the Army, by getting so fat and out-of-shape that they'd have to discharge him. It didn't work. He also tried to eat his way out of the Army by devouring a jeep. He managed to get down a windshield wiper, several bolts, and a horn button before his stomach decided no more. Big "NO!" : Hawkeye upon waking from a nightmare in "Dreams." Big Storm Episode : "They Call The Wind Korea" is about the camp preparing for and dealing with the onslaught of a massive freezing windstorm. Bilingual Bonus : Klinger's Arabic, while it doesn't sound specifically Lebanese, is pretty accurate (ironically, far more so than the Korean spoken on the show, which is usually not even Korean). However, in the episode "Hawkeye", Korean is actually spoken by the family in whose house Hawkeye is staying. As Hawkeye is both the only main cast member and the only English-speaking character in the episode, Korean-speakers get to hear about twice as much dialog as English-only-speakers. Among the gems are the father telling Hawkeye to "please shut up so we can eat dinner." In the second scene of "Fade Out, Fade In - Part 1," Hawkeye spits game at a nurse in very good French. Bit Character : Most of the show's nurses and corpsmen are this. Black Comedy : Basically what the show is built on. Something as horrifying as war shouldn't be funny, but they make it so. Blackmail : Occasionally employed by Hawkeye and co. For instance, in "George" he and Trapper get Frank to admit to having paid for the answers on his medical exams, and then use the info to keep him from sending a letter to the Pentagon outing a gay GI and demanding he be dishonorably discharged. In the episode where Hawkeye and BJ get the portable bathtub, Charles offers to buy it off of them. When they refuse and even insist they won't let him use it, he threatens to tell the entire camp they have said bathtub. They caved in immediately. Blatant Lies : In order to get a new foot locker, Margaret shoots it with Charles's shotgun and claims that it was destroyed by enemy fire. Frank got his black eye when he slipped on a bar of soap and hit his face on the sink. Hawkeye most definitely had not gotten fed up with Frank and belted him before bursting out in song. Hawkeye sedated Frank by force and unlawfully took command of the 4077. Frank most definitely didn't concuss himself walking into a door and leave the others to fend for themselves. Major Burns handles the most difficult cases, as Major Houlihan tells a visiting colonel. He most definitely doesn't get saddled with the least difficult cases on account of his incompetence. Bluffing the Murderer : Hawkeye exposes a thief by tricking him into a revealing giveaway. The Board Game : The show had one, made by Milton Bradley. Players would try to load a chopper with wounded and fly it to the pad via dice moves. There was also a Licensed Game made for Atari and Coleco. It was not well received. Book Burning : Done by Frank in preparation of Gen. MacArthur's visit in "Big Mac". Frank: One of the greatest living Americans is coming and I'm not going to let him see some of the trash that's read around here. Trapper: Plato's Republic? The Life of Red Grange? Hawkeye: Revolutionaries. Hawkeye: Everybody runs around half-naked. Trapper: Norman Mailer? Frank: It's got that word* in it. Bookends : "A War for All Seasons" opens and closes with successive New Year's ceremonies at the 4077, complete with identical toasts given by Col. Potter. At the beginning of the series, the words "Korea - A hundred years ago" appear onscreen. In the last standard episode of the series, the characters are burying a time capsule to be dug up in a hundred years. Boring but Practical : An all-star Football player who loses a leg talks with Radar about how the team won a major victory against another team with superior defense: The short pass. Bottle Episode : "O.R.", "The Bus", "Hawkeye", "A Night at Rosie's" "Requiem for a Lightweight" has Trapper John taking on the champ of the 8063rd, a heavyweight enlisted man. In "End Run", Klinger and Zale are roped into a boxing match by Frank Burns. Breakout Character : In Season 1, Klinger showed up in a few episodes as "the guy trying to get a Section 8 discharge"; by the end of the series, he was part of the main cast. Break the Haughty : When they first meet, Col. Flagg condescendingly attempts to browbeat Col. Potter. Potter puts him in his place, and fast. Flagg never treats Potter with anything less than respect again. Flagg: I want a medical decision, and I want it now! The last C.O. they had here couldn't make a decision without a month's warning. Potter: I'm not fond of personal abuse, Flagg. I was in this man's Army when the only thumb you cared about was the one in your mouth. According to Hawkeye, Winchester never was broken. However, he was in the final episode by the death of his prized Chinese musicians. Breaking the Fourth Wall : The season 4 premiere "Welcome to Korea" ends with the P.A. announcer naming the new season's cast regulars as both actors and characters. Brick Joke : In season 3 Henry Blake talks to Radar about having his tonsils removed, stating that they're "big as a baby's backside." In season 7 Radar's tonsils again come up and this time they are taken out. The can of beans on the stove in season 4's "It Happened One Night". Potter recounts how an old rival of his swallowed 23 goldfish to beat his record of 22. Later, it turns out Klinger is in reach of a pole-sitting record, but he's cold and wants to come down. Potter: I'll give you a choice. You can stay up there, or come down here and swallow 24 goldfish. Klinger: Did you say 24 goldfish, sir? Potter: The first 18 are easy. Briefer Than They Think : As mentioned above, you could fit three Korean Wars into the show's run. Broken Ace : Captain Newsome in "Heal Thyself". And Hawkeye in "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". Also Captain Chandler in "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler". Broken Aesop : In the episode "Images," The Stinger has Radar setting up a weight bar on two chairs to start working out. Potter tells him not to, because he would have to keep working out basically for the rest of his life, lest the muscles atrophy. So, it's bad to want to be physically fit and get into shape, even in the Army as a corpsman/stretcher bearer? Radar says he wants really big muscles, which actually impede the fast movement and dexterity that he would need as a corpsman. The whole of the episode involves Radar wanting to get a tattoo and the others telling him not to—not because the local tattoo artists aren't sterile, but because they think tattoos look dumb. Even worse is the next episode, "MASH Olympics," where Potter is appalled that everyone is in such poor shape that several can't right an ambulance, yet four MPs can with ease. Not only does it break the Aesop, it doesn't even make sense. The characters are established to work absurdly hard at highly physical duties for extremely long hours. If they aren't up to righting an ambulance, it's because they're tired, not out of shape. They aren't exceptionally strong, they have extreme stamina at light tasks (i.e. surgery). There's the episode "Souvenirs," in which Hawkeye and BJ force a chopper pilot to stop selling trinkets made out of junk found on battlefields. Granted that people, including little kids, are getting hurt and killed when they try to scavenge something that turns out to be booby-trapped, but this doesn't solve the problem. Fact #1: These people are dirt poor and desperate for every penny they can scrape up. Fact #2: Metal is valuable. Even if the souvenir industry dried up, the brass shells could be sold to someone who can use them, to melt down if nothing else. Fact #2 can't be changed. Fact #1 can, but Hawkeye and BJ don't do anything about it. In fact, they put a guy out of business who gives fifty bucks to the family of one of his suppliers who got hurt. Nice move. He even mentions that his predecessor used to just send flowers. Those families are certainly better off with him gone . Bucket Booby-Trap : Frank rigs one for Hawkeye (yep, you read that right) in "Showtime", while Hawkeye himself does so for a visiting colonel in "April Fools". Buffy Speak : In a cold snap episode, Henry asks Radar to requisition, "Those nice wooly caps with the ear muffs, but in military talk." Bunny-Ears Lawyer : No matter how madcap Hawkeye gets, his medical skills save him from court martial a few dozen times. Klinger is trying to get a Section 8 discharge by crossdressing and generally acting insane. But he's too much of a professional to actually shirk his duty as a sentry or doing anything other than his utmost to help when the 4077 is inundated with wounded. Burma-Shave : The camp rigs up a homemade sign to welcome Hawkeye back from his psychiatric treatment in "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". Hawk was gone Butt Monkey : Frank Burns, who frequently gets comeuppance for being a jerkass. Igor, who only serves the food and is in no way responsible for its quality but nonetheless takes a steady stream of verbal abuse over it. This on top of being on permanent KP. If the episode "A War for All Seasons" is any indication of Igor's usual culinary efforts, then at least some of the abuse directed at him is well deserved. Father Mulcahy spends most of the episode tending to a small cornfield he planted so he can treat the camp to corn on the cub during their 4th of July celebration, but Igor ruins Mulcahy's efforts by instead serving creamed corn. Hunnicutt: In a few minutes we're going to be decobbing corn, thanks to you and your khaki thumb. Mulcahy: Don't I know it. All week I've been dreaming of getting butter on my cheeks, juice on my shirt, and a niblet wedged between two molars. Mulcahy: (at the table Igor is serving) Where is the corn? Igor: You're looking at it. The mushy stuff. Mulcahy: You... You creamed it! (on the verge of tears) You... you ninny! Igor: (while everyone is yelling at him) I was just trying to be helpful! Next 4th of July you can eat it on the cob for all I care! Henry Blake frequently experienced any number of mishaps and misfortune. California Doubling : As with the film, exteriors for the show were filmed at the Fox Ranch (now Malibu Creek State Park) near Malibu. California is about as mountainous as Korea, but the doubling is obvious in the winter episodes, where, aside from a lack of snow in any such episode, the surrounding plant life is green and alive. Additionally, due to a limited shooting schedule at the ranch quite a lot of "outdoor" scenes (particularly those taking place at night, and/or in the immediate vicinity of the compound) were rather obviously shot on a soundstage. During season eleven, all scenes were shot on the soundstage because the ranch set burnt down in a wildfire during production of the finale (which was actually the first episode shot that season), and it was deemed pointless to build a new one so close to the end. Calvin Ball : Double Cranko, a game invented by Hawkeye and BJ which incorporates chess, checkers, poker, gin rummy, and booze. BJ: You're cheating! Hawkeye: How can I cheat? There are no rules! Camp Cook : Igor Straminsky, although he wasn't the actual cook and would often remind those complaining to him of such. Canon Foreigner : A very large percentage of the regular and recurring characters on the show never appeared in the original novel or film, including the various replacements (BJ, Potter, Charles) as well as Klinger, Flagg, Sidney, Igor, Zale, Rizzo, etc. The Casanova : Hawkeye, particularly in the earlier seasons. Also Trapper. It ultimately starts backfiring on Hawkeye in the later seasons, when every advance either ends in a strikeout, getting humiliated, or a disastrous date. And, in the season 11 episode "Who Knew", Millie Carpenter has such a crush on him that she ends up wandering into a minefield. Carlye Walton, nee Breslin, from season 5, is Hawkeye's one true love that got away. Celebrity Lie : Subverted in "Major Topper". In a bragging and name-dropping contest, Charles claims to have had dinner with Audrey Hepburn , despite never having seen any of her movies. Hawkeye and BJ refuse to believe him, until Charles produces a photograph (which is never shown to the viewers) to prove the veracity of his tale. Played straight in "Bombshells", when Hawkeye and Charles start a rumor that Marilyn Monroe is going to visit the 4077th, and it snowballs until even Colonel Potter believes it and arranges a welcome ceremony for her. Celebrity Paradox : A minor case, but still noteworthy. One of the films shown to the camp on movie night was the 1945 musical State Fair, which features Harry Morgan (aka Colonel Potter) in a supporting role. Granted, he would have looked 30 years younger, but no one seems to note the similarity between their commanding officer and the character in the movie. In season 3's "House Arrest" they watch Dragonwyck, which also features Harry Morgan, although at that point he hadn't yet joined the show as a regular. Cerebus Rollercoaster : Especially in the later seasons, it wasn't unusual for a given episode to shift on a dime between comedic and dramatic moods. Cerebus Syndrome : The series began as a zany comedy much like the movie , and ended as a dramedy on the horror and pointlessness of war. To elaborate more on this: the movie was a dark/black comedy and a biting antiwar satire that would have had to be toned down for television anyway. At the same time, however, co-creators/producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds wanted to avoid the show being, "Just another sitcom," from the get-go. A lot of the show's zany tone and almost Hogan's Heroes -esque war hijinks humor in its earliest seasons were mostly the case of Executive Meddling wanting the show to avoid becoming too gory or too dark. It wasn't until Wham Episodes such as "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" and "Abyssinia, Henry" went over well, and the show began to establish itself in the ratings, that Executive Meddling was toned down, and the producers and writers were given more freedom to do as they wish, such as give the show more of a dramatic undertone. Even with the eventual departures of Gelbart and later Reynolds, comedy was still the show's main focal point, with drama taking a back seat - though the humor itself was also toned down, and became more intelligent and cerebral, as opposed to silly and slapstick. Finally, by Season Eight, the entire writing and producing staff was overhauled by Alan Alda and Burt Metcalfe, causing the show to flip its priorities, and make drama the show's driving force with comedy shunted to the back burner. Chain of Deals : Happens in "For Want of a Boot" and "The Price of Tomato Juice." Character as Himself : "Tuttle" has its title character billed this way. Character Focus : Numerous times, generally at least once a season. Characterization Marches On : Radar starts out in the first season as smart, hypercompetent, was often seen smoking Blake's cigars and drinking his booze, and is implied to have long ago lost his virginity. From season four on, he's incredibly naïve, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink much, and seems to have regained his virginity. Lampshaded by Sidney as being Radar's defense mechanism for dealing with the war: reverting to more childish characteristics to escape the horrors forced on him everyday. Frank fell victim to Flanderization (see below), however, one facet of his character was that Frank wasn't completely against Koreans to begin with. For one thing, he demeaned Hawkeye and Trapper's prejudice in "Corruption of Ho-Jon", and even seemed sympathetic towards Ho-Jon when it was revealed he was stealing everyone's belongings to sell for bribe money for the border guards to bring his family down from North Korea. He once even implies that he has his own personal Korean houseboy, whom he pays six cigarettes on a daily basis to keep his boots shined at all times. With each passing season, however, Frank's contempt for Koreans (and all foreigners) increases more and more to the point that he doesn't even like a South Korean ping-pong player (who was actually assigned to the 4077th) simply for being oriental, and disapproves of his wedding to his fiancée because the army shouldn't be concerned and tries to attack a South Korean general, mistaking him for a North Korean. Father Mulcahy goes back and forth a lot throughout the series. In certain episodes, such as "Mulcahy's War" (S5) or "Dear Sis" (S7), he feels like wasted space and completely useless in a camp where nobody seems to have any need for him (the former, he especially feels he would be more useful on the front lines, where his spiritual comfort would really be needed); other episodes, such as "Hepatitis" (S5) or "An Eye for a Tooth" (S7), he actually does feel like he's of importance to the 4077th - in "Hepatitis", he becomes concerned at the thought of being quarantined from the rest of the camp when people may require Confession or, even more serious, Last Rites, while in "An Eye for a Tooth", he feels that he deserves a promotion for all he's done for the 4077th, and even demands Potter to get I-Corps to give him one, to no avail. In spite of Henry's signature outfit consisting of a fishing hat and vest, he was really only a fishing aficionado throughout the first season; afterwards, golf was his activity of choice. Chivalrous Pervert : Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce Christmas Episode : Somehow they had four of these, although there were only three Christmases during the war. "Dear Dad" (Season 1), "Dear Sis" (Season 7), "Death Takes a Holiday" (Season 9), "'Twas the Day After Christmas" (Season 10). Chuck Cunningham Syndrome : Spearchucker Jones (dropped from the series after the makers learned that there's no evidence that any black doctors served in Koreanote The creators were mistaken on there being a lack of black doctors during the Korean War. From the memoirs of Harold Secor, an online memoir of a doctor from the 8055th MASH unit (the same one as Richard Hooker): "In Secor's quarters, there was...Captain Miles, a black doctor from Virginia...." Richard Hooker arrived near the end of Harold Secor's stay at the 8055th and based many of the stories that appear in the book off stories he heard from Secor and others. For more information search the Memoirs of Harold Secor.), Lt. Dish, Ugly John, Sgt. Zale. Cigar Chomper : Trapper, Blake, Potter, Klinger, Zale, and Rizzo could all be seen enjoying the occasional stogie. Not to mention various visiting generals, colonels, etc. Even Radar was seen enjoying Blake's cigars from time to time in the first season or two. Claustrophobia : Hawkeye, in "CAVE". Clip Show : "Our Finest Hour". The tag of "Abyssinia, Henry" features a Really Dead Montage of Henry clips, set to a bittersweet rendition of the theme entitled "Memories of Henry". Clock Discrepancy : A soldier who they're trying to keep alive through December 25th (so his kids don't have to remember Christmas as "the day Daddy died") dies at about 11:35 pm. Hawkeye moves the hands of the clock so that it's 12:10 am, saying "Hey, look, he made it." They falsfy the death certificate. Clown Car : Invoked in one episode, Hawkeye tries to break the record for the most people stuffed into a Jeep (16) after seeing a picture in Life magazine of a bunch of college kids doing it in a Volkswagen. Clueless Boss : Col. Henry Blake was the commanding officer, but he relied heavily on his assistant Radar O'Reilly to do most of the work and was often oblivious to the goings-on around the base Color Me Black : In one episode, Hawkeye and Trapper gradually darken the skin of a white racist to make him think he's turning black after getting a blood transfusion from a black person, an in-universe exploitation of said soldier failing biology forever . The plot is somewhat inspired by a season one episode of All in the Family . Comfort Food : In the episode "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye goes out of his way to order and have delivered to the 4077th (which is in Korea, remember, in the middle of a war zone) 40 pounds of ribs (plus sauce) from a restaurant called Adam's Ribs in Chicago, Illinois. And why did he go to such trouble? Because he was sick of army food and Adam's Ribs was the best food he could think of. In another episode the surgeons are attempting to build a makeshift dialysis machine, for which they need sausage casings as a filter. Klinger manages to hook them up via his favorite hot dog vendor in Toledo...then places an delivery order for the team to celebrate their success. Averted when Father Mulcahy contributes fresh corn on the cob from his vegetable garden to the camp's 4th of July picnic, thinking the change of pace would be appreciated...only to learn that the cook prepared it as the usual creamed corn instead thinking the camp preferred creamed corn. Comic-Book Time : The series lasted twelve years. The Korean War lasted three years. Technically, the series begins at least three months into the Korean War so the entire series covers the events of about two years and nine months. There are several Christmas' celebrated and the actors noticeably age, both of which are ignored througout the series. Comically Missing the Point : In the finale, Sidney reminds Hawkeye that the night before he was hospitalized, he drove a jeep though the wall of the Officer's Club and ordered a double bourbon. Hawkeye's reply? Hawkeye: That was strange. [ beat ] I drink martinis. Communications Officer : Radar (later Klinger, after Radar is sent home) is usually called upon to operate the communications equipment. Almost everyone else has trouble getting the stuff to work properly. Compressed Abstinence : Hawkeye once takes a bet from BJ that he can go a whole 24 hours without making a joke. He barely makes it. Hawkeye also once pledges to give up drinking for a week. After a rough session in the OR on the seventh day, he joins the rest of the staff in the Officers Club and orders a martini. Hawkeye: Yes! I admit it! I need a drink! [ beat ] I'll be back when I want one, not when I need one. Confess in Confidence : There are at least three episodes where Father Mulcahy learns of an issue from a confessing soldier and has to figure out how to solve it without breaking the seal of the confessional. One involves a black marketer who has stolen critically needed medical supplies, one a soldier who swapped dog tags with a friend who died just before the end of his tour of duty , and one, a new doctor who confesses that he's been pretending to be a doctor to get officers' privileges and rank. In one episode a solder who shot himself to get sent home confesses to Frank, mistaking him for a priest while he was in Father Mulcahy's tent to leave him a note. Also note that in the case of the dogtags, Mulcahy was not technically bound by the seal of the confessional. As he says himself, the soldier is virtually unrepentant and has no intention of stopping his sin. Not simply turning him in and searching for another solution was more a matter of doing what was best for the soldier than breaking his own priest's vows. Conservation of Competence : At least, until Colonel Potter shows up. Contagious Laughter : Once Frank tried to join in when Blake was talking about what kidders the men were. Continuity Drift : A fair amount in the early seasons. Hawkeye signs a letter "love to Mom" but it's later revealed that his mother is dead; the writers couldn't keep the name of Henry's wife straight; at one point Margaret states her father is dead, but he shows up alive and well on an episode years later. Granted, Margaret is very drunk when she says it, but one would still expect her to remember which of her parents are living. Frank earlier asked if her father had left her some money, implying that Frank thought he was dead before her drunk reference to his death. Hawkeye initially has a sister, too. And he was originally from Vermont, but is later from Maine. In one episode, he says that his family lives in Vermont and has a summer home in Maine, but this is dropped in favor of making Hawkeye a Maine native. And for some reason he went to a dentist in Detroit (which might be an oblique reference to Painless, who was from Detroit). Potter originally has a son. Later, he has only a daughter. When his daughter gave birth, she originally had a daughter. Later, Potter has a grandson, but no granddaughter. Also, depending on the episode, Potter was 15 when he joined the Army. At other times, he was already married by the time he joined the Army. Potter could conceivably have been married at the age of 15; the legal age of consent didn't reach 16 in most states until 1920, and though a teenage marriage might have been unusual in the 1910s it wouldn't have been unheard of. He may even have joined the Army to support a young family at the time. Potter mentions he joined when the US entered the First World War, but later gives his age as 62, putting his date of birth in 1889 or 1890, which would make him 27 when the US entered the war. Potter arrived in September of 1952, but later episodes have him present in 1951. The timeline seems to be all over the place. "The Moon is Not Blue" has a visiting general order that the Officers' Club be closed as it is supposedly against regulations to have a bar serving alcohol at a MASH. However, the club was original built, in "Officers Only", as a gift from another visiting general. Continuity Nod : Despite the above, the show does make numerous references to previous episodes and seasons: Arterial transplants, which Hawkeye performs for the first time in one of the early episodes, are performed regularly after that. "The Late Captain Pierce" has Hawkeye reference how Trapper went home and Henry was killed. In "Depressing News" he again mentions these, as well as Frank's departure. Frank is mentioned innumerable times after his departure, mainly in reference to Margaret's Character Development . The time capsule episode mentioned several characters who had departed, including Henry and Radar (they included a fishing hook and teddy bear to symbolize both men) and Frank (they referenced his lack of surgical skill by claiming that his scalpel was a deadly weapon). In "The Joker Is Wild", BJ's prank war against Hawkeye is inspired by the latter's reference to Trapper having been the best joker to ever be in the 4077. The staff get a letter from Radar in Iowa (and Potter subsequently talks to his mother on the phone) in "The Foresight Saga". The vascular clamps that the doctors develop are referenced in several other episodes. Klinger's crossdressing is mentioned several times after he gives up the act, including him signing a portrait of himself dressed as Scarlett O'Hara for BJ in the finale. The promotions for Klinger and Mulcahy (to Sergeant and Captain, respectively) maintain through the rest of the series. The resolution of "Henry in Love" involves Henry talking to his wife on the phone, and her wanting him to balance her checkbook. A few episodes later there's a mail call episode, and the documents arrive for him to do it. In season 3's "Checkup", Henry informs Radar that he's going to have to have his tonsils removed eventually; it finally happens in season 7's "None Like It Hot". While packing his things in preparation of going home in season 8, Radar finds the thermometer that Col. Blake had given him (in "Abyssinia, Henry"). He also finds his Purple Heart and comments on how Hawkeye had saluted him (in "Fallen Idol"). Radar, Henry, and Trapper are all mentioned in "Period of Adjustment". The series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", has several of them: Hawkeye attempts to compose a "Dear Dad" letter while at the psychiatric hospital. Hawkeye laments that BJ went home without leaving him a note, just as Trapper had done. Margaret and Charles re-hash an old argument (from season 6's "War of Nerves") over whether or not he touched his nose in surgery. Sidney references an earlier comment he had made (in season 3's "O.R.") with his parting words to the group. When saying goodbye to Hawkeye and BJ, Col. Potter mentions their pantsing of Winchester in the O.R. (from season 9's "Bottom's Up"). Saying goodbye to BJ, Hawkeye says he'll think of him "next time somebody nails my shoe to the floor" (something BJ did earlier that season, in "The Joker Is Wild"). Contrived Clumsiness : On one episode where Hawkeye, BJ and Charles were on a promotion committee, they evaluated prospective promotees and gave their recommendations. In The Stinger , after commenting on wondering who was promoted, Private Igor, who works in the mess tent chow line and was not promoted, tosses a scoopful of mashed potatoes on BJ. "Oh, I'm sorry. But what do you expect from a dumb private?" A flashback in one episode showed Father Mulcahy "accidentally" tucking a tablecloth into his belt and upstaging the meal of a visiting general who was causing a holdup in the mess tent. Control Freak : Frank Burns, and to a lesser extent Hot Lips. Corpsing : Many's a time Hawkeye and Trapper pull some kind of prank on Frank, and Trapper could never keep a straight face, from smirking when Frank wakes up from wetting his cot, to stifling laughter when Hawkeye slips into Margaret's seat next to Frank at the movie, to busting out into laughter watching Frank tear up the Swamp looking for the rest of Hawkeye's "Pioneer Aviation" letter. Corrupt Quartermaster : In "The Incubator", Hawkeye and Trapper John run into one of these, who is hoarding several of the incubators that they need, but refuses to release one. In another episode, Klinger gets a quartermaster to sell him an electrical generator because the camp's main generator is broken and the backup one is missing. Just before they complete the deal the Colonel of the unit which is supposed to get the generator shows up in person because several of their requests for generators have "mysteriously disappeared." The colonel even mentions that they're making do with a backup generator they stole from a MASH unit. Cool Old Guy : You wish Colonel Potter was your grandfather, admit it. Courtroom Episode : "The Trial of Henry Blake", "The Novocaine Mutiny", "Snappier Judgment", coupled with Court-Martialed Court-Martialed : "The Novocaine Mutiny": Pierce is on the receiving end of a trial instigated by Burns. The events of Burns' short tenure as a Commanding Officer are discussed making use of flashbacks . Burns' embellished version ultimately charges Pierce with assaulting the CO. After hearing both sides, the court finds Pierce innocent and otherwise preserves the status quo . In "Snap Judgement", the 4077 suffers from elusive thieves and a Polaroid camera goes missing. Continuing in "Snappier Judgment," Klinger, who bought the camera back from black market peddlers, because he couldn't explain possessing it or why he delayed reporting it stolen, is arrested by military police and court-martialed for the theft instead. Winchester volunteers to be his legal counsel, while Hawkeye and BJ set out to catch the culprit. Because of Winchester's ineptitude in law and the unfortunate circumstances, Klinger is just about to be convicted when the real thief is brought into the court, absolving Klinger of the charges. Covered in Mud : In the episode which introduces new doctor BJ Hunnicutt, before he even gets to the unit he, Hawkeye and Radar get caught in a bombing raid by the North Koreans along with some GIs. As he runs from one wounded soldier to another he slips and falls into some mud, ruining his dress uniform. The "Bulletin Board" episode has a scene of everyone having a tug-of-war over a mud puddle during the camp picnic; needless to say, they all end up like this. When the camp is pinned down by a sniper, one soldier ends up slipping on the mud and belly-flopping into a puddle of it. Critical Staffing Shortage : On a couple of occasions the nurses are all shipped off because of a potential bombing (or other) attack by North Koreans, so the doctors and enlisted personnel have to do all the stuff the nurses usually do. At one point even a civilian bartender gets roped into nurse duty during an operation. Another time, due to a flu epidemic Hawkeye is the only doctor who isn't bedridden. He has to jump from operating table to operating table doing bits of surgeries while the nurses help much more than usual. Margaret pretty much performs an operation all by herself, but not without a lot of coaching and encouragement from Hawkeye. Crossover : One of the odder examples. Larry Linville and Loretta Swit appear in character as Frank and Hot Lips in a 1975 Don Rickles variety special, helping perform a musical number called "I'm a Nice Guy." McLean Stevenson famously did a cameo on The Cher Show as Henry Blake after "Abyssinia, Henry" aired, sitting in a smoking rubber raft and yelling, "I'm okay!". It can be viewed here . Over the years, people misremembered the show as The Carol Burnett Show . The story of the clip can be found here . Crossword Puzzle : The central MacGuffin of the episode "38 Across", as the characters struggle to solve a New York Times crossword puzzle. However, the episode seems to have been written by someone who has never seen a New York Times crossword puzzle, as there is no way for anyone to be missing just one word - all letters in a crossword are used in exactly two words. If they are missing a 5 letter word beginning with V, then they are also missing one letter from exactly four other words. Cruel Twist Ending : "Abyssinia, Henry". Early in the episode, Radar cheerfully announces during an O.R. session that Col. Blake has earned enough points to be sent home from Korea. The rest of the episode deals with the entire camp giving him a celebratory sendoff. Many happy tearful goodbyes are made as Col. Blake departs the camp. In the very last scene, Radar again enters the O.R., this time to announce that he just received a message: "Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake's plane has been shot down, over the sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors." Crushing Handshake : During the MASH Olympics, Hawkeye and BJ make a wager with each other, but when they shake on it, BJ jokingly tries to crush Hawkeye's hand. Trapper is afraid of this in the Boxing episode, after learning that his opponent once punched out a Jeep. Frank tackles a visiting South Korean general in the mess tent, mistaking him for a North Korean. After learning what he's done, he apologetically offers his hand to the general...and gets one of these. Cuckold : In an episode there's a threat of an air raid so the nurses are sent away. It turns out it's just a "propaganda bomb," with leaflets dropped including " Harry Truman is sleeping with your wife." In other episodes it's played more dramatically (if hypocritically) as Henry, Trapper and some of the other married personnel worry that their wives are cheating on them, even as they carry on dalliances at the 4077th. An unmade episode reveals Frank's wife was cheating on him with a state senator, but the canonicity is uncertain. Defrosting Ice Queen : Margaret Houlihan. Deliberately Monochrome : "The Interview" episode, and the new footage in "Our Finest Hour". Also, the various home movies (save for Henry's). Delivery Not Desired : In the episode "Dear Sigmund", Sidney Freedman feels down in the dumps after a psychiatrict patient of his commits suicide because of voices in his head. Wanting a "vacation", Sidney retreats to the 4077th for a couple of weeks; while there, he writes a letter about the people and the hijinks of the 4077th to none other than Sigmund Freud. Department of Redundancy Department : Radar speaks like this, particularly in his waning years on the show; on more than one occasion he talks about someone being, "naked with no clothes on." Henry has a number of these from time to time: "Radar, hand me this here clipboard that I have right here in my hand here." Sometimes, as in the specific example given, it's the result of Radar anticipating him and handing him the item he wants before he's finished asking for it. Frank also has his moments, particularly in his last two seasons when he de-evolves into a one-dimensional, psychopathic character. Descent into Addiction : During the fifth season (Frank's last), Margaret's engagement and eventual marriage to Donald Penobscott effective ends her affair with Frank, which drives him over the edge, and as that season progresses, his obsession for her grows and grows to pathological proportions; his attempts to just talk or eat with her usually ends with him breaking down and making a move on her, only for her to push him away and threatening to tell Penobscott. In "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde" Major Charles Emerson Winchester starts taking amphetamines to make up for a lack of sleep and quickly becomes addicted to them. "Tea and Empathy" has BJ dealing with a patient who became addicted to morphine after a hip wound. Determinator : A rare comedic example with Klinger, who in the early seasons is never in an episode that doesn't feature him trying some way to get that elusive Section 8 or otherwise get out of the Army. Henry: [pulls out binder of Klinger's past hardship-discharge requests] Father dying, last year. Mother dying, last year. Mother and father dying. Mother, father, and older sister dying. Mother dying and older sister pregnant. Older sister dying and mother pregnant. Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying. Here's an oldie but a goodie: half of the family dying, other half pregnant. [puts file down] Klinger, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Klinger: Yes sir. [beat] I don't deserve to be in the Army. Digital Destruction : Due to the series' popularity, and the constant reprinting of episodes for syndicated markets, the video presentation on DVD isn't exactly impressive. While the picture quality is certainly an improvement over syndicated prints, earlier seasons on DVD show evidence of digital imperfections on occasion, such as pixelization and bad interlacing. Seasons 4 and 5 are probably the worst for this, but luckily things improve greatly afterwards, to the point that the last few seasons look wonderful on DVD. Do You Want to Haggle? : In "Dear Mildred", Frank and Margaret are commissioning a local Korean artist to make a wooden bust of Col. Potter's head for his birthday: Artist: Six bucks. Doesn't Like Guns : Hawkeye "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to old Virginny, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!" Invoked and played with a few seasons later when Hawkeye and Potter are away from the camp, stuck in a foxhole, pinned down by enemy fire, and drunk off their asses. After getting upbraided by Potter for being so mule-headed about his distaste for firearms, Potter convinces Hawkeye to just fire it in the air to scare away the enemy. Double Standard : The show is quite famous for calling out America for all of its misdeeds during the war, but was rather sketchier on doing the same to the other side. Any such misdeeds that were called out (mistreatment of prisoners, press ganging civilians, use of internationally outlawed weaponry, and other war crimes) were more often blamed on the "horrors of war" than on the soldiers or country committing them... unless that country was America. Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male : While there were a lot of rape jokes in the early days, this is averted once in "Rainbow Bridge" when Margaret mentions the prisoner exchange might end up in rape and Hawkeye actually looks afraid. Downer Ending : "Abyssinia Henry". See Cruel Twist Ending above. "Preventive Medicine". Hawkeye removes a healthy appendix of a colonel to try to stop him from provoking an attack against his own troops so that he would have an excuse to seize a particular hill (for pride, apparently) and callously throw away the lives of the troops under his command (completely against orders, hence the previous provoked attack serving as a loophole). Hawkeye removes his appendix, but sadly, even without said colonel, the gears of war churn onward. Also an example of Real Life Writes the Plot as the original script didn't deal with the implications of Hawkeye's actions (as in an earlier episode in which Hawkeye and Trapper do the exact same thing to Colonel Flagg just to get back the penicillin he stole, without any kind of hand-wringing). Mike Farrell complained that BJ wouldn't stand for that, and his objections became BJ's. "Period of Adjustment" deals with BJ's growing despair due to being separated from his family and ends with him broken and sobbing against Hawkeye on the floor. The Finale has its share of them as well: Potter leaving Sophie behind when he returns to the States. Hawkeye seemingly giving up surgery to instead become a general practitioner due to his PTSD. The musicians that Charles had been training getting killed on their way home. Mulcahy going deaf. Dramedy : A Trope Codifier , if not Ur-Example . Dream Sequence : The aptly titled "Dreams" features one. Dressing to Die : In "The Army-Navy Game", an unexploded bomb lands in the middle of the compound; Klinger dons the suit he was drafted in, on the grounds that if they die when the bomb goes off, the way he wants people to see him as before their demise is, "Like a person with a nice suit." Though he does vow that if the bomb doesn't go off, he'll go back to wearing dresses. Drink Order : General Clayton is apparently partial to sherry and ginger ale. Henry: Do we have enough sherry and ginger ale for the General, Radar? Radar: Oh, nobody does, sir. Hawkeye generally prefers martinis, the drier the better. Hawkeye: Right now, my manservant Trapper is mixing me a martini. He makes them beautifully. He made me an especially dry one last night, but it blew away. Played for Black Humor in the Finale, when Sidney reminds Hawkeye that the night before he ended up in the hospital, he drove a jeep through the wall of the Officer's Club and ordered a double bourbon. Hawkeye points out that he drinks martinis. Radar's grape Nehi, Charles' cognac, Frank's Shirley Temples. From the "Officers Only" episode: Henry: I've been dying for a banana daiquiri. Bartender: Is that a drink, sir? Henry: Oh, yeah. You just take some bananas and some rum and some cream and some crushed ice, and just put it in a blender. Bartender: We've got no bananas, no rum, and no blender, sir. And only powdered cream. Henry: Okay, gimme a beer. Dr. Jerk : Burns as an incompetent version and Winchester as a highly competent one. Drowning My Sorrows : Or, as Margaret once puts it, "taking them for a swim". In one episode an upset Radar takes a rare swig of Hawkeye and BJ's moonshine gin, then grimaces at the taste. Radar: I thought this stuff was supposed to make you feel better. BJ: No, it's supposed to make you feel nothing. Drugs Are Bad : "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde". Winchester gets addicted to amphetamines, and pays the price as the addictive qualities and side effects take their toll. Drunk with Power : Happens to Hawkeye of all people the first time he takes temporary command from Col. Potter. He goes from being a loveable prankster with a low opinion of Army discipline to a martinet. Once Potter gets back, Hawkeye reverts to normal . It's lampshaded later on when Hawkeye refuses a second chance at temporary command Dry Crusader : Frank Burns, in "Alcoholics Unanimous"; a visiting general who's recovering from surgery, in "The Moon Is Not Blue". Early Installment Weirdness : Watching the early seasons (and Season 1 in particular) can be a disorienting experience if you're more accustomed to the later ones, due to the turnover in the cast as well as the Cerebus Syndrome mentioned above. A prime example of this: in the early seasons, the laugh track will sometimes play in the OR, something the producers objected to and which was excised in the later seasons. That only happened three times, one of which was justifiable, as it was during Frank's Rashomon Style flashback making himself out as being a super surgeon during a particularly heavy deluge — we all know not to take Ferret Face seriously. Earned Stripes : In one episode a nurse with the rank of sergeant is given an unofficial, honorary field promotion to 2nd Lieutenant for the last three weeks of his tour of duty. Major Houlian donates her old Lieutenant bars to pin on him. In a late episode Klinger earns a promotion from Corporal to Sergeant and has a brand new set of stripes on his arm. Eat the Evidence : Done by the entire unit to an illicitly acquired side of beef. When an MP shows up looking for the beef, he's invited to sit down and have a plate, which he happily accepts. Economy Cast : The 4077th as depicted on the show has a much smaller staff than a real-life MASH unit would have had (or that we see in the novel or film). The point is made on the show that there are around 200 people in the unit, yet no more than two dozen are ever seen at one time, even when there are formations that require everyone to be present. Also, when Colonel Potter says he wants to see all the officers, the only people who show up are the members of the main cast and not the other officers in the unit, including all the nurses (except Margaret). El Spanish "-o" : Radar, while trying to communicate with some Greeks: Radar: Uh... put-em here-o. (Not even "os", which would be the real equivalent of el Spanish-o in Greek.) A family of Koreans set up housekeeping in the middle of the camp. Henry tries to tell them to leave: "Go-ee home-ee!" When that doesn't work, he tells Radar to tell them to leave. Radar then tells the family, "Go-ee home-ee!" Embarrassing Cover Up : When an optometrist visits the camp, Houlihan comes in for a checkup, but everyone thinks she's there to hit on him; when everyone else leaves, she reveals that she'd rather they think "Hot Lips" was on the move than let on to her vision problems. Embarrassing Middle Name : Hawkeye and Trapper crack up when they learn Frank's is "Marion". Embarrassing Nickname : Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, Frank "Ferret Face" Burns. In "The Foresight Saga" we (and Klinger) learn that Potter's wife calls him " Pudd'nhead ", a Shout-Out to Mark Twain . Episode Title Card : Used in "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", and "Our Finest Hour" (the second interview show). Escalating War : A staple, an example being "The Smell of Music". Even the Guys Want Him : Frank is a mild, and subtle example of this when it comes to Colonel Flagg. Every Helicopter Is a Huey : Mostly averted in favor of the historically-accurate Bell 47. However, some early episodes have a model Huey hanging from the ceiling of Col. Blake's office, and later on the O Club has a sign on the wall reading "4077th Med. Co. Air Ambulance" and featuring an illustration of either a Huey or another Vietnam-era chopper. Possibly intentional, as in the movie and in the first few seasons, Korea was meant to be a metaphor for Vietnam. The Bell 47G is the only helicopter that really makes that chirp-chirp-chirp sound as the drive belts disengage. It's become a well-known helicopter movie cliche . Everyone Has Standards : In "Abyssinia, Henry", Frank is seen crying when Henry's death is announced. Klinger may have pulled every con he could think of to get out of the army, and would swear to every god he knew (and some he made up!) that he was insane. But when there were wounded that needed care, he dropped the act and did his job with gusto. Exact Time to Failure : Occurs in the episode "Life Time". They run over the timer, but since they induced hypothermia the patient still recovers. Extreme Omni Goat : A goat once ate the entire payroll of the MASH unit, leaving Hawkeye and Radar in deep trouble till they could convince the officer sent to investigate the issue that they didn't make up the story to cover for embezzlement. Failure Is the Only Option : Klinger trying to get a Section 8, Burns trying to instill military discipline, Winchester trying to get transferred back to Tokyo. Winchester seems to play on his awareness that his exile to the 4077th is permanent at the end of the episode where the staff members' families meet at a party back in the States. On hearing that his parents and Radar's hit it off so well that they're planning another get-together after the war, he asserts that for all he cares, they "...can bring your goat. Makes no difference to me, for I shan't be there; I'm turning myself in to the Chinese." Fake Aristocrat : In order to get Radar into the Officers' Club at the Kimpo airport in "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye appends BJ's captain's bars to the corporal's uniform. When questioned about this, Pierce explains that the Army is field-testing a new intermediate rank: corporal captain. Fake Pregnancy : This is the subject of an episode that was ultimately never filmed, as at the time it was considered too risqué. The episode, entitled "Hawkeye on the Double," had Hawkeye seeing two different nurses behind each of their backs, and when the two found out about each other, they planned on getting back at him by both pretending to be pregnant with his child, and pressuring him into choosing which one of them to marry. The script for the episode is available as a special feature on DVD. Familiar Soundtrack, Foreign Lyrics : Many early episodes had Japanese or Korean language versions of traditional American songs played over the PA in order to emphasize the fact that they're in Korea. Fanservice : Margaret wearing shorts and a backless bathing suit in "The Merchant of Korea"; BJ doing pull-ups in "The Smell of Music." Finishing Each Other's Sentences : Hawkeye and B.J. often do this. First-Name Basis : Most characters in the show are usually called by their first names (Charles, Margaret, Frank, BJ, even Col. Henry Blake) or an affectionate nickname ("Hawkeye", "Trapper", "Radar"). The only ones of the major cast to whom everyone regularly refers by their rank/title and last name are Col. Potter and Fr. Mulcahy, out of a sense of respect from pretty much everyone. The notable exception to this trope is Klinger, whose first name, Maxwell, is very rarely used. Fixing the Game : The craps game in the back of Rosie's bar is rigged. Frank runs a bookie operation for baseball games that are broadcast to the camp during the day. Turns out he's listening to previous, late-night broadcasts of the same games to get the outcomes before taking anyone's bets. Charles giving uppers to Radar's mouse Daisy before she races a Marine's champion rodent. Hawkeye and Trapper rig a boxing match by putting ether on Trapper's glove, but Frank realizes the fix is in and replaces the ether with water. During the bowling match against the Marines, Charles and BJ drug their ringer with a pill that turns his urine blue, tricking him into thinking he had a disease that his bowling would aggrivate. Father Mulcahy convinces his opponent to throw a race so the proceeds of the bets can be used to build a roof for an orphanage. Flanderization : Radar's naïveté, Col. Potter's crankiness, and Frank Burns's jerk-assedness (and flakiness, and paranoia) all grew more and more pronounced as the show progressed. In early seasons, Frank showed occasional flashes of human decency. For instance, in season 1's "Sticky Wicket", when Hawkeye re-opens a patient who's failing to get better and discovers he'd overlooked a tiny bit of shrapnel damage, Frank quietly says "Anyone could have missed that." In season 2's "Kim" he tries to help when a little boy runs into a minefield, and in season 3's "O.R." he's horrified to learn he nearly removed a patient's sole kidney. Even as late as season 3 when Henry's death was announced, Frank has tears in his eyes as the camera pans over the OR. In all these instances Linville played Frank's emotions as genuine, not faked or selfishly motivated. Frank's incompetence as a doctor was Flanderized too. In early episodes he simply wasn't as talented as the other surgeons but had the reasonable excuse of being the one with the least experience. Later episodes portrayed him as being totally inept in medicine, to the point where he had to cheat to graduate med school. The original back story for Burns is that he went to medical school, but didn't study surgery, rather being one of the last surgeons who could become one by taking an apprenticeship (from his father). This is especially bad when you consider that in one episode it's established that Frank had been in practice for 12 years, which means he was actually more experienced than Hawkeye, Trapper, or BJ when they first arrived. Combine this with his statement that he took twice as long to graduate medical school and become a doctor as normal and a typical surgical residency period, and he would have been the same age as Henry (who gave his age as 42 near the end of Season 3). All of which eventually drove Larry Linville from the show, as he felt that Burns had devolved so badly there was nowhere else to go with the character as they were writing him. Flipping Helpless : In one episode, an ambulance-truck flipped on its back demonstrated to Colonel Potter the general unfitness of his camp: after everyone pushing together can't get it rightside up, a group of 4 MPs happens by and rights it all by themselves. Another time, BJ rolls a jeep onto its side while avoiding a crash. When he and Hawkeye attempt to right it, they roll it on its top, leaving them to walk back to the 4077 . Flynning : "Requiem for a Lightweight" both plays straight and subverts this with boxing. Trapper is trying to just keep in the fight long enough to knock his opponent out with what he thinks is an ether-soaked glove. His opponent, however, seems to barely tap Trapper during the match despite having 197 wins. Foil : All of Hawkeye's Swampmates were this to him, to a certain extent. Trapper occasionally exhibited a world-weary pragmatism in contrast to Hawkeye's passionate idealism. B.J. was a devoted family man in contrast with Hawkeye's womanizing. Frank Burns was a jingoistic lover off all things military in contrast with Hawkeye's staunch liberal pacifism. And Charles was an aristocratic Boston Brahmin in contrast with Hawkeye's small-town unpretentiousness. The Food Poisoning Incident : Happens to Charles and Margaret in "The Grim Reaper", and nearly the entire camp in "The Yalu Brick Road". Foreshadowing : A typo is made on the inscription of Margaret's replacement wedding ring: "Over hill, over dale, our love will ever fail". Her marriage to Donald ends in a bitter divorce roughly a year later. Forged Message : Klinger occasionally would forge letters, particularly in mail call episodes, in further attempts to get a discharge; Henry kept many of Klinger's letters on record and uses them against him to point out how ridiculous the claims in the letters are, leading up to one letter that reads, "Half of the family dying, other half pregnant." Potter, on the other hand, dug a little deeper when Klinger tried to pull a similar stunt on him. Incidentally, Klinger has no brothers. Potter: Klinger, this letter is in your handwriting. Klinger: I translated my mother's letter, it was in Lebanese. Potter: Let me see it. Klinger: I burned it. Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics : Which were used in the original movie but not the series. Through early morning fog I see / Visions of the things to be / The pains that are witheld for me / I realize and I can see / That suicide is painless / It brings on many changes / And I can take or leave it if I please. The movie version of the theme, written by Johnny Mandel and then-14-year-old Mike Altman, was a huge hit on college and community radio stations. The lyrics were probably Mistaken for Profound ; at best, they're an Ice-Cream Koan ; Robert Altman , who directed the film, asked for "the stupidest lyrics ever written" and his son turned them out in five minutes. Four-Temperament Ensemble : Hawkeye (constantly sanguine), Blake /Potter (choleric), Burns/Winchester (melancholic), and Trapper/BJ (phlegmatic). Despite the replacement characters all being vastly different than their predecessors, they still fill the spots left open. Fox News Liberal : Winchester is a conservative version. Charles: (to a HUAC shill) I come from a family that would make you look like a New Dealer. An insult that Hawkeye purposefully throws at Charles to make him talk visibly angers him: Hawkeye: Charles - your parents voted for Roosevelt ( beat ) four times! Freudian Excuse : Frank Burns apparently had an absolutely miserable childhood. Getting Crap Past the Radar : The Section 8 discharge that Klinger so desperately sought was intended for mental illness discharges. However in practice, it was most often used to remove personnel from the military due to overt or strongly suspected homosexuality. And Klinger was crossdressing... Averted, as Freedman initially offers Klinger a discharge for being a homosexual and transvestite. Klinger angrily turns him down, saying "All I am is nuts!" In the Season 2 episode "The Sniper", Radar's bare butt is shown briefly when a sniper opens fire on him as he runs back into the showers tent; however, depending on the network, some syndicated prints have a different version where he doesn't drop his towel. Too bad they couldn't show him running by the latrines, thereby getting Radar past...well, you know. More generally, the show had a lot of Double Entendre gags in the early years. For example: Frank: Oh, Margaret, you're my snug harbor, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you to sail into. A similar example: Margaret: [to Potter] If evidence is what you want, Colonel, evidence is what you'll get. [to Frank] Are you with me, Major? Frank: Right up to the hilt. "The General Flipped at Dawn" has one just as blatant: Trapper: You better not bump into Henry and that general. Hawkeye: I intend only to bump into Nurse Baker. Repeatedly, if possible. In one episode, Hawkeye sees Margaret using a scalp massager on Frank. Hawkeye's response is, "Behind every great man is a woman with a vibrator." And yes, they had vibrators back then — Hamilton Beach started selling them in 1902. How did they explain the name "Hot Lips?" In the film, Margaret tells Frank to kiss her "hot lips." Which doesn't necessarily refer to the ones on her face. The Tag of the pilot, with Hawkeye and Trapper handcuffed together (they were being arrested by General Hammond) was considered controversial at the time. For some reason. We're actually treated to some brief side-boobage in, "The Merchant of Korea," after Margaret finishes her angry phone call to Penobscott, as she leaves Radar's office, she swings her arm far enough to reveal a little side-boob under her summer shirt. Two moments in "Some 38th Parallels": an entire subplot focuses on a nurse wanting to get it on with Hawkeye, but he can't because he's suffering from a case of impotency. Secondly, Frank holds a garbage auction, and tries to wish the Korean bidders prosperity, but he looked up the wrong word, and instead, wishes each of them a prostitute. In "Goodbye Radar pt. 2", Klinger is wheeling and dealing for a new generator when theirs is stolen. At the depot, an enormous major shows up announcing he's here to pick up HIS generator — the one that was supposed to go to the 4077 — and Max mutters Ya ibn kalb! This is "son of a dog", and considered mild enough to say to a misbehaving child, but still. (To make matters worse, the major's outfit was the one that stole the 4077's backup generator before the main one broke.) In one episode, the writers clearly didn't care about the Radar at all, having Hawkeye directly call a South Korean Torture Technician (that's right, a South Korean who planned to torture an admittedly unrepentant enemy) a "son of a bitch". Of course, it was obviously done for shock value. When propositioning a nurse, Hawkeye was once interrupted by Father Mulcahy. When asked, he said they were discussing the ups and downs of doctor-nurse relationships. Speaking of the good padre, in one episode Radar asks if he's seen Hawkeye anywhere. Mulcahy: "I believe he mentioned Nurse Schibetta. He was going to share a spicy salami with her. [ beat ] She's Italian, you know." Once, when Hawkeye is propositioning a nurse during surgery: Frank: Are you gonna knock it off? Hawkeye: That's what I'm trying to find out, Frank. In "The Interview", since what we see is ostensibly a documentary shown on TV, swear words are bleeped out. At one point, Hawkeye gets a "shit" past the radar. Margaret compares Frank to Donald. Margaret: When I can have knockwurst, why settle for a— Hawkeye: cocktail frank? Gilligan Cut : In "Too Many Cooks", Potter is acting unusually testy and irritable. At one point, the others are trying to decide whether one of them should confront him about what's bothering him. Margaret: Colonel Potter is a sensible, mature man. He can work it out himself. Leave him alone if he doesn't want to talk! (cut) Potter: Leave me alone. I don't want to talk. Margaret: Sir, you have to talk to me. Girl of the Week : Or, in Hawkeye's case, a Nurse of the Week. Largely averted in Seasons 2 and 3, where he almost exclusively was paired up with Nurse Gage. Glory Hound : Some of the commanding officers, like those who were determined to take some hill or other no matter what it cost in casualties. Gold Fever : Deliberately inculcated in Frank by Hawkeye and Trapper, in "Major Fred C. Dobbs". Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen : In one episode, Margaret steals Hawkeye's and BJ's clothes while they are showering. Radar did it to Hawkeye and Trapper once, when they made the mistake of making fun of him while showering. Hawkeye: You know without your glasses you could almost pass for offensive? Trapper: Hey, why don't you leave the little fellow alone. Radar: It's okay, I can take a joke. steals their clothes and towels off the rack and leaves Hawkeye and Trapper: Hey! Wait a minute! Where are you going? I was kidding! He was kidding! You're beautiful! In "Communications Breakdown" an anonymous prankster does this to Charles (all Charles and the viewer sees is an arm reaching into the shower and stealing his bathrobe), leaving behind a only a newspaper. It's later taken Up to Eleven when the prankster steals all of Winchester's clothing and furniture from his tent. Grand Finale Gratuitous Spanish : Col. Potter loves this trope. Father Mulcahy attracts a little of this as Potter calls him "Padre" (Father), which is moderately common US Army slang; the rest of the cast uses "Father," but some Korean characters picked it up. Potter is not even close to being a native speaker; his pronunciation is horrendous, e.g. he pronounces "Padre" and "comprende" with an "ee" sound at the end. At one point, he conducts a phone call with a Canadian unit with some very gratuitous French sprinkled in, also terribly pronounced. The viewers are collectively embarrassed for him. G-Rated Drug : Averted in "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde". Winchester gets addicted to amphetamines, which are hardly G-Rated. And in "Tea and Empathy", a wounded man is hooked on morphine and BJ helps him quit. Greeting Gesture Confusion : In "The Nurses", one Sergeant Tony Baker drops in at the 4077th, where his newly wedded wife is a nurse. Baker steps into Radar's office and proceeds to introduce and greet himself by sticking out his hand for handshake, which Radar confuses for a salute. The two briefly try to figure out what to do, but just shrug it off. Gung Holier Than Thou : Col. Flagg is literally described as such. Burns & Houlihan also qualify until they stopped going over the CO's head to General Clayton. Gut Punch : The end of "Abyssinia, Henry". Halloween Episode : "Trick or Treatment". Hand or Object Underwear : Employed by BJ in "Bottoms Up" (pillow) and Charles in "Communication Breakdown" (newspapers). Handshake Refusal : Winchester's dental woes coupled with his fear of dentists. In the end of the episode, Winchester is about to shake the hand of the man who Hawkeye and BJ brought on to handle the episode's A-plot only for them to reveal he's a dentist; Winchester immediately retracts his hand, but due to his fear of dentists, not an attempt at being insulting. Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist : Hawkeye and Trapper in particular wore a lot of Hawaiian print shirts when not in something resembling uniform. He Who Must Not Be Seen : Sparky, the telephone operator at I Corps, was a constant fixture on the other end of Radarï¿½s calls, but was only shown on screen once, in the "Tuttle" episode. He was shown sitting at a switchboard, eating an apple and reading a Captain Marvel comic. He only got two lines of dialog, but judging from that, Sparky seemed to have a southern drawl. The same scene revealed his real name (Sgt. Pryor) for the first and only time. O'Brien, the chopper pilot. Like Sparky, he is refered to many times throughout the series (particularly the first three seasons), but was only shown on screen once, in "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde", where a sleep-deprived Hawkeye tries to convince him not to fly around in his chopper anymore, figuring that if doesn't go up with empty stretchers, he won't come back down with them occupied by bloody bodies. Also, the camp's unnamed PA announcer , voiced at different times by Sal Viscuso or Todd Susman. An interesting point with this is that sometimes it sounds like either Jamie Farr (Klinger) or Gary Burghoff (Radar) is providing that voice. The episode "Who Knew?" centers around a never-seen nurse who died stepping on a landmine while going for a late-night stroll following a tryst with Hawkeye, for whom she had serious feelings (unbeknownst to him). We do hear her voice narrating her diary, as Hawkeye reads it while preparing to eulogize her. Captain Tuttle. Justified in that he never actually existed in the first place. Heat Wave : "The Nurses" (Season Five), "The Merchant of Korea" (Season Six), "None Like It Hot" (Season Seven), "No Sweat" (Season Nine), "The Moon Is Not Blue" (Season Eleven). Season Two's "A Smattering of Intelligence" is a subtler example: there's no actual discussion about the heat in the episode (which centers around a visit from Col. Flagg), but throughout there are visual cues including Hawkeye wearing cutoff shorts, Trapper in a tank-style basketball jersey, Henry trying to fix an electric fan in his office, etc. Inverted by Cold Snap episodes such as "The Long-John Flap" (Season One) "Crisis" (Season Two), "It Happened One Night" (Season Four), "Dear Sigmund" (Season Five), "The Light that Failed" (Season Six), "Baby It's Cold Outside", and "Out of Gas" (both Season Seven). Heroic B.S.O.D. : Hawkeye gets one in the finale when a mother smothers her child when they're all hiding from an enemy patrol. Even worse, he feels that it's his fault; she did it after he told her they'd all get captured if she didn't keep the baby quiet. A visiting surgeon (who had seemed cheerful and "as [sane] as any of us" - "that's what scares me," Hawkeye replies) suffers one in the middle of OR, walking out and wandering into a tent where he's found softly complaining that the blood won't come off . Charles has an episode-long one when he is almost shot in the head by a sniper (he enters it upon seeing the twin bullet holes in his cap. Heroic Sacrifice : Margaret's foot locker, at least, according to her report in one episode where she's trying to replace it. Mulcahy's actions in the finale can be seen as a (barely) averted one, since he left shelter during a bombardment to rescue a group of prisoners who had been left out in the open. He survived, but he lost his hearing from a near-miss artillery shell. Hero of Another Story : Sidney Freedman (who works mostly at the EVAC hospital in Seoul) and the staffs of the 8055th and 8063rd ( Real Life MASH units, which would be mentioned and occasionally seen, and the members of which were supposed to be at least as crazy as the members of the 4077th). And the front-line aid station personnel. And the chopper pilots, ambulance drivers, etc. Several of the patients, who are recognized as such by the doctors and/or their peers. Examples include the former football player who lost his leg, the Chinese-American soldier who had been wounded several times, and the homosexual soldier who had 3 Purple Hearts. Heterosexual Life-Partners : Hawkeye and Trapper, and later Hawkeye and BJ. , and here . The Martinis and Medicine DVD box set also includes a blooper reel as a bonus feature. Historical In-Joke : In one episode Winchester mentions his family having a summer place in Hyannisport, where a large " nouveau riche " family moved in next door and got on their nerves by playing "a perpetual game of touch football on their lawn". This is clearly a reference to the Kennedy clan. During the final episode, a radio announcer mentions increasing hostilities in Vietnam, prompting Klinger to ask, "Where's that?" Hitler's Time-Travel Exemption Act : In "The Long-John Flap", Henry has a water pitcher in his office that not only doesn't belong in 1950, it doesn't even look like something from 1972... 2002, maybe... Holiday Volunteering : During several Christmases the 4077th hosts the children from nearby orphanages instead of getting blind stinking drunk as they would've done otherwise. Hollywood Darkness : The "Major Fred C. Dobbs" episode has some outdoor "night" scenes that were clearly shot in the daytime with a dark filter over the camera. Hollywood Law : Any time Frank brings charges against Hawkeye and crew, when Hawkeye is found not-guilty of whatever it is Frank was setting him up for, Frank is never brought up on any charges for falsifying statements, even when his actions could have led to Hawkeye's death. When Flagg visits the camp in "Officer of the Day," he insists that Hawkeye prepare his patient so Flagg can take him to Seoul, where he intends to execute him for being a spy. Although spies may have been executed, it wouldn't have been for Flagg to do on his own. Many of the stunts and hijinks pulled were incredibly illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and would have brought serious consequences. Hollywood Tactics : Numerous, such as: Jeeps being shot at with artillery (virtually impossible against moving targets with immobile artillery pieces) when shooting the occupants would suffice; Hawkeye attempting to surrender the entire camp to a lone sniper, against orders, so they can attend to the wounded (without even trying to explain how this makes any sense); Hawkeye climbing down a rope to treat a wounded soldier in a foxhole, dressed as Santa, while under direct fire, rather than the chopper landing and taking off (as was developed in Korea before its extensive use in Vietnam). Hospital Hottie : Hot Lips, as well as many of the various guest nurses Hawkeye tries to bed. As for the men: Hawkeye himself, BJ (especially when he didn't have that mustache), Trapper, Father Mulcahy when he was only wearing that tight, black t-shirt and Winchester in his nicer moments. Huddle Shot : Two in the opening credits, and one occurred in the "Point of View" episode. Humiliating Wager : In "The Joker is Wild", Hawkeye bets BJ that he can't pull a prank on each of the major characters. When BJ succeeds (sort of), Hawkeye has to stand on a table in the mess hall with his pants down and sing "You're the Top" to him. Hurricane of Puns Hypercompetent Sidekick : Radar, at least until season six or so. In fact, he was the Trope Namer at one point. Hypocrite : Invoked in "Rally Round the Flagg, Boys." A patient named Basgall is enraged that Hawkeye tended to a wounded North Korean before his injured friend (as far as Hawkeye was concerned, the North Korean was wounded far worse than Baskall's buddy). During surgery Basgall hurls epiphets at Hawkeye for being a communist sympathizer, to which Hawkeye snaps back and yells at him. For much of the rest of the episode, BJ keeps telling Hawkeye about how he needs to control his temper and retain his sense of compassion and professionalism, but later when Basgall attacks Hawkeye, BJ snaps and nearly strangles him. BJ: (Sighs) I notice I don't practice what I preach. Hawkeye: Yeah. And thank you. Can be said of all the main protagonists of the first 3 seasons, as one of their primary objections to Major Burns was that he was cheating on his wife with Major Houlihan. These objections came despite the fact that both Trapper and Henry also had various girlfriends and one night stands nearly every episode, and they also had wives back home. Oddly, they are never called on the hypocrisy. Hypocritical Humor : Majors Burns and Houlihan often displayed this in the early seasons. In spite of his rank, Potter hates colonels, on the grounds that all they do is try to make as many points as they can to make general, so they can kick back and relax on their big fat rear echelons. Justified in that Potter is a medical officer and has no plans or expectation of being promoted before he retires. A mild case occurs with Father Mulcahy, of all people. Frank had asked the Father to give a sermon on temperance. However, Mulcahy was uncomfortable with the subject ("The Prodigal Son" and "Turn the Other Cheek" being more familiar territory for him). Needing to calm his nerves, he has a drink from a bottle gifted to him by a greatful soldier. It may have been a case of it being some unusually potent stuff, or it may be that the good Father Can't Hold His Liquor , but the result was that Mulcahy delivered his temperance sermon while drunk. Also an I Can't Believe I'm Saying This when he makes the announcement about this. Margaret does this when the nurses are ordered to the rear when the line is pushed far enough south that the unit is in enemy territory. Hawkeye and Margaret in "Bug Out" when they need to tend to a wounded patient. Frank, after having a transfer approved and then being tricked into thinking that the area around the 4077 is filthy with gold. Henry, in the episode "Henry Please Come Home", decides to give up his newly-found life of luxury in Tokyo, in favor of returning to the danger and generally poor lifestyle of the 4077th Identical-Looking Asians : In a season two episode, the Korean liaison officer semi-sarcastically explains the difficulty in finding the father of a half-American baby as, "You all look alike to us." There are also several episodes that deal with or make reference to the difficulty in people being able to tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Korean people. An Asian blackmarket salesmen posing as a general even uses the trope to deflect suspicion away from himself, claiming, "We all look the same." Frank Burns: [They're] clever, boy. They don't all look alike by accident, you know! Invoked in the finale, Klinger's Korean fiancee (played by Rosalind Chao, Chinese-American) is looking for her family, whom she describes several times as "Short, dark hair?" Perhaps a meta casting gag in that there were plenty of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese actors cast to play Koreans. Humorously invoked in "To Market, To Market". Hawkeye and Trapper arrange a deal with Charlie Lee, a black marketeer, to give him Henry Blake's newly-acquired antique oak desk — without Henry's knowledge — in exchange for some Hydrocortisone. As a prelude to the deal, he shows up at Henry's office disguised as a South Korean general to examine said desk. Then, at the end of the episode after the exchange has been made, Henry sees Charlie again without the disguise: Henry: [suspiciously] Hey, have you got a relative who's a general? Charlie: [shrugging] You know how it is, Colonel. We all look alike. Identity Amnesia / Napoleon Delusion : In "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", a bomber pilot claims to be Jesus Christ . Everyone thinks he's pulling a scam at first, but it turns out losing his identity was the only way he could escape his guilt about being a long-term bombardier. "The Billfold Syndrome" involves an amnesiac soldier whose condition turns out to stem from guilt over his failure to prevent his younger brother's death while they served in combat together. Used by Klinger as a dodge one time. He attempted to convince everyone that he believed the 4077 was Toledo (he played off the wounded as him helping out the victims of a traffic accident). This almost worked, but, as always, he blew it at the last second. I Have This Friend... : Klinger tries to use this with Potter once. Potter sees through it immediately (probably because Klinger claims the "friend" is serving in a MASH unit in Cleveland) and tells him to spit it out. Klinger admits that he's found evidence that the camp's newest nurse has a serious drinking problem. Another episode has Sidney Freedman visiting the 4077 and Father Mulcahy coming to him, saying he has a friend who he's kind of worried about, because "things aren't going so well for him, and he's feeling a little low". When Sidney smiles and asks who the friend is, Mulcahy tells him it's him, Sidney (who has, in fact, been feeling depressed over an uncooperative patient). They then have a nice little therapy-for-the-therapist chat. I Know Karate : When administering inncolations, Major Burns, thinking a Korean boy stole his Purple Heart, warns him with "I've had two judo lessons". A few episodes later , though, he mistakes judo for a religion. I'll Take Two Beers Too : In "Divided We Stand", Henry offers a drink to a visiting psychiatrist who's evaluating the camp. The man declines, and Henry nervously hastens to add that he's not ordinarily much of a drinker. Then Radar enters with a couple glasses of brandy: Henry: Captain Hildrebrand doesn't care for any. Radar: Oh, then I won't bring his glass in. Imperial Storm Trooper Marksmanship Academy : North Korean and Chinese soldiers could never seem to hit any of the main characters when shot at on camera. Another notable example is a sniper who took several shots at two bottles of high-class scotch, eventually destroying both, then an ambulance's tire, and not actually hitting anyone. And a bombing version ... Five O'Clock Charlie. The episode 'featuring' him had everyone in the camp betting on how badly he'd miss. And judging by quality of equipment and pilot, his target (a nearby ammo dump) was very low on the DPRK target priority list. A sniper shooting at Klinger and Father Mulcahy continuously hit the bell behind them, but never manages to actually hit them. Even the tactics the North Koreans used failed miserably. When the North Koreans were shelling the unit, they never seemed to hit anything. The shells would often drop into the center of camp or, on occassion, blow up boxes and such sitting around ( and sometimes the latrine ). How they missed the large central building with the big red 'X' on top is anyone's guess. Any time someone drove a Jeep somewhere, the North Koreans would attack it with artillery, not the best weapon to use against a single, moving target. In the episode with General Stone, a sniper starts shooting at General Stone and doesn't seem to hit anything, not even the Jeep. General Steele, after inspecting a swamp he wants to move the 4077 to, insists on being saluted despite the danger of tipping off any snipers. A sniper starts shooting at him, but never even gets close. General Steele: We can stand and fight...or we can have lunch. Blake and Burns: Lunch! Incessant Music Madness : In "The Smell of Music", Winchester's French horn aggravates BJ and Hawkeye to the point where they refuse to bathe until he gives it up. In "Your Hit Parade", Potter's insistence on repeatedly hearing "Sentimental Journey" nearly drives the rest of the unit over the Despair Event Horizon . Usually provoking a Lame Pun Reaction from Hawkeye. I Need a Freaking Drink : Averted in one episode when Hawkeye, having sworn off alcohol for a week, orders a drink in the Officers' Club after a long, grueling session in OR. He is just a few inches from drinking it when he decides that he would prefer to want the drink instead of need it, puts the glass back down, and leaves the club. Colonel Blake frequently went straight to his liquor cabinet whenever he heard that trouble (usually in the form of a general) was coming his way. Come to think of it, he usually did the same thing even when it was good news, too. Used subtly in "What's Up Doc?" upon Radar realizing that they have to kill his rabbit in order to do a pregnancy test on Margaret. While Radar loses it, a clearly exasperated Margaret grabs a bottle of liquor that Potter and Hawkeye had just been drinking from and pours herself a shot. Initialism Title : of course, "MASH" is not exclusive to the fiction of the series. In the real-world, Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, like the one in which the series is based, are indeed referred to as " MAS Hes " or "MASH units". Insane Troll Logic : In "The Novocaine Mutiny," Frank (who's temporarily in command) hears Zale complain about losing 300 dollars and he starts searching the entire camp to find the "stolen" money. Hawkeye and BJ tell him that Zale's money wasn't stolen, he just lost it in a poker game. Frank says that's impossible because he has prohibited gambling, therefore there is no gambling in the camp, therefore the money was stolen. Insomnia Episode : This happened with Hawkeye a few times. He was even ordered to go to bed and responded with "not now, I need a little sleep." Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy Instrumental Theme Tune : "Suicide Is Painless", originally used (with lyrics) in the feature film. The theme was rearranged several times during the show's run, albeit so subtly for the most part that the changes are hard to notice if you're not listening for them. In "The Joker Is Wild", as Hawkeye is reminiscing about the long-departed Trapper John: Hawkeye: Trapper was a man ahead of his time. Right, Margaret? Margaret: He was a ridiculous, juvenile child. Hawkeye: See? Internal Retcon : In one of the Christmas episodes, a mortally wounded soldier is brought in, and BJ tries his best to help him. He knows it's hopeless, but BJ tries to delay the man's death because he doesn't want his kids to think of Christmas as the day their daddy died. In the end, he fails, coming up minutes short of midnight, so Hawkeye walks over to the clock and moves it ahead, telling him he died on December 26th. Hawkeye, BJ, Houlihan and Mulcahy know it's illegal, but they falsify the record and keep it secret. It Has Been an Honor In the finale episode: Hawkeye and BJ give Col Potter a silent one by standing at attention and saluting him, something that they did very rarely throughout the course of the series. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan tells everyone in the 4077th that it has been an honor serving with them. Hawkeye salutes Radar in "Good-bye Radar Part 2", while in the operating room to top it off, as well as when presenting him his Purple Heart at the end of "Fallen Idol". It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY"! : Charles pronouncing "cretin" and "Iowa" as "creh-tin" and "Io-way"; Radar pronouncing zwiebac as "z-why-back"; Potter pronouncing "kudo" as "cue-do"; among others. We have this exchange between Frank and Klinger in "It Happened One Night:" Klinger: Halt! Frank: It's me, Major Burns! Klinger: What's the password? Klinger: I thought it was "carri-be-an." Frank: It's the same thing, you simp! It's Always Spring : While several episodes take place in winter, due to California Doubling none of them contain any snow and feature completely green plantlife. In the early seasons, the green plantlife is averted by having all exterior scenes in winter episodes taking place at night. In later seasons, this was not always done (and wouldn't have made sense for some of them anyway). Although one of the Christmas episodes, "Dear Sis", does end with it beginning to snow in camp, naturally . In any episode where the weather is supposed to be cold, the actors who are trying to pretend to be cold by bundling up and huddling around heaters and burning barrels, are obviously uncomfortable and sweating profusely, making it difficult to believe they're cold. This was done as a Take That from the writing staff. Whenever the writers got upset with comments and complaints from the cast about scripts, they would write a winter episode to make the actors miserable. Jerkass Has a Point : Frank was right when he warned Margaret that Donald might not be all that he seems. Yes, he said this in an attempt at getting into her pants, but in the end, Donald was revealed to be cheating on Margaret, stealing her money, and finally requested a transfer behind her back, leading to their divorce. Frank is also perhaps the only one to acknowledge the hospital is only three miles from the front line, while everyone else seems to act like it's a vacation between OR sessions. Hawkeye reluctantly points out that Frank is correct in that Trapper needs a physical to diagnose what's wrong with him, which turns out to be an ulcer. When Hawkeye and BJ question Frank on a missing gun (which he had stolen), he points out that Radar is given the presumption of innocence, even though he should be the one responsible for the gun locker, but they won't give Frank the same right. Juggling Loaded Guns : Gun fanatic Frank Burns. He frequently shot himself, and at one point, he accidentally shot BJ, for which he was relentlessly mocked. Frank: Sir, I think the Chinese have captured Major Houlihan. Col. Potter: I see. So, naturally, you shot Captain Hunnicutt. One incident involved him shooting himself in the foot after stealing a high-ranking officer's beautiful revolver, which leads to the Fridge Logic that not only did Frank assume it was unloaded, but that Radar had left it loaded. He also had a particularly entertaining scene where he pulled the pin on a grenade for no good reason, and about six seconds later realized he was waving around a live grenade. Cue frantic search for the dropped pin and fumbling attempt to return it to the grenade (he found the pin and managed to get it back in the grenade). When a sniper takes a shot at Hawkeye and his date in one episode, he initially assumes it was Frank being an idiot nearby with his target practice, then another shot comes in. Kansas City Shuffle : BJ gaslights Hawkeye into believing he was trying to outdo Trapper's antics and was out to get him and the rest of the camp, culminating in Hawkeye sleeping outdoors in a barb wire enclosure. BJ and his "victims" reveal that they were all in on it and made up their pranks, and the real victim was Hawkeye (which means BJ lost the bet, since he bet he could prank everyone, not just Hawkeye). BJ does this to Charles in another episode (in which everyone was exchanging ghost stories) by rigging a tent flap over Charles's cot to flap violently on command. Karma Houdini : After his general incompetence, Frank gets promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. After his jerkassery, he gets a cushy stateside post. After he cheats on his wife at every opportunity, he goes home to her and presumably continues cheating without losing his marriage, which he's only keeping for financial reasons. A lesser case, Trapper. He likewise cheats on his wife without a shred of guilt, and never suffers any consequences for it. A micro example: In "Last Laugh," Margaret throws a giant tantrum because she's horny and wants to see her husband to relieve this condition (and coaching it as though Donald is the one who desperately needs to get laid). She wrecks Radar's office and physically assaults him, and Potter lets her go see Donald. She returns smiling and relaxed, rewarded in full for her bad behavior. Kick the Dog : Hawkeye has a tendency to do this: In, "38 Across," Frank receives a B.B. game for his birthday, and spends three days trying to get all of the B.B.s in the holes. During The Tag , he finally gets the last B.B. in, which Hawkeye intentionally slaps Frank on the back, causing him to knock all of the B.B.s loose. This is certainly one of those few times where one can't help but actually feel sorry for Frank. Frank: You did it on purpose! Everytime I do something special, you always ruin it! Hawkeye: So do it again. In the pilot, Hawkeye drugs Frank so he can put on a fundraiser to send a young lad to college. In "For Want of a Boot", he steals a birthday card sent to Frank from Frank's wife and uses it to cover a hole in his boot, then returns the card and tells Frank what he did. In "House Arrest", he punches Frank after finishing surgery because he stood up for Houlihan after Hawkeye's unprovoked verbal abuse of her. In "Crisis", Hawkeye and Trapper attack Frank for wearing heated socks he bought privately — which he was wearing in lieu of blankets — during a cold snap. Killing for a Tissue Sample : In one episode, Margaret thinks she might be pregnant. She asks Hawkeye to do a Rabbit Test on her (where they inject a rabbit with a urine sample from a possible mother and then dissect the rabbit to examine its ovaries). The only female rabbit available is Radar's, who refuses to allow them to kill his pet, but he will let them do the test if they promise that the rabbit won't be killed. So Hawkeye does an ovarectomy on Radar's rabbit. The Klutz : Nurse Edwina Ferguson in "Edwina", Private Paul 'Look out below' Conway in "Too Many Cooks". "Knock Knock" Joke : Hawkeye tells a couple truly awful ones in "Dear Dad...Again". The Lancer : Trapper, and later BJ, were basically this for Hawkeye. Language Barrier : There was a language barrier between Americans who didn't speak Korean and some Korean common people didn't speak English either, though lot of them did at least to some degree. It happened several times that one of the doctors was sent away to help some Koreans and got lost. They were nearly unable to communicate with people who tried to help them. The amount of Korean that the various personnel speak seems to vary. In one episode, Radar is able to speak at least conversational Korean, and in another (later in the series, mind you!) is completely unable to speak any of the language. Margaret of all people seems to be the most fluent. Hawkeye is later shown to be able to read the language best of all the surgeons, although this is Justified since he has been there longest. Large Ham Radio : "Your Hit Parade" has Radar playing DJ by spinning a new batch of records over the camp P.A. system. Later Installment Weirdness : Although the subject of Seasonal Rot has always been up for debate, it's often agreed that the show's ultimate turn for the worse began with Season Eight: by that time, Alan Alda and Burt Metcalfe had completely overhauled the production staff and replaced almost all of the writers, shifting the tone of the show from a sitcom with dramatic undertones to a drama with comedic undertones; with Cerebus Syndrome set in, as well the loss of Radar and an end to Klinger's Section 8 schemes - including running around in dresses ( even Harry Morgan once remarked, "When we lost Radar, we essentially lost Klinger as well" ), the last four seasons are much regarded as an almost entirely different show altogether. Laugh Track : Employed over the objections of the producers and at the insistence of the network , though averted in the O.R. scenes (and averted entirely for certain episodes). Also not used in foreign syndication. The DVDs allow the viewer the option of turning the laugh track off if so desired. UK airings of the show had no laugh track. When laugh track versions started airing, outraged Brits petitioned to not have them. It worked. Leader Wannabe : Frank Burns often would covet being the CO, and would thus relish the times when (as 2nd in command) he would be temporarily put into command (his underlings, not so much). Leaning on the Fourth Wall : In an episode from season 6, when the show was airing on Tuesday nights, Potter remarks "Why is it Tuesdays are always the worst?" in reaction to one of Klinger's more irritating schemes. Left the Background Music On : The earliest episodes of the series actually contained music scoring throughout the whole show, as other sitcoms had a tendency to do. Starting in the second season and onward, music scoring was slowly, yet progressively, toned back; for at least a couple of seasons, background music would usually be heard in particularly lengthy comic sequences (Klinger hang-gliding out of camp, Flagg tearing apart a tent, etc.), though music buttons would be heard coming in and out of commercial breaks; for the next few seasons, those buttons were pretty much the only background music you heard; finally, by Season Eight, the show had no background music whatsoever. Burt Metcalfe's reasonings for eliminating the background music were similar to that of Larry Gelbart's reasonings for wanting to forgo the laugh track altogther: "Just like the actual Korean War" . Coincidentally, just before the final episode was filmed the show's outdoor set burned down in a wildfire. Life-or-Limb Decision : Done in an unusual way in Season 8's "Heal Thyself". Potter and Charles are down with the mumps, and the one replacement surgeon that's shown up has been showing signs of instability. When they get a large batch of wounded, at one point Hawkeye's forced to amputate a soldier's leg because other patients don't have time for him to do anything else. Hawkeye: If I save this leg I lose that life! Lighter and Softer : The show basically started out as a milder, more TV-friendly version of the movie. Likes Older Men : Invoked in "Potter's Retirement," where during the Kentucky Derby party, Hawkeye - dressed like a Colonel Sanders Expy - once again hits on Bigelow, only for her to actually go along with him this time. Hawkeye: Why has it taken you over a year? Bigelow: Tugs on Hawkeye's false beard I like older men. Limited Advancement Opportunities : Only Klinger and Father Mulcahy get promoted in the show (though Burns makes Lieutenant Colonel after his departure, and Flagg goes from Lt. Col. to full Col. between appearances). Radar also received a temporary promotion (as well as a fake one to "Corporal Captain"). Actually kind of justified; since the show takes place over the three years of The Korean War , most of the characters don't meet the time-in-service requirements (not to mention required time at their current rank) to get promoted. Limited Wardrobe : It's played straight when you consider that most of the people in camp are army personnel, and therefore, pretty much wear their uniforms all the time, however, it's curiously averted whenever we see a character leave for R&R, and they start packing a whole bunch of different clothes we never see them wear at all, even when they're out of uniform in camp. Hawkeye and Trapper seem to pack a lot of Hawaiian shirts, despite only wearing the same ones over and over again, and similarly, when Radar is unpacking his to stay at the 4077th rather than go home, he seems to have a lot of clothes he's pulling out of his suitcase and duffle bag. Loan Shark : Winchester to BJ in "The Merchant of Korea", Rizzo to Winchester in "That Darn Kid". Local Hangout : Rosie's. Also, the Officers' Club. Locked in a Room : Happens to Trapper and Margaret in an early episode. The Loins Sleep Tonight : Hawkeye experiences this in "Some 38th Parallels". "U.N., the Night and the Music" has Margaret falling for a Swedish soldier who suffers from this due to a war injury. Long List : Hawkeye seems to like to utilize this trope whenever he can, usually in describing things he will or won't do in any given situation. A few characters (mostly Radar) will go into detail of all the specific paper, forms, requisitions, and such that are needed in order to obtain something that is needed. Long-Runner Cast Turnover : The series had a significant cast turnover during its eleven seasons. Alan Alda (Hawkeye) and Loretta Swit (Margaret) were the only main cast present for the entire run from pilot to finale. Jamie Farr (Klinger) was introduced early in the first season, but he started off as an extra . William Christopher played Father Mulcahy beginning early in the first season, but the role was played by a different actor in the pilot. The military hospital setting made it easy to write characters in and out with the excuse of them getting drafted, transferred, and discharged. Loud of War : In one episode, Hawkeye and BJ got in a showdown with Charles — they didn't like him playing the French horn, so they refused to shower until he stopped. He refused to stop. The Main Characters Do Everything : MASH is a particularly bad example. Other surgeons are occasionally mentioned, but rarely seen. This leads to many instances of the four doctors working many hours straight without a break. There is also only one person who does the clerking work (who also works as a stretcher-bearer), when there should be somewhere between two and four, plus an entire administrative staff. In season one, the camp had an anesthesiologist, "Ugly John", who was written out after a few episodes and replaced with whoever was closest to the anesthetics at the time, regardless of their qualifications to administer anesthesia. Perhaps the worst and most confusing is "Cementing Relationships". Despite a camp full of lower ranking soldiers with a great deal more experience with manual labor and less to lose from a hand injury, three surgeons, the head nurse, and the camp chaplain are the ones who put the new cement floor in the OR. Unsurprisingly, they screw up their first try. Similarly, in "MASH Olympics", when an ambulance is overturned, two of the three surgeons, the head nurse and the camp chaplain are tasked with righting it. Maligned Mixed Marriage : GI's with Korean girlfriends/wives (and sometimes children) occasionally appear often struggling to get through red tape to either get married or bring their new families back to the States with them. This also became a central plot point in the Spin-Off series AfterMASH , as Klinger struggled with his fellow Americans maligning his marriage to the Korean Soon-Lee. Manly Tears : Several times, but especially in "Abyssinia, Henry". Even Frank is seen crying on hearing the news of Henry's death. Mattress Tag Gag : Variant: In "The General Flipped at Dawn", Henry dons a new set of fatigues in anticipation of Gen. Steele's arrival. He asks Radar if there are any tags visible, and Radar tears one off from the back of the pants before reading: "Do not remove this tag under penalty of Federal Code 764-J." Henry: Boy, you get me in trouble and I'm gonna have your keister. Meaningful Echo : Provided by Sidney Freedman in the finale. "You know, I told you people something a long time ago, and it's just as pertinent today as it was then. Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice." Meaningful Name : Back home, the O'Reilly's have a goat named Randy, who apparently likes to try and mate with other animals on the farm. In fact, in a letter from home, Randy had tried to kiss a turkey. Meta example: The episode "38 Across" is about what happens when misunderstandings spiral out of control with disastrous results. The title refers to a crossword puzzle clue that kicks off the episode's plot, but also to the 38th Parallel — the line of latitude that cuts across Korean Peninsula between North and South Korea, where much combat and fruitless peace talks occurred. Meatgrinder Surgery : Or "Meatball Surgery" as Hawkeye puts it. A MASH unit's doctors main objective was simply to make sure the wounded didn't die, that soldiers with minor injuries could be sent back to their units, and more severe cases could survive long enough to be transported to an evac hospital. Charles struggles with this concept because he is a perfectionist and and takes pride in being able to perform complicated and delicate procedures that should really be done further away from the front line. In one episode, Recurring Character Dr. Sydney Freedman tells the gang that he himself also performs "Meatball therapy". Medal of Dishonor : BJ in "Bombshells". Meganekko : Lt. Simmons, a nurse Radar pursues in "Springtime". Mildly Military : Justified somewhat by the Real Life Army practices of drafting civilian doctors in wartime, and automatically giving all M.D.s the rank of Captain. Very few of the non-draftees wear the appropriate uniform or haircut. No main character in the entire series ever seems to wear a unit patch on the left sleeve to identify his division as was (and still is) the common practice at the time. One-shot characters will sometimes have a patch on, like the Colonel with V.D. who wore a 1st Cavalry patch. It's extremely unlikely someone dressing and behaving like Klinger would have been tolerated in any military unit in the early fifties. More than likely he would have gotten a dishonorable discharge just to get him the heck out of there. Lampshaded by Blake and Potter; they are willing to put up with his shenanigans because he is a highly competent corpsman despite his crossdressing and stunts. Military Moonshiner : There's always been a distillery in the Swamp, but it's been three different stills. The first (which looked radically different) was destroyed by Frank Burns in the pilot episode and rebuilt in the design that was seen for the rest of the show. The second was totaled by BJ in the episode after Radar's departure. The third iteration of the still survived to the end of the show, but it's not clear what exactly happened to it; presumably it was discarded, as Hawkeye and BJ would have no need for it at home. Misplaced Wildlife : In "The Joker Is Wild", a hyena can be heard in the background when Hawkeye is sleeping outside. Hyenas are indigenous to Africa. Radar's menagerie of pets includes a skunk. Those don't exist in Asia. Mix and Match : In the finale Klinger marries a Korean woman and in a act that surprises everyone (including himself) decides to stay in Korea temporarily to help locate her family. One the flip side are Korean women abandoned by the GI father of their child. Both mother and child suffer from ostracism from society and rejection from their families. Sadly this is Truth in Television for many mixed race children born in countries at war. And further exacerbated by the fact, mentioned on the show, that while most countries with troops in Korea offered assistance to the children of their service personnel and Korean women, no such support was forthcoming from the US. Mobile Shrubbery : Radar (spying on Hawkeye) in "I Hate a Mystery"; Klinger (attempting to escape the 4077) in "Dear Peggy". Colonel Flagg hides inside a garbage can for a meeting with Charles in "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys". Modern Major General : Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake is a top-notch surgeon, but is clearly out of his depth as commanding officer of a MASH unit. The Mole : The "Dear Comrade" episode involves a North Korean spy who infiltrates the 4077 posing as Winchester's houseboy. Momma's Boy : Frank. He became a doctor as per her wishes, he keeps her picture by his cot, and when he flips his lid over Margaret's engagement, Radar places a call to his mother. Mood Whiplash : Too many to list, but "Yankee Doodle Doctor" in particular stands out, both In-Universe and out. After doing Groucho Marx -esque gags throughout the film, Hawkeye ends it by sitting next to a critically injured patient and explaining that despite doing all they could, he has a 50/50 chance of surviving his wounds, and that they just can't save everyone. Mundane Made Awesome : During one episode when Korean orphans have overrun the 4077th, a pair of kids persuade Colonel Potter to read a user manual for a Garand rifle as a bedtime story. Potter reads in an epic tone to satisfy the kids. My Friends... and Zoidberg : When Hawkeye, BJ, Charles and Radar are in the Swamp together, Charles will often excuse himself with: "Gentlemen. (nod to Radar) Corporal." Justified Trope : That actually is the proper etiquette for that situation which with his Blue Blood upbringing he would be more likely to follow then anyone else. Not certain if it's still the case but back in the 50's only officers were considered gentleman which Radar was not. Charles is very politely including Radar as part of the group even though he isn't a "Gentleman". Charles excusing himself that way is no more rude then saying "Gentleman. (nod to Margaret) Major." had Major Houlihan been there instead. My Nayme Is : Sidney Freedman. It's actually brought up in one episode, where Hawkeye spells it out to Flagg: "Two 'E's, as in "Freedom". Flagg even later confronts Sidney; "I've done a lot of reading about you, Dr. Freedman with two 'E's." Never Got to Say Goodbye : In "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye discovers Trapper was sent home while he was away on R&R. In "Goodbye Radar", the entire camp decides to throw Radar a going-away party, which he is late to attending. Before he can get to it, the choppers arrive and the camp goes into hospital-mode, the party left abandoned. Radar is forced to settle for quick goodbyes with the primary cast, and a simple salute from Hawkeye, who is in the O.R. performing surgery In the Grand Finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", BJ leaves for home while Hawkeye is in the psychiatric hospital recovering from his breakdown. Subverted when BJ's discharge orders are rescinded, Hawkeye is released from the hospital, and both of them are sent back to the 4077 to see the end of the war together. Never Lend to a Friend : "The Merchant of Korea" has Winchester loaning money to BJ and then proceeding to treat him like a servant, expecting him to do everything he wants. For some reason BJ grudgingly complies, even though he already has the money and these conditions were never discussed when he asked for the loan . Another episode has Frank and Hot Lips arguing over this, including the obligatory mention of the "neither a borrower nor a lender be" quote from Hamlet . New Year Has Come : "A War for All Seasons" covers an entire year in the life of the 4077th, bookended by New Year's Eve celebrations in 1950 and 1951. Nice Hat : Henry's bucket-style fishing hat; Colonel Potter's WW1 campaign hat; Klinger's Toledo Mud Hens cap (and, in the earlier seasons, his impressive collection of feminine millinery); Father Mulcahy's panama hat; Radar's wool knit cap; Trapper and BJ's straw hats; Winchester's childhood wool toboggan cap. Though he doesn't wear them often, Hawkeye has a few nifty-looking hats: a floppy camo hat that he wears in a few first-season episodes (it turns up in the opening credits), a straw cowboy hat, a propeller beanie, etc. Also Frank's wool knit cap, worn only in the TV interview show, for the rather obvious reason that it allows him to display his rank insignia prominently at all times when on camera (even in the OR, as he wears it under his surgical cap with the front pulled down to show the insignia). Nicknaming the Enemy : Both North and South Koreans are called "gooks" by unsympathetic guest characters. Truth in Television , regrettably. The tern "gook" was coined during the Korean War and was later used more famously in Vietnam. It's derived from "Miguk", the Korean word for the United States. Apparently, American soldiers thought the Koreans were identifying themselves as "gooks" in Hulk Speak ("Miguk" sounds like "me gook"). And yes, all too many American soldiers didn't even bother to make a distinction between the South Koreans they were defending and the North Koreans they were fighting, viewing them all as "just gooks". The North Koreans are also referred to as "unfriendlies" on a couple occasions. No Ending : Parodied and played straight in one episode (in the same scene, even): The entire camp shares a murder mystery chapter by chapter. Once they reach the ending, the murderer is revealed to beï¿½ nothing, the last page is missing. They go so far as to hunt down and contact the author at her home across the globe to get the answer, with some difficulty (she's so old she has trouble even remembering which novel it is). Then, the kicker: later on Colonel Potter notices and announces that her answer couldn't possibly have been the murderer due to several in-story scenes that contradict that. The episode then ends with Hawkeye humorously declaring himself to be the murderer. No Name Given : In the episode "Lil" when Hawkeye tries to figure out what "BJ" stands for. Every record Hawkeye can find (even BJ's official personnel file) lists the name as simply BJ, much to Hawkeye's chagrin. As revealed in the end of that episode, BJ was named after his parents: his mother Bea and his father Jay. Thus there shouldn't be any periods after the letters . He's not B.J., he's BJ. Radar's first name (Walter) was not revealed until "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler". Maxwell Q. Klinger's middle name was never revealed . Trapper's middle names Francis Xavier are not revealed during the course of the series, but the initials are seen on his footlocker. Noodle Incident : The origin of Margaret's nickname, "Hot Lips," is this in the series. Hawkeye uses it in the pilot episode, but when General Hammond arrives later in the episode and uses it, they react like they've never heard it before; Hawkeye simply stumbled onto an embarrassing nickname she already had. The origin is known to the audience and all of the characters in the novel and movie. Not with the Safety on, You Won't : When Hawkeye and Potter are pinned in a foxhole and Hawkeye must actually fire his pistol, Potter cocks the hammer first. Which means Hawkeye carries it hammer down, which on a 1911note Actually a Star Model B, a Spanish 9mm copy (without a grip safety), because 9mm blanks were more reliable then. is actually the least safe way to carry it (John Browning designed it this way, so no matter how much you drop a cocked 1911, it will never accidentally discharge). Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep : Parodied by Father Mulcahy, of all people. Now I lay me down to sleep, A bag of peanuts at my feet. If I die before I wake, Give them to my brother Jake. Followed by a full fifteen seconds of the other cast members in the tent laughing uncontrollably. It's unclear whether they just lost it, or they were scripted to laugh. Now You Tell Me : Happens in Season 1 when Henry reads instructions on how to disarm a bomb while Hawkeye and Trapper perform the actual task. A few steps in, they're given one step followed by a "But first-" clause. Obfuscating Disability : In "Deal Me Out", Radar apparently hits an elderly Korean villager with a jeep. When the man demands $50 not to report Radar to the MPs, a visiting officer susses out that he's a notorious con man known as "Whiplash Wang". Reprised in "Exorcism" with a twist. Frank warns that this too may be a scam, until the man's granddaughter explains that the old man was trying to frighten away a demon he believes has possessed him . Klinger employs this (and/or Playing Sick ) in some of his dodges. Once he faked fainting spells, and another time he pretended to have crippling depression. Averted, however, in the one time that he was actually ill (he had anemia) but everyone else assumed he was faking . His response to their claims for faking points out that while he may play a scam or obfuscate to try and get out, he has never done it when peoples lives are on the line and he is needed in surgery. Inverted when Klinger is too close to an exploding shell and loses his hearing. At first the main characters suspect he's trying another ploy to get out of the army, but it turns out he really has lost his hearing. At the end of the episode, he gets his hearing back, only for another character to tell him, "Too bad, Klinger, hearing-loss is surefire ticket out of the army!" Klinger, of course, immediately starts pretending he's lost it again. Obfuscating Insanity : Repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted by Klinger. Also tried unsuccessfully by Hawkeye to get leave in the episode "Bananas, Crackers and Nuts." In "Fade Out, Fade In", Klinger enlists the services of a "lawyer" who turns out to be using this. Subverted by a one-off character, Corporal Miller, in the episode "Major Topper," whom Klinger is convinced is faking. After Miller returns to the states and makes a fortune off of the toys he was able to make based on his experiences in Korea, Klinger is convinced Miller was a fake until Klinger reads part of Miller's letter where Miller asks Klinger if anyone could describe the glider Miller claims to have seen. Obstructive Bureaucrat : They're in the Army, after all, so the 4077th occasionally find themselves dealing with one or more of these. Obvious Stunt Double : When some of the characters are riding in a chopper, and it's clear it's not the actual actors. Once a Season : Up until Cerebus Syndrome set in, the writers and producers made it a point to have at least one episode each season that was far more serious in tone, or subject matter (such as "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" from Season 1, or "George" from Season 2). Beginning with Season 3's "O.R.", there would also be at least one or two episodes per season where the laugh track would be omitted entirely. One Crazy Night : Several episodes compress the usual wacky hijinks into one night. The episode Deal Me Out, centers around a poker game. In between, the characters have to deal with a con man, a violent soldier and a paranoid CID officer. "It Happened One Night" deals with the entire camp observing blackout conditions due to enemy shelling - which happens to turn out to be their own artillery; during this time, Hawkeye deals with a spastic shell-shocked soldier in Post-Op, Klinger trains a new corpsman pulling guard duty, Frank literally tears Margaret's tent apart to look for his love notes she kept, B.J. worries about his patient whose had an excessive amount of blood IVs, and Potter and Radar work to try to get the shelling stopped. "No Sweat" has the camp unable to sleep during a miserable heat wave; B.J. stays up fuming because he got a letter from his wife mentioning that the gutters need to be cleaned, which he views as his responsibility, Klinger stays up taking apart and putting back together the P.A. system, Potter reluctantly takes a sleeping pill to help him sleep, and Margaret suffers from a severe case of prickly heat on her butt. The Oner : "Point Of View" has several, including an Epic Tracking Shot that begins over the hill and ends on the helipad. One Scene, Two Monologues : In "Life with Father", Colonel Blake and Father Mulcahy have a conversation of this type. (Blake's worried about his wife being unfaithful back home; Mulcahy's worried about his sister, a nun, possibly leaving the sisterhood; the two of them consequently talk right past each other.) One-Shot Character : Not only were there a number of them, but many of them got a Day in the Limelight episode: Young-Hi: A young Korean woman who was bought by an America Sergeant as his own personal "Moose" (an oriental slang term for girl), whom Hawkeye, Trapper, and Spearchucker liberate and attempt to teach her how to act like a person. John "Cowboy" Hodges: A Reno-native chopper pilot who fears his stateside wife may be cheating on him and continually attempts to assassinate Henry for refusing to let him go home. Lieutenant Edwina Ferguson: A disasterously clumsy and awkward nurse who initially joined the army on an impulse after her fiancee enlisted and she never heard from him again, and still hadn't found love since. Colonel Buzz Brighton (the ringbanger): who's so callous about his army career, yet in such peak physical fitness that Hawkeye and Trapper convince him he's suffering a mental breakdown and needs to be sent stateside for a while. Kim: An assumed orphaned boy who Trapper decides to adopt until his mother turns up in the end to reclaim him. Nancy Sue Parker: A young twentysomething whom Henry falls in love with, despite the difference in their ages (and already being married), and despite taking into consideration at that young age, Nancy's hormones aren't quite under control. Private Baker: Who was desperate for plastic surgery to reshape his large, bulbous nose. George: A foot soldier who was beaten by his fellow soldiers for being gay, and whom Frank tries to get a dishonorable discharge for. General Bartford Hamilton Steele: The crazy general who inspects the 4077th and decides they need to move even closer to the front to conserve on helicopter fuel and get casualties to the hospital faster. General Robert "Iron Guts" Kelly: A visiting general who dies in the middle of hanky-panky with Margaret. Colonel Reese: An older female colonel who has the hots for Frank, but when she's caught forcing herself on him, she claims rape. Lieutenant "Digger" Dettmuller: An undertaker who was sent to claim Hawkeye's body after he was mistakenly registered as dead, but is still in need of taking a body back to the morgue. Captain Arnold Chandler: A downed bomber pilot who suffers an identity crisis and believes he's Jesus Christ. Smilin' Jack: A chopper pilot whose desperate to win the Chopper Pilot of the Year award, despite Potter ordering him to be grounded due to having diabetes. Most of the nurses in "The Nurses", particularly Mickie Baker who ends up in house arrest for arguing with Margaret, but is sneaked out so she can spend the night with her newlywedded husband as he passes through on a 24-hour pass. Sergeant Billy Tyler: The All-American running back from Ottumwa, Iowa, who loses his leg, and believes his football career is over. Lieutenant Carrie Donovan: A heartbroken nurse who receives a "Dear Jane" letter from her husband, but finds comfort (and kinda probably a little more) from B.J. Leo Bardanaro: B.J.'s old friend who's a notorious practical joker and gets B.J. by having him arrested for pranking a general in a hotel by yelling fire while the general and his secretary were in the bathtub at the time. Captain Roy Dupree and Captain Lorraine Anderson, both of whom temporarily trade places with Hawkeye and Bigelow, respectively; the former B.J. and Charles find incredibly obnoxious for his boorish personality, the latter is a childhood friend of Margaret's and is actually envied for still retaining her carefree spirit. Colonel Lillian "Lil" Rayburn: An elderly female colonel who spends a few days at the 4077th for inspection, and ends up becoming very friendly with Potter, much to Radar's outrage. Sergeant Jerry Neilsen: A field medic who comes down with amnesia after his baby brother is killed by mortar fire in his bunker. Private Rich: A foot soldier whose stay at the 4077th is seen completely through his point of view after sustaining a throat injury. Kwang: A Korean Charles hires to be his own personal houseboy, not knowing he's actually a North Korean spy sent to gather information of the 4077th's surgical techniques to find out what makes the unit so efficient. Inga: A Swedish lady doctor who unintentionally bruises both Hawkeye and Charles's male egos. Among others. One Steve Limit : Trapper John McIntyre, Francis John Patrick Mulcahy, Ugly John Black, Ho-Jon. Henry's wife's name was originally Mildred (later Lorraine), while Potter's wife was also named Mildred (as well as a girl Trapper had a one-night stand with in Chicago). Both Trapper and Frank's wives names were Louise. Played straight in an episode where the hospital had to examine and treat five different locals, all named Kim Luck. (It was their Kim Lucky day.) This is implied to be a case where a number of people are all using the same alias. In addition to them, Trapper almost adopted a presumed orphaned boy whose name was Kim, and Hawkeye also helped one of the medics marry his Korean baby-mama, whose name was also Kim. Mind you, "Kim" is a family name in Korea, not a personal name; and it is more common than Smith in English speaking countries. So it's actually more surprising that even more characters weren't named Kim. Various different nurses went through the names Able, Baker, Gage, Mitchell, Anderson, Simmons, among others. Radar had two different pets (one was a bunny, the other was a guinea pig) that were named Bongo. In "Mail Call Three", we learn there's at least one other Capt. Benjamin Pierce serving in Korea, and having his letters mixed up with Hawkeye's. Peggy Hunnicutt and Peggy Bigelow. The Only Believer : From the main cast, only Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan really believe in the cause of the Korean War. All the rest are draftees and anti-war. Open Heart Dentistry : On one occasion, Dr. Freedman was asked to help out in O.R.; as a psychiatrist he is a qualified medical doctor, but he's not a surgeon, and as Sidney put it: "medical school was a long time ago". Spearchucker as well. He commented once that "anything outside the skull, I'm dead" while performing surgery on a patient's abdomen. Margaret Houlihan is also taught by Hawkeye to perform emergency surgery note they have temporarily been sent to replace a medical team killed in action in the front line. Despite her protestations that as a nurse she is not trained and legally cannot perform surgery, she performs very capably. And even the Padre can perform basic surgical procedures when assisting in the OR. On one occasion, he performs a tracheotomy on the road with Hawkeye coaching him over the radio. And one gifted doctor, temporarily with the 4077th, turns out not to be a qualified doctor at all - he is a Walter Mitty who is pretending to be a doctor. Hawkeye notes that for a guy with no medical training he's still ten times better than Frank Burns and never lost a patient. Open Secret : Frank and Margaret's relationship in seasons 1-4. Father Mulcahy was the only one who didn't know officially but did suspect. Out with a Bang : "Iron Guts Kelly" combines this with a bit of Of Corpse He's Alive . Paranoia Gambit : "The Joker is Wild". BJ bets Hawkeye he can prank eveyone in the camp, and as his pranks intensify and everyone but Hawkeye gets pranked, he sleeps outside within a barb wire enclosure. Then at the end, BJ and his "victims" reveal that no one was pranked, and Hawkeye was the only one pranked. So technically, BJ lost the bet. In another escalating prank war initiated by Charles, after they drop a dummy on her while in bed, Margaret tells BJ she sent a letter to his wife detailing their year long affair, and that Hawkeye set them up. It's actually another Kansas City Shuffle , on Charles. Patriotic Fervor : Frequently displayed by Frank Burns and (especially) Colonel Flagg. Pet the Dog : Margaret gets one in season 3 as a prelude to her later softening-up, as she cares for a feverish Radar. Pie in the Face : Father Mulcahy gets one (thrown by Margaret and meant for Hawkeye and BJ) in "An Eye for a Tooth". Pin-Pulling Teeth : In a moment of ill-considered "manliness", Frank pulls the pin out of a grenade with his teeth and spits it away. Then he realizes what he's done and starts desperately searching for it. Pointy-Haired Boss : Colonel Blake, much of the time. Poor Man's Porn : Hawkeye's nudist magazines, and Radar's reference to looking at National Geographic when his Uncle Ed wasn't around. Additionally, Radar's holes drilled in the nurses' shower tent. And Hawkeye was prone to bribing Radar by offering him to look at the nurses' x-rays. Henry's movies from Cuba and his Japanese prints. Porn Stache : Donned by BJ beginning in season 7. Ugly John also sported one. P.O.V. Cam : "Point of View" The Prankster : BJ especially, but other characters (Hawkeye, Trapper, Charles ) take on this role in various episodes as well. Even Frank Burns gets to try his hand at this in "Showtime". The season 11 episode "The Joker Is Wild" turns the entire camp into Pranksters. Although they're eventually revealed to have all been collaborating on a master pranking of Hawkeye by BJ. Precision F-Strike : The usually timid and soft-spoken Radar once lets loose an exasperated "Hell!" The Wham Line from the final episode, which was one of the forbidden Seven Dirty Words in The '80s : Hawkeye: You son of a bitch, why did you make me remember that? The above was also used first in the episode "Guerilla My Dreams," when Hawkeye seethes at a Korean interrogator taking a female enemy soldier off to be tortured. It was the first time "bitch" ever aired uncensored on prime-time television. Pregnancy Scare : A subplot of "What's Up Doc?" has Margaret believing she's pregnant after having spent R&R in Tokyo with Penobscott, and worries that giving birth will result in an automatic discharge. For confirmation, Hawkeye borrows Radar's female bunny for Margaret's pregnancy test, which turns up negative. Apparently, Margaret was simply having gallbladder problems. Present Day Past Pretty in Mink : Klinger, although one was used as a plot point before he stopped cross-dressing. Promotion, Not Punishment : Klinger is threatened with this. In his continued efforts of trying to get a discharge from the Army by running around in dresses, among other things, Frank, at one point, says to him, "I've warned you, that crazy stuff's not gonna wash with me! The next time I find you in a floppy hat, or a brassiere... I'll promote you!" On one occasion, Klinger recalls trying to convince his draft board he was crazy. He was told, "Keep this up and we'll make you an officer." Promotion to Opening Titles : Jamie Farr (season 4), William Christopher (season 5). Prosthetic Limb Reveal : In the episode "Dreams", Hawkeye dreams that he's taking a test and the proctor tells Winchester to remove Hawkeye's arms, which are then tossed onto a pile. Then Hawkeye is supposed to operate on an injured Korean boy, but can't because he doesn't have arms. In the context of the dream, Hawkeye doesn't have real arms, which is revealed when Winchester removes them. It symbolizes Hawkeye's frustration at his inability to make any real changes to the war. Pungeon Master : Most of the characters at times, but Hawkeye and BJ in particular. Punished for Sympathy : "The Trial of Henry Blake" puts this into perspective: in an attempt to have Henry relieved of duty as commanding officer of the 4077th, Margaret and Frank have him charged with a number of misdemeanors, including giving aid and comfort to North Koreans. In actuality, Henry had been contributing penicillin, among other drugs, to an elderly American nurse who runs a clinic in enemy territory dedicated to aiding poverty-stricken civilians. Put on a Bus : Henry, Trapper, Frank, and Radar are all Put on a Plane and sent back to the States. (In Henry's case, the plane crashes , literally and figuratively.) Each of these people get a mention in the final two episodes: Hawkeye and BJ contribute items once belonging to Radar and Henry for the time capsule, they explain to Charles that nothing of Frank's would be included due to his incompetence, and when BJ leaves for home in the series finale without leaving Hawkeye a farewell note, Hawkeye laments that Trapper did the same thing. Really Gets Around : Hawkeye, obviously, though surprisingly he is portrayed as more or less monogamous with Nurse Gage during the second and third season. During the Dramatic MASH phase, his womanizing slowly cuts back as he becomes more generally respectable, and he gets a couple of episodes where his attitude is called into question by himself. Trapper John is as bad as Hawkeye when it comes to chasing, and unlike him is actually married back home. Hot Lips Houlihan is this during the Comedic MASH phase, as she not only tends to have had intimate relationships with the visiting officers (her promiscuity is her worst-kept secret, and alongside her passionate love affair with Frank Burns is why she has her nickname), but also tends to make use of these relationships to further various schemes she and/or Frank make. This aspect pretty much gets cut completely during the Dramatic Mash phase. Really Seventeen Years Old : In "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", there's a wounded kid (played by Ron Howard ) who lied about his age to get into the army and impress a girl back home. Hawkeye discovers this and initially agrees to keep his secret , but after seeing a buddy die on the operating table from wounds received in combat, he changes his mind and turns the kid in. Kid: I'll hate you for the rest of my life! Hawkeye: Let's hope it's a long and happy hate. Ironically, Ron Howard was actually 18 at the time of filming. Hawkeye gives a fairly blistering one to Frank in "Sticky Wicket". Margaret gives an epic one to Hawkeye about his treating women as sex objects. Reassigned To Korea : How Henry Blake ended up in the 4077th. He was in Honolulu when he responded to an order for a coffee enema by asking, "With cream and sugar?" Also applies to Charles, who happened to be beating his CO at cribbage (to the tune of $672, or about $6,100 in today's money) and being insufferable about it when the request for Frank's replacement came. Reckless Gun Usage : Frank Burns, who seems dangerously unaware of basic firearm safety for a military officer. He has both wounded a fellow officer (BJ) and shot himself in the foot. Not to mention the time that he blew up an Army ammo dump (though it was technically Hawkeye that made it happen - Burns' crew was about to refuse the order). Colonel Sam Flagg - the overzealous Intelligence officer. Major Sidney Theodore Freedman - the divisional psychiatrist. Private Igor Stramensky - the 4077th's mess tent server. Sergeant Zelmo Zale - the 4077th's supply sergeant. Sergeant Luther Rizzo - the 4077th motor pool sergeant. Cho Man Chin - the swindling Korean peddler. Rosie - the proprietor of the Local Hangout just outside of camp. Sergeant Jack Scully - a front-line soldier and potential romantic interest for Margaret. Klinger and Father Mulcahy started out as this before eventually becoming regulars. The numerous nurses and the handful of generals as well. Retirony : the soldiers who died often suffered from this, as did Henry Blake. BJ takes extreme measures to negate some of the irony in "Death Takes a Holiday". Red Wire Blue Wire : In an episode where an unexploded bomb lands in the compound and the doctors are given instructions on how to disarm it. Reunion Show : Memories of MASH (1991) featured clips and pre-recorded interviews with the cast members; 30th Anniversary Reunion (2002) had the producers and surviving cast members getting together for a roundtable discussion. Done in an episode by having the families of the 4077 personnel gather in New York for a weekend together to bond and lament missing their loved ones. Right Behind Me : Invoked a few times in earlier seasons, whenever Frank and/or Margaret would barge in to register complaints with Henry, while Henry is preoccupied with reading sports magazines, or even sleeping, and casually mentioning to Radar what pains they are. Henry: Frank Burns has got to be the biggest horse's patoot in this man's army. Frank: You think so? Henry: (Hums innocently while turning around to find Frank in his office) A later episode has Charles Winchester, who's temporarily in charge while Potter's away, occupying the CO's office and employing Klinger as his personal valet. In a scene toward the end, Charles makes insulting remarks about Potter to (he assumes) Klinger, not realizing that Potter has returned and slipped in behind him. Right on the Tick : Five O'Clock Charlie, every day at 5 pm, comes in his plane and tosses a single bomb at an ammo dump. Road Trip Plot : The two-part Season 4 premiere "Welcome to Korea" (BJ's debut) was one of these. Also, "Rainbow Bridge" and "Aid Station" (Season 3); "The Bus" (Season 4); "Bug Out" (Season 5); "Comrades in Arms" (Season 6); "They Call the Wind Korea" and "CAVE" (Season 7); "The Yalu Brick Road" (Season 8). A significant chunk of the series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", takes place away from Uijeongbu: the beach party in Incheon, the mental hospital where Hawkeye is treated by Sidney, and the temporary camp where the 4077th relocates after the wildfire forces them to bug out. For no readily apparent reason, every episode that features Colonel Flagg also features someone named Perkins - usually with the rank of Captain, and usually not their actual name. Also, not actually a gag. Throughout the first couple seasons: Henry: Folks, could I have your attention, please? (Everyone ignores him and keeps talking) Radar: (Stands up) QUIET!!! (Everyone shuts up) Henry: Thank you, Radar. A group of characters introducing each other by rank: "General, Captain." "Major, General." "Colonel, Major." "Captain, Colonel." And so forth. A gag possibly perfected with: Henry: Major Houlihan! Major Stoner. Margaret: Major. Henry: Major Burns, Major Stoner. Frank: Major. Hawkeye: Well, I think we made a major breakthrough here. Tried out in a couple of episodes: Henry: (To a visitor) These are Captains Pierce... Hawkeye: (Interrupting and gesturing to Trapper) And these are Captains McIntyre. In the early seasons, the majors going to Henry's office to complain about something and Margaret doing all the talking for Frank, usually leading to a snarky comment from Henry. Also in the early seasons, Radar informing Henry that Frank and/or Margaret wanted to see him, and Henry telling Radar to send them away, only for them to walk in without waiting to be admitted. Henry's awkward sex lectures. Frank and Margaret exchanging secret knocks prior to his entering her tent. Subverted on at least one occasion by having Radar enter instead. Subverted on another occasion where Hawkeye and Trapper enter... then later, when Margaret lets Frank in without knocking, he mentions it, to which she replies, "Frank, EVERYBODY knows our secret knock." Hawkeye/Trapper/BJ greeting Frank with "Hello", "Good morning", etc. and Frank automatically taking it as an insult. Several times in Seasons 4 and 5, Col. Potter mentions how many months and days remain until his retirement. Various characters waking Radar up in the middle of the night to make a stateside phone call, since he's the only one who knows how to operate the telephone system; we even have this exchange on one occasion: Radar: Why can't anybody ever use this darn phone during the daytime?! BJ: I'm sorry Radar, I can't wait that long, look, I owe you one... Radar: Boy, if I had an hour sleep for everytime somebody ever said that to me! Ironically, Radar explained to Frank in an earlier episode that it's no use trying to phone the States in the middle of the (Korean) afternoon, because it's last night there. "By this time, everybody's gone to bed and already said, 'See you tomorrow'." Hawkeye spends much of the first couple seasons kidding Radar mercilessly about his short stature. The latrine has an odd habit of bad things happening to it, i.e. getting hit by mortar fire, run over by tanks, towed away to North Korea ... The P.A. announcer making disparaging comments about the Mess Tent food and/or the movie that's going to be shown later. For example, "Tonight's movie is a holdover from last week and will be shown right after supper, which is also a holdover from last week." P.A. Announcer: Attention, all personnel. Due to circumstances beyond our control, lunch will be served today. An episode-specific instance: In the episode "Bottle Fatigue", Charles is upset about a letter his sister sent him with news of her engagement to an Italian. His attempts at making contact with her include him specifying that he's trying to get a hold of someone in Boston. Each time, whoever he is speaking clarifies by asking, "Boston, Massachusetts?" which is followed by him angrily declaring, "Yes! Boston, Massachusetts!" Sad Clown : Hawkeye. But don't tell him that. Sarcasm Failure Scenery Censor : Hawkeye's naked stroll through the compound in "Dear Dad...Again". They even moved the signpost to just beside the door of the Swamp to complete the effect. (It normally stands in an open area in the middle of camp.) Also done with Hawkeye and BJ after Margaret steals their robes from the shower in "An Eye for a Tooth", and with Winchester after Hawkeye pulls down his pants in the O.R. in "Bottoms Up". Scrabble Babble : In "Mad Dogs and Servicemen". Hawkeye: "Vailness". A quality of "vail". The act of "vailing". To be full of "vaily". Screw the War, We're Partying! : Subverted actually, as most of the personnel in camp were simply "acting crazy to keep their sanity". After all, the instant the wounded arrive, the staff drop their hijinks and get to work with the utmost professionalism beyond their usual snarky banter. Most of the Season 2 premiere, in which a psychiatrist is sent to the 4077th to determine if the personnel have begun to succumb the stress of operating so close to the front and that the unit should be disbanded and everyone reassigned. He's completely certain that they should be, until a batch of wounded show up and suddenly this bunch of total nutbars turn into the most efficient medical operation he's ever seen. He gets drunk and gives his report to the general while drunk. Scunthorpe Problem : Father Mulcahy's nickname of "Dago Red", used once in the pilot and then never again in the series. In a way, this inverts the movie, where he was initially introduced by his name, and then always addressed by his nickname after that. Seduction-Proof Marriage : Played straight by BJ Hunnicutt, who is (almost) completely faithful to his wife because of this. The one or two times he does get seduced he feels awful about it afterwards. Played with between Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan. The former is married but is having an ongoing relationship with Margaret. When Margaret gets engaged he thinks they can still fool around but she shoots him down. Seemingly Wholesome '50s Girl : Nancy Sue Parker, in "Henry in Love". Series Continuity Error : The show had quite a few of these. Early on, Hawkeye is said to be from Vermont, have a sister and his mom still alive; later he's from Maine, an only child and his mother died when he was ten. In the novel, his mother is dead but he has a brother. Colonel Potter's hometown is Hannibal, MO, but for some reason, in one episode, it's changed to Nebraska, and in another it's Montana. Possibly Justified by his time in the Army. Moving from place to place usually prevents one from setting down roots, which became a plot point when he mentions that Mildred had demanded they buy a house in Hannibal so that they would have a permanent home instead of constantly changing military housing. During BJ's earlier appearances, he mentions that his daughter, Erin, is two years old, however, in the finale, he's upset at the prospect of missing her second birthday. He also says he and his wife went out for the first time after Erin was born and returned home to find his orders to ship out to Korea had come through. In "Last Laugh", BJ claims that his friend Bardonaro played a practical joke at BJ's wedding and that they both gave up practical joking "ten years ago" (Presumably after they both graduated from Medical School and after BJ's wedding). 1953-10=1943-both BJ and Bardonaro would have been drafted in World War II; yet Bardonaro wears only Korean War medals on his dress jacket. In "Welcome to Korea" BJ's age is given as 28, which means BJ went to Medical School at 14 and graduated at 18. Radar's virginity. It's established in the original novel and movie that he's lost his virginity, as an example of being corrupted by wartime impulses; when the series begins, Radar is a virgin (and the fact is even played with on occasion); in an early Season Three episode, it is heavily implied that he loses his virginity to a nurse of the week; afterwards, he's back to being a virgin, and seemingly stays that way. Radar is more than happy to smoke Colonel Blake's cigars and sneak his whiskey when he isn't around, but is introduced to them for apparently the first time by Colonel Potter. In one early episode Colonel Blake discovers Radar has a tattoo while giving him a physical. A much later episode has a subplot about Radar contemplating getting a tattoo for the very first time. Within the same season, Frank mentions having taken two judo lessons, then, just a few episodes later, Frank confuses judo for a religion. The 4077 staff's ability to speak Korean. At times Radar can speak it conversationally, other times it's like he's unaware Korean is even a language. Hawkeye is seen practicing Korean a couple of times, but doesn't seem to have picked it up. Father Mulcahy speaks a few words, but Margaret is the only one that is particularly fluent. And even that wasn't entirely consistent: in the episode where the 4077th adopts a seemingly orphaned boy, Margaret tries to read him a bedtime story, but is constantly checking with an English-to-Korean dictionary throughout the story in an attempt to translate for him. The year the show is supposed to take place changes repeatedly, from 1950 in the pilot to (reasonably) 1953 by "Rainbow Bridge" in season three (based on a real incident), then Potter's arrival in September 1952 and a passing reference several episodes later to General Eisenhower's visit to Korea in 1952 in "The Late Captain Pierce", then New Year's Day 1951 and 1952 in "A War for All Seasons" (which did the most damage) note The episode begins New Year's Day 1951 and included Col. Potter as Father Time. Henry Blake was killed in August or Sept 1952 since Col. Potter reported for duty at the 4077 on September 19, 1952. Did Potter step back in time?, an episode covering China's entrance to the war in October 1950 with MacArthur's statement of "This is an entirely new war" announced on the PA, and a near constant reference to General MacArthur being in command throughout the show's run (MacArthur was relieved of command in spring 1951 for insubordination). Before Radar's discharge, Klinger was a reasonably competent substitute clerk. One episode after Radar leaves, Klinger has trouble doing even the most basic duties until he gets help from Potter and Mulcahy. In "Comrades in Arms Part 2", while demonstrating a new vascular surgery at the 8063, Margaret mentions the clamp they use was invented at the 4077, yet three episodes later in "Patient 4077", they actually make the clamp. Subverted in the episode order on Netflix where "Patient 4077" is 3 episodes earlier. In "For Want of a Boot" in Season Two, it's the dead of winter, and it's Frank's birthday, however, later in "The Most Unforgettable Characters", it's Frank's birthday again, yet it's the middle of June. Potter's age and service in the First World War . He mentions he lied about his age to join in "Change of Command", and in "Foreign Affairs" he mentions he fell in love with a French woman named Danielle twenty years his senior. But, in "Pressure Points", he says he's 62, which would put his date of birth in 1889 or 1890, making him at least 27 by the time the US entered the war. He also mentions he was inspired to join the cavalry by Theodore Roosevelt 's Rough Riders and San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, so while it could be possible he joined before the war, he also states he joined in 1917. At the end of "Smilin' Jack", the PA announcer makes a reference to the battle of Solma-Ri, also known as "Gloucesters Hill" or the battle of the Imjin River, in which 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment held off overwhelming Chinese forces for four days, from 22 to 25 April 1951. note Although completely surrounded, hugely outnumbered and short of ammunition, the Gloucesters continued to fight, delaying the Chinese advance long enough for other UN forces to establish a new defensive line where the Chinese advance was finally halted. When finally ordered to retreat, only 46 Gloucesters out of an initial strength of around 700 men managed to reach UN lines, with the rest either dead, missing or captured. Following the battle, the "Glorious Gloucesters" (as they became known) were awarded the US Distinguished Unit Citation for "exceptionally outstanding performance of duty and extraordinary heroism in action", while the British decorations included two Victoria Crosses. However, two episodes later in "Deluge", China has intervened in the war, entering Korea with 30 divisions, totalling 300,000 troops, which occured on 3 November 1950, and a reference is made to General MacArthur's statement of "we now face an entirely new war", which he made to the Joints Chiefs of Staff on 28 November 1950. In "Mail Call", Hawkeye says this is his second war. But then mentions that he was drafted. If he had served in WW II he would have had a 4A classification for prior service, making him exempt. In "The Novocaine Mutiny", Burns is stated to have been drafted as a doctor, but other episodes state he was a reservist who was activated when the war broke out. Mulcahy's piano playing skills, or lack thereof, seem to change all the time. On some occasions, he can actually play the piano quite well, especially when it comes to ragtimes or waltzes, but most of the time, his playing leaves a lot to be desired, either rendering the tune unrecognizable, or having trouble finding where the music ends. In the Season 6 episode "Potter's Retirement", Charles mentions that the first successful open-heart surgery has just been performed. This took place on May 6, 1953, less than three months before the Korean War ended. Serious Business : In "Sons and Bowlers", the 4077 has a bowling match against a Marine unit, and Col. Potter makes it abundantly clear that winning it is very, very important to him. '70s Hair : Alan Alda, Mike Farrell, and Loretta Swit all sported increasingly blatant (and therefore blatantly anachronistic ) examples of this as the show went on. Shameful Source of Knowledge : In "Tea and Empathy", a passing soldier confesses to Father Mulcahy that he was involved with the black market, and reveals that stolen penicillin is kept under an old bell at a burn-out school house. As it turns out, the 4077th is having a dire penicillin shortage and can't obtain any new supply, leaving Mulcahy conflicted about what he should do about what he knows about the whereabouts of some penicillin. She's Got Legs : Seen on the rare occasions when Margaret wears a skirt, or shorts, or a short nightgown, or runs out of the shower wearing only a towel (and curiously, pantyhose). Anytime a nurse is forced out of the shower, she will be wearing only a towel that barely covers her lower body enough to be shown on television. He's Got Legs: Klinger, when he's in drag, actually has some pretty shapely legs for a guy. Ship Tease : A few episodes hint at the fact that Margaret and Hawkeye actually have feelings for each other... some do more than just hint it... and their last interaction is a decent length, passionate kiss in the series finale. "Decent length" doesn't begin to cover it. It's at least a half a minute long, during which Col. Potter, B.J. and Charles are standing on looking uncomfortable and trying to find something else to look at. The season 6 two-parter "Comrades in Arms" has them making out while spending the night in an abandoned hut behind enemy lines. In the morning it's clear that Margaret takes things a lot more seriously than Hawkeye does, leading to a serious falling-out between them before they finally decide they're Better as Friends . Some early episodes show Margaret also having a barely-suppressed attraction to Trapper John. One episode has her openly, albeit drunkenly, coming on to him when everyone thinks he's going home and throws him a farewell party. Early Winchester episodes suggested that he'd become Frank's replacement in more way than one by hinting at an upcoming Relationship Upgrade between him and Margaret, but that never came to fruition. An early season episode has Hawkeye grab Margaret and give her a long, passionate kiss in front of Trapper, Henry, and Frank. Frank's increasingly angry protests eventually result in Henry telling Hawkeye to stop already. Afterwards, a blissed-out looking Margaret makes an appreciative comment in response to Frank's insult of Hawkeye, and Hawkeye makes an appreciative comment to Trapper in response to asking how it was. Shirtless Scene : Any scene in the showers. Depending on the actor, this was either fanservice or Squick . Shoo Out the Clowns : Henry Blake and Frank Burns were probably the most broadly comedic characters in the ensemble during the early seasons, and their departures (and replacement with the more grounded Potter and Winchester, respectively) marked a definite sea change in the show's shift in emphasis from comedy to drama. The switch from wisecracking, skirt-chasing Trapper to quiet, cerebral family man B.J. is another example. As is the departure of Radar, which actually cost the show two of its funniest characters; not only was Radar himself gone, but Klinger was made his replacement as company clerk and consequently abandoned his pursuit of a Section 8 discharge (and the cross-dressing and other wacky stunts that went along with it). Part of the reason for Colonel Flagg getting written out of the later seasons was that his characterization didn't mesh with the show's tone by then. Shout-Out : Folksinger Loudon Wainwright III appeared in a couple Season 3 episodes as a "Captain Spaulding", a clear Shout Out to Groucho Marx's Animal Crackers character. For a short while in S4, they had a really big thing for referencing The Shadow in almost every episode. More generally, many other classic programs, films, and songs of the era are referenced, either in-universe or in episode titles or both. Charles Emerson Winchester III was possibly named after a fellow Bostonian, founder of Emerson College, Charles Wesley Emerson. Sherman Tecumseh Potter is one for William Tecumseh Sherman. Klinger's early Running Gag of wearing womens' clothing in an unsuccessful bid to be declared insane and win a Section 8 discharge is loosely based on stories about Lenny Bruce attempting to get thrown out of the Navy by dressing up as a WAVE (or women's naval auxillary) during World War II (in truth, he only wore a WAVES uniform once for a comedy show, then lied to the psychiatrist to spite his commander for ordering an evaluation). Klinger even obliquely lampshades this with a reference to an uncle in the Navy using the same trick in WWII (and his family periodically sending him things from his uncle's WWII wardrobe). Klinger often expressed his support of two real-life institutions in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio: the Mud Hens (minor-league baseball team) and Tony Packo's Cafe (hot-dog restaurant). These references were added due to Klinger's actor (Jamie Farr) being from Toledo and being familiar with both of those institutions. Sick and Wrong : In "The Late Captain Pierce", this is a nurse's reaction to B.J.'s idea to hold a wake for Hawkeye, who's been mistakenly listed as dead by the Army. Hawkeye quickly assures her that he would have wanted it that way. In "Period of Adjustment", Hawkeye and Margaret discover that a drunken B.J. and Klinger made a Dartboard of Hate with a picture of Radar's face ( It Makes Sense in Context ), leading Margaret to exclaim, "Now that's sick!" Sick Episode : Most of the characters come down with the flu in "Carry On, Hawkeye" and get food poisoning in "The Yalu Brick Road". Hawkeye starts sneezing uncontrollably in "Bless You, Hawkeye" and has chronic back pain in "Hepatitis". Both turn out to be psychosomatic in nature, however. Henry suffers a ruptured appendix in "The Long John Flap". Frank develops a hernia in "As You Were" and contracts a severe fever in "Soldier of the Month". Radar gets tonsillitis in "None Like It Hot". Col. Potter and Charles get the mumps in "Heal Thyself". "Follies of the Living, Concerns of the Dead" has Klinger getting a severe fever and seeing the ghost of a dead soldier . Margaret develops laryngitis in "Say No More", and both she and Charles get food poisoning in "The Grim Reaper". Significant Reference Date : During the P.A. announcement at the end of "Welcome to Korea". Skip the Anesthetic : Col. Flagg of the CID insists on going into surgery without anesthetic because if he's knocked out he might inadvertently talk, and nobody at the unit is cleared to hear any of the state secrets he might accidentally divulge. In another episode a Turk and a Greek soldier are both at the 4077th at the same time trying to out-stoic one another, refusing anesthetic after a fight at Rosie's bar. Turkish soldier: What's this? of "Suicide is Painless" is very upbeat-sounding, the closing theme even more so. Worse, several episodes have the closing theme played over the opening credits. Source Music : In a carryover from the film, the P.A. occasionally plays music in camp. This actually becomes a plot point in "Your Hit Parade", where Potter tasks Radar with keeping up morale during one grueling O.R. session by spinning popular tunes of the day. (Particularly "Sentimental Journey".) Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace : Played with in "Margaret's Marriage"; at the line in question, everyone present turns to Frank, but he demurs. Speech Impediment : Winchester counsels a soldier who is cruelly bullied as "stupid" because he stammers. Revealing that he's looked into the man's service record and knows of his actual high intelligence, he gives him Moby-Dick to read. Returning to his tent, he listens happily to a taped letter from his beloved sister Honoria... who also stammers. Spider-Sense : Radar had this (hence his nickname ), although it was downplayed over time. Although the man Radar was based on (in the book) says he did it just by really paying attention (so he'd hear things like incoming choppers before other people would). Spinoff : Two or three, depending on how you look at it. Trapper John, MD is the first and the only one with any success, lasting a whole seven seasons. The second, AfterMASH , only lasted two seasons, and struggled every step of the way — a TV Guide article called it the seventh-worst TV show of all time , and a Time Magazine poll ranked it as one of the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century . The third, WALTER, wasn't picked up, and the pilot was aired on CBS as a half-hour special. Trapper John doesn't legally count, however; the MASH producers sued for royalty payments, but the court ruled that it was a spinoff of the books and movie, not the show. Stealth Hi/Bye : Usually attempted unsuccessfully by Flagg. Steel Eardrums : Averted, when Father Mulcahy is deafened by an artillery shell. Happened to Klinger once too, except he regained his hearing by the end of the episode. Mulcahy didn't. He did in the spinoff. Stiff Upper Lip : Explored: In one episode, the 4077th is treating wounded from a British unit. Their Major walks around, telling the men how they'll soon be back in action, after handing out cups of tea to the wounded in the field. Hawkeye asks him how he can be so callous about his men's lives, even risking killing some of them by giving tea to those with abdominal wounds. The British major explains that he is speaking about going back into battle soon to give the men the impression that things aren't as bad as they seem (by downplaying their injuries, he is keeping up their morale by not letting them dwell on the severity of their wounds), and that it wasn't known on the frontlines that giving tea to treat abdominal wounds could cause complications, and promises to stop the practice immediately. Stock Footage : Aside from the opening sequence (which sometimes still featured Radar years after his departure), all the bugout footage of the camp being torn down was filmed in season one. In the finale, you can even see Radar! Strawman Political : Frank Burns, but that's okay since he was damn funny that way. Strip Poker : An early episode has a gag where Hawkeye and Trapper are down to their underwear while playing this with (and losing badly to) a nurse. When Hawkeye loses another hand, he takes off... his dogtags. A later episode has several characters playing this. However, since it's the dead of winter, even the losers are still donning several layers of clothing when the game's interrupted by arriving wounded. In another early episode, a visiting general looking for Henry walks in on Spearchucker and Nurse Ginger playing strip dominoes (albeit not too far into the game). Stress Vomit : After BJ first arrives in Korea, he faces a young Korean girl injured in a minefield, pinned down by guerilla sniper fire, and having to assist foot soldiers under mortar fire, all before he even got to camp; at one point, when he sees how badly a soldier had been wounded (and killed) by mortar fire, and the situation finally sinks in, he crawls over to a thicket of tall grass to vomit, while Hawkeye holds his head for him. Stuff Blowing Up : One episode had the camp experience weather so cold that the landmines around the camp detonated on their own due to the contracting dirt. Though the explosions occur in the middle of the camp, where mines simply would not be located (and are much larger and fiery than actual landmines). Stylistic Suck : Radar, having recently enrolled in the Famous Las Vegas Writers' School, narrating the staff duty log (via voiceover) in "The Most Unforgettable Characters". Sugar and Ice Personality : Margaret Houlihan, Justified in that she took her job as head nurse seriously (and that she was an Army brat). Frank Burns was too immature, and Donald Penobscot treated her poorly behind the scenes, but the likes of BJ, Col. Potter, and especially Hawkeye helped soften her up . Suicide Dare : Col. Potter deals with a suicidal patient by giving him the Radish Cure : Potter puts the mask from the knockout gas on the boy and forces him to continue to breathe in the fumes even when the boy tries to struggle free. Potter then points out the dichotomy, which makes the patient no longer suicidal. Suicide Is Painless : The show's (and film's) theme song is the Trope Namer . One episode has an example of the trope, where a soldier, injured when his rifle backfired and the bolt struck him in the face, would rather die than go home disfigured. Colonel Potter eventually gets him to give up when he tries to overdose on anesthetic by opening the valves to make the dosage lethal, and explains that the part of the body that wants to live is stronger than the part that wants to die. Summation Gathering : Hawkeye holds one in the mess tent in "I Hate a Mystery". Superstition Episode : A B-plot in season 4's "Dear Ma" has Colonel Potter's wife getting a premonition that something bad will happen to him. Sure enough, he gets shot in the butt by a sniper while making a supply run to a nearby village. In season 5's "Exorcism", Potter makes Radar remove a Korean spirit post from the middle of the compound because it's blocking traffic — on Friday the 13th , no less — after which a bunch of bad things happen, from a lighter not working to an ambulance crash. Radar puts a horseshoe up in Potter's office to ward off the bad luck, and a shamanic priestess is brought in to exorcise any evil spirits from the camp. The season 11 Halloween Episode "Trick or Treatment" has the group telling ghost stories to each other in the O.R. with varying degrees of credulity from the listeners. Surprise Party : In one episode, BJ tries to organize a surprise birthday party for Hawkeye, despite the fact that it isn't Hawkeye's birthday, in order to get some camp morale going. Hawkeye learns of this and counters by "accidentally" letting it slip that the same day is BJ's wedding anniversary. In the end BJ drafts a random extra to be the Birthday Boy. In "For Want of a Boot", Hawkeye organizes a surprise birthday party for Frank Burns as part of his attempted Chain of Deals for a new pair of boots. In another episode, Mildred Potter (Col. Potter's wife) enlists Hawkeye to throw a surprise "the Mortgage is Paid Off" party for the Colonel. Still another episode ("Peace On Us") has the staff throwing Hawkeye a surprise party in the mess tent...where everyone is dressed completely in red, Hawkeye having said that he's sick of seeing green Army stuff everywhere he looks. There Are No Therapists : Averted, with Sidney Freedman. Sidney admits that he himself could use one sometimes. Sidney actually comes up to the 4077 in "Dear Sigmund" to take a bit of a 'rest cure' after a patient commits suicide. BJ: We couldn't help but notice that you came for the poker game and stayed two weeks. To Absent Friends : Most especially when Potter is the last survivor of his World War I unit. Played with in Frank's departure episode: "So long, Ferret Face." Tontine : In "Old Soldiers" Potter is part of one, though it's for a bottle of brandy rather than an investment. He drinks a solo toast To Absent Friends for the rest of his first outfit, listing when each of them died. Took a Level in Dumbass : Radar, sort of. Leading to Characterization Marches On when you go back and watch the early episodes. Even William Christopher thinks this of Father Mulcahy when we have this little exchange at the beginning of "Fade Out, Fade In, Part 1": Mulcahy: You know... I didn't want to bring this up before... but, I have a suspicion that Major Burns and Major Houlihan were... somewhat... "attached". Hawkeye: [Has the look of "Are you kidding me?" written on his face] They knew each other in the Biblical sense. BJ: Both Testaments. Trademark Favorite Food : Hawkeye seems to like bananas, he once mentions to Trapper how as a child he once ate twelve banana sandwiches, and also says one of the first things he's looking forward to when he gets home is a banana (with chocolate cake). Potter says he loves really fresh corn. Inverted with regards to tomato juice; Potter loves it, but he's allergic to it (a detail he neglected to mention before Radar began a series of trades and favors to acquire it for Potter). Frank's favorite dessert must be pudding, if he actually prays for chocolate pudding at lunch, and requires tapioca on his birthday. Translation by Volume : Lampshaded when Hawkeye tends to a wounded Korean. Hawkeye: How's that, bet-ter? "Bet-ter". I've been here all this time, and I still can't speak the language. B.J.: Well, you Americans figure everybody understands English, provided you speak-it-slow-ly-e-nough. Hawkeye: Huh? Lampshaded by Hawkeye again when, running Rosie's bar while Rosie is recovering, he tries to talk to one of the waitresses for Rosie's cut of the tip money. When both this and Hulk Speak fail to get his point across, he remarks, "Why am I suddenly talking like some guy named Milton who's lost in Barcelona?" Frank and Margaret do this a few times when conversing with locals. Trash of the Titans : A relatively mild example, but there's a reason Hawkeye's tent is known as "The Swamp". As shown, the Swamp is untidy, but not actually dirty. Character dialog, however, indicates it's supposed to be filthy. Trespassing to Talk : In the episode "Cowboy", Henry - who is in a really bad mood - enters his office to find Hawkeye waiting for him behind his desk, wanting to discuss giving chopper pilot Cowboy a temporary medical discharge. Henry even remarks, " Uh-uh-uh! Don't get up... let me just pretend YOU'RE the one in charge of this nuthouse ." In "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys", Potter walks into his office, with Father Mulcahy in tow, to find Colonel Flagg waiting for them at his desk, and neither of them (nor Radar, who was in his outer office the whole time) can even figure out how Flagg got in there in the first place. Triage Tyrant : Frank Burns plays this role at one point, prioritizing Americans over Koreans regardless of the severity of their injuries. Strangely enough, this was actually Truth in Television on Frank's part; he correctly cites the triage procedures of the time period (1st Americans, 2nd Allies, 3rd Enemy troops). Tricked Into Signing : In the first three seasons, Lt. Col. Blake was often tricked into signing some kind of requisition, or pass, or anything for whatever Zany Scheme Hawkeye and Trapper had cooked up. Radar apparently made a habit of having Blake's successor Col. Potter sign blank pieces of paper, which he could then use to submit routine letters or requests without bothering Potter about them. Potter apparently knew what Radar was doing and didn't mind. Tricksters : Hawkeye, Trapper, BJ, and on occasion, Winchester. Father Mulcahy can be one from time to time, engaging in the camp poker games and pools to raise money for the local orphanage, and usually walking away with the other trickster's money. Hawkeye: You won again! Who do you know? Mulcahy: Looks skyward Hawkeye: (Good-naturedly) Name-dropper. Trivially Obvious : In "Say No More", a laryngitis-afflicted Margaret gets Charles to act as her voice for a phone call to Dr. Steven Chesler, an internationally-renowned ER doctor whom she admires but whom Charles regards as a quack. Charles' first words of the conversation are "Dr. Chesler! Well! This is indeed a... phone call." Troll : Charles in "Trick or Treatment" when treating Private Laroche, a Marine with a pool ball stuck in his mouth. Charles: Hello, I'm Dr. Winchester. And your name is? Laroche: Mm-MMPH! Charles: Would that be with one "M" or two? [Laroche grumbles around the pool ball in his mouth and gestures insistently] Of course... three. [writes on pad] Now then, what seems to be the, er, problem? [Laroche makes more frustrated, indistinct grumbling sounds] Now, my dear lad, don't be shy, the doctor is your friend! [more grumbling from Laroche as he gestures to his mouth, but Charles is deliberately avoiding looking at his face and instead puts his stethoscope against Laroche's back to listen to his breathing] You seem to be a bit... congested. [grumbling from Laroche] Maybe a little frog in your throat? [Laroche grumbles again, shakes his head, and points to the pool ball in his mouth, but Charles continues to pretend he hasn't seen it] Could you... could you cough for the doctor, please. Laroche: [high-pitched] Mm-MM! [shakes his head] Charles: [takes his stethoscope out of his ears] Well, my dear man, how can I discover what's wrong with you if you will not co-operate? [Laroche grumbles and points at his mouth again, but Charles puts his ear next to Laroche's mouth instead of looking] Oh, I see, you want me to take your temperature! I can do that. [he picks up a thermometer, then pretends to only now notice the pool ball in Laroche's mouth] GAD-zooks!... You realise you have something in your mouth? Laroche: [nods frantically] Mm-HMM! Mm-HMM! Charles: What on Earth could that be? [Laroche mimes playing pool] Oh looky! There's a little "6" painted on it. Could that be... how old you are? [Laroche groans] Oh! Now I see! You may not realise this, but you have a pool ball lodged in your mouth. [Laroche nods and taps the end of his nose to say "You've got it!"] No sweat, there is an alternative... I'll just take your temperature the other way! [he shoves Laroche over onto his side] True Companions : Near the end of the series, when Winchester and Margaret had developed into jerks with hearts of gold , the main cast were a slightly vitriolic version of this. Tsundere : Margaret, especially toward Hawkeye. Her dere-dere side was revealed in "Comrades In Arms, Part 1", and then Double-Subverted in "Comrades In Arms, Part 2"— she began and ended the latter episode with a friendly chat with Hawkeye, but they had quite a few disagreements in between. Tuckerization : A number of the characters on the series were named after people the writers and producers knew: Really, the only in-universe example is Hawkeye being given his nickname after the Indian character in the book The Last of the Mohicans , which was his father's favorite book. His real name, Benjamin Franklin Pierce, is supposedly a combination of an Indian, a president, and a stove. BJ Hunnicutt was named after the series' original cinematographer, William "B.J." Jurgenson. Legend has it that Sherman T. Potter was named after Larry Gelbart's old doctor. Another has it he was named after Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. Writer Ken Levine was perhaps the most frequent user of this trope, as a number of the one-shot and guest characters were named after people he knew (something he does frequently in his writing), including two of Radar's love interests - Linda Nugent, and Patty Haven (both named for two of Levine's former girlfriends). Two Lines, No Waiting : Frequently, especially in later seasons. Tyrant Takes the Helm : Frank Burns, whenever he's given temporary command of the camp. Col. Potter could be considered something of a Bait-and-Switch Tyrant . Ironically, even Hawkeye falls prey to this when he is put in command for an episode, insisting on silence in the OR (amongst other things) as an indication of how much it's getting to him. Ugly Guy, Hot Wife : Played with with Margaret and Donald Penobscott, Margaret is so infatuated with Donald, that his physical traits that are pointed by other characters, or even herself, seem to only entice her even more (such as him being stocky, having no neck, one eyebrow, etc). In fact, both of Donald's appearances (played by two different actors) really don't help matters much. Ultimate Job Security : No matter what zany scheme Hawkeye pulls off or what general he offends, they need him as a doctor. Also somewhat Truth in Television - surgeons could get away with some ridiculous things, due to the sheer need for them, though there were limits even for doctors. Klinger, no matter how hard he tries to avert this. Although undeniably a force for good, Father Mulcahy gets away with some rather worldly behaviours for the sake of greater charity, such as gambling and black market dealings. Some of Hawkeye's stunts would, in Real Life , land him a court martial, such as "The Sniper", where he defies an order not to surrender, even though it could put the nurses in physical danger. Hawkeye makes an impassioned case for surrender, but what he actually does is go out to bring the wounded in from the ambulance under a flag of truce (which gets fired on). While surrender would also commonly be arranged under a flag of truce, that would involve communicating directly with the enemy, which he does not attempt. Uncanny Family Resemblance : One episode has the gang watching a home movie sent by Radar's mother...who, like Radar himself, is played by Gary Burghoff. Lampshaded when one person jokes that Radar bears a striking resemblance to his dog Ranger. Unexplained Recovery : Invoked by Trapper when a Luxembourg soldier is misplaced and presumed dead, then shows up for his own memorial . Hawkeye: I thought he died? Trapper: (shrugs) He got better. Henry Blake, in a blackout gag on Cher 's 1975 variety series. Unique Pilot Title Sequence : The pilot starts with the title "Korea 1950 - 100 Years Ago" as Hawkeye and Trapper John play golf with "My Blue Heaven" playing in the background. Radar gets tossed a football and stops as he hears the choppers coming, which then leads into an extended version of the standard opening. Just imagine what a whole new meaning it'll take on when we're still watching reruns of this show in 2050. Unlimited Wardrobe : Klinger's dresses. In fact, Real Life subverted this trope. He eventually dropped the cross dressing act because the studio ran out of dresses that would fit him. Jamie Farr has stated in interviews that he asked to stop wearing dresses on the show because he didn't want his children to see him wearing dresses. (Although one would think that ship had already sailed, given the early seasons' omnipresence in syndicated reruns even before the show's network run ended.) The size of Klinger's wardrobe is explained in-universe by a combination of him regularly ordering things from catalogs, packages of clothing sent by his family (from his uncle's wardrobe from using the same trick in WWII), and him frequently making things (both shown and spoken of, and they even raided his sewing supplies once when they ran out of sutures). Klinger, it seems, is quite accomplished with needle and thread. Unresolved Sexual Tension : Between Hawkeye and Margret. It was briefly resolved in "Comrades in Arms", but it was undone midway through Part 2 and stayed that way. Unusual Euphemism : Col. Potter, often horse-related. More along the lines of sectional euphemism, most of his euphemisms were actual (albeit he used the more family friendly ones) euphemisms used in West Texas. Subverted in the episode "Dear Peggy", when Father Mulcahy mentions Hawkeye is sharing a "spicy sausage" with an Italian nurse. Judging by his breath while scrubbing for surgery, he was sharing an actual spicy sausage. Unusually Uninteresting Sight : One episode has Hawkeye, Radar and the newly arrived BJ in Rosie's bar. No one in the bar seems to notice the brawl between two other patrons except BJ even when it goes literally though their table. Klinger and his dresses have this effect. Hawkeye bets Trapper that he could go into the mess tent naked and no one would notice. No one does, until a startled soldier drops his tray and whistles, drawing everyone's attention. Upper-Class Twit : Frank Burns, and Charles Emerson Winchester even more so. Vomit Indiscretion Shot : BJ suffers from this in "Welcome to Korea" when he sees firsthand the savagery of war injuries. Being fresh out of residency at the time he's drafted doesn't help matters any. Vinyl Shatters : In the finale, Major Winchester breaks the classical record he was listening to after he finds out the band of prisoner-musicians he had formed got killed in an ambush. This may or may not be an example of the trope; in 1953, when the Korean War ended, large-diameter shellac records were still quite common. In the episode where the cast are awaiting an expected deluge of casualties, BJ and Hawkeye start shattering Charles's records on their heads when they snap from the pressure. The Voice : The camp PA announcer. In the episode "Run for the Money", Winchester plays a tape recording from his sister, Honoria. In "Springtime", Laverne Esposito can be heard when Klinger marries her via radio. Pvt. Rich, in the " Point of View " episode. In an early episode, Radar's unseen girlfriend breaks up with him via a Dear John recording. Both her voice and the voice of her new fiancé are heard. War Is Hell : Pretty much the defining trait of the final seasons. Hawkeye once argues that war is worse than Hell; at least in Hell, you know that everyone there deserves to be there. In war, almost everyone except the Armchair Military is an innocent bystander. Way Past the Expiration Date : A frequent topic of complaining is the surplus army food, some of which (it is claimed, mostly by Hawkeye) came from WWII or even WWI. Hawkeye: 1943, a very good year for beans. Wedding Day : The season 5 finale, "Margaret's Marriage", has the Major tying the knot with Donald Penobscott (with a heartbroken Frank Burns serving as best man). Klinger weds childhood sweetheart Laverne Esposito (via radio) in season 3's "Springtime", then gets married a second time to Soon-Lee in the season 11 (and series) finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". We see a film of Frank's wedding day in Season 3's "There's Nothing Like a Nurse". It looks absolutely terrible, from a near total lack of guests to a fly strip getting stuck to Frank's face while cutting the cake to his wife not smiling and refusing to let him drive the honeymoon car. Wedding Ring Defense : Hawkeye is fooled by one of these, worn by the episode's visting guest nurse. We Want Our Jerk Back Wham Episode : "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", also the first Downer Ending episode. More would follow, most notably "Abyssinia, Henry". What Happened to the Mouse? : Hawkeye takes up a collection to send his house-boy to the states to go to medical school, but then we never hear from him again. Until he robs most of the regular cast to get money to bribe border guards to allow his family to cross the border. Radar always had a large menagerie of different animals, including rabbits, guinea pigs, raccoons, squirrels, skunks , and even a turtle, each having their own cages. Then, in his very last episode, when he says goodbye to his animals, all that are left are one turtle, one rabbit, and one guinea pig. He tells them the rest of the camp will take care of them in his absence, although we see them only once after that, in "The Red White Blues". In "The Foresight Saga", the MASHers send a Korean boy to live in Iowa and work as a farmhand for Radar. Between AfterMASH and the DOA spinoff WALTE*R, we learn that Radar's farming career fell through, but his farmhand is never mentioned past this episode. What the Hell, Hero? : "Preventive Medicine", where BJ argues with Hawkeye that removing a healthy organ is immoral (see Real Life Writes the Plot above). Hey Hawkeye, I don't like Frank Burns anymore than you do, but did you really need to punch him in "House Arrest"? Granted there have been plenty of times Frank could use a good pop, but given the circumstances, this wasn't one of them. Hawkeye got one from Radar after he (Hawkeye) showed up for surgery too drunk to operate. He got another one from everyone - including himself - after he laid into Radar for it. Frank is on the receiving end of several, ranging from comments about his casual racism towards Koreans to his demand for a Purple Heart due to getting an egg shell in his eye. Wheelchair Antics : During the Olympics episode, Hawkeye and BJ are team captains. They make a bet that the loser has to push the winner around in a wheelchair for a month. Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? : BJ Hunnicutt's given name is, apparently, BJ. Leads to this exchange: Hawkeye: What kind of parents would name their kid "BJ"? BJ: My mother, Bea Hunnicutt, and my father, Jay Hunnicutt. Whole Costume Reference : Many of Klinger's dresses were from the studio's stock from other shows and films. Klinger even lampshades it himself a few times when he's intentionally copying a movie character's garb. Whole Episode Flashback : used in "The Novocaine Mutiny" to show events that led up to Hawkeye being put on trial for mutiny. The flashbacks are divided between Frank's fictional account and Hawkeye's reveal of what "really" happened. Wholesome Cross Dresser : Klinger, of course. It was his plan to get home - they'd think he was crazy and hence unfit for duty if he wore women's clothing. He was otherwise portrayed as a good soldier. This was based on a story about Lenny Bruce wearing a WAVES uniform to get discharged from the Navy during World War II . Who's Watching the Store? : In the episodes "The Bus" and "The Novocaine Mutiny", all of the 4077th's regular surgeons (Hawkeye, BJ, Frank, Potter) are away from camp for an extended period. It's never explained who's operating on the wounded in their absence. Wildlife Commentary Spoof : Hawkeye describes an encounter between Frank and Margaret in this fashion: "Observe the female of the species. Seemingly calm and detached, her tiny GI bosom is beating wildly, because she senses the presence of her frequent partner, the notorious red-necked nose-breather. Uh-oh, the signaling process has begun. Eyeballs are exchanged, and our khaki lovers do their famous 'Where'll we meet today?' ritual. It is almost impossible for the uninitiated to discern any connection between these two US Army majors. Yet, the trained observer will see that what these two officers have in mind is to arrange a bit of brass rubbing." Wire Dilemma : "The Army-Navy Game" World's Smallest Violin : Possibly the Trope Maker : Margaret does this in 1978 when Charles complains that an overflow of post-op patients has kicked him out of his tent. Margaret: Charles, do you know what this is? It's the world's smallest violin, and it's playing just for you. Worthy Opponent : Winchester, for Hawkeye and BJ. Occasionally moved into the realm of Vitriolic Best Buds , whenever Hawkeye or BJ would have an actual problem and Winchester's empathy would kick in, and likewise Hawkeye and BJ both admitted a respect and care for Charles they never displayed for his predecessor Frank. If Winchester hadn't had total disdain for pretty much everyone in camp, he'd probably have been very close friends with the other two. The boys probably respected him more because he was capable of taking their pranks and pranking them back, and his surgical skills were impressive (which is more than could be said for Frank's, especially post-Flanderization). Then there were those times when one of them (usually BJ) would form a temporary alliance with Charles, either against the remaining Swampmate (usually Hawkeye) or some other character. Margaret actually has hints of this with Hawkeye. They might have clashed over matters of discipline and regulation (especially early on in the series) but it's quite clear that both of them never had anything but the highest respect for each other's skills and professional ability. If Margaret hadn't been so uptight (or if Hawkeye hadn't been so nuts) that Ship Tease probably would have become more than just teasing. One time, Frank managed to continually one-up Hawkeye with pranks (trick showerheads, a bucket of water over the door, etc). In the end, Hawkeye wins the prank war by rolling up the wall of the latrine tent while Frank is occupied therein, finishing with a genuine looking salute. Writer on Board : Became increasingly pronounced in the later seasons of the show, particularly in the episodes that Alan Alda scripted (where this approached Author Filibuster or even Author Tract status). Yank the Dog's Chain : The first season has an episode where everyone comes to believe that there's been a ceasefire and the war is over. During their "farewell" party they learn the sad news: the war isn't over, and the wounded are arriving. Another early episode has Trapper thinking he'll get to go home due to a stomach ulcer, and even getting a farewell party, before being told by HQ that he'll have to stay in Korea and be operated on there. Trapper gets put through the wringer again in "Kim", deciding to adopt a seemingly-orphaned Korean boy with his wife back in the States, then having to rescue the kid after he wanders into a minefield...then having to watch as the kid's mother turns up and whisks him away. Season three's finale has Henry Blake getting discharged and finally getting to go home. What happened next was a trope-naming moment .invoked In "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye races to an airport to try and say goodbye to Trapper, who was discharged while Hawkeye was away on leave and couldn't stay any longer. Naturally, despite his best efforts, Hawkeye misses him by minutes. In a more humorous example, Klinger comes tantalizingly close to actually getting a Section 8 discharge in "None Like It Hot". He dons a fur coat and other warm-weather gear in the middle of a blistering Heat Wave , and Col. Potter is so impressed with his determination that he promises to approve a Section 8 if he can keep it up for 24 hours. When Klinger finally breaks down and gives up toward the end of the episode, a sincerely disappointed Potter notes that he only had an hour left to go. In the show's final episode, BJ receives discharge papers, though they are quickly rescinded. Col. Potter is informed of this, but doesn't say anything - hoping BJ will be stateside before anyone finds out. Unfortunately, he only makes it as far as Guam before he's yanked back to the 4077th. (However, he does ultimately get to go home - along with everybody else - when the war ends shortly thereafter.) BJ: I'm sitting there in this crummy officers club, and this guy comes up to me, and says, "You Hunnicutt the doctor?" Now, I didn't like the sound of that, so I said, "No, not me, pal, I'm Hunnicutt the chaplain." He says, "Well, chaplain, you'd better start praying for a miracle, because you're going back to Korea to do surgery." You Are in Command Now : "Carry On, Hawkeye" was a funny example; "Commander Pierce" much less so. The one time that Winchester was left in command, he simply allowed everyone to go about their routine and instead focused on pampering himself (having Klinger acquire silk sheets, fine food, etc). Anytime Blake or Potter said this to Burns, the unit prepared for a journey across the Despair Event Horizon . You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious : Despite their disdain for military protocol , Hawkeye and BJ on regularly address Col. Potter by his rank out of respect for his competent, compassionate , thoughtful approach to command. Only once, when Potter has been badly upset by another soldier snitching on him to his superiors and is contemplating leaving the Army, does Hawkeye call him "Sherm," urging him to stay. Winchester only ever refers to Hawkeye as "Pierce" except for when they are waiting by the phone to hear word about Hawkeye's father (who is having a surgery done). He calls him "Hawkeye" while telling him that he envies the relationship Pierce and his father have. It's the only time that Winchester drops his walls around his fellow surgeons. Similarly, when Klinger and Winchester call each other Max and Charles at Christmas when Klinger lets on that he knows about Winchester secretly donating sweets to the orphans. Invoked in the finale: Col. Potter calls Father Mulcahy "Francis" for the first time as they say goodbye. Made heartbreaking by the fact that the Father couldn't hear him due to his deafness. You No Take Candle : Korean characters sometimes talk like this, much to the disdain of actual Korean viewers.	Walter
What position/title comes between apprentice and master craftsman/master tradesman?	The Never Ending Battle Book One:Through Early Fog Chapter 1: Through Early Morning Fog I See, a X-Files + MASH Crossover fanfic \| FanFiction "Yes, you could call it that. And-you should. Insult. Injury. Criminal also comes to mind." Mulder was sympathetic, but only to a degree. "Hawkeye, it's always been a man's army. What they did to her was low, but unsurprising, given the times." Hawkeye now had a direct frown, but it wasn't directed at Fox Mulder. "One thing those times weren't, pal, was given." He breathed in, the injustice of it all requiring an effort from his aging but fit frame just to talk about it. "I mean, we get there, its 66', before Tet, before My Lai, when all that seemed like nothing more than Korea on the Mekong. The doctors are all kids, they lack the ability to know when to drink and when NOT to drink, and casualties are dizzying. The place was a meat grinder. It was as though any pretense of caring about the soldiers was gone-kaput, fini, dadadadae-That's All Folks. Gaining a new appreciation for Henry and Sherman, God rest their souls, I start running the place. I figure, soon the new head guy will arrive, right? Six months later, we're still waiting. They don't have anyone technically in charge, they don't even call it a MASH, just some doublespeak euphemism. Too many damned words for other words. Always has been. Makes me wish the thesaurus had died with the other dinosaurs." Mulder was enjoying this, despite the time he was wasting. Still, he would have to nudge Hawkeye back on track soon. Perhaps Pierce sensed this, and drew his tale towards a close. "Sorry. 40 years on, and still the angry Mohican. Finally, someone arrives. Margaret, whose nurses would never dare get out of line, is, of course, appointed head nurse, and finally promoted to full colonel. I mean, right? She's only qualified from head to scrumptious toe. But that happens second. First, the new guy takes over." Hawkeye turned his towards himself, as though showing something off. "Meet the new guy. Colonel Benjamin Franklin Pierce. Promoted two seconds-on paper-before Margaret. Make no mistake, Fox. She may have married a Pierce, but she was all Houlihan. That means military. That means she worked off the cutest butt there ever was for over 20 years to be one of the few women at that time to be a full colonel. Me-I should have been a Captain again, maybe a Major. Who knows maybe LC, on the outside. But because of macho stupidity, a real Patriot is outdone by her goofball hubby, a guy Tail-Gunner Joe and the boys at HUAC would have loved to have barbecued slowly over a razored pit. I outranked Margaret. " Mulder knew he had to find something of use, soon, or gently ditch this fascinating older gentleman. But now was not that time. "How-did she take it?" Hawkeye started to calm down. "She?-Oh, well, fine. Of course, it was another six weeks before she spoke to me again, on anything but business. She just walked into my tent, sobbed, It's Not Fair.* and collapsed in my arms, sobbing like a baby. We made love that night-I shouldn't talk about that, I know, but, she felt angry with me and angry with herself for being angry with me and it made things-memorable. When we came out the next day, everyone applauded." Mulder smiled. "Memorable and quite vocal, it would seem. Listen, Hawkeye, its been great, but…" Pierce stopped him, bid him sit down. "No, no. I got way off track, and you need to justify coming all this way. Tally-ho, Fox." MASH 4077th-KTO-January 27, 1952 - A Thousand Years Ago "Damn. Damn. DAAAAMMN." Hawkeye Pierce was livid with rage. Not his sarcastic, put-on, need-to-get-a-job-done rage, but the real red thing. The man who had built the 4077th was gone. Dead. Killed, not in action, but on his way home. Senseless death took on a whole new dictionary. "McIntyre, get him calmed down. Now. That's an order, Mister. Please, Trapper? I think he might hit me." Trapper looked over disgustedly at his new commanding officer. God had a twisted sense of humor, on occasion, thought Trapper John McIntyre. "Have a heart, Burns. We're all emotionally tapped out. A good man is gone for no reason anybody can figure, and Hawk's just takin' it worse than some. And you two stay away from Radar for a while. The kid's inconsolable. It was calming him down made Hawkeye this way." Frank Burns straightened himself out, his composure coming and going as often as his marriage vows. He wasn't a bad man, just a very nervous one. Oft times, that nervousness came out as haughty arrogant indifference. This was one of those times. "First off, Commander, that's Captain Burns to you." Margaret, by his side as always, elbowed him in it. "Ow, pussycat. Why'd you..." "Ohhhh...Um.. First off, like before, but I'm the Commander, you're the Captain." Trapper was still not impressed. "Are you sure, Margaret?" Frank opened his mouth, but it was Hot Lips who spoke. "We're sure, Captain. We all miss Henry Blake the man, I know I kissed him, when I learned he was gone." Margaret realized her mistake, remembering Henry's last-minute smacker, but trudged on. Frank gave her a quizzical look, but then, he was always doing that. Flustered, she continued. "My point is, the man was good, but the Commander was deplorable. I think, in this time of tragedy, we need to fully support our commanding officer, right, Major?" Frank nodded. "Oh, absolutely, Major. I support you…your notion, 145%." By this time, Hawkeye had stopped yelling. They all noticed a cleared compound. In it were themselves, and the odd young man who'd given Radar the tragic news. He looked like a coiled spring, or cobra, if the light was correct. He just stood there, watching, as he had for hours. Pierce shrugged. "What're you still doing here? Surely the pale horse pony express has other rounds to make?" The young man never answered a question directly. "Pity about Colonel Blake, isn't it? They just bombed his plane right out of the sky." The coldness in his voice made everyone want to walk away. Who could discuss death so matter-of-factly? Trapper pointed. "Why don't you run along for Grim Reaper training, kid? You bother us." Even Margaret and Frank wanted him out. There was a feeling of hope snuffed out that permeated the otherwise innocuous young man, and Trapper's urging to leave was shared by all. But still he didn't respond directly to them. "Planes get bombed, people get drunk and call it bombed, people get sick, say they feel like they've been bombed, sometimes-" A cold as ice chuckle followed. "Even whole villages get bombed. Maybe, just maybe, if people didn't talk so much about it, they could get on with their lives, go home and call it a night." Hawkeye moved forward. "Are you talking about that village our guys accidentally bombed? Because there are people still getting sick there, and what I want..." The young iceman quickly cut Hawkeye off. "What you want is irrelevant, Captain. By the way-you're talking about it. No points. Sorry. Majors?" Frank spoke for them, for once. "If our top brass want this thing hush-hushed, then I see no reason not to give them all our sweat, blood, and fears." Margaret did not agree. "Surely, if people are getting ill, the Army wants to..." Just as briskly, Houlihan was shushed by a man who could have been Radar's evil non-identical twin. "What the Army wants, is irrelevant, Major-and guess what-you're talking about it. Sorry-no points." Margaret yelled. "You Twerp, this isn't a quiz show." The man cupped her face in his hand, and caressed her cheek. Margaret was revolted. "No, no, it's not a quiz show, Major. But there are prizes. Don't you agree, Captain McIntyre?" Trapper shifted uncomfortably. "I got nothin to say to you". The young man nodded at Trapper, then at Frank. He then looked at Hawkeye and Margaret, shaking his index figure back and forth in a shaming motion. As he got back in his jeep to leave, Hawkeye grabbed the man--kid-really. "Boy, you're just a junior Colonel Flagg, aren't you, tough-guy?" Calmly as ever, the code-talking officer pushed Hawkeye off him. With Pierce on the ground, in pain, he leaned over him, grasping him by the hair. "Don't touch me Pierce. I know exactly where you've been. As for Flagg, consider this: If you were head of the AMA, and you didn't want people to take you doctors seriously, you'd appoint someone like Burns as your spokesperson, am I right?" Hawkeye said Yes, and for once Frank abided the disparaging of his surgical abilities without comment. "Well, why do you think we have Colonel Flagg? If everyone thinks that Government Intelligence is an oxymoron, it serves our purposes nicely. A strutting poltroon like Sam Flagg is a godsend. If we hadn't found him, we'dve had to invent him. And that's always too much work. Major Burns, I think Captain Pierce could use two weeks R+R in Tokyo. What do you say...Sir? A little time to forget about Poor Henry Blake? He didn't get the points, either. Always talking, even in the hospital. Ooops, I forgot. No survivors. All dead on impact. I got to keep my facts straight." Burns acquiesced, and the cold young man left as quickly and as quietly as Colonel Flagg always claimed he could. In the present, Hawkeye Pierce concluded his narrative to Fox Mulder. "So this guy goes. I get sent to Tokyo, where I do the geisha circuit. I really do forget, while I'm there. But not totally. I owed Henry that much." Mulder had heard quite a bit of trivia, but nothing to keep him there. He awaited the chance to excuse himself again. "When you got back, Doctor McIntyre had left. Gotten sent home." Pierce nodded, and took a swig of wine. His throat was dry, and he needed to calm his nerves. To this day, he wanted to go back and wring that punk's neck. "It was odd. Trapper and I had arrived together, wined together, dined together, rampaged together, crusaded together, and nursed together. Other guys-like BJ Hunnicutt-had families, too, but Trap gets sent home, right before I come back. Like - he was trying to avoid me. When Frank leaves, he's promoted. Army thinking aside, it just didn't make sense. I'm not just olive-drab with envy here. That man barely deserved a medical license, let alone half-a-bird on his collar." Pierce stopped, caught his breath again, then continued. Mulder slowly sipped from the bottom of his club soda. Now was the time to go. "But here's the kicker, Fox. Years on, on the day that Margaret and I became Colonels, there's that punk again. Says in a snide voice, I Guess You both finally got the Points. " Mulder was now gulping the last of his soda. "He hadn't changed, much. He just looked more dangerous than ever. Well, that, and he had apparently taken up chain-smoking. Had a cigarette in his mouth the whole time." At that, a stunned Mulder spit his remaining drink all over Pierce. As Hawkeye wiped himself off, he quipped. "Well, Fox, if you don't like the Club Soda, you should've said something. Waitress. Some Grape Nehi...and an umbrella." Mulder knew he was going to be there a while longer. THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH KOREA "Rosie could speak better English, but Rosie not care to. English young, clumsy language. Not like Korean. People always making English up as they go. Korean language have rules, order. That very important. For example, Rosie's granddaughter get her tush pinched by men who come here after stock market. She no mind, Rosie no mind. But one of them put his hand under her schoolgirl skirt - he not use that hand for weeks. If you not say what they grab, they grab all. Pretty soon you like Rosie's mother, child by Japanese soldiers. Village throw us out. Build first bar just to live. GI's not care who Rosie father is. Rosie not care either. " The 92-year-old founder of a chain of rough-and-tumble bars where Korean businessmen unwound then stopped, caught her breath, and gathered herself. "For you, Agent Scully, though, I will speak as I am able to. Its just that when you are old and rich, you can speak any way you damn well please. Now, you wanted to know about Immunita? I only know what everyone knows." Dana Scully was taking copious notes. "Mrs. Rosie, Immunita is some sort of quasi-governmental project working towards the goal of meta - immunity. Meta-Immunity is a non-word coined for an effort to have the human body fight off diseases itself, without the use of antibiotics that were quickly being outpaced by viral evolution. The goal, like many others, is laudable. The means stink to high heaven. Immunita's beneficiaries have immune systems so pro-active, they seek out, by means of some kind of microscopic spores, the diseases of others." The results were not pleasant, as Scully related. "One maternity ward in East St. Louis was wiped out to every mother, child, father, and member of the medical staff. One mother had been treated with the mega-doses of genetically altered Echinacea, goldenseal, and an unguessable RNA/DNA combination in capsule form. Her body had treated her child as an invading parasite. Her husband, who had apparently invaded her during her pregnancy, died dehydrating. Her own heart gave up from the strain-but her immune system kept right on till all parasites in the surrounding area were destroyed." Dana tried to figure out a way to say the next part without sounding accusatory. "You've said that you were witness to the remote genesis of Immunita, back during the hot phase of the Korean War, when you ran your 1st establishment across from the 4077th MASH. Were patients at this MASH subjected to its early efforts?" Rosie merely shrugged. "Patients, Doctors, Nurses. Hah-nurses. That why they allow the men to look at them while they shower. These were wild ladies, but they liked their privacy. When problems from sickness show up, you never see it yourself. So they allow the men in camp to cut a small hole, to peep in on them while they in there. Men get what they want, ladies know they're not sick." Scully was more than a little disturbed by this. "So they allowed their privacy to be destroyed under the old, Boys Will Be Boys Rule? Did the commanding officer tolerate this?" Rosie shook her head. "You're not listening, Agent Scully. Heat from shower make marks appear. Marks mean disease starting. Only someone drooling over you would notice them soon enough. Besides, Colonel Blake didn't know, and neither did Colonel Potter. Neither did Hawkeye or the other doctors, or Major Houlihan-she was the head nurse. It was so funny. She would sew up tent-flap, convinced Hawkeye or Trapper did it. Her own nurses rip threads right out, and take a look at enlisted men. It was a trade-off, and not a bad one, either. Everybody sees something they like, and most everybody stays alive. Enlisted men and nurses knew, command didn't. That was the way things went, back then." Scully still had her doubts. "Rosie, you've said that you and other local Koreans knew about the experiments, and that the lower ranking people at the 4077th knew as well, to the point of putting together an almost pagan ritual to nip the ill effects in their early stages. Why would you all have that kind of information but not immediate higher-ups?" Rosie smiled, the smile of a teacher amused by a 1st grader's spelling efforts. "Because, Dana Scully, none of us mattered. Hawkeye could undo the whole thing, in a heartbeat. Major Houlihan would just punch her way through. Colonel Potter call a few old friends and have it all kiboshed. But what was Rosie gonna do? Or Zale? Or Kellye? Nothing, that's what. There's two types of people who not involved in a secret that you let know-One is someone who won't believe they have eyes, and then go looking for proof that they don't-the other is someone you don't care if they know. For example, Scully know, but they not care about him-and he tell Major Houlihan nothing, when they together-say-Jack Scully related to you?" Dana nodded. "My uncle. For a time, Margaret Houlihan was my aunt, although they were divorced before I was born. She and her new husband Ben Pierce got along with Uncle Jack, despite everything, before his strokes. I saw them occasionally, before and after they served in Vietnam. I doubt they remember me." Dana suddenly felt anew the grief she had felt as a child when Uncle Jack took inexplicably ill. But in the here and now, something else odd was occurring. Rosie sat as though she was a deer caught in the headlights, then burst out in uncontrollable laughter. "Ben Pierce - Major Houlihan married to Hawkeye? BWAAAA - HAHHAAAA. Those two almost kill each other, then they playing house.? HOOOOH OOH AAHAA." Scully feared the old woman was going to have a heart attack. A concerned friend came out, probably her accountant. This new woman had a lovely mix of Mid-East and Korean in her face. Her most prominent feature, though, was her prominent nose. While aquiline, and graceful, it was definitely there. It made her smile at Rosie seem all the more friendly, somehow. "Geez, Rosie, you gave me quite a scare." Rosie related why she was laughing. "We never told you? Aww, that's the last time I leave anything like that to Dad. Those bowling alleys eat up all his time nowadays. Look, Rosie. Susie, she's asleep now. The pain in her leg was killing her. I'll bring her to the clinic tomorrow. Poor kid. She's got more steel in her than one of Uncle Sherman's war patients." "Rosie sobered up. "Great - grand daughter, the one you give tape to, is very sick, Agent Scully. Watching those Immortal people make her feel like she will live forever." As Rosie left, she shot off, "Su-Na will not live forever. But I want you to promise Rosie, you tell those science-fellas she does matter." Dana smiled. "Of course she does. And they will pay for this atrocity." Rosie just shook her head, feeling quite defeated. "People like that, they never pay. When I come back, Rosie tell you about Colonel Blake and the meteors. Very Important." As Rosie went to check on her great-granddaughter, Scully felt her hand being shook by the accountant. "Pleased to meetcha. Maxine Ishikawa, Rosie's accountant. My Dad, Max Klinger, knows your partner, Spooky Mulder. Boy, my kids used to love it when Dad brought him over. Spooky, tell me a story. That was before me and the hubby relocated here, though, to help out Rosie, of course." Scully had heard Mulder mention a friend he called Old Max. "Fox tolerates that nickname, at best. But you all called him that?" Maxine pulled back, folded her arms and smiled that disarming smile once again. "You mean to say, he never told you this story? Huh? We women talk too much, but a man won't talk if he's on fire. Ok, here goes. Your partner's a new cadet at the FBI Academy. He's smart as a whip, but is always looking into weird stuff. Traipses around, reams of paper always in hand. Scares the living heck out of the other cadets. Finally, they ask my Dad to talk to him. Max Klinger can talk to any-body. They chat, and my Dad likes what he hears. The others ask Old Max what he thinks, and you know what he says?" Dana liked hearing about a younger, more awkward Mulder, even if he hadn't really changed one bit. "No, I don't. What did your dad say?" Motioning in an apparent imitation of her father's body language, Maxine told. "He says, Well, ya know, that is one nice, sweet kid. Willing to listen. But boy, talk about Spooky. And the name stuck". Scully felt a rush of deja vu. Why did a MASH Unit half-a-world and half-a-century away seem to have so much bearing on the X-Files? More than that, it seemed to tie somehow into Mulder's view of a grander conspiracy. But these elements were all random, beyond the control of the dark forces of misinformation leading her partner around by the nose - weren't they? Whatever the case, Rosie's words earlier about people with eyes who used them to prove that eyes didn't exist stung her. Was she the disabler? Meant to debunk some vital piece of information Mulder needed merely because her beliefs were not his? Suddenly, she felt as if she could see into the shower where the filthy people who had made Fox Mulder who he was tried in vain to cleanse themselves of the residue from rubber alien suits and plaster from movie sets. In that shower, she saw herself, washing away proof that meant she was wrong about the Big Picture. Dana Scully didn't mind serving as Mulder's counterbalance. But seeing herself as his neutralizer made her not like what she saw through the hole in the shower tent. She wasn't there to buttress his alien-based theories. Scully had as much as told him that. But all the coincidences surrounding the 4077th made her understand Mulder a bit better. It was hard not to see an unseen hand. Perhaps, she thought, for her it was too easy not to see it, just as it was a knee-jerk reaction for Mulder to always see it. She completed this thought as Rosie returned. Now, she wanted to know all about Henry Blake and the meteors, even if that did make her seem Spooky. While Rosie attended to her sick great-granddaughter, Dana Scully received further background from Maxine Klinger Ishikawa. "Rosie and her brood are family. Toshi - that's the hubby - well, his great-grandfather was the SOB who got Rosie's Mom pregnant. He was never worth anything, to either family. Especially his Korean family. After he passed in 1980, Toshi's Mom insisted that the two families meet, to heal old wounds. The upshot is that Toshi is sent to the U.S. to attend a business school near my home. He stays with us, since Pop and Rosie know each other from the 4077th. Well, we meet, fall in love, and get married. Of course, since, at the time, I'm preggers out my ears, my Dad nearly kills him. But we get married, have a few more, etc." Dana checked her notes. "I take it that it was during the etc. that your family met Fox Mulder." Maxine smiled. "My mom-Soon-Lee-she adores Spooky. He boarded with us, in Toshi's old room. He was always willing to help around the house, and was never late with any bill. I sometimes got the feeling that Fox's folks were a trifle distant with him, after what happened to his sister. I know that Mom had a crush on him. Totally innocent, though. Pop thought it was cute, so far as it went. You see, to Mom, any secret-police-type like you FBI people who cared about and respected others were aces. I hear the ROK's guys were rough numbers, back when." "Has Mulder ever discussed what happened to his sister with your family?" By this, of course, Scully meant, what Fox Mulder believed happened to Samantha that night long ago. "Oh, you mean, the Aliens? Sure. I mean, he was there. Wouldn't he know what occurred? Truth be known, at times I felt like a substitute Samantha. More truth be known, I....kinda felt like my Mom did, not so sister-like. But his lady is the Truth, and the little witch isn't sharing. That, and me and my Mom each being married to terrific guys kinda nipped things in the bud. Now, if Toshi and Pop had just been bums...." "Actually, if Mulder has a lady, it's his quest for what he believes to be the truth. That aside, have your children been ill like Rosie's family?" Maxine frowned. "I've never been sick-ever. My kids neither. My big brother Wally-er, Walter Sherman Klinger-he's always been sick, on and off. Nothing big, it's just like he's got no resistance. And they tested for normal immune problems, so that ain't it. Rosie's brood has a 60% stillborn rate. Except for poor Su-Na, all the rest are in perfect shape. Kind of like..." Dana completed her grim thought. "A winnowing". Rosie then returned, and bid Maxine check on Su-Na while she and Scully talked. "Now, Agent Scully, I tell you of how Colonel Blake build the 4077th, my bar, a company clerk, and a furnace he only use once. Also, we speak on how he took the meteors from the sky and made a deal with the devil. 4077th always unique place. Father's work camp right where Colonel Blake and company lay foundation. One camp for death, one for life. One camp kill Americans, Chinese, and Koreans, one help everyone regardless. Rosie does not need to tell you which one she liked better. My father spared his cruelty to no one." Scully stopped Rosie, there. "If your father ran one of those death-march camps, whose purpose it was to work POW's to death, then why wasn't he prosecuted for war crimes? There's no mention of the 4077th being on such a site, that I've seen." Once again, Rosie shook her head at what she perceived as Scully's naiveté. "My father make my mother believe he love her. How hard you think it is for slippery number like him to make deal with occupying American forces, who want insider's knowledge of area? They ship him back to Japan. Toshi's family's problem, not ours anymore. I love my great-nephew, but if father was in Korea too much longer, he would get my mother pregnant again. She would have been dead at 39, rather than fifteen years back. So Toshi's grandmother get hit, instead of my mother. Both good, gracious women. Strong. Deserve much better." Dana was constantly struck by the way Rosie both shrugged off her early life and yet was haunted by it. At least Rosie's harsh life had no mysteries. Aliens or no, something had happened to Samantha Mulder that would haunt her partner forever-with no real answers. She then remembered her host's mentioning something. "Rosie, what about the meteors and Colonel Blake? For that matter, what did your father know that spared him war crime charges?" Rosie gathered herself. These were all things she knew, but the telling was not easy. "If you think the two are connected, Agent Scully, you are correct. In exchange for information about the Meteor Valley, or Sky-Stone Valley as my grandparents called it, certain people cut my father a good deal that not only kept him out of war trials, but kept social workers from answering his Japanese family's calls of abuse. Always very thorough, my father. Damned thorough." Dana was getting a bit edgy, now. Any talk of the meteors and what Scully suspected about them was being sidetracked by Rosie's feelings about her father. "Forgive me, Rosie. But what does Sky-Stone Valley have to do with the 4077th-or Colonel Henry Blake?" Rosie looked both annoyed and apologetic. "If Rosie take time to get to point, you can be pretty sure that I have a point to make. Washington, D.C. built on swamp, go on to do great things. Henry Blake built the 4077th MASH in the Valley Of The Sky-Stones. The O.R. built on spot where most of them hit. Father used the meteors to terrorize locals. Told about stones to American men with dead, cold eyes. Those men create Immunita. Colonel Blake deal with them, to save camp. Almost doom camp in process. Probably doomed himself." Rosie could see from Scully's eyes that not all of this was meshing for her. "I'll explain by way of a couple of stories, Agent Scully. To take you forward, Rosie will have to take you back a ways." THE SECOND WORLD WAR, KOREA, AUGUST 1943. EXACTLY SEVEN YEARS BEFORE THE FOUNDING OF THE 4077TH MASH Girl was not her name. But it may as well have been for all the Japanese soldiers cared. She was in an odd position in life. The soldiers treated her with contempt; but other Koreans were beneath contempt, in their eyes. They were not half-Japanese, as she was. To most Koreans, though, she was less than nothing. A thing built by the invading forces that had toppled their princes. But she wasn't at the camp that day for any of them. She was there for her father. There were times she wanted his approval so badly she could taste it. Other times, she wanted to rip out his heart. Today, though, she was to meet someone. And to see something important. "Girl, this is my son. If you were not half-beast, he would be your brother. Understand, he owes you nothing. If he wants, I will give you to him, to be his first. Do you understand?" Taking care not to meet her father's gaze, the girl nodded yes. At least this boy bathed. None of the other soldiers did. Besides, she could see, from the terror in his eyes, that he really was her brother. It wasn't just a trick. As her father left them, she prepared for the worst. She hoped it wasn't really his first time-men were always so clumsy, then. What he said, though, surprised her as she began to undress. "I think it inappropriate that a sister should undress in front of her brother. I am nothing like him; unless you want this, or if he will beat you, then my sister is my sister, nothing else. He will believe whatever I tell him." The boy, Yoshiro, was sweet and tender to her. In the weeks that followed, they were siblings, and nothing more. Yoshi was delighted to have an older sister. They would kiss goodbye full on the lips, each day, to satisfy their father's twisted desire. He could believe what he wanted about what else might happen. Neither of them cared much for the thug that dishonored their mothers. Even the other soldiers found the extremes of his racial views repugnant. The head of the guards was actually relieved when he discovered the children were simply playing together. But nothing could erase the terror all held the Commander in; Whatever fun the girl and her brother had together would be tempered still by that first day. "Do you approve of the halfling, my son?" The boy regarded his sister. She pretended to be upset, as he had told her to. "Fortunately, Father, she has some quality blood in her. But we will have to see if she meets my standards. Perhaps, by the time I am done here, there will be more meat on her." Later on, the boy wasted valuable play time apologizing for his remarks. But fate had a sense of humor and justice. Public bluster aside, the Commander did not have the son he wanted. His son would have simply picked the girl up and carried her off. But he said nothing. He had control, and more importantly, the appearance of control. After this, he would have even more. "Bring forward the prisoners." At his bidding, a mixed bag of Chinese and American POW's was brought out, and told to crack some rocks, with pick-axes. As they had done this many times before, they simply broke the rocks, with no prompting. Then, the horror came.. A sickly looking greenish gas came out from the rocks. Reactions varied. Some men literally shriveled up and died. Some actually hacked up internal organs. Skin began to flow like water off of others. Some few-very few-simply continued to break the rocks, rather than be summarily shot. Of a field of forty, three were left when it was done. When a second pile of the odd rocks was brought out and broken, two of those survivors were gone. Of the groups that came and went only three Americans and three Chinese survived. There was no rhyme nor reason. They simply did. Further, from then on, they had no dysentery, nor even a cold or rash. The Commander had his terror, and then some. Before he left, Yoshi met one of his sister's friends. She was actually delighted at a soldier who asked, and did not simply take, so his first time was with her. The tales he told, though, were of his sister. This was at her insistence, so that their father would think his son like him. He didn't give her what he told the other soldiers he did; But he did give her something. "It's a doll. Oh, Yoshi. Her red hair is so beautiful. Like a rose." Since he was out of sight of the others, he kissed her on the cheek. "My sister is beautiful. So is Lo, but I cannot see her again. Tell her she will always have a place in my heart. But hide the doll, or Father will smash it. I know you're a little old for it, at 23, but let nothing happen to our little Rosie." Back in the present, both Dana and Rosie were close to tears. "So that's how you became Rosie to any Westerners?" "Yes. It would remind me of a brother so wonderfully different from his father. He was in Tokyo, in December of 1954, when the Catastrophe struck. Hawkeye saved his life, then. If the 4077th had not held its reunion, there, my brother would have died under that creature's great feet, like so many others in Tokyo." "Rosie, if your brother had not been so kind, would your father have actually forced you to commit incest?" Rosie had often considered this question. The answer was grim. "In a heartbeat. To his mind, my mother was from a different species. Nazi liaison his teacher, way back when. Tell him certain people aren't people. My mother not human, then, his son has no sister. No sister, no incest. No wrong. As I say, my father was slippery type. Only his rules matter. Not anyone else's. Not even God's." Scully felt disgusted. She had encountered worse things, even worse forms of incest. But this wasn't some sobbing girl she had to comfort long enough to testify. This was Rosie, one of the funny people from the stories she would hear as a little girl, from her Uncle Jack. She knew it was becoming more and more difficult to stay on track. That meant it was more important to do so than ever. Rosie added: "Then as now, Brother is family. Just like Maxine is family. Just like you and your partner are family, Scully. Not merely to each other. But to the family of 4077th." Scully nervously changed the subject back, remembering recent reductions in the Scully and Mulder clans. "Rosie, let's just clear some things up. Those gaseous rocks-meteors?" "Yes". "Your true age 79-not 89, like our records say?" "I lie about age to get business license. Older person shown more respect, once." Scully was forming ideas about the meteors, but first decided to listen to Rosie's story of the first two months of the MASH 4077th. July 24, 1950-KTO-Site of Construction-MASH 4077th "On this, 19 July, 2450, we dedicate this Corner Store....." Henry Blake stopped, and stared at the sheet he had been given to read. He looked over at one of the assembled soldiers. The one that was sweating grenades. "Private O'Reilly. Front and Center." The nervous young man did as he was bid. "O' Reilly. Did I or did I not tell you to have my dedication speech at the ready when we were ready to make this camp ready.?" O'Reilly squirmed. "I-I wasn't ready, sir." Lieutenant Colonel Blake rubbed his head. Besides O'Reilly's complete incompetence, the army hat he was wearing was itchy and uncomfortable. He wished he was back home, with his trademark fishing cap. But this was the military. Things had to be different. They were piecing back together the men who were holding back the fall of civilization. Order and discipline were needed. In another life, the man now called Henry Braymore Blake served a man named Arthur as his First Knight. In a top-down structure, the efforts of the merest squire counted as much as those of a king. That was something O'Reilly, the worst company clerk on Earth, didn't seem to appreciate. "You lose all the mail. You make using the phone seem like -I don't know- Hand-to-hand combat. Three of out the seven surgeons we need to run this place are somewhere in Europe, because you filled out 'E' instead of 'As" for continent of destination on the request order." Walter Eugene O'Reilly, PFC for no good reason Henry Blake could discern, then almost fumbled and dropped a clipboard. He couldn't even get dropping things right. "According to this schedule, Sir, Doctors Burns, McIntyre, and Pierce will be here in six hours. I try to clean up my mistakes, Colonel." "One-Private, lose that tone of voice. This place is gonna have to be tight as a drum to survive this police action. Two - The wounded will be here in eight hours, O'Reilly. That's cutting it awful close, wouldn't you say? Three - Of course you learn from your mistakes, soldier. And you are among the most learned I have ever met-not to my pleasure, mind you." Trying hard not to cry, O'Reilly ran back to resume duties that were certain to make him cry. "Y'all were a little hard on him, weren't you Colonel? O'Reilly's just like any horse, gotta be broken in a little." Henry was not in the mood for backtalk from sympwimp draftee doctors like Duke Forrest. "Captain, when I want your opinion on running this camp, I'll have you arrested for insubordination, and interrogate you for it." Three goofball surgeons. They were another headache the Commander of the near-frontline experimental unit, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, Number 4077, did not need. There was Duke Forrest, who whined continually about missing his family. Henry missed his, too, but he didn't let it interfere with his duties. The Australian, as called himself Ugly John, with an almost incomprehensibly thick accent. Damn the UN and its rules, Henry thought. We shouldn't even be in there. Finally, possibly the only Negro Surgeon in Korea, Doctor Gerald Jones. Henry considered himself quite the tolerator, but this man insisted on being called "SpearChucker". It was a name he had been (partially) smeared with at Med School, and which he now wore as a kind of angry badge of honor. A childish way, Henry thought, of saying, 'I'll call myself a name before you can'. Jones never bothered telling the uptight CO that it had also been given him for his prowess on the football field. Of the new three, Burns had experience in the Indiana National Guard. Pierce and McIntyre had graduated near the top of their classes. From these three he expected respect for his authority, discipline, and order. They would keep the other three in line, surely. He had enough trouble keeping the men in line. The women-the nurses-were wilder than fratboys. This was evidenced by the nurse dancing nude on top of his jeep for quarters. He would need a female ramrod to keep them in line. Then, the nurses would try to end-run her to him-but to no avail-he would back her up one hundred percent of the time. When this woman, Major Margaret Houlihan, first showed up along with the new chaplain, she seemed as befuddled as O'Reilly, though. Assured she would have Colonel Blake's full backing, the dancing nurse was clothed, and the mixed showers closed. He wondered if she had Blake's inherent discipline, to keep on top of those women-so to speak. The chaplain was a round-collar, an Irishman named Francis Mulcahy. He had a less than auspicious beginning, as the Nude Dancing Nurse, ordered by Houlihan to get off the jeep, jumped off and fell into the lap of the Catholic Priest who was still sitting in the Jeep. Trying to stop herself from falling further, she had wrapped her fumbling arms around his neck, then excused herself to get dressed. 30 minutes later, when he emerged from his state of shock, Father Mulcahy's first words at the 4077th were notable. "She is--A Most---Jocular- young lady, isn't she?" As the first three surgeons, fitted with special protective work gloves, helped the corpsmen clear away the meteorites that the area was lousy with, a Korean woman of indeterminate age asked Henry a question for the seventh time, and she got her seventh answer. "No, lady. You are not setting up your speakeasy anywhere near this camp. I'm gonna try to keep it dry here for long as possible- maybe forever." Rosie, thinking the man was crazy, resolved to ask him again when the wounded came. Until then, she would watch and wait. "These rocks could stand to lay off the bacon n' beans, for a spell. Whoa. Never smelled anything like that. And that was only a small crack." "A shaman lives in New South Wales asked me to puff somethin' from his pipe, once. It didn't have half the kick that this junk did." "Some of the folks from the Klan once tried to shove my pretty face into something that still smelled better than what those rocks have going on. And I liked them better than I do this Blake character. I mean, didn't he and Frau Eva shoot each other back in Berlin?" Henry had other concerns than the complaints of his surgeons. Supplies necessary to the survival of soldiers wounded in General MacArthur's push to the Chinese border had not yet arrived. He thought he knew who to blame there, as well. "O'Reilly, it's bad enough you seem to want to do my military career in. But, when you screw up supplies that are VITAL to the survival of your fellow servicemen, I have to wonder if you weren't sent by the other side for sabotage." Private O'Reilly wasn't much on bucking authority, especially when most of his ground was so shaky. But here he felt solid, and acted like it. Blake had crossed the line once too often. "Now, just you listen up, sir. I may be a boob, but I don't stare at boobs like the other guys. Instead of watchin' that lady's keister, I've been workin' mine off. Forgive my tone, an' my language, but those supply requisitions were done one hundred percent co-rrect. I ain't done much else right, but I done those. I know how important they are. I didn't get any sleep til I checked em' all over FIVE times. We sent em', and ICOR got em'. The only thing we ain't got is the supplies. But for once, Colonel, it ain't me." If it weren't for Henry's pride, the boy's impassioned defense would have gotten something other than We'll See as a response. As Blake discovered, O'Reilly was correct, and he had done his job. Fact was, for the previous hour, since standing up for himself, Private O'Reilly had nailed down the missing surgeons, who were now arrived and prepping for the deluge. So Blake had those odd rocks moved, he had a company clerk growing in confidence and competence, and he had a full staff. But where, he wondered, were those supplies? He listened as O'Reilly spoke to another clerk. "Leodegrance? Your folks ACTUALLY saddled ya with somethin' like that?" He held the phone away. "And I thought Walter Eugene was bad." He picked it up again. "Well, lemme try and help ya out, pal....howzabout, from now on, you're....Sparky. Oh, you, like that, huh? The other name'll be between just you an' me, all right, Sparky....Sparky?" In the compound, new and old surgeons got to know one another. Thinking they could see clearly, they didn't notice the fog gathering. This place would be nothing like any of them expected. Dana Scully could tell that Rosie was not pausing merely for dramatic effect. The narrative was exhausting her. It was exhausting Scully, merely by listening. "Rosie, if you need to rest, we can come back to this later." Rosie smiled. This young woman was acting more like family all the time. "No, Scully. I have plenty enough time to rest, soon." If the elements of Rosie's story were not so damned vital to uncovering Immunita's origins, Scully would have asked what she meant by rest soon. But they were, and she couldn't. "Before Rosie get back to story of 4077th beginning, I must ask you something. I ask before, but I ask again - why do you believe Rosie? You seem like doubtful kind of person, but you not challenge anything I have to say." Dana paused, hoping her answer would be more complete this time. "An FBI agent is trained to not only hear what a person says, but the way they say it, how they carry themselves. Your tenor with me is very matter-of-fact, no embellishments. Your body language indicates to me that telling this story is both a strain and a release for you. Where you don't know, you don't say. Add to that, while everything you've told me could be explained away....To do so I would have to have no eyes." "Good. I do not like being humored, or tolerated. You have done neither. You have just listened to me. You will listen, now, as Rosie tells how best laid plans of Henry Blake lead to 72 straight hours of pure hell for his camp. And you know, Scully, who waits at the center of Hell, wanting to make deal." JUST-COMPLETED SITE OF MASH, 4077TH, KTO, JULY 25TH, 1950, 0130 HOURS Except for the missing supplies, the camp was at the ready for the delayed throng of wounded that would be arriving within the wee morning hours. While obeying Blake's strict prohibition orders, the surgeons took turns talking and getting to know one another. They didn't know each other. As it would turn out, they didn't know themselves or their limits very well. That would change. They would change. "Well, since I've never really left Maine, except for my residency, I'll follow your lead, Major Burns. After all, you've worked in Indianapolis and Dayton. Big cities like that." "I'll help where I can, Captain, but - to be honest - my cutting skills are just not what they should be." "You'll do fine, Major. You're probably the best surgeon here. Me, I just want to keep myself from straying. Those are some fine looking nurses, and they seem pretty willing, but this is one Trapper who just wants to catch a ride home by Christmas, like General MacArthur promised. I love my wife, and I'm not gonna be like some guys, who use this kinda thing as an excuse to jump on everything in sight." "Christmas, Macintyre.? The General is gonna have us home for Thanksgiving. By Christmas, HE'LL be feasting on Peking Duck-In Peking, no less." "I don't know about that, Doctor Jones. Back in Fort Wayne, I knew some John Birch types. That kind of jingoistic talk could cause a Third World War we'd be years recovering from. I say, have him reunify this Peninunsla, then the Republican nod in 52'. Of course, that'd put him up against a man like Truman, but that'd only mean America would have two strong candidates to choose from for once." "Are you a liberal, Major? Back in CrabApple Cove, I have to say we didn't have much use for them-except as kindling on lobster night." "It's Oz for me, and some bare beauties on beaches full of brew. I say, even in case of disaster, I'll be seeing said bare beauties in February. I'll unwrap them as me Valentine's Day Gift." "Well, Mrs. Forrest's little boy isn't feeling so hot, right now. But a visit real soon with Mrs. Forrest's beautiful daughter-in-law will fix that up real quick. Plus, I hear tell she's got some great...kids. God, I miss them. I don't think I'm ever going to see them again." "My Dad would've called you a worrymonger, Duke. Of course, Daniel Webster Pierce tends to call everyone that, at some point. MY point is, this is the Army. You know, the people that saved the world and stopped the bad guy, five years back? This is all part of a plan. They know what they're doing. They have to. They're the Army." "What Pierce said is kinda obvious, but I'm glad he said it. The McIntyres came to America to take in the good. It's our patriotic duty to give some back. Those soldiers are gonna want to get patched up and sent back to the fight, ASAP. What they won't want is some sob-sisters holding their hands." "Yeah, Trapper, but so we want to end up like Patton? Striking a shell-shocked soldier? I heard that war can get pretty rough, especially at the front. My uncle Martin once told me that the foxholes offer no protection sometimes." "Listen, Burns. The Army will protect its soldiers when it can. On the odd occasion it can't, that's what we're here for. What's great for me, is that here, we're all Americans. I'm not black, you're not white. We're all part of the Red, White, and Blue." Doctor Jones' commentary was hardly the last word in a dreamlike conversation that, later on, none of them would remember having. But Rosie, who had caught an earful of it, moved on, passing the Nurses' Quarters as she went. "It was just a little dancing. God, that Blake's such a stickler. Listen, Major, the Doctors may not know what's coming, but the Nurses and the corpsmen do. When those wounded come, we won't be ready. We can't be ready. I strip down, do a little dance, everyone has maybe the last good laugh they'll have--ever. I know that the Chaplain will never forget me." "You'll be the angel in his visitations, for awhile, that's for certain. Listen, Cunningham, I've been known to dance a little Gypsy Rose myself, with even less than you had on. But while I sympathize, he is the CO." Charlotte Cunnigham nodded, but then realized something Margaret Houlihan had said. "Less than me? How is that possible?" Margaret pulled at her ears. "Earrings, kiddo. If this was a contest, you may as well have been covered from head to toe. Details, Chuckie. Details. Without paying attention to little things, you become like one of those stuffy old nurses we used to make fun of. 'Big Picture' my behind." Charlotte "Chuckie" Cunningham smiled at her old friend. "So, Maggie-Pie, is there anyone you've seen that you'll be doing a dance for? Head-Nurse gets first dibs." "Oh, I don't know. That hayseed from Maine looks good. Sweet, but dumb." The two women laughed, and then spoke, in unison. "Sweet But Dumb--That's How They Should Come." Laughing with them were Chuckie's friends, Julia Winslow and Benita Martin, who were both impressed by the new Head Nurse's decision to bunk with her staff, instead of seeking her own tent. Margaret Houlihan was determined to avoid the distance she sensed between her beloved father and his soldiers, that she observed when he made Major. No, she and the nurses would get on fine. Let Blake find his ramrod somewhere else. "I've called us to order at 0400 hours because that is the way each and every day will begin, whether we have wounded, or not. You will all show up, in uniform, cleaned, and ready to begin your day. A salute is expected, and you will address me as Colonel Blake. Lieutenant Colonel is a title. Colonel is a fact of your life. I do not foresee any need to relax this discipline-ever. If any object, let me remind you that this is the United States Army. We may be fighting for democracy, but that concept does not exist here. I am the head and center of all your lives. I want it said, in months to come, that the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 4077th is, what it is, purely because of Henry Blake's leadership. Nonsense will not be tolerated. Competence and drive will be rewarded, though." He pointed to O'Reilly. "This young man has improved so much, because of my firm hand, in the last 12 hours alone, that I am giving him a field promotion to Corporal, to encourage both him and yourselves. A hand, then, for Corporal Walter Eugene O'Reilly, of Des Moines, Iowa." Blake found O'Reilly's real home town unpronounceable. Besides, it wasn't the point. O'Reilly didn't have the promotion coming, but a carrot-and-stick approach sometimes required giving up a piece of carrot, to keep things moving. O'Reilly then spoke. "Actually, Colonel Blake, sir, it's Ottumwa, Iowa. Er--we all kinda don't really care for Des Moines-it's a long story, not anybody's fault-er, ah...." He paused. "I usually don't like the name my birth-parents gave me when they had me born, so usually I like to be called what my pals called me. They called me Radar, cause I could always tell things were gonna happen before they did, kinda like.....choppers and ambulances. A load of em." All stared at the young man. "Uh, Radar? Hawkeye Pierce, here. Um, look kid. There's the direction everything supposed to come from. Now, I look over there and I see noth.....My God. There aren't that many ambulances in the whole world." Blake looked out, with his binoculars. "There are...quite a few of them, aren't there? All right, company dismissed. Seek your posts in an orderly fashion. If we do this carefully, it can be done. If this can be done, it can be done right." For one of three times during the entire Korean War, the 4077th broke an orderly assembly in an orderly fashion. Despite the lack of supplies, Lieutenant Colonel Blake felt in charge and fully in control of the entire world's destiny. In months to come, Henry Blake would wonder where this man went. "My Auntie Margaret actually bragged of nude dancing? Everything she ever told me about her life then suggested she was at least a public exemplar." "Rosie not know what to tell you, Scully. Except to bring point home again. What happen when those first wounded arrive change some. Others become more like themselves than ever." MASH, 4077th, KTO, JULY 25, 1950, 2300 HOURS, IT HAS BEGUN.... "Colonel Blake? Some of these soldiers are the enemy. What I am supposed to do?" "You take our boys, first, Pierce, then the allies, then any hostiles. That's-oh, geez- he's hurt bad-he's not gonna make--Pierce, belay that. He's just a kid. Take him first." Hawkeye Pierce couldn't believe the order he had just received. But he operated on the young enemy soldier, and was glad he did. The American was ashamed for aiding and comforting. The Doctor was ashamed for even thinking of classifying a sick person the way he had originally intended to. In this, his nineteenth straight hour on the operating room floor, The Doctor decided he couldn't be an American without keeping to all his oaths, loyalty and Hippocratic and any others he couldn't think of right now. Hawkeye felt like this place was trying to beat him into submission, and he wouldn't have that-ever. He resolved a new oath that would carry him through the next three years of his life. "Superman wouldn't let this place win. Neither will I. Death, to me, you're nothing but a big, bald Lex Luthor. And Luthor always loses to Superman. Oh, and by the way, you're also a complete bastard." Hearing the surgeon talk to himself, the attending nurse, Head Nurse Margaret Houlihan, found herself in an odd position. She found his resolve-not to mention the man himself-attractive. But it was a wild kind of strength, one that might easily hurt her. She had already been hurt enough, in the last nineteen hours. The nurses were no longer her friends. They weren't pulling their weight. They weren't doing their duty. They were covering for each other's unscheduled breaks-coffee and otherwise. When their attitude had forced Margaret to pull rank, Charlotte Cunnigham had as much as told her that maybe it was a good idea if she seek the private quarters Blake offered her. Her friends had hurt her, by abusing her kindness. She came to the grim realization that a distance was required, in a war zone. That distance would be necessary to do her job. But it would also leave her terribly, terribly alone. Could Hawkeye Pierce be the one to make the long nights go faster? She listened as he spoke again. "I'm sorry if I'm ranting, Major. But I'm not gonna let this hell-hole kill me. It will make me nuts, though. I know its gonna make me nuts. I mean, where are our supplies? This isn't surgery. We're not surgeons. We're a bunch of Swedish chefs, taking ground meat and turning it into meatballs." Margaret made a disastrous move to calm Pierce, before Colonel Blake could hear what he was saying, and maybe have him leave the OR. Her effort was to help him, first and foremost. But it was also her duty. In the hellish hours since the quiet camp fell apart forever, Doctor Pierce had proven to be their fastest, most skilled, and most tireless cutter. While McIntyre sweated to keep up, and Burns grew paler and paler from the effort, and the other four looked dead on their feet, Pierce seemed to glow. It was like Life itself had taken up residence in him, to rebut the Grim Reaper's arguments personally. There were moments when Margaret wondered if she really wasn't looking at Superman. There were brief moments when she felt like grabbing a phone booth to find out if she was. But words chosen in exhaustion have a hit-or-miss quality to them. Both Hawkeye and Margaret would need fifteen years to come back to this point in their lives. As Monsignor Francis Mulcahy said that day in 1965 : "Dearly Beloved...It's about bloody time these two woke up." At this time, though, they began a long sleep apart. "Captain Pierce, I'm certain the Army will get us our supplies. They know what they're doing. I'm certain there's a good reason for the delay." Margaret wasn't convinced of her own words. The Army she knew would have had those supplies at the ready when Blake came over the hill one week back. She didn't expect such incompetence that bordered on indifference to the wounded. But she also didn't expect the visceral reaction of Hawkeye Pierce, to her simple statement. "I may have believed that line of horse manure going in here, Major, but not anymore. We've lost twenty percent of the wounded, all because simple things like Sulfa, Penicillin, and bandages were too much for HQ to part with. Those dead bodies tell me all I need to know. The top brass does not give a damn about the fighting man in this war. Maybe any war." "First off, Captain, this is a police action, not a war. Secondly, how dare you, a draftee, mock men who have voluntarily devoted their entire lives to this nation's defense? Why, I'd say it borders on treason." This was going very wrong, for both of them. But larger than average egos, tremendous pride and twin explosive tempers would, in their own way, set the course for the rest of their lives. Their argument had made them feel all the worse for their initial attraction. So they fed it back into the anger. In years to come, they would openly wonder if they missed their chance for children in that one bitter moment. "Listen up, Madame Nixon. Don't you dare equate questioning this insanity with some kind of commie witch-hunt. You want commies? We're piecing one together right now who looks like he should be home wondering if the new cheerleader will let him past second base." "There is a time and a place for that kind of gutter talk, Captain, and guess what? This sure as hell isn't it. You want to save lives, then think more of them and less of your libido." "Waitaminute. I never mentioned my libido. Or is it you, Major, who wants to see what my libido can do? Say, the stock area, in twenty minutes? Lord knows, its EMPTY enough. We'll have enough space to see whether or not you can do something with that cute behind of yours besides talk through it." Predictably, Margaret slapped him for that comment. She was disgusted, and Pierce actually looked hurt at this. A moment of Why are we doing this passed quickly as Margaret fled the room, attempting to hide her tears. The altercation had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the O.R. staff. Colonel Blake made that much clear. "Pierce, take it outside, if you're gonna act that way." Hawkeye stood dazed and exhausted, for a moment. He was between wanting to slap Margaret Houlihan around and wanting to grab her, and a chopper, and flying till they crashed on some Pacific Island. He needed something to do to stay alive. It was as simple as that. If Blake wouldn't let him operate, then. "Colonel Blake?" "What If I go outside..." "That's kind of what I ordered you to do, Pierce." "What If I go outside, and prep the patients, ya know, maybe prioritize them by how badly they're wounded? That'd stretch the supplies some." Blake was stunned. "We call that triage, Pierce. You didn't invent it. But if that's how you wanna help, we could all use the respite from your balloon juice." "I promise to be...polite, from here, on in, Colonel." A nurse, one of about six that seemed to be named Baker, stopped Pierce on his way out. "Not too polite, I hope. I'll meet you in that storage area, in forty minutes, and you better NOT be a gentleman." Hawkeye Pierce found so aggressive a woman attractive, but the thought of sex distracting him from surgery was something that Doctor Pierce felt strongly against. His response to Baker surprised him, though. "I'll be there with bells on." He was, too. The succeeding hours had each surgeon taking a break by handling the prioritizing of patients. Pierce actually seemed to prefer the OR, and that was where he was needed. The medically-based prioritizing went against some regs, but it kept better with the camp's basic mission. Problem was, Colonel Blake was having a harder and harder time figuring out what the hell that mission was. They did stretch supplies, but that couldn't last. What's more, over the next sixteen hours, he would hear his own name more times than he had after his kids had learned to talk. "Colonel Blake. Some of these patients ...Don't care for their choice of surgeon. Must be my oily skin." "They're patients, Captain Jones. They don't choose that kind of thing. If they don't like it, then sedate them big time." "Colonel Blake. When do they expect the wounded to stop coming?" "How the hell should I know, McIntyre?" "Colonel Blake. We don't get those supplies soon, these lads'll be Down Under quicker than me on VK Day." "Listen, Doctor St. John, Radar has been calling everywhere. They're not to be found." Henry wasn't sure what the Aussie surgeon's last name was. But he'd be damned before he'd call someone Ugly John out loud. The only one not asking for direction was the one who didn't need any-Hawkeye Pierce. To him, the OR was a caged grudge-match between two unyielding rivals. Frank Burns, on the other hand, did not seem to be taking it all in stride. "Colonel. Captain Pierce has excused himself-with a nurse in tow-every six hours. This is disgracefully unmilitary. Not to mention his shabby treatment of poor Major Houlihan." Margaret, who had not forgotten the souring of her feelings towards Hawkeye Pierce, smiled at Burns. "Why, thank you, Major. But as to Captain Pierce, well, let's just say that perhaps some people don't belong in the United States Military. Margaret was hoping to get Pierce's goat with that statement. But she would be a long time in doing that. All Hawkeye could say, in response, was one thing. "Hot Lips, when you're right, you're right." It was a nickname that Margaret would never quite live down, this despite the fact that her and Hawkeye's first real kiss was over two years in the future. Radar walked into the OR, was ordered to put on a mask, and yelled, "Colonel Blake." This was the straw that broke his back. His next statement veered away from the discipline he had hoped to achieve. "Listen Up, People. From now on, all medical and nursing staff will call me Henry. If I hear Colonel Blake too many more times, I think I'm gonna explode. Now, what is it, Radar?" "Well, uh-Sir. The Supplies Are Here." A sincere and resounding cheer was heard throughout the OR. "Then bring them in, Corporal." "Uh, no can do Colonel Bla-Sir." "And exactly why are you refusing to obey my order, Private?" "I'm not, Sir. But the guy outside with the trucks says he's only gonna wanna deal with you." "What the hell? Pierce, close for me." As Henry walked outside, he wondered what kind of maniac would hold up vital supplies at an army hospital literally overflowing with wounded. He was about to find out. The exhausted medics were in their thirty-sixth hour. They didn't know it, but another thirty-three would see the wounded finally abate. They were dead in the middle of their own private hell. Like any other middle of any other hell, there waited the devil. Henry saw the devil, standing, waiting for him. He was a dead ringer for a man Henry Blake would never truly meet, but he was not Sherman T. Potter. The slightly crazy-looking man was not a Colonel, but a General. General Bartford Hamilton Steele the Third, to be exact. "General, sir, if I may ask what the hold-up is all-about? My people want these supplies and..." "What you want is not relevant, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake. And, no you may not ask. No points, Blake." Henry was very confused. "Sir, this isn't a game." Steele was unmoved. "No, Colonel, this isn't a game, but there are prizes. Although, in my favorite game, I play a wide-eyed lunatic who pounces upon unsuspecting units. I'll have to show you sometime. The kids love it. Specially Bart the Fourth. Heh, My Little Iceman." Neither Henry's confusion nor his anxiety were showing any signs of clearing up. "Sir, what Prizes? I have a hospital to run." Steele was still moving slowly on any straight answers. "Boy, you must be quite dense. To run a hospital you need....SUPPLIES. You and me, we can have a supplies party." Henry was sickened by the thought, but said it out loud, anyway. "In exchange for what, General?" "Oh, just those foul-smelling rocks your boys picked up. The former owner of this site says they have a mean kick to em'." "Former owner? General, this was the site of one of the nastier Japanese POW camps." Steele's eyes were turning as cold as his name. On a man who wore a friendly facade, it looked twice as evil. "For the supplies, Blake, the following is true: There never was any such camp on this site. Also, no strange rocks were found here-ever. Thirdly, if I show up, to have a chat, you've never seen me before. You play along, and this patchwork factory of yours will have supplies even under the worst of conditions, for many months to come. Otherwise, things can get a mite dry. Agreed, Colonel?" There were men dying in the next building. His surgeons and nurses were killing themselves to keep those dying men alive. "Agreed, General." The psychotic little man was suddenly all gregarious again. "GOOOOD. Pleasure doing business with you, Blake. A real pleasure to meet you. Hope you remember my name." As the supply trucks were unloaded at incredible speeds, Henry Blake found a motor pool rag and wiped off the hand that Steele had shook. He saw that the rag had plenty of grease on it, and now so did he. Making sure the General was out of earshot, he made one last comment before heading back towards OR. "Your name isn't what's puzzling me, pal." With the arrival of their supplies and then some, the next thirty hours were made to fly by. Unlike the first forty-two or so, they had the physical means to get through. Since Post-Op was not yet set up, the patients were slowly evaced out. The loss of twelve percent of those patients to the ride forever altered how patients were evaced from the 4077th. There were a lot of forevers that day. Still trying to drink in that a respected general from a respected family would hold the lives of fighting men hostage to a bunch of rocks, Henry noticed the compound. Quiet. Quiet, and clear, except for the fact that the nude nurse had become the nude nurses, joined by the nude medics and nude corpsmen. Two of them were surgeons Duke Forrest and Trapper John McIntyre, each handling a couple of women at the same time. Each of whom had declared their love and fidelity for their wives, prior to the onslaught. Henry couldn't remember his own wife's name, at that point, so he wouldn't blame those men. There was a literal orgy going on in his compound, but he couldn't care less. He grabbed one-the first dancer, Charlotte Cunnigham, and brought her to his tent. For the first time, she felt awkward about her state of undress. "Army regs say I can't do this. Well, Nurse Cunnigham, I'm not ordering you to do a damned thing. Nothing's gonna happen to your career, or anything else, if you walk out. But I need someone here with me. I once knew a man named Arthur. I thought I could be as good a war commander as him. But I'm no CO. I'm just an old man, asking a young woman to make him feel like he isn't fifteen-hundred years old. You don't even have to do anything. Just please don't leave me alone." Henry Blake was sobbing his brains out. With a compassion born as much from a nurse's instinct as sexual desire, Charlotte began to kiss Henry Blake. Contrary to myths abounding at the time, Lorraine Blake slept peacefully through the night. Henry had broken his vows to her with a woman he had met when she wasn't wearing a stitch. But Henry was raw himself. Colonel Blake never did return. The 4077th was the circus it was, people said, because of Henry Blake's lack of leadership. Later, anyone who said that in the presence of Sherman T. Potter caught an earful. The man who looked like Bartford Hamilton Steele and who filled Henry Blake's shoes knew what the man went through. Or, he thought he did. Margaret Houlihan never had a chance to apologize for the back and forth between her and Pierce in the OR. The sight of a shattered, lonely Frank Burns caught her eye. Like Carlye Walton before her, she chose a needy man over a man who seemed to need no one. She would always like Frank Burns. But she would still secretly view her choice as cowardice. Hawkeye felt the same way about himself. But they weren't cowards. They had merely begun their fifteen - year - long dance. At relating that, Rosie went up to check on her great-granddaughter, a girl so spry, you would never believe she had bone and marrow problems. But she had both. After five minutes downstairs, Dana Scully and Maxine Klinger Ishikawa heard the scream. As they ran up, the tape Scully had obtained was playing. In it, the Immortal Hero, realizing he had been tricked into killing his protégé, begged someone to kill him. He was weeping, and sobbing. Neither Rosie nor Su-Na were doing anything. Rosie had come upstairs, and upon finding her great-granddaughter was definitely not immortal, fell and joined her. A heart heavy from burying too many of her children had finally given out. Broken on the floor was a red-haired porcelain doll, the symbol of love from a brother who refused to be a barbarian towards his own sister. Maxine was beyond consoling. Scully helped her downstairs, and agreed to make the arrangements, despite her caseload. Maxine and her husband, both shattered, tried to let Scully out of her promise, but she refused. She said just two words on the subject. "We're family." Half a world away, as Hawkeye Pierce finished a gin-and-tonic, unaware that the friend who had served him so many gin-and-tonics was gone, Fox Mulder was asking him another in a spiraling, ever more intricate series of questions. "All I'm saying, Hawkeye, is that there is no record of Doctors Jones, Forrest, or St. John ever serving at the 4077th." "All I'm saying, Fox, is that, given the kind of world you run around in, you think there's not a reason for all that?" "There are always reasons, Hawkeye." "Yeah, there are always reasons. But I'd rather crawl inside a refrigerator than tell you the reasons for that." "But, Doctor, you will tell me?" "Yeah, kid. But this isn't pretty." "I'm sorta used to not pretty, Doctor." "Then get sorta used to industrial ugly, Mulder." Mulder had heard worse. But what followed from Hawkeye Pierce came damned close to the worst. But before Hawkeye could relate the lives of three doctors who, according to Mulder's records, never served at the 4077th, the young FBI agent received a call from his partner. The news was not good. "Well, I'm sorry Scully. Max has always spoken well of her. No, I suppose it is good that it happened quickly. But for her to find...I've done more than contact one of them...Hawkeye Pierce is right here in front of me...Ok, I'll ask." Mulder indicated to Pierce that his partner wished to speak with him. Pierce hesitated, then acquiesced, like a man who had received many phone calls he didn't care for. Fox Mulder understood this look. "Yes, Agent Scully, I...Rosie? Oh, God, No… The little girl? I was there, helped her mother to...I'm sorry, it's just, when it comes to Death, I've always been a sore loser...Not that I've always been the greatest winner...What do you mean you remember....SCILLY?.. Hold on, honey, Uncle Benny just has to do something, kiddo." Pierce looked at Mulder a bit askance. He then reached into his coat's pocket, and pulled out a resealable bag. Inside it were tongue depressors. He wrote the word "Rosie" upon one, then broke it gently, almost tenderly in two. Mulder did not question the odd ritual. Hawkeye, on the other hand, questioned him. "Why the hell didn't you tell me that your partner was Jack Scully's niece? Your records do indicate he was Margaret's ex, don't they?" Scully's uncle had died after a long series of strokes not long after her sister had been murdered. Mulder had never met him, and Dana had only mentioned him in passing. But there it was, under 4077th and associated personnel. Jack Scully, formerly married to Margaret Houlihan, later Margaret Pierce. Known relatives : Dana ( Niece ), Special Agent with the Federal Bureau Of Investigation. Mulder knew about small worlds. He was beginning to wonder, though, if the X-Files itself wouldn't turn out to be a scam Pierce and his cohorts thought up to impress some prospective nurses. Pierce resumed talking to Scully. Mulder would have to be careful of reminding her about the childhood nickname, Scilly Scully. "Of course I remember you. You were always the brightest thing...I'm sorry, Dana. It's just that I'm glad news like this is being delivered by family. No, I was just about to get to that, when you called. No, just like everything else, there's a reason for those guys not being...No, Dana, I'm sorry. No, you heard correctly. My wife disappeared ten years ago." It was the first time Mulder heard Hawkeye say it out loud. Even to utter her name was painful for Hawkeye. A police investigation had cleared the aging surgeon of even any potential wrongdoing. Mulder had seen grinners before. Men who essentially dared you to prove that they had done away with their wives, smiling all the while. Pierce did not fit any known profile of a man capable of this act. That didn't disprove anything, and there were reports of loud arguments before Margaret's vanishing. But with those two, loud arguments were invariably followed by deafening silence---punctuated by the sound of a headboard about to bust on through the bedroom wall. A young married couple nearby had once complained of the noise. For all that, one fact remained : In September of 1988, Retired Army Colonel Margaret Houlihan Pierce simply up and vanished. Either she had left her husband for some reason-or she had been made to leave. "Well, Dana, you just get used to dealing with it...No, that doesn't mean it gets any...San Francisco?...Oh, her brother's buried there...Trapper?...still head of surgery, out there, last I checked...No, we don't speak much...Whatever it is, it's his problem, I...Beej and Peg live in Montana, now...No, the part without the Fruitcakes.. I visit them once a year...No, I can't say where she is.. Seems we have a mutual fiend..." Hawkeye then related the painful day Henry Blake died, and the 4077th's grim visitor. Hawkeye did not like what Dana had to say about that man. "Kiddo, I don't care how old the guy is SUPPOSED to be. I know who showed up that day. Fox and I discussed...No, no, I don't think he was leading me into his way of thinking ...Well, if you disagree with him that much, then why are you his part...Don't tell me it's none of my business. If you're going to tell me I didn't see who I...Don't...Don't cry, Scilly. Your Uncle Ben is sorry...I know you are, honey...Well, that's your choice...of course I've looked for your Aunt Margaret.. No, someone else played with me, there...Only everyday of my life, Dana. If she's alive, she'll find me, when she's good and ready, hopefully that's soon...Who? OH. Well, sure.... Hhhey. How's the beautiful schnozz on Earth? Jeez, I am so sorry about Rosie...Well, sure, but I wanna talk some when we can." Hawkeye was a bit calmer, now. "Hey, Mulder, a party to speak with you." Mulder picked up the cell-phone. "MAXINE.? Oh, no. Oh, well it's good to hear your voice, too. Did Toshi dump you yet? Smart man, that Toshi. If he ever dumbs up, or if your dad decides on a trophy wife--what do you mean, No Chance? Hey, I've got a standing offer of mad, passionate love from Soon-Lee I'm not going to let pass...So she's 63? I have recent photos of her.. some quite explicit, ...hey I'm FBI. ...Wally any better?...No, Rosie loved her brother, and San Francisico's where he's buried...Non-Terrestrial DNA? Meteors?...Hey, Scully, why?...Yes, I believe we will talk later about procedure for evidence..." On the other end, Scully snuck Mulder a quick message. "Fox, Uncle Benny is lying. He knew I was FBI. I even wrote him about you. These people are up to something." With the other party having hung up, Mulder did the same. He was annoyed by the fact of Hawkeye Pierce laughing at him. "Just what is so funny?" "You. You go from talking like a Klinger to your usual self in 3.5 seconds. It's just funny is all." Mulder thought about his method of speech, talking to Maxine. The times he spent in the chaotic Klinger household were some of the happiest in his life. Max and Soon-Lee, whom he really did have a crush on, were his parents who had no secrets. Maxine was Samantha who didn't go away. Wally-Walter Sherman Cy Young Klinger-was a brother who had more problems than him, health-wise. Toshi was his clumsy brother-in-law, and those beautiful, always-healthy kids were his nieces and nephews. Spooky, tell me a story rang in his ears. He remembered Toshi saying a lot of the same things. With all of them, there were no taboo subjects-sex included. When the kids were awake, the MASH stories were about silly people ending up naked. When they were asleep, the stories were about silly people acting on their nakedness. "Hawkeye, with them, I am a Klinger." THE KLINGER HOUSEHOLD, During Mulder's Academy Days Fox couldn't stop apologizing. It was making Max's head spin. "Spooky, it's all right. Soon-Lee never locks the door when she showers. That's just her all over-lemme rephrase that. Er, taken altogether...No, that's not gonna do it..The bottom line..No, you saw that, and the front page--so did she, for that matter. Look, you're forgiven. Besides, she's pushing 55, like I am 60. We're not spring chickens. How much could it mean to a young guy like you?" THE PRESENT "How much did it mean, Mulder?" Hawkeye was trying not to be judgmental. But it sounded like something more went on than the old no-towel walk-in. "30 minutes. Except for a few fumbling times, as a teenager...my first time." Hawkeye looked over. He decided he wanted to hear more. "Don't get carried away-so to speak-but, Fox, Soon-Lee? She was twice your age, married to the man who let you stay in his house. A man who....had a one night stand of his own, didn't he?" Fox was desperate to get back to the missing doctors, but this had eaten at him for some time. "She was--is-- very attractive, Hawkeye. Never more so than when she surprised me in the shower. I suddenly had no self-control. But that wasn't the worst of it." "Ok, what was?" "I was an approved affair." "You mean, Max knew...." "Knew, and set it up. Same with Soon-Lee and Max's fling. They needed to see if they were still attractive to others. They'd never done that kind of thing. I think that was the only time. All I knew, was, she didn't look 55-she looked-dreamy." Hawkeye was not entirely thrown. Mulder's tale wasn't lurid, but it did lack one important element. "Dreamy, you say? Protected dreamy, or unprotected dreamy? Because, unprotected dreamy can become nightmarish, menopause or no." "That's how I figured out the plan, and eventually cornered them on it. She had me ---protected---pretty quickly--with Max's favorite brand. To think, they apologized to me." Hawkeye was relieved. "I'm just glad you're all right-all of you. I may tell a lot of jokes about sex, but lacking protection can be fatal." Mulder wondered if the dance Pierce had spoken of between himself and Margaret had taken this long to complete. "Are you about to tell me something, or is this a Public Service Announcement?" Mulder realized what he had just said, and knew Pierce was getting to him. "Brace yourself, kid. This little jaunt is about to go R. And not just for sex. We got through two major traumas that 1st two and a half months. One was that first two and a half months. The other....was really bad." Concurrent with the account offered Scully by the late Rosie, Hawkeye Pierce had told Fox Mulder of that first OR session, minus the role of General Steele. They had all been so tired. What happened then exhausted their bodies. What came next emptied their souls. MASH 4077TH, KTO, Friday, October 13, 1950, 1313 hours Certain familiar patterns had begun to manifest. Corpsmen hung out by the nurses shower, and nurses hung out by the corpsmen's shower. Margaret Houlihan was receiving promises of commitment from a man whom she knew wasn't going to keep them. But she needed to be needed, and Frank Burns needed her. Between the four of them, Trapper John McIntyre, "Ugly" St. John Black, Duke Forrest, and SpearChucker Jones had landed almost every woman in the area. This was a feat accomplished by Hawkeye Pierce in and of himself. To Pierce, though, it was the one woman he didn't have that ate at him. Little did he realize how much it ate at her, as well. Radar O'Reilly was getting to be quite the scam artist. When drinking with the guys, he told stories of phony female conquests while drinking from cups filled with disguised Grape Nehi. He decided to be someone not himself around other people. That would change. What would not change is his growing proficiency at a job he seemed born to do. The guiding hand of Henry Blake didn't hurt, either. Blake could have used a guiding hand. Colonel Blake never returned. Only Henry was there, and he was still angered by the bizarre actions of the General. Confused, he allowed an atmosphere of sex and drinking that prevailed until the wounded arrived. And they always would arrive. Each week, he would find a young lady who reminded him of Lorraine. Just enough companionship to see him through, nothing more. Henry didn't like it wild. For some people, though, wild was the only way to go-no matter the risks. One of the people who liked it wild was Charlotte Chuckie Cunningham. A once devout woman who loved ministering to the sick, her first times dealing with the blood those sick folk had all over them had gone badly. While in Army Nurse training, and with her friend Margaret Houlihan watching, she disgustedly stripped off her blood-soaked clothes and ran around starkers. To her surprise, she was less tense around others, and they her, after the show. When appropriate, she just up and did it for fun. She never told anyone that it was actually a relief for her not to wear clothes with blood on them. To them, she was a good sport, whatever that really meant. None of them mattered, though. Only Margaret. She was determined to get her friend back. Chuckie entered the head nurse's tent, remembering with sorrow her stupid suggestion, during that first OR. "Margaret, we need to talk." "So talk, Lieutenant, but it's Major Houlihan." "Will the Major accept a two-month belated apology?" "Certainly, although it's the wounded you need to apologize to, not me." "What's that supposed to mean?" "It means, Cunnningham, that your attitude stinks. You and all the other nurses." "Define stinks, Major." "Stinks means putting your open legs and open blouses before the fighting man's open wounds. Don't tell me that wasn't the case--I was there." "Yea, you were there. Playing with Captain Pierce in a 5th Grade I'll punch his arm to see if he likes me game. Nobody was at their best in that hell, Major." "Captain Pierce is a cheek-grabbing degenerate. I-could-never-care for a man like him. And I do agree, Lieutenant, neither you nor the others were ANYWHERE near your best." "Don't twist my words. Y'know, I was going to try and get my friend back. I was going to invite her and that cheek-grabbing degenerate who you don't care about, supposedly, to one wild time in the Swamp. But I can see my friend is gone. Maybe I pushed her away, or maybe she ran away scared. But she's not here now. Sorry to bother you, MA'AM." "I was your friend. But you used me, turned on me like vipers the first time I pulled rank. I was your pal till I had to be your Head Nurse. So no wild times or any other times with you ingrates. I have someone for me. A good, decent, respectful man." Margaret had stood firm up to this point. But what Chuckie said next made her stop dead in her tracks. "Margaret, he's a married man." Houlihan knew this. Knew that the other woman never did well, on any level. But until someone else said it, she had allowed herself comforting illusions about Frank Burns' ultimate intentions towards her. He wasn't a bad man. But he also wasn't going to follow through on any promises of a long-term relationship that didn't have Margaret skulking in the shadows and hanging up on Louise Burns. "Yes, he is." At that, a friendship was reborn. Chuckie embraced a lightly crying Margaret, and they talked as friends and sisters do. Margaret asked about what the Wild Time entailed. "Well, Maggie-Pie, it entails...our tails." It was difficult to embarrass Margaret Houlihan. Shocking her was actually quite easy. But to succeed in making her face as beet-red as it was at Chuckie's suggestion was a rare feat. "Chuckie, fun is fun. But that's pushing things-literally. There's no more inherently dangerous way of going about matters. I mean, a whole host of health risks, it'll be...." "It'll be fun, Major. Risky fun like this girl needs, like each of those three doctors needs. Jones, Ugly, and Forrest look like they're falling apart. For Duke, it'll be his last waltz in wartime. Devotion to his wife like that makes me, Bennie Martin, and Julia Winslow feel all the more special, risks or no. Now, howzabout you and Pierce, just to make it an even four couples?" "I can't. Blake is letting your three risk-takers out of it, but the rest of the senior staff has to attend a meeting. All of a sudden, he decides he wants to act like a Commander." In the nineties, the advice Margaret next gave her friend about frivolous intimacy would either have been second nature or background noise. In wartime 1950, it was completely unheeded. In the CO's office, a 3-hour film called 3 Hours In The Life Of A Military Staff included footage of a military staff watching a movie. It seemed the night would never end. But it did. Hawkeye, exhausted, rented a farmer's hut to be alone and sleep in quiet. After a long, circuitous journey, Major Burns joined Major Houlihan in her tent. Trapper was quite happy in the company of a nurse, one of about four named Abel. They all slept soundly. In the Swamp, fully shaded and lights out, a wild time was had by all. In a way, this wild time would last the rest of their lives. Then, in the morning, came the screams. All pointed at the Toledo native, though he was at that time still dressed like a man. "What's wrong with him?" "Who, Klinger?" "Yeah. I tried to make a date with him for tonight, but he brushed me off." "Didn't you hear?" "Hear what?" "Klinger was the first one to go into the Swamp, this morning. He saw firsthand--what was left of them." At that reminder, Nurse Kellye Nakahara ran and threw up for the fifth time that morning. Zale didn't blame her, or Klinger, for feeling like that. Even the toast he had was hard to hold in light of what he and Klinger had been forced to watch those spy-guys clean up. He hadn't thought there was that much bleach in the whole of Asia. But it was necessary. Klinger, upon seeing all this, had been heard to mutter to himself. "They were still together. He was behind her...THEY WERE ALL STILL SMILING. Dried up like rotten vegetables. I'll do what I have to, but they're not keepin' me here." At first, no one really noticed Max Klinger's quest, inspired partly by this horror. Then, six weeks later, a UFO worthy of Mulder and Scully was seen over the 4077th. It resembled a big red bird with fuzzy pink feet. A legend had begun. But neither Max nor anyone else told of the horror. Mulder would hear it not from his father, but from Pierce, in 1998. There was a reason for this. Another familiar face in Mulder's long story cropped up, over a decade before Fox's birth. "By Direct Executive Order, based upon the National Security Act , the following is the truth : Doctors Jones, Black, and Forrest and Nurses Cunningham, Winslow, and Martin never served in this or any unit in the Korean Theatre of Operations. They were captured and killed by enemy forces upon their arrival, BEFORE any assignment. Their remains were never found. Secondly, the Doctors in question, since they were never here, never handled hazardous material during their non-stay. Next, no one participated in an illegal game, clearly against army regulations, of sexual horseplay last night. This was broken up before it happened. Again, those people who weren't here were certainly not a part of such shenanigans. Lastly, no bodies on the verge of liquification were found in the Doctors' quarters early this morning. The tent and material were burned for lice infestation, nothing more. Failure to keep with this version of events will be read as willful treason in wartime. You are to maintain your silence in perpetuity. Vigilance will be maintained, and violators will not have time to regret their lapse." With those words, the well-kept, meticulously manicured man left the 4077th and was not seen there again. A week and a half later, the understaffed 4077th and the rest of the UN forces in Korea would face the introduction of One-Half Million Chinese into the conflict, which now had no end in sight. In more ways than one, it was a whole new war. THE PRESENT "For those of us who were tired of the Old War. The way I see it, Mulder, those rocks had some kind of bacteria, and when poor Duke, Spear, and Ugly were going at it with Chuckie, Bennie, and Julie, it just had a good place to hide. Now, those creeps saw that some of us had survived, and....Mulder? Fox?" Hawkeye saw his young friend making a mad dash for the restroom, covering his mouth as he went. Pierce couldn't blame him. "Sorry, kid. But sometimes when you think you've seen and heard it all, fate has you running for cover." In the restroom, Mulder was angry with himself. Angry for being aroused by the story, angry for not being ready for its ending. Six people, trying to hold back the night through simple pleasure, eaten, by that selfsame night. Making him angrier was the presence in all these stories of key players. People who weren't there, but were. People too young to be there, there anyway. None of these people gave a damn about anything but their precious hybrids. So why make super-immune humans? He needed time to make it click. Time he wasn't sure he had. Waiting for Mulder, Pierce spotted someone. For reasons he hadn't yet told Mulder, Hawkeye was not what his age would make him seem. He would tell the young agent, but for now was glad he hadn't. He was now certain they were being watched. "Well, I must be Kimble and Fox must be Girard, cause outside is everyone's favorite One-Armed Man." Having dealt with the sudden wave of nausea caused by Hawkeye's story of sex and death at the early 4077th, Mulder sat back down at the table. He saw that Pierce had written him a note. Fox - We're being watched. Mulder scribbled his reply, adding out loud: "Look, Hawkeye, I didn't agree to pay for all your drinks. Try this figure, see what you think." He pushed the paper back to Pierce. Unsurprising. Give me a description. Don't look around. Hawkeye looked at the paper. He started to write something, saying: "So, this is where that 'Budget Surplus' comes from. You feds are gypping your informants. Well, Uncle Sam Cheapskate, try this." Well, I'd call him Lefty, but the arm's on the other foot. At that, Mulder's face turned red. He crumpled the piece of paper, and threw it on the floor. The thought that the little weasel would dare show his face anywhere near Mulder without an Army to back him up was a bad button to have pushed. He started to get up, but Hawkeye stopped him. "Fox, it's alright. I'll pay for the entire meal. There's no need to go storming outside. Besides, I haven't finished my story yet." "Hawkeye, you don't understand. He killed my..." "Mulder, sit. He's killed a lot of people. Being a killer, that's what he tends to do. We go out now, it's on his terms. We finish talking, and I can at least give us an edge." Fox Mulder sat, but felt completely clueless as to what kind of edge Hawkeye Pierce might have over a killer like Alex Krychek. But he first listened to Hawkeye complete his narrative about the death and erasures of Ugly St. John Black, Spearchucker Jones, and Duke Forrest, not to mention their lovely companions-one of whom was Margaret's dear friend. Remembering that Margaret Houlihan-Pierce's disappearance, Mulder wondered if Krychek had been busy destroying the Pierce family, as well. "I'll tell you about Wonder Boy later. His whole family's a trip. But the day we were all told to forget, we forgot. I mean Willful Treason In Wartime, right? Didn't take a genius to do the math. So we all became who we were, only moreso. Much moreso. Henry gave up trying to do anything more than keeping the place away from meltdown. Not that anyone, even Sherman, could have really done any better. In a time of propaganda bombs, psychotic Cowboys, and delusional snipers, I think Captain America would've moved to a loft and become a free-lance artist. It was funny. Later on, when Potter came, he quietly but firmly told Flagg to shut the hell up about Henry's flaws. CO wasn't an easy job. Not for them, or for me." Waiting for Krychek to strike was not doing Mulder's queasy stomach any good. He saw in Hawkeye's face that he felt the same. But Pierce was right. Letting the little psychotic dictate their movements was dangerous. "Trapper and I react in the only way we knew how - nursinizing and drinking. Sounds crude, but, trust me when I say, these ladies knew how to say no. My ego has the bruises to prove it. Of course, there was one thing no one ever did again-and I mean ever." Mulder felt re-engaged, briefly. "That's for the best, Hawkeye. That position is probably the most dangerous form of unprotected intimacy. Even before HIV, there were a ton of health risks, particularly when done as a kind of ritualized game." Pierce nodded in grim acquiescence, but then shot off, "A good VD film would have sufficed, there. I mean, a REALLY good VD film. I wouldn't settle for anything less." Mulder smiled. "Hawkeye, there aren't any REALLY good VD films. Not since, You Would Die Too, If It Happened To You I mean, when that bobbysoxer was standing by the wall, and her fella walks up....Er, so how did this shift in truth affect your relationship with Margaret?" "My...Margaret was torn up inside. Chuckie had been the only nurse willing to speak with her. But Chuckie never served there, so she pulled into herself, and Frank kind of skulked in afterward. Pity about Frank." "Is he gone?" "No. Mysteriously, he still has a practice, in a town called Elk Ridge, Indiana. He's older than me, hands shake worse than ever, but nobody takes his license. His grandson is too well-connected for that. Whatever problems I had with Frank are multiplied a thousandfold in his little Alex." Hawkeye didn't need to say anything more about Burns' grandson-for now. Mulder had often absently wondered what kind of apple tree Krychek had fallen from. Now he knew. "No, the pity was that all that denial wiped out the decent man who was trying to get out from under a rotten childhood and lousy marriage. Frank used to drink with us, talk somewhat amiably with us, pull practical jokes on us. It wasn't paradise, but he was one of us-almost. But SpearChucker and he had somewhat similar notions on taxes and MacArthur-go figure. Losing the one person who seemed to believe certain things as he did was a terrific blow-one of the few he didn't deserve." Mulder's thoughts were still on Burns' lurking grandson, killer of so many, including Mulder's father. Hawkeye was trying to defend Frank Burns, albeit in a limited way. Fox decided to test that defense's credibility. "Wasn't Major Burns a racist? Everything I read says that he had some decidedly Neolithic ideas on the subject of non-WASPS." "Frank may have said that stuff, but I don't think he believed it. The man was a walking, open, mental wound that never had a chance to heal. Lashing out like that was just his way of pushing people far enough away so that they couldn't hurt him like he'd been hurt already. By dying like that, Spearchucker ran out on Frank." Mulder saw the caricature surgeon with new eyes. "So, since the only possible friend he had in any way, shape or form was one he was ordered to forget, Major Burns forgot---" Hawkeye completed his thought. "Poor Frank forgot his humanity. We only saw it again on rare occasions. I'd like to think he got it back, someday, but I dunno, Fox. Decency's not included in your stateside orders." Just then, the owner of the restaurant came over to and sat down with Pierce and Mulder. Time would be hard-pressed to diminish the regal bearing of Doctor Charles Emerson Winchester III. "Pierce, in case those eyes of yours hadn't noticed, Burns' little burnt offering is wandering around outside. Hello, Fox. I'm terribly sorry I couldn't attend your father's funeral. Honoria's granddaughter graduated med school the same day." "Doctor Winchester, you own this place?" Now, Mulder was becoming suspicious of his hosts. Too many coincidences already. But the presence of his father's old friend, Charles, whose 4077th connection he had never actively known of till today, as owner of their meeting place, started to tip things in an uncomfortable direction. "One of many investments, Fox, m'boy. Pierce, about Krychek....?" "We're on him, Charles. And no more references to Frank, please. Having a grandkid like that is hardly his fault." "Then you've confirmed the presence of our Nicotine-ridden acquaintance in the delinquency of said minor?" "Oh, he's the one who gave our young Alex that neat little package for me. But I've always known that." Mulder interrupted. "Hawkeye? What package? A bomb?" Winchester responded. "Of sorts, Fox. It had an effect on our deceptively agile Mohican. Fortunately, Sydney Freedman was able to help him, much as he helped you." For once Pierce asked the questions. "You met Sydney, Fox? When?" Mulder blinked once, then spoke. "Doctor Winchester and his family are friends of my family-old friends. I fell apart after Samantha's abduction. What Dr. Freedman did, in the way of post-hypnotic suggestion, saved my life. Until my parents' silence on the subject let up enough to have me see a therapist, he, at Charles' behest, told me to do something else when anxiety about my sister hit home." Both former surgeons were familiar with the suggestions, which Sydney had called Meatball Psychiatry. Pierce's face showed its concern. "So, what did Sydney do?" "He told me to read up on the subject that was causing me so much terror. By understanding it, I might conquer it. And I will, too. Where is Sydney?" Sadly, Pierce held up his bag of tongue depressors. Winchester nodded. "Our wanderer will tarry no more. Courtesy of a bigoted thug named James Horton. Not every conspiracy makes its way before you, my young friend." Dana Scully, exhausted from making funeral arrangements, awoke in the back of a car. Maxine resumed an earlier argument. "Dana, I think Spooky's a great man. His IQ's only two points below mine, and he has a better cognitive grasp on matters. You shouldn't go holding things back from him. Its not right." "I think he is great, Maxine. But what happened to his sister has crippled his reason on matters like this apparently non-terrestrial bacteria." "Look, Dana, I'm sorry, but, to me, Fox is family. Family that I didn't make sick." "I know how you and your parents feel, Maxine. But family...that you didn't make sick.? Your brother, Wally...Immunita?" Maxine was upset, but with herself. "Right before they kicked this whole Genetic Acceleration bushwa right between its viruses, and told these jerks where they could stuff their whole wheat from chaff ideas about immunity...the people involved got to my Dad. They pumped him full of a new version of the virus. Made him healthier, and smarter. Did the same for my Mom and me, cause I was conceived after it all started. But our pro-active immune systems...." Dana finished for her. "Destroyed Wally's." "Dana, I am faster than you might think. I don't look 42, and my folks don't look 60ish. But my brother...he's only got six months, maybe." Scully embraced Maxine. "Oh, you poor kid." Maxine was older than Dana, and smarter. But she was out of her depth when it came to a planted doctor at Pershing VA Hospital in River Bend, Missouri, that had decided to play God with her family's genes. Maxine embraced Dana so hard that she cut off her air. "There were two other people they played with, Scully. They really changed. But they're not important right now. Now, we gotta get, you, and the evidence, to San Fran. Trapper'll know what to do from there." Dana hadn't seen any evidence, so far. Without air, Dana soon didn't see anything. An hour later, a dying but extremely powerful man with a filthy social habit smiled as he received the call stating that the car carrying Dana Scully had been destroyed. They only awaited DNA and other kill confirmation. On the former site of the 4077th, laborers paid in cash raised something up out of the ground. After it was perused and one item removed, the buried item was placed back in, looking as though it had never been disturbed. The person holding the item then waited for their ride. MAINE "Gentlemen. With me are sharpshooters of no mean skill. Doctor Winchester can remain. But Mulder and the man who had such great fun at my grandfather's expense are coming with us. Frank Burns may be a dolt, but he deserved a lot better." Mulder wanted to shout something. But Pierce beat him to it. "Krychek, I should kill you for what you did." Fox Mulder once again wondered what had been in the package. He kept wondering as he was led from the restaurant with Hawkeye. In the car, with Krychek's man driving, he asked outright about Alex Krychek's delivery to Hawkeye Pierce. Crabapple Cove, January 1989 "Yes?" "Hi. You Doctor Pierce?" "That's me. Hey,aren't you Frank's grandson? We met when he brought the bunch of you back in February of 83' to the reunion. You must be near 20, now." "Yes, Doctor. I'm Alex Krychek. Look, somebody agreed to sponsor me to the FBI academy if I just dropped this off and relayed a message." Since it was a kid he sort of knew, Pierce's guard was down. This was a pity. The contents wholly enraged him. "WHO SENT THIS?." "A friend. One who wants to know who might've kidnapped your bed-hopping slut of a wife, mister Practical-joker. Now, what about it Pierce? Just tell him what you know, and the two people who did more to destroy my Grandfather's self-esteem than any others can rut their golden years away. Where is your wife, Pierce? If the faction we represent doesn't have her, than another Immunita-base has to. Who has contacted you in the last 4 months?" This was one cocky young punk Pierce was ready for. Picking him up, he literally tossed Alex Krychek into his driveway. "One- It wasn't ever that way with Frank. Two - He has more class than you and your friend could ever hope to, and Three - I don't know where Margaret is. You think I take orders from people like you? If they told me not to talk about it, guess what, pal? I'd talk. So no one's said a word. Four - Don't come near me again without ten kinds of back-up." THE PRESENT Chuckling in the field in which they had taken their captives, Krychek shrugged. "Hey, this enough back-up for you, Pierce?" Pierce ignored Alex's barb in favor of Fox's repeated question. "So what was in the package?" Still laughing, Krychek shot in, "Oh, just some chicken." Hawkeye wasn't laughing. "It was a chicken, alright. One that had been carefully smothered. Nice effort, Alex." "Oh, it was no effort, Pierce. Freedman always took extensive notes. Then, and during the six months you spent in the bughouse after our talk. No luck on finding that backstabbing witch, I take it." "My WIFE is still missing, yes." "Well, we have you, now, Hawkeye. Whoever has dear Hot Lips should be willing to barter for her, once they find out. After all, Immunita is secondary only to the Bigger Task. And whoever has the Pierces controls Immunita. Who knows? Maybe I'll even have a chance to meet up with my former employer on more equal footing." Since Hawkeye did not evince surprise at Krychek's words, Mulder's feelings of having been brought in under false pretenses only magnified. Eventually, the car stopped and they got out. By now, Charles Winchester had called the police, even knowing the untouchable nature of the abductors. "Now, Pierce. If you contacted Mulder, you must have a clue as to your --wife's-- location. Your life for it. Quite simple." The irony of Krychek being Burns' grandson did not escape Mulder, who decided to test his seemingly poor position-not to mention his luck. "Tell, me, Krychek, how does a patriot like your grandfather like having a Russian-double-agent in the family.?" It all happened in a blur. An angry Krychek ordered a bazooka-holding soldier to actually shoot Mulder. But somehow, Hawkeye put himself directly in front of the shell.. Mulder had never seen anybody move that fast-not even the damned hybrids. The explosion rocked Mulder's form and sent the older man flying over the nearby ridge, fully aflame. There was the sound of a secondary explosion, as well. Through pained and blurry vision, Fox saw Krychek and his men withdraw amid worried shouts of Resource Destroyed.. The last thing Mulder felt before falling unconscious, he was certain for the last time, was himself struggling to check out the distant place where Hawkeye had fallen. Whatever value he had to the many Immunita factions, it ceased upon his death. Then Fox Mulder fell into pained oblivion. The world was a confusing blur of contradictory signals, motions made as much to distract as to inform. But that was par for the course in the life of FBI surgeon Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Mulder. There were people feeding him misinformation as the Truth, and the Truth layered in a fine chocolate pudding with a decidedly deadly whipped cream. Either that, or he was hungry. He was studying the nurses' shower tape for the five-hundredth time, certain that the moles on Lt. Dish's inner thigh formed a message that would lead to the true fate of Adam's Rib. Alternately, she was just good to look at. Out walked his skeptical partner, Dana Hot Lips Scully. She had gotten the nickname from the virus she had once been infected with that made it really hard for her to get a date. The men in question had all died happy, though, so no charges were pressed. After her, as always, was their sidekick, Fox O'Reilly. A bunch of his rabbits had disappeared, leading him to join their quest. They hadn't the heart to tell him that Assistant Director Burns had a rabid appetite for hasenpfeffer. "Mulder?. Turn off that filth. We've got to go." "Oh, golly gosh gee whiz willikers, Sir. She's right and all. Lookit what personnel is waiting outside for us, in the out of doors." Hawkeye Mulder looked. Sitting mockingly in his red, white, and blue car, was the most dangerous, yet strangely ineffectual, man, on the face of the Earth. In each hand, as always, was Old Glory. "My God. it's Flagg-Waving Man. I'll bet he knows about the great tragedies of the sixties. Why Lost In Space was cancelled, why Secret Captive only had 17 episodes, and why Paul Henning felt the need to make Petticoat Junction, when Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies were more than adequate." "You're being absurd, Mulder. The first one was cancelled for ratings, Patrick McGoohan made all the Secret Captive episodes he wanted, and Henning just miscalculated on Petticoat. Besides, wasn't it you who staked out that water tower in the opening credits? 'Surveillance', my butt. Granted, Bobbie Jo didn't mind, but we all know how SHE slept around." "Me, I kinda always liked the little dog, running after the train. Shutting up, Sirs. Say, he's gettin' away." Hot Lips Scully just folded her arms and scowled. "May I suggest we get after him?" Hawkeye Mulder smiled playfully. "Hey, Dana, I have some suggestions. They involve you and me in that alien saucer we recovered." "That saucer was a prop, and as for your suggestions, FILE THEM." Fox O'Reilly looked over at his mentor as they went out to the Jeep. "I think yer wearin' her down, Sir." As they all climbed in the Jeep, they saw Flagg-Waving Man's mocking face at the top of the hill. Unfortunately, because of an oversight that Scully now pointed out, they weren't going to be joining him. "Mulder. I can't believe you forgot to fill the tank." "Not to worry, Dana. As long as you keep blowing hot air, we'll have plenty of gas." "Hey, hey. Will you two sirs stop arguing? We gotta go find out the Truth about what happened ta Hawkeye's sister." Hawkeye Mulder shook his head. "I don't have a sister, Fox. You do." "Ya see what a good job they done? They took your sister an' gave her to me, and then they took her again. Boy, those creepy guys. Hey, why don't we just run after Flagg-Waving Man?" Scully turned to Fox O'Reilly, and smiled. "Because Hawkeye doesn't want you to find out the Truth, Fox." Suddenly, peering in the window, was Flagg-Waving Man. Only he was now older, and different, and smoking a cigarette. "Hawkeye set you up, Fox. He only pretended not to know anything about Immunita. He's in it up to his eyeballs. He brought you in as a feint. Pierce and his wife ARE Immunita." "You'll kinda forgive, me, Mr. Evil Secret Spy, sir, if I don't believe nothin' you got to tell me." Scully sneered. "Who are you kidding? You're his puppet. You jump to his tune in everything you say and do, Fox. Hawkeye knew this, and used that to get what he wanted." "Hey, Hawkeye? Tell em' that isn't true. Tell em....Oh, geez. It is, isn't it? You set me up. All those coincidences were to draw me in, weren't they, Pierce?" Hawkeye stood silent. Suddenly the very odd amalgamated world dropped away, leaving them as themselves and alone. "Yes, Fox, I needed you. What's going on here is not your big conspiracy. But it is close. For now, forget about me, though. Think. Why would people who want or stand to benefit from the colonization of human-alien hybrids also want super-immune humans?" "First, what do you and Margaret..." "Kid, you're lucid dreaming, right now. Even highly intelligent people have a hard time achieving this. Ask me when you're awake. Don't waste this opportunity." "Alright. They want to control Immunita to winnow out humanity for their hybrid friends-wait, I can't ask Hawkeye anything, he's dead. Had me following his damned stories. Treated me like a dupe, treated me like a servant, or a...." "SLAVE. SLAVES!! They needed…" MAINE, 1998 On a couch inside a house, Fox Mulder sat bolt upright, shaking off the slumber, and the dream. He absently noticed that his shrapnel wound had been expertly tended to, almost as though by microsurgery. Ignoring everything else, he grabbed an available pen and paper and began to write as he spoke out loud. "All right. When they take over, there are still going to be some things they need done that they won't want to do themselves. They'll need workers, ones with strong backs. But how to find out who's the best suited? Winnowing. No sense having good slaves wiped out by plague. Strong, able, but controllable by superior technology. Now, why would everyone on their side be squabbling over this? They seem to be of one mind otherwise. Whatever their other agendas. But here, they talk about bases, indicating disunity. Why cooperate in the first instance, but not in the second?" As Mulder looked at the pad he was writing on, he noticed the address imprinted upon it. A voice then shattered his reverie. The voice of a very dead man. "Well, my best guess is, whoever owns the means to make the potential slaves can eke out a better deal from the Cthulu Cotillion. Give themselves one step up as they all jockey for position. But I'm not FBI, so I dunno." Fox Mulder somehow knew that the early thirtyish looking man in front of him was not a clone, an offspring, a shapeshifter, or possessed by an internal creature. Despite seeing him die, the FBI Special Agent knew exactly who he was speaking to. Not a dream, or a ghost, or an Immortal of the kinds he had encountered, the man holding a large, steaming tray of breakfast food, was, despite all evidence and common sense, exactly who he appeared to be. Without a gray hair or wrinkle, the identity of his rescuer was obvious. "HAWKEYE....???" Having washed off the gray hair dye and makeup he used in public for the most part, the ever-surprising Hawkeye Pierce put down the tray and checked Mulder's wound. Pierce himself showed no signs of wounds or scarring. His face showed no signs of plastic surgery. "Ummm, Fox? If I told you about a planet called Krypton, would you believe....no, I didn't think you would, somehow." "Your credibility is kind of shot with me, Pierce. You-you're a hybrid." Pierce shook his head. "It isn't like that. Look, I'm different, now, yeah. But I'm completely human. Just, well, let's just say, when they give you a flu shot, check first to be sure what you're getting." Mulder was ready to bolt this seeming diversion once and for all. "Hawkeye, if you don't tell me the entire, verifiable truth, here and now, I'm gone. You pretended to want me here to find out about Henry Blake's death. Now, I'm finding things out that are shaking up my whole world. I go in thinking to continue my investigation into Immunita, but instead I find out that your MASH unit and the X-Files are practically joined at the hip." "Look, Fox, don't blame me. Your world invaded mine, first, pal. I can't give you the full truth, now. But after tomorrow, you'll know something just as valuable. Yes, I took you in, but it was to protect this little world of ours and someone I care about more than my own stupid life. That flu shot I mentioned? There was one other recipient, and the effects were the same. But I have to play interference against Nick O'Tine and Krychek and the rest till I can get her back. It's gonna be soon, but I have to keep making them think I'm only looking. I'm sorry, really. But for her, I'd do anything. And to stop Immunita, I'd do absolutely anything. This little gift of theirs comes with a rather bloody pricetag. Do you have any clue how many people had to die so we could live well past our time?" "I....have to talk to Scully. I'm sick of people keeping things from me. As soon as I'm done, though, Hawkeye, you and me, we're having this out." Just then, the house-phone rang. Hawkeye bid Mulder pick it up. "Hello? Pierce Residence, this is...Max.? Yeah, it's Spooky. How's...Oh,no. Max, I...Is Soon-Lee all right? No, of course...MAX. That's a helluva joke to make about your own wife-oh, she's the one who made it...Soon-Lee? Oh, God. I know he was, but you can't tell me it's better off...I love you, too. Both you guys. You're-you're my heart. Oh, alright I'll tell him...Goodbye, Max---Pop." Putting down the phone, Mulder walked over and socked Hawkeye in the jaw. Pierce didn't even flinch, but Fox did rub his sore hand. "You sonova---Wally Klinger is dead. A guy I regarded as a brother was blown up in Korea. You sacrificed him. They said it was part of your plan. Why, Hawkeye.? DAMN YOU, PIERCE, I ASKED WHY." Hawkeye flinched now. He wasn't proud of his actions. "Wally wanted to leave with a bang. His health problems were getting worse, so he dressed up as Scilly-I mean Dana, and drove her car. We knew they'd move against her. He wanted to pay the good folks at Immunita back, for his immune problems. More on that, later. The point is, Dana, the evidence Henry had stashed, and -something else- very important are out of Korea. Dana should be in San Francisco by now, with Trapper." "Colonel Blake had evidence?" "He gave it to Sydney, who passed it back to us. We hid it, before we left in 53', where they wouldn't be able to search us, if it came to that. Documents, early tests of some of that junk---names, including our ace in the hole. Best of all, a sealed sample of the rocks that killed Spear, Ugly, and Duke. Trapper'll have to re-do some of those tests, but he's good for that, and what he can't do, Scilly can." "I thought you and Trapper weren't getting along. Another scam. Wait, how can you be so sure that we're not bugged, or, that your ride got Scully and--that special someone--to their destination?" Hawkeye smiled a cat-canary special. "Let's just say that this is one person you can always depend on. Plus, he's good with a sword, nowadays. Which beats the hell out of a teddy bear." Several hours prior As Dana regained consciousness, she saw who was driving her. It was another old family friend, the man who had spent ten years taking care of Uncle Jack, before he died. But then, there was no sweeter person in the entire world. The sword he had in back with her, though, looked like it could cleave someone's head off. This was needed, because the old family friend was an Immortal. But Dana didn't know that. All she noticed was that it was the only sword she knew of with a small teddy bear engraving. "You okay back there, Dana? I can stop if you're not. Okay, that is." "I'm fine, Uncle Walter. But who's that with you?" The person in front with Walter O'Reilly merely turned around and looked at a stunned Dana Scully, who knew that face as well as she knew Walter's. Better. "Good to see you---Scilly." Fox Mulder was not happy with Hawkeye Pierce. Since first meeting with him a scant forty-eight hours ago, he had been lied to repeatedly. Certain people he expected this from; but he had let his guard down around the MASH surgeon, the way he did for no one but Scully, Max, and Soon-Lee. He now thought he was a fool to trust the Klingers, as well. Soon-Lee had seduced him, some time back. In some odd game of re-affirmation, Max had allowed this, so that the older couple would know they were still attractive to one another. But that was hardly the worst of it. They had brought him into their home, made him a Klinger. He had a new sister, and an older brother who needed attention because of his many health problems. He had a family that- he thought - didn't have any secrets from him. But those good people had ruthlessly sacrificed their own son to Pierce's Immunita-based agenda. Walter Sherman Cy Young Klinger, Wally, had died in Korea so that Scully could be smuggled out, along with evidence whose purpose Mulder still wasn't clear on. The only thing he was clear on was that he was tired of Krycheks, and Shadowy Men, and worrying about the loyalties of U.N. workers. For his world to continue, someone somewhere had to be exactly what they seemed. Even his world-view needed a balance, and he was finding none. "Fox, if you'll just let me explain..." "Explain about what, Hawkeye? About Tuttle? About the Boot? About how many nurses you nailed, before settling down? About why I should trust my partner's life to Walter O'Reilly, a man who would do anything you to tell him to? Oh, I've got it. Why don't you explain to me how you coached the Klingers into PRETENDING they gave a damn about me?" Mulder never saw the blow coming. It was only the back of Pierce's hand, but he would swear it almost had a sonic boom effect. He was suddenly reminded of why else he didn't trust Pierce. Hawkeye, and the apparently missing Margaret, were the primary beneficiaries of Immunita's true goal : the development of hyper-perfect humanity, to serve as slaves to the alien-human hybrids that were the future inheritors of Earth. Unless Mulder and Scully could stop them. "Look, Mulder. Max and Soon-Lee love you. Both of them. Wally and Maxine love you. Those kids of Toshi and Maxine's? Every time they've been over, they ask if Uncle Spooky's here, too. So, whatever you think of me, don't think it of them. If I hear you disparage those two again, I'll make you and Alex Krychek a matched set. GOT IT?" "I..got it. But understand, Hawkeye. You told me you wanted Henry Blake's killers. But you know who probably did it. You included in your narratives the presence of the most dangerous individual I've ever met, a person sure to push my buttons. You played on my feelings of loss for my sister, while apparently knowing all along where your wife was. I've found out that, for all intents, and purposes, you and your friends may as well have delivered Dana and myself. Finally, I see you as you really are. You're still 30, Pierce. You can move like the wind, you're strong as an ox, and I find out that you and your missing wife are Immunita. You two are what they wanted. You are their goal. What deal did you make, Hawkeye, for this gift? For cellular godhood?" Pierce saw that the chronologically younger man was somewhat calmer, and helped him up. He chose his words carefully. The Truth, Now, he told himself. But how to deliver it? "First, I'm sorry I slapped you. But you had it coming, with that crack about the Klingers. Next, Margaret and I didn't make any deals. This was done TO us, without our consent. Also we aren't their goal. We two are kind of a missed throw. The Project overdid us. I'll explain that, but not right now." "No more delays, Hawkeye. I mean it." Pierce still didn't care for Mulder's tone, but understood his anger. It had once been his own. "Short version : With Margaret and me, they created versions of their would-be-slaves who were faster, stronger, and smarter than the people they were supposed to be serving. No point in that, huh? It was Max's family they were successful with. They've tried on numerous occasions to kidnap Maxine's lovely little hellions, but the kids are too smart for em', and they always summer here. I don't need much in the way of food or sleep anymore, which is a blessing when you're dealing with teenagers. They wouldn't dare mess with me. Not here." "That's all well and good, Hawkeye, but Krychek threatened your life, despite needing you alive. Although, he does have an irrational streak. But as to the kids, whether it's aliens or not, these characters have some allies, or operatives, who are awfully good at abduction." "Irrational? Alex? Every joke I made about his grandfather's personality is true of him. That kid is messed up from before the word go. Frank is actually the only decent influence in his whole sorry life. I know about the aliens, Fox, but remember, these people are trying to develop a means of barter with those alien hybrid whatevers. Wouldn't make sense to call them in and hand over control, would it?" "I suppose. But how did they get to you and Margaret, going that far back?" "Well, one, they killed a lot of other people, no big surprise for stonehearts like them. You see, the history of Immunita is kind of the history of the dance." "What dance? Hawkeye, please, no more codes, or romantic storytelling to glad-hand me. I think I deserve a bit more, by this point, don't you?" "Sorry, Fox. The Dance is just a term coined by a mutual friend of myself and Margaret's, a medic by the name of Duncan Macleod." Mulder's eyes shifted at that name, telling Pierce all he needed to know. "Yes, old Duncan does get around. Anyhoo, he was the first person to outright tell me and Margaret that we were ducking our true feelings for one another. He said we were dancing around each other too much to realize we were crazy for us. We laughed him off at the time, but, considering it took us fifteen years to walk down the aisle, the guy knew whereof he spoke." "His kind--of person--usually does. Tell me about your Dance, Hawkeye." Feeling very much like a little girl, safe in the company of family that would never harm or violate her, Dana Scully now sat in the front seat of Walter O'Reilly's car. Radar's hair was dyed white, but that was the only concession he made to the public. His immortality was not like Hawkeye or Margaret had, nor was he as quick or as strong. But his trademark senses had only expanded upon his first death in 1952. This helped him to evade others of his kind, to avoid the deadly Game that ended when there was only one left. But he could also avoid the scrutiny of mortals, and come upon them unawares. This served him well as he drove Dana Scully and their mysterious passenger to the private Korean airport, then, upon arriving in Seacouver, drove them down to San Francisco to meet with Trapper. It also served him well in other, even grimmer circumstances. "Walter, where is our---passenger?" Radar smiled. Dana was right not to use the passenger's name, even though they had both checked for bugs. "I wouldn't worry yourself about her, Dana. I seen her put men through glass windows with one punch, and that's before the junk kicked in. Boy, your spy-friends are sure creeple people. I heard about your sister, but I was still takin' care o' your Uncle Jack when it happened." Dana fondly remembered Jack Scully, and then reached over and kissed Uncle Walter on the cheek. "Hey, what's that for? Not that I mind, ya know." "You spent ten years of your life taking care of a man you hardly knew, all on the say-so of Uncle Ben-I mean, Hawkeye. Walter--I don't live in a straightforward world anymore. So, I have to ask you..." "Was there somethin' more to it? Sure thing. Sorry, Scilly, but there's been somethin' more to everything since that first O.R., and when they killed Colonel Blake, they went and made it personal." "Oh, I understand." Actually, she didn't. But her intuition told her to trust Walter, so she obeyed it. "Speed up the car. We're being followed. Walter. Are you listening? There's a blur behind us, gaining rapidly." "Ah, don't worry none. She's just bringin' the food." At that, the back door opened, and their passenger re-entered. "Sorry I'm late. I could only get non-carbonated soft drinks, for obvious reasons. Scilly, you were always kraut and relish, right? I got you those cheese fries you always liked, kiddo." Someone had just entered their car, moving at a little under seventy miles per hour, as though it were parked or in traffic. This did not seem to disturb Walter, who chomped merrily away on his chili cheese dog. Scully, however, was so thrown off by this that she didn't notice the welcome signs to San Francisco, nor their entry to a hospital parking lot. An older man---a truly older man--stood in the window, and received a hug from their passenger. He kind of looked to Scully like the older Cartwright brother, from Bonanza. Of course he was not. The man in front of them was the soon-to-be retired head of that hospital. "Now look, it's all going to plan. You run off to Vegas, where BJ and Peg will meet you. Once I have the final analysis, we'll give it to Radar. He'll meet you in St. Louis. Then, off to the Swamp." "Hey, Radar?" "You'll meet me in St. Louis? Where?" Chuckling, Radar hummed/sang. "I'll meet cha at the fair. Now can the jokes and run off--Ma'am." Giving Radar, Scully, and their old friend a brief hug, the passenger literally did run off, dodging traffic like it wasn't even there. Scully stared in complete disbelief. This did, however, explain why she was never able to sneak cookies at her Uncle and Aunt's house, as a child-she never stood a chance. "Look at her go. My God." John Francis Xavier McIntyre, aka Trapper John, just shook his head. "Close, but not quite. Although, with her and Hawkeye's egos, they might tend to think they were gods. Eh, Radar?" "I wouldn't know about no gods, Trapper. My head comes off, I die just like anybody else-cept for the fireworks." A female doctor, looking to be a youngish 45, ran up and hugged Radar. "Walter. How're ya doin? Is this Dana Scully? Oh, boy. You were just a baby back at Hawkeye and Margaret's wedding. Oh, duh-Sorry. I screw up like that sometimes. So, you divorcing bum. Introduce me, or I'll tell Dad you're ignoring me again." "He was already angry enough that I went and married ya to begin with. Dana, this is my ex-wife, though things went good when we broke up, on accounta I can't have no children. Doctor Erin O'Reilly, chief chest-cracker here, under Trapper." Dana was a little thrown off. "You married a man who you once ran up to and called 'Daddy'?" Erin Hunnicutt O'Reilly just shrugged. "Um--Trapper? Gonzo's ready for the tests." Trapper sighed. It's so hard on him, being just a lab man. But since the strokes---Radar, you get in there and help him. You're mostly immune, right?" "Yeah, but I'm still gonna be careful with that stuff. When Klinger screamed that morning, I was the one ran over to the Swamp. I saw them, too. That's somethin' ya can't forget. Not ever." Radar knew Gonzo Gates, from the reunion that the 4077th alumni had on February 28, 1983. His career had ground to a halt, after a series of unexplainable strokes. The connection was not lost on Dana. She was beginning to see a pattern. Trapper and Erin then turned to her, with the evidence valise in tow. "Dana, I know you and your partner haven't been played straight with. Maxine phoned me and asked me to apologize for knocking you out. She's got her hands full, planning Rosie and Wally's funerals. Did Radar tell you, about Wally Klinger?" When Dana had awoken in her car in a different dress, she had suspected something was up. Pressed, Radar had revealed how the sickly first child of Max and Soon-Lee Klinger had dressed as her and died in her place when she was targeted. For Radar, it was doubly hard, since Walter Sherman Cy Young Klinger was his godson and namesake. "Hubby tells me you're a pathologist?" "Yes, of sorts. You need help with the analysis?" Trapper nodded. "Yes, but something more. We know how they got to Hawkeye, Margaret, and Max. But the entire camp's lineage is replete with health problems. Not just the GWS or Agent Orange type, either. My family's been all right, but none of Dish's kids survived childhood, all three Baker cousins were gone early, William Bubba Rizzo has had early chronic heart problems, and poor Igor lost his mind, all for reasons that seem to indicate a non-native environmental factor. In short, Scully, we need to know their delivery system, or else no one's going to believe us. Our evidence will have no more effect than the depth charges they tried to use on Godzilla, back in 54' ". Dana thought. The story of the 4077th's 1st disastrous reunion in doomed Tokyo, in December of 54', had always been a favorite of hers. One of the scariest parts when they had mined Tokyo Bay, in an unsuccessful effort to kill the creature. The thought of a government, mining its own harbor, its own people, for any reason was....the answer. "Your Minefields. I've read how they used to be set off by any number of conditions. Is that so, Trapper?" "Pretty much. Hell, we used to refer to the mine field as being a kind of reliable ....delivery boy. Damn. Those things never kept the enemy back, but they sure made our lives miserable. I didn't know they were trying to kill us, back when they were trying to kill us." As Trapper, Erin, and Scully headed inside, they were all angry. Dana stopped, and looked around. These unseen forces were holding a more and more solid hand, of late. Upset that they were again messing with her family, she sighed audibly. "How do we make these people go away? I'll even let Mulder be right on every last detail, if they'll just go away." Trapper shook his head. "It took us forty-five years, Miss Scully. But we're almost there, I promise. Too many names on those lousy tongue depressors. We'll get them." Despite the release, Dana knew those grim forces would not be impressed by a speech. Defeating them would take hard, real-world work. But if destroying Immunita would hurt them, then she was all for it. Immunita's sponsors, though, still had teeth, and they would use them. She went inside to help with the analysis of Gonzo Gates' tests. Leaving CrabApple Cove in Hawkeye's station wagon, Mulder heard the first words of the story he had been awaiting. Pierce was still quite vague about other things, though. "We're headed South. Max contacted a friend of yours-a real friend. We'll meet him in Atlantic City, then catch the Cape May ferry to Virginia. You drive for a while, I'll play lookout. Don't worry-I can tell if we've been bugged. I keep magnets scattered all over the car. Plays havoc with their stuff. All, right. It all started during that 1st OR. Henry didn't know we were watching..." July 27, 1950 Despite himself, Hawkeye decided to walk up to the still-upset Major Houlihan and apologize. Her reaction was warm and understanding of the circumstances. "Go to hell." "Hell's already here, Major. I said something crude, but you took an honest question and turned into a loyalty test." "Right on both counts, Captain. It's clear we don't get along, so why don't we just steer...what's Colonel Blake doing?" Pierce looked over, and saw Henry Blake standing dumbfounded, as a person who appeared to be a General had him cornered. "How's your hearing, Major?" "Decent. But you have a stethoscope." "Oh, yeah. Here, lets grab an ear." Since Pierce had always had a bit of the ringleader in him, Margaret went along without knowing exactly why. With one ear of the scope in each of them, they heard the General's unbelievable conversation with a shaken Colonel Blake. "Did--I just hear what I thought? Did that brass just threaten the lives of all those soldiers--over some rocks?" "This isn't possible. Even the CIA wouldn't---" "CIA? Who said anything about the CIA?" "That man is General Bartford Hamilton Steele. He and his family practically formed the Pacific Theatre OSS, which became the CIA. My God, what can we do? This level of unashamed corruption may be unassailable." The thought of deep, highly-placed corruption in the Army she had devoted her life to hurt Major Houlihan at her core. It had her near panic. But not Pierce, whose opinion of the Army had never been quite as sky-high. While not panicked, though, he did feel thrown. "Up til now, I thought the one good thing about the Army was that it beat up on guys like that General. Oh, well, naiveté lost. Back to the Operating Room." "Whaaat? But what about this--travesty?" "Later. The supplies are being unloaded, and we have patients-lots of them. Umm--act like you and I are still pistols at ten paces, too." "Captain, you kept your head when I began to lose mine. Even for appearances, I can't stay mad with that in mind." "Major. Of course you can." Ten seconds later, Margaret kneed Hawkeye in the groin. In the present, Mulder asked Pierce; "What precisely did you do to get her that upset?" "I pinched her butt… both cheeks." "Hardly PC. But her kneeing you? That's a bit extreme." "Did I mention I reached under her surgical gown to do this?" Mulder chuckled. "You're lucky to be alive, Hawkeye." "Luckier than you know, Fox. A lot luckier." "So, from the very start, you knew something was wrong." "Yeah. Margaret and I would sometimes fake an argument to compare notes. Not that most of them were fake, but they made for good cover." Mulder had to concede the future couple's cleverness. Odds are, even someone watching them wouldn't pay attention when real disagreements flared so regularly. November 29, 1950 Margaret Houlihan was just leaving the shower. Outside, standing far enough away to show that he wasn't peeping, was Hawkeye Pierce. "Captain." "Major, when?" "Captain, when Frank falls asleep." Later, under guise of a failed practical joke and the threat of a report, they would talk of what they had found out about the grim October just past. "Captain, you?" "My reporter friend? The one---I lost? He didn't just happen here. They took those rocks and set up, about ten miles from here. They've set up an apothecary of horrors, to hear him tell it. And no, I don't think whoever-it-is killed him. But, I'm keeping an open mind-God help me." "Major, you?" "I told a baloney story about losing my Father to anyone who would listen. I then wrote to him---he told me not to cross Steele--or his son." "Not until we see that place. With everyone getting the flu, that won't be soon." Just then, in 1998, Fox Mulder brought the car to a screeching halt. "You expect me to believe you and Margaret had your own search for the truth going almost 50 years ago? I told you to stop playing me, Hawkeye." "I'm not. I mean, it wasn't as sophisticated as yours, but we had people we could talk to, though only once, mind you." "Why only once?" "Well, some of them turned up dead. Others, well, let's just say we were fearful of misinformation. After all, even in desperation, you don't trust Cigarette Man anymore, am I right?" Mulder pulled forward with a surge, telling Hawkeye he had again displayed his talent at saying just the right thing. "Let's say I accept your version of events, Hawkeye. But if you and Margaret were working together to find out about the fate of those meteors, then why all the trouble between you? An act?" "Ahhh, he hath ears, but does not listen. No Sherlock, it wasn't an act. She legit tried to get Henry busted, and Trapper and I legit tried to bed every willing female and drink every drink in the KTO. None of us succeeded, mind you, but we all did what we could. No, the investigation was just neutral territory. We had dead, erased friends to avenge. There were no showers, no reports, and no insults then. Fun was fun, business - the wounded - was business, and the Truth, as they say was out there. But the Truth invaded our fun and our business." "So, Doctor, what did X-Files KTO find out next?" December 4, 1950 Half the staff was down with the flu. But Hawkeye Pierce's pants were all the way down, with Margaret Houlihan having to give him an injection of an experimental flu shot. Adding to her discomfort, Radar walked in and walked out, thinking something was going on between them. "Owwww. Ohh, Major. Again." "You piece of---pull those pants up. And DO NOT turn around. You don't impress me, Pierce." "Well, if you're not going to let me turn around, then how am I supposed to impress you? Er, Major? You're kind of supposed to say something, like, Yeah, Pierce, but I don't have my microscope handy.....Margaret?" Pierce quickly redressed. Margaret was silent, staring at the packing for the experimental flu vaccine. "My God. They've killed us." "What, they've killed us? Major, what are you...THEM? They sent this?" Hawkeye stared at the packaging. It was labeled: MEDICAL UNIT 3966 : PANACEA VACCINE : IMMUNITA 01. "Great. Just great. The 3966th. Our friends down the road. Well, take heart, Major. I may have laughed about you seeing my rump roast, but that means I'll go quicker. Maybe we can pump yours out of your arm, though, before anything sets in." "No, Doctor. You'll have to amputate - I don't want to end up - like them." "Look, we do have patients. Let's treat them, but keep an eye out--what the hell do you think you're doing?" "Your fantasy, Doctor. I'm disrobing, so that I can be checked for signs of contagion. Maybe you better bring O'Reilly in. He's still coherent enough to see." Pierce stopped her unbuttoning in its tracks. "Ohhhh, no you don't. Not without a pool of chocolate pudding. Major, an exam won't reveal anything. Remember, everyone had themselves checked out before Party Night. Besides, it's too cold." Margaret was grateful, but shaken. "What do we do? I say we drive down there and--no, scratch that--I'm not dying there. Alright, Captain. Let's see if anything happens. I'm glad you overcame your libido, this once." "Major, you'd be surprised at what possible imminent death can accomplish. The perfect thing for those couples who have enough children. The Grim Reaper helps chase those reproductive thoughts right out." "You're babbling, Doctor." "Damned right, Major." The Present "So, when me, her, and Klinger were returning from that frontline unit, we stopped by Immunita, and got a list. Max just babbled up a storm while we filched a rather nasty document. Of all the people they'd fed that space-junk to, we were it. People dropping like flies for any number of official reasons. Anywhere from two to twenty thousand." "And these paranoid conspirators didn't try to stop you?" "Oh, they did try. They surrounded us with well-trained soldiers with seemingly infinite ammo-clips." Mulder stopped the car. "Would they be like the soldiers who currently have us surrounded?" "Pretty much. Fox?" "Do you mind?" "Not at all. Scully and I have been through this cliché enough times." The men outside were used to their orders being obeyed. Their guns made sure of that. But this time, Mulder actually waved at them, playfully. He was sure someone familiar was just over the ridge, but he didn't care. The soldiers were expertly trained, and fanatic about their missions of suppression. While not killing them, Hawkeye Pierce went through them like a hot knife through butter. They brought lead, when what they needed was Kryptonite. As Pierce got back in the car, having outpaced and overpowered the small army, Mulder couldn't resist yelling back, to them, and whoever was their sponsor. "Now remember, fellas--none of this EVER happened!" Pierce smiled, before resuming his story. It seemed like Fox Mulder was finally getting the hang of all this. "Jeepers, Mr. Kent, whatever did you do then?" "Fox?" "As far as comedy goes, stick to the paranormal." "You forget, Hawkeye, I've heard your jokes. They bear investigation. Question?" "Shoot." "Maybe later. Question is, have you heard of a meteor strike in Siberia, in 1908?" "Sure. Leveled a forest, right?" "Yes. The meteors there contained an actual living extraterrestrial. Did yours?" "Funny you should mention that. No, they didn't. They only contained the base material, which ended up giving Immunita an edge over its leash-holders. Remember, SpearChucker and the others weren't possessed - just gone. We only managed to get out with the one document, but we peeked at quite a few. What's odd, is, Henry's marching orders came down not too long thereafter. I have to wonder if we didn't put things in motion. Henry nearly hit the roof when he found out where we'd been, but backed us up, particularly after he told us about what he'd given Sydney. But back to the subject. Maybe the two sets of meteors are still connected. Maybe this stuff was the Siberialien's luggage. Radar seems to think our rocks have a connection to his big green pal from Tokyo-way. Who knows?" Mulder chuckled at the word Siberialien, but realized that Pierce was correct. Without a hostile, parasitic entity contained within the meteors, Immunita's mad scientists would have a field day. Questions remained, though. "When did you and Margaret first notice the effects? And, if you were overly enhanced, why did they still want you? Krychek - I concede the source - called you two the keys to Immunita." "We were noticing the quicker healing and greater endurance as time went by. The Kick as we like to call it, didn't come around until after we left Korea. I first REALLY felt it during Godzilla's attack on Tokyo, in 54'. Margaret and I were on fire. Trapper and BJ tried to get us to take blood tests. But we got those later, at a secure location." "Where, might I ask?" "That's--kind of classified, Fox. As in none of the people involved have even been born yet. Suffice it to say that we found out what we needed to. We were still human, but had been 'bumped up the long ladder', supposedly more evolved. The doctor who did the testing had the same thing happen to him as a child. I could out-think those soldiers by almost two hundred movements, while Margaret could have done it by about five hundred. She can break through brick walls, while I can go through a steel one. I can personally outpace most jets. Margaret can beat bolts of lightning to their target. Together, we could upend Godzilla, and shake off the radiation poisoning. The blood you saw from Krychek's bazooka shell was the equivalent of a finger scrape, for me. As to why they want us, well----. Pierce then made a sound like a small buzzsaw. Mulder got the message- vivisection, to see where to alter the treatment on the only people to survive Immunita's wretched flu vaccine. "Now, Fox, we fast-forward through the whys and wherefores of two kids named Hawkeye and Hot Lips, who, as they were getting older, discovered that - they weren't. Mind you, there are two significant drawbacks to all this. One, we have to live with what it cost other people for us to have all this, not to mention who it came from. We were so damned lucky, but it's sometimes hard to feel that way, with this high a price tag." "What's the second drawback?" "Well, you see, we end up spending a small fortune on gray hair dye and headboards." Having been set up once again, Mulder groaned. "We're almost at the Atlantic City exit, Hawkeye. Cut to the chase." January 12, 1951 Trapper analyzed the preserved month-old vaccine with great interest. But Hawkeye's tale held still greater interest for him. Considering his own efforts at winning Hot Lips' attentions, McIntyre had a great interest. "So she stared and stared at your bare derriere'? Hawkeye, move in. The fact that she even allowed you to do this means the woman wants more than Frank 'N' Beans." "Trap, it was a joke, and she went along with it, to shut me up--end of story. I mean, do you throw a lighted match into a gasoline can? Me and Hot Lips? Hah. Frank will leave his wife before that happens. Now, about this stuff..." "Oh, it's contaminated, all right. I have never, ever seen anything remotely like it. Hawk - this stuff is dangerous. Who else took it, sides' you and Houlihan?" "Nobody else, here. She took hers in the arm, so maybe the effects will take longer. Did you compare it with -- ya know?" Even Trapper didn't like to say it out loud. Hawkeye almost couldn't think about it. It was a fingernail recovered from one of their lost friends, the ones they were ordered never to speak of again. "I more than compared it. It's a lock. This junk and that junk are the same junk. Keep an eye on your health, Hawk. And- as to Hot Lips--think about it. I know I will." "I will think about it. I promise. On the day that she has HER trousers down in front of me, receiving a shot, letting me take a gander at her cheeks, I'll propose. I promise.....Trapper, stop thinking about it and get back to your work." May 15th, 1951 "Major, did you check the lab results?" "Captain, they are appropriately checked-and, God help me, falsified." "Margaret, I realize this doesn't sit well with you. But somewhere in the Army, someone, maybe that so-called 'Crazy General', is directing all this. Now, Trapper tells me there's a positive match to the remains, and that junk. So, this village didn't just get bombed." "I'd like to think it's merely a few rogues, but it's more, isn't it?" Hawkeye Pierce would willingly pull any number of low jokes on Margaret Houlihan. But he didn't like shattering her faith. "Don't give up hope. Or Crosby. All we know is that the 3966th- Immunita - definitely had a hand in that shelling. Those faceless nothings over there have been swarming all over those poor fools." "It's hard for me to think straight on this, Captain. When should we think about talking to Colonel Blake?" "Now. Before his lunch wears off." Blake was warm, helpful and supportive of the odd ambitions of his senior staff. "The two of you? Amateur FBI? Pierce, you, I expect this tom-foolery from, but Major, I really expected better." "Colonel Blake, this enterprise is the one thing that Captain Pierce and I agree on. That alone should tell you how serious we are." "Henry, people are dying because of that pharmacy from hell. If Hot---If Major Houlihan and I are really working together, do the math, Einstein." "I can't. You two never add up. You might shack up, but add up? That's a big Noper." "Henry, we are trying to nail down some slippery characters. She's here without Frank, me without Trapper. No back-up. And, for the Major's dignity, no shack-up till the war has come to a complete halt. Which what we've got here just might do." "All right Pierce, Major. Here's how it goes. Pierce, I'm ordering a new round of physicals for the nurses. COMPLETE physicals, and you alone have the workload. You'll need to take extensive X-rays. Some ladies may be waiting for hours, as they were born. Major Houlihan, you have a month's R+R in Tokyo, where you will stay with a three-star General and his wife who recently lost their daughter. They like innovative young people. They like to help them along--in life." Both sat and stared at Henry. Pierce was livid. "Henry, that's a beautiful fantasy, but I don't think some cheesy--well, not cheesy-- bribe is going to---COMPLETE physicals?" "Nothing's too good for our nurses. Be very thorough, Pierce. Take a month, if needed. They can just report back." "Aaaah, Stuff It. With my luck, Five O'Clock Charlie will pick that day to actually hit the target. Besides, I like my physicals to be administered one at a time. Major, are you as upset as I am?" "Three--Stars? Like to help people? Lieutenant Colonel people? Ummm, NO. Certainly not. Pierce is right, Colonel. How dare you try to bribe -three stars- bribe us into silence?" "Here's news for you engineers. I wasn't serious. But the people we're going up against are. You don't know what-oh, hell, you do know what they're capable of. All I'm saying is, be careful. Give me copies of what you have, and I'll give them to---" Henry then wrote 'HEAD SHRINKER' on a blank tablet. The Present "So Dr. Freedman had the evidence, then you, then him ---then who? Who's had it all these years?" "It's not who, Fox, but what. Until three days ago, we had it buried where they would never look, for all the junk that was in it." Mulder made an insightful guess. "You crazy---What makes you think they wouldn't look in the Time Capsule?" "Because, for years, we handed around an empty valise. They just assumed we kept it here, with us, because they were always trying to grab it." Mulder wondered just how capable of subterfuge his new friend was. He still had no real clue. He would know soon, and enjoy every minute of it. November 23, 1963 It was that horrible Friday between the death of a President and the death of the man who, it was believed, had pulled the trigger. But to Hawkeye Pierce, none of that mattered. Margaret Scully had called him, after a silence of years. She needed his help. Jack had taken ill, and Winchester said that Pierce was needed. He liked Charles, and Jack. But for Margaret, he would do anything. Even risk being hurt again. In 1959, a tearful Margaret had left him at the altar. Comforted by wedding guest Jack Scully, she had married him within a month thereafter. Within one year, the once and future couple had stopped speaking altogether. Pierce realized fully the irony of his wanting to commit to her, but her getting cold feet. As he entered Boston General, she was waiting for him---as were a thousand knots. "How is he?" "It was a stroke, Hawkeye." "How? The guy's as healthy as a horse." "It's me. Charles says I'm killing him." "I trust Charles, of course. But what does he mean?" "The vaccine, Pierce. The same one that makes us-what we are. My--our---immune systems are so incredibly active, that anyone were near for too long is attacked by antibodies. Charles says that they caused Jack's circulatory system to weaken. We--have to divorce. It's for his own good. I've killed him." "Wait. What about Frank and Penobscott? And how come we went years near patients without infecting a single one?" "Charles called in...our consultant friend. The one who lives near the…Bay-Shore?" "So what did future-boy say?" As Margaret relayed what she knew, the clear implication to Pierce was that he and Margaret could be together, but not with anyone else. "C'mon, Margaret. It's not your fault." "Like hell, it's not. I married Jack strictly so could avoid marrying the man I love. Hawkeye? Let's end this dance. If you'll have me, if you still love me, then will you marry me?" Pierce felt simultaneously like he was both embracing fate and defying it. But he knew what his answer had to be. "Yes. Hell, yes." They embraced, and kissed deeply. Margaret had waited to say those words, and Hawkeye had waited to hear them. But first and foremost, they would help Jack Scully, an unwitting victim of their avoidance dance. But on August 22, 1965, what was either the inevitable or the ridiculous finally became the real. The Present "So, we made sure there was always someone we could trust to give poor Jack full care. Even tapped Radar, for a decade. Poor bastard. We owed him big. A lug, but always a gentleman. He even brought his niece over, in the summer, at CrabApple Cove. Nice kid. So when do you two stop dancing?" In the convention parking lot, Mulder saw Frohike of The Lone Gunmen waving in the distance, and realized that's who they were there to meet. But he bristled at Pierce's question. "Hawkeye, Dana and I don't dance. It's not like it was with you and Margaret." "If you say so, Fox. Hey, Frohike." "Well, if it isn't . Doc, good news. The LG's are gonna netcast the event at five tomorrow. The big goons won't know what byte bit em'. Mulder, this guy was you before you were." As Frohike got in to the back seat, Mulder was still on the last page. "Really. We don't dance." "Uh, guys...Dana's not here, is she?" "No, pal. But we'll all be there for the event." "Could someone tell the poor FBI man just what event you're talking about?" Hawkeye smiled at both younger men. "Why, payback, of course. I hear she's a difficult, demanding date. Always wants steak, lobster and champagne. But she always makes it worth it." San Francisco Walter walked in. Scully could see what had happened in the eternally young man's face. Trapper was next, with a look as though he was girding himself for a body blow. Erin Hunnicutt O'Reilly Gates, though, sat unsuspecting. She only smiled at the entrance of her ex-husband into Trapper's office, with the final analysis of the Immunita evidence that had been, in part, hidden in the Korean Time Capsule. Having dealt with death and having dealt death to others, Walter knew the best thing to do was be quick and brutal. Given the choice, though, he'd rather fight the Kurgan than say what he had to say. "Guys. Its Gonzo. Multiple concurrent organ failures. He's in quarantine, pending mandatory cremation. Erin, honey, I'm sorry. If I coulda given him some of what I have, I would. You gotta know that." The sobbing widow embraced her former husband, who was also a friend to her parents and late husband, not to mention her boss, Doctor McIntyre. "Just get it and her to the Swamp, Walter. You keep your head, and we'll all make them pay." Walter shook hands with Trapper, then hugged Scully and kissed his ex-wife again, before departing for his rendezvous in St. Louis, where his second cousin was now Chief Of Police. From there, East to the Swamp. "Remember, 4:30 tomorrow, guys." Scully asked two questions, after Walter left. "If Gonzo is gone, then who pays? Sorry, Erin. And what happens tomorrow?" Erin was still upset. Tonight, she would choose to stay at Trapper's house. This decision would have consequences that BJ and Trapper would have words about---again. For now, Trapper John spoke for both of them. "Well, Dana, Gonzo's original series of strokes were induced. Someone gave him, after a stabbing incident, some blood with our mystery junk in it. Blood they knew would vastly weaken his circulatory system. A reminder for me to keep my mouth shut, on certain matters. It made him bitter enough to drive off his first wife, but never Erin." "How on Earth could they predict its effects that precisely?" Trapper frowned. "Because it was from a man who had already experienced the same effects." Dana took in Trapper's words, then, grimly, said two words of her own. "Uncle Jack." Special Agent Dana Scully decided that she was getting tired of connections, and coincidences, and grim similar fates. She now couldn't wait to see what her extended family was going to do when they reached The Swamp. The next morning, the three left on a flight East. In Denver, Erin Hunnicutt's parents did the same, all to meet up at The Klinger household, situated near the Swamp. Doctor Winchester was already there, having brushed off Alex Krychek's attempt at interrogation twenty-four hours back. When one's family ran two sets of Watchers, one tended to have connections, and Charles had plenty of those. Out from Saint Louis, Walter O'Reilly drove a decoy car in circles, while a brilliant blur speeded toward the Swamp, evidence sealed and protected, ready to be used to fulfill the 4077th alumni's agenda. On the car ferry that sails from Cape May, New Jersey, Lone Gunman Frohike spoke with Mulder about Hawkeye's discrepancy concerning Cigarette Man's age. He was succinct. "I know what my bio of him said, Fox. But the bastard's slippery. Doc Pierce's version of events seems to jibe with new evidence we've found. But with that sleaze, who the hell knows? I sure don't." That and that alone, seemed to be the one unchanging aspect of Mulder's life. With Cigarette Man, you simply never knew anything for certain. The ferry completed its journey, and they were back on the road. By twelve the next day, they were nearing the 'Swamp'. Pierce gracefully answered Frohike's awkward questions. "Well, Frohike, all I'm saying is that whoever-it-was should never have posted this on the net; Trapper and I pulled the shower down as a practical joke, only. You really shouldn't ask a man to sign an essentially nude picture of his own wife--that part's just for future reference." Margaret would have killed him. Hawkeye signed anyway, earning Frohike's eternal gratitude, but not his balance. "She's-she's Dana's Aunt, isn't she?" Mulder and Pierce looked at each other and rolled their eyes at the obvious meaning in Frohike's question. Then Mulder realized their very familiar location. "Hawkeye, this is the Swamp?" "Well, technically speaking, it was built on a swamp. Plus, some of the stuff that comes out of here makes you wonder if they drained it yet." Mulder realized how turned around he was not to grasp that they were entering Washington, D.C., the nation's capital. Now, all the players were in place, and Mulder and Scully would find out if the 4077th really had what it took to bring down the Consortium. So far, they had stymied all of Hawkeye's requests for investigation of those early deaths. Mulder wondered what was different, now. Radar met them at 4:30, near a privately built memorial to veterans like Henry Blake, who died after their war was over. It was secluded, almost inviting someone to come after them. Mulder nodded at Pierce. "Pity your second CO isn't here, Hawkeye." Pierce grinned at this, but said nothing on the fate of Sherman Potter. All the MASH surviving senior staff were there, with the exception of the still missing Margaret Pierce---and one other. Then again, he always had been the odd one out. Elk Ridge, Indiana Frank Burns had raised his grandson himself. He loved Alex Krychek with a fierce devotion. The young man was Burns' pride and joy. While thinking these thoughts, Frank heard a knock at the door---and he prayed to God Almighty that it was anyone except his grandson. Alex scared him. Checking the window, he saw that it was not Alex, but rather Tom Beckett from down the road. Tom Beckett, whose brother Sam his grandson had tried very hard to kill in Frank's own house. "Doctor Burns." Tom Beckett didn't like Frank. That much was made clear in his voice. "Hey, Tom. Anyone in the family sick?" The former Navy Seal frowned. "Frank, you know that if they were, I wouldn't bring them here." "I said I was sorry." Frank knew why Tom was angry with him. His sister Katie had taken a fall, and needed a few stitches. By the time Frank Burns was done with her, though, she needed to be rushed to the hospital, with massive infections. Tom's family had not been happy about this. Especially not his brother, Sam. The bigger problem -Frank's grandson Alex had been lying in wait for him. Frank had never really asked how they all kept out of jail, after that. Alex Krychek himself was the direct result of questions Frank Burns didn't ask. He was, it should be noted, quite good at not asking questions. 1952 "Margaret, we were ordered not to say anything. Now I hear you and Pierce are bothering those nice people at the 3966th. I mean, if they want to build a better world on everyone else's backs, who are we to tell them no?" "I thought maybe we were the American people, Frank." "Weeeelll, if you're gonna go and bring THAT up....." 1955 "Hey-hey, Louise. Your dragon-slayer is home from Tokyo. Boy, what a great time we all had. Well, 'cept for Godzilla stomping on everything. But you can't let a little thing like that ruin an otherwise mediocre reunion." Louise Burns didn't even turn her head. "I know you saw her, Frank. That's why we have a couch, and that's why you're using it tonight." In Tokyo, Frank and Margaret had barely said ten words to each other, and Frank knew this. "Yes, Dear." 1969 Frank's daughter was marrying Antony Krychek. It was a shotgun wedding, but the young man seemed anxious to pay for his mistake, and Frank was anxious to make him pay. Burns spoke to daughter Elisa before the ceremony. "Father, what if I told you I don't want to marry Antony?" "Oh, but kitten, it's all paid for." "What if I didn't want to have the baby?" "Don't be silly, lumpkins. Who else would have it?" 'What if I said that on that night I got pregnant, it wasn't really my choice to be with Antony?" "Well, maybe not, but it's not like he forced himself on you." Fighting back tears, Elisa said, "Dad?" Not connecting the dots at all, Frank said, "Yes, baby-bear?" "Could you send Mrs. Hunnicutt in?" 1974 "Where is Mrs. Burns, Doctor?" "Oh, well, you see, we ran into a spot of trouble in our marriage, so we entered the care of the Reverend Martin, who acted as our marriage counselor. That's where she is right now. I hear her and the Reverend are quite happy. IIIII'm not doing so well, myself." "Be that as it may, we're here to talk about young Alex. Given his mother's disappearance and his father's fugitive status, coupled with your ex-wife's total lack of desire to have anything to do with the child, the county has seen fit to award him to the best available blood relative." "Why aren't I getting him?" The social worker just stared. "Doctor Burns, I meant you." "Oh. Whod've Thought?" "You do understand the problems associated with raising a sexually abused child, Doctor?" "Oh, I'm not taking any damaged goods. Just my Alex." "Doctor, let me be succinct. Antony Krychek was a repeat sexual offender. Why your daughter married him, knowing this, is beyond me. But the boy has definitely been..." As the social worker continued talking, part of Frank's mind realized the depth of his failure to Elisa. He swore he would not fail Alex, too. Sadly, this same part had once vowed to divorce Louise and marry Margaret. 1981 "Alex, were you fighting again?" "No, gramps. I was destroying people who got in my way." "So long as you weren't fighting." 1983 "That witch broke my hand." "Alexxxx, grabbing Mrs. Pierce like that was not a good idea. I mean, you nearly ruined the whole reunion." "So I grabbed her. I was just feeling what every other man in the room once did." "Alex?" 1988 "Um, do you have to smoke?" "Yes, I do. Now out with it Burns. I have a busy schedule. Word is, Dear Margaret has vanished." "I appreciate my promotions and all, but I think you're a bad influence on my grandson." "Bad Influence? Doctor, do you want him to end up like you--or me?" Frank stood up, defiantly. "Now that's hardly a fair question." 1995 Alex Krychek was drunk. He sat in his grandfather's living room, and sang song parodies. "Granpa, just killed a man; Put my gun up to his head; Pulled my trigger now he's dead.; BIll Mulder's life was almost done; But I still went and shot him anyway.." As Alex's song continued, Frank rolled his eyes. "I used to like that song. Even if it was written by a fruit." "Hey, Granpa. Tell me again about how everyone made a fool of you at the 4077th." "Oh, no. I'm pretty much over that, Alex." Frank heard a gun click. "PLEAAASEE, GRANPA..." 1998 "I'm here, Frank, because they've reached what they call The Swamp. That is all." Frank breathed a sigh of relief as Tom Beckett left, and also in knowing it would all soon be over. The odd man out had an even odder grandson. Frank wondered if he would ever be the hero of his early daydreams. He didn't like the answers he found. Washington, DC In the foreground was Mulder's constant nemesis, known by his favorite habit. In the background were lots of trained killers, all cocking their guns in seclusion. Things looked bad for the heroes. "Well, all are assembled. Now where's the evidence, Pierce? Going to Skinner with it?" Hawkeye Pierce shocked Cigarette Man by smiling directly back at him, with an even cockier smile. Hawkeye had some choice words for this would-be secret master of the Earth. "You've Lost, Pal. You see, its 5:00, and this time, you're out of points." Mulder and Scully exchanged a look which contained heavy doses of prayer that Hawkeye wasn't just bluffing. While Cigarette Man laughed heartily at Pierce's boast of having beaten him, the snipers he had surrounding the area were at the ready. They were some of them mercs, others ideologues in the Consortium's cause, others merely soldiers who were reprimanded for liking killing a little too much. They were perfectly ready to pepper the secluded memorial area with enough firepower to kill even Hawkeye--debatably. But they were tragically unready for an Iowan Immortal who wanted revenge for the death of the man who was like his own father. Radar O'Reilly was not a killer. But these people weren't killing anyone else, especially not his family. Quickly and silently, he dispatched twenty-five armed killers who thought they were large and in charge. The diminutive Immortal proved them wrong. He went to scan for more before rejoining his friends---for the unmasking. "I'll tell you what, Pierce. You failed to get to Skinner. Just give me the evidence on Immunita, and I'll even help you find your wife. We may have a lead on her whereabouts - or we may not. Your choice. Maybe you can sulk in Hunnicutt's sub-basement and pine for her, like you do every six months. We do have the odd person in Montana, you know." BJ was livid. He was no militia type. But folks up there did not, as a rule, care for the federal government. This was guy was the Federales Cubed. "You Slime. So you know about the sub-basement. Ah, but do you know about the Sub-Sub Basement?" "Spare me the jokes, Doctor. That's always been Pierce's supposed forte'. Yours is...." BJ reached slowly into his pocket, pulling out an AM Radio. This had been mostly his plan, and he would be allowed to play it out at its finish. "This is the way your world ends, pal. Not with a bang of a gun, but the bang of a gavel. You see, my strength is not verbal jokes, like Hawkeye. Trapper and I both share a love of--practical jokes." The news broadcast on the small radio was coming straight from the nearby halls of Congress. The voice was recognizable as Senator Matheson, an ally of Mulder's. Cigarette Man-smiled. "Matheson won't be able to use a courier, boys and girls. He'll need one of the senior staff to back it up, and you're all here. We did take these 'Immunita' hearings into account, you know." Matheson's voice continued: "Madame, this evidence is quite startling. If Immunita's goal is the production of superhumans and not Immune enhancement, then Congressional and Executive guidelines regarding DNA research have almost certainly been violated, and I will ask Attorney General Reno to appoint a task force, immediately. Seconded by our own investigation, which, thanks to you, has now taken on unbelievable dimensions. I am told that certain parties have downloaded your evidence onto the World-Wide-Web. For security reasons, I wish you had not, but can understand your reasoning in this. These appear to be dangerous folk, even back to the KTO. Do you have anything else you wish to say?" A woman's voice now came through. Most hearts rejoiced at hearing it. For different reasons, CSM and Hawkeye's hearts nearly burst free of their moorings. "Nothing much, Senator. Just that I could not have gotten here, today, to do this without the love and support of many people. Chief among them are my niece, FBI Special Agent Dana Scully, her partner, Fox Mulder, and my big stupid lug of a husband, retired Colonel Benjamin Franklin Pierce, who should be nearby, helping an old acquaintance get the points." With that, the testimony of the no-longer-missing Colonel Margaret Houlihan Pierce came to an end. CSM began to shout into a cell-phone. He was now barely in control of his own bodily functions. He had been played, as had all the interested parties. For ten years, the only one who had possession of Margaret--was Margaret. "SUPPRESS THE PARK. SUPPRESS THE WHOLE DAMNED CAPITOL BUILDING. RESPOND. RESPOND." From the shadows emerged Radar, sadly wiping off his Confederate sword. "If I were you, pal, I wouldn't be countin' on those bums fer nothin'." A blur then streaked through the park, knocking Cigarette Man down as it did. With gray hair dye not yet washed out, Margaret Pierce was kissing her husband like he'd rarely been kissed before. Angrily, the stunned spy pulled his gun and picked a target-Dana Scully. He fired, and would have hit her. But Margaret raced forward and merely caught the bullet, and tossed it through his shoulder. In agony, he asked : "Is there any way this day could get any worse?" Two things happened to make that so. One, a message appeared on his beeper, likely from his well-manicured superior. IMMUNITA - PROTECT THE LARGER INTEREST. SUPPRESS ALL RESOURCES WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. PROJECT TERMINATED - PROTECT LARGER CONCERNS AND HIGHER-PLACED PERSONNEL. Next, Hawkeye said a name. Again, the man's heart nearly stopped. "Bartford Hamilton Steele--The Fourth." Mulder had never expected to hear anyone put a likely name to his enemy. Nor did he expect the look on the man's face. "To think, I never really knew what the whiter shade of pale looked like till now." "Shut Up, Mulder. I'm not through, here. Remember, if anything happens to me, I guarantee you will never find out what became of Samantha." The master manipulator was trying to regain his footing. But the people of the 4077th had long since waxed the dance floor. Worse, he now had a name - Bartford Hamilton Steele the Fourth, son of the Flipping General, founder of Immunita and 'Heroes America'. Mulder wondered if even this was his real name, but he did know that his foe must have had use for it. The living puzzle was cringing, or felt a need to feign cringing. Either way, it was a first for both FBI agents. Fox saw Margaret kiss Dana on the cheek, then walk over to 'Steele' and pick him up. The former nurse lifted him into the air - with one hand. As he sweated, she lightly caressed his cheek, then slapped him. "First things first, scuzball. That was for me. Second, how DARE you try to shoot my niece?. You're no danger to anyone without this Freudian substitute. You're a fraud. You never killed anyone. Henry was shot down by enemy fire." Steele seemed to regain his composure. As Margaret dropped him, she seemed to be wandering into his territory. Emphasis on 'seemed.' "Nice try, Mrs. Pierce. But a little lame. Got those recorders going? Hidden camcorders? None of it matters. My people will have it all neutralized in some fashion, quicker than even you can blink. Ok, here's the summation to your little lives : In January, 1952, I placed an extra duffel bag aboard the plane set to transport Henry Blake home. That bag contained a bomb. We made sure that his body was decapitated, the one sure way to kill his kind--heh, heh--sorry, O'Reilly." Radar shrugged. "Feel sorry for yourself, jerk. Remember, I'm always gonna be twenty." Mortality was much on Steele's mind of late, so Walter's counter-punch had its desired effect. Still, he tried again to recover. He had an ace-in-the-hole, to remind them who was boss. Unfortunately for him, they already knew that, and it wasn't Steele. "What about the other death you tried to investigate, Pierce? The other friend of yours who died, back then? There was no bomb, that time. I shoved him out of the helicopter, myself. Listen up, Mulder. Find out how these amateurs are in over their heads." Hawkeye looked over at Fox. "Fox, this is it. I'm about to show you something you've always known, but never really allowed to sink in, concerning this guy and his ilk. This one lesson will make all the lies I told you worth it. I'm still not proud of all that, but now you'll see why it all was necessary. Dana, honey, you pay attention, too. This one kind of kicks both ways. Okay, Steele, tell your story, but leave out the sheep and wolves business, and the part about how people like you and people like me are really no different. Just the facts, scam." "You're a funny guy, Pierce. But you won't think it's so funny, now. Yes, I killed the other one, too. He begged for his life, but I still pushed him out. I KILLED JONATHAN TUTTLE!!!!" The crew didn't think Steele's claim was funny, at all. They thought it was out-and-out hilarious. Holding back laughter, Dana walked over to Fox, also chuckling under his hand. Trapper and Charles found themselves sitting back-to-back, howling. "Fox, it's true. HE-hehaaha. He did kill Tuttle. And I'm Samantha. Hi Brother." Mulder embraced Scully. "Dana, I thought I was Samantha." Now Soon-Lee spoke. "Margaret, you were Samantha LAST year. Now I'm Samantha." Maxine Ishikawa looked mock-angry at her mother. "MA. I'm Samantha. Besides, how can you be, since you and Fox..." "Don't correct your mother, Maxine. As to me and Fox, that just keeps it in the family. We have a very open family. Open to what, though, I'm never quite sure." As the man possibly known as Bartford Hamilton Steele the 4th looked on in utter confusion, every woman and every man -Fox included- claimed to be Mulder's missing sister. It was a savage joke, but Fox Mulder knew it was not at his expense. He actually felt a guilty joy at being able to laugh about it. It helped him to remember the good times before that night. BJ, crafter of the scenario, informed Steele of his faux pas. "Here's the long and short of it, you meatball. Margaret left Hawkeye to gather evidence where she could. We all pretended to be upset, screaming when you would make your little phone calls. The Pierces would meet in my sub-sub basement -remember that?- once every six months. Once she had some solid stuff here, we went for Korea, to get to the Time Capsule. But we needed a little diversion before the hearings." BJ pointed to Mulder and Scully, then Max Klinger took over. "Meet a little diversion. Dana, the Pierces' cute little niece, now not so little, and my boy Spooky. Since you bums offed his Dad, I guess he sort of is my boy, and I'm glad to have him. Not so glad as the missus, but that's another story. I know from talking to him that you guys follow everything he does. So, we mask what we're doing, and for once, you creeps are jumping at shadows. You follow him so much, it was an easy out. But there are two last things." At that, Max, Soon-Lee and Maxine punched Steele in the stomach. That hurt him. But if one of the Pierces had done it, they would have snapped him in two. The Klingers enhancements were not as radical. Max spoke again. "That was for my son, Wally, and everybody else you played God with. The second thing is, you can't possibly have killed Captain Tuttle. Nobody could have. Spooky, ya wanna tell him why?" Max briefly hugged his 'son', and then Mulder delivered the coup de grace. Steele looked up, the plaintive look of road kill. He was stepped on. "You see, Tuttle was the kind of man you and your friends would appreciate. He was all made up. Hawkeye and Trapper constructed him out of whole cloth. You just boasted about killing a man who never even existed. I'm talking real non-existence here, as in never was. Not erased, or reassigned. I mean he only existed on paper. Congrats, killer. You've spilled some ink again." Hawkeye had done as he had promised. The lesson to Mulder was simply that some people need the appearance of control even more than they need the control. For all the real danger Steele and company represented, they were still innate phonies at heart, even to the point of claiming credit for eliminating an imaginary man. This lesson would stay with Fox. The humiliated, injured master spy then tried to get out of there. But Frohike blocked him. "Out of my way, freak." But with Margaret and Hawkeye now holding him, Steele was forced to listen to what the Lone Gunman had to say. "Ahem. I didn't kill nobody, sir. I'm jest a patsy. Yessir, I been set up. God, I have always wanted to do that." With thoughts of having to explain the loss of Immunita to his superiors shaking him still further, the man possibly named Bartford Hamilton Steele the Fourth left. Mulder and Scully would meet him again, but he would leave the 4077th and their families alone-for good. To do otherwise would mean revealing how he- how they all had been played for fools by a bunch of medics from the Korean War. They would have enough trouble wiping out Immunita's various bases, to protect their own sorry hides. "So, Fox? Scratch one conspiracy. Sorry we can't help you with the big one, but Margaret and I might be able to help elsewhere." "No, I think you've done enough, Hawkeye. Your lesson was one I needed badly. He seems so convincing, at times, I forget I'm dealing with inherent liars. I can't promise I'll change my methods, but I might shift them around a bit, find other means of accessing what I need." Now, Dana spoke. "It's odd, but I have to wonder, after all this, if Mulder's vision of things is as blurry as I thought. The only promise I offer is to be a little more open to it - if the evidence is there. So, are you two off to look for America?" Hawkeye and Margaret looked at one another, then at Fox. They both smiled, and Margaret spoke. "No, Dana. We're going to be looking for Samantha. We owe Fox that much, and we just realized how much children really mean. You see, Hawkeye and I were together one month ago, and...the tests are positive." The tragedy was wiped away. For one, brief, shining moment life - albeit life extended into infinity - had won out. All faces lit up. Hawkeye and Margaret's children would be born into a world where those who wished to enslave them--were history. Mulder smiled, brightest of all, for he felt that, if anyone could find Samantha, it was his new friends, the Pierces. For all the pain, Mulder and Scully had found out in a definitive way that their foes could be beaten, their power broken. It didn't guarantee victory--only made it possible. In years to come, this would prove critical. In time, they would mourn for Wally, Gonzo, and all the others. But for now, Hawkeye had the last word. "To Henry Blake: We finally got them, Henry. We finally made the bastards pay. Yeah, they're only walking with a limp. They're not on their knees. But we've got two good kids on our side, and I know those slimeballs days are numbered. Rest in peace, Henry. This time for sure." All seconded Hawkeye's heartfelt words. In the meantime, Maxine Ishikawa's kids heard from their favorite storyteller, Uncle Spooky. "Once upon a time, there were some good people who set out to save the world from evil. And that's exactly what they did--with a little help from their friends." It was early summer, so the sun did not go down til late in the Memorial Park. Each fallen member of the 4077th was toasted, even those who had been 'erased'. Their families could be told the truth at long last. In the news on BJ's pocket radio, there was talk of the explosive Immunita investigation, and how some rather cold scientists who used to work the talk-show circuit on behalf of 'misunderstood' Immunita were suddenly nowhere to be found. Other news spoke of a vague bomb threat to a federal building in Dallas, and the mysterious figure behind the recent genocidal rampages that plagued the world- a man known only as Khan. But for now, aunt and niece spoke. "Oh, Dana. Jack would be so proud. Look at you. Do you forgive us? We really couldn't have done it without you." "Auntie Margaret, don't you dare ask me to forgive you. I mean, you crazy people almost single-handedly brought down the second tier of perhaps the most vast conspiracy of all time. I'm amazed. By the way, Auntie---do earrings count?" "DANA. You can't ask me---oh, what the hell? They sure didn't count in that picture your little friend asked me to sign." Dana thought for a second, then pulled her gun. "FROHIKE!" Max stopped her. "He's not here, kiddo. Said something about renting a hotel room. I'll tell ya, someone like that could out-spooky Fox." Dana hugged Max. "Thank you for being there for him. You and Soon-Lee." Soon-Lee responded. "We all love Spooky, Dana. I really like having him, myself." There was an undertone to Soon-Lee's words that Scully decided not to pursue. Radar had something to say. "Time for me to go, guys. When ya receive the telegram, informing you and all, don't panic. I'll be in Paris with Duncan, if he'll train me." In four months, a telegram would inform them all of Walter Eugene O'Reilly's passing. In Seacouver, though, was a young man who looked just like him-Benjamin T. Blake, student to one Duncan Macleod. Playfully, Hawkeye and Margaret looked at one another and nearly flew off to be together in CrabApple Cove. Mulder would phone them later, to thank them again. But he would wait seventy-two hours or so--and maybe buy them a new headboard, while he was at it. Maxine's youngest spoke up. "Granpa? Those two could be at it for a year. Where we sposed' to spend the summer?" As Dana said hello to BJ, Peg, and Charles, Erin tried to figure out how to deal with her dad, while Trapper sat and realized for the first time that Gonzo Gates was really dead. Fox sat with his alternate family and mourned for Wally, and Rosie's clan, grief subsuming the awkwardness he felt around Soon-Lee. But Mulder was used to feeling awkward around his own mother, after all. The evening ended with Trapper and BJ giving little details about their scam at Steele's expense. They all departed, but the future held much. December 31, 2000 For the Consortium, all was dust. All the people who would never talk were talking. All the documents that would never turn up were turning up. The hybrids were gone, the unintended result of an Immunita-created reagent. Their possibly-alien sponsors had flown into the sun. Scully and Mulder, damn them, had found the Truth. It was all Pierce's fault, Steele thought, as he lay on the operating table. He and his band of misfits had shown Fox the way. After Dallas and Antarctica, Mulder had persevered. After he and Scully had lost everything and been put on the run, Mulder persevered. After Steele played the Samantha card and 'revealed' himself to be an ally to the X-Files, Mulder persevered. When the sham was exposed and the false Samantha revealed-again- Mulder persevered. Mulder stopped coming to him, demanding information. His buttons became harder to push. When the Pierces finally kept their promise, Mulder woke up. Marita and all the other hidden allies were being arrested right and left. When Skinner slapped the cuffs on Steele's well - manicured superior, it was over. Steele killed FBI Director Skinner, of course, to retaliate, but it was a hollow victory. Krychek's KGB-remnant cells fared no better, which is why the injured pair headed out together, seeking the safe-house that was Frank Burns' Elk Ridge, Indiana home. Burns would call the hospital, and there Steele would contact people still in his thrall. If he moved quickly enough, he still had resources. It wasn't all over, not by a longshot. Burns was odd as always. Upon his arrival. Krychek wasn't moving anymore, so Frank took Steele into his office, put him on the table, and then pulled the protection windows down. He only said a few sentences. "You know, Bart, for all his flaws, I loved my grandson. And, for all his weakness, I liked Henry Blake. I think I liked them all." "Just call the hospital, Burns. NOW." Burns just laughed his odd little laugh, and left. As Frank watched the New Year begin, and with it a new Millennium, Bartford Hamilton Steele the Fourth died. With him died the best coherent liaison in the so-called 'Octopus' - the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind. Finding Steele gone, Frank Burns felt he had no choice. "Wow. A mysterious death. Seems to me that requires a FULL autopsy. Gotta cover the points. Hmmph. For such a smart guy, Steele, you never did get around to asking a simple little question--"Who was their inside man? Who was telling them my movements? Frank Burns? HAH. Couldn't be him, right?" The next morning, Tom Beckett found that Doctor Burns had died of natural causes in the night. Having finished off the Consortium, Francis Marion Burns died as the hero he always hoped he could be. Death, like life, has its ironies. JULY, 2002 Before attending to his guest, Assistant Director Mulder called his boss. "Look, Scully, all I'm saying is, Bin Laden had researched Djinns in the late 90's. A Djinn would explain why he keeps slipping away. Okay, okay. No, she's fine. She asked for you. Very well, Madame Director. I'll say hello to her and your uncle." Putting the cell-phone away, Fox shook Hawkeye's hand. "How's Blake doing? She flying yet?" Pierce groaned. "Don't. Margaret and I are having enough trouble dealing with the fact that she was born like us. A toddler that can lift tonnage is hard to keep tabs on. But Blake's being good, now that she's learned she's going to be a big sister. If it's a boy--we'll call him Sherman." Hawkeye's look turned somber. Mulder did not look at all somber. In fact he smiled. "Dana doesn't have a baby." Pierce shook his head. "But I heard.. the grapevine..Huh? Well, uh..how's that new fella, Daggett--Tagett, was it?" Mulder smiled ever wider. "Never met the man." Tension between the two, Pierce wondered? "I heard a story about this hybrid Amazon-type and you people. Was she any real trouble?" Mulder poured the pair some ice water. "Elephant, officer? What elephant?" Hawkeye was now correctly sensing a trend. "What about you-know-who being your real father? That hadda hurt." Mulder was now almost chuckling openly. "My father was Bill Mulder. My mother hated Bart Steele because she hated Bart Steele." Pierce finally gave in. "Has this humble sawbones-and a lot of other people-been the victims of a misinformation campaign, Mister Assistant Director? What about the invasion of 2012?" Mulder pulled out a book on Mayan mythology. He opened it to a certain page. "2012 is the year the ancient Mayans believe the sun will burn out. It seemed like a good year to die. Gave us a date to plant that already had resonance." Hawkeye began smiling.	i don't know
Patented by it's inventor in 1916, what type of bed folds from the wall?	History of Beds - Inventors History of Beds By Mary Bellis Updated August 06, 2016. A bed is a piece of furniture upon which a person may recline or sleep, in many cultures and for for many centuries the bed was considered the most important piece of furniture in the house and a type of status symbol. Beds were used in ancient Egypt as more than a place for sleeping, beds were used as a place to eat meals and entertain socially. According to A Brief History of Beds, "The earliest beds were shallow chests in which the bedding was placed. The first attempt at a soft basis consisted of ropes stretched across a wooden framework." The Mattress A Short History of Mattress Making tells us that "A typical bed of 1600 in its simplest form was a timber frame with rope or leather supports. The mattress was a 'bag' of soft filling which was most commonly straw and sometimes wool that was covered in plain, cheap fabric. In the mid 18th century, the cover became made of quality linen or cotton, the mattress cane box was shaped or bordered and the fillings available were natural and plenty, including coconut fibre, cotton, wool and horse hair. continue reading below our video 5 Steps to Starting Your Own Business The mattresses also became tufted or buttoned to hold the fillings and cover together and the edges were stitched. Iron and steel replaced the past timber frames in the late 19th century. The most expensive beds of 1929 were latex rubber mattresses produced by the very successful 'Dunlopillow'. Pocket spring mattresses were also introduced. These were individual springs sewn into linked fabric bags. Waterbeds The first water-filled beds were goatskins filled with water, used in Persia more then 3,600 years ago. In 1873, Sir James Paget at St Bartholomew's Hospital presented a modern waterbed designed by Neil Arnott as a treatment and prevention of pressure ulcers (bed sores). Waterbeds allowed mattress pressure to be evenly distributed over the body. By 1895 a few waterbeds were sold via mail order by the British store, Harrod’s. They looked like, and probably were, very large hot water bottles. Due to lack of suitable materials, the waterbed did not gain widespread use until the 1960s, after the invention of vinyl . Murphy Bed Murphy Bed, the bedding idea of 1900 was invented by American William Lawrence Murphy (1876–1959) from San Francisco. The space-saving Murphy Bed folds into a wall closet. William Lawrence Murphy formed the Murphy Bed Company of New York, the second oldest oldest furniture manufacturer in the United States. Murphy patented his "In-A-Dor" bed in 1908, however, he did not trademark the name "Murphy Bed".	Murphy bed
What is the common name for a poker hand that consists of all the cards in your hand being of the same suit, not in rank order?	Beyond Sofa Beds: 7 Creative New Kinds of Sleeper Couch \| Urbanist Beyond Sofa Beds: 7 Creative New Kinds of Sleeper Couch Article by Delana , filed under Furniture & Decor in the Design category When you want to have a place for house guests to sleep but don’t have a spare room in which to put them, a sofa bed can be a lifesaver. This original piece of transforming furniture has often been mocked as uncomfortable, ugly, and inconvenient. But today, a new generation of sleeper sofas is turning that perception upside down with style and surprising functionality. (images via: Bonbon ) The DOC sofa bed from UK company Bonbon is an elegant solution to the small-space conundrum. By day it’s a regular-looking (and rather stylishly modern) sofa, but by night – or just when your old college roommates are visiting – it transforms into a bunk bed with room for two. As the video above demonstrates, the action to take the DOC from sofa to bunk bed is surprisingly simple. (images via: Dornob ) Italian furniture manufacturer Campeggi might just be onto something with their push-button convertible sofa. Rather than moving cushions, pulling hard on a reluctant mattress and trying desperately to smooth everything into place, this sofa lets you extend a single finger to take it from couch to bed. The drawbacks, of course, include having to keep it near an electrical outlet and the potential for inconvenient breakdowns – but it might be worth it to never have to deal with a standard sleeper sofa again. (images via: Bonbon ) Not all sofa beds are alike, as evidenced by the Adam horizontal wall bed unit from Bonbon . Designed to fit into an office or den setting, the actual bed pulls down from the wall to cover the sofa. The clever setup is a bit different than the typical convertible sofa, but the Murphy bed-type solution still allows for a multi-functional space. (images via: Bonbon ) Likewise, the Altea Relax creates a room that can be made for socializing or for sleeping – all using a minimal amount of floor space. The Altea Relax incorporates a wall storage unit along with a pull-down bed, and the lower sofa segment also features a handy storage space under its surface. (images via: de Sede ) While not exactly a sofa that transforms into a bed, the DS-1164 from Swiss furniture maker de Sede is both a sofa and a bed. The elegant piece of furniture features “bed heads” which can be moved around into any configuration to create a comfy lounging or sleeping spot, no matter what time of day it is. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get out of bed in the morning already. (images via: Dornob ) This modular convertible sofa from Dutch designers Zuiver is a fun departure from the usual bed-or-sofa binary design. It allows each individual segment to be moved up or down as desired, creating entirely new pieces of furniture every time. When entirely unfolded, the sofa could easily be used as a comfy temporary bed. (images via: Grüne Erde ) The stylish Stefano sofa bed completely redefines the functionality of a sofa bed, lending a superbly unique form factor to the classic piece of furniture. Rather than a sofa out of which a bed is pulled, the Stefano is a folding piece of soft foam that takes the form of a sofa when folded and a bed when unfolded. With no moving parts, the Stefano is simple enough for anyone to operate.	i don't know
What legendary blues guitarist, best known for his hit "The Thrill Is Gone" , played a guitar he dubbed Lucille?	B.B. King - Guitarist, Songwriter, Singer - Biography.com READ MORE: Blues Legend B.B. King Dies at 89 King made his first recording in 1949, and the next year began a 12-year-long association with Kent/RPM/Modern, for which he recorded a string of rhythm and blues hits, including "You Know I Love You," "Woke Up This Morning" and "Three O'Clock Blues," which reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and became his first national hit. He also toured the nightclub circuit continuously, averaging more than 300 shows annually for over 30 years. His style of music earned him the title "King of the Blues." Famed Guitar 'Lucille' Coincidentally, the year that King made his first recording was also the same year that he named his beloved guitar. King attended a dance in Twist, Arkansas, that had a barrel lit with kerosene in the middle of the dance floor, used to keep the crowd warm late at night. While there, a fight broke out and the barrel was knocked over, causing a fire to spread throughout the venue. Everyone evacuated, including King, but he rushed back inside to retrieve his prized guitar. Luckily, he managed to escape with his guitar as the building collapsed around him. King later learned that the fight erupted because of a woman who worked at the venue named Lucille. From then on, King named his guitar "Lucille" to remind himself never to do anything so foolish again. Hit 'The Thrill Is Gone' In 1962, King signed with ABC Records, which released Live at the Regal (1965), a benchmark blues concert album. In 1969, he released his biggest hit single, "The Thrill is Gone." The first bluesman to tour the Soviet Union in 1979, by this time he had also become the first bluesman to enter the pop mainstream, making regular appearances in Las Vegas, Nevada and on network television. King also found commercial success with the many collaborations he made over the years, including with artists Eric Clapton , Elton John , Sheryl Crow , Van Morrison and Bonnie Raitt . In 1987, King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Highly-Acclaimed Musical Artist One of music's best-regarded performers, King picked up the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 2006 for his duets album 80, having won the award multiple times over the decades. Later that year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush . The legendary singer and guitarist also became the subject of his own museum, which opened its doors in 2008. The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Mississippi, is dedicated to King's music, the music which influenced him, and the history of the delta area. Also in 2008, King released his album One Kind Favor to critical acclaim. He did his own take on songs by John Lee Hooker , T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson , earning yet another Grammy Award for his efforts, marking his 15th win. In February 2012, King played a special gig at the White House with Buddy Guy and others. He and his fellow performers were accompanied by President Barack Obama on the song "Sweet Home Chicago. Recent Years and Death King played more than 250 concerts per year well into his 70s. In his 80s, the number of tour dates the guitarist booked were more limited in number. His health had been deteriorating over the past few years. After a shaky concert in April 2014 at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis, fans voiced their concern about King on social media saying he appeared to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. After that show, the blues legend issued a public apology for his erratic performance. In October 2014, the 89-year old fell onstage during a performance at Chicago’s House of Blues and cancelled several upcoming gigs. In a statement issued on his web site after the fall, it said the singer had been “diagnosed with dehydration and suffering from exhaustion.” But no matter where he was, King had his signature guitar "Lucille" in his hands. While in hospice care, B.B. King died in his sleep on May 14, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada, leaving behind an enduring musical legacy. In the days following King’s death, his daughters Karen Williams and Patty King said they believed King's manager LaVerne Toney and personal assistant Myron Johnson had poisoned their father. "I believe my father was poisoned and that he was administered foreign substances to induce his premature death," the daughters said in identical affidavits. "I believe my father was murdered." A lawyer for B.B. King’s estate released a statement, saying: "The allegations are baseless and unfounded and are unsupported in reality. Ms. Toney did everything she could to carry out the wishes of Mr. King while he was alive, and continues to carry out Mr. King's wishes after his death." On May 27, 2015, thousands of fans lined Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee to watch a funeral procession in honor of the late blues legend, who was nicknamed the Beale Street Blues Boy. King will be buried in Indianola, Mississippi, his hometown, on May 30th. Related Videos Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information	B.B. King
The mechanism of using 2 flags held in different positions to communicate between ships at sea is called what?	B.B. King Biography \| B.B. King \| The Official Website of the King of the Blues, B.B. King B.B. King B.B. King B.B. King Biography His reign as King of the Blues has been as long as that of any monarch on earth. Yet B.B. King continues to wear his crown well. At age 76, he is still light on his feet, singing and playing the blues with relentless passion. Time has no apparent effect on B.B., other than to make him more popular, more cherished, more relevant than ever. Don’t look for him in some kind of semi-retirement; look for him out on the road, playing for people, popping up in a myriad of T.V. commercials, or laying down tracks for his next album. B.B. King is as alive as the music he plays, and a grateful world can’t get enough of him. For more than half a century, Riley B. King – better known as B.B. King – has defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN, to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of the South gravitated, and which supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues. B.B.’s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis, and later to a ten-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” became so popular, it was expanded and became the “Sepia Swing Club.” Soon B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King. In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.’s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille. Soon after his number one hit, “Three O’Clock Blues,” B.B. began touring nationally. In 1956, B.B. and his band played an astonishing 342 one-night stands. From the chitlin circuit with its small-town cafes, juke joints, and country dance halls to rock palaces, symphony concert halls, universities, resort hotels and amphitheaters, nationally and internationally, B.B. has become the most renowned blues musician of the past 40 years. Over the years, B.B. has developed one of the world’s most identifiable guitar styles. He borrowed from Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and others, integrating his precise and complex vocal-like string bends and his left hand vibrato, both of which have become indispensable components of rock guitarist’s vocabulary. His economy, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for thousands of players, from Eric Clapton and George Harrison to Jeff Beck. B.B. has mixed traditional blues, jazz, swing, mainstream pop and jump into a unique sound. In B.B.’s words, “When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.” In 1968, B.B. played at the Newport Folk Festival and at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West on bills with the hottest contemporary rock artists of the day who idolized B.B. and helped to introduce him to a young white audience. In “69, B.B. was chosen by the Rolling Stones to open 18 American concerts for them; Ike and Tina Turner also played on 18 shows. B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He received NARAS’ Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987, and has received honorary doctorates from Tougaloo(MS) College in 1973; Yale University in 1977; Berklee College of Music in 1982; Rhodes College of Memphis in 1990; Mississippi Valley State University in 2002 and Brown University in 2007. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi. In 1991, B.B. King’s Blues Club opened on Beale Street in Memphis, and in 1994, a second club was launched at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles. A third club in New York City’s Times Square opened in June 2000 and most recently two clubs opened at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut in January 2002. In 1996, the CD-Rom On The Road With B.B. King: An Interactive Autobiography was released to rave reviews. Also in 1996, B.B.’s autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (written with David Ritz for Avon Books) was published. In a similar vein, Doubleday published “The Arrival of B.B. King” by Charles Sawyer, in 1980. B.B. continued to tour extensively, averaging over 250 concerts per year around the world. Classics such as “Payin’ The Cost To Be The Boss,” “The Thrill Is Gone,” How Blue Can You Get,” “Everyday I Have The Blues,” and “Why I Sing The Blues” are concert (and fan) staples. Over the years, the Grammy Award-winner has had two #1 R&B hits, 1951’s “Three O’Clock Blues,” and 1952’s “You Don’t Know Me,” and four #2 R&B hits, 1953’s “Please Love Me,” 1954’s “You Upset Me Baby,” 1960’s “Sweet Sixteen, Part I,” and 1966’s “Don’t Answer The Door, Part I.” B.B.’s most popular crossover hit, 1970’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” went to #15 pop. B.B. passed away in his sleep on May 14th 2015 Stay Up-To-Date	i don't know
'Let your fingers do the walking' is the advertising slogan for what company?	Ad Age Advertising Century: Top 10 Slogans \| Special: The Advertising Century - AdAge Adage Aleady a member? Sign in Get More From Ad Age Register to become a member today. You'll get the essential information you need to do your job better, including 7 free articles per month on Ad Age and Creativity Ability to comment on articles and creative work Access to 9 custom e-newsletters like Ad Age Daily, Ad Age Digital and CMO Strategy To get unlimited content and more benefits, check out our Membership page Register Now Want more Access, Content & Connections? We are glad you are enjoying Advertising Age. To get uninterrupted access and additional benefits, become a member today. Already a member? Log in or go back to the homepage . Hey, there. It looks like you're using an ad blocker. The news and features are funded in part by our advertisers. To support Ad Age and the industry we cover please either: Ad Age Advertising Century: Top 10 Slogans Published on See more from The Advertising Century An unforgettable phrase that perfectly encapsulates a brand promise is the basis of many a successful campaign. Once found, a slogan can define a brand for decades. Here are the top 10 slogans for the 20th Century, as well as another five that Ad Age just couldn't leave out. "A diamond is forever" - DeBeers "Just do it" - Nike "The pause that refreshes" - Coca-Cola "Tastes great, less filling" - Miller Lite "We try harder" - Avis "Good to the last drop" - Maxwell House "Breakfast of champions" - Wheaties "Does she ... or doesn't she?" - Clairol "When it rains, it pours" - Morton Salt "Where's the beef?" - Wendy's "Look Ma, no cavities!" - Crest toothpaste "Let your fingers do the walking" - Yellow Pages "Loose lips sink ships" - public service "M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand" - M&M candies "We bring good things to life" - General Electric In this article:	Yellow pages
What famous John Steinbeck novel featured the travels of Tom Joad?	The 20 Most Suggestive Brand Slogans of All Time The 20 Most Suggestive Brand Slogans of All Time SumoMe Does your mind go straight to the gutter at the mention of anything remotely suggestive? Yeah, mine too. I can’t keep these slogans PG- or G-rated in my head. I just can’t. It’s too hard! (See what I mean? Even that was kind of suggestive). Let’s just get to my picks for the 20 most suggestive brand slogans of all time, shall we? Here they are, in no particular order: “Where’s the cream filling?” Really, Hostess? I don’t even need to comment on this one. Chevy’s “Like a rock” slogan was everywhere in the 1990s, and Bob Seger’s song still plays in my head when I see it. But that doesn’t make it any less suggestive to me as an adult… “You can do it. We can help.” Thanks for the encouragement, Home Depot, but no thanks. I’m good. Gatorade’s “Is it in you?” is the dirtiest one on my list, by far. Call me immature all you want, but COME ON. McDonald’s ditched their previous slogan, “We love to see you smile,” with the somewhat vague and mildly suggestive “I’m lovin’ it.” It covers a lot of ground. I’m pretty sure the use of the pronoun “it” has been responsible for a fair number of slogan misinterpretations, and KFC’s “It’s finger lickin’ good” is one of those. Don’t get me wrong, Haagen-Dazs is delicious! However, “Pleasure is the path to joy” sounds like a cookie fortune from an adult book shop. “Reach out and touch someone” should be 100% clean, but somehow it’s not. Especially when you ask yourself why AT&T would advise customers to do a thing like that. Who do they think they are, Depeche Mode? “It’s all inside” may be perfectly PG to those of you with unsoiled minds, but the rest of you get it. JCPenney’s simple slogan could be risque if you think about it. Again, the lack of pronouns in “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand” gives it a racier tone than it deserves. Although, we’d all be lying if we denied giggling at this slogan at least once in our lives, right? When Burger King told you to “Have it your way” during a commercial, you thought of burgers. But if you saw the slogan by itself? Gutter. Yeah, Timex’s “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” made my list as well. My reasoning was: The slogan certainly applies to watches, but the question is, what else does it apply to? To be quite honest, I had no idea what the “Where’s the beef?” slogan meant when I was a kid, so this one by Wendy’s remained innocent until I became an adult. No longer… Maxwell House’s “Good to the last drop!” is only as racy as you make it. That’s all I’ll say. The Almond Joy and Mounds debate isn’t over. Not by a long shot! “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” was one of those instantly catchy slogans that everyone still remembers — suggestively or not. When I saw “Pleasing people the world over” for the first time, I didn’t know which brand it was for. Then, I learned it was Holiday Inn’s slogan. No further comments needed… Yellow Pages still uses the “Let your fingers do the walking” slogan, and my mind still enters the gutter when I see it. How about you? “Isn’t life juicy?” Starburst asked, unwrapping the waxy paper with his fingers. Okay, I’ll admit, “Eat fresh” is kind of a stretch. Subway probably never anticipated this slogan being racy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t think about it anyway. I saved one of the best for last: Nike’s classic “Just do it.” Yeah, ’nuff said. – Which brand slogans are the most suggestive to you? Did I miss any racy, lewd, or colorful taglines that you’d like to point out? Anything else to say? Leave a comment below! Images owned and copyrighted by their respective companies. All rights reserved. You might also like:	i don't know
Into what body of water does the Nile River drain?	Into what sea does the River Nile flow? \| Reference.com Into what sea does the River Nile flow? A: Quick Answer The River Nile drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is the longest river on the African continent and in the world. Full Answer The headwaters of the Kagera River, known as its tributary Ruvubu, are the origination of the River Nile. From its origin, the river flows north through Africa before it enters Egypt. While many people believe that the majority of the River Nile is located in Egypt, only 22 percent of it is located there. It is believed that Ancient Egypt would not have existed without the River Nile as it provided the moisture that crops needed to survive. The Ancient Egyptians could only grow crops in the soil that formed after the River Nile flooded each year.	Mediterranean Sea
What is the name of Lisa's saxophone playing mentor with the Faberge egg addiction?	Drainage basin \| WaterWiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Drainage basins of the major oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean drains approximately 47% of all land in the world. In North America, it directly drains the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes basins, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the Canadian Maritimes , and Newfoundland and Labrador . It also directly drains nearly all of South America (that portion east of the Andes ), northern Europe , and the greatest portion of western Sub-Saharan Africa . The the three major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic: The basin of the American Mediterranean Sea (the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico ) includes all of the American interior between the Appalachian and Rocky mountains, eastern Central America , and a small part of northern South America . The basin of the European Mediterranean Sea includes much of northeastern Africa (including Egypt , Libya , Sudan and the other countries of the Nile basin), southern and eastern Europe, Turkey , and the coastal areas of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. The basin of the Arctic Sea drains most of northern Canada and Russia . The Pacific Ocean drains just over 13% of the land in the world. Its basin includes much of China , southeastern Russia , Japan , Korea , most of Indonesia and Malaysia , the Philippines , all Pacific Islands , the northeast coast of Australia, most of Alaska , the western part of Canada, the United States, Central America, and the South America (the smaller portion west of the Andes ). The Indian Ocean drains around 13% of the Earth's land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf , the Indian subcontinent , Burma , and most of Australia . The Southern Ocean drains Antarctica . (At least those portions that drain; there is no runoff from the interior of the continent.) Antarctica comprises approximately 8% of the Earth's land. Endorheic drainage basins Edit Endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain into an ocean; around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas. The largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia , and drains into the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea . Other basins include the Great Basin in the United States , much of the Sahara Desert , the watershed of the Okavango River ( Kalahari Basin ), highlands near the African Great Lakes , the interiors of Australia and the Arabian Peninsula , and parts in Mexico and the Andes . Geopolitical boundaries Edit Drainage basins have been important historically in determining boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important. For example, the English crown gave the Hudson's Bay Company a monopoly on the Indian Trade in the entire Hudson Bay watershed, an area called Rupert's Land. The company later acquired the North American watershed of the Arctic Ocean (the North-Western Territory ). These lands later became part of Canada as the Northwest Territories , making up the vast majority of Canada's land area. Today, bioregional democracy can include agreements of states in a particular drainage basin to defend it. These include the Great Lakes Commission . Hydrology File:Ohiorivermap.png The largest drainage basin in the world is the Amazon , covering 6,144,727 km² (a third of the area of South America). In hydrology , the drainage basin is a logical unit of focus for studying the movement of water within the hydrological cycle , because the majority of water that discharges from the basin outlet originated as precipitation falling on the basin. A portion of the water that enters the groundwater system beneath the drainage basin may flow towards the outlet of another drainage basin because groundwater flow directions do not always match those of their overlying drainage network. Measurement of the discharge of water from a basin may be made by a stream gauge located at the basin's outlet. Rain gauge data is used to measure total precipitation over a drainage basin, and there are different ways to interpret that data. If the gauges are many and evenly distributed over an area of uniform precipitation , using the arithmetic mean method will give good results. In the Thiessen polygon method , the watershed is divided into polygons with the rain gauge in the middle of each polygon assumed to be representative for the rainfall on the area of land included in its polygon. These polygons are made by drawing lines between gauges, then making perpendicular bisectors of those lines form the polygons. The isohyetal method involves contours of equal precipitation are drawn over the gauges on a map. Calculating the area between these curves and adding up the volume of water is time consuming. Ecology File:Mississippi River basin.jpg Drainage basins are important elements to consider also in ecology . As water flows over the ground and along rivers it can pick up nutrients, sediment, and pollutants . Like the water, they get transported towards the outlet of the basin, and can affect the ecological processes along the way as well as in the receiving water body. Modern usage of artificial fertilizers, containing nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, has affected the mouths of watersheds. The minerals will be carried by the watershed to the mouth and accumulate there, disturbing the natural mineral balance. Resource management Edit Because drainage basins are coherent entities in a hydrological sense, it has become common to manage water resources on the basis of individual basins. In Minnesota, U.S.A., governmental entities that perform this function are called watershed districts . In New Zealand, they are called catchment boards. Comparable community groups based in Ontario, Canada, are called conservation authorities . In North America this function is referred to as watershed management . In Brazil , the National Policy of Water Resources, regulated by Act n° 9.433 of 1997, establishes the drainage basin as territorial division of Brazilian water management.	i don't know
What American writer, buried in Baltimore, had his gravesite mysteriously visited every January 19th, to receive	The Real Dead Poets Society: How America Buries Its Famous Writers - The Atlantic The Atlantic The Real Dead Poets Society: How America Buries Its Famous Writers Most Popular Print Text Size There's no rule for how to properly commemorate a literary great—so some authors' grave sites are more modest than mausoleum. Wikimedia Driving down Veirs Mill Road on the way to the Rockville Amtrak station in Rockville, Md., it's easy to miss the small banner to the side of St. Mary's Church, laying claim to the grave of one of America's most lauded authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald. But ask a local where Fitzgerald is buried, and you might soon venture through a small metal gate into the cemetery, wander through the overgrowth, and find Fitzgerald's final resting place. He's buried next to his wife, Zelda, and their grave is commemorated with the Great Gatsby quote: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." On the sunny, early fall Sunday I was there, no one else was visiting Scott, though it's clear that others had been before, judging by the pennies left atop his and Zelda's worn stone marker. The pennies could go back to old-world folklore about leaving something to take into the afterlife, perhaps, or they could also could also serve as belated and futile insurance against Fitzgerald's rapid descent in society due to alcoholism and an excessive lifestyle, which left him broke and feeling like a failure when he died in his 40s, despite having published more than 150 short stories and four novels (a fifth, The Love of the Last Tycoon or sometimes just The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously). Some have touching or amusing epitaphs—Charles Bukowski's is "Don't try." Writers' graves can be surprising places to visit. Unlike the luminaries housed at more elegant cemeteries, like Pere Lachaise in Paris (Victor Hugo, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright), many literary stars lie for eternity in simpler, plainer spots around this country, with traditions around how to commemorate them as widely varied as the genres they comprise. Some have touching or amusing epitaphs—Charles Bukowski's is "Don't try." The flamboyant persona of Truman Capote, meanwhile, might shudder at the simplicity of his grave marker: His ashes are noted with a plaque on the wall in a cemetery in Westwood Memorial in Los Angeles. (His proximity to the graves of Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe might make him smile from that great Tiffany's in the sky). Oddly, a couple handfuls of Capote's ashes were kept at the house of his friend Joanne Carson (Johnny's wife), until they were stolen one Halloween night and then later returned, mysteriously, in the dead of night, and placed in a coiled-up garden hose out back. (Some of Capote's ashes have also been scattered in New York, making him forever bicoastal). e.e. cummings is buried in Forrest Hills cemetery in Boston on a hill overlooking a lake, beneath a tiny rock that you can barely find (even with a map, depending on how many leaves have fallen that day), just a short walk from Anne Sexton's larger, more noticeable tombstone. Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia Farm grave in Milledgeville, Ga., receives tokens ranging from coins to plastic gorillas (a reference to her story "Wise Blood"). And Sylvia Plath's grave at one time (before the lettering was changed to bronze) saw fans returning again and again to scratch out the name of her philandering poet husband Ted Hughes. Saul Bellow, so well-associated with Chicago, is permanently housed now in the Jewish section of a cemetery in Brattleboro, Vt., where he had a vacation home (his grave was luckily spared when Hurricane Irene struck in 2011). And Fitzgerald's own Paris comrade Ernest Hemingway, long associated with Key West, forever lies in Sun Valley—Ketchum, Idaho—a place he used to escape to, and where he eventually took his life. Dorothy Parker grew up in New Jersey and is almost synonymous with the literary scene in New York City, and yet her ashes are currently interred at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore, with the epitaph, "Excuse my dust." According to a piece done by NPR , when she died in 1967, her last will and testament specified that Martin Luther King should have her estate. When King was assassinated the next year, plan B (which she had also specified, considering the constant danger King was in) went into effect, and the NAACP got her remains. The greatest and most famous mystery grave of all could be that of Edgar Allan Poe, who was found going out of his mind on Baltimore's streets in 1849 and died of either delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, cholera or rabies (all have been posited as theories). For more than 20 years, Poe lay in an unmarked grave, until he was moved to Charm City's Westminster Cemetery, on the southeast corner of Fayette and Greene Streets, in 1875. "What's true is that he was buried in Baltimore very soon after he died, and that there was no marker originally; no proper stone," said Mark Redfield, who made a film called The Death of Poe in 2006 and produces events with the Poe House and Museum. "As Poe's fame grew after his death ... after the Civil War, a group of fans led the charge to build a proper monument to him." A few years later, they also moved Virginia Clemm, Poe's wife, and Poe's aunt, Maria Clemm (yes, Poe married his cousin), to join him. "Of course, they had to disturb him again to reunite him with his family," said Redfield. "I'm sure he welcomed it." The original plot where Poe was buried now has a marker of its own: That of a raven. And it is partially for the similarities between Poe's disquieting sense of the macabre and his own tragic demise and burial that draws thousands of visitors to the gravesite every year. According to Redfield, visitors he comes in contact with are most fascinated with 'The Poe Toaster,' a mysterious figure who leaves three red roses and a half bottle of cognac at his grave every anniversary—a tradition begun in the 1940s when the Poe Society of Baltimore formed. Related Story The Childhood Homes of 20 Famous Authors But not all graves that seem less auspicious than their owners are mysterious. Kate Chopin, who wrote "The Awakening," an early feminist novel published in 1899, is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis with a simple plaque slightly off the ground that only gives her name, her birthday, and death date. And that's likely how she wanted it. "Here's the thing: We're very simple people," said Susie Chopin, Kate's great-granddaughter, who's in her early 50s. "All the tombstones are very simple and very uniform. It was just the style." Susie lives about 20 minutes from Calvary—which also happens to house the gravesite of Tennessee Williams—and visits about six times a year. She has never bumped into any non-family visitors while there—though, as with the Fitzgerald site, there are mementos of peoples' affection for Kate. "We've seen roses. There were little scrolls [that] when you took them apart, [held] a poem that Kate had written about her best friend, Kitty," she said. "These school kids had laminated poems and some of them had drawn pictures, put ribbons around them and left them at her grave. They also left little paper-made cigars"—which hark back to Kate Chopin's days in Louisiana when she liked to smoke. Of people who visit the site, she said, "It's very sweet because we know that people really love her and remember her," Susie said. And then, there are times when redemption is possible long after an author died, as was the case with Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. When Hurston died in 1960, in Fort Pierce, Fla., she only had a "very slight insurance policy that didn't cover the cost of her funeral," said journalist Valerie Boyd, who wrote Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. After one of Hurston's friends wrote about the author's death for the Miami Herald, Hurston's neighbors took up a collection for a funeral—raising $661.87—but they didn't manage to collect enough money for a headstone. "The fact is, it wasn't unusual for black people at that time to be buried in graves that weren't marked," Boyd said. "Financially strapped Southern families often couldn't afford a marker as well as the costs of the funeral itself. People would just remember where their loved ones were buried and visit their graves every year to pay tribute. Often, if the family came into some good fortune, they would add a marker to the grave later." A 29-year-old Alice Walker visited Fort Pierce in 1973 with the intent of placing a marker on Hurston's grave. Walker was then at the early stages of her own career, many years before publishing The Color Purple and winning the Pulitzer prize. She stumbled through the weeds to get to Zora, and worked to get a headstone put in place. The epitaph Walker chose reads, "A Genius of the South." Now, Fort Pierce hosts a ZoraFest every year, and there's a plaza entry by Hurston's grave. Local women from Zeta Phi Beta sorority—of which Hurston was a member—tend to the grave regularly. "I think folks in Fort Pierce have been a bit embarrassed by the impression that some people have of them as the town that couldn't raise enough money to properly bury Zora Neale Hurston," Boyd said, though she adds that she feels that reputation is "undeserved and inaccurate." As for tokens, Boyd said, "I always visit the grave when I'm in the area and I usually try to take Zora a little bit of money, because she never had enough in her lifetime, some Pall Mall cigarettes, because that's what she smoked, and some Florida oranges, because she loved them so."	Edgar Allan Poe
January 17 marks the anniversary of the opening of the First Gulf War, aka Operation Desert Storm, which happened in what year?	National Library of Israel ID 000611916 001861454 Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator , writer, and statesman . After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). After the Civil War , Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass . First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, it covered events throughout and after the Civil War. Douglass additionally actively supported women's suffrage , and held several public offices. Without his approval, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull , on the Equal Rights Party ticket. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black , female , Native American , or recent immigrant . He was additionally a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, and in the liberal values of the American Constitution. When radical abolitionists under the motto "No Union With Slaveholders", criticised Douglass' willingness to dialogue with slave owners, he famously replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." One biographer argues: The most influential African American of the nineteenth century, Douglass made a career of agitating the American conscience. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women's rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education, and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted the bulk of his time, immense talent, and boundless energy to ending slavery and gaining equal rights for African Americans. These were the central concerns of his long reform career. Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. And he recognised that African Americans must play a conspicuous role in that struggle. Less than a month before his death, when a young black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, Douglass replied without hesitation: "Agitate! Agitate! Agitate! Life as a slave Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland . The plantation was between Hillsboro and Cordova ; his birthplace was likely his grandmother's shack east of Tappers Corner, () and west of Tuckahoe Creek . The exact date of his birth is unknown, and he later chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14. In his first autobiography, Douglass stated: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it." Douglass was of mixed race, which likely included Native American on his mother's side, as well as African and European. He was given his name by his mother, Harriet Bailey. After escaping to the North years later, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped his two middle names. He wrote of his earliest times with his mother: The opinion was ... whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing.... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant.... It [was] common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a quite early age. … I don't recollect ever seeing my mother by the light of day. ... She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. After this early separation from his mother, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At the age of seven, he was separated from his grandmother and moved to the Wye House plantation , where Aaron Anthony worked as overseer. Douglass's mother died when he was about ten. After Anthony died, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas' brother Hugh Auld in Baltimore . When Douglass was about twelve, Hugh Auld's wife Sophia started teaching him the alphabet . Douglass described her as a kind and tender-hearted woman, who treated him "as she supposed one human being ought to treat another". Hugh Auld disapproved of the tuition, feeling that literacy would encourage slaves to desire freedom; Douglass later referred to this as the "first decidedly antislavery lecture" he had ever heard. Under her husband's influence, Sophia came to believe that education and slavery were incompatible and one day snatched a newspaper away from Douglass. In his autobiography, Douglass related how he learned to read from white children in the neighborhood, and by observing the writings of the men with whom he worked. Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself how to read and write. He later often said, "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom." As Douglass began to read newspapers, pamphlets, political materials, and books of every description, this new realm of thought led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator , an anthology that he discovered at about age twelve, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights. The book, first published in 1797, is a classroom reader, containing essays, speeches and dialogues, to assist students in learning reading and grammar. When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he taught additional slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly Sunday school . As word spread, the interest among slaves in learning to read was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. For about six months, their study went relatively unnoticed. While Freeland remained complacent about their activities, additional plantation owners became incensed about their slaves being educated. One Sunday they burst in on the gathering, armed with clubs and stones, to disperse the congregation permanently. In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh ("[a]s a means of punishing Hugh," Douglass later wrote). Thomas Auld sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey , a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker." He whipped Douglass regularly, and nearly broke him psychologically. The sixteen-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings, however, and fought back. After Douglass won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again. From slavery to freedom Douglass first tried to escape from Freeland, who had hired him out from his owner Colonel Lloyd, but was unsuccessful. In 1836, he tried to escape from his new master Covey, but failed again. In 1837, Douglass met and fell in love with Anna Murray , a free black woman in Baltimore about five years older than he. Her free status strengthened his belief in the possibility of gaining his own freedom. Anna Murray-Douglass , Douglass's wife for 44 years On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by boarding a Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad train (the line was newly merged) to the great Northern cities. He jumped aboard the train a short distance east of the previous temporary P.W.& B. train depot in the just-developed industrial, commercial and residential neighborhood, between the modern neighbourhoods of Harbor East and Little Italy , at President and Fleet Streets, east of "The Basin" of the Baltimore harbor on the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River . (This depot was replaced by the historic President Street Station , constructed 1849-1850; it was noted as a site of additional slave escapes along one of a large number of routes of the famous " Underground Railroad " and throughout the Civil War .) Young Douglass reached Havre de Grace, Maryland , in Harford County , in the northeast corner of the state, along the southwest shore of the Susquehanna River , which flowed into the Chesapeake Bay . Though this placed him a few 20 miles from the free state of Pennsylvania, it was easier to travel through Delaware, another slave state. Dressed in a sailor's uniform provided to him by Murray, who additionally gave him part of her savings to cover his travel costs, he carried identification papers that he had obtained from a free black seaman. Douglass crossed the wide Susquehanna River by the railroad's steam-ferry at Havre de Grace to Perryville on the opposite shore in Cecil County , then continued by train across the state line to Wilmington, Delaware , a large port at the head of the Delaware Bay . From there, because of the not yet completed rail line at that time, he went by steamboat along the Delaware River further northeast to the "Quaker City" of Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery stronghold, and continued to the safe house of noted abolitionist David Ruggles in New York City . His entire journey to freedom took less than 24 hours. Frederick Douglass later wrote of his arrival in New York City: I have often been asked, how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. And my readers might share the same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I couldn't give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the 'quick round of blood,' I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: 'I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.' Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, might be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. Once Douglass had arrived, he sent for Murray to follow him north to New York. She brought with her the necessary basics for them to set up a home. They were married on September 15, 1838, by a black Presbyterian minister, just eleven days after Douglass's arrival in New York. At first, they adopted Johnson as their married name, to divert attention. Abolitionist and preacher The home and meetinghouse of the Johnsons, where Douglass and his wife lived in New Bedford, Massachusetts The couple settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts . After meeting and staying with Nathan and Mary Johnson , they adopted Douglass as their married name: previously Douglass had been given the second name of Bailey, but he now again felt the need to find a new name and asked Johnson to choose a suitable surname. Johnson had been reading The Lady of the Lake , and suggested "Douglass" after the principal character in the poem. Douglass thought of joining a white Methodist Church but from the beginning he was disappointed when he saw it was segregated. Later he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church , an independent black denomination first established in New York City, which counted among its members Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman . He became a licenced preacher in 1839, and this helped him hone his oratorical skills. He held various positions, including steward, Sunday School superintendent, and sexton. In 1840, Douglass delivered a speech in Elmira, New York , then a station on the Underground Railroad . (Years later a black congregation formed there and by 1940 it became the region's largest church). Douglass additionally joined several organisations in New Bedford, and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison 's weekly journal The Liberator . Inspired by Garrison, Douglass later said, "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [of the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." So deep was this influence that in his last biography, Douglass confessed "his paper took a place in my heart second only to The Bible." Garrison was likewise impressed with Douglass, and had written about his anti-colonialism stance in The Liberator as early as 1839. In 1841 Douglass first heard Garrison speak at a meeting of the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society. At another meeting, Douglass was unexpectedly invited to speak. After telling his story, Douglass was encouraged to become an anti-slavery lecturer. A few days later Douglass spoke at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket . Then 23 years old, Douglass conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his rough life as a slave. William Lloyd Garrison , abolitionist and one of Douglass's first friends in the North In 1843, Douglass joined additional speakers in the American Anti-Slavery Society 's "Hundred Conventions" project, a six-month tour at meeting halls throughout the Eastern and Midwestern United States . During this tour, slavery supporters frequently accosted Douglass. At a lecture in Pendleton, Indiana , an angry mob chased and beat Douglass before a local Quaker family, the Hardys, rescued him. His hand was broken in the attack; it healed improperly and bothered him for the rest of his life. A stone marker in Falls Park in the Pendleton Historic District commemorates this event. Autobiography Douglass circa 1847–52. Douglass's best-known work is his first autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , published in 1845. At the time, a few sceptics questioned whether a black man could have produced such an eloquent piece of literature. The book received generally positive reviews and became an immediate bestseller. Within three years, it had been reprinted nine times, with 11,000 copies circulating in the United States. It was additionally translated into French and Dutch and published in Europe. Douglass published three versions of his autobiography throughout his lifetime (and revised the third of these), each time expanding on the previous one. The 1845 Narrative was his biggest seller, and probably allowed him to raise the funds to gain his legal freedom the following year, as discussed below. In 1855, Douglass published My Bondage and My Freedom . In 1881, after the Civil War , Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , which he revised in 1892. Travels to Ireland and Britain Douglass' friends and mentors feared that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-owner, Hugh Auld, who might try to get his "property" back. They encouraged Douglass to tour Ireland, as a large number of former slaves had done. Douglass set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845. He travelled in Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine was beginning. The feeling of freedom from American racial discrimination amazed Douglass: Eleven days and a half gone and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I'm under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I'm covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle [Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel [slave] becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who'll question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlour—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended... I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I'm met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, 'We don't allow niggers in here!' He additionally met and befriended the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell who was to be a great inspiration. Douglass spent two years in Ireland and Britain, where he gave a large number of lectures in churches and chapels. His draw was such that a few facilities were "crowded to suffocation". One example was his hugely popular London Reception Speech, which Douglass delivered in May 1846 at Alexander Fletcher's Finsbury Chapel . Douglass remarked that in England he was treated not "as a color, but as a man." In 1846 Douglass met with Thomas Clarkson , one of the last living British abolitionists , who had persuaded Parliament to abolish slavery in Great Britain's colonies. During this trip Douglass became legally free, as British supporters led by Anna Richardson and her sister-in-law Ellen of Newcastle upon Tyne raised funds to buy his freedom from his American owner Thomas Auld. Many supporters tried to encourage Douglass to remain in England but, with his wife still in Massachusetts and three million of his black brethren in bondage in the United States, he returned to America in spring of 1847. In the twenty-first century, historical plaques were installed on buildings in Cork and Waterford , Ireland, and London to celebrate Douglass's visit: the first is on the Imperial Hotel in Cork and was unveiled on August 31, 2012; the second is on the facade of Waterford City Hall and was unveiled on October 7, 2013. It commemorates his speech there on October 9, 1845. The third plaque adorns Nell Gwynn House, South Kensington in London, where Douglass stayed with the British abolitionist George Thompson . Return to the United States After returning to the US, Douglass started publishing his first abolitionist newspaper, the The North Star , from the basement of the Memorial AME Zion Church in Rochester, New York . The The North Star's motto was "Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we're all brethren." The AME Church and North Star vigorously opposed the mostly white American Colonization Society and its proposal to send blacks back to Africa. This and Douglass's later abolitionist newspapers were mainly funded by English supporters, who gave Douglass five hundred pounds to use as he chose. Douglass additionally soon split with Garrison, perhaps because the North Star competed with Garrison's National Anti-Slavery Standard and Marius Robinson's Anti-Slavery Bugle. Douglass additionally came to consider Garrison too radical. Earlier Douglass had agreed with Garrison's position that the Constitution was pro-slavery, because of its compromises related to apportionment of Congressional seats, based on partial counting of slave populations with state totals; and protection of the international slave trade through 1807. Garrison had burned copies of the Constitution to express his opinion. But, Lysander Spooner published The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1846), which explored the United States Constitution as an anti-slavery document. Douglass's change of opinion about the Constitution and his splitting from Garrison around 1847 became one of the abolitionist movement's most notable divisions. Douglass angered Garrison by saying that the Constitution could and should be used as an instrument in the fight against slavery. In September 1848, Douglass published an open letter addressed to his former master, Thomas Auld, berating him for his conduct, and enquiring after members of his family still held by Auld. In a graphic passage, Douglass asked Auld how he would feel if Douglass had come to take away his daughter Amanda as a slave, treating her the way he and members of his family had been treated by Auld. Women's rights Frederick Douglass stood up to speak in favour of women's right to vote, photo, c. 1840s. In 1848, Douglass was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention , the first women's rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women's suffrage . Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott . Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he couldn't accept the right to vote as a black man if women couldn't additionally claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world. After Douglass's powerful words, the attendees passed the resolution. Also in the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass used an editorial spot in his paper, The North Star, to press the case for women's rights in this public venue. The article was two-fold: it recalled the "marked ability and dignity" of the proceedings and briefly conveyed several arguments of the convention and feminist thought at the time. On the first count, Douglass acknowledged the "decorum" of the participants in the face of disagreement. The latter half discussed the primary document that emerged from the conference, a Declaration of Sentiments, and his own discussion of the "infant" feminist cause. Strikingly, he expressed the belief that "[a] discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency…than would be a discussion of the rights of women," and Douglass noted the link between abolitionism and feminism, the overlap between the communities. His opinion as the prominent editor of the paper likely carried weight, and he stated the position of The North Star explicitly: "[w]e hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man." This letter, written a week after the convention, reaffirmed the first part of the paper's slogan, "right is of no sex." Later, after the Civil War when the 15th Amendment to give freedmen and free blacks the right to vote was being debated, Douglass split with the Stanton-led faction of the women's rights movement. Douglass supported the amendment, which would grant suffrage to black men. Stanton opposed the fifteenth Amendment because it limited expansion of suffrage to black men; she predicted its passage would delay for decades the cause for women's right to vote. Stanton argued that American women and black men should band together to fight for universal suffrage , and opposed any bill that split the issues. Douglass and Stanton both knew that there wasn't yet enough male support for women's right to vote, but that an amendment giving black men the vote could pass in the late 1860s. Stanton wanted to attach women's suffrage to that of black men so that her cause would be carried to success. Douglass thought such a strategy was too risky, that there was barely enough support for black men's suffrage. He feared that linking the cause of women's suffrage to that of black men would result in failure for both. Douglass argued that white women, already empowered by their social connexions to fathers, husbands, and brothers, at least vicariously had the vote. African-American women, he believed, would have the same degree of empowerment as white women once African-American men had the vote. Douglass assured the American women that at no time had he ever argued against women's right to vote. Douglass refines his ideology Douglass argued against John Brown's plan to attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, painting by Jacob Lawrence . Meanwhile, in 1851, Douglass merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith 's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which was published until 1860. On July 5, 1852, Douglass delivered an address to the ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. This speech eventually became known as " What to the slave is the fourth of July? " and a few consider it the greatest anti-slavery oration ever given. Frederick Douglass in 1856 Like a large number of abolitionists, Douglass believed that education would be crucial for African Americans to improve their lives. This led Douglass to become an early advocate for school desegregation. In the 1850s, Douglass observed that New York's facilities and instruction for African-American children were vastly inferior to those for whites. Douglass called for court action to open all schools to all children. He said that full inclusion within the educational system was a more pressing need for African Americans than political issues such as suffrage. On March 12, 1859, Douglass met with radical abolitionists John Brown , George DeBaptiste , and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation Douglass met Brown again, when Brown visited his home two months before leading the raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry . Notwithstanding Douglass disapproved of Brown's plan to start an armed slave rebellion in the South . Douglass believed that attacking federal property would enrage the American public. After the raid, Douglass fled for a time to Canada, fearing guilt by association as well as arrest as a co-conspirator. Years later, Douglass shared a stage in Harpers Ferry with Andrew Hunter , the prosecutor who secured Brown's conviction and execution. In March 1860, while Douglass was once again travelling in England, his youngest daughter Annie died in Rochester, New York . Douglass sailed back from England the following month, travelling through Canada to avoid detection. Photography Douglass considered photography quite important in ending slavery and racism, and believed that the camera wouldn't lie, even in the hands of a racist white, photographs being an excellent counter to the a large number of racist caricatures, particularly in blackface minstrelsy . He was the most photographed American of the nineteenth Century, self-consciously using photography to advance his political views. He never smiled, specifically so as not to play into the racist caricature of a happy slave. He tended to look directly into the camera to confront the viewer, with a stern look. Religious views As a child, Douglass was exposed to a number of religious sermons, and in his youth, he at times heard Sophia Auld reading the Bible. In time, he became interested in literacy; he began reading and copying bible verses, and he eventually converted to Christianity. He described this approach in his last biography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: I wasn't more than thirteen years old, when in my loneliness and destitution I longed for a few one to whom I could go, as to a father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels against His government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ. I can't say that I had a quite distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I consulted a good old coloured man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to "cast all my care upon God." This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, travelling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, and especially, did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible. Douglass was mentored by Rev. Charles Lawson, and, early in his activism, he often included biblical allusions and religious metaphors in his speeches. Though a believer, he strongly criticised religious hypocrisy and accused slaveholders of wickedness , lack of morality, and failure to follow the Golden Rule . In this sense, Douglass distinguished between the "Christianity of Christ" and the "Christianity of America" and considered religious slaveholders and clergymen who defended slavery as the most brutal, sinful, and cynical of all who represented "wolves in sheep's clothing." Notably, in a famous oration given in the Corinthian Hall of Rochester, he sharply criticised the attitude of religious people who kept silent about slavery, and held that religious ministers committed a blasphemy when they taught it as sanctioned by religion. He considered that a law passed to support slavery was "one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty" and said that pro-slavery clergymen within the American Church "stripped the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form," and "an abomination in the sight of God." Of ministers like John Chase Lord, Leonard Elijah Lathrop, Ichabod Spencer , and Orville Dewey , he said that they taught, against the Scriptures, that "we ought to obey man's law before the law of God". He further asserted, "in speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organisations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men might be found, scattered all over these Northern States,... Henry Ward Beecher , of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May , of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend [Robert R. Raymonde]." He maintained that "upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave's redemption from his chains." In addition, he called religious people to embrace abolitionism, stating, "let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds." During his visits to the United Kingdom, between 1846 and 1848, Douglass asked British Christians never to support American Churches that permitted slavery, and he expressed his happiness to know that a group of ministers in Belfast had refused to admit slaveholders as members of the Church. On his return to the United States, Douglass founded The North Star, a weekly publication with the motto "Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we're all Brethren." Douglass later wrote a letter to his former slaveholder, in which he denounced him for leaving Douglass's family illiterate: Your wickedness and cruelty committed in this respect on your fellow creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of our common Father and Creator. — Letter to His Old Master. To my Old Master Thomas Auld. Sometimes considered a precursor of a non-denominational liberation theology , Douglass was a deeply spiritual man, as his home continues to show. The fireplace mantle features busts of two of his favourite philosophers, David Friedrich Strauss , author of "The Life of Jesus," and Ludwig Feuerbach , author of "The Essence of Christianity." In addition to several Bibles and books about various religions in the library, images of angels and Jesus are displayed, as well as interior and exterior photographs of Washington's Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church . Throughout his life, Douglass had linked that individual experience with social reform, and like additional Christian abolitionists, he followed practises such as abstaining from tobacco, alcohol and additional substances that he believed corrupted body and soul. Civil War years Before the Civil War By the time of the Civil War , Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his orations on the condition of the black race and on additional issues such as women's rights . His eloquence gathered crowds at every location. His reception by leaders in England and Ireland added to his stature. Fight for emancipation and suffrage Douglass, circa 1860s Douglass and the abolitionists argued that because the aim of the Civil War was to end slavery, African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass publicised this view in his newspapers and several speeches. In August 1861, Douglass published an account of the First Battle of Bull Run that noted that there were a few blacks already in the Confederate ranks. A few weeks later, Douglass brought the subject up again, quoting a witness to the battle who said they saw black Confederates "with muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets." Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of black soldiers, and with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage . President Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, 1863, declared the freedom of all slaves in Confederate-held territory. (Slaves in Union-held areas and Northern states were freed with the adoption of the thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865.) Douglass described the spirit of those awaiting the proclamation: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky ... we were watching ... by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day ... we were longing for the answer to the agonising prayers of centuries." During the U.S. Presidential Election of 1864 , Douglass supported John C. Frémont . Douglass was disappointed that President Lincoln didn't publicly endorse suffrage for black freedmen. Douglass believed that after African-American men were fighting for the Union in the American Civil War , they deserved the right to vote. With the North no longer obliged to return slaves to their owners in the South, Douglass fought for equality for his people. He made plans with Lincoln to move liberated slaves out of the South. During the war, Douglass additionally helped the Union by serving as a recruiter for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment . His eldest son, Charles Douglass, joined the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, but was ill for much of his service. Lewis Douglass fought at the Battle of Fort Wagner . An Additional son, Frederick Douglass Jr., additionally served as a recruiter. After Lincoln's death Frederick Douglass (before 1897) The post-war (1865) ratification of the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery. The 14th Amendment provided for citizenship and equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment protected all citizens from being discriminated against in voting because of race. On April 14, 1876, Douglass delivered the keynote speech at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park. In that speech, Douglass spoke frankly about Lincoln, noting what he perceived as both positive and negative attributes of the late President. Calling Lincoln "the white man's president", Douglass criticised Lincoln's tardiness in joining the cause of emancipation, noting that Lincoln initially opposed the expansion of slavery but didn't support its elimination. But Douglass additionally asked, "Can any coloured man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863 , when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?" Douglass additionally said: "Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery...." The crowd, roused by his speech, gave Douglass a standing ovation. Lincoln's widow Mary Lincoln supposedly gave Lincoln's favourite walking-stick to Douglass in appreciation. That walking-stick still rests in Douglass's final residence, "Cedar Hill", now preserved as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site . Reconstruction era After the Civil War, Douglass continued to work for equality for African-Americans and women. Due to his prominence and activism throughout the war, Douglass received several political appointments. He served as president of the Reconstruction -era Freedman's Savings Bank . Douglass additionally became chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic, but resigned that position after two years because of disagreements with U.S. government policy. Meanwhile, white insurgents had quickly arisen in the South after the war, organising first as secret vigilante groups, including the Ku Klux Klan . Armed insurgency took different forms. Powerful paramilitary groups included the White League and the Red Shirts , both active throughout the 1870s in the Deep South. They operated as "the military arm of the Democratic Party", turning out Republican officeholders and disrupting elections. More than 10 years after the end of the war, Democrats regained political power in every state of the former Confederacy and began to reassert white supremacy. They enforced this by a combination of violence, late 19th-century laws imposing segregation and a concerted effort to disfranchise African Americans. New labour and criminal laws additionally limited their freedom. Douglass' former residence in the U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C. He built 2000–2004 seventeenth Street, N.W. , in 1875. In an effort to combat these efforts, Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 . In 1870, Douglass started his last newspaper, the New National Era, attempting to hold his country to its commitment to equality. President Grant sent a Congressionally sponsored commission, accompanied by Douglass, on a mission to the West Indies to investigate if the annexation of Santo Domingo would be good for the United States. Grant believed annexation would help relieve the violent situation in the South allowing African Americans their own state. Douglass and the commission favoured annexation, however, Congress remained opposed to annexation. Douglass criticised Senator Charles Sumner , who opposed annexation, stating if Sumner continued to oppose annexation he would "regard him as the worst foe the coloured race has on this continent." After the midterm elections, Grant signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Klan Act), and the second and third Enforcement Acts . Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and sending troops there and into additional states. Under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made. Grant's vigour in disrupting the Klan made him unpopular among a large number of whites, but earned Douglass's praise. An associate of Douglass wrote of Grant that African Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services." In 1872, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States, as Victoria Woodhull 's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket. He was nominated without his knowledge. Douglass neither campaigned for the ticket nor acknowledged that he had been nominated. In that year, he was presidential elector at large for the State of New York , and took that state's votes to Washington, D.C. However, throughout that year his home on South Avenue in Rochester, New York, burned down; arson was suspected. A complete issue of The North Star was lost. Douglass then moved to Washington, D.C. Throughout the Reconstruction era, Douglass continued speaking, and emphasised the importance of work, voting rights and actual exercise of suffrage. Douglass's stump speech for 25 years after the end of the Civil War emphasised work to counter the racism that was then prevalent in unions. In a speech delivered on November 15, 1867, Douglass said: "A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex." Douglass spoke at a large number of colleges around the country. These included Bates College in Lewiston, Maine , in 1873. Family life Frederick Douglass with his second wife Helen Pitts Douglass (sitting). The woman standing is her sister Eva Pitts. Douglass and Anna had five children: Rosetta Douglass, Lewis Henry Douglass , Frederick Douglass, Jr., Charles Remond Douglass , and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten). Charles and Rosetta helped produce his newspapers. Anna Douglass remained a loyal supporter of her husband's public work, even though Douglass' relationships with Julia Griffiths and Ottilie Assing , two women he was professionally involved with, caused recurring speculation and scandals. After Anna died in 1882, in 1884 Douglass married again, to Helen Pitts , a white feminist from Honeoye, New York . Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts, Jr., an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication named Alpha while living in Washington, D.C. The marriage provoked a storm of controversy, after Pitts was both white and nearly 20 years younger than Douglass. Her family stopped speaking to her; his children considered the marriage a repudiation of their mother. Notwithstanding feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton congratulated the couple. Douglass responded to the criticisms by saying that his first marriage had been to someone the colour of his mother, and his second to someone the colour of his father. Final years in Washington, D.C. Cedar Hill , Douglass' house in the Anacostia neighbourhood of Washington, D.C., is preserved as a National Historic Site . The Freedman's Savings Bank went bankrupt in 1874, mere months after Douglass became its president. During that same economic crisis, his final newspaper, The New Era, failed as well. When Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President, Douglass accepted an appointment as United States Marshal for the District of Columbia , which helped assure his family's financial security. Also in 1877, Douglass visited Thomas Auld, who was by then on his deathbed, and the two men reconciled. Douglass had met Auld's daughter, Amanda Auld Sears, a few years prior; she had requested the meeting and had subsequently attended and cheered one of Douglass' speeches. Her father complimented her for reaching out to Douglass. The visit additionally appears to have brought closure to Douglass, although a few criticised his effort. That same year, Douglass bought the house which was to be the family's final home in Washington D.C., on a hill above the Anacostia River . He and Anna named it Cedar Hill (also spelled CedarHill). They expanded the house from 14 to 21 rooms, and included a china closet. One year later, Douglass purchased adjoining lots and expanded the property to 15 acres (61,000 m²). The home is now preserved as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site . In 1881, Douglass both published the final edition of his autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, and received another political appointment, as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. Notwithstanding Anna Murray-Douglass died in 1882, leaving the widower devastated. After a period of mourning, Douglass found new meaning from working with activist Ida B. Wells . He additionally remarried in 1884, as mentioned above. Douglass additionally continued his speaking engagements and travel, both in the United States and abroad. With his new wife, Helen, Douglass travelled to England, Ireland, France, Italy, Egypt and Greece from 1886 to 1887. Douglass additionally became known for advocating Irish Home Rule and supported Charles Stewart Parnell in Ireland. Gravestone of Frederick Douglass located in Mount Hope Cemetery , Rochester, New York At the 1888 Republican National Convention , Douglass became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party 's roll call vote. That year, Douglass spoke at Claflin College , a black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina , and the oldest such institution in the state. Many African Americans, called Exodusters , escaped the Klan and racially discriminatory laws in the South by moving to large northern cities, as well as to places like Kansas where a few formed all-black towns to have a greater level of freedom and autonomy. Douglass didn't favour this, nor the Back-to-Africa movement , which he thought resembled the American Colonization Society he had fought in his youth. In 1892, at an Indianapolis conference convened by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner , Douglass spoke out against the separatist movements, urging blacks to stick it out. He made similar speeches as early as 1879, and was criticised both by fellow leaders and a few audiences, who even booed him for this position. Speaking in Baltimore in 1894, Douglass said, "I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I can't shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me." President Harrison appointed Douglass to be the United States's minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and Chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo in 1889, but Douglass resigned the commission in July 1891. In 1893, Haiti made Douglass a co-commissioner of its pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1892, Douglass constructed rental housing for blacks, now known as Douglass Place , in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. The complex still exists, and in 2003 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places . Death On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and received a standing ovation. Shortly after he returned home, Frederick Douglass died of a massive heart attack or stroke. His funeral was held at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church ; thousands passed by his coffin to show their respect. Although Douglass had attended several churches in the nation's capital, he had a pew here and donated two standing candelabras when this church had moved to a new building in 1886. He additionally gave a large number of lectures there, including his last major speech, "The Lesson of the Hour." Douglass' coffin was transported back to Rochester, New York , where he had lived for 25 years, longer than anywhere else in his life. He was buried next to Anna in the Douglass family plot of Mount Hope Cemetery , and Helen joined them in 1903. Susan B. Anthony is the cemetery's additional often-visited gravesite. Legacy and honors Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943 The Episcopal Church (USA) remembers Douglass annually on its liturgical calendar for February 20, the anniversary of his death. Many public schools have additionally been named in his honor. Other honours and remembrances, organised chronologically, include: In 1921, members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (the first African-American intercollegiate fraternity) designated Frederick Douglass as an honorary member. Douglass thus became the only man to receive an honorary membership posthumously. The Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge , at times referred to as the South Capitol Street Bridge, just south of the US Capitol in Washington DC, was built in 1950 and named in his honor. In 1962, his home in Anacostia (Washington, DC) became part of the National Park System, and in 1988 was designated the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site . Also in 2010, the New York Writers Hall of Fame inducted Douglass in its inaugural class. On June 12, 2011, Talbot County, Maryland, honoured Douglass by installing a seven-foot bronze statue of Douglass on the lawn of the county courthouse in Easton, Maryland . The Frederick Douglass Institute is a West Chester University programme for advancing multicultural studies across the curriculum and for deepening the intellectual heritage of Frederick Douglass. On June 19, 2013, a statue of Douglass by Maryland artist Steven Weitzman was unveiled in the United States Capitol Visitor Center as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection , the first statue representing the District of Columbia . On September 15, 2014, under the leadership of Governor Martin O'Malley a portrait of Frederick Douglass was unveiled at his official residence in Annapolis, MD. This painting, by artist Simmie Knox , is the first African American portrait to grace the walls of Government House. Commissioned by Eddie C. Brown , founder of Brown Capital Management, LLC, the painting was presented at a reception by the Governor. On January 7, 2015, As a parting gift in honour of Governor Martin O'Malley 's last Board of Public Works a portrait of Frederick Douglass was gifted to him by Peter Franchot . Two editions of this artwork, by artist Benjamin Jancewicz, were purchased from Galerie Myrtis by Peter Franchot and his wife Ann both as a gift for the Governor as well as to add to their own collection. The Governor's edition now hangs in his office. Works 1965 US Postage Stamp, published throughout the upsurge of the Civil Rights Movement Writings	i don't know
January 17, 1942 saw the birth of one Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. Nicknamed The Louisville Lip, under what name did he achieve boxing immortality?	Cassius Clay Place Of Birth \| Search Net Worth of Celebrities Cassius Clay Place Of Birth Read more... Muhammad Ali Net Worth is $80 Million. Muhammad Ali Net Worth is $80 Million. Muhammad Ali is a retired American boxer with a net worth of $80 million. Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr on January 17th, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. His father painted billboards signs and h Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist. Considered a cultural icon, Ali was both idolized and vilified. Originally known as Cassius Clay, Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975, and more recently practicing Sufism. In 1967, three years after Ali had won the World Heavyweight Championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. Ali stated, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" - one of the more telling remarks of the era. Widespread protests against the Vietnam War had not yet begun, but with that one phrase, Ali articulated the reason to oppose the war for a generation of young Americans, and his words served as a touchstone for the racial and antiwar uph... New Muhammad Ali Photo Exhibit at NYC’s Port Authority Bus Terminal Gallery Did you know there’s an art gallery inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal? Well, there’s a timely new exhibit on Muhammad Ali presented by the Donna Compton Gallery, timed with his birthday yesterday and Black History Month in February. It ... Posted: January 18, 2017, 8:35 am Understanding Muhammad Ali ON this day Muhammad Ali would have been 75 years old. The great man died last year and was mourned across the world. Thomas Hauser, the author of the authorised biography and most recently ‘Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest’, spoke to Boxing ... Posted: January 17, 2017, 10:23 am Michael Mann On Muhammad Ali, Will Smith, And His New Cut Of ‘Ali’ DEADLINE: What made you go back in and change the film, 15 years later? MICHAEL MANN: With the hindsight of history, I felt the drama didn’t get all the way there. It wasn’t as strong as it should have been. I don’t think I changed anything on a ... Posted: January 17, 2017, 12:23 pm On an afternoon in 1958, near the shopping district at Walnut and Fourth Streets in Louisville, Ky., Thomas Merton was moving about inconspicuously gathering supplies for the Abbey at Gethsemani. The monastery, established in 1848 by the Order of Trappist ... Posted: January 17, 2017, 12:21 am Champ’s artistic side to be displayed at Muhammad Ali Center LOUISVILLE, Ky. >> When Muhammad Ali wasn’t jabbing or dancing in the ring, he sometimes liked dabbling as an artist. Now, 15 drawings created by The Greatest are being donated to the Muhammad Ali Center in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Posted: January 18, 2017, 3:50 pm Related Topics: Athletes , Athletes Income , Athletes Net Worth , Boxers , Boxers Income , Boxers Net Worth , Cassius Clay , Cassius Clay Age , Cassius Clay Background , Cassius Clay Bio , Cassius Clay Country , Cassius Clay Date Of Birth , Cassius Clay Ethnicity , Cassius Clay Height , Cassius Clay History , Cassius Clay Home Town , Cassius Clay Images , Cassius Clay Income , Cassius Clay Net Worth , Cassius Clay News , Cassius Clay Partner , Cassius Clay Place Of Birth , Cassius Clay Profession , Cassius Clay Salary , Cassius Clay Story , Cassius Clay Talent , Cassius Clay Videos , Cassius Clay Weight , Cassius Marcellus Clay , Cassius Marcellus Clay Age , Cassius Marcellus Clay Background , Cassius Marcellus Clay Bio , Cassius Marcellus Clay Country , Cassius Marcellus Clay Date Of Birth , Cassius Marcellus Clay Ethnicity , Cassius Marcellus Clay Height , Cassius Marcellus Clay History , Cassius Marcellus Clay Home Town , Cassius Marcellus Clay Images , Cassius Marcellus Clay Income , Cassius Marcellus Clay Net Worth , Cassius Marcellus Clay News , Cassius Marcellus Clay Partner , Cassius Marcellus Clay Place Of Birth , Cassius Marcellus Clay Profession , Cassius Marcellus Clay Salary , Cassius Marcellus Clay Story , Cassius Marcellus Clay Talent , Cassius Marcellus Clay Videos , Cassius Marcellus Clay Weight , How Much Cassius Clay Worth , How Much Cassius Marcellus Clay Worth , How Much Is Cassius Clay Income , How Much Is Cassius Clay Net Worth , How Much Is Cassius Clay Salary , How Much Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Income , How Much Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Net Worth , How Much Is Cassius Marcellus Clay Salary , How Much Is Jr. Income , How Much Is Jr. Net Worth , How Much Is Jr. Salary , How Much Is Muhammad Ali Income , How Much Is Muhammad Ali Net Worth , How Much Is Muhammad Ali Salary , How Much Is Richest Athletes Income , How Much Is Richest Athletes Net Worth , How Much Is Richest Athletes Salary , How Much Is Richest Boxers Income , How Much Is Richest Boxers Net Worth , How Much Is Richest Boxers Salary , How Much Jr. Worth , How Much Muhammad Ali Worth , How Much Richest Athletes Worth , How Much Richest Boxers Worth , Jr. , Jr. Age , Jr. Background , Jr. Bio , Jr. Country , Jr. Date Of Birth , Jr. Ethnicity , Jr. Height , Jr. History , Jr. Home Town , Jr. Images , Jr. Income , Jr. Net Worth , Jr. News , Jr. Partner , Jr. Place Of Birth , Jr. Profession , Jr. Salary , Jr. Story , Jr. Talent , Jr. Videos , Jr. Weight , Muhammad Ali , Muhammad Ali Age , Muhammad Ali Background , Muhammad Ali Bio , Muhammad Ali Biography , Muhammad Ali Center , Muhammad Ali Country , Muhammad Ali Date Of Birth , Muhammad Ali Daughter , Muhammad Ali Death , Muhammad Ali Egypt , Muhammad Ali Ethnicity , Muhammad Ali Fights , Muhammad Ali Health , Muhammad Ali Height , Muhammad Ali History , Muhammad Ali Home Town , Muhammad Ali Images , Muhammad Ali Income , Muhammad Ali Jinnah , Muhammad Ali Jr , Muhammad Ali Loses , Muhammad Ali Malcolm X , Muhammad Ali Money , Muhammad Ali Movie , Muhammad Ali Net Worth , Muhammad Ali News , Muhammad Ali Parkinson , Muhammad Ali Partner , Muhammad Ali Place Of Birth , Muhammad Ali Profession , Muhammad Ali Quotes , Muhammad Ali Record , Muhammad Ali Salary , Muhammad Ali Speech , Muhammad Ali Story , Muhammad Ali Talent , Muhammad Ali Timeline , Muhammad Ali Videos , Muhammad Ali Weight , Richest Athletes Age , Richest Athletes Background , Richest Athletes Bio , Richest Athletes Country , Richest Athletes Date Of Birth , Richest Athletes Ethnicity , Richest Athletes Height , Richest Athletes History , Richest Athletes Home Town , Richest Athletes Images , Richest Athletes Income , Richest Athletes Net Worth , Richest Athletes News , Richest Athletes Partner , Richest Athletes Place Of Birth , Richest Athletes Profession , Richest Athletes Salary , Richest Athletes Story , Richest Athletes Talent , Richest Athletes Videos , Richest Athletes Weight , Richest Boxers Age , Richest Boxers Background , Richest Boxers Bio , Richest Boxers Country , Richest Boxers Date Of Birth , Richest Boxers Ethnicity , Richest Boxers Height , Richest Boxers History , Richest Boxers Home Town , Richest Boxers Images , Richest Boxers Income , Richest Boxers Net Worth , Richest Boxers News , Richest Boxers Partner , Richest Boxers Place Of Birth , Richest Boxers Profession , Richest Boxers Salary , Richest Boxers Story , Richest Boxers Talent , Richest Boxers Videos , Richest Boxers Weight , Who Is Cassius Clay , Who Is Cassius Marcellus Clay , Who Is Jr. , Who Is Muhammad Ali , Who Is Richest Athletes , Who Is Richest Boxers , Add Widgets (Content Sidebar) This is your Content Sidebar. Edit this content that appears here in the widgets panel by adding or removing widgets in the Content Sidebar area.	Muhammad Ali
The 1933 ratification of the 20th Amendment moved the day of the inauguration of the President of the United States from March 4 to what date?	LeBron, Warriors honor Ali ahead of NBA Finals Game 2 :: Jenkers LeBron, Warriors honor Ali ahead of NBA Finals Game 2 Jim SLATER, Agence France-Presse Posted atJun 05 2016 08:39 AM Fans of the late Muhammad Ali, the former world heavyweight boxing champion come to pay their respects at the Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. June 4, 2016.Photo by John Sommers II, Reuters OAKLAND -- Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James offered an impassioned tribute to Muhammad Ali Saturday at the NBA Finals, as the defending champion Golden State Warriors began their practice with a musical homage to the iconic fighter. Ali, who died Friday at age 74, was recalled for his sacrifices and struggles for social justice as well as his boxing career on the eve of game two of the NBA Finals. The late boxer lost three prime years of his career for his stand against fighting in the Vietnam War before the US Supreme Court vindicated him in 1971. (Goodbye to The Greatest: Even weak, Ali had imposing stature) "When an icon like Muhammad Ali passes away, it's just very emotional," James said. "It's also gratifying to know that guy, one man, will sacrifice so much of his life knowing it will better the next generation of men and women after him." James says he would not be among the world's richest and best known athletes if not for Ali. "I wouldn't be able to walk in restaurants, go anywhere where blacks weren't allowed back in those days," he told reporters. "Today I can make trips to China and all over the world and people know my name and face. I give all credit to Muhammad Ali because he was the first icon. He's the greatest of all time and it has nothing to do with his accomplishments in the ring," he added. "His legacy will obviously live on." James has been active in social issues as well, posing in a hoodie for a photo after the 2012 shooting death of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watchman. "I feel it's my duty to carry on the legacy of the guys who did it before me," James said. - Musical tribute - Warriors coach Steve Kerr began practice Saturday with an Ali tribute song including the lyrics: "I'm Ali, the black Superman. I'm Ali, catch me if you can." "What he did in terms of trying to promote equality, raising the level of consciousness about what was happening in this country -- [he was] probably the most influential athlete in the history of our country," Kerr said. Jerry West, a 1960s Los Angeles Lakers star guard and boxing fan who is now part-owner of the Warriors, was co-captain of the US gold medal team at the 1960 Rome Olympics where Ali won light-heavyweight gold. "He's someone who left his mark as a fighter and a human rights person. I admired him tremendously for all of that," West said. "The world was better for knowing him." West, 78, attended Ali's first fight with Joe Frazier in New York and saw Ali fight and excite the Athletes Village in Rome. "He was a teen sensation," West said. "You could hear him coming a mile away. Who knew what he was saying? I'm the biggest this. I'm the greatest that. "That guy was bigger than life. You almost felt a God-like presence around him. You really did. - 'Use your platform' - "Muhammad Ali was a big reason why I was able to achieve so much," Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said. "Just knowing what he has done for this country, fighting for human rights not just black rights, and making every kid feel they had the chance to be something special." Warriors star Stephen Curry said Ali offered "an example of how you use your platform and speak what you believe no matter what people will say." At the nearby National Hockey League Finals, San Jose Sharks coach Peter DeBoer recalled how Ali gave him an autographed Koran in 1986 when DeBoer was a 17-year-old at his high school prom at a Canada hotel. "He just personalized each one, asked us some questions about what we were doing," he said. "It was an unbelievable life experience." © 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse 'He will never die': World mourns Muhammad Ali Marc JOURDIER, Agence France-Presse Posted atJun 05 2016 08:42 AM Muhammad Ali poses with gloves in this undated portrait.Photo by Action Images/Sporting Pictures. KINSHASA, DR Congo -- From the White House to Kinshasa and Uzbekistan they remembered on Saturday a sporting and cultural icon, saying there would never be another one like Muhammad Ali, "The Greatest". Ali was recalled not just as a heavyweight boxing king but also for his fight for social justice, while others told moving personal stories of his warmth and generosity, how he was equally at home with presidents and people on the streets. (Goodbye to The Greatest: Even weak, Ali had imposing stature) President Barack Obama hailed Ali, who died on Friday after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease, as a towering champion "who fought for what was right". "His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing," Obama said in a heartfelt statement. "It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground and his victory helped us get used to the America we recognise today." Ali had been Nelson Mandela's hero, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said, revealing how Mandela's favourite book at his office was an autographed copy of an Ali biography and that there was a photo of the two men together there. "Nelson Mandela, a boxing enthusiast most of his life, acknowledged Ali as his boxing hero. Madiba had great respect for his legacy and spoke with admiration of Ali's achievements," said Sello Hatang, chief executive of the foundation. Reflecting Ali's reach far beyond boxing, former US president Bill Clinton said he had been "honoured" to award Ali the Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House in January 2001, just before leaving office. "Through triumph and trials", Clinton said, Ali "became even greater than his legend". Thousands of kilometres away in Kinshasa, underlining Ali's enduring global appeal, they still talk about that historic night in 1974 in what was then Zaire -- the "Rumble in the Jungle". Ali knocked out the previously undefeated George Foreman in the greatest victory of his storied career. "Ali was part of our youth, it is he who shaped us," Martino Kavuala, a former amateur boxer now aged 63, remembered fondly. "In those days, if you were young and you didn't box, it wasn't only that you weren't really a youngster, you didn't have a place in society." - 'My idol, my hero' - Football great Pele led the tributes from the sporting world, which united to remember one of its biggest names. "The sporting universe has just suffered a big loss. Muhammad Ali was my friend, my idol, my hero," Pele said on Instagram. "We spent many moments together and always kept a good connection throughout the years. The sadness is overwhelming." Ali spoke out for African-American civil rights in the 1960s, carrying on his fight against injustice and sacrificing the prime years of his own career in the process. Retired NBA all-time scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar praised Ali's courage in fighting discrimination. "At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labelled uppity and often arrested, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right," said Abdul-Jabbar. "In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7-feet-2 but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow." Ali won an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and battled the onset of Parkinson's to light the torch at the 1996 Olympic opening ceremony in one of the most memorable moments in Games history. Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Ali "was engaged beyond sport, an athlete who had the courage to give hope to so many suffering illness by lighting the Olympic cauldron and not hiding his own affliction". - Boxing tributes - Foreman reminisced about the three-way rivalry he enjoyed with Ali and Joe Frazier during heavyweight boxing's most feted era, tweeting: "Ali, Frazier and Foreman... we were one guy. A part of me slipped away, the greatest piece." "We lost a legend, a hero and a great man," said Floyd Mayweather, who retired last year as an unbeaten welterweight champion. "He's one of the guys who paved the way for me to be where I'm at. Words can't explain what Muhammad Ali did for the sport." Another former world heavyweight title-holder, Mike Tyson, tweeted: "God came for his champion. So long great one. The Greatest. RIP." Don King, who promoted the Rumble in the Jungle, said Ali will live on forever alongside other US civil rights heroes. "He was tremendous, not just a boxer, a great human being, an icon," King said. "Muhammad Ali's spirit, like Martin Luther King Jr., will live on. That's why Muhammad Ali will never die." In Tashkent, Uzbekistan at the amateur World Series of Boxing the crowd and boxers from Cuba and Britain stood in respectful silence as three bells rang out in poignant respect. © 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse Ali recalled as fighter for justice and in ring Jim SLATER, Agence France-Presse Posted atJun 05 2016 08:46 AM U.S. President George W. Bush (R) awards boxing legend Muhammad Ali (C) with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as Ali's wife Lonnie watches, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington in this November 9, 2005 file photo.Photo by Kevin Lamarque, Reuters SAN FRANCISCO -- Muhammad Ali was remembered in tributes worldwide for his iconic fight for social justice as well as his legendary boxing battles following his death Friday at age 74. "We lost a giant," Filipino fighter Manny Pacquiao said. "Boxing benefitted from Muhammad Ali's talents but not as much as mankind benefitted from his humanity." George Foreman, Ali's most famous knockout victim from the Rumble in the Jungle, noted Ali's other main rival, Joe Frazier, in tweeting: "Ali, Frazier and Foreman we were 1 guy. A part of me slipped away, The greatest piece." The front page headline on Ali's hometown newspaper, the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, simply said, "The Greatest" with a legendary 1965 photo of Ali standing over a flattened Sonny Liston. Ali spoke out for African-American civil rights in the 1960s, carrying on his fight against injustice and sacrificing the prime years of his own career in the process. "When people saw what he had done for what he believed in, threw away 3 1/2 years of his career and he remained steadfast, he came through all of that bigger and more important than ever before," boxing promoter Bob Arum said. Retired NBA all-time scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar praised Ali's courage in fighting discrimination. "At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labeled uppity and often arrested, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right," said Abdul-Jabbar. "In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7-feet-2 but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow." (Goodbye to The Greatest: Even weak, Ali had imposing stature) - Ali spirit 'will never die' - Boxing began mourning its greatest star with ultimate praise. "We lost a legend, a hero and a great man," said Floyd Mayweather, who retired last year as an unbeaten welterweight champion. "He's one of the guys who paved the way for me to be where I'm at. Words can't explain what Muhammad Ali did for the sport." Former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson tweeted: "God came for his champion. So long great one. @MuhammadAli TheGreatest RIP." Four-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield said he was inspired by Ali. "It's a great loss," Holyfield said. "Someone asked me if I wanted to break his record (as a three-time champion) and I said no because that means I have to lose. But you find out you have to be stronger to get up from a loss to go on. And that's what Ali proved." Don King, who promoted the Rumble in the Jungle, said Ali will live on forever alongside other US civil rights heroes. "He was tremendous, not just a boxer, a great human being, an icon," King said. "Muhammad Ali's spirit, like Martin Luther King Jr., will live on. That's why Muhammad Ali will never die." NBA commissioner Adam Silver also hailed Ali's immortality and courage. "Muhammad Ali transcended sports with his outsized personality and dedication to civil rights and social justice," Silver said. "While we are deeply saddened by his loss, Muhammad Ali's legacy lives on in every athlete who takes a stand for what he or she believes." - 'Legacy will forever endure' - Ali won an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and lit the torch at the 1996 Olympic opening ceremony. "The sports world has lost one of its most iconic figures," US Olympic Committee chief executive officer Scott Blackmun said. "With unparalleled grit and determination, he left a legacy that will continue to inspire." Los Angeles 2024 Olympic bid vice chair Janet Evans, a four-time Olympic champion swimmer who handed Ali the torch in 1996, said Ali "inspired me and millions of others around the world to be the best version of ourselves. He will be sorely missed, but his legacy will forever endure." Retired US fighter and promoter Oscar de la Hoya said Ali "exemplified courage. He never took the easy route, something to be admired in and outside of the ring." Today's top boxers paid triubute to Ali, with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez tweeting: "My idol has left us. I will always remember you as the best and will follow ur example. Your legend will live forever" and Gennady Golovkin tweeting: "The Greatest. In boxing and in life, an inspiration to mankind." © 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse Ali's visits to Baltimore left lasting impressions on those he encountered Kweisi Mfume remembers stepping into the boxing ring at the Baltimore Civic Center almost 40 years ago, a self-confessed 160-pound weakling wearing borrowed trunks that barely stayed on his waist, to face off against the world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. It was 1977, and Ali was in town for an event to raise money for a Nation of Islam mosque in West Baltimore. His team had offered any media organization that promoted the event the chance to send a representative to try their luck against the Champ. Mfume, then a radio personality, stepped up. "We were goofing off and having a good time," Mfume said. For two rounds, Ali allowed him to get a few jabs in but then, Mfume said, "he threw a punch and I happened to be in the way." The event was one of several visits Ali made to Baltimore over the years. There was the exhibition fight in 1972 when Ali defended the steep $10 ticket price as a bargain; a 1992 swing through Leakin Park on an anti-drug and anti-crime campaign; and a visit with the Baltimore Ravens before their Super Bowl-winning 2012 season. Those who met him — however briefly — recall being inspired by his boxing expertise, political ideals and cheerful personality, anecdotes fresh in their minds even years later. Ali, 74, died Friday after being hospitalized last week in the Phoenix area. A family spokesman said Saturday he died of septic shock "due to unspecified natural causes." Ali was a once deeply polarizing then hugely popular figure, a three-time world heavyweight boxing champion known and admired as much for his political principles as his past physical prowess. His death marks not just an end of a life lived large and out loud but one that encompassed the sweep of major American historical markers, chief among them the Vietnam War and the black civil rights era. The 1977 fundraising event in Baltimore brought together a number of men who became influential local figures. Mfume survived the blow from Ali and was later elected to the House of Representatives and became president of the NAACP. State Del. Curt Anderson, then a junior reporter at WBAL-TV, also fought Ali that day. Lawyer A. Dwight Pettit was there but was relegated to the sidelines. Pettit said he had traveled in Ali's entourage many times because Baltimore's Muslims thought the young attorney looked like the boxer. Ali disagreed, telling the lawyer he "isn't as pretty me," Pettit recalled, Pettit said he was under consideration to become Maryland U.S. attorney at the time and let the White House know he was going to be doing a mock bout with Ali. The president's team judged Ali too controversial and dropped the idea, which Pettit said is "one of my biggest regrets." Anderson taped a goofy four-minute video in which he fought and defeated the boxer after Ali taunted him with the words "Curt is dirt." "Initially we went into a small room with Ali's lawyers and they made us sign an affidavit that we wouldn't try to hurt him," Anderson recalled. "I was wondering where his affidavit was." In the video, the WBAL anchors laugh at Anderson's antics in the ring. Anderson said that by the late '70s the controversy over Ali's refusal to be drafted during the war in Vietnam and his conversion to the Nation of Islam's unorthodox version of the Muslim faith had faded, making the charity event comfortable fodder for the evening news. "It was right in the middle of his growing admiration around the world," Anderson said. "Had this been 1969, it might have been a different story." Anderson had helped bring Ali to the campus of Rutgers University that year. The boxer was in the midst of a 31/2 -year ban from fighting and a leading figure in the anti-war movement. Anderson was involved in Rutgers' black student union and was stunned when thousands of people — the majority of them white — turned up to hear Ali speak. "My political acumen was formed then and Muhammed Ali was a big part of it," said Anderson, a Democrat who now represents Baltimore in the state legislature. Despite Ali's iconic status as a fighter and his activist role in the social upheavals of the late 1960s, those who met him described him as easygoing and personable. Pettit recalled him sitting on the floor of attorney Billy Murphy's house chatting like he'd known them for years. Boxing trainer Mack Allison III met Ali when he was working at the now-closed Baltimore Sports Bar in the Inner Harbor. Allison was in his early 20s at the time and only starting to learn how to fight. When he learned Ali would be coming to the bar, he brought his boxing shorts and asked for an autograph. Ali shook Allison's hand and signed the shorts. "I would smile, and he'd be like, 'What are you smiling at?' So I kept smiling," Allison said. "He was just nice to everybody. I mean, really nice." Ali's one-on-one warmth was in stark contrast to his brash media personality, which was on full display in 1972 when Ali fought in an exhibition at the Baltimore Civic Center against four opponents in front of a crowd of more than 6,000 fans. Before the fight, a reporter asked him if he thought the $10 ticket price — about $57 in today's money — was excessive. "Ten dollars, that's cheap," Ali said. "Why, people pay that much to see just an ordinary fighter. But this time they'll be seeing the greatest athlete — not boxer — in the world. I'm the most talked-about, most publicized and highest-paid athlete ever. I've met and fought before kings, queens and sheiks. In fact, I've been invited to Peking next month. Yes, by the same people who invited Nixon. Now tell me, isn't $10 cheap?" Even as his health failed, Ali remained boastful. He returned to Baltimore in December 1992 to promote an anti-crime and anti-drug event the following year at Leakin Park. Fifty years old and suffering from Parkinson's disease, he was asked if he could have defeated then-heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe in his prime, Ali smiled. "You must be joking," he said. "You know I'm still the greatest in the whole world." Ali's visited Baltimore again in 2012, when he attended a Ravens' final practice before the team began their Super Bowl-winning season. The workout was closed to the press but word of the legendary boxer's presence leaked out in giddy social media postings. Many of the Ravens players acted like star-struck teenagers meeting one of their sports heroes. As they learned of Ali's death, some of the players who where there went online again to share their condolences. "If he taught me nothing else live life your way," Ray Lewis wrote on Instagram. "Because he was the only one putting in hrs that nobody else could see, rest in Peace Champ I'm honored the time I got to spend with you on this earth. God has much work waiting on the other side." Oilers made memorable birthday visit to Muhammad Ali What do I recall about the only time I ever met Muhammad Ali, at his house in Los Angeles on a bright January day in 1983 as the Edmonton Oilers dropped by to wish him happy 41st birthday? I recall the slow-moving Ali, showing the early affects of Parkinsons disease, shuffling about his darkened house with all the drapes pulled, looking at the birthday cake the players had brought and offering up a roundhouse right put-down at the cake in the shape of a boxing ring. I love your company and I love your style, he said, but your gift is so cheap I hope you dont come back for awhile. “Maybe he figured we were going to give him a car,” laughed former Oilers’ coach/GM Glen Sather who was there with the players that day. Ali’s hands were a little unsteady but his eyes were twinkling. His ability to talk in rhymes was still there. Mark Messiers uncle Larry was working for Ali in those days and the hustling Messier had set up the player visit on one of their off days in LA. I was allowed to come and I remember being in a bus, driving through the rich Hancock Park neighbourhood of LA, the bus pulling up to Alis 20-room mansion. Every single player was excited to have an audience with The Champ this was a starry team that would be at President Gerald Fords Palm Desert house often and had been on the MASH TV show set in LA because Klinger, Jamie Farr, was a huge hockey fan. But seeing Ali was a cut way above. “Was it a highlight for me? Yes, no question” said Kevin Lowe. Wayne Gretzky was the only player missing, as a I recall, because No. 99 was filming a TV spot with Kenny Rogers, I believe. “I remember Ali came into our dressing room before we went to his house and and said ‘Where’s this pip-squeak who calls himself the Greatest? I’m the Greatest,” laughed Sather. The house, as I said, was eerily quiet, dark inside because the drapes were pulled. Ali’s third wife Veronica was there that day but we never saw her. I recall a big dog barking out back. Not that Ali needed any guarding, but nobody ventured outside because the dog was one giant leap from mankind. The player visit only lasted about an hour and, again, Ali certainly wasnt floating like a butterfly that day in LA because of the onset of Parkinsons but he still had lots of muscle power. “He snuck up behind everybody and he squeezed their fingers and made them squeal…that’s how strong he was,” said Sather. “I’d seen him fight at Madison Square Garden against (Joe) Frazier when I was playing for the Rangers (70s). We were right in front of the ring, about 10 of us players. Great show. Watching all the strange people coming and going, fur coats, platform shoes. Muhammad Ali? Probably the most recognizable guy in the world.” The Champ was in a playful mood with the Oilers at his house. “He certainly seemed to be enjoying himself,” said Sather. He spent a good amount of time doing magic tricks, the now-you-see it, now you dont hankie stuff, and balls appearing and disappearing. He had a captive audience for the trick where he somehow got his feet to lift off the ground. How you do that? said the wide-eyed Jaroslav Pouzar, over and over again, as the Oilers winger tried the levitation trick, with absolutely no luck before boarding the bus to the teams hotel. Ali didnt didnt pretend to know anything about hockey as he looked at the autographed stick the players had brought, but I remember him asking any brothers on the team? Goalie Grant Fuhr nodded and laughed softly. I remember he wanted to know who the toughest Oiler was. “He loved Semenk (Dave Semenko),” said Lowe. “I remember when Muhammad came to Edmonton later (six months), he had a couple of meals at Yiannis Psalios’s Greek restaurant when he was there to fight Dave (three round exhibition).” On the day the Oilers visited Ali, he said he was going to Africa soon and he’d come up with a theme song for his tour from a very successful Philadelphia R&B group named Harold Melvin and Blue Notes. “They’re Wally Ali now,” said the Champ, of his Black Muslim religion. He asked if any of the Oilers were bible readers. A young centre Laurie Boschman was too shy and didnt stick his hand up but the veteran Garry Unger, now running the Banff Hockey Academy, did. They had a nice, animated conversation. As I recall, not one Oiler left that day without saying “now, that was special.” Special: Remembering Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali, known as "The Louisville Lip" as he began his ascension to boxing greatness, will be celebrated in his Kentucky hometown with ceremonies on Thursday and Friday, a family spokesman said. A public memorial is scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m.... Read More Ali coming home as 'citizen' of world for Louisville funeral Ali coming home as 'citizen' of world for Louisville funeral He was fast of fist and foot — lip, too — a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper. He was The Greatest. Muhammad Ali died Friday at age 74, according to a statement from the family. He was hospitalized in the Phoenix area with respiratory problems earlier this week, and his children had flown in from around the country. "It's a sad day for life, man. I loved Muhammad Ali, he was my friend. Ali will never die," Don King, who promoted some of Ali's biggest fights, told The Associated Press early Saturday. "Like Martin Luther King his spirit will live on, he stood for the world." A funeral will be held in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The city plans a memorial service Saturday. Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer ordered flags lowered to half-staff to honor Ali. "The values of hard work, conviction and compassion that Muhammad Ali developed while growing up in Louisville helped him become a global icon," Fischer said. "As a boxer, he became The Greatest, though his most lasting victories happened outside the ring." With a wit as sharp as the punches he used to "whup" opponents, Ali dominated sports for two decades before time and Parkinson's disease, triggered by thousands of blows to the head, ravaged his magnificent body, muted his majestic voice and ended his storied career in 1981. He won and defended the heavyweight championship in epic fights in exotic locations, spoke loudly on behalf of blacks, and famously refused to be drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War because of his Muslim beliefs. Despite his debilitating illness, he traveled the world to rapturous receptions even after his once-bellowing voice was quieted and he was left to communicate with a wink or a weak smile. "He was the greatest fighter of all time but his boxing career is secondary to his contribution to the world," promoter Bob Arum told the AP early Saturday. "He's the most transforming figure of my time certainly." Revered by millions worldwide and reviled by millions more, Ali cut quite a figure, 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds in his prime. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," his cornermen exhorted, and he did just that in a way no heavyweight had ever fought before. He fought in three different decades, finished with a record of 56-5 with 37 knockouts — 26 of those bouts promoted by Arum — and was the first man to win heavyweight titles three times. He whipped the fearsome Sonny Liston twice, toppled the mighty George Foreman with the rope-a-dope in Zaire, and nearly fought to the death with Joe Frazier in the Philippines. Through it all, he was trailed by a colorful entourage who merely added to his growing legend. "Rumble, young man, rumble," cornerman Bundini Brown would yell to him. And rumble Ali did. He fought anyone who meant anything and made millions of dollars with his lightning-quick jab. His fights were so memorable that they had names — "Rumble in the Jungle" and "Thrilla in Manila." But it was as much his antics — and his mouth — outside the ring that transformed the man born Cassius Clay into a household name as Muhammad Ali. "I am the greatest," Ali thundered again and again. Few would disagree. Ali spurned white America when he joined the Black Muslims and changed his name. He defied the draft at the height of the Vietnam war — "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" — and lost 3 1/2 years from the prime of his career. He entertained world leaders, once telling Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos: "I saw your wife. You're not as dumb as you look." He later embarked on a second career as a missionary for Islam. "Boxing was my field mission, the first part of my life," he said in 1990, adding with typical braggadocio, "I will be the greatest evangelist ever." Ali couldn't fulfill that goal because Parkinson's robbed him of his speech. It took such a toll on his body that the sight of him in his later years — trembling, his face frozen, the man who invented the Ali Shuffle now barely able to walk — shocked and saddened those who remembered him in his prime. "People naturally are going to be sad to see the effects of his disease," Hana, one of his daughters, said, when he turned 65. "But if they could really see him in the calm of his everyday life, they would not be sorry for him. He's at complete peace, and he's here learning a greater lesson." The quiet of Ali's later life was in contrast to the roar of a career that had breathtaking highs as well as terrible lows. He exploded on the public scene with a series of nationally televised fights that gave the public an exciting new champion, and he entertained millions as he sparred verbally with the likes of bombastic sportscaster Howard Cosell. Ali once calculated he had taken 29,000 punches to the head and made $57 million in his pro career, but the effect of the punches lingered long after most of the money was gone. That didn't stop him from traveling tirelessly to promote Islam, meet with world leaders and champion legislation dubbed the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. While slowed in recent years, he still managed to make numerous appearances, including a trip to the 2012 London Olympics. Despised by some for his outspoken beliefs and refusal to serve in the U.S. Army in the 1960s, an aging Ali became a poignant figure whose mere presence at a sporting event would draw long standing ovations. With his hands trembling so uncontrollably that the world held its breath, he lit the Olympic torch for the 1996 Atlanta Games in a performance as riveting as some of his fights. A few years after that, he sat mute in a committee room in Washington, his mere presence enough to convince lawmakers to pass the boxing reform bill that bore his name. Members of his inner circle weren't surprised. They had long known Ali as a humanitarian who once wouldn't think twice about getting in his car and driving hours to visit a terminally ill child. They saw him as a man who seemed to like everyone he met — even his archrival Frazier. "I consider myself one of the luckiest guys in the world just to call him my friend," former business manager Gene Kilroy said. "If I was to die today and go to heaven it would be a step down. My heaven was being with Ali." One of his biggest opponents would later become a big fan, too. On the eve of the 35th anniversary of their "Rumble in the Jungle," Foreman paid tribute to the man who so famously stopped him in the eighth round of their 1974 heavyweight title fight, the first ever held in Africa. "I don't call him the best boxer of all time, but he's the greatest human being I ever met," Foreman said. "To this day he's the most exciting person I ever met in my life." Born Cassius Marcellus Clay on Jan. 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali began boxing at age 12 after his new bicycle was stolen and he vowed to policeman Joe Martin that he would "whup" the person who took it. He was only 89 pounds at the time, but Martin began training him at his boxing gym, the beginning of a six-year amateur career that ended with the light heavyweight Olympic gold medal in 1960. Ali had already encountered racism. On boxing trips, he and his amateur teammates would have to stay in the car while Martin bought them hamburgers. When he returned to Louisville with his gold medal, the Chamber of Commerce presented him a citation but said it didn't have time to co-sponsor a dinner. In his autobiography, "The Greatest," Ali wrote that he tossed the medal into the Ohio River after a fight with a white motorcycle gang, which started when he and a friend were refused service at a Louisville restaurant. The story may be apocryphal, and Ali later told friends he simply misplaced the medal. Regardless, he had made his point. After he beat Liston to win the heavyweight title in 1964, Ali shocked the boxing world by announcing he was a member of the Black Muslims — the Nation of Islam — and was rejecting his "slave name." As a Baptist youth he spent much of his time outside the ring reading the Bible. From now on, he would be known as Muhammad Ali and his book of choice would be the Koran. Ali's affiliation with the Nation of Islam outraged and disturbed many white Americans, but it was his refusal to be inducted into the Army that angered them most. That happened on April 28, 1967, a month after he knocked out Zora Folley in the seventh round at Madison Square Garden in New York for his eighth title defense. He was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his title and banned from boxing. Ali appealed the conviction on grounds he was a Muslim minister. He married 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, the second of his four wives, a month after his conviction, and had four children with her. He had two more with his third wife, Veronica Porsche, and he and his fourth wife, Lonnie Williams, adopted a son. During his banishment, Ali spoke at colleges and briefly appeared in a Broadway musical called "Big Time Buck White." Still facing a prison term, he was allowed to resume boxing three years later, and he came back to stop Jerry Quarry in three rounds on Oct. 26, 1970, in Atlanta despite efforts by Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox to block the bout. He was still facing a possible prison sentence when he fought Frazier for the first time on March 8, 1971, in what was labeled "The Fight of the Century." A few months later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on an 8-0 vote. "I've done my celebrating already," Ali said after being informed of the decision. "I said a prayer to Allah." Many in boxing believe Ali was never the same fighter after his lengthy layoff, even though he won the heavyweight championship two more times and fought for another decade. Perhaps his most memorable fight was the "Rumble in the Jungle," when he upset a brooding Foreman to become heavyweight champion once again at age 32. Many worried that Ali could be seriously hurt by the powerful Foreman, who had knocked Frazier down six times in a second round TKO. But while his peak fighting days may have been over, he was still in fine form verbally. He promoted the fight relentlessly, as only he could. "You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned," he said. "Wait till I whup George Foreman's behind." Ali won over a country before he won the fight, mingling with people as he trained and displaying the kind of playful charm the rest of the world had already seen. On the plane into the former Congo he asked what the citizens of Zaire disliked most. He was told it was Belgians because they had once colonized the country. "George Foreman is a Belgian," Ali cried out to the huge crowd that greeted him at the airport. By the time the fight finally went off in the early morning hours of Oct. 30, 1974, Zaire was his. "Ali booma-ya (Ali kill him)," many of the 60,000 fans screamed as the fight began in Kinshasa. Ali pulled out a huge upset to win the heavyweight title for a second time, allowing Foreman to punch himself out. He used what he would later call the "rope-a-dope" strategy — something even trainer Angelo Dundee knew nothing about. Finally, he knocked out an exhausted Foreman in the eighth round, touching off wild celebrations among his African fans. "I told you I was the greatest," Ali said. That might have been argued by followers of Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano or Sugar Ray Robinson, but there was no doubt that Ali was just what boxing needed in the early 1960s. He spouted poetry and brash predictions. After the sullen and frightening Liston, he was a fresh and entertaining face in a sport that struggled for respectability. At the weigh-in before his Feb. 25, 1964, fight with Liston, Ali carried on so much that some observers thought he was scared stiff and suggested the fight in Miami Beach be called off. "The crowd did not dream when they lay down their money that they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny," Ali said. Ali went on to punch Liston's face lumpy and became champion for the first time when Liston quit on his stool after the sixth round. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," became Ali's rallying cry. His talent for talking earned him the nickname "The Louisville Lip," but he had a new name of his own in mind: Muhammad Ali. "I don't have to be what you want me to be," he told reporters the morning after beating Liston. "I'm free to be who I want." Frazier refused to call Ali by his new name, insisting he was still Cassius Clay. So did Ernie Terrell in their Feb. 6, 1967, fight, a mistake he would come to regret through 15 long rounds. "What's my name?" Ali demanded as he repeatedly punched Terrell in the face. "What's my name?" By the time Ali was able to return to the ring following his forced layoff, he was bigger than ever. Soon he was in the ring for his first of three epic fights against Frazier, with each fighter guaranteed $2.5 million. Before the fight, Ali called Frazier an "Uncle Tom" and said he was "too ugly to be the champ." His gamesmanship could have a cruel edge, especially when it was directed toward Frazier. In the first fight, though, Frazier had the upper hand. He relentlessly wore Ali down, flooring him with a crushing left hook in the 15th round and winning a decision. It was the first defeat for Ali, but the boxing world had not seen the last of him and Frazier in the ring. Ali won a second fight, and then came the "Thrilla in Manila" on Oct. 1, 1975, in the Philippines, a brutal bout that Ali said afterward was "the closest thing to dying" he had experienced. Ali won that third fight but took a terrific beating from the relentless Frazier before trainer Eddie Futch kept Frazier from answering the bell for the 15th round. "They told me Joe Frazier was through," Ali told Frazier at one point during the fight. "They lied," Frazier said, before hitting Ali with a left hook. The fight — which most in boxing agree was Ali's last great performance — was part of a 16-month period on the mid-1970s when Ali took his show on the road, fighting Foreman in Zaire, Frazier in the Philippines, Joe Bugner in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Jean Pierre Coopman in Puerto Rico. The world got a taste of Ali in splendid form with both his fists and his mouth. In Malaysia, a member of the commission in charge of the gloves the fighters would wear told Ali they would be held in a prison for safekeeping before the fight. "My gloves are going to jail," shouted a wide-eyed Ali. "They ain't done nothing — yet!" Ali would go on to lose the title to Leon Spinks, then come back to win it a third time on Sept. 15, 1978, when he scored a decision over Spinks in a rematch before 70,000 people at the Superdome in New Orleans. Ali retired, only to come back and try to win the title for a fourth time against Larry Holmes on Oct. 2, 1980, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Ali grew a mustache, pronounced himself "Dark Gable" and got down to a svelte 217 1/2 pounds to beat Father Time. But Holmes, his former sparring partner, mercifully toyed with him until Dundee refused to let Ali answer the bell for the 11th round. "He was like a little baby after the first round," Holmes said. "I was throwing punches and missing just for the hell of it. I kept saying, 'Ali, why are you taking this?' "He said, 'Shut up and fight, I'm going to knock you out.'" When the fight was over, Holmes and his wife went upstairs to pay their respects to Ali. In a darkened room, Holmes told Ali that he loved him. "Then why did you whip my ass like that?" Ali replied. A few years later, Ali said he would not have fought Holmes if he didn't think he could have won. "If I had known Holmes was going to whip me and damage my brain, I would not have fought him," Ali said. "But losing to Holmes and being sick are not important in God's world." It was that world that Ali retreated to, fighting just once more, losing a 10-round decision to Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas. With his fourth wife, Lonnie, at his side, Ali traveled the world for Islam and other causes. In 1990, he went to Iraq on his own initiative to meet with Saddam Hussein and returned to the United States with 15 Americans who had been held hostage. One of the hostages recounted meeting Ali in Thomas Hauser's 1990 biography "Muhammad Ali — His Life and Times." "I've always known that Muhammad Ali was a super sportsman; but during those hours that we were together, inside that enormous body I saw an angel," hostage Harry Brill-Edwards said. For his part, Ali didn't complain about the price he had paid in the ring. "What I suffered physically was worth what I've accomplished in life," he said in 1984. "A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life." Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. Muhammad Ali: Jeff Powell recalls a golden age including the Beatles, medical miracles, colour TVs, space travel... and The Greatest It was a few minutes after 5am in London when the world stopped. The worst news always seems to creep up on us in the early hours. Our defences are down. So too, for the first time, were Muhammad Alis. The Greatest was gone. It wasnt so much a shock. We knew it was coming. The warning signs were writ larger than ever. The anxiety following his latest, and as it transpired last, hospitalisation had nagged at us through the night. Sleep was fitful. The TV was on. The fateful words flickered across the foot of the screen. The heart missed a beat. It was the sense of loss. It wasnt only we who had been fortunate to have sometimes kept his company who felt it. Millions around the world sensed a fatal disturbance in the force. Suddenly, there was a void in our lives. Not only those of us old enough to have watched Ali bestride the golden age of mankind civil rights, colour television, medical miracles, space travel, Third World emergence, Sinatra to Pavarotti via the Beatles. Muhammad Ali relaxes in London the morning after beating Henry Cooper for a second time in 1966 The Fab Four met the then Cassius Clay at Miami Beach's 5th Street Gym before his first fight with Sonny Liston Then known as Cassius Clay, Ali is pictured during a training session before his first meeting with Cooper Also those too young to have seen him fight but who are informed of his magnificence in the ring and aware of the part he played in one of humanitys most profound struggles, the black mans fight for freedom. Just before the loquacious lad from Louisville discarded Cassius Marcellus Clay Jnr as a slave name, he had, as he put it, shaken up the world by beating Sonny Liston. From the moment he won the first of his three world heavyweight titles and promptly assumed his Islamic identity he flew in the face of American convention. Thus he began not only writing his legend in the ring but weaving himself into the tapestry of our life and times. More than any president or prime minister John F Kennedy even Ali was the iconic, majestic figure of fascination around whom the world turned through its most extraordinary era of turbulence and change. Such was the vaulting personality for whom they were finally left with no option but to switch off the life-support machine. It was not the first time he had been ferried in haste to that hospital in the capital of the state of Arizona. The frequencies of those traumas had been accelerated by the advance of Parkinsons Disease but on every previous occasion he climbed from his sick-bed, just as he had done from the canvas of the ring. Ali came to London twice to beat Cooper and made himself a popular figure on the other side of the pond Michael Parkinson interviewed Ali four times and is pictured during a memorable show in 1971 with Freddie Starr This time there would be no rising like the Phoenix after whom that city is named. The family braced for the inevitable. Lonnie, his fourth wife who devoted herself to the care which prolonged his life, sent for his daughters. Like the family, we feared the worst when they reported respiratory problems. So often the cruelest diseases end in a failure of the lungs.Still they carried him out in triumph. Staving off Parkinsons for 32 years, no less, is a victory as noble any as any of those won against such formidable heavyweights as George Foreman and Joe Frazier. It has been the most brilliant of all the magic tricks he loved to perform, even in latter days when his hands were at their most shaky. It serves also as an heroic source of inspiration to all who are similarly afflicted. That message reverberates around this planet upon which he is still the most recognisable face of all. Not least in London. A city he loved. A city he held in thrall through his two fights with Henry Cooper. Especially the first, at Wembley, in which he had to rise from a hammer blow from Our Enry only just in time to fulfil his typically brash prediction of a fifth-round stoppage. Ali, pictured at a pre-fiught lunch in the West End, predicted of a fifth round stoppage of Cooper Henry Cooper knocked Ali to the canvas for the second time in his career but the champ fought back in 1963 Three years later, Ali opened up a gaping wound above Cooper's left eye which left the referee little choice My first conversation with him took place in London. He was back in town for a spying mission on a future opponent. As he made a hurried exit from amid the opulence of the Royal Albert Hall, I followed him out to request a few quotes. He was about to step into his limousine but paused, held the door open and said: Climb aboard. We started talking on the ride to the Park Lane Hilton, carried on in the elevator and became increasingly animated in his penthouse suite. Then I thanked him and made to leave. Where do you think youre going? he asked. To send these words of yours to my paper, I replied. How long will that take? Twenty minutes if I write it down. Five if I adlib to a copy-taker. Get your skinny white ass back here in five. We got a lotta talking to do. So we did. Through to the dawn. Him doing most of the talking, of course. About boxing, life, putting the world to rights.How he loved an audience. Even if it had to be a mesmerised young English hack he hardly knew. The last time we could converse was ringside at a junior boxing tournament in Louisville. The voice was down to a whisper but when I asked how he felt there were no complaints or regrets about that diminished faculty. Rather he talked about its advantages, saying: Now I am at peace to reflect on my life and all that is going on in the world around us. Im good. How good to have met and known him. How thrilling to have watched him transform boxing into a work of art, drama, poetic movement, passion, speed and courage. How honoured to have been invited to his 70th birthday dinner in Louisville four Januarys ago. Jeff Powell shares another moment with The Greatest during his 70th birthday celebration in Louisville The Louisville Lip captivates the crowds on Brewer Street during the build up to his first fight with Our Enry The old adversaries shared a strong mutual respect which remained throughout their lives The Louisville Lip had been silenced by his condition. That Adonis body was wasted almost to the bones. He was no longer The Prettiest, a reality in which he and his ladies had revelled. Yet that kaleidoscopic mind was still burning bright. You could see it in the light in his eyes, the sparkle which made them glitter all the more when something tickled that mischievous sense of humour. That spirit is still alive. Everywhere. Not least in London. You can feel it at the splendid exhibition of timeless Ali film and priceless memorabilia I Am The Greatest which he was not well enough to visit but which is about to turn that section of the O2 arena into a shrine of pilgrimage for the thousands upon thousands who worship Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali took the planet by storm: 'I shook up the world' he said after beating Sonny Liston... and it wasn't a boast, it was a statement of fact Fifty-two years have passed since that February dawn, yet still the cry comes ringing down the decades: Ah shook up the world! Ah shook up the world! The pictures from Miami told an extraordinary tale. Sonny Liston was slumped on his stool, monstrous, bewildered and crushingly defeated, while Cassius Marcellus Clay Jnr was dancing lightfooted across our screens. His eyes were bright, his voice was shrill and his message was compelling. Ah shook up the world! Within a few weeks, he had changed his name. Within a few years, Muhammad Ali had become the most celebrated individual on the planet. His fame evolved from his sporting excellence. The prize ring had never known a fighter least of all a heavyweight fighter who could move with such instinctive fluency or execute his strategies with such dramatic efficiency. Certainly it had never known a man capable of fulfilling to the letter even the most outrageous of his promises. Ali could do all of these things and very much more besides. Scroll down for video After beating Sonny Liston as Cassius Clay, the Louisville Lip embarked on gleeful celebrations 'Ah shook up the world', the excitable newly-crowned heavyweight champion of the world exclaimed Ali would dominate for over a decade with his personality winning many fights before entering the ring Half a century later, it is impossible to convey the impact of his emergence. Before Ali, sportsmen tended to be modest in victory and sanguine in defeat. Self-confidence was acceptable but only when it was tempered with discretion. Yet Ali obeyed different rules. For him, modesty was unpalatable and defeat unthinkable. He exuded a manic optimism, a conviction that everything was possible if only you had sufficient nerve and courage and talent. And he possessed each of those qualities in staggering profusion. Looking back, we were always aware that he was never just a fighter, for the wit was too nimble and the personality too vivid. From the start of his professional career, he realised that ability was not enough. He needed to stand out from the crowd, to make his mark on public awareness. Hence the daft little rhymes, the bumptious assertions, the calling of the conclusive round. People began to notice him, to talk about him. He was different and he was genuinely formidable. Even so, it took him more than three years and 20 fights before he secured the title, slaying the ogre Liston in the Miami Convention Centre. We knew he was exceptional, that much was always obvious. But as we kept a bleary watch through the early hours at city centre cinemas, we slowly started to realise that he was much more: he was genuinely significant. Between the first and second Liston fights, he became affiliated to the Nation of Islam, renouncing his slave name of Cassius Clay and taking the name which he would carry to the grave. This move incensed a wide swath of white America, particularly when it was followed, three years later, by his refusal to serve in Vietnam. Although he was not alone in rejecting that tragic misadventure I aint got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me n***r, he famously explained the consequences were profound, both for Ali and for America. Already he had defended his title against an array of opponents, including Liston, Floyd Patterson and the Britons Henry Cooper and Brian London. But refusal to serve, followed by conviction for draft evasion, saw him stripped of his titles in 1967. He did not fight for almost four years, between 25 and 29 when he would have been at his peak. In an era of great racial turbulence in America, a time of riots, civil unrest and the assassinations of inspirational leaders Senator Robert Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King, Alis conscientious objection, and the price he paid, gave him an aura of martyrdom. The then Cassius Clay arrives at McCarran International Airport in 1963 flanked by cornerman Angelo Dundee Ali stands above the floored Liston as he won their second fight at the end of the first round Ali travelled to England twice to face Henry Cooper, with the popular Brit knocking him down in their first fight He lost his passport and he almost lost his freedom but he used those years to imbibe and propound the disturbing racial doctrines of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, lecturing in colleges and universities across the States and revelling in the status of teacher and evangelist. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in June 1971, but Ali had resumed his boxing career a few months earlier, defeating Jerry Quarry in three rounds. So began the glory years, an era such as heavyweight boxing had never known. And Ali was its most charismatic figure. In March 1971, he fought Joe Frazier for the title, losing on points after a brutal epic. The preamble to the fight had been dominated by Alis taunting wit; the poems, doggerel and blood-chilling threats delivered with a roguish grin. But the performance had also revealed a different side to his character. He demeaned Frazier with a cruelty which went far beyond even boxings acceptable bounds. He called him an Uncle Tom, the vilest of racial insults, and repeatedly mocked Frazier for his inability to trade verbal abuse. Any valid assessment of Ali must include that streak of wanton spite. He fought Frazier again in January 1974, another harrowing battle which Ali won by virtue of his extraordinary ringcraft and superb physical conditioning. This opened the way for The Rumble in the Jungle, against reigning champion George Foreman. This preposterous escapade, staged in the small hours of the Kinshasa morning to accommodate American television, was largely funded by a corrupt despot named Mobutu Sese Seko and became one of the landmark events of 20th century sport. Once again, Ali was facing an ogre; fearsome as Liston and apparently implacable. And once again, the odds were overthrown in dramatic fashion, with Ali inviting Foreman to do his worst, to throw a relentless stream of murderous punches at Alis unprotected body until fatigue overwhelmed him. Ali trains at the Territorial Army Gymnasium in White City ahead of his second fight with Cooper George Foreman gave Ali's body a brutal workover, but tired himself out in the process with stunning results It was the strategy of the asylum, yet it worked. After almost eight rounds of submission, Ali unleashed a series of lacerating combinations, followed by a thunderous right hand which sent Foreman tottering across the ring. As he subsided to the canvas, the lingering memory is of the BBC commentator, the late Harry Carpenter, yelling: Oh my God! Hes won the title back, at 32! Ali was back but the golden era was passing. He beat Frazier once more, yet another war of attrition which ended in 14 rounds, then, in February 1978, he lost the title to Leon Spinks. Ali was then 36, his speech was already faintly slurred and he must have known that any extension of his career would prove unacceptably dangerous. But he outpointed Spinks over 15 rounds just seven months later and then, on October 2, 1980, in a converted parking lot at Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas, he faced the young, strong, utterly menacing figure of Larry Holmes for the heavyweight championship of the world. It was the only Ali fight I ever covered, sitting in the shadow of Alis corner, shamelessly yearning for a miracle. I remember scanning the ringside and surveying the clientele; the hookers and high rollers, the Black Muslim elders, faces blank as plates and their young minders in sober suits with revolvers slapping on their hips. I remember spotting Cary Grant and Gregory Peck, the curiously corpulent Frank Sinatra and the sad and slumberous figure of the great Joe Louis, slumped in a wheelchair like a terrible warning. Then the fighters. Ali was within four months of his 39th birthday, he had been idle for two years and had shed 33lbs. When he removed his robe, he seemed adequately fit, free from the blubbering fat which had recently clung to his waist. Then Holmes removed his robe and we realised the terrible futility of Alis enterprise. Holmes was lean, hard and menacing, a man capable of inflicting appalling damage. Alis great deception had fallen apart before a punch had been thrown. The outcome was even worse than we feared. I could actually hear the punches pounding the body and jolting back the head, the small grunts of pain which Ali emitted as the blows found their target and the fatuous shrieks of his odious camp-follower Bundini Brown: Dont be hit, champ! Dont be hit!. Larry Holmes (left) was eight years Ali's junior when they met at Caeser's Palace for an unedifying spectacle Ali, next to trainer Angelo Dundee (second left) and Bundini Brown (right) fails to come out against Holmes I recall the tiny, terrible details: the black dye in Alis hair, designed to disguise his advancing years, mingling with the sweat and running down his temples. And his attempts to talk to the champion as the blows rained down; muttering old taunts, recognising their pathetic futility. The criminally incompetent referee allowed the slaughter to continue through 10 rounds until the cornerman Angelo Dundee pulled his fighter out. Even then, Bundini pleaded for One more round! Ali sank to his stool, oblivious to the chaos around him. Holmes pushed through to his corner: I love you, man. I respect you. Youre my brother. Ali could not respond. A uniquely ugly occasion had run its course, leaving the broken man to stumble towards his future. Unwilling to surrender even a hopelessly devalued meal ticket, they arranged just one more fight. It was boxing, you see; the Noble Art, the sport in which fighters take all of the blows while men in sharp suits pocket most of the cash. He was on the eve of his 40th birthday when he faced Trevor Berbick in Nassau. Drama in the Bahamas, they called it. Ali was beaten up in 10 rounds and that was that. By now, his physical distress was evident. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinsons Syndrome and his long, slow journey into the twilight took shape. He was wheeled out on major occasions to cut a ribbon or take a bow but his infirmity was palpable. I recall him lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, bravely presenting himself to a public which adored him. But down the years, each time we saw him, his condition had deteriorated. His appearance at the opening of the London Olympics was heart-wrenching. Ali, who won Olympic gold in Rome in 1960, lights the flame at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Games Ali beat portly Pole Zbigniew Pietrzykowski to win Olympic gold in the the light-heavyweight division Ali, pictured prior to fighting Foreman in Zaire, will forever be remembered as a great inside and out of the ring Now he has gone, the light is extinguished, a life of astonishing achievement is at an end. We live in an age which bestows its laurels too readily; legends are 10-a-penny, icons run of the mill. But Ali was different. He said some foolish things and made some poor decisions and yet he made a difference. A man with virtually no formal education, cruelly slighted by the attitudes of the American South, Ali rose above it all through a mixture of skill, audacity, charm, courage and sublime athletic ability. He leaves a tangled legacy. The sport he knew has virtually ceased to exist. Professional boxing is littered with dubiously talented young athletes, boastfully booming while trying to remember their lines. To a man, they are untouched by Alis wit or talent or saving sense of mischief. The cause he championed has far to travel. Black Americans still seek to secure the same social, educational and commercial opportunities as their white counterparts. And yet, these past eight years, a black president has adorned the Oval Office. And a heavyweight fighter was one of the pioneers of that. So Muhammad Ali made his mark. He played a significant part in the drama of his age. And when we think of him, we shall remember the small smile, akin to a twinkle, which flitted across that dazzling face. There was pure mischief in that smile, the kind of mischief which captivates creeds and colours and entire continents. Ah shook up the world!, cried the kid from Louisville. It was more than a boast, it was a statement of fact. Michael J. Fox Reflects on Friendship With Muhammad Ali It's been almost two decades since Michael J. Fox first met Muhammad Ali , several years after the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion retired from the sport and was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The iconic boxer reached out to Fox in 2000 after the actor revealed that he too was battling the incurable neurological condition. In an interview with ABC News today, Fox said he locked himself in the bathroom to avoid any distraction from his kids and finally mustered up the courage to call Ali back. "I'm in the bathroom talking to Muhammad Ali. He didn't say much. He just said, "With you in this fight, we can win,'" Fox told ABC News. "I cried." The two met in person a few months later, and they teamed up to raise awareness for Parkinson's. They also formed a close friendship that lasted throughout the rest of Ali's life. The legendary boxer and global humanitarian died Friday night at an Arizona hospital, after a long fight with the disease. Fox tweeted a photo of him with Ali Saturday morning in the hours after his death with the caption, "Ali, the G-O-A-T. A giant, an inspiration, a man of peace, a warrior for the cure. Thank you." Fox and Ali appeared together in Parkinson's PSAs, at fundraisers and even at a Senate subcommittee hearing in May 2002 to lobby lawmakers on funding research for a cure. Ali's wife Yolanda "Lonnie" Williams served on the board of directors of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research from 2001 to 2004. A few years later, the couple was appointed to the foundation's founder's council. "He was really committed to finding an answer to this disease, as he was to finding answers to strife in the world and wars and conflict and all kinds of things," Fox said today. "He was a very complex man and a very special man." The actor said he looked up to Ali in more ways than one. "His standard principles, his defiances, his artistry, his brilliance, his guts and his valiant fight with Parkinson's," he said. "The fact that I had that to relate to as well as the other influences he had just by being him." Fox said he "felt conflicted" after learning of Ali's passing. On one hand, he was sad for Ali's family and regretted that he didn't get a chance to speak to his friend once more. "At the same time, I was somewhat relieved for him that he was no longer battling this," he told ABC News today. "It's a sad day but it's great to think about him as much as we have today, because he really deserves it." ABC News' Tom Kelly contributed to this report. Hillary Clinton Invokes Muhammad Ali to Bash Donald Trump Hillary Clinton invoked Muhammad Ali today as she blasted Donald Trump for his attack on the federal judge assigned to handle one of the suits filed against Trump University . "On a day that we are mourning Muhammad Ali, it's worth remembering that we live in a country where people can break down barriers, where they can worship their own god, where they can choose their own name, and where they can lead and follow their dreams as far as their hard work and talent will take them," Clinton told a fired up crowd of 1,200 packed into a high school gymnasium in Oxnard -- her first campaign rally since the boxing legend's passing. "I've always believed that in America it doesn't matter where your parents were born or what color your skin is, we're judged by our words and our deeds, not our race, not our ethnicity, not our religion," she added. Ali changed his name from Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam after becoming heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Clinton made the comments about Ali after laying into Trump for his comments on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over one of the lawsuits against Trump University. Trump has said Curiel has "an absolute conflict" of interest regarding the case because "of Mexican heritage." "He is trying to distract people by making a prejudiced bigoted attack," Clinton exclaimed today. "Judge Curiel is as much of an American as I am and he is as much of an American as Donald Trump is," she continued, "But he has Mexican roots, so to Donald Trump that means he can't do his job." Just before these remarks, Clinton tweeted about Muhammad Ali, who passed away on Friday at the age of 74. "Muhammad Ali really was The Greatest -- unmatched not just in power and skill, but also in courage and conscience. Think of his family," she wrote. Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, is expected to deliver the eulogy at Ali's funeral service next week. Ali's Unlikely Friendship With Sportscaster Howard Cosell Muhammad Ali will always be remembered both for his powerful jabs in the ring and his playful barbs outside -- and one man who was a frequent foil for his one liners was ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell. Ali was a brash, young black boxing champ from Louisville, Kentucky, and Cosell was a Jewish sports reporter from Brooklyn -- but the two formed an unlikely friendship. For over 30 years, they played their roles to perfection -- Cosell as the pompous commentator, and Ali had just the needle to puncture that pomposity. But there was also genuine respect and affection -- especially when Ali felt slighted by others. When Ali adopted a Muslim name, so many people refused to call him Muhammad. Cosell was one of the first reporters to address him by his chosen name. And when Ali was banned from boxing and imprisoned for using refusing to be drafted, Cosell stood by him. And in a touching moment at Ali's 50th birthday in 1992, just a few years before Cosell died, the sportscaster came to the podium to honor his friend. "All of the years, all of the times together, I've enjoyed them," Cosell said. "You're a very special man. With a very special meaning to all of the American people. I congratulate you. It's my honor. Your name is Muhammad Ali." A sad day for George Foreman with his friend now gone They were young then and, oh, so proud. Three magnificent gladiators on a collision course with history, they fought fearlessly, battling each other on the biggest stages and in the oddest places. Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The names roll off the tongue like they were made to be together. They’ve been linked together now for nearly a half century, united by the special bond created when two men step into the ring. Enemies, rivals and sometimes friends, they fought in a golden era for heavyweights. When Foreman woke up Saturday, it was with the unsettling knowledge that he was the only one left. “We were like one guy,” Foreman said. “But this morning I realized that the greatest piece of us all was Muhammad Ali.” Ali, of course, was the greatest and the worst part of being muted by Parkinson’s in his later years had to be that he couldn’t keep telling his rivals that. Not that Foreman had to be told, because he was a convert ever since shortly after the night in Africa 42 years ago that changed everything. Ali was supposed to be old, and he was supposed to be shot. It was going to be easy pickings for Foreman, a way to earn a big payday and get on with the business of fighting real fighters. “I heard rumours Muhammad Ali was out of money and having a rough time,” Foreman said. “If I took the fight with him he could make $5 million. I said that’s good, I’ll give him a chance to make a few bucks and kill him.” Foreman could afford to be charitable. He had knocked Frazier down six times in two rounds the year before, and stopped Ali’s nemesis, Ken Norton, in the second round of his last fight. Big and strong, he had never lost as a pro and was the most fearsome slugger around. “I thought I could beat anybody,” he said from his Houston home. “I devastated Frazier and Norton. I thought this would be the easiest fight of my life. I’d run all over him.” Ali had other plans in the early morning heat in Kinshasa, Zaire. He took Foreman’s biggest punches early, taunting him all the way. “Is that all you got George?” Ali said after each punch landed. “I knew I was in trouble,” Foreman recalled. “I knew this was something different. I put everything I had into the third round and he was still standing.” Ali would famously employ his rope-a-dope strategy to wear Foreman out before suddenly unleashing a flurry of punches in the eighth round that floored him. Ali was the heavyweight champion once again, much to the delight of the crowd who spent much of the fight shouting “Ali booma-ya (Ali kill him).” The fight didn’t just restore a title. It restored the faith of boxing fans in Ali, allowing him to fight for six more years. Foreman would soon be out of boxing, content to be a preacher in his Texas church for the better part of a decade before making a remarkable comeback that would end with him knocking out Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever. He resented Ali at first, and had no plans to become his friend. But Ali began calling, trying to get him to come out of retirement and take care of Norton, who still had Ali’s number. “He said, ‘George, I need you to do me a favour. You can beat Norton and I can’t. I’ll let you use my training camp and everything,'” Foreman recalled. “I said I’m a preacher now and am not coming back and he said, ‘Remember what David did to Goliath? You can come back and fight for God.'” Foreman would wait until Ali was retired to come back, but still their friendship grew. “I loved the guy,” Foreman said. “There was something about him, you see his face and you have to smile. My heart would beat fast around him. It was like the most exciting human being I ever met in my life.” Foreman watched in dismay as the years and the Parkinson’s took their toll on his friend. Before, they had talked on the phone and Ali would come down to Houston to visit. In his later years, though, Foreman had to be content with memories of a better time. Frazier died in 2011, Ali didn’t travel nearly as much, and he could no longer talk on the phone. He’s proud to be one of the three. He’s also sad his friend is gone and he’s only one left. “He was the greatest man I ever knew,” Foreman said. “People say he was the greatest heavyweight, but I say that’s a putdown. He was simply the greatest man, period.” ____ Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist and the boxing writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg Ali found icon status in blending politics, activism, sports NEW YORK, N.Y. – During the Beatles’ first visit to the United States in 1964, clever publicity agents arranged a meeting with Cassius Clay, then training for the bout that would make him heavyweight champion. The result was a memorable photo of a whooping Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, standing astride four “knockout victims.” They were two emerging cultural forces beginning their path to global fame. But as popular as the Beatles became, it was Ali who went on to become the most recognized person in the world. That picture was among the first to show him growing into that persona alongside the major cultural, political and entertainment figures of the era. For a generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Ali was far more than a boxer. With a personality that could deftly dance and connect politics and entertainment, activism and athletics, his identity blended boundaries. He was an entertainer, a man at the centre of swirling political and cultural change, a hero and a villain to many for his brash self-assuredness. “Part of Muhammad’s greatness was his ability to be different things to different people,” retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote on Facebook Saturday. “To sports fans he was an unparalleled champion of the world, faster and smarter than any heavyweight before. To athletes, he was a model of physical perfection and shrewd business acumen. To the anti-establishment youth of the 1960s, he was a defiant voice against the Vietnam War and the draft. To the Muslim community, he was a pious pioneer testing America’s purported religious tolerance. To the African-American community, he was a black man who faced overwhelming bigotry the way he faced every opponent in the ring: fearlessly.” The stoic generation that had fought World War II returned home to raise children who became defined by rebelliousness, impatience, an unwillingness to accept things the way they were. Few people embodied that spirit quite like Ali. To his job, he brought a joy and brutal efficiency. Ali didn’t just beat opponents; he predicted which round he’d deliver the whuppin’. He spouted poetry while mugging for the camera. Ali talked trash before the phrase was even invented. “This might shock and amaze ya, but I’m going to destroy Joe Frazier,” he said. Much of it was good-natured, although his battles with Frazier later became ugly and personal. Ali wasn’t simply a loudmouth, since his beauty and grace within the ring delivered on the promises. He was like Michael Jordan became in another era, an athlete whose excellence could be appreciated by close and casual followers of his sport. But even Jordan, at the height of his fame, couldn’t reach the profile that Ali did. Outside the ring, the court fight over Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam War cost him three years at the peak of his career but earned him respect among the growing number of people turning against the war. His conversion to Islam, with his abandonment of the birth name Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., tested the deepness of Americans’ support for religious freedom, five decades before a presidential candidate talked openly about banning Muslims from coming to the United States. It all made Ali the subject of countless arguments in playgrounds, bars, living rooms and offices. Everyone took sides when Ali returned from his suspension for refusing to join the military to fight Frazier. Whether or not you rooted for Ali often had little to do with boxing. And think of it: When’s the last time you argued with anyone about a heavyweight championship boxing match? In a civil rights era when many Americans still denied the very humanity of black men, Ali became one of the most recognizable people on Earth. “One of the reasons the civil rights movement went forward was that black people were able to overcome their fear,” HBO host Bryant Gumbel told Ali biographer Thomas Hauser. “And I honestly believe that, for many black Americans, that came from watching Muhammad Ali. He simply refused to be afraid. And being that way, he gave other people courage.” Ali’s transcendent force his comic bravado, physical beauty and insistence on being the master of his own story made him the athlete most favoured by singers, intellectuals, filmmakers and other artists and entertainers. He socialized with Sam Cooke, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton. Ali’s verbal sparring with sportscaster Howard Cosell helped make the latter’s career. When Ali travelled to Zaire in 1974 for his “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman, he was joined by James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba and other top musicians. His legacy is captured in songs and prose that span decades. Author David Maraniss, who wrote about Ali in “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World,” called him a “gift to writers because he offered so many themes. Bravery. Pride. Humor. Blackness. Universality. “He was complex and contradictory yet simple and clear in what he said and what he represented,” Maraniss told the AP. Ali’s fight against Foreman, and the odd conditions under which it was fought, became the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, “When We Were Kings.” In 2001, actor Will Smith starred in a Hollywood story of the boxer’s life, “Ali.” Ali inspired songs from around the world. John Lennon borrowed Ali’s “I’m the Greatest” catchphrase for a song that he gave to Ringo Starr. The 1977 biopic “The Greatest” was soon forgotten, but not the theme song later immortalized by Whitney Houston, “The Greatest Love of All.” Rappers Jay Z, Kanye West, Nas, Common and Will Smith referenced Ali in their lyrics. In 1988, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka of Nigerian captured an ailing, but still vital man in “Muhammad Ali at the Ringside, 1985.” He wrote: “Promoters, handlers, it’s time to throw in the towel. Parkinson’s, polysyllables have failed to tease a rhyme from the once nimble Louisville lips. The camera flees, distressed. But not before the fire of battle flashes in those eyes, rekindled by the moment’s urge to centre stage.” Parkinson’s disease quieted the man himself in his later years. The reception given to a halting Ali as he lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996 made it clear he had made the transition from a polarizing to beloved figure. There may be no more proof of his legacy than in those who remember him. President Barack Obama keeps a pair of boxing gloves worn by Ali in his private study. “He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved,” Obama said. “But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves.” Obamas mourn Muhammad Ali: “We pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace” PHOENIX, AZ - APRIL 12: A general view of atmosphere at Muhammad Ali's Celebrity Fight Night XX held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa on April 12, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Celebrity Fight Night) PHOENIX, AZ - APRIL 12: A general view of atmosphere at Muhammad Ali's Celebrity Fight Night XX held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa on April 12, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Celebrity Fight Night) WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on Saturday mourned the loss of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. “Muhammad Ali shook up the world,” the Obamas said in a statement released by the White House. “And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace.” Ali, 74, died Friday after a lengthy battle against Parkinson’s disease. Critics Notebook: The Big Screen Was Too Small For Muhammad Alis Charisma “You think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned? Just wait till I whip George Foreman’s behind...” The poet laureate of the boxing ring, Muhammad Ali was a natural screen performer, effortlessly blurring the line between sports and show business. Quite apart from being arguably the greatest boxing champion in history, and certainly the most beloved, his mischievous wit and towering self-confidence made him into a magnetic showman. He once called himself the "Elvis of boxing.” For once, he was being modest: He was the Elvis, the James Brown and the Marlon Brando of boxing rolled into one. Cameras adored him, and the feeling was mutual. Ali was The Greatest, the Louisville Lip, the Black Superman. And he never let you forget it. Ever since Ali first ditched his “slave name” of Cassius Clay, earning worldwide infamy as an anti-war protestor, Muslim convert and contentious civil rights champion, filmmakers have tried to squeeze his outsized charisma into the reductive frame of the big screen. But always with mixed results. He may have had a high-wattage movie-star personality, but it mostly proved too volatile, too contradictory, too complex for any simplifying cinematic gaze. In his prime, the real Ali was forever dancing around the ring, floating and stinging, myth-making and mystifying. Movies could barely keep up with the constant rope-a-dope of his colorful life story. Ali was not well served by dramatizations of his life, even when he played the starring role himself. InThe Greatest(1977), made while he was still boxing, the three-time world champion stiffly impersonates his younger self as an anodyne biopic hero. Ali’s loose-cannon braggadocio seems defeated by the demands of scripted acting, especially when paired with screen heavyweights like James Earl Jones, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Duvall. The death of director Tom Gries during production did not help matters. Still, at least the fight footage looks genuine, mainly because it is. A later attempt to make a more measured biopic,Ali: An American Hero(2000) stars David Ramsey as the boxing legend. Though Leon Ichaso’s made-for-TV drama is a little more frank about his stormy private life and political battles, it is low on depth or insight, cramming too many events into its short running time. Ramsey’s interpretation captures some of Ali’s regal arrogance, but not enough of his mirth, mischief and mania. The most robust attempt yet to dramatize this story wasAli(2001), a high-profile star vehicle that fell to Michael Mann after years in development with Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and others. Physically, the lean and lanky Will Smith was not an obvious choice of lead, though he bulks up impressively and faithfully reproduces Ali’s vocal mannerisms. Smith reportedly declined the role at first, but Ali changed his mind by insisting the artist formerly known as The Fresh Prince was the only actor pretty enough to do him justice. Even if this story is hype and folklore, we really want it to be true. Mann compresses Ali’s life down to his most eventful decade, recreating the period in forensic detail, showing his darker side alongside his weapons-grade charm. Even so, this epic treatment feels oddly flat, its superbly orchestrated fight scenes let down by lifeless dramatic vignettes. Stretched over three hours,Alimistakes bigness for greatness, bombast for brio. Numerous documentaries have also been made about Ali. One of the earliest isAKA Cassius Clay(1970), directed by boxing promoter Jim Jacobs in the depths of Ali’s long enforced career hiatus, when his hopes of regaining past glory seemed remote. It features Ali and legendary boxing trainer Cus D’Amato reviewing clips of the boxer’s past fights, debating his greatness, and squaring up for a mock punch-up. It is an intriguing curio but, inevitably, it predates the more interesting second act. Among the more notable recent additions to this non-fiction canon is Pete McCormick’sFacing Ali(2009), in which former rivals and sparring partners pay tribute to the champ. Ali himself only appears in archive footage but first-hand interviewees include George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, Leon Spinks and Henry Cooper, who makes the claim that Ali’s decline into Parkinson’s was likely caused by too many blows to the head. Also worth seeing is Bill Siegel’s Tribeca entryThe Trials of Muhammad Ali(2013), a dry but engaging history lesson focused on the embattled boxer’s political and religious struggles during his long exile from the ring. Neither is a fully rounded portrait, but both are thorough and careful to avoid hagiography. Of course, few would dispute that the best documentary vehicle for Ali’s explosive screen showmanship is Leon Gast’s Oscar-winnerWhen We Were Kings(1996) — a time capsule of the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” comeback fight in Zaire in 1974, when a 32-year-old Ali sensationally reclaimed his title from George Foreman seven years after it was stripped from him. Hanging around in Kinshasa for weeks while the fight is delayed, Gast gains enviable access to Ali for interviews and training footage. As the once and future king of the ring runs along dusty African backroads, adoring locals spur him on with the rousing chant “Ali bomaye!” (“Ali, kill him!”), a slogan which passed into pop-culture legend. Rescued from the vaults after two decades in legal limbo, with help from co-producer Taylor Hackford,When We Were Kingsis an audiovisual treasure chest of music and politics, big egos and Afro-centric pride. Between cameos by Don King, James Brown, Miriam Makeba, Spike Lee, B.B. King, Norman Mailer and more, Gast’s film captures Ali in multiple moods, from inspirational icon to boorish bully. The end result is bigger than a mere sports movie — more like a richly rewarding record of a momentous comeback and a highly charged period in African-American history. At the 1997 Academy Awards, long-time friends Ali and Foreman pointedly came onstage together. Just likeWhen We Were Kingsis a boxing movie for non-boxing fans, Ali himself was a sporting superstar for people with zero interest in sports. He was the people’s champion, leaving a deep imprint on20thcentury sport, culture, politics and race relations. But his cinematic legacy is scrappy, largely because his heavyweight personality was too big for even the biggest screen. The Elvis of boxing has left the building. A sad day for George Foreman with his friend now gone They were young then and, oh, so proud. Three magnificent gladiators on a collision course with history, they fought fearlessly, battling each other on the biggest stages and in the oddest places. Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The names roll off the tongue like they were made to be together. They’ve been linked together now for nearly a half century, united by the special bond created when two men step into the ring. Enemies, rivals and sometimes friends, they fought in a golden era for heavyweights. When Foreman woke up Saturday, it was with the unsettling knowledge that he was the only one left. “We were like one guy,” Foreman said. “But this morning I realized that the greatest piece of us all was Muhammad Ali.” Ali, of course, was the greatest and the worst part of being muted by Parkinson’s in his later years had to be that he couldn’t keep telling his rivals that. Not that Foreman had to be told, because he was a convert ever since shortly after the night in Africa 42 years ago that changed everything. Ali was supposed to be old, and he was supposed to be shot. It was going to be easy pickings for Foreman, a way to earn a big payday and get on with the business of fighting real fighters. “I heard rumours Muhammad Ali was out of money and having a rough time,” Foreman said. “If I took the fight with him he could make $5 million. I said that’s good, I’ll give him a chance to make a few bucks and kill him.” Foreman could afford to be charitable. He had knocked Frazier down six times in two rounds the year before, and stopped Ali’s nemesis, Ken Norton, in the second round of his last fight. Big and strong, he had never lost as a pro and was the most fearsome slugger around. “I thought I could beat anybody,” he said from his Houston home. “I devastated Frazier and Norton. I thought this would be the easiest fight of my life. I’d run all over him.” Ali had other plans in the early morning heat in Kinshasa, Zaire. He took Foreman’s biggest punches early, taunting him all the way. “Is that all you got George?” Ali said after each punch landed. “I knew I was in trouble,” Foreman recalled. “I knew this was something different. I put everything I had into the third round and he was still standing.” Ali would famously employ his rope-a-dope strategy to wear Foreman out before suddenly unleashing a flurry of punches in the eighth round that floored him. Ali was the heavyweight champion once again, much to the delight of the crowd who spent much of the fight shouting “Ali booma-ya (Ali kill him).” The fight didn’t just restore a title. It restored the faith of boxing fans in Ali, allowing him to fight for six more years. Foreman would soon be out of boxing, content to be a preacher in his Texas church for the better part of a decade before making a remarkable comeback that would end with him knocking out Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever. He resented Ali at first, and had no plans to become his friend. But Ali began calling, trying to get him to come out of retirement and take care of Norton, who still had Ali’s number. “He said, ‘George, I need you to do me a favour. You can beat Norton and I can’t. I’ll let you use my training camp and everything,'” Foreman recalled. “I said I’m a preacher now and am not coming back and he said, ‘Remember what David did to Goliath? You can come back and fight for God.'” Foreman would wait until Ali was retired to come back, but still their friendship grew. “I loved the guy,” Foreman said. “There was something about him, you see his face and you have to smile. My heart would beat fast around him. It was like the most exciting human being I ever met in my life.” Foreman watched in dismay as the years and the Parkinson’s took their toll on his friend. Before, they had talked on the phone and Ali would come down to Houston to visit. In his later years, though, Foreman had to be content with memories of a better time. Frazier died in 2011, Ali didn’t travel nearly as much, and he could no longer talk on the phone. He’s proud to be one of the three. He’s also sad his friend is gone and he’s only one left. “He was the greatest man I ever knew,” Foreman said. “People say he was the greatest heavyweight, but I say that’s a putdown. He was simply the greatest man, period.” ____ Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist and the boxing writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg A sad day for George Foreman with his friend now gone They were young then and, oh, so proud. Three magnificent gladiators on a collision course with history, they fought fearlessly, battling each other on the biggest stages and in the oddest places. Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The names roll off the tongue like they were made to be together. They’ve been linked together now for nearly a half century, united by the special bond created when two men step into the ring. Enemies, rivals and sometimes friends, they fought in a golden era for heavyweights. When Foreman woke up Saturday, it was with the unsettling knowledge that he was the only one left. “We were like one guy,” Foreman said. “But this morning I realized that the greatest piece of us all was Muhammad Ali.” Ali, of course, was the greatest and the worst part of being muted by Parkinson’s in his later years had to be that he couldn’t keep telling his rivals that. Not that Foreman had to be told, because he was a convert ever since shortly after the night in Africa 42 years ago that changed everything. Ali was supposed to be old, and he was supposed to be shot. It was going to be easy pickings for Foreman, a way to earn a big payday and get on with the business of fighting real fighters. “I heard rumours Muhammad Ali was out of money and having a rough time,” Foreman said. “If I took the fight with him he could make $5 million. I said that’s good, I’ll give him a chance to make a few bucks and kill him.” Foreman could afford to be charitable. He had knocked Frazier down six times in two rounds the year before, and stopped Ali’s nemesis, Ken Norton, in the second round of his last fight. Big and strong, he had never lost as a pro and was the most fearsome slugger around. “I thought I could beat anybody,” he said from his Houston home. “I devastated Frazier and Norton. I thought this would be the easiest fight of my life. I’d run all over him.” Ali had other plans in the early morning heat in Kinshasa, Zaire. He took Foreman’s biggest punches early, taunting him all the way. “Is that all you got George?” Ali said after each punch landed. “I knew I was in trouble,” Foreman recalled. “I knew this was something different. I put everything I had into the third round and he was still standing.” Ali would famously employ his rope-a-dope strategy to wear Foreman out before suddenly unleashing a flurry of punches in the eighth round that floored him. Ali was the heavyweight champion once again, much to the delight of the crowd who spent much of the fight shouting “Ali booma-ya (Ali kill him).” The fight didn’t just restore a title. It restored the faith of boxing fans in Ali, allowing him to fight for six more years. Foreman would soon be out of boxing, content to be a preacher in his Texas church for the better part of a decade before making a remarkable comeback that would end with him knocking out Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever. He resented Ali at first, and had no plans to become his friend. But Ali began calling, trying to get him to come out of retirement and take care of Norton, who still had Ali’s number. “He said, ‘George, I need you to do me a favour. You can beat Norton and I can’t. I’ll let you use my training camp and everything,'” Foreman recalled. “I said I’m a preacher now and am not coming back and he said, ‘Remember what David did to Goliath? You can come back and fight for God.'” Foreman would wait until Ali was retired to come back, but still their friendship grew. “I loved the guy,” Foreman said. “There was something about him, you see his face and you have to smile. My heart would beat fast around him. It was like the most exciting human being I ever met in my life.” Foreman watched in dismay as the years and the Parkinson’s took their toll on his friend. Before, they had talked on the phone and Ali would come down to Houston to visit. In his later years, though, Foreman had to be content with memories of a better time. Frazier died in 2011, Ali didn’t travel nearly as much, and he could no longer talk on the phone. He’s proud to be one of the three. He’s also sad his friend is gone and he’s only one left. “He was the greatest man I ever knew,” Foreman said. “People say he was the greatest heavyweight, but I say that’s a putdown. He was simply the greatest man, period.” ____ Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist and the boxing writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg A sad day for George Foreman with his friend now gone They were young then and, oh, so proud. Three magnificent gladiators on a collision course with history, they fought fearlessly, battling each other on the biggest stages and in the oddest places. Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The names roll off the tongue like they were made to be together. They've been linked together now for nearly a half century, united by the special bond created when two men step into the ring. Enemies, rivals and sometimes friends, they fought in a golden era for heavyweights. When Foreman woke up Saturday, it was with the unsettling knowledge that he was the only one left. "We were like one guy," Foreman said. "But this morning I realized that the greatest piece of us all was Muhammad Ali." Ali, of course, was the greatest and the worst part of being muted by Parkinson's in his later years had to be that he couldn't keep telling his rivals that. Not that Foreman had to be told, because he was a convert ever since shortly after the night in Africa 42 years ago that changed everything. Ali was supposed to be old, and he was supposed to be shot. It was going to be easy pickings for Foreman, a way to earn a big payday and get on with the business of fighting real fighters. "I heard rumors Muhammad Ali was out of money and having a rough time," Foreman said. "If I took the fight with him he could make $5 million. I said that's good, I'll give him a chance to make a few bucks and kill him." Foreman could afford to be charitable. He had knocked Frazier down six times in two rounds the year before, and stopped Ali's nemesis, Ken Norton, in the second round of his last fight. Big and strong, he had never lost as a pro and was the most fearsome slugger around. "I thought I could beat anybody," he said from his Houston home. "I devastated Frazier and Norton. I thought this would be the easiest fight of my life. I'd run all over him." Ali had other plans in the early morning heat in Kinshasa, Zaire. He took Foreman's biggest punches early, taunting him all the way. "Is that all you got George?" Ali said after each punch landed. "I knew I was in trouble," Foreman recalled. "I knew this was something different. I put everything I had into the third round and he was still standing." Ali would famously employ his rope-a-dope strategy to wear Foreman out before suddenly unleashing a flurry of punches in the eighth round that floored him. Ali was the heavyweight champion once again, much to the delight of the crowd who spent much of the fight shouting "Ali booma-ya (Ali kill him)." The fight didn't just restore a title. It restored the faith of boxing fans in Ali, allowing him to fight for six more years. Foreman would soon be out of boxing, content to be a preacher in his Texas church for the better part of a decade before making a remarkable comeback that would end with him knocking out Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever. He resented Ali at first, and had no plans to become his friend. But Ali began calling, trying to get him to come out of retirement and take care of Norton, who still had Ali's number. "He said, 'George, I need you to do me a favor. You can beat Norton and I can't. I'll let you use my training camp and everything,'" Foreman recalled. "I said I'm a preacher now and am not coming back and he said, 'Remember what David did to Goliath? You can come back and fight for God.'" Foreman would wait until Ali was retired to come back, but still their friendship grew. "I loved the guy," Foreman said. "There was something about him, you see his face and you have to smile. My heart would beat fast around him. It was like the most exciting human being I ever met in my life." Foreman watched in dismay as the years and the Parkinson's took their toll on his friend. Before, they had talked on the phone and Ali would come down to Houston to visit. In his later years, though, Foreman had to be content with memories of a better time. Frazier died in 2011, Ali didn't travel nearly as much, and he could no longer talk on the phone. He's proud to be one of the three. He's also sad his friend is gone and he's only one left. "He was the greatest man I ever knew," Foreman said. "People say he was the greatest heavyweight, but I say that's a putdown. He was simply the greatest man, period." ____ Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist and the boxing writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg The day Muhammad Ali met the Beatles It's hard to imagine the scene from 1964 now - someone barely having a clue who the Beatles were, or the man who would become Muhammad Ali. But that's how things were when US journalist Robert Lipsyte found himself face to face with these future legends more than 50 years ago, through a chance of publicity matchmaking. The New York Times plucked Lipsyte from the feature department to head for Miami Beach to cover the heavyweight boxing title fight between champ Sonny Liston and the upstart Cassius Clay, who would later change his name to Ali. He barely knew who Clay was, and even less about the mop-top haired singers from Liverpool who happened to show up during his visit. "I wasn't a teenage girl," Lipsyte said. "I really didn't know who the Beatles were or what they would become." A few days earlier they appeared for the first time on American television's massively popular Ed Sullivan Show, having enjoyed their first US number one single I Want To Hold Your Hand. Now they were being led up a stairway in the gym where Clay trained, with an unwitting Lipsyte swept along. "They're little guys with lots of hair and all wearing white terrycloth cabana jackets," Lipsyte said. "They were yelling and cursing because they had just been told Clay wasn't there yet, and they wanted to leave. But these big security types just kind of herded them up the stairs." Lipsyte found himself in a dressing room with the Beatles, who were not at all happy. They had gone earlier to Liston's training, but Liston took one look at them and refused to pose for pictures. Lipsyte introduced himself and asked for their prediction, which was for a first-round Liston knockout. Then they all waited for 10 or 15 minutes, with the Beatles complaining the whole time, for Clay to arrive. "But suddenly the door burst open and there he is. He's the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen. He kind of glows and he's laughing, and he says, 'Come on, Beatles, let's go make some money.'" Make some money they did. In photos that would become legendary, Clay is shown knocking the Beatles down like dominoes, and standing over them sprawled out in the ring. It was as if they had all rehearsed it beforehand, Lipsyte said. "There was a lot of laughter, and then they're gone, off to their limo," he said. "Cassius then started training in front of people who paid 50 cents to get in." After the workout, Clay went back to the dressing room for a rubdown, and Lipsyte crowded in with him. Clay recognized him as being in the room earlier, and beckoned him over with a question. "Who were those little sissies?" he asked. Clay, of course, would beat Liston and go on to even greater things as Muhammad Ali. Lipsyte would become a columnist for the Times and cover him for years. And the Beatles? They ended up doing OK, too.	i don't know
What SI unit of power, equivalent to one Joule per second, is named after a Scottish Inventor who was born on January 19, 1736?	watts - Memidex dictionary/thesaurus watts noun (power unit) a unit of power equal to 1 joule per second; the power dissipated by a current of 1 ampere flowing across a resistance of 1 ohm Synonyms: W [acronym]. Type of: power unit. Part of: horsepower \|kilowatt Watts (poet) an English poet and theologian (born: 1674 – died: 1748) Synonyms: Isaac Watts. Type of: poet. Type of: theologian Etymology summary [plural] \| W, w \| W. \| w. \| w/ "w":, \| the 23rd letter of the English alphabet, a semivowel. \| any spoken sound represented by the letter "W" or "w", as in "way, bewitch", or "row". ... (26 of 182 words, 48 definitions) \| w. [abbreviation, sense-specific] the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second and equal to the ... \| "Watt" : "James Watt": 1736-1819, Scottish engineer and inventor. (25 of 53 words, 2 definitions, pronunciations) [sense-specific] \| ... "André Watts": born 1946, United States concert pianist, born in Germany. \| "George Frederick Watts": 1817-1904, English painter and sculptor. \| ... (19 of 35 words, 3 definitions, pronunciations) watt \| watts [plural] In the International System of Units, the derived unit of power; the power of a system in which one joule of energy is transferred per second. Symbol: W (28 of 54 words, pronunciations) a unit for measuring electrical power, measured in joules per second (11 of 40 words, 1 usage example, pronunciation) Wikipedia: Watt \| WOT \| W a derived unit of power in the International System of Units, named after the Scottish engineer James Watt. The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion or transfer. One watt is the rate at which work is done when... (45 of 2561 words) Watts [disambiguation] may refer to: Watt, a unit of power \| Watts (surname), the surname of several people \| Watts S. Humphrey (1927-2010), American software engineer often called the father of software quality \| Watts (producer), a Canadian record producer \| Watts family... (37 of 353 words, 40 definitions) watt \| Watt \| James Watt [sense-specific] the derived SI unit of power, equal to 1 joule per second; the power ... \| 1736-1819, Scottish engineer and inventor. His fundamental improvements to ... (24 of 470 words, 2 definitions, 8 usage examples, pronunciations) Watts \| watt \| George Frederick Watts [sense-specific] \| Isaac Watts [sense-specific] 1817-1904, English painter and sculptor, noted especially for his painting ... \| 1674-1748, English hymn-writer \| the derived SI unit of power, equal ... (21 of 428 words, 3 definitions, 9 usage examples, pronunciations) Columbia Encyclopedia: watt \| kilowatt abbreviation W, unit of power, or work done per unit time, equal to 1 joule per second. It's used as a measure of electrical and mechanical power. One ... (28 of 100 words) www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0851648.html Watts residential section of south central Los Angeles. Named after C. H. Watts, a Pasadena realtor, the section became part of Los Angeles in 1926. Artist ... (25 of 121 words) watt \| W [abbreviation] the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second, corresponding to the rate of consumption of energy in an electric circuit where the ... (25 of 75 words, pronunciation) oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/watt Watts Syllabification: (Watts) \| a district in southern Los Angeles in California, home to much of the black population of the city. (20 of 38 words, 2 definitions, pronunciation) watt [unit of measurement] unit of power in the International System of Units equal to one joule of work performed per second, or to 1/746 horsepower. An ... (23 of 70 words) Watts [district, Los Angeles, California, United States] southwestern district of Los Angeles, California, U.S. The district, originally called Mud Town, was renamed in 1900 for C.H. Watts, a Pasadena ... watt \| Watt \| W [abbreviation, sense-specific] the basic unit of electric, mechanical, or thermal power in the SI and MKS ... \| Watt, James 1736-1819; Scot. engineer & inventor: pioneer in the ... (25 of 70 words, 2 definitions, pronunciations) Watts \| Watts, Isaac \| Isaac Watts (Born: 1674 – Died: 1748) English clergyman & writer of hymns (6 of 10 words, pronunciation) Merriam-Webster: watt the absolute meter-kilogram-second unit of power equal to the work done at the rate of one joule per second or to the power produced by a current of ... (28 of 65 words, pronunciation) section of Los Angeles, California south of the downtown district (10 of 16 words, pronunciation) George Frederic 1817-1904 England painter and sculptor (7 of 14 words, pronunciation) Isaac 1674-1748 England theologian and hymn writer (7 of 14 words) watt \| Watt \| James Watt \| W [abbreviation] An International System unit of power equal to one joule per second. \| British engineer and inventor who made fundamental improvements in the steam ... (23 of 51 words, 2 definitions, pronunciations) www.yourdictionary.com/watt Watts \| George Frederick Watts \| Isaac Watts A district of Los Angeles, California. It was the scene of severe racial tensions and violence in 1965 and 1992. \| British painter noted for his ... (25 of 58 words, 3 definitions, pronunciation)	Watt
One of 110 recipients during the Spanish American war, which total bad-ass did President Bill Clinton award a posthumous Medal of Honor to on January 16, 2001?	Watt, James, 1736-1819 - Credo Reference Embedding articles is subject to our Terms of use . [{"style":"mla","pubnonperiodical":{"title":"Topic Pages","city":"Boston","publisher":"Credo Reference Publisher Contributors","year":2017,"state":"MA"},"pubtype":{"main":"pubnonperiodical","suffix":"pubdatabase"},"pubdatabase":{"year":"2017","month":"January","day":"19","yearaccessed":"2017","monthaccessed":"January","dayaccessed":"19","service":"Credo Reference","db":"Credo Reference","searchtext":"http://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/watt_james_1736_1819"},"source":"chapter","chapter":{"title":"Watt, James, 1736-1819","type":"essay"}}] Topic Page: Watt, James, 1736-1819 Summary Article: Watt, James from The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide Image from: James Watt, oil painting by H. Howard; in the... in Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Scottish engineer who developed the steam engine in the 1760s, making Thomas Newcomen's engine vastly more efficient by cooling steam in a condenser separate from the main cylinder. He eventually made a double-acting machine that supplied power with both directions of the piston and developed rotary motion. He also invented devices associated with the steam engine, artistic instruments and a copying process, and devised the horsepower as a description of an engine's rate of working. The modern unit of power, the watt, is named after him. At Glasgow University, Watt was asked to repair a small working model of Newcomen's steam engine, which was unpredictable and difficult to operate without air entering the cylinder and destroying the vacuum. It was also extremely costly to run in terms of the coal required to keep a large enough head of steam in a practical engine. Newcomen's engine was impractical for widespread use in the new mills that were beginning to appear in the early years of the Industrial Revolution; although the concept was correct, it needed further development for commercial use. In Newcomen's engine, the steam in the cylinder was condensed by a jet of water, creating a vacuum. The vacuum, in turn, was filled during the power stroke by the atmosphere pressing the piston to the bottom of the cylinder. On each stroke the cylinder was heated by the steam and cooled by the injected water, thus absorbing a tremendous amount of heat. Watt investigated the properties of steam and made measurements of boilers and pistons. He had the idea of a separate condenser (separate from the piston) that would allow the cylinder to be kept hot, and the condenser fairly cold by lagging (covering with an insulating material), thus improving the thermal efficiency. Working with manufacturer Matthew Boulton in 1782, Watt improved his machine by making it double-acting. Using a mechanical linkage known as ‘parallel motion’ and an extra set of valves, the engine was made to drive on both the forward and backward strokes of the piston, and a ‘sun-and-planet’ gear (also devised by Watt in 1781) allowed rotary motion to be produced. Watt's engine could now drive a machine with a forward and backwards, up and down, and circular motion. This new and highly adaptable engine was quickly adopted by cotton and woollen mills. During the period 1775–90, Watt developed the automatic centrifugal governor (controller), which cut off the steam when the engine began to work too quickly and turned it on again when it had slowed sufficiently to a safe speed. He also created a steam engine indicator that showed steam pressure and the degree of vacuum within the cylinder. Because of the secretarial duties connected with his business, Watt developed a way of copying letters and drawings with a chemical process that was replaced only with the invention of the typewriter and photocopier. Watt devised a mathematically rational method to rate the capability of his engines by considering the rate at which horses worked. After many experiments, he concluded that a ‘horsepower’ was 33,000 lb/15,000 kg raised through 1 ft/0.3 m each minute. Watt was born in Greenock (now in Inverclyde) and trained as an instrument maker. Between 1767 and 1774 he made his living as a canal surveyor. In 1775 Boulton and Watt went into partnership and manufactured Watt's engines at the Soho Foundry, near Birmingham. Watt's original engine of 1765 is now in the Science Museum, London. essays	i don't know
Bowline, clove hitch, square, and sheepshank are all types of what?	Scouting Knots \| How to Tie Scouting Knots \| Animated Scouting Knots Welcome to Scouting Knots Selection These animated knots are described for scouts, but most of them have critical uses in other environments. The selection of knots is based on consultation with many scouting leaders and a review of the requirements by some national organizations. Choices Rather than show the Fisherman's Knot the Double Fisherman's is used because it is safer and more widely used. The Fisherman's can easily be created by substituting Overhand Knots for the Double Overhand Knots. The Sheepshank is included reluctantly for reasons explained on its page. I make no apology for also including the Constrictor and Alpine Butterfly. They are both useful and more valuable than the Sheepshank. Optional Knots Some additional knots which have been listed for teaching to scouts are described elsewhere on this website: the Water Knot , the Bowline on a Bight , the Carrick Bend , and the Sailmaker's Whipping . The Tautline Hitch is regarded as a variation of the Rolling Hitch . The Double Sheet Bend is pictured on the Sheet Bend Page . The Pipe Hitch is not described as several knots appear to share this name, one of which is the same as the Klemheist . The Masthead or Jury Knot is not described here as it appears to have limited use but you can find how to make it on the page about the Masthead Knot Mat in the decorative section. So far at least, the Cat's paw, Draw Hitch, and Honda are not included. Make a selection from the images above or go to the Options Page. Disclaimer: Any activity that involves ropes is potentially hazardous. Lives may be at risk - possibly your own. Considerable attention and effort have been made to ensure that these descriptions are accurate. However, many critical factors cannot be controlled, including: the choice of materials; the age, size, and condition of ropes; and the accuracy with which these descriptions have been followed. No responsibility is accepted for incidents arising from the use of this material. Copyright	Knot
Which state, the second to join the union, is known as the Keystone State?	Seven Essential Knots for Sailors - Sail Magazine Sailboat DIY And Repair Tips Seven Essential Knots for Sailors Seven Essential Knots for Sailors Jeff Werner \| April 1, 2015 Once you cut a piece of rope off the spool at the chandlery and bring it aboard your boat and give it a job to do, it becomes a line you have put to work. Whatever job it is performing—whether it becomes a jibsheet, a fender whip or a dockline—there is an ideal knot, hitch or bend for its given task. Types of knots fall into three general categories. The first are those tied on the end of a line and are commonly called “knots,” such as the bowline knot and the stopper knot. The second category are those used to join two lines together. They may have “bend” in their name, as in a sheet bend, because to bend, in sailor talk, means to join. The last group are those which secure a line to a cleat, piling or stanchion, and they are known as “hitches.” If you didn’t learn knots when you were young, you can still master them quickly. The key is to learn what a given knot should look like when completed, then practice tying it until you can do it with your eyes closed. When studying knots, it helps to know some terms. The ends of a line are referred to as either “working” or “standing.” The working end is free, while the standing end is secured to something. A loop formed in a line is known as a bight. Bowline The most useful knot aboard a sailboat is the bowline. It forms a fixed noose at the end of a line that cannot run or slip and is commonly used, for example, to secure sheets to the clew of a headsail. Two bowlines can also be used to connect two lines. The great advantage of a bowline is that no matter how tight it becomes after being loaded for a while, it can always be easily untied. The well known ditty for tying a bowline runs as follows: “The rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around back of the tree, and then jumps back into the hole.” The “rabbit” is the working end of the line; the “hole” and “tree” are formed in the standing end. To finish the knot properly, give a hard pull on the tree and the rabbit’s ears at the same time, so the shape of the knot is not deformed. To untie a bowline, turn the knot over and break its back by bending it downward. Form a closed loop in the line, with the working end passing over the standing end. Pass the working end through the loop, around behind the standing end, then back into the loop. Give a hard pull to close the knot up tight. To untie a bowline, turn the knot over and break its back by bending it downward. Stopper Knot To keep a line from pulling through a block or rope clutch, a knot should be tied in the end of it. The most secure knot for doing this is the double overhand stopper knot, known as the stopper knot for short. Unlike a simple overhand knot or a figure eight knot, this knot does not come loose easily. The easiest way to tie a true stopper knot is by using your hand as a form. Just loop the end of the line twice around the palm of your hand, tuck the working end under the two loops, and then pull the loops off your hand. Once you try it, you’ll never use a figure eight again. Working back to front, pass the working end twice around the palm of your open hand. After you’ve got two full wraps, pass the working end under the wraps on your palm away from your thumb. Then use the end to pull the knot tight as it slips off your hand. Clove Hitch This is a handy knot because it can be tied very quickly. On sailboats its usual use is for securing fender whips to a lifeline, stanchion base or toerail. It can be easily adjusted to raise or lower a fender as needed. The clove hitch can also be used to temporarily secure a dock line to a piling, but be aware that the hitch can unexpectedly work free as the boat moves around at the dock. Take one full turn around the object the line is being secured to. Then pass the line over itself as you take another turn. Finish the knot by tucking the working end under itself and pull tight. Sheet Bend Many sailors use a square knot when tying two lines together, but these often come loose when not under load. The sheet bend is more secure, is easy to untie and works much better when two lines of unequal diameter need to be tied together. As you can see in the illustration, its final form is only slightly different from a square knot, though it is tied quite differently. Form a bight in the end of one line. Pass the end of the other line through the bight from beneath and around behind both parts of the first line. Finish the knot by passing the working end of the second line under itself, then pull the knot tight. Two Half Hitches This knot has a self-explanatory name: one half hitch, followed by another half hitch. It is easy to tie and forms a running noose that can be made larger or smaller. This is the perfect hitch to use to tie a line tightly around an object. Combined with a round turn, it is an excellent way to secure a dock line to a piling. Tying two half hitches on top of a clove hitch is also the best way to keep a fender whip from slipping. Pass the line twice around the object it is being secured to. Then tie one hitch on top of the turns by passing the working end of the line behind the standing end and pulling it through. Repeat to tie the second hitch. You can tie two half hitches without taking turns first, but they are less secure this way. Rolling Hitch The rolling hitch comes to the rescue when riding turns jam a line on a winch drum. This hitch is designed not to slip. Use an extra line to tie a rolling hitch on the standing portion of a jammed line, shift the load to the extra line and you can free the jammed line. The rolling hitch will also keep any line secured to a vertical cylindrical object, such as a stanchion, from slipping. It can also be used to form an adjustable noose that doesn’t slip under load, which is handy when securing tie-downs for an awning on deck. The Boy Scouts use the same knot to tension lines secured to tent pegs, only they call it a taut line hitch. Wrap a line twice around another fixed line or post. Take a third turn by passing the working end of the first line over its standing end and then around the second line above the first two turns. Pull on the standing part of the first line and the hitch will not slip down the second line. Cleat Hitch Walk down a dock in any marina and you will see many dock lines improperly secured to cleats. A proper cleat hitch is easy to tie, very effective and it can be released under load without worrying about losing a finger in the process. Any time you make off a line on a cleat, on a dock or on deck, this is the knot to use. As you gain experience, you will begin to recognize families of knots that are related. For example, two half hitches and the cleat hitch are really clove hitches: the former is tied on the standing end of a line, while the latter is bent around the horns of a cleat. As you practice tying these seven essential knots, you will immediately recognize the look and shape of the knot when made correctly, and more important, will recognize when you have tied it incorrectly. Take one full turn around the base of the cleat, leading the line so that its standing part runs clear of the cleat. Then take a figure-eight turn around first one horn of the cleat, then the other. On the final turn pass the line under itself and pull it tight. Want to learn more about knot tying? Check out The Pocket-Sized Guide , The Above and Beyond Guide , and The See-it-to-Learn-it Guide: For those who prefer visual learning, Fair Wind Sailing School’s “Knots So Fast” video series may be your ticket to knot-tying success. In 2-3 minute videos, Capt. Dave Bello provides in-depth lessons on tying what he calls “the nine most critical knots in sailing”: the cleat hitch, reef knot, sheet bend, clove hitch, round turn & two half hitches, figure 8, rolling hitch, bowline and truckers hitch. The first 2-minute video is free and discusses knotting terminology. The second video, “The Figure Eight Knot” is also free. After that, videos can be purchased for $2.95 apiece, or $12.95 for all 10. All videos are shot in high def with dual-angle filming, meaning the viewer sees the knot from two perspectives: overhead and straight on. Once purchased, the videos are yours to watch and re-watch until you’re satisfied. Knots so Fast Videos by Fair Wind Sailing School $2.95 for one; $12.95 for ten Illustrations by Dick Everitt	i don't know
Which of the 4 annual Grand Slam tennis events is played first?	AUS Open - Latest Tennis News, Score, Tennis Player Profiles AUS Open Roger Federer Brief bio Swiss tennis player Roger Federer, dominated the sport in the early 21st century with his exceptional all-round game. Born in Basel, Switzerland his admiral career includes 17 men’s singles Grand Slam championships, the most in tennis history. Early playing history Born in 1981, Roger Federer was amongst the top junior tennis players […] Female Tennis Players Maria Sharapova Brief bio Maria Sharapova is ranked as the world’s number 4 female professional tennis player, and is from Bradenton in Florida, although born in Russia SFSR, and Soviet Union. She turned pro in April 2001, has been ranked world number one in singles by the WTA for a total of 21 weeks on five different […] Tennis Australian Open Championship Most Dramatic Tennis Australian Open Moments In its 110 year history the Tennis Australian Open and its spectators saw thousands of brilliantly played matches between some of the world’s best match play champion’s; however, some of these matches became moments in history to be remembered because their light shone just a little brighter than all the other stars over the years. Finals matches such as the 1969 men’s singles finals battle that saw the legendary Australian “Rocket” Rod Laver defeat Tony Roche in a pivotal victory on his road to become the only player that won the Grand Slam title twice. Another finals match, rated by tennis historian Steve Flink as one of the greatest tennis matches of all time, etched to memory after the 1981 defeat of number 1 ranked Chris Evert at the hands of Martina Navratilova. John McEnroe the seven time Grand Slam winner, not being one to shy away from confrontation became the first tennis player in history to be turfed from any Grand Slam Open era finals match. The Beginnings of the Australian Tennis Open Rodney George Laver enjoyed a professional career spanning 24 years and retained his position as the world No. 1 ranked professional player from 1964 until 1970. He took his first Tennis Australian Open title in 1960 after defeating Neale Fraser a fellow Australian player he went on to win the same title on another two occasions despite suffering from a ban lasting five years in the pre-Open era. He still holds an all-time male singles record of having taken 22 titles during a single season in 1962. Tennis Australian Open Championship – A Historical Synopsis Brief Biography The Tennis Australian Open Championship established itself as one of the world’s Premier tournaments staged annually during the last two weeks of January, with Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia as the elected event host. Chronologically it is the first of four annual global tennis events known as the Grand Slam, the US Open, Wimbledon, and the French Open being the other three events on the Grand Slam calendar. The championship features women’s and men’s singles; women’s and men’s mixed doubles; Junior Championships; the exhibition and legends; and wheelchair events. Prior to 1988 the competition had traditionally been played on grass; however, since 1988 the Melbourne Park tournament sought two distinctly different types of hardcourt surfaces, from 1988 to 2007 a green Rebound Ace surface was used, with a blue Plexicushion utilised since 2008 till current. The Australian Open Championship experiences extremely high attendance figures, second only to those experienced at the U.S. Open. It also became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to feature retractable roofs over all three the primary courts, namely the Hisense Arena, and since its refurbishment the Margaret Court Arena, as well as the Rod Laver Arena. The History of the Australian Tennis Open The inaugural Australasian Championship event took place in 1905 at Melbourne’s Warehouseman Cricket Ground, later renamed to Albert Reserve Tennis Centre; in addition, in 1927 the tournament became known as the Australian Championships, only in 1969 did it finally receive its final renaming to become the Australian Open.	Australian Open
John Schnatter is the founder and chairman of what pizza chain, the 3rd largest takeout and delivery pizza chain in the United States?	Grand Slam 2016: Tennis' Four Majors By The Numbers Grand Slam 2016: Tennis' Four Majors By The Numbers {{article.article.images.featured.caption}} Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Full Bio The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Loading ... With reporting by Danielle Rossingh Tennis has come full circle with the start of the 2016 Australian Open. After Serena Williams nearly captured the Calendar Year Grand Slam and Novak Djokovic capped off his historic season by winning the US Open in 2015, the 2016 season is in full swing with early rounds already underway in Melbourne. Roger Federer of Switzerland makes a forehand return to Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine during their second round match at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.(AP Photo/Vincent Thian) As the top seeds begin their quests for glory under the summer sun at Melbourne Park, let's take an in-depth look at the numbers at the center of the four fortnights which form the backbone of the ATP and WTA tour schedules. Each of the Majors claims to be the best tournament in tennis, offering spectators the best tennis they’ll ever see. Fierce competition can erupt among the events over anything and everything, from spectators and roofs to television ratings and prize money. None desires to fall behind. So, does Wimbledon's reputation as the most prestigious Major stack up with its purse? How do the courts and amenities compare in Paris and Melbourne? Does Arthur Ashe Stadium's high capacity push the US Open ahead of the pack in terms of attendance? Read on to find out... Novak Djokovic of Serbia poses with the trophy after defeating Andy Murray of Britain in the men's singles final at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian) AUSTRALIAN OPEN Typically Played: Final two weeks of January Surface: Hard court (blue Plexicussion, plays medium) Night Matches: Yes Total Staff: 8,412 2015 Attendance: 703,899 Weather Protocols: Routinely the hottest of the Majors, Australia has used the Wet Bulb Global Temperature (WBGT, a "feels like" measurement that includes wind and humidity as well as temperature) to inform its Extreme Heat Policy since 2014. The policy can be enacted once temperature reaches 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), and the WBGT reading exceeds 32.5. Chair umpires have final discretion. Revenue (2015): A$254,590,000 ($174,631,000) [Made record A$11.97M ($8.211M) profit] Total Purse (2015): A$40,000,000 ($27,437,000) Championship Prize Money: A$3,100,000 ($2,126,000) Unique Traits: Australia is often referred to as the "Happy Slam" because players, press and spectators are known to have such a good time. In possibly unrelated news, media members are given a bottle of whiskey with their credentials, and Melbourne is the only Slam to be sponsored by a gambling house (William Hill). Minutiae: The Aussie Open overtook the US Open as the most-attended Slam last year, registering 12,000 more spectators over its two weeks. Given the extreme heat that hits Melbourne in January, the tournament boasts roofs on all three of its show courts (Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and Hisense Arena). Switzerland's Stan Wawrinka holds the cup after defeating Serbia's Novak Djokovic in their final match of the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium, Sunday, June 7, 2015 in Paris. Wawrinka won 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) FRENCH OPEN Location: Stade Roland Garros, Paris Typically Played: Final week of May, first week of June Surface: Red clay (plays slow) Night Matches: No Total Staff: 10,000 2015 Attendance: 463.328 Weather Protocols: As the red clay absorbs water well, rain is rarely a deterrent to play at Roland Garros. However, as championed by the WTA, women and girls’ singles players can leave the courts for a 10 minute break between the second and third sets when the Heat Stress Index—which measures air temperature, humidity and surface temperature—is at or above 30.1 Celsius (86.18 Fahrenheit). The French Open shares this protocol with the following two Slams. A similar rule for men has been discussed for years by the ATP, to no avail. Revenue (2015): €187,300,000 ($204,719,000) Total Purse (2015): €28,028,600 ($30,365,000) Championship Prize Money: €1,800,00 ($1,967,000) Unique Traits: The tournament's distinctive red clay and Parisian flare have attracted French politicians like Jacque Chirac, European royalty, and pop stars such as Prince—who sat in the Presidential Box last year. The slow play of the clay, which blunts powerful serves and groundstrokes, has made this tournament elusive for some of tennis' greats, including Pete Sampras and Novak Djokovic. Minutiae: The smallest of the Grand Slam tournaments, the French Open has been exploring options to alleviate its cramped confines (21 acres) at Stade Roland Garros for years. There is major pushback against any grounds expansion—including a roof for Court Philippe Chatrier from a group of local residents, environmental groups and politicians. However, Paris is bidding to host the 2024 Olympics; there is hope the city's bid for the world's largest multi-sport event will influence construction positively. FILE - In this July 11, 2015, file photo, Serena Williams, of the United States, holds up the trophy after winning the women's singles final against Garbine Muguruza, of Spain, at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships in Wimbledon, London. For the fourth time, Williams has been named The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File) THE CHAMPIONSHIPS, WIMBLEDON Location: All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, London Typically Played: First two weeks of July (as of 2015) Surface: Grass (plays medium-fast) Total Staff: 6,000 2015 Attendance: 484,391 Weather Protocols: Closure of the Centre Court roof is at the discretion of tournament officials. In the interest of keeping Wimbledon an outdoor event, the roof is rarely closed ahead of a match unless the weather forecast is truly bleak. As for heat, women and girls’ singles players can leave the courts for a 10 minute break between the second and third sets when the Heat Stress Index is at or above 30.1 Celsius (86.18 Fahrenheit). Revenue (2014): £169,700,000 ($240,548,000) [It is the most profitable Slam, with £56.1M ($79.521M) made in 2014] Total Purse (2015): £26,750,000 ($37,918,000) Championship Prize Money: £1,880,000 ($2,665,000) Unique Traits: In addition to the grass, strawberries & cream is a huge tradition at Wimbledon. The venue sold 142,000 portions of English strawberries last year. The Championships is also the only Slam organized by a private club, rather than a national tennis association. The All England Club is very exclusive, boasting only about 500 members. Adding to this exclusivity is the presence of the Royal Box, known to occasionally host Queen Elizabeth as well as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Minutiae: Famously, a retractable roof was added to Centre Court—the most storied show court in tennis—in 2009, to combat delays arising from the notoriously rainy English summer. Currently, another roof is being constructed over Court 1, the second-largest show court at the All England Club. It will be ready in 2019. Flavia Pennetta, of Italy, right, and Roberta Vinci, of Italy, pose with their awards after Pennetta won their women's championship match of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) UNITED STATES OPEN Location: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Queens, New York Typically Played: Final week of August, first week of September Surface: Hard court (DecoTurf, plays medium-fast) Night Matches: Yes Total Staff: 9,000 2015 Attendance: 691,280 Weather Protocols: Play is often suspended due to rain at the US Open. Arthur Ashe Stadium is undergoing changes to alleviate this, but no new protocols are in place as of yet. The US Open is usually the hottest Major outside of Australia, but also has no extreme heat policy other than the WTA's policy for women and girls' singles players. Revenue (2013): $253,000,000 Total Purse (2015): $42,253,400 Championship Prize Money: $3,300,000 Unique Traits: Located in Flushing, Queens, the USTA National Tennis Center is the farthest venue from the city center of all the Slams (though it boasts easy access to Midtown Manhattan via the 7 Subway line). The US Open is also the only venue in which players can smell hamburgers on the court. Minutiae: Capable of accommodating 23,000 spectators, Arthur Ashe Stadium is the largest show court in the world. The Men's Final was rain-delayed to Monday for four straight years beginning in 2008, prompting the USTA to approve construction of a roof. The 6,500 ton superstructure over Ashe will be finished in time for this year's tournament. Aliko Carter is a contributor for Forbes and the SportsMoney Blog. With an eye on community impacts, he covers the NBA, sports biz and philanthropy. Find him on Twitter @alikogitare .	i don't know
The name for what alcohol translates from the Gaelic as "Water of life"?	Celtic Spirit- Irish Whiskey Scotch Whisky, Gaelic Uisce Beatha Water of Life Irish Whiskey Scotch Whisky Whiskey The Irish spell it “whiskey,” the Scots spell it “whisky.” That’s just the beginning of this longstanding dispute. Naturally, they can’t agree on which variety is superior, either. However, all can raise a toast to and concur regarding the origins of the word; it is from the Gaelic uisce beatha, translated as “The Water of Life.” Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey – each can boast devotees who exhibit near-religious reverence for their favorite brand of the potent amber liquid. So what are the actual differences between the two? Irish is said to be the smoother choice, while Scotch is said to have a more smoky flavor. The flavor difference between the two varieties originates with the different ways in which each is made. Both spirits start out the same way: barley is malted by soaking it in water, laying it out flat, and leaving it until sprouting occurs. Since Scotch distillers then dry the damp malt over a peat-fueled fire, it acquires a characteristic smokiness. By contrast, Irish distillers dry the malt in a smoke-free kiln. Subsequent steps in the production process, mashing and fermentation, are nearly identical. The mash is milled into grist. Boiling water is applied, which induces the transformation of starch into sugars. With exposure to yeast, the sugary wort liquid converts to crude alcohol. The alcoholic “wash” is heated in large copper pot stills to cull the alcohol from the water, and the distillation process begins. To give you a basis for comparison, bourbon is distilled once; Scotch, two times; but Irish whiskey is distilled three times. Following distillation, the whiskey resides in oak casks, where it is aged from five to 25 years. The last process consists of mixing the contents of many casks together, eliminating variances among casks and ensuring consistency of flavor. Tragically, for every year the whiskey sits in the cask maturing, a portion of it evaporates heavenward and is lost forever. Distillers call the evaporated portion "the angels’ share.” Use the links below to navigate to the Celtic Network’s other articles on whiskey: Irish Whiskey Scotland and Its Whiskies: The Great Whiskies and Their Landscapes by Michael Jackson Famed master Michael Jackson devotes a chapter to each of Scotland's ten premier distilleries, explaining the influence of environment and geography on the finished product. Lavishly illustrated with the gorgeous photography of Harry Cory Wright. The Whiskeys of Ireland by Peter Mulryan There is a wealth of lore – historical, economic, and cultural – surrounding the fastest-growing export coming out of Ireland. Learn the details of how whiskey is made, and about the differences between varieties of whiskeys; in addition, Mulryan includes tasting notes on 60 renowned Irish brands. The following link offers whiskey related items through AnIrishChristmas.com.	Whisky
Jill Munroe, Kelly Garrett, and Sabrina Duncan, along John Bosley were found on what late 1970s TV series?	The 50 Most Beautiful Words in the Irish Language \| Smartling The 50 Most Beautiful Words in the Irish Language A Curated Selection of Inspired Terminology Words, the Irish Language, Translation — and Why We Should Care Words are so much more than a mere compilation of letters or characters. Each word is a reflection of the people who created it, the community or culture from which it came, and in its purest form, a message that someone wanted to share with another person. That’s why translating words from one language into another is so challenging. Transferring the essence of word from one culture to another is very difficult. Translators use various techniques to get the meaning across by focusing on the message, not the words. To celebrate the beauty and complexity of words, and to highlight the importance of translation, Smartling is proud to present 50 of the most beautiful words in the Irish language. Irish (also known to people outside of Ireland as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic) is spoken by about 1.6 million people with varying degrees of fluency. Usage of the language has been in decline, but Irish was spoken quite widely in fairly recent memory. For example, there were nearly half a million people speaking Irish in the United States in the 1890s. About 36 million Americans have Irish ancestry, and many of their grandparents and great-grandparents spoke Irish. Today, you can use Facebook in Irish and can even watch a soap opera in Irish (with English subtitles if you don’t speak it). Technology is breathing new life into languages that might have otherwise had less chance of survival. Ireland has always been an important country for language, and today, it’s one of the most important hubs in the world for translation and localization. All of us here at Smartling hope you’ll enjoy this collection of Irish language terms, selected for you with care by Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh, an Irish translator who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Aimsir (AM-shir) – Weather, time, season. THE ELEMENTS THAT SURROUND US. This is the Irish word for an ever-popular topic with which to make small talk in Ireland. Its earlier meaning, ‘time’, occurs in a proverb which translates as ‘time is a good storyteller’. Aisling (ASH-ling) – Vision, dream, apparition. OUR DESIRE AS IMAGE. This word is used of a popular eighteenth-century poetic genre in which Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman who speaks to him of the current state of the nation. The word is now popular as a personal name. Aoibhneas (EEV-nass) – Bliss, delight. FILLING OUR SENSES. This word generally refers to the joy we feel from external things such as music, song, scenery and good weather, and may be contrasted with áthas (AW-hass), which is joy arising from internal considerations. Baile (BAL-yeh) – Place, home, homestead, farmstead, village, town. WHERE WE COME HOME. This Irish word is probably the most commonly occurring term in Irish placenames and is usually anglicized as Bally. Bean an tí (BAN-a-TEE) – The woman of the house. SHE WHO CARES FOR EVERYTHING. Schoolchildren who lodge with families in Irish-speaking parts of Ireland quickly learn the centrality of this person in their life. Her counterpart, fear an tí (FAR-a-TEE) ‘the man of the house’, may also be encountered. Both terms can also be used to denote ‘the master of ceremonies’ at an event. Beatha (BA-ha) – Life, livelihood, food, sustenance. THAT WHICH SUSTAINS US. One of the uses made of this Irish word is in salutations, such as ‘your life and your health to you’. It also occurs in a surname meaning ‘a son of life’, one variant of which has given us the anglicized form Macbeth, as found in Shakespeare. Blas (Bloss) – Taste, flavour, accent. BEAUTY THROUGH TASTE. This Irish word is used in a proverb that translates as ‘a small amount is tasty’, a notion perhaps better suited to a country like Ireland than the concept that ‘bigger is better’. The word can also be used of speech – one says in Irish that there is a lovely flavour on a person’s speech if their accent is good. Bó (Boe) – Cow. PARTNERSHIP IN NATURE. The cow has been central to Irish rural life for many centuries and the Irish word for it occurs as an element in many place and river names. Looking up at the stars, the Milky Way is called ‘The Way of the White Cow’ in Irish. Bua (BOO-a) – Victory, talent, virtue. CARRYING THE DAY. One of the sayings in which this Irish word is used may be translated as ‘Bring victory and a blessing!’, in other words, ‘Best wishes!’ Cara (KA-ra) – Friend. OUR CONNECTION TO ONE ANOTHER. This Irish word occurs in the quintessential way of addressing someone at the beginning of a letter – the formula may be simply translated as ‘O friend!’ Ceol (Kyol) – Music, song, vigour. THE RHYTHM WITHIN US. This word conjures not only music but the conviviality that is a central element to Irish life. The idiom ‘you are my music’ essentially means ‘Bravo!’ Comhaltas (COAL-tas) – Co-fosterage, friendship, membership. LEARNING TOGETHER This word is used in the title of the Irish traditional musicians organization Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (COAL-tas KYOAL-tory AY-ran) ‘Association of Musicians of Ireland’, which is very often referred to, by way of a blend of the first two words, as Ceoltas (KYOAL-tas). Comhar (Core) – Combined work, mutual assistance, partnership. THE POWER OF WORKING TOGETHER. Originally meaning co-operative ploughing between neighbours, this Irish word now evokes the general notion of co-operation and shared work. Comhluadar (CO-loo-der) – Company, family. THE HARMONY OF BEING TOGETHER. This Irish word primarily describes convivial company, namely people conversing pleasantly together, but may also refer to family. Craic (Crack) – Entertaining conversation, high-spirited fun. THE SERIOUS WORK OF PLAY. Although originally a borrowing from Middle English, this word has been borrowed back into the English of Ireland in its Irish-language spelling, and is felt to denote a uniquely Irish variety of boisterous fun. Dáil (DAW-ill) – A coming together, a consultative gathering. A MEETING OF MINDS. This word can denote a tryst or a meeting of various sorts but is best known now as the title of the principal chamber of the national parliament, Dáil Éireann (‘the Assembly of Ireland’) or simply the Dáil. Dathúil (DA-hoo-il) – Good-looking. A PLEASURE TO THE EYES. This Irish word literally means ‘coloured’ or ‘colourful’, and is used to describe beauty and comeliness of appearance. Dóchas (DOE-hass) – Hope. BRINGING FAITH TO THE FUTURE. This Irish word conjures a sense of trust, belief, confidence and optimism, and is used in the title of a number of Irish organizations and institutions. Draíocht (DREE-oct) – Magic, enchantment. THAT WHICH IS UNSEEN. This Irish word for magic once specifically denoted the secret lore and arts of the druids of pre-Christian Ireland and Celtic society. Dúchas (DOO-hass) – Birthright, heritage, native place, innate quality. THE DRIVE WITHIN . This Irish word sums up what we are born with. One of the many proverbs in which it occurs translates as ‘instinct is stronger than upbringing’. Éire (AY-ra) – Ireland. OUR ISLAND HOME. The name of the country. The English form ‘Ireland’ derives from it and the poetic form ‘Erin’ is based on its dative and genitive forms Éirinn and Éireann. The land-goddess of the country had Éire as one of her names in medieval tradition, and writers represented Éire as one of three sisters, the others being Banbha (BAN-va) and Fódla (FOE-la), who also appear as personifications of the country, and are occasionally encountered in Modern Ireland in titles etc. Fadó (Fodd-Oh) – Long ago. WHAT CAME BEFORE. This Irish word is used in a variety of phrases that can be used to begin a folktale, and corresponds to the English ‘Once upon a time’. Feis (Fesh) – Feast, celebration. REJOICING TOGETHER. Etymologically, this denotes the act of spending the night, especially with another person, hence ‘espousal’, and by extension was used of a festival held in honour of the marriage of a king, including symbolic marriage to the sovereignty goddess. The most famous of these in early Ireland was the feast of Tara. The word is now generally used with reference to festivals or competitions of music or dance. Fios (Fiss) – Knowledge. KNOWING AND UNDERSTANDING. If you want to say you know something in Irish you say you have its knowledge, namely knowledge of it. If you leave out the ‘its’, the sense is ‘prophetic knowledge’. The word is used in the title of Geoffrey Keating’s monumental history of Ireland (1634), which translates as ‘A foundation of knowledge about Ireland’. Flaithiúil or Flaithiúlach (Fla-hool, Fla-hool-ock) – Generous, princely. THE GIFT OF GIVING This word, which is still often used in the English of Ireland, contains the element flaith ‘lord’, who in medieval times was expected to be munificent. Nowadays, generosity is not confined to the upper echelons, and it may be noted that Ireland was ranked the most generous country in Europe and fifth most generous in the world in the World Giving Index 2013. Foinse (Fwin-sha) – Fountain, spring, source AT THE BEGINNING This evocative word was used as the title of an Irishlanguage newspaper, which is currently only available online. Gael (Gale) – An Irish person, a Scottish highlander THE ESSENCE OF IDENTITY This word speaks to the shared heritage of Ireland and Scotland – and indeed to our more distant Celtic cousins, the Welsh, as the word itself is thought to derive from the Welsh word gwyddel ‘raider’, a sense which resonates with the fact that our patron saint, Patrick, was abducted as a slave from Britain in the fifth century. Gaisce (GOSH-ka) Weapons, feat (of arms), bravado AT OUR BEST This word is used as the title of the President’s Award, Ireland’s national challenge award earned by young people between 15 and 25 for participating in several activities, in which context it is best translated as ‘great achievement’. Inis (IN-ish) – Island THE LAND SURROUNDED BY WATER No longer the common Irish word for ‘island’, this word survives mostly in names, such as Inis Fraoigh (‘Heathery Isle’, anglicized Inishfree), County Sligo, made famous by the poem ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by William Butler Yeats. The word occurs also in the old appellation Inis Fáil, a poetic name for Ireland, a term that was used in a speech by US President Bill Clinton in Dublin in 1995. Fáilte (FALL-tcha) – Welcome OPENING UP WITH ENTHUSIASM TO THOSE WHO APPROACH This Irish word, originally meaning ‘joy, bliss, happiness’, occurs in a traditional salutation which translates as ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’. Leannán (LAN-awn) – Lover PERFECTION IN OUR HEARTS To say that love is blind in Irish, one says ‘a lover sees no fault’. This was one of the words used by the professional poetic class in medieval times to metaphorically describe their noble patrons. Meitheal (MEH-hull) – Working party JOINING OUR EFFORTS TOWARD A SHARED GOAL This Irish word refers to the tradition of a group of neighbouring farmers coming together for a number of days to reap corn, pick potatoes, etc. No pay was involved but the recipient of the help was expected to provide hospitality. Meas (Mass) – Estimation, opinion, esteem, respect A SENSE OF GRAVITAS This Irish word is still encountered in the English of Ireland. ‘They have great meas on him’, for instance, means ‘they have great regard for him’. It is also used in a formula for signing off a letter, namely Is mise le meas (ISS-MISHa-leh-MASS), which translates as ‘It is I, with respect’, and which may be seen occasionally in the letters pages of English language newspapers in Ireland. Misneach (MISH-nock) – Courage, spirit, hopefulness PUSHING FORWARD THROUGH UNCERTAINTY This popular word occurs in a proverb meaning ‘The man of courage has never lost’, in other words, ‘fortune favours the brave’. The word itself seems to have the effect of adding encouragement to a conversation when introduced. Muiceanach idir Dhá Sháile (MWICK-in-ock-idder-gaw-haw-lya) – A hog-backed hill between two arms of the sea IDENTITY IN A NAME This west of Ireland placename is impressive in both its original Irish form and in its anglicized dress, Muckanaghederdauhaulia, a form which appears in Georges Perec’s 1978 novel, La Vie mode d’emploi (the English translation is entitled Life, A User’s Manual), where it is visited and painted by the hero, who believes it to be the longest port name in the world. Pléaráca (PLAY-raw-ka) – Revelry, boisterous merrymaking A PARTY YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS This word speaks to an element of Irish culture that goes back a long time. It occurs in the title of an eighteenth-century poem which was set to music by the famous harper Turlough O’Carolan and translated by Jonathon Swift as ‘O’Rourke’s Feast’. It begins: O’Rourke’s noble fare / Will ne’er be forgot / By those who were there / And those who were not. Plámás (Plaw-mawss) – Flattery, soft talk, cajolery A FEW SWEET NOTHINGS This is the art of flattery, Irish style. It may sometimes involve empty praise but it’s still nice to be on the receiving end of it. Saoi (SEE) – Wise and learned person WISDOM THROUGH INSIGHT Though this word is rightly reserved for the more eminent among us, a proverb reminds us that a saoi is not wont to be without fault, or, to put it another way, ‘Homer sometimes nods.’ Saoirse (SEER-sha) – Freedom, liberty BEING WHO YOU ARE This word, which expresses a noble idea, originally referred to the privileges enjoyed by the nobility. Nowadays, it is an ideal sought after and expected by everyone and has become popular as a first name. Scéal (Shkayle) – Story, account, narrative, tale, piece of news, state of affairs TELLING THE TALE Storytelling – scéalaíocht (SHKAYLE-ee-ockt) – is an art that has always been appreciated in Ireland. Long-windedness, however, is not, and there are several intriguing ways that describe narratives that suffer from this ailment, one example being ‘the story of the eight-legged dog’. Sceitimíní (SKETCH-a-meeny) – Excited feelings, fits of rapturous excitement BUBBLING JOY If you are really excited in Irish, you say that these are on you! Sláinte (SLAWN-tcha) – Health, soundness, completeness MAY YOU BE WELL This Irish word can be used in various ways when making a toast, one of which is simply to exclaim Sláinte! Slán(SLAWN) – Health, soundness; healthy, safe GO IN SAFETY This Irish word can be used in various ways when saying goodbye to someone. One may simply exclaim Slán!, or Slán agus beannacht! (Slawn OGG-uss BAN-ockt), which means ‘farewell and a blessing’. Sona (SUN-a) – Happy, lucky, fortunate MAY FORTUNE SMILE The primary sense of this word is ‘happy’ and may be used, for instance, in wishing someone a happy birthday. Its less dominant sense is found in a proverb indicating that luck is largely a matter of opportunity and may be translated as ‘the lucky man waits for the lucky moment.’ Spleodar (SPLYO-dar) – Glee, joy, vivacity, exuberance PLAYFULNESS One of the many Irish words for fun, this one seems to exude its sense and has been used for the title of a number of organizations and events. Suaimhneas (SOO-iv-nass) – Peace, tranquillity, quietness, rest CALM COMFORT This popular Irish word encapsulates the sense of serenity that is much striven for in modern life. Taisce (TASH-ka) – Store, treasure, hoard THAT WHICH WE VALUE This Irish word can be used as a term of endearment, as in A thaisce! (a-HASH-ka), meaning ‘My darling!’. It is also used with the definite article, i.e. An Taisce (un-TASH-ka), as the title for the National Trust for Ireland, an NGO with a public interest mandate relating to the environment. Taoiseach (TEE-shock) – Leader, chief, ruler, prime minister FIRST AMONG US In origin, an adjective meaning ‘first’, it came to denote a chieftain in medieval times. Nowadays, it is used exclusively as the title of the Irish prime minister. Uachtarán (OOK-ter-awn) – President ONE WHO RISES THROUGH EXCELLENCE This word contains the element meaning ‘cream’, that which rises to the top. Uisce (ISH-ka) – Water THE SOURCE OF LIFE Something which seems to fall from the sky endlessly in Ireland. Naturally, it has captured the Irish imagination. Its flowing underground has given rise to a metaphorical term for ‘intrigue’. Uisce beatha, ‘the water of life’, was originally anglicized to usquebaugh and variants thereof, and later shortened to ‘whiskey’. Now that you know the 50 most beautiful words in the Irish language, take a look at the list of the top Irish slang terms we compiled. Sign Up For Our Newsletter Receive a curated, monthly update on Smartling’s most popular content Topics	i don't know
What is the largest, by area, province in Canada?	What is the biggest province in Canada? \| Reference.com What is the biggest province in Canada? A: Quick Answer As of 2014, the largest province in terms of size in Canada is Quebec, which has an area of 643,819 square miles. Canada has 10 provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta and British Columbia. The country has three territories, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon; Nunavut is the largest in size of all the provinces and territories. Full Answer Quebec is located in the eastern region of Canada. It borders the provinces of New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador to its east and Ontario to its west. Quebec covers an area extending 1,242 miles from the border with the United States to the Arctic Ocean, with the Saint Lawrence River linking the province to the Atlantic Ocean. It is a French-speaking province, with the majority of the population speaking French. The capital is Quebec City.	Quebec
According to Elvis Presley, what do you find at the end of Lonely Street?	Discover Canada Discover Canada The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship Canada’s Regions Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship - Canada's Regions Duration: 14 minutes, 23 seconds. Read by Geraint Wyn Davies . Download this chapter: MP3 You can also download all of Discover Canada as a single file. The audio may take a moment to load. In order to maximize the functionality of this page, please turn on Javascript . is now a tourist attraction and winter skateway [ See larger version ] Canada is the second largest country on earth—10 million square kilometres. Three oceans line Canada’s frontiers: the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Atlantic Ocean in the east, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Along the southern edge of Canada lies the Canada-United States boundary. Both Canada and the U.S.A. are committed to a safe, secure and efficient frontier The Regions of Canada Canada includes many different geographical areas and five distinct regions. The Atlantic Provinces The Northern Territories The National Capital Ottawa, located on the Ottawa River, was chosen as the capital in 1857 by Queen Victoria, the great-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. Today it is Canada’s fourth largest metropolitan area. The National Capital Region, 4,700 square kilometres surrounding Ottawa, preserves and enhances the area’s built heritage and natural environment. Provinces and Territories Canada has ten provinces and three territories. Each province and territory has its own capital city. You should know the capital of your province or territory as well as that of Canada. Population Canada has a population of about 34 million people. While the majority live in cities, Canadians also live in small towns, rural areas and everywhere in between. Peggy’s Cove harbour, Nova Scotia Ottawa: The Capital of Canada The Atlantic provinces Atlantic Canada’s coasts and natural resources, including fishing, farming, forestry and mining, have made these provinces an important part of Canada’s history and development. The Atlantic Ocean brings cool winters and cool humid summers. Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador is the most easterly point in North America and has its own time zone. In addition to its natural beauty, the province has a unique heritage linked to the sea. The oldest colony of the British Empire and a strategic prize in Canada’s early history, the province has long been known for its fisheries, coastal fishing villages and distinct culture. Today off-shore oil and gas extraction contributes a substantial part of the economy. Labrador also has immense hydro-electric resources. Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island ( P.E.I. ) is the smallest province, known for its beaches, red soil and agriculture, especially potatoes. P.E.I. is the birthplace of Confederation, connected to mainland Canada by one of the longest continuous multispan bridges in the world, the Confederation Bridge. Anne of Green Gables, set in P.E.I. by Lucy Maud Montgomery, is a much-loved story about the adventures of a little red-headed orphan girl. Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is the most populous Atlantic Province, with a rich history as the gateway to Canada. Known for the world’s highest tides in the Bay of Fundy , the province’s identity is linked to shipbuilding, fisheries and shipping. As Canada’s largest east coast port, deep-water and ice-free, the capital, Halifax, has played an important role in Atlantic trade and defence and is home to Canada’s largest naval base. Nova Scotia has a long history of coal mining, forestry and agriculture. Today there is also off-shore oil and gas exploration. The province’s Celtic and Gaelic traditions sustain a vibrant culture. Nova Scotia is home to over 700 annual festivals, including the spectacular military tattoo in Halifax. New Brunswick Situated in the Appalachian Range, the province was founded by the United Empire Loyalists and has the second largest river system on North America’s Atlantic coastline, the St. John River system. Forestry, agriculture, fisheries, mining, food processing and tourism are the principal industries. Saint John is the largest city, port and manufacturing centre; Moncton is the principal Francophone Acadian centre; and Fredericton, the historic capital. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province, and about one-third of the population lives and works in French. The province’s pioneer Loyalist and French cultural heritage and history come alive in street festivals and traditional music. Central Canada More than half the people in Canada live in cities and towns near the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River in southern Quebec and Ontario, known as Central Canada and the industrial and manufacturing heartland. Southern Ontario and Quebec have cold winters and warm humid summers. Together, Ontario and Quebec produce more than three-quarters of all Canadian manufactured goods. Quebec Nearly eight million people live in Quebec, the vast majority along or near the St. Lawrence River. More than three-quarters speak French as their first language. The resources of the Canadian Shield have helped Quebec to develop important industries, including forestry, energy and mining. Quebec is Canada’s main producer of pulp and paper. The province’s huge supply of fresh water has made it Canada’s largest producer of hydro-electricity. Quebecers are leaders in cutting-edge industries such as pharmaceuticals and aeronautics. Quebec films, music, literary works and food have international stature, especially in La Francophonie, an association of French-speaking nations. Montreal, Canada’s second largest city and the second largest mainly French-speaking city in the world after Paris, is famous for its cultural diversity. Ontario At more than 12 million, the people of Ontario make up more than one-third of Canadians. The large and culturally diverse population, natural resources and strategic location contribute to a vital economy. Toronto is the largest city in Canada and the country’s main financial centre. Many people work in the service or manufacturing industries, which produce a large percentage of Canada’s exports. The Niagara region is known for its vineyards, wines and fruit crops. Ontario farmers raise dairy and beef cattle, poultry, and vegetable and grain crops. Founded by United Empire Loyalists, Ontario also has the largest Frenchspeaking population outside of Quebec, with a proud history of preserving their language and culture. There are five Great Lakes located between Ontario and the United States: Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan (in the U.S.A. ) and Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. The Prairie Provinces Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are the Prairie Provinces, rich in energy resources and some of the most fertile farmland in the world. The region is mostly dry, with cold winters and hot summers. Manitoba Manitoba’s economy is based on agriculture, mining and hydro-electric power generation. The province’s most populous city is Winnipeg, whose Exchange District includes the most famous street intersection in Canada, Portage and Main. Winnipeg’s French Quarter, St. Boniface, has Western Canada’s largest Francophone community at 45,000. Manitoba is also an important centre of Ukrainian culture, with 14% reporting Ukrainian origins, and the largest Aboriginal population of any province, at over 15%. Saskatchewan Saskatchewan, once known as the “breadbasket of the world” and the “wheat province,” has 40% of the arable land in Canada and is the country’s largest producer of grains and oilseeds. It also boasts the world’s richest deposits of uranium and potash, used in fertilizer, and produces oil and natural gas. Regina, the capital, is home to the training academy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Saskatoon, the largest city, is the headquarters of the mining industry and an important educational, research and technology centre. Alberta Alberta is the most populous Prairie province. The province, and the world-famous Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains, were both named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. Alberta has five national parks, including Banff National Park, established in 1885. The rugged Badlands house some of the world’s richest deposits of prehistoric fossils and dinosaur finds. Alberta is the largest producer of oil and gas, and the oil sands in the north are being developed as a major energy source. Alberta is also renowned for agriculture, especially for the vast cattle ranches that make Canada one of the world’s major beef producers. The West Coast British Columbia is known for its majestic mountains and as Canada’s Pacific gateway. The Port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest and busiest, handles billions of dollars in goods traded around the world. Warm airstreams from the Pacific Ocean give the B.C. coast a temperate climate. British Columbia British Columbia ( B.C. ), on the Pacific coast, is Canada’s western most province, with a population of four million. The Port of Vancouver is our gateway to the Asia-Pacific. About one-half of all the goods produced in B.C. are forestry products, including lumber, newsprint, and pulp and paper products—the most valuable forestry industry in Canada. B.C. is also known for mining, fishing, and the fruit orchards and wine industry of the Okanagan Valley. B.C. has the most extensive park system in Canada, with approximately 600 provincial parks. The province’s large Asian communities have made Chinese and Punjabi the most spoken languages in the cities after English. The capital, Victoria, is a tourist centre and headquarters of the navy’s Pacific fleet. The Northern Territories The Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon contain one-third of Canada’s land mass but have a population of only 100,000. There are gold, lead, copper, diamond and zinc mines. Oil and gas deposits are being developed. The North is often referred to as the “Land of the Midnight Sun” because at the height of summer, daylight can last up to 24 hours. In winter, the sun disappears and darkness sets in for three months. The Northern territories have long cold winters and short cool summers. Much of the North is made up of tundra, the vast rocky Arctic plain. Because of the cold Arctic climate, there are no trees on the tundra and the soil is permanently frozen. Some continue to earn a living by hunting, fishing and trapping. Inuit art is sold throughout Canada and around the world. Yukon Thousands of miners came to the Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s, as celebrated in the poetry of Robert W. Service. Mining remains a significant part of the economy. The White Pass and Yukon Railway opened from Skagway in neighbouring Alaska to the territorial capital, Whitehorse in 1900 and provides a spectacular tourist excursion across precipitous passes and bridges. Yukon holds the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada (-63°C). Mount Logan, located in the Yukon, is the highest mountain in Canada. It is named in honour of Sir William Logan, a world-famous geologist, born in Montreal in 1798 to Scottish immigrant parents. Logan founded and directed the Geological Survey of Canada from 1842 to 1869 and is considered one of Canada’s greatest scientists [ See larger version ] Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories ( N.W.T. ) were originally made up in 1870 from Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory. The capital, Yellowknife (population 20,000), is called the “diamond capital of North America.” More than half the population is Aboriginal (Dene, Inuit and Métis). The Mackenzie River, at 4,200 kilometres, is the second-longest river system in North America after the Mississippi and drains an area of 1.8 million square kilometres. Nunavut Nunavut, meaning “our land” in Inuktitut, was established in 1999 from the eastern part of the Northwest Territories, including all of the former District of Keewatin. The capital is Iqaluit, formerly Frobisher Bay, named after the English explorer Martin Frobisher, who penetrated the uncharted Arctic for Queen Elizabeth I in 1576. The 19-member Legislative Assembly chooses a premier and ministers by consensus. The population is about 85% Inuit, and Inuktitut is an official language and the first language in schools. (From left to right) An Inuit boy in Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, uses a pellet gun to hunt for birds The caribou (reindeer) is popular game for hunters and a symbol of Canada’s North	i don't know
What Shakespeare tragedy features the House of Capulet and the House of Montague, sworn enemies all?	buzzingbooks.com, A Shakespeare Story: Romeo and Juliet, Retold by Andrew Matthews, 9781841213361 A Shakespeare Story: Romeo and Juliet by Retold by Andrew Matthews Book Summary Romeo belongs to the house of Montague, and Juliet, to the house of Capulet. The two families are sworn enemies, and Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love leads them to a path that can only end in tragedy and despair. Perhaps Shakespeare’s best-known play, Romeo and Juliet, even today, is synonymous with doomed love. Suggested Age:	Romeo and Juliet
What month is: Native American Heritage Month, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, COPD Awareness month, National Novel Writing Month, Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, American Diabetes Month, Lung Cancer Awareness Month, National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Crohn's & Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Month, and National Pomegranate Month?	SparkNotes: Romeo and Juliet: Character List Romeo and Juliet Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Romeo - The son and heir of Montague and Lady Montague. A young man of about sixteen, Romeo is handsome, intelligent, and sensitive. Though impulsive and immature, his idealism and passion make him an extremely likable character. He lives in the middle of a violent feud between his family and the Capulets, but he is not at all interested in violence. His only interest is love. At the beginning of the play he is madly in love with a woman named Rosaline, but the instant he lays eyes on Juliet, he falls in love with her and forgets Rosaline. Thus, Shakespeare gives us every reason to question how real Romeo’s new love is, but Romeo goes to extremes to prove the seriousness of his feelings. He secretly marries Juliet, the daughter of his father’s worst enemy; he happily takes abuse from Tybalt; and he would rather die than live without his beloved. Romeo is also an affectionate and devoted friend to his relative Benvolio, Mercutio, and Friar Lawrence. Read an in-depth analysis of Romeo. Juliet - The daughter of Capulet and Lady Capulet. A beautiful thirteen-year-old girl, Juliet begins the play as a naïve child who has thought little about love and marriage, but she grows up quickly upon falling in love with Romeo, the son of her family’s great enemy. Because she is a girl in an aristocratic family, she has none of the freedom Romeo has to roam around the city, climb over walls in the middle of the night, or get into swordfights. Nevertheless, she shows amazing courage in trusting her entire life and future to Romeo, even refusing to believe the worst reports about him after he gets involved in a fight with her cousin. Juliet’s closest friend and confidant is her nurse, though she’s willing to shut the Nurse out of her life the moment the Nurse turns against Romeo. Read an in-depth analysis of Juliet. Friar Lawrence - A Franciscan friar, friend to both Romeo and Juliet. Kind, civic-minded, a proponent of moderation, and always ready with a plan, Friar Lawrence secretly marries the impassioned lovers in hopes that the union might eventually bring peace to Verona. As well as being a Catholic holy man, Friar Lawrence is also an expert in the use of seemingly mystical potions and herbs. Read an in-depth analysis of Friar Lawrence. Mercutio - A kinsman to the Prince, and Romeo’s close friend. One of the most extraordinary characters in all of Shakespeare’s plays, Mercutio overflows with imagination, wit, and, at times, a strange, biting satire and brooding fervor. Mercutio loves wordplay, especially sexual double entendres. He can be quite hotheaded, and hates people who are affected, pretentious, or obsessed with the latest fashions. He finds Romeo’s romanticized ideas about love tiresome, and tries to convince Romeo to view love as a simple matter of sexual appetite. Read an in-depth analysis of Mercutio. The Nurse - Juliet’s nurse, the woman who breast-fed Juliet when she was a baby and has cared for Juliet her entire life. A vulgar, long-winded, and sentimental character, the Nurse provides comic relief with her frequently inappropriate remarks and speeches. But, until a disagreement near the play’s end, the Nurse is Juliet’s faithful confidante and loyal intermediary in Juliet’s affair with Romeo. She provides a contrast with Juliet, given that her view of love is earthy and sexual, whereas Juliet is idealistic and intense. The Nurse believes in love and wants Juliet to have a nice-looking husband, but the idea that Juliet would want to sacrifice herself for love is incomprehensible to her. Tybalt - A Capulet, Juliet’s cousin on her mother’s side. Vain, fashionable, supremely aware of courtesy and the lack of it, he becomes aggressive, violent, and quick to draw his sword when he feels his pride has been injured. Once drawn, his sword is something to be feared. He loathes Montagues. Capulet - The patriarch of the Capulet family, father of Juliet, husband of Lady Capulet, and enemy, for unexplained reasons, of Montague. He truly loves his daughter, though he is not well acquainted with Juliet’s thoughts or feelings, and seems to think that what is best for her is a “good” match with Paris. Often prudent, he commands respect and propriety, but he is liable to fly into a rage when either is lacking. Lady Capulet - Juliet’s mother, Capulet’s wife. A woman who herself married young (by her own estimation she gave birth to Juliet at close to the age of fourteen), she is eager to see her daughter marry Paris. She is an ineffectual mother, relying on the Nurse for moral and pragmatic support. Montague - Romeo’s father, the patriarch of the Montague clan and bitter enemy of Capulet. At the beginning of the play, he is chiefly concerned about Romeo’s melancholy. Lady Montague - Romeo’s mother, Montague’s wife. She dies of grief after Romeo is exiled from Verona. Paris - A kinsman of the Prince, and the suitor of Juliet most preferred by Capulet. Once Capulet has promised him he can marry Juliet, he behaves very presumptuous toward her, acting as if they are already married. Benvolio - Montague’s nephew, Romeo’s cousin and thoughtful friend, he makes a genuine effort to defuse violent scenes in public places, though Mercutio accuses him of having a nasty temper in private. He spends most of the play trying to help Romeo get his mind off Rosaline, even after Romeo has fallen in love with Juliet. Prince Escalus - The Prince of Verona. A kinsman of Mercutio and Paris. As the seat of political power in Verona, he is concerned about maintaining the public peace at all costs. Friar John - A Franciscan friar charged by Friar Lawrence with taking the news of Juliet’s false death to Romeo in Mantua. Friar John is held up in a quarantined house, and the message never reaches Romeo. Balthasar - Romeo’s dedicated servant, who brings Romeo the news of Juliet’s death, unaware that her death is a ruse. Sampson & Gregory - Two servants of the house of Capulet, who, like their master, hate the Montagues. At the outset of the play, they successfully provoke some Montague men into a fight. Abram - Montague’s servant, who fights with Sampson and Gregory in the first scene of the play. The Apothecary - An apothecary in Mantua. Had he been wealthier, he might have been able to afford to value his morals more than money, and refused to sell poison to Romeo. Peter - A Capulet servant who invites guests to Capulet’s feast and escorts the Nurse to meet with Romeo. He is illiterate, and a bad singer. Rosaline - The woman with whom Romeo is infatuated at the beginning of the play. Rosaline never appears onstage, but it is said by other characters that she is very beautiful and has sworn to live a life of chastity. The Chorus - The Chorus is a single character who, as developed in Greek drama, functions as a narrator offering commentary on the play’s plot and themes.	i don't know
The 52nd, who is the current mayor of Seattle?	Seattle Elects Gay Mayor Ed Murray \| Advocate.com Seattle Elects Gay Mayor Ed Murray State senator Ed Murray, Seattle's new mayor-elect, was instrumental in establishing marriage equality in Washington State. By Michelle Garcia November 06 2013 2:18 PM EST Seattle elected the city's first openly gay mayor when state senator Ed Murray defeated current Mayor Mike McGinn with 56% of the vote Tuesday night. McGinn, who earned 43% of the vote, said he expected to concede once all the votes came in (in Washington voting is done completely by mail, just like in neighboring Oregon). The two ran campaigns targeted toward Seattle's left-leaning politics, including support for a $15 minimum wage, new taxes, and making marijuana use legal, according to the Associated Press. Murray was instrumental in bringing marriage equality to Washington in 2012 as a state senator. According to the Seattle Times , Murray's campaign embraced and even touted his marriage equality efforts as his signature legislative accomplishment. When addressing supporters Tuesday night, Murray, 58, was joined onstage by his husband, Michael Shiosaki. The two wed over the summer.	Michael McGinn
The steps for what ballroom dance are: Basic forward, Basic backward, Rock left turn, Forward progressive, and Promenade?	Seattle Elects Gay Mayor Ed Murray \| Advocate.com Seattle Elects Gay Mayor Ed Murray State senator Ed Murray, Seattle's new mayor-elect, was instrumental in establishing marriage equality in Washington State. By Michelle Garcia November 06 2013 2:18 PM EST Seattle elected the city's first openly gay mayor when state senator Ed Murray defeated current Mayor Mike McGinn with 56% of the vote Tuesday night. McGinn, who earned 43% of the vote, said he expected to concede once all the votes came in (in Washington voting is done completely by mail, just like in neighboring Oregon). The two ran campaigns targeted toward Seattle's left-leaning politics, including support for a $15 minimum wage, new taxes, and making marijuana use legal, according to the Associated Press. Murray was instrumental in bringing marriage equality to Washington in 2012 as a state senator. According to the Seattle Times , Murray's campaign embraced and even touted his marriage equality efforts as his signature legislative accomplishment. When addressing supporters Tuesday night, Murray, 58, was joined onstage by his husband, Michael Shiosaki. The two wed over the summer.	i don't know
Which Sesame Street character calls a trash can him home?	Oscar the Grouch (Character) - Biography biography from "Sesame Street" (1969) The content of this page was created by users. It has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff. Warning! This character biography may contain plot spoilers. Visit our Character Biography Help to learn more. Character Biography History Discuss Oscar the Grouch lives in a trash can on Sesame Street. He has shaggy, green fur all over. There is nothing in the world that he likes more than trash. He keeps just about every piece of garbage imaginable in his can. He loves all kinds of things that other people disapprove of: rotten eggs, broken toys, mud, and loud unpleasant noise. On the other hand, he hates the things that most people love, things like flowers, ice cream, kittens, romantic music, and people being nice to one another. Whenever someone knocks on his can, he goes into a grouchy rage, yelling at them to scram. And yet when they leave, Oscar finds himself unsatisfied. Who will he scream at now? Besides trash, Oscar has many other things in his can. He is a grouch, after all, and it's his home, so he has practically set up housekeeping in there. He has revealed that he has many things inside that one would doubt could possibly fit in the can, like a piano and a swimming pool. Oscar also has a handful of pets, including a worm named Slimey and an elepahant named Fluffy (all we ever see of her is her trunk). His pets have varied over the years. Various family members have paid Oscar visits from time to time. Elders in his family include his mother, grandmother, and his grandfather. He also has a niece named Irvine whom he often baby-sits. His significant other is a lady grouch named Grungetta, who he sometimes addresses as Grungie. Despite his distaste for people, Oscar, like everyone on Sesame Street, is nice to kids. He's even set up his own Grouchketeer club (you can always tell a grouchketeer because he's the one with the thumb in his ear). They help him collect more trash or make loud noises. Oscar has a number of transportation modes. Sometimes he can stick his feet out the bottom of his can and walk around that way. Other times, his can is carried around by Bruno, a trashman of few words. Oscar can also drive. He owns a broken-down taxi, as well as a car he calls the Sloppy Jalopy. Page last updated by Shanak41 , 6 years ago	Oscar the Grouch
Which word describes the flat area of alluvial deposits on the mouth of some rivers, such as the Nile, Mississippi, and the Ganges?	Oscar the Grouch \| Grouches Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia EPISODE 0001 OSCAR THE GROUCH is, without a doubt, the most famous GROUCH in the world & also 1 of the key characters on SESAME STREET . He lives in a TRASH CAN that is right between BIG BIRD ’s NEST & 123 SESAME STREET . In fact, he loves TRASH so much that he's rarely seen outside of his TRASH CAN ever. His trademark song is " I LOVE TRASH " explaining his love of TRASH . 1 tradition is, whenever OSCAR sings " I LOVE TRASH ", his signature song , he is always shown singin at his TRASH CAN , & nowhere else. OSCAR's birthday, according to SESAME STREET Magazine , is June 1 st. Like all GROUCHES , OSCAR's mission in life is to be as miserable & GROUCHY as possible, & pass that feeling on to everyone else. When a visitor knocks on his TRASH CAN -- invariably interrupting him from a nap or an important task, OSCAR greets them with a snarl. He always complains that he wants to be left alone, although when he's left entirely to himself, he's dissatisfied -- there isn't anybody around to irritate or complain to. OSCAR has said that: "I don't really like being happy. But then, sometimes somebody will give me a nice bag of TRASH , & I'm going to get a chance to look through it. So that makes me happy. But I DON'T like to be happy. I'd like to be miserable. But being happy makes me miserable. So I like being miserable, so that makes me happy. But I DON'T like being happy. That makes me miserable. But being miserable makes me...I'm a mess." OSCAR has had many pets but his closest companion is his WORM , SLIMEY . He also has a girlfriend, a GROUCH named GRUNDGETTA , although a romantic relationship between 2 GROUCHES is understandably rocky. GRUNDGETTA usually calls him OSKIE while he occasionally calls her GRUNGIE . OSCAR & GRUNDGETTA , in addition to being a "couple", are best friends as well. OSCAR & GRUNDGETTA have been friends for "a very long time", as stated by OSCAR & Gordon ’s sister Olivia in EPISODE 2107 . Elmo & Telly Monster both consider OSCAR to be a close friend, although OSCAR disputes this since Telly & Elmo are the 2 monsters that OSCAR just doesn't like at all. OSCAR reluctantly confirmed in GROUCH land that Elmo was, however, indeed his friend. OSCAR is 43 years old according to performer CAROLL SPINNEY . [1] Contents [ show ] Origins According to SESAME STREET UNpaved , "The character of OSCAR was inspired by a nasty waiter from a restaurant called OSCAR's Tavern in Manhattan . JIM HENSON & Jon Stone were waited on by a man who was so rude & GROUCHY that he surpassed annoying & started to actually amuse both Jim & Jon . They were so entertained that going to OSCAR's Tavern became a sort of masochistic form of luncheon entertainment for them & their waiter forever became immortalized as the world's most famous GROUCH ." In the Ask HENSON.com web column, JIM HENSON Company Archivist Karen Falk said that the restaurant was named OSCAR's Salt of the Sea -- & went on to say, "Some of the designs that we have in the Archives were done by JIM on OSCAR's paper placemats!" While JIM HENSON 's 1 st OSCAR sketches were colored purple, the original OSCAR puppet was orange ( HENSON later said in an interview that this change was made cause the early cameras couldn't capture the color right [2] ). In chapter 9 of the book The Wisdom of BIG BIRD , CAROLL SPINNEY says that the OSCAR puppet was rebuilt about a month after SESAME STREET started taping. JIM tore apart the original puppet, & a new puppet was built. An early version of the green OSCAR debuted on The Flip Wilson Show in 1970 & OSCAR's explanation for that was that he had vacationed at Swamp Mushy MUDDY , where the dampness had turned him green overnight. In a 2003 appearance, OSCAR stated that while his time in Swamp Mushy MUDDY made him appear green, he is still in fact orange underneath all the slime & mold. (with an exception , he's just never taken a bath). [3] OSCAR explained his family roots & fur color again in a Life Magazine article in 2009 , "Most of the family was orange. But I had a lovely vacation in Swamp Mushy MUDDY resort. It was so dark & dreary I kind of turned GREEN . It's mostly moss. I like it — it goes with my eyes. I accidentally took a bath once, turned orange again & washed all the moss off, so I went right back to Swamp Mushy MUDDY , & here I am." [4] " In his introduction to the book SESAME STREET: A Celebration - 40 Years of Life on the STREET (which also contained his lunch from yesterday, grape juice, & something unidentifiable), OSCAR tells how he ended up on SESAME STREET , saying he was a normal GROUCH when Joan Ganz Cooney & Jon Stone decided to create the show , they hired Jim Henson , who bugged him until he agreed to be on the show for the 1 st episode only. He headed off to Swamp Mushy MUDDY after the production wrapped, disgusted, but discovered that his agent, Bernie, had signed a contract to have him on the entire run of SESAME STREET . OSCAR became so mad he that he turned GREEN (a fictitious explanation around how he became GREEN ), but figured the show wouldn’t run for more than 6 months anyway (obviously disappointed). CAROLL SPINNEY says that OSCAR’s voice on another New York resident -- a Bronx taxi driver who drove him to his 1 st day performing the character. On entering the cab, the driver snapped, "Where to, Mac ?" [1] OSCAR's 1 st line on SESAME STREET , in episode 1 , was "Don't bang on MY CAN ! Go away." This would sum up his personality as it would remain for over 40 years. Performing OSCAR During season 1 of SESAME STREET , the set of the STREET was arranged in such a way that SPINNEY , who is right-handed, was forced to operate OSCAR's head w/ his left hand. Eventually, a subsequent redesign of the STREET let SPINNEY switch hands. By 2015 , ERIC JACOBSON became SPINNEY ’s understudy for OSCAR. JACOBSON performed OSCAR for his Sprout appearances on February 21 st, 2015 ; sometimes lip-syncing to a prerecorded vocal track by SPINNEY , & other times doing the voice himself . JACOBSON also performed OSCAR, un-dubbed, on a 2016 appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver & a YouTube video promoting the SESAME Studios channel.( YouTube ) Transportation OSCAR has many forms of transportation. He can move w/ his legs sticking out of his TRASH CAN , as seen in early 1970s SESAME STREET episodes (portrayed by Hervé Villechaize ), in the specials Christmas Eve on SESAME STREET , DON'T Eat the Pictures & various stage shows. He also often had BRUNO THE TRASHMAN just carry his TRASH CAN around while he's inside. While the puppet OSCAR frequently moves outside of the TRASH CAN on his own his limbs are rarely shown. A rare moment where his full body was shown was in episode 3958 . In a few episodes he has also made a few out-of-his- TRASH-CAN appearances during which the top half of his body is shown. Also, when he sings, " I’m Sad Because I’m Happy ", we see his feet splash in the MUD , but his voice is off-screen. OSCAR has a car, THE SLOPPY JALOPY , which was used in Follow That BIRD & episodes of SESAME STREET . THE SLOPPY JALOPY 's New York license plate says " S C R A M ". OSCAR has also been seen driving a broken-down taxi . Trivia	i don't know
What is the metric unit prefix for 1000?	Units: Metric Prefixes Using the Dictionary Metric Prefixes To help the SI units apply to a wide range of phenomena, the 19th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1991 extended the list of metric prefixes so that it reaches from yotta- at 1024 (one septillion) to yocto- at 10-24 (one septillionth). Here are the metric prefixes, with their numerical equivalents stated in the American system for naming large numbers : yotta- (Y-) Notes: I am often asked about prefixes for other multiples, such as 104, 105, 10-4, and 10-5. The prefix myria- (my-) was formerly used for 104, but it is now considered obsolete and it is not accepted in the SI. To the best of my knowledge, no prefixes were ever accepted generally for 105, 10-4, or 10-5. There is a widespread misconception that prefixes for positive powers of ten are all capitalized, leading to the use of K- for kilo- and D- for deca-. Although this does seem like a useful idea, it is not correct. **The SI Brochure spelling of this prefix is deca-, but the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends deka-. National variations in spelling of the prefixes are allowed by the SI . In Italian, for example, hecto- is spelled etto- and kilo- is spelled chilo-. The symbols, however, are the same in all languages, so dam (not dkm) is the symbol for the dekameter and km is the symbol for the Italian chilometro. The prefixes hecto-, deka-, deci-, and centi- are widely used in everyday life but are generally avoided in scientific work. Contrary to the belief of some scientists, however, the SI does allow use of these prefixes. The last letter of a prefix is often omitted if the first letter of the unit name is a vowel, causing the combination to be hard to pronounce otherwise. Thus 100 ares is a hectare and 1 million ohms is a megohm. However, the last letter of the prefix is not omitted if pronunciation is not a problem, as in the case of the milliampere. The letter "l" is sometimes added to prefixes before the erg, so 1 million ergs is a megalerg (sounds odd, but better than "megerg"). Binary prefixes In computing, a custom arose of using the metric prefixes to specify powers of 2. For example, a kilobit is usually 210 = 1024 bits instead of 1000 bits. This practice leads to considerable confusion. In an effort to eliminate this confusion, in 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission approved new prefixes for the powers of 2. These prefixes are as follows: kibi- Ei- 260 = 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 The Commission's ruling is that the metric prefixes should be used in computing just as they are used in other fields. Thus, 5 gigabytes (GB) should mean exactly 5 000 000 000 bytes, and 5 gibibytes (GiB) should mean exactly 5 368 709 120 bytes. The fate of this innovation is uncertain. So far, very few people are using the IEC binary prefixes. Searches for them on the Internet turn up, for the most part, complaints by people who don't want to use them. Return to the Dictionary Contents page . You are welcome to email the author ([email protected]) with comments and suggestions. All material in this folder is copyright &COPY; 2005 by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Permission is granted for personal use and for use by individual teachers in conducting their own classes. All other rights reserved. You are welcome to make links to this page, but please do not copy the contents of any page in this folder to another site. The material at this site will be updated from time to time. April 16, 2005	Kilo
With over a billion adherents worldwide, what Asian country is home to the largest Hindu population?	Visionlearning \| General Science \| The Metric System The Metric System The Metric System: Metric and Scientific Notation by Anthony Carpi, Ph.D. prefix : a word part or meaningful sequence of letters attached to the beginning of a word in order to change the meaning of the word shorthand : an abbreviated form that uses symbols to represent words Glossary Terms By the 18th century, dozens of different units of measurement were commonly used throughout the world. Length, for example, could be measured in feet, inches, miles, spans, cubits, hands, furlongs, palms, rods, chains, leagues, and more. The lack of common standards led to a lot of confusion and significant inefficiencies in trade between countries. At the end of the century, the French government sought to alleviate this problem by devising a system of measurement that could be used throughout the world. In 1790, the French National Assembly commissioned the Academy of Science to design a simple decimal-based system of units; the system they devised is known as the metric system. In 1960, the metric system was officially named the Système International d'Unités (or SI for short) and is now used in nearly every country in the world except the United States. The metric system is almost always used in scientific measurement. Metric system basics The simplicity of the metric system stems from the fact that there is only one unit of measurement (or base unit) for each type of quantity measured (length, mass , etc.). The three most common base units in the metric system are the meter, gram, and liter. The meter is a unit of length equal to 3.28 feet; the gram is a unit of mass equal to approximately 0.0022 pounds (about the mass of a paper clip); and the liter is a unit of volume equal to 1.05 quarts. So length, for example, is always measured in meters in the metric system; regardless of whether you are measuring the length of your finger or the length of the Nile River. To simplify things, very large and very small objects are expressed as multiples of ten of the base unit . For example, rather than saying that the Nile River is 6,650,000 meters long, we can say that it is 6,650 thousand-meters long. This would be done by adding the prefix "kilo" (meaning 1,000) to the base unit "meter" to give us 6,650 kilometers for the length of the Nile River. This is much simpler than the American system of measurement, in which we have to remember inches, feet, miles, and many more units of measurement. Metric prefixes can be used with any base unit. For example, a kilometer is 1,000 meters, a kilogram is 1,000 grams, and a kiloliter is 1,000 liters. Six common prefixes used in the metric system are listed below. Common Metric Prefixes b.grams and liters Changing metric units through decimal places The metric system is a called a decimal-based system because it is based on multiples of ten. Any measurement given in one metric unit (e.g., kilogram) can be converted to another metric unit (e.g., gram) simply by moving the decimal place. For example, let's say a friend told you that he weighed 72,500.0 grams (159.5 lbs). You can convert this to kilograms by moving the decimal three places to the left. In other words, your friend weighs 72.5 kilograms. Because the metric system is based on multiples of ten, converting within the system is simple. Here's a shortcut: If you are converting from a smaller unit to a larger unit (moving upward in the table shown above), move the decimal place to the left in the number you are converting. If you are converting from a larger unit to a smaller unit (moving down in the table), move the decimal to the right. The number of places you move the decimal corresponds to the number of rows you are crossing in the table. For example, let's say someone told you that you had to walk 8,939.0 millimeters to get to the grocery store. That sounds like a long walk, but let's convert the number into meters to see how long it really is. The base unit, meter, is three rows above the millimeter, so the decimal should be moved three places to the left. It's less than 9 meters to the grocery store - or about 30 feet. Metric units can be abbreviated for simplicity. Abbreviations for the base units are the first letter of the unit name: m = meter, g = gram, and l = liter. Subunits can be abbreviated using the first letter of the prefix and the first letter of the base unit (all lowercase): mm = millimeter, kg = kilogram, etc. Comprehension Checkpoint b.feet to inches. Scientific notation In science, it is common to work with very large and very small numbers. For example, the diameter of a red blood cell is 0.0065 cm, the distance from the Earth to the sun is 150,000,000 km, and the number of molecules in 1 g of water is 33,400,000,000,000,000,000,000. It gets cumbersome to work with such long numbers, so measurements such as these are often written using a shorthand called scientific notation. Each zero in the numbers above represents a multiple of 10. For example, the number 100 represents 2 multiples of 10 (10 x 10 = 100). In scientific notation, 100 can be written as 1 times 2 multiples of 10: 100 = 1 x 10 x 10 = 1 x 102 (in scientific notation) Scientific notation is a simple way to represent large numbers because the 10's exponent (2 in the example above) tells you how many places to move the decimal of the coefficient (1 in the example above) to obtain the original number. In our example, the exponent 2 tells us to move the decimal to the right two places to generate the original number: Scientific notation can be used even when the coefficient is a number other than 1. For example: This shorthand can also be used with very small numbers. When scientific notation is used with numbers less than one, the exponent on the 10 is negative, and the decimal is moved to the left, rather than the right. For example: Therefore, using scientific notation, the diameter of a red blood cell is 6.5 x 10-3 cm, the distance from the Earth to the sun is 1.5 x 108 km, and the number of molecules in 1 g of water is 3.34 x 1022. Also note that in scientific notation, the base numeral is always represented as a single digit followed by decimals if necessary. Therefore, the number 0.0065 is always represented as 6.5 x 10-3, never as 0.65 x 10-2 or 65 x 10-4. Summary The metric system is the standard system of measurement in science. This module describes the history and basic operation of the metric system, as well as scientific notation. The module explains how the simplicity of the metric system stems from having only one base unit for each type of quantity measured (length, volume, and mass) along with a range of prefixes that indicate multiples of ten. Key Concepts The metric system, also known as the Système international d'unités (SI), was developed in the late 1700s to standardize units of measurement in Europe. The metric system is the primary system of measurement used through much of the world and in science. Each type of measurement has a base unit to which prefixes are added to indicate multiples of ten. Scientific notation is a shorthand for writing very small and very large numbers. Anthony Carpi, Ph.D. “The Metric System” Visionlearning Vol. SCI-1 (3), 2000.	i don't know
The Palmer Cup, Lexus Cup, Solheim Cup, and Ryder Cup are all events in what sport?	Ryder Cup : definition of Ryder Cup and synonyms of Ryder Cup (English) 11 External links Format The Ryder Cup Matches involve various match play competitions between players selected from two teams of twelve. Currently, the matches consist of eight foursomes matches, eight fourball matches and 12 singles matches. The winner of each match scores a point for their team, with ½ a point each for any match that is tied after 18 holes. A foursomes match is a competition between two teams of two golfers. The golfers on the same team take alternate shots throughout the match, with the same ball. Each hole is won by the team that completes the hole in the fewest shots. A fourball match is also a competition between two teams of two golfers, but all four golfers play their own ball throughout the round rather than alternating shots, and each hole is won by the team whose individual golfer has the lowest score. A singles match is a standard match play competition between two golfers. The matches take place over three days, Friday to Sunday, a total of 28 matches. On Friday, there are four fourball matches in the morning (or afternoon) and four foursomes matches in the morning (or afternoon). On Saturday, the same schedule repeats. On Sunday, there are 12 singles matches, when all team members play. Not all players must play on Friday and Saturday; the captain can select any eight players for each of the four rounds of play over these two days. The winning team is determined by cumulative total points. Under Ryder Cup rules, the defending champion team from the previous matches only needs to halve the cumulative point totals (14) to retain the Cup, while the opposing team must win it outright (14½ or more). The format has changed over the years. From the inaugural event through 1959, the Ryder Cup was a two-day competition, with four 36-hole foursomes matches on the first day and eight 36-hole singles matches on the second day, for a total of 12 points. In 1961, the matches were changed to 18 holes each, but the number of matches was doubled, resulting in a total of 24 points. In 1963, the event was expanded to three days, with eight fourball matches being added on the middle day to make a total of 32 points. This format remained until 1977, when the number of matches was reduced to 20: five foursomes matches on the first day, five fourball matches on the second day, and ten singles matches on the final day. In 1979, the first year continental European players participated, the format was changed to the 28-match version in use today, with eight foursomes/four-ball matches on the first two days and 12 singles matches on the last day. [5] In 2008, the format for the event changed versus the previous three Ryder Cup Matches. For the first time since 1999, the opening matches of a Ryder Cup featured the foursome (alternate-shot) format. U.S. captain Paul Azinger , hoping to give his team an early advantage in Kentucky , announced the change on January 30, 2008 at the PGA Tour's FBR Open in Phoenix. Alternate shot, or foursomes, had been used in the first sessions every year since 1981 until European captain Seve Ballesteros opened with better ball (fourballs) in 1997 at Valderrama . U.S. captain Ben Crenshaw switched back to alternate shot in 1999 at Brookline , but the next three Ryder Cup matches started with better ball. [6] The competition in 2008 however returned to the foursomes format, but was reverted again to fourballs in 2010. In the 2010 competition , the format was changed significantly after inclement weather cost the competition over 7 hours of play during the weekend. Initially, on the Friday (1 October), the fourballs competition began, but was suspended after around 2 hours due to torrential rain that caused the course to be waterlogged. The delay continued from around 9:30 to around 17:00, when play resumed, but was again suspended at around 19:00 due to fading light after sunset . The decision was taken to change the format completely, to try and prevent a Monday finish to the Ryder Cup for the first time. Thus, on the Saturday, the opening fourballs finished before 6 foursome matches began (involving all 24 players, a unique event in a single Ryder Cup foursomes contest). These matches were completed on the Saturday, upon which the last two foursomes and the four remaining fourballs began. Again, sunset caused play to be suspended after the lead match had just finished the 9th hole. It was hoped that these matches could be completed on Sunday, followed by the 12 singles matches, but further heavy rain on Sunday morning caused play to start at 13:30, leaving insufficient time to complete the Ryder Cup. With the weather forecast for the Monday (4 October) being good, the decision was taken to complete the foursomes and fourballs competitions on Sunday and play the whole singles contest on Monday. Team selections Team Europe The European team qualification rules for 2012 have changed since 2010. The European Points List now takes precedence over the World Points List, while the captain's picks have been reduced from 3 to 2 with the top 5 players in the World Points List now qualifying rather than the top 4. The team will consist of: [7] The leading five players on the Ryder Cup European Points List [8] The leading five players, not qualified above, on the Ryder Cup World Points List [9] Two captain's picks Team USA The United States qualification rules for 2012 remain the same as for 2010 and the team will consist of: [10] The leading eight players on the Ryder Cup Points List [11] Four captain's picks Founding of the Cup The Ryder Cup on display in 2008. There is some debate over who suggested the idea for the Ryder Cup. James Harnett, a journalist with Golf Illustrated magazine, appears to have proposed a similar idea to the PGA of America on December 15, 1920 and, having failed to attract support, the idea was refloated by Sylvanus P. "SP" Jermain, president of the Inverness Club , the next year. Historical records indicate that the first unofficial Ryder Cup-style matches were played in 1921 at Gleneagles Golf Course, Perthshire . The American team was chosen by James Harnett. Great Britain made Ryder Cup history by beating the American golf team 9-3, the second match in 1926 was won 13½–1½ by Britain. Present at the 1926 match, held on the East Course at Wentworth Club , Virginia Water , Surrey , was Samuel Ryder , a seed merchant who traded from St Albans , Hertfordshire . Having watched the play, Ryder thought it would be a good idea to make the match official and thus the Ryder Cup was founded, with Ryder donating the trophy. [12] Few people who took up golf after their 50th birthday have left as many positive impressions on the game during the history of golf. To get started, Ryder recruited the services of a golf professional called Hill from a local golf course to introduce him to the fundamentals of golf. Afterwards, Ryder hired Abe Mitchell as his private tutor for a fee of £1,000 per year. Ryder received most of his lessons at his home, Marlborough House, and he was relentless. He practised his driving, pitching and putting six days each week. At the age of 51, he had achieved a handicap of six and was accepted as a member of the Verulam Golf Club in St Albans in 1910. A year later, he captained the golf club. He was also club captain in 1926 and 1927. In 1923, he sponsored the Heath and Heather Tournament, which was only open to professionals. One of the golf professionals who took part was ex-gardener Abe Mitchell, considered one of the best British golfers of his era. Among the British at the 1926 landmark match were golfing giants Abe Mitchell, George Duncan , Archie Compston , Ted Ray (portrayed by Stephen Marcus in the 2005 film The Greatest Game Ever Played ), and Arthur Havers . From America came Walter Hagen , Tommy Armour , Jim Barnes and Al Watrous . This first official match was held in Worcester, Massachusetts , at the Worcester Country Club , in 1927. Ryder, who donated a gold cup and had agreed to pay £5 to each member of the winning team, attached his name to the new competition. Since 1927, it has been held on a two-year cycle, apart from 1939 to 1945, when it was cancelled due to World War II . Until 1977, the matches featured teams representing the United States and Great Britain and Ireland (there was at least one Irish player in every Ryder Cup from 1947 to 1977). Since 1979 inclusive, players from continental Europe have been eligible to join what is now known as Team Europe. The change to include continental Europeans arose from discussion in 1977 between Jack Nicklaus and the Earl of Derby , who was serving as the President of the Professional Golfers' Association ; it was suggested by Nicklaus as a means to make the matches more competitive, since the Americans almost always won, often by lopsided margins. [13] The change worked, as the team matches immediately became much more competitive, with talented young Europeans such as Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer bolstering the European side. The present-day popularity of the Ryder Cup, which now generates enormous media attention, can be said to date from that change in eligibility. The 2001 match was delayed for a year, as it was due to take place shortly after the September 11 attacks . It was subsequently decided to hold the Ryder Cup in even-numbered years instead of odd-numbered years. The boards at The Brabazon Course at The Belfry , which hosted the 2002 Ryder Cup (which should have been hosted in 2001) still read "The 2001 Ryder Cup", and U.S. captain Curtis Strange deliberately referred to his team as "The 2001 Ryder Cup Team" in his speech at the closing ceremony. Europe claimed their first hat-trick of victories in 2002, 2004 and 2006. Controversial Ryder Cups Main article: 1969 Ryder Cup The 1969 Cup held at Royal Birkdale was perhaps one of the best and most competitive contests in terms of play (18 of the 32 matches went to the last green). It was decided in its very last match, one which United States Captain Sam Snead later called "This is the greatest golf match you have ever seen in England". [14] With the United States and Great Britain all tied at 15.5 each, Jack Nicklaus led Tony Jacklin by the score of 1 up as they played the 17th hole. Jacklin made a 35-foot eagle putt and when Nicklaus missed his own eagle try from 12-feet, the match was all square. At the par-5 finishing hole, both Jacklin and Nicklaus got on the green in two. Nicklaus ran his eagle putt five feet past the hole, while Jacklin left his two foot short. Nicklaus then sank his birdie putt, and with a crowd of 8,000 people watching, picked up Jacklin's marker, conceding the putt he needed to tie the matches. The United States thus retained the cup. [15] [16] 1991 Main article: 1991 Ryder Cup After accusing each other of cheating at The Belfry in 1989, the feud between Seve Ballesteros and Paul Azinger escalated at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort in 1991. Azinger said, "I can tell you we're not trying to cheat." Ballesteros replied, "Oh no. Breaking the rules and cheating are two different things." The constant goading intensified their desire to win and with their partners, José María Olazábal and Chip Beck respectively, they produced what is regarded as the best pairs match in history, with the Spaniards winning 2 & 1. The match also received the sobriquet "the War on the Shore" after some excitable advertising in the American media, and Corey Pavin caused controversy by sporting a Desert Storm baseball cap during the event. 1999 Main article: 1999 Ryder Cup The 1999 Ryder Cup held at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts , caused great controversy. A remarkable comeback by the American team helped propel the U.S. to a 14.5–13.5 victory after trailing 10–6 heading into the final day. The U.S. went 8–3–1 in the singles matches to seal the first American victory since 1993. The competition turned on the 17th hole of a match between American Justin Leonard and Spaniard José María Olazábal . With the match all square at the 17th hole, Leonard needed to earn at least a half-point by either winning one of the last two holes (therefore earning a full point), or finishing the match at all square (therefore earning a half-point) to seal an American victory. After Olazábal's second shot left him with a 22-foot putt on the par-4, Leonard hit his shot within 10 feet of the hole and then watched it roll away from the cup, leaving him with a 45-foot putt for birdie. While sinking a putt of this length is unlikely, Leonard had made putts of 25 and 35 feet earlier in the round. Leonard holed the astounding putt, and a wild celebration ensued with other U.S. players, their wives, and a few fans running onto the green. Had Leonard's putt sealed the match, this type of behavior would have been inappropriate but moot. Knowing that a made putt would extend the match while a miss would assure Leonard of a half-point and the U.S. a victory (the Americans needed 14.5 points to gain the cup due to the Europeans' 1997 victory at Valderrama), Olazábal tried to regain his focus. However, he missed the difficult putt, and the American team celebrated once again (although the second celebration was more reserved than the first one). According to the "Best of the Rest" section of ESPN's Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame program, NBC television footage and press photos prove that no official rules (Ryder Cup or PGA) were broken when the Americans celebrated after Leonard's putt (i.e. no one walked in or crossed Olazábal's putting line – although Europe player Sam Torrance has said in TV interviews that a TV cameraman stood on Olazábal's line whilst filming the invasion of the green by players and spectators). However, the game of golf is upheld by many to be "the gentleman's game", and there remain a number of unwritten rules and codes of conduct which the European players believe were being ignored. Many of the American players believed the Europeans' response was hypocritical; they argued that European players – in particular Seve Ballesteros – had been guilty of excessive celebration and gamesmanship as far back as the 1985 Ryder Cup Matches, without attracting the same opprobrium from the European media. There was still considerable bad blood after the match, with some of the European players complaining about the behavior of the American galleries throughout the match. Sam Torrance branded it "disgusting," while European captain Mark James referred to it as a "bear pit" in a book recounting the event. [17] There were also reports that a spectator spat at James' wife. [18] Following the 1999 Ryder Cup, a number of members of the U.S. team apologized for their behavior, and there were numerous attempts by both teams to calm the increasing nationalism of the event. These efforts appear to have been largely successful, with subsequent Cups being played in the "spirit of the game". Results * - Delayed one year due to September 11, 2001 attacks . NB: The 1939, 1941, 1943, and 1945 tournaments were canceled due to World War II . The 1969 and 1989 tournaments were drawn, so the Cup remained with the previous victors. 1939 Ryder Cup The 1939 Ryder Cup was planned for 18-19 November at Ponte Vedra Country Club in Jacksonville , Florida but never took place. Walter Hagen was chosen as non-playing captain of the United States team. In early April, the British P.G.A. chose a selection committee of six and selected Henry Cotton as captain. [20] In August, eight players were named in the team: Cotton, Jimmy Adams , Dick Burton , Sam King , Alf Padgham , Dai Rees , Charles Whitcombe and Reg Whitcombe . [21] Charles Whitcombe immediately withdrew from the team, [22] not wishing to travel to the United States. With seven selected, three places were left to be filled. War was declared on 3 September and the British P.G.A. immediately cancelled the match: "The P.G.A. announce that the Ryder Cup match for this year has been cancelled by the state of war prevailing in this country. The P.G.A. of the United States is being informed." [23] Summary Golf Other regular international team golf events include: Solheim Cup — The women's equivalent of the Ryder Cup, featuring the same U.S. vs. Europe format, played in the years the Ryder Cup is not held. Presidents Cup — Men's event, held in odd-numbered years, with a format similar to the Ryder Cup, except that the competing sides are a U.S. side and an International side consisting entirely of players whose citizenship makes them ineligible for the Ryder Cup. Handa Cup — The senior women's equivalent, featuring a U.S. team versus an International team. Walker Cup — Event for amateur men. Unlike the Ryder Cup, the Walker Cup has never adopted a U.S.–Europe format. The U.S. side is opposed by a team drawn from Great Britain and Ireland. Curtis Cup — Women's amateur event directly analogous to the Walker Cup. Like the Walker Cup, the competition format is the U.S. versus Great Britain and Ireland. Lexus Cup — Women's professional event held annually beginning in 2005 and sanctioned by the LPGA . The competing teams are an Asia team and an International team of players from the rest of the world. UBS Cup — A discontinued event for men similar to the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. The competing sides were USA and Rest of the World. Six golfers on each side had to be 50 or over, and the remaining six in their forties (2001–2004). Seve Trophy — A European professional men's event, founded by Seve Ballesteros , that pits a side from Great Britain and Ireland against one from continental Europe. Tommy Bahama Challenge — An annual professional men's event, operated by the U.S. PGA Tour , that pits USA and International (rest of the world) professionals no older than 30. Palmer Cup — An annual match between U.S. and European college/university golfers. Tavistock Cup — An annual match between Isleworth and Lake Nona country club featuring some of the world's best professionals. Chrysler Cup — A former event between United States and International senior professionals (1986–1995). Dynasty Cup — Men's event, held in odd-numbered years, with a similar format as the Ryder Cup, between Japan Golf Tour and Asian Tour golfers, started 2003. Single Figure Golfer Challenge Cup — A match between a team of amateur golfers and former Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup and Walker Cup players. Royal Trophy — An annual match between Asia and Europe, started 2006. Other sports	Golf
Who "stuck a feather in his hat and called it Macaroni"?	Coastal Georgia’s Mike Cook eases his way into the big-time \| Golfweek Coastal Georgia’s Mike Cook eases his way into the big-time Coastal Georgia’s Mike Cook eases his way into the big-time Coastal Georgia’s Mike Cook eases his way into the big-time By Brentley Romine May 27, 2016 9:24 am shares By: Brentley Romine \| May 27, 2016 9:24 am Editor’s note: This story originally ran in the May 9 issue of Golfweek. SEA ISLAND, Ga. – Mike Cook asked to hear the question a third time, hoping that might bring better clarity. He was at home in Georgia last November, enjoying a post-dinner glass of wine. The Golf Coaches Association of America was phoning with a simple question: Would Cook like to coach the U.S. team in the Arnold Palmer Cup at England’s Formby Golf Club? “I asked, ‘Are you calling the right golf coach? I think you meant to call Chris Haack down the road at the University of Georgia,’ ” said the self-deprecating Cook. No, Cook was their guy. Finally convinced, he answered, “Hell yeah!” Cook’s 10-man U.S. team, led by Stanford’s Maverick McNealy, a Haskins and Nicklaus award winner, will take on Europe at Formby on June 24-26. The Palmer Cup was rebranded the Arnold Palmer Cup to better connect with its inspirational ambassador, the King himself, and will celebrate its 20th year. In 2018 the event will include women as well as players from all corners of the world. A Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup/Solheim Cup-meets-college-golf kind of deal. Cool. College golf has its giants, and then there is Coastal Georgia, a fledgling NAIA program in Brunswick, Ga. Cook, 56, an instructor just over the causeway at Sea Island’s Golf Performance Center for 25 years, started the men’s and women’s programs at Coastal in 2010; he still coaches the men while overseeing the women’s program as the university’s director of golf. Coastal Georgia has emerged as an NAIA force, and it’s nice that Cook is recognized for what he has built. The last three seasons, his teams have won 18 tournaments, including back-to-back national titles in 2014-15 and twice Cook has been NAIA coach of the year. Sport sometimes gets lost in its giants. Naming Cook is a deserving nod to the little, often lesser-recognized guy. “I think it’s neat,” said Scott Wellington, executive director of the PGA Tour’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, which is aligned closely with the Arnold Palmer Cup. “You look at what he’s done, and wow, Mike has been very successful.” Cook was first-team All-SEC and a third-team All-American as a senior at Georgia (1982-83). He says his game paled to what he sees at the college level today. “I’ve witnessed a lot of great talent at the NAIA level that could have played D-1 golf,” he said. “There’s kids from all over the world who can really play.” He points to the Golfweek NAIA Spring Invitational that his Mariners team won in April at Mission Inn in Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. When Cook played the mini-tours in the 1980s, he played Mission Inn’s El Campeon a bunch. “That course used to eat my lunch,” he said. “These guys do a lot better job with it than I did.” Cook has a significant challenge ahead at Formby: The U.S. leads the Arnold Palmer Cup, 10-8-1, but since 2004, Uncle Sam’s boys are 1-5 across the pond (sound familiar?). The team will have only two full days to learn the bounces of Formby’s storied 1884 links before the matches commence. At Sea Island, Cook has several places to turn for advice. Residents include USGA president Diana Murphy; Walker Cup captain Spider Miller; and Davis Love III, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain. “We think we have an excellent team,” Cook said, “and Davis has some ideas for me.” First, though, Cook will lead his Coastal Georgia into the NAIA nationals at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill. In his typical laid-back style, Cook said the “three-peat” won’t be any part of pregame talks. Cook laughs. “Not even going to mention it,” he said.	i don't know
What radio host are dittoheads fans of?	Radio Waves: Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract - Entertainment News - NorthJersey.com © 2017 North Jersey Media Group August 5, 2016 Last updated: Friday, August 5, 2016, 1:21 AM Radio Waves: Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract By Ray Edel Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract with iHeartmedia and Premiere Networks. Terms of the new deal were undisclosed beyond a release calling the renewal a "long-term, multi-platform agreement." "I'm thrilled to be continuing," said Limbaugh in statement. "And I really want to be on the air if the Russians find Hillary's emails." Locally, Limbaugh can be heard on WOR-AM (710) from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays. * Voting results for the 2016 National Radio Hall Of Fame's 24 nominations in six categories are in. Four of those categories were decided by a voting participant panel of 400 industry professionals. The other two categories, music format on-air personality and spoken word on-air personality, were voted on by the public. The 2016 inductees are: Eric & Kathy (Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart), WTMX-FM (101.9), Chicago, active local/regional, 10+ years; Jeff & Jer (Jeff Detrow and Jerry Cesak), KYXY-FM (96.5), San Diego, longstanding local/regional, 20+ years; Steve Harvey, The Steve Harvey Morning Show; syndicated by Premiere Networks, active network/syndication, 10+ years; Delilah, syndicated by Premiere Networks, longstanding network/syndication, 20+ years; Bob Kingsley, Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40; syndicated by Westwood One, music format on-air personality; and Michael Savage, The Savage Nation; syndicated by Westwood One, spoken word on-air personality. Additionally, the nominating committee voted to induct four individuals for their contribution to the industry. Those inductees are: George G. Beasley, chairman/CEO/founder of Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc.; Kidd Kraddick, the late national on-air personality; Tony Roberts, former sportscaster and play-by-play announcer for Notre Dame Football; and Neil Rogers, the late Southern Florida on-air personality. * WABC-AM (770), WNSH-FM (94.7) and WPLJ-FM (95.5) will host "Bark in the Park" from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. next Saturday at Overpeck Park, Ridgefield Park. The day will feature food vendors, music, activities and giveaways. Visitors can even adopt a puppy from the North Shore Animal League. Information: wabcradio.com. * WEPN-FM (98.7) on-air personality Don LaGreca will host a charity softball game 5 p.m. Saturday in his hometown of Hawthorne. The eighth annual game is for LaGreca's friend and Hawthorne resident Mark Sasso, who died of cancer in 2008. It will be played at the Wag Field, Wagaraw Road. "It is an honor to give back to the community, especially the town where I grew up," said LaGreca. "I am who I am because of the people of Hawthorne and to their dedication to the area". The celebrity team this year will consist of Rick DiPietro, former New York Islander and host of "Hahn and Humpty" on WEPN; Ken Daneyko, former New Jersey Devil; Carl Banks, former New York Giant; former New York Jet Greg Buttle; and ESPN radio hosts Michael Kay, Bill Daughtry, Dave Rothenberg, Robin Lundberg and Anita Marks. There will be silent auctions, and game jerseys will be signed and auctioned after the event. All money raised will go to scholarships for children in Hawthorne. LaGreca will also broadcast remotely from 2 to 4 p.m. The game is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. * Columnist and author Michael Riedel will be joining WNYM-AM (970) The Answer for a new lifestyle show — "On the Town" — to air on Saturdays from 9 to 10 a.m. "On The Town" — which debuts this week — will focus on movies, television, books, food, wine and theater. Riedel was the managing editor of TheaterWeek and co-hosts PBS's "Theater Talk." Email: [email protected].	Rush Limbaugh
Located in St. Louis, what is the tallest monument in the United States, at a height of 630 feet?	Radio Waves: Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract - Entertainment News - NorthJersey.com © 2017 North Jersey Media Group August 5, 2016 Last updated: Friday, August 5, 2016, 1:21 AM Radio Waves: Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract By Ray Edel Dittoheads, rejoice! Rush Limbaugh has a new contract with iHeartmedia and Premiere Networks. Terms of the new deal were undisclosed beyond a release calling the renewal a "long-term, multi-platform agreement." "I'm thrilled to be continuing," said Limbaugh in statement. "And I really want to be on the air if the Russians find Hillary's emails." Locally, Limbaugh can be heard on WOR-AM (710) from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays. * Voting results for the 2016 National Radio Hall Of Fame's 24 nominations in six categories are in. Four of those categories were decided by a voting participant panel of 400 industry professionals. The other two categories, music format on-air personality and spoken word on-air personality, were voted on by the public. The 2016 inductees are: Eric & Kathy (Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart), WTMX-FM (101.9), Chicago, active local/regional, 10+ years; Jeff & Jer (Jeff Detrow and Jerry Cesak), KYXY-FM (96.5), San Diego, longstanding local/regional, 20+ years; Steve Harvey, The Steve Harvey Morning Show; syndicated by Premiere Networks, active network/syndication, 10+ years; Delilah, syndicated by Premiere Networks, longstanding network/syndication, 20+ years; Bob Kingsley, Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40; syndicated by Westwood One, music format on-air personality; and Michael Savage, The Savage Nation; syndicated by Westwood One, spoken word on-air personality. Additionally, the nominating committee voted to induct four individuals for their contribution to the industry. Those inductees are: George G. Beasley, chairman/CEO/founder of Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc.; Kidd Kraddick, the late national on-air personality; Tony Roberts, former sportscaster and play-by-play announcer for Notre Dame Football; and Neil Rogers, the late Southern Florida on-air personality. * WABC-AM (770), WNSH-FM (94.7) and WPLJ-FM (95.5) will host "Bark in the Park" from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. next Saturday at Overpeck Park, Ridgefield Park. The day will feature food vendors, music, activities and giveaways. Visitors can even adopt a puppy from the North Shore Animal League. Information: wabcradio.com. * WEPN-FM (98.7) on-air personality Don LaGreca will host a charity softball game 5 p.m. Saturday in his hometown of Hawthorne. The eighth annual game is for LaGreca's friend and Hawthorne resident Mark Sasso, who died of cancer in 2008. It will be played at the Wag Field, Wagaraw Road. "It is an honor to give back to the community, especially the town where I grew up," said LaGreca. "I am who I am because of the people of Hawthorne and to their dedication to the area". The celebrity team this year will consist of Rick DiPietro, former New York Islander and host of "Hahn and Humpty" on WEPN; Ken Daneyko, former New Jersey Devil; Carl Banks, former New York Giant; former New York Jet Greg Buttle; and ESPN radio hosts Michael Kay, Bill Daughtry, Dave Rothenberg, Robin Lundberg and Anita Marks. There will be silent auctions, and game jerseys will be signed and auctioned after the event. All money raised will go to scholarships for children in Hawthorne. LaGreca will also broadcast remotely from 2 to 4 p.m. The game is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. * Columnist and author Michael Riedel will be joining WNYM-AM (970) The Answer for a new lifestyle show — "On the Town" — to air on Saturdays from 9 to 10 a.m. "On The Town" — which debuts this week — will focus on movies, television, books, food, wine and theater. Riedel was the managing editor of TheaterWeek and co-hosts PBS's "Theater Talk." Email: [email protected].	i don't know
What unit of measurement was originally defined as “one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole along Paris Meridian” but is now the “distance travelled by light in free space in 1299,792,458 of a second”?	Metre \| Define Metre at Dictionary.com Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for metre Expand chiefly British English spelling of meter (n.); for spelling, see -re . meter n. also metre, "poetic measure," Old English meter "meter, versification," from Latin metrum, from Greek metron "meter, a verse; that by which anything is measured; measure, length, size, limit, proportion," from PIE root me- "measure" (see meter (n.2)). Possibly reborrowed early 14c. (after a 300-year gap in recorded use) from Old French metre, with specific sense of "metrical scheme in verse," from Latin metrum. also metre, unit of length, 1797, from French mètre (18c.), from Greek metron "measure," from PIE root me- "to measure" (cf. Greek metra "lot, portion," Sanskrit mati "measures," matra "measure," Avestan, Old Persian ma-, Latin metri "to measure"). Developed by French Academy of Sciences for system of weights and measures based on a decimal system originated 1670 by French clergyman Gabriel Mouton. Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the meridian. "device for measuring," abstracted 1832 from gas-meter, etc., from French -mètre, used in combinations (in English from 1790), from Latin metrum "measure" or cognate Greek metron "measure" (see meter (n.2)). Influenced by English meter "person who measures" (late 14c., agent noun from mete (v.)). As short for parking meter from 1960. Meter maid first recorded 1957; meter reader 1963. v. "to measure by means of a meter," 1884, from meter (n.3). Meaning "install parking meters" is from 1957. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper	The Metre/Waiting for the Sun
Which PGA golfer, considered one of the best of all times, was nicknamed "The Golden Bear"?	metre : definition of metre and synonyms of metre (English) Main article: History of the metre Name The first recorded proposal for a decimal-based unit of length was the universal measure unit proposed by the English philosopher John Wilkins in 1668. [2] In 1675, the Italian scientist Tito Livio Burattini , in his work Misura Universale, used the words metro cattolico (lit. " catholic [i.e. universal] metre"), which was derived from the Greek μέτρον καθολικόν (métron katholikón), "a universal measure ". This word gave rise to the French mètre which in 1797 was introduced into the English language. [3] Belfry, Dunkirk - the northern end of the meridian arc Fortress of Montjuïc - the southerly end of the meridian arc Meridional definition In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wren 's suggestion of a pendulum with a half- period of one second to measure a standard length that Christiaan Huygens had observed to be 38 Rhineland or 39¼ English inches (997 mm) in length. [2] In the 18th century, there were two favoured approaches to the definition of the standard unit of length. One approach followed Wilkins in defining the metre as the length of a pendulum with a half- period of one second , a ' seconds pendulum '. The other approach suggested defining the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant , that is the distance from the equator to the North Pole . In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences selected the meridional definition over the pendular definition because the force of gravity varies slightly over the surface of the Earth, which affects the period of a pendulum. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, measurements of this meridian more accurate than those available at that time were imperative. The French Academy of Sciences commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain , lasting from 1792 to 1799, which measured the distance between the Dunkerque belfry and Montjuïc castle , Barcelona to estimate the length of the meridian arc through Dunkerque (assumed to be the same length as the Paris meridian ). This portion of the meridian was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian, connecting the North Pole with the equator. The exact shape of the Earth is not a simple mathematical shape ( sphere or oblate spheroid ) at the level of precision required for defining a standard of length. The irregular and particular shape of the Earth (smoothed to sea level) is called a Geoid , which means "Earth-shaped". However, in 1793, France adopted as its official unit of length a metre based on provisional results from the expedition. Although it was later determined that the first prototype metre bar was short by a fifth of a millimetre because of miscalculation of the flattening of the Earth, this length became the standard. The circumference of the Earth through the poles is therefore slightly more than forty million metres (40 007 863). [4] Prototype metre bar Creating the metre-alloy in 1874 at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Present Henri Tresca, George Matthey, Saint-Claire Deville and Debray Historical International Prototype Metre bar, made of an alloy of platinum and iridium , that was the standard from 1889 to 1960. In the 1870s and in light of modern precision, a series of international conferences was held to devise new metric standards. The Metre Convention (Convention du Mètre) of 1875 mandated the establishment of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM: Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to be located in Sèvres , France. This new organisation would preserve the new prototype metre and kilogram standards when constructed, distribute national metric prototypes, and maintain comparisons between them and non-metric measurement standards. The organisation created a new prototype bar in 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM: Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures), establishing the International Prototype Metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar composed of an alloy of ninety percent platinum and ten percent iridium , measured at the melting point of ice. [5] The original international prototype of the metre is still kept at the BIPM under the conditions specified in 1889. A discussion of measurements of a standard metre bar and the errors encountered in making the measurements is found in a NIST document. [6] Standard wavelength of krypton-86 emission In 1893, the standard metre was first measured with an interferometer by Albert A. Michelson , the inventor of the device and an advocate of using some particular wavelength of light as a standard of length. By 1925, interferometry was in regular use at the BIPM. However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new SI system as equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange - red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton -86 atom in a vacuum . [7] Speed of light To further reduce uncertainty, the seventeenth CGPM in 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of the second and the speed of light : The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 299,792,458 of a second. [1] This definition fixed the speed of light in vacuum at exactly 299,792,458 metres per second. An intended by-product of the 17th CGPM’s definition was that it enabled scientists to compare their lasers accurately using frequency, resulting in wavelengths with one-fifth the uncertainty involved in the direct comparison of wavelengths because interferometer errors were eliminated. To further facilitate reproducibility from lab to lab, the 17th CGPM also made the iodine-stabilised helium–neon laser “a recommended radiation” for realising the metre. [8] For purposes of delineating the metre, the BIPM currently considers the HeNe laser wavelength to be as follows: λHeNe = 632 991 212.58 fm with an estimated relative standard uncertainty (U ) of 2.1×10−11. [9] [10] This uncertainty is currently one limiting factor in laboratory realisations of the metre, and it is several orders of magnitude poorer than that of the second, based upon the caesium fountain atomic clock (U = 5×10−16 ). [11] Consequently, a realisation of the metre is usually delineated (not defined) today in labs as 1,579,800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium-neon laser light in vacuum, the error stated being only that of frequency determination. [12] This bracket notation expressing the error is explained in the article on measurement uncertainty . Practical realisation of the metre is subject to uncertainties in characterising the medium, in addition to various uncertainties of interferometry, and to uncertainties in measuring the frequency of the source. [13] A commonly used medium is air, and NIST has set up an on-line calculator to convert wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air. [14] As described by NIST, in air the uncertainties in characterising the medium are dominated by errors in finding temperature and pressure, and errors in the theoretical formulas used are secondary. [15] By implementing a refractive index correction such as this, an approximate realization of the metre can be implemented in air, for example, using the formulation of the metre as 1,579,800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium-neon laser light in vacuum, and converting the wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air. Of course, air is only one possible medium to use in a realization of the metre, and any partial vacuum can be used, or some inert atmosphere like helium gas, provided the appropriate corrections for refractive index are implemented. [16] Length measurement in metres See also: Length measurement Although the metre is now defined as the path length travelled by light in a given time, actual laboratory length measurements in metres are determined by counting the number of wavelengths of laser light of one of the standard types that fit into the length, [8] [17] and converting the selected unit of wavelength to metres. Three major factors limit the accuracy attainable with laser interferometers for a length measurement: [18] [13] Uncertainty in vacuum wavelength of the source, Uncertainty in the refractive index of the medium, Least count resolution of the interferometer. Of these, the last is peculiar to the interferometer itself. The conversion of a length in wavelengths to a length in metres is based upon the relation: which converts the unit of wavelength λ to metres using c, the speed of light in vacuum in m/s. Here n is the refractive index of the medium in which the measurement is made; and f is taken for the conversion here as the measured frequency of the source. Although conversion from wavelengths to metres introduces additional error in the overall length due to measurement error in determining the refractive index and the frequency, measurement of frequency is one of the most accurate measurements available. [18] Timeline of definition 1790 May 8 – The French National Assembly decides that the length of the new metre would be equal to the length of a pendulum with a half- period of one second . 1791 March 30 – The French National Assembly accepts the proposal by the French Academy of Sciences that the new definition for the metre be equal to one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant through Paris, that is the distance from the equator to the north pole. 1795 – Provisional metre bar constructed of brass . 1799 December 10 – The French National Assembly specifies the platinum metre bar, constructed on 23 June 1799 and deposited in the National Archives , as the final standard. 1889 September 28 – The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium , measured at the melting point of ice. 1927 October 6 – The seventh CGPM adjusts the definition of the metre to be the distance, at 0 ° C , between the axes of the two central lines marked on the prototype bar of platinum-iridium, this bar being subject to one standard atmosphere of pressure and supported on two cylinders of at least one centimetre diameter, symmetrically placed in the same horizontal plane at a distance of 571 millimetres from each other. 1960 October 14 – The 11th CGPM defines the metre to be equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2p10 and 5d5 quantum levels of the krypton -86 atom . [19] 1983 October 21 – The 17th CGPM defines the metre as equal to the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1⁄299,792,458 of a second . [20] 2002 – The International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) considers the metre to be a unit of proper length and thus recommends this definition be restricted to "lengths ℓ which are sufficiently short for the effects predicted by general relativity to be negligible with respect to the uncertainties of realisation". [21] Definitions of the metre since 1795 [22] Basis of definition yottametre Common prefixed units are in bold face. The term micron is often used instead of micrometre, but this practice is officially discouraged. [23] Spelling Metre is used as the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in all English-speaking nations except the USA, which uses meter. [24] The most recent official brochure, written in 2006, about the International System of Units (SI), Bureau international des poids et mesures, was written in French by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures . An English translation (using the spelling: metre) is included to make the SI standard "more widely accessible". [25] In 2008, the U.S. English translation published by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology chose to use meter in accordance with the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual. [26] Measuring devices (such as parking meter, speedometer) are traditionally spelt "...meter" in all countries. [27] The word "meter", signifying any such device, has the same derivation as the word "metre", denoting the unit of length this article is about. [28] Equivalents in other units picometres Within this table, "inch" (and "yard") means "international inch" (and yard). [29] though approximate conversions in the left-hand column hold for both international units and survey units. "≈" means "is approximately equal to". "≡" means "equals by definition" or equivalently, "is exactly equal to". One metre is exactly equivalent to 10000⁄254 inches and to 10000⁄9144 yards. A simple mnemonic aid exists to assist with conversion, as three "3": 1 metre is nearly equivalent to 3 feet, 3 and 3/8 inches. [30] This gives an over-estimate of 0.125 mm. The ancient Egyptian cubit was about ½ m (surviving rods are 52.3–52.9 cm). Scottish and English definitions of ell (two cubits) were 0.941 m and 1.143 m, respectively. The ancient Paris toise (fathom) was slightly shorter than 2 m, and was standardized at exactly 2 m in the mesures usuelles system, such that 1 m was exactly ½ toise. The Russian verst was 1.0668 km. The Swedish mil was 10.688 km, but was changed to 10 km when Sweden converted to metric units. See also National Institute of Standards and Technology. (27 June 2011). NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock . Author. National Physical Laboratory. (25 March 2010). Iodine-Stabilised Lasers . Author. Naughtin, Pat. (2008). Spelling metre or meter. Author. Penzes, W. (29 December 2005). Time Line for the Definition of the Meter . Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology — Precision Engineering Division. Retrieved 4 December 2010. Taylor, B.N. and Thompson, A. (Eds.). (2008a). The International System of Units (SI) . United States version of the English text of the eighth edition (2006) of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures publication Le Système International d’ Unités (SI) (Special Publication 330). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 18 August 2008. Taylor, B.N. and Thompson, A. (2008b). Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (Special Publication 811). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 23 August 2008. Tibo Qorl. (2005) The History of the Meter (Translated by Sibille Rouzaud). Retrieved 18 August 2008. Wilkins, J. (c. 2007). An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language .[Also available without images of original .] Metrication Matters. (Reprinted from title page and pp. 190–194 of original, 1668, London: Royal Society) Zagar, B.G. (1999). Laser interferometer displacement sensors in J.G. Webster (ed.). The Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook. CRC Press. isbn=0-8493-8347-1. "(Mise en Pratique) MEP 2003: Iodine (λ≈633nm)" . BIPM. 2003. http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/mep/M-e-P_I2_633.pdf . Further reading Alder, Ken. (2002). The Measure of All Things : The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World. Free Press, New York ISBN 0-7432-1675-X	i don't know
According to the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution, on what date are the president and vice president begin their terms?	Twentieth Amendment - U.S. Constitution - FindLaw Twentieth Amendment - U.S. Constitution Amendment Text \| Annotations Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission. 20th Amendment Annotations Purpose of the Amendment The Senate Committee on the Judiciary in its report suggested several reasons for the proposed Twentieth Amendment. It said in part: ''[W]hen our Constitution was adopted there was some reason for such a long intervention of time between the election and the actual commencement of work by the new Congress. . . . Under present conditions [of communication and transportation] the result of elections is known all over the country within a few hours after the polls close, and the Capital City is within a few days' travel of the remotest portions of the country. . . . ''Another effect of the amendment would be to abolish the so- called short session of Congress. . . . Every other year, under our Constitution, the terms of Members of the House and one-third of the Members of the Senate expire on the 4th day of March. . . . Experience has shown that this brings about a very undesirable legislative condition. It is a physical impossibility during such a short session for Congress to give attention to much general legislation for the reason that it requires practically all of the time to dispose of the regular appropriation bills. . . . The result is a congested condition that brings about either no legislation or illy considered legislation. . . . ''If it should happen that in the general election in November in presidential years no candidate for President had received a majority of all the electoral votes, the election of a President would then be thrown into the House of Representatives and the memberships of the House of Representatives called upon to elect a President would be the old Congress and not the new one just elected by the people. It might easily happen that the Members of the House of Representative, upon whom devolved the solemn duty of electing a Chief Magistrate for 4 years, had themselves been repudiated at the election that had just occurred, and the country would be confronted with the fact that a repudiated House, defeated by the people themselves at the general election, would still have the power to elect a President who would be in control of the country for the next 4 years. It is quite apparent that such a power ought not to exist, and that the people having expressed themselves at the ballot box should through the Representatives then selected, be able to select the President for the ensuing term. . . . ''The question is sometimes asked, Why is an amendment to the Constitution necessary to bring about this desirable change? The Constitution [before this amendment] does not provide the date when the terms of Senators and Representatives shall begin. It does fix the term of Senators at 6 years and of Members of the House of Representatives at 2 years. The commencement of the terms of the first President and Vice President and of Senators and Representatives composing the First Congress was fixed by an act of [the Continental] Congress adopted September 13, 1788, and that act provided 'that the first Wednesday in March next to be the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution.' It happened that the first Wednesday in March was the 4th day of March, and hence the terms of the President and Vice President and Members of Congress began on the 4th day of March. Since the Constitution provides that the term of Senators shall be 6 years and the term of Members of the House of Representatives 2 years, it follows that this change cannot be made without changing the terms of office of Senators and Representatives, which would in effect be a change of the Constitution. By another act (the act of March 1, 1792) Congress provided that the terms of President and Vice President should commence on the 4th day of March after their election. It seems clear, therefore, that an amendment to the Constitution is necessary to give relief from existing conditions.'' 1 As thus stated, the exact term of the President and Vice President was fixed by the Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 1, at 4 years, and became actually effective, by resolution of the Continental Congress, on the 4th of March 1789. Since this amendment was declared adopted on February 6, 1933, Sec. 1 in effect shortened, by the interval between January 20 and March 4, 1937, the terms of the President and Vice President elected in 1932. Similarly, it shortened, by the intervals between January 3 and March 4, the terms of Senators elected for terms ending March 4, 1935, 1937, and 1939; and thus temporarily modified the Seventeenth Amendment, fixing the terms of Senators at 6 years. It also shortened the terms of Representatives elected to the Seventy-third Congress, by the interval between January 3 and March 4, 1935, and temporarily modified Article I, Sec. 2, clause 1, fixing the terms of Representatives at 2 years. Section 1 further modifies the Twelfth Amendment in its reference to March 4 as the date by which the House must exercise its choice of a President. Section 2 supersedes clause 2 of Sec. 4 of Article I. The setting of an exact hour for meeting constitutes a recognition of the long practice of Congress, which in 1867 was for the first time enacted into permanent law, 2 only to be repealed in 1871. 3 When the 3d of January fell on Sunday (in 1937), Congress did by law appoint a different day for its assemblage. 4 Pursuant to the authority conferred upon it by Sec. 3 of this amendment, Congress shaped the Presidential Succession Act of 1948 5 to meet the situation which would arise from the failure of both President elect and Vice President elect to qualify on or before the time fixed for the beginning of the new Presidential term. Footnotes	January 20
January 18, 1778 saw explorer Captain James Cook make landfall at the islands he dubbed The Sandwich Islands. By what name do we know them today?	Twentieth Amendment--Terms of President, Vice President, Members of Congress: Presidential Vacancy Justia US Law US Codes and Statutes US Constitution Twentieth Amendment--Terms of President, Vice President, Members of Congress: Presidential Vacancy Twentieth Amendment--Terms of President, Vice President, Members of Congress: Presidential Vacancy TWENTIETH AMENDMENT S ECTION 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. S ECTION 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. S ECTION 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. S ECTION 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. S ECTION 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article. S ECTION 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission. PURPOSE OF THE AMENDMENT The Senate Committee on the Judiciary in its report suggested several reasons for the proposed Twentieth Amendment. It said in part: ''[W]hen our Constitution was adopted there was some reason for such a long intervention of time between the election and the actual commencement of work by the new Congress… Under present conditions [of communication and transportation] the result of elections is known all over the country within a few hours after the polls close, and the Capital City is within a few days' travel of the remotest portions of the country…'' ''Another effect of the amendment would be to abolish the so-called short session of Congress… Every other year, under our Constitution, the terms of Members of the House and one-third of the Members of the Senate expire on the 4th day of March… Experience has shown that this brings about a very undesirable legislative condition. It is a physical impossibility during such a short session for Congress to give attention to much general legislation for the reason that it requires practically all of the time to dispose of the regular appropriation bills… The result is a congested condition that brings about either no legislation or illy considered legislation…'' ''If it should happen that in the general election in November in presidential years no candidate for President had received a majority of all the electoral votes, the election of a President would then be thrown into the House of Representatives and the memberships of the House of Representatives called upon to elect a President would be the old Congress and not the new one just elected by the people. It might easily happen that the Members of the House of Representative, upon whom devolved the solemn duty of electing a Chief Magistrate for 4 years, had themselves been repudiated at the election that had just occurred, and the country would be confronted with the fact that a repudiated House, defeated by the people themselves at the general election, would still have the power to elect a President who would be in control of the country for the next 4 years. It is quite apparent that such a power ought not to exist, and that the people having expressed themselves at the ballot box should through the Representatives then selected, be able to select the President for the ensuing term…'' ''The question is sometimes asked, Why is an amendment to the Constitution necessary to bring about this desirable change? The Constitution [before this amendment] does not provide the date when the terms of Senators and Representatives shall begin. It does fix the term of Senators at 6 years and of Members of the House of Representatives at 2 years. The commencement of the terms of the first President and Vice President and of Senators and Representatives composing the First Congress was fixed by an act of [the Continental] Congress adopted September 13, 1788, and that act provided 'that the first Wednesday in March next to be the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution.' It happened that the first Wednesday in March was the 4th day of March, and hence the terms of the President and Vice President and Members of Congress began on the 4th day of March. Since the Constitution provides that the term of Senators shall be 6 years and the term of Members of the House of Representatives 2 years, it follows that this change cannot be made without changing the terms of office of Senators and Representatives, which would in effect be a change of the Constitution. By another act (the act of March 1, 1792) Congress provided that the terms of President and Vice President should commence on the 4th day of March after their election. It seems clear, therefore, that an amendment to the Constitution is necessary to give relief from existing conditions.''1 As thus stated, the exact term of the President and Vice President was fixed by the Constitution, Art. II, § 1, cl. 1, at 4 years, and became actually effective, by resolution of the Continental Congress, on the 4th of March 1789. Since this amendment was declared adopted on February 6, 1933, § 1 in effect shortened, by the interval between January 20 and March 4, 1937, the terms of the President and Vice President elected in 1932. Similarly, it shortened, by the intervals between January 3 and March 4, the terms of Senators elected for terms ending March 4, 1935, 1937, and 1939; and thus temporarily modified the Seventeenth Amendment, fixing the terms of Senators at 6 years. It also shortened the terms of Representatives elected to the Seventy-third Congress, by the interval between January 3 and March 4, 1935, and temporarily modified Article I, § 2, clause 1, fixing the terms of Representatives at 2 years. 1 S. Rep. No. 26, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., 2, 4, 5, 6 (1932). Section 1 further modifies the Twelfth Amendment in its reference to March 4 as the date by which the House must exercise its choice of a President. Section 2 supersedes clause 2 of § 4 of Article I. The setting of an exact hour for meeting constitutes a recognition of the long practice of Congress, which in 1867 was for the first time enacted into permanent law,2 only to be repealed in 1871.3 When the 3d of January fell on Sunday (in 1937), Congress did by law appoint a different day for its assemblage.4 Pursuant to the authority conferred upon it by § 3 of this amendment, Congress shaped the Presidential Succession Act of 19485 to meet the situation which would arise from the failure of both President elect and Vice President elect to qualify on or before the time fixed for the beginning of the new Presidential term. 2 Ch. 10, 14 Stat. 378. 3 Ch. 21, § 30, 17 Stat. 12. See 1 A. H INDS	i don't know
With a record 22 guest appearances, who has been Saturday Night Live's most frequent guest host?	Most Frequent SNL Hosts \| List of Saturday Night Live Guest Hosts Alec Baldwin - 16 times Alec Baldwin is a funny guy. He's a likable guy. And he's a really good 'Saturday Night Live' host. So good, in fact, that he has passed Steve Martin and is the current record holder for most times hosting the show: 16, to be exact. And Baldwin is about to beat Martin. When he hosts 'SNL' on September 24, 2011, (his first time hosting a 'Saturday Night Live' premiere) he'll be the undisputed champ of hosts - sweet 16! Here, Baldwin hosts for the 15th time, during the season finale of 'Saturday Night Live's' 35th season (May 15, 2010). And he explains that he and Steve Martin aren't rivals. Really. He also delivers a hilarious 'SNL' commencement address. Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor, producer, and comedian. As a member of the Baldwin family, he is the oldest of the four Baldwin brothers, all well-known actors. Baldwin first gained recognition appearing on seasons 6 and 7 of the CBS television drama Knots Landing, in the role of ... more more ABOUT Christopher Walken - 7 times The awesomeness that is Christopher Walken has graced the 'SNL' stage as a host seven times. Basically, if he wants to host, he's got a gig. Lorne Michaels likes him that much, and so do I. His monologues are always interesting, and his skits? Well, from 'The Continental' to the (now infamous) 'Behind the Music' Blue Oyster Cult sketch (more cowbell!), they are simly hysterically funny. In 2008, Walken appeared in the skit "Meet the Family" - an instant Walken classic. Christopher Walken is an American actor. He has appeared in more than 100 films and television shows, including The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Catch Me If You Can, Hairspray and Seven ... more more ABOUT Bill Murray - 5 times Bill Murray is an 'SNL' "Five Timer" club member with good reason. As an original cast member, he's one of only two alumni who are in this club (the other being Chevy Chase, the man he eventually replaced in the cast!). Murray hosted his fifth 'Saturday Night Live' show in February of 1999. During that show, Chevy Chase joined him in a great skit about 'Caddyshack.' In this monologue from 'SNL' season 6, in March of 1981, an enthusiastic Murray delivers his monologue with help from Eddie Murphy. Awesome Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor fun. William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained exposure on Saturday Night Live for which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in comedy films, including Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, What About Bob?, and Groundhog Day. Murray garnered ... more more ABOUT Paul Simon - 4 times Paul Simon is NOT a member of the 'SNL' "Five Timers" club - yet. One more and he'll make it. Simon has performed as a musical guest on 'Saturday Night Live' nine times - second only to Dave Grohl. Perhaps Simon's best, most memorable 'SNL' monologue was the bizarre (and hilarious) Thanksgiving turkey opening. In November of 1976, Simon donned a turkey costume and proceeded to belt out his hit song "Still Crazy After All These Years." Watch the clip of Paul trying not to be "Mr. Alienation," and then tell me he doesn't deserve to make this list! Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, actor and singer-songwriter. Simon's fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote nearly all of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the ... more more ABOUT Candice Bergen - 5 times Candice Bergen has hosted 'SNL' five times and is one of only two women on this multiple-hosts list. She was also the first woman to ever host 'Saturday Night Live' (during season 1, episode 4 on November 8, 1975). A little over a month later, on December 20, 1975, Bergen set another 'SNL' record, becoming the first person to host the show a second time. Bergen returned to host 'Saturday Night Live' for a third time in December of 1976, during the show's second season, appearing in one of my favorite all-time 'SNL' skits: Irvin Mainway, Bag O' Glass. Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress and former fashion model. For her role as the title character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown, she won five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards as Best Actress in a TV Comedy. She is also an Academy Award nominee. Bergen began her career as a fashion ... more more ABOUT	Steve Martin
Scheduled to do it's flyby on July 14, 2015, the NASA launched probe New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006 to do explore what heavenly body?	12 Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Holiday Sketches 12 Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Holiday Sketches Share Comment Just last weekend, comedian and former Saturday Night Live cast member Martin Short delivered quite the holiday spectacular . As a result, I thought now might also be the time to dive back into the past of the late night sketch comedy series to remember some of the classic holiday hilarity from years past. Below you’ll find this writer’s picks for the 12 best holiday sketches from SNL, and they span decades and include cast members like Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, Adam Sandler, Bill Hader and honorary cast members such as Steve Martin, Justin Timberlake and Alec Baldwin. #12. I Wish It Was Christmas Today – This isn’t so much funny as it is charming, and it also helps that people loved this little song enough to have it revived eight different times after debuting in 2000. Below is the original version, but you can find the various renditions of the song on Hulu from later years. Horatio Sans, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan and Tracy Morgan are always the ones belting out this catchy Christmas tune, and that’s pretty cool. #11. Irwin Mainway and Mainway Toys – Reaching back in time, this is a classic sketch featuring Dan Aykroyd as a shady toy salesman with products for kids that might not be so safe. This was one of those sketches that survived long enough to penetrate my childhood viewings of Saturday Night Live around the holidays, and even as a grade school kid, the “Bag of Broken Glass” joke was part of my schoolyard humor repertoire. #10. Christmastime for the Jews – For all those Jewish families who don’t celebrate Christmas and would rather hit the local movie theater and grab some Chinese food, this little TV Funhouse animated sketch captures the magic that comes during the special time of year when the Jews take to the streets and run the city. Using the classic claymation style that Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer employed in the 60s, it’s another classic that I watched as a kid, but didn’t necessarily understand until I was older. #9. Drunk Uncle – This is easily one of my favorite recent Weekend Update correspondents, and Bobby Moynihan thankfully hasn’t run him into the ground like some of the other recurring characters on the show. Almost everyone has a relative like this who gets a little toasty around the holidays, and doesn’t make all that much sense once they start running off at the mouth. “Put that in your iPad and smoke it.” #8. Stefon – Yes, while Drunk Uncle has only been around for a handful of sketches, Bill Hader as frequent clubber Stefon has returned for plenty of suggestions (all of them terrible) for tourists to enjoy when they’re in New York City. One of these days, someone should recreate any of his suggestions for a party (maybe not). #7. Steve Martin’s Christmas Wish – It’s a common misconception that Steve Martin was a cast member on Saturday Night Live (especially since he has his own Best of Steve Martin DVD from the show), in fact the comedian has simply hosted the show 15 times (a record only just recently broken by Alec Baldwin). And this is truly one of Martin’s best sketches, and puts his classic sense of humor on display. #6. Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood – This is one of the oldest Saturday Night Live sketches I ever saw, and as a child who religiously watched Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, this just cracked me up. Easily one of Eddie Murhpy’s most memorable characters, Mr. Robinson’s childish whimsy and smile just made all his despicable actions seems wholly acceptable. #5. Glengarry Glen-Christmas – It’s the inside-joke premise that makes this sketch work so well, but if you haven’t seen Glengarry Glen Ross, the sketch is probably only about 25% as funny. Alec Baldwin reprises his role from the James Foley film written by David Mamet (based on his play), but in the form of a hard ass elf coming down on the employees at Santa’s workshop. It’s almost a word-for-word recreation of a scene from the movie, but with Christmas themed replacements here and there. If you haven’t seen Glengarry Glen Ross, fix that problem and then watch this sketch. #4. Dick in a Box – Who would’ve thought that Justin Timberlake would be in one of the most iconic sketches in recent Saturday Night Live memory? It helps that this came as one of the now infamous SNL Digital Shorts, but along with Lazy Sunday, this helped give cast member Andy Samberg and writers Jorma Taccone and Akiva Shaffer a career as the fake rap trio The Lonely Island, and Timberlake still joins them occasionally on their own tracks. #3. It’s a Wonderful Life Alternate Ending – A Christmas classic gets an unlikely DVD supplement in the form of an alternate ending that features Dana Carvey doing his patented Jimmy Stewart impression to great effect. It’s fun to take such a famous holiday classic and give it a fun spin like this. And you really can’t go wrong with most sketches involving Dana Carvey from the 90s. #2. The Hanukkah Song – This and Lunch Lady Land helped give Adam Sandler a career in comedy music for a little while, but no song would ever eclipse the appeal of this holiday tune. With a list of celebrities who are (probably) Jewish, Sandler gives a rare dose of comedy to Jewish audiences around Christmas time. What makes this all the more charming is the fact that it’s just Sandler and his guitar at the Weekend Update desk, and there’s not a band or backtrack to help him out. #1. The Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls – Good times. Alec Baldwin has a voice made for radio, so it makes perfect sense that he would stop by NPR’s Delicious Dish segment, but we never knew that he would bring out his balls. This is no doubt the best Delicious Dish segment that Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon ever made, and is one of the sketches that Baldwin is most remembered for in his record 16 times hosting (among countless surprise guest appearances). So there you have it. Some of the best holiday laughs from decades of Saturday Night Live. Here’s hoping this brings some laughter to you this holiday season and that you enjoy some laughs of your own with family and friends. Saturday Night Live returns on January 19th with host Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games) and musical guest The Lumineers at 11:30/10:30c on NBC.	i don't know
Who pondered The Road Ahead and advocated Business at the Speed of Thought?	The Globalization Website - Global Actors GLOBAL ACTORS Wallerstein, Immanuel M. Borlaug, Norman E. (1914-). Plant scientist who played leading role in developing high-yield, disease-resistant wheat strains. PhD, University of Minnesota, 1942. Nobel Peace Prize for "Green Revolution,"1970. Joined Rockefeller Foundation cooperative project on wheat research and improvement in Mexico,1944. Developed new methods for crossing and testing strains; worked with farmers to implement changes. "Green Revolution" contributed to the improvement of food production in developing countries (e.g., Pakistan, India), helping nearly to double global grain yields per acre in second half of twentieth century. Since 1980s involved in African projects. Faced criticism from environmentalists for use of inorganic fertilizers. Publications include The Impact of Agricultural Research on Mexican Wheat Production (1958); Wheat Breeding and Its Impact on World Food Supply (1968); A Green Revolution Yields a Golden Harvest (1969). Sources: D. Paarlberg, Norman Borlaug: Hunger Fighter, 1970; D.G.Johnson, The Struggle Against World Hunger,1967. LINKS: back to the list of actors Bové, José (1953-). French activist and farmer, prominently involved in opposition to free trade policies, corporate agriculture, and genetically modified food. Born in Bordeaux, spent early childhood in Berkeley (US). College activist in France after 1968. Moved to countryside to farm in 1975, involved in politics of agriculture. Launched Peasant Confederation in 1987 (fusion of two organizations) to defend independent farmers and promote traditional practices. Caught public attention with destruction of genetically modified rice plants and ransacking of McDonald's (Millau) in 1999, followed by prosecution and trials. Celebrity in anti-globalization movement (chant at World Social Forum, Porto Alegre 2001: "We are all José Bové"). Publications: The World Is Not For Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food (with others; Verso 2001); La Révolte d'un Paysan (Éditions Golias 2001); "Pour une Agriculture Paysanne (Le Monde, 1999); "Report from French Farmers" (address to court). Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1931-). Influential scholar of underdevelopment, elected President of Brazil in 1994. PhD, University of São Paulo, 1961. Long-time professor of political science at University of Sao Paulo, now emeritus; member of the Scientific Council of CEBRAP (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning). Known among academics for Dependency Theory, influenced by Marxist concepts, attributing Latin American underdevelopment to dependence on foreign capital and political influence. Started political career in 1970s; co-founder of two political parties; senator, 1988-92; foreign minister and finance minister, 1992-4. Since election to presidency a vigorous advocate of free markets, privatization, and containing inflation. Publications include Dependency and Development in Latin America (with E. Faletto;1978); The New Global Economy in the Information Age (contributor;1993). Source: T. Goertzel, Fernando Henrique Cardoso: Reinventing Democracy in Brazil, 1999. LINKS: back to the list of actors Carter, Jimmy (James Earl Carter, Jr., 1924-). President of U.S., 1977-81, and leading supporter of global causes. BS, The United States Naval Academy, 1946. As president contributed to major accords (Panama Canal, Camp David, SALT II) and championed human rights. Founder of Carter Center and distinguished professor at Emory University, 1982-. Actively involved in conflict resolution, election monitoring, human rights advocacy, and immunization projects around the world. Publications include A Government as Good as Its People (1977); Keeping Faith: Memories of a President (1982); Living Faith (1996). Sources: D. Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, 1998; R.A. Strong, Working in the World : Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 2000 LINKS: back to the list of actors De Soto, Hernando (1941-). Influential Peruvian economist and development expert, known for advocating legalization of property of the poor as basis for capital formation and economic growth. Born in Arequipa, Peru; went abroad with diplomat father. College in Peru, graduate education in Geneva. Worked for GATT, organization of copper-exporting nations, and Swiss engineering company. Returned to Peru in 1980, founded Institute for Liberty and Democracy in 1982 to study informal economy and pursue reform to help the poor. Advisor to President Fujimori in early 1990s, involved in legalizing many illegal buildings and small businesses. Active in development and reform outside Peru since 1996. Publications: The Other Path (1986) and The Mystery of Capital : Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (Basic Books 2000; reviewed by R. Samuelson here ). Friedman, Thomas L. (1953-). Influential commentator on globalization and foreign affairs. Educated at Brandeis University and St. Antony's College, Oxford. Former foreign affairs correspondent, currently columnist for New York Times. Winner of two Pulitzer prizes, one for reporting on Lebanon reflected in From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1988. Describes globalization as inexorable, mainly positive in widely reviewed bestseller, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1999. LINK: back to the list of actors Gates, William (1955-). Influential entrepreneur in PC revolution; co-founder (1975) and Chairman of Microsoft, leading provider of operating systems and software applications for personal computers in 1980s and 1990s. Studied at Harvard University (1973-75). Guiding assumption: a PC on every desktop, to be operated by Microsoft software. Adapted company strategy to internet in 1990s. Long considered world's richest man. Founder of Gates Foundation, one of world's largest charities. Company found guilty of antitrust violations in 2000. Publications: The Road Ahead (1995) and Business@the Speed of Thought (1999). Sources: J. Wallace, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, 1993; D. Ichbiah and S.L. Knepper, The Making of Microsoft: How Bill Gates and His Team Created the World's Most Successful Software Company,1991; P. Andrews, How the Web was Won: Microsoft from Windows to the Web, 1999. LINK: back to the list of actors Gorbachev, Mikhail S. (1931-). Last Soviet president; key figure in demise of communist rule in Eastern Europe and end of Cold War. Graduated from Moscow State University. After career in Communist Party, became General Secretary and President of Soviet Union, 1985-91. Attempted reform to preserve socialism and party role via perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Allowed Moscow allies to abolish communism and acceded to demise of Soviet system. Nobel Peace Prize, 1990, for role in transition. President of International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (Gorbachev Foundation), 1992-, and Green Cross International. Publications include Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (1987); The Years of Hard Decisions (1993); On My Country and the World (1999). Sources: M. Galeotti, Gorbachev and his Revolution, 1997; R. Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States, 1998. LINK: back to the list of actors John Paul II, Pope (Karol Jozef Wojtyla,1920-). Leader of Roman-Catholic Church since 1978, influential voice on world issues, contributed to end of Communism in eastern Europe. PhD, Jagiellonian University, 1949. First non-Italian pope in 455 years. Had been published poet, professor of ethics and member of theater group prior to church career. Influential supporter of anticommunist movements, esp. in native Poland, hence credited with role in ending Cold War. Reaffirmed conservative church position on abortion, birth control, and ordination of women. Spread message through frequent travel, fostering non-Western church growth reflected in diversified bishop ranks. Cracked down on church critics and liberation theology; also defended rights of labor and opposed dominance of materialist capitalism. Publications include The Splendor of Truth (encyclical, 1993);The Gospel of Life (encyclical;1995); Celebrate 2000: A Three Year Reader : Reflections on Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father (1996). Sources: G. Weigel, Witness To Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, 1999; J.F. Crosby et al., The Legacy of John Paul II: His Contribution to Catholic Thought, 2000. LINKS: back to the list of actors Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Moussavi (1902-1989). Iranian cleric, opponent of Shah's rule in 1960s and 70s from exile, leader of Islamic Revolution, then founder of Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979. Denounced U.S. as Great Satan; opposed Western influence in Islamic world. Favored strict application of Islamic law; assumed new position of vali-e faqih, supreme jurist-leader. Author of several books on Islam. Publications include Islamic Government (1979); A Clarification of Questions (1984). Sources: A. Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution, 1985; N.R. Keddie and E. Hooglund, eds., The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic, 1986; A. Ehteshami, After Khomeini : The Iranian Second Republic, 1995. LINKS: back to the list of actors Kissinger, Henry A. (1923-). Influential figure in American foreign policy since 1960s. PhD, Harvard University, 1954. After teaching history at Harvard, served as National Security Advisor, then Secretary of State (1973-77) under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Advocated detente with Soviet Union, negotiated peace with North Vietnam, pursued Mideast diplomacy. Favored realist defense of state interests over pursuit of moral mission. Influential commentator on international affairs after leaving office. Publications include American Foreign Policy (1974); Diplomacy (1995); Years of Renewal (1999). Sources: W. Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography, 1993; R. Strong, Bureaucracy and Statesmanship : Henry Kissinger and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1986. LINK: back to the list of actors Krugman, Paul (1953-). Influential economic theorist and commentator on international economics. PhD, MIT, 1977. Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT. Developed new theory of international trade. Columnist for New York Times since 2000. Iconoclastic policy analyst; has opposed viewing countries as firms in competition, recommended capital controls to deal with speculative capital movements, and proposed deficit spending in Japan to end recession. Author of Market Structure and Foreign Trade (with E. Helpman; 1985), International Economics (with M. Obstfeld; 1997), and many books for general public. LINK: back to the list of actors Lubbers, Ruud (1939-). Dutch politician and student of globalization, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2001-). Studied economics in Rotterdam, worked in family business, and became active in Catholic Party before serving as Minister of Economic Affairs (1973-7). Christian-Democratic leader in Parliament (1977-82). Prime minister of the Netherlands, various cabinets, 1982-94. Professor of globalization studies , Tilburg University, 1995-200, focusing on problems of social cohesion and human values in globalization. Involved in wide variety of organizations prior to UNHCR appointment. MacBride, Sean (1904-1988). Irish diplomat active in numerous international organizations; chaired Amnesty International, 1961-74. Nobel Peace Prize, 1974. Author of UNESCO report proposing international communication order less dominated by West (Many Voices, One World, 1980). Previously active in struggle for Irish independence, trial lawyer, founder (1946) and leader of Republican Party, and foreign minister (1948-51). UN Commissioner for Namibia (elected 1973). Chairman and President, International Peace Bureau, 1968-85. Publications include Israel in Lebanon (1984). Sources: A.J. Jordan, Seán MacBride: A Biography, 1993. LINK: back to the list of actors Mandela, Nelson (Rolihlahla Dalibhunga) (1918-). Key figure in struggle against apartheid in South Africa; first post-apartheid president, 1994-99. Studied in University College of Fort Hare and in Johannesburg. Former President of African National Congress (joined in 1942). Imprisoned by South African government for over 20 years for engaging in armed attacks on regime. Influential voice and symbol of struggle against all racial discrimination. Nobel Peace Prize, 1993. Publications include Long Walk to Freedom : The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1995); In the Words of Nelson Mandela (1998). Sources: A. Sampson, Mandela : The Authorized Biography, 1999; M. Meredith, Nelson Mandela : A Biography,1997. LINKS: back to the list of actors Marx, Karl (1818 -1883). Student and critic of capitalism who predicted its global spread; intellectual source of communist movement. Born in Trier, Germany; studied law at Bonn and philosophy at Berlin. Editor of radical newspaper, exiled to Paris (1843), Brussels (1845), and finally London (from 1849). Organized Communist League, 1847. Author with Engels of Communist Manifesto, attacking capitalism and calling for class struggle. Leader in First International, socialist organization, 1864-1872. Publications include Das Kapital [Capital] (1867-1894); archive of publications is in http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm . Sources: S. Avineri, Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, 1970; L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, 1978; F. Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life, 1999. LINK: back to the list of actors Murdoch, K. Rupert (1931- ). Developed News Corp. into multinational multimedia empire. Studied at Worcester College, England. By 2000 company included The Times and other newspapers, HarperCollins publisher, 22 U.S. TV stations, TV Guide magazine, 20th Century Fox movie studio, Star TV (Asia) and BSkyB (Europe) satellite tv services, and Fox tv network. Subsidiaries span five continents. Outlets influence culture and politics of dozens of countries. Sources: W. Shawcross, Murdoch, 1993. S. Crainer, Business the Rupert Murdoch Way : 10 Secrets of the World's Greatest Deal Maker, 1999; "Media: A Predator Becomes the Prey," The Observer, Feb. 20, 2000; "Bloodied, But Unbowed," Financial Times, March 2, 2000; "What the Hell is Rupert Up To?" The Guardian, March 6, 2000; "Murdoch Sees Satellite as Way To Keep News Corp. Current," The New York Times, June 16, 2000. LINK: back to the list of actors Reagan, Ronald W. (1911-). Contributed to end of Cold War, stronger U.S. position in world, and open world economy as President of U.S., 1981-89. BA, Eureka College, 1932. After career as movie actor served as governor of California. Advocated smaller government, less regulation, lower taxes ("Reaganomics"); stronger defense for "peace through strength." Associated with higher deficits and arms spending, neoliberal pursuit of free trade, and pressure on Soviet Union near end of Cold War. Publications include Ronald Reagan : An American Life (1999); The Quotable Ronald Reagan (1999). Sources: D.H. Strober, G.S. Strober, Reagan : The Man and His Presidency, 1997; E.J. Schmertz et al., President Reagan and the World, 1997; F. Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War, 2000. LINKS: back to the list of actors Soros, George (1930-). Influential financier, operating Soros Fund Management and Quantum Group funds (1969-), who gained fame in successful currency speculation marking integration of financial markets, hence target of globalization critics. Emigrated from Hungary, 1947; studied at London School of Economics. Founder of charitable Open Society Fund (1979) and Soros Foundations network, engaged in humanitarian projects around globe, promoting debate on controversial issues in U.S. Critic of unrestrained capital mobility and "market fundamentalism." Publications include The Alchemy of Finance (1987); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, (1998). Sources: R. Slater, Soros : The Life, Times, & Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor, 1997; L.B. Lindsey, Economic Puppetmasters, 1999; "Soros's Milk of Human Kindness Running Dry," The Daily Telegraph, Aug. 14, 1999; "Volatile Market Forces Soros to Scale Back Risk in Quantum Fund," Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2000; "A Social Call from a Ruthless Speculator," The Financial Times, May 6, 2000. LINK: back to the list of actors Strong, Maurice (1929-). Leading figure on global environmental issues, active in UN reform. Educated in Manitoba, Canada. Started career as oil and power company executive, later chairman of Ontario Hydro utility. Chief organizer of ground-breaking 1972 UN meeting on environment in Stockholm. Member of UN Commission on Environment and Development (1980s) and Commission on Global Governance (1990s). Secretary-General of UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio 1992. Chairman of Earth Council, environmental NGO, since 1993. Advocates sustainable development and "greening the market system." Served as senior advisor to UN Secretary-General and to President of World Bank. Publications include Where on Earth Are We Going?, 2000. Sources: H. Westrup, Maurice Strong: Working for Planet Earth, 1994; "Listen to the 'Crazies' or the Earth Is Doomed," The Ottawa Citizen, May 15, 2000; "Clarion Call to Save the World," The Gazette (Montreal), May 27, 2000. LINKS: back to the list of actors Turner, Ted (1938-). Founder of Cable News Network (1980), 24-hour international news service, and other U.S. networks. BA, Brown University. Developed Turner Broadcasting System, several U.S. TV channels. Became owner of Atlanta Braves and Hawks teams. Started Goodwill Games between U.S and Soviet Union. Vice-chairman of Time Warner after takeover of TBS/CNN. Established foundation to allocate $1 billion donation to UN. Internationally active in nature conservation. Publications include Ted Turner Speaks: Insight from the World's Greatest Maverick (1999). Sources: H. Whittemore, CNN: The Inside Story, 1990; R. Goldberg/G.J. Goldberg, Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon, 1995; P. Bibb, Ted Turner : It Ain't As Easy at Is Looks : A Biography, 1997; A.E. Carlson, Riding A White Horse: Ted Turner's Goodwill Games and Other Crusades, 1998; "The Emperor's New Roles," The Observer, June 4, 2000; "The End for Ted?" The Times, June 9, 2000. LINKS: back to the list of actors Wallerstein, Immanuel M. (1930-). Key figure in development of theory of capitalist world-system. PhD, Columbia University, 1964. Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director, Fernand Braudel Center, at State University of New York at Binghamton since 1976. President, International Sociological Association, 1994-8. Started career as student of Africa; became proponent of world-system theory, historical account of development of global capitalist system stressing role of strong core countries in world market. Critic of global inequality and of outmoded disciplinary divisions in social science. Publications include The Modern World-System (Vols. 1-3; 1974,1980,1989); Geopolitics and Geoculture (1991); Unthinking Social Science (1991); After Liberalism (1996); The End of the World As We Know It (1999). Sources: T.R. Shannon, An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 1989; S.K. Sanderson, ed., Civilizations and World Systems, 1995. LINK:	Bill Gates
“There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s” what?	Inspirational thoughts and motivational quotes Back to home page click here THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK Inspirational thoughts, motivational quotes, and wisdom from around the world A new thought each and every week Underlying these thoughts are my personal values and my personal philosophy which encompass difference and diversity, fun and friendship, optimism and openness, trust, tolerance and teamwork, creativity, learning and growth, a commitment to reason and critical thinking, an interest in other countries and cultures, and a willingness to embrace change and new experiences. If you share at least some of these principles, then you should find the following thoughts illuminating and, on occasions, hopefully even inspiring. One of my friends once called my circulation of Thought For The Week "a web of wisdom". What is Roger thinking? If you would like to read this week's thought click here Each week, a new thought is sent out by e-mail to around 2,000 contacts worldwide. If you would like to be on the circulation list e-mail me . "There appears to be a positive correlation between an atmosphere of 'human playfulness' (otherwise known as humour) in the workplace and the improvement of 'innovative activity and creativity'." "Observer Business Section", 18 April 1999 "Here on the edge of the twenty-first century, a fundamental new rule of business is that the Internet changes everything." "Business @ The Speed Of Thought" by Bill Gates (1999) "In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours: life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: philosophy." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "In the global marketplace of tomorrow, the successful company will be known for the quality of the employee that it keeps rather than the numbers of workers who are laid-off." "From The Telegraph To The Internet" by Morton Bahr "The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself." "Memories and Memories" by Dame Nellie Melba, Australian operatic soprano (1861-1931) Note: Dame Nellie was born Helen Porter Mitchell and took her professional name after her native city of Melbourne; in turn she gave this name to a new dessert called p&#234che melba. "I wouldn't like to have lived without ever having disturbed anyone." Personal motto of Father Charles Urnick, my American pen-friend of 34 years "Intelligence is of the essence in warfare - it is what the armies depend upon in their every move. To be reliable, information must be firsthand. There is thus an important relationship between intelligence and timing." "The Art Of Warfare" by Sun-tzu "Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself." Mary Schmich, "Chicago Tribune", 1 June 1997 in a piece now known as "the Sunscreen Speech" which has been made into a record by the film director Baz Luhrmann "Astronomers estimate that there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way" ('our' galaxy) and "It is estimated that 100 billion galaxies are in principle visible to our modern instruments." "The Future Of Cosmology" by John Gribbin "A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer." Dean Acheson (1893-1971), quoted in "Wall Street Journal", 8 September 1977 "At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly sceptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new." "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan "A life is never ended until all the lives it has touched have ended too." Chinese proverb, quoted at funeral of Peter Cotgrove (1929-1999), father of our colleague Nigel, held on 30 June 1999 "When a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it into something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting." "The History Of Mr. Polly" by H.G. Wells (1910) "The wealth of the three richest people in the world exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 smallest countries." "Guardian", 12 June 1999 "Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? There are still five - because there's a difference between deciding and doing." "Five Frogs On A Log" by Mark L Feldman & Michael F Spratt "The are only two ways to handle tense situations: you can change them, or you can change the way you look at them. There is enlightenment to be had in changing the way you look at things." "The Little Book Of Calm" by Paul Wilson (1996) "Every breath you take contains atoms forged in the blistering furnaces deep inside stars. Every flower you pick contains atoms blasted into space by stellar explosions that blazed brighter than a billion suns. Every book you read contains atoms blown across unimaginable gulfs of space and time by the wind between the stars." "The Magic Furnace: The Search For The Origin Of Atoms" by Marcus Chown "It's no longer about the big beating the small; it's about the fast beating the slow." Larry Carter, Chief Executive Officer of Cisco Systems, quoted in "The Economist", 26 June 1999 "Make a point of connecting with someone new every day. And re-acquaint yourself with anyone you have not spoken to for some time by going through your address book." "Your Personal Survival Guide To The 21st Century" by Roy Sheppard (1998) "Life is like that old Spanish saying: 'He who plants the lettuce doesn't always eat the salad'." The actor Anthony Quinn in the "Sunday Express", 13 October 1963 "Enthusiastic people are the ones who actually get things done in this world. Enthusiasm is what turns any idea into reality. And enthusiasm is linked closely with happiness." "Your Personal Survival Guide To The 21st Century" by Roy Sheppard (1998) "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere." Eleanor Roosevelt, speaking to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 27 March 1958 "There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it." "Notes From A Big Country" by Bill Bryson "We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it? What does nature hold dearer or more proper to herself? Could you have a hot bath unless the firewood underwent some change? Could you be nourished if the food suffered no change? Is it possible for any useful thing to be achieved without change?" "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "You see things that are and say 'Why?' But I dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'" Writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "We .. live in a world that has seen Superman, in the person of Christopher Reeve, rendered a quadriplegic, and a quadriplegic, in the person of Stephen Hawking, rendered Superman." David Beresford, himself a sufferer of Parkinson's disease, writing in the "Observer", 3 October 1999 "There is no activity more intrinsically globalizing than trade, no ideology less interested in nations than capitalism, no challenge to frontiers more audacious than the market." "Jihad vs McWorld" by Benjamin R. Barber (1995) "Two men look out through the same bars; One sees the mud and one sees the stars." Frederick Langbridge (1849-1923) "Indulge yourself by being generous - help someone out, perform an act of kindness, offer a compliment. The person who will feel most uplifted by you having done so is you." "The Little Book Of Calm" by Paul Wilson (1996) "The doers cut a path through the jungle, the managers are behind them sharpening the machetes. The leaders find time to think, climb the nearest tree, and shout 'Wrong jungle!' Find time to climb the trees." Peter Maxwell, director of the Leadership Trust, writing in the "Guardian", 6 October 1999 "You've got to search for the hero inside yourself. Search for the secrets you hide. Search for the hero inside yourself - until you find the key to your life." Refrain from the song "Search For The Hero" by British pop group M People "Words open the soul's window to ideas and the discourse of words is how we grope our way to conversation and, when conversation can be stripped of its inequalities and hidden hegemonies, how we eventually become capable of cooperation, of common life with others, and even of justice." A defence of the complexity of words against the simple imagery of pictures by Benjamin R. Barber in "Jihad vs McWorld" (1995) "The only one who got everything done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe." "The Mirror", 12 November 1999 "Ask most people which is the dominant language on planet Earth and they will reply that it's either English or Chinese. A good guess, but they would be wrong. Binary is now dominant, with computers and machines having more conversations every working day than a sum total of mankind going back to the birth of Eve." "Tips For Time Travellers" by Peter Cochrane (1997). "In spite of illness, in spite of the arch enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable of intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways." Comment on ageing by American novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937) "Creative work will increasingly involve people working in teams which combine members with different skills and backgrounds. These teams are more effective when people can trust fellow team members to play their part. In low-trust organisations, people will tend to hoard knowledge and only share ideas formally through memos and when requested. In high-trust organisations, people are more likely to bestow their knowledge on one another and develop joint understandings of problems and their solutions. Trust and co-operation will be vital to the work cultures of the future." "Living On Thin Air" by Charles Leadbeater (1999) "We are all molded and remolded by those who have loved us and, though that love may pass, we remain, none the less, their work. No love, no friendship can ever cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark upon it forever." Francois Mauriac, French novelist (1885-1970) "To be cheerful about 2000, consider only this. Of the 30 major elections that will be held, 16 will be in countries that 25 years ago were dictatorships." "The World In 2000", published by "The Economist" "Our feelings of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, loss of hope and so forth are in fact related to all phenomena. If we do not adopt the right outlook, it is possible that anything and everything could cause us frustration. Yet phenomena are part of reality and we are subject to the laws of existence. So this leaves us only one option: to change our own attitude. By bringing about a change in our outlook towards things and events, all phenomena can become friends or sources of happiness, instead of becoming enemies or sources of frustration." "The Dalai Lama's Book Of Wisdom" (1999) "Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference." Extract from "The Road Not Taken", a poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963) "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) "There is an emerging consensus about what the knowledge-creating company of the future will look like. It will be good at learning and unlearning. It will be open to new ideas from a diverse network of contacts, but able to integrate them smoothly, with the financial, production and marketing skills needed to make money from them. Staff will have a large measure of autonomy to try and fail. Employees will be encouraged to challenge the status quo. Open communication and information-sharing with customers, staff and suppliers will encourage a flow of ideas. Teamwork and flexibility will be taken for granted." "Living On Thin Air" by Charles Leadbeater (1999) "Never assume, as assume makes an ass out of u and me." "The Mirror", 7 February 2000 "By 2020, we will have synthetic intelligent life forms sharing our planet and they may even have legal rights. They will catch up with human intelligence before then in overall terms, though there will still be a few things left that only humans can do. Most new knowledge will be developed by synthetic intelligence and we will have to accept that we just do not understand some of it, while accepting the resultant benefits." "Technology Timeline - Towards Life In 2020" by BT futurologist Ian Pearson in "BT Technology Journal", No 1 2000 "This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it." Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author, poet & philosopher (1803 - 1882) "There is therefore no function in society which is peculiar to woman as woman or man as man; natural abilities are similarly distributed in each sex and it is natural for woman to share all occupations with men." "The Republic" by Plato (427-347 BC) "Academics have now confirmed what many of us have long believed: that positive thinking leads to a longer and healthier life." "The Observer Magazine", 12 March 2000 "The Web must allow equal access to those in different economic and political situations; those who have physical or cognitive disabilities; those of different cultures; and those who use different languages with different characters that read in different directions across a page." "Weaving The Web" by the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee (1999) "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "When you would have a cordial for your spirits, think of the good qualities of your friends." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "My country is the world and my religion is to do good." "The Rights Of Man" by Thomas Paine (1737-1809) "Most smiles are started by another smile." Anonymous "Truth will prevail." Czech religious reformer Jan Hus (c. 1370-1415), as quoted on his statue in the Old Town Square in Prague "Some men die in shrapnel Some go down in flames Most men perish inch by inch Playing little games." "Business Beyond the Box" by John O'Keeffe (1999) "The one important thing that I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous." Ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991) "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." Plutarch, priest at the Delphic Oracle (c.45-125 AD) "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." American political activist Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) "We tend to measure life by too one-sided a standard: its length rather than its greatness; we think more of extending life than of filling it." Founder-President of Czechoslovakia Tomas Masaryk (1850-1937) "There is good evidence that how long you sleep seems to be the most important indicator of how long you'll live." "The Promise Of Sleep " by William C. Dement with Christopher Vaughan "Most people don't take the time to think. I made an international reputation for myself by deciding to think twice a week." Writer and thinker George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." "Business Beyond the Box" by John O'Keeffe (1999) "We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about." Novelist Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) "Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds." Buddha "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person." "Heretics" by G.K. Chesterton (1905) "Life is made up of giving and getting and forgiving and forgetting." Anonymous "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Brazilian archbishop, Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999) "To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is the perfection of character." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) "The 21st century corporation must adapt itself to management via the Web. It must be predicated on constant change, not stability; organized around networks, not rigid hierarchies; built on shifting partnerships and alliances, not self-sufficiency; and constructed on technological advantages, not bricks and mortar.". "Management By Web" by John A Byrne in "The 21st Century Corporation" supplement to European edition of "Business Week", 21-28 August 2000 "Many people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do." Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "If we work upon marble it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow man, we will engrave on those tablets something that will brighten all eternity." Noah Webster (1758-1843), author of the first American dictionary "He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "We are made of stardust. Every atom of every element in your body except for hydrogen has been manufactured inside stars, scattered across the universe in great stellar explosions and recycled to become part of you." "Stardust" by John Gribbin (2000) "The humane do not worry; the wise are not perplexed; and the courageous do not feel fear." "The Analects" by Confucius (551-479 BC) "More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to." "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson (1990) "One who loses money, loses much; one who loses a friend, loses much more; one who loses faith, loses all." Anonymous "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Martin Luther King, writing in a letter from jail in Birmingham, Alabama, USA on 16 April 1963 "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exup&#233ry (1945) "One does not worry about the fact that other people do not appreciate one. One worries about not appreciating other people." "The Analects" by Confucius (551-479 BC) "Women have become terribly important to me. Not that I understand them. I just like the tangible comfort they give me and their different point of view." British actor Peter O'Toole "I believe that a lot of our striving after the symbols and levers of success is due to a basic insecurity, a need to prove ourselves. That done, grown up at last, we are free to stop pretending." Charles Handy in "Masters Of The Wired World", edited by Anne Leer (1999) "The trouble with the rat-race is that, even if you win, you're still a rat." American comedienne Lily Tomlin "Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." Yoda in the film "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) "Even a little gift may be vast with loving kindness." Theocritus, Greek poet prominent around 270 BC "If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk; happy for a long time, fall in love; happy for ever, take up gardening." British playwright and comedian Arthur Smith "True fulfilment is, I believe, vicarious. We get our deepest satisfaction from the fulfilment, growth and happiness of others. It takes time, often a lifetime, to realize this." Charles Handy in "Masters Of The Wired World", edited by Anne Leer (1999) "We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half." English suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) "Ask a question and you're a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you're a fool for the rest of your life." Anonymous "I don't think you can change the world by smashing up McDonald's - but I do believe that you can change the world by organising a trade union in McDonald's." British singer & songwriter Billy Bragg "Today we know that the greatest danger is not the evil among those who are evil, but the silence of those who are good." Opening remarks of the Swedish Prime Minister G&#246ran Persson at the Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance, 29 January 2001 "The only thing that does not change is that everything changes." "Watching The Tree To Catch The Hare" by Adeline Yen Mah (2000) "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Anonymous "The mind is like an umbrella - it only works when it is open." Scientist Sir James Jeans (1877-1946) "Once you embrace unpleasant news not as a negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren't defeated by it. You're learning from it." "Business @ The Speed Of Thought" by Bill Gates (1999) "Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." Francois-Marie Arouet, called Voltaire (1694-1778) "Comment is free, but facts are sacred." C.P. Scott (1846-1932), former editor of the "Guardian" "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Danish philosopher S&#248ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) "The most subversive people are those who ask questions." "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder (1991) "No government can now rely on the ignorance of its population to sustain it. We are richer as citizens thanks to the expansion of modern media." "A New Future For Communications", UK Government White Paper, December 2000 "Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought." Hungarian scientist, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) "All the masterpieces of art contain both light and shadow. A happy life is not one filled with only sunshine, but one which uses both light and shadow to produce beauty." American evangelist Billy Graham "It is not things in themselves that trouble us but our opinion of things." Greek philosopher Epictetus (c. AD 60 -c. AD 100) "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." Scottish philosopher David Hulme (1711-1776) "Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger." Franklin P Jones "Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair." American comedian George Burns "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." Irish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) "The most important moment in your life is this one - right now. Truly it's the only moment that you have. All other moments are either over and are now just a memory or they are yet to be - a mere speculative thought about some future moment." "Slowing Down To The Speed Of Life" by Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (1997) "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them." Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1634-1677) "Anger is only one letter short of danger." Anonymous "Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically - without learning how or without practising." "Logic For The Millions" by Alfred Mander (1947) "It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than 1000 years as a sheep." Tibetan proverb, quoted by the husband of mountaineer Alison Hargreaves after her death on the mountain K2 "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." German pastor Martin Niem&#246ller, speaking in 1945 "The holes in your Swiss cheese are somebody else's Swiss cheese." Melvin Fishman, "Times Higher Education Supplement" (1982) "I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed." Feminist author Doris Lessing speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 13 August 2001 "You cannot milk a cow with your hands in your pockets." Russian proverb "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Italian Renaissance artist Buonarroti Michelangelo (1475-1564) "You would think the fury of aerial bombardment Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces. History, even, does not know what is meant." Extract from the poem "The Fury Of Aerial Bombardment" by the American Second World War poet Richard Eberhart "All of us were born for one another." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King in "Strength To Love" (1963) "This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us." British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressing the Labour Party Conference on 2 October 2001 "If McWorld in its most elemental negative form is a kind of animal greed - one that is achieved by an aggressive and irresistible energy, Jihad in its most elemental negative form is a kind of animal fear propelled by anxiety in the face of uncertainty and relieved by self-sacrificing zealotry - an escape out of history." "Jihad vs McWorld: How Globalisation And Tribalism Are Reshaping The World" by Benjamin R. Barber (1995) "There are no facts, only interpretations." German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in "Nachlass" "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Karl Marx in "Theses On Feuerbach" (1845) "I wanted to change the world - but I found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself." English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) "Much research suggests that the language most likely to dominate the Internet in future years will be Chinese." Henry Manisty of Reuters speaking at a Sino-UK High Level Business Seminar on Communications held in Beijing on 5-6 November 2001 "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity." French chemist Marie Curie (1867-1934) "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "At each moment of life, you are at a fork in the road and you will choose which direction to take." "Slowing Down To The Speed Of Life" by Richard Carlson & Joseph Bailey (1997) "Hold fast to dreams, Langston Hughes (1902 -1967) US poet, writer, editor "The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen." Lee Iacocca, former Chief Executive of the Chrysler Corporation "Learn to love change. If you appreciate that as much good comes from change as bad, you will avoid the concerns that many people seem to have about it. Relax and be open to change when it visits." "The Little Book of Calm" by Paul Wilson (1996) "Democratic and responsible trade unionism is the most powerful force for democracy and social justice around the world." British Foreign Office Minister Denis MacShane, January 2002 "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Irish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another." "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx & Frederick Engels (1847) "Today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday." Anonymous "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author, poet & philosopher (1803 - 1882) "Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterise our age." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in "Out Of My Later Life" (1950) "Without the bitter, baby, the sweet ain't as sweet." The actor Jason Lee in his role as Brian Shelby in the film "Vanilla Sky" (2002) "Discard hard and fast rules. Victory is the only thing that matters and this cannot be achieved by adhering to conventional canons." "The Art Of Warfare" by Sun-tzu (500 BC) "The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you." 'King of the blues' B B King "That which does not defeat me makes me stronger." German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) "Life is just one damned thing after another." American writer and editor Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915) "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "Think, think, think. It will hurt like hell at first, but you'll get used to it." British politician Barbara Castle (1911-2002) "There's not much use in trying", said Alice. "One can't believe impossible things". "I dare say that you haven't had much practice", said the Queen. "Why sometimes, I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Alice In Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (1865) "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author, poet & philosopher (1803 -1882) "The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." "The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence (1926) "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) "There was a time I used to reject those who were not of my faith. Now my heart has grown capable of taking on many forms: a pasture for gazelles, a convent for Christians, a temple for idols, a Kaaba* for the pilgrim, a table for the Torah, a book of the Koran. My religion is love - whichever the route love's caravan shall take, that path shall be the path of my faith." The most sacred Muslim shrine, to be found in Mecca Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) "Education ends with death. Or after, according to your beliefs." Peter Ustinov - British citizen, resident in Switzerland, part Russian, German, French and Italian, actor, author, playwright and producer "Confusion is the beginning of wisdom." Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) "Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?" The poem "Leisure" by William Henry Davies (1870-1940) "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." Martin Luther King, speech in St. Louis, Missouri, 22 March 1964 "The wisest men follow their own direction and listen to no prophet guiding them." Greek philosopher Euripides (480-406 BC) "Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us daily." Sally Koch "If we do not change direction, we may end up at the point at which we are heading." Old Chinese proverb "If at first an idea doesn't seem crazy, then there is no hope for it." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in "Hamlet" "It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top." English novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) "They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom." Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC) "Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." Martin Luther King (1929-1968) "The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own." British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in "Historical Review of Pennsylvania" (1759) "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." English novelist and writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) "Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical disguise." "Exhaust The Little Moment" by Gwendolyn Brooks (1949) "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about." "The Picture Of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde (1890) "Politics is what we create by what we do, what we hope for and what we dare to imagine." American senator Paul Wellstone (1944-2002) "I am in the world to change the world." German artist K&#228the Kollwitz (1867-1945) "There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho (1988) "He who does not ask a question learns nothing." Swahili proverb "Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." Samuel Ullman (1840-1924) "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?" South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." "Business @ The Speed of Thought" by Bill Gates (1999) "If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thought your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same " Extract from the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) "You make a choice or set a goal and let people know about it. Then just getting started leads to the discovery of internal resources that help us to go further than we ever thought we could." "Nothing Is Impossible" by Christopher Reeve (2002) "It is not our abilities that truly define us - it is the choices we make." "Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets" by J K Rowling (1998) "When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that, when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying." Anonymous "Brevity is the sister of talent." Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) "If all the world valued food and merriment above mountains of treasure, the earth would be a happier place." "The Hobbit" by J R R Tolkien (1937) "To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing." Welsh novelist Raymond Williams (1921-1989) "If you no got smile on you face, no use open shop". Jamaican proverb "Don't agonize, organize." American civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy (1916-2001) "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that's my religion." Abraham Lincoln in 1860 "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again." Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) in speech entitled "Citizenship in a Republic", delivered in Paris in 1910 "You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war." One-time American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) "Critical thinking should centre not on answering questions but on questioning answers." "The Changing Nature And Uses Of Media Literacy" by Sonia Livingstone (2003) "So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable." "Nothing Is Impossible" by Christopher Reeve (2002) "Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." Dalai Lama "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have the same number of hours per day as Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein." "Life's Little Instruction Book" by H. Jackson Brown Jr (1991) "No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it." "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho (1988) "Make new friends and the other is gold." Anonymous "It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end." "The Left Hand Of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin (1969) "Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else." American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) "Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy." French-Italian-Polish poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) "If the earth's life were seen as a single day, human beings proper would only appear in the last second before midnight." "The No Nonsense Guide To World History" by Chris Brazier (2001) "Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil - the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be." William George Jordan "We live by encouragement and die without it - slowly, sadly, angrily." American actress Celeste Holm "Your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone and never in your power again." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "A new broom sweeps clean, but an old one knows all the corners." Jamaican proverb "Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up." Reverend Jesse Jackson "If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable." German politician Petra Kelly (1947-1992) "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." American essayist Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985) "There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable. Wisdom is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad." Anonymous "Rest satisfied with doing well and leave others to talk of you as they will." Greek mathematician Pythagoras (c.569 BC - c.475 BC) "If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." American actress Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003) "A person without a sense of humour is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road." American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) "Wealth, if you use it, comes to an end; learning, if you use it, increases." Swahili proverb "The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles but misguided men". Martin Luther King in "Strength To Love" (1963) "The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement." British former boxer Chris Eubank "The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind." Polish-born mathematician and humanist Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) "Never be afraid to tread the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you. Do not feel you have to follow is someone else's footsteps." Eileen Caddy in "Footprints On The Path" "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing". American President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) "He who awaits much can expect little." Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Success is a journey, not a destination - half the fun is getting there." American author and consultant Gita Bellin "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "Ask yourself this daily question: 'How would the person I'd like to be ... do the things I'm about to do?'" American speaker and author Jim Cathcart "You can blame people who knock things over in the dark, or you can begin to light candles. You're only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing." American author and environmentalist Paul Hawken "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?" English poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) "Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." Chinese philosopher Confucius (c.550-c.478 BC) "When everyone agrees, someone is not thinking." Second World War U.S. General George S. Patton (1885-1945) "No good act performed in the world ever dies. Science tells us that no atom of matter can ever be destroyed, that no force once started ever ends; it merely passes through a multiplicity of ever-changing phases. Every good deed done to others is a great force that starts an unending pulsation through time and eternity. We may not know it, we may never hear a word of gratitude or recognition, but it will all come back to us in some form as naturally, as perfectly, as inevitably, as echo answers to sound." William George Jordan "This is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way." Author Doris Lessing "Hope is an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and it is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. It is an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed." "Seeds of Hope" by Vaclav Havel "Not all those who wander are lost." "The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring" by J R R Tolkien "There is no guarantee of reaching a goal at a certain time, but there is a guarantee of never attaining goals that are never set." "Even Eagles Need A Push" by David McNally (1991) "Dream as though you'll live for ever; live as though you'll die today." Actor James Dean (1931-1955) "The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?" Spanish cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973 "Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (1960) "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye". Novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) "People will not always remember what you said. People will not always remember what you did. But people will always remember how you made them feel". Anonymous "Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." Second World War U.S. General George S. Patton (1885-1945) "Believe, no pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor." H. Jackson Brown Jr. "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." John F Kennedy speaking in Indianapolis on 12 April 1959 "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." American writer and editor Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915) "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival". British author C S Lewis (1898-1963) "The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't." American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) "In every field of endeavour, there are the timid and there are the tigers. Go on. Be a tiger." Accenture advertisement "All rising to a great place is by a winding stair." British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "Squeeze the past like a sponge, smell the present like a rose, and send a kiss to the future." Arabic proverb "It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." Second World War General George S Patton (1885-1945) "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." American author, poet & philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC) "Every time we say 'I must do something' it takes an incredible amount of energy. Far more than physically doing it." American author and consultant Gita Bellin "Simply seek happiness and you are not likely to find it. Seek to create and love without regard to your happiness and you are likely to be happy much of the time." American psychiatrist Dr M Scott Peck (1936-2005) "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." American President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." Alexander Pope (1688-1744) "Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less." American business consultant Dr Kenneth Blanchard "Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than to be responsible and wrong." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time." T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in "Little Gidding V" "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) "If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out." Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) "A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." Alexander Pope (1688-1744) "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." American writer Tom Robbins "Sow a thought, reap a deed; sow a deed, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a lifestyle; sow a lifestyle, reap a destiny." Charles Reed "You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind." Anonymous "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) "If you are going through hell, keep going." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." French writer André Gide (1869-1951) "Music is medicine to man." Inscription on bell number 4, St Mary's Church, Harrow-on-the-Hill, England "In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts." "In Praise Of Slow" by Carl Honoré (2004) "A friend is a present you give yourself." British novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) "We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and brave and patient; and we've got to study and think, and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds." The last page of the 1,300-page "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman (1995-2000) "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC) "The spirit of Ubuntu - that profound African sense that we are human beings only through the humanity of other human beings - is not a parochial phenomenon, but has added globally to our common search for a better world." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela Note: Ubuntu is an ancient African concept meaning "kindness towards human beings" or "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are". "Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness." Opening lines from poem by Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) "We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more." Former US President Bill Clinton at the opening of his presidential library on 18 November 2004 "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness." Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." Opening line of the poem "Endymion" by John Keats (1795-1821) "The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up." American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." Writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) "The cruellest lies are often told in silence." American politician and diplomat Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page." Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) "The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown." Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875 -1961) "No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "Without music, life would be a mistake." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in "The Twilight Of The Idols" (1889) "Money is like manure - it should be spread around." Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude "The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour." Sir James Hopwood Jeans (1877-1946) "Better light a candle than curse the darkness." Chinese proverb "The totality of life, known as the biosphere to scientists and creation to theologians, is a membrane of organisms wrapped around Earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered." "The Future Of Life" by E.O. Wilson (2002) "The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way." Anonymous "We have in our hands the power and obligation - never given to any other generation at any other time in human history - to banish ignorance and poverty from the earth." British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown "Life is not measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away." The actor Will Smith in his role as Alex Hitchens in the film "Hitch" (2005) "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "We are different so that we know our need of one another, for no one is ultimately self-sufficient. A completely self-sufficient person would be sub-human." South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu "Freedom for the pike is death to the minnow." Philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) "Everything changes. We plant trees for those born later." Opening and closing words of the poem "Everything Changes" by Cicely Herbert "We ought not to be ashamed of applauding the truth, nor appropriating the truth, from whatever source it may come, even if it be from remote races and nations alien to us." Arab philosopher Al-Kindi (801-873) "Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "An inch of time is an inch of gold, but you can't buy that inch of time with an inch of gold." Chinese proverb "We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. When we are no longer able to change a situationwe are challenged to change ourselves." "Man's Search For Meaning" by Viktor E Frankl (1997) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) "Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous." "The Analects" by Confucious (551-479 BC) "Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky." Writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) "Who struggles can fail. Who doesn't struggle has already failed." German playwright Berthold Brecht (1898-1956) "I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love". "Foundations Of Mathematics And Other Logical Essays" by F.P. Ramsey (1931) "The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." Chinese proverb "There are few misfortunes in this world that you cannot turn into a personal triumph if you have the iron will and the necessary skill." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies." Anonymous "Why do we fall? So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up." Line of dialogue from the film "Batman Begins" (2005) "The sleep of reason brings forth monsters." "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen (2004) "When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of troubles in his life, most of which had never happened." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" English writer Mary Ann Evans aka George Eliot (1819-1880) "Lose your temper and you lose a friend; lie and you lose yourself." Hopi proverb "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Some people take no mental exercise apart from jumping to conclusions". Harold Acton (1904-1994) "Women are half the world's people who do two-thirds of the world's work. They earn a tenth of the world's income and own a hundredth of the world's property." WomenAid International "When a finger points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger." Chinese proverb "We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who." "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling "If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow." Chinese proverb "All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time." "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" by Mitch Albom (2003) "In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive." American advertising guru William Bernbach (1911-1982) "Those of us enjoying freedom and with our basic needs met, have a moral obligation to engage in compassionate activism on behalf of those who have no freedom, who have no voice, whose situation is precarious, whose lives are in crisis." Pida Ripley, Founder of WomenAid International "You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person." Anonymous "Mother Earth is not a resource; she is an heirloom." Yurok artist David Ipinia "An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it." American advertising guru William Bernbach (1911-1982) "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." English writer Mary Ann Evans aka George Eliot (1819-1880) "The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it." Chinese proverb "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone." British nurse Edith Cavell (1865-1915) "Good advice is better than gold." Czech proverb "When the facts change, I change my mind." British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) "The real voyage of discovery begins not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) "God gave man two ears but only one mouth that he might hear twice as much as he speaks." Greek philosopher Epictetus (c.55-c.135 AD) "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." Anonymous "It's never too late to be who you might have been." English writer Mary Ann Evans aka George Eliot (1819-1880) "Lost time never returns." Czech proverb "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the the few who are rich." Inaugural address of President John F Kennedy (1917-1963), 20 January 1961 "An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind." British social scientist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) "To utter pleasant words without practising them is like a fine flower without fragrance." "The Teaching Of Buddha" "The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts." British inventor Trevor Baylis "Always wear a smile. The gift of life will then be yours to give." Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) "You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now." "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom (1997) "I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in: a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that the future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall." American Rachel Corrie (1979-2003), killed while working as a volunteer in Gaza "Thinking is not entertainment but an obligation." Russian science fiction authors Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky "Love is the only rational act." Poet and teacher Stephen Levine "Data, data everywhere, but never time to think." Professor Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics "Happy thoughts are half your health." Czech proverb "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." American business executive Charles Kettering (1876-1958) "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength." Dutch protector of Jews from the Holocaust Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best is now." Chinese proverb "Do what gives you a buzz." British inventor Trevor Baylis "We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color." American writer, poet, actress Maya Angelou "You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship." "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom (1997) "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow'." Writer Mary Anne Radmacher "Have patience. All things change in due time. Wishing cannot bring autumn glory or cause winter to cease." The Cherokee Ginaly-li "Love each other or perish." British poet W H Auden (1907-1973) "He who laughs, lasts." Writer Mary Pettibone Poole "Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "People who care about other people are on average happier than those who are more preoccupied with themselves." "Happiness" by Richard Layard (2005) "Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal to true happiness." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in "Conquest Of Happiness", 1930 "I know for sure that what we dwell on is what we become." American television talk show host Oprah Winfrey "There is no such thing as 'too late' in life." "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom (1997) "We live in an age of unprecedented change." Adam to Eve "Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as in knowing what to do next." American President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) "If you sow the seed of good, it will grow into seven ears and then yield seven hundred good deeds." Uzbek founder of Sufic Islam Khazreti Mohammed Bakhauddin Nakhshbandi (1318-1389) "Friends are the family we choose for ourselves." American writer Edna Buchanan "No one is useless in the world who lightens the burdens of another." English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) "Only dead fish swim with the tide." British inventor Trevor Baylis "The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials." Chinese proverb "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." American consultant Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) "There are four things that hold back human progress: ignorance, stupidity, committees and accountants." British civil servant Sir Charles James Lyall (1845-1920) "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom." Greek proverb "Live out of your imagination, not your history." American educator Stephen Covey "It is from ignorance and greed that the world of delusion is born and the vast complexity of coordinating causes exists within the mind and nowhere else." "The Teaching Of Buddha" "A kind word warms for three winters." Chinese proverb "A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles." Chinese proverb "The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) - from a written list given to his departing grandson Arun in October 1947 "Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity." Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991) "Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." Inaugural address of President John F Kennedy (1917-1963), 20 January 1961 "Not to know is bad, but not to wish to know is worse." West African proverb "Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of our daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out." American scientist James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) "A half truth is a whole lie." Yiddish proverb "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're probably right." American industrialist Henry Ford (1863-1947) "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." Greek philosopher Epictetus (c. AD 60 -c. AD 100) "A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for." Theologian William Shedd "Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." American science fiction writer Frank Herbert (1920-1986) "Our true nationality is mankind." British novelist H. G. Wells (1866-1946) "The most beautiful thing under the sun is being under the sun." German novelist Christa Wolf "Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's life in happiness, the greatest by far is friendship." Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) "Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: let people be different." American writer David Grayson (1870-1946) "To attract good fortune, spend a new coin on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend, and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon." Chinese proverb "Life is the greatest bargain - we get it for nothing." Yiddish proverb "The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet, going around a nuclear fireball ninety million miles away and think this is normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." British writer Douglas Adams (1952-2001) "We are the hero of our own story." Novelist Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) "The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." American General H. Norman Schwarzkopf "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." Franco-Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) “Those who stand for nothing, will fall for anything.” American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) "Recognition is the greatest motivator." Gerard C. Eakedale "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." American poet Maya Angelou "A person is a person through other people." Setswana proverb "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." French author Anatole France (1844-1924) "By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC) "All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter." Irish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." American chemist Linus Pauling (1901-1994), the only person who has won two undivided Nobel Prizes "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) "Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." American actor Alan Alda "Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have." British novelist H. G. Wells (1866-1946) "The range of sizes, distances or speeds with which our imaginations are comfortable is a tiny band, set in the midst of a gigantic range of the possible, from the scale of quantum strangeness at the smaller end to the scale of Einsteinian cosmology at the larger". Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion" (2006) "In complete darkness we are all the same. It is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us. Don't let your eyes deceive you." American singer Janet Jackson "It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it." French moralist Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) "Life is like a pen, you can cross something out but you can never erase it." Anonymous "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object." German writer Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) "Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "Man is a credulous animal and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in "Unpopular Essays", 1950 "A stumble may prevent a fall." English proverb "Make all you can; save all you can; give all you can." John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism "To teach is to learn twice." French moralist Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could." American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "You can always learn something from somebody." Rafael Benitez, manager of Liverpool Football Club "For to be free is not to merely cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "Happiness and laughter - that's what it's all about, isn't it?" Peggy Clark, aged 84, having just married James Mason, aged 93, to make them Britain's oldest newly-weds on 19 November 2007 "The great mistakes are made when we feel we are beyond questioning." American advertising guru William Bernbach (1911-1982) "The sleep of reason breeds monsters." Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) "Everything that ever happens in life has an end as well as a beginning." Tonga proverb "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; don't walk behind me, I may not lead; walk beside me, and just be my friend." French writer Albert Camus (1913-1960) "What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles to be sure, but the good they do is inconceivable." English writer Joseph Addison (1672-1719) "Dreams, dreams, without dreams man is a bird without wings." Sergei Korolev (1907-1966), the Soviet chief designer behind the Sputnik and Vostok programmes "Always be a little kinder than necessary." Chinese fortune cookie "If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else." African-American educator Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) "Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves." English writer William Hazlitt (1778-1830) "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." Ancient Greek statesman Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) "You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time." American writer Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) Pericles (495-429 BC) "If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you." American advertising guru William Bernbach (1911-1982) "If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counsellor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius." English writer Joseph Addison (1672-1719) "I can live for two months on a good compliment." American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me'. Look what happens with a love like that... it lights the whole sky." Hafez of Shiraz, Persian Sufi poet c 1350 AD "If you have zest and enthusiasm, you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind." American Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) "No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted." Ancient Greek philosopher Aesop (620-560 BC) "You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails." Yiddish proverb "The greatest prize that life has to offer is the chance to do hard work that is worth doing." American President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) "Be true to your work, your word, and your friend." American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "One-fifth of the people are against everything all of the time." American politician Robert F Kennedy (1925-1968) "The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been truth, goodness, and beauty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour - property, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Remember - a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic." Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) "If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it." "Meditations" by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "To live for only some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top." Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974) "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921-1997) "The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love." Clergyman William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006) "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." American President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) "Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, and to diminish something of their pains." English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) "You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from landing on your shoulder, but you can prevent them nesting in your hair." Chinese proverb "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." British author J.K. Rowling in an address at Harvard, 5 June 2008 "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify." American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances." Wife of US President, Martha Washington (1731-1802) "As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters." Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC - c. AD 65) "Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished without the will to start, the enthusiasm to continue and, regardless of temporary obstacles, the persistence to complete." American businessman Waite Phillips (1883-1964) "Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace." Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and American president (1890-1969) "The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer." Nobel Peace Prize winner Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1922) "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) "Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) "Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." South African religious leader Desmond Tutu "You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you can make a new start whenever you choose. For the thing we call failure is not the falling but the staying down." Canadian actress Mary Pickford (1892-1979) "Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime." American writer Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." British writer George Orwell (1903-1950) "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "To be avoided at all costs is the solace of opinion without the pain of thought." Clergyman William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006) "I don't mind if my future is long or short, as long as I'm doing the right thing." Henry Allingham, First World War veteran and Britain's oldest person (born 6 June 1896) "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "We judge others by their behaviour, but ourselves by our intentions." American educator Stephen Covey "After six years without seeing one, I love just seeing a smile - every smile I see gives me hope." French-Columbian politician Ingrid Betancourt who was held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) from 2002-2008 "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." American President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others." John Andrew Holmes "For every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul." English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) "Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole." Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "If we choose to focus our awareness and energy on those things and people that bring us pleasure and satisfaction, we have a very good chance of being happy in a world full of unhappiness." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "Do whatever you can, with whatever you have been given, in the time you have, wherever you are." Nkosi Johnston - a South African boy who died aged 12 of HIV/AIDS on 1 June 2001 in a speech to the 13th International Aids Conference in Durban the year before "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." British writer, broadcaster and medical doctor Ben Goldacre "It's a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous and that it won't last for ever." "The Cellist Of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway (2008) "We are not what we think or what we say or what we feel. We are what we do." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "The unexamined life is not worth living." Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won." British author J.K. Rowling in an address at Harvard, 5 June 2008 "I can give you a six-word formula for success: 'Think things through - then follow through'." American fighter ace and businessman Edward Rickenbacker (1890-1973) "Life is a gamble in which we don't get to deal the cards, but are nevertheless obligated to play them to the best of our ability." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "It is never too late to give up your prejudices." American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "I don't understand why people are scared of difference because difference is what makes life interesting." British singer Jarvis Cocker "A crank is a small engine that causes revolutions." Irish suffragist Frank Sheehy-Skeffington (1878-1916) "People often tell me that motivation doesn't last, and I tell them that bathing doesn't either. That's why I recommend it daily." American motivational speaker Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar "The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "You cannot open a book without learning something." Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC) "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." American actor Will Rogers (1879-1935) "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone, where no wind can ever erase it." Anonymous "The process of learning consists not so much in accumulating answers as in figuring out how to formulate the right questions." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Under certain circumstances, there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." British writer Henry James (1843-1916) "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." America's sixth President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) "What happens to us is not nearly as important as the attitude we adopt in response." "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart" by Gordon Livingston MD (2004) "You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." American comedian and actor Robin Williams "Does't thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff that life is made of." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "A man's errors are his portals of discovery." Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941) "Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure." Jewish proverb "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "As a culture, we seem to have trouble distinguishing science from pseudoscience, history from pseudohistory, and sense from nonsense." "Why People Believe Weird Things" by Michael Shermer (1997) "The clock of time is wound but once And no man has the power To tell you when his hands will stop At late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in tomorrow For the clock may then be still." Sign in Botanical Gardens, Durban, South Africa "The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned." Italian writer Antonio Gramsci (1891- 1937) "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "Too many of us believe the world is to be discovered, rather than a product of our own construction and thus to be invented." "Counter Clockwise" by Ellen J Langer (2009) "We are reformers in spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth." American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "Every closed eye is not sleeping and every open eye is not seeing." American comedian Bill Cosby "Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world." Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use being anything else." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "Let no man pull you low enough to hate him." Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil-rights leader (1929-1968) "Search for knowledge from the cradle to the grave." The prophet Mohammed (c.570-632) "Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is." American psychologist William James (1842-1910) "Well done is better than well said." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." "The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (1958) "I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again." English statesman William Penn (1644-1718) "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "A goal without a plan is just a wish." French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) "Keep your face to the sunshine and you will not see the shadows." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget." G. Randolf "Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?" Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov in "The White Guard" "When one door of happiness closes another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go." American poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) "Science goes out in search of greater truth (if it has to use the word truth at all) rather than the truth." "You Are Here" by Christopher Potter (2009) "Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief." Swedish proverb "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." American writer Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) "It's only those who do nothing who make no mistakes." British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain." American singer-songwriter Vivian Greene "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." English essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719) "The hefty price for accepting information uncritically is that we go through life unaware that what we've accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible." "Counter Clockwise" by Ellen J Langer (2009) "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Describe the challenges by all means, but don't confuse analysis with action. The one must lead to the other if it is to be useful to people." British Labour Party leader Michael Foot (1913-2010) "Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." English statesman William Penn (1644-1718) "We know what we are, but know not what we may be." William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in "Hamlet" "Common sense is the genius of humanity." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) "An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper." Lebanese-born writer Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." American motivational speaker Michael Altshuler "All I ask for in life is a soft bed and a library card. Everything else is extra." American socialist Leon Malkin (1911-2009) "There is more to life than increasing its speed." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Diligence is the mother of good luck." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference." British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "There is a wisdom in knowing when to resist, when to persist, and when to desist." "From Mud To Miracles" blog by my friend Jennifer Crokaert "It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams." Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Be like a tree; people throw stones at it but it throws down fruits at them." Arabic saying "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." English poet John Donne (1572-1631) "I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks". Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (1960) "The suffering of the people of any single country affects all of us no matter where we find ourselves." South African anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela "I keep my friends as misers do their treasure because, of all things granted to us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship." Italian writer Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) "All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking." German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche "Keep calm and carry on." Poster produced by the British Government's Ministry of Information on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 "Life is too short and precious for us to pass through it without leaving a few footprints behind us." "The Silent Traveller In Oxford" by Chiang Yee (1944) "It's a little embarrassing that, after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other." English novelist and writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) "The first hurdle is the people who will not accept the change that's already happened." American writer Joss Whedon "Gifts make friends and friends make gifts." Social anthropologist Marshall Sahlins "Nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness". "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver (2009) "There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly." American architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) "Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, moulding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt, or thought has had its hand in moulding us, shaping us." American author Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) "Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle." Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC) "In times of change, learners will inherit the earth while the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." American writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." Senator Edward Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic National Convention "The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness." English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Nobody has the power to make you miserable - it's an inside job." Adyashanti "Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) "Do not judge your neighbour until you walk two moons in his moccasins." Native American proverb from the Northern Cheyenne "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant." British novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) "Hope is not a feeling or a mood or a personality type. Hope is a choice." "The Great Awakening" by Jim Wallis (2007) "The greatest strength is gentleness." Native American proverb from the Iroquois "What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature." Francois-Marie Arouet, called Voltaire (1694-778) "Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." Blind activist Helen Keller (1880-1968) "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." Buddha "I brought children into this dark world because it needed the light that only a child can bring." Liz Armbruster "Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." Lebanese-born writer Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) "We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion." American writer Max de Pree "Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." English designer and writer William Morris (1834-1896) "The things you really need are few and easy to come by; but the things you can imagine you need are infinite, and you will never be satisfied." Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) "Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "There is one way of attaining what we may term, if not utter, at least mortal happiness; it is by a sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others." English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) "Those who have one foot in the canoe and one foot in the boat are going to fall in the river." Native American proverb from the Tuscarora "Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." American psychologist William James (1842-1910) "You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give." Lebanese-born writer Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "Just because you're breathing doesn't mean you're alive." Strapline for the documentary movie "TT3D: Closer To The Edge" "A goal without a plan is a dream and dreams fade when we awake." Jannie Williams "The older you get, the more you realise that kindness is synonymous with happiness." American actor Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954) "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." The Dalai Lama "Live more. Give more. Forgive more." British film producer Trudie Styler "Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." American comedienne Gilda Radner (1946-1989) "Remember a real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken new action; if there's no action, you haven't truly decided." American motivator Anthony Robbins "Sandwich every bit of criticism between two thick layers of praise." American businesswoman Mary Kay Ash (1915-2001) "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." American statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) "Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons." Ruth Ann Schabacker "The fool wonders; the wise man asks." British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Wisdom begins in wonder." Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) "We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have." German inventor Frederich Koenig (1774-1833) "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." American management consultant Peter Drucker (1909-2005) "The earth is not given to us by our parents; it is lent to us by our children." Kenyan proverb "The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences." Franco-Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other." English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) in "A Tale Of Two Cities" (1859) "Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won't have time to make them all yourself." American bridge player Alfred Sheinwold (1912-1997) "Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance." Anonymous "Do not fear to open the doors that lie between what is known and what is unknown." American self-development writer Wayne Dyer "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention." Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature." Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us." American writer Albert Pike (1809-1891) "Everybody likes a compliment." American President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) "It isn't our position, but our disposition, that makes us happy." Anonymous "Anything worth doing is going to be difficult." 100 year old Fauja Singh who in October 2011 became the oldest person in the world to run a full-length marathon "Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "Doubting everything or believing everything are two equally convenient solutions, both of which save us from thinking." French mathematician & philosopher Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) "Two things you should never be angry at: what you can help and what you cannot help." English writer Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly." British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "You can't think your way into a new way of living; you have to live your way into a new way of thinking." American self-development writer Wayne Dyer "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." Greek philosopher Epictetus (c. AD 60 –c. AD 100) "I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." American actress and comedian Gilda Radner (1946-1989) "Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945) “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars." American educator Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) "The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged." Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi All who would win joy must share it; happiness was born a twin." British poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen, six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought, and six, result misery". Mr Micawber in "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) "Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty." "Wealth Against Commonwealth" by Henry Demarest Lloyd (1894) "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Greek-Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BC - 50 AD) "Everything will be alright in the end. If it is not alright, then it is not the end." Line from the film "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" (2012) "The bridges you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there." American basketball player Gene Brown "A kind word can warm three winter months." Japanese proverb "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) "A kind word is like a Spring day." Russian proverb "Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks." German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) "Approximately half of the world's one hundred largest economic entities are now corporations". "Consent Of The Networked" by Rebecca MacKinnon (2012) "If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough." Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away." English writer Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875) "The past is never dead. It's not even past." American novelist William Faulkner (1897-1962) "There's nothing simpler than looking at the goodness in other people. The difficult part is to tell them what you see." The opening lines to John Mooney's 2005 children's story "A Wonderful Story" "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in “Measure For Measure” "Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." American novelist William Faulkner (1897-1962) “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) "Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter." French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) "One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession." Greek playwright Sophocles (497-406 BC) "You will find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?" American women's rights activist Lydia M Child (1802-1880) "There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up." American poet John Albert Holmes (1904-1962) "Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them." Italian writer Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) “To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded." American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) “Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.” French writer André Gide (1869-1951) "Happiness is not a destination; it is a way of life." Sign in shop window in the town of Porvoo in Finland "Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny." American theologian Tyron Edwards (1809-1894) "Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities – those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness." Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh "Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious." Professor Stephen Hawking, speaking at the Opening Ceremony of the London Paralympic Games, 29 August 2012 "The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men." American educational reformer John Dewey (1859-1952) "In any controversy, the instant we feel angry, we have already ceased striving for truth, and begun striving for ourselves." Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) "Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen." American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." American futurist Alvin Toffler "You will never 'find' time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." English philanthropist Charles Buxton (1823-1871) "As I try and understand how life works - and why some people cope better than others with adversity - I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found." "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Winterson (2011) "Hatred is never overcome by hatred, but only by readiness to love; this is an eternal law." The Buddha in “The Dhammapada” "You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005) "A faithful friend is the medicine of life." Apocrypha "The true way to soften one's troubles is to solace those of others." Madame de Maintenon (1635- 1719) "We always think the thing we need to transform everything - the miracle - is elsewhere, but often it is right next to us. Sometimes it is us, ourselves." "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Winterson (2011) "We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." Peruvian-American author Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998) "All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action." American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) "If you don't develop a strategy of your own, you become a part of someone else's strategy." American futurist Alvin Toffler "It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually". American psychiatrist Dr M Scott Peck (1936-2005) "Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life." American author Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) "The whole of life is about another chance and, while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance." "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Winterson (2011) "The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goals. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach." American social activist Benjamin Mays (1894-1984) "Change is not merely necessary to life, it is life." American futurist Alvin Toffler "The greatest happiness in the world is to make others happy." American botanist Luther Burbank (1849-1926) "We must act; we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect." President Barack Obama’s second inauguration speech, 22 January 2013 “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion." American writer Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) "I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." Opening lines of essay entitled "On The Value Of Scepticism" (1928) by philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "What is 'no'? Either you have asked the wrong question or you have asked the wrong person. Find a way to get the 'yes'." "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Winterson (2011) "When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either." American advertising executive Leo Burnett (1891-1971) “Normal is a cycle on the washing machine. There is no such thing when it comes to human beings.” British television presenter Trisha Goddard "People often say motivation doesn't last. But neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily." American motivational speaker Hilary Hinton 'Zig' Ziglar (1926- 2012) "Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) “Ask questions. Be curious.” American singer Will.i.am (William Adams) “Read in order to live.” French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) “We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.” American business executive Charles F Kettering (1876-1958) “One smile can start a friendship. One word can end a fight. One look can save a relationship. One person can change your life.” Anonymous "Every two days we create as much digital content as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003 - that's about five exabytes of information, with only two billion people out of a possible seven billion online." * 1 EB = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 B = 10 to the power of 18 bytes "The New Digital Age" by Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen (2013) "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." American writer William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” Maori proverb “Restlessness and discontent are the necessities of progress.” American inventor Thomas Edison (1837-1931) “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” Native American proverb “A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.” American writer William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) "One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world." 16 year old Malala Yousafzai addressing the United National Youth Assembly, 12 July 2013 "There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone." “Meditations” by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) “Use you head, but follow your heart.” Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, UK “The Internet is among the few things humans have built that they don’t truly understand.” “The New Digital Age” by Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen (2013) "Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength." Sixth century BC Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in the “Tao Te Ching” “How wonderful life is while you’re in the world.” “Your Song” by British singer Elton John (lyrics by Bernie Taupin) “It's not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived. Let's scatter the good things”. American Helen Walton (1919-2007), at one point the richest woman in the world “Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.” Italian statesman Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) “The education system is based on a framework from the 17th and 18th century that says we should play for the first five years of life, then learn, then work, then rest and then die. I believe we should be able to do all those things all the time." German-born computer scientist and Google Vice-President Sebastian Thun “Today is a most unusual day, because we have never lived it before; we will never live it again; it is the only day we have.” American writer William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) "A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." American naturalist John Burroughs (1837–1921) “There is nothing permanent except change.” Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) "Feelings are like children. You don't want to let them drive the car but you don't want to shut them in the trunk either." Line of dialogue from the film "Thanks For Sharing" (2013) “The secret of happiness is something to do.” American naturalist John Burroughs (1837 –1921) “Reading is a basic tool in living a good life.” American philosopher and educator Mortimer J Adler (1902-2001) “We should never stop exploring, never stop thinking like kids, looking for awe and wonder.” British former headmaster Richard Gerver “Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.” American naturalist John Burroughs (1837 –1921) “Behold the turtle: he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” President of Harvard University James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) “We have enough people who tell it like it is. Now we could use a few who tell it like it can be.” American writer Robert Orben “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” Scottish writer James M Barrie (1860-1937) “A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.” Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) "There are too many of us who stand on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism, when our voices must be heard." Barack Obama speaking at Nelson Mandela memorial ceremony, 10 December 2013 “Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) “Life is like a storybook. If you refuse to turn the page to the next chapter, you will never be able to move forward.” Canadian writer Byron Pulsifer “So many people didn’t achieve what they could because no one believed in them or gave them a chance.” British film director Steve McQueen "If you're not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you're determined to learn, no one can stop you." Anonymous "Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means." Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” British statesman Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) "Even if the cock does not crow, the sun will rise." Ndebele proverb “Truth exists; only lies are invented.” French artist George Braque (1882-1963) “Life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love.” Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor who died this week aged 110 “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” American motivational speaker Robert H Schuller "You never know what people you meet each day are going through. No one has an ordinary life." British actress Imogen Poots talking about her role in the film "A Long Way Down" (2014) “Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of travelling.” American author Margaret Lee Runback (1905-1956) “We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped”. American educator Lyman Lloyd Bryson (1888-1959) “Give what you have. To someone else, it may be better than you dare to think.” American educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) "We build too many walls and not enough bridges." British scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) "Once water has been spilled, it cannot be scooped back up." Swahili proverb “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) “Life isn’t a matter of milestones but of moments.” American philanthropist Rose Kennedy (1890-1995) “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson “The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.” American singer-songwriter Pete Seeger (1919-2014) “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” American author and poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) “Let your hopes not your hurts shape your future.” American motivational speaker Robert H Schuller “Two words that pay a multitude of dividends are uncommon to some; the most simple of expressions serves to make each recipient valued as a person; the two words are ‘thank you’ which when extended and expressed often say more about the giver than any other two words in the English language." Canadian writer Byron Pulsifer “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due.” British writer William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) “A smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight.“ Danish musician Victor Borge (1909-2000) “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." British writer C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” American author and poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) “I have loved and been loved; all the rest is background music.” Quoted by Hillary Clinton in her memoirs “Hard Choices” (2014) “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) “Everyone, at some time in their life, must choose whether to stay with a ready-made world that may be safe but which is limiting, or to push forward, often past the frontiers of commonsense, into a personal space, unknown and untried.” British author Jeannette Winterson “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) "There's only one rule that I know of - God damn it, you've got to be kind." American writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) “History is a weapon. Nothing is inevitable. Everything is possible.” Mural by Carrie Reichardt at the entrance to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (2014) “Power to the people. Art is not a mirror to reflect the world. Rather it is a hammer with which to shape it." Mural by Carrie Reichardt at the entrance to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (2014) "Language does have the power to change reality. Therefore, treat your words as the mighty instruments they are - to heal, to bring into being, to nurture, to cherish, to bless, to forgive." American author Daphne Rose Kingma "He who has a why to live for, can endure almost any how." Austrian Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl (1905-1997) “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” Four-term American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) “Questioning authority is never easy … but almost always necessary.” Malaysian friends Sartha Rajoo & Mandeep Kaur Pram Singh “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” “Guardian” newspaper editor C. P. Snow (1905-1980) "The trouble with most folks isn’t so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain’t so." American humorist Josh Billing (1818-1885) "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." American author and poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." South African religious leader Desmond Tutu "They invented hugs to let people know you love them without saying anything." American cartoonist Bill Keane (1922-2011) “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” Four-term American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) “When a scientist says something is possible, they’re probably underestimating how long it will take. But, if they say it’s impossible, they’re probably wrong.” American Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard Smalley (1943-2005), often called ‘the father of nanotechnology’ “You can’t control everything. Sometimes you just need to relax and have faith that things will work out. Let go a little and just let life happen.” American author Kody Keplinger “Every day may not be good ... but there's something good in every day.” American writer Alice Morse Earle (1851-1911) “Let our New Year's resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.” Former Prime Minister of Sweden G&#246ran Persson “You only have to know one thing: you can learn anything.” Motto of the online learning resource the Khan Academy "Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want." American author and educator Anna Lappé “The weariest nights, the longest days, sooner or later must perforce come to an end.” British novelist Baroness Orczy (1865-1947) “I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.” Lyrics by Simon & Garfunkel “If you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” “The Twits” by Roald Dahl "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Former President of Harvard University Derek Bok "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.” American actor Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) “The biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become." “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom (1997) “The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in 10 minutes after the big picture has started and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” British writer Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) in “Moving Pictures” “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.“ American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” British statesman Winston Churchill (1874-1965) “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” American architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.” British writer Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) in “Monstrous Regiment” “Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.” German writer Gunter Grass (1927-2015) “I believe in the diversity of the human condition. The best thing about the world is the amount of worlds it has.” Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) “It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.” English social philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) “Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.” British writer Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) in “Snuff” "Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening." Tom Goodwin, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. "There are two wolves who are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. The question is ... which wolf wins? The one you feed." Dialogue from the film "Tomorrowland" (2015) "You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, and move on." Homer Simpson “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) “The key to a happy life is to accept you are never actually in control.” Dialogue from the film "Jurassic World" (2015) “The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.” German writer Gu&#252nter Grass (1927-2015) “We should always be open-minded, but the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does.” Richard Dawkins in “The Magic Of Reality” (2011) “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” Diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945) “I do not look at the world in terms of black and white – and I find people who do rather scary. I think it’s all shades of grey.” British writer E.L. James, author of “Fifty Shades Of Grey” “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” President John F Kennedy (1917-1963) “The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.” American author Marvin Phillips “I see life as being attacked by a bear. You can run or play dead or make yourself bigger.” American actress and comedian Amy Poehler “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that, even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” American writer Kurt Vonnegut, (1922-2007) “Whoever is happy will make others happy too.” Diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945) “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” President John F Kennedy (1917-1963) “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” Buddha (563-483 BC) “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” Roman poet Horace (65 BC - 8 BC) “Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” American self development writer Wayne Dyer (1940-2015) “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” American author and poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) "I’m never gonna put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never gonna say I can’t do it. I’m never gonna say ‘maybe’. I’m never gonna say, ‘I don’t think I can.’ I can and I will." Nadiya Hussain, winner of the "Great British Bake Off", 7 October 2015 “Love is something, if you give it away, you end up having more.” Grandparents’ Day, Montessori Learning Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, 16 October 2015 “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.” British historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” President John F Kennedy (1917-1963) “Here’s the thing. None of us get out of life alive. So be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful for the opportunities that you have.” Jake Bailey, 18 year old New Zealand schoolboy and cancer sufferer in a school valedictory speech, November 2015 “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” “Meditations” by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) in “The Fire Next Time” “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” Mae Jemison, the first African-American astronaut "Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure, short of total abstention." English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.” American writer Herman Melville (1819-1891) “I think we can disagree without impugning other people’s motives or being disagreeable.” President Barack Obama, January 2016 (announcing executive orders on gun control) "When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) “Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.” Mae Jemison, the first African-American astronaut “If you always give, you will always have.” Chinese proverb "Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold." American novelist Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948) "I refuse to just sit here. I will make a change." Sign on a bench in Uhuru Park, Nairobi, Kenya "Happiness may be as simple as prioritising experiences over possessions, relationships over achievements, and time over money." Oliver Burkeman, ""Guardian" newspaper, 5 March 2016 "Life is like a sandwich; you have to fill it with the best ingredients." Sign in "Incanto" Deli, Harrow-on-the-Hill, London “Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.” American paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock (1903-1998) "Real life is messy. We all have limitations. We all make mistakes. Which means, hey, glass half full, we all have a lot in common. And the more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be. But we have to try. So no matter what kind of person you are, I implore you: Try. Try to make the world a better place. Look inside yourself and recognize that change starts with you." The closing words of the animated movie "Zootropolis" (2016) “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) “I consider myself a runner and I run my ragged race, but then I’m passing on to the next person. Hopefully they are running in the right direction and not the wrong direction, and hopefully they don’t drop the baton – and then they go and they pass it on to somebody else.” President Barack Obama, London, 23 April 2016 “Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.” American writer Margaret Wheatley “Earth laughs in flowers.” American author, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) “The world today, with all its pain and all its sorrow, is more just, more democratic, more free, more tolerant, healthier, wealthier, better educated, more empathetic than ever before. If you didn’t know, ahead of time, what your social status would be, what your race was, what your gender was or sexual orientation was, what country you were living in, and you asked what moment in human history would you like to be born, you’d choose right now”. President Barack Obama, BBC series “Inside Obama’s White House” (2016) “The river never drinks its own water. The tree never tastes its own fruit. The field never consumes its own harvest. They selflessly strive for the well-being of all those around them.” Indian proverb “My goal is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better than I used to be.” American self development writer Wayne W Dyer (1940-2015) “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” American President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” American boxer and political activist Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) “We each have two lives and the second begins when we realise we have only one.” Anonymous “You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.” American psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp (1929-1999) “We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” American writer Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.” American economist Thomas Sowell "Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It is the belief that what we do matters, even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand." American writer Rebecca Solnit “Man is many things, but he is not rational.” Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African proverb “What life means to us is determined, not so much by what life brings to us as by the attitude we bring to life; not so much by what happens to us as by our reaction to what happens.” American writer Lewis L. Dunnington “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” American author Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) "You’re probably happier in life if you can forget things.” American film director Woody Allen “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” American baseball manager Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (1925-2015) “Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.” American author Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) "Be realistic. Plan for a miracle." Indian spiritual leader Osho “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.” American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) “It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself, you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.” American author Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) “Before you assume, read the facts. Before you judge, understand why. Before you speak, think.” American teacher Shaana Niessen "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” English politician and reformer William Wilberforce (1759-1833) "It's never wrong to do the right thing.” American novelist, journalist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) “Promise me you’ll remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think.” “Winnie The Pooh” by A.A. Milne (1882-1956) "A statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless and unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five? It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken truthfully. It is spoken with gentleness. It is spoken with beneficial intention. It is spoken with a mind of good-will." The Buddha (Vaca Sutta) (AN5.198) “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” American-Canadian writer William Gibson “Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have.” American author Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) “It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.” English politician and reformer William Wilberforce (1759-1833) “There is one almost surefire way to be happier: spend more time with people you like.” "Happiness By Design” by Paul Dolan (2014) “There is never an excuse not to speak up for what you think is right.” British politician Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960) “Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Alcoholics Anonymous affirmation “Nothing is quite as important as you think it is while you’re thinking about it.” Happiness By Design” by Paul Dolan (2014) Last updated 15 January 2017 Some Thoughtful Sites	i don't know
Frontier legend William H. Bonney, ultimately killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett, gained notoriety under what pseudonym?	William Henry "Billy the Kid" Bonney (McCarty) (c.1859 - 1881) - Genealogy William Henry "Billy the Kid" Bonney Share your family tree and photos with the people you know and love Build your family tree online Share photos and videos William Henry "Billy the Kid" Bonney (McCarty) Also Known As: "Henry McCarty", "William H. Bonney" Birthdate: in Fort Sumner, NM, USA Cause of death: Half brother of Katherine Bonney and Joseph McCarty Managed by: NewspaperARCHIVE.com Text: ... The Kid was about 23. He was born in New York city, and has been passing several years under the name of Billy Bonney. His real name ...... Date: NewspaperARCHIVE.com Text: "...the name of Billy Bonney. His real name was McCarthy. He was burled at Fort Sumner. IHDIA2Î ITEMS. The WMVb Elv«c Dtes Still te Gaaae... Date: NewspaperARCHIVE.com Text: ... was bom in rily and has been several years under the name of Billy Bonney Ills ieal niu McCarthy He was buried at Kort Sumner ... weathe... Date: Sep 17 1859 - New York, NY Death: July 14 1881 - Fort Sumner, NM Parents: Patrick Mccarty, Catherine Devine Mccarty (born Antrim) Siblings: Nov 23 1859 - New York City Death: July 14 1881 - Fort Sumner, New Mexico Parents: July 14 1881 - Fort Sumner, NM Parents: William Harrison Bonney, Catherine Bonney (born Antrim) Sister: July 14 1881 - Fort Sumner, New Mexico Parents: William Henry Harrison (Antrim), Catherine Bonney (Antrim) (born McCarty) Brother: Patrick Henry McCarty, Katherine McCarty (born Bonney) Brother: mother About William Henry "Billy the Kid" Bonney "The Real Billy the Kid" by Miguel Antonio Otero is one of the best authentic sources for his life from a non-biased perspective. Otero befriended Billy and accompanied him from Las Vegas NM to Santa Fe in chains. Otero later became Governor of New Mexico and wrote extensively of his "Life in the Frontier". Miguel Otero is one of my cousins, another Otero cousin helped make the coffin and buried Billy. Our family looks favorably on Billy, we have some stories of him from our Jaramillo cousins. (by Dr. Denis Ismael HaLevi-Otero) ISBN-10: 1558852344 ISBN-13: 978-1558852341WHO ARE BILLY'S PARENTS?= To this day, genealogists are still stumped. There have been various books published with different information. Billy used to lie about his identity often, including his age and birth to Census intakers. He was an outlaw, of course he lied! All we know is that his mother's name was Catherine Devine or McCarty , Katherine Beaujean or Katherine Bonney . His father can't be proven, but theory says that his name could be William Harrison Bonney , Patrick Henry McCarty , Patrick McCarthy, and a few more. All we know is that FOR SURE, according to Census, his mother married a man named Antrim . Joseph McCarty , later changed his name to Joseph McCarty-Antrim. He is thought to be Billy the Kid's younger half-brother as they had different features and build (Joseph was taller, stockier, nose was different, and he did not have crooked protruding teeth like his older brother), possibly the son of a McCarty or McCarthy. His lineage is also a mystery. BILLY'S NAMES Martin Garcia, alias he used when he allegedly married Abrana S. Garcia Introduction Source: About Billy the Kid William H. Bonney alias Billy the Kid is probably the most misunderstood historical figure of the Old West. He was not a cold-blooded killer, nor was he a robber of trains or banks. Instead he was a gunfighter in a feud between two factions in which both sides stole from each other and killed. The Lincoln County War would have turned out exactly the way it did if Billy the Kid never took part in it. His role in the LCW was minor -he wasn’t the leader but a follower. Although Billy the Kid was one of many who fought and killed during the LCW, he was the only one that faced conviction and was sentence to death. So Billy the Kid used his wit and courage to escape his date with the hangman which boost his notoriety even more. If his spectacular escape wasn't enough, his controversial death was the final dramatic ending to his story. But it wasn't the end, Billy the Kid lives on in history and legend. Please take notice of the footnote numbers in parenthesis within the summary, you will find the footnotes at the end of the paragraph in italics Billy the Kid’s real name was William Henry McCarty (1), when and where he was born, or who or what happened to his father is not known. It’s estimated that he was born around 1860-61 possibly in New York. History first traces the Kid as a youngster in Indiana in the late 1860s and then in Wichita, Kansas in 1870. His mother Catherine McCarty was a widow and single mother and he had a younger brother named Joseph (born 1863). By 1871, Catherine was diagnosed with Tuberculosis and was told to move to a climate that was warmer and drier. Footnote 1: There's a mystery with the last name of McCarty; it's speculated that it may be his father's name, mother's maiden name, or the last name of his half brother's father. On March 1, 1873 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Catherine McCarty married a man named William Antrim. Since there were now two Billies in the household, the Kid’s mother referred to him by his middle name, he was now Henry McCarty-Antrim (2). Footnote 2: It’s my guess that Billy the Kid’s stepfather never legally adopted his stepsons, since the Kid would also be referred to by his last name “McCarty” in Silver City. The family moved to Silver City in Grant County, located in southern New Mexico. Catherine was suffering from consumption and her health began to deteriorate rapidly. Then on September 16, 1874, the Kid’s mother died. Antrim didn’t want to be burden with two small boys, so he separated them and placed them in foster homes and left Silver City for Arizona. The Kid now had to earn his own keep, so he was put to work washing dishes and waiting on tables at a restaurant. After a year of no parental guidance and looking out for himself, the Kid quickly fell in with the wrong crowd. One of his troublemaking buddies, Sombrero Jack, stole some laundry from a Chinese laundry cleaner and told the Kid to hide the bundle. The Kid got caught with it and was arrested. The county sheriff decided to keep him locked up for a couple of days just to scare him, but the Kid escaped and ran away (3). Footnote 3: The Silver City newspaper reported: “Henry McCarty, who was arrested Thursday and committed to jail to await the action of the grand jury, upon the charge of stealing clothes from Charley Sun and Sam Chung, celestials, sans cue, sans Joss sticks, escaped from prison yesterday through the chimney. It’s believed that Henry was simply the tool of Sombrero Jack, who done the stealing whilst Henry done the hiding. Jack has skinned out.” The Kid fled to one of his foster families and they put him on a stagecoach to Clifton, Arizona where his stepfather was living, but when he found his stepfather he didn’t want him and told the Kid to leave. All alone in a strange desert, the Kid wandered from one ranch to another to find work. For the next 2 years the Kid tramped around as a ranch hand and gambler. He then met up with a horse thief name John Mackie who taught him the tricks of the trade and the two became partners. But after some close calls, arrest, and escaping from custody, the Kid decided it was wiser to give up his new occupation. He returned some stolen horses to the army to clear himself and got work as a ranch hand. One day while at a saloon in Camp Grant, Arizona, the Kid who was about sixteen at the time, got into serious trouble. He got into an argument with a bully named Frank “Windy” Cahill, who had picked on him numerous times before. After some name-calling, Cahill rushed the Kid and slammed him down on the ground, then jumped on top of him and proceeded to slap him in the face. The Kid worked his hand free to his revolver and fired it into Cahill’s gut. When Cahill fell over the Kid squirmed free, ran off, and mounted the nearest horse and fled Camp Grant. The Kid didn’t stick around to face murder charges and left Arizona and returned to New Mexico. Now an outlaw and unable to find honest work, the Kid met up with another outlaw named Jesse Evans, who was the leader of a gang of rustlers called “The Boys.” The Kid didn't have anywhere else to go and since it was suicide to be alone in the hostile and lawless territory, the Kid reluctantly joined the gang. The gang made their way to Lincoln County where the Boys joined forces with James Dolan, who was currently in a feud against an Englishman entrepreneur named John Tunstall and his attorney and partner Alex McSween. The feud would be famously known as the Lincoln County War (4). Footnote 4: James Dolan was the protégé of LG Murphy and when Murphy became ill of cancer and hospitalized in Santa Fe, Dolan stepped up to take his place. Supporting Dolan was the powerful Santa Fe Ring (similar to a mafia) in which members consisted of the governor, politicians and attorneys. Tunstall came to Lincoln to start his own business and ranch, but Dolan didn’t like the competition and set out to drive him away. Tunstall refused to be intimidated and instead tried to fight back with legal action. When Tunstall realized he couldn't fight his enemies the legal way due to the bias Judge Bristol and Governor Sam Axtell, Tunstall decided to fight fire with fire and hired his own gunmen. The feud then turned into an all out war. The Boys started to steal Tunstall’s livestock, so arrests were made and the Kid eventually was caught and placed in jail. Tunstall noticed something different about this rustler, he wasn’t rough like the other men, but just a boy who got a bad start in life and was looking for place to belong. So Tunstall gave him an ultimatum: if he testified against the other rustlers, Tunstall would hire him as an employee. The Kid took Tunstall’s offer. Now fighting for the Tunstall side and in the hopes of a better future, the Kid changed his name to William H. Bonney, but his friends called him “Kid.” Tensions were high and the feud between Dolan and Tunstall escalated in to bloody violence. John Tunstall was brutally murder by members of Sheriff Brady’s posse and the Boys. Tunstall’s ranch hands then formed a vigilante group called “the Regulators.” Now the war was on. At first the deputized Regulators tried to do things legally by serving warrants, but with the prejudice Sheriff Brady and the bias court system, they couldn’t count on justice being served. So they took the law in their own hands. They retaliated by killing Bill Morton, Frank Baker and William McCloskey. Then they ambushed Sheriff Brady and his deputy George Hindman in Lincoln (5). Lastly, they had a dramatic gunfight with Dolan gunman Buckshot Roberts, but during that shootout their leader Dick Brewer was killed. Footnote 5: The Regulators were particular bitter towards Bill Morton, because he led the posse that murdered Tunstall and was one of those that shot him. As for William McCloskey, he was a Regulator suspected for playing both ends of the table and tried to intervene in Morton and Baker’s execution after the Regulator’s arrested them. As for the Brady shooting, six members of the Regulators (the Kid included) ambushed the sheriff and four of his deputies as they walked down the street in Lincoln to arrest Alex McSween. The Regulators revenge only made things worse. They were now viewed as the bad guys and warrants were put out for their arrest. Now the Dolan side struck back. Dolan's gunmen and newly appointed sheriff, George Peppin and his men, had the McSween house surrounded with Alex McSween and many of the Regulators trapped in side. Dolan sent for Colonel Dudley at Fort Stanton for assistance. The colonel came with troops along with a Howitzer and Gatling gun. On the fifth day of the siege the Dolan side was getting impatient, so they set the house on fire. By nightfall, the house was completely ablaze and heat from the flames were overwhelming. The Regulators began to panic, so the cool-headed Billy the Kid, only about seventeen years old, took over leadership of the men. The Kid divided the men into two groups, he lead his party out the door first and ran in one direction so as to draw the line of fire towards them so McSween’s party could make a run in another direction and get away. When the men began to run out of the burning house the Dolan side opened fire and all hell broke loose. McSween and three men were killed, but Billy the Kid and the others escaped into the darkness. The war was over; the Regulators disbanded and the Kid was now a fugitive. Billy the Kid was unable to settle down, so he made his living by gambling and rustling cattle. The Kid heard about Governor Axtell being replaced by Lew Wallace, who was now trying to bring law and order to Lincoln. The Kid wrote to the governor that he was tired of running and would surrender to authorities and testify against the Dolan side to have his murder charges dropped. The governor agreed and promised the Kid a full pardon. The Kid surrendered and testified in court, but the Santa Fe Ring had influence over the court system, so members of the Dolan side, including James Dolan, were acquitted. The Kid was in unfriendly territory and one of his threats was prosecutor attorney William Rynerson, who was part of the “Ring” and wanted to put the Kid on trial for the murder of Sheriff Brady. The Kid felt betrayed when he learned that Governor Wallace didn’t have the power to pardon him without Rynerson’s cooperation, nor was the governor pressuring the attorney to collaborate. Wallace simply lost interest and left the Kid to his fate. Billy the Kid knew he didn’t stand a chance in court and he had lost faith in the governor, so he escaped. On the run again and an outlaw, the Kid went back to making a living the only way he knew how –rustling. There were other outlaws and rustlers in New Mexico, much worse than Billy the Kid, but the Kid had gain fame and was singled out by the newspapers who had built him up into something he wasn’t. It was the newspapers who had given him a name that he would forever be known as “Billy the Kid.” Since the end of the Lincoln County War, the Kid spent the next two years eluding the law and living in and around Fort Sumner (a former military fort transformed into a tiny Mexican village). While in Fort Sumner, he would kill a drunk at a saloon (6), but the killing was shrugged off and got almost no attention, but unfortunately, the Kid got into more serious trouble that did get plenty of attention. It happened when a posse from White Oaks surrounded the Kid and his gang at a station house, during the standoff the posse accidentally killed their own deputy, James Carlyle. Of course the death was credited to the Kid and destroyed any ounce of sympathy the public had for him, not to mention, any chance for him to get things squared up with the governor to get his pardon. Footnote 6: Before the shooting, Billy the Kid sensed trouble from a man named Joe Grant and he casually went up to him and asked to see his gun. As he pretended to admire it, he spun the cylinder so the hammer would fall on an empty chamber. This wise precautionary move saved the Kid's life, because Grant then pulled his gun on him and fired. The gun clicked and then the Kid had his turn but his gun went BANG. As the Kid dodged the law, Pat Garrett was elected sheriff and made US Marshal to hunt for Billy the Kid. He was familiar with the Kid’s habits and hideouts, which may show that Garrett may have been a rustler himself or at one time may have ridden with the Kid. During the pursuit for Billy the Kid, Garrett ended up killing two of the Kid’s closest comrades, Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. Finally on December 23, 1880 Garrett trapped the Kid and three other gang members at a cabin in Stinking Springs. After a short standoff, Billy the Kid came out and surrendered. Billy the Kid was quickly put on trial in Mesilla and was sentence to hang for the murder of Sheriff Brady. After his sentence was passed, the Kid was taken to Lincoln to await his hanging. The Kid was shackled and imprisoned in a room in the Lincoln courthouse as two deputies took turns guarding over him. On April 28, 1881 the Kid made his most daring escape (which would also be his last). The Kid was successful in getting a drop on the lone guard, Deputy James Bell, by slipping his hand out of the handcuffs and using the heavy restraints to hit the deputy over the head. The Kid then jerked Bell's pistol and told him to throw up his hands, but instead the deputy ran and the Kid had no choice but to shoot him. The other guard Bob Olinger was across the street having dinner when he heard the gunshots. He ran toward the building and as the Kid saw him approaching he shot Olinger down with a shotgun (7). The Kid rode out of Lincoln a free man and headed to the only place he could call home: Fort Sumner. Footnote 7: Bob Olinger was a bully and an old enemy of Billy the Kid. He took pleasure in tormenting the helpless prisoner and used his shotgun to intimidate him. So when Olinger ran to the courthouse, the Kid didn’t hesitate to shoot him with his own shotgun. The Kid’s original plan of escape was to take Bell prisoner, lock him up, and slip out unseen before Olinger came back. The Kid decided to laid low long enough until the law would give up hunting him and he could “rustle” up some money and leave the territory. By July of 1881, Garrett heard rumors that Billy the Kid was in the Fort Sumner area, so with two deputies he rode into Fort Sumner. On July 14, 1881 just before midnight, Pat Garrett waited till the town was quiet before he slipped into Pete Maxwell’s room to ask him about Billy the Kid. Garrett was a former employee of Pete Maxwell's and it's possible that Maxwell tipped Garrett off that the Kid was in the area. At that exact moment, the Kid with a knife in hand went to Maxwell’s house to get some fresh beef for a late steak dinner. As he approached, he saw Garrett’s two deputies on the porch and since he didn't recognizing the strangers, he backed cautiously into Maxwell’s room and asked “Pete, who are those fellows outside?” He got no answer and as he walked towards the bed, he saw Garrett’s silhouette and started to back away and asked in Spanish, “Whose there?” Garrett recognized the Kid’s voice and fired his gun. The bullet pierced the Kid's heart and he fell to the floor. Garrett and Maxwell ran out of the room and huddled outside with the two deputies and waited. They could hear as the Kid gasped for breath and then all was quiet -Billy the Kid was dead (8). Footnote 8: It’s of great speculation whether or not the Kid was armed with a gun. There's also something fishy about this whole incident and there may have been more foul play then we're led to believe. Garrett may have deliberately been waiting in the dark to shoot the Kid. The next day Billy the Kid was buried at the Fort Sumner cemetery near his two fallen companions, Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. He was killed not for who he “really” was, but for what people “thought” he was. He was a pawn in losing game and he was made a scapegoat for other outlaws’ crimes. Although he did participate in killings, the men he fought against were much worse than he ever was. This nineteen or twenty year old lived a short life but made a lasting impression. If it weren’t for our attraction to Billy the Kid, the history of the Lincoln County War and its participants would've been long forgotten. Thanks to Billy the Kid, New Mexico has a thriving business in tourism as a steady flow of tourists each year come to visit the Billy the Kid sites. Even in death Billy the Kid is likeable and he has a large following with people all over the word. A matter of fact, Billy the Kid is known as the Old West's most favorite outlaw. Henry McCarty; aka Billy the Kid; aka Willian H Bonney (he used his grandfather's name). a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War. According to legend, he killed over 20 white men and a number of Mexicans and Indians,[2]but he is generally accepted to have killed four men.[2] McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) to 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) tall with blue eyes, a smooth complexion and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, and many recalled that he was as "lithe as a cat".] Contemporaries described him as a "neat" dresser who favored an "unadorned Mexican sombrero". Wikipedia William Bonney (English) Henry McCarty, better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney (reportedly November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881), was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War. According to legend, he killed 21 men, but he is generally accepted to have killed between four and nine. McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) to 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall with blue eyes, a smooth complexion and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, and many recalled that he was as "lithe as a cat".[4] Contemporaries described him as a "neat" dresser who favored an "unadorned Mexican sombrero". These qualities, along with his cunning and celebrated skill with firearms, contributed to his paradoxical image, as both a notorious outlaw and beloved folk hero.[7] A relative unknown during his own lifetime, he was catapulted into legend the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Pat Garrett, along with co-author M.A. "Ash" Upson, published a sensationalistic biography titled The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's account, Billy the Kid grew into a symbolic figure of the American Old West.[8] Early life Little is known about McCarty's origins, but many reputable scholars of western history "contend that he was born on the eve of the Civil War in the bowels of an Irish neighborhood in New York City (70 Allen Street). If indeed, his birthplace was New York, no records that can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he ever lived there have ever been uncovered".[9][10] While his biological father remains an obscure figure, some researchers have theorized that his name was Patrick McCarty, Michael McCarty, William McCarty, or Edward McCarty.[9] There is clear evidence that his Mother's name was Catherine McCarty, although "there have been continuing debates about whether McCarty was her maiden or married name".[9][10] According to some accounts, McCarty was born as William Henry McCarty, Jr., but his mother preferred to call him "Henry" because she did not wish him to be known as "Junior".[11] It is generally believed that McCarty's Mother was a survivor of the Great Irish Famine of the mid-19th century.[9][10] Some genealogists argue, however, that the future outlaw was born William Henry Bonney, the son of William Harrison Bonney and wife Katherine Boujean, paternal grandson of Levi Bonney and wife Rhoda Pratt and great-grandson of Obadiah Pratt, who in turn were the Grandparents of Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt, making him and McCarty first cousins once removed.[12] By 1868, Catherine McCarty had moved with her two young sons, Henry and Joseph, to Indianapolis, Indiana.[13] There, she met William Antrim, who was 12 years her junior.[14] In 1873, after several years of moving around the country, the two were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico,[15] and settled further south in Silver City.[16] Antrim found sporadic work as a bartender and carpenter but soon became more interested in prospecting and gambling for fortune than in his wife and stepsons.[17] Nevertheless, young McCarty often used the surname "Antrim" when referring to himself.[18] Faced with a husband who was frequently absent, McCarty's mother reportedly washed clothes, baked pies, and took in boarders in order to provide for her sons.[19] Although she was fondly remembered by onetime boarders and neighbors as "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief",[20] she was already in the final stages of tuberculosis when the family reached Silver City.[21] The following year, on September 16, 1874, Catherine McCarty died; she was buried in the Memory Lane Cemetery in Silver City.[17] At age 14, McCarty was taken in by a neighboring family who operated a hotel where he worked to pay for his keep. The manager was impressed by the youth, contending that he was the only young man who ever worked for him that did not steal anything.[22] One of McCarty's school teachers later recalled that the young orphan was "no more of a problem than any other boy, always quite willing to help with chores around the schoolhouse".[23] Early biographers sought to explain McCarty's subsequent descent into lawlessness by focusing on his habit of reading dime novels that romanticized crime. A more likely explanation, however, was his slender physique, "which placed him in precarious situations with bigger and stronger boys".[24] Forced to seek new lodgings when his foster family began to experience "domestic problems", McCarty moved into a boarding house and pursued odd jobs.[24] In April, 1875, McCarty was arrested by Grant County Sheriff Harvey Whitehill, after McCarty stole some cheese. On September 24, 1875, McCarty was again arrested when he was found in possession of clothing and firearms that a fellow boarder had stolen from a Chinese laundry owner.[25] Two days after McCarty was placed in jail, the teenager escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. From that point on, McCarty was more or less a fugitive.[26] According to some accounts, he eventually found work as an itinerant ranch hand and shepherd in southeastern Arizona.[27] In 1876, he settled in the vicinity of Fort Grant Army Post in Arizona, where he worked local ranches and tested his skills at local gaming houses.[28] Sheriff Whitehill would later say that he liked the boy, and his acts of theft were more due to necessity than wantonness. During this time, McCarty became acquainted with John R. Mackie, a Scottish-born ex-cavalry private with a criminal bent.[29] The two men supposedly became involved in the risky, but profitable, enterprise of horse thievery; and McCarty, who targeted local soldiers, became known by the sobriquet of "Kid Antrim".[30] Biographer Robert M. Utley writes that the nickname arose because of McCarty's "slight build and beardless countenance, his young years, and his appealing personality".[31] In 1877, McCarty was involved in an altercation with the civilian blacksmith at Fort Grant, a loquacious Irish immigrant named Frank "Windy" Cahill, who took pleasure in bullying young McCarty.[32] On August 17, Cahill reportedly attacked McCarty after a verbal exchange and threw him to the ground. Reliable accounts suggest McCarty retaliated by drawing his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day.[33] The coroner's inquest concluded that McCarty's shooting of Cahill was "criminal and unjustifiable." Some of those who witnessed the incident later claimed that McCarty acted in self-defense.[34] Years later, Louis Abraham, who had known McCarty in Silver City but was not a witness, denied that anyone was killed in this altercation.[35] In fear of Cahill's friends and associates, McCarty fled Arizona Territory and entered New Mexico Territory.[36] He eventually arrived at the former army post of Apache Tejo, where he joined a band of cattle rustlers who targeted the sprawling herds of cattle magnate John Chisum.[37] During this period, McCarty was spotted by a resident of Silver City, and the teenager's involvement with the notorious gang was mentioned in a local newspaper.[38] It is unclear how long McCarty rode with the gang of rustlers known as "the Boys", but reliable sources indicate that he soon turned up at the house of Heiskell Jones in the Pecos Valley,[39] New Mexico.[40] According to this account, Apaches stole McCarty's horse, forcing him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement, which happened to be Jones' home. When he arrived, the young man was supposedly near death, but Mrs. Jones nursed him back to health.[40] The Jones family developed a strong attachment to McCarty and gave him one of their horses.[40] At some point in 1877, McCarty began to refer to himself as "Willam H. Bonney."[41] Lincoln County War In the Autumn of 1877, McCarty (now widely known as Bonney) moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and was first hired by Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre to work in their cheese factory.[42] Through them he met Frank Coe, George Coe and Ab Saunders, three cousins who owned their own ranch near to the ranch of Dick Brewer. After a short stint working on the ranch of Henry Hooker, McCarty began working on the Coe-Saunders ranch.[43] Late in 1877, McCarty, along with Brewer, Bowdre, Scurlock, the Coes and the Saunders, was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall, an English cattle rancher, banker and merchant, and his partner, Alexander McSween, a prominent lawyer.[44] A conflict known today as the Lincoln County War had erupted between the established town merchants, Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, and competing business interests headed by Tunstall and McSween.[45] Events turned bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall was spotted while driving a herd of nine horses towards Lincoln and murdered by William Morton, Jessie Evans, Tom Hill, and Frank Baker — all members of the Murphy-Dolan faction, and members of a posse sent to attack McSween's holdings.[46] After murdering Tunstall, the gunmen shot down his prized bay horse.[47] "As a wry and macabre joke on Tunstall's great affection for horses, the dead bay's head was then pillowed on his hat", writes Frederick Nolan, Tunstall's biographer.[48] Although members of the Murphy-Dolan faction sought to frame Tunstall's death as a "justifiable homicide", evidence at the scene suggested that Tunstall attempted to avoid a confrontation before he was shot down.[49] Tunstall's murder enraged McCarty and the other ranch hands.[50] McSween, who abhorred violence, took steps to punish Tunstall's murderers through legal means; he obtained warrants for their arrests from the local justice of the peace John B. Wilson.[51] Tunstall's men formed their own group called the Regulators.[52] After being deputized by rancher Richard "Dick" Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, who had been appointed a special constable and given the warrant to arrest Tunstall's killers, they proceeded to the Murphy-Dolan store.[53] The wanted men, Bill Morton and Frank Baker, attempted to flee, but they were captured on March 6. Upon returning to Lincoln, the Regulators reported that Morton and Baker had been shot on March 9 near Agua Negra during an alleged escape attempt.[54][55][56] During their journey to Lincoln, the Regulators also killed one of their own members, a man named McCloskey, whom they suspected of being a traitor.[54][57][58] On the very day that McCloskey, Morton, and Baker were slain, Governor Samuel Beach Axtell arrived in Lincoln County to investigate the ongoing violence. The governor, accompanied by James Dolan and associate John Riley, proved hostile to the faction now headed by McSween. Thus, the Regulators "went from lawmen to outlaws".[59] Notably, Axtell refused to acknowledge the existence of the so-called "Santa Fe Ring", a group of corrupt Republican politicians and business leaders led by U.S. Attorney Thomas Benton Catron.[60] Catron cooperated closely with the Murphy-Dolan faction, which was perceived as part of the notorious "ring".[61] Unfazed, the Regulators planned to settle a score with Sheriff William J. Brady, who had arrested McCarty and fellow deputy Fred Waite in the aftermath of Tunstall's murder. At the time Brady arrested them, the two men were attempting to serve a warrant on Brady for his suspected role in looting Tunstall's store after the Englishman's death, as well as his posse members for the murder of Tunstall.[51] On April 1, Regulators Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and McCarty ambushed Sheriff Brady[62] and his deputy, George W. Hindman,[63] killing them both in Lincoln's main street. McCarty was shot in the thigh while attempting to retrieve a rifle that Brady had seized from him during an earlier arrest.[57] With this move, the McSween faction disillusioned many former supporters, who came to view both sides as "equally nefarious and bloodthirsty".[64] The connection between McSween and the Regulators was ambiguous, however. McCarty was loyal to the memory of Tunstall, though not necessarily to McSween.[65] There is some doubt as to whether McCarty and McSween were even acquainted at the time of Brady's death.[65] According to a contemporary newspaper account, the Regulators disclaimed "all connection or sympathy with McSween and his affairs" and expressed their sole desire to track down Tunstall's murderers.[65] On April 4, in what became known as the Gunfight of Blazer's Mills, the Regulators sought the arrest of an old buffalo hunter known as Buckshot Roberts, whom they suspected of involvement in the Tunstall slaying.[66] Roberts, however, refused to be taken alive, even after he suffered a severe bullet wound to the chest.[67] During the gun battle that ensued, Roberts shot and killed the Regulators' leader, Dick Brewer.[66][68] Four other Regulators were wounded in the skirmish.[57] The incident had the effect of further alienating the public, given that many local residents "admired the way Roberts put up a gutsy fight against overwhelming odds".[69] Killing of Frank McNab and after After Brewer's death, Frank McNab was elected as captain of the Regulators.[69] For a short period, the Regulators benefited from the appointment of Sheriff John Copeland, who proved sympathetic to the McSween faction.[69] Copeland's authority, however, was undermined by the Murphy-Dolan faction, which promptly rounded up recruits from among Sheriff Brady's former deputies.[70] On April 29, 1878, a posse including the Jessie Evans Gang and the Seven Rivers Warriors, under the direction of former Brady deputy George W. Peppin, engaged Regulators Frank McNab, Ab Saunders and Frank Coe in a shootout at the Fritz Ranch.[70] McNab was killed in a hail of gunfire, while Saunders was severely wounded and Frank Coe was captured.[70] Frank Coe escaped custody a short time later, when his captors were occupied elsewhere.[71] What is known about the morning following McNab's death is that the Regulator "iron clad" took up defensive positions in the town of Lincoln, trading shots with Dolan men as well as U.S. cavalrymen.[72] The only casualty was Dutch Charley Kruling, a Dolan man wounded by a rifle slug fired by George Coe at a distance of 440 paces.[73] By shooting at government troops, the Regulators earned their animosity and gained a whole new set of enemies. On May 15, the Regulators tracked down Seven Rivers gang member Manuel Segovia, the suspected murderer of Frank McNab, and shot him to death.[74] Around the time of Segovia's death, the Regulator "iron clad" gained a new member, a young Texas "cowpoke" named Tom O'Folliard, who became McCarty's close friend and constant companion.[75] The Regulators' position worsened when the governor, in a quasi-legal move, removed Copeland and appointed George Peppin (an ally of the Murphy-Dolan faction) as sheriff.[76] Under indictment for the Brady killing, McCarty and the other Regulators spent the next several months in hiding and were trapped, along with McSween, in McSween's home in Lincoln on July 15, by members of "The House" (as the Murphy-Dolan faction was known) and some of Brady's men.[77] On July 19, a column of U.S. cavalry soldiers entered the fray. Ostensibly neutral, the column's actions worked to the clear advantage of the Dolan faction.[78] After a five-day siege, McSween's house was set on fire by the sheriff's posse.[79] McCarty and the other Regulators fled, although McCarty is believed by some to have killed one "House" member named Bob Beckwith.[80] McSween was shot down while fleeing the blaze, and his death essentially marked the end of the Lincoln County Cattle War.[81] Lew Wallace and amnesty In the Autumn of 1878, a former Union Army general, Lew Wallace, became Governor of the New Mexico Territory.[82] In an effort to restore peace to Lincoln County, Wallace proclaimed an amnesty for any man involved in the Lincoln County War who was not already under indictment.[82] McCarty, who had fled to Texas after his escape from McSween's house, was under indictment, but sent Wallace a letter requesting immunity in return for testifying in front of the Grand Jury.[83] In March 1879, Wallace and McCarty met in Lincoln County to discuss the possibility of a deal. McCarty greeted the governor with a revolver in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. After taking several days to consider Wallace's offer, McCarty agreed to testify in return for amnesty.[83] The arrangement called for McCarty to submit to a token arrest and a short stay in jail until the conclusion of his courtroom testimony.[83] Although McCarty's testimony helped to indict John Dolan, the district attorney, one of the powerful "House" faction leaders, disregarded Wallace's order to set McCarty free after his testimony.[84] After the trial, McCarty and O'Folliard slipped away on horses that were supplied by friends. For the next year-and-a-half, McCarty survived by rustling, gambling, and taking defensive action. In January 1880, he reportedly killed a man named Joe Grant in a Fort Sumner saloon.[86] Grant, who did not realize he was playing poker with McCarty, boasted that he would kill "Billy the Kid" if he ever encountered him. In those days people loaded their revolvers with only five rounds, with the hammer down on an empty chamber. This was done to prevent an accidental discharge should the hammer be struck. The Kid asked Grant if he could see his ivory handled revolver and, while looking at the weapon, rotated the cylinder so the hammer would fall on the empty chamber when the trigger was pulled.[86] He then informed Grant of his identity. When Grant fired, nothing happened, and McCarty then shot him. When asked about the incident later, he remarked, "It was a game for two, and I got there first".[87] Other versions of this story exist. One biographer, Joel Jacobsen, recounts the story as described in Utley, describing Grant as a "drunk" who was "making himself obnoxious in a bar".[88] As in other accounts of the incident, the Kid is described as rotating the cylinder "so an empty chamber was beneath the hammer".[88] In Jacobsen's recounting of the incident, however, Grant attempted to shoot McCarty unawares. "As [McCarty] was leaving the saloon, his back turned to Grant, he heard a distinct click. He spun around before Grant could reach a loaded chamber. Always a good marksman, he shot Grant in the chin".[88] In November 1880, a posse pursued and trapped McCarty's gang inside a ranch house owned by one of the Kid's friends, James Greathouse, at Anton Chico in the White Oaks area.[89] A posse member named James Carlyle[90] ventured into the house under a white flag, in an effort to negotiate the group's surrender.[89] Meanwhile, Greathouse was sent out to act as a hostage for the posse.[91] At some point in the evening, Carlyle evidently decided the outlaws were stalling. According to one version of events, Carlyle heard a shot that had been fired accidentally outside. Concluding that the posse members had shot down Greathouse, he chose escape, crashed through a window and was fired upon and killed.[89] Recognizing their mistake, the posse members became demoralized and scattered, enabling McCarty and his gang to slip away. McCarty vehemently denied shooting Carlysle,[89] and later wrote to Governor Wallace, claiming to be innocent of this crime and others attributed to him.[92] Pat Garrett During this time, McCarty became acquainted with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo hunter named Pat Garrett.[87] While popular accounts often depict McCarty and Garrett as "bosom buddies", there is no concrete evidence that they were ever friends.[93] Running on a pledge to rid the area of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November 1880, and in early December, he assembled a posse and set out to arrest McCarty, now known almost exclusively as "Billy the Kid" and carrying a $500 bounty on his head.[94] The posse led by Garrett fared well, and his men closed in quickly. On December 19, McCarty barely escaped a midnight ambush in Fort Sumner, which left one member of the gang, Tom O'Folliard, dead.[95] On December 23, the Kid was tracked to an abandoned stone building located in a remote location known as Stinking Springs (near present-day Taiban, New Mexico). While McCarty and his gang were asleep inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise. The next morning, a cattle rustler named Charlie Bowdre stepped outside to feed his horse.[96] Mistaken for McCarty, he was shot down by the posse.[96] Soon afterward, somebody from within the building reached for the horse's halter rope, but Garrett shot and killed the horse, whose body blocked the building's only exit.[97] As the lawmen began to cook breakfast over an open fire, Garrett and McCarty engaged in a friendly exchange, with Garrett inviting McCarty outside to eat, and McCarty inviting Garrett to "go to hell".[97] Realizing that they had no hope of escape, the besieged and hungry outlaws finally surrendered later that day and were allowed to join in the meal. Escape from Lincoln McCarty was transported from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas, where he gave an interview to a reporter from the Las Vegas Gazette.[98] Next, the prisoner was transferred to Santa Fe, where he sent four separate letters over the next three months to Governor Wallace seeking clemency.[99] Wallace, however, refused to intervene,[99] and the Kid's trial was held in April 1881 in Mesilla.[100] On April 9, after two days of testimony, McCarty was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady, the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants in the Lincoln County Cattle War.[100] On April 13, he was sentenced by Judge Warren Bristol to hang.[100] With his execution scheduled for May 13, McCarty was removed to Lincoln, where he was held under guard by two of Garrett's deputies, James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on the top floor of the town courthouse. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, McCarty stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping.[101] The details of the escape are unclear. Some researchers believe that a sympathizer placed a pistol in a nearby privy that McCarty was permitted to use, under escort, each day. McCarty retrieved the gun, and turned it on Bell when the pair had reached the top of a flight of stairs in the courthouse. Another theory holds that McCarty slipped off his manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell[102] over the head with them, grabbed Bell's own gun, and shot him with it. Whatever happened, Bell staggered into the street and collapsed, mortally wounded.[2] Meanwhile, McCarty scooped up Ollinger's[103] 10-gauge double barrel shotgun and waited at the upstairs window for Ollinger, who had been across the street with some other prisoners, to come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into view, McCarty leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello Bob!" and killed him.[2][104] The Kid's escape was delayed for an hour while he worked free of his leg irons[105] with a pickax and then the young outlaw mounted a horse and rode out of town, reportedly singing.[2] The horse returned two days later.[106] Death Responding to rumors that McCarty was still lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape, Sheriff Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881, to question one of the town's residents, a friend of McCarty's named Pete Maxwell (son of land baron Lucien Maxwell).[107] Close to midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, McCarty unexpectedly entered the room.[108] There are at least two versions of what happened next. One version suggests that as the Kid entered, he failed to recognize Garrett in the poor light. McCarty drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?").[108] Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet striking McCarty just above his heart, killing him.[108] In a second version, McCarty entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone in the darkness, and uttered the words, "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style. Although the popularity of the first story persists, and portrays Garrett in a better light, many historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one.[109] A markedly different theory, in which Garrett and his posse set a trap for McCarty, has also been suggested. Most recently explored in the Discovery Channel documentary, Billy the Kid: Unmasked, this theory contends that Garrett went to the bedroom of Pedro Maxwell's sister, Paulita, and bound and gagged her in her bed. When McCarty arrived, Garrett was waiting behind Paulita's bed and shot the Kid. McCarty was buried the next day in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery, between his fallen companions Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre.[8] A single tombstone was later erected over the graves, giving the three outlaws' names (Billy's as "William H. Bonney") and with a one word epitaph of "Pals" also carved into it. The tombstone has been stolen and recovered three times since it was set in place in the 1940s, and the entire gravesite is now enclosed within a steel cage.[110] Notoriety Like many gunfighters of the "Old West", Billy the Kid enjoyed a reputation built partly on exaggerated accounts of his exploits.[111] McCarty was credited with the killing of 20 men.[2] Some historians speculate that his image was created deliberately to distract the public's attention from the nefarious activities of the Dolan faction and their influential supporters in Santa Fe, notably regional political leader Thomas Benton Catron.[111] The undeserved notoriety that McCarty gained during the Lincoln County War effectively doomed his appeals for amnesty.[112] A number of the Regulators faded away or secured amnesty, but McCarty was in no position to accomplish either. His negotiations with Governor Lew Wallace (famed Civil War general and author of the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ) for amnesty came to nothing. His position was further undermined by a string of negative newspaper editorials that referred to him as "Billy the Kid".[112] When a reporter reminded Wallace that the Kid was depending on Wallace's intervention, the governor supposedly smiled and said, "Yes, but I can't see how a fellow like him can expect any clemency from me".[99] One widely reported characteristic of McCarty has stood the test of research: his personal charisma and popularity. Various accounts recorded by friends and acquaintances describe him as fun-loving and jolly, articulate in both his writing and his speech, and loyal to those for whom he cared.[113] He was fluent in Spanish, popular with Latina girls, an accomplished dancer, and thus especially well-loved within the territory's Hispanic community. There, he was regarded as a champion of the oppressed.[7] "His many Hispanic friends did not view him as a ruthless killer but rather as a defender of the people who were forced to kill in self-defense," Wallis writes. "In the time that the Kid roamed the land he chided Hispanic villagers who were fearful of standing up to the big ranchers who stole their land, water, and way of life".[106] Left-handed or right-handed? It was widely assumed throughout much of the 20th century that Billy the Kid was left-handed. This perception was encouraged by the only documented photograph of McCarty (an undated ferrotype), in which he appears to be wearing a gun belt with a holster on his left side. (All Winchester Model 1873 rifles were made with the loading gate on the right side of the receiver: the "left-handed" photograph is a mirror image.)[114] Indeed, the notion of a left-handed Billy became so entrenched that, in 1958, a film biography of "the Kid" (starring Paul Newman) was titled The Left Handed Gun. In 1954, however, western historians James D. Horan and Paul Sann wrote that McCarty was "right-handed and carried his pistol on his right hip".[115] More recently, in response to a story from The Guardian that used an uncorrected McCarty ferrotype, Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and Television Archive, cited their work and added: This particular reproduction error has occurred so often in books and other publications over the years that it has led to the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed, for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the evidence (from viewing his photo correctly) is that he was right-handed: he wears his pistol on his right hip with the butt pointing backwards in a conventional right-handed draw position. Wallis wrote in 2007 that McCarty was ambidextrous.[117] Personality traits according to first-hand accounts Frank Coe, who rode as a Regulator, recalled years after the Kid's death: "I never enjoyed better company. He was humorous and told me many amusing stories. He always found a touch of humor in everything, being naturally full of fun and jollity. Though he was serious in emergencies, his humor was often apparent even in such situations. Billy stood with us to the end, brave and reliable, one of the best soldiers we had. He never pushed in his advice or opinions, but he had a wonderful presence of mind. The tighter the place the more he showed his cool nerve and quick brain. He never seemed to care for money, except to buy cartridges with. Cartridges were scarce, and he always used about ten times as many as everyone else. He would practice shooting at anything he saw, from every conceivable angle, on and off his horse".[35] George Coe, a cousin to Frank who also served as a Regulator, stated: "Billy was a brave, resourceful and honest boy. He would have been a successful man under other circumstances. The Kid was a thousand times better and braver than any man hunting him, including Pat Garrett".[35] Susan McSween, widow of Alexander McSween, stated: "Billy was not a bad man, that is he was not a murderer who killed wantonly. Most of those he killed deserved what they got. Of course I cannot very well defend his stealing horses and cattle, but when you consider that the Murphy, Dolan, and Riley people forced him into such a lawless life through efforts to secure his arrest and conviction, it is hard to blame the poor boy for what he did".[35] Deluvina Maxwell, a friend of Billy the Kid, stated: "Garrett was afraid to go back in the room to make sure of whom he had shot. I went in and was the first to discover that they had killed my little boy. I hated those men and am glad that I lived long enough to see them all dead and buried".[35] Louis Abraham, who befriended the Kid in Silver City, New Mexico, stated: "The story of Billy the Kid killing a blacksmith in Silver City is false. Billy was never in any trouble at all. He was a good boy, maybe a little too mischievous at times. When the boy was placed in jail and escaped, he was not bad, just scared. If he had only waited until they let him out he would have been all right, but he was scared and ran away. He got in with a band of rustlers in Apache Tejo in part of the county where he was made a hardened character".[35] People claiming to be Billy the Kid Legends grew over time that Billy the Kid had somehow cheated death, despite eyewitness accounts of his slaying.[118] In 2004, researchers sought to exhume the remains of Catherine Antrim, McCarty's mother, "so her DNA could be tested and compared with DNA to be taken from the body buried under the Kid's gravestone".[118] Ultimately, the case was bogged down in the courts, "much to the delight of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who knows all too well the value of Billy as a cultural icon and a draw for tourists".[118] At least two men claimed to be McCarty, and they were successful in persuading a small segment of the public. Brushy Bill In 1949, a paralegal named William Morrison located a man in West Texas named Ollie P. Roberts (nicknamed "Brushy Bill"), who claimed to be Billy the Kid and challenged the popular account of Billy's slaying at the hands of Pat Garrett in 1881. Most historians reject Brushy Bill's claim, although his argument was not entirely bereft of supporting evidence. Despite discrepancies in birth dates and physical appearance, the town of Hico, Texas (Brushy Bill's residence), has capitalized on the Kid's infamy by opening the Billy The Kid Museum.[119] John Miller Another individual who allegedly claimed to be Billy the Kid was John Miller, whose family supported his claim in 1938, some time after Miller's death. Miller was buried at the state-owned Pioneers' Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona. Tom Sullivan, a former sheriff of Lincoln County, and Steve Sederwall, a former mayor of Capitan, disinterred the bones of John Miller in May 2005.[120] DNA samples from the remains were sent to a lab in Dallas, Texas, to be compared with traces of blood obtained from a bench that was believed to be the one upon which McCarty's body was placed after he was shot to death. The pair had been searching for McCarty's physical remains since 2003, starting in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and eventually ending up in Arizona. To date, no results of the DNA tests have been made public. Selected references in popular culture Billy the Kid has been the subject and inspiration for many popular works, including: Literature Billy The Kid (1958), a serial poem by Jack Spicer. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-handed Poems, by Michael Ondaatje, 1970 Governor General's Award-winning biography in the form of experimental poetry. Added as an immortal to Michael Scott's series Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel during the third book The Sorceress. The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid is a science fiction novel by Rebecca Ore, published in 1991. Anything for Billy is a 1988 novel by Larry McMurty. Lucky Billy: a novel about Billy the Kid is a 2008 novel by John Vernon, a professor at Binghamton University. Film Billy the Kid, 1930 widescreen film directed by King Vidor and starring Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett.[121] Billy the Kid Returns, 1938: Roy Rogers plays a dual role, Billy the Kid and his dead-ringer lookalike who shows up after the Kid has been shot by Pat Garrett. Billy the Kid, 1941 remake of the 1930 film, starring Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy. Buster Crabbe played Billy the Kid in a serial series during 1942 and 1943. The thirteen films included Blazing Frontier, The Renegade, Cattle Stampede, and Western Cyclone (1943).[122] The Outlaw, Howard Hughes' 1943 motion picture featuring Jane Russell in her breakthrough role as the Kid's fictional love interest. The Kid from Texas (1950, Universal International) film starring Audie Murphy--location of title character's place of origin changed to appeal to Texans and capitalize on Murphy association with that state. The Law vs Billy the Kid (1954, Columbia Pictures Corporation) starring Scott Brady. The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn's 1958 motion picture based on a Gore Vidal teleplay, starring Paul Newman as Billy and John Dehner as Garrett. The Boy from Oklahoma (1954), with Tyler MacDuff in the role of Billy the Kid[123] One-Eyed Jacks (1961) is the only film directed by actor Marlon Brando, who also played its lead character, Rio. Story from an adaptation by Rod Serling of a Charles Neider novelization of Billy the Kid's life, with a later revision among others by Sam Peckinpah. Chisum, 1970 movie starring John Wayne as John Chisum, dealing with Billy the Kid's involvement in the Lincoln County War. Billy is portrayed by Geoffrey Deuel. Dirty Little Billy,[124] Stan Dragoti's 1972 film starring Michael J. Pollard. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 motion picture with Kris Kristofferson as Billy, James Coburn as Pat Garrett, and with a soundtrack by Bob Dylan, who also appears in the movie. Young Guns, Christopher Cain's 1988 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and Patrick Wayne, son of John Wayne as Pat Garrett Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989 time travel time travel movie featuring Dan Shor as Billy the Kid. Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid,[125] Gore Vidal's 1989 film starring Val Kilmer as Billy and Duncan Regehr as Pat Garrett. Young Guns II, Geoff Murphy's 1990 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and William Petersen as Pat Garrett. Purgatory (film), Uli Edel's 1999 made for TV movie starring Donnie Wahlberg as Deputy Glen/Billy The Kid. Requiem for Billy the Kid, Anne Feinsilber's 2006 motion picture starring Kris Kristofferson. The Green Mile, Wild Bill has a tattoo of Billy the Kid in the 1999 film. Music "Billy the Kid", a folk song in the public domain, was published in John A. Lomax and Alan Lonax's American Ballads and Folksongs,[126] and also their Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.[127] "Billy the Kid" folksong sung by Woody Guthrie, recorded by Alan Lomax in 1940 for the Library of Congress (#3412 B2), with a melody Guthrie later used for his song "So Long, it's Been Good to Know You". He also recorded it in 1944 for Moe Asch's Asch/Folkways label (MA67).[128] Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid, a ballet that premiered in 1938. Bob Dylan's album Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, soundtrack of the 1973 film by Sam Peckinpah. Jon Bon Jovi's album Blaze of Glory, used as part of the soundtrack for Young Guns II, and featured the song "Billy Get Your Gun". Marty Robbins' song "Billy the Kid" from the album Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs Volume 3. Marty Robbins' song "Fastest Gun Around" from the 1963 album Return of the Gunfighter. Dave Stamey's "The Skies of Lincoln County", which features the deceased Bonney as narrator, answering historical distortions by Pat Garrett. Ry Cooder recorded the folk song "Billy the Kid", on the album Into The Purple Valley,[129] with his own melody and instrumental. It was also on Ry Cooder Classics Volume II.[130] Billy Joel's song The Ballad of Billy the Kid, a historically inaccurate re-telling of Billy the Kid's life, off of his 1973 album Piano Man American composer Mark Nichols (American Composer/Playwright) wrote a popular score for Michael Ondaatje play,"The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" in 1990, The Charlie Daniels Band recorded the song "Billy The Kid" (Daniels, Dean, Wilson) on their 1976 album High Lonesome (Charlie Daniels album). UK rock band Loungetree recorded a song 'William Child' on their 2009 album 'Seasons' with inspiration drawn from the name and legend of Billy the Kid Stage Joseph Santley's 1906 Broadway play co-written by Santley, in which he also starred Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, 1973 play based on his poetry Television and radio The 2003 Discovery Channel Quest, Billy the Kid: Unmasked, investigated the life and death of Billy the Kid through forensic science. The actor Richard Jaeckel played The Kid in a 1954 episode of Jim Davis's syndicated television series, Stories of the Century. The NBC series The Tall Man ran from 1960 to 1962, starring Clu Gulager as Billy and Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett. The ABC series Maverick featured an episode where Bret (James Garner) meets several outlaws, including Billy the Kid. Additional Sources	Billy the Kid
Before being overthrown by Zeus and the Olympians, what race of powerful deities ruled the Greek world during the legendary Golden Age?	Billy the Kid - Amerifo- Info on Everything America History ‎ > ‎ Biographies ‎ > ‎ Billy the Kid Billy the Kid, also known as William Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney (allegedly November 23, 1859 [1] – c. July 14, 1881) was a 19th-century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War . According to legend, he killed 21 men, [2] but he is generally accepted to have killed between four [2] and nine. [3] McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) to 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall with blue eyes, a smooth complexion, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, [4] [5] and many recalled that he was as "lithe as a cat". [4] Contemporaries described him as a "neat" dresser who favored an "unadorned Mexican sombrero ". [4] [6] These qualities, along with his cunning and celebrated skill with firearms, contributed to his paradoxical image, as both a notorious outlaw and beloved folk hero. [7] Relatively unknown during most of his lifetime, Bonney was catapulted into legend a few months before his death by New Mexico's governor, Lew Wallace , who placed a price on his head, and by stories printed in the Las Vegas Gazette ( Las Vegas, New Mexico ) and the New York Sun . [8] Many other newspapers followed suit and published stories about Billy the Kid's exploits. After his death, several biographies were written that portrayed the Kid in varying lights. [8] Early life Little is known about McCarty's origins, but some scholars of western history "contend that he was born on the eve of the Civil War in an Irish neighborhood in New York City " (at 70 Allen Street ). If indeed his birthplace was New York, no records that can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he ever lived there have ever been uncovered". [9] [10] While his biological father remains an obscure figure, some researchers have theorized that his name was Patrick McCarty, Michael McCarty, William McCarty, or Edward McCarty. [9] There is clear evidence that his mother's name was Catherine McCarty, although "there have been continuing debates about whether McCarty was her maiden or married name". [9] [10] According to some accounts, McCarty was born as William Henry McCarty, Jr., but his mother preferred to call him "Henry" because she did not wish him to be known as "Junior". [11] It is believed that McCarty's mother was a survivor of the Great Famine . [9] [10] By 1868, Catherine McCarty had moved with her two young sons, Henry and Joseph, to Indianapolis, Indiana . [12] There, she met William Antrim, who was 12 years her junior. [13] In 1873, after several years of moving around the country, the two were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico , [14] and settled further south in Silver City . [15] Antrim found sporadic work as a bartender and carpenter but soon became more interested in prospecting and gambling for fortune than in his wife and stepsons. [16] Nevertheless, young McCarty often used the surname "Antrim" when referring to himself. [17] Faced with a husband who was frequently absent, McCarty's mother reportedly washed clothes, baked pies, and took in boarders in order to provide for her sons. [18] Although she was fondly remembered by onetime boarders and neighbors as "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief", [19] she was already in the final stages of tuberculosis when the family reached Silver City. [20] The following year, on September 16, 1874, Catherine McCarty died; she was buried in the Memory Lane Cemetery in Silver City. [16] At age 14, McCarty was taken in by a neighboring family who operated a hotel where he worked to pay for his keep. The manager was impressed by the youth, contending that he was the only young man who ever worked for him that did not steal anything. [21] One of McCarty's school teachers later recalled that the young orphan was "no more of a problem than any other boy, always quite willing to help with chores around the schoolhouse". [22] Early biographers sought to explain McCarty's subsequent descent into lawlessness by focusing on his habit of reading dime novels that romanticized crime. A more likely explanation, however, was his slender physique, "which placed him in precarious situations with bigger and stronger boys". [23] Forced to seek new lodgings when his foster family began to experience "domestic problems," McCarty moved into a boarding house and pursued odd jobs. [23] In April 1875, McCarty was arrested by Grant County Sheriff Harvey Whitehill , after McCarty stole some cheese. On September 24, 1875, McCarty was again arrested when he was found in possession of clothing and firearms that a fellow boarder had stolen from a Chinese laundry owner. [24] Two days after McCarty was placed in jail , the teenager escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. From that point on, McCarty was more or less a fugitive. [25] According to some accounts, he eventually found work as an itinerant ranch hand and shepherd in southeastern Arizona . [26] In 1876, he settled in the vicinity of Fort Grant Army Post in Arizona, where he worked local ranches and tested his skills at local gaming houses. [27] Sheriff Whitehill would later say that he liked the boy, and his acts of theft were more due to necessity than wantonness. During this time, McCarty became acquainted with John R. Mackie, a Scottish -born ex-cavalry private with a criminal bent. [28] The two men supposedly became involved in the risky, but profitable, enterprise of horse thievery; and McCarty, who targeted local soldiers, became known by the sobriquet of "Kid Antrim". [29] Biographer Robert M. Utley writes that the nickname arose because of McCarty's "slight build and beardless countenance, his young years, and his appealing personality". [30] In 1877, McCarty was involved in an altercation with the civilian blacksmith at Fort Grant, an Irish immigrant named Frank "Windy" Cahill, who took pleasure in bullying young McCarty. [31] On August 17, Cahill reportedly attacked McCarty after a verbal exchange and threw him to the ground. Reliable accounts suggest McCarty retaliated by drawing his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day. [32] The coroner's inquest concluded that McCarty's shooting of Cahill was "criminal and unjustifiable". Some of those who witnessed the incident later claimed that McCarty acted in self-defense. [33] Years later, Louis Abraham, who had known McCarty in Silver City but was not a witness, denied that anyone was killed in this altercation. [34] In fear of Cahill's friends and associates, McCarty fled Arizona Territory and entered New Mexico Territory. [35] He eventually arrived at the former army post of Apache Tejo, where he joined a band of cattle rustlers who targeted the sprawling herds of cattle magnate John Chisum . [36] During this period, McCarty was spotted by a resident of Silver City, and the teenager's involvement with the notorious gang was mentioned in a local newspaper. [37] It is unclear how long McCarty rode with the gang of rustlers known as the " Jesse Evans Gang ", but reliable sources indicate that he soon turned up at Heiskell Jones's house in Pecos Valley, New Mexico . [38] [39] According to this account, Apaches stole McCarty's horse, forcing him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement, which happened to be Jones's home. When he arrived, the young man was supposedly near death, but Mrs. Jones nursed him back to health. [39] The Jones family developed a strong attachment to McCarty and gave him one of their horses. [39] At some point in 1877, McCarty began to refer to himself as "William H. Bonney". [40] [ edit ]Lincoln County War Main article: Lincoln County War In 1877, McCarty (now widely known as William Bonney) moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico , and was first hired by Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre to work in their cheese factory. [41] Through them he met Frank Coe , George Coe and Ab Saunders , three cousins who owned their own ranch near to the ranch of Richard Brewer . After a short stint working on the ranch of Henry Hooker , McCarty began working on the Coe-Saunders ranch. [42] Late in 1877, McCarty, along with Brewer, Bowdre, Scurlock, the Coes and the Saunders, was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall , an English cattle rancher, banker and merchant, and his partner, Alexander McSween , a prominent lawyer. [43] A conflict known today as the Lincoln County War had erupted between the established town merchants, Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan , and competing business interests headed by Tunstall and McSween. [44] Events turned bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall was spotted while driving a herd of nine horses towards Lincoln and murdered by William Morton, Jessie Evans , Tom Hill, and Frank Baker — all members of the Murphy-Dolan faction, and members of a posse sent to attack McSween's holdings. [45] After murdering Tunstall, the gunmen shot down his prized bay horse. [46] "As a wry and macabre joke on Tunstall's great affection for horses, the dead bay's head was then pillowed on his hat", writes Frederick Nolan , Tunstall's biographer. [47] Although members of the Murphy-Dolan faction sought to frame Tunstall's death as a "justifiable homicide", evidence at the scene suggested that Tunstall attempted to avoid a confrontation before he was shot down. [48] Tunstall's murder enraged McCarty and the other ranch hands. [49] McSween, who abhorred violence, took steps to punish Tunstall's murderers through legal means; he obtained warrants for their arrests from the local justice of the peace John B. Wilson. [50] Tunstall's men formed their own group called the Regulators . [51] After being deputized by Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, who had been appointed a special constable and given the warrant to arrest Tunstall's killers, proceeded to the Murphy-Dolan store. [52] The wanted men, Bill Morton and Frank Baker, attempted to flee, but they were captured on March 6. Upon returning to Lincoln, the Regulators reported that Morton and Baker had been shot on March 9 near Agua Negra during an alleged escape attempt. [53] [54] [55] During their journey to Lincoln, the Regulators also killed one of their own members, a man named McCloskey, whom they suspected of being a traitor. [53] [56] [57] On the very day that McCloskey, Morton, and Baker were slain, Governor Samuel Beach Axtell arrived in Lincoln County to investigate the ongoing violence. The governor, accompanied by James Dolan and associate John Riley, proved hostile to the faction now headed by McSween. Thus, the Regulators "went from lawmen to outlaws". [58] Notably, Axtell refused to acknowledge the existence of the so-called "Santa Fe Ring", a group of corrupt politicians and business leaders led by U.S. Attorney Thomas Benton Catron . [59] Catron cooperated closely with the Murphy-Dolan faction, which was perceived as part of the notorious "ring". [60] Unfazed, the Regulators planned to settle a score with Sheriff William J. Brady , who had arrested McCarty and fellow deputy Fred Waite in the aftermath of Tunstall's murder. At the time Brady arrested them, the two men were attempting to serve a warrant on Brady for his suspected role in looting Tunstall's store after the Englishman's death, as well as his posse members for the murder of Tunstall. [50] On April 1, Regulators Jim French , Frank McNab , John Middleton , Fred Waite, Henry Brown and McCarty ambushed Sheriff Brady [61] and his deputy, George W. Hindman , [62] killing them both in Lincoln's main street. McCarty was shot in the thigh while attempting to retrieve a rifle that Brady had seized from him during an earlier arrest. [56] With this move, the McSween faction disillusioned many former supporters, who came to view both sides as "equally nefarious and bloodthirsty". [63] The connection between McSween and the Regulators was ambiguous, however. McCarty was loyal to the memory of Tunstall, though not necessarily to McSween. [64] There is some doubt as to whether McCarty and McSween were even acquainted at the time of Brady's death. [64] According to a contemporary newspaper account, the Regulators disclaimed "all connection or sympathy with McSween and his affairs" and expressed their sole desire to track down Tunstall's murderers. [64] On April 4, in what became known as the Gunfight of Blazer's Mills , the Regulators sought the arrest of an old buffalo hunter known as Buckshot Roberts , whom they suspected of involvement in the Tunstall slaying. [65] Roberts refused to be taken alive, even after he suffered a severe bullet wound to the chest. [66] During the gun battle that ensued, Roberts shot and killed the Regulators' leader, Dick Brewer. [65] [67] Four other Regulators were wounded in the skirmish. [56] The incident had the effect of further alienating the public, given that many local residents "admired the way Roberts put up a gutsy fight against overwhelming odds". [68] [ edit ]Killing of Frank McNab and after Main article: Battle of Lincoln (1878) After Brewer's death, Frank McNab was elected as captain of the Regulators. [68] For a short period, the Regulators benefited from the appointment of Sheriff John Copeland, who proved sympathetic to the McSween faction. [68] Copeland's authority, however, was undermined by the Murphy-Dolan faction, which promptly rounded up recruits from among Sheriff Brady's former deputies. [69] On April 29, 1878, a posse including the Jessie Evans Gang and the Seven Rivers Warriors , under the direction of former Brady deputy George W. Peppin, engaged McNab, Ab Saunders and Frank Coe in a shootout at the Fritz Ranch. [69] McNab was killed in a hail of gunfire, while Saunders was severely wounded and Coe was captured. [69] Coe escaped custody a short time later, when his captors were occupied elsewhere. [70] What is known about the morning following McNab's death is that the Regulators "iron clad" took up defensive positions in the town of Lincoln, trading shots with Dolan's men as well as U.S. cavalrymen . [71] The only casualty was Dutch Charley Kruling, a Dolan man wounded by a rifle slug fired by George Coe at a distance of 440 paces. [72] By shooting at government troops, the Regulators earned their animosity and gained a whole new set of enemies. On May 15, the Regulators tracked down Seven Rivers Warriors gang member Manuel Segovia, the suspected murderer of Frank McNab, and killed him. [73] Around the time of Segovia's death, the Regulator "iron clad" gained a new member, a young Texas "cowpoke" named Tom O'Folliard , who became McCarty's close friend and constant companion. [74] The Regulators' position worsened when the governor, in a quasi-legal move, removed Copeland and appointed George Peppin (an ally of the Murphy-Dolan faction) as sheriff. [75] Under indictment for the Brady killing, McCarty and the other Regulators spent the next several months in hiding and were trapped, along with McSween, in McSween's home in Lincoln on July 15, by members of "The House" (as the Murphy-Dolan faction was known) and some of Brady's men. [76] On July 19, a column of U.S. cavalry soldiers entered the fray. Ostensibly neutral, the column's actions worked to the clear advantage of the Dolan faction. [77] After a five-day siege, McSween's house was set on fire by the sheriff's posse. [78] McCarty and the other Regulators fled. [79] McSween was shot down while fleeing the blaze, and his death essentially marked the end of the Lincoln County War. [80] [ edit ]Lew Wallace and amnesty In the Autumn of 1878, a former Union Army general, Lew Wallace , became Governor of the New Mexico Territory. [81] In an effort to restore peace to Lincoln County, Wallace proclaimed an amnesty for any man involved in the Lincoln County War who was not already under indictment. [81] McCarty, who had fled to Texas after his escape from McSween's house, was under indictment, but sent Wallace a letter requesting immunity in return for testifying in front of the Grand Jury. [82] In March 1879, Wallace and McCarty met in Lincoln County to discuss the possibility of a deal. McCarty greeted the governor with a revolver in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. After taking several days to consider Wallace's offer, McCarty agreed to testify in return for amnesty. [82] The arrangement called for McCarty to submit to a token arrest and a short stay in jail until the conclusion of his courtroom testimony. [82] Although McCarty's testimony helped to indict John Dolan, the district attorney, one of the powerful "House" faction leaders, disregarded Wallace's order to set McCarty free after his testimony. [83] After the trial, McCarty and O'Folliard slipped away on horses that were supplied by friends. [84] For the next year-and-a-half, McCarty survived by rustling, gambling, and taking defensive action. In January 1880, he reportedly killed a man named Joe Grant in a Fort Sumner saloon. [85] Grant, who did not realize he was playing poker with McCarty, boasted that he would kill "Billy the Kid" if he ever encountered him. In those days people loaded their revolvers with only five rounds, with the hammer down on an empty chamber. This was done to prevent an accidental discharge should the hammer be struck. The Kid asked Grant if he could see his ivory handled revolver and, while looking at the weapon, rotated the cylinder so the hammer would fall on the empty chamber when the trigger was pulled. [85] He then informed Grant of his identity. When Grant fired, nothing happened, and McCarty then shot him. When asked about the incident later, he remarked, "It was a game for two, and I got there first". [86] Other versions of this story exist. One biographer, Joel Jacobsen, recounts the story as described in Utley, describing Grant as a "drunk" who was "making himself obnoxious in a bar". [87] As in other accounts of the incident, the Kid is described as rotating the cylinder "so an empty chamber was beneath the hammer". [87] In Jacobsen's recounting of the incident, however, Grant attempted to shoot McCarty unawares. "As [McCarty] was leaving the saloon, his back turned to Grant, he heard a distinct click. He spun around before Grant could reach a loaded chamber. Always a good marksman, he shot Grant in the chin". [87] In November 1880, a posse pursued and trapped McCarty's gang inside a ranch house owned by one of the Kid's friends, James Greathouse, at Anton Chico in the White Oaks area. [88] A posse member named James Carlyle [89] ventured into the house under a white flag , in an effort to negotiate the group's surrender. [88] Greathouse was sent out to act as a hostage for the posse. [90] At some point in the evening, Carlyle evidently decided the outlaws were stalling. According to one version of events, Carlyle heard a shot that had been fired accidentally outside. Concluding that the posse members had shot down Greathouse, he chose escape, crashed through a window and was fired upon and killed. [88] Recognizing their mistake, the posse members became demoralized and scattered, enabling McCarty and his gang to slip away. McCarty vehemently denied shooting Carlyle, [88] and later wrote to Governor Wallace, claiming to be innocent of this crime and others attributed to him. [91] Pat Garrett During this time, McCarty became acquainted with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo hunter named Pat Garrett . [86] While popular accounts often depict McCarty and Garrett as "bosom buddies", there is no concrete evidence that they were ever friends. [92] Running on a pledge to rid the area of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November 1880, and in early December, he assembled a posse and set out to arrest McCarty, at that time known almost exclusively as "Billy the Kid", and he carried a $500 bounty on his head that had been authorized by governor Lew Wallace. [93] [94] The posse led by Garrett fared well, and his men closed in quickly. On December 19, McCarty barely escaped a midnight ambush in Fort Sumner , which left one member of the gang, Tom O'Folliard, dead. [95] On December 23, the Kid was tracked to an abandoned stone building located in a remote location known as Stinking Springs (near present-day Taiban, New Mexico ). While McCarty and his gang were asleep inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise. The next morning, a cattle rustler named Charlie Bowdre stepped outside to feed his horse. [96] Mistaken for McCarty, he was shot down by the posse. [96] Soon afterward, somebody from within the building reached for the horse's halter rope, but Garrett shot and killed the horse, whose body blocked the building's only exit. [97] As the lawmen began to cook breakfast over an open fire, Garrett and McCarty engaged in a friendly exchange, with Garrett inviting McCarty outside to eat, and McCarty inviting Garrett to "go to hell". [97] Realizing that they had no hope of escape, the besieged and hungry outlaws finally surrendered later that day and were allowed to join in the meal. [97] Escape from Lincoln McCarty was transported from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas , where he gave an interview to a reporter from the Las Vegas Gazette. [98] Next, the prisoner was transferred to Santa Fe, where he sent four separate letters over the next three months to Governor Wallace seeking clemency. [99] Wallace, however, refused to intervene, [99] and the Kid's trial was held in April 1881 in Mesilla . [100] On April 9, after two days of testimony, McCarty was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady, the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants in the Lincoln County War. [100] On April 13, he was sentenced by Judge Warren Bristol to hang . [100] With his execution scheduled for May 13, McCarty was removed to Lincoln, where he was held under guard by two of Garrett's deputies, James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on the top floor of the town courthouse. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, McCarty stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping. [101] The details of the escape are unclear. Some researchers believe that a sympathizer placed a pistol in a nearby privy that McCarty was permitted to use, under escort, each day. McCarty retrieved the gun, and turned it on Bell when the pair had reached the top of a flight of stairs in the courthouse. Another theory holds that McCarty slipped off his manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell [102] over the head with them, grabbed Bell's own gun, and shot him with it. [56] Bell staggered into the street and collapsed, mortally wounded. [2] McCarty scooped up Ollinger's [103] 10-gauge double-barrel shotgun . Both barrels had been fully loaded with buckshot earlier by Ollinger himself. The Kid waited at the upstairs window for his second guard, who had been across the street with some other prisoners, to respond to the gunshot and come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into view, McCarty leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello Bob!" and killed him. [2] [104] The Kid's escape was delayed for an hour while he worked free of his leg irons [105] with a pickax and then the young outlaw mounted a horse and rode out of town, reportedly singing. [2] The horse returned two days later. [106] Death Sheriff Pat Garrett offered that he responded to rumors that McCarty was lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape. Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881, to question one of the town's residents, a friend of McCarty's named Pete Maxwell (son of land baron Lucien Maxwell ). [107] Close to midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, McCarty unexpectedly entered the room. [108] There are at least two versions of what happened next. One version suggests that as the Kid entered, he failed to recognize Garrett in the poor light. McCarty drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" ( Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?"). [108] Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet striking McCarty in the chest just above his heart, killing him. [108] In a second version, McCarty entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone in the darkness, and uttered the words, "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style. Although the popularity of the first story persists, and portrays Garrett in a better light, some historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one. [109] A markedly different theory, in which Garrett and his posse set a trap for McCarty, has also been suggested. Most recently explored in the 2004 Discovery Channel documentary, Billy the Kid: Unmasked, this theory contends that Garrett went to the bedroom of Pedro Maxwell's sister, Paulita, and bound and gagged her in her bed. When McCarty arrived, Garrett was waiting behind Paulita's bed and shot the Kid. According to Garrett, McCarty was buried the next day in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery, between his fallen companions Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. [110] A single tombstone was later erected over the graves, giving the three outlaws' names (Billy's as "William H. Bonney") and with a one word epitaph of "Pals" also carved into it. The tombstone has been stolen and recovered three times since it was set in place in the 1940s, and the entire gravesite is now enclosed within a steel cage. [111] In his book, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, Robert Utley told the story of Pat Garrett's book effort. In the weeks following Garrett's execution of the Kid, he felt the need to tell his side of the story. Many people had begun to talk about the unfairness of the encounter, so Garrett called upon his friend, Marshall Ashmun Upson, to ghost-write a book with him. [112] Ash Upson was a roving journalist who had a gift for graphic prose. Their collaboration led to a book entitled The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid , which was first published in 1882. The book never sold many copies; however, it eventually proved to be an important reference for historians who would later write about the Kid's life. [112] Notoriety Like many gunfighters of the "Old West", Billy the Kid enjoyed a reputation built partly on exaggerated accounts of his exploits. [113] McCarty was credited with the killing of between 15 to 26 men, depending on varying sources. [2] [114] [115] Some historians speculate that his image was created deliberately to distract the public's attention from the nefarious activities of the Dolan faction and their influential supporters in Santa Fe, notably regional political leader Thomas Benton Catron. [113] The undeserved notoriety that McCarty gained during the Lincoln County War effectively doomed his appeals for amnesty . [116] A number of the Regulators faded away or secured amnesty, but McCarty was in no position to accomplish either. His negotiations with governor Lew Wallace (famed Civil War general and author of the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ ) for amnesty came to nothing. His position was further undermined by a string of negative newspaper editorials that referred to him as "Billy the Kid". [116] When a reporter reminded Wallace that the Kid was depending on Wallace's intervention, the governor supposedly smiled and said, "Yes, but I can't see how a fellow like him can expect any clemency from me." [99] [ edit ]Personality traits according to first-hand accounts One widely reported characteristic of McCarty has stood the test of research: his personal charisma and popularity. Various accounts recorded by friends and acquaintances describe him as fun-loving and jolly, articulate in both his writing and his speech, and loyal to those for whom he cared. [117] He was fluent in Spanish, popular with Latina girls, an accomplished dancer, and thus especially well loved within the territory's Hispanic community. [7] "His many Hispanic friends did not view him as a ruthless killer but rather as a defender of the people who was forced to kill in self-defense," Wallis writes. "In the time that the Kid roamed the land he chided Hispanic villagers who were fearful of standing up to the big ranchers who stole their land, water, and way of life." [106] There are several surviving accounts that portray an image of a friendly, fun loving Billy The Kid, who was loyal to those he loved. Frank Coe, who rode as a Regulator, recalled years after the Kid's death: "I never enjoyed better company. He was humorous and told me many amusing stories. He always found a touch of humor in everything, being naturally full of fun and jollity. Though he was serious in emergencies, his humor was often apparent even in such situations. Billy stood with us to the end, brave and reliable, one of the best soldiers we had. He never pushed in his advice or opinions, but he had a wonderful presence of mind. The tighter the place the more he showed his cool nerve and quick brain. He never seemed to care for money, except to buy cartridges with. Cartridges were scarce, and he always used about ten times as many as everyone else. He would practice shooting at anything he saw, from every conceivable angle, on and off his horse." [34] George Coe, a cousin to Frank who also served as a Regulator, stated: "Billy was a brave, resourceful and honest boy. He would have been a successful man under other circumstances. The Kid was a thousand times better and braver than any man hunting him, including Pat Garrett." [34] Susan McSween, widow of Alexander McSween, came to his defense in the years of his notoriety, saying: "Billy was not a bad man, that is he was not a murderer who killed wantonly. Most of those he killed deserved what they got. Of course I cannot very well defend his stealing horses and cattle, but when you consider that the Murphy, Dolan, and Riley people forced him into such a lawless life through efforts to secure his arrest and conviction, it is hard to blame the poor boy for what he did." [34] Contemporaries of Bonney often claimed that tales of his crimes were exaggerated or denied their veracity altogether. Louis Abraham, who befriended the Kid in Silver City, denied the killing of the blacksmith, attributed to Bonney there, saying: "The story of Billy the Kid killing a blacksmith in Silver City is false. Billy was never in any trouble at all. He was a good boy, maybe a little too mischievous at times. When the boy was placed in jail and escaped, he was not bad, just scared. If he had only waited until they let him out he would have been all right, but he was scared and ran away. He got in with a band of rustlers in Apache Tejo in part of the county where he was made a hardened character." [34] These recollections seem to indicate Bonney was popular with the people around him rather than the feared outlaw of contemporary media. Deluvina Maxwell, who was present at the Maxwell farmhouse at the time of The Kid's death, stated, "Garrett was afraid to go back in the room to make sure of whom he had shot. I went in and was the first to discover that they had killed my little boy. I hated those men and am glad that I lived long enough to see them all dead and buried." [34] Ferrotype One of the few artifacts remaining from Billy's life is a 2x3 inch ferrotype taken by an unknown photographer sometime in late 1879 or early 1880. It is the only picture of Billy that is universally agreed upon as an authentic photo of Billy. [118] The ferrotype survived because after Billy's death, Dan Dedrick, one of Billy's rustler friends, held onto the picture and passed it down in his family. The ferrotype appeared in several copied forms before the original was made public in the mid 1980s by Stephen and Art Upham, descendants of Dedrick. It was on display for several years in the Lincoln County Heritage Trust Museum before it was withdrawn again. The ferrotype sold at auction on June 25, 2011, in a three day Western show where it was sold for 2.3 million dollars, some six times the estimate - making it the most expensive piece ever sold at Brian Lebel's Annual Old West Show & Auction, [119] and the 4th most expensive photograph ever sold. [120] The photograph of The Kid, commonly known as the Upham tintype - after its longtime owner Frank Upham, a nephew of Dan Dedrick - was the subject of intense study by experts in the late 1980s. Their detailed findings were presented at a symposium held in 1989. Among the conclusions reached by these experts, the Colt revolver carried by McCarty in the photograph was probably not his primary weapon, since his holster is not the type normally associated with gunslingers; it is a rather common holster, with a safety strap across the top to keep the six-shooter from bouncing out while riding a horse. McCarty's main weapon appears to be the Winchester carbine held in his hand in the ferrotype. The ferrotype was sold at auction on June 25, 2011 to Florida billionaire William Koch for $2.3 million. Koch will allow a few small museums to display the ferrotype before putting it into his private collection. [121] [ edit ]Left-handed or right-handed? It was widely assumed throughout much of the 20th century that Billy the Kid was left-handed . This perception was encouraged by the above mentioned photograph of McCarty, in which he appears to be wearing a gun belt with a holster on his left side, [122] but further examination revealed that as all Winchester Model 1873 rifles were made with the loading gate on the right side of the receiver, the "left-handed" photograph is in fact a mirror image. [123] Indeed, the notion of a left-handed Billy became so entrenched that, in 1958, a film biography of "the Kid" (starring Paul Newman ) was titled The Left Handed Gun . In 1954, western historians James D. Horan and Paul Sann announced the disclosure that McCarty was "right-handed and carried his pistol on his right hip". [124] More recently, in response to a story from The Guardian that used an uncorrected McCarty ferrotype, Clyde Jeavons, a former curator of the National Film and Television Archive , cited their work and added: You can see by the waistcoat buttons and the belt buckle. This is a common error which has continued to reinforce the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed. He was not. He was right-handed and carried his gun on his right hip. This particular reproduction error has occurred so often in books and other publications over the years that it has led to the myth that Billy the Kid was left-handed, for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the evidence (from viewing his photo correctly) is that he was right-handed: he wears his pistol on his right hip with the butt pointing backwards in a conventional right-handed draw position. [125] A second look at the ferrotype confirms what Jeavons wrote. The prong on the belt buckle points the wrong way, and the buttons on the Kid's vest are on the left side, the side reserved for ladies' blouses. The convention for men's wear is that buttons go down the right side. [126] Wallis wrote in 2007 that McCarty was ambidextrous . [127] [ edit ]People who claimed to be Billy the Kid Legends grew over time that Billy the Kid had somehow cheated death and survived, despite eyewitness accounts of his slaying. [128] In 2004, researchers sought to exhume the remains of Catherine Antrim, McCarty's mother, "so her DNA could be tested and compared with DNA to be taken from the body buried under the Kid's gravestone". [128] Ultimately, the case was bogged down in the courts, "much to the delight of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson , who knows all too well the value of Billy as a cultural icon and a draw for tourists". [128] Several men have claimed to be McCarty over the years, and at least two became notable because they were successful in persuading a small segment of the public. [ edit ]Brushy Bill Roberts In 1949, a paralegal named William Morrison located a man in Central Texas named Ollie P. Roberts (nicknamed "Brushy Bill"), who claimed to be Billy the Kid and challenged the popular account of McCarty as shot to death by Pat Garrett in 1881. [129] [130] Despite discrepancies in birth dates and physical appearance, the town of Hico, Texas (Brushy Bill's residence), has capitalized on the Kid's infamy by opening the "Billy The Kid Museum". [131] Brushy Bill's story was further promoted by the 1990 film Young Guns II .	i don't know
Of the 4 types of Treasury Securities issued, Treasury Bills, Treasury Notes, Treasury Bonds, and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, which one has the shortest maturation date of only a year?	Individual - Treasury Securities & Programs Individual Treasury Securities & Programs NOTE: Weï¿½re introducing a new retirement savings account, the myRA . U.S. Treasury securities are a great way to invest and save for the future. Here, you'll find overviews regarding U.S. Treasury bonds, notes, bills, TIPS, and Floating Rate Notes (FRNs), as well as U.S. Savings Bonds. Treasury Securities Here's what's available: Treasury Bills Treasury bills are short-term government securities with maturities ranging from a few days to 52 weeks. Bills are sold at a discount from their face value. Treasury Notes Treasury notes are government securities that are issued with maturities of 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10 years and pay interest every six months. Treasury Bonds Treasury bonds pay interest every six months and mature in 30 years. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) TIPS are marketable securities whose principal is adjusted by changes in the Consumer Price Index. TIPS pay interest every six months and are issued with maturities of 5, 10, and 30 years. Floating Rate Notes (FRNs) Interest payments on an FRN rise and fall based on discount rates for 13-week Treasury bills. FRNs are issued for a term of 2 years and pay interest quarterly. I Savings Bonds are a low-risk savings product that earn interest while protecting you from inflation. Sold at face value. Check out our table that is a comparison of TIPS and Series I Savings Bonds . EE and E Savings Bonds EE and E Savings Bonds are a secure savings product that pay interest based on current market rates for up to 30 years. Electronic EE Savings Bonds are sold at face value in TreasuryDirect. Treasury Securities Programs If you are interested in electronic payroll savings, or are looking to find out more about auctions, you can also find the necessary details here:	United States Treasury security
Who rules in a hagiarchy [hag-ee-ahr-kee]?	Series 7-Debt Securities: Corporate and U.S Government Loans Flashcards issued in successive years but have only one maturity date issuers pay interest only on the bonds they've issued so far construction companies that are in phases of construction would issue this type of bond Term Serial Bonds Definition a portion of the oustanding bonds mature at regular intervals (for example, 10% of the entire issue matures yearly). Usually issued by corporations and munis to fund projects that provide regular income streams a serial bond that has more bonds maturing on the final maturity date is called a balloon issue Term Secured Bonds Definition are backed by collateral, involve a pledge from the issuer that a specific asset (for instance, property) will be sold to pay off the oustanding debt in the event of default have a lower yield than unseccured bonds are considered a safer investment (think conservative investor) Term 4 Types of Secured Bonds Definition the amount the investore receives if the bond is called prior to maturity Term Definition if the CY, YTM, or YTV is > than the NY the bond price will drop and vice sersa Term Accrued Interest Definition the additional cost that invstors pay when they purchase bonds in the market on top of the market price it is due when bonds are purchase between coupon dates, is the portion of the interest still due to the seller if an investor hold onto a bond for five months out of a six month period, he or she is entitled to 5/6 of that next interest payment; thats accrued interest Term Remember! Definition Accrued interest on corporate and municipal bonds is calculated on a 360-day year and assumes 30-day months Accrued interest on U.S government bonds is calculated using the actual days per year and actual days per year Accrued interest is calculated from the previous coupon date up to, but not including, the settlement date Term the 31 day months are January, March, May, July, August, October, December The rest are 30 day, except for febuary which is 28 Term Callable Bonds Definition A bond that the issuer has the right to buy back from investors at the price stated on the indenture riskier for investors because investors dont know how long they can hold onto the bond issued with a higher coupon rate most are issued with call protection which is the amount of time that an issuer had to wait before calling the bond some also have a call premium which is the amount over par value that an issuer has to pay if calling its bond in the early years Term Put Bonds Definition allow the investor to "put" the bonds back (redeem them) to the issuer at any time at the price stated on the indenture these bonds are rarely used Term interest received on U.S government securities is exempt from state and local taxes the interest received on municipal bonds is exempt from federal taxes When you see a question on the exam about the best investment for a future event (college), the answer will most likely be either zero-coupon bonds or T-STRIPS Term Definition debt securities backed by pools of mortgages dont have a set maturity date and are subject to things called extension risk and prepayment risk they are broken down into tranches (slices) of varying maturity dates Term Prepayment Risk Definition the risk that a tranche will be called sooner than expected due to decreasing interest ratesl more people refinance when interest rates are low Term Extension Risk Definition the risk that a tranche will be called later than expected dude to a less than normal amount of refinancing occurs when interest rates are high Term Tranche Definition all have regular interest payments, but only the tranche with the shortest maturity receives principle payments after the shortest tranche is retired, the second-shortest receives principle payments until that tranche is retiredm and then the principle is paid to the next tranche Term Planned Amortization Class (PAC) Tranches Definition the most common because it has the most certain prepayment date the prepayment and extension risk can be somewhat negated by a companion tranche, which assumes a greater degree of risk Term Targeted Ammortization Class (TAC) Tranches Definition second safest CMO TACs protect investors from a rise in the prepayment rate or a fall in interest rates. They do not protect from a fall in the prepayment rate like PACs. Term Companion Tranche Definition A class of tranche found in planned amortization class (PAC) and targeted amortization class (TAC) collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) that absorbs variable prepayment rates. The companion trache is so named because it is designed to provide support to the main PAC tranche, which has priority in receiving principal and interest payments so as to give its investors steadier and more predictable cash flows. If the actual rate of prepayments differs from the assumptions made at the time the CMO was issued, the difference is absorbed by the companion tranche. Term american dollars held by a foreign bank outside the U.S this situation is usually the result of payments made to overseas companies Term Bankers Acceptances Definition a time-draft (short-term credit investment) created by a company whose payment is guaranteed by a bank used for importing and exporting goods Term EE bond Definition A non-marketable, interest-bearing U.S. government savings bond that is guaranteed to at least double in value over the initial term of the bond, typically 20 years. Most Series EE bonds have a total interest-paying life that extends beyond the original maturity date, up to 30 years from issuance. Term HH bond Definition A 20-year non-marketable U.S. government savings bond that pays semi-annual interest based on a coupon rate. This coupon is locked in at a fixed rate for the first 10 years, after which it is reset by the U.S. Treasury for the rest of the bond's life. Interest on Series HH bonds is exempt from state and local - but not federal - taxes. Term Arbitrage Definition The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. Arbitrage exists as a result of market inefficiencies; it provides a mechanism to ensure prices do not deviate substantially from fair value for long periods of time. Supporting users have an ad free experience!	i don't know
With a representative from 4 of the 5 branches of the military, what is the name of the group of military leaders whose role is to guide the civilian government of the US?	Nigeria - GOVERNMENT Nigeria - GOVERNMENT Nigeria THE STORY OF NIGERIA during the postcolonial era has been one of a search for the constitutional and political arrangement that, while allowing for the self-expression of its socially and culturally diverse peoples, would not hinder the construction of a nation out of this mosaic. In this search, the country has experienced cycles of military and civilian rule, civil war, and peaceful reconstruction. If any nation typified political scientist Richard Sklar's characterization of the African continent as a "workshop of democracy," it would certainly be Nigeria. The country has experimented with different federal, state, and local government systems, learning more about its needs, resources, and constraints with each experiment. Despite the predominance of military regimes during the three postcolonial decades, Nigerian society has retained many of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic polity: vigorous entrepreneurial classes, a broad intelligentsia and numerous centers of higher education, a dynamic legal community and judiciary, diverse and often outspoken media, and, increasingly, courageous human rights organizations. Despite the differences in character and composition of the successive governments, it is still possible to identify the major threads of Nigeria's institutional evolution. As the nation finds itself once more on the threshold of transition from military to civilian rule, promised for 1992, examination of these threads is essential for understanding the Nigeria that will become the Third Republic. Nigeria is essentially an artificial creation, which, like most other African states, is a product of colonialism. This fact is central to understanding the country's government and politics, which have been conditioned and bedeviled by the problems of accommodating several diversities: ethnic, linguistic (there are between 250 and 400 distinct languages), geopolitical, religious (there is a deepening cleavage between Christians and Muslims), and class. Nigeria became politically independent on October 1, 1960, after about seven decades of colonial rule by the British. Prior to colonial rule, most of the groups that today make up the country were often distinguished by differences in history, culture, political development, and religion. The major differences among these precolonial groups pertained to their sociopolitical organization: anthropological and historical studies usually distinguish between societies that were centralized ("state") and those that were noncentralized ("stateless"). To the former category belonged the Sokoto Caliphate and the emirates of the north that, together with the Kanem-Bornu Empire, were advanced Islamic theocracies. Also included in this category were the Benin, Oyo, and other western kingdoms, as well as the Igala Kingdom in the middle belt or lower north. In these centralized systems, there were clear divisions between the rulers and the ruled, usually based on wealth and ascribed status. Institutions of a distinctly political nature, as well as taxation systems, were already established. Of all the centralized systems, the Sokoto Caliphate with its vassal emirates had the most advanced form of state organization. Not surprisingly, it provided the model for the British colonial policy of indirect rule, i.e., the governance of indigenous peoples through their own institutions and rulers. By contrast, in noncentralized systems such as those of the Igbo and other eastern and middle-belt groups, there was a diffusion of political, economic, and religious institutions and practices. Also to be found was a large measure of egalitarianism, democracy, and decentralized authority. Under the colonial policy of indirect rule, "traditional" rulers (known as warrant chiefs) were imposed on these stateless societies. In the immediate precolonial period, a pronounced religious gulf separated the northern from the southern peoples. Islam had been introduced to the Hausa states and other northern parts in the fifteenth century, but it did not dominate until the jihad of 1804, which extended Islamic influence to most parts of the north and even to towns on the southern fringe, such as Oyo and Auchi. The southern peoples were devotees mainly of traditional religions who underwent increasing contact with, and exposure to, Europeans and Christianity. In some areas of the south, such as Benin and Warri, the penetration of Christianity dates to the fifteenth century. When the north experienced contact with Europeans much later, the spread of Christianity and other Western influences was slowed by the strong attachment to Islam. This fact explains in part the uneven rates of economic and educational development between the northern and southern peoples that have persisted to this day, with important consequences for government and politics. It should not be assumed that the various population groups in precolonial Nigeria were completely separated from one another. Historians have established evidence of various forms of interaction among the peoples, the major ones being trade and superordinate-subordinate relationships. Powerful centralized systems, such as the Sokoto Caliphate and the Benin Empire, dominated several neighboring groups. Where no established group held sway over the others, as was the case among the Yoruba-speaking people in the nineteenth century, a pattern of conflicts and wars prevailed. On balance, there were pronounced differences among the people who later came to comprise Nigeria, especially when we consider the major regional groups. British rule did much to accentuate these differences and, in some cases, created new divisive sentiments. Even the nature of British conquest and the process by which its rule was established encouraged separate identities. The conquest and colonization of the coastal area of Lagos and its hinterlands took place between 1861 and 1897. The conquest of the eastern region and the declaration of the Niger Coast Protectorate occurred in 1894. Finally, a third wave of penetration led to the declaration of a protectorate over the northern areas in 1900. In 1906 the colony of Lagos and the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria (which included the former Niger Coast Protectorate) were joined together to become the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Finally, in 1914 the northern and southern protectorates were amalgamated to become the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, although both parts continued to be administered separately. During the period extending from amalgamation in 1914 to independence from colonial rule in 1960, Nigeria had four major constitutions, each named after the colonial governor who formulated it: the Clifford Constitution (1922), Richards Constitution (1946), Macpherson Constitution (1951), and Lyttleton Constitution (1954). Although the first two constitutions were virtually imposed on the country, the latter two involved some consultations with representatives of the people through constitutional conferences. At the Ibadan General Conference of 1950, Nigerian leaders agreed that only a federal system that allowed each of the three regions (north, west, and east as created by the Richards Constitution) to progress at its own pace would be acceptable. Until that point, the constitutions had a unitary orientation. In creating three regions and delegating some powers to them, the Richards Constitution was a forerunner of the later federal constitutions. Although the regional leaders at the Ibadan conference had unequivocally declared their preference for federalism, the subsequent Macpherson Constitution was essentially unitary. It went farther than the Richards Constitution in devolving power to the regions but left the regions subordinate and closely tied to the central government. Because many Nigerian political leaders favored a federal system in which the regions enjoyed wide autonomy, the Macpherson Constitution engendered continuing opposition. Finally, in 1953, this constitution became unworkable. Rather than self-government for the whole nation, the northerners wanted self-government as soon as practicable and only for any region that was ready for it. They believed that each region should progress politically at its own pace. When a constitutional conference was convened in London in 1953, a federal constitution that gave the regions significant autonomy eventually emerged. This Lyttleton Constitution was the one that remained in force, with slight amendments, until independence in 1960. It enabled the regions to become self-governing at their own pace: the two southern regions in 1956 and the northern region in 1959. Several important developments that have continued to affect Nigeria's government and politics in the postcolonial period marked the period of colonial rule. First, British colonial rule nurtured north-south separation, which has remained the classic cleavage in the country. In particular, after Lord Frederick Lugard's pact with northern emirs to protect Islamic civilization, the north was shut off from much of the Westernizing influences to which the south was exposed. This protection gave the southern peoples a head start, especially in Western education. During the struggle for independence, northern leaders were afflicted by a constant fear of southern domination. Many of the northern responses to national politics to this day can be attributed to this fear. At the same time, with the creation of three regions that saw the northern region larger in size and population than the two southern regions, there was also a southern fear of northern domination. The image of a homogenous north, although contradicted by the cultural diversity of that region, continued in 1990 to feature prominently in most southerners' perception of national politics. Second, in creating largely artificial regions, the British fostered the cleavage between ethnic majority and minority groups. Each region contained the nucleus of a majority group that dominated in its respective region: the Hausa/Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east. The major political parties that emerged in the regions and controlled them were based on these groups. With regional autonomy, the major groups became the major "shareholders" of the federation. Power-sharing and political calculations have consequently centered on ensuring a balance of power among these groups. The minorities, feeling oppressed and dominated, agitated for separate states in the regions. Although a panel was appointed in 1956 to inquire into the fears of the minorities and to explore ways of allaying them, their requests were not met until after independence. Third, the uneven rates of development among the groups, which generally coincided with regional boundaries, strengthened the forces of regionalism. The creed became north for northerners, west for westerners, and east for easterners. Despite the periodic creation of more states during the postcolonial period, these regionalist feelings continued to affect national politics, especially in the distribution of national resources. One manifestation of this tendency was the ceaseless disagreements and rancor over revenue allocation. Another consequence of these regional and ethnic divisions was the fragmentation of the national elite. Unlike a few other African countries, Nigeria had no fully national leaders at independence. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo, who had the greatest potential for becoming a national leader, was forced by regionalist pressures to become a sectional leader. The other leaders during the postindependence period--Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Michael Okpara, Samuel Akintola, and Aminu Kano--are best remembered as sectional leaders, even though they are usually called nationalists. This fractionalization of the political elite in turn reinforced ethnicity, regionalism, and religious conflicts, as these sentiments were often aroused in the competition for power, material resources, and privileges. The colonial heritage, therefore, produced a country that was only weakly united. At some points, the regional leaders threatened to secede from the federation: in the early to mid- 1950s northern leaders contemplated separation after their humiliation by southerners because of their refusal to support a motion for achieving self-government in 1956; in 1954 the Western Region threatened to separate itself if the colony of Lagos were not made a part of that region. There were strong countervailing factors that prevented breakup of the federation. First, British colonial rule had held the country together as one unit. Second, the regions had economic complementarity. In particular, given the export orientation of the colonial economy, the landlocked northern region depended greatly on the southern regions that had access to the sea. Third, in the final days of colonial rule, Nigerian leaders recognized the advantages conferred by the country's large size and population. <>THE FIRST REPUBLIC Nigeria Nigeria became independent on October 1, 1960. The period between this date and January 15, 1966, when the first military coup d'�tat took place, is generally referred to as the First Republic, although the country only became a republic on October 1, 1963. After a plebiscite in February 1961, the Northern Cameroons, which before then was administered separately within Nigeria, voted to join Nigeria. At independence Nigeria had all the trappings of a democratic state and was indeed regarded as a beacon of hope for democracy. It had a federal constitution that guaranteed a large measure of autonomy to three (later four) regions; it operated a parliamentary democracy modeled along British lines that emphasized majority rule; the constitution included an elaborate bill of rights; and, unlike other African states that adopted one-party systems immediately after independence, the country had a functional, albeit regionally based, multiparty system. These democratic trappings were not enough to guarantee the survival of the republic because of certain fundamental and structural weaknesses. Perhaps the most significant weakness was the disproportionate power of the north in the federation. The departing colonial authority had hoped that the development of national politics would forestall any sectional domination of power, but it underestimated the effects of a regionalized party system in a country where political power depended on population. The major political parties in the republic had emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s as regional parties whose main aim was to control power in their regions. The Northern People's Congress (NPC) and the Action Group (AG), which controlled the Northern Region and the Western Region, respectively, clearly emerged in this way. The National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), which controlled the Eastern Region and the Midwestern Region (created in 1963), began as a nationalist party but was forced by the pressures of regionalism to become primarily an eastern party, albeit with strong pockets of support elsewhere in the federation. These regional parties were based upon, and derived their main support from, the major groups in their regions: NPC (Hausa/Fulani), AG (Yoruba), and NCNC (Igbo). A notable and more ideologically-based political party that never achieved significant power was Aminu Kano's radical Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), which opposed the NPC in the north from its Kano base. There were also several political movements formed by minority groups to press their demands for separate states. These minority parties also doubled as opposition parties in the regions and usually aligned themselves with the party in power in another region that supported their demands for a separate state. Ethnic minorities therefore enabled the regional parties to extend their influence beyond their regions. In the general election of 1959 to determine which parties would rule in the immediate postcolonial period, the major ones won a majority of seats in their regions, but none emerged powerful enough to constitute a national government. A coalition government was formed by the NPC and NCNC, the former having been greatly favored by the departing colonial authority. The coalition provided a measure of north-south consensus that would not have been the case if the NCNC and AG had formed a coalition. Nnamdi Azikiwe (NCNC) became the governor general (and president after the country became a republic in 1963), Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (NPC) was named prime minister, and Obafemi Awolowo (AG) had to settle for leader of the opposition. The regional premiers were Ahmadu Bello (Northern Region, NPC), Samuel Akintola (Western Region, AG), Michael Okpara (Eastern Region, NCNC), and Dennis Osadebey (Midwestern Region, NCNC). Among the difficulties of the republic were efforts of the NPC, the senior partner in the coalition government, to use the federal government's increasing power in favor of the Northern Region. The balance rested on the premise that the Northern Region had the political advantage deriving from its preponderant size and population, and the two southern regions (initially the Eastern Region and the Western Region) had the economic advantage as sources of most of the exported agricultural products, in addition to their control of the federal bureaucracy. The NPC sought to redress northern economic and bureaucratic disadvantages. Under the First National Development Plan, many of the federal government's projects and military establishments were allocated to the north. There was an "affirmative action" program by the government to recruit and train northerners, resulting in the appointment of less qualified northerners to federal public service positions, many replacing more qualified southerners. Actions such as these served to estrange the NCNC from its coalition partner. The reactions to the fear of northern dominance, and especially the steps taken by the NCNC to counter the political dominance of the north, accelerated the collapse of the young republic. The southern parties, especially the embittered NCNC, had hoped that the regional power balance could be shifted if the 1962 census favored the south. Population determined the allocation of parliamentary seats on which the power of every region was based. Because population figures were also used in allocating revenue to the regions and in determining the viability of any proposed new region, the 1962 census was approached by all regions as a key contest for control of the federation. This contest led to various illegalities: inflated figures, electoral violence, falsification of results, manipulation of population figures, and the like. Although the chief census officer found evidence of more inflated figures in the southern regions, the northern region retained its numerical superiority. As could be expected, southern leaders rejected the results, leading to a cancellation of the census and to the holding of a fresh census in 1963. This population count was finally accepted after a protracted legal battle by the NCNC and gave the Northern Region a population of 29,758,975 out of the total of 55,620,268. These figures eliminated whatever hope the southerners had of ruling the federation. Since the 1962-63 exercise, the size and distribution of the population have remained volatile political issues. In fact, the importance and sensitivity of a census count have increased because of the expanded use of population figures for revenue allocations, constituency delineation, allocations under the quota system of admissions into schools and employment, and the siting of industries and social amenities such as schools, hospitals, and post offices. Another census in 1973 failed, even though it was conducted by a military government that was less politicized than its civilian predecessor. What made the 1973 census particularly volatile was the fact that it was part of a transition plan by the military to hand over power to civilians. The provisional figures showed an increase for the states that were carved out of the former Northern Region with a combined 51.4 million people out of a total 79.8 million people. Old fears of domination were resurrected, and the stability of the federation was again seriously threatened. The provisional results were finally canceled in 1975. As of late 1990, no other census had been undertaken, although one was scheduled for 1991 as part of the transition to civilian rule. In the interim, Nigeria has relied on population projections based on 1963 census figures. Other events also contributed to the collapse of the First Republic. In 1962, after a split in the leadership of the AG that led to a crisis in the Western Region, a state of emergency was declared in the region, and the federal government invoked its emergency powers to administer the region directly. These actions resulted in removing the AG from regional power. Awolowo, its leader, along with other AG leaders, was convicted of treasonable felony. Awolowo's former deputy and premier of the Western Region formed a new party--the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP)--that took over the government. The federal coalition government also supported agitation of minority groups for a separate state to be excised from the Western Region. In 1963 the Midwestern Region was created. By the time of the 1964 general elections, the first to be conducted solely by Nigerians, the country's politics had become polarized into a competition between two opposing alliances. One was the Nigerian National Alliance made up of the NPC and NNDC; the other was the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) composed of the NCNC, the AG, and their allies. Each of the regional parties openly intimidated its opponents in the campaigns. When it became clear that the neutrality of the Federal Electoral Commission could not be guaranteed, calls were made for the army to supervise the elections. The UPGA resolved to boycott the elections. When elections were finally held under conditions that were not free and were unfair to opponents of the regional parties, the NCNC was returned to power in the east and midwest, while the NPC kept control of the north and was also in a position to form a federal government on its own. The Western Region became the "theater of war" between the NNDP (and the NPC) and the AG-UPGA. The rescheduled regional elections late in 1965 were violent. The federal government refused to declare a state of emergency, and the military seized power on January 15, 1966. The First Republic had collapsed. Scholars have made several attempts to explain the collapse. Some attribute it to the inappropriateness of the political institutions and processes and to their not being adequately entrenched under colonial rule, whereas others hold the elite responsible. Lacking a political culture to sustain democracy, politicians failed to play the political game according to established rules. The failure of the elite appears to have been a symptom rather than the cause of the problem. Because members of the elite lacked a material base for their aspirations, they resorted to control of state offices and resources. At the same time, the uneven rates of development among the various groups and regions invested the struggle for state power with a group character. These factors gave importance to group, ethnic, and regional conflicts that eventually contributed to the collapse of the republic. The final explanation is closely related to all the foregoing. It holds that the regionalization of politics and, in particular, of party politics made the stability of the republic dependent on each party retaining control of its regional base. As long as this was so, there was a rough balance between the parties, as well as their respective regions. Once the federal government invoked its emergency powers in 1962 and removed the AG from power in the Western Region, the fragile balance on which the federation rested was disturbed. Attempts by the AG and NCNC to create a new equilibrium, or at least to return the status quo ante, only generated stronger opposition and hastened the collapse of the republic. Nigeria In most developing countries, there is a disruption of the civil-military equilibrium usually assumed in liberal democracies. In liberal tradition, the military is insulated from politics and subject to civilian control. In several developing countries, however, the military has not only intervened in the political process and overthrown the constitutional civilian authority, but it also often has established its supremacy over elected politicians. Even in those countries where the military has become almost a permanent feature of politics, military rule is still considered an aberration and symptomatic of a malfunctioning political system. In Nigeria, which typifies the scenario just presented, military rule was usually seen as a "rescue" operation necessary to save the country from civilian ineptitude. Military rule was not expected to last long; once the rescue operation was complete, the military should return to the barracks where they belonged and leave the governing to civilian politicians. The problem, however, was that although military officers accepted this rationale, military rule usually became self-sustaining. From the onset of independent government in Nigeria in 1960 to the end of 1990, the military had ruled for twenty-one years. Altogether there were five coups d'�tat involving changes of government: those of January 15, 1966; July 29, 1966; July 29, 1975; December 31, 1983; and August 27, 1985. There was also an unsuccessful coup in which the head of state, General Murtala Muhammad, was killed in February 1976, and another was nipped in the bud in December 1985. An attempt to overthrow General Ibrahim Babangida was made in April 1990. Of these coups, only those of January 1966 and December 1983 were against civilian governments. Several explanations of military intervention have been added to those given by the coup plotters themselves. Whereas the latter have cited economic mismanagement and corruption, other explanations have ranged from the continuation of ethnoregional politics by military means to the personal ambitions of officers. <>The 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon's Government <>The Muhammad and Obasanjo Government <>The Buhari Regime Nigeria By the time a disparate group of junior officers struck first in January 1966, the officers were still politically naive and had yet to master the art of coup planning and execution. This inexperience partly explains why Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and others who masterminded the coup, failed to take over state power. Instead, Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, commander in chief of the army, became Nigeria's first military ruler. Some of the remote causes of the coup included the use of soldiers to quell unrest, such as the riots among the Tiv people of the lower northern region, and calls on the military to supervise the 1964 elections. Whereas the latter involvement gave the soldiers a feeling of political efficacy, the beginnings of what came to be known as the "federal character" principle that sought to give each area some parity of representation, gave military personnel a sense of being sectional representatives. The coup of January 1966 was seen by many northerners as an attempt by the Igbo people of the east to dominate the federation. A successful countercoup six months later led by northern soldiers demonstrated the degree to which soldiers had become politicians in uniform. The immediate reasons for the first-coup, however, concerned the nationwide disillusionment with the corrupt and selfish politicians, as well as with their inability to maintain law and order and guarantee the safety of lives and property. During the initial stages, Nzeogwu and his collaborators were hailed as national heroes. But the pattern of killings in the coup gave it a partisan appearance: killed were the prime minister, a northerner, the premier of the Northern Region, and the highest ranking northern army officers; only one Igbo officer lost his life. Also killed was the premier of the Western Region who was closely allied with the NPC. General Ironsi, an Igbo, emerged as the head of state. In his policies and actions, Ironsi did little to allay the fears of Igbo domination. He failed to place the coup plotters on trial as northern leaders demanded, and he appointed Igbos to sensitive governmental positions. Against all advice, Ironsi promulgated Decree Number 34 of 1966, which abrogated the federal system of government and substituted a unitary system; he argued that the military could only govern in this way. Given the already charged atmosphere, this action reinforced northern fears. As the north was less developed than the south, a unitary system could easily lead to southerners "taking over control of everything," as a northern spokesperson put it. It was at the height of northern opposition to unitarism that the countercoup of July 1966 took place. Most top-ranking Igbo officers, including Ironsi, lost their lives; the "status quo" of northern dominance was restored. Lieutenant Colonel (later General) Yakubu Gowon, a Christian from the middle belt, became the head of state after the coup. His first act was to reinstate the federal system, along with the four regions and their allotted functions. But relations between the federal government and the Eastern Region, led by military governor Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, were very strained. In addition to the elimination of many Igbo officers during the July coup, a massive pogrom against Igbos occurred in the Northern Region. In September Colonel Gowon summoned an ad hoc constitutional conference to deliberate on the country's political future. Most regional delegates to the conference, with the exception of those from the midwest, recommended a confederal system to replace the federal system. The delegates from the Eastern Region insisted that any region wishing to secede from the federation should be allowed to do so. The conference was ended abruptly by increased killings of Igbos in the north and the heightening of tensions between the federal government and the Eastern Region. A summit of military leaders at Aburi, Ghana, in January 1967 attempted to resolve the disagreements and recommended the establishment of a base confederation of regions. The Aburi Agreement became a source of contention, however. In anticipation of eastern secession, Gowon moved quickly to weaken the support base of the region by decreeing the creation of twelve new states to replace the four regions. Six of these states contained minority groups that had demanded state creation since the 1950s. Gowon rightly calculated that the eastern minorities would not actively support the Igbos, given the prospect of having their own states if the secession effort were defeated. Many of the federal troops who fought the civil war, known as the Biafran War, to bring the Eastern Region back to the federation, were members of minority groups. The war lasted thirty months and ended in January 1970. In accepting Biafra' unconditional cease-fire, Gowon declared that there would be no victor and no vanquished. In this spirit, the years afterward were declared to be a period of rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation. The oil-price boom, which began as a result of the high price of crude oil (the country's major revenue earner) in the world market in 1973, increased the federal government's ability to undertake these tasks. The postwar Gowon government issued a nine-point transition program that was to culminate in the handing over of power to a civilian government on October 1, 1976. The agenda of the transition included the reorganization of the armed forces, the completion of the establishment of the twelve states announced in 1967, a census, a new constitution, and elections. Gowon initiated several nation-building policies, the most notable of which was the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), a community service institution that required one year of service by each Nigerian immediately after graduation from university or other institution of higher learning. Each member of the corps had to serve in a state other than his or her home state. More than 1 million graduates had served in this program by 1990. The Gowon years also saw the oil boom and a buoyant economy. The federal government was encouraged to take on some responsibilities formally allocated to the states, especially in the area of education. It embarked on major infrastructural projects to transfer control of the economy from foreigners to Nigerians. The Nigerian Entreprises Promotion decree of 1972, which was expanded in 1977, stipulated that only Nigerians could participate in certain categories of business. In those in which foreign involvement was permitted, controlling shares had to be owned by Nigerians. The structure of government under Gowon was basically unitarian. At the apex of government was the all-military Supreme Military Council (SMC), which was the lawmaking body for the entire federation. Its decrees could not be challenged in any law court. Most members of the SMC under Gowon were state governors. There was also a Federal Executive Council composed of military and civilian commissioners. The states also had commissioners appointed by the governor. The states were practically reduced to administrative units of the federal government, which in several domains made uniform laws for the country. This basic structure of military federalism has, with amendments, remained the same during all military governments in the country. Nigeria General Gowon was overthrown in a palace coup in July 1975 and succeeded by General Murtala Muhammad, who was in turn assassinated in an abortive coup on February 13, 1976. He was replaced by Olusegun Obasanjo, formerly his second in command. General Obasanjo basically continued the policies and plans of the Muhammad regime. Murtala Muhammad, a Hausa from the north (Kano State), ruled for only seven months. Within that short period, he endeared himself to most Nigerians because of his strong leadership and the radical reforms he introduced in domestic and foreign policies. He "purged" the public-service ministries, universities, parastatals, and other government agencies at the federal and state levels of individuals accused of being corrupt, indolent, or inefficient. He set up a panel headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe to advise on the creation of more states. Its report led to the creation of seven additional states in 1976. Murtala Muhammad also set up a panel under Justice Akintola Aguda to consider whether a new federal capital should be created because of the congestion in Lagos. The panel recommended Abuja in the southern part of the former Northern Region as the site of a new capital. In economic matters, Murtala Muhammad introduced the "low-profile" policy, a radical departure from the ostentation of the Gowon era. Although he retained the framework of military federalism, Murtala Muhammad removed state governors from membership in the SMC and created a new body in which they were included at the center, the National Council of States. Because this body was chaired by the head of state and subordinate to the SMC, its creation underscored the subordinate position of the state governments. This arrangement enabled the head of state to exert greater control over the state governors than had been the case under Gowon. In the area of foreign policy, Murtala Muhammad pursued a vigorous policy that placed Africa at the center and that involved active support for liberation movements in the continent. Of all Murtala Muhammad's actions, however, the one that had the most lasting consequences was a program of transition to civilian rule that he initiated before his death. The program was carried through as planned by his successor, Obasanjo. The stages of the transition agenda included the creation of more states, the reform of the local government system, the making of a new constitution, the formation of parties and, finally, the election of a new government. The transition process was to culminate in the handing over of power to civilians on October 1, 1979. In February 1976, Murtala Muhammad was killed in an unsuccessful coup led by Colonel Bukar Dimka and officers from the middle belt; the coup appeared to be an attempt by middle-belt officers to bring back Gowon from his self-imposed exile and reinstate him as head of state. Obasanjo, a Yoruba and southerner, became head of state. Although unfavorably compared with Murtala Muhammad initially, he succeeded in many areas of his administration where the more intransigent Murtala Muhammad might have failed. Obasanjo became an adept political ruler, determined not to exacerbate north-south and Muslim-Christian schisms in the country. In addition to its methodical conduct of all the stages of the transition to civilian government in 1979, the Obasanjo government initiated numerous reforms in public life. Attempts were made to introduce greater probity in the activities of civil servants and other public officials. The main vehicle for this process was the establishment of public complaints commissions in all states of the federation and in the capital. Despite the publicizing of particular cases of abuse of office and corruption, little progress was made in stopping the spread of this cancer in the society and economy. The Obasanjo administration expanded the economic indigenization program started under Gowon. It also used the Land Use Decree of 1978 to rationalize the country's haphazard tenurial systems, to reduce the crippling land speculation and curb the frequent litigation over individual and communal property rights. It was hoped that these reforms would facilitate the acquisition of land for modern agricultural purposes. In a similar vein, the Obasanjo regime launched Operation Feed the Nation to counter the rapid rise in food exports. None of these efforts was successful, but the programs indicated the kind of strategies that Nigeria would have to adopt to alter its economic imbalances. In view of the complex process of transition to civilian rule and the many reforms introduced in the four years of the Muhammad/Obasanjo governments, those regimes seemed in retrospect to have tried to do too much too soon. In the final year he was in power, Obasanjo introduced many austerity measures and insisted on a "low profile" for all government officials. He was aware that Nigeria, despite its oil wealth, was still largely an underdeveloped country and its businesspersons mainly agents or intermediaries for foreign businesses. Such a salutary attitude was soon forgotten, however, as the successor regime rode the crest of a renewed upsurge in oil prices, spent resources faster than they could be realized and left the country deeply in debt and its economy nearly in shambles when it ended in 1983. Nigeria On December 31, 1983, the army struck again. This time the brazen corruption, the economic mismanagement, and the inept leadership of civilians provided the grounds for military intervention. Indeed, conditions had deteriorated so much in the Second Republic that when the coup came, it was widely acclaimed. Major General Muhammadu Buhari, a Hausa/Fulani northerner from Katsina State and a former member of the SMC in the Muhammad/Obasanjo governments, became the head of state. Because of the great powers that his second in command, Major General Tunde Idiagbon, chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters, was believed to wield, many commentators refer to this government as the Buhari/Idiagbon regime. In broad outline, the structure of government remained essentially the same as it was under Muhammad and Obasanjo. At the apex was the SMC, and the subordinate bodies were the Federal Executive Council and the National Council of States. The urgent task before the government was to salvage the country's economy, which had suffered from the mismanagement of the Second Republic and from the rapid drop in the price of crude oil. Nigeria had become heavily indebted to several foreign monetary agencies, and the price of crude oil had begun to slide. Buhari believed that urgent economic problems required equally urgent solutions. He also thought that it was not a pressing issue to prepare to hand power over to civilians; in fact, all of Nigeria's military regimes have ruled without the benefit of democratic checks and balances. The Buhari government investigated and detained the top political leaders of the Second Republic, holding them responsible for economic excesses of the previous regime. Constraints were placed on various groups, including the Nigerian Medical Association, which was outlawed, and the National Association of Nigerian Students, and it promulgated two decrees that restricted freedom of the press and suppressed criticism of the government. Decree Number 4 forbade any journalist from reporting information considered embarrassing to any government official. Two journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, were convicted under the decree. Decree Number 2 gave the chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters the power to detain for up to six months without trial anyone considered a security risk. Special military tribunals increasingly replaced law courts while the state security agency, the National Security Organisation, was given greater powers. Buhari's controls also extended to his efforts to deal with the problems of "indiscipline" in the areas of environmental sanitation, public decorum, corruption, smuggling, and disloyalty to national symbols such as the flag and the anthem. He declared a War Against Indiscipline and specified acceptable forms of public behavior, such as a requirement to form lines at bus stops. The main concern, however, remained the economy. The government introduced a comprehensive package of austerity measures. It closed the country's land borders for a period to identify and expel illegal alien workers and placed severe restrictions on imports and heavy penalties on smuggling and foreign exchange offenses. The austerity measures made it difficult for local industries to procure essential imported raw materials, leading many of them to close or to operate at greatly reduced capacity. Many workers were laid off, and government itself retrenched many workers to increase its "cost effectiveness." All of these actions were accompanied by high inflation. The price of basic food items rose, and life became increasingly difficult, even for the affluent. Despite the increased efficiency with which Buhari and his associates tackled the multifaceted national crisis, the regime's inflexibility caused discontent. The latter was the main justification given for the overthrow of Buhari by General Babangida in a palace coup on August 27, 1985, although the personal ambition of Babangida was an important contributing factor. Nigeria Babangida, of Gwari origins and a middle belt Muslim, was Nigeria's sixth military ruler and, as of 1990, the most powerful. Compared with Buhari, Babangida was a somewhat more methodical ruler, and his style was different. Whereas Buhari was stern and resolute, Babangida was deft and tactical. Babangida was reported to have taken part in all coups in Nigeria, which may explain his confident handling of national affairs. He was, however, unpredictable. Although Babangida came to power as a champion of human rights, his record in this area deteriorated over time. He gradually released most of the politicians incarcerated by Buhari. Yet, he often hounded opposition interest groups, especially those of labor and students, and detained many radical and anti-establishment persons for various offenses. The infamous Decree Number 2 remained in force in 1990 to facilitate these oppressive acts. The year after seizing power, the Babangida regime declared a National Economic Emergency. The options open to the country, Babangida said, were either to accept an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and the conditions attached or to embark on more austere economic measures that would require great sacrifices. Although the people favored a non-IMF option, they soon discovered the hardships eventually imposed differed little from the IMF's conditions. The economic recovery program recommended by the World Bank was instituted as a self-imposed structural adjustment program (SAP) that involved a drastic restructuring of the country's economy. Under SAP, unemployment rates soared, food prices increased significantly, and numerous user fees for education and health services were imposed. These hardships did not dissuade the government from SAP, which it believed to be the only approach to the country's social and economic problems. The benefits of SAP, such as longer inflation and more balanced budget, began to be seen but SAP was adhered to less stringently in the late 1980s. Babangida's government adopted other economic reforms leading to a market system and political reforms leading to democratic processes. Important changes were made in the basic structures of military federalism. For the first time, a military leader was called president, presumably to emphasize the executive power he wielded. The name of the supreme lawmaking body was changed from Supreme Military Council to the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC). There was also a new Armed Forces Consultative Assembly, formed in 1989, which functioned as an intermediate legislative chamber between the AFRC and the rest of the military. In spite of these elaborate structural changes, Babangida adroitly increased the powers of his office. He changed his ministers and state governors frequently. Even supposedly powerful members of the government were not spared, as was demonstrated in 1986 when he dropped his second in command, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe. In his place, he appointed Rear Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, former chief of the naval staff. The most dramatic of these changes were made at the end of 1989, when Babangida reassigned several ministers, including General Domkat Bali, the powerful minister of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The changes were perceived by southerners and Christians as resulting in an AFRC that consisted mainly of northern Muslims. The service chiefs of the army, navy, and police were Muslims; only the chief of the air staff was a southerner. The ministries of external affairs, petroleum resources, internal affairs, and defense, considered the most powerful cabinet posts, were held by northern Muslims (the minister of defense being the president himself). These changes generated heated controversy and antigovernment demonstrations by Christians in some northern cities. Babangida emerged from the changes more powerful than before. Babangida also introduced far-reaching changes in the civil service, the police, the armed and security forces, and the political system. Certain actions of his government exacerbated religious tensions. The religious cleavage in the country had become increasingly politicized, beginning in the debates in 1977 when Muslims began pressing for the extension of sharia law (Muslim religious law) from state courts in the north to the federal courts. In the Second Republic, activist Islamic groups emerged in the north, demanding the Islamization of the country. After coming to power in 1985, Babangida adopted several measures that were considered to favor Muslims and to threaten the secular nature of the Nigerian state. In 1986 Nigeria became a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an international association of Islamic states in which Nigeria had long held observer status; this action was very controversial. In apparent contradiction, Babangida survived several religious crises by reiterating that the federation remained secular. At one point, he set up a religious advisory panel to mediate in the religious crises. On April 22, 1990, a coup attempt led by Major Gideon Orkar almost toppled the Babangida regime. The presidential residence in Dodan Barracks was extensively damaged by the rebellious soldiers, but the head of state escaped. A unique feature of this coup attempt was the level of involvement of Nigerian civilians, who allegedly helped finance the operation. During the hours when the rebels controlled the radio station in Lagos, they broadcast a critique of the regime that combined attacks on its dictatorial nature and pervasive corruption with threats to expel the far northern states from the federation. The survival of Babangida and all senior members of the regime enabled the government to continue its policies, especially the planned transition to civilian rule in 1992. The detention of several journalists and other critics of the military regime and the temporary closure of some newspapers, however, indicated the government's awareness that it had overstayed its welcome and would have to govern with even stricter controls than before. The state congresses of the two government-sponsored political parties, the only legal parties, the National Republican Convention and the Social Democratic Party, were held in the summer of 1990 and campaigning began in earnest thereafter. Nigeria Political transition in Nigeria has been based not only on the military ruler's conviction that civil rule was desirable but also on the expectation of the people that, after the military performed its rescue operation, it should turn power over to civilians. Gowon and Buhari failed to meet this expectation, reducing their popular support and resulting in their overthrows. In accepting demilitarization as a necessary process, political transition has been on the agenda of every military government since Ironsi's, with the probable exception of that of Buhari. Ironsi set up a Constitution Review Committee, whose task was overtaken by the promulgation of the unitary decree; Gowon designed a transition plan, which he later aborted; the Muhammad/Obasanjo governments successfully executed a transition program and handed power over to civilians; and Babangida in 1990 was implementing a transition program, designed to culminate in civilian rule in 1992. <>The Second Republic Nigeria In the program of transition to the Second Republic, the military leaders' primary concern was to prevent the recurrence of the mistakes of the First Republic. They believed that if the structures and processes of government and politics that had proved inappropriate in the First Republic could be changed, a stable and effective civilian government would emerge. The transition was therefore designed to address those fundamental issues, which were historically divisive, and to establish new political institutions, processes, and orientations. Except for the census, which remained problematic, most issues that threatened the stability and survival of the federation were addressed. The revenue allocation process was altered based on the recommendation of a technical committee, despite the politicians' rejection of its recommendation. Local governments were also streamlined and made more powerful by the 1976 reforms. The second aspect of the transition involved the making of a new constitution and appropriate institutions. A Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) was appointed in 1975 under the chairmanship of a leading lawyer, Rotimi Williams, and, in 1977, a Constituent Assembly (CA) composed of both elected and appointed officials examined and ratified the draft constitution. After final ratification by the SMC, the Constitution was promulgated in 1979. Political parties were formed, and new corrective national bodies, such as the Code of Conduct Bureau, Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, and Public Complaints Commission, were established. The most far-reaching changes of the transition were made in the area of institutionalizing a new constitutional and political system. At the inauguration of the CDC, Murtala Muhammad outlined the objectives of transition as the continuation of a federal system of government with constitutional law guaranteeing fundamental human rights, maximum participation, and orderly succession to political power. To avoid the pitfalls of the First Republic, the new constitution was designed to eliminate political competition based on a system of winner-takes-all, broaden consensus politics to a national base, eliminate overcentralization of power, and ensure free and fair elections. The SMC suggested that these objectives could be met by recognition of national rather than sectional parties, controls on the proliferation of parties and on the creation of more states, and an executive presidential system similar to that in the United States. In addition, the federal character of the country was to be reflected in the cabinet; an independent judiciary was to be established as well as corrective institutions. The draft constitution incorporated these elements. When the CA met to ratify the constitution, a few issues were highly volatile. The most notable was the matter of sharia law, which Muslims argued should be given appellate jurisdiction at the federal level. Most Christian members of the assembly vehemently opposed this. Only the intervention of the head of state resolved the situation. Although the sharia clause was deleted from the constitution, the cleavage between Christian and Muslim groups persisted. Other controversial issues included the creation of more states, the determination of an age limit for participation in politics (intended to eliminate most discredited politicians who had actively participated in politics in the First Republic), and the scope of the executive president's powers. After the CA completed its work, the SMC added a few amendments, including use of Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba as additional official languages in the National Assembly and applying the federal-character principle to the composition of the armed forces' officer corps. By Decree Number 25 of 1978, the 1979 constitution was enacted. The constitution differed from that of the First Republic in 1963 in that it introduced a United States-type presidential system in place of the parliamentary system. Previously, the executive branch of government derived its powers from the legislature. Under the 1979 constitution, the president and vice president, as well as state governors and their deputies, were elected in separate elections. The elections had the federation and the state, respectively, as constituencies. Furthermore, while the Senate was largely a ceremonial body in the First Republic, the new constitution gave the Senate and House of Representatives coequal powers. There were other provisions in the 1979 constitution that aimed at eliminating past loopholes. The first was the federal- character principle, which sought to prevent the domination of power by one or a few states, ethnic groups, or sections at the federal center, and by one or more groups in the states and local government areas. The principle required that the composition of the cabinet, boards, and other executive bodies, as well as appointments to top government positions, should reflect the federal character or diversity of the country at the particular level of government. This principle also applied to the composition of the armed forces. The principle was extended to the distribution of national resources, such as the siting of schools and industries. The question of party politics became a constitutional matter. In view of the need for a limited number of national political parties, the constitution specified certain criteria that parties had to meet in order to be registered: the name, emblem, or motto of the party could not contain any ethnic or religious connotation or give the party the image of a sectional party; membership in the party should be open to all Nigerians irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation; the party headquarters must be in the federal capital; and the executive committee of the party should reflect the federal character of the country. The task of registering political parties and conducting elections was given to the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO). The necessity for national parties resulted from the conviction that the disunity of the First Republic was engendered by the regional parties then operating. When the ban placed on political activities in 1966 was lifted in September 1978, at least fifty-three political associations were formed. Seventeen of them applied for registration, but only five were registered: the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the Nigerian People's Party (NPP), the United Party of Nigeria (UPN), the Great Nigeria People's Party (GNPP), and the People's Redemption Party (PRP). In 1981 a sixth party, the Nigeria Advance Party (NAP), was registered. Contrary to the expectations of the drafters of the constitution and the military rulers, most of these parties resembled the ethnoregional ones of the pre-1966 period although legally parties were required to transcend ethnoregional bases. The only exceptions were the NAP, which proclaimed itself a "new breed" party, and the NPN, which despite its regional antecedents, was probably the only national party in Nigeria. The UPN was a resurrection of the AG with its Yoruba core; the NPP was a rejuvenation of the NCNC with its Igbo core and strands of middle-belt support; the PRP recalled Kano's NEPU; and the GNPP, which appeared initially to be a new minorities formation, had its strength within the Kanuri section of the north. Apart from the PRP, which flickered as a radical party, and the populist NAP, the other parties appeared to be parties of the wealthy class or those who aspired to join it, for whom politics was a means of enriching themselves and consolidating their material base. Given this character of the registered parties, it can be argued that the perceived need to balance the power groups in the country rather than the constitutional requirements decided which parties were registered. In the 1979 presidential election, NPN candidate Shehu Shagari was declared the winner, even though many people thought he did not meet the full requirements. He obtained a simple majority of the total votes cast in the federation but failed to get 25 percent of the total votes cast in thirteen states of the federation. The latter was the generally accepted interpretation of the constitutional requirement that the winner of the presidential election should obtain 25 percent of the total votes cast in two-thirds of the nineteen states of the federation. Shagari obtained 25 percent of the votes in twelve states but got only 19 percent in the thirteenth state. When FEDECO declared Shagari the winner "in the absence of any legal explanation or guidance in the electoral decree," Awolowo, the presidential candidate and leader of the UPN, led other defeated candidates and their parties to challenge the declaration in the electoral tribunal and later in the Supreme Court. But the challenge was to no avail. The controversy led to strong anti-NPN, anti-Shagari sentiments in several states controlled by the other parties. Once the NPN succeeded in consolidating power at the center, the attraction it held was strong enough to tear the other parties asunder. Consequently, the history of the Second Republic is replete with interparty and intraparty schisms and federal-state conflicts. At the domestic level, the NPN-controlled federal government embarked on politically expedient but uneconomic projects, such as establishing a federal university in every state, commissioning iron and steel plants that remain unfinished in 1990, and indiscriminately awarding contracts to build the new federal capital at Abuja. To finance these projects, the government relied heavily on foreign loans and aid. While the external debt of the country increased, the lot of the common citizen worsened. The global economic recession in the early 1980s and the collapse of crude oil prices in the world market accelerated the economic decline of the Second Republic. By the time Shagari decided to initiate IMF-inspired austerity measures under the Economic Stabilization Act (1982), the problems of the economy required more drastic measures. This act, however, provided the blueprint for the austerity measures subsequently introduced by Buhari and by Babangida. The demise of the Second Republic was accelerated by the tension generated by the 1983 general elections, which were similar to those of 1964-65. As in the earlier elections, two major political camps were involved in the contest: the NPN and the Progressive Parties Alliance, comprising the UPN, the NPP, and factions of the PRP and the GNPP. The NPN won landslide victories even in states considered traditional strongholds of the other parties. In several places, violence erupted, and every election was contested in court. A number of the electoral verdicts were rescinded in view of evidence that results were falsified. Under these circumstances the military intervened in December 1983. Nigeria The transition program of the military rulers toward the establishment of civilian rule as the Third Republic was more elaborate and deliberate than was that toward the Second Republic. The goal was to prevent a recurrence of past mistakes. It was recognized that far-reaching changes involving more than the constitution and political institutions must be introduced. Consequently, as much attention was paid to restructuring the economy through the SAP as to fostering a new social order and a political culture through a program of social mobilization. In 1990 the transition program was tightly controlled, based on the assumption that desirable changes must occur through government intervention. It was also the most extended transition thus far, and this protracted schedule contributed to frequent changes in the agenda. The date of the final handing over of power was shifted from 1990 to 1992, state gubernatorial and assembly elections from 1990 to 1991, and the census from 1990 to 1991. Apart from these changes, major decisions frequently were reversed. Although President Babangida claimed that the transition was "sequential and methodical," it was actually responsive and ad hoc. The transition to the Third Republic began with the setting up of a seventeen-member Political Bureau in 1986 to formulate a blueprint for the transition, based on ideas collated during a nationwide debate. In its report, the bureau recommended that a socialist ideology be introduced through a process of social mobilization, that local governments be strengthened as an effective third tier of government, and that a two-party system be created. The government accepted the recommendations except for the proposal advocating socialism. Most knowledgeable observers believed, however, that the Political Bureau was largely a facade created by the military, who had little intention of following the advice of the young intellectuals who composed the bureau. Of all the recommendations, the two-party system was the most significant because it marked a departure from the multiparty system of the past. A majority in the bureau thought that a two-party system was the best way to ensure that the parties would be national and that they be financed largely by the state, as recommended. The bureau argued that in the First Republic and the Second Republic, the electoral alliances pointed to a two-party system. The north-versus-south character of these alliances led many to fear that a two-party system would function along similar lines, especially given the increasing sensitivity of the Muslim-Christian division. The government decreed the formation of two new parties in October 1989, requiring that the parties draw from a national, as opposed to a regional, constituency to prevent such a dichotomy. Other aspects of the transition included a new Constitution Review Committee, a National Electoral Commission (NEC), strengthened local governments, the creation of local councils through nonpartisan elections, and the setting up of a Constituent Assembly (CA) to ratify the draft constitution, subject to final approval by the AFRC. The government, however, forbade the CA to deliberate on sensitive matters on which decisions had already been made or were to be made by the AFRC: the creation of more states and local government areas, the census, revenue allocation, the two-party system, and sharia (the latter, after the issue again threatened to tear the assembly apart, as it did in 1978). In May 1989, after introducing eleven amendments, the AFRC promulgated the new constitution by Decree Number 12. The amendment covered the deletion of Section 15 of the new constitution that pronounced the country a welfare state and of Sections 42 and 43 that provided for free education to age eighteen and free medical care for persons up to age eighteen or older than sixty-five, the handicapped, and the disabled. The second amendment provided for streamlining the jurisdiction of sharia and customary courts of appeal to make them apply at the state level only to matters relating to the personal status of Muslims. Amendment three described civil service reforms. Amendment four reduced the minimum age requirements for federal and state elective offices from forty to thirty-five for the president, thirty-five to thirty for senators and governors, twenty-five for members of the House of Representatives, and twenty-one for members of state houses of assembly and local government councillors. The fifth amendment replaced the six-year, single-term tenure for the president and governors with a four-year, maximum two-term tenure. Amendment six removed from the National Assembly control over matters of national security because, in the view of the AFRC, it "exposes the chief executives and the nation to clear impotence in the face of threats to security". The seventh amendment made the federal Judicial Service Commission accountable in the hope that this would enhance the independence of the judiciary. Amendment eight eliminated provisions establishing an armed forces service commission to supervise compliance with provisions of the federal-character principle, i.e., that government-bodies such as the military, the civil service, and university faculties reflect the various elements of the population. Amendment nine covered the reduction of the number of special advisers to the president from seven to three and alteration of the provisions for gubernatorial advisers. Amendment ten eliminated Section 1 (4) of the draft constitution outlawing coups and making them a criminal offense. The eleventh amendment deleted the provisions forbidding the federal government to obtain external loans without the approval of the National Assembly. These amendments ensured that some of the changes introduced by the Babangida government would remain binding after the government had handed over power. In spite of those amendments, the 1989 constitution is similar to that of 1979; the presidential system is retained with minor amendments, such as the reduction in the number of senators from each state from five to three. The major difference in the new political arrangement is the two-party system. Two unique aspects of the transition program since 1989 require emphasis. One was the blanket ban placed on all former politicians and top political officeholders, especially those found guilty of abuse of office. In effect, the new political order was to be built around the "new breed" politicians, namely, those who supposedly had not been affected by corruption, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and other vices that characterized the "old brigade." A corollary of this was the government's opposition to the participation of ideological and religious "radicals" and "extremists." To participate in the Third Republic, each prospective politician needed a clearance certificate from the Federal Electoral Commission. The second important factor was the decision to create in October 1989 two parties wholly run and financed by the state. After the ban on political activities was lifted in May 1989, a number of political associations were formed, and thirteen applied for registration. The requirements for registration were very strict and almost impossible to fulfill in the time allotted: the submission of the names, addresses, and passport photographs of all members of the association in the federation was required to facilitate physical confirmation of the claims by the NEC. In its report to the AFRC, the NEC gave low scores to the associations, including the "big four" that were the strongest--the People's Solidarity Party, the Nigerian National Convention, the Patriotic Front of Nigeria, and the Liberal Convention. The report stated that most of the membership claims were found to be false, their manifestos and organization were very weak, and most of the associations were affiliated with banned politicians. The AFRC's reaction to the report was unanticipated. It dissolved all the political associations and decreed two new parties--the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). It arranged for constitutions and manifestos of these two parties to be written by the NEC and by specially constituted panels based on a synthesis of those of the dissolved associations. The difference between the two parties was made a supposed ideological divide: "a little to the right" and "a little to the left." The finances of the parties, their secretariats in every local government area of the country, the appointment of their administrative secretaries, and their membership drives were now the responsibility of the federal government. The government described this new system as a "grass- roots democratic model" anchored in the rural and local groups rather than the "moneybags" and city elites that had allegedly hijacked the political process in the past. A connection has also been made between these political changes and attempts to alter the economic and social realms. The economic transition centered on the SAP, while the social component included the process of social mobilization aimed at fostering a new social order and political culture. The general process was coordinated by the Directorate of Social Mobilization; the declared goals were social justice, economic recovery, mass mobilization, and political education under the acronym MAMSER (Mass Mobilization for Self-Reliance). MAMSER has been popularized, but time will be needed to gauge how far its goals have been realized. An emphasis has also been placed on rural development through strengthening of local governments, the Directorate of Rural Development, and improving facilities for the rural women's program. The transition program toward the establishment of the Third Republic was the most ambitious undertaken in Nigeria. The success and stability of the republic, however, depended on the degree to which inherent structural problems could be overcome. Much depended on the orientations and on the actions of the politicians themselves, as well as on the dispositions of the military. Above all, its success depended on the accompanying economic and social transformations. The stability of the Third Republic, therefore, would rest not only on the operation of the new two-party system but also on the effectiveness of the SAP and MAMSER. The 1989 constitution provided for more than twenty ministers in the executive branch, in addition to various councils and commissions. The names and numbers of these ministries and commissions, which, geneally speaking, were responsible directly to the president, have changed occasionally since early 1990. Reportedly, Babangida was considering reducing the number of ministries to economize. Nigeria Given the territorially delineated cleavages abounding in Nigeria and the historical legacy of divisions among ethnic groups, regions, and sections, the federal imperative was so fundamental that even military governments--characteristically unitarian, hierarchical, and centralist--attached importance to the continuation of a federal system of government. The federation began as a unitarian colonial state but disaggregated into three and later four regions. In 1967 the regions were abrogated and twelve states created in their place. The number of states increased to nineteen in 1976, and to twenty-one in 1987. In addition, in 1990 there were 449 local government areas that had functioned as a third tier of government since the late 1980s. In 1990 the Federal Military Government (FMG) included the president, the AFRC, the Federal Executive Council, the civil service, and a federal judiciary made up of federal high courts, courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court. The locus of power was the president and the AFRC, which possessed all law-making powers that could not normally be challenged in any court of law. The Federal Executive Council was an enlarged instrument of the president. The federal judiciary had appellate jurisdiction in appeals emanating from the state judiciaries. It did not have much independence because the government was directly involved in the appointment of judges and in the finances of the federal Judicial Service Commission. The integrity of the judiciary was constantly weakened by the setting up of special tribunals. Some of these tribunals were responsible for conducting trials of politicians of the Second Republic, while a few tried "miscellaneous" cases involving drug, smuggling, or foreign exchange offenses. The state governments consisted of the military governor, a cabinet, the civil service, and the state judiciary. In most policy matters and in matters of finance, the state governments had to abide by federal directives and were subject to coordination by the National Council of States. The local governments had elected management councils comprising a chairman and councillors until June 1989, when these councils were dissolved. They were replaced by sole administrators, state civil servants appointed by the state governors. New local government elections were held in December 1989. In spite of the increasing powers of local governments, they remained subordinate to the state and federal governments and could be described as administrative agencies of these two higher levels of government. "Civilian federalism" and "military federalism" corresponded to civilian government and to military government, respectively. According to federal theory, civilian federalism was the true form of federalism. It entailed government based on a constitutional sharing of power between the federal and state governments (and local government as well), using the principle of decentralization of powers. It was marked by party politics, which determined the nature of the federation, the configuration of powers, and the prevalence of the rule of law. The major elements of military federalism included the suspension and modification of the constitution; the omnipotence of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) at the center, and therefore the existence of only one decision-making level of government; and the ban on all (civilian) political activities. Because military federalism had been more common than civilian federalism, this model made the federal government the "master" in relation to the "dependent" state governments. At independence largely autonomous regions possessed the residual powers in the federation and functioned almost independently. Even before the First Republic collapsed, the federal government was asserting greater powers. In particular, it controlled the national economy and possessed emergency powers to intervene in any region where law and order had broken down, as it did in the Western Region in 1962. Relative to the powers of the states in 1990, however, the regions were very powerful; they had separate constitutions, foreign missions, and independent revenue bases. All this changed under military rule. The FMG expanded its control over the economy to the extent that in 1990 the states depended on it for up to 90 percent of their revenues. The federal government also took over such matters as education, which formerly belonged to the states. Because state governors were appointed on military assignment by the president, the states had little autonomy, except in deciding how to implement policies formulated by the federal government. Attempts by state governments to reassert their autonomy during the Second Republic were aborted by the return of military rule. Some state governments that were controlled by parties other than the NPN took the NPN-controlled federal government to court on many occasions over matters of jurisdictional competence. This trend was likely to recur during the Third Republic, when the states would seek to regain powers lost under military rule. Another area in which successive military governments had changed intragovernmental relations was in the bolstering of local governments as a third tier of government. This process began with the 1976 local government reforms, which introduced a uniform local government system; gave local governments jurisdictional competence in matters such as markets, automobile parks, and collection of local taxes; and made it statutory for both the federal and state governments to give specified percentages of their revenues to local governments. Although these reforms were embodied in the 1979 constitution, state governments in the Second Republic refused to allow local governments any measure of autonomy, partly because they were themselves struggling to reclaim their autonomy. With the return of military rule, and as part of the transition toward the Third Republic, local governments were further strengthened. Because the federal government accepted the recommendation of the Political Bureau that local governments should be made an effective tier of government, efforts had been made to reduce their control by state governments. In 1988 state ministries of local government, the major instrument of control, were replaced by directorates of local government in the governors' offices. All local government funds were paid directly to the local governments by the federal government rather than through the state governments. The functions and jurisdiction of local governments were streamlined, and state governments were asked to stay out of local affairs. These measures increased the importance of local governments and infused in their civilian-elected functionaries a certain stubbornness that led to open conflicts with state governments over matters of jurisdiction. In several cases, these conflicts became the subject of litigation. State governments resisted the loss of jurisdiction, and many underscored the subordinate status of local governments at every opportunity. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that local governments were sufficiently autonomous to be an effective tier of government. The allocation of federal revenues was a problematic aspect of fiscal federalism because the states were unequally endowed and were virtually dependent on allocations from the federal government. Several revenue allocation commissions were set up, among them the National Revenue Mobilization, Allocation, and Fiscal Commission established during the 1980s. The major problem arose from disagreements over the criteria that should be used in allocations--derivation, population, need, equality, or minimum government responsibility. The federal-character principle emerged as a balancing formula in the 1979 constitution to forestall the domination of the government or any of its agenciesor resources by persons from one or a few states, ethnic groups, or sections. The uneven rates of development among the states and sections was largely responsible for the tension and controversy associated with the application of this principle, complicated by the pattern of distribution of the major ethnic groups. The issue of state creation derived from the very nature of the federation. From three regions in 1960, the number of constituent units had increased to the present twenty-one states and the Federal Capital Territory. It was likely that a few more would be created. The increasing number of states was a direct response to the demands and agitations of groups that were not satisfied with their positions in the federation. Initially, it was the minorities who agitated for more states, but in 1990 the need for states had changed. They were no longer needed to protect group identity and autonomy. Any group that sought a share of the "national cake" or that wanted to maximize its share of the cake demanded more states, although states were not designed to have an ethnic basis. An example of the latter was the Igbo, who constituted the majority in only two states, Anambra and Imo; the other major groups, the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba, represented majorities in about five states each. The Igbo had persistently pressed for equality with other major groups by demanding new states. Realizing that the creation of states could go on endlessly, the federal government tried to bolster local governments as another way of meeting the demands. The subordinate status of local governments, however, coupled with the continued use of the states as units for distributing national resources, made demands for more states a recurrent theme in Nigerian federalism. According to the 1989 constitution, representation in the legislative branch was based both on population (the House of Representatives, with 453 members) and on states (the Senate with 64 members, 3 from each of the 21 states and 1 from the Federal Capital Territory), which together composed the National Assembly. These figures were subject to change to reflect a possible increase in the number of states and the redistribution of population. The judicial branch consisted of the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal, and, at the top, the Supreme Court with a chief justice and up to fifteen other justices. Nigeria The civil service in 1990 consisted of the federal civil service, the twenty-one autonomous state civil services, the unified local government service, and several federal and state government agencies, including parastatals and corporations. The federal and state civil services were organized around government departments, or ministries, and extraministerial departments headed by ministers (federal) and commissioners (state), who were appointed by the president and governors, respectively. These political heads were responsible for policy matters. The administrative heads of the ministry were the directors general, formerly called permanent secretaries. The "chief" director general was the secretary to the government and until the Second Republic also doubled as head of the civil service. As chief adviser to the government, the secretary conducted liaison between the government and the civil service. The major function of the director general, as of all senior civil servants, was to advise the minister or the commissioner directly. In doing so, the director general was expected to be neutral. In the initial periods of military rule, these administrative heads wielded enormous powers. For some time, the military rulers refused to appoint civilian political heads. Even after political heads were appointed, it was years before the era of "superpermanent secretaries" to end. That happened in 1975 when, after Gowon's fall, the civil service was purged to increase its efficiency. Many of the superpermanent secretaries lost their jobs, and the subordinate status of permanent secretaries to their political bosses was reiterated. Another consequence of the purge, reinforced subsequently, was the destruction of the civil service tradition of security of tenure. The destruction was achieved by the retirement or dismissal of many who had not attained retirement age. Until the 1988 reforms, the civil service was organized strictly according to British traditions: it was apolitical, civil servants were expected to serve every government in a nonpartisan way, and the norms of impersonality and hierarchical authority were well entrenched. As the needs of the society became more complex and the public sector expanded rapidly, there was a corresponding need to reform the civil service. The Adebo Commission (1970) and the Udoji Commission (1972) reviewed the structure and orientations of the civil service to make it more efficient. Although these commissions recommended ways of rationalizing the civil service, the greatest problems of the service remained inefficiency and red tape. Again in 1985, a study group headed by Dotun Phillips looked into the problems. It was believed that the 1988 reforms, the most current measures aimed at dealing with the problems of the service as of 1990, were based on this report. Compared with the 1960s and 1970s, the civil service by 1990 had changed dramatically. It had been politicized to the extent that most top officials openly supported the government of the day. The introduction of the quota system of recruitment and promotion, adherence to the federal-character principle, and the constant interference of the government in the day-to-day operation of the civil service--especially through frequent changes in top officials and massive purges--meant that political factors rather than merit alone played a major role in the civil service. The 1988 reforms formally recognized the politicization of the upper echelons of the civil service and brought about major changes in other areas. The main stated objective of the reforms was "to ensure a virile, dynamic and result-oriented civil service." As a result, ministers or commissioners vested with full executive powers were fully accountable for their ministries or commissions. The director general had become a political appointee whose length of tenure was dependent on that of the government of the day; in practice, this meant that directors general need not be career civil servants, thereby reducing the latter's career prospects. Each ministry had been professionalized so that every official, whether specialist or generalist, made his career entirely in one ministry, whereas previously an official could move among ministries. A new department--the Presidency--comprising top government officials was created at the federal level to coordinate the formulation of policies and monitor their execution, thus making it a clearinghouse between the president and all federal ministries and departments. The reforms created a new style of civil service, but the structure might change under later governments with different priorities. In the past, the attempt by every government to effect changes in the civil service produced many discontinuities. Ministries have been constantly restructured, new ones created, and existing ones abolished. Nevertheless, the 1988 reforms might solve some of the problems of the civil service, because most civil servants tended to remain in their jobs despite reorganizations. Also, the move of the capital from Lagos to Abuja the early 1990s will provide new opportunities to apply the federal-character principle in replacing Lagosian civil servants unwilling to move. Organized interest groups played a crucial role in national politics, especially under military regimes when other forms of direct political participation were prohibited. Professional Associations These associations were the most established interest groups in the country and included the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), the Nigerian Society of Engineers, the Nigerian Economic Society, and the Nigerian Political Science Association. Many of these associations were mainly concerned with matters relating to the professional interests of their members. In pursuing professional concerns, however, they articulated and demanded important political actions. Between 1983 and 1985, for example, the NMA called a strike of medical doctors to demand an improvement in health care delivery. Its leaders were detained and the union banned until 1986. The NBA has been at the forefront of the movement for the observance of the rule of law and human rights in Nigeria. Most other associations held annual conferences at which positions were taken on national issues. The most distinguishing characteristics of professional associations were their elitist and urban base, and the nonviolent pursuit of their interests. Trade Unions The central trade union in the country was the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), which was formed in 1975 as the umbrella trade union and recognized by Decree Number 44 of 1976 as the sole representative of all trade unions in the country. The NLC had a national executive and secretariat, as well as state councils in all states. It had more than 100 affiliated unions. Although most labor matters were channeled through the NLC, the affiliate unions had engaged individually in union activities, such as strikes and lockouts. In the 1980s, the NLC was torn apart by leadership struggles, ideological differences, and ethnoregional conflicts. The NLC nearly broke up in 1988 after disagreements over elections of its leadership, resulting in the federal government's appointing an administrator for several months. The NLC organized a nationwide workers' strike in 1986 to demand the retention of government subsidies on petroleum products and continued to articulate workers' demands on matters such as minimum wages and improved welfare conditions. Several other trade unions were also active. A few, such as the Academic Staff Union of Universities, were proscribed for alleged antigovernment activities. The Media The press was a specialized interest group in Nigeria. As the fourth estate or the "societal watchdog," it was the most vocal and effective interest group in the country, especially because other interest groups channeled their demands and support through the press. The media could act as a watchdog because of the large number of newspapers and radio and television stations, and because of the wide degree of press freedom. In the 19__s, Nigeria had more than thirty national and provincial newspapers, more than twenty general magazines and journals, and more than twenty television and radio stations. Although the radio and television stations were owned by the federal and state governments, most of the newspapers and magazines were privately owned and were, in general, seen as instruments of partisan political interests. Thus, the latter could afford to be critical of the government. At some points, newspapers and magazines have been proscribed, as happened to Newbreed in 1977, the Tribune in 1984, and Newswatch in 1988. Individual journalists have been harassed and intimidated by government security agents. In 1971 Minere Amakiri, a Nigerian Observer correspondent, was detained and his hair shaved. Since then, numerous editors and reporters have been detained. The organized interest groups representing the press included the Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Newspaper Proprietors Association, and the Nigerian Guild of Editors. These associations mainly pursued the professional interests of their members but also played active roles on broader social issues. Student Associations Since 1962, when students prevented the government from signing the Anglo-Nigerian Defense Pact, they have played an active role in influencing government actions. From the 1970s on, they have engaged in violent protests and riots that have sometimes resulted in fatalities. The grounds for these riots have ranged from narrow concerns, such as unacceptable dining facilities and boarding conditions, to broader national issues, such as the removal of government subsidies on petroleum products, the SAP, and repressive government. Since 1977 no year has passed without one university or other institution of higher learning being closed because of violent student protests. The most dramatic were the 1978 "Ali must go" riots, in which all universities in the country protested a rise in the costs of university education; and the 1989 anti-SAP riots, which claimed many lives. Student activities were coordinated nationally by the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), which has operated underground since its proscription in 1986. Every institution of higher learning had a student union. Until 1986, when the Justice Mohammad panel recommended voluntary membership as a way to check student protests, membership in student unions was compulsory. There were several other student associations, such as voluntary groups and religious associations, which also articulated students' interests. Women's Organizations Nigeria had several women's organizations, most of them professional and social clubs. The umbrella organization, recognized as the voice of women on national issues, was the National Council of Women's Societies (NCWS). Many of the women's groups were affiliated with the NCWS, which tended to be elitist in organization, membership, and orientation. Another major women's association was Women in Nigeria, composed primarily of university women and inclined toward Western feminist views. Conservative Nigerian Muslim women in the late 1970s began to indicate discontent with the liberal trends of these two organizations and in the mid-1980s created the Federation of Muslim Women's Associations of Nigeria, which had about 400 member bodies throughout the country. In the 1980s, women from lower social strata in the towns, represented mainly by the market women's associations, became militant and organized mass protests and demonstrations in several states. Their major grievances ranged from narrow concerns such as allocation of market stalls to broader issues such as increased school fees. Other Interest Groups Other notable interest groups included social clubs and fraternities, old boys' and alumni associations, and various voluntary associations. On the whole, the activities of interest groups and the roles they played in national politics depended on how narrow or broad the group's interests were, the resources available to it, its ties with those in authority, its affiliation with other groups, and the ideological character of its membership. The major interest groups were elitist, but other groups were also active at times. Nigeria A 1989 publication by the Federal Military Government, Four Years of the Babangida Administration, summarized the priority issues of Nigerian foreign policy: the abolition of apartheid in South Africa; the enhancement of Nigeria's relations with member countries of the European Economic Community (EEC), the United States, the Soviet Union, and with other major industrialized countries to increase the flow of foreign investments and capital into Nigeria; and continued support for international organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Relations with other African states constituted the cornerstone of Nigerian foreign policy. The Ministry of External Affairs was directly responsible for foreign policy formulation and implementation. Because matters were usually left in the hands of the minister and his officials, foreign policy positions could change radically from one minister to another, depending on the minister's orientation. In addition to the minister's immediate staff, there was a small foreign policy elite comprising other top government officials, interest group leaders, academicians, top military officers, religious leaders, and journalists. This elite exerted indirect influence through communiqu�s and press releases, as well as direct pressure on the government. In 1986 a conference--to which every stratum of this elite was invited--was held to review Nigeria's foreign policy and recommend broad policy frameworks for the 1990s and beyond. Several factors conditioned Nigeria's foreign policy positions. First, the ethnic and religious mix of the country required cautious positions on some issues, such as policy toward Israel. Nigeria found it difficult to restore diplomatic ties with Israel and had not done so as of 1990 because of Muslim opposition and sympathy with the rest of the Arab Muslim world. Second, Nigeria's legacy as an ex-British colony, combined with its energy-producing role in the global economy, predisposed Nigeria to be pro-Western on most issues despite the desire to maintain a nonaligned status to avoid neocolonialism. In 1990 this pro-Western posture was reinforced by Nigeria's "economic diplomacy," which involved negotiating trade concessions, attracting foreign investors, and rescheduling debt repayment to Western creditors. Third, the country's membership in and commitment to several international organizations, such as the United Nations and bodies mentioned earlier, also affected foreign policy positions. Fourth, and most important, as the most populous country in Africa and the entire black world, Nigeria perceived itself as the "giant" of Africa and the potential leader of the black race. Thus, Nigerian external relations have emphasized African issues, which have become the avowed cornerstone of foreign policy. These factors have caused certain issues to dominate Nigerian foreign policy across various governments, but each government has had distinctive priorities and style. During the 1950s and early 1960s, foreign policy aimed at proper behavior in the international system, and British authorities played a major role in Nigerian foreign relations. Consequently, the Balewa government stressed world peace, respected sovereign equality, and maintained nonalignment based on friendship with any country that took a reciprocal position. After the fall of the First Republic, critics asserted that the government had been too proWestern and not strong enough on decolonization or integration, and that the low profile had been embarrassing. Nonetheless, Gowon continued to keep a low profile by operating within the consensus of the OAU and by following routes of quiet diplomacy. The civil war marked a distinct break in Nigerian foreign policy. The actions of various countries and international bodies during the war increased awareness of the alignments within Africa and appreciation of the positive role that the OAU could play in African affairs. Whereas white-dominated African countries had supported Biafra, the OAU sided with the federation by voting for unity. The OAU stance proved helpful for Nigerian diplomacy. Nigeria first turned to the Soviet Union for support after the West refused to provide arms to the federation, and after the war, a less pro-Western stance was maintained. At the same time, Africa remained Nigeria's top priority. In the mid- to late 1970s, attention focused on the liberation of southern Africa, on the integration of ECOWAS, and on the need for complete economic independence throughout Africa. These goals were included in the 1979 constitution: promotion of African unity; political, economic, social, and cultural liberation of Africa; international cooperation; and elimination of racial discrimination. Relations with Neighboring States Nigeria had cordial relations with all its neighbors--Benin, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea--as well as with other countries in the West African subregion, with most of which it had bilateral agreements. There had been occasional border disputes with Chad and Cameroon, and military action against these neighbors was contemplated by the civilian government in 1982 and 1983. Another problem arose in the early 1980s, when Nigeria decided to expel many illegal immigrants, mainly Ghanaians, but this dispute also was resolved amicably. The guiding principle of Nigeria's regional foreign policy was that of good neighborliness and friendship. In this spirit, it helped to resolve conflicts between Liberia and Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Mali, and Togo and Ghana. Nigeria also tried to make its neighbors "safe" friends, partly to reenforce boundary claims and protect human rights of Nigerian citizens who were migrantworkers and partly to stabilize relations between the immediate neighboring countries. For example, since 1988 it has established a strong presence in Equatorial Guinea. To pursue the economic interests through of foreign relations within West Africa, Nigeria championed the formation of ECOWAS and, in spite of competing allegiances to rival organizations within the subcontinent, continued to support the organization's objectives. Strengthening ECOWAS promoted Nigeria's national interests through encouraging development of the region's economy and discouraging its neighbors' reliance on extra-African countries for military, political, and economic survival, thus serving such security interests as weakening colonial divisions within West Africa, ending border disputes, contributing to African unity, and strengthening West Africa's bargaining positions vis-�-vis the EEC. Relations with the Rest of Africa The prevailing perception in Nigeria's foreign policy was that, as predominant the African leader, it should play a bigbrother role in relations with African states. Nigeria was a founding member of the OAU and often channeled major policy initiatives through that organization. Most of its relations with other African states took place outside the OAU framework but were guided by OAU principles. Nigeria's primary African commitment was to liberate the continent from the last vestiges of colonialism and to eradicate apartheid in South Africa. Promoting liberation had grown from a weak and conservative stance during the 1960s to an increasingly firm push after the civil war. This commitment was pursued most actively after Murtala Muhammad successfully backed the Movimento Popular de Liberta��o de Angola's ascent to power in Angola in 1975 by providing the swing vote in the OAU decision to recognize the MPLA. Nigeria had played a role in the independence of Zimbabwe and in the late 1980s was active in assisting Nambibia to achieve independence of Namibia. In the latter case, it contributed about US$20 million to assist the South West Africa People's Organization in the 1989 elections and other preparations for Namibian independence. The country also contributed financially to liberation movements in South Africa and to the front line states of Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, which were constantly harassed by South Africa. Although Nigeria's armed forces were among the largest in black Africa in the early 1990s, sizable military might has rarely been used in foreign policy. The army participated in peacekeeping forces, either alone or through the OAU and contributed personnel to United Nations peacekeeping missions. In line with its ECOWAS comunitment, Nigeria was one of the main contributors of troops to the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) sent to Liberia August 23, 1990 after the peace talks there failed. Additional forces were sent in late September 1990 under a Nigerian field commander, General Doganyaro. Threats to fight for southern African liberation were made but not acted on, but Nigeria did give military and financial aid to the African National Congress for its efforts against the apartheid regime in South Africa and provided military equipments to Mozambique to help its struggle South African-backed guerrillas. In addition, Nigeria gave aid and technical assistance to several African states, often through the African Development Bank of which it was a major benefactor. In 1987 a Technical Aid Corps, operating along the lines of the United States Peace Corps, was established. Under it, young Nigerian professionals served in other African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries where their expertise was needed. Nigeria also provided scholarships and fellowships, training facilities, grants, equipment, and medical supplies, and subsidized oil during the 1970s' oil crisis to African countries under certain conditions. In July 1974, the Gowon government decided to sell crude oil at concessionary rates to African countries on condition that they had their own refineries and would not re-export to third countries. The decision came despite Nigeria's role as an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member generally in favor of higher prices and after more than two years of deliberations. Nigeria acted largely in response to external pressures: international actors attempted to divide Third World countries into OPEC members and nonoil producers; various African countries, especially Liberia, begged for less expensive oil; and both the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries had established programs to aid poor countries while encouraging other oil producers, especially African nations, to follow suit. Providing subsidies for African countries was a safe move for Nigeria because Africa comprised only a small portion of the country's total oil export market, it enhanced Nigeria's position and influence in Africa while building African solidarity, and it protected security interests by preventing economic decline. Moreover, this example of generosity aided Nigeria in its efforts to create ECOWAS. In November 1990, Babangida suggested that Nigeria might again offer concessionary prices to other African countries as the Middle East crises pushed oil prices upward. Relations with Major Powers During the Gulf crisis that began with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 and that marked the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a coalition, Nigeria kept a low profile. It did not send troops to engage in the Persian Gulf war but continued to be an active supporter of UN policy. Buying the bulk of Nigeria's crude oil, the United States was Nigeria's most important trading partner. Until the civil war, Nigeria had had no significant relationship with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Since then, ties with the Soviet Union had increased, although they remained minimal in comparison with ties to the West. Nigeria's other major trading partners were Japan and the EEC, from which it continued to obtain loans and aid. Although Nigeria has always leaned toward the West, the closeness of the relationship has varied. Nigeria's Western ties were originally strongest with Britain, its former colonial ruler. The special relationship, which lasted until the 1966 coup, led Nigeria to side with Britain on most issues. After the coup and the civil war, the new Nigerian leaders were less favorable toward Britain, especially after Britain took a position of neutrality in the civil war, refused to sell arms to the federation and ignored the blockade against Biafra. Nigerian leaders also were rankled by Britain's support of white-dominated governments in southern Africa. Several Nigerian groups pressured the new government to weaken ties with Britain as the only way to true independence. At times, more verbal and symbolic damage was done to Nigerian-British relations for Nigerian popular consumption than was true in reality. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were interested in Nigeria because of its size, population, economic and military potential, and, especially for the United States, its oil. From 1966 to 1977, Nigeria was very cool toward the United States. The two countries took opposing positions over southern African liberation. Nigerians were angered by proBiafran propaganda in the United States and by America's refusal to sell arms to the federation during the civil war. United States involvement was even suspected by Nigeria in the assassination of Murtala Muhammad. In 1977 Jimmy Carter became president, and Nigerian relations with the United States suddenly changed. The United States recognized Nigeria as a stabilizing force in Africa and was willing to consult with Nigeria on African issues. The two governments appeared to have similar interests in southern Africa. The special relationship had a weak basis, however, depending mostly upon continuing agreement and cooperation over southern African issues. Once Ronald Reagan replaced Carter as president (1981-88), the countries again had divergent interests in southern Africa. Just as the balance of trade was not expected to shift dramatically with the opening of Eastern Europe so, too, Nigeria's political position was not expected to change greatly. In a time of shifting world coalitions, a position of nonalignment with a leaning toward the West provided more options for Nigeria than ever. Events in southern Africa, including Namibia's independence and the opening of debate for eliminating apartheid in South Africa, removed the largest obstacles to closer relations with the United States without excluding the Soviet Union or other leading powers. Relations with International Organizations Nigeria played active roles in various international organizations and vied for positions in them. For example, Joseph Garba, Nigeria's former permanent representative to the UN, was elected in 1989 to a one-year term as president of the UN General Assembly; Adebayo Adeedji was executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, a UN affiliate; and Emeka Anyaoku became secretary general of the Commonwealth of Nations in 1989. Former military head of state Obasanjo also had become a recognized world statesman and spokesman on African issues. Nigeria contributed personnel to many UN peacekeeping missions, including operations in Congo, Tanzania, and the UN India/Pakistan Observer Mission in the 1960s, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon in 1978, and UN forces observing the Iran-Iraq cease-fire and the AngolaNamibian accords in 1988. The importance that Nigeria placed on international organizations grew out of a striving for peace and international cooperation. In the cases of the OAU and ECOWAS, these organizations also served to increase African unity, another important Nigerian goal. Nigeria played an initiating role in the creation of both organizations and was active in both thereafter. Although Nigeria's positions on various issues have changed over the years, its level of activity in international organizations has increased. In 1987 Nigeria initiated a Concert of Medium Powers, more widely known as the Lagos Forum, to facilitate multilateral cooperation and to enable member states to exert greater collective influence on world affairs. Forum members included Sweden, Austria, Zimbabwe, and Egypt. The initiative, which could be seen as an effort preceding the end of the Cold War, seemed to collapse, however, after its initiator, Boleji Akenyemi, was removed as minister for external affairs in 1987.	Joint Chiefs of Staff
If young female horses are called fillies, what are young male horses called?	SparkNotes: U.S. Government and Politics Glossary: Glossary of Terms in U.S. Government & Politics Glossary of Terms in U.S. Government & Politics U.S. Government and Politics Glossary ← Glossary of Terms in U.S. Government & Politics → Table of Contents How to Cite This SparkNote absentee ballot - A ballot, usually sent in the mail, that allows those who cannot go to their precinct on election day to vote. absolutism - The belief that the government should have all the power and be able to do whatever it wants. acquisitive model - A view of bureaucracies that argues agency heads seek to expand the size, budget, and power of their agency. actual malice - Knowingly printing falsehoods in order to harm a person’s reputation. administrative adjudication - The bureaucratic function of settling disputes by relying on rules and precedents. affirm - An action by the Supreme Court to uphold a ruling by a lower court; that ruling is now the legally binding one. affirmative action - Measures to give minorities special consideration for hiring, school admission, and so on, designed to overcome past discrimination. agency capture - The gaining of control (direct or indirect) over a government regulatory agency by the industry it regulates. agency representation - A type of representation in which the representative is seen as an agent, acting on behalf of the district, who is held accountable if he or she does not do as the constituents wish. agenda-setting - The power of the media to determine which issues will be discussed and debated. amendment - A change to the Constitution. American conservatism - The belief that freedom trumps all other political considerations; the government should play a small role in people’s lives. American exceptionalism - The view that the United States is different from other countries. American liberalism - The belief that the government should promote equality in politics and economics. Americans with Disabilities Act - The major law banning discrimination against the disabled, it requires employers to make all reasonable accommodations to disabled workers; it passed in 1990. amicus curiae brief - Literally, a “friend of the court” brief. A brief submitted to the court by a group not involved in the case; it presents further arguments for one side in the case. anarchism - The belief that all governments are repressive and should be destroyed. appellate jurisdiction - The authority to review cases heard by lower courts. appointment power - The president’s power to appoint people to key federal offices. appropriation - The act of Congress formally specifying the amount of authorized money that an agency can spend. Articles of Confederation - America’s first national constitution, which loosely bound the states under a weak national Congress. attack journalism - Journalism that aims to undermine political leaders. Australian ballot - A ballot printed by the government that allows voting to be secret. authoritarian regime - A government that can do whatever it wants, without limits. authority - The ability of the government to exercise power without resorting to violence. authorization - A formal declaration by a congressional committee that a certain amount of money is available to an agency. autocracy - A regime in which the government holds all the power. bad-tendency rule - A rule to judge if speech can be limited: If the speech could lead to some sort of “evil,” it can be prohibited. Bakke case - This Supreme Court Case decided in 1978 that affirmative action is legal as long as race is not the only factor considered. balanced budget - When a government spends exactly as much as it takes in. bicameral legislature - A legislature with two houses. bilateral - A state acting in cooperation with another state. bill - A proposed law or policy. bill of attainder - A bill passed by the legislature that declares a person guilty of a crime. Bill of Rights - The first ten amendments to the Constitution, which safeguard some specific rights of the American people and the states. Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act - A law passed in 2002 that banned soft money, put limits on issue advertising, and increased the amount people can donate to candidates; also called the McCain-Feingold bill. bipolar system - An international system characterized by two superpowers that roughly balance each other. blanket primary - A primary in which voters can choose candidates from more than one party; declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. block grant - A grant-in-aid with few restrictions or rules about how it can be spent. blog - A weblog on the Internet; the thoughts and opinions of a person or group posted online. brief - A document submitted to a court that presents one side’s argument in a case. broadcast media - Media that is distributed over the airwaves. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas - Supreme Court case that ended segregation and declared “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional. bundling - The practice of lumping campaign donations from several donors together. bureaucracy - An administrative way of organizing large numbers of people to work together; usually relies on specialization, hierarchy, and standard operating procedure. buying power - One’s ability to purchase things; it is undermined by inflation. cabinet - A group, composed of the heads of federal departments and key agencies, that advises the president. caesaropapism - The belief that the powers of church and state should be united in one person. candidate-centered politics - Campaigns and politics that focus on the candidates, not party labels. case law - The collection of court decisions that shape law. casework - Work done by a member of Congress or his or her staff on behalf of constituents. categorical grants - Money given for a specific purpose that comes with restrictions concerning how the money should be spent. There are two types of categorical grants: project grants and formula grants. caucus - A gathering of political leaders to make decisions, such as which candidate to nominate for an office; set policy; and plot strategy. census - Counting the population to determine representation in the House of Representatives; the constitution mandates one every ten years. central bank - The institution with the power to implement monetary policy. centralization - the process by which law- and policymaking becomes centrally located. centrally planned economy - An economy where all decisions are made by the government. charter - A document issued by state government granting certain powers and responsibilities to a local government. checks and balances - The ability of different branches of government to stop each other from acting; designed to prevent one branch from gaining too much power. chief of state - The ceremonial head of government; in the United States, the president serves as chief of state. citizen - A legal member of a political unit. civic education - Education geared toward training the young to be good citizens. civil liberties - Individual freedoms that the government cannot take away, including free speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of the accused. civil rights - The rights of equality under the law. Civil Rights Act of 1964 - The major civil rights legislation in the modern era, the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination and segregation in public accommodations. Civil Rights Cases - Supreme Court decision in 1883 that said the Fourteenth Amendment only made discrimination by government illegal; private citizens could do as they pleased. civil service - Government employees hired and promoted based on merit, not political connections. Civil Service Commission - The first federal personnel agency. Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 - Law that established the federal civil service; also known as the Pendleton Act. Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 - Law that updated and reformed the civil service. civil society - The network of community relationships that builds social capital. civil war - A war fought within a single country between or among different groups of citizens who want to control the government and do not recognize another group’s right to rule. classical conservatism - A view that arose in opposition to classical liberalism; it claimed that tradition was very valuable, human reason limited, and stability essential. classical liberalism - A view that arose in the early modern era in Europe; it argues for the value of the individual, the necessity for freedom, the importance of rationalism, and the value of the free market. clear-and-present danger - A limit on free speech stipulating that speech that constitutes a “clear and present danger” can be banned. closed primary - A primary in which the voter must belong to the party in which he or she participates. closed rule - A rule on a bill, issued by the House Rules Committee, which limits or bans amendments during floor debate. cloture - A motion to end debate in the Senate, it must be approved by sixty votes. codetermination - A policy used in some states with strong social democratic parties that forces large corporations to have substantial representation from the workers on the board of directors command economy - An economy where all decisions are made by the government. commerce clause - A clause in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution that grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. common-carrier role - The media’s role as an intermediary between the people and the government. common law - A system of law, originally from England, in which previous decisions guide judges in interpreting the law. communism - An extreme form of socialism that advocates violent revolution to create a socialist state. comparative politics - An academic discipline that compares states in order to understand how they work. concurrent powers - Powers exercised simultaneously by the states and the federal government. concurring opinion - An opinion issued by a judge who votes with the winning side but disagrees with the majority or plurality opinion. confederacy - A loose relationship among a number of smaller political units. confederate system - A system of government with a very weak central government and strong states. conformism - A tendency for people to act the same way, watch the same television programs, read the same books, and so on. constituency - The people in a district represented by a legislator. constitution - A set of rules that govern how power will be distributed and used legitimately in a state. constitutional democracy - A type of government characterized by limitations on government power spelled out in a constitution. constitutional government - A regime in which the use of power is limited by law. constitutional powers - Powers of the president granted explicitly by the Constitution. continuing resolution - A measure passed by Congress that temporarily funds an agency while Congress completes its budget. conventional participation - Political participation in activities deemed appropriate by most; includes voting, donating to a campaign, and writing letters to officeholders. convention delegate - A party member or official who goes to the national convention to vote for the party’s presidential nominee and to ratify the party’s platform. cooperative federalism - A term used to describe federalism for most of the twentieth century (and into the twenty-first), where the federal government and the states work closely together and are intertwined; also known as marble-cake federalism. corrupt practices acts - A series of laws in the early twentieth century that were the first attempts to regulate campaign finance. credentials committee - Party officials who decide which delegates may participate in the national convention. critical election - An election that marks the advent of a realignment. dealignment - The loosening of party ties as more voters see themselves as independents. decision - A document issued by the court stating who wins the case. Declaration of Independence - The document written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 that broke the colonies away from British rule. de facto segregation - Segregation that exists due to economic and residential patterns, not because of law. defamation of character - Unfairly hurting a person’s reputation. deficit spending - When a government intentionally spends more money than it takes in. de jure segregation - Segregation imposed by law. delegated powers - Powers granted by Congress to help the president fulfill his duties. demand-side economics - An approach to economic policy that stresses stimulation of demand by putting more money in the hands of consumers. democracy - Rule by the people. democratic socialism - A peaceful form of socialism that works within democratic governments to attain socialism gradually. demosclerosis - The inability of the U.S. government to get anything significant done because interest groups block all major change. denial of power - Declaring that a certain person or group does not have a particular power. depression - A severe economic downturn that lasts a long time; more serious than a recession. deregulation - The repeal or reduction of regulations in order to boost efficiency, increase competitiveness, and benefit consumers. deterrence - Threatening to use military force to prevent another state from taking a particular course of action. devolution - The process of the national government giving responsibilities and powers to state, local, or regional governments. dictatorship - An absolute government in which one person holds all the power and uses it for his or her own self-interest. diplomacy - The act of negotiating and dealing with other nations in the world, trying to achieve goals without force. direct democracy - A government in which the people come together to vote on all important issues. discharge petition - A measure in the House that forces a bill out of a committee for consideration by the whole House. dissenting opinion - A court opinion written by the losing side that explains why it disagrees with the decision. diversity - A mix of different cultural and religious traditions and values. divided government - A situation in which one party controls the presidency, while the other controls at least one house of Congress. divine right theory of kingship - The view that the monarch is chosen by God to rule with absolute power over a country. division of labor - The practice of dividing a job into smaller component parts and assigning one person or group to do each part. dual federalism - A term to describe federalism through most of the nineteenth century, where the federal and state governments each had their own issue areas, which rarely overlapped; also known as layer-cake federalism. due process clause - Part of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that no person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. duopoly - A term to describe the overwhelming power of the two major parties in American politics. Earned Income Tax Credit - A federal welfare program that refunds all or part of a poor family’s social security tax. economic aid - Assistance to other countries designed to help the recipient’s economy. economic group - An interest group that seeks material benefits for its members. economic growth - The expansion of the economy, leading to the creation of more jobs and more wealth. effective tax rate - The actual percentage of one’s income that one pays in taxes, after deductions and tax credits. elastic clause - Clause in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution that says the Congress has the power to do anything that is necessary and proper in order to carry out its explicit powers; also called the necessary and proper clause. elector - A member of the Electoral College. Electoral College - The body that elects the president of the United States; composed of electors from each state equal to that state’s representation in Congress; a candidate must get a majority of electoral votes to win. elitism/elite theory - The view that a small capable group should rule over the rest. emergency powers - Inherent powers exercised by the president to deal with emergencies. empire - A state that governs more than one national group, usually as a result of conquest. enabling legislation - A law passed by Congress that lays out the general purposes and powers of an agency but grants the agency the power to determine the details of how it implements policy. entitlement program - A program under which the federal government is obligated to pay a specified benefit to people who meet certain requirements. enumerated powers - The powers specifically given to Congress in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. environmental impact statement - A statement that must be prepared by the federal government prior to acting that describes how the environment will be affected. environmentalism - The belief that humans have an obligation to protect the world from the excesses of human habitation, including pollution and the destruction of wilderness. equality of opportunity - When all people are given the same chances to compete and achieve so that those with talent and diligence will succeed, whereas others will not. equality of outcome - When all people achieve the same result, regardless of talent or effort. equal protection clause - Part of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that states must give all citizens the equal protection of the law. Equal Rights Amendment - A proposed amendment that would end gender discrimination; it failed to be ratified. equal time rule - A broadcast media regulation that requires media outlets to give equal amounts of time to opposing candidates in an election. equity - When all parties to a transaction are treated fairly. establishment clause - A part of the First Amendment that forbids government establishment of religion. excess demand - An economic situation in which the demand for something exceeds the supply. exclusionary rule - A legal rule that excludes from trial evidence obtained in an illegal search. executive leadership - The view that the president should have strong influence over the bureaucracy. Executive Office of the President - A set of agencies that work closely with the president to help him perform his job. executive order - An order issued by the president that has the effect of law. executive privilege - The right of officials of the executive branch to refuse to disclose some information to other branches of government or to the public. ex post facto law - A law that declares something illegal after it has been done. expressed powers - The specific powers given to Congress or the president by the Constitution; also called the enumerated powers. fairness doctrine - A broadcast media regulation that requires a broadcaster that airs a controversial program to also provide airtime to people with an opposing view. faithless elector - An elector who votes for someone other than the candidate who won the most votes in the state. fascism - Ideology from Italy that stresses national unity, a strong expansionist military, and absolute rule by one party. federal budget - A document detailing how the federal government will spend money during a fiscal year. Federal Communications Commission - The federal agency that regulates the broadcast media. Federal Election Campaign Act - A law, passed in 1971, that limited expenditures on media advertising and required disclosure of donations above $100; made more stringent following the Watergate scandal. Federal Election Commission - The independent agency established in 1974 to enforce campaign finance laws. federalism - A system of government in which power is shared by national and state governments. Federal Register - A federal publication that lists all executive orders. federal reserve bank - The name of the central bank of the United States; often called the Fed. federal system - A system of government where power is shared between the central government and state and local governments. feminism - The belief that women are equal to men and should be treated equally by the law. filibuster - A Senate tactic; a senator in the minority on a bill holds the floor (in effect shutting down the Senate) until the majority backs down and kills the bill. First Continental Congress - A gathering of representatives from all thirteen colonies in 1774; it called for a total boycott of British goods in protest against taxes. fiscal federalism - The practice of states spending federal money to help administer national programs. fiscal policy - How the government influences the economy through taxing, borrowing, and spending. fiscal year - A twelve-month period (which does not coincide with the calendar year) used for accounting and budget purposes by the federal government. 527 groups - A political organization, not affiliated with a party, that can raise and spend soft money; named after a section of the Internal Revenue Code. flat taxes - A taxation system in which everyone is charged the same rate, regardless of income. food stamps - Coupons issued by the government that can be used to purchase food. foreign policy - A state’s international goals and its strategies to achieve those goals. formalized rules - Another term for standard operating procedure. formula grants - Grants in which a formula is used to determine how much money each state receives. framers - The men who wrote the Constitution. franking - The ability of members of Congress to mail informational literature to constituents free of charge. free exercise clause - The part of the First Amendment that forbids the government from interfering in the free exercise of religion. free rider - A person who benefits from an interest group’s efforts without actually contributing to those efforts. front-loading - Moving primaries up in the campaign calendar so that many primaries are held early in the campaign. front-runner - The candidate perceived to be in the lead in an election campaign. full faith and credit clause - A clause in Article IV of the Constitution that declares that state governments must give full faith and credit to other state governments’ decisions. fundamentalism - The belief that a religious document is infallible and literally true. gag order - An order by a court to block people from talking or writing about a trial. gender discrimination - Treating people differently and unequally because of gender. general election - An election contest between all party nominees and independent candidates; the winner becomes a member of Congress. general jurisdiction - A court’s power to hear cases, which is mostly unrestricted. gerrymandering - The term used to describe the process by which the party that controls the state government uses redistricting to its own political advantage. Gibbons v. Ogden - An 1824 Supreme Court case that gave the federal government extensive powers through the commerce clause. Gideon v. Wainwright - Supreme Court case of 1963 that ordered governments to provide an attorney to criminal defendants who cannot afford one. globalization - The trend toward the breakdown of state borders and the rise of international and global organizations and governments. government - The organization of power within a country. Government Accountability Office - Congress’s main investigative agency, the GAO investigates operations of government agencies as part of congressional oversight. government bond - A promissory note issued by the government to pay back the purchase price plus interest. government corporation - A federal agency that operates like a corporation (following business practices and charging for services) but receives some federal funding. grandfather clause - A voting law that stated that a person could vote if his grandfather was eligible to vote prior to 1867; designed to keep blacks from voting. grant-in-aid - A general term to describe federal aid given to the states for a particular matter. grant of power - Declaring that a certain person or group has a specific power. grassroots activism - Efforts to influence the government by mobilizing large numbers of people. Great Compromise - The compromise plan on representation in the constitutional convention; it created a bicameral legislature with representation determined by population in one house and equality in the other; also known as the Connecticut Compromise. gross domestic product - The total value of all economic transactions within a state. guerrilla war - A war in which one or both combatants use small, lightly armed militia units rather than professional, organized armies; guerrilla fighters usually seek to topple their government, often enjoying the support of the people. gun control - Policies that aim at regulating and reducing the use of firearms. Hatch Act - A law passed in 1939 that restricts the participation of federal civil servants in political campaigns. hierarchy - An arrangement of power with a small number of people at the top issuing orders through a chain of command to lower-level workers; each person is responsible to someone above him or her. home rule - The granting of significant autonomy to local governments by state governments. home style - The way a member of Congress behaves in his or her district. honeymoon period - The first few months of an administration in which the public, members of Congress, and the media tend to give the president their goodwill. horizontal federalism - How state governments relate to one another. hyperpluralism - The idea that there are too many interest groups competing for benefits. idealism - The view that states should act in the global arena to promote moral causes and use ethical means to achieve them. ideology - A set of beliefs a person holds that shape the way he or she behaves and sees the world. illegal participation - Political activity that includes illegal actions, such as sabotage or assassination. impeachment - The power of the House of Representatives to charge an officeholder with crimes; the Senate then holds a trial to determine if the officeholder should be expelled from office. implementation - The act of putting laws into practice. implied powers - Powers given to the national government by the necessary and proper clause. income distribution - The way income is distributed among the population. income transfer - A government action that takes money from one part of the citizenry and gives it to another part; usually the transfer goes from the well-off to the poor. incorporation - The practice of federal courts forcing state governments to abide by the Bill of Rights. incrementalism - The tendency of policy in the United States to change gradually, in small ways, rather than dramatically. independent - A person who does not feel affiliation for any party. independent executive agency - A federal agency that is not part of any department; its leader reports directly to the president. independent regulatory agency - A federal agency charged with regulating some part of the economy; in theory, such agencies are independent of Congress and the president. individualism - The idea that all people are different and should be able to make their own choices. inflation - The increase of prices. informational benefits - The educational benefits people derive from belonging to an interest group and learning more about the issues they care about. inherent powers - The powers inherent to the national government because the United States is a sovereign nation. in-kind subsidies - Government aid to poor people that is not given as cash but in forms such as food stamps and rent vouchers. inside game - Interest groups’ efforts to influence government by direct and close contact with government officials; also known as lobbying. interest group - An organization of people who share a common interest and work together to protect and promote that interest by influencing the government. international agreement - An understanding between states to restrict their behavior and set up rules governing international affairs. internationalism - The view that the United States should play an active role in world affairs. international law - A set of agreements, traditions, and norms built up over time that restricts what states can do; not always binding. international organization - An institution set up by agreements between nations, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. international system - The basic structures that affect how states relate to one another, including rules and traditions. Internet media - Media that is distributed online. interpretive reporting - Reporting that states the facts along with analysis and interpretation. intervention - When a state sends military forces to help a country that is already at war. iron triangle - An alliance of groups with an interest in a policy area: bureaucrats from the relevant agency, legislators from appropriate committees, and interest groups affected by the issue. isolationism - The view that the United States should largely ignore the rest of the world. issue advertising - Advertising, paid for by outside groups, that can criticize or praise a candidate but not explicitly say “vote for X” or “vote against X.” issue network - A collection of actors who agree on a policy and work together to shape policy. Jim Crow laws - Laws passed by southern states that imposed inequality and segregation on blacks. Joint Chiefs of Staff - A group that helps the president make strategy decisions and evaluates the needs and capabilities of the military. judicial activism - A judicial philosophy that argues courts must take an active positive role to remedy wrongs in the country. judicial implementation - The process of enforcing a court’s ruling. judicial philosophy - A set of ideas that shape how a judge or lawyer interprets the law and the Constitution. judicial restraint - A judicial philosophy that believes the court’s responsibility is to interpret the law, not set policy. judicial review - The power of the courts to declare laws and presidential actions unconstitutional. jurisdiction - A court’s power to hear cases of a particular type. justiciable question - A matter that the courts can review. just-war theory - A theory of ethics that defines when war is morally permissible and what means of warfare are justified. Keynesian economics - A demand-side economic policy, first presented by John Maynard Keynes after World War I, that encouraged deficit spending by governments during economic recessions in order to provide jobs and boost income. kitchen cabinet - An informal name for the president’s closest advisers. Kyoto Protocol - An international treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. laissez-faire capitalism - The economic philosophy that the government should not interfere with the economy. lawmaking - The power to make rules that are binding on all people in a society. layer-cake federalism - A term used to describe federalism through most of the nineteenth century, in which the federal and state governments each had their own issue areas, that rarely overlapped; also known as dual federalism. legislative agenda - A series of laws a person wishes to pass. legitimacy - Acceptance by citizens of the government. Lemon test - A three-part test to determine if the establishment clause has been violated; named for the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman. libel - Printing false statements that defame a person’s character. liberalism - A theory of international relations that deemphasizes the importance of military power in favor of economic power, trade, and international institutions. libertarianism - The belief that government should be small and most decisions left up to the individual. liberty - The freedom to do what one chooses as long as one does not harm or limit the freedom of other people. limited government - A government that places few restrictions on its citizens’ choices and actions, and in which the government is limited in what it can do. limited jurisdiction - A court’s power to hear only certain kinds of cases. limited war - A war fought primarily between professional armies to achieve specific political objectives without causing widespread destruction. line-item veto - A special type of veto that the president can use to strike the specific parts of the bill he or she dislikes without rejecting the entire bill. line organization - In the government bureaucracy, an agency whose head reports directly to the president. literacy test - Historically, a test that must be passed before a person can vote; designed to prevent blacks from voting. lobbying - Attempting to persuade government officials through direct contact via persuasion and the provision of material benefits; also known as the inside game. logrolling - A practice in Congress where two or more members agree to support each other’s bills. loophole - A part of a tax code that allows individuals or businesses to reduce their tax burden. loose constructionism - A judicial philosophy that believes the Constitution should be interpreted in an open way, not limited to things explicitly stated. machine - A very strong party organization that turns favors and patronage into votes. Madisonian Model - A structure of government proposed by James Madison that avoided tyranny by separating power among different branches and building checks and balances into the Constitution. majority leader - (1) In the House, the second-ranking member of the majority party; (2) in the Senate, the highest-ranking member of the majority party. majority opinion - A court opinion that reflects the reasoning of the majority of justices. majority party - In a legislative body, the party with more than half of the seats. majority rule - The idea that the government should act in accordance with the will of the majority of people. malapportionment - An apportionment of seats in Congress that is unfair due to population shifts. mandate - When the federal government requires states to do certain things. mandatory retirement - An employment policy that states that when an employee reaches a certain age, he or she must retire. marble-cake federalism - A term used to describe federalism for most of the twentieth century (and into the twenty-first), where the federal government and the states work closely together and are intertwined; also known as cooperative federalism. markup - When a Congressional committee revises a bill in session. material incentive - The lure of a concrete benefit, usually money, that attracts people to join a group. McCain-Feingold bill - The popular informal name for the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002; it is named after its sponsors, Republican John McCain and Democrat Russell Feingold. McCulloch v. Maryland - A Supreme Court case that granted the federal government extensive power to carry out its enumerated powers. means-testing - Basing benefits from a policy on a person’s wealth so that poor people get more benefits than rich people. media - Information and the organizations that distribute that information to the public. media consolidation - The trend toward a few large corporations owning most of the media outlets in the country. merit system - The practice of hiring and promoting people based on skill. Merit System Protection Board - A board that investigates charges of wrongdoing in the federal civil service. midterm election - A congressional election that does not coincide with a presidential election. military aid - Assistance to other countries designed to strengthen the recipient’s military. military-industrial complex - The alliance of defense contractors, the military, and some members of Congress that promotes a large defense budget in order to profit themselves. minority leader - In both the House and Senate, the leader of the minority party. minority party - In a legislative body, the party with fewer than half of the seats. Miranda v. Arizona - A 1966 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that police must inform suspects of their rights when arrested. mixed economy - An economy that includes elements of the free market and central planning. monarchy - A regime in which all power is held by a single person. monetary policy - An economic policy that seeks to control the supply of money in the economy. monopolistic model - A view of the bureaucracy that says bureaucracies have no incentive to reform or improve performance because they face no competition. Monroe Doctrine - An American policy, set by President James Monroe in 1823, that claims America’s right to intervene in the affairs of Western Hemisphere nations. multiculturalism - The idea that Americans should learn about and respect the many cultural heritages of the people of the United States. multilateralism - The idea that nations should act together to solve problems. multinational corporation - A business that operates in more than one country. multiple-member district - A legislative district that sends more than one person to the legislature. multipolar system - An international system with more than two major powers. nation - A large group of people who are linked by a similar culture, language, and history. national convention - A convention held by a political party every four years to nominate candidates for president and vice president and to ratify the party platform. national debt - Money owed by a government. national interest - Things that will benefit and protect a state. nationalism - A belief in the goodness of one’s nation and a desire to help make the nation stronger and better. National Security Council - A part of the White House Staff that advises the president on security policy. nation-building - The task of creating a national identity through promotion of common culture, language, and history. nation-state - A state that rules over a single nation. Nazism - Political ideology from Germany that stressed the superiority of the German race, authoritarian rule by one party, military expansion, and a longing for a mythical past. necessary and proper clause - A clause at the end of Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution that grants Congress the power to do whatever is necessary and proper to carry out its duties; also known as the elastic clause. necessary evil - Something that is believed to be needed but is not good in and of itself; many Americans see government as a necessary evil. negotiated rule-making - A federal rule-making process that includes those affected by the rules. neoconservatism - A recent development in American conservatism that believes the power of the state should be used to promote conservative goals. New Deal coalition - The supporters of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal; the coalition included labor unions, Catholics, southern whites, and African Americans; helped the Democrats dominate politics from the 1930s until the 1960s. new federalism - An American movement, starting in the 1970s, to return power to state and local governments, thereby decreasing the amount of power held by the federal government. New Jersey Plan - A plan at the constitutional convention that gave each state equal representation in the legislature. nihilism - The belief that in order to remake society, one must first destroy the current society. Nineteenth Amendment - Passed in 1920, it gave women the right to vote. No Child Left Behind Act - A law passed in 2001 that expanded federal funding to schools but required increased testing and accountability. noneconomic group - An interest group that works on noneconomic issues; also called a citizens’ group. nongovernmental actor - A participant in the international arena that is not part of a government; such participants include nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and international organizations. nongovernmental organization - A political actor that is not affiliated with a particular government. Many NGOs are nonprofit institutions run by private citizens, such as the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Catholic Church. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - An international treaty, signed in 1968, that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. objective reporting - Reporting only the facts with no opinion or bias. office-block ballot - A ballot that groups candidates by office: All candidates for an office are listed together; also called the Massachusetts ballot. Office of Personnel Management - The central federal personnel office, created in 1978. oligarchy - Rule by the wealthy few. ombudsperson - A person who investigates complaints against government agencies or employees. open primary - A primary in which a person can participate in any party’s primary as long as he or she participates in only one party’s primary. open rule - A rule on a bill, issued by the House Rules Committee, allowing amendments during floor debate. opinion - A document issued by a court explaining the reasons for its decision. opinion leader - A person whose opinion can shape the opinions of many others. original intent - A judicial philosophy that states that judges should seek to interpret the law and the constitution in line with the intent of the founders. original jurisdiction - The authority to be the first court to hear a case. outside game - A term used to describe grassroots activism and other means to influence elections and policymaking. overregulation - An excess of regulation that hurts efficiency. oversight - Congress’s power to make sure laws are being properly enforced. pack journalism - The idea that journalists frequently copy and imitate each other rather than doing independent reporting. paradox of participation - When many people vote because they wish to make a difference, but the actual chances of making a difference are infinitesimally small. pardon - A release from punishment for criminal conviction; the president has the power to pardon. parliamentary democracy - A regime in which the legislature chooses the executive branch. partisan journalism - Journalism that advances the viewpoint of a political party. party activist - A person who is deeply involved with a party; usually more ideologically extreme than an average party voter. party-centered politics - Campaigns and politics that focus on party labels and platforms. party-column ballot - A ballot that groups candidates by party; also called the Indiana ballot. party identification - Feeling connected to a political party. party in government - The role and function of parties in government, particularly in Congress. party in the electorate - Party identification among voters. party organization - The formal structure and leadership of a political party. party platform - The collection of issue positions endorsed by a political party. party reform - Measures aimed at opening up party leadership adopted by the major parties following the 1968 election. patronage - Government jobs and contracts given out to political allies in exchange for support. Pendleton Act - Another name for the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. per curiam - An unsigned decision issued by an appellate court; it reaffirms the lower court’s ruling. pigeonholing - The ability of a committee to kill a bill by setting it aside and not acting on it. Plessy v. Ferguson - The Supreme Court case of 1896 that upheld a Louisiana law segregating passengers on trains; it created the separate but equal doctrine. pluralism - The view that society contains numerous centers of power and many people participate in making decisions for society. plurality - More votes than any other candidate but not a majority. plurality opinion - An opinion written by the majority of justices on the winning side. pocket veto - An unusual type of presidential veto: When the president neither signs nor vetoes a bill, after ten days the bill dies if Congress is not in session. political action committee - An organization, usually allied with an interest group, that can donate money to political campaigns. political appointees - Federal bureaucrats appointed by the president, often to reward loyalty. political culture - The set of beliefs, values, shared myths, and notions of a good polity that a group of people hold. political economy - The study of how politics and economics interact. political efficacy - The belief that the government listens to normal people and that participation can make a difference in government. political equality - Treating everyone the same way in the realm of politics. political participation - Engaging in actions to achieve political goals. political party - An alliance of like-minded people who work together to win elections and control of the government. political science - The systematic, rigorous study of politics. political socialization - The process by which political culture is passed on to the young. politics - The process by which government decisions are made. polling - Assessing public opinion by asking people what they think and feel. pollster - A person who conducts polls. poll tax - A fee for voting, designed to keep blacks and other poor people from voting. popular sovereignty - A regime in which the government must respond to the wishes of the people. Populists - A political movement in the late nineteenth century that fought on behalf of the poor workers and farmers; fused with the Democratic Party in 1896. pork - Money spent by Congress for local projects that are not strictly necessary and are designed to funnel money into a district. poverty line - The federal standard for poverty: Anyone below a certain income level is considered poor. power - The ability to get others to do what you want. power of the purse - The ability of Congress to spend money; all federal expenditures must be authorized by Congress. precedent - A court ruling bearing on subsequent court cases. preemption - The practice of the national government overriding state and local laws in the name of the national interest. Presidential Commission - A body that advises the president on some problem, making recommendations; some are temporary, whereas others are permanent. presidential democracy - A regime in which the president and the legislators must be entirely separate. president pro tempore - In the vice president’s absence, the presiding officer of the Senate. primary election - An election within a party to choose the party’s nominee for the office. print media - Media distributed via printed materials. prior restraint - Stopping free expression before it happens. private bill - A bill that offers benefit or relief to a single person, named in the bill. private good - A good that benefits only some people, such as members of a group. privatization - The practice of private companies providing government services. privileges and immunities clause - Part of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids state governments from taking away any of the privileges and immunities of American citizenship. probability sample - A sampling technique in which each member of the population has a known chance of being chosen for the sample. professional legislature - A state legislature that meets in session for long periods, pays its members well, and hires large support staffs for legislators. progressive taxes - A taxation system in which the rich must pay a higher percentage of their income than the poor. prohibited powers - The powers specifically denied to the national government by the Constitution. project grants - Categorical grant programs in which states submit proposals for projects to the federal government and the national government chooses which to fund on a competitive basis. proportional representation - An electoral system in which each party gets a number of seats in the legislature proportionate to its percentage of the vote. prospective voting - Making a vote choice by looking to the future: Voters choose the candidate(s) they believe will help the country the most in the next few years. proxy war - A war fought by third parties rather than by the enemy states themselves. public administration - The task of running the government, and providing services through policy implementation. public assistance - Another term for welfare. public education - Informing the public about key issues and about what Congress is doing about those issues. public good - A good that benefits everyone, not just some; also called collective good. public opinion - The basic attitudes and opinions of the general public. public policy - Any rule, plan, or action pertaining to issues of domestic national importance. public representative role - The role of the media to act as a representative of the public, holding government officials accountable to the people. purposive incentive - The lure of a desire to promote a cause. rally ’round the flag effect - A significant boost in presidential popularity when a foreign crisis arises. random selection - A sampling technique to ensure that each person in the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample. ranking member - The senior committee member from the minority party. ratings game - The practice of organizations rating members of Congress based on votes that matter to the organizations and their members. rational choice theory - An approach that assumes people act rationally in their self-interest, seeking to maximize value. rationalism - The belief that human reason can find solutions to many of our problems. realignment - A dramatic shift in the balance of the two parties that changes the key issues dividing the parties. realism - A theory of international relations that stresses the importance of power (particularly military power) and claims that states act in their national interest. reapportionment - The process of reallocating representation in the House of Representatives after a census; some states will gain seats, while other will lose them. recession - An economic downturn; milder than a depression. redistributive policy - A government action that takes money from one part of the citizenry and gives it to another part; usually the transfer goes from the well-off to the poor; also known as income transfer. redistricting - Redrawing district boundaries after a state loses or gains seats in the House of Representatives. regime - A word used to describe a particular government. regressive taxes - A taxation system that costs the poor a larger portion of their income than it does the rich because the amount of tax gets smaller as the amount to which the tax is applied gets larger. regulated federalism - The practice of the national government imposing standards and regulations on state governments. regulatory policy - Government policies that limit what businesses can do; examples include minimum wages, workplace safety measures, and careful monitoring of stock sales. remand - Sending a case back to a lower court for a new trial or proceeding. rent voucher - A voucher issued by the government that can be used to pay all or part of a poor person’s rent. representative democracy - A system of government in which the people elect officials to represent their interests in the government. representative sample - A sample that resembles the population as a whole. reprieve - A formal postponement of the execution of a criminal sentence; the president has the power to grant reprieves. republic - A regime that runs by representative democracy. reregulation - Significantly changing government regulations on an industry. reserved powers - The powers reserved to the states and the people in the Tenth Amendment. responsible party - A party that is strong enough to carry out a specific platform if elected to office. retention election - A state election, held in states using the merit plan for selecting judges, in which voters are asked whether a judge should keep his or her job. retrospective voting - Making a vote choice by looking to the past: Voters support incumbents if they feel that the country has done well over the past few years. revenue agency - A government agency that raises money by collecting taxes or fees. revenue sharing - The practice of the federal government giving money to the states with no strings attached; started by the Nixon Administration and ended by the Reagan Administration. reverse - When a court overturns a lower court’s ruling, declaring it void. reverse discrimination - Discrimination against majority-status people due to affirmative action policies. revolution - A major event causing a fundamental change in a state. rider - An amendment attached to a bill that has nothing to do with the bill itself. right of rebuttal - A media regulation that requires broadcasters to give people an opportunity to reply to criticisms aired on the outlet. rights of the minority - Rights held by the minority that must be respected by the majority. Roe v. Wade - A 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion during the first trimester. rogue state - A state that does not follow international law or unspoken rules of the global arena. roll-call vote - Occurs when each member’s vote is recorded. rugged individualism - A form of individualism that emphasizes self-reliance and ignoring what others want and think. rule-making - The bureaucratic function of creating rules needed to implement policy. rule of four - An informal rule in the Supreme Court: Four justices must agree to hear a case for the Court to issue a writ of certiorari. sample - A group of people who are used to stand in for the whole population in a poll. sampling error - Mistakes in polls caused by bad samples. school vouchers - Government money given to parents to help pay for tuition at private schools. Second Continental Congress - The governing body over the colonies during the revolution that drafted the Articles of Confederation to create the first national government. selective incentives - The lure of benefits that only group members will receive. selective incorporation - Forcing states to abide by only parts of the Bill of Rights, not the whole thing. self-selected candidate - A person who chooses to run for office on his or her own initiative. senatorial courtesy - A tradition in which a Senator, if he or she is of the president’s party, gets input into nominees for federal judgeships in his or her state. separation of powers - Dividing up governmental power among several branches. sexual harassment - Unwanted and inappropriate physical or verbal conduct of a sexual nature that interferes with doing one’s job or creates a hostile work environment. Shays’ Rebellion - A 1786 uprising of Massachusetts farmers against high taxes and debt. signing message - A message attached to a bill the president signs, explaining his or her understanding of the bill. single-member district - A legislative district that sends only one person to the legislature. skewed sample - A sample that is not representative and leads to inaccurate polling results; a deceptive practice used to manipulate public opinion. slander - Publicly stating things that the speaker knows to be untrue that hurt a person’s reputation. social capital - Mutual trust and habits of cooperation that are acquired by people through involvement in community organizations and volunteer groups. socialism - Political view that the free market breeds servitude and inequality and should be abolished. social security - A social insurance program that aims to keep retired people and the disabled out of poverty. sociological representation - A type of representation in which the representative resembles the constituents in ethnic, religious, racial, social, or educational ways. soft money - Unregulated money raised by parties and spent to influence elections indirectly; banned by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. solicitor general - A high-ranking Justice Department official who submits requests for writs of certiorari to the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government; he or she also usually argues cases for the government in front the Court. solidarity incentive - The lure of a social benefit, such as friendship, gained by members of an organization. sovereignty - The right to exercise political power in a territory. Speaker of the House - The leader of the House of Representatives, elected by the majority party. special district - A type of local government designed to meet a very specific need. special election - An election to replace a member of Congress who leaves office in between regular elections. specialization - The practice of a group or person becoming extremely knowledgeable and skilled at one specific task. splinter party - A third party formed when a faction from a major party breaks off and forms its own party. split-ticket voting - Voting for candidates from one party for some offices and from the other party for other offices. spoiler - A losing candidate who costs another candidate the election. spoils system - The practice of an elected officials rewarding supporters and allies by giving them government jobs. staffer - A person who works for Congress in a supporting capacity. standard operating procedure - A set of rules established in a bureaucracy that dictate how workers respond to different situations so that all workers respond in the same way. stare decisis - The legal doctrine of following precedent. state - A political unit that has sovereign power over a particular piece of land. statecraft - The exercise of power, guided by wisdom, in pursuit of the public good. State of the Union address - A constitutionally mandated message, given by the president to Congress, in which the president lays out plans for the coming year. statute - A law passed by Congress, a state legislature, or some other government body. stewardship theory - A view of presidential power, put forward by Theodore Roosevelt, arguing that the president is uniquely suited to act for the well-being of the whole nation because he or she is elected by the whole nation. straight-ticket voting - Voting for only candidates from one party. strict constructionism - A judicial philosophy that argues that constitutional interpretation should be limited to the specific wording of the document. subnationalism - Identification with small ethnic and regional groups within a nation. suffrage - The right to vote; also called the franchise. sunset provisions - Expiration dates written into some federal programs; Congress can renew the program if it is satisfied that the program is achieving its objectives. sunshine laws - Laws that require government agencies to hold public proceedings on a regular basis. superdelegate - A party leader or elected official who is automatically granted delegate status for the national convention; superdelegates do not have to be chosen in primaries. Super Tuesday - A term used to describe primary elections held in a large number of states on the same day. Supplemental Security Income - A federal program that provides a minimum income to seniors and the disabled who do not qualify for social security. supply-side economics - An attempt to improve the economy by providing big tax cuts to businesses and wealthy individuals (the supply side). These cuts encourage investment, which then creates jobs, so the effect will be felt throughout the economy; also known as trickle-down economics. supremacy clause - The part of Article VI of the Constitution that specifies that the federal Constitution, and laws passed by the federal government, are the supreme law of the land. supremacy doctrine - The doctrine that national law takes priority over state law; included in the Constitution as the supremacy clause. surplus - When a government spends less money than it takes in. symbolic speech - Actions that are intended to convey a belief. system of government - How power is distributed among different parts and levels of the state. talk radio - A radio format featuring a host who interviews guests that is often very partisan. tax credit - A reduction in one’s tax burden designed to help certain people. Temporary Assistance to Need Families - A federal welfare program that provides money to poor families. term limits - Limits on the number of terms an elected official can serve. terrorism - The use of violent tactics with the aim of creating fear and destabilizing a government; frequently targets civilians. third party - In American politics, any political party other than the Democrats and Republicans. Three-Fifths Compromise - A compromise on how to count slaves for determining population; slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person. totalitarian government - A regime in which the government controls every facet of life. total war - A highly destructive total war in which combatants use every resource available to destroy the social fabric of the enemy. transnational - Something that lies beyond the boundaries of a nation-state or consists of several nation-states. trickle-down economics - An attempt to improve the economy by providing big tax cuts to businesses and wealthy individuals (the supply side). These cuts encourage investment, which then creates jobs, so the effect will be felt throughout the economy; also known as supply-side economics. trustee representation - A type of representation in which the people choose a representative whose judgment and experience they trust. The representative votes for what he or she thinks is right, regardless of the opinions of the constituents. tyranny of the majority - When the majority violate the rights of the minority. unconventional participation - Political activity that, although legal, is not considered appropriate by many people; it includes demonstrations, boycotts, and protests. underemployment - When people who seek work can only find part-time jobs. unemployment - When not everyone who wants a job can find one. unfunded mandate - A mandate for which the federal government gives the states no money. unilateral - A state acting alone in the global arena. unipolar - An international system with a single superpower dominating other states. unitary system - A system of government where power is concentrated in the hands of the central government. unity - The idea that people overwhelmingly support the government and share certain common beliefs even if they disagree about particular policies. user fee - A fee charged by the government to do certain things (e.g., paying a toll to use a tunnel). veto - The power of the president to stop a bill passed by Congress from becoming law. veto message - A message written by the president, attached to a bill he or she has vetoed, which explains the reasons for the veto. Virginia Plan - A plan at the constitutional convention to base representation in the legislature on population. voter turnout - The percentage of citizens who vote in an election. voting behavior - A term used to describe the motives and factors that shape voters’ choices. Voting Rights Act - A law passed in 1965 that banned discrimination in voter registration requirements. War Powers Resolution - Passed by Congress in 1973, the War Powers Resolution demands that the president consult with Congress when sending troops into action; it also gives Congress the power to force withdrawal of troops. Washington community - The “inside the beltway” group that closely follows politics and constantly evaluates the relative power of politicians. watchdog journalism - Journalism that attempts to hold government officials and institutions accountable for their actions. Weberian model - The model of bureaucracy developed by sociologist Max Weber that characterizes bureaucracy as a rational and efficient means of organizing a large group of people. welfare - The term for the set of policies designed to help those in economic need. welfare state - The term to describe the government or country that provides aid to the poor and help to the unemployed. whip - A member of the leadership of a legislative body responsible for counting votes and connecting the leadership with the rank and file. whistleblower - A person who reports wrongdoing in a government agency. White House staff - The people with whom the president works every day. white primary - The practice of political parties only allowing whites to participate in their primaries. winner take all - An electoral system in which the person with the most votes wins everything (and everyone else loses); most states have winner-take-all systems for determining electoral votes. writ of certiorari - The legal document, issued by the Supreme Court, that orders a lower court to send a case to the Supreme Court for review. writ of habeas corpus - A court order requiring that the government show cause for detaining someone and charge him or her with a crime. yellow journalism - Journalism that focuses on shocking and sordid stories to sell newspapers.	i don't know

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.