text:
Counterfactual definiteness

In quantum mechanics, counterfactual definiteness (CFD) is the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed (i.e., the ability to assume the existence of objects, and properties of objects, even when they have not been measured). The term "counterfactual definiteness" is used in discussions of physics calculations, especially those related to the phenomenon called quantum entanglement and those related to the Bell inequalities. In such discussions "meaningfully" means the ability to treat these unmeasured results on an equal footing with measured results in statistical calculations. It is this (sometimes assumed but unstated) aspect of counterfactual definiteness that is of direct relevance to physics and mathematical models of physical systems and not philosophical concerns regarding the meaning of unmeasured results.

Overview
The subject of counterfactual definiteness receives attention in the study of quantum mechanics because it is argued that, when challenged by the findings of quantum mechanics, classical physics must give up its claim to one of three assumptions: locality (no "spooky action at a distance"), no-conspiracy (called also "asymmetry of time"), or counterfactual definiteness (or "non-contextuality").

If physics gives up the claim to locality, it brings into question our ordinary ideas about causality and suggests that events may transpire at faster-than-light speeds.

If physics gives up the "no conspiracy" condition, it becomes possible for "nature to force experimenters to measure what she wants, and when she wants, hiding whatever she does not like physicists to see."

If physics rejects the possibility that, in all cases, there can be "counterfactual definiteness," then it rejects some features that humans are very much accustomed to regarding as enduring features of the universe. "The elements of reality the EPR paper is talking about are nothing but what the property interpretation calls properties existing independently of the measurements. In each run of the experiment, there exist some elements of reality, the system has particular properties < #ai > which unambiguously determine the measurement outcome < ai >, given that the corresponding measurement a is performed."

As a noun, "counterfactual" may refer to an inferred effect or consequence of an unobserved macroscopic event. An example is counterfactual quantum computation.

Theoretical considerations
An interpretation of quantum mechanics can be said to involve the use of counterfactual definiteness if it includes in the mathematical modelling outcomes of measurements that are counterfactual; in particular, those that are excluded according to quantum mechanics by the fact that quantum mechanics does not contain a description of simultaneous measurement of conjugate pairs of properties.

For example, the uncertainty principle states that one cannot simultaneously know, with arbitrarily high precision, both the position and momentum of a particle. Suppose one measures the position of a particle. This act destroys any information about its momentum. Is it then possible to talk about the outcome that one would have obtained if one had measured its momentum instead of its position? In terms of mathematical formalism, is such a counterfactual momentum measurement to be included, together with the factual position measurement, in the statistical population of possible outcomes describing the particle? If the position were found to be r0 then in an interpretation that permits counterfactual definiteness, the statistical population describing position and momentum would contain all pairs (r0,p) for every possible momentum value p, whereas an interpretation that rejects counterfactual values completely would only have the pair (r0,⊥) where ⊥ (called "up tack" or "eet") denotes an undefined value. To use a macroscopic analogy, an interpretation which rejects counterfactual definiteness views measuring the position as akin to asking where in a room a person is located, while measuring the momentum is akin to asking whether the person's lap is empty or has something on it. If the person's position has changed by making him or her stand rather than sit, then that person has no lap and neither the statement "the person's lap is empty" nor "there is something on the person's lap" is true. Any statistical calculation based on values where the person is standing at some place in the room and simultaneously has a lap as if sitting would be meaningless.

The dependability of counterfactually definite values is a basic assumption, which, together with "time asymmetry" and "local causality" led to the Bell inequalities. Bell showed that the results of experiments intended to test the idea of hidden variables would be predicted to fall within certain limits based on all three of these assumptions, which are considered principles fundamental to classical physics, but that the results found within those limits would be inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanical theory. Experiments have shown that quantum mechanical results predictably exceed those classical limits. Calculating expectations based on Bell's work implies that for quantum physics the assumption of "local realism" must be abandoned. Bell's theorem proves that every type of quantum theory must necessarily violate locality or reject the possibility of extending the mathematical description with outcomes of measurements which were not actually made.

Counterfactual definiteness is present in any interpretation of quantum mechanics that allows quantum mechanical measurement outcomes to be seen as deterministic functions of a system's state or of the state of the combined system and measurement apparatus. Cramer's (1986) transactional interpretation does not make that interpretation.

Copenhagen interpretation
The traditional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics rejects counterfactual definiteness as it does not ascribe any value at all to a measurement that was not performed. When measurements are performed, values result, but these are not considered to be revelations of pre-existing values. In the words of Asher Peres "unperformed experiments have no results".

Many worlds
The many-worlds interpretation rejects counterfactual definiteness in a different sense; instead of not assigning a value to measurements that were not performed, it ascribes many values. When measurements are performed each of these values gets realized as the resulting value in a different world of a branching reality. As Prof. Guy Blaylock of the University of Massachusetts Amherst puts it, "The many-worlds interpretation is not only counterfactually indefinite, it is factually indefinite as well."

Consistent histories
The consistent histories approach rejects counterfactual definiteness in yet another manner; it ascribes single but hidden values to unperformed measurements and disallows combining values of incompatible measurements (counterfactual or factual) as such combinations do not produce results that would match any obtained purely from performed compatible measurements. When a measurement is performed the hidden value is nevertheless realized as the resulting value. Robert Griffiths likens these to "slips of paper" placed in "opaque envelopes". Thus Consistent Histories does not reject counterfactual results per se, it rejects them only when they are being combined with incompatible results. Whereas in the Copenhagen interpretation or the Many Worlds interpretation, the algebraic operations to derive Bell's inequality cannot proceed due to having no value or many values where a single value is required, in Consistent Histories, they can be performed but the resulting correlation coefficients can not be equated with those that would be obtained by actual measurements (which are instead given by the rules of quantum mechanical formalism). The derivation combines incompatible results only some of which could be factual for a given experiment and the rest counterfactual.

title: Counterfactual definiteness


text:
Mick Fleetwood

Michael John Kells Fleetwood (born 24 June 1947) is a British musician, songwriter and actor. He is the drummer, co-founder, and leader of the rock band Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood, whose surname was merged with that of the group's bassist John "Mac" McVie (the only two members to appear on every studio album during the band's run) to form the name of the band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Fleetwood Mac in 1998.

Born in Redruth, Cornwall, Fleetwood lived in Egypt and Norway for much of his childhood. Choosing to follow his musical interests, Fleetwood travelled to London at the age of 15, eventually forming the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Bob Brunning. After several album releases and line-up changes, the group moved to the United States in 1974. Fleetwood then invited Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join. Buckingham and Nicks contributed to much of Fleetwood Mac's later commercial success, including the celebrated album Rumours, while Fleetwood's own determination to keep the band together was essential to the band's longevity. Fleetwood has also enjoyed a solo career, published written works, and flirted briefly with acting.

Early life
Michael John Kells Fleetwood was born in Redruth, Cornwall, second child to John Joseph Kells Fleetwood and Bridget Maureen (née Brereton) Fleetwood. His elder sister, actress Susan Fleetwood, died of cancer in 1995. In early childhood, Fleetwood and his family followed his father, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, to Egypt. Six years later, they moved to Norway where his father was deployed by NATO. He attended school there and became fluent in Norwegian.

Biographer Cath Carroll describes the young Fleetwood as "a dreamer, an empathetic youth" who, though intelligent, did not excel academically. According to his own autobiography, Fleetwood had an extremely difficult and trying time academically at the English boarding schools he attended, including King's School at Sherborne House in Gloucestershire and Wynstones School in Gloucestershire. He performed poorly on exams, which he attributed to his inability to memorise facts. He nevertheless enjoyed acting during school, often in drag, and was a competent fencer. At 6ft 6in tall, he was an imposing figure, and sported a beard and long hair for much of his life. "Mick was very aristocratic," recalls Ken Caillat, a sound engineer on Rumours. "The way he formed sentences was impeccable. When he spoke, everyone stopped and listened. He was quiet and wise, and he had a great sense of humour. He loved to laugh, but he was also a straight shooter."

Abandoning academic pursuits, Fleetwood took up the drums after his parents, recognising that he might find a future in music, bought him a "Gigster" drum kit when he was thirteen. His family encouraged his artistic side, as his father composed poetry and was an amateur drummer himself. Fleetwood was inspired—as he said at the Brits Awards ceremony in 1989—by Cliff Richard, Tony Meehan (drummer of the Shadows), and The Everly Brothers. With his parents' support, he dropped out of school at 15 and, in 1963, moved to London to pursue a career as a drummer. At first, he stayed with his younger sister Sally in Notting Hill. After a brief stint working at Liberty in London, he found his first opportunity in music.

Early efforts in London
Keyboard player Peter Bardens lived only a few doors away from Fleetwood's first home in London, and upon hearing of the proximity of an available drummer, Bardens gave Fleetwood his first gig in Bardens' band the Cheynes in July 1963, thus seeding the young drummer's musical career. It would take him from the Cheynes—with whom he supported early gigs by the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds—to stints in the Bo Street Runners, where he replaced original drummer Nigel Hutchinson, who had enjoyed brief television fame on Ready Steady Go!. However, by April 1965, when Fleetwood joined the band, it was fading into obscurity. By February 1966, Bardens, who had left the group, called on Fleetwood to join his new band, the Peter Bs, which soon expanded to become Shotgun Express (with Rod Stewart). Peter Green, who was a guitarist in the Peter Bs, left to  join John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, followed  by  Fleetwood in April 1967. Mayall’s new band already featured John McVie.

Green became a supportive bandmate who helped Fleetwood in his early experimentation with the drum kit. Fleetwood was, however, dismissed from the Bluesbreakers for repeated insobriety during gigs. Both Fleetwood and McVie were heavy drinkers, and their combined efforts were too much for Mayall and the band to cope with. Green, feeling trapped within the Bluesbreakers, also left in June 1967. Recalling "his favourite rhythm section, 'Fleetwood Mac'"—Mick Fleetwood and John McVie—Green elected to invite both to join him in his new band, Fleetwood Mac. Though McVie hesitated briefly due to financial reasons, both joined Green by the summer of 1967 with a record contract on the horizon.

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac
The initial incarnation of Fleetwood Mac performed its first gig in August 1967 at the seventh annual Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival, playing a Chicago-style blues. McVie, initially hesitant to commit, was later prompted to leave the Bluesbreakers and join Fleetwood Mac full-time when the former adopted a horns section with which he disagreed. He replaced the initial bassist, Bob Brunning. McVie, Fleetwood, Green and guitarist Jeremy Spencer thus formed the first fixed line-up of Fleetwood Mac.

The band's first album, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, was released in 1968, and the band toured the United States for the first time, though Green was reluctant to do so for fear of gun crime. Upon their return, they recorded a second album, Mr. Wonderful under simply "Fleetwood Mac" with Green's name dropped. A guest musician on the album, Christine Perfect, became close with the group and she and McVie were married in 1968. A third guitarist, Danny Kirwan, was also added to the line-up. Despite the success of their third album, Then Play On, and a string of hit singles including "Albatross" and "Man of the World", Green himself drifted away from the band, struggling both creatively and with increasing use of LSD.

1970–1973
Fleetwood remained a consistent presence in the ever-changing line-up of the group following the departure of Green in May 1970, when Spencer and Kirwan assumed more central roles in the group's song-writing. In September 1970 the release of Kiln House saw a line-up of Spencer, Kirwan, John McVie and Fleetwood, with Christine McVie providing keyboards and backing vocals. Fleetwood, "a social creature who prized community and communication", was particularly taken with the group's new living arrangements: they moved into a large Victoria-era mansion near Headley, Hampshire.

By early 1971, with Christine McVie becoming an official member of the band, Fleetwood and the group boarded a plane to San Francisco. Spencer, fearful following the recent 1971 San Fernando earthquake, reluctantly boarded the plane. He left the hotel abruptly one afternoon and disappeared. He was found several days later to have joined Family International, then known as Children of God, a religious group. Once more, Fleetwood attempted to mediate; however, Spencer would not return. Bob Welch would become their next member. Their next album, Future Games, was released later that year. Bare Trees came a year later, in 1972. During the subsequent tours to promote the latter, Fleetwood once more adopted the role of mediator. Kirwan's self-destructive personality and problems with alcohol culminated in a refusal to go on stage before one concert; Fleetwood himself made the decision to fire the band member. Furthermore, there were early signs of strife in the marriage of John and Christine McVie. Fleetwood again stepped in to mediate between the two members, talking Christine out of a decision to leave the group. The band added guitarist Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker, formerly of Savoy Brown and the Idle Race. The resulting turmoil, however, negatively affected their next album, Penguin, released in 1973 to poor reviews. Walker was subsequently asked to leave the group, and the next album Mystery to Me was received more warmly.

In October 1973, Fleetwood instructed Weston—who had engaged in an affair with Fleetwood's wife—to leave Fleetwood Mac. Meanwhile, manager Clifford Davis began to lead a separate group of musicians under the name 'Fleetwood Mac', and his increasing legal assault on the original group pushed Fleetwood and his fellow band members to consider managing themselves. Fleetwood took on more managerial responsibility and leadership over the group.

Heroes Are Hard to Find, Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
In 1974, the band moved to Los Angeles, where they recorded the album Heroes Are Hard to Find. By November 1974, Bob Welch had left the band. Meanwhile, Fleetwood was planning a follow-up album to Heroes Are Hard to Find – Welch's last with the group – which had charted at #34 in the US. Fleetwood was shopping with his children when a chance encounter with an old friend led him to visit Sound City and producer Keith Olsen. While at the studio, Olsen played samples from an album entitled Buckingham Nicks. Fleetwood immediately "was in awe". On New Year's Eve, 1974, Fleetwood contacted Olsen to advise him that their planned project was on hiatus after Welch's departure, however, he then suggested that Nicks and Buckingham join Fleetwood Mac. The group ate together with Nicks and Fleetwood at a local restaurant before practising together for the first time in the new studio.

The next year, the new line-up released Fleetwood Mac. The album proved to be a breakthrough for the band and became a huge hit, reaching No.1 in the US and selling over five million copies. Fleetwood and Olsen collaborated on a number of drumming innovations. "It was all about 'plastic puke.' First off, for the kick drum I had Mick use a real skin, not a plastic head. All the bass drum sounds had snap and rack and warmth, but the snare drum on the whole album was a plastic puke." The album had reached No. 1 come November 1976, and at this time Fleetwood Mac became self-managing, with Fleetwood himself arguing that an external manager would be less apt at holding together such a group of dynamic personalities. He put forward an idea of promising to reimburse any losses suffered by promoters should they occur, in an attempt to raise the group's profile and earn more contracts and gigs. "Self-management was the right decision," remembered freelance Rolling Stone writer John Grissim. "Mick Fleetwood had great leadership skills ... had a great deal of experience—nine years. They were business-like, they always delivered the product and had the right lawyers and accountants for the job. They didn't need what Van Morrison called 'pressure mongers,'... they just needed to get on and make a really good album." Ken Caillat, sound engineer on Rumours, concurred that Fleetwood "had superb intuition and a flair for taking risks".

Like many musicians during the 1970s in Los Angeles, Fleetwood Mac began using copious amounts of cocaine. Fleetwood would go on to recollect in his autobiography that "Until then, Fleetwood Mac hadn't had much experience with this Andean rocket fuel. Now we discovered that a toot now and then relieved the boredom of long hours in the studio with little nourishment." The personal relationships between the band members were becoming frayed. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced in August 1976, ending nearly eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks also fought often, a fact that was revealed to fans by Rolling Stone in April 1976. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. At the same time, Christine McVie and Nicks became closer. Fleetwood, meanwhile, began searching for a new recording location, and landed on the Record Plant of Sausalito, California. Grissim, working for Rolling Stone, frequently met with the group and took a particular liking to Fleetwood, whom he described as "a real pro."

Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant February 1976 with hired engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Despite his talent at keeping the group together, the recording of Rumours was fraught with emotional turmoil due to the collapsing relationships within the line-up. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, when the band jammed, recalled that "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording". Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's groove. After the final mastering stage and hearing the songs back-to-back, the band members sensed they had recorded something "pretty powerful".

Rumours was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number one record. It stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 31 non-consecutive weeks, while also reaching number one in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The album was certified platinum in America and the UK within months of release after one million units and 300,000 units were shipped respectively. The band and co-producers Caillat and Dashut, would go on to win the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. By March, the album had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including over eight million in the US alone.

Tusk, experimentation
Tusk, Fleetwood Mac's 12th studio album, was released in 1979. The work represented a more experimental direction taken by Buckingham. Fleetwood, recently diagnosed as having diabetes after suffering recurring bouts of hypoglycaemia during several live shows, was again instrumental in maintaining the band's cohesion. He placated Buckingham over feelings of creative claustrophobia and discomfort playing alongside Nicks. On the issue of Buckingham taking creative control away from the other members of the group for the creation of Tusk, Fleetwood recounts that his three-day discussion with Buckingham culminated in him telling the latter that "if it's good, then go ahead." Though the nature of the album strained relationships again within the band—particularly John McVie, a long-established blues musician who disliked the experimental nature of the album—Fleetwood himself rates the album as his favourite by Fleetwood Mac, and cites the freedom of creative expression allotted to each band member as integral to the survival of the group. The album sold four million copies worldwide, a return noticeably poorer than Rumours. Though Buckingham was blamed by the record labels, Fleetwood linked the album's relative failure to the RKO radio chain playing the album in its entirety prior to release, thus allowing mass home taping.

Later career
Fleetwood has also led a number of side projects. 1981's The Visitor produced by Richard Dashut, featured heavy African stylistics and a rerecording of "Rattlesnake Shake" with Peter Green.

In 1983, Fleetwood formed Mick Fleetwood's Zoo and recorded I'm Not Me. The album featured a minor hit, "I Want You Back", and a cover version of the Beach Boys' "Angel Come Home". A later version of the group featured Bekka Bramlett on vocals and recorded 1991's Shaking the Cage. Fleetwood released Something Big in 2004 with the Mick Fleetwood Band, and his most recent album is Blue Again!, appearing in October 2008 with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band touring to support it, interspersed with the Unleashed tour of Fleetwood Mac.

Fleetwood has played drums on many of his bandmates' solo records, including Law and Order, where he played on the album's biggest hit, "Trouble". Other albums include French Kiss, Three Hearts, The Wild Heart, Christine McVie, Try Me, Under the Skin, Gift of Screws, and In Your Dreams. In 2007 he was featured on drums for the song "God" along with Jack's Mannequin in the Pop album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, a collection of covers of John Lennon songs.

Fleetwood co-authored Fleetwood—My Life and Adventures with Fleetwood Mac with writer Stephen Davis. The book was published in 1990. In the book, he discussed his experiences with other musicians including Eric Clapton, members of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, as well as the affair with Stevie Nicks and his addiction to cocaine and his personal bankruptcy. Reception was mixed. Robert Waddell of the New York Times described the piece as "a blithe, slapdash memoir." The Los Angeles Times's Steve Hochman noted that "Fleetwood tells the story as if he was sitting in your living room, which is good for the intimacy of the tale, but bad for the rambling, sometimes redundant telling." Hochman did acknowledge that Fleetwood was "one of rock's more colorful characters."

Fleetwood has a secondary career as a TV and film actor, usually in minor parts. His roles in this field have included a leader of the Resistance in The Running Man (1987), and as a guest alien in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Manhunt" (1989).

Fleetwood co-hosted the 1989 BRIT Awards, which contained numerous gaffes and flubbed lines. In the wake of this public mishap, the BRIT Awards were pre-recorded for the next 18 years until 2007; the awards are now again broadcast live to the British public.

In 1998, Fleetwood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac.

As of March 2021, Fleetwood had been a member of Fleetwood Mac for 53 years and was the only band member who had been in the band for its entire history.

Playing style
Fleetwood was a self-taught drummer from his early childhood, after moving from a lacklustre academic performance at school to a love of music encouraged by his family, who bought him his first drum kit. His first years were heavily influenced by Tony Meehan and The Everly Brothers, and during his formative years in London during the late 1960s, Green helped Fleetwood through bouts of "rhythmic dyslexia" during live performances when Fleetwood panicked and lost the beat. He often sang filled pauses along to songs to help keep the beat. Green also instilled in Fleetwood an ability to follow and predict the lead guitarist, enabling him to meet the guitar with the drum rhythm as well as allowing him to know a good guitarist when he saw one—which would in part lead him later in his career to select Lindsey Buckingham.

Bob Brunning recalled from his early involvement with Fleetwood Mac that Fleetwood was "very open to playing with different people as long as he didn't have to change his style. He was, and is, a completely straightforward drummer, and it works with a lot of different styles. I don't s'pose [sic] he's played a traditional drum solo in his life!" Biographer Carroll highlights this ability as integral to the success of Fleetwood Mac, arguing that Fleetwood was not a virtuoso, but his disciplined and in-distractable manner of play allowed him to hold together a band of strong leading personalities without impinging upon their expression.

Caillat, in contrast, cites Fleetwood as "still one of the most amazing drummers I've ever met. He had his rack of tom drums arranged back to front. Most drummers place them from high to low (in pitch) from their left to right, but Mick chose to place his mid, high, low. I think perhaps this helped him develop his unique style. He hit his drums very hard, except for his kick drum. For some reason, when he played his high hat, it distracted him. He would keep perfect beat with his kick, but he played it so softly that we could hear his mouth noises through his kick mic."

Personal life
Fleetwood has been married to three women and has four children.

In the 1960s, Fleetwood became infatuated with model Jenny Boyd, the sister of Pattie Boyd, who would be wife to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton. In June 1970, Fleetwood and Jenny Boyd were married. In the mid-1970s, Fleetwood discovered that Boyd was having an affair with band member Weston. Fleetwood, after wrestling with the idea of leaving the band, was later critical of his own role in "neglecting" his family. Fleetwood and Boyd divorced in 1976. Fleetwood travelled to Zambia to convalesce, with Christine McVie—who was also suffering marital problems—travelling with him for part of the journey.

Boyd and Fleetwood began living together once more in 1976, and temporarily remarried to help their children emigrate to the United States. In November 1977, Fleetwood and Nicks began having an affair. The affair continued sporadically for the next two years until the pair mutually decided to end it. Fleetwood and Boyd's second marriage also ended in divorce. They had two daughters together.

In November 1978, Fleetwood moved into a Bel Air home with Sara Recor, a mutual friend of Fleetwood and Nicks who was at the time married to another music producer. Fleetwood married Recor in 1988; the couple divorced in 1995.

Fleetwood married Lynn Frankel in 1995. Fleetwood and Frankel had twin daughters who were born in 2002. The couple divorced in 2015.

Fleetwood was a heavy cocaine user in the 1970s.

Fleetwood became a U.S. citizen on 22 November 2006 in Los Angeles.

Fleetwood has called Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii home for years. His restaurant and bar called Fleetwood's were lost to the 2023 Hawaii wildfires.

Equipment
At the age of 15, Fleetwood's parents bought him a Rogers drum kit, which helped him land his first gig as a drummer. During his tenure in Fleetwood Mac, he primarily used Ludwig Drums for live performances and Sonor Drums in the studio. He specifically sought Ludwig drums for their oversized bass drums and tom-toms. By the Tusk tour, Fleetwood dropped both drum kits from his arsenal in favour of Tama Drums. He attributed his pivot to Tama to Ludwig's supposed deterioration in quality and Sonor's inability to produce a bass drum suitable for Fleetwood's large frame. From the 1990s onwards, Fleetwood has been an endorser of Drum Workshop. His drum kit for the Say You Will Tour was made from wood dredged from the bottom of the Great Lakes. All of his drum shells and hardware are coated in 18 carat gold.

Fleetwood had played Paiste cymbals from the late 60s to early 90s, favouring their expressiveness and higher frequencies over Zildjian cymbals. He stopped using Paiste cymbals by 1994 and subsequently switched over to Zildjian.

He also uses Remo drumheads, Easton Ahead 5B Light Rock drumsticks and Latin Percussion. Fleetwood has incorporated many percussion instruments into his drum rig, including a 40 inch Zildjian gong, two rows of wind chimes, and congas.

Mick Fleetwood's Zoo
Other

 * Total Drumming - sample and loop compilation

Songwriting credits for Fleetwood Mac
Although not a prolific writer, Fleetwood has co-written or written a few songs on Fleetwood Mac's albums.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mick Fleetwood


text:
Soma cube

The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Danish polymath Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg.

Seven different pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3×3×3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes.

The pieces of the Soma cube consist of all possible combinations of at most four unit cubes, joined at their faces, such that at least one inside corner is formed. There are no combinations of one or two cubes that satisfy this condition, but one combination of three cubes and six combinations of four cubes that do. Thus, 3 + (6 × 4) is 27, which is exactly the number of cells in a 3×3×3 cube. Of these seven combinations, two are mirror images of each other (see Chirality).

The Soma cube was popularized by Martin Gardner in the September 1958 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. The book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays also contains a detailed analysis of the Soma cube problem.

There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cube puzzle, excluding rotations and reflections: these are easily generated by a simple recursive backtracking search computer program similar to that used for the eight queens puzzle. John Horton Conway and Michael Guy first identified all 240 possible solutions by hand in 1961.

Pieces
The seven Soma pieces are six polycubes of order four, and one of order three:

Production
Piet Hein authorized a finely crafted rosewood version of the Soma cube manufactured by Theodor Skjøde Knudsen's company Skjøde Skjern (of Denmark). Beginning in about 1967, it was marketed in the U.S. for several years by the game manufacturer Parker Brothers. Plastic Soma cube sets were also commercially produced by Parker Brothers in several colors (blue, red, and orange) during the 1970s. The package for the Parker Brothers version claimed there were 1,105,920 possible solutions. This figure includes rotations and reflections of each solution as well as rotations of the individual pieces. The puzzle is currently sold as a logic game by Piet Hein Trading and by ThinkFun (formerly Binary Arts) under the name Block by Block.

Solutions
Solving the Soma cube has been used as a task to measure individuals' performance and effort in a series of psychology experiments. In these experiments, test subjects are asked to solve a soma cube as many times as possible within a set period of time. For example, In 1969, Edward Deci, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate assistant at the time, asked his research subjects to solve a soma cube under conditions with varying incentives in his dissertation work on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation establishing the social psychological theory of crowding out.

In each of the 240 distinct solutions to the cube puzzle, there is only one place that the "T" piece can be placed. Each solved cube can be rotated such that the "T" piece is on the bottom with its long edge along the front and the "tongue" of the "T" in the bottom center cube (this is the normalized position of the large cube). This can be proven as follows: If you consider all the possible ways that the "T" piece can be placed in the large cube (without regard to any of the other pieces), it will be seen that it will always fill either two corners of the large cube or zero corners. There is no way to orient the "T" piece such that it fills only one corner of the large cube. The "L" piece can be oriented such that it fills two corners, or one corner, or zero corners. Each of the other five pieces have no orientation that fills two corners; they can fill either one corner or zero corners. Therefore, if you exclude the "T" piece, the maximum number of corners that can be filled by the remaining six pieces is seven (one corner each for five pieces, plus two corners for the "L" piece). A cube has eight corners. But the "T" piece cannot be oriented to fill just that one remaining corner, and orienting it such that it fills zero corners will obviously not make a cube. Therefore, the "T" must always fill two corners, and there is only one orientation (discounting rotations and reflections) in which it does that. It also follows from this that in all solutions, five of the remaining six pieces will fill their maximum number of corners and one piece will fill one fewer than its maximum (this is called the deficient piece).

Figures
In addition to constructing a cube, the Soma manual provides assorted figures to construct with the seven pieces. The figure on the right shows solutions to some of the figures in the same colour scheme.

Similar puzzles
Similar to Soma cube is the 3D pentomino puzzle, which can fill boxes of 2×3×10, 2×5×6 and 3×4×5 units.

The Bedlam cube is a 4×4×4 sided cube puzzle consisting of twelve pentacubes and one tetracube. The Diabolical cube is a puzzle of six polycubes that can be assembled together to form a single 3×3×3 cube.

Eye Level also makes use of the Thinking Cube (once students are in levels 30-32 of Basic Thinking Math or levels 29-32 of Critical Thinking Math), as one of its Teaching Tools, similar to the Soma cube.

Rubik's Bricks, a puzzle produced under the Rubik's branding, is a similar puzzle made of 27 cubes, but the pieces are formed by joining cubes either by faces or by edges. There are exactly 9 such ways to join three cubes, so the puzzle can make a 3x3x3 cube. The individual cubes are colored in such a way as to give a unique solution.

title: Soma cube


text:
User:David Merrill

 * David Merrill
 * [mailto:merrill.david@gmail.com Merrill.David@gmail.com]

Hello!

I'm a queer guy living with my husband and a third partner in Washington, DC.

I first started working on Wikipedia in the very early days, when there were less than 10,000 articles! My User ID (when there were public User IDs) was 118. I'm very proud to have been involved in getting this incredible resource off the ground.

I have created and edited thousands of articles, but most of them were before we started tracking statistics. I created the original page on evolution, which tells you how early I came along! An infographic that mentions my role (under the username Dmerrill) in the writing of the article is the top hit on Digg Data Deluge. I also wrote the first versions of Homosexuality, Gay Rights, and other similar pages.

title: User:David Merrill


text:
Lhotshampa

The Lhotshampa or Lhotsampa (ल्होत्साम्पा; ) people are a heterogeneous Bhutanese people of Nepali descent. The Lhotshampa were estimated to comprise around 35% of the Bhutan's population by the U.S. Department of State as of 2008. The Lhotshampa are predominantly Hindu and speak the Nepali language.

People of Nepali origin started to settle in uninhabited areas of southern Bhutan in the 19th century. The term "Lhotshampa", which means "southern borderlanders" in Dzongkha, began to be used by the Bhutanese state in the second half of the twentieth century to refer to the population of Nepali origin in the south of the country. By the 1990s, over 100,000 Lhotshampa had been forcibly displaced and removed from Bhutan.

After being displaced as a result of the state-run ethnic cleansing and living in refugee camps in eastern parts of Nepal, starting in 2007 most of the Bhutanese refugees were resettled to various countries, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. , the number of Lhotshampa in Nepal is significantly lower than that in the United States and other countries where they have resettled.

Early immigration
The first small groups of Nepali emigrated primarily from eastern Nepal under British auspices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The beginning of Nepali immigration largely coincided with Bhutan's political development: in 1885, Druk Gyalpo Ugyen Wangchuck consolidated power after a period of civil unrest and cultivated closer ties with the British in India.

In 1910, the government of Bhutan signed a treaty with the British in India, granting them control over Bhutan's foreign relations. The actual immigrants registered and settled through the agent from Kalimpong, Raja Ugen Dorji and (son) Raja Sonam Togbay Dorji started in the reigns of the second and third kings. Immigrants from Nepal and India continued to enter Bhutan with an increase from the 1960s when Bhutan's first modern five-year plan began, many arriving as construction workers.

1960s-present
The government traditionally attempted to limit immigration and restrict residence and employment of Nepali to the southern region. Liberalization measures in the 1970s and 1980s encouraged intermarriage and provided increasing opportunities for public service. The government allowed more internal migration by Nepali seeking better education and business opportunities.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the most divisive issue in Bhutan in the 1980s and early 1990s was the accommodation of the Nepali Hindu minority. In 1988, the government census recategorized people with Nepali heritage as illegal immigrants. Local Lhotshampa leaders responded with antigovernmental protests demanding citizenship and damaged government institutions.

In 1989, the Bhutanese government enacted reforms that directly impacted the Lhotshampa. First, it elevated the status of the national dress code of the Driglam namzha from recommended to mandatory. All citizens including the Lhotshampa were required to observe the dress code in public during business hours. This decree was resented by the Lhotshampa who complained about being forced to wear the clothing of the Ngalong majority. Second, the government removed Nepali as a language of instruction in schools in favor of Dzongkha, the national language. This alienated the Lhotshampa, many of whom knew no Dzongkha at all.

Expulsion
Since the late 1980s, over 100,000 Lhotshampa have been forced out of Bhutan, accused by the government of being illegal aliens. Between 1988 and 1993, thousands of others left alleging ethnic and political repression.

In a 1992 interview with the Calcutta Statesman, Bhutanese foreign minister Dawa Tsering stated that an increase in the country's Nepali population would lead the country to become "another Sikkim and Darjeeling".

In 1990, violent ethnic unrest and anti-government protests in southern Bhutan pressed for greater democracy and respect for minority rights. That year, the Bhutan Peoples' Party, whose members are mostly Lhotshampa, began a campaign of violence against the Bhutanese government. In the wake of this unrest, thousands fled Bhutan. Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch reported that state security forces forcibly removed ethnic Lhotshampa from their homes and coerced them into renouncing their citizenship. A refugee accounted that:"'The army took all the people from their houses... As we left Bhutan, we were forced to sign the document. They snapped our photos. The man told me to smile, to show my teeth. He wanted to show that I was leaving my country willingly, happily, that I was not forced to leave'"Many of them have either entered Nepal's seven refugee camps (on 20 January 2010, 85,544 refugees resided in the camps) or are working in India. According to U.S. State Department estimates in 2008, about 35% of the population of Bhutan is Lhotshampa.

Culture
Traditionally, the Lhotshampa have been involved mostly in sedentary agriculture, although some have cleared forest cover and conducted tsheri and slash and burn agriculture. The Lhotshampa are generally classified as Hindus. However, this is an oversimplification as many groups that include Tamang and the Gurung are largely Buddhist; the Kiranti groups that include the Rai and Limbu are largely animist followers of Mundhum (these latter groups are mainly found in eastern Bhutan). Whether they are Hindu or Tibetan Buddhist, most of them abstain from beef, notably those belonging to the orthodox classes who are vegetarians. Their main festivals include Dashain and Tihar.

Language
Lhotshampas speak Nepali as their first language. Samchi, Chirang and Geylegphug are southern dzongkhags that have a large Lhotshampa community where most people speak Nepali. In southern Bhutan, Nepali used to be taught in the school and was spoken and written in these areas. However, this changed during the 1980s when there was racial conflict between Nepali in Bhutan and Bhutanese. Since then, Nepali is only taught in the home and has become a spoken language in Bhutan. Thus, some Nepali speakers from southern Bhutan cannot read or write in Nepali. Currently, Nepali is the first language for most southern Bhutanese and most people use it in their home. Also, Nepali is most commonly used in school outside of the classes.

Nepali in Bhutan is different in the rural areas and Thimphu. Also, some Nepali words are used differently in Bhutan than Nepali in Nepal.

Notable Lhotsampas

 * Tek Nath Rizal, Bhutanese politician
 * Indra Adhikari, journalist
 * Mangala Sharma, human and women's rights activist
 * Hiranyamayee Lama, politician
 * Loknath Sharma, politician
 * Jai Bir Rai, politician
 * Dilliram Sharma Acharya, Bhutanese poet in Nepali language
 * Biren Basnet, footballer
 * Khare Basnet, footballer
 * Hemlal Bhattrai, footballer
 * Mon Bhattrai, footballer
 * Dhan Bahadur Biswa, footballer
 * Dinesh Chhetri, footballer
 * Hari Gurung, footballer
 * Karun Gurung, footballer
 * Man Bahadur Gurung, footballer
 * Puspalal Sharma, footballer
 * Diwash Subba, footballer
 * Anju Gurung, women's cricketer

title: Lhotshampa


text:
Glycerius

Glycerius (died after 474) was Roman emperor of the West from 473 to 474. He served as comes domesticorum (commander of the palace guard) during the reign of Olybrius ((r. undefined – undefined)), until Olybrius died in November 472. After a four-month interregnum, Glycerius was proclaimed as emperor in March 473 by Gundobad, the magister militum (master of soldiers) and power behind the throne. Very few of the events of his reign are known other than that an attempted invasion of Italy by the Visigoths was repelled by local commanders, diverting them to Gaul. Glycerius also prevented an invasion by the Ostrogoths through diplomacy, including a gift of 2,000 solidi.

Glycerius was not recognized by the Eastern Roman emperor Leo I ((r. 457 – 474)), who instead nominated Julius Nepos ((r. 474 – 475/480)) as Western Emperor and sent him with an army to invade the Western Empire. Glycerius was without allies because Gundobad had abandoned him, and therefore was forced to abdicate on 24 June 474, and was succeeded by Nepos. He was appointed Bishop of Salona, which position he held until his death. He died, possibly in 480, and a nearly contemporaneous source blames him for the assassination of Nepos, but the records for this event are muddled.

Background
The historian Penny MacGeorge states the summary that "almost nothing is known of Glycerius". Glycerius was born in Dalmatia. His family is unknown, and may not have been aristocratic. He rose to the office of comes domesticorum (commander of the palace guard), and likely served as such during the reign of Western Roman Emperor Olybrius ((r. undefined – undefined)). The Germanic magister militum (master of soldiers) Ricimer had deposed the Western Roman Emperor Majorian ((r. 457 – 461)) in 461, and thereafter installed a series of Western Roman emperors as puppets: Libius Severus ((r. 461 – 465)), Anthemius ((r. 467 – 472)), and Olybrius, enthroned in July 472, after Ricimer overthrew Anthemius. Ricimer died on 18 August 472, forty days after deposing Anthemius, and was succeeded as magister militum and kingmaker by his Burgundian nephew Gundobad. Olybrius died shortly thereafter, on 2 November 472, and an interregnum ensued for nearly four months, before Gundobad convinced Glycerius to assume the throne, and proclaimed him as emperor at Ravenna: the Fasti vindobonenses, a record of consular years, states that it was on 5 March 473, however, the Paschale campanum, also a consular record, asserts it was on the 3rd.

Reign
Few events of Glycerius' reign are known. Glycerius is known from a few fragmented references in what historian Ralph Mathisen calls "jejune chronicles", such as the Annales of Marcellinus Comes, the Gallic Chronicle of 511, and the Chronicle of Saragossa, as well as some small references provided by the 6th-century writer Jordanes and the bishop Ennodius. Under Glycerius, invasions by both the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths were repelled, through a mixture of diplomatic and military activities. The Visigoths and Ostrogoths were Germanic groups that were settled in Gallia Aquitania, and Pannonia Prima and Valeria, respectively, as foederati. In 473, the Visigothic king Euric ((r. 466 – 484)) ordered an invasion of Italy, but his commander, Vincentius, was killed by the Comites (regional commanders) Alla and Sindila. After Vincentius was killed, Euric chose instead to invade Gaul, occupying both Arles and Marseilles. The Ostrogothic king Videmir ((r. 469 – 474)) proposed to invade Italy, but Glycerius was able to dissuade Videmir through the gift of 2,000 solidi (high-value gold coins), and diverted them from Italy to Gaul, where surrounding groups, described by Jordanes as "various peoples", later attacked them. Mathisen comments that these actions to defend the empire may be the reason that Glycerius receives a generally favorable reception in Roman and Byzantine sources. The 9th-century historian Theophanes describes him only as a "not despicable man", but Ennodius, the bishop of Pavia, describes him more thoroughly in his Vita St. Epiphanius:

"After Olybrius, Glycerius ascended to the rule. With regard to whom I summarize, in my desire for brevity, the numerous things he did for the well being of many people. For, when the blessed man [Bishop Epiphanius of Pavia] interceded, he pardoned the injury done to his mother by some men under his authority."

Mathisten states that the aforementioned injuries to Glycerius' mother may have been in reaction to his bribery of Videmir, but remarks that "such measures were a regular part of imperial policy", and speculates that the attackers may have been soldiers, explaining their lack of punishment. Glycerius seems to have primarily reigned in northern Italy, as all the coins found from his reign but one were minted in either Ravenna or Milan. The only law enacted by Glycerius which has survived was dated 11 March 473, and issued to Himilco, the Praetorian prefect of Italy, and later reissued to the Praetorian prefects of Illyricum, the East, and Gaul, regarding simony (the selling of church offices). It was adopted not just by the prefects of Italy and Gaul, who were a part of the Western Roman Empire, but also by the prefects of Illyricum and the East, despite the fact that he did not have the authority to issue laws to them. The law was designed to grant Glycerius the support of the clergy, but would likely also have appealed to the senatorial class, who were concerned about increasingly violent elections, as well as the use of church funds by clergy for personal reasons. This law was also the last known one issued by a Western Roman emperor.

It is possible that Glycerius attempted reconciliation with the Eastern Roman Empire, evidenced by the fact that Glycerius did not nominate a consul for 474, and instead accepted the eastern consul, the infant Emperor Leo II ((r. 473 – 474)). Despite this, the Eastern Roman Emperor, Leo I ((r. 457 – 474)), refused to recognize Glycerius as emperor because he was merely a puppet of Gundobad. Emperor Leo instead chose to recognize one of his own men, Julius Nepos ((r. 474 – 475/480)), and sent him with a fleet to invade the Western Empire. The 7th-century historian John of Antioch states that Leo made the decision to remove Glycerius after hearing that he had assumed the throne of the Western Roman Empire, but Mathisen comments that Leo must have hesitated for some time, as the actual invasion was delayed by the onset of winter, and Julius Nepos was forced to wait until the beginning of spring to launch his invasion.

Glycerius was without allies, as Gundobad seemingly abandoned him, leaving him with no option but to surrender. After Nepos landed at Ostia in June 474, Glycerius abdicated on 24 June 474, in Ravenna, and Nepos assumed the throne. The historian John Michael O'Flynn states that the "circumstances surrounding this speedy overthrow are obscure and, at first sight, puzzling", noting that while the forces of Nepos were likely small, Gundobad made no moves to counter them, but rather "disappeared entirely from the Italian scene." He speculates that, while Gundobad could have put up stiff resistance, rather than attempting to oppose the imperial legitimacy of Leo, he accepted Leo's authority to reject Glycerius as an imperial colleague and to install one of his own choosing. Additionally, Glycerius seems to never have attracted the favor of the Roman Senate or the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, which would make the decision to back him, and therefore alienate both, far less palatable for Gundobad. Notably, as king of Burgundy, Gundobad ((r. 473/474 – 516)) enjoyed warm relations with the Eastern Roman Empire, which he served as a foederatus (treaty subject). Mathisen suggests the alternatives that Gundobad was attempting to raise further troops in Gaul, or that he left to ensure he received his inheritance after the death of his father, King Gondioc ((r. 437 – 473)).

Later life
After being deposed, Glycerius was promptly ordained as Bishop of Salona. According to the 5th-century Byzantine historian Malchus, Glycerius had some part in organizing the assassination of Julius Nepos in 480, after Nepos had been forced to flee Italy and was ruling in exile in Dalmatia, although the historical records for the assassination are muddled. Glycerius died sometime after 474, possibly in 480. He has sometimes been identified with a Glycerius who was Archbishop of Milan by King Odoacer ((r. 476 – 493)), but this is likely incorrect. The source for the promotion of Glycerius to archbishop is an obscure line written by Ennodius, in which he praises an archbishop named Glycerius, among other archbishops of Milan, however, this section seems to have been either corrupted or added later, to identify the archbishop Glycerius with the emperor Glycerius.

title: Glycerius


text:
User:BlckKnght

Welcome to the user page belonging to BlckKnght.

=About me= I found Wikipedia a long time ago after seeing a story by Larry Sanger on Kuro5hin and thought I'd contribute a few articles on things that interest me (or that I know about). I've been a rather sporadic contributor, but every few months (or years) I become active again for a while.

=Prehistoric edits=

In the early days of Wikipedia I created a number of Computer Science related articles (often based on the classes I was taking at the U of I or the Jargon File). Since most of these contributions were from before MediaWiki had been written and was in use, the history of the pages doesn't always include my earliest edits. Many of the pages have been significantly rewritten and/or renamed since (very likely by editors more knowledgeable than me).

Here's a list of these old articles:

 * Data structure
 * Array
 * Linked list
 * Hash table
 * Tree data structure
 * Binary tree
 * Tree rotation
 * Binary search tree
 * AVL tree
 * Splay tree
 * Sort algorithm
 * Bubble sort
 * Quicksort
 * Radix sort
 * Search algorithm
 * Hello world (I initially created this article to say only "Hello World")
 * Node
 * Null
 * Pointer
 * Pseudocode
 * Godwin's law (I'm pretty sure this was added before Mike Godwin became involved with Wikipedia)

title: User:BlckKnght


text:
User:Taral

Known in real life as JP Sugarbroad. Not so new anymore. :)

Userboxes
Feel free to suggest more userboxes...

title: User:Taral


text:
User:Tbackstr

Tom Bäckström, D.Sc. (tech.)

Currently professor of practice at Aalto University, Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics, Finland. Formerly professor at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), researcher at Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen, Germany, post-doctoral researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing, Finland.

Main interests from work to hobbies, and areas I have interest in developing on Wikipedia:
 * Speech processing, Audio and speech coding, audio signal processing, digital signal processing, mathematics, optimization, systems analysis, operations research, linear prediction
 * Voice analysis
 * Composer, orchestration, instrumentation, arrangement and classical music in general
 * Conductor of a musical, player of violin, piano and flute, and a singer
 * Rock climbing, Bicycling/Offroad
 * Stuttering
 * Rock climbing, Bicycling/Offroad
 * Stuttering

---

title: User:Tbackstr


text:
Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera (, ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.

Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Before the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the country's ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia banned his books. He led a low-profile life and rarely spoke to the media. He was thought to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also a nominee for other awards.

Kundera was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1985, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1987, and the Herder Prize in 2000. In 2021, he received the Golden Order of Merit from the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor.

Early life and education
Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova 6 (6 Purkyně Street) in Královo Pole, a district of Brno, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic), to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971), was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček Music Academy in Brno from 1948 to 1961. His mother Milada Kunderová (born Janošíková) was an educator. His father died in 1971, and his mother in 1975.

Milan learned to play the piano from his father and later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences, references and notation can be found throughout his work. Kundera was a cousin of Czech writer and translator Ludvík Kundera. In his youth, having been supported by his father in his musical education, he was testing his abilities as a composer. One of his teachers at the time was Pavel Haas. His approach to music was eventually dampened due to his father not being able to launch a piano career for insisting on playing the unpopular modernist and Jew Arnold Schoenberg.

At the age of eighteen, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1947. In 1984, he recalled that "Communism captivated me as much as Stravinsky, Picasso and Surrealism."

He attended lectures on music and composition at the Charles University in Prague but soon moved to the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) to study film. In 1950, he was expelled from the party. After graduating, the Film Faculty appointed Kundera a lecturer in world literature in 1952. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he lost his job at the Film Faculty. In 1956, Kundera also married for the first time, the operetta singer Olga Haas, the daughter of the composer and his teacher Pavel Haas and the doctor of Russian origin Sonia Jakobson, the first wife of Roman Jakobson.

Political activism and professional career
His expulsion from the Communist party was described by Jan Trefulka in his novella Pršelo jim štěstí (Luck Rained on Them, 1962). Kundera also used the expulsion as an inspiration for the main theme of his novel Žert (The Joke, 1967), in which he ridiculed the ruling Communist party. In 1956 Kundera was readmitted to the party but was expelled for a second time in 1970. He took part in the Fourth Congress of the Czech Writers union in June 1967, where he delivered an impressive speech. In the speech he focused on the Czech effort to maintain a certain cultural independence among its larger European neighbours. Along with other reformist Communist writers such as Pavel Kohout, he was peripherally involved in the 1968 Prague Spring. This brief period of reformist activities was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Kundera remained committed to reforming Czechoslovak Communism, and argued vehemently in print with fellow Czech writer Václav Havel, saying, essentially, that everyone should remain calm and that "nobody is being locked up for his opinions yet," and "the significance of the Prague Autumn may ultimately be greater than that of the Prague Spring." In 1968, the year his books were banned by the Czech Government, he made his first journey to Paris, where he befriended the publisher Claude Gallimard. After he returned to Prague, he was frequently visited by Gallimard who encouraged Kundera to emigrate to France and also smuggled the manuscript for Life Is Elsewhere out of Czechoslovakia. Finally, Kundera gave in and moved to France in 1975. In 1979, his Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked. He lectured for a few years at the University of Rennes. After three years, he moved to Paris.

Works
Although his early poetic works are staunchly pro-communist, his novels escape ideological classification. Kundera repeatedly insisted that he was a novelist rather than a politically motivated writer. Political commentary all but disappeared from his novels after the publication of The Unbearable Lightness of Being except in relation to broader philosophical themes. Kundera's style of fiction, interlaced with philosophical digression, was greatly inspired by the novels of Robert Musil and the philosophy of Nietzsche. In 1945 the journal Gong published his translation of some of the works from the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovsky. The next year the journal Mladé archy printed a poem of his, to which he was inspired by his cousin Ludvík Kundera, also a writer.

In the mid-1950s he was readmitted to the Communist party and he was able to publish Manː A Wide Garden in 1953, a long epic poem in 1955 called The Last May dedicated to Julius Fucik and the collection of lyrical poetry Monologue in 1957. Those, together with other fore and afterwords are deemed to be written in the fashion of uncontroversial propaganda which allowed him to benefit to a certain degree from the advantages that came with being an established writer in a Communist environment. In 1962 he wrote the play The Owners of the Keys, which became an international success and was translated into several languages. Kundera himself claimed inspiration from Renaissance authors such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Rabelais and, perhaps most importantly, Miguel de Cervantes, to whose legacy he considered himself most committed. Other influences include Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Denis Diderot, Robert Musil, Witold Gombrowicz, Hermann Broch, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger and Georges Bataille. Originally he wrote in the Czech language, but from 1985 onwards, he made a conscious transition from Czech towards the French which has since become the reference language for his translations. Between 1985 and 1987, he undertook the revision of the French translations of his earlier works himself. With Slowness his first work in French was published in 1995. His works were translated into more than eighty languages.

The Joke
In his first novel, The Joke (1967), he satirized the totalitarianism of the Communist era. Following the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the book was banned. His criticism of the Soviet invasion in 1968 led to his blacklisting in Czechoslovakia and the banning of his books.

Life Is Elsewhere
Kundera's second novel was first published in French as La vie est ailleurs in 1973 and in Czech as Život je jinde in 1979. Life Is Elsewhere is a satirical portrait of the fictional poet Jaromil, a young and very naïve idealist who becomes involved in political scandals. For the novel Kundera was awarded the Prix Médicis the same year.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
In 1975, Kundera moved to France where The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was published in 1979. An unusual mixture of novel, short story collection, and authorial musings which came to characterize his works in exile, the book dealt with how Czechs opposed the Communist regime in various ways. Critics noted that the Czechoslovakia Kundera portrays "is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there," which is the "kind of disappearance and reappearance" Kundera ironically explores in the book.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Kundera's most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was published in 1984. The book chronicles the fragile nature of an individual's fate, theorizing that a single lifetime is insignificant in the scope of Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. In an infinite universe, everything is guaranteed to recur infinitely. In 1988, American director Philip Kaufman released a film adaptation, which Kundera disliked. The book focuses on the life of a Czech dissident surgeon's journey from Prague to Zurich and his return to Prague, where he was not permitted to take up work as a surgeon. He worked instead as a window washer and used his job to arrange sex with hundreds of women. At the end he and his wife move to the country. The book was not published in Czechoslovakia due to Kundera's fear it would be badly edited. He eventually delayed the publishing date for years and only in 2006 would an official translation be available in the Czech language. The book had previously been available in Czech, however, as a Czech expatriate in Canada had translated the book in 1985.

Ignorance
In 2000, Ignorance was published. The novel centres on the romance of two alienated Czech émigrés, two decades after the Prague Spring of 1968. It is thematically concerned with the suffering of emigration. In it, Kundera undermines the myths surrounding nostalgia and the émigré's longing for return. He concludes that in the "etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing." Kundera suggests a complex relationship between memory and nostalgia, writing that our memory can "create rifts both with our earlier selves and between people who ostensibly share a past." The main characters of Irena and Josef discover how emigration and forgetfulness have ultimately freed them from their pain. Kundera draws heavily from the myth of Odysseus, specifically the "mythology of home, the delusions of roots." Linda Asher translated the original French version of the novel to English in 2002.

The Festival of Insignificance
The 2014 novel focuses on the musings of four male friends living in Paris who discuss their relationships with women and the existential predicament confronting individuals in the world, among other things. The novel received generally negative reviews. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times describes the book as being a "knowing, pre-emptive joke about its own superficiality". A review in the Economist stated that the book was "sadly let down by a tone of breezy satire that can feel forced".

Writing style and philosophy
François Ricard suggested that Kundera conceived his fiction with regard to the overall body of his work, rather than limiting his ideas to the scope of just one novel at a time, his themes and meta-themes traversing his entire œuvre. Each new book manifests the latest stage of his personal philosophy. Some of these meta-themes include exile, identity, life beyond the border (beyond love, beyond art, beyond seriousness), history as a continual return, and the pleasure of a less "important" life.

Many of Kundera's characters seem to develop as expositions of one of these themes at the expense of their full humanity. Specifics in regard to the characters tend to be rather vague. Often, more than one main character is used in a novel; Kundera may have even completely discontinued a character, resuming the plot with somebody new. As he told Philip Roth in an interview in The Village Voice: "Intimate life [is] understood as one's personal secret, as something valuable, inviolable, the basis of one's originality".

Kundera's early novels explore the dual tragic and comic aspects of totalitarianism. He did not view his works, however, as political commentary. "The condemnation of totalitarianism doesn't deserve a novel", he said. According to the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, "What he finds interesting is the similarity between totalitarianism and the immemorial and fascinating dream of a harmonious society where private life and public life form but one unity and all are united around one will and one faith". In exploring the dark humour of this topic, Kundera seems deeply influenced by Franz Kafka.

Kundera considered himself a writer without a message. In Sixty-three Words, a chapter in The Art of the Novel, Kundera tells of a Scandinavian publisher who hesitated to publish The Farewell Party because of its apparent anti-abortion message. Not only was the publisher wrong about the existence of such a message, Kundera explained, but, "I was delighted with the misunderstanding. I had succeeded as a novelist. I succeeded in maintaining the moral ambiguity of the situation. I had kept faith with the essence of the novel as an art: irony. And irony doesn't give a damn about messages!".

Kundera also ventured often into musical matters, analyzing Czech folk music for example; or quoting from Leoš Janáček and Bartók; or placing musical excerpts into the text, as in The Joke; or discussing Schoenberg and atonality.

Miroslav Dvořáček controversy
On 13 October 2008, the Czech weekly Respekt reported that an investigation was being carried out by the state-funded historical archive and research Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, into whether a young Kundera had denounced a returned defector, Miroslav Dvořáček, to the StB, or Czechoslovak secret police, in 1950. The accusation was based on a police station report which named "Milan Kundera, student, born 1.4.1929" as the informant in regard to Dvořáček's presence at a student dormitory. But the report did not include his ID card number, which was usually included, nor his signature. According to the police report, the ultimate source of the information about Dvořáček's previous desertion from military service and defection to the West was Iva Militká.

Dvořáček had allegedly fled Czechoslovakia after being ordered to join the infantry in the wake of a purge of the flight academy, and returned to Czechoslovakia as an agent of an anti-communist espionage agency organised by Czechoslovak exiles, an allegation which was not mentioned in the police report. Dvořáček returned secretly to the student dormitory of a friend's ex-girlfriend, Iva Militká. Militká was dating and later married a fellow student, Ivan Dlask, who knew Kundera. The police report alleges that Militká told Dlask of Dvořáček's presence, and that Dlask told Kundera, who told the secret police. Although the prosecutor sought the death penalty, Dvořáček was sentenced to 22 years of hard labour, fined 10,000 crowns, stripped of personal property, and deprived of his civic rights for ten years. Dvořáček served 14 years in a labor camp, some of it working in a uranium mine, before he was released.

In his response to Respekt's announcement, Kundera denied turning Dvořáček into the StB, stating he never knew him at all, and could not even remember an individual named "Militká". On 14 October 2008, the Czech Security Forces Archive announced that they had ruled out the possibility that the document could be a forgery, but refused to arrive at any other definite conclusions. Vojtech Ripka of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said, "There are two pieces of circumstantial evidence [the police report and its sub-file], but we, of course, cannot be one hundred percent sure. Unless we find all survivors, which is unfortunately impossible, it will not be complete." Ripka added that the signature on the police report matches the name of a man who worked in the corresponding National Security Corps section and that a police protocol is missing.

Many in the Czech Republic condemned Kundera as a "police informer", while many others accused Respekt of committing journalistic misconduct by publishing such a poorly researched piece. On the other hand, presenting an ID card was a procedure whenever dealing with the StB in 1950. Kundera was the student representative of the dorm Dvořáček had visited, and while it cannot be ruled out that another student could have denounced him to the StB using Kundera's name, impersonating someone else in a Stalinist police state posed a significant risk. Contradictory statements by Kundera's fellow students appeared in the Czech news media in the wake of this scandal. Historian Adam Hradílek, the co-author of the Respekt article, was also accused of an undeclared conflict of interest since one of the individuals involved in the incident was his aunt. Nonetheless, Respekt states on its website that its task is to "impartially study the crimes of the former communist regime". With time, the Western journalists realized the whole controversy was flawed, with French newspapers defending Kundera. The literary scholar Karen de Kunes investigated the reports and came to the conclusion that even if Kundera had issued the report, all he reported was the existence of a suitcase in the hallway.

On 3 November 2008, eleven internationally recognized writers came to Kundera's defence, including four Nobel laureates, Orhan Pamuk, Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, as well as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, and Jorge Semprún.

Awards and honours
In 1973, Life Is Elsewhere received the French Prix Médicis. In 1979 Kundera was awarded the Mondello Prize for The Farewell Party. In 1985, Kundera received the Jerusalem Prize. His acceptance address appears among the essays collected in The Art of the Novel. He won The Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1987. In 2000, he was awarded the international Herder Prize. In 2007, he was awarded the Czech State Literature Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 2010, he was made an honorary citizen of his hometown, Brno. When he died the Greek Newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton (Journal of the editors) published a special section where all the current affairs on each page were described with a book title of Kundera's.

In 2011, he received the Ovid Prize. The asteroid 7390 Kundera, discovered at the Kleť Observatory in 1983, is named in his honour. In 2020, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, a Czech literary award.

Personal life
Stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979, Kundera became a French citizen in 1981. He maintained contact with Czech and Slovak friends in his homeland, but rarely returned and never with any fanfare. He was granted Czech citizenship in 2019. He saw himself as a French writer and insisted his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in bookstores.

Kundera was married twice. His first wife was the singer Olga Haasová-Smrčková, daughter of composer Pavel Haas. His second marriage was to Věra Hrabánková, whom he married in 1967. Vera reportedly was his secretary, translator of his works and the gatekeeper between Kundera and the outside world.

Kundera died after a prolonged illness, in Paris on 11 July 2023, at the age of 94. He was cremated in Paris on 19 July 2023.

Novels

 * Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead: Faber Stories (1969)
 * The Joke (Žert) (1967)
 * Life Is Elsewhere (Život je jinde) (1969)
 * The Farewell Waltz (Valčík na rozloučenou) (Original translation title: The Farewell Party) (French version "La Valse aux Adieux") (1972)
 * The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kniha smíchu a zapomnění) (1979)
 * The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) (1984)
 * Immortality (Nesmrtelnost) (1988)
 * Slowness (La Lenteur) (1995)
 * Identity (L'Identité) (1998)
 * Ignorance (L'Ignorance) (2000)
 * The Festival of Insignificance (La fête de l'insignifiance) (2014)

Collections

 * Laughable Loves (Směšné lásky) (1969)

Stories

 * The Apologizer (2015)

Poetry collections

 * Člověk zahrada širá (Man: A Wide Garden) (1953)
 * Poslední máj (The Last May) (1955) – celebration of Julius Fučík
 * Monology (Monologues) (1957)

Essays

 * Český úděl (The Czech Deal) in Listy (December 1968)
 * Radikalizmus a expozice (Radicalism and Exhibitionism) (1969)
 * The Art of the Novel (L'art du Roman) (1986)
 * Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts (Les testaments trahis: essai) (1993)
 * D'en bas tu humeras les roses – rare book in French, illustrated by Ernest Breleur (1993)
 * The Curtain (Le Rideau) (2005)
 * An Encounter (Une rencontre) (2009)

Drama

 * Majitelé klíčů (The Owners of the Keys) (1962)
 * Ptákovina (The Blunder) (1969)
 * Jacques and His Master (Jakub a jeho pán: Pocta Denisu Diderotovi) (1981)

Articles

 * What is a novelist (2006)
 * Die Weltliteratur (2007)

Non-fiction

 * A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe (2023)

title: Milan Kundera