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Diosdado Cabello

Diosdado Cabello Rondón (born 15 April 1963 ) is a Venezuelan politician and current member of the National Assembly of Venezuela, where he previously served as Speaker. He is also an active member of the Venezuelan armed forces, with the rank of captain.

Cabello played a key role in Hugo Chávez's return to power following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt. He became a leading member of Chavez’s Movimiento V República (MVR), and remains a leading member of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, into which MVR was merged in 2007. Governor of Miranda state from 2004 to 2008, he lost the 2008 election to prominent opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski and was subsequently appointed Public Works & Housing Minister. In November 2009, he was additionally appointed head of the National Commission of Telecommunications, a position traditionally independent from the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. In 2010, he was elected a member of parliament by his home state of Monagas. In 2011, President Hugo Chávez named him the vice president of Venezuela’s ruling party, the PSUV. In 2012, he was elected and sworn in as President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, the country’s parliament. He was elected president of the National Assembly each year until 2016. He was the second and last president of the 2017 National Constituent Assembly.

Allegations of corruption involving Cabello includes being head of an international drug trafficking organization, accepting bribes from Derwick Associates for public works projects in Venezuela, using nepotism to reward friends and family members and directing colectivos while paying them with funds from Petróleos de Venezuela. In 2013, there were at least 17 formal corruption allegations lodged against Cabello in Venezuela's prosecutors office. On 26 March 2020, the U.S. Department of State offered $10 million for information to bring him to justice in relation to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Often described as the second most, if not the most, powerful man in Venezuela, Reuters notes that Cabello possesses significant "sway with the military and lawmakers plus close links to businessmen."

Early life and education
Diosdado Cabello was born in El Furrial, in the state of Monagas. In 1987, he graduated second in his class from the Venezuelan Military Academy. His measured intelligence quotient (IQ) was ranked as the fifth-highest among all students in the institution's history. His background is in engineering. He has an undergraduate degree in systems engineering from the Instituto Universitario Politécnico de las Fuerzas Armadas Nacionales and a graduate degree in engineering project management from the Andrés Bello Catholic University.

Military career
While at Instituto Universitario Politécnico de las Fuerzas Armadas Nacionales, Cabello befriended Hugo Chávez and they played on the same baseball team.

During Chávez’s abortive coup d'état of February 1992 against the government of then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez, Cabello led a group of four tanks to attack Miraflores Palace. Cabello was jailed for his participation in the coup, though President Rafael Caldera later pardoned him with the rest of the coup participants and Cabello was released after only two years without any charges.

Political career
After Chávez was released from jail in 1994, Cabello helped him run his political campaign as he was a prominent member of the Fifth Republic Movement Chávez was leading. Following Chávez’s 1998 electoral victory, he helped set up the pro-Chávez grassroots civil society organizations known as "Bolivarian Circles" which have been compared to Cuba's Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and are parent organizations for the Colectivos.

From 1999-2000, Cabello was head of the national telecommunications commission (CONATEL). The main telecommunications law he helped promulgate, known as the "Organic Telecommunications Law" (2000), was especially praised by the private sector. Specifically, it ended the state's prior monopoly on the industry and fostered a significant level of free-market competition, as Cabello's work helped increase the treasury's revenue by $400 million dollars at a time when oil prices were not especially high.

In May 2001, he became Chavez' chief of staff, and was appointed Vice President by President Hugo Chávez on 13 January 2002, replacing Adina Bastidas. As such, he was responsible to both the president and the National Assembly, and for the relations between the executive and legislative branches of the government.

On 13 April 2002, he took on the duties of the presidency on a temporary basis, replacing Pedro Carmona, head of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, as interim president during the coup d'état attempt when Chávez was kept prisoner and was consequently absent from office. Upon taking office, Cabello said that "I, Diosdado Cabello, am assuming the presidency until such time as the president of the republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, appears." A few hours later, Chávez was back in office. This made Cabello’s presidency the world’s second briefest, after that of Mexican President Pedro Lascuráin.

On 28 April 2002, Cabello was replaced as Vice President by José Vicente Rangel. Cabello was named interior minister in May 2002, and then infrastructure minister in January 2003.

In October 2004, Cabello was elected to a four-year term as Governor of Miranda State. He lost the 2008 election to Henrique Capriles Radonski, and was subsequently appointed Public Works & Housing Minister.

In 2009 he was additionally appointed head of Conatel. On 1 August 2009, 32 radio and 2 television stations were intervened, decision ordered by Cabello. The measure was received as an act of censorship by several non-governmental and international organizations.

On 11 December 2011, Cabello was installed as the Vice-President of the United Socialist Party (PSUV), thus becoming the second most powerful figure in the party after Hugo Chávez.

Cabello was appointed president of the National Assembly in early 2012 and was re-elected to that post in January 2013.

Cabello’s status after the death of Hugo Chávez was disputed. Some argue that Cabello was constitutionally required to be the acting President, but Nicolás Maduro held the position.

Often described as the second most, if not the most, powerful man in Venezuela, Reuters notes that Cabello possesses significant "sway with the military and lawmakers plus close links to businessmen." Despite serving as the leader of Chavez' party, his overall reputation is that of a pragmatist rather than an ideologue.

Television program
Cabello has his own weekly program on Venezolana de Televisión, Con el Mazo Dando (Going at it with the Club). In that program, Cabello talks about the government's view on many political issues and presents accusations against the opposition. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has expressed concerns about how the program has intimidated people that went to the IACHR denouncing the government. Some Venezuelan commentators have compared the use of illegally recorded private conversations on programs such as Cabello's to the practices in place in the East Germany as shown in the film The Life of Others.

Amnesty International has denounced the way in which Cabello has revealed details on the travel arrangements of two human rights defenders in his program and how he routinely shows state monitoring of people that may disagree with the government.

Personal life
His wife, Marleny Contreras, was elected as a member of the National Assembly until she became minister of tourism in 2015. Cabello’s sister, Glenna, is a political scientist and was Counsellor of the Venezuelan Permanent Mission to the United Nations. His brother, José David, previously minister of infrastructure, is in charge of the nation’s taxes as head of SENIAT, Venezuela’s revenue service. Now José David is also minister of Industries.

On 9 July 2020, Cabello tested positive for COVID-19, during the pandemic in Venezuela.

Controversies
Cabello was nicknamed "the octopus" by Rory Carroll for having "tentacles everywhere." He is very influential in the Venezuelan government, using a network of patronage throughout the military, ministries and pro-government militias. He was described by a contributor to The Atlantic as the "Frank Underwood" of Venezuela under whose watch the National Assembly of Venezuela has made a habit of ignoring constitutional hurdles entirely—at various times preventing opposition members from speaking in session, suspending their salaries, stripping particularly problematic legislators of parliamentary immunity, and, on one occasion, even presiding over the physical beating of unfriendly lawmakers while the assembly was meeting.

Information presented to the United States State Department by Stratfor claimed that Cabello was "head of one of the major centers of corruption in Venezuela." A leaked U.S. Embassy cable from 2009 characterized Cabello as a "major pole" of corruption within the regime, describing him as "amassing great power and control over the regime’s apparatus as well as a private fortune, often through intimidation behind the scenes". The communiqué likewise created speculation that "Chavez himself might be concerned about Cabello's growing influence but unable to diminish it."

Drug trafficking
Allegations of corruption involving Cabello includes being head of an international drug trafficking organization, accepting bribes from Derwick Associates for public works projects in Venezuela, using nepotism to reward friends and family members and directing colectivos while paying them with funds from Petróleos de Venezuela. In 2013, there were at least 17 formal corruption allegations lodged against Cabello in Venezuela's prosecutors office.

On 27 January 2015, reports accusing Cabello of drug trafficking emerged. In a series of investigations by the United States government, it was stated that Cabello's alleged involvement in the drug trade as the "capo" [sic] (head) of the Cartel of the Suns (Spanish Cartel de los soles), had also involved high-ranking generals of Venezuelan military.

On 26 March 2020, the U.S. Department of State offered $10 million for information to bring him to justice in relation to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Assassination plot targeting Marco Rubio
In mid-July 2017, reporters in Washington, D.C. observed an increased security presence surrounding United States Senator Marco Rubio. A month later on 13 August 2017, The Miami Herald reported that Diosdado Cabello potentially initiated an assassination plot targeting Rubio, allegedly contacting Mexican nationals to discuss killing Rubio. Rubio, who is a critic of the Venezuelan government, has led an effort in the United States government to take action against officials of the Latin American government, often singling out Cabello. The Department of Homeland Security could not verify all of the details involved in the threat, though the plan was serious enough that multiple law enforcement agencies were contacted about the incident and Rubio's security detail had increased in size.

Sanctions
Cabello has been sanctioned by several countries and is banned from entering neighboring Colombia. The Colombian government maintains a list of people banned from entering Colombia or subject to expulsion; as of January 2019, the list had 200 people with a "close relationship and support for the Nicolás Maduro regime".

Canada
Canada sanctioned 40 Venezuelan officials, including Cabello, in September 2017. The sanctions were for behaviors that undermined democracy after at least 125 people were killed in the 2017 Venezuelan protests and "in response to the government of Venezuela's deepening descent into dictatorship". Canadians were banned from transactions with the 40 individuals, whose Canadian assets were frozen. The sanctions noted a rupture of Venezuela's constitutional order.

European Union
The European Union sanctioned Cabello and six other Venezuela officials on 18 January 2018, singling them out as being responsible for deteriorating democracy in the country. The sanctioned individuals were prohibited from entering the nations of the European Union, and their assets were frozen. Cabello, known as number two in Chavismo, had not been sanctioned by the U.S. when the European Union sanctioned him.

United States
On 18 May 2018, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury placed sanctions in effect against Cabello, his wife, his brother and his "testaferro" Rafael Sarria. OFAC stated that Cabello and others used their power within the Bolivarian government "to personally profit from extortion, money laundering, and embezzlement", with Cabello allegedly directing drug trafficking activities with Vice President of Venezuela, Tareck El Aissami while dividing profits with President Nicolás Maduro. The Office also stated that Cabello would use public information to track wealth individuals who were potentially drug trafficking and steal their drugs and property in order to get rid of potential competition.

As a result of the sanctions, reports estimate that approximately $800 million worth of assets were frozen by the United States government. Cabello denied the reports, stating that it would be foolish to have assets located in a place where they could be seized.

Switzerland
On 28 March 2018, Cabello was sanctioned by Switzerland due to "human rights violations and the deterioration of the rule of law and democratic institutions", freezing their funds and banning them from entering Switzerland.

Mexico
The Mexican Senate froze the assets of officials of the Maduro administration, including Cabello, and prohibited them from entering Mexico on 20 April 2018.

Panama
In March 2018, Panama sanctioned 55 public officials, including Cabello; the officials were sanctioned by the Panamanian government for their alleged involvement with "money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction".

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

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Stream cipher

A stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream (keystream). In a stream cipher, each plaintext digit is encrypted one at a time with the corresponding digit of the keystream, to give a digit of the ciphertext stream. Since encryption of each digit is dependent on the current state of the cipher, it is also known as state cipher. In practice, a digit is typically a bit and the combining operation is an exclusive-or (XOR).

The pseudorandom keystream is typically generated serially from a random seed value using digital shift registers. The seed value serves as the cryptographic key for decrypting the ciphertext stream. Stream ciphers represent a different approach to symmetric encryption from block ciphers. Block ciphers operate on large blocks of digits with a fixed, unvarying transformation. This distinction is not always clear-cut: in some modes of operation, a block cipher primitive is used in such a way that it acts effectively as a stream cipher. Stream ciphers typically execute at a higher speed than block ciphers and have lower hardware complexity. However, stream ciphers can be susceptible to security breaches (see stream cipher attacks); for example, when the same starting state (seed) is used twice.

Loose inspiration from the one-time pad
Stream ciphers can be viewed as approximating the action of a proven unbreakable cipher, the one-time pad (OTP). A one-time pad uses a keystream of completely random digits. The keystream is combined with the plaintext digits one at a time to form the ciphertext. This system was proven to be secure by Claude E. Shannon in 1949. However, the keystream must be generated completely at random with at least the same length as the plaintext and cannot be used more than once. This makes the system cumbersome to implement in many practical applications, and as a result the one-time pad has not been widely used, except for the most critical applications. Key generation, distribution and management are critical for those applications.

A stream cipher makes use of a much smaller and more convenient key such as 128 bits. Based on this key, it generates a pseudorandom keystream which can be combined with the plaintext digits in a similar fashion to the one-time pad. However, this comes at a cost. The keystream is now pseudorandom and so is not truly random. The proof of security associated with the one-time pad no longer holds. It is quite possible for a stream cipher to be completely insecure.

Types
A stream cipher generates successive elements of the keystream based on an internal state. This state is updated in essentially two ways: if the state changes independently of the plaintext or ciphertext messages, the cipher is classified as a synchronous stream cipher. By contrast, self-synchronising stream ciphers update their state based on previous plaintext or ciphertext digits. A system that incorporates the plaintext into the key is also known as an autokey cipher or autoclave cipher.

Synchronous stream ciphers
In a synchronous stream cipher a stream of pseudorandom digits is generated independently of the plaintext and ciphertext messages, and then combined with the plaintext (to encrypt) or the ciphertext (to decrypt). In the most common form, binary digits are used (bits), and the keystream is combined with the plaintext using the exclusive or operation (XOR). This is termed a binary additive stream cipher.

In a synchronous stream cipher, the sender and receiver must be exactly in step for decryption to be successful. If digits are added or removed from the message during transmission, synchronisation is lost. To restore synchronisation, various offsets can be tried systematically to obtain the correct decryption. Another approach is to tag the ciphertext with markers at regular points in the output.

If, however, a digit is corrupted in transmission, rather than added or lost, only a single digit in the plaintext is affected and the error does not propagate to other parts of the message. This property is useful when the transmission error rate is high; however, it makes it less likely the error would be detected without further mechanisms. Moreover, because of this property, synchronous stream ciphers are very susceptible to active attacks: if an attacker can change a digit in the ciphertext, they might be able to make predictable changes to the corresponding plaintext bit; for example, flipping a bit in the ciphertext causes the same bit to be flipped in the plaintext.

Self-synchronizing stream ciphers
Another approach uses several of the previous N ciphertext digits to compute the keystream. Such schemes are known as self-synchronizing stream ciphers, asynchronous stream ciphers or ciphertext autokey (CTAK). The idea of self-synchronization was patented in 1946 and has the advantage that the receiver will automatically synchronise with the keystream generator after receiving N ciphertext digits, making it easier to recover if digits are dropped or added to the message stream. Single-digit errors are limited in their effect, affecting only up to N plaintext digits.

An example of a self-synchronising stream cipher is a block cipher in cipher feedback (CFB) mode.

Based on linear-feedback shift registers
Binary stream ciphers are often constructed using linear-feedback shift registers (LFSRs) because they can be easily implemented in hardware and can be readily analysed mathematically. The use of LFSRs on their own, however, is insufficient to provide good security. Various schemes have been proposed to increase the security of LFSRs.

Non-linear combining functions
Because LFSRs are inherently linear, one technique for removing the linearity is to feed the outputs of several parallel LFSRs into a non-linear Boolean function to form a combination generator. Various properties of such a combining function are critical for ensuring the security of the resultant scheme, for example, in order to avoid correlation attacks.

Clock-controlled generators
Normally LFSRs are stepped regularly. One approach to introducing non-linearity is to have the LFSR clocked irregularly, controlled by the output of a second LFSR. Such generators include the stop-and-go generator, the alternating step generator and the shrinking generator.

An alternating step generator comprises three LFSRs, which we will call LFSR0, LFSR1 and LFSR2 for convenience. The output of one of the registers decides which of the other two is to be used; for instance, if LFSR2 outputs a 0, LFSR0 is clocked, and if it outputs a 1, LFSR1 is clocked instead. The output is the exclusive OR of the last bit produced by LFSR0 and LFSR1. The initial state of the three LFSRs is the key.

The stop-and-go generator (Beth and Piper, 1984) consists of two LFSRs. One LFSR is clocked if the output of a second is a 1, otherwise it repeats its previous output. This output is then (in some versions) combined with the output of a third LFSR clocked at a regular rate.

The shrinking generator takes a different approach. Two LFSRs are used, both clocked regularly. If the output of the first LFSR is 1, the output of the second LFSR becomes the output of the generator. If the first LFSR outputs 0, however, the output of the second is discarded, and no bit is output by the generator. This mechanism suffers from timing attacks on the second generator, since the speed of the output is variable in a manner that depends on the second generator's state. This can be alleviated by buffering the output.

Filter generator
Another approach to improving the security of an LFSR is to pass the entire state of a single LFSR into a non-linear filtering function.

Other designs
Instead of a linear driving device, one may use a nonlinear update function. For example, Klimov and Shamir proposed triangular functions (T-functions) with a single cycle on n-bit words.

Security
For a stream cipher to be secure, its keystream must have a large period, and it must be impossible to recover the cipher's key or internal state from the keystream. Cryptographers also demand that the keystream be free of even subtle biases that would let attackers distinguish a stream from random noise, and free of detectable relationships between keystreams that correspond to related keys or related cryptographic nonces. That should be true for all keys (there should be no weak keys), even if the attacker can know or choose some plaintext or ciphertext.

As with other attacks in cryptography, stream cipher attacks can be certificational so they are not necessarily practical ways to break the cipher but indicate that the cipher might have other weaknesses.

Securely using a secure synchronous stream cipher requires that one never reuse the same keystream twice. That generally means a different nonce or key must be supplied to each invocation of the cipher. Application designers must also recognize that most stream ciphers provide not authenticity but privacy: encrypted messages may still have been modified in transit.

Short periods for stream ciphers have been a practical concern. For example, 64-bit block ciphers like DES can be used to generate a keystream in output feedback (OFB) mode. However, when not using full feedback, the resulting stream has a period of around 232 blocks on average; for many applications, the period is far too low. For example, if encryption is being performed at a rate of 8 megabytes per second, a stream of period 232 blocks will repeat after about a half an hour.

Some applications using the stream cipher RC4 are attackable because of weaknesses in RC4's key setup routine; new applications should either avoid RC4 or make sure all keys are unique and ideally unrelated (such as generated by a well-seeded CSPRNG or a cryptographic hash function) and that the first bytes of the keystream are discarded.

The elements of stream ciphers are often much simpler to understand than block ciphers and are thus less likely to hide any accidental or malicious weaknesses.

Usage
Stream ciphers are often used for their speed and simplicity of implementation in hardware, and in applications where plaintext comes in quantities of unknowable length like a secure wireless connection. If a block cipher (not operating in a stream cipher mode) were to be used in this type of application, the designer would need to choose either transmission efficiency or implementation complexity, since block ciphers cannot directly work on blocks shorter than their block size. For example, if a 128-bit block cipher received separate 32-bit bursts of plaintext, three quarters of the data transmitted would be padding. Block ciphers must be used in ciphertext stealing or residual block termination mode to avoid padding, while stream ciphers eliminate this issue by naturally operating on the smallest unit that can be transmitted (usually bytes).

Another advantage of stream ciphers in military cryptography is that the cipher stream can be generated in a separate box that is subject to strict security measures and fed to other devices such as a radio set, which will perform the XOR operation as part of their function. The latter device can then be designed and used in less stringent environments.

ChaCha is becoming the most widely used stream cipher in software; others include: RC4, A5/1, A5/2, Chameleon, FISH, Helix, ISAAC, MUGI, Panama, Phelix, Pike, Salsa20, SEAL, SOBER, SOBER-128, and WAKE.

Trivia

 * United States National Security Agency documents sometimes use the term combiner-type algorithms, referring to algorithms that use some function to combine a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) with a plaintext stream.

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Robert Andrews Millikan

Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect.

Millikan graduated from Oberlin College in 1891 and obtained his doctorate at Columbia University in 1895. In 1896 he became an assistant at the University of Chicago, where he became a full professor in 1910. In 1909 Millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron. He began by measuring the course of charged water droplets in an electric field. The results suggested that the charge on the droplets is a multiple of the elementary electric charge, but the experiment was not accurate enough to be convincing. He obtained more precise results in 1910 with his oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water (which tended to evaporate too quickly) with oil.

In 1914 Millikan took up with similar skill the experimental verification of the equation introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905 to describe the photoelectric effect. He used this same research to obtain an accurate value of the Planck constant. In 1921 Millikan left the University of Chicago to become director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. There he undertook a major study of the radiation that the physicist Victor Hess had detected coming from outer space. Millikan proved that this radiation is indeed of extraterrestrial origin, and he named it "cosmic rays." As chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech (the school's governing body at the time) from 1921 until his retirement in 1945, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953.

Millikan was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Education
Robert Andrews Millikan was born on March 22, 1868, in Morrison, Illinois. He went to high school in Maquoketa, Iowa and received a bachelor's degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1891 and his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1895 – he was the first to earn a Ph.D. from that department.

At the close of my sophomore year [...] my Greek professor [...] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, "Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics." "All right," said I, "you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it." I at once purchased an Avery's Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home – trying to master the subject. [...] I doubt if I have ever taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm.

Millikan's enthusiasm for education continued throughout his career, and he was the coauthor of a popular and influential series of introductory textbooks, which were ahead of their time in many ways. Compared to other books of the time, they treated the subject more in the way in which it was thought about by physicists. They also included many homework problems that asked conceptual questions, rather than simply requiring the student to plug numbers into a formula.

Charge of the electron

Starting in 1908, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Millikan worked on an oil-drop experiment in which he measured the charge on a single electron. J. J. Thomson had already discovered the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. However, the actual charge and mass values were unknown. Therefore, if one of these two values were to be discovered, the other could easily be calculated. Millikan and his then graduate student Harvey Fletcher used the oil-drop experiment to measure the charge of the electron (as well as the electron mass, and Avogadro constant, since their relation to the electron charge was known).

Professor Millikan took sole credit, in return for Harvey Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics, in part for this work, and Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death. After a publication on his first results in 1910, contradictory observations by Felix Ehrenhaft started a controversy between the two physicists. After improving his setup, Millikan published his seminal study in 1913.

The elementary charge is one of the fundamental physical constants, and accurate knowledge of its value is of great importance. His experiment measured the force on tiny charged droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes. Knowing the electric field, the charge on the droplet could be determined. Repeating the experiment for many droplets, Millikan showed that the results could be explained as integer multiples of a common value (1.592 × 10−19 coulomb), which is the charge of a single electron. That this is somewhat lower than the modern value of 1.602 176 53(14) x 10−19 coulomb is probably due to Millikan's use of an inaccurate value for the viscosity of air.

Although at the time of Millikan's oil-drop experiments it was becoming clear that there exist such things as subatomic particles, not everyone was convinced. Experimenting with cathode rays in 1897, J. J. Thomson had discovered negatively charged 'corpuscles', as he called them, with a charge-to-mass ratio 1840 times that of a hydrogen ion. Similar results had been found by George FitzGerald and Walter Kaufmann. Most of what was then known about electricity and magnetism could be explained on the basis that charge is a continuous variable. This in much the same way that many of the properties of light can be explained by treating it as a continuous wave rather than as a stream of photons.

The beauty of the oil-drop experiment is that as well as allowing quite accurate determination of the fundamental unit of charge, Millikan's apparatus also provided a 'hands on' demonstration that charge is actually quantized. General Electric Company's Charles Steinmetz, who had previously thought that charge is a continuous variable, became convinced otherwise after working with Millikan's apparatus.

Data selection controversy
There is some controversy over selectivity in Millikan's use of results from his second experiment measuring the electron charge. This issue has been discussed by Allan Franklin, a former high-energy experimentalist and current philosopher of science at the University of Colorado. Franklin contends that Millikan's exclusions of data do not affect the final value of the charge obtained, but that Millikan's substantial "cosmetic surgery" reduced the statistical error. This enabled Millikan to give the charge of the electron to better than one-half of one percent. In fact, if Millikan had included all of the data he discarded, the error would have been less than 2%. While this would still have resulted in Millikan's having measured the charge of e− better than anyone else at the time, the slightly larger uncertainty might have allowed more disagreement with his results within the physics community, which Millikan likely tried to avoid. David Goodstein argues that Millikan's statement, that all drops observed over a 60 day period were used in the paper, was clarified in a subsequent sentence that specified all "drops upon which complete series of observations were made". Goodstein attests that this is indeed the case and notes that five pages of tables separate the two sentences.

Photoelectric effect
When Albert Einstein published his 1905 paper on the particle theory of light, Millikan was convinced that it had to be wrong, because of the vast body of evidence that had already shown that light was a wave. He undertook a decade-long experimental program to test Einstein's theory, which required building what he described as "a machine shop in vacuo" in order to prepare the very clean metal surface of the photoelectrode. His results, published in 1914, confirmed Einstein's predictions in every detail, but Millikan was not convinced of Einstein's interpretation, and as late as 1916 he wrote, "Einstein's photoelectric equation... cannot in my judgment be looked upon at present as resting upon any sort of a satisfactory theoretical foundation," even though "it actually represents very accurately the behavior" of the photoelectric effect. In his 1950 autobiography, however, he declared that his work "scarcely permits of any other interpretation than that which Einstein had originally suggested, namely that of the semi-corpuscular or photon theory of light itself".

Although Millikan's work formed some of the basis for modern particle physics, he was conservative in his opinions about 20th century developments in physics, as in the case of the photon theory. Another example is that his textbook, as late as the 1927 version, unambiguously states the existence of the ether, and mentions Einstein's theory of relativity only in a noncommittal note at the end of the caption under Einstein's portrait, stating as the last in a list of accomplishments that he was "author of the special theory of relativity in 1905 and of the general theory of relativity in 1914, both of which have had great success in explaining otherwise unexplained phenomena and in predicting new ones."

Millikan is also credited with measuring the value of the Planck constant by using photoelectric emission graphs of various metals.

Later life
In 1917, solar astronomer George Ellery Hale convinced Millikan to begin spending several months each year at the Throop College of Technology, a small academic institution in Pasadena, California, that Hale wished to transform into a major center for scientific research and education. A few years later Throop College became the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Millikan left the University of Chicago to become Caltech's "chairman of the executive council" (effectively its president). Millikan served in that position from 1921 to 1945. At Caltech, most of his scientific research focused on the study of "cosmic rays" (a term he coined). In the 1930s he entered into a debate with Arthur Compton over whether cosmic rays were composed of high-energy photons (Millikan's view) or charged particles (Compton's view). Millikan thought his cosmic ray photons were the "birth cries" of new atoms continually being created to counteract entropy and prevent the heat death of the universe. Compton was eventually proven right by the observation that cosmic rays are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field (hence must be charged particles).

Millikan was Vice Chairman of the National Research Council during World War I. During that time, he helped to develop anti-submarine and meteorological devices. During his wartime service, an investigation by Inspector General William T. Wood determined that Millikan had attempted to steal another inventor's design for a centrifugal gun in order to profit personally. Wood recommended termination of Millikan's army commission, but a subsequent investigation by Frank McIntyre, the executive assistant to the army chief of staff, exonerated Millikan. He received the Chinese Order of Jade. After the War, Millikan contributed to the works of the League of Nations' Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (from 1922, in replacement to George E. Hale, to 1931), with other prominent researchers (Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz, etc.). Millikan was a member of the organizing committee of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, and in his private life was an enthusiastic tennis player. He was married and had three sons, the eldest of whom, Clark B. Millikan, became a prominent aerodynamic engineer. Another son, Glenn, also a physicist, married the daughter (Clare) of George Leigh Mallory of "Because it's there" Mount Everest fame. Glenn was killed in a climbing accident in Cumberland Mountains in 1947.

In the aftermath of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, Millikan chaired the Joint Technical Committee on Earthquake Protection. They authored a report proposing means to minimize life and property loss in future earthquakes by advocating stricter building codes.

A religious man and the son of a minister, in his later life Millikan argued strongly for a complementary relationship between Christian faith and science. He dealt with this in his Terry Lectures at Yale in 1926–27, published as Evolution in Science and Religion. He was a Christian theist and proponent of theistic evolution. A more controversial belief of his was eugenics – he was one of the initial trustees of the Human Betterment Foundation and praised San Marino, California for being "the westernmost outpost of Nordic civilization ... [with] a population which is twice as Anglo-Saxon as that existing in New York, Chicago, or any of the great cities of this country." In 1936, Millikan advised the president of Duke University in the then-racial segregated southern United States against recruiting a female physicist and argued that it would be better to hire young men. On account of Millikan's affiliation with the Human Betterment Foundation, in January 2021, the Caltech Board of Trustees authorized removal of Millikan's name (and the names of five other historical figures affiliated with the Foundation), from campus buildings.

This criticism has been rigorously analyzed in 2023 by mathematician Thomas C. Hales in, concluding: "In a reversal of Caltech's claims, this article shows that all three of Caltech's scientific witnesses against eugenics were actually pro-eugenic to varying degrees. Millikan's beliefs fell within acceptable scientific norms of his day." His analysis further proposed to remedy the Caltech's decision as follows: "The following remedies are recommended. President Rosenbaum and the Caltech Board of Trustees should rescind their endorsement of the CNR report. The report itself should be retracted for failing to meet the minimal standards of accuracy and scholarship that are expected of official documents issued by one of the world’s great scientific institutions. Caltech should restore Robert Andrews Millikan to a place of honor."

Westinghouse time capsule
In 1938, he wrote a short passage to be placed in the Westinghouse Time Capsules.

"At this moment, August 22, 1938, the principles of representative ballot government, such as are represented by the governments of the Anglo-Saxon, French, and Scandinavian countries, are in deadly conflict with the principles of despotism, which up to two centuries ago had controlled the destiny of man throughout practically the whole of recorded history. If the rational, scientific, progressive principles win out in this struggle there is a possibility of a warless, golden age ahead for mankind. If the reactionary principles of despotism triumph now and in the future, the future history of mankind will repeat the sad story of war and oppression as in the past."

Death and legacy

Millikan died of a heart attack at his home in San Marino, California in 1953 at age 85, and was interred in the "Court of Honor" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

On January 26, 1982, he was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 37¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.

Tektronix named a street on their Portland, Oregon, campus after Millikan with the Millikan Way (MAX station) of Portland's MAX Blue Line named after the street.

Name removal from college campuses during the 21st century
During the mid to late 20th century, several colleges named buildings, physical features, awards, and professorships after Millikan. In 1958, Pomona College named a science building Millikan Laboratory in honor of Millikan. After reviewing Millikan's association with the eugenics movement, the college administration voted in October 2020 to rename the building as the Ms. Mary Estella Seaver and Mr. Carlton Seaver Laboratory.

On the Caltech campus, several physical features, rooms, awards, and a professorship were named in honor of Millikan, including the Millikan Library, which was completed in 1966. In January 2021, the board of trustees voted to immediately strip Millikan's name from the Caltech campus because of his association with eugenics. The Robert A. Millikan Library has been renamed Caltech Hall. In November 2021, the Robert A. Millikan Professorship was renamed the Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professorship.

Possible name removal from secondary schools during the 21st century
In November 2020, Millikan Middle School (formerly Millikan Junior High School) in the suburban Los Angeles neighborhood of Sherman Oaks started the process of renaming their school. In February 2022, the Board of Education for the Los Angeles Unified School District voted unanimously to rename the school in honor of musician Louis Armstrong.

In August 2020, the Long Beach Unified School District established a committee that would examine the need for renaming of their Robert A. Millikan High School. By early 2023, Long Beach remains the only city that still has an educational institution named in honor of Millikan.

Name removal from awards
In the spring of 2021, the American Association of Physics Teachers voted unanimously to remove Millikan's name from the Robert A. Millikan award, which honors "notable and intellectually creative contributions to the teaching of physics." A few months later, AAPT announced that the award would be renamed in honor of University of Washington professor of physics Lillian C. McDermott who died the previous year.

Personal life
In 1902 he married Greta Ervin Blanchard (1876–1955). They had three sons: Clark Blanchard, Glenn Allan, and Max Franklin.

Famous statements
"If Kevin Harding's equation and Aston's curve are even roughly correct, as I'm sure they are, for Dr. Cameron and I have computed with their aid the maximum energy evolved in radioactive change and found it to check well with observation, then this supposition of an energy evolution through the disintegration of the common elements is from the one point of view a childish Utopian dream, and from the other a foolish bugaboo."

"No more earnest seekers after truth, no intellectuals of more penetrating vision can be found anywhere at any time than these, and yet every one of them has been a devout and professed follower of religion."

Archival collections

 * Robert Millikan papers [microform, 1821-1953 (bulk 1921-1953), Niels Bohr Library & Archives ]
 * William Polk Jesse student notebooks, 1919-1921, Niels Bohr Library & Archives (contains notes on the lectures of Robert A. Millikan, including courses taught by Millkan: Electron Theory, Quantum Theory, and Kinetic Theory)

title: Robert Andrews Millikan


text:
Talk:Foreign relations of Afghanistan

Iran relations
A recent link to an LA Times article was referred to at the end of the Afghanistan-Iran relations section. Although it states the United States current accusations, the writeup of the data seems contrived, especially with the addition that Iran may be a potential "destroyer" of Afghanistan despite their open support. Whether the accusations are factual or not, it is from the point of view of the United States and the neutrality of the final statement is questionable, and also seems to predicate a problem that may or may not be real. I would like to reword or remove this edit but I'm not sure what the appropriate thing to do is, as it is a potentially sensitive issue.69.163.48.140 (talk) 09:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Josiah Harlan
The sentences on Josiah Harlan aren't worded well. For starters, his name is not mentioned and he is referred to as a "recorded person" Reliefappearance (talk) 19:06, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Update please
This needs updating - it still refers to the Taliban regime. -- April

I have started by removing the reference to a dispute re UN representation, updating the initial overview, changing the general lay-out and adding a bit about German Afghani relationship. I also removed a reference re Kashmir and joint land border India/Afghanistan as I felt this is just a start to have a major discussion re rights and wrongs of Kashmir +/- occupations etc, which I do not think this particular article shoudl be used for. I hope this can generally be agreed upon Refdoc 20:21, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Note the 2005 CIA factbook is now available. Rich  Farmbrough 14:40 6  March 2006 (UTC).

Clarify
This sentence "By 2001, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban. All three countries withdrew recognition Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew recognition following the September 11, 2001 bombings. " Rich  Farmbrough 14:40 6  March 2006 (UTC).

Merging graph and external links to this page
I would like to merge much of a large graph into a new subsection. this is the result of comprimise between editors at WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force. Any objections from those who regularly edit here? Ikip (talk) 17:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * List of diplomatic missions of Afghanistan

Attribution
This article contains information that was merged or copied from the following articles: Afghanistan – United States relations, Afghanistan–Canada relations, Afghanistan–India relations, Afghanistan–Iran relations, Afghanistan–Iran relations, Afghanistan–Pakistan relations, Afghanistan–Russia relations, Afghan–Turkish relations.

potential Qatar resource

 * Afghans Pull Envoy to Qatar 15.December.2011 by DION NISSENBAUM AND YAROSLAV TROFIMOV (Alex Delmar-Morgan contributed to this article, page A17 in print) WSJ reporting from Kabul, excerpt ...

97.87.29.188 (talk) 00:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

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IRA foreign relations table
Should the section listing the former foreign relations of the Islamic Republic not be removed? On one hand, it can serve as a template for the (maybe not so) soon-to-be relations in the future, but on the other hand it is outdated information. I believe a compromise could remove any states with which there aren't any relations at all, while keeping the ones that have been unofficially cooperating with the new government through their embassies in Kabul and elsewhere, e.g. the United States, Pakistan, Russia, etc. Any other opinions would be nevertheless appreciated.180app (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Foreign relations of Afghanistan


text:
Grimm's law

Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift, is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the first millennium BC, first discovered by Rasmus Rask but systematically put forward by Jacob Grimm. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and stop consonants of certain other Indo-European languages.

History
Grimm's law was the first discovered systematic sound change, creating historical phonology as a historical linguistics discipline. Friedrich von Schlegel first noted the correspondence between Latin p and Germanic f in 1806. In 1818, Rasmus Rask extended the correspondences to other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, and to the full range of consonants involved. In 1822, Jacob Grimm put forth the rule in his book Deutsche Grammatik and extended it to include standard German. He noticed that many words had consonants different from what his law predicted. These exceptions defied linguists for several decades, until Danish linguist Karl Verner explained them in Verner's law.

Overview
Grimm's law consists of three parts, forming consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift. The phases are usually constructed as follows:

 * 1) Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
 * 2) Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
 * 3) Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones).

This chain shift (in the order 3, 2,1) can be abstractly represented as:

Here each sound moves one position to the right to take on its new sound value. Within Proto-Germanic, the sounds denoted by $⟨b⟩$, $⟨d⟩$, $⟨g⟩$ and $⟨gw⟩$ were stops in some environments and fricatives in others, so →  indicates  →, and likewise for the others. The voiceless fricatives are customarily spelled $⟨f⟩$, $⟨þ⟩$, $⟨h⟩$ and $⟨hw⟩$ in the context of Germanic.

The exact details of the shift are unknown, and it may have progressed in a variety of ways before arriving at the final situation. The three stages listed above show the progression of a "pull chain", in which each change leaves a "gap" in the phonological system that "pulls" other phonemes into it to fill the gap. Alternatively, the shift may have occurred as a “push chain”, where the sounds changed in reverse order, with each change "pushing" the next forward to avoid merging the phonemes.

The steps could also have occurred somewhat differently. Another possible sequence of events could have been:

 * 1) Voiceless stops are allophonically aspirated under most conditions.
 * 2) Voiced stops become unaspirated voiceless stops.
 * 3) All aspirated stops become fricatives.

This sequence would lead to the same result. This variety of Grimm's law is often suggested in the context of Proto-Indo-European glottalic theory, which is followed by a minority of linguists. This theoretical framework assumes that PIE "voiced stops" were actually voiceless to begin with, so that the second phase did not actually exist as such, or was not actually devoicing but was losing some other articulatory feature like glottalization or ejectiveness. This alternative sequence also accounts for Verner's law phonetics (see below), which are easier to explain within the glottalic theory framework when Grimm's law is formulated in this manner. Additionally, aspirated stops are known to have changed to fricatives when transiting between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Italic, so representing a plausible potential change from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic.

Further changes
Once the sounds described by Grimm's law had changed, only one type of voiced consonant was left, with no distinction between voiced stops and voiced fricatives. They eventually became stops at the start of a word (for the most part), as well as after a nasal consonant, but fricatives elsewhere. Whether they were plosives or fricatives at first is therefore not clear. The voiced aspirated stops may have first become voiced fricatives, before becoming stops under certain conditions. But they may also have become stops at first, then become fricatives in most positions later.

Around the same time as the Grimm's law sounds shifted, another change occurred known as Verner's law. Verner's law caused the voiceless fricatives that resulted from the Grimm's law changes to become voiced under certain conditions, creating apparent exceptions to the rule. For example:

 * Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr ("brother") > Proto-Germanic *brōþēr (Old English broþor, Old High German bruothar/bruodar)
 * Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr ("father") > Proto-Germanic *faðēr (Old English fæder, Old High German fatar)

Here, the same sound *t appears as *þ in one word (following Grimm's law), but as *d  in another (apparently violating Grimm's law). See the Verner's law article for a more detailed explanation of this discrepancy.

The early Germanic *gw that had arisen from Proto-Indo-European (and from  through Verner's law) further changed with various sorts:

 * After *n it was preserved as a labiovelar stop *gw, but later changed to a plain velar *g in West Germanic.
 * Following vowels, it seems to have become *w, presumably through a fricative stage *ɣʷ.
 * Word-initially, the most plausible reflex is labiovelar stop *gʷ at first, but the further development is unclear. In that position, it became either *w, *g or *b during late Proto-Germanic.
 * The regular reflex next to *u would likely have been *g, due to the labial element before a labial vowel being lost in Proto-Indo-European, which continued to act as a surface filter. (See boukólos rule)

Perhaps the usual reflex was *b (as suggested by the connection of bid < *bidjaną and Old Irish guidid), but *w appears in certain cases (possibly through dissimilation when another labial consonant followed?) like warm and wife (provided that the proposed explanations are correct). Proto-Germanic *hw voiced by Verner's law fell together with this sound and developed identically, compare the words for 'she-wolf': from Middle High German wülbe and Old Norse ylgr, one can reconstruct Proto-Germanic nominative singular *wulbī, genitive singular *wulgijōz, from earlier *wulgwī, *wulgwijōz.

Examples
Further changes following Grimm's law, as well as sound changes in other Indo-European languages, can occasionally obscure the law's effects. The most illustrative examples are used here.

This process appears strikingly regular. Each phase involves one single change which applies equally to the labials and their equivalent dentals, velars  and rounded velars. The first phase left the phoneme repertoire of the language without voiceless stops, the second phase filled this gap, but created a new one, and so on until the chain had run its course.

Behaviour in consonant clusters
When two obstruents occurred in a pair, the first was changed according to Grimm's law, if possible, while the second was not. If either of the two was voiceless, the whole cluster was devoiced, and the first obstruent also lost its labialisation, if it was present.

Most examples of this occurred with obstruents preceded by *s (resulting in *sp, *st, *sk, *skʷ), or obstruents followed by *t (giving *ft, *ss, *ht, *ht) or *s (giving *fs, *ss, *hs, *hs). The latter change was frequent in suffixes, and became a phonotactic restriction known as the Germanic spirant law. This rule remained productive throughout the Proto-Germanic period. The cluster *tt became *ss (as in many Indo-European daughter languages), but this was often restored analogically to *st later on.

Examples with preceding *s:

 * Some linguists dispute the origin of the word "scold", but Julius Pokorny, among others, proposed *skʷetlo as the assumed root.
 * Several languages, including English, later have an unrelated change >  (or >  in the case of Dutch).

Examples with following *t:

 * Icelandic nótt comes from Old Norse nǫ́tt, nátt, from Proto-Germanic *naht-. The Germanic *ht regularly becomes Old Norse tt, and this then becomes preaspirated in Icelandic. Thus, the  of the modern Icelandic form is not Germanic 's direct descendant. The same ancestry holds for Icelandic átta's  as well.

Correspondences to PIE
The Germanic "sound laws", combined with regular changes reconstructed for other Indo-European languages, allow one to define the expected sound correspondences between different branches of the family. For example, Germanic (word-initial) *b- corresponds regularly to Latin *f-, Greek ', Sanskrit ', Slavic, Baltic or Celtic b-, etc., while Germanic *f- corresponds to Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic and Baltic p- and to zero (no initial consonant) in Celtic. The former set goes back to PIE * (faithfully reflected in Sanskrit and modified in various ways elsewhere), and the latter set to PIE *p- (shifted in Germanic, lost in Celtic, but preserved in the other groups mentioned here).

One of the more conspicuous present surface correspondences is the English digraph wh and the corresponding Latin and Romance digraph qu, notably found in interrogative words (wh-words) such as the five Ws. These both come from. The present pronunciations have further changed, like many English varieties reducing the wh-cluster, though the spellings reflect the history more; see Interrogative word: Etymology for details.

title: Grimm's law


text:
Verner's law

Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *s, *h, *hʷ, following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives *β, *ð, *z, *ɣ, *ɣʷ. The law was formulated by Karl Verner, and first published in 1877.

Problem
A seminal insight into how the Germanic languages diverged from their Indo-European ancestor had been established in the early nineteenth century, and had been formulated as Grimm's law. Amongst other things, Grimm's law described how the Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops ', ', , and *kʷ regularly changed into Proto-Germanic *f (bilabial fricative ), *þ (dental fricative ), *h (velar fricative ), and *hʷ (velar fricative ).

However, there appeared to be a large set of words in which the agreement of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Baltic, Slavic etc. guaranteed Proto-Indo-European ', ' or , and yet the Germanic reflex was not the expected, unvoiced fricatives *f, *þ, *h, *hʷ but rather their voiced counterparts *β, *ð, *ɣ, *ɣʷ. A similar problem obtained with Proto-Indo-European *s, which sometimes appeared as Proto-Germanic *z.

At first, irregularities did not cause concern for scholars since there were many examples of the regular outcome. Increasingly, however, it became the ambition of linguists like the Neogrammarians to formulate general and exceptionless rules of sound change that would account for all the data (or as close to all the data as possible), not merely for a well-behaved subset of it.

One classic example of Proto-Indo-European  → Proto-Germanic *ð is the word for 'father'. Proto-Indo-European (here, the macron marks vowel length) → Proto-Germanic faðēr (instead of expected faþēr). In the structurally similar family term 'brother', Proto-Indo-European  did indeed develop as predicted by Grimm's Law (Germanic ). Even more curiously, scholars often found both *þ and *ð as reflexes of Proto-Indo-European  in different forms of one and the same root, e.g. *werþaną 'to turn', preterite third-person singular *warþ 'he turned', but preterite third-person plural *wurðun and past participle *wurðanaz.

Solution
Karl Verner is traditionally credited as the first scholar to note the factor governing the distribution of the two outcomes. Verner observed that the apparently unexpected voicing of Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops occurred if they were non-word-initial and if the vowel preceding them carried no stress in Proto-Indo-European. The original location of stress was often retained in Greek and early Sanskrit; in Germanic, though, stress eventually became fixed on the initial (root) syllable of all words.

The following table illustrates the sound changes according to Verner. In the bottom row, for each pair, the sound on the right represents the sound changed according to Verner's Law.

The crucial difference between ' and ' was therefore one of second-syllable versus first-syllable stress (compare Sanskrit pitā́ versus bhrā́tā).

The *werþaną : *wurðun contrast is likewise explained as due to stress on the root versus stress on the inflectional suffix (leaving the first syllable unstressed). There are also other Vernerian alternations, as illustrated by modern German ziehen 'to draw, pull': Old High German zogōn 'to tug, drag' ← Proto-Germanic *teuhaną : *tugōną ← Pre-Germanic ' : ' 'lead'.

The change described by Verner's Law also accounts for Proto-Germanic *z as the development of Proto-Indo-European  in some words. Since this *z changed to *r in the North Germanics and in West Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Frisian), Verner's Law resulted in alternation of *s and *r in some inflectional paradigms, known as grammatischer Wechsel. For example, the Old English verb ceosan 'choose' had the past plural form curon and the past participle (ge)coren. These three forms derived from Proto-Germanic *keusaną : *kuzun ~ *kuzanaz, which again derived from Pre-Germanic ' : ' ~  'taste, try'. We would have **corn for chosen in Modern English if the consonants of choose and chose had not been morphologically levelled (compare the Dutch kiezen 'to choose' : verkoren 'chosen'). On the other hand, Vernerian *r has not been levelled out in English were ← Proto-Germanic *wēzun, related to English was. Similarly, English lose, though it has the weak form lost, also has the archaic form †lorn (now seen in the compounds forlorn and lovelorn) (compare Dutch verliezen : verloren); in German, on the other hand, the *s has been levelled out both in war 'was' (plural waren 'were') and verlieren 'lose' (participle verloren 'lost').

Verner's law in Gothic
Whereas the North Germanic and West Germanic languages clearly show the effects of Verner's law, those patterns seldom appear in Gothic, the representative of East Germanic. This is usually thought to be because Gothic eliminated most Verner's law variants through analogy with the unaffected consonants.

Significance
Karl Verner published his discovery in the article "Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung" (An exception to the first sound shift) in Kuhn's Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research in 1877, but he had already presented his theory on 1 May 1875 in a comprehensive personal letter to his friend and mentor, Vilhelm Thomsen.

A letter shows that Eduard Sievers had hit on the same explanation by 1874, but did not publish it.

Verner's theory was received with great enthusiasm by the young generation of comparative philologists, the so-called Junggrammatiker, because it was an important argument in favour of the Neogrammarian dogma that the sound laws were without exceptions ("die Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze").

Dating the change described by Verner's law
The change in pronunciation described by Verner's Law must have occurred before the shift of stress to the first syllable: the voicing of the new consonant in Proto-Germanic is conditioned by which syllable is stressed in Proto-Indo-European, yet this syllabic stress has disappeared in Proto-Germanic, so the change in the consonant must have occurred at a time when the syllabic stress in earlier Proto-Germanic still conformed to the Indo-European pattern. However, the syllabic stress shift erased the conditioning environment, and made the variation between voiceless fricatives and their voiced alternants look mysteriously haphazard.

Which applied first: Grimm's law or Verner's law?
Until recently it was assumed that Verner's law was productive after Grimm's Law, and this remains the standard account: R. D. Fulk's 2018 Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages, for example, finds that 'Grimm's law should be assumed to antecede Verner's law'.

But it has been pointed out that, even if the sequence is reversed, the result can be just the same given certain conditions, and the thesis that Verner's Law might have been valid before Grimm's Law—maybe long before it—has been finding more and more acceptance. Accordingly, this order now would have to be assumed:

 * 1) Verner's law (possible boundary for Indo-European/Germanic)
 * 2) Grimm's law/First Sound Shift (does not mark the formation of Germanic accordingly)
 * 3) Appearance of initial stress (third possible boundary for Indo-European/Germanic)

This chronological reordering would have far-reaching implications for the shape and development of the Proto-Germanic language. If Verner's law operated before Grimm's law, one would expect the voicing of Proto-Indo-European ', ', ', and *kʷ to produce ', ', ', and *gʷ, which would have been identical with the existing Proto-Indo-European voiced stops. Yet it is clear that consonants affected by Verner's law merged with the descendants of the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirate stops, not of the plain voiced stops. The usual proposed explanation for this is to postulate aspiration in the voiceless stops of the dialect of Indo-European that gave rise to Proto-Germanic.

Here is a table describing the sequence of changes in this alternative ordering: (This can however be bypassed in the glottalic theory framework, where the voiced aspirate stops are replaced with plain voiced stops, and plain voiced stops with glottalized stops.)

Meanwhile, Noske (2012) argued that Grimm's Law and Verner's Law must have been part of a single bifurcating chain shift.

Areal connections
An exact parallel to Verner's law is found in the neighboring Finnic languages, where it forms a part of the system of consonant gradation: a single voiceless consonant (*p, *t, *k, *s) becomes weakened (*b, *d, *g; *h < *z) when occurring after an unstressed syllable. As word stress in Finnic is predictable (primary stress on the initial syllable, secondary stress on odd-numbered non-final syllables), and has remained so since Proto-Uralic, this change did not produce any alternation in the shape of word roots. However, it manifests in the shape of numerous inflectional or derivational suffixes, and is therefore called "suffixal gradation".

Lauri Posti argued that suffixal gradation in Finnic represents Germanic influence, in particular reflecting the pronunciation of Proto-Finnic by a hypothetical Germanic-speaking superstrate (often assumed to account for the great number of Germanic loanwords already in Proto-Finnic). On the contrary, consonant gradation has also been viewed as inheritance from Proto-Uralic, as it occurs also in other Uralic languages. In particular, suffixal gradation under identical conditions also exists in Nganasan. The possibility of the opposite direction of influence – from Finnic to Germanic – has also been suggested.

Further reference

 * 1) Ramat, Paolo, Einführung in das Germanische (Linguistische Arbeiten 95) (Tübingen, 1981)
 * 2) Wolfram Euler, Konrad Badenheuer: Sprache und Herkunft der Germanen — Abriss des Protogermanischen vor der Ersten Lautverschiebung [Language and Origin of the Germanic Peoples — Compendium of the Proto-Germanic Language prior to First Sound Shift, 244 p., ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6, London/Hamburg 2009
 * 3) Kortlandt, Frederik, Proto-Germanic obstruents. — in: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 27, p. 3–10 (1988).
 * 4) Koivulehto, Jorma / Vennemann, Theo, Der finnische Stufenwechsel und das Vernersche Gesetz. - in:  Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 118, p. 163–182 (esp. 170–174) (1996)
 * 5) Noske, Roland, The Grimm–Verner Chain Shift and Contrast Preservation Theory. — in: Botma, Bert & Roland Noske (eds.), Phonological Explorations. Empirical, Theoretical and Diachronic Issues (Linguistische Arbeiten 548), p. 63–86. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.
 * 6) Vennemann, Theo, Hochgermanisch und Niedergermanisch. — in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 106, p. 1–45 (1984)

title: Verner's law


text:
Talk:Parkinson's law

Parkinson vs. Peter
The penultimate sentence of the article mentions in passing that one chapter of Parkinson's Law documents the principle of promotion to the level of incompetence that has more recently been called the "Peter Principle" by people who've had the bad luck never to have read Parkinson.

I believe that this fact of prior publication deserves more than just a snippet of a run-on sentence and should have its own subsection. And I believe that the Peter principle article should be rewritten to acknowledge Parkinson's prior publication. Briankharvey (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Another Parkinson's Law?
Cut and pasted from: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-government-so-bad-at-doing-things-that-capitalism-naturally-excels-at-is-the-world-doomed-to-the-realities-of-capitalism-as-a-superior-social-system-and-henceforth-a-theory-of-human-nature-which-is-what/answer/Susanna-Viljanen: "economist and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson (of the Parkinson’s Laws fame) and he came to the conclusion that when an institution (private or public) grows larger than a certain limit, it becomes inefficient and bloated. This is the reason why monopolies - private or public - are inefficient. The underlying reason is the length of the feedback loops. This was affirmed by Donella Meadows in her 12 leverage points’ theorem." 74.127.200.151 (talk) 11:10, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

formula error?
I'm not familiar with this topic, I so I haven't changed anything, but the equation seems wrong (on dimensional and logical grounds) is it possible it should be m^k vs k^m in the numerator? 198.84.249.151 (talk) 10:29, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Criticisms section needed
No criticisms section? why not. 120.21.232.142 (talk) 11:45, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Two meanings
It seems pretty clear that the term “Parkinson's Law” is used in two meanings, and the article is currently a mixture of the two:

 * 1)  work expanding to fill the time available,
 * 2)  bureaucracy / number of employees tends to grow

I didn't look at the entire edit history, but it seems like basically people will keep adding the “other” meaning no matter what; here are some example edits:

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=next&oldid=697856975
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=prev&oldid=791119771
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_law&diff=prev&oldid=1162268038

Both have some validity (the former seems to have more popular usage, and the latter is the original), so it seems that if the article tries to insist on one meaning it will ultimately be short-lived as the other meaning will get added at some point. So it would be good to more explicitly mention the two meanings, and separate out sections that have to do with each. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

 * I've done that a bit. More clean-up may be needed. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:59, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Parkinson's law