text:
Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari (, also,   ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect, who is best known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of all art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.

Giorgio was a Mannerist painter who was highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day, but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the Lives promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts.

Vasari designed the Tomb of Michelangelo, his hero, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence that was completed in 1578. Based on Vasari's text in print about Giotto's new manner of painting as a rinascita (rebirth), author Jules Michelet in his Histoire de France (1835) suggested the adoption of Vasari's concept, using the term Renaissance (rebirth, in French) to distinguish the cultural change. The term was adopted thereafter in historiography and is still in use today.

Life
Vasari was born prematurely on 30 July 1511 in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an early age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia, a skillful painter of stained glass. Sent to Florence at the age of sixteen by Cardinal Silvio Passerini, he joined the circle of Andrea del Sarto and his pupils, Rosso Fiorentino and Jacopo Pontormo, where his humanist education was encouraged. He was befriended by Michelangelo, whose painting style would influence his own.

Vasari enjoyed high repute during his lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune. He married Niccolosa Bacci, a member of one of the richest and most prominent families of Arezzo. He was made Knight of the Golden Spur by the Pope. He was elected to the municipal council of his native town and finally, rose to the supreme office of gonfaloniere.

He built a fine house in Arezzo in 1547 and decorated its walls and vaults with paintings. It is now a museum in his honour named the Casa Vasari, whilst his residence in Florence is also preserved.

In 1563, he helped found the Florentine Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, with Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and Michelangelo as capi of the institution. Thirty-six artists were chosen as members.

He died on 27 June 1574 in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, aged 62.

Painting
In 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasari's own Mannerist paintings were more admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547, he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni. He was regularly employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome. He also worked in Naples (for example on the Vasari Sacristy), Arezzo, and other places. Many of his paintings still exist, the most important being on the wall and ceiling of the Sala di Cosimo I in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where he and his assistants worked from 1555. Vasari also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio.In Rome, he painted frescos in the Sala Regia. Among his better-known pupils or followers are Sebastiano Flori, Bartolomeo Carducci, Mirabello Cavalori (Salincorno), Stefano Veltroni (of Monte San Savino), and Alessandro Fortori (of Arezzo).

His last major commission was a vast The Last Judgement fresco on the ceiling of the cupola of the Florence Cathedral that he began in 1572 with the assistance of the Bolognese painter Lorenzo Sabatini. Unfinished at the time of Vasari's death, it was completed by Federico Zuccari.

Architecture
Aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was successful as an architect. His loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi by the Arno opens up the vista at the far end of its long narrow courtyard. It is a unique piece of urban planning that functions as a public piazza, and which, if considered as a short street, is unique as a Renaissance street with a unified architectural treatment. The view of the Loggia from the Arno reveals that, with the Vasari Corridor, it is one of the very few structures lining the river that is open to the river and appears to embrace the riverside environment.

In Florence, Vasari also designed the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river. The corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio, and winds around the exterior of several buildings. It was once the location of the Mercado de Vecchio.

He renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. In both buildings, he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodeled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time.

In Santa Croce, he produced the painting of The Adoration of the Magi commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and completed in February 1567. It was restored recently, before being exhibited in 2011 in Rome and Naples. Eventually, it will be returned to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo (Province of Alessandria, Piedmont).

In 1562, Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of High Renaissance architecture.

In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammannati at Pope Julius III's Villa Giulia.

The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
Often called "the first art historian", Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects). This work was first published in 1550 and dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. Vasari introduced the term "Rinascita" (rebirth in Italian) in printed works – although an awareness of an ongoing "rebirth" in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti. Vasari's term, applied to the change in artistic styles with the work of Giotto, eventually would become the French term Renaissance (rebirth) widely applied to the era that followed. Vasari was responsible for the modern use of the term Gothic art, as well, although he only used the word Goth in association with the German style that preceded the rebirth, which he identified as "barbaric".

The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was partly rewritten and extended in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural).The work shows a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, the invention of engraving. Venetian art in particular (along with arts from other parts of Europe), is ignored systematically in the first edition. Between his first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art (finally including Titian), it did so without achieving a neutral point of view.

Many inaccuracies exist within his Lives. For example, Vasari writes that Andrea del Castagno killed Domenico Veneziano, which is incorrect; Andrea died several years before Domenico. In another example, Vasari's biography of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, whom he calls "Il Sodoma", published only in the second edition of the Lives (1568) after Bazzi's death, condemns the artist as being immoral, bestial, and vain. Vasari dismisses Bazzi's work as lazy and offensive, despite the artist's having been named a Cavalier of the Supreme Order of Christ by Pope Leo X and having received important commissions for the Villa Farnese and other sites.

Vasari's biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip. Many of his anecdotes seem plausible, while others are assumed fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that supposedly, the older master repeatedly tried to brush away (a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles). He did carry out research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and his biographies are considered more reliable in the case of his contemporary painters and those of the preceding generation. Modern criticism – with new materials produced by research – has revised many of his dates and facts.

Vasari included a short autobiography at the end of the Lives, and added further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco Salviati.

According to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term "competition" (or "concorrenza" in Italian) in its economic sense. He used it repeatedly, and stressed the concept in his introduction to the life of Pietro Perugino, in explaining the reasons for Florentine artistic preeminence. In Vasari's view, Florentine artists excelled because they were hungry, and they were hungry because their fierce competition amongst themselves for commissions kept them so. Competition, he said, is "one of the nourishments that maintain them".

References and sources
References

Sources
 * The Lives of the Artists. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-283410-X
 * Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volumes I and II. Everyman's Library, 1996. ISBN 0-679-45101-3
 * Vasari on Technique. Dover Publications, 1980. ISBN 0-486-20717-X
 * Life of Michelangelo. Alba House, 2003. ISBN 0-8189-0935-8

title: Giorgio Vasari


text:
User:Tarquin/to do

Stuff to do when I suddenly find a spare life hanging around. (Anyone is welcome to beat me to doing any of the following!)

 * upload picture of chives
 * see Talk:Quadratic formula
 * Get dates for Jacques Prevert
 * see Talk:Louis IV of France
 * merge North Pole and South Pole into something coherent & unstubbish, about geographic & magentic poles. (but please beat me to it, I know naaaaaaathing about all this)
 * merge in all the types of computer kernel, maybe
 * do some fiddling to floppy disk
 * sort out Folly
 * direct object and indirect object

 * ponder some way to merge all these "walled garden" todo lists -- somehow resurrect "votes for rewrite"

The todo lists
Reasons:

 * Many users now keep a "todo" list within their personal space -- but many users also add a "but please beat me to it!"
 * Many articles' talk pages have notes & queries which go unresolved for months (qv my watchlist...).
 * Recent changes goes by too quickly for people to see questions that they might be able to answer.

Instead of keeping personal lists, we should start using Pages needing attention more -- but change it to be a hub of sorts. From this, we'd have pages for different sorts of things to do:

 * deletion requests
 * NPOVing
 * factual questions (someone with knowledge of the subject is needed)
 * copyediting / rewrites for clarity (ie work that someone can do with no knowledge of the subject other than what they read in the article itself)
 * merging duplicates
 * renaming
 * Find or fix a stub, of course
 * & maybe others

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

title: User:Tarquin/to do


text:
Deșteaptă-te, române!

"Deșteaptă-te, române!" ("Awaken Thee, Romanian!"; ) is the national anthem of Romania and former national anthem of Moldova.

The lyrics were composed by Andrei Mureșanu (1816–1863), and the music was popular (it was chosen for the poem by Gheorghe Ucenescu, as most sources say). It was written and published during the 1848 revolution, initially with the name "Un răsunet" ("An echo"), as a lyrical response to Vasile Alecsandri's poem "Către Români" ("To Romanians"), later known as "Deșteptarea României" ("The Awakening of Romania"), from which Mureșanu took inspiration for many of the themes and motifs of his own lyrics, a fact that is reflected in the overall similarity between the two poems. The original text was written in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. It was first sung in late June in the same year in the city of Brașov, on the streets of the Șcheii Brașovului neighborhood and it became immediately the revolutionary anthem.

Since then, this patriotic song has been sung during all major Romanian conflicts, including during the 1989 anti-communist revolution. After the revolution, it became the national anthem on 24 January 1990, replacing the communist-era national anthem "Trei culori" ("Three colours").

29 July, the "National Anthem Day" (Ziua Imnului național), is an annual observance in Romania.

The anthem was also used on various solemn occasions in the Moldavian Democratic Republic during its brief existence between 1917 and 1918. Between 1991 and 1994, "Deșteaptă-te, române!" was the national anthem of Moldova before it was subsequently replaced by the current Moldovan anthem, "Limba noastră" ("Our language").

History
The melody was originally a sentimental song called "Din sânul maicii mele" composed by Anton Pann after hearing the poem. In 1848 Andrei Mureșanu wrote the poem Un răsunet and asked Gheorghe Ucenescu, a Șcheii Brașovului Church singer, to find him a suitable melody. After Ucenescu sang him several lay melodies, Mureșanu chose Anton Pann's song instead.

First sung during the uprisings of 1848, "Deșteaptă-te române!" became a favourite among Romanians and it has seen play during various historical events, including as part of Romania's declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), and during World War I. The song received particularly heavy radio broadcast in the days following Romanian coup d'état of 23 August 1944, when Romania switched sides, turning against Nazi Germany and joining the Allies in World War II.

After the Communist Party abolished the monarchy on 30 December 1947, "Deșteaptă-te române!" and other patriotic songs closely associated with the previous regime were outlawed. Nicolae Ceaușescu's government permitted the song to be played and sung in public, but it was not given state recognition as the national anthem of the Socialist Republic of Romania.

The song was officially adopted as the national anthem on 24 January 1990, shortly after the Romanian Revolution of December 1989.

The overall message of the anthem is a "call to action"; it proposes a "now or never" urge for change present in many national anthems like the French revolutionary song "La Marseillaise" – hence why Nicolae Bălcescu called it the "Romanian Marseillaise".

Another anthem
"Hora Unirii" ("Hora of the Union"), written by poet Vasile Alecsandri (1821–1890), which was sung a great deal on the occasion of the Union of the Principalities (1859) and on other occasions. "Hora Unirii" is sung on the Romanian folk tune of a slow but energetic round dance joined by the whole attendance (hora).

Lyrics
Romania's national anthem has eleven stanzas. Today, only the first, second, fourth, and last are sung on official occasions, as established by Romanian law. At major events such as the National Holiday on 1 December, the full version is sung, accompanied by 21-gun salute when the President is present at the event.

Other versions
Note that, in accordance with Romanian law, there are no official translations of the anthem.

title: Deșteaptă-te, române!


text:
Transport puzzle

Transport puzzles are logistical puzzles, which often represent real-life transportation problems. The classic transport puzzle is the river crossing puzzle in which three objects are transported across a river one at time while avoiding leaving certain pairs of objects together. The term should not be confused with the usage of transport puzzle as a shortened form of transportation puzzle, representing children's puzzles with different transportation vehicles used as puzzle pieces.

Description
A transport problem is one in which objects are moved from a starting position to a destination position following the logical rules of the puzzle. Transport puzzles do not necessarily involve any physical movement of objects, although they often do. Rather, they are those puzzles that consist of finding a path through the state space of the puzzle to reach the goal state. State changes can include rotations and distortions of the object being transported as well as its translation in space.

As in rearrangement puzzles, no piece is ever lost or added to the board. In contrast to rearrangement puzzles, however, transport puzzles have all persons and objects follow certain routes given on the board; they cannot be lifted off the board and placed on faraway positions that have no visible connection to the from-position. Hence transport puzzles often mean that the player has to move (physical) objects in a very restricted space. The player may or may not be part of the game (either directly, or as a player character on the board).

Types of transport puzzles

 * Tour puzzles are first-person transport puzzles: the player does the tour him/herself or is represented by a player character on the board.
 * labyrinths: player runs one convoluted path way, no dead ends.
 * mazes: player runs fixed set of pathways, many dead ends.
 * Sokoban-type puzzles: player pushes objects into place.
 * sliding puzzles with single player, for example Rush Hour
 * other first-person transport puzzles. Some of them are elimination puzzles: these are similar to Sokoban-type puzzles, but one eliminates pieces on the way rather than pushing them around.
 * Other transport games: The player is not represented in the game.
 * sliding puzzles: slide pieces (on a board) into place.
 * The fifteen puzzle is the best known example of these.
 * train shunting puzzles: move trains and carriages along tracks.
 * river crossing puzzles: move a set of pieces across a river using a bridge or boat. Certain conditions apply.

Math
The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1736 laid the foundations of graph theory and prefigured the idea of topology.

Literature
The famous British puzzler Henry Dudeney added several puzzles to this category.

Transportation puzzles can be used to study intelligence and educational issues. They are good for this purpose because, as logic puzzles, they require no outside information. Everything needed is contained within the puzzle. Also, the state-space representation makes them amenable to computer analysis, but at the same time they are appealing to human subjects of cognitive psychology experiments.

title: Transport puzzle


text:
Talk:Transport puzzle

mention also train-shunting puzzles

VfD results
This article was nominated for deletion. The result was no consensus, but some merging/redirecting might be in order. For details, please see Votes for deletion/MoreKarlScherer. -- BD2412 talk 00:38, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Vfd #2
no consensus again per Votes_for_deletion/KarlSchererRevisited5. --Woohookitty 07:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

A missed one, also.
There is the "snake and ladder" board game. It is the most basic transport puzzle. But the puzzle here would be a metaphore of the outcome of the pair of die.

Fifteen puzzle
As in fact is mentioned in the article on the fifteen puzzle, Sam Loyd did not invent it. I'm removing this claim from this article as well. 91.107.171.183 (talk) 23:51, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Puzzle types
I have tried to cite the list of types of puzzles but have not found a source for tour puzzles. Mazes and labyrinths are certainly tour puzzles and I can find multiple sources that say Sokoban is both a maze and a transport puzzle, but nothing that makes a more general statement. I can see the logic of having them in transport puzzles - a maze is like a transport puzzle with only one object (the player) being moved whereas transport puzzles more usually have multiple objects.

I am also concerned with the distinction being made between mazes and labyrinths. That strikes me as WP:OR and note there is no article on labyrinth as a puzzle (although there is a board game).

There is no source for train shunting puzzle, but this is so self-evidently a transport puzzle that I think we can keep it in per WP:BLUESKY.

While I have the sources open, here is the list of puzzles that are explicitly mentioned (some of which are not in the article)
 * Source: Uduslivii
 * 15 puzzle
 * Sliding puzzles
 * Klotski
 * Rail maze 2 by Spooky House Studios UG
 * The fox, the goose, and the bag of beans (river crossing puzzle)
 * Girls Like Robots
 * Sokoban

 * Source: Postma
 * Sokoban
 * Rush Hour (puzzle)
 * Jelly no Puzzle
 * Snake Bird
 * Zen Puzzle Garden (oddly, also studied in an IEEE paper. That paper also names it as a transport puzzle)

 * Source: Jarušek & Pelánek
 * Sokoban
 * Rush Hour (puzzle)
 * Replacement puzzle, a puzzle invented by the mathematician Erich Friedman (known for Friedman number).

SpinningSpark 18:58, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Transport puzzle


text:
Talk:Charter of the United Nations

Untitled
Why is it particularly relevant that the US ratified the treaty? - Khendon 10:10 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

Aha! I know, being the poster of that sentence. The relevance is that as the law of the United States the President of the United States is bound by the terms of the Charter; thus, the Bush doctrine is arguably in violation of law. (However, it is just a law and can be modified by statute, as the current (Ocober 10, 2002) resolutions being debated in Congress might do) User:Fredbauder

Does the sentence I just added suit you, then? - Khendon 13:55 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

No, the United States is not a parlimentary democracy, thus attempts by the executive branch to act in violation of a United States statute have a significance different from an action by a prime minister. As far as nations being obligated by treaty, that's good in theory, but only in a few countries, and probably only in the United States could that form a complaint in a court that might eventually be granted relief. I think as a true statement, which conveys significant information, it should stay absent some overriding concern requiring its deletion. User:Fredbauder

Then that point should be explicitly made, rather than just an arbitrary-seeming statement about one particular country. - Khendon 08:01 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

 * Because it never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, thus staying out of the League of Nations, which was ultimately a fiasco? (Or looking at the previous text, probably just because the poster was looking at the legal aspect from a US point of view.) --Brion 10:20 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

UN Charter question moved to Reference Desk by Mattworld

Bush Doctrine in UN Charter
I think the issue of the Bush Doctrine and the UN Charter is a valid subject, but it doesn't belong in an article about the UN Charter, but rather in the already existing article about the Bush Doctrine.

 * I concur. I'd rather see an annotated text of the charter, if it can be reproduced here, and a history of its development and noting nations that haven't ratified it. Mkilly 07:38, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If the issue is nations ignoring the UN Charter, there are many, including most of the major powers, not to mention that the US and all of NATO simply bypassed the UN to wage war in former Yugoslavia, because they knew Russia would veto it in the Security Council. If there is no reasonable onjection, I intend to move the material. Cecropia 06:04, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I do not agree NATO was not set up to be indecisive when it came to such matters as yugoslavia. so it it were neccessary for them to get UN approval it would be rediculous to think that they could then be able to react swiftly to any such matters.

 * I agree, but the material was still here, so I've moved it and made a link there. SpaceFrog 17:46, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

New Picture
Found a picture my Dad has of President Truman signing the Charter, inludes Senator Arthur Vandenburg, Harold Stassen, and, of course, Truman. Should I upload it to replace the current photo of the Egyptian Delegation?- Ben of Oz

Language template poll
A poll as to whether or not the language template should be included in this article is being conducted at Talk:United_Nations_Commission_on_Human_Rights Raul654 19:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Bricker Amendment
For some time I have been working on revisions to the Bricker Amendment article. I finally posted it and have a PR at Peer review/Bricker Amendment/archive1. I'd welcome comments. I know all those references may seem extravagant, but I'm hoping to get it as an FA and those voters want lots of footnotes. PedanticallySpeaking 16:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The rest of it?
As I understand it, there are nineteen chapters. We only have two here. Does anyone else see a distinct lack of information? 125.238.89.244 (talk) 19:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Yes, but the links are there for the rest of it. I actually came here looking for a list of signatories and was surprised that it's not here.  IIRC, the USSR, Ukraine, and Byelorussia all signed separately giving the USSR 'de facto' 3 votes.  If I can find a list of signatories, I'll post them here. 138.162.128.55 (talk) 03:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)  NB: found and added 138.162.128.54 (talk) 03:46, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Requested move
I'm requesting this article be moved to Charter of the United Nations, as per the charter's official name given here and here. Unable to move the page using the move tab. --Joowwww (talk) 14:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Per Naming conventions, the standard is to use the most common name, not necessarily the official name. In this case, the charter is most commonly known as the United Nations Charter or UN Charter.  Polemarchus (talk) 16:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually you're right, don't bother it would mean moving all the chapter article pages too. Request withdrawn. --Joowwww (talk) 21:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Pdf of signed Charter
Any one know if there is a pdf on the net of the above? I would like to see the signatures etc. Regards. Redking7 (talk) 09:11, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I think this is it. --Mathew5000 (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

 * That's quite a good external link - I've added it to the list. Laurent (talk) 01:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

 * From treaties.un.org/Pages/CTCs.aspx you can get to some useful related pdfs, such as a single file with all five language versions of the original Charter, plus materials on the three amendments. Also it's worth mentioning the publication Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, which you can download in three volumes: . (Those pdfs are very large, so you should "save target as" on them instead of opening them in a web browser.) The first volume contains some information on the specific dates that each of the original UN members ratified the Charter (which you can also find here). --Mathew5000 (talk) 03:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Link to nonexistent image of signing ceremony removed
Here, I've removed the infobox link to what appears to be the latest in a longstanding series of nonexistent images or redirects. Perhaps one of the images here might be suitable (I don't know their copyright status -- perhaps images at the un.org website are public domain ??) Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Vandalizing admin
20:49, 24 April 2014 RHaworth (talk | contribs) deleted page Charta of the United Nations (R3: Recently created, implausible redirect) "Charta of the United Nations" is the name given in the introduction.

It is vandalism to delete a redirect that is named so. ArmijaDonetsk (talk) 22:07, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

 * I think you're trolling, but I'll bite anyway. It's not vandalism. Read the definition at WP:VANDALISM. The admin did not carry out a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia". Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:11, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Obviously ArmijaDonetsk was overlooking the difference between the correct English spelling "charter" and his misspelling "charta". I wouldn't call that an "implausible" misspelling though, so I find redirects from those misspellings at least worthy of consideration. It's "charta", "carta" or something similar in so many other languages that many non-native readers of English Wikipedia might easily look for it under such a spelling. I must admit that I myself, when I first saw these edits and deletions, was wondering "hey, what's wrong about those redirects, why didn't we have them all along?" Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * My apologies if this was not trolling. It just sounded so—silly, or rap-tastic, or something. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:16, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

U.S. did not sign at the San Fran ceremony
According to the U.S. State Dept., Truman witnessed but did not sign the charter in June with the rest of the member nations. He had to wait until August, after the treaty had been ratified by the Senate. Have I read this wrong, or is the first paragraph of this article in need of adjustment? Krychek (talk) 21:27, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Signing a treaty and ratifying it are two separate steps. The U.S. ratifies treaties by having a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. Prior to this, the President or his representative can sign treaties, after which they are sent to the Senate for ratification. Truman did not sign the UN Charter at the conclusion of the S.F. Conference, but the U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr. did, as did six other U.S. officials. The original signed copy of the UN Charter can be found here, where you can view the original signatures by all countries that were done in S.F. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:18, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah, that clears it up. Thank you. Krychek (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Good Olfactory's 'simplifications
I think that the simplifications and clarifications from Good Olfactory make the article harder to read (for a newcomer who looks first at an encyclopedia article for an introduction). I think that the editor has made the article harder to read, not easier to read, merely by taking out core 'bits' of useful, helpful information. MaynardClark (talk) 05:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Specifically, what from this is problematic? The main simplification was clarifying the extremely convoluted sentence in the lead that set out the five permanent members. There was no need to mention Chapter II in that sentence at all, IMO. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:23, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 15 November 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved (page mover nac) Flooded  with them hundreds  12:25, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

United Nations Charter → Charter of the United Nations – "United Nations Charter" is not the official name of the document. The UN and the ICJ use the phrase "Charter of the United Nations". Indy beetle (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. The official name of the document also happens to be more commonly used, from what I can see. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support "United Nations Charter" is just shorthand for the correct title.  Daemonickangaroo2018 (talk) 18:31, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

title: Talk:Charter of the United Nations


text:
Antonio da Correggio

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – 5 March 1534), usually known as just Correggio (, also, ,  ) was an Italian Renaissance painter who was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the sixteenth century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Baroque art of the seventeenth century and the Rococo art of the eighteenth century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.

Early life
Antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, a small town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain (around 1489). His father was a merchant. Otherwise little is known about Correggio's early life or training. It is, however, often assumed that he had his first artistic education from his father's brother, the painter Lorenzo Allegri.

In 1503–1505, he was apprenticed to Francesco Bianchi Ferrara in Modena, where he probably became familiar with the classicism of artists like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia, evidence of which can be found in his first works. After a trip to Mantua in 1506, he returned to Correggio, where he stayed until 1510. To this period is assigned the Adoration of the Child with St. Elizabeth and John, which shows clear influences from Costa and Mantegna. In 1514, he probably finished three tondos for the entrance of the church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, and then returned to Correggio, where, as an independent and increasingly renowned artist, he signed a contract for the Madonna altarpiece in the local monastery of St. Francis (now in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie).

One of his sons, Pomponio Allegri, became an undistinguished painter. Both father and son occasionally referred to themselves using the Latinized form of the family name, Laeti.

Works in Parma
By 1516, Correggio was in Parma, where he spent most of the remainder of his career. Here, he befriended Michelangelo Anselmi, a prominent Mannerist painter. In 1519 he married Girolama Francesca di Braghetis, also of Correggio, who died in 1529. From this period are the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John, Christ Leaving His Mother and the lost Madonna of Albinea.

Correggio's first major commission (February–September 1519) was the ceiling decoration of a private chamber of the mother-superior (abbess Giovanna Piacenza) of the convent of St. Paul in Parma, now known as Camera di San Paolo. Here he painted an arbor pierced by oculi opening to glimpses of playful cherubs. Below the oculi are lunettes with images of statues in feigned monochromic marble. The fireplace is frescoed with an image of Diana. The iconography of the scheme is complex, combining images of classical marbles with whimsical colorful bambini.

He then painted the illusionistic Vision of St. John on Patmos (1520–21) for the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the Cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin, crowded with layers of receding figures in Melozzo's perspective (sotto in su, from down to up). These two works represented a highly novel illusionistic sotto in su treatment of dome decoration that would exert a profound influence upon future fresco artists, from Carlo Cignani in his fresco Assumption of the Virgin, in the cathedral church of Forlì, to Gaudenzio Ferrari in his frescoes for the cupola of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Saronno, to Pordenone in his now-lost fresco from Treviso, and to the baroque elaborations of Lanfranco and Baciccio in Roman churches. The massing of spectators in a vortex, creating both narrative and decoration, the illusionistic obliteration of the architectural roof-plane, and the thrusting perspective toward divine infinity, were devices without precedent, and which depended on the extrapolation of the mechanics of perspective. The recession and movement implied by the figures presage the dynamism that would characterize Baroque painting.

Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints, both at the Galleria Nazionale of Parma. The Lamentation is haunted by a lambency rarely seen in Italian painting prior to this time. The Martyrdom is also remarkable for resembling later Baroque compositions such as Bernini's Truth and Ercole Ferrata's Death of Saint Agnes, showing a gleeful saint entering martyrdom.

Mythological series

Aside from his religious output, Correggio conceived a now-famous set of paintings depicting the Loves of Jupiter as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, probably to decorate his private Ovid Room in the Palazzo Te. However, they were given to the visiting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and thus left Italy within years of their completion.

Leda and the Swan – acquired by Frederick the Great in 1753; now in Staatliche Museen of Berlin – is a tumult of incidents: in the centre Leda straddles a swan, and on the right, a shy but satisfied maiden. Danaë, now in Rome's Borghese Gallery, depicts the maiden as she is impregnated by a curtain of gilded divine rain. Her lower torso semi-obscured by sheets, Danae appears more demure and gleeful than Titian's 1545 version of the same topic, where the rain is more accurately numismatic. The picture once called Antiope and the Satyr is now correctly identified as Venus and Cupid with a Satyr.

Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle depicts the young man aloft in literal amorous flight. Some have interpreted the conjunction of man and eagle as a metaphor for the evangelist John; however, given the erotic context of this and other paintings, this seems unlikely. This painting and its partner, the masterpiece of Jupiter and Io, are in Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle, one of the four mythological paintings commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga, is a proto-Baroque work due to its depiction of movement, drama, and diagonal compositional arrangement.

Death
Returning to his home town in later years, Correggio died there suddenly on 5 March 1534. The following day he was buried in San Francesco in Correggio near his youthful masterpiece, the 'Madonna di San Francesco', housed today in Dresden. The precise location of his tomb is now unknown.

Evaluation

Correggio was remembered by his contemporaries as a shadowy, melancholic, and introverted character. An enigmatic and eclectic artist, he appears to have emerged from no major apprenticeship. In addition to the influence of Costa, there are echoes of Mantegna's style in his work, and a response to Leonardo da Vinci, as well. Correggio had little immediate influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists. A half-century after his death Correggio's work was well known to Vasari, who felt that he had not had enough "Roman" exposure to make him a better painter. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, his works were often noted in the diaries of foreign visitors to Italy, which led to a reevaluation of his art during the period of Romanticism. The flight of the Madonna in the vault of the cupola of the Cathedral of Parma inspired many scenographical decorations in lay and religious palaces during those centuries.

Correggio's illusionistic experiments, in which imaginary spaces replace the natural reality, seem to prefigure many elements of Mannerist, Baroque, and Rococo stylistic approaches. He appears to have fostered artistic grandchildren, for example, Giovannino di Pomponio Allegri (1521–1593). Correggio had no direct disciples outside of Parma, where he was influential on the work of Giovanni Maria Francesco Rondani, Parmigianino, Bernardo Gatti, Francesco Madonnina, and Giorgio Gandini del Grano.

Selected works

 * Judith and the Servant (c. 1510) —Oil on canvas,Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg
 * Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist (c. 1510) —Oil on panel-Pavia Civic Museums, Pavia
 * The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1510–1515) —National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
 * Madonna (1512–14) —Oil on canvas, Castello Sforzesco, Milan
 * Madonna and Child with St Francis (1514) —Oil on wood, 299 × 245 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
 * Madonna and Child (unknown, early 1500s) —Oil on canvas, National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia
 * Madonna of Albinea (1514, lost)
 * Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist (1514–15) —Oil on wood panel, 45 × 35.5 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
 * Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist (c. 1515) —Oil on panel, 64.2 × 50.2 cm, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
 * The Holy Family with Saint Jerome (1515) –East Closet of Hampton Court Palace as part of the Royal Collection
 * Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John (1516) —Oil on canvas, 48 × 37 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
 * Adoration of the Magi (c. 1515–1518) –Oil on canvas, 84 × 108 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
 * Saint Jerome (c. 1515–1518)–O il on Wood 64 x 51 cm, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
 * Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist (1518)–O il on panel, 48 x 37 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
 * Portrait of a Gentlewoman (1517–1519) —Oil on canvas, 103 × 87.5 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg
 * Frescoes for Camera di San Paolo (1519) —Monastery of San Paolo, Parma
 * The Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saint Francis (c. 1520) —Oil on canvas, 123.5 × 106.5 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
 * Portrait of a man (c. 1520) –Oil on canvas, 55 x 40 cm, Museo Nacional Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid.
 * Death of St. John (1520–1524) —Fresco, San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma
 * Correggio, san girolamo.jpgMadonna della Scala (c. 1523) —Fresco, 196 × 141.8 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
 * Martyrdom of Four Saints (c. 1524) —Oil on canvas, 160 × 185 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
 * Virgin and Child with an Angel (Madonna del Latte) (c. 1524) —Oil on wood, 68 × 56 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
 * Deposition from the Cross (1525) —Oil on canvas, 158.5 × 184.3 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
 * Noli me Tangere (c. 1525) —Oil on canvas, 130 × 103 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
 * Ecce Homo (1525–1530) —Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
 * Madonna della Scodella (1525–1530) —Oil on canvas, 216 × 137 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
 * Adoration of the Child (c. 1526) —Oil on canvas, 81 × 67 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
 * Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (mid-1520s) —Wood, 105 × 102 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
 * Assumption of the Virgin (1526–1530) —Fresco, 1093 × 1195 cm, Cathedral of Parma
 * Madonna of St. Jerome (1527–28) —Oil on canvas, 205.7 × 141 cm, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
 * Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love') (c. 1528) —Oil on canvas, 155 × 91 cm, National Gallery, London
 * Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (c. 1528) —Oil on canvas, 188 × 125 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
 * Nativity (Adoration of the Shepherds, or Holy Night) (1528–1530) —Oil on canvas, 256.5 × 188 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
 * Madonna and Child with Saint George (1530–1532) —Oil on canvas, 285 × 190 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
 * Danaë (c. 1531) —Tempera on panel, 161 × 193 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome
 * Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle (1531–32) —Oil on canvas, 163.5 × 70.5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
 * Jupiter and Io (1531–32) —Oil on canvas, 164 × 71 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum
 * Leda with the Swan (1531–32) —Oil on canvas, 152 × 191 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
 * Allegory of Virtue (c. 1531) —Oil on canvas, 149 × 88 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
 * Allegory of Vice (c. 1531) —Oil on canvas, 149 × 88 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

title: Antonio da Correggio


text:
Talk:AI ethics

untitled
Removed:

 * In the near future, once these technologies begin to crystalize, it will be important to consider: "for what reasons is this research going on".

 * The lack of mandatory ethics courses in universities that research AI shows that this question above is not asked as much as it could be.

This is unattributed opinion and thus has no place, as it stands, in the article. This article needs to be rewritten anyway, but seeing that most ethical dilemmas involving AI are, at this stage, just speculation it's hardly the most pressing topic to cover.

For the record, my AI course spent some time discussing the ethics and philosophy of AI topics, and as part of my CS degree we did a broader "Professional Issues" course which discussed ethics quite a lot. --Robert Merkel 10:49 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

title: Talk:AI ethics


text:
Dionysius Exiguus

Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for "Dionysius the Humble"; Greek: Διονύσιος; c. 470 – c. 544) was a 6th-century Eastern Roman monk born in Scythia Minor. He was a member of a community of Scythian monks concentrated in Tomis (present-day Constanța, Romania), the major city of Scythia Minor. Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini (AD) dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianised) Julian calendar. Almost all churches adopted his computus for the dates of Easter.

From around the year 500 until his death, Dionysius lived in Rome. He translated 401 Church canons from Greek into Latin, including the Apostolic Canons and the decrees of the First Council of Nicaea, First Council of Constantinople, Council of Chalcedon, and Council of Sardica, and a collection of the decretals of the popes from Siricius to Anastasius II. These Collectiones canonum Dionysianae had great authority in the West, and they continue to guide church administrations. Dionysius also wrote a treatise on elementary mathematics.

The author of a continuation of Dionysius's Computus, writing in 616, described Dionysius as a "most learned abbot of the city of Rome", and the Venerable Bede accorded him the honorific abbas (which could be applied to any monk, especially a senior and respected monk, and does not necessarily imply that Dionysius ever headed a monastery; indeed, Dionysius's friend Cassiodorus stated in Institutiones that he was still a monk late in life).

Origins
According to his friend and fellow-student, Cassiodorus, Dionysius, although by birth a "Scythian", was in character a true Roman, most learned in both tongues (by which he meant Greek and Latin). He was also a thorough catholic Christian and an accomplished Scripturist. The use of such an ambiguous, dated term as "Scythian" raises the suspicion that his contemporaries had difficulties classifying him, either from lack of knowledge about him personally or about his native land, Scythia Minor. By the 6th century, the term "Scythian" could mean an inhabitant of Scythia Minor, or simply someone from the north-east of the Greco-Roman world, centred on the Mediterranean. The term had a widely encompassing meaning, devoid of clear ethnic attributes. Even for the "Scythian monk" Joannes Maxentius, friend and companion of Dionysius, the two monks are "Scythian" by virtue of their geographical origin relative to Rome, just as Faustus of Riez is a "Gaul".

The dubious assertion, based on a single Syriac source, that the Eastern-Roman rebel general Vitalian, to whom Dionysius seems to have been related, was of Gothic extraction was the basis for labelling, without any further evidence, all of the Scythian monks, Dionysius included, as "Goths". In Greek and Latin sources, Vitalian is sometimes labelled with the same ambiguous term "Scytha"; he is presented as commanding "Hunnic", "Gothic", "Scythian", "Bessian" soldiers, but this information says more about the general's military endeavours, and bears little relevance to clarifying his origins. Furthermore, since none of the Scythian monks expressed any kinship, by blood or spiritual, with the Arian Goths who at that time ruled Italy, a Gothic origin for Dionysius is questionable. Vitalian seems to have been of local Latinised Thracian stock, born in Scythia Minor or in Moesia; his father bore a Latin name, Patriciolus, while two of his sons had Thracian names and one a Gothic name. By the time of the flourishing of the Scythian monks, the provinces from the Lower Danube, long since Latinised, were already a centre for the production of Latin-speaking theologians. Most likely Dionysius was also of local Thraco-Roman origin (romanized Geto–Dacian), like Vitalian's family to whom he was related, and the rest of the Scythian monks and other Thraco-Roman personalities of the era (Justin I, Justinian, Flavius Aetius, etc.).

Works and translations
Dionysius translated standard works from Greek into Latin, principally the "Life of St. Pachomius", the "Instruction of St. Proclus of Constantinople" for the Armenians, the "De opificio hominis" of St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the history of the discovery of the head of St. John the Baptist (written by Archimandrite Markellos). The translation of St. Cyril of Alexandria's synodical letter against Nestorius, and some other works long attributed to Dionysius are now acknowledged to be earlier and are assigned to Marius Mercator.

Of great importance were the contributions of Dionysius to the tradition of canon law. His several collections embrace:

1. A collection of synodal decrees, of which he has left two editions:1. Codex canonum Ecclesiæ Universæ. This contains canons of Oriental synods and councils only in Greek and Latin, including those of the four œcumenical councils from Nicæa (325) to Chalcedon (451).

2. Codex canonum ecclesiasticarum. This is in Latin only; its contents agree generally with the other, but the Council of Ephesus (431) is omitted, while the so-called "Canons of the Apostles" and those of Sardica are included, as well as 138 canons of the African Council of Carthage (419).

3. Another bilingual version of Greek canons, undertaken at the instance of Pope Hormisdas, only the preface has been preserved.

2. A collection of papal Constitutions (Collectio decretorum Pontificum Romanorum) from Siricius to Anastasius II (384–498).

Anno Domini
Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar. He used it to identify the several Easters in his Easter table, but did not use it to date any historical event. When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year; he himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which he also stated was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". How he arrived at that number is unknown, but there is evidence of the system he applied. He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. It has been suggested that he arranged the numbers so that leap years would be exactly divisible by four, and that his new table would begin one "Victorian cycle" (see below), i.e. 532 years, after his new epoch.

Evidence exists that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world. At the time, some believed that the Second Coming and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus. The current Anno Mundi calendar commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Greek Septuagint. It was believed that, based on the Anno Mundi calendar, Jesus was born in the year 5500 (or 5500 years after the world was created) with the year 6000 of the Anno Mundi calendar marking the end of the world. Anno Mundi 6000 (c. 500) was thus equated with the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.

Easter tables
In 525, Dionysius prepared a table of 95 future dates of Easter (532–626) and a set of rules ("argumenta") explaining their calculation (computus). This followed a request by Pope John I, possibly influenced by the fact that the then current Victorian table gave an Easter date for 526 (19 April) which was the 22nd day of the moon. In a previous embarrassment, this table had given Saturday, 24 April as the date of the Greek Easter in 482. Note well that only the first nine arguments are by Dionysius – arguments 10 to 16 as well as the second paragraphs of 3 and 4 and the third paragraph of 9 are later interpolations. Arguments 11 and 12 imply that these were interpolated in the year 675, shortly before Bede. Dionysius also introduced his table and arguments via a letter to a bishop Petronius (also written in 525) and added another explanatory letter (written in 526). These works in volume 67 of the 217-volume Patrologia Latina also include a letter from Bishop Proterius of Alexandria to Pope Leo (written before 457). Though not named by Dionysius, this collection was recently called his Liber de Paschate (Book on Easter) by Audette.

Dionysius ignored the existing table used by the Patriarchate of Rome, which was prepared in 457 by Victorius of Aquitaine, complaining that it did not obey Alexandrian principles, without actually acknowledging their existence. To be sure that his own table was correct, he simply extended a table prepared in Alexandria that had circulated in the west in Latin, but was never used in the west to determine the date of Easter (however, a variant of it was used in the Byzantine Empire, in Greek). The Latin table was prepared by a subordinate of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria shortly before Cyril's death in 444. It covered a period of 95 years or five decennovenal (19-year) cycles with years dated in the Diocletian Era, whose first year was 285 (the modern historical year in progress at Easter). Diocletian years were advantageous because their division by 19 yielded a remainder equal to the year of the decennovenal cycle (1–19).

Ultimately, Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table, meanwhile extended from the years 532–626 to the years 532–721, must have been adopted at Rome and also have arrived in Britain and Ireland, where, however in both cases certainly not before the second quarter of the seventh century, Victorius of Aquitaine's lunar limits 16–22 were gradually replaced with Dionysius’ lunar limits 15–21; only then the discord between the churches of Rome and Alexandria regarding the correct date for the celebration of Easter came to an end, and only from then both these authoritative churches used identical tables and hence observed Easter on the same day.

The Greek tables had begun with the new moon which fell (on 29 August) the day before the starting date of their chronology, which was 30 August 284. The epact thus calculated was carried over unchanged by Dionysius into his tables together with a number from one to seven, calculated annually, called by the Greeks the "day of the [planetary] gods" and in the west the "concurrent". This number the Greeks used for calculating the day of the week for any date in the Alexandrian civil calendar (a late form of the Egyptian solar calendar which included a final leap day every four years), which involved no more than simple arithmetic because the twelve months ran consecutively and all had thirty days. These two variables were understood neither by Dionysius nor by the other western computists, who were used to working with the age of the moon on 1 January and the Sunday letters to determine the Sundays. This is why the tables took so long to gain acceptance, but the values were eventually assimilated into the theory, the concurrent as the weekday of 24 March and the epact as the age of the moon on 22 March.

Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table owes its strong structure to his distant predecessor Anatolius, who invented the Metonic 19-year lunar cycle, which is an application of the Metonic cycle in the Julian calendar. Its lunar cycle is the nearby variant of Theophilus' 19-year lunar cycle proposed by Annianus and adopted by bishop Cyril of Alexandria in the first half of the fifth century. The Metonic structure of this so-called classical Alexandrian 19-year lunar cycle contained in Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table is reflected by the structure of its 19-year periodic sequence of epacts.

The epact, since it originally marked the new moon, was zero in all first decennovenal years. The Latin word nulla meaning no/none was used because no Roman numeral for zero existed. To determine the decennovenal year, the Dionysian year plus one was divided by 19. If the result was zero (to be replaced by 19), it was represented by the Latin word nvlla, also meaning nothing. Both "zeros" continued to be used by (among others) Bede, by whose extension of Dionysius Exiguus’ Easter table to a great Easter cycle all future Julian calendar dates of Easter Sunday were fixed unambiguously at last. However, in medieval Europe one had to wait as late as the second millennium to see the number zero itself come into use, although it had come into being around the year 600 in India.

Dionysius copied the last decennovenal cycle of the Cyrillian table ending with Diocletian 247, and then added a new 95-year table with numbered Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (Years of our Lord Jesus Christ) because, as he explained to Petronius, he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The only reason he gave for beginning his new 95-year table with the year 532 was that six years were still left in the Cyrillian table after the year during which he wrote. For the current year he only stated that it was 525 years after the Incarnation of Christ, without stating when this event occurred in any other calendar. He did not realise that the dates of the Alexandrian Easter repeated after 532 years, despite his apparent knowledge of the Victorian 532-year 'cycle', indicating only that Easter did not repeat after 95 years. He knew that Victorian Easters did not agree with Alexandrian Easters, thus he no doubt assumed that they had no bearing on any Alexandrian cycle. Furthermore, he obviously did not realise that simply multiplying 19 by 4 by 7 (decennovenal cycle × cycle of leap years × days in a week) fixed the Alexandrian cycle at 532 years.

Most of the British Church accepted the Dionysian tables after the Synod of Whitby in 664, which agreed that the old British method (the insular latercus) should be dropped in favour of the Roman one. Quite a few individual churches and monasteries refused to accept them, the last holdout finally accepting them during the early 10th century. After the first Frankish adaptation of Bede's The Reckoning of Time was published (by 771), the Church of the Franks (France) accepted them during the late 8th century under the tutelage of Alcuin, after he arrived from Britain.

Ever since the 2nd century, some bishoprics in the eastern Roman Empire had counted years from the birth of Christ, but there was no agreement on the correct epoch – Clement of Alexandria (c. 190) and Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 320) wrote about these attempts. Because Dionysius did not place the Incarnation in an explicit year, competent scholars have deduced both AD 1 and 1 BC. The reason for his omission may be simply that the starting date was computationally convenient, or that he did not believe that the date of the Nativity could be pinpointed exactly. Ambiguities arise from the fact that eras may be either elapsed or current years, there are discrepancies in the lists of consuls, and there is disagreement as to whether the Incarnation should be reckoned from the Annunciation or the Nativity. Most scholars have selected 1 BC (historians do not use a year zero), arguing that because the anniversary of the Incarnation was 25 March, which was near Easter, a year that was 525 years "since the Incarnation" implied that 525 whole years were completed near that Easter. Consequently, one year since the Incarnation would have meant 25 March AD 1, meaning that Dionysius placed the Incarnation on 25 March 1 BC. Because the birth of Jesus was nine calendar months later, Dionysius implied, but never stated, that Jesus was born 25 December 1 BC. Only one scholar, Georges Declerq (Declerq, 2002), thinks that Dionysius placed the Incarnation and Nativity in AD 1, basing his conclusion on the structure of Dionysius's Easter tables. In either case, Dionysius ignored his predecessors, who usually placed the Nativity in the year we now label 2 BC. In his 1605 thesis, the Polish historian Laurentius Suslyga was the first to suggest that Christ was actually born around 4 BC, deriving this from the chronology of Herod the Great, his son Philip the Tetrarch, and the daughter of Augustus, Julia. Having read Suslyga's work, Kepler noted that Christ was born during the reign of King Herod the Great (2:1–18), whose death he placed in 4 BC. Kepler chose this year because Josephus stated that a lunar eclipse occurred shortly before Herod's death. John Pratt of the International Planetarium Society proposed the 29 December 1 BC eclipse as another eclipse. According to Josephus, Herod died in the year 4 or 3 BC.

Although Dionysius stated that the First Council of Nicaea in 325 sanctioned his method of dating Easter, that is only generally true. There was no formal canon – the Council echoed Canon 1 of the first Council of Arles (314) which had decreed that the Christian Passover be celebrated uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem (on one day and at one time through all the world) – but added that all "celebrate Pascha at the same time as" the churches of Alexandria and Rome.

A synodal letter to the church of Alexandria states: "All our eastern brothers who up till now have not been in agreement with the Romans or you or with all those who from the beginning have done as you do, will henceforth celebrate Pascha at the same time as you."

And the letter of the Emperor Constantine to bishops who had not attended the council states: "It was judged good and proper, all questions and contradictions being left aside, that the eastern brothers follow the example of the Romans and Alexandrians and all the others so that everyone should let their prayers rise to heaven on one single day of holy Pascha." Dionysius' method had actually been used by the Church of Alexandria (but not by the Church of Rome) at least as early as 311, and probably began during the first decade of the 4th century, its dates naturally being given in the Alexandrian calendar. Thus Dionysius did not develop a new method of dating Easter. The most that he may have done was convert its arguments from the Alexandrian calendar into the Julian calendar. The resulting Julian date for Easter was the Sunday following the first Luna XIV (the 14th day of the moon) that occurred on or after the XII Kalendas Aprilis (21 March) (12 days before the first of April, inclusive). The 14th day of the moon, Nisan 14, was the date that paschal lambs were slain (in late afternoon) until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 prevented their continuing sacrifice, as well as the day when all leavened bread crumbs had to be collected and burned, hence Nisan 14 was the day of preparation for Passover. Alexandria may have chosen it because it was the day that Christ was crucified according to the Gospel of John (18:28, 19:14), in direct contradiction to the Synoptic Gospels (, Mark 14:12, and Luke 22:7), who state that he was crucified after he ate the Seder, his Last Supper. Then and now, the Seder was eaten after sundown at the beginning of Nisan 15. Because Dionysius's method of computing Easter used dates in the Julian calendar, it is also called the Julian Easter. This Easter is still used by all Orthodox churches, even those which have regularized the rest of their calendars with the West. The Gregorian Easter still uses the same definition, but relative to its own solar and lunar dates.

title: Dionysius Exiguus


text:
Christian calendar

List of Christian liturgical calendars, calendars used by predominantly Christian communities or countries, and calendars referred to as the "Christian calendar."

 * Gregorian calendar, internationally accepted civil calendar used in Western Christendom
 * Armenian calendar, used by Armenian Christians and Churches
 * Coptic calendar, Egyptian liturgical calendar (also known as the Alexandrian calendar) used by Coptic Christians and Churches
 * Ethiopian calendar, principal calendar used in Ethiopia and Eritrea (also known as the Ge'ez calendar or Eritrean calendar)
 * Julian calendar, calendar introduced by Julius Caesar used in most of Eastern Christian churches
 * Revised Julian calendar, calendar used by some Eastern Orthodox churches
 * Liturgical year, annually recurring fixed sequence of Christian feast days

title: Christian calendar


text:
Basutoland

Basutoland was a British Crown colony that existed from 1884 to 1966 in present-day Lesotho, bordered with the Cape Colony, Natal Colony and Orange River Colony until 1910 and completely surrounded by South Africa from 1910. Though the Basotho (then known as Basuto) and their territory had been under British control starting in 1868 (and ruled by Cape Colony from 1871), the Cape Colony was unpopular and unable to control the territory. As a result, Basutoland was brought under direct authority of Queen Victoria, via the High Commissioner, and run by an Executive Council presided over by a series of British Resident Commissioners.

It was divided into seven administrative districts: Berea, Leribe, Maseru, Mohale's Hoek, Mafeteng, Qacha's Nek and Quthing.

Basutoland gained its independence from the United Kingdom on 4 October 1966 and was renamed the Kingdom of Lesotho.

Background
Between 1856 and 1868 the Basotho engaged in conflict with the Orange Free State. Their king, Moshoeshoe I, sought British protection. On 29 August 1865, he wrote to Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor of Cape Colony:

"I am giving myself and my country up to Her Majesty's Government under certain conditions which we may agree on between your Excellency and me."

In July 1866, after referring to the former letter, the Chief said:

"All those things I have given up into your hands the last year..., they are still yours. I still continue to be the humble servant of Her Majesty."

Eventually, in January 1868, the Governor received a document dated 9 December 1867, signed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, authorizing the annexation of Basutoland to the Colony of Natal (not to the Cape as Wodehouse had wished). On 12 March 1868, a proclamation declared the Basotho to be British subjects and Basutoland to be British territory. It was not in fact annexed to Natal, as Natal attempted unsuccessfully to condition its acceptance on Basotho land being made available for European settlement; so for some time Basutoland remained under the direct authority of Wodehouse as British High Commissioner for South Africa.

Three years later, Basutoland was annexed to the Cape Colony by Act No. 12 of 1871 of the Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, confirmed by an Order in Council of 3 November 1871. The rule of the Cape Colony then proved unpopular with the people, leading to the Basuto Gun War of 1880–1881.

By an Order in Council dated 2 February 1884, which came into force on 18 March 1884, royal assent was given to a Cape bill repealing the Act of 1871. Basutoland was thus brought under the direct authority of the Queen, with legislative and executive powers again vested in the High Commissioner.

As a crown colony
Moshoeshoe had been succeeded as paramount chief by his son, Letsie I, and he in turn was succeeded in 1891 by Lerotholi Letsie I. These chieftains acted in concert with the British representative in the country, to whom was given the title of resident commissioner. The first commissioner was Sir Marshal James Clarke. The period of warfare over, the Basotho turned their attention more and more to agricultural pursuits and Christian missionaries entered the territory. Trade increased, and in 1891 Basutoland was admitted to the customs union, which already existed between Orange Free State, Cape Colony and British Bechuanaland. When Alfred Milner visited Basutoland in 1898, on his way to Bloemfontein, he was received by 15,000 mounted Basotho. The chiefs also attended a large meeting at Maseru. On the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, these same chiefs proclaimed loyalty to the British Crown. They remained passive throughout the War and the neutrality of the country was respected by both armies. One chief alone sought to take advantage of the situation by disloyal action, and his offence was met by a year's imprisonment.

In pursuance of the policy of encouraging the self-governing powers of the Basotho, a national council was instituted and held its first sitting in July 1903. In August 1905 the paramount chief Lerotholi died. In early life he had distinguished himself in the wars with the Boers, and in 1880 he took an active part in the revolt against the Cape government. Since 1884 he had been a loyal supporter of the imperial authorities, and carried a reputation for high diplomatic gifts. On the 19th of September following Lerotholi's death, the national council, with the concurrence of the imperial government, elected his son Letsie II as paramount chief. The completion in October 1905 of a railway connecting Maseru with the South African railway system proved a great boon to the community. During the Bambatha Rebellion in 1906 the Basotho remained perfectly quiet.

Executive branch
Basutoland's Executive Council members were the resident commissioner, who presided, three ex-officio members and four council members from the Basutoland National Council, appointed by the resident commissioner, one by the Paramount Chief and three nominated by the Council itself, selected by secret ballot.

Legislative branch
The legislative council, known as the Basutoland National Council, consisted of a non-voting President appointed by the Resident Commissioner, four official members (ex officio), twenty-two Chiefs, forty elected members elected by District Councils, and fourteen nominated members appointed by the Resident Commissioner on the nomination of the Paramount Chief. The Resident Commissioner had the right to address the council.

The Commissioner had authority to make laws by Proclamation on certain subjects, such as external affairs, defence and the public service. These matters were excluded from the powers of the National Council, but the Commissioner was required to lay a draft of any Proclamation before the council and to consider their observations. The Constitution made special provision regarding particular objections made by the council.

Paramount Chief
There was a College of Chiefs of Basutoland whose function related to matters pertaining to the offices of the Paramount Chief, Chief and Headman. Their decisions and recommendations were submitted for acceptance to the Paramount Chief. They were subject to review by the High Court.

The Constitution vested a number of functions in the Paramount Chief. In exercising these, he was required in most cases to consult either with the Executive Council or with the Resident Commissioner, a Council member of the Executive and a member of the Basotho Nation appointed by himself.

Land in Basutoland was vested by the Constitution in the Paramount Chief in trust for the Basotho Nation, subject to lawfully acquired rights.

Demographics
Considering the extensive area of uninhabitable mountain land it contained, the territory supported a mediocre population. The inhabitants increased from 128,206 in 1875, to 348,848 in 1904. Women outnumbered men by about 20,000, which was, however, about the number of adult men away from the country at any given period. The majority lived in the district between the Maloti Mountains and the Caledon River. The great bulk of the people were Basotho, but there were some thousands of Barolong and other natives. The White inhabitants in 1904 numbered 895. Maseru, the seat of government, had in 1904 a population of about 1,000 including some 100 Europeans.

Districts

 * Berea District
 * Leribe District
 * Maseru District
 * Mohales Hoek District
 * Mafeteng District
 * Qacha's Nek District
 * Quthing District

Chief Justices
The Chief Justice was the Chief Justice of the High Commission Territories (Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland). From 1951 the Chief Justices were:

title: Basutoland


text:
Dominator culture

Dominator culture refers to a model of society where fear and force maintain rigid understandings of power and superiority within a hierarchical structure. Futurist and writer Riane Eisler first popularized this term in her book The Chalice and the Blade (HarperCollins San Francisco, 1987). In it, Eisler positions the dominator model in contrast to the partnership model, a more egalitarian structure of society founded on mutual respect among its inhabitants. In dominator culture, men rule over women, whereas partnership culture values men and women equally.

Other theorists, including Terence McKenna and bell hooks, have expanded on the implications and impact of dominator culture. They, among others, argue that adherence to the dominator model over the partnership model denies the possibility of a more equal society, systematically allowing for the persecution of those who are "dominated"—including racial and ethnic minorities, LGBT people, and women.

Concept and terminology
Riane Eisler presents dominator culture as a cultural construction of the roles and relations of women and men, where men "dominate", or are in control within society. Regardless of the location, time period, religious beliefs, or advancements in technology, a society might follow the dominator culture model. Eisler characterizes dominator culture as featuring four core elements: The dominator model is framed in contrast to the partnership model. In a sort of reversal of the elements of dominator culture, the partnership model is characterized by: By juxtaposing dominator culture with partnership culture, Eisler creates a continuum between the two. She argues that where a society falls on this spectrum influences its culture, beliefs, and actions. Adherence to dominator culture affects people from a personal to a public level, as seen in its societal impact.
 * an authoritarian social and family structure
 * rigid male dominance
 * a high level of violence and abuse
 * and a system of beliefs that normalizes such a society
 * organization according to the ideals of a democratic structure
 * equal partnership between men and women
 * a lack of tolerance for abuse and violence
 * and belief systems that validate an empathetic perspective

Historical context
The prevalence of dominator culture has shifted over time. Eisler claims that, in the prehistory of humans, partnership used to be the norm. In both the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, there are examples of matriarchal societies preceding patriarchies. British archaeologist James Mellaart, for example, reported a Neolithic site with many female images and no signs of destructive warfare for almost 1000 years. For thousands of years, people lived in these peaceful partnership societies, until warlike nomadic tribes disrupted the balance with their dominator cultures. Since then, fluctuations between dominator and partnership societies have occurred over time, but the primary shift has been towards dominator culture.

Societal impact
Dominator culture impacts the way a society appears and functions. Eisler posits that "narratives about our cultural origins", like dominator culture, "reflect and guide how we think, feel, and act." Though no culture is fully dominator or fully partnership in its construction, the degree to which it aligns with one of these models impacts the beliefs, institutions, and relationships of that society.

Gender inequalities
The main distinction between the dominator and partnership models, according to Eisler, is their treatment of the relationships between men and women. She argues that, historically, men have been the dominators, leading to patriarchal society that upholds constricting, traditional gender roles. Surveys by anthropologists Peggy R. Sanday and Scott Coltrane support this connection, showing the correlation between a society's structure and the expectations for men and women. They found that greater equality between men and women led to greater male involvement in childcare. However, because dominator culture upholds a harsh division between masculinity and femininity, it dissociates masculinity from anything stereotypically feminine—even at the expense of benefits such as those reported by Sanday and Coltrane. Accordingly, in these societies that prize domination and power, the societal value for qualities like empathy, caregiving, and nonviolence diminishes. Instead, by viewing femininity as undesirable and inferior, these dominator societies accept and perpetuate violent and inequitable behavior.

Power disparities
In dominator culture, society reinforces such hierarchies by presenting the dominator model as the natural order of society. According to Eisler, some sociobiologists and psychologists claim that male dominance is inherent in human genes and a product of evolution, demonstrating dominator thinking. Theorist bell hooks has expanded on this, indicating that dominator culture "teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role." By accepting male dominance as a genetic imperative, society justifies a dominator structure. Consequently, this situates the desire to overpower and control others as part of human identity, according to hooks.

This hierarchical disparity is not only explained genetically but societally reinforced, extending to "power" more generally. Although Eisler often distinguishes between the two models on the basis of gender, she also applies these hierarchies more broadly to other societal constructions of power, like race, class, and age. Terence McKenna, a friend of Eisler's and fellow writer, asserts that Eisler's book The Chalice and the Blade "de-genderized the terminology", framing it as a contrast between dominator and partnership ideologies, rather than just an indictment of patriarchy. Supporting this interpretation, Eisler argues that society's requirement of children to be submissive and obedient to their parents reflects the influence of dominator culture. Dominator culture encourages the ideology, from childhood, that one either dominates or is dominated. Accordingly, dominator culture not only equates the difference between men and women to superiority and inferiority, but rather "frame[s] all relationships as power struggles."

Historical and cultural implications
Dominator culture has had varying manifestations in society throughout the course of human history, from the prehistoric warlike tribes of the Neolithic era to present-day displays. The dominator structure of society dictates and shapes the culture that accompanies it. Other authors have used, expanded on, and interpreted Eisler's idea of dominator culture to apply it to a wide range of fields, as far-reaching as nursing, war, language learning, economics, and ecofeminism.

Historical and cultural manifestations
Author Malcolm Hollick cites Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Islamic fundamentalist states as modern, though severe, examples of dominator societies. The Nazi claim to power, for example, was also accompanied by the call for women's return to "traditional", or subservient, places in family structures. However, manifestations of dominator culture are not always so extreme; the effects of dominator culture often manifest in pervasive and subtle ways in society. In the United States, the wars on terror, drugs, and crime perpetuate the use of force to achieve an end and indicate a lessening of certain freedoms. On a larger scale, sex-slavery, forced marriage, and the acceptance of wife-beating persist around the world. Though the Western world has made considerable strides towards a more partnership society in the past few centuries—Western society boasts of freedom of speech, access to education, political participation, gay rights, and women in the workforce—the shift towards the partnership model is neither universal nor complete.

Similarly, dominator culture threatens the preservation of the environment. Hierarchical societies that value claiming control justify humans' claims of dominion over nature. McKenna expanded on Eisler's work, using the idea of dominator culture to illuminate the character of what he sees as Western patriarchal culture—indicating, for example, his claims that it perennially lacks social conscience and lacks concern for the environment. He argues that, "The entire structure of dominator culture ... is based upon our alienation from nature, from ourselves, and from each other." As a result, dominator culture not only accepts but justifies the pollution and destruction of the environment. Daniel Quinn, a philosophical and environmental writer, takes on these issues in his novel Ishmael, characterizing dominator culture as Taker culture and detailing its incompatibility with the environment.

The term has been used and expanded upon by other writers, such as
 * Carol J. Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990)
 * Fritjof Capra in The Turning Point (1982)
 * Thom Hartmann in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (1999)
 * Leonard Shlain in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (1998)
 * Starhawk in Dreaming the Dark (1982)
 * bell hooks in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)
 * Walter Wink in Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (1992) and other books on the Myth of Redemptive Violence

Consequences for the future
Despite the stability and fairness characteristic of partnership society, dominator culture often still takes precedence. Eisler argues that blindly accepting dominator culture as part of the genetic, natural order of the world excuses human responsibility. When people understand dominator culture as a genetic imperative, they ignore environmental influences, including parenting. This perpetuates the cycle of dominator culture and ignores scientific findings that contradict the supposedly genetic nature of violence. By accepting dominator culture as the norm, people discount their own claim to agency. However, in her article "Love as the Practice of Freedom", bell hooks offers a potential counter to dominator culture. She states that love—the "longing to connect with someone radically different"—led people to overcome dominator thinking in action, whether the issue was "ending racism, sexism, homophobia, or class elitism." Ultimately, Eisler acknowledges that cultural transformation does not happen on its own; however, she asserts, "Many of us worldwide are working for cultural transformation, for a shift to a more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable way of relating to one another and our Mother Earth."

title: Dominator culture


text:
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve

Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve is a 54.5 km2 protected area, on the fringe of Namadgi National Park. Tidbinbilla is a short drive from the capital city of Australia, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory.

The nature reserve consists of a large valley floor, the Tidbinbilla Mountain and the Gibraltar range. The sides of the valley are steep and relatively undisturbed. The lower slopes of the valley are partly cleared and have a significant history of Aboriginal and European use. Tidbinbilla Mountain is believed to have been used for Aboriginal initiation ceremonies. The word 'Tidbinbilla' is Aboriginal in origin and comes from the word Jedbinbilla – a place where boys become men.

Known sites of Aboriginal significance at Tidbinbilla include the Birriagi Rock Shelter, which is the oldest Aboriginal site within the Australian Capital Territory. Bogong Rocks is a shelter where the oldest evidence of Aboriginal occupation was found at a bogong moth resting site.

The nature reserve is classified as an IUCN Category II protected area. It is the traditional Country of the Ngunnawal people.

Indigenous history
Aboriginal people have inhabited the Tidbinbilla area since antiquity. Archaeological digs at Birrigai, over the hill from Tidbinbilla, found the earliest evidence of the use of fire, dated at 20,000 years old. This was at the time of the last ice age. Excavations at Hanging Rock has dated occupation of that site to some 16,000 years.

The name Tidbinbilla is derived from the Aboriginal word 'Jedbinbilla' meaning a place where boys become men. The last corroboree, an Australian Aboriginal dance ceremony, held at Tidbinbilla was circa 1904. There are aboriginal rock paintings to be found at Gibraltar Peak in a small cave.

European history
There are over 100 years of European occupancy within the nature reserve. Nil Desperandum and Rock Valley Homestead are both pise rammed earth buildings built in the 1890s. Both buildings were built by George Green and George Hatcliff. Nil Desperandum is a historic four-roomed residence alongside Hurdle Creek first occupied by Henry French Gillman. The remains of a commercial camellia plantation and the best preserved eucalyptus distillery in the ACT are also nearby.

The Rock Valley Homestead was occupied by the Green family. Nil Desperandum was later occupied by George Greens daughter Elsie Jane and her husband Eric Blewitt from the early 1930s to the early 1950s when Eric was killed drenching a horse.

Both Nil Desperandum and the Rock Valley Homestead buildings were severely damaged during the 2003 Canberra bushfires. Nil Desperandum has since been rebuilt in its original condition and design with the kitchen extension but not the enclosed side verandah that the two brothers John Douglas (Doug) & Cyril Leslie (Ned) both slept in.

History of the nature reserve
In 1936 about 8.10 km2 were set aside as a public reserve. In 1939 a koala enclosure was built by the Institute of Anatomy. The government acquired additional land to establish a national park and fauna reserve in 1962, extending the national park to 36.29 km2. Tidbinbilla was later expanded again to its current size.

In 1966 the park saw the appointment of park ranger and later manager, David Kerr. He developed many of the bush walking tracks, enclosures, water fowl areas and roads throughout the park. Under his management the Cape Barren goose enclosure and conservation scheme was developed which has significantly contributed to the survival of the endangered species. In 1969 the first wildlife displays were created. David oversaw the importation of Victorian koalas to the park, the establishment of kangaroo enclosures and the creation of the water fowl areas. Many of the picnic areas enjoyed by generations of visitors were established under his management. David left Tidbinbilla in 1970 to oversee the foundation of Namadji National Park.

In 1971 the nature reserve was officially gazetted.

The Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve is located adjacent to the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, part of the NASA Deep Space Network.

1988 saw one of the world's first international TV satellite linkups "World Safari" be broadcast from Tidbinbilla's kangaroo enclosure. The ABC linked up with fellow broadcasters across the globe in a live natural history program, which was an idea from David's daughter, Fiona Kerr.

In 2003, bush fires devastated the nature reserve with many of the koala population being lost to the fires. The Manager's Residence was also lost and there was damage to the Heritage listed Rock Valley and Nil Desperandum homesteads.

On 7 November 2008, the nature reserve was added to the Australian National Heritage List as one of eleven areas constituting the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves.

Since 2011, Tidbinbilla has taken the charge of breeding of the critically endangered Northern Corroboree Frog, the Southern Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby and the Eastern Bettong on behalf of the ACT Government. It has been successful in the endeavour over the years.

Fauna
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve has a wide variety of bushwalks - ranging from 30 minutes to over 6 hours. It is a native habitat for kangaroos, wallabies, platypus, koalas, lyrebirds, emus, and other wildlife. Ninety-nine percent of the park was burnt out in the Bendora bushfire of 18 January 2003, resulting in the loss of countless numbers of wildlife. Of the captive animals, only one koala, six rock wallabies, five potoroos, four freckled ducks, and nine black swans survived the bushfire.

Walking tracks
There are a variety of walking trails which enable people to explore the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. There is a trail to suit all fitness levels and lengths of walks range from 30 minutes to 6 hours.

Congwarra Trail
The Congwarra trail is ideal for families. It is a 3–4 km walk that will take visitors approximately 1 hour to complete. This trail starts at the Visitor Centre and leads to the Nature Discovery Playground and picnic area. The playground design is inspired by the Tidbinbilla Valley and blends into the surrounding environment in an effort to preserve the park's natural beauty.

Birrigai Time Trail
The Birrigai Time Trail is an easy 3 km walk that takes visitors back in time to explore the local Aboriginal and European heritage. Birrigai is the Ngunnawal word for laughter. This trail is a predominantly flat walk that starts at the Visitor Centre and ends at the Birrigai Rock Shelter. Birrigai is the Ngunnawal word for laughter.

The Birrigai Rock Shelter is the oldest Aboriginal rock shelter in the ACT. It is highly valued by the local Aboriginal community as it has a high level of cultural significance. Artefacts have been found at the shelter dating back 25,000 years.

Turkey Hill Trail
This short trail is approximately 500m and will take visitors 15 minutes. Granite boulders and panoramic mountains surround this  as visitors make their way up to Turkey Hill. Drive from the Visitor Centre to the Dalsetta carpark to access the start of this trail.

Xanthorrhoea Loop
Start this walk at Dalsetta carpark and follow the small brown signs that line the trail. This trail overlaps with the longer Gibraltar Peak trail.

Xanthorrhoea Loop is named after the Xanthorrhoea group of 30 species of native Australian plants. This group of plants are commonly referred to as grass trees are seen along the trail.

Church Rock Heritage Loop
This walk starts at the Flints BBQ area in Tidbinbilla and is 2.5 km long. It is an easy walk designed for low intensity exercise.

The walk takes visitors past early European settler sites and remains which date back to the late 1800s. Explore the history of the Flints Homestead and Sheedy's Home Site as the path slowly winds up the hillside and loops around the reserve.

The slowly winds up the hillside and crosses over the main road that loops around the reserve. On the walk visitors will come across a bench that they can rest on while they take in the spectacular mountain views.

After taking in the views of the Gibraltar Ranges there will be a short walk to the Church Rock. Diaries dating back to the 1800s indicate the bass of the rock was the meeting point for children to receive religious lessons. There is also evidence the local Aboriginal people used this rock as meeting place.

Sanctuary Loop
The Sanctuary Loop allows visitors at Tidbinbilla to be up close and personal with a range of native animals in their natural habitat. The 2.5 km loop is easy and flat walk with well signposted with information about the local history and the native flora and fauna. The wheelchair accessible and child friendly pathway winds through a series of interconnected habitats.

In the Sanctuary visitors will be able to get close to Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies, platypus, echidnas, birds, and other animals in their natural habitats. While they are interesting to look at it is important that visitors do not touch or disturb these wild animals.

Gibraltar Peak
This moderate to hard level walking trail is 8.2 km long and will take approximately 2–3 hours to complete. Starting at Dalsetta the trail passes through open grassland before it climbs to Eliza Saddle. After taking a short break at the picnic table here continue up the steep climb through rugged bushland to the Gibraltar Peak viewpoint.

As visitors ascend the boulders of the viewpoint they are able to take in 360-degree views of Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Canberra and Black Mountain Tower.

title: Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve