text:
Talk:Lanthanum

For GA
Look through the applications, make it read better (it's currently just a huge list), and see which ones are the really important ones. If going for FA later, expand the chemistry section (it's an okay overview, but there is more to say). Double sharp (talk) 03:22, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * (OTOH, since these are all real uses and Greenwood 1984 may not be up-to-date here, unlike for In, it may be fine. Awaiting the review, then.) Double sharp (talk) 03:40, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

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regarding the coverage of the old La/Lu controversy here
R8R removed the old paragraph describing it, which I restored. I tried to be balanced here: the first paragraph shows pretty much the main Lu argument (both La and Lu have the d differentiating electron), and then the La ones given in the literature in their own paragraph ("the differences are because La is bigger", "La has no f-involvement", and "eka-Y should be expected to be bigger than Y, and La is but Lu isn't"). So I restrained myself to giving the points made in the literature, and I also noted that Lu is more similar to Y (but not Sc). In general it is pretty difficult to find this material in the literature because it is usually considered a non-issue resolved in favour of La, so if you can find some more points in the actual literature (not just from us pontificating), please let me know, and I'll add them. Or if you also have any suggestions on how to make it look less biased.

But I notice my point doesn't seem to be quite understood, so here's a summary of how I think about it personally without the balancing in the article (it goes without saying that this is talk-page material, illustrating why I find your objections lack some force for me):

 * 1) We know that both La and Lu are trivalent.
 * 2) We know that both La and Lu have a 5d differentiating electron from the elements before them. (This and the previous point make them both suitable candidates for being eka-Y.)
 * 3) We know that Lu is more similar in behaviour to Y than La is. (But neither is very much like Sc, which is much more like Al.)
 * 4) From this difference we are led to the conclusion that since {Al, Sc, Y, La, Lu} are all trivalent, size is the key factor that determines similarity between them.
 * 5) It is not unusual for size to increase down the table. In fact it is the predominant trend throughout all of it. So if you want to claim that eka-Y should not be larger than Y you need a reason for group 3 to be special.
 * 6) *(If we were to use chemical similarity on the problem of group 2, we would be suggesting Be and Mg to be placed over Zn, so clearly chemical similarity is not the only factor.)
 * 7) Now it happens that there is such a reason: the lanthanide contraction. Groups 4 through 8, we are all agreed, come after the lanthanides (accepting that they might not be the only groups to do so), and because the 4f shell is terrible at shielding the nuclear charge we get a pattern that the 4d and 5d elements are very similar to each other and both quite distinct from the 3d element.
 * 8) So the question is whether the lanthanides precede or succeed group 3. If the former, then the lanthanide contraction succeeds as an explanation and we adopt Lu; but if the latter, it doesn't work, and then we have to adopt La.
 * 9) The defining property of lanthanide chemistry is 4f involvement. In other words, we should have some reasonable expectation that the Ln atoms and their ions should have 4f electrons. Now La doesn't have them, but Lu does.
 * 10) In fact, if you plot the chemically relevant Ln3+ electron configurations, they start at [Xe]4f0 for La and end at [Xe]4f14 for Lu. Now it seems much more reasonable to include the full f-shell than the empty one in the f-block, even though neither shows much f chemistry, just like we include Zn but not Ca in the d-block even though Zn really does not act like a transition metal.
 * 11) *Furthermore, since Yb is actually mixed divalent-trivalent as a metal due to a 4f-5d band overlap, Lu might be said to have "half a 4f" differentiating electron – an absent effect for La. (This is a side point anyway.)
 * 12) But most of all, orbitals undergo a sudden contraction and lowering of energy when they first become chemically active. For example, this happens at Z = 19 for 4s but only at Z = 21 for 3d, whence the 3d-4s problem resolved by Aufbau. Now if you look at the beginning of the sixth period, the collapse happens at Z = 55 for 6s, Z = 57 for 5d, and Z = 58 for 4f.
 * 13) These points strongly suggest that the beginning of 4f involvement is at Ce, just like the beginning of 3d involvement is at Sc.
 * 14) But if Ce is the first element to have significant 4f involvement as a valence shell, instead of just "supervalent hybridisation" like Ca, Sr, and Ba do with the d-shells that are about to collapse, then La cannot be an f-block element, any more than Ca preceding Sc is a d-block element.

Since you (evidently) disagree with my conclusion, then the issue must be with (at least) one of these statements. So where do you find a problem?

One possible objection may be how much weight you apply to the Aufbau principle. If you consider that to be sacrosanct, then indeed it would trump the smaller differences and suggest Lu under Y. The problem is that I don't believe that the Aufbau principle is sacrosanct. I, like many actual chemists, believe that it is supposed to be a rough guide to the periodic table in terms of actual electron configurations, which influence but don't dictate actual chemistry, and this may sound anti-reductionist (it isn't) but we don't understand completely where the Aufbau comes from, only that it is a trend that you can see from the subshell collapses. So I think that as long as we don't have a coherent theory that pops out Aufbau from first principles instead of just showing it up as a cool pattern, I think that the choice between La and Lu needs chemical justification like any other.

But, of course, this is just how I think, and in the article we have to reflect what is in the literature. This may be a bit of a tall order because the main arguments offered by the few Lu-advocates I see are Aufbau, greater similarities of Lu than La to Y, and commonalities in trends with groups 4 through 8, all of which are covered. (Though I notice that it's mostly the La advocates who note that while Lu is very similar to Y, it certainly isn't as similar to Sc, which is different because it's even smaller.) There seem to be a few more La arguments around (since this has finally gotten enough spotlight that a few La advocates have responded). But please do suggest some improvements on the talk page; I daresay it would be more useful to our readers than deleting the entire thing, which is all found in reliable sources. Double sharp (talk) 02:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

 * Sure, a discussion it is, then.
 * Let me make one point clear: for the purposes of this article, I am not pro arguing for that the idea of lanthanum being a d element is wrong or right. I think that the article should not pick sides at all and the text I deleted definitely did pick a side. (That especially outraged me given that the subsections on bulk properties and isotopes both took less space than a discussion on this frankly minor issue anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to see a shorter subsection on the issue even in a full-sized FA. Group 3 element would be much more appropriate for a detailed discussion on the matter.) The text gave one opinion without fully giving the other one. I could explain how so sentence by sentence if you wish.
 * I am unfortunately not ready at the moment to discuss the "truth" on the matter at the moment (typing this on my cellphone). On a quick note, though, point 5 is clearly biased: if you are to truly determine something, you should pick any position as default to fall back to just in case. You even acknowledge this when you say that Aufbau is just a general guideline and deviations are possible. Also, it would make more sense for me to pick the other version as default because that's the norm for the d block but that's irrelevant anyway because you shouldn't pick any. Also, 9 is words with no support behind them: you can use analogies for illustrating your point but not making one. Why are we talking about cations and neutral atoms anyway? This is not a universal criterion throughout the PT. Also, why compare in many aspects to group II but never to IV? 12 ignores (not debunks; ignores) the point the -Lu-Lr supporters make: La is an exception like copper.
 * I am not arguing that your thesis is flawed or otherwise. I am only saying some of your arguments are and they sometimes don't even try to acknowledge the other position. I think we therefore better have no discussion rather than a flawed one especially given that we probably don't need this discussion in this article anyway.--R8R (talk) 09:39, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I've hidden this section for now, since I'm rather swayed by your point that this article isn't the place for it any more than those for Lu, Ac, and Lr are. We might conceivably salvage part of it for the discussion at group 3 element, though it strikes me that I have internalised -La-Ac too well, so perhaps we should get you to write some of it too. ^_^
 * I'm also short of time, so here are some quick replies:
 * 5. It seems to me that even if you say that the other version is the norm for the d-block, you still need to answer why it is the norm there, and nowhere else. And in fact I find the "lanthanide contraction" explanation a little unconvincing, because it is dependent on where group 3 comes after. It seems to me that you cannot argue in favour of La as eka-Y on those grounds, because it would mean that you don't accept that the lanthanides precede group 3, which means you are in fact begging the question. And the same for Lu as eka-Y, so this is a lame argument and thank you for spotting it, and I shall try to patch up the hole when I have more time to think. I think we can instead have something like:
 * "The predominant trend in the early d-block groups 4 through 8 is for the 4d element to be very similar in size to the 5d element, because of the poor shielding effect of the 4f subshell in the lanthanides that precede them. The predominant trend in the s-block groups is for an increase in size from the 5s element to the 6s element because of the lack of this inner 4f subshell. So the question of La vs Lu can be reduced to the equivalent question of which of them is an f-block element."
 * What do you think of that?
 * 9. Seems to me that the electron configurations are pretty much universal because of how well they reflect chemistry, and when they appear otherwise it's in period one where everything goes topsy-turvy because 1s2 is already a full shell and there's no 1p, making a vast difference from everything else. But I think I'm not phrasing my point very clearly, which is that if La is 4f0 everywhere it doesn't seem to be very convincing as a 4f element, especially since Ac is also 5f0 everywhere.
 * 12. The question of exceptions is also related with why I didn't cover group IV: because only in II and III is the idea of the differentiating electron not helpful. I mean, if you want to compare Ti/Zr/Ce to Ti/Zr/Hf, you just have to see that Ti/Zr/Ce has differentiating electrons 3d/4d/4f from the preceding Sc/Y/La, while Ti/Zr/Hf has differentiating 3d/4d/5d from Sc/Y/Lu, so only the second one gives a match: there are exceptions, of course, but when you consider the question of which orbitals are actually chemically active the point stands with the exceptions as a minor anomaly (like I guess we would all accept for Cu). It's only in II and III that we have a totally consistent set of anomalies: going from group I (A or B) to II (A or B) the differentiating electron is always s, and going from group II (B or "C") to III (B or "C") the differentiating electron is always d, and neither Ca/Sr/Ba | La/Ac nor Zn/Cd/Hg | Lu/Lr show much involvement of the inner subshell. I think my thought process is mostly that if the two situations are this analogous, they should be treated the same way, nebulous as that sounds, because I just find the thought of a 4f element with no 4f involvement at all hard to stomach.
 * Now about the exceptions. I think the point of the exceptions is that they still behave like their supposed blocks by Aufbau if the exceptions weren't there: Cu still acts like a d-block element in how it displays variable oxidation states, and Th still acts like an f-block element, Th3+ being [Rn]5f1. And you can express this more precisely by looking at the energy levels of the electron shells and seeing which ones are drowned in the core, which ones are too high to be usable in chemistry (rather than in physics), and which ones are at a happy medium (all three being reasonably far apart and distinguishable), which takes care of all the exceptions. Cu shows 3d and 4s as valence subshells, Pd shows 4d and 5s, and so on, so while the details are a bit off the general picture of what is being filled is right. And it is very right for the beginnings of chemical activity of a subshell, since the falls from the heights into the medium-range are very steep, even if the descent into the core is slow (graph of 3d, 4s, 4d, 5s at doi 10.1021/ed8001286). But still La and Ac show up with 4f and 5f respectively being up in the heights and not ready to collapse till Ce and Th, and it's that point that clinched it for me, TBH. Double sharp (talk) 15:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry to keep you waiting. I read your response yesterday and formulated a reply on that very day. However, as soon as I came home, I found myself too tired and sleepy to write a long meaningful message. Same today even though it's much earlier today. I know what I mean to write back and will as soon as I can.--R8R (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, the new 5 is okay.
 * The problem in your thinking is that you've clearly chosen a perspective from which you would look at the problem and don't try to do the same from the other position; you'd otherwise see most, if not all, of your arguments can be mirrored. I am not unsympathetic to this as I was once a heavy -Lu-Lr supporter. The point that got me there for sure was exactly that Lu added an electron to an already complete shell (which precisely mirrors your killing argument, making neither really "killing"). I'm changing my ways, though. During our last discussion at WT:ELEM, I did suggest this was only a problem of personal liking; however, quite to my surprise, we have found some uniquely pro-La-Ac and pro-Lu-Lr points. I didn't investigate on them due to lack of free time and you and Sandbh were quite okay not to, about which I was genuinely surprised. (That being said, if I recall all of that correctly.) I suggest you ensure being right by assuming the opposing position and see if they can compete with your argument.
 * I understand your 12. Okay then. Still, if you want to look at the differentiating electron, again, look at the other side and investigate group III: if it is okay to use Be-Mg-Ca/Zn and Ca-Sr-Ba/Hg to support Sc-Y-La, then it is just as okay to use B-Al-Sc/Ga and Ga-In-Lu/Tl to support Sc-Y-Lu, which exactly mirrors your point.
 * Yes, there is indeed some unique validity in that a series begins when behavior common for that series starts. This must be a uniquely pro-La-Ac point, since Yb still shows some а behavior, so a Lu showing none of it well parallels Zn showing none of d. That is noted. Perhaps it would be a good idea to revisit that old discussion to see all of the unique arguments on both sides.
 * For the sake of completeness, your 9, however, isn't just flawed; it contradicts chemistry as I know it. We don't judge about an element's location by properties of its ions; we judge it by properties of the neutral element. For instance, cesium is an s-block element alright despite it being 6s0 basically on every occasion. Cesium is an s-block element because its differentiating electron is 6s. Interestingly, you already referred to the differentiating electron; keep your consistency at it.--R8R (talk) 19:59, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I've looked at this and will give an actual response soon; still need to think about it a bit more. Off the cuff I'd say that what I meant is that La and Ac didn't have f-electrons to begin with and they're not using these orbitals even to remove electrons from or put more in, like Cs getting rid of its 6s electron it already had or Th bumping its electrons down into 5f as you ionise it, but I still need to write it up properly. Double sharp (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately real life intervened after that post and I forgot about this discussion, but in the meantime this issue got another airing in the WT:ELEM archives. That latest discussion came very close indeed to convincing me back to Sc-Y-Lu-Lr. ^_^ I do agree now that group 3 element is the proper place for this longstanding argument and that any discussion here ought to be short and perhaps just limited to saying that there is an argument, because regardless of which side you pick, you still need to do comparative chemistry with Ac and the rare earths anyway. So I think it's fine that this section is no longer in the article, but that the lede mentions that La's exact classification is under some debate and both La and Lu have sometimes been assigned the 5d1 slot (and there's not much we could do in the body except for repeating tha statement again without going off-topic, so I think we might be able to invoke IAR for its absence from the body). Double sharp (talk) 13:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I absolutely agree about the part on the lead section. As for mentioning that in the body, I suggest considering a mention in History, something similar to Thorium. History would gain from some expansion anyway.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Thankfully, I finally learned enough to be able to tell where exactly this argument fails: points 8 and 11. Lanthanum has f-involvement, and it continues until only ytterbium. Therefore, the case doesn't work, and so I changed my mind to -Lu-Lr (as most sources focusing on this point agree with, even if textbooks are slow to update). Fortunately, IUPAC has already published the provisional report, so this mistake (as Bernd T. Mathias put it) could finally be corrected. Although it still has to get into an actual report, the IUPAC periodic table, and finally out in the wild. Double sharp (talk) 13:08, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Use in high-temperature superconductors
I am missing a mention of the use of La in High-temperature superconductors (HTS) and more broadly the Lanthanum hydrides. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where to put it, since HTS are not really 'applications' yet. Any thoughts on this?

Another good source for this is this very recent paper.

Aypac (talk) 15:27, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

World annual production?
No information in the article. I found few other sources, but they are not accurate, or outdated. Around 2011 I see sources say 12.5 kt per year. 2015 estimates say 54 kt (oxide). More recent articles say that China alone is producing about 90 kt of La and Ce (together) per year (while world usage is about 50kt per year of La and Ce together). Unclear if this is metal, but more probably oxide. 81.6.34.169 (talk) 16:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Thanks. Without good sources we should say nothing. ✅ Johnjbarton (talk) 16:50, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Lanthanum


text:
Talk:Don Woods (programmer)

Untitled
This is a cool story. However, I don't know that it belongs in an encyclopedia article. Anecdotes are fine, but more facts would be better. - Dreamword 20:52 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. - Hephaestos 02:21 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

(Personal Story)

An old-school hacker, great programmer, and all-around cool guy. I used to work with Don in the mid-1990's at ClariNet Communications and he had a map on his office wall that a fan of Colossal Cave Adventure had drawn by hand showing the layout of the entire cave system, in 3D. It was really cool. :-)

The funny thing was, I didn't know Don had done Adventure for the first month or two that we worked together, and one day I saw someone posting on Usenet and getting all excited flustered at hearing from "*THE* Don Woods".

Me: "Don, why does your name provoke such a reaction in people on the Net?"

Don: "Did you ever hear of an old text-based dungeon game called 'Adventure'?"

Me: "Oh yeah! I used to play that back in 1981 on Apple ][ computers! It was great!"

Don: "Most of the geeks in Silicon Valley say the same thing. I created it."

Me: "Oh." :-)

After that, we had numerous conversations about the game, and I got to see the latest versions he was working on. Even 20 years later, he continued to tweak and improve it, and often kept a copy running on a machine wherever he worked.

I haven't seen Don in about 4 years. If someone knows how to contact him, send him my way.

You can find out more about the history of the game and the later offshoots like Zork here.

User:PatrickSalsbury

perdurable ? -- Zoe

 * Oddly, an actual word meaning "very durable" - so durable it can be considered permanent. ('per-' + 'durable' as an intensifier, like 'per-'+'lucid' -> 'pellucid'). I cannot myself say how perdurable Don Woods is, but I suspect he falls somewhat short of eternal. -- Someone else 03:57 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * In this context, does that make the use of the word POV? -- Zoe

 * Probably not, but I have no qualms about changing it to a word that won't make the reader go 'huh?' . -- Someone else 04:13 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * After contacting the original author by the (nowadays nostalgic) means of sending an e-mail to crowther@sitename, where sitename was every host currently on the Internet...

Nostalgic? I believe spammers still use this technique. ( 15:53, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

can anyone fix dead link?
The "Are you really a wizard" link is dead, but I don't want to remove it in case anyone knows where that file can now be found. Allen 16:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Removed it. --Allen 07:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

On the /Internet/?
Right from the beginning the article has said, "then distributed it on the Internet." The game was developed around 1975. Our seismology lab had just gotten onto the ARPAnet that year, and we played ADVENT on a PDP-10 at BBN, if I remember correctly. I used a crummy VT-52 terminal with a "bell" that honked.

Is there some weird and unknown consensus that the term "Internet" subsumes "ARPAnet"? If not, I'll probably change the term unless someone else does it first. Snezzy (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Don Woods (programmer)


text:
Shakuhachi

A shakuhachi is a Japanese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the fuke shakuhachi (普化尺八). A bamboo flute known as the ancient (古代尺八) or gagaku shakuhachi (雅楽尺八) was derived from the Chinese xiao in the Nara period and died out in the 10th century. After a long blank period, the hitoyogiri shakuhachi (一節切尺八) appeared in the 15th century, and then in the 16th century, the was developed in Japan. The flourished in the 18th century during the Edo period, and eventually the  also died out. The developed in Japan is longer and thicker than the  and has one finger hole less. It is longer and thicker than and is superior in volume, range, scale and tone quality. Today, since the shakuhachi generally refers only to, the theory that the is an instrument unique to Japan is widely accepted.

The is traditionally made of bamboo, but versions now exist in ABS, ebonite, anodized aluminum, and hardwoods. It was used by the monks of the Fuke Zen of Zen Buddhism in the practice of (blowing meditation).

The instrument is tuned to the minor pentatonic scale.

Etymology
The name means "1.8 ", referring to its size. It is a compound of two words:
 * 1) shaku (尺) is an archaic unit of length equal to 30.3 cm and subdivided in ten subunits.
 * 2) hachi (八) means "eight", here eight, or tenths, of a.

Thus, the compound word means "one  eight " (54.54 cm), the standard length of a. Other vary in length from about 1.1  up to 3.6. Although the sizes differ, all are still referred to generically as.

Overview

are usually made from the root end of (Phyllostachys bambusoides) bamboo culm and are extremely versatile instruments. Professional players can produce virtually any pitch they wish from the instrument, and play a wide repertoire of original Zen music, ensemble music with, , and , folk music, jazz, and other modern pieces.

Much of the 's subtlety (and player's skill) lies in its rich tone colouring, and the ability for its variation. Different fingerings, embouchures and amounts of can produce notes of the same pitch, but with subtle or dramatic differences in the tone colouring. Holes can be covered partially and pitch varied subtly or substantially by changing the blowing angle. The pieces rely heavily on this aspect of the instrument to enhance their subtlety and depth.

Unlike a recorder, where the player blows into a duct—a narrow airway over a block which is called a "fipple"—and thus has limited pitch control, the player blows as one would blow across the top of an empty bottle (though the  has a sharp edge to blow against called ) and therefore has substantial pitch control. The term utaguchi (歌口) literally translates as "to the mouth that sings", referring to the upper and main hole of the flute where the mouthpiece or blowing edge is created by a natural diagonal cut in the bamboo.

The history of the shows a variety of designs of inlaid mouthpieces that vary between certain traditional Japanese schools of. Thus, the Kinko Ryu, Myoan and Tozan Ryu, differ in different features in their line of mouthpiece design, coinciding in them the total non-use in their inlay of the semi-circumference formed by the natural cut of the mouthpiece in the bamboo. Beyond the fact that these inlaid forms were a hallmark of styles and schools, the fact of inlaying a mouthpiece historically could respond to a way of repairing the instrument due to wear or damage in particular in its blowing edge.

The five finger holes are tuned to a minor pentatonic scale with no half-tones, but using techniques called meri (メリ) and kari (カリ), in which the blowing angle is adjusted to bend the pitch downward and upward, respectively, combined with embouchure adjustments and fingering techniques the player can bend each pitch as much as a whole tone or more. Pitches may also be lowered by shading (カザシ) or partially covering finger holes. Since most pitches can be achieved via several different fingering or blowing techniques on the, the timbre of each possibility is taken into account when composing or playing thus different names are used to write notes of the same pitch which differ in timbre. The has a range of two full octaves (the lower is called 乙/呂, the upper, 甲 ) and a partial third octave (大甲 ) though experienced players can produce notes up to E7 (2637.02Hz) on a 1.8 shakuhachi. The various octaves are produced using subtle variations of breath, finger positions and embouchure. In traditional repertoire, instead of tonguing for articulation like many Western wind instruments, hitting holes (oshi (押し), osu (オス)) with a very fast movement is used and each note has its corresponding repeat fingerings; e.g., for repeating C5 the 5th hole (D5's tone hole) is used.

A 1.8 produces D4 (D above Middle C, 293.66Hz) as its fundamental—the lowest note it produces with all five finger holes covered, and a normal blowing angle. In contrast, a 2.4 has a fundamental of A3 (A below Middle C, 220Hz). As the length increases, the spacing of the finger holes also increases, stretching both fingers and technique. Longer flutes often have offset finger holes, and very long flutes are almost always custom made to suit individual players. Some, in particular those of the Nezasaha (Kimpu-ryū) school, are intended to be played on these longer flutes.

Due to the skill required, the time involved, and the range of quality in materials to craft bamboo, one can expect to pay from US$1,000 to US$8,000 for a new or used flute. Because each piece of bamboo is unique, cannot be mass-produced, and craftsmen must spend much time finding the correct shape and length of bamboo, curing it for more or less of a decade in a controlled environment and then start shaping the bore for almost a year using Ji (地) paste—many layers of a mixture including powder (砥の粉) and  and finished with  lacquer—for each individual flute to achieve correct pitch and tonality over all notes. Specimens of extremely high quality, with valuable inlays, or of historical significance can fetch US$20,000 or more. Plastic or PVC have some advantages over their traditional bamboo counterparts: they are lightweight, extremely durable, nearly impervious to heat and cold, and typically cost less than US$100. made of wood are also available, typically costing less than bamboo but more than synthetic materials. Nearly all players, however, prefer bamboo, citing tonal qualities, aesthetics, and tradition.

History
The is derived from the Chinese bamboo-flute. The bamboo-flute first came to Japan from China during the 7th or 8th century. This style of bamboo flute, also called ancient (古代尺八) or gagaku shakuhachi (雅楽尺八), was used for playing, but died out in the 10th century. Eight remain in the Shōsō-in Treasure Repository. There are no records of musical scores related to the, so details such as its playing method and scale are unknown. The average length was 40 cm, the diameter of the finger holes was 2 cm, and there were 6 finger holes – 5 at the front, 1 at the back.

In the 15th century, the hitoyogiri shakuhachi (一節切尺八) appeared. It is characterized by a single bamboo joint in the middle of the tube. Although it flourished in the 17th century, it gradually fell into disuse due to the development and popularity of the superior, and was no longer used by the 19th century. The average length was 33.6 cm, the outer diameter was 3 cm, and there were 5 finger holes – 4 at the front, 1 at the back.

The flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the fuke shakuhachi (普化尺八). This style of is longer and thicker than the older, and its volume, range, scale, and tone are superior to those of the older. It is made from the base of the bamboo, and the average length is 54.5 cm, which corresponds to 1 8 ; the outside diameter is 4 cm, and there are 5 finger holes – 4 at the front, 1 at the back.

During the medieval period, were most notable for their role in the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhist monks, known as  ("priests of nothingness" or "emptiness monks"), who used the shakuhachi as a spiritual tool. Their songs (called ) were paced according to the players' breathing and were considered meditation as much as music.

Travel around Japan was restricted by the shogunate at this time, but the Fuke sect managed to wrangle an exemption from the, since their spiritual practice required them to move from place to place playing the and begging for alms (one famous song reflects this mendicant tradition: Hi fu mi, hachi gaeshi (一二三鉢返の調); "One two three, pass the alms bowl"). They persuaded the to give them exclusive rights to play the instrument. In return, some were required to spy for the shogunate, and the sent several of his own spies out in the guise of Fuke monks as well. This was made easier by the wicker baskets (天蓋) that the Fuke wore over their heads, a symbol of their detachment from the world.

In response to these developments, several particularly difficult pieces, e.g. "Distant Call of the Deer" (鹿の遠音), became well known as "tests": if one could play them, they were a real Fuke monk. If they could not, they were probably a spy and might very well be killed if they were in unfriendly territory.

With the Meiji Restoration, beginning in 1868, the shogunate was abolished and so was the Fuke sect, in order to help identify and eliminate the 's holdouts. The very playing of the was officially forbidden for a few years. Non-Fuke folk traditions did not suffer greatly from this, since the tunes could be played just as easily on another pentatonic instrument. However, the repertoire was known exclusively to the Fuke sect and transmitted by repetition and practice, and much of it was lost, along with many important documents.

When the Meiji government did permit the playing of again, it was only as an accompanying instrument to the, , etc. It was not until later that  were allowed to be played publicly again as solo pieces.

The has traditionally been played almost exclusively by men in Japan, although this situation is rapidly changing. Many teachers of traditional music indicate that a majority of their students are women. The 2004 Big Apple Festival in New York City hosted the first-ever concert of international women  masters. This festival was organized and produced by Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin, who was the first full-time master to teach in the Western hemisphere. Nyogetsu also holds 2 Dai Shihan (Grand Master) licenses, and has run KiSuiAn, the largest and most active Dojo outside Japan, since 1975.

The has grown in international popularity in recent decades. The first non-Japanese person to become a master was American-Australian Riley Lee. Lee was responsible for the World Festival being held in Sydney, Australia over 5–8 July 2008, based at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Riley Lee played the in Dawn Mantras which was composed by Ross Edwards especially for the Dawn Performance, which took place on the sails of the Sydney Opera House at sunrise on 1 January 2000 and was televised internationally.

Acoustics
The creates a harmonic spectrum that contains the fundamental frequency together with even and odd harmonics and some blowing noise. Five tone holes enable musicians to play the notes D-F-G-A-C-D. Cross (or fork) fingerings, half-covering tone holes, and blowing cause pitch sharpening, referred to as intonation anomaly. Especially the second and third harmonic exhibit the well-known timbre. Even though the geometry of the is relatively simple, the sound radiation of the  is rather complicated. Sound radiating from several holes and the natural asymmetry of bamboo create an individual spectrum in each direction. This spectrum depends on frequency and playing technique.

Notable players
The International Shakuhachi Society maintains a directory of notable professional, amateur, and teaching players.

Recordings
The primary genres of music are:

 * (traditional, solo)
 * (ensemble, with and )
 * (new music composed for and, commonly post-Meiji period compositions influenced by Western music)

Recordings in each of these categories are available; however, more albums are catalogued in categories outside the traditional realm. As of 2018, players continue releasing records in a variety of traditional and modern styles.

The first recording appeared in the United States in the late 1960s. Gorō Yamaguchi recorded A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky for Nonesuch Explorer Records on LP, an album which received acclaim from Rolling Stone at the time of its release. One of the pieces featured on Yamaguchi's record was, also called (Crane's Nesting). NASA later chose to include this track as part of the Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft.

In the film industry
are often used in modern film scores, for example those by James Horner. Films in which it is featured prominently include: The Karate Kid parts II and III by Bill Conti, Legends of the Fall and Braveheart by James Horner, Jurassic Park and its sequels by John Williams and Don Davis, and The Last Samurai by Hans Zimmer and Memoirs of a Geisha by John Williams.

Renowned Japanese classical and film-score composer Toru Takemitsu wrote many pieces for and orchestra, including his well-known Celeste, Autumn and November Steps.

Western contemporary music

 * The Australian master and composer Jim Franklyn has composed a number of works for solo, also including electronics.
 * British composer John Palmer included a wide range of extended techniques in (1999, for  and ensemble)
 * In Carlo Forlivesi's composition for and guitar "" (雨月), the performance techniques were remarked as "[presenting] notable difficulties in a few completely novel situations: an audacious movement of 'expansion' of the respective traditions of the two instruments pushed as they are at times to the limits of the possible, the aim being to have the  and the guitar playing on the same level and with virtuosity (two instruments that are culturally and acoustically so dissimilar), thus increasing the expressive range, the texture of the dialogue, the harmonic dimension and the tone-colour."
 * American composer and performer Elizabeth Brown plays and has written many pieces for the instrument that build on Japanese traditions while diverging with more modern arrangement, orchestration, melodic twists or harmonic progressions.
 * New York-born musician James Nyoraku Schlefer plays, teaches, and composes for.
 * Composer Carson Kievman has employed the instrument in many works from "Ladies Voices" in 1976 to "Feudal Japan" in the parallel world opera Passion Love Gravity in 2020–21.
 * Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes formed a jazz quintet in 2002 called The N.Y.C. Club. They play avant-garde jazz versions of tradition American folk and blues songs with Ritchie's  playing as the focal point. In 2004 they released their debut album on Weed Records.
 * Welsh composer Karl Jenkins features prominent solos in his 2005 Requiem, specifically in the movements where the texts are death haikus.
 * American multi-instrumentalist and composer Zac Zinger is a specialist, featuring it on his progressive-jazz album Fulfillment, as well as playing it on the score of Just Cause 4 and the promotional album for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, from Magic: The Gathering.
 * "Nobody's Listening", a 2003 rap rock song from the album Meteora by Linkin Park, features the flute.
 * British jazz musician Shabaka Hutchings performed shakuhachi on the André 3000 album New Blue Sun

Synthesized/sampled
The sound of the is also featured from time to time in electronica, pop and rock, especially after being commonly shipped as a "preset" instrument on various synthesizers and keyboards beginning in the 1980s. The General MIDI standard assigns the shakuhachi to programm number 78. One of the best known pop songs of the 1980s that uses this sound is Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.

title: Shakuhachi


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Vladimiro Montesinos

Vladimiro Lenin Ilich Montesinos Torres (born May 20, 1945) is a Peruvian former intelligence officer and lawyer, most notorious for his role as the head of Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN) during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori. Montesinos wielded significant power behind the scenes, often regarded as the true authority in the government, supported by the Peruvian Armed Forces.

Montesinos' career was marked by his deep connections with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), through which he received substantial funding ostensibly for anti-terrorism efforts. His tenure saw numerous human rights abuses and corruption scandals. The "Vladi-videos," secretly recorded tapes showing Montesinos bribing officials, led to a national scandal in 2000. This exposure forced him to flee Peru and precipitated Fujimori's resignation.

Investigations unveiled Montesinos' involvement in a wide range of illegal activities, including embezzlement, drug trafficking, and orchestrating extrajudicial killings. He was subsequently captured, tried, and convicted on multiple charges. Despite his imprisonment, Montesinos continued to influence Peruvian politics and sought to protect allies within the Fujimorist faction, including Keiko Fujimori.

Montesinos' early life was influenced by his communist parents and his cousin, a leader of the Shining Path guerrilla group. He received military training in the U.S. and Peru, later becoming involved in intelligence and political advisory roles. His legal career, following a brief imprisonment for espionage, was marred by fraudulent activities and associations with drug traffickers.

Early years and education
Vladimiro Montesinos was born in the city of Arequipa, the capital of the Arequipa Region in southern Peru. His parents were devout communists of Greek origin and named their son after Vladimir Lenin. Montesinos is a cousin of the incarcerated communist leader Óscar Ramírez Durand, a.k.a. "Feliciano", the leader of the Shining Path. In 1965, Montesinos graduated as a military cadet at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Panama. A year later, he graduated from the Chorrillos Military School, in Lima, Peru.

Aide to prime ministers
In 1973, during the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru's leftist military junta of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, Montesinos became an artillery captain in the Peruvian army and was appointed to the role of aide to General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, who served as both Prime Minister and Chief of the Armed Forces. While working with Jarrín, Montesinos travelled with the prime minister to Algeria, Colombia, Cuba, France, Spain and Venezuela. While visiting Cuba, he stayed with Raúl Castro as a personal guest. The Armed Forces Movement of Portugal had also reportedly been in contact with Montesinos. He visited several foreign institutions as an official representative of the Peruvian army, also without authorization.

When the Velasco government fell in 1975, Montesinos was able to maintain his position in the military during the more conservative government of General Francisco Morales-Bermúdez. He would also serve as an aide for prime ministers Guillermo Arbulú Galliani and Jorge Fernández Maldonado Solari during the government of Francisco Morales Bermúdez. A talented writer, Montesinos wrote many of the speeches for ministers of the government and was a frequent contributor to newspapers. He was also reportedly writing various treatises regarding an invasion of Chile and granting Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean.

CIA contact
In 1974, political scientist Alfred Stepan of Yale University recommended to the Embassy of the United States, Lima that Montesinos be given the International Visitor's Leader Grant, describing him as the "most theoretically sophisticated of young military officers in national security doctrine" and that he had "considerable leadership potential". Montesinos expressed during the nomination process that he wanted to meet with officials of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United States National Security Council of President Gerald Ford to discuss military and economic relations. He also specified to US officials that he did not want to "waste time" going to tourist destinations such as Walt Disney World. The United States Department of State and the CIA then began its relationship with Montesinos.

From 5 to 21 September 1976, Montesinos travelled to Washington, D.C. paid for by the United States government, meeting with multiple US officials; Robert Hawkins of the CIA's Office of Current Intelligence, Luigi R. Einaudi, policy-planning chief of the US State Department's Latin America division, Alfred Stepan of Yale University, Albert Fishlow of University of California, Berkeley, Riordan Roett of Johns Hopkins University and Abraham Lowenthal of the University of Southern California were documented to have met with Montesinos. Such trips for foreign individuals provided by the United States were rare at the time and were only reserved for high-value recruits destined to carry out US interests.

Upon his return to Lima, he was arrested for having failed to obtain formal government permission to make the trip. In 1977, Major José Fernández Salvatteci of the Army Intelligence Service (Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército (SIE)) charged Montesinos with the crimes of spying and treason, accusing him of delivering military documents to the embassy of the United States in Lima. The documents included a list of weapons which Peru had purchased from the Soviet Union. The subsequent investigation revealed that top-secret documents had been found in his possession, and that he had photographed them and given copies to the CIA. Montesinos had travelled to the U.S. without authorization from army command, and had forged military documents to allow him to complete the trip without being detained.

Montesinos was dishonorably discharged from the military and sentenced two years in the military prison at Bolivar Barracks in Pueblo Libre. This was a far less severe sentence than the customary death penalty that was the punishment for traitors during the military regime. United States Ambassador to Peru Robert William Dean contacted Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru José de la Puente Radbill to pressure for Montesinos' release while the attorney representing the imprisoned army captain was asked to contact Einaudi. General Mercado then ordered the charges be dropped.

Years later, declassified US State Department documents revealed the reason for the CIA's interest in Montesinos. In the 1970s, Peru was governed by the only left-wing regime in South America, a continent dominated by right-wing governments. Locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and fearing its influence in the region, as well as that of the Communist government of Cuba, the US was seeking information about activities in Peru. Montesinos conjured up and told a story about potential attacks against Peru's southern rival, Chile, then ruled by dictator Augusto Pinochet, an ally of the U.S.

Attorney career
In February 1978, Montesinos was freed after two years in jail. He was given work by his cousin Sergio Cardenal Montesinos, a lawyer who persuaded him to pursue a degree in law. In April of the same year, Montesinos applied to the National University of San Marcos in Lima. He received his law diploma only three months later, through fraudulent means. Book No. 24 of the University of San Marcos Office of Records, where Montesinos' graduation would be noted, has disappeared from the Office. Montesinos' undergraduate thesis and other materials related to his academic record have never been produced.

On 15 August 1978, Montesinos used his degree to register as a lawyer with the Superior Court of Lima. Ten days later, on 25 August 1978, he became a member of the Lima bar association. He became notorious for representing a number of Colombian and Peruvian members of the illegal drug trade, as well as police officers accused of being involved in drug trafficking. Between 1978 and 1979, he represented Colombian drug lords Evaristo "Papá Doc" Porras Ardila and Jaime Tamayo. In addition, he acted as guarantor on Tamayo's lease of several offices and warehouses used to manufacture cocaine.

Between 1980 and 1983, Montesinos revealed sensitive information related to military wiretapping and assassinations to the newspaper Kausachum, run by Augusto Zimmerman, ex-spokesperson of deposed president Juan Velasco Alvarado. General Carlos Briceño, the Commander of the Peruvian Army, re-opened the investigation into Montesinos' alleged treason. Montesinos fled to Ecuador, where in 1984 he revealed information to the Ecuadorian Army about Peru's military weapons purchases. The investigation was closed that year in order to "protect institutional image", and Montesinos was allowed to return to Peru.

Plan Verde
During his attorney career, Montesinos was hired by Susana Higuchi, the wife of engineer Alberto Fujimori, assisting Higuchi after she made controversial deals in real estate. The paperwork in the case disappeared and the charges were dropped. This began the relationship between Montesinos and Fujimori.

Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti reported that Montesinos allegedly used $1 million provided by Pablo Escobar to fund the presidential campaign for Fujimori in the 1990 Peruvian general election to enter as a dark horse candidate. In addition, evidence exists that Montesinos reportedly forged tax documents and the birth certificate of Fujimori according to the Harvard International Review. Prior to the election, the Peruvian Armed Forces created Plan Verde, a clandestine military operation developed during the internal conflict in Peru that involved the genocide of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians, the control or censorship of media in the nation and the establishment of a neoliberal economy controlled by a military junta in Peru. The military decided against committing a coup as initially outlined in Plan Verde as they expected Mario Vargas Llosa, a neoliberal candidate, to be elected in the 1990 election. According to Fernando Rospigliosi, Montesinos was not initially involved with Plan Verde, but his ability to resolve issues for the military resulted in the armed forces tasking him with implementing the plan with Fujimori, while Alfredo Schulte-Bockholt would say that both General Nicolás de Bari Hermoza and Montesinos were responsible for the relationship between the armed forces and Fujimori.

Peruvian political analyst Umberto Jara would describe the relationship Montesinos had between the military and Fujimori:

"[Montesinos was] the nexus capable of uniting two weaknesses: an army that had lost its prestige because of subversion and human rights violations, and a political unknown, absolutely solitary, without a political organization or a social base."

Mario Vargas Llosa later reported that United States Ambassador to Peru, Anthony C. E. Quainton, personally told him that allegedly leaked documents of the CIA purportedly being supportive of Fujimori's candidacy were authentic. Rendón writes that the United States supported Fujimori because of his relationship with Montesinos.

Fujimori's campaign exploited the popular distrust of the existing Peruvian political establishment and the uncertainty about the proposed neoliberal economic reforms of his opponent Vargas Llosa. Fujimori would win the election, and according to Oiga, the armed forces finalized plans on 18 June 1990 involving multiple scenarios for a coup to be executed on 27 July 1990, the day prior to Fujimori's inauguration. The magazine noted that in one of the scenarios, titled "Negotiation and agreement with Fujimori. Bases of negotiation: concept of directed Democracy and Market Economy", Fujimori was to be directed on accepting the military's plan at least twenty-four hours before his inauguration. Rospigliosi writes that head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), General Edwin “Cucharita” Díaz, beside Montesinos also played a key role with making Fujimori abide by the military's demands. Díaz and Montesinos allegedly convinced Fujimori that he was being targeted by the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and made Fujimori stay at the Círculo Militar, limiting his access to only military officials. Rospigliosi states "an understanding was established between Fujimori, Montesinos and some of the military officers" involved in Plan Verde prior to Fujimori's inauguration. Montesinos and SIN officials would ultimately assume the armed force's position in the plan, placing SIN operatives into military leadership roles.

After Fujimori won the presidential election on 28 July 1990, Montesinos became his chief advisor and the de facto head of the SIN. Fujimori would go on to adopt many of the policies outlined in Plan Verde. Just days after Fujimori took office, the United States shared concerns in diplomatic cables that paramilitary death squads had been created by Montesinos. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to documents, believed in 1990 that Montesinos effectively ruled Peru through the SIN. Former Peruvian generals and commanders also reported to the United States that Montesinos controlled Fujimori. Montesinos then reportedly made Fujimori nominate former artillery officers to head key sectors of civilian and military posts, including Ministry of Defense of Peru and the Ministry of Interior, effectively giving Montesinos control of Peru's military. In a statement to a colleague at the time, Montesinos would remark "[Fujimori] is completely malleable: he does nothing at all without me knowing".

Relationship with the United States
While leading the SIN through the 1990s, Montesinos served the interests of the United States on multiple occasions according to the Harvard International Review. The United States reportedly support Fujimori's candidacy in the 1990 elections due to Montesinos' ties. The United States reportedly maintained a relationship with Montesinos as a way to have direct influence in Peru; the SIN head would clear bureaucratic obstacles and would immediately implement the recommendations of the CIA. During his years with Fujimori, Montesinos was said to be paid $1 million annually by the CIA from 1990 to 2000, according to US officials, while the CIA and the DEA defended him from allegations of misconduct. In a 1998 letter from the CIA chief in Lima sent to Montesinos, the American official would admire Montesinos' "leadership, dedication, and professionalism".

Montesinos had strong connections with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for over 25 years and was said to have received $10 million from the agency for his government's anti-terrorist activities, with international bank accounts possessed by Montesinos reportedly holding at least $270 million.

Monstesinos was directly involved with assisting American businesses establish deals in Peru, mediating US-led drug enforcement efforts in the Peruvian army and air force and obtaining money for US antinarcotics missions in Peru upon demand. One of his largest accomplishments for the United States was granting majority mining rights of the Yanacocha mine – the fourth largest gold mine in the world – to the US-based Newmont. French mining company Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières discovered the Yanacocha, though Newmont sought majority rights to access the mine, raising a judicial dispute between the two. US Ambassador to Peru Dennis Jett told the Fujimori government that "any appearance of succumbing to French pressure would feed rumors of corruption in the Peruvian judicial system and thus scare off international investors", with Montesinos later telling a supreme court judge tasked with decision that if the decision was not in favor with Newmont, then the United States would not support Peru's territorial dispute with Ecuador from the Cenepa War. The Supreme Court ultimately decided 4-3 in favor of granting the rights to Newmont.

Political repression
The DEA documented in December 1990, that Montesinos utilized illegal surveillance acts both domestically and internationally.

Montesinos is widely accused of threatening or harassing Fujimori's political opponents. Evidence proves that he supervised a death squad known as the Grupo Colina, part of the National Intelligence Service, which was thought to have been responsible for the Barrios Altos massacre and the La Cantuta massacre, actions intended to repress the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), the major communist insurgency movement that had been operating since the 1980s, but only resulted in the execution of civilians. Montesinos avoided large-scale violence against opponents, saying he wanted to avoid performing "clumsy" acts that occurred under Chilean president Augusto Pinochet. Violence instead targeted peasants and students, avoiding prominent individuals in order to remain covert.

Four officers who were tortured during interrogation after plotting a coup d'état against Fujimori in November 1992 later stated that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them. On 16 March 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicians and journalists. Zanatta also said that army intelligence agents had killed fellow agent Mariella Barreto Riofano because she gave a magazine information about human rights violations, as well as the location of bodies from the La Cantuta massacre. Zanatta said that in early 1997, Barreto had told her that she was part of the Grupo Colina death squad responsible for the La Cantuta massacre. Barreto's dismembered body was found by a roadside on 29 March 1997, and showed evidence of torture before death and mutilation.

Control of the media
During the Fujimori years, Montesinos gained extensive control over the Peruvian media by bribing television channel executives in an effort to know and control all information within Peru. Bribes ranged from approximately US$500,000 per month to Channels 2 and 5 to $1.5 million per month to Channel 4. In total, Montesinos paid more than US$3 million per month in bribes to Peruvian television channels.

Montesinos funneled additional funds to the television channels through government advertising. From 1997 to 1999, the Peruvian government increased their advertising budget by 52%, becoming Peru's largest advertiser. Ultimately, Montesinos held editorial control over Peru's free-to-air television networks: Frecuencia Latina, América Televisión, Panamericana Televisión, ATV, and Red Global.

To maintain this control he structured bribe payments in monthly installments, limiting the risk of defection by the TV channel owners. He also ensured continued cooperation through blackmail, utilizing video evidence of sexual indiscretions by bribe recipients. To keep track of the numerous bribes and gain further evidence of the owners' complicity, which could also be used as blackmail, Montesinos filmed monetary exchanges and forced channel executives to sign contracts stipulating the extent of influence he expected in return for the stated monetary bribe.

The Fujimori government also controlled the content of Channel 7, Televisión Nacional de Peru, which was explicitly state owned. Canal N, remained the only independent television channel, funded entirely by monthly service fees. Montesinos did not bribe Canal N because of their low viewership, numbering in the tens of thousands, which was a result of the unaffordability of the monthly fees for most Peruvians. Canal N was the first network to air the Kouri videotape, which exposed the extent of Montesinos's corruption.

On 14 July 1997, the government legally stripped Baruch Ivcher, a native Israeli, of his Peruvian nationality for supposed offenses against the government. In September, control of Channel 2 was given to minority shareholders more sympathetic to the government. In response, former United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said, "Peru is no longer a democracy. We are now a country headed by an authoritarian regime."

2000 elections
The 2000 presidential elections, which followed years of political violence, was controversial. A journalist claimed to have a videotape of Montesinos bribing election officials to fix the vote. He claimed to have been kidnapped by secret police agents, who sawed his arm to the bone to get him to give up the tape. In view of such tactics, the Clinton administration threatened briefly not to recognize Fujimori's victory. It backed off from this threat, and pressured Fujimori's government to take action to root out abuses, including ousting Montesinos.

Continuing political unrest in Peru would have represented a serious problem as US operations against the FARC in Colombia got under way. Peru was needed as a base of operations and a defensive backstop against guerrillas based in Colombia's south, not far from the Peruvian border.

Drug trafficking allegations
The DEA was aware of reports in August 1990 that Montesinos was involved with being paid for the immunity of drug traffickers.

Allegations circulated that Montesinos and General Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, the chairman of Peru's joint chiefs of staff, were taking protection money from drug traffickers. Documents that were later declassified by the US government showed that by 1996 the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was aware of the allegations. Despite evidence that Montesinos was in business with Colombian narco-traffickers, the CIA paid Montesinos's intelligence organization $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking.

One of the most notorious scandals during this period was the 11 May 1996 seizure of 169–176 kg of cocaine (the quantity depends on the source) aboard a Peruvian Air Force Douglas DC-8 (frequently confused in the media as the presidential Boeing 737 as it had operated on this role until the acquisition of the Boeing ) that was about to depart on a mission to Russia (with stopovers at the Canary Islands and Bordeaux), carrying military aviation equipment for maintenance. The scandal remains a mystery to this day because the drug's origin and destiny were never determined and the investigations were compromised by Fujimori's corrupt government and possibly Montesinos himself. A 2011 investigation revealed that some four drug shipments were made abroad, with Miami listed as a destination, in air force planes during 1993–1994. Only the material authors (several low-ranking officers) were processed, acquitted and publicly defended by Fujimori in late 1997 (amongst them Fujimori's aide-de-camp who was part of the plane's crew).

Peruvian drug kingpin Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, known as "El Vaticano", testified that Montesinos was a protector of drug trafficking. During a trial audience on 16 August 1996, Chávez Peñaherrera stated that he had bribed members of the Peruvian Armed Forces and Montesinos himself, as the effective chief of the Peruvian Intelligence Service (SIN), to be able to operate freely in Campanilla, a jungle area of the Huallaga region (where he operated an illegal airstrip). Recordings of radio communications presented during the trial showed that members of the army had let Chávez's organization operate freely in the Huallaga region in exchange for bribes. During a latter appearance in the court, Chávez appeared tortured and drugged, evidenced by his incoherent speaking. After sentencing, while in prison, Chávez talked to the press and revealed that Montesinos said to him at one point that he "did some work" with Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín Cartel.

Montesinos was paid US$50,000 a month during 1991 and 1992. As proof, the government presented recordings during Chávez's trial of radio communications between his drug traffickers and members of the Armed Forces attesting to bribery of Montesinos. In addition, Chávez said that retired general Nicolás de Bari Hermoza, the former chief of the Armed Forces Joint Command, and Fujimori had both complete knowledge of the illicit acts of Montesinos.

Downfall
Frequently, Montesinos secretly videotaped himself bribing individuals in his office, incriminating politicians, officials and military officers. His downfall appears to have been precipitated by the discovery of a major illegal arms shipment. Arranged by guerrilla leader Tomás Medina Caracas, the arms were airlifted from Jordan via Peru, to the FARC insurgent guerrillas in southern Colombia.

Montesinos claimed the credit for uncovering the arms smuggling, which involved upwards of 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Jordan rejected the Peruvian version of events, insisting the shipments were legitimate government-to-government deals. Evidence emerged which pointed to Montesinos having orchestrated the gun-running operation rather than dismantling it. A senior Peruvian general was found to have participated in the deal, and another principal participant was a government contractor. He had signed at least eleven deals with the Fujimori regime, most of them to provide supplies to the Peruvian military.

According to one report, a group of military officers angered by Montesinos's apparent role in the arms deal broke into his offices and stole the video that was subsequently broadcast. Because of the arms deal, Montesinos lost the support of the US, which attached high strategic importance to crushing the FARC.

Vladi-videos
On 14 September 2000, Peruvian television broadcast a video of Montesinos bribing an opposition congressman, Alberto Kouri, to support Perú 2000, Fujimori's party. The video caused Fujimori's remaining support to collapse. He accepted the resignation of Montesinos and thanked him for his services. He then announced the dissolution of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) and new elections, in which he would not run. Shortly thereafter, Montesinos sought political asylum in Panama.

In following months, some of the most infamous "Vladi-videos" were released. One showed the owners of Channel 2 being offered US$500,000 a month to ban appearances of the political opposition on their channel. Another showed Channel 4 owners getting $1.5 million a month for similar cooperation. Others show Montesinos counting out $350,000 in cash to Channel 5's proprietor, and the owner of Channel 9 receiving $50,000 to cancel an investigative series called SIN censura (Uncensored). In June 2001, through the assistance of the U.S. Government, Montesinos was turned over to the Venezuelan government in Caracas and extradited back to Peru. Then his trial began.

Trial
Montesinos was convicted of embezzlement, illegal assumption of his post as intelligence chief, abuse of power, influence peddling and bribery. Those charges carried sentences of between five and fifteen years each, but Peruvian prison sentences are served concurrently, so prosecutors continued to pursue him on additional charges. He was acquitted of two specific charges of corruption and conspiracy related to the mayor of Callao, whom he was alleged to have helped evade drug-trafficking charges. Montesinos was imprisoned at the Centro de Reclusión de Máxima Seguridad (CEREC) in Callao (which was built under his orders during the 1990s) and is serving 15 years in prison, but he will have to face at least 8 more trials in the next years. In total he was accused of sixty-three crimes that range from drug trafficking to murder.

On 29 January 2024, Montesinos pleaded guilty to charges of homicide, murder and forced disappearance in the 1992 killings of six farmers accused of being rebels in Pativilca, Lima Region, and was sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment.

Imprisonment
In August 2004, U.S. officials returned to Peru $20 million in funds embezzled by Montesinos; it had been deposited in U.S. banks by two men working for him. Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero and other prosecutors believed that the total amount embezzled by Montesinos during his tenure at the National Intelligence Service surpassed one billion dollars, most of which was deposited in foreign banks.

In October 2004 Wilmer Yarleque Ordinola, 44, was apprehended in Virginia in the US and convicted of immigration fraud. He had been working as a construction laborer without papers. The Peruvian government sought his extradition as an alleged member of Montesino's Grupo Colina and responsible for 26-35 deaths or "disappearances" which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru) attributed to him. In October 2004 Yarleque was being held by the U.S. Marshals in Alexandria, Virginia. The suspect was initially granted a writ of habeas corpus, as he argued that he could not be extradited for political offenses committed for the government, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision in 2005, opening the way for his extradition.

Montesinos was sentenced in September 2006 to a 20-year prison term for his direct involvement in an illegal arms deal to provide 10,000 assault weapons to Colombian rebels. Tribunal judges made their ruling based on evidence that placed Montesinos at the center of an intricate web of negotiations designed to transport assault rifles from Jordan to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC.

In 2007 Montesinos was on trial for allegedly ordering the extra-judicial killings of the hostage-takers from the left-wing Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) during the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis. The former chief of the armed forces,, and retired Colonel Roberto Huaman were also charged with ordering the extrajudicial execution of the 14 rebels. This action followed the government's commando raid in April to free the more than 70 diplomats who had been held hostage for more than four months in the Japanese embassy. The Peruvian special forces' recapture resulted in the deaths of one hostage, two commandos and all of the MRTA rebels. The former Japanese political attaché Hidetaka Ogura, one of the hostages freed from the Embassy, stated that he saw at least three of the MRTA rebels captured alive. Montesinos, Hermoza and Huaman were acquitted of those charges in 2012, as the court found that a chain of command linking the accused to the killings had not been proven.

In August 2012 Montesinos and the former chief of the Peruvian Air Force, Waldo Richter, were acquitted of drug trafficking for the 1996 Air Force plane case. He had been involved by a number of drug traffickers.

Vladi-audios
Following the 2021 Peruvian general election, audio recordings deemed Vladi-audios were leaked revealing that Montesinos was allegedly involved in at least 17 landline phone calls while imprisoned at the CEREC maximum security prison in an effort to prevent leftist presidential candidate Pedro Castillo from entering office and to protect Keiko Fujimori from being imprisoned. In one reported audio, Montesinos mentions a first plan to have Fujimori's husband to go to the United States embassy in Lima to present "documentation of the fraud" to the Office of Regional Affairs and Central Intelligence Agency, with Montesinos allegedly saying he already contacted the embassy, that the documents would reach President Joe Biden and that his administration would condemn the election as interference from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, subsequently giving Fujimori's claims of fraud more weight. In other reported audios, Montesinos suggests to retired military officer and Popular Force member Pedro Rejas Tataje on 10 June 2021 that they should bribe three electoral magistrates of the National Jury of Elections (JNE) – who were tasked with reviewing the narrow and controversial election – with one million dollars each, telling the former officer to contact attorney Guillermo Sendón who then reportedly made contact with JNE magistrate Luis Arce. The next day on 11 June, the JNE extended the deadline to file complaints to annul the election despite the maximum deadline already passing. Following the leak of the audios, Pedro Rejas Tataje released additional recording saying that he collected them as he believed that Montesinos was participating in illegal activities. Rejas would later explain that he believed Montesinos was directly involved with the campaign of Keiko Fujimori.

Right-wing politicians in Peru downplayed the audios of Montesinos. According to IDL-Reporteros, the Navy of Peru was involved in a "lie" when issuing their joint statement, saying that Montesinos was only involved in two phone calls, with IDL asking "How could you not notice the 17 calls and 12 conversations at CEREC, at the Naval Base of the institution with the greatest development in electronic intelligence within the Armed Forces?". The Ministry of Defense opened an investigation of the matter and on 25 August 2021, President Pedro Castillo announced that Montesinos had been transferred to the Ancon II prison to serve the remaining of his sentence while four officers were replaced at the naval prison.

In popular culture
Montesinos was portrayed in the Peruvian film Caiga quien caiga.

title: Vladimiro Montesinos


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Samuel Clarke

Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley. Clarke's altered, Nontrinitarian revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer continues to influence worship among modern Unitarians.

Early life and studies
Clarke was born in Norwich, the son of Edward Clarke, an alderman of Norwich and Member of Parliament, and brother of John Clarke. He was educated at Norwich School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His tutor at Caius was John Ellis, a personal friend of Isaac Newton, but who in natural philosophy taught in line with the Cartesianism that prevailed in the university.

Clarke, however, came to adopt the new physical system of Newton; he used the vehicle of an annotated translation of a work on physics in the Cartesian tradition to comment on the superiority of the Newtonian system. This textbook was published in 1697, and in the same year Clarke met the Newtonian William Whiston. It was a chance encounter in Norwich, but Whiston was then chaplain to John Moore, bishop of Norwich. Having taken holy orders, Clarke became chaplain to Moore in Whiston's place, and was presented by Moore to the rectory of Drayton, Norfolk.

In 1706, through the influence of Moore, Clarke obtained the rectory of St Benet Paul's Wharf, London. Soon afterwards Queen Anne appointed him one of her chaplains in ordinary, and in 1709 presented him to the rectory of St James's, Westminster. His church brought Clarke into personal contact with Newton.

Boyle Lectures (1704)
Clarke was Boyle lecturer for two years, and produced two books. The Newtonian theologians used the Boyle Lectures to attack opponents (Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, deists and freethinkers in particular). Clarke's lectures set the agenda for further debates. He dealt in 1704 with the Being and Attributes of God, an example of a physico-theological system; and in 1705 with the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. These books were later published together.

Clarke's reputation rested largely on his effort to demonstrate the existence of God, and his theory of the foundation of rectitude. The former is not a purely a priori argument, and it was not presented as such. The intelligence, for example, of the self-existence and original cause of all things is, he says, "not easily proved a priori," but "demonstrably proved a posteriori from the variety and degrees of perfection in things, and the order of causes and effects, from the intelligence that created beings are confessedly endowed with, and from the beauty, order, and final purpose of things." The theses maintained in the argument are:

 * 1) That something has existed from eternity
 * 2) that there has existed from eternity some one immutable and independent being
 * 3) that that immutable and independent being, which has existed from eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is, necessarily existing
 * 4) what the substance or essence of that being is, which is self-existent or necessarily existing, we have no idea, neither is it at all possible for us to comprehend it
 * 5) that though the substance or essence of the self-existent being is itself absolutely incomprehensible to us, yet many of the essential attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable as well as his existence, and, in the first place, that he must be of necessity eternal
 * 6) that the self-existent being must of necessity be infinite and omnipresent
 * 7) must be but one
 * 8) must be an intelligent being
 * 9) must be not a necessary agent, but a being endued with liberty and choice
 * 10) must of necessity have infinite power
 * 11) must be infinitely wise, and
 * 12) must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme governor and judge of the world.

In order to establish his sixth thesis, Clarke contended that time and space, eternity and immensity, are not substances, but attributes: the attributes of a self-existent being. The work of Clarke on the existence of God set off a British debate that lasted to the middle of the century. Edmund Law and other writers represented Clarke as arguing from the existence of time and space to the existence of Deity. Law was influenced by a 1718 work of Samuel Colliber that modified Clarke's approach.

Correspondence with Anthony Collins
The public correspondence of Samuel Clarke with the English freethinker Anthony Collins in 1707 and 1708 was a debate on the nature of consciousness. The principal focus of the correspondence was the possibility of a materialist theory of mind. Collins defended the materialist position that consciousness was an emergent property of the brain, while Clarke opposed such a view and argued that mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. The correspondence also inquired into the origins of consciousness, personal identity, free will, and determinism.

The debate arose from a controversy of 1706 on the immortality of the soul. Clarke published a refutation of the views of Henry Dodwell, and this drew in Collins, who wrote a Letter to Mr Dodwell in his defence. By the sixth edition (1731), Clarke's own Letter to Mr Dodwell of 1706 had grown to 475 pages, including the replies of Collins. Clarke's main argument against Dodwell was that the soul, being immaterial, must be immortal. John Norris argued differently, though on Clarke's side of the debate, using in particular the ideas of Malebranche. Collins challenged Clarke on the ground of his substance dualism.

The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712)
Clarke studied scripture in the original languages, and the primitive Christian writers. He took the degree of doctor in divinity in 1710, defending as his thesis the two propositions: Nullum fidei Christianae dogma, in Sacris Scripturis traditum, est rectae rationi dissentaneum [No doctrine of the Christian faith, delivered in the Holy Scriptures, is contrary to right reason.], and Sine actionum humanarum libertate nulla potest esse religio [Without the freedom of human actions, there can be no religion.]. The formal disputation was long remembered for Clarke's virtuosity; but the presiding Regius Professor, Henry James, received the distinct impression that Clarke's views on the Trinity were unorthodox. Clarke was required to swear to keep the 39 Articles; and his attempt at self-justification by putting his views in book form were not immediately successful.

During 1712 Clarke published his treatise on The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. It is divided into three parts. The first contains a collection and exegesis of texts in the New Testament relating to the doctrine of the Trinity; in the second the doctrine is set out, and explained as a set of propositions; and in the third passages in the liturgy of the Church of England relating to the doctrine of the Trinity are considered.

Whiston claimed that, some time before publication, a message was sent to Clarke by Sidney Godolphin, to the effect "the affairs of the public were with difficulty then kept in the hands of those that were for liberty", and that therefore it was a bad time for the publication of a controversial book. Clarke in any case took no notice of any Whig qualms.

Maurice Wiles calls Clarke's views "moderate Arianism". At the time they were certainly denounced as Arianism; they belonged, as did Newton's, to the type of antitrinitarianism later called "High Arianism". Clarke's position was subordinationist, and less radical than Newton's and typical English Unitarians of his time. He looked at 1251 biblical texts, and rejected the added phrase known as the Johannine Comma. He made a more careful case than Whiston.

The Trinitarian controversy
The controversy within the Church of England to which Clarke was a major contributor had been initiated by George Bull, with his publication in 1685 of views on the opinions of the Church Fathers before the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD). He was reacting to issues that had been raised elsewhere in Europe, by Petavius, by Christopher Sandius and Daniel Zwicker for the Socinian camp, and the Arminians.

It was only with the close discussions of Clarke and his major opponent Daniel Waterland, a generation later, that the theological and historical points involved came clearly into focus. Clarke and Waterland had definite differences on the theology of consubstantiality and aseity.

Waterland argued in theology for the Anglican orthodoxy of time, in particular that the possible attitudes were, besides the orthodox Athanasian view, limited to Arianism and Sabellianism; and that the two latter were not consistent with Scripture. He also championed Bull's historical claim, that the Fathers before Nicaea held the views that were orthodox after Nicaea. Clarke's resistance to both points has had support from some modern scholars.

The trajectory of the English controversy from 1712 involved at least ten writers. By summer 1714 the debate on The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity had ramified, and provoked a formal complaint from the Lower House of Convocation: the Blasphemy Act 1697 still made it an offence for "any person, educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, to deny the Holy Trinity". Clarke drew up an apologetic preface, and then gave explanations which satisfied the Upper House of Convocation. He had strong supporters among the bishops. Clarke promised not to preach or write on the topic. Arthur Ashley Sykes and John Jackson from then on acted as his proxies. Other main participants in the controversy were John Edwards, Francis Gastrell, James Knight who published with Bull's biographer Robert Nelson, Richard Mayo of Great Kimble (son of the nonconformist Richard Mayo), Stephen Nye, Edward Welchman and Edward Wells.

Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, requested that Clarke defend his views in a disputation with Edward Hawarden, and it took place in 1719, in her presence. Hawarden returned to the subject in Answer to Dr. Clarke and Mr. Whiston (1729).

Revised prayer book
By 1724, Clarke had been pressured to public retract his Nontrinitarian views. However, he maintained these beliefs in private. That year, Clarke privately altered his copy of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, deleting Trinitarian formulae and the Athanasian Creed. The work went unpublished, though copies were made and his son later donated the original manuscript to the British Library. Theophilus Lindsey eventually encountered a copy in the possession of John Disney. Lindsey, using Clarke's work as his basis, published his own Unitarian prayer book revision in 1774 and began using it with his Essex Street Chapel congregation. In 1785, Lindsey's work was further adapted by James Freeman for use at King's Chapel in Boston, where a ninth edition version is still used.

Correspondence with Leibniz
In 1715 and 1716 Clarke had a discussion with Gottfried Leibniz on the principles of natural philosophy and religion, which was cut short when Leibniz died. A collection of the papers which passed between them was published in 1717.

Later life and death
In 1719 Clarke was presented by Nicholas Lechmere, 1st Baron Lechmere, to the mastership of Wigston's hospital in Leicester. In 1727, on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he was offered by the court the post of Master of the Mint, worth on an average from £1200 to £1500 a year. He refused the position.

On Sunday 11 May 1729, when going out to preach before the judges at Serjeants' Inn, Clarke had a sudden illness. It caused his death on the Saturday following, in London. His funeral was held at St James's on Thursday, 22 May.

Translations
Clarke published a Latin version of the Traité de physique of Jacques Rohault (1617(?)-1672) with notes, which he finished before he was twenty-two. The system of Rohault was based on Cartesian principles, and was previously known only through the medium of a crude Latin version. Clarke's translation (1697) continued to be used as a text-book in the university till supplanted by the treatises of Newton. Four editions were issued, the last being that of 1718. It was translated into English in 1723 by his younger brother John, dean of Salisbury.

In 1706 Clarke translated Newton's Opticks into Latin, for which the author presented him with £500. In 1709, at the request of the author, Clarke revised William Whiston's English translation of the Apostolical Constitutions. In 1712 he published an annotated edition of Caesar's Commentaries, with engravings, dedicated to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

In 1729 he published the first twelve books of Homer's Iliad. This edition, dedicated to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was praised by Bishop Hoadly. Three years after his death appeared also the last twelve books of the Iliad, published by his son Samuel Clarke, the first three of these books and part of the fourth having, as he states, been revised and annotated by his father.

Other works
In 1699 Clarke published two treatises: Three Practical Essays on Baptism, Confirmation and Repentance and Some Reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton's Life, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and the Canon of the New Testament. In 1701 he published A Paraphrase upon the Gospel of St Matthew, which was followed, in 1702, by the Paraphrases upon the Gospels of St Mark and St Luke, and soon afterwards by a third volume upon St John. They were subsequently printed together in two volumes and passed through several editions.

In 1724 Clarke published seventeen sermons, eleven of which had not before been printed. In 1728 was published "A Letter from Dr Clarke to Benjamin Hoadly, F.R.S., occasioned by the controversy relating to the Proportion of Velocity and Force in Bodies in Motion," printed in the Philosophical Transactions.

Soon after his death his brother, Dr John Clarke, published, from his original manuscripts, An Exposition of the Church Catechism, and ten volumes of sermons. The Exposition is composed of the lectures which he read on Thursday mornings, for some months in the year, at St James's church. He revised them, and left them ready for the press.

Moral views
Clarke's ethical theory of "fitness" is formulated on the analogy of mathematics. He held that in relation to the will things possess an objective fitness similar to the mutual consistency of things in the physical universe. This fitness God has given to actions, as he has given laws to Nature; and the fitness is as immutable as the laws. The theory was criticized by Théodore Simon Jouffroy, Amédée Jacques, Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Brown, Francis Hutcheson, and others, but substantially defended by John Balguy against Hutcheson's sentimentalist case against moral rationalism. A similar form of moral rationalism is developed by the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth.

Influence
Clarke had an influence on Enlightenment philosophers including Lord Monboddo. He left notes on the Book of Common Prayer. These became the source of Theophilus Lindsey's The Book of Common Prayer Reformed According to the Plan of the Late Dr. Samuel Clarke 1774, and other liturgical works.

Family
Clarke married his first cousin Katherine Lockwood (d. 1753), daughter of the Rev. Mr. Lockwood of Little Massingham, Norfolk and Katherine Clarke in St Margaret's Church, Burnham Norton, Norfolk on 17 October 1700. They had seven children, of whom five survived him; only three children are mentioned in their mother's will, Samuel, Dorothy and Katherine. Clarke's surviving son Samuel Clarke (b. 1710) died without issue sometime in 1778. His will was proved by his cousin Frances Clarke, one of the daughters of his uncle John Clarke on 13 May 1778.

Writings

 * A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God: and Other Writings, edited by Ezio Vailati, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
 * G. W. Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. Correspondence, edited by Roger Ariew, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.

title: Samuel Clarke


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Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus (: sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a coffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word sarcophagus comes from the Greek σάρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγεῖν phagein meaning "to eat"; hence sarcophagus means "flesh-eating", from the phrase lithos sarkophagos (λίθος σαρκοφάγος), "flesh-eating stone". The word also came to refer to a particular kind of limestone that was thought to rapidly facilitate the decomposition of the flesh of corpses contained within it due to the chemical properties of the limestone itself.

History of the sarcophagus
Sarcophagi were most often designed to remain above ground. The earliest stone sarcophagi were used by Egyptian pharaohs of the 3rd dynasty, which reigned from about 2686 to 2613 B.C.

The Hagia Triada sarcophagus is a stone sarcophagus elaborately painted in fresco; one style of later Ancient Greek sarcophagus in painted pottery is seen in Klazomenian sarcophagi, produced around the Ionian Greek city of Klazomenai, where most examples were found, between 550 BC (Late Archaic) and 470 BC. They are made of coarse clay in shades of brown to pink. Added to the basin-like main sarcophagus is a broad, rectangular frame, often covered with a white slip and then painted. The huge Lycian Tomb of Payava, now in the British Museum, is a royal tomb monument of about 360 BC designed for an open-air placing, a grand example of a common Lycian style.

Ancient Roman sarcophagi—sometimes metal or plaster as well as limestone—were popular from about the reign of Trajan, and often elaborately carved, until the early Christian burial preference for interment underground, often in a limestone sepulchre, led to their falling out of favor. However, there are many important Early Christian sarcophagi from the 3rd to 4th centuries. Most Roman examples were designed to be placed against a wall and are decorated on three sides only. Sarcophagi continued to be used in Christian Europe for important figures, especially rulers and leading church figures, and by the High Middle Ages often had a recumbent tomb effigy lying on the lid. More plain sarcophagi were placed in crypts. The most famous examples include the Habsburg Imperial Crypt in Vienna, Austria. The term tends to be less often used to describe Medieval, Renaissance, and later examples.

In the early modern period, lack of space tended to make sarcophagi impractical in churches, but chest tombs or false sarcophagi, empty and usually bottomless cases placed over an underground burial, became popular in outside locations such as cemeteries and churchyards, especially in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, where memorials were mostly not highly decorated and the extra cost of a false sarcophagus over a headstone acted as an indication of social status.

United States of America
Sarcophagi, usually "false", made a return to the cemeteries of America during the last quarter of the 19th century, at which time, according to a New York company which built sarcophagi, "it was decidedly the most prevalent of all memorials in our cemeteries". They continued to be popular into the 1950s, at which time the popularity of flat memorials (making for easier grounds maintenance) made them obsolete. Nonetheless, a 1952 catalog from the memorial industry still included eight pages of them, broken down into Georgian and Classical detail, a Gothic and Renaissance adaptation, and a Modern variant. The image shows sarcophagi from the late 19th century located in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The one in the back, the Warner Monument created by Alexander Milne Calder (1879), features the spirit or soul of the deceased being released.

Asia
In the Mekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam, it is common for families to inter their members in sarcophagi near their homes, thus allowing ready access for visits as a part of the indigenous tradition of ancestor worship.

In Sulawesi, Indonesia, waruga are a traditional form of sarcophagus.

India
Nearly 140 years after British archaeologist Alexander Rea unearthed a sarcophagus from the hillocks of Pallavaram in Tamil Nadu, an identical artifact dating back by more than 2,000 years has been discovered in the same locality.

Spain
Phoenician and Paleochristian sarcophagi have been found in the Iberian Peninsula.

title: Sarcophagus


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Alberich of Reims

Alberich of Reims (c. 1085 – 1141) was a scholar who studied under Anselm of Laon and later became an opponent of Peter Abelard.

He was originally from Reims, but moved to nearby Laon to study under Anselm and his brother Ralph. When Anselm died he returned to his hometown to take a position at the School of Reims, restoring that school to its earlier prominence. He also served as Archdeacon of Reims from 1131 to 1136. He was reluctantly promoted by the Pope to be Archbishop of Bourges in 1136 and served there until his death in 1141. Other than a single letter, no writings of Alberich survive. He was considered one of the great scholars of his age by his contemporaries. His specialty, building on the work of Anslem, was commentaries on the Christian Bible.

Alberich along with another student of Anselm's, Lotulf of Lombardy, instigated proceedings against Peter Abelard, charging him with the heresy of Sabellius in a provincial synod held at Soissons in 1121. Alberich was a follower of the longstanding approach of judging theological arguments by the historical authority or who had made them. This view was rapidly undermined by Abelard's dialectical approach that came to dominate.

title: Alberich of Reims


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Recklinghausen (district)

Recklinghausen is a Kreis (district) in the centre of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is surrounded by the neighbouring districts of Borken, Coesfeld, Unna, Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop, and Wesel. The district administration is located in the city of the same name.

Apart from the Region Hannover, Kreis Recklinghausen is the largest non-city district in Germany by population.

History
During medieval times, the area surrounding present-day Recklinghausen was known as Vest Recklinghausen, a territory which belonged to the Electorate of Cologne. From 1446 to 1576, this area was leased to the lordship of Gemen (now a part of the city Borken) and Schaumburg-Lippe. In 1811, the territory was added to the Grand Duchy of Berg, and in 1815 it became part of the Prussian Province of Westphalia.

The district was created in 1816. After several changes it obtained its present borders with the last reorganizations of 1975–76. It is also one of the oldest districts located in Germany.

Geography
The district Recklinghausen is located at the north of the Ruhr area with the urban parts of Ruhr area to the south and the rural Münsterland to the north. The Lippe River flows through the district.

Coat of arms
The coat of arms show a silver nettle leaf on green ground - the sign of the Herrlichkeit Lembeck, an Amt (subdivision) in the clerical state of Münster. The black cross is the sign of the Bishops of Cologne who owned a big part of the district's area, the Vest Recklinghausen. The key inside the cross symbolizes St. Peter, the patron of Cologne.

Partner districts

 * Wodzisław County, Poland.
 * Landstinget Sörmland, Sweden

title: Recklinghausen (district)


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Talk:Indian Archipelago

Is it appropriate to redirect this to Lakshadweep? Or to Malaysia? Sorry, my knowledge of geography is particularly poor! -- sannse

title: Talk:Indian Archipelago