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Harald Schmidt

Harald Franz Schmidt (born 18 August 1957) is a German actor, comedian, television presenter and writer best known as the host of two popular German late-night shows.

Early and private life
A son of refugees who fled from Sudetenland (now Czech Republic) in 1945, Schmidt spent his youth in Swabian Nürtingen. Due to his strict Catholic upbringing he devoted time to the Roman Catholic church, serving as choirmaster and playing the organ.

At the age of 21, Schmidt went to Stuttgart to attend drama school for three years. After that, he gained on-stage experience at Städtische Bühne (Municipal Stage) in Augsburg. His first role was that of the 2nd Mamaluke in Lessing's Nathan the Wise. In 1984, Schmidt became a lyricist for the cabaret Kom(m)ödchen in Düsseldorf and in 1986, was honoured as "Best Newcomer cabaret artist" and toured through Germany with his own show.

In October 2005, his daughter Amelie was born. Schmidt resides in Cologne with his partner Ellen Hantsch, a school teacher, and their five children, the eldest being from a previous relationship. Little is known about the children and their two mothers as Schmidt shields them from the public. In interviews he hardly talks about them.

Television career
Before long, TV noticed the talented young comedian, and in 1988, Schmidt began to host his first TV show, MAZ ab. This was followed by shows like Psst! and Schmidteinander. The biggest boost to his career occurred in 1992, when Schmidt started hosting the popular Saturday night show Verstehen Sie Spaß? (a variation of Candid Camera). Schmidt was awarded Germany's most important TV award, the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, which would be followed by many others. Just one year later, he was honoured as the "Entertainer of the Year" and awarded the Bambi Award, as well as the Golden Camera.

In 2004, Schmidt toured through Germany with a live comedy show, featuring his former late night show sidekick Manuel Andrack.

Harald Schmidt Show
In 1995, Schmidt changed from the publicly funded TV station ARD to the privately owned German television network Sat.1 in order to host a late night show similar to Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Late Show with David Letterman. The show, named Die Harald Schmidt Show, featured stand-up comedy as well as famous national and international guests. From 30 June 2003, the show was broadcast five days a week, including Monday evening. On 8 December 2003, Schmidt suddenly announced the end of the show, following a change of management of Sat.1. The last show was aired on 23 December 2003. The following suspension of the TV format lasted until 2011, when the show returned to Sat.1.

Harald Schmidt
In 2004, Schmidt began a second run with a new show named Harald Schmidt on publicly funded ARD, where he had begun his television career 16 years earlier. The show no longer featured "celebrity" interviews but dealt even more with the discussion of current events in a rather freely associative manner. Manuel Andrack returned as his sidekick.

On his first show after the break, Schmidt appeared with long hair and a full beard, making fun of his long absence from the public. After summer break in 2005 the "celebrity guest" segment was reintroduced.

Schmidt & Pocher
Late in 2007, Manuel Andrack was replaced by comedian Oliver Pocher, who had a more active part than his predecessor, and some other elements changed as well. The broadcast's title was changed to Schmidt & Pocher, trying to attract a younger audience. Pocher appeared "less intellectual", a fact that caused some criticism among Schmidt's core audience and broadsheet newspaper comments in Germany.

Harald Schmidt
After the termination of Schmidt & Pocher, Schmidt again hosted the show under its former title Harald Schmidt, this time without any sidekick.

Relaunch of the Harald Schmidt Show
On 15 September 2011, Schmidt returned to his former network Sat.1, picking up its former name of Die Harald Schmidt Show again. However, Sat.1 cancelled the show after one season due to low ratings. Starting 4 September 2012, new episodes were shown on Sky Hits HD and Sky Atlantic HD, two channels of the German Pay-TV network Sky Deutschland. Schmidt hosted his very last show on 13 March 2014. He announced he would not return to TV. SKY published the last show on video-sharing website YouTube.

Concept and personalities
The self-proclaimed hypochondriac became popular for his cynical jokes, cruel remarks and wry intellectual wit. (Even though he is obsessed with health he was able to lampoon this weak spot in a self ironic TV commercial for a medicine curing colds.) Schmidt models himself after people like Johnny Carson and Conan O'Brien, but adds factors and qualities to his show himself.

He engaged in long, seemingly boring conversations with his "supervising producer" Manuel Andrack (known as "chief dramatic adviser"), who sat at a desk next to Schmidt's until 2005, and, like David Letterman, also included his staff in the show, for instance, his cue card girl Suzana Novinscak and his band leader Helmut Zerlett. Schmidt celebrated the return of French woman Nathalie Licard in his ARD era (like Zerlett she is still part of Schmidt's team). In Schmidt's original Harald Schmidt Show (1995–2003), Licard was involved in the goings-on in front of the audience too.

Criticism
Especially during the first years of Die Harald Schmidt Show, Schmidt was sometimes criticised for making fun of minorities like foreigners or gays. He also did Adolf Hitler imitations in his show (in one of these he as Hitler warned young people not to vote for racist and nationalistic parties). Schmidt's more unorthodox and politically incorrect jokes have garnered the show a reputation as cult television and his supporters accused critics of being incapable of understanding satire.

In the later years of its first run on Sat.1 (circa 2001–2003), the Harald Schmidt Show became a critics' favourite due to Schmidt's "intellectual" sense of humour, especially for incorporating many references to high culture (be it literature, theater, classical music, painting, or cinema), history, and philosophy. Another recurring item were forays into surrealism and absurdity that were pretty much anathema to commercial or "mainstream" interest: For example, Schmidt hosted one show completely in French (re-broadcast a few days later on Franco-German channel Arte, this Show en Francais episode gained glowing reviews from French critics). On another occasion, the screen was blacked for half of the show making it into a "radio broadcast". Another time, Schmidt disproved a critic who had written that it is impossible to spend several minutes on TV just cracking nuts without anybody saying anything. The show's reviews and renown among critics gradually worsened during the years of its ARD run (2004–2010), especially because Schmidt's choice of Oliver Pocher as a new sidekick was considered a mistake that diminished the entire show's quality.

Other activities
Schmidt's first book, Tränen im Aquarium, was published in 1993, the second, Mulatten in gelben Sesseln, in 2005.

1994–2013 H. Schmidt worked as a columnist for one of the major German weekly news magazines, Focus. Many of his articles were assembled and released as books. The first of these, Warum? ("Why?"), was published in 1997; another nine books followed.

Schmidt also voiced an audiobook, Jerry Cotton – Mein erster Fall beim FBI (2003).

Awards
Schmidt has won more than 30 television, comedy and theatrical awards, including three German Television Awards, the viewers choice award Bambi, the Grimme Award, the Golden Camera and the RTL Golden Lion as best talk show host. In 2013, he became a Cavalier of Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur.

Filmography
Film

Television

Discography

 * 1997: Die Besten Sprüche aus der Harald Schmidt Show
 * 1998: Die besten Harald Schmidt Sprüche, Vol. 2
 * 2004: Schmidtgift
 * 2005: LiveMitSchmidt

Videography

 * 2000: Harald Schmidt – Respektlos und rezeptfrei
 * 2004: Die Harald Schmidt – The Best of Vol. 1 & 2 + Golden Goals
 * 2005: Harald Schmidt – Best of Harald Schmidt 2005
 * 2006: Harald Schmidt – Best of Harald Schmidt 2006
 * 2007: Harald Schmidt – Gala
 * 2008: Harald Schmidt & Oliver Pocher – Das erste Jahr: Best of
 * 2011: Ich hab schon wieder überzogen / Überstehen ist alles
 * 2011: Die Harald Schmidt Show – Die ersten 100 Jahre: 1995–2003
 * 2013: Die Harald Schmidt Show – Die zweiten 100 Jahre: 1995–2003

Literature

 * 2003: Kay Sokolowsky: Late Night Solo – Die Methode Harald Schmidt. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-7466-7044-6.
 * 2004: Mariam Lau: Harald Schmidt – Eine Biografie. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-548-36675-9.
 * 2006: Peter Reinwarth: Wer ist Harald Schmidt. Edition Steffan, Köln, ISBN 3-923838-53-0.
 * 2009: Julia Wenmakers: Rechtliche Grenzen der neuen Formen von Satire im Fernsehen. Wo hört bei Stefan Raab und Harald Schmidt der Spaß auf? Verlag Dr. Kovac, Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-8300-4299-0.

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

title: Harald Schmidt


text:
Politeness

Politeness is the practical application of good manners or etiquette so as not to offend others and to put them at ease. It is a culturally defined phenomenon, and therefore what is considered polite in one culture can sometimes be quite rude or simply eccentric in another cultural context.

While the goal of politeness is to refrain from behaving in an offensive way so as not to offend others, and to make all people feel relaxed and comfortable with one another, these culturally defined standards at times may be broken within the context of personal boundaries – this is known as positive politeness.

Types
Anthropologists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson identified four kinds of politeness, deriving from Erving Goffman's concept of face:
 * 1) Negative politeness is the act of making a request less infringing, such as "If you don't mind..." or "If it isn't too much trouble..."; respects a person's right to act freely. This is a variety of deference. There is a greater use of indirect speech acts. It is also considered a part of being assertive.
 * 2) Non-assertive politeness is when a person refrains from making a comment or asserting their beliefs during a discussion so as to remain polite to others present. It is also when a person goes along with a decision made by someone else so as not to appear impolite, essentially following general social norms.
 * 3) Assertive politeness can be when a person offers their opinion in a positive and constructive way to be assistive and helpful during an interaction, or refrains from purporting to agree with something they do not actually agree with in a way that does not offend others.
 * 4) Positive politeness seeks to establish a positive relationship between parties, and it respects a person's need to be liked and understood. This standard of politeness is determined by personal boundaries, and often violates etiquette norms in letter. Direct speech acts, swearing and flouting Grice's maxims can be considered aspects of positive politeness because:
 * 5) * They show an awareness that the relationship is strong enough to cope with what would normally be considered impolite (in the popular understanding of the term);
 * 6) * They articulate an awareness of the other person's values, which fulfills the person's desire to be accepted.
 * 7) * They convey a natural, relaxed, casual setting.

Some cultures, groups, and individuals prefer some ideals of politeness over the other. In this way, politeness is culturally bound, and even within broader cultures, people may disagree.

History

During the Enlightenment era, a self-conscious process of the imposition of polite norms and behaviors became a symbol of being a genteel member of the upper class. Upwardly mobile middle class bourgeoisie increasingly tried to identify themselves with the elite through their adopted artistic preferences and their standards of behavior. They became preoccupied with precise rules of etiquette, such as when to show emotion, the art of elegant dress and graceful conversation and how to act courteously, especially with women. Influential in this new discourse was a series of essays on the nature of politeness in a commercial society, penned by the philosopher Lord Shaftesbury in the early 18th century. Shaftesbury defined politeness as the art of being pleasing in company: "'Politeness' may be defined a dext'rous management of our words and actions, whereby we make other people have better opinion of us and themselves."

Periodicals, such as The Spectator, founded as a daily publication by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in 1711, gave regular advice to its readers on how to be a polite gentleman. Its stated goal was "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality... to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses." It provided its readers with educated, topical talking points, and advice on how to carry on conversations and social interactions in a polite manner.

The art of polite conversation and debate was particularly cultivated in the coffeehouses of the period. Conversation was supposed to conform to a particular manner, with the language of polite and civil conversation considered to be essential to the conduct of coffeehouse debate and conversation. The concept of "civility" referred to a desired social interaction which valued sober and reasoned debate on matters of interest. Established rules and procedures for proper behavior, as well as conventions, were outlined by gentleman's clubs, such as Harrington's Rota Club. Periodicals, including The Tatler and The Spectator, intended to infuse politeness into English coffeehouse conversation, as their explicit purpose lay in the reformation of English manners and morals.

Techniques
There is a variety of techniques one can use to seem polite. Some techniques include expressing uncertainty and ambiguity through hedging and indirectness, polite lying or use of euphemisms (which make use of ambiguity as well as connotation).

Additionally, one can use tag questions to direct statements, such as "You were at the store, weren't you?" There are three types of tags: modal tags, affective tags, and facilitative tags. Modal tags request information of which the speaker is uncertain: "You haven't been to the store yet, have you?" Affective tags indicate concern for the listener: "You haven't been here long, have you? Facilitative tags invite the addressee to comment on the request being made: "You can do that, can't you?" Finally, softeners reduce the force of what would be a brusque demand: "Hand me that thing, could you?"

Some studies have shown that women are more likely to use politeness formulas than men, though the exact differences are not clear. Most current research has shown that gender differences in politeness use are complex, since there is a clear association between politeness norms and the stereotypical speech of middle class white women, at least in the UK and US. It is therefore unsurprising that women tend to be associated with politeness more and their linguistic behavior judged in relation to these politeness norms.

Linguistic devices
Besides and additionally to the above, many languages have specific means to show politeness, deference, respect, or a recognition of the social status of the speaker and the hearer. There are two main ways in which a given language shows politeness: in its lexicon (for example, employing certain words in formal occasions, and colloquial forms in informal contexts), and in its morphology (for example, using special verb forms for polite discourse). The T–V distinction is a common example in Western languages, while some Asian languages extend this to avoiding pronouns entirely. Some languages have complex politeness systems, such as Korean speech levels and honorific speech in Japanese.

Japanese is perhaps the most widely known example of a language that encodes politeness at its core. Japanese has two main levels of politeness, one for intimate acquaintances, family, and friends, and one for other groups, and verb morphology reflects these levels. Besides that, some verbs have special hyper-polite suppletive forms. This happens also with some nouns and interrogative pronouns. Japanese also employs different personal pronouns for each person according to gender, age, rank, degree of acquaintance, and other cultural factors.

Criticism of Brown and Levinson's typology
Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness has been criticised as not being universally valid, by linguists working with East-Asian languages, including Japanese. Matsumoto and Ide claim that Brown and Levinson assume the speaker's volitional use of language, which allows the speaker's creative use of face-maintaining strategies toward the addressee. In East Asian cultures like Japan, politeness is achieved not so much on the basis of volition as on discernment (, finding one's place), or prescribed social norms. is oriented towards the need for acknowledgment of the positions or roles of all the participants as well as adherence to formality norms appropriate to the particular situation.

title: Politeness


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United Kingdom cabinet committee

The British government is directed by the Cabinet, a group of senior government ministers led by the Prime Minister. Most of the day-to-day work of the Cabinet is carried out by Cabinet committees, rather than by the full Cabinet. Each committee has its own area of responsibility, and their decisions are binding on the entire Cabinet.

The details of the committee structure and membership are at the discretion of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is free to reorganize committees, assign responsibilities, and can appoint or dismiss committee members freely. The sole limitation is the requirement that Cabinet ministers must be sworn members of the Privy Council, since the Cabinet itself is a committee of the Privy Council.

Although there have been many changes since the Cabinet committee system was first developed in the early twentieth century, the committees for foreign and military policy, domestic policy, economic policy, and the government's legislative agenda have been more or less permanent fixtures. These and many other committees are standing committees, which have a broad remit; others are ad hoc committees, which are established to deal with specific matters. Ad hoc committees are rarer now than throughout most of the twentieth century. Many matters are now expected to be resolved bilaterally between departments, or through more informal discussion, rather than requiring the formation of a committee.

The 2015 government introduced "Implementation Taskforces" to address specific cross-cutting priorities. These are to report to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Cabinet approval is still required if collective agreement is needed.

When the Prime Minister is unable to attend Cabinet or the chair and any deputy chair of a Cabinet committee are absent, the next most senior minister in the ministerial ranking should take the chair.

Committee procedure
Committee membership is limited to ministers, but non-ministers may attend in some cases. In particular, the National Security Council is routinely attended by senior military, intelligence and security officials. Members of the Prime Minister's office – including the Prime Minister themselves – may attend any committee. The Prime Minister's attendance does not mean that they will chair the committee, despite being the most senior Cabinet member present, though they may choose to do so.

In the 2010 coalition government, each Cabinet committee included members of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. Furthermore, the general pattern was for committees to have a chair and a deputy chair, one from each party. There was a Coalition Committee, and an operational working group, to handle appeals over coalition disputes and to plan future policy.

Former committees with non-ministers as full members include the Economic Advisory Council, whose membership was made up of a combination of ministers and experts in economics. The Committee of Imperial Defence, a parallel Cabinet for military policy which existed from 1904 until 1939, included ministers, heads of the armed services, and civil servants. Between 1997 and 2001, there was a Ministerial Consultative Committee with the Liberal Democratic Party which included senior Liberal Democrats as well as Labour ministers.

Until 1992, the list of cabinet committees, their membership, and their terms of reference were secret, with rare exceptions. During the Second World War, details of the War Cabinet structure were communicated to Parliament; Winston Churchill had previously announced a Standing Committee on National Expenditure in his 1925 Budget statement. The existence and membership of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee was announced in 1963, coinciding with the amalgamation of the service ministries into a single Ministry of Defence. Margaret Thatcher confirmed the continuing existence of this committee in the House of Commons in 1979, along with standing committees for Economic Strategy, Home and Social Affairs, and Legislation. The secrecy was due to the concern that public knowledge of Cabinet procedure would lead to a loss of faith in collective responsibility (if it became known that only a subset of the Cabinet had been involved in making a given decision) and undue pressure being put on committee chairs once their specific policy responsibilities became known. Whether decisions were made by the entire Cabinet, or by a committee, is not revealed at present.

Cabinet committees are shadowed by "official committees" made up of civil servants from the relevant departments. Official committees follow a thirty-year secrecy rule with respect to their existence and membership.

Committees with special functions
Most committees exist for the coordination of policy in some specific area. Some committees, however, have a special role in managing government business, and accordingly have different procedures.

The Public Expenditure Committee (PEX) plays a central role in the allocation of government money to departments. It originated in 1981 under the informal title of "Star Chamber" as an ad hoc committee (MISC 62) which could handle appeals over spending disputes, rather than having these be dealt with by the full Cabinet. An appeal to Cabinet was still possible, but this right was rarely exercised. The original name refers to the Star Chamber court noted for its secret, arbitrary and brutal decisions. The committee was made permanent under John Major, under the name "EDX", and placed under the chairmanship of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. From 1998 to 2010 the same committee (by then called "PX", and later "PSX") also monitored departments' fulfillment of Public service agreements. While such agreements are no longer used, the committee retains its role in examining departmental expenditure, and will advise Cabinet on the allocation each department is to receive.

The Legislation committee allocates time for government bills to be considered in Parliament, coordinates the writing and handling of these bills in general, and is responsible for the Queen's Speech. Previously, there had been two committees, one for considering future legislation and another to deal with bills during their passage through Parliament. Departments who wish to make new primary legislation must apply to the committee for a slot in the legislative programme, as well as obtaining clearance from the relevant policy committee.

In an emergency, the National Security Council (Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies) subcommittee can meet in an operational configuration. This arrangement was previously named as the Civil Contingencies Committee. In this case, the chair is taken by the minister for whichever government department is the "lead" for the emergency in question. That subcommittee however has disestablished as of 2021.

Ad hoc committees
During the post-Second World War period, in addition to standing committees, there were ad hoc committees that were convened to handle a single issue. These were normally short-lived. Each was given a prefix of Gen or Misc and a number. Gen 183, for example, was the Committee on Subversive Activities. Between 1945 and 1964, Gen (for general) committees were sequentially numbered from 1 to 881 in order of formation.

Cabinet papers
Committee minutes and papers follow the same secrecy rules as for the full Cabinet. Documents are generally handled on a need-to-know basis, and so may not be available to ministers who do not serve on the relevant committee. Some materials may be classified as being available exclusively to the named members of the committee, and particularly sensitive papers may be kept in a secure room and read only under supervision. Papers may be distributed physically or electronically (via the Government Secure Intranet). Notes taken at meetings for the purpose of preparing the official minutes are destroyed once the minutes have been written. The minutes do not generally link points made in discussion to the specific people who made them.

Future governments may not be permitted to see the cabinet papers of their predecessors, if there has been a change of party. Access in this case requires the approval of the former Prime Minister, or of the Leader of the Opposition. The few exceptions relate to papers of an expressly non-political nature, such as legal advice or international agreements. Retired ministers wishing to write their memoirs are given access to papers from their tenure, but are usually not allowed to borrow them from the Cabinet Office archive.

Current committees
This table follows the document issued by the Cabinet Office in November 2022.

Non-Cabinet committees
There are several committees for which the Cabinet Office is administratively responsible, but which are not Cabinet committees. These include the various 'official' committees, which mostly shadow the Cabinet committees but with civil servants rather than ministers as members. Some others are:
 * In the first years of the 2010 coalition government, the Coalition Operation and Strategic Planning Group (described as a "working group", rather than a full committee) was to "consider and resolve issues relating to the operation of the coalition agreement, the longer term strategic planning of Government Business and to report as necessary to the Coalition Committee". Its functions were later taken over by the 'Quad' meetings attended by David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne, and Danny Alexander, with support from political aides and civil servants.
 * The Joint Intelligence Committee is an official committee that directs and oversees the UK intelligence and security agencies.
 * The Joint Ministerial Committee consists of ministers and officials from the UK and devolved administrations. Its secretariat is provided by the Cabinet Office but it is not a Cabinet committee.
 * The Permanent Secretaries Management Group and Civil Service Steering Board are committees of the senior civil service, housed within the Cabinet Office.

Historical statistics
An approximate count of committees up to and during the Second World War was given by Wilson as follows. This excludes committees which did not have at least one meeting (several of these existed solely as a means for documents to be circulated among the members). The 1939-45 figures do not include the Joint Intelligence Committee, Joint Planning Staff, or the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

title: United Kingdom cabinet committee


text:
Talk:Ikhthus

The discussion of the Christian symbol Ikhthus should be separated from the discussion of the Zodiac sign Pisces. I cannot see any connection between the two, except that the acronym Ikhthus is, by chance, also a sensible Greek word. Mass. is the abbreviation of the word Massachusetts, but there is no special connection between the state Massachusetts and any church service denoted by the English word "mass". -- David, 2 Jan 2003.

Obvious duplication of subject matter with Ichthys. No opinion on which spelling to use for the final title. --Michael Snow 00:23, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ikhthus


text:
Penny (United States coin)

The cent, the United States of America one-cent coin (symbol: ¢), often called the "penny", is a unit of currency equaling one one-hundredth of a United States of America dollar. It has been the lowest face-value physical unit of U.S. currency since the abolition of the half-cent in 1857 (the abstract mill, which has never been minted, equal to a tenth of a cent, continues to see limited use in the fields of taxation and finance). The first U.S. cent was produced in 1787, and the cent has been issued primarily as a copper or copper-plated coin throughout its history. Due to inflation, pennies have lost virtually all their purchasing power and are often viewed as an expensive burden to businesses, banks, government (especially mints) and the public in general.

The penny is issued in its current form as the Lincoln cent, with its obverse featuring the profile of President Abraham Lincoln since 1909, the centennial of his birth. From 1959 (the sesquicentennial of Lincoln's birth) to 2008, the reverse featured the Lincoln Memorial. Four different reverse designs in 2009 honored Lincoln's 200th birthday and a new, "permanent" reverse – the Union Shield – was introduced in 2010. The coin is 0.75 inches (19.05 mm) in diameter and 0.0598 inches (1.52 mm) in thickness. The current copper-plated zinc cent issued since 1982 weighs 2.5 grams, while the previous 95% copper cent still found in circulation weighed 3.11 g (see further below).

The U.S. Mint's official name for the coin is "cent" and the U.S. Treasury's official name is "one cent piece". The colloquial term penny derives from the British coin of the same name, which occupies a similar place in the British system. Pennies is the plural form (not to be confused with pence, which refers to the unit of currency).

In the early 2010s, the price of metal used to make pennies rose to a noticeable cost to the mint which peaked at more than 2¢, a negative seigniorage, for the $0.01 face-value coin. This pushed the mint to look for alternative metals again for the coin, and also brought the debate about eliminating the coin into more focus. there are no firm plans to do so.

History of composition
The composition of the penny has varied over time:

The isotope composition of early coins spanning the period 1828 to 1843 reflects the copper from Cornish ores from England, while coins after 1850 reflect the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan ores, a finding consistent with historical records.

In 1943, at the peak of World War II, zinc-coated steel cents were made for a short time because of war demands for copper. A few copper cents from 1943 were produced from 1942 planchets remaining in the bins. Similarly, some 1944 steel cents have been confirmed. From 1944 to 1946, salvaged ammunition shells made their way into the minting process, and it was not uncommon to see coins featuring streaks of brass or having a considerably darker finish than other issues.

During the early 1970s, the price of copper rose to the point where the cent contained almost one cent's worth of copper. This led the Mint to test alternative metals, including aluminum and bronze-clad steel. Aluminum was chosen, and over 1.5 million samples of the 1974 aluminum cent were struck before ultimately being rejected.

The cent's composition was changed in 1982 because the value of the copper in the coin started to rise above one cent. Some 1982 cents used the 97.5% zinc composition, while others used the 95% copper composition. With the exception of 2009 bicentennial cents minted specifically for collectors, United States cents minted after 1982 have been zinc with copper plating. The bronze and copper cents can be distinguished from the newer zinc cents by dropping the coins on a solid surface, or by flipping them in the air with your thumb. The predominantly zinc coins make a lower-pitched "clunk" when hitting the surface, and make no sound when flipped in the air; while the copper coins produce a higher-pitched ringing sound. In addition, a full 50-cent roll of pre-1982/3 coins weighs 5.4 oz compared to a post-1982–83 roll which weighs 4.4 oz.

Designs
The coin has gone through several designs over its two-hundred-year time frame. Until 1857 it was about the size of the current U.S. dollar coins (Susan B. Anthony through present dollars). Shown below are the different cent designs that have been produced; mintage figures can be found at United States cent mintage figures.

Large cents: Small cents:
 * Flowing Hair Chain 1793
 * Flowing Hair Wreath 1793
 * Liberty Cap 1793–1796
 * Draped Bust 1796–1807
 * Classic Head 1808–1814
 * Coronet 1816–1839
 * Braided Hair 1839–1857, 1868 (not a regular issue)
 * Flying Eagle cent (1856–1858)
 * Indian Head cent (1859–1909)
 * Lincoln cent (1909–present)
 * Lincoln Wheat (1909–1958)
 * Lincoln Memorial (1959–2008)
 * Lincoln Bicentennial 4 reverse designs (2009)
 * Lincoln Union Shield (2010–present)

Throughout its history, the Lincoln cent has featured several typefaces for the date, but most of the digits have been old-style numerals, except with the 4 and 8 neither ascending nor descending. The only significant divergence is that the small 3 was non-descending (the same size as a 0, 1, or 2) in the early history, before switching to a descending, large 3 for the year 1934 and then permanently in 1943. Similarly, the digit 5 was small and non-descending up to 1945.

Lincoln cent
The Lincoln cent is the current one-cent coin of the U.S. It was adopted in 1909 (which would have been Lincoln's 100th birthday), replacing the Indian Head cent. Its reverse was changed in 1959 from a wheat-stalks design to a design which includes the Lincoln Memorial (to commemorate Lincoln's sesquicentennial) and was replaced again in 2009 with four new designs to commemorate Lincoln's bicentennial. There are more one-cent coins produced than any other denomination, which makes the Lincoln cent a familiar item. In its lifespan, this coin has weathered both world wars, one of which temporarily changed its composition as part of the war effort. The obverse design is the longest produced for any circulating American coin.

History

When the Lincoln one-cent coin made its initial appearance in 1909, it marked a radical departure from the accepted styling of United States coinage, as it was the first regular coin to bear a portrait other than the mythical Liberty which appeared on most pre-1909 regular coins. Previously, a strong feeling had prevailed against using portraits on coins in the United States, but public sentiment stemming from the 100th anniversary celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birth proved stronger than the long-standing tradition.

A variety of privately minted tokens bearing Lincoln's image circulated as one-cent pieces during Lincoln's presidency; legitimate coinage had become scarce during the Civil War. These early tokens undoubtedly influenced the denomination, appearance, size, and composition of Lincoln cents.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, thought American coins were so common and uninspiring that he attempted to get the motto "In God We Trust" removed as offending religion. Roosevelt had the opportunity to pose for a young Lithuanian-born Jew, Victor David Brenner, who, since arriving nineteen years earlier in the United States had become one of the nation's premier medalists. Roosevelt had learned of Brenner's talents in a settlement house on New York City's Lower East Side and was immediately impressed with a bas-relief that Brenner had made of Lincoln, based on a Mathew Brady photograph. Roosevelt, who considered Lincoln the savior of the Union and the greatest Republican president, and who also considered himself Lincoln's political heir, ordered the new Lincoln cent to be based on Brenner's work and to be released just in time to commemorate Lincoln's 100th birthday in 1909. The likeness of President Lincoln on the obverse of the coin is an adaptation of a plaque Brenner created several years earlier which had come to the attention of President Roosevelt in New York.

In addition to the prescribed elements on U.S. coins—LIBERTY and the date—the motto In God We Trust appeared for the first time on a coin of this denomination. The United States Congress passed the Act of March 3, 1865, authorizing the use of this motto on U.S. coins, during Lincoln's tenure in office.

Even though no legislation was required for the new design, approval of the Secretary of the Treasury was necessary to make the change. Franklin MacVeagh gave his approval on July 14, 1909, and not quite three weeks later, on August 2, the new coin was released to the public.

In 1918, after the controversy over Brenner's name and initials on the reverse had died down, his initials were placed on the obverse with no further controversy. They are to be found in minute form on the rim of the bust, just under the shoulder of Lincoln.

Wheat cent (1909–1958)
A study of three potential reverses resulted in the approval of a very simple design bearing two wheatheads in memorial style. Between these, in the center of the coin, are the denomination and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, while curving around the upper border is the national motto, E Pluribus Unum, Latin for "Out of Many, One".

The original model bore Brenner's name on the reverse, curving along the rim below UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Before the coins were issued, however, the initials "VDB" were substituted because officials at the United States Mint felt the name was too prominent. After the coin was released, many protested that even the initials were conspicuous and detracted from the design. Because the coin was in great demand, and because to make a change would have required halting production, the decision was made to eliminate the initials entirely.

Thus in 1909 the U.S. had six different cents: the 1909 and 1909-S Indian Head cents, and four Lincoln coins: 1909 VDB, 1909-S VDB, 1909 and 1909-S. In all cases the Philadelphia mintages far exceeded the San Francisco issues. While the smallest mintage is the '09-S Indian, the '09-S VDB is the key Lincoln date, and hence is most valuable. Its mintage of 484,000 is only 1.7% of the plain V.D.B.

Lincoln Memorial cent (1959–2008)
On February 12, 1959, a revised reverse design was introduced as part of the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. No formal competition was held. Frank Gasparro, then Assistant Engraver at the Philadelphia Mint, prepared the winning entry, selected from a group of 23 models that the engraving staff at the Mint had been asked to present for consideration. Again, only the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury was necessary to make the change because the design had been in use for more than the required 25 years. The imposing marble Lincoln Memorial provides the central motif, with the legends E Pluribus Unum and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA completing the design, together with the denomination. The initials "FG" appear on the right, near the shrubbery. This series is noteworthy for having the image of Abraham Lincoln both on the obverse and reverse, as his likeness can be discerned at the center of the memorial on the reverse.

Lincoln Bicentennial cents (2009)
The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 required that the cent's reverse be redesigned in 2009. This resulted in the mintage of four different coins showing scenes from Abraham Lincoln's life in honor of the bicentennial of his birth.

These four designs, unveiled September 22, 2008, at a ceremony held at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., are:
 * Birth and early childhood in Kentucky: this design features a log cabin and Lincoln's birth year 1809. It was designed by Richard Masters and sculpted by Jim Licaretz. This cent was released into circulation on Lincoln's 200th birthday, February 12, 2009, at a special ceremony at LaRue County High School in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln's birthplace. The mintage was extremely low compared to prior years (see Lincoln cent mintage figures). It has been nicknamed the "Log Cabin Penny".
 * Formative years in Indiana: this design features a young Lincoln reading while taking a break from rail splitting. It was designed and sculpted by Charles Vickers. Nicknamed the "Indiana Penny", it was released on May 14, 2009.
 * Professional life in Illinois: this design features a young professional Lincoln standing before the Illinois State Capitol, in Springfield. It was designed by Joel Iskowitz and sculpted by Don Everhart. Nicknamed the "Illinois Penny", it was released on August 13, 2009.
 * Presidency in Washington, D.C.: this design features the half-completed Capitol dome. It was designed by Susan Gamble and sculpted by Joseph Menna. This fourth cent was released to the public on November 12, 2009. U.S. Mint released collector's sets containing this design in copper prior to the public launch of this design in zinc.

Special 2009 cents struck for sale in sets to collectors had the metallic copper content of cents minted in 1909 (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc). Those struck for circulation retained the normal composition of a zinc core coated with copper.

Union shield cent (2010–present)
The 2005 act that authorized the redesign for the Bicentennial stated that another redesigned reverse for the Lincoln cent will be minted which "shall bear an image emblematic of President Lincoln's preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country". Eighteen designs were proposed for the reverse of the 2010 cent. On April 16, 2009, the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) met and selected a design that showed 13 wheat sheaves bound together with a ring symbolizing American unity as one nation. Later this design was withdrawn because it was similar to coinage issued in Germany in the 1920s. The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee later met and chose a design showing a Union shield with ONE CENT superimposed in a scroll; E Pluribus Unum was also depicted in the upper portion of the shield. In June 2009 the CFA met again and chose a design featuring a modern rendition of the American flag. As a part of the release ceremony for the last of the 2009 cents on November 12, the design for the 2010 cent was announced. The design chosen was the one that was chosen earlier by the CCAC. According to the Mint, the 13 stripes on the shield "represent the states joined in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above". The Mint also noted that a shield was commonly used in paintings in the Capitol hallways painted by Constantino Brumidi, an artist in the Capitol active during the Lincoln Presidency. The obverse of the cent was also changed to a modern rendition of Brenner's design. The new Union Shield design replaces the Lincoln memorial in use since 1959. The coin was designed by artist Lyndall Bass and sculpted by U.S. Mint sculptor-engraver Joseph Menna. In January 2010, the coins were released early in Puerto Rico; this was caused by a shortage of 2009-dated pennies on the island. The new design was released at a ceremony at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois on February 11, 2010. In 2017, cents minted in Philadelphia were struck with a "P" mintmark to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Mint. 2017 is the only year that Philadelphia cents have had a mintmark. In 2019, the United States Mint, the West Point Mint minted pennies marked with a "W" mintmark which was only available with proof sets, wrapped separately from the proof set in its own United States Mint plastic wrap.

Proposals to eliminate
It has been suggested that the penny should be eliminated as a unit of currency for several reasons. For example, many Americans do not actually spend pennies, but rather only receive them in change at stores and proceed to return them to a bank for higher denomination currencies, or cash them in at coin counting kiosks. Most modern vending machines do not accept pennies, further diminishing their utility. In addition, the production cost now exceeds the face value of the coin, caused by increasing inflation. In 2001 and 2006, for example, United States Representative Jim Kolbe (R) of Arizona introduced bills which would have stopped production of pennies (in 2001, the Legal Tender Modernization Act, and in 2006, the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation [COIN] Act).

In anticipation of the business of melting down U.S. pennies and U.S. nickels for profit, the U.S. Mint, which is a part of the US Department of the Treasury, implemented new regulations on December 14, 2006, which criminalize the melting of pennies and nickels and place limits on export of the coins. Violators can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000 USD, imprisoned for a maximum of five years, or both.

Metal content and manufacturing costs
The price of metal drives the cost to manufacture a cent. The Secretary of the Treasury has authority to alter the percentage of copper and zinc in the one-cent coin if needed due to cost fluctuations. For years, the Mint's production and shipping costs for cents have exceeded the face value of the coin (the Mint's fixed costs and overhead, however, are absorbed by other circulating coins). As a result, the U.S. Treasury loses tens of millions of dollars every year producing cents. For example, the loss in 2013 was $55 million.

When copper reached a record high in February 2011, the melt value of a 95% copper cent was more than three times its face value. As of January 21, 2014, a pre-1982 cent contained 2.203 cents' worth of copper and zinc, making it an attractive target for melting by people wanting to sell the metals for profit. In comparison, post-1982 copper-plated zinc cents have a metallurgical value of only 0.552 cent.

Toxicity
Zinc, a major component of U.S. cents minted after mid-1982, is toxic in large quantities. Swallowing such a coin, which is 97.5% zinc, can cause damage to the stomach lining because of the high solubility of the zinc ion in the acidic stomach. Coins are the most commonly ingested foreign body in children but generally are allowed to pass spontaneously unless the patient is symptomatic. Zinc toxicity, mostly in the form of the ingestion of U.S. pennies minted after 1982, is commonly fatal in dogs where it causes a severe hemolytic anemia. It is also highly toxic in pet parrots and can often be fatal.

title: Penny (United States coin)


text:
Talk:Indirect self-reference

[Untitled]
Cute. Indirect self-reference indirectly self-references itself. Should this be a real article? -- Wapcaplet

yes Vera Cruz

Perhaps some more clear explanations in regards to the "when quined" and "yields a false" examples are in order? Darquis 23:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Of particular interest is the quine

"'yields a false statement when preceded by its quotation' yields a false statement when preceded by its quotation"

which forms a paradoxical statement without using pronouns or any method of direct self-reference. I beleive "its" is indeed a pronoun, could that sentance be worded more clearly? 170.171.1.5 21:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. "Its" is a possessive pronoun! Matt2h

whether its is a pronoun or not, it is a form of self reference. This contradicts what the section is trying to prove. I wonder we can infer the "its" the same way as the sentence infers a "this" in the beginning. So in other words change the sentence from:

[this] yields a false statement when preceded by its quotation

to

[this] yields a false statement when preceded by [its] quotation

Now the question is, do the implied pronouns not get preprocessed by our brain and added in for clarity? So is this not just a hacky self reference?

Incorrect example
I believe this text is incorrect:
 * This example is similar to the Scheme expression "((lambda(x)(x x)) (lambda(x)(x x)))", which is expanded to itself by beta reduction, and so its evaluation loops indefinitely despite the lack of explicit looping constructs. (That behaviour derives from Scheme's eager evaluation rule. The equivalent expression in lambda calculus has no normal form, for the same reason, but is not otherwise as problematic as it is in Scheme.)

In particular, there is no difference between Scheme and lambda-calculus for the given example, so I'm going to remove the second part. In Scheme, and in most call-by-value functional languages (all that I know of), lambda-abstractions are considered values, and are thus not further reduced, even if the are arguments of an application. If you disagree even after reading the explanation, please discuss it here before editing back in the text I removed. --Blaisorblade (talk) 06:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:Indirect self-reference


text:
Moral panic

A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community.

Stanley Cohen, who developed the term, states that moral panic happens when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests". While the issues identified may be real, the claims "exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality and/or inevitability of harm". Moral panics are now studied in sociology and criminology, media studies, and cultural studies. It is often academically considered irrational (see Cohen's model of moral panic, below).

Examples of moral panic include the belief in widespread abduction of children by predatory pedophiles; belief in ritual abuse of women and children by Satanic cults; and concerns over the effects of music lyrics. Some moral panics can become embedded in standard political discourse, which include concepts such as the MeToo movement, Red Scare, racism, and terrorism.

It differs from mass hysteria, which is closer to a psychological illness rather than a sociological phenomenon.

History and development
Though the term moral panic was used in 1830 by a religious magazine regarding a sermon, it was used in a way that completely differs from its modern social science application. The phrase was used again in 1831, with an intent that is possibly closer to its modern use.

Though not using the term moral panic, Marshall McLuhan, in his 1964 book Understanding Media, articulated the concept academically in describing the effects of media.

As a social theory or sociological concept, the concept was first developed in the United Kingdom by Stanley Cohen, who introduced the phrase moral panic in a 1967–1969 PhD thesis that became the basis for his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. In the book, Cohen describes the reaction among the British public to the rivalry between the "mod" and "rocker" youth subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s. Cohen's initial development of the concept was for the purpose of analyzing the definition of and social reaction to these subcultures as a social problem.

According to Cohen, a moral panic occurs when a "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." To Cohen, those who start the panic after fearing a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are 'moral entrepreneurs', while those who supposedly threaten social order have been described as 'folk devils'.

In the early 1990s, Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda produced an "attributional" model that placed more emphasis on strict definition than cultural processes.

Differences in British and American definitions
Many sociologists have pointed out the differences between definitions of a moral panic as described by American versus British sociologists. Kenneth Thompson claimed that American sociologists tended to emphasize psychological factors, while the British portrayed "moral panics" as crises of capitalism.

British criminologist Jock Young used the term in his participant observation study of drug consumption in Porthmadog, Wales, between 1967 and 1969. In Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978), Marxist Stuart Hall and his colleagues studied the public reaction to the phenomenon of mugging and the perception that it had recently been imported from American culture into the UK. Employing Cohen's definition of moral panic, Hall and colleagues theorized that the "rising crime rate equation" performs an ideological function relating to social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes; moral panics could thereby be ignited to create public support for the need to "police the crisis".

Cohen's model of moral panic
First to name the phenomenon, Stanley Cohen investigated a series of "moral panics" in his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. In the book, Cohen describes the reaction among the British public to the seaside rivalry between the "mod" and "rocker" youth subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s. In a moral panic, Cohen says, "the untypical is made typical".

Cohen's initial development of the concept was for the purpose of analyzing the definition of and social reaction to these subcultures as a social problem. He was interested in demonstrating how agents of social control amplified deviance, in that they potentially damaged the identities of those labeled as "deviant" and invited them to embrace deviant identities and behavior. According to Cohen, these groups were labelled as being outside the central core values of consensual society and as posing a threat to both the values of society and society itself, hence the term "folk devils".

Setting out to test his hypotheses on mods and rockers, Cohen ended up in a rather different place: he discovered a pattern of construction and reaction with greater foothold than mods and rockers – the moral panic. He thereby identified five sequential stages of moral panic.

Characterizing the reactions to the mod and rocker conflict, he identified four key agents in moral panics: mass media, moral entrepreneurs, the culture of social control, and the public.

In a more recent edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Cohen suggested that the term "panic" in itself connotes irrationality and a lack of control. Cohen maintained that "panic" is a suitable term when used as an extended metaphor.

Cohen's stages of moral panic
Setting out to test his hypotheses on mods and rockers, Cohen discovered a pattern of construction and reaction with greater foothold than mods and rockers – the moral panic.

According to Cohen, there are five sequential stages in the construction of a moral panic:

 * 1) An event, condition, episode, person, or group of persons is perceived and defined as a threat to societal values, safety, and interests.
 * 2) The nature of these apparent threats are amplified by the mass media, who present the supposed threat through simplistic, symbolic rhetoric. Such portrayals appeal to public prejudices, creating an evil in need of social control (folk devils) and victims (the moral majority).
 * 3) A sense of social anxiety and concern among the public is aroused through these symbolic representations of the threat.
 * 4) The gatekeepers of morality – editors, religious leaders, politicians, and other "moral"-thinking people – respond to the threat, with socially-accredited experts pronouncing their diagnoses and solutions to the "threat". This includes new laws or policies.
 * 5) The condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.

Cohen observed further:

"Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folk-lore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself."

Agents of moral panic
Characterizing the reactions to the mod and rocker conflict, Cohen identified four key agents in moral panics: mass media, moral entrepreneurs, the culture of social control, and the public.
 * Media – especially key in the early stage of social reaction, producing "processed or coded images" of deviance and the deviants. This involves three processes:

 * exaggeration and distortion of who did or said what;
 * prediction, the dire consequences of failure to act;
 * symbolization, signifying a person, word, or thing as a threat.
 * Moral entrepreneurs – individuals and groups who target deviant behavior
 * Societal control culture – comprises those with institutional power: the police, the courts, and local and national politicians. They are made aware of the nature and extent of the 'threat'; concern is passed up the chain of command to the national level, where control measures are instituted.
 * The public – these include individuals and groups. They have to decide who and what to believe: in the mod and rocker case, the public initially distrusted media messages, but ultimately believed them.

Mass media
The concept of "moral panic" has also been linked to certain assumptions about the mass media. In recent times, the mass media have become important players in the dissemination of moral indignation, even when they do not appear to be consciously engaged in sensationalism or in muckraking. Simply reporting a subset of factual statements without contextual nuance can be enough to generate concern, anxiety, or panic.

Cohen stated that the mass media is the primary source of the public's knowledge about deviance and social problems. He further argued that moral panic gives rise to the folk devil by labelling actions and people. Christian Joppke, furthers the importance of media as he notes, shifts in public attention "can trigger the decline of movements and fuel the rise of others."

According to Cohen, the media appear in any or all three roles in moral panic dramas:

 * Setting the agenda – selecting deviant or socially problematic events deemed as newsworthy, then using finer filters to select which events are candidates for moral panic.
 * Transmitting the images – transmitting the claims by using the rhetoric of moral panics.
 * Breaking the silence and making the claim.

Goode and Ben-Yehuda's attributional model
In their 1994 book Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda take a social constructionist approach to moral panics, challenging the assumption that sociology is able to define, measure, explain, and ameliorate social problems.

Reviewing empirical studies in the social constructionist perspective, Goode and Ben-Yehuda produced an "attributional" model that identifies essential characteristics and placed more emphasis on strict definition than cultural processes. They arrived at five defining "elements", or "criteria", of a moral panic:

 * 1) Concern – there is "heightened level of concern over the behaviour of a certain group or category" and its consequences; in other words, there is the belief that the behavior of the group or activity deemed deviant is likely to have a negative effect on society. Concern can be indicated via opinion polls, media coverage, and lobbying activity.
 * 2) Hostility – there is "an increased level of hostility" toward the deviants, who are "collectively designated as the enemy, or an enemy, of respectable society". These deviants are constructed as "folk devils", and a clear division forms between "them" and "us".
 * 3) Consensus – "there must be at least a certain minimal measure of consensus" across society as a whole, or at least "designated segments" of it, that "the threat is real, serious and caused by the wrongdoing group members and their behaviour". This is to say, though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs" are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganized.
 * 4) Disproportionality – "public concern is in excess of what is appropriate if concern were directly proportional to objective harm". More simply, the action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, "the concept of moral panic rests on disproportion". As such, statistics are exaggerated or fabricated, and the existence of other equally or more harmful activity is denied.
 * 5) Volatility – moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared because public interest wanes or news reports change to another narrative.

Goode and Ben-Yehuda also examined three competing explanations of moral panics:

 * 1) the grass-roots model – the source of panic is identified as widespread anxieties about real or imagined threats.
 * 2) the elite-engineered model – an elite group induces, or engineers, a panic over an issue that they know to be exaggerated in order to move attention away from their own lack of solving social problems.
 * 3) the interest group theory – "the middle rungs of power and status" are where moral issues are most significantly felt.

Similarly, writing about the Blue Whale Challenge and the Momo Challenge as examples of moral panics, Benjamin Radford listed themes that he commonly observed in modern versions of these phenomena:

 * Hidden dangers of modern technology.
 * Evil stranger manipulating the innocent.
 * A "hidden world" of anonymous evil people.

Topic clusters
In over 40 years of extensive study, researchers have identified several general clusters of topics that help describe the way in which moral panics operate and the impact they have. Some of the more common clusters identified are: child abuse, drugs and alcohol, immigration, media technologies, and street crime.

Child abuse
Exceptional cases of physical or sexual abuse against children have driven policies based on child protection, regardless of their frequency or contradicting evidence from experts. While discoveries about pedophilia in the priesthood and among celebrities has somewhat altered the original notion of pedophiles being complete strangers, their presence in and around the family is hardly acknowledged.

Alcohol and other drugs
Substances used for pleasure such as alcohol and other drugs are popularly subject to legal action and criminalization due to their alleged harms to the health of those who partake in them or general order on the streets. Recent examples include methamphetamine, mephedrone, and designer drugs.

Immigration
A series of moral panic is likely to recur whenever humans migrate to a foreign location to live alongside the native or indigenous population, particularly if the newcomers are of a different skin color or religion. These immigrants may be accused of: bringing alien cultures and refusing to integrate with the mainstream culture; putting strain on welfare, education, and housing systems; and excessive involvement in crime.

Media technologies
The advent of any new medium of communication produces anxieties among those who deem themselves as protectors of childhood and culture. Their fears are often based on a lack of knowledge as to the actual capacities or usage of the medium. Moralizing organizations, such as those motivated by religion, commonly advocate censorship, while parents remain concerned.

According to media studies professor Kirsten Drotner:

"[E]very time a new mass medium has entered the social scene, it has spurred public debates on social and cultural norms, debates that serve to reflect, negotiate and possibly revise these very norms.… In some cases, debate of a new medium brings about – indeed changes into – heated, emotional reactions … what may be defined as a media panic."Recent manifestations of this kind of development include cyberbullying and sexting.

Street crime
A central concern of modern mass media has been interpersonal crime. When new types or patterns of crime emerge, coverage expands considerably, especially when said crime involves increased violence or the use of weapons. Sustaining the idea that crime is out of control, this keeps prevalent the fear of being randomly attacked on the street by violent young men.

Examples
Researchers have considered a number of historical and current events to meet the criteria set out by Stanley Cohen.

Nativist movement and the Know-Nothing Party (1840s–1860s)
The brief success of the Know-Nothing Party in the US during the 1850s can be understood as resulting from a moral panic over Irish Catholic immigration dating back to the 1840s, particularly as it related to religion, politics, and jobs. Nativist criticism of immigrants from Catholic nations centered upon the control of the Pope over church members. The concern regarding the social threat led the Know-Nothing Party in the 1856 presidential election to win 21.5% of the vote. The quick decline in political success for the Know Nothing-Party as a result of a decline in concern for the perceived social threat is an indicative feature of the movements situated in Moral Panic.

Red Scare (1919–1920, late 1940s–1950s)
During the years 1919 to 1920, followed by the late 1940s to the 1950s, the United States had a moral panic over communism and feared being attacked by the Soviet Union. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, a period now known as the McCarthy Era, Senator Joseph McCarthy used his power as a senator to conduct a witch hunt for communists he claimed had infiltrated all levels of American society, including Hollywood, the State Department, and the armed forces. When he began, he held little influence or respect within the Senate, but he exploited Americans' fears of communism (and Congress' desire to not lose re-election) to rise to prominence and keep the hunt going in spite of an increasingly apparent lack of evidence, often accusing those who dared oppose him of being communists themselves.

"The Devil's music" (1920s–1980s)
Over the years, there has been concern of various types of new music causing spiritual or otherwise moral corruption to younger generations, often called "the devil's music". While the types of music popularly labeled as such has changed with time, along with the intended meaning of the term, this basic factor of the moral panic has remained constant. It could thus be argued that this is really a series of smaller moral panics that fall under a larger umbrella. While most notable in the United States, other countries such as Romania have seen exposure to or promotion of the idea as well.

Blues was one of the first music genres to receive this label, mainly due to a perception that it incited violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s.

Jazz was another early receiver of the label. At the time, traditionalists considered jazz to contribute to the breakdown of morality. Despite the veiled attacks on blues and jazz as "negro music" often going hand-in-hand with other attacks on the genres, urban middle-class African Americans perceived jazz as "devil's music", and agreed with the beliefs that jazz's improvised rhythms and sounds were promoting promiscuity.

Some have speculated that the rock phase of the panic in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to the popularity of the satanic ritual abuse alleged moral panic in the 1980s.

Comic books (1950s)
In the United States, substantial limits were placed on comic book content during the 1950s, especially in the horror and crime genres. This moral panic was promoted by the psychologist Fredric Wertham, who claimed that comics were a major source of juvenile delinquency, arguing in his book Seduction of the Innocent that they predisposed children to violence. Comic books appeared in congressional hearings, and organisations promoted book burnings. Wertham's work resulted in the creation of the Comics Code, which drastically limited what kind of content could be published. As a result of these limitations, many comics publishers and illustrators were forced to leave the profession, and the content produced by those that remained became tamer and more focused on superheroes.

During the following decades, the Comics Code was loosened in scope before finally being abolished in 2011.

Switchblades (1950s)
In the United States, a 1950 article titled "The Toy That Kills" in the Women's Home Companion, about automatic knives, or "switchblades", sparked significant controversy. It was further fuelled by highly popular films of the late 1950s, including Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Crime in the Streets (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Delinquents, High School Confidential (1958), and the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story.

Fixation on the switchblade as the symbol of youth violence, sex, and delinquency resulted in demands from the public and Congress to control the sale and possession of such knives. State laws restricting or criminalizing switchblade possession and use were adopted by an increasing number of state legislatures, and many of the restrictive laws around them worldwide date back to this period.

Mods and rockers (1960s)
In early 1960s Britain, the two main youth subcultures were Mods and Rockers. The "Mods and Rockers" conflict was explored as an instance of moral panic by sociologist Stanley Cohen in his seminal study Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which examined media coverage of the Mod and Rocker riots in the 1960s.

Although Cohen acknowledged that Mods and Rockers engaged in street fighting in the mid-1960s, he argued that they were no different from the evening brawls that occurred between non-Mod and non-Rocker youths throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, both at seaside resorts and after football games.

Dungeons & Dragons (1980s–1990s)
At various times, Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games have been accused of promoting such practices as Satanism, witchcraft, suicide, pornography and murder. In the 1980s and later, some groups, especially fundamentalist Christian groups, accused the games of encouraging interest in sorcery and the veneration of demons.

Satanic panic (1980s–1990s)
The "satanic panic" was a series of moral panics regarding satanic ritual abuse that originated in the United States and spread to other English-speaking countries in the 1980s and 1990s, which led to a string of wrongful convictions. The West Memphis Three were three teenagers falsely accused of murdering children in a satanic ritual. Two were sentenced to life in prison and one was sentenced to death, before all being released after 18 years in prison.

HIV/AIDS (1980s–1990s)
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a viral illness that may lead to or exacerbate other health conditions such as pneumonia, fungal infections, tuberculosis, toxoplasmosis, and cytomegalovirus. A meeting of the British Sociological Association's South West and Wales Study entitled "AIDS: The Latest Moral Panic" was prompted by the growing interest of medical sociologists in AIDS, as well as that of UK health care professionals working in the field of health education. It took place at a time when both groups were beginning to voice an increased concern with the growing media attention and fear-mongering that AIDS was attracting. In the 1980s, a moral panic was created within the media over HIV/AIDS. For example, in Britain, a prominent advertisement by the government suggested that the public was uninformed about HIV/AIDS due to a lack of publicly accessible and accurate information.

The media outlets nicknamed HIV/AIDS the "gay plague", which further stigmatized the disease. However, scientists gained a far better understanding of HIV/AIDS as it grew in the 1980s and moved into the 1990s and beyond. The illness was still negatively viewed by many as either being caused by or passed on through the gay community. Once it became clear that this was not the case, the moral panic created by the media changed to blaming the overall negligence of ethical standards by the younger generation (both male and female), resulting in another moral panic. Authors behind AIDS: Rights, Risk, and Reason argued that "British TV and press coverage is locked into an agenda which blocks out any approach to the subject which does not conform in advance to the values and language of a profoundly homophobic culture—a culture that does not regard gay men as fully or properly human. No distinction obtains for the agenda between 'quality' and 'tabloid' newspapers, or between 'popular' and 'serious' television."

Similarly, reports of a group of AIDS cases amongst gay men in Southern California which suggested that a sexually transmitted infectious agent might be the etiological agent led to several terms relating to homosexuality being coined for the disease, including "gay plague".

Dangerous dogs (late 1980s – early 1990s)
After a series of high-profile dog attacks on children in the United Kingdom, the British press began to engage in a campaign against so-called dangerous dog breeds, especially Pit Bulls and Rottweilers, which bore all the hallmarks of a moral panic.

This media pressure led the government to hastily introduce the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 which has been criticised as "among the worst pieces of legislation ever seen, a poorly thought-out knee-jerk reaction to tabloid headlines that was rushed through Parliament without proper scrutiny." The act specifically focused on Pit Bulls, which were associated with the lower social strata of British society, rather than the Rottweilers and Dobermann Pinschers generally owned by richer social groups. Critics have identified the presence of social class as a factor in the dangerous dogs moral panic, with establishment anxieties about the "sub-proletarian" sector of British society displaced onto the folk devil of the "Dangerous dog".

Increase in crime (1970s–present)
Research shows that fear of increasing crime rates is often the cause of moral panics. Recent studies have shown that despite declining crime rates, this phenomenon, which often taps into a population's "herd mentality", continues to occur in various cultures. Japanese jurist Koichi Hamai explains how the changes in crime recording in Japan since the 1990s caused people to believe that the crime rate was rising and that crimes were getting increasingly severe.

Violence and video games (1970s–present)
There have been calls to regulate violence in video games for nearly as long as the video game industry has existed, with Death Race being a notable early example. In the 1990s, improvements in video game technology allowed for more lifelike depictions of violence in games such as Mortal Kombat and Doom. The industry attracted controversy over violent content and concerns about effects they might have on players, generating frequent media stories that attempted to associate video games with violent behavior, in addition to a number of academic studies that reported conflicting findings about the strength of correlations. According to Christopher Ferguson, sensationalist media reports and the scientific community unintentionally worked together in "promoting an unreasonable fear of violent video games". Concerns from parts of the public about violent games led to cautionary, often exaggerated news stories, warnings from politicians and other public figures, and calls for research to prove the connection, which in turn led to studies "speaking beyond the available data and allowing the promulgation of extreme claims without the usual scientific caution and skepticism".

Since the 1990s, there have been attempts to regulate violent video games in the United States through congressional bills as well as within the industry. Public concern and media coverage of violent video games reached a high point following the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, after which videos were found of the perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, talking about violent games like Doom and making comparisons between the acts they intended to carry out and aspects of games.

Ferguson and others have explained the video game moral panic as part of a cycle that all new media go through. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association that legally restricting sales of video games to minors would be unconstitutional and deemed the research presented in favour of regulation as "unpersuasive".

War on drugs (1970s–present)
Some critics have pointed to moral panic as an explanation for the War on Drugs. For example, a Royal Society of Arts commission concluded that "the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 ... is driven more by 'moral panic' than by a practical desire to reduce harm".

Some have written that one of the many rungs supporting the moral panic behind the War on Drugs was a separate but related moral panic, which peaked in the late 1990s, involving media's gross exaggeration of the frequency of the surreptitious use of date rape drugs. News media have been criticized for advocating "grossly excessive protective measures for women, particularly in coverage between 1996 and 1998", for overstating the threat and for excessively dwelling on the topic. For example, a 2009 Australian study found that drug panel tests were unable to detect any drug in any of the 97 instances of patients admitted to the hospital believing their drinks might have been spiked.

Sex offenders, child sexual abuse, and pedophilia (1970s–present)
The media narrative of a sex offender, highlighting egregious offenses as typical behaviour of any sex offender, and media distorting the facts of some cases, has led legislators to attack judicial discretion, making sex offender registration mandatory based on certain listed offenses rather than individual risk or the actual severity of the crime, thus practically catching less serious offenders under the domain of harsh sex offender laws. In the 1990s and 2000s, there have been instances of moral panics in the United Kingdom and the United States, related to colloquial uses of the term pedophilia to refer to such unusual crimes as high-profile cases of child abduction.

The moral panic over pedophilia began in the 1970s after the sexual revolution. While homosexuality was becoming more socially accepted after the sexual revolution, pro-contact pedophiles believed that the sexual revolution never helped pro-contact pedophiles. In the 1970s, pro-contact pedophile activist organizations such as Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) were formed in October 1974 and December 1978, respectively. Despite receiving some support, PIE received much backlash when they advocated for abolishing or lowering age of consent laws. As a result, people protested against PIE.

Until the first half of the 1970s, sex was not yet part of the concept of domestic child abuse, which used to be limited to physical abuse and neglect. The sexual part of child abuse became prominent in the United States due to the encounter of two political agendas: the fight against battered child syndrome by pediatricians during the 1960s and the feminist anti-rape movement, in particular the denunciation of domestic sexual violence. These two movements overlapped in 1975, creating a new political agenda about child sexual abuse. Laura Lowenkron wrote: "The strong political and emotional appeal of the theme of 'child sexual abuse' strengthened the feminist criticism of the patriarchal family structure, according to which domestic violence is linked to the unequal power between men and women and between adults and children." Although the concern over child sexual abuse was caused by feminists, the concern over child sexual abuse also attracted traditional groups and conservative groups. Lowenkron added: "Concerned about the increasing expansion and acceptance of so-called 'sexual deviations' during what was called the libertarian age from the 1960s to the early 1970s", conservative groups and traditional groups "saw in the fight against 'child sexual abuse' the chance" to "revive fears about crime and sexual dangers".

In the 1980s, the media began to report more frequently on cases of children being raped, kidnapped, or murdered, leading to the moral panic over sex offenders and pedophiles becoming very intense in the early 1980s. In 1981, for instance, a six-year-old boy named Adam Walsh was abducted, murdered, and beheaded. Investigators believe the murderer was serial killer Ottis Toole. The murder of Adam Walsh took over nationwide news and led to a moral panic over child abduction, followed by the creation of new laws for missing children. According to criminologist Richard Moran, the Walsh case "created a nation of petrified kids and paranoid parents ... Kids used to be able to go out and organize a stickball game, and now all playdates and the social lives of children are arranged and controlled by the parents."

Also during the 1980s, inaccurate and heavily flawed data about sex offenders and their recidivism rates was published. This data led to the public believing sex offenders to have a particularly high recidivism rate; this in turn led to the creation of sex offender registries. Later information revealed that sex offenders, including child sex offenders, have a low recidivism rate. Other highly publicized cases, similar to the murder of Adam Walsh, that contributed to the creation of sex offender registries and sex offender laws include the abduction and murder of 11-year-old boy Jacob Wetterling in 1989; the rape and murder of 7-year-old girl Megan Kanka in 1994; and the rape and murder of 9-year-old girl Jessica Lunsford in 2005.

Another contributing factor in the moral panic over pedophiles and sex offenders was the day-care sex-abuse hysteria in the 1980s and early 1990s, including the McMartin preschool trial. This led to a panic where parents became hypervigilant with concerns of predatory child sex offenders seeking to abduct children in public spaces, such as playgrounds.

Human trafficking (2000–present)
Many critics of contemporary anti-prostitution activism argue that much of the current concern about human trafficking and its more general conflation with prostitution and other forms of sex work have hallmarks of moral panic. They further argue that this moral panic shares much in common with the 'white slavery' panic of a century earlier, which in the US prompted passage of the 1910 Mann Act. Nick Davies argues that the following major factors contributed towards this effect. Since the collapse of Communism, Western Europe was flooded with sex workers from Eastern Europe, and the term "sex trafficking" came to mean any organized movement of sex workers, losing the connotation of force and coercion. This change of the definition entered, e.g., into the UK's Sexual Offences Act 2003. Second, academic researchers on sex trade provided a range of estimates of the trafficked persons, including estimates based on various assumptions, up to the very pessimistic ones. The media picked the most alarmist numbers, which were uncritically used by politicians, who in their turn were quoted for further misleading information.

Terrorism and Islamic extremism (2001–present)
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, some scholars identified a rising fear of Muslims in the western world, which they described as a moral panic. This exaggeration of the threat posed by Islam served a political purpose, contributing to the concept of a global war on terror, including the war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq.

Following the September 11 attacks, there was a dramatic increase in hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in the United States, with rates peaking in 2001 and later surpassed in 2016.

QAnon conspiracies (2020s)
QAnon, a late-2010s to early 2020s far-right conspiracy theory that began on 4chan and which alleged that a secret cabal of Jewish, Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring, has been described as a moral panic and compared to the 1980s panic over satanic ritual abuse.

LGBT grooming conspiracy theory (2020s–present)
Since the early 2020s, members of the far-right and a growing number of mainstream conservatives, mostly in the United States, have falsely accused LGBT people, as well as their allies and progressives in general, of systematically using LGBT-positive education and campaigns for LGBT rights as a method of child grooming. These accusations and conspiracy theories are characterized by experts as baseless, homophobic and transphobic, and as examples of moral panic.

Criticism of moral panic as an explanation
Paul Joosse has argued that while classic moral panic theory styled itself as being part of the "sceptical revolution" that sought to critique structural functionalism, it is actually very similar to Émile Durkheim's depiction of how the collective conscience is strengthened through its reactions to deviance (in Cohen's case, for example, "right-thinkers" use folk devils to strengthen societal orthodoxies). In his analysis of Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 United States presidential election, Joosse reimagined moral panic in Weberian terms, showing how charismatic moral entrepreneurs can at once deride folk devils in the traditional sense while avoiding the conservative moral recapitulation that classic moral panic theory predicts. Another criticism is that of disproportionality: there is no way to measure what a proportionate reaction should be to a specific action.

Writing in 1995 about the moral panic that arose in the UK after a series of murders by juveniles, chiefly that of two-year-old James Bulger by two 10-year-old boys but also including that of 70-year-old Edna Phillips by two 17-year-old girls, the sociologist Colin Hay pointed out that the folk devil was ambiguous in such cases; the child perpetrators would normally be thought of as innocent.

In 1995, Angela McRobbie and Sarah Thornton argued "that it is now time that every stage in the process of constructing a moral panic, as well as the social relations which support it, should be revised". Their argument is that mass media has changed since the concept of moral panic emerged so "that 'folk devils' are less marginalized than they once were", and that "folk devils" are not only castigated by mass media but supported and defended by it as well. They also suggest that the "points of social control" that moral panics used to rest on "have undergone some degree of shift, if not transformation".

British criminologist Yvonne Jewkes (2004) has also raised issue with the term "morality", how it is accepted unproblematically in the concept of "moral panic" and how most research into moral panics fails to approach the term critically but instead accepts it at face value. Jewkes goes on to argue that the thesis and the way it has been used fails to distinguish between crimes that quite rightly offend human morality, and thus elicit a justifiable reaction, and those that demonise minorities. The public are not sufficiently gullible to keep accepting the latter and consequently allow themselves to be manipulated by the media and the government.

Another British criminologist, Steve Hall (2012), goes a step further to suggest that the term "moral panic" is a fundamental category error. Hall argues that although some crimes are sensationalized by the media, in the general structure of the crime/control narrative the ability of the existing state and criminal justice system to protect the public is also overstated. Public concern is whipped up only for the purpose of being soothed, which produces not panic but the opposite, comfort and complacency.

Echoing another point Hall makes, sociologists Thompson and Williams (2013) argue that the concept of "moral panic" is not a rational response to the phenomenon of social reaction, but itself a product of the irrational middle-class fear of the imagined working-class "mob". Using as an example a peaceful and lawful protest staged by local mothers against the re-housing of sex-offenders on their estate, Thompson and Williams argue that the sensationalist demonization of the protesters by moral panic theorists and the liberal press was just as irrational as the demonization of the sex offenders by the protesters and the tabloid press.

Many sociologists and criminologists (Ungar, Hier, Rohloff) have revised Cohen's original framework. The revisions are compatible with the way in which Cohen theorizes panics in the third Introduction to Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

title: Moral panic