text:
Bhakti movement

The Bhakti movement was a significant religious movement in medieval Hinduism that sought to bring religious reforms to all strata of society by adopting the method of devotion to achieve salvation. Originating in Tamilakam during 6th century CE,  it gained prominence through the poems and teachings of the Vaishnava Alvars and Shaiva Nayanars before spreading northwards. It swept over east and north India from the 15th century onwards, reaching its zenith between the 15th and 17th century CE.

The Bhakti movement regionally developed around different gods and goddesses, and some sub-sects were Vaishnavism (Vishnu), Shaivism (Shiva), Shaktism (Shakti goddesses), and Smartism. Bhakti movement preached using the local languages so that the message reached the masses. The movement was inspired by many poet-saints, who championed a wide range of philosophical positions ranging from theistic dualism of Dvaita to absolute monism of Advaita Vedanta.

The movement has traditionally been considered an influential social reformation in Hinduism in that it provided an individual-focused alternative path to spirituality regardless of one's birth or gender. Contemporary scholars question whether the Bhakti movement ever was a reform or rebellion of any kind. They suggest the Bhakti movement was a revival, reworking, and recontextualization of ancient Vedic traditions.

Terminology
The Sanskrit word bhakti is derived from the root, which means "divide, share, partake, participate, to belong to". The word also means "attachment, devotion to, fondness for, homage, faith or love, worship, piety to something as a spiritual, religious principle or means of salvation".

The meaning of the term Bhakti is analogous to but different from Kama. The Kama connotes emotional connection, sometimes with sensual devotion and erotic love. Bhakti, in contrast, is spiritual, a love and devotion to religious concepts or principles, that engages both emotion and intellection. Karen Pechelis states that the word Bhakti should not be understood as uncritical emotion, but as committed engagement. Bhakti movement in Hinduism refers to ideas and engagement that emerged in the medieval era on love and devotion to religious concepts built around one or more gods and goddesses. Bhakti movement preached against the caste system using the local languages so that the message reached the masses. One who practices bhakti is called a bhakta.

Textual roots
Ancient Indian texts, dated to the 1st millennium BCE, such as the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, and the Bhagavad Gita mention Bhakti.

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
The last of three epilogue verses of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, 6.23, uses the word Bhakti as follows,

"यस्य देवे परा भक्तिः यथा देवे तथा गुरौ । तस्यैते कथिता ह्यर्थाः प्रकाशन्ते महात्मनः ॥ २३ ॥

Who has highest Bhakti (love, devotion) of Deva (God), just like his Deva, so for his Guru (teacher), To him who is high-minded, these teachings will be illuminating."

This verse is notable for the use of the word Bhakti, and has been widely cited as among the earliest mentions of "the love of God". Scholars have debated whether this phrase is authentic or later insertion into the Upanishad, and whether the terms "Bhakti" and "God" meant the same in this ancient text as they do in the medieval and modern era Bhakti traditions found in India. Max Muller states that the word Bhakti appears only in one last verse of the epilogue, could have been a later insertion and may not be theistic as the word was later used in much Sandilya Sutras.

Grierson, as well as Carus, note that the first epilogue verse 6.21 is also notable for its use of the word Deva Prasada (देवप्रसाद, grace or gift of God), but add that Deva in the epilogue of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad refers to "pantheistic Brahman" and the closing credit to sage Śvetāśvatara in verse 6.21 can mean "gift or grace of his Soul".

Doris Srinivasan states that the Upanishad is a treatise on theism, but it creatively embeds a variety of divine images, an inclusive language that allows "three Vedic definitions for a personal deity". The Upanishad includes verses wherein God can be identified with the Supreme (Brahman-Atman, Self, Soul) in Vedanta monistic theosophy, verses that support the dualistic view of Samkhya doctrines, as well as the synthetic novelty of triple Brahman where a triune exists as the divine soul (Isvara, theistic God), individual soul (self) and nature (Prakrti, matter).

Tsuchida writes that the Upanishad syncretically combines monistic ideas of the Upanishads and the self-development ideas of Yoga with personification of the deity Rudra. Hiriyanna interprets the text to be introducing "personal theism" in the form of Shiva Bhakti, with a shift to monotheism but in the henotheistic context where the individual is encouraged to discover his own definition and sense of God.

Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita, a post-Vedic scripture composed in 5th to 2nd century BCE, introduces bhakti marga (the path of faith/devotion) as one of three ways to spiritual freedom and release, the other two being karma marga (the path of works) and jnana marga (the path of knowledge).

In verses 6.31 through 6.47 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna (Incarnation of Vishnu), the source of everything, describes bhakti yoga and loving devotion, as one of the several paths to the highest spiritual attainments.

Devi Mahatmya
The Devi Mahatmya embodies bhakti through three stories about the goddess Devi. In these narratives, bhakti is vividly portrayed as the gods turn to Devi in times of crisis, emphasizing bhakti's central role in seeking divine aid and protection. The text prescribes rituals like recitation and worship to honor Devi, emphasizing that her Mahatmya should be recited "with bhakti" on specific days of each lunar fortnight and especially during the annual "great offering" (maha-puja) held in autumn, known today as Durga puja (Devi Mahatmya 12.4, 12.12).

Initial development in Tamil lands

The Bhakti movement originated in Tamilakam during the seventh to eighth century CE, and remained influential in South India for some time. In the second millennium, a second wave of bhakti spread northwards through Karnataka (c. 12th century) and gained wide acceptance in fifteenth-century Assam, Bengal and northern India.

According to Brockington, the initial Tamil bhakti movement was characterized by "a personal relationship between the deity and the devotee", and "fervent emotional experience in response to divine grace". The Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu was composed of two main parallel groups: Shaivas (who also worshipped local deities like Murugan/Kartikeya) and Vaishnavas (who also worshipped local deities like Tirumāl). The Vaishnava Alvars and Shaiva Nayanars and, who lived between 5th and 9th century CE. They promoted love of a personal God first and foremost which is also expressed by love of one's fellow human beings. They also wrote and sang hymns of praise to their God, and came from numerous social classes, even shudras. These poet saints became the backbone of the Sri Vaishnava and Shaiva Siddhanta traditions.

The Alvars, which literally means "those immersed in God", were Vaishnava poet-saints who sang praises of Vishnu as they traveled from one place to another. They established temple sites such as Srirangam, and spread ideas about Vaishnavism. Various poems were compiled as Alvar Arulicheyalgal or Divya Prabandham, developed into an influential scripture for the Vaishnavas. The Bhagavata Purana's references to the South Indian Alvar saints, along with its emphasis on bhakti, have led many scholars to give it South Indian origins, though some scholars question whether this evidence excludes the possibility that bhakti movement had parallel developments in other parts of India.

Like the Alvars, the Shaiva Nayanars were bhakti poet saints. The Tirumurai, a compilation of hymns on Shiva by sixty-three Nayanar poet-saints, developed into an influential scripture in Shaivism. The poets' itinerant lifestyle helped create temple and pilgrimage sites and spread spiritual ideas built around Shiva. Early Tamil-Shiva bhakti poets influenced Hindu texts that came to be revered all over India.

Spread throughout India in the second millennium

The influence of the Tamil bhakti saints and those of later northern Bhakti leaders ultimately helped spread bhakti poetry and ideas throughout all the Indian subcontinent by the 18th century CE. However, outside of the Tamil speaking regions, the bhakti movement arrived much later, mostly in the second millennium.

For example, in Kannada speaking regions (roughly modern Karnataka), the bhakti movement arrived in the 12th century, with the emergence of Basava and his Shaivite Lingayat movement, who were known for their total rejection of caste distinctions and the authority of the Vedas, their promotion of the religious equality of women, and their focus on worshipping a small lingam that they always carry around their necks (as opposed to images in temples run by elite priesthoods). Another important Kannada figure in the bhakti movement was Madhvacharya (c. 12-13th centuries), a great and prolific scholar of Vedanta, who promoted the theology of dualism (Dvaita Vedanta).

Similarly, the Bhakti movement in Odisha (known as Jñanamisrita bhakti or Dadhya Bhakti) also began in the 12th century. It included various scholars including Jayadeva ( the 12th century author of the Gita Govinda ) and it had soon become a mass movement by the 14th century. Figures like Balarama Dasa, Achyutananda, Jasobanta Dasa, Ananta Dasa and Jagannatha Dasa preached Bhakti through public sankirtans across Odisha. Jagannath was and remains the center of the Odisha bhakti movement.

The Bhakti movements also spread to the north later, particularly during the flowering of northern bhakti yoga of the 15th and 16th centuries. Perhaps the earliest of the northern bhakti figures was Nimbārkāchārya ( c. 12th century), a brahmin from Andhra Pradesh who moved to Vrindavan. He defended a similar theology to Ramanuja, which he called Bhedābheda (difference and non-difference). Other important northern bhaktas include Nāmdev (c. 1270-1350), Rāmānanda, and Eknath (c. 1533-99).

Another important development was the rise of the Sant Mat movement, which drew from Islam, Nath tradition, and Vaishnavism, from arose which the famous 15th century saintKabir arose. Kabir is known for Hindi poetry, which expresses a rejection of external religion in favor of inner experience. After his death, his followers founded the Kabir panth. A similar movement sharing the same Sant Mat bhakti background that drew on both Hinduism and Islam, was founded by the Guru Nānak (1469-1539), the first Guru of Sikhism.

In Bengal, the most famous composer of Vaishnava devotional songs was Candīdās (1339–1399). He was celebrated in the popular Bengali Vaishnava-Sahajiya movement. One the most influential of the northern Hindu Bhakti traditions was the Krishnaite Gaudiya Vaishnavism of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) in Bengal. Chaitanya eventually came to be seen by the Bengali Vaishnavas as an avatara of Krishna himself. Another important leader of northern Vaishnava Bhakti was Vallabhacharya Mahaprabhu (1479–1531 CE) who founded the Pushtimarg tradition in Braj (Vraja).

Some scholars state that the Bhakti movement's rapid spread in India in the 2nd millennium was in part a response to the arrival of Islam and subsequent Islamic rule in India and Hindu-Muslim conflicts. This view is contested by some scholars, with Rekha Pande stating that singing ecstatic bhakti hymns in local language was a tradition in south India before Muhammad was born. According to Pande, the psychological impact of Muslim conquest may have initially contributed to community-style bhakti by Hindus. Yet other scholars state that Muslim invasions, their conquering of Hindu Bhakti temples in south India and seizure/melting of musical instruments such as cymbals from local people, was in part responsible for the later relocation or demise of singing Bhakti traditions in the 18th century.

According to Wendy Doniger, the nature of Bhakti movement may have been affected by the "surrender to God" daily practices of Islam when it arrived in India. In turn it influenced devotional practices in Islam such as Sufism, and other religions in India from the 15th century onwards, such as Sikhism, Christianity, and Jainism.

Klaus Witz, in contrast, traces the history and nature of the Bhakti movement to the Upanishadic and the Vedanta foundations of Hinduism. He writes, that in virtually every Bhakti movement poet, "the Upanishadic teachings form an all-pervasive substratum, if not a basis. We have here a state of affairs that has no parallel in the West. Supreme Wisdom, which can be taken as basically non-theistic and as an independent wisdom tradition (not dependent on the Vedas), appears fused with the highest level of bhakti and with the highest level of God-realization."

Key figures

The Bhakti movement witnessed a surge in Hindu literature in regional languages, particularly in the form of devotional poems and music. This literature includes the writings of the Alvars and Nayanars, poems of Andal, Basava, Bhagat Pipa, Allama Prabhu, Akka Mahadevi, Kabir, Guru Nanak (founder of Sikhism), Tulsidas, Nabha Dass, Gusainji, Ghananand, Ramananda (founder of Ramanandi Sampradaya), Ravidass, Sripadaraja, Vyasatirtha, Purandara Dasa, Kanakadasa, Vijaya Dasa, Six Goswamis of Vrindavan, Raskhan, Ravidas, Jayadeva Goswami, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram, Mirabai, Ramprasad Sen, Sankardev, Vallabha Acharya, Narsinh Mehta, Gangasati and the teachings of saints like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

The writings of Sankaradeva in Assam however, not only included an emphasis on the regional language, but also led to the development of an artificial literary language called Brajavali. Brajavali is to an extent, a combination of medieval Maithili and Assamese. The language was easily understood by the local populace, in line with the Bhakti movement's call for inclusion, but it also retained its literary style. A similar language, called Brajabuli was popularised by Vidyapati, which was adopted by several writers in Odisha in the medieval times, and in Bengal during its renaissance.

The earliest writers from the 7th to 10th century CE known to have influenced the poet-saints driven movements include, Sambandar, Tirunavukkarasar, Sundarar, Nammalvar, Adi Shankara, Manikkavacakar and Nathamuni. Several 11th and 12th century writers developed different philosophies within the Vedanta school of Hinduism, which were influential to the Bhakti tradition in medieval India. These include Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha and Nimbarka. These writers championed a spectrum of philosophical positions ranging from theistic dualism, qualified nondualism and absolute monism.

The Bhakti movement also witnessed several works getting translated into various Indian languages. Saundarya Lahari, written in Sanskrit by Adi Shankara, was translated into Tamil in the 12th century by Virai Kaviraja Pandithar, who titled the book Abhirami Paadal. Similarly, the first translation of the Ramayana into an Indo-Aryan language was by Madhava Kandali, who translated it into Assamese as the Saptakanda Ramayana.

Shandilya and Narada are credited with two Bhakti texts, the Shandilya Bhakti Sutra and Narada Bhakti Sutra, though these have been dated to the 12th century by modern scholars.

Theology
The Bhakti movement of Hinduism saw two ways of imaging the nature of the divine (Brahman) – Nirguna and Saguna. Nirguna Brahman was the concept of the Ultimate Reality as formless, without attributes or quality. Saguna Brahman, in contrast, was envisioned and developed as with form, attributes and quality.

These two views had parallels in the ancient pantheistic formless and theistic traditions, respectively, and are traceable to a dialogue in the Bhagavad Gita. These two may be considered to be the same Brahman, as viewed from two perspectives: a formless mode focused on wisdom (jñana) and a form mode, focused on love. Nirguna bhakti poetry is more focused on jñana while Saguna bhakti poetry focuses on love (prema). In Bhakti, the emphasis is reciprocal love and devotion, where the devotee loves God, and God loves the devotee.

Jeaneane Fowler states that the concepts of Nirguna and Saguna Brahman, which is at the root of Bhakti theology, underwent more profound developments with the ideas of the Vedanta schools, particularly those of Adi Shankara's (8th century) Advaita Vedanta (absolute non-dualism / monism), Ramanuja's (12th century) Vishishtadvaita Vedanta (a qualified non-dualism which posits unity and diversity), and Madhvacharya's (c. 12th-13th century) Dvaita Vedanta (which posits a true dualism between God and the atman).

According to David Lorenzen, the idea of bhakti for a Nirguna Brahman has been a baffling one to scholars, since it offers, "heart-felt devotion to a God without attributes, without even any definable personality". Yet given the "mountains of Nirguni bhakti literature", bhakti for Nirguna Brahman has been a part of the reality of the Hindu tradition along with the bhakti for Saguna Brahman. Thus, these were two alternate ways of imagining God even in the bhakti movement.

The Nirguna and Saguna forms of bhakti may be found in two 12th-century treatises on bhakti: the Sandilya Bhakti Sutra, and Narada Bhakti Sutra. The Sandilya leans towards Nirguna-bhakti, while Narada leans towards Saguna-bhakti.

Salvation
According to J. L. Brockington, in the fourteenth century the Sri Vaishnavas had split into two subsects:"the dispute was over the question of human effort versus divine grace in achieving salvation, a con troversy often and not unreasonably compared to the Arminian and Calvinist standpoints within Protestantism. The Northern school held that the worshipper had to make some effort to win the grace of the Lord and emphasised the performance of karma, a position commonly summed up as being ‘on the analogy of the monkey and its young’, for as the monkey carries her young which cling to her body so Visnu saves the worship per who himself makes an effort. The Southern school held that the Lord’s grace itself conferred salvation, a position ‘on the analogy of the cat and its kittens’, for just as the cat picks up her kittens in her mouth and carries them off willy-nilly, so Visnu saves whom he wills, without effort on their part."

Social impact

The Bhakti movement led to devotional transformation of medieval Hindu society, wherein Vedic rituals or alternatively ascetic monk-like lifestyle for moksha gave way to individualistic loving relationship with a personally defined god. Salvation which was previously considered attainable only by men of Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya castes, became available to everyone. Most scholars state that Bhakti movement provided women and members of the Shudra and untouchable communities an inclusive path to spiritual salvation. Some scholars disagree that the Bhakti movement was premised on such social inequalities.

Poet-saints grew in popularity, and literature on devotional songs in regional languages became profuse. These poet-saints championed a wide range of philosophical positions within their society, ranging from the theistic dualism of Dvaita to the absolute monism of Advaita Vedanta. Kabir, a poet-saint for example, wrote in Upanishadic style, the state of knowing truth:

"There's no creation or creator there, no gross or fine, no wind or fire, no sun, moon, earth, or water, no radiant form, no time there, no word, no flesh, no faith, no cause and effect, nor any thought of the Veda, no Hari or Brahma, no Shiva or Shakti, no pilgrimage and no rituals, no mother, father, or guru there..."

The early 15th-century Bhakti poet-Sant Pipa stated,

"Within the body is the god, the temple, within the body all the Jangamas within the body the incense, the lamps, and the food-offerings, within the body the puja-leaves.

After searching so many lands, I found the nine treasures within my body, Now there will be no further going and coming, I swear by Rama."

The Bhakti movement also led to the prominence of the concept of female devotion, of poet-saints such as Andal coming to occupy the popular imagination of the common people along with her male counterparts. Andal went a step further by composing hymns in praise of God in vernacular Tamil rather than Sanskrit, in verses known as the Nachiyar Tirumoli, or the Woman's Sacred Verses:

"Clouds that spill lovely pearls what message has the dark-hued lord of Venkatam sent through you? The fire of desire has invaded my body I suffer. I lie awake here in the thick of night, a helpless target for the cool southern breeze."

The impact of the Bhakti movement in India was similar to that of the Protestant Reformation of Christianity in Europe. It evoked shared religiosity, direct emotional and intellection of the divine, and the pursuit of spiritual ideas without the overhead of institutional superstructures. Practices emerged bringing new forms of spiritual leadership and social cohesion among the medieval Hindus, such as community singing, chanting together of deity names, festivals, pilgrimages, rituals relating to Saivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism. Many of these regional practices have survived into the modern era.

Seva, dāna, and community kitchens
The Bhakti movement introduced new forms of voluntary social giving such as Seva (service, for example to a temple or guru school or community construction), dāna (charity), and community kitchens with free shared food. Of community kitchen concepts, the vegetarian Guru ka Langar introduced by Nanak became a well-established institution over time, starting with northwest India, and expanding to everywhere Sikh communities are found. Other saints such as Dadu Dayal championed the similar social movement, a community that believed in Ahimsa (non-violence) towards all living beings, social equality, and vegetarian kitchen, as well as mutual social service concepts. Bhakti temples and matha (Hindu monasteries) of India adopted social functions such as relief to victims after a natural disaster, helping the poor and marginal farmers, providing community labor, feeding houses for the poor, free hostels for poor children and promoting folk culture.

Jainism
Bhakti has been a prevalent practice in various Jaina sects, wherein learned Tirthankara (Jina) and human gurus are considered superior beings and venerated with offerings, songs and Āratī prayers. John Cort suggests that the bhakti movement in later Hinduism and Jainism may share roots in vandal and puja concepts of the Jaina tradition.

Buddhism
Medieval-era bhakti traditions among non-theistic Indian traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism have been reported by scholars, wherein the devotion and prayer ceremonies were dedicated to an enlightened guru, primarily Buddha and Jina Mahavira respectively, as well as others. Karel Werner notes that Bhatti (Bhakti in Pali) has been a significant practice in Theravada Buddhism, and states, "there can be no doubt that deep devotion or bhakti / Bhatti does exist in Buddhism and that it had its beginnings in the earliest days".

Sikhism
Some scholars call Sikhism a Bhakti sect of Indian traditions. In Sikhism, "nirguni Bhakti" is emphasised – devotion to a divine without Gunas (qualities or form), but it accepts both nirguni and saguni forms of the divine.

The Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture of the Sikhs, contains the hymns of the Sikh gurus, thirteen Hindu bhagats, and two Muslim bhagats. Some of the bhagats whose hymns were included in the Guru Granth Sahib, were bhakti poets who taught their ideas before the birth of Guru Nanak – the first of Sikh Guru. The thirteen Hindu bhagats whose hymns were entered into the text, were poet saints of the Bhakti movement, and included Namdev, Pipa, Ravidas, Beni, Bhikhan, Dhanna, Jayadeva, Parmanand, Sadhana, Sain, Surdas, Trilochan, while the two Muslim bhagats were Kabir and Sufi saint Farid.

Most of the 5,894 hymns in the Sikh scripture came from the Sikh gurus, and rest from the Bhagats. The three highest contributions in the Sikh scripture of non-Sikh bhagats were from Bhagat Kabir (292 hymns), Bhagat Farid (134 hymns), and Bhagat Namdev (60 hymns).

While Sikhism was influenced by Bhakti movement,  and incorporated hymns from the Bhakti poet-saints, it was not simply an extension of the Bhakti movement. Sikhism, for instance, disagreed with some of the views of Bhakti saints Kabir and Ravidas.

Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru and the founder of Sikhism, was a Bhakti saint. He taught, states Jon Mayled, that the most important form of worship is Bhakti. Nam-simran – the realisation of God – is an important Bhakti practice in Sikhism. Guru Arjan, in his Sukhmani Sahib, recommended the true religion is one of loving devotion to God. The Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib includes suggestions for a Sikh to perform constant Bhakti. The Bhakti themes in Sikhism also incorporate Shakti (power) ideas.

Some Sikh sects outside the Punjab-region of India, such as those found in Maharashtra and Bihar, practice Aarti with lamps in a Gurdwara. Arti and devotional prayer ceremonies are also found in Ravidassia sect, previously part of Sikhism.

Debates in contemporary scholarship
Contemporary scholars question whether the 19th- and early 20th-century theories about the Bhakti movement in India, its origin, nature, and history are accurate. Pechilis in her book on Bhakti movement, for example, states:

"Scholars writing on bhakti in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were agreed that bhakti in India was preeminently a monotheistic reform movement. For these scholars, the inextricable connection between monotheism and reform has both theological and social significance in terms of the development of Indian culture. The orientalist images of bhakti were formulated in a context of discovery: a time of organized cultural contact, in which many agencies, including administrative, scholarly, and missionary – sometimes embodied in a single person – sought knowledge of India. Through the Indo-European language connection, early orientalists believed that they were, in a sense, seeing their own ancestry in the antique texts and 'antiquated' customs of Indian peoples. In this respect, certain scholars could identify with the monotheism of bhakti. Seen as a reform movement, bhakti presented a parallel to the orientalist agenda of intervention in the service of the empire."

Madeleine Biardeau states, as does Jeanine Miller, that Bhakti movement was neither reform nor a sudden innovation, but the continuation and expression of ideas to be found in Vedas, Bhakti Marga teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the Katha Upanishad and the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

John Stratton Hawley describes recent scholarship which questions the old theory of Bhakti movement origin and "story of south-moves-north", then states that the movement had multiple origins, mentioning Brindavan in north India as another center. Hawley describes the controversy and disagreements between Indian scholars, quotes Hegde's concern that "Bhakti movement was a reform" theory has been supported by "cherry-picking particular songs from a large corpus of Bhakti literature" and that if the entirety of the literature by any single author such as Basava is considered along with its historical context, there is neither reform nor a need for reform.

Sheldon Pollock writes that the Bhakti movement was neither a rebellion against Brahmins and the upper castes nor a rebellion against the Sanskrit language, because many of the prominent thinkers and earliest champions of the Bhakti movement were Brahmins and from upper castes, and because much of the early and later Bhakti poetry and literature was in Sanskrit. Further, states Pollock, evidence of Bhakti trends in ancient southeast Asian Hinduism in the 1st millennium CE, such as those in Cambodia and Indonesia where Vedic era is unknown, and where upper caste Tamil Hindu nobility and merchants introduced Bhakti ideas of Hinduism, suggest the roots and the nature of Bhakti movement be primarily spiritual and political quest instead of the rebellion of some form.

John Guy states that the evidence of Hindu temples and Chinese inscriptions from the 8th century CE about Tamil merchants, presents Bhakti motifs in Chinese trading towns, particularly the Kaiyuan Temple (Quanzhou). These show Saivite, Vaishnavite and Hindu Brahmin monasteries revered Bhakti themes in China.

Scholars increasingly are dropping, states Karen Pechilis, the old premises and the language of "radical otherness, monotheism and reform of orthodoxy" for Bhakti movement. Many scholars are now characterizing the emergence of Bhakti in medieval India as a revival, reworking, and recontextualization of the central themes of the Vedic traditions.

title: Bhakti movement


text:
Footrot Flats

Footrot Flats, a comic strip by New Zealand cartoonist Murray Ball, ran from 1976 to 1994 in newspapers (unpublished strips continued to appear in book form until 2000). Altogether there are 27 numbered books (collecting the newspaper strips, with additional material), a further 8 books collecting the Sunday newspaper strips, and 5 smaller "pocket" books of original material, plus various related publications. The strips inspired a stage musical, an animated feature film called Footrot Flats: the Dog's Tail Tale, and the Footrot Flats Fun Park in Auckland, New Zealand. The strip reached its peak of popularity in the mid-1980s, with the books selling millions of copies in Australasia.

The comic's protagonist is a border-collie sheepdog known as "the Dog", owned by Wal Footrot, who runs a sheep and cattle farm called Footrot Flats near the fictional rural town of Raupo in New Zealand. The comic depicts the trials and tribulations of Wal, the Dog and other characters, human and animal, which they encounter. The Dog's thoughts are voiced in thought bubbles, though he is clearly "just a dog", unlike the heavily anthropomorphised creatures of some other comics or animation. The humour draws on the foibles of the characters, which many farmers found easy to recognise around them. There was much "humour in adversity", making fun of the daily struggle that permeates farming life. The depictions of the animals are quite realistic and detailed, with a dose of comic anthropomorphism superimposed without spoiling the farming realism.

History
Footrot Flats was initially rejected for syndication by both The New Zealand Herald and The Auckland Star. It was first accepted in 1976 by Mike Robson, editor of Wellington's The Evening Post. The strip appeared in hundreds of newspapers in Australasia and also gained an international following, especially in Denmark.

The strip's leading human character, Wal Footrot, is based on Murray Ball's cousin Arthur Waugh, who was a sheep shearer around the time of the strip's inception and went on to own a 2,100-hectare farm situated east of Pahiatua in the southeastern North Island of New Zealand.

Ball cited different reasons for quitting the strip, including the death of his own dog, and his displeasure with the direction of New Zealand politics.

Among the strip's fans were Peanuts creator Charles Schulz and Garfield creator Jim Davis.

The Gisborne Museum & Arts Centre created an exhibition for Footrot Flats, which was exhibited at the Auckland War Memorial Museum in September 1991.

Main characters

 * "The Dog" : The main character of the series, a Border Collie, he considers himself tough and brave, but is quite soft and sometimes cowardly. His real name, chosen by Wal's Aunt Dolly, has never been revealed. He despises this "refined, aristocratic name" and goes to great lengths to censor it. Wal always calls him "Dog", gaining his loyal devotion. The Dog was born on October 13 at Aunt Dolly's holiday home for cats and raised by a Persian cat named Ninky Poo before being given to Wal. He is a competent sheepdog and is often put to work to guard things or get rid of rats or pigs, but has a considerable independent streak. He is fond of rabbits, afraid of hares and dislikes seeing trees being cut down. He has several alter egos: "The Scarlet Manuka" who attempts to 'liberate' cricket balls, "Mitey Iron Paw", and "the Grey Ghost of The Forest". The Dog has claimed to have the following commendations: V.C. (Very Cute), D.S.O. (Doesn't Steal Offal), and B.A.R (What Sheep Do), along with the alias of '00Dog' (Licensed to be kind but fair). He usually attempts to act as a 'chaperone' on Wal's dates with "Cheeky" Hobson, leading to disaster for Wal.

 * Wallace Cadwallader "Wal" Footrot : Wallace Footrot was born on 26 January in Northern Manawatu. He was educated at Apiti Primary School and later Foxton Agricultural High, where he excelled at tractor reversing and rooster imitations. Wallace established an outstanding relationship with muscovy ducks, but unfortunately failed completely with geese. Indeed, he seemed to have an uncanny knack of irritating them. Wallace took a full part in all school activities. He displayed a promising right cross during his time in the front row of the 2nd XV, but was unable to transfer this ability to the boxing ring. He rather let the side down during the inter-school championships by throwing in the sponge, which knocked the referee's glasses crooked. He was disqualified. On leaving school, he acquired 400 acre of swamp between the Ureweras and the sea. He is unmarried, although he has an interest in Darlene "Cheeky" Hobson, who works as a hairdresser in Raupo. Wal plays rugby union for Raupo, where he is a hooker and dreams of representing New Zealand's national team, the All Blacks. The Raupo XV often play against the Mill team, whose star player is Wal's sleazy neighbour, 'Spit' Murphy, who also competes for Cheeky's affections.

 * Socrates "Cooch" Windgrass : Wal's neighbour and best friend. Cooch has compassion for all living creatures and nature, and thus has a natural affinity with animals. But he is no vegetarian. His family owns 1,000 acres of swamp, tussock, scrub, forest and mudflat. A cabbage tree grows through his verandah floor, while a pūriri tree has pushed his house crooked. Cooch owns the Dog's girlfriend Jess and a pet magpie called Pew. Cooch never drives a tractor, preferring to plod along on his Clydesdales. He helps Wal with fencing, shearing and other farm jobs. He is unmarried but has a crush on his cousin Kathy. Murray Ball describes Cooch as 'eccentric, NOT an idiot!', having based the character on two people he knows.

 * Dolores Monrovia Godwit "Aunt Dolly" Footrot: Wal's aunt (by marriage). She was born in Cambridge, Waikato, and was the second daughter of Englishman Edward George Bogg and New Zealander Fiona Godwit Symington. She was educated at Lady Hinema Sacks-Grenville School for Young Ladies and was a prefect, captain of hockey, lacrosse, and boxing. She married beneath her station to Arch' "Toey" Footrot, a barber and unlicensed bookie, who was Wal's father's older brother. Unfortunately, Toey ran off to Australia with "a dumb but decorative darts stall owner with masses of black hair". Aunt Dolly's first cat was Archibald II. She owns a cat home (where Dog was born) on Prince Phillip Drive in Tauranga. She is conservative, reveres the British monarchy, always addresses people by their proper names, and she disapproves of Wal's relationship with Cheeky Hobson. Beneath her strictness she has a kind heart and takes to mothering abandoned lambs in the winter. Dog despises her for giving him his name.

 * Darlene "Cheeky" Hobson : Wal's girlfriend. She is the proprietor of La Parisienne Hairdressing Salon in Raupo. Cheeky is despised by the Dog, who is always looking for ways to come between her and Wal. She has two younger sisters, Belinda (Book 10) and Avril (Books 14 and 24), also both disliked by the Dog. Near the end of the strip's run, Cheeky and Wal become engaged, much to the dismay of the Dog and Aunt Dolly, but at the last minute Cheeky dumps Wal to move to Los Angeles with a male stripper. She is first mentioned in Wal's mini biography at the start of Book 1 (September 1978) but does not appear until Book 2 (August 1979).

 * Horse: A large, fierce and practically invulnerable tomcat, based on a cat that lived on Murray Ball's farm. He is a menace to the Dog and the other characters, resisting attempts to be tamed. He has a girlfriend (Fred, first mentioned in Book 9, first appears in Book 11) who has tattooed ears, lives with a biker gang and loves leather. He occasionally fathers kittens. Horse "spoke" infrequently in the earlier comics, but subsequently communicated via actions and yowls. Horse has saved the Dog and Jess from the local rat population at the Murphy farm. Book 7 is dedicated to the real Horse and begins with an elegy, followed by a eulogy penned by Murray Ball to commemorate the irascible cat's passing. First appearance: Book 2 (August 1979).

 * Janice "Pongo" Footrot : Wal's niece, daughter of Rex Footrot. She ages during the books. She starts off as a stereotypical little girl, dressing up the Dog, putting him in a pram and playing dolls; however, she slowly turns into a strong feminist. Despite being a "town" girl and attending boarding school, she is unafraid of wildlife and assists with mustering and other farm work. She insists her nickname Pongo derives from her ping pong skills, not because she ponged (stunk) as a baby. First appearance: Book 3 (July 1980).

 * Prince Charles: A very spoiled Welsh Corgi owned by Aunt Dolly. Has a higher view on life from listening to Aunt Dolly and living indoors. Often there are "class" clashes between him and Dog. He sometimes lusts after Jess but is even more fond of fine canine cuisine. In Book 12, he is asked to "service" a female corgi named Penelope Penrose IV, but fails to rise to the occasion, leaving Major to do the job at night. The Dog usually has to explain to Prince Charles the rougher aspects of farm life, like livestock mating and maggots eating mutton without gravy. Prince Charles is territorial when on his own turf. First appearance: Book 4 (April 1981).

 * Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones : A local boy who often appears on the farm to give Wal a hand, he also plays with Pongo when she visits during holidays. Despite his short stature, he is a skilled rugby player, often getting the better of Wal. Rangi's father is an abattoir slaughterman and his mother teaches at Raupo School. In his first appearance, Rangi considers skinning the Dog to make a fur coat. As a testimony to Murray Ball's skill as an artist, the character of Rangi grew up over the years, appearing slightly older in each book from being a little kid to a teenager. First appearance: Book 4 (April 1981).

The characters are invariably known by their nicknames, such as Cooch, Pongo, Rangi, and Aunt Dolly. However, Aunt Dolly never uses the nicknames and always addresses them by their proper names.

Minor characters

 * Jess : Cooch's dog. She is the Dog's girlfriend and co-parent. Despite frequently being confined to the "Bitch's Box" when "on heat", she has had several litters of puppies with the Dog. The Dog's Tail Tale contains the story of their meeting as puppies, although Jess's letter at the start of Book 5 gives a different account of the first time they saw each other. First appearance: Book 1 (September 1978).
 * Major: Wal's first dog. A pig-hunting dog, he is stern and tough. He has some fondness for Dog, saving him from the Murphys' dogs. First appearance: Book 1.
 * Cecil the Ram : An aged stud ram, who lacks zest for the task of servicing Wal's ewes. He soon rediscovers his libido when Wal sharpens the butchery knife. As the books progress, Cecil's appearance becomes increasingly decrepit. First appearance: Book 2 (August 1979).
 * Rex "Chicken" Footrot : Wal's younger brother and Pongo's father, he lives in town and is a potter. He has a young son named Mad Mick, who rarely visits the farm. Rex is better than Wal at just about every sport, much to Wal's annoyance. He owns Boobsie, the Dog's mum, and also owned Flash, the Dog's father, whose death was announced in Book 14. First appearance: Book 3 (July 1980).
 * Pew : Cooch's pet magpie. Orphaned when Wal cut down his parents' macrocarpa tree; socially confused and always seeking revenge on Wal. Wal gave Pew to Cooch as a birthday present - the first time Wal ever remembered it - to get rid of him, but Pew's revenge continues. Cooch became a surrogate mother for Pew, coaching him in the way of birds as best he can. In Book 14, Pew falls in love with and abducts Cheeky Hobson's pet budgerigar, Little Twinkle, which is then eaten by Horse. First appearance: Book 4 (April 1981).
 * Puti Puti : Rangi's cousin. A city slicker from Porirua, she often carries a boombox on her shoulder and invariably suffers culture shock when visiting the farm. In Book 25, she brings her pit bull terrier, Terror, to the farm. First appearance: Book 10 (September 1985).
 * Kathy : An occasional visitor to Cooch's farm. Her face remains a mystery, as she is almost always drawn facing away from the reader – except once in Book 27, when she is only partially obscured by Spit Murphy's arm. Kathy is beautiful and a free spirit, sometimes going casually nude outdoors. She is loved by everyone, including the Dog, and especially Cooch; much to his heartbreak, as they are cousins. In the final book of the series, Kathy tells Cooch that she loves him and gives him a passionate kiss. First appearance: Book 8 (September 1983).
 * Stewart "Irish" Murphy : Wal's other neighbour; a brutish man who does not welcome visitors and shoots any dog that strays onto his property, Blackwater Station, or mercifully hangs them by their hind legs on a fence. Once he did this to Prince Charles and lived to regret it when Aunt Dolly found out. Always filthy ("health warning: do not approach this man downwind"), probably due to farming numerous pigs, which cause Wal plenty of grief. He has two loutish sons, Spit and Hunk. He is first mentioned in Cooch's introduction to Book 3, his pigs first appear in the same book, but he and his sons do not appear until Book 9 (October 1984).
 * Elvis "Spit" Murphy : The brighter of Irish Murphy's two sons, Spit is described by the Dog as "a sort of rural John Travolta with smaller lips and bigger jeans". He is Wal's rival in rugby and romance. He is also interested in Cooch's cousin Kathy.
 * Ronald "Hunk" Murphy : Irish Murphy's large, slow-witted and aggressive son. He is described by the Dog as "fat, pink and smelly". His nephew Lex Murphy (first appearance: Book 11) sometimes fights with Rangi.
 * "Irish" Murphy's pigs : A fearsome gang of three to six enormous beasts. Often lurking in the nearby river, causing consternation to unsuspecting fishermen and dogs. Always ravenous, they once defeated and ate some large sharks that swam up the estuary.
 * Tiger, Wolf and Creampuff, "Irish" Murphy's pig-dogs : They often terrorize the Dog, who seeks help from Wal, Horse or Major. Now and then, the Dog tries to take on all three of them at once. Creampuff is a bull terrier.
 * Hermit Ram "The Buffalo" : This long unshorn ram has left the mob and lives in the farm's wild scrub. He sometimes shows interest in the ewes, and Dog is sent to pursue him, but without success. First appearance: Book 11.
 * The Goat: One of the toughest animals on the farm, the Goat is usually tethered to a chain in Wal's garden. Wal bought him to keep the grass down, but the Goat prefers eating fruit trees and footy socks, and chasing the Dog and Wal. At one point, Wal tries in vain to sell the Goat and then decides to kill it, but cannot, exclaiming "Dammit, I know this goat!". First appearance: Book 1.
 * The Goose : Another character introduced in the first Footrot Flats book, the goose occasionally stalks Wal and pecks his posterior whenever possible. In the film "The Dog's Tale", the goose attempts to peck Wal and finally gets his chance when Wal rescues Irish Murphy from a river.
 * Cooch's goats : A cunning pack of goats that uses gang tactics to annoy Wal. For example, if Wal plants trees behind a fence, Cooch's goats will stand on each other to get over and eat them. The Dog hates mustering Cooch's goats.
 * Other hostile animals : In the early books, the Dog's main tormentors were the turkey, goat and pigs (Boris and Dolores). In one strip in Book 4, the goose is chasing Wal and the turkey is chasing the Dog, but Wal kicks the turkey and the Dog jumps on the goose's neck, then Wal and the Dog celebrate their partnership.

Sport
Sport plays a major part in Footrot Flats. Wal plays all sorts of sports including cricket, golf, fishing, rugby union, tennis and snooker. The Dog often plays with Wal, sometimes helping him, sometimes embarrassing him and sometimes being exploited. Wal can never beat his younger brother Rex in any sport.

Wal plays for the Raupo rugby club as a hooker and is often seen playing and training in the strip. At one point Wal was replaced by a younger man as he was getting too old, but the younger player wasn't as good. The final few strips ever drawn involve an unlikely chain of events which culminate in Wal somehow scoring a try against a touring international rugby side. Wal also coaches the Raupo School rugby team, with Rangi being one of its more prominent members and the Dog serving as mascot (a duty he takes seriously, often blaming himself if the team loses).

In the cricket season, Wal plays for an unnamed team as an all-rounder, although he is sometimes pictured as the wicket keeper. Cooch often plays cricket with Wal and so does the Dog, usually fielding in the slips or in the covers (wherein the Dog's alias of 'The Scarlet Manuka' sometimes comes into play, stealing cricket balls to 'rescue' them from persecution).

Cooch also plays golf with Wal, who has a homemade course on his farm. Cooch is better than Wal at golf, even though the course is very hard (the first hole is a par 14). When they do play on a real course, Cooch usually wins. Wal claims the trees are on Cooch's side. Wal and Cooch also play snooker on a small table in Cooch's house, where a tree hampers play.

Wal also occasionally plays tennis with Cheeky Hobson and fights for her affections with Nigel Erskine, another member of the tennis club. The Dog is usually the ball boy.

Wal and Cooch frequently fish in various ways: whitebaiting, long line fishing, and most often floundering.

Other sports seen in Footrot Flats are boxing, polo, soccer, squash, badminton and shooting.

List of publications
Main series
 * Footrot Flats 1-27 (1978–99)
 * The Footrot Flats 'Weekender' 1-8 (1985–98)
 * The Puppydog Footrot Flats 1-21 (1/11/95)

Pocket books
 * "They've put custard with my bone!" (1983)
 * The cry of the grey ghost (1984)
 * "I'm warning you, Horse..." (1985)
 * It's a dog's life (1988)
 * "Let slip the dogs of war!" (1992)
 * Footrot Flats Pocket Book Collection (1995)

Combined collections
 * Footrot Flats Collector's Edition (1987)
 * Footrot Flats Collector's Edition 2 (1989)
 * Footrot Flats Collector's Edition 3 (1993)
 * The Footrot Flats 'Weekender' Special (1994)
 * Footrot Flats Gallery 1-3 (2005–06)
 * Footrot Flats Sports Collection (2005)
 * Footrot Flats: The Wisdom of Dog (27/9/2010)
 * The Art of Footrot Flats (25/10/2011)
 * Footrot Flats: Luv from Dog (24/9/2013)
 * The Essential Footrot Flats (28/10/2014)
 * Footrot Flats Gallery 1 (27/10/15, Reprint)
 * Footrot Flats Gallery 2 (26/10/16, Reprint)

Murray Ball Collector's Trilogy
 * Footrot Flats: The Dog Strips (2007)
 * Footrot Flats: The Long Weekender (2008)
 * Six of the Best by Murray Ball (2009)

Misc
 * Footrot Flats Collector’s Edition Box Set (1982, NZ-Only Release)
 * Footrot Flats Danish Album Series 1-27 called Fæhunden (1984-2000)
 * The Mini Footrot Flats (1984)
 * Footrot Flats - The Stage Musical (1984)
 * Footrot Flats the Motion Picture: Prospectus (1985)
 * Footrot Flats: The Making of the Movie (1986)
 * Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tail Tale (1986)
 * Footrot Flats School Kit (1986)
 * Footrot Flats Japanese Edition (1986)
 * Footrot Flats Danish Book Series 1-12 called Fæhunden bøger (1989-2000)
 * Footrot Flats in Focus - A 1990 Perspective (1989)
 * Footrot Flats Chinese Edition - Counterfeit copy (1990)
 * Footrot Flats Norwegian series 1-3 called 'Bikkja' (1990-93) Printed in Norway, each magazine is closer to the size of the UK editions
 * Footrot Flats UK Titan Books Series 1-6 (1990–94)
 * Footrot Flats Swedish Books Series 1-4 called Fähunden (1991–94)
 * Footrot Flats German Edition (1991, as "Dog Von Der Stinkfuẞfarm")
 * Footrot Flats USA Edition (1992) (With Foreword by Charles M. Schulz)
 * Footrot Flats Calendar: 1983-1992, 1997–2000
 * Footrot Flats Sports Calendar: 1988-1991
 * Footrot Flats Dog Star Calendar: 1989
 * The Ballad of Footrot Flats (1996)
 * Footrot Flats Desk Calendar: 1997
 * Footrot Flats - "The Dog's Tail Tale" (VHS, DVD)
 * Footrot Flats - "The Dog's Tail Tale" (Re-release) (DVD/Blu-ray) (1/12/11)
 * Footrot Flats 2015 40th Anniversary Commemorative Calendar (October 2014)

Miscellaneous merchandise included:
 * greeting cards, postcards, posters, pencil cases, coloring books, notepad
 * mugs, drinking glasses, beer stein, coasters, place mats, teaspoons, plates, beer
 * clothing, bed linen, tea towels, aprons, beach towels, badges, lapel pins, transfers, patches
 * activity packs, door hangers, stickers, wrapping paper, matches, key-rings
 * stuffed toys, jigsaw puzzles, hot water bottles, ceramics, soap figurines,

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

title: Footrot Flats


text:
Bloom County

Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.

On July 12, 2015, Breathed started drawing Bloom County again. The first revived strip was published via Facebook on July 13, 2015.

Breathed won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987, making him only the second (and so far last) comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer; the other was Garry Trudeau, whose work has influenced Breathed.

Publication history and production
Bloom County originated from a comic strip known as The Academia Waltz, which Breathed produced for The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas. The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of The Washington Post, who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, Bloom County, syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, made its debut and featured some of the characters from Academia Waltz, including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Cutter John.

Breathed set Bloom County in a small town. Breathed said he made the choice because he had followed a girlfriend to Iowa City, Iowa; Breathed commented, "You draw—literally—from your life if you’re going to write anything with some juice to it. I did just that."

Breathed's hand-printed signature on his strips was usually presented in mirror image, i.e. right to left.

Breathed's award of the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning in 1987 for Bloom County was controversial. Because the cartoon appeared on the comics page, and not on the editorial page, the win was disapproved of by many members of Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

Breathed cited the controversy over the release of Go Set a Watchman as the factor that led him to resume Bloom County.

Core characters
At the very beginning of the strip (December 1980), the central setting was the Bloom boarding house run by the grandparents of Milo Bloom. As the strip continued, various boarders (and/or pets) moved into the boarding house. In the order the characters debuted:

 * Milo Bloom, introduced in December 1980, is a 10-year-old newspaper reporter and probably the most worldly-wise of the bunch. Milo was the original protagonist of Bloom County, and much of the strip's action during its first year takes place at the boarding house owned by his family. Initially presented as an innocent-yet-precocious ten-year-old grappling bizarrely with the hallmarks of his impending puberty (to the extent of developing an intense infatuation with Betty Crocker), Milo's 'offscreen' appointment to a journalist position for the local Bloom Beacon newspaper in January 1982 gradually modified his role to that of a 'straight man', with a number of his more absurdist earlier traits re-allocated to then-ascendant protagonist Opus. In the very earliest strips, Milo's grandfather ("The Major") was a central character; after the first year, the Major's role diminished and he eventually ceased to appear as a regular at the end of 1982, vanishing altogether after his final appearance in a July 1983 Sunday strip.
 * Steve Dallas, introduced in May 1981, was (like Cutter John) originally a featured character in The Academia Waltz. Steve is Bloom County's sole defense attorney.  A machoistic and irresponsible chain smoker and former "frat boy", Dallas spends most of his free time either trying to seduce women or concocting get-rich-quick schemes, including forming and managing a heavy metal band, Billy and the Boingers (previously known as Deathtöngue). While initially introduced as a foil to Bobbi Harlow, the latter's eventual hookup with Cutter John increasingly expanded the flexibility of Dallas's role, rendering him the strip's sole major adult human character by the mid-80s.
 * Michael Binkley was also introduced in May 1981. Binkley was a schoolmate of Milo's who lived with his father, Tom Binkley, rather than in the boarding house. Binkley is wishy-washy and overly reflective (in the mold of Charlie Brown), when not contemplating the lives of famous figures in pop culture, often at his father's bedside in the middle of the night.  His "anxiety closet", first appearing in January 1983, has been a staple of many storylines.
 * Opus is a large-nosed penguin (occasionally mistaken for a puffin) with a herring addiction who lost track of his mother during the Falklands War (they were later reunited in a closing storyline at the end of the strip's first incarnation). He was originally introduced as the more realistically designed pet penguin of Michael Binkley ("A boy and his penguin!" "A penguin and his boy!") in June 1981, although he was only seen in three strips that month. He was re-introduced as a full-time cast member in January 1982; by mid-1982, Opus had ceased to be Binkley's pet and he eventually became a boarder at the Bloom house, with his design likewise evolving into its more stylized trademark form (thus identifying him less strongly as a penguin) by the end of 1983. Opus' hopeless naïveté and optimism made him a fan favorite, and he quickly became the center of the strip, as well as the subject of two "sequel" strips (Outland and Opus), three children's books, and a television special entitled A Wish for Wings That Work.
 * Cutter John, introduced in November 1981, is a wheelchair-using Vietnam War veteran, noted for indulging in Star Trek fantasies with the meadow animals (Hodge-Podge, Portnoy and Opus), as well as anti-war protests. He is not a womanizer like Steve Dallas, but he is more popular with the ladies. His visage is nearly identical to that of Breathed himself. The character had previously appeared in Breathed's earlier comic strip, The Academia Waltz, where he had been known as 'Saigon John'.
 * Bill the Cat is a filthy, scraggly, flea-bitten, orange tabby cat, introduced in June 1982 as a parody of the comic character Garfield. The humor of the character was the antithesis of Garfield: whereas the famous fat-cat was a marketing bonanza, Bloom County humorously tried desperately to present Bill in the same manner, despite his disgusting and unappealing appearance. After serving over a year as a relatively minor character largely existing 'outside' of the strip's main continuity and cast of characters (beyond sporadic appearances and background references to his merchandise), Breathed temporarily retired the character via alluding to his 'offscreen' death in September 1983 (allegedly from acne); following his resurrection in July of the following year, Bill rapidly increased in prominence to the point of assuming an ironically central role in numerous major storylines, thus solidifying him as one of the strip's most widely-known figures (alongside Opus). Following his resurrection, Bill's low intelligence and inability to articulate himself beyond his trademark responses, "Ack" and "Pbthhh" led to him becoming something of a blank slate around which various increasingly-absurd plots revolved. He has been a cult member ("Bhagwan Bill"), televangelist ("Fundamentally Oral Bill"), perennial Presidential candidate (for the National Radical Meadow Party), heavy metal rock star ("Wild Bill Catt"), nuclear power plant operator at Chernobyl, and, in the last months of the series, had his brain surgically replaced with Donald Trump's, alongside allegedly conducting affairs with Jeane Kirkpatrick, Princess Diana and Socks the cat. He has been known to speak on occasion, most notably during the Communist witch-hunt trials of which he has been a subject, when he remarked, "Say, you don't suppose the 'Jury Box' is anything like a litter box, do you?". Numerous strips indicated that his persistent near-catatonic state was the result of drug use or brain damage resulting from once being legally dead and then revived after too long a period. In the Christmas special A Wish for Wings That Work, implicitly set in a differing continuity from the strip, Opus alternately recounts having rescued Bill from a university science lab where they had replaced his brains with Tater Tots.
 * Hodge-Podge is a rabbit (name unknown until April 1984) who is best friends with Portnoy and Cutter John. He is politically conservative and fanatical about various issues, despite the fact that he is extremely ignorant about those same issues. Both Hodge-Podge and Portnoy (below) started off in April 1982 as unnamed minor characters, and their roles gradually increased as the strip continued, coalescing into their final forms around 1984.
 * Portnoy is a groundhog, although his species was a mystery until October 1983. Before the revelation that he was a groundhog, he was portrayed as a squirrel, gopher, porcupine and possum, with his finalized groundhog design first emerging in March 1983. Portnoy was the grouchiest and most bigoted character by far and (in a few strips) was a bully to Opus.
 * Oliver Wendell Jones is a schoolmate of Milo and Binkley, introduced in September 1983. He is a young computer hacker and gifted scientist. He once tried to bring an end to the Cold War by introducing onto the front page of Pravda the headline, "Gorbachev Urges Disarmament: Total! Unilateral!", but faulty translation caused the headline to read, "Gorbachev Sings Tractors: Turnip! Buttocks!" He has a fairly extensive criminal record as a result of his numerous computer pranks.  Oliver is African-American.  His mother has dressed her son to resemble Michael Jackson, much to Oliver's chagrin.

Other characters

 * Bobbi Harlow is the feminist schoolteacher of Milo and Binkley and the love interest of both Steve and Cutter. She was a major character from her introduction in April 1981 until mid-1982, in which her role largely dissipates into that of Cutter John's sporadically appearing girlfriend, thus catalyzing her eventual disappearance by July 1983. She appears only once in the strip's later years, when Opus learns she has joined the crew of The Phil Donahue Show. In August 1981, her parents visited, and met Steve, whom they disliked.
 * Quiche Lorraine, cousin of Bobbi Harlow and one-time girlfriend of Steve Dallas circa 1982. She was only dating Steve because of his body and dumped him after an accident left him in a full-body cast.
 * Cozy Fillerup, single mother and love interest to Cutter John. She was introduced in the 2015 revival of the strip when Cutter John and crew ran over her with his wheelchair, the "Aluminium Falcon".
 * Abby Fillerup, Cozy's sole daughter. She was introduced in the 2015 revival of the strip. She practices yoga, acupuncture, and other New Age beliefs. As her introduction is quite recent, her importance and involvement with the future of the strip is unknown. She has been seen to participate in the gang's pop culture fantasies, and is often seen engaging in antics with the main cast.
 * Tom Binkley, Binkley's father, usually distraught over his son's behavior, his own divorce or mid-life crisis.
 * Frank Jones, Oliver's father, who funds his son's scientific endeavors, particularly his cure for baldness made from cat-sweat nicknamed "Scalp Tonic".
 * Eleanor Jones, Oliver's mother, distrustful of technology and science, usually with good reason.
 * Lola Granola, a free-spirited and gentle hippie who experiments with green politics and vegetarianism. She and Opus had a long engagement, but were married only seconds before Opus was knocked unconscious while clumsily trying to kiss her and had a nightmare of his future which caused him to annul the marriage the instant he woke up.
 * Milquetoast the Cockroach: an eloquent yet disgusting cockroach living in the boarding house, he secretly uses subliminal messaging (usually in the form of whispering in the tenants' ears as they sleep) to convince them to spare his life and bring him food.
 * Rosebud the Basselope, a basset hound with antlers (in a play on jackalope). As the last basselope on Earth (the second-to-last having been hunted and killed for sport by Donald Trump), Rosebud is somewhat gullible, naive, and easily shocked. Long after her introduction, it was determined that Rosebud was actually female, in a parody of the use of female dogs to portray the ostensibly male canine beer mascot Spuds McKenzie. The rebooted Bloom County gave her the ability to fly when her antlers were inflated with "dandelion gas".
 * Ronald-Ann Smith is a young, innocent African-American girl from "the wrong side of the tracks" who lives in poverty. Her frequent efforts to make the best of the little she has often make the rest of the cast feel selfish and uncomfortable. Her best friend is Reynalda, a headless doll. At the end of the first series of Bloom County, she shows Opus the way to Outland, presented as a magical imaginary world she created to escape her harsh reality.
 * The Banana Jr. 6000 Computer (a blatant parody of the Apple Macintosh) is presented as an almost robot-like companion of Oliver, though he is quick to dispose of it if a newer model has even the slightest superficial upgrade.

Notable storylines
For detailed summaries of all storylines, see the entries for the individual books.
 * Opus was originally intended to have a run of just two weeks, but his status was cemented with a memorable Sunday strip involving a Hare Krishna asking for money. Opus continued to misunderstand the Krishna's request for money before finally misinterpreting "Prayer temples for Hare Krishnas" as "Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts!" Breathed wrote in one of the Bloom County books that the reaction was so overwhelmingly strong he made Opus a permanent member of the cast.
 * In 1984 the American Meadow Party ran Bill the Cat as its presidential candidate opposing Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, with Opus as the vice presidential candidate. Their campaign slogan was, "This Time, Why Not The Worst?" The sequence parodied the entire campaign season and the lengths some parties would go to, with Opus becoming near suicidal when told he is running behind pickled prunes in popularity polls. It did lead to the slogan of disaffected voters everywhere, "Don't blame me. I voted for Bill and Opus."
 * Steve forms a heavy metal band with Opus, Hodge Podge, and Bill, initially called "Deathtöngue". Steve is forced to rename the band "Billy and the Boingers" after he is brought before a congressional hearing investigating the effect of heavy metal music on youth, similar to the Parents Music Resource Center.
 * Opus decides to reunite with his long-lost mother for Christmas in Antarctica, only to discover that his mother supposedly died saving soldiers in the Falklands war. Her gravestone reads, 'The Falklands Martyr: She Loved her Boy'. She is later revealed to be alive.
 * The cast of Bloom County goes on strike. W. A. Thornhump refuses to concede to any of their demands and attempts to have his office staff fill in.  Things get ugly when Steve Dallas crosses the picket line and Thornhump hires strike-breakers to play Opus, Bill, and Oliver.  In the end, the strikers are defeated, although Opus still throws eggs at Steve, saying "Here comes breakfast from Aunt Opus!!"
 * Oliver invents Dr. Oliver's Scalp Tonic using Bill the Cat's perspiration motivated from the thought of Dan Quayle becoming US president. The tonic miraculously will restore hair on anyone, but has the side effect of users producing "ack" noises.  The US government bans it, but the gang decide to continue producing it illegally after discovering that desperate customers are willing to buy it at exorbitant prices. In a parody of the war on drugs, the gang is extremely successful while thwarting the ineffectual government attempts to stop the illegal trade. As violent crime arises from the trade, the tonic operation is fatally undermined when the government legalizes it. The effects are later to be shown as temporary, leaving Oliver's father totally bald.
 * Oliver learns of the Apartheid system in South Africa. He invents a "pigmentizer", which will temporarily turn a white person black. Cutter John and Opus are dispatched to Washington to zap the South African ambassador, but their balloon-powered wheelchair crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and they disappear. Though officially listed as "Eaten By Squid", Opus reappears some time later, suffering from such strong amnesia that he initially has no idea he is even a penguin. Eventually the fake news of a secret wedding between Eddie Murphy and Diane Sawyer, Opus' longtime crush, shocks him into recalling what happened. After drifting for a while between lost islands, using the wheelchair as a raft, Cutter John and Opus were rescued by a Soviet submarine and arrested as spies. In order to rescue him, Steve Dallas meets with Russian envoys to trade Cutter John in for the one thing they want from Bloom County: Bill the Cat.
 * Donald Trump is accidentally and fatally injured by the anchor of his own yacht. Incredibly, surgeons turn to Bill the Cat as a donor body in which to insert Trump's still-living brain. Trapped in Bill's body, Trump finds himself disinherited from his financial empire and estranged from his wife Ivana. With nowhere else to turn, he takes Bill's place in the Bloom County boarding house, making unsuccessful attempts to start from scratch and occasionally being given equally unsuccessful lessons on the value of life by Opus. This eventually culminates in Trump regaining power and using it to buy out Bloom County, firing the entire staff of characters in the process.

End and spinoff strips
Breathed decided to end the strip in 1989. In keeping with the continuity of the Bill the Cat/Donald Trump storyline, Trump "buys out" the comic strip and fires all of the cast. In the strip's final weeks the cast found new "jobs" with other comic strips. A "goodbye party" was held over the course of the week where characters talked about joining new strips. Portnoy and Hodge Podge get jobs as janitors behind the scenes at Marmaduke; Steve Dallas joins the cast of Cathy and attempts to pitch himself as a new superhero, but is quickly fired from both jobs; Michael Binkley becomes a wild boar skinner for Prince Valiant. Lola Granola says that she has been invited to pose for Playboy, which Opus dislikes. Milo Bloom is seen with a snake swallowing him head first and informing Opus he would be appearing Tuesdays in The Far Side. Oliver Wendell Jones is seen with the distinct features of Family Circus characters. He informs Opus he is being "bussed in" to the strip as part of a court order. Once Bloom County characters are scattered, only Opus is left as part of a plot to transition to Breathed's next strip in Bloom County's final week.

Shortly after Bloom County ended, Breathed started a Sunday-only strip called Outland with original characters and situations introduced in Bloom County's final days. However, Opus, Bill and other characters eventually reappeared and slowly took over the strip. Outland ran from September 3, 1989, to March 26, 1995. Another Sunday-only spinoff strip called Opus ran from November 23, 2003, to November 2, 2008.

Return
On July 12, 2015, Breathed posted to his Facebook page a photo with the caption "A return after 25 years. Feels like going home." The photo showed him drawing a comic strip with the title Bloom County 2015 with Opus pictured in the first frame. A fan asked in the comments on the picture if this was in response to Donald Trump's presidential campaign; Breathed responded, "This creator can't precisely deny that the chap you mention had nothing to do with it." The next day, July 13, 2015, the first comic of the revived strip was officially posted online, also to Breathed's Facebook page. The strip was relaunched under the Bloom County 2015 title, only to be renamed simply as Bloom County at the start of 2016.

On the return of the strips Breathed stated: "Deadlines and dead-tree media took the fun out of a daily craft that was only meant to be fun. I had planned to return to Bloom County in 2001, but the sullied air sucked the oxygen from my kind of whimsy. Bush and Cheney's fake war dropped it for a decade like a bullet to the head. But silliness suddenly seems safe now. Trump's merely a sparkling symptom of a renewed national ridiculousness. We're back baby." Breathed originally had no plans of publishing the new strips outside of his Facebook page, commenting that “Newspapers need deadlines, alas. Like my departed friend Douglas Adams used to say, the only part of deadlines I enjoyed was the whooshing sound as they sped by.” An archive of the new strips has started at GoComics since then. A new book was announced in June 2016; Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope was a compilation of strips from 2015 and 2016. Two more books followed in 2017 and 2018, respectively. No more books have been published since.

On April 11, 2022, Breathed posted a new strip on Facebook labeled "Season 33, Episode 3" in the title panel. It featured Steve Dallas and Opus in a satire of the MeToo Movement.

New installments of the strip have been released far more sporadically in recent years. In 2023, Breathed only created seven daily strips released between July 23rd and August 13th and has yet to release any at all for 2024.

Incorporating Calvin and Hobbes
Starting from 2016, Breathed took on, with permission, the characters from Calvin and Hobbes in an occasional series of strips.

Influence
Bloom County has had an influence on other cartoonists, particularly cartoonists who have an irreverent bent or tackle political topics in their work.

For example, Scott Kurtz, creator of the webcomic PvP, acknowledged Breathed's contributions at one point with a strip expressing the opinion that "so many webcomics. ..are nothing but Bloom County ripoffs", then lampooning itself by mimicking Breathed's art and dialogue style in the final panel.

Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic and later animated series The Boondocks, has paid tribute to Breathed's work as well, with a few aspects of the strip bearing more than a passing resemblance to important Bloom County features (including at least a couple of artistic similarities), and an episode of the animated series wherein the character Uncle Ruckus calls Breathed "Master Penguin Draw'er".

The series was adapted into the 1991 animated Christmas special entitled A Wish for Wings That Work, which is now available on DVD.

Bloom County location
The fictional setting of Bloom County served as a recurring backdrop for the comic and its sequels, although the nature of the setting was frequently altered.

In the comics, the county is presented as a stereotypical American midwestern small town. The small town setting was frequently contrasted with the increasing globalization taking place in the rest of the world; though Bloom County contained the likes of farmers and wilderness creatures by default, it was frequented by Hare Krishnas, feminists, and rock stars.

While the location of Bloom County is never explicitly mentioned, there have been some clues in the strip. When Oliver Jones identified Bloom County as the place where Halley's Comet would crash into Earth, a sign was seen saying that it was at 35.05 N 146.55 E. This would place it in the Pacific Ocean, about 300 miles off the coast of Japan. Oliver's previous calculation was 39.43 N 105.01 W, which would place it just south of Denver, Colorado. In an early strip, Milo gives his address as "Box 163, Bloom County, N.I., 12460", the zip code for which would place it about 30 miles southwest of Albany, New York. Another strip has Opus trying to make airline reservations to Des Moines, Iowa. He balks at the outrageously high quoted price for a ticket stating that "Des Moines is just 94 miles from Bloom County". Geographically, this would place Bloom County in either Iowa or the far north-central tier of counties of Missouri, but likely referring to the distance from Iowa City, where the strip was produced, to Des Moines. Also, in a Sunday strip with L.H. Puttgrass, he is holding a King Soopers bag, which would place the comic in Colorado. On January 29, 2016, Berkeley Breathed posted on Facebook that "The Bloom County boarding house still sits in beautiful hayseedless Iowa City, home for this cartoonist for four years."

The county was home to the Bloom Boarding House, Steve Dallas' law offices, the Bloom Beacon and Bloom Picayune newspapers, at least one pond, and Milo's Meadow. In the comic's later years, the county contained what appeared to be a big-city ghetto ("the wrong side of the tracks", as it was known).

The geographical profile of the county was fluid as the artistic style of the strip evolved. During most of Bloom County's run, the rural meadow setting was presented realistically, while in its later years it became increasingly more abstract.

The Outland setting of the strip was originally set apart from the county by way of a magical doorway. By Outland 's end, the Outland appeared to be a part of Bloom County itself.

The final Outland strip listed the characters as living at "555 Hairybutt St., Bloom County, Outland".

Opus also takes place in Bloom County.

Real-world references
Breathed lived in Iowa City, Iowa during the early years of the strip, and the setting of Bloom County resembles Iowa City in several ways. The Bloom Boarding House, which appeared as a high contrast photo within the strip, is modeled after the Linsay House located at 935 East College Street. Another Iowa City landmark, The Prairie Lights Bookstore, was referred to in the strip as the "Prairie Lights Newsstand"; original Bloom County artwork from Breathed now hangs in the bookstore. Another original Bloom County strip hangs in the Iowa City Public Library. Breathed used the call letters KRNA to refer to Bloom County's rock radio station featuring "Rockin' Charmin' Harmin". The call letters belong to an actual Iowa City rock station which featured a disc jockey named "Charmin'" Jeff Harmon in the 1980s. Several Iowa City local news items also directly inspired Bloom County storylines. For example, a fictional Ronald Reagan sexist gaffe, referring to women as "little dumplin's", was lifted from University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry's comment, infuriating feminists at the university.

Animated series
On February 15, 2022, Fox announced a Bloom County television series, with Berkeley Breathed as executive producer and co-writer. Bento Box will serve as the animation studio on the project. Fox's animation company, Bento Box Entertainment, Miramax, Spyglass Media Group and Project X Entertainment are all working on it as an animated series. In September 2022, it was announced The Simpsons writer Tim Long joined the series as showrunner.

Bloom County books
Like many other popular comic strips, Bloom County has been republished in various collections. By 2004, the comic strip was reprinted in 11 books, the first having been published in 1983 and the last in that year. None of the reprints contained complete runs of the strip, although Bloom County Babylon contained many of the strips that preceded Loose Tails. All of the daily strips have been reprinted in Comics Revue magazine.

IDW Publishing published The Bloom County Library, a five volume hardback collection of all Bloom County strips, beginning in October 2009. This series is part of their Library of American Comics series. It is a complete reprint of the strip, including side notes about cultural and political references made in the strip, "Headlines" breaks to identify the top stories of the day, and commentary from Breathed. Each volume has three separate releases: a standard edition, a signed edition, and a signed, remarked edition. Breathed said that the reason why the strips printed in The Bloom County Library were not published in previous collections was that the publisher would not let Breathed publish 400 pages each year, so Breathed had to reduce the content in each book. Breathed also said that he believes that, "I just closed my eyes and dropped a dart on the ones to be included." He felt relieved the publishers did not "have to ask ... to do this again."

On October 25, 2017, IDW published Bloom County: Real, Classy, & Compleat: 1980-1989, collecting the complete run of Bloom County in two volumes. An "Ultimate Collectors Set" was also released, including the original art from a daily strip featuring Opus, a page from Breathed's sketchbooks, and a personalized sketch of Opus on the slipcover.

Collections

 * Loose Tails (1983)
 * Toons for Our Times (1984)
 * Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things (1985)
 * Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness (1986)—An omnibus featuring strips from the previous three collections
 * Billy and the Boingers Bootleg (1987)
 * Tales Too Ticklish to Tell (1988)
 * The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos (1989)
 * Happy Trails! (1990)
 * Classics of Western Literature (1990)—An omnibus featuring strips from the previous four collections
 * One Last Little Peek, 1980–1995: The Final Strips, the Special Hits, the Inside Tips (1995) - A collection of strips from both Bloom County and Outland
 * Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best (2004)—An omnibus featuring strips from Bloom County, Outland, and Opus
 * Bloom County Episode XI: A New Hope (2016)
 * Bloom County: The Real, Classy, & Compleat 1980–1989 (2017)
 * Bloom County Brand Spanking New Day (2017)
 * Bloom County Best Read on the Throne (2018)

The Complete Bloom County Library
Bloom County: The Complete Library, published by The Library of American Comics, an imprint of IDW Publishing, between 2009 and 2012. Collects the complete Bloom County as well as Outland and Opus.

title: Bloom County


text:
List of amusement rides

Amusement rides, sometimes called carnival rides, are mechanical devices or structures that move people to create fun and enjoyment.

Rides are often perceived by many as being scary or more dangerous than they actually are. This could be due to the design, having acrophobia, or from hearing about accidents involving rides that are similar. For some, the adrenaline associated with riding amusement rides is part of the experience.

They are common at most annual events such as fairs, traveling carnivals, and circuses around the world. Sometimes music festivals and concerts also host amusement park rides.

Types of rides

 * Flat rides are usually those that move their passengers on a plane generally parallel to the ground, such as rides that spin around a vertical axis, like carousels and twists; and ground-level rides such as bumper cars.
 * In gravity rides, gravity is responsible for all or some of the movement where any vertical movement is not about a fixed point, such as roller coasters, water slides and drop towers.
 * Vertical rides usually move their passengers in a vertical plane and around a fixed point, such as Ferris wheels, Enterprise and Skydiver.
 * As of the 2010s, some rides employ virtual reality.

Specific themes

 * Dark ride
 * Bumper cars
 * Haunted house
 * Funhouse
 * Pendulum ride
 * Rollercoaster
 * Ferris wheel

Literature

 * Florian Dering: Volksbelustigungen. Eine bildreiche Kulturgeschichte von den Fahr-, Belustigungs- und Geschicklichkeitsgeschäften der Schausteller vom achtzehnten Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Greno, Nördlingen 1986, ISBN 3-89190-005-8.
 * Karl Ruisinger: Kirmes Special. Karussells 1950er und 1960er Jahre (= Kirmes Special 1). Gemi Verlag, Reichertshausen 2005, ISBN 3-9808913-3-X.
 * Sacha-Roger Szabo: Rausch und Rummel. Attraktionen auf Jahrmärkten und in Vergnügungsparks. Eine soziologische Kulturgeschichte. transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-566-9 (Zugleich: Freiburg, Univ., Diss., 2006).

title: List of amusement rides


text:
Talk:Kevin Mitnick

He's gone, Jim.
[] Crazysane (T/C\D) 00:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

dead
apparently he died of cancer or something 🤷♂ 2A00:23EE:1478:219E:3051:7545:2AE4:DCE2 (talk) 00:59, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * The memorial page that is being shared: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/las-vegas-nv/kevin-mitnick-11371668 Skyfaller (talk) 01:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * The problem is no one's confirming it. Just a memorial page isn't much to go on. No one on Twitter, Reddit, or Hacker News is stepping up to say specifically "I know all about this and know independently of this memorial page that Kevin is dead". Entities like 2600 or Jason Scott are just retweeting the memorial. Is Kevin Mitnick dead? Probably yes. But given that he was famous in particular for social engineering, there's a bit of niggling doubt there about him or someone else up to shenanigans... --Gwern (contribs) 01:09 20 July 2023 (GMT)
 * A member of the hacking community, MG, claims on Twitter to have independently confirmed this but as of now has provided no additional sources. Also Security Week has reported it, citing "SecurityWeek sources" in addition to the memorial page.  Replysixty (talk) 01:27, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Can someone protect the page to stop the back-and-forth unsourced edit-warring? Nicolas09F9 (talk) 01:32, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Yet another source, not to mention the Obituary is definitely legit. --Neøn (talk) 01:42, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * And now the Sun as well. I think this should be enough. Replysixty (talk) 01:46, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess there's no way to block the reverts that will predictably follow.. -- Neøn (talk) 01:49, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * After a discussion with User:GeneralNotability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:GeneralNotability#Kevin_Mitnick) I've restored what I believe was the best version to come out of this back-and-forth editing, featuring the obituary and the SecurityWeek article. At this point, the back-and-forth has mostly slowed, so hopefully we can leave it at this... demize  (t · c) 02:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Confirmed by multiple sources, including New York Times. See: Lexlex (talk) 20:29, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 July 2023 (2)
He died on the 16th of july not the 19th of july ComuterK1d (talk) 02:08, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. EggRoll97 (talk) 04:00, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 July 2023 (3)
Please change in "Death" July 21,2023 to July 20, 2023 Fischdix (talk) 14:13, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Please disregard changes, correct date is July 16, 2023. https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/las-vegas-nv/kevin-mitnick-11371668 Fischdix (talk) 14:16, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Kevin Mitnick


text:
God's Debris

God's Debris: A Thought Experiment is a 2001 novella by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. The introduction disclaims any personal views held by the author, "The opinions and philosophies expressed by the characters are not my own, except by coincidence in a few spots not worth mentioning."

God's Debris espouses a philosophy based on the idea that the simplest explanation tends to be the best. The book proposes a form of pandeism and monism, postulating that an omnipotent God annihilated Itself in the Big Bang, because an omniscient entity would already know everything possible except Its own lack of existence, and exists now as the smallest units of matter and the law of probability, or "God's debris".

Synopsis
The main character, the Avatar, defines God as primordial matter (like quarks and leptons) and the law of probability. He offers recommendations on everything from an alternative theory for planetary motion to successful recipes for relationships under his system. He proposes that God is currently reassembling himself through the continuing formation of a collective intelligence in the form of the human race, modern examples of which include the development of the internet; this is related to the idea of the Omega Point. In the introduction, Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment, challenging readers to differentiate its scientifically accepted theories from "creative baloney designed to sound true" and to "[t]ry to figure out what's wrong with the simplest explanation".

Levels of consciousness
The chapter "Fifth Level" (p. 124) describes five levels of human awareness, or consciousness.
 * Level 1: Consciousness at birth: pure innocence, self-awareness.
 * Level 2: Awareness of others, and acceptance of authority (a belief system).
 * Level 3: Awareness that some beliefs may be wrong, but not sure which ones.
 * Level 4: Skepticism and adoption of the scientific method.
 * Level 5: Avatar level, understanding that the human mind is a delusion-generating machine, and that science is another belief system, albeit a useful one.

Philosophical roots
The book subscribes to the Lakoffian point of view, in that the mind is viewed as a "delusion generator" rather than a window to true understanding. As George Lakoff said: "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." The particular philosophy espoused has been identified as a form of pandeism, the concept that a god created the universe by becoming the universe.

Publication
Given Adams' fame as the author of the Dilbert comics, publishers were wary of publishing any book by Adams without Dilbert content. The book was therefore released initially as an e-book in 2001, with comparatively small "publishing" costs. It was released in hard-cover format in 2004. In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published the book for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version.

title: God's Debris