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Color confinement

In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), color confinement, often simply called confinement, is the phenomenon that color-charged particles (such as quarks and gluons) cannot be isolated, and therefore cannot be directly observed in normal conditions below the Hagedorn temperature of approximately 2 terakelvin (corresponding to energies of approximately 130–140 MeV per particle). Quarks and gluons must clump together to form hadrons. The two main types of hadron are the mesons (one quark, one antiquark) and the baryons (three quarks). In addition, colorless glueballs formed only of gluons are also consistent with confinement, though difficult to identify experimentally. Quarks and gluons cannot be separated from their parent hadron without producing new hadrons.

Origin
There is not yet an analytic proof of color confinement in any non-abelian gauge theory. The phenomenon can be understood qualitatively by noting that the force-carrying gluons of QCD have color charge, unlike the photons of quantum electrodynamics (QED). Whereas the electric field between electrically charged particles decreases rapidly as those particles are separated, the gluon field between a pair of color charges forms a narrow flux tube (or string) between them. Because of this behavior of the gluon field, the strong force between the particles is constant regardless of their separation.

Therefore, as two color charges are separated, at some point it becomes energetically favorable for a new quark–antiquark pair to appear, rather than extending the tube further. As a result of this, when quarks are produced in particle accelerators, instead of seeing the individual quarks in detectors, scientists see "jets" of many color-neutral particles (mesons and baryons), clustered together. This process is called hadronization, fragmentation, or string breaking.

The confining phase is usually defined by the behavior of the action of the Wilson loop, which is simply the path in spacetime traced out by a quark–antiquark pair created at one point and annihilated at another point. In a non-confining theory, the action of such a loop is proportional to its perimeter. However, in a confining theory, the action of the loop is instead proportional to its area. Since the area is proportional to the separation of the quark–antiquark pair, free quarks are suppressed. Mesons are allowed in such a picture, since a loop containing another loop with the opposite orientation has only a small area between the two loops. At non-zero temperatures, the order operator for confinement are thermal versions of Wilson loops known as Polyakov loops.

Confinement scale
The confinement scale or QCD scale is the scale at which the perturbatively defined strong coupling constant diverges. This is known as the Landau pole. The confinement scale definition and value therefore depend on the renormalization scheme used. For example, in the MS-bar scheme and at 4-loop in the running of $$\alpha_s$$, the world average in the 3-flavour case is given by
 * $$\Lambda^{(3)}_\overline{MS} = (332 \pm 17) \,\rm{MeV} \,.$$

When the renormalization group equation is solved exactly, the scale is not defined at all. It is therefore customary to quote the value of the strong coupling constant at a particular reference scale instead.

It is sometimes believed that the sole origin of confinement is the very large value of the strong coupling near the Landau pole. This is sometimes referred as infrared slavery (a term chosen to contrast with the ultraviolet freedom). It is however incorrect since in QCD the Landau pole is unphysical, which can be seen by the fact that its position at the confinement scale largely depends on the chosen renormalization scheme, i.e., on a convention. Most evidences point to a moderately large coupling, typically of value 1-3 depending on the choice of renormalization scheme. In contrast to the simple but erroneous mechanism of infrared slavery, a large coupling is but one ingredient for color confinement, the other one being that gluons are color-charged and can therefore collapse into gluon tubes.

Models exhibiting confinement
In addition to QCD in four spacetime dimensions, the two-dimensional Schwinger model also exhibits confinement. Compact Abelian gauge theories also exhibit confinement in 2 and 3 spacetime dimensions. Confinement has been found in elementary excitations of magnetic systems called spinons.

If the electroweak symmetry breaking scale were lowered, the unbroken SU(2) interaction would eventually become confining. Alternative models where SU(2) becomes confining above that scale are quantitatively similar to the Standard Model at lower energies, but dramatically different above symmetry breaking.

Models of fully screened quarks
Besides the quark confinement idea, there is a potential possibility that the color charge of quarks gets fully screened by the gluonic color surrounding the quark. Exact solutions of SU(3) classical Yang–Mills theory which provide full screening (by gluon fields) of the color charge of a quark have been found. However, such classical solutions do not take into account non-trivial properties of QCD vacuum. Therefore, the significance of such full gluonic screening solutions for a separated quark is not clear.

title: Color confinement


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Shape

A shape is a graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, texture, or material type. In geometry, shape excludes information about the object's location, scale, orientation and reflection. A figure is a representation including both shape and size (as in, e.g., figure of the Earth).

A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie on a plane, in contrast to solid 3D shapes. A two-dimensional shape or two-dimensional figure (also: 2D shape or 2D figure) may lie on a more general curved surface (a non-Euclidean two-dimensional space).

Classification of simple shapes

Some simple shapes can be put into broad categories. For instance, polygons are classified according to their number of edges as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, etc. Each of these is divided into smaller categories; triangles can be equilateral, isosceles, obtuse, acute, scalene, etc. while quadrilaterals can be rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, squares, etc.

Other common shapes are points, lines, planes, and conic sections such as ellipses, circles, and parabolas.

Among the most common 3-dimensional shapes are polyhedra, which are shapes with flat faces; ellipsoids, which are egg-shaped or sphere-shaped objects; cylinders; and cones.

If an object falls into one of these categories exactly or even approximately, we can use it to describe the shape of the object. Thus, we say that the shape of a manhole cover is a disk, because it is approximately the same geometric object as an actual geometric disk.

In geometry

A geometric shape consists of the geometric information which remains when location, scale, orientation and reflection are removed from the description of a geometric object. That is, the result of moving a shape around, enlarging it, rotating it, or reflecting it in a mirror is the same shape as the original, and not a distinct shape.

Many two-dimensional geometric shapes can be defined by a set of points or vertices and lines connecting the points in a closed chain, as well as the resulting interior points. Such shapes are called polygons and include triangles, squares, and pentagons. Other shapes may be bounded by curves such as the circle or the ellipse. Many three-dimensional geometric shapes can be defined by a set of vertices, lines connecting the vertices, and two-dimensional faces enclosed by those lines, as well as the resulting interior points. Such shapes are called polyhedrons and include cubes as well as pyramids such as tetrahedrons. Other three-dimensional shapes may be bounded by curved surfaces, such as the ellipsoid and the sphere.

A shape is said to be convex if all of the points on a line segment between any two of its points are also part of the shape.

Properties
There are several ways to compare the shapes of two objects: Sometimes, two similar or congruent objects may be regarded as having a different shape if a reflection is required to transform one into the other. For instance, the letters "b" and "d" are a reflection of each other, and hence they are congruent and similar, but in some contexts they are not regarded as having the same shape. Sometimes, only the outline or external boundary of the object is considered to determine its shape. For instance, a hollow sphere may be considered to have the same shape as a solid sphere. Procrustes analysis is used in many sciences to determine whether or not two objects have the same shape, or to measure the difference between two shapes. In advanced mathematics, quasi-isometry can be used as a criterion to state that two shapes are approximately the same.
 * Congruence: Two objects are congruent if one can be transformed into the other by a sequence of rotations, translations, and/or reflections.
 * Similarity: Two objects are similar if one can be transformed into the other by a uniform scaling, together with a sequence of rotations, translations, and/or reflections.
 * Isotopy: Two objects are isotopic if one can be transformed into the other by a sequence of deformations that do not tear the object or put holes in it.

Simple shapes can often be classified into basic geometric objects such as a point, a line, a curve, a plane, a plane figure (e.g. square or circle), or a solid figure (e.g. cube or sphere). However, most shapes occurring in the physical world are complex. Some, such as plant structures and coastlines, may be so complicated as to defy traditional mathematical description – in which case they may be analyzed by differential geometry, or as fractals.

Some common shapes include: Circle, Square, Triangle, Rectangle, Oval, Star (polygon), Rhombus, Semicircle. Regular polygons starting at pentagon follow the naming convention of the Greek derived prefix with '-gon' suffix: Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon, Octagon, Nonagon, Decagon... See polygon

Equivalence of shapes
In geometry, two subsets of a Euclidean space have the same shape if one can be transformed to the other by a combination of translations, rotations (together also called rigid transformations), and uniform scalings. In other words, the shape of a set of points is all the geometrical information that is invariant to translations, rotations, and size changes. Having the same shape is an equivalence relation, and accordingly a precise mathematical definition of the notion of shape can be given as being an equivalence class of subsets of a Euclidean space having the same shape.

Mathematician and statistician David George Kendall writes: "In this paper ‘shape’ is used in the vulgar sense, and means what one would normally expect it to mean. [...] We here define ‘shape’ informally as ‘all the geometrical information that remains when location, scale and rotational effects are filtered out from an object.’"

Shapes of physical objects are equal if the subsets of space these objects occupy satisfy the definition above. In particular, the shape does not depend on the size and placement in space of the object. For instance, a " d " and a " p " have the same shape, as they can be perfectly superimposed if the " d " is translated to the right by a given distance, rotated upside down and magnified by a given factor (see Procrustes superimposition for details). However, a mirror image could be called a different shape. For instance, a " b " and a " p " have a different shape, at least when they are constrained to move within a two-dimensional space like the page on which they are written. Even though they have the same size, there's no way to perfectly superimpose them by translating and rotating them along the page. Similarly, within a three-dimensional space, a right hand and a left hand have a different shape, even if they are the mirror images of each other. Shapes may change if the object is scaled non-uniformly. For example, a sphere becomes an ellipsoid when scaled differently in the vertical and horizontal directions. In other words, preserving axes of symmetry (if they exist) is important for preserving shapes. Also, shape is determined by only the outer boundary of an object.

Congruence and similarity
Objects that can be transformed into each other by rigid transformations and mirroring (but not scaling) are congruent. An object is therefore congruent to its mirror image (even if it is not symmetric), but not to a scaled version. Two congruent objects always have either the same shape or mirror image shapes, and have the same size.

Objects that have the same shape or mirror image shapes are called geometrically similar, whether or not they have the same size. Thus, objects that can be transformed into each other by rigid transformations, mirroring, and uniform scaling are similar. Similarity is preserved when one of the objects is uniformly scaled, while congruence is not. Thus, congruent objects are always geometrically similar, but similar objects may not be congruent, as they may have different size.

Homeomorphism
A more flexible definition of shape takes into consideration the fact that realistic shapes are often deformable, e.g. a person in different postures, a tree bending in the wind or a hand with different finger positions.

One way of modeling non-rigid movements is by homeomorphisms. Roughly speaking, a homeomorphism is a continuous stretching and bending of an object into a new shape. Thus, a square and a circle are homeomorphic to each other, but a sphere and a donut are not. An often-repeated mathematical joke is that topologists cannot tell their coffee cup from their donut, since a sufficiently pliable donut could be reshaped to the form of a coffee cup by creating a dimple and progressively enlarging it, while preserving the donut hole in a cup's handle.

A described shape has external lines that you can see and make up the shape. If you were putting you coordinates on and coordinate graph you could draw lines to show where you can see a shape, however not every time you put coordinates in a graph as such you can make a shape. This shape has a outline and boundary so you can see it and is not just regular dots on a regular paper.

Shape analysis
The above-mentioned mathematical definitions of rigid and non-rigid shape have arisen in the field of statistical shape analysis. In particular, Procrustes analysis is a technique used for comparing shapes of similar objects (e.g. bones of different animals), or measuring the deformation of a deformable object. Other methods are designed to work with non-rigid (bendable) objects, e.g. for posture independent shape retrieval (see for example Spectral shape analysis).

Similarity classes
All similar triangles have the same shape. These shapes can be classified using complex numbers $u$, $v$, $w$ for the vertices, in a method advanced by J.A. Lester and Rafael Artzy. For example, an equilateral triangle can be expressed by the complex numbers 0, 1, (1 + i√3)/2 representing its vertices. Lester and Artzy call the ratio $$S(u, v, w) = \frac{u - w}{u - v} $$ the shape of triangle $(u, v, w)$. Then the shape of the equilateral triangle is $$\frac{0 - \frac{1 + i \sqrt{3}}{2}}{0 - 1} = \frac{1 + i\sqrt{3}}{2} = \cos(60^\circ) + i\sin(60^\circ) = e^{i\pi/3}.$$ For any affine transformation of the complex plane, $$z \mapsto a z + b,\quad a \ne 0,$$  a triangle is transformed but does not change its shape. Hence shape is an invariant of affine geometry. The shape $p = S(u,v,w)$ depends on the order of the arguments of function S, but permutations lead to related values. For instance, $$1 - p = 1 - \frac{u-w}{u-v} = \frac{w-v}{u-v} = \frac{v-w}{v-u} = S(v,u,w).$$ Also $$p^{-1} = S(u,w,v).$$ Combining these permutations gives $$S(v,w,u) = (1 - p)^{-1}.$$ Furthermore, $$p(1-p)^{-1} = S(u,v,w)S(v,w,u) = \frac{u-w}{v-w} = S(w,v,u). $$ These relations are "conversion rules" for shape of a triangle.

The shape of a quadrilateral is associated with two complex numbers $p$, $q$. If the quadrilateral has vertices $u$, $v$, $w$, $x$, then $p = S(u,v,w)$ and $q = S(v,w,x)$. Artzy proves these propositions about quadrilateral shapes: A polygon $$ (z_1, z_2,...z_n)$$ has a shape defined by n − 2 complex numbers $$S(z_j, z_{j+1}, z_{j+2}), \ j=1,...,n-2.$$ The polygon bounds a convex set when all these shape components have imaginary components of the same sign.
 * 1) If $$ p = (1-q)^{-1},$$ then the quadrilateral is a parallelogram.
 * 2) If a parallelogram has $| arg p | = | arg q |$, then it is a rhombus.
 * 3) When $p = 1 + i$ and $q = (1 + i)/2$, then the quadrilateral is square.
 * 4) If $$p = r(1-q^{-1})$$ and $sgn r = sgn(Im p)$, then the quadrilateral is a trapezoid.

Human perception of shapes
Human vision relies on a wide range of shape representations. Some psychologists have theorized that humans mentally break down images into simple geometric shapes (e.g., cones and spheres) called geons. Others have suggested shapes are decomposed into features or dimensions that describe the way shapes tend to vary, like their segmentability, compactness and spikiness. When comparing shape similarity, however, at least 22 independent dimensions are needed to account for the way natural shapes vary.

There is also clear evidence that shapes guide human attention.

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

title: Shape


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Talk:Master P

Master P products
Hello Mr. Master P I have a question that I’m trying to get help with; us killing one another instead of not trying to be someone to make something positive out of our lives. How can the social media help our community to be able to help one another 2600:4040:BFEB:2900:A8E0:D4A1:AF35:B09E (talk) 22:02, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Hey Master P I love your songs and albums of all the time@ 41.113.244.33 (talk) 12:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Master P


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Twig

A twig is a thin, often short, branch of a tree or bush.

The buds on the twig are an important diagnostic characteristic, as are the abscission scars where the leaves have fallen away. The color, texture, and patterning of the twig bark are also important, in addition to the thickness and nature of any pith of the twig.

There are two types of twigs: vegetative twigs and fruiting spurs. Fruiting spurs are specialized twigs that generally branch off the sides of branches and are stubby and slow-growing, with many annular ring markings from seasons past. The twig's age and rate of growth can be determined by counting the winter terminal bud scale scars, or annular ring marking, across the diameter of the twig.

Uses
Twigs can be useful in starting a fire. They can be used as kindling wood, bridging the gap between highly flammable tinder (dry grass and leaves) and firewood. This is due to their high amounts of stored carbon dioxide used in photosynthesis.

Twigs are a feature of tool use by non-humans. For example, chimpanzees have been observed using twigs to go "fishing" for termites, and elephants have been reported using twigs to scratch parts of their ears and mouths which could not be reached by rubbing against a tree.

title: Twig


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Acrux

Acrux is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Crux. It has the Bayer designation α Crucis, which is Latinised to Alpha Crucis and abbreviated Alpha Cru or α Cru. With a combined visual magnitude of +0.76, it is the 13th-brightest star in the night sky. It is the most southerly star of the asterism known as the Southern Cross and is the southernmost first-magnitude star, 2.3 degrees more southerly than Alpha Centauri. This system is located at a distance of 321 light-years from the Sun.

To the naked eye Acrux appears as a single star, but it is actually a multiple star system containing six components. Through optical telescopes, Acrux appears as a triple star, whose two brightest components are visually separated by about 4 arcseconds and are known as Acrux A and Acrux B, α1 Crucis and α2 Crucis, or α Crucis A and α Crucis B. Both components are B-type stars, and are many times more massive and luminous than the Sun. This system was the second ever to be recognized as a binary, in 1685 by a Jesuit priest. α1 Crucis is itself a spectroscopic binary with components designated α Crucis Aa (officially named Acrux, historically the name of the entire system) and α Crucis Ab. Its two component stars orbit every 76 days at a separation of about 1 astronomical unit (AU). HR 4729, also known as Acrux C, is a more distant companion, forming a triple star through small telescopes. C is also a spectroscopic binary, which brings the total number of stars in the system to at least five.

Nomenclature
α Crucis (Latinised to Alpha Crucis) is the system's Bayer designation; α1 and α2 Crucis, those of its two main components stars. The designations of these two constituents as Acrux A and Acrux B and those of A's components—Acrux Aa and Acrux Ab—derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for multiple star systems, and adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The historical name Acrux for α1 Crucis is an "Americanism" coined in the 19th century, but entering common use only by the mid 20th century. In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN states that in the case of multiple stars the name should be understood to be attributed to the brightest component by visual brightness. The WGSN approved the name Acrux for the star Acrux Aa on 20 July 2016 and it is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.

Since Acrux is at −63° declination, making it the southernmost first-magnitude star, it is only visible south of latitude 27° North. It barely rises from cities such as Miami, United States, or Karachi, Pakistan (both around 25°N) and not at all from New Orleans, United States, or Cairo, Egypt (both about 30°N). Because of Earth's axial precession, the star was visible to ancient Hindu astronomers in India who named it Tri-shanku. It was also visible to the ancient Romans and Greeks, who regarded it as part of the constellation of Centaurus.

In Chinese, 十字架 (Shí Zì Jià, "Cross"), refers to an asterism consisting of Acrux, Mimosa, Gamma Crucis and Delta Crucis. Consequently, Acrux itself is known as 十字架二 (Shí Zì Jià èr, "the Second Star of Cross").

This star is known as Estrela de Magalhães ("Star of Magellan") in Portuguese.

Stellar properties
The two components, α1 and α2 Crucis, are separated by 4 arcseconds. α1 is magnitude 1.40 and α2 is magnitude 2.09, both early class B stars, with surface temperatures of about 28,000 and $75.779 day$, respectively. Their luminosities are 25,000 and 16,000 times that of the Sun. α1 and α2 orbit over such a long period that motion is only barely seen. From their minimum separation of 430 astronomical units, the period is estimated to be around 1,500 years.

α1 is itself a spectroscopic binary star, with its components thought to be around 14 and 10 times the mass of the Sun and orbiting in only 76 days at a separation of about $0.46$. The masses of α2 and the brighter component α1 suggest that the stars will someday explode as supernovae. Component Ab may perform electron capture in the degenerate O+Ne+Mg core and trigger a supernova explosion, otherwise it will become a massive white dwarf.

Photometry with the TESS satellite has shown that one of the stars in the α Crucis system is a β Cephei variable, although α1 and α2 Crucis are too close for TESS to resolve and determine which one is the pulsator.

Rizzuto and colleagues determined in 2011 that the α Crucis system was 66% likely to be a member of the Lower Centaurus–Crux sub-group of the Scorpius–Centaurus association. It was not previously seen to be a member of the group.

The cooler, less-luminous B-class star HR 4729 (HD 108250) lies 90 arcseconds away from triple star system α Crucis and shares its motion through space, suggesting it may be gravitationally bound to it, and it is therefore generally assumed to be physically associated. It is itself a spectroscopic binary system, sometimes catalogued as component C (Acrux C) of the Acrux multiple system. Another fainter visual companion listed as component D or Acrux D. A further seven faint stars are also listed as companions out to a distance of about two arc-minutes.

On 2 October 2008, the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft resolved three of the components (A, B and C) of the multiple star system as Saturn's disk occulted it.

In culture
Acrux is represented in the flags of Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea as one of five stars that compose the Southern Cross. It is also featured in the flag of Brazil, along with 26 other stars, each of which represents a state; Acrux represents the state of São Paulo. As of 2015, it is also represented on the cover of the Brazilian passport.

The Brazilian oceanographic research vessel Alpha Crucis is named after the star.

title: Acrux


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Neil Innes

Neil James Innes (9 December 1944 – 29 December 2019) was an English writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the pioneering comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. He co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project, with Python Eric Idle, and wrote the band's songs. He also wrote and voiced the 1980s ITV children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls.

Early life
Innes was born in Danbury in Essex. His Scottish father was a warrant officer in the British Army, and Innes spent his childhood in West Germany where his father was deployed with the British Army of the Rhine. He took piano lessons from age 7 to 14 and taught himself to play guitar. His parents were supportive of their children's artistic leanings, and his father also drew and painted. After returning to the United Kingdom, Innes received his formal education at Thorpe Grammar School, the Norwich School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London, where he studied fine art. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 1966.

The Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band
While still at Goldsmiths, Innes joined a semi-professional college band originally called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band (after Bonzo the dog, an illustrated cartoon character from the 1920s, and the art movement Dada), which was later renamed the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band after the group tired of constantly explaining the concept of Dada to confused onlookers (and later still the band name was officially shortened to the Bonzo Dog Band). At this point the band, which then had a revolving membership of anything up to a dozen players at a time, largely performed a dada-influenced, deliberately shambolic, comedic repertoire of trad-jazz cover versions at local public houses and college events, to the delight and occasional bemusement of audiences.

Innes had met the band's co-founders Vivian Stanshall and Rodney Slater some time earlier when they and bandmate "Legs" Larry Smith were studying at the Central School of Art, but Innes' official entry into the band was actually facilitated by his then-landlord and college tutor, Vernon Dudley Bohay Nowell, who happened to be the band's bass guitarist at the time. Innes' induction into the band proved to be fundamental to their eventual success when he brought a more focused and disciplined musical direction to their efforts, with his talents as a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist. At the band's creative peak in 1968 and 1969, Innes, alone and together with Stanshall, composed most of the band's original material, including his solo composition (and sole Bonzos hit) "I'm the Urban Spaceman", (produced by Apollo C. Vermouth, a collective alias for Paul McCartney and Gus Dudgeon), and "Death Cab for Cutie" (with lyrics by Stanshall), which featured in the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Innes won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Novel(ty) Song in 1968 for "I'm the Urban Spaceman".

During the same creatively-fertile 1968/69 period, Innes and the Bonzo Dog Band also appeared each week in both seasons of the British children's television series Do Not Adjust Your Set which also featured future Monty Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. Although initially intended to appeal solely to children, the show's surreal and absurdist nature soon also attracted a large adult following.

After the break-up of the Bonzo Dog Band in early 1970, Innes joined with former Dog Band bassist Dennis Cowan, drummer Ian Wallace and guitarist Roger McKew to form The World, a band hoping for "more commercial" success with music ranging from rock to pure pop, yet still retaining some Doo-Dah style and even some of the humour. However, by the time their first and only album, Lucky Planet, was released in late 1970 the members had already disbanded and were moving on to other projects.

GRIMMS and Monty Python
The 1970s proved to be a highly prolific decade for Innes as a solo artist, band member and live stage and television performer.

In 1971, Innes briefly reunited with most of his former Bonzo Dog Band colleagues to record their reunion/contractual obligation album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly, and he, Vivian Stanshall and Dennis Cowan also formed a short-lived touring band named Freaks with Keith Moon on drums. This in turn led Innes and Stanshall to a union with The Scaffold and other musicians, poets and performers later that year as GRIMMS. While Stanshall effectively bowed out of this group soon after its formation, Innes remained as one of the permanent core members for the next five years, working with Andy Roberts, Roger McGough, John Gorman, Mike McGear, Dave Richards, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, John Megginson, future Rutles bandmates Ollie Halsall and John Halsey, and Gerry Conway (among many others). Although GRIMMS was initially conceived purely as a touring revue-type ensemble, early 1973 saw the release of their self-titled live album, followed by a second studio-recorded album Rockin' Duck at the end of the same year. GRIMMS remained an informal enough setup throughout this period to allow the various members to come and go as they pleased and continue with their own outside musical, performing and literary careers, and in 1973 Innes also recorded his debut solo album How Sweet To Be An Idiot, aided and abetted by various GRIMMS. The group also undertook regular and extensive tours of the UK university and theatre circuit throughout its existence, releasing a book of humorous poetry, lyrics and photographs in 1974 entitled Clowns On The Road detailing some of their experiences. The final GRIMMS studio LP Sleepers was released in 1976, after which their activities as a group ceased.

In the mid-1970s, Innes became closely associated with the Monty Python team, having first worked with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle on the 1960s television show Do Not Adjust Your Set. He contributed music to the Monty Python albums Monty Python's Previous Record (1972) and The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973), and played a major role in performing and writing songs and sketches for their final TV series in 1974, after John Cleese temporarily left the troupe. He wrote a squib of a song called "George III" for the episode "The Golden Age of Ballooning", which was sung by the Flirtations but billed onscreen as the Ronettes. He also wrote the song "When Does a Dream Begin?", used in "Anything Goes: The Light Entertainment War". He co-wrote the "Most Awful Family in Britain" sketch and played a humorous stilted guitar version of the theme song, "The Liberty Bell" march, during the credits of the last episode, "Party Political Broadcast". He is one of only two non-Pythons ever to be credited writers for the TV series, the other being Douglas Adams (who co-wrote the "Patient Abuse" sketch, also featured in "Party Political Broadcast").

He appeared on stage with the Pythons in the UK and Canada in 1973, in London in 1974 and in New York City in 1976, performing the Bob Dylanesque "Protest Song" (complete with harmonica) on the album Monty Python Live at City Center. He was introduced as Raymond Scum. After his introduction he told the audience, "I've suffered for my music. Now it's your turn." In 1980, he travelled to the States with the Pythons again, subsequently appearing in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. He performed the songs "How Sweet to Be an Idiot" and "I'm the Urban Spaceman". He also appeared as one of the singing "Bruces" in the Philosopher Sketch and as a Church Policeman in the "Salvation Fuzz" sketch.

Innes wrote original songs for the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), such as "Knights of the Round Table" and "Brave Sir Robin". He appeared in the film as a head-bashing monk, the serf crushed by the giant wooden rabbit, and the leader of Sir Robin's minstrels. He also had small roles in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), and performed the whistling on the latter's hit song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". His collaborations with Monty Python and other artists were documented in the musical film The Seventh Python (2008), which premiered at the Mods & Rockers Film Festival on 26 June 2008.

Rutland Weekend Television, The Rutles, and The Innes Book of Records
After Monty Python finished its original run on UK television, Innes joined Eric Idle on the series Rutland Weekend Television. This was a Pythonesque sketch show based in a fictional low-budget regional television station, which ran for two seasons in 1975–76. Songs and sketches from the series appeared on a 1976 BBC LP, The Rutland Weekend Songbook. One short sketch on the show spawned the Rutles (the "prefab four"), which was an affectionate pastiche of the Beatles. In the sketch Innes portrayed the character of Ron Nasty, a character based on John Lennon, while Idle portrayed Dirk McQuickly (a character based on Paul McCartney), and the fictional group briefly performed 'I Must Be In Love', a suitably Beatlesque pastiche written by Innes.

Eric Idle later played a videotape of the Rutles sketch on Saturday Night Live in 1976 during an appearance as guest host, and the favourable response led to a 1978 American-made spin-off TV movie, All You Need Is Cash, with Innes and Idle again playing Nasty and McQuickly. While Idle and Innes co-created the original Rutles sketch concept, Idle wrote the screenplay for the film on his own, and Innes composed all of the songs for the project without any input from Idle (Dirk McQuickly's musical contributions on the soundtrack were performed by guitarist/vocalist Ollie Halsall while Idle lip-synched them in the film). Innes' songs consequently appeared on the soundtrack album The Rutles, released by Warner Bros in 1978.

The songs written by Innes so closely pastiched the original source material that he was taken to court by the owners of the Beatles' catalogue. Innes had to testify under oath that he had not listened to the songs at all while composing the Rutles' songs, but had created them completely originally based on what he remembered various songs by the Beatles sounding like at different times. However the court ruled in favour of ATV music and imposed co-writing credits and royalties. Many years later, Innes' own music publisher demanded a co-writing credit for Innes from Beatles-influenced band Oasis, for their 1994 song "Whatever", as it directly lifted parts of its melody from Innes' 1973 song "How Sweet to Be an Idiot". This event was subsequently referenced in the Rutles' song "Shangri-La" on their 1996 reunion album The Rutles Archaeology, which was itself a parody of The Beatles Anthology.

After Rutland Weekend Television, Innes made a solo series in 1979 on BBC television, The Innes Book of Records, which ran for three series until 1981. The series offered an early example of music-video presentation, albeit on a shoestring BBC budget, centred around new recordings and alternate versions of many of Innes' older compositions along with new material written specially for the show. In keeping with Innes' usual whimsically surreal style, each episode was linked by a loose and often absurdist theme and also featured an eccentric guest performer (such as Stanley Unwin or Percy Edwards) or musician (such as Ivor Cutler or Jake Thackray). Innes' former bandmate Vivian Stanshall also appeared in one episode, reciting his own surrealist monologue about the English seaside.

Other television work
During the 1980s, Innes delved into children's entertainment. This new career path began when he took over from Tom Baker as host of Yorkshire TV's The Book Tower for the ITV network. He went on to play the role of the Magician in the live-action children's television series Puddle Lane, also made by Yorkshire Television. He also wrote and voiced the 1980s children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls, a motley collection of "rejects" from a toy factory. The 65 episodes for Yorkshire Television included the characters Sad Sack, Hi-Fi, Lucy, Dotty, Back-to-Front, Princess and Claude.

He also composed and performed original music and songs for children's television, including Puddle Lane, The Raggy Dolls, The Riddlers and Tumbledown Farm. He brought Monty Python's Terry Jones's book Fairy Tales to television as East of the Moon. He contributed all the stories and music on this production. He was also involved with the popular children's show Tiswas.

Also, during the 1980s, Innes wrote and performed incidental music and songs for the BBC TV series, Jane. Jane was a short-form drama series which was shown nightly in 10-minute segments. The weekly episodes were edited together and broadcast in a 50-minute version on Saturday evening.

Reunion concerts
At the time of The Beatles Anthology CDs, there was a revival of interest in the Rutles and a new album was released in 1996 entitled Archaeology.

In 1998, Innes hosted a 13-episode television series for Anglia Television, called Away with Words, in which he travelled to different areas of Britain to explore the origins of well-known words and phrases.

Innes took part, along with the remaining Monty Python members, in the 2002 Concert for George, in memory of George Harrison.

Innes was occasionally heard (often as the butt of jokes) standing in as the pianist for the BBC Radio 4 panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

Innes toured the UK in 2006 and produced a new Bonzo CD as part of the Bonzo Dog Band's 40th Anniversary tour. In 2008 he undertook the Neil Innes and Fatso 30th Anniversary tour, playing predominantly Rutles numbers with a few Bonzos and Python items.

The Idiot Bastard Band
In late 2010, Innes announced the formation of the Idiot Bastard Band, a comedy musical collective featuring himself, Adrian Edmondson, Phill Jupitus, Simon Brint and Rowland Rivron. The band debuted, with an 8-week residency, at the Wilmington Arms in Clerkenwell, London in December, playing a range of comedy songs old and new, with deliberately little rehearsal.

New concerts were scheduled in 2011. Jupitus was unable to attend due to prior commitments and was replaced by several special guests, including Paul Whitehouse, Barry Cryer and Nigel Planer. Following the death of Brint, the band performed a further tour in 2012. The band's name is a play on Frank Zappa's song The Idiot Bastard Son.

Personal life and death
While a student at Goldsmiths College, London, in the mid-1960s Innes met Yvonne Catherine Hilton; they married on 3 March 1966. The couple had three sons, Miles (b. 1967), Luke (b. 1971), and Barney (b. 1978).

Innes died of a heart attack on 29 December 2019 at Montcuq, Lot, France, where he had lived for several years. Fellow entertainers, including John Cleese and Stephen Fry, paid tribute to him. The League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss also paid tribute to Innes. Comedian Diane Morgan called him "one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and a towering talent," and director Edgar Wright said he was "forever a fan" of Innes.

Discography
Singles

Solo albums

 * How Sweet to Be an Idiot (1973)
 * The Rutland Weekend Songbook (1976, with Eric Idle)
 * Taking Off (1977)
 * The Innes Book of Records (1979)
 * Off the Record (1982)
 * Erik the Viking (1989, film soundtrack)
 * Re-Cycled Vinyl Blues (1994, compilation)
 * Recollections 1 (2000, compilation)
 * Recollections 2 (2001, compilation)
 * Recollections 3 (2001, compilation)
 * Works in Progress (2005)
 * Dogman (A Comedy Musical Story For Children) (2005, with John Dowie & Phill Jupitus)
 * Innes Own World – Best Bits Part One (2010, re-edit of 2003 radio series)
 * Innes Own World – Best Bits Part Two (2010, re-edit of 2003 radio series)
 * Back Catalogue: Silly Songs/Love Songs/Protest Songs/Party Songs (2010, digital compilation series, resequencing of Recollections albums)
 * Farewell Posterity Tour (with Fatso) (2014, live album, recorded 2008)
 * Nearly Really (2019, final recording)

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
 * Gorilla (1967)
 * The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse (1968)
 * Tadpoles (1969)
 * Keynsham (1969)
 * Let's Make Up and Be Friendly (1972)
 * Wrestle Poodles... And Win! (2006, live album)
 * Pour l'Amour des Chiens (2007)

The World
 * Lucky Planet (1970)

GRIMMS

 * Grimms (1973, live album)
 * Rockin' Duck (1973)
 * Sleepers (1976)

The Rutles

 * The Rutles (1978)
 * Archaeology (1996)
 * Live + Raw (2014, live album, recorded 2013)
 * The Wheat Album (2018, demo compilation, recorded 1992)

Filmography

 * Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-69) as various (also composer)
 * Magical Mystery Tour (1967) as himself
 * Monty Python (1974, fourth series only) as various (also writer/composer)
 * Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) as various (also composer)
 * Rutland Weekend Television (1975–76) as various (also composer)
 * Pleasure at Her Majesty's (1976) as Bob Nylon
 * Jabberwocky (1977) as 2nd Herald
 * All You Need Is Cash (1978) as Ron Nasty (also composer)
 * The Innes Book of Records (1979-1981) as Nick Cabaret/Nobby Normal/Bob Nylon/various (also writer/composer)
 * Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) as A Weedy Samaritan
 * Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1980) as various (also composer)
 * Frankie Howerd Strikes Again (1981) as various (also composer)
 * The Missionary (1982) as Gin Palace Singer
 * Puddle Lane (1985-89) as Magician (also composer)
 * The Raggy Dolls (1986-1994) as Narrator (also writer/composer)
 * East of the Moon (1988) as various (also composer)
 * Erik the Viking (1989) as Hy-Brasilian (also composer)
 * Away with Words (1998) as himself (also writer)
 * Concert for George (2002) as Barbershop Singer
 * The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (2003) as Ron Nasty (archive footage only, also composer)
 * The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band 40th Anniversary Celebration (2006) as himself (also composer)
 * The Seventh Python (2008) as himself (also subject)
 * Not the Messiah (2009) as Mexican/Mountie

Books

 * "Gloom, Doom & Very Funny Money: Economics For Half-wits"
 * published:29 October 1992 (Hardback & Paperback)
 * publisher:Piccadilly Press Ltd.

with GRIMMS:

 * "Clowns On The Road"
 * published: 3 October 1974 (Paperback)
 * publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

The Raggy Dolls series with Melvyn Jacobsen:

 * "Hot Air Balloon" (25 January 1990)
 * "Moving House" (25 January 1990)
 * "Royal Tour" (25 January 1990)
 * "A Trip To The Sea" (25 January 1990)
 * "In Days Of Old" (18 October 1990)
 * "Stolen Parrot" (18 October 1990)
 * "Treehouse" (18 October 1990)
 * "We Are Not Amused" (18 October 1990)
 * "The Raggy Dolls Activity Book" (30 November 1990)
 * all published in paperback
 * all published by:Boxtree Ltd.

with John Dowie:

 * "Dogman: A Comedy Musical Story For Children"
 * published:4 April 2007 ( Audio book with paperback book edition)
 * published by:Laughing Stock Productions Ltd.
 * story by John Dowie, narrated by Phil Jupitus, with songs by Neil innes

title: Neil Innes


text:
Russian Ark

Russian Ark (Русский ковчег) is a 2002 experimental historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. The plot follows an unnamed narrator, who wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler.

An international co-production between Russia and Germany, Russian Ark was shot entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001, using a one-take single 87-minute Steadicam sequence shot. It extensively uses the fourth wall device, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times, the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed.

The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Russian Ark is widely regarded as one of the greatest Russian films of all time.

Plot
On a winter's day, a small party of men and women arrive by horse-drawn carriage to a minor side entrance of the Winter Palace, dressed in the style of the early 19th century to attend a ball hosted by the Emperor Alexander I. The narrator (whose point of view is always in first-person) meets another spectral but visible outsider, "the European", and follows him through numerous rooms of the palace. "The European", a 19th-century French diplomat who appears to be the Marquis de Custine, has nothing but contempt for Russians; he tells the narrator that they are unable to create or appreciate beauty as "Europeans" do, as demonstrated by the European treasures around him. Each room manifests a different period of Russian history, although the periods are not in chronological order.

Featured are Peter the Great harassing and striking one of his generals; a spectacular presentation of operas and plays in the era of Catherine the Great; an imperial audience in which Tsar Nicholas I is offered a formal apology by the Shah of Persia, represented by his grandson Khosrow Mirza, for the death of ambassador Alexander Griboyedov in 1829; the idyllic family life of Tsar Nicholas II's children; the ceremonial changing of the various regiments of the Imperial Guard; contemporary tourists visiting the palace; the museum's director whispering the need to make repairs during the rule of Joseph Stalin; and a desperate Leningrader making his own coffin during the 900-day siege of the city during World War II.

A grand ball follows, held in the Nicholas Hall, with many of the participants in spectacular period costume and a full orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev featuring music by Mikhail Glinka, then a long final exit with a crowd down the grand staircase. The European tells the narrator that he belongs here, in the world of 1913 where everything is still beautiful and elegant, and does not want to go any further. The narrator then walks backwards out the hallway and sees many people from different time periods exiting the building together. As he watches them, the narrator quietly departs the procession, leaves the building through a side door and looks out upon the River Neva.

Cast

 * Alexander Sokurov as Narrator
 * Sergei Dontsov (Sergey Dreyden) as the European (Marquis de Custine)
 * Mariya Kuznetsova as Catherine the Great
 * Marksim Sergeyev as Peter the Great
 * Anna Aleksakhina as Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
 * Vladimir Baranov as Nicholas II
 * Svetlana Svirko as Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia)

Production
The film displays 33 rooms of the museum, which are filled with a cast of over 2,000 actors and three orchestras. Russian Ark was recorded in uncompressed high-definition video using a Sony HDW-F900 camera. The information was not recorded compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes which was carried behind the cameraman as he traveled from room to room, scene to scene. According to In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, the documentary on the making of the film, four attempts were made. The first failed at the five-minute mark. After two more failed attempts, they were left with only enough battery power for one final take. The four hours of daylight available were also nearly gone. Fortunately, the final take was a success and the film was completed at 90 minutes. Tilman Büttner, the director of photography and Steadicam operator, executed the shot on 23 December 2001.

In a 2002 interview, Büttner said that film sound was recorded separately. "Every time I did the take, or someone else made a mistake, I would curse, and that would have gotten in, so we did the sound later." Lighting directors of photography on the film were Bernd Fischer and Anatoli Radionov. The director later rejected Büttner's nomination for a European Film Academy award, believing that only the whole film should gain an award.

Post-production
In post-production the uncompressed HD 87-minute one-shot could be reworked in detail: besides many object removals (mainly cables and other film equipment), compositings (e.g. additional snow or fog), stabilisations, selective colour-corrections and digitally added focus changes, the whole film was continuously and dynamically reframed (resized) and for certain moments even time-warped (slowed down and sped up). This work took several weeks and was mainly executed by editor Patrick Wilfert under supervision of lead editor Sergei Ivanov on Discreet Logic's Inferno system. Avoiding any playouts and using framestore to framestore transfers only, the picture was left uncompressed, before being reprinted onto filmstock for theatrical distribution.

Background
The narrator's guide, "the European", is based on the book by the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine, who visited Russia in 1839 and wrote La Russie en 1839, in which he depicted Russia in extremely unflattering terms. A few biographical elements from Custine's life are shown in the film. Like the European, the Marquis' mother was friends with the Italian sculptor Canova and he himself was very religious. Custine's book mocks Russian civilization as a thin veneer of Europe on an Asiatic soul. For Custine, Europe was "civilization" while Asia was "barbarism", and his placing of Russia as a part of Asia rather than Europe was meant to deny that Russians had any sort of civilization worthy of the name. Echoing this sentiment, the film's European comments that Russia is a theater and that the people he meets are actors. The Marquis's family fortune came from a porcelain works, hence the European's interest in the Sèvres porcelain waiting for the diplomatic reception. At the end of the film, which depicts the last imperial ball in 1913, the European appears to accept Russia as a European nation.

In One Breath, a documentary about the making of Russian Ark, written and directed by Knut Elstermann, gives more insight into the single long shot tracking techniques and formidable organization behind the making of the film.

Box office
The film was not a huge commercial success, though as an arthouse film it performed strongly in many territories. These include the UK, Japan, Korea, Argentina, and especially the US, where the film remains one of the most successful of both German and Russian movies of recent decades.

Russian Ark is a German-Russian co-production. The film grossed $3,048,997 in the United States and Canada, with $5,641,171 internationally, for a worldwide total of $8,690,168.

Critical response
Russian Ark received high critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 109 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The consensus review summary reads, "As successful as it is ambitious, Russian Ark condenses three centuries of Russian history into a single, uninterrupted, 87-minute take." On Metacritic, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has an 86/100 rating based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Roger Ebert wrote, "Apart from anything else, this is one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen.... [T]he effect of the unbroken flow of images (experimented with in the past by directors like Hitchcock and Max Ophüls) is uncanny. If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. Russian Ark spins a daydream made of centuries."

Slant Magazine ranked the film 84th in its list of the best films of the 2000s. In a critics' and readers' poll by Empire magazine, it was voted the 358th greatest film of all time.

Awards and nominations
Russian Ark received the Visions Award at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, a Special Citation at the 2003 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards and the 2004 Silver Condor Award for Best Foreign Film from the Argentine Film Critics Association; it was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Hugo at the 2002 Chicago International Film Festival and the 2004 Nika Award for Best Film. In addition, Alexander Sokurov was named Best Director at Fancine in 2003 and was nominated for the 2002 European Film Award for Best Director. Cinematographer Tilman Büttner was also nominated for various awards for his work on the film, including a European Film Award for Best Cinematographer and a German Camera Award.

title: Russian Ark


text:
Talk:Main Page/Archive 4

Talk:Main Page Archive 4
Hard to believe the Leonids weren't up on the main page...if somebody with authority to change it happens by soon, it might be worth adding them.

 * Done. Good for a couple days at least. --mav

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To all wikipedians: Happy New Year 2003!!

Sincerely yours, [[User:AntonioMartin|AntonioMartin

Could we add Oil spill off Spanish coast? - Montréalais

 * Done. "One is happy to be of service, as the great Andrew Martin used to say." --Ed Poor

We need Homeland Security Bill Lir 08:56 Nov 20, 2002 (UTC)

Add a link to whatever foreign wiki happens to have the most entries. Does anyone else have a suspicion that foreign wikis are eventually going to become a really good way to learn a language? 129.186.80.116 11:45 Nov 20, 2002 (UTC)

The Swedish wikipedia is active, please add a link. // Dan Koehl

 * Much apologies for not having an interlanguage link for the Swedish Wikipedia. We were trying to limit interlanguage links on the Main Page to active Wikipedias and seemed to have missed the Swedish one. This is probably my fault and I do apologize. --mav

May I suggest adding "rabies" to "in the news"? We have not had the disease here in UK for almost exactly 100 years, but some chap just died of it in Scotland. GrahamN 04:47 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

 * The Americans got antibiotic resistance listed so its only fair. Good for at least a few days. --mav 04:55 Nov 25, 2002 (UTC)

 * Thank you GrahamN 00:27 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

- Might add United States Department of Homeland Security to current events dml

 * Done. In the future please make sure an item you want on the Main Page is already mentioned on the Current events or dead celebs page before you ask. --mav 01:51 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

- Hi mav, the link to Chinese Wikipedia is old, would you like to change it to zh.wikipedia.org? thanks.--Ghyll 16:54 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)

 * Done. Alos changed the links for other wikipedias that have recently moved, and removed two no longer very recent deaths. --Scipius 17:29 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)

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Can we add a text like "Please use the sandbox if you just want to experiment" to the first paragraph? My experience with my own wiki is that the sandbox is used if its purpose is clearly explained, which is very good for newbies to avoid breaking articles. But right now the sandbox link is hidden among many, and the link name is not intuitive enough to make it useful. --Eloquence

http://zh.wikipedia.org - please add to other languages

-fonzy

 * It has been on the Main Page for some time now. --mav

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"Thanksgiving" should read "American Thanksgiving" or some such. I had Thanksgiving a month and a half ago. - Montréalais

 * And I not at all... ;-) Do we put other festivals & celebrations on the front page? -- Tarquin

 * No - but I don't see why it would hurt to have them on the Main Page for a day or two. There is plenty of room on the This day in history line after the date. --mav

please add to main:

Wikipedians_resources

-fonzy

 * Help desk is already listed. --mav

It's not the same thing -- the page I gave gives a list of Wikipædians resources so you know who to ask. That help-desk is mostly general.

 * As I point out on the resources talk page, it has the potential to be useful. Unfortunately, you are not likely to be taken seriously if you don't invest a certain minimum effort in your sentences. I count > 11 spelling errors / typos in the above sentence .. --Eloquence

1)How do you know i dont have learning difficulties?

 * I'm sure you can do better. "Difficulties" is a rather, well, difficult word, compared to "the", don't you think? And you got that one right. Just read your sentences a few times before saving, I know you didn't because you replied fairly quickly. --Eloquence

I was making a point and i do have things wrong with me, like NF and AS. - Fonzy

 * We're trying to keep editor links to a minumum on the front page -- link from Utilities instead -- Tarquin

 * Fair enough. I'm not even saying that people are right for not trying to get your point if it is not expressed well, I'm just saying that it will happen. One of the first lessons in school is that "people who can't spell right can't think right", and many have taken this in as gospel. Try to work on your edits patiently before saving them. I know you can do that. Nobody will criticize you if you take more time for your edits than other people. --Eloquence

i am not acusing you of it but where ever youg ot that rule from, i would like to rip up, i can thnk perfectly well. I know more than most ppl in my class. My main problem is expressing my self, in writing and speach.

 * There are plenty of people out there who are carelss typists, but we should make allowances for someone who has difficulty typing -- this is a wiki, we can clean up after each other. Dyslexics are, on average, of higher IQ. and Mav, one of our most prolific contributors has lousy spelling ;) -- Tarquin 14:08 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

Since you added Thanksgiving, please add Saint Nicholas, which is celebrated in many European countries on Dec 5 and Dec 6. Hopefully, we'll get some info on the different traditions. --Eloquence

 * This is exactly why I was against mentioning thanksgiving on the main page -- at what point do we draw the line? the catholic calendar has a saint on every day ... -- Tarquin

 * Well, Saint Nicholas is not strictly a Catholic thing. Many Protestants have adopted it, and in the Netherlands it's still as big as Christmas. I think it's a reasonably large festivity to be included, and getting it some exposure might help us to learn about the different ways it is celebrated internationally. --Eloquence

 * Done. I thought you were an Admin already Eloquence... Anyway, I obviously don't see any harm in having relevant and timely links to holidays on the Main Page. The This day in history line is usually largely blank and lonely. Interested people do have to remind Admins about this and they shouldn't get mad when we fail to read their minds about what to list and when. --mav

 * Nah, I'm just a developer, not a sysop. Thanks for adding the link. It's a bit sad that we have to protect the Main Page -- it could use some wiki love .. --Eloquence

 * Visit Main Page/Temp and have fun. :) --mav

Please move "computer science" to the science list and put "software engineering" under the "applied sciences" list.

It is pretty clear that algorithms and analysis go well with mathematics, while working applications are something else completely. Thank you.

-

'''Backing up database -- the database will be frozen for a few minutes to make an updated backup dump. If you find yourself locked out from editing, please feel free to peruse and edit the Meta-Wikipedia or one of our other language sections. --Brion 13:08 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)''' - Where does the "this day in history" entries come from? It lists Ramadan now, which isn't a historical event. Pearl Harbor should be listed. Tokerboy 16:25 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)

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The day in history stuff is outdated. Given that the Main Page is currently maintained mostly by one person (Mav), should we rename this to This week in history? --Eloquence

 * Hey, other people help. :) If I had to choose between this week and this day I would choose this day since the next link is always the current day. How about Historical anniversaries? --mav

 * Sounds good to me. I'm not entirely sure if the term anniversary has positive connotations. --Eloquence
 * Done. Yeah, anniversary isn't the best but it works. --mav

Why is not the link to the Czech site [] on the main page? The announcement can be "Czech (Cesky)" --Rudyment

 * That was just an oversight. Done. --mav

Can a new sentance be added about wiktioanry please? - fonzy

 * Come up with a good sentence and state a good place to place it and then we might get somewhere. --mav

 * May I for starters suggest in a new 2nd paragraph putting,
 * Wikipedia is not a dictionary but by popular demand we have begun our own at Wiktionary
 * Eclecticology

What are the rules regarding using a photograph of somebody? Vera Cruz 03:30 Dec 15, 2002 (UTC)
 * It depends on the photo, how it is used, what the copyright status of the photo is, who owns it and whether or not the person who took it or the subject is alive or dead and how long. Yes, it is complicated. You should post your question on the Village pump. --mav

i think that you all need to put something on olliscopes on this site because i cant find them ANYWHERE!!!!!!!!!! i NEED them for my science project!

 * Perhaps you are thinking of oscilloscopes. --Camembert

Why Bill Clinton? --Phoe6

 * It was a slow day as far as history is concerned so the impeachment of slick willy was the best I could come up with. He was impeached on December 19, 1998. --mav 19:42 Dec 23, 2002 (UTC)

The ongoing events reads. U.S plan to invade Iraq | War on terrorism

It should be 'U.S plan to invade Iraq IS NOT War on terrorism '--Phoe6

 * ? What are you talking about? Is that just an isolated rant? If so it is not appropriate to place it here. --mav 22:15 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

Mav, can you replace the layout block "About the project": with the new one in Main Page/Temp? This separates the large block as we already discussed, and I've added a link to the new Shared resources, which is currently an orphan. --Eloquence

 * Done. --mav

 * Thanks!--Eloquence

might it be appropriate to ad a reference to this article in the news,

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=535&ncid=535&e=6&u=/ap/20021230/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_217 more info: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20021223.html --12.233.98.161

 * A summary for it in Current events would be more than enough. --mav

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I'd like to add Mary Wesley to recent deaths, but the article is too stubbish at the moment. :( -- Tarquin 11:25 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC) (and can we clean up this talk page & remove all the old stuff? It's getting a bit too long)

 * She also needs to be listed on Recent celebrity deaths. Nah, you haven't seen long until you've seen my talk page. --mav

- Attention:

Unless somebody disagrees I'm going to tweak the formatting of the main page to more closely match current heading style. See Main Page/Temp. --mav

 * I think the headings are too big. It's OK in articles because you have a lot of text between them, but on the main page I would prefer something slightly smaller. It's too attention-grabbing. --Eloquence

 * I turned most of the headings into H3s by adding one H2 heading named ==Category Index==. This may not be the best name for it... Any ideas for an H2 heading name for the more meta-type stuff? --mav

 * One of the rules of design is to try to make things obvious instead of needing to point them out. Headings like "Category index", "Selected articles .." may not really be necessary. The large box around the selected articles stuff directs the first time visitor's attention to that box, whereas we would want them to read the "Welcome to Wikipedia" paragraph first (right now this works because the "Welcome to Wikipedia" stuff is bold). But if you want something to work on, the Wikipedia: namespace stuff could badly use cleanup and structuring, and we really need to come up with a well-defined process for first time visitors to figure out how things work around here. --Eloquence

 * Is that better? I do wish we could use the H2 - but yes at lower resolutions the H2 are too big. --mav

 * The "Category Index" heading, as Eloquence says, was not needed; the actual list of categories is self-explanatory. I liked the (now deleted) "Selected articles of timely interest" box, however. Boxing off the currently featured stuff visually simplified the page, which was good, and clarified it too. Yes, it does catch the eye, but as just one of the three primary foci of the page, and not to the exclusion of the "Welcome to Wikipedia" section or the category index, IMO. As for heading size, the smallest ones (as on the current main page) were best, even at fairly high resolutions. Tannin

 * It's OK here. Perhaps we should remove the Press Coverage section? It's not updated much and we have a detailed listing in Friends of Wikipedia (which could use some reorg as well). --Eloquence

 * I really like the temp page as of my last edit. Your idea to place everything in a table was great! Now everything fits on my screen (granted my sreen is 1400 pixels wide). --mav

IMO the H2 headings are needed to organize the page in 3 different areas. It is also conceptually clean to go from H1 -> H2 -> H3 --mav

 * It is certainly conceptually clean, but remember we are not working on an article here -- this is what the H1, H2, H3 hierarchy is useful for, where you need to structure large amounts of text. We are trying to create an intro page that gives the reader a good idea where to go without overtaxing him with information. By having many different font sizes, and many different headlines, the visitor doesn't know where to look, and the whole structure dissolves. Instead of looking for visual clues, he now has to read all those headlines: "Browse", "About" .. Good design makes clever use of small visual hints. Bad design makes use of lots of information that tells you what you should be doing. "I think you are writing a letter.." --Eloquence

 * Hm. I don't know. With the headings all a person has to do is just read the heading itself to know with the context is of the whole section. Without the heading the reader has to piece together the information for themselves by reading several subheadings and displayed links. The Browse and About headings give an instant cue to the organization of the whole page. If the H2 is displayed too big then that is something that needs to be fixed in the style sheet. --mav

 * While the two sections are very distinct (making it useful to distinguish them visually), the "About" section is fairly heterogenous. "About" is not really a proper description anyway, especially as we have links to all the non-English Wikipedias there. The left side (categories) is fairly obvious because it is the run-of-the mill category layout that many people are familiar with from Yahoo et al. Neither the "Browse" nor the "About" headline are particularly helpful in finding stuff. --Eloquence

i have no idea how to communicate with anybody here. Why isn't there some kind of simple java chatroom? Um, using recent changes cur last isn't very useful because you can't cut and paste from one of the selected documents. Could that be changed? I have an unstable connection and when it disconnects as Im clicking on submit...well i lose all my data...what can be done about that? Vera Cruz

 * That is a question for the village pump. --mav

The last line on every page is *sooo* ugly: ''This page... The page... This page...'' Not exactly good style. Can't we think of something more eloquent?

Like:

This page was last modified DATE and has been accessed NN times since DATE. Wikipedia content is available under the GNU FDL.

or something similar... -- Martin

 * I agree. When I have time I'll bug the developers about it. --mav

 * The text has been changed. --Eloquence

 * I find the "All text is available under the terms..." to be misleading, particularly as the justification is that some images may have additional restrictions on copying due to being fair-use excerpts of other non-GFDL copyrighted works. This is equally true of fair-use textual quotations (additionally you may be restricted by local trademark, patent, libel, privacy, blasphemy, obscenity, etc laws from copying various portions of the text), and ignores the many public domain and GFDL-only-licensed images that we do have. "Wikipedia content" would be much preferable IMHO. --Brion 11:16 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

 * I dunno - "Wikipedia content" seems a bit vague. How about "All content .. where not otherwise noted"? --Eloquence

 * The text has improved somewhat, but now "GNU Free Documentation License" has a line break (in Mozilla, and perhaps in other browsers too), which is even uglier than before. Can't the license stuff be put in a second line entirely, possibly in a somewhat smaller font?  Also, my suggestion to let last edit time and number of accesses switch places was not accidental, because I believe most casual readers are more interested in how old the content they are seeing might be.  Number of accesses is more of a geek thing (not that there's anything wrong with that).  Finally, I am not sure if it really helps to have "GNU" on every page so visibly.  A few people react somewhat allergic to GNU, and as much as I admire Richard Stallman, I fear people might lose confidence in our NPOV if they are familiar with some of Richard's decidedly non-NPOV statements... --Martin

 * Martin, I think these are non-issues. 1) Line-break -- happens when a line gets too long. Inserting arbitrary breaks is bad style, we might add more text there anyway. The font-size should be smaller, I already checked in a modified stylesheet but this doesn't seem to be live yet. 2) Last update vs. stats -- matter of taste. The last update isn't exactly very useful when someone just copied in a large chunk of text from the 1911 Britannica. Less extremely put, the fact that a page has been recently updated doesn't mean that it's up-to-date. The visitor counter is interesting to anyone who cares about the project. 3) GNU -- this is silly. It's the name of the license, and besides legal obligations, we should give credit where it's due.--Eloquence 22:19 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

 * Well, the GNU project is an operating system, basically. And the Wikipedia license is most definitely not called GNU, but GFDL.  Wikipedia, aside from using a license somewhat similar to Free Software, is in no way affiliated with the GNU project.  There is no legal obligation to put free advertising for the Free Software Foundation on virtually all our pages...  --Martin

 * GFDL is the abbreviation for GNU Free Documentation License. Since almost nobody knows what GFDL means, it makes sense to spell it out. Your GNU-paranoia is extremely silly. --Eloquence

 * In the free software world, the abbreviation GPL is commonly used. And mathematically speaking, it isn't even possible to spell out GFDL, because GNU is recursive... I suppose Wikipedia doesn't quite meet Richard Stallman's high standards anyway.  Many articles I have verified with Google did indeed contain bits of copyrighted material.  Is rewording really that difficult for many people? --Martin

 * Which articles contain copyrighted material? If so, please point it out on the respective Talk Page. Articles that contain copyrighted information should either be modified or listed on Votes for deletion.

 * Okay, the above column is now so narrow that only dogs can read it. If you're not discussing the layout of the Main Page, move it to meta or a new Wikipedia: page please -- Tarquin 19:56 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

What do you mean by it  is  too nar- row ? :-)

OK, OK, moved it to Copyright_bot. --Martin

A defiant North Korea warned that sanctions against it would "mean a war," this should probably go on the main page since both the us and north korea have threatened "no negotiation" Vera Cruz

 * And where exactly would that go? The selected articles section is a list of links - all other text needs to go in the corresponding selected article and/or in the corresponding grouping page (current events, recent celebrity deaths, day page etc). --mav

When I search for December 7, it's not listed at the top. Vera Cruz

 * See Searching.

its not helpful. Vera Cruz

 * Look again.

Well I see your change, and that helps explain why it's not working right, but if I type in December 7 i kinda wanna see a link to December 7, not December 6... Vera Cruz

Ricin should be capitalized. It's not a brand name. --Eloquence

---

The Wikipedia main page should have a better HTML "". In order to maximize bookmarks, references, searches, etc., please change "Main Page: Wikipedia" to "Wikipedia, Main Page". That way, someone bookmarking the page will always see Wikipedia even if the title of the page gets truncated. If someone responds to this, they might also like to consider similar changes for other Wikipedia pages.

 * I second your opinion about the Main Page title. I accidentally bookmarked that page twice, because I was scanning my bookmarks for Wikipedia, not "Main Page", obviously, then had to change the bookmark title.  Administrators, please do something about it! --Martin

---

How about an option to turn off redirects when searching? Also, the front page has over 1 million views... Vera Cruz

- The introduction curently says "... to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language". There are at least six thousand living languages in the world today, and countless thousands of extinct ones, most of which we know next to nothing about. Do we seriously propose to have an enyclopaedia in Atikamekw and ancient Etruscan? As it stands, it makes the project appear hopelessly naive. May I suggest changing the wording to "... in every major language" GrahamN 20:50 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * Absolutely not. Wikipedia shall be in every language that anyone cares enough about to edit in, just as it shall cover every topic that anyone cares enough to write about encyclopedically. "Major language" is a slap in the face to anyone whose language you decide isn't major. (Haven't we had this discussion before?) --Brion 20:57 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree with Brion. Many people think that Esperanto isn't a major language, yet it is one of the fastest growing Wikipedias. We even have a Latin Wikipedia! --Eloquence

 * we'd better put something about this on the page about all the languages... Brion is right, it's come up before. -- Tarquin 21:19 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * GrahamN, check out the new wording on Main Page/Temp. It doesn't have the problems you mention but leaves us open to have as many or as few languages as there are people to contribute to them. --mav

 * Good point, Brion, about "major". I hadn't thought of that. But I still think it is absurd to say "every language".  "Welcome to Wikipedia, a multilingual project to produce the world's greatest public domain encyclopedia" gets my vote.  --GrahamN 19:00 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * We ain't public domain - not at all. Our goal is to be the best encyclopedia - period. --mav

 * Well, we will be seventy years after we're all dead. Ya gotta think long-term here! :) --Brion 22:51 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * I will write out one hundred times "Open content is not public domain. Open content is not public domain..." --GrahamN 23:02 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

Das ist echt lustig.. ;)

title: Talk:Main Page/Archive 4


text:
Marsh

In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants. More in general, the word can be used for any low-lying and seasonally waterlogged terrain. In Europe and in agricultural literature low-lying meadows that require draining and embanked polderlands are also referred to as marshes or marshland.

Marshes can often be found at the edges of lakes and streams, where they form a transition between the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are often dominated by grasses, rushes or reeds. If woody plants are present they tend to be low-growing shrubs, and the marsh is sometimes called a carr. This form of vegetation is what differentiates marshes from other types of wetland such as swamps, which are dominated by trees, and mires, which are wetlands that have accumulated deposits of acidic peat.

Marshes provide habitats for many kinds of invertebrates, fish, amphibians, waterfowl and aquatic mammals. This biological productivity means that marshes contain 0.1% of global sequestered terrestrial carbon. Moreover, they have an outsized influence on climate resilience of coastal areas and waterways, absorbing high tides and other water changes due to extreme weather. Though some marshes are expected to migrate upland, most natural marshlands will be threatened by sea level rise and associated erosion.

Basic information

Marshes provide a habitat for many species of plants, animals, and insects that have adapted to living in flooded conditions or other environments. The plants must be able to survive in wet mud with low oxygen levels. Many of these plants, therefore, have aerenchyma, channels within the stem that allow air to move from the leaves into the rooting zone. Marsh plants also tend to have rhizomes for underground storage and reproduction. Common examples include cattails, sedges, papyrus and sawgrass. Aquatic animals, from fish to salamanders, are generally able to live with a low amount of oxygen in the water. Some can obtain oxygen from the air instead, while others can live indefinitely in conditions of low oxygen. The pH in marshes tends to be neutral to alkaline, as opposed to bogs, where peat accumulates under more acid conditions.

Values and ecosystem services
Marshes provide habitats for many kinds of invertebrates, fish, amphibians, waterfowl and aquatic mammals. Marshes have extremely high levels of biological production, some of the highest in the world, and therefore are important in supporting fisheries.

Marshes also improve water quality by acting as a sink to filter pollutants and sediment from the water that flows through them. Marshes partake in water purification by providing nutrient and pollution consumption. Marshes (and other wetlands) are able to absorb water during periods of heavy rainfall and slowly release it into waterways and therefore reduce the magnitude of flooding. Marshes also provide the services of tourism, recreation, education, and research.

Types of marshes
Marshes differ depending mainly on their location and salinity. Both of these factors greatly influence the range and scope of animal and plant life that can survive and reproduce in these environments. The three main types of marsh are salt marshes, freshwater tidal marshes, and freshwater marshes. These three can be found worldwide and each contains a different set of organisms.

Salt marshes
Saltwater marshes are found around the world in mid to high latitudes, wherever there are sections of protected coastline. They are located close enough to the shoreline that the motion of the tides affects them, and, sporadically, they are covered with water. They flourish where the rate of sediment buildup is greater than the rate at which the land level is sinking. Salt marshes are dominated by specially adapted rooted vegetation, primarily salt-tolerant grasses.

Salt marshes are most commonly found in lagoons, estuaries, and on the sheltered side of a shingle or sandspit. The currents there carry the fine particles around to the quiet side of the spit, and sediment begins to build up. These locations allow the marshes to absorb the excess nutrients from the water running through them before they reach the oceans and estuaries. These marshes are slowly declining. Coastal development and urban sprawl has caused significant loss of these essential habitats.

Freshwater tidal marshes
Although considered a freshwater marsh, this form of marsh is affected by the ocean tides. However, without the stresses of salinity at work in its saltwater counterpart, the diversity of the plants and animals that live in and use freshwater tidal marshes is much higher than in salt marshes. The most serious threats to this form of marsh are the increasing size and pollution of the cities surrounding them.

Freshwater marshes

Ranging greatly in both size and geographic location, freshwater marshes make up the most common form of wetland in North America. They are also the most diverse of the three types of marsh. Some examples of freshwater marsh types in North America are:

Wet meadows
Wet meadows occur in areas such as shallow lake basins, low-lying depressions, and the land between shallow marshes and upland areas. They also occur on the edges of large lakes and rivers. Wet meadows often have very high plant diversity and high densities of buried seeds. They are regularly flooded, but are often dry in the summer.

Vernal pools
Vernal pools are a type of marsh found only seasonally in shallow depressions in the land. They can be covered in shallow water, but in the summer and fall, they can be completely dry. In western North America, vernal pools tend to form in open grasslands, whereas in the east they often occur in forested landscapes. Further south, vernal pools form in pine savannas and flatwoods. Many amphibian species depend upon vernal pools for spring breeding; these ponds provide habitat free from fish, which eat the eggs and young of amphibians. An example is the endangered gopher frog. Similar temporary ponds occur in other world ecosystems, where they may have local names. However, the term vernal pool can be applied to all such temporary pool ecosystems.

Playa lakes
Playa lakes are a form of shallow freshwater marsh that occurs in the southern high plains of the United States. Like vernal pools, they are only present at certain times of the year and generally have a circular shape. As the playa dries during the summer, conspicuous plant zonation develops along the shoreline.

Prairie potholes
Prairie potholes are found in the northern parts of North America as the Prairie Pothole Region. These landscapes were once covered by glaciers, and as a result shallow depressions were formed in great numbers. These depressions fill with water in the spring. They provide important breeding habitats for many species of waterfowl. Some pools only occur seasonally, while others retain enough water to be present all year.

Riverine wetlands
Many kinds of marsh occur along the fringes of large rivers. The different types are produced by factors such as water level, nutrients, ice scour, and waves.

Embanked marshlands
Large tracts of tidal marsh have been embanked and artificially drained. They are usually known by the Dutch name of polders. In Northern Germany and Scandinavia they are called Marschland, Marsch or marsk; in France marais maritime. In the Netherlands and Belgium, they are designated as marine clay districts. In East Anglia, a region in the East of England, the embanked marshes are also known as Fens.

Restoration
Some areas of the world have already lost 90% of their wetlands, including marshes. They have been drained to create agricultural land or filled to accommodate urban sprawl. Restoration is the process of returning marshes to the landscape to replace those lost in the past. Restoration can be done on a large scale, such as by allowing rivers to flood naturally in the spring, or on a small scale by returning wetlands to urban landscapes.

title: Marsh