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Cucumber

The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a widely-cultivated creeping vine plant in the family Cucurbitaceae that bears cylindrical to spherical fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables. Considered an annual plant, there are three main types of cucumber—slicing, pickling, and seedless—within which several cultivars have been created. The cucumber originates in Asia extending from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, China (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi), and Northern Thailand, but now grows on most continents, and many different types of cucumber are grown commercially and traded on the global market. In North America, the term wild cucumber refers to plants in the genera Echinocystis and Marah, though the two are not closely related.

Description
The cucumber is a creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils. The plant may also root in a soilless medium, whereby it will sprawl along the ground in lieu of a supporting structure. The vine has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruits.

The fruit of typical cultivars of cucumber is roughly cylindrical, but elongated with tapered ends, and may be as large as 62 cm long and 10 cm in diameter.

Cucumber fruits consist of 95% water (see nutrition table). In botanical terms, the cucumber is classified as a pepo, a type of botanical berry with a hard outer rind and no internal divisions. However, much like tomatoes and squashes, it is often perceived, prepared, and eaten as a vegetable.

Flowering and pollination

Most cucumber cultivars are seeded and require pollination. For this purpose, thousands of honey beehives are annually carried to cucumber fields just before bloom. Cucumbers may also be pollinated via bumblebees and several other bee species. Most cucumbers that require pollination are self-incompatible, thus requiring the pollen of another plant in order to form seeds and fruit. Some self-compatible cultivars exist that are related to the 'Lemon cucumber' cultivar.

A few cultivars of cucumber are parthenocarpic, the blossoms of which create seedless fruit without pollination, which degrades the eating quality of these cultivar. In the United States, these are usually grown in greenhouses, where bees are excluded. In Europe, they are grown outdoors in some regions, where bees are likewise excluded.

Traditional cultivars produce male blossoms first, then female, in about equivalent numbers. Newer gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. They may have a pollenizer cultivar interplanted, and the number of beehives per unit area is increased, but temperature changes induce male flowers even on these plants, which may be sufficient for pollination to occur.

In 2009, an international team of researchers announced they had sequenced the cucumber genome.

A study of genetic recombination during meiosis in cucumber provided a high resolution landscape of meiotic DNA double strand-breaks and genetic crossovers. The average number of crossovers per chromosome per meiosis was 0.92 to 0.99.

Herbivore defense
Phytochemicals in cucumbers may discourage natural foraging by herbivores, such as insects, nematodes or wildlife. As a possible defense mechanism, cucumbers produce cucurbitacin C, which causes a bitter taste in some cucumber varieties. This potential mechanism is under preliminary research to identify whether cucumbers are able to deter herbivores and environmental stresses by using an intrinsic chemical defense, particularly in the leaves, cotyledons, pedicel, carpopodium, and fruit.

Nutrition, aroma, and taste
Raw cucumber (with peel) is 95% water, 4% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat. A 100 g reference serving provides 65 kJ of food energy. It has a low content of micronutrients: it is notable only for vitamin K, at 14% of the Daily Value (table).

Depending on variety, cucumbers may have a mild melon aroma and flavor, in part resulting from unsaturated aldehydes, such as (E,Z)-nona-2,6-dienal, and the cis- and trans- isomers of 2-nonenal. The slightly bitter taste of cucumber rind results from cucurbitacins.

Varieties
In general cultivation, cucumbers are classified into three main cultivar groups: slicing, pickled, and seedless/burpless.

Slicing
Cucumbers grown to eat fresh are called slicing cucumbers. The main varieties of slicers mature on vines with large leaves that provide shading.

Slicers grown commercially for the North American market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have much tougher skin. In contrast, those in other countries, often called European cucumbers, are smaller and have thinner, more delicate skin, often with fewer seeds, thus are often sold in plastic skin for protection. This variety may also be called a telegraph cucumber, particularly in Australasia.

Pickling
Pickling with brine, sugar, vinegar, and spices creates various flavored products from cucumbers and other foods. Although any cucumber can be pickled, commercial pickles are made from cucumbers specially bred for uniformity of length-to-diameter ratio and lack of voids in the flesh. Those cucumbers intended for pickling, called picklers, grow to about 7 to 10 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. Compared to slicers, picklers tend to be shorter, thicker, less-regularly shaped, and have bumpy skin with tiny white or black-dotted spines. Color can vary from creamy yellow to pale or dark green.

Gherkin
Gherkins, also called cornichons, or baby pickles, are small cucumbers, typically those 1 to 5 in in length, often with bumpy skin, which are typically used for pickling. The word gherkin comes from the early modern Dutch gurken or augurken ('small pickled cucumber'). The term is also used in the name for Cucumis anguria, the West Indian gherkin, a closely related species.

Burpless
Burpless cucumbers are sweeter and have a thinner skin than other varieties of cucumber. They are reputed to be easy to digest and to have a pleasant taste. They can grow as long as 2 ft, are nearly seedless, and have a delicate skin. Most commonly grown in greenhouses, these parthenocarpic cucumbers are often found in grocery markets, shrink-wrapped in plastic. They are marketed as either burpless or seedless, as the seeds and skin of other varieties of cucumbers are said to give some people gas.

Production
In 2022, world production of cucumbers and gherkins was 95 million tonnes, led by China with 82% of the total.

Cultivation history
Cultivated for at least 3,000 years, the cultivated cucumbers "Cucumis sativus" were domesticated in India from wild "C. sativus var. hardwickii". where a great many varieties have been observed, along with its closest living relative, Cucumis hystrix. Three main cultivar groups of cucumber are namely Eurasian cucumbers (slicing cucumbers eaten raw and immature), East Asian cucumbers (pickling cucumbers) and Xishuangbanna cucumbers. Based on demographic modelling, the East Asian C. sativus cultivars diverged from the Indian cultivars c. 2500 years ago. It was probably introduced to Europe by the Greeks or Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th century, England in the 14th century, and in North America by the mid-16th century.

Roman Empire
According to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Tiberius had the cucumber on his table daily during summer and winter. In order to have it available for his table every day of the year, the Romans reportedly used artificial methods of growing (similar to the greenhouse system), whereby mirrorstone refers to Pliny's lapis specularis, believed to have been sheet mica:

"Indeed, he was never without it; for he had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the cucumbers were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while, in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of frames glazed with mirrorstone."

Reportedly, they were also cultivated in specularia, cucumber houses glazed with oiled cloth. Pliny describes the Italian fruit as very small, probably like a gherkin. He also describes the preparation of a medication known as elaterium. However, some scholars believe that he was instead referring to Ecballium elaterium, known in pre-Linnean times as Cucumis silvestris or Cucumis asininus ('wild cucumber' or 'donkey cucumber'), a species different from the common cucumber. Pliny also writes about several other varieties of cucumber, including the cultivated cucumber, and remedies from the different types (9 from the cultivated; 5 from the "anguine;" and 26 from the "wild").

Middle Ages
Charlemagne had cucumbers grown in his gardens in the 8th/9th century. They were reportedly introduced into England in the early 14th century, lost, then reintroduced approximately 250 years later. The Spaniards (through the Italian Christopher Columbus) brought cucumbers to Haiti in 1494. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, found "very great cucumbers" grown on the site of what is now Montreal.

Early-modern age
Throughout the 16th century, European trappers, traders, bison hunters, and explorers bartered for the products of American Indian agriculture. The tribes of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains learned from the Spanish how to grow European crops. The farmers on the Great Plains included the Mandan and Abenaki. They obtained cucumbers and watermelons from the Spanish, and added them to the crops they were already growing, including several varieties of corn and beans, pumpkins, squash, and gourd plants. The Iroquois were also growing them when the first Europeans visited them.

In 1630, the Reverend Francis Higginson produced a book called New-Englands Plantation in which, describing a garden on Conant's Island in Boston Harbor known as The Governor's Garden, he states: "The countrie aboundeth naturally with store of roots of great varietie [sic] and good to eat. Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are store of pompions, cowcumbers, and other things of that nature which I know not..."In New England Prospect (1633, England), William Wood published observations he made in 1629 in America: "The ground affords very good kitchin gardens, for Turneps, Parsnips, Carrots, Radishes, and Pompions, Muskmillons, Isquoter-squashes, coucumbars, Onyons, and whatever grows well in England grows as well there, many things being better and larger. [sic]"

Age of Enlightenment and later

In the later 17th century, a prejudice developed against uncooked vegetables and fruits. A number of articles in contemporary health publications stated that uncooked plants brought on summer diseases and should be forbidden to children. The cucumber kept this reputation for an inordinate period of time, "fit only for consumption by cows," which some believe is why it gained the name, cowcumber.

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on 22 August 1663: "[T]his day Sir W. Batten tells me that Mr. Newburne is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which the other day I heard of another, I think."

John Evelyn in 1699 wrote that the cucumber, 'however dress'd, was thought fit to be thrown away, being accounted little better than poyson (poison)'.

According to 18th-century British writer Samuel Johnson, it was commonly said among English physicians that a cucumber "should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing."

A copper etching made by Maddalena Bouchard between 1772 and 1793 shows this plant to have smaller, almost bean-shaped fruits, and small yellow flowers. The small form of the cucumber is figured in Herbals of the 16th century, however stating that "[i]f hung in a tube while in blossom, the Cucumber will grow to a most surprising length."

title: Cucumber


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Computer magazine

Computer magazines are about computers and related subjects, such as networking and the Internet. Most computer magazines offer (or offered) advice, some offer programming tutorials, reviews of the latest technologies, and advertisements.

1940s–1950s
Sources:.
 * Mathematics of Computation established in 1943, articles about computers began to appear from 1946 (Volume 2, Number 15) to the end of 1954. Scientific journal.
 * Digital Computer Newsletter, (1949–1968), founded by Albert Eugene Smith.
 * Computers and People, (1951–1988 ), was arguably the first computer magazine. It began as Roster of Organizations in the Field of Automatic Computing Machinery (1951–1952), and then The Computing Machinery Field (1952–1953). It was published by Edmund Berkeley. Computers and Automation held the first Computer Art Contest in 1963 and maintained a  bibliography on computer art starting in 1966. It also included a monthly estimated census of all installed computer systems starting in 1962. In 1973 name changed to Computers and Automation and People, and finally in 1975 to Computers and People.
 * AFIPS conference proceedings (AFIPS Joint Computer Conferences) (1952–1987).
 * ACM National Conference proceedings (Proceedings of National Meetings) (1952, 1956–1987, 1997)
 * IEEE Transactions on Computers from 1952, scientific journal.
 * Computing News (1953–1963 ), was an early computer magazine produced by Jackson W. Granholm out of Thousand Oaks, California. The first documented copyright was applied for on September 1, 1954, for issue #36. The magazine was released on the 1st and 15th of each month, which places issue #1 at March 15, 1953. The last documented release was issue #217 on March 15, 1962.
 * Journal of the ACM from 1954, scientific journal.
 * Datamation from 1957, was another early computer and data processing magazine. It is still being published as an e-publication on the Internet. Futurist Donald Prell was its founder.
 * Information and Computation from 1957, scientific journal.
 * IBM Journal of Research and Development from 1957, scientific journal.
 * Communications of the ACM from 1958, mix of science magazine, trade magazine, and a scientific journal
 * The Computer Journal from 1958, scientific journal.

1960s–1970s

 * ACS Newsletter (1966–1976), Amateur Computer Society newsletter.
 * Computerworld (1967)
 * People's Computer Company Newsletter (1972–1981)
 * Amateur Computer Club Newsletter (ACCN; 1973–)
 * Dr. Dobb's Journal (1976–2014) was the first microcomputer magazine to focus on software, rather than hardware.

1980s
1980s computer magazines skewed their content towards the hobbyist end of the then-microcomputer market, and used to contain type-in programs, but these have gone out of fashion. The first magazine devoted to this class of computers was Creative Computing. Byte was an influential technical journal that published until the 1990s.

In 1983 an average of one new computer magazine appeared each week. By late that year more than 200 existed. Their numbers and size grew rapidly with the industry they covered, and BYTE and 80 Micro were among the three thickest magazines of any kind per issue. Compute!'s editor in chief reported in the December 1983 issue that "all of our previous records are being broken: largest number of pages, largest-number of four-color advertising pages, largest number of printing pages, and the largest number of editorial pages".

Computers were the only industry with product-specific magazines, like 80 Micro, PC Magazine, and Macworld; their editors vowed to impartially cover their computers whether or not doing so hurt their readers' and advertisers' market, while claiming that their rivals pandered to advertisers by only publishing positive news. BYTE in March 1984 apologized for publishing articles by authors with promotional material for companies without describing them as such, and in April suggested that other magazines adopt its rules of conduct for writers, such as prohibiting employees from accepting gifts or discounts. InfoWorld stated in June that many of the "150 or so" industry magazines published articles without clearly identifying authors' affiliations and conflicts of interest.

Many magazines ended that year, however, as their number exceeded the amount of available advertising revenue despite revenue in the first half of the year five times that of the same period in 1982. Consumers typically bought computer magazines more for advertising than articles, which benefited already leading journals like BYTE and PC Magazine and hurt weaker ones. Also affecting magazines was the computer industry's economic difficulties, including the video game crash of 1983, which badly hurt the home-computer market. Dan Gutman, the founder of Computer Games, recalled in 1987 that "the computer games industry crashed and burned like a bad night of Flight Simulator—with my magazine on the runway". Antics advertising sales declined by 50% in 90 days, Compute! number of pages declined from 392 in December 1983 to 160 ten months later, and Compute! and Compute!'s Gazettes publisher assured readers in an editorial that his company "is and continues to be quite successful ... even during these particularly difficult times in the industry". Computer Gaming World stated in 1988 that it was the only one of the 18 color magazines that covered computer games in 1983 to survive the crash. Compute! similarly stated that year that it was the only general-interest survivor of about 150 consumer-computing magazines published in 1983.

Some computer magazines in the 1980s and 1990s were issued only on disk (or cassette tape, or CD-ROM) with no printed counterpart; such publications are collectively (though somewhat inaccurately) known as disk magazines and are listed separately.

1990s
In some ways the heyday of printed computer magazines was a period during the 1990s, in which a large number of computer manufacturers took out advertisements in computer magazines, so they became quite thick and could afford to carry quite a number of articles in each issue, (Computer Shopper was a good example of this trend). Some printed computer magazines used to include covermount floppy disks, CDs, or other media as inserts; they typically contained software, demos, and electronic versions of the print issue.

2000s–2010s
However, with the rise in popularity of the Internet, many computer magazines went bankrupt or transitioned to an online-only existence. Exceptions include Wired, which is more of a technology magazine than a computer magazine.

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

title: Computer magazine


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Talk:SMPTE timecode

Correcting time codes
I don't believe most devices could correct the time codes. This prevents editing to the same frame. That's why I deleted the following text:

Most timecode processing devices check for internal consistency in the sequence of timecode values, and use simple error correction schemes to correct for short error bursts. As a result, the boundary between discontinuous timecode ranges cannot be determined exactly until several frames of code have been read after the timecode boundary. User:Ray Van De Walker

 * Ray, I can assure that they do. You cannot ever use the current frame's LTC for editing: by the time you've read it, the frame's already gone by, and it's too late to make the edit.  So you use the number of the frame before, and infer it.

And if you're going to do that, you might as well use the previous N frames, and do a "flywheel" filter to reject bad values. Which is what LTC readers do. you can do a Google search for "timecode flywheel" for more on this.

 * Thanks, Ray

Frames per second
From the article:

 * Some of the bits also tell whether the timing is for 24 frames/sec (film), 25 frames/sec (European video), 30 frames/sec (black & white NTSC (archaic)), or 29.97 frames/sec (30/sec drop-frame color NTSC).

Wrong. There are colour frame and drop-frame bits, but they don't tell you the basic frame rate. Indeed, the drop-frame bit is not necessarily meaningful in a 25 fps timecode. However, you can always tell the underlying frame rate, as you are either using an LTC decoder (in which case you can get the rate from the underlying bit-rate, or from watching the rate of arrival of decoded frames, or decode it from watching the frame count rollover) or are using a VITC decoder (in which case you either already know the rate, or can read it from the hardware, or infer it from the rate of arrival of code frames, or decode it from watching the frame count rollover)

Needs careful proofreading
Note: this is a seriously complex field, with a mixture of good and bad engineering over many decades combined with a certain amount of retconning, with different standards being bastardised and re-combined in different parts of the world. This needs lots of proof-reading and going back to references to get right.

Timecode differences in Production and Presentation Domains
One of the important concepts not mentioned is that timecode can be used in two different domains. In production, (editing) timecode is principly used to identifying video frame sequences, but in (master control) presentation, the focus is upon synchronizing activities along a timeline. Part of the beauty of the notion of timecode is that is can be used as a good enough, but not perfect, bridge between the production and presentation aspects of television. Where this is most noticeable is in timecode math:

01:02:03:05 - 01:02:03:04 = 2 frames
 * In production, if a clip starts at 01:02:03:04 and ends at 01:02:03:05, the clip is two frames long

01:02:03:05 - 01:02:03:04 = 1 frame
 * In presentation, if a clip starts at 01:02:03:04 and the next one starts at 01:02:03:05, the clip is one frame long

Until recently, as production and presentation were essentially separate, so this difference was not significant. But as new technologies start to move timecode data across these domain, it is more important to acknowledge and accommodate the expectations of users in different domains. Adamelk

Wrong number?
This meant that an "hour of timecode" at a nominal frame rate of 29.97 frame/s was longer than an hour of wall-clock time by 3.59 seconds ...

1 hour at 30 fps equals 108,000 farmes; 1 hour at 29.97 fps equals 107892 frames - the difference is 108 frames. 108 frames at 29,77 fps take 3.60... seconds - so I am puzzled about the 3.59 seconds value. 31.18.215.19 (talk) 21:51, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

 * The math is 3600-3600/1.001 = 3.596403596403200712527678... So it should be reported as 3.6, 3.60 or 3.596... The article currently says 3.6 so we're good. ~Kvng (talk) 20:02, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You used some kind of very bad calculator, without infinite precision arithmetic :( . It is actually just 3.$\overline{596403}$ https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3600-3600%2F1.001 As for the other value, if you were to use 108000/29.97 it will give you 3.$\overline{603}$ seconds and 108000/30*1.001 will give you perfect 3.6. Valery Zapolodov (talk) 20:58, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , I used Python. I thought that was a good calculator. ~Kvng (talk) 12:34, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, it is not, though you can use pyGMP. https://stackoverflow.com/a/11523077/11173412 Though better to outright use GMP in C. Or even better this or Wolfram Alpha: https://github.com/lcn2/calc/blob/a86d62998263a8d7fa76cd89c59314b9aaf4b72e/cal/factorial2.cal#L630 Valery Zapolodov (talk) 13:20, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Wrong history
The history statement is incorrect in the HISTORY section of the SMPTE Timecode page. How do I correct it? Cbaudio (talk) 04:45, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

 * The History section is currently unsourced. The first thing to do is find some reliable sources that can be used to support corrections. ~Kvng (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:SMPTE timecode


text:
Radish

The radish (Raphanus sativus) is a flowering plant in the mustard family, Brassicaceae. Its large taproot is commonly used as a root vegetable, although the entire plant is edible and its leaves are sometimes used as a leaf vegetable. Originally domesticated in Asia prior to Roman times, radishes are now grown and consumed throughout the world. The radish is sometimes considered to form a species complex with the wild radish, and instead given the trinomial name Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus.

Radishes are often used raw as a crunchy salad vegetable with a pungent, slightly spicy flavor, varying in intensity depending on its growing environment. There are numerous varieties varying in size, flavor, color, and length of time they take to mature. Radishes owe their sharp flavor to the various chemical compounds produced by the plants, including glucosinolate, myrosinase, and isothiocyanate. They are sometimes grown as companion plants and suffer from few pests and diseases. They germinate quickly and grow rapidly, common smaller varieties being ready for consumption within a month, while larger daikon varieties take several months. Being easy to grow and quick to harvest, radishes are often planted by novice gardeners. Another use of radish is as a cover or catch crop in winter, or as a forage crop. Some radishes are grown for their seeds; others, such as daikon, may be grown for oil production. Others are used for sprouting.

History
Varieties of radish are now broadly distributed around the world, but almost no archeological records are available to help determine their early history and domestication. However, scientists have tentatively located the origin of Raphanus sativus in Southeast Asia, as this is the only region where truly wild forms have been discovered. India, central China, and Central Asia appear to have been secondary centers where differing forms were developed. Radishes enter the historical record in third century BC. Greek and Roman agriculturalists of the first century AD gave details of small, large, round, long, mild, and sharp varieties. The radish seems to have been one of the first European crops introduced to the Americas. A German botanist reported radishes of 100 lb and roughly 3 ft in length in 1544, although the only variety of that size today is the Japanese Sakurajima radish. The large, mild, and white East Asian form was developed in China, though it is mostly associated in the West with the Japanese daikon, owing to Japanese agricultural development and larger exports.

Description

Radishes are annual or biennial brassicaceous crops grown for their swollen tap roots which can be globular, tapering, or cylindrical. The root skin colour ranges from white through pink, red, purple, yellow, and green to black, but the flesh is usually white. The roots obtain their color from anthocyanins. Red varieties use the anthocyanin pelargonidin as a pigment, and purple cultivars obtain their color from cyanidin. Smaller types have a few leaves about 13 cm long with round roots up to 2.5 cm in diameter or more slender, long roots up to 7 cm long. Both of these are normally eaten raw in salads. A longer root form, including oriental radishes, daikon or mooli, and winter radishes, grows up to 60 cm long with foliage about 60 cm high with a spread of 45 cm. The flesh of radishes harvested timely is crisp and sweet, but becomes bitter and tough if the vegetable is left in the ground too long. Leaves are arranged in a rosette. They have a lyrate shape, meaning they are divided pinnately with an enlarged terminal lobe and smaller lateral lobes. The white flowers are borne on a racemose inflorescence. The fruits are small pods which can be eaten when young.

The radish is a diploid species, and has 18 chromosomes (2n=18). It is estimated that the radish genome contains between 526 and 574 Mb.

Cultivation
Radishes are a fast-growing, annual, cool-season crop. The seed germinates in three to four days in moist conditions with soil temperatures between 65 and 85 F. Best quality roots are obtained under moderate day lengths with air temperatures in the range 50 to 65 F. Under average conditions, the crop matures in 3–4 weeks, but in colder weather, 6–7 weeks may be required. Homegrown varieties can be significantly sharper.

Radishes grow best in full sun in light, sandy loams, with a soil pH 6.5 to 7.0, but for late-season crops, a clayey-loam is ideal. Soils that bake dry and form a crust in dry weather are unsuitable and can impair germination. Harvesting periods can be extended by making repeat plantings, spaced a week or two apart. In warmer climates, radishes are normally planted in the autumn. The depth at which seeds are planted affects the size of the root, from 1 cm deep recommended for small radishes to 4 cm for large radishes. During the growing period, the crop needs to be thinned and weeds controlled, and irrigation may be required.

Radishes are a common garden crop in many parts of the world, and the fast harvest cycle makes them particularly suitable for children's gardens. After harvesting, radishes can be stored without loss of quality for two or three days at room temperature, and about two months at 0 C with a relative humidity of 90–95%.

Companion plant
Radishes can be useful as companion plants for many other crops, probably because their pungent odour deters such insect pests as aphids, cucumber beetles, tomato hornworms, squash bugs, and ants. They can also function as a trap crop, luring insect pests away from the main crop. Cucumbers and radishes seem to thrive when grown in close association with each other, and radishes also grow well with chervil, lettuce, peas, and nasturtiums. However, they react adversely to growing in close association with hyssop.

Pests
As a fast-growing plant, diseases are not generally a problem with radishes, but some insect pests can be a nuisance. The larvae of flea beetles live in the soil, but the adult beetles cause damage to the crop, biting small "shot holes" in the leaves, especially of seedlings. The swede midge (Contarinia nasturtii) attacks the foliage and growing tip of the plant and causes distortion, multiple (or no) growing tips, and swollen or crinkled leaves and stems. The larvae of the cabbage root fly sometimes attack the roots. The foliage droops and becomes discoloured, and small, white maggots tunnel through the root, making it unattractive or inedible.

Varieties
Broadly speaking, radishes can be categorized into four main types according to the seasons when they are grown and a variety of shapes, lengths, colors, and sizes, such as red, pink, white, gray-black, or yellow radishes, with round or elongated roots that can grow longer than a parsnip.

Spring or summer radishes
Sometimes referred to as European radishes or spring radishes if they are planted in cooler weather, summer radishes are generally small and have a relatively short three- to four-week cultivation time.
 * The 'April Cross' is a giant white radish hybrid that bolts very slowly.
 * 'Bunny Tail' is an heirloom variety from Italy, where it is known as Rosso Tondo A Piccola Punta Bianca. It is slightly oblong, mostly red, with a white tip.
 * 'Cherry Belle' is a bright red-skinned round variety with a white interior. It is familiar in North American supermarkets.
 * 'Champion' is round and red-skinned like the 'Cherry Belle', but with slightly larger roots, up to 5 cm, and a milder flavor.
 * 'Red King' has a mild flavor, with good resistance to club root, a problem that can arise from poor drainage.
 * 'Sicily Giant' is a large heirloom variety from Sicily. It can reach up to 5 cm (2 in) in diameter.
 * 'Snow Belle' is an all-white variety of radish, similar in shape to the 'Cherry Belle'.
 * 'White Icicle' or 'Icicle' is a white carrot-shaped variety, around 10 – long, dating back to the 16th century. It slices easily, and has better than average resistance to pithiness.
 * 'French Breakfast' is an elongated, red-skinned radish with a white splash at the root end. It is typically slightly milder than other summer varieties, but is among the quickest to turn pithy.
 * 'Plum Purple', a purple-fuchsia radish, tends to stay crisp longer than average.
 * 'Gala' and 'Roodbol' are two varieties popular in the Netherlands in a breakfast dish, thinly sliced on buttered bread.
 * 'Easter Egg' is not an actual variety, but a mix of varieties with different skin colors, typically including white, pink, red, and purple radishes. Sold in markets or seed packets under the name, the seed mixes can extend harvesting duration from a single planting, as different varieties may mature at different times.

Winter varieties
'Black Spanish' or 'Black Spanish Round' occur in both round and elongated forms, and are sometimes simply called the black radish (Raphanus sativus L. var. niger (M.) S.K. or L. ssp. niger (M.). D.C. var. albus D.C) or known by the French name Gros Noir d'Hiver. It dates in Europe to 1548, and was a common garden variety in England and France during the early 19th century. It has a rough, black skin with hot-flavored, white flesh, is round or irregularly pear shaped, and grows to around 10 cm in diameter.

Daikon refers to a wide variety of winter oilseed radishes from Asia. While the Japanese name daikon has been adopted in English, it is also sometimes called the Japanese radish, Chinese radish, Oriental radish or mooli (in India and South Asia). Daikons commonly have elongated white roots, although many varieties of daikon exist. One well-known variety is 'April Cross', with smooth white roots. The New York Times describes 'Masato Red' and 'Masato Green' varieties as extremely long, well-suited for fall planting and winter storage. The Sakurajima radish is a hot-flavored variety which is typically grown to around 10 kg, but which can grow to 30 kg when left in the ground.

Korean radish, also called mu(무), is a variety of white radish with firm crunchy texture. Although mu is also a generic term for radishes in Korean (as daikon is a generic term for radishes in Japanese), the word is usually used in its narrow sense, referring to Joseon radish(조선무, Joseonmu). In Korean cuisine context, the word Joseon is often used in contrast to Wae, to distinguish Korean varieties from Japanese ones. The longer, thinner, and waterier Japanese daikon cultivated mainly for danmuji is referred to as Wae radish(왜무, Waemu) in Korea. Korean radishes are generally shorter, stouter, and sturdier than daikon, and have pale green shade halfway down from the top. They also have stronger flavour, denser flesh and softer leaves. The greens of Korean radishes are called mucheong(무청) and used as vegetable in various dishes.

Seed pod varieties
The seeds of radishes grow in siliques (widely referred to as "pods"), following flowering that happens when left to grow past their normal harvesting period. The seeds are edible, and are sometimes used as a crunchy, sharp addition to salads. Some varieties are grown specifically for their seeds or seed pods, rather than their roots. The rat-tailed radish, an old European variety thought to have come from East Asia centuries ago, has long, thin, curly pods which can exceed 20 cm in length. In the 17th century, the pods were often pickled and served with meat. The 'München Bier' variety supplies seed pods that are sometimes served raw as an accompaniment to beer in Germany.

Production
Using 2003–4 data, several sources report annual world production of radishes to be about 7 million tonnes, produced mainly by China, Japan, and South Korea, and representing roughly 2% of global vegetable production.

Nutritional value
In a 100 g reference serving, raw radishes provide 66 kJ of food energy and have a moderate amount of vitamin C (18% of Daily Value), with other essential nutrients in low content (table). A raw radish is 95% water, 3% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and has negligible fat.

Cooking
The most commonly eaten portion is the napiform or fusiform taproot, although the entire plant is edible and the tops can be used as a leaf vegetable. The seed can also be sprouted and eaten raw in a similar way to a mung bean.

The root of the radish is usually eaten raw, although tougher specimens can be steamed. The raw flesh has a crisp texture and a pungent, peppery flavor, caused by glucosinolates and the enzyme myrosinase, which combine when chewed to form allyl isothiocyanates, also present in mustard, horseradish, and wasabi.

Radishes are mostly used in salads, but also appear in many European dishes. In Mexican cuisine, sliced radishes are used in combination with shredded lettuce as garnish for traditional dishes such as tostadas, sopes, enchiladas and Posole stew.

Radish greens are usually discarded, but are edible and nutritious, and can be prepared in a variety of ways. The leaves are sometimes used in recipes, like potato soup or as a sauteed side dish. They are also found blended with fruit juices in some recipes.

In Indian cuisine the seed pods are called "moongra" or "mogri" and can be used in many dishes.

Other uses
The seeds of radishes can be pressed to extract radish seed oil. Wild radish seeds contain up to 48% oil, and while not suitable for human consumption, this oil is a potential source of biofuel. The daikon grows well in cool climates and, apart from its industrial use, can be used as a cover crop, grown to increase soil fertility, to scavenge nutrients, suppress weeds, help alleviate soil compaction, and prevent winter erosion of the soil.

"Radi", a spiral-cut radish, served with salt and occasionally chives, is traditionally served with beer at the Bavarian Oktoberfest.

Culture
The daikon varieties of radish are important parts of East, Southeast, and South Asian cuisine. In Japan and Korea, radish dolls are sometimes made as children's toys. Daikon is also one of the plants that make up the Japanese Festival of Seven Herbs (Nanakusa no sekku) on the seventh day after the new year.

Citizens of Oaxaca, Mexico, celebrate the Night of the Radishes (Noche de los rábanos) on December 23 as a part of Christmas celebrations. This folk art competition uses a large type of radish up to 50 cm long and weighing up to 3 kg. Great skill and ingenuity are used to carve these into religious and popular figures, buildings, and other objects, and they are displayed in the town square.

title: Radish


text:
Giselle Blondet

Alba Giselle Blondet Gomez (born January 9, 1964) is a Puerto Rican actress and TV host. She also founded the non-profit organization "Fundación Arte por La Paz".

Early biography
Giselle Blondet was born Alba Giselle Blondet, in 1964, to Victor Manuel Blondet and Alba Gomez, in New York, New York, but was raised and studied in Puerto Rico.

In 1982 she married her first husband, jeweler Luis Iglesias, with whom she had a daughter, Andrea. They divorced two years later in 1984.

In 1986 she married again, this second time to actor Luis Abreu. That marriage did not last long, and they divorced shortly after. Blondet spent the rest of the late 1980s participating in different television shows, soap operas, and mini-series, as well as in some theater plays.

During the early 1990s, Blondet recorded a popular television commercial in Puerto Rico for the feminine hygiene brand, Always.

In 1989, she married for a third time, to Argentine producer Harold Trucco. They had a daughter, Gabriella, and a son, Harold Emmanuel. By way of that marriage, she was the sister-in-law of actor Ed Trucco. The relationship encountered problems and ended in 1997. In June 1997, her career took off internationally as she became co-host for Univision's international morning show, ¡Despierta América!, alongside Rafael José, Fernando Arau, Ana Maria Canseco, and Neida Sandoval. Since divorcing Trucco, she has remained single and says she wants to dedicate her free time to her children.

Later career
In 2004, Blondet published her autobiography Con los Pies en la Tierra. The following year, she left Despierta América to host a new television show about real-life tragedies, entitled Historias Para Contar, but it resulted in a series of small special episodes. In 2006, she starred in a Spanish-language Christmas movie alongside José Feliciano and Raúl De Molina entitled Feliz Navidad. Blondet's movie was due to be released later that year, but was released to DVD. In 2007, she was given the opportunity to become the host of a reality show in Univision, called Nuestra Belleza Latina (Our Latin Beauty). The show has hints of American Idol, America's Next Top Model, and Miss Universe, and was an early hit.

In 2010, after 14 years away from acting, she starred in an episode of Mujeres Asesinas as Luz Maria, alongside Cynthia Klitbo in the episode "Luz, Arrolladora".

In February 2012, she was one of a group of celebrities who walked down a catwalk in red dresses for the 'Heart Truth Red Dress Collection' show, part of New York Fashion Week. She wore an Oscar de la Renta dress.

In December 2013, after hosting Univision's Nuestra Belleza Latina for seven years, she announced that she was leaving the hit show to pursue other opportunities and hoped to produce her own TV show in the future. Her role as host was taken over by Chiquinquirá Delgado.

In June 2014, she launched her jewelry and bedding collections for Gi by Giselle Blondet through Walmart in Puerto Rico. The business become a success throughout the island and was projected to reach the United States before Fall 2014. She also decided to release a second book titled, "Tengo 50...Y que?!" (I'm 50...so what?!), which is a collection of anecdotes aiming to help women transition into the age of 50. The expected release of the book was also Fall 2014.

In January 2016, she joined Telemundo and was the host of Gran Hermano USA. The show was cancelled after one season.

In February 2017, she returned to Univision to become the host of Pequeños Gigantes USA.

During Nuestra Belleza Latina's 2018 season, Blondet returned, as presiding judge.

title: Giselle Blondet


text:
Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

Background and education
Peacock was born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of Samuel Peacock and his wife Sarah Love, daughter of Thomas Love, a retired master of a man-of-war in the Royal Navy. His father was a glass merchant in London, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (1763–1826). Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey in 1791 and in 1792 went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green where he stayed for six and a half years.

Peacock's father died in 1794 in "poor circumstances" leaving a small annuity. Peacock's first known poem was an epitaph for a school fellow written at the age of ten and another on his Midsummer Holidays was written when he was thirteen. Around that time in 1798 he was abruptly taken from school and from then on was entirely self-educated.

Early occupation and travelling
In February 1800, Peacock became a clerk with Ludlow Fraser Company, who were merchants in the City of London. He lived with his mother on the firm's premises at 4 Angel Court Throgmorton Street. He won the eleventh prize from the Monthly Preceptor for a verse answer to the question "Is History or Biography the More Improving Study?". He also contributed to "The Juvenile Library", a magazine for youth whose competitions excited the emulation of several other boys including Leigh Hunt, de Quincey, and W. J. Fox. He began visiting the Reading Room of the British Museum and continued doing so for many years, diligently studying the best literature in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. In 1804 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, The Monks of St. Mark and Palmyra. Some of Peacock's juvenile compositions were privately printed by Sir Henry Cole.

In around 1806 Peacock left his job in the city and during the year made a solitary walking tour of Scotland. The annuity left by his father expired in October 1806. In 1807 he returned to live at his mother's house at Chertsey. He was briefly engaged to Fanny Faulkner, but it was broken off through the interference of her relations. His friends, as he hints, thought it wrong that so clever a man should be earning so little money. In the autumn of 1808 he became private secretary to Sir Home Popham, commanding the fleet before Flushing. By the end of the year he was serving Captain Andrew King aboard HMS Venerable (1808) in the Downs. His preconceived affection for the sea did not reconcile him to nautical realities. "Writing poetry," he says, "or doing anything else that is rational, in this floating inferno, is next to a moral impossibility. I would give the world to be at home and devote the winter to the composition of a comedy." He did write prologues and addresses for dramatic performances on board HMS Venerable. His dramatic taste then and for the next nine years resulted in attempts at comedies and lighter pieces, all of which lacked ease of dialogue and suffered from over-elaborated incident and humour. He left HMS Venerable in March 1809 at Deal and walked around Ramsgate in Kent before returning home to Chertsey. He had sent his publisher Edward Hookham a little poem of the River Thames which he expanded during the year into "The Genius of the Thames". On 29 May he set out on a two-week expedition to trace the course of the Thames from its source to Chertsey and spent two or three days staying in Oxford.

Peacock travelled to North Wales in January 1810 where he visited Tremadog and settled at Maentwrog in Merionethshire. At Maentwrog he was attracted to the parson's daughter Jane Gryffydh, whom he referred to as the "Caernavonshire nymph". Early in June 1810, the Genius of the Thames was published by Thomas and Edward Hookham. Early in 1811 he left Maentwrog to walk home via South Wales. He climbed Cadair Idris and visited Edward Scott at Bodtalog near Tywyn. He also visited William Madocks at Dolmelynllyn. His journey included Aberystwyth and Devil's Bridge, Ceredigion. Later in 1811, his mother's annuity expired and she had to leave Chertsey and moved to Morven Cottage Wraysbury near Staines with the help of some friends. In 1812 they had to leave Morven Cottage over problems paying tradesmen's bills.

Friendship with Shelley
In 1812 Peacock published another elaborate poem, The Philosophy of Melancholy, and in the same year made the acquaintance of Shelley. He wrote in his memoir of Shelley, that he "saw Shelley for the first time just before he went to Tanyrallt", whither Shelley proceeded from London in November 1812 (Hogg's Life of Shelley, vol. 2, pp. 174, 175.) Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's early writings, was possibly responsible for the introduction. It was Hookham's circulating library which Shelley used for many years, and Hookham had sent The Genius of the Thames to Shelley, and in the Shelley Memorials, pp. 38–40, is a letter from the poet dated 18 August 1812, extolling the poetical merits of the performance and with equal exaggeration censuring what he thought the author's misguided patriotism. Peacock and Shelley became friends and Peacock influenced Shelley's fortunes both before and after his death.

In the winter of 1813 Peacock accompanied Shelley and his first wife Harriet to Edinburgh. Peacock was fond of Harriet, and in his old age defended her reputation from slanders spread by Jane, Lady Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Shelley's second wife Mary.

In 1814 Peacock published a satirical ballad, Sir Proteus, which appeared under the pseudonym "P. M. O'Donovan, Esq." Shelley resorted to him during the agitation of mind which preceded his separation from Harriet. After Shelley deserted Harriet, Peacock became an almost daily visitor throughout the winter of 1814–15 of Shelley and Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), at their London lodgings. In 1815 Peacock shared their voyage to the source of the Thames. "He seems", writes Charles Clairmont, Mary Godwin's stepbrother and a member of the party, "an idly-inclined man; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer; he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the season while they last; he was only happy while out from morning till night". By September 1815 when Shelley had taken up residence at Bishopsgate, near Windsor, Peacock had settled at Great Marlow. Peacock wrote Headlong Hall in 1815, and it was published the following year. With this work Peacock found the true field for his literary gift in the satiric novel, interspersed with delightful lyrics, amorous, narrative, or convivial.

During the winter of 1815–16 Peacock was regularly walking over to visit Shelley at Bishopgate. There he met Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and "the winter was a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively Greek". In 1816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock appears to have been entrusted with the task of finding the Shelleys a new residence. He fixed them near his own home at Great Marlow. Peacock received a pension from Shelley for a time, and was put into requisition to keep off wholly unauthorised intruders upon Shelley's hospitable household. Peacock was consulted about alterations in Shelley's Laon and Cythna, and Peacock's enthusiasm for Greek poetry probably had some influence on Shelley's work. Shelley's influence upon Peacock may be traced in the latter's poem of Rhododaphne, or the Thessalian Spell, published in 1818 and Shelley wrote a eulogistic review of it. Peacock also wrote at this time the satirical novels Melincourt published in 1817 and Nightmare Abbey published in 1818. Shelley made his final departure for Italy and the friends' agreement for mutual correspondence produced Shelley's magnificent descriptive letters from Italy, which otherwise might never have been written.

Peacock told Shelley that "he did not find this brilliant summer," of 1818, "very favourable to intellectual exertion;" but before it was quite over "rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings, and banditti were all dancing before me like a masked ball." He was at this time writing his romance of Maid Marian which he had completed except for the last three chapters.

East India Company
At the beginning of 1819, Peacock was unexpectedly summoned to London for a period of probation with the East India Company who needed to reinforce their staff with talented people. They summoned to their service in the Examiner's office James Mill and three others. Peacock was included at the recommendation of Peter Auber, the company historian, whom he had known at school, though probably not as a school-fellow. Peacock's test papers earned the high commendation, "Nothing superfluous and nothing wanting." On 13 January 1819, he wrote from 5 York Street, Covent Garden: "I now pass every morning at the India House, from half-past 10 to half-past 4, studying Indian affairs. My object is not yet attained, though I have little doubt but that it will be. It was not in the first instance of my own seeking, but was proposed to me. It will lead to a very sufficing provision for me in two or three years. It is not in the common routine of office, but is an employment of a very interesting and intellectual kind, connected with finance and legislation, in which it is possible to be of great service, not only to the Company, but to the millions under their dominion."

On 1 July 1819 Peacock slept for the first time in a house at 18 Stamford Street, Blackfriars which, "as you might expect from a Republican, he has furnished very handsomely." His mother continued to live with him in Stamford Street.

In 1820 Peacock contributed to Ollier's Literary Pocket Book and wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, the latter of which argued that poetry's relevance was being ended by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The official duties of the India House delayed the completion and publication of Maid Marian, begun in 1818, until 1822, and as a result of the delay it was taken for an imitation of Ivanhoe although its composition had, in fact, preceded Scott's novel. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and was translated into French and German. Peacock's salary was now £1000 a year, and in 1823 he acquired a country residence at Lower Halliford, near Shepperton, Middlesex, constructed out of two old cottages, where he could gratify the love of the Thames, which was as strong as his enthusiasm for classical literature. In the winter of 1825–26 he wrote Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems "during the prevalence of an influenza to which the beautiful fabric of paper-credit is periodically subject." In his early time at the India Office he wrote little except for the operatic criticisms which he regularly contributed to The Examiner, and an occasional article in the Westminster Review or Bentley's Miscellany.

Peacock showed great ability in business and in the drafting of official papers. In 1829 he began to devote attention to steam navigation, and composed a memorandum for General Chesney's Euphrates expedition, which was praised both by Chesney and Lord Ellenborough. He opposed the employment of steamers on the Red Sea, probably in deference to the supposed interests of the company. In 1829 he published The Misfortunes of Elphin  founded upon Welsh traditions, and in 1831 the novel Crotchet Castle, the most mature and thoroughly characteristic of all his works. He was greatly affected by the death of his mother in 1833 and said himself that he never wrote anything with interest afterwards.

Peacock often appeared before parliamentary committees as the company's champion. In this role in 1834, he resisted James Silk Buckingham's claim to compensation for his expulsion from the East Indies, and in 1836, he defeated the attack of the Liverpool merchants and Cheshire manufacturers upon the Indian salt monopoly. In 1836 his official career was crowned by his appointment as Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence, in succession to James Mill. The post was one which could only be filled by someone of sound business capacity and exceptional ability in drafting official documents: and Peacock's discharge of its duties, it is believed, suffered nothing by comparison either with his distinguished predecessor or his still more celebrated successor, Stuart Mill. In 1837 appeared his Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems of which only one hundred copies were printed. Also in 1837, Headlong Hall, Nightmare Abbey, Maid Marian, and Crotchet Castle appeared together as vol. 57 of Bentley's Standard Novels. During 1839 and 1840 Peacock superintended the construction of iron steamers which rounded the Cape, and took part in the Chinese war.

Peacock's occupation was principally with finance, commerce, and public works.

He wrote a poem on "A Day at the India Office":

In about 1852 towards the end of Peacock's service in the India office, his zeal or leisure for authorship returned, and he began to contribute to Fraser's Magazine in which appeared his entertaining and scholarly Horæ Dramaticæ, a restoration of the Querolus, a Roman comedy probably of the time of Diocletian, and his reminiscences of Shelley.

Later life
Peacock retired from the India House on 29 March 1856 with an ample pension. In his retirement he seldom left Halliford and spent his life among his books, and in the garden, in which he took great pleasure, and on the River Thames. In 1860 he still showed vigour by the publication in Fraser's Magazine of Gryll Grange, his last novel. In the same year he added the appendix of Shelley's letters. His last writings were two translations, Gl' Ingannati (The Deceived) a comedy, performed at Siena in 1861 and Ælia Lælia Crispis of which a limited edition was circulated in 1862.

Peacock died at Lower Halliford, 23 January 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library, and was buried in the new cemetery at Shepperton.

His granddaughter remembered him in these words:

"In society my grandfather was ever a welcome guest, his genial manner, hearty appreciation of wit and humour in others, and the amusing way in which he told stories made him a very delightful acquaintance; he was always so agreeable and so very witty that he was called by his most intimate friends the "Laughing Philosopher", and it seems to me that the term "Epicurean Philosopher", which I have often heard applied to him, describes him accurately and briefly. In public business my grandfather was upright and honourable; but as he advanced in years his detestation of anything disagreeable made him simply avoid whatever fretted him, laughing off all sorts of ordinary calls upon his leisure time."

Sir Edward Strachey wrote of him:

"A kind-hearted, genial, friendly man, who loved to share his enjoyment of life with all around him, and self-indulgent without being selfish."

Richard Garnett in the Dictionary of National Biography described Peacock as:

"a rare instance of a man improved by prosperity; an element of pedantry and illiberality in his earlier writings gradually disappears in genial sunshine, although, with the advance of age, obstinate prejudice takes its place, good humoured, but unamenable to argument. The vigour of his mind is abundantly proved by his successful transaction of the uncongenial commercial and financial business of the East India Company; and his novels, their quaint prejudices apart, are almost as remarkable for their good sense as for their wit. But for this penetrating sagacity, constantly brought to bear upon the affairs of life, they would seem mere humorous extravaganzas, being farcical rather than comic, and almost entirely devoid of plot and character. They overflow with merriment from end to end, though the humour is frequently too recondite to be generally appreciated, and their style is perfect. They owe much of their charm to the simple and melodious lyrics with which they are interspersed, a striking contrast to the frigid artificiality of Peacock's more ambitious attempts in poetry. As a critic, he was sensible and sound, but neither possessed nor appreciated the power of his contemporaries, Shelley and Keats, to reanimate classical myths by infusion of the modern spirit."

Family
Peacock married Jane Griffith or Gryffydh in 1820. In his "Letter to Maria Gisborne", Shelley referred to Jane as "the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope." Peacock had four children, a son Edward who was a champion rower, and three daughters. One of them, Mary Ellen, married the novelist George Meredith as her second husband in August 1849. Only his son survived him, and he for less than a year, but he left several grandchildren. Jane Peacock died in 1865. Canada boasts the majority of Peacock relatives including Tommy Peacock.

Works
Peacock's own place in literature is pre-eminently that of a satirist. That he has nevertheless been the favourite only of the few is owing partly to the highly intellectual quality of his work, but mainly to his lack of ordinary qualifications of the novelist, all pretension to which he entirely disclaims. He has no plot, little human interest, and no consistent delineation of character. His personages are mere puppets, or, at best, incarnations of abstract qualities such as grace or beauty, but beautifully depicted.

His comedy combines the mock-Gothic with the Aristophanic. He suffers from that dramatist's faults and, though not as daring in invention or as free in the use of sexual humour, shares many of his strengths. His greatest intellectual love is for Ancient Greece, including late and minor works such as the Dionysiaca of Nonnus; many of his characters are given punning names taken from Greek to indicate their personality or philosophy.

He tended to dramatize where traditional novelists narrated; he is more concerned with the interplay of ideas and opinions than of feelings and emotions; his dramatis personae is more likely to consist of a cast of more or less equal characters than of one outstanding hero or heroine and a host of minor auxiliaries; his novels have a tendency to approximate the Classical unities, with few changes of scene and few if any subplots; his novels are novels of conversation rather than novels of action; in fact, Peacock is so much more interested in what his characters say to one another than in what they do to one another that he often sets out entire chapters of his novels in dialogue form. Plato's Symposium is the literary ancestor of these works, by way of the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus, in which the conversation relates less to exalted philosophical themes than to the points of a good fish dinner.

Novels

 * Headlong Hall (published 1815 but dated 1816) [revised slightly, 1837]
 * Melincourt (1817)
 * Nightmare Abbey (1818) [revised slightly, 1837]
 * Maid Marian (1822)
 * The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829)
 * Crotchet Castle (1831) [revised slightly, 1837]
 * Gryll Grange (1861) [serialised first during 1860]

Verse

 * The Monks of St. Mark (1804)
 * Palmyra and other Poems (1805)
 * The Genius of the Thames: a Lyrical Poem (1810)
 * The Genius of the Thames Palmyra and other Poems (1812)
 * The Philosophy of Melancholy (1812)
 * Sir Hornbook, or Childe Launcelot's Expedition (1813)
 * Sir Proteus: a Satirical Ballad (1814)
 * The Round Table, or King Arthur's Feast (1817)
 * Rhododaphne: or the Thessalian Spirit (1818)
 * Paper Money Lyrics (1837)
 * "The War-Song of Dinas Vawr" (in The Misfortunes of Elphin, 1829)

Essays

 * The Four Ages of Poetry (1820)
 * Recollections of Childhood: The Abbey House (1837)
 * Memoirs of Shelley (1858–62)
 * The Last Day of Windsor Forest (1887) [composed 1862]
 * Prospectus: Classical Education

Plays

 * The Three Doctors
 * The Dilettanti
 * Gl'Ingannati, or The Deceived (translated from the Italian, 1862)

Unfinished tales and novels

 * Satyrane (c. 1816)
 * Calidore (c. 1816)
 * The Pilgrim of Provence (c. 1826)
 * The Lord of the Hills (c. 1835)
 * Julia Procula (c. 1850)
 * A Story Opening at Chertsey (c. 1850)
 * A Story of a Mansion among the Chiltern Hills (c. 1859)
 * Boozabowt Abbey (c. 1859)
 * Cotswald Chace (c. 1860)

Editions
Modern paperback editions of Peacock's works are almost nonexistent. The standard edition of Peacock's verse and prose is the Halliford edition, edited by H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones and published in ten volumes between 1924 and 1934.
 * Brett-Smith, H. F. B. (ed.) The Four Ages of Poetry etc. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953) [no ISBN]. Contains The Four Ages of Poetry, as well as P. B. Shelley's response Defence of Poetry, and Robert Browning's Essay on Shelley. 3rd volume of The Percy Reprints series. The text is presumably that of the Halliford edition. Out of print.
 * Peacock, Thomas Love Headlong Hall / Nightmare Abbey / The Misfortunes of Elphin / Crotchet Castle (Pan Books: Pan Classics, 1967) ISBN 0330300318. Introduction by J. B. Priestley, notes by Barbara Lloyd Evans.
 * Peacock, Thomas Love Nightmare Abbey / Crotchet Castle (Harmondsworth: Penguin English Library, 1969) ISBN 0140430458. Edited with an introduction and notes by Raymond Wright. Reprinted as a Penguin Classic in 1982.
 * Peacock, Thomas Love Headlong Hall & Nightmare Abbey (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1995) ISBN 1853262781. Cheap reprint, with a brief introduction and biography (both unsigned).
 * Peacock, Thomas Love Nightmare Abbey (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 2007) ISBN 9781551114163 Edited by Lisa Vargo.

Correspondence

 * Joukovsky, N. A. (ed.) The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0198126581 (vol. 1), 0198186339 (vol. 2)]. The first volume contains Peacock's correspondence from 1792 to 1827, and the second his correspondence from 1828 to 1866.

Works of criticism

 * Burns, Bryan. The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1985) ISBN 038920532X.
 * Butler, Marilyn. Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in His Context (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979)
 * Campbell, Olwen W. Thomas Love Peacock (London: Arthur Barker, 1953) "The English Novelists" series
 * Dawson, Carl. His Fine Wit: A Study of Thomas Love Peacock (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970)
 * Felton, Felix. Thomas Love Peacock (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973)
 * Freeman, A. M. Thomas Love Peacock: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker, 1911)
 * Helm, W. H. Thomas Love Peacock (London: Herbert & Daniel, 1911)
 * Madden, Lionel. Thomas Love Peacock (London: Evans Bros., 1967) "Literature in Perspective" series
 * Mulvihill, James. Thomas Love Peacock (Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1987) "Twayne's English Authors" series
 * Prance, Claude A. The Characters in the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, 1785-1866: With Bibliographical Lists (Edwin Mellen Press, 1992)
 * Priestley, J. B. Thomas Love Peacock (London: Macmillan, 1927); reprinted with introduction by J. I. M. Stewart (1966)
 * Van Doren, Carl. The Life of Thomas Love Peacock (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911)

title: Thomas Love Peacock


text:
Nimber

In mathematics, the nimbers, also called Grundy numbers, are introduced in combinatorial game theory, where they are defined as the values of heaps in the game Nim. The nimbers are the ordinal numbers endowed with nimber addition and nimber multiplication, which are distinct from ordinal addition and ordinal multiplication.

Because of the Sprague–Grundy theorem which states that every impartial game is equivalent to a Nim heap of a certain size, nimbers arise in a much larger class of impartial games. They may also occur in partisan games like Domineering.

The nimber addition and multiplication operations are associative and commutative. Each nimber is its own additive inverse. In particular for some pairs of ordinals, their nimber sum is smaller than either addend. The minimum excludant operation is applied to sets of nimbers.

Nim
Nim is a game in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. As moves depend only on the position and not on which of the two players is currently moving, and where the payoffs are symmetric, Nim is an impartial game. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap. The goal of the game is to be the player who removes the last object. The nimber of a heap is simply the number of objects in that heap. Using nim addition, one can calculate the nimber of the game as a whole. The winning strategy is to force the nimber of the game to 0 for the opponent's turn.

Cram
Cram is a game often played on a rectangular board in which players take turns placing dominoes either horizontally or vertically until no more dominoes can be placed. The first player that cannot make a move loses. As the possible moves for both players are the same, it is an impartial game and can have a nimber value. For example, any board that is an even size by an even size will have a nimber of 0. Any board that is even by odd will have a non-zero nimber. Any $2 × n$ board will have a nimber of 0 for all even $n$ and a nimber of 1 for all odd $n$.

Northcott's game
In Northcott's game, pegs for each player are placed along a column with a finite number of spaces. Each turn each player must move the piece up or down the column, but may not move past the other player's piece. Several columns are stacked together to add complexity. The player that can no longer make any moves loses. Unlike many other nimber related games, the number of spaces between the two tokens on each row are the sizes of the Nim heaps. If your opponent increases the number of spaces between two tokens, just decrease it on your next move. Else, play the game of Nim and make the Nim-sum of the number of spaces between the tokens on each row be 0.

Hackenbush
Hackenbush is a game invented by mathematician John Horton Conway. It may be played on any configuration of colored line segments connected to one another by their endpoints and to a "ground" line. Players take turns removing line segments. An impartial game version, thereby a game able to be analyzed using nimbers, can be found by removing distinction from the lines, allowing either player to cut any branch. Any segments reliant on the newly removed segment in order to connect to the ground line are removed as well. In this way, each connection to the ground can be considered a nim heap with a nimber value. Additionally, all the separate connections to the ground line can also be summed for a nimber of the game state.

Addition
Nimber addition (also known as nim-addition) can be used to calculate the size of a single nim heap equivalent to a collection of nim heaps. It is defined recursively by $$\alpha \oplus \beta = \operatorname{mex} \! \bigl( \{ \alpha' \oplus \beta : \alpha' < \alpha \} \cup \{\alpha \oplus \beta' : \beta' < \beta \} \bigr),$$ where the minimum excludant $mex(S)$ of a set $S$ of ordinals is defined to be the smallest ordinal that is not an element of $S$.

For finite ordinals, the nim-sum is easily evaluated on a computer by taking the bitwise exclusive or (XOR, denoted by $⊕$) of the corresponding numbers. For example, the nim-sum of 7 and 14 can be found by writing 7 as 111 and 14 as 1110; the ones place adds to 1; the twos place adds to 2, which we replace with 0; the fours place adds to 2, which we replace with 0; the eights place adds to 1. So the nim-sum is written in binary as 1001, or in decimal as 9.

This property of addition follows from the fact that both $mex$ and XOR yield a winning strategy for Nim and there can be only one such strategy; or it can be shown directly by induction: Let $α$ and $β$ be two finite ordinals, and assume that the nim-sum of all pairs with one of them reduced is already defined. The only number whose XOR with $α$ is $α ⊕ β$ is $β$, and vice versa; thus $α ⊕ β$ is excluded. $$\zeta := \alpha \oplus \beta \oplus \gamma$$ On the other hand, for any ordinal $γ < α ⊕ β$, XORing $ξ$ with all of $α$, $β$ and $γ$ must lead to a reduction for one of them (since the leading 1 in $ξ$ must be present in at least one of the three); since $$\zeta \oplus \gamma = \alpha \oplus \beta > \gamma,$$ we must have either $$\begin{align} \alpha > \zeta \oplus \alpha &= \beta \oplus \gamma, \\[4pt] \beta > \zeta \oplus \beta &= \alpha \oplus \gamma; \end{align}$$ thus $γ$ is included as either $$\begin{align} (\beta \oplus \gamma) \oplus \beta, \\[4pt] \alpha \oplus (\alpha \oplus \gamma); \end{align}$$ and hence $α ⊕ β$ is the minimum excluded ordinal.

Nimber addition is associative and commutative, with $0$ as the additive identity element. Moreover, a nimber is its own additive inverse. It follows that $α ⊕ β = 0$ if and only if $α = β$.

Multiplication
Nimber multiplication (nim-multiplication) is defined recursively by

$$ \alpha \, \beta = \operatorname{mex} \! \bigl(\{\alpha' \beta \oplus \alpha \, \beta' \oplus \alpha' \beta' : \alpha' < \alpha, \beta' < \beta \} \bigr).$$

Nimber multiplication is associative and commutative, with the ordinal $1$ as the multiplicative identity element. Moreover, nimber multiplication distributes over nimber addition.

Thus, except for the fact that nimbers form a proper class and not a set, the class of nimbers forms a ring. In fact, it even determines an algebraically closed field of characteristic 2, with the nimber multiplicative inverse of a nonzero ordinal $α$ given by

$$\alpha^{-1} = \operatorname{mex}(S),$$ where $S$ is the smallest set of ordinals (nimbers) such that
 * 1) $0$ is an element of $S$;
 * 2) if $0 < α′ < α$ and $β'$ is an element of $S$, then $$\tfrac{1 + (\alpha' - \alpha) \beta'}{\alpha'}$$ is also an element of $S$.

For all natural numbers $n$, the set of nimbers less than $2^{2^{n}}|undefined$ form the Galois field $GF(2^{2^{n}})|undefined$ of order $2^{2^{n}}|undefined$. Therefore, the set of finite nimbers is isomorphic to the direct limit as $n → ∞$ of the fields $GF(2^{2^{n}})|undefined$. This subfield is not algebraically closed, since no field $GF(2^{k})$ with $k$ not a power of 2 is contained in any of those fields, and therefore not in their direct limit; for instance the polynomial $x^{3} + x + 1$, which has a root in $GF(2^{3})$, does not have a root in the set of finite nimbers.

Just as in the case of nimber addition, there is a means of computing the nimber product of finite ordinals. This is determined by the rules that

 * 1) The nimber product of a Fermat 2-power (numbers of the form $2^{2^{n}}|undefined$) with a smaller number is equal to their ordinary product;
 * 2) The nimber square of a Fermat 2-power $x$ is equal to $3x/2$ as evaluated under the ordinary multiplication of natural numbers.

The smallest algebraically closed field of nimbers is the set of nimbers less than the ordinal $ω^{ω^{ω}}$, where $ω$ is the smallest infinite ordinal. It follows that as a nimber, $ω^{ω^{ω}}$ is transcendental over the field.

Addition and multiplication tables
The following tables exhibit addition and multiplication among the first 16 nimbers.

This subset is closed under both operations, since 16 is of the form $2^{2^{n}}|undefined$. (If you prefer simple text tables, they are .)

title: Nimber


text:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 fantasy adventure film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce and Valentina Cortese. An international co-production of the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, the film is based on the tall tales of the 18th-century German nobleman, Baron Munchausen, and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire.

The film was a box office bomb, grossing only $8 million and losing $38 million for Columbia Pictures. Despite this, it received positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.

Plot
In an unnamed war-torn European city in the "Age of Reason", as a large Ottoman army prepares an invasion outside the city gates, a fanciful touring stage production of Baron Munchausen's life and adventures is taking place. In a theatre box, the mayor, "The Right Ordinary" Horatio Jackson, reinforces the city's commitment to reason by ordering the execution of a soldier who had just accomplished a near-superhuman feat of bravery, claiming that his bravery is demoralizing to other soldiers and citizens.

The play is interrupted by an elderly man claiming to be the real Baron, protesting its many inaccuracies. Over the complaints of the audience, the theatre company and Jackson, the "real" Baron gains the house's attention and narrates through flashback an account of one of his adventures, of a life-or-death wager with the Grand Turk, in which the younger Baron's life is saved only by his amazing luck, plus the assistance of his remarkable associates: Berthold, the world's fastest runner; Adolphus, a rifleman with superhuman eyesight; Gustavus, who possesses extraordinary hearing and powerful lungs; and the fantastically strong Albrecht.

When gunfire disrupts the elderly Baron's story, Jackson cancels the acting troupe's contract because of the Baron. The Baron wanders backstage, where the Angel of Death tries to take his life, but Sally Salt, the young daughter of the theatre company's leader, saves him and persuades him to remain living. Sally races to the wall, yelling for the Turkish army to leave. The Baron accidentally fires himself through the sky using a mortar, and returns riding a cannonball, narrowly escaping the Angel of Death again. Insisting that he alone can save the city, the Baron escapes over the city's walls in a hot air balloon constructed of women's underwear, accompanied by Sally as a stowaway.

The balloon expedition proceeds to the Moon, where the Baron, who has grown younger, finds Berthold, but angers the King of the Moon, a giant with separate minds in his head and body, and who resents the Baron for his romantic past with the Queen of the Moon. The death of the King's body and a bungled escape from the Moon bring the trio back to the Earth and into the volcano of the Roman god, Vulcan. He hosts the group as his guests, and reveals that Albrecht is working as his servant. The Baron and Vulcan's wife, Venus, attempt a romantic interlude by waltzing in the air, prompting an irate Vulcan to expel the foursome from his kingdom into the South Seas.

Swallowed by an enormous sea creature, the travellers locate Gustavus, Adolphus and the Baron's trusty horse, Bucephalus. The Baron (who appears elderly again after being "expelled from a state of bliss") encounters the Angel of Death for the fourth time. They escape by blowing "a modicum of snuff" into the sea creature's cavernous interior, causing it to sneeze the heroes out through its whale-like blowhole. The Baron, young again, sails to where the Turkish army is located, but his associates are too elderly and tired to fight.

The Baron firmly lectures them, but to no avail, so he storms off, intending to surrender to the Grand Turk. His companions rally to save the Baron, and, through a series of fantastic acts, they rout the Turkish army and liberate the city. During the city's celebratory parade, the Baron is shot dead by Jackson, and the Angel of Death appears for a final time to take the Baron's life. An emotional public funeral takes place, but the denouement reveals that this is merely the final scene of yet another story that the Baron is telling to the same theatregoers in the city. The Baron calls the foregoing "only one of the many occasions on which I met my death", and closes his tale by saying that "everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after".

The Baron leads the citizens to the city gates to reveal that the city has indeed been saved, although it is unclear if the events of the battle occurred in a tall tale or in reality. Sally asks, "It wasn't just a story, was it?" The Baron grins, rides away on Bucephalus, and disappears.

Cast
In addition, Robin Williams—credited as "Ray D. Tutto" (a play on "king of everything" in Italian)—portrays the King of the Moon. Director Terry Gilliam explained, "The deal was that we couldn't use his [Williams] name because his agents said, 'We don't want you pimping his ass for your film.' [...] so that's why Robin is not credited." Sting has a credited cameo as a soldier executed for being a hero ("behaviour demoralizing to ordinary soldiers"), and Gilliam has an uncredited cameo as an irritating singer.

Background
Tall tales, loosely based on the German adventurer, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen, or Baron Munchausen, were compiled by Rudolf Erich Raspe and published for English readers in 1785 as The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (or Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia). The tales were further embellished and translated back to German by Gottfried August Bürger in 1786. These tales were frequently extended and translated throughout the 19th century, further fictionalized in the 1901 American novel, Mr. Munchausen.

The stories were adapted into various films, including Baron Munchausen's Dream (1911, by Georges Méliès), Münchhausen (1943, by Josef von Báky, with a script by Erich Kästner), The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961, by Karel Zeman) and The Very Same Munchhausen (1979), directed by Mark Zakharov, who depicted Munchausen as a tragic character, struggling against the conformity and hypocrisy of the world around him.

Budget
The film went over budget; what was originally $23.5 million grew to a reported $46.63 million. Gilliam, acknowledging that he had gone over budget, said that its final costs had been nowhere near $40 million.

In The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen (included on the bonus DVD of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Munchausen), producer Thomas Schühly said that, as part of a deal with 20th Century Fox before it went to Columbia, a budget plan had been set up for $35 million, "and it's strange, the [film's] final cost was 35 [million].... We always had a budget of 34 or 35 million, the problem was when I started to discuss it with Columbia, Columbia would not go beyond 25.... Everybody knew from the very beginning that this cutting out was just a fake.... The problem was that David Puttnam got fired, and all these deals were oral deals.... Columbia's new CEO, Dawn Steel, said, 'Whatever David Puttnam [has] said before doesn't interest me'."

Regarding the new regime's apparent animosity towards all of Puttnam's projects and Munchausen, Gilliam added in the same documentary, "I was trying very hard to convince Dawn Steel that this was not a David Puttnam movie, it was a Terry Gilliam movie." Similarly, Kent Houston, head of Peerless Camera, which was doing the film's special effects, said in Madness and Misadventures that they were promised a bonus if they would finish the effects in time, but when they approached the person again when they were done, he was met with the reply, "I'm not gonna pay you, because I don't want to seem to be doing anything that could benefit Terry Gilliam."

Experience
Munchausen is the third entry in Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination", preceded by Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible". Gilliam explained, "The one theme that runs through all three of these pictures is a consistently serious battle between fantasy and what people perceive as reality." All three films focus on these struggles, and attempt to escape them through imagination: Time Bandits, through the eyes of a child, Brazil, through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen, through the eyes of an elderly man.

When the production finally came to a successful close, several of the actors commented on the rushed tightness of the whole project. Eric Idle said, "Up until Munchausen, I'd always been very smart about Terry Gilliam films. You don't ever [want to] be in them. Go and see them by all means – but to be in them, fucking madness!!!"

Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, described it as a traumatic experience. "[I]t definitely left me with a few scars... It was just so dangerous. There were so many explosions going off so close to me, which is traumatic for a kid whether it's dangerous or not. Being in freezing cold water for long periods of time and working endless hours. It was physically grueling and unsafe." She further elaborated on her experience in her 2022 memoir, Run Towards the Danger, writing, "Though [Gilliam] was magical and brilliant and made images and stories that will live for a long, long time, it's hard to calculate whether they were worth the price of the hell that so many went through over the years to help him make them."

Nevertheless, on 29 October 2022, she tweeted, "You have my unconditional permission to still love this movie", to people who were wondering whether they could "still like this movie after hearing about [her] horrible experiences working on it as a child"; adding in a second tweet, "Yes, it was traumatic for me. Yes, it should have been handled very differently. Yes, it is still a great movie. The joy that comes from it is the joy I am able to carry with me as well as the terrible memories. So go nuts. Enjoy it. You have my blessing."

Production designer Dante Ferretti afterwards compared Gilliam to his former director, saying, "Terry is very similar to Fellini in spirit. Fellini is a wilder liar, but that's the only difference! Terry isn't a director so much as a film author. He is open to every single idea and opportunity to make the end result work. Often the best ideas have come out of something not working properly and coming up with a new concept as a result. He is very elastic and that's one quality in a director that I admire the most."

Release
When The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was finally completed, David Puttnam, who had obtained the film's US distribution rights for Columbia Pictures, had been replaced as CEO of Columbia; coupled with Gilliam's prior quarrels with major studios over Brazil, the film was given limited distribution in the United States. It grossed $8.1 million in the US and Canada, and £1,917,499 in the United Kingdom, resulting in a loss of $38.5 million.

In Madness and Misadventures, Robin Williams commented on the low number of release prints that Columbia produced, saying, "[Puttnam's] regime was leaving, the new one was going through this, and they said, 'This was their movie, now let's do our movies!' It was a bit like the new lion that comes in and kills all the cubs from the previous man."

Regarding the contemporary press's perception of the film being a financial disaster, Gilliam said in a 2000 interview with IGN, "It seemed actually appropriate that Munchausen—the greatest liar in the world—should be a victim of some of the greatest liars in the world." He compared the film's budget problems to the more serious problems of the film, We're No Angels; he went on to declare its difficulties as a mixture of "trade press" still being upset about his battle with Universal over Brazil, nepotism, and an intrigue on behalf of Ray Stark successfully trying to have Puttnam removed from Columbia, coupled with the fact the studio was being sold at the time:

The negative stories about the shoot that were turning up in the Hollywood press were coming, we found out later, from a source at Film Finances—which was the completion bond company on the film. Their lawyer was a guy named Steve Ransohoff, whose father was Martin Ransohoff—who was Ray Stark's friend and partner. [...] I thought it was quite extraordinary, because the stories were doing two things—they were making me and the whole project look like it was completely out of control and all my fault, and that Film Finance, the completion guarantors, were the only thing holding it together—the people trying to bring control to it... the fact was, they were absolutely useless.

The ultimate fact was that when the film was ultimately released, there were only 117 prints made for America—so it was never really released. 117 prints! ...an art film gets 400. We were ultimately the victim of Columbia Tri-Star being sold to Sony, because at that time all they were doing was trying to get the books looking as good as possible. We weren't the only film that suffered, but we were the most visible one. And what happened—to complete the story in a neat and tidy way—was that they were not spending any money on advertising to promote any of the movies started by the previous regime—by Putnam's regime. They were burying films left right and center by spending no money on them—and the books looked really good at the end of that.

The joke is, if you look back, we got the best reviews and we were doing the best business in the opening weeks of any film they had released since Last Emperor. We actually opened well in the big cities—we opened really well. A friend who had bought the video rights said he had never seen anything so weird—Columbia was spending their whole time looking at exit polls to prove the film would not work in the suburbs, and so it would be pointless to make any more prints. He said, "I've never seen anything like this." There it was. Then it becomes this kind of legend—which it deserves to be... even if it's the wrong legend.

Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Bursting with Terry Gilliam's typically imaginative flourishes, this story of a possibly deranged Baron recounting his storied life is a flamboyant and witty visual treat." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Regarding the gap between the film's troubled production and its eventual triumph of aesthetic cinematic form on the screen, Jeff Swindoll wrote in his 2008 DVD review of Munchausen for Monsters and Critics: "For the absolute hell that the production of the film turned out to be, you really don't see any of that tension on the screen... the film is a fantastic, whimsical treat... Baron Munchausen is full of whimsy, fantasy, bright colors, and fabulous characters. None is as fantastic as the Baron himself as played, with a twinkle in his eye, by the grand John Neville."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4, and found that it was "told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them", appreciating "the sly wit and satire that sneaks in here and there from director Terry Gilliam and his collaborators, who were mostly forged in the mill of Monty Python". While considering the film's special effects as "astonishing", Ebert also contended that "the movie is slow to get off the ground", and "sometimes the movie fails on the basic level of making itself clear. We're not always sure who is who, how they are related, or why we should care." But "allowing for the unsuccessful passages there is a lot here to treasure". Ebert concluded, "This is a vast and commodious work... the wit and the spectacle of Baron Munchausen are considerable achievements." Additionally, he considered John Neville's title role performance as appearing "sensible and matter-of-fact, as anyone would if they had spent a lifetime growing accustomed to the incredible".

Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called the film a "wondrous feat of imagination", although, "except for Williams, the actors are never more than a detail in Gilliam's compositions".

Richard Corliss of Time wrote, "Everything about Munchausen deserves exclamation points, and not just to clear the air of the odor of corporate flop sweat. So here it is! A lavish fairy tale for bright children of all ages! Proof that eccentric films can survive in today's off-the-rack Hollywood! The most inventive fantasy since, well, Brazil! You may not believe it, ladies and gentlemen, but it's all true."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "consistently imaginative" and a "spectacle [that] is indeed spectacular and worth the admission price and patches of boredom". He said that the "major credit must go to Giuseppe Rotunno, the cameraman; Dante Ferretti, the production designer; Richard Conway, who did the special effects, and Peerless Camera Company Ltd., responsible for the optical effects. Without them, Baron Munchausen would have looked about as big and as interesting as a 25-cent postage stamp."

Home media
A Criterion Collection LaserDisc was released with features, such as a commentary track by Gilliam and deleted scenes. The first DVD edition of the film, issued 27 April 1999, did not include any of these nor any other extras.

A 20th anniversary edition was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 8 April 2008. It included a new commentary with Gilliam and co-writer/actor McKeown, a three-part documentary on the making of the film, storyboard sequences, and deleted scenes.

The Criterion Collection released the film on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on 3 January 2023, with bonus features.

Comic book
The film was adapted into a comic series in 1989 by NOW Comics: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – The Four-Part Mini-Series.

title: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen


text:
Talk:The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Quote in budget
This quote, which I removed from the budget subsection, has to be sourced:

 * Schühly of course is a Munchausen character if there ever was one. The making of the movie is described in details in a book called Losing the Light by Andrew Yule. Schühly comes across as a hopeless buffoon, with little or no knowledge of the movie business, a conjurer of past triumphs that never existed or have been discredited by the real miracle workers, a credit-stealer par excellence when it suits him, a name dropper extraordinaire, more interested in his own publicity than in anything else. The stunts he pulled, the incompetence he displayed, according to the people interviewed, left one either visibly shaken or furious or rolling their eyes.

Is this a direct quote from someone? If so, who? Where is the quote taken from? If this is a paraphrase, it needs more work, because this is a description of a living person, and could be construed as libellous. ---  RepublicanJacobite  TheFortyFive 03:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Apparent disappearance
In the final sentence of the Plot summary there is the oxymoron, As the Baron and Bucephalus are bathed in the light of the sun parting through the clouds, they apparently disappear.

Would I be justified in rewording this?

Nuttyskin (talk) 13:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Sure. I'm not sure I like "[sunlight] parting through the clouds" much either... --Fru1tbat (talk) 14:01, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Nationality of the film?
The BFI source that was added to the film in the last day or so lists this film as a British/American/West German co-production. The sources I have found, though, list two British production companies and one Italian company. Is there one reliable source that can sort this out? Beyond distribution, was Columbia involved in the production? If not, in what way is this an American film? I can't find any German companies involved in the production. ---  The Old Jacobite  The '45  13:00, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, there's this. DonIago (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That would be more helpful if it listed the production companies. There's no mention there of Italy. ---  The Old Jacobite   The '45  17:21, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, best I could come up with while trying to deal with a few other things. DonIago (talk) 17:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Removing the Additional Citations template
I think it is time to remove the citation needed template. There are plenty of wikilinks and citations to support the article's content. Jackfork (talk) 05:28, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Background, Accolades and Home media aren't especially well-sourced. DonIago (talk) 00:16, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Adventures of Baron Munchausen


text:
User talk:Qwitchibo

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