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Rovaniemi

Rovaniemi (, ; ; Ruávinjargâ; Ruäʹvnjargg) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Lapland. It is located near the Arctic Circle in the northern interior of the country. The population of Rovaniemi is approximately 0, while the sub-region has a population of approximately 0. It is the most populous municipality in Finland, and the 12th most populous urban area in the country.

Rovaniemi is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland, and its southern part Peräpohjola. The city centre is situated about 6 km south of the Arctic Circle and is between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara, at the confluence of the river Kemijoki and its tributary, the Ounasjoki. It is the second-largest city of Northern Finland after Oulu, and, together with the capital city Helsinki, it is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism.

The city and the surrounding Rovaniemen maalaiskunta (Rural municipality of Rovaniemi) were consolidated into a single entity on 1 January 2006. Rovaniemi municipality has an approximate population of 0. The urban area of Rovaniemi has a population of 53,361, in an area of about 59 km2. Rovaniemi is a unilingual Finnish-speaking municipality, and unusually for larger Finnish towns, it is also known by its Finnish name and spelling in the Swedish language.

The coat of arms of Rovaniemi was designed by Toivo Vuorela. Its explanation is "in the green field, a silver pall with light-height upper branches; accompanied by a golden flame in the upper corner". It was approved on 15 August 1956 by the Rovaniemi Rural Municipal Council and confirmed on October 26 at the Ministry of the Interior as the coat of arms of the Rovaniemi Rural Council.

Name
The rova part in the name Rovaniemi has often been considered to be of Saami origin, as roavve in Northern Saami denotes a forested ridge or hill or the site of an old forest fire. The niemi part of the name means "cape". The name of the town in the Saami languages spoken in Finland are Ruávinjargâ, Roavenjárga and Roavvenjárga and Ruäʹvnjargg.

History
Periodic clearance of new land for agriculture and the practice of slash-and-burn cultivation began around 750–530 BC. Artifacts found in the area suggest that an increasing number of travellers from Karelia in the east, Häme in the south and the Arctic Ocean coast in the north must have come there from 500 AD onwards. The Sami are indigenous to Sápmi.

Rovaniemi is first mentioned by name in official documents in 1453, existing as a set of small villages whose inhabitants earned their living mainly in agriculture and animal husbandry—with fishing and hunting the most important offshoots.

The exploitation of Lapland's natural resources in the 1800s boosted Rovaniemi's growth. Extensive logging sites and gold fever attracted thousands of people to Lapland. As the mining of natural resources was increased, Rovaniemi became the business centre of the province of Lapland.

The township decree was promulgated on 27 June 1928, as a result of which Rovaniemi seceded from the old rural municipality as its own market town on 1 January 1929.

World War II
During World War II, Finland signed the Moscow Armistice on 19 September 1944 and was required to expel forces of its former German ally. In the Lapland War retreating German forces utilised scorched earth tactics, and though initially German General Lothar Rendulic ordered only the public buildings in Rovaniemi to be destroyed, on 13 October 1944, the German army received orders to destroy all the buildings in Rovaniemi, only excluding hospitals and houses where inhabitants were present.

While the German rearguard was going about the destruction, an ammunition train in Rovaniemi station exploded and set fire to the wooden houses of the town. The German troops suffered many casualties, mainly from glass splinters. A Finnish commando unit claimed to have blown up the ammunition train and may well have been the primary cause of the town's ruin. The cause was then unknown and assumed to be the deliberate intent of Rendulic. During these hostilities, 90% of all the buildings in Rovaniemi were destroyed. There is a German cemetery 19 km from Rovaniemi where soldiers killed fighting in Lapland during the war are buried.

Although there has been continuous human settlement in the Rovaniemi area since at least the Stone Age, few of the buildings date back before 1944, since most of the city was destroyed during World War II. When the city was rebuilt, it was designed with input by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who planned the city's footprint in the shape of a reindeer's head, with the city roads forming the antlers, and the local sports stadium as the reindeer's eye.

Climate
Due to its location near the Arctic Circle, Rovaniemi has a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc) with short, pleasant summers, while the winters are long, cold and snowy. The city lies just south of the 0 °C mean annual isotherm, but freezing in the soil is very limited even during the winter due to typical heavy snow cover. Its extreme northerly location combined with frequent overcast skies leads to very low levels of sunshine in the winter months; December averages just under six minutes of sunshine daily.

Winters are somewhat modified by marine air from the North Atlantic Current that ensures average temperatures are less extreme than expected for an inland area at such a northerly latitude. On 26 April 2019, Rovaniemi recorded its warmest April day on record with 19 °C.

From 1 to 6 July 2021, Rovaniemi recorded 122 hours of continuous sunshine, which is a new world record. The sun shone continuously from 02:00 on 1 July 2021 to 04:00 on 6 July 2021. The previous record was 112 hours and 10 minutes at Cape Evans, Antarctica, from 16 to 21 November 1911.

The average annual temperature in Rovaniemi is 0.9 C. Snow stays on the ground 175 days a year on average. The lowest temperature ever recorded at the airport is −38.1 °C, recorded on 28 January 1999. However, on the same day temperatures as cold as -47.5 C were recorded at nearby weather stations. The highest temperature ever recorded is 32.2 °C, recorded on 18 July 2018 at the railway station.

Despite the fact that Rovaniemi experiences polar day between 7 June and 6 July (30 days) it does not experience polar night. However, the sun barely gets above the horizon in the winter.

Population
The city of Rovaniemi has 0 inhabitants, making it the most populous municipality in Finland. The Rovaniemi region has a population of 0. In Rovaniemi, 4.9% of the population has a foreign background, which is below the national average.

Languages
Rovaniemi is a monolingual Finnish-speaking municipality. The majority of the population - 0 people or NaN% - speak Finnish as their first language. In Rovaniemi, 0 people, or NaN% of the population, speak Swedish. The number of Sámi speakers, Finland's third official language, is 0 inhabitants, or NaN% of the population. NaN of the population of Rovaniemi have a mother tongue other than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon.

At least 40 different languages are spoken in Rovaniemi. The most common foreign languages are Russian (0.7%), English (0.4%), Arabic (0.3%), Chinese (0.3%) and Ukrainian (0.3%).

Immigration
, there were 3,219 persons with a migrant background living in Rovaniemi, or 4.9% of the population. The number of residents who were born abroad was 3,847, or 5.9% of the population. The number of persons with foreign citizenship living in Rovaniemi was 2,350. Most foreign-born citizens came from the Sweden, former Soviet Union, China and Russia.

The relative share of immigrants in Rovaniemi's population is below to the national average. However, the city's new residents are increasingly of foreign origin. This will increase the proportion of foreign residents in the coming years.

Religion
In 2023, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the largest religious group with 69.1% of the population of Rovaniemi. Other religious groups accounted for 1.6% of the population. 29.3% of the population had no religious affiliation.

Of the revival movements within the church, Conservative Laestadianism is particularly active in the locality, with three peace associations in the locality: the Rovaniemi Peace Association, the Rautionsaari Peace Association and the Viirinkylä Peace Association.

Other local communities include the Rovaniemi Pentecostal Church, a member of the Finnish Pentecostal Church, and the Rovaniemi Adventist Church, part of the Finnish Adventist Church.

Economy
Since Rovaniemi is the capital of the region of Lapland, many government institutions have their offices there. About 10,000 of the inhabitants are students. Rovaniemi is home to not only the University of Lapland but also the Lapland University of Applied Sciences (formerly known as the Rovaniemi Polytechnic), which comprises institutes of information and traditional technology, business, health and social care, culinary studies, forestry, rural studies, and sports. Local newspapers include the Lapin Kansa, Uusi Rovaniemi and Lappilainen.

Tourism
Because of the unspoiled nature of the area and numerous recreational opportunities, tourism is an important industry in Rovaniemi. The city has a number of hotels and restaurants located both in the centre and on the outskirts of the town, hosting over 481,000 visitors in 2013. Tourism can be seen and heard in the city's streetscape, at the Arctic Circle and at Rovaniemi Airport, one of Finland's busiest airports in terms of passenger numbers.

Rovaniemi is also considered by Finns to be the official home town of Santa Claus. It is home to the Santa Claus Village at the Arctic Circle and SantaPark Arctic World, which is located 8 km north of the centre.

Directly across the river from the town is the Ounasvaara ski centre. There have been recreational activities in the Ounasvaara area since 1927, when the first winter sports were also organized. The top of the Ounasvaara hill bears the site of some of the earliest known human settlements in the area.

A phenomenon also attracting numerous tourists is the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. In Finnish Lapland, the number of auroral displays can be as high as 200 a year, whereas in southern Finland, the number is usually fewer than 20.

Attractions
Rovaniemi's most prominent landmarks include the Jätkänkynttilä bridge with its eternal flame over the Kemijoki river, the Arktikum Science Museum, which rises out of the bank of the Ounasjoki river, the Rovaniemi city hall, the Lappia Hall, which serves as a theatre, concert hall, and congress centre, and the library.

The last three mentioned buildings are designed by Alvar Aalto. The Arktikum Science Museum is a comprehensive museum of Finland's, and the world's, Arctic regions.

Sports
The city is home to the football clubs Rovaniemen Palloseura, or RoPS, part of Ykkönen, the Finnish third division, and FC Santa Claus, part of the sixth division; to the ice hockey team Rovaniemen Kiekko, or RoKi, whose home arena is Lappi Areena and which competes in Mestis, the second-highest league in Finland; and to the volleyball team called Team Lakkapää (formerly Rovaniemen Santasport and Perungan Pojat), which plays in the Finland Volleyball League and won the national championship in 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2011. The Rovaniemi Nordmen, an American Football team, was formed in 2013 and has played at various levels throughout the Finnish American Football Association.

Rovaniemi has hosted several international ski competition, including the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1984, several FIS Nordic Combined World Cup and FIS Ski Jumping Continental Cup events, the 2005 FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships, the 1970 Winter Universiade and the 2008 Winter Transplant Games.

In 2021, Rovaniemi hosted the World Rally Championship for 2021 Arctic Rally Finland, the first WRC event held inside the Arctic Circle.

Transport
VR Group, the Finnish state railway system, operates direct daytime and overnight passenger trains from Rovaniemi Station to Oulu, Tampere, Helsinki and Turku. Diesel-powered passenger trains operated northeast of Rovaniemi to Kemijärvi until March 2014, when electrification to Kemijärvi was completed. Rovaniemi Airport is located about 10 km north of the Rovaniemi city centre, and it is the third-busiest airport in Finland after Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and Oulu Airport. The busiest time for the airport is in the Christmas season, when many people go on Santa Flights.

Notable inhabitants

 * Snowboarder and 2005 Winter X Games gold medalist Antti Autti, Rovaniemi native, in April 2005 received his own piece of land in the city for being named to the 2006 Finnish Olympic team
 * Antti Iivari (born 1992), ice hockey player
 * writer Timo K. Mukka died in Rovaniemi in 1974
 * Nätti-Jussi ("Pretty John"), legendary lumberjack and forester
 * Harri Olli, ski jumper
 * Tanja Poutiainen Alpine skier
 * Tomi Putaansuu, better known as Mr. Lordi lead singer of the hard rock band and 2006 Eurovision Song Contest winner Lordi
 * Jari Tervo, author
 * Antti Tuisku, singer
 * Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, said to be the residence of Father Christmas
 * Progressive rock band Absoluuttinen Nollapiste
 * The black metal band Beherit came from Rovaniemi

Twin towns – sister cities
Rovaniemi is twinned with:

 * Ajka, Hungary
 * Alanya, Turkey
 * Cadillac, United States
 * Grindavík, Iceland
 * Harbin, China
 * Kassel, Germany
 * Kiruna, Sweden
 * Narvik, Norway
 * Neustrelitz, Germany
 * Olsztyn, Poland
 * Sankt Johann in Tirol, Austria
 * Veszprém, Hungary

In March 2022, Rovaniemi suspended the agreement with Murmansk, Russia due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In popular culture

A 1996 Christmas episode of Tots TV called "Lapland Out" took place in Rovaniemi.

The 1998 Spanish romantic film Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Los amantes del Círculo Polar), by director Julio Medem, partly takes place in Rovaniemi.

Rovaniemi appears in the video game Tom Clancy's EndWar as a possible battlefield. In the game, Rovaniemi houses military facilities critical to a missile shield for a European Federation.

Rovaniemi is a central scene in a documentary film Reindeerspotting.

TV-Star Bam Margera and his friends travelled to Rovaniemi in their film Bam Margera Presents: Where the ♯[[Bam Margera Presents: Where the ♯$&% Is Santa?]]% Is Santa? in order to find Santa Claus who is assumed to live in Rovaniemi.

A version of the music video for Lordi's song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" was filmed near Rovaniemi for the opening of the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest. After winning the contest, a square called the Lordi's Square (Lordin aukio) in the city center of Rovaniemi has been named after the band.

The video for the Nightwish single "The Islander" was filmed in Rovaniemi by Stobe Harju.

Rovaniemi used to have the northernmost location of any McDonald's in the world from 1997 until the opening of a McDonald's in Murmansk in 2013, 23 years after it first opened in that country. However, the title of the northernmost in the world returned to Rovaniemi in 2022, when in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, all Russian McDonald's restaurants were closed, and rebranded to Vkusno i tochka. In January 2024, Rovaniemi once again lost the title of having the northernmost McDonald's in the world as a new restaurant opened in Tromsø, Norway.

Rovaniemi appears as one location of Gavin Lyall's 1963 book The Most Dangerous Game, a spy-thriller set in Lapland and the northern USSR.

Rovaniemi was featured in the first episode of The Reluctant Traveler.

title: Rovaniemi


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User talk:YaYa

I have been working for many years in the puppetry medium and I offer this clarification between 'puppet' and 'automata' as we deal with emerging new media.

YaYa 15:11 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:YaYa


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Second language

A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with, is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "the first language learned in childhood and still spoken", recognizing that for some, the earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment.

Second-language acquisition
The distinction between acquiring and learning was made by Stephen Krashen as part of his Monitor Theory. According to Krashen, the acquisition of a language is a natural process; whereas learning a language is a conscious one. In the former, the student needs to partake in natural communicative situations. In the latter, error correction is present, as is the study of grammatical rules isolated from natural language. Not all educators in second language agree to this distinction; however, the study of how a second language is learned/acquired is referred to as second-language acquisition (SLA).

Research in SLA "...focuses on the developing knowledge and use of a language by children and adults who already know at least one other language... [and] a knowledge of second-language acquisition may help educational policy makers set more realistic goals for programmes for both foreign language courses and the learning of the majority language by minority language children and adults."

SLA has been influenced by both linguistic and psychological theories. One of the dominant linguistic theories hypothesizes that a device or module of sorts in the brain contains innate knowledge. Many psychological theories, on the other hand, hypothesize that cognitive mechanisms, responsible for much of human learning, process language.

Other dominant theories and points of research include 2nd language acquisition studies (which examine if L1 findings can be transferred to L2 learning), verbal behaviour (the view that constructed linguistic stimuli can create a desired speech response), morpheme studies, behaviourism, error analysis, stages and order of acquisition, structuralism (approach that looks at how the basic units of language relate to each other according to their common characteristics), 1st language acquisition studies, contrastive analysis (approach where languages are examined in terms of differences and similarities) and inter-language (which describes the L2 learner's language as a rule-governed, dynamic system). These theories have all influenced second-language teaching and pedagogy. There are many different methods of second-language teaching, many of which stem directly from a particular theory. Common methods are the grammar-translation method, the direct method, the audio-lingual method (clearly influenced by audio-lingual research and the behaviourist approach), the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, community language learning, the Total Physical Response method, and the communicative approach (highly influenced by Krashen's theories). Some of these approaches are more popular than others, and are viewed to be more effective. Most language teachers do not use one singular style, but will use a mix in their teaching. This provides a more balanced approach to teaching and helps students of a variety of learning styles succeed.

Effect of age
The defining difference between a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) is the age the person learned the language. For example, linguist Eric Lenneberg used second language to mean a language consciously acquired or used by its speaker after puberty. In most cases, people never achieve the same level of fluency and comprehension in their second languages as in their first language. These views are closely associated with the critical period hypothesis.

In acquiring an L2, Hyltenstam found that around the age of six or seven seemed to be a cut-off point for bilinguals to achieve native-like proficiency. After that age, L2 learners could get near-native-like-ness but their language would, while consisting of few actual errors, have enough errors to set them apart from the L1 group. The inability of some subjects to achieve native-like proficiency must be seen in relation to the age of onset (AO). Later, Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson modified their age cut-offs to argue that after childhood, in general, it becomes more and more difficult to acquire native-like-ness, but that there is no cut-off point in particular.

As we are learning more and more about the brain, there is a hypothesis that when a child is going through puberty, that is the time that accents start. Before a child goes through puberty, the chemical processes in the brain are more geared towards language and social communication. Whereas after puberty, the ability for learning a language without an accent has been rerouted to function in another area of the brain—most likely in the frontal lobe area promoting cognitive functions, or in the neural system of hormone allocated for reproduction and sexual organ growth.

As far as the relationship between age and eventual attainment in SLA is concerned, Krashen, Long, and Scarcella, say that people who encounter foreign language in early age, begin natural exposure to second languages and obtain better proficiency than those who learn the second language as an adult. However, when it comes to the relationship between age and rate SLA, "Adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant)". Also, "older children acquire faster than younger children do (again, in early stages of morphological and syntactic development where time and exposure are held constant)". In other words, adults and older children are fast learners when it comes to the initial stage of foreign language education.

Gauthier and Genesee have done research which mainly focuses on the second language acquisition of internationally adopted children and results show that early experiences of one language of children can affect their ability to acquire a second language, and usually children learn their second language slower and weaker even during the critical period.

As for the fluency, it is better to do foreign language education at an early age, but being exposed to a foreign language since an early age causes a "weak identification". Such issue leads to a "double sense of national belonging," that makes one not sure of where they belong to because, according to Brian A. Jacob, multicultural education affects students' "relations, attitudes, and behaviors". And as children learn more and more foreign languages, children start to adapt, and get absorbed into the foreign culture that they "undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made". Due to such factors, learning foreign languages at an early age may incur one's perspective of his or her native country.

Speed
Acquiring a second language can be a lifelong learning process for many. Despite persistent efforts, most learners of a second language will never become fully native-like in it, although with practice considerable fluency can be achieved. However, children by around the age of 5 have more or less mastered their first language with the exception of vocabulary and a few grammatical structures, and the process is relatively very fast because language is a very complex skill. Moreover, if children start to learn a second language when they are seven years old or younger, they will also be fully fluent with their second language in a faster speed comparing to the speed of learning by adults who start to learn a second language later in their life.

Correction
In the first language, children do not respond to systematic correction. Furthermore, children who have limited input still acquire the first language, which is a significant difference between input and output. Children are exposed to a language environment of errors and lack of correction but they end up having the capacity to figure out the grammatical rules. Error correction does not seem to have a direct influence on learning a second language. Instruction may affect the rate of learning, but the stages remain the same. Adolescents and adults who know the rule are faster than those who do not.

In the learning of a second language the correction of errors remains a controversial topic with many differing schools of thought. Throughout the last century much advancement has been made in research on the correction of students' errors. In the 1950s and 60s, the viewpoint of the day was that all errors must be corrected at all costs. Little thought went to students' feelings or self-esteem in regards to this constant correction.

In the 1970s, Dulay and Burt's studies showed that learners acquire grammar forms and structures in a pre-determined, inalterable order, and that teaching or correcting styles would not change that.

In 1977, Terrell"s studies showing that there were more factors to be considered in the classroom than the cognitive processing of the students. He contested that the affective side of students and their self-esteem were equally important to the teaching process.

In the 1980s, the strict grammar and corrective approach of the 1950s became obsolete. Researchers asserted that correction was often unnecessary and that instead of furthering students' learning it was hindering them. The main concern at this time was relieving student stress and creating a warm environment for them. Stephen Krashen was a big proponent in this hands-off approach to error correction.

The 1990s brought back the familiar idea that explicit grammar instruction and error correction was indeed useful for the SLA process. At this time, more research started to be undertaken to determine exactly which kinds of corrections are the most useful for students. In 1998, Lyster concluded that "recasts", the teacher repeating a student's incorrect utterance with the correct version, are not always the most useful because students do not notice the correction. His studies in 2002 showed that students learn better when teachers help students recognize and correct their own errors. Mackey, Gas and McDonough had similar findings in 2000 and attributed the success of this method to the student's active participation in the corrective processes.

Depth of knowledge
According to Noam Chomsky, children will bridge the gap between input and output by their innate grammar because the input (utterances they hear) is so poor but all children end up having complete knowledge of grammar. Chomsky calls it the Poverty of Stimulus. And second language learners can do this by applying the rules they learn to the sentence-construction, for example. So learners in both their native and second language have knowledge that goes beyond what they have received, so that people can make correct utterances (phrases, sentences, questions, etc) that they have never learned or heard before.

Emotionality
Bilingualism has been an advantage to today's world and being bilingual gives the opportunity to understand and communicate with people with different cultural backgrounds. However, a study done by Optiz and Degner in 2012 shows that sequential bilinguals (i.e. learn their L2 after L1) often relate themselves to the emotions more when they perceive these emotions by their first language/native language/L1, but feel less emotional when by their second language even though they know the meaning of words clearly. The emotional distinction between L1 and L2 indicates that the "effective valence" of words is processed less immediate in L2 because of the delayed vocabulary/lexical access to these two languages.

Success
Success in language learning can be measured in two ways: likelihood and quality. First language learners will be successful in both measurements. It is inevitable that all people will learn a first language and with few exceptions, they will be fully successful. For second language learners, success is not guaranteed. For one, learners may become fossilized or stuck as it were with ungrammatical items. (Fossilization occurs when language errors become a permanent feature.) The difference between learners may be significant. As noted elsewhere, L2 learners rarely achieve complete native-like control of the second language.

For L2 pronunciation, there are two principles that have been put forth by Levis. The first is nativeness which means the speaker's ability to approximately reach the speaking pattern of the second language of speakers; and the second, understanding, refers to the speaker's ability to make themselves understood.

Being successful in learning a second language is often found to be challenging for some individuals. Research has been done to look into why some students are more successful than others. Stern, Rubin and Reiss are just a few of the researchers who have dedicated time to this subject. They have worked to determine what qualities make a "good language learner". Some of their common findings are that a good language learner uses positive learning strategies, is an active learner who is constantly searching for meaning. Also a good language learner demonstrates a willingness to practice and use the language in real communication. He also monitors himself and his learning, has a strong drive to communicate, and has a good ear and good listening skills.

Özgür and Griffiths have designed an experiment in 2013 about the relationship between different motivations and second language acquisition. They looked at four types of motivations—intrinsic (inner feelings of learner), extrinsic (reward from outside), integrative (attitude towards learning), and instrumental (practical needs). According to the test results, the intrinsic part has been the main motivation for these student who learn English as their second language. However, students report themselves being strongly instrumentally motivated. In conclusion, learning a second language and being successful depend on every individual.

Foreign language

In pedagogy and sociolinguistics, a distinction is made between second language and foreign language, the latter is being learned for use in an area where that language is originally from another country and not spoken in the native country of the speakers. And in other words, foreign language is used from the perspective of countries; the second language is used from the perspective of individuals.

For example, English in countries such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, the Nordic countries and the Netherlands is considered a second language by many of its speakers, because they learn it young and use it regularly; indeed in parts of South Asia it is the official language of the courts, government and business. The same can be said for French in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, although French is not an official language in any of them. In practice, French is widely used in a variety of contexts in these countries, and signs are normally printed in both Arabic and French. A similar phenomenon exists in post-Soviet states such as Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, where Russian can be considered a second language, and there are large Russophone communities.

However, unlike in Hong Kong, English is considered a foreign language in China due to the lack of opportunities for use, such as historical links, media, conversation between people, and common vocabulary. Likewise, French would be considered a foreign language in Romania and Moldova, even though both French and Romanian are Romance languages, Romania's historical links to France, and all being members of la Francophonie.

Weber's report
George H. J. Weber, a Swiss businessman and independent scholar, founder of the Andaman Association and creator of the encyclopedic andaman.org Web site, made a report in December 1997 about the number of secondary speakers of the world's leading languages. Weber used the Fischer Weltalmanach of 1986 as his primary and only source for the L2-speakers data, in preparing the data in the following table. These numbers are here compared with those referred to by Ethnologue, a popular source in the linguistics field. See below Table 1.

Later data
Collecting the number of second language speakers of every language is extremely difficult and even the best estimates contain guess work. The data below are from ethnologue.com as of June 2013.

title: Second language


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User:Lament

hi.

title: User:Lament


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Talk:2D computer graphics

Needs rewrite
I agree with Wapcaplet (et al) about the need for a serious rewrite of this article. I am by no means an expert on this and so can't do it for myself (not without a ton of research and I'm just not interested enough).

Also: this article has zero in-text references (minus the wikipedia links). This is a serious handicap for someone looking for further information. PainMan 01:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Difference between vector and raster video
Might be good to go into some detail about the distinction between Vector and Raster video hardware. Early Vector displays were expensive and did not catch on - see the Vectrex for example (though I do not know if this is truly Vector hardware, since it used a regular TV). Also good would be some more clarification on the fact that modern displays are predominantly raster (with pixels), even though some software uses vector techniques (Illustrator, any SVG editor, etc.) I am no expert on the subject though, so it may be best left to someone with more knowledge. -- Wapcaplet

The paragraph beginning "Still, one can't diminish the value of the earlier geneneration of graphic programs..." seems pretty darned biased. Should it be re-worded or omitted? -Frecklefoot

 * Definitely needs re-wording. Ideally, there'd be a short history of 2D graphics software, in the context of the hardware available at the time (unless this has already been covered in another article), but I wouldn't be qualified to do this without quite a bit of research. -- Wapcaplet

 * It seems like this would be very involved. Tracing the history of 2D graphics software from its inception across all available (or at least most) systems available over the years could be very daunting.  At the very least, I think it should go in a seperate article, not in this one.  A short discussion would be appropriate here, but an exhaustive one should have its own page.  Anyone else? -Frecklefoot

 * Agreed. Perhaps we need a new article, History of computer graphics. -- Wapcaplet

 * I thought the discussion would be the History of computer graphic software. If you want to approach it from the other angle, that's fine with me. -Frecklefoot

 * Sounds like a daunting article (or articles), no matter how you look at it. A quick googling turns up A Short History of Computer Graphics, which looks to be a good starting point, and even has significant advances on both the software and hardware fronts. I'll see if I can work up a stub for both History of computer graphic software and History of computer graphic hardware. -- Wapcaplet

Needs to start slower
I think this could start off a bit slower. Consider:

 * The art of producing images on computer display, printer, or other output device. Usually involves treating the drawing area, or drawable, as a large grid of squares, which can be set to different colours. The dimensions of the grid is referred to as the 'resolution', which is also a characteristic of the output device itself. The image on screen is maintained in a special area of the computer's memory, sometimes called video RAM. (Link to article on computer displays.) Whereas displays originally simply held text (and so was character-oriented), computer graphics involves treating the video RAM, or buffer, as a more general array of individual pixels which can be turned on or off (in basic systems), set to a varying intensity (in monochrome displays), or to one of a palette of colours.

 * As the resolution and colour fidelity increase, images appear more detailed. In modern displays, images displayed on computers are starting to rival photographic prints, at least to the casual observer.

 * Once one has the ability to show an image -- that is, the ability to manipulate the state of the memory buffers which affect which pixels are lit on the screen, and with what intensities and/or colours -- the question is then a matter of what to show and how to show it. Moreover, simply displaying static images is comparatively easy compared to the job of letting users create images of their own. Even ignoring the introduction of externally produced images into the computer's memory using a scanning device or a digital camera, there are numerous ways in which to produce images in video RAM to be displayed on screen.

At that point, it would make sense to introduce the concept of simple drawing programs, as an introduction into the basics of some of the algorithms for producing images from primitives, like lines and shapes, and using fills, gradients, and such. Then introduce the idea of vectorized images, wherein the instructions for creating a drawing are preserved and can be modified in part in order to change the image, contrasted to "painting over" a pure raster image. The distinction should be clear between the idea that an image can exist in two forms: transient computer memory, and in files which record the image as pixel arrays or drawing instructions (or both), but the primary method of displaying a computer image is always through the raster display or printer.

It might also make sense to mention the use of 3D computer graphics in the production of 2D still images, especially ray tracing, but that can alternately be left to an improved 3D graphics article. Brent Gulanowski 02:19, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Just about technical
This article is all about the technical aspects and techniques of 2D graphics, and doesn't mention any of the cultural aspects of 2D graphics, such as their historical and current popularity, especially in comparison to 3D graphics and other graphics rendering systems. A link to a relevant article on those subjects, and/or section devoted to them would be appropriate. Ziiv (talk) 08:31, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Are there any articles on such aspects of 2D computer graphics? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 12:01, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Why was the first section translated?
The first section of the article is no longer in english. I am pretty new to wikipedia so I am not sure if I am allowed to just undo it.  Pratyush Sarkar ( talk ) 20:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I undid it. Seems fine now, but it might have to be touched up . No idea why it was changed in the first place. 71.246.119.35 (talk) 09:15, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Duplication
2D computer graphics duplicates Translation (geometry) and Rotation (geometry). It could be remedied using template:excerpt. fgnievinski (talk) 17:55, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:2D computer graphics


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Joan Littlewood

Joan Maud Littlewood (6 October 1914 – 20 September 2002) was an English theatre director who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and is best known for her work in developing the Theatre Workshop. She has been called "The Mother of Modern Theatre". Her production of Oh, What a Lovely War! in 1963 was one of her more influential pieces.

Littlewood and her company lived and slept in the Theatre Royal while it was restored. Productions of The Alchemist and Richard II, the latter starring Harry H. Corbett in the title role, established the reputation of the company.

She also conceived and developed the concept of the Fun Palace in collaboration with architect Cedric Price, an experimental model of a participatory social environment that, although never realized, has become an important influence in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Miss Littlewood, a musical written about Littlewood by Sam Kenyon, was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2018.

Early years
Littlewood was born in Stockwell, London, and was educated at La Retraite Convent School in Clapham Park. She trained as an actress at RADA, but left after an unhappy start and moved to Manchester in 1934, where she met folksinger Jimmie Miller, who later became known as Ewan MacColl. After joining his troupe, Theatre of Action, Littlewood and Miller soon were married. After a brief move to London, they returned to Manchester and set up the Theatre Union in 1936.

Career

In 1941, Littlewood was banned from broadcasting on the BBC and her personnel file was marked by an MI5 officer as she was deemed a security risk. The ban was lifted two years later, when MI5 said she had broken off her association with the Communist Party. She was under surveillance by MI5 from 1939 until the 1950s.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, Littlewood, her husband the communist folk singer Ewan MacColl, and other Theatre Union members formed Theatre Workshop and registered it while staying at Ormesby Hall. The following eight years were spent touring. Shortly afterwards, when Gerry Raffles joined the troupe, MacColl and Littlewood divorced, though they still worked together for many years and Littlewood was godmother to MacColl's two children. Littlewood and Raffles were life partners until his death in 1975.

In 1953, after an attempt to establish a permanent base in Glasgow, Theatre Workshop took up residence at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, east London, where it gained an international reputation, performing plays across Europe and in the Soviet Union. One of Littlewood's most famous productions was the British première of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1955), which she directed and also starred in. Her production of Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, a musical about the London underworld, became a hit and ran from 1959 to 1962, transferring to the West End.

The works for which she is now best remembered are probably Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey (1958), which gained critical acclaim, and the satirical musical Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963), her stage adaptation of a work for radio by Charles Chilton. Both were made into films. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Musical for Oh, What a Lovely War!, becoming the first woman nominated for the award. Theatre Workshop also championed the work of Irish playwright Brendan Behan.

Later life and death
After Raffles's death in 1975, Littlewood left Theatre Workshop and stopped directing. After a time of drifting she settled in France and became the companion of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the vintner and poet, and wrote his memoirs Milady Vine. In the mid-1980s, she commenced work on her 1994 autobiography, Joan's Book.

Littlewood died in 2002 of natural causes at the age of 87 in the London flat of Peter Rankin.

Portrayals
Littlewood was played by Zoë Wanamaker in the 2017 BBC Television drama Babs, about the life of Barbara Windsor.

Honours

 * Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1986)

title: Joan Littlewood


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Celia Johnson

Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson, (18 December 1908 – 26 April 1982) was an English actress, whose career included stage, television and film. She is especially known for her roles in the films In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Brief Encounter (1945) and The Captain's Paradise (1953). For Brief Encounter, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. A six-time BAFTA Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).

Johnson began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. She continued performing in theatre for the rest of her life, though much of her later work was in television, including winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC Play for Today, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1973). She suffered a stroke in 1982 and died later the same day, aged 73.

Early life and education
Born in Richmond, Surrey, and nicknamed "Betty", Johnson was the second daughter of John Robert Johnson and Ethel (née Griffiths) Johnson. Her first public performance was in 1916, when she played a role in a charity performance of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returned First World War soldiers.

She attended St Paul's Girls' School in London from 1919 until 1926, and played the oboe in the school's orchestra under Gustav Holst. She acted in school productions, but had no other acting experience, when she was accepted to study at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1926, where she was in the same class as Margaretta Scott. She later spent a term in Paris, studying under Pierre Fresnay at the Comédie Française. She later recalled her choice of an acting career with the comment, "I thought I'd rather like it. It was the only thing I was good at. And I thought it might be rather wicked."

Career
Her stage début, and first professional role, was as Sarah in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the Theatre Royal, Huddersfield in 1928. She went to London the following year to take the place of Angela Baddeley in the part of Currita in A Hundred Years Old, which was performed at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. In 1930 Johnson played in Cynara with Sir Gerald Du Maurier and Dame Gladys Cooper. She made her first trip to the United States the following year to star as Ophelia in a New York City production of Hamlet.

She returned to London, where she appeared in a number of minor productions, before establishing herself with a two-year run in The Wind and the Rain (1933–35). She married the journalist Peter Fleming in 1935, and in 1939 gave birth to their first child, a son. Her theatre career flourished with her portrayals of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1940) and the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940); the production of the latter was halted when the theatre was destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb in September 1940.

During the Second World War Johnson lived with her widowed sister and sister-in-law, and helped care for their combined seven children. Unable to commit her time to the often lengthy run of a play, Johnson preferred the less time-consuming schedules of film and radio, which allowed her to devote time to her family and her work for the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps. She appeared in In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944), both directed by David Lean and written by Noël Coward.

Lean and Coward sought Johnson for the next production, Brief Encounter (1945). She accepted the role with misgivings because of her family responsibilities, but was interested in the part, writing to her husband, "There is no getting away from the fact that it is a very good part and one which I should love to play. I have found myself already planning how I should play bits and how I should say lines..." A romantic drama about a conventional middle-class housewife who falls in love with a married doctor she meets in the refreshment room at a railway station, the film was well-received, and is now regarded as a classic. Johnson was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

After the war, Johnson concentrated on her family life, which included two daughters born in 1946 and 1947 and her occasional acting work was secondary for the following decade.

In 1957 she acted with Ralph Richardson in The Flowering Cherry. In 1958, she opened The Grass is Greener. As a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company, Johnson appeared in the plays The Master Builder (1964) (with Olivier) and Hay Fever (1965), and later reprised her roles in the television productions.

Awards
For her role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), she received the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1958, "for services to the theatre", and was raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1981.

Personal life and death
Johnson was married to Peter Fleming (who during the Second World War became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Special Operations Executive, and who was known as the author of travel literature such as Brazilian Adventure and non-fiction works including the Siege at Peking) from 1935 until Fleming's death from a heart attack in 1971, while on a shooting expedition near Glencoe in Argyll, Scotland. He was the brother of the James Bond creator, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Commander, and MI6-SIS Information Research Division (IRD) spy Ian Fleming.

They had three children:
 * Nicholas Peter Val Fleming (3 January 1939 – 9 May 1995), spent most of his life at the Fleming family home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, as a farmer. He was also a journalist, and the author of thriller novels published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a non-fiction historical work, August 1939. From his early twenties he lived with his partner Christopher Balfour, a merchant banker.
 * Kate Fleming (born 1946), now Kate Grimond, is married to John Grimond (son of politician Jo Grimond), former foreign editor of the news magazine The Economist, now writer-at-large for the publication; the couple have three children. She is the author of Celia Johnson: A Biography (1991).
 * Lucy Fleming (born Eve Lucinda Fleming, 15 May 1947), is an actress. In the 1970s she starred as Jenny in the BBC's apocalyptic fiction series Survivors. She is married to the actor and writer Simon Williams.

Since the late 1990s, the two sisters, Kate Grimond and Lucy Fleming, have co-owned the Ian Fleming estate.

Johnson distanced herself from her acting career while her children were young, preferring to devote her attention to her family. She was described as a woman "always ready to laugh" and "maternal in a light-hearted way" and her daughter recalled that she was often torn between her desire to care for her family and her need to be involved in the "mechanics" of acting.

In 1982, she was touring with Sir Ralph Richardson in Angela Huth's The Understanding and the play's West End run had been announced. On one of her days off, she was at her home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, playing bridge with friends, when she collapsed from a stroke. She died a few hours later in her home. She left an estate worth £150,557.

Legacy
On 18 December 2008, to mark the centenary of her birth, a blue plaque was unveiled at her childhood home in Richmond. Among the guests at the ceremony were her daughters, Lucy Fleming and Kate Grimond. In The Times, Grimond noted that the "tragedy of theatre" is that even the best performances fade from memory, and that her mother's current reputation rests almost entirely on her performance in Brief Encounter. Grimond noted that the advent of video allowed the film to be seen by a new audience, and that modern appraisals of the film had led to its being regarded as a classic.

title: Celia Johnson


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Plesiochronous system

In telecommunications, a plesiochronous system is one where different parts of the system are almost, but not quite, perfectly synchronised. According to ITU-T standards, a pair of signals are plesiochronous if their significant instants occur at nominally the same rate, with any variation in rate being constrained within specified limits. A sender and receiver operate plesiosynchronously if they operate at the same nominal clock frequency but may have a slight clock frequency mismatch, which leads to a drifting phase. The mismatch between the two systems' clocks is known as the plesiochronous difference.

In general, plesiochronous systems behave similarly to synchronous systems, except they must employ some means in order to cope with "sync slips", which will happen at intervals due to the plesiochronous nature of the system. The most common example of a plesiochronous system design is the plesiochronous digital hierarchy networking standard.

The asynchronous serial communication protocol is asynchronous on the byte level, but plesiochronous on the bit level. The receiver detects the start of a byte by detecting a transition that may occur at a random time after the preceding byte. The indefinite wait and lack of external synchronization signals makes byte detection asynchronous. Then the receiver samples at predefined intervals to determine the values of the bits in the byte; this is plesiochronous since it depends on the transmitter to transmit at roughly the same rate the receiver expects, without coordination of the rate while the bits are being transmitted.

The modern tendency in systems engineering is towards using systems that are either fundamentally asynchronous (such as Ethernet), or fundamentally synchronous (such as synchronous optical networking), and layering these where necessary, rather than using a mixture between the two in a single technology.

The term plesiochronous comes from the Greek πλησίος plesios ("near") and χρόνος chrónos ("time").

title: Plesiochronous system


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Charles II of Spain

Charles II of Spain (6 November 1661 – 1 November 1700) was King of Spain from 1665 to 1700. The last monarch from the House of Habsburg which had ruled Spain since 1516, he died without children, leading to a European conflict over his successor.

For reasons that are still debated, Charles experienced extended periods of ill health throughout his life. As a consequence, who would inherit his throne was a prominent consideration in European politics from the moment he became king at the age of four. Historian John Langdon-Davies wrote that "...from the day of his birth, they were waiting for his death".

The two main candidates were the Austrian Habsburg Archduke Charles, and 16-year-old Philip of Anjou, grandson of Maria Theresa of Spain and Louis XIV of France. Shortly before his death in November 1700, Charles named Philip his heir, but the acquisition of an undivided Spanish Empire by either France or Austria threatened the European balance of power. Failure to resolve these issues through diplomacy resulted in the 1701 to 1714 War of the Spanish Succession.

Personal details
Born 6 November 1661, Charles was the only surviving son of Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria, who were uncle and niece. While European nobility commonly married within the same extended family to retain property, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs were unusual in the extent to which they followed this practice. Of eleven marriages contracted by Spanish monarchs between 1450 and 1661, the vast majority contained some element of consanguinity, while Philip and Mariana were one of two unions between uncle and niece. This policy may also have been driven by limpieza de sangre or "blood purity" statutes enacted in the early 16th century, which remained in use until the 1860s.

Inter-marriage accentuated the so-called 'Habsburg jaw', a physical characteristic common in both Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs. One contemporary reported this was so pronounced in Charles that he swallowed his food without thoroughly chewing, leading to frequent stomach problems. A 2019 study based on an analysis of Habsburg portraits concluded this feature was likely due to a recessive trait; however, in the absence of genetic material, such claims remain speculative.

Whether his ill-health resulted from inbreeding remains disputed. Neither his elder sister Margaret Theresa of Spain, or Maria Antonia, daughter of the marriage to her uncle Leopold I, had similar issues. Based on an analysis of contemporary accounts, modern researchers speculate Charles may have had combined pituitary hormone deficiency and distal renal tubular acidosis. However, other studies argue his issues were more likely due to a herpetic infection incurred as an infant, while his autopsy report showed symptoms associated with hydrocephalus. A 2021 study postulates his issues may have been the result of problems with his metabolism.

After his birth, he was entrusted to the royal governess Mariana Engracia Álvarez de Toledo Portugal y Alfonso-Pimentel. Under her careful supervision, he survived childhood attacks of measles, chickenpox, rubella and smallpox, any one of which was then potentially fatal. He also had rickets, which left him unable to walk unaided until he was four and compelled him to wear leg braces until the age of five. Suggestions he was largely uneducated until his teens appear to be incorrect; Ramos del Manzano, a professor at the University of Salamanca and legal expert, was appointed his tutor when he was six. From the age of 12, he received lessons in music from Juan del Vado and in mathematics by Jose Zaragoza, Professor at the Colegio Imperial de Madrid, whom he later commissioned to carry out a number of engineering projects in Spain.

The extent of his physical and mental disabilities is hard to assess, since very little is known for certain and much of what is suggested is either unproved or incorrect. While prone to illness, he was extremely active physically and contemporaries reported he spent much of his time hunting. One often cited example of his alleged mental incapacity is the period he spent sleeping with his father's disinterred body; this was in fact done under instructions from Mariana, whose doctors advised this would help him produce an heir. Although reputedly subject to bouts of depression, his participation in government and reports from his council and foreign observers such as the French ambassador Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquess of Torcy, indicate his mental capacities remained intact.

This is confirmed by a 1691 report submitted by an envoy from Ismail Ibn Sharif, Sultan of Morocco; sent to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, he was received by Charles himself, who played a full part in the discussions. Costanzo Operti, a Savoyard diplomat who held regular audiences with Charles during the Nine Years' War, described him as affable and generous but shy and lacking self-confidence, characteristics noted by other foreign diplomats.

Reign

Since Charles was a legal minor when Philip died on 17 September 1665, Mariana was appointed Queen Regent by the Council of Castile. The Spanish Empire remained an enormous global confederation, but its economic supremacy was increasingly challenged by the Dutch Republic and England, and its position in Europe destabilised by the expansionist policies of Louis XIV of France.

Her ability to respond effectively to the challenges facing the Empire was hampered by an ongoing power struggle with John Joseph of Austria, Charles's older, illegitimate half-brother. In addition, enacting essential reforms was complicated since Spain was a personal union between the Crown of Castile and Crown of Aragon, each with very distinct political cultures and traditions. Infighting between those who ruled in Charles's name during his regency did little to help, but it is debatable how far they can be held responsible for long-term trends predating his reign. The monarchy proved remarkably resilient, and when Charles died, remained largely intact.

However, government finances were in perpetual crisis, the Crown declaring bankruptcy nine times between 1557 and 1666, including 1647, 1652, 1662, and 1666. Following the policy established by her husband Philip, Mariana ruled through a "valido", the first being her personal confessor and fellow Austrian, Juan Everardo Nithard. His most urgent task was to end the costly wars with France and Portugal, achieved in the 1668 treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle and Lisbon. Despite acknowledging their necessity, Don Juan forced Mariana to dismiss Nithard in February 1669, who replaced him with Fernando de Valenzuela. A member of the lower hidalgo class, his appointment was deeply resented by the Grandees who normally filled such positions.

In 1673, Spain was drawn into the Franco-Dutch War, placing additional strain on the economy, and Don Juan renewed efforts to remove Mariana as Regent. A month before Charles became a legal adult on 6 November 1675, he indicated his intention to take control of government, supported by his brother. When the Regency Council requested a two-year extension of their office on 4 November, Charles initially refused, but was later pressured into accepting. He was also forced to issue a Royal Decree ordering Don Juan to leave Madrid.

Don Juan finally gained control of the government in January 1678 and exiled Valenzuela to the Philippines. His first action was to make peace with France in the 1678 Treaties of Nijmegen, with Spain ceding Franche-Comté and areas of the Spanish Netherlands returned in 1668. Seeking to minimise future conflict between the two countries, in August 1679 Don Juan brokered a match between Charles and the 17-year-old Marie Louise of Orléans, eldest niece of Louis XIV and daughter of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Arranging the marriage was Don Juan's last significant act; he died shortly before it took place in November 1679.

In February 1680, Juan Francisco de la Cerda, 8th Duke of Medinaceli became the new valido. He clashed with Marie-Louise over the alleged influence exerted over her by the French ambassador, Pierre de Villars, who was expelled from Madrid in 1681, badly affecting the relationship between the two. Medinaceli was further undermined by economic problems and the loss of Luxembourg following the 1683 War of the Reunions. In June 1684, he sought to bolster his support by appointing the Count of Oropesa as President of the Council of Castile, the second most powerful position in the state. However, continuing ill-health led him to resign in April 1685, with Oropesa taking over as de facto valido. He retained this position until 1690.

Economy
The so-called "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century was a period of crisis throughout Europe, leading to poor harvests and economic decline. Spain was especially affected, due in part to the parlous economic situation, particularly in Castile, where the population dropped from 6.5 million in 1600 to less than 5 million in 1680, while figures for Spain as a whole were 8.5 to 6.6 million. This was exacerbated by a series of wars with France and the need to defend the Empire, which were a constant drain on public expenditure. In 1663, Philip IV had converted state debt into government bonds, or juros, but a history of default required high rates of interest, meaning taxes were often assigned to creditors years in advance to pay current liabilities. Although silver bullion imports from the Americas increased, the vast majority went to paying off foreign debtors.

One less obvious side effect of this globalisation of the Spanish trading system was that its opponents had the most to lose from its collapse. By the 1670s, foreign trade was controlled by Dutch and English merchants, while the domestic economy relied on French labour and imported wheat. The Marqués de Varinas, a senior colonial official, observed in 1687 that the Empire continued to exist in its present form "only because it enables the English, Dutch and French to exploit [it] more cheaply".

In the 1680s, Spanish officials took steps to restore faith in the currency and issued a series of drastic deflationary decrees, revaluing the coinage at 25% of its previous value. The immediate impact was the total disruption of commerce and collapse of financial credit; in response, debtors were given three months to repay government debts using the existing rate, later extended to six months. Having stabilised the position, in 1686, the coinage was readjusted to a more favourable rate and thereafter left unaltered.

Succession conflict and death

The domestic political situation was transformed when Marie-Louise died in February 1689, shortly after the outbreak of the Nine Years' War with France; based on the description of her symptoms, modern doctors believe her illness was almost certainly appendicitis. In August, Charles married Maria Anna of Neuburg by proxy, the formal wedding taking place in May 1690. Mariana died on 16 May 1696 and Maria Anna took control of access to Charles.

It was now clear Charles's health was finally failing, and agreeing on a successor became increasingly urgent. The Nine Years' War showed France could not achieve its objectives on its own; the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick was the result of mutual exhaustion and Louis's search for allies in anticipation of a contest over the Spanish throne. Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor refused to sign since it left the issue unresolved; he reluctantly did so in October 1697, but viewed it as a pause in hostilities.

Although Charles was reportedly devoted to her, Marie Louise was blamed for the failure to produce an heir, while primitive fertility treatments gave her severe intestinal problems. There has been considerable debate as to whether Charles was impotent, and if so, the cause; based on private interviews with Marie Louise, he may have experienced premature ejaculation. The suggestion this resulted from inbreeding has not been proved, while a number of scientific studies dispute any linkage between fertility and consanguinity. After Marie Louise died in February 1689, Charles married Maria Anna of Neuburg, daughter of Philip William, Elector Palatine, and sister-in-law to Emperor Leopold, who was selected partly because her family was famous for its fertility.

Despite these hopes, Maria Anna was no more successful in producing an heir than her predecessor, almost certainly because Charles was by now physically incapable of doing so; his autopsy later revealed his sole remaining testicle was atrophied. The question of the succession became increasingly urgent; since the Crown of Spain passed according to cognatic primogeniture, it could be inherited through the female line. This enabled Charles's sisters Maria Theresa (1638–1683) and Margaret Theresa to pass their rights to the children of their marriages with Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold. However, to prevent a union between Spain and France, Maria Theresa had renounced her inheritance rights on her marriage; in return, Louis was promised a dowry of 500,000 gold écus, a huge sum that was never paid.

In 1685, Leopold and Margaret's daughter Maria Antonia married Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria; she died in 1692, leaving one surviving son, Joseph Ferdinand. In October 1698, France, England and the Dutch Republic attempted to impose a diplomatic solution to the Succession on Spain and Austria, by the Treaty of the Hague or First Partition Treaty. This made Joseph Ferdinand heir to the bulk of the Spanish monarchy, with France gaining the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily and other concessions in Italy plus the modern Basque province of Gipuzkoa. Leopold's younger son Archduke Charles became ruler of the Duchy of Milan, a possession considered vital to the security of Austria's southern border.

The Spanish objected to their empire being divided by foreign powers without consultation, and on 14 November 1698, Charles II made Joseph Ferdinand heir to an independent and undivided Spanish monarchy. Maria Anna was appointed Regent during his minority, an announcement allegedly received by the Spanish councillors in silence. Joseph Ferdinand's death in 1699 ended these arrangements. It also left Louis XIV's eldest son, Louis, Grand Dauphin, heir to the Spanish throne, once again implying union between Spain and France. In March 1700, France, England and the Dutch agreed an alternative; Archduke Charles replaced Joseph Ferdinand, with Spanish possessions in Europe split between France, Savoy and Austria. Charles reacted by altering his will in favour of Archduke Charles, but once again stipulating an undivided and independent Spanish monarchy.

Most of the Castilian nobility disliked Maria Anna and her German courtiers and viewed a French candidate as more likely to ensure their independence. In September 1700, Charles became ill again; by 28 September he was no longer able to eat, and Luis Manuel Fernández de Portocarrero persuaded him to alter his will in favour of Louis XIV's grandson, Philip of Anjou. He died on 1 November 1700, at age 38. The autopsy records his "heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water." As suggested previously, these are indicative of hydrocephalus, a disease often associated with childhood measles, one of many illnesses contracted by Charles.

Philip was proclaimed king of Spain on 16 November 1700, and the War of the Spanish Succession formally began on 9 July 1701.

Spanish Inquisition

Charles' reign saw the final political eclipse of the Spanish Inquisition, whose involvement in the succession struggle negated attempts to rebuild its former influence. This included holding a large public auto-da-fé in Madrid on 30 June 1680. When Charles changed his will in favour of Philip in 1700, the Inquisitor General Baltasar de Mendoza y Sandoval, an ally of Maria Anna, arrested his personal confessor Froilán Díaz on a charge of 'bewitching' the King. When Díaz was found not guilty, Mendoza attempted to arrest those who voted for his acquittal, resulting in the establishment of a Council to investigate the Inquisition; although it survived until 1834, its influence had ended.

Legacy
The 35-year reign of Charles II has traditionally been viewed as one of decline and decay; in 1691, a foreign ambassador commented that "it is incomprehensible how this monarchy survives". More recent studies have criticised these views, historian Luis Ribot arguing "both the myth of decline and an incapable king are simplistic and inexact". Others attest his reign was crucial for the clearest signs of demographic recovery after decades of crisis, the first major attempts to reform peninsula trade, and the beginning of a more open approach to European thought and science.

Although both the Spanish state and economy relied on silver and gold mined in the Americas, this had been the case since the 16th century, while bullion imports reached historic highs between 1670 and 1700. Despite their disastrous short-term impact, the financial measures ended the chronic instability which had affected the Spanish currency throughout the 17th century and helped drive sustainable economic growth. Many of the commercial and political policies initiated under Charles formed the basis for reforms enacted by his Bourbon successors.

Though not as fond of the arts as his father, Charles employed artists like the Italian painter Luca Giordano and Claudio Coello to decorate El Escorial. In 1690, the latter created one of the last and most significant examples of Spanish Baroque painting, Charles II adores the Holy Eucharist.

On 7 November 1693, a Royal Decree provided sanctuary in Spanish Florida for escaped slaves from the nearby colony of South Carolina. Despite its relative poverty, Spanish Florida provided protection from storms in the Gulf of Mexico for Spanish merchant shipping; the decree was intended to bolster its population, while undermining the neighbouring colony, which claimed the Spanish capital of St. Augustine. Formalised in 1733 by Philip, it led to the founding in 1738 of Santa Teresa de Mose, the first legally sanctioned free black town in the present-day United States.

The Caroline Islands and the town of Charleroi in modern Belgium were named after him in 1666 and 1686 respectively. Decrees were also issued in his name approving universities in South America which still exist. In Peru, they include San Cristóbal, established in 1680, and the National University; in Guatemala, the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, the fourth-oldest university on the continent. Others include Santo Tomas Aquino in 1688, now part of the Central University of Ecuador, and finally in 1694 the Universidad de San Nicolás de Mira in Bogotá, Colombia.

title: Charles II of Spain


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Louis I of Spain

Louis I (Luis Felipe Fernando José de Borbón y Saboya; 25 August 1707 – 31 August 1724) was King of Spain from 15 January 1724 until his death in August the same year. His reign is one of the shortest in history, lasting for just over seven months.

Infante of Spain (1707–1709)
Louis was born at Palacio del Buen Retiro, in Madrid as the eldest son of the reigning King Philip V of Spain and his wife Maria Luisa Gabriella of Savoy. He was named after his great-grandfather Louis XIV of France.

Prince of Asturias (1709–1721)

At birth he was the heir apparent but was not given the traditional title of "Prince of Asturias" until April 1709. In 1714, when Louis was seven, his mother died, leaving him and his brothers, Infante Ferdinand and Infante Felipe Pedro. On 24 December 1714, Louis' father remarried to Elisabeth Farnese, the young heiress to the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza.

Marriage (1722)
As heir not only to the vast Spanish Empire, but also to a new dynasty, it was decided that Louis would take a wife as soon as possible. On 20 January 1722, at Lerma, he met and married Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, a daughter of Philippe, Duke of Orléans, cousin of Louis' father and then the Regent of France. The dowry of this marriage was an enormous 4 million livres.

King of Spain (1724)
Louis ruled for a short period between the time his father Philip V abdicated in his favour (14 January 1724) and his death from smallpox, just over seven months. King Philip sent him a letter informing him of his decision. He calls his son a great king. Louis sent his father a humble reply, thanking him. Louis signed his letter as Prince of Asturias. His marital problems dominated during his reign. His father kept tabs on him from San Ildefonso. To counter his father's influence, he surrounded himself with officials who had not served under Philip. His plans were to focus more on the American colonies rather than the lost Italian territories. On his death, his father returned to the throne, and reigned 22 more years until his own death in 1746. Louis was buried in the Cripta Real del Monasterio de El Escorial part of the El Escorial complex.

Appearance and personality
Louis was tall and thin, with blonde hair. He was considered unattractive and the similarity between him and his maternal grandfather, Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia, was notable. Apart from this, Louis had weak arms, which emphasized his delicacy.

Not much is known about Louis' personality. According to Vicente Bacallar, Marquis de San Felipe, he was extremely liberal, magnanimous and into making people to feel comfortable next to him. However, neither his liberty as king nor gentilism eclipsed his strong religiosity. Other contemporaries allegedly pointed out Louis had inherited his father's intelligence and charm and his mother's morality and submission.

Sexuality
Apart from it, many have argued that Louis inherited his father's sexual appeal. He was reputedly bisexual, being initiated into such a practice by a servant, originally from Versailles. Historians believe that Lacotte, who was Louis' servant and who had a reputation of being a pedophile, was sent into the Spanish royal court to seduce the prince, whose impotence was known. W. Clarke writes: the Spanish heir was as into boys as girls during the parties that he had, playing erotic games with both sexes; a line about Louis' sexual life was sung across streets of Madrid: Fiery as his mother, lascivious as his father, flaming as his stepmother and onanist as a pedophile.

title: Louis I of Spain


text:
René Daumal

René Daumal (16 March 1908 – 21 May 1944) was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic and poet, best known for his posthumously published novel Mount Analogue (1952) as well as for being an early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics.

Biography
Daumal was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France. In his late teens his avant-garde poetry was published in France's leading journals. As an adolescent, Daumal co-founded the art group Les Phrères Simplistes with the poets Roger Gilbert-Lecomte and Roger Vailland. They would later co-found the literary journal Le Grand Jeu, which published three issues between 1928 and 1930. Although courted by André Breton, the journal was founded as a counter to Surrealism and Dada; the Surrealists reacted to its publication with some hostility.

He is best known in the English-speaking world for two novels: A Night of Serious Drinking, and the allegorical novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, both based upon his friendship with Alexander de Salzmann, a pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff.

Daumal was self-taught in the Sanskrit language and translated some of the Tripitaka Buddhist canon into the French language, as well as translating the literature of the Japanese Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki into French.

He married the Bulgarian émigré Vera Milanova, the former wife of the poet Hendrik Kramer; after Daumal's death, she married the landscape architect Russell Page.

Death
Daumal's sudden and premature death from tuberculosis on 21 May 1944 in Paris may have been hastened by youthful experiments with drugs and psychoactive chemicals, including carbon tetrachloride. He died leaving his novel Mount Analogue unfinished, having worked on it until the day of his death.

He is buried at Cimetière parisien de Pantin in Pantin, a municipality just outside Paris.

Legacy
The motion picture The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky is based largely on Daumal's Mount Analogue.

Works by René Daumal in English translation

 * Le Contre-Ciel (Le contre-ciel), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2005.
 * Le Contre-Ciel: The Anti-Heaven, Part One, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 2002. transl. and with an introduction by Jordan Jones.
 * Le Contre-Ciel: The Anti-Heaven, Parts Two and Three, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 2003. transl. Jordan Jones.
 * A Fundamental Experiment, New York / Madras: Hanuman Books, 1987; first published: René Daumal, "A Fundamental Experiment", X magazine, Vol. I, No. I (November 1959).
 * The Lie of the Truth and Other Parables from the Way of Liberation, New York / Madras: Hanuman Books, 1989.
 * Mount Analogue (Le mont analogue), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2004.
 * Mugle and the Silk (Mugle; La soie), New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1997.
 * A Night of Serious Drinking (La grande beuverie), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2003.
 * Pataphysical Essays, Cambridge: Wakefield Press, 2012.
 * The Powers of the Word (1927–1943) (Les pouvoirs de la parole), San Francisco: City Lights, 1991.
 * 'Rasa or Knowledge of the Self' Essays on Indian Aesthetics and Selected Sanskrit Studies. New York: New Directions, 1982.* ed. Claudio Rugafiori, transl. Louise Landes Levi, Repr. Kathamndu, Nepal, Shivastan, 2002 & 2006 (each edition 333 copies).
 * You've Always Been Wrong (Tu t'es toujours trompé), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. transl. Thomas Vosteen.
 * René Daumal, Letters on the Search for Awakening, 1930–1944, Toronto: Dolmen Meadow Editions, 2010. transl. Gabriela Ansari and Roger Lipsey, with an introduction by Roger Lipsey.

title: René Daumal


text:
Genlock

Genlock (generator locking) is a common technique where the video output of one source (or a specific reference signal from a signal generator) is used to synchronize other picture sources together. The aim in video applications is to ensure the coincidence of signals in time at a combining or switching point. When video instruments are synchronized in this way, they are said to be generator-locked, or genlocked.

Possible problems
Video signals generated and output by generator-locked instruments are said to be syntonized. Syntonized video signals will be precisely frequency-locked, but because of delays caused by the unequal transmission path lengths, the synchronized signals will exhibit differing phases at various points in the television system. Modern video equipment such as production switchers that have multiple video inputs often include a variable delay on each input to compensate for the phase differences and time all the input signals to precise phase coincidence.

Where two or more video signals are combined or being switched between, the horizontal and vertical timing of the picture sources should be coincident with each other. If they are not, the picture will appear to jump when switching between the sources whilst the display device re-adjusts the horizontal and/or vertical scan to correctly reframe the image.

Where composite video is in use, the phase of the chrominance subcarrier of each source being combined or switched should also be coincident. This is to avoid changes in colour hue and/or saturation during a transition between sources.

Scope
Generator locking can be used to synchronize as few as two isolated sources (e.g., a television camera and a videotape machine feeding a vision mixer (production switcher)), or in a wider facility where all the video sources are locked to a single synchronizing pulse generator (e.g., a fast-paced sporting event featuring multiple cameras and recording devices). Generator locking can also be used to ensure that multiple CRT monitors that appear in a movie are flicker-free. Generator locking is also used to synchronize two cameras for Stereoscopic 3D video recording.

In broadcast systems, an analog generator-lock signal usually consists of vertical and horizontal synchronizing pulses together with chrominance phase reference in the form of colorburst. No picture information is usually carried to avoid disturbing the timing signals, and the name reference, black and burst, color black, or black burst is usually given to such a signal. A composite colour video signal inherently carries the same reference signals and can be used as a generator-locking signal, albeit at the risk of being disturbed by out-of-specification picture signals.

Although some high-definition broadcast systems may use a standard-definition reference signal as a generator-locking reference signal, the use of tri-level synchronising pulses directly related to the frame and line rate is increasing within HD systems. A tri-level sync pulse is a signal that initially goes from 0 volts DC to a negative voltage, then a positive voltage, before returning to zero volts DC again. The voltage excursions are typically 300 mV either side of zero volts, and the duration each of the two excursions is the same as a particular number of digital picture samples.

Connections
Most television studio and professional video cameras have dedicated generator-locking ports on the camera. If the camera is tethered with a triaxial cable or optical fibre cable, the analog generator-locking signal is used to lock the camera control unit, which in turn locks the camera head by means of information carried within a data channel transmitted along the cable. If the camera is an ENG-type camera, one without a triax/fibre connection or without a dockable head, the generator-locking signal is carried through a separate cable from the video.

Variants
Natlock is a picture-source synchronizing system using audio tone signals to describe the timing discrepancies between composite video signals, while Icelock uses digital information conveyed in the vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal.

title: Genlock


text:
A Night of Serious Drinking

A Night of Serious Drinking (La Grande Beuverie) is an allegorical novel, published 1938, by the French surrealist writer René Daumal. It was translated into English in 1979 by David Coward and E.A. Lovatt. In 2003 Overlook press published a new edition with an index and a scholarly introduction.

Plot summary
An unnamed narrator spends an evening getting drunk with a group of friends. As the party becomes intoxicated and exuberant, the narrator seemingly begins a journey that ranges from apparent paradises to hell. The fantastic world depicted in A Night of Serious Drinking is actually the ordinary world distorted and satirized. Various characters are termed Anthographers, Fabricators of useless objects, Scienters, Nibblists, Clarificators, and other absurd titles. Yet the inhabitants of these strange realms are only too familiar: scientists dissecting an animal in their laboratory, a wise man surrounded by his devotees, politicians, poets expounding their rhetoric. These characters perform humorous antics and intellectual games, which they consider to be attempts to find meaning.

In the second half of the book there is an early description of a linguistic strange loop (a set of verbal references which seem to repeat conceptually) which the character terms a "Taglufon."

title: A Night of Serious Drinking


text:
Asynchrony

Asynchrony is the state of not being in synchronization.

Asynchrony or asynchronous may refer to:

Electronics and computing

 * Asynchrony (computer programming), the occurrence of events independent of the main program flow, and ways to deal with such events
 * Async/await
 * Asynchronous system, a system having no global clock, instead operating under distributed control
 * Asynchronous circuit, a sequential digital logic circuit not governed by a clock circuit or signal
 * Asynchronous communication, transmission of data without the use of an external clock signal
 * Asynchronous cellular automaton, a mathematical model of discrete cells which update their state independently
 * Asynchronous operation, a sequence of operations executed out of time coincidence with any event
 * Asynchronous I/O, an Input and Output operations that allow a program to continue executing other tasks without waiting for data to be transferred.

Other uses

 * Asynchrony (game theory), when players in games update their strategies at different time intervals
 * Asynchronous learning, an educational method in which the teacher and student are separated in time
 * Asynchronous motor, a type of electric motor
 * Asynchronous multiplayer, a form of multiplayer gameplay in video games
 * Asynchronous muscles, muscles in which there is no one-to-one relationship between stimulation and contraction
 * Collaborative editing or asynchronous editing, the practice of groups producing works together through individual contributions

title: Asynchrony