text:
Xenocrates

Xenocrates (Ξενοκράτης; c. 396/5 – 314/3 BC) of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader (scholarch) of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to define more closely, often with mathematical elements. He distinguished three forms of being: the sensible, the intelligible, and a third compounded of the two, to which correspond respectively, sense, intellect and opinion. He considered unity and duality to be gods which rule the universe, and the soul a self-moving number. God pervades all things, and there are daemonical powers, intermediate between the divine and the mortal, which consist in conditions of the soul. He held that mathematical objects and the Platonic Ideas are identical, unlike Plato who distinguished them. In ethics, he taught that virtue produces happiness, but external goods can minister to it and enable it to effect its purpose.

Life
Xenocrates was a native of Chalcedon. By the most probable calculation he was born 396/5 BC, and died 314/3 BC at the age of 82. His father was named Agathon (Ἀγάθωνος) or Agathanor (Ἀγαθάνορος).

Moving to Athens in early youth, he became the pupil of Aeschines Socraticus, but subsequently joined himself to Plato, whom he accompanied to Sicily in 361. Upon his master's death, he paid a visit with Aristotle to Hermias of Atarneus. In 339/8 BC, Xenocrates succeeded Speusippus in the presidency of the school, defeating his competitors Menedemus of Pyrrha and Heraclides Ponticus by a few votes. On three occasions he was member of an Athenian legation, once to Philip, twice to Antipater.

Xenocrates resented the Macedonian influence then dominant at Athens. Soon after the death of Demosthenes (c. 322 BC), he declined the citizenship offered to him at the insistence of Phocion as a reward for his services in negotiating peace with Antipater after Athens' unsuccessful rebellion. The settlement was reached "at the price of a constitutional change: thousands of poor Athenians were disenfranchised," and Xenocrates said "that he did not want to become a citizen within a constitution he had struggled to prevent". Being unable to pay the tax levied upon resident aliens, he is said to have been saved only by the courage of the orator Lycurgus, or even to have been bought by Demetrius Phalereus, and then emancipated. In 314/3, he died from hitting his head, after tripping over a bronze pot in his house.

Xenocrates was succeeded as scholarch by Polemon, whom he had reclaimed from a life of profligacy. Besides Polemon, the statesman Phocion, Chaeron (tyrant of Pellene), the academic Crantor, the Stoic Zeno and Epicurus are said to have frequented his lectures.

Wanting in quickness of apprehension and natural grace he compensated by persevering and thorough-going industry, pure benevolence, purity of morals, unselfishness, and a moral earnestness, which compelled esteem and trust even from the Athenians of his own age.

Xenocrates adhered closely to the Platonist doctrine, and he is accounted the typical representative of the Old Academy. In his writings, which were numerous, he seems to have covered nearly the whole of the Academic program; but metaphysics and ethics were the subjects which principally engaged his thoughts. He is said to have made more explicit the division of philosophy into the three parts of Physics, Dialectic and Ethics.

Writings
With a comprehensive work on Dialectic (τῆς περὶ τὸ διαλέγεσθαι πραγματείας βιβλία ιδ΄) there were also separate treatises On Knowledge, On Knowledgibility (περὶ ἐπιστήμης α΄, περὶ ἐπιστημοσύνης α΄), On Divisions (διαιρέσεις η΄), On Genera and Species (περὶ γενῶν καὶ εἰδῶν α΄), On Ideas (περὶ ἰδεῶν), On the Opposite (περὶ τοῦ ἐναντίου), and others, to which probably the work On Mediate Thought (τῶν περὶ τὴν διάνοιαν η΄) also belonged. Two works by Xenocrates on Physics are mentioned (περὶ φύσεως ϛ΄ - φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως ϛ΄), as are also books On the Gods (περὶ Θεῶν β΄), On the Existent (περὶ τοῦ ὄντος), On the One (περὶ τοῦ ἑνός), On the Indefinite (περὶ τοῦ ἀορίστου), On the Soul (περὶ ψυχῆς), On the Emotions (περὶ τῶν παθῶν α΄) On Memory (περὶ μνήμης), etc. In like manner, with the more general Ethical treatises On Happiness (περὶ εὐδαιμονίας β΄), and On Virtue (περὶ ἀρετῆς) there were connected separate books on individual Virtues, on the Voluntary, etc. His four books on Royalty he had addressed to Alexander (στοιχεῖα πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον περὶ βασιλείας δ΄). Besides these he had written treatises On the State (περὶ πολιτείας α΄; πολιτικός α΄), On the Power of Law (περὶ δυνάμεως νόμου α΄), etc., as well as upon Geometry, Arithmetic, and Astrology. Besides philosophical treatises, he wrote poetry and paraenesis.

Epistemology
Xenocrates made a more definite division between the three departments of philosophy, than Speusippus, but at the same time abandoned Plato's heuristic method of conducting through doubts, and adopted instead a mode of bringing forward his doctrines in which they were developed dogmatically.

Xenocrates recognized three grades of cognition, each appropriated to a region of its own: knowledge, sensation, and opinion. He referred knowledge to that essence which is the object of pure thought, and is not included in the phenomenal world; sensation  to that which passes into the world of phenomena; opinion  to that essence which is at once the object of sensuous perception, and, mathematically, of pure reason - the essence of heaven or the stars; so that he conceived of  in a higher sense, and endeavored, more definitely than Plato, to exhibit mathematics as mediating between knowledge and sensuous perception.

All three modes of apprehension partake of truth; but in what manner scientific perception did so, we unfortunately do not learn. Even here Xenocrates's preference for symbolic modes of sensualising or denoting appears: he connected the above three stages of knowledge with the three Fates: Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis. We know nothing further about the mode in which Xenocrates carried out his dialectic, as it is probable that what was peculiar to Aristotelian logic did not remain unnoticed in it, for it can hardly be doubted that the division of the existent into the absolutely existent, and the relatively existent, attributed to Xenocrates, was opposed to the Aristotelian table of categories.

Metaphysics
We know from Plutarch that Xenocrates, if he did not explain the Platonic construction of the world-soul as Crantor after him did, nevertheless drew heavily on the Timaeus; and further that he was at the head of those who, regarding the universe as unoriginated and imperishable, looked upon the chronological succession in the Platonic theory as a form in which to denote the relations of conceptual succession. Plutarch unfortunately, does not give us any further details, and contented himself with describing the well-known assumption of Xenocrates, that the soul is a self-moving number. Probably we should connect with this the statement that Xenocrates called unity and duality (monas and duas) deities, and characterised the former as the first male existence, ruling in heaven, as father and Zeus, as uneven number and spirit; the latter as female, as the mother of the gods, and as the soul of the universe which reigns over the mutable world under heaven, or, as others have it, that he named the Zeus who ever remains like himself, governing in the sphere of the immutable, the highest; the one who rules over the mutable, sublunary world, the last, or outermost.

If, like other Platonists, he designated the material principle as undefined duality, the world-soul was probably described by him as the first defined duality, the conditioning or defining principle of every separate definitude in the sphere of the material and changeable, but not extending beyond it. He appears to have called it in the highest sense the individual soul, in a derivative sense a self-moving number, that is, the first number endowed with motion. To this world-soul Zeus, or the world-spirit, has entrusted - in what degree and in what extent, we do not learn - dominion over that which is liable to motion and change. The divine power of the world-soul is then again represented, in the different spheres of the universe, as infusing soul into the planets, Sun and Moon, - in a purer form, in the shape of Olympic gods. As a sublunary daemonical power (as Hera, Poseidon, Demeter), it dwells in the elements, and these daemonical natures, midway between gods and men, are related to them as the isosceles triangle is to the equilateral and the scalene. The divine world-soul which reigns over the whole domain of sublunary changes he appears to have designated as the last Zeus, the last divine activity.

It is not until we get to the sphere of the separate daemonical powers of nature that the opposition between good and evil begins, and the daemonical power is appeased by means of a stubbornness which it finds there congenial to it; the good daemonical power makes happy those in whom it takes up its abode, the bad ruins them; for eudaimonia is the indwelling of a good daemon, the opposite the indwelling of a bad one.

How Xenocrates tried to establish and connect scientifically these assumptions, which appear to be taken chiefly from his books on the nature of the gods, we do not learn, and can only discover the one fundamental idea at the basis of them, that all grades of existence are penetrated by divine power, and that this grows less and less energetic in proportion as it descends to the perishable and individual. Hence he also appears to have maintained that as far as consciousness extends, so far also extends an intuition of that all-ruling divine power, of which he represented even irrational animals as partaking. But neither the thick nor the thin, to the different combinations of which he appears to have tried to refer the various grades of material existence, were regarded by him as in themselves partaking of soul; doubtless because he referred them immediately to the divine activity, and was far from attempting to reconcile the duality of the principia, or to resolve them into an original unity. Hence too he was for proving the incorporeality of the soul by the fact that it is not nourished as the body is.

It is probable, that, after the example of Plato, he designated the divine principium as alone indivisible, and remaining like itself; the material, as the divisible, partaking of multiformity, and different, and that from the union of the two, or from the limitation of the unlimited by the absolute unity, he deduced number, and for that reason called the soul of the universe, like that of individual beings, a self-moving number, which, by virtue of its twofold root in the same and the different, shares equally in permanence and motion, and attains to consciousness by means of the reconciliation of this opposition.

Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, recognized amongst contemporary Platonists three principal views concerning the ideal numbers, and their relation to the ideas and to mathematical numbers:

 * 1) those who, like Plato, distinguished ideal and mathematical numbers;
 * 2) those who, like Xenocrates, identified ideal numbers with mathematical numbers
 * 3) those who, like Speusippus, postulated mathematical numbers only

Aristotle has much to say against the Xenocratean interpretation of the theory, and in particular points out that, if the ideal numbers are made up of arithmetical units, they not only cease to be principles, but also become subject to arithmetical operations.

In the derivation of things according to the series of the numbers he seems to have gone further than any of his predecessors. He approximated to the Pythagoreans in this, that (as is clear from his explanation of the soul) he regarded number as the conditioning principle of consciousness, and consequently of knowledge also; he thought it necessary, however, to supply what was wanting in the Pythagorean assumption by the more accurate definition, borrowed from Plato, that it is only insofar as number reconciles the opposition between the same and the different, and has raised itself to self-motion, that it is soul. We find a similar attempt at the supplementation of the Platonic doctrine in Xenocrates's assumption of indivisible lines. In them he thought he had discovered what, according to Plato, God alone knows, and he among men who is loved by him, namely, the elements or principia of the Platonic triangles. He seems to have described them as first, original lines, and in a similar sense to have spoken of original plain figures and bodies, convinced that the principia of the existent should be sought not in the material, not in the divisible which attains to the condition of a phenomenon, but merely in the ideal definitude of form. He may very well, in accordance with this, have regarded the point as a merely subjectively admissible presupposition, and a passage of Aristotle respecting this assumption should perhaps be referred to him.

Ethics
The information on his Ethics is scanty. He tried to supplement the Platonic doctrine at various points, and at the same time to give it a more direct applicability to life. He distinguished from the good and the bad something which is neither good nor bad. Following the ideas of his Academic predecessors, he viewed the good as that which should be striven after for itself, that is, which has value in itself, while the bad is the opposite of this. Consequently, that which is neither good nor bad is what in itself is neither to be striven after nor to be avoided, but derives value or the opposite according as it serves as means for what is good or bad, or rather, is used by us for that purpose.

While, however, Xenocrates (and with him Speusippus and the other philosophers of the older Academy) would not accept that these intermediate things, such as health, beauty, fame, good fortune, etc. were valuable in themselves, he did not accept that they were absolutely worthless or indifferent. According, therefore, as what belongs to the intermediate region is adapted to bring about or to hinder the good, Xenocrates appears to have designated it as good or evil, probably with the proviso, that by misuse what is good might become evil, and vice versa, that by virtue, what is evil might become good.

Still he maintained that virtue alone is valuable in itself, and that the value of every thing else is conditional. According to this, happiness should coincide with the consciousness of virtue, though its reference to the relations of human life requires the additional condition, that it is only in the enjoyment of the good things and circumstances originally designed for it by nature that it attains to completion; to these good things, however, sensuous gratification does not belong. In this sense he on the one hand denoted (perfect) happiness as the possession of personal virtue, and the capabilities adapted to it, and therefore reckoned among its constituent elements, besides moral actions conditions and facilities, those movements and relations also without which external good things cannot be attained, and on the other hand did not allow that wisdom, understood as the science of first causes or intelligible essence, or as theoretical understanding, is by itself the true wisdom which should be striven after by people, and therefore seems to have regarded this human wisdom as at the same time exerted in investigating, defining, and applying. How decidedly he insisted not only on the recognition of the unconditional nature of moral excellence, but on morality of thought, is shown by his declaration, that it comes to the same thing whether one casts longing eyes, or sets one's feet upon the property of others. His moral earnestness is also expressed in the warning that the ears of children should be guarded against the poison of immoral speeches.

Mathematics
Xenocrates is known to have written a book On Numbers, and a Theory of Numbers, besides books on geometry. Plutarch writes that Xenocrates once attempted to find the total number of syllables that could be made from the letters of the alphabet. According to Plutarch, Xenocrates result was 1,002,000,000,000 (a "myriad-and-twenty times a myriad-myriad"). This possibly represents the first instance that a combinatorial problem involving permutations was attempted. Xenocrates also supported the idea of "indivisible lines" (and magnitudes) in order to counter Zeno's paradoxes.

title: Xenocrates


text:
Doom metal

Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres. Both the music and the lyrics are intended to evoke a sense of despair, dread, and impending doom. The genre is strongly influenced by the early work of Black Sabbath, who formed a prototype for doom metal. During the first half of the 1980s, a number of bands such as Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar from England, American bands Pentagram, Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Trouble, and Cirith Ungol, and Swedish band Candlemass defined doom metal as a distinct genre. Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Trouble and Candlemass have been referred to as "the Big Four of Doom Metal".

Instrumentation
The electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit are the most common instruments used to play doom metal (although keyboards are sometimes used), but its structures are rooted in the same scales as in blues. Guitarists and bassists often down tune their instruments to very low notes and make use of large amounts of distortion, thus producing a very "thick" or "heavy" guitar tone, which is one of the defining characteristics of the genre. Along with the usual heavy metal compositional technique of guitars and bass playing the same riff in unison, this creates a loud and bass-heavy wall of sound. Another defining characteristic is the consistent focus on slow tempos, and minor tonality with much use of dissonance (especially in the form of the tritone), employing the usage of repetitive rhythms with little regard to harmonic progression and musical structure.

Vocals
Traditional doom metal vocalists favor clean vocals, which are often performed with a sense of despair, desperation, or pain; imitating the high-tone wails of Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath), Frank Ferrara (Bang), Bobby Liebling (Pentagram), and Zeeb Parkes (Witchfinder General). So-called "epic doom" vocalists often take it a step further, singing in an operatic style. Doom metal bands influenced by other extreme metal genres often use growled or screamed vocals, as is the case of death-doom, black-doom, and funeral doom.

Lyrical themes
Lyrics in doom metal play a key role. Influenced by notable blues musicians like Robert Johnson and Son House, normally they are gloomy and pessimistic, including themes such as suffering, depression, fear, grief, dread, death, and anger. While some bands write lyrics in introspective and personal ways, others convey their themes using symbolism – which may be inspired by occult arts and literature.

Some doom metal bands use religious themes in their music. Trouble, one of the genre's pioneers, were among the first to incorporate Christian imagery. Others have incorporated occult and pagan imagery. For many bands, the use of religious themes is for aesthetic and symbolic purposes only. Examples include lyrics/imagery about the Last Judgment to invoke dread, or the use of crucifixes and cross-shaped headstones to symbolize death.

Furthermore, some doom metal bands write lyrics about drugs or drug addiction. This is most common among stoner doom bands, who often describe hallucinogenic or psychedelic experiences.

Origins (late 1960s–1970s)
The first traces of doom in rock music could be heard as far back as the Beatles' 1969 track "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Black Sabbath are generally regarded as the progenitors of doom metal. Black Sabbath's music is (in and of) itself stylistically rooted in blues, but with the deliberately doomy and loud guitar playing of Tony Iommi, and the then-uncommon dark and pessimistic lyrics and atmosphere, they set the standards of early heavy metal and inspired various doom metal bands. In the early 1970s, both Black Sabbath and Pentagram (also as side band "Bedemon") composed and performed this heavy and dark music, which would in the 1980s begin to be known and referred to as doom metal by subsequent musicians, critics and fans. Joe Hasselvander, Pentagram's drummer also cited bands like Black Widow, Toe Fat, Iron Claw, Night Sun, and Zior as pioneers of the doom metal sound.

Aside from Pentagram and Black Sabbath, other groups from the 1970s would heavily influence the genre's development. Blue Cheer is often hailed as one of the first stoner metal bands. Through the use of loud amplifiers and guitar feedback, their debut Vincebus Eruptum created a template for other artists to follow. Though lacking the pessimistic lyrical content of their contemporaries, Welsh heavy metal band Budgie would also produce heavy songs which were amongst the loudest of their day, stylistically influencing various doom metal acts. Led Zeppelin's No Quarter is considered as one of the earliest examples of a doom metal song made by a rock band. Early doom metal was also influenced by Japanese psychedelic rock albums, such as Kuni Kawachi & Friends' Kirikyogen and Flower Travellin' Band's Satori. Bang's 1971 self-titled debut is considered an important forerunner to doom metal. Other notable groups include Sir Lord Baltimore, Buffalo, Necromandus, Lucifer's Friend, and Leaf Hound.

Development (1980s)
During the early-mid-1980s, bands from England and the United States contributed much to the formation of doom metal as a distinct genre. In 1982, English pioneers Witchfinder General released their debut album Death Penalty. During 1984, two American pioneers also released their debuts—Saint Vitus released their eponymous album and Trouble released Psalm 9. That same year, American band Cirith Ungol (formed in 1971) released their second studio album, King of the Dead—regarded by many as an early influence on doom. The following year, American band Pentagram would go on to release their debut, Relentless. The Swedish Candlemass would also prove influential with their first record Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in 1986, from which epic doom metal takes its name.

Some doom metal bands were also influenced by the underground gothic rock and post-punk scene of the 1980s, showing similarities with the dark themes addressed through lyrics and the atmosphere both music styles deal with. A doom metal band like Mindrot was often described as a cross-over between death metal and gothic rock.

Regional scenes
Like other extreme metal genres, doom metal also has regionally based scenes, with their own particular characteristics:

Finnish doom metal
In one of the greatest doom metal outputs, Finnish groups focus more on the depressive mood of the genre, evoking an intense grieving feeling. The bands play with very slow tempos and melodic tones, creating an atmosphere of darkness and melancholia. This scene was kick-started by the band Rigor Mortis (which, due to an older US band with the same name, changed their name to Spiritus Mortis), which originated in 1987. Notable bands include Reverend Bizarre, Minotauri, Dolorian, Shape of Despair, Thergothon, Skepticism, and Unholy.

Louisiana doom metal
Regarded as sludge metal's birthplace by AllMusic, this scene originated in New Orleans in the late 1980s. The bands of this scene employ some punk influences, like harsh vocals, guitar distortion and downtuned sound. This scene was pioneered by Exhorder, who was the first band to combine doom metal with a punk-influenced metal sound. In the 90s, several sludge and stoner metal bands arose in the state, mainly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Melvins, also mixing their sound with genres like hardcore punk and Southern rock. Notable bands include Eyehategod, Down Exhorder, Crowbar, and Acid Bath.

Washington D.C. doom metal
This scene formed in the early 1970s and was kickstarted by Pentagram and the Obsessed. Various doom/stoner bands, mostly from Washington, D.C. and its metropolitan area on Maryland and Virginia (thus also being labelled "Maryland doom sound" ), formed in this region being heavily influenced by early hard rock and heavy metal bands, like UFO, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Sir Lord Baltimore. This scene is also known as "Hellhound sound" for being closely related to the late Hellhound Records, who signed with many important bands of the scene like Saint Vitus, Internal Void,  Iron Man, Revelation, Wretched and Unorthodox. Other notable bands include Evoken, Spirit Caravan, Earthride, and the Hidden Hand.

Pacific Northwest doom metal
The Pacific Northwest region – primarily Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia – has been host to a growing scene of doom, sludge, and stoner metal since the 1990s. It is influenced by the geographical origin of grunge music and a sound pioneered in part by the Washington band Melvins. Common visual themes include the region's cold, rainy, forested climate, and many bands utilize psychedelic imagery influenced by bands like Sleep, Karp and Harkonen. Musical styles often share crossover features with atmospheric/ambient black metal, drone metal, and post-metal as seen in Oregon's YOB, Agalloch, Witch Mountain, and Red Fang; Washington's Earth, and Sunn O))); and Vancouver's Anciients, Astrakhan, and Aaron Turner project Sumac, among various others.

Palm Desert Scene
Palm Desert, California, hosts a thriving desert rock and stoner metal scene, drawing heavy influences from psychedelia, blues and hardcore punk, often featuring distinctive repetitive drum beats, a propensity for free-form jamming, and "trance-like" or "sludgy" grooves. Because of their integration, the term "stoner rock" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "desert rock". Notable bands include Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Dali's Llama, Slo Burn, and Brant Bjork.

Black-doom
Black-doom, also known as blackened doom, is a style that combines the slowness and thicker, bassier sound of doom metal with the shrieking vocals and heavily distorted guitar sound of black metal. Black-doom bands maintain the Satanic ideology associated with black metal, while melding it with moodier themes more related to doom metal, like depression, nihilism, and nature. They also use the slower pace of doom metal in order to emphasize the harsh atmosphere present in black metal. Examples of black-doom bands include Barathrum, Forgotten Tomb, Woods of Ypres, Deinonychus, Shining, Nortt, Bethlehem, early Katatonia, Tiamat, Dolorian, October Tide, and In the Woods...

Depressive suicidal black metal
Pioneered by black-doom bands like Ophthalamia, Katatonia, Bethlehem, Forgotten Tomb, and Shining, depressive suicidal black metal, also known as suicidal black metal, depressive black metal, or DSBM, is a style that melds the second wave-style of black metal with doom metal, with lyrics revolving around themes such as depression, self-harm, misanthrophy, suicide, and death. DSBM bands draw the lo-fi recording and highly distorted guitars of black metal, while employing the usage of acoustic instruments and non-distorted electric guitar's timbres present in doom metal, interchanging the slower, doom-like, sections with faster tremolo picking. Vocals are usually high-pitched like in black metal, but lacking of energy, simulating feelings like hopelessness, desperation, and plea. The presence of one-man bands is more prominent in this genre compared to others. Examples of bands include Xasthur, Leviathan, Strid, Silencer, Make a Change... Kill Yourself, and I Shalt Become.

Blackened death-doom
Blackened death-doom is a genre that combines the slow tempos and monolithic drumming of doom metal, the complex and loud riffage of death metal and the shrieking vocals of black metal. Examples of blackened death-doom bands include Morast, Faustcoven, the Ruins of Beverast, Bolzer, Necros Christos, Harvest Gulgaltha, Dragged into Sunlight, Hands of Thieves, and Soulburn.

Death-doom
Death-doom is a style that combines the slow tempos and pessimistic atmosphere of doom metal with the deep growling vocals and double-kick drumming of death metal. Influenced mostly by the early work of Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, the style emerged during the late 1980s and gained a certain amount of popularity during the 1990s. Death-doom was pioneered by bands such as Winter, Disembowelment, Paradise Lost, Autopsy, Anathema, My Dying Bride and Novembers Doom.

Funeral doom
Funeral doom is a genre that crosses death-doom with funeral dirge music. It is played at an extremely slow tempo, and places an emphasis on evoking a sense of emptiness and despair. Typically, electric guitars are heavily distorted and dark ambient aspects such as keyboards or synthesizers are often used to create a "dreamlike" atmosphere. Vocals consist of mournful chants or growls and are often in the background. Funeral doom was pioneered by Mournful Congregation, Esoteric, Evoken, Funeral, Thergothon, and Skepticism.

Drone metal

Drone metal (also known as drone doom) is a style of doom metal that is largely defined by drones; notes or chords that are sustained and repeated throughout a piece of music. Typically, the electric guitar is performed with large amounts of reverb and feedback while lacking the presence of drums and vocals. Songs are often very long and lack beat or rhythm in the traditional sense. Drone metal is generally influenced by drone music, noise music,  and minimalist music. The style emerged in the early 1990s and was pioneered by Earth, Boris, and Sunn O))).

Epic doom
Epic doom has a heavy classical influence. One of the main characteristics are the vocals; vocalists typically employ clean, operatic, and choral singing, accompanied by keyboarding and drumming performed in a bombastic fashion in order to evoke an "epic" sensation. Lyrics and imagery are typically inspired by fantasy or mythology. Examples of prominent epic doom bands include Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus, Solstice, While Heaven Wept, and Doomsword.

Gothic-doom
Gothic-doom, also known as doom-gothic, is a style that combines more traditional elements of doom metal with gothic rock. Gothic-doom bands usually play at slow and mid-tempos and employ the usage of instruments that are more related to classical music, alongside traditional doom metal instruments, in order to create darker and meditative atmospheres. Doom-gothic lyrics combines the dramatic and romantic elements of gothic rock with the sorrowness and melancholy present in doom metal, while being more introspective and focused on personal experiences such as love, grief, irreparable loss, loss of faith, etc. Unlike in gothic metal and death-doom, gothic-doom bands prefer the use of cleaner vocals instead of employing death growls, although some of them employ harsher vocals occasionally, and avoid the usage of death metal-like riffage. Bands labelled as gothic-doom include Weeping Silence, the Foreshadowing, Grave Lines, Artrosis, Ava Inferi, Draconian, and Type O Negative.

Progressive doom
Progressive doom is a fusion genre that combines elements of progressive metal and doom metal. Notable bands include King Goat, Below the Sun, Sierra, Oceans of Slumber, and Green Carnation.

Sludge metal
Sludge metal (also known as sludge doom ) is a style that combines doom metal and hardcore punk. Many sludge bands compose slow and heavy songs that contain brief hardcore passages. However, some bands emphasise fast tempos throughout their music. The string instruments are heavily distorted and are often played with large amounts of feedback to produce an abrasive, sludgy sound. Drumming is often performed in typical doom metal fashion, but drummers may employ hardcore d-beat or double-kick drumming during faster passages. Vocals are usually shouted or screamed, and lyrics often focus on suffering, drug abuse, politics and anger towards society. The style was pioneered in the late 1980s by the Melvins, and in the 1990s by bands such as Eyehategod, Crowbar, Buzzov*en, Acid Bath, and Grief.

Sludgecore
Sludgecore further combines sludge metal with hardcore punk, and possesses a slow pace, a low and dark pitch, and a grinding dirge-like feel. Bands regarded as sludgecore include Acid Bath, Eyehategod, Soilent Green, Black Sheep Wall, Admiral Angry, and The Abominable Iron Sloth. Crowbar mixed "detuned, lethargic sludged-out metal with hardcore and southern elements".

Stoner metal

Stoner metal or stoner doom describes doom metal that incorporates psychedelic rock and acid rock elements. Stoner metal is often heavily distorted, groove-laden bass-heavy sound, making much use of guitar effects such as fuzz, phaser, or flanger. Stoner bands typically play in slow-to-mid tempo, employing the usage of melodic vocals and "retro" production. It was pioneered in the early–mid-1990s by bands such as Kyuss, Sleep, Acid King, Electric Wizard, Orange Goblin, and Sons of Otis.

Desert rock
Desert rock combines the psychedelic elements of stoner metal with hard rock characteristics. Bands of this style include Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Queens of the Stone Age, Earthlings? and Yawning Man.

Traditional doom
Influenced by 70s and 80s heavy metal, traditional doom metal bands more commonly use higher guitar tunings, and do not play as slowly as many other doom bands. Traditional doom bands typically play slow to mid-tempo songs with a thick and heavy sound with the electric bass following the melody line, and sometimes employ the usage of keyboards, although assuming a secondary role on traditional doom metal songs. Vocals are usually clean with the occasional growl or scream. The lyrics in traditional doom usually are eerie and dark like other doom metal divisions. Some bands who play traditional doom metal are Orodruin, Reverend Bizarre, Witchcraft, Saint Vitus, and Count Raven.

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

title: Doom metal


text:
Jean Rey

Jean Rey may refer to:

 * Jean Rey (physician) (c. 1583–c. 1645), French physician and chemist
 * Jean Rey (politician) (1902–1983), Belgian Liberal politician
 * Jean Rey (cyclist) (1925–1950), French cyclist

title: Jean Rey


text:
Talk:Skid-steer loader

Skid loader
what does it do? -- Tarquin 20:11 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)
 * Exactly. what's it useful for?  :-) Koyaanis Qatsi

All kinds of things! You can put various implements on the front, but I have personal experience only with the bucket and pallet fork attachments, which in themselves are very usefull. A New Holland LS-180 is what I have used.

With the bucket as shown on the Bobcat you can load, dump, dig, grade, carry, etc. It makes for an excellent oversized wheelbarrow, particularly when there is are one or more extra persons to load the bucket.

With the pallet forks, you have an all terrain forklift, but they are good for so much more than just pallets! The forks are positionable from between six inches apart, to the full width of the attachment.

Pushed close together they can break up dirt when digging holes in hard ground making the task much faster than with hand tools alone (strictly speaking this is what an auger or small excavator attachment is for, but you work with what you have.) Great for starting small holes in hard ground when planting trees. Just the other day I used the forks in this configuration to quickly and easily remove some medium shrubs that we wanted to transplant.

With the forks spaced wider you can even do demoliton! Then spread the forks, or put on the bucket to haul the debris. Then you can use one of these attachments to compress the contents of the disposal dumpster in order to fit as much as possible into it. --Knife Knut 03:28, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I've seen them used for snow removal. It tends to be for smaller spaces and only when the snow banks are already so high that regular snow plows can't pile it up anymore, but I'm not sure about the precise conditions under which they are used for snow removal. Bostoner (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Move? (1)
I think the correct title is Skid-steer Loader. I've never heard the term Skid loader - I would have guessed  that's a type of skidder. Toiyabe 23:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I concur with the title change. A Google search for "skid loader" returns about 100K items, versus 360K for "skid-steer loader".  Any objections to the title change? Mmoyer 13:20, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree with the title change also. "Skid steer" or "skid steer loader" are the terms I see most on a quick survey of major manufacturers' websites, with very few uses of "skid loader". Ptschett (talk) 04:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it should be moved to Bobcat (equipment) Alx xlA 20:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It is basically about Bobcat and IR. Move it there. It also talks about other Bobcat products, but it doesn't mention the VersaHandler TTC.68.151.51.221 02:58, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Move it to Skid steer. That's what it is called. --Roger Chrisman (talk) 22:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Removal of copyedit tag
I read the article and it is much improved since the January version. I have therefore removed the copyedit tag. Mmoyer 20:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Historical content
Does anyone else feel that detailed product line histories would be best placed on separate articles? I could provide a Melroe/Bobcat history which would run as long or longer than the Case/Uni-Loader history, but I would rather put that information under the Melroe Manufacturing Company or Bobcat_(equipment) page.

I propose that after the initial text for how the skid steer loader came to be, major timeline events (company entries into the market, new technologies, etc.) be listed with their dates, instead of having detailed histories for particular product lines. For example:

Melroe had the 1st hydrostatic drive in 1970

Melroe introduced the "Bob-Tach" quick attachment system, which became the industry standard, in 1970

New Holland entered the market in 1972 with the first vertical path liftarm

Case introduced its first hydrostatic models in 1975

Melroe sold its last clutch drive products in 1982

ASV introduced the first rubber-tracked skid steer loader in 1987

Caterpillar entered a partnership with ASV in 1999 and began selling ASV-tracked "multi terrain loaders" in 2001

etc... (Dates and information may not be correct and my format might not be the best, but you get the idea)

Ptschett (talk) 02:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

other compact equipment
should not be included here. It could be under further reading, but it's not the subject and could even confuse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.134.94.21 (talk) 14:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I took the liberty of deleting this section, as it is unrelated to this material, you wouldn't include a section on cars in the truck article because they both use four wheels and are use to transport things, and this is a similar situation. Moskevap (talk) 03:13, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My opinion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.134.94.21 (talk) 12:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested move (2)

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Page moved to Skid-steer loader. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:20, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Skid loader → Skid steer loader – This type of machine is called a "skid steer loader" (sometimes hyphenated, i.e. "skid-steer loader") by the major manufacturers of these loaders (Cat, Deere, CNH, Bobcat, JCB, etc.) From a quick overview of the manufacturers' sites, "Skid loader" is an unusual term within the industry. ptschett (talk) 04:59, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

 * Oppose – Take a look at google books n-gram viewer to see that most usage is "skid loader" (except in 1988 and 2002); what the manufacturers call them is less important than what others call them. Dicklyon (talk) 23:17, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Three thoughts:
 * -Many people call this kind of machine a "bobcat", after the name of the earliest popular brand name; popular usage is not always right.
 * -A search of "skid loader" vs "skid steer loader" in Google Books search shows "skid steer loader" with almost twice as many results as "skid loader".
 * -This machine is an example of "skid loader" being used in a sense where the "skid" is what is being loaded, rather than a reference to the steering principle. ptschett (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * What book search links are you using for the result? It conflicts with the search I linked showing "skid loader" as most common.  Dicklyon (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I searched "Skid loader" and "skid steer loader" and compared the number of results. ptschett (talk) 23:10, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I would be unhappy if the article was renamed after one manufacturer's brand. While Dicklyon's assertion that "skid loader" is the most commonly used term is compelling I think choosing a less ambiguous term would outweigh that.  This is why I preferred "Commons:Category:Lake Freighter" over "Commons:Category:Lakers", which had to be disambiguated to ''"Commons:Category:Lakers (ships).  This is why I prefered Commons:Category:Water bomber over Commons:Category:Air tanker.  Geo Swan (talk) 20:44, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not clear what position you are taking here? Support, oppose, or something else?  Dicklyon (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

 * Support FNQ (talk) 08:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I revise my opposition, having the studied the article and sources more. Before I read up, I thought the skid in "skid loader" referred to the thing on the front of the loader arms, which appears to be what it originally meant, like in this magazine. It now seems clear that the first move suggested before this one was on the right track, except for the capitalization; it should be "Skid-steer loader", with the hyphen. The hyphen is found in some sources, helping the reader understand that "skid-steer" is a compound having to do with steering by skidding; in other sources, they assume the reader will know, and they omit the hyphen, making the naive reader more likely to think that it is a "steer loader" of a skid sort, silly though that seems. It is WP style to include hyphens when the help the readability by users not that familiar with the material (MOS:HYPHEN), so "skid steer loader" should be avoided. It's interesting to that in terms of book counts "skid-steer loader" (neglecting punctuation) is more common than "skid loader", while in terms of n-gram counts it's the other way around; probably books that refer a lot to the device take shortcut of using the shorter name. Or it could be that some of the "skid loader" hits are the old meaning. Should I ask the nom to propose a modification to this RM with hyphen, in which case I would support, or should I start a new one as an alternative? Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm new to the RM process so I'm not sure the best route to modify my request, but I do agree with your logic for including the hyphen and naming the page "skid-steer loader". ptschett (talk) 14:27, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Bobcat
Is there an article on Bobcats? 70.24.244.248 (talk) 06:17, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

 * Yes: Bobcat Company ptschett (talk) 15:22, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

History section needs accurate images
This article needs some proper historical images. Here is what is needed, but we need free images of these uploaded to the Commons, to put into the article:
 * Google image search: Bobcat M200 - early form, two wheel with caster
 * Google image search: Bobcat M400 - evolved form, skid steer as we know it.

Note the awesome minimalism of driver protection, either a tiny grille by the arms, or none at all.

The people that invented the skid steer have their own online museum and physical. Perhaps they'd be willing to contribute an image or two?
 * www.skidsteerhistory.com

DMahalko (talk) 21:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Mecanum Wheel?
Why is this relevant? Are there kits available for the conversion of skid-steer loaders to Mecanum Wheel loaders? Is this just an chance to highlight an interesting mechanical device?Joecycle (talk) 19:03, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Request edit
Regarding the first line of the article: "A skid loader, skid-steer loader, skidsteer, or 'bobcat'[citation needed] (as a generic trademark) is a small, rigid-frame, engine-powered machine with lift arms used to attach a wide variety of labor-saving tools or attachments.", I request deletion of "''bobcat' (as a generic trademark)".

The term BOBCAT is not a "generic trademark." Clark Equipment Company (doing business as Bobcat Company) owns many active U.S. federal trademark registrations and many trademark registrations worldwide for the BOBCAT name for use with skid steer loaders as well as other compact construction equipment and related goods and services. It is therefore not correct to say that the entire category of skid steer loaders can be generically referred to as "bobcats," because "a Bobcat" in this context refers specifically to a skid steer loader manufactured by Bobcat Company.

Representative examples of U.S. trademark registrations for the BOBCAT mark include nos. 890,034, 670,566 and 1,604,367. Copies of the registration certificates and information on these registrations are accessible by their registration number through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Electronic Search System available at http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp. Representative examples of BOBCAT trademark registrations outside the United States include Australian Registration Nos. 707,659 and 198,207 and European Community Registration No. 29,371. Information on these registrations can be easily verified by accessing records through the countries’ trademark offices: https://search.ipaustralia.gov.au/trademarks/search/quick and https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/

You can also see discussion of this particular topic on the Talk page for the Bobcat Company article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bobcat_Company

--Chs88 (talk) 03:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Reply 24-MAR-2019

 * The company in question understandably wishes to avoid this article helping to advance the genericization of their product. The edit in question was not referenced and thus need not stand in the article.

 * The main article picture of the company's product featuring the brand name Bobcat prominently was omitted. The descriptions of the other brand names in other photos were all omitted as well. The article ought not to become an arena where varying manufacturers vie to have their product's displayed. Spintendo  04:44, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Skid-steer loader


text:
Wikipedia:Search engine test

A search engine lists web pages on the Internet. This facilitates research by offering an immediate variety of applicable options. Possibly useful items on the results list include the source material or the electronic tools that a web site can provide, such as a dictionary, but the list itself, as a whole, can also indicate important information. However, discerning that information may require insight.

Search engine results can help editors retain (what is notable) or delete (what is not verifiable) source material, depending on their reliability. There is a high demand for reliability on Wikipedia. Discerning the reliability of the source material is an especially core skill for using the web, while the wiki itself only facilitates the creation of multiple drafts. As presentations and deletions progress, this variety of choices for input tend to produce the desired objective—a neutral viewpoint. Depending on the type of query and kind of search engine, this variety can open up to a single author.

Some search engine tests
This page describes both these web search tests and the web search tools that can help develop Wikipedia, and it describes their biases and their limitations.
 * 1) Popularity – See Google's trending tool below.
 * 2) Usage – Identify a term's notability. (See for example [//books.google.com/ngrams Google's ngram tool].)
 * 3) Genuineness – Identify a spurious hoax or an urban legend.
 * 4) Notability – Decide whether a page should be nominated for deletion.
 * 5) Existence – Discover what sources (including websites) actually exist for possible presentation.
 * 6) Information – Review the reliability of facts and citations.
 * 7) Names and terminology – Identify the names used for things (including alternative names and terminology).
 * 8) Copyrighting – Identify whether material is copied, and if so, check the licensing.

The advantages of a specific search engine can be distinguished by using a variety of common search engines. The distinct advantages of each are their user interface and, less obviously, their algorithms for compiling and searching their own indexes. Because a web crawler can be blocked—specific ones or just in general—different search engines can list different web sites, and there are more web sites available by URL than are indexed in any database.

The most common search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Specialized search engines exist for medicine, science, news and law amongst others. Several generalized search engines exist. These adapt your query to many search engines. See  below. This page mostly uses Google instead of Bing or Yahoo, but aims for generality where it can. For example, it describes Google Groups (usenet groups), Google Scholar (academia), Google News, and Google Books.

Good-faith searching: a rule of thumb
If an unsourced addition to an article appears plausible, consider taking a moment to use a suitable search engine to find a reliable source before deciding whether to revert.

Search engine tests
Depending on the subject matter, and how carefully it is used, a search engine test can be very effective and helpful, or produce misleading or non-useful results. In most cases, a search engine test is a first-pass heuristic or "rule of thumb".

What a search test can do, and what it can't
A search engine can index pages and text which others have placed on the internet, just like a big index at the back of a book.

Search engines can:
 * Provide information and lead to pages that assist with the above goals
 * Confirm "who's reported to have said what" according to sources (useful for neutral citing)
 * Often provide full cited copies of source documents
 * Confirm roughly how popularly referenced an expression is. For example, a Google search for "the green goldfish", with quotes, in 2021 initially reports around 209,000 results, yet on paging through to the last search results page shows the returned number of hits to be 303. See also here to calculate statistical significance.
 * Search more specifically within certain websites, or for combined and alternative phrases (or excluding certain words and phrases that would otherwise confuse the results).

Search engines cannot: and search engines
 * Guarantee the results are reliable or "true" (search engines index whatever text people choose to put online, true or false).
 * Guarantee why something is mentioned a lot, and that it isn't due to marketing, reposting as an internet meme, spamming, or self-promotion, rather than importance.
 * Guarantee that the results reflect the uses you mean, rather than other uses. (E.g., a search for a specific John Smith may pick up many "John Smiths" who aren't the one meant, many pages containing "John" and "Smith" separately, and also miss out all the useful references indexed under "J. Smith" or, if the term is put in quotes, "John Michael Smith" and "Smith, John")
 * Guarantee you aren't missing crucial references through choice of search expression.
 * Guarantee that little-mentioned or unmentioned items are automatically unimportant.
 * Guarantee that a particular result is the original instance of a piece of text and not a reprint, excerpt, quotation, misquotation, or copyright violation.
 * Provide the latest research in depth to the same extent as journals and books, for rapidly developing subjects.
 * Be neutral.

A search engine test the work of interpreting your results and deciding what they really show. Appearance in an index alone is not usually proof of anything.

Verifiability
Search engine tests may return results that are fictitious, biased, hoaxes or similar. It is important to consider whether the information used derives from reliable sources before using or citing it. Less reliable sources may be unhelpful, or need their status and basis clarified, so that other readers gain a neutral and informed understanding to judge how reliable the sources are.

Neutrality
Google (and other search systems) do not aim for a neutral point of view. Wikipedia does. Google indexes self-created pages and media pages which do not have a neutrality policy. Wikipedia has a neutrality policy that is mandatory and applies to all articles, and all article-related editorial activity.

As such, Google is specifically a source of neutral titles – only of popular ones. Neutrality is mandatory on Wikipedia (including deciding what things are called) even if not elsewhere, and specifically, neutrality trumps popularity.

Notability
Raw "hit" (search result) count is a very crude measure of importance. Some unimportant subjects have many "hits", some notable ones have few or none, for reasons discussed further down this page.

Hit-count numbers alone can only rarely "prove" anything about notability, without further discussion of the type of hits, what's been searched for, how it was searched, and what interpretation to give the results. On the other hand, examining the types of hit arising (or their lack) often does provide useful information related to notability.

Additionally, search engines do not disambiguate, and tend to match partial searches. (However, as described below, you can eliminate partial matches by quoting the phrase to be matched): While Madonna of the Rocks is certainly an encyclopedic and notable entry, it's not a pop culture icon. However, due to Madonna matching as a partial match, as well as other Madonna references not related to the painting, the results of a Google or Bing search result count will be disproportionate as compared to any equally notable Renaissance painting. To exclude partial matches when Googling for the phrase, quote the phrase to be matched as follows: "Madonna of the Rocks".

Search engine expressions (examples and tutorial)
This section explains some search expressions used in Google web search. Similar approaches will work in many other search engines, and other Google searches, but always read their help pages for further information as search engines' capabilities and operation often differ. Note that if you are signed in to a Google account when searching on Google then this may affect the results that you get, based on your search history. Also be sure to check "Languages for Displaying (Search) Results" in "Search Settings". )

The single most useful search engine tool may be the use of quotation marks to find an exact match for a phrase. However, a search engine such as Google has both an easy, and an advanced search with further search options. The advanced search makes it easier to enter advanced options, that may help your searching. The following collapsible sections cover basic examples and help for using search engines with Wikipedia.

Specialized search engines such as medical paper archives have their own specialized search structure not covered here.

Specific uses of search engines in Wikipedia

 * Google Trends can allow you to find which rendering of a word or name is most searched for, like this (note: sports category) or like this. "Tidal wave" vs. "Tsunami" example, see also the Google Books example below.
 * Google Books has a pattern of coverage that is in closer accord with traditional encyclopedia content than is the Web, taken as a whole; if it has systemic bias, it is a very different systemic bias from Google Web searches. Multiple hits on an exact phrase in Google Book search provide convincing evidence for the real use of the phrase or concept. You can compare usage of terms, such as [//books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tidal+wave%2Ctsunami&year_start=2004&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3 "Tidal wave" vs. "Tsunami"]. Google Book search can locate print-published testimony to the importance of a person, event, or concept. It can also be used to replace an unsourced "common knowledge" fact with a print-sourced version of the same fact.
 * Google Groups or other date-stamped media can help establish the timing and context of early references to a word or phrase. Google Groups search.
 * Google News can help assess whether something is newsworthy. Google News used to be less susceptible to manipulation by self-promoters, but with the advent of pseudo-news sites designed to collect ad revenues or to promote specific agendas, this test is often no more reliable than others in areas of popular interest, and indexes many "news" sources that reflect specific points of view. The news archive goes back many years but may not be free beyond a limited period. News results often include press releases, which are not neutral, independent sources.
 * Google Scholar provides evidence of how many times a publication, document, or author has been cited or quoted by others. Best for scientific or academic topics. Can include Masters and Doctorate thesis papers, patents, and legal documents. Google Scholar search.
 * Topics alleged to be notable by popular reference can have the type of reference, and popularity, checked. An alleged notable issue that only has a few hundred references on the Internet may not be very notable; truly popular Internet memes can have millions or even tens of millions of references. However note that in some areas, a notable subject may have very few references; for example, one might only expect a handful of references to some archaeological matter, and some matters will not be reflected online at all.
 * Topics alleged to be genuine can be checked to test if they are referenced by reliable independent sources; this is a good test for hoaxes and the like.
 * Copyright violations from websites can often be identified (as described above).
 * Alternative spellings and usages can have their relative frequencies checked (e.g., for a debate which is the more common of two equally neutral and acceptable terms). Google Trends can compare usage in the "News" category ("Tidal wave" vs "Tsunami" example), but this may not be reliable for older news.

General
A raw hit count should never be relied upon to prove notability. Attention should instead be paid to what (the books, news articles, scholarly articles, and web pages) is found, and whether they actually demonstrate notability or non-notability, case by case. Hit counts have always been, and very likely always will remain, an extremely erroneous tool for measuring notability, and should not be considered either definitive or conclusive. A manageable sample of results found should be opened individually and read, to actually verify their relevance.

In the case of Google (and other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo!), the hit count at the top of the page is unreliable and should usually not be reported. The hit count reported on the penultimate (second-to-last) page of results may be slightly more accurate. For searches with few reported hits (less than 1000) the actual count of hits needed to reach the bottom of the last page of results may be more accurate, but even this is not a sure thing. Google returns different search results depending on factors such as your previous search history and on which Google server you happen to hit.

Other useful considerations in interpreting results are:
 * Article scope: If narrow, fewer references are required. Try to categorize the point of view, whether it is NPoV, or other; e.g., notice the difference between Ontology and Ontology (computer science).
 * Article subject: If it's about some historical person, one or two mentions in reliable texts might be enough; if it's some Internet neologism or a pop song, it may be on 700 pages and might still not be considered 'existing' enough to show any notability, for Wikipedia's purposes.

Biases to be aware of
In most cases, search results should be reviewed with an awareness and careful skepticism before relying upon them. Common biases include:

General biases
General (the Internet or people as a whole):
 * Personal bias – Tendency to be more receptive to beliefs that one is familiar with, agrees with, or are common in one's daily culture, and to discount beliefs and views that contradict one's preferred views.
 * Cultural and computer-usage bias – Biased towards information from Internet-using developed countries and affluent parts of society (internet access). Countries where computer use is not so common will often have lower rates of reference to equally notable material, which may therefore appear (mistakenly) non-notable.
 * Undue weight – May disproportionally represent some matters, especially related to popular culture (some matters may be given far more space and others far less, than fairly represents their standing): popularity is not notability.
 * Sources not readily accessible – Some sources are accessible to all, but many are payment only, or not reported online. This may, for example, affect the search results you get for a historical topic that achieved its peak media prominence 50 or 100 years ago; valid sources may very well exist, but would be found on microfilms or subscription news archiving sites like ProQuest or Newspapers.com rather than in a general Google search.

General web search engines (Google, Bing web search etc.):
 * Dark net – Search engines exclude a vast number of pages, and this may include systematic bias so that some matters are excluded disproportionately (for example, because they are commonly visible on sites that do not allow Google indexing, or the content for technical reasons cannot be indexed (Flash- or image-based websites etc.)
 * Search engines as promotion tool – An industry exists seeking to influence site position, popularity, and ratings in such searches, or sell advertising space related to searches and search positions. Some subjects, such as pornographic actors, are so dominated by these that searches cannot be reliably used to establish popularity.
 * Review process varies; some sites accept any information, while others have some form of review or checking system in place.
 * Self-mirroring – Sometimes other sites clone Wikipedia content, which is then passed around the Internet, and more pages built up based upon it (and often not cited), meaning that in reality the source of much of the search engine's findings are actually just copies of Wikipedia's own previous text, not genuine sources.
 * Popular usage bias – Popular usage and urban legend is often reported over correctness
 * Examples:
 * A search for the incorrect Charles Windsor gives 10 times more results than the correct Charles Mountbatten-Windsor.
 * A search for the most common spelling of El Niño will often report it spelt "El Nino", without the diacritic.
 * Urban legends are often reported widely, for example hundreds of sites report that the USS Constitution set sail in 1779, although the correct date is 1797.
 * Popular views and perceptions are likely to be more reported. For example, there may be many references to acupuncture and confirming that people are often allergic to animal fur, but it may only be with careful research that it is revealed there are medical peer-reviewed assessments of the former, and that people are usually not allergic to fur, but to the sticky skin and saliva particles (dander) the fur.
 * Language selection bias – For example, an Arabic speaker searching for information on homosexuality in Arabic will likely find pages which reflect a different bias than an English speaker searching in English on the same subject, since popular and media views and beliefs about homosexuality can differ widely between English-speaking countries (US, UK, Australia, etc.) that tend to include a higher proportion of homosexuality-accepting groups, and Arabic-speaking countries (Middle East) that tend to include a lower proportion.

Other:
 * Note that other Google searches, particularly Google Book Search, have a different systemic bias from Google Web searches and give an interesting cross-check and a somewhat independent view.

Foreign languages, non-Latin scripts, and old names
Often for items of non-English origin, or in non-Latin scripts, a considerably larger number of hits result from searching in the correct script or for various transcriptions—be sure to check "Languages for Displaying (Search) Results" in "Search Settings". An Arabic name, for instance, needs to be searched for in the original script, which is easily done with Google (provided one knows what to search for), but problems may arise if – for example – English, French and German webpages transcribe the name using different conventions. Even for English-only webpages there may be many variants of the same Arabic or Russian name. Personal names in other languages (Russian, Anglo-Saxon) may have to be searched for both including and excluding the patronymic, and searches for names and other words in strongly inflected languages should take into account that arriving at the total number of hits may require searching for forms with varying case-endings or other grammatical variations not obvious for someone who does not know the language. Names from many cultures are traditionally given together with titles that are considered part of the name, but may also be omitted (as in Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha).

Even in Old English, the spelling and rendering of older names may allow dozens of variations for the same person. A simplistic search for one particular variant may underrepresent the web presence by an order of magnitude.

A search like this requires a certain linguistic competence which not every individual Wikipedian possesses, but the Wikipedia community as a whole includes many bilingual and multilingual people and it is important for nominators and voters on AfD at least to and not make untoward assumptions when language or transcription bias may be a factor.

Google distinct page count issues
Note also, that the number of search string matches reported by search engines is only an estimate. For example, Google will only calculate the actual number of matches once the user navigates through all result pages, to the last one, and even then it places restrictions on the figure. At times, the "match" count estimate can be significantly different (by one or more orders of magnitude) to the total count of results shown on the last results page.

A site-specific search may help determine if most of the matches are coming from the same web site; a single web site can account for hundreds of thousands of hits.

For search terms that return many results, Google uses a process that eliminates results which are "very similar" to other results listed, both by disregarding pages with substantially similar content and by limiting the number of pages that can be returned from any given domain. For example, a search on "Taco Bell" will give only a couple of pages from tacobell.com even though many in that domain will certainly match. Further, Google's list of distinct results is constructed by first selecting the top 1000 results and then eliminating duplicates without replacements. Hence the list of distinct results will always contain fewer than 1000 results regardless of how many webpages actually matched the search terms. For example,, from the about 742 million pages related to "Microsoft", Google was returning 572 "distinct" results. . Caution must be used in judging the relative importance of websites yielding well over 1000 search results.

Search engine limitations – technical notes
Many, probably most, of the publicly available web pages in existence are not indexed. Each search engine captures a different percentage of the total. Nobody can tell exactly what portion is captured.

The estimated size of the World Wide Web is at least 11.5 billion pages, but a much deeper (and larger) Web, estimated at over 3 trillion pages, exists within databases whose contents the search engines do not index. These dynamic web pages are formatted by a Web server when a user requests them and as such cannot be indexed by conventional search engines. The United States Patent and Trademark Office website is an example; although a search engine can find its main page, one can only search its database of individual patents by entering queries into the site itself.

Google, like all Internet search engines can only find information that has actually been made available on the Internet. There is still a sizable amount of information that is not on the Internet.

Google, like all major Web search services, follows the robots.txt protocol and can be blocked by sites that do not wish their content to be indexed or cached by Google. Sites that contain large amounts of copyrighted content (Image galleries, subscription newspapers, webcomics, movies, video, help desks), usually involving membership, will block Google and other search engines. Other sites may also block Google due to the stress or bandwidth concerns on the server hosting the content.

Search engines also might not be able to read links or metadata that normally requires a browser plugin, Adobe PDF, or Macromedia Flash, or where a website is displayed as part of an image. Search engines also can not listen to podcasts or other audio streams, or even video mentioning a search term. Similarly, search engines cannot read PDF files consisting of photoscans or look inside compressed (.zip) files.

Forums, membership-only and subscription-only sites (since Googlebot does not sign up for site access) and sites that cycle their content are not cached or indexed by any search engine. With more sites moving to AJAX/Web 2.0 designs, this limitation will become more prevalent as search engines only simulate following the links on a web page. AJAX page setups (like Google Maps) dynamically return data based on real-time manipulation of JavaScript.

Google has also been the victim of redirection exploits that may cause it to return more results for a specific search term than exist actual content pages.

Google and other popular search engines are also a target for search engine "search result enhancement", also known as search engine optimizers, so there may also be many results returned that lead to a page that only serves as an advertisement. Sometimes pages contain hundreds of keywords designed specifically to attract search engine users to that page, but in fact serve an advertisement instead of a page with content related to the keyword.

Hit counts reported by Google are only estimates, which in some cases have been shown to necessarily be off by nearly an order of magnitude, especially for hit counts above a few thousands. For such common words as to yield several thousand Google hits, freely available text corpora such as the British National Corpus (for British English) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (for American English) can provide a more accurate estimate of the relative frequencies of two words.

Example of the limitations
The Economic Crime Summit site is a rather Google- and Internet Archive-unfriendly site. It is very graphics heavy, providing Google with little to nothing to look for and many missing pages in the Internet Archive version. So while you can bring up the 2002 Economic Crime Summit Conference, the overview link that would tell you who presented what does not work. The 2004 Economic Crime Summit Conference archive is even worse as that was in three places and none of the archived links tells you anything about the papers presented.

Via Internet Archive you have proof that some information regarding "Impact of Advances in Computer Technology in Evidence Processing" existed on the Internet. Yet today  A program known to be part of the 2002 Economic Crime Summit Conference and at one time was listed on a website on the Internet currently cannot be found by Google.

Common search engines
The most common search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo but the most useful search engine, which depend on a context, may not be the most common ones.

Specialized search engines
Google Scholar works well for fields that are paper-oriented and have an online presence in all (or nearly all) respected venues. This search engine is a good complement for the commercially available Thompson ISI Web of Knowledge, especially in the areas which are not well covered in the latter, including books, conference papers, non-American journals, the general journals in the field of strategy, management, international business, English language education and educational technology. The analysis of the PageRank algorithm utilised by Google Scholar demonstrated that this search engine, as well as its commercial analogs, provides an adequate information about popularity of some concrete source, although that does not automatically reflect the real scientific contribution of concrete publication.

MedLine, now part of PubMed, is the original broadly based search engine, originating over four decades ago and indexing even earlier papers. Thus, especially in biology and medicine, PubMed "associated articles" is a Google Scholar proxy for older papers with no on-line presence. E.g., The journal Stroke puts papers on-line back through 1970s. For this 1978 paper, Google Scholar lists 100 citing articles, while PubMed lists 89 associated articles

There are a large number of law libraries online, in many countries, including: Library of Congress, Library of Congress (THOMAS), Indiana Supreme Court, FindLaw (US); Kent University Law Library and sources (UK).

See also this list of search engines.

Generalized search engines
Several generalized search engines exist. These adapt your query to many search engines. Web browsers offer a choice of search engines to choose to employ for the search box, and these can be used one at a time to experiment with search results. Meta-search engines use several search engines at once. A web browser plugin can add a search engine or a meta-search engine to your list of choices.

title: Wikipedia:Search engine test


text:
Industrial policy

Industrial policy is government policy to encourage the development and growth of all or part of the economy in pursuit of some public goal. Historically, it has often focused on the manufacturing sector, militarily important sectors, or on fostering an advantage in new technologies. In industrial policy, the government takes measures "aimed at improving the competitiveness and capabilities of domestic firms and promoting structural transformation". A country's infrastructure (including transportation, telecommunications and energy industry) is a major enabler of industrial policy.

Industrial policies are interventionist measures typical of mixed economy countries. Many types of industrial policies contain common elements with other types of interventionist practices such as trade policy. Industrial policy is usually seen as separate from broader macroeconomic policies, such as tightening credit and taxing capital gains. Traditional examples of industrial policy include subsidizing export industries and import-substitution-industrialization (ISI), where trade barriers are temporarily imposed on some key sectors, such as manufacturing. By selectively protecting certain industries, these industries are given time to learn (learning by doing) and upgrade. Once competitive enough, these restrictions are lifted to expose the selected industries to the international market. More contemporary industrial policies include measures such as support for linkages between firms and support for upstream technologies.

Economists have debated the role of industrial policy in fostering industrialization and economic development. They have also debated concerns that industrial policy threatens free trade and international cooperation.

History
The traditional arguments for industrial policies go back as far as the 18th century. Prominent early arguments in favor of selective protection of industries were contained in the 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures of US economist and politician Alexander Hamilton, as well as the work of German economist Friedrich List. List's views on free trade were in explicit contradiction to those of Adam Smith, who, in The Wealth of Nations, said that "the most advantageous method in which a landed nation can raise up artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of its own is to grant the most perfect freedom of trade to the artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of all other nations."

According to NYU historians Prince & Taylor, "The relationship between government and industry in the United States has never been a simple one, and the labels used in categorizing these relationships at different times are often misleading if not false. In the early nineteenth century, for example, it is quite clear that the laissez faire label is an inappropriate one." In the US, an industrial policy was explicitly presented for the first time by the Jimmy Carter administration in August 1980, but it was subsequently dismantled with the election of Ronald Reagan the following year.

Historically, there is a growing consensus that most developed countries, including United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and France, have intervened actively in their domestic economy through industrial policies. These early examples are followed by interventionist ISI strategies pursued in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico or Argentina. More recently, the rapid growth of East Asian economies, or the newly industrialized countries (NICs), has also been associated with active industrial policies that selectively promoted manufacturing and facilitated technology transfer and industrial upgrading. The success of these state-directed industrialization strategies are often attributed to developmental states and strong bureaucracies such as the Japanese MITI. According to Princeton's Atul Kohli, the reason Japanese colonies such as South Korea developed so rapidly and successfully was down to Japan exporting to its colonies the same centralised state development that it had used to develop itself. Precisely speaking, South Korea's development can be explained by the fact that it followed the similar industrial policies that UK, US and Germany implemented, and South Korea adopted Export-Oriented Industrialization (EOI) policy from 1964 based on its own decision contrary to the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) policy touted by international aid organizations and experts at that time. Many of these domestic policy choices, however, are now seen as detrimental to free trade and are hence limited by various international agreements such as WTO TRIMs or TRIPS. Instead, the recent focus for industrial policy has shifted towards the promotion of local business clusters and the integration into global value chains.

During the Reagan administration, an economic development initiative called Project Socrates was initiated to address US decline in ability to compete in world markets. Project Socrates, directed by Michael Sekora, resulted in a computer-based competitive strategy system that was made available to private industry and all other public and private institutions that impact economic growth, competitiveness and trade policy. A key objective of Socrates was to utilize advanced technology to enable US private institutions and public agencies to cooperate in the development and execution of competitive strategies without violating existing laws or compromising the spirit of "free market". President Reagan was satisfied that this objective was fulfilled in the Socrates system. Through the advances of innovation age technology, Socrates would provide "voluntary" but "systematic" coordination of resources across multiple "economic system" institutions including industry clusters, financial service organizations, university research facilities and government economic planning agencies. While the view of one US President and the Socrates team was that technology made it virtually possible for both to exist simultaneously, the industrial policy vs. free market debate continued as later under the George H. W. Bush administration, Socrates was labeled as industrial policy and de-funded.

Following the Financial Crisis of 2007–08, many countries around the world – including the US, UK, Australia, Japan and most countries of the European Union – have adopted industry policies. However contemporary industry policy generally accepts globalization as a given, and focuses less on the decline of older industries, and more on the growth of emergent industries. It often involves the government working collaboratively with industry to respond to challenges and opportunities. China is a prominent case where the central and subnational governments participate in nearly all economic sectors and processes. Even though market mechanisms have gained importance, state guidance through state-directed investment and indicative planning plays a substantial role in the economy. In order to catch-up and even overtake industrialized countries technologically, China's "state activities even extend to efforts to prevent the dominance of foreign investors and technologies in areas considered to be of key significance such as the strategic industries and the new technologies" including robotics and new energy vehicles.

Criticism
Some criticize industrial policy based on the concept of government failure. Industrial policy is seen as harmful as governments lack the required information, capabilities, and incentives to successfully determine whether the benefits of promoting certain sectors above others exceeds the costs and in turn implement the policies. While the East Asian Tigers provided successful examples of heterodox interventions and protectionist industrial policies, industrial policies such as import-substitution-industrialization (ISI) have failed in many other regions such as Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Governments, in making decisions with regard to electoral or personal incentives, can be captured by vested interests, leading to industrial policies supporting local rent-seeking political elites while distorting the efficient allocation of resources by market forces.

Debates on process
Despite criticism, there is a consensus in recent development theory that says state interventions may be necessary when market failures occur. Market failures often exist in the form of externalities and natural monopolies. Some economists argue that public action can boost certain development factors "beyond what market forces on their own would generate." In practice, these interventions are often aimed at regulating networks, public infrastructure, R&D or correcting information asymmetries. Many countries are now seeing a revival of industrial policy.

One question is which kinds of industrial policy are most effective in promoting economic development. For example, economists debate whether developing countries should focus on their comparative advantage by promoting mostly resource- and labor-intensive products and services, or invest in higher-productivity industries, which may only become competitive in the longer term.

Debate also surrounds the issue of whether government failures are more pervasive and severe than market failures. Some argue that the lower the government accountability and capabilities, the higher the risk of political capture of industrial policies, which may be economically more harmful than existing market failures.

Of particular relevance for developing countries are the conditions under which industrial policies may also contribute to poverty reduction, such as a focus on specific industries or the promotion of linkages between larger companies and smaller local enterprises.

title: Industrial policy


text:
Vessel

Vessel(s) or the Vessel may refer to:

Biology

 * Blood vessel, a part of the circulatory system and function to transport blood throughout the body
 * Lymphatic vessel, a thin walled, valved structure that carries lymph
 * Vessel element, a narrow water transporting tube in plant

Containers

 * Bowl (vessel), a common open-top container
 * Drinking vessel, for holding drinkable liquids
 * Pressure vessel, designed to hold fluids at a pressure different from the ambient pressure

Watercraft

 * Watercraft, a water-borne conveyance

Film and television

 * Vessel (film), a 2014 documentary film by Diana Whitten
 * The Vessel (film), a 2016 film starring Martin Sheen
 * The Vessel (web series), a 2012 British comedy web series
 * "The Vessel" (The Outer Limits), a television episode

Performers

 * Vessels (band), a British post-rock and electronic band
 * Vessel (solo artist), British electronic music producer and composer
 * Vessel Drum and Bugle Corps, San Dimas, California
 * The pseudonymous frontman and lead singer of Sleep Token, a British post-metal/indie pop band.

Albums

 * Vessel (Dark Time Sunshine album), 2010
 * Vessel (Frankie Cosmos album), 2018
 * Vessel (Twenty One Pilots album), 2013
 * Vessel (DVD), a video album by Björk, 2003
 * Vessels (Be'lakor album), 2016
 * Vessels (Ivoryline album), 2010
 * Vessels (Starset album), 2017
 * Vessels (Wolf & Cub album), 2006

Songs

 * "Vessel", by Bodyjar from Role Model, 2013
 * "Vessel", by Nine Inch Nails from Year Zero, 2007
 * "Vessel", by Spratleys Japs from Pony, 1999

Other media

 * Vessel (comics), a fictional Marvel Comics villain
 * Vessel (video game), a 2012 video game developed by Strange Loop Games
 * Vessels - characters in the game Hollow Knight
 * Vessel - a music video production company

Other uses

 * Vessel (structure), a public structure in New York City's Hudson Yards
 * Vessel (website), a subscription video service launched by the early team behind Hulu, including Hulu's former CEO Jason Kilar

People with the surname

 * Edy Vessel (born 1940), Italian actress and businesswoman

title: Vessel


text:
Al Hirschfeld

Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.

Personal life
Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex apartment at 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved with his family to New York City in 1915, where he received art training at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design.

He married chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby in 1927; the couple separated in 1932 and divorced in 1943. That same year he married actress Dolly Haas. Haas died in 1994, aged 84. They had one child, a daughter, Nina (b. 1945).

In 1996, he married Louise Kerz, a theatre historian (b. 1936).

Career
In 1924, Hirschfeld traveled to Paris and London, where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. When he returned to the United States, a friend, fabled Broadway press agent Richard Maney, showed one of Hirschfeld's drawings to an editor at the New York Herald Tribune, which got Hirschfeld commissions for that newspaper before he moved to The New York Times.

Hirschfeld's style was unique, and he was considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary drawing and caricature, having influenced countless artists, illustrators, and cartoonists. His caricatures were regularly drawings of pure line in black ink, for which he used a genuine crow quill.

Readers of The New York Times and other newspapers prior to the time they printed in color will be most familiar with the Hirschfeld drawings that are black ink on white illustration board. However, there is a whole body of Hirschfeld's work in color. Hirschfeld's full-color paintings were commissioned by many magazines, often as the cover. Examples are TV Guide, Life Magazine, American Mercury, Look Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Masses, and Seventeen Magazine. He also illustrated many books in color, most notably among them Harlem As Seen By Hirschfeld, with text by William Saroyan.

He was commissioned by CBS to illustrate a preview magazine featuring the network's new TV programming in fall 1963. One of the programs was Candid Camera, and Hirschfeld's caricature of the show's host Allen Funt outraged Funt so much he threatened to leave the network if the magazine were issued. Hirschfeld prepared a slightly different likeness, perhaps more flattering, but he and the network pointed out to Funt that the artwork prepared for newspapers and some other print media had been long in preparation and it was too late to withdraw it. Funt relented but insisted that what could be changed would have to be. Newsweek ran a squib on the controversy.

Broadway, film, and more
Hirschfeld started young and continued drawing to the end of his life, thus chronicling nearly all of the major entertainment figures of the 20th century. During his eight-decade career, he gained fame by illustrating the actors, singers, and dancers of various Broadway plays, which would appear in advance in The New York Times to herald the play's opening. Though the theater was his best-known field of interest, according to Hirschfeld's art dealer Margo Feiden, he actually drew more for the movies than he did for live plays. "By the ripe old age of 17, while his contemporaries were learning how to sharpen pencils, Hirschfeld became an art director at Selznick Pictures. He held the position for about four years, and then in 1924 Hirschfeld moved to Paris to work and lead the Bohemian life. Hirschfeld also grew a beard, necessitated by the exigencies of living in a cold water flat. This he retained for the next 75 years, presumably because "you never know when your oil burner will go on the fritz."

In addition to Broadway and film, Hirschfeld also drew politicians, TV stars, and celebrities of all stripes from Cole Porter and the Nicholas Brothers to the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also caricatured jazz musicians——Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald—and rockers The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and Mick Jagger. In 1977, he drew the cover of Aerosmith's Draw the Line album.

Hirschfeld drew many original movie posters, including for Charlie Chaplin's films, as well as The Wizard of Oz (1939). The "Rhapsody in Blue" segment in the Disney film Fantasia 2000 was inspired by his designs, and Hirschfeld became an artistic consultant for the segment; the segment's director, Eric Goldberg, is a longtime fan of his work. Further evidence of Goldberg's admiration for Hirschfeld can be found in Goldberg's character design and animation of the genie in Aladdin (1992). He was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary film The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996).

Nina
In 1943, Hirschfeld married German actress Dolly Haas. They were married for more than 50 years and had a daughter, Nina. Hirschfeld is known for hiding Nina's name, written in capital letters ("NINA"), in most of the drawings he produced after her birth. The name would appear in a sleeve, in a hairdo, or somewhere in the background. As Margo Feiden described it, Hirschfeld engaged in the “harmless insanity,” as he called it, of hiding her name at least once in each of his drawings. The number of NINAs concealed is shown by the number written to the right of his signature. Generally, if no number is to be found, either NINA appears once or the drawing was completed before she was born.

For the first few months after Nina's birth, Hirschfeld intended the hidden NINAs to appeal to his circle of friends. But what he hadn't realized was that the population at large was beginning to spot them, too. When Hirschfeld thought that the gag was wearing thin among his friends and stopped concealing NINAs in his drawings, letters to The New York Times ranging from "curious" to "furious" pressured him to begin hiding them again. He said it was easier to hide the NINAs than it was to answer all the mail. From time to time he lamented that the gimmick had overshadowed his art.

In Hirschfeld's book Show Business is No Business, Feiden recounts the following story to illustrate what Hirschfeld meant when he referred to the NINA counting as a harmless insanity: "The NINA-counting mania was well illuminated when in 1973 an NYU student kept coming back to my Gallery to stare at the same drawing each day for more than a week. The drawing was Hirschfeld's whimsical portrayal of New York's Central Park. When curiosity finally got the best of me, I asked,  'What is so riveting about that one drawing that keeps you here for hours, day after day?' She answered that she had found only 11 of 39 NINAs and would not give up until all were located. I replied that the '39' next to Hirschfeld's signature was the year. Nina was born in 1945."

In his 1966 anthology The World of Hirschfeld, he included a drawing of Nina that he titled "Nina's Revenge". That drawing contained no NINAs. There were, however, two ALs and two DOLLYs ("the names of her wayward parents").

In the Fantasia 2000 segment, the crimp of Duke the Builder's toothpaste tube contained a NINA in tribute to Hirschfeld.

Publications
Al Hirschfeld famously contributed to The New York Times for more than seven decades. His work also appeared in The New York Herald Tribune, The Old World, The New Yorker Magazine, Collier's, The American Mercury, TV Guide, Playbill, New York magazine, and Rolling Stone.

In 1941, Hyperion Books published Harlem As Seen By Hirschfeld, with text by William Saroyan.

Hirschfeld's illustrations for the theater were gathered and published yearly in the books, The Best Plays of ... (for example, The Best Plays of 1958-1959).

Additional collections of Hirschfeld's illustrations include: Manhattan Oasis, Show Business Is No Business (1951), American Theater, The American Theater as Seen by Al Hirschfeld, The World of Al Hirschfeld (1970), The Lively Years, 1920-1973 with text by Brooks Atkinson (1973), The Entertainers (1977), Hirschfeld by Hirschfeld (1979), Hirschfeld’s World (1981), Show Business is No Business with preface and endnotes by Margo Feiden (1983), A Selection of Limited Edition Etchings and Lithographs with text by Margo Feiden (1983), Art and Recollections From Eight Decades (1991), Hirschfeld On Line (2000), Hirschfeld’s Hollywood (2001), Hirschfeld’s New York (2001), Hirschfeld’s Speakeasies of 1932 with Introduction by Pete Hamill (2003), and Hirschfeld’s British Isles (2005).

Hirschfeld collaborated with humorist S. J. Perelman on several publications, including ''Westward Ha! Or, Around the World in 80 Clichés, a satirical look at the duo's travels on assignment for Holiday'' magazine. In 1987, the United States Postal Service commissioned him to draw a series of postage stamps commemorating famous American comedians. The 1991 collection included drawings of Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy), Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Bud Abbott, and Lou Costello. He followed that with a collection of silent film stars including Rudolph Valentino, ZaSu Pitts and Buster Keaton. The Postal Service allowed him to include Nina's name in his drawings, waiving its own rule forbidding hidden messages in United States stamp designs.

Hirschfeld expanded his audience by contributing to Patrick F. McManus' humor column in Outdoor Life magazine for a number of years.

Collections and tributes
Permanent collections of Hirschfeld's work can be found at a variety of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Public Library in New York, Harvard University in Cambridge, and the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

Hirschfeld was the recipient of two lifetime achievement Tony Awards. On June 21, 2003, the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway was renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Hirschfeld was also honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

In 2002, Al Hirschfeld was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He was an Honorary Member of the Salmagundi Club.

Death
On January 20, 2003, Hirschfeld died of natural causes in his home at 122 East 95th Street in Manhattan. He was survived by his daughter Nina Hirschfeld West, and his third wife, Louise Kerz.

title: Al Hirschfeld