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Al Hirt

Alois Maxwell "Al" Hirt (November 7, 1922 – April 27, 1999) was an American trumpeter and bandleader. He is best remembered for his million-selling recordings of "Java" and the accompanying album Honey in the Horn (1963), and for the theme music to The Green Hornet. His nicknames included "Jumbo" and "The Round Mound of Sound". Colin Escott, an author of musician biographies, wrote that RCA Victor, for which Hirt had recorded most of his best-selling recordings and for which he had spent most of his professional recording career, had dubbed him with another moniker: "The King." Hirt was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in November 2009. He received eight Grammy nominations during his lifetime, including winning the Grammy award in 1964 for his version of "Java".

Biography
Hirt was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of a police officer. At the age of six, he was given his first trumpet, which had been purchased at a local pawnshop. He played in the Junior Police Band with friend Roy Fernandez, the son of Alcide Nunez; by the age of 16, Hirt was playing professionally, often with his friend Pete Fountain, while attending Jesuit High School. During this time, he was hired to play at the local horse racing track, beginning a six-decade connection to the sport.

In 1940, Hirt went to Cincinnati, Ohio, to study at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with Dr. Frank Simon (a former soloist with the John Philip Sousa Orchestra). After a stint as a bugler in the United States Army during World War II, Hirt performed with various swing big bands, including those of Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Ina Ray Hutton.

In 1950, Hirt became first trumpet and featured soloist with Horace Heidt's Orchestra. After spending several years on the road with Heidt, Hirt returned to New Orleans working with various Dixieland groups and leading his own bands. Despite Hirt's statement years later "I'm not a jazz trumpeter and never was a jazz trumpeter", he made a few recordings where he demonstrated his ability to play in that style, during the 1950s with bandleader Monk Hazel, and a few other recordings on the local Southland Records label.

Hirt's virtuoso dexterity and fine tone on his instrument soon attracted the attention of major record labels and he signed with RCA Victor. Hirt posted twenty-two albums on the Billboard charts in the 1950s and 1960s. The albums Honey in the Horn and Cotton Candy (album) were both in the Top 10 best sellers for 1964, the same year Hirt scored a hit single with his cover of Allen Toussaint's tune "Java" (Billboard No. 4), and later won a Grammy Award for the same recording. Both Honey in the Horn and "Java" sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs.

Hirt's Top 40 charted hit "Sugar Lips" in 1964 would be later used as the theme song for the NBC daytime game show Eye Guess, hosted by Bill Cullen and originally airing from January 1966 to September 1969. Hirt was chosen to record the frenetic theme for the 1960s TV show The Green Hornet, by famed arranger and composer Billy May. Based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee from his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, it showcased Hirt's technical prowess. In 2003, the recording again gained public attention when it was featured in the film Kill Bill.

From the mid-1950s to early 1960s, Hirt and his band played nightly at Dan's Pier 600 at the corner of St. Louis and Bourbon Street. The club was owned by his business manager, Dan Levy, Sr.

Hirt opened his own club on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, which he owned from 1962 to 1983. He also became a minority owner in the NFL expansion New Orleans Saints in 1967.

In 1962, in an effort to showcase him in a different musical setting, Hirt was teamed with arranger and composer Billy May and RCA Victor producer Steve Sholes to record an album titled Horn A Plenty that was a departure from the Dixieland material that he was generally associated with. Covering an eclectic variety of popular, standard and show tunes, it featured a big-band supplemented by timpani, French horns and harp. He also appeared opposite Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette in the 1962 motion picture, Rome Adventure.

In 1965, Hirt hosted the hour-long television variety series Fanfare, which aired Saturday nights on CBS as the summer replacement for Jackie Gleason and the American Scene Magazine.

Hirt starred along with marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State University at the first Super Bowl halftime show in 1967.

On February 8, 1970, while performing in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, Hirt was injured while riding on a float. It was widely reported that he was struck in the mouth by a thrown brick or a piece of concrete and required 12 stitches to the underside of his upper lip. Factual documentation of the details of the incident is sparse, consisting primarily of claims made by Hirt after the incident although police reported that the 1970 Mardi Gras was one of the worst for trouble, with hundreds arrested for drunkenness and violence. Whatever the actual cause of his injuries, Hirt underwent surgery and made a return to the club scene. This incident was parodied in a Saturday Night Live skit from their second season Mardi Gras special, the "Let's Hit Al Hirt in the Mouth with a Brick Contest".

In 1987, Hirt played a solo rendition of "Ave Maria" for Pope John Paul II's visit to New Orleans. He is referred to in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam, in a broadcast made by Lieutenant Hauk (Bruno Kirby).

Hirt died of liver failure at the age of 76, after having spent the previous year in a wheelchair due to edema in his leg. He was survived by his wife, Beverly Essel Hirt, and eight children from a previous marriage.

title: Al Hirt


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Talk:William Boyce (composer)

Untitled
I haven't yet found more than two sources that agree on Boyce's birth and death dates. There's a very wide range of dates given out there. For the moment, I've put in what allclassical.com says, because it's at least a modern source, and (generally) reliable. I'll check in Grove and see what that says next time I get a chance. --Camembert

There is no known source containing Boyce's birth date. Burney misleading writes that Boyce was 69 at the time of his death, however parochial registers show he was baptised on 11th September 1711, considering all his siblings were baptised within 4-10 days of their birth, modern scholars assume the same applies to Boyce. The last edition of Grove I checked has his birth year as 1710, date unknown so I would check their sources before citing their entry. 92.23.45.35 (talk) 16:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

 * The inscription on his grave in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral also refers to his having died at age 69, but that's usually disregarded. --  JackofOz (talk) 09:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Given all the conflicting information, and the lack of definite proof, it behoves us to not simply pick what we think is the likely date and assert it without qualification, as if it were universally accepted as factual, but to have a note explaining the different sources and saying why we've chosen the one we have. --  JackofOz (talk) 09:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Also, given that he was born when England was using the Julian calendar but died after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar (1752), we need to make some statement about whether 11 September 1711 is a Julian date or a Gregorian date. --  JackofOz (talk) 09:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Classical composer?
Although Boyce's productive life fits pretty squarely in the early Classical era, wasn't his output stylistically Baroque? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.109.82.96 (talk) 22:32, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes and no. Stylistically he was conservative for the period in which he lived. As the article states, his chamber-music output includes trio sonatas, which is a form associated with the Baroque. However, he also composed a set of eight symphonies, a form more characteristic of the Classical period. The Category of "Classical-era composers" assigned to this article, which I suppose is what prompted your question, is apt since (as you yourself point out) he lived in the period referred to. I would say that, from a stylistic point of view, Boyce would be plausibly described as a "transitional" composer.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:47, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

"However, he also composed a set of eight symphonies, a form more characteristic of the Classical period." The symphonies are definitely in the baroque style. ---Dagme (talk) 01:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Dr. Boyce?
I seem to remember reading that Boyce was also a medical doctor. Or is it simply old age toying with my memory? Any info on this? Opus131 (talk) 02:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Guess not. I am inordinately fond of Boyce's symphonies: What a totally jolly and good-natured musical personality! Opus131 (talk) 06:59, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed! ---Dagme (talk) 01:58, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

 * His doctor was in music. Here is an explanation from the "Memoirs of Dr. William Boyce" written by the music historian John Hawkins (1719-1789):

 * ... Upon this occasion an Ode, written by Mr. Mason, was given to Mr. Boyce to set to music; and the same, and also an anthem suited to the solemnity, was publicly performed in the church of St. Mary on the first day of July in the above year, being Commencement-Sunday.
 * This performance seems to have answered two purposes, viz. the celebration of the Duke’s installation, and that of an exercise for a degree in music, which as an academical honour, Mr. Boyce was desirous of: he obtained it without any solicitation, and was, permitted by the university to accumulate the degrees of bachelor and doctor in his faculty.
 * From this point onwards, the memoirs refer to him as "Dr. Boyce". --User:Haraldmmueller 11:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:William Boyce (composer)


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The Mind's I

The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul is a 1981 collection of essays and other texts about the nature of the mind and the self, edited with commentary by philosophers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The texts range from early philosophical and fictional musings on a subject that could seemingly only be examined in the realm of thought, to works from the twentieth century where the nature of the self became a viable topic for scientific study.

Summary
The book's chapters are each made up of a previously published work by authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alan Turing, Richard Dawkins, Raymond Smullyan, John Searle, Stanisław Lem, Thomas Nagel (as well as Hofstadter and Dennett themselves), each followed up by a commentary by Hofstadter and/or Dennett. Dennett and Hofstadter both support the idea that we can learn much about human minds and souls by exploring human mentality in terms of information processing. Dennett and Hofstadter are both proponents of the idea that the wonders of human mentality can be accounted for by mechanical brain processes—which leaves nothing theoretical to prevent us from building human-like mental processes into our mechanical devices. A few views that run counter to this notion, such as John Searle's widely known presentation of the Chinese room argument, are included in this book mainly as targets for refutation.

The book is divided into six sections, each focusing on a particular aspect of the problem of self.

Part I
Part I, "A Sense of Self", begins with two works of fiction that challenge the notions of self and identity (including the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges's "Borges and I"), provoking the reader to think more closely about just what is meant by "self". It closes with an essay by Harold J. Morowitz on the reductionist view of the mind.

Part II
Part II, entitled "Soul Searching", takes on the idea of soul—that spark which separates thinking beings from unthinking machines. Included here is Alan Turing's famous article from 1950, in which he proposes an operational test—popularly known as the "Turing test"—for machine intelligence, judged successful if a machine can use human language well enough to pass as human. This goal was distant at the time. A dialogue of Hofstadter's own picks up the idea of the Turing test and spins a thought-provoking scenario from it.

Two chapters excerpted from The Soul of Anna Klane, a novel by Terrel Miedaner, end the section. Hofstadter interprets them in accordance with his own atheistic beliefs, without acknowledgment of Miedaner's opposite intent, which used them to support alternative ideas about the nature of mind and soul.

Part III
The formation of mind from elements individually incapable of thought is the central theme of Part III, "From Hardware to Software". The evolution of the mind toward its current state is addressed in the first two reprinted works. Following that is a reprint of "Prelude... Ant Fugue" from Hofstadter's Pulitzer-winning book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, in which he builds up the metaphor of the mind as anthill: each individual part with only rudimentary function, coming together to be more than the sum of its parts.

Part IV
Part IV explores its titular issue, "Mind as Program". What is the self: the mind, or the body? Can they be separated? Can the location of the consciousness be separate from one's physical location. In that case, where are you, really? Dennett's fantastical account of being separated from his brain and David Sanford's response tackle these issues. In this section the mind is considered as software: as patterns of thought and action, as separate from the physical body housing it as a piece of software is from the machine it runs on.

Part V
Part V, "Created Selves and Free Will", includes John Searle's notorious "Minds, Brains, and Programs" (originally an article published in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1980), which states: "...mental processes are computational processes over formally defined elements." Searle has objections to the idea that computer programs might ever produce mind, but the idea that mentality involves computation can be traced through the history of Western philosophy where it has long been explored in the context of trying to explain human reason in terms of formal logical systems. A dramatic and famous rejection of the formal systems idea was that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher whom Dennett respects. After first embracing the idea of reducing everything to logical atoms (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), Wittgenstein later rejected the idea that human language games should be formulated as formal systems (Philosophical Investigations). However, many philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers remain captivated by the formal systems approach. For example, Dennett has tried to help the MIT Cog project develop formal computer programming methods towards the goal of producing human-like intelligence. In his book "Contemporary Philosophy of Mind", Georges Rey provides an example of continuing attempts to express human intelligence in machines through computational processes over formally defined elements. An alternative but minority approach has grown out of the work of people like Gerald Edelman and his student Olaf Sporns through which it is suggested that machine intelligence can most efficiently be achieved by creating autonomous robotic systems that can learn the way human children learn through interacting with their environment.

Part VI
The book closes with "The Inner Eye", a collection of short pieces on the subjective nature of experience. How can one describe what it is like to be a particular entity, without actually being it yourself? Thomas Nagel, Raymond Smullyan, Douglas Hofstadter, and Robert Nozick tackle the problem of translating the experiences of one being into terms another can understand. But can we ever know what it is like to be another self? For that matter, what can we know about what it is like to be ourselves? Hofstadter and Dennett's commentary suggest that self-knowledge is elusive, to say nothing of the experience of other minds.

Reception
Historian of psychology Jeremy Burman, while calling The Mind's I "a wonderful book", described it as popularizing a non-metaphorical reading of Richard Dawkins' proposals regarding memes, leading to widespread misunderstanding (in the form of memetics) and the reification of the original idea-as-replicator metaphor.

Neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey, writing in The London Review of Books gave The Mind's I a mixed review, stating "People who like this kind of thing will undoubtedly find this book the kind of thing they like. Counting myself among them, I would reckon The Mind's I cheap at twice the price." However, he criticized the emphasis the book places on paradoxes, stating "Paradoxes are fun; they can be illuminating. But we should be wary of the temptation to celebrate paradoxes as a royal road to some higher level of reality."

Professor of philosophy William Barrett, writing in The New York Times gave The Mind's I a mixed review. He stated that the book represented a "welcome sign of change" from the prevailing attitudes in philosophy which emphasized the objective over the subjective but stated that "for all its stimulation, I found the book rather confusing, and even confused, in its effect", criticizing Hofstadter's contributions in particular. Dennett later wrote a letter to the New York Times defending Hofstadter and calling Barrett's stance "preposterous".

title: The Mind's I


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James K. Baxter

James Keir Baxter (29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972) was a New Zealand poet and playwright. He was also known as an activist for the preservation of Māori culture. He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and controversial literary figures. He was a prolific writer who produced numerous poems, plays and articles in his short life, and was regarded as the preeminent writer of his generation. He suffered from alcoholism until the late 1950s. He converted to Catholicism and established a controversial commune at Jerusalem, New Zealand, in 1969. He was married to writer Jacquie Sturm.

Early life
Baxter was born in Dunedin as the second son to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton, 20 km south of Dunedin city. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party.

Baxter's father had been a conscientious objector during World War I, and both his parents were active pacifists and socialists. His mother had studied Latin, French and German at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, the University of Sydney and Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Baxter and his brother were not baptised, although their mother read to them sometimes from the Bible. On his first day of school at Brighton Primary School (now Big Rock Primary School), Baxter burned his hand on a stove and later used this incident to represent the failure of institutional education.

In 1936, when Baxter was ten, the family moved to Wanganui where he and his brother attended St Johns Hill School, and the following year they moved to England and attended Sibford School in the Cotswolds. Both schools were Quaker schools and boarding schools. In 1938 the family returned to New Zealand. Baxter said of his early life that he felt a gap between himself and other people, "increased considerably by the fact that I was born in New Zealand, and grew up there till I was nine, and then attended an English boarding school for a couple of years, and came back to New Zealand at thirteen, in the first flush of puberty, quite out of touch with my childhood companions and uncertain whether I was an Englishman or a New Zealander".

Baxter began writing poetry at the age of seven, and he accumulated a large body of technically accomplished work both before and during his teenage years.

In 1940, Baxter began attending King's High School, Dunedin, where he was bullied, because of his differences to other students (in personality, voice and background), his lack of interest in team sports and his family's pacifism. His older brother, Terence, was a conscientious objector like their father and was detained in military camps between 1941 and 1945 for his refusal to fight in World War II. Between 1942 and 1946, Baxter drafted around 600 poems, saying later in life that his experiences as a teenager were painful but "created a gap in which the poems were able to grow".

In 1943, Baxter's final year of high school, he wrote to a friend that he was considering becoming a lawyer, but was "not decided on it": "If I should find it possible to live by writing I would gladly do so. Yet many men have thought they could, and found it an illusion."

Early literary career
In March 1944, at age seventeen, Baxter enrolled at the University of Otago. That same year, he published his first collection of poetry, Beyond the Palisade, to much critical acclaim. Allen Curnow selected six poems from the collection for 1945 collection A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–1945, and described Baxter's poems as "a new occurrence in New Zealand: strong in impulse and confident in invention, with qualities of youth in verse which we have lacked". In this year, Baxter also won the Macmillan Brown Prize for his poem "Convoys". The prize was coincidentally named after his Scottish maternal grandfather, John Macmillan Brown.

Baxter's work during this time was, as with his contemporary compatriots, most notably the experimental novelist Janet Frame, largely influenced by the modernist works of Dylan Thomas. He was a member of the so-called "Wellington Group" of writers that also included Louis Johnson, W.H. Oliver and Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. Baxter typically wrote short lyrical poems or cycles of the same rather than longer poems.

After his eighteenth birthday on 29 June 1944, like his father and brother, Baxter registered as a conscientious objector, citing "religious and humanitarian" grounds. The authorities did not pursue him however due to the late stage of the war.

Baxter failed to complete his course work at the University of Otago due to increasing alcoholism, and was forced to take a range of odd jobs from 1945–7. He fictionalised these experiences in his only novel Horse, published posthumously in 1985. It was during this time that he had his first significant relationship, with a young medical student, but the relationship ended due to his alcoholism. He wrote the collection of poems Cold Spring about this early failed relationship, but it was not published until after his death in 1996. In 1947 he met Jacquie Sturm, a young Māori student, who would later become his wife.

In late 1947, Baxter moved to Christchurch where he continued working odd jobs. Although he did not enrol at the University of Canterbury he became the literary editor of its student magazine, Canta, and attended some lectures. His behaviour could be erratic due to his alcoholism. His second collection, Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness was published in 1948, and its themes included the New Zealand landscape and solitude. Curnow, in a review, described Baxter as "the most original of New Zealand poets now living".

Marriage and later career
In 1948 Baxter married Jacquie Sturm at St John's Cathedral, Napier, and his developing interest in Christianity culminated in his joining the Anglican church and being baptised during that same year. They moved to Wellington and in February 1951 Baxter enrolled at Wellington Teachers' College. In 1952 Baxter's poems were published in a collaborative volume, Poems Unpleasant, alongside poems from Louis Johnson and Anton Vogt. He completed his teaching course in December 1952, and subsequently published his third major collection of poems, The Fallen House. In 1954 he was appointed assistant master at Epuni School, Lower Hutt, and it was here that he wrote a series of children's poems published later as The Tree House, and Other Poems for Children (1974).

Baxter and his wife had a daughter, Hilary, in 1949, and a son, John, in 1952.

In late 1954, Baxter joined Alcoholics Anonymous, successfully achieving sobriety, and in 1955, he finally graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University College. He had also received a substantial inheritance from a great-aunt in 1955 and was able to purchase a house for the family in Ngaio, Wellington. He left Epuni School early in 1956 to write and edit primary school bulletins for the Department of Education's School Publications Branch. This period is likely to have influenced his later writing which criticised bureaucracy.

In 1957 Baxter took a course in Roman Catholicism and his collection of poems In Fires of No Return, published in 1958 by Oxford University Press, was influenced by his new faith. This was his first work to be published internationally, though it was not critically well-received. Baxter's wife, a committed Anglican, was dismayed by his conversion to Catholicism, and it was partly because of his conversion that they separated in 1957. Baxter admitted however in a letter to a friend that his conversion was "just one more event in a series of injuries, alcoholism, and gross mistakes". Through the late 50s and 60s Baxter visited the Southern Star Abbey, a Cistercian monastery at Kopua near Central Hawke's Bay. He was baptised into the Catholic church in 1958.

Later in 1958, Baxter received a UNESCO stipend to study educational publishing and began an extended journey through Asia, and especially India, where Rabindranath Tagore's university Shantiniketan was one of the inspirations for Baxter's later community at Jerusalem, New Zealand. In India he was reconciled with his wife and contracted dysentery. His writing after returning from India was more overtly critical of New Zealand society, evident in the collection Howrah Bridge and Other Poems (1961). He was particularly concerned about the displacement of Māori within the country.

In the late 1950s and 1960s Baxter became a powerful and prolific writer of both poems and drama, and it was through his 1958 radio play Jack Winter's Dream that he became internationally known. The play was produced by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service for radio, and in 1978 was adapted for the screen by New Zealand filmmaker David Sims.

The first half of the 1960s also saw, however, Baxter struggling to make ends meet on a postman's wage, having resigned from the Department of Education in 1963 and refused to take work as a schoolmaster. He also controversially criticised The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, an anthology published by his former champion Allen Curnow, for under-representing younger New Zealand poets. However, in 1966 Baxter's critically acclaimed collection of poems Pig Island Letters was published in which his writing found a new level of clarity. In 1966, Baxter took up the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, which eased the money worries for a time. He held the fellowship for two years during which time he participated in protests against the Vietnam War. During the fellowship he also had a number of his plays staged at the Globe Theatre by Dunedin director Patric Carey.

Jerusalem
In 1968 Baxter claimed in a letter to his friend John Weir that he had been instructed in a dream to "Go to Jerusalem". Jerusalem, New Zealand was a small Māori settlement (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruhārama) on the Wanganui River. He left his university position and a job composing catechetical material for the Catholic Education Board, with nothing but a bible. This was the culmination of a short period in which he struggled with family life and his vocation as a poet.

While planning his move to Jerusalem, in early 1969, Baxter spent some time in Grafton, Auckland where he set up a drop-in centre for drug addicts, acting on the same principles as Alcoholics Anonymous. Around this time, Baxter worked for three weeks as a cleaner at Chelsea Sugar Refinery, which inspired the poem Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works. He had been referred to the job by poet Hone Tuwhare. He also adopted the Māori version of his name, Hemi.

Around July or August 1969, Baxter travelled to Jerusalem, which according to John Weir was at that time "a tiny Māori settlement – it had a marae, a resident priest, a church, a convent, resident nuns and some abandoned dwellings." Baxter stayed in a cottage owned by the Sisters of Compassion, and obtained permission for a long stay from the mother general of the sisters. He proceeded to form a commune structured around "spiritual aspects of Māori communal life". It was a place where he felt he could embody both his Catholic faith and his interest in Māori culture. He lived a sparse and isolated existence and made frequent trips to the nearby cities where he worked with the poor and spoke out against what he perceived as a social order that sanctions poverty. His poems of this time, published in his final collections Jerusalem Sonnets (1970) and Autumn Testament (1972), have a conversational style but speak strongly of his social and political convictions.

The commune's popularity grew, in part due to an article in the Sunday Times newspaper in June 1970, and by mid-1970 around 25 people were living in the community. The population increased to 40 permanent residents by May 1971, mostly aged between 16 and 25, living in three abandoned houses, and the number of visitors was estimated by Baxter at about a thousand over the year. The five goals Baxter devised for the commune were: "To share one's goods; To speak the truth, not hiding one's heart from others; To love one another and show it by the embrace; To take no job where one has to lick the boss's arse; To learn from the Maori side of the fence". He was, however, reluctant to impose any kind of rules or work roster.

The increased numbers of residents and visitors, and the lack of order and regulation, led to growing concern from the Sisters of Compassion and Wanganui District Council, and opposition from local residents, particularly the local Māori iwi, Ngāti Hau. Baxter himself was often absent from the commune participating in protests or other social work. In September 1971, the commune was disbanded under pressure from the Council and local farmers. Baxter returned to live in Wellington, but in February 1972 was permitted to return to Jerusalem provided that only 10 people would be allowed to live on the land at any one time.

Final years and death
The harsh deprivations Baxter adopted at this time took their toll on his health. By 1972 he was too ill to continue living at Jerusalem and moved to another commune near Auckland. On 16 October Baxter visited his long-time friend the artist Michael Illingworth and wrote his last poem on the Illingworth’s dining room table before leaving on the 19th. Three days later on 22 October 1972 Baxter suffered a coronary thrombosis in the street and died in a nearby house, aged 46. He was buried at Jerusalem on Māori land in front of "the Top House" where he had lived, in a ceremony combining Māori and Catholic traditions. A river boulder on the burial site was inscribed with his Māori name Hemi.

Sturm was Baxter's literary executor after his death. She collected and catalogued his prolific writing, arranged new and revised publications of his work, and negotiated the use and adaptation of his works. She set up the James K. Baxter Charitable Trust, which supported causes he had supported, for example prison reform and drug addiction rehabilitation programmes, and ensured that all proceeds of his work went to the trust.

Evidence and allegations of sexual assault
In January 2019, the Victoria University Press published a collection of Baxter's personal letters as James K Baxter: Letters of a Poet. The collection was edited by his friend, John Weir. One letter in the collection revealed that Baxter confided to a friend that he raped his wife, Jacquie Sturm, after she expressed low interest in sex. New Zealanders reacted with dismay to the revelations, describing them as "awful", "terrible" and "shocking". In The Spinoff John Newton wrote that it is no longer possible to talk about Baxter without addressing how Baxter thinks and writes about women.

Paul Millar, a Baxter scholar and personal friend of Sturm, who had been appointed as her literary executor after her death, cautioned against reading the letter as turning Sturm into a victim: "Leaving apart how appalling this letter is – a betrayal on so many levels from the brutal act described, the lack of shame in the description, and the profound betrayal of trust – its publicity is once again putting Jacquie in a subordinate position to Baxter, a bit player in his narrative. ... Jacquie deserves much more than to be remembered as Baxter’s victim ... despite everything she endured, she emerged victorious. If people really want to know Jacquie they should seek our her writing, not Baxter's." Mark Williams, emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University, said the admission was consistent with what he knew of Baxter: "He observed his own adulteries objectively as part of the fallen human condition. This even extended to marital rape. I’m not sure if he was simply a phoney, as some have observed. He was genuinely religious. The problem is that his religious faith allowed him to regard his sexual failings—small and great—at a quizzical remove."

Baxter and Sturm's great-grandson, Jack McDonald, wrote that the account was "sickening" and that he believed his great-grandmother "would never have wanted these brutal details made public". He also noted that she never received sufficient credit for connecting Baxter to the Māori world: "The reality is that Nana had introduced Baxter to everything he knew about Māoritanga".

An allegation of attempted rape followed when, in April 2019, the New Zealand news outlet Stuff published an account by Rosalind Lewis (Ros), who had been at the Jerusalem commune in 1970 when she was aged 18 years. Ros described an "attempted rape", which would have succeeded were it not for Baxter's erectile dysfunction. She mentioned a friend of hers, "Angela", who had told Ros that she was permitted to watch him flagellate himself (a variety of religious penance), and that she, Angela, knew of two other women who she claims were sexually abused. No charges were pressed at the time by the women. Lewis said: "This truth needs to sit alongside Baxter's literary achievements. It must be fully acknowledged and never glossed over. This is for the sake of women such as myself and for those who may not be able to find a voice as I have. As ever, in celebrating the genius of Baxter the artist, we cannot overlook the evils of Baxter the human being."

Critical reception and legacy
Criticism of Baxter's poetry has generally focussed on his incorporation of European myths into his New Zealand poems, his interest in Māori culture and language, and the significance of his religious experiences and conversion to Roman Catholicism. New Zealand poet laureate Vincent O'Sullivan wrote in 1976 that Baxter is an inherently New Zealand poet: "that is the proportion of Baxter's achievement – the most complete delineation yet of a New Zealand mind. The poetic record of its shaping is as original an act as anything we have." A common theme in Baxter's extensive body of writing was strong criticism of New Zealand society. His biographer Paul Millar said: "If, at times, Baxter appears to evaluate New Zealand society harshly, his judgements are always from the perspective of one intimately involved in the social process."

Baxter's use of te reo Māori has inspired both praise and criticism. W.H. Oliver described it as "often a cosmetic device, or worse, an earnest affectation". By contrast, John Newton noted that at least some Māori welcomed Baxter's engagement with their language and culture, and John Weir regards his use as "a genuine attempt at using a bicultural language in this country when no other Pākehā was doing so".

In his critical study Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt claimed that Baxter was "one of the most precocious poets of the century" whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. In Schmidt's view, Baxter's writing was affected by his alcoholism. Schmidt also commented on Baxter's influences, noting that his work drew upon Dylan Thomas and W. B. Yeats; then on Louis MacNeice and Robert Lowell. Michael Schmidt identified "an amalgam of Hopkins, Thomas and native atavisms" in Baxter's Prelude N.Z..

The critic Martin Seymour-Smith ranked Baxter above Robert Lowell ("Baxter knew all about narcissism and vanity, and is a much superior poet"), and defended Baxter's high reputation on the grounds of his spiritual and intellectual seeking: "Baxter's energy and sheer intelligence, his refusal to give way to mean cerebral impulses or to give up his terrible struggle with himself, are sufficient to justify his high position in New Zealand poetry". On the other hand, Smith said that Baxter "remained, disappointingly, over-intoxicated with his own energy, and never convincingly manifested qualities of restraint to balance it."

A number of Baxter's poems were written in the ballad form, and Baxter has been described by critics as "New Zealand's principal lyricist". A number of Baxter's works have since been translated into music by New Zealand musicians. In 2000, a collection of songs written to Baxter's poems was released, titled Baxter, and featuring some of New Zealand's most well-known musicians: for example Dave Dobbyn, Martin Phillipps, Emma Paki, Greg Johnson, David Downes and Mahinārangi Tocker. It was devised by New Zealand singer-songwriter Charlotte Yates.

Selected works

 * Beyond the Palisade, 1944
 * Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness, 1948
 * Hart Crane; a poem, 1948
 * Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry, 1951
 * Poems Unpleasant, 1952 (with Louis Johnson and Anton Vogt)
 * Rapunzel: a Fantasia for Six Voices, 1953
 * The Fallen House, 1953
 * The Fire and the Anvil, 1955
 * Traveller’s Litany, 1956
 * The Iron Breadboard: Studies in New Zealand Writing, 1950
 * The Night Shift: Poems on Aspects of Love, 1957 (with Charles Doyle, Louis Johnson and Kendrick Smithyman)
 * In Fires of No Return, 1958
 * Chosen Poems, 1958
 * Two Plays: The Wide Open Cage and Jack Winter's Dream, 1959
 * The Ballad of Calvary Street, 1960
 * Howrah Bridge and Other Poems, 1961
 * Three Women and the Sea, 1961
 * The Spots of the Leopard, 1962
 * The Ballad of the Soap Powder Lock-Out, 1963
 * A Selection of Poetry, 1964
 * Pig Island Letters, 1966
 * Aspects of Poetry in New Zealand, 1967
 * The Lion Skin, 1967
 * The Man on the Horse, 1967
 * The Bureaucrat, 1968 (prod.)
 * The Rock Woman: Selected Poems, 1969
 * Jerusalem Sonnets: Poems for Colin Durning, 1970
 * The Flowering Cross, 1970
 * The Devil and Mr Mulcahy, and The Band Rotunda, 1971 (plays)
 * Jerusalem Daybook, 1971
 * The Sore-Footed Man, and The Temptations of Oedipus, 1971 (plays)
 * Ode to Auckland and Other Poems, 1972
 * Autumn Testament, 1972 (reissued in 1998, edited by Paul Millar)
 * Four God Songs, 1972
 * Letter to Peter Olds, 1972

Posthumously published

 * Runes, 1973
 * Two Obscene Poems, 1974
 * Barney Flanagan and Other Poems, read by James K. Baxter (record), 1973
 * The Labyrinth: Some Uncollected Poems 1944–72, 1974
 * The Tree House and Other Poems for Children, 1974
 * The Bone Chanter, edited and introduced by John Weir, 1976
 * The Holy Life and Death of Concrete Grady, edited and introduced by John Weir, 1976
 * Baxter Basics, 1979
 * Collected Poems, edited by John Weir, 1979 (reissued in 1995 and 2004)
 * Collected Plays, edited by Howard McNaughton, 1982
 * Selected Poems, edited by John Weir, 1982
 * Horse: a Novel, 1985
 * The Essential Baxter, selected and introduced by John Weir, 1993
 * Cold Spring: Baxter's Unpublished Early Collection, edited and introduced by Paul Millar, 1996
 * James K. Baxter: Poems, selected and introduced by Sam Hunt, 2009
 * Poems to a Glass Woman, with introductory essay by John Weir, 2012
 * James K. Baxter: Complete Prose, four volume set edited by John Weir, 2015 (Victoria University Press)
 * James K Baxter: Letters of a Poet, edited by John Weir, 2015 (Victoria University Press)

title: James K. Baxter


text:
Talk:Adrian Olivares

Untitled
Wait! Isnt the word Blond more popularly known as Blond and not blonde worldwide?

Antonio Sex Alcohol and Joy Martin

 * To be honest with you, I'm not sure. Change it back if you'd like, the spelling isn't that important. -- Notheruser 23:58 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * this is one of the adjectivces in English that has a masculine and feminine form. Men are blond, women are blonde.  Any other usage is incorrect.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.46.56.198 (talk) 05:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Adrian Olivares


text:
Luck

Luck is the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones. The naturalistic interpretation is that positive and negative events may happen at any time, both due to random and non-random natural and artificial processes, and that even improbable events can happen by random chance. In this view, the epithet "lucky" or "unlucky" is a descriptive label that refers to an event's positivity, negativity, or improbability.

Supernatural interpretations of luck consider it to be an attribute of a person or object, or the result of a favorable or unfavorable view of a deity upon a person. These interpretations often prescribe how luckiness or unluckiness can be obtained, such as by carrying a lucky charm or offering sacrifices or prayers to a deity. Saying someone is "born lucky" may hold different meanings, depending on the interpretation: it could simply mean that they have been born into a good family or circumstance; or that they habitually experience improbably positive events, due to some inherent property, or due to the lifelong favor of a god or goddess in a monotheistic or polytheistic religion.

Many superstitions are related to luck, though these are often specific to a given culture or set of related cultures, and sometimes contradictory. For example, lucky symbols include the number 7 in Christian-influenced cultures and the number 8 in Chinese-influenced cultures. Unlucky symbols and events include entering and leaving a house by different doors or breaking a mirror in Greek culture, throwing rocks into the wind in Navajo culture, and ravens in Western culture. Some of these associations may derive from related facts or desires. For example, in Western culture opening an umbrella indoors might be considered unlucky partly because it could poke someone in the eye, whereas shaking hands with a chimney sweep might be considered lucky partly because it is a kind but unpleasant thing to do given the dirty nature of their work. In Chinese and Japanese culture, the association of the number 4 as a homophone with the word for death may explain why it is considered unlucky. Extremely complicated and sometimes contradictory systems for prescribing auspicious and inauspicious times and arrangements of things have been devised, for example feng shui in Chinese culture and systems of astrology in various cultures around the world.

Many polytheistic religions have specific gods or goddesses that are associated with luck, both good and bad, including Fortuna and Felicitas in the Ancient Roman religion (the former related to the words "fortunate" and "unfortunate" in English), Dedun in Nubian religion, the Seven Lucky Gods in Japanese mythology, mythical American serviceman John Frum in Polynesian cargo cults, and the inauspicious Alakshmi in Hinduism.

Etymology and definition

The English noun luck appears comparatively late, during the 1480s, as a loan from Low German, Dutch or Frisian luk, a short form of gelucke (Middle High German gelücke). Compare to old Slavic word lukyj (лукый) - appointed by destiny and old Russian luchaj (лучаи) - destiny, fortune. It likely entered English as a gambling term, and the context of gambling remains detectable in the word's connotations; luck is a way of understanding a personal chance event. Luck has three aspects:
 * Luck is good or bad.
 * Luck is the result of chance.
 * Luck applies to a sentient being.

Before the adoption of luck at the end of the Middle Ages, Old English and Middle English expressed the notion of "good fortune" with the word speed (Middle English spede, Old English spēd); speed besides "good fortune" had the wider meaning of "prosperity, profit, abundance"; it is not associated with the notion of probability or chance but rather with that of fate or divine help; a bestower of success can also be called speed, as in "Christ be our speed" (William Robertson, Phraseologia generalis, 1693).

The notion of probability was expressed by the Latin loanword chance, adopted in Middle English from the late 13th century, literally describing an outcome as a "falling" (as it were of dice), via Old French cheance from Late Latin cadentia "falling". Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fate or luck, was popular as an allegory in medieval times, and even though it was not strictly reconcilable with Christian theology, it became popular in learned circles of the High Middle Ages to portray her as a servant of God in distributing success or failure in a characteristically "fickle" or unpredictable way, thus introducing the notion of chance.

Interpretations
Luck is interpreted and understood in many different ways.

Lack of control
Luck refers to that which happens to a person beyond that person's control. This view incorporates phenomena that are chance happenings, a person's place of birth for example, but where there is no uncertainty involved, or where the uncertainty is irrelevant. Within this framework, one can differentiate between three different types of luck:
 * 1) Constitutional luck, that is, luck with factors that cannot be changed. Place of birth and genetic constitution are typical examples.
 * 2) Circumstantial luck—with factors that are haphazardly brought on. Accidents and epidemics are typical examples.
 * 3) Ignorance luck, that is, luck with factors one does not know about. Examples can be identified only in hindsight.

Circumstantial luck with accidental happenstance of favorable discoveries and/or inventions is serendipity.

Fallacy
Another view holds that "luck is probability taken personally." A rationalist approach to luck includes the application of the rules of probability and an avoidance of unscientific beliefs. The rationalist thinks that the belief in luck is a result of poor reasoning or wishful thinking. To a rationalist, a believer in luck who asserts that something has influenced his or her luck commits the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy: that because two events are connected sequentially, they are connected causally as well. In general, this fallacy is that:
 * 1) A luck-attracting event or action happens;
 * 2) Then a positive outcome happens;
 * 3) Therefore, the event or action influenced the outcome.

More contemporary authors writing on the subject believe that the definition of good destiny is: One who enjoys good health; has the physical and mental capabilities of achieving his goals in life; has good appearance, and; has happiness in mind and is not prone to accidents.

In the rationalist perspective, probability is only affected by confirmed causal connections.

The gambler's fallacy and inverse gambler's fallacy both explain some reasoning problems in common beliefs in luck. They involve denying the unpredictability of random events: "I haven't rolled a seven all week, so I'll definitely roll one tonight".

Philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote that "luck is mere luck" rather than a property of a person or thing.

Essence
There is also a series of spiritual, or supernatural beliefs regarding fortune. These beliefs vary widely from one to another, but most agree that luck can be influenced through spiritual means by performing certain rituals or by avoiding certain circumstances.

Luck can also be a belief in an organization of fortunate and unfortunate events. Luck is a form of superstition which is interpreted differently by different individuals. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity, which he described as "a meaningful coincidence".

Abrahamic religions believe God controls future events; belief in luck or fate is criticised in :

Belief in the extent of Divine Providence varies; most acknowledge providence as at least a partial, if not complete influence on luck. Christianity, in its early development, accommodated many traditional practices which at different times, accepted omens and practiced forms of ritual sacrifice in order to divine the will of their supreme being or to influence divine favoritism. The concepts of "Divine Grace" or "Blessing" as they are described by believers closely resemble what is referred to as "luck" by others.

Mesoamerican religions, such as the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas, had particularly strong beliefs regarding the relationship between rituals and the gods, which could in a similar sense to Abrahamic religions be called luck or providence. In these cultures, human sacrifice (both of willing volunteers and captured enemies), as well as self-sacrifice by means of bloodletting, could possibly be seen as a way to propitiate the gods and earn favor for the city offering the sacrifice. An alternative interpretation would be that the sacrificial blood was considered as a necessary element for the gods to maintain the proper working order of the universe, in the same way that oil would be applied to an automobile to keep it working as designed.

Many traditional African practices, such as voodoo and hoodoo, have a strong belief in superstition. Some of these religions include a belief that third parties can influence an individual's luck. Shamans and witches are both respected and feared, based on their ability to cause good or bad fortune for those in villages near them.

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Some evidence supports the idea that belief in luck acts like a placebo, producing positive thinking and improving people's responses to events.

In personality psychology, people reliably differ from each other depending on four key aspects: beliefs in luck, rejection of luck, being lucky, and being unlucky. People who believe in good luck are more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives, and have better moods. People who believe they are personally unlucky experience more anxiety, and less likely to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. One 2010 study found that golfers who were told they were using a "lucky ball" performed better than those who were not.

Some people intentionally put themselves in situations that increase the chances of a serendipitous encounter, such as socializing with people who work in different fields.

Games
The philosopher Nicholas Rescher has proposed that the luck of someone's result in a situation of uncertainty is measured by the difference between this party's yield and expectation: λ = Y - E. Thus skill enhances expectation and reduces luck. The extent to which different games will depend on luck, rather than skill or effort, varies considerably. For example, chess does not involve any random factors (beyond the determination of which player moves first), while the outcome of Snakes and Ladders is entirely based on random dice rolls. In poker, especially games with a communal board, pure luck may decide a winning hand. Luck in games involving chance is defined as the change in a player's equity after a random event such as a die roll or card draw. Luck is positive (good luck) if the player's position is improved and negative (bad luck) if it is worsened. A poker player who is doing well (playing successfully, winning) is said to be "running good".

Almost all sports contain elements of luck. A statistical analysis in the book The Success Equation attempted to elucidate the differing balance between skill and luck with respect to how teams finished in the major North American sports leagues. This analysis concluded that, on a luck-skill continuum, the NBA had the most skill-dependant result while that of the NHL was most luck-dependant.

Lotteries
A defining feature of a lottery is that winners are selected purely by chance. Marketing and other discussions regarding lotteries often mention luck but tend to underplay the actual prospects of winning, which are usually millions to one against.

Means of resolving issues
"Leaving it to chance" is sometimes a way of resolving issues for example, where there are two possible outcomes, flipping a coin may determine the outcome. This practice has gone on for thousands of years, a common contemporary example is the coin toss at the start of a sporting event which may determine who goes first.

Numerology
Most cultures consider some numbers to be lucky or unlucky. This is found to be particularly strong in Asian cultures, where the obtaining of "lucky" telephone numbers, automobile license plate numbers, and household addresses are actively sought, sometimes at great monetary expense. Numerology, as it relates to luck, is closer to an art than to a science, yet numerologists, astrologists or psychics may disagree. It is interrelated to astrology, and to some degree to parapsychology and spirituality and is based on converting virtually anything material into a pure number, using that number in an attempt to detect something meaningful about reality, and trying to predict or calculate the future based on lucky numbers. Numerology is folkloric by nature and started when humans first learned to count. Through human history it was, and still is, practiced by many cultures of the world from traditional fortune-telling to on-line psychic reading. Dudley describes numerology as, "the delusion that numbers have power over events."

Science
Different thinkers like Thomas Kuhn have discussed the role of chance in scientific discoveries. Richard Wiseman did a ten-year scientific study into the nature of luck that has revealed that, to a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune. His research revealed that "Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations, and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good." Researchers have suggested that good luck and good mood often co-occur (Duong & Ohtsuka, 2000) and that people who believe themselves to be lucky are often comparatively happy and optimistic whereas people who believe themselves to be unlucky may feel comparatively anxious and depressed (Day & Maltby, 2003; Wiseman, 2003). Luck can also correlate with superstitious behaviors that increase opportunities of good fortune occurring like avoiding walking under ladders or blowing left and right for safe travels before crossing train tracks, which inadvertently increases your chances of seeing an oncoming train.

Although previous studies have explored the antecedents and consequences of luck using attribution theory (e. g., Fischoff, 1976; Weiner et al., 1987), personality variables (Darke & Freedman, 1997a;b), and more recently a cognitive priming approach (DeMarree et al., 2005; Kramer & Block, 2008) research on the underlying mechanism of how luck influences consumer judgment and behavior has been noticeably absent in the extant literature. Moreover, in much of this previous work, luck is manipulated in a way that is very likely to elicit positive affect as well. Thus, it is difficult to articulate whether the observed effects of luck are due to chronic beliefs about luck, temporary changes in how lucky people feel, or because of changes caused by the positive affect that is experienced. Their research showed that priming participants subliminally with luck-related stimuli made them feel luckier and happier. It was also found that the effects of priming luck using subliminal messages increased participants' estimates of the likelihood of favorable events, their participation in lotteries, the amount of money they invested in relatively risky financial options and these effects appeared to be mediated by temporary changes in perceptions of luck rather than by affect.

Buddhism
Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, taught his followers not to believe in luck. He taught that all things which happen must have a cause, either material or spiritual, and do not occur due to luck, chance or fate. The idea of moral causality, karma (Pali: kamma), is central in Buddhism. In the Sutta Nipata, the Buddha is recorded as having said the following about selling luck: "Whereas some religious men, while living of food provided by the faithful make their living by such low arts, such wrong means of livelihood as palmistry, divining by signs, interpreting dreams ... bringing good or bad luck ... invoking the goodness of luck ... picking the lucky site for a building, the monk Gautama refrains from such low arts, such wrong means of livelihood. D.I, 9–12"

Belief in luck is prevalent in many predominantly Buddhist countries. In Thailand, Buddhists may wear verses (takrut) or lucky amulets which have been blessed by monks for protection against harm.

Christianity and Judaism
The book of Proverbs 16:33 states "the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord". Ecclesiastes 9:11 states (in a passage that describes events with different outcomes - e.g. a race, a battle, the gaining of wealth and favour): "time and chance happeneth to them all" (both quotes are from the New International Version of the bible). Whilst the latter passage from Ecclesiastes suggests no things in human affairs are certain, the extract from Proverbs indicates that the outcome of something as apparently random as the rolling of dice or the tossing of a coin remains subject to God's will or sovereignty. In his book God, Chance and Purpose: Can God have it both ways?, Bartholomew argues that chance is part of God's creation but that not even God can accurately predict what chance will do.

God's sovereignty involves two aspects. God's active will or sovereignty would involve something God causes to happen such as the leading of wicked King Ahab into battle (2 Chronicles 18:18-19). Ahab's death was not merely the result of a randomly shot arrow, but as 2 Chronicles 18 reveals, God actively directed the events that led Ahab into battle and used that randomly shot arrow to accomplish his intended will for Ahab that day.

God's passive will involves God allowing, rather than causing, something to happen. Chapter 1 of the book of Job illustrates this in what God allowed Satan to do in the life of Job. It is also involved in the evil that God allowed Joseph's brothers to do to Joseph in order to accomplish a greater good, a good not apparent to Joseph until years later (Genesis 50:20).

Hinduism
In Hinduism the Bhagavad-Gita values "Purushartha" more than mere Luck or Fate.

The Gita says; "Set thy heart upon selfless performance of thy natural duty (Svakarma, Svadharma), but never on its reward. Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work" (Gita, 2.47).

There are five causes of all actions as given in the Samkhya wisdom; says Gita—

"The physical body (adhisthana), the lower 'I am' (karta), the means of perception (karanam), the varied multiple efforts (vividhasch pruthak cheshta) and the Cosmic Wheel of Action (daivam), these five sources together are responsible for success or failure of any action" ( Gita, 18 . 14–15 ).

Here the word "daivam" does not mean luck, fate, fortune, providence, or destiny. None of these English words are the exact synonym for the Sanskrit word "Daivam" here. "Daivam" is the Cosmic Wheel of Action (Kshara-gati, Apara-Prakriti, Maya) that keeps the perfect account of our past and present actions.

A man who says "Nothing is impossible for me; I am the only hero of all these achievements; who else is there like me?" He is a man of clouded vision and he does not see the Truth.

Islam
The definition which is much closer to the concept of luck in Islam is "a force that brings good fortune or adversity" Quran 17:13: "And (for) every man We have fastened to him his fate (fortune) in his neck, and We will bring forth for him (on the) Day (of) the Resurrection a record which he will find wide open". A very long discussion continues on how this prefixed destiny, fortune or luck defines attitudes and living behavior and so as to how much amends one can make in this predetermined fate by one's own contribution through positive actions in accordance with the teachings of Islam. There is no concept of luck in Islam other than actions determined by Allah based on the merit of the choice made by human beings. It is stated in the Qur'an (Sura: Adh-Dhariyat (The Winds that Scatter) verse:22) that one's sustenance is pre-determined in heaven when the Lord says: "And in the heaven is your provision and that which ye are promised." One should supplicate to Allah to better one's life rather than hold faith in un-Islamic acts such as using "lucky charms". In the Arabic language there is a word which directly means "luck", which is حظ ', and a related word for "lucky", محظوظ '. It is also forbidden to believe in luck or anything else related to luck, as it is classified as shirk (associating partners to Allah or giving any share of any attribution which belongs to Allah and Allah alone).

The Tunisians retain some native beliefs of Berber origin such as the evil eye. A number of practices, such as shutters painted blue are also used to repel evil spirits.

Belief measurement

Darke and Freedman (1997) were the first researchers systematically to address directly both the concept and the measurement of belief in luck as a deterministic and personal attribute. They define luck belief as the perception that good luck is "a somewhat stable characteristic that consistently favors some people but not others". They define disbelief in luck as "a tendency to agree with the rational view of luck as random and unreliable" (p. 490). To capture their unidimensional definition of irrational luck belief, Darke and Freedman developed a 12-item measure. Unfortunately, they found their measure "does not seem particularly good at distinguishing between people who [say] they [are] typically lucky from those who [say] they [are] typically unlucky". They also found factor analyses of their measure produced a multi-component solution, as did Prendergast and Thompson (2008).

André (2006) proposed a model of luck-related perceptions that includes separate positive and negative beliefs. She found the positive and negative components of personal luck beliefs correlate highly, suggesting they are conceptually very close or in fact the same. Maltby et al. (2008) proposed a six-dimensional model of beliefs around luck, but empirical analyses supported only a four-dimensional model: belief in being personally lucky; belief in being personally unlucky; general belief in luck; and rejection of belief in luck.

Thompson and Prendergast (2013) clarified the concepts of belief in luck and belief in personal luckiness. They addressed the logical problem that nobody who disbelieves in luck could consider themselves lucky by differentiating between belief in luck as a deterministic phenomenon that affects the future, on one hand, and on the other, belief in personal luckiness as an appraisal of how fortunately or otherwise chance events in the past might have turned out. They developed and validated an internationally applicable scale to measure, respectively, belief in luck and personal luckiness constructs. They found no correlation between the constructs and no evidence of a distinction between positive and negative aspects of each, suggesting they represent two discrete and unidimensional constructs. Belief in luck and personal luckiness were also found to correlate differently with personality and psychological variables, such as the Big Five and affect.

title: Luck


text:
The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.

History
The TLS first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to The Times but became a separate publication in 1914. Many distinguished writers have contributed, including T. S. Eliot, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Reviews were normally anonymous until 1974, when signed reviews were gradually introduced during the editorship of John Gross. This aroused great controversy. "Anonymity had once been appropriate when it was a general rule at other publications, but it had ceased to be so", Gross said. "In addition I personally felt that reviewers ought to take responsibility for their opinions."

Martin Amis was a member of the editorial staff early in his career. Philip Larkin's poem "Aubade", his final poetic work, was first published in the Christmas-week issue of the TLS in 1977. While it has long been regarded as one of the world's pre-eminent critical publications, its history is not without gaffes: it missed James Joyce entirely, and commented only negatively on Lucian Freud from 1945 until 1978, when a portrait of his appeared on the cover.

Its editorial offices are based in The News Building, London. It is edited by Martin Ivens, who succeeded Stig Abell in June 2020.

The TLS has included essays, reviews and poems by D. M. Thomas, John Ashbery, Italo Calvino, Patricia Highsmith, Milan Kundera, Philip Larkin, Mario Vargas Llosa, Joseph Brodsky, Gore Vidal, Orhan Pamuk, Geoffrey Hill and Seamus Heaney, among others.

Many writers have described the publication as indispensable; Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist and the 2010 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, had once described the TLS as "the most serious, authoritative, witty, diverse and stimulating cultural publication in all the five languages I speak".

Editors

 * 1902: James Thursfield
 * 1902: Bruce Richmond
 * 1938: D. L. Murray (David Leslie Murray)
 * 1945: Stanley Morison
 * 1948: Alan Payan Pryce-Jones
 * 1959: Arthur Crook
 * 1974: John Gross
 * 1981: Jeremy Treglown
 * 1991: Ferdinand Mount
 * 2003: Peter Stothard
 * 2016: Stig Abell
 * 2020: Martin Ivens

title: The Times Literary Supplement


text:
Talk:Luck

Suggestions
Isn't the broken mirror bad luck avoided if you don't look in the mirror (and even those who didn't break it get bad luck by looking at it).

Also, perhaps the idea that bad luck can be arbitrarily assigned to objects (e.g. the "spirit stick" in the movie "Bring it on") should also be included.

Finally, when I was growing up, whistling was bad (meant you weren't gonna have money) as was sitting at a corner of a table (meant you weren't gonna get married for some number of years). But that could've been local. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.196.226.219 (talk) 1:03, 2 May 2006 yuliya 01:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC) [Section heading added & authorship of unsigned contrib claimed/acknowledged 25 minutes later.]

 * Another suggestion: I think “*five leaf clovers” (in the unlucky section) should be either also in the good luck section (a Google search gave me a lot more results on the “more luck” than a four-leaf clover, although I know a Google search isn’t an argument). What I remember is that a five leaf clover is unlucky unless given to someone else (case in which it is then good luck for both the finder and the receiver) or specified that it's also sometimes considered lucky. I read this in a book, but remembering what book would be practically impossible. Pro bug catcher 19:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Origins of Luck
Luck has probably been around for ages but origins of the word? I heard it was derived from 'Lucifer' --Cazoodle 06:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

 * No Sr. Kalei-tre-Cophe (talk) 02:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Lucifer is completely unrelated, as it means "light bearer" in Greek and Latin. -Bredd13
 * From Wiktionary: "Etymology - Shortened form of Middle Dutch: gheluc (happiness)"

'gheluc' is related to modern-Dutch 'lukken', which is a verb which means something like 'to accomplish' or 'to succeed'. Something is 'gelukt' if it has turned out well, which has its roots in 'gheluc' and the English 'luck'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.84.82.171 (talk) 19:05, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Edits to introduction
I removed the discussion of so-called "descriptive" and "proscriptive" luck from the introduction. First, the discussion seemed to be nothing more than a needlessly convoluted and jargon-y repetition of the relatively simple and clear statement in the preceding paragraph that some people attribute luck to chance and some attribute it to other forces. Second, I strongly suspect that this terminology -- which does not appear to be derived from any source -- is simply the author's own invention; this is indicated in part by the repeated misuse of "proscriptive" where the author presumably intended "prescriptive". This edit leaves that the statement that the word luck is "pervasive in common speech" hanging on its own. That statement seems obvious and unnecessary, really, and this really stands out when the other material is removed, so I guess it ought to go too.

There are other real problems here but this was the easiest to remedy. Does it really make sense to have an article claiming that something the vast majority of the world's population believes to exist -- luck in the "other forces" sense -- doesn't exist? So far as I know Wikipedia doesn't do this in articles about topics like "God". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.172.64 (talk) 17:32, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

 * I have restored much of this deletion. Although, I have corrected "proscriptive" to "prescriptive." I am a bit perplexed as to respond to this criticism, as I am in complete disagreement about removing that particular part. I would think that for any Wikipedia article about a concept, that we cover all relevant senses in which the term is used. The prescriptive and descriptive senses are the two prevailing senses in which the term is used, and so I am at a loss to understand how their removal helps at all. Greg Bard (talk) 07:27, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Dubious differentiation between Abrahamic and Meso-american religion
The article suggests that the Abrahamic religions don't believe in luck, but instead only in something like divine intervention, whereas the Meso-American religions believe in luck. The implication that is conveyed is that Abrahamic religions are less primitive.

In reality, the act of placating gods in order to be rewarded with a prosperous fate is well attested in both religious forms in more or less equal measure. — Harburg (talk • contribs) 19:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Belief in luck
Merge? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Luck in poker
In the subsection Games, which is under §Social aspects, this sentence
 * Players who consistently get the best hand, which either wins or a worse hand which draws to better, is said to "run good".

is a real mess. I'm changing it to what I think it's trying to say—
 * Players who consistently get either the best hand, which wins, or a worse hand which draws to a better one, are said to "run good".

—but I don't know poker terminology. I'm going to write to a prominent poker player I know for advice. --Thnidu (talk) 04:15, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

 * No Sr. Kalei-tre-Cophe (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

The expert (Steven Brust, who plays poker a lot; quoted by permission) says (personal email exchange even as I type this):
 * "Running good" is a real thing, as is "running bad," but decent poker players know that either one is a temporary state; that luck evens out in the end.  So you get, "How you've been doing lately?"  "Sucking at tournaments, but I've been running good in cash games for the last month and a half, so I'm not complaining." --Thnidu (talk) 05:33, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

"Misfortune"
The usage and primary topic of misfortune is under discussion, see talk:Misfortune (disambiguation) -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 05:35, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I actually think that there should be a section in this article on "Bad Luck" and how it is used to blame negative chance-based outcomes, based on sources such as, just as a couple of examples.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  22:27, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

What a horrible talk page!
I don't recall how i wandered onto this discussion, but this striking early ... uh, ... contribution highlights my chagrin, et c. I'm going to further experiment with rescuing this tk pg from the malpractice of wiki-discussion it has sustained; perhaps i will find myself called to attempt improvements to the article, if i find any clarity abt what kind of process got us to wherever the article is. --Jerzy•t 11:04, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

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Etimology of 'luck'
I have been of the view that the word luck may have it's origin from the Sanskrit word Lakshmi also written as Luxmi the Goddess of wealth in Hindu mythology or religion.In Sanskrit language and other Indian languages it is used in the context of good luck or bad luck.For instance the famous Carnatic Lyricist/musician calls Ganesha the Lord of obstacles 'Lakshmi' lakumikara' meaning O Ganesha -the giver of luck There are many such references in Indian languages.we may therefore say the word 'luck' might have it's origin from the Sanskrit word Lakshmi Ramamurthy Kamakolanu (talk) 02:16, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

The famous Carnatic Lyricist/ musician is Thyagaraja.He sings"Lambodara lakumikara' in one of his keerthans. Ramamurthy Kamakolanu (talk) 02:22, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

 * No Sr. Kalei-tre-Cophe (talk) 02:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

The lyric /keerthans 'Lambodara lakumikara' was written by Saint musician Purandara dasa and d not Thyagaraja Ramamurthy Kamakolanu (talk) 02:36, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Use of the word Frisian
Under the heading Etymology and Definition, the word Frisian is used. This is too general, as the articles are West Frisian language and Frisian languages. Sarcelles (talk) 11:10, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

頑張って
While the Japanese word 頑張って is often used in similar situations to "good luck", it means "Do your best", and from typically has nothing to do with the concept of luck. Should it be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.80.194.55 (talk) 04:59, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Translations

 * Greek: καλοτυχία (which means "good luck", because τύχη is a generic term) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.1.141.108 (talk) 14:59, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Islam
On one hand, There is no concept of luck in Islam other than actions determined by Allah; but it is also forbidden to believe in luck as this is to commit the sin of shirk (placing other gods or semidivine powers alongside God). So, which is it?

Nuttyskin (talk) 02:22, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Luck


text:
Cog (project)

Cog was a project at the Humanoid Robotics Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was based on the hypothesis that human-level intelligence requires gaining experience from interacting with humans, like human infants do. This in turn required many interactions with humans over a long period. Because Cog's behavior responded to what humans would consider appropriate and socially salient environmental stimuli, the robot was expected to act more human. This behavior also provided the robot with a better context for deciphering and imitating human behavior. This was intended to allow the robot to learn socially, as humans do.

As of 2003, all development of the project had ceased.

Today Cog is retired to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology museum.

Principal investigators

 * Rodney Brooks
 * Lynn Andrea Stein

Purpose

 * To study theories of cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI).

Goals

 * To design and fabricate a humanoid face for each robot that fosters suitable social contact between robots and humans.
 * To create a robot which is capable of interacting with humans and objects in a human-like way.
 * To develop a relatively general system by which Cog can learn causal relations between commands to its motors and input from its sensors (primarily vision and mechanical proprioception).
 * To shift the robot aesthetic to a design language that utilizes strong curvilinear and organic forms through state of the art design processes and materials.

Research and advancements

 * Development of a human-like face for Cog (complete).
 * Obtaining major degrees of motor freedom in trunk (complete), head (complete), arms (complete), legs, and a flexible spine.
 * Sight (through video cameras that respond to movement; complete).
 * Hearing, touch, vocalization system, and hands.
 * Allowing Cog to learn how its own movements alter its sensory inputs.
 * Forcing Cog to take energy efficiency into account during movements.

Justification
One motivation for making humanoid robots can be understood in the book Philosophy in the Flesh by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. They argue that the contents of human thoughts are to some degree dependent on the physical structure of our brains. By constructing artificial intelligence systems that have  structural features similar to those of humans, we may be more likely to achieve human-like functionality.

Another motivation for building humanoid robotic systems is that a machine with a human-like form may have more human-like interactions with people. This could be particularly important for an artificial intelligence device to learn from people in the way that human children learn through interactions within a social group.

Marvin Minsky criticized the project, that Cog should be built as a software simulation, "because robotics research is really a software problem".

Media appearances
Cog appeared on ABC's Brave New World in a segment drumming with They Might Be Giants titled "Dan vs. Cog".

Cog appeared in the Understanding television series episode "The Senses".

Cog appeared in Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together

Cog's earliest popular science appearance was the 1994 Bringing Up RoboBaby published in Wired and authored by David H. Freedman. As confirmed in the original project proposal by Brooks and Stein, Freedman reports AI consciousness was part of the original goal.

title: Cog (project)


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William Cusins

Sir William George Cusins (14 October 1833 – 31 August 1893) was an English pianist, violinist, organist, conductor and composer.

Biography
Born in London, Cusins entered the Chapel Royal in his tenth year and studied music in Brussels under François-Joseph Fétis and later at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, under Cipriani Potter, William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Lucas and Prosper Sainton.

He toured widely, in England, Leipzig, Berlin and other places, as a concert pianist and as a composer. He was appointed organist to Queen Victoria's private chapel. He also played the violin in various orchestras in London. In 1851 he became assistant professor at the RAM, and later full professor. In 1867 he succeeded Sterndale Bennett as conductor of the Philharmonic Society and remained in this post until 1883.

He was appointed Master of the Queen's Musick by Queen Victoria in 1870, succeeding George Frederick Anderson, who had retired. He was knighted on 5 August 1892 (the only Master to be knighted during his term of office) and received the Cross of Isabella the Catholic in 1893.

He died at Remonchamps, Ardennes, France on 31 August 1893, of influenza, and was buried at Kensal Green, London.

Works
Sir William Cusins produced editions of the piano music of Robert Schumann. Among his works as a composer are Royal Wedding Serenata (1863), concert overture Les Travailleurs de la mer (1869), the oratorio Gideon (produced Gloucester, 1871), overture to William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (1875), Piano Concerto in A minor, marches and songs.

title: William Cusins


text:
Talk:The Green River Killer

There has been a arrest in the 20 year old case of The Green River Killer, His name is Gary Leon Ridgeway. He was one of the top suspects for the police over the years and they matched his DNA to the DNA taken from the crime sene years ago and matched it to his.

He's only been charged in 4 of the murders, so far. -- Zoe

This article contains no dates. Reading it, I have no idea if it happened in the 1870s, 1920s, 1990s....please give some details about setting. Kingturtle 02:32 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I read part of that prosecution document linked on this page....it's disturbing. dave 04:38, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Green River Killer


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Walter Parratt

Sir Walter Parratt (10 February 1841 – 27 March 1924) was an English organist and composer.

Biography

Born in Huddersfield, son of a parish organist, Parratt began to play the pipe organ from an early age, and held posts as an organist while still a child. He was a child prodigy: on one occasion he played Bach's complete The Well-Tempered Clavier by heart, without notice, at age ten.

From 1854 to 1861 he was an organist at St Paul's Church in his native town and, as successor to John Stainer, in 1872 at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he remained for ten years. From 1882 he held the post of organist of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. He became Heather Professor of Music at Oxford University in 1908, taking over from Hubert Parry.

He became one of the foremost organ teachers of his day, with many important posts in Britain being filled by his students. He was president of the Royal College of Organists from 1905 to 1909.

Parratt was also a distinguished chess player, and was able to simultaneously play chess and a complex organ piece—at first sight. He served for a few months as president of the Oxford University Chess Club and for two years was captain of the eight chosen to play against Cambridge. He died at Windsor Castle on 27 March 1924.

Honours
He was knighted in 1892. In 1893 he was appointed Master of the Queen's Musick to Queen Victoria, and afterward held the same office under Kings Edward VII and George V.

Later honours included: Member (MVO, 1901), Commander (CVO, 1917), and Knight Commander (KCVO, 1921) of the Royal Victorian Order.

After Parratt's death in 1924 a monument to him was erected in the grounds of Huddersfield Parish Church. There is also a monument to him in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, next to the entrance to King George VI Memorial Chapel where King George VI and the Queen Mother, and Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh are buried.

Appointments

 * Armitage Bridge Church, 1852-1854
 * St. Paul's Church, Huddersfield, 1854-1861
 * Private organist to the Earl of Dudley, Witley Court, 1861-1868
 * Organist of Wigan Parish Church, 1868-1872
 * Magdalen College, Oxford, 1872-1882
 * St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle 1882-1924

title: Walter Parratt


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Block voting

Block or bloc voting refers to a class of electoral systems where multiple candidates are elected simultaneously. They do not guarantee minority representation and allow a group of voters (a voting bloc) to ensure that only their preferred candidates are elected. In these systems, a voter can select as many candidates as there are open seats. That is, the voter has as many votes to cast as the number of seats to fill. The block voting systems are among various election systems available for use in multi-member districts where the voting system allows for the selection of multiple winners at once.

Block voting falls under the multiple non-transferable vote category, a term often used interchangeably with this term. Block voting may be also associated with the concept of winner-take-all representation in multi-winner electoral systems or the plurality election method.

Other variations of block voting include block approval voting, and party block voting (sometimes called a general ticket). Block voting is often contrasted with proportional representation, where the aim is to ensure that each voter's vote carries equal weight. In contrast, block voting tends to favor the most popular party, resulting in a landslide victory.

Terminology
The term "plurality at-large" is common in representative elections where members represent an entire body (such as a city, state, province, or nation). In multi-member electoral districts, the system is often referred to as "block voting" or the "bloc vote." This article's description of block voting specifically pertains to "unlimited voting," unlike "limited voting," where voters have fewer votes than the available seats. The term "block voting" may also refer to a simple plurality election of slates (electoral lists) in multi-member districts.

Types of block voting
Multiple winners are typically elected simultaneously in one non-transferable round of voting. In some cases, multiple non-transferable voting (MNTV) appears in a runoff or two-round version, as seen in certain local elections in France, where candidates without an absolute majority are thinned out before a second round.

Plurality block voting
In a block voting election, all candidates compete for m positions, often referred to as the district magnitude. Each voter selects up to m candidates on the ballot. The m candidates with the most votes, but not necessarily a majority, are elected and fill the positions.

Two-round block voting
Two-round block voting is a variation of plurality-at-large where the field of candidates is thinned out before a second round.

General ticket / Party block voting
Party block voting (PBV) or the general ticket is the party-list version of block voting. In contrast to the classic block vote, where candidates may stand as non-partisan and some minority nominations can theoretically succeed, PBV associates each candidate with a party list voted on by electors, often leading to a landslide outcome. The Parliament of Singapore uses this system for most of its elections.

Approval block voting
Block approval voting permits every voter to vote for any number of candidates, provided that they do not vote more than once for the same candidate. Block voting, specifically plurality block voting, is compared with preferential block voting as both often produce landslide victories for similar candidates. Instead of checkboxes, preferential block voting utilizes a preferential ballot, making it a multiple transferable vote rather than a multiple non-transferable vote. Under both systems, a slate of the top preferred candidate and their clones typically secures every available seat.

Preferential block voting
Block voting, or plurality block voting, is often compared with preferential block voting as both systems tend to produce landslide victories for similar candidates. Instead of a series of checkboxes, preferential block voting uses a preferential ballot. A slate of clones of the top preferred candidate will win every seat under both systems, however in preferential block voting this is instead the instant-runoff winner.

Limited voting (LV) / Partial block voting
Partial block voting, also known as limited voting, operates similarly to plurality-at-large voting. However, in partial block voting, each voter casts fewer votes than the number of candidates to be elected. This process enables reasonably sized minorities to achieve some representation, preventing a simple plurality from sweeping every seat. Partial bloc voting is employed in elections to the Gibraltar Parliament, allowing each voter ten votes for seventeen open seats. The typical outcome sees the most popular party winning ten seats and forming the ruling administration. In contrast, the second-most popular party secures seven seats to form the opposition. The Spanish Senate also adopts partial block voting, offering four seats per constituency, with each voter casting three votes. Historically, three- and four-member constituencies in the United Kingdom used partial block voting until the abolition of multimember constituencies.

With fewer votes per voter, the threshold to win decreases under partial block voting, making the results more akin to proportional representation, provided voters and candidates use effective strategies.

Plurality block voting and majority block voting
Consider a scenario with 12 candidates in a 3-member district among 10,000 voters. Both plurality block voting and majority block voting allow voters to cast three votes (although they need not use all three) but restrict voting to one vote per candidate.

Party A garners roughly 35% support among the electorate, Party B secures around 25%, and the remaining voters mainly support independent candidates but lean toward Party B if compelled to choose between the two parties. Assuming all voters cast their votes sincerely and avoid tactical voting, the following tabulation elucidates the outcomes:

In the second round, voters of independent candidates can vote for candidates of party B. As even fewer voters cast all their 3 votes, even in the second round, some winners do technically win with a majority, but only a plurality in fact (similar to differences between turnout levels in two-round voting).

Block voting and approval block voting
A 3-member district with 10,000 voters features 12 candidates. Block voting allows each voter to cast only one vote for a single candidate.

 * Under unlimited block approval voting, voters can select any number of candidates.
 * Under limited block approval voting, voters can cast up to six votes, twice the number of winners.
 * Under plurality block voting, voters can cast up to three votes, though it's not mandatory.
 * Under limited (block) voting, voters can cast a maximum of two votes.
 * Under the single non-transferable vote (which is not block voting), voters can cast only one vote.

Party A has an approximate 35% electorate support, notably due to one well-received candidate. Party B holds around 25% backing, comprising two popular candidates. The remaining voters primarily favor independent candidates, but tend to lean towards Party B if pressed to choose between the two main parties. All voters engage in sincere voting with no tactical influence.

 * Under the single non-transferable vote, the three most popular candidates based on voters' initial preferences are elected, irrespective of party affiliation.
 * In limited voting, it is probable that the party with a plurality secures two seats (reflecting the number of votes each voter has), while the minority party gains the remaining seats.
 * Plurality block voting generally results in the party with the most support winning all available seats.
 * Limited block approval voting allows independent candidates' supporters to use their additional votes to assist candidates other than their top three choices, possibly leading to a reversal of the outcome observed in plurality block voting.
 * Block approval voting permits any popular party-affiliated or independent candidates to be elected, but it's plausible that nearly half of the population might not have a representative elected.

title: Block voting