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Pulpit

A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin pulpitum (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accessed by steps, with sides coming to about waist height. From the late medieval period onwards, pulpits have often had a canopy known as the sounding board, tester or abat-voix above and sometimes also behind the speaker, normally in wood. Though sometimes highly decorated, this is not purely decorative, but can have a useful acoustic effect in projecting the preacher's voice to the congregation below, especially prior to the invention of modern audio equipment. Most pulpits have one or more book-stands for the preacher to rest his bible, notes or texts upon.

The pulpit is generally reserved for clergy. This is mandated in the regulations of the Catholic Church, and several others (though not always strictly observed). Even in Welsh Nonconformism, this was felt appropriate, and in some chapels a second pulpit was built opposite the main one for lay exhortations, testimonies and other speeches. Many churches have a second, smaller stand called the lectern located in the Epistle side, which can be used by lay persons, and is often used for other Scripture lessons and ordinary announcements. The traditional Catholic location of the pulpit to the left side of the chancel or nave has been generally retained by Lutherans and many Anglicans, while in Presbyterian and Baptist churches the pulpit is located in the centre behind the communion table. Many modern Roman Catholic churches have an ambo that functions as both a pulpit and lectern.

Equivalent platforms for speakers are the bema (bima, bimah) of ancient Greece and Jewish synagogues, and the minbar of Islamic mosques. From the pulpit is often used synecdochically for something which is said with official church authority.

Location
In many Reformed and Evangelical Protestant denominations, the pulpit is at the centre of the front of the church, while in the Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions the pulpit is placed to one side and the altar or communion table is in the centre. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Often, the one on the left (as viewed by the congregation) is called the pulpit. Since the Gospel lesson is often read from the pulpit, the pulpit side of the church is sometimes called the gospel side.

In both Catholic and Protestant churches the pulpit may be located closer to the main congregation in the nave, either on the nave side of the crossing, or at the side of the nave some way down. This is especially the case in large churches, to ensure the preacher can be heard by all the congregation. Fixed seating for the congregation came relatively late in the history of church architecture, so the preacher being behind some of the congregation was less of an issue than later. Fixed seating facing forward in the nave and modern electric amplification has tended to reduce the use of pulpits in the middle of the nave. Outdoor pulpits, usually attached to the exterior of the church, or at a preaching cross, are also found in several denominations. If attached to the outside wall of a church, these may be entered from a doorway in the wall, or by steps outside.

The other speaker's stand, usually on the right (as viewed by the congregation), is known as the lectern. The word lectern comes from the Latin word "lectus" past participle of legere, meaning "to read", because the lectern primarily functions as a reading stand. It is typically used by lay people to read the scripture lessons (except for the Gospel lesson), to lead the congregation in prayer, and to make announcements. Because the epistle lesson is usually read from the lectern, the lectern side of the church is sometimes called the epistle side. In other churches, the lectern, from which the Epistle is read, is located to the congregation's left and the pulpit, from which the sermon is delivered, is located on the right (the Gospel being read from either the centre of the chancel or in front of the altar).

Though unusual, movable pulpits with wheels were also found in English churches. They were either wheeled into place for each service where they would be used or, as at the hospital church in Shrewsbury, rotated to different positions in the church quarterly in the year, to allow all parts of the congregation a chance to have the best sound. A portable outside pulpit of wood and canvas was used by John Wesley, and a 19th-century Anglican vicar devised a folding iron pulpit for using outdoors.

Origins
The Ancient Greek bema (βῆμα) means both 'platform' and 'step', and was used for a variety of secular raised speaking platforms in ancient Greece and Rome, and from those times to today for the central raised platform in Jewish synagogues. Modern synagogue bimahs are often similar in form to centrally placed pulpits in Evangelical churches.

The use of a bema carried over from Judaism into early Christian church architecture. It was originally a raised platform, often large, with a lectern and seats for the clergy, from which lessons from the Scriptures were read and the sermon was delivered. In Western Christianity the bema developed over time into the sanctuary and chancel (or presbytery).

The next development was the ambo, from a Greek word meaning an elevation. This was originally a raised platform from which the Epistle and Gospel would be read, and was an option to be used as a preacher's platform for homilies, though there were others. Saint John Chrysostom (died 407) is recorded as preaching from the ambo, but this was probably uncommon at this date. In cathedrals early bishops seem often to have preached from their chair in the apse, echoing the position of magistrates in the secular basilicas whose general form most large early churches adopted. Often there were two ambos, one to each side, one used more as a platform on which the choir sang; sometimes the gospel was read, chanted or sung from one side and the epistle from the other. The location of the ambo within the church varied, with about the same range of places as modern pulpits. In ancient Syrian churches it was often placed in the centre of the nave (on both axes). Gradually the ambo came to resemble the modern pulpit in both form and function, though early examples in large churches are often large enough to accommodate several people. The steps up to the pulpit almost invariably approach it from the side or behind, and are often curved. The typical design of the Islamic minbar, where a straight flight of steps leads to the front of the pulpit, is very different.

The Ambon of Henry II, an Imperial gift of 1014 to Aachen Cathedral, was originally installed centrally, but later moved to the side. It is richly decorated with sheets of gold, ivory, and gems, probably emulating Justinian's lost pulpit of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, of which a description by Paul the Silentiary survives. In churches where there is only one speaker's stand at the front of the church, it serves the functions of both lectern and pulpit and may be called the ambo, which is still the official Catholic term for the place the gospel is read from.

Large raised pulpits, elaborately carved with relief panels, were important monuments in the Italian Duecento, with the best known including those of the Pisa Baptistery (dated 1260) and Siena Cathedral Pulpit by Nicola Pisano and the Pulpit of Sant' Andrea, Pistoia, by his son Giovanni Pisano, 1297-1301.

Catholicism

Preaching had always been important in Catholicism, but received a particular revival in the late Middle Ages with the two preaching orders of friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans, the former tending to an emotional and populist style and the latter more intellectual. Some preaching was done outdoors by touring preachers, but the orders, especially in Italy, soon began constructing large churches designed to hold congregations who came to hear star preachers. These featured large raised pulpits, typically some way down the nave, and sometimes in pairs on either side of the nave. These were both used for various purposes, whether different readings in services, accommodating singers or musicians at times, or for disputations between two speakers across the nave. Accordingly, they often have a larger platform area than later pulpits. For example, the St. Antony's Church, Ollur, pulpit is one of the tallest and largest relief sculptured wooden pulpit in India. In Western Catholic Churches, the stand used for readings and homilies is formally called the ambo. Despite its name, this structure usually more closely resembles a lectern than the ambon of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The readings are typically read from an ambo in the sanctuary, and depending on the arrangement of the church, the homily may be delivered from a raised pulpit where there is one. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) specifies:

Protestantism
It is central to Protestant belief that the clergy should preach sermons on Biblical passages to the congregation. To achieve this, some existing churches were adapted to place the clergyman in a position audible to all, which in larger churches usually places this in a visible location, and raised up. This had long been the practice in larger Catholic churches and many smaller ones, but was now made universal. In smaller churches the pulpit remained in the traditional east end of the church, where altars were usually located, but was often raised higher than before.

In Protestant churches, the pulpit is considered one of the most important pieces of furniture in the church. In certain Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist churches designed with a pulpit-centered chancel, the pulpit is located centrally in relation to the congregation and raised, with the communion table being in front of it. In such churches it may be where the minister stands for most of the service. In the eighteenth century, double-decker and triple-decker pulpits were often introduced in English-speaking countries. The three levels of lecterns were intended to show the relative importance of the readings delivered there. The bottom tier was for the parish clerk, the middle was the reading desk for the minister, and the top tier was reserved for the delivery of the sermon. A good example of a three-decker pulpit is found in St Andrew's Church, Slaidburn, Lancashire. America's only surviving three-decker pulpit on the centerline of the church is at Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island. In Lutheran churches, as well as many Anglican and Methodist churches designed with a divided chancel, the pulpit is located on the Gospel side of the chancel (from which the Gospel is read and the sermon is delivered) while a lectern is located on the Epistle side of the sanctuary, with the latter being used by readers to vocalize the other Scripture lessons.

In many Evangelical Christian churches, the pulpit stands squarely in the centre of the platform, and is generally the largest piece of church furniture. This is to symbolise the proclamation of the Word of God as the central focus of the weekly service of worship. In more contemporary evangelical churches, the pulpit may be much smaller, if used at all, and may be carried out after the end of the song service. Often placed in the centre of the platform as well, the item of furniture may be used by both lay and ordained members, in effect doubling as a lectern.

In the 1600s and 1700s, particularly in Lutheran churches in Germany and Scandinavia, the pulpit altar became a popular design in churches, combining the pulpit and the altar.

Presbyterian Protestant churches
Traditional Presbyterian Churches in Scotland and elsewhere often had a central pulpit, that is, the pulpit was located in the centre of the chancel in the position where most churches have the communion table or altar. The table could be situated in front of the pulpit or to the side, and sometimes was not in the chancel area at all.

This declares the Bible to be the foundation of the faith. Furthermore, the "Centrality of the Word" implies that the reading and preaching of the Bible is the centrepiece of a service of worship, and thus takes priority over the sacraments. The central pulpit is intended to give visual representation of this idea.

Since the late 19th century, the fashion in the Church of Scotland and most other Presbyterian denominations has been for a return to the pre-Reformation layout. Thus many buildings which once had a central pulpit now have a pulpit to the side. See for example Skene Parish Church or Old West Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

This Presbyterian tradition is historically distinct from the tradition of the ambon in Eastern Christianity.

Eastern Christianity
In modern Eastern Christianity the area directly in front of the Beautiful Gates of the iconostasis from which the Gospel is typically read is called the ambon, and the entire low elevation above the level of the nave in front of the iconostasis is called the soleas. In larger churches, the ambo might be distinguished by three curved steps by which one may reach it from the nave. In addition many Orthodox churches, especially Greek-speaking churches, have pulpits for preaching from, which are similar to those in Western Christianity.

In Eastern Orthodox Church cathedrals there is usually a low platform in the center of the nave called the episcopal ambo where the bishop is vested prior to the Divine Liturgy and where he is enthroned until the Little Entrance. If the bishop is serving in a simple parish church, an episcopal ambo is set temporarily in place. There are huge intricately carved wooden pulpits, some of the biggest in India and the world, in the Syrian churches of Kerala, India

In addition to the ambo, many major churches in Greece and Cyprus also have a raised pulpit on the left side of the nave, usually attached to a column and raised several feet high. This is reached by a narrow flight of stairs. It is considered an architectural element that is symmetrical to the bishop's throne, which is located in an equivalent position on the right. Pulpit and throne are usually similar in construction, usually made of either sculpted stone or sculpted wood. This pulpit was used mostly for sermons and in order to improve audibility, before the advent of modern public address systems in churches. Nowadays it is used rarely. Tradition dictates that it be used for the reading of the "12 Passion Gospels" during the Matins of Holy Friday, served late in the evening of Maundy Thursday. This is done to signify that the Passion of Christ is being "broadcast" for all to know. In the same spirit, a phonetic transcription of the relevant Gospel passages is provided in several common languages (e.g. English, French, Russian, Arabic etc.), so that they may be read from this pulpit at the same time.

Decorations

The exterior of a wood or stone pulpit may be decorated, especially with carved reliefs, and in the centuries after the Protestant Reformation these were sometimes, especially in Lutheran churches, one of the few areas of the church left with figurative decoration such as scenes from the Life of Christ. Pulpit reliefs were especially important at the start of the Italian Renaissance, including those from the Pisa Baptistry (1260) and Siena Cathedral Pulpit (1265–68) by Nicola Pisano, the Pulpit of Sant' Andrea, Pistoia by Giovanni Pisano (1301), and those by Donatello

Elements of decoration shared between Catholic and Protestant denominations are the flowers that may be placed in front of the pulpit, and the antependium or "pulpit fall", a piece of cloth that covers the top of the book-stand in the pulpit and hangs down a short way at the front. It is often of a rich material and decorated with Christian symbols. Flags and banners used by church-related organizations may also stand on the floor around the pulpit.

In the Reformed tradition, though avoiding figurative art, pulpits were increasingly important as a focus for the church, with the sanctuary now comparatively bare and de-emphasized, and were often larger and more elaborately decorated than in medieval churches.

The bookstand of the pulpit (usually in medieval churches) or lectern (common in Anglican churches) may be formed in the shape of an eagle. The eagle symbolizes the gospels, and shows where these were read from at the time the eagle was placed there. When pulpits like those by the Pisani with eagles in stone on them were built the gospel reading was done from the pulpit.

The spread of the sounding board offered artists decorating Catholic Baroque churches a space for spectacular features of various types on top of it. An artistic conceit largely confined to the 18th-century Rococo churches of South Germany was to shape the body of the pulpit as a ship, to utilize the old metaphor of the church as a ship. This allowed for fantastical plaster or wood decoration of sails and rigging manned by angels above, and apostles hauling in nets below.

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Aleutian Range

The Aleutian Range is a major mountain range located in southwest Alaska. It extends from Chakachamna Lake (80 miles/130 km southwest of Anchorage) to Unimak Island, which is at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. It includes all of the mountains of the Peninsula. The Aleutian Range is special because of its large number of active volcanoes, which are also part of the larger Aleutian Arc. The mainland part of the range is about 600 miles (1000 km) long. The Aleutian Islands are (geologically) a partially submerged western extension of the range that stretches for another 1,600 km (1000 mi). However the official designation "Aleutian Range" includes only the mainland peaks and the peaks on Unimak Island. The range is almost entirely roadless wilderness. Katmai National Park and Preserve, a large national park within the range, must be reached by boat or plane.

The core Aleutian Range can be divided into three mountain groups. Listed from southwest to northeast, they are:

 * Mountains of the Alaska Peninsula and Unimak Island
 * Chigmit Mountains
 * Neacola Mountains

See Aleutian Islands for the continuation of the range to the west of Unimak Island. Just to the north of the Aleutian Range are the Tordrillo Mountains, the southeasternmost extent of the Alaska Range.

Selected mountains:
 * Mount Redoubt (3,108 m), Chigmit Mountains
 * Iliamna Volcano (3,054 m), Chigmit Mountains
 * Mount Neacola, (2,873 m), Neacola Mountains
 * Mount Shishaldin (2,857 m), Unimak Island
 * Mount Pavlof (2,715 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Mount Veniaminof (2,508 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Isanotski Peaks (2,446 m), Unimak Island
 * Mount Denison (2,318 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Mount Griggs, (2,317+ m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Mount Douglas (2,153 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Mount Chiginagak (2,134 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Double Peak (2,078 m), Chigmit Mountains
 * Mount Katmai (2,047 m), Alaska Peninsula
 * Pogromni Volcano (2,002 m), Unimak Island

Volcanic eruptions
Two volcanoes erupted during the summer of 2008 on the eastern Aleutian Islands. On July 12, 2008, Mount Okmok erupted, and it continued to erupt for a month. A giant, rapidly moving ash and gas cloud shot up to a height of 15,240 m as a result of this eruption.

Mount Kasatochi was home to the other eruption, which occurred on August 7 and 8. This eruption also sent up a gas cloud about 15,000 high. Together, these two power volcanic eruptions deposited emissions of trace gases an aerosols into the atmosphere. These emissions formed a sulfate aerosol layer that totaled a transfer of 1.6 Tg of SO2 into the stratosphere and disturbed flights over this area for a short period following the eruptions.

Earthquakes
The 7.9 Mw Aleutian Islands earthquake occurred in June 2014 at an intermediate depth of 107 km. The quake was caused by oblique normal faulting along the Aleutian Trench, a convergent boundary where the Pacific plate is subducting underneath the North American plate at around 59 mm/year.

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

title: Aleutian Range


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Jill Dando

Jill Wendy Dando (9 November 1961 – 26 April 1999) was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader. She spent most of her career at the BBC and was the corporation's Personality of the Year in 1997. At the time of her death, her television work included co-presenting the BBC One programme Crimewatch with Nick Ross.

On the morning of 26 April 1999, Dando was shot dead outside her home in Fulham, south-west London, prompting the biggest murder inquiry conducted by the Metropolitan Police and the country's largest criminal investigation since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. A local man, Barry George, was convicted and imprisoned for the murder, but after eight years in prison he was acquitted following an appeal and retrial. No other suspect has been charged with Dando's murder and the case remains unsolved.

Early life
Jill Wendy Dando was born at Ashcombe House Maternity Home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. She was the daughter of Jack Dando (February 1918 – February 2009 ) and Winifred Mary Jean Hockey (August 1928 – January 1986), who died of leukaemia aged 57. Her only sibling, brother Nigel (born 1952), worked as a journalist for BBC Radio Bristol before retiring in 2017, having previously worked as a journalist in local newspapers since the 1970s. Dando was raised as a Baptist and remained a devout follower. When she was three years old, it was discovered that she had a hole in her heart and a blocked pulmonary artery. She had heart surgery on 12 January 1965.

Dando was educated at Worle Infant School, Greenwood Junior School, Worle Community School, and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre, where she was head girl, and completed her A-levels. She then went on to study Journalism at the South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education.

Dando was a member of Weston-super-Mare Amateur Dramatic Society and Exeter Little Theatre Company, with whom she appeared in plays at the Barnfield Theatre. She was a volunteer at Sunshine Hospital Radio in Weston-super-Mare in 1979.

Career
Dando's first job was as a trainee reporter for the local weekly newspaper, the Weston Mercury, where her father and brother worked. After five years as a print journalist, she started to work for the BBC, becoming a newsreader for BBC Radio Devon in 1985. That year, she transferred to BBC South West, where she presented a regional news magazine programme, Spotlight South West. In 1987, she worked for Television South West, then BBC Spotlight in Plymouth. In early 1988, Dando moved from regional to national television in London to present BBC television news, specifically the short on-the-hour bulletins that aired on both BBC1 and BBC2 from 1986 until the mid-1990s.

Dando presented the BBC television programmes Breakfast Time, Breakfast News, the BBC One O'Clock News, the Six O'Clock News, the travel programme Holiday, the crime appeal series Crimewatch (from 1995 until her death) and occasionally Songs of Praise. In 1994, she moved to Fulham. On 25 April 1999, Dando presented the first episode of Antiques Inspectors. She was scheduled to present the Six O'Clock News on the evening of the following day. She was featured on the cover of that week's Radio Times magazine (from 24 to 30 April). Dando was also booked to host the British Academy Television Awards 1999, alongside Michael Parkinson, at Grosvenor House Hotel on 9 May. On 5 September, BBC One resumed airing of Antiques Inspectors, the final series to be recorded by Dando. The series had made its debut on 25 April, with filming of the final episode completed two days before that. The programme was cancelled following her death, but it was decided later in the year that it should be aired as a tribute to Dando. The final episode aired on 24 October.

At the time of her death, Dando was among those with the highest profile of the BBC's on-screen staff, and had been the 1997 BBC Personality of the Year. Crimewatch reconstructed her murder in an attempt to aid the police in the search for her killer. After Barry George was charged with the murder but acquitted, Crimewatch made no further appeals for information concerning the case.

Personal life
From 1989 to 1996, Dando engaged in a relationship with BBC executive Bob Wheaton. She then had a brief relationship with national park warden Simon Basil. In December 1997, Dando met gynaecologist Alan Farthing, later Queen Elizabeth II's personal physician, on a blind date set up by a mutual friend. Farthing was separated from his wife at the time. A couple of months after Farthing's divorce was finalised, the couple announced that they were engaged on 31 January 1999. Their wedding was set to take place on 25 September.

Murder
On the morning of 26 April 1999, 37-year-old Dando left Farthing's home in Chiswick. She returned alone, by car, to the house she owned at 29 Gowan Avenue, Fulham. She had lived in the house, but by April 1999 was in the process of selling it and did not visit it frequently. The purpose of her visit was to collect contract documents which had been faxed to her there by her agent Jon Roseman. As Dando reached her front door at about 11:32 BST, she was shot once in the head. Her body was discovered about fourteen minutes later by neighbour Helen Doble. Police were called at 11:47. Dando was taken to the nearby Charing Cross Hospital where she was declared dead on arrival at 13:03.

"As Dando was about to put her keys in the lock to open the front door of her home in Fulham, she was grabbed from behind. With his right arm, the assailant held her and forced her to the ground, so that her face was almost touching the tiled step of the porch. Then, with his left hand, he fired a single shot at her left temple, killing her instantly. The bullet entered her head just above her ear, parallel to the ground, and came out the right side of her head."

Forensic study indicated that Dando had been shot by a bullet from a 9mm Short calibre semi-automatic pistol, with the gun pressed against her head at the moment of the shot. The cartridge appeared to have been subject to workshop modification, possibly to reduce its charge. Richard Hughes, her next-door neighbour, heard a scream from Dando ("I thought it was someone surprising somebody") but heard no gunshot. Hughes looked out of his front window and, while not realising what had happened, made the only certain sighting of the killer — a six-foot-tall (183 cm) white man aged around 40, walking away from Dando's house.

Investigation
After the murder, there was intense media coverage. An investigation by the Metropolitan Police, named Operation Oxborough, proved fruitless for over a year. Dando's status as a well-known public figure had brought her into contact with thousands of people, and she was known to millions. There was huge speculation regarding the motive for her murder.

Within six months, the Murder Investigation Team had spoken to more than 2,500 people and taken more than 1,000 statements. With little progress after a year, the police concentrated their attention on Barry George, who lived about half a mile from Dando's house. He had a history of stalking women, sexual offences and other antisocial and attention seeking behaviour. George was put under surveillance, arrested on 25 May 2000 and charged with Dando's murder on 28 May.

George was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and on 2 July 2001 was sentenced to life imprisonment. Concern about this conviction was widespread on the basis that the case against George appeared thin. Two appeals were unsuccessful, but after discredited forensic evidence was excluded from the prosecution's case, George's third appeal succeeded in November 2007. The original conviction was quashed and a second trial lasting eight weeks ended in George's acquittal on 1 August 2008.

After George's acquittal, some newspapers published articles which appeared to suggest that he was guilty of the Dando murder and other offences against women. In December 2009, George accepted substantial damages from News Group Newspapers over articles in The Sun and the News of the World, following a libel action in the High Court.

Lines of inquiry
Lines of inquiry explored in the police investigation included:
 * Theories that a jealous ex-boyfriend or an unknown lover had killed Dando. This was quickly ruled out by the detectives who interviewed all Dando's friends and acquaintances and checked her phone calls.
 * A belief that somebody had hired an assassin to murder Dando as revenge for their being convicted as a result of evidence garnered by Crimewatch viewers. After exhaustive inquiries this was also ruled out by detectives.
 * Various theories relating to Bosnian-Serb or Yugoslav groups in retaliation for NATO actions against media outlets and her appeals for aid during the Yugoslav Wars.
 * The possibility that a deranged fan may have killed Dando after she had rejected his approaches. Dando's brother, Nigel, informed detectives that she had become concerned by “some guy pestering her” in the few days before her death, but this was ruled out by detectives.
 * A case of mistaken identity. This was judged unlikely, given that the killing took place on the doorstep of Dando's own home.
 * Following the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal a claim was made that Dando had investigated a paedophile ring at the BBC during the mid-1990s and had handed a dossier containing her findings to BBC management, purportedly prompting a revenge attack. The BBC said it had seen no evidence to support the claim.
 * Actions taken by a professional rival or business partner also had to be considered. Her agent Jon Roseman stated that he had been interviewed as a suspect by police.

The original police investigation had explored the possibility of a contract killing, but since Dando was living with her fiancé and was only rarely visiting her Fulham residence, it was considered unlikely that a professional assassin would have been sufficiently well informed about Dando's movements to have known at what time she was going to be there. CCTV evidence of Dando's last journey (mainly security video recordings from a shopping centre in Hammersmith, which she visited on her way to Fulham) did not show any sign of her being followed.

Initial investigations focused on Dando's personal circle since only a few people knew of her intention to visit her Gowan Avenue house on the day. Her agent Jon Roseman was an initial suspect since he knew Dando was going there to collect faxes he had sent her. But Roseman convinced detectives of his innocence. Bob Wheaton also attracted attention since he was a jilted lover and Dando had transferred £35,000 to him towards the end of their relationship. Wheaton stated that this transfer was a gift and not a loan. He also convinced detectives of his innocence.

On the night of her death, Dando's BBC colleague Nick Ross said on Newsnight that retaliatory attacks by criminals against police, lawyers and judges were almost unknown in the UK. Forensic examination of the cartridge case and bullet recovered from the scene of the attack suggested that the weapon used had been the result of a workshop conversion of a replica or decommissioned gun. It was argued that a professional assassin would not use such a poor quality weapon. The police therefore soon began to favour the idea that the killing had been opportunistically carried out by a crazed individual. This assumed profile of the perpetrator led to the focus on George.

Cold case reviews by the police after 2008 concluded that Dando was killed by a professional assassin in a "hard contact execution". Pressing the gun against her head would have acted as a suppressor — muffling the sound of the shot and preventing the killer from being splattered with blood.

Yugoslav connection
In early 1999, the UK and NATO were involved in the Kosovo War, opposing Serbia. Immediately after the Dando killing, a number of telephone calls were made to the BBC and other media outlets claiming responsibility for the killing on behalf of Serb groups. These calls stated that the murder was revenge for the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia, and threatened further killings. These calls were not judged wholly credible and may have been hoaxes. Nevertheless, at George's first trial, his defence barrister, Michael Mansfield, proposed that the Serbian warlord Arkan had ordered Dando's assassination in retaliation for the NATO bombing of the RTS headquarters. Mansfield suggested that Dando's earlier presentation of an appeal for aid for Kosovar Albanian refugees may have attracted the attention of Bosnian-Serb hardliners. Dando's appeal for aid for the Kosovar Albanian refugees had been shown on television three weeks before her murder.

In 2019, it was reported that the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) had given an intelligence report to the Dando murder enquiry claiming that the murder was in retaliation for the RTS bombing and Arkan had ordered the killing. The report highlighted a possible connection between the bullet used to kill Dando and bullets used in assassinations in Germany, namely handmade markings found on them. An opposition journalist, Slavko Ćuruvija, was assassinated outside his home in Belgrade just a few days before Dando's murder and the method used in both cases was identical. In 2019, four men of the Serbian Secret Service were convicted of this murder. However, the verdicts were reversed on appeal in 2024, which led to a widely criticized acquittal of the four. In 2002, journalist Bob Woffinden had advanced the view that a Yugoslav group was behind the Dando killing and, in various newspaper articles, contested all the grounds on which the police had dismissed this possibility.

Legacy
Dando's funeral took place on 21 May 1999 at Clarence Park Baptist Church in Weston-super-Mare. She was buried next to her mother in the town's Ebdon Road Cemetery. Her father inherited all of her estate, valued at £607,000 after debts and taxes, because she died intestate.

Dando's co-presenter Nick Ross proposed the formation of an academic institute in her name and, together with her fiancé Alan Farthing, raised almost £1.5 million. The Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science was founded at University College London on 26 April 2001, the second anniversary of her murder.

A memorial garden designed and realised by the BBC Television Ground Force team in Dando's memory, using plants and colours that were special to her, is located within Grove Park, Weston-super-Mare, and was opened on 2 August 2001. The BBC set up a bursary award in Dando's memory, which enables one student each year to study broadcast journalism at University College Falmouth. Sophie Long, who was then a postgraduate who had grown up in Weston-super-Mare and is now a presenter on BBC News, gained the first bursary award in 2000.

In 2007, Weston College opened a new university campus on the site of the former Broadoak Sixth Form Centre where Dando studied. The sixth-form building has been dedicated to her and named the Jill Dando Centre.

The life, death and subsequent police investigation of Jill Dando was the subject of a true crime Netflix miniseries titled Who Killed Jill Dando?, released in 2023 and running for a total of three 44-minute-long episodes. The miniseries received mixed reviews from critics, citing pacing issues, although the documentary's usage of vintage archive footage from Dando's career and early childhood were also noted as a point of interest. Critic Lucy Mangan drew attention to the details shared by Dando's brother, Nigel, of the two siblings "eating sand-blown lettuce sandwiches" on the beach together and how this added to the thoroughness of the story presented. The miniseries also interviewed Barry George, who was 63 and living with his sister in Ireland at the time of filming. George stated, "I live in Ireland now. It's quiet here. You're treated like a scab in London, but you're not here."

title: Jill Dando


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Visual Pinball

Visual Pinball ("VP") is a freeware and source available video game engine for pinball tables and similar games such as pachinko machines. It includes a table editor as well as the simulator itself, and runs on Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Visual PinMAME, an emulator for ROM images from real pinball machines.

A huge variety of user-created VP tables are available on the internet. Players can choose between faithful recreations of existing pinball machines, with or without ROM emulation, and original pinball simulations based on licensed or completely original themes. VP's scripting capabilities can also be used to create pinball-like games such as pitch-and-bat baseball, pinball bingo, bowling, cue sports, and pachinko.

VP can be used with common desktop PCs and monitors, but also supports "virtual pinball" cabinets, with various monitors and TVs used to display the playfield and backbox, similar to a real pinball machine. 3D televisions are supported; and recent versions support touch controls for playing on tablet computers and smartphones.

In February 2010, VP's source code was released under a license allowing free non-commercial use.

Design
Every Visual Pinball table includes two main parts: the "physical" playfield design, and the script that determines table gameplay, establishing the "wiring" of the emulation (through Visual PinMAME) to the table components such as lamps, switches and flippers. The editor uses Microsoft VBScript for user programming. VP itself is written in C++ with the Active Template Library for making ActiveX controls. VP is based on DirectX, so it can run on any Windows version from Windows 98 on, but most recent VP versions require at least Windows XP due to modern Microsoft compilers abandoning older versions of the OS.

History
Visual Pinball was released to the public on December 19, 2000 by programmer Randy Davis.

In 2005, David R. Foley purchased rights from Davis for modification of the suite for a full-sized pinball cabinet based on the Visual Pinball software. Chicago Gaming purchased rights for licensed tables from Williams Electronics. The Visual PinMAME team and the Visual Pinball development community also joined in the effort to produce improvements to the suite product and a few tables. This project, known as UltraPin, was acquired by Global VR following the acquisition of certain assets UltraCade, and was discontinued in 2008.

In 2008, NanoTech Entertainment acquired VP rights from Davis to use and distribute the engine with its Pinball Wizard PC Controller. They released version 9 of the engine back to the community, with many updates developed between 2005–2008. Version 9 includes major improvements, but incomplete backward compatibility, so some older tables still need VP version 8 to run properly.

In 2010, the source code of Visual Pinball 9.0.7 was released under a license allowing free non-commercial use, similar to the original MAME license. Davis and NanoTech are no longer involved in development as of (at least) version 9.0.8. Since then, development has been done by various open-source contributors.

Visual Pinball X ("VPX") was released on December 24, 2015, again breaking backward compatibility with version 9; previously created tables can be loaded with it, but not played without changes. VPX brings significant improvements to graphics and the program's physics engine.

Current efforts include the re-integration of the VPVR fork into Visual Pinball 10.8.0, which adds support for dynamic virtual camera movement, including Virtual reality headsets, and adding OpenGL as an alternative graphics API option. Due to the latter, Visual Pinball 10.8.1 added support for operating systems other than Windows, including macOS, iOS, tvOS, Linux (incl. the Batocera distribution and the Raspberry Pi platform) and Android. These versions for now omit (most of) the user interface for creating tables, and focus on simulating/playing existing tables.

Visual PinMAME
The simulation of most modern pinball machines (especially those made after 1992, using large portions of DMD animations and digital sound samples) requires the Visual PinMAME program (sometimes referred to as VPinMAME or VPM) to emulate physical machines as closely as possible. VPM increases Visual Pinball's system requirements and, like other emulators, uses image files of actual ROMs from physical pinball machines, executing them as simulations of the embedded CPUs, sound chips and displays from the original machines.

VPM is a program (a COM class) designed to work in combination with Visual Pinball (or nowadays, any other program that can use the COM class, e.g. Unit3D Pinball ) to allow 3D renderings of actual pinball table designs. It is responsible for emulating CPUs and the connected ROMs used in modern pinball tables, as opposed to tables with electro-mechanical mechanisms that contain no ROMs or advanced ICs. VPM displays the LEDs or DMD of the machines in a separate window, and emulates integrated sound chips. To work properly with a rendered table, it requires that specific table's ROM images.

VPM was written by a programming team including Steve Ellenoff, Tom Haukap, Martin Adrian and Gerrit Volkenborn, and was released on March 30, 2001 with version 0.99 beta. The underlying PinMAME core—which drives all emulation components, and is responsible for emulating LED displays, the DMD and playback of the emulated sound and music—was already started in April 1999. VPM is named after the original MAME program for emulating arcade games and is based on some parts of the MAME core .7X. The VPM project started as WPCMAMECOM (and its underlying core as WPCMAME, based on the WPC and MAME acronyms). VPM is written in the C++ programming language, whereas PinMAME is still based on C.

On August 1, 2008, the full source code of PinMAME 2.0 was made available to the public. Since then, development continues with the help of open-source contributors.

In 2017, the effort of making the PinMAME core interact with other programs through other APIs than the Windows exclusive COM was started (initially called PinMAMEdll). Over the years, this was further extended to result in a platform-independent library (libPinMAME) initially released in January 2021, that can be employed also on macOS, iOS, tvOS, Linux and Android, and in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

title: Visual Pinball


text:
Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford

Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, KG (16 January 1362 – 22 November 1392) was a favourite and court companion of King Richard II of England. He was the ninth Earl of Oxford and the first Duke of Ireland and the only Marquess of Dublin. He was also the first person to be created a Marquess.

Early life
Robert de Vere was the only son of Thomas de Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford and Maud de Ufford. He succeeded his father as earl in 1371, and was created Marquess of Dublin in 1385. The next year he was created Duke of Ireland. He was thus the first marquess, and only the second non-princely duke (after Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster in 1337), in England. King Richard's close friendship with de Vere was disagreeable to the political establishment. This displeasure was exacerbated by the earl's elevation to the new title of Duke of Ireland in 1386. His relationship with King Richard was very close and rumoured by Thomas Walsingham to be homosexual.

Robert, Duke of Ireland, was married to Philippa de Coucy, the King's first cousin (her mother, Isabella, was the sister of the King's father, Edward, the Black Prince and the eldest daughter of Edward III). Robert had an affair with Agnes de Launcekrona, a lady-in-waiting of Richard's queen, Anne of Bohemia. In 1387, the couple were separated and eventually divorced; Robert took Launcekrona as his second wife.

Downfall
Since Robert was hugely unpopular with the other nobles and magnates, his close relationship with King Richard was one of the catalysts for the emergence of an organised opposition to Richard's rule in the form of the Lords Appellant.

In 1387, Robert led Richard's forces to defeat at the Battle of Radcot Bridge outside Oxford, against the forces of the Lords Appellant. He fled the field and his forces were left leaderless and compelled into ignominious surrender. He travelled abroad into exile after Radcot Bridge.

He was attainted and sentenced to death in absentia by the Merciless Parliament of 1388, which also made him forfeit his titles and lands. People associated with him were also affected, for the parliament dismissed his Irish Administration, composed of John Stanley, his deputy, who had been serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond, the governor, Bishop Alexander de Balscot of Meath, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Sir Robert Crull, Lord High Treasurer of Ireland.

Death
He died in or near Louvain in 1392 of injuries sustained during a boar hunt. Three years later, on the anniversary of his death, 22 November 1395, Richard II had his embalmed body brought back to England for burial. It was recorded by the chronicler Thomas Walsingham that many magnates did not attend the re-burial ceremony because they 'had not yet digested their hatred' of him. The king had the coffin opened to kiss his lost friend's hand and to gaze on his face one last time.

Succession
After Ireland's death, his uncle Sir Aubrey de Vere, was restored to the family titles and estates, becoming 10th Earl of Oxford. The Marquessate of Dublin became extinct.

title: Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford


text:
Chugach Mountains

The Chugach Mountains of southern Alaska are the northernmost of the several mountain ranges that make up the Pacific Coast Ranges of the western edge of North America. The range is about 250 mi long and 60 mi wide, and extends from the Knik and Turnagain Arms of the Cook Inlet on the west to Bering Glacier, Tana Glacier, and the Tana River on the east. It is bounded on the north by the Matanuska, Copper, and Chitina rivers. The highest point of the Chugach Mountains is Mount Marcus Baker, at 13094 ft, but with an average elevation of 4006 ft, most of its summits are not especially high. Even so, its position along the Gulf of Alaska ensures more snowfall in the Chugach than anywhere else in the world, an annual average of over 1500 cm (800 in).

The mountains are protected in the Chugach State Park and the Chugach National Forest. Near to Anchorage, they are a popular destination for outdoor activities.

The Richardson Highway, Seward Highway, Portage Glacier Highway, and the Glenn Highway run through the Chugach Mountains. The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel of the Portage Glacier Highway provides railroad and automobile access underneath Maynard Mountain between Portage Lake and the city of Whittier on Prince William Sound.

On Mount Gordon Lyon, at about the 4,000 ft level, is a 300 ft five-pointed star using around 350 light globes. This faces Anchorage to be visible from the city at night. It is illuminated to commemorate Christmas, being lit from Thanksgiving until Christmas Day; and, on 9/11. Maintenance is undertaken by the US Air Force’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, although it was established in around 1960 and formerly maintained by the US Army having been near the former Army (Nike missile Site Summit) in the mountains.

History
The name "Chugach" comes from Chugach Sugpiaq "Cuungaaciiq," Alaska Natives inhabiting the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound on the south coast of Alaska. The Chugach people are an Alutiiq (Pacific Eskimo) people who speak the Chugach dialect of the Alutiiq language. In 1898 United States Army Captain William R. Abercrombie spelled the name "Chugatch" and applied it to the mountains. It is possible that the Koniagmiut (Sugpiat or Alutiit of the Kodiak Archipelago and the Alaska Peninsula) may also have called these northern Sugpiat "Cuungaaciirmiut" in ancient times but it is also possible that this was a neologism during Russian times.

Mountains
The twelve highest peaks in the Chugach Mountains are listed below:

Other important peaks in the Chugach Mountains include:
 * Mount Michelson 8504 ft
 * Bashful Peak 8005 ft
 * Mount Billy Mitchell 6968 ft
 * Mount Palmer 6703 ft
 * Eagle Peak 6909 ft
 * Polar Bear Peak 5656 ft
 * Mount Williwaw 5445 ft
 * The Ramp 5240 ft
 * North Yuyanq’ Ch’ex 5065 ft
 * Ptarmigan Peak 4839 ft
 * Byron Peak 4590 ft
 * Flattop Mountain 3245 ft
 * Bold Peak 7522 ft

title: Chugach Mountains


text: User:Hephaestos/Years

title: User:Hephaestos/Years


text:
Sliced bread

Sliced bread is a loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine and packaged for convenience, as opposed to the consumer cutting it with a knife. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". By 1933, around 80% of bread sold in the US was pre-sliced, leading to the popular idiom "greatest thing since sliced bread".

History
Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, United States, invented the first single loaf bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, who sold their first slices on July 7, 1928. Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", proved to be a success. Battle Creek, Michigan, has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread sliced by Rohwedder's machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek's claim. The bread was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped".

St. Louis baker Gustav Papendick bought Rohwedder's second bread slicer and set out to improve it by devising a way to keep the slices together at least long enough to allow the loaves to be wrapped. After failures trying rubber bands and metal pins, he settled on placing the slices into a cardboard tray. The tray aligned the slices, allowing mechanized wrapping machines to function.

W.E. Long, who promoted the Holsum Bread brand, used by various independent bakers around the country, pioneered and promoted the packaging of sliced bread, beginning in 1928. In 1930, Wonder Bread, first sold in 1925, started marketing sliced bread nationwide.

In the United Kingdom, the first slicing and wrapping machine was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in Tottenham, London, in 1937. By the 1950s around 80% of bread sold in Britain was pre-sliced.

Effects
As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time. They also ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of getting and eating another piece of bread. This increased consumption of bread and, in turn, increased consumption of spreads, such as jam, to put on the bread.

1943 U.S. ban
In 1943, U.S. officials imposed a short-lived ban on sliced bread as a wartime conservation measure. The ban was ordered by Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, who held the position of Food Administrator, and took effect on January 18, 1943. According to The New York Times, officials explained that "the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out." It was also intended to counteract a rise in the price of bread, caused by the Office of Price Administration's authorization of a ten percent increase in flour prices.

In a Sunday radio address on January 24th, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia suggested that bakeries that had their own bread-slicing machines should be allowed to continue to use them, and on January 26th, 1943, a letter appeared in The New York Times from a distraught housewife:

"I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush during and after breakfast. Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that's ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!"

On January 26th, however, John F. Conaboy, the New York Area Supervisor of the Food Distribution Administration, warned bakeries, delicatessens, and other stores that were continuing to slice bread to stop, saying that "to protect the cooperating bakeries against the unfair competition of those who continue to slice their own bread... we are prepared to take stern measures if necessary."

On March 8th, 1943, the ban was rescinded. While public outcry is generally credited for the reversal, Wickard stated that "Our experience with the order, however, leads us to believe that the savings are not as much as we expected, and the War Production Board tells us that sufficient wax paper to wrap sliced bread for four months is in the hands of paper processor and the baking industry."

A theory of the ban was that the bread slicing machines used replaceable hardened steel for the slicers. This type of steel was essential to the war effort. Rather than to try monitoring production and usage of this type of steel, preventing the sale of sliced bread would stifle demand from bakeries for fresh slicers, thereby making the steel more available to the war effort.

Around the world
Due to its convenience, sliced bread is popular in many parts of the world, and the usual thickness varies by company and country:

 * In the United Kingdom, sliced bread is sold as "Extra Thick", "Thick", "Medium" or "Thin", ranging from 16 mm down to 10 mm.
 * In the Republic of Ireland, the most popular bread type is known as "sliced pan", sold in 800- or 400-gram loaves, wrapped in wax paper.
 * In Japan, the same half-loaf of bread is labeled by the number of slices it is cut into (commonly a four or six cut, but also eight or ten), meaning a higher number is a thinner cut. Whole cut loaves are rarely seen. Thin sliced crustless "sandwich bread" is also sold in Japan, since regular four–six slice bread is deemed too thick.
 * In Canada and the United States, Texas toast is a type of packaged bread sliced twice as thick as most sliced bread.
 * In Australia most sliced bread slices are about 18 mm thick, known as "toast" thickness, while 12–13 mm is known as "sandwich". Less common is "café" thickness, about 24 mm.

In popular culture
The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is a common idiom used to praise an invention or development. A writer for The Kansas City Star wrote that "the phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know-how."

In 1933, an advertisement for a bread offering thick and thin slices in the same loaf called it "the first improvement since sliced bread". In 1940, a package of bread consisting of two wrapped sliced half-loaves was advertised as the "greatest convenience since sliced bread".

title: Sliced bread


text:
Steve Lawson (musician)

Steve Lawson (born 1972) is a British bass guitarist. Based in Birmingham, England, Lawson regularly tours in the United States and Europe. He has supported Level 42 and 21st Century Schizoid Band, worked as a third of the political doom metal band #TORYCORE, and performed and recorded as a duo with his wife, singer Lobelia.

Lawson releases his music through his Pillow Mountain label and Bandcamp. His albums have included solo works, duets, and trio with live looping, mingling layers of sounds generated from a bass guitar. As a music journalist he contributes to Bassist, Guitarist magazine, The Independent On Sunday, Third Way magazine, Bass Player, and Bass Guitar magazine.

He teaches bass guitar in Birmingham. In 2015 Bass Guitar magazine published an in depth interview with him.

Equipment
He uses two Modulus 6-string basses, one fretted and one fretless. He uses a Looperlative LP1 for looping and a majority of his effects are provided by the two Lexicon G2 multi-effects processors. Lawson also uses an Elrick Steve Lawson SLC signature bass guitar.

Discography

 * And Nothing but the Bass (2000)
 * Lessons Learned from an Aged Feline, Pt I (2001)
 * Not Dancing for Chicken (2002)
 * Grace and Gratitude (2004)
 * Lessons Learned From an Aged Feline, Pt II (2004)
 * Behind Every Word (2006)
 * Lessons Learned From an Aged Feline, Pt III (2006)
 * Ten Years On: Live in London (2010)
 * 11 Reasons Why 3 is Greater than Everything (2011)
 * Believe in Peace (2012)
 * What the Mind Thinks, the Heart Transmits (2014)
 * Closing In (2015)
 * The Way Home (2015)
 * You Guys! Let's Just Talk About Nail Varnish! (2015)
 * A Crack Where the Light Gets In (2015)
 * Referendum (2016)
 * The Surrender of Time (2016)
 * Hands Music (2016)
 * Towards a Better Question (2017)
 * PS, You Are Brilliant (2017)
 * Small Is Beautiful (2017)

Collaborations

 * Conversations (2003) with Jez Carr
 * For the Love of Open Spaces (2003) with Theo Travis
 * It's Not Going to Happen (2003) with Theo Travis
 * Calamateur v Steve Lawson (2007) with Calamateur
 * Live in Nebraska (2008) with Lobelia
 * Numbers (2008) as Lawson/Dodds/Wood (with Roy Dodds & Patrick Wood)
 * Slow Food (2010) with Trip Wamsley
 * Infralab (2010) with Trip Wamsley
 * Live So Far (2010) with Lobelia (wife)
 * Hidden Windows (2012) with Neil Alexander
 * Invenzioni (2012) with Mike Outram
 * Nothing Can Prepare (2012) with Andy Williamson
 * The Fingerpainting Sessions (2013) with Daniel Berkman
 * Diversion (2014) with Jon Thorne
 * Marinate (2014) with Julie Slick
 * Tangents (2014) with Murphy McCaleb
 * Explore  (2015) with Ruth Goller
 * Live at the Tower of Song as Lawson/Edwards/Godfrey with Andy Edwards & Jen Godfrey
 * Winter Song  (2015) as Lawson/Edwards/Corbett with Andy Edwards & Bryan Corbet
 * Ley Lines  (2015) as Phi Yaan-Zek, Steve Lawson & Andy Edwards
 * Language Is a Music (2016) as Steve Lawson & Michael Manring
 * The Quiet After the Drums (2016) as Phi Yaan-Zek & Steve Lawson
 * Ley Lines II  (2017) as Phi Yaan-Zek, Steve Lawson & Andy Edwards
 * Over Time (2017) as Steve Lawson & Andy Edwards
 * Intersect  (2917) as Steve Lawson & Pete Fraser
 * Illuminated Loops (2017) as Steve Lawson & Poppy Porter

title: Steve Lawson (musician)


text:
Emotivism

Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson.

Emotivism can be considered a form of non-cognitivism or expressivism. It stands in opposition to other forms of non-cognitivism (such as quasi-realism  and universal prescriptivism), as well as to all forms of cognitivism (including both moral realism and ethical subjectivism).

In the 1950s, emotivism appeared in a modified form in the universal prescriptivism of R. M. Hare.

History
Emotivism reached prominence in the early 20th century, but it was born centuries earlier. In 1710, George Berkeley wrote that language in general often serves to inspire feelings as well as communicate ideas. Decades later, David Hume espoused ideas similar to Stevenson's later ones. In his 1751 book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume considered morality not to be related to fact but "determined by sentiment":

"In moral deliberations we must be acquainted beforehand with all the objects, and all their relations to each other; and from a comparison of the whole, fix our choice or approbation. … While we are ignorant whether a man were aggressor or not, how can we determine whether the person who killed him be criminal or innocent? But after every circumstance, every relation is known, the understanding has no further room to operate, nor any object on which it could employ itself. The approbation or blame which then ensues, cannot be the work of the judgement, but of the heart; and is not a speculative proposition or affirmation, but an active feeling or sentiment."

G. E. Moore published his Principia Ethica in 1903 and argued that the attempts of ethical naturalists to translate ethical terms (like good and bad) into non-ethical ones (like pleasing and displeasing) committed the "naturalistic fallacy". Moore was a cognitivist, but his case against ethical naturalism steered other philosophers toward noncognitivism, particularly emotivism.

The emergence of logical positivism and its verifiability criterion of meaning early in the 20th century led some philosophers to conclude that ethical statements, being incapable of empirical verification, were cognitively meaningless. This criterion was fundamental to A.J. Ayer's defense of positivism in Language, Truth and Logic, which contains his statement of emotivism. However, positivism is not essential to emotivism itself, perhaps not even in Ayer's form, and some positivists in the Vienna Circle, which had great influence on Ayer, held non-emotivist views.

R. M. Hare unfolded his ethical theory of universal prescriptivism in 1952's The Language of Morals, intending to defend the importance of rational moral argumentation against the "propaganda" he saw encouraged by Stevenson, who thought moral argumentation was sometimes psychological and not rational. But Hare's disagreement was not universal, and the similarities between his noncognitive theory and the emotive one — especially his claim, and Stevenson's, that moral judgments contain commands and are thus not purely descriptive — caused some to regard him as an emotivist, a classification he denied:

"I did, and do, follow the emotivists in their rejection of descriptivism. But I was never an emotivist, though I have often been called one. But unlike most of their opponents I saw that it was their irrationalism, not their non-descriptivism, which was mistaken. So my main task was to find a rationalist kind of non-descriptivism, and this led me to establish that imperatives, the simplest kinds of prescriptions, could be subject to logical constraints while not [being] descriptive."

Proponents
Influential statements of emotivism were made by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards in their 1923 book on language, The Meaning of Meaning, and by W. H. F. Barnes and A. Duncan-Jones in independent works on ethics in 1934. However, it is the later works of Ayer and especially Stevenson that are the most developed and discussed defenses of the theory.

A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer's version of emotivism is given in chapter six, "Critique of Ethics and Theology", of Language, Truth and Logic. In that chapter, Ayer divides "the ordinary system of ethics" into four classes: He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—saying that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered in normative ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy. While class three statements were irrelevant to Ayer's brand of emotivism, they would later play a significant role in Stevenson's.
 * 1) "Propositions that express definitions of ethical terms, or judgements about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions"
 * 2) "Propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience, and their causes"
 * 3) "Exhortations to moral virtue"
 * 4) "Actual ethical judgments"

Ayer argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be verified; in this he agrees with ethical intuitionists. But he differs from intuitionists by discarding appeals to intuition as "worthless" for determining moral truths, since the intuition of one person often contradicts that of another. Instead, Ayer concludes that ethical concepts are "mere pseudo-concepts":

"The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, "You stole that money," in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks. … If now I generalise my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. … I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments."

Ayer agrees with subjectivists in saying that ethical statements are necessarily related to individual attitudes, but he says they lack truth value because they cannot be properly understood as propositions about those attitudes; Ayer thinks ethical sentences are expressions, not assertions, of approval. While an assertion of approval may always be accompanied by an expression of approval, expressions can be made without making assertions; Ayer's example is boredom, which can be expressed through the stated assertion "I am bored" or through non-assertions including tone of voice, body language, and various other verbal statements. He sees ethical statements as expressions of the latter sort, so the phrase "Theft is wrong" is a non-propositional sentence that is an expression of disapproval but is not equivalent to the proposition "I disapprove of theft".

Having argued that his theory of ethics is noncognitive and not subjective, he accepts that his position and subjectivism are equally confronted by G. E. Moore's argument that ethical disputes are clearly genuine disputes and not just expressions of contrary feelings. Ayer's defense is that all ethical disputes are about facts regarding the proper application of a value system to a specific case, not about the value systems themselves, because any dispute about values can only be resolved by judging that one value system is superior to another, and this judgment itself presupposes a shared value system. If Moore is wrong in saying that there are actual disagreements of value, we are left with the claim that there are actual disagreements of fact, and Ayer accepts this without hesitation:

"If our opponent concurs with us in expressing moral disapproval of a given type t, then we may get him to condemn a particular action A, by bringing forward arguments to show that A is of type t. For the question whether A does or does not belong to that type is a plain question of fact."

C. L. Stevenson
Stevenson's work has been seen both as an elaboration upon Ayer's views and as a representation of one of "two broad types of ethical emotivism." An analytic philosopher, Stevenson suggested in his 1937 essay "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" that any ethical theory should explain three things: that intelligent disagreement can occur over moral questions, that moral terms like good are "magnetic" in encouraging action, and that the scientific method is insufficient for verifying moral claims. Stevenson's own theory was fully developed in his 1944 book Ethics and Language. In it, he agrees with Ayer that ethical sentences express the speaker's feelings, but he adds that they also have an imperative component intended to change the listener's feelings and that this component is of greater importance. Where Ayer spoke of values, or fundamental psychological inclinations, Stevenson speaks of attitudes, and where Ayer spoke of disagreement of fact, or rational disputes over the application of certain values to a particular case, Stevenson speaks of differences in belief; the concepts are the same. Terminology aside, Stevenson interprets ethical statements according to two patterns of analysis.

First pattern analysis
Under his first pattern of analysis an ethical statement has two parts: a declaration of the speaker's attitude and an imperative to mirror it, so "'This is good' means I approve of this; do so as well." The first half of the sentence is a proposition, but the imperative half is not, so Stevenson's translation of an ethical sentence remains a noncognitive one.

Imperatives cannot be proved, but they can still be supported so that the listener understands that they are not wholly arbitrary:

"If told to close the door, one may ask "Why?" and receive some such reason as "It is too drafty," or "The noise is distracting." … These reasons cannot be called "proofs" in any but a dangerously extended sense, nor are they demonstratively or inductively related to an imperative; but they manifestly do support an imperative. They "back it up," or "establish it," or "base it on concrete references to fact.""

The purpose of these supports is to make the listener understand the consequences of the action they are being commanded to do. Once they understand the command's consequences, they can determine whether or not obedience to the command will have desirable results.

"The imperative is used to alter the hearer's attitudes or actions. … The supporting reason then describes the situation the imperative seeks to alter, or the new situation the imperative seeks to bring about; and if these facts disclose that the new situation will satisfy a preponderance of the hearer's desires, he will hesitate to obey no longer. More generally, reasons support imperatives by altering such beliefs as may in turn alter an unwillingness to obey."

Second pattern analysis
Stevenson's second pattern of analysis is used for statements about types of actions, not specific actions. Under this pattern,

"'This is good' has the meaning of 'This has qualities or relations X, Y, Z … ,' except that 'good' has as well a laudatory meaning, which permits it to express the speaker's approval, and tends to evoke the approval of the hearer."

In second-pattern analysis, rather than judge an action directly, the speaker is evaluating it according to a general principle. For instance, someone who says "Murder is wrong" might mean "Murder decreases happiness overall"; this is a second-pattern statement that leads to a first-pattern one: "I disapprove of anything that decreases happiness overall. Do so as well."

Methods of argumentation
For Stevenson, moral disagreements may arise from different fundamental attitudes, different moral beliefs about specific cases, or both. The methods of moral argumentation he proposed have been divided into three groups, known as logical, rational psychological and nonrational psychological forms of argumentation.

Logical methods involve efforts to show inconsistencies between a person's fundamental attitudes and their particular moral beliefs. For example, someone who says "Edward is a good person" who has previously said "Edward is a thief" and "No thieves are good people" is guilty of inconsistency until he retracts one of his statements. Similarly, a person who says "Lying is always wrong" might consider lies in some situations to be morally permissible, and if examples of these situations can be given, his view can be shown to be logically inconsistent.

Rational psychological methods examine facts that relate fundamental attitudes to particular moral beliefs; the goal is not to show that someone has been inconsistent, as with logical methods, but only that they are wrong about the facts that connect their attitudes to their beliefs. To modify the former example, consider the person who holds that all thieves are bad people. If she sees Edward pocket a wallet found in a public place, she may conclude that he is a thief, and there would be no inconsistency between her attitude (that thieves are bad people) and her belief (that Edward is a bad person because he is a thief). However, it may be that Edward recognized the wallet as belonging to a friend, to whom he promptly returned it. Such a revelation would likely change the observer's belief about Edward, and even if it did not, the attempt to reveal such facts would count as a rational psychological form of moral argumentation.

Non-rational psychological methods revolve around language with psychological influence but no necessarily logical connection to the listener's attitudes. Stevenson called the primary such method "'persuasive,' in a somewhat broadened sense", and wrote:

"[Persuasion] depends on the sheer, direct emotional impact of words—on emotive meaning, rhetorical cadence, apt metaphor, stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of voice, dramatic gestures, care in establishing rapport with the hearer or audience, and so on. … A redirection of the hearer's attitudes is sought not by the mediating step of altering his beliefs, but by exhortation, whether obvious or subtle, crude or refined."

Persuasion may involve the use of particular emotion-laden words, like "democracy" or "dictator", or hypothetical questions like "What if everyone thought the way you do?" or "How would you feel if you were in their shoes?"

Criticism
Utilitarian philosopher Richard Brandt offered several criticisms of emotivism in his 1959 book Ethical Theory. His first is that "ethical utterances are not obviously the kind of thing the emotive theory says they are, and prima facie, at least, should be viewed as statements." He thinks that emotivism cannot explain why most people, historically speaking, have considered ethical sentences to be "fact-stating" and not just emotive. Furthermore, he argues that people who change their moral views see their prior views as mistaken, not just different, and that this does not make sense if their attitudes were all that changed:

"Suppose, for instance, as a child a person disliked eating peas. When he recalls this as an adult he is amused and notes how preferences change with age. He does not say, however, that his former attitude was mistaken. If, on the other hand, he remembers regarding irreligion or divorce as wicked, and now does not, he regards his former view as erroneous and unfounded. … Ethical statements do not look like the kind of thing the emotive theory says they are."

James Urmson's 1968 book The Emotive Theory of Ethics also disagreed with many of Stevenson's points in Ethics and Language, "a work of great value" with "a few serious mistakes [that] led Stevenson consistently to distort his otherwise valuable insights".

Magnetic influence
Brandt criticized what he termed "the 'magnetic influence' thesis", the idea of Stevenson that ethical statements are meant to influence the listener's attitudes. Brandt contends that most ethical statements, including judgments of people who are not within listening range, are not made with the intention to alter the attitudes of others. Twenty years earlier, Sir William David Ross offered much the same criticism in his book Foundations of Ethics. Ross suggests that the emotivist theory seems to be coherent only when dealing with simple linguistic acts, such as recommending, commanding, or passing judgement on something happening at the same point of time as the utterance.

"… There is no doubt that such words as 'you ought to do so-and-so' may be used as one's means of so inducing a person to behave a certain way. But if we are to do justice to the meaning of 'right' or 'ought', we must take account also of such modes of speech as 'he ought to do so-and-so', 'you ought to have done so-and-so', 'if this and that were the case, you ought to have done so-and-so', 'if this and that were the case, you ought to do so-and-so', 'I ought to do so-and-so.' Where the judgement of obligation has referenced either a third person, not the person addressed, or to the past, or to an unfulfilled past condition, or to a future treated as merely possible, or to the speaker himself, there is no plausibility in describing the judgement as command."

According to this view, it would make little sense to translate a statement such as "Galileo should not have been forced to recant on heliocentricism" into a command, imperative, or recommendation - to do so might require a radical change in the meaning of these ethical statements. Under this criticism, it would appear as if emotivist and prescriptivist theories are only capable of converting a relatively small subset of all ethical claims into imperatives.

Like Ross and Brandt, Urmson disagrees with Stevenson's "causal theory" of emotive meaning—the theory that moral statements only have emotive meaning when they are made to change in a listener's attitude—saying that is incorrect in explaining "evaluative force in purely causal terms". This is Urmson's fundamental criticism, and he suggests that Stevenson would have made a stronger case by explaining emotive meaning in terms of "commending and recommending attitudes", not in terms of "the power to evoke attitudes".

Stevenson's Ethics and Language, written after Ross's book but before Brandt's and Urmson's, states that emotive terms are "not always used for purposes of exhortation." For example, in the sentence "Slavery was good in Ancient Rome", Stevenson thinks one is speaking of past attitudes in an "almost purely descriptive" sense. And in some discussions of current attitudes, "agreement in attitude can be taken for granted," so a judgment like "He was wrong to kill them" might describe one's attitudes yet be "emotively inactive", with no real emotive (or imperative) meaning. Stevenson is doubtful that sentences in such contexts qualify as normative ethical sentences, maintaining that "for the contexts that are most typical of normative ethics, the ethical terms have a function that is both emotive and descriptive."

Philippa Foot's moral realism
Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension." She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word injury. Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, have not we fallen into the old naturalist fallacy? "It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connexion between 'injury' and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all."

Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness. "Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are."

Standard using and standard setting
As an offshoot of his fundamental criticism of Stevenson's magnetic influence thesis, Urmson wrote that ethical statements had two functions — "standard using", the application of accepted values to a particular case, and "standard setting", the act of proposing certain values as those that should be accepted — and that Stevenson confused them. According to Urmson, Stevenson's "I approve of this; do so as well" is a standard-setting statement, yet most moral statements are actually standard-using ones, so Stevenson's explanation of ethical sentences is unsatisfactory. Colin Wilks has responded that Stevenson's distinction between first-order and second-order statements resolves this problem: a person who says "Sharing is good" may be making a second-order statement like "Sharing is approved of by the community", the sort of standard-using statement Urmson says is most typical of moral discourse. At the same time, their statement can be reduced to a first-order, standard-setting sentence: "I approve of whatever is approved of by the community; do so as well."

title: Emotivism


text:
Stephen Miller (Minnesota governor)

Stephen Miller (January 7, 1816 – August 18, 1881) was an American Republican politician. He was the first Civil War veteran to serve as Minnesota Governor. He was the fourth Governor of Minnesota.

Early years and business entrepreneur
Born in Carroll Township, Pennsylvania, Stephen Miller established a series of successful businesses. Frail health prompted the entrepreneur, of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, to leave home at age 42 and follow his friend Alexander Ramsey to Minnesota, where the climate reportedly was more congenial. Miller established a mercantile business in St. Cloud and, within two years, had risen to prominence in the state Republican Party.

Civil War soldier and leader
During the Civil War, Miller, a middle-aged soldier with no previous military experience, advanced rapidly from the rank of private to colonel in the 1st Minnesota Infantry. In 1862 Miller returned from the South and replaced Brig. Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley as commander of Mankato's Camp Lincoln. There, 303 Dakota men, convicted of participating in the Dakota War of 1862, awaited their fate. Four months later, Miller supervised, by order of President Lincoln, the mass execution of 38 Dakotas condemned for their part in the war.

Governor of Minnesota
His military career and Alexander Ramsey's support assured Miller of a gubernatorial victory in 1863. He was the 4th Governor of Minnesota, serving from January 11, 1864, to January 8, 1866. He was the first of several Civil War veterans to serve as Governor of Minnesota. Although lacking a college degree himself, he valued higher education and advocated generous appropriations to the University of Minnesota and to state normal schools, one of which evolved into St. Cloud State University. In his final address to the legislature, he strongly but unsuccessfully urged adoption of a black suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

Later years and term as state representative
Miller chose not to run for re-election and was unemployed until 1871, when he became a railroad-company field agent in Windom. He served as a state representative from January 7, 1873, to January 5, 1874, representing then-District 38, which included all or portions of Cottonwood, Jackson, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone and Rock counties in the southwestern part of the state. During his term, he was chair of the House's Public Lands Committee. In 1876, he was a representative to the Electoral College. The one-time war hero and popular governor died alone, an impoverished widower, in Worthington in 1881.

title: Stephen Miller (Minnesota governor)


text:
William Rainey Marshall

 William Rainey Marshall (October 17, 1825 – January 8, 1896) was an American politician. He was the fifth Governor of Minnesota from January 8, 1866, to January 9, 1870, and was a member of the Republican party. He served as an officer in the 7th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War (1861–1865).

He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Marshall first settled in Illinois and Wisconsin, where he mined for lead and surveyed land. He was elected to serve in the Wisconsin State Assembly in the 1st Wisconsin Legislature in 1848 as a Democrat, but his seat was successfully contested by Joseph Bowron, because his home in St. Croix Falls was on the west (Minnesota Territory) side of the new state line. In 1849 he crossed the St. Croix River to settle in St. Paul, soon home of his fledgling hardware business. He served a term in the first Minnesota territorial legislature, and his reputation grew when he served as chairman of the convention that founded the state's Republican Party.

The one-time banker, dairy farmer, stock-raiser, and newspaper publisher volunteered to fight in both the Civil War and the Dakota War of 1862. He enlisted as a private in the 8th Minnesota and was quickly appointed lieutenant colonel of the 7th Minnesota on August 28, 1862. He fought in many of the battles of the Dakota War being promoted to colonel of his regiment on November 6, 1863. Marshall and his regiment were transferred to Andrew Jackson Smith's command in Missouri and took part in the pursuit of Sterling Price. Smith's command was attached to George H. Thomas' army outside Nashville. When Colonel Sylvester G. Hill was killed the first day of the battle of Nashville, Colonel Marshall took command of Hill's brigade and led it throughout the rest of the battle. He continued in brigade command when transferred to Mobile, Alabama, to take part in the Battle of Fort Blakeley. Colonel Marshall was brevetted brigadier general of volunteers, dated March 13, 1865.

Marshall won the 1865 and 1867 gubernatorial elections. As governor, he repeatedly urged passage of a black suffrage amendment. After defeating it twice, the legislature finally adopted the amendment and inspired Marshall to declare that the "free young state of Minnesota" is "now altogether free." During William Marshall's administration, his adoptive state experienced a post-Civil-War surge of growth and development: its population doubled to 350,000, its railroad mileage quadrupled, and its commercial endeavors flourished.

After leaving office, Marshall remained active in both the private and public sectors as an attorney, banker, and as a railroad and land commissioner. He was a partner in a law firm with Jude Kerr and Robertson Howard while residing in St. Paul, but subsequent commercial ventures faltered, as did his health. He moved to California in 1894 and died there two years later, in Pasadena on January 8, 1896. He was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Saint Paul. He is listed as one of the few politicians to be an adherent of Swedenborgianism.

In Minnesota, Marshall County and the city of Marshall were both named after him.

title: William Rainey Marshall


text:
Talk:Mazda Rx-7

There's a Mazda Rx-7 and a Mazda RX-7 article both about the same thing. Which is the correct spelling? -- stewacide 22:58 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mazda Rx-7


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Fra Dolcino

Fra Dolcino (c. 1250 – 1307) was the second leader of the Dulcinian reformist movement who was burned at the stake in Northern Italy in 1307. He had taken over the movement after its founder, Gerard Segarelli, had also been executed in 1300 on the orders of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the beliefs and spirituality of the Dulcinian sect were inspired by the teachings of Francis of Assisi, who had founded the Franciscan Order in 1210, their beliefs were condemned as heresy by the Catholic Church. The Papacy condemned their practices of poverty, liberty and opposition to the feudal system.

Real name
The origins of Fra Dolcino and his real name are a subject of constant debate among historians. One view is that he belonged to the wealthy Tornielli family of Novara, while another view is that he was the illegitimate son of a priest who fled from Vercelli to escape punishment for some small burglaries.

Recent research by Raniero Orioli presents a plausible theory: the paper of the Anonymous Synchronous (an "anonymous contemporary") written shortly after the facts, identifies him as nomine Dulcinus, filius presbyteri Iulii de Tarecontano Vallis Ossole diocesis Novariensis (by name Dulcinus, son of presbyter Julius from Tarecontano of the Ossola Valley in the diocese of Novara); a few years later the inquisitor Bernardo Gui in his work on heretical sects reports the same information changing the word presbyteri to sacerdotis (priest) thus concluding that he was the illegitimate son of a priest. The research of Orioli shows that De Julio Presbitero was actually the name of a wealthy family of Vercelli belonging to the Ghibellines, who often married members of the Tornielli family of nearby Novara (Romagnano Sesia), also Ghibellines, so he proposes that Dolcino could be the son of a couple that united members of both families.

History
Benvenuto da Imola in his commentaries written less than a century after the fact tells us that Dolcino was born in Romagnano Sesia, went in his childhood to Vercelli and there lived in the church of St. Agnes where he studied grammar. He was very intelligent and proficient in the studies, of short stature, always smiling and of gentle temperament. One day a priest lamented that some money had been stolen and accused one of his familiars, Patras, of the theft; he in turn accused Dolcino and wanted him tortured to make him confess. The priests refused and did not accuse him of anything but Dolcino was terrorized and fled far away to the city of Trento where he met and joined the sect of the Apostolics. Dolcino left Vercelli between 1280 and 1290 and the research of Orioli shows that in the same period, the fights between Guelphs and Ghibellines caused many victims on both sides in the city; the fear of being involved in these fights could better explain his decision to leave and join the initially pacifist movement of Segarelli. The inquisitor Bernardo Gui cites the same episode, concluding that he fled to Trento to escape the just punishment for his burglaries.

Fra Dolcino, a former member, became in 1300 the leader of the movement of Apostolics, and influenced by the millenarist theories of Gioacchino da Fiore gave birth to the Dulcinian movement, which existed between the years 1300 and 1307. It ended in the mountains in Sesia Valley and in the Biella area, in Piedmont, Italy, on 23 March 1307 when many crusaders (multi crucesignati) finally conquered the fortification built on the mount Rubello by the Dulcinians. According to the Roman Catholic Church and most historians of the period, Dolcino and his followers, in reaction to attacks by Catholic troops, became criminals (today they would probably be called guerrilla fighters), who would not hesitate, for their own survival, to plunder and devastate villages, killing any who opposed them, and burning their houses. He justified the actions committed by his followers in this period citing Saint Paul (Epistle to Titus 1:15): "To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted", as reported by the Anonymous Synchronous Dolcino maintained: "[...] that it was legitimate for him and his followers to hang, behead, [...] people who obey to the Roman church and burn down, destroy, [...] because they were acting to redeem them and thus without sin".

Despite this, he was considered by some to be one of the reformers of the Church and one of the founders of the ideals of the French Revolution and socialism. In particular he was positively reevaluated toward the end of the 19th century and was dubbed the Apostle of the Socialist Jesus and thus in 1907 left wing workers of Biella and the Sesia Valley erected a monument on mount Rubello, the place of its last resistance. The monument was later (1927) symbolically gunned down by the Fascists and rebuilt in a smaller size and different shape in 1974.

Execution
Fra Dolcino and his co-preacher or concubine Margaret of Trent were never tried by the Church. Manly Hall claims (as do many other modern writers) that Dolcino was castrated and torn to pieces, limb by limb, the pieces afterwards burned by the public executioner. This is apparently not based on any contemporary or near contemporary account of Fra Dolcino's execution. Fifteen years later (in 1322), approximately thirty of Dolcino's disciples were burned alive in the marketplace at Padua. After his capture the Bishop of Vercelli consulted with the Inquisition and other eminent people to decide on an immediate execution (in fact the acts of the trial were never found, despite some suggestions that they could be hidden somewhere in the secret archives of the Vatican) so the paper of the Anonymous Synchronous, probably written by a follower or a local sympathizer of the Dulcinian, the one of Bernardo Gui and another anonymous paper (probably also written by Bernardo Gui) are the only documents we have that were written in the same period the events took place.

Ideas
He was considered to have been an intelligent, erudite and charismatic speaker. He expressed his ideas in a series of letters he wrote to the Apostolics from 1300 to 1307; his letters were found by the Inquisition and are deeply analyzed (and confuted) in the paper "Additamentum ad Historiam fratris Dulcini, haeretici", written by an Inquisitor.

Cultural references
In Dante's Divine Comedy, actually written after Fra Dolcino's death but as if it were before it, Mohammed talks about Dolcino (Inferno XXVIII):

"Then you, who will perhaps soon see the sun, tell Fra Dolcino to provide himself with food, if he has no desire to join me here quickly, lest when the snow besieges him, it brings the Novarese the victory that otherwise they would not find too easy"

Fra Dolcino and his former followers are mentioned often in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. The dialogue between the narrator Adso and the old priest Ubertino recounts the story of Fra Dolcino in outline, leaving much to the imagination of the reader. Bernardo Gui also figures in the novel, as do Dolcino's papers.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill uses Fra Dolcino as an example of the inability of truth to triumph over persecution.

Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo includes an episode that recounts the story of Fra Dolcino's rebellion.

title: Fra Dolcino


text:
Daifang Commandery

The Daifang Commandery was an administrative division established by the Chinese Han dynasty on the Korean Peninsula between 204 and 220. It was conquered by Goguryeo in 314.

History
Gongsun Kang, a warlord in Liaodong, separated the southern half from the Lelang commandery and established the Daifang commandery sometime between 204 and 220 to make administration more efficient. He controlled southern natives with Daifang instead of Lelang.

In 238 under the order of Emperor Ming of Cao Wei, Sima Yi defeated the Gongsun family and annexed Liaodong, Lelang and Daifang to Wei. A dispute over the control of southern natives caused their revolt. The armies of Lelang and Daifang eventually stifled it.

Daifang Commandery was inherited by the Jin dynasty. Due to the bitter civil War of the Eight Princes, Jin became unable to control the Korean peninsula at the beginning of the 4th century. Zhang Tong (張統) broke away from Jin in Lelang and Daifang. After Luoyang, the capital of Jin, was occupied by the Xiongnu in 311, he went for help to Murong Hui, a Xianbei warlord, with his subjects in 314. Goguryeo under King Micheon annexed Lelang and Daifang soon after that.

Area
The Daifang Commandery was located around Hwanghae and its capital was Daifang County. However, the controversy over its location is not resolved yet. According to a Chinese official chronicle, the Book of Jin (晉書), it had the following seven counties (縣, xian):

 * Daifang (帶方)
 * Liekou (列口)
 * Nanxin (南新)
 * Changcen (長岑)
 * Tixi (提奚)
 * Hanzi (含資)
 * Haiming (海冥)

Maps
 File:Ancient Korea Taihougun.png|Daifang Commandery in 3 AD

title: Daifang Commandery


text:
Talk:Defence Against the Dark Arts

...coveted by Hogwarts' Potion master Severus Snape

Is it though ?, IIRC. Hagrid says about Lockhart that he (Lockhart) was the only applicant for the job, implying that Snape didn't want the job. --Imran 23:15 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * It is indeed. In at least one place in the newest book, someone comments on Snape's constant attempts to become the Defence Against . . . teacher; Snapes acknowledges that he keeps trying, but refuses to posit on why he has never been chosen. Phil Bordelon 23:54 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, he really /is/ still associated with Voldemort, in the "undercover-member-of-the-Death-Eathers" sort of way. Not that I really care about the wording one way or the other. Phil Bordelon 00:30 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Dumbledore must not really want Snape to have the job, if he'd rather give it to Umbridge.

title: Talk:Defence Against the Dark Arts