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Merriam-Webster

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.

In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to An American Dictionary of the English Language from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source.

In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc., as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, in 1982.

Noah Webster
In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learned 26 languages. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used somewhat different vocabularies and spelled, pronounced, and used words differently.

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, and at the University of Cambridge. His 1820s book contained 70,000 words, of which about 12,000 had never appeared in a dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings, replacing colour with color, waggon with wagon, and centre with center. He also added American words, including skunk and squash, that did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of 70 in 1828, Webster published his dictionary; it sold poorly, with only 2,500 copies, and put him in debt. However, in 1840, he published the second edition in two volumes with much greater success.

Merriam as publisher
In 1843, after Webster's death, George Merriam and Charles Merriam secured publishing and revision rights to the 1840 edition of the dictionary. They published a revision in 1847, which did not change any of the main text but merely added new sections, and a second update with illustrations in 1859. In 1864, Merriam published a greatly expanded edition, which was the first version to change Webster's text, largely overhauling his work yet retaining many of his definitions and the title "An American Dictionary. This began a series of revisions that were described as being "unabridged" in content. In 1884 it contained 118,000 words, "3000 more than any other English dictionary".

With the edition of 1890, the dictionary was retitled Webster's International. The vocabulary was vastly expanded in Webster's New International editions of 1909 and 1934, totaling over half a million words, with the 1934 edition retrospectively called Webster's Second International or simply "The Second Edition" of the New International.

The Collegiate Dictionary was introduced in 1898 and the series is now in its eleventh edition. Following the publication of Webster's International in 1890, two Collegiate editions were issued as abridgments of each of their Unabridged editions. Merriam overhauled the dictionary again with the 1961 Webster's Third New International under the direction of Philip B. Gove, making changes that sparked public controversy. Many of these changes were in formatting, omitting needless punctuation, or avoiding complete sentences when a phrase was sufficient. Others, more controversial, signaled a shift from linguistic prescriptivism and towards describing American English as it was used at that time.

With the ninth edition (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (WNNCD), published in 1983), the Collegiate adopted changes which distinguish it as a separate entity rather than merely an abridgment of the Third New International (the main text of which has remained virtually unrevised since 1961). Some proper names were returned to the word list, including names of Knights of the Round Table. The most notable change was the inclusion of the date of the first known citation of each word, to document its entry into the English language. The eleventh edition (published in 2003) includes more than 225,000 definitions, and more than 165,000 entries. A CD-ROM of the text is sometimes included. This dictionary is preferred as a source "for general matters of spelling" by the influential The Chicago Manual of Style, which is followed by many book publishers and magazines in the United States. The Chicago Manual states that it "normally opts for" the first spelling listed.

The G. & C. Merriam Company lost its right to exclusive use of the name "Webster" after a series of lawsuits placed that name in public domain. Its name was changed to "Merriam-Webster, Incorporated", with the publication of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary in 1983. Previous publications had used "A Merriam-Webster Dictionary" as a subtitle for many years and will be found on older editions.

Since the 1940s, the company has added many specialized dictionaries, language aides, and other references to its repertoire. The company has been a subsidiary of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., since 1964.

The dictionary maintains an active social media presence, where it frequently posts dictionary related content as well as its takes on politics. Its Twitter account has frequently used dictionary jargon to criticize and lampoon the Trump administration. In one viral tweet, Merriam Webster subtly accused Kyle Rittenhouse of fake crying at his trial.

Services
In 1996, Merriam-Webster launched its first website, which provided free access to an online dictionary and thesaurus.

Merriam-Webster has also published dictionaries of synonyms, English usage, geography (Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary), biography, proper names, medical terms, sports terms, slang, Spanish/English, and numerous others. Non-dictionary publications include Collegiate Thesaurus, Secretarial Handbook, Manual for Writers and Editors, Collegiate Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Literature, and Encyclopedia of World Religions.

On February 16, 2007, Merriam-Webster announced the launch of a mobile dictionary and thesaurus service developed with mobile search-and-information provider AskMeNow. Consumers use the service to access definitions, spelling and synonyms via text message. Services also include Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day—and Open Dictionary, a wiki service that provides subscribers the opportunity to create and submit their own new words and definitions.

Pronunciation guides
The Merriam-Webster company once used a unique set of phonetic symbols in their dictionaries—intended to help people from different parts of the United States learn how to pronounce words the same way as others who spoke with the same accent or dialect did. Unicode accommodated IPA symbols from Unicode version 1.1 published in 1993, but did not support the phonetic symbols specific to Merriam-Webster dictionaries until Unicode version 4.0 published in 2003. Hence, to enable computerized access to the pronunciation without having to rework all dictionaries to IPA notation, the online services of Merriam-Webster specify phonetics using a less-specific set of ASCII characters.

Writing entries
Merriam creates entries by finding uses of a particular word in print and recording them in a database of citations. Editors at Merriam spend about an hour a day looking at print sources, from books and newspapers to less formal publications, like advertisements and product packaging, to study the uses of individual words and choose things that should be preserved in the citation file. Merriam-Webster's citation file contains more than 16 million entries documenting individual uses of words. Millions of these citations are recorded on 3-by-5 cards in their paper citation files. The earliest entries in the paper citation files date back to the late 19th century. Since 2009, all new entries are recorded in an electronic database.

title: Merriam-Webster


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Sharon Butala

Sharon Butala (born Sharon Annette LeBlanc, 1940 in Nipawin, Saskatchewan) is a Canadian writer and novelist.

Life
Butala was born in an outpost hospital in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. She was the second of five daughters born to Amy Graham and Achille LeBlanc, who ran a sawmill near Garrick, Saskatchewan. In 1946 her family moved to the French-Canadian town of St. Louis, Saskatchewan, and moved again when she was thirteen years old to the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She attended the University of Saskatchewan obtaining both a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Education degree. Between her third and fourth year of university she married for the first time. This marriage lasted 14 years, and her son, Sean Hoy, was born during this time.

After graduating she taught English in Saskatchewan and British Columbia and also taught in a special program for the YMCA in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1969 she returned to Saskatoon and worked in special education at Princess Alexandra School. In 1972 she returned to the University of Saskatchewan to work on a post-graduate diploma in education and began teaching for the College of Education.

By 1975 she was divorced and working on her Master of Education degree with a budding academic career when she met Peter Butala. She abandoned her degree, and they were married on May 21, 1976, after which she moved to his ranch near Eastend, Saskatchewan. It was here that she began writing seriously, and this environment became the setting of much of her writing. Her first book, Country of the Heart, was published in 1984 and was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award.

As head of the Eastend Arts Council she spearheaded the creation of the Wallace Stegner House Residence for Artists in which Wallace Stegner's childhood home was turned into a retreat for writers and artists. She lived near Eastend until 14 months after Peter's death in 2007. She now lives in Calgary, Alberta.

She was shortlisted for the Governor General's award three times, once for fiction for Queen of the Headaches, and twice for nonfiction, for The Perfection of the Morning and Where I Live Now. The Fall 2012 issue of Prairie Fire, entitled The Visionary Art of Sharon Butala was dedicated to Butala and her work and influence. She and her husband, Peter Butala, were also involved in the creation of the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area. The Butala homestead is now the interpretive centre for this area of original and restored mixed grass prairie.

Awards

 * Marian Engel Award (1998)
 * Officer of the Order of Canada (2001)
 * Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Regina (2000)
 * Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Saskatchewan (2004)
 * Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Alberta (2013)
 * Saskatchewan Order of Merit (2009)
 * Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. (2012)
 * Five Conservation Awards

Fiction

 * A Tropical Holiday, Branch Lines, 1981; Southwest Saskatchewan Writers Project
 * Fever, HarperCollins, 1990
 * Upstream, Fifth House, 1991; HarperCollins, 1996
 * Country of the Heart, Fifth House, 1984; HarperCollins, 1999
 * The Fourth Archangel, HarperCollins, 1992
 * Luna, HarperPerennial Canada, 1994
 * Queen of the Headaches, Coteau Books, 1994 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
 * The Gates of the Sun, HarperCollins, 2001
 * The Garden of Eden, HarperFlamingo Canada- A Phyllis Bruce Book, 2002
 * Real Life, HarperFlamingo Canada – A Phyllis Bruce Book, 2002
 * Wild Rose, Coteau Books, 2015
 * Zara's Dead, Coteau Books, 2018
 * Season of Fury and Wonder, 2019 (winner of the 2019 W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Award )

Non-fiction

 * Harvest, Fifth House, 1992
 * The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature, HarperCollins, 1994 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
 * Coyote's Morning Cry: Meditations & Dreams From a Life in Nature, HarperCollins, 1995
 * Wild Stone Heart: An Apprenticeship in the Fields, HarperFlamingo Canada, 2000
 * Old Man on His Back: Portrait of a Prairie Landscape, HarperCollins – A Phyllis Bruce Book, 2002 (with Courtney Milne)
 * Lilac Moon, HarperPerennial – A Phyllis Bruce Book, 2005 (winner of the 2005 Saskatchewan Book Award for non-fiction)
 * The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder, HarperCollins – A Phyllis Bruce Book, 2008
 * Where I Live Now: A Journey through Love and Loss to Healing and Hope, Simon & Schuster, 2017 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
 * This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life, Freehand Books, 2021

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

title: Sharon Butala


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Sjambok

The sjambok or litupa is a heavy leather whip. It is traditionally made from an adult hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide, but is also commonly made out of plastic.

A strip of the animal's hide is cut and carved into a strip 0.9 to 1.5 m long, tapering from about 1 in thick at the handle to about 3/8 in at the tip. This strip is then rolled until reaching a tapered-cylindrical form. The resulting whip is both flexible and durable. A plastic version was made for the apartheid era South African Police, and used for riot control.

Peter Hathaway Capstick describes a sjambok as a short swordlike whip made from rhino pizzle leather that could lay a man open like a straight razor.

The sjambok was heavily used by the Voortrekkers driving their oxen while migrating from the Cape of Good Hope, and remains in use by herdsmen to drive cattle. They are widely available in South Africa from informal traders to regular stores from a variety of materials, lengths and thicknesses.

South Africa
In South Africa, use of the sjambok by police is sometimes seen as synonymous with the apartheid era, but its use on people started much earlier. It is sometimes used outside the official judiciary by people who carry out punishments imposed by extralegal courts. South African police officers favoured the sjambok, with the South African Police stating that they inflicted less injury as compared to the wooden baton. Despite this, public perception of the sjambok was poor, both domestically and internationally. Allegations of police brutality concerning the sjambok were widespread, which eventually led to the sjambok being effectively banned for riot control in September 1989.

United Kingdom
In 1963, an enquiry into the police force of Sheffield in the United Kingdom found that rhino whips had been used on suspects.

Other types
The name seems to have originated as cambuk in Indonesia, where it was the name of a wooden rod for punishing slaves, where it was possibly derived from the Persian chabouk or chabuk. When Malay slaves arrived in South Africa in the 1800s, the instrument and its name were imported with them, the material was changed to hide, and the name was finally incorporated into Afrikaans, spelled as sambok. It is known in Bengali as chabuk.

The instrument is also known as imvubu (hippopotamus in Zulu), kiboko (hippopotamus in Swahili) and as mnigolo (hippopotamus in Malinké). In the Portuguese African colonies, the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo, it was called a chicote, from the Portuguese word for whip, or fimbo and was used to force labour from local people through flogging, sometimes to death. The official tariff for punishment in this case was lowered in time from twenty strokes to eight, then (in 1949) six, and progressively four and two, until flogging was outlawed completely in 1955. In North Africa, particularly Egypt, the whip was called a kurbash, Arabic for whip. The term shaabuug is used in the Somali language; it can also refer to a generic leather whip.

In popular culture
In the film Would You Rather, players are given the option to stab a fellow contestant with an ice pick or whip another contestant with a sjambok.

In Willard Price's Elephant Adventure, the cruel Arab slaver known as the Thunder Man enjoys flogging captives with a sjambok made from hippopotamus hide.

The Islamic preacher Shah Mustafa is known to have used a chabuk to defeat a snake which was on the throne of Raja Chandra Narayan Singh. This earned him the title of Chabukmar.

title: Sjambok


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David Carpenter (disambiguation)

David Carpenter (born 1930) is an American serial killer.

David Carpenter may also refer to:
 * David Carpenter, early Texas settler and namesake of Carpenters Bayou
 * David Carpenter, better known as Dave Carpender, guitarist
 * David Aaron Carpenter (born 1986), violist
 * David Carpenter (cricketer) (1935–2022), English cricketer
 * David Carpenter (historian) (born 1947), British historian
 * David Carpenter (writer) (born 1941), Canadian novelist
 * J. D. "David" Carpenter (born 1948), Canadian poet and novelist
 * Dave Carpenter (1959–2008), bassist
 * David G. Carpenter, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
 * David Carpenter (baseball, born 1985), baseball player
 * David Carpenter (baseball, born 1987), baseball player
 * David O. Carpenter, professor of environmental health sciences

title: David Carpenter (disambiguation)


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Talk:Beagle

Change infobox image
I think File:Beagle on a leash.jpg would be a better image for the infobox, with a better angle and better resolution. Could the Alt also be "Image of a Beagle on a leash, identified primarily with a white stripe running across their head down to their nose, with a brown torso, white legs, and a black back."? Lallint ⟫⟫⟫  Talk  20:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

 * I think the current image is better, the side view, the stance, much better showing of the breed. -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 20:22, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I disagree, the old one has been being used since March 8, 2004, and is low quality. Lallint  ⟫⟫⟫  Talk  22:02, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I prefer the current photo for the infobox, it gives a better overall impression of the breed. Cavalryman (talk) 00:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC).

Their Name is a French Word
Their name may have derived from the French word “Be’Geule,” meaning “open throat,” referring to their distinctive baying or howling vocalizations while on the hunt. Find out at https://canine4u.com/beagle/ BR252 (talk) 18:25, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

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Sim (game)

Sim is a two-player paper-and-pencil game.

Gameplay
Six dots (vertices) are drawn. Each dot is connected to every other dot by a line (edge).

Two players take turns coloring any uncolored lines. One player colors in one color, and the other colors in another color, with each player trying to avoid the creation of a triangle made solely of their color (only triangles with the dots as all corners count; intersections of lines are not relevant); the player who completes such a triangle loses immediately.

Analysis
Ramsey theory can also be used to show that no game of Sim can end in a tie. Specifically, since the Ramsey number R(3, 3) is equal to 6, any two-coloring of the complete graph on 6 vertices (K6) must contain a monochromatic triangle, and therefore is not a tied position. This will also apply to any super-graph of K6. For another proof that there must eventually be a triangle of either color, see the Theorem on friends and strangers.

Computer search has verified that the second player can win Sim with perfect play, but finding a perfect strategy that humans can easily memorize is an open problem.

The game of Sim is one example of a Ramsey game. Other Ramsey games are possible. For instance, the players can be allowed to color more than one line during their turns. Another Ramsey game similar to Sim and related to the Ramsey number R(4, 4) = 18 is played on 18 vertices and the 153 edges between them. The two players must avoid to color all six edges connecting four vertices.

Because the Ramsey number R(3, 3, 3) is equal to 17, any three-coloring of the complete graph on 17 vertices must contain a monochromatic triangle. A corresponding Ramsey game uses pencils of three colors. One approach can have three players compete, while another would allow two players to alternately select any of the three colors to paint an edge of the graph, until a player loses by completing a monochromatic triangle. Finding perfect winning strategies for these variants is most likely out of reach.

A technical report by Wolfgang Slany is available online, with many references to literature on Sim, going back to the game's introduction by Gustavus Simmons in 1969, including proofs and estimates of the difficulty as well as computational complexity of Sim and other Ramsey games.

Software
An app including its source code in the visual multi-platform Catrobat programming language is available for playing it against one's smartphone.

title: Sim (game)


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User:Willem

I first stumbled across Wikipedia while googling the convergence of random variables in the Spring of 2003.

title: User:Willem


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Wiretap (disambiguation)

Wiretap, or telephone tap, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party.

Wiretap may also refer to:

 * Wiretap (film), a proposed remake of the film Overhead
 * WireTap (magazine)
 * WireTap (radio program), a weekly radio program aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
 * The Wiretap EP, a 2002 album by Your Enemies Friends

title: Wiretap (disambiguation)


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Talk:Denis Thatcher

He didn't marry Margaret Thatcher. He married Margaret Roberts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.173.223.44 (talk) 14:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

He didn't marry Margaret Roberts. He married Margaret Thatcher. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.939.888.88 (talk) 14:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC) = — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.174.62.43 (talk)

title: Talk:Denis Thatcher


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Carbonation

Carbonation is the chemical reaction of carbon dioxide to give carbonates, bicarbonates, and carbonic acid. In chemistry, the term is sometimes used in place of carboxylation, which refers to the formation of carboxylic acids.

In inorganic chemistry and geology, carbonation is common. Metal hydroxides (MOH) and metal oxides (M'O) react with CO2 to give bicarbonates and carbonates:
 * MOH +  CO2  →   M(HCO3)
 * M'O +  CO2  →   M'CO3

Carbonic anhydrase
In mammalian physiology, transport of carbon dioxide to the lungs involves a carbonation reaction catalyzed by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase. In the absence of such catalysts, carbon dioxide cannot be expelled sufficient rate to support metabolic needs. The enzyme harbors a zinc aquo complex, which captures carbon dioxide to give a zinc bicarbonate:
 * [(imidazole)3ZnOH]+ + CO2  <->  [(imidazole)3ZnOCO2H]+

Behavior of concrete
In reinforced concrete, the chemical reaction between carbon dioxide In the air and calcium hydroxide and hydrated calcium silicate in the concrete is known as neutralisation. The similar reaction in which calcium hydroxide from cement reacts with carbon dioxide and forms insoluble calcium carbonate is carbonatation.

Urea production
Carbonation of ammonia is one step in the industrial production of urea:In 2020, worldwide production capacity was approximately 180 million tonnes. As a fertilizer, it is a source of nitrogen for plants. Urea production plants are almost always located adjacent to the site where the ammonia is manufactured.
 * 2 NH3 + CO2 ⇌ [NH4]+[NH2COO]-

In the subsequent urea conversion: the ammonium carbamate is decomposed into urea, releasing water:
 * [NH4]+[NH2COO]- ⇌ CO(NH2)2 + H2O

Solubility
Henry's law states that Pundefined=KBxundefined where Pundefined is the partial pressure of gas above the solution. KB is Henry's law constant. KB increases as temperature increases. xundefined is the mole fraction of gas in the solution. According to Henry's law carbonation increases in a solution as temperature decreases.

Since carbonation is the process of giving compounds like carbonic acid (liq) from CO2 (gas) {i.e. making liquid from gasses} thus the partial pressure of CO2  has to decrease or the mole fraction of CO2 in solution has to increase {Pundefined/xundefined  = KB} and both these two conditions support increase in carbonation.

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User talk:Atob

Do you think European Union should have the form of the WikiProject Countries? --Kaihsu 17:35, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I reverted your Mel Gibson deletions. His father's odd beliefs are seriously relevant to the many objections that people have raised about Mr. Gibson's new Jesus movie. RickK 02:27, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Was there any reason to remove all the accents in the article on Spain? Lupo 13:31, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Image:Bottlenose.jpg listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Bottlenose.jpg, has been listed at Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. dbenbenn | talk 01:45, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Blairism
I have nominated Blairism, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/Blairism. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Ricky81682 (talk) 04:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:Atob


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Talk:BITNET

Untitled
BITNET, Bitnet, BITnet, BITNet? The variations from seemingly reputable sources are staggering. Grier and Campbell, in their scholarly social history of BITNET, consistently use Bitnet, but CREN, the closest thing we have today to a successor to BITNET, consistently uses BITNET. So, I've standardized on BITNET. Logically, "BITNet" makes to most sense to me, but I've never seen that version anywhere. ;=) Bill 17:07 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I used BITNET in the mid-1980s, and I never saw it written as BITNet. I believe BITNET was the prefered form, with Bitnet a possible acceptable alternative.

 * IBM had a history of ALL-CAPS ACRONYMS, so this might be why BITNET is the common form.

 * One point on BITNET as store and forward -- I belive BITNET also allowed one to PASSTHRU (rlogin/telnet) from one machine to another on the network. I am also sure that a form of instant messaging from one node to another was possible. Perhaps BITNET was only store and forward for email. --Zippy 06:39, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * When I was using it in the early 90s, I referred to it as BITnet, as did most of the other munchkins with which I was associated. --  — I. Neschek |  talk 17:04, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Store and forward - not a network property, but a software one?
BITNet supported interactive protocols like sending messages (via the CP/CMS command smsg, I think) to remote nodes. I remember also being able to use the PASSTHRU command to get to interactive logon screens on other nodes. So I believe the claim that it was "store and forward ... unlike the internet" is incorrect.

That said, I'm not sure how to reword the section. Any suggestions? --Zippy 19:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

 * CP SMSG was a variant of the CP MSG command that did not show up for regular users but could only be received by applications who explicitely registered for it. I used that ability to find out which users linking my disk were running my peer-to-peer chat client. Yeah we weren't allowed to run daemons at our university after some other guys made a game that crashed the mainframe. Sorry, just felt like some historic offtopic talk here. Back on topic: Yeah go ahead with whatever. :) Store & Forward was the thing concerning e-mail and file transfers,  but I guess for remote logins and messaging that can't have applied. I remember the RSCS virtual machine involved in this, but not the details on the protocol.  --lynX

PassThru used separate links and thus isn't part of the RSCS (which stands for Remote Spooling Communications System see IBM form SH24-5219-03). You're correct that the "oneliners" aren't stored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.198.50.213 (talk • contribs) April 21, 2010

 * BITNET had two physical networks of landlines - the RSCS one and a smaller and separate one for PassThru. Very few nodes had PassThru links, a limited subset of the VM nodes (PassThru didn't exist for any other platform).  In fact, most BITNET site reps and users were unaware of the PassThru part of the network. RossPatterson (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

BITNET: Dead or what?
The article is all in the past tense, but doesn't give any definite information on either "the end of BITNET" or "BITNET today". Can someone please clarify this? -- Writtenonsand 16:14, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

 * In 1996, CREN ended their support for Bitnet. The individual nodes were free to keep their phone lines up as long as they felt like it, but as nodes dropped out the network splintered into parts that were inaccessible from one another.  I'd be surprised if any universities were still maintaining their nodes today.  Sources:  (for the exact year) and personal recollection (for the aftermath). -- Heath 24.127.115.128 05:27, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Interchat Relay Network
Relay was not "the network's instant messaging feature", it was the chat. "SEND" was the instant messaging. And don't forget "PHONE", the split-screen, real-time (and I mean keystroke real-time) tool. 24.143.105.148 (talk) 19:21, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Usenet?
I was on Usenet via BITNET in the early 1990s. Any citations known for this? Allens (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:BITNET


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Talk:The Trial

after 1924
If Franz Kafka had lived in the time off the nazies, would the story be equal? i know there is no real answer, yet i think its an importend question cq thought. nazis existed by laws and this story is about laws aswell, although unspoken in this case... 85.149.83.125 (talk) 01:02, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Different editions (translations and chapter placement etc.)
Would it be worth adding a section regarding the English translations, and how The Schocken Kafka Library edition differs from the Muir translation (I think it was Muir?) and how the chapters were rearranged? I remember this was a big deal when it was announced but there's nothing in the article about it. --203.41.135.132 (talk) 07:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems very short
Shouldn't an article about a book this significant be a tad longer? 2A00:23C4:1591:4C00:69CF:4B3B:4259:D48B (talk) 19:48, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Does Josef K. really get killed?
I hope that no one minds, but I have changed "church" to "cathedral" as the place where Kafka meets the priest. This is consistent with the English translation, of which one chapter is called "In the Cathedral". Also, is it really true that K. gets killed? I have just finished reading "The Trial", and in my edition, after the chapter called "The End", there is a section called "Fragments". YTKJ (talk) 21:04, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Trial


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Council

A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or national level are not considered councils. At such levels, there may be no separate executive branch, and the council may effectively represent the entire government. A board of directors might also be denoted as a council.

A committee might also be denoted as a council, though a committee is generally a subordinate body composed of members of a larger body, while a council may not be. Because many schools have a student council, the council is the form of governance with which many people are likely to have their first experience as electors or participants.

A member of a council may be referred to as a councillor or councilperson, or by the gender-specific titles of councilman and councilwoman.

In politics
Notable examples of types of councils encountered in politics include:

 * Borough council, a form of local government
 * Catholic Ecumenical Councils, ecclesiastical gatherings for ordering the Catholic Church
 * City council, a form of local government
 * Community council, the most local official representative body in Scotland and in Wales
 * Council of Europe, a political, intergovernmental organization with 47 member countries
 * Council of the European Union, the upper house of the European Union
 * Council of State, an organ of government in many states
 * County council, a council that governs a county in the British Isles
 * District council, a unit of government in various jurisdictions
 * Ecumenical Councils, pan-Christian discussion bodies
 * European Council, the body of heads of states or of governments of the European Union
 * Labour council, an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area
 * Municipal council, a form of local government
 * National security council, an executive-branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues
 * Parish councils in England, a form of local government in part of the United Kingdom
 * Privy council, a body that advises the head of state of a country
 * Provincial council, a governing body for a province
 * Regional council, a local-government body in various countries
 * Shire council, an entity of local government in Australia
 * Shura Council, the formerly upper house of the Egyptian parliament.
 * Town council, a democratically elected form of government for small municipalities or parishes
 * Tribal Council, First Nations' and Native American Nations' governing bodies
 * UK Research Councils, government agencies responsible for an area of research in the United Kingdom
 * United Nations Security Council, a decision-making body at the United Nations
 * Vatican Council, a high-level policy-council of the Roman Catholic Church
 * Village council (Palestinian Authority), a local-government body in Palestine
 * Workers' council, a council composed of working-class or proletarian members

In other fields
Types of councils encountered in other spheres include:
 * Arts council: a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts.
 * Bar council: a professional body that regulates the profession of barristers together with the Inns of Court.
 * Buddhist councils: important historical events in the history of Buddhism.
 * Council (Boy Scouts): a non-profit private corporation within Boy Scouts of America.
 * Ecumenical council: a meeting of the bishops of the whole church convened to discuss and settle matters of Church doctrine and practice.
 * Military council:
 * Science research council
 * Student council: a student organization present in many elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities.
 * Synod: in a Christian church.
 * University Council: running a university.
 * War Council: discussions pertaining to a declaration of war, or tactics and strategy of a coming battle.
 * Works council: a body representing the workers of a plant, factory, etc., elected to negotiate with the management about working conditions, wages, etc.
 * Youth council: an example of youth voice engaged in youth-led decision-making.

title: Council


text:
Chandler Motor Car

The Chandler Motor Car Company produced automobiles in the United States of America during the 1910s and 1920s.

Corporate strategy
Chandler was incorporated in 1913, with Frederick C. Chandler as President, headquartered and with its factory in Cleveland, Ohio. Chandler was a former designer for the Lozier Motor Company, a top end luxury automobile manufacturer. Chandler and several other Lozier executives left the company to form his company.

Chandler concentrated on producing a good quality motor-car within the price range of middle class Americans. Chandlers were well received in the marketplace.

Production
In 1920, Chandler had a line of six cars, ranging from $1995 to $3595. This grew to 10 by 1922, ranging from $1495 to $2375. Like many other medium-price carmakers, in the middle 1920s Chandler introduced a lower-priced "companion car" called the Cleveland. In 1924, they introduced the "Traffic Transmission," a constant-mesh gearbox that reduced the need for extra clutching when downshifting. This was several years before General Motors offered the "Synchro-Mesh" transmission, which allowed the driver to shift into first gear while moving forward at low speeds.

Chandler's peak year was 1927, when they sold 20,000 cars. Hopes for continued growth of the market led to overexpansion by the company the following year, which finished 1928 over half a million dollars in debt.

In 1929, Chandler Motor Company was purchased by its expanding competitor Hupp Motor Car Company for its factory and manufacturing facilities, and the brand was discontinued.

Chandler, like most cars built before all-steel bodies became the industry standard in the mid-1930s, used bodies built with a metal skin around a wooden frame (an "armored wood" frame). Due to the use of fabric roofs, after a few decades the wood tended to rot; because of this Chandlers have survived in smaller numbers than some other popular automobiles of the era that used all-steel bodies.

Production models

 * Chandler Light Weight Model 19 Touring 1919
 * Chandler Metropolitan Sedan, 1922

title: Chandler Motor Car


text:
Boxer (dog breed)

The Boxer is a medium to large, short-haired dog breed of mastiff-type, developed in Germany. The coat is smooth and tight-fitting; colors are fawn or brindled, with or without white markings. Boxers are brachycephalic (they have broad, short skulls), have a square muzzle, mandibular prognathism (an underbite), very strong jaws, and a powerful bite ideal for hanging on to large prey. The Boxer was bred from the Old English Bulldog and the now extinct Bullenbeisser, which became extinct by crossbreeding rather than by a decadence of the breed. The Boxer is a member of both The Kennel Club and American Kennel Club (AKC) Working Group.

The first Boxer club was founded in 1895, with Boxers being first exhibited in a dog show for St. Bernards in Munich the next year. Based on 2013 AKC statistics, Boxers held steady as the seventh-most popular breed of dog in the United States for the fourth consecutive year. According to the AKC's website, though, the boxer is now the 11th-most popular dog breed in the United States.

Appearance
The head is the most distinctive feature of the Boxer. The breed standard dictates that it must be in perfect proportion to the body and above all it must never be too light. The greatest value is to be placed on the muzzle being of correct form and in absolute proportion to the skull. The length of the muzzle to the whole of the head should be a ratio of 1:3. Folds are always present from the root of the nose running downwards on both sides of the muzzle, and the tip of the nose should lie somewhat higher than the root of the muzzle. In addition, a Boxer should be slightly prognathous, i.e., the lower jaw should protrude beyond the upper jaw and bend slightly upwards in what is commonly called an underbite or "undershot bite".

Boxers were originally a docked and cropped breed, and this is still done in some countries, but due to pressure from veterinary associations, animal rights groups, and the general public, both cropping of the ears and docking of the tail have been prohibited in many countries around the world, and is not recognised by the breed standard laid down by The Kennel Club of the UK. The American Kennel club still permits cropped ears. A line of naturally short-tailed (bobtail) Boxers was developed in the United Kingdom in anticipation of a tail-docking ban there; after several generations of controlled breeding, these dogs were accepted in the Kennel Club (UK) registry in 1998, and today representatives of the bobtail line can be found in many countries. In 2008, the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) added a "naturally stumpy tail" as a disqualifying fault in their breed standard, meaning those Boxers born with a bobtail can no longer be shown in FCI member countries. In the United States and Canada as of 2012, cropped ears are still more common in show dogs, though the practice of cosmetic cropping is currently opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association. In March 2005, the AKC breed standard was changed to include a description of the uncropped ear, but to severely penalize an undocked tail. The tail of a boxer is typically docked before the cartilage is fully formed, from 3–5 days old. The procedure does not require any sutures when performed at this young age, and anesthesia is not used. The docking of the tail is not permitted under the breed standard of The Kennel Club UK.

Coat and colors
The Boxer is a short-haired breed, with a smooth coat that lies tight to the body. The recognized colors are fawn and brindle, frequently with a white underbelly and white on the feet. These white markings, called "flash", often extend onto the neck or face, and dogs that have these markings are known as "flashy". "Fawn" denotes a range of colors, the tones of which may be described variously as light tan or yellow, reddish tan, mahogany, or stag/deer red, and dark honey-blonde. In the UK and Europe, fawn Boxers are typically rich in color and are often called "red". "Brindle" refers to a dog with black stripes on a fawn background. Some brindle Boxers are so heavily striped that they give the appearance of "reverse brindling", fawn stripes on a black body; these dogs are conventionally called "reverse brindles", but that is actually a misnomer—they are still fawn dogs with black stripes. In addition, the breed standards state that the fawn background must clearly contrast with or show through the brindling.

The Boxer does not carry the gene for a solid black coat color, so purebred black Boxers do not exist. Boxers that appear black are actually heavily brindled, where the fawn color is completely sealed out by the black striping. These are often referred to as "sealed" Boxers, and are not an AKC recognized coloring.

White Boxers
Boxers with white markings covering more than one-third of their coat – conventionally called "white" Boxers – are neither albino nor rare; about 20–25% of all Boxers born are white. Genetically, these dogs are either fawn or brindle, with excessive white markings overlying the base coat color. Like fair-skinned humans, white Boxers have a higher risk of sunburn and associated skin cancers than darker Boxers. The extreme piebald gene, which is responsible for white markings in Boxers, is linked to congenital sensorineural deafness in dogs. An estimated 18% of white Boxers are deaf in one or both ears, though Boxer rescue organizations see about double that number.

In the past, breeders often euthanized white puppies at birth. A 1998 study of Boxers in the Netherlands showed that 17% of Boxer pups were euthanized because they were white. Previously, the American Boxer Club "unofficially recommended euthanasia for these animals." Reasons for euthanizing white pups include the view that selling a dog with "faults" is unethical, which is in stark contrast to the AKC preference for docked tails. Additionally there is the perception that white Boxers are at higher risk of ending up abandoned in rescues. Today, breeders are increasingly reluctant to euthanize healthy pups, and may choose to neuter and place them in pet homes, instead.

Temperament
"The character of the Boxer is of the greatest importance and demands the most solicitous attention. He is renowned from olden times for his great love and faithfulness to his master and household. He is harmless in the family, but can be distrustful of strangers, bright and friendly of temperament at play, but brave and determined when aroused. His intelligence and willing tractability, his modesty and cleanliness make him a highly desirable family dog and cheerful companion. He is the soul of honesty and loyalty, and is never false or treacherous even in his old age."

"General appearance

Great nobility, smooth-coated, medium-sized, square build, strong bone and evident, well developed muscles.

Characteristics

Lively, strong, loyal to owner and family, but distrustful of strangers. Obedient, friendly at play, but with guarding instinct.

Temperament Equable, biddable, fearless, self-assured."

Boxers are a bright, energetic, and playful breed and tend to be very good with children. They are patient and spirited with children, but also protective, making them a popular choice for families. They are active, strong dogs that require adequate exercise to prevent boredom-associated behaviors such as chewing, digging, or licking. Boxers have earned a slight reputation of being "headstrong", which can be related to inappropriate obedience training. Owing to their intelligence and working-breed characteristics, training based on corrections often has limited usefulness. Boxers, like other animals, typically respond better to positive reinforcement techniques such as clicker training, an approach based on operant conditioning and behaviorism, which offers the dog an opportunity to think independently and to problem-solve. Stanley Coren's survey of obedience trainers, summarized in his book The Intelligence of Dogs, ranked Boxers at number 48 —average working/obedience intelligence. Many who have worked with Boxers disagree quite strongly with Coren's survey results, and maintain that a skilled trainer who uses reward-based methods will find Boxers have far above-average intelligence and working ability.

The Boxer by nature is not an aggressive or vicious breed. It is an instinctive guardian and can become very attached to its family. Like all dogs, it requires proper socialization. Boxers are generally patient with smaller dogs and puppies, but difficulties with larger adult dogs, especially those of the same sex, may occur. Boxers are generally more comfortable with companionship, in either human or canine form. They are very patient and are great to adopt as family dogs because they are good with children and people of all kinds.

History

The Boxer is a hunting mastiff developed in Germany in the late 19th century from the now extinct Bullenbeisser, a dog of English Mastiff descent, and Bulldogs brought in from Great Britain. The Bullenbeisser had been working as a hunting dog for centuries, employed in the pursuit of bear, wild boar, and deer. Its task was to seize the prey and hold it until the hunters arrived. In later years, faster dogs were favored and a smaller Bullenbeisser was bred in Brabant, in northern Belgium. The Brabanter Bullenbeisser is generally accepted as being a direct ancestor of today's Boxer.

In 1894, three Germans, Friedrich Robert, Elard König, and R. Höpner, decided to stabilize the breed and put it on exhibition at a dog show. This was done in Munich in 1896, and the year before they founded the first Boxer Club, the Deutscher Boxer Club. The club went on to publish the first Boxer breed standard in 1904, a detailed document that has not been changed much since.

The breed was introduced to other parts of Europe in the late 19th century and to the United States around the turn of the 20th century. The AKC registered the first Boxer in 1904, and recognized the first Boxer champion, Dampf vom Dom, in 1915. During World War I, the Boxer was co-opted for military work, acting as a valuable messenger dog, pack carrier, attack dog, and guard dog. The Boxer did not become popular around the world until after World War II. Taken home by returning soldiers, the dog was introduced to a wider audience and soon became a favorite as a companion, a show dog, and a guard dog.

Early genealogy

German citizen George Alt, a Munich resident, mated a brindle-colored female dog imported from France named Flora with a local dog of unknown ancestry, known simply as "Boxer", resulting in a fawn-and-white male, named Lechner's Box after its owner.

This dog was mated with his own dam, Flora, and one of his offspring was a female called Alt's Schecken. George Alt mated Schecken with a Bulldog named Dr. Toneissen's Tom to produce the historically significant dog Mühlbauer's Flocki. Flocki was the first Boxer to enter the German Stud Book after winning the aforementioned show for St. Bernards in Munich 1896, which was the first event to have a class specific for Boxers.

The white female dog Ch. Blanka von Angertor, Flocki's sister, was even more influential when mated with Piccolo von Angertor (Lechner's Box grandson) to produce the predominantly white (particolored) female dog Meta von der Passage, which, even bearing little resemblance with the modern Boxer standard (early photographs depict her as too long, weak-backed, and down-faced), is considered the mother of the breed. John Wagner, in The Boxer (first published in 1939) said the following regarding this female dog:

"Meta von der Passage played the most important role of the five original ancestors. Our great line of sires all trace directly back to this female. She was a substantially built, low to the ground, brindle and white particolor, lacking in underjaw and exceedingly lippy. As a producing female, few in any breed can match her record. She consistently whelped puppies of marvelous type and rare quality. Those of her offspring sired by Flock St. Salvator and Wotan dominate all present-day pedigrees. Combined with Wotan and Mirzl children, they made the Boxer."

Breed name
The name "Boxer" is supposedly derived from the breed's tendency to play by standing on its hind legs and "boxing" with its front paws. According to Andrew H. Brace's Pet Owner's Guide to the Boxer, this theory is the least plausible explanation. He claims, "it's unlikely that a nation so permeated with nationalism would give to one of its most famous breeds a name so obviously anglicised".

German linguistic and historical evidence finds the earliest written source for the word Boxer in the 18th century, where it is found in a text in the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (The German Dictionary of Foreign Words), which cites an author named Musäus of 1782 writing "daß er aus Furcht vor dem großen Baxer Salmonet ... sich auf einige Tage in ein geräumiges Packfaß ... absentiret hatte". At that time, the spelling "baxer" equalled "boxer". Both the verb (boxen [English "to box, to punch, to jab"]) and the noun (Boxer) were common German words as early as the late 18th century. The term Boxl, also written Buxn or Buchsen in the Bavarian dialect, means "short (leather) trousers" or "underwear". The very similar-sounding term Boxerl, also from the Bavarian dialect, is an endearing term for Boxer. More in line with historical facts, Brace states that many other theories may explain the origin of the breed name, from which he favors the one claiming the smaller Bullenbeisser (Brabanter) dogs were also known as Boxl and that Boxer is just a corruption of that word.

In the same vein runs a theory based on the fact that a group of dogs was known as Bierboxer in Munich by the time of the breed's development. These dogs were the result from mixes of Bullenbeisser and other similar breeds. Bier (beer) probably refers to the Biergarten, the typical Munich beer garden, an open-air restaurant where people used to take their dogs along. The nickname "Deutscher Boxer" was derived from Bierboxer and Boxer could also be a corruption of the former or a contraction of the latter.

A passage from the book The Complete Boxer by Milo G Denlinger states:

"It has been claimed that the name 'Boxer' was jokingly applied by an English traveler who noted a tendency of the dog to use its paws in fighting. This seems improbable. Any such action would likely result in a badly bitten if not broken leg. On the other hand, a German breeder of 40 years' experience states positively that the Boxer does not use his feet, except to try to extinguish a small flame such as a burning match. But a Boxer does box with his head. He will hit (not bite) a cat with his muzzle hard enough to knock it out and he will box a ball with his nose. Or perhaps, since the German dictionary translates Boxer as 'prize-fighter', the name was bestowed in appreciation of the fighting qualities of the breed rather than its technique."

Boxer is also the name of a dog owned by John Peerybingle, the main character in the best-selling 1845 book The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens, which is evidence that "Boxer" was commonly used as a dog name by the early 19th century, before the establishment of the breed by the end of that same century.

Health
A 2024 UK study found a life expectancy of 11.3 years for the breed compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds. A 2024 Italian study found a life expectancy of 9 years for the breed compared to 10 years overall. A 2005 Swedish study of insurance data found 50% of Boxers died by the age of 10, higher than the overall rate of 35% of dogs dying by the age of 10.

Leading health issues to which Boxers are prone include cancers, heart conditions such as aortic stenosis and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (the so-called "Boxer cardiomyopathy"), hypothyroidism, hip dysplasia, and degenerative myelopathy and epilepsy; other conditions that may be seen are gastric dilatation volvulus (also known as bloat), intestinal problems, and allergies (although these may be more related to diet than breed). Entropion, a malformation of the eyelid requiring surgical correction, is occasionally seen, and some lines have a tendency toward spondylosis deformans, a fusing of the spine, or dystocia. Other conditions that are less common but occur more often in Boxers than other breeds are histiocytic ulcerative colitis (sometimes called Boxer colitis), an invasive E. coli infection, and indolent corneal ulcers, often called Boxer eye ulcers.

An emerging health concern among boxers is Boxer Juvenile Kidney Disease (JKD), where the kidneys do not develop normally during gestation and leads to chronic renal failure. JKD is most frequently diagnosed in dogs under the age of 3, and often much earlier than this in puppies before the age of 12 months. There is strong evidence to suggest JKD is an inherited condition in boxers with research being undertaken by the University of Ohio to determine the gene mutation, as well as other work separately by the [http://www.boxerbreedcouncil.co.uk/jkd.html#:~:text=Q5%3A%20What%20symptoms%20does%20a,and%20often%20uneven%20in%20shape. UK Boxer Breeder Council].

About 22% of puppies die before reaching seven weeks of age. Stillbirth is the most frequent cause of death, followed by infection. Mortality due to infection increases significantly with increases in inbreeding.

According to a UK Kennel Club health survey, cancer accounts for 38.5% of Boxer deaths, followed by old age (21.5%), cardiac (6.9%) and gastrointestinal (6.9%) related issues. The breed is particularly predisposed to mast cell tumours, a cancer of the immune system. Median lifespan was 10.25 years. Responsible breeders use available tests to screen their breeding stock before breeding, and in some cases throughout the life of the dog, in an attempt to minimize the occurrence of these diseases in future generations.

The Boxer is one of the more commonly affected breeds for degenerative myelopathy.

Nutrition
Boxers need plenty of exercise, which means their diet should be high in quality calories. The main source of these calories should be lean animal protein, which includes lean chicken, turkey, lamb, and fish. While on a high calorie diet, owners should be thoughtful of the amount of treats given as this tends to cause obesity. Owners should be mindful of the food to snack ratio being consumed by the Boxer when determining how many treats are acceptable. Some healthy snacks include raw fruits and vegetables.

Boxers are also prone to dental problems, increasing their susceptibility for bad breath; dry dog food that is large and difficult for them to chew improves the likelihood for plaque removal. Plaque can also be removed by crude fiber in kibble, which has a flexible structure that increases chewing time. Dry dog food is often coated with polyphosphates, which further reduces plaque buildup by preventing calcium production in saliva. Odor production from the boxer's mouth is likely to be reduced if its teeth and oral cavity are kept in healthy conditions.

Uses
Boxers are friendly, lively companions that are popular as family dogs. Their suspicion of strangers, alertness, agility, and strength make them formidable guard dogs. They sometimes appear at dog agility or dog obedience trials and flyball events. These strong and intelligent animals have also been used as service dogs, guide dogs for the blind, therapy dogs, police dogs in K9 units, and occasionally herding cattle or sheep. The versatility of Boxers was recognized early on by the military, which has used them as valuable messenger dogs, pack carriers, and attack and guard dogs in times of war.

Notable Boxers

 * Punch and Judy were awarded the Dickin Medal for conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving in a military conflict.

title: Boxer (dog breed)


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Dickinsonia

Dickinsonia is a genus of extinct organism, most likely an animal, that lived during the late Ediacaran period in what is now Australia, China, Russia, and Ukraine. It is one of the best known members of the Ediacaran biota. The individual Dickinsonia typically resembles a bilaterally symmetrical ribbed oval. Its affinities are presently unknown; its mode of growth has been considered consistent with a stem-group bilaterian affinity, though various other affinities have been proposed. It lived during the late Ediacaran (final part of Precambrian). The discovery of cholesterol molecules in fossils of Dickinsonia lends support to the idea that Dickinsonia was an animal, though these results have been questioned.

Description
Dickinsonia fossils are known only in the form of imprints and casts in sandstone beds. The specimens found range from a few millimetres to about 1.4 m in length, and from a fraction of a millimetre to a few millimetres thick. They are nearly bilaterally symmetric, segmented, round or oval in outline, slightly expanded to one end (i.e. egg-shaped outline). The rib-like segments are radially inclined towards the wide and narrow ends, and the width and length of the segments increases towards the wide end of the fossil. The body is divided into two by a midline ridge or groove, except for a single unpaired segment at one end, dubbed the "anterior most unit" suggested to represent the front of the organism. It is disputed whether the segments are offset from each other following glide reflection, and are thus isomers, or whether the segments are symmetric across the midline, and thus follow true bilateral symmetry, as the specimens displaying the offset may be the result of taphonomic distortion. The number of segments/isomer pairs varies from 12 in smaller individuals to 74 in the largest Australian specimens.

The body of Dickinsonia is suggested to have been sack-like, with the outer layer being made of a resistant but unmineralised material. Some specimens from Russia show the presence of branched internal structures. Some authors have suggested that the underside of the body bore cilia, as well as infolded pockets.

Dickinsonia is suggested to have grown by adding a new pair of segments/isomers at the end opposite the unpaired "anterior most unit". Dickinsonia probably exhibited indeterminate growth (having no maximum size), though it is suggested that the addition of new segments slowed down later in growth. Deformed specimens from Russia indicate that individuals of Dickinsonia could regenerate after being damaged.

Ecology
Dickinsonia is suggested to have been a mobile marine organism that lived on the seafloor and fed by consuming microbial mats growing on the seabed using structures present on its underside. Dickinsonia-shaped trace fossils, presumed to represent feeding impressions, sometimes found in chains demonstrating this behaviour have been observed. These trace fossils have been assigned to the genus Epibaion. A 2022 study suggested that Dickinsonia temporarily adhered itself to the seafloor by the use of mucus, which may have been an adaptation to living in very shallow water environments.

Discovery
The first species and specimens of this fossil organism were first discovered in the Ediacara Member of the Rawnsley Quartzite, Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Reg Sprigg, the original discoverer of the Ediacaran biota in Australia, described Dickinsonia, naming it after Ben Dickinson, then Director of Mines for South Australia, and head of the government department that employed Sprigg. Additional specimens of Dickinsonia are also known from the Mogilev Formation in the Dniester River Basin of Podolia, Ukraine, the Lyamtsa, Verkhovka, Zimnegory and Yorga Formations in the White Sea area of the Arkhangelsk Region, Chernokamen Formation of the Central Urals, Russia, (these deposits have been dated to 567–550 Myr.  ), the Dengying Formation in the Yangtze Gorges area, South China. (ca. 551–543 Ma).

Taphonomy
As a rule, Dickinsonia fossils are preserved as negative impressions ("death masks") on the bases of sandstone beds. Such fossils are imprints of the upper sides of the benthic organisms that have been buried under the sand. The imprints formed as a result of cementation of the sand before complete decomposition of the body. The mechanism of cementation is not quite clear; among many possibilities, the process could have arisen from conditions which gave rise to pyrite "death masks" on the decaying body, or perhaps it was due to the carbonate cementation of the sand. The imprints of the bodies of organisms are often strongly compressed, distorted, and sometimes partly extend into the overlying rock. These deformations appear to show attempts by the organisms to escape from the falling sediment.

Rarely, Dickinsonia have been preserved as a cast in massive sandstone lenses, where it occurs together with Pteridinium, Rangea and some others. Large beds containing many hundreds of Dickinsonia (along with many other species) are preserved in situ within Nilpena Ediacara National Park, with park rangers providing on-site guided tours in the cooler months of the year. These specimens are products of events where organisms were first stripped from the sea-floor, transported and deposited within sand flow. In such cases, stretched and ripped Dickinsonia occur. The first such specimen was described as a separate genus and species, Chondroplon bilobatum and later re-identified as Dickinsonia.

Species
Since 1947, a total of nine species have been described, of which three are currently considered valid:

A claimed specimen of Dickinsonia from India was later determined to be the remains of a beehive.

External relationships
Dickinsonia is classified as part of the group Proarticulata or Dickinsoniomorpha. Proarticulata includes a number of morphologically similar organisms, such Spriggina, Yorgia, Andiva and Cephalonega, which share the same segmented articulation. The affinities of Proarticulata to other organisms, including to other members of the Ediacaran biota, like rangeomorphs, have long been contentious. It has been historically proposed that most Ediacaran organisms were closely related to each other, as part of the grouping "Vendobionta", though recent authors argue that this grouping as a whole is likely to be polyphyletic. Gregory Retallack has proposed that the fossils of Dickinsonia and other Ediacaran biota represent lichens that grew in a terrestrial environment, but this has been broadly rejected by other authors, who argue that a marine environment of deposition better fits available evidence. Other proposal have included giant protists, as proposed by Adolf Seilacher. Most modern research suggest that Dickinsonia and other proarticulatans are likely to be animals, possibly belonging to Eumetazoa. A chemical study of Russian specimens found that they were enriched with cholesterol, which is only produced by animals, supporting an animal affinity, though these results have been questioned by other authors, who consider the association between the cholesterol molecules and the Dickinsonia fossils to not be definitive. Within Animalia, a number of affinities have been proposed, including as stem-eumetazoans forming a clade with rangeomorphs, to Placozoa, and to Cnidaria. A number of researchers have proposed close affinities to Bilateria, based on the bilateral or nearly bilateral organisation of proarticulatans, though proarticulatans are not likely to be a member of the bilaterian crown group.

title: Dickinsonia


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Phil McGraw

Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), known professionally as  Dr. Phil, is an American television personality and author, best known for hosting the talk show Dr. Phil. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, though he ceased renewing his license to practice psychology in 2006.

McGraw rose to fame with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late 1990s. Oprah Winfrey then helped McGraw launch his own program, Dr. Phil, in September 2002. The show is formatted as an advice show.

Early life and education
McGraw was born in Vinita, Oklahoma, on September 1, 1950, the son of Joseph J. McGraw Jr. and his wife, Anne Geraldine "Jerry" (née Stevens). He grew up with two older sisters, Deana and Donna, and younger sister Brenda in the oilfields of North Texas where his father was an equipment supplier. At age 13, he worked at an A&W Root Beer stand and a local chain called Pizza Planet in Oklahoma City.

McGraw moved to Kansas with his father as the latter pursued his lifelong goal of becoming a psychologist. There, he attended Shawnee Mission North High School in Overland Park, Kansas. He played linebacker on the high school football team and, in 1968, earned a football scholarship to the University of Tulsa where he played middle linebacker under coach Glenn Dobbs.

He later transferred to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he graduated in 1975 with a B.A. in psychology. He went on to earn an M.A. in experimental psychology in 1976 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1979, both at North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas), where his dissertation was titled "Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Psychological Intervention." He did a year of post-doctoral training in forensic psychology at the Wilmington Institute. McGraw's doctoral advisor was Frank Lawlis, who later became the primary contributing psychologist for the Dr. Phil television show.

Early career
After obtaining his doctorate, McGraw rejoined his father in Wichita Falls, Texas, where the elder McGraw had established his private psychology practice.

In 1985, McGraw and his father partnered with Thelma Box, a Texas businesswoman, in presenting "Pathways" self-help seminars. In October 1991, six years after joining Box, the younger McGraw sold his share in the company for $325,000.

In 1990, McGraw co-founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc. (CSI), a trial consulting firm, with lawyer Gary Dobbs. CSI would perform "dry runs" of court cases in simulated courtrooms, and McGraw would offer advice about what parts of the lawyer's case worked and what parts did not. McGraw is no longer an officer or director of the company. The TV show Bull is based on McGraw's experience as a trial consultant, and he is credited as one of the creators of the series. McGraw began working with Oprah Winfrey through CSI.

Oprah Winfrey and the Dr. Phil show
In 1995, Oprah Winfrey hired McGraw's legal consulting firm CSI to prepare her for the Amarillo Texas beef trial. Winfrey was so impressed with McGraw that she thanked him for her victory in that case, which ended in 1998. Soon after, she invited him to appear on her show. His appearance proved so successful that he began appearing weekly as a relationship and life strategy expert on Tuesdays, starting in April 1998.

In September 2002, McGraw formed Peteski Productions and launched his own syndicated daily television show, Dr. Phil, produced by Winfrey's Harpo Studios. Dr. Phil is an advice show in which McGraw tackles a different topic each show, offering advice to his guests. He signed a five-year extension of his syndication deal with his show's distributors, King World Productions, Inc. The deal was to pay McGraw $15 million per year and keep the show in production through the 2013–2014 television season.

In 2007, McGraw was named 30th on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. On May 21, 2007, Dr. Phil was ranked fourth by Nielsen Media Research, with 6.69 million viewers. On May 12, 2008, almost one year later, the show was ranked sixth with 5.69 million viewers. At that time, the only talk show more popular than Dr. Phil was The Oprah Winfrey Show. On December 11, 2018, Dr. Phil was the top syndicated show with a "2.9 live-plus-same-day" national Nielsen rating, ranking first among talk shows for the 117th consecutive week. His ranking improved, and by 2020, he was in the 22nd spot on the aforementioned Forbes list with earnings of $65.5 million.

Spin-off shows
In 2005, Phil and Jay McGraw, Phil's eldest son, formed Stage 29 Productions, and a week later, announced a new show called Moochers (similar to ABC's Kicked Out). Ultimately, the show was not produced.

In 2006, the Dr. Phil House (similar to CBS's Big Brother) began airing as part of the Dr. Phil television show. Following a protest by neighbors, the house in Los Angeles was shut down, and production resumed on a sound stage on a studio back lot.

Stage 29 launched Decision House in September 2007. It was executive produced by Jay McGraw, and featured Judge Lynn Toler (from Divorce Court) on MyNetworkTV. The show produced 13 episodes during its only season, which ran until May 24, 2008.

Late in 2007, McGraw began promoting the Dr. Phil Show spinoff series The Doctors. The show, which first aired in September 2008 and ended in August 2022, was hosted by television personality and ER physician Travis Stork; Jay was executive producer of the show. On September 8, 2008, The Doctors debuted and, as of November 10, had a 2.0 rating. The show won a Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Talk Show/Informative in 2010, and was nominated eight times between 2009 and 2013.

Daily Mail TV, executive produced by Phil and Jay McGraw, along with producers Martin Clarke, Carla Pennington, and Jeffrey Wilson, won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding News Program in 2019.

In August 2021, the reality television series House Calls with Dr. Phil aired on CBS. In the series, McGraw visits various families at home and offers advice on their home life. The series ended after six episodes in September 2021.

Merit Street
On April 2, 2024, McGraw launched his own television network, Merit Street, alongside an accompanying streaming service Merit+. Its flagship program is Dr. Phil Primetime, alongside programming from Nancy Grace and Steve Harvey.

Doctor on Demand
In 2012, McGraw founded the telehealth company Doctor On Demand, an online platform that allows individuals to schedule virtual appointments with a network of physicians and therapists. The company launched a web and mobile service in 2014. The platform focuses on services related to preventative care, medication management, wellness, and mental health. According to ABC News, the company had a network of around 11,000 board-certified physicians as of 2015. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company expanded its bandwidth and increased its pool of therapists to deal with the increasing volume of patients seeking virtual consultations and care.

Approach to psychology
McGraw's advice and methods have drawn criticism from fellow psychotherapists and non-experts. McGraw's critics regard advice given by him to be, at best, simplistic and, at worst, ineffective or harmful. The National Alliance on Mental Illness called McGraw's conduct in one episode of his television show "unethical" and "incredibly irresponsible". McGraw said in a 2001 Sun-Sentinel interview that he never liked traditional one-on-one counseling, and that "I'm not the Hush-Puppies, pipe and 'Let's talk about your mother' kind of psychologist."

McGraw frequently advises individuals to seek professional help, particularly psychotherapy. A 2016 study at The Ohio State University found that viewers were more likely to seek professional mental health care for themselves and their children after seeing McGraw deal with similar issues on the Dr. Phil show. The study attributed this phenomenon to viewers' tendency to form a parasocial bond with McGraw through watching the show, and have increased belief in their ability to seek help.

1970s
In 1971, McGraw lived in Topeka, Kansas, and ran the Grecian Health Spa alongside his father and two friends. McGraw abruptly closed the business, filed for bankruptcy and moved out of state in September 1973. McGraw had sold the lifetime membership contracts customers had signed to another company, resulting in customers being still legally responsible for the membership even though the spa was closed. McGraw and his business partners were investigated by the state's Attorney General office. Lead investigator Emory Goad said "McGraw had been pulling off a textbook example of a membership scam. He was signing up hundreds of customers to long, expensive contracts, then turning around and selling the contracts to a financial institution for a percentage of the total value up front in cash. He then simply shut down the spa at some point after collecting that money and left town. It was a total rip-off because the customers would still be liable for the contract payments, only now to the financial institution." McGraw was sued by several Topeka banks for $41,000 they claimed he owed, but the lawsuits and investigation stalled when he left the state.

1980s
On October 21, 1988, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists determined that McGraw had hired a former patient for "part-time temporary employment". Specifically, the board cited "a possible failure to provide proper separation between the termination of therapy and the initiation of employment"; in response to the issue, they issued a letter of reprimand and imposed administrative penalties. The board also investigated claims made by the patient of inappropriate contact initiated by McGraw, but the "Findings of Fact" document issued by the board on October 21, 1988, at the end of its investigation includes no reference to any physical contact of any kind. It specifically identified "the therapeutic and business relationships" as constituting McGraw's sole issue with the board. McGraw fulfilled all terms of the board's requirements, and they closed the complaint file in June 1990.

2000s
McGraw stopped renewing his Texas license to practice psychology in 2006; he has never had a license in California, where his show is taped. In 2002, the California Board of Psychology determined that, because McGraw's television show was more about entertainment than psychology, McGraw did not need a license.

In 2003, McGraw lent his name and image to a line of nutritional supplements, including vitamin packets, meal replacement drinks, and power bars under the brand name Shape Up, under a licensing agreement with CSA Nutraceuticals, a Texas start-up. The deal stipulated that a certain percentage of sales would be given to the Dr. Phil Foundation, a Dallas charity that works on issues like childhood obesity. CSA Nutraceuticals stopped producing the supplements in 2004 after the Federal Trade Commission began investigating it for false advertising. Three disappointed consumers filed a lawsuit in 2004, claiming that it made false or unproven claims. In 2006, a $10.5 million settlement was reached.

In 2003, The Making of Dr. Phil, an unauthorized biography by Sophia Dembling and Lisa Gutierrez, was published by John Wiley and Sons. The book covers McGraw's personal and professional life, including allegations of abuse and unethical practices, with interviews from his childhood friends and former classmates.

In 2006, McGraw was named a co-defendant, along with Paramount, CBS Television, and others, in a 2006 lawsuit filed concerning the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. The lawsuit was filed by Deepak Kalpoe and his brother Satish Kalpoe, who claimed that an interview they did with McGraw, aired in September 2005, was "manipulated and later broadcast as being accurate, and which portrays Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe 'as engaging in criminal activity against Natalee Holloway and constitutes defamation.'" On March 17, 2015, the lawsuit against McGraw and CBS was dismissed. The court records disclosed the lawsuit by Deepak and Satish Kalpoe was rejected one week before the civil trial was set to begin.

Another contentious case arose in January 2008, when McGraw visited pop star Britney Spears in her hospital room. The visit by McGraw drew criticism from the Spears family and mental health professionals; it appeared to be part of an attempt at getting Spears and her parents to participate in an "intervention" on the Dr. Phil television show. Immediately after the visit, McGraw issued public statements about Spears' situation that the Spears' family spokeswoman Lou Taylor said violated their family's trust in McGraw. "This is another example of a trust being betrayed", Taylor told Today co-host Meredith Vieira. "Rather than helping the family's situation, the celebrity psychologist caused additional damage". Several mental health care professionals criticized McGraw for his actions, but fellow television psychologist Joyce Brothers defended McGraw. It was reported that a psychologist filed a complaint with the California Board of Psychology (BOP), alleging that McGraw had practiced psychology without a license and had violated doctor-patient privilege by discussing Spears' case with the media. A copy of the complaint appeared in the media, but there is no way to verify whether or not it was submitted to BOP as it does not disclose that information unless an investigation is opened. Martin Greenberg, a former BOP president, said on the Today Show that this incident was not a matter that the law covers or would be concerned about.

Later that year, McGraw was sued by Thomas Riccio, the memorabilia collector responsible for taping the Las Vegas robbery that led to O. J. Simpson's conviction. Riccio sued McGraw in Los Angeles Superior Court for defamation and other complaints, stemming from an interview he did on the Dr. Phil Show which aired on October 8, 2008. The claims were dismissed, with the judge finding that it was protected speech under the First Amendment.

2010s
In 2016, McGraw and his wife filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against American Media Inc., a publishing company that owns the National Enquirer and Radar Online, due primarily to their publishing an interview from a former patient who had accused McGraw of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s while under his care. McGraw had denied the sexual abuse allegations since they were first made against him in 2003. The lawsuit was later dropped on mutual terms.

McGraw was criticized for an interview featuring former actress Shelley Duvall, which aired in 2016. Vivian Kubrick described McGraw's behavior towards Duvall as "exploitative" and "appallingly cruel" and called for a boycott of the show.

2020s
In February 2022, around a dozen current and former employees of Dr. Phil alleged that they experienced "verbal abuse in a workplace that fosters fear, intimidation, and racism." Seven current employees also claimed that the show's guests are often manipulated and treated unethically. Attorneys for McGraw and his co-producer, Carla Pennington, categorically denied every allegation.

A former guest who appeared on Dr. Phil in 2016, Danielle Bregoli, also known as "Bhad Bhabie", criticized the methods of Turn-About Ranch, an Escalante, Utah-based therapeutic horse ranch for troubled youth that McGraw had endorsed. In 2022, McGraw, Viacom and CBS were sued by Bregoli and Hannah Archuleta, another former guest, for recommending their parents send them to Turn-About Ranch. Afterward, McGraw stopped recommending Turn-About Ranch on Dr. Phil.

Writing career
In 1999, McGraw published his first book, Life Strategies. In the following six years, McGraw published three additional relationship books, Relationship Rescue, Self Matters, and Family First. Since 2022, McGraw and physician John Whyte have co-written a series of columns for WebMD and USA Today. The former has also written op-eds for Sportico and The Hill.

Awards and recognition
McGraw was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2020, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. McGraw was invited to give the presidential address at the 2006 annual convention of the American Psychological Association, where he received the APA's Presidential Citation for "highlighting mental health issues" to "more Americans than any other living psychologist."

Personal life
McGraw married his first wife, Debbie Higgins McCall, in 1970, when he was 20 years old. According to her, McGraw was domineering and would not allow her to participate in the family business. She claimed that she was confined to domestic duties and instructed to begin lifting weights to improve her bustline. McCall also claimed that infidelity had ended their marriage.

While annulling the marriage in 1973, McGraw met and began dating Robin Jo Jameson, whom he married in 1976. The couple have two children together, Jay McGraw and Jordan McGraw.

McGraw is a private pilot, with an instrument rating, flying single-engine airplanes. He is a Christian. He launched a Dr. Phil Foundation charity in October 2003.

title: Phil McGraw