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Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik (born 17 October 1946) is a Polish historian, essayist, former dissident, public intellectual, as well as co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

Reared in a family of committed communists, Michnik became an opponent of Poland's communist regime at the time of the party's anti-Jewish purges. He was imprisoned after the 1968 March Events and again after the imposition of martial law in 1981. He has been called "one of Poland's most famous political prisoners".

Michnik played a crucial role during the Polish Round Table Talks, as a result of which the communists agreed to call elections in 1989, which were won by Solidarity. Though he has withdrawn from active politics, he has "maintained an influential voice through journalism". He has received many awards and honors, including the Legion of Honour and European of the Year. He is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders. In 2022, he received the Princess of Asturias Award in the category "Communication and Humanities".

Family
Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family of communist activists of Jewish origin. His father Ozjasz Szechter was First Secretary of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, and his mother Helena Michnik was a historian, communist activist, and children's-book author. His step-brother on his mother's side, Stefan Michnik, was a military judge in the 1950s, who passed sentences, including executions, in politically-motivated trials of members of Polish anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Stefan Michnik (who lived in Sweden from 1968 until his death in 2021), was later formally accused of zbrodnie komunistyczne ("communist crimes") by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.

A step-brother of Adam Michnik on his father's side, Jerzy Michnik (born 1929), settled in Israel after 1957 and then moved to New York.

Education
While attending primary school, he was an active member of the Polish Scouting Association (ZHP), in a troop which was led by Jacek Kuroń. During secondary school, this particular Scouting troop was banned, and Adam began to participate in meetings of the Crooked Circle Club. After its closing in 1962, with the encouragement from Jan Józef Lipski and under Adam Schaff's protection, he founded a discussion group, "Contradiction Hunters Club" (Klub Poszukiwaczy Sprzeczności); he was one and the most visible leader of the left wing student opposition group, the Komandosi.

In 1964, he began to study history at Warsaw University. A year later he was suspended because he disseminated an open letter to the members of Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) among his schoolmates. Its authors, Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski appealed for a beginning of reforms which would repair the political system in Poland. In 1965, the PZPR forbade the printing of his works. In 1966, he was suspended for the second time for organizing a discussion meeting with Leszek Kołakowski, who was expelled from the PZPR several weeks earlier, for criticizing its leaders. From then on, he wrote under a pseudonym to several newspapers including "Życie Gospodarcze", "Więź", and "Literatura".

In March 1968, he was expelled from the University for his activities during 1968 Polish political crisis. The crisis was ignited by the ban of Kazimierz Dejmek's adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz's poetic drama Dziady ("Forefathers' Eve") in the National Theatre. The play contained many anti-Russian allusions, which were greeted with enthusiastic applause by the audience. Michnik and another student, Henryk Szlajfer, recounted the situation to a correspondent of Le Monde, "whose report was then carried on Radio Free Europe". Both Michnik and Szlajfer were expelled from the university. Upon their expulsion, students organized demonstrations, which were brutally suppressed by the riot police and "worker-squads".

Władysław Gomułka used Michnik's and several other dissidents' Jewish background to wage an anti-Semitic campaign, blaming the Jews for the crisis. Michnik was arrested and sentenced to three years imprisonment for "acts of hooliganism".

In 1969, he was released from prison under an amnesty, but he was forbidden to continue his studies. Not until the middle of the 1970s was he allowed to continue his studies of history, which he finished in 1975 at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, under the supervision of Prof. Lech Trzeciakowski.

Opposition
After he was released from prison, he worked for two years as a welder at the Róża Luxemburg's (Rosa Luxemburg) Industrial Plant and then, on the recommendation of Jacek Kuroń, he became private secretary to Antoni Słonimski.

In 1976–77 he lived in Paris. After he returned to Poland, he became involved in the activity of Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), which had already existed for a couple of months. It was one of the best known opposition organizations of the 1970s. He became one of the most active opposition activists and also one of the supporters of the Society for Educational Courses (Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych).

Between 1977 and 1989, he was the editor or co-editor of underground newspapers published illegally, samizdat: Biuletyn Informacyjny, Zapis, and Krytyka. He was also a member of the management of one of the biggest underground publishers: NOWa.

In years 1980–1989, he was an adviser to both the Independent Self-governing trade union "Solidarity" (NSZZ "Solidarność") in the Mazovia Region and to Foundry Workers Committee of "Solidarity".

When martial law was declared in December 1981, he was an internee at first, but when he refused to sign a "loyalty oath" and assent to voluntarily leave the country, he was jailed and accused of an "attempt to overthrow socialism". He was in jail without a verdict until 1984 because the prosecutor's office deliberately prolonged the trial.

Adam Michnik demanded an end to the judicial proceedings against him or have his case dismissed. Meanwhile, he wanted to be granted the status of a political prisoner and began a hunger strike while in jail. In 1984, he was released from jail, under an amnesty.

He took part in an attempt to organize a strike in the Gdańsk shipyard. As a consequence, he was rearrested in 1985 and this time sentenced to three years imprisonment. He was released the following year, again under another amnesty.

Since 1989
In 1988, he became an adviser of Lech Wałęsa's informal Coordination Committee, and later he became a member of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee. He took an active part in planning and preliminary negotiations for the Round Table Talks in 1989, in which he also participated. Adam Michnik inspired and collaborated with the editors of the Ulam Quarterly, before 1989 that journal pioneered the World Wide Web in the USA.

After the Round Table Talks, Lech Wałęsa told him to organize a big Polish national daily, which was supposed to be an 'organ' of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee, before the upcoming elections. This newspaper, under the Round Table agreement, was Gazeta Wyborcza ("Election Newspaper") because it was supposed to appear until the end of the parliamentary election in 1989. After organizing this newspaper with journalists who worked in the "Biuletyn Informacyjny", Adam Michnik became its editor-in-chief.

In the elections to the Contract Sejm on 4 June 1989 he became a member of parliament for Lech Wałęsa's Solidarity Citizens' Committee electoral register, as a candidate for the city of Bytom.

Both as a member of parliament and as editor of Gazeta Wyborcza he actively supported Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government and his candidature in the 1990 presidential election campaign against Lech Wałęsa. After the breakup of the Citizens' Committee and Mazowiecki's failure, Michnik withdrew from his direct involvement in politics and did not run for a seat in the 1991 parliamentary election, instead focusing on editorial and journalistic activities. Under his leadership, Gazeta Wyborcza was converted into an influential liberal daily newspaper in Poland. Based on Gazeta Wyborcza assets, the Agora SA partnership came into existence. By May 2004, it was one of the biggest media concerns in Poland, administrating 11 monthly titles, the portal gazeta.pl, the outdoor advertising company AMS, and has shares in several radio stations. Adam Michnik does not have any shares in Agora and does not hold any office, other than chief editor, which is unusual in business in Poland. Michnik's shares are kept by Agora.

Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in his exposé in September 1989 began a new, so-called "thick line"attitude to the political history of the recent past. Michnik is a proponent and advocate of this policy.

On 27 December 2002, Adam Michnik and Paweł Smoleński revealed the so-called "Rywin affair" which had to be explained by a specially called parliamentary select committee.

In autumn 2004, due to health problems (he suffered from tuberculosis) he resigned from active participation in editing Gazeta Wyborcza and passed his duties to editorial colleague Helena Łuczywo.

He is a member of the Association of Polish Writers and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Since the conservative Law and Justice party led by Jarosław Kaczyński gained power in Poland in 2015, Michnik has been a vocal critic of the new government accusing it of undermining democracy in the country stating that "What we are seeing today is a gradual closing down of democracy. There is no other democracy than the liberal version. Everything else is a contradiction in terms."

Quotations
According to Canadian translator and writer Paul Wilson, Adam Michnik "[holds a] core... belief... that history is not just about the past because it is constantly recurring, and not as farce, as Marx had it, but as itself:"'The world is full of inquisitors and heretics, liars and those lied to, terrorists and the terrorized. There is still someone dying at Thermopylae, someone drinking a glass of hemlock, someone crossing the Rubicon, someone drawing up a proscription list.''""'Brutal and cruel colonialism is not the only, or the determining, aspect of English, French, and Dutch identity, even though the colonial era profoundly influenced these cultures. Likewise, Russia is not doomed to despotism at home and aggression abroad. It is no sphinx—it is a country full of conflicts and debates.'"

Recognition

 * Polcul Foundation Award (Australia, 1980)
 * Andrzej Kijowski Prize (Poland, 1985)
 * Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (United States, 1986)
 * Prize winner of Prix de la Liberte of the French PEN-Club (France, 1988)
 * Europe's Man of the Year – prize awarded by the magazine La Vie (France, 1989)
 * Shofar Award – prize awarded by National Jewish Committee on Scouting (Israel, 1991)
 * Francisco Cerecedo Award, by the Association of European Journalists (1999)
 * Imre Nagy's Medal (Hungary, 1995)
 * Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Prize for Democracy and Journalism (May 1996)
 * Order of Bernardo O'Higgins (Chile, 1998)
 * One of 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the International Press Institute
 * Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Germany, 2001)
 * Erasmus Prize (Netherlands, 2001)
 * PhD Honoris Causa in New School for Social Research, University of Minnesota, Connecticut College, University of Michigan
 * Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (France, 2003)
 * Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk 3rd Class (Czech Republic, 2003)
 * Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (Poland, 2005)
 * Listed by Financial Times as one of the 20 most influential journalists in the world.
 * Professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine, 2006)
 * Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise 3rd class (Ukraine, 2006)
 * Dan David Prize (Israel, 2006)
 * Cena Pelikán (Czech Republic, 2007)
 * Patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative
 * PhD Honoris Causa Charles University, Prague (Czech Republic)
 * Recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award (Czech Republic, 2010)
 * Order of the White Eagle (Poland, 2010)
 * Goethe Medal (Germany, 2011)
 * PhD Honoris Causa Klaipėda University, Klaipėda (Lithuania, 2012)
 * Kisiel Prize (Poland, 2013)
 * Freedom Prize of the Lithuanian Parliament (Lithuania, 2014)
 * Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana 3rd Class (Estonia, 2014)
 * Alumno Bene Merenti Medal presented by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland, 2016)
 * Ortega y Gasset Award presented by El País daily (Spain, 2016)
 * Primo Levi Prize presented by the Primo Levi Center in Genoa (Italy, 2018)
 * Princess of Asturias Award in the category "Communication and Humanities" (Spain, 2022)
 * Order of the White Double Cross, 2nd class, Grand Officer (Slovakia, 2024)

Books

 * In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe , translated by Roman S. Czarny, editor Irena Grudzinska Gross, 2011. (ISBN 9780520269231)
 * Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives, translated by Jane Cave, 1998. (ISBN 0-520-21759-4)
 * Church and the Left, (David Ost, editor), 1992. (ISBN 0-226-52424-8)
 * Letters from Prison and Other Essays, translated by Maya Latynski, 1986. (ISBN 0-520-05371-0)

Journalism

 * What was the nationality of the stuffed teddy bear the reaction of Adam Michnik to the accusations towards Andrzej Wajda's Katyn in the French Le Monde, April 2008, originally published in Gazeta Wyborcza, English translation by * salon.eu.sk
 * A Miracle a column about Czechoslovakia, published as a part of the * Czechoslovakian dossier, a special project of the Czechoslovakian Bridges Association and * salon.eu.sk
 * After the Velvet, an Existential Revolution? a dialogue between Adam Michnik and Václav Havel, English, originally published in Gazeta Wyborcza, November 2008
 * "The Polish Witch-Hunt" The New York Review of Books 54/11 (28 June 2007) : 25–26

Articles

 * "An Open Letter to International Public Opinion". Telos 54 (Winter 1982–83). New York: Telos Press.

title: Adam Michnik


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User:Ab384

I have now left Wikipedia and no longer post to it.

Any posts made to it following 19 Jan 2005 under my name are not made by me.

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

title: User:Ab384


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Words (Unix)

words is a standard file on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, and is simply a newline-delimited list of dictionary words. It is used, for instance, by spell-checking programs.

The words file is usually stored in /usr/share/dict/words or /usr/dict/words.

On Debian and Ubuntu, the file is provided by the  package, or its provider packages, , etc. On Fedora and Arch Linux, the  file is provided by the  package. The package is sourced from data from the Moby Project, a public domain compilation of words.

title: Words (Unix)


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National Endowment for Democracy

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization in the United States founded in 1983 to advance democracy worldwide, by promoting political and economic institutions, such as political groups, trade unions, free markets, and business groups.

The NED was created as a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation, and in turn acts as a grant-making foundation. It is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress. In addition to its grants program, the NED also supports and houses the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, the International Forum for Democratic Studies, the Reagan–Fascell Fellowship Program, the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, and the Center for International Media Assistance.

Upon its founding, the NED assumed some former activities of the CIA. Political groups, activists, academics, and some governments have said the NED has been an instrument of United States foreign policy helping to foster regime change.

Founding
The National Security Decision Directive 77 was instrumental for the creation of Project Democracy and its offspring NED.

In a 1982 speech at the Palace of Westminster, President Ronald Reagan proposed an initiative, before the British Parliament, "to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities." This intersected with previously formulated plans by the American Political Foundation, an NGO supported by some members of the Republican and Democratic parties, together with scholars based at CSIS, to create a government-funded but privately run democracy promotion foundation to support democratic civil society groups and parties. The idea was strongly championed by the State Department, which argued that a non-governmental foundation would be able to support dissident groups and organizations in the Soviet Bloc, and also foster the emergence of democratic movements in US-allied dictatorships that were becoming unstable and in danger of experiencing leftist or radical revolutions, without provoking a diplomatic backlash against the US government. After some initial uncertainty over the idea from Reagan Administration hard-liners, the U.S. government, through USAID (United States Agency for International Development), contracted The American Political Foundation to study democracy promotion, which became known as "The Democracy Program". The Program recommended the creation of a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation to be known as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED, though non-governmental, would be funded primarily through annual appropriations from the U.S. government and subject to congressional oversight.

In 1983, the House Foreign Affairs Committee proposed legislation to provide initial funding of $31.3 million for NED as part of the State Department Authorization Act (H.R. 2915), because NED was in its beginning stages of development the appropriation was set at $18 million. Included in the legislation was $13.8 million for the Free Trade Union Institute, an affiliate of the AFL–CIO, $2.5 million for an affiliate of the National Chamber Foundation, and $5 million each for two party institutes, which was later eliminated by a vote of 267–136. The conference report on H.R. 2915 was adopted by the House on November 17, 1983, and the Senate the following day. On November 18, 1983, articles of incorporation were filed in the District of Columbia to establish the National Endowment for Democracy as a nonprofit organization.

1980s to present
An analysis by political scientist Sarah Bush found that while NED activity in the 1980s focused on direct challenges to autocrats by funding dissidents, opposition parties, and unions, the majority of 21st-century NED funding goes to technical programs that are less likely to challenge the status quo, with the proportion of NED funding for "relatively tame programs" increasing from roughly 20% of NED grants in 1986 to roughly 60% in 2009. Political scientist Lindsey A. O'Rourke writes that, "Today, NED programs run in more than ninety countries. Although the number of US-backed democracy promotion programs have grown, most of today's programs pursue less aggressive objectives than their Cold War counterparts." In a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, NED founder Allen Weinstein said: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

During the 1984 Panamanian general election the American Institute for Free Labor Development and the NED provided around $20,000 in support of activists involved with Ardito Barletta's campaign.

In 1984, NED started activities in China, helping to launch the Chinese-language quarterly journal The Chinese Intellectual (TCI) and funding its publications. The journal, which was originally targeted at Chinese students and scholars in the West, opened offices in Beijing in 1988. The TCI was forced to move back to New York following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Since 2004 NED has granted US$8,758,300 to Uyghur groups including the World Uyghur Congress, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Campaign for Uyghurs and The Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project. It has also provided extensive grants for programs pertaining to Tibet. Between 2005 and 2012 it gave grants to the China Free Press NGO and in 2019 it gave about $643,000 to civil society programmes in Hong Kong. In response, in 2020 China imposed sanctions on NED president Carl Gershman and Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House.

The NED played a role in supporting the Arab Spring of 2011. For example, the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and individual Yemeni activist Entsar Qadhi received training and finances from the NED. In Egypt, between 2008 and 2012, it also supported Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman, an exiled police officer who opposed both Hosni Mubarak's and Mohamed Morsi's presidencies, as well as secularist activist Esraa Abdel-Fatah's Egyptian Democratic Academy in 2011.

Funding and structure
NED is a grant-making foundation, distributing funds to private non-governmental organizations for promoting democracy abroad in around 90 countries. Half of NED's funding is allocated annually to four main U.S. organizations: the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (associated with the AFL–CIO), the Center for International Private Enterprise (affiliated with the USCC), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (associated with the Democratic Party), and the International Republican Institute (formerly known as the National Republican Institute for International Affairs and affiliated with the Republican Party). The other half of NED's funding is awarded annually to hundreds of non-governmental organizations based abroad which apply for support. In 2011, the Democratic and Republican Institutes channeled around $100 million a year through the NED.

Source of funding
The NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget (it is included in the chapter of the Department of State budget destined for the U.S. Agency for International Development-USAID) and is subject to congressional oversight even as a non-governmental organization.

From 1984 to 1990 the NED received $15–18 million of congressional funding annually, and $25–30 million from 1991 to 1993. At the time the funding came via the United States Information Agency. In 1993 the NED nearly lost its congressional funding, after the House of Representatives initially voted to abolish its funding. The funding (of $35 million, a rise from $30 million the year before) was only retained after a vigorous campaign by NED supporters.

In the financial year to the end of September 2009 NED had an income of $135.5 million, nearly all of which came from U.S. Government agencies. In addition to government funding, the NED has received funding from foundations, such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and others. The Bradley Foundation supported the Journal of Democracy with $1.5 million during 1990–2008.

In 2018, President Donald Trump proposed to slash the NED's funding and cut its links to the Democratic and Republican Institutes.

Board
NED's current president is Damon Wilson. His predecessor was Carl Gershman, serving between April 30, 1984 and July 2021. Carl Gershman was a former Senior Counselor to the United States Representative to the United Nations and former executive director of Social Democrats, USA.

In January 2024, NED announced the addition of Alyssa Ayres, Elizabeth Economy, and Juan Zarate to its board of directors.

Democracy Award
NED's Board of Directors annually gives a Democracy Award to recognize "the courageous and creative work of individuals and organizations that have advanced the cause of human rights and democracy around the world." The trophy is a small-scale replica of the Goddess of Democracy that was constructed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Notable recipients include: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, former President of Mexico Vicente Fox, journalist Veton Surroi, and most recently, four civil society organizations focused on defending Ukraine amid Russia's war. Past speakers at the award's ceremony have included U.S. Senator John McCain, Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA)
In 2006, CIMA was founded as an initiative of the National Endowment for Democracy with encouragement from Congress and a grant from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. CIMA promotes the work of independent media and journalists abroad, with a focus on the developing world, social media, digital media, and citizen journalism. It issued its first report, Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster Free and Independent Media Around the World, in 2008, and subsequently issued other reports, including a report on digital media in conflict-prone societies and a report on mobile phone use in Africa.

Reception
Writing in Slate in 2004, Brendan I. Koerner wrote that, "Depending on whom you ask, the NED is either a nonprofit champion of liberty or an ideologically driven meddler in world affairs."

NED has been criticized by both the right and the left. Some on the right accuse the NED of having a pro-social democracy agenda, promoted through its labor affiliate; conversely, some on the left accuse the NED of being "a rightwing initiative" oriented toward Reagan's Cold War politics. Within Latin America, critics accuse the NED of manifesting U.S. paternalism or imperialism, conversely, "supporters say that it helps many groups with a social-democratic and liberal orientation across the world," providing training and support for pro-democracy groups that criticize the U.S. In a 2004 article for the Washington Post, Michael McFaul argues that the NED is not an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. He said he experienced the difference between the actions of US policymakers and the actions of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) while representing the NDI in Moscow during the last days of the Soviet Union: U.S. policymakers supported Mikhail Gorbachev while the NDI worked with Democratic Russia, Gorbachev's opponents. NED has said in public statements that democracy evolves "according to the needs and traditions of diverse political cultures" and does not necessitate an American-style model.

In 1986, NED's President Carl Gershman said that the NED was created because "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 1960s and that's why it has been discontinued". Throughout the course of a 2010 investigation by ProPublica, Paul Steiger, the then editor in chief of the publication said that "those who spearheaded creation of NED have long acknowledged it was part of an effort to move from covert to overt efforts to foster democracy" and cited as evidence a 1991 interview in which then-NED president Allen Weinstein said, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

Critics have compared the NED's funding of Nicaraguan groups (pro-U.S. and conservative unions, political parties, student groups, business groups, and women's associations) in the 1980s and 1990s in Nicaragua to the previous CIA effort "to challenge and undermine" a left-wing government in Chile. (Latin Americanist scholar William M. LeoGrande writes that the NED's roughly $2 million funding into Nicaragua between 1984 and 1988 was the "main source of overt assistance to the civic opposition," of which about half went to the anti-Sandinista newspaper La Prensa. ) According to sociologist William Robinson, NED funds during the Reagan years were "ultimately used for five overlapping pseudo-covert activities: leadership training for pro-American elites, promotion of pro-American educational systems and mass media, strengthening the 'institutions of democracy' by funding pro-American organizations in the target state, propaganda, and the development of transnational elite networks." Criticizing these activities, Robinson wrote that "U.S. policymakers claim that they are interested in process (free and fair elections) and not outcome (the results of these elections); in reality, the principal concern is outcome."

Political scientist Lindsey A. O'Rourke writes that the Reagan-era NED played a key role in U.S. efforts "to promote democratic transitions in Chile, Haiti, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, and Suriname," but did so to promote the success of pro-U.S. parties, not just to promote democracy, and did not support communist or socialist opposition parties. The North American Congress on Latin America says that the NED engages in a "a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics--in countries from Nicaragua to the Philippines, Ukraine to Haiti, overturning unfriendly 'authoritarian' governments (many of which the United States had previously supported) and replacing them with handpicked pro-market allies."

Thailand and Malaysia
In the 2020 Thai protests, pro-government groups cited NED support for protester-sympathizing groups to assert that the US government was masterminding the protests. The United States Embassy in Bangkok formally denied allegations of funding or supporting protesters.

In August 2021, Malaysian human rights activist and Suaram adviser Kua Kia Soong criticized the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan for accepting funding from the National Endowment of Democracy, which he described as a "CIA soft power front". Citing the US track record of supporting regime change abroad and racial discrimination against Black and Asian Americans, Kua urged Malaysian civil society organizations to stop accepting funding from the NED since it undermined their legitimacy, independence, and effectiveness. Kua's statement came after Daniel Twining, the president of the NED affiliate International Republican Institute, had made remarks in 2018 acknowledging that the NED had financially supported Malaysian opposition parties since 2002. Following the 2018 Malaysian general election Twining had also praised the newly elected Pakatan Harapan government for freezing Chinese infrastructural investments.

Russia
Russian government officials and state media have frequently regarded the NED as hostile to their country. In 2015, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti blamed NED grants for the Euromaidan mass protests that forced Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power. In July 2015, the Russian government declared NED to be an "undesirable" NGO, making the NED the first organization banned under the Russian undesirable organizations law signed two months earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

China
During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, a Chinese newspaper accused the US of using the NED to fund pro-democracy protesters. Michael Pillsbury, a Hudson Institute foreign policy analyst and former Reagan administration official, stated that the accusation was "not totally false". In 2019, the government of the People's Republic of China sanctioned the NED in response to the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The Chinese government stated that the NED and CIA worked in tandem to covertly foment the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, and that NED acted as a U.S. intelligence front. NED was one of several U.S.-based NGOs sanctioned by the Chinese government; others included the Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. China also already tightly restricted the activities of foreign NGOs in China, particularly since 2016, and the NGOs sanctioned by China typically do not have offices on the mainland; as a result, the sanctions were regarded as mostly symbolic. NED grant recipients in Hong Kong included labor advocacy and human rights groups such as the Solidarity Center and Justice Centre Hong Kong. The Chinese government said that the sanctioned organizations were "anti-China" forces that "incite separatist activities for Hong Kong independence"; a U.S. State Department official said that "false accusations of foreign interference" against U.S.-based NGOs were "intended to distract from the legitimate concerns of Hongkongers." NED has denied it provided aid to protestors in 2019.

In August 2020, the Chinese government sanctioned NED chairman Carl Gershman, together with the heads of four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. The unspecified sanctions were a tit-for-tat measure responding to the earlier sanctioning by the U.S. of 11 Hong Kong officials in response to the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in June 2020.

In December 2020 China sanctioned the senior director of the NED, John Knaus, saying he "blatantly interferes in Hong Kong affairs and grossly interferes in China's domestic affairs".

In May 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused NED of funding separatists to undermine the stability of target countries, instigating color revolutions to subvert state power, and meddling in other countries' politics.

Elsewhere
Other governments that have objected to NED activity include Iran, Egypt, India, and Venezuela.

title: National Endowment for Democracy


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Osceola (disambiguation)

Osceola is the name of a nineteenth-century Seminole leader in the United States of America.

Osceola may also refer to

People

 * Pen name used by the Danish author Karen Blixen (1885–1962)

Places
In Canada:
 * Osceola, Ontario, a community in Admaston Bromley, Ontario

In the United States:
 * Osceola, Arkansas
 * Osceola, Indiana
 * Osceola, Iowa
 * Osceola, Missouri
 * Osceola, Nebraska
 * Osceola, Nevada
 * Osceola, New York
 * Osceola, South Dakota
 * Osceola, West Virginia
 * Osceola, Wisconsin, a village in Polk County
 * Osceola, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, a town
 * Osceola, Grant County, Wisconsin, a projected town which never materialized in what would become Potosi
 * Osceola, Polk County, Wisconsin, a town
 * Mount Osceola, White Mountains, New Hampshire

Waterbodies

 * Lake Osceola, Winter Park, Florida
 * Lake Osceola (Coral Gables) on the University of Miami campus

Other uses

 * Osceola and Renegade, symbols of Florida State University
 * Osceola National Forest, a national forest in Florida
 * Osceola and St Croix Valley Railway, a heritage railroad in Osceola, Wisconsin
 * Osceola, a subspecies of wild turkey
 * USS Osceola, the name of several United States Navy ships
 * Tom and John Osceola, characters in Key Largo (film)
 * Osceola, a synonym of the moth genus Peoria (moth)

title: Osceola (disambiguation)


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Censer

A censer, incense burner, perfume burner or pastille burner is a vessel made for burning incense or perfume in some solid form. They vary greatly in size, form, and material of construction, and have been in use since ancient times throughout the world. They may consist of simple earthenware bowls or fire pots to intricately carved silver or gold vessels, small table top objects a few centimetres tall to as many as several metres high. Many designs use openwork to allow a flow of air. In many cultures, burning incense has spiritual and religious connotations, and this influences the design and decoration of the censer.

Often, especially in Western contexts, the term "censer" is used for pieces made for religious use, especially those on chains that are swung through the air to spread the incense smoke widely, while the term "perfume burner" is used for objects made for secular use. The original meaning of pastille was a small compressed mixture of aromatic plant material and charcoal that was lit to release the odour, and pastille-burners were designed for this, for use in the home. Pastilles were made at home until their heyday in the early 19th century, and the burners are often made in pottery or porcelain.

Some types could also be used as pomanders, where the perfume diffuses slowly by evaporation rather than burning.

Use
For direct-burning incense, pieces of the incense are burned by placing them directly on top of a heat source or on a hot metal plate in a censer or thurible.

Indirect-burning incense, also called "non-combustible incense", is a combination of aromatic ingredients that are not prepared in any particular way or encouraged into any particular form, leaving it mostly unsuitable for direct combustion. The use of this class of incense requires a separate heat source since it does not generally kindle a fire capable of burning itself and may not ignite at all under normal conditions. This incense can vary in the duration of its burning with the texture of the material. Finer ingredients tend to burn more rapidly, while coarsely ground or whole chunks may be consumed very gradually as they have less total surface area. The heat is traditionally provided by charcoal or glowing embers.

For home use of granulated incense, small, concave charcoal briquettes are sold. One lights the corner of the briquette on fire, then places it in the censer and extinguishes the flame. After the glowing sparks traverse the entire briquette, it is ready to have incense placed on it.

For direct-burning incense, the tip or end of the incense is ignited with a flame or other heat source until the incense begins to turn into ash at the burning end. Flames on the incense are then fanned or blown out, with the incense continuing to burn without a flame on its own.

Censers made for stick incense are also available; these are simply a long, thin plate of wood, metal, or ceramic, bent up and perforated at one end to hold the incense. They serve to catch the ash of the burning incense stick.

In Taoist and Buddhist temples, the inner spaces are scented with thick coiled incense, which are either hung from the ceiling or on special stands. Worshipers at the temples light and burn sticks of incense. Individual sticks of incense are then vertically placed into individual censers.

Chinese use

The earliest vessels identified as censers date to the mid-fifth to late fourth centuries BCE during the Warring States period. The modern Chinese term for "censer," xianglu (香爐, "incense burner"), is a compound of xiang ("incense, aromatics") and lu (爐, "brazier; stove; furnace"). Another common term is xunlu (熏爐, "a brazier for fumigating and perfuming"). Early Chinese censer designs, often crafted as a round, single-footed stemmed basin, are believed to have derived from earlier ritual bronzes, such as the dou 豆 sacrificial chalice.

Among the most celebrated early incense burner designs is the hill censer (boshanlu 博山爐), a form that became popular during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BCE). Some scholars believe hill censers depict a sacred mountain, such as Mount Kunlun or Mount Penglai. These elaborate vessels were designed with apertures that made rising incense smoke appear like clouds or mist swirling around a mountain peak. The Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang (77–6 BCE) composed an inscription describing a hill censer: "I value this perfect utensil, lofty and steep as a mountain! Its top is like Hua Shan in yet its foot is a bronze plate. It contains rare perfumes, red flames and green smoke; densely ornamented are its sides, and its summit joins azure heaven. A myriad animals are depicted on it. Ah, from it sides I can see ever further than Li Lou [who had legendary eyesight]."

Another popular design was the small "scenting globe" (xiangqiu 香球), a device similar to a pomander, but used for burning incense. The famed inventor and craftsmen, Ding Huan (1st c. BCE), is believed to have made these with gimbal supports so the censer could easily be used to fumigate or scent garments. This is described by Edward H. Schafer: "'Censing baskets' were globes of hollow metal, pierced with intricate floral or animal designs; within the globe, an iron cup, suspended on gimbals, contained the burning incense. They were used to perfume garments and bedclothes, and even to kill insects." Other Chinese censers are shaped like birds or animals, sometimes designed so that the incense smoke would issue from the mouth. During the medieval period when censers were more commonly used in Buddhist and Daoist rituals, hand-held censers (shoulu 手爐) fashioned with long handles were developed.

Archeologists have excavated several censers from Han era tombs that contained aromatics or ashen remains. Some of these aromatic plants have been identified as maoxiang (茅香 "Imperata cylindrica, thatch grass"), gaoliangjiang (高良薑 "Galangal"), xinyi (辛夷 "Magnolia liliiflora, Mulan magnolia), and gaoben (藁本"Ligusticum sinense, Chinese lovage"). Scholars speculate burning these grasses "may have facilitated communication with spirits" during funeral ceremonies.

According to the Sinologist and historian Joseph Needham, some early Daoists adapted censers for the religious and spiritual use of cannabis. The Daoist encyclopedia Wushang Biyao (無上秘要 "Supreme Secret Essentials", ca. 570 CE), recorded adding cannabis into ritual censers. The Shangqing School of Daoism provides a good example. The Shangqing scriptures were written by Yang Xi (330– c. 386 CE) during alleged visitations by Daoist "immortals", and Needham believed Yang was "aided almost certainly by cannabis". Tao Hongjing (456-536 CE), who edited the official Shangqing canon, also compiled the Mingyi bielu (名醫別錄 "Supplementary Records of Famous Physicians"). It noted that mabo (麻勃 "cannabis flowers"), "are very little used in medicine, but the magician-technicians ([shujia] 術家) say that if one consumes them with ginseng it will give one preternatural knowledge of events in the future." Needham concluded, "Thus all in all there is much reason for thinking that the ancient Taoists experimented systematically with hallucinogenic smokes, using techniques which arose directly out of liturgical observance. … At all events the incense-burner remained the centre of changes and transformations associated with worship, sacrifice, ascending perfume of sweet savour, fire, combustion, disintegration, transformation, vision, communication with spiritual beings, and assurances of immortality. Wai tan and nei tan met around the incense-burner. Might one not indeed think of it as their point of origin?" These Waidan (外丹 "outer alchemy") and neidan (內丹 "inner alchemy") are the primary divisions of Chinese alchemy.

During the T’ang period, incense was used by upper-class people for personal hygiene, romantic rendezvous, and deodorizing the interior of edifices. These included places of worship, dwellings, and work-spaces. Dating back to the seventh century AD, the kuanhuo (changing of fire) ceremony took place, where people would cleanse their homes with incense. However, in some parts of East Asia, incense burners were used as a way to tell time

In the Far East, incense was used as a way to tell time because it was a simple mechanism and generally not a fire hazard. Time increments were marked off on each incense stick to show how much time had passed, then placed in a ritual tripod vessel known as a ting. During imperial coronations, incense sticks would be used to tell how long the ceremony was. Other variations of incense is the spiral incense coil. The spiral incense coil was used to measure time for longer durations. One spiral equated to one night. This type of incense was mainly used by the five ‘night watches’ of the community. The length of their shifts and breaks were determined by the time increments marked off on the spirals.

Tiangong censers are used for religious reasons in China

Middle East

Incense burners (miqtarah in Arabic) were used in both religious and secular contexts, but were more widely utilized in palaces and houses. The earliest known examples of dish-shaped incense burners with zoomorphic designs were excavated in Ghanza, while the earliest examples of zoomorphic incense burners are from 11th-century Tajikistan. It is most likely that this practice was inspired by Hellenistic style incense burners as well as the frankincense trade present in the Arabian peninsula since the 8th century BCE. A wide variety of designs were used at different times and in different areas. Pottery and stone incense burners were the most common while those made of metals were reserved for the wealthy. Artisans created these incense burners with moulds or the lost-wax method. Openwork zoomorphic incense burners with lynx or lion designs were popular in the Islamic world; bronze or brass examples are found from the 11th century until the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. These were especially popular during the Seljuq period. The extensive use of lynx shape incense burners was due to the animals popularity as a hunting animal and as pet in Muslim courts. The complexity of the piece would also make it fit into a palatial setting. This style of incense burners could measure about 22 cm; others like an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York measures 85 cm. The surface of the object would be decorated with bands of Arabic calligraphy which would imitate a tiraz. This bands of text could include the name of the artist and the patron as well as prayers and good wishes for the owner. To insert coals and incense the head would be removed; the openwork geometric design would then allow the scented smoke to escape. Depending on the size, the incense burner could be either carried on a tray or carried by using the tail as a handle.

In mosques, incense burners do not have a liturgical use or a specific design denoted for religious context. However, they are still an important part of rituals and weddings. Other religious groups in Middle East such as the Copts and Syriacs do have ceremonial uses for incense burners.

Japan
Koro (Japanese: 香炉, kōro), also a Chinese term, is a Japanese censer often used in Japanese tea ceremonies.

Examples are usually of globular form with three feet, made in pottery, Imari porcelain, Kutani ware, Kakiemon, Satsuma, enamel or bronze. In Japan a similar censer called a egōro (柄香炉) is used by several Buddhist sects. The egōro is usually made of brass with a long handle and no chain. Instead of charcoal, makkō powder is poured into a depression made in a bed of ash. The makkō is lit and the incense mixture is burned on top. This method is known as Sonae-kō (Religious Burning).

Mesoamerica
Used domestically and ceremonially in Mesoamerica, particularly in the large Central-Mexican city of Teotihuacan (100–600 AD) and in the many kingdoms belonging to the Maya civilization, were ceramic incense burners. The most common materials for construction were Adobe, plumbate, and earthenware. These materials can be dried by the sun and were locally sourced, making them the perfect material for a Mayan craftsman. Censers vary in decoration. Some are painted using a fresco style technique or decorated with adornos, or small ceramic ornaments. These decorations usually depicted shells, beads, butterflies, flowers, and other symbols with religious significance that could to increase rainfall, agricultural abundance, fertility, wealth, good fortune or ease the transition of souls into the underworld. To identify precious materials such as jadeite and quetzal feathers, important visual markers of status, artists used colorful paints.

Used to communicate with the gods, these censers functioned for acts of religious purification. Incense would be presented to the divine being. In fact, some people were appointed the position of fire priest. Fire priests dealt with most tasks related to incense burning. Some rituals involved a feast, which would be followed by the fire priest igniting a sacred brazier in the temples. It was given to the divine beings and deities as offerings on a daily basis. The practice would end at the sound of a trumpet made from a conch shell. Another function of incense was to heal the sick. Once recuperated, the diseased would present some incense to the appropriate gods to repay them for being cured. Made up of copal (tree resin), rubber, pine, herbs, myrrh, and chewing gum, the incense produced what was described as "the odor of the center of heaven."

The shape of incense burners in the Maya southern lowlands reflected religious and cultural changes over time. Some censers were used in funerals and funerary rituals, such as those depicting the Underworld Jaguar or the Night Sun God. When a king would die, ‘termination rituals’ were practiced. During these rituals, incensarios would be smashed and older temples were replaced with new ones. Mayan censers, which had a reservoir for incense on top of a vertical shaft were highly elaborate during the Classic period (600–900 AD), particularly in the kingdom of Palenque, and usually show the head of a Mayan deity. In Post-Classic Yucatán, particularly in the capital of the kingdom of Mayapan, censers were found in great numbers, often shaped as an aged priest or deity. Craftsmen produced Mayan censers in many sizes, some just a few inches in height, others, several feet tall.

Chain censer
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, as well as the Eastern Catholic Churches, censers (Greek: thymiateria) are similar in design to the Western thurible. This fourth chain passes through a hole the hasp and slides in order to easily raise the lid. There will often be 12 small bells attached to the chains, symbolising the preaching of the Twelve Apostles, where one of the bells has been silenced to symbolize the rebel Judas. In some traditions the censer with bells is normally used only by a bishop. Before a deacon begins a censing, he will take the censer to the priest (or the bishop, if he is present) for a blessing. The censers, charcoal and incense are kept in the diaconicon (sacristy) Entrance with the censer at Great Vespers.

The censer is used much more frequently in the Eastern churches: typically at every vespers, matins, and Divine Liturgy, as well as pannikhidas (memorial services), and other occasional offices. If a deacon is present, he typically does much of the censing; otherwise, the priest will perform the censing. Unordained servers or acolytes are permitted to prepare and carry the censer, but may not swing it during prayers. Liturgical Censing is the practice of swinging a censer suspended from chains towards something or someone, typically the Holy Eucharist, an icon or person, so that smoke from the burning incense travels in that direction. Burning incense represents the prayers of the church rising towards Heaven. One commonly sung psalm during the censing is "Let my prayer arise in Thy sight as incense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice." When a deacon or priest performs a full censing of the temple (church building), he will often say Psalm 51 quietly to himself.

Hand censer
In addition to the chain censer described above, a "hand censer" (Greek: Κατσί katzi or katzion) is used on certain occasions. This device has no chains and consists of a bowl attached to a handle, often with bells attached. The lid is normally attached to the bowl with a hinge.

In Greek practice, particularly as observed on Mount Athos, during the portion of Vespers known as "Lord, I cry unto Thee" the ecclesiarch (sacristan) and his assistant will perform a full censing of the temple and people using hand censers.

Some churches have the practice of not using the chain censer during Holy Week, even by a priest or bishop, substituting for it the hand censer as a sign of humility, repentance and mourning over the Passion of Christ. They return to using the chain censer just before the Gospel reading at the Divine Liturgy on Great Saturday.

Some Orthodox Christians use a standing censer on their icon corner (home altar).

Western churches
In the Latin Church and its Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church and some other groups, the censer is often called a thurible, and used during important offices (benedictions, processions, and important Masses). A common design for a thurible is a metal container, about the size and shape of a coffee-pot, suspended on chains. The bowl contains hot coals, and the incense is placed on top of these. The thurible is then swung back and forth on its chains, spreading the fragrant smoke.

A famous thurible is the Botafumeiro, in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral, the swinging of this 5 ft high, 55 kilogram silver vessel is an impressive sight.

One of the explanations for the great size of the Botafumeiro is that in the early days it was used to freshen the air in the cathedral after being visited by droves of travel-weary pilgrims. It was also once believed that the incense smoke guarded against contracting the many diseases that plagued the populace in past centuries.

Some thuribles were based on an architectural motif, for example the Gozbert Censer from the Cathedral of Trier inspired by the Temple of Solomon.

Hindu use
Hindus have traditionally used an earthen censer called a Dhunachi for burning incense with coal, though coconut husk is also used. The vessel has a flared shape with a curved handle and an open top. There are also brass and silver versions.

title: Censer


text:
Talk:Dale Murphy

Disabled girl
Hey, so, can anyone verify that "disabled girl" story? It's a famous story about Babe Ruth -- I find it kind of hard to believe that Dale Murphy did the exact same thing. -- ESP 14:58 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I did a little googling and found this: http://lekotekga.org/lekotalk/may03.htm

 * There are lots of links pointing to sites telling the same story about the same girl. I find it hard to believe that all of these people, some of whom are actual charity organizations, would be making this up, especially long after Dale Murphy has left the city.

Thunderbunny 04:47, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * http://users.aol.com/brave3/murphy.htm
 * On June 12, 1983 Dale visited a 6-year old girl in the stands who had lost both arms and a leg in a power line accident. The girl's nurse asked Murphy if he would hit a home run for the girl. Flustered as he was, Dale could only mumble "Well, O.K." That night he hit not one but two home runs and drove in all three runs in a 3-2 Braves victory.

Here is the box score from the game: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=198306120ATL

 * Here is the text from the original story "Murphy's Law Is Nice Guys Finish First" from Sports Illustrated, July 4, 1983:

And the mythologizing of Murphy is under way. Before a home game against San Francisco on June 12, Murphy visited in the stands with Elizabeth Smith, a six-year-old girl who had lost both hands and a leg when she stepped on a live power line. After Murphy gave her a cap and a T shirt, her nurse innocently asked if he could hit a home run for Elizabeth. "I didn't know what to say, so I just sort of mumbled 'Well, O.K., '" says Murphy. That day he hit two homers and drove in all the Braves' runs in a 3-2 victory.

Hall of Fame (moved from article)
Despite his career accomplishments, Murphy has become a highly-debated candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In order to be elected to the Hall of Fame, a candidate must receive votes on seventy-five percent (75%) of the ballots cast in any given year. The adjoining table shows the number and percentage of votes that Murphy has received each year since he became eligible in 1999.

He will remain on the ballot as long as he appears on a minimum of five percent (5%) of the ballots cast in the preceding election, but at this point Murphy's chances of election appear slim.

Various reasons given for this failure include the lack of success of the teams Murphy played on, and his "mediocre" performance in the later part of his career. Murphy's performance suddenly tailed off after the age of 31, and he finished his career with four below-average seasons and two seasons as a bench player.

His career numbers have also been overshadowed by the explosion in offense in the 10-year period just after Murphy's retirement (1993-2002). For example, there have been 50 home runs hit in a season 30 times in the history of baseball: 18 times between 1921-1990 and 12 times between 1995 and 2000. Many believe the general inflation in hitting statistics since the time of Murphy's retirement to the abuse of drugs such as androstenedione and steroids. Perhaps the prevalence of such drug use may cause the Hall of Fame voters to re-evaluate statistics of players such as Dale Murphy and contemporary stars such as Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, and Jim Rice. However, few outfielders with career totals comparable to Murphy before 1993 have made the Hall of Fame. According to Baseball Reference, only one of the ten players with career numbers most similar to Murphy's is in the Hall of Fame (Duke Snider). This, of course, does not account for how Murphy compares to his contemporaries, how he compares to these other ten (four of whom played significant amounts of time during the recent statistical binge period), or take into account the accolades above mentioned. The debate may be summarized as a question about whether it is more impressive to accumulate large statistical totals or to exhibit dominance over one's contemporaries. The former standard would be much harsher on Murphy while the latter would strongly suggest he be inducted to the Hall of Fame.

The main article says it is unlikely he'll ever get enshrined, but what it should say is by the Baseball Writers Association. There is still the veteran's committee if and when he loses eligibility in the regular voting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.21.220.156 (talk) 14:34, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this section needs to be added back to the page. Its very relevant. Many, many, many people in Atlanta and Georgia in general still argue vehemently that Dale belongs in the Hall. This story still has legs as he received over 10% of the vote again in the 2008 election. Qwerty1900 (talk) 08:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

 * I agree with most of the sentiments displayed; but the content is original research, and that's why I moved it out. Thunderbunny (talk) 00:12, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Catcher
"He began as a catcher, but had difficulties throwing out runners attempting stolen bases."

Actually, he had developed a mental block and couldn't throw the ball back to the pitcher

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/grigg-w4.html

"Mike Ivie, a 17-year-old recruited by the San Diego Padres in 1970, developed a crippling case after beginning his minor league career, and twice turned down a chance at the Majors because he didn’t want to catch. Before Dale Murphy became one of the most dominant players of the 1980s as a center fielder, he was a frustrated catcher prone to return pitches by casting the ball into center field.

 * Ivie wasn't just "recruited". He was the #1 draft pick in the baseball draft of amateur and college baseball players. He never was successful as a Major Leaguer because of all of his trouble as a catcher, adn maybe hitting problems, too.72.146.52.143 (talk) 08:09, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Other position players – such as All-Star second basemen Steve Sax of the Dodgers and Chuck Knoblauch – have been touched by the same plague. ''And almost without exception the condition has no identifiable connection to an injury or other physical ailment. Some of those who suffered – Dale Murphy in particular – had strong and accurate throwing arms, but found it almost impossible to make routine short throws''."

 * If someone whould actually check his/her facts, Murphy actually played outfield (mostly left field) and first base in the minor leagues. Next, after he reached the major leagues, someone in the Braves' higher management (not "the manager") got the "bright idea" (a dumb idea) of trying to convert him into a catcher. This stupid move lead to Murphy's being involved in a big collision at home plate, and enduring a season-ending knee injury requiring surgery. After this fiasco, new people in the Braves' management decided that Murphy was too-valuable as a hitter to risk at being a catcher. Besides the dangers of collisions, there is the everyday wear and tear on the catcher's legs. They decided to make him into a permanent outfielder, and after some experimentation, they found that he was much better as a center fielder than as either a left fielder or a right fielder. With his ability to cover lots of ground in center field - this lead to his long string of Golden Gloves out there. As an aside, the former Braves' management had earlier tried to convert the young hitting star Earl Williams into a catcher, too. Williams had already won the Rookie of the Year award as a third baseman and an outfielder, and he wasn't cut out to be a catcher. I'll be frank with my conclusion: for both of these attempts to convert good players (outfielders/infielders) into catchers, they had "bugs in their brains".72.146.52.143 (talk) 08:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Position on Bonds
Why does what Murphy thinks about Bonds need to be included in his page? This seems a little out there for me. I suggest that it be removed. Hell, why not put what Murphy thinks about "The Simpsons?" I know Bonds is the hot tamale right now, but I don't see it relevant to Murphy's biography.Atlantabravz 22:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we put position on Bonds under the iwontcheat foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to deter steroid youth and cheating. Whenever promoting the foundation, Murph is asked something about Bonds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Treslarsen (talk • contribs) 07:35, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see why we have to put what Murphy thinks about Bonds anywhere in his bio. Why not list what Murphy thinks about every single steroid user ever identified by name? It's better just to make the statement that Murphy started his foundation because he is against any steroid usage, not just what he thinks about Bonds. On the flipside, why not put in EVERY single biography on wikipedia what he or she thinks about Barry Bonds? Unless an opinion on something makes serious news and really contrasts to most of the opinions out there, i.e. an extreme minority position, I don't see how it's bio-worthy. Murphy's opinion is in line with significantly more than half of ANYONE ever surveyed, so why is his majority opinion significant? Why not put what he feels about beer commercials or Britney Spears? Do you see where I'm going?Atlantabravz 17:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up the section by removing the overly long block quote and neatly summarizing it. It's not like those remarks were the Gettysburg Address, and they don't need to take up that much room in a BLP.Atlantabravz (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I actually disagree. Over the past few years, Murphy's views on steriods and especially Barry Bonds have continued to garner attention. As funny as it sounds, this has become the dominant storyline (views on steroids/Bonds) of Murphy's life post-baseball and post-political ambitions. I definitely think this section needs to be added back to the page. No reason for Murphy's wiki page to be this small, lets tell the whole story. Qwerty1900 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC).

Basketball
Wasn't Murphy something of a basketball player too? To the point that he was scouted by professional teams while in college? Why isn't any mention made of it in the article? I'd add it if I knew anything much about it. — Frecklefσσt|Talk 13:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

BYU?
Someone has claimed that Murphy attended BYU sometime after starting his MLB career...does anyone have a source that validates this claim? Thanks. --Eustress (talk) 01:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It is in his book "Murph". That is where he met his wife. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.120.226.153 (talk) 23:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

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Career summary and honors question
The first sentence in 'Career summary and honors' states "... 398 home runs (19th in MLB history at the time of his retirement)". That sounded wrong to me so I did a little quick-and-dirty research. Using the Career HR list at baseball-reference.com on 7/25/2018, I counted 26 players with more HR than Dale Murphy as of the end of the 1993 season, which was Murphy's last season. So, I believe the sentence should read "27th in MLB history". If someone disagrees with my analysis, please let me know. If I don't hear anything for a while, I will make the change. Thanks.TheCanadian33 (talk) 01:09, 26 July 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheCanadian33 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Hall of Fame eligible MVPs
Alex Rodriguez now joins Murphy, Bonds, Maris, and Gonzalez as multi-MVP winners not in the HOF. 2600:1014:B166:72CE:7148:8208:32E1:AD7E (talk) 21:43, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

 * Source? BilCat (talk) 22:14, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Dale Murphy


text:
Talk:The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)

Question about "This Section Does Not Cite Any Sources"
The first two sections -- Plot and Gameplay -- are not derived from sources at all, other than the game itself. They are entirely descriptions of the product they are describing. How do we proceed here? Scottman 01 (talk) 20:14, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To answer my own question, and to provide assistance to anyone else that may be wondering this, Final Fantasy Tactics has excellent examples of how an entry can reference the product's instruction manual, and even product itself. Scottman 01 (talk) 19:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Classes
I'd appreciate it if someone could fill out the list of classes. It's been a long time since I've played the game and didn't have the patience to research it. :-( Nothing verbose, just a list of the class types and a short (a couple of words) description of each would be ideal. :-) —Frecklefoot 15:08 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The way it stands now is nice; a simple linked list of the classes, which lets the links be the description... this is an encyclopedia entry after all, not an in-depth fan site. :) -- Mecandes 13:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The New Bard's Tale
Is it time for a disambiguation page to jump between the old and new Bard's Tale games? Kainaw 03:18, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * OK. I made a disambiguation page. I hope I did it right. Kainaw 14:18, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

icestorm99999
I removed the link to this site from the fansites section, on the grounds that the only relevant content is a set of links to other fansites and a decent amount of potentially copyright-infringing material. Feel free to re-add it, if anyone thinks it should be there, but even if it is all perfectly legal I really see no useful reason to link to it from the article.

Bard's Tale Beer
Does Bard's Tale Beer have any connection to these computer games? If so, it should be mentioned in the article. Mike R (talk) 16:24, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

 * I asked them and they told me that they were thinking of Shakespeare when they named it. Frotz (talk) 20:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Accurate name
I realize that 99.9% of all people just call it "The Bard's Tale," but surely Wikipedia is interested in accuracy, and this page should redirect to a page with the game's actual full name: "Tales of the Unknown, Volume 1: The Bard's Tale." Yes, it is listed in parentheses in the article, but this is like having a Wikipedia article entitled "America" with ("United States of America") after it. 97.113.28.76 (talk) 22:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

 * Tha naming of Wiki pages is often a convoluted tale. In your example, both names are generally used by all people - it would be more correct for you to have made the comparison between "United States of America" and "The Great Satan" - where one would be the correct title and one would be the title that less than 1% of world uses to refer to the US... Its also a goat rope changing the main page to something else. If you want to take that on, be my guest. Ckruschke (talk) 20:08, 29 May 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

More than one version for the Nintendo
Something to note, the US release of Bard's Tale has at least 2 different versions. We'll call them version 1 and version 2. It's nearly impossible to tell the difference from the outside, although I believe version 1 has a darker shade of red for the cover art. The biggest difference is the enemies, version 1 uses the same color palette for all the monsters if you get attacked by a group of 3 identical monsters. In version 2, they are given the rainbow treatment, each monster appearing a different color. Another difference is the color of the Wizard's guarding the wine cellar. All of this is original research, but verifiable, so I didn't add it to the article. 24.225.23.137 (talk) 13:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, just another side note, there is no alternative version listed in any of the ROM databases on the internet, the file 'Bard's Tale, The - Tales of the Unknown (U) [!]' is a version 1 romdump. 24.225.23.137 (talk) 13:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Series, the old ones
Now in the beginning, there is nowhere said, that it is a serie, the bard's tale, a sequel. The old ones are 4: --93.184.26.78 (talk) 21:43, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Bard's Tale
 * The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight
 * The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate
 * The Bard's Tale Construction Set

 * That is mentioned in the Sequels section. You're free to add it somewhere in the lead if you like. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 14:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Burger Becky's involvement... or lack thereof
I really don't think any prominence should be given in the Development section to Rebecca Heineman's claims of involvement. As someone who has followed the game and its developers since its release, it's pretty clear that Becky's claims have changed and expanded over the years... as a matter of public record, the way she describes her involvement in older interviews differs a lot from the way she describes her involvement in more recent interviews. Cranford has said she only helped with a data compression algorithm, while Fargo says her role was "minimal" and limits her involvement to perhaps 40 lines of code (which is in line with Cranford's statement). Becky is not listed in the credits for The Bard's Tale nor The Bard's Tale II (cf. this Bard's Tale Compendium credits page). Frankly, she shouldn't even be mentioned in this article; just the article for The Bard's Tale III. 99.239.114.226 (talk) 19:23, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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"The concept of the Bard was also an innovation"
This claim (and the quoted reference) seems to imply that Michael Cranford invented the idea of a bard in role-playing games as a magic user who casts spells by playing music. This is dubious; a Dungeons and Dragons magazine from 1976 (see p. 11) contains a description of a magic-casting Bard character in tabletop role-playing that predates Cranford's bard by nearly a decade. Perhaps this sentence of the article should be removed? Whirligig231 (talk) 22:53, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Wizardry
Lots of television shows have this spin off. From music like Deadmau 5 to Hello Kitty's darth VADER. Obviously you only get to visit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1301:86E5:95EA:A719:15AD:B37 (talk) 22:02, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Images
Could the time be added to the computer images? E. g. when the image first appeared, on commodore and so on? On the side of the image bar on wikipedia. That way we can quickly see when that image was first displayed. This is mostly from a historic point of view. 2A02:8388:1602:6D80:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Reviews

 * Jeux & Stratégie #40
 * Jeux & Stratégie HS #3

Gameplay and citations
The gameplay section is missing what many fans seem to consider a cornerstone of the gameplay experience, namely the fact that you cannot save the game, only the characters, and that you have to return to the Adventurer's Guild for this. This may be rooted in technical limitations rather than conscious game design, but it did result in sorties from the Adventurer's Guild essentially being "iron man" all-or-nothing adventures; you had to carefully manage your party resources and make sure you could make it back, or all progress would be lost. I tried to add this to the gameplay section but it was removed again for being "unsourced". This is unfortunate. I am at a loss as to how I would source or cite how the original program was written? Frabartolo Ringril (talk) 07:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)


text:
Oneida

Oneida may refer to:

Native American/First Nations

 * Oneida people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy
 * Oneida language
 * Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York
 * Oneida Nation of the Thames, also known as "Onyota'a:ka First Nation"
 * Oneida Nation of Wisconsin

People

 * Mary Oneida Toups, American occultist

Places

 * Oneida County (disambiguation)
 * Oneida Township (disambiguation)

Canada

 * Oneida 41, Ontario, also known as the "Oneida Settlement"
 * Oneida Township, Ontario, a historic township of Haldimand County

United States

 * Oneida, former name of Martell, California
 * Oneida, Illinois
 * Oneida, Kansas
 * Oneida, Kentucky
 * Oneida, New York
 * Oneida, Ohio
 * Oneida, Pennsylvania
 * Oneida Falls, one of 24 named waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsylvania
 * Oneida, Tennessee
 * Oneida (town), Wisconsin in Outagamie County
 * Oneida, Wisconsin, unincorporated community in both Outagamie and Brown Counties
 * Oneida Castle, New York, a village
 * Oneida Corners, New York, hamlet of the town of Queensbury in Warren County
 * Oneida, a former name of Amarillo, Texas
 * Oneida Creek, in central New York State
 * Oneida Lake, in central New York State
 * Oneida River, in central New York State
 * Oneida County Airport, a closed airport in Whitestown, New York

Sport

 * Oneida Football Club, historical Boston football club (founded in 1862)
 * Oneida FC, a Cambridge, Massachusetts rugby league club

Other uses

 * Oneida Carry, a portage for native and colonial Americans in Central New York
 * Oneida Community, a religious intentional community in Oneida, New York
 * Oneida Guaipe, Venezuelan politician
 * Oneida Limited, the international tableware company
 * Oneida (band), a five-piece rock band from Brooklyn, New York
 * Oneida (moth), a genus of moths
 * USS Oneida, any of five ships in the U.S. Navy
 * Two civilian steam yachts owned by Elias Cornelius Benedict, each associated with unique historical incidents:
 * USS Adelante (SP-765), originally launched in 1883 as the Utowana, acquired and renamed Oneida by Benedict in 1887 and later renamed again as the Adelante before being acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1918; notable as the site of a secret operation in July 1893 on President Grover Cleveland for the removal of a cancerous growth from his mouth.
 * Oneida (1897), originally launched in 1897 as the Alcedo before being renamed and acquired by Benedict as a larger replacement for the previous ship of that name owned by him, considered for acquisition by the U.S. Navy during World War I but never taken, and later acquired by William Randolph Hearst (with whom it became involved with the mysterious death of film producer Thomas H. Ince).
 * Whitestown Seminary, a Presbyterian educational institution based in Whitestown, New York, and founded in 1827, previously known as Oneida Academy and Oneida Institute

title: Oneida


text:
Wikipedia:Reference Desk archive 4

''This is part of the Reference Desk archive. See Reference Desk for current questions.''

User:Juuitchan wants to know the difference between straw and hay; in particular, how to tell them apart.

 * I think straw is dried wheat and hay is dried grass in general. --Menchi 21:10 22 May 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't think I've ever seen real hay, but I'm under the impression that it is a more delicate material than straw. Hay is animal feed, but from what I know of straw, most animals would balk if it were put in their feed troughs. -Smack

Ship buffs: I wanted to know the power rating of a nice, powerful nuclear power plant, presumably from an aircraft carrier, and perhaps one from a submarine too, to add as an example for orders of magnitude (power), but I've been through pretty nearly all the U.S. aircraft carrier pages, checked the ships' own websites when they had external links, and haven't come up with a thing other than "two A4W reactors". Is the information classified or something? I wouldn't have thought so. If not, does one of you have a power rating of at least one aircraft carrier/submarine in any of your references? -- John Owens 21:06 22 May 2003 (UTC)

 * While I'm at it, on the off chance one of the ship people pops a head in here, check my recent addition of the volume definition of ton. I'm not quite clear on just when it measures volume of displacement, volume of capacity, and plain old mass. -- John Owens 12:37 24 May 2003 (UTC)

 * And here I didn't even know I was supposed to be watching this page! :-) Googling '"aircraft carrier" horsepower' turns up a random assertion that Nimitz'es are 260,000 hp, and http://www.dresser-rand.com/newsroom/pr/archives/nptnews.asp says "more than a quarter-million". On ton, there have been different systems in the past, but these days it's volume of displacement, assuming 35 cu ft / ton of water. Stan 07:46 27 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Each of the A4W/1G reactor power plants produces approx. 97 MW power. Therefore the ship has an total power output of 194 MW for the two engines. The new A1B power plant from Bettis (Bechtel) is said to produce 150 MW; two of those would provide the next-generation CVN-21 with 300 MW. It sounds as if it may be be a far more "electric ship" with electromagnetic catapults and other energy-consuming requirements. Petercorless 16:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey Library Reference Desk! I have a HISTORY reference question: where might I find detailed county-by-county results for past U.S. Presidential elections? My specific question is New Jersey Counties in the 1860 Lincoln/Douglas contest, but I'm sure I will have other uses for the answer to the originla question. I'll even make an article on it, if I can find out where to get the info. Many thanks in advance... ArloBee 20:12 25 May 2003 (UTC)

 * here's a first try... says that 109 of 147 counties in the Mid-Atlantic states voted Republican. You could email webmaster@harpweek.com and find out where they got the numbers Kingturtle 20:32 25 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks Kt. I just queried the Lib of Cong site a couple of ways and found:

Dubin, Michael J. United States presidential elections, 1788-1860 : the official results by county and state / Michael J. Dubin. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2002. xxv, 225 p. : maps ; 29 cm. CALL NUMBER: JK524 .D778 2002 Alc  The U of Penn library has it and I will go up there tomorrow for that (1 hour away). But if there turns outto be an online source somewhere, that would be pretty great. I guess I can copy some measure of facts out of that book without violating copyright? But I'll feel safer if there is a neighboring book of greater vintage that I can mine from for wiki. ArloBee 20:49 25 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Did a little more poking around: this is a body of and enormous amount of original research. I will be respecting his copyright!  :-)  ArloBee 21:21 25 May 2003 (UTC)

In an aqueous solution of, say, a lead compound, why don't all the lead ions sink to the bottom? I suppose that lead is only denser than water because the atoms in solid or liquid lead are packed tighter than the molecules in water, but to me it seems unlikely that all the ions and molecules in a solution have exactly the same density. What is it that keeps them all afloat? -- Heron

 * Water is a polar molecule so it forms relatively strong intermolecular bonds with ions. Water molecules essentially attach to the ions and act as one large ion/water thingamajing.  Basically the same thing soap molecules do to grease.  This is the reason that ions are formed in the first place, the polar water molecules attach to the atoms in an ionic compound and pull them apart. Iammaxus 20:48 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. So the 'ion/water thingamajing' has the same density as water. -- Heron 21:03 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * nope, it'll be denser. This is why you float on the Dead sea: high concentration of ion/water thingamajing, only in that case the ions are Na+ Cl- -- Tarquin 21:57 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * its denser than water, but the entire solution is denser than water, thats why the ions float Iammaxus 02:07 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Heron originally asked "why don't all the lead ions sink to the bottom". Off the top of my head, I would say diffusion. Random thermal motion of the lead particles tends to make them evenly mixed throughout the sample, and swamps the gravitational effect. It's the same reason the air in a room doesn't settle to the floor, leaving vacuum at the top. If the lead ions were much, much heavier, they would sink towards the bottom. The bottom would become positively charged, eventually repelling additional lead ions. -- Tim Starling 08:05 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

--

as heard on US tv shows, what are "cooties"?

 * Lice. --Menchi 20:40 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * It's a derisive term used by children toward other children who are odd or strange, a sort of social mechanism by which the "in" crowd can identify the "out" crowd: The "out" crowd is said to "have cooties". Most children will not understand the origin of the term, only that it's a bad thing, and that "cooties" are contagious: if you hang around with other children considered to have "cooties", you'll wind up with "cooties" (and therefore in the out group) too.  The origin is in head lice, for which "cooties" was a slang term when they were more prevalent. -- Someone else 20:44 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Was also used by grade-school boys speaking of girls and (I think) vice-versa, irrespective of in-ness and out-ness, sometimes qualified as "girl cooties". We didn't know what cooties really were (must have been a sanitary bunch), but a single touch was considered sufficient to pass them on, which led to variants of tag-type games. Stan 21:14 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * I'd see this as a manifestation of 'outness': for boys of certain ages, girls are intrinsically "out". I imagine girls might also use the term of boys... -- Someone else 21:25 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Circular saw inventor
The circular saw is persistently listed on timeline of inventions as being invented by Samuel Miller. And yet I have a distinct memory of reading that it was invented by someone of the female persuasion, in some religious utopian community or other. Can't find my source, and it is driving me crazy. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 17:52 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * About a dozen Googles say it's Sister Tabitha Babbitt of the Harvard Shakers's work in 1810:
 * After watching the brothers sawing, she concluded that their back and forth motion wasted half their effort, and mounted a notched metal disc on her spinning wheel to demonstrate her proposed improvements.... Sister Tabitha intended the blade to be turned by water power.
 * Source: Alic, Margaret (1986). Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science From Antiquity to the Late 19th Century, London, The Women's Press.

 * Hypatia's Heritage is 230-page. Apparently, the author is not a historian, but a biochemist. And she claims that Moses and his wife operated a medical school in Egypt. The Amazon has 2 reviews (a hating man, and an adoring woman. Both American).

 * Despite it being written in sto.. I mean, book, its authencity is still questionable.

 * --Menchi 09:20 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Oddly enough, the year in which Ms. Babbitt is supposed to have invented the circular saw is 33 years after the date ascribed to Mr. Miller. Interpret that as you will. -Smack 16:03 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What is this all about
Hi im a little confused on what this page is for, can i ask any guestion or only guestions regarding world events and or common knowledge. JS

 * Any question at all, since Wikipedia aims to be a summary of human knowledge. See Wikipedia for more. Of course, the answer to many questions is "We don't have any information at this time." :) -- Stephen Gilbert 20:47 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia:Reference Desk archive 4


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Talk:Learning theory (statistics)

I'm not sure what is meant by "mind changes" ? Is this talking about VC-dimension (or fat-shattering) bounds? -- hike395 15:41 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Moved from article, User:Michael Hardy suggests ---
 * Should this page be merged with statistical learning theory?

I would suggest not. Statistical learning theory is a specific, poorly-named, form of computational learning theory, established by Vladimir Vapnik. It turns out that the practitioners of the different brands of learning theory (e.g., Bayesian, PAC, etc.) have strong philosophical and practical disagreements with the Vapnik-style theorists, and would not agree that they are the same thing at all.

One possibility is renaming this article "Computational learning theory", which is the name of the main conference of the field. That may be clearer. What do people think? Another possibility is putting "Vapnik" into the title of "Statistical learning theory", but I am not sure how to do that without being idiosyncratic and making that other article hard to find. --- hike395 02:00, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Learning theory (statistics)