text:
Maud Gonne

Maud Gonne MacBride (Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mhic Giolla Bhríghde; 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. She was of Anglo-Irish descent and was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of people evicted in the Land Wars. She actively agitated for home rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.

Early life
She was born in England at Tongham near Aldershot, Hampshire, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne (1835–1886) of the 17th Lancers, and his wife, Edith Frith Gonne, born Cook (1844–1871). After her mother died while Maud was still a child, her father sent her to a boarding school in France to be educated. "The Gonnes came from County Mayo, but my great-great grandfather was disinherited and sought fortune abroad trading in Spanish wine," she wrote. "My grandfather was head of a prosperous firm with houses in London and Oporto – he destined my father to take charge of the foreign business and had him educated abroad. My father spoke 6 languages but had little taste for business, so he got a commission in the English army; his gift for languages secured for him diplomatic appointments in Austria, the Balkans and Russia, and he was as much at home in Paris as in Dublin."

Dublin, London and Paris
In 1882, her father, an army officer, was posted to Dublin. She accompanied him and remained with him until his death in 1886. With her sister Kathleen, Gonne spent an unhappy time in London under the guardianship of their uncle William Gonne. Unaware that she would inherit a fortune on her majority, she tried to become an actress, but became ill with the tuberculosis that stayed with her throughout her life; in the summer of 1887 she went to the French spa town of Royat in the Auvergne to recover.

In France, Gonne met Lucien Millevoye (1850–1918), a married journalist with fervid right-wing politics, a supporter of the revanchist General Boulanger. Her relationship with Millevoye, who was sixteen years her senior, was both sexually and politically driven. With Boulanger he would redeem France by regaining Alsace-Lorraine. Her mission was Ireland, and together they would constitute an alliance against the British Empire.

In December 1887 Maud Gonne inherited trust funds in excess of £13,000 and an unentailed sum from her mother's estate. She was a very wealthy woman and was free to live as she pleased. She travelled early in 1888 on a clandestine Boulangist mission to Russia, where she met the notable Pall Mall Gazette editor W. T. Stead, who wrote of meeting in St Petersburg "one of the most beautiful women of the world" (Review of Reviews, 7 June 1892). She returned to Ireland and worked for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail.

In 1889, she first met W. B. Yeats, who fell in love with her. Gonne was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation. In 1891 she briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occultist organisation with which Yeats had involved himself.

In 1890, in France she again met Millevoye. They had a son, Georges, but the child died within the year, possibly of meningitis. Gonne was distraught, and buried him in a large memorial chapel. (Her distress remained with her; in her will she asked for Georges's baby shoes to be interred with her). After the child's death, she separated from Millevoye, but in late 1893 arranged to meet him at the mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine and, next to their child's sarcophagus, they had sexual intercourse. Her purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis. Gonne's daughter by Millevoye, Iseult Gonne, was born in August 1894.

Gonne MacBride is known for having had anti-Semitic views. Historian D. G. Boyce described her as "noisily anti-Semitic." The Dictionary of Irish Biography states that she believed in anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic theories.

Inghinidhe na hÉireann
During the 1890s, Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the nationalist cause, forming an organization called the "Irish League" (L'association irlandaise) in 1896.

In 1900, Gonne helped found Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland). Twenty-nine women attended the first meeting. They decided to "combat in every way English influence doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of the Irish people."

At the same time, she conceived Inghinidhe na hÉireann as a distinct voice for women in Irish affairs. In an early number of Bean na hÉireann, the organisation's journal, the editorial proclaims, "Our desire to have a voice in directing the affairs of Ireland is not based on the failure of men to do so properly, but is the inherent right of women as loyal citizens and intelligent human souls."

Sinn Féin
In her autobiography, she wrote, "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy."

A second organisation, the National Council, was formed in 1903 by Gonne and others, including Arthur Griffith, on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose was to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address was duly defeated, but the National Council remained in existence as a pressure group with the aim of increasing nationalist representation on local councils.

The first annual convention of the National Council on 28 November 1905 was notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote (with Griffith dissenting), to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his 'Hungarian' policy, which was now called the Sinn Féin policy. This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the Sinn Féin party.

Acting
In 1897, along with Yeats and Griffith, she organised protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces which had been "lost" to the British. She was already spending much of her time in Paris.

In the same year, she joined the Roman Catholic Church. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her, she replied, Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.

Marriage
In Paris in 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud married Major John MacBride, who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. The following year their son Seán MacBride was born. Afterwards Gonne and her husband agreed to end their marriage. She demanded sole custody of their son, but MacBride refused, and a divorce case began in Paris on 28 February 1905. The only charge against MacBride substantiated in court was that he had been drunk on one occasion during the marriage. A divorce was not granted, and MacBride was given the right to visit his son twice weekly.

After the marriage ended, Gonne made allegations of domestic violence and, according to W. B. Yeats, of sexual molestation of Iseult, her daughter from a previous relationship, then aged 11. Critics have suggested that Yeats may have fabricated his allegations due to his hatred of MacBride over Maud's rejection of him in favour of MacBride. Neither the divorce papers submitted by Gonne nor Iseult's own writings mention any such incident, which is unsurprising, given the reticence of the times around such matters, but Francis Stuart, Iseult's later husband, attests to Iseult telling him about it. The allegation concerning Iseult was made by Maud to Anthony MacBride, John's brother. Though Maud omitted it from court proceedings, the MacBride side raised it in court to have John's name cleared. As Maud wrote to Yeats, MacBride succeeded in this. Yeats and some of his biographers have maintained that Iseult was a victim, and have omitted the court incident.

MacBride visited his son as allowed for a short time, but returned to Ireland and never saw him again. Gonne raised the boy in Paris. MacBride was executed in May 1916 along with James Connolly and other leaders of the Easter Rising. After MacBride's death Gonne felt that she could safely return to live permanently in Ireland.

In 1917, Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either. He had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings (many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father). Iseult considered the proposal, but finally turned him down, because he was not really in love with her and it would upset her mother too much.

Irish republicanism
Known as the "Irish Joan of Arc", Gonne became known for her Irish republican views on a variety of contemporary social issues in Ireland. During the fin de siècle era, she supported Irish Catholic tenant farmers in their struggles against the Protestant Ascendancy and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Land War. Gonne chaired several meetings of international groups to build sympathy for her causes among the American, British and French publics. During the Second Boer War, Gonne, along with a small group of republicans, supported the Boer republics by giving speeches and publishing newspaper articles advocating against Irish involvement in the war. Gonne became known for her eloquence in her political speeches and they were credited for animating the founding of new Irish nationalist organizations.

In April 1900, Maude wrote an article titled "The Famine Queen" for the United Irishman newspaper on the occasion of a planned visit by Queen Victoria to Ireland. The newspaper was suppressed by the RIC but the article was republished in US newspapers.

Gonne remained very active in Paris. In 1913, she established L'Irlande libre, a French newspaper. She wanted Cumann na mBan to be considered seriously: her idea was to get affiliation with the English Red Cross, and wrote to Geneva to gain an international profile for the new nationalist organization. In 1918, she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months.

She worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence. Gonne MacBride moved in upper-class circles. Lord French's sister, Mrs Charlotte Despard was a famous suffragist, who was already a Sinn Feiner when she arrived in Dublin in 1920. She naturally accompanied Gonne on a tour of County Cork, seat of the most fervent revolutionary activity. Cork was under a Martial Law Area (MLA) prohibited to Irishmen and women outside the zone but the Viceroy's sister had a pass.

In 1921, she opposed the Treaty and advocated the Republican side. The committee that set up White Cross in Ireland asked Gonne to join in January 1921 to distribute funds to victims administered by Cumann na mBan. She settled in Dublin in 1922. During the street battles she headed up a delegation called The Women's Peace Committee which approached the Dáil leadership, and her old friend Arthur Griffith. But they were unable to stop the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, being more interested in law and order. In August she set up a similar organization, the Women's Prisoner's Defence League. The prisons were brutal and many women were locked up in men's prisons. The League supported families wanting news of inmates. They worked for prisoners rights, began vigils, and published stories of tragic deaths. Through her friendship with Despard and opposition to government they were labeled "Mad and Madame Desperate". Historians have related the extent of the damage done to her home at 75 St Stephen's Green, when soldiers from the National Army ransacked the place. Maud was arrested and taken to Mountjoy Jail. On 9 November 1922 the Sinn Féin Office was raided in Suffolk street; the Free State had swept the capital, rounding up opposition committing them to prison for internment. The evidence comes from Margaret Buckley, who as Secretary of Sinn Féin acted as legal representative for the ladies but there was nothing prudish about their concerted opposition to civil rights abuses.

On 10 April 1923, Maud Gonne MacBride was arrested. The charges were: 1) painting banners for seditious demonstrations, and 2) preparing anti-government literature. According to the diary account of her colleague Hannah Moynihan: "Last night [10th April] at 11pm, we heard the commotion which usually accompanies the arrival of new prisoners... we pestered the wardress and she told us there were four – Maud Gonne MacBride, her daughter Mrs Iseult Stuart and two lesser lights... Early this morning... we could see Maud walking majestically past our cell door leading on a leash a funny little lap dog which answered to the name that sounded like Wuzzo – Wuzzo." She was released on 28 April, after twenty days in custody. Months later the women spread a rumour that Nell Ryan had died in custody in order to gain a propaganda victory. Women continued to be arrested. On 1 June Gonne was standing in protest outside Kilmainham Jail with Dorothy Macardle, the writer and activist, and Iseult Stuart. They were supporting hunger striker Máire Comerford. Again the source for this story seems to be fellow ex-prisoner Hannah Moynihan.

Other activism
Gonne was a leading figure in the Catholic monetary reform movement in Ireland in the 1930s. Formed in 1932 as the Financial Freedom Federation, they became the Irish Social Credit Party in late 1935 and Gonne MacBride was a prominent member of the group throughout the 1930s. They were committed to reforming Ireland's financial and economic systems by way of instituting reforms laid out in the inter-war period by the originator of social credit economics, Major C.H. Douglas. In the Irish Independent in 1936, Gonne criticised Ernest Blythe's denunciation of social credit economics. Opening, she wrote; "I read with amazement the report of Mr. Blythe's broadcast attack on Social Credit. Major Douglas's contention that production has outstripped distribution with disastrous results of unemployment and starvation, tending to war and anarchy is incontrovertible, and is apparent to all in the desperate scramble for markets, the restriction of output and destruction in almost every country of consumable goods, while millions of people who need these goods are allowed to starve."

In the 1930s, she was involved in the Friends of Soviet Russia organisation. She met and was photographed with the Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose when he visited Ireland in 1936.

Yeats's muse

Gonne was a muse for Yeats. Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking." He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for her.

Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body ("Leda and the Swan" and "Among School Children"), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she woul late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways Or hurled the little streets upon the great. (from 'No second Troy', 1916)"

Yeats's 1893 poem "On a Child's Death" is thought to have been inspired by the death of Gonne's son Georges, whom Yeats thought Gonne had adopted. The poem was not published in Yeats's lifetime; scholars say he did not want the poem to be part of his canon, as it is of uneven quality.

Personal
Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen, a reference to both a vision she had of the Irish queen of old, Kathleen Ni Houlihan and an ironic title considering Gonne's Irish Nationalism and rejection of the British monarchy.

Iseult Gonne (1894–1954), her daughter with Millevoye, was educated at a Carmelite convent in Laval, France. When she returned to Ireland she was referred to as Maud's niece or cousin rather than daughter. She was to attract the admiration of literary figures including Ezra Pound, Lennox Robinson and Liam O'Flaherty. In 1916, in his fifties, Yeats proposed to the 22-year-old Iseult who refused his advances. Many Dubliners had suspected that Yeats was her father. In 1920, she eloped to London with 17-year-old Irish-Australian Francis Stuart, who became a writer, and the couple later married.

Iseult was not acknowledged as her mother's daughter in Maud Gonne's will when Gonne died in 1953, possibly due to pressure from her half-brother Seán MacBride who did not want to reveal Maud's relation to Millevoye. Iseult died less than a year later from heart disease.

Gonne's son, Seán MacBride (1904–1988) was active in the IRA and in Irish republican politics. As Irish Foreign Minister (1948–1951) he was active the United Nations and helped secure ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights. He was later a founding member of Amnesty International and its Chairman, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Gonne died in Clonskeagh, aged 86, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Publications

 * A Servant of the Queen Dublin, Golden Eagle Books Ltd. (ISBN 9780226302522, 1995 reprint)

title: Maud Gonne


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Jamie Cullum

Jamie Cullum (born 20 August 1979) is an English jazz-pop singer, pianist, songwriter and radio presenter. Although primarily a vocalist and pianist, he also accompanies himself on other instruments, including guitar and drums. He has recorded nine studio albums, three compilation albums, one live album and twenty-four singles. Since April 2010, he has presented a weekly Tuesday evening jazz show on BBC Radio 2.

Early life
Cullum's Jewish father, whose own mother had fled Nazi Germany, was born in Jerusalem. His mother's father was Indian and her mother was born in Burma. Following the Japanese invasion, the family left Burma and moved to Wales, when his mother was aged five.

Cullum was born in Rochford, Essex, but was brought up in Hullavington, Wiltshire. He failed his grade 4 piano exam, and by his own admission can barely read music. At 15, after attending Grittleton House School, he went to Sheldon School in Chippenham. He felt that he "was on a pathway" for a place at the University of Oxford; instead, he read English Literature and Film Studies at the University of Reading, "just down the road" from where he graduated with First-Class Honours.

Career
Cullum produced his first album, Heard It All Before, with only £480. It was released in 1999, with only 500 copies made. The success of the album led to an invitation to appear on Geoff Gascoyne's album Songs of the Summer.

After graduating from Reading University, Cullum released his album Pointless Nostalgic (2002), which stirred interest from broadcasters Michael Parkinson and Melvyn Bragg.

Just after Cullum made his first television appearance, on Parkinson, in April 2003, he signed a £1m contract for three albums with Universal, who beat Sony in a bidding war. Cullum's third studio album, Twentysomething, released in October 2003, went platinum and became the No. 1 selling studio album by a jazz artist in the United Kingdom. Cullum ended 2003 as the UK's biggest selling jazz artist of all time.

Although primarily a jazz musician, Cullum performs in a wide range of styles and is generally regarded as a "crossover" artist, with his musical roots firmly based in jazz. Cullum draws his inspiration from many different musicians and listens to an eclectic mix of music including Miles Davis.

A stomp box made from a small wooden block (not to be confused with an effect pedal for guitars) features in Cullum's concerts. The box is used to amplify a musician's tapping foot. Cullum found this in Melbourne, Australia and uses it to enhance upbeat and fast-paced songs such as "Seven Nation Army", originally by The White Stripes, and "Gold Digger", originally by Kanye West. He also often uses a looping machine; this plays a major part in Cullum's versions of "Seven Nation Army" and "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. Cullum also beatboxes at most gigs.

As well as The White Stripes and Kanye West, Cullum has performed work by Massive Attack, Pharrell, Rihanna, Pussycat Dolls, Radiohead, Gnarls Barkley, Elton John, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Joy Division, Lady Gaga and many others. He has performed with Deltron 3030, Kylie Minogue, Sugababes, will.i.am, Burt Bacharach and The Heritage Orchestra.

Cullum has played at many large music festivals, including Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (in 2006, 2009 and 2015), Montreux Jazz Festival (2004, 2009, 2014, 2016, 2018), Glastonbury (2004, 2009 and 2017), New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (in 2005), Coachella (2005), South by Southwest (2004, 2006), North Sea Jazz Festival, the Hollywood Bowl (performing with the Count Basie Orchestra), the 2006 Playboy Jazz Festival, the 2007 Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival and the 2008 Monterey Jazz Festival. On 30 April 2006 Cullum played his biggest-ever crowd on Queensday in the Netherlands.

In February 2012, Germany picked Roman Lob with "Standing Still", a composition by Cullum alongside Steve Robson and Wayne Hector, as their entry for the Eurovision Song Contest.

In October 2014, Cullum appeared in a comedy sketch with Jimmy Carr and Daisy Lowe, which was made for Channel 4's The Feeling Nuts Comedy Night to raise awareness of testicular cancer.

On 30 April 2016, Cullum played at The White House in Washington, D.C., as part of the International Jazz Day Global Concert.

In January 2017, Cullum appeared as a member of the house band in ITV's The Halcyon.

Pointless Nostalgic
On this album, Cullum created covers of old classics with new arrangements of Bob Dorough's composition "Devil May Care", Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't" and Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So".

The song as recorded by Cullum ("It Ain't Necessarily So") is also used in the film The Anatomy of Hate; A Dialogue to Hope by Mike Ramsdell.

Twentysomething
Recorded at London's Mayfair Studios and released in 2003, Twentysomething contains a mix of jazz standards, contemporary covers, and ballads. Due to the acoustic nature of the music, producer Stewart Levine chose to record and mix Twentysomething entirely on analogue tape.

The album includes jazz standards "What a Diff'rence a Day Made", "Singin' in the Rain", and Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick out of You", modern takes on My Fair Lady "I Could Have Danced All Night", Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should Have Come Over", and Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary", as well as new tracks written by Cullum and his brother Ben, including the first single from the album All at Sea and the title track "Twentysomething".

Catching Tales
Catching Tales has been released on double vinyl, as was the first single, "Get Your Way". A limited edition version of the "Get Your Way" single was released on red vinyl.

Cullum toured in support of Catching Tales from the end of October 2005 to December 2006.

The Pursuit
In June 2009, Cullum announced the title of his fourth studio album, The Pursuit. The album, which was released on 10 November 2009, was produced by Greg Wells, and the first single was "I'm All Over It", written with Deacon Blue frontman, Ricky Ross.

The Pursuit was recorded in a variety of places: Cullum's kitchen, a studio in L.A. and Terrified Studios (his own in Shepherd's Bush, London). Various musicians were used in the recording process. Songs recorded in L.A. mostly used session musicians and saw Wells and Cullum play various instruments including drums and bass. "Don't Stop The Music", the second single from the album (released as a download only in January 2010) was recorded with Chris Hill and Brad Webb. The track "Gran Torino", written in collaboration with Clint Eastwood, was used as the title track of Eastwood's 2008 movie of the same name and was nominated for the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

From 2003 to 2008, Cullum played consistently with Geoff Gascoyne on bass, and Sebastiaan de Krom on drums. From 2003 until 2004 the trio was joined by Ben Castle on saxophone, John Hoare on trumpet, Barnaby Dickinson on trombone and Malcolm MacFarlane on guitar. Sam Wedgwood (guitarist, bassist and trumpeter) later joined Cullum on tour, for a little over a year. At the end of 2005 Cullum was joined by Tom Richards (saxophonist, occasional guitarist and percussion). Soon after that Sam Wedgwood left to pursue his own solo musical career. At the beginning of 2006 Rory Simmons (trumpeter and guitarist) joined the band as a replacement, bringing the total number of band members (including Cullum himself) to five.

In late 2009, Cullum replaced Geoff Gascoyne (bass) and Sebastiaan de Krom (drums) with Chris Hill (bass) and Brad Webb (drums).

Momentum
Jamie Cullum's album Momentum was released on 20 May 2013. In conjunction with the album, he performed six intimate gigs across Europe; the first was in London.

In an interview with NBHAP, Cullum said that "Momentum" is about the crossover period from being a young man while having one foot in the adult world, and about the balance of childish fantasies with grand and epic responsibilities.

Interlude
Interlude is an album consisting of jazz covers, released on 6 October 2014. Recorded with producer Benedic Lamdin of big band Nostalgia 77, and recorded in one take, the album was influenced by Cullum's BBC Radio 2 weekly jazz show. The duets on the album include two acts for which Cullum's radio show acted as a springboard for mainstream success: Laura Mvula featured on the track "Good Morning Heartache", and Gregory Porter on the lead single "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood".

Available in standard and deluxe versions, the latter including a DVD of Cullum's full performance at Jazz à Vienne, and an exclusive photo booklet containing tour and studio pictures.

To celebrate the launch of his first pure jazz album, Cullum played at several jazz clubs, including Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, and London's Ronnie Scott's.

God Only Knows
In October 2014 Cullum was part of the 2014 BBC charity single for Children in Need, "God Only Knows". He appeared in the song video, in a hot air balloon, wearing a salmon-coloured Alexander McQueen suit.

Taller
In February 2017 Cullum announced he was working on his next studio album Taller, following the release of its first single "Work of Art" on 17 February.

Recent work
In July 2020 Cullum released the single "Don't Give Up on Me" on the Island Records label.

Awards
The British Jazz Awards recognized Cullum's growing success by awarding him the "Rising Star" award, at the 2003 ceremony in July. At the 2004 BRIT Awards, Cullum was nominated in the "British Breakthrough Act" category. He performed live in the ceremony at Earl's Court, a duet with Katie Melua of The Cure's "The Lovecats". In the 2005 BRIT Awards, Cullum was nominated for two awards: "Best Male Artist" and "Best Live Act". In 2005 Cullum was nominated for a Grammy while taking BBC Radio 2 "Artist of the Year" honors at the BBC Jazz Awards (as voted by listeners of Radio 2).

In 2007 Cullum won the Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club Award for "Best British Male". He was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for his composition Gran Torino for the Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino. At the Jazz FM awards 2013, he was a nominee for UK Jazz Artist of the Year. {| class=wikitable ! Year !! Awards !! Work !! Category !! Result
 * 2003
 * British Jazz Awards
 * rowspan="8" | n/a
 * Rising Star
 * Won
 * rowspan="3" | 2004
 * Silver Clef Awards
 * Best Newcomer
 * Won
 * MOBO Awards
 * Best Jazz Act
 * Won
 * rowspan="3" | Brit Awards
 * British Breakthrough Act
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="5" | 2005
 * British Male Solo Artist
 * Nominated
 * British Live Act
 * Nominated
 * BBC Jazz Awards
 * Artist of the Year
 * Won
 * Naomi Awards
 * Worst British Male
 * Won
 * Grammy Awards
 * Twentysomething
 * Best Jazz Vocal Album
 * Nominated
 * rowspan=2|2006
 * ECHO Awards
 * rowspan="3" | n/a
 * Best Jazz Act
 * Nominated
 * Meteor Music Awards
 * Best International Male
 * Nominated
 * 2007
 * Ronnie Scott's Jazz Awards
 * Best British Male
 * Won
 * 2008
 * St. Louis Film Critics Association
 * Gran Torino
 * Best Music
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="2" | 2009
 * Golden Globe Awards
 * rowspan="2" | "Gran Torino"
 * Best Original Song
 * Nominated
 * World Soundtrack Awards
 * Best Original Song
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="2" | 2012
 * New York Festival Radio Awards
 * Jamie Cullum's BBC Radio Show
 * Best Jazz Format
 * Won
 * Parliamentary Jazz Awards
 * rowspan="2" | n/a
 * Jazz Broadcaster of the Year
 * Won
 * 2013
 * Jazz FM Awards
 * UK Jazz Artist of the Year
 * Won
 * 2014
 * Radio Academy Awards
 * Jamie Cullum's BBC Radio Show
 * Best Music Programme
 * Won
 * Jamie Cullum's BBC Radio Show
 * Best Jazz Format
 * Won
 * Parliamentary Jazz Awards
 * rowspan="2" | n/a
 * Jazz Broadcaster of the Year
 * Won
 * 2013
 * Jazz FM Awards
 * UK Jazz Artist of the Year
 * Won
 * 2014
 * Radio Academy Awards
 * Jamie Cullum's BBC Radio Show
 * Best Music Programme
 * Won
 * Jamie Cullum's BBC Radio Show
 * Best Music Programme
 * Won

Projects
Cullum's early music career saw him playing three or four times a week at PizzaExpress's restaurants throughout London, gaining exposure and later his big break with Universal. In 2011 the "Pizza Express Big Audition with Jamie Cullum" competition gave singers, songwriters and musicians a platform and a chance to win a £5,000 prize and a residency at the restaurant chain's Dean Street Jazz Club. 7,500 acts entered the competition and the final, held at the Addison's Rooms in Kensington on 23 November, was judged by Cullum, Michael Parkinson, M People's Heather Small and other music critics. The winning act was Offbeat South, an urban group of 18- to 21-year-olds from Croydon. The other finalists were Andy Lewis, Elle Watson, Palms 13 and The Yesberger Band.

In 2021, alongside Sophie Ellis-Bextor and The Feeling, Cullum re-recorded the classic 1977 Fleetwood Mac song "Don't Stop" as part of the UK's National Thank You Day on 4 July, to celebrate the work of the National Health Service. The single was released on 25 June.

In 2022, Cullum was among the artists who celebrated 60 years of music from James Bond films in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Personal life
Cullum first met his future wife at a charity concert where she performed a song. He married the English author and former model Sophie Dahl in a private ceremony in Hampshire on 9 January 2010. They live in Buckinghamshire, where Sophie's grandfather Roald Dahl lived for the second half of his life. Their daughter, Lyra, was born on 2 March 2011 and their second daughter, Margot, was born in 2013.

In 2011, a portrait of Cullum, painted by British artist Joe Simpson, was exhibited around the UK, including a solo exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall.

Cullum was the guest for BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on 25 March 2012, where he created programme history by performing three of his chosen songs, live in the studio for the show. His disc choices included The Lamb by John Tavener, and "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland Illinois" by Sufjan Stevens. His favourite was "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" by Randy Newman.

Cullum is a fan of Swindon Town Football Club

Discography

 * Heard It All Before (1999)
 * Pointless Nostalgic (2002)
 * Twentysomething (2003)
 * Catching Tales (2005)
 * The Pursuit (2009)
 * Momentum (2013)
 * Interlude (2014)
 * Taller (2019)
 * The Pianoman at Christmas (2020)

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

title: Jamie Cullum


text:
Jimmy O'Dea

James Augustine O'Dea (26 April 1899 – 7 January 1965) was an Irish actor and comedian.

Life
Jimmy O'Dea was born at 11 Lower Bridge Street, Dublin, to James O'Dea, an ironmonger, and Martha O'Gorman, who kept a small toy shop. He was one of 11 children. His father had a shop in Capel Street. He was educated at the Irish Christian Brothers O'Connell School in North Richmond Street, Dublin, where a classmate was future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Blackrock College, and by the Jesuits at Belvedere College. From a young age he was interested in taking to the stage; he co-founded an amateur acting group, the Kilronan Players, in 1917. But his father would not hear of it. O'Dea was apprenticed to an optician in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he qualified as an optician.

He returned to Dublin where, aged 21, he set up his own business which he was, eventually, to give to his sister, Rita. In his spare time he took part in amateur productions of Ibsen and Chekhov. From 1920 he was in the Irish theatre in Hardwicke Street working with actor-producer John McDonagh. In 1922 he made a series of comedy films for Norman Whitten. After working in plays by Shaw for a few years he rejoined McDonagh in revues, the first of which, Dublin To-Night, was produced at the Queen's Theatre in 1924. In 1927 he took to the stage full-time. In 1928, this company's first production Here We Are won international acclaim, and in December of the same year it produced its first Christmas Pantomime, Sinbad the Sailor.

O'Dea formed a partnership with Harry O'Donovan (died 3 November 1973) whom he first met in a production of You Never Can Tell in 1924. Their first show was Look Who's Here at Queen's. For more than two decades beginning in 1929 the duo produced two shows a year in Dublin, first in the Olympia Theatre, then in the Gaiety. They created O'Dea's most famous character, "Mrs. Biddy Mulligan". The role drew on Jimmy's previous manifestations as "Dames" in Variety performances and pantomimes. Biddy Mulligan was the representation (caricature, parody and stereotype) of a Dublin street-seller, with all the working-class repartee, wisdom and failings implicit. He made a number of recordings of sketches starring Mrs. Mulligan. Biddy Mulligan is referenced in many Dublin music hall songs such as "Biddy Mulligan the Pride of the Coombe", "Daffy the Belle of the Coombe" and "The Charladies' Ball".

O'Dea made some film appearances, such as Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) in which he played the leprechaun king Brian, and Johnny Nobody (1961) as a postman. He also had a successful career in pantomime and toured Ireland and England many times, and is much associated with actress Maureen Potter (1925–2004), with whom he often partnered.

O'Dea was also a prolific songwriter. Many of his songs are still well known to this day, some of them having been sung and recorded by Dublin singer Frank Harte.

Personal life
O'Dea married Ursula Doyle. Maureen Potter was bridesmaid. Seán Lemass, was best man; while Taoiseach, Lemass also gave the valedictory oration at O'Dea's funeral in 1965. Jimmy O’Dea had one child – Christine O’Dea – who married Ursula Doyle's brother Noel Doyle. Christine lives in Toronto. Christine and Noel had two boys, Donal and Eamonn. Eamonn has 2 daughters, Eve Siobhan and Bridget Kate.

Death
Jimmy O'Dea died at Dr Steevens' Hospital, Dublin, aged 65, on 7 January 1965.

Selected filmography

 * Jimmy Boy (1935)
 * Penny Paradise (1938)
 * Cheer Boys Cheer (1939)
 * Let's Be Famous (1939)
 * The Rising of the Moon (1957)
 * Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Recordings
With Harry O'Donovan:
 * "Mrs. Mulligan nearly wins the Sweep" E.3694 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan in London" E.3895 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan at the telephone" E.3663 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan at the talkies" E.3764 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan at the racecourse" E.3763 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan in the tram" E.3764 Parlophone
 * "The Irish Schoolmaster" E.3634 Parlophone
 * "Sixpence each way" E.3634 Parlophone
 * "Biddy Mulligan" E 3817 Parlophone
 * "Mrs. Mulligan, Smuggler"
 * "The Charladies' Ball"

title: Jimmy O'Dea


text:
Tray

A tray is a shallow platform designed for the carrying of items. It can be fashioned from numerous materials, including silver, brass, sheet iron, paperboard, wood, melamine, and molded pulp. Trays range in cost from inexpensive molded pulp trays which are disposable and inexpensive melamine trays used in cafeterias, to mid-priced wooden trays used in a home, to expensive silver trays used in luxury hotels. Some examples have raised galleries, handles, and short feet for support.

Trays are flat, but with raised edges to stop things from sliding off them. They are made in a range of shapes but are commonly found in oval or rectangular forms, sometimes with cutout or attached handles with which to carry them.

A more elaborate device is the tray table, which is designed to accommodate a tray, or to serve as a tray itself. There are two primary kinds of tray tables. The TV tray table is typically a small table, which may have legs that fold to allow it to be carried like a tray. The airplane tray table is a tray built into the back of an airline seat, which folds down so that the person sitting in the seat behind the one containing the table can use it as a surface from which to eat meals served on the airplane.

Examples

 * A butler's tray often has a gallery, or deeper surround, handles on the long sides to facilitate carrying (usually cut into the surround), and a portable stand with folding legs. It is used for the service of drinks and generally serves as a convenient side table.
 * A cafeteria tray is used for carrying items in a cafeteria. It is typically made of plastic or fiberglass. A compartment tray or mess tray is a cafeteria tray designed to be used directly, without dishes - it incorporates shallow compartments in which different types of food are placed.
 * A cargo tray, the rear of a ute, used to hold goods.
 * A molded pulp tray is a disposable (or recyclable) tray provided by fast food restaurants, coffee shops and movie theaters. The tray is designed to hold four disposable cups.
 * Surgical trays are used to carry surgical instruments, are rectangular and made of stainless steel to resist the heat of sterilization without corrosion.
 * Seed trays are used for propagating vegetables and flowers and other plants from seed. They are also used for taking plant cuttings. The trays for seedling production are made of expanded polystyrene or polythene. They come in many sizes; the most common are the Danish and the European sized trays. Seed trays can also be stacked in seed tray racks to take up less space.
 * A darkroom tray, also known as print developing tray, is used in photography.
 * A dental impression tray is a receptacle or device that is used to carry impression material to the mouth, confine the material in apposition to the surfaces to be recorded, and control the impression material while it sets to form the impression.
 * A baking tray or oven tray is used to cook a variety of foods in an oven, including vegetables and meats such as whole chickens. It allows food to be very exposed to the hot air inside the oven whilst preventing any fats of liquids from falling onto the oven floor. See also Sheet pan.
 * Food packaging trays
 * A foam tray is used by the supermarkets and by the fruit shops to package meat and small fruits, vegetables and mushrooms. Patents for this product exist since 1966.
 * Aluminium foil take-out food tray used by the supermarkets for packaging processed food.
 * Thin plastic trays used for both packaging shelf food and for take-out food
 * A coin tray is used to store or collect coins. They are used in banks, restaurants, shops, casinos, and for coin collecting.

title: Tray


text:
Jakob Maria Mierscheid

Jakob Maria Mierscheid MdB has been a fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 11 December 1979. He was the alleged deputy chairman of the Mittelstandsausschuss (Committee for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) of the Bundestag in 1981 and 1982. According to his official biography, he was born in Morbach/Hunsrück, a very rural constituency in Rhineland-Palatinate. He is Catholic and a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

The idea of Jakob Mierscheid was created on 11 December 1979 on the back of a menu in the restaurant of the Bundestag, when two members of parliament from the SPD, and, decided that their recently deceased colleague Carlo Schmid needed a worthy successor. He is now a widely known curiosity within the Bundestag and uses Twitter as means of communication.

In 1983, the party magazine Vorwärts published an article purportedly written by Mierscheid claiming the discovery of a "law", the Mierscheid Law, that indicated a strong correlation between the election results of the SPD in national elections and West German steel production. The Bundestag official web site carries an ostensibly serious 'biography' and a photograph purporting to depict Mierscheid. In previous versions of the photograph, his fashion sense seemed very antiquated and his eyeglasses were added later. The current (2010) image shows a balding man sitting in a chair, facing away from the camera, in the middle of the empty Hall of Representatives. The German language version of the site lists 615 current names although the actual membership of the Bundestag is only 614, while the English and French language versions only list the actual membership of the Bundestag. Mierscheid has his own stationery and e-mail address and issues press releases now and then. The picture of Mierscheid at the Bundestag is based on the RTL Samstag Nacht character Karl Ranseier.

The hoax is paralleled in Germany in a number of other areas; for example, Friedrich Gottlob Nagelmann is a known (fictional) lawyer, and Edmund Friedemann Dräcker is a known (fictional) diplomat. Mierscheid, Nagelmann, and Dräcker each have a long list of publications which have sometimes really been published in otherwise reputable media (science journals, parliament press).

Biography
The biography of Jakob Maria Mierscheid is that of a backbencher with a list of humble career steps. The official biography of the German parliament lists him as a member of the Trade Union of Peasants and Lumberjacks, member of the Sport Friends Club (treasurer 1977-1982), honorary member of the Choral Society of the Trade Union for Wood and Plastics Workers. First listed as official delegate to the Social Democrat Party congress in Hannover 1960, Mierscheid first visited the West German capital in 1967.

In 1967–68, he wrote a four-part series about the "travel routes of the ring-tailed wood pigeons and its avionics" in the Central Journal of the Carrier Pigeon Breeder Association, reprinted 1969 in the Swiss-confederate journal "Homing Pigeon Correspondences". He entered the parliament in 1979. Following his time as deputy chairman of the Mittelstandsausschuss (Committee for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) of the Bundestag in 1981 and 1982, he wrote an article on the "Mierscheid Law" in the Social Democrats' journal Vorwärts published on 14 July 1983.

His activities continued with an article in Vorwärts titled "The Solution: More market than corruption" published on 12 January 1985, and in 1993 he authored "Ecological data on the CFC replacement R134a" for the third Höchst Stone Louse Symposium in Frankfurt.

There are some approved biography books like that of Peter Raabe: ''Die Mierscheid-Akte. Dokumentarische Spuren eines Phantoms'' (The Mierscheid File: Documentary Traces of a Phantom). Later Dietrich Sperling and Friedhelm Wollner published Jakob Mierscheid, Aus dem Leben eines Abgeordneten: Eine politische Holografie (Jakob Mierscheid, from the Life of a Member of Parliament: A Political Holography) in 1998.

On 11 December 2004, Mierscheid celebrated his 25th anniversary as member of the Bundestag. On 1 March 2013, the President of the German Bundestag, Mr. Norbert Lammert, said an official congratulation on occasion of Mierscheid's 80th birthday. Mierscheid did not show up to a reception given in his honour in his home-town of Morbach.

In July 2005, the German Tagesschau announced the exit of Mierscheid from SPD to the German Linkspartei and WASG. Mierscheid's angry dementi was announced both by the Tagesschau, and an interview in Der Spiegel.

After the parliament moved to Berlin, two new office buildings for members of parliament were connected with a pedestrian bridge over the Spree river. This bridge was nicknamed the "Mierscheid Bridge". Attempts to mark it with an official plate were said to have failed because "the nails were nuts" (pun on Niete meaning nut/rivet, a blank in lottery or a person that is unable to accomplish anything).

After the historic defeat in the 2009 election, Mierscheid quoted Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" in German to raise the spirits of his comrades in the Bundestag.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Further appreciation
On Mierscheid’s 80th "birthday" in 2013, his alleged home town Morbach opened a hiking trail, a roundtrip of about 16 km (10 miles), providing humorous reflections on Mierscheid’s life and political activities on 14 information boards along the trail.

title: Jakob Maria Mierscheid


text:
User talk:Mbecker/Archive 1

Hello there Mbecker, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit How does one edit a page and experiment at Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Coolness - you have copied my standard greeting and greeted at least one other user. Keep up the great work! :) --mav

Hi there. Great to see you're meeting and greeting, but are User talk:4656, User talk:202519688 all called "Parallax"? I think you may have forgotten to change the name part of the greeting... ;-) -- Tarquin

Hi - I understand your concern about pages that redirct to people's user pages (such as Lee Daniel Crocker), but please do not add comments to them as it stops the redirects from working. These pages take up very little space, and are necessary because a lot of pages point to them - usually talk pages signed before the "User:" namespace was created. If you want to raise the matter with someone, you should probably add a comment to the Village pump --Camembert

A response for you is at my talk page. --mav

Did *you* get permission to put them here? I just took what you uploaded, which was in some format no one recognized, looked at it in khexedit, figured out it's an uncompressed pixelmap, changed the unknown header to PPM, and compressed to PNG. -phma

Why should Cops be deleted? Koyaanis Qatsi 07:04 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't think I understand you. Would you want every page mentioned on Links to disambiguating pages deleted also?  Koyaanis Qatsi

 * Adding to what Koyaanis Qatsi has said, just because there are now currently no links to the page doesn't mean there won't be any in the future. And, in my opinion there undoubtably will be. Also I expect there are other books/films out there called Cops that could be put there in the future and perhaps also there should be a link to an article about the meaning of the word cop (either in Wikipedia or Wiktionary) as it is a slang term and I'd guess many people with English as a second language who learnt English from a non-American source mightn't have heard the term. On just the first line of the 'A' section of Links to disambiguating pages, eight of the eighteen links point to pages with only 2 articles listed on them but I think a lot of people would argue that they shouldn't be deleted. -- Ams80 13:24 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

RE question about March 2003. RobLa creates these redirects so that the current month link goes somewhere. This is a content-oriented approach; since the events for March 2003 are still on Current events it makes sense to redirect March 2003 to Current events until the end of March. Then the redirect will become its own page with all the archived current events for March. --mav 01:37 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

My preferences are set so that links aren't underlined, so it's not possible to tell the difference between red text and links to non-existent articles. Could you use a different way of highlighting? (like bold and italic, eg). Might save a bit of confusion from people reading your page... :) Martin 20:07 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I made it that way on purpose. I think it draws the eye of a real Wikidedian :)  MB 20:48 15 May 2003 (UTC)

---

I was messing around with color on my user page, and I wanted to see if I could change the color of one of the links on my page. You see, it is a link to an internal page, but wikipedia gives it the color of an external link. I found out that it is really easy to do this in a bit of a funky way with the &lt;/nowiki> flag. Here is an example: hEx  MiXeR and here is the code:  hEx  MiXeR  MB 19:02 15 May 2003 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's not just the color flag that you can mess with. I changed the font on my userpage too.  I will be messing around and seeing what types of neat stuff I can put in the wiki.  Check out my page to see what I am up to :).  MB 19:13 15 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Do you really have to modify the standard font choices? Changing the colour might be ok, but why have you made your user page appear in Courier? We should sternly discourage the use of different fonts. It's not neat - it's vulgar and does not add anything. Cgs

 * What is wrong with personal style when it comes to personal pages? MB 19:22 15 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Personal pages are fine - I just have nightmares of Wikipedia becoming like the internet in the mid 90's - all flashing text and scrolling banners and shit. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Cgs

 * Well then we need to decide what is acceptable, and what is not, and then decide how to enforce it. 1)  Change the wiki source to disallow resricted formating changes, or 2)  Just make policies.  MB 19:33 15 May 2003 (UTC)

 * You're free to design your user page however you want, but you should note two things: 1) The developers are currently discussing ways to entirely get rid of HTML in Wikipedia. Support for some features of HTML will probably be disabled at some point. 2) Many users, including myself, have the "Underline links" user preference disabled. If I visit your user page with these settings, it is impossible to distinguish between differently colored links and differently colored text. I have to move my mouse over the text "Michael Becker" to see whether it is a link. Very bad design. --Eloquence 23:20 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

 * Mbecker's response to my similar comment above was "I made it that way on purpose". I plan to make it a better way in an equally purposeful manner, since I feel this is insufficient reason to inconvenience others. :) Martin 23:46 15 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Actually, I've had a sudden attack of live and let live feelings, so I won't revert if you stick the red links back in. But green still looks nicer! :) Martin 00:03 16 May 2003 (UTC)

First rule of UI design: Nobody reads the manual! :) Thanks for fixing. And thanks also for keeping your markup green. And much thanks for fixing the clitoris image - nice trick with the nails! :) Martin

Like you're doing with Futurama Please tell me all similar effots you've done with categorizing topics. user_talk:hfastedge

I think you're going a bit over the top with the disambiguation thing. We only need to disambiguate when there is something else to disambiguate from. -- Oliver P. 01:09 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks much for the tip! RK 00:16 21 May 2003 (UTC)

How did you get a figure of 222? My user contributions page lists only 180. CGS 21:44 21 May 2003 (UTC).

Actually, I think it's spelled more like "Capiche?" or something like that. Italian (and Romance languages in general) have a pretty severe lack of 'k's, mostly. -- John Owens 20:09 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Your clitoris image looks good to me. I guess you should mention it on one of the talk pages, just in case. I'm glad that we've got something productive out of all that arguing! :) Martin ---
 * Michael, we like many of your contributions and are glad to have you as wikiholic - let us know: where did your clitoris image go? There are many places on the web for content like the instructions in the old fisting page or your pictures, and we adult vikings like to see them (an enzyclopedia is not the right place) - To ban us you need the support of a colleague of mine - say hallo to the professors of your university (colleagues of mine)

 * one of the vikings - Viking 19:13 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Wapcaplet certainly isn't Viking - indeed, he seconded your call for a ban. Evercat 20:03 30 May 2003 (UTC)

And your latest addition is not funny. :-P Evercat 20:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Heh. Viking is (in my opinion) probably just a single individual. In any event, check out the history of my talk page. Why would I waste time arguing with myself? Finally, I saw your edits to your whiteboard because I regularly check Special:Recentchanges as I do quite a bit of vandalism reversion and it often shows up there first. I knew you'd been discussing Viking and wondered if your edit was about that, so I had a look. Anyway, it's alright, I'm not offended. Evercat 20:28 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Mystery solved - it was User:Kils and some people he knew. There's some talk on the mailing list. Evercat 20:06 31 May 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Mbecker/Archive 1


text:
User talk:Mbecker/Archive 2

Check out Wikipedia and Religion. --Dante Alighieri 08:57 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hallo Michael: I appologize to you if you felt insulted. I did not mean it that way. You have great pages. If I can be of help to you as a professor anytime, let me know - Uwe ("sailor") Kils 13:48 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re: the Viking situation. Glad to contribute my opinion on the situation. I had no idea I was under any suspicion of actually being Viking }:-) Anyhow, hopefully the situation has resolved itself. -- Wapcaplet 15:19 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun! --Eloquence 18:46 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Reverting edits is a lot easier if you check a user's contributions list ("User contributions" on the user page) and click the rollback link. It is only available if the edit is still the most recent one, and you cannot accidentally rollback twice. --Eloquence 20:36 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Did you and I talk about Micheal problems on another page at some time not long ago? Or am I thinking of someone else? Senility has obviously set in, I can't remember. No matter, I just dropped by to say that your edit summary just now - fixed spelling error by Michael. Checked validity of everything he added - is a really good idea. That makes life so much easier for people cleaning up after the factually-challenged one, and also avoids any risk of your edit getting caught in the crossfire. Hey - you know this stuff already, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Cheers -- Tannin

Welcome to the Friends of Michael :-) -- JeLuF 20:25 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Heya,

I think you've done an excellent job as a sysop so far, and I'm telling you this to get you to do some work for me :-). I'll be gone for four days starting Wednesday, and it would be nice if someone could keep the list of "new pages" on the Main Page up to date in that period. What this basically means is checking Special:Newpages once a day and adding four to five links to articles that already look good. Would you do this for me while I'm gone? I'll do an example update in a few minutes. --Eloquence 22:18 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Argh, look what you've started! :-) Evercat 22:34 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Banning user accounts and seeing users' IPs is restricted to developers only at this point. Since this is just more idiot vandalism I've gone ahead and banned that account. --Brion 05:23 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Martin
 * 1) meta:Wikipedia:RainCloud doesn't exist.
 * 2) bans is the meandering thoughts of a reprobate and has no official status
 * 3) Have you seen accuracy dispute?

Smaller done (lavender_small.jpg) ¿Is enough or you need smaller yet? Guillermo 15:12 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That is a good size :-). I tried to favor the creation of m:wiki:raincloud; but it didnot work :-( you are welcome to give it a try :-). WikiLove User:anthere

I did an article text search on "8217" to find all the Microsoft-generated cruft (apostrophes first; there are 413 articles with this type of apostrophe in it, and hopefully that will be the largest count I get). I'm planning on doing double quotes, dashes etc. later.

It keeps me occupied. ;-) - Hephaestos 02:16 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

thanks for the advice. Will know now :-) Ant

Re question on my talk page - Like I tried to report back, I changed that image inadvertently (clicked on a wrong link). Thanks for changing it back, I couldn't figure out how to do it. Enough already. Espen

I like my version better, without the Wikipedia: namespace visible -- Rotem Dan 19:48 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please read my comments on Talk:Main Page -- Rotem Dan 19:51 5 Jun 2003 (UTC) --- Hi, I changed the voting list in takepage of inheritance (object-oriented programming) so that the course of further contributions can be clear. -- Taku 03:44 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up about Inheritance etc... Mintguy

Hey, Mbecker, I'll bet you want to talk me through the creation of a bot or two, don't you? Also, do you have AIM? --Dante Alighieri 20:57 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Ah, my mistake, User:Bender isn't operational yet. ;) --Dante Alighieri 21:03 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't know Python, but I am interested in learning. It's been one of those things that I was going to get around to at some time or other. Let's talk over AIM, it's faster. ;) Check here for my AIM name. --Dante Alighieri 21:18 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

-

er...sorry. I usually try to think of using the full sig on user talk page. Not often on article or meta talk page, as I consider answers and comments are likely to be put there. I put my name by hands for uneasyness to do the thild on my keyboard. No, I wont use an official short name for I specifically asked some users not to call me ant. So, I do not sign in the same way in all places. Did you have something to tell me ? :-) user:Anthere

Re: Favorite pages of banned users - I did notice this. Good idea! Most of us who have been here a while have a pretty easy time spotting Michael's edits, but this will definitely be quite useful. If only all vandals were as consistent as he is :) -- Wapcaplet 23:31 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

MB, it seems the content disclaimer has sorted itself out. I still think a couple of examples would be useful, but otherwise I think it covers the consensus position quite nicely. --Robert Merkel 00:45 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

con·sen·sus  Audio pronunciation of consensus ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (kn-snss) n.

1. An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole: “Among political women... there is a clear consensus about the problems women candidates have traditionally faced” (Wendy Kaminer). See Usage Note at redundancy. 2. General agreement or accord: government by consensus.

There is no consensus about what to do. Don't pretend that there is. Thanks. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi 00:49 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Subpages are definitely out. Mintguy 15:12 10 Jun 2003 (UTC) See Do not use subpages Mintguy 15:27 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Fair enough. Well then, I don't see any compromise.  MB 15:36 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I think, and hope, Taku wil buy my argument about genetic algorithms. BTW have you looked at subprogram. It's a disaster. I didn't want to get involved in another dispute with Taku but it's a right mess because Taku decided that everthing that resembled a subroutine should all be on the same page. At one point it even said something like "an abstract method was a subprogram without any code in it." Also I rarely contribute to articles about software on Wikipedia, I get enough of that in my day job. I made an exception and I wish I hadn't. Mintguy 15:53 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re: Subprogram. It isn't a proper term. At least not since the 1950s. But as I said above I don't want to get into another conflict. Mintguy

Wrongbros probably is not Michael, but is adding some articles regarding a record label that might not exist, see Messed Up Wreckords and the associated talk page. -- JeLuF

Hi there. Whilst I agree that QEII made an interpretation of the facts, but it remains a fact that this was her response to a request made direct to her by some Rastafarians when she visited Jamaica. I think "In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain refused to make a public apology for the long history of slavery under the British Empire on the basis that it was legal." is a fair summary of her response. So I don't really see where the problem of this arises. I might think that her argument is specious particularly in light of the legal and political chicanery which Edward Coke involved himself, but this is not what I say - I leave the reader to make whatever inference they feel the evidence warrants. Harry Potter 00:35 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please don't give three sided football any legitimacy by adding stuff about "London Psychogeographic Association" into the football article. As far as I can work out the London Psychogeographic Association, only exists as a concept in a few pataphysic artists heads. Take a look at http://www.deepdisc.com/space1999/archive/11.html to get some idea and then read Luther Blissett Mintguy 08:07 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This is the whole point - is is deliberatly hard to understand in order to confuse. At its heart the concept of three-sided football is absurd. There are some facts, some pseudo-facts, and some fantasy all mixed in together. They call it pataphysics some might call it art, but I call it nonsense. Luther Blissett never organised and games. The AAA doesn't exist. It is a name invented for the sake of art as the ostensible organisers of an art exhibition called space1999. At least that's the best that I can make of it. Mintguy

 * Mintguy seems very bold in making assertions about things which they clearly know nothing about. Space 1999, Tendays that shoke the universe was a "Festival of independent and community-based space exploration" held in London, Earth from June 18th 27th 1999. It included a conference, performance, astral travel, music, film, discussion and training. The festival explored "the new possibilities that open up when we form autonomous communities in outer space". In fact the Association of Autonomous Astronauts was an world organisation with events in Italy, Austria as well as London, with branches in New Zealand as well as across Europe. The idea that Space 1999 was an "art exhibition" is what we call Absurdist. Harry Potter 11:13 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Mbecker. I've seen a lot of your edits here and there and generally, as far as I recall, there are generally pretty good and make Wikipedia better. :) However, today I've seen you adding redundant links to the bottom of articles (usually in the See also:) sections.  They are generally links to subjects which are covered in the main article, which usually have a link to the subject already.  While I don't think there is any formal style guideline on this, redudant links in articles are generally discouraged (I know, I've had several of my own mistaken redundant links reverted).  Therefore, you might want to reconsider creating the redundant links as they are already covered in the articles (and might just be reverted). :)  —Frecklefoot 13:56 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for my WikiLove flower! Angela 12:20 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Actually, Impeccability was perfectly accurate. I assume you deleted it because you weren't familiar with it? Would you mind terribly if I undeleted it? -- Someone else 21:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * I made the assumption you wouldn't and went ahead and recreated it since I had more to add. -- Someone else 22:04 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * Ah. I hope you're happier with the current version then. I'm not complaining, there's entirely too much nonsense here that doesn't get deleted (like a library that consists solely of references to itself!), but I think generally definitions go onto the "votes for deletion" page. Sometimes (like (I hope) here) they have the ability to be expanded to something more than a dictionary definition. -- Someone else 22:19 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I removed your phg from Finch. Although this article might benefit from more finch photos, I didn't think this hopefully serious article benefited from a cartoon finch (if that's what it was!)   jimfbleak 05:28 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I am reluctant to get into edit wars, so I've left the Finch png for the time being; the first time round I thought it might be a little joke. Although images, even poor ones, often add greatly to an article, this parody really doesn't. To me, it detracts from the serious nature of the article and adds nothing. I'm off-line for a couple of days, so I'll give some thought whether to delete again. Can't you photograph a Chaffinch/House Finch (sorry, forgotten you nationality) instead?    jimfbleak 05:15 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree with Jim, that this picture is inappropriate. Please remove it or find a better location for it. -- Cordyph 10:06 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I haven't accused you of being a troublemaker, if you check my talk page, and I wouldn't do so. The fact is that, apart from myself and Tannin, who might be considered to have a vested interest, both Cordyph and Arpingstone have supported the deletion.

 * I'm sorry if you found the words cartoon or parody offensive, but the fact is that in that in an article about birds for adults, you would expect either a photograph or a properly drawn illustration. If you look at Brittanica or on-line sources, you will not find images like yours. There are other photos I could add to the article, but it might then be too cluttered. There are drawings on some pages, see skua, but the standard is much higher.

 * I'm sorry that you have taken umbrage at this, but I think the consensus is clear.   jimfbleak 14:52 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Hi Michael. It's a pity to disagree over a matter like this, as I have always found you an easy person to cooperate with and respected your edits, and the more so as you took the time to create that drawing. (Something I could not do in a year of trying - the average four-year-old draws better than I do!) As I see it, the best illustrations for articles about the natural world are usually photographs. Where a suitable photo cannot be obtained, then a drawing must suffice. At present, a lot of the bird and mammal articles are illustrated with drawings from out-of-copyright encyclopedias. I don't like them much, but they are nevertheless a whole lot better than nothing. To me, your drawing and those drawings fit into the same category: if there is no photograph available, then they are the fall-back. I admit to finding your finch a little twee, but then I have exactly the same feeling about many of those old encyclopedia drawings too - and some of those are more than likely painted by very famous nature illustrators of their day! Over time, I would love to see a quality photograph for every fauna entry (and the flora too) replace all the drawings. To this end, I've taken quite a few myself of late (not all of them posted yet), and have been traveling all over the state. Just the week before last I got really carried away, and lashed out on a massive telephoto lens so that (I hope) I can get lots of good bird pictures. (Not one of which will wind up in finch - as our Australian finches are not finches - they are in their own family, but closely related to the sparrows.) Anyway, let me put it like this. I think my language was a little strong on Jim's talk page (speak first, repent at lesiure!) and I apologise for that. On reflection, I think that I would be in favour of retaining your drawing if there was not already a decent photo. Best -- Tannin

 * PS: Speaking only for myself here - others may or may not agree - I would certainly welcome drawings for the birds (or mammals) that we are unlikely to be able to get photographs of. The reality is, for anything that doesn't happen to have a photo somewhere on a public domain US Government site, we depend on Wikipedians with cameras. Over time, it is reasonable to expect that we will accumulate good pictures of all the common species in the places where most Wikipedians live or visit: Europe, North America, Australia, and so on. But we are unlikely to get many photos of the creatures of (e.g.) South America or China, bar those few that we can talk pictures of in zoos.

See [http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/yregengl.htm. 1]. This is a 1905 German encyclopedia; look for Pomarine Skua. I have inexpertly edited the image to isolate the species I wanted, but the drawing original dates from before electronics. You should be aware that digitally editing an in-copyright photo and using that in Wikipedia would still have been a breach of copyright, if that is what I had done. jimfbleak 15:14 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * This isn't important, but for the sake of completeness, the pix are from a German field guide ("Naumann, Naturgeschichte der Vögel Mitteleuropas", 1905). Cordyph gave me the links http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/naumann.htm. and an English index on : http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/regengl.htm. Bizarrely, although the second one opens for me, it does so in IE, which is not my browser. I've no idea why, having no computing background at all.  jimfbleak 15:53 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi from Adrian. Please have a look at Talk:Finch. Thanks. Adrian Pingstone 16:18 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, that's a photo of lavender you posted at user talk:Anthere? It reminds me of liatris: thin purple flowers blooming on a stalk from the top down. Know of any others like that? I thought liatris was the only one. best, Koyaanis Qatsi 05:15 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * It looks too tall and thin to be liatris, so I'll trust the gimp contributors that it's lavender. I just never knew what it looked like, and was surprised that it bloomed purple flowers from the top down.  Koyaanis Qatsi 05:15 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Michael: the only woodpecker finch images uploaded were the ones you deleted yesterday, so I'm not quite sure what you're asking (unless I missed your message then). The other uploads were various goose/duck photos taken by Adrian. If I've misunderstood, get back to me. jimfbleak 06:10 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I said (or meant) I would write some articles to go with various duck and goose images Adrian had taken at a wildfowl collection. AFAIK, there are no good-quality images of any of the Darwin's finches that we can use, and unlikely to be so for a while, since these birds are restricted to the Galapagos, and are not common in collections. However, there are images of several other finches, so until the Darwin's finches get an article, that's not a problem.

Hello, sorry for replying late, but I was offline for the weekend. Jim, Tannin and Adrian have already explained, why the image is inappropriate in my and their opinion. Just this: No offence was intended, and if I would have known, that the image was drawn by you, I would have been a bit more diplomatic. So I apologise for that. Cheers -- Cordyph 06:47 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

-

Well, I would gladly have answered to you. But I don't know how to do it now if you have flagged my emails to be rejected. I use the same email address from everywhere. That is a yahoo address ! (you know, the disposable type :-)). You can't select them by ip either. I am on dsl both at work and home. This is the same set of addresses which is likely used in both places. Non fix ips. Sorry I can't answer you then. User:anthere

Hi Mbecker! Thank you for asking for my input regarding U.S. occupation of Iraq. I would prefer U.S.-led occupation of Iraq on the principles that 1) it should be strictly accurate and U.S. occupation is not strictly accurate, and 2) we should convey as much important, useful information as possible. The fact that it's US-led is important and isn't controversial and that should be reflected in the title. (For example, when the occupation gets linked to from Military history of the United States, it would be good if the title reflected the U.S. role in it.) However, I don't care enough about it to break my current policy of working only on Voting systems pages; I'm only giving my opinion out of respect for you because you asked. Peace, DanKeshet

Hey, MB! Why are you replacing British English in Current Events with Amerucan English? Organisation, Labelling etc are correct Brit Eng. Wikipedia has a policy of treating the use of both forms equally and it is against wiki rules to Americanise British english. And it is particularly wrong when you are taking British english out of references to Britain, and putting in American english. I presume you just made a mistake. That sort of stuff almost invariably triggers off edit wars and revertions, and is one of wiki's biggest no-nos that should never be done. FearÉIREANN 21:13 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi! Please don't think I was making any sort of a threat or anything. All I meant was that changing BE spellings to AE spellings is one of the surefire way of triggering of revertion wars. From what I could see, only one word was spelt incorrectly, The rest were absolutely correct BE spellings. The issue of Spellchecks is a nightmare because most use only AE spellings and judge all BE spellings to be wrong. I have spent months adding in BE spellings to my spellck command but it still drives me made insisting that correct BE spellings are incorrect and offering a AE alternative 'correct' spelling. (It is so infuriating I now no longer use the spellcheck, because 90% of the mistakes it finds are simply words spelt differently but correctly to its default AE) S instead of z, ll for l are standard correct BE versions of words spelt with a z or one l in AE spelling. BTW, as an example of the complexity, a British TV quiz show Countdown yesterday (Monday), in which spellings is a crucial component, refused to accept an AE spelling of a word. In academic circles in Ireland, AE spelling is marked as wrong, and AE style capitalisation (where almost everything is lowercased) is judged illiterate on this side of the Atlantic. (Hence the rows on wiki between a few people who insist on lowercasing almost everything AE-style, to the fury of BE users who use their standard capitalisation when writing articles and take high offence when their spelling is changed, their capitalisation is lowercased, etc.

 * "lowercase" is itself AE; BE is "lower case", two words (BE does not have the German style approach of allowing any word combinaions to be compounded at will). Also, "lowercased" is an example of the AE tendency to assume it is safe that "any noun can be verbed". PML.

I am going to go through the article and reinsert the correct BE spellings. As it was written that way, it should be left in that format. Hope you dont mind. wikilove. FearÉIREANN 00:40 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

BTW, I just noticed another change. How tos is correct, how to's is incorrect. I see Eloquence has already changed it back. FearÉIREANN 00:43 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This comic may be useful to you. --Eloquence

Thanks for the heads up on the Clitoris debate. RickK 01:02 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fighting stalin with flower-power. Nice one! :-) (PS: I reverted Paektu's vandalism of your page. Maybe you have planted the seeds (!!!) of change on his page!. wikilove, FearÉIREANN 06:23 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Why religion is different from race: people strongly identify with their religion and choose it. The ideal for most non-racists is a world in which race just doesn't matter (however difficult it might be getting to that world). The ideal for almost nobody is a world where religion just doesn't matter--except those who are actually somewhat hostile to religion. They want that world. --Tb 06:34 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

-- From expierence with previous vandals, we've learned your line of (partly politically-motivated) attacking only encourages them to act in an inappropriate manner out of vindictiveness. In addition, if he were offended, this might encourage him to be even more aggressive in advancing his views in an inappropriate manner. I myself found the inslut "twisted" offensive, and especially your defense of your own inappropriate behavior.

Ad hominem attacks against those with unpopular views don't have a place on Wikipedia, where users are supposed to be thinking critically, not casting emotional aspersions against personalities. For one, the ad hominem distracted the focus on vandalism and made issue of his views, with which we are not concerned. And if you were interested in debating him, this site deserves a rational response backed up by complex arguments if your counter-points are going to be posted.

I know that there are no restrictions on intellectual fallacies on the talk pages; I'm just recommending that you refine your debating skills. Moreover, I'll encourage your to try to combat vandalism in a prudent manner that doesn't encourage vandalism. After all, if he feels as if he's been making personal enemies and has been persecuted for his political views, he could go to the extremes of Michael or Lir/Vera to extract retribution.

I'm well aware of the reasons why anti-revisionist Stalinists admire Stalin, and you calling Paektu "twisted" for admiring a "killer" doesn't counter a single one of them. They argue that at the very end of the 1920s a sharp struggle started over the ways of putting the peasantry on the socialist road. They argue that the concrete conditions at that time, both at home and internationally, necessitated a considerable increase in the rate of socialist construction. Most do not shy away from admitting the human toll, but argue the necessity of charting a previously unknown method of industrialization: to begin building a heavy industry at once, without reliance on external sources of finance, and without waiting years for capital to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, which was the only possible way in those conditions. They agree that his was incredibly difficult for the country and the people, but argue that it was an innovative step in which the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses was taken into account as a component of economic growth and that industrialization raised the country to a fundamentally new level in one jump.

The Stalinist line isn't mine, of course, although much of what I mentioned above has a strong basis in reality, but I counter it in a more refined way than calling neo-Stalinists "twisted". To counter some of the arguments that I summarized one could point out the rigid centralization, from which a system of administrative command and bureaucratism in Party and government evolved, contributing to the Soviet Union's later stagnation. Or you could point out that the abandoned NEP was a far more humane and realistic system. Combined with the human toll, these are my arguments.

So, in short, you should apologize for calling his views twisted or perhaps express yourself more effectively. 172

No, I am more intolerant of vandals than you are. Your attacks are only going to encourage him. Don't you think that he was trying to provoke an ideological confrontation? The issue was vandalism, not Stalinism; and your vandalism of his page with the flowers and name-calling just diverted the issue from his obnoxiousness to his ideology. If he makes a comeback, you should apologize for calling his views "twisted" and keep your focus on vandalism apolitical, direct, and effective. That's our best chance of encouraging him to go away or become a productive user.

If your concern, however, is crusading against Stalinism and not vandalism, then make effective arguments. 172

title: User talk:Mbecker/Archive 2


text:
Ming Pao

Ming Pao is a Chinese-language newspaper published by Media Chinese International in Hong Kong. In the 1990s, Ming Pao established four overseas branches in North America; each provides independent reporting on local news and collects local advertisements. Currently, of the overseas editions, only the two Canadian editions remain: Ming Pao Toronto and Ming Pao Vancouver. In a 2022 survey from the Chinese University of Hong Kong sampling 994 local households, Ming Pao was listed as the second most credible paid newspaper in Hong Kong.

Launch, early days
Ming Pao was first published on 20 May 1959, and was founded by the famous Chinese Wuxia novelist Louis Cha, known better by his pseudonym Jin Yong (金庸), and his friend, Shen Pao Sing (沈寶新).

Daisy Li Yuet-Wah won an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists for her work with the paper in 1994.

Before British Hong Kong's handover to the People's Republic of China by the United Kingdom in 1997, Ming Pao was considered hostile to the Chinese authority. When China reunited with Hong Kong, the controversial editors of Ming Pao turned favorable towards the Chinese government.

Merger with Malaysia Sinchew and Nanyang Groups
In October 1995, the publisher of Ming Pao, Ming Pao Enterprise was taken over by Tiong Hiew King (Chinese: 張曉卿). On 29 January 2007, Tiong released a proposal to merge the three media groups – Sin Chew Media Corporation Berhad (Malaysia), Nanyang Press Holdings Berhad (Malaysia) and Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation Limited (Hong Kong). The merged group, named Media Chinese International Limited was dual-listed on the main boards of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and the Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad in April 2008. All of the existing groups retain their existing publications and independent operations.

The website of Ming Pao was set up in 1995, one of the earliest newspaper websites in Hong Kong.

Since April 2008, Ming Pao is published by Ming Pao Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Media Chinese International Limited.

International development
Ming Pao set up a Toronto office in Canada in May 1993 to publish the Ming Pao Eastern Edition, then set up a Vancouver office in October the same year for the Ming Pao Western Edition.

In April 1997, the group set up a New York office and started publishing the Ming Pao US East Coast Edition. The journal launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in April 2004 with a print run of 25,000, the sixth Chinese newspapers to be distributed in the region. In 2007, the office also published the New York Free Newspaper.

Ming Pao New York and Ming Pao San Francisco ceased operations on 31 January and 14 February 2009, respectively. The closing of NY operations was a symbol of the weakening of ethnic newspapers of the region. The group merged the resources of Ming Pao New York and the New York Free Newspaper to create Ming Pao Daily Free News (New York), serving the Chinese community along the US East Coast.

Accusations of Chinese Communist Party influence
A 2001 report on Chinese media censorship by the Jamestown Foundation cited Ming Pao as one of the four major Chinese newspapers in the United States directly or indirectly controlled by Beijing. “Employees at Ming Pao's New York office have told sources that their 'true boss' is none other than the Chinese Consulate [in New York], and that they are obligated to do whatever the Consulate asks," it said.

A 2006 study of Ming Pao editorials noted a tendency toward self-censorship concerning criticism toward Beijing. According to a 2013 report by the Center for International Media Assistance, this came after a number of newspapers, including Ming Pao Daily, were bought by business tycoons with interests in China and close ties to mainland officials before and after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.

Assault on former chief editor Kevin Lau
Kevin Lau, who had been chief editor of the journal until January 2014, was attacked in the morning of 26 February 2014 in Sai Wan Ho, Hong Kong. He was seriously injured in a targeted knife attack. It was widely speculated that the attack may have been driven by political motivation, and related to its role in investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) into the offshore assets of China's leaders, including relatives of Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, former Premier Wen Jiabao, and several members of the National People's Congress Journalists and press of the world saw the attack as an attack on press freedom. Thousands of people, led by leading journalists, attended a rally to denounce violence and intimidation of the media.

During the court hearings of the two suspects, one declared that he was looking to get a $100,000 reward with this attack.

Appointment of Chong Tien Siong
In 2014, the appointment of new chief editor Chong Tien Siong sparked controversy and internal revolt, due to Siong's close ties to Beijing, and was seen as a major threat to the Chinese-language newspaper's editorial independence.

Censorship of 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
Ming Pao was subject to controversy in 2015 after editor-in-chief Chong Tien-siong ordered that a story detailing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre be replaced with a story about Chinese Internet giant Alibaba as a "role model for young, would-be entrepreneurs". Chum Shun-kin said the story that was pulled contained details about the history of the massacre, including eyewitness accounts of the killing of civilians and information from diplomatic cables from Canada. The pulling of the Tiananmen story has been criticised by some, including Civic Party lawmaker Claudia Mo who said that Chong appears to "want to shield Beijing from embarrassment, instead of acting in the interests of the public and protecting their right to information".

Hong Kong Journalists Association spokeswoman Shum Yee-lan called on Chong to "communicate" with his own staff.

Termination of chief editor Keung Kwok-yuen
The journal's executive chief editor, Keung Kwok-yuen, was abruptly terminated on 20 April 2016, the same day that a report based on the Panama Papers was published on its front page. Management said that the paper's turnover had been falling in since last year and the Keung had been laid off with immediate effect due to difficult operating conditions. The timing of Keung's removal led to speculation that the Panama Papers report, which connected a number of influential individuals in the territory to tax havens abroad, may have been considered sensitive, thus being the real reason for the dismissal.

Keung had written several weeks earlier about the suppression of Ten Years, a dystopian film about Hong Kong in the year 2025 that was banned in mainland China. Staff and the union publicly denounced editor-in-chief Chong Tien Siong's decision to "punish editorial staff who have different opinions", and questioned the cost reduction pretext as an excuse. Journalists at Ming Pao manifested the concern felt by the media at large, several of them protested by filed blank space reports in an edition the Sunday following the dismissal.

Editorials for 2019 anti-extradition bill protests
On 13–14 June 2019, Ming Pao published editorials to define the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests as a riot, blaming the violence of the protesters. However, on 14 June, the instant news section of mingpao.com, the web portal of the publisher, published a statement to declare that the editorial represents the newspaper, but not the frontier staff of the publisher. The translator of the editorial refused to translate the article to English as well as any editorials in the future in protest.

On 17 June 2019, Ming Pao published an open letter written by some of its employees criticizing the June 13 editorial for being biased towards the establishment and damaging the reputation of the newspaper.

title: Ming Pao


text:
Panathenaic Games

The Panathenaic Games (Παναθήναια) were held every four years in Athens in Ancient Greece from 566 BC to the 3rd century AD. These Games incorporated religious festival, ceremony (including prize-giving), athletic competitions, and cultural events hosted within a stadium.

History
The Panathenaic festival was formed in order to honor the goddess Athena who had become the patron of Athens after having a competition with the god Poseidon where they were to win the favor of the Athenian people by offering the people gifts. The festival would also bring unity among the people of Athens.

The attempted assassination of the tyrants Hippias and Hipparchus during the Panathenaea in 514 BC by Harmodius and Aristogeiton was often regarded as the birth of Athenian democracy.

Events
The competitions for which the festival came to be known were part of the Great Panathenaia, a much larger religious occasion. These ritual observances consisted of numerous sacrifices to Athena (the namesake of the event and patron deity to the hosts of the event) as well as Poseidon and others. The Lesser Panathenaia, a sister-event to the Great Panathenaia, was held every year with 3 to 4 days shorter in celebration. The competitions were the most prestigious games for the citizens of Athens, but not as important as the Olympic Games or the other Panhellenic Games.

The Panathenaea also included poetic and musical competitions. Prizes were awarded for rhapsodic recitation of Homeric poetry, for instrumental music on the aulus and cithara, and for singing to the accompaniment of the aulus and cithara (citharody). In addition, the Games included a reading of epic poetry by early poets such as Homer, Pindar and Hesiod.

The Panathenaic Stadium
The athletic events were staged at the Panathenaic Stadium, which is still in use today. In 1865, Evangelis Zappas left a vast fortune in his will with instructions to excavate and refurbish the ancient Panathenaic stadium so that modern Olympic Games could be held every four years "in the manner of our ancestors". The Panathenaic Stadium has hosted Zappas Olympics in 1870, and 1875, as well as the modern Olympic Games in 1896 and 2004. The stadium also hosted the 1906 Intercalated Games.

Contests
The Panathenaic Games held contests in a number of musical, athletic, and equestrian events. Due to the fact that there were so many contests held, the games usually lasted a little over a week. On a fourth century marble block, experts explain that on the block is written a program for the games, as well as individual events and their prizes. The inscription also says that there are two age categories for the music events but three age categories for the athletic events. According to scholars, the age groups are boys: 12–16; beardless youths: 16–20; men: over 20. One thing that was different about these games than normal funeral games is that prizes were given to runners-up, not just the lone victor.

Using the inscription, experts put together a general program like so: Day 1: Musical and Rhapsodic Contest; Day 2: Athletic Contest for Boys and Youths; Day 3: Athletic Contest for Men; Day 4: Equestrian Contest; Day 5: Tribal Contest; Day 6: Torch Race and Sacrifice; Day 7: Boat Race; Day 8: Awarding of Prizes, Feasting and Celebrations. Experts reasonably came up with how the games went based on the order of prizes which were written on the marble block. Wrestling and discus were also included in the contest.

The musical events which took place were Kithara players, Flute players, and singers. The athletic events were the stadion, pentathlon, wrestling, boxing, and pankration. The equestrian events were two-horse chariot race, horse race, and javelin throw on horseback. Based on the inscription, we learn that the prizes given to the men and the youth were different. Men were rewarded a certain amount of drachmas and/or a valuable crown worth a certain amount of drachmas. Boys and youths were given a certain number of amphorae of olive oil.

Ceremony
The Panathenaic games were a chrematitic ('monetary') event were the winner would take home prizes with a monetary value, as opposed to stephanitic ('crowned') games like the Olympics which awarded the winner with only a crown. Award ceremonies included the giving of Panathenaic amphorae, which were large ceramic vessels containing olive oil given as a prize. The winner of the chariot race received as a prize one-hundred and forty Panathenaic amphorae full of olive oil.

In mythology
In the myth of the Minotaur, Minos' son Androgeus is killed during the Panathenaic Games. Some accounts, like Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, state he won and his jealous competitors ambushed and murdered him. Others, such as Graeciae Descriptio by Pausanias, say he was trampled to death by a mad bull.

title: Panathenaic Games


text:
User talk:Cehjohnson~enwiki

Hello, Cehjohnson.

A few tips for you:

 * Check out Welcome, newcomers + the links in there.
 * You can sign your stuff on talk pages with ~ It will convert to your username + the time. "anon" is fine too.
 * If puzzled, put a question on Village pump.

-- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 19:11 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

P. S. Please do not continue replacing the same unencyclopaedic content which I have repeatedly deleted.

Hi. Creating subpages is frowned-upon; put the answer to Trays on the same page. Furthermore, in this particular case ANSWER is the name of a prominent anti-war group, so should be reserved for an article on that topic, not the answer to a random math problem. --Delirium 19:46 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * I'll ask you again; please do not persist in re-adding deleted pages. If you disagree with their deletion, request they be undeleted at Votes for undeletion.  --Delirium 19:58 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If you really want to work on maths problems and their solutions, why don't you head over to Textbook and work there? But please, use less ambiguous names. Why not try "The tray problem" or some variant? -- Jim Regan 20:16 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi. Use the sandbox for experiments. Thanks. Koyaanis Qatsi 20:17 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Apologies to all concerned. I didn't realize i was posting in anything important. Incidentally the sandbox link is not visible anymore. Thanks for the tip about Textbox Jim

 * The Wikipedia family is a rapidly growing thing, and since textbook is a new project, it could do with the contributors. And I'd like to thank you in reciprocation; I'd forgotten about it :) -- Jim Regan 17:48 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Cehjohnson. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Cehjohnson~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 22:57, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Cehjohnson~enwiki