text:
IChat

iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR (AIM) protocol, audio and video calling, and screen-sharing capabilities. It also allowed for local network discussion with users discovered through Bonjour protocols.

In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, iChat was replaced by Messages for chat and FaceTime for video calling.

History
iChat was first released in August 2002 as part of Mac OS X 10.2. It featured integration with the Address Book and Mail applications and was the first officially supported AIM client that was native to Mac OS X (the first-party AIM application at the time was still running in Classic emulation).

One episode of the first season of the HBO dramedy series Entourage had Eric Murphy having an iChat conversation with Ari Gold, marking the first time that this application was used on a television series.

Interface
iChat incorporated Apple's Aqua interface and used speech bubbles and pictures to personify the online chatting experience. With iChat, green (available), yellow (idle), and red (away) icons could be displayed next to the name of each connected user on the buddy list. For color-blind users, this could be altered to show different shapes, circle (available), triangle (idle), and squares (away), to illustrate status with shape rather than color.

iChat AV
In June 2003, Apple announced iChat AV, the second major version of iChat. It added video and audio conferencing capabilities based on the industry-standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The final version of the software was shipped with Mac OS X 10.3 and became available separately on the same day for Mac OS X 10.2.

iChat AV 2
In February 2004, AOL introduced AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) version 5.5 for Windows users, which enabled video, but not audio, chats over the AIM protocol and was compatible with Apple's iChat AV. On the same day, Apple released a public beta of iChat AV 2.1 to allow Mac OS X users to video conference with AIM 5.5 users.

iChat AV 3
In June 2004, Steve Jobs announced that the next version of iChat AV would be included with Mac OS X 10.4. iChat AV 3 provided additional support to allow up to four people in a single video conference and ten people in an audio conference. Additionally, the new version of iChat used the H.264/AVC codec, which offered superior quality video compared to the older H.263 codec used in previous versions. This release supported the XMPP protocol, which could be directly used to connect to Google Talk and indirectly be used to connect to users of services including Facebook Chat, and Yahoo! Messenger. However, support was limited as it did not support several common XMPP features such as account creation, service discovery and full multi-user chat support. iChat 3 included the Bonjour protocol (previously called Rendezvous ) which allowed iChat to automatically find other users with iChat Bonjour messaging enabled on the local network.

In October 2005, iChat received support for encrypted communications, but only for paid subscribers of .Mac (later MobileMe and currently iCloud) service. These features were part of iChat 3.1, released as part of the Mac OS X v10.4.3 update. This version also added support for XMPP multi-user chat.

In March 2007, Apple released the Mac OS X v10.4.9 update, which allowed USB video device class (UVC) cameras to be used with iChat, rather than FireWire cameras only. This allowed a wider range of cameras to be used with iChat AV.

iChat 4
iChat 4, the first version release under iChat's current name, was introduced as a part of Mac OS X 10.5 and received new features including: iChat Theater (inspired by ChatFX  a product from Plum Amazing), Backdrops, and Screen Sharing. iChat Theater allowed users to share any file supported by Quick Look, including photos, Keynote presentations, and movies, over a video chat session. Backdrops allowed users to insert movies or photos as a backdrop in video chats. Screen Sharing allowed two users of Mac OS X Leopard to have control of the same desktop and work collaboratively. Minor features in the new release included multiple logins, animated icons, use of Photo Booth effects in live video chat, and tabbed chats.

iChat 5
iChat 5.0, released with Mac OS X 10.6, reduced the bandwidth required for 640×480 video chats and upgraded iChat Theater to the same resolution.

iChat 6
iChat 6.0, released with Mac OS X 10.7, added support for Yahoo Messenger account and allowed iChat users to have text, voice and video chats using their Yahoo Mail accounts. It also supported third-party plugins, eventually allowing other protocols to be compatible with the software. iChat 6 was the last iChat version; in OS X Mountain Lion, it was replaced by Messages. The final release, iChat 6.0.1, was published on February 1, 2012.

Messages
As part of the OS X Mountain Lion preview, Apple announced on February 16, 2012, that its OS X messaging client would be Messages, and that it would support the iMessage protocol, making it compatible with the iOS client. Messages also incorporates FaceTime support. Apple made Messages immediately available as a downloadable beta version for use on Mac OS X 10.7.

Supported protocols
iChat's AIM support was fully endorsed by AOL, and used their official implementation of the AIM OSCAR protocol. Using a XMPP transport, iChat could serve as a client for AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MobileMe, ICQ and XMPP. iChat could also integrate Google Talk contacts into the XMPP pane.

title: IChat


text:
List of airports in the United Kingdom and the British Crown Dependencies

This list of airports in the United Kingdom is a partial list of public active aerodromes (airports and airfields) in the UK and the British Crown Dependencies. Most private airfields are not listed. For a list ranked by volume of traffic, see Busiest airports in the United Kingdom by total passenger traffic.

The ICAO codes for airports in the United Kingdom (and its Crown Dependencies) begin with the two letters "EG". RAF Mount Pleasant on the Falkland Islands also uses the "EG" code.

Airport names in italics are listed in the UK Aeronautical Information Publication. Airport names in bold have scheduled commercial airline service(s). Runway information is for the longest runway when more than one is available.

Airports in British overseas territories
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18.445496986587326        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#2900ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -64.3294358253479,         18.727429205343714        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0300ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -64.42803382873535,         18.445995690360512        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#2100ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -81.35663509368896,         19.293079008211883        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#000dff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -80.09997725486755,         19.666806197629924        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#1a00ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -79.87963914871216,         19.687354334815254        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0300ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -57.77885913848877,         -51.685820364059026        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0024ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -58.45009803771972,         -51.82134933886299        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#003bff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -5.347187519073486,         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21.444560726087573        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#001cff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -71.80331468582153,         21.826185821364337        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0024ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -71.93946361541748,         21.91734819775826        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0052ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -72.09166288375854,         21.87480105391674        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#003bff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -71.64130926132202,         21.300030435880785        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#002cff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -72.27107048034668,         21.773768022309604        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0024ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -71.19970500469208,         21.334492463745327        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0024ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airport" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -71.52809858322144,         21.515664359463276        ]      }    },    {      "type": "Feature", "properties": { "marker-color": "#0015ff", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-symbol": "airfield" },     "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -68.12570571899414,         -67.5662942707537        ]      }    }  ] }

 * List of airports in Anguilla
 * List of airports in Bermuda
 * List of airports in the British Indian Ocean Territory
 * List of airports in the British Virgin Islands
 * List of airports in the Cayman Islands
 * List of airports in the Falkland Islands
 * List of airports in Gibraltar
 * List of airports in Montserrat
 * List of airports in Saint Helena
 * List of airports in the Turks and Caicos Islands

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


text:
Talk:Bzip2

Untitled
There was also briefly some content at bunzip2: bzip2 and bunzip2 are free open-source compression utilities.

 * They're a single utility with different behavior depending on the name used to call it, actually. :)

''Many consider them "third-generation" compression utilities, surpassing both first-generation tools (like arc and LHA) and second-generation tools (such as the popular PKZIP and gzip formats) in compression ability; it "pays" for this extra compression with an increased computational cost. Nonetheless, with the constant effect of Moore's Law making computer time less and less important, compression methods like bzip2 have become more popular.''

Of particular note is the fact that, unlike PKZIP, bzip2 is released under a very permissive license, which encourages its use in both open- and closed-source software.

 * Note that in addition to bzip2, gzip and zlib, there's the PKZIP-compatible Info-ZIP, also under a permissive license. --Brion 04:41 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Indeed. I was referring specifically to the PKZIP product, which doesn't have a permissive license.  With the move to bzip2, however, and the new article, I don't see much need for my third-generation rambles and jabber about PKZIP's license.  The addition of the Moore's Law comment is good enough for me; I was just trying to destubify an article I knew a bit about (bunzip2), but there's no need for that here. Phil Bordelon 04:47 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

π?
bit-sequences derived from the decimal representation of pi.
 * Eh? Why? -- Anon.

 * Indeed, this caught my eye too and is nonsense. -S

/*--  A 6-byte block header, the value chosen arbitrarily as 0x314159265359 :-). A 32 bit value does not really   give a strong enough guarantee that the value will not   appear by chance in the compressed datastream.  Worst-case   probability of this event, for a 900k block, is about   2.0e-3 for 32 bits, 1.0e-5 for 40 bits and 4.0e-8 for 48 bits.   For a compressed file of size 100Gb -- about 100000 blocks --   only a 48-bit marker will do.  NB: normal compression/   decompression do *not* rely on these statistical properties.   They are only important when trying to recover blocks from   damaged files. --*/

 * ...from . (And look at the fifth thru tenth bytes of a .bz2 file with a hex editor.) Frencheigh 17:51, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I've also add that the other magic number used (to mark end of stream) is sqrt(π) and that both are in binary-coded_decimal format. Sladen 20:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

GN00
"In GNU, bzip2 can be used combined or independently of tar"

In GNU, what the heck? No-one says "in GNU" and it should be "In Unix", anyway. Opinions? Jsalomaa 21:55, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Very well, I fixed it - you really can use it under practically any Unix and not just under GNU. Jsalomaa 19:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

 * Also older versions of GNU tar used the -I switch instead of the -j used currently. This used to be very confusing to me when the older version was still in use.  – b_jonas 15:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Except under some older UNIXes where bzip2'ing options (-I or -j) have not made it into tar! Jen 23:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Origin of the 'b'?
Just curious -- does anyone know why bzip is called bzip? --babbage 20:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * -- the man page says it: bzip2, bunzip2 - a block-sorting file compressor; so the 'b' comes from 'block'

 * -- Or, just think of the "better ZIP" :-) -- since actually most compressors split their data into blocks before crushing each. Jen 23:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

 * -- Other possible explanation:it's one of the few algos that uses the Burrows Wheeler transform... The 'b' might come from that.

tar?
Why is there information about tar that doesn't relate to bzip? Goffrie 20:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Redundant "Run-length encoding" sections
There's two "Run-length encoding" sections in the article. They need to be merged.--Father Goose 03:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It appears to be clear from the textual-description of the two "RLE" stages that they both function in non-obvious-ways. The first stage encodes the length only after four consecutive symbols.  The later stage encodes the length as binary power of two using the additional symbols   and  .  Based on the differing ways in which the two operate (even if the heading is the same), I believe it would be inappropriate to merge them.  Note also that they two uses of the this technique are several stages apart;  to merge them would produce an inaccurate reflection of the compression stack. Sladen 09:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay, I failed to notice that section was describing the algorithm used, and that RLE is performed twice in the sequence, in two different forms. My error.--Father Goose 10:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Technical limitations of bzip2
What are the technical limitations of bzip2? what is the maximum file size, the longest possible contained filename, the maximum amount of contained files etc.? --Loh 12:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

 * As far as I know there is no maximum file size (it is only limited by the containing filesystem, or perhaps [num of 900k blocks]*[maximum size of architecture integer]). Filenames and 'contained files' are not relevant because bzip2 is only a data compressor, not an archiver. It has no concept of combining together multiple files, typically tar is used for that. --Bk0 (Talk) 00:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The Bzip2 format itself does not have support for storing a filename, or even a file timestamp. As noted by Bk0, data is seen just as one long stream, with no knowledge of the contents. The tar (file format) does have limitations, but those are not inherited from Bzip and Bzip2 can be used with an alternative archiving format such as an incompressed ZIP file. The Bzip2 file format does not contain any limitations (IIRC), though the supplied bzip2recover utility does. Sladen 10:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, bzip2recover is designed to search for the two markers (pi and sqrt(pi), 48-bit binary-coded decimal) and to extract usable blocks from that. Incidentally, it should be noted that these markers do *not* have to be byte-aligned, and as such may not be easy to recognize in a file (manually using a hex editor or by something that searches for bytes). The first block marker is clearly recognizable, as it's right after BZh9 and looks like "1AY&SY" in ASCII, but the end-of-stream marker, which looks like ".re8P." - dots are non-printable ASCII - may not be recognizable in a text or hex editor to if it isn't on a byte boundary, but bzip2recover will still see it). Also, subsequent block markers may also be unrecognizable. nneonneo 04:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Apache link removevd
I removed the external link to the Apache BZip2 implementation becacuse it doesn't seem to be standard. It expects the data to start at byte 3, without the "BZ" magic. --Zom-B (talk) 18:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

"Compression efficiency"
I made a cleanup to the "compression efficiency" because the old version makes inaccurate claims (specific amount of speed compared X) and the benchmark reference is not very good one. Futhermore the technical description of magic number is irrelevant to compression and the magic number is already described in the technical section about the format, which is where it belongs. Samir000 (talk) 20:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Second RLE and Huffman descriptions
Since the output of the second RLE is used by Huffman, it seems to me that it must already remove the zero symbol (which is instead replaced by RUNA/RUNB). Thus the text would be as follows:
 * Run-length encoding (RLE): long strings of repeated symbols in the output (normally zeros by this time) are replaced by a combination of the symbol and a sequence of two special codes,  and , which represent the run-length as a binary number greater than zero (0).  Because the MTF encoding transforms a run in a single non-zero element followed by a streak of zeros, RLE is only used to compress runs of zero.  Apart from this limitation, this RLE process is more flexible than the RLE of step 1, as it is able to encode arbitrarily long integers (in practice, this is usually limited by the block size, so that this step does not encode a run of more than 900000 bytes). The run-length is encoded in this fashion: assigning place values of 1 to the first bit, 2 to the second, 4 to the third, etc. in the RUNA/RUNB sequence, multiply each place value in a RUNB spot by 2, and add all the resulting place values (for RUNA and RUNB values alike) together. Thus, the sequence RUNB, RUNA results in the value (1*2 + 2) = 4, the sequence   would be represented as  .  As a more complicated example:
 * Huffman coding: this process replaces fixed length symbols (8-bit bytes) with variable length codes based on the frequency of use. More frequently used codes end up shorter (2-3 bits) whilst rare codes can be allocated up to 20 bits.  The codes are selected carefully so that no sequence of bits can be confused for a different code. The end-of-stream code is particularly interesting. If there are n different bytes (symbols) used in the uncompressed data, then the Huffman code will consist of two RLE codes (RUNA and RUNB), n-1 symbol codes and one end-of-stream code. As in the previous step, there is never any need to explicitly reference the first symbol in the MTF table (it is replaced instead by RUNA and RUNB), thus explaining why only n-1 symbols are coded in the Huffman tree. In the extreme case where only the zero symbol is used in the uncompressed data, there will be no symbol codes at all in the Huffman tree, and the entire block will consist of RUNA and RUNB (implicitly repeating the single byte) and an end-of-stream marker with value 2.
 * Huffman coding: this process replaces fixed length symbols (8-bit bytes) with variable length codes based on the frequency of use. More frequently used codes end up shorter (2-3 bits) whilst rare codes can be allocated up to 20 bits.  The codes are selected carefully so that no sequence of bits can be confused for a different code. The end-of-stream code is particularly interesting. If there are n different bytes (symbols) used in the uncompressed data, then the Huffman code will consist of two RLE codes (RUNA and RUNB), n-1 symbol codes and one end-of-stream code. As in the previous step, there is never any need to explicitly reference the first symbol in the MTF table (it is replaced instead by RUNA and RUNB), thus explaining why only n-1 symbols are coded in the Huffman tree. In the extreme case where only the zero symbol is used in the uncompressed data, there will be no symbol codes at all in the Huffman tree, and the entire block will consist of RUNA and RUNB (implicitly repeating the single byte) and an end-of-stream marker with value 2.

Another change is in the final line: since the 0 value is not represented, the byte values there are 1-255, and the end of stream is represented by a value between 2 and 257 (not 258). Can anyone confirm and/or make the changes? Balabiot (talk) 07:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have tweaked it slightly to remove the "8-bit bytes" mention, as at this stage RUNA/RUNB will have been included into the stream of symbols (range 0-257), with the end of stream marker that is 0-258. IIRC, the symbol block for is only nullified in the case of there only being a single normal symbol used.  —Sladen (talk) 09:48, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * bzip2-1.0.6 compress.c#228 looks like that the end of stream is 257 (mtfv[wr] = EOB; and EOB = s->nInUse+1;). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:268:C143:8531:E42A:B9E7:E6E5:7B19 (talk) 13:52, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

LZMA
Article says "LZMA is generally more space-efficient than bzip2 at the expense of slower compression speed, while having much faster decompression." This is based on these benchmarks: http://compressionratings.com/comp.cgi?7-zip+9.12b++bzip2+1.0.5++gzip+1.3.3+-5 But in these benchmarks only highest compression level(-9) of LZMA was tested. This benchmarks(http://tukaani.org/lzma/benchmarks.html) show that LZMA with different settings(-1 or -2) can be comparable to or more efficient than bzip2 in both compression speed and space-efficiency. 213.155.215.214 (talk) 19:32, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Blocksize
The file format section states for the "contents" part that it is "max. 7372800 bit". This would translate to 900 * 1024 * 8. However, the bzlib.c calculates the number of the buffer to be: 1000 * blockSize100k. It looks like therefore this might be an error in the Wiki article, i.e., kilo and kilo binary were confused for each other. Therefore, I think it should read "max. 7200000 bit". However, I'm not 100% sure. If anyone could check this, please? Maxiantor (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I can help with validation as well as editing the page. "the bzlib.c calculates", can you be more specific about which file (version) and which line? BernardoSulzbach (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The contents part of the file format is not the BWT buffer size, so I doubt either of these maximums is correct. The BWT step limits the block to 900,000 symbols. But in the worst pathological case none of the symbols gets run-length encoded and the huffman coding could use 20 bits for each of them. Shouldn't the maximum be 900,000 * 20 = 18,000,000 bits? --EoZahX9m (talk) 05:32, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bzip2


text: Talk:IChat

title: Talk:IChat


text:
Havannah (board game)

Havannah is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Christian Freeling. It belongs to the family of games commonly called connection games; its relatives include Hex and TwixT. Havannah has "a sophisticated and varied strategy" and is best played on a base-10 hexagonal board, 10 hex cells to a side.

The game was published for a period in Germany by Ravensburger, with a smaller, base-8 board suitable for beginners. It is nowadays only produced by Hexboards.

Game rules
One player plays as black; the other plays as white. White starts, after which moves alternate. The rules are as follows:
 * Each player places one stone of their color on the board per turn.
 * Stones are never moved, captured, or otherwise changed.
 * A player wins when they complete one of three different structures from unbroken lines, or paths, of connected stones, all of their colour:
 * A ring is a loop around one or more cells (no matter whether the encircled cells are occupied by any player or empty );
 * A bridge, which connects any two of the six corner cells of the board;
 * A fork, which connects any three edges of the board; corner points are not considered parts of an edge.

An example of all three winning combinations is shown above. The structure in the centre of the board is a ring; the structure on the left-hand side is a fork; the structure on the right-hand side is a bridge.

Since the first player to move in Havannah has a distinct advantage, the pie rule is generally implemented for fairness. This rule allows the second player to choose whether to switch positions with the first player after the first player makes the first move.

Players of different strength can still play an interesting game when the weaker player (as white) is allowed to place two or more stones on the first turn.

Difference compared to Hex
In Hex, when the board is completely filled, exactly one player will have a winning connection; in Havannah a completely filled board will have usually more than one winning structures (but the game ends with first winning structure).

Unlike in Hex, in Havannah draws are technically possible, in practice they are extremely rare. There has been one known draw between human players. Tactics are much easier to master than strategy, and differences in playing level are considerable.

Computer Havannah
In 2002 Freeling offered a prize of 1000 euros, available through 2012, for any computer program that could beat him in even one game of a ten-game match. For many years, computer programs lagged far behind human players. However, since 2010 several Havannah-playing programs have applied Monte Carlo tree search techniques resulting in some notable improvement in playing strength. The "Havannah Challenge 2012" was held October 15–19, 2012 during which Freeling played ten games against three of the strongest Havannah-playing programs available, playing (at least) one game as black and one as white against each opponent. Freeling lost the challenge when he had to resign a game with white against the Lajkonik program.

Until 2019, the best humans were still by far stronger than computers. However, MetaTotoro, based on Polygames (an open-source project, initially developed by Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research and several universities ), won four times in a row on the board of size 8 against the human player with the best ELO rank on LittleGolem, who was also the winner of various tournaments. This result was achieved by the same program as the one used for beating best humans at Hex. It is a zero-learning based algorithm, as in AlphaZero, but with novelties: boardsize invariance thanks to fully convolutional neural networks (as in U-Net) and global pooling. This allows growing architectures, meaning the program can learn on a small board, and then extrapolate on a large board.

Computational complexity
Solving Havannah is PSPACE-complete with respect to the size of the input graph. The proof is by a reduction from generalized geography and is based on using ring-threats to represent the geography graph. In detail, since Lichtenstein and Sipser have proved that generalized geography remained PSPACE-hard even if the graph is only bipartite and of degree at most 3, it only remains to construct an equivalent Havannah position from such a graph, which is accomplished by constructing various gadgets in Havannah.

Reviews

 * Jeux & Stratégie #9

title: Havannah (board game)


text:
Pie rule

The pie rule, sometimes referred to as the swap rule, is a rule used to balance abstract strategy games where a first-move advantage has been demonstrated. After the first move is made in a game that uses the pie rule, the second player must select one of two options:
 * 1) Letting the move stand. The second player remains the second player and moves immediately.
 * 2) Switching places. The second player becomes the first-moving player with the move already done by the opponent, and the opponent plays the first move of their new color.

Depending on the game, there may be two ways to implement switching places.
 * 1) Switching colors means that the players exchange pieces. The player who made the first move becomes the second player and makes the second move on the board. This is demonstrated in the chess diagrams shown here.
 * 2) Switching the first piece can occur in games where the board starts empty and the first move consists of placing one piece. Suppose the colors are white versus black, and black places the first piece. This piece is replaced by a white piece in the corresponding location for white, and the black piece is returned to black's supply. In a game such as Hex or TwixT, the corresponding location is at a cell "reflected" across the nearest (or either) diagonal. In games such as Y, where the board is not directional, the white stone replaces the black stone in the same cell. Players keep their respective color pieces, and play continues with black making the next move. This is effectively the same as switching colors.

The use of pie rule was first reported in 1909 for a game in the Mancala family. Among modern games, Hex uses this rule. TwixT in tournament play uses a swap rule. In Meridians, the first player places 2 stones on the board before the second player chooses the color. The rule can be applied to other games which are otherwise solved for one player, such as Gomoku or Tablut.

The rule gets its name from the divide and choose method of ensuring fairness in when dividing a pie between two people: one person cuts the pie in half, then the other person chooses which half to eat. The person cutting the pie, knowing that the other person will choose the larger piece, will make as equal a division as possible.

This rule acts as a normalization factor in games where there may be a first-move advantage. In games that cannot end in a draw, such as Hex, the pie rule theoretically gives the second player a win (since one of the players must have a winning strategy after the first move, and the second player can choose to be this player), but the practical result is that the first player will choose a move neither too strong nor too weak, and the second player will have to decide whether switching places is worth the first-move advantage.

Use for determining komi in Go
In Go, one player can choose the amount of komi. (These are the points given to the second player as compensation for not going first.) The other player then decides whether to accept that or switch colors with the other player. This leads players to choose fair komi amounts because if they choose a komi that is too advantageous, the other player can just choose to play White and take advantage of that high komi.

title: Pie rule


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Black Duck

Black duck may refer to three dabbling ducks:
 * African black duck, Anas sparsa
 * American black duck, Anas rubripes
 * Pacific black duck, Anas superciliosa

Black Duck or Blackduck may also refer to:

Canada

 * Black Duck, Newfoundland and Labrador, a settlement in Canada
 * Black Duck Creek (Manitoba), a stream in the Northern Region of Manitoba
 * Black Duck Creek (Ontario), a stream in Osborne Township in Northeastern Ontario

United States

 * Blackduck, Minnesota, a small city in the United States
 * Blackduck Lake, a lake in Minnesota
 * Blackduck River, tributary of Red Lake in northwestern Minnesota
 * Blackduck State Forest, a state forest in Minnesota

Other places

 * Black Duck Creek, Queensland, a locality in the Lockyer Valley Region, Queensland, Australia

Organizations

 * Black Duck (group), an Italian pop music group
 * Black Duck Software, a software auditing company
 * Black Duck Joint Venture, a conservation partnership
 * Black Ducks, a nickname sometimes used for the Swan Districts Football Club

title: Black Duck


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Eochu Airem

Eochu Airem ("the ploughman"), son of Finn, was, according to medieval Irish legend and historical tradition, a High King of Ireland. He succeeded to the throne after the death of his brother, Eochu Feidlech, and ruled for twelve or fifteen years, until he was burned to death in Fremain by Sigmall Sithienta. He was succeeded by Eterscél. The Lebor Gabála synchronises his reign with the dictatorship of Julius Caesar (48–44 BC). The chronology of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn dates his reign to 82–70 BC, that of the Annals of the Four Masters to 131–116 BC.

He plays an important role in the Old Irish saga Tochmarc Étaíne ("The Wooing of Étaín"), which tells of the lives of the beautiful Étaín, the lover of Midir of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who was turned into a fly by Midir's jealous wife, which had been swallowed by the wife of Étar, an Ulster warrior. Étar's wife becomes pregnant, and Étaín is reborn. When Eochu invites the men of Ireland to the festival of Tara, they refuse to attend for a king who has no queen. He sends messengers to look for the most beautiful woman in Ireland, and they find Étaín. Eochu falls in love with her at first sight, and marries her.

However, Eochu's brother, Ailill Angubae, also falls in love with her, and wastes away with unrequited desire. Eochu leaves Tara on a tour of Ireland, leaving Étaín with the dying Ailill, who tells her the cause of his sickness, which he says would be cured if she gave the word. She tells him she wants him to be well, and he begins to get better, but says the cure will only be complete if she agrees to meet him on the hill above the house, so as not to shame the king in his own house. She agrees to do so three times, but each time she goes to meet him, she in fact meets Midir, who has put Ailill to sleep and taken his appearance. On the third occasion Midir reveals his identity and tells Étaín who she really is, but she does not know him. She finally agrees to go with him, but only if Eochu agrees to let her go.

Later, after Ailill has fully recovered and Eochu has returned home, Midir comes to Tara and challenges Eochu to play fidchell, an ancient Irish board game, with him. They play for ever increasing stakes. Eochu keeps winning, and Midir has to pay up. One such game compels Midir to build a causeway across the bog of Móin Lámrige: the Corlea Trackway, a wooden causeway built across a bog in County Longford, dated by dendrochronology to 148 BC, is a real-life counterpart to this legendary road. Finally, Midir suggests they play for a kiss and an embrace from Étaín, and this time he wins. Eochu tells Midir to come back in a month for his winnings, and gathers his best warriors at Tara to prepare for his return. Despite the heavy guard, Midir appears inside the house. Eochu agrees that Midir may embrace Étaín, but when he does, the pair fly away through the skylight, turning into swans as they do so.

Eochu instructs his men to dig up every síd (fairy-mound) in Ireland until his wife is returned to him. Finally, when they set to digging at Midir's síd at Brí Léith, Midir appears and promises to give Étaín back. But at the appointed time, Midir brings fifty women, who all look alike, and tells Eochu to pick which one is Étaín. He chooses the woman he thinks is his wife, takes her home and sleeps with her. She becomes pregnant and bears him a daughter. Later, Midir appears and tells him that Étaín had been pregnant when he took her, and the woman Eochu had chosen was his own daughter, who had been born in Midir's síd. Out of shame, Eochu, orders the daughter of their incestuous union to be exposed, but she is found and brought up by a herdsman and his wife, and later marries Eochu's successor Eterscél and becomes the mother of the High King Conaire Mór (in Togail Bruidne Dá Derga she is named as Mess Búachalla and is the daughter of Étaín and Eochu Feidlech).

title: Eochu Airem


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Sidh

Sidh may refer to:

 * Sidh, Gujrat, a village in the Gujrat District of Pakistan
 * Sidh community, a caste in western Rajasthan, India
 * Sidh, the abodes of the Aos Sí in Celtic mythology
 * Supersingular Isogeny Diffie–Hellman Key Exchange, post-quantum public key cryptographic algorithm; see Supersingular isogeny key exchange

title: Sidh


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Talk:Sidh

Untitled
This should probably be folded into the sidhe article... or the sidhe article could be folded into this one. Either way, really. I would recommend sidh redirecting to sidhe as the plural form is in more common usage. --Dante Alighieri 06:04 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sidh


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Road running

Road running is the sport of running on a measured course over an established road. This differs from track and field on a regular track and cross country running over natural terrain.

These events are usually classified as long-distance according to athletics terminology, with races typically ranging from 5 kilometers to 42.2 kilometers in the marathon. They may involve large numbers of runners or wheelchair entrants. The four most common World Athletics recognized distances for road running events are 5K runs, 10K runs, half marathons and marathons.

Running on the road is an alternative surface to running on a trail, track, or treadmill. For many people looking to participate in running as an activity or sport, there are multiple opportunities that can be found on the road.

Road running is one of several forms of road racing, which also includes road bicycle racing and motor vehicle road racing.

Courses
Race courses are usually held on the streets of major cities and towns but can be on any road. World Athletics recognizes eleven common distances for road races that are eligible to be counted for records if they meet the eligibility criteria: 1 mi, 5 km, 10 km, 15 km, 10 mi, 20 km, half marathon (21.098 km or 13.1 mi), 25 km, 30 km, marathon (42.195 km or 26.2 mi), 35 km, 50 km, and 100 km. The 24-hour run is also recognized. Of these, the 5K, 10K, 25K, 30K, half marathon, marathon, and 100K are distances that are recognized for world records.

Some major events have unique distances. The Fifth Avenue Mile in New York City, United States is 1.0 mi; the "Round the Bays" run in Auckland, New Zealand is 8.4 km; the Falmouth Road Race in Falmouth, Massachusetts is 7.1 mi; the Manchester Road Race in Manchester, Connecticut is 4.75 mi; "City to Surf" in Sydney, Australia is 14 km; Honolulu's "Great Aloha Run" is 8.15 mi; the "King Island Imperial 20" is 32 km long; and the "Charleston Distance Run" in Charleston, West Virginia is 15 mi.

Participation
Most road running events are open to the general public. Participants are of varying running ability. It is not unusual for large events to have thousands of participants. Men and women compete side by side, and professional runners run in the same events as the average runner. In more prestigious races this is less likely to happen as there will be separate heats for men and women and for professional and non-professional athletes. In certain athletic events, first time amateurs are welcome to participate in the same event as members of running clubs and even current world-class champions.

This wide availability makes road racing extremely popular, and millions of people worldwide run thousands of races each year. In the U.S., 18.1 million people registered for recreational road races in 2018. While world record-holders can maintain paces of 4–5 minutes per mile (2.5 – 3 minutes per km), non-professional runners average around 10 min/mile (6 min/km). The majority of registrants run for personal reasons such as achievement and fitness rather than to compete, and many race courses accommodate this by staying open long enough for participants to jog or walk the distance.

Timing
In order to record times for participants in road races, the race organiser typically pays a timing company to take times electronically, using a technology called radio-frequency identification (RFID). RFID technology is placed in either a disposable race bib, a shoe chip that is tied to shoelaces, or an ankle bracelet. RFID timing mats are then placed at the finish line of the race; when the runner crosses the line their time will be automatically recorded. This technology has developed over time to be the most efficient form of recording multiple athlete times.

Diversity
Road running is recognizable for its diverse features. Anyone is welcome to participate in road running whether it be for recreational activity or for the purpose of competition. Running is an activity that attracts people from all over the world and for any age. For example, many road racing events recognize finishers in an age group system which acts as a way to reward younger or older athletes who may not be able to compete with runners in a prime age.

Charity
Road races are often community-wide events that highlight or raise money for an issue or project. In the US, Susan G. Komen's Race for the Cure is held nationwide to raise breast cancer awareness. This race is also run in Germany, Italy and Puerto Rico. Similarly, Race for Life holds races throughout the UK to raise money for Cancer Research UK. First person "race reports" frequently appear on the Dead Runners Society electronic mailing list. Dublin, Ireland's Women's Mini-Marathon is said to be the largest all-female event of its kind in the world.

Motivation to be active
For many, competing in a local road race can be the motivation needed for individuals to pursue physical activity. In a study done by the bureau for labor statistics, road running ranked third in the most common form of sport and exercise activity for Americans.

Physical benefit
Running on the roads has a different effect on the muscles in the human body opposed to running on the treadmill. Treadmills are made to assist running form due to the way the belt pushes your legs back enhancing movement. Running on the road through various conditions such as hills will do more to strengthen glutes, hamstrings, quads, and smaller muscles in the legs. Additionally, running on the road can help improve bone density as your body breaks down from impact and then regenerates itself.

Impact
As with any type of running, there is a risk of natural wear and tear on the human body due to the different movements required to run. The difference with road running compared to other forms is that for long periods of time, a runner will continuously be landing on a harder surface, which can lead to various overuse injuries. In any given year, on average 65–80 percent of runners experience some type of injury. In order to decrease the risk of becoming injured from impact on the road, runners can change their shoes every 300–400 miles (500–650 km). This is important because high mileage shoes have poor shock absorption, and worn down treads which can cause pain.

Danger
One danger in road running, as opposed to running in any other location, is that vehicles drive by regularly at high speeds. In a study by the company Road ID, it was found that on average 122,000 runners are hit by vehicles and end up in hospital each year. This figure does not include runners who are hit but do not end up in hospital. Runners can take precautions to decrease this risk, including: wearing reflective gear, wearing bright colors, running only during daylight, wearing a headlight, and running on the side of the road opposite traffic.

Costs
At first running can seem like a very cheap activity that anyone can partake in. But there are some expenses. For one, replacing running shoes every 400–500 miles (650–800 km). Also, road race entry fees can be expensive because they have to cover the costs incurred by the race organizer. The entry fee for some big city marathons can be 150 to 300 dollars.

Governing body and international organizations
The international governing body for road racing is World Athletics (formerly IAAF). World Athletics aims to set the standards for competitions by ensuring that all participants are drug-free and that all equipment used is legal. World Athletics measures each race course to give it an World Athletics certification rating. Once a race course is certified, the course can be counted for different records or rankings.

National governing bodies which are affiliated to World Athletics are responsible for road races held in their country. Of the thousands of road races held each year, 238 races, including some premier ones, are members of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (AIMS). Many race organizers (or the running clubs which conduct the races) are members of the Road Runners Club of America. In addition, the USA Track & Field plays a role in selecting representatives for certain international competitions under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978.

Competitors from around the world participate in what are dubbed the "elite" races for cash prizes. Elite level road running series include the World Marathon Majors, the Great Run series, and IAAF Road Race Label Events.

Main competitions

 * Marathon and half marathon events
 * World Marathon Cup
 * World Half Marathon Championships
 * European Marathon Cup
 * European Half Marathon Cup

 * Race-walking events
 * World Race Walking Team Championships
 * European Race Walking Cup

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Asherah

Asherah (אֲשֵׁרָה; ; 𒀀𒅆𒋥; Qatabanian: 𐩱𐩻𐩧𐩩 ) was a goddess in ancient Semitic religions. She also appears in Hittite writings as Ašerdu(s) or Ašertu(s), and as Athirat in Ugarit. Some scholars hold that Yahweh and Asherah were a consort pair in ancient Israel and Judah,  while others disagree.

Etymology
Some have sought a common-noun meaning of her name, especially in Ugaritic appellation rabat athirat yam, only found in the Baal Cycle. But a homophone's meaning to an Ugaritian doesn't equate an etymon, especially if the name is older than the Ugaritic language. There is no hypothesis for rabat athirat yam without significant issues, and if Asherah were a word from Ugarit it would be pronounced differently.

The common NW Semitic meaning of šr is "king, prince, ruler." The NW Semitic root ʾṯr (Arabic ) means "tread".

Grammar
The -ot ending "Asherot" is found three times in the Tanakh, with -im "Asherim" making up the great majority. The significance is unclear, as the interaction of gender and number in Hebrew is not robustly understood. Not all scholars find HB references with final t plural. Archaic suffixes like –atu/a/i became Northwest Semitic -at or -ā latter written -ah in transcription. That is, merely terminally alternate spellings like Asherat and Asherah reflect contextual rather than existential variation.

Title
Her titles often include qdš "holy", or elat, ba'alat, or rabat, all meaning Lady or goddess, and qnyt ỉlm, "creator of the gods."

Interpretation
Due to certain ambiguities in surviving attestations of Asherah, whether she is to be considered a deity or a symbol is not universally agreed upon. While some consider Asherah to be a defined deity, others call her a "mere cultic object". de Vaux says Asherah was "both," and Winter says the goddess and her symbol should not be distinguished altogether.

Beside the obvious connections between goddesses who sometimes cannot be distinguished, some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as "the mother of all living" in Genesis 3:20 through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess, Hebat. Olyan notes that Eve's original Hebrew name, ḥawwāh, is cognate to ḥawwat, an attested epithet of Tannit/Asherah in the first millennium BCE. Other scholars dispute the connection between Tanit and Asherah and between Asherah and Eve. A Phoenician deity Ḥawwat is attested in the Punica tabella defixionis.

There is further speculation that the Shekhinah as a feminine aspect of Yahweh may be a cultural memory or devolution of Asherah. Another such aspect is seen in the feminine (grammatically or otherwise) treatment of the Holy Spirit or Sophia. Goddess "aspect creep" can even lap upon male figures like Jacob or Jesus.

Iconography
A variety of symbols have been associated with Asherah. The most common by far is that of the tree, an equivalence seen as early as Neolithic times.

Cultic objects dedicated to Asherah frequently depict trees, and the terms asherim and asheroth, regularly invoked by the Hebrew Bible in the context of Asherah worship, are traditionally understood to refer to sacred trees called "Asherah poles". An especially common Asherah tree in visual art is the date palm, a reliable producer of nutrition through the year. Some expect living trees, but Olyan sees a stylized, non-living palm or pole. The remains of a juniper tree discovered in a 7,500 year old gravesite in Eilat has been considered an Asherah tree by some.

Asherah's association with fertility was not limited to her association with trees; she was often depicted with pronounced sexual features. Idols of Asherah, often called ’Astarte figurines’, are representative of Asherah as a tree in that they have bodies which resemble tree trunks, while also further extenuating the goddess' connection to fertility in line with her status as a "mother goddess". The "Judean pillar figures" universally depict Asherah with protruding breasts. Likewise, the so-called Revadim Asherah is rife with potent, striking sexual imagery, depicting Asherah suckling two smaller figures and using both of her hands to fully expose her vagina. Many times, Asherah's pubis area was marked by a concentration of dots, indicating pubic hair, though this figure is sometimes polysemically understood as a grape cluster. The womb was also sometimes used as a nutrix symbol, as animals are often shown feeding directly (if a bit abstractly) from the pubic triangle.

Remarking on the Lachish ewer, Hestrin noted that in a group of other pottery vessels found in situ, the usual depiction of the sacred tree flanked by ibexes or birds is in one goblet replaced by a pubic triangle flanked by ibexes. The interchange between the tree and the pubic triangle prove, according to Hestrin, that the tree symbolizes the fertility goddess Asherah. Hestrin draws parallels between this and representations of Hathor as the sycamore tree goddess in Egypt, and suggests that during the period of Egyptian rule in Palestine the Hathor cult penetrated the region so extensively that Hathor became identified with Asherah. Other motifs in the ewer such as a lion, fallow deer and ibexes seem to have a close relationship with the iconography associated with her.

Asherah may also have been associated with the ancient pan-Near Eastern "Master of animals" motif, which depicted a person or deity betwixt two confronted animals. According to Beaulieu, depictions of a divine "mistress of lions" motif are "almost undoubtedly depictions of the goddess Asherah." The lioness made a ubiquitous symbol for goddesses of the ancient Middle East that was similar to the dove and the tree. Lionesses figure prominently in Asherah's iconography, including the tenth-century BC Ta'anach cult stand, which also includes the tree motif. A Hebrew arrowhead from the eleventh century BC bears the inscription "Servant of the Lion Lady".

The symbols around Asherah are so many (8+ pointed star, caprids and the like, along with lunisolar, arboreal, florid, serpentine) that a listing would approach meaninglessness as it neared exhaustiveness. Frevel's 1000-page dissertation ends enigmatically with the pronouncement "There is no genuine Asherah iconography".

Sumer
An Amorite goddess named Ashratum is known to have been worshipped in Sumer. Her Amorite provenance is further supported by her status as the wife of Mardu/Amurrum, the supreme deity of the Amorites.

A limestone slab inscribed with a dedication made by Hammurabi to Ashratum is known from Sippar. In it, he complements her as "lord of the mountain" (bel shadī), and presages similar use with words like voluptuousness, joy, tender, patient, mercy to commemorate setting up a "protective genius" (font?) for her in her temple.

Though it is accepted that Ashratum's name is cognate to that of Asherah, the two goddesses are not actually identified with one another, given that they occupied different positions within their pantheons, despite sharing their status as consort to the supreme deity.

Akkad
In Akkadian texts, Asherah appears as Aširatu; though her exact role in the pantheon is unclear; as a separate goddess, Antu, was considered the wife of Anu, the god of Heaven. In contrast, ʿAshtart is believed to be linked to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar who is sometimes portrayed as the daughter of Anu.

Points of reference in Akkadian epigraphy are collocated and heterographic Amarna Letters 60 and 61's Asheratic personal name. Within them is found a king of the Amorites by the 14th-century name of Abdi-Ashirta, "servant of Asherah".

Each is on line ii within the letter's opening or greeting sentiment. Some may transcribe Aširatu or Ašratu.

Ugarit
In Ugaritic texts, Asherah appears as ʾṯrt (Ugaritic: 𐎀𐎘𐎗𐎚), anglicised ʾAṯirat or Athirat. She is called ʾElat, "goddess", the feminine form of ʾEl (compare Allāt); she is also called Qodeš, "holiness". There is reference to a ''šr. ‘ṯtrt. Gibson says sources from before 1200 BC almost always credit Athirat with her full title rbt ʾṯrt ym (or rbt ʾṯrt''). However, Rahmouni's indexing of Ugaritic epithets states the phrase occurs in only the Baʿal Epic. Apparently of Akkadian origin, rabat means "lady" (literally "female great one"). She appears to champion her son, Yam, god of the sea, in his struggle against Baʾal. (Yam's ascription as god of the sea may mislead; Yam is the deified sea itself rather than a deity who holds dominion over it.) So some say Athirat's title can be translated as "Lady ʾAṯirat of the Sea", alternatively, "she who walks on the sea", or even "the Great Lady-who-tramples-Yam." This invites relation to a Chaoskampf in which neither she nor Yam is otherwise implicated. Park suggested in 2010 that the name Athirat might be derived from a passive participle form, referring to the "one followed by (the gods)", that is, "progenitress or originatress", which would correspond to Asherah's image as the "mother of the gods" in Ugaritic literature. This solution was a response to and variation of B. Margalit's of her following in Yahweh's literal footsteps, a less generous estimation nonetheless supported by D's use of the Ugaritian word in an ordinary sense. Binger finds some of these risibly imaginative, and unhappily falls back on the still-problematic interpretation that Ym may also mean day, so "Lady Asherah of the day", or, more simply, "Lady Day". The common Semitic root ywm (for reconstructed Proto-Semitic *yawm-), from which derives (יוֹם), meaning "day", appears in several instances in the Masoretic Texts with the second-root letter (-w-) having been dropped, and in a select few cases, replaced with an A-class vowel of the Niqqud, resulting in the word becoming y(a)m. Such occurrences, as well as the fact that the plural, "days", can be read as both yōmîm and yāmîm (יָמִים), gives credence to this alternate translation.

Another primary epithet of Athirat was qnyt ʾilm, which may be translated as "the creator of the deities". In those texts, Athirat is the consort of the god ʾEl; there is one reference to the 70 sons of Athirat, presumably the same as the 70 sons of ʾEl. Among the Hittites this goddess appears as Ašerdu(s) or Ašertu(s), the consort of Elkunirsa ("El, the Creator of Earth") and mother of either 77 or 88 sons.

In Israel and Judah
The conception of Asherah as the partner of Yahweh has stirred a lot of debate. Many have written about it, and many scholars conclude that Yahweh and Asherah were indeed a consort pair among the ancient Israelites.

Inscriptions
Prime evidence for worship includes an iconography and inscriptions at two locations in use circa the 9th century. The first was in a cave at Khirbet el-Qom.

The second was at Kuntillet Ajrud. In the latter, a jar shows bovid-anthropomorphic figures and several inscriptions that refer to "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah." Some scholars hold that the "asherah" mentioned in the inscriptions refers to a cultic symbol, rather than a goddess.

In one potsherd there appear a large and small bovine. This "oral fixation" motif has diverse examples, see figs 413–419 in Winter. In fact, already Flinders Petrie in the 1930s was referring to Davies on the memorable stereotype. It's such a common motif in Syrian and Phoenician ivories that the Arslan Tash horde had at least four; they can be seen in the Louvre.

Sacred prostitution
Early scholarship emphasized somewhat mutually-negating possibilities of holy prostitution, hieros gamos, and orgiastic rites. It has been suggested by several scholars that there is a relationship between the position of the gəḇīrā in the royal court and the worship (orthodox or not) of Asherah. The Hebrew Bible frequently and graphically associates goddess worship with prostitution ("whoredom") in material written after the reforms of Josiah. Jeremiah, and Ezekiel blame the goddess religion for making Yahweh "jealous", and cite his jealousy as the reason Yahweh allowed the destruction of Jerusalem. Although their nature remains uncertain, sexual rites typically revolved around women of power and influence, such as Maacah. The Hebrew term qadishtu, formerly translated as "temple prostitutes" or "shrine prostitutes", literally means "priestesses" or "consecrated women", from the Semitic root qdš, meaning "holy". However, there is a growing scholarly consensus that sacred prostitution never existed, and that sex acts within the temple were strictly limited to yearly sacred fertility rites aimed at assuring an abundant harvest.

In the Hebrew Bible

There are references to the worship of numerous deities throughout the Books of Kings: Solomon builds temples to many deities and Josiah is reported as cutting down the statues of Asherah in the temple Solomon built for Yahweh (2 Kings 23:14). Josiah's grandfather Manasseh had erected one such statue (2 Kings 21:7).

The name Asherah appears forty times in the Hebrew Bible, but it is much reduced in English translations. The word ʾăšērâ is translated in Greek as ἄλσος (grove; plural: ἄλση) in every instance apart from Isaiah 17:8; 27:9 and 2 Chronicles 15:16; 24:18, with δένδρα (trees) being used for the former, and, peculiarly, Ἀστάρτη (Astarte) for the latter. The Vulgate in Latin provided lucus or nemus, a grove or a wood. From the Vulgate, the King James translation of the Bible uses grove or groves instead of Asherah's name. Non-scholarly English language readers of the Bible would not have read her name for more than 400 years afterward. The association of Asherah with trees in the Hebrew Bible is very strong. For example, she is found under trees (1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10) and is made of wood by human beings (1 Kings 14:15, 2 Kings 16:3–4). The farther from the time of Josiah's reforms, the broader the perception of an Asherah became. Trees described in later Jewish texts as being an asherah or part of an asherah include grapevines, pomegranates, walnuts, myrtles, and willows. Eventually, monotheistic leaders would suppress the tree due to its association with Asherah.

Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship. Jezebel brought hundreds of prophets for Baal and Asherah with her into the Israelite court.

William Dever's book discusses female pillar figurines, the queen of heaven name, and the cakes. Dever also points to the temple at Tel Arad, the famous archaeological site with cannabanoids and massebot. Dever notes: "The only goddess whose name is well attested in the Hebrew Bible (or in ancient Israel generally) is Asherah."

Philistine records
Various partial inscriptions found on destroyed seventh century BCE jars in Ekron contain words like šmn "oil", dbl "fig cake", qdš "holy," l'šrt "to Asherah", and lmqm "for the shrine". This has been taken as evidence that Asherah was worshipped in Philistia.

In Egyptian sources
Attempts to identify Asherah within the pantheon of ancient Egypt have been met with both limited acceptance and controversy.

Beginning during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, a Semitic goddess named Qetesh ("holiness", sometimes reconstructed as Qudshu) appears prominently. That dynasty follows expulsion of occupying foreigners from an intermediary period. René Dussard suggested a connection to Asherah in 1941. Subsequent studies tried to find further evidence for equivalence of Qetesh and Asherah, although Wiggins does not. His hesitance did not dissuade subsequent scholars from equating Asherah with Qetesh.

In Arabia
As ʾAṯirat (Qatabanian: 𐩱𐩻𐩧𐩩 ) she was attested in pre-Islamic south Arabia as the consort of the moon-god ʿAmm.

One of the Tema stones (CIS II 113) discovered by Charles Huber in 1883 in the ancient oasis of Tema, northwestern Arabia, and now located at the Louvre, believed to date to the time of Nabonidus's retirement there in 549 BC, bears an inscription in Aramaic that mentions Ṣelem of Maḥram, Šingalāʾ , and ʾAšîrāʾ as the deities of Tema. It is unclear whether the name would be an Aramaic vocalisation of the Ugaritic ʾAṯirat or a later borrowing of the Hebrew ʾĂšērāh or similar form. In any event, Watkins says the root of both names is a Proto-Semitic *ʾṯrt. Pritchard excerpts the mention wšnglʔ wʔšyrʔ ʔlhy tymʔ and differs on the root's meaning.

The Arabic root ʾṯr (as in ʾaṯar, "trace") is similar in meaning to the Hebrew ʾāšar, indicating "to tread", used as a basis to explain Asherah's epithet "of the sea" as "she who treads the ym (sea). "

Asherah survived late in remote South Arabia as seen in some common era Qatabanian and Maʕinian inscriptions.

Deities
{{columns-list|colwidth=20em|

 * Al-Lat
 * Ashima
 * Ašratum
 * Ashtar-Chemosh
 * ʿAṯtar
 * Hathor
 * Inanna (Ishtar)
 * Ishara
 * Qetesh (Qudshu)
 * Queen of Heaven (antiquity)

Other

 * Kuntillet ʿAjrud - inscriptions
 * Nehushtan
 * Revadim Asherah - Bronze age figures
 * Judean pillar figure - Iron age figures
 * Semitic neopaganism
 * Shekhinah
 * Tel Arad
 * Asherah pole
 * Xoanon
 * Fig-cake (fruit)
 * Ashteroth Karnaim

}}

Asherah

 * Asphodel P. Long, The Goddess in Judaism – An Historical Perspective
 * Asherah, the Tree of Life and the Menorah
 * Jewish Encyclopedia: Asherah
 * Rabbi Jill Hammer, An Altar of Earth: Reflections on Jews, Goddesses and the Zohar
 * University of Birmingham: Deryn Guest: Asherah at Archive.org
 * Lilinah biti-Anat, Qadash Kinahnu Deity Temple "Room One, Major Canaanite Deities"

Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions

 * Jacques Berlinerblau, "Official religion and popular religion in pre-Exilic ancient Israel" (Commentary on Yahweh's Asherah.)
 * ANE: Kuntillet bibliography
 * Jeffrey H. Tigay, "A Second Temple Parallel to the Blessings from Kuntillet Ajrud" (University of Pennsylvania) (This equates Asherah with an asherah.)

Israelite

 * David Steinberg, Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel

title: Asherah


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Talk:Taiwan independence movement

Essay-like
The tone of this article in general is essay-like and is more fitting of a journal article than a Wikipedia article. However, unlike academic works, most of the content in this article is either unsourced or poorly sourced. Several claims and assertions are made about the general nature or understandings of each party to the issue of Taiwanese independence (i.e. supporters of Taiwanese independence and supporters of Chinese unification, as well as foreign political observers), but nearly all of them lack a citation next to them. When citations are provided, they tend to verify only documents and policies referenced in the sentence(s) or paragraph(s), but not the actual claims made in the sentence(s) or paragraph(s). The use of existing citations is also questionable in other respects, such as citing the work of one specific pro-independence group (e.g. Free Formosans' Formosa Newsletter) to make a general statement about the pro-independence camp as a whole.

I have added an "Essay-like" maintenance tag to the top of the article as it would be redundant to retain existing and add new tags to the seven sections which share the same issues: unsourced or few sources which do not verify the arguments made + likely original research (essay-like). Yue 🌙 23:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Taiwan independence movement


text:
User talk:Tridy

Hello Tridy welcome to Wikipedia!

There are lots of resources around to help guide you. be sure to check out:

 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

Also check out
 * image use policy before uploading any images

If you need any help try
 * Help
 * Village pump
 * My talk page User_talk:Jimfbleak.

Gold extraction
Thanks for your work on that. Do you know anything about orebody formation? Josh Parris # 03:46, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Pleasure. I have been thinking of having a go at an article on gold orebody models/formation but its not a straight forward thing to do. I do know a bit about it, but my experience is limited to Australia, so I've been a bit reluctant to tackle it. As a suggestion, I would have a section on Ore body formation - as it currently is - on the Gold Extraction page and have a link to a full article of Gold orebody models/types/formation. It would also be ideal to link this into other articles on economic geology/mining geology/ orebody models etc. I haven't really look at what already exsists in these areas. I'll have a think about starting something. If you have any specific requests/questions on geology especially economic (especially gold) geology, I'll be happy to give it a go. Tridy 09:39, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

October 2019
[[

Image:Information.svg|25px|alt=Information icon]] Welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions, but in one of your recent edits to Antisemitism, it appears that you have added original research, which is against Wikipedia's policies. Original research refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and personal experiences—for which no reliable, published sources exist; it also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. Thank you. RolandR (talk) 16:07, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Spelling
Fremantle... thanks for the edit anyways, the spelling utilised is the single e JarrahTree 12:08, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tridy


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User talk:Silver Maple

Hello Silver Maple, welcome to Wikipedia!

There are lots of resources around to help guide you. be sure to check out:

 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

Also check out
 * image use policy before uploading any images

If you need any help try
 * Help
 * Village pump
 * My talk page User_talk:Jimfbleak.

Thanks! Silver Maple

-- We already have a Jihad article. Why the link to the sixth pillar? Per our naming conventions that should just be redirect to Jihad. --mav 03:59 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * No, because as the article makes clear, there are other candidates for the "sixth pillar", thus such a redirect is pre-judging that issue. The question of how fundamental jihad is to Islam is separate from the question of how jihad is defined.  I agree also with what is said here: EofT

 * The idea of Jihad being the "sixth pillar of Islam" is really unsubstantiated and also somewhat offensive. It also seems to be a neologism.  The page titled "sixth pillar of Islam" is intended to hold information that pertains to the phrase "sixth pillar of Islam", and its history of use.

 * Also, it does not seem credible to me that "sixth pillar of Islam", which is itself (officially, at least) not included in the _Five_ Pillars of Islam, can be said to exclusively refer to Jihad. The phrase is a phenomenon in and of itself, and warrants further study. Silver Maple

 * Very well. But your first draft looked really bad though - the article is much better now. --mav 06:21 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

-

The list of Muslims and list of ethicists have some names with no articles behind them yet. On the latter some of the names appear to be Muslims of note - probably from a list of ethicists somewhere else or mentioned in other articles. This leaves a few holes. Would you consider writing a few stub biographies? You note on your user page some names. As you may have noticed there are few here who understand the issues or key figures in Islam or Muslim civilization, so we need your help rather badly. ThanksEofT

-

Hi EntmootsOfTrolls, you are right, but if I were to attempt this, then I would fail. But you have my permission to edit the User:Silver Maple page to make the needed pages more visible (I will try also). I suggest that the page be subdivided into an introduction, a section on pages that need stubs, a section on pages that show strong bias and need attention, and a section on other pages that are worth watching. (I'm out of time. Will come back later.) Silver Maple 07:37 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Please take a look at the Manual of style. Article titles should be bolded and external links should be presented with a sectional heading:

title: User talk:Silver Maple


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Y (game)

Y is an abstract strategy board game, first described by John Milnor in the early 1950s. The game was independently invented in 1953 by Craige Schensted and Charles Titus. It is a member of the connection game family inhabited by Hex, Havannah, TwixT, and others; it is also an early member in a long line of games Schensted has developed, each game more complex but also more generalized.

Gameplay
Y is typically played on a triangular board with hexagonal spaces; the "official" Y board has three points with five-connectivity instead of six-connectivity, but it is just as playable on a regular triangle. Schensted and Titus' book Mudcrack Y & Poly-Y has a large number of boards for play of Y, all hand-drawn; most of them seem irregular but turn out to be topologically identical to a regular Y board.

As in most games of this type, one player takes the part of Black and one takes the part of White; they place stones on the board one at a time, neither removing nor moving any previously placed stones. The pie rule can be used to mitigate any first-move advantage.

Rules
The rules are as follows:
 * Players take turns placing one stone of their color on the board.
 * Once a player connects all three sides of the board, the game ends and that player wins. The corners count as belonging to both sides of the board to which they are adjacent.

As in most connection games, the size of the board changes the nature of the game; small boards tend towards pure tactical play, whereas larger boards tend to make the game more strategic.

Relation to other connection games
Schensted and Titus argue that Y is a superior game to Hex because Hex can be seen as a subset of Y. Consider a board subdivided by a line of white and black pieces into three sections. The portion of the board at the bottom-right can then be considered a 5×5 Hex board, and played identically. However, this sort of artificial construction on a Y board is extremely uncommon, and the games have different enough tactics (outside of constructed situations) to be considered separate, though related.

Mudcrack Y & Poly-Y also describes Poly-Y, the next game in the series of Y-related games; after that come Star and *Star.

Criticism
Y, like Hex, yields a strong first-player advantage. The standard approach to solving this difficulty is the "pie" rule: one player chooses where the first move will go and the other player then chooses who will be the first player.

Y's chief criticism is that on the standard hexagonal board a player controlling center can easily reach any edge no matter what the other player does. This is because the distance from the center to an edge is only approximately 1/3 the distance along the edge from corner to corner. As a result, defending an edge against a center attack is very difficult.

Schensted and Titus attacked this problem with successive versions of the game board, culminating in the present "official" board with three pentagons inserted among the hexagons. They noted that were players to play on a hemisphere rather than a plane with hexagons, with the equator divided into three "sides" (each 1/3 the circumference of the hemisphere), the distance from the "north pole" of the hemisphere to the equator was 1/4 the circumference, and thus the distance ratio improved from 1/3 to 3/4. This made defending a side from a center attack much more plausible. Thus the present "official" board is essentially a geodesic dome hemisphere squashed flat into a triangle to provide this effect.

No draws
It has been formally shown that Y cannot end in a draw. That is, once the board is complete there must be one and only one winner.

The first player wins
In Y the strategy-stealing argument can be applied. It proves that the second player has no winning strategy. The argument is that if the second player had a winning strategy, then the first player could choose a random first move and then pretend that she is the second player and apply the strategy. An important point is that an extra stone on the board is never a disadvantage in Y. Y is a complete and perfect information game in which no draw can be conceived, so there is a winning strategy for one player. The second player has no winning strategy so the first player has one. It is nevertheless possible for the first player to lose by making a sufficiently bad move, since although that stone has value, it may have significantly less value than the second move—an important consideration for understanding the nature of the pie rule.

If the "pie rule" is in force, however, the second player wins, because the second player can in principle evaluate whether or not the first move is a winning move and choose to invoke the pie rule if it is (thereby effectively becoming the first player).

In practice, assuming the pie rule is in force and the official Schensted/Titus board is being used, Y is a very well balanced game giving essentially equal chances for any two players of equal strength. The balance is achieved because the first player will intentionally make a move that is sufficiently "bad" that it is not clear to the second player whether it is a winning move or a losing move. It is up to the judgement of the second player to make this difficult determination and invoke the pie rule accordingly.

title: Y (game)


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Bael (demon)

Bael (Ba’al or Baal) is a demon described in demonological grimoires such as The Lesser Key of Solomon and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (where he is the first spirit mentioned) and also in the Dictionnaire Infernal. He is described as a hoarsely-voiced king with the power to make men invisible and ruling over sixty-six legions of demons. The Lesser Key of Solomon describes him as appearing in the form of a cat, toad, human, some combination thereof, or other "diverse shapes", while the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and the Dictionnaire Infernal state that he appears with the heads of a cat, toad, and human simultaneously.

Jacques Collin de Plancy wonders if Bael is the same as the Canaanite deity Baal, a reasonable assumption. In the Livre des Esperitz, Bael (as Beal) is described as a king ruled by Oriens (himself a demon overseeing the cardinal direction east, or the Orient), still possessing the power of invisibility, as well as the power to garner the favor of others, but ruling over only six (rather than sixty-six) legions of demons. The Liber Officiorum Spirituum features Baal, Baall, Boal, or Boall, again as a hoarsely-voiced king (or sometimes a soldier), with not only the powers of invisibility but also of the sciences and love. Sloane MS 3824 mentions Baal, in "Of the Demon Rulers", as a king ruled by Oriens, attributed with teaching science, (again) granting invisibility, and controlling 250 legions of spirits. Bael appears in later editions of The Grimoire of Pope Honorius, under Astaroth, as a prince whose powers include (again) invisibility and popularity. In the Grand Grimoire, Bael (as Baal) is listed as a subordinate of Lucifuge Rofocale. According to Thomas Rudd, Bael is opposed by the Shem HaMephorash angel Vehuiah.

In popular culture

 * Baal appears as a recurring antagonist in the long-running German dime novel series Geisterjäger John Sinclair. The novels and audio dramas by author Jason Dark depict Baal as one of the archdemons along with Astaroth, Eurynome and Amducias.
 * In the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, a prominent mobile suit is known as "ASW-G-01 Gundam Bael".
 * The former Electro Archon (Makoto) in Genshin Impact also goes by the name Baal. Now the current Electro Archon (Raiden Ei), or Beelzebul, uses the name "Baal" to disguise herself.
 * Bael is the demon that possesses Father Lucas Trevant (Played by Anthony Hopkins) in the film The Rite.
 * In the Inazuma Eleven cartoon, a Dark Team player is named Bael, referring to the demon of the same name.
 * Baal was the featured antagonist in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, the 2001 expansion to Blizzard Entertainment's hit franchise "Diablo".

title: Bael (demon)


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Brights movement

The Brights movement is a social movement whose members since 2003 refer to themselves as Brights and have a worldview of philosophical naturalism.

Most Brights believe that public policies should be based on science (a body of knowledge obtained and tested by use of the scientific method). Brights are likely to oppose the practice of basing public policies on supernatural doctrines. Brights may therefore be described as secularists.

Terminology
The Bright movement has proposed the following terminology:
 * super (noun): someone whose worldview includes supernatural and/or mystical elements
 * bright (noun): someone whose worldview is naturalistic (no supernatural and mystical elements)
 * Bright: a bright who has registered on the Bright website as a member of the movement

History
Paul Geisert, who coined the term bright and co-founded the bright movement is a one-time Chicago biology teacher, professor, entrepreneur and writer of learning materials. In deciding to attend the Godless Americans March on Washington in 2002, Geisert disliked the label "godless" because he thought it would alienate the general public to whom that term was synonymous with "evil". He sought a new, positive word that might be well accepted and improve the image of those who did not believe in the supernatural. A few weeks later, Geisert came up with the noun "bright" after brainstorming many ideas. He then ran into another room and told his wife: "I've got the word, and this is going to be big!".

It was also co-founded by his wife, Mynga Futrell. Futrell remains director of the organization. Paul Geisert died November 17, 2020.

After coming up with the term they pitched their idea to friends and decided to unveil their idea at an Atheist Alliance International conference in Tampa, Florida. They called the organizers and got permission to present the idea.

Geisert and Futrell made their proposal in Spring 2003 at an atheist conference in Florida which was attended by Richard Dawkins. They launched the Brights' Net website on June 4, 2003. The movement gained early publicity through articles by Richard Dawkins in The Guardian and Wired; and by Daniel Dennett in The New York Times.

The movement continued to grow and experienced accelerated registrations following media debate around New Atheism prompted by a series of book releases in late 2006 including The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, God Is Not Great, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The movement has grown to be a constituency of over 78,000 Brights in 204 nations and territories.

Brights
Many, but not all, brights also identify as atheist, antitheist, humanist (specifically secular humanist), freethinker, irreligionist, naturalist, materialist or physicalist, agnostic, skeptic, or even naturalistic pantheist. Even so, the "movement is not associated with any defined beliefs". The website Brights' Net says its goal is to include the umbrella term bright in the vocabulary of this existing "community of reason".

However, "the broader intent is inclusive of the many-varied persons whose worldview is naturalistic", but are in the "general population" as opposed to associating solely with the "community of reason". Thus, persons who can declare their naturalistic worldview using the term bright extend beyond the familiar secularist categories as long as they do not hold theistic worldviews. Registrations even include some members of the clergy, such as Presbyterian ministers and a Church History Professor and ordained priest.

Dawkins compares the coining of bright to the "triumph of consciousness-raising" from the term gay: "Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an 'up' word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like 'gay'[,] [...] a noun hijacked from an adjective, with its original meaning changed but not too much. Like gay, it should be catchy: a potentially prolific meme. Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright."

Despite the explicit difference between the noun and adjective, there have been comments on the comparison. In his Wired article, Dawkins stated: "Whether there is a statistical tendency for brights [noun] to be bright [adjective] is a matter for research".

Notable people who have self-identified as brights at one time or another include: biologists Richard Dawkins and Richard J. Roberts; cognitive scientist Steven Pinker; philosophers Daniel Dennett and Massimo Pigliucci; stage magicians and debunkers James Randi and Penn & Teller; Amy Alkon; Sheldon Glashow; Babu Gogineni; Edwin Kagin; Mel Lipman; Piergiorgio Odifreddi; and Air America Radio talk show host Lionel.

Contrasted with supers
Daniel Dennett suggests in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon that if non-naturalists are concerned with connotations of the word bright, then they should invent an equally positive sounding word for themselves, like supers (i.e. one whose world view contains supernaturalism). He also suggested this during his presentation at the Atheist Alliance International '07 convention. Geisert and Futrell maintain that the neologism has always had a kinship with the Enlightenment, an era which celebrated the possibilities of science and a certain amount of free inquiry. They have endorsed the use of super as the antonym to bright.

Symbol
The Brights' avatar represents a celestial body viewed from space. As there is no up or down or right or left in outer space, the arrangement of planet and darkness and starlight is changeable. Although the symbol is open to the viewer's interpretation, it is generally meant to invoke transition and a sense of gradual illumination. The intentional ambiguity of the avatar is meant to symbolically reflect an important question: Is the future of humankind becoming luminous or more dim? The Brights aspire "to take the promising route, whereby the imagery brings to mind a gradually increasing illumination for this earth of ours, an escalation of enlightenment". This optimistic interpretation of the Brights' symbol is summarized by the motto "Embrightenment Now!".

Name controversy
The movement has been criticised by some (both religious and non-religious) who have objected to the adoption of the title "bright" because they believe it suggests that the individuals with a naturalistic worldview are more intelligent ("brighter") than non-naturalists, such as philosophical skeptics or idealists, believers in the paranormal, philosophical theists, or the religious. For example, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry published an article by Chris Mooney titled "Not Too 'Bright in which he stated that although he agreed with the movement, Richard Dawkins's and Daniel Dennett's "campaign to rename religious unbelievers 'brights' could use some rethinking" because of the possibility that the term would be misinterpreted. The journalist and noted atheist Christopher Hitchens likewise found it a "cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called 'brights.

In response to this, Daniel Dennett has stated: "There was also a negative response, largely objecting to the term that had been chosen [not by me]: bright, which seemed to imply that others were dim or stupid. But the term, modeled on the highly successful hijacking of the ordinary word "gay" by homosexuals, does not have to have that implication. Those who are not gays are not necessarily glum; they're straight. Those who are not brights are not necessarily dim."

title: Brights movement


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Common pochard

The common pochard (Aythya ferina), known simply as pochard in the United Kingdom, is a medium-sized diving duck in the family Anatidae. It is widespread across the Palearctic. It breeds primarily in the steppe regions of Scandinavia and Siberia, and winters further south and west.

Taxonomy and systematics
Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus first assigned a scientific name to the common pochard in the tenth edition of his landmark treatise Systema Naturae; this was the first edition which included such names. He called the duck Anas ferina. In 1822, German zoologist Friedrich Boie created the genus Aythya for various diving ducks, and moved the common pochard to that new genus. Uptake of Aythya as the genus for the common pochard was mixed for much of the next century, with some authors leaving the duck in the genus Anas or assigning it to various other now-defunct genera instead. The common pochard is considered a superspecies with the canvasback. In the past, the redhead of North America was thought to be a subspecies, but the common pochard is now agreed to be monotypic, with no subspecies. It is known to have hybridised with tufted duck and ferruginous duck in captivity, and these known combinations resemble suspected hybrids seen in the wild, which may share the same parentage. Hybridisations with the red-crested pochard have also been reported.

The genus name Aythya is derived from the Ancient Greek word aithuia, an unidentified seabird mentioned by authors including Hesychius and Aristotle. In modern Greek, the word is associated with both a duck and an auklet. The species name is the Latin word ferina, meaning "wild game" (derived from ferus, meaning "wild"). The common name "pochard" was first applied to the duck in the mid-1500s; its origin and etymology is unknown. It is also sometimes known as European pochard, Eurasian pochard, or (particularly in the UK) simply pochard.

Description
The common pochard is a plump, medium-sized diving duck, measuring 42 - 49 cm in length, with a wingspan of 72 - 82 cm. It is stocky and short-tailed, with a sloping forehead and relatively long bill. Its weight (which has been reported only for winter birds) ranges from 467 to 1240 g. Males average larger and heavier than females. Like most ducks, it is sexually dimorphic.

The male has a chestnut-coloured head and neck, a black breast and tail, and a pale grey body, marked with fine vermiculations. His bill is dark grey, with a wide blue-grey band across the middle. His iris is yellow-orange to red, growing brighter in the breeding season.

The legs and feet are grey in both sexes and all ages. The female's iris is brown, sometimes tending towards yellowish-brown. The juvenile's iris is yellow-olive, but attains its adult colour during the first winter.

Voice
The male is generally silent, though he may whistle softly as part of his courtship display. The female growls softly—a sound transcribed as krrr—if she is flushed. The duckling has a short contact call of two to four notes. If distressed, its calls are higher and faster than are those of Anas ducklings of the same size and age.

Similar species
The male common pochard is quite similar to the male canvasback, but the latter has an all-dark bill. It is also similar to the redhead, but the latter has a yellow iris and a greyer back.

Distribution and habitat
Their breeding habitat consists of marshes and lakes with a metre or more water depth. Pochards breed in much of temperate and northern Europe and across the Palearctic. They are migratory, and spend winter in the south and west of Europe.

In the British Isles, birds breed in eastern England and lowland Scotland, in small numbers in Northern Ireland with numbers increasing gradually, and sporadically in the Republic of Ireland, where it may also be increasing. While uncommon, individuals are also occasionally seen in the south of England, and small populations are sometimes observed on the River Thames. Large numbers stay overwinter in Great Britain, after the birds retreat from Russia and Scandinavia.

Ecology
These are gregarious birds; they form large flocks in winter, often mixing with other species of diving duck. They are strong fliers; in direct, flapping flight, they can reach speeds of 22 –.

Food and feeding
Common pochards feed on plant material (including seeds), small fish, molluscs, and other aquatic invertebrates. They feed primarily by diving to retrieve items from under the water's surface. However, they will also upend and dabble at items on the water's surface. They do most of their feeding at night.

They regularly forage in close association with Bewick's and whooper swans, two species that trample underwater sediment to excavate food. Studies have shown that this behaviour greatly increases the food intake rate of the pochards, as they glean food items that drift away from where the swans are trampling. This rate can be double what it would be if the birds were feeding on their own.

Breeding
The female builds a platform nest of plant material, with a shallow cup lined with down feathers near its center. This is placed either on the ground within 10 m of the water's edge or in the water with the platform rising above the water's surface. It is always located in dense cover. The female lays one egg daily until her clutch—typically 8-10 eggs—is complete. Only then does she begin incubation. The eggs are greenish-grey and broadly oval, measuring 62 x on average. They are incubated by the female and hatch synchronously after around 25 days. When off the nest the female will cover the eggs with down. The young are precocial, nidifugous and can feed themselves. They fledge when aged 50–55 days.

Like many ducks, common pochards suffer a high rate of parasitic egg-laying, a behaviour also known as egg dumping. Studies have shown that as many as 89% of nests in some areas contain one or more eggs not laid by the incubating female. The percentage of parasitic eggs may reach as high as 37% of all eggs laid in some populations. There appears to be little cost to the incubating female for accepting eggs that are not her own, and indeed she will roll any egg left close to her nest into her clutch. However, if the number of parasitic eggs exceeds six, she is twice as likely to abandon her nest. Females sometimes lay their eggs in the nests of other duck species as well; red-crested pochards are unwitting hosts in some areas.

Levels of nest predation can be high, particularly for nests located in upland areas. Those located on islands, or over water (on artificial platforms) do sgnificantly better, presumably because water deters at least some mammalian predators. Nesting success depends on a number of factors, including the age of the female, her body mass, the date the nest was started, and the size of the clutch. Older, heavier birds are more successful than younger, lighter ones. Smaller, earlier-laid clutches are less likely to be abandoned than larger, later ones.

Conservation and threats
The common pochard is one of the species protected by the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA). The International Union for Conservation of Nature rates the species as vulnerable. Though it has a huge range and an extremely large population, there is evidence of precipitous declines in several regions. These reach somewhere in the range of 30–49 per cent over a 23-year period in Europe, for example. In number of countries, its population is decreasing mainly due to the urbanization and transformation of the natural habitats, as well as due to overhunting. Introduced predators, such as the American mink, have wreaked havoc on some populations. In Poland, for example, one studied population showed a 92 per cent decrease in the 30 years after mink first became established in the area. Birds, including carrion crows and marsh harriers are important nest predators.

A further threat to conservation efforts of this bird is that 75 official languages are spoken across the countries in which it is found, thus scientific knowledge is scattered across those different languages, and collaboration on conservation efforts is more difficult.

It is the host for a variety of internal parasites, including cestodes, nematodes and trematodes. These include Paramonostomum aythyae, a trematode which was first isolated from the common pochard; it is carried in the gut. In some locations, the common pochard may be an important vector of avian schistosomes, which are harboured in the bird's nasal and mesenteric blood vessels. These schistosomes can be transmitted to humans who work or swim in the same wetland areas as the ducks, potentially causing cercarial dermatitis. Known blood parasites include Haemoproteus greineri, Haemoproteus nettionis and Plasmodium circumflexum. It is also known to carry Toxoplasma gondii.

title: Common pochard


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User talk:MyallR

Hello there MyallR, welcome to Wikipedia! 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. MB 14:09 20 May 2003 (UTC)

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Tease

Tease may refer to:
 * Teasing
 * Tease (EP) by Piano Overlord
 * Tease (TV series), a U.S. TV series presented by Lisa Rinna
 * Tease (band), an American R&B band from Los Angeles formed in 1979.

title: Tease