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Hammock

A hammock, from Spanish hamaca, borrowed from Taíno and Arawak hamaka, is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two or more points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts. Hammocks were developed by native inhabitants of the Americas for sleeping, as well as the English. Later, they were used aboard ships by sailors to enable comfort and maximize available space, by explorers or soldiers travelling in wooded regions and eventually by parents in the early 1920s for containing babies just learning to crawl. Today they are popular around the world for relaxation; they are also used as a lightweight bed on camping trips. The hammock is often seen as a symbol of summer, leisure, relaxation and simple, easy living.

Etymology
The word hammock comes, via Spanish, from a Taíno culture Arawakan word meaning 'stretch of cloth' from the Arawak root -maka while ha- indicated the action of hanging. The Amerindian origin of the word was often obscured in English-language sources from the late 18th century onward. Samuel Johnson claimed that it was of Saxon origin, but his etymology was soon debunked. Hamaka was meaningfully transformed into modern German Hängematte, Swedish Hängmatta and Dutch Hangmat, and calqued from Swedish into Finnish riippumatto (all literally hanging mat).

Europe

Some 19th-century authors attributed the invention of the hammock to the Athenian politician Alcibiades (d. 404 BC). This was inferred from Plutarch, who wrote that Alcibiades had his galley bed hung from ropes, but did not specifically describe it as a net or sling. Other ancient writers mention the use of hanging beds to improve sleep or health without giving details on their mode of suspension.

The 11th-century Old English Hexateuch shows the biblical Joseph, promoted to the "second chariot" of the pharaoh (that is second in command), in a simple type of vehicle, the body of which seems to be a cloth hammock. The piece is suspended on two hooks attached to two opposite posts rising from the chassis. The hammock motif is repeated in the manuscript in a series of increasingly abstract miniatures, leaving it open to interpretation whether the artist had in mind a wheeled hammock litter or a rudimentary coach with a flexible suspension.

The hammock reappears in unequivocal form in another medieval English source, the Luttrell Psalter (dated to c. 1330), where it has developed to a regular hanging bed. The sling now ends in two rope beckets that anticipate the rings of the naval hammock. Like the earliest known naval specimen the fabric is canvas, not the netting the Spanish later encountered in the New World. The Dutch historian of technology André Sleeswyk argues that it may have been this English type that eventually spread through the European navies despite the word hammock later being adopted from the Americas:

"It may be significant that in the first official mention of hammocks in the Royal Navy of 1597 they are not referred to under that name, but as 'hanging cabbons or beddes'. The medieval canvas hammock may have been an English invention which was not known on the continent when Columbus made his voyage. In the course of the seventeenth century its use spread to the navies of Western Europe, and eventually it was given the same name as the Caribbean hammock of netting which came to Europe when Columbus returned."

New World

Spanish colonists noted the use of the hammock by Native Americans, particularly in the West Indies, at the time of the Spanish conquest.

Columbus, in the narrative of his first voyage, says: “A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship to-day for the purpose of bartering their cotton, and hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep.” He observed the widespread use of hammocks during his travels among the Taino people in the Bahamas.

Early hammocks were woven out of tree bark, and later this material was replaced by sisal fibers because it was more abundant. One of the reasons that hammocks became popular in Central and South America was their ability to provide safety from disease transmission, insect stings, or animal bites. By suspending their beds above ground, inhabitants were better protected from snakes, biting ants, and other harmful creatures.

Naval
Around 1590, hammocks were adopted for use in sailing ships; the Royal Navy formally adopted the sling hammock in 1597 when it ordered three hundred bolts of canvas for "hanging cabbons or beddes". Aboard ship, hammocks were regularly employed for sailors sleeping on the gun decks of warships, where limited space prevented the installation of permanent bunks. Since a slung hammock moves in concert with the motion of the vessel, the occupant is not at a risk of being thrown onto the deck (which may be 5 or 6 feet below) during swells or rough seas. Likewise, a hammock provides more comfortable sleep than a bunk or a berth while at sea since the sleeper always stays well balanced, irrespective of the motion of the vessel. Prior to the adoption of naval hammocks, sailors would often be injured or even killed as they fell off their berths or rolled on the decks on heavy seas. The sides of traditional canvas naval hammocks wrap around the sleeper like a cocoon, making an inadvertent fall virtually impossible. If suitably packed, they could also be used as emergency flotation devices. Many sailors in the Royal Navy, during the 1590s at least, used a spreader – a length of wood with a V cut in each end to engage the second hammock string on each side. The first string was set up more tightly than the others so that it raised a protective lip along each side to keep out drafts and prevent the sleeper being thrown out. A narrow mattress was also issued which protected the user from cold from below. In addition naval hammocks could be rolled tightly and stowed in an out of the way place or in nets along the gunwale as additional protection during battle (as was the case during the age of sail). Many sailors became so accustomed to this way of sleeping that they brought their hammocks ashore with them on leave. The naval use of hammocks continued into the 20th century. During World War II, troopships sometimes employed hammocks for both naval ratings and soldiers in order to increase available space and troop carrying capacity. Many leisure sailors even today prefer hammocks over bunks because of better comfort in sleep while on the high seas.

Hammocks have also been employed on spacecraft in order to utilize available space when not sleeping or resting. During the Apollo program, from Apollo 12 onwards, the Lunar Module was equipped with hammocks for the commander and lunar module pilot to sleep in between moonwalks.

Mexican and Mayan
In Mexico, hammocks are made in villages surrounding the capital city of the Yucatán, Mérida, and are sold throughout the world as well as locally. They were not part of Classic era Maya civilization; they were said to have arrived in the Yucatán from the Caribbean fewer than two centuries before the Spanish conquest. In addition to bark and sisal, hammocks were constructed from various materials, including palm fronds. Quality of native and modern hammocks depends greatly on the quality of the material, thread, and the number of threads used. Mayan hammocks are made on a loom and are hand woven by men, women and children. Hammocks are so symbolically and culturally important for the Yucatecans that even the most humble of homes have hammock hooks in the walls.

El Salvador

El Salvador is a large producer and exporter of hammocks. The valley in which San Salvador City sits is dubbed "The Valley of the Hammocks" because the Native Americans used hammocks to "repel" constant earthquakes. Later, the colonizing Spaniards used the term as an allusion to earthquakes constantly rocking the valley like a hammock. Hammocks are a big part of Salvadoran culture and are often used for afternoon naps. It is completely socially acceptable to lie in a hammock all day in this Central American country. Hammocks swing from doorways, inside living rooms, on porches, in outdoor courtyards, and from trees, in all social classes of Salvadoran homes from the most humble rural home to the most prestigious city hotel chains. In rural El Salvador, a family home may have multiple hammocks strung across the main room, for use as seating, as beds, or as sleep-swings for infants. The municipality of "Concepcion Quezaltepeque" celebrates its traditional Hammocks Festival, where artisans produce and sell hammocks, every year between the first and second weekend of November.

Venezuelan
In Venezuela entire villages raised their families in hammocks. During the first part of the 20th century, many scientists, adventurers, geologists and other non-native visitors to Central and South American jungles soon adopted the Venezuelan hammock design, which gave protection against scorpions and venomous snakes such as the fer de lance. The difficult jungle environments of South America encountered by Western explorers soon stimulated further development of the Venezuelan hammock for use in other tropical environments.

The Venezuelan hammock's panels were always made of breathable material, necessary to prevent the onset of fungal infections caused by constant rain and high humidity. Fine-woven sandfly netting was eventually added to provide more complete protection from mosquitoes, flies, and crawling insects, especially in regions notorious for malaria or screwworm infestations. A waterproof top sheet or rainfly could be added to protect the occupant from drenching by heavy nighttime rains, along with drip strings – short pieces of string tied to suspension lines — to prevent rainwater running from the tree trunk down the hammock cords to the hammock itself. A breathable false cotton (later nylon) bottom panel was frequently added to these jungle hammocks, allowing air to pass through while still preventing mosquito stings to the occupant.

Jungle hammock
The Venezuelan hammock, as modified, eventually became known as a jungle hammock. Simply by wetting the hammock suspension ropes with insecticides or insect repellent, the jungle hammock even gave protection against crawling insects with mandibles that could bite holes through the insect netting.

The United States Army eventually adopted their own version of the jungle hammock, complete with rain proof fly and sandfly netting for use by U.S. and Allied forces in tropical jungle regions such as Burma during World War II. While at first reluctant to accept the idea of its men sleeping in hammocks, the United States Marine Corps later employed jungle hammocks in New Britain and later Pacific island campaigns where heavy rain and insects were prevalent; concerns over injuries from machine gun and artillery fire were overcome by first digging a slit trench, then staking the hammock's support lines to suspend the hammock beneath ground level.

Later U.S. Army hammocks issued during the Vietnam War, such as the M1966 Jungle Hammock, were mistakenly fitted with waterproof bottom panels, which often became filled with water overnight. On the other side, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) forces regularly employed jungle hammocks fabricated from scavenged or captured US parachute cloth and shroud lines. Hung well off jungle trails, the hammocks kept down the incidence of disease and illness, which NVA commanders generally regarded as a greater threat than shrapnel injuries caused by sleeping above ground.

After the Vietnam War, the use of hammocks has become popular in Vietnam among the civilians, as the civilians learned how to make hammocks and sleep in them from the American soldiers. Many used parachutes were recycled into hammocks, and also local styles have emerged.

Indian
Ceiling mounted hammocks for babies are traditional to south India. The textile used is the woven 5 meter Sari, which is long enough to be hung high, yet reach low enough to be safe for toddlers. The light material allows perspiration and cooling in the hot climate native to this region.

Lunar crewed missions

The first two men to walk on the Moon, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, spent their rest periods on the Apollo lunar module floor and reported being too cold to sleep comfortably.

From the mission Apollo 12 until the last Apollo lunar mission, hammocks designed to attach to the interior of the lunar module ascent stage were provided. They helped reduce the cooling effects of contact with the cabin floor as well as a softer support. They enabled astronauts from the last missions to spend complete nights of sleep on the Moon.

Usage
There are currently a wide variety of hammocks available. There are hammocks that are designed specifically for backpacking and include mosquito netting along with pockets for nighttime storage. There are hammocks made out of thin and lightweight material which makes them ideal for taking on daytrips. Other hammocks include self-standing metal or wood structures that support the hammock. Given that hammocks are commonly similar lengths to accommodate for an average adult's height, most hammock stands are universal in design, typically featuring a spreader bar that runs along the ground, feet for stability at each end, and a diagonal arm at each end to provide two hanging points.

Hammocks are very popular in the Brazilian northeast region, but not only as sleeping devices: in the poorest areas of the sertão, if there is not a cemetery in a settlement, hammocks may be used to carry the dead to a locale where there is one; also, they frequently serve as a low-cost alternative to coffins. This custom inspired Candido Portinari's 1944 painting Enterro na Rede ("burial in the hammock"). Traditionally the sailors who have died at sea were buried at sea in their hammocks.

Medical research suggests the gentle rocking motion of the hammock allows users to fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply compared to a traditional, stationary mattress.

Styles
Current popular hammock styles include the spreader-bar, Mayan, Brazilian, naval, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan (jungle), and travel hammocks. Each style is distinctive and has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Many hammocks come in a variety of colors, patterns, and sizes ranging from a one-person (250 – 350 lbs / 110 – 160 kg) to two or three person (400 lbs – 600 lbs / 180 – 270 kg). Common dimensions for unslung hammocks fall in a range between 3'/0.9m to 14'/4.2m across and 6'/1.8m to 11'/3.3m long.

The spreader-bar hammock is easily recognized by wooden or metal bars at the head and foot of the hammock, spreading its width and allowing for easy access for casual use, such as in a backyard. Unfortunately, the spreader bars also make the hammock unsteady since the metacenter of the hammock when sleeping is very high. This style is generally considered less stable and less comfortable for sleeping than other styles. A subset of this style is the single-spreader bar hammock, which uses a spreader bar on only one end and is much more stable. A variation of the single-spreader bar hammock has three attachment points, one at each corner of the spreader bar and one at the non-spreader bar end, and is nearly untippable.

While the various styles of hammocks available today are similar in form, they differ significantly in materials, purpose, and construction.

Mayan and Nicaraguan hammocks are made from either cotton or nylon string that is woven to form a supportive net. Mayan Hammocks have a looser weave than Nicaraguan hammocks, and the supportiveness of the hammock "bed" depends on the number of strings and quality of the weave.

Brazilian hammocks are made from cotton fabric and usually more durable than the string varieties. While Mayan and Nicaraguan hammocks are considered by some to have the potential to be more comfortable, the Brazilian hammock's comfort is less dependent on its construction and therefore less likely to vary as highly from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Naval hammocks are usually made from canvas or strong cotton. They are intended to be durable and stand well the hardships of shipboard use. They usually are simple and undecorated but robust. Venezuelan or jungle hammocks made today are generally of breathable nylon or polyester, and use dacron or similar non-stretch suspension lines. They are "inline" hammocks; like the canvas naval hammocks of old, the occupant sleeps along the length of the hammock, rather than across it. With their breathable false bottoms, drip strings, sandfly netting, and optional rainfly, they are one of the most secure hammocks against not only water entry, but also insect stings or bites.

Travel or camping hammocks are popular among leave no trace and ultra-light campers, hikers, and sailing enthusiasts for their reduced impact on the environment and their lightness and lack of bulk compared to tents. They are typically made of sturdy nylon parachute fabric which may use ripstop techniques to improve durability. Some hammocks feature a mosquito net and storage pockets. Some types offer a ridgeline to make set up easier, and may also include a slit for entry through the bottom of the hammock. Special webbing straps (called "treehuggers") are used to loop around trees in order to create attachment points for the hammock.

Set-up and use
For non spreader-bar styles, the way they are hung is critical for comfort. Generally, a higher attachment point is preferred as well as sufficient length between points, though these two dimensions can be adjusted to compensate for a lack in one or the other. The optimal angle of the attaching lines to the post / wall / tree is usually about 30 degrees. Hammocks can be attached to the anchor points using a variety of suspension systems, including ropes and webbing straps.

Though one can lie in a hammock lengthwise or across its width, most hammocks are best used with a diagonal position, as it provides the most room and support. Users with back and joint pains often report some relief from these problems when sleeping in a hammock in this manner.

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

title: Hammock


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Charles Gray

Charles Gray may refer to:

 * Charles Gray (Colchester MP) (1696–1782), member of parliament for Colchester, 1742–1755, 1761–1780
 * Charles Gray (songwriter) (1782–1851), Royal Marines captain and songwriter
 * Charles McNeill Gray (1807–1885), American politician, mayor of Chicago, 1853–1854
 * Charles Wing Gray (1845–1920), British member of parliament for Maldon, 1886–1892
 * Charles Gray (New Zealand politician) (1853–1918), member of parliament for Christchurch North, 1905–1908
 * Charlie Gray (1864–1900), American baseball pitcher
 * Charles Gray (Canadian politician) (1879–1954), mayor of Winnipeg, 1919–1920
 * Charles H. Gray (1921–2008), American actor
 * Charles Gray (actor) (1928–2000), British actor
 * Sir Charles Gray (Scottish politician) (1929–2023), Scottish local politician and leader of Strathclyde Regional Council, 1986–1992
 * Sir Charles Gray (judge) (1942–2022), English High Court judge
 * Charles Gray (diplomat) (born 1953), former British ambassador to Morocco and HM Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps
 * Chuck Gray (Arizona politician) (born 1958), former Arizonan state senator and member of the Arizona House of Representative
 * Charles Gray (musician), also known as Ultra Kyu, American former member of The Aquabats

title: Charles Gray


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You Only Live Twice (novel)

You Only Live Twice is the eleventh novel and twelfth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series of stories. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on 26 March 1964 and quickly sold out. It was the last Fleming novel published in his lifetime. He based his book in Japan after visiting it in 1959 as part of a trip around the world; his experience was published as Thrilling Cities. He returned to the country in 1962 and spent twelve days exploring the country and its culture.

You Only Live Twice is the concluding chapter in what is known as the "Blofeld Trilogy" after Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The story begins eight months after the murder of Tracy Bond, which occurred at the end of the previous novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond is drinking, gambling heavily and making mistakes on his assignments when, as a last resort, he is sent to Japan on a semi-diplomatic mission. While there he is challenged by the head of the Japanese Secret Service to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. Bond realises that Shatterhand is Ernst Stavro Blofeld—the man responsible for Tracy's death—and sets out on a revenge mission to kill him and his wife, Irma Bunt.

The novel deals on a personal level with the change in Bond from an emotionally shattered man in mourning, to a man of action bent on revenge, to an amnesiac living as a Japanese fisherman. Through the mouths of his characters, Fleming also examines the decline of post-Second World War British power and influence, notably in relation to the United States. The book was popular with the public, with pre-orders in the UK totalling 62,000; critics were more muted in their reactions, generally delivering mixed reviews of the novel, with many critical of the extended sections of what they considered a travelogue.

The story was serialised in the Daily Express newspaper and Playboy magazine, and also adapted for comic strip format in the Daily Express. In 1967 it was released as the fifth entry in the Eon Productions James Bond film series, starring Sean Connery as Bond; elements of the story were also used in No Time to Die (2021), the twenty-sixth film in the Eon Productions series. The novel has also been adapted as a radio play and broadcast on the BBC.

Plot
After the wedding-day murder of his wife, Tracy, the Secret Service agent James Bond goes into a decline, drinking and gambling heavily, making mistakes and turning up late for work. His superior in the Secret Service, M, had been planning to dismiss Bond, but decides to give him a last-chance opportunity to redeem himself by assigning him to the diplomatic branch of the organisation. Bond is subsequently re-numbered 7777 and handed an "impossible" mission: convincing the head of Japan's secret intelligence service, Tiger Tanaka, to share a decoding machine codenamed Magic 44 and so allow Britain to obtain information from encrypted radio transmissions made by the Soviet Union. In exchange, the Secret Service will allow the Japanese access to one of their own information sources.

Bond is introduced to Tanaka—and to the Japanese lifestyle—by an Australian intelligence officer, Dikko Henderson. When Bond raises the purpose of his mission with Tanaka, it transpires that the Japanese have already penetrated the British information source and Bond has nothing left to bargain with. Instead, Tanaka asks Bond to kill Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who operates a politically embarrassing "Garden of Death" of poisonous plants in a rebuilt ancient castle on the island of Kyushu; people visit the grounds to commit suicide. After examining photos of Shatterhand and his wife, Bond discovers that the couple are actually Tracy's murderers, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Irma Bunt. Bond gladly takes the mission, keeping his knowledge of Blofeld's identity a secret so that he can exact revenge for his wife's death. Made up and trained by Tanaka, and aided by the former Japanese film star Kissy Suzuki, Bond attempts to live and act as a mute Japanese coal miner in order to penetrate Shatterhand's castle. Tanaka gives Bond the cover name "Taro Todoroki" for the mission.

After infiltrating the Garden of Death and the castle where Blofeld spends his time dressed in the costume of a Samurai warrior, Bond is captured and Bunt identifies him as a British secret agent and not a Japanese coal miner. After surviving a near execution, Bond exacts revenge on Blofeld in a duel, Blofeld armed with a sword and Bond with a wooden staff. Bond eventually kills Blofeld by strangling him in a fit of violent rage; he then blows up the castle. Upon escaping, he suffers a head injury, leaving him an amnesiac living as a Japanese fisherman with Kissy, while the rest of the world believes him dead; his obituary appears in the newspapers.

While Bond's health improves, Kissy conceals his true identity to keep him forever to herself. Kissy eventually sleeps with Bond and becomes pregnant, and hopes that Bond will propose marriage after she finds the right time to tell him about her pregnancy. Bond reads scraps of newspaper and fixates on a reference to Vladivostok, making him wonder if the far-off city is the key to his missing memory; he tells Kissy he must travel to Russia to find out.

Background and writing history
By January 1963 the author Ian Fleming had published ten books of the Bond series in the preceding ten years: nine novels and a collection of short stories. An eleventh book, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, was being edited and prepared for production; it was released on 1 April 1963. Fleming travelled to his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica in January 1962 to write On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He followed his usual practice, which he later outlined in Books and Bookmen magazine: "I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day." Towards the end of February 1963 he wrote to his friend and copyeditor William Plomer "I have completed Opus XII save for 2 or 3 pages and am amazed that the miracle should have managed to repeat itself — the 65,000 odd words that is, and pretty odd some of them are!" When he had nearly completed writing You Only Live Twice, Fleming wrote to his friend, Richard Hughes, the Far Eastern correspondent of The Sunday Times:

"I'm grinding away at Bond's latest but the going gets harder and harder and duller and duller and I don't really know what I'm going to do with him. He's become a personal—if not a public—nuisance. Anyway he's had a good run, which is more than most of us can say. Everything seems too much trouble."

Back in England Fleming undertook some further work on his manuscript while staying in Kent. This included contacting the company secretary of The Times to ask permission to use their masthead above Bond's fictional obituary; the matter was complicated by the presence of the royal coat of arms.

You Only Live Twice is the last book completed by Fleming before his death and the last that was published in his lifetime; he died five months after the UK release of the novel. The story is the third part of what is known as the "Blofeld trilogy", coming after Thunderball, where SPECTRE is introduced, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which ends with Blofeld involved in the murder of Bond's wife. It was written in January and February 1963 in Jamaica at Fleming's Goldeneye estate. The original manuscript was 170 pages long and the least revised of all Fleming's novels. Fleming's biographer Matthew Parker, consider the novel to have a mood that is dark and claustrophobic, reflecting Fleming's own increasing melancholia, partly as a result of the recent news that he had, at most, five years to live.

Although Fleming did not date the events within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—have identified timelines based on episodes and situations within the novel series as a whole. Chancellor put the events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service between 1962 and 1963; Griswold is more precise and considers the story to have taken place between April 1962 and April 1963. The story was written after the film version of Dr. No was released in 1962, and Bond's personality in the book was altered by the screen persona, compared to the previous books; Fleming took the elements of humour in Sean Connery's filmic depiction of Bond and added them to You Only Live Twice giving Bond a sense of humour and a more relaxed manner.

Fleming based his novel in Japan after visiting it in 1959, as part of a trip round world cities for The Sunday Times, although his visit only lasted for three days. He later wrote his travel book Thrilling Cities based on the result. He was enthralled by the country, which led to its use as the location for the novel. He revisited Japan in 1962, spending twelve days there. Like his first trip, he was accompanied and guided on his trip round the country by two journalists: Hughes and Torao "Tiger" Saito.

Inspirations
The novel contains a fictional obituary of Bond, supposedly published in The Times, which provided the first details from Fleming of Bond's early life. Many of the traits were Fleming's own. This included Bond's expulsion from Eton College, which was akin to Fleming's withdrawal from the college by his mother, according to the journalist Ben Macintyre. As with a number of the previous Bond stories, You Only Live Twice used names of individuals and places that were from Fleming's past. Bond's mother, Monique Delacroix, was named after two women in Fleming's life: Monique Panchaud de Bottens, a Swiss girl from Vich in the canton of Vaud, who Fleming was engaged to in the early 1930s, with Delacroix taken from Fleming's own mother, whose maiden name was Ste Croix Rose.

Fleming named Bond's aunt "Charmian Bond": Charmian was the forename of Fleming's cousin who married his brother Richard. Charmian's sister was called "Pet", which, when combined with a play on words from Monique Panchaud de Bottens, gives Pett Bottom, where Charmian lives. Pett Bottom is also the name of a real place which amused Fleming when he stopped for lunch after a round of golf at Royal St George's Golf Club, Sandwich. In the summer of 1963, shortly after completing the book, Fleming went to Montreux to visit the writer Georges Simenon; he tried to see Monique to reveal her part in his new book, but she refused to meet him.

Blofeld's name is taken from comes from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer and a fellow member of Fleming's club Boodle's, who was a contemporary of Fleming's at Eton. For Blofeld's pseudonym in the novel, Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, Fleming uses the name of an old café he had seen in Hamburg in 1959, "Old Shatterhand". The café was named after a fictional character from a series of Western stories by the German writer Karl May. In his first draft, Fleming named the character Julius Shatterhand, but subsequently crossed it out in favour of Guntram. The characterisation of him dressed as a samurai was taken from the sketch Fleming had come up with thirty-five years earlier for a character called Graf Schlick.

Much of the background material for the novel—particularly the description of the country and Japanese culture—Fleming obtained during his two visits to Japan. So much of the book is taken up with the description that the literary analyst LeRoy L. Panek describes the work as a "semi-exotic travelogue". Fleming's two companions on his trip, Richard Hughes and Tiger Saito became Dikko Henderson and Tiger Tanaka for the book. Hughes was also the model for "Old Craw" in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy. Fleming described Saito as "a chunky, reserved man with considerable stores of quiet humour and intelligence, and with a subdued but rather tense personality. He looked like a fighter—one of those war-lords of the Japanese films". When planning the 1959 trip, Fleming told Hughes:

"There would be no politicians, museums, temples, Imperial palaces, or Noh plays, let alone tea ceremonies. I wanted, I said, to see Mr Somerset Maugham, who had just arrived and was receiving a triumphal welcome; visit the supreme judo academy; see a sumo wrestling match; explore the Ginza; have the most luxurious Japanese bath; spend an evening with geishas; consult the top Japanese soothsayer; and take a day trip into the country. I also said that I wanted to eat large quantities of raw fish, for which I have a weakness, and ascertain whether sake was truly alcoholic or not."

They managed to undertake all the events, except the sumo match, but also managed to fit in a trip to a geisha house, where Fleming's attendant geisha, Masami, served as the inspiration for Trembling Leaf, a geisha in the novel. As Fleming noted when he visited a geisha house in Thrilling Cities, "Most foreigners do not have a correct understanding of the geisha. They are not prostitutes".

Characters
The central character in the novel is James Bond. He begins You Only Live Twice in a disturbed state, described by M as "going to pieces", following the death of his wife Tracy eight months previously. He has visited doctors, hypnotists and therapists and told them "I feel like hell. I sleep badly. I eat practically nothing. I drink too much and my work has gone to blazes. I'm shot to pieces. Make me better." The historian Jeremy Black points out that it was a very different Bond to the character who lost Vesper Lynd at the end of Casino Royale. Given a final chance by M to redeem himself with a difficult mission, Bond's character changes under the ministrations of Dikko Henderson, Tiger Tanaka and Kissy Suzuki. The result, according to Benson, is a Bond with a sense of humour and a purpose in life. The book's penultimate chapter contains Bond's obituary, purportedly written for The Times by M. Fleming uses this to provide a number of previously unrevealed biographical details of Bond's early life, including his parents' names and nationalities and Bond's education.

The novelist and critic Kingsley Amis, in his examination of Fleming's stories, finds Bond a Byronic hero, seen as "lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique which has become in some way ravaged, of similarly fine but ravaged countenance, dark and brooding in expression, of a cold or cynical veneer, above all enigmatic, in possession of a sinister secret". By the close of You Only Live Twice, according to Amis, Bond has been transformed and has "acquired the most important single item in the Byronic hero's make-up, a secret sorrow over a woman, aggravated, as it should be, by self-reproach".

Blofeld makes his third appearance in the Bond series in You Only Live Twice and Benson notes that on this occasion he is mad and egocentric in his behaviour; Tanaka refers to him as "no less than a fiend in human form", and the cultural critic Umberto Eco considers the character to have "a murderous mania". The Anglicist Christoph Lindner notes that Fleming, through Bond, parallels Blofeld with Caligula, Nero and Hitler, and that this exemplifies Blofeld's actions as being on "a titanic scale", as was much of the criminal action throughout the Bond series. Lindner continues that the crimes perpetrated are not against individuals per se, but entire nations or continents. The literary analyst LeRoy L. Panek considers that the character is a declining force in comparison to his appearance in Thunderball, and "is a paper figure ... in spite of the megalomaniac speeches".

According to Raymond Benson, the author of the continuation Bond novels, Kissy Suzuki is "a most appealing heroine" who falls in love with Bond. Apart from being the mother of Bond's unborn child at the end of the book, Suzuki also acts as a "cultural translator" for Bond, helping explain the local traditions and customs; Quarrel had the same function in Dr. No and Live and Let Die. The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and Tony Bennett consider her to be "the ideal Bond girl - natural, unaffected, totally lacking in deference, independent and self-reliant, yet also caring, loving, solicitous for Bond's well-being and willing to cater to his every need without making any demands in return".

Eco identifies Tiger Tanaka as one of Fleming's characters with morals closer to those of traditional villains, but who act on the side of good in support of Bond; others of this type have included Darko Kerim (From Russia, with Love), Marc-Ange Draco (from On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and Enrico Colombo (from "Risico"). Similarly, Panek considers that Dikko Henderson "serves as an inspiration for Bond" because of what he sees as the character's "robust enjoyment of life—enjoyment of food, drink and women". The Anglicist Robert Druce writes the similarities in characters between Henderson and those of Draco and Darko, and observes that the nickname "Dikko" is a close echo of their names too.

Style
Much of You Only Live Twice is taken up with background information about Japan and its culture. Bond is not threatened for most of the novel, and only meets threat when he comes into contact with Blofeld in the final thirty pages. The first 112 pages—in a book of 212 pages—"read more like a hybrid travelogue/sociology textbook than a James Bond novel", according to the Anglicist John Hatcher. In writing from his western viewpoint for a western audience, Hatcher considers that the novel "is a comprehensive anthology of Western tropes and stereotypes about Japan". Panek identifies how, like in other of his novels, Fleming structures his storylines based on episodes, that are then linked together by the narrative. For his weaker books, Panel observes, Fleming's descriptive narrative becomes padding; with You Only Live Twice, which Panek says is one of the worst examples of Fleming's work, "this padding degenerates into incompetent travelogue".

Benson describes the first two-thirds of the book as being in a high journalistic style, but from the point Bond is preparing to meet and battle Blofeld, Benson sees Fleming's writing becoming allegorical and epic, using Bond as a symbol of good against the evil of Blofeld. Benson sees an increased use of imagery to reinforce this approach, to give an effect which is "horrific, dreamlike and surrealistic".

Themes
Much in the novel concerns the state of Britain in world affairs. Black points out that the reason for Bond's mission to Japan is that the US did not want to share intelligence regarding the Pacific, which it saw as its "private preserve". As Black goes on to note, however, the defections of four members of MI6 to the Soviet Union had a major impact in US intelligence circles on how Britain was viewed. The last of the defections was that of Kim Philby in January 1963, while Fleming was still writing the first draft of the novel. Black contends that the conversation between M and Bond allows Fleming to discuss the decline of Britain, with the defections and the 1963 Profumo affair as a backdrop. After Tiger Tanaka's criticisms of Britain's weaknesses, Bond can point only to Nobel Prize winners and the ascent of Everest as a defence. Bennet and Woollcott see that one of the roles Bond has in the novels "is to prove that there is still an elite in Britain, still a backbone to the English character".

The theme of Britain's declining position in the world is also dealt with in conversations between Bond and Tanaka, Tanaka voices Fleming's own concerns about the state of Britain in the 1950s and early 60s. Tanaka accuses Britain of throwing away the empire "with both hands"; this would have been a contentious situation for Fleming, as he wrote the novel as the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation was breaking out (in December 1962), a direct challenge to British interests in the region. Fleming's increasingly jaundiced views on America appear in the novel too, through Bond's responses to Tiger's comments, and they reflect on the declining relationship between Britain and America: this is in sharp contrast to the warm, co-operative relationship between Bond and Leiter in the earlier books.

One of the main themes of You Only Live Twice is that of symbolic death and rebirth. This is echoed in the book's title and in Bond's attempt at a haiku, written in the style of Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō:

The rebirth in question is that of Bond, transformed from the heavy drinker with emotional problems, mourning his wife at the beginning of the book, to a man of action and then, after the death of Blofeld and the seeming death of Bond, becoming Taro Todoroki, the Japanese partner of Kissy Suzuki. Druce observes that "in Kissy's care, Bond is symbolically reborn, while Kissy, his Sybilline tutor in the Japanese language, learns to love once more."

As with several other Bond stories, the concept of Bond as Saint George against the dragon underlies the storyline to You Only Live Twice. Tiger Tanaka twice overtly calls attention to this when he says to Bond "You are to enter this Castle of Death and slay the Dragon within", and then later asks:

"But, Bondo-san, does it not amuse you to think of that foolish dragon dozing all unsuspecting in his castle while St. George comes silently riding towards his lair across the waves? It would make the subject for a most entertaining Japanese print."

This is, according to Druce, reinforced by Blofeld's staff being recruited from the Japanese "Black Dragon" society; the organisation was described by Fleming as being formerly "the most feared and powerful secret society in Japan". Druce also highlights a kimono Blofeld wears when addressing Bond, which is described thus: "the golden dragon embroidery, so easily to be derided as a childish fantasy, crawled menacingly across the black silk and seemed to spit real fire from over the left breast".

Publication history
You Only Live Twice was published in the UK on 16 March 1964, by Jonathan Cape. There were 62,000 pre-orders for the book, a significant increase over the 42,000 advance orders for the hardback first edition of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Richard Chopping, the cover artist for The Spy Who Loved Me, was engaged for the design. In July 1963, Michael Howard of Jonathan Cape had written to Chopping about the artwork, saying "If you could manage a pink dragonfly sitting on one of the flowers, and perhaps just one epicanthic eye peering through them, [Fleming] thinks that will be just splendid." After searching for a toad along the banks of the River Colne, Chopping borrowed one from a neighbour's daughter. Chopping's fee rose to 300 guineas for the cover from the 250 guineas he received for The Spy Who Loved Me.

You Only Live Twice was published in the US by New American Library in August 1964; it was 240 pages long. The book went on to The New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for over twenty weeks; it was the eighth bestselling novel of 1964 in the US.

In July 1965 Pan Books published a paperback version of You Only Live Twice in the UK that sold 309,000 copies before the end of the year and 908,000 in 1966. Since its initial publication the book has been re-issued in hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and, as at 2024, has never been out of print. In 2023 Ian Fleming Publications—the company that administers all Fleming's literary works—had the Bond series edited as part of a sensitivity review to remove or reword some racial or ethnic descriptors. Although many of Fleming's racial epithets were removed from the novel, Fleming's description of the Japanese as "A violent people without a violent language" was retained. The release of the bowdlerised series was for the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel.

Critical reception
The critic for The Times was largely unimpressed with You Only Live Twice, complaining that "as a moderate to middling travelogue what follows will just about do ... the plot with its concomitant sadism does not really get going until more than half way through". In The Guardian, Francis Iles wrote that "I think he [Fleming] must be getting tired of the ineffable James Bond and perhaps even of writing thrillers at all". Iles reasoned that "of the 260 pages of You Only Live Twice ... only 60 are concerned with the actual business of a thriller", and his enjoyment was further diminished by what he considered "the grossness of Bond's manners and his schoolboy obscenities". Duval Smith believed that "the background is excellent ... Mr. Fleming has caught the exact 'feel' of Japan", Maggie Ross, in The Listener, was also a little dissatisfied, writing that the novel can be read as a thriller and, "if interest flags, as it may do, the book can be treated as a tourist guide to some of the more interesting parts of Japan". She went on to say that "since not very much in the way of real excitement happens until the latter half of the book, perhaps it is better to ignore the whole thing". Maurice Richardson, in The Observer, was critical of a number of aspects, saying that the "narrative is a bit weak, action long delayed and disappointing when it comes but the surround of local colour ... has been worked over with that unique combination of pubescent imagination and industry which is Mr. Fleming's speciality".

Peter Duval Smith, in the Financial Times, thought that You Only Live Twice "is not really a success and it's Bond's fault mainly. He just doesn't add up to a human being". Malcolm Muggeridge, writing in Esquire magazine, wrote that "Bond can only manage to sleep with his Japanese girl with the aid of colour pornography. His drinking sessions seem somehow desperate, and the horrors are too absurd to horrify ... it's all rather a muddle and scarcely in the tradition of Secret Service fiction. Perhaps the earlier novels are better. If so, I shall never know, having no intention of reading them." Robert Fulford, in the Toronto-based magazine Maclean's, noted that "the characteristic which makes Fleming appear so silly also helps make him so popular: his moral simplicity. When we read James Bond we know whose side we are on, why we are on that side and why we are certain to win. In the real world that is no longer possible." Charles Poore, writing in The New York Times, noted that Bond's mission "is aimed at restoring Britain's pre-World War II place among the powers of the world. And on that subject, above all others, Ian Fleming's novels are endlessly, bitterly eloquent". The Boston Globe's Mary Castle opined that the agent's trip was "Bond's latest and grimmest mission", which she called "Escapism in the Grand Manner".

Richardson thought You Only Live Twice, "though far from the best Bond, is really almost as easy to read as any of them", and the Belfast Telegraph considered that Fleming was "still in a class of his own". The Bookman declared that You Only Live Twice "must rank among the best of the Bonds". Cyril Connolly, reviewing for The Sunday Times, wrote that the novel was "reactionary, sentimental, square, the Bond-image flails its way through the middle-brow masses, a relaxation to the great, a stimulus to the humble, the only common denominator between Kennedy and Oswald". The Times thought that "though Mr. Fleming's macabre imagination is as interesting as ever, some of the old snap seems to have gone". Dealing with the cliffhanger ending to the story, the reviewer wrote that "Mr. Fleming would keep us on tenterhooks, but at this rate of going even his most devoted admirers will free themselves before very long." The critic for The Spectator felt that "Ian Fleming has taken a hint from films of his books and is now inclined to send himself up. I am not at all sure that he is wise".

Adaptations
You Only Live Twice was adapted for serialisation in the Daily Express on a daily basis from 2 March 1964 onwards. The novel was also adapted as a daily comic strip in the same newspaper, and syndicated worldwide. The adaptation, written by Henry Gammidge and illustrated by John McLusky, ran from 18 May 1965 to 8 January 1966. It was the final James Bond strip for Gammidge, while McClusky returned to illustrating the strip in the 1980s. The strip was reprinted by Titan Books in The James Bond Omnibus Vol. 2, published in 2011.

The novel was also serialised in the April, May and June 1964 issues of Playboy magazine, with illustrations from Daniel Schwartz. In the January 1997 edition of Playboy, the short story "Blast from the Past" appeared. Written by Raymond Benson, the story depicts the murder of James Suzuki—the child Bond fathered with Kissy Suzuki. Bond finds out that his son had been murdered by Irma Bunt as revenge for the death of Blofeld. Bond tracks her down and kills her.

In 1967 the book was adapted into the fifth film in the Eon Productions series. It stars Sean Connery as Bond, and the screenplay was by Fleming's friend Roald Dahl. Only a few elements of the novel and a limited number of Fleming's characters survive into the film version, which has a heavy focus on Bond's gadgets. The June 1967 issue of Playboy contained the feature "007's Oriental Eyefuls". This was a six-page pictorial that featured several of the women from the film, which included Mie Hama (who played Kissy Suzuki) and Akiko Wakabayashi (who played Aki), as well as some of the film's extras. The accompanying text was written by Dahl.

In 1990 the novel was adapted into a 90-minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2013. In 2021 elements of You Only Live Twice were used in No Time to Die, the twenty-sixth film in the Eon Productions series, which stars Daniel Craig as Bond. The film included Bond mourning the loss of his romantic partner, finding solace through drinking and eventually seeking revenge on the person who killed his partner by strangling him and defeating the main villain of the story and destroying his "garden of death" on a private island between Russia and Japan.

title: You Only Live Twice (novel)


text: Talk:Political cartoon

title: Talk:Political cartoon


text:
Louvois

Louvois may refer to:

 * Louvois, Marne, a French commune
 * François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641–1691), French secretary of state for war
 * Camille le Tellier de Louvois (1675–1718), French clergyman, son of the marquis
 * Jehan de Louvois (13th century), French trouvère
 * Fontaine Louvois, monumental public fountain in Paris
 * Fort Louvois, 17th-century fortification on the Atlantic coast of France
 * Louvois (horse)

title: Louvois


text:
Talk:Main Page/Layout design/Archive 2

I have the feeling, we are mixing up two questions/votes (see comments on most votes...). Lets split them in separate votes:

Vote 1:

 * Many colors current main page
 * Bdesham
 * Arwel
 * Kosebamse - with some reservations regarding the choice of colours (see below - discussion with anthere)
 * One color Main Page/Temp2
 * Fantasy
 * Coma
 * SGBailey 22:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC) as long as it is a light colour and I dislike Temp2.
 * No colors (as it was in the old days)
 * James F.
 * Oliver P.

Vote 2:

 * more emphasis on the "dynamic content" at Main Page/Temp4. Colour is more Question 1, but I'd be interested in suggestions on that too. Note that this temp page is changing as I get comments, so I'm taking this as useful feedback, not as being decisive or consensus-building in any way. Martin
 * Arwel
 * Fantasy (for the colors I prefer Main Page/Temp2)
 * Eloquence (see discussion below)
 * Oliver P. (see discussion below)
 * James F. (see discussion below)
 * Brion (cautiously optimistic; see discussion below)
 * Angela I know I'm voting in more than one place but I want color, less clutter and more dynamic content.
 * Kurt Jansson (with the colors of Main Page/Temp2)
 * whkoh (Dynamic content & single-color)
 * Delirium (dynamic content is good; I prefer colors, but don't care that much)
 * LDan (It seems like the majority wants this, so I'm going to implement it)
 * leave it as it was
 * Coma
 * Bdesham
 * SGBailey 22:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Kosebamse
 * Other folks have given negative comments below - I'm not ignoring them :)
 * Any better proposals?

Vote 3 (statistical):

 * I always start with the Main Page
 * Angela but I don't actually look at it. I log in and then go to my watchlist then recent changes.
 * whkoh for convenience, since my bookmark goes there
 * James F.
 * Bdesham -- yeah, what Angela said
 * I glance to see what's new/in the news/..., and then go to my watchlist Martin
 * Oliver P. - ditto. I might click on a recently deceased person or other newsworthy thing, but I very rarely use any of the other stuff.
 * Kosebamse - ditto
 * SGBailey 22:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC) as a convenient bookmark and to look at the selected articles block, then I do "Recent changes" or login
 * Arwel -- Quick glance at the main page before going to my watchlist.
 * I always start with my watchlist (= I never use the Main Page)
 * Fantasy
 * User:DavidWBrooks ("never" is too strong - "rarely" look at MP)
 * I always start with Recent Changes
 * SGBailey 22:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC) Second page, but where I aim for.
 * Several of the above

Would this kind of Votes make more sense? Fantasy 13:59 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * yes, I think it would -- Tarquin
 * Perhaps it's too early to be voting. Comments would be more useful than numbers. I keep wanting to vote for all of them. Angela

The third question could be helpful to see, if any of us are even using the Main Page, or if we should look for other sources of Opinion... ;-) Fantasy 18:45 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

-

People for the new design: (10)

 * Delirium
 * FearÉIREANN (I like the lack of clutter on Temp3 but not the colour-scheme. A combination of the current colour scheme with Temp3 contents would be interesting to see.) (Done - Main Page/Temp3 Angela)
 * Poor Yorick
 * Eloquence (although I prefer and )
 * User:anthere. Not gonna say I don't like this kind of design, since I helped set the initial one on the fr wiki. I like it better than the old one. Love the colors. However, 1) I support different designs and different organisations-schemes among wikipedias, 2) a table-type design makes it harder to edit 3) there is imho too much information on this page. What about working on point 3 ?
 * Tannin (But see comment below)
 * user:zanimum
 * Angela I prefer it with color than without.
 * (Arwel I prefer colour too. ) -- removing this vote because the question is now meaningless with all the extra pages being designed! Arwel 08:55 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Tim Starling
 * Kosebamse The colours per se are fine, but some degirliefication definitely wouldn't hurt. Whatever we do, please let's keep the introductory paragraph (it seems to be missing from Main Page/Temp4). Degirlification ? What about instoring sex neutrality on this encyclopedia ? Equality of numbers between female and male editors ? The previous design was a man-perception of what an encyclopedia should be :-) User:anthere   Sure. And it is my (male) perception that these colours per se are good (by which I mean that making community matters yellow on the main page is a good idea, as all community pages here are yellow and a coherent design would help everybody find their way around. Blue is a good colour for content as content pages are blue on white and it is also a colour that is traditionally associated with seriousness, and red is obvously a good choice for current or new subjects.) However, it is also my perception that the lilac, pink, and light yellow tones currently used run contrary to (again, my perception) Wikipedia's "dead serious" attitude and soften up the visual impression where clarity would be more desirable. I'm not against pastel, but it should look grown-up. Ahem...I just found out that I did't write anything gender-related - but I'll try if somebody insists ;-)   actually, IMO, it is not sex neutrality that is under discussion here, so please accept my apologies for my choice of words. WikiRespect, Kosebamse 19:04 7 Jul 2003 (UTC). No problem Kosebamse. Well, you might perhaps write something about different color perceptions and meaning men versus women ? :-) WikiWomen I would if I could offer any more than a personal impression, which unfortunately is not the case. But it looks like an intersting topic (perhaps it covered somewhere under psychology and perception?) Kosebamse 06:30 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Which "new design" is this question asking about? Main Page/Temp, Temp2, Temp3, or Temp4?  I don't think this page is set up too well, there's just too many "new designs". --bdesham 16:05 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

People against the new design: (6)
 * James F.
 * Oliver P.
 * Camembert
 * The Cunctator
 * Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 07:55 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * SGBailey 22:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC) (I Prefer the current main page but with fewer colours. Temp is ok, dislike Temp2, mediocre about temp3, dislike temp4

People against all of the above designs: (-)

 * Color aside, these (nearly identical) layouts are cramped, poorly spaced, and illegible on small screens. Take a look over some old versions of the main page and see what we've gained and what we've lost. Then consider a cleaner layout... (4)
 * Brion
 * Tarquin - yup.
 * Camembert - that's the crux of the thing, really
 * Angela Reducing the clutter is more important that the color, but I think it should have some color, so I'm voting twice.

 * People in favour of Main Page/Temp2 i.e. single-color layout: (4)
 * whkoh (Dynamic content & single-color)
 * Coma
 * Kurt Jansson
 * user:zanimum

What are we voting for? Does "against the new skin" mean that you want it forgotten about forever, or merely reverted temporarily pending discussion? -- Tim Starling 01:52 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't know about anybody else, but I'm thinking of it as a straw poll, nothing more. Putting my name up there means I'm against the new layout, just as it says. Beyond that, I'd have to see how other people feel. --Camembert

 * I'm thinking of it as a straw poll too; just to see who loves/hates it. It seems to me that a lot of people were not properly informed about the permanant change to the Main Page.  I personally like it, but I'd also like to make sure that the Wikipedia population is given a say about it.
 * I think it should go live now. That way people will complain soon enough if something goes wrong. Remember, this is a wiki, after all ;-). --Eloquence 15:07 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * Yeh, a couple of days, and we got complaints. :-/ Poor Yorick

 * Is this a vote for or against the current revision? --Eloquence

 * The current revision. But I think people who don't like the current revision, wouldn't like any minor tweaks of the current revision either.  Wikipedians seem to be split between the bland white camp and the groovy colour camp.  Hm... if there was only a way we can have the Main Page design listed as a preference.... Poor Yorick
 * Agreed. Then everyone can choose the layout that he/she likes...and everyone can be happy and not be confined to the choices made by other people. whkoh 07:22 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * What do you mean by "current revision"? It's changed frequently in the last few hours, from ugly and cramped and hard to read with lots of colors to ugly and cramped and hard to read in black and white and back again. Either way, it's ugly and cramped and hard to read. Color is a silly thing to fight over when the page is so difficult to use. :) --Brion

 * some talk to Talk:Main Page/Temp4
 * more talk to talk:Main Page/Temp4

Poll Question
I'm afraid I'm completely confused by the poll at the top of this page now. There seem to be five different categories. What does "People against both designs" mean? Is this about the old design and the current one, or Main Page/Temp and Main Page/Temp2? -- Oliver P. 03:14 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * THEY'RE ALL DREADFUL! What difference does it make what color scheme? :) --Brion

HMMM!
Since registered users can select a skin of their choosing, why vote? Gad! Am I alone in feeling this "poll" is redundant?

Could someone clearly and patiently explain why it isn't?

I'm all for people submitting new skin designs... Surely choice is the best way forward?

Important: There should certainly be a completely bland skin for those who need no extra stimulation.

JasonM

 * If I show a potential new Wikipedian www.wikipedia.org, I need a really good general startpage. I don't want him to have to log in first and tell him to choose a skin design. Hope this helps as a reason? Fantasy 08:44 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I have to agree with that point, however there will always be personal preference coming into this, my argument is that a "best" skin is not possible, all the designs (temp1 - 4) are highly functional however none are likely to be anyone's true ideal style sheet... Plus the need for some users to switch to an accessible style sheet highlights the usefulness of perhaps DHTML scripted switchable style sheets (see a www.listapart.org [].) It's a thought anyway.

 * Further, in the discussion between dynamic and static content, you can't easily "skin" dynamic content - it needs to be kept updated by an actual human. Martin

 * The content needs updating, the purpose of the style guide (or 'skin') is to provide a drop in format for the information.

What is the purpose of the main page?
It seems to me there are two semi-conflicting jobs for it:

1. To act as an introduction and lead-in for people seeking information (users)

2. To act as an introduction and lead-in for people seeking to be part of wikipedia (participants)

If its main job is No. 1, then it should be more dynamic. If its main job is No. 2, then it should be more like the current configuation. I would vote for No. 2, because I don't think wikipedia is yet in shape to present itself to the world as a product instead of a process: We need more participants before we can concentrate about users, IMHO. And as far as color/boxes/fonts/design, since (*cliche alert*) a camel is a horse designed by a committee, I think this should be left up to the Secret Cabal rather than group-think. - DavidWBrooks 13:41 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I don't get your distinction between "users" and "participants". I expect almost all people arrive here because they were seeking information, and I rather doubt that anyone arrives here with the express purpose of contributing, if they haven't already seen the information. So it's the "users" (in your terminology) that we need to draw in with the Main Page. Personally, I think they'd be more likely to be drawn in by a simple uncluttered page with some interesting topical content. And they'd be turned off by the presence of a cabal! -- Oliver P. 15:35 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * This is the way I look at it: How do people first come to Wikipedia? If they come through Google/search engine looking for information ("users"), they'll go directly to a topic page, not Main Page. If they (like me) come because they read about Wikipedia and were interested in the way it works ("participants"), they'll go to Main Page. So I think Main Page should concentrate on helping/luring the "participant" by being heavy with information ABOUT the project, rather than helping the "user" by being heavy with information IN the project. - DavidWBrooks 16:18 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

See The Read/Talk/Contribute Model. It's based around h2g2, but it applies to Wikipedia too - on Wikipedia it'd be a Read/Correct/Contribute model.

 * 1) Read: The way most people come to Wikipedia will be to read the content. We've got good content now, which is convenient, because that's what gets us readers. If a reader finds something interesting or useful, then they may come back, or visit the main page to see what else there is. Note that pure readers are invisible to us, but a common figure is that there are 20 readers for every person who ever contributes.
 * 2) Correct: We make it easy to correct errors or make tiny improvements to Wikipedia - a spelling mistake here, rewording a sentence there, adding a date there. That helps draw folks into the site, and also improves our content. But they'll probably carry on reading stuff too. The user might also make some suggestion on a talk page, or ask a question on the reference desk.
 * 3) Contribute: After making some minor corrections like this, and building up confidence with the system, some users will move on to become contributors. Assuming they got a good response of course, and weren't flamed to death by some of our more excitable Wikipedians. They might write a brand new article, or completely rewrite a page, or go and research a subject, or design a new front page - whatever they like.

I think it's obvious why folks move from reading to correcting - dislike of typos, or the desire to add a factoid they happen to know. Many folks will be happy to just read/correct and never go further, and that's cool too. But many will go on to make larger and larger edits, just in a natural progression from "ooh, this word is spelt wrong" to "ooh, this article really should have a section on X".

Steering back to the topic, the point is that folks rarely magically become contributors straight away, without going through the reading/correcting stages. Most people will want to find out what flavour the site is, whether they'll feel at home, what the community is like, before writing a five page essay on their specialist subject.

In any case users carry on reading and correcting when they're at the contribution stage. So by having a main page that appeals to the reader and corrector (as Main Page/Temp4 does, I think) we should please everyone. Maybe it should give an additional link to (say) Contribute (just as we give a link to Welcome, Newcomers and About). I'm not convinced that the mishmash of links to random Wikipedia: pages on the Main Page is much use to anyone. Martin 18:06 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Hmmm. I hate to say this, but you're pretty convincing, because there's few things more painful than having your mind changed! I'm afraid you're righter than me: a dynamic Main Page would be better, along the lines of Main Page/Temp4, as long as it can be done frequently enough and consistently. - DavidWBrooks 18:56 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Woo! :)
 * I think you're absolutely right that it would need to be updated frequently - and to a decent standard. But we already do this to some extent, and I think it'd be worth the effort. By the way, I've added a link to the contributing FAQ - does that help address your concerns? Martin

This vote is last hit Monty Pythonesque levels of absurdity. The question keeps changing, new questions keep appearing, new temps appear only to change and become a different version when 'b' votes on them than they were when 'a' voted. At this stage which votes are the 'real' ones, which questions the 'real' ones? Are the 'old' questions replaced by the 'new' ones, or do they live alongside? And how come, among those who are against all the above designs category in one of the categories, we have People in favour of Main Page/Temp2 i.e. single-color layout: (4) - so people who are against all the above designs including Temp2 are included in a category under a headline that has them endorsing Temp2!!! Lewis Carroll could not have written something more absurd.

I have no doubt those responsible for the above are trying their best to sort out the mess. But in trying to 'tweak' things the end result is something that seems to get more confusing every day. So lets just scrap the vote and start again. If we have to have a vote, it has to have clear and unambiguous questions. And because the issue is so complicated, I do not see how you can hope to hold a vote on all the questions simultaneously. The questions are:

1. Colour or no colour? (ie, change old page? Keep old page?)

2 if colour, which colour layout?

3. How much text?

You cannot do all of these at once, without creating a complete mess. The only way is to have a separate vote on each, with each basic decision, decided on its own, leading to the next set of choices. If you want no colour, little text would be largely unworkable, because you would have an almost empty page. Equally, colour would necessitate a limit to text, because fill page with text and colour and you would produce an unreadable mess. So each step would have implications for the options available in the next question.

As Number 1 basically offers you a two-way straight choice (the issue of a lot of colour versus a little colour can be solved when discussing specifically discussing alternative layouts) that can be decided pretty clearly, quickly and cleanly.

And if on 2 and 3 you want to try to reach a consensus, given that you would have a number of choices, one solution is to opt for PR.STV. Everyone lists their name, the options, and casts their preference votes. And when they being counted, using PR.STV ends up allowing everyone to shape the final result.

Finally could someone copyright Temp2? It looks like wiki has found a guaranteed cure for insomia. :-) I mean, what the was the person who designed that page on? And if you can find out ban the substance immediately! :-) FearÉIREANN

 * talk moved to Wikipedia talk:Vote - summary: Jtdirl likes instant-runoff voting (which he calls PR.STV because he's Irish and that's what it's called in Ireland). MyRedDice likes approval voting. Neither like first past the post.

sigh Instant Run-off Voting (IRoV) is NOT the same as PR.STV, though you would not know it from the articles on wiki that merged different systems into one blatently wrong article against the advice of people who kept trying to point out they were different. Given the determination of a couple of people to screw up the articles on voting systems and make a mess of the names against the advice of a range of people who knew the facts, those who did the original articles that were wrongly merged just gave up trying to get things right when so many people seemed intent on getting them wrong! As to First Past the Post (FPtP), it is a crappy undemocratic system that is a mathematical joke, producing ludicrous results with the loser in popular vote being given landslide victories (Thatcher in 1983, the SDP-Liberal Alliance getting less than 5% of the seats on 25% on the votes. FearÉIREANN 21:06 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Shall we take this to talk:instant-runoff voting? Then we can fix whatever this problem is, if indeed it is a problem. Martin

title: Talk:Main Page/Layout design/Archive 2


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Hypercorrection

In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form or phrase they use is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal or educated.

Linguistic hypercorrection occurs when a real or imagined grammatical rule is applied in an inappropriate context, so that an attempt to be "correct" leads to an incorrect result. It does not occur when a speaker follows "a natural speech instinct", according to Otto Jespersen and Robert J. Menner.

Hypercorrection can be found among speakers of less prestigious language varieties who attempt to produce forms associated with high-prestige varieties, even in situations where speakers of those varieties would not. Some commentators call such production hyperurbanism.

Hypercorrection can occur in many languages and wherever multiple languages or language varieties are in contact.

Types of overapplied rules
Studies in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have noted the overapplication of rules of phonology, syntax, or morphology, resulting either from different rules in varieties of the same language or second-language learning. An example of a common hypercorrection based on application of the rules of a second (i.e., new, foreign) language is the use of octopi for the plural of octopus in English; this is based on the faulty assumption that octopus is a second declension word of Latin origin when in fact it is third declension and comes from Greek.

Sociolinguists often note hypercorrection in terms of pronunciation (phonology). For example, William Labov noted that all of the English speakers he studied in New York City in the 1960s tended to pronounce words such as hard as rhotic (pronouncing the "R" as rather than ) more often when speaking carefully. Furthermore, middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than working class speakers did.

However, lower-middle class speakers had more rhotic pronunciation than upper-middle class speakers. Labov suggested that these lower-middle class speakers were attempting to emulate the pronunciation of upper-middle class speakers, but were actually over-producing the very noticeable R-sound.

A common source of hypercorrection in English speakers' use of the language's morphology and syntax happens in the use of pronouns.

Hypercorrection can also occur when learners of a new-to-them (second, foreign) language try to avoid applying grammatical rules from their native language to the new language (a situation known as language transfer). The effect can occur, for example, when a student of a new language has learned that certain sounds of their original language must usually be replaced by another in the studied language, but has not learned when not to replace them.

English
English has no authoritative body or language academy codifying norms for standard usage, unlike some other languages. Nonetheless, within groups of users of English, certain usages are considered unduly elaborate adherences to formal rules. Such speech or writing is sometimes called hyperurbanism, defined by Kingsley Amis as an "indulged desire to be posher than posh".

Personal pronouns
In 2004, Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, said on Voice of America that the correction of the subject-positioned "you and me" to "you and I" leads people to "internalize the rule that 'you and I' is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they should not – such as 'he gave it to you and I' when it should be 'he gave it to you and me.'

However, the linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum write that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear" and that "[t]hose who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption."

H-adding
Some British accents, such as Cockney, drop the initial h from words; e.g. have becomes 'ave. A hypercorrection associated with this is H-adding, adding an initial h to a word which would not normally have one. An example of this can be found in the speech of the character Parker in the marionette TV series Thunderbirds, e.g. "We'll 'ave the haristocrats 'ere soon" (from the episode "Vault of Death"). Parker's speech was based on a real person the creators encountered at a restaurant in Cookham.

The same, for the same reason, is often heard when a person of Italian origins speaks English: "I'm hangry hat Francesco", "I'd like to heat something". This should not be expected to be consistent with the h-dropping common in the Italian accent, so the same person may say "an edge-og" instead of "a hedgehog", or just say it correctly.

Hyperforeignism
Hyperforeignism arises from speakers misidentifying the distribution of a pattern found in loanwords and extending it to other environments. The result of this process does not reflect the rules of either language. For example, habanero is sometimes pronounced as though it were spelled "habañero", in imitation of other Spanish words like jalapeño and piñata. Machismo is sometimes pronounced "makizmo", apparently as if it were Italian, rather than the phonetic English pronunciation which resembles the original Spanish word,. Similarly, the z in chorizo is sometimes pronounced as /ts/ (as if it were Italian), whereas the original Spanish pronunciation has or.

English as a second language
Some English-Spanish cognates primarily differ by beginning with s instead of es, such as the English word spectacular and the Spanish word espectacular. A native Spanish speaker may conscientiously hypercorrect for the word escape by writing or saying scape, or for the word establish by writing or saying stablish, which is archaic, or an informal pronunciation in some dialects.

Serbo-Croatian
As the locative case is rarely found in vernacular usage in the southern and eastern dialects of Serbia, and the accusative is used instead, speakers tend to overcorrect when trying to deploy the standard variety of the language in more formal occasions, thus using the locative even when the accusative should be used (typically, when indicating direction rather than location): "Izlazim na kolovozu" instead of "izlazim na kolovoz".

Hebrew and Yiddish
Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the following hypercorrect pronunciations in Israeli Hebrew are "snobbatives" (from snob + -ative, modelled upon comparatives and superlatives):

 * the hypercorrect pronunciation khupím instead of khofím for 'beaches'.
 * the hypercorrect pronunciation tsorfát instead of tsarfát for 'France'.
 * the hypercorrect pronunciation amán instead of omán for 'artist'.

The last two hypercorrection examples derive from a confusion related to the Qamatz Gadol Hebrew vowel, which in the accepted Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation is rendered as but which is pronounced  in Ashkenazi Hebrew, and in Hebrew words that also occur in Yiddish. However, the Qamatz Qaṭan vowel, which is visually indistinguishable from the Qamatz Gadol vowel, is rendered as in both pronunciations. This leads to hypercorrections in both directions.

Other hypercorrections occur when speakers of Israeli Hebrew (which is based on Sephardic) attempt to pronounce Ashkenazi Hebrew, for example for religious purposes. The month of Shevat is mistakenly pronounced Shvas, as if it were spelled *. In an attempt to imitate Polish and Lithuanian dialects, qamatz (both gadol and qatan), which would normally be pronounced, is hypercorrected to the pronunciation of holam, , rendering ('large') as goydl and  ('blessed') as boyrukh.
 * The consistent pronunciation of all forms of qamatz as, disregarding qatan and hataf forms, could be seen as hypercorrections when Hebrew speakers of Ashkenazic origin attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew, for example, , 'midday' as tzaharayim, rather than tzohorayim as in standard Israeli pronunciation; the traditional Sephardi pronunciation is tzahorayim. This may, however, be an example of oversimplification rather than of hypercorrection.
 * Conversely, many older British Jews consider it more colloquial and "down-home" to say Shobbes, cholla and motza, though the vowel in these words is in fact a patach, which is rendered as in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Hebrew.

Spanish
In some Spanish dialects, the final intervocalic  is dropped, such as in pescado (fish), which would typically be pronounced  but can be manifested as  dialectically. Speakers sensitive to this variation may insert a intervocalically into a word without such a consonant, such as in the case of bacalao (cod), correctly pronounced  but occasionally hypercorrected to.

Outside Spain and in Andalusia, the phonemes and  have merged, mostly into the realization  but ceceo, i.e. the pronunciation of both as  is found in some areas as well, primarily parts of Andalusia. Speakers of varieties that have in all cases will frequently produce  even in places where peninsular Spanish has  when trying to imitate a peninsular accent. As Spanish orthography distinguishes the two phonemes in all varieties, but the pronunciation is not differentiated in Latin American varieties, some speakers also get mixed up with the spelling.

Many Spanish dialects tend to aspirate syllable-final, and some even elide it often. Since this phenomenon is somewhat stigmatized, some speakers in the Caribbean and especially the Dominican Republic may attempt to correct for it by pronouncing an where it does not belong. For example, catorce años '14 years' may be pronounced as catorces año.

German
The East Franconian dialects are notable for lenition of stops /p/ /t/ /k/ to [b], [d], [g]. As such a common hypercorrection is the fortition of properly lenis stops, sometimes including aspiration as evidenced by the speech of Günther Beckstein.

The digraph  in word-final position is pronounced per the Bühnendeutsch standard, but this pronunciation is frequently perceived as nonstandard and instead realized as  or  (final obstruent devoicing) even by speakers from dialect areas that pronounce the digraph  or.

Palatinate German language speakers are among those who pronounce both the digraph $⟨ch⟩$ and the trigraph $⟨sch⟩$ as. A common hypercorrection is to produce even where standard German has  such as in Helmut Kohl's hypercorrect rendering of "Geschichte", the German word for "history" with a  both for the (standard German ) and the $⟨ch⟩$.

Proper names and German loanwords into other languages that have been reborrowed, particularly when they have gone through or are perceived to have gone through the English language are often pronounced "hyperforeign". Examples include "Hamburger" or the names of German-Americans and the companies named after them, even if they were or are first generation immigrants.

Some German speakers pronounce the metal umlaut as if it were a "normal" German umlaut. For example, when Mötley Crüe visited Germany, singer Vince Neil said the band couldn't figure out why "the crowds were chanting, 'Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh!

Swedish
In Swedish, the word att is sometimes pronounced when used as an infinitive marker (its conjunction homograph is never pronounced that way, however). The conjunction och is also sometimes pronounced the same way. Both pronunciations can informally be spelt å. ("Jag älskar å fiska å jag tycker också om å baka.") When spelt more formally, the infinitive marker is sometimes misspelt och. ("Få mig och hitta tillbaka.*")

The third person plural pronoun, pronounced dom in many dialects, is formally spelt de in the subjective case and dem in the objective case. Informally it can be spelled dom ("Dom tycker om mig."), yet dom is only acceptable in spoken language. When spelt more formally, they are often confused with each other. ("De tycker om mig." as a correct form, compared to "Dem tycker om mig"* as an incorrect form in this case). As an object form, using dem in a sentence would be correct in the sentence "Jag ger dem en present" ('I give them a gift.')

Sources cited

 * Labov, William. 1966.  "Hypercorrection by the Lower Middle Class as a Factor in Linguistic Change".  In Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964.  William Bright, ed.  Pp. 84–113.  The Hague: Mouton.
 * Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1970.

title: Hypercorrection