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Snodland

Snodland is a town in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. It lies on the River Medway, between Rochester and Maidstone, and 27 miles from central London. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 10,211.

History
"Snoddingland" is first mentioned in a charter of 838 in which King Egbert of Wessex gave "four ploughlands in the place called Snoddingland and Holanbeorge" (Holborough) to Beornmod, the Bishop of Rochester. Since -ingland names are mostly derived from personal names, the name appears to refer to 'cultivated land connected with Snodd' or Snodda. The Domesday Book of 1086 refers to it as "Esnoiland".

The first Roman advance in the conquest of Britain may have crossed the River Medway near Snodland, although there are other possible locations. The supposed crossing place is marked by a memorial on the opposite side of the river from Snodland, close to Burham. Near this spot, a ferry later carried pilgrims bound for Canterbury along the Pilgrims' Way.

Bishop Gundulph, at the end of the 11th century, built a palace at Halling, which was used by his successors until the 16th century.

Lime working had been carried out at Snodland for centuries, but expanded dramatically in the 19th century, as building boomed. The firm of Poynder and Medlicott began quarrying on the Snodland-Halling border in the early 19th century and the company was taken over by William Lee in 1846. Others followed and the last one was built in 1923 by W. L. H. Roberts at Holborough. Lime for building Waterloo and other London bridges came from the area.

The paper-making industry came to Snodland around 1740, when the May family built a mill which the Hook family took over in 1854. New manufacturing techniques and the coming of the railway in the 1850s improved paper production from five to 70 tons a week. Snodland's population doubled between 1840 and 1857. After the Medway Valley railway was opened on 18 June 1856, the village trebled in size between 1861 and 1881. As a result, the parish boundary was re-aligned in 1898 and again in 1988, both changes absorbing areas of Birling parish, known locally as "Lower Birling".

Snodland is now under a 10-year development plan by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council to redevelop and expand the Holborough part of Snodland. In 2005, Berkeley Homes began the construction of around 1,200 houses on the former Holborough Quarry.

Government
Fifteen members sit on Snodland Town Council. Snodland East ward elects two councillors and Snodland West three councillors on Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council. In the 2011 election, the West ward elected three Conservative councillors, and East ward elected one Conservative and one Labour. Sarah Hohler is the town's member on Kent County Council, and the town is part of the Chatham and Aylesford constituency, represented at Westminster by Conservative Tracey Crouch.

Geography
The town is situated between the North Downs to the west and the river Medway to the east. Leybourne Lakes Country Park was created from disused gravel pits to the south that have been flooded and landscaped to make fishing and wildlife lakes; across the river is the Burham Marsh nature reserve, a tidal reed bed.

Demography
At the 2011 census, Snodland had a population of 10,211.

Economy
Since 1903, Snodland has been the home of the Mid Kent Water Company. After privatisation of the water companies, the owners of Mid Kent Water in October 2006 also bought South East Water, although regulatory issues dragged on until 2007. The two companies were then merged under the name South East Water, whilst retaining the headquarters facilities in Rocfort Road. The company supplies 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.

Culture and community
Since 1986, Snodland has been twinned with Moyeuvre-Grande, a town of similar size, located near Metz in North East France. The towns planned to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the partnership in May 2016.

Snodland has two public houses, The Freemasons Arms and The Monks Head, and two working men's clubs, Snodland WMC and Ham Hill WMC.

Landmarks
The Roman villa in Church Field has survived quite well and has been partially excavated. Aside from the churches (see below), Woodlands Farmhouse on Constitution Hill is a Grade II* listed building dating to the early-mid 15th century. The Mulberry Cottages on the High Street were originally a classical Wealden hall house dating to c1450; there's another hall house at 72 Holborough Rd. There are a number of more recent listed structures, perhaps the most unusual is a mock ruin, built c1850 to the south of the water company headquarters on the High St.

Transport
The town is situated on the A228 road connecting the Medway Towns with Tonbridge. The M20 motorway junction 4 is two miles south of the town and affords good access to London and the Channel Ports. The Snodland by-pass takes heavy commercial traffic away from the town centre.

The railway station was opened on 18 June 1856, on an extension of the North Kent Line from Strood to Maidstone (SER) along the Medway Valley Line. There are peak-time services via HS1 direct to St Pancras; otherwise, passengers for London need to change at Strood or Maidstone Barracks/Maidstone East.

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the Bluebell Hill TV transmitter, BBC London and ITV London can also be received from the Crystal Palace TV transmitter.

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Kent on 96.7 FM, Heart South on 103.1 FM, Gold Radio on 1242 AM and KMFM Maidstone on 105.6 FM.

The town is served by the local newspaper, Kent Messenger.

Education
The Holmesdale School is a Foundation school formerly known as Holmesdale Technology College. It still specialises in technology and is linked to The Malling School in The Malling Holmesdale Federation Trust. There are two primary schools in the village, St Katherine's Primary School and Snodland Church of England Primary School.

Religious sites
All Saints Church dates from the 12th century, and is a Grade I listed building.

Christ Church, in the south of the town, was built after the population growth in the 19th century led to the requirement for a new church. It was designed by Percy Monkton in Early English Gothic Revival style.

St Benedict's Church, Paddlesworth is a Norman church on the Pilgrim's Way about a mile west of the town. It dates from the early 12th century but has spent much of its life as a farm building and is currently in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

There is a Kingdom Hall on Church Field, used by local Jehovah's Witnesses.

In the late 1940s, the defunct Grand Picture Palace cinema on Holborough Road was converted into the Catholic Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, but it was closed in 2007 and redeveloped.

A Primitive Methodist Chapel on Chapel Road closed in 1976 and is now a car showroom.

The Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem on the High St was used until the 1980s but is now a private house, and is called Church House.

The United Church on the High Street closed in 2011 after becoming structurally unsound. The cemetery was opened in 1896, with the house and chapel being designed by Hubert Bensted of Maidstone.

Sport
The Snodland Sports Association was set up in 2008. The 2012–13 season saw the merger of all the senior and junior football clubs in the town. Snodland Town F.C. competes in the Southern Counties East Football League, Division One. The other 13 teams include Snodland Town Reserves FC, Snodland Town Sunday FC and Snodland Town Nomads FC.

Snodland Community Cricket Club play at Rectory Meadow, just off Rocfort Road car park. The Snodland Chess Club, established in 2003, uses the Cricket Pavilion as its playing venue. The chess club has been national champions in two sections of the National Chess Club Championship.

Notable people
The postal pioneer Thomas Fletcher Waghorn (1800–50), shortened the mail route to India from three months to between 35 and 45 days by going through the Egyptian desert. He is buried in the churchyard.

The white reggae singer Judge Dread (real name Alex Hughes, 1945–98) lived in Snodland. Alex Hughes Close is now named after him. Several Judge Dread songs refer to Snodland, such as "Belle of Snodland Town" and "Last Tango in Snodland".

Cultural references
Samuel Beckett used the name "Snodland" in his short play Play of 1963.

"'Before I could do anything he disappeared. That meant she had won. That slut! I couldn't credit it. I lay stricken for weeks. Then I drove over to her place. It was all bolted and barred. All grey with frozen dew. On the way back by Ash and Snodland'" The British jazz/rock band Soft Machine included a track titled Snodland on their 1973 album Seven.

title: Snodland


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Acculturation

Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society. Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new cultural environment as a result of being placed into a new culture, or when another culture is brought to someone. Individuals of a differing culture try to incorporate themselves into the new more prevalent culture by participating in aspects of the more prevalent culture, such as their traditions, but still hold onto their original cultural values and traditions. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both the devotee of the prevailing culture and those who are assimilating into the culture.

At this group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, religious practices, health care, and other social institutions. There are also significant ramifications on the food, clothing, and language of those becoming introduced to the overarching culture.

At the individual level, the process of acculturation refers to the socialization process by which foreign-born individuals blend the values, customs, norms, cultural attitudes, and behaviors of the overarching host culture. This process has been linked to changes in daily behaviour, as well as numerous changes in psychological and physical well-being. As enculturation is used to describe the process of first-culture learning, acculturation can be thought of as second-culture learning.

Under normal circumstances that are seen commonly in today's society, the process of acculturation normally occurs over a large span of time throughout a few generations. Physical force can be seen in some instances of acculturation, which can cause it to occur more rapidly, but it is not a main component of the process. More commonly, the process occurs through social pressure or constant exposure to the more prevalent host culture.

Scholars in different disciplines have developed more than 100 different theories of acculturation, but the concept of acculturation has only been studied scientifically since 1918. As it has been approached at different times from the fields of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, numerous theories and definitions have emerged to describe elements of the acculturative process. Despite definitions and evidence that acculturation entails a two-way process of change, research and theory have primarily focused on the adjustments and adaptations made by minorities such as immigrants, refugees, and indigenous people in response to their contact with the dominant majority. Contemporary research has primarily focused on different strategies of acculturation, how variations in acculturation affect individuals, and interventions to make this process easier.

Historical approaches
The history of Western civilization, and in particular the histories of Europe and the United States, are largely defined by patterns of acculturation.

One of the most notable forms of acculturation is imperialism, the most common progenitor of direct cultural change. Although these cultural changes may seem simple, the combined results are both robust and complex, impacting both groups and individuals from the original culture and the host culture. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have studied acculturation with dominance almost exclusively, primarily in the context of colonialism, as a result of the expansion of western European peoples throughout the world during the past five centuries.

The first psychological theory of acculturation was proposed in W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's 1918 study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. From studying Polish immigrants in Chicago, they illustrated three forms of acculturation corresponding to three personality types: Bohemian (adopting the host culture and abandoning their culture of origin), Philistine (failing to adopt the host culture but preserving their culture of origin), and creative-type (able to adapt to the host culture while preserving their culture of origin). In 1936, Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits provided the first widely used definition of acculturation as: "Those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups...under this definition acculturation is to be distinguished from...assimilation, which is at times a phase of acculturation."

Long before efforts toward racial and cultural integration in the United States arose, the common process was assimilation. In 1964, Milton Gordon's book Assimilation in American Life outlined seven stages of the assimilative process, setting the stage for literature on this topic. Later, Young Yun Kim authored a reiteration of Gordon's work, but argued cross-cultural adaptation as a multi-staged process. Kim's theory focused on the unitary nature of psychological and social processes and the reciprocal functional personal environment interdependence. Although this view was the earliest to fuse micro-psychological and macro-social factors into an integrated theory, it is clearly focused on assimilation rather than racial or ethnic integration. In Kim's approach, assimilation is unilinear and the sojourner must conform to the majority group culture in order to be "communicatively competent." According to Gudykunst and Kim (2003) the "cross-cultural adaptation process involves a continuous interplay of deculturation and acculturation that brings about change in strangers in the direction of assimilation, the highest degree of adaptation theoretically conceivable." This view has been heavily criticized, since the biological science definition of adaptation refers to the random mutation of new forms of life, not the convergence of a monoculture (Kramer, 2003).

In contradistinction from Gudykunst and Kim's version of adaptive evolution, Eric M. Kramer developed his theory of Cultural Fusion (2011, 2010, 2000a, 1997a, 2000a,  2011, 2012 ) maintaining clear, conceptual distinctions between assimilation, adaptation, and integration. According to Kramer, assimilation involves conformity to a pre-existing form. Kramer's (2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2003, 2009, 2011) theory of Cultural Fusion, which is based on systems theory and hermeneutics, argues that it is impossible for a person to unlearn themselves and that by definition, "growth" is not a zero-sum process that requires the disillusion of one form for another to come into being but rather a process of learning new languages and cultural repertoires (ways of thinking, cooking, playing, working, worshiping, and so forth). In other words, Kramer argues that one need not unlearn a language to learn a new one, nor does one have to unlearn who one is to learn new ways of dancing, cooking, talking, and so forth. Unlike Gudykunst and Kim (2003), Kramer argues that this blending of language and culture results in cognitive complexity, or the ability to switch between cultural repertoires. To put Kramer's ideas simply, learning is growth rather than unlearning.

Theory of Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation
Although numerous models of acculturation exist, the most complete models take into consideration the changes occurring at the group and individual levels of both interacting groups. To understand acculturation at the group level, one must first look at the nature of both cultures before coming into contact with one another. A useful approach is Eric Kramer's theory of Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation (DAD). Two fundamental premises in Kramer's DAD theory are the concepts of hermeneutics and semiotics, which infer that identity, meaning, communication, and learning all depend on differences or variance. According to this view, total assimilation would result in a monoculture void of personal identity, meaning, and communication. Kramer's DAD theory also utilizes concepts from several scholars, most notably Jean Gebser and Lewis Mumford, to synthesize explanations of widely observed cultural expressions and differences.

Kramer's theory identifies three communication styles (idolic, symbolic, or signalic ) in order to explain cultural differences. It is important to note that in this theory, no single mode of communication is inherently superior, and no final solution to intercultural conflict is suggested. Instead, Kramer puts forth three integrated theories: the theory Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation, the Cultural Fusion Theory and the Cultural Churning Theory.

For instance, according to Kramer's DAD theory, a statue of a god in an idolic community is god, and stealing it is a highly punishable offense. For example, many people in India believe that statues of the god Ganesh – to take such a statue/god from its temple is more than theft, it is blasphemy. Idolic reality involves strong emotional identification, where a holy relic does not simply symbolize the sacred, it is sacred. By contrast, a Christian crucifix follows a symbolic nature, where it represents a symbol of God. Lastly, the signalic modality is far less emotional and increasingly dissociated.

Kramer refers to changes in each culture due to acculturation as co-evolution. Kramer also addresses what he calls the qualities of out vectors which address the nature in which the former and new cultures make contact. Kramer uses the phrase "interaction potential" to refer to differences in individual or group acculturative processes. For example, the process of acculturation is markedly different if one is entering the host as an immigrant or as a refugee. Moreover, this idea encapsulates the importance of how receptive a host culture is to the newcomer, how easy is it for the newcomer to interact with and get to know the host, and how this interaction affects both the newcomer and the host.

Fourfold models

The fourfold model is a bilinear model that categorizes acculturation strategies along two dimensions. The first dimension concerns the retention or rejection of an individual's minority or native culture (i.e. "Is it considered to be of value to maintain one's identity and characteristics?"), whereas the second dimension concerns the adoption or rejection of the dominant group or host culture. ("Is it considered to be of value to maintain relationships with the larger society?") From this, four acculturation strategies emerge.

 * Assimilation occurs when individuals adopt the cultural norms of a dominant or host culture, over their original culture. Sometimes it is forced by governments.
 * Separation occurs when individuals reject the dominant or host culture in favor of preserving their culture of origin. Separation is often facilitated by immigration to ethnic enclaves.
 * Integration occurs when individuals can adopt the cultural norms of the dominant or host culture while maintaining their culture of origin. Integration leads to, and is often synonymous with biculturalism.
 * Marginalization occurs when individuals reject both their culture of origin and the dominant host culture.

Studies suggest that individuals' respective acculturation strategy can differ between their private and public life spheres. For instance, an individual may reject the values and norms of the dominant culture in their private life (separation), whereas they might adapt to the dominant culture in public parts of their life (i.e., integration or assimilation).

Predictors of acculturation strategies
The fourfold models used to describe individual attitudes of immigrants parallel models used to describe group expectations of the larger society and how groups should acculturate. In a melting pot society, in which a harmonious and homogenous culture is promoted, assimilation is the endorsed acculturation strategy. In segregationist societies, in which humans are separated into racial, ethnic and/or religious groups in daily life, a separation acculturation strategy is endorsed. In a multiculturalist society, in which multiple cultures are accepted and appreciated, individuals are encouraged to adopt an integrationist approach to acculturation. In societies where cultural exclusion is promoted, individuals often adopt marginalization strategies of acculturation.

Attitudes towards acculturation, and thus the range of acculturation strategies available, have not been consistent over time. For example, for most of American history, policies and attitudes have been based around established ethnic hierarchies with an expectation of one-way assimilation for predominantly White European immigrants. Although the notion of cultural pluralism has existed since the early 20th century, the recognition and promotion of multiculturalism did not become prominent in America until the 1980s. Separatism can still be seen today in autonomous religious communities such as the Amish and the Hutterites. Immediate environment also impacts the availability, advantage, and selection of different acculturation strategies. As individuals immigrate to unequal segments of society, immigrants to areas lower on economic and ethnic hierarchies may encounter limited social mobility and membership to a disadvantaged community. It can be explained by the theory of Segmented Assimilation, which is used to describe the situation when immigrants individuals or groups assimilate to the culture of different segments of the society of the host country. The outcome of whether entering the upper class, middle class, or lower class is largely determined by the socioeconomic status of the last generation.

On a broad scale study, involving immigrants in 13 immigration-receiving countries, the experience of discrimination was positively related to the maintenance of the immigrants' ethnic culture. In other words, immigrants that maintain their cultural practices and values are more likely to be discriminated against than those whom abandon their culture. Further research has also identified that the acculturation strategies and experiences of immigrants can be significantly influenced by the acculturation preferences of the members of the host society. The degree of intergroup and interethnic contact has also been shown to influence acculturation preferences between groups, support for multilingual and multicultural maintenance of minority groups, and openness towards multiculturalism. Enhancing understanding of out-groups, nurturing empathy, fostering community, minimizing social distance and prejudice, and shaping positive intentions and behaviors contribute to improved interethnic and intercultural relations through intergroup contact.

Most individuals show variation in both their ideal and chosen acculturation strategies across different domains of their lives. For example, among immigrants, it is often easier and more desired to acculturate to their host society's attitudes towards politics and government, than it is to acculturate to new attitudes about religion, principles, values, and customs.

Mindsponge mechanism
The mindsponge mechanism describes acculturation from the standpoint of information absorption and ejection processes of cultural values. It suggests that each person has a mindset (or a set of core values) that influences their thinking and behaviors, and the person's acculturation happens when their core cultural values alter. When a person is exposed to new cultural values and believes that those values are subjectively beneficial, they are more likely to accept those values to enter the mindset and possibly replace the core cultural values. However, when the emerging and existing values conflict with each other, it does necessarily lead to the rejection of the weaker (or less subjectively valuable) values, but they can co-exist and subsequently influence the person's thinking and behaviors. This phenomenon can be called cultural additivity.

The mechanism has been evidenced by natural and social laws, and elaborated in the mindsponge theory.

Acculturative stress
The large flux of migrants around the world has sparked scholarly interest in acculturation, and how it can specifically affect health by altering levels of stress, access to health resources, and attitudes towards health. The effects of acculturation on physical health is thought to be a major factor in the immigrant paradox, which argues that first generation immigrants tend to have better health outcomes than non-immigrants. Although this term has been popularized, most of the academic literature supports the opposite conclusion, or that immigrants have poorer health outcomes than their host culture counterparts.

One prominent explanation for the negative health behaviors and outcomes (e.g. substance use, low birth weight) associated with the acculturation process is the acculturative stress theory. Acculturative stress refers to the stress response of immigrants in response to their experiences of acculturation. Stressors can include but are not limited to the pressures of learning a new language, maintaining one's native language, balancing differing cultural values, and brokering between native and host differences in acceptable social behaviors. Acculturative stress can manifest in many ways, including but not limited to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other forms of mental and physical maladaptation. Stress caused by acculturation has been heavily documented in phenomenological research on the acculturation of a large variety of immigrants. This research has shown that acculturation is a "fatiguing experience requiring a constant stream of bodily energy," and is both an "individual and familial endeavor" involving "enduring loneliness caused by seemingly insurmountable language barriers".

One important distinction when it comes to risk for acculturative stress is degree of willingness, or migration status, which can differ greatly if one enters a country as a voluntary immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker, or sojourner. According to several studies, voluntary migrants experience roughly 50% less acculturative stress than refugees, making this an important distinction. According to Schwartz (2010), there are four main categories of migrants: This type of entry distinction is important, but acculturative stress can also vary significantly within and between ethnic groups. Much of the scholarly work on this topic has focused on Asian and Latino/a immigrants, however, more research is needed on the effects of acculturative stress on other ethnic immigrant groups. Among U.S. Latinos, higher levels of adoption of the American host culture has been associated with negative effects on health behaviors and outcomes, such as increased risk for depression and discrimination, and increased risk for low self-esteem. However, some individuals also report "finding relief and protection in relationships" and "feeling worse and then feeling better about oneself with increased competencies" during the acculturative process. Again, these differences can be attributed to the age of the immigrant, the manner in which an immigrant exited their home country, and how the immigrant is received by both the original and host cultures. Recent research has compared the acculturative processes of documented Mexican-American immigrants and undocumented Mexican-American immigrants and found significant differences in their experiences and levels of acculturative stress. Both groups of Mexican-American immigrants faced similar risks for depression and discrimination from the host (Americans), but the undocumented group of Mexican-American immigrants also faced discrimination, hostility, and exclusion by their own ethnic group (Mexicans) because of their unauthorized legal status. These studies highlight the complexities of acculturative stress, the degree of variability in health outcomes, and the need for specificity over generalizations when discussing potential or actual health outcomes.
 * 1) Voluntary immigrants: those that leave their country of origin to find employment, economic opportunity, advanced education, marriage, or to reunite with family members that have already immigrated.
 * 2) Refugees: those who have been involuntarily displaced by persecution, war, or natural disasters.
 * 3) Asylum seekers: those who willingly leave their native country to flee persecution or violence.
 * 4) Sojourners: those who relocate to a new country on a time-limited basis and for a specific purpose. It is important to note that this group fully intends to return to their native country.

Researchers recently uncovered another layer of complications in this field, where survey data has either combined several ethnic groups together or has labeled an ethnic group incorrectly. When these generalizations occur, nuances and subtleties about a person or group's experience of acculturation or acculturative stress can be diluted or lost. For example, much of the scholarly literature on this topic uses U.S. Census data. The Census incorrectly labels Arab-Americans as Caucasian or "White". By doing so, this data set omits many factors about the Muslim Arab-American migrant experience, including but not limited to acculturation and acculturative stress. This is of particular importance after the events of September 11, 2001, since Muslim Arab-Americans have faced increased prejudice and discrimination, leaving this religious ethnic community with an increased risk of acculturative stress. Research focusing on the adolescent Muslim Arab American experience of acculturation has also found that youth who experience acculturative stress during the identity formation process are at a higher risk for low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

Some researchers argue that education, social support, hopefulness about employment opportunities, financial resources, family cohesion, maintenance of traditional cultural values, and high socioeconomic status (SES) serve as protections or mediators against acculturative stress. Previous work shows that limited education, low SES, and underemployment all increase acculturative stress. Since this field of research is rapidly growing, more research is needed to better understand how certain subgroups are differentially impacted, how stereotypes and biases have influenced former research questions about acculturative stress, and the ways in which acculturative stress can be effectively mediated.

Culture
When individuals of a certain culture are exposed to another culture (host) that is primarily more present in the area that they live, some aspects of the host culture will likely be taken and blended within aspects of the original culture of the individuals. In situations of continuous contact, cultures have exchanged and blended foods, music, dances, clothing, tools, and technologies. This kind of cultural exchange can be related to selective acculturation that refers to the process of maintaining cultural content by researching those individuals' language use, religious belief, and family norms. Cultural exchange can either occur naturally through extended contact, or more quickly though cultural appropriation or cultural imperialism.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by members a different cultural group. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or behavior. These elements are typically imported into the existing culture, and may have wildly different meanings or lack the subtleties of their original cultural context. Because of this, cultural appropriation for monetary gain is typically viewed negatively, and has sometimes been called "cultural theft".

Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting the culture or language of one nation in another, usually occurring in situations in which assimilation is the dominant strategy of acculturation. Cultural imperialism can take the form of an active, formal policy or a general attitude regarding cultural superiority.

Language
In some instances, acculturation results in the adoption of another country's language, which is then modified over time to become a new, distinct, language. For example, Hanzi, the written language of Chinese language, has been adapted and modified by other nearby cultures, including: Japan (as kanji), Korea (as hanja), and Vietnam (as chữ Hán). Jews, often living as ethnic minorities, developed distinct languages derived from the common languages of the countries in which they lived (for example, Yiddish from High German and Ladino from Old Spanish). Another common effect of acculturation on language is the formation of pidgin languages. Pidgin is a mixed language that has developed to help communication between members of different cultures in contact, usually occurring in situations of trade or colonialism. For example, Pidgin English is a simplified form of English mixed with some of the language of another culture. Some pidgin languages can develop into creole languages, which are spoken as a first language.

Language plays a pivotal role in cultural heritage, serving as both a foundation for group identity and a means for transmitting culture in situations of contact between languages. Language acculturation strategies, attitudes and identities can also influence the sociolinguistic development of languages in bi/multilingual contexts.

Food
Food habits and food consumption are affected by acculturation on different levels. Research has indicated that food habits are discreet and practiced privately, and change occurs slowly. Consumption of new food items is affected by the availability of native ingredients, convenience, and cost; therefore, an immediate change is likely to occur. Aspects of food acculturation include the preparation, presentation, and consumption of food. Different cultures have different ways in which they prepare, serve, and eat their food. When exposed to another culture for an extended period of time, individuals tend to take aspects of the "host" culture's food customs and implement them with their own. In cases such as these, acculturation is heavily influenced by general food knowledge, or knowing the unique kinds of food different cultures traditionally have, the media, and social interaction. It allows for different cultures to be exposed to one another, causing some aspects to intertwine and also become more acceptable to the individuals of each of the respective cultures.

Definitions
Anthropologists have made a semantic distinction between group and individual levels of acculturation. In such instances, the term transculturation is used to define individual foreign-origin acculturation, and occurs on a smaller scale with less visible impact. Scholars making this distinction use the term "acculturation" only to address large-scale cultural transactions. Acculturation, then, is the process by which migrants gain new information and insight about the norms and values of their culture and adapt their behaviors to the host culture.

Recommended models
Research has largely indicated that the integrationist model of acculturation leads to the most favorable psychological outcomes and marginalization to the least favorable. While an initial meta-analysis of the acculturation literature found these results to be unclear, a more thorough meta-analysis of 40 studies showed that integration was indeed found to have a "significant, weak, and positive relationship with psychological and sociocultural adjustment". A study was done by John W. Berry (2006) that included 7,997 immigrant adolescents from 13 countries found that immigrant boys tend to have slightly better psychological adaptation than immigrant girls. Overall, immigrants in the integration profile were found to be more well-adapted than those in other profiles. Perceived discrimination was also negatively linked to both psychological and sociocultural adaptation. Various factors can explain the differences in these findings, including how different the two interacting cultures are, and degree of integration difficulty (bicultural identity integration). These types of factors partially explain why general statements about approaches to acculturation are not sufficient in predicting successful adaptation. As research in this area has expanded, one study has identified marginalization as being a maladaptive acculturation strategy.

Typological approach
Several theorists have stated that the fourfold models of acculturation are too simplistic to have predictive validity. Some common criticisms of such models include the fact that individuals don't often fall neatly into any of the four categories, and that there is very little evidence for the applied existence of the marginalization acculturation strategy. In addition, the bi-directionality of acculturation means that whenever two groups are engaged in cultural exchange, there are 16 permutations of acculturation strategies possible (e.g. an integrationist individual within an assimilationist host culture). According to the research, another critic of the fourfold of acculturation is that the people are less likely to cultivate a self-perception but either not assimilate other cultures or continuing the heritage cultures.Rethinking the Concept of Acculturation - PMC The interactive acculturation model represents one proposed alternative to the typological approach by attempting to explain the acculturation process within a framework of state policies and the dynamic interplay of host community and immigrant acculturation orientations.

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

title: Acculturation


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Talk:Clarke's three laws

Langford reference
In the interests of accountability, I am going to credit "Clarke's Third Law for Science-Fiction Writers" to David Langford (rather than, as the anon. contributor has done, to Clarke himself), on the grounds that If you find an earlier reference than mine, feel free to correct me. --Paul A 01:30, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) I have found no other reference to Clarke having said it; and
 * 2) I have found a reference to Langford having said it under circumstances that suggest he made it up.

Redundant
So, we have both

Raymond's Second Law: Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable from a technology.

...and...

Terry Pratchett refers to the law in his Discworld books by having wizard Ponder Stibbons state that "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

Seems like it's stating the same thing twice, no? Perhaps these should be combined somehow, or at the very least, placed next to each other in the list. Rhomboid 00:33, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

 * "Seems like it's stating the same thing twice, no?" No. Raymond's formulation is more precise, and, to be blunt, shows signs of having had some thought put into it, whereas "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology" is a rather obvious joke that was around years before Pratchett used it. That said, I agree that they're too similar to really be listed separately. --Paul A 03:12, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apology
A retroactive apology for the admittedly vain addition of my corollary to the list, removed by Mdob. Sorry! -- Ben 10:43, 15 Dec 2005 (GMT)

Slashdot pastische
Another parody has appeared as a sig on slashdot :
 * Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality

Should I add it ? (I can trace the origins... maybe...) (note : sorry, forgot to sign in...) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.79.66.137 (talk) 17:31, 23 January 2006

As a counter point of view
Rule 3 - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

One could also make the suggestion that .. Any technology which is distinguishable from magic, is therefore not sufficiently advanced 146.200.7.104 (talk) 20:12, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Clarke's three laws


text:
Glory (optical phenomenon)

A glory is an optical phenomenon, resembling an iconic saint's halo around the shadow of the observer's head, caused by sunlight or (more rarely) moonlight interacting with the tiny water droplets that comprise mist or clouds. The glory consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. Due to its appearance, the phenomenon is sometimes mistaken for a circular rainbow, but the latter has a much larger diameter and is caused by different physical processes.

Glories arise due to wave interference of light internally refracted within small droplets.

Appearance and observation
Depending on circumstances (such as the uniformity of droplet size in the clouds), one or more of the glory's rings can be visible. The rings are rarely complete, being interrupted by the shadow of the viewer. The angular size of the inner and brightest ring is much smaller than that of a rainbow, about 5° to 20°, depending on the size of the droplets. In the right conditions, a glory and a rainbow can occur simultaneously.

"Glories can be seen on mountains and hillsides, from aircraft and in sea fog and even indoors."

Like a rainbow, outdoor glories are centred on the antisolar (or, in case of the moon, antilunar) point, which coincides with the shadow of the observer's head. Because this point is diametrically opposite to the sun's (or moon's) position in the sky, it usually lies below the observer's horizon except at sun (or moon) rise and set. Outdoor glories are commonly observed from aircraft. In the latter case, if the plane is flying sufficiently low for its shadow to be visible on the clouds, the glory always surrounds it. This is sometimes called The Glory of the Pilot.

In 2024 astronomers suggested that the existence of glory might explain certain observations of the exoplanet WASP-76b. If this interpretation could be confirmed, it would become the first extrasolar glory-like phenomenon to be discovered.

Brocken spectre
When viewed from a mountain or tall building, glories are often seen in association with a Brocken spectre, also called Mountain spectre, the apparently enormously magnified shadow of an observer, cast (when the sun is low) on clouds below the mountain on which the viewer is standing. The name derives from the Brocken, the tallest peak of the Harz mountain range in Germany. Because the peak is above the cloud level and the area is frequently misty, conditions conducive to casting a shadow on a cloud layer are common. Giant shadows that seemed to move by themselves due to movement of the cloud layer (this movement is another part of the definition of the Brocken spectre), and that were surrounded by glories, may have contributed to the reputation the Harz mountains hold as a refuge for witches and evil spirits. In Goethe's Faust, the Brocken is called the Blocksberg and is the site of the Witches' Sabbath on Walpurgis Night.

Theory
Modern theories of light, first described by Henri Poincaré in 1887, are able to explain the phenomenon of glories through the complex angular momentum (rotation) of the electromagnetic field of a light wave, and do not need quantum theories. A summary of rainbowlike phenomena was provided in Scientific American in 1977, and states: "It is gratifying to discover in the elegant but seemingly abstract theory of complex angular momentum an explanation for these two natural phenomena [Glories and 10th order Rainbows], and to find there an unexpected link between them."

Most 20th century work on the phenomenon of rainbows and glories has focused on determining the correct intensity of light at each point in the phenomenon, which does require quantum theories. In 1947, the Dutch astronomer Hendrik van de Hulst suggested that surface waves are involved. He speculated that the brightness of the coloured rings of the glory are caused by two-ray interference between "short" and "long" path surface waves—which are generated by light rays entering the droplets at diametrically opposite points (both rays suffer one internal reflection). A theory by Brazilian physicist Herch Moysés Nussenzveig suggests that the light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from classical wave tunneling (synonymous in the paper to the evanescent wave coupling), which is an interaction between an evanescent light wave traveling along the surface of the drop and the waves inside the drop.

In culture
C. T. R. Wilson saw a glory while working as a temporary observer at the Ben Nevis weather station. Inspired by the impressive sight, he decided to build a device for creating clouds in the laboratory, so that he could make a synthetic, small-scale glory. His work led directly to the cloud chamber, a device for detecting ionizing radiation for which he and Arthur Compton received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927.

In China, the phenomenon is called Buddha's light (or halo). It is often observed on cloud-shrouded high mountains, such as Huangshan and Mount Emei. Records of the phenomenon at Mount Emei date back to A.D. 63. The colourful halo always surrounds the observer's own shadow, and thus was often taken to show the observer's personal enlightenment (associated with Buddha or divinity).

Stylized glories appear occasionally in Western heraldry. Two glories appear on the Great Seal of the United States: A glory breaking through clouds surrounding a cluster of 13 stars on the obverse, and a glory surrounding the Eye of Providence surmounting an unfinished pyramid on the reverse.

title: Glory (optical phenomenon)


text:
Mockbeggar

Mockbeggar is a geographic name. Places with this name include:

 * Mockbeggar, Swale, in Kent, England.
 * Mockbeggar, Hampshire, a village in England
 * Mockbeggar, a hamlet near Higham, Kent, England
 * Mockbeggar Wharf in Moreton, Merseyside, England

title: Mockbeggar


text:
Mumbles

Mumbles (Mwmbwls) is a headland sited on the western edge of Swansea Bay on the southern coast of Wales.

Toponym
Mumbles has been noted for its unusual place name. The headland is thought by some to have been named by French sailors, after the shape of the two anthropomorphic islands which the headland comprises: the word "Mumbles" may be a corruption of the French les mamelles, meaning "the breasts". Another possible source of the name is the word Mamucium, which is generally thought to represent a Latinisation of an original Brythonic name, either from mamm- ("breast", in reference to a "breast-like hill") or from mamma ("mother", in reference to a local river goddess).

Mumbles Lighthouse was built during the 1790s, and was converted to solar powered operation in 1995.

Notable features
Mumbles Pier was opened in 1898 at the terminus of the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, which was the world's first horse-drawn public passenger train service. It opened 2 Mar 1807 and used horse power to 1877, then steam power to 1929, when it switched to double deck overhead electric tram power, lasting till the line closed in Jan 1960.

Mumbles Lifeboat Station has operated since 1866. In 1947, the entire lifeboat crew was lost at sea, attempting to rescue the crew of the SS Samtampa, in what has become known as the Mumbles lifeboat disaster. The nearest church, All Saints' Church, Oystermouth, contains memorials to the crew.

title: Mumbles


text:
Bell Canada

Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) for enterprise customers in the western provinces.

Its subsidiary Bell Aliant provides services in the Atlantic provinces. It provides mobile service through its Bell Mobility (including flanker brand Virgin Plus) subsidiary, and television through its Bell Satellite TV (direct broadcast satellite) and Bell Fibe TV (IPTV) subsidiaries.

Bell Canada's principal competitors are Rogers Communications in Ontario and Western Canada, Telus in Quebec and Western Canada, and Quebecor (Videotron) in Quebec. The company serves over 13 million phone lines and is headquartered at the Campus Bell complex in the borough of Verdun in Montreal.

Bell Canada is one of the main assets of the holding company BCE Inc., an abbreviation of its full name, Bell Canada Enterprises. In addition to the Bell Canada telecommunications properties, BCE also owns Bell Media (which operates mass media properties including the national CTV Television Network) and holds significant interests in the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, owner of several Toronto professional sports franchises. BCE ranked number 301 on the 2021 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list.

History
Historically, Bell Canada has been one of Canada's most important and most powerful companies and, in 1975, was listed as the fifth largest in the country. The company is named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who also co-founded Bell Telephone Company in Boston, Massachusetts. Bell Canada operated as the Canadian subsidiary of the Bell System from 1880 to 1975. However, unlike the other regional Bell operating companies, Bell Canada had its own research and development labs.

Inception
In the mid-1870s Alexander Graham Bell, who was Scottish-born but lived in Canada, invented an analogue electromagnetic telecommunication device that could simultaneously transmit and receive human speech. In March 1876 he successfully patented his invention in the United States under the title of "Improvement In Telegraphy". His device later adopted the name now used worldwide, the telephone. Bell also patented it in Canada and transferred 75% of the Canadian patent rights to his father, Alexander Melville Bell, with the remaining 25% being awarded to Boston telephone manufacturer Charles Williams Jr. in exchange for 1,000 telephones to be provided to the Canadian market. This order could not be fulfilled due to surging demand in the United States.

For a few years, the senior Bell and his friend and business associate Reverend Thomas Philip Henderson collected royalties from the lease of telephones to customers in the limited late-1870s Canadian market, who either operated their own private telephone lines or subscribed to a third party telecommunications service provider.

In 1879 Bell's father sold his Canadian rights to the National Bell Telephone Company, formed in Boston, Massachusetts earlier that year by the merger of the Bell Telephone Company and the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, which in 1880 reorganized as the American Bell Telephone Company, initiating the Bell System. That same year the Canadian division was renamed to "The Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd.", eventually to be headed by U.S. executive Charles Fleetford Sise from Chicago who served as its first general manager.

The first supplier of telephones to Bell was a company established by Thomas C. Cowherd and his son James H. Cowherd, in a three-storey brick building in Brantford, Ontario, creating Canada's first telephone factory. Thomas and James had been good friends of Alexander Graham Bell, providing stovepipe wire with which Bell conducted his early telephone experiments from his father's home in Tutelo Heights, Ontario, and also building some 2,398 telephones to Bell's specifications for the Canadian market until James Cowherd's untimely death from tuberculosis in 1881. With a government-granted monopoly on Canadian long-distance telephone service, The Bell Telephone Company of Canada was serving 237,000 subscribers by 1914.

Since its early years The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. had been known colloquially as "The Bell" or "Bell Telephone". On March 7, 1968, Canadian federal legislation renamed The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. to Bell Canada.

Competition and territory reduction

Bell Canada extended lines from Nova Scotia to the foot of the Rocky Mountains in what is now Alberta. However, most of the attention given to meeting demand for service focused on major cities in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces.

Atlantic Canada
During the late 19th century, Bell sold its Atlantic operations in the three Maritime provinces, where many small independent companies also operated and eventually came under the ownership of three provincial companies. Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada with several private companies, and a government operation that was transferred to the control of Canadian National Railways.

Bell acquired interests in all Atlantic companies during the early 1960s, starting with Newfoundland Telephone (which later was organized as NewTel Communications) on July 24, 1962. Bell acquired controlling interest in Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company, later known as MT&T, which also owned PEI-based Island Telephone, and in Bruncorp, the parent company of NBTel in 1966. The purchase of MT&T was made despite efforts of the Nova Scotia legislature on September 10, 1966, to limit the voting power of any shareholder to 1000 votes. Bell-owned MT&T absorbed some 120 independent companies, most serving fewer than 50 customers each. Bell-owned NewTel purchased the CNR-owned Terra Nova Tel in 1988.

In the late 1990s, Newtel, Bruncorp, MT&T and Island Tel merged into Aliant, now Bell Aliant which owns many services in rural areas of Ontario and Quebec formerly owned by Bell Canada.

On January 1, 2011, Bell acquired xwave from Bell Aliant for $40 million, an information technology company offering sales and services in Atlantic Canada.

Quebec and Ontario
Independent companies appeared in many areas of Ontario, Quebec and Maritime provinces without adequate Bell Canada service. During the 20th century Bell acquired most of the independent companies in Ontario and Quebec, most notably the purchase of Nexxlink Technologies, a Montreal-based integrated IT solutions and telecommunications provider founded by Karol Brassard. Alongside the acquisition of Charon Systems, Nexxlink now operates today as Bell Business Solutions—a division of Bell Canada. Quebec, however, still has large swaths of relatively rural areas served by Telus Québec (formerly Québec Telephone, later acquired by Telus) and Télébec (now owned by Bell Canada via Bell Aliant) and by some 20 small independent companies. As of 1980, Ontario still had some 30 independent companies, and Bell has not acquired any; the smaller ones were sold to larger independents with larger capital resources. Cellcom Communications is the largest franchisee of Bell Canada, currently operating 25 Bell stores in both Québec and Ontario regions.

Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan
At separate times, the three Prairie provinces acquired Bell Canada operations and formed provincial utility services, investing to develop proper telephone services throughout those provinces; Bell Canada's investment in the prairies had been scant or insufficient relative to growth, and all three had various local telephone companies. The Alberta government's Alberta Government Telephones Commission and Manitoba Government Telephones purchased the Bell operations of their provinces in 1908. Saskatchewan's Department of Railways, Telegraphs and Telephones, established in June 1908, purchased the Bell operations on October 1, 1909; all three provinces' government operations eventually acquired the independent companies.

Having achieved a high level of development, Manitoba moved to privatize its telephone utility and Alberta privatized Alberta Government Telephones to create Telus in the 1990s. Saskatchewan continues to own SaskTel as a crown corporation .Edmonton was served by a city-owned utility, Edmonton Telephones Corporation, that was sold to Telus in 1995. BCE re-gained ownership of the Manitoba system, now known as Bell MTS, on March 17, 2017.

British Columbia
British Columbia, served today by Telus, was served by numerous small companies that mostly amalgamated to form British Columbia Telephone, later known as BC Tel (the last known acquisition was the Okanagan Telephone Company in the late 1970s), which served the province from the 1960s until its merger with Telus. (The amalgamations produced one anomaly: Atlin is surrounded by the territory of Northwestel, implying that the company that established service there was acquired by a company serving territories further south.)

Northern Canada
Although Bell Canada entered the Northwest Territories (NWT) with an exchange at Iqaluit (then known as Frobisher Bay, in the territory now known as Nunavut) in 1958, Canadian National Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Canadian National Railways (CNR), provided most of the telephone service in Canada's northern territories (specifically, Yukon, northern BC and the western NWT). CNR created Northwestel in 1979, and Bell Canada Enterprises acquired the company in 1988 as a wholly owned subsidiary. Bell Canada sold its 22 exchanges in the eastern region of the NWT to Northwestel in 1992, and BCE transferred ownership of the company to Bell Canada in 1999. Northwestel's operating area was in 2001 opened to long-distance competition (which has materialized only in the form of prepaid card business, and service to large national customers with some operating locations in the north) and in 2007 to resale of local telephone service (which has not yet occurred).

Northern British Columbia, northeastern Ontario and the James Bay region of northern Quebec were served by independent companies, though Bell Canada eventually provided service in more far-flung reaches of Ontario and Quebec, acquired ownership interests in companies serving large swaths of northwestern Quebec and northeastern Ontario, and in Northwestel.

Divestiture and deregulation
The Bell System had two main companies in the telephone industry in Canada: Bell Canada as a regional operating company (affiliated with AT&T, with an ownership stake of approximately 39%) and Northern Electric as an equipment manufacturer (affiliated with Western Electric, with an ownership stake of approximately 44%). The Bell Telephone Company of Canada and Northern Electric were structured similarly in Canada to the analogous portions of the Bell System in the United States; the regional operating company (Bell Canada) sold telephone services as a local exchange carrier, and Western Electric (Northern Electric) designed and manufactured telephone equipment.

As part of the consent decree signed in 1956 to resolve the antitrust lawsuit filed in 1949 by the United States Department of Justice, AT&T and the Bell System proper divested itself of Northern Electric in 1956.

In October 1973, AT&T and Bell Canada signed an agreement stating that AT&T would no longer furnish Bell System communications and research to Bell Canada. AT&T's at-the-time chairman John DeButts explained that the main reason for this was because Bell Canada had developed its own research and development lab (Bell-Northern Research), making Bell Canada ready to serve its Canadian landline customers on its own. As a result, AT&T divested Bell Canada on June 30, 1975.

Even though Bell Canada had been divested, it was allowed to participate in Bell System projects which could be completed shortly after its divestiture date.

Northern Electric renamed itself Northern Telecom in 1976, which in turn became Nortel Networks in 1998 with the acquisition of Bay Networks.

Bell Canada acquired 100 percent of Northern Electric in 1964; starting in 1973, Bell's ownership stake in Northern Electric was diminished through public stock offerings, though it retained majority control. In 1983, as a result of deregulation, Bell Canada Enterprises (later shortened to BCE) was formed as the parent company to Bell Canada and Northern Telecom. As a result of the stock transaction used by Northern Telecom to purchase Bay Networks, BCE ceased to be the majority owner of Nortel, and in 2000, BCE spun out its share of Nortel, distributing its holdings to its shareholders.

Between 1980 and 1997, the federal government fully deregulated the telecommunications industry and Bell Canada's monopoly largely ended. Bell Canada currently provides local phone service only in major city centres in Ontario and Quebec.

In July 2006, Bell and former subsidiary Aliant completed a restructuring whereby Aliant, renamed Bell Aliant Regional Communications, took over Bell's wireline operations in much of Ontario and Quebec (while continuing to use the "Bell" name in those regions), as well as its 63% ownership in rural lines operator Bell Nordiq (a publicly traded income trust that controls NorthernTel and Télébec). These are in addition to Bell Aliant's operations in Atlantic Canada. In turn, Bell has assumed responsibility for Bell Aliant's wireless and retail operations. Bell Aliant, now an income trust, is 44% owned by Bell.

On April 30, 2007, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision to allow pay phone rates for Bell Canada, Telus, Bell Aliant, SaskTel, and MTS Allstream to increase from 25 cents to 50 cents, starting as early as June 1. The CRTC also permitted local rural rates to increase by the lesser of the annual rate of inflation or five percent, and removed price caps on optional rural services, such as call display and voicemail. On June 2, 2007, Bell Canada increased the cost of a local pay phone call to 50 cents when paid in cash and one dollar when paid by calling card or credit card, Bell's first increase in pay phone rates since 1981.

In 2009, Bell Canada purchased electronics retailer The Source and all other assets of InterTAN Canada Ltd. from bankrupt Circuit City.

Bell has deployed MPLS on their nationwide fibre ring network to support consumer and enterprise-level IP applications, such as IPTV and VoIP.

On March 17, 2017, BCE Inc. completed its acquisition of Manitoba Telecom Services.

Criticism
Bell Canada has faced controversy and scandal. In late 2011, Bell Canada admitted to a policy of bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent traffic across its network when it announced it would stop the practice of "traffic shaping" during periods of high demand beginning in March 2012. In November 2011, only a few weeks before, the CRTC issued a ruling that stopped the controversial practice of usage-based billing of smaller internet service providers who purchase space on Bell Canada networks, providing a fee structure based on total capacity needed. Bell Canada had originally wanted to charge providers by how much data each user downloaded.

In May 2017, the email addresses of 1.9 million Bell customers were stolen, along with the name and phone numbers of 1.7 million customers. Then in January 2018, there was another data breach affecting about 100 thousand Bell customers.

Bell Canada's mobile phone services has been criticized for monopolistic practices, including during its acquisition of MTS.

Services
Bell Canada provides many different types of telecommunications services.

Voice
Bell Canada provides standard voice service. It used to offer VoIP to customers, branded as "Digital Voice". Businesses can still obtain VoIP service. It now offers BTC (Bell Total Connect) SIP service as a digital voice package.

Voicemail
Bell Home Phone and Bell Mobility provide voicemail service as an optional feature for residences and businesses. Bell Prepaid customers, however, receive a basic voice mail at no additional charge. The complimentary voice mail can store five messages of one minute each, for up to five days.

Wireless
Bell Mobility operates a cellular network in all Canadian provinces. It also owns Virgin Mobile Canada. While it created the Solo Mobile brand in 1999, Bell shut down all standalone Solo stores in 2011 while discontinuing third-party sales of all Solo phones in November 2011. The brand continues to be active for its current customers, but there are no incentives to encourage new subscriptions.

Television

Formerly known as ExpressVu, Bell Satellite TV is a satellite television service provider. There is also a mobile TV service, Bell Mobile TV, and a locked IPTV service known as Bell Fibe TV and Alt TV. The latter is available in most of Alberta, British Columbia, the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Montreal, Québec City and Atlantic Canada.

Internet
Bell Internet provides high speed DSL and fiber to the home FTTH Internet service in many areas where it offers phone service. DSL is offered in various speeds ranging from 500 kbit/s to 100 Mbit/s download and 256 kbit/s to 10 Mbit/s upload on DSL while up to 8 Gbit/s on fiber optic depending on what the local infrastructure can support.

Bell began offering Fibre-to-the-node Internet access to some subscribers in 2010. Bell markets this service under the name "Fibe". Many urban Fibe regions can access all speeds up to and including 50+mbps down and 15+mbps up but some rural Fibe regions can only obtain 16 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up. Non-Fibe regions are limited to legacy DSL technology, supporting speeds of up to 7 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up. Bell Canada has now rolled out Fibre to the Home services to certain subscribers across Eastern Canada, this service can provide guaranteed download of 3 Gbit/s and upload speeds of 3 Gbit/s. In August 2019, the company announced it would cut roughly 200,000 households from a rural internet expansion program after a federal regulator lowered wholesale broadband prices that major telecom companies can charge smaller internet providers.

In a press release issued February 24, 2022, Bell announced that it has acquired Internet service provider EBOX. Bell wishes to keep the brand and the activities of EBOX and let the company continue to operate independently while remaining based in Longueuil.

Legacy
Bell previously offered Bell Home Monitoring, also known as Bell Gardium.

Bell Canada also previously offered cable television services in the United Kingdom via Bell Cablemedia plc (a joint venture with Jones Intercable and Cable & Wireless plc) from 1994 until 1997, when Vidéotron first sold its UK operations to Bell Cablemedia, after which Bell Cablemedia and the UK operations of NYNEX Corporation merged with Cable & Wireless plc to form Cable & Wireless Communications.

Marketing
Bell Canada created the Frank and Gordon beavers to advertise its products from 2006 to 2008.

Coinciding with its advertising campaign as part of its sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bell introduced a new logo and minimalist ad style, with the slogans "Today just got better" (with emphasis on the suffix "er") in English Canada and "La vie est Bell" (a pun on "La vie est Belle" — life is beautiful) in French Canada. The font used in Bell's marketing is a custom typeface known as 'Bell Slim', by Canadian typeface designer Ian Brignell.

Historical financial performance
The financial performance of the company is reported to shareholders on an annual basis. The unit (except where noted) is millions of Canadian dollars.

title: Bell Canada


text:
Bell Internet

Bell Internet, originally and frequently still called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the largest ISP in Canada.

1990s: Early years
Sympatico was launched on November 29, 1995. Originally a national service operated jointly by Canada's incumbent local exchange carriers and operational run as a content portal by MediaLinx, the companies other than Bell (including Aliant) have since retreated to their own brands.

2000s: Value-added services and rebranding
Starting in Summer 2003, Sympatico tried to differentiate its service from its competitors by adding value-added services. This meant the launch of Radial Point's (formerly Zero Knowledge) suite of antivirus, firewall and anti-spyware services. Although a fee was originally required, this is no longer the case, as Bell now provides the service at no extra charge for DSL customers. In 2004, Sympatico added a wireless modem-router hardware upgrade and Microsoft's MSN Premium software to its portfolio. In Summer 2007, Sympatico packaged its Security suite and wireless home networking modem together with its high speed offering as Sympatico Total Internet.

Bell Sympatico changed its name to Bell Internet on August 8, 2008, in conjunction with the Today Just Got Better rebranding. Bell subsidiaries NorthernTel, Télébec and Northwestel continue to brand their Internet services as Sympatico, and users receive an @ntl.sympatico.ca, @tlb.sympatico.ca, or @sympatico.ca email address, respectively.

2010s: Lower caps and faster speeds
On January 3, 2012, customer advocacy blog Stop The Cap! reported that Bell lowered its bandwidth caps in Ontario and Quebec by 10 GB for all new activations of its Fibe services, except for the Fibe 25 plan in Ontario which was lowered by 25 GB instead and Fibe 6 and 7 which remain unchanged. In May 2012, Bell launched new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) plans and simplified its slower DSL plans. FTTH regions can now download and upload at symmetric speeds of up to 175 Mbit/s. The previous changes for lower bandwidth caps were reverted for the new Fibe 15/1 and Fibe 25/7 plans. The Fibe 5/1 plan replaced the older Essential, Essential Plus, Fibe 6 and Fibe 7 plans. The bandwidth cap for Fibe 5/1, however, was lowered from 25 GB to 15 GB.

The Fibe 50/50 FTTH plan was removed from Bell's website by February 2013. In its place, a Fibe 50/10 FTTN plan was made available for the first time. During that same month, usage caps for the 15/10, 25/10 and 50/10 plans were lowered by 15, 25 and 75 GB respectively. February also saw the addition of an unlimited Internet usage add-on for Bell Internet. It costs $30/month and can be added to any residential plan. Those who subscribe to telephony (Bell Mobility or Bell Home Phone) and residential television (Bell Satellite TV or Bell Fibe TV) from Bell can obtain a $20/month discount on the unlimited Internet usage add-on.

Hardware
When Bell started its DSL Internet service, then known as Sympatico, it simply offered one DSL modem, the Nortel 1-Meg Modem, which connected to only one computer. Later, it added more models with routing and wireless LAN capabilities built-in, eliminating the need to purchase additional hardware. Customers previously had to pay extra for such capabilities. Today, both of these features are standard in both all-in-one devices Bell lends to its customers. Standard DSL customers must rent Bell's 2Wire 2701HG-G device, which can create 802.11g wireless access point. VDSL customers consist of any service with more than 1 Mbit/s of upload speed, and they must rent the Cellpipe router 802.11n-capable device instead, which also bundles a superior DSL modem.

As of November 2021, the Home Hub 4000 is Bell's newest modem, for Internet and Fibe TV customers on different types of Plans.
 * 1) The SpeedStream 5200 is a basic, legacy device, distributed during the early 2000s, providing an RJ45 or a USB port for connectivity.
 * 2) The SpeedStream 6520 is a wireless-capable, legacy device, distributed during the mid-2000s,
 * 3) The back of the SpeedStream 6520. Four RJ45 ports, one USB port and 802.11g wireless LAN antenna for connectivity can be seen.
 * 4) The 2Wire 2701HG-G is Bell's current device for standard DSL customers, distributed since 2009. It provides four RJ45 ports and 802.11g wireless LAN for connectivity, but omits the previously available USB port.
 * 5) The Cellpipe 7130 has the same ports as the 2Wire, but also adds ports for a wireless antenna, a console or fiber. (No longer being distributed)
 * 6) The Sagemcom F@st 2864 (marketed as the ″Bell Connection Hub″) was used for ADSL/VDSL and FTTH customers, distributed 2010 to June 2014. It provides one WAN port for FTTH, an RJ11 jack for VDSL connection, four GigE LAN ports, an HPNA connector, 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN for connectivity and 2 USB ports.
 * 7) The Sagemcom F@st 4350 (Marketed as the "Home Hub 1000") is Bell's current device, since June 2014, for internet only customers subscribing to 15/10 or higher and issued on both ADSL/VDSL and FTTH. It provides one WAN port for FTTH, an RJ11 jack for VDSL connection, four GigE LAN ports, 802.11b/g/n (2.4 GHz) wireless LAN for connectivity and 2 USB ports.
 * 8) The Sagemcom F@st 5250 (Marketed as the "Home Hub 2000") is Bell's current device, since June 2014, for internet and Fibe TV customers issued on both ADSL/VDSL and FTTH. It provides one WAN port for FTTH, two grey RJ11 jack for VDSL connection (pair bonding capable), two green RJ11 jacks for VoIP (not currently used), four GigE LAN ports, 802.11b/g/n (2.4 GHz) and 802.11a/n/ac (5 GHz) wireless LAN for connectivity and 2 USB ports.

Services
While Bell Internet mostly sells digital subscriber line (DSL) service, they also offer dial-up service to businesses and grandfathered residential customers. This legacy technology uses a telephone modem to provide Internet access.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
Bell's digital subscriber line (DSL) services are based on ADSL, ADSL2+ and VDSL2 technology. The main differences in both equipments vary from the speed of signal, its length and its ability to overcome the noise of a phone line. Except for very few grandfathered customers, Bell has monthly data transfer limits for all of their tiered Internet services. Both downloads and uploads count towards the limit. The following Bell Internet services are only available in Ontario and Quebec, and availability varies by region. Fibe services can only be used where fibre-to-the-neighbourhood (FTTN) technology is deployed. This currently includes urban Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto as well as most major cities around GTA. Non-FTTN regions offer two plans: Bell Internet and Bell Internet Plus.

Bell has simplified its DSL lineup to offer only two traditional plans and five FTTN plans.

Fibre To The Home (FTTH)
Bell Fibe Internet (FTTH) services are offered by Bell in select regions of Ontario and Quebec. Bell guarantees that the FTTH download and upload speeds advertised will be delivered to the Bell equipment. Bell Fibe Internet is offered at the following speeds: 25/25 Mbit/s, 50/50 Mbit/s, 150/150 Mbit/s, 500/500 Mbit/s, 1.5/0.94 Gbit/s, 3/3 Gbit/s, and 8/8 Gbit/s.

Bell Aliant offers a similar but different Fibe service under the same branding to certain areas in Atlantic Canada.

Dry DSL
Naked DSL, commonly known as dry DSL in Canada, consists of a DSL service without a traditional home phone service. Bell does not charge any additional fees for dry DSL service; previously, there was a charge of $4 per month. Bell charges resellers a monthly fee ranging from $7.25 to $25.10 and a one-time activation fee for dry DSL service. Although Bell still attributes a phone number to a dry DSL line, it cannot be used for phone calls. When one attempts to call a dry DSL phone number, they receive the following message: "The number you are calling cannot receive incoming calls. This is a recording." The message is then repeated in French.

McAfee Security
Since April 11, 2013, Bell offers McAfee Security on all of its current Internet plans.

Add-ons
These are services offered by Bell Internet in addition to DSL or FTTH services, either for free or at additional costs:
 * PC Care, an optional computer technical support service with a monthly fee.
 * Usage Insurance, which increases the monthly bandwidth cap with one or multiple blocks of 25 GB, or provides unlimited Internet usage for a fee.
 * Unlimited Internet Usage
 * Wireless Home Networking

Legacy services
Bell previously offered Portable Internet and Rural Internet services in select rural regions, similarly to what Rogers Communications offered. These services used the Inukshuk Wireless network. Bell is discontinuing these offerings. Customers are encouraged to use Bell Mobility Internet services instead, which generally offer a much lower bandwidth cap.

Bell Entertainment was a bundle offer which included Bell Fibe TV service and 25 Mbit/s "Fibe" DSL. It was only available in some parts of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). Customers can now add any DSL Internet plan to their Fibe TV service. Despite being an IPTV service, Bell does not charge usage-based billing for Bell Fibe TV.

Personal Vault was a backup service, available nationwide both for customers and non-customers.

While inMusic remains available as a music news portal, both the online music store and subscription service were discontinued.

title: Bell Internet


text:
Northern Electric

Northern Electric was an electricity supply and distribution company serving north east England.

History
It had its origins as the North Eastern Electricity Board, formed as part of the nationalisation of the electricity industry by the Electricity Act 1947.

The assets of the board were transferred to Northern Electric plc in March 1990, and the company was privatised in December of the same year. At the end of 1996 the company was acquired by American corporation, CalEnergy, which formed a subsidiary, CE Electric to manage Northern Electric.

The company was split into supply and distribution arms under the Utilities Act 2000. In 2001, the supply business was disposed in an asset swap with npower, exchanging the North East consumer business for the distribution arm of Yorkshire Electricity.

The North East England distribution arm was retained by CE Electric, renamed Northern Electric Distribution Limited (NEDL) and merged with the newly acquired distribution arm of Yorkshire Electricity, which was renamed Yorkshire Electricity Distribution Ltd (YEDL) to form CE Electric UK. It is licensed as the distribution network operator for the North East England region by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets.

title: Northern Electric