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Gratz v. Bollinger

Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6–3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points towards admission to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional.

Case
The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicants, with 100 points needed to guarantee admission. The University gave underrepresented ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, an automatic 20-point bonus towards their score, while a perfect SAT score was worth 12 points.

The petitioners, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, both residents of Michigan, applied for admission to the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA). Gratz applied for admission in the fall of 1995 and Hamacher in the fall of 1997. Both were subsequently denied admission to the university. Gratz and Hamacher were contacted by the Center for Individual Rights, which filed a lawsuit on their behalf in October 1997. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against the University of Michigan, the College of LSA, James Duderstadt, and Lee Bollinger. Duderstadt was president of the university while Gratz's application was under consideration, and Bollinger while Hamacher's was under consideration. Their class-action lawsuit alleged "violations and threatened violations of the rights of the plaintiffs and the class they represent to equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment... and for racial discrimination."

Like Grutter, the case was heard in District Court, appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and asked to be heard before the Supreme Court.

Issue of standing
It has been argued by some that Jennifer Gratz lacked legal standing to bring this action. Gratz applied in 1995, three years before the University of Michigan adopted its points system. Gratz could not claim injury as a result of the points system, and thus, under traditional legal rules, Gratz lacked standing. Gratz chose not to attend the University of Michigan by declining the university's offer to be placed on a waiting list. Every Michigan student who agreed to go onto the waiting list in the spring of 1995 was admitted to the University of Michigan for the Fall 1995 semester. However, Gratz argues that she did fill out the paperwork for the waiting list, but the University claims it got lost.

Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the court. The court's majority found that Gratz and co-plaintiff Hamacher had standing to seek declaratory and injunctive relief, relying on Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656 (1993). Here the "injury in fact" necessary to establish standing in the case was the denial of equal treatment resulting from the imposition of the barrier, and not in the ultimate inability to obtain the benefit.

Opinion of the Court
The court held that because the university’s use of race in its current freshman admissions policy was not narrowly tailored to achieve the respondents' asserted interest in diversity, the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Dissent
Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg dissented. Ginsburg wrote that "government decisionmakers may properly distinguish between policies of exclusion and inclusion...Actions designed to burden groups long denied full citizenship stature are not sensibly ranked with measures taken to hasten the day when entrenched discrimination and its after effects have been extirpated."

title: Gratz v. Bollinger


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Mandarin duck

The mandarin duck (Aix galericulata) is a perching duck species native to the East Palearctic. It is sexually dimorphic, with males showing a dramatic difference from the females. It is medium-sized, at 41 – long with a 65 – wingspan. It is closely related to the North American wood duck, the only other member of the genus Aix. is an Ancient Greek word which was used by Aristotle to refer to an unknown diving bird, and 'galericulata' is the Latin for a wig, derived from galerum, a cap or bonnet. Outside of its native range, the mandarin duck has a large introduced population in the British Isles and Western Europe, with additional smaller introductions in North America.

Taxonomy
The mandarin duck was descibed and illustrated in 1727 by the German explorer Engelbert Kaempfer in his The History of Japan. He wrote: "Of Ducks also there are several differing kinds, and as tame as the Geese. One kind particularly I cannot forbear mentioning, because of the surprizing beauty of its male, call'd Kinmodsui, which is so great, that being shew'd its picture in colours, I could hardly believe my own Eyes, till I saw the Bird it self, it being a very common one." In 1747 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the species in the second volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The Chinese teal". He based his hand-coloured etching on a live specimen kept by the merchant Matthew Decker on his estate at Richmond in Surrey. Decker was a director of the East India Company. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the mandarin duck with the ducks and geese in the genus Anas. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Anas galericulata and cited the earlier publications. The mandarin duck is now placed together with the wood duck in the genus Aix that was introduced in 1828 by the German ornithologist Friedrich Boie. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The genus name is the Ancient Greek word for an unknown diving bird mentioned by Aristotle. The specific epithet is from Latin galericulatum meaning a "peruke" or "wig".

Description
The mandarin duck is among the more diminutive types of waterfowl, with a shorter height and smaller overall body size than the dabbling ducks, and is slightly smaller than its American wood duck relatives. The adult male has a petite, red bill, large white crescent above the eye and reddish face and "whiskers". The male's breast is purple with two vertical white bars, the flanks ruddy, and he has two orange feathers at the back (large feathers that stick up similar to boat sails). The female is similar to the female wood duck, with a grayish-lavender tone to her plumage, and a white eye-ring and stripe running back from the eye. The female is paler on the underside, has a small white flank stripe, and a pale tip to its bill.

Both the males and females have crests, but the purple crest is more pronounced on the male.

Like many other species of ducks, the male undergoes a moult after the mating season into eclipse plumage. When in eclipse plumage, the male looks similar to the female but can be distinguished by its bright yellow-orange or red beak, lack of any crest, and a less-pronounced eye-stripe.

Mandarin ducklings are almost identical in appearance to wood ducklings, and very similar to mallard ducklings. The ducklings can be distinguished from mallard ducklings because the eye-stripe of mandarin ducklings (and wood ducklings) stops at the eye, while in mallard ducklings it reaches all the way to the bill.

Mutations
Various mutations of the mandarin duck are found in captivity. The most common is the white mandarin duck. Although the origin of this mutation is unknown, the constant pairing of related birds and selective breeding is presumed to have led to recessive gene combinations, leading in turn to genetic conditions including leucism.

Distribution and habitat
The species was once widespread in East Asia, but large-scale exports and the destruction of its forest habitat have reduced populations in eastern Russia and in China to below 1,000 pairs in each country; Japan, however, is thought to still hold some 5,000 pairs. The Asian populations are migratory, overwintering in lowland eastern China and southern Japan.

Specimens frequently escape from collections, and in the 20th century, a large, feral population was established in Great Britain; more recently, small numbers have bred in Ireland, concentrated in the parks of Dublin. Now, about 7,000 are in Britain. Owing to its different habitat preferences compared to native water birds, the mandarin duck appears to have had no negative impacts on native wildfowl as a result of its introduction to the UK, as it does not engage in competition with other ducks over their habitats.

Additional populations of mandarin ducks can be found on the European continent, the largest of which is in the region of Berlin. Isolated populations exist in the United States. The town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, has a limited population, and a free-flying feral population of several hundred mandarins exist in Sonoma County, California. This population is the result of several ducks escaping from captivity, then reproducing in the wild. In 2018, a single bird, dubbed Mandarin Patinkin, was seen in New York City's Central Park.

The habitats it prefers in its breeding range are the dense, shrubby forested edges of rivers and lakes. It mostly occurs in low-lying areas, but it may breed in valleys at altitudes of up to 1500 m. In winter, it additionally occurs in marshes, flooded fields, and open rivers. While it prefers fresh water, it may also be seen wintering in coastal lagoons and estuaries. In its introduced European range, it lives in more open habitat than in its native range, around the edges of lakes, water meadows, and cultivated areas with woods nearby.

Behaviour
Compared to other ducks, mandarins are shy birds, preferring to seek cover under trees such as overhanging willows, and form smaller flocks, but may become bolder as a result of becoming tame from frequent interaction with humans.

Breeding
In the wild, mandarin ducks breed in densely wooded areas near shallow lakes, marshes or ponds. They nest in cavities in trees close to water during the spring. A single clutch of nine to twelve eggs is laid in April or May. Although the male may defend the brooding female and his eggs during incubation, he himself does not incubate the eggs and leaves before they hatch. Shortly after the ducklings hatch, their mother flies to the ground and coaxes the ducklings to leap from the nest. After all of the ducklings are out of the tree, they will follow their mother to a nearby body of water.

Food and feeding
Mandarins feed by dabbling or walking on land. They mainly eat plants and seeds, especially beech mast. The species will also add snails, insects and small fish to its diet. The diet of mandarin ducks changes seasonally; in the fall and winter, they mostly eat acorns and grains. In the spring, they mostly eat insects, snails, fish and aquatic plants. In the summer, they eat dew worms, small fish, frogs, mollusks, and small snakes. They feed mainly near dawn or dusk, perching in trees or on the ground during the day.

Conspecific brood parasitism
Like many other bird species, Mandarin ducks display conspecific brood parasitism. Typically, Mandarin ducks lay their eggs in nests of their own relatives or other bird species. In the Zuojia Nature Reserve in Northeast China, 46.1% of Mandarin ducks were found to practice conspecific brood parasitism. Female ducks lay their eggs in different nests for a wide variety of reasons. For example, when there are nest limitations or there are little resources available, female ducks are more likely to practice conspecific brood parasitism. When females practice this behavior, they can benefit from a decrease in the costs from parental care and incubation. Additionally, female parasitic ducks can reduce their risks from predation.

While there was speculation that larger clutch sizes can lead to an increase in resource competition, research has found that the number of parasite eggs had no negative influence on the success of eggs from the host. Over generations, conspecific brood parasitism can increase the net number of offsprings found within each generation. Overall, other duck species that have utilized this behavior to lay their eggs were able to increase their reproductive success by more than double.

Threats
Predation of the mandarin duck varies between different parts of its range. Mink, raccoon dogs, otters, polecats, Eurasian eagle-owls, and grass snakes are all predators of the mandarin duck. The greatest threat to the mandarin duck is habitat loss due to loggers. Hunters are also a threat to the mandarin duck, because often they are unable to recognize the mandarin in flight and as a result, many are shot by accident. Mandarin ducks are not hunted for food, but are still poached because their extreme beauty is prized.

Chinese culture
The Chinese refer to mandarin ducks as, where  (鴛) and  (鴦) respectively stand for male and female mandarin ducks. In traditional Chinese culture, mandarin ducks are believed to be lifelong couples, unlike other species of ducks. Hence they are regarded as a symbol of conjugal affection and fidelity, and are frequently featured in Chinese art.

A Chinese proverb for loving couples uses the mandarin duck as a metaphor: "Two mandarin ducks playing in water". A mandarin duck symbol is also used in Chinese weddings because in traditional Chinese lore, they symbolize wedded bliss and fidelity. Because the male and female plumages of the mandarin duck are so unalike, is frequently used colloquially in Cantonese to mean an "odd couple" or "unlikely pair" – a mixture of two different types of the same category; for example, the drink  and  fried rice. Mandarin ducks featured on the flag of Weihaiwei during British rule.

Korean culture
For Koreans, mandarin ducks represent peace, fidelity, and plentiful offspring. Similar to the Chinese, they believe that these ducks mate for life. For these reasons, pairs of wooden-carved mandarin ducks called wedding ducks are often given as wedding gifts and play a significant role in Korean marriage.

Japanese culture
Similarly, in Japanese the ducks are called oshidori (おしどり/オシドリ/鴛鴦) and are used in the phrase "a couple of lovebirds/happily married couple" (おしどり夫婦). In addition, the Crown Prince wears the Sokutai decorated with a pattern featuring oshidori.

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

title: Mandarin duck


text:
User talk:Noodle~enwiki

Hiya, Noodle. Welcome to wikipedia. You might want to read How_to_edit_a_page, especially the section on "Links, URLs," etc., which will let you know how to make article links in wiki text easily. Also one of our maxims is Be bold in editing pages, so once you've got the basics feel free to jump right in and edit! Hope to see more of you around... Graft 07:46 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

P.S. You can sign your name easily by making three ~ marks in a row - four will sign and timestamp.
 * Sup noodle, this is Jebus. And yeah, u can sign with 4 of the "tilde" marks (~). 63.115.40.141 (talk) 13:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

 * U alive? And remember, sign with ~ . 68.196.242.88 (talk) 20:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

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

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

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

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Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Noodle~enwiki


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RedLibre

RedLibre is a non-profit project in which a combination of people, groups, entities, administrations or companies interested in the development and/or use of networks create a free, community data network that allows users to contribute content and share resources, among other uses.

RedLibre has been connected mainly to Wireless Communities, being a point of union and synergy for them. RedLibre also facilitates the tasks that the different organizations involved decide to perform together.

History
The RedLibre project was created in September 2001 by Jaime Robles, based on the philosophy of the “Open Source” initiative. It was the first free network project in Spain and was inspired by similar movements that were appearing in the United States, such as New York Wireless and Seattle Wireless.

RedLibre was born with a much wider range than a “wireless city”, because it was evaluated that a project of this type would need many people (critical mass) to be able to succeed. Instead of creating a local project, the objective was to create a widespread project in which all Spanish-speaking people could gather and share ideas, projects, and more.

Later on, the National Association of Wireless Network Users (ANURI) was formed with the goal of offering legal support to the users of this type of network.

Since the inception of RedLibre in 2001-2002, hundreds of wireless communities have appeared worldwide. Everyone registered domains and created websites with “su_pueblowireless.net” or “su_ciudadwireless”; it was a moment of new hope and great movement. Many of these wireless communities, against their own philosophy, saw RedLibre as a threat; instead of uniting to generate a common network with RedLibre as a meeting point, they saw it as a project that intended to control the free networks in Spain. These issues slowed the growth and development of free networks in Spain since efforts were divided into small groups that worked independently, without the common goal of generating a free network.

When the issues with communities appeared (because everyone wanted to go off on their own), RedLibre changed its initial direction to try to adapt to the circumstances. Instead of directing itself as a community for people to unite and create a single project, it became a meta-community where support, media, and infrastructure were given to smaller groups. Communities that believed in a common free network gathered together and tried to agree on standardized goals, requirements, and actions.

In December of 2002, the City Council of Gran Canaria organized a meeting of free network communities in Las Palmas. Representatives from many local communities attended the meeting. The first-hand knowledge and the power of speech worked to bring positions closer together.

Devices that had been modified to work internally with Linux systems, referred to as LinuxAP, started to be used. These devices provided flexibility and an endless amount of new possibilities.

By 2003, many of the communities created in previous years had disappeared, and RedLibre also observed a lack of people and the circulation of mailing lists. There has always been a series of problems to solve in wireless communities:

 * A lack of action, feeling of community, and teamwork.
 * A lack of coordination between communities.
 * Excessive expectations?

All of these problems had greatly diminished the number of communities that were active or growing.

In early 2004, with the arrival of new devices using Linux by Linksys and new firmware capable of equipping simple household wireless networks with capacities that none of the expensive professional routers had, RedLibre gave another boost to the creation of communities. Many members of RedLibre collaborated to create new firmware for Linksys routers or to improve existing ones (special mention to the ValenciaWireless team with their version of OpenWrt-eh or the DD-Guifi by Guifi.net).

In 2005 history repeated itself; many communities were once again isolated due to the lack of general collaboration, information, or experience. In addition, there was a technical problem with the RedLibre website and the partial loss of Web content or mailing lists with information from past years.

In 2006, a group of people returned to revive RedLibre, migrating the website from the old Phpnuke portal to the new Drupal CMS. These changes did not just apply to the Web or lists; the true intention was to revamp and update the project, with the experience that many years had given its members.

2007 was marked by several long discussions about what path RedLibre should take; about definitions of free networks or the adoption of a license that defines in-writing what a free wireless network really is (WirelessCommons). Thanks to the help of several volunteers, the Web began to have some movement.

Goals

 * Create a free network:

A free network is a network (in this case wireless) created, run, and managed by the users themselves. A free network is widespread; it does not belong to anyone in particular, but belongs to everyone. RedLibre offers free-of-charge access to one’s own network. Free access means that any person can gain access to any part of the network, at any moment.

 * Bring technology closer to society and promote communication:

A free network promotes the technical training of users and brings new technologies closer to citizens, eliminating many of the barriers that currently exist in the full development of the information society. It also creates new channels of communication between people in a completely free way.

 * Create an emergency network for use in the event of disaster:

In the event of disaster and the consequent collapse of regular communication networks, the free network would be an alternative communication that does not depend on regular transmission media and allows connection to the network at any and all moments. This allows RedLibre to serve as an emergency network and to attend to the needs for communication or voice and data transmission that may arise.

title: RedLibre


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Buggy

Buggy may refer to:
 * Buggy (automobile)
 * Buggy (carriage), a type of horse-drawn vehicle
 * Buggy (surname)
 * Dune buggy or beach buggy, a light, open recreational vehicle
 * Kite buggy, a light, purpose-built vehicle powered by a traction kite
 * Shopping buggy or shopping cart
 * Buggy the Clown, an antagonist in One Piece
 * Baby carriage or buggy
 * Gravity racer or buggy, an unmotorised go-kart
 * Buggy, a class of off-road radio-controlled cars
 * Chief's buggy, a 19th-century horse-drawn fire chief's vehicle
 * Buggy, a U.S. nuclear test conducted under Operation Crosstie, and Operation Plowshare
 * Buggy, a character in the animated preschool TV series Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!

title: Buggy


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Exhibitionism

Exhibitionism is the act of exposing in a public or semi-public context one's intimate parts – for example, the breasts, genitals or buttocks. As used in psychology and psychiatry, it is substantially different. It refers to an uncontrollable urge to exhibit one’s genitals to an unsuspecting stranger, and is called an "Exhibitionistic Disorder" rather than simply exhibitionism. It is an obsessive compulsive paraphilic disorder, which typically involves men exposing themselves to women. It is considered a psychiatric disorder. Such patients need psychological/psychiatric treatment.

The practice may arise from a desire or compulsion to expose oneself in such a manner to groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers for their amusement or sexual satisfaction, or to shock the bystander. Exposing oneself only to an intimate partner is normally not regarded as exhibitionism. In law, the act of exhibitionism may be referred to as indecent exposure or exposing one's person, or by other expressions.

History

Public exhibitionism by women has been recorded since classical times, often in the context of women shaming groups of men into committing, or inciting them to commit, some public action. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gives an account of exhibitionistic behaviors from the fifth century BC in The Histories. Herodotus writes that:

"When people travel to Bubastis for the festival, this is what they do. Every baris carrying them there overflows with people, a huge crowd of them, men and women together. Some of the women have clappers, while some of the men have pipes which they play throughout the voyage. The rest of the men and women sing and clap their hands. When in the course of their journey they reach a community—not the city of their destination, but somewhere else—they steer the bareis close to the bank. Some of the women carry on doing what I have already described them as doing, but others shout out scornful remarks to the women in the town, or dance, or stand and pull up their clothes to expose themselves. Every riverside community receives this treatment."

A case of what appears to be exhibitionism in a clinical sense was recorded in a report by the Commission against Blasphemy in Venice in 1550. John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an early libertine in England, who was known for his exhibitionism.

In the United Kingdom, the 4th draft of the revised Vagrancy Act 1824 included an additional clause "or openly and indecently exposing their persons" which gave rise to difficulties because of its ill-defined scope. During the course of a subsequent debate on the topic in Parliament, the then-Home Secretary Robert Peel observed that "there was not a more flagrant offence than that of indecently exposing the person which had been carried to an immense extent in the parks ... wanton exposure was a very different thing from accidental exposure".

The development of new technologies such as smartphones and tablets has permitted some exhibitionists to reorient their methods such as with nude selfies.

Psychological aspects

The term exhibitionist was first used in 1877 by French physician and psychiatrist Charles Lasègue. Various earlier medical-forensic texts discuss genital self-exhibition, however.

When exhibitionistic sexual interest is acted on with a non-consenting person or interferes with a person's quality of life or normal functioning, it can be diagnosed as exhibitionistic disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5). The DSM states that the highest possible prevalence for exhibitionistic disorder in men is 2% to 4%. It is thought to be much less common in women.

In a Swedish survey, 2.1% of women and 4.1% of men admitted to becoming sexually aroused from the exposure of their genitals to a stranger.

A research team asked a sample of 185 exhibitionists, "How would you have preferred a person to react if you were to expose your privates to him or her?" The most common response was "Would want to have sexual intercourse" (35.1%), followed by "No reaction necessary at all" (19.5%), "To show their privates also" (15.1%), "Admiration" (14.1%), and "Any reaction" (11.9%). Only very few exhibitionists chose "Anger and disgust" (3.8%) or "Fear" (0.5%).

Types of exposure
Various types of behavior are classified as exhibitionism, including:

 * Anasyrma: the lifting of the skirt when not wearing underwear, to expose genitals.
 * Candaulism: when a person exposes their partner in a sexually provocative manner.
 * Flashing:
 * the momentary display of bare female breasts by a woman, with an up-and-down lifting of the shirt or bra
 * or, the exposure of a man's or woman's genitalia in a similar manner
 * Martymachlia: a paraphilia which involves sexual attraction to having others watch the execution of a sexual act.
 * Mooning: the display of bare buttocks by pulling down of trousers and underwear. The act is most often done for the sake of humour, disparagement, or mockery.
 * Reflectoporn: the act of stripping and taking a photograph using an object with a reflective surface as a mirror, then posting the image on the Internet in a public forum. Examples include "images of naked men and women reflected in kettles, TVs, toasters and even knives and forks". The instance generally credited with starting the trend involved a man selling a kettle on an Australian auction site featuring a photograph where his naked body is clearly visible; other instances followed,  and the specific term "reflectoporn" was coined by Chris Stevens of Internet Magazine.
 * Streaking: the act of running naked through a public place. The intent is not usually sexual but for shock value.
 * Telephone scatologia: the act of making obscene phone calls to random or known recipients. Some researchers have claimed that this is a variant of exhibitionism, even though it has no in-person physical component.
 * Underwear as outerwear: the intentional display of underwear as a fashion statement or to be provocative can also be seen as exhibitionism. When revealing thong underwear above pants or a skirt, the result is often called a whale tail.

The DSM-5 diagnosis for exhibitionistic disorder has three subtypes: exhibitionists interested in exposing themselves to non-consenting adults, to prepubescent children, or to both.

title: Exhibitionism


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Gualichu

Gualichu, or gualicho, in Mapuche mythology and mainly in the Tehuelche culture, was an evil spirit or demon, comparable but not similar to the Devil.

Description
As the Araucanians had not a properly called god of evil, Gualichu was not worshipped but feared. He was blamed for every disease or calamity, and all evil happenings were said to be caused by him. Gualichu could enter people's body or objects and then an exorcism had to be performed to expel him (see also demon possession). He was a purely spiritual being and there is no depiction of him. He was believed to live underground.

By extension, the term applied to an evil spell or charm, or a jinx ("It has Gualichu"). In this sense the word has evolved into gualicho and still survives in the local folklore of Chile, Argentina, south of Brazil and Uruguay, in the form of a noun and a verb (engualichar, to cast an evil spell on somebody or something).

title: Gualichu


text:
James Tilly Matthews

James Tilly Matthews (1770 – 10 January 1815) was a British merchant of Welsh and Huguenot descent who was committed to the Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1797 after developing politically charged delusions which led him to disrupt sessions of the House of Commons of Great Britain. These delusions were documented in an 1810 book titled Illustrations of Madness, including Matthews' belief that a group of spies were using an "air loom" to secretly torment him from a distance. Modern historians consider Matthews to be the first fully documented case of schizophrenia.

Voyage to France
In the early 1790s, concerned at the likelihood of war between Britain and France, Matthews travelled to France with the radical David Williams who was acquainted with such Girondins as Jacques Pierre Brissot and Charles-François Lebrun. Williams made efforts at mediation which failed, whereupon Matthews took the lead. He gained the trust of the French government for a short time.

On 2 June 1793 the Girondists were displaced by the Jacobins and Matthews fell under suspicion for his Girondist associations and also because he was suspected of being a double agent. He was arrested and imprisoned for three years during the height of The Terror and was reportedly terrified of the guillotine, like all others. This lasted until 1796 when the French authorities concluded that he was a lunatic and released him.

Committal
Returning to London, Matthews wrote two letters to Lord Liverpool, in which he accused the Home Secretary of treason and complained about conspiracies directed against his life. After interrupting a debate in the House of Commons by shouting "Treason" at Lord Liverpool from the Public Gallery, he was arrested and held at Tothill Fields Bridewell, a secure house of correction in Tothill Fields, Westminster before being admitted to the Bethlem (Bedlam) hospital on 28 January 1797. Upon examination he declared that he had taken part in secret affairs of state (referring to his efforts in France), but had been betrayed and abandoned by William Pitt's administration.

In 1809 his family and friends petitioned for his release, on the grounds that he was no longer insane, but their petition was rejected by the Bethlem authorities. They therefore took out a suit of habeas corpus and two doctors, George Birkbeck and Henry Clutterbuck examined Matthews, declaring him sane. John Haslam, the resident apothecary at Bethlem, begged to differ and maintained that Matthews' delusions, particularly on political matters, rendered him a danger both to public figures and the general public.

Illustrations of Madness
In 1810 John Haslam produced the book Illustrations of Madness (original title: Illustrations of Madness: Exhibiting a Singular Case of Insanity, And a No Less Remarkable Difference in Medical Opinions: Developing the Nature of An Assailment, And the Manner of Working Events; with a Description of Tortures Experienced by Bomb-Bursting, Lobster-Cracking and Lengthening the Brain. Embellished with a Curious Plate). Haslam intended to settle the dispute over Matthews' sanity; his book contains verbatim accounts of Matthew's beliefs and hallucinatory experiences and is considered the original description of the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. The book documented the first full study of a single psychiatric patient in medical history and has become a classic in the medical literature.

The "Air Loom"
Matthews believed that a gang of criminals and spies skilled in pneumatic chemistry had taken up residence at London Wall in Moorfields (close to Bethlem) and were tormenting him by means of rays emitted by a machine called the "Air Loom" or gaseous charge generator. The torments induced by the rays included "Lobster-cracking", during which the circulation of the blood was prevented by a magnetic field; "Stomach-skinning" and "Apoplexy-working with the nutmeg grater" which involved the introduction of fluids into the skull. His persecutors bore such names as "the Middleman" (who operated the Air Loom), "the Glove Woman" and "Sir Archy" (who acted as "repeaters" or "active worriers" to enhance Matthews' torment or record the machine's activities) and their leader, a man called "Bill, or the King".

Matthews' delusions had a definite political slant: he claimed that the purpose of this gang was espionage, and that there were many other such gangs armed with Air Looms all over London, using "pneumatic practitioners" to "premagnetize" potential victims with "volatile magnetic fluid". According to Matthews, their chief targets (apart from himself) were leading government figures. By means of their "rays" they could influence ministers' thoughts and read their minds. Matthews declared that William Pitt was "not half" susceptible to these attacks and held that these gangs were responsible for the British military disasters at Buenos Aires in 1807 and Walcheren in 1809 and also for the Nore Mutiny of 1797.

In 1814 Matthews was moved to "Fox's London House", a private asylum in Hackney, where he became a popular and trusted patient. His delusions appeared to have stopped. The asylum's owner, Dr. Fox, regarded him as sane. Matthews assisted with bookkeeping and gardening until his death on 10 January 1815.

Significance of the Air Loom Gang affair
Although it is impossible to make an unequivocal diagnosis of a person long since deceased, Matthews' description of his torment by the "Air Loom Gang" reads as a classic example of paranoid persecutory delusions experienced as part of a psychotic episode. From this, it can be concluded that his disorder was most likely schizophrenia, although retrospective diagnoses should be treated with caution. Modern historians consider Matthews to be the first fully documented case of schizophrenia.

It should also be noted that while Haslam kept notes on Matthews, Matthews kept notes on Haslam and his treatment in Bethlem. This formed part of the evidence looked at by the House of Commons 'Committee On the Better Regulation of Madhouses in England' in 1815, the findings of which led to Haslam's dismissal and reform of the treatment of patients in the Bethlem Hospital.

Matthews was also important in the history of psychiatry for more practical reasons. During his involuntary confinement he took part in a public competition to design plans for the rebuilding of Bethlem hospital. Bethlem's governors thought so well of the 46 pages of designs submitted by Matthews that they paid him £50  and the drawings finally used to build the new hospital show some features proposed by Matthews.

Fictional representations

 * Haslam's Key, a play written by journalist Danny O'Brien and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1993, imagined Matthews as a forerunner of modern science fiction authors. The titular "key" was a wooden spoon-like device invented by John Haslam, the documenter of Matthew's delusions, which was used to force-feed Bedlam patients.
 * In 2002, the British artist Rod Dickinson built a re-creation of the air loom from Matthews' original plans.
 * Greg Hollingshead's novel Bedlam (2004) concerns the changing relationship between John Haslam and Matthews and is narrated in first-person from the perspective of Haslam, Matthews, and Matthews' wife.
 * The CSI episode "Lab Rats" (2007), Grissom uses Matthews' condition as an analogy in describing The Miniature Killer, a serial killer obsessed with bleach.
 * Robert Rankin's 2007 novel The Da-da-de-da-da Code features a group of villains known as the Air Loom Gang, as well as a doctor named Doctor Archy, a pub called "The Middle Man" and a beer called "King Billy".
 * The game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs from 2013 makes several references to both James Tilly Matthews, the Air Loom and Bedlam.

title: James Tilly Matthews


text:
William Farr

William Farr CB (30 November 1807 – 14 April 1883) was a British epidemiologist, regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics.

Early life
William Farr was born in Kenley, Shropshire, to poor parents. He was effectively adopted by a local squire, Joseph Pryce, when Farr and his family moved to Dorrington. In 1826 he took a job as a dresser (surgeon's assistant) in the Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury and served a nominal apprenticeship to an apothecary. Pryce died in November 1828, and left Farr £500, which allowed him to study medicine in France and Switzerland. In Paris he heard Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis lecture.

Farr returned to England in 1831 and continued his studies at University College London, qualifying as a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in March 1832. He married in 1833 and started a medical practice in Fitzroy Square, London. He became involved in medical journalism and statistics.

General Register Office
In 1837 the General Register Office (GRO) took on the responsibility for the United Kingdom Census 1841. Farr was hired there, initially on a temporary basis to handle data from vital registration. Then, with a recommendation from Edwin Chadwick and backing from Neil Arnott, Farr secured another post in the GRO as the first compiler of scientific abstracts (i.e. a statistician). Chadwick and Farr had an agenda, demography aimed at public health, and the support of the initial Registrar General Thomas Henry Lister. Lister worked with Farr on the census design, to forward the programme.

Farr was responsible for the collection of official medical statistics in England and Wales. His most important contribution was to set up a system for routinely recording the causes of death. For example, for the first time it allowed the mortality rates of different occupations to be compared.

Learned societies and associations
In 1839, Farr joined the Statistical Society, in which he played an active part as treasurer, vice-president and president over the years. In 1855 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He was involved in the Social Science Association from its foundation in 1857, taking part in its Quarantine Committee and Committee on Trades' Societies and Strikes.

Law of epidemics
In 1840, Farr submitted a letter to the Annual Report of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England. In that letter, he applied mathematics to the records of deaths during a recent smallpox epidemic, proposing that:

"'If the latent cause of epidemics cannot be discovered, the mode in which it operates may be investigated. The laws of its action may be determined by observation, as well as the circumstances in which epidemics arise, or by which they may be controlled.'"

He showed that during the smallpox epidemic, a plot of the number of deaths per quarter followed a roughly bell-shaped or "normal curve", and that recent epidemics of other diseases had followed a similar pattern.

Research on cholera
There was a major outbreak of cholera in London in 1849 which killed around 15,000 people. Early industrialisation had made London the most populous city in the world at the time, and the River Thames was heavily polluted with untreated sewage. Farr subscribed to the conventional theory that cholera was carried by polluted air rather than water – the miasmic theory. In addition, through his analysis of several variables and their association with death from cholera, Farr held the belief that elevation was the major contributor to the occurrence of the disease. He also presented how topographical features are able to prevent certain diseases similarly to immunization.

During the 1853-54 epidemic, Farr gathered more statistical evidence. During focused study of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak, the physician John Snow used data supplied by the GRO and applied the (now accepted) mechanism for transmission he had proposed in 1849: people were infected by swallowing something, and it multiplied in the intestines. Snow also examined mortality statistics compiled by the GRO for people supplied with water from two companies in South London – the Southwark & Vauxhall Company (which drew contaminated water from low in the Thames basin) and the Lambeth Water Company (which drew cleaner water from further up the Thames) – and found Southwark & Vauxhall customers were especially likely to suffer. Farr took part in the General Board of Health's 1854 Committee for Scientific Enquiries. The conventional explanation for cholera was still multifactorial; Snow's view of cholera as solely caused by a pathogen was not accepted, though his evidence was taken seriously. Farr's research was detailed and showed an inverse correlation of mortality and elevation.

There was a further epidemic in 1866, by which time Snow had died, and Farr had accepted Snow's explanation. He produced a monograph which showed that mortality was extremely high for people who drew their water from the Old Ford Reservoir in East London. Farr's work was then considered conclusive.

Later life
In 1858, he performed a study on the correlation of health and marriage condition, and found that health decreases from the married to the unmarried to the widowed. In the period 1857–9 the Office ordered a difference engine, a model designed by Swedish followers of Charles Babbage. The intended application was the "British Life Table".

In 1862 Farr was paid £300 for producing a report on the Metropolitan Police Superannuation Fund, an early pension provision for that organisation. He also served as a commissioner in the 1871 census, retiring from the General Register Office in 1879 after he was not given the post of Registrar General, the position going to Sir Brydges Henniker. The same year, Farr received as honours a Companionship of the Bath and the Gold Medal of the British Medical Association for his work in the field of biostatistics.

In his last years, Farr's approach had become obsolescent. Bacteriology had changed the face of the medical issues, and statistics became an increasingly mathematic tool. Medical reformers, too, changed approach, expecting less from legislation and central government.

Farr died aged 75 at his home in Maida Vale, London, and was buried in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, Bromley Common.

Works
In 1837 Farr wrote the chapter "Vital Statistics" for John Ramsey McCulloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire. In January 1837 he established the British Annals of Medicine, Pharmacy, Vital Statistics, and General Science, discontinued in August of that year. He revised a book of James Fernandez Clarke on tuberculosis.

Farr exploited his GRO post compiling abstracts in a way that went beyond the original job description. In so doing he applied the techniques of the English actuary Benjamin Gompertz (the Gompertz curve), and the closely allied statistical "law of mortality" of his fellow actuary Thomas Rowe Edmonds. Farr, by relying on the existing mathematical model of mortality, could use data sampling to cut back the required computation. From the GRO data he constructed a series of national life tables.

The theory of zymotic disease was Farr's contribution to the debate on aetiology. He identified urbanisation and population density as public health issues. In terms of nosology he classed epidemic, endemic and contagious diseases as "zymotic", seen as diseases of filth and overcrowding.

A selection of his statistical writings was published in 1885, edited by Noël Humphreys.

In drama
In "The Sewer King", an episode in the 2003 British television documentary series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, Farr was played by Norman Lovett.

Family
Farr's first wife, whom he married in 1833, had the surname Langford; she died of tuberculosis in 1837. He married Mary Elizabeth Whittal in 1842, and they had eight children. In 1880 a public testimonial was collected to provide for his daughters after he lost money through unwise investments. One daughter, Henrietta, was married to painter and illustrator Henry Marriott Paget, the older brother of illustrators Sidney and Walter Paget. Another daughter, Florence Farr, was also a painter and artist and a model of many famous art deco works of art. The Pagets as well as the Farr sisters lived and worked in Bedford Park, the famous artist's colony in West London.

Recognition
Farr's name features on the Frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Twenty-three names of public health and tropical medicine pioneers were chosen to appear on the School building in Keppel Street when it was constructed in 1926.

In 1884, Farriolla, which is a genus of fungi in the Ascomycota phylum, was named in William Farr's honour.

title: William Farr


text:
Perambulator

Perambulator may refer to:

 * Pram (baby), a type of baby transport
 * Surveyor's wheel, a device for measuring distance

title: Perambulator


text:
Act

Act, ACT, or The Act may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

 * A.C.T, a Swedish band
 * The Act (1989 film), a 1989 British television film by Richard Langridge
 * The Act, American rapper also known as UnoTheActivist
 * Act (band), a British band
 * The Act (band), a Norwegian rock band from the 1980s
 * Act (drama), a segment of a dramatic or musical work (such as a play, opera, or ballet)
 * The Act (musical), a 1977 musical
 * The Act (TV series), a 2019 true crime TV series
 * The Act (video game), a 2007 arcade game produced by Cecropia
 * ACT Music, a German music label
 * ACT Theatre, in Seattle, Washington, US
 * Acting, theatrical performance
 * Acts, a 2012 album by American band RNDM
 * American Conservatory Theater, in San Francisco, California, US
 * Arts & Culture Trust, a South African cultural organisation responsible for the ACT Awards

Business organizations

 * AdaCore, formerly Ada Core Technologies, Ada specialist software company
 * Advanced Cell Technology, stem cell company
 * Advanced Computer Techniques, a U.S. software company 1962–1994
 * Applied Computer Techniques, later Apricot Computers, UK
 * Atria Convergence Technologies, a telecommunications company in India
 * Aviation Composite Technology, an aircraft manufacturer in the Philippines

Education

 * ACT (nonprofit organization), provides assessments etc. for US school students etc.
 * ACT (test), for college admission, US
 * Asian College of Technology, Cebu City, Philippines
 * Australian College of Theology

Government / military

 * AC Transit, a transit agency serving Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California
 * Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation, a rule made by the California Air Resources Board which requires trucks to decarbonize
 * Advanced Concepts Team, a research team of the European Space Agency
 * Agency for Community Transit, a paratransit system for Madison County Transit, Illinois
 * Allied Command Transformation, a NATO strategic command
 * Azienda comunale del traffico, a former transport operator in Lugano, Switzerland
 * Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority (Autoridad de Carreteras y Transportación)

Law

 * Act (document), a document recording the legality of a transaction or contract
 * Acting (law) refers to someone temporarily exercising the powers of a vacant position
 * Act of Parliament, Act of Congress, or Act of Tynwald, a statute or law passed by a legislature
 * Advance corporation tax, a tax collected in the UK until 1999

Political parties and campaigning/advocacy groups

 * Act! (Italy), an Italian political party
 * ACT Alberta, a Canadian coalition to raise awareness about human trafficking
 * ACT Alliance, an alliance of churches for coordinating humanitarian assistance and development work
 * ACT New Zealand, a political party in New Zealand
 * ACT Teachers Partylist, a political party in the Philippines
 * ACT for America, an advocacy group in the United States
 * ACT-CIS Partylist, a political party in the Philippines
 * Action for Children's Television, an organization dedicated to improvements in children's television
 * Agir (France) (French for "Act"), a political party in France
 * Alliance for Change and Transparency, a political party in Tanzania
 * Amazon Conservation Team, a non-profit organization that works to protect the Amazon rainforest
 * America Coming Together, a US political group

Professional organizations

 * Academy of Clinical Thyroidologists, United States
 * Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Philippines
 * American College of Toxicology
 * Association for Citizenship Teaching, UK
 * Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians, UK
 * Association of Corporate Treasurers, UK

Other organizations

 * ACT, former name of Together for Short Lives, a children's charity in the United Kingdom
 * Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust, a UK charity
 * Anglican Church in Thailand
 * The Association of Commercial Television in Europe, a group representing the business interests of commercial television in the EU
 * Australian Civic Trust, an Australian urban design organization

Sports

 * Australia national cricket team
 * American Canadian Tour, a stock car racing series

Transport

 * ACT, the IATA code for Waco Regional Airport, Texas, US
 * ACT, the National Rail code for Ascot railway station, Berkshire, UK

Computing

 * ACT (NASDAQ), Automated Confirmation of Transactions, a trade reporting and clearing system
 * Act! LLC, a customer relationship management software
 * ACT-R, a symbolic cognitive architecture
 * Apple Certified Trainer, one of the Apple certification programs

Medicine

 * Acceptance and commitment therapy, a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy
 * Acetylcholine, (ACt/ACh) a neurotransmitter
 * Activated clotting time, a test of coagulation
 * Adoptive cell transfer, transfer of cells into a patient, usually immune system cells
 * Artemisinin based combination therapy, a treatment for malaria
 * Assertive community treatment, a system for treating mental illness

Other uses in science, technology, and mathematics

 * Act or S-act, the action of a monoid on a set, or a semiautomaton
 * ACT (audio format), a file format
 * Ford ACT, a transit system
 * Astrographic Catalog/Tycho or Tycho-2 Catalogue
 * Atacama Cosmology Telescope, Chile
 * ACT, a codon for the amino acid Threonine

Other uses

 * , in linguistics, glossing abbreviation for active voice
 * ACT, the ISO 639-3 language code for Achterhooks, a Dutch dialect
 * ACT mouthwash, produced by Chattem
 * Acting rank, temporary military rank
 * Australian Capital Territory ("The ACT"), the territory in which the Australian capital city of Canberra is seated
 * Courtney Act, Australian drag queen, singer, and television personality

title: Act


text:
Chinese Soviet Republic

The Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) was a state within China, proclaimed on 7 November 1931 by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders Mao Zedong and Zhu De in the early stages of the Chinese Civil War. The discontiguous territories of the CSR included 18 provinces and 4 counties under the Communists' control. The CSR's government was located in its largest component territory, the Jiangxi Soviet. Due to the importance of the Jiangxi Soviet in the CSR's early history, the name "Jiangxi Soviet" is sometimes used to refer to the CSR as a whole. Other component territories of the CSR included the Northeastern Jiangxi, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Hunan-Western Hubei, Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou, Eyuwan, Shaanxi-Gansu, Sichuan-Shanxi, and Haifeng-Lufeng Soviets.

Mao Zedong was both CSR state chairman and prime minister; he led the state and its government. Mao's tenure as head of a "small state within a state" gave him experience in mobile warfare and peasant organization, which helped him lead the Chinese Communists to victory in 1949.

The Encirclement Campaigns launched by the Kuomintang in 1934 forced the CCP to abandon most of the soviets in southern China. The CCP (including the leadership of the CSR) embarked on the Long March from southern China to the Yan'an Soviet, where a rump CSR continued to exist. A complex series of events in 1936 culminated in the Xi'an Incident, in which Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped and forced to negotiate with the CCP. The CCP offered to abolish the CSR and put the Chinese Red Army under (nominal) Kuomintang command in exchange for autonomy and an alliance against Japan. These negotiations were successful, and eventually led to the creation of the Second United Front. The CSR was officially dissolved on 22 September 1937 and the Yan'an Soviet was officially reconstituted as the Shaan-Gan-Ning and Jin-Cha-Ji Border Regions.

Background
During the First United Front between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the two parties embarked on the Northern Expedition in an effort to unify China under a single government. In 1927, the KMT broke the United Front with the Shanghai Massacre and violently suppressed the Communists. The Communists as well as a few army units loyal to them fled urban areas into the countryside, where they founded the Chinese Workers and Peasants' Red Army to wage civil war. A large group in southern China led by Mao Zedong established a base in the remote Jinggang Mountains. A Kuomintang counterinsurgency campaign forced Mao and his group to relocate once again, and they moved into the border region between Jiangxi and Fujian provinces.

Meanwhile, Communists from other areas of China followed a similar pattern of retreat into the countryside. In order to rebuild the party's strength, the 6th National Congress ordered these rural cadres to organize soviet governments. Beginnging in 1929, soviets began to pop up in isolated regions across the country, including rural Guangxi, the Eyuwan border area, and the Xiangegan border area. Mao's group founded the Jiangxi Soviet, which became the largest and best administered soviet thanks to the number of Communist cadres from across the country that took refuge there. Although the Central Committee of the Communist Party was still underground in Shanghai during this period, the center of political gravity had begun to shift to Mao in Jiangxi.

Establishment and growth
In 1931, the Communist Party decided to consolidate these isolated base areas into a single state, the Chinese Soviet Republic. On 7 November 1931 (the anniversary of the 1917 Russian October Revolution) a National Soviet People's Delegates Conference was held in Ruijin, the capital of the Jiangxi Soviet. The Conference held a formal opening ceremony for the CSR which included a military parade. Notably, communications between the far-flung soviets were so poor (due to their isolation and intense pressure from the Kuomintang) that the second-largest soviet, in Eyuwan, failed to send delegates. Instead, it held its own conference.

With Mao Zedong as both head of state and head of government, the CSR gradually expanded. The CSR reached its peak in 1933. It governed a population which exceeded 3.4 million in an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometers (although the isolated soviets were never connected into one contiguous piece of territory).

Encirclement campaigns
The National Revolutionary Army conducted a series of campaigns against the various soviets of the CSR known as the "encirclement campaigns". The Jiangxi Soviet survived the first, second and third encirclement campaigns thanks to the use of flexible guerrilla tactics. However, after the third counter-encirclement campaign Mao was replaced by Wang Ming, a Chinese communist returning from the Soviet Union. The Chinese Red Army was commanded by a three-man committee, which included Wang Ming's associates Otto Braun (a Comintern military advisor), Bo Gu and Zhou Enlai. The CSR then began a rapid decline, due to its extreme left-wing governance and incompetent military command. The new leadership could not rid itself of Mao's influence (which continued during the fourth encirclement campaign), which temporarily protected the communists. However, due to the dominance of the new communist leadership after the fourth counter-encirclement campaign, the Red Army was nearly halved. Most of its equipment was lost during Chiang's fifth encirclement campaign; this began in 1933 and was orchestrated by Chiang's newly-hired Nazi advisors who developed a strategy of building fortified blockhouses to advance the encirclement.

This was effective; in an effort to break the blockade the Red Army besieged the forts many times, suffering heavy casualties and only limited success. As a result, the CSR shrank significantly due to the Chinese Red Army's manpower and material losses.

The Long March
Since the Jiangxi Soviet could not be held, the Standing Committee appointed Bo (responsible for politics), Braun (responsible for military strategy), and Zhou (responsible for the implementation of military planning) to organize an evacuation. The Communists managed to successfully hide their intentions from the besieging Nationalist forces for long enough to execute a successful breakout. On October 16, 1934, a force of about 130,000 soldiers and civilians under Bo Gu and Otto Braun attacked the line of Kuomintang positions near Yudu. More than 86,000 troops, 11,000 administrative personnel and thousands of civilian porters actually completed the breakout; the remainder, largely wounded or ill soldiers, continued to fight a delaying action after the main force had left, and then dispersed into the countryside. After passing through three of the four blockhouse fortifications needed to escape Chiang's encirclement, the Red Army was finally intercepted by regular Nationalist troops, and suffered heavy casualties. Of the 86,000 Communists who attempted to break out of Jiangxi with the First Red Army, only 36,000 successfully escaped. Due to the low morale within the Red Army at the time, it is not possible to know what proportion of these losses were due to military casualties, and which proportion were due to desertion. The conditions of the Red Army's forced withdrawal demoralized some Communist leaders (particularly Bo Gu and Otto Braun), but Zhou remained calm and retained his command.

This retreat marked the beginning of what would become known as the Long March. During the course of the next two years, Communist forces abandoned almost all of their soviets in southern China that had made up the core of the CSR. The survivors went into hiding or followed Mao to Yan'an, where they took refuge in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region.

Dissolution
The Chinese Soviet Republic continued to exist formally even after the Long March, since the Communists still controlled some areas such as the Hubei-Henan-Shaanxi Soviet. Bao'an was, for a time, the capital until the Communist government was moved to the Yan'an Soviet. The Chinese Soviet Republic was dissolved on 22 September 1937 when the Chinese Communist Party issued, in the Second United Front, its manifesto on unity with the Kuomintang; the Second Sino-Japanese War was only a few weeks old. The Chinese Communist Party remained in de facto control of Yan'an, which was its stronghold for the remainder of the war with Japan.

Administration
The CSR had a central government as well as local and regional governments. It operated institutions including an education system and court system. The CSR also issued currency. It enacted the Constitutional Guideline of CSR in 1934.

Land reform
The most important policy implemented by the soviet governments was land redistribution, which destroyed the landlord-dominated political economy which had existed previously. The CSR issued the 1931 Land Law, which required: "All lands belonging feudal landlords, local bullies and evil gentry, warlords, bureaucrats, and other large private landlords, irrespective of whether they work the lands themselves or rent them out, shall be confiscated without compensation. The confiscated lands shall be redistributed to the poor and middle peasants through the [CSR]. The former owners of the confiscated lands shall not be entitled to receive any land allotments." The property of rich peasants was also confiscated, although rich peasants were entitled to receive land of lesser quality if they farmed it themselves. By 1932, the Communist Party had equalized landholding and eliminated debt within the CSR. Although the 1931 Land Law remained the official policy in the CSR's territory until the Nationalists' defeat of the CSR in 1934, after 1932, the Communist Party was more radical in its class analysis, resulting in formerly middle peasants being viewed as rich peasants.

The Chinese Red Army had modern communications technology (telephones, telegraph and radio, which the warlords' armies lacked), and transmitted wireless coded messages while breaking nationalist codes. At the time, only Chiang Kai-shek's army could match the communist forces.

The CSR declared itself a government of all Chinese workers, Red Army soldiers, and the masses. CSR policy was in large part carried out by mass organizations, particularly the Poor Peasants League, which was composed entirely of poor peasants and farm laborers. Poor peasants composed a majority of the membership of all CSR associations or state bodies.

The CSR issued regulations barring landlords, rich peasants, merchants, religious leaders, and Kuomintang members from participating in its elections. Landlords and rich peasants were barred from joining the biggest civil organizations in the CSR, the Anti-Imperialist League and the Soviet Protection League.

Finance
On 1 February 1932, the Chinese Soviet Republic National Bank was established, with Mao Zemin as president. The CSR Central Mint issued three types of currency: a paper bill, a copper coin and a silver dollar.

The CSR was funded primarily by tax income on grain and rice. It also received voluntary contributions from its core political constituency, the peasantry. During the period 1931 to 1934, the CSR issued three series of government bonds to further finance its operations.

Banknotes

The Central Mint briefly issued both paper bills and copper coins. Neither circulated for long, primarily because the currency could not be used in the rest of China. The paper bill had "Chinese Soviet Republic National Bank" (中華蘇維埃共和國國家銀行) printed on the bill in traditional Chinese characters and a picture of Vladimir Lenin.

Copper coins
Like the paper bill, copper coins issued by the Central Mint also had "Chinese Soviet Republic" (中華蘇維埃共和國) engraved in traditional Chinese. Since coins last longer than paper bills, these coins were issued (and circulated) in a much greater quantity. However, these coins are rarer than the paper bill; copper was needed for ammunition, and these copper coins were recalled and replaced by silver dollars.

Silver dollars
The predominant currency produced by the Central Mint was the silver dollar. Unlike the bills and copper coins, the silver dollars had no communist symbols; they were a copy of silver dollars produced by other mints in China (including the popular coin with the head of Yuan Shikai and the eagle silver dollar of the Mexican peso). This, and the fact that the coin was made of silver, enabled them to be circulated in the rest of China; thus, it was the currency of choice.

When the Chinese Red Army's First Front began its Long March in October 1934, the Communist bank was part of the retreating force; fourteen bank employees, over a hundred coolies and a company of soldiers escorted them with the money and mint machinery. An important duty of the bank was, when the Chinese Red Army stayed in a location for longer than a day, to have the local populace exchange Communist paper bills and copper coins for currency used in the nationalist-controlled regions to avoid prosecution by the nationalists after the Communists left. The Zunyi Conference decided that carrying the entire bank on the march was impractical, and on 29 January 1935, at Tucheng (土城) the bank employees burned all Communist paper bills and destroyed the mint machinery. By the end of the Long March in October 1935, only eight of the original fourteen employees were left; the other six had died along the way.

Taxation
In November 1931, the National Tax Bureau was founded. In 2002, the original building was renovated for the public.

Postage stamps
The Directorate General of Chinese Soviet Posts was founded in Ruijin on 1 May 1932. The first stamps were designed by Huang Yaguang and printed lithographically by the Printing House of the Ministry of Finance in Ruijin. White paper or newspaper was used. They were imperforate, and denominated in the Chinese Soviet silver-dollar currency. They are fairly rare, and sought after by collectors. There are also many forgeries and bogus issues imitating early stamps from the Communist areas.

Intelligence
Zhou Enlai had planted more than a dozen moles in Chiang Kai-shek's inner circle, including his general headquarters at Nanchang. One of Zhou's most important agents, Mo Xiong, was not a communist; however, his contributions saved the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Red Army.

With recommendations from Chiang Kai-shek's secretary-general Yang Yongtai (who was unaware of Mo's Communist activities), Mo rose in Chiang Kai-shek's regime and became an important member in his general headquarters during the early 1930s. In January 1934, Chiang Kai-shek appointed him administrator and commander-in-chief of the Fourth Special District in northern Jiangxi. Mo used his position to plant more than a dozen Communist agents in Chiang's general headquarters, including Liu Yafo (劉亞佛) (who introduced the Chinese Communist Party), Xiang Yunian (項與年) (his Communist handler, whom he hired as his secretary) and Lu Zhiying (acting head of the spy ring, under the command of Zhou Enlai).

After successfully besieging the Ruijin area (the CSR capital) and occupying most of the CSR itself, Chiang was confident that he could defeat the Communists in a final decisive strike. In late September 1934 he distributed his top-secret "Iron Bucket Plan" to general headquarters at Lushan (the summer substitute for Nanchang), which detailed the final push to annihilate the Communist forces. Chiang planned 30 blockade lines supported by 30 barbed wire fences (most electrified) in a 150 km radius around Ruijin to starve the Communists. In addition, more than 1,000 trucks were to be mobilized in a rapid-reaction force to prevent a Communist breakout. Realizing the certainty of Communist annihilation, Mo Xiong handed the several-kilogram document to Xiang Yunian (項與年) the same night—risking his life and those of his family.

With help from Liu Yafo (劉亞佛) and Lu Zhiying, Communist agents copied the intelligence into four dictionaries and Xiang Yunian (項與年) was tasked with bringing it to the CSR. The trip was hazardous, since the nationalist forces arrested and executed anyone attempting to cross the blockade. Xiang Yunian (項與年) hid in the mountains, knocking out four of his teeth with a rock and causing his face to swell. Disguised as a beggar, he tore off the covers of the four dictionaries and covered them with spoiled food at the bottom of his bag. Crossing several blockade lines, he reached Ruijin on 7 October 1934. The intelligence provided by Mo Xiong convinced the Communists in the CSR to abandon their base and retreat before Chiang could reinforce his blockade lines with barbed-wire fences. They mobilized trucks and troops, saving themselves from annihilation.

Historiography
The official history in the People's Republic of China views the Chinese Soviet Republic positively, although it is recognized that the regime was ultimately a failure. In a speech on the 80th anniversary of the CSR's founding, Xi Jinping focused on the fact that the CSR was attempting to do something novel, stating "The Chinese Soviet Republic was the first national workers' and peasants' regime in Chinese history." The efforts of the CSR government are seen as having built the reputation of the CCP and strengthened the Chinese Red Army. Commentaries usually tout the CSR as an experiment that paved the way for the success of the later People's Republic. In the Historical Picture Book of the Chinese Soviet Republic, the Ganzhou Municipal Committee of the CCP called the CSR a "great rehearsal for the People's Republic of China."

title: Chinese Soviet Republic


text:
Seagram

The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was in the 1990s the largest owner of alcoholic beverage lines in the world.

Toward the end of its independent existence, it also controlled various entertainment and other business ventures. Its purchase of MCA Inc., whose assets included Universal Studios and its theme parks, was financed through the sale of Seagram's 25% holding of chemical company DuPont, a position it acquired in 1981.

Seagram later imploded, with its beverage assets wholesaled off to various industry titans, notably Diageo, Infinium Spirits, and Pernod Ricard. Universal's television holdings were sold to media entrepreneur Barry Diller, and the balance of the Universal entertainment empire and what was Seagram was sold to French conglomerate Vivendi in 2000.

History
In 1857, Waterloo Distillery was founded in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Joseph E. Seagram became a partner with George Randall, William Roos and William Hespeler in 1869 and sole owner in 1883, and the company became known as Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Many decades later, in 1924, Samuel Bronfman and his brothers founded Distillers Corporation Limited, in Montreal, which enjoyed substantial growth in the 1920s, in part due to Prohibition in the United States (the Distillers Corporation Limited name was derived from a United Kingdom company called Distillers Company Limited, which controlled the leading brands of whisky in the UK, and which was doing business with the Bronfmans).

In 1923, the Bronfmans purchased the Greenbrier Distillery in the United States, dismantled it, shipped it to Canada, and reassembled it in LaSalle, Quebec. The Bronfmans shipped liquor from Canada to the French-controlled overseas collectivity Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the then-Dominion of Newfoundland, which was then shipped by bootleggers to rum rows in New York, New Jersey and other states.

In 1928, a few years after the death of Joseph E. Seagram in 1919, the Distillers Corporation acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons from heir and President Edward F. Seagram; the merged company retained the Seagram name. The company was prepared for the end of Prohibition in 1933 with an ample stock of aged whiskeys, ready to sell to the newly-opened American market.

Although he was never convicted of criminal activity, Samuel Bronfman's dealings with bootleggers during the Prohibition-era in the United States have been researched by various historians and are documented in various peer-reviewed articles.

In the 1930s, when Seagram established business in the United States, it paid a fine of $1.5 million to the US government to settle delinquent excise taxes on liquor illegally exported to the US during Prohibition. The US government had originally asked for $60 million.

From the 1950s, most of Distillers-Seagram was owned by the four children of Samuel Bronfman, through their holding company Cemp Investments. The three most popular Seagram distilled products in the 1960s through 1990s were Seven Crown, VO, and Crown Royal.

In 1963, Seagram purchased the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company for $61 million in cash and a $216 million production payment sale to Glanville Minerals Corporation of New York. Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company was merged Frankfort Oil Company, another oil-producing company owned by Seagram. The new firm was named Texas Pacific Oil Company. In 1980, the Bronfman heirs sold the Texas Pacific Oil holdings to Sun Oil Co. for $2.3 billion.

After the death of Samuel Bronfman in 1971, Edgar Bronfman Sr. was named chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) until June 1994 when his son, Edgar Bronfman Jr., was appointed CEO.

In 1978, Seagram's took over the Stonyfell winery in the eastern foothills of Adelaide from Dalgety Australia, around which time the winemaking part of the business at Stonyfell was wound up.

During the early 1980s, Seagram's attempted to acquire St. Joe Minerals. However, it was outbid by Fluor Corporation.

In 1981, cash-rich and wanting to diversify, the U.S.-based subsidiary Seagram Company Ltd. attempted to engineer a takeover of Conoco Inc., a major American oil and gas producing company. Although Seagram acquired a 32.2% stake in Conoco, DuPont was brought in as a white knight by the oil company and entered the bidding war. Seagram lost the bidding war, though in exchange for its stake in Conoco it became a 24.3% owner of DuPont. By 1995, Seagram was DuPont's largest single shareholder with four seats on its board.

In 1986, the company started a TV commercial campaign advertising its Golden wine cooler products. With rising star Bruce Willis as pitchman, Seagram rose from fifth place among distillers to first in just two years.

In 1987, Seagram engineered a $1.2 billion takeover of French cognac maker Martell & Cie.

In 1995, Edgar Bronfman Jr. was eager to enter the film and electronic media business. On April 6, 1995, after being approached by Bronfman, DuPont announced a deal whereby the company would buy back its shares from Seagram for $9 billion. Seagram was heavily criticized by the investment community—the 24.3% stake in DuPont accounted for 70% of Seagram's earnings. Standard & Poor's took the unusual step of stating that the sale of the DuPont interest could result in a downgrade of Seagram's more than $4.2 billion of long-term debt. Bronfman used the proceeds of the sale to acquire a controlling interest in MCA from Matsushita, whose assets included Universal Pictures and its theme parks a year after.

Later in 1998, Seagram purchased PolyGram and Deutsche Grammophon and scattered the assets within Universal Studios, notably Universal Music Group.

The same year, Seagram sold to PepsiCo its juice business Tropicana Products that it acquired in 1988 for $3.1 billion.

In 2000, Seagram's entertainment division was sold to Vivendi, and, after Vivendi had acquired French media giant Groupe Canal+, it became part of the new company, Vivendi Universal, on 11 December 2000.

The beverage division was sold to Pernod Ricard and Diageo. By the time Vivendi began auctioning off Seagram's beverages business, the once-renowned operation consisted of around 250 drink brands and brand extensions in addition to its original high-profile brand names.

In 2002, The Coca-Cola Company acquired the line of Seagram's mixers (ginger ale, tonic water, club soda and seltzer water) from Pernod Ricard and Diageo, as well as signing a long-term agreement to use the Seagram name from Pernod Ricard for these lines.

A license from Pernod Ricard to produce Seagram's Cooler Escapes and Seagram's malt-beverage brands has been held by North American Breweries (formerly KPS) since 2009.

On April 19, 2006, Pernod Ricard announced that they would be closing the former Seagram distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The distillery was instead sold in 2007 to CL Financial, a holding company based in Trinidad and Tobago which then collapsed and required government intervention. They operated the distillery as Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana. In December 2011, the distillery was purchased by MGP Ingredients, headquartered in Atchison, Kansas. It is now known as MGP of Indiana, and continues to be the source of the components of Seagram's Seven Crown, now owned by Diageo.

In a 2013 interview with The Globe and Mail, Charles Bronfman (uncle of Edgar Jr.) stated about the decisions leading to the demise of Seagram: "It was a disaster, it is a disaster, it will be a disaster. It was a family tragedy."

In 2018, Diageo sold several Seagram's brands to Sazerac including Seagram's VO, but retained the Seven Crown brand.

Legacy
The Seagram name survives today in various well-known drinks. Seagram's Seven Crown, used to make the American cocktail, 7 and 7, is produced by Diageo, while Seagram's V.O. is produced by Sazerac. Several brands of coolers are produced under the Seagram name as of 2022: Seagram's Escapes are produced by Genesee Brewing for the American market, while Seagram Island Time is produced by Waterloo Brewing for the Canadian market. The Coca-Cola Company currently produces Seagram's Ginger Ale soda line since 2002 & made it widely available in 2011.

Seagram's House, the former company headquarters in Montreal, was donated to McGill University by Vivendi Universal in 2002, then renamed Martlet House. The landmarked Seagram Building, once the company's American headquarters in New York City, was commissioned by Phyllis Lambert, daughter of Seagram CEO Samuel Bronfman, and designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson. Regarded as one of the most notable examples of the functionalist aesthetic and a prominent instance of corporate modern architecture, it set the trend for the city's skyline for decades to follow, and has been featured in several Hollywood films. On completion in 1958, its costs made it the world's most expensive skyscraper. The Bronfman family sold the Seagram building to TIAA for $70.5 million in 1979.

The Seagram Museum, formerly the original Seagram distillery in Waterloo, Ontario, was forced to close due to lack of funds in 1997. The building is now the home of the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as Shopify. The two original barrel houses are now the Seagram Lofts condominiums. There were almost 5 acre of open land, upon which the Balsillie School of International Affairs was subsequently built; construction began in 2009, and was completed in 2010.

title: Seagram


text:
User:Doom

Too much about me and my thoughts are available elsewhere:

http://obsidianrook.com/doomfiles http://obsidianrook.com/map

Some more wikipedia-centric musings:

The act of writing is an attempt at communication between human beings.

It can not be done without making assumptions about what the audience is likely to know.

An encyclopedia article is a general introduction to a subject which necessarily glosses over some details.

Extreme detail places a cost on the reader: time and mental effort has to be expended. So every article should begin with some sort of summary of the subject, an explanation of why the reader might be interested in delving into the detail that follows.

(Example: don't begin an article about a person with straight, chronological biography. Whatever is of interest about this person, it's not likely it occured at the beginning of their life. First discuss the achievements, then back-up and do a biographical section, if that seems adviseable.)

An encyclopedia article can not be a simple compendium of facts: it's meant to be read by human beings, and it has to be of interest to the audience.

The facts that are presented must be selected and filtered.

(Consider the now common legal technique of attempting to drown the opposition with more data than they can possibly digest. "Disclosure" is required, but nothing prevents them from giving far more than is needed to make it as hard as possible to find anything of significance.)

But the manner of presentation also has to flow as readable prose. Terseness is not the only critereon for good factual writing.

Spend some time pondering the difference between trying to achieve a "neutral point of view" (the stated goal of wikipedia) and an objective one.

A quotation from Neutral_point_of_view

 * A special case is the expression of aesthetic opinions. Wikipedia articles about art, artists, and other creative topics (e.g., musicians, actors, books, etc.) have tended toward the effusive. This is out of place in an encyclopedia; we might not be able to agree that so-and-so is the greatest guitar player in history. But it is important indeed how some artist or some work has been received by the general public or by prominent experts. Providing an overview of the common interpretations of a creative work, preferably with citations or references to notable individuals holding that interpretation, is appropriate. For instance, that Shakespeare is one of the greatest authors of the English language is a bit of knowledge that one should learn from an encyclopedia.

Advocacy Disguised as Neutrality
I think we're agreed advocacy has no place in the Wikipedia, and that the tendency to disguise advocacy as neutrality is totally dishonest. In fact there are many articles in the Wikipedia Style Guide that are essentially attempts at rooting out disguised neutrality.

Unfortunately -- I think I'm required to say "ironically" -- the Style Guide itself, is largely an example of disguised neutrality. It is essentially a compendium of injunctions to writers and editors to encourage them to write in a particular way; but instead of just coming out and saying it that way, the authors pretend that they're making pronouncements about the nature of words, just like all those other "style guides" out there.

But we don't actually know all that much about the nature of words, so what you get in the "Style Guide" is a lot of strangely overbearing flat statements that then have to back up and admit are all actually just "rules of thumb".

If you'd like to test this theory some time, try writing something, anything, in the Style Guide as though you were giving advice to writers (and/or editors) -- my prediction is that it won't last long: people will think it sounds too "personal" and begin trying to give it a (totally false) objective tone.

A case in point, is this material that's still in my Sandbox, an attempt at writing a replacement for the "Peacock Terms" and "Weasel Words" style guides:

Sandbox of Doom

Oh, and here's one of my early, naive attempts at fixing problems in the "Avoid weasel words" article (which lasted for around two seconds):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words&oldid=2640250

names that inspire and mislead
In retrospect, the "-pedia" suffix in "wikipedia" and the tag "the free online encyclopedia" may have been a mistake: reports abound of clueless young students that think the wikipedia is just like any other encyclopedia.

But then, the name got across the goal much more quickly than a more neutral name would've, like say "neutropia".

(Or "everything2"?)

Similarly, I suspect that the Wikipedia "Style Guide" is not much like those other "Style Guides" (that specify rules for hyphenation and so on), and calling it something else might alleviate some confusion -- but on the other hand the existing name got the idea across quickly at the outset...

Using a recognizeable name for something that's in fact a quite new thing is something of a social hack: the existing connotations of the name gives people a mental handle to work with while the new paradigm develops; it immediately gets across a way of working to a large number of people: we write for wikipedia in a way that "sounds encyclopedic", we write in the Style Guide in a way that sounds like other style guides out there, and so on.

Then as time goes on, divergences evolve from that original, rough vision -- and then I suspect the connotations of the original naming scheme start to get in the way, but by then it's too late.

As an example, consider "passive voice". It sounds very official, very "encylopedic", but anyone who has thought about it knows there are problems with it -- it leads to convoluted phrasing, it can be used to evade responsibility, it dodges the problem of defining the actual subject.

(An experiment for another day: look up what it actually says about "passive voice" in a style guide like Strunk and White. I bet that either they (1) use passive voice while deriding it or perhaps more likely (2) they've invented some other even more awkward system of phrasing in a later edit, to avoid being accused of hypocrisy.)

 * Geoff Nunberg on the subject of passive voice: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/passive.html

wikipedia failure scenario: a problem with consensus
Wikipedia is at risk of going the way of all volunteer organizations that try to use "consensus" decision-making: the most stubborn people win. The reasonable people just walk... or force themselves to become stubborn.

wikipedia failure scenarios: a problem with anonymity
For now, I'm just quoting something I posted to slashdot:

And here's a nightmare scenario for you: wikipedia continues to increase in popularity, to the point where it's actually politically significant what gets said in wikipedia articles. A Karl Rove-type hires 100 people and tells them to each get five wikipedia accounts, and develop reputations as responsible contributors. A year later, he's got 500 accounts he can play with to do spin control.

Variation: substitute slashdot for wikipedia. The 500 accounts all mod each other up.

Conclusion: anonymity is only good for toy sites; it's not for serious use.

neutral style = boring style?
Well, it's taken as a given that I can't write wikipedia articles in my own voice, right? I've got other web pages for that.

So what voice do we all write in? Well, we're supposed to be neutral right? But while neutrality might dictate some elements of literary style, there's a whole host of other things that go into making something seem like "encylopedia" writing: We try to write in a vaguely stiff and formal way, imitating the encyclopedia articles we've seen elsewhere.

There is no implicit reason that neutral writing should have to be boring writing, but everyone acts as though this is so.

If an article drowns the reader in so many randomly presented facts no one can get through it, that's regarded as at least okay, if not exce:llent. If you do anything else, the odds are good that someone is going to drive by and play Neutrality Cop, until it's chopped up into something unreadable. Wikipedia style: a hundred disjointed pieces, with no sense of flow from one to the other.

 * "In fact the prose of Wikipedia is inexorably drawn to a corporate impersonality -- it's the way the English language would talk if it had no place to go home to at night." -- Geoffrey Nunberg, "A Wiki's as Good as a Nod", Fresh Air Commentary, 6/5/07, http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/wikipedia.html

A peeve: appendicitis
A major peeve of mine with wikipidea edits is this tendency for people to look at a list of three examples and insist on adding a fourth, then a fifth, then why not six, seven, eight? And the reason why not, of course, is that you don't need to list every possible example to get a point across. If I say "some notable beat writers were: ... " and I happen to skip one that you know about there really is no particular reason you have to insert that one you've got on your mind. In fact, the one on your mind may be your absolute favorite beat writer, they may be the one beat writer that you first think of when you think "beat writer" and there would still be no compulsion to stick it in the list. The one possible justification for adding it would be if you know for a fact that experts in the field of beat writers regard your example as more prominent, more canoncial than my example. But even in that case instead of just adding your example, you should be thinking about replacing one of mine with it, because you can't say everything at once, and an english sentence with a list of more than about three items in it can be pretty unwieldly, and adding more facts at random to an article does not do anyone any good if they also make the article unreadable.

A related problem: someone comes along and reads a paragraph on some subject, and their first thought is "Ooooh! They missed something! I know something about this!  I'll stick it on the end of this paragraph right here!". It's fine if you want to show off, it's great if you've got something interesting to say about it: but pick the right place. Think about where it should go. Create a new spot for it if there's no good existing one. Maybe you should even create a whole new article...

neutrality over truth?
What do you do when something that you know to be true is not common knowledge? Then speaking the truth is deviating from the consensus understanding of the truth, and you are not being "neutral", you're taking a side. Well, then, am I supposed to do some research to find other people's work that I can site to support the point? But what if there isn't any (or isn't very much)? What if it's just something that I know? Uh oh, now I'm in the realm of original research. I can make a case for this point, but because it's my case, and not a quote of someone else's, it doesn't belong in the realm of the wikipedia. I can publish elsewhere, and hope that the point eventually finds it's way into the consensus understanding, and from there into the wikipedia, but in the meantime, I'm expected to keep silent here... I might even be expected to write things that I know are wrong, to avoid presenting an original point.

Perhaps this is not an optimal situation, eh?

Could it be that there should be a "wikiresearch" companion to "wikipedia"?

show don't tell, right?
Why am I the only one who seems to think it's a good idea to quote some passages written by an author when discussing an author's work? What better way to get across what the author's work is like than to actually show some of it? (Everyone does know that short quotations are allowed under the "fair use" doctrine, right?).

how can you avoid biting the newbies?
"Don't bite the newbies" is one of the standard principles, but how is it possible to avoid it, given the way wikipedia is set-up? A new person wanders in and decides to try adding some material to an article, and there's invariably a problem with what they've done-- it's pretty typical for new contributors to slip into magazine writing, it's also often not source very well, doesn't fit where they tried to add it, and may actually be factually wrong. It's very likely that the only thing to do for the good of the article is to revert the changes, and how can that be experienced as anything but a "bite"? Given the set of customs that's evolved on wikipedia, you're not supposed to do the discussion on that page, it's supposed to be stashed in the background on the Talk page, but this being a newbie, they may not think to click on the label "Discussion". You can try leaving a message in the History log when you do the revert, but this being a newbie, they may not think to click on "History". You can leave a message on their own page, but newbies often don't have one, they make their first edits as a not-logged in individual that displays nothing but their IP address.

Thoughts: (1) Break the rules: Insert a temporary comment in the text with explicit instructions to look on the Talk page. Problems: the comment may be more temporary than you want it to be, instantly removed by someone else. (2) Salvage the new material: try to find something, anything to do with the new material. Will it fly with just a re-write? Can you say something else about this subject that makes it clear you at least agree it's an interesting direction? Problems: takes time and thought. Do you let the junk sit there until you can find time to deal with it? It might sit a long time.

A plea for changes to wikipedia: get rid of the not-logged-in edits, make people at least choose a handle where they can receive messages. If there's some grave privacy violation about revealing someone's IP address, why do we default to doing that? -- Doom (talk) 17:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Discussion vs. Talk and hypertext design
Someone, at some point, decided that the way to get into the "Talk" pages is by punching on a tab labeled "Discussion". So now we have two terms for the same thing. An experienced person typically uses the shorter and older term, but if you address a newbie, you have to remember to use the longer, less familiar jargon, or else they'll have no hope of finding their way in.

It's a very old principle of hypertext design (perhaps unfortunately, not followed with the web): the link label and the title of thing linked too should match each other. This gives the user immediate feedback that they just went to the place they intended to, it makes the users feel like they're in control.

assume good faith
A wikipedia contributor is required to assume good faith, but a wikipedia admin never does. We are required to take people at face value, but they are allowed to practice their mind-reading skills... now admittedly, they have very few other tools to work with, and it's not my complaint that they try to make insightful guesses (though I do wish their judgments were more insightful and not just kindergarten-teacher schtick like "I don't like your attitude, young man"); my real complaint is that it's ridiculous to expect us to refrain from making our own guesses.

What the rule "assume good faith" really means is "go through the motions of acting as though you believe your opponent is not a crazy bastard"... but sometimes your opponent really is a crazy bastard, and you would have to be a complete idiot to just ignore that possibility. This is a rule that demands a fundamentally insincere, feigned politeness, and that is not really acting in good faith.

("Assume good faith"? You wouldn't buy a pack of baseball cards based on this principle, why would you try to build a critical piece of information infrastructure based on it?)

-- Doom (talk) 17:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

inventing rules that aren't rules

 * Tradition: This article has been like this for a year, what right have you to change it now?

 * Ask first: Before you change this page you should discuss it on the Talk page!

 * Homesteading: I wrote this page, you're not allowed to change it.

You talking to me?
If you'd like to talk to me, you can just use my talk page: User_talk:Doom. (I just moved some material over to there.)

title: User:Doom