text:
Paramount

Paramount (from the word paramount meaning "above all others") may refer to:

Entertainment and music companies

 * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS.
 * Paramount Pictures, an American film distributor and producer
 * Paramount Animation
 * Paramount+, an American streaming video service formerly known as CBS All Access
 * Paramount Records, American jazz and blues label

Places

 * Paramount (Shanghai), a Chinese historical nightclub and dance hall
 * Paramount, California, U.S., a city in Los Angeles County
 * Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway, Manhattan, New York, U.S.
 * The Paramount at Buckhead, a residential skyscraper in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.

People

 * Paramount chief, the highest-level political leader in a region or country
 * Paramount leader, the highest leader in the People's Republic of China
 * Lord paramount, a lord who held his fief from no superior authority
 * Abcde Patroba, premier production executive at Paramount Pictures

Other uses

 * Paramount, a difficulty level in Dance Dance Revolution

title: Paramount


text:
Thornton Abbey

Thornton Abbey was a medieval abbey located close to the small North Lincolnshire village of Thornton Curtis, near Ulceby, and directly south of Hull on the other side of the Humber estuary. Its ruins are a Grade I listed building, including notably England's largest and most impressive surviving monastic gatehouse.

It was founded as a priory in 1139 by William le Gros, the Earl of Yorkshire, and raised to the status of abbey in 1148 by Pope Eugene III. It was a house for Augustinian or black canons, who lived a communal life under the Rule of St Augustine but also undertook pastoral duties outside the Abbey. Officers within the abbey included a cellarer, bursar, chamberlain, sacrist, kitchener and an infirmer. A medieval hospital also operated near the abbey, founded no later than 1322.

Due to its involvement in the area's burgeoning wool trade, Thornton was a wealthy and prestigious house, with a considerable annual income in 1534 of £591 0s 2¾d. The abbey was closed in 1539 by Henry VIII as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It survived by becoming a Secular College, until Secular Colleges were also closed, in 1547.

Thornton Abbey railway station is nearby.

Later history
Since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the site has been owned by: Henry Randes (the Bishop of Lincoln); Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby; Sir Vincent Skinner of Westminster (in 1602); Sir Robert Sutton; George Appleby; and in 1816 Charles, 1st Baron Yarborough.

In May 1859, members of the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society visited the site and were given a guided tour by the Rev. J. Byron of North Killingholme. A report of the tour, published by the Stamford Mercury, records that access to site had been restricted due to damage "by bands of modern Vandals". Brass effigies, some in place, others "strewed amongst the growing grass", and the entrance to a subterranean passageway were also observed.

In 1938, Sackville Pelham, 5th Earl of Yarborough handed the care of the abbey remains to the Office of Works. The site is currently in the care of English Heritage and open to the public. It is necessary to book a visit in advance, and the interior spaces are closed at present.

Architecture
The founding abbey building from the 12th century was Romanesque in style, but nothing of it remains above ground. The later abbey from the 13th/14th centuries was built in Early Gothic style. Little remains of the building, except for three walls of the chapter house and part of the cloister, though the ground plan of the abbey is traced out.

The main interest lies in the gatehouse which is among the earliest large-scale uses of brick in England. It stands two storeys high and is structurally intact. There are few windows in the building, and the internal dimensions are cramped due to the thickness of the walls. The outside of the building is adorned with three almost life-size statues directly above the gate. A bridge over the moat adjoins the gatehouse and is fortified with walls and garderobes.

The nearby Abbot's Lodge is also a Grade I listed building. Elements of the ground floor of the monastic range of Thornton Abbey were converted to a house and the first floor rebuilt in the 17th century, reputedly by Sir Vincent Skinner, but the structure collapsed upon completion.

Archaeology
Thornton Abbey was relatively under-examined for its size and importance, until English Heritage launched a programme of research beginning in 2007. This initial non-invasive research was followed by excavations performed by the University of Sheffield Department of Archaeology between 2011 and 2016, directed by Hugh Willmott.

In 2013, continuing excavation work uncovered a Black Death plague pit in the cemetery of the abbey's hospital, containing the remains of at least 48 individuals including the skeletons of 27 children. DNA was successfully extracted and tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the plague, making this the first instance in Britain of a Black Death mass grave found in a rural, rather than urban, area. Willmott stated: "The finding of a previously unknown and completely unexpected mass burial dating to this period in a quiet corner of rural Lincolnshire is thus far unique, and sheds light into the real difficulties faced by a small community ill-prepared to face such a devastating threat."

Burials at the abbey

 * William le Gros, 1st Earl of Albemarle
 * Aveline de Montfichet, wife of William de Forz, 3rd Earl of Albemarle

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

title: Thornton Abbey


text:
Talk:Mormonism and polygamy

New page for anti-polygamy legislation?
Hello, fellow Wikipedians! I have been editing on this page for a few months and I’ve also been compiling sources and information on federal anti-polygamy legislation. Since there is more information specific to anti-polygamy legislation in the United States, I have been thinking about making a new page for it. This page would be a spin-off page and would include the legal and historical background, the actors involved in creating the legislation, Mormon and non-Mormon response to the legislation, if the legislation passed, and the effects of the legislation. I have been drafting the page in my sandbox for the past month and have a lot of academic sources that provide more information. If I create this page, I would remove the subsection entitled “US government actions against polygamy” and put it on the new page. I would leave a short blurb of the legislation and a link to the new page on the Mormonism and polygamy page. I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea. Please let me know what you think! NatalieEmma.BYU (talk) 20:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

 * I think that sounds like a great idea. I've seen antipolygamy treated as a discrete subject in an encyclopedia before (e. g. Ray Jay Davis, "Antipolygamy Legislation," Encyclopedia of Mormonism), so I think that could be a justifiable subject, especially since there's significant scholarly literature on the topic. I would also point out that there is a "Legality of Polygamy in the United States" page, with some references to newspaper articles and some references directly to state statutes. That one seems more to do with state level laws. Is the page you're thinking of going to be focused on federal law?
 * Another thing to keep in mind is that there are or could be Wikipedia pages for each individual bill or law, so it might be good to think about the justification for having a consolidated page for numerous laws. I think it is justifiable, since it's a subject deemed fit of itself in an existing academic encyclopedia. Having the various laws in one place could also be useful for conveying to the reader how the laws work together and built on each other.
 * Will the 'response' portion of subsections include judicial suits and rulings? For example, Reynolds v. United States deciding that the Morrill Act didn't violate the First Amendment, or how Cleveland v. United States (1946) ruled that the Mann Act (1910) ban on interstate trafficking for "any immoral purpose" applied to polygamy as well? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

[ User:Hydrangeans ] Thanks so much for replying. In the draft that I have been working on, I have only been focusing on federal laws so far. However, once I get the page finished and published, I would certainly be interested in adding information about state legislations. In answer to your question about the "response" section, I was planning on including law suits and their effect as well as any public response from others (such as protests or petitions.) I'll keep working on the draft! Thanks for your input! NatalieEmma.BYU (talk) 21:33, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Short description
I changed the short description from “Formerly allowed practice” to “History of polygamy among Mormon sects.” While the term ‘Mormon’ most frequently applies to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it can broadly be applied to all faiths that either broke from that church, claim to originate with Joseph Smith, Jr., or use the Book of Mormon as sacred text. While the LDS Church has disallowed practice of polygamy, some smaller sects have not. As these are covered in the article, I find it more appropriate to just label it as a history of the practice rather than a formerly allowed practice. DJ Cane (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Increase in bachelorhood subsection warrants removal for lack of reliable secondary sources
Because removing a subsection, albeit a brief one and for reasons that feel well warranted, seems a little on the bold side, I have included an explanation on the talk page for my recent revision to the page.

In the "Increase in bachelorhood subsection", the only secondary source supporting the claim that there was a rise in bachelorhood among nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints is the reference to Richard Abanes's One Nation Under Gods. Although the subsection draws its quote of Heber C. Kimball from Stanley P. Hirshon's Lion of the Lord (1969), the book does not extend the quotation into a conclusion about bachelorhood or bachelorettehood (is that a word?) in nineteenth-century Mormon country. Instead, Hirshon takes the quote as evidence about Kimball's personality, claiming "Kimball always kept an eye out for romance". The subsection also includes a reference to the Encylcopedia of Mormonism, but following up that reference does not substantiate the claim about an increase in bachelorhood either. (There's also, I suppose, the footnote to FAIR, formerly FairMormon, but that's just the page fighting with itself and hedging claims instead of seeking scholarly consensus.)

As for Abanes's One Nation Under Gods, I am not convinced the book should be considered reliable for a Wikipedia page. The book is a work of pop expose rather than scholarship, as attested by the scholarly Journal of American History. JAH's review of the book was almost entirely negative, concluding the book was written not as part of the late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century movement toward scholarly Mormon history, but instead "revert[ed] to the negative type" of polemical expose popular in the 1800s.

All other references in the subsection are to primary sources, such as a nineteenth-century newspapers or the Journal of Discourses. I would add that quotations from the Journal of Discourses cannot be taken for granted because George D. Watts, the compiler, often made major changes to speeches in language, tone, style, and even content between transcription and publication ("The Prophets Have Spoken, but What Did They Say?" 2015). Just because it was written in the Journal of Discourses does not guarantee the person attributed actually said it that way, or at all.

With no reliable secondary sources in the subsection, its claim has no reliable warrants that meet Wikipedia standards. and then does not have place on the page. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:40, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

removed quote from Brigham Young reported by Wilford Woodruff
We were able to verify the quote about Brigham Young refusing to marry two young girls ages 12 and 13 to a man (you can see the page in the Wilford Woodruff diaries via the Wilford Woodruff papers here). If anyone knows of secondary sources that discuss the quote, we can include a summary of those findings on the page. We removed the quote because the commentary on it is original research, and including the quote without commentary seems unhelpful and unencyclopedic. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 22:00, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Polygamy in Salt Lake City
Here's a newly added comment I am moving from the archives into a new discussion thread. Binksternet (talk) 22:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC) "Hi Binksternet and bytebear! I was reading through the talk page and saw your comments. I found some recently published articles about polygamy in Utah (particularly the legal battles regarding polygamy.) I will be happy to add these in if wanted. Do you have a suggestion of where on the page this would fit best? Cheers! NatalieEmma.BYU (talk) 21:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)"
 * , I would be interested to see your sources. If your material merits it, you could create a new section titled "Current status" or similar, describing modern cases of polygamy. Binksternet (talk) 22:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mormonism and polygamy


text:
Division (sport)

In sports, a division is a group of teams who compete against each other for a championship.

League system
In sports using a league system (also known as a pyramid structure), a division consists of a group of teams who play a sport at a similar competitive level. Teams can move up to a higher division of play or drop down to a lower one via the process of promotion and relegation, based on their performance in the standings at the end of the season. The existence of divisions based on level of competition ensures that teams at one competitive level can play other teams at a similar competitive level, thus creating parity and more exciting matches.

Franchise system
In North America, where sports usually operate on a franchise system rather than a league system, a division is a group of teams within a league which is organized along geographical lines rather than competitive success. Teams based in cities that are in a particular region of the continent are grouped together in the same division. For instance, in Major League Baseball, both the American and National Leagues have East, Central, and West divisions; the teams in each division are mostly (but not always) located in the eastern, central, and western sections of North America respectively. In a franchise system, teams are not promoted or relegated as are teams in a league system. All teams in the league (and by extension, the divisions of the league) are at the same competitive level and remain so year after year.

North American professional sports leagues often construct their season schedules in a way such that teams in a division play matches against each other more often than other teams in the league. This not only has the effect of reducing travel costs, but also creates exciting rivalries between the teams in the division. Moreover, the top teams in a division qualify for the postseason playoff tournament that crowns the league champion, which heightens the rivalries between the teams in a division.

Geographically-based divisions can become skewed if an expansion team joins the league or if one of the franchises within a division moves to another city, necessitating a shuffling or realignment of the teams in a division. Furthermore, the results of the realignment may not always reflect geographical realities. For instance, in 1995, the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL) moved to St. Louis, Missouri and became the St. Louis Rams. The team retained its place in the NFC West division despite the fact that St. Louis is further east than Dallas, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys. Although Dallas is located in the south-central United States, the Cowboys are a member of the NFC East division due to their long-standing rivalries with the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Washington Commanders, all of whom are located on the Eastern seaboard.

U.S. college sports
In U.S. college sports, a "division" has a meaning different from either sense listed above, although somewhat closer to that of the league system.

The major governing bodies for college sports, the NCAA and NAIA, divide their member schools into large competitive groups. These groups are much larger than divisions in either the league or franchise system—for example, the NCAA's highest competitive level, Division I, has more than 300 member schools. The vast majority of teams are members of conferences, smaller groupings that usually have between 6 and 14 members. Conference champions, plus selected other teams, compete in national championship tournaments (with the exception of schools in the highest level of NCAA (American) football, which have never had an NCAA-recognized national championship).

As an example, the NCAA is split into three divisions:

 * Division I – Usually the largest and most prominent schools, with the largest athletic budgets. All Division I member schools are allowed to award athletic scholarships to students, although some schools and conferences voluntarily choose not to award athletic scholarships in some or all sports (most notably the Ivy League, which prohibits such scholarships in all sports).
 * Division II – Generally smaller schools that do not choose to take on the sometimes-massive expense of Division I athletics. The NCAA allows D-II schools to award scholarships, but places much more stringent limits on the amount of athletic aid awarded than at the D-I level.
 * Division III – Schools, usually but not always small institutions, at which intercollegiate sports is treated more as a regular student activity. In keeping with this philosophy, the NCAA prohibits Division III schools from awarding athletic scholarships.

"Division" within conferences
The term division is also used in US college sports to indicate the groupings of members of a given conference. However, this usage is more recent. The first conference to divide its teams into divisions was the Southeastern Conference which, upon expanding to 12 members in 1992, divided into Eastern and Western divisions. Other conferences have undergone similar expansion and division. The usage in the section above is still maintained. For example, the Georgia Bulldogs are in Division I, but are also in the Eastern Division of the Southeastern Conference.

title: Division (sport)


text:
Patricia Routledge

Dame Katherine Patricia Routledge (born 17 February 1929) is an English actress and singer, best known for her comedy role as Hyacinth Bucket in the popular BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances (1990–1995).

Routledge was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1992 and 1993. Her film appearances include To Sir, with Love (1967) and Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968).

Routledge made her professional stage debut at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952 and her Broadway debut in How's the World Treating You in 1966. She won the 1968 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Darling of the Day, and the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Candide.

On television, Routledge came to prominence during the 1980s in monologues written by Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood; appearing in Bennett's A Woman of No Importance (1982), as Kitty in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–1986), and being nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for Bennett's Talking Heads: A Lady of Letters (1988). She also starred as Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1990, 1996–1998). In 2017, she was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her services to entertainment and charity.

Early life
Routledge was born on 17 February 1929 in Tranmere in Birkenhead, Cheshire. Her father was a haberdasher and gentlemen's outfitter. She was educated at Birkenhead High School, and the University of Liverpool. She gained a degree with honours in English Language and Literature. She was involved in the university's dramatic society, where she worked closely with the academic Edmund Colledge, who both directed and acted in several of the society's productions. It was Colledge who persuaded her to pursue an acting career. After graduating, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and returned to Liverpool to begin her acting career at the Liverpool Playhouse.

Theatre
Routledge has had a long career in theatre, particularly musical theatre, in the United Kingdom and the United States. Her vocal range was labelled as a mezzo-soprano and a contralto. She has been a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), appearing in such acclaimed productions as the 1984 Richard III, which starred Antony Sher in the title role. Her West End credits include Little Mary Sunshine, Cowardy Custard, Virtue in Danger, Noises Off, The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Solid Gold Cadillac, as well as a number of less successful vehicles. She was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her work in And a Nightingale Sang in 1979. A classically trained singer, she has occasionally made forays into operetta including taking the title role in an acclaimed production of Jacques Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein at the 1978 Camden Festival; "As the Grand Duchess she invested every phrase, spoken or sung [...] with wit and meaning, and coloured her tone to express a wide variety of emotions. Never did she resort to the hoydenish behaviour that this role – in British productions at least – seems to invite."

Routledge made her Broadway debut in Roger Milner's comedy How's the World Treating You? in 1966, returning in the short-lived 1968 musical Darling of the Day, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, sharing the honour with Leslie Uggams of Hallelujah, Baby! Following this, Routledge had roles in several more unsuccessful Broadway productions including a musical called Love Match, in which she played Queen Victoria; the legendary 1976 Leonard Bernstein flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in which she portrayed every U.S. First Lady from Abigail Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt; and a 1981 musical, Say Hello to Harvey – based on the Mary Coyle Chase play Harvey (1944) – which closed in Toronto before reaching New York City.

In 1980, Routledge played Ruth in the Joseph Papp production of The Pirates of Penzance, co-starring American actor Kevin Kline and pop vocalist Linda Ronstadt, at the Delacorte Theatre in New York City's Central Park, one of a series of Shakespeare in the Park summer events. The show was a hit and transferred to Broadway the following January, with Estelle Parsons replacing Routledge. A DVD of the Central Park production, with Routledge, was released in October 2002. She also performed in Façade at New York's Carnegie Recital Hall.

Routledge won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1988 for her portrayal of the Old Lady in Leonard Bernstein's Candide in the London cast of the critically acclaimed Scottish Opera production. One critic noted "She stopped the show with 'I am so easily assimilated', and her long narration worked on at least two levels – it was both hilarious and oddly moving." She also played the role of Nettie Fowler to great acclaim in the 1992 National Theatre production of Carousel. In a 2006 Hampstead Theatre production of The Best of Friends, she portrayed Dame Laurentia McLachlan. In 2008, she played Queen Mary in Royce Ryton's play Crown Matrimonial. More recent work includes the role of Dame Myra Hess in the tribute show Admission: One Shilling from 2009, the narrator in The Carnival of the Animals with the Nash Ensemble in 2010, and Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2014.

Since 2009, Routledge has toured with a show entitled Facing The Music. The show features insights into her musical theatre career.

Film and television
Routledge's screen credits include To Sir, with Love (1967), Pretty Polly (1967), 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (all 1968), If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) and Girl Stroke Boy (1971).

Routledge's early television appearances included a role in Steptoe and Son, in the episode "Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" (1974), as a clairvoyant called Madame Fontana. She also appeared in Coronation Street (1961), and as a white witch in Doctor at Large (1971). Routledge played Mrs. Jennings in the BBC mini-series production of Sense and Sensibility (1971). However, she did not come to prominence on television until she featured in monologues written for her by Alan Bennett and later Victoria Wood in the 1980s. She first appeared in A Woman of No Importance, the second installment of Bennett's anthology, Objects of Affection in 1982. She then played the opinionated Kitty in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV in 1985. She performed two further monologues in Bennett's Talking Heads in 1988 and 1998. Routledge was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for the monologue "A Lady of Letters".

In 1990, Routledge accepted the lead role of Hetty Wainthropp in an ITV mystery drama, Hetty Wainthropp: Missing Persons. ITV opted not to pursue a series after the pilot episode, but in 1996 the BBC produced the first series of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, with Routledge again in the lead role. The show co-starred Dominic Monaghan as her assistant and Derek Benfield as her husband. It was first aired in January 1996, and ran until the autumn of 1998. Monaghan, who went on to enjoy a Hollywood career, has since credited Routledge as "an amazing teacher" who taught him some "very valuable lessons" in acting.

In 1990, Routledge was cast as Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy series Keeping Up Appearances. She portrayed a formerly working-class woman with social pretensions (insisting her surname be pronounced "bouquet") and delusions of grandeur (her oft-mentioned "candlelight suppers"). Routledge delighted in portraying Hyacinth, as she claimed she "couldn't stand people like her" in real life. In 1991, she won a British Comedy Award for her portrayal, and she was later nominated for two BAFTA TV Awards in 1992 and 1993. Routledge quit the role in 1995, despite the series' ongoing popularity, as she wished to pursue other roles as an actress. In a 2017 interview, Routledge said: "I always thought of the great, great Ronnie Barker. He always left something when he was on a high, and it's much better to have people say now 'Oh, why didn't you do some more?' than having them say 'Oh, is that still on?'" Another reason she wished to leave the role was that she felt that the writer Roy Clarke was "recycling some old ideas that we'd already dealt with".

Routledge has also played several real-life characters for television, including Barbara Pym and in a dramatised BBC Omnibus biographical documentary of 1994, Hildegard of Bingen.

In 2001, Routledge starred in Anybody's Nightmare, a fact-based television drama in which she played Sheila Bowler, a mother and piano teacher who served four years in prison for murdering her elderly aunt, but was later acquitted following a retrial.

In 2016, Routledge presented Beatrix Potter with Patricia Routledge on Channel 4, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth.

In January 2023, Channel 5 aired a 67-minute special Keeping Up Appearances retrospective for their series "30 Years Of Laughs". Cast, crew and celebrities paid tribute to the show. The documentary featured an interview with Routledge, who was 93 at the time, sharing her memories of the show, along with supporting cast members Judy Cornwell, Jeremy Gittins and David Janson.

Radio and audio books
In 1966, Routledge sang the role of Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, the title role in Iolanthe, and Melissa in Princess Ida, in a series of BBC Radio Gilbert and Sullivan recordings. She took part in a studio broadcast of Tchaikovsky's opera Vakula the Smith (narrating excerpts from the work by Gogol) in 1989. In 2006, she was featured in an episode of the Stage and Screen series on Radio 3.

Routledge's extensive radio credits include several Alan Bennett plays and the BBC dramatisation of Carole Hayman's Ladies of Letters, in which she and Prunella Scales play retired women exchanging humorous correspondence over the course of several years. A tenth series of Ladies of Letters premiered on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

Radio work prior to 1985 included Private Lives, Present Laughter, The Cherry Orchard, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland and The Fountain Overflows.

Having a distinctive voice, Routledge has also recorded and released a variety of audiobooks including unabridged readings of Wuthering Heights and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and abridged novelisations of the Hetty Wainthropp series.

Personal life
Routledge has never married and has no children. In a 2001 interview, she said: "I didn't make a decision not to be married and not to be a mother. Life just turned out like that because my involvement in acting was so total". In the same interview, Routledge discussed two affairs she had been involved in: one with a married man whilst in her late 20s and the other being some years later with a man directing a play she was appearing in.

She has lived in Chichester since 2000 and regularly worships at Chichester Cathedral. In 2020, she helped raise £10,000 towards the restoration of the cathedral roof.

Routledge is a patron of the Beatrix Potter Society and an ambassador for the charity Royal Voluntary Service, previously known as WRVS.

Routledge was a close friend of former Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd. Her recording of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" was played at Boothroyd's funeral in March 2023.

Honours
Routledge was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1993 Birthday Honours, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2004 Birthday Honours, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to theatre and charity.

In 2008, Routledge received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Lancaster University for her contribution to drama and theatre.

On 15 March 2019, Routledge received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Chester at Chester Cathedral for her contributions to theatre and television.

In 2022, the Royal Academy of Music conferred Routledge with honorary membership.

An honorary president of the Association of English Singers & Speakers (which exists to "encourage communication of English words in speech and song with clarity, understanding and imagination"), she has sponsored the annual AESS National English Song Prize from 2003 to the present.

title: Patricia Routledge


text:
As It Happens

As It Happens is a Canadian interview show that airs on CBC Radio One in Canada and various public radio stations in the United States through Public Radio Exchange. Its 50th anniversary was celebrated on-air on November 16, 2018. It has been one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on CBC Radio.

The bulk of the program consists of a CBC journalist, currently Nil Köksal since 2022, conducting telephone interviews with newsmakers and other persons of interest. The other co-host, Chris Howden as of January 6, 2020, introduces the interviews and other segments, such as "For the Record" recordings of speeches or press conferences, and musical interludes (or as former co-host Barbara Budd often referred to them, "the dance portion of the program").

Stations and time
The show is broadcast each weekday from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. (half an hour later in Newfoundland) throughout Canada. It used to be widely accessible to much of the northern United States, but as the CBC switched its CBC Radio One from powerful AM signals in Eastern Canadian urban centres to FM stations, it became harder to receive CBC content further away from the border.

As It Happens can be heard on CBC Radio One's channel 169 on Sirius XM Satellite Radio (in both Canada and the U.S.), on an increasing number of American public radio stations, especially NPR affiliates with news radio formats, via distribution from CBC's American distribution partner Public Radio Exchange, and on the Internet via streaming audio at the CBC's website. Older broadcasts are available as a stream from the CBC's website, but without the music.

As It Happens is heard on a delayed-broadcast basis in the United States, generally airing in a later-evening slot and often paired with Q; American stations that carry As It Happens do not air the final half-hour (7:30 to 8:00 p.m.) of the program.

In the fall of 2009, the show also added an hour long repeat airing at midnight on weeknights called As It Happens: The Midnight Edition, which features an abbreviated edition of the 6:30 p.m. broadcast. Thanks to shorter run time, many of the less important interviews and stories are cut from the midnight rerun to fit the reduced air time, so the midnight broadcast is virtually identical to the American NPR edit. However, in the summer months of July and August, the program is reduced to an hour in its regular time slot, which means the midnight edition airs all the content during that period.

During the summer, the program ends at 7:30 and is followed by a half-hour program from the network's schedule of short-run summer series. Most summers, one of those summer series is As It Happened: The Archive Edition, a separate program which airs previously broadcast interviews from the main series.

History
The show was introduced in 1968 as a reverse call-in show: rather than having the public call in, the reporters at As It Happens called newsmakers and pundits for their opinions.

During the 1970s, the program produced 54-minute-long segments called "As It Happened, (insert year)", covering the major events of years past, particularly the 1930s and 1940s. During the CBC technicians strike in 1981, after a few weeks of music, the As It Happened segments were played each weeknight in chronological order as repeat filler material until the strike was resolved.

When the interviewer is absent, other CBC journalists typically sit in as substitute interviewers; when the announcer is absent, substitutes may include other CBC personalities, actors such as R. H. Thomson, or program staffers; Howden himself sometimes appeared on the program as a guest announcer before being named co-host effective January 6, 2020.

In January 2022, Off announced her retirement from As It Happens, effective February 25. In July 2022, it was announced that Nil Köksal will debut as former host Carol Off's successor in September.

Hosts

 * 1968–1969: Phillip Forsyth, Harry Brown and William Ronald
 * 1969–1971: Harry Brown and William Ronald
 * 1971–1973: Barbara Frum, Harry Brown, Cy Strange
 * 1973–1974: Barbara Frum and Harry Brown
 * 1974–1981: Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland
 * 1981–1985: Elizabeth Gray and Alan Maitland
 * 1985–1987: Dennis Trudeau and Alan Maitland
 * 1987–1993: Michael Enright and Alan Maitland
 * 1993–1997: Michael Enright and Barbara Budd
 * 1997–2005: Mary Lou Finlay and Barbara Budd
 * 2006–2010: Carol Off and Barbara Budd
 * 2010: Carol Off and guest host
 * 2011–2019: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas
 * 2019: Carol Off and guest host
 * 2020–2022: Carol Off and Chris Howden
 * 2022–present: Nil Köksal and Chris Howden

Notable interviews
The show has had many notable interviews, including:

 * the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn just after his arrest.
 * Sandra Good, the best friend of Squeaky Fromme, just after her friend had attempted to shoot Gerald Ford.
 * a Rwandan woman seemingly moments away from being killed by Tutsi militia during the 1994 Rwandan genocide—she stayed on the phone with As It Happens up to the point when the attackers knocked on her door. She was ultimately spared.

The show has also interviewed a wide array of presidents, prime ministers, terrorists, inventors, and authors.

Humour
Despite the gravity of many of its stories, As It Happens is also known for being lighthearted and carrying news of the obscure and bizarre. For instance, during the early 1990s there were updates for several years on the battle over a large fibreglass fish that annoyed a neighbour in England. The show opens with humorous synopses of the day's stories, which are followed by a pun based on one of the same. An example is "radio that reads between the Linuses," following a story about baseball stats in the Peanuts comic strip. As it happens, the show's title is also a pun.

Former host Barbara Frum once interviewed Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. Another well-remembered interview was with a hard-of-hearing but imperturbable British farmer who had grown a prize-winning giant cabbage. The 1976 interview was conducted by an increasingly frustrated Frum, who could not get the farmer to give any kind of coherent replies to her straightforward questions; by mid-interview, Frum was stuck repeatedly asking the question, "What did you feed your cabbage?" a little bit louder each time. Exasperated, she finally asks him "WHAT. DID. YOU. FEED. THE. GODDAMN. CABBAGE?". It is still occasionally played as an amusing interlude on the show, as well as on CBC Radio's afternoon series Rewind.

After Lloyd Robertson left CBC Television for CTV in 1976, the program conducted its own on-air auditions for his replacement as anchor of The National, eventually choosing Robert Stanfield as its nominee.

Barbara Budd and Mary Lou Finlay maintained a recurring debate over whether ABBA's "Dancing Queen" was an appropriate choice of bumper music between interviews, and Budd and Carol Off later solicited listener feedback to determine the world's most annoying song. On one occasion when Budd was away on a sick leave that coincided with April Fools' Day, she and Finlay arranged a prank in which Budd gave an interview explaining that she had been given a Canada Council grant to tour the world visiting all the cities whose names she had ever mispronounced on the air.

Following Finlay's retirement in 2005, she published The As It Happens Files, a memoir of her time with the program. The book was subtitled Radio That May Contain Nuts.

Distance from Reading
A frequently-cited example of the show's sometimes whimsical sense of humour relates to references to the UK town of Reading, Berkshire. After almost any lighter news story or interview that emanates from any location in the UK, the As It Happens host will conclude the piece by straight-facedly noting how far the UK location is from Reading, frequently giving the distance in both miles and some other form of strange, non-standard measurement (e.g., 733,000 garden gnomes, lined up hat to hat).

This long-standing tradition on the show dates from the mid-1970s, when English-born segment producer George Somerwill once concluded a program script with a note that a small village mentioned in the preceding segment was located 'nine miles from Reading'. This note, intended as a serious clarification, was totally baffling to most Canadian listeners—and even to the rest of the show's staff. It quickly became a running joke on the show to identify all places in the UK (even major centres like London) in relation to their proximity to the comparatively obscure borough of Reading.

In her 2009 book The As It Happens Files, former show host Mary Lou Finlay notes that As It Happens had given a boost not just to Reading's profile, but also to its economy: a number of Canadian fans of the show made a point of visiting Reading when they are visiting the UK.

Christmas and Hanukkah readings
During the holiday season in late November and December each year, the show also maintains a tradition of airing one or more Christmas and Hanukkah themed stories narrated by past or present announcers. Alan Maitland's reading of Frederick Forsyth's The Shepherd is always played on the last show before Christmas Day, and Maitland's reading of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" remains a popular staple of the program, as do Barbara Budd's narrations of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Aubrey Davis' Bone Button Borscht.

Music
The original opening and closing themes were "Curried Soul" and "Koff Drops" respectively, played by jazz musician Moe Koffman. The second segment of the show begins with a 1987 rearrangement of "Curried Soul" by Billy Bryans.

In September 2013, amidst much on-air fanfare, the decades-old "Curried Soul" opening theme was given a discreetly modernized remix by Socalled. During phone-in segments broadcast in the days following the new theme's premiere, listener reaction was mixed: some preferred the newer mix, while others stated their preference for the original 1969 recording. When Socalled appeared on CBC Radio's Q as a musical guest in June 2015, Off and Douglas joined him for a live performance of the song, with Douglas playing a shaker and Off playing cowbell.

On extraordinary news occasions, the show may also broadcast alternate opening and closing theme music more reflective of a major news story, or may entirely skip opening theme music. For example, on the December 5, 2013 episode marking the death of Nelson Mandela, the show opened and closed with Ladysmith Black Mambazo's recording of "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"; on the October 22, 2014 episode covering the Parliament Hill shootings, the show opened with a montage of audio clips of the day's events, entirely skipping theme music; and on the November 11, 2016 episode following the death of Canadian musical and literary icon Leonard Cohen, the show opened with Cohen's "Bird on the Wire".

Awards
In 2005, the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada honoured Barbara Frum for her time with As It Happens.

title: As It Happens


text:
User:Kyokpae~enwiki

kyokpae is a Wikipedist, only occasionally active.

This is how he introduced himself in 2003. Virtually all the information below had ceased to be true since that time.

kyokpae is a Wikipedist. And I am him.

My name is Marcin Olak. I was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1982 and I still live here. I study Information technology and management in telecommunications at the Warsaw University of Technology.

I am also the president of Student Space Engineering Scientific Group at my faculty. We participate in building a micro-satellite called ESEO (European Students Earth Orbiter) which is one of the SSETI projects (more info here: http://www.sseti.org ).

I am interested in making electronic music, programming, computer networks, telecommunications, electronics, DSP, artificial intelligence and martial arts. My contribution lies mostly in these areas.

At this site: http://www.kyokpae.prv.pl I place my music, texts, and any other piece of art. I also study taekwondo.

greetings! kyokpae

title: User:Kyokpae~enwiki


text:
Talk:Lianchiang

What's with this 1/2 romanization? The ROC Government spells it "Lienchiang," not "Lianchiang." Should we just go by the pinyin Lianjiang? [|http://www.post.gov.tw/e0-6-1d.htm] Jiang 23:12 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Lianchiang


text:
Hive mind

A hive mind or group mind may refer to:

Shared intelligence

 * Collective consciousness and collective intelligence, two concepts in sociology and philosophy
 * Group mind (science fiction), a type of collective consciousness
 * Groupthink, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in a group results in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making
 * Sheeple, a derogatory term referring to groups of people who ‘mindlessly’ follow those in power
 * Swarm intelligence, the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial
 * The apparent consciousness of colonies of social insects such as ants, bees, and termites
 * Universal mind, a type of universal higher consciousness in some esoteric beliefs
 * Egregore, a concept in occultism which has been described as group mind

Media

 * Hive Mind (book), a 2015 nonfiction book by Garett Jones
 * Hive Mind (The Internet album), 2018
 * Hive Mind (Sinch album), 2012
 * "Hive Mind", a 2013 song by They Might Be Giants from Nanobots
 * "Hive Mind", a 2016 song by Circle of Dust from Machines of Our Disgrace
 * "Hive Mind", a 2017 song by Blanck Mass from World Eater
 * "Hive Mind", a 2021 song by Tirzah from Colourgrade
 * "Hivemind", a 2012 song by To Speak of Wolves from Find Your Worth, Come Home
 * "Hivemind", a 2022 song by Slipknot from The End, So Far
 * HiveMind, a video game that was planned but never released by Will Wright
 * Hive Minds, a BBC4 quiz-show started in 2015 and hosted by Fiona Bruce
 * HIVEMIND, an internet game show hosted by Riley Savage, Graydon Weaver and the fictional Dignan Zazumbazaffodil, played by Weaver.

title: Hive mind


text:
Visionary art

Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.

History
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, first established in 1946, is considered to be an important technical and philosophical catalyst in its strong influence upon contemporary visionary art. Its artists included Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden among others. Several artists who would later work in visionary art trained under Fuchs, including Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa, Philip Rubinov Jacobson and De Es Schwertberger.

Definition
Visionary art often carries themes of spiritual, mystical or inner awareness. Despite this broad definition, there does seem to be emerging some definition to what constitutes the contemporary visionary art 'scene' and which artists can be considered especially influential. Symbolism, Cubism, Surrealism and Psychedelic art are also direct precursors to contemporary visionary art. Notable visionary artists count Hilma af Klint, Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake, Morris Graves (of the Pacific Northwest School of Visionary Art), Emil Bisttram, and Gustave Moreau amongst their antecedents.

Schools and organizations
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, which includes Ernst Fuchs and Arik Brauer, is also a strong influence on visionary culture. It may also be considered the European version, with the names being interchangeable.

The Society for the Art of Imagination, founded by Brigid Marlin serves as an important portal for visionary art events. More recently, a new wave of visionary artists collaborate to function as modern cooperatives involved in self-publishing and promotion of visionary artists through the internet and via festivals such as Burning Man and Boom Festival, and exhibition/ritual spaces such as Temple of Visions and the Interdimensional Art Movement.

The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, is a museum devoted entirely to visionary art.

title: Visionary art


text:
Velvet Tone Records

Velvet Tone Records was an American record label that was founded by Columbia Records in 1925 and shut down in 1932. Velvet Tone contained material identical to that of Columbia's two other low price labels, Harmony Records and Diva Records (and after Diva was discontinued, Clarion Records).

Popular culture

 * In Frank Capra's 1946 film, It's a Wonderful Life, Mary can be seen playing a record with a "Velvet Tone" label on the phonograph. A close examination reveals that it is "Buffalo Gals" performed by "Arthur Black and His Orchestra". However, the label's design is inconsistent with actual Velvet Tone labels. The prop record is a nod towards the film's assistant director, Arthur Black.

title: Velvet Tone Records


text:
Ebenaceae

The Ebenaceae are a family of flowering plants belonging to order Ericales. The family includes ebony and persimmon among about 768 species of trees and shrubs. It is distributed across the tropical and warmer temperate regions of the world. It is most diverse in the rainforests of Malesia, India, Thailand, tropical Africa and tropical America.

Many species are valued for their wood, particularly ebony, for fruit, and as ornamental plants.

Biology
The fruits contain tannins, a plant defense against herbivory, so they are often avoided by animals when unripe. The ripe fruits of many species are a food source for diverse animal taxa. The foliage is consumed by insects.

The plants may have a strong scent. Some species have aromatic wood. They are important and conspicuous trees in many of their native ecosystems, such as lowland dry forests of the former Maui Nui in Hawaii, Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests, Khathiar–Gir dry deciduous forests, Louisiade Archipelago rain forests, Madagascar lowland forests, Narmada Valley dry deciduous forests, New Guinea mangroves, and South Western Ghats montane rain forests.

Ebony is a dense black wood taken from several species in the genus Diospyros, including Diospyros ebenum (Ceylon ebony, Indian ebony), Diospyros crassiflora (West African ebony, Benin ebony), and Diospyros celebica (Makassar ebony). Diospyros tesselaria (Mauritius ebony) was heavily exploited by the Dutch in the 17th century.

Description
The family includes trees and shrubs. The leaves are usually alternately arranged, but some species have opposite or whorled leaves. The inflorescence is usually a cyme of flowers, sometimes a raceme or a panicle, and some plants produce solitary flowers. Most species are dioecious. The flower has 3 to 8 petals, which are joined at the bases. There are usually several single or paired stamens, which are often attached to the inner wall of the corolla. Female flowers have up to 8 stigmas. The calyx is persistent. The fruits are berry-like or capsular. Like the wood of some species, the roots and bark may be black in color.

Etymology
The family name Ebenaceae is based on the genus name Ebenus, published by Otto Kuntze in 1891. It is a later homonym of Ebenus L., a genus already named in the family Fabaceae, and is thus nomen illegitimum. The plant that Kuntze had named Ebenus was accordingly reassigned to the genus Maba, which in turn has since been included in the genus Diospyros.

Because the name Ebenaceae had become well known, having been used in major botanical references such as Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, Engler and Prantl's Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, and Hutchinson's Families of Flowering Plants, it was conserved and is therefore legitimate.

Genera
During the last century, seven genera have been included in the family at one time or another. One phylogenetic analysis reduced the family to four genera:

title: Ebenaceae


text:
Art car

An art car is a vehicle that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art cars are often driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as "Cartists".

Most car artists are ordinary people with no artistic training. Artists are largely self-taught and self funded, though some mainstream trained artists have also worked in the art car medium. Most car artists agree that creating and driving an art car daily is its own reward. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others have designed BMW Art Cars and their work has been reflected in racing cars like the BMW V12 LMR.

History
The art car subculture started with several influences - the hippie-themed VWs of the late 1960s, the lowrider, as well as a Merry Pranksters' creation, the decorated school bus known as Furthur.

During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelically-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon had a psychedelic Rolls-Royce. Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured many painted VW Buses (sometimes with a peace symbol in place of the giant VW logo) and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood seen in the film Escape from New York). Likewise, as a way of evading The Muppet Movie's main antagonist "Doc Hopper", Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem paint up the borrowed 1951 "bullet-nose" Studebaker Commander two-door owned by Fozzie Bear's uncle in a psychedelic manner, for Fozzie and Kermit the Frog to escape safely, at least for a while.

Artist Larry Fuente was among the first to take motorized appliqué to the limit with his "Mad Cad." Later, artists David Best and Jackie Harris contributed their works to the art car world.

An art car community began to cohere in the 1990s, inspired by movies and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative art display venues such as Burning Man. One of the main forces behind this is filmmaker and art car artist Harrod Blank, who created the art car documentaries Wild Wheels (1992), Driving The Dream (1998) and Automorphosis (2009). He also published two books Wild Wheels (1993, 2001) and Art Cars: the cars, the artists, the obsession, the craft (2002, 2007, 2012) Blank also co-founded with Philo Northrup the U.S.'s second largest art car festival in the San Francisco Bay Area: ArtCar Fest. Today many cars are covered by local newspapers and media. The only real way to get an idea of what is out there is to simply hit the road or attend an art car event. A New Year's Eve event in Houston, Texas, held on 31 December 2010 had over 100 Illuminated entrants, it is titled Gloworama, produced by ArtX (formerly Art Cars of Houston LLC prior to 2013 - their events are limited to illuminated vehicles only). The illuminated parade also drew the attention of the Galveston, Texas-based business empire Yaga's Entertainment, Inc. (the contract holder of Mardi Gras! Galveston 2011–2015) as part of their five-year contract signed on 18 November 2010.A well known early art car used for commercial advertisement was the Oscar Mayer Wienie Wagon—Later versions were known as the Wienermobile. These are bus-sized vehicles styled to appear as a hot dog on a bun. Commercial use of the art car has become popular in the 20th and continues into the 21st century. At the same time visionary applications including cars transformed into religious shrines continues to place visionary self-taught artists, student artists and corporate artists side by side on the road and at art car events.

The art car culture was once strongest throughout Texas and the Southeast but now it extends throughout the United States and art car events can be found in many major cities as well as in small country towns. Art cars now very evident in the East, with a large event often held in Baltimore. In Canada, art cars are popular in British Columbia and also in the western Canadian plains with shows in Nanaimo, British Columbia and Regina, Saskatchewan. Other cars can be found throughout the world, most recently in Europe with the European arm of car-hire firm Avis supporting the movement.

Artistic styles
Art cars are public and mobile expressions of the artistic need to create. Often these days art cars derive their inspiration from popular culture. Others however, are created by visionary artists in order to express complex visions, philosophies and ideas. There is a wide and varied spectrum of purpose found in art cars. In creating an art car, the "exteriors and interiors of factory-made automobiles are transformed into expressions of individual ideas, values, beliefs and dreams. The cars range from imaginatively painted vehicles to extravagant fantasies whose original bodies are concealed beneath newly sculptured shells".

Later themes have become more widely focused and more satirical or dark. Science fiction themes (monsters, giant insects from Them!, flying saucers), surrealism, and expressions of the Gothic and the sublime, are not uncommon. In parades and shows, "arted" bicycles or motor-scooters or costumed roller-skaters may also weave among the art cars. Some art car owners incorporate elements of music or street theater in their presentation.

For cars to be roadworthy, artistic style must be kept with the constraints of the law. This generally means keeping turn signals and windows clear, license plates visible, and not extending beyond the width of a normal car frame.

title: Art car


text:
TechTV

TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming. At the height of its six-year run, TechTV was broadcast in 70 countries, reached 43 million households, and claimed 1.9 million unique visitors monthly to its website. A focus on personality-driven product reviews and technical support made it a cultural hub for technology information worldwide, still existing today online through its former hosts' webcasts, most notably the TWiT Network.

The offices were located at 650 Townsend Street, 94103, and the studios, of which there were two, were located at 535 York Street, 94110.

Origins
On August 20, 1994, computer magazine publisher Ziff Davis entered the television industry with the premiere of The Personal Computing Show, a program that aired on Saturday mornings on CNBC, America's Talking and the Jones Computing Network. The Personal Computing Show, co-hosted by Jim Louderback and Gina Smith, targeted a growing demographic of personal computer owners and demonstrated how to purchase, install, maintain and repair personal computers and peripheral devices such as printers. Shortly after The Personal Computing Show's premiere, Ziff Davis revealed plans to produce a second show in October 1994 named PC Update, a half-hour Sunday morning news program hosted by Leo Laporte and focusing on the computer industry. According to Ziff Davis spokesman Gregory Jarboe, The Personal Computing Show was unsuccessful due to its relegation to odd channels and timeslots. When Ziff Davis' sale to investment firm Forstmann Little & Company was announced in October 1994, a small Foster City-based television operation named "ZD-TV" was listed as a company asset.

In April 1996, Ziff Davis announced the establishment of ZDTV as a San Francisco-based unit specializing in the production of television and internet broadcasts, which would allow the publisher to showcase its products. Its first project was to develop The Site, a daily hour-long prime time news show co-hosted by Soledad O'Brien about the increasing social and economic effects of technology. The program aired on the cable news network MSNBC, which launched on July 15, 1996. It was the third San Francisco-based television program specializing in technology after CNET Central and Cyberlife. According to Ziff Davis chief executive Larry Wangberg, San Francisco was chosen as ZDTV's headquarters for its proximity to Silicon Valley and easy access to Multimedia Gulch-based talent.

On May 6, 1997, Ziff Davis announced its plan to launch ZDTV as a 24-hour interactive cable network specializing in computers and the Internet. The publisher put $100 million behind the project and planned to debut the ZDTV channel in early 1998. Projected programming for the channel included talk shows on the impact of technology, business-oriented shows evaluating investments in high-tech stocks, and reviews of software and hardware. Children's programming was also planned for the weekends. The channel had 11 initial charter advertisers, including IBM, Gateway 2000, Microsoft, and Charles Schwab. Ziff Davis chairman and CEO Eric Hippeau cited the increasing presence of computers in cable television homes and workspaces as motivation for filling the niche of programming about computers, saying "This is a huge audience and it will only get bigger". Wangberg, who would be made the network's CEO, proclaimed Ziff Davis' ambition of ZDTV becoming "to computing what CNN is to news, what ESPN is to sports". Although Ziff Davis intended to continue producing The Site for MSNBC following ZDTV's launch, the show was canceled in September 1997 as a result of the network's shift toward an all-news format. In December 1997, Ziff Davis revealed at the Western Cable Trade Show in Anaheim that it had secured agreements with four cable operators to carry the network: Prime Cable in Las Vegas, Harron Communications in Detroit, Televue in Georgia, and Prestige Cable in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.

ZDTV
ZDTV was initially set to launch at the end of 1998's first quarter, but was delayed by Ziff Davis' initial public offering, which was announced on February 18. The network launched on Monday May 11, 1998, on cable systems in Las Vegas, Detroit, parts of Georgia near Atlanta and parts of Maine. An early adopter of ZDTV was Paul Allen's Charter Communications, which began carrying the channel in Newnan, Georgia in July 1998. On August 1, 1998, ZDTV was broadcast in its native San Francisco when the channel struck a deal with DirecTV to become available on Channel 273 via the providers' satellite dishes. In November 1998, Allen's holding company Vulcan Ventures invested $54 million in ZDTV, granting it a 33 percent stake in the network.

Although ZDTV was critically acclaimed, it struggled to gain a foothold in AT&T/TCI cable lineups, and was deemed unprofitable. In an effort to sell company assets to reduce debt and boost its share price, Ziff Davis put ZDTV up for sale on July 16, 1999. In November 1999, Vulcan purchased the remaining two-thirds in a transaction that was completed on January 21, 2000. The deal (which permitted the network to retain its name) was worth $204.8 million. On August 21, 2000, ZDTV announced that it would be changing its name to TechTV the following month, and would simultaneously be added to AT&T and Time Warner Cable's digital cable lineups.

TechTV
On September 18, 2000, ZDTV was renamed TechTV, and a new on-air strategy was announced along with several new series including the music-technology series, AudioFile. Soon, TechTV made a huge commitment to enter into live broadcasting when it launched a nine-hour experimental news program called TechLive in April 2001. The show, which catered to day traders and business types, never caught on with TechTV's audience. In November 2001, following a massive round of layoffs, TechLive was divided into three one-hour shows. In the spring of 2002, TechLive was cut further into just one thirty-minute daily news magazine show, with a focus less on tech news and more on how technology changed people's lives.

Beginning March 15, 2001, TechTV experienced repeated layoffs. In 2002, Silicon Spin (an opinion forum hosted by PC Magazine editor John C. Dvorak from the original ZDTV launched in May 1998) and AudioFile (a show for digital music enthusiasts launched in August 2000) were canceled, with its hosts being absorbed onto other network programs. 2003 saw the introduction of several new shows (such as Performance, Robot Wars, and Unscrewed with Martin Sargent).

In late 2001 and early 2002, many Comcast cable systems dropped TechTV from their channel lineups. At the time, some viewers speculated that this was done to eliminate a competitor to the Comcast-owned G4. When Comcast's G4 Media acquired TechTV and merged it with G4 in 2004, a second theory emerged, which suggested that Comcast's actual motive was to lower TechTV's value, and ultimately its asking price.

TechTV was also broadcast over the air on KTQW in Wichita, Kansas until the TechTV name was dropped during the G4 merger.

International distribution
A Canadian version of TechTV launched on September 7, 2001, as a joint venture of TechTV, Rogers Media, and Shaw Communications. The channel would later become G4techTV Canada to coincide with the American merger of TechTV and G4. The channel would change its name once again in mid-2009 to G4 Canada. In 2004, TechTV launched on Foxtel Digital in Australia. After the merger with G4, TechTV (then called G4techTV) left Australia lineups as its international feed ceased. On Malaysia's ASTRO platform, repeats of the international feed was run for some time after the international feed ceased before starting to import G4TV programming and retransmitting them locally on the same channel as the public educational service TV Pendidikan from 2002 to 2006. In Japan, Sony's So-net channel aired several TechTV programs until the fall of 2005 (they aired reruns after May 2004). In New Zealand, TechTV aired on Saturn Communications's channel 34 until May 2004. In addition to those countries, TechTV was broadcast internationally in the United Kingdom.

Merger and consolidation
On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV. This move became hugely controversial among loyal fans of TechTV and Leo Laporte, who, because of a contract dispute with Vulcan, left the channel. Shows with Laporte, including The Screen Savers and Call for Help, continued on with remaining staff taking over his hosting duties.

Around May 6, 2004, G4 announced the termination of 250 employees from the San Francisco office by July 16, 2004, allowing approximately 80 to 100 employees to transition to G4's main office in Los Angeles if they agreed to relocate there. Shows from TechTV that were not redundant to G4's offerings continued on until July, when the closing of the TechTV Offices would close the respective stages for these shows in turn.

On May 10, 2004, G4 Media completed the acquisition of TechTV from Vulcan. G4techTV was launched in the U.S. on May 28, 2004. This led to the cancellation of many of the TechTV channels throughout carriers across the world (e.g.: systems with both channels active, systems limiting Comcast's number of channels on their lineup, etc.) On January 3, 2005, TechTV International began airing select programs from G4techTV. After the closure deadline passed on July 16, 2004, only Los Angeles produced shows would air on the new channel. The final production originating at TechTV in San Francisco was the September 2, 2004, episode of The Screen Savers (which was taped on July 16, 2004).

On February 15, 2005, the TechTV brand was dropped from the United States G4techTV feed, leaving the network name as G4 – Video Game Television which also echoed the changes in programming made to the channel due to the merger for both G4's original offering and the greatly diminished TechTV originated shows (exceptions noted below); after that, G4 went through a rebranding and changed most of its programming to position itself as a male-oriented network.

TechTV shows and personalities who survived the merger
The Screen Savers survived somewhat in Attack of the Show!, remaining an open-format hosted talk show. On March 17, 2005, the staff made an announcement that they intended to reformat The Screen Savers to better fit the network, including the change of its name (a computer term for a program to protect a monitor from burned-in imagery, which no longer fit when The Screen Savers stopped covering computer self-help and DIY programming). It changed to Attack of the Show (a reference to the Star Wars prequel "Attack of the Clones"), and while still covering technology to a lesser extent, it also covers autos, sports, movies, new products and pop culture. Kevin Rose, Sarah Lane, and Brendan Moran stayed on after the transition to Attack of the Show for a short time, but Rose left on May 27, 2005, and both Lane and Moran left after their marriage on April 6, 2006, marking the final TechTV on-camera staff's exit from the program.

Six TechTV personalities, Kevin Rose, Sarah Lane, Morgan Webb, Adam Sessler, Chi-Lan Lieu and Brendan Moran relocated to Los Angeles to join G4. Only two TechTV shows, Anime Unleashed and X-Play, survived the merger without any major changes. Anime Unleashed (and in turn, all of the anime series which aired on the block) was canceled in March 2006. X-Play was the last TechTV-created show in production under G4 until it was announced in late 2012 that it and Attack of the Show would both be cancelled in December 2012.

In April 2012, Sessler was let go from G4. A proper reason was not given, however there have been rumors of a contractual dispute. Sessler was the last of the original hosts from the initial launch of ZDTV in 1998. When the network withdrew all their live programming in December 2012, Blair Butler and Webb were the only remaining TechTV personalities working at G4.

Programs
The following is a partial list of programs aired by TechTV.

Original programming

 * AudioFile – a weekly program focusing on technology's increasing role in the music industry.
 * Big Thinkers – a weekly interactive program that conducts interviews with the technology industry's visionaries.
 * Call for Help – a prime-time interactive program in which viewers can call, email or netcam for assistance in solving computer problems.
 * Computer Shopper – a weekly program that provides information about computer hardware and software products and how to buy them intelligently.
 * CyberCrime – a weekly program that investigates dangers to computer users such as fraud, hacking, viruses, cybersex crimes, and invasions of privacy.
 * Digital Avenue – a prime-time program in which manufacturers present in-depth demonstrations of their latest products.
 * Eye Drops – a weekly showcase of computer-animated shorts.
 * Fresh Gear – a weekly program that reviews technological gadgets.
 * Internet Tonight – a prime-time program showcasing people and personalities who specialize in the Internet.
 * Invent This! – a weekly prime-time program showcasing inventors.
 * Microsoft Insider Live – a pair of special live events that aired on October 5 and November 2, 2002. Each event was an interactive broadcast that showcased five new products from Microsoft. The event offered product demos, giveaways and an insider look at Microsoft Research & Development.
 * The Money Machine – a daytime program that gives expert financial advice concerning computers and the Internet.
 * Nerd Nation – a weekly prime-time program focused on nerd sub-cultures.
 * Performance – a weekly program covering technology's role in the world of sports.
 * The Screen Savers – a prime-time program that covers the latest computing products and demonstrates their effective use at home and the workplace.
 * Secret, Strange & True – a weekly program focusing on bio-technology.
 * Silicon Spin – an interactive prime-time program in which computing industry leaders discuss current technology events and features viewer commentary through email, chat, and videophone.
 * The Tech of: – a weekly prime-time program focusing on the workings of technology used in everyday life.
 * TechLive – formerly ZDTV News (1998–2000) and TechTV News (2000–2001); a bi-daily news program covering current events of the technology industry.
 * The Technotainment Zone – a weekly morning program in which Best Buy customers discuss the convergence of the technology and entertainment industries and how Best Buy can help get them the most that both industries have to offer.
 * Titans of Tech – a weekly series of biographies profiling figures in the technology industry.
 * Unscrewed with Martin Sargent – a daily showcase of "the darker, funnier, sexier world of technology and the Internet".
 * Wired for Sex – a weekly prime-time program focusing on technology's role in human sexuality.
 * Working the Web – a weekly program that provides information, advice, and resources for entrepreneurs and emerging companies to set up businesses on the Internet.
 * X-Play – formerly GameSpot TV (1998–2001) and Extended Play (2001–2003); a weekly program that provides reviews, tips and tricks, and previews for contemporary video games.
 * You Made It – a program that showcases homemade netcam videos.
 * Zip File – an abridged selection of ZDTV's other programs hosted by animated characters Dash and Tilde.

Acquired programming

 * Anime Unleashed – a programming block of science fiction anime.
 * Banner of the Stars
 * Betterman
 * Boogiepop Phantom
 * Crest of the Stars
 * Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure
 * Gate Keepers 21
 * Last Exile
 * Serial Experiments Lain
 * Silent Möbius
 * The SoulTaker
 * Beyond Tomorrow
 * Body Hits
 * Conspiracies
 * Future Fighting Machines
 * Max Headroom
 * Robot Wars
 * Spy School
 * Techno Games
 * Thunderbirds
 * Tomorrow's World

Staff
ZDTV's original executive lineup consisted primarily of television veterans; CEO Larry Wangberg was previously CEO of Times Mirror Cable Television, senior vice president of programming Greg Drebin previously served the same position at MTV, and news director Harry Fuller previously worked for KPIX-TV and KGO-TV.

Show personalities
The personalities of TechTV include Leo Laporte, Kate Botello, Alison Strahan, Roger Chang, Yoshi DeHerrera, John C. Dvorak, Carmine Gallo, Ali Hossaini, James Kim, Kris Kosach, Pam Krueger, Chris Leary, Chi-Lan Lieu, Jim Louderback, Tom Merritt, Megan Morrone, Patrick Norton, SuChin Pak, Michaela Pereira, Bill Rafferty, Kevin Rose, Alison Strahan Martin Sargent, Catherine Schwartz,  Adam Sessler, Laura Swisher, Morgan Webb, Tammy Cavadias and Liam Mayclem.

Many former hosts of TechTV programs have gone on to create new programs distributed online: Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech, Chris Pirillo's live.pirillo.com, Systm, thebroken, From The Shadows, commandN, Diggnation, Infected with Martin Sargent, DL.TV, CrankyGeeks, InDigital, East Meets West, and Weezy and the Swish are some of the shows produced by alumni.

Leo Laporte hosted Call for Help which aired until April 6, 2007. It was revamped and renamed The Lab with Leo Laporte and was shown on G4techTV Canada and the Australian HOW TO Channel. The show was filmed in HD and Laporte hoped to have it picked up by an American network. The series has since been cancelled due to poor ratings.

Kevin Rose, who worked on "The Screen Savers" and "Unscrewed with Martin Sargent", co-founded Digg which he featured on "The Screen Savers" in 2004, was hired by Google in March 2012, along with many of the employees at Rose's mobile app incubator called Milk.

Former personalities

 * Peter Barnes, Fox Business Network
 * Erica Hill, CNN journalist
 * Leo Laporte, Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech, founder of TWiT.tv
 * Kris Kosach, Host Audiofile
 * Scott Herriot, Anchor of Internet Tonight and Sasquatch Hunter
 * Michaela Pereira, anchor of KTTV's "Good Day LA"
 * Chris Pirillo, created own website
 * Victoria Recaño, formerly at KTLA
 * Alison Strahan, Actor and reporter.
 * Becky Worley, tech contributor for ABC's Good Morning America
 * Liam Mayclem, Formerly Correspondent Internet Tonight Host Audiofile NOW KCBS FOODIE CHAP KCBS RADIO
 * Tammy Cavadias, Community Production Manager

Virtual characters
Many of the founding staff of ZDTV had previously worked on MSNBC's The Site, which featured Dev Null, a virtual animated character voiced by Leo Laporte who interacted with host Soledad O'Brien. Improving on the technology used for Dev Null, ZDTV created two animated virtual characters who appeared as hosts for the network. Dash (voiced first by Paul McKinney and later by Patrick Flick and Chris Manners, with body performance by Jessa Brie Moreno and Slater Penney) and Tilde (voiced by Kate Botello and later by Laura LeBleu, with body performance by Jessa Brie Moreno and Slater Penney, in some support chat appearances Tilde was played by Theresa Quinn, Asst Production Manager) appeared in on-air and online promos for the network. Dash also appeared as a virtual correspondent on the show Internet Tonight in a segment called "The Homepage Hall of Fame" and briefly as the host of "Dash's Animation House."

Reunion
A possible TechTV reunion was announced by Leo Laporte in his blog on July 21, 2006. Further details were also announced by Chris Pirillo on his blog. Nothing further has been mentioned about a reunion of TechTV staff since 2006. Laporte and Patrick Norton, however, did team up for a final skit on the series finale of Attack of the Show.

title: TechTV


text: Talk:TechTV

title: Talk:TechTV


text:
Sinecure

A sinecure ( or ; from the Latin sine, 'without', and cura, 'care') is an office, carrying a salary or otherwise generating income, that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval church, where it signified a post without any responsibility for the "cure [care] of souls", the regular liturgical and pastoral functions of a cleric, but came to be applied to any post, secular or ecclesiastical, that involved little or no actual work. Sinecures have historically provided a potent tool for governments or monarchs to distribute patronage, while recipients are able to store up titles and easy salaries.

A sinecure can also be given to an individual whose primary job is in another office, but requires a sinecure title to perform that job. For example, the Government House Leader in Canada is often given a sinecure ministry position so that they may become a member of the Cabinet. Similar examples are the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose holders are ex officio members of the Privy Council and therefore may be given admitted to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom (which is formally the executive committee of the Privy Council). The minister without portfolio is a frequent example of this sinecure, often employed to give cabinet-level positions to enough members of all partners in a coalition government. Other sinecures operate as legal fictions, such as the British office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, used as a legal excuse for resigning from Parliament.

History
Sinecure, properly a term of ecclesiastical law for a benefice without the cure of souls, arose in the English Church when the rector had no cure of souls nor resided in the parish, the work of the incumbent being performed by a vicar. Such sinecure rectories were expressly granted by the patron. They were abolished by Parliament under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act of 1840.

Other ecclesiastical sinecures were certain cathedral dignities to which no spiritual functions attached or incumbencies where by reason of depopulation and the like, the parishioners disappeared or the parish church was allowed to decay. Such cases eventually ceased to exist.

The term is also used of any office or place to which salary, emoluments, or dignity, but no duties, are attached. The British civil service and the royal household, for example, were loaded with innumerable offices which, by lapse of time, had become sinecures and were only kept as the reward of political services or to secure voting power in parliament. They were prevalent in the 18th century, but were gradually abolished by statutes during that and the following centuries.

Current usage
Below is a list of extant sinecures by country.

Positions associated with membership of the Privy Council/Cabinet

 * Lord President of the Council
 * Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal
 * First Secretary of State
 * Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
 * Paymaster General

Positions used to effect resignation from the House of Commons

 * Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds
 * Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead

Positions associated with the Whips' Office

 * Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury – held by the Chief Whip in the House of Commons
 * Treasurer of the Household – held by the Deputy Chief Whip in the Commons
 * Comptroller of the Household – held by a senior Commons Whip
 * Vice-Chamberlain of the Household – held by a senior Commons Whip
 * Lords of the Treasury – held by the several junior Commons Whips
 * Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms – held by the Chief Whip in the House of Lords
 * Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard – held by the Deputy Chief Whip in the Lords
 * Lords in Waiting – held by the several junior Lords Whips

Ceremonial and honorary positions

 * Lord Clerk Register
 * Lord Steward of the Household
 * Master of the Horse
 * Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports
 * Constable of the Tower of London
 * Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle

Canada

 * Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
 * President of the Privy Council (given to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs)

Australia

 * Vice-President of the Executive Council

title: Sinecure


text:
Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton

Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton (1596 – 28 September 1652) was an English politician, military officer and peer. During the First English Civil War, he served as Royalist commander in the West Country, and was made Baron Hopton of Stratton in 1643.

Along with his close friend Sir Edward Hyde (later the Earl of Clarendon), he was made advisor to the future Charles II, when he was appointed to rule the West in early 1644. He commanded the last significant Royalist field army, and followed Charles into exile after surrendering in March 1646. A devout supporter of the Church of England, his personal opposition to Catholicism and Presbyterianism meant he took no further part in the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He died in Bruges in 1652.

In his stated account of the war, Clarendon described him as 'a man of great honour, integrity, and piety, of great courage and industry, and an excellent officer for any command but the supreme, to which he was not equal'.

Life
Ralph Hopton was born in early 1596, and baptised on 13 March at St Peter's, in Evercreech. He was the eldest child of Robert Hopton, 1575 to 1638, and Jane ( Kemys, circa 1570 to 1610, who owned estates in Monmouthshire. His grandfather's lands in Suffolk had been sold to provide dowries for his ten surviving daughters, and Robert inherited Witham Friary in Somerset, acquired from Glastonbury Abbey after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538.

He was educated at a local grammar school, possibly King's School, Bruton; various sources confirm he attended Lincoln College, Oxford, as did his uncle, Sir Arthur Hopton. In 1614, he studied law at Middle Temple in London, thus completing the education common for a man of his standing at the time.

He married Elizabeth Capel (1596-1646) in 1623; their marriage was childless. His estates were inherited by his nephew Thomas Wyndham, son of his eldest sister Catherine.

1615 to 1642
From 1615 to 1618, Hopton was travelling in Europe, in order to 'learn languages'. In 1620, he joined an English volunteer force under Sir Horace Vere, sent to support Frederick of the Palatinate, newly appointed Protestant king of Bohemia. This was authorised by James I, whose daughter, Elizabeth, was Frederick's wife; Hopton's younger sister Abigail was one of her Maids of Honour.

After Frederick's defeat at White Mountain in November 1620, he and his close friend William Waller were among those who escorted the Royal couple to safety, the Queen reportedly riding on his horse. They finally reached safety in the Dutch Republic in early 1621.

Hopton returned to London in February, and elected Member of Parliament, or MP, for Shaftesbury, a constituency controlled by the Earl of Pembroke, a connection of his mother, Jane. Parliament's fury at James' lack of support for his sister, and the Protestant cause in general, found an outlet in charges against an elderly Catholic lawyer, Edward Floyd, accused of insulting Frederick. Despite his personal anti-Catholicism, Hopton argued Floyd should not be condemned without a proper hearing; he was ultimately released, after James intervened.

When Parliament adjourned in June, he enlisted in Sir Charles Rich's Regiment of Foot, serving in the Palatinate campaign against the Catholic League. It appears likely he was among the English garrison of Frankenthal, which was ordered by James to surrender in March 1623.

Back in England, he married Elizabeth Capell, five years his senior, and widow of Justinian Lewin, a Privy Councillor; while childless, their marriage was apparently happy. Invited to stand as MP for Somerset in 1624, he declined, instead joining an English force recruited by Mansfeld to relieve Breda, then besieged by the Spanish. They arrived in the Dutch Republic in February 1625, reportedly in an 'appalling state;' the expedition collapsed, Breda surrendered, and Hopton returned home in July.

In his absence, Hopton was appointed MP for Bath in place of Nicholas Hyde, who switched to Bristol; Hyde was the uncle of Edward Hyde, future Earl of Clarendon. Their connection links Hopton with the constitutional monarchists, those who opposed attempts by Charles I to rule without Parliament, but ultimately supported him in 1642. During the 1625 to 1630 Anglo-Spanish War, Hopton refused to take part in the Cádiz expedition, accurately predicting its failure due to lack of funding. He was made a Knight of the Bath in February 1626, and MP for Wells in 1628. The following year, Charles dissolved Parliament, and did not recall it until 1640.

Appointed Deputy lieutenant of Somerset, and a Justice of the Peace, Hopton inherited his father's estates in 1638. He avoided involvement in the political debates of the 1630s, but supported the levying of Ship money, and in 1639, raised a troop of cavalry to fight in the first of the 1639 and 1640 Bishops Wars. Charles refused to seek financing from Parliament, and the result was chaos; although he assembled 15,000 men at York, the vast majority were untrained, unfed, unpaid and mutinous conscripts from the Northern trained bands, armed with bows and arrows. He was obliged to agree the Treaty of Berwick, leaving the Covenanters in control of Scotland.

Seeking funds for another attempt, in early 1640 Charles called what became known as the Short Parliament; Hopton was selected for Somerset, but the house refused to provide taxes without concessions, and was dissolved after three weeks. Hopton took no part in the 1640 war, another humiliating defeat; he was MP for Wells in the Long Parliament, this time called to raise the money to pay the Scots to return large parts of Northern England.

Along with Edward Hyde and other moderates, he voted for the execution of Charles' chief advisor, the Earl of Strafford; unlike them, he also backed the strongly anti-Catholic Grand Remonstrance in late 1641. A committed supporter of the Church of England, the arrest of Archbishop Laud and exclusion of bishops from the Lords seems to have been the point when he changed sides. He defended the attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1642, and in early March, was held in the Tower of London for two weeks for objecting to Parliament censuring the king.

1642 to 1646
After his release in March, Hopton was appointed Royalist Commissioner of Array for Somerset, placing him in command of the local trained bands. Despite Hopton's connections, the county was dominated by Parliament, forcing him to withdraw to Sherborne, in Dorset; the First English Civil War began on 22 August, when Charles raised his standard at Nottingham.

Charles named the Marquess of Hertford as his Lieutenant General in the West. Threatened by a larger Parliamentary army under the Earl of Bedford, the Royalists retreated from Wells to Minehead, where Hopton advised Hertford to take the infantry and artillery across the water to South Wales.

Accompanied by a small force of cavalry, Hopton joined Sir Bevil Grenville and other supporters in Cornwall. Under his command, the Royalists won victories at Braddock Down in January 1643, then Stratton in May. After the inconclusive Battle of Lansdowne on 5 July, he linked up with Hertford and Prince Maurice; their combined force destroyed William Waller's Western Association army at Roundway Down on 13 July. The biggest Royalist success of the war, it secured the West Country, apart from isolated garrisons in Plymouth and elsewhere.

Temporarily blinded by an explosion after Lansdowne, Hopton was confirmed as Royalist commander in the West, made Baron Hopton of Stratton, and governor of Bristol. In September, it was agreed Prince Rupert would move against London, while Hopton advanced into Hampshire and Sussex, whose iron foundries were Parliament's main source of armaments. However, Rupert was checked at Newbury on 20 September, and although Hopton reached Winchester in November, he was prevented from moving further.

In March 1644, he was defeated at Cheriton, ending the Royalist campaign in Southern England, and damaging his position with Charles. Although he served in the Lostwithiel campaign, his main role became one of administration; in early 1645, he was appointed to the Council advising the future Charles II. After Naseby in June, the Western Army was the last significant Royalist field force, but was scattered by the New Model Army at Langport in July.

Hopton succeeded Lord Goring as commander in January 1646, but the remnants of his army were defeated at Torrington on 16 February 1646. He pulled back to Truro, where he surrendered to Thomas Fairfax on 12 March.

1646 to 1652
Along with Edward Hyde, he followed the Prince of Wales to Jersey; like the majority of his advisors, they refused to accompany him to Paris, concerned over the influence of his strongly Catholic mother, Henrietta Maria. His wife died shortly after, and in 1647, he moved to Rouen, where he stayed with his uncle, Sir Arthur Hopton, former Ambassador in Madrid.

He resumed his position as advisor to Charles II during the 1648 to 1649 Second English Civil War, which continued after the execution of Charles I in January 1649. He resigned after Charles II signed the 1650 Treaty of Breda, which agreed to impose Presbyterianism on England in return for Scottish support in restoring him to the throne. An Episcopalian Church of England was central to Hopton's political beliefs, and he refused to support it.

While in exile, he wrote Bellum civile, an account of his campaign in the West from 1642 to 1644. He died at Bruges in September 1652, and after the 1660 Restoration, his body was reburied at St Mary's, in Witham Friary in Somerset. Confiscated by Parliament in 1647, his estates were returned to his family, and inherited by his nephew Thomas Wyndham.

title: Ralph Hopton, 1st Baron Hopton


text:
Talk:'night, Mother

name
I renamed the page from 'Night, Mother to Night, Mother, since the name was grammatically incorrect, I also added the first word bold thing. ilyanep 23:37 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Interesting. But the title of the play is  ' night, Mother, and I don't believe there is anything you can do about it. See for example http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/norman437-des-.html . --KF 13:54 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've changed it back to 'night, Mother because that is the official title of the play, grammatically correct or not. Kakashi-sensei 04:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oprah's version cancelled
Not really sure how to do all the referencing correctly, so someone else should do it. But Oprah cancelled her revival saying that the play was "too depressing". Source: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/oprah-winfrey-nixes-broadway-revival-of-too-depressing-night-mother-343156 155.41.117.99 (talk) 05:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC) casual wikipedia user

title: Talk:'night, Mother