text:
Electric Sheep

Electric Sheep is a volunteer computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver.

Process
The process is transparent to the casual user, who can simply install the software as a screensaver. Alternatively, the user may become more involved with the project, manually creating a fractal flame file for upload to the server where it is rendered into a video file of the animated fractal flame. As the screensaver entertains the user, their computer is also used for rendering commercial projects, sales of which keep the servers and developers running.

There are about 500,000 active users (monthly uniques).

According to Mitchell Whitelaw in his Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, "On the screen they are luminous, twisting, elastic shapes, abstract tangles and loops of glowing filaments."

The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep).

The sheep motif is carried over into other aspects of the project: the 100 or so sheep stored on the server at any time is referred to as 'the flock'; creating a new fractal by interpolating or combining the sheep's fractal code with that of another sheep is called mating/breeding; changes to the code are called mutations, etc.

The parameters that generate these movies (sheep) can be created in a few ways: they can be created and submitted by members of the electricsheep mailing list, members of the mailing list can download the parameters of existing sheep and tweak them, or sheep can be mated together automatically by the server or manually by server admins (nicknamed shepherds).

Users may vote on sheep that they like or dislike, and this voting is used for the genetic algorithm which generates new sheep. Each movie is a fractal flame with several of its parameters animated. The individual frames of which these movies consist are rendered using 'spare' processing cycles from idle computers on the distributed network of those running the screensaver application, and finished sheep (in the form of .avi files) are distributed to the network.

The computer-generated sheep parameters and movies are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (CC-BY-NC) license; user-generated sheep parameters are under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. Both are automatically downloaded by the screen saver. The underlying copyright issues raised by generative, distributed digital art projects involve novel legal issues that the current copyright system can not understand or handle.

The screensaver was created and released as free software by Scott Draves in 1999 and continues to be developed by him and a team of about five engineers.

The 2.7.x series differs from the old versions. It has a new logo, higher quality sheep and other features. It has switched to a freemium model in which the server software is not available and much of the computed data is not available under a free license, which led to its removal from Debian.

title: Electric Sheep


text:
Banca Transilvania

Banca Transilvania S.A. (also BT or TLV) is a banking institution with headquarters in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The bank was founded in 1993 in Cluj-Napoca with a capital of 2 billion RON, of which 79% was Romanian and 21% foreign.

BT is the largest bank in Romania in terms of assets, with a market share of over 16%. Its activities are organized into four main business lines: corporate banking, IMM, retail banking and medical division. BT has about 3.6 million customers ( 3.3 million personal accounts and 390,000 companies, 550 locations, and over 7,000 employees. Since June 2013, the CEO of BT has been Ömer Tetik.

General Information
A large Romanian bank, Banca Transilvania has over 1.76 million customers. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is the largest shareholder in the bank (15% of capital).

In 2013, Banca Transilvania was considered the third largest bank in Romania, not having experienced losses during a financial crisis plaguing the nation in the year.

In 1997, it became the first bank in Romania to be listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange It entered Superbrands Romania for the first time in 2013. Furthermore, it also launched the Western Union money transfer service via Internet Banking and ATM.

Bank net profit

 * 2007: 102 million euros
 * 2008: 108.2 million euros
 * 2009: 14.6 million euros
 * 2010: 24.43 million euros
 * 2011: 51.34 million euros
 * 2012: 71.98 million euros
 * 2013: 83.44 million euros

Bank assets

 * 2006: 1.2 billion euros
 * 2007: 3.8 billion euros
 * 2008: 4.2 billion euros
 * 2009: 4.6 billion euros
 * 2010: 4.8 million euros
 * 2011: 5.8 million euros
 * 2012: 6.6 million euros
 * 2013: 7.1 billion euros

Banca Transilvania's stock value was headed in 2007 toward 2 billion euros, but after drastic corrections on the financial markets, the bank reached a stock value of below 300 million euros in April 2009.

In December 2009, Bank of Cyprus acquired 9.7% of Banca Transilvania's shares through several transactions made on Bucharest Stock Exchange totaling 58 million euros.

Banca Transilvania registered for Q1 of 2014, a net profit of 103.4 million lei, almost 23 million euros, having a 23% increase since last year's same period.

The BT Financial Group
The BT Financial Group was formed in 2003, and includes Banca Transilvania, BT Asset Management, BT Direct, BT Leasing, BT Securities, Factoring company, BT Finop Leasing and Medicredit. BT has 100% equity shares or majority positions in the other parts of the group, all of which use the BT logo.

BT Asset Management (BT AM) manages the group activities. It was founded in 2005 and manages the BT Maxim, BT Classic and BT Invest 1 closed-end investment funds, which hold shares in Romanian companies with high growth potential. In 2007, BT Asset Management was the leading Romanian mutual fund with a market share of 15.3%, in 2008 it slipped to 5th place, with a market share of 5.2% and assets of 77.3 million RON.

Sponsorships
As of 2021, it is the official jersey sponsor of the Romanian national basketball team, CS Universitatea Cluj-Napoca (men's basketball) and Romania national under-21 football team.

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

title: Banca Transilvania


text:
Ilia Chavchavadze

Prince Ilia Chavchavadze (ილია ჭავჭავაძე; 8 November 1837 – 12 September 1907) was a Georgian public figure, journalist, publisher, writer and poet who spearheaded the revival of Georgian nationalism during the second half of the 19th century and ensured the survival of the Georgian language, literature, and culture during the last decades of Tsarist rule. He is Georgia's "most universally revered hero" and is regarded as the "Father of the Nation."

He was a leader of contemporary youth intellectual movement named "Tergdaleulebi". They spread modern and European liberal ideals in Georgia. Ilia Chavchavadze founded two modern newspapers: Sakartvelos Moambe and Iveria. He played an important role in the creation of the first financial structure in Georgia – Land Bank of Tbilisi, with the aim of protecting Georgian land from being bought by Armenian bourgeoisie. During 30 years he was a chairman of this Bank, through which he financed and promoted most of the cultural, educational, economical and charity events which took place in Georgia.

Continuing the educational work started in Constantinople by Fr. Peter Kharischirashvili and the Servites of the Immaculate Conception, Ilia Chavchavadze also participated in the foundation of "Society for the Spreading of Literacy among Georgians" – an organization that established schools that taught in the Georgian language. This was instrumental in halting the Russification policy of Russian Empire in Georgia.

Inspired by the contemporary liberal and nationalist movements throughout Europe, Chavchavadze directed much of his efforts toward awakening national and liberal ideals among Georgians. Chavchavadze was the author of numerous articles that were published in his newspaper Iveria, as well as in other periodicals that were published in Georgia. In his articles, Chavchavadze discussed literature, education, theater, politics, economics, current affairs. His views on self-government, judicial system, social issues, human rights, women's rights, and civic activism were ahead of their time and contributed to Georgia's sense of national identity. He was a devoted protector of the Georgian language and culture from Russification. He coined the phrase "Ena, Mamuli, Sartsmunoeba" ("Language, Homeland, Faith"), which is a widely acknowledged slogan of Georgian nationalism.

During the 1905 Russian Revolution Chavchavadze was elected as a representative of the Georgian nobility to the imperial State Council. However, he stated that he would represent the whole nation, not just one particular social class. He advocated against capital punishment and lobbied for Georgian autonomy.

His most important literary works were: The Hermit, The Ghost, Otaraant Widow, Kako The Robber, Happy Nation, Letters of a Traveler and Is a man a human?!.

Chavchavadze was killed in Tsitsamuri, near Mtskheta, by a gang of assassins. Details of his murder are still matter of debate. His legacy earned him the broad admiration of the Georgian people. In 1987 he was canonized as Saint Ilia the Righteous (წმინდა ილია მართალი, tsminda ilia martali) by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Today, Georgians revere Chavchavadze as The Uncrowned King (უგვირგვინო მეფე, ugvirgvino mepe) and the "Father of the Nation."

Ancestry and early life
Ilia Chavchavadze was born in Qvareli, a village in Kvareli, located in the Alazani Valley, in the Kakheti province of Georgia, which was part of the Russian Empire at that time. Ilia was a tavadi, the Georgian title of prince. It is thought that the noble Chavchavadze family came from the Pshav-Khevsureti region of Georgia, and, in 1726, King Constantine II granted the Chavchavadze family the rank of Prince in recognition of their knighthood and valor to the nation. This resulted in the family moving and settling in the Alazani Gorge in Kakheti.

Ilia was the third son of Grigol Chavchavadze and Mariam Beburishvili. Grigol, like his father and his famous ancestors, had a military background. He, along with the local militiamen protected the village from numerous Dagestani invasions. This can be seen in the architecture of the Ilia Chavchavadze museum house in Kvareli, incorporating a Medieval castle style in the two-storey castle in the yard, which was designed to protect the house during invasions.

Chavchavadze was educated at the elementary level by the deacon of the village before he moved to Tbilisi where he attended the prestigious Academy for Nobility in 1848. However, from an early age, Ilia was influenced by his parents who were highly educated in classical literature, Georgian history and poetry. From his parents, Ilia learned the inspiring stories of Georgian heroism in classical historical novels. In his autobiography, Ilia refers to his mother, Princess Mariam Chavchavadze, who knew most Georgian novels and poems by heart and encouraged her children to study them. Ilia also described the influence of the deacon's storytelling, which gave him an artistic inspiration, later applied in his novel writing.

Ilia's mother, Mariam, died on 4 May 1848, when Ilia was ten years old, and his father asked his sister, Makrine, to help bring up the children. Aunt Makrine had a significant impact on Ilia's life, because, after 1852, when Ilia's father Grigol died, she was the only remaining caretaker of the family.

In 1848, after the death of Princess Chavchavadze, Ilia was sent to Tbilisi by his father to begin his secondary education. Ilia attended a private school for three years before he entered the 1st Academy of Tbilisi in 1851. Soon after, Ilia's father died and Aunt Makrine looked after the family. His secondary school years were very stressful, due to his father's death. However, the Chavchavadze family suffered another devastating blow when Ilia's brother, Constantine, was killed during the Dagestani raid on Kakheti. Ilia expressed his anguish and grief in one of his first short-poems called Sorrow of a Poor Man. In addition to his personal problems, the political situation in Georgia worsened under the harsh authority of the Russian Empire, which played a destructive role to the nation and its culture.

Student years
After graduating from the academy, Ilia decided to continue his education at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia. Before leaving for St. Petersburg, Ilia composed one of his most remarkable poems, To the Mountains of Kvareli in the village of Kardanakhi on 15 April 1857, in which he expressed his lifelong admiration for the Greater Caucasus Mountains and his sorrow at leaving his homeland.

That same year, Ilia was admitted to the University of St. Petersburg. During his student years, numerous revolutions sprang up in Europe which Ilia observed with great interest. Ilia's attention focused on the events in Italy and the struggle of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom he admired for many years. While in St.Petersburg, Ilia met Princess Catherine Chavchavadze, from whom he learned about the poetry and lyrics of the Georgian romantic Prince Nik'oloz Baratashvili. Due to the harsh climate in St Petersburg, Ilia became very ill and returned to Georgia for several months in 1859.

Ilia finally returned to Georgia after the completion of his studies in 1861. During his journey back, Ilia wrote one of his greatest masterpieces, The Traveler's Diaries, in which he outlines the importance of nation-building and provides an allegorical comparison of Mt. Kazbegi and the Tergi River in the Khevi region of Georgia.

Political life
Ilia's main political and social goals were based on Georgian nationalism. He urged nationwide resistance to the House of Romanov's policy of forced Russification, the revival of the Georgian language, and the cultivation of Georgian literature. Even more subversive from the State's perspective, Chavchavadze also pushed for reviving the independence of the Georgian Orthodox Church from the control of the Russian Tsar and the Holy Synod.

In the 1860s, "Tergdaleulebi", the new generation of Georgian intellectuals, educated at Russian universities and exposed to European ideas, promoted national culture against assimilation by the Imperial center. Led by Ilia Chavchavadze, their program attained more nationalist colors as the nobility declined and capitalism progressed, further stimulated by the rule of the Russian bureaucracy and economic and demographic dominance of the Armenian bourgeoisie in the capital city of Tbilisi. Chavchavadze prominently founded "The Bank of the Nobility" of Tbilisi, with the aim of protecting Georgian land from being sold off by poor Georgian nobles to rich Armenian bourgeoisie. In his work Outcrying Stones, Chavchavadze denounced Armenians for falsifying Georgian history, buying up Georgian land and appropriating Georgian churches, as well as indebting poor Georgian peasant families. Chavchavadze attacked Armenians for their mercantilism and condemned them in his newspaper Iveria for "eating the bread baked by someone else or drinking that which is created by another's sweat", as well as being "sly moneylenders and unscrupulous traders". He also created slogan "Language, Homeland, Religion", which served as a motto of Georgian nationalism. Chavchavadze and his associates called for the unity of all Georgians and put national interests above class and provincial divisions. Their vision did not envisage an outright revolt for independence, but demanded autonomy within the reformed Russian Empire, with greater cultural freedom, promotion of the Georgian language, and support for Georgian educational institutions and the national church, whose independence had been suppressed by the Russian government.

As the number of supporters for Chavchavadze's ideas grew, so did opposition to Chavchavadze from both the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and particularly from Noe Zhordania. The SD's main aims were focused on toppling the Tsarist autocracy and upon an Atheist and Marxist transformation of a still unified Russian Empire. This did not include the revival of the Georgian Church, State, language, or of a distinctly Georgian identity. Ilia was viewed as bourgeois and as an old aristocrat who failed to realize the importance of the revolutionary and Atheist future.

In addition to his works described above, Chavchavadze was also the founder and chairman of many public, cultural and educational organizations (Society for the Spreading of Literacy Among Georgians, "The Dramatic Society", "The Historical-Ethnographical Society of Georgia", etc.). He was also a translator of British literature. His main literary works were translated and published in French, English, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and other languages. Between 1906 and 1907, he was a member of the State Council (Gosudarstvennaya Duma) in Russia. His eclectic interests also led him to be a member of, among others, the Caucasian Committee of the Geographical Society of Russia, the Society of Ethnography and Anthropology of Moscow University, the Society of Orientalists of Russia and the Anglo-Russian Literary Society (London).

Prince Chavchavadze briefly acted as a literary mentor to a young Joseph Stalin, who was then an Orthodox seminarian in Tbilisi. According to historian Simon Sebag Montefiore: "The Prince was sufficiently impressed to show the teenager's work to his editors. He admired Stalin's verse, choosing five poems to publish – quite an achievement. Prince Chavchavadze called Stalin the 'young man with the burning eyes.'"

Death
After serving as a member of the Upper House in the first Russian Duma, Ilia decided to return to Georgia in 1907. On 28 August 1907, while travelling with his wife Olga from Tbilisi to Saguramo, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze was ambushed and murdered by a crew of six assassins in the small village of Tsitsamuri, near Mtskheta.

The Prince's murder was seen as a national tragedy and was mourned by all classes of Georgian society. Prince Akaki Tsereteli, who was suffering from serious health problems at the time, spoke at the funeral and dedicated an outstanding oration to Ilia: "Ilia's inestimable contribution to the revival of the Georgian nation is an example for future generations". Famous Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela said: "Ilia's murderers would have killed Georgia if they could".

Following the unfortunate passing of Ilia, the news coverage pertaining to his assassination was primarily limited to a single newspaper called Isari (ისარი). Notably, Isari, despite being a relatively small publication, provided extensive coverage of the incident. Surprisingly, larger mainstream newspapers did not report on the intricate details surrounding Ilia's assassination.

Investigation
In 1907, the Tsarist authorities launched investigation into Chavchavadze's death and arrested four suspects: Giorgi Khizanishvili, Ivane Inashvili, Gigola Modzghvrishvili and Tedo Labauri. One suspect (Gigla Berbichashvili, the head of the crew) went into hiding in Iran, while another one (Pavle Aptsiauri) died during clashes with the police. According to investigation, during the incident Chavchavadze appealed to the crew: "Do not shoot, I am Ilia", while Gigla replied: "That's why we have to shoot you". In 1909, according to the decision of the Stolypin tribunal, the entire gang was sentenced to capital punishment. Following the October Revolution, Gigla Berbichashvili returned to Georgia in 1921 and worked in the various positions within the Soviet Georgian government. In 1936, the investigation was launched against him for participating the murder of Ilia Chavchavadze. In December 1941, he was tried in the court, which sentenced him to capital punishment in January 1942. However, this was later changed to 10 years imprisonment.

Theories
The assassination of Ilia Chavchavadze remains controversial today. The Tsarist investigation concluded that the murderers were part of Bolshevik "Red Squad", while the Soviet investigation blamed the Tsarist secret police and administration for being involved in the assassination. The unofficial versions mostly blame Bolsheviks as well as Mensheviks for orchestrating the murder. Chavchavadze had publicly and very successfully undermined the growth of both Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Social Democratic Labour Party. Furthermore, Prince Chavchavadze's Orthodox Christian and socially conservative vision for Georgian nationalism and his enormous popularity and influence upon the Georgian people may have been additional causes. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suspects, while Prince Chavchavadze's assassination may have been a rare instance of cooperation between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the SDLP, that Joseph Stalin may have been at least tangentially involved in the murder of his former publisher and literary mentor.

According to Montefiore: "The Bolshevik position in Georgia was undermined by the assassination of the hugely popular Prince Ilya Chavchavadze, in August 1907. The Bolsheviks had attacked his patriarchal vision of Georgian culture and, it was widely believed, had decided to kill him. There is some evidence that Stalin's friends Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Filipp Makharadze organized or took part in the assassination. It may be that the SDs took no part in the murder at all. Stalin always praised Chavchavadze's poetry in his old age and there is no evidence that he ordered the hit, but he was very close to Sergo and he was certainly more than capable of separating literary merit from cruel necessity: politics always came first."

Legacy

Ilia Chavchavadze is considered to be "the founding father of modern Georgian nation". Ilia's legacy of national awakening earned him the everlasting admiration of the Georgian people and the title of Uncrowned King of the Nation.  His work was acknowledged in his lifetime, as well as Soviet period. His legacy is cherished in modern-day Georgia too. In 1937, the Soviet authorities celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Ilia Chavchavadze. During Soviet times, Chavchavadze's rejection and criticism of serfdom was particularly emphasized.

After the Soviet invasion of Georgia and the nation's annexation into the Soviet Union in 1921, Chavchavadze became for Georgian nationalists the symbol of Georgian freedom and national liberation. In 1987, Chavchavadze was formally canonized by the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church, as "Saint Ilia the Righteous." In October 1987 the Ilia Chavchavadze Society, an organisation that promoted Georgian national revival and political independence, was established by Soviet dissident intellectuals. In 1989, during the anti-Soviet protests in Tbilisi, the poems, novels and political beliefs of Prince Ilia Chavchavadze became a driving force behind the Georgian struggle for independence.

In 1998, Stephen Kinzer wrote about the widespread admiration of Chavchavadze across the political spectrum: "Today leftists in Georgia embrace Chavchavadze for his hatred of injustice, centrists love him for his nonviolent humanism, and right-wing nationalists have adopted his slogan Motherland, Language, Faith." Faith, in this context, exclusively means Georgian Orthodoxy.

In 2006, Ilia State University was named after Ilia Chavchavadze. Various streets and avenues are also named after him, including Tbilisi's central avenue, Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue. Chavchavadze's main works, including his Is a man a human?!, are taught in Georgian schools within Georgian Language and Literature classes.

Published works

 * Georgian Poetry: Rustaveli to Galaktion: A Bilingual Anthology. Translations by Lyn Coffin, with the assistance of Gia Jokhadze, featuring an introduction by Dodona Kiziria. Slavica, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013.
 * Georgische Dichter. Translated and compiled by Arthur Leist, Dresden-Leipzig, 1887 (Poems of Ilia Chavchavadze and other Georgian poets, in German)
 * The Hermit by Prince Ilia Chavchavadze. Translated from the Georgian by Marjory Wardrop, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1895

title: Ilia Chavchavadze


text:
Public holidays in the United States

In the United States, public holidays are set by federal, state, and local governments and are often observed by closing government offices or giving government employees paid time off. The federal government does not require any private business to close or offer paid time off, as is the case for most state local governments, so employers determine which holidays to observe.

Several federal holidays are widely observed by private businesses with paid time off. These include New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Businesses often close or grant paid time off for New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve, and the Day after Thanksgiving, but none of these are federal holidays. Other federal holidays are less widely observed by business. Most federal holidays are regularly celebrated on a Monday or Friday to create a three-day weekend.

Christmas is the only religious holiday that is a federal holiday. Some businesses allow religious employees to take paid time off for their religious observances.

Other holidays, such as Halloween and Valentine's Day, are widely celebrated in the United States but rarely include paid time off.

Overview
There are no national holidays on which the law requires all businesses to close. Federal holidays are only established for certain federally chartered and regulated businesses, government contractors, and the city of Washington, DC. All other public holidays are created by the States. Most states allow local jurisdictions, cities, villages, etc, to establish their own local holidays. As a result, holidays have not historically been governed at the federal level, and federal law does not govern business openings.

Many states have additional holidays that are not observed by the federal government. Most prominent among these are holidays to celebrate statehood. Since 2000, some city and state-level celebrations of Malcolm X Day and Rosa Parks Day have been created, in addition to the federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to honor and recognize African American contributions to the United States. Missouri honors Rosa Parks on her birthday.

Colorado became the first state to establish a paid state holiday honoring a woman in 2020 with the designation of the first Monday in October as Frances Xavier Cabrini Day.

Many businesses observe certain holidays as well, which are also not mandated by any government agency. Many workplaces celebrate religious observance as well as ethnic holidays, such as Saint Patrick's Day, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Mardi Gras, and Cinco de Mayo, as a matter of best practice.

While the popularity of each public holiday cannot easily be measured, the holiday with the highest greeting card sales is Christmas. Major retail establishments, such as shopping malls and centers, close only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but remain open on all other holidays, with early closings on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, and sometimes on other major holidays. In the face of a rapidly tightening retail market in the 2010s, retailers have increasingly been opening on Thanksgiving evening and night to extend Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, however, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly limited this practice.

Virtually all large companies observe and close on the major holidays (New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). Some non-retail businesses close on the day after Thanksgiving, while others, such as federal banks and post offices, are not allowed to close that day. Some smaller businesses normally open on Sundays will close on Easter Sunday if they expect to have very few customers that day.

Holiday business restrictions
Some states restrict certain business activities on some holidays. Business closures are mandated on a few holidays in some states for certain kinds of businesses by blue laws. For example, businesses that operate on more than 5,000 sqft cannot open on Thanksgiving in some New England states. The most notable businesses to close on such occasions are car dealerships and liquor stores. Some holidays are observed with community service, depending on the meaning of the holiday. Service is not mandated by any government agencies, whether they be federal, state, or local.

Federal holidays
The following federal holidays are observed by the majority of private businesses with paid time off:
 * New Year's Day (January 1)
 * Memorial Day (May 25–31, floating Monday)
 * Independence Day (July 4)
 * Labor Day (September 1–7, floating Monday)
 * Thanksgiving (November 22–28, floating Thursday)
 * Christmas (December 25)

Other federal holidays are less widely observed by businesses. These include:
 * Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 15–21, floating Monday)
 * Washington's Birthday (February 15–21, floating Monday)
 * Juneteenth (June 19)
 * Columbus Day (October 8–14, floating Monday)
 * Veterans Day (November 11)

Established in 2021, Juneteenth is the newest federal holiday. In its second year of federal observance, 30% of private employers offered paid time off.

Holidays with religious significance
Religious and cultural holidays in the United States are characterized by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. However, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...." and Article VI specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." As a result, various religious faiths have flourished, as well as perished, in the United States. In 2002, a majority of Americans reported that religion plays a "very important" role in their lives, a proportion unique among developed nations.

In 2012, the majority of Americans (73–80%) identified themselves as Christians and about 15–20% had no religious affiliation. In the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), 76% of American adults population identified themselves as Christians, with 51% professing attendance at a variety of churches that could be considered Protestant or unaffiliated, and 25% professing Catholic beliefs. The same survey said that other religions (including, for example, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism) collectively made up about 4% of the adult population, another 15% of the adult population claimed no religious affiliation, and 5.2% said they did not know, or they refused to reply. In a 2012 survey by the Pew forum, 36 percent of Americans stated that they attended services nearly every week or more.

Christian holidays
With 65% of adults in the U.S. identifying as Christian in 2019, many holidays from the liturgical calendar are observed by this segment of the population. Many businesses, as well as federal, state, and local governments, are closed on Christmas. A reference in the film A Christmas Story shows a Chinese restaurant being the only establishment open on Christmas.

Some private businesses and certain other institutions are closed on Good Friday. The financial market and stock market is closed on Good Friday. Most retail stores remain open, although some might close early. Public schools and most universities are closed on Good Friday, either as a holiday of its own, or part of spring break. The postal service operates, and banks regulated by the federal government do not close for Good Friday.

Many companies, including banks, malls, shopping centers, and most private retail stores that normally open on Sundays are closed on Easter.

Hindu holidays

The Hindu holidays of Diwali and Holi are celebrated in some parts of the United States, mostly by Indian Americans or peoples of Indian descent. Holi, the "festival of colors" has inspired a Broadway musical based on this festival. While not officially recognized in most of the United States, the New York City Council officially recognized these as official school holidays in New York City. CNN reported that the Diwali holiday is shown in American pop culture through an episode of The Office.

Jewish holidays
The three most commonly celebrated Jewish holidays are Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah. Passover and Yom Kippur in addition to Rosh Hashannah and Hanukkah are recognized as an optional state level holiday in Texas. All Jewish holidays start the night before, as that is when the Jewish day begins.

Islamic holidays
The major Islamic holidays of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha have been recognized in the United States. Awareness of these holidays can be found in calendars published by major calendar manufacturers. According to Al-Jazeera, schools in New York and Michigan (mainly Dearborn) may begin to close in observance of all Muslim holidays.

Drinking holidays
According to the National Institutes of Health, about 86% of the population over 18 drinks alcohol recreationally or socially. In the United States, the holidays that are considered the most "festive" are generally regarded as some of the "most drunken holidays". Celebrations usually revolve around barbecues and beer. Although many of these holidays lack any official status, they are generally observed by the drinking culture for the fact that these holidays revolve around drinking.

One measurement of the popularity of these holidays is the amount of alcohol purchased for the occasion. One survey names New Year's Eve as the holiday on which the most alcohol is consumed based on sales. While many holidays are listed, some are generally notable for their drinking requirement while others are known for abstinence.

African American holidays
Some holidays in the United States celebrate or recognize the struggle of African-Americans for emancipation from slavery and civil rights. Two holidays are celebrated as Federal holidays:
 * Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed on the Monday falling on or between January 15–21, commemorates the birthday of Dr. King, a significant leader of the Civil Rights Movement. The holiday was established federally in 1983 and first officially celebrated in 1986; efforts to create the holiday faced strong opposition and some southern states paired the new holiday with a holiday honoring the Confederacy
 * Juneteenth, observed on June 19, commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas in June 1865, and more generally the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans. The name is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth and has been a federal holiday since 2021.

Some states and cities have additional holidays honoring African-Americans:
 * Emancipation Day, observed in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands on various days based on when enslaved people were emancipated in those jurisdictions
 * Harriet Tubman Day, observed in New York and in some parts of Maryland on March 10
 * Malcolm X Day, observed in Illinois and Berkeley, California, on May 19; also celebrated in cities such as Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. as an unofficial holiday
 * Rosa Parks Day, observed in Missouri on February 4, in California and Michigan on the following Monday, and in Ohio on December 1

A significant African-American cultural celebration is Kwanzaa, observed from December 26 to January 1. Created by Maulana Karenga in 1966, the holiday honors African heritage in African-American culture.

Confederate holidays
Some states celebrate holidays honoring the Confederate States of America that seceded from the United States. Many of these state holidays were created in the early twentieth century, fifty years after the end of the Civil War, as part of the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
 * Confederate Memorial (or Heroes) Day is observed in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas on various days.
 * Robert E. Lee Day (on or around Lee's Jan 19 birthday) is still observed in Alabama and Mississippi combined with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the only remaining states to do so. It is officially recognized in Florida, but is not widely observed there. Arkansas combined the observance of Robert E. Lee Day with Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1985. In 2017, the state passed a law removing Lee's name from the January holiday and instead establishing a state memorial day on the second Saturday of October in honor of Lee.
 * Confederate History Month has been declared at least once in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia as well as by various cities, usually in April to augment Confederate Memorial Day.

Other traditional and informal holidays
In addition to the federal/national holidays, many religious, ethnic, and other traditional holidays populate the calendar, as well as lighter celebrations. These are rarely observed by businesses as holidays; indeed, many are viewed as opportunities for commercial promotion. Because of this commercialization, some critics apply the deprecatory term Hallmark holiday to such days, after the Hallmark greeting card company.
 * Groundhog Day, February 2
 * Valentine's Day, February 14
 * Saint Patrick's Day, March 17
 * April Fool's Day, April 1
 * Patriots' Day (Revolutionary War), April 15
 * Earth Day, April 22, varies
 * Arbor Day, April 24–30, floating Friday
 * May Day, May 1
 * Cinco de Mayo, May 5
 * Mother's Day, May 8–14, floating Sunday
 * Flag Day, June 14
 * Helen Keller Day, June 27
 * Father's Day, June 15–21, floating Sunday
 * Pioneer Day, July 24
 * Women's Equality Day, August 26
 * Patriot Day, September 11
 * Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, September 17
 * Oktoberfest, various days in September/October
 * World Vegetarian Day, October 1 globally (initiating Vegetarian Awareness Month throughout October)
 * Halloween, October 31
 * Election Day (also Democracy Day), November 2–8, floating Tuesday
 * Black Friday, November 23–29, floating Friday
 * Cyber Monday, November 26–December 2, floating Monday
 * Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, December 7
 * New Year's Eve, December 31

Other notable holidays

 * Opening Day (late March/early April; the beginning of the Major League Baseball season and an unofficial indication that summer is approaching)
 * Winter break (two weeks in early winter that schools are off)
 * Spring break (one week in early spring that schools are off)
 * Summer vacation (summer months in which schools are off)
 * Super Bowl Sunday (the second Sunday in February; the day of the National Football League's championship; festivities generally including in-home parties and watching the game on television with beverages and snacks)

title: Public holidays in the United States


text:
Talk:Banca Transilvania

Untitled
The Romanian original gave the initial capitalization of the bank as "2 miliarde lei". As I understand it, their "miliard" is our (US) "billion". I believe that in recent years the UK has mostly come around to share this US usage; I realize that historically the UK also used "milliard", with a UK "billion" being a thousand times larger than a US "billion".

I made my US$ translation based on the (unverified) assumption that in December 1993 there were about 2,000 Romanian lei to the US dollar. Someone may want to follow that up. -- Jmabel 01:42, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:SIGLA-BT-simpla.gif
Image:SIGLA-BT-simpla.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Banca Transilvania. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100501214752/http://www.bancatransilvania.ro/index/3.html to http://www.bancatransilvania.ro/index/3.html
 * Added tag to http://www.bancatransilvania.ro/bt/stiri/2013-05-14_Banca_Transilvania_are_un_nou_director_general.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 13:49, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Banca Transilvania


text:
South China University of Technology

The South China University of Technology (SCUT) is a public university in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education and co-sponsored with the Guangdong Provincial People's Government. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.

The university is a multidisciplinary university focusing on engineering, combined with science, also promoting well coordinated development of management, economics, humanities and law.

History

 * Formerly known as the South China Institute of Technology (华南工学院), it was established in 1952, through a reorganization process that unified the engineering schools and departments of major universities from five provinces in Central and Southern China, including the former National Sun Yat-sen University, Lingnan University, Hunan University, Guangxi University, South China Joint University, and four others.
 * In 1960, it was selected as one of the National Key Universities, under the direct administration of the Chinese Ministry of Education.
 * The University was renamed as South China University of Technology in 1988.
 * In 1995, it was selected as one of the universities into which China will make a significant investment in the 21st century as part of Project 211.
 * In 1999, it was rated "excellent" during the Undergraduate Teaching Assessment, and was among the first "Excellent Universities of Undergraduate Education" in the country. In the same year, a national science park was established with the authorization of the State Ministry of Technology and State Ministry of Education.
 * In 2000, authorization was given for the establishment of a Graduate School.
 * In 2001, it became one of the 39 national universities sponsored by Project 985.
 * In 2017, it became one of the 36 Class A Double First-Class Universities.

Rankings and reputation

 * In the 2013 Leiden Ranking of universities according to the proportion of their scientific publications that rank among the top 10% in their field, SCUT was ranked 138th in the world, 11th in Asia, and 5th in China (excluding Hong Kong) behind Nankai University, Hunan University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Lanzhou University.
 * As of 2023, QS World University Rankings placed the university at # 392 in the world.
 * The university ranked 401-500th according to the 2012 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
 * The university ranked 301-400th according to the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). In 2015, its engineering/technology and computer science was ranked 48th, and its mathematics and chemistry were ranked 151-200th and 101-150th respectively among world universities.
 * The university ranked 200-300th according to the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
 * The university ranked 151-200th according to the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
 * The university ranked 101-150th according to the 2023 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
 * The university ranked 448th according to the 2015 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities.
 * The university ranked 394th according to the 2017 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities.
 * The university ranked 219th according to the 2023 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities.

Campuses and Schools
There are three SCUT campuses, both located in Guangzhou: Wushan Campus (or North Campus), University Town Campus (or South Campus, HEMC Campus) and Guangzhou International Campus (GZIC). The headquarters of the university are on the Wushan Campus.

Of SCUT's 32 schools, 17 are located on the Wushan Campus, 11 on the University Town Campus, and 4 on the GZIC.

Wushan Campus (North Campus)

This campus was formerly part of the National Sun Yat-sen University campus, and many buildings remain from that time.

17 schools:
 * School of Architecture
 * School of Automation Science & Engineering
 * School of Business Administration
 * School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
 * School of Civil and Transportation Engineering
 * School of Electric Power
 * School of Electronic and Information Engineering
 * School of Food Science and Engineering
 * School of Foreign Languages
 * School of Light Industry and Engineering
 * School of Materials Science and Engineering
 * School of Mathematics
 * School of Marxism
 * School of Mechanical & Automotive Engineering
 * School of Physical Education
 * School of Physics and Optoelectronic Technology
 * School of Public Administration

University Town Campus (South Campus)

11 schools:
 * School of International Education
 * School of Arts
 * School of Bioscience and Bioengineering
 * School of Computer Science & Engineering
 * School of Design
 * School of Economics and Commerce
 * School of Environment and Energy
 * School of Journalism and Communication
 * School of Law
 * School of Software Engineering
 * School of Medicine

Guangzhou International Campus (GZIC)

4 schools:
 * School of Micro-electronics
 * School of Molecular Science and Engineering
 * Shien-Ming Wu School of Intelligent Engineering
 * School of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering

Politicians and military

 * Cheng Siwei – Vice Chairman of The National People's Congress
 * Wan Qingliang –  Former mayor and CCP secretary of Guangzhou City
 * Lin Shusen –  Former Governor and Deputy Communist Party Chief of Guizhou Province

Athletes

 * Chen Ding –  2012 Summer Olympics gold medallist in the 20 kilometres walk

Academics

 * He Jingtang –  Dean of School of Architecture of SCUT, Member of China Academy of Engineering and the main designer of the acclaimed China Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
 * Thomas Hou –  Charles Lee Powell Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology
 * Rong Baisheng, architect and civil engineer

Businesspeople

 * Yao Zhenhua –  Founder of Baoneng Group
 * Li Dongsheng –  CEO of TCL Corporation
 * Zhang Zhidong –  Former CTO of Tencent
 * He Xiaopeng –  Co-founder and president of UCWeb Inc.

title: South China University of Technology


text:
Talk:Scientific skepticism

what makes it a "movement"
The article seems a mish mash of various topics related to skeptical thinking, but where is the "movement"? Of course as modern people have generally become better educated they have (mostly) applid critical thought to discard various outlandish claims. Is that a movement? This should be answered and addressed in the opening sentences of the article. (Or perhaps the article title should be changed) Gjxj (talk) 12:40, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I would like to echo this same question. It seems to me like the main subject of the article is scientific skepticism, as the references supporting the idea of a movement are few and far between. It appears that the only source making prominent reference to scientific skepticism as a movement is Loxton's 2013 article "Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?" Another source says "I’m part of a growing community (some would even call it a movement) consisting of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who value science and critical thinking", which is rather unconvincing. A few of the other sources cited in support of claims about "the movement" don't in fact make any reference to there being a skeptical movement at all. Plus, as mentioned above in the previous talk section, none of the other language versions of this article on Wikipedia call it a movement—they're all titled the equivalent of "Scientific skepticism".
 * I think the article for New Atheism could help guide us here. New Atheism has also been described by some as a movement, and the article includes discussion of those who consider it a movement, but it doesn't give the idea undue prominence by e.g. including it in the article title, or defining the movement and the idea separately. I propose we do the same here—rename the article to scientific skepticism, and remove separate definitions of the idea and the movement, as well as any other potentially undue emphasis on the idea as a movement. Stonkaments (talk) 03:01, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree that scientific skepticism is better name for this article. --Thi (talk) 08:18, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about that. The article covers pre-scientific skepticism and skepticism of topics that effectively cannot be studied by science. It also touches on pseudoskepticism. MarshallKe (talk) 22:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It sounds like that information could potentially be better suited for Skepticism. The focus of this article is specifically scientific skepticism. Stonkaments (talk) 23:43, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you object to me listing the change to Scientific skepticism at WP:Requested moves? (The target title already exists as a redirect, so I can't do the move myself.) Stonkaments (talk) 20:18, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. MarshallKe (talk) 11:50, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * MarshallKe Stonkaments Thi Hey everyone (It seems Gjxj isn't on Wikipedia anymore). I've a history and philosophy of science degree: my research work is on the skeptical movement (only written in French for now). I just wanted to say that I totally support the fact that it is a movement (...), I guess the same way feminism is a social movement even if we can agree with it without being actually part of the movement. When I started to work on the subject I was happy that this page was still called Skeptical movement, since scientific skepticism is often mistaken for something else. Yeah we can support Paul Kurtz philosophy without being part of the movement, but he still created a global movement (that the Comite Para became part of even if they were already there), and most people in it right now actually don't know Kurtz's philosophy. I'm not here to fight, the page actually talk about the skeptical movement anyway (even if the first lines let think the subject might be larger).
 * MarshallKe: Yeah Kurtz wanted a movement that don't only deal with science and parascience subjects, but we still can call it scientific skepticism => it only means that the skeptical inquiry process/work is inspire by science. EpisteMax (talk) 17:52, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Relevant quotes
It would be nice to find appropriate spots for the inclusion of these quotes:

 * "The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact." - John Tyndall, physicist
 * "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." - William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and philosopher
 * "A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which this world is suffering." - Bertrand Russell, British polymath

Valjean (talk) 16:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Scientific skepticism


text:
Iowa Writers' Workshop

The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 87 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2.7% and 3.7%. On the university's behalf, the workshop administers the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Iowa Short Fiction Award.

The workshop's current director is the writer Lan Samantha Chang, under whom its endowment has grown from $2.6 million to $12.5 million.

History
In 1897, theater producer George Cram Cook began teaching a class called "Verse-Making", effectively the University of Iowa's first creative writing class. In 1922, Dean Carl Seashore of the University of Iowa Graduate College allowed creative writing to be accepted as theses for advanced degrees. Later, the School of Letters began selecting students for writing courses in which they were tutored by resident and visiting writers. The Iowa Writers' Workshop began as an official program in 1936, with Wilbur Schramm as its first director.

Under Paul Engle, its second director from 1941 to 1965, the program became a national landmark and was divided into fiction and poetry. He partnered with Esquire for a 1959 symposium titled "The Writer in Mass Culture" that included as guests Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, and Mark Harris, and was covered in Newsweek. In 1962, Engle and his wife, Hualing Nieh Engle, started the country's first translation workshop, which led to the creation of the university's MFA program in literary translation. In 1967, the couple founded the International Writing Program, and in 1976, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work facilitating creative and cultural exchange through the International Writing Program. A reported over 300 writers supported them for the honor, which the Nobel Committee eventually did not give that year.

Engle secured donations for the workshop from the business community for about 20 years, including locals such as Maytag and Quaker Oats, as well as U.S. Steel and Reader's Digest. Between 1953 and 1956, the Rockefeller Foundation donated $40,000. Henry Luce, the publisher of TIME and Life magazines, and Gardner Cowles Jr., who published Look magazine, provided publicity for the workshop's events.

Subsequent directors were George Starbuck (1965–69), John Leggett (1969–86), and Frank Conroy (1987–2005), whose 19 years at the helm made him the longest-serving director.

Lan Samantha Chang was appointed the Workshop's sixth director in 2006. She is the program's first female, first Asian American, and first nonwhite director, and has held the role for 17 years.

Locations
The Writers' Workshop originated in temporary military barracks-style buildings near the Iowa River, the present location of the Iowa Memorial Union, but in 1966 moved to the English-Philosophy Building. In 1997, it moved to its current location, Dey House. The Glenn Schaeffer Library and Archives, an extension including a library and reading room, classrooms, and faculty offices, was added to Dey House in 2006.

Methodology
The Workshop was formed by Norman Foerster's passionate support for creative writing and Wilbur Schramm's conviction that writing should be as technical and rigorous a pursuit as any traditional literature degree. The workshop model for higher education creative writing was created in that pursuit of technical intensity. The model constantly exposed students to outside opinions on their fiction and created a pressurized atmosphere that forced students to rein in their emotional reactions and consider their work analytically. The Workshop operated without the characteristic assumption of the time that artists needed to be unleashed, instead opting to focus and refine them. While intended to serve fiction writers, the Workshop began to change in the 1970s when its first nonfiction thesis was accepted. Ever since, the Workshop has produced many literary journalists and shaped public perception of creative nonfiction.

Curriculum and courses
The program's curriculum requires students to take a small number of classes each semester, including the Graduate Fiction Workshop or Graduate Poetry Workshop and one or two additional literature seminars. These requirements are meant to prepare students for the realities of professional writing, where self-discipline is paramount. The graduate workshop courses meet weekly. Before each three-hour class, a small number of students submit material for critical reading by their peers. The class consists of a round-table discussion during which the students and the instructor discuss each piece. How classes are conducted varies by teacher and between poetry and fiction. The ideal result is not only that writers come away with insights into their work's strengths and weaknesses, but that the class as a whole derives insight, whether general or specific, about the process of writing.

When the Workshop received the National Humanities Medal in 2002, then director Conroy explained its ethos: "It is a focused program, like Juilliard. We read constantly, rereading the classics. They can write anything they want. We teach them what we've learned as writers."

In a 2022 interview, Chang said: "We don't have a quota about where people are from or what kind of writing they do. What we look for is work that is filled with energy, work that interests us. I'm sure, every year, there are many, many very good writers who go elsewhere because we don't admit them. But we try to be very open. I would say that we look for work that excites us. Frank Conroy used to describe it as feeling someone reaching off the page at you when you're reading, feeling tension in the language."

Faculty and alumni
Former faculty have included Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, John Cheever, and Marilynne Robinson.

As of January 2023, the workshop's faculty are Jamel Brinkley, Charles D'Ambrosio, Margot Livesey, and Ladee Hubbard in fiction; Ethan Canin in English and creative writing; James Galvin, Mark Levine, Tracie Morris, Elizabeth Willis in poetry; and Program Director Lan Samantha Chang. Visiting faculty are Alexia Arthurs, Tom Drury and Amy Parker.

Reputation and influence
In 1986, during the 50th anniversary of the Workshop, The New York Times wrote: "At 50, the Iowa workshop is something of a dowager, standing unshakably in the mainstream of our literary life."

In 2019, five graduates won Guggenheim Fellowships. In April 2021, the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized seven graduates and former faculty: five graduates and a former visiting faculty member received awards, and an alumna was elected to membership. In response to the news, Chang said: "The graduates being distinguished by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021 came to the Iowa Writers' Workshop over a period of more than four decades. This reflects the strength and longevity of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and creative writing at Iowa."

Graduates have gone on to become directors of other notable creative writing MFA programs, including Wallace Stegner at Stanford University, Eileen Pollack at the University of Michigan, Vance Bourjaily at Louisiana State University, Bret Anthony Johnston at the University of Texas, Austin's Michener Center, and Adam Haslett at The City University of New York's Hunter College. They have also become top editors at major publishers. These include Haki R. Madhubuti, founder of Third World Press; Jill Bialosky, executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company; and Thomas Gebremedhin, vice president and executive editor of Doubleday. Among them have also been editors of major publications, including D. Herbert Lipson of Ebony, and curators, such as Christine Kuan, former CEO and director of Sotheby's Institute of Art New York.

On the HBO show Girls, the character Hannah Horvath enrolls in the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Fiction

 * Robert Penn Warren, 1947 Pulitzer for All the King's Men, former faculty member.
 * Wallace Stegner, 1972 Pulitzer for Angle of Repose, MA, 1932; PhD, English, 1935.
 * James Alan McPherson, 1977 Pulitzer for Elbow Room, MFA, 1969; former faculty member.
 * John Cheever, 1979 Pulitzer for The Stories of John Cheever, former faculty member.
 * Jane Smiley, 1992 Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres, MA, 1975; MFA, English, 1976; PhD, English, 1978.
 * Philip Roth, 1998 Pulitzer for American Pastoral, former faculty member.
 * Michael Cunningham, 1999 Pulitzer for The Hours, MFA, English, 1980.
 * Marilynne Robinson, 2005 Pulitzer for Gilead, emeritus faculty member.
 * Paul Harding, 2010 Pulitzer for Tinkers, MFA, English, 2000.
 * Andrew Sean Greer, 2018 Pulitzer for Less, former visiting faculty member.
 * Jayne Anne Phillips, 2024 Pulitzer for Night Watch, MFA, 1978.

Journalism

 * Tracy Kidder, 1982 Pulitzer in general nonfiction for The Soul of a New Machine, MFA, 1974.

Poetry

 * Karl Shapiro, 1945 Pulitzer for V-Letter and Other Poems, former faculty member
 * Robert Lowell, 1947 Pulitzer for Lord Weary's Castle, 1974 Pulitzer for The Dolphin, former faculty member
 * Robert Penn Warren, 1958 Pulitzer for Poems 1954–56, Now and Then, 1980 Pulitzer for Poems 1976–78, former faculty member
 * W. D. Snodgrass, 1960 Pulitzer for Heart's Needle, BA, 1949; MA, 1951; MFA, 1953
 * John Berryman, 1965 Pulitzer for 77 Dream Songs, former faculty member
 * Anthony Hecht, 1968 Pulitzer for The Hard Hours, attended Workshop but did not graduate
 * Donald Justice, 1980 Pulitzer for Selected Poems, alumnus and former faculty member
 * Carolyn Kizer, 1985 Pulitzer for Yin, former faculty member
 * Rita Dove, 1987 Pulitzer for Thomas and Beulah, MFA, 1977
 * Mona Van Duyn, 1991 Pulitzer for Near Changes, MA, English, 1943
 * James Tate, 1992 Pulitzer for Selected Poems, MFA, 1967
 * Louise Glück, 1993 Pulitzer for The Wild Iris, former faculty member
 * Philip Levine, 1995 Pulitzer for The Simple Truth, MFA, 1957; former faculty member
 * Jorie Graham, 1996 Pulitzer for The Dream of the Unified Field, MFA, English, 1978; former faculty member
 * Charles Wright, 1998 Pulitzer for Black Zodiac, MFA, 1963
 * Mark Strand, 1999 Pulitzer for Blizzard of One, MA, 1962; former faculty member
 * Robert Hass, 2008 Pulitzer for Time and Materials, frequent visiting faculty member
 * Philip Schultz, 2008 Pulitzer for Failure, MFA, English, 1971

U.S. Poets Laureate

 * Mark Strand, 2019–20, MFA '78.
 * Rita Dove, 1993, MFA '77, the youngest person and first African American to hold the position
 * Philip Levine
 * Robert Penn Warren, faculty
 * Mona Jane Van Duyn, faculty
 * Robert Hass, faculty
 * Louise Glück, faculty
 * Charles Wright, 2014–16, MFA '70
 * Juan Felipe Herrera, 2015–17, MFA '91
 * Joy Harjo, 2019–20, MFA '78, the first Native American person to hold the position

Booker Prize

 * Eleanor Catton, 2013, for The Luminaries, alumna

National Humanities Medal

 * Rita Dove, 1996
 * Iowa Writers' Workshop, 2003

MacArthur Fellowship

 * Yiyun Li, 2003

title: Iowa Writers' Workshop


text:
User talk:Hundredweight

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

snoyes 02:10, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Excellent work on NAACP v. Alabama and Bolling v. Sharpe. Really glad to welcome someone who has both knowledge to share and the tenacity to look through wikipedia's formatting documentation ;-). --snoyes 02:15, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hundredweight 21:15, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hehe, formatting is certainly not my strong point. I'm learning as I go along. Thanks, anyway - I find writing these pages helps solidify my own knowledge of these cases. --hundredweight

title: User talk:Hundredweight


text:
Margaret Widdemer

Margaret Widdemer (September 30, 1884 – July 14, 1978) was an American poet and novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise, shared with Carl Sandburg for Cornhuskers.

Biography
Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where her father, Howard T. Widdemer, was a minister of the First Congregational Church. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She first came to public attention with her poem The Factories, which treated the subject of child labor. In 1919, she married Robert Haven Schauffler (1879–1964), a widower five years her senior. Schauffler was an author and cellist who published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. His papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin.

Widdemer's memoir Golden Years I Had recounts her friendships with eminent authors such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Widdemer died in Gloversville, Fulton County, NY on July 14, 1978.

Poetry collections

 * The Factories, With Other Lyrics (1915)
 * The Old Road to Paradise (1918)
 * Cross Currents (1921)
 * A Tree with a Bird in It (1922) (parodies)
 * Little Girl and Boy Land (1924)
 * Ballads and Lyrics (1925)
 * Collected Poems (1928)
 * The Road to Downderry (1931)
 * Hill Garden (1937)
 * Dark Cavalier (1958)

Children's fiction

 * Winona of the Camp Fire (1915)
 * Winona of Camp Karonya (1917)
 * You're Only Young Once (1918)
 * Winona's War Farm (1918)
 * Winona's Way (1919)
 * Winona on her Own (1922)
 * Winona's Dreams Come True (1923)
 * Binkie and the Bell Dolls (1923)
 * Marcia's Farmhouse (1939)

On writing

 * Do You Want to Write? (1937)
 * Basic Principles of Fiction Writing (1953)

Memoir

 * Golden Friends I Had (1964)
 * Summers at the Colony (1964)
 * Jessie Rittenhouse: A Centenary Memoir-Anthology (1969)

Adult fiction

 * The Rose-Garden Husband (1915) – adapted as the 1917 film A Wife on Trial
 * Why Not? (1916) – adapted as the 1918 film The Dream Lady
 * The Wishing Ring Man (1919) – adapted as the film The Wishing Ring Man
 * The Boardwalk (1919)
 * I’ve Married Marjorie (1920)
 * The Boardwalk (1920)
 * The Year of Delight (1921)
 * A Minister of Grace (1922)
 * Graven Image (1923)
 * Charis Sees It Through (1924)
 * Gallant Lady (1926)
 * More Than Wife (1927)
 * Loyal Lover (1929)
 * Rhinestones (1929)
 * All the King's Horses (1930)
 * The Truth About Lovers (1931)
 * The Pre-War Lady (1932)
 * The Years of Love (1933)
 * Golden Rain (1933)
 * The Other Lovers (1934)
 * Eve's Orchard (1935)
 * Back to Virtue, Betty (1935)
 * Songs for a Christmas Tree (1935)
 * This Isn't the End (1936)
 * ''The Singing Wood (1936)
 * Marriage is Possible (1936)
 * Ladies Go Masked (1939)
 * Hand on Her Shoulder (1939)
 * She Knew Three Brothers (1939)
 * Someday I'll Find You (1940)
 * Lover's Alibi (1941)
 * Angela Comes Home (1942)
 * Constancia Herself (1945)
 * Let Me Have Wings (1945)
 * Lani (1949)
 * Red Cloak Flying (1950)
 * Lady of the Mohawks (1951)
 * The Great Pine's Son (1954)
 * The Golden Wildcat (1957)
 * Buckskin Baronet (1960)
 * The Red Castle Women (1968)

title: Margaret Widdemer


text:
Rick Rubin

Frederick Jay Rubin (, ; born March 10, 1963) is an American record executive and record producer. He is a co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records.

Rubin helped popularize hip hop by producing records for acts such as the Beastie Boys, Geto Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J. He has also produced hit records for acts from a variety of other genres, such as pop (Kesha, Adele, and Lady Gaga), heavy metal (Danzig, Metallica and Slayer), alternative rock (the Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, the Strokes and Weezer), hard rock (Audioslave and Aerosmith), nu-metal (Linkin Park, System of a Down), and country (Johnny Cash, The Avett Brothers, and the Chicks).

In 2007, Rubin was called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and was named on Time list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World".

Early life
Frederick Jay Rubin was born into a Jewish family in Long Beach, New York, on March 10, 1963, the son of housewife Linda and shoe wholesaler Michael Rubin. He grew up in Lido Beach, New York. While a student at Long Beach High School, Rubin befriended the school's audiovisual department director, who gave him a few lessons in guitar playing and songwriting. He then played in a band with three friends, performing at garage gigs and school shows until a teacher helped him create a punk band called the Pricks. Their biggest claim to fame was being thrown off the stage at CBGB after performing two songs due to brawling with hecklers, which had actually been instigated by friends of the band who had been instructed to do so to get the show shut down and create a buzz. Although he had no authority in New York City, his father traveled to Manhattan wearing his Long Beach auxiliary police uniform as he attempted to "shut down" the show.

Def Jam
Rubin founded Def Jam Recordings while in college at New York University. He moved on to form the band Hose, influenced by San Francisco's Flipper. In 1982, a Hose track became Def Jam's first release, a 45 rpm 7" vinyl single in a brown paper bag, and no label. The band played in and around the NYC punk scene, toured the Midwest and California, and played with seminal hardcore bands like Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, and Minor Threat, becoming friends with Fugazi frontman and Dischord Records owner Ian MacKaye. The band broke up in 1984 as Rubin's passion moved toward the NYC hip hop scene.

Having befriended Zulu Nation's DJ Jazzy Jay, Rubin began to learn about hip hop production. By 1983, the two had produced "It's Yours" for Bronx rapper T La Rock, and released it on Def Jam. Producer Arthur Baker helped to distribute the record worldwide on Baker's Streetwise Records in 1984. Jazzy Jay introduced Rubin to concert promoter/artist manager Russell Simmons in the Negril club, and Rubin explained he needed help getting Def Jam off the ground. Simmons and Rubin edged out Jazzy Jay and the official Def Jam record label was founded while Rubin was attending New York University in 1984. Its first release was LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat". Rubin went on to find more hip-hop acts outside the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem, including rappers from Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island, which eventually led to Def Jam's signing of Public Enemy. Rubin was instrumental in pointing the members of the Beastie Boys away from their punk roots and into rap, resulting in Kate Schellenbach's departure from the group. The Beastie Boys' 1985 "Rock Hard"/"Party's Gettin' Rough"/"Beastie Groove" EP came out on the success of Rubin's production work with breakthrough act Run-DMC, of which previous recordings were produced by Simmons and Orange Krush's musician Larry Smith. His productions were characterized by occasionally fusing rap with heavy rock. Rubin tapped Adam Dubin and Ric Menello to co-direct the videos for the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" and "No Sleep till Brooklyn", effectively launching the band's mainstream hip hop career.

It was the idea of Rubin's friend Sue Cummings, an editor at Spin magazine, to have Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborate on a cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". This 1986 production is often credited with both introducing rap hard rock to mainstream ears and revitalizing Aerosmith's career. In 1986, he worked with Aerosmith again on demos for their forthcoming album, but their collaboration ended early and resulted in only rough studio jams. In the same year, Rubin began his long musical partnership with Slayer, producing Reign in Blood, considered a classic of the heavy metal genre. This was his first work with a metal band.

In 1987, the Cult released its pivotal third album, Electric. Produced by Rubin, the album remains one of the Cult's trademark and classic works. Rubin worked with the Cult again on the 1992 single "The Witch". He is credited as music supervisor for the film Less than Zero and as the producer of its soundtrack. Rubin portrayed a character based on himself in the 1985 hip-hop motion picture Krush Groove, which was inspired by the early days of Simmons's career as an artist manager and music producer. He then directed and co-wrote (with Ric Menello) a second Run–DMC film, Tougher Than Leather in 1988.

In 1988, Rubin and Simmons went their separate ways after Rubin had a falling out with then Def Jam president Lyor Cohen. Rubin left for Los Angeles to start Def American Records, while Simmons remained at Def Jam in New York. In Los Angeles, Rubin signed a number of rock and heavy metal acts, including Danzig, Masters of Reality, the Four Horsemen, and Wolfsbane, as well as alternative rock group the Jesus and Mary Chain and stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Though Rubin's work at this time focused mainly on rock and metal, he still retained a close association with rap, signing the Geto Boys and continuing to work with Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run-DMC.

American Recordings
Rubin had originally given his new label the name "Def American Recordings". In 1993, he found that the word "def" had been accepted into the standardized dictionary and held an actual funeral for the word, complete with a casket, grave, celebrity mourners, and a eulogy by Al Sharpton. Def American became American Recordings. Rubin has said: "When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie. When 'def' went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose."

The first major project on the renamed label was Johnny Cash's American Recordings (1994), a record including six cover songs and new material written by others for Cash at Rubin's request. The album was a critical and commercial success, and helped revive Cash's career after a fallow period. The formula was repeated for five more Cash albums: Unchained (on which Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers served as the backing band), Solitary Man, The Man Comes Around (the last album released before Cash's death), A Hundred Highways, and Ain't No Grave. The Man Comes Around earned a 2003 Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance ("Give My Love to Rose") and a nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("Bridge over Troubled Water" with Fiona Apple). Rubin introduced Cash to Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", and the resulting cover version of it on The Man Comes Around became a defining song of Cash's later years. Rubin also produced two of Joe Strummer's final songs, "Long Shadow", a song Strummer wrote for Cash to record although he never did, and a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song". Both were released on Strummer's final album, Streetcore, which was released after his death. Rubin also produced a version of "Redemption Song" with Strummer and Cash together, which was featured in Cash's posthumous box set, Unearthed.

Rubin has also produced a number of records with other artists, which were released on labels other than American. Arguably his biggest success as a producer came from working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom Rubin produced six studio albums from 1991 to 2011, starting with the band's fifth release, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which launched the band to mainstream success thanks to the hit singles "Give It Away" and "Under the Bridge". Other albums include One Hot Minute, Californication, By the Way, Stadium Arcadium and I'm With You. The six albums with the Chili Peppers also spawned 12 number-one singles on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, a record the band as of 2015 still holds, and various awards, including 16 Grammy nominations (with six wins), and a Producer of the Year Grammy award for 2006's Stadium Arcadium, which was also nominated for Album of the Year. The band has sold over 80 million albums worldwide, most of which are the Rubin-produced albums. Various members of the Chili Peppers have also been used on other projects by Rubin, John Frusciante featured on Johnny Cash and Chad Smith featured on the Chicks. After 24 years of working with Rubin, the band announced in late 2014 that it would be working with Danger Mouse on its 11th studio album. Rubin returned to the role of producer for the band's two albums released in 2022, seven months apart from one another: Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen. Again these two albums both featured no.1 singles on the Alternative Songs chart.

Rubin also produced Mick Jagger's 1993 Wandering Spirit album, Lords of Acid's 1994 Voodoo-U album, Tom Petty's 1994 Wildflowers, AC/DC's 1995 Ballbreaker, Donovan's 1996 Sutras, System of a Down's 1998 System of a Down, and Metallica's 2008 Death Magnetic. In 2005, Rubin executive-produced Shakira's two-album project Fijación Oral Vol. 1 and Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. He was to appear on the Talib Kweli's album Eardrum, Clipse's album Til the Casket Drops and Lil Jon's album Crunk Rock. Rubin also produced the Jay-Z track "99 Problems", and was featured in the song's video. He also worked with Eminem on the song and music video "Berzerk".

Rubin produced Black Sabbath's 2013 album 13 and Billy Corgan's comeback solo album Ogilala.

Columbia
In May 2007, Rubin was named co-head of Columbia Records. He co-produced Linkin Park's 2007 album Minutes to Midnight with Mike Shinoda. Rubin and Shinoda have since co-produced the band's 2010 album A Thousand Suns and its 2012 release Living Things.

In 2007, Rubin won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for his work with the Chicks, Michael Kranz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Green Day, and Johnny Cash released in 2006 Rubin won the award again in 2009, for production work for Metallica, Neil Diamond, Ours, Jakob Dylan, and Weezer in 2008.

In 2007 and 2012, Rubin won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The former was for his work on the Chicks album Taking the Long Way and the latter came for his contribution to Adele's album 21.

Post-Columbia
Rubin left Columbia in 2012, and revived the American Recordings imprint through a deal with Republic Records. The first albums released under this new deal were ZZ Top's La Futura and the Avett Brothers' The Carpenter.

Rubin attempted to record a cover album with Crosby, Stills & Nash in 2012, but the brief sessions were unsuccessful. Graham Nash called the sessions "irritable" and "not a great experience".

In July 2021, Rubin signed with Endeavor Content to further develop his home studio, Shangri-La Recording Studios.

Other work
Rubin has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss's book Tools of Titans, and often gives advice on creativity via his Instagram page.

Rubin's debut book, published on January 17, 2023, by Penguin Press, is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It is a nonfiction work about creativity. He said, "I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be."

Praise
Rubin's biggest trademark as a producer has been a "stripped-down" sound, which involves eliminating production elements such as string sections, backup vocals, and reverb, and instead having naked vocals and bare instrumentation. But by the 2000s, Rubin's style included such elements, as noted in The Washington Post: "As the track reaches a crescendo and [Neil] Diamond's portentous baritone soars over a swelling string arrangement, Rubin leans back, as though floored by the emotional power of the song."

Of Rubin's production methods, Dan Charnas, a music journalist who worked as vice president of A&R (Artists & Repertoire) and marketing at American Recordings in the 1990s, said, "He's fantastic with sound and arrangements, and he's tremendous with artists. They love him. He shows them how to make it better, and he gets more honest and exciting performances out of people than anyone." Natalie Maines of the Chicks has praised his production methods, saying, "He has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured. Come to think of it, maybe he is a guru." Producer Dr. Dre has said that Rubin is "hands down, the dopest producer ever that anyone would ever want to be, ever".

Despite having never worked with Rubin, British band Muse praised him for his "hands off" approach to production and credited him as an influence on its first self-produced album, The Resistance. The album's lead single, "Uprising", was named UK Single of the Year at the 2010 Music Producers Guild Awards, and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy while accepting the award said, "I'd like to thank John Leckie for teaching us how to produce and Rick Rubin for teaching us how not to produce." The statement was initially interpreted as a criticism of Rubin, but Bellamy later clarified it was meant as a self-deprecating comment on the band's similarly "hands-off" attitude to production.

Criticism
In 2014, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor said that he met Rubin only four times during the entire recording process of Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses): "We were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't care who you are! [...] The Rick Rubin of today is a shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again." Taylor expressed regret for those comments in 2016, and said he wanted to make amends with Rubin, attributing the friction to being "freshly sober [...] unsure of [himself]" and to never having previously worked with anyone whose methods were like Rubin's.

In 2019, when comparing Rubin to Greg Fidelman (who had recently produced Slipknot's album We Are Not Your Kind), Taylor again criticized Rubin for his absences from the studio due to other work commitments. He said that Rubin was "a nice guy, absolutely nice guy" but claimed that "he just wasn't fucking there" and that the band did not see him more than once a week until they finished recording the vocals at his house.

In 2022, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler said of Rubin's production of the band's 2013 album 13: "Some of it I liked, some of it I didn't like particularly. It was a weird experience, especially with being told to forget that you're a heavy metal band. That was the first thing [Rubin] said to us. He played us our very first album, and he said, 'Cast your mind back to then when there was no such thing as heavy metal or anything like that, and pretend it's the follow-up album to that,' which is a ridiculous thing to think." Butler also stated that vocalist Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Tony Iommi had frustrations with Rubin's suggestions, and said: "I still don't know what [Rubin] did. It's, like, 'Yeah, that's good.' 'No, don't do that.' And you go, 'Why?' [And he'd say], 'Just don't do it.

Loudness war
Since at least 1999, listeners have criticized Rubin for contributing to a phenomenon in music known as the loudness war, in which the dynamic range of recorded music is compressed and sometimes clipped in order to increase the general loudness. Albums Rubin produced that have been criticized for such treatment include:

 * Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999) – Tim Anderson of The Guardian criticized its "excessive compression and distortion", and Stylus Magazine said it suffered from so much digital clipping that "even non-audiophile consumers complained about it".
 * Death Magnetic by Metallica (2008) – a remixed/remastered version of the entire album was released as downloadable content for the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Songs that are used in rhythm games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are always remixed/remastered by the game studios, despite that this edition of the album was released for gameplay instead of casual listening, fans have said that the mix of Death Magnetic found on the game is preferred because it consequently is not subject to the same level of compression as the official commercially released record.
 * 13 by Black Sabbath (2013) – Ben Ratliff of The New York Times said, "The new Black Sabbath album was produced by Rick Rubin, who some believe to be a prime offender in the recent history of highly compressed and loudly mastered music – a major cause of ear fatigue ... 13 is mastered loudly, too ... Your ears aren't given room to breathe." Jon Hadusek of Consequence of Sound wrote, "Rubin ... deserves disparagement for the way he mixed the audio levels, which are crushed by distortion and compression. Otherwise well-recorded songs are blemished, an affliction all too pervasive in the modern music industry".

Personal life
Rubin has practiced meditation since he was 14 years old.

Rubin began dating former actress and model Mourielle Hurtado Herrera in 2010, and they were married at an unknown date. They have a son born in 2017 and reside in Malibu, California.

Rubin was a vegan for over 20 years, but later began eating meat again. He is a fan of professional wrestling and held season tickets to WWE events at Madison Square Garden throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He has cited wrestlers Roddy Piper and Ric Flair as influences on his work, and has said that villainous wrestlers were hugely influential in the development of the Beastie Boys' public image. He financially backed wrestling promoter Jim Cornette's company Smoky Mountain Wrestling from 1991 to 1995.

Published work

 * Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Penguin Random House, 432 pages, ISBN 9780593652886, 2023

title: Rick Rubin


text:
Cluj International Airport

Avram Iancu Cluj International Airport is an airport serving the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Initially known as Someșeni Airport, it is located 9 km east of the city centre, in the Someșeni area, which is now within the Cluj-Napoca city limits. The airport is named in honour of Romanian revolutionary Avram Iancu.

In terms of passenger traffic, Cluj Airport is the second busiest airport in Romania, after Bucharest Henri Coandă, handling 3.24 million passengers in 2023. Its size and location (on the European route E576 and close to the A3 Transylvania Motorway) make it the most important airport in the historical region of Transylvania.

History

The Cluj Airport was founded on 1 April 1932 by the Romanian Ministry of Industry and Trade. Until the civil airport was built, the area was used as a military airfield. On 15 December 1917, the County Council of Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca) gave land in the settlement of Szamosfalva (today the Someșeni district of Cluj-Napoca) in order to develop a military airport. After the Union of Transylvania with Romania, the Someșeni Military Aerodrome was used for the first civil operations by the National Service of Air Navigation (Serviciul Național de Navigație Aeriană SNNA). The SNNA was set up in 1928 by the Romanian Ministry of War for opening an air transportation line between Cluj and Bucharest. The first passenger plane landed on 2 August 1928. The first aircraft used was the Farman-Goliath aircraft, a twin-engine plane with space for ten passengers built by the Farman Aviation Works. Later, the Bucharest-Cluj service was operated by LARES (Liniile Aeriene Române Exploatate de Stat, Romanian Airlines Operated by the State) with Junkers F 13 planes.

In 1933, Cluj Airport was declared an International Airport by the Romanian Government. The first international flight, a CSA Czech Airlines Prague-Cluj-Bucharest flight, took place on 11 September 1933. The aircraft used on this route were eight-seat Avia-Fokker aircraft. In the following years, several new routes were opened, such as the Aeroflot Moscow-Cluj-Prague flight, opened on 15 November 1935, which was operated with 14-seat McDonnell Douglas DC-2 twin-engine aircraft, registered as USSR-M25 and USSR-M26. Domestic flights were also operated in this period, such as Cluj-Satu-Mare and Cernăuți-Cluj-Arad using Lockheed Model 10 Electra ten-passenger aircraft and de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft. In the late 1930s, the airport recorded steady growth and the employees' number rose from 6 in 1934 to 16 in 1939. The passenger terminal was also built in this period, being inaugurated in 1939.

During World War II, the airport became again a military airport, as it was considered to be the most important in Transylvania. In 1940, as a result of the Second Vienna Award, Northern Transylvania (including Cluj) was ceded to Hungary and thus the airport was used by the Hungarian Air Force and German Luftwaffe. Malert airline also operated flights to Budapest during these years. In October 1944, the Hungarian forces in the city were defeated by the Romanian and Soviet armies. By the time of the reconquest of the airport by the Romanian No. 4 Fighting Squadron Focșani, in late September 1944, the airport was completely destroyed.

After the war, the airport's operations were resumed with TAROM domestic flights connecting Cluj to other major Romanian cities. The aircraft used were the Lisunov Li-2 / Douglas DC-3 and Ilyushin Il-14 aircraft.

In the 1960s, an extensive modernization of the airport began. In 1969, a new passenger terminal was opened. By 1970, the airport was fully equipped with all of the safety facilities.

The airport remained a domestic airport until September 1996, when it was once again opened to both international passenger and cargo traffic. The extension of the terminal building was also started in 1996 and since August 1997, it is run by the Cluj County Council. By 2001, the extension of the airport building was finished, the runway lighting system was modernized, and an Instrument Landing System (ILS) CAT I was iinstalled.

In 2007 and 2008, the airport posted year-over-year growth of 60% and 93% respectively, reaching over 750,000 passengers in 2008.

The construction of a new terminal, capable of handling 2 million passengers annually, started on 26 June 2007. The 10812 m2 arrivals hall was inaugurated on 22 May 2008, followed by the new departures hall, with a total area of 16150 m2, inaugurated on 15 May 2009. The connecting building between the two terminals was inaugurated in November 2009. The total project cost was an estimated €40 million. In February 2009, the ILS equipment was upgraded to CAT II.

Cluj Airport exceeded the 1,000,000 passenger mark in 2010. On 8 September 2011, the construction works for building a new runway of 2100 m began. The works represented the first phase of the investment that aims at a take-off/landing runway of 3500 m. The new runway 07/25 officially went into operation on 26 October 2013. The old runway 08/26 became a taxiway, after the new runway opened.

In 2014, ROMATSA held a competition for the creation of a new control tower for Cluj-Napoca Airport. Of the 22 projects that were submitted in the competition, as winner the project of Outline Architecture Office was chosen, an architectural design office based in Bucharest. The tower resembles a tulnic and will have a height of 42 m. The costs for the construction of the new control tower will be borne by ROMATSA.

In June 2023, the airport began works to expand the departure hall and the apron. Expected to open on 31 May 2024, the 7200 sqm extension will add three more gates to the current nine.

On 24 November 2023 the Avram Iancu Cluj International Airport celebrated the first time in his history the passenger with the number 3,000,000 registered during one year and becomes the first regional airport in Romania to exceed this significant passenger threshold.

For the future, the airport development project foresees the construction of the second terminal with an area of 40000 sqm.

Airlines and destinations
The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights to and from Cluj-Napoca:

Ground transportation

The airport is located 8 km east of the city centre on the European route E576. The drive from the city centre takes about 20 minutes. CTP Cluj Napoca, the local public transport company, operates its Route No. 8 that connects the airport with the Mihai Viteazul Square in the City Center and trolleybus No. 5 to the Main Rail Station.

Accidents and incidents

 * On 5 September 1986 at about 19:45, a fully loaded Antonov An-24RV aircraft departed Bucharest Otopeni Airport, bound for Cluj-Napoca. When the landing procedure began, one of the flight attendants, Aurelia Grigore, realized that the aircraft was landing at higher than normal speed. When the main landing gear touched the ground, it bounced repeatedly until the aircraft stopped. The front of the aircraft was on fire. Grigore realized they had an emergency situation. With her flight attendant colleague, she decided to start deplaning passengers. She opened the emergency exit and she let the stairs down, but the stairs weren't touching the ground because the front gear was broken. She was helped by Emil Hossu, a famous actor. "He was one of the few people that didn't panic and helped us evacuate the aircraft in safety", said Grigore. After evacuating the passengers they returned to help the pilots who were trapped in the cockpit. "The cockpit was on fire and we lost any faith that we could save them". The next moments were horrible for all passengers and flight crew. The aircraft was destroyed by flames and with the pilots still on board. After 10 minutes, they saw one of the copilots trying to escape through a window. "He told us his foot was stuck and that he couldn't get it out. We tried to help him, but we couldn't. Finally, he managed to get out of the aircraft on fire. He was completely burned, you couldn't even look at him. It was terrible. The other 2 pilots burned alive as we watched them, helpless". The copilot died also. He was transported to the ER but died the next day because of the burns. The authorities said that the accident was due to an equipment malfunction. The 3 pilots were the only casualties.
 * On 7 January 2016, a Blue Air Boeing 737-400, reg. YR-BAS, skidded off the runway after landing. No injuries were reported amongst the 116 passengers and crew. The accident's cause was the performance of an extended flare flight, followed by the runway touchdown at a distance of about 2300 ft. (approx. 700 m) measured from runway threshold 25. The wet snow layer present on the runway may have contributed to the accident.

title: Cluj International Airport