text:
Glassmanor, Maryland

Glassmanor is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 18,430. In the 1990 and 2000 censuses, the United States Census Bureau had placed Glassmanor and the adjacent community of Oxon Hill in the "Oxon Hill-Glassmanor" census-designated place for statistical purposes. Glassmanor was last delineated separately in 1980, when the CDP recorded a population of 7,751.

The original Glassmanor apartments were built circa 1950 by the Glassman company, just outside the border of southeast Washington. In the mid-1950s, the Eastover shopping center was built across the highway, followed by other adjoining apartment projects in the 1960s. U.S. Senator George McGovern, who was the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 1972, lived briefly in Glassmanor while a freshman congressman. The area has undergone tremendous demographic and social changes since that time.

Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Glassmanor has a total area of 6.1 sqkm, all land. The CDP is bordered by Washington, D.C. to the northwest, the town of Forest Heights to the west, Oxon Hill to the south, Temple Hills to the southeast, Marlow Heights to the east, and Hillcrest Heights to the northeast. Interstate 495/95, the Capital Beltway, forms the southern boundary of the Glassmanor CDP.

Government
Prince George's County Police Department District 4 Station in Glassmanor CDP, with an Oxon Hill postal address, serves the community. The Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department and Oxon Hill Volunteer Fire Department provide fire protection and emergency medical services from Fire Station 842 located in Glassmanor.

Education
Residents are zoned to Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS).

Elementary schools serving sections of the CDP include Barnaby Manor, Flintstone, Forest Heights, Glassmanor, and Valley View. Benjamin Stoddert and Oxon Hill middle schools serve sections of the CDP. All residents are zoned to Potomac High School.

The former Owens Road Elementary School was located within the Glassmanor CDP. The school closed on June 18, 2009.

title: Glassmanor, Maryland


text:
Mahler's theorem

In mathematics, Mahler's theorem, introduced by, expresses any continuous p-adic function as an infinite series of certain special polynomials. It is the p-adic counterpart to the Stone-Weierstrass theorem for continuous real-valued functions on a closed interval.

Statement
Let $$(\Delta f)(x)=f(x+1)-f(x)$$ be the forward difference operator. Then for any p-adic function $$f: \mathbb{Z}_p \to \mathbb{Q}_p$$, Mahler's theorem states that $$f$$ is continuous if and only if its Newton series converges everywhere to $$f$$, so that for all $$x \in \mathbb{Z}_p$$ we have

 * $$f(x)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty (\Delta^n f)(0){x \choose n},$$

where

 * $${x \choose n}=\frac{x(x-1)(x-2)\cdots(x-n+1)}{n!}$$

is the $$n$$th binomial coefficient polynomial. Here, the $$n$$th forward difference is computed by the binomial transform, so that$$ (\Delta^n f)(0) = \sum^n_{k=0} (-1)^{n-k} \binom{n}{k} f(k).$$Moreover, we have that $$f$$ is continuous if and only if the coefficients $$(\Delta^n f)(0) \to 0$$ in $$\mathbb{Q}_p$$ as $$n \to \infty$$.

It is remarkable that as weak an assumption as continuity is enough in the p-adic setting to establish convergence of Newton series. By contrast, Newton series on the field of complex numbers are far more tightly constrained, and require Carlson's theorem to hold.

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

title: Mahler's theorem


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Talk:Eighth Route Army

Untitled
The date in the first sentence of the second paragraph lacks the year (August 27 of which year?). --Kaihsu Tai 17:18, 2003 Dec 19 (UTC)

 * I have added the putative 1927. --Kaihsu Tai 17:20, 2003 Dec 19 (UTC)

 * I have removed the August date, leaving only the year; this seems consistent with the People's Liberation Army article. --Kaihsu Tai 17:23, 2003 Dec 19 (UTC)

 * Wow, that was a stupid mistake on my part... generally I am too lazy to proofread my articles on here, except for the obvious "forgot to finish brackets" or "forgot to end emphasis" sort of things... ugen64 03:24, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)

copyright violations
The recent version of this article included text lifted from the online Britannica article of the same name. ( http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/181256/Eighth-Route-Army ). The article history for the Britannica article indicates it was edited in August 2006, so I have reverted this article to a pre-August 2006 version. W. B. Wilson (talk) 04:53, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Name
Why is it called "eigth route"? Odd name for an army division. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.10.211.236 (talk) 00:18, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It is not the "8th Route" Army. It is a Route Army with the numeral 8. ...GELongstreet (talk) 17:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Eighth Route Army


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Cambyses I

Cambyses I ( Kambūjiya) was king of Anshan from c. 580 to 559 BC and the father of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II), younger son of Cyrus I, and brother of Arukku. He should not be confused with his better-known grandson Cambyses II.

Etymology
The origins of the name of "Cambyses" is disputed in scholarship; according to some scholars, the name is of Elamite origin, whilst others associate it with Kambojas, an Iranian people who inhabited northwestern India. The name of Cambyses is known in other languages as: Elamite Kanbuziya; Akkadian Kambuziya; Aramaic Kanbūzī.

Background
No records composed during Cambyses' lifetime have survived. Cambyses was an early member of the Achaemenid dynasty. He was apparently a great-grandson of its founder Achaemenes, grandson of Teispes and son of Cyrus I. His paternal uncle was Ariaramnes and his first cousin was Arsames.

However, around 100 years later, Herodotus claimed that Cambyses I was a vassal of the Median king Astyages and, he solidified his political standing through marriage to one of Astyages' daughters, whose name wasn't explicitly said by Herodotus. This alliance likely helped in securing the support or neutrality of Media as his son, Cyrus, began his military campaigns that eventually led to the founding of the Persian Empire. His role was essential in the transition from a minor regional rule in Anshan to the larger ambitions of the Achaemenid dynasty that dominated much of the ancient Near East.

Personal life
According to Herodotus, Cambyses was "a man of good family and quiet habits". He reigned under the overlordship of Astyages, King of Media. He was reportedly married to Princess Mandane of Media, a daughter of Astyages and Princess Aryenis of Lydia. His wife was reportedly a granddaughter of both Cyaxares of Media and Alyattes of Lydia. The result of their marriage was the birth of his successor Cyrus the Great. According to Nicolas of Damascus, his original name was Atradates, and he was wounded and later died in the Battle of the Persian Border which he, with his son, fought against Astyages. It occurred in about 551 BC, and he is reported to have received an honorable burial.

Also according to Herodotus, Astyages chose Cambyses as a son-in-law because he considered him to pose no threat to the Median throne, having dreamt his daughter would give birth to one who would rule Asia, overthrowing Astyages. This was not quite the case with Cyrus the Great who would go on to depose his grandfather, and to begin the Persian Empire.

title: Cambyses I


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Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive 6

Rearranging, not Shortening
Without intending to step onto anyone's toes, I wonder whether it might be a useful way forward to take apart the whole Criticism area and form a new new paragraph like "MT's motivation and aims".

It is quite clear that she had particular views on aborrtion and fertility, her aims were not simply relief of poverty and she felt death bed conversions are genuine conversions, warranting baptism, whatever the critics think. This paragraph would be factual and concentrated onto her alone.

A criticism paragraph could then follow, containing exactly what eloquence has written. This would alter the tone probably significantly without necesstiating any actual deletions.

WRT to teh pictures - do they actually add information eloquence ? I am not sure. To me they simply affect bandwith, but than I am a poor Modem-user and I really do not want to be in THAT discussion involved.

After all her aims and motivations are hers not alone and might well be shared by many Wikipedians (and many in the world at large), while eloquence's criticisms are obviously a valid POV. I do not intend to become involved unless there is consensus that this might be a good idea. I am normally a logged in user, but a bit wary looking glancingly at the length of the current discussion. I will watch this page and come back under my username if people agree i should give it a go. Afterwards everyone can revert to status quo ante and continue happily in NPOV/POV warring... :-)

Naive Newbie 23:59 15th December 2003

 * Is the picture of MT with the Pope useful? Hardly, because that event was neither unusual nor surprising. These pictures are a dime a dozen. The "negative" pictures are about as useful as pictures can be, as they show historical events in MT's life that are unsual and unexpected, yet the pictures themselves do not distort the truth. They convey information which is factual, on-topic and useful. This would be clearer if Jtdirl had not mutilated the captions beyond recognition, as now it is difficult at first glance to see what the pictures are about (e.g. Charles Keating: that she accepted money from him which she refused to return later when asked to do so). So it looks a bit like we're simply trying to show her with persons of questionable reputation in order to discredit her, while in reality, these pictures refer to specific historical events that are discussed in the text.—Eloquence

One Wikipedian's Perspective
I first noticed Mother Teresa (the article) just before this war broke out. I've been watching the article ever since, but I have so little time to devote to WP most days that I haven't wanted to say anything. But I feel today as though I should say something because inaction is a comment of its own. I must reluctantly say that I think this article and the argument surrounding it is one of WP's darkest moments, for both sides. Everyone involved here is a contributor that I have at least moderate respect for. Most of them (especially Jt and Erik) have behaved in a manner that I think is detrimental to Wikipedia and what we all (including Jt and Erik) are trying to accomplish here--I personally believe that both Jt and Erik are assets to this community (far more useful than me, at any rate), and I am still puzzled by how events have turned out. I know each of you blames the other for escalating things, but it occurs to me that there was a way of avoiding this which does not come down to "so-and-so should have given up his/her intractable and illogical bias". Articles like MT will always exist, and they will tend to attract controversy and bias: humans are controversial, biased beings. We have to find a better way of dealing with this, in my opinion. I only wish I had an answer to offer.

The only other thing I really wanted to say is that I am no longer going to keep this article on my watchlist because it is, in my opinion, no longer an embarassment to Wikipedia, which I personally believe it has been for a long time now (no matter whose opinion was ascendant at the time). I still think there are improvements to make, and (yes, I'll make my own bias clear) I still believe there are a few sentences in the Criticism section which go too far, but overall, we have an article that makes many, many people slightly uncomfortable, and no one truly happy. And in an article that invites bias and outrage, I think this is what NPOV looks like: everyone just a little miffed that the article doesn't deliver "the truth". With that definition of NPOV, the only suggestion I can make for MT's future is that I think (though Erik likely disagrees) that the anti-MT faction (which likely calls itself something else..I haven't watched closely enough to know what) is more comfortable with this article than the pro-MT faction, and I would therefore encourage the article to stablize slightly more in favor of MT than it currently is. But perhaps that's just my own bias: as I said above, I think this article is probably about where NPOV lies. That's only my opinion, and I've said it now, and anyone who likes can bash me for it. The only thing I will say in its defense is that I've spent two months thinking about this--thinking, and not writing--so this is perhaps (and I emphasize perhaps) a more considered and carefully thought-out statement than I am wont to make. Peace to all of you, and I hope we can all go back to other articles now, Jwrosenzweig 23:37, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your feedback, and I agree with you 100% that this discussion has devolved into a lot of name calling and insults. I have tried to avoid such a course when I made my peace offer to Jtdirl on October 22 and stayed away from the article for several weeks. Jtdirl ignored my offer, first blaming it on the weather and then just launching another public tirade against me. The real reason, of course, is that I wanted an agreement on specific ground rules, such as a) no personal attacks, b) no more than one revert in case of disagreements.

 * This he could never agree to. His whole methodology for resolving bigger disputes on Wikipedia is: 1) ostracize the person in question (i.e. try to make it a "Us vs. HIM" situation), 2) launch a massive attack on all Wikipedia communication channels, 3) hope that the person stops contributing, 4) if they don't, start an edit war. Of course he is also happy if the person apologizes and agrees with him. Jtdirl is a very efficient bully, and when I pointed this out, several users told me, publicly and privately, that they had noticed this behavior themselves.

 * But Jtdirl is not unbiased in his abuse. He has reserved it for the anti-MT faction (and I will gladly accept that label). The result was that good contributors like Adam were driven away by zealots like Alexandros, while Jtdirl did nothing. After Alexandros vandalized (yes, vandalized - he just removed the entire criticism section) the article several times, and Jtdirl didn't intervene, Viajero wrote on his talk page: "I wish no ill of Alexandros, but if you are so concerned with protocol, why aren't you chastising him repeatedly on these pages? I am not the problem. In view of all this, I can't help but suspect your neutrality on the issue of Mother Teresa."

 * He never accepted my peace offer, and abused me verbally at every opportunity he could find - on users' talk pages, mailing lists and of course here. I asked Jimbo to intervene, and he said that he had sent a private message to Jtdirl asking him to moderate himself. That didn't help one bit, and since no explicit public message was forthcoming (as is usually the case when regulars break the rules), there was no alternative for me but to behave the same way Jtdirl did in order to preserve some kind of sanity.

 * Jtdirl isn't interested in NPOV here, and it's quite blatantly obvious. He is interested in 1) maintaining the pecking order - he has to be the alpha male, 2) getting the most embarrassing facts out of this article (he deliberately removed single passages from quotations, such as the claim by Robin Fox that Mother Teresa did not distinguish curable and incurable patients). In the last weeks, he has waited patiently until someone made a comment here in support of changes to the article, and then started an anti-Erik tirade of the type "Look, everyone thinks this article is biased and Erik just won't listen! Now we have X, Y, Z, A, B and C who all think it's a terrible article but Erik wants to play wiki-God and push his agenda. He thinks he is some kind of Christ-like figure for atheists!" (I'm not making this up.) So he tries to instrumentalize every opinion he comes across, no matter how vague, no matter how opposed to his own earlier statements, in order to gain the kind of control he wants over this article.

 * I can tell you with certainty at this point that Jtdirl is too biased to have this kind of control. I can tell you with equal certainty that I am, and have always been, willing to make reasonable edits to this article in order to accommodate people with a different point of view. In fact, this article is the result of such an editing process with people from all sides of the issue.   I for one am very disappointed that nobody has tried to write a decent rebuttal to these criticisms, and as Adam Carr has explained, that's because the Catholic Church has never made one! They have simply ignored the criticisms. So what are you going to do in a case like that? It is always going to be slightly in favor to the anti-MT side until there is an official rebuttal. In the meantime, the only way to make this article more "balanced" is to include more facts about Mother Teresa's life.

 * Then there is the information removal argument. Some people believe that NPOV

can only be maintained if certain information -- images, entire sections -- is removed from the article. Never mind that everyone agrees that the information is on-topic. This is of course a logic we would apply nowhere else, but in a case of MT that position suddenly becomes acceptable because, hey, people loved her so much, how can we write so many negative things about her? I will always resist this kind of information deletionism, as it is the very opposite of Wikipedia's mission statement to collect and structure all human knowledge.
 * Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive2
 * Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive3
 * Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive4

 * My position has always been and continues to me: If there are factual criticisms of this article, I'd like to hear them. Even logical arguments why certain information should be removed. But generic "I think this reads like POV" statements are of no value whatsoever in this discussion. As for the tone, I hope that when the mediation/arbitration teams become official next year, we can moderate it down somewhat.—Eloquence 04:58, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

For the record I
 * 1) came to the article to tone down its initial glorification of MT in the opening. Then I found that whereas the top third was ludicrously OTT in proclaiming MT as the greatest person of the 20th century, the bottom 2/3s adopted a tone that held her on a par with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Both chunks were so far from NPOV as to be laughable.
 * 2) have removed plenty of OTT glorification of MT, removed references to her being venerated the world over as hero, agreed that her views on abortion should be included, against the wishes of Alexandros and others.
 * 3) reverted an edit by Alexandros back to one by Eloquence and asked him to use that as a template.
 * 4) sought a wide spread of views of wikipedians on the article, leaving messages all over wikipedia asking for opinions.
 * 5) Championed the use of Alan Carr's alternative draft.
 * 6) Rewrote sections of text in NPOV language, unlike others who deleted chucks and went out of the way to use POV constructs (eg, analysing MT's views on abortion exclusively from a 'pro-choice' angle. I pointed out how equally ludicrous it would be to write the same paragraph from a 'pro-life' perspective and instead wrote the paragraph in a manner that mentioned both sides' perspectives, without producing text that looked like it was written by a fanatic from either side.

As to Erik's laughable peace-offer, it was classic Erik. 'Let me get my way and I'll let you contribute. Whereas I have been repeatedly asking outsiders to come and comment, Eloquence has spent most of his time driving people away, screaming at them to read the fucking article'', accusing people of being in the pay of the Catholic Church, threatening bans twice to such an extent that one user was too afraid of him and his position as a developer and sysop to continue contributing to the page, verbially abusing Daniel and Ed to such an extent that other quite senior wikipedians were afraid to come to the page.

As far as I am concerned, this article has to carry details of allegations and criticism of MT. It has to cover who she was, what she believed, what her perspective on the world was, what her critics' perspective were, etc. A glorification article is not an option. Neither is a demonisation. I hope Jwrosenzweig and everyone else will stay had contribution and that everyone driven away will feel able to return without anymore threats and swearing and the ridiculing of their opinions, beliefs and perspectives. FearÉIREANN 19:47, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Nice revisionist history there. Your first "contribution" to this article was to start an edit war by moving the entire criticism section to a separate page, unannounced, against the opinions of various Wikipedians. It's all in the page history. I have never accused you of removing the most well known claims about MT, I have pointed out quite clearly that you have deliberately and selectively removed substantial parts of these criticisms, such as the lack of distinction between curable and incurable patients. When Alexandros went on his edit war, Viajero rightly pointed out that you did not find it necessary to revert his massive vandalism of the article, and in fact, you have gone on to use Alexandros in your "list of poor people who were driven away by evil Erik", even when Adam Carr has agreed that this article would be better off without him. (Which brings me again to the fact that this present article is the result of a collaboration by several contributors, especially Adam, so when you accuse me of not being able to write biographical articles, you are effectively insulting all the people who have worked on this version.) You "championed the use" of Adam's draft? There was never any dispute about using that version as a basis for further edits. You held a silly vote because you thought (and still claim) that I am somehow opposing reasonable changes to the article. I have never done that, and I have immediately accepted major rewrites of sections that were in dispute. I have removed or rephrased anti-Teresa POV where I spotted it.

 * As long as you are more interested in "winning" than in cooperating, the article (and the conversation about it) will stagnate in its present state, for better or for worse. If you want to start working with me and others, I'm all ears. Make factual, logical suggestions without personal attacks, and I will respond in kind, as I always have. I invite all interested parties to a reasonable discourse based on logic and a sound understanding of our policies, under the mutual assumption of good faith. Is there a rebuttal that should be included? Has MT been misrepresented somewhere? Is there a criticism that is missing? What parts of her life and work should we discuss in more detail? This is the kind of discussion I would like to have about this article. If you can accept that you won't dominate this article and get exactly what you want, then we can work together. It's your decision - another flamewar every couple of days, or a reasonable discussion among adults who treat each other as equals. I'm not interested in "winning". I only want to make this article a well deserved entry on Brilliant prose ASAP. :-) —Eloquence 20:38, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

One thing to me is clear: I shouldn't have written my post above. It just gave you both license to attack each other again. My apologies. I hope you will both realize that, for many Wikipedians, we don't care very much at this stage who started it or who was most wrong or what reversion was most unjust. Personally, anyway, I hope you both leave each other alone for a long time because, as I noted before, you make significant contributions to this site, both of you, and I would love to see a lot more of them. Please stop posting long histories of the other person's violations--even if you have lost respect for each other, I, at least, still respect you both, and accept that almost all of us have done things at WP that others thought worthy of censure. Once again, please don't take my posts as the indication that you should remain in pitched battle. Jwrosenzweig 21:16, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This page needs assistance to make it passable, let alone an adequate encyclopædia article. Please do contribute as much as you can. Silsor has been making great efforts to remove some of the worst of the rubbish. As for Eloquence's attacks, I really don't care anymore. Threats, curses, libels and spin have been what people have had to put up with here for months everytime he can't get his own way. If he wants to use this page as his personal playpen, that's his problem. Plenty of others are concerned with principles like NPOV, accuracy and balance. However many people are driven away by Erik's tantrums, others will continue to threat this article as something that should aim to achieve encyclopædic, not tabloid, standards. So please do offer any constructive suggestions you have on the article, its structure, language, tone and content. The more contributors of substance the better. :-) FearÉIREANN 23:18, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * You must have missed the whole point of his original posting. He appears to not agree with you about the current state of the article. At least to the degree that it is close to evenly balanced so that neither opponents or supporters of MT have it all their way. (apologies to JWR, if I misrepresented your position) -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 15:54, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

Naive Newbie again
1) Can someone archive some of the discussion it is again far too long, but I do not know yet enough how to do this

2) There is one point in the criticism section which I find curious: Her supposed support for a forced sterilisation programme. This sounds so out of order for a catholic nun, that I can not really believe this. I searched today the whole day the net and could not come up with any source supporting this. The only "close" finding i had was that she apparently made some/many(?) supportive noises towards Rajiv Gandhi, who in turn run this programme - but no direct link between her and the programme. Unless this link is established I believe this criticism is "tabloid" and should be removed.

 * It is one of the more strange claims. On the face of it there was about as much likelihood of Mother Teresa supporting sterilisation as there was of her supporting abortion. Both are condemned by the RC Church in equal measure. It is indicative of some of the fundamental errors regarding Roman Catholic beliefs that have been added in here and elsewhere. Unless some credible source can be found for this on the face of it nutty suggestion, it should indeed be binned. FearÉIREANN 00:06, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

3) Apart from this - I was "Naive Newbie" above. I get your point, Eloquence, wrt to the pics.

4) But my other point remained unadressed - I think a re-arrangement - her motivations and aims under one section and criticism under a second section would be more appropriate. Unless someone tells me with good argument I should not do this I will make an attempt at it - you can always revert it if you do not like the result. The idea is to re-arrange not to delete!

Refdoc 23:49, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A Question
All right, then, I'll make one of my suggestions. A sentence that throws me off a little each time I read it is at the end of the paragraph on Duvalier. It reads (currently) "By the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had houses in most Communist countries." It seems a little off-balance in the paragraph to me...the section deals with criticisms of MT. Are we criticizing her for helping the poor in Communist nations? Would we prefer that she have only operated in nations who followed a capitalist ideal? I imagine not. So I assume the sentence has landed there because this article has been edited and reverted enough that we've lost track of some things.

As I see it, either this sentence indicates a criticism by MT's opponents (though as I note above, what the criticism is I cannot fathom) or it does not. If it does, I hope that someone will flesh out the criticism in its own paragraph (along with a response from the pro-MT faction, if there is a public response). If it doesn't, we can either move it to MT's bio section or delete it. I can't imagine why it's noteworthy enough for the bio section...I suppose a list of nations where the MofC operated might possibly fit....but surely a better fit for their own article, no? I think it best to delete the sentence unless there is a specific criticism behind it. Note that I do not want to delete much of the criticism section (I worry I will be perceived as taking sides here), but think this particular sentence oddly placed, and worthy of removal (if not expanded). Jwrosenzweig 23:58, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I inserted that sentence a while ago; I think it was because of the controversy over the "guilt by association" issue of her associating with Communists. I just wanted to point out that her efforts in associating with people or regimes which some may find disagreeable may have had results in allowing her to continue her mission in certain areas.  I thought it flowed well with the previous sentence,
 * Critics said her actions compromised her perceived moral authority through unwise and controversial political associations; however, her supporters defended such associations, saying she had to deal with political realities of the time in order to lobby for her causes.
 * but if you don't think it works, feel free to change it. silsor 00:08, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I guess I just feel that its position in a criticisms section implies it's either a criticism or a defense against one. If it's a defense, I think it should be reworded...something like "Defenders of Mother Teresa note that she was often forced to work with totalitarian governments in order to aid the poor living under those governments."  If it's a criticism, I think it should be rephrased more like this: "Critics of Mother Teresa note that, by the end of her life, her Missionaries of Charity had outposts in virtually every Communist country, which they consider to be an indication of her alliance with totalitarian governments."  Note, I don't know that defenders or critics of MT ever say such things, so I don't know if it would be right to represent them as saying so here.  As it stands, I see the sentence as too ambiguous, and therefore distracting in a section devoted essentially to delineating the two chief perspectives on MT's work.  I am hesitant to change anything because I am sure everyone else here knows more about MT than I do (if you didn't before October, I imagine you've picked it up by now), and because I prefer to have consensus because it makes me feel less nervous when I end up clicking that "Save Page" button.  Thanks for telling me its origins, though! Jwrosenzweig 00:17, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Just a quick note that many of Teresa's (or rather, the MoC's) outposts had nothing to do with aiding the poor at all. They had a purely missionary posi function. This is generally acknowledged by critics and defenders alike.—Eloquence

And so what?
What do we do for this MT page? Shall we leave it like this, with the POV header? I am not sure to have fully understood all contributions here but I feel that more people think there is a POV problem, and less think that the POV header could be removed without changing the article. In fact, Eloquence is the only one to claimed NPOV here, if I'm not mistaking. Maybe his own homepage can explain this : Declaration of bias: I am opposed to irrationalism, be it in the form of organized religion, miracle healers or postmodernism. he wrote himself. I a way, I fully share the opposition to irrationalism, but I do share another value that I think is more inportant: tolerance and respect to others beliefs, even to the stupidest ones. And I still think the attacks against MT that are reflected in the article are fuelled with strong anti-religious ideas, if not anti-Catholic ones.

I don't know what are the procedures in case of conflicts, and I don't want to go to an edit war, but I do want this article to be better and I am ready to try some modifications. gbog 08:13, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm all for removing the POV header. As for your proposed changes, just go ahead and make them. If I find them problematic, I will revert them and we can discuss them here. Removal of relevant factual information is generally unacceptable, but adding information for balance and rearranging is OK, even moving it to other articles if it is more ontopic elsewhere. Factual inaccuracies, if there are any, should of course be corrected.

 * As for tolerance, my own moral position is that there should be no tolerance of intolerant acts. Mother Teresa wanted to deny women the right to choose to have children, she even wanted to deny people the right to use contraceptives. There should also be no tolerance of immoral behavior, and in spite of her order's noble mission, she committed quite a few questionable acts and seemed to relish the suffering of those who came to her for help ("beautiful for the poor to accept their lot .. share it with the passion of Christ" - her words), instead of providing them with proper medical assistance and pain relief. Many children who could have been saved died because they were thrown into a room together with people suffering from infectious disease, and the last thing they got was a "ticket to heaven".

 * Of course, by declaring my own bias I do not imply that the articles I contribute to should adopt this point of view. I merely request that my point of view be tolerated like any other, and included in an NPOV fashion. You can accuse me of intolerance toward certain actions, that accusation I accept. However, I am not intolerant toward other people's beliefs. I feel that all beliefs of and about Mother Teresa should be treated fairly and neutrally, and I feel that other people have been disrespectful and intolerant toward the beliefs of her critics, trying to remove them entirely or segregate them from the main article. Thus, while I may be intolerant toward some people's actions, it is the people who have tried to remove information from this article who are intolerant toward other people's beliefs.

 * Prove me wrong: Point to a single instance where I tried to prevent the inclusion of information in this article. You won't find any. All I've done in the last few weeks is try to prevent the removal of some of the points of view about Mother Teresa. And whenever there was discussion about the precise phrasing of an NPOV paragraph -- how do we include all points of view, what possible explanation is there for Mother Teresa's actions -- I have always been open to compromise. What you are asking me to be tolerant of is the removal of my point of view from the article ("shorten the criticism section to one paragraph" - your suggestion), and you accuse me of intolerance if I do not comply. I think that is a rather twisted way of seeing things.—Eloquence

 * Nonsense. (Quoting Eloquence, by the way). You should take all the statements here with a grain of salt. All of them. Pfortuny 09:08, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * And here comes "one of the most polite and honest wikipedians", according to Jtdirl. :-)—Eloquence 09:16, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

 * First time I read that applied to me, AFAIK. Thanks for the compliment. Pfortuny 11:30, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hey, Eloquence, I don't want to discuss each comma and go into quasi edit war with you. As you are sysop and more experienced as me, I'm sure to loose :)

I also don't want to discuss the validity of each argument against MT, not at all. There is a book full of them and I'm sure they could all be stated here. The only thing I want is to reach NPOV and wikipedia standards. You proposed me to add weight in the pro-part. I am not sure that it is a good idea. The article itself already smells a little bit the edit war cold smoke and I would rather eliminate few flawly things in pro-part, as I already said. So the only solution I see is to shorten con-part (I like slim things!). STOP! Don't shout loudly! I DON'T want to reduce the strength of the arguments themselves, I only want to reduce their size in the page. This is my only little goal here. That's why I am trying to "filter" some paragraphs. As you know, filtering something usually means that you carefully keep the best, and improve the value of the material.

So, if you would like to agree that the percieved size (in pixels, in number of words) could be reduced without weakening argument's strength, and if you would agree that the con-part shouldn't be fatter than pro-part (excluding pure bio that is really neutral), I think we could go somewhere together. (Note also that when I said I wanted to reduce criticism to one paragraph, It was a way to bargain and I was ready to accept more!)

For a more precise case, let's take the sentence MT said at Nobel Prize speech. What does it exactly add to a sentence saying that criticist didn't like that she lobbied against abortion? MT article is not a trial. One don't have to give every factual proofs (but, sure, proofs are very useful in discussion pages if people don't agree). So I would like to be able to write "Criticists claim she lobbied against abortion and artificial contraception" and that's all. The argument (She was lobbied against a and a c) as not weakened, it's on the opposite washed from all the pushy things around. If you really don't like it this way, we could even swap "claim" with a stronger word like "proved", but definitly not inline all the proofs here. What do you think? gbog 10:22, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I understand your goals. But I think there's no way to avoid discussing every single change you make. In some cases I will agree with the removal, in others I will not. The discussion is necessary in order to arrive at real NPOV, and not just one person's understanding of it. This is not an edit war, it's normal procedure.

 * Regarding the "greatest destroyer of peace" quote, I think it is very important, because it illustrates the level of opposition she had to abortion. It's not just proof for the statement -- that would be something like "For example, on May 12, 1984 she met with the German chancellor Helmut Kohl to discuss § 218 StGB in order to reach a consensus that even early term abortions should not be tolerated." (Completely made up example.) There are plenty such examples which are real that we could cite, but do not, because as you say, we do not need to include every single proof unless someone questions the veracity of what we write.

 * But a mere statement like "She opposed abortion" is not enough. How much did she oppose abortion? I think it is most NPOV to express this with her own words. After all, it was an important cause to her and it's not just in the interest of the critics that we should devote some space to it. The fact that this is presently only one paragraph, even though it took much more space in her real life and work, is already a big concession to those who would like to reduce the emphasis on her active political lobbying.

 * Well, to show your spirit of conciliation, you could agree that saying that 1) she lobbied against abortion and 2) she said "blabla" is redundant, as both show the same fact. Agreeing this, and agreeing also that shortening criticist space (space, not strength) is not hell, you could allow me to write only one on both things, that of your choice.gbog 15:18, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * They're not the same. There is a big difference between public speeches and private lobbying in talks with high level politicians. We might expect a public figure like Mother Teresa to use an opportunity like the Nobel Prize to promote her beliefs, but what she did clearly went far beyond that -- she frequently participated in meetings with conservative leaders to discuss specific legal proposals.—Eloquence

 * I think you are a little bit split hairs here. What is important, what people may want to know, is that MT was against abortion and, as you said, "how much" she was. Saying all she made in this direction is off topic. If you really don't want me to touch this article, say it once for all, you will save your time, and mine. gbog 16:00, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't think it's splitting hairs at all to distinguish between public speeches and closed doors political lobbying, and as I've said already, I feel this particular paragraph is already as minimized as it can get. I think if you want to work on improving this article, figuring out better section headings might be a good start.—Eloquence

 * Ah. On that note. The "Secret Baptisms" header. I edited it into "Baptisms without clear will to convert" while the page was protected, and got deservedly chastised for it. Maybe the edit could be reinstated now? I think the "Beef" here is not the secrecy, but whether the recipients actually knew what they were "consenting" to IMO. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 16:04, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

 * I can't believe this is two archives ago yet less than 48 hours ago. Anyway, as you haven't been flamed, I'm guessing that's ok. And as it was me who reverted it in the first place, I've added it back in. Angela. 04:37, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * In short, this summary -- she opposed it, and here's a quote to show how much she did -- is the minimum I think that is acceptable, both in the interest of the critics and of her own views. She herself would certainly want this message to be included in even greater detail.—Eloquence 10:40, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

 * Hum, I personnally don't want to think about what MT herself would think on our article, and in fact I don't care at all. gbog 15:18, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But why is this under "criticism"?! It is her good right to oppose abortion and to work hard for changing the law. So a "motivation" section should contain this. The criticism section would then contain that some people where not happy with her anti abortion stance.

Similarly 'she went to the grave of Enver Hodja' - where is the criticism here? Good Enver would have shot her in his time, so if at all this is a sign of her being a forgiving person - unless of course she went to the grave to gloat a la "I am still alive and you are dead!" It certainly did not curry her any favours anywhere - within the communist world Enver was a pariah.

I do think not very much needs to be cut on any place, but a lot needs to be re-arranged!

Refdoc 11:39, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I thought about this myself a few hours ago and decided not to change the current structure to avoid splitting arguments up too much. Maybe we simply need a different headline, which would also reduce the impression that this article focuses too much on criticism (this was the case in the original version of the article, FWIW). As for the Enver Hoxha visit, I didn't add that particular part, but if there was indeed some controversy at the time we should include it, but we should also include the Catholic POV about it. I agree that it's not particularly damning.—Eloquence

title: Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive 6


text:
Réunion ibis

The Réunion ibis or Réunion sacred ibis (Threskiornis solitarius) is an extinct species of ibis that was endemic to the volcanic island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The first subfossil remains were found in 1974, and the ibis was first scientifically described in 1987. Its closest relatives are the Malagasy sacred ibis, the African sacred ibis, and the straw-necked ibis. Travellers' accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries described a white bird on Réunion that flew with difficulty and preferred solitude, which was subsequently referred to as the "Réunion solitaire".

In the mid 19th century, the old travellers' accounts were incorrectly assumed to refer to white relatives of the dodo, due to one account specifically mentioning dodos on the island, and because 17th-century paintings of white dodos had recently surfaced. However, no fossils referable to dodo-like birds were ever found on Réunion, and it was later questioned whether the paintings had anything to do with the island. Other identities were suggested as well, based only on speculations. In the late 20th century, the discovery of ibis subfossils led to the idea that the old accounts actually referred to an ibis species instead. The idea that the "solitaire" and the subfossil ibis are identical was met with limited dissent, but is now widely accepted.

Combined, the old descriptions and subfossils show that the Réunion ibis was mainly white, with this colour merging into yellow and grey. The wing tips and plumes of ostrich-like feathers on its rear were black. The neck and legs were long, and the beak was relatively straight and short for an ibis. It was more robust in build than its extant relatives, but was otherwise quite similar to them. It would have been no longer than 65 cm (25 in) in length. Subfossil wingbones indicate it had reduced flight capabilities, a feature perhaps linked to seasonal fattening. The diet of the Réunion ibis was worms and other items foraged from the soil. In the 17th century, it lived in mountainous areas, but it may have been confined to these remote heights by heavy hunting by humans and predation by introduced animals in the more accessible areas of the island. Visitors to Réunion praised its flavour, and therefore sought after its flesh. These factors are believed to have driven the Réunion ibis to extinction by the early 18th century.

Taxonomy
The taxonomic history of the Réunion ibis is convoluted and complex, due to the ambiguous and meagre evidence that was available to scientists until the late 20th century. The supposed "white dodo" of Réunion is now believed to have been an erroneous conjecture based on the few contemporary reports which described the Réunion ibis, combined with paintings of white dodos from Mauritius by the Dutch painters Pieter Withoos and Pieter Holsteyn II (and derivatives) from the 17th century that surfaced in the 19th century.

The English Chief Officer John Tatton was the first to mention a specifically white bird on Réunion, in 1625. The French occupied the island from 1646 and onwards, and referred to this bird as the "solitaire". M. Carré of the French East India Company described the "solitaire" in 1699, explaining the reason for its name: "I saw a kind of bird in this place which I have not found elsewhere; it is that which the inhabitants call the Oiseaux Solitaire for to be sure, it loves solitude and only frequents the most secluded places; one never sees two or more together; it is always alone. It is not unlike a turkey, if it did not have longer legs. The beauty of its plumage is a delight to see. It is of changeable colour which verges upon yellow. The flesh is exquisite; it forms one of the best dishes in this country, and might form a dainty at our tables. We wished to keep two of these birds to send to France and present them to His Majesty, but as soon as they were on board ship, they died of melancholy, having refused to eat or drink."

The marooned French Huguenot François Leguat used the name "solitaire" for the Rodrigues solitaire, a Raphine bird (related to the dodo) he encountered on the nearby island of Rodrigues in the 1690s, but it is thought he borrowed the name from a 1689 tract by Marquis Henri Duquesne which mentioned the Réunion species. Duquesne himself had probably based his own description on an earlier one. No specimens of the "solitaire" were ever preserved.

The two individuals Carré attempted to send to the royal menagerie in France did not survive in captivity. Billiard claimed that the French administrator Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais sent a "solitaire" to France from Réunion around 1740. Since the Réunion ibis is believed to have gone extinct by this date, the bird may actually have been a Rodrigues solitaire.

The only contemporary writer who referred specifically to "dodos" inhabiting Réunion was the Dutch sailor Willem Ysbrandtszoon Bontekoe, though he did not mention their colouration: "There were also Dod-eersen [old Dutch for dodos], which have small wings, and so far from being able to fly, they were so fat that they could scarcely walk, and when they tried to run, they dragged their under side along the ground." When his journal was published in 1646, it was accompanied by an engraving which is now known to have been copied after one of the dodos in the Flemish painter Roelant Savery's "Crocker Art Gallery sketch". Since Bontekoe was shipwrecked and lost all his belongings after visiting Réunion in 1619, he may not have written his account until he returned to Holland, seven years later, which would put its reliability in question. He may have concluded in hindsight that it was a dodo, finding what he saw similar to accounts of that bird.

Early interpretation
In the 1770s, the French naturalist Comte de Buffon stated that the dodo inhabited both Mauritius and Réunion for unclear reasons. He also combined accounts about the Rodrigues solitaire and a bird from Mauritius ("oiseau de Nazareth", now thought to be a dodo), as well as the "solitaire" Carré reported from Réunion under one "solitaire" section, indicating he believed there was both a dodo and "solitaire" on Réunion. The English naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland discussed the old descriptions of the "solitaire" in his 1848 book The Dodo and Its Kindred, and concluded it was distinct from the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire due to its colouration.

The Belgian scientist Edmond de Sélys Longchamps coined the scientific name Apterornis solitarius for the "solitaire" in 1848, apparently making it the type species of the genus, in which he also included two other Mascarene birds only known from contemporary accounts, the red rail and the Réunion swamphen. As the name Apterornis had already been used for a different bird by the English biologist Richard Owen, and the other former names were likewise invalid, Bonaparte coined the new binomial Ornithaptera borbonica in 1854 (Bourbon was the original French name for Réunion). In 1854, the German ornithologist Hermann Schlegel placed the "solitaire" in the same genus as the dodo, and named it Didus apterornis. He restored it strictly according to contemporary accounts, which resulted in an ibis or stork-like bird instead of a dodo.

In 1856, William Coker announced the discovery of a 17th-century "Persian" painting of a white dodo among waterfowl, which he had been shown in England. The artist was later identified as Pieter Withoos, and many prominent 19th-century naturalists subsequently assumed the image depicted the white "solitaire" of Réunion, a possibility originally proposed by ornithologist John Gould. Simultaneously, several similar paintings of white dodos by Pieter Holsteyn II were discovered in the Netherlands. Other paintings and drawings were also later identified as showing white dodos. In 1869, the English ornithologist Alfred Newton argued that the Withoos' painting and engraving in Bontekoe's memoir depicted a living Réunion dodo that had been brought to Holland, while explaining its blunt beak as a result of beak trimming to prevent it from injuring humans. He also brushed aside the inconsistencies between the illustrations and descriptions, especially the long, thin beak implied by one contemporary account.

Newton's words particularly cemented the validity of this connection among contemporary peers, and several of them expanded on his views. The Dutch zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans suggested in 1917 that the discrepancies between the paintings and the old descriptions were due to the paintings showing a female, and that the species was, therefore, sexually dimorphic. The British zoologist Walter Rothschild claimed in 1907 that the yellow wings might have been due to albinism in this particular specimen, since the old descriptions described these as black.

By the early 20th century, many other paintings and even physical remains were claimed to be of white dodos, amid much speculation. Rothschild commissioned British artist Frederick William Frohawk to restore the "solitaire" as both a white dodo, based on the Withoos painting, and as a distinct bird based on the French traveller Sieur Dubois' 1674 description, for his 1907 book Extinct Birds. In 1937, the Japanese writer Masauji Hachisuka suggested that the old accounts and paintings represented two different species, and referred to the white dodos of the paintings as Victoriornis imperialis (honouring King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy), and the "solitaire" of the accounts as Ornithaptera solitarius (using the generic name coined by Bonaparte). Hachisuka also suggested that a 1618 Italian illustration previously identified as a dodo being hunted, actually showed a male, brown Réunion solitaire (he ruled out Rodrigues because that island was not yet inhabited at the time). To him, this cleared up the confusion between the two species, which is why he named the white dodo for the King of Italy (the illustration being from Italy). Today the illustration is thought to depict an ostrich or a bustard.

Modern interpretation
Until the late 1980s, belief in the existence of a white dodo on Réunion was the orthodox view, and only a few researchers doubted the connection between the "solitaire" accounts and the dodo paintings. The American ornithologist James Greenway cautioned in 1958 that no conclusions could be made without solid evidence such as fossils, and that nothing indicated that the white dodos in the paintings had anything to do with Réunion. In 1970, the American ornithologist Robert W. Storer predicted that if any such remains were found, they would not belong to Raphinae like the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire (or even to the pigeon family like them).

The first subfossil bird remains on Réunion, the lower part of a tarsometatarsus, was found in 1974, and considered a new species of stork in the genus Ciconia by the British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles in 1987. The remains were found in a cave, which indicated it had been brought there and eaten by early settlers. It was speculated that the remains could have belonged to a large, mysterious bird described by Leguat, and called "Leguat's giant" by some ornithologists. "Leguat's giant" is now thought to be based on a locally extinct population of greater flamingos. Also in 1987, a subfossil tarsometatarsus of an ibis found in a cave was described as Borbonibis latipes (the specific name means "wide foot") by the French palaeontologists Cécile Mourer-Chauviré and François Moutou, and thought related to the bald ibises of the genus Geronticus.

In 1994, Cowles concluded that the "stork" remains he had reported belonged to Borbonibis, since their tarsometatarsi were similar. The 1987 discovery led the English biologist Anthony S. Cheke to suggest to one of the describers of Borbonibis that the subfossils may have been of the "solitaire". In 1995, the French ecologist Jean-Michel Probst reported his discovery of a bird mandible during an excavation on Réunion the former year, and suggested it may have belonged to the ibis or the "solitaire". In 1995, the describers of Borbonibis latipes suggested that it represented the "Réunion solitaire", and reassigned it to the ibis genus Threskiornis, now combined with the specific name solitarius from de Sélys-Longchamps' 1848 binomial for the "solitaire" (making Borbonibis latipes a junior synonym). The authors pointed out that the contemporary descriptions matched the appearance and behaviour of an ibis more than a member of the Raphinae, especially due to its comparatively short and straight mandible, and because ibis remains were abundant in some localities; it would be strange if contemporary writers never mentioned such a relatively common bird, whereas they mentioned most other species subsequently known from fossils.

The possible origin of the 17th-century white dodo paintings was examined, by the Spanish biologist Arturo Valledor de Lozoya in 2003, and independently by experts of Mascarene fauna Cheke and Julian Hume in 2004. The Withoos and Holsteyn paintings are clearly derived from each other, and Withoos likely copied his dodo from one of Holsteyn's works, since these were probably produced at an earlier date. All later white dodo pictures are thought to be based on these paintings. According to the aforementioned writers, it appears these pictures were themselves derived from a whitish dodo in a previously unreported painting called Landscape with Orpheus and the Animals, produced by Roelant Savery c. 1611. The dodo was apparently based on a stuffed specimen then in Prague; a walghvogel (old Dutch for dodo) described as having a "dirty off-white colouring" was mentioned in an inventory of specimens in the Prague collection of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to whom Savery was contracted at the time (1607–1611).

Savery's several later dodo images all show greyish birds, possibly because he had by then seen a normal specimen. Cheke and Hume concluded the painted specimen was white due to albinism, and that this peculiar feature was the reason it was collected from Mauritius and brought to Europe. Valledor de Lozoya instead suggested that the light plumage was a juvenile trait, a result of bleaching of old taxidermy specimens, or simply due to artistic license. In 2018, the British ornithologist Jolyon C. Parish and Cheke suggested that the painting was instead executed after 1614, or even after 1626, based on some of the motifs.

While many subfossil elements from throughout the skeleton have been assigned to the Réunion ibis, no remains of dodo-like birds have ever been found on Réunion. A few later sources have taken issue with the proposed ibis-identity of the "solitaire", and have even regarded the "white dodo" as a valid species. The British writer Errol Fuller agrees that the 17th-century paintings do not depict Réunion birds, but has questioned whether the ibis subfossils are necessarily connected to the "solitaire" accounts. He notes that no evidence indicates the extinct ibis survived until the time Europeans reached Réunion. Cheke and Hume have dismissed such sentiments as being mere "belief" and "hope" in the existence of a dodo on the island.

Evolution
The volcanic island of Réunion is only three million years old, whereas Mauritius and Rodrigues, with each of their flightless Raphine species, are eight to ten million years old, and according to Cheke and Hume it is unlikely that either bird would have been capable of flying after five or more million years of adapting to the islands. Therefore, it is unlikely that Réunion could have been colonised by flightless birds from these islands, and only flighted species on the island have relatives there. Three million years is enough time for flightless and weak flying abilities to have evolved in bird species on Réunion itself, but Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues pointed out that such species would have been wiped out by the eruption of the volcano Piton des Neiges between 300,000 and 180,000 years ago. Most recent species would therefore likely be descendants of animals which had recolonised the island from Africa or Madagascar after this event, which is not enough time for a bird to become flightless.

In 1995, a morphological study by Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues suggested the closest extant relatives of the Réunion ibis are the African sacred ibis (T. aethiopicus) of Africa and the straw-necked ibis (T. spinicollis) of Australia. Cheke and Hume instead suggested that it was closest to the Malagasy sacred ibis (T. bernieri), and therefore of ultimately African origin.

Description
Contemporary accounts described the species as having white and grey plumage merging into yellow, black wing tips and tail feathers, a long neck and legs, and limited flight capabilities. Dubois' 1674 account is the most detailed contemporary description of the bird, here as translated by Strickland in 1848: "Solitaires. These birds are so called because they always go alone. They are the size of a large Goose, and are white, with the tips of the wings and tail black. The tail feathers resemble those of an Ostrich; the neck is long, and the beak is like that of a Woodcock, but larger; the legs and feet like those of Turkeys. This bird has recourse to running, as it flies but very little."

According to Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues, the plumage colouration mentioned is similar to that of the related African sacred ibis and straw-necked ibis, which are also mainly white and glossy black. In the reproductive season, the ornamental feathers on the back and wing tips of the African sacred ibis look similar to the feathers of an ostrich, which echoes Dubois' description. Likewise, a subfossil lower jaw found in 1994 showed that the bill of the Réunion ibis was relatively short and straight for an ibis, which corresponds with Dubois' woodcock comparison. Cheke and Hume have suggested that the French word (bécasse) from Dubois' original description, usually translated to "woodcock", could also mean oystercatcher, another bird with a long, straight, but slightly more robust, bill. They have also pointed out that the last sentence is mistranslated, and actually means the bird could be caught by running after it. The bright colouration of the plumage mentioned by some authors may refer to iridescence, as seen in the straw-necked ibis.

Subfossils of the Réunion ibis show that it was more robust, likely much heavier, and had a larger head than the African sacred and straw-necked ibises. It was nonetheless similar to them in most features. According to Hume, it would have been no longer than 65 cm (25 in) in length, the size of the African sacred ibis. Rough protuberances on the wing bones of the Réunion ibis are similar to those of birds that use their wings in combat. It was perhaps flightless, but this has not left significant osteological traces; no complete skeletons have been collected, but of the known pectoral elements, only one feature indicates reduction in flight capability. The coracoid is elongated and the radius and ulna are robust, as in flighted birds, but a particular foramen (or opening) between a metacarpal and the alular is otherwise only known from flightless birds, such as some ratites, penguins, and several extinct species.

Behaviour and ecology
As contemporary accounts are inconsistent on whether the "solitaire" was flightless or had some flight capability, Mourer-Chauvire and colleagues suggested that this was dependent on seasonal fat-cycles, meaning that individuals fattened themselves during cool seasons, but were slim during hot seasons; perhaps it could not fly when it was fat, but could when it was not. However, Dubois specifically stated the "solitaires" did not have fat-cycles, unlike most other Réunion birds. The only mention of its diet and exact habitat is the account of the French cartographer Jean Feuilley from 1708, which is also the last record of a living individual: "The solitaires are the size of an average turkey cock, grey and white in colour. They inhabit the tops of mountains. Their food is only worms and filth, taken on or in the soil." The diet and mode of foraging described by Feuilley matches that of an ibis, whereas members of the Raphinae are known to have been fruit eaters. The species was termed a land-bird by Dubois, so it did not live in typical ibis habitats such as wetlands. This is similar to the Réunion swamphen, which lived in forest rather than swamps, which is otherwise typical swamphen habitat. Cheke and Hume proposed that the ancestors of these birds colonised Réunion before swamps had developed, and had therefore become adapted to the available habitats. They were perhaps prevented from colonising Mauritius as well due to the presence of red rails there, which may have occupied a similar niche.

The Réunion ibis appears to have lived in high altitudes, and perhaps had a limited distribution. Accounts by early visitors indicate the species was found near their landing sites, but they were found only in remote places by 1667. The bird may have survived in eastern lowlands until the 1670s. Though many late 17th century accounts state the bird was good food, Feuilley stated it tasted bad. This may be because it changed its diet when it moved to more rugged, higher terrain, to escape pigs that destroyed its nests; since it had limited flight capabilities, it probably nested on the ground.

Many other endemic species of Réunion became extinct after the human colonisation and the resulting disruption of the island's ecosystem. The Réunion ibis lived alongside other recently extinct birds such as the hoopoe starling, the Mascarene parrot, the Réunion parakeet, the Réunion swamphen, the Réunion scops owl, the Réunion night heron, and the Réunion pink pigeon. Extinct reptiles include the Réunion giant tortoise and an undescribed Leiolopisma skink. The small Mauritian flying fox and the snail Tropidophora carinata lived on Réunion and Mauritius, but vanished from both islands.

Extinction
As Réunion was populated by settlers, the Réunion ibis appears to have become confined to the tops of mountains. Introduced predators such as cats and rats took a toll. Overhunting also contributed and several contemporary accounts state the bird was widely hunted for food. In 1625, John Tatton described the tameness of the bird and how easy it was to hunt, as well as the large quantity consumed: "There is store of land fowle both small and great, plenty of Doves, great Parrats, and such like; and a great fowle of the bignesse of a Turkie, very fat, and so short winged, that they cannot fly, being white, and in a manner tame: and so be all other fowles, as having not been troubled nor feared with shot. Our men did beat them down with sticks and stones. Ten men may take fowle enough to serve fortie men a day." In 1671, Melet mentioned the culinary quality of this species, and described the slaughter of several types of birds on the island: "(A)nother sort of bird called solitaires which are very good (to eat) and the beauty of their plumage is most fascinating for the diversity of bright colours that shine on their wing and around their necks... There are birds in such great confusion and so tame that it is not necessary to go hunting with firearms, they can so easily be killed with a little stick or rod. During the five or six days that we were allowed to go into the woods, so many were killed that our General [de La Haye] was constrained to forbid anyone going beyond a hundred paces from the camp for fear the whole quarter would be destroyed, for one needed only to catch one bird alive and make it cry out, to have in a moment whole flocks coming to perch on people, so that often without moving from one spot one could kill hundreds. But, seeing that it would have been impossible to wipe out such a huge quantity, permission was again given to kill, which gave great joy to everyone, because very good fare was had at no expense." The last definite account of the "solitaire" of Réunion was Feuilley's from 1708, indicating that the species probably became extinct sometime early in the century. In the 1820s, the French navigator Louis de Freycinet asked an old slave about drontes (old Dutch word for dodo), and was told the bird existed around Saint-Joseph when his father was an infant. This would perhaps be a century earlier, but the account may be unreliable. Cheke and Hume suspect that feral cats initially hunted wildlife in the lowlands and later turned to higher inland areas, which were probably the last stronghold of the Réunion ibis, as they were unreachable by pigs. The species is thought to have been driven to extinction around 1710–1715.

title: Réunion ibis


text:
Moving average (disambiguation)

A moving average is a calculation to analyze data points by creating a series of averages of different subsets of the full data set.

Moving average may also refer to:

 * Moving-average model, an approach for modeling univariate time series models
 * Moving average filter, a finite impulse response filter in digital signal processing
 * Convolution, a moving average in other mathematical contexts

title: Moving average (disambiguation)


text:
Talk:Octagon

Regular tetrahedron?
The article says in part:

 * "If squares are constructed all internally or all externally on the sides of an octagon, then the midpoints of the segments connecting the centers of opposite squares form a quadrilateral that is both equidiagonal and orthodiagonal (that is, whose diagonals are equal in length and at right angles to each other)."

Can the quadrilateral be construed as a regular tetrahedron? Sandbh (talk) 03:37, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

 * Perhaps as a shadow of one. —Tamfang (talk) 01:21, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

That's what I thought, maybe. It seems peculiar to derive regularity from irregularity. Sandbh (talk) 04:47, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Added image from National Trust
Hello! I added an image of a chair that uses octagonal geometry as part of this pilot project, more images are available to use here Lajmmoore (talk) 19:00, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Octagon


text:
Air France Flight 4590

On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde passenger jet on an international charter flight from Paris to New York, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. It was the only fatal Concorde accident during its 27-year operational history.

Whilst taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, Air France Flight 4590 ran over debris on the runway dropped by the previous aircraft using the same runway, causing a tyre to explode and disintegrate. Tyre fragments, launched upwards at great speed by the rapidly spinning wheel, violently struck the underside of the wing, damaging parts of the landing gear – thus preventing its retraction – and causing the integral fuel tank to rupture. Large amounts of fuel leaking from the rupture ignited, causing a loss of thrust in the left-hand-side engines 1 and 2. The aircraft lifted off, but the loss of thrust, high drag from the extended landing gear, and fire damage to the flight controls made it impossible to maintain control. The jet crashed into a hotel in nearby Gonesse two minutes after takeoff. All nine crew and 100 passengers on board were killed, as well as four people in the hotel. Four other people sustained slight injuries.

In the wake of the disaster, the entire Concorde fleet was grounded. It returned to service on November 7, 2001, following the implementation of various modifications to the airframe, but to limited commercial success, especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Concorde aircraft were finally retired by Air France in May 2003 and by British Airways in November of the same year.

Aircraft and crew
The aircraft involved was a 25-year-old Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde (registration F-BTSC, serial number 203) that had its maiden flight on 31 January 1975 (during testing, the aircraft's registration was F-WTSC). The aircraft was leased to Air France on 6 January 1976. It joined the Air France fleet full-time in 1980. It was powered by four Rolls-Royce Olympus 593/610 turbojet engines, each of which was equipped with reheat. The aircraft's last scheduled repair had taken place on 21 July 2000, four days before the accident; no problems were reported during the repair. At the time of the crash, the aircraft had flown for 11,989 hours and had made 4,873 take-off and landing cycles.

The cockpit crew consisted of the following:
 * Captain Christian Marty (age 54), who had been with Air France since 1967. He had 13,477 flight hours, including 317 hours on the Concorde. Marty had also flown the Boeing 727, 737, Airbus A300, A320, and A340 aircraft.
 * First officer Jean Marcot (50), who had been with Air France since 1971 and had 10,035 flight hours, with 2,698 of them on the Concorde. He had also flown the Aérospatiale N 262, Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris, Sud Aviation Caravelle and Airbus A300 aircraft.
 * Flight engineer Gilles Jardinaud (58), who had been with Air France since 1968. He had 12,532 flight hours, of which 937 were on the Concorde aircraft. Jardinaud had also flown the Sud Aviation Caravelle, Dassault Falcon 20, Boeing 727, 737, and 747 (including the -400 variant) aircraft.

Crash
The wind at the airport was light and variable that day, and was reported to the cockpit crew as an 8 knot tailwind as they lined up on runway 26R.

At 16:38 CEST (14:38 UTC), five minutes before the Concorde departed, Continental Airlines Flight 55, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, took off from the same runway for Newark International Airport and lost a titanium alloy strip that was part of the engine cowl, identified as a wear strip about 435 mm long, 29 to 34 mm wide, and 1.4 mm thick. The DC-10 was not seriously affected by this. At 16:42, the Concorde ran over this piece of debris during its take-off run while the aircraft was doing 185 mph (300 km/h), cutting the right-front tyre (tyre No 2) of its left main wheel bogie and sending a large chunk of tyre debris (4.5 kg) into the underside of the left wing at an estimated speed of 140 m/s. It did not directly puncture any of the fuel tanks, but it sent out a pressure shockwave that ruptured the number 5 fuel tank at its weakest point, just ahead of the left landing gear well. Leaking fuel gushing out from the bottom of the wing was most likely ignited either by an electric arc in the landing gear bay (debris cutting the landing gear wire) or through contact with hot parts of the engine. Engines 1 and 2 both surged and lost all power, likely due to ingestion of hot gases (both engines) and tyre debris (engine 1 only), and then engine 1 slowly recovered over the next few seconds. A large plume of flame developed, and the flight engineer shut down engine 2 in response to a fire warning and the captain's command.

Air traffic controller Gilles Logelin noticed the flames before the Concorde was airborne and informed the flight crew. However, the aircraft had passed V1 speed, at which point takeoff is considered unsafe to abort. The plane did not gain enough airspeed with the three remaining engines as damage to the landing gear bay door prevented the retraction of the undercarriage. The aircraft was unable to climb or accelerate, and its speed decayed during the course of its brief flight. The fire damaged the inner elevon of the left wing and it began to disintegrate, melted by the extremely high temperatures. Engine number 1 surged again, but did not fully recover, and the right wing lifted from the asymmetrical thrust, banking the aircraft to over 100 degrees. The crew reduced the power on engines three and four in an attempt to level the aircraft, but they lost control due to deceleration and the aircraft stalled. The aircraft struck the ground left wing low after a heading change of nearly 180°, crashing into the Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel. A video of the burning plane on takeoff and the aftermath of the crash was captured by a passing driver.

The crew tried to divert to nearby Paris–Le Bourget Airport, but accident investigators stated that a safe landing would have been highly unlikely, given the aircraft's flightpath. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the last intelligible words in the cockpit (translated into English):

"Co-pilot: 'Le Bourget, Le Bourget, Le Bourget.'

Pilot: 'Too late (unclear).'

Control tower: 'Fire service leader, correction, the Concorde is returning to runway zero nine in the opposite direction.'

Pilot: 'No time, no (unclear).'

Co-pilot: 'Negative, we're trying Le Bourget' (four switching sounds).

Co-pilot: 'No (unclear).'

Fire service leader: 'De Gaulle tower from fire service leader, can you give me the situation of the Concorde?' (two gongs and sound of switch, followed by another switch and sounds likened to objects being moved)

Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)

Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)

Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)

End of recording"

Fatalities
The flight was chartered by German company Peter Deilmann Cruises. The passengers were on their way to board the cruise ship MS Deutschland in New York for a 16-day cruise to Manta, Ecuador. They included German football manager Rudi Faßnacht and German trade union board member Christian Götz.

All the passengers and crew, and four employees of the Hotelissimo hotel were killed in the crash.

Aftermath

A few days after the crash, all Air France Concordes were grounded, pending an investigation into the cause of the crash and possible remedies.

Air France's Concorde operation had been a money-losing venture, and it is claimed that the aeroplane had been kept in service as a matter of national pride; British Airways claimed to make a profit on its Concorde operations. According to Jock Lowe, a Concorde pilot, until the crash of Air France Flight 4590 at Paris, the British Airways Concorde operation made a net average profit of about £30M (equivalent to £M in ) a year. Commercial service was resumed on November 7, 2001, after a £17M (£M today) safety improvement programme, until the type was retired between May (Air France) and October (British Airways), 2003.

This was the only fatal accident of Concorde's entire service life.

Investigation
The official investigation was conducted by France's accident investigation bureau, the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).

Post-accident investigation revealed that the aircraft was over the maximum takeoff weight for ambient temperature and other conditions, and 810 kg over the maximum structural weight,    loaded so that the centre of gravity was aft of the take-off limit. Fuel transfer during taxiing left the number 5 wing tank 94 per cent full. A 12 in spacer normally keeps the left main landing gear in alignment, but it had not been replaced after recent maintenance; the BEA concluded that this did not contribute to the accident.

The final report was issued on 16 January 2002.

Conclusions
The BEA concluded that:
 * The aircraft was overloaded by 810 kg above the maximum safe takeoff weight. Any effect on takeoff performance from this excess weight was negligible.
 * After reaching takeoff speed, the tyre of the number 2 wheel was cut by a metal strip (a wear strip) lying on the runway, which had fallen from the thrust reverser cowl door of the number 3 engine of a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off from the same runway five minutes previously. This wear strip had been replaced at Tel Aviv, Israel, during a C check on 11 June 2000, and then again at Houston, Texas, on 9 July 2000. The strip installed in Houston had been neither manufactured nor installed in accordance with the procedures as defined by the manufacturer.
 * The aircraft was airworthy and the crew were qualified. The landing gear that later failed to retract had not shown serious problems in the past. Despite the crew being trained and certified, no plan existed for the simultaneous failure of two engines on the runway, as it was considered highly unlikely.
 * Aborting the takeoff would have led to a high-speed runway excursion and collapse of the landing gear, which also would have caused the aircraft to crash.
 * While two of the engines had problems and one of them was shut down, the damage to the plane's structure was so severe that the crash would have been inevitable, even with the engines operating normally.

Additional factors and alternative theories
Former British Airways (BA) Concorde captain John Hutchinson said the fire on its own should have been 'eminently survivable; the pilot should have been able to fly his way out of trouble'. Hutchinson believed this did not happen due to a series of operational errors and 'negligence' by the maintenance department. According to a report in a British newspaper, by journalist David Rose, the crash had "more than one contributing factor, most of which were avoidable."

While examining the wreckage in a warehouse, investigators noticed that a spacer was missing from the bogie beam on the left-hand main landing gear. (It was later found in an Air France maintenance workshop.) This skewed the alignment of the landing gear because a strut was able to wobble in any direction with 3° of movement. The problem was exacerbated on the left gear's three remaining tyres by the uneven fuel load. Drag marks left on the runway by the left rear landing wheels show the Concorde was veering to the left as it accelerated toward takeoff. Photographs in the BEA report showed a smashed steel landing light, clipped by the aircraft, parts of which were probably ingested by engine number 1.

According to Rose, former French Concorde pilot Jean-Marie Chauve and former Concorde flight engineer Michel Suaud spent six months preparing a 60-page report which was submitted to the investigating judge. They re-evaluated two factors that the BEA had found to be of negligible consequence to the crash, the unbalanced weight distribution in the fuel tanks and the loose landing gear. Chauve and Suaud gave detailed calculations, stating that without the retardation caused by the missing undercarriage spacer, the aircraft would have taken off 1684 metres from the start of the runway, before the point where the metal strip was located, although the BEA disputed this, saying the acceleration was normal.

At the start of the takeoff, the aircraft had 1.2 tonnes of extra fuel which should have been burnt during the aircraft's taxi. Nineteen items of luggage, weighing some 500kg (0.5 tonnes) were loaded onto the aircraft at the last minute without being included in the aircraft's manifest, giving the aircraft a weight of 186 tonnes, which exceeded the aircraft's certified maximum structural weight by one tonne. A change in wind conditions created an 8 knot tailwind, which would have reduced the regulated takeoff weight to 180 tonnes, six tonnes below the actual aircraft weight. Rather than to take off from the other end of the runway to take off into the wind, no change in takeoff direction occurred. The additional weight of the extra fuel in tank 11, the rearmost tank, plus the additional luggage shifted the aircraft's centre of gravity rearwards, to beyond the safe operating limit of 54 per cent, set by the Concorde test pilots. Once the damaged forward tank 5 began to lose fuel, the centre of gravity moved even further rearward. At one point, it drifted toward a just-landed Air France Boeing 747 that was carrying then-French President Jacques Chirac (who was returning from the 26th G8 summit meeting in Okinawa, Japan). As the plane was about to leave the tarmac, with the aircraft rotated for takeoff, its speed was only 188 knots, 11 knots under the minimum recommended velocity. The flight engineer shut down engine number two at only 25 feet altitude. The procedure for shutting down an engine is to wait until stable flight at 400 feet is achieved, and then only on the command of the captain.

According to Mike Bannister, former British Airways Concorde Chief Pilot, there is evidence to suggest that the fuel tank transfer pump that fed the ruptured fuel tank, was left running, causing fuel to be pumped overboard and subsequently feeding the fire, and that the fuel tank was approximately 30% full at the time of crash rather than empty, if the pump had been off.

Previous tyre incidents
In November 1981, the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a letter of concern to the French BEA that included safety recommendations for Concorde. This communiqué was the result of the NTSB's investigations of four Air France Concorde incidents during a 20-month period from July 1979 to February 1981. The NTSB described those incidents as "potentially catastrophic", because they were caused by blown tyres during takeoff. During its 27 years in service, Concorde had about 70 tyre- or wheel-related incidents, seven of which caused serious damage to the aircraft or were potentially catastrophic.
 * 13 June 1979: The number 5 and 6 tyres blew out during a takeoff from Washington Dulles International Airport. Fragments thrown from the tyres and rims damaged number 2 engine, punctured three fuel tanks, severed several hydraulic lines and electrical wires, and tore a large hole on the top of the wing over the wheel well area.
 * 21 July 1979: Another blown tyre incident during takeoff from Dulles Airport. After that second incident the "French director general of civil aviation issued an Airworthiness Directive and Air France issued a Technical Information Update, each calling for revised procedures. These included required inspection of each wheel and tyre for condition, pressure, and temperature prior to each takeoff. In addition, crews were advised that landing gear should not be raised when a wheel/tyre problem is suspected."
 * August 1981: British Airways (BA) plane taking off from New York suffered a blow-out, damaging landing gear door, engine, and fuel tank.
 * November 1985: Tyre burst on a BA plane leaving Heathrow, causing damage to the landing gear door and fuel tank. Two engines were damaged as a result of the accident.
 * January 1988: BA plane leaving Heathrow lost 10 bolts from its landing gear wheel. A fuel tank was punctured.
 * July 1993: Tyre burst on a BA plane during landing at Heathrow, causing substantial ingestion damage to the number 3 engine, damaging the landing gear and wing, and puncturing an empty fuel tank.
 * October 1993: Tyre burst on a BA plane during taxi at Heathrow, puncturing wing, damaging fuel tanks, and causing a major fuel leak.

Because it is a tailless delta-wing aircraft, Concorde could not use the normal flaps or slats to assist takeoff and landing, and required a significantly higher air and tyre speed during the takeoff roll than an average airliner. That higher speed increased the risk of tyre burst during takeoff. Analysis of test results revealed that this occurring could release sufficient kinetic energy to cause the fuel tank to rupture. The analysis of impact energy considered a tyre piece of 4.5 kg with a speed around 140 m/s. The piece could reach this speed by combination of rotation of the tyre on takeoff and the tyre burst.

Modifications and revival
The accident led to modifications to Concorde, including more-secure electrical controls, Kevlar lining to the fuel tanks, and specially developed burst-resistant tyres.

The crash of the Air France Concorde nonetheless proved to be the beginning of the end for the type. Just before service resumed, the September 11 attacks took place, resulting in a marked drop in passenger numbers, and contributing to the eventual end of Concorde flights. Air France stopped flights in May 2003, followed by British Airways five months later.

In June 2010, two groups attempted, unsuccessfully, to revive Concorde for "Heritage" flights in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The British Save Concorde Group, SCG, and French group Olympus 593 were attempting to obtain four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines from the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum.

Criminal investigation
French authorities began a criminal investigation of Continental Airlines, whose plane dropped the debris on the runway, in March 2005, and that September, Henri Perrier, the former chief engineer of the Concorde division at Aérospatiale at the time of the first test flight in 1969 and the programme director in the 1980s and early 1990s, was placed under formal investigation.

In March 2008, Bernard Farret, a deputy prosecutor in Pontoise, outside Paris, asked judges to bring manslaughter charges against Continental Airlines and two of its employees – John Taylor, the mechanic who replaced the wear strip on the DC-10, and his manager Stanley Ford – alleging negligence in the way the repair was carried out. Continental denied the charges, and claimed in court that it was being used as a scapegoat by the BEA. The airline suggested that the Concorde "was already on fire when its wheels hit the titanium strip, and that around 20 first-hand witnesses had confirmed that the plane seemed to be on fire immediately after it began its take-off roll".

At the same time, charges were laid against Henri Perrier, head of the Concorde program at Aérospatiale; Jacques Hérubel, Concorde's chief engineer; and Claude Frantzen, head of DGAC, the French airline regulator. It was alleged that Perrier, Hérubel, and Frantzen knew that the plane's fuel tanks could be susceptible to damage from foreign objects, but nonetheless allowed it to fly.

The trial ran in a Parisian court from February to December 2010. Continental Airlines was found criminally responsible for the disaster. It was fined €200,000 ($271,628) and ordered to pay Air France €1 million. Taylor was given a 15-month suspended sentence, while Ford, Perrier, Hérubel, and Frantzen were cleared of all charges. The court ruled that the crash resulted from a piece of metal from a Continental jet that was left on the runway; the object punctured a tyre on the Concorde and then ruptured a fuel tank. The convictions were overturned by a French appeals court in November 2012, thereby clearing Continental (which had merged with United Airlines by then) and Taylor of criminal responsibility.

The Parisian court also ruled that Continental would have to pay 70% of any compensation claims. As Air France had paid out €100 million to the families of the victims, Continental could be made to pay its share of that compensation payout. The French appeals court, while overturning the criminal rulings by the Parisian court, affirmed the civil ruling and left Continental liable for the compensation claims.

Legacy
A monument in honour of the crash victims was established at Gonesse. The Gonesse monument consists of a piece of transparent glass with a piece of an aircraft wing jutting through. Another monument, a 6000 sqm memorial surrounded with topiary planted in the shape of a Concorde, was established in 2006 at Mitry-Mory, just south of Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Documentaries and other media

 * The Concorde that crashed was the primary aircraft extensively used in The Concorde ... Airport '79.
 * The timeline and causes of the crash were profiled in the premiere episode of the National Geographic documentary series Seconds From Disaster.
 * NBC aired a Dateline NBC documentary on the crash, its causes, and its legacy on 22 February 2009.
 * Channel 4 and Discovery Channel Canada aired a documentary called Concorde's Last Flight.
 * Smithsonian Channel aired a 90-minute documentary in 2010.
 * The accident and subsequent investigation were featured in the 7th episode during Season 14 of the Canadian documentary series Mayday (also known as Air Crash Investigation) titled "Concorde: Up in Flames", first broadcast in January 2015.
 * In 2020, Montreal synth-pop group Le Couleur released an album, Concorde, inspired by the story of this crash.

title: Air France Flight 4590


text:
Paycheck (novelette)

"Paycheck" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Philip K. Dick, written on July 31, 1952 and first published in the June 1953 issue of Imagination. The story was later made, with various alterations, into the film Paycheck in 2003 directed by John Woo and starring Ben Affleck.

Plot summary
Jennings, a talented electronic engineer, has accepted a secret contract with Rethrick Construction. The terms of the contract state that he will work for two years on a secret project after which he will have his memory of the time erased and will be paid an inordinate sum. It is implied that this type of working contract has replaced non-disclosure agreements in business and is commonplace. He wakes up to find that during his tenure he decided to forgo the payment of money and instead receive an envelope of trinkets. Rethrick states that this in itself is not unusual and that people often change their mind as to their method of payment during the course of contracts.

Soon after exiting the building he discovers that in the two years he has forgotten, America has become a police state—he is seized by the Security Police who want to know what Rethrick is doing. One of the trinkets he received as payment enables his escape from the police. Jennings soon realizes that the only way to secure his safety is to blackmail Rethrick as to who will be able to shield him from the government. Using several more of the trinkets, he is able to make his way back to Rethrick's hidden facility. He has also realized that during his tenure at Rethrick Industries he worked on a machine that allowed people to view the future and the trinkets are part of a carefully crafted plan to ensure his survival.

When he finally enters Rethrick's complex, it dawns on him that there is much more going on than the construction of an illegal device that can show the future. Rethrick is building an army to support a revolution which would free the country from the oppressive government. The story concludes with Jennings successfully blackmailing Rethrick into allowing him to join the company in a partner-like capacity.

The trinkets that Jennings received as payment are as follows:

 * A length of fine wire (allows him to short out and open the door of a police car)
 * A bus token (allows him to quickly board a bus and escape the Security Police)
 * A ticket stub (tells him where Rethrick's building is)
 * A green strip of cloth (a worker's armband, enabling him to enter Rethrick's building)
 * A code key (opens a rear exit from Rethrick's building)
 * Half of a broken poker chip (permits entry to a gambling den where he hides from both the Company and the police)
 * A parcel receipt (permits access to material stored in a bank that allows him to blackmail Rethrick into protecting him from the government)

Critical analysis
Dick said of the story: "How much is a key to a bus locker worth? One day it's worth 25 cents, the next day thousands of dollars. In this story I got to thinking that there are times in our lives when having a dime to make a phone call spells the difference between life and death. Keys, small change, maybe a theater ticket -- how about a parking receipt for a Jaguar? All I had to do was link this idea up with time travel to see how the small and useless, under the wise eyes of a time traveler, might signify a great deal more. He would know when that dime might save your life. And, back in the past again, he might prefer that dime to any amount of money, no matter how large."

Critic Zack Handlen remarked, "This is still early Dick, which means that while interesting concepts are introduced, and there’s some play with identity -- Jennings develops an overwhelming faith in the prescience of his past self, a faith which most people can’t ever have in their present versions, and by the end he’s even referring to that past guy as a separate person -- the primary focus is nabbing you and keeping you entertained. ... A solid piece of work all around."

title: Paycheck (novelette)