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Good King Wenceslas

"Good King Wenceslas" (Roud number 24754) is a Christmas carol that tells a story of a Bohemian king (modern-day Czech Republic) who goes on a journey, braving harsh winter weather, to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen (December 26, the Second Day of Christmas). During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle against the cold weather, but is enabled to continue by following the king's footprints, step for step, through the deep snow. The legend is based on the life of the Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (907–935), who was not a king in his lifetime but had that status conferred on him after his death.

In 1853, English hymnwriter John Mason Neale wrote the lyrics in collaboration with his music editor Thomas Helmore to fit the melody of the 13th-century spring carol "Tempus adest floridum" ("Eastertime Is Come"), which they had found in the 1582 Finnish song collection Piae Cantiones. The carol first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide, published by Novello & Co the same year.

Source legend
Wenceslas was considered a martyr and a saint immediately after his death in the 10th century, when a cult of Wenceslas rose up in Bohemia and in England. Within a few decades of Wenceslas's death, four biographies of him were in circulation. These hagiographies had a powerful influence on the High Middle Ages conceptualization of the rex iustus, or "righteous king"—that is, a monarch whose power stems mainly from his great piety, as well as from his princely vigor. Referring approvingly to these hagiographies, a preacher from the 12th century wrote:

"But his deeds I think you know better than I could tell you; for, as is read in his Passion, no one doubts that, rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God's churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched."

Several centuries later the legend was claimed as fact by Pope Pius II, who himself also walked ten miles barefoot in the ice and snow as an act of pious thanksgiving.

Although Wenceslas was, during his lifetime, only a duke, Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (962–973) posthumously "conferred on [Wenceslas] the regal dignity and title" and that is why, in the legend and song, he is referred to as a "king." The usual English spelling of Duke Wenceslas's name, Wenceslaus, is occasionally encountered in later textual variants of the carol, although it was not used by Neale in his version. Wenceslas is not to be confused with King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia (Wenceslaus I Premyslid), who lived more than three centuries later.

A statue of Saint Wenceslas on horseback can be found at the Wenceslas Square, in Prague.

Tempus adest floridum
The tune is that of "Tempus adest floridum" ("Eastertime has come"), a 13th-century spring carol in 76 76 Doubled Trochaic metre, first published in the Finnish song book Piae Cantiones in 1582. Piae Cantiones is a collection of seventy-four songs compiled by Jacobus Finno, the Protestant headmaster of Turku Cathedral School, and published by Theodoric Petri, a young Catholic printer. The book is a unique document of European songs intended not only for use in church, but also schools, thus making the collection a unique record of the late medieval period.

A text beginning substantially the same as the 1582 "Piae" version is also found in the German manuscript collection Carmina Burana as CB 142, where it is substantially more carnal; CB 142 has clerics and virgins playing the "game of Venus" (goddess of love) in the meadows, while in the Piae version they are praising the Lord from the bottom of their hearts. The tune has also been used for the Christmas hymn Mary Gently Laid Her Child, by Joseph S. Cook (1859–1933); GIA Publications's hymnal Worship uses "Tempus Adest Floridum" only for Cook's hymn.

Neale's carol
In 1853, English hymnwriter John Mason Neale wrote the "Wenceslas" lyric, in collaboration with his music editor Thomas Helmore, and the carol first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide, published by Novello & Co the same year.

The text of Neale's carol bears no relation to the words of "Tempus Adest Floridum". In or around 1853, G. J. R. Gordon, the British envoy and minister in Stockholm, gave a rare copy of the 1582 edition of Piae Cantiones to Neale, who was Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead, Sussex and to the Reverend Thomas Helmore (Vice-Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea).

The book was entirely unknown in England at that time. As a member of the Tractarian Oxford Movement, Neale was interested in restoring Catholic ceremony, saints days, and music back into the Anglican church. The gift from G. J. R. Gordon gave him the opportunity to use medieval Catholic melodies for Anglican hymn writing.

In 1849 he had published Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History which recounted legends from Christian tradition in Romantic prose. One of the chapters told the legend of St Wenceslas and his footsteps melting the snow for his page:
 * "My liege," he said, "I cannot go on. The wind freezes my very blood. Pray you, let us return."

"Seems it so much?" asked the King. "Was not His journey from Heaven a wearier and a colder way than this?"
 * Otto answered not.

"Follow me on still," said S. Wenceslaus. "Only tread in my footsteps, and you will proceed more easily."
 * The servant knew that his master spoke not at random. He carefully looked for the footsteps of the King: he set his own feet in the print of his lord's feet.

For his 1853 publication Carols for Christmas-tide, he adapted his earlier prose story into a poem, and together with the music editor Thomas Helmore added the words to the melody in Piae Cantiones, adding a reference to Saint Stephen's Day (26 December), making it suitable for performance on that Saint's Day.

The hymn's lyrics take the form of five eight-line stanzas in four-stress lines. Each stanza has an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme. Lines 1, 3, 5, and 7 end in single-syllable (so-called masculine) rhymes, and lines 2, 4, 6, and 8 with two-syllable ("feminine") rhymes. (In the English tradition, two-syllable rhymes are generally associated with light or comic verse, which may be part of the reason some critics have demeaned Neale's lyrics as "doggerel".)

In the music the two-syllable rhymes in lines 2, 4, and 6 (e.g. "Stephen/even", "cruel/fuel") are set to two half-notes (British "minims"), but the final rhyme of each stanza (line 8) is spread over two full measures, the first syllable as two half-notes and the second as a whole note ("semi-breve")—so "fuel" is set as "fu-" with two half-notes and "-el" with a whole-note. Thus, unusually, the final musical line differs from all the others in having not two but three measures of 4/4 time.

Some academics are critical of Neale's textual substitution. H. J. L. J. Massé wrote in 1921:

"Why, for instance, do we tolerate such impositions as 'Good King Wenceslas?' The original was and is an Easter Hymn...it is marked in carol books as 'traditional', a delightful word which often conceals ignorance. There is nothing traditional in it as a carol."

A similar sentiment is expressed by the editors (Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams) in the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols, which is even more critical of Neale's carol:

"This rather confused narrative owes its popularity to the delightful tune, which is that of a Spring carol. . . . Unfortunately Neale in 1853 substituted for the Spring carol this Good King Wenceslas, one of his less happy pieces, which E. Duncan goes so far as to call 'doggerel', and Bullen condemns as 'poor and commonplace to the last degree'. The time has not yet come for a comprehensive book to discard it; but we reprint the tune in its proper setting . . . not without hope that, with the present wealth of carols for Christmas, Good King Wenceslas may gradually pass into disuse, and the tune be restored to spring-time."

Elizabeth Poston, in the Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, refers to the song as the "product of an unnatural marriage between Victorian whimsy and the thirteenth-century dance carol". She goes on to say that Neale's "ponderous moral doggerel" does not fit the lighthearted dance measure of the original tune, and that if performed in the correct manner it "sounds ridiculous to pseudo-religious words". A similar development has occurred with the song "O Christmas Tree," the tune of which has been used for "Maryland, My Maryland," "The Red Flag," and other unrelated songs.

By contrast, Brian Scott, quoting from The Oxford Book of Carols its criticism and hope that the carol would "pass into disuse", argues: "Thankfully, they were wrong", for the carol "still reminds us that the giving spirit of Christmas should not happen just on that day. . . ." Jeremy Summerly and Nicolas Bell of the British Museum also strongly rebut Dearmer's 20th century criticism, noting: "it could have been awful, but it isn't, it's magical . . . you remember it because the verse just works".

Other versions

 * William Lloyd Webber included "Good King Wenceslas" as one of his Songs without Words.
 * Bing Crosby first covered the song on his 1949 album Christmas Greetings, and later with Ella Fitzgerald.
 * The Beatles' Christmas Record (1963) featured several renditions of the carol.
 * In 1984, Mannheim Steamroller recorded an electronic synthesizer arrangement of the carol for their first Christmas album.
 * R.E.M. recorded a version of the song for their Christmas '89 holiday single.
 * The song's tune was re-worked by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on their track "Christmas Jazz", from their 2004 CD The Lost Christmas Eve.
 * It was covered by English folk duo Blackmore's Night on their 2006 album Winter Carols.
 * It was covered by Canadian Celtic singer Loreena McKennitt on her 1995 EP A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season, and reissued on her 2008 album A Midwinter Night's Dream.
 * In 2013, The Piano Guys made a piano-cello instrumental cover of this song for A Family Christmas, their Christmas studio album.
 * Mel Tormé covered the song on his 1992 Christmas Songs album.
 * The Count Basie Orchestra recorded a Sammy Nestico Big Band Arrangement of the song, re-named to 'Good Swing Venceslas', on their 2015 Album 'A Very Swingin' Basie Christmas'.
 * Child Bite covered the song in their 2018 anthology Burnt Offerings.
 * Tenth Avenue North opened their 2017 Christmas album, Decade The Halls, with the song, setting it to 1920s era music.
 * Rob Halford, vocalist of metal band Judas Priest, covered the song on his 2019 Christmas album, Celestial.
 * The song is included on We Three Kings (The Roches album), the sixth studio album by the folk trio The Roches, released in 1990 on MCA Records.
 * The song is included in Relient K's Christmas Album Let It Snow, Baby... Let It Reindeer under the title, "Good King Wenceslas"
 * Millennial Choirs and Orchestras included "Good King Wenceslas" in their 2020 album Star of Wonder.

In popular culture

 * Walt Kelly's Pogo cartoon strip spoofs the song as "Good King Sauerkraut" and "Good King Winkelhoff".
 * In the film Love Actually, Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant) sings the carol at the home of three small girls to explain his presence there while he is knocking on doors randomly searching for his love interest.
 * In the British show Miranda, Penny plays the song on the piano with altered lyrics.
 * In the Scottish film Filth, Dr Rossi sings the song with altered lyrics.
 * Two Doctor Who episodes have referenced the song. In the first episode of the 1975 series "Genesis of the Daleks", the Doctor and his companions Sarah Jane Smith and Harry find themselves in the middle of a minefield on the Dalek home planet Skaro. The Doctor turns to them and says, "Follow me and tread in my footsteps." Sarah Jane looks at Harry and remarks, "Good King Wenceslas." In the 2007 Christmas special entitled "Voyage of the Damned", an alien tour guide on board an alien spaceship replica of the Titanic mistakenly believes that Good King Wenceslas is the current monarch of the United Kingdom while explaining Earth's history.
 * In the television special A Muppet Family Christmas, Gonzo sings this song.
 * In the movie The Muppet Christmas Carol, Bean Bunny sings this song to Scrooge. An instrumental rendition of the song is also played during the opening credits.
 * In the 1987 film Dragnet, LAPD Detective Pep Streebeck closes his eyes and starts singing this song during a high-speed chase when told to "think about Christmas" by his partner, Detective Joe Friday.
 * In Telltale's story driven videogame The Walking Dead: Season Two the character Sarita sings the carol in the second episode titled "A House Divided". Sarita talks about the meaning of the song with a young girl named Sarah as they decorate a massive christmas tree in the ski lodge.
 * In the Discworld book Hogfather, the carol is slightly 'twisted' during a scene when Death, while acting as the Hogfather, encounters a king trying to give a beggar his feast as an act of charity, even though the beggar keeps protesting that he doesn't actually want any of the king's rich food. Death criticizes the king's actions as simply wanting to be praised on Hogswatch night as he has never shown any concern for the beggar before nor will so in the future. Having forced the king out, Death leaves the beggar with a smaller meal of plainer food that is nevertheless more to the beggar's tastes.
 * Buford and Baljeet sing this song with altered lyrics in A Phineas and Ferb Family Christmas.
 * The song is begun by guests of The Simpsons in "White Christmas Blues". Marge, who doesn't like second verses of Christmas carols, remarks this one creeps her out from the beginning and leaves the room to listen to a blender.
 * In the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story, the song is played by the Salvation Army Band outside of Higbee's Department Store.
 * In The Polar Express, the song is played briefly in one scene where the Polar Express passes the Herpolsheimer's store and in another scene, where the hobo sings it while playing the hurdy-gurdy.
 * The setting of Gene Wolfe's novel The Devil in a Forest is based on the second verse of the carol, which is given as the epigraph to the book.
 * The 1987 BBC radio play Crisp and Even Brightly, by Alick Rowe, is a comedic re-telling of the story in the carol, starring Timothy West as Wenceslas, and featuring a page called Mark and other characters not found in the carol.
 * On the Will & Grace season 6 episode "All About Christmas Eve", Karen sings the song with both Jack and Will to a bellman at her suite at the Palace Hotel.
 * On the Big Bang Theory episode "The Santa Simulation", Sheldon sings the song while playing Dungeons & Dragons with Leonard, Howard and Stuart, so that his character in the game can avoid danger. Sheldon insists on singing the entire song, even though he only needs to sing the first verse to complete his task.
 * In a blooper reel of the fourth season of TV series Game of Thrones, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) start singing and dancing to the carol when entering the throne room during Tyrion's trial.
 * In an episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert sings the song with Michael Stipe and Mandy Patinkin.
 * In the Porridge Christmas Special, "No Way Out", Norman Stanley Fletcher and his fellow inmates sing the carol - until they are hushed by Mr. Mackay. In place of "When a poor man came in sight gathering winter fuel" comes: "When a Scotsman came in sight hollerin’...".
 * Comedian John Finnemore wrote a sketch for his Souvenir Programme based on the carol, in which the poor man criticises King Wenceslas for bringing unnecessary fuel and flesh, and for making his page carry them in the cold weather.
 * In an episode of Hogan's Heroes, several of the POWs loudly and repeatedly rehearse the song in order to distract the guards from the covert activities of the rest of the team.
 * At the ironic ending of Frederik Pohl's science fiction novel Jem, human colonists on a faraway planet developed the habit of celebrating Christmas by taking off their clothes and engaging in a wild orgy, their copulations accompanied by a chorus of the planet's enslaved indigenous beings singing "Good King Wenceslas", whose Christian significance was long forgotten.
 * The song was parodied by the British children's television programme, Horrible Histories. In this version, carol singers attempt to give a more historically accurate portrayal of the king, including a line about his murder.
 * The song is parodied by Peter Schickele (aka P. D. Q. Bach) as Good King Kong, though the melody quickly diverges from the original.

Literature

 * Scott, Brian (2015). But Do You Recall? 25 Days of Christmas Carols and the Stories Behind Them, Anderson, ISBN 978-1-329-91959-4

title: Good King Wenceslas


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Shona

Shona often refers to:

 * Shona people, a Southern African people
 * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today
 * Shona languages, a wider group of languages defined in the early 20th century
 * Kingdom of Zimbabwe, a Shona state in the 13th to 15th centuries

Shona may also refer to:

 * Shona (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing
 * Shona (given name)
 * Shona cabbage, a common name for the vegetable Cleome gynandra
 * Shona hopper, a butterfly
 * Shona hotspot, a geographical feature in the Atlantic ocean
 * Eilean Shona, a Scottish island

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

title: Shona


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Heck cattle

The Heck or Munich-Berlin is a German breed or type of domestic cattle. It was bred in the 1920s by Heinz and Lutz Heck in an attempt to breed back the extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius). Controversy revolves around methodology and success of the programme. There are considerable differences between Heck cattle and the aurochs in build, height, and body proportions. Furthermore, there are other cattle breeds which resemble their wild ancestors at least as much as Heck cattle.

History
Heck cattle originated in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to breed back domestic cattle to their ancestral form: the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius). In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck independently started their extensive breeding-back programmes.

Their motivation was to rescue the aurochs from oblivion because it was constantly confused with the European bison, the other large bovine of Holocene Europe. The Heck brothers believed that creating a look-alike and showing both species next to each other would help to show the difference between the two species to a broader public. Apart from that, they believed they were able to reconstruct the species and therefore to correct the mistake man made when killing the species off.

Heinz was the director of the Hellabrunn Zoological Gardens in Munich and Lutz of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. Only eleven years after they started their breeding experiments, just as the Weimar Republic was drawing to a close, they each announced success.

Lutz Heck used Spanish Fighting Bulls for his breed, some of which were released in the Polish Romincka Forest, but survived until the late 1940s when they were killed during the end of the Second World War. Rewilding Lutz Heck's cattle breed was met with objection since the beginnings of this project, as these cattle were aggressive and their ecological impact on the native fauna was considered to be unpredictable. Later rewilding attempts in Poland were rejected.

Lutz Heck's cattle were exterminated at the end of the Second World war. Heinz Heck used a different set of breeds; all living Heck cattle go back to his stock. The ancestral breeds used by Heinz Heck include:
 * Hungarian Grey
 * Highland cattle
 * Corsican cattle
 * Murnau-Werdenfels
 * Angeln cattle
 * German Black Pied cattle
 * White Park cattle
 * Brown Swiss

In 1932 the first bull that Heinz Heck believed to resemble the aurochs was born and named Glachl. He was a 75% Corsican and 25% (Gray cattle × Lowland × Highland × Angeln) cross. This bull and his father were subsequently bred into further breeds to increase weight. As a consequence most modern Heck cattle go back to Central European dairy and beef cattle that were supplemented by cattle from other regions. Advocates of Heck cattle often claim that Heinz' and Lutz' breeding results looked largely identical, thus "proving the success" of their experiment. However, Berlin and Munich Heck cattle did not look very similar.

Distribution
There are about 2 000 Heck cattle in Europe, and a few elsewhere. Heck cattle are found in German zoos because of the erroneous claim by the Heck brothers that these cattle represent resurrected aurochs and are suitable for conservation projects today. In Oostvaardersplassen in Flevoland (Netherlands), about 600 Heck cattle roam freely. Weak animals are shot by hunters in order to prevent unnecessary suffering. Others are at the Falkenthaler Rieselfelder near Berlin, at the Nesseaue nature reserve near Jena, Thuringia and at the Grubenfelder Leonie nature reserve in Auerbach, Bavaria. About 100 were registered in France in 2000. The introduction of Heck cattle into nature reserves in order to restore ancient landscapes inspired Rewilding Europe. The way of no interference in the Oostvaardersplassen, however, was terminated in 2018, as large numbers of cattle died of starvation during the cold winters of 2005 and 2010, which caused a loss of public support.

Criticism
Criticism of the methodology and result of the Heck brothers' programs dates back to at least the 1950s. Cis van Vuure describes the work of W. Herre in 1953 and O. Koehler in 1952:

 * A lack of basic knowledge about the extinct aurochs, broad selection criteria ... and the rich imagination and complacency of the two brothers led to their excessive simplification of the breeding-back procedure.

Criticism also focused on the carelessness, the ease and the speed with which they had carried out their experiments as well as the genetic basis. Cis van Vuure further stated that:

 * On account of the absence of any marked similarity in size, colour, and horn shape, among other aspects, Heck cattle cannot be considered to resemble the aurochs closely. Rather they should be seen as a population of cattle in which a few aurochs characteristics may be found; a trait they share with many other cattle populations.

In the view of some experts, primitive Southern European cattle breeds are much closer overall to the aurochs than Heck cattle, such as the Spanish fighting bull.

Characteristics
A typical bull stands on average 1.4 m tall, and a cow 1.3 m, with weight up to 600 kg. Heck cattle are twenty to thirty centimeters shorter than the aurochs they were bred to resemble. Heck bulls are not larger than other domestic bulls and actually a little smaller than cattle used in modern intensive agriculture, whilst aurochs bulls reached shoulder heights of between 160 and 180 and in rare cases even 200 cm. Aurochs bulls are believed to have weighed some 700 to 1000 kg.

Size is not the only aspect in which Heck cattle differ from their wild ancestor. Heck cattle are bulky like many other domestic breeds, whilst the aurochs, as a wild bovine, had an athletic body shape. The legs of Heck cattle are shorter and the trunk much longer than in the aurochs, in which shoulder height and trunk length nearly equalled each other. Heck cattle have a comparatively small and short head, whilst aurochs had a large elongated head sitting on a muscular neck. Aurochs had well-developed shoulder musculature, carried by long spines, which is absent in Heck cattle. All in all, proportions and body shape of Heck cattle are not significantly similar to the aurochs and do not differ from many other domestic breeds.

The horns of the aurochs had a characteristic and relatively stable shape. At the base they grew outwards-upwards, then forwards-inwards and inwards-upwards at the tips. Aurochs horns were large and thick overall, reaching in length and  or more in diameter. However the horns of Heck cattle differ in many respects. Usually they curve too much upwards or outwards compared with the original or do not reach the length or diameter of the aurochs. Often the horns of Heck cattle strongly resemble the breeds it was created from (i.e. Grey Cattle).

In coat colour Heck cattle may resemble the aurochs, the bulls having a black overall coat colour with a light eel stripe and cows displaying a reddish-brown colour. However some Heck bulls may have a light-coloured saddle (which was apparently not present in the European aurochs) and the sexual dimorphism in colour is unclear in most cases; bulls and cows may be dark with a light-coloured saddle, black cows appear regularly and light-coloured bulls are no rarity. There are other deviant colours too, such as individuals having a grayish or gray colour and cows being beige. White patches, typical of pied dairy breeds, appear as well, sometimes to the same extent as in Holstein cattle.

Heck cattle demonstrate a higher amount of heterogeneity than any wild animal or most other domestic breeds. There is considerable variation in coat colour, horn shape and horn dimensions, as well as size and proportions. Besides the features that are desired because they bear resemblance to the aurochs, numerous divergent features may appear (as explained above).

Heck cattle differ in many respects from the aurochs, and there are breeds that resemble the aurochs at least as much, such as the Spanish fighting bull. Nevertheless, they are capable of coping in the wild with cold temperatures or nutrient-poor food. On the other hand, there are other robust cattle breeds that cope with harsh conditions at least as well as Heck cattle, and feral cattle are no rarity.

Use
Heck cattle have been used in breeding-back projects aimed at creating cattle with closer similarity to the aurochs, such as the German Projekt Taurus and the Dutch Tauros Programme.

title: Heck cattle


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Swazi language

Swazi or siSwati is a Bantu language of the Nguni group spoken in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and South Africa by the Swati people. The number of speakers is estimated to be in the region of 4.7 million including first and second language speakers. The language is taught in Eswatini and some South African schools in Mpumalanga, particularly former KaNgwane areas. Siswati is an official language of Eswatini (along with English), and is also one of the twelve official languages of South Africa.

The official term is "siSwati" among native speakers; in English, Zulu, Ndebele or Xhosa it may be referred to as Swazi. Siswati is most closely related to the other Tekela languages, like Phuthi and Northern Transvaal (Sumayela) Ndebele, but is also very close to the Zunda languages: Zulu, Southern Ndebele, Northern Ndebele, and Xhosa.

Dialects
Siswati spoken in Eswatini can be divided into four dialects corresponding to the four administrative regions of the country: Hhohho, Lubombo, Manzini, and Shiselweni.

Siswati has at least two varieties: the standard, prestige variety spoken mainly in the north, centre and southwest of the country, and a less prestigious variety spoken elsewhere.

In the far south, especially in towns such as Nhlangano and Hlatikhulu, the variety of the language spoken is significantly influenced by isiZulu. Many Swazis (plural emaSwati, singular liSwati), including those in the south who speak this variety, do not regard it as 'proper' Swazi. This is what may be referred to as the second dialect in the country. The sizeable number of Swazi speakers in South Africa (mainly in the Mpumalanga province, and in Soweto) are considered by Eswatini Swazi speakers to speak a non-standard form of the language.

Unlike the variant in the south of Eswatini, the Mpumalanga variety appears to be less influenced by Zulu, and is thus considered closer to standard Swazi. However, this Mpumalanga variety is distinguishable by distinct intonation, and perhaps distinct tone patterns. Intonation patterns (and informal perceptions of 'stress') in Mpumalanga Swazi are often considered discordant to the Swazi ear. This South African variety of Swazi is considered to exhibit influence from other South African languages spoken close to Swazi.

A feature of the standard prestige variety of Swazi (spoken in the north and centre of Eswatini) is the royal style of slow, heavily stressed enunciation, which is anecdotally claimed to have a 'mellifluous' feel to its hearers.

Consonants
Swazi does not distinguish between places of articulation in its clicks. They are dental (as ) or might also be alveolar (as ). It does, however, distinguish five or six manners of articulation and phonation, including tenuis, aspirated, voiced, breathy voiced, nasal, and breathy-voiced nasal.

The consonants each have two sounds. and can both occur as ejective sounds,  and, but their common forms are  and. The sound differs when at the beginning of stems as, and commonly as  within words.

Tone
Swazi exhibits three surface tones: high, mid and low. Tone is unwritten in the standard orthography. Traditionally, only the high and mid tones are taken to exist phonemically, with the low tone conditioned by a preceding depressor consonant. Bradshaw (2003) however argues that all three tones exist underlyingly.

Phonological processes acting on tone include:
 * When a stem with non-high tone receives a prefix with underlying high tone, this high tone moves to the antepenult (or to the penult, when the onset of the antepenult is a depressor).
 * High spread: all syllables between two high tones become high, as long as no depressor intervenes. This happens not only word-internally, but also across a word boundary between a verb and its object.

The depressor consonants are all voiced obstruents other than. The allophone of  appears to behave as a depressor for some rules but not others.

Vowels

 * a - [a]
 * e - [ɛ~e]
 * i - [i]
 * o - [ɔ~o]
 * u - [u]

Consonants

 * b - [ɓ]
 * bh - [bʱ]
 * c - [ᵏǀ]
 * ch - [ᵏǀʰ]
 * d - [dʱ]
 * dl - [ɮ]
 * dv - [dv]
 * dz - [dz]
 * f - [f]
 * g - [gʱ]
 * gc - [ᶢǀʱ]
 * h - [h]
 * hh - [ɦ]
 * hl - [ɬ]
 * j - [dʒʱ]
 * k - [kʼ, k̬]
 * kh - [kʰ]
 * kl - [kɬ]
 * l - [l]
 * m - [m]
 * mb - [mb]
 * n - [n]
 * nc - [ᵑǀ]
 * nch - [ᵑǀʰ]
 * ndl - [ⁿɮ]
 * ng - [ŋ, ŋɡ]
 * ngc - [ᵑǀʱ]
 * nhl - [ⁿɫ]
 * p - [pʼ]
 * ph - [pʰ]
 * q - [kʼ, k̬]
 * s - [s]
 * sh - [ʃ]
 * t - [tʼ]
 * tf - [tf]
 * th - [tʰ]
 * tj - [tʃʼ]
 * ts - [tsʼ, tsʰ]
 * v - [v]
 * w - [w]
 * y - [j]
 * z - [z]
 * zh - [ʒ]

Labialised consonants

 * dvw - [dvʷ]
 * khw - [kʰʷ]
 * lw - [lʷ]
 * nkhw - [ᵑkʰʷ]
 * ngw - [ᵑ(g)ʷ]
 * sw - [sʷ]
 * vw - [vʷ]

Nouns
The Swazi noun (libito) consists of two essential parts, the prefix (sicalo) and the stem (umsuka). Using the prefixes, nouns can be grouped into noun classes, which are numbered consecutively, to ease comparison with other Bantu languages.

The following table gives an overview of Swazi noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs.

Verbs
Verbs use the following affixes for the subject and the object:

Sample text
The following example of text is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Bonkhe bantfu batalwa bakhululekile balingana ngalokufananako ngesitfunti nangemalungelo. Baphiwe ingcondvo nekucondza kanye nanembeza ngakoke bafanele batiphatse futsi baphatse nalabanye ngemoya webuzalwane.

The Declaration reads in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Software

 * Project to translate Free Software into Swazi
 * Swazi edition of OpenOffice.org
 * Swazi spell checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla (basic)

title: Swazi language


text:
Touchstone Pictures

Touchstone Pictures was an American film production label of Walt Disney Studios, founded and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Feature films released under the Touchstone label were produced and financed by Walt Disney Studios, and featured more mature themes targeted at adult audiences than typical Walt Disney Pictures films. As such, Touchstone was merely a pseudonym label for the studio and did not exist as a distinct business operation.

Established on February 15, 1984, by then-Disney CEO Ron W. Miller as Touchstone Films, Touchstone operated as an active film production division of Disney during the 1980s through the early 2010s, releasing a majority of the studio's PG-13 and R-rated films. In 2009, Disney entered into a five-year, thirty-picture distribution deal with DreamWorks Pictures under which DreamWorks' productions would be released through the Touchstone banner; the label then distributed DreamWorks' films from 2011 to 2016. Following the release of The Light Between Oceans, the final film of the DreamWorks deal, the Touchstone label became defunct.

Background and conception
Due to the increased public assumption that Disney films were aimed at children and families, films produced by Walt Disney Productions began to falter at the box office. This began in 1975 with the release of Escape to Witch Mountain and its 1978 sequel. In late 1979, Walt Disney Productions released The Black Hole, a science-fiction movie that was the studio's first production to receive a PG rating (the company, however, had already distributed via Buena Vista Distribution its first PG-rated film, Take Down, almost a year before the release of The Black Hole).

Over the next few years, Disney experimented with more PG-rated fare, such as the horror-mystery The Watcher in the Woods, the spy-themed comedy Condorman, and the Paramount Pictures co-produced fantasy epic Dragonslayer. With Disney's 1982 slate of PG-rated films, which included the thriller drama Night Crossing and the science-fiction film Tron, the company lost over $27 million. Tron was considered a potential Star Wars-level success by the production company.

In late 1982, Disney vice president of production Tom Wilhite announced that they would produce and release more mature films under a new brand. Wilhite elaborated to The New York Times: "We won't get into horror or exploitive sex, but using a non-Disney name will allow us wider latitude in the maturity of the subject matter and the edge we can add to the humor." He stated that one of the first films that would be released under this new brand was Trenchcoat, a comedy caper starring Margot Kidder and Robert Hays; however, the new brand had not yet been created by the time of the film's release in March 1983, so it was instead released by Walt Disney Productions, but with no production company credited in the released prints.

The company registered a loss of $33 million in 1983, resulting primarily from such films as the adaptation of Ray Bradbury's horror-fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, the horror-comedy The Devil and Max Devlin starring Elliott Gould and Bill Cosby, and the dramas Tex and Never Cry Wolf, the latter a PG release that featured male nudity, which did well as the studio downplayed the film's association with the Disney brand.

Touchstone Films
Touchstone Films was founded by then-Disney CEO Ron W. Miller on February 15, 1984, as a label for their PG films, with an expected three to four movies released under the label. Touchstone's first film was Splash, a huge hit that grossed $68 million at the domestic box office that year. Touchstone was a brand chosen from over 1,200 potential names; the runner-up name was "Silver Wind". Incoming Disney CEO Michael Eisner and film chief Jeffrey Katzenberg considered renaming the label to "Hollywood Pictures", which went on to become a separate Disney film label on February 1, 1989.

In 1986, Down and Out in Beverly Hills was another early success for Touchstone and was Disney's first R-rated film. It was followed in 1987 by Disney's first PG-13-rated film, Adventures in Babysitting. Disney increased the momentum with additional PG-13 and R-rated films with Ruthless People (1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Tin Men (1987), and other top movies. In April 1986, movies by Touchstone Films were licensed to Showtime/The Movie Channel for five years, starting in 1987.

Touchstone Pictures
Touchstone Films was renamed Touchstone Pictures after the release of Ruthless People in 1986. With the Touchstone movies, Disney moved to the top of box office receipts, beating out all the other major film studios by 1988. On April 13, 1988, Touchstone became a unit of Walt Disney Pictures under newly appointed president Ricardo Mestres.

On October 23, 1990, The Walt Disney Company formed Touchwood Pacific Partners I to supplant the Silver Screen Partners partnership series as their movie studios' primary funding source.

With several production companies getting out of film production or closing shop by December 2, 1988, the Walt Disney Studios announced the formation of the Hollywood Pictures division, which would only share marketing and distribution with Touchstone, to fill the void. Mestres was appointed president of Hollywood. On July 27, 1992, Touchstone agreed to an exclusive, first-look production and distribution agreement with Merchant Ivory Productions for three years.

Following the success of the Disney-branded PG-13-rated Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003 and other films that in the 1980s and 1990s would have been released as Touchstone or Hollywood Pictures films, Disney weighed distribution of films more toward Disney-branded films and away from Touchstone Pictures, though not entirely disbanding them as it continued to use the Touchstone label for R and most PG-13-rated fare. In 2006, Disney limited Touchstone's output to two or three films in favor of Walt Disney Pictures titles due to an increase in film industry costs. Disney indicated scaling back on using multiple brands in 2007 with the renaming of Touchstone Television to ABC Television Studio in February and the outright elimination of the Buena Vista brand in April. On January 14, 2010, Sean Bailey was appointed president of live-action production at Walt Disney Studios, overseeing all films produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone.

Distribution label
In 2009, Disney repurposed Touchstone as a distribution label for films produced by DreamWorks Studios. Disney provided $100 million in financing to DreamWorks productions and an additional $75 million credit line if DreamWorks could not get additional equity funding. In January 2012, Disney was reportedly in the early stages of considering Touchstone's fate, including a possible sale.

Following Disney's decision not to renew their long-standing deal with Jerry Bruckheimer Films in 2013, producer Jerry Bruckheimer revealed that he insisted on revitalizing the Touchstone label for production. Disney was uninterested, with studio chairman Alan Horn admitting that Touchstone's output had been reduced to only distributing DreamWorks' films as those films were in the label's interest. In addition to DreamWorks' films, Touchstone also released non-Disney-branded animated films such as Gnomeo & Juliet, The Wind Rises, and Strange Magic.

By the end of the DreamWorks deal in August 2016, Disney had distributed 14 of DreamWorks' original 30-picture agreement, with thirteen through Touchstone. The deal ended with The Light Between Oceans being the final theatrical film released by Disney under the Touchstone banner. Universal Pictures then replaced Disney as DreamWorks' distributor. Disney retained the film rights to these DreamWorks films in perpetuity as compensation for the studio's outstanding loan.

Following the release of The Light Between Oceans, the label became defunct. Since then, several other Disney divisions have produced or are developing television series and films based on previous Touchstone properties—such as Turner & Hooch, High Fidelity, Three Men and a Baby, Sister Act, and Real Steel—for Disney+ and Hulu.

Film library
Some well-known Touchstone Pictures releases include Beaches, Turner & Hooch, Splash, The Color of Money, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Good Morning, Vietnam, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Dead Poets Society, Dick Tracy, Pretty Woman, Sister Act, Ed Wood, Up Close & Personal, The Waterboy, The Insider, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sweet Home Alabama, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Prestige, The Help, War Horse, Lincoln, and Bridge of Spies. Its highest-grossing film release is Armageddon. Although animated films produced by Walt Disney Studios are primarily released by Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone's animated releases include the original theatrical release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gnomeo & Juliet, The Wind Rises, and Strange Magic. Six Touchstone films have received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Dead Poets Society, The Insider, The Help, War Horse, Lincoln, and Bridge of Spies.

Through Touchstone, Disney's first R-rated film, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, was released on January 31, 1986, and was a box office success. Ruthless People followed on June 27, 1986, and was also very successful. Both of these pictures starred Bette Midler, who had signed a six-picture deal with Disney and became a major film star again with these hits as well as Beaches and Outrageous Fortune.

One of the most notable producers of Touchstone films was Jerry Bruckheimer, who had a production deal with Disney from 1993 to 2014. Touchstone films produced by Bruckheimer include The Ref, Con Air, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Gone in 60 Seconds, Coyote Ugly, and Pearl Harbor. Bruckheimer also produced several other films released under the Disney and Hollywood labels.

Releases from Touchstone Pictures were distributed theatrically by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and through home media platforms by Buena Vista Home Entertainment (branded as "Touchstone Home Entertainment").

Touchstone Television
Touchstone Television served as Touchstone Pictures' counterpart label for television programming, producing television series including The Golden Girls, Blossom, Home Improvement, My Wife and Kids, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, Criminal Minds, and Monk. In 2007, the company was renamed ABC Studios as part of a move by Disney to re-align its studios around core brands such as ABC.

On August 10, 2020, Disney announced that it would revive the Touchstone Television brand as a renaming of Fox 21 Television Studios as part of its phase-out of the "Fox" brand from the studios it acquired from 21st Century Fox. At the same time, the existing ABC Studios merged with the previous iteration of ABC Signature Studios to form the current iteration of ABC Signature.

However, about four months later, on December 1, 2020, Disney announced the revived Touchstone Television label would be folded into 20th Television.

Touchstone Interactive
By the end of 2007, Disney's video game subsidiary Buena Vista Games had begun to produce material under its own short-lived Touchstone imprint. As is the case with its motion picture and television counterparts, Touchstone Interactive merely acted as a brand label of Disney Interactive and not its own entity. The only title it released was the Turok video game in 2008.

Touchmark Comics
In the early 1990s, after having pulled their comic licenses from Gladstone Publishing and begun to create comics based on Disney properties themselves through the Disney Comics label, the company additionally considered an expansion into the burgeoning adult comics market (the expansion also included Hollywood Comics, modeled after Hollywood Pictures, and Vista Comics, offering stories based on Disney's superhero and adventure films). Former DC Comics editor Art Young led the nascent effort, which was aided by his contacts within the British and American comic markets. The new label was dubbed Touchmark Comics, echoing the Touchstone brand used for films and television. Proposed titles included Enigma by Peter Milligan and Sebastian O by Grant Morrison. The brand got as far as a promotional booklet given out at the 1991 San Diego Comic-Con.

Before the idea could progress further, however, the so-called "Disney Implosion" (the result of poor sales and aggressive overexpansion) forced the company to cut back on its comic book ambitions, and Touchmark was scrapped. Young subsequently returned to DC and helped launch the Vertigo imprint in 1993, using many of the intended projects from Touchmark. Now as Marvel Comics.

title: Touchstone Pictures


text:
Anders Graneheim

Anders Graneheim (born May 3, 1962) is a Swedish bodybuilder. He was Swedish and Nordic Bodybuilding Champion during the 1980s. After a nine-year absence from competitive bodybuilding he competed in the "Sweden Grand Prix" in Gothenburg in 1997, where he placed third after two professional bodybuilders.

He won the Swedish competition B&K Classic Body Show in 2000 which earned him a pro card in bodybuilding. He also competed in Master's Mr. Olympia in USA in August 2002.

Anders Graneheim is a popular guest poser at bodybuilding contests and sports events, and he holds seminars about training and nutrition in gyms, sports centers and schools, and he is engaged as a nutrition expert for Swedish athletes and sports teams. He also writes articles for the Swedish bodybuilding monthly BODY Magazine (formerly B&K Sports Magazine), in which he also has a regular expert column.

With a career spanning over more than 20 years, Anders Graneheim is regarded as one of Sweden's most outstanding bodybuilders. He is regarded as Sweden's best bodybuilder ever when it comes to symmetry, and he is one of the few bodybuilders in Sweden that is also known to the general public.

Anders Graneheim has been portrayed in a one-hour TV documentary named Sista Posen ("The Last Pose") on Swedish Television, in which a camera team followed his training and preparation for the Master's Mr. Olympia competition in the summer of 2002. The documentary was aired on Swedish Television in 2003 and has also been aired on Danish and Norwegian television in 2004 and 2005.

Anders Graneheim's major bodybuilding competitions and titles
As a Junior:

1983:
 * Mr. Fotonorden (a photo competition for young bodybuilders from the Nordic countries)

1983:
 * Norrland Champion (weight class -70 kg) Norrland is a region in Sweden
 * National Champion (-70 kg)
 * Nordic Champion (-70 kg)

Senior Division:

1985:
 * European Championships Qualification, 2nd place, -80 kg

1986:
 * Norrland Champion (-80 kg)
 * National Champion (-80 kg)

1988:
 * National Champion (-90 kg)

1997:
 * Sweden Grand Prix, 3rd place, (his first competition in nine years)

2000:
 * Winner, B&K Classic Body Show

2002:
 * Master's Mr. Olympia, 10th place

title: Anders Graneheim


text:
Talk:Bohemia and Moravia

Actually this is the name of the German puppet state, but the redir is fine until I get around to writing and illustrating the philately, which is an interesting combination of German and Czech material. Stan 17:04, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bohemia and Moravia


text:
Carpino

Carpino (Pugliese: Carpìne) is a coastal town and comune of the Italian region of Apulia, lying on the Gargano peninsula.

The town's name has been linked to the rebirth of the traditional folk songs of Gargano, which have artistic value and deserve to be preserved and studied. The group "Cantori di Carpino" (Carpino Singers), by reinterpreting ancient tarantellas, has enabled the development of a broadly articulated project regarding the traditional popular music of southern Italy.

The town's main square, now called the "Piazza del Popolo", or People's Square, is the historic home of the folk music festival and its influences. The Carpino Folk Festival is an event that includes several cultural elements, brought together under a single symbol, with the performing arts, and especially music, dance, and theater with popular roots, but also workshops, conferences, roundtables, workshops, presentations of literature and cinema, with a full program of live performances, original and energetic, showing the richness and musical diversity of an area that has many natural resources, as well as landscape and historical importance. The festival has high artistic achievements and standards, although it has not yet fully exploited its material in a structured, integrated and accessible way, to represent real strategic factors in economic and social development.

Standing on a hill which has many well tended olive trees, Carpino has been dubbed "Città dell’olio" (Oil Town) because of its business of producing olive oil. Noteworthy are the archaeological site of the "grotte di Minutille" (the Minutille caves), the Church of the Holy Cross, the Church of Saint George, and the Church of Saint Cyril.

History
The town is first mentioned in historical records in 1158, in a bull of pope Adrian IV, with which the abbey of Monte Sacro obtained privileges on the church of St. Peter e St. Mary near the "castellum capralis", a location identifiable as the municipality, as subsequently confirmed from historical documents.

title: Carpino


text:
Talk:Nutrition science

Causes of Obesity (opinion)
People are fat because they eat too many calories.

First of all, the human body needs calories to maintain its well being, its status quo. Secondly, the human body needs calories to grow new muscle, nerve and bone tissue in order to be stronger. Thirdly, the human body needs calories to refill its storage facvities in order to insure a constant availability of calories.

The human body does not need to take in calories in excess of its needs even though the mind wants to eat.

Obesity is like alcoholism in that the fat people have this compulsion to eat as the alcoholic has the compulsion to drink alcohol. Some alcohol is beneficial as evidenced by the healthy effects of drinking red wine, but alcoholism produces a totally different type of consumption.

Similarly, eating prevents starvation and wasting away. It is far necessary to take in calories to prevent starvation then to drink wine to prevent heart disease. But eating oneself into obesity is as detrimental as alcoholism.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Garygromet (talk • contribs) 17:09, 18 November 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Nutrition science


text:
User talk:Sverdrup/Archive 1

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

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

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

Angela 17:11, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't know if Angela is online now, so I'll answer for her. She gave you all the links, because you are new here not because you were doing a bad job. Keep up the good work! Noldoaran 18:09, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * Hello again - no, I didn't mean anything against what you've done so far. I would have said if it was terrible. :) They're just useful links. I still read them myself every few weeks and I've got 12000 edits now, so I certainly didn't mean it in a bad way. Good luck with your editing. Angela

Lol. I don't really! There's over 100 sysops. See Administrators. Angela. 22:22, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, the pump needs cleaning. It often does: basically, move discussions to the relevant page in the Wikipedia: namespace, an article talk page, or on meta-Wikipedia. See List of articles in the Wikipedia namespace for a list of possible targets. People will thank you for it in their hearts, and a few will even thank you with words. I do some, when I can, as does Angela and other great Wikipedians. I'd love it if you could help us out! You don't need to be a sysop or anything, you just need a smidgeon of boldness, and to act in good faith. :) Martin 23:08, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Whee! I love to be useful, I'll see what I can do. Cheers. — Sverdrup (talk) 23:11, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Great! Best of luck. :) Martin 23:36, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for your mail. I'm not decided yet, what to do now. I will contact you in January. Anyway: Merry Christmas -- Caius2ga 23:55, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You have to pay for the lottery slots before the draw, otherwise people might change their minds after finding the results ;) silsor 18:35, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

You won third prize, congratulations! silsor 03:01, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Yay! :-) — Sverdrup 15:43, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits at the Madrid attack article. It is quite important for us in Spain. Pfortuny 17:46, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * I can imagine. I felt deeply for you all upon browsing the intense news on the subject. On a subject like this, when I'm not the one knowing the most, I do the small wiki-gnomish things I can. — Sverdrup 17:51, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hehe, thanks for correcting my spelling of Å Matthewmayer 22:18, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Heh. No problem ;-) . I guess it's easier when you have Å right on the keyboard. — Sverdrup 22:23, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing, and for doing The Right Thing. –Hajor 22:29, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Välkommen hit! Den fjättrade ankan 8 december 2003 kl.14.47 (CET)

Välkommen! Jag såg att du har en hel del bra artiklar på susning som saknas på wikipedia. Behöver du hjälp med att kopiera över dem? Är det okej att göra det? Vissa av dem bara ber om en omgång TeX :-) // E23 8 december 2003 kl.20.04 (CET)

Hej och välkommen! Såg att du petade lite i Riemanns zeta-funktion. Härligt med någon ytterligare som är intresserad av talteori. // Wellparp 11 december 2003 kl.18.07 (CET)
 * Tack. Vi får se vad jag kan göra för sv wikipedia och talteorin! :) -- Sverdrup 11 december 2003 kl.21.51 (CET)

"I övrigt anser jag att det är amuserande att så många svenskar är mer aktiva på en. wikipedia än sv."

 * Ja, det är lite lustigt. Kan bero på att vi svenskar ofta (felaktigt?) anser oss vara väldigt duktiga på engelska. Den fjättrade ankan 13 december 2003 kl.17.54 (CET)

 * Till viss del. Men den engelska pedian är störst och var först så det är kanske mer ärofullt att vara aktiv där än på den "lilla" svenska varianten. // Wellparp

Hallo, Du kannst selbstverständlich alle Abbildungen gerne in anderen Sprachversionen hochladen. Du findest sie in der deutschen Wikipedia unter Benutzer:Stern/Galerie. Einige Abbildungen habe ich z. T. schon vor einigen Wochen mal in der en- und sv-Wikipedia hochgeladen. Weiß ich leider nicht genau, welche das waren. Vielleicht schaust Du vorher in entsprechenden Artikeln. Also dann, Stern 14 mars 2004 kl.02.12 (CET)
 * So, ich habe auf den Bildseiten versucht die Interwiki-Links nachzutragen. Überall wo nun keine stehen, stehen die Bilder nur auf der deutschen Wikipedia, wenn ich nix vergessen haben sollte. Gute Nacht sagt Stern 14 mars 2004 kl.02.27 (CET)

thanks for... swedeshizing? ... correcting the text fomating on Bortom Det Bla. I knew it wasn't properly formatted, but my source just had standard english formatting. Crackshoe 00:43, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Date format
Thanks; I didn't know it was possible to set preferences like that, but have found out now how to do it - MPF 15:40, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Except it hasn't worked; the box at the foot of the European Union page still shows "May 1" on my computer. How do I get it to show "1 May" without editing the box? - MPF 15:47, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Hmm.. I'm confused. We might have an issue with msg:tags and this, if a force reload won't solve it. I might have to give up my stance if it doesn't work inside msgs. :/ — Sverdrup 15:55, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I'll have another look tomorrow, just in case it only resets when I reboot my computer - MPF 16:14, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Image:Schr-harmonic.png
Thanks for the comment. I'm afraid I can't email the code... The program is part of a piece of coursework, which I haven't summited yet. I have to sign a declaration saying I haven't shown anyone else it. I think I can share details after the submission date, which is sometime in May. Dmn 23:57, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It means "north" as in Beijing. See. --Jiang 20:46, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Re:articles i nominated for deletion
I just thought they were so devoid of content that they were on the verge of qualifying for speedy deletion. Feel free to de-list them. Adjutant should probably be moved to wiktionary if not copyvio. --Jiang 00:04, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Heegner numbers are positive?
Regarding your edit to 19: According to the MathWorld article at, there are only nine Heegner numbers, -1, -2, -3, -7, -11, -19, -43, -67, and -163, all negative; and their discriminants, -4, -8, -3, -7, -11, -19, -43, -67, and -163, are all also negative. Now, I freely admit that my knowledge of quadratic field theory is at about George W. Bush's level (that is, next to nil), but I've never known MathWorld to be wrong. Sloane's lists them as positive because it's their idiosyncracy to ignore minus signs and to add 1 as the first term to any sequence that doesn't begin with 1. Those idiosyncracies are explained in the book format, that is, the Handbook of Integer Sequences. So what's your basis for saying that Heegner numbers are positive? PrimeFan 20:30, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I followed the link (Heegner number), I didn't dig deep into it. But if mathworld says they are not only positive, I think it's wikipeida having it wrong. We'll just update the article, and it's no problem. — Sverdrup 08:15, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have known MathWorld to be wrong. In any case it's not authoritative. It's probably better to merge Heegner number into Stark-Heegner theorem, if there's going to be any confusion.

Charles Matthews 08:17, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Roman numerals for big integers
Regarding your edit to 2147483647 (number): I think that beyond the maximum number representable by Roman numerals, we should just omit the Roman numeral field of the Docuan table. I'll bring this issue up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers. PrimeFan 20:33, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

you are now an admin
A consensus has been reached by your peers that you should be an admin. I have made it so. Please review Administrators' reading list and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Kingturtle 01:18, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Triangle illustrations
Thanks for the compliment on my illustrations. Have you GFDLed the images? Yes, I have. Can I go ahead and add to them? Sure, it'll teach me how to do it myself next time. —Herbee 14:09, 2004 Apr 6 (UTC)

Chess
Hi, I've started a discussion on which syntax(es) should be implemented for table-based chessboards. Your opinion is invited. Thanks. Arvindn 14:57, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Om svenska Wikipedia
Hej Ulrik! Grattis till sysopskapet! Vi har påbörjat arbetet med att omarbeta artikelstrukturen i svenska Wikipedias WP-namnrymd från grunden. Du verkar ha koll på engländarna - skriv gärna upp dig som deltagare i "arbetgruppen" på Bybrunnen. / Mats 15:18, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Junk DNA / Meta DNA
Hi, I noticed your additions to Junk DNA. The recent detection of highly conserved "junk" DNA seems an important addition to the article, but I haven't heard of this "meta DNA". Could you write more about how this meta DNA is hypothesized to aid development? It sounds kind of mysterious as written. Thanks,

Zashaw 03:38, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I think I can put some more info about it, I recently found a text about it, and just threw in a sentence in a hurry in the article. I'll see what I can do. ✏ Sverdrup 06:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Isoflurane
your structure is correct - desflurane and sevoflurane would be good to include since they are becoming more popular. best wishes Erich 02:39, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Nice to hear. I uploaded sevo and des too. ✏ Sverdrup 11:39, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

 * thanks! nothing like a good picture! sevo looked wrong to me but I look it up and it is perfect! (unlike my memmory!) btw, is it just my browser or is there a little grey line at the bottom of the images? Erich 12:13, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

 * No problem, but the gray line; it seems to be added by my pdf-to-png converter, but I can't figure out why. I can't see the lines in the thumbs, so I don't bother for now. ✏ Sverdrup 16:34, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Banners
I'm not sure why you voted the way you did at Votes_for_deletion/Old. Please respond there. --Jiang 04:38, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for responding. I like your idea. I made a post at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy (but without your proposal). I think we should make a definitive policy on these things. --Jiang 22:06, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ilmatar
Hiya.. I see you restored the comment about JRR Tolkien that I removed from Ilmatar. I just wanted to say, that's cool - since the original comment was misspelled and unlinked, when I went looking for info I found nothing and assumed it was just some crazy fan thinking "the names rhyme, Tolkien must have named Illuvatar after Ilmatar". With your correctly spelled and linked version, a quick Google reveals various people speculating about links and discussing similarities, etc. —Stormie 04:46, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * Yeah, it's not about the rhyme. :-) Thanks. ✏ Sverdrup 08:57, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template talk:Europe#Poll: Which items should be listed?
Just curious why you voted to oppose Kazakhstan. Could you please explain here? Thanks. Pædia 14:54, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

 * Sure, it's simple: I voted by thinking of my own definition of Europe. When I (as a swede) think about Europe, I understand that it includes a part of Russia, but I don't look further away (ie beyond Russia, to include the small streach of Kaz) than that. ✏ Sverdrup 15:01, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Should the stub message link to the stub's edit page?
Hey there, Sverdrup. Thanks for your (very bold) edit to Template:Stub. I agree with User:Jdforrester, who said here that "...editing this page" is somewhat more correct than "...expanding it". Either way, I think the new links are more intuitive. --Diberri | Talk 23:30, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

 * You should have many praises and the honour for have come with the idea. Let's see where the discussion leads. ✏ Sverdrup 20:01, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Game of Life
Hallo Sverdrup, deine löbliche Animation erscheint auf dem normalen Artikel nicht. Nur in der History ist sie zu bewundern --212.205.209.178 17:15, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC) aka arbol01 im Deutschen Wikipedia.

 * Vielen dank! Für mich sieht the animation gut aus, aber ich weiss es kann manchmal Probleme mit GIFs sein. Welche webbrowser verwenden Sie?✏ Sverdrup 17:57, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Jetzt sehe ich es auch. Ich benutze meistens den IE (Asche auf mein Haupt). --212.205.209.178 19:57, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Alles gut, dann? (Vielen dank für die Deutsch-üben, Ich brauche es :-) ✏ Sverdrup 19:58, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hitler
I don't understand what your saying on the talk page. Are you suggesting that only a sysop can edit the page, even after it is unprotected? Also, I did present a different intro, and it was reverted and the page protected within minutes. I am very dubious of these sorts of things... Sam [Spade] 23:11, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * I clarified. Better? ✏ Sverdrup 23:22, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

stub template
Adding the category to the stub message is a bad idea, too. ✏ Sverdrup 11:20, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Why? (Answer at Village pump I don't care which way you feel, I want to know WHY. haven't really decided totally myself.  thanks. --ssd 04:38, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia maintenance
good job on fixing my category name. I'm beginning to consider a robot to rename Category:Science fiction authors to Category:Science fiction writers, just too many to fix by hand! *shudder* --ssd 15:38, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * NP, short lists are just fun to do. This is a monster, though, and we definitely need a robot. A place to post a request is Help wanted ✏ Sverdrup 15:42, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I was actually thinking of a robot that could be very through...i.e., give it list of category subsets, and if an article is not in one of the subsets (i.e., list of genre categories, list of * by nation categories), then it adds the article to a list...at the same time, it would have a list of articles & categories to add them to and edit as it goes... --ssd 18:30, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * I guess somebody will develop a category bot. Which for example would take a List of.. and add them all to a Category. ✏ Sverdrup 18:34, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re: Changing Attribution for an edit
Thanks for reminding me. Last time I checked, the IPs had to match exactly, and sadly my ISP rotates them dynamically. Fortunately there seems to have been a change of policy, so I've placed a request on the page. Johnleemk | Talk 05:12, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Crypto corner (?)
S, I notice that you have made large numbers of edits in crypto related articles. Not all are maintenance, so I speculate some interest in the subject. Can I invite you to formally join the WikiProject Crypto?

If nothing else, you can participate in the current teapot tempest, cypher v cipher. At the very least, it illustrates the insanity of English spelling. Chase down the pointers in the discussion for a full account, as this has been simmering on a back burner for some time. For those interested in languages (as I note you are), the anarchic history of English is particularly illuminating, if only dimly as through a smouldering torch in Plato's cave.

Jump in, the teapot's warm.

Thanks for the editing help! ww 15:41, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pop idol --> Pop icon
I merged and redirected your Pop idol article with the already-existing Pop icon article. Davodd 21:15, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * I think your insights made the existing article better, anyway. Davodd 21:22, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

Please do not revert the Philosophy article
Sverdrup, the Philosophy article was renamed for a reason - it refers to Western Philosophy, not all of Philosophy; the "Philosophy" page was changed to a disamb. page with links to numerous philosophical traditions. Secondly, my "Move" feature is not working as it is new, so I did not move the whole article - but now I have copied & pasted the discussion over as well. -- Simonides 01:29, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Crypto categories
Just wanted to say thanks for your help in categorising the cryptography articles! — Matt 11:49, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Sv, This seemed to be the right rubric for this note. I left a comment for you at Talk:Block cipher modes of operation and wanted to be sure you noticed it since you appear not to be a cryptiac and so probably don't lurk in the crypto corner. And thanks also for your help with the categorization. ww 15:19, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yay for Sweden
through to the next round! theresa knott 23:54, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Yep! What a party, what a Nordic victory! Italy's out! :-) ✏ Sverdrup 23:55, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Board Vote Poll on Meta
I put the poll up as the discussion on the foundation mailing list was going nowhere fast. I wanted to suss out people's opinions, as we couldn't seem to come to a consensus. Hope this clarifies a few things. Burgundavia 16:44, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not saying that the person to put up a poll is stupid, I'm only letting my opinion out. My opinion is like anthony's, that the board decides. ✏ Sverdrup 16:46, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Formatting
Hi there! Thanks for the support at Category:Swedish wars, as you might have noticed in the edit history I did have some problems in getting the formatting right. However, it is not the only problem relating to that page. The main question is whether it is a good idea at all to try to replace an earlier list with a category. Currently I'm contemplating either to revert the list article or make transition to a structure more adapted to the functionality that the categories offer. Cheers, -- Mic 12:49, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hej Sverdup! Kul att du har hittat till Wikipedia... jag finns också på Wikipedia som SuperNoddy. Jag hette Noddy på susning... du kanske känner igen mig.

Filer?
Kan man ladda upp egna filer förutom bilder?/SuperNoddy Och förresten, jag kommer nog att fråga dig rätt mycket, bara så du vet.

Pergamon Museum
I didn't mean to step on your toes with an edit conflict there, but I got caught up in making several minor spelling corrections. (Very nice work you're doing there, too!). Do you think "Museumsinsel" should be translated (Museum Island) or stay in German? - Nunh-huh 02:47, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Or you could keep Museuminsel and provide the translation the first time it's mentioned? I also wonder about "Milet": this would, I think probably be either Miletus or Miletia in English, and my Lanngenscheidt doesn't say which... - Nunh-huh 02:57, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I'll stop tinkering now , I don't want to annoy by causing another edit conflict, but if you'd like, once you've gotten things fairly stable, I'd be happy to take another look. - Nunh-huh 03:04, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Magellan
Nice work with the Magellan voyage map. This one even looks better than the copyrighted one. older ≠ wiser 17:08, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your support
I just wanted to thank you for your support in my recent nomination to become an administrator. I really appreciate it. blankfaze | •• | •• 14:38, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fler susare?
Hello Sverdrup! Just wanted to say hello and ask you if there is any "susarklubb" here at the english wikipedia? // Solkoll 20:14, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Unrecognized Countries
Hi, Sverdrup. I noticed you had made contributions to Abkhazia. If you're interested in Abkhazia and similar places, why don't you drop by the WikiProject Unrecognized countries and help add some more depth to Wikipedia's coverage of these?

Be sure to visit the Project talk page, and if you are interested, you can become a member. Ambivalenthysteria 12:12, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

FAC
Many thanks for adding the links to my nomination of speed of light - can you tell it is the first thing I have nominated? :) -- ALoan (Talk) 11:34, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Heh - no problem :-) [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 11:36, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sig
Hi there,

How does one produce such colourful sigs?

Regards, Zoney 11:26, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the help! (though I notice you actually use a slightly more complicated arrangement!) zoney █ █ █  talk 00:51, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * for the record, your sig really pisses me off. Far to jarring. Could well do without your little face peering out as I read talk pages &c. Just because you can do it, &c. YMMV. best wishes --Tagishsimon

 * Me, I just think the previous one was nicer. But I guess too, having this wee disembodied head popping up in discussions is a tad offputting. zoney █ █ █  talk 11:43, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I just wish you would stick to the point and stop insulting my beautiful head. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 14:25, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Neat new sig. Betcha someone'll complain about the blinking tho! :o) zoney █ █ █  talk 01:28, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Nothing on the Internet should blink. Really.  Markalexander100 02:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Yep, they will complain. This is an experiment, but not a benign one. I think it is progressive though; it forces change in they way people think about sigs, and action by developers and users will determine the future of the sigs. --S

But, what do you want to convey when you have a Wikilink to the German article from an anchor "talk" ? -- Sundar 04:57, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

I want to introduce unsuspecting wikipedians to german Wiener Schnitzel. Possibly. --S

 * :-) But, I had to use Altavista translation service to know what this article is about. -- Sundar 05:12, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

 * Since it was your sig that inspired me. I thought I'd show you mine. I've had comments already that it is nightmare inducing. [[Image:Theresa Knott Sig.gif]] 22:16, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

GFDL tag on image
Thanks. I had to leave the computer for few minutes, but forgot to get back to the image... I'm currently kind of busy, which is also the reason I'm not contributing that much. Fredrik | talk 00:33, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Olympic Flame around the world...
Can you cite another example when the Olympic Flame has circumnaviated the globe (or even really toured it?)

I think the current caption on 2004 Summer Olympics is fine, but I want to make sure that the page 2004 Olympic Torch Relay is correct.

All previous torches were lit in Athens and then went basically straight to the host country (by foot where possible, but by plane as needed).

This year is different since it left Athens, went all over the place then returned to Athens.

 * No, I can't. I think my reformulation of the caption came from misunderstanding; I understood the old caption as if it was the first time the torch relay was done. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 09:59, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re your message
I must respond to your message to me, namely''
 * I am sad to hear that this expert.........who did very good contributions in his short time on wikipedia, has left again. Some people are harder to handle than others. Some people have their expectations on wikipedia shattered on their first try, like this man here. We must not bite the newbies, and give good contributors lots of respect. I am certainly not blaming you, but I'm asking you to be more careful.

Firstly, I try to help wiki establish a reputation as an authoritative source of information. When I see someone deliberately remove a fact and replace it with something deliberately designed to deny the fact, then I will react. It doesn't matter that the person is supposedly an expert. Secondly, you are wrong -- of course we can bite newbies, IF they deliberately bias an article. Thirdly, I object to you asking me to "be more careful" when I have not been careless. You should read the exchange carefully. You will see where the poster replaced fact with something to "suggest" that "in his view" there is reason to "suspect"something (for which there is no evidence). His words in bold. Lastly, you might have missed my last amendment to the article where I inserted one word --"known" -- which actually helps the poster's cause. You have woken a sleeping dog I was willing to leave asleep. To reply to your comments would normally mean including the poster's name here through no fault of his own, so I deleted it from your messsage to me. It was never my intention to pursue the poster, but to help improve wikipedia. I think I have done so. Cheers Moriori 23:23, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

Template Categories
Hi. I'm having some difficulties in implementing categories through template, but I noticed that you successfully did so with the Category:Municipalities of Skåne. However, when I changed that to Category:Municipalities of Skåne County to conform the standard used in Category:Municipalities of Sweden it seems the underlying articles does not show up in the category. I realise that there might be a delay factor but I don't see why your addition was successful there while it did not seem to work for me at Template:Kronoberg County. Cheers. -- Mic 07:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

cat:Mach and OS X
Technically, OS X does not use Mach proper, so the category listing OS X under Mach should not be there. Dysprosia 02:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the technicalities of it; I just tranferred the categories from the Mac OS X article. <span style=" font-family: Optima, sans-serif; border-bottom: 1px solid blue;">[[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞ ]] 02:07, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I had removed it, and I saw you replaced it again, so I thought I'd let you know, just in case :) Dysprosia 02:17, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't see that. I only remember I saw I had forgot it and went confused and readded it :-)

Image in signature
Hi Ulrik. I would appreciate your input regarding the use of images in signatures on WP:VP. David Remahl 21:04, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Metropolitan Malmö
I början av augusti redigerade jag artikeln som då hette Stor-Malmö, och ändrade namnet till Sydvästra Skåne, eller något i den stilen. Nu ser jag att min redigering har redigerats bort igen. :-))) Nåväl, om du som är infödd (Lundabo? ...eller bara Lundensare?) tycker att Skanör, Bjärred, Veberöd och Trelleborg ingår i ett "Stor Malmö" så får jag ju böja mig för sakkunskapen. I valet mellan termer som commuter belt, conurbation och metropolitan area tycker jag nog att min engelska inte är tillräckligt säker, även om jag har på känn att den nuvarande definitionen i wikipedia ("metropolitan area == conurbation + commuter belt") kanske är lite kontroversiell, även om utläggningen i artikeln Aire urbaine är mer än halvvägs övertygande.

I samband med att jag vistades en del på statsvetenskapliga institutionen, för ett par år sedan, hade vi en handledare/föreläsare som refererade till den mer eller mindre stadslika och sammanhänande bebyggelsen som "SSK-regionen" vilket, tror jag, uttyddes som Sydvästra Skånes Kommuner. Termen "Stor-Malmö" har jag ännu bara sett användas i mäklarstatistik över priser på villor och bostadsrätter.

Hälsningar! /Tuomas 16:33, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Jag tycker inte att jag har så mycket att bidra med, och har eg. inte favoriserat något av namnen. Jag tycker också att stor-Malmö låter okänt, men jag accepterar ''Metropolitan Malmö" eftersom Wikipedia redan har sådana artiklar för Gbg och Stockholm. Om det bara får ett namn på engelska som pekar på att det är ett tättbefolkat område som hör i hop, är jag nöjd. Jag har inte tagit ställning, sa jag, men jag kan göra det nu; i nuläget tycker jag vi ska ha kvar Metropolitan-titeln, men ta bort saker som "Stor-Malmö". --S

TOC v NOTOC
Hi Sverdrup, I noticed that you have removed the NOTOC from Archery at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Apart from originally creating the page in advance of the games I have not personally been involved in entering the results there as I was concentrating on other events. I just wondered how you would feel about replacing the TOC with something like I did at Volleyball at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's Beach Volleyball which gives the reader an easy link to the relevant sections without taking up a screenful of page with a TOC. This was the thought process that I originally used to set up all of the 2004 Olympic event pages and thought that I would wait until everyone had finished playing with them, which will probably be later this week, to concentrate on formatting them as near as possible to the same style. I have also video-ed about 150 hours of coverage to replay at leisure so that I can add some write ups to the events pages to expand on the bare results details.Scraggy4 16:22, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that tip about the id=toc, I wasn't sure how to make the box appear around the text but I can now copy what you put on my talk page. many thanks.Scraggy4 16:33, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To Sverdrup & Eloquence
I noticed a rather odd "edit war" of Sverdrup's signature. That is probably not the best way of dealing with the problem, if you don't mind me saying so.

I would like to suggest that you discuss the issue at Wikipedia talk:Username or Username, where I have started discussion about a policy for acceptable signatures.

— David Remahl 10:23, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:History_of_Earth
I'd appreciate your comments here Category_talk:History_of_Earth. I like the idea of this category, but I'm not sure what your vision of expanding it is. Thanks, Maastrictian 21:28, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Macintosh software
See Wikipedia talk:Categorization; I'd welcome your input as to what we (I guess that means you, Ellmist, and I) should do about categories for software platforms in general. --Ardonik.talk 05:30, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

WikiReader
I am just now getting back to a regular schedule and looking for things to do with Wiki again. I'd like to help with the reader- anything specific you feel that needs to be done, or just general editing/copyediting/expanding? Lyellin 20:00, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Sverdrup/Archive 1


text:
SOA

SOA may refer to:

Arts, entertainment, and media

 * Siege of Avalon, a 2000 computer role-playing game
 * Soldiers of Anarchy, a 2002 real-time tactics computer game
 * Sons of Anarchy, an FX television series about a motorcycle club
 * Sons of Azrael, a deathcore band from Buffalo, New York
 * State of Alert, a hardcore punk group formed in Washington, D.C.

Computing and technology

 * Safe operating area, the recommended voltage and current conditions for a semiconductor
 * Semiconductor optical amplifier
 * Service-oriented architecture, a set of software design principles and methodologies
 * SOA governance, a concept for services control in such an architecture
 * SOA security
 * SOA record (for start of authority), a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS)
 * Statement of Applicability (SoA), an ISO/IEC 27001 document for information security management systems
 * Structure of arrays, a method of arranging records in memory

Enterprises and organizations

 * School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a U.S. Department of Defense training facility
 * Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (SOA University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
 * Security and Intelligence Agency, (Croatian: Sigurnosno-obavještajna agencija or SOA), in Croatia
 * Scottish Orienteering Association

 * Society of Actuaries, in North America
 * Society of Ancients, a UK-based ancient and medieval history and war gaming organization
 * Society of Authors, a British writers' trade union
 * Spirit of America (charity), a US non-governmental nonprofit organization promoting American values abroad
 * Special Operations Australia, a.k.a. Services Reconnaissance Department, a World War II agency
 * State Oceanic Administration, a Chinese administrative agency
 * Swiss Olympic Association

Sports

 * SOA (basketball club), in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast
 * SOA (football club), in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast

Other uses

 * Secondary organic aerosol, a type of particulate matter produced by combustion engines
 * Southampton Airport Parkway railway station,in Eastleigh, Hampshire, England
 * Stimulus onset asynchrony, a measure used in experimental psychology
 * Super output areas, geographical regions defined in the U.K. ONS coding system
 * Statement of account

title: SOA