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Wong Tai Sin Temple (Hong Kong)

Wong Tai Sin Temple is a well known shrine and tourist attraction in Hong Kong. It is dedicated to Wong Tai Sin, or the Great Immortal Wong. The 18000 m2 Taoist temple is famed for the many prayers answered: "What you request is what you get" (有求必應) via a practice called kau chim. The temple is located on the southern side of Lion Rock in the north of Kowloon.

History
In the early 20th century, Leung Yan-am from Namgong village (稔岡) near Mount Sai Chiu in Namhoi, Guangdong Province spread the influence of Wong Tai Sin to Wan Chai in Hong Kong. Wong Tai Sin was obscure and largely unknown before Leung took it to Hong Kong.

Leung arrived in Hong Kong in 1915. He rented an apartment in Wan Chai, and set up an altar to Wong Tai Sin in his apartment. For the image of Wong Tai Sin, he used a picture of Wong Tai Sin which he brought from Namgong village. By March 1916, he opened an herbal medicine shop nearby and moved the altar to the back of the shop. Customers coming to his shop could pray at Wong Tai Sin's altar and seek advice for their ailments. Leung would then fill their prescriptions. The popularity of Wong Tai Sin then began to grow.

However, in 1918, Leung's shop was destroyed by fire. Then, Leung moved back to Namgong as he was now 57 or 58 years old and only could live for three years.

In 1921, Leung said that he received a message from Wong Tai Sin instructing him to construct a new shrine through "Fu Ji", a divination technique that uses a suspended sieve or tray to guide a stick which writes Chinese characters in sand or incense ashes. Leung Yan-am and his Taoist fellow were advised to start walking to the site which was 3600 paces from a pier They found the spot which was about the right distance form Kowloon City Pier. When they arrived at Chuk Yuen Village, they put a piece of bamboo into the ground as a mark. Then they consulted Wong Tai Sin via the process of "Fu Ji". They were told that it was a good site. Wong Tai Sin also taught them to determine the would-be centre of the Temple by 3 Chinese feet (approximately 1 m) on the right and 3 Chinese feet backwards of the mark and the would-be temple was named as "Chik Chung Sin Shrine". The Taoist priests were also asked to start the construction of the shrine on 24th of the sixth lunar month by one of the Taoist Gods, Wen Chang Di via the process of "Fu Ji". Eventually the shrine was completed and was officiated on the 20th of the seventh lunar month. In the same year, on the 23rd of the eighth lunar month, during the celebration of the birthday of Wong Tai Sin, the altar was named as "Pu Yi Tan" by the most supreme Taoist God, Yu Di  via the process of "Fu Ji". Later on, the other Taoist God, Wen Chang Di gave the name of the premises as "Sik Sik Yuen" via the process of "Fu Ji". Meanwhile, the managing body, Sik Sik Yuen was established. In 1925, the shrine was renamed as "Chik Chung Wong Sin Hall" by Taoist Immortal, Lü Dongbin  through the process of "Fu Ji". Since then, the name "Chik Chung Wong Sin Hall" has replaced the original name.

The funds of building the temple were mainly by four rich businessmen. It is likely that these men had been clients of Leung's medical prescription shrine in Wan Chai, and had become believers as a result of the benefits they believed could be obtained from these prescriptions.

During and after the World War Two, many Chinese escaped to Hong Kong from China and they only could settle in the Kowloon site which near the temple. These immigrants became refugees in Hong Kong. The Wong Tai Sin Temple, overlooking large stretches of these squatter settlements in the 1950s., filled a need for a major local shrine among this rapidly growing population eager for upward mobility. These people needed a god whose attention was not already occupied by the locals, luckily, Wong Tai Sin Temple was ready to receive any and all new worshippers, like these immigrants. The popularity of Wong Tai Sin Temple had rapidly been grown since that time.

According to the then regulations, Sik Sik Yuen used to be a private shrine and only Taoists or their family members were allowed. It was not until 1934, Sik Sik Yuen formally applied to the government for opening the Temple to the public during the 1st lunar month of every Chinese New Year. Finally, Sik Sik Yuen was allowed to open completely to the public in 1956.

In 1956, the government proposed to reclaim the temple for public housing development. Chairman Wong Wan Tin's pushed for the temple to remain open. Charging a 10-cent admission fee at the main entrance, fees were donated to the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. To facilitate administration and management, the temple was registered as a limited company of charitable nature in 1965, and was granted the immunity of not having to add the word "Limited" to the organisation's name.

Because of its historic significance, the Temple is graded as a Grade I historic building. The temple also is the first Taoist temple allowed by the government to organise Taoist weddings and issue marriage certificates.

Facilities
The temple consists of traditional Chinese architecture with red pillars, a gold roof with blue friezes, yellow latticework and multi-coloured carvings.

There is a Nine-Dragon Wall modelled after one in Beijing. Some of the halls include the Great Hall and the Three-Saint Hall. The Three-Saint Hall is dedicated to Lü Dongbin, Guan Yin, and Lord Guan. Containing a portrait of Confucius, the Taoist temple has a collection of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist literature.

There are also three memorial archways in the temple, with the first carved with the name of the temple at the entrance. The second memorial is along past the fortune-telling stalls, and the third one further ahead.

Traditions
Annually, from 1 to 15 January, the temple receives numerous visitors, such as those whose prayers were answered returning to thank the immortal. Wong Tai Sin's birthday on the 23rd day of the 8th lunar month, and the Chinese New Year holidays are the busiest times for the temple.

On the Chinese New Year's Eve, thousands of worshippers wait outside the temple before midnight and rush in to the main altar to offer Wong Tai Sin their glowing incense sticks when the year comes. As the tradition goes, the earlier they offer the incense, the better luck they will have that year.

Most of the visitors come to the temple in search for a spiritual answer via a practice called kau chim. They light incense sticks, kneel before the main altar, make a wish, and shake a bamboo cylinder containing fortune sticks until a stick falls out. This stick is exchanged for a piece of paper bearing the same number, and then the soothsayer will interpret the fortune on the paper for the worshiper. Often the same piece of fortune is taken to multiple booths for verification purposes. Some booths offer palm reading service.

Recently, Taoist weddings have been performed here.

Operation
The temple is open from 7:00am to 5:00pm throughout the year, and runs overnight in the Lunar New Year Eve. It is currently administered by Sik Sik Yuen (嗇色園) a Taoist organisation in Hong Kong.

Secondary schools

 * Ho Fung College
 * Ho Lap College
 * Ho Dao College
 * Ho Ngai College
 * Ho Yu College and Primary School

Primary schools

 * Ho Shun Primary School
 * Ho Lap Primary School
 * Ho Ming Primary School

Kindergartens and nursery

 * Ho Yu Kindergarten
 * Ho Shui Kindergarten
 * Ho Lap Kindergarten
 * Ho Ching Kindergarten
 * Ho Yan Kindergarten
 * Ho Tak Kindergarten and Ho Tak Child Care Centre
 * Ho Oi Day Nursery

Education centre

 * Ho Koon Nature Education cum Astronomical Centre

In popular culture
The Wong Tai Sin Fortune-telling and Oblation Arcade was a site of the Fast Forward in the seventh leg of the reality TV show The Amazing Race 2, in which racers had to find the fortune-teller Amelia Chow (in stall No.44) to have a face reading and a palm reading.

title: Wong Tai Sin Temple (Hong Kong)


text:
User:Britney~enwiki

I’m not ashamed of the things that I dream I find myself flirting with the verge of obscene Into the unknown, I will be bold I’m going to places I can be out of control

And I don’t want to explain tonight All the things I’ve tried to hide I shut myself out from the world so I Can draw the blinds and I’ll teach myself to fly

I love myself It’s not a sin I can’t control what’s happenin’

‘Cause I just discovered Imagination’s taking over Another day without a lover The more I come to understand The touch of my hand

From the small of my back and the arch of my feet Lately I’ve been noticin’ the beautiful me I’m all in my skin and I’m not gonna wait I’m into myself in the most precious way

And I don’t want to explain tonight All the things I’ve tried to hide I shut myself out from the world so I Can draw the blinds and I’ll teach myself to fly

‘Cause I just discovered Imagination’s taking over Another day without a lover The more I come to understand The touch of my hand

There’s a And my body is mine I won’t be left behind I’m already here

‘Cause I just discovered Imagination’s taking over Another day without a lover The more I come to understand The touch of my hand

‘Cause I just discovered Imagination’s taking over Another day without a lover The more I come to understand The touch of my hand

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

title: User:Britney~enwiki


text:
Talk:School of law

What? A figure of speech doesnt deserve an article. Redirect to law school! --Jiang 10:32, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:School of law


text:
User:Wernher/Stuff

Reference pages
Wikipedia special characters, Wikipedia boilerplate texts, Wikipedia general markup, Wikipedia guide to layout, Wikipedia citation format, W Status of FOLDOC import, Wikipedians from Norway, Community Information Directory, How to use tables, HTML table sampler

Other
List of articles frequently visited through Google, Template messages/Compact table of contents, Wikipedia:Edit summary legend:Quick reference, Forum for Encyclopedic Standards, Wikipedia as a press source, Template messages/Stubs, MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables, Manual of Style (dashes), Extended image syntax, Wikipedia in the media, WikiProject, Naming conventions, Categorisation FAQ, MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning, Duplicate articles, Sister projects, User:Angela/useful stuff, Help:Interwiki linking, Statistics, System messages, Country codes, Web colors, Aviators – for its multicolumn bullet point table technique

Talk page threads in one place, please
 (please just reply here on this page -- it's almost always better to keep a conversational thread in one place, don't you agree? --w)

title: User:Wernher/Stuff


text:
Talk:World Meteorological Organization

Members table
It had just occurred to me that it would be nice to have a table of the members with their accession dates, as seen on the WMO site, it could be a sortable table. Just I don't have the time for such work now, and I don't really know when I would get round to it. --$\color{Blue}\mathcal{M}$$\color{Blue}\vec{( e\ ,}$$\color{Blue}t )$ = ? 12:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've started the table here, anyone is welcome to it, if you want to speed things up. --$\color{Blue}\mathcal{M}$$\color{Blue}\vec{( e\ ,}$$\color{Blue}t )$ = ? 20:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And the table is done, I've taken the liberty of adding it to the article. --$\color{Blue}\mathcal{M}$$\color{Blue}\vec{( e\ ,}$$\color{Blue}t )$ = ? 09:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Nominated the article to DYK because of the list: Template:Did you know nominations/World Meteorological Organization. --$\color{Blue}\mathcal{M}$$\color{Blue}\vec{( e\ ,}$$\color{Blue}t )$ = ? 08:08, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

List of WMO's country codes?
The list of country codes from the external links section of this article is old (dated 1999) and includes only a small subset of WMO's country codes. Finding a complete, official list of WMO's country codes is not easy. If one exists on their own website, they have done a good job of hiding it. Although I know Wikipedia prefers to avoid articles that are lists or tables of data, I think providing an article listing WMO's country codes would be a great service Wikipedia could provide. I've come to this subject after learning that some weather applications use country codes which do not correspond with those from ISO, which is extremely confusing. If anybody can provide a list of WMO codes, that would be excellent, but if it also included a comparison with ISO codes, that would be even better. --Lance E Sloan (talk) 19:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/5nK30hphK?url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html to http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html

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Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 18:50, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Map
Image:WMO_Regions.PNG Should "multiple regions" be replaced with stripes? 42.98.83.51 (talk) 03:39, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 November 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Weihao GUO. Peer reviewers: Ncgrzejk.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:07, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:World Meteorological Organization


text:
Talk:2004 Taiwanese presidential election

Article title
Should the title be capitalized? U.S. presidential election, 2004 is not. --Jiang 10:36, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * moved. --Jiang 23:51, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Updates needed
Things need to be updated (verb tenses etc.) if the mobilizations near February 28 have actually happened. -- Kaihsu 17:21, 2004 Feb 28 (UTC)

 * It did: . Up to the task? --Jiang

Sources of information
What is the source of the "Heart Connecting to Hearts" and torch relay? Google shows up nothing in English. --Jiang 07:27, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * TVBS, United Daily News, and China Times (all Chinese). I don't know what the official translation is of Hearts connecting to Hearts. The torch relay became redone as "Women running first"  Roadrunner 17:27, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * And for that matter, what is the source of "One other interesting statistic is that people who have Internet accounts are more likely to support Pan-Blue, but people without Internet accounts are more likely to support Pan-Green."?

--Lowellian 20:29, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

 * United Daily News. You won't find it now (even in the archives) because Taiwan is in poll blackout, but it should be easy to get a link to it after the election Roadrunner 17:27, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lack of coverage in American media
One comment. I'm absolutely amazed at the lack of English language coverage over the elections. With the exception of some Taiwanese English language papers, the coverage by the New York Times, CNN, BBC, Time, Newsweek, and the Washington Post has been dreadful.

This wikipedia page actually is probably much better source of news than any of the above. Roadrunner 17:35, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Maybe they'll take a better notice after the results come in. --Menchi 03:31, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Voting figures
Does anyone know where the anonymous user 61.30.127.3 is getting his voting figures from? They are in advance of those at the government election website, which is spoiling my fun. Adam 11:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * The figures provided on TV are also in the 6 million range, so I think the website is being updated slower. Just turn to your local Chinese/international television channel. --Jiang 11:10, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Rolls eyes at assumption that everyone in the world has Chinese television. Adam 11:12, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * poor you! --Jiang

By the way, is Lien Chan Mr Lien or Mr Chan? Adam 11:13, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * It's Mr. Lien, but since he has a Ph.D., it should be Dr. Lien. --

Jiang

Quite so. Dr Adam 11:27, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

To answer Adam's question, yes, I am in fact getting my information off a local Chinese channel (TVBS to be exact). --61.30.127.3 13:31, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Split referendum article
I think the referendum should be put in another article, ROC referendum, 2004. Objections? --Jiang 11:32, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I assume there has already been a long argument about the use of "ROC" in article headings? I think it should be either "Taiwan" or "Republic of China." Who knows what ROC stands for (I mean apart from Jiang, who knows everything)?Adam 11:36, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * It's for the sake of consistency. Given that the presidential election articles are under the ROC headings, there is no reason to do anything different for the referendum. The alternative names will redirect there.--Jiang 11:45, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That section is getting quite long, and should be made a separate article. --Menchi 11:44, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Presidential terms
Could I suggest that The Election for the 11th-term President and Vice-President of the Republic of China is a very mystifying formulation for anyone not familiar with Chinese history (that is, just about everyone)? What does "11th term President" mean? Is President Chen running for his 11th term? I would guess it means this is the 11th presidential election in the history of the Republic of China - since the 1911 revolution? since the 1947 constitution? since the move to Taiwan? since the establishment of democracy? If this is thought to be important, it should be explained somewhere in the opening paragraph. It is not important it should be deleted. Also the word Taiwan needs to appear in the opening paragraph, since this is what the English-speaking world calls the country. Adam 13:09, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * It's since the 1947 constitution. CKS serve terms 1-5 (Yen finished the 5th); CCK served terms 6-7, Lee served terms 8-9, and Chen is serving term 10.--Jiang

Table of results
The names used are those given by the CEC. I suppose that's irrelevant since the real ballot was in Chinese anyways. "Kuomintang" is the common English name of the party. That's what the government calls it and what the party calls itself. The number on the ballot is relevant here. If the table's too wide, then there's something wrong with your browser. When I reduce my browser to half its width, the table contracts on its own. It's not too wide.--Jiang

Nationalist Party is also widely used and is in principle preferable in an English encyclopaedia. (Anyway surely it should be Guomindang?) If the ballot order is relevant this should be explained in the text. If the table is too wide for me it will be for other people as well. It's not hard to make it fit, I just don't know how. Adam 09:20, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The ballot number should be a self explanatory piece of information. No explanation is necessary. Why Guomindang? The point is to use the common spelling. Kuomintang is english like tsunami.

The HTML code has the width set it 100%. It should span the full screen of any browser and the text wraps on its own if the screen is not as wide. The "other people" are too few and insignificant for us to care. The 0.25% election figure is mentioned nowhere else in the article and should not be deleted.--Jiang 10:06, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just as I was starting to like you again Jiang, you reveal yourself to be the same unpleasant arrogant little shit I thought you were before. I have made a resolution not to get into fights with people like you so I am taking the election page off my watchlist. You can do as you please. Don't bother replying to this. Adam 10:16, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Cool down people. Not sure what that resolution thing is about (depending on the operating system), but the Kuomintang is now a common replacement of what's once called "The Chinese Nationalist League" (as I saw in a b/w photo). Think of the ink saved.. --Menchi 10:33, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No recount is conducted yet
Anyway Chen's re-election is confirmed officially by the Election Commission.

Coloring of election results table
Here's the history of the coloring of the election results table:

The original color scheme was (1). User:Jiang changed the scheme to (2) {last}. User:Lowellian changed the scheme back to (1) {last}, saying that (2) was too bright and clashing and that it was hard to read the blue links on the brighter blue background. User:Jiang then changed the scheme to (3) {last}, saying that the colors of (1) blended in too much with the gray. User:Acegikmo1 then changed the scheme back to (2) {last}, saying that (3) made no sense because the Pan-Blue Coalition should have a blue color. User:Lowellian then changed the scheme back to (1), but changed the gray into white to avoid the gray blending in with the other colors.

 * white bordering is unnacceptable becuase the table has no gridlines. i will change it to the original table with no colors. DDDDFF looks gray and DDFFDD looks light blue. that's horrible, imo. --Jiang 00:41, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * we should make this conistent with the 1996 and 2000 elections. --Jiang 00:45, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree that the colors should be consistent with pages about past elections. However, the colors used on the ROC presidential election, 1996 and ROC presidential election, 2000 are different.  I propose that we use the colors on the 1996 election page on all three pages.

 * Acegikmo1 03:33, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * 1 and 3 are good. 2 is flashy and hard-to-read. --Menchi 01:13, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am a taiwanese
I am a taiwanese and i find many false facts about the election of taiwan here. mr. lien is not pro-china which is our enemy.but they want to force us to accept ONE CHINA(and "according to them" one china is prc) or they won't negotiate with us at all,and they also harm us by all means like pressuring many taiwanese bussinessmen having investment there and thus trying to force our government to yield. so Mr.lien's decision is a compromised one for economical concerns. In fact, Tatwan,THIS LAND, is now already an independent country BECAUSE she has her own land,citizen and her own authority. It dosn't matter she is not an UN member now because even switzerland have joined UN recently. I guarantee that most taiwanese would totally agree to change the current name "ROC" to "taiwan" or "formosa" if there were no threat of war from the enemy. they just continually try to confuse everyone with their propaganda "one china" and hope that there would be no aids if one day they attack us by force.but I want to say the truth is unchagable that both sides are independent countries and surely they are different nations. -- Anonymous

I totally agree with you. Taiwan is a very different country from China--Jerrypp772000 03:02, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Time tells the truth
Right now the text just meet the informations declared by most official sources. --Mea Culpa 08:36, 2004 Apr 28 (UTC)

Demographics section clarification?
First of all, thanks for a well-written article that explains the whole election quite fairly. I have just one question: In the section "Demographic trends and public opinion", the article says:

"Since Taiwan does not provide absentee ballots, large numbers of citizens travelled to vote from North America and Mainland China, with typical estimates indicating that about 20,000 people travelled from North America and between 100,000 and 150,000 people travelled from Mainland China."

I am under the impression that people in China are not legally allowed to travel to Taiwan (under China's own regulation, I think). So you must mean that these 100,000-150,000 people from Mainlaid China are Taiwanese businessmen who are currently living in China, correct? This could be a source of confusion. -- Liang people in China are not legally allowed to travel to Taiwan because that's taiwan's regulation. And it is another strong and direct proof that they are different nations.

They are businessmen who traveled through Hong Kong, usually. I have removed the word "apparent" in front of the term "assassination" in the section on Lien Chan's remarks, as there is no evidence that this was anything other than a real assassination, despite the claims of the Blues. -- MTurton

Spelling of Vice-President
Is the way Vice President is spelt in the first sentence doesn't look correct. I think it would more likely be Vice-President. Can someone check on that?

 * "Vice President" (with no dash) seems to be the most common rendering of the word. Acegikmo1 21:53, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * "vice-president" is the form referenced in style guides.

What's with all the question marks in a row in the 2nd paragraph?
Subject says it all.. --Rebroad 10:38, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't see any. Make sure your computer can read unicode because there's a block of chinese charcters after the bolded textJiang

 * Hi Jiang. Thanks for you reply. This Chinese text will fail to display correctly on most non-Chinese web browser software, and therefore I would recommend it be removed from the English version of this article as most people will not realise that it is suppose to display Chinese letters only on certain versions of web browser software that have been specifically configured to display Chinese. --Rebroad 11:37, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Having non-Roman scripts encoded in unicode is the standard in hundreds, if not thousands, of pages here. Unicode should display on most browsers, unlike Big5 of GB which require special software to be installed. Please ask Village pump (technical) for input from someone more versed in technical issues. From my knowledge, the script should display with no extra software installed. --Jiang 12:09, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Jiang is correct. I've checked the page with standard English-versions of both IE and Opera, and neither browser has any problem displaying the characters.  —Lowellian (talk)   17:51, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Request for references
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 18:26, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * When I edited this article back in early 2004, I added in-line links to news articles I used as references, but I think these were later removed. A look into some of the page history can reveal some references.--Jiang 04:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

GA nomination, fail
GA status requires citation of sources. There is not one single reference or footnote in this article. There are also external link jumps in the text, which are highly frowned upon. Work on the citations and formatting, and then resubmit. Rlevse 01:45, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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BetacommandBot (talk) 21:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2020 Taiwan presidential election which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)


text:
Provinces of Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is divided into four provinces (until 2017, three) and one Western Area; these are further divided into 16 districts (previously 14), and the districts are further divided into 190 (previously 149) chiefdoms.

Provinces

 * Eastern Province
 * Northern Province
 * Southern Province
 * North West Province

Areas

 * Western Area

title: Provinces of Sierra Leone


text:
William Macready

William Charles Macready (3 March 1793 – 27 April 1873) was an English stage actor. The son of Irish actor-manager William Macready the Elder he emerged as a leading West End performer during the Regency era.

Career
He was born in London the son of William Macready the Elder, and actress Christina Ann Birch. Educated at Rugby School where he became headboy, and where now the theatre is named after him, it was his initial intention to go to University of Oxford, but, in 1809, financial problems experienced by his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical management. On 7 June 1810, he made a successful first appearance as Romeo at Birmingham. Other Shakespearian parts followed, but a serious rupture between father and son resulted in the young man's departure for Bath in 1814. Here he remained for two years, with occasional professional visits to other provincial towns.

On 16 September 1816, Macready made his first London appearance at Covent Garden as Orestes in The Distressed Mother, a translation of Racine's Andromaque by Ambrose Philips. Macready's choice of characters was at first confined chiefly to the romantic drama. In 1818, he won a permanent success in Isaac Pocock's (1782–1835) adaptation of Scott's Rob Roy. He showed his capacity for the highest tragedy when he played Richard III at Covent Garden on 25 October 1819.

In 1820, he played the title role in the tragedy Virginius by James Sheridan Knowles. Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose in public favour, his most conspicuous success being in the title role of Sheridan Knowles's William Tell (11 May 1825). In 1826, he completed a successful engagement in the United States, and, in 1828, his performances met with a very flattering reception in Paris. In 1829, he appeared as Othello in Warwick.

On 15 December 1830 he appeared at Drury Lane as Werner, one of his most powerful impersonations. In 1833, he played in Antony and Cleopatra, in Byron's Sardanapalus, and in King Lear. He was responsible, in 1834, and more fully in 1838, for returning the text of King Lear to Shakespeare's text (although in a shortened version), after it had been replaced for more than a hundred and fifty years by Nahum Tate's happy-ending adaptation, The History of King Lear. He performed at the Georgian Wisbech theatre (now Angles Theatre) and other theatres of the Lincoln theatre circuit run by Fanny Robertson.

Already, Macready had done something to encourage the creation of a modern English drama, and after entering on the management of Covent Garden in 1837 he introduced Robert Browning's Strafford, and in the following year Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, the principal characters in which were among his most effective parts. On 10 June 1838, he gave a memorable performance of Henry V, for which Stanfield prepared sketches, and the mounting was superintended by Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, Forster, Maclise, W. J. Fox and other friends.

Dickens wrote to him in 1847: "The multitude of tokens by which I know you for a great man, the swelling within me of my love for you, the pride I have in you, the majestic reflection I see in you of the passions and affections that make up our mystery, throw me into a strange kind of transport that has no expression but in a mute sense of an attachment which in truth and fervency is worthy of its subject." The first production of Bulwer-Lytton's Money took place under the artistic direction of Count d'Orsay on 8 December 1840, Macready winning unmistakable success in the character of Alfred Evelyn. Both in his management of Covent Garden, which he resigned in 1839, and of Drury Lane, which he held from 1841 to 1843, he found his designs for the elevation of the stage frustrated by the absence of adequate public support.

In 1843, he staged Cymbeline. In 1843–44, he made a successful tour in the United States, but his last visit to that country, in 1849, was marred by the Astor Place Riot, in which between 22 and 31 rioters were dead, and more than 120 people injured.

Judge Charles Patrick Daly later presided at the trial. Both Forrest and Macready were playing Macbeth in concurrent, competing productions at the time of the riot, a fact which added to the ominous reputation of that play. Playwright Richard Nelson dramatized the events surrounding the riot in his 1990 play, Two Shakespearean Actors.

Macready took leave of the stage in a farewell performance of Macbeth at Drury Lane on 26 February 1851. The remainder of his life was spent in happy retirement, and he died at Cheltenham on 27 April 1873.

Personal life
He married twice, firstly in 1823 to Catherine Frances Atkins (died 1852). Of a numerous family of children only one son and one daughter survived. In 1860, aged 67, he married the 23 year old Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer (1827–1908), by whom he had a son, Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, known as "Nevil", who would become a General in the British Army, and a baronet. Macready's son from his second marriage was General Sir Nevil Macready, a distinguished British Army officer as was his brother, Major Edward Nevil Macready, who commanded the Light Company of the 30th Regiment of Foot in the closing stages of the Battle of Waterloo.

His daughter, Catherine Frances Macready, was a minor Victorian poet. Her book, Leaves From the Olive Mount, published by Chapman & Hall in 1860, began with a one-page dedication poem, 'To My Father'. Writer Rowena Farre (Daphne Lois Macready) was a great-granddaughter of William Macready.

Upon his death, William Macready's remains were deposited in the catacomb below the Anglican Chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery.

Evaluation and legacy
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: "Macready's performances always displayed fine artistic perceptions developed to a high degree of perfection by very comprehensive culture, and even his least successful personations had the interest resulting from thorough intellectual study. He belonged to the school of Kean rather than of Kemble; but, if his tastes were better disciplined and in some respects more refined than those of Kean, his natural temperament did not permit him to give proper effect to the great tragic parts of Shakespeare, King Lear perhaps excepted, which afforded scope for his pathos and tenderness, the qualities in which he specially excelled. With the exception of a voice of good compass and capable of very varied expression, Macready had no especial physical gifts for acting, but the defects of his face and figure cannot be said to have materially affected his success."

When Macready retired, Alfred Tennyson dedicated the following verse to him:

In 1927, the Cheltenham Local Tablets Committee placed a bronze tablet at No. 6 Wellington Square recording Macready's residence there from 1860 to 1873.

The London County Council affixed a blue plaque to Macready's birthplace, 45 Stanhope Street, Regent's Park on 25 June 1928. The house was subsequently demolished, the plaque being donated to the Theatre Museum c1965, the object passing to the V&A in 2007.

Actor Frank Barrie wrote and performed the one-man play Macready!, which was first performed in 1979 and eventually staged in 65 countries. A television adaptation of the play was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1983 as a one-hour special, again starring Frank Barrie.

Selected roles

 * Emperor of Byzantium in Adelgitha by Matthew Lewis (1817)
 * Valencia in The Conquest of Taranto by William Dimond (1817)
 * Pescara in The Apostate by Richard Sheil (1817)
 * Chosroo in Retribution by John Dillon (1818)
 * Amurath in Bellamira by Richard Sheil (1818)
 * Winterland in A Word to the Ladies by James Kenney (1818)
 * Ludovico in Evadne by Richard Sheil (1819)
 * Wallenberg in Fredolfo by Charles Maturin (1819)
 * Virginius in Virginius by James Sheridan Knowles (1820)
 * Wallace in Wallace by Charles Edward Walker (1820)
 * Damon in Damon and Pythias by John Banim and Richard Sheil (1821)
 * Duke of Mirandola in Mirandola by Barry Cornwall (1821)
 * Caius Gracchus in Caius Gracchus by James Sheridan Knowles (1823)
 * Julian in Julian by Mary Russell Mitford (1823)
 * William Tell in William Tell by James Sheridan Knowles (1825)
 * Henry in Don Pedro, King of Castile by Lord Porchester (1828)
 * Don Leon in The Pledge by James Kenney (1831)
 * Alfred the Great in Alfred the Great by James Sheridan Knowles (1831)
 * Scroope in The Merchant of London by Thomas Serle (1832)
 * Colberg in The House of Colberg by Thomas Serle (1832)
 * Sardanapalus in Sardanapalus by Lord Byron (1834)
 * Ion in Ion by Thomas Talfourd (1836)
 * Bertulphe in The Provost of Bruges by George William Lovell (1836)
 * Melantius in The Bridal by James Sheridan Knowles (1837)
 * Strafford in Strafford by Robert Browning (1837)
 * Marquis De Bragelone in The Duchess de la Vallière by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1837)
 * Thoas in The Athenian Captive by Thomas Talfourd (1838)
 * Walsingham in Woman's Wit by James Sheridan Knowles (1838)
 * Richelieu in Richelieu by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1839)
 * Richard Cromwell in Master Clarke by Thomas Serle (1840)
 * Halbert MacDonald in Glencoe by Thomas Talfourd (1840)
 * Earl of Ruthven in Mary Stuart by James Haynes (1840)
 * Gisippus in Gisippus by Gerald Griffin (1842)
 * Mordaunt in The Patrician's Daughter by John Westland Marston (1842)
 * Colonel Green in The Secretary by James Sheridan Knowles (1843)

title: William Macready


text:
English Springer Spaniel

The English Springer Spaniel is a breed of gun dog in the Spaniel group traditionally used for flushing and retrieving game. They are descended from the Norfolk or Shropshire Spaniels of the mid-19th century; the breed has diverged into separate show and working lines. It is closely related to the Welsh Springer Spaniel and very closely to the English Cocker Spaniel; less than a century ago, springers and cockers would come from the same litter. The smaller "cockers" were used in woodcock hunting while their larger littermates were used to flush, or "spring", other game birds, hence the name. In 1902, The Kennel Club recognized the English Springer Spaniel as a distinct breed. They are used as sniffer dogs on a widespread basis.

Description
The English Springer Spaniel is a medium-sized compact dog. Its coat is moderately long with feathering on the legs and tail. It is a well proportioned, balanced dog with a gentle expression. This breed represents perhaps the greatest divergence between working and show lines of any breed of dog. A field-bred dog and a show-bred dog appear to be different breeds but are registered together. The gene pools are almost completely segregated and have been for at least 70 years. A field-bred dog would not be competitive in a modern dog show, while a show dog would not have the speed or stamina to succeed in a field trial.

The English Springer Spaniel field-bred dogs tend to have shorter, coarser coats than show-bred dogs. The ears are less pendulous. Field-bred dogs are wiry and have more of a feral look than those bred for showing. The tail of the field-bred dog may be docked a few inches in comparison to the show dog. Field-bred dogs are selected for their sense of smell, hunting ability, and response to training rather than appearance.

Show dogs have longer fur and more pendant ears, dewlaps and dangling flews. The tail is docked to a short stub in those countries that permit docking. They are generally more thickly boned and heavier than field-bred springers.

The English Springer Spaniel is similar to the English Cocker Spaniel and at first glance, the only major difference is the latter's smaller size. However English Springers also tend to have shorter, and higher-set ears than English Cockers. Springers also tend to have a longer muzzle; their eyes are not as prominent, and the coat is less abundant. The major differences between the Welsh Springer and the English Springer are that the Welsh have more limited colors and tend to be slightly smaller.

Coat and colors
Field-bred dogs tend to have shorter, coarser coats than the longer furred show-bred dogs. They normally only shed in summer and spring months but shed occasionally in the autumn. The coat comes in black or liver (dark brown) with white markings or predominantly white with black or liver markings; Tricolour: black and white or liver and white with tan markings, usually found on eyebrows, cheeks, inside of ears and under the tail. Any white portion of the coat may be flecked with ticking.

Sizes
Males in the show dog line are typically approximately 19 to 21 in at the withers and weigh 40 to 60 lb. According to the UK Breed Standard, the English Springer Spaniel should be 20 in at the withers. The females should be 18 to 20 in and usually 35 to 55 lb. Working types can be lighter in weight and finer in bone.

Temperament
The English Springer Spaniel ranks 13th in Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs

Health
A 2022 UK study found a life expectancy of 11.92 years for the breed, above the average of 11.23 years. A 2024 UK study found a life expectancy of 13.5 years for the breed compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds. A 2005 Swedish study found 29% of Spring Spaniels died by the age of 10, less than the overall rate of 35% of dogs dying by the age of 10.

Skin conditions the breed is predisposed to include: acral mutilation syndrome, intertrigo, lichenoid psoriasis–form dermatitis, Malassezia dermatitis, otitis externa, and primary seborrhoea.

An American study reviewing over a million cases presented to 27 veterinary teaching hospitals in North America found the English Springer Spaniel to be prediposed to canine hip dysplasia, with 4.39% of dogs having the condition compared to 3.52% overall. A survey of UK breed club members found cancer to be the most common cause of death at 26.7% of deaths.

English Springer Spaniels have a predisposition to chronic hepatitis. The form of chronic hepatitis in the breed is more severe, affects younger dogs, and is more likely to affect bitches. One study found the English Springer Spaniel to be 6.3 times more likely to acquire the disease. Another study found an odds ratio of 5.3.

History
The English physician John Caius described the spaniel in his book the Treatise of Englishe Dogs published in 1576. His book was the first work to describe the various British breeds by function. By 1801, Sydenham Edwards explained in the Cynographia Britannica that the land spaniel should be split into two kinds, the Springing, Hawking Spaniel, or Starter; and the Cocking or Cocker Spaniel.

At this point, both cocker spaniels and springer spaniels were born in the same litters. The purpose of the breed was to serve as a hunting dog. The smaller cockers were used to hunt woodcock, while their larger littermates, the springer spaniels, would "spring"—or flush—the gamebird into the air where a trained falcon or hawk would bring it to the handler.

Many spaniel breeds were developed during the 19th century, and often named after the counties in which they were developed, or after their owners, who were usually nobility. Two strains of larger land spaniel were predominant and were said to have been of "true springer type." These were the Norfolk and the Shropshire spaniels, and by the 1850s, these were shown under the breed name of Norfolk spaniel.

In January 1899, the Spaniel Club of England and the Sporting Spaniel Society held their trials together for the first time. Three years later, in 1902, a combination of the physical standard from the Spaniel Club of England and the ability standard from the Sporting Spaniel Society led to the English Springer Spaniel breed being officially recognized by the English Kennel Club. The American Kennel Club followed in 1910. In 1914, the first English Field Champion was crowned, FTC Rivington Sam, whose dam was a registered cocker spaniel, Rivington Riband. Sam is considered one of the foundation sires for modern field lines.

Skills
An English Springer Spaniel is foremost a game bird flushing dog. There are several skills that breeders train the dog to perform for their occupation.
 * Retrieve to Hand Most hunters and all hunt test or field trial judges require that a dog deliver a bird to hand, meaning that a dog will hold the bird until told to give it to the hunter directly.
 * Soft Mouth Springers are taught to deliver game with a soft mouth, meaning he does not puncture it with his teeth. The game should always be fit for the table. If a springer damages the bird, it may be hard-mouthed. This is a serious fault, but it can be difficult to determine whether it may have been genetic or caused by poor training methods. Breeders generally avoid using any springer that is hard-mouthed.
 * Quarter A flushing spaniel's primary role is often as a game bird flushing dog. Dogs must work in a zig-zag pattern in front of the hunter seeking game birds. The dog is taught to stay within gun range to avoid flushing a bird outside shooting distance. This pattern is one of the primary criteria used to judge a dog in a field trial.
 * Scenting Having the ability to scent game is of vital importance to the hunter. A springer should have a good nose in both wet and dry conditions. A dog with a good nose will learn to use the wind as it quests for game, ever adjusting its pattern according to the nuances of the wind.
 * Flushing The springer should have a positive flush. It should not hesitate or point when encountering game. Some field trial dogs will often get airborne during a flush. This is exciting to watch but is not necessary to win. Most hunters prefer that their dog not flush in that style, as it can present a risk to the dog.
 * Hup This is the traditional command to sit and stay. When hupped the dog can be given direction called by the handler. The ability to hup a dog actively working a running bird allows the handler and any gunners to keep up without having to run.
 * Follow Hand Signals Game bird hunting involves pursuing wild game in its native habitat. Gun dogs must investigate likely covers for game birds. The dog must be responsive to hand signals for the hunter to be able to direct the dog into areas of particular interest.
 * Steady When hunting game birds, a flushing dog should be steady to wing and shot, meaning that he sits when a bird rises or a gun is fired. He does this to mark the fall and to avoid flushing other birds when pursuing a missed bird.
 * Blind Retrieve An adequately trained and experienced working springer can be expected to use all of the aforementioned attributes to be conducted by hand, whistle and command to a position whereby an unmarked lost game bird can be picked and retrieved to hand.

Detection dog
The Springer Spaniel is used as a sniffer dog. Notable search dogs have included Buster, a Dickin Medal recipient, Royal Army Veterinary Corps arms and explosives search dog serving with the Duke of Wellington's Regiment in Iraq, for finding an extremist group's hidden arsenal of weapons and explosives. Another example is Jake, aka Hubble Keck People's Dispensary for Sick Animals Gold Medal and Blue Cross Animal Hospital Medal recipient, a London Metropolitan Police explosives search dog. He was deployed at Tavistock Square, Russell Square and King's Cross following the 7 July 2005 London bombings.

The Springer is not limited to detecting explosives. Other varied uses for the Springer can include sniffing out bumblebee nests, illegal immigrants, blood and the superbug C. difficile. Springers are used for drug detection in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Isle of Man, Ireland, Canada CBSA and Qatar.

The Springer Spaniel is also used as a search and rescue dog by mountain rescue and Lowland Rescue teams, where their willingness to work and cover rough terrain makes them an excellent choice.

Notable English Springer Spaniels
Awarded the Dickin Medal for conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving in military conflict: Awarded the PDSA Gold Medal for animal bravery: Awarded the PDSA Order of Merit
 * Theo
 * Buster
 * Ghillie
 * Max

title: English Springer Spaniel


text:
Miniature Schnauzer

The Miniature Schnauzer is a breed of small dog of the Schnauzer type that originated in Germany in the mid-to-late 19th century. Miniature Schnauzers may have been developed from the smallest specimens of the Standard Schnauzer, or crosses between the standard and one or more smaller breeds such as the Affenpinscher, Miniature Pinscher, and Poodles,    as farmers bred a small dog that was an efficient ratting dog. They are described as "spunky" but aloof dogs, with good guarding tendencies without some guard dogs' predisposition to bite. Miniature Schnauzers are recognized in four colors internationally: solid black, black and silver, salt and pepper, and white.

It is the most popular Schnauzer breed, and remains one of the most popular worldwide, primarily for its temperament and relatively small size. As of 2022 it is the 17th most popular breed in the U.S.

History
The earliest records surrounding the development of the Standard Schnauzer in Germany come from the late 19th century. They were originally bred to be medium-sized farm dogs in Germany, equally suited to ratting, herding, and guarding property. As time passed, farmers bred the Standard Schnauzer into a smaller, more compact size for ratting by combining it, according to cynologist theorization, with one or more small breeds such as the Affenpinscher and Miniature Poodle,  Miniature Pinscher,  or Pomeranian, or by chance from smallest specimens of the Standard Schnauzer. The first recorded Miniature Schnauzer appeared in 1888, black female named Findel, and the Pinscher-Schnauzer Klub (formed in 1895) in its first volume of the club's stud book mentioned Wirehaired Miniature Pinscher. The first exhibition was held in 1899.

The American Kennel Club accepted registration of the new breed in 1926, two years after Miniature Schnauzers were introduced to the United States. The American Miniature Schnauzer Club was formed in 1933, from the older parent club Wire-Haired Pinscher Club of America which also included Standard Schnauzer, and initially both competed in the Working Group until 1927. International Kennel Club classifications vary; by the VDH and FCI it is placed in "Group 2, Section 1: Pinschers and Schnauzers", with "Nr. 183" in "Section 1.2" dedicated to the Miniature Schnauzer breed, the KC, ANKC and NZKC include it in the Utility Group, while by the AKC, UKC and CKC the Miniature Schnauzer is classed in the Terrier Group.

The start of the modern Miniature Schnauzer in the United States is considered to have a beginning in 1924 when four dogs were imported from Germany. It is argued that almost all American-bred Miniatures partly descend from them, and between 1926 and 1936, 108 more dogs were imported. One of the most notable champions was Ch. Dorem Display, born in 1945 and lived to be nearly fourteen. It is claimed that many champion Miniature Schnauzers in America can trace their lineage back to Dorem Display.

Miniature Schnauzers were the 11th most popular breed in the U.S. in 2008, falling to 17th most popular in 2016.

Appearance

Miniature Schnauzers have a very square-shaped build, measuring 11 to 14 in tall and weighing 10 to 15 lb for females and 11 to 18 lb for males. They have a double coat, with wiry exterior fur and a soft undercoat. In show trim, the coat is kept short on the body, but the fur on the ears, legs, belly, and face is retained. Recognized coat colors are black, pepper and salt, black and silver, and pure white; pepper and salt coloration is where coat hairs have banded shades of black, gray and silver, fading to a gray or silver at the eyebrows, whiskers, underbody and legs.

Miniature Schnauzers are often described as non-moulting dogs, and while this is not entirely true, their shedding is minimal and generally unnoticeable. For this reason, Schnauzers are considered a hypoallergenic breed. They are characterized by a rectangular head with bushy beard, mustache, and eyebrows; teeth that meet in a "scissor bite"; oval and dark colored eyes; and v-shaped, natural forward-folding ears (when cropped, the ears point straight upward and come to a sharp point). Their tails are naturally thin and short, and may be docked (where permitted). They will also have very straight, rigid front legs, and feet that are short and round (so-called "cat feet") with thick, black pads.

Docking of tails and cropping of ears has become a controversial practice, especially for non-working dogs, and is now illegal or restricted in a number of countries worldwide, including the UK and Australia.

Grooming
Schnauzers have a specific groom cut that is standard among the schnauzer breeds. Schnauzers require regular grooming, either by stripping, or by clipping. Stripping removes the loose, dead coat; it may be done by hand, called finger stripping, or plucking, or with a stripping knife; either way, it is a laborious process. When kept as pets, Miniature Schnauzers are often groomed differently (usually via clipping) from show dogs (often using stripping). Regular grooming of a Miniature Schnauzer is recommended approximately every six weeks. Clipping, using a mechanical clippers (or shaver), produces a soft, silky, skin-close trim. Whether stripped or clipped, the coat is close at the body, and falls into a fringe-like foundation on its undercarriage, called furnishings, which can be left to grow, but must be combed regularly. All schnauzers, whether they are Miniatures, Standards, or Giants, often sport a beard, created by allowing the hair around their noses to grow out. Left unclipped or unstripped, the body hair will grow two to four inches, and will often tangle into mats and curls.

North American white coat controversy
White is one of four color varieties of the Miniature Schnauzer currently recognized by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale. However, they are not accepted for conformation showing by the American Kennel Club and Canadian Kennel Club. The controversy rests on the disputed origins of the white variation, namely whether it was contained within the genes of the originally recognized breed, or whether it was the result of subsequent modifications. Since the other two schnauzer types have never been available in a white variation, and the original German standard never included white as an acceptable color, the American Miniature Schnauzer Club chooses not to recognize white.

Temperament
The American Kennel Club breed standard describes temperament as "alert and spirited, yet obedient to command ... friendly, intelligent and willing to please... never overaggressive or timid". Usually easy to train, they tend to be excellent watchdogs with a good territorial instinct, but more inclined toward barking than biting. They are often aloof with strangers until the owners of the home welcome the guest, upon which they are typically very friendly to them. While the Miniature Schnauzer is included in the Terrier Group in North America (due to rat-catching background), it does not have common ancestry with Terriers from Great Britain, and compared to them has a different personality, being more laid back, obedient, friendly, and less aggressive to other dogs.

Miniature Schnauzers can compete in dog agility trials, obedience, showmanship, flyball, and tracking. Schnauzers have a high prey drive, which means they may chase other small animals and hence should not be off leash when not in a fenced area. Stanley Coren ranked the Miniature Schnauzer 12th out of 140 breeds in his book The Intelligence of Dogs (2006). Coren grouped the breed amongst "excellent working dogs". Additionally, experts contacted by Coren ranked the Miniature as fifth among top 15 breeds at watchdog barking ability.

Health
A UK study found a life expectancy of 13.3 years for the breed, higher than the 12 year average for crossbreeds. A study in Japan for pet cemetery data found a life expectancy of 13.4 years, below the overall average of 13.7 years and the 15.3 year average for crossbreeds below 10kgs.

A Japanese study found a signifnicant predisposition to gall bladder mucoceles for the Miniature Schnauzer with a 5.23 odds ratio.

A North American study found the breed to be predisposed to congenital portosystemic shunts, with 1% of Miniature Schnauzers having the condition compared to 0.05% for mixed-breed dogs.

Miniature Schnauzers are also prone to von Willebrand disease (vWD). vWD in dogs is an inherited bleeding disorder that occurs due to qualitative or quantitative deficiency of von Willebrand factor (vWF), a multimeric protein that is required for platelet adhesion.

The breed is predisposed to atopic dermatitis.

Schnauzer comedo syndrome is a type of follicular keratinisation defect found exclusively in the Miniature Schnauzer that is similar to nevus comedonicus in humans. The condition is characterised by small comedones developing on the dorsal spine (back) of the dog. The condition is believed to be caused by an inherited developmental defect in hair follicles, causing abnormal keratinisation and subsequently comedo formation, follicular plugging, and secondary bacterial folliculitis which leads to alopecia and crusting.

title: Miniature Schnauzer


text: Talk:Education in the Netherlands

title: Talk:Education in the Netherlands


text:
User talk:Kidless Mom

To whom it may concern, we recently had a mis-hap concerning a story about a child custody issue it was e-mailed Nov,18,03 and because of user comp. skill knowledge we have lost the story and are at this time requesting help from any one who may have read this document. It is a real and oh! so true situation. If you have any info on this text please shoot the author a e-mail at TnTall4one@aol.com any help would be appreciated. Thanks again! T-222.

title: User talk:Kidless Mom


text:
Computer simulation

Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determined by comparing their results to the real-world outcomes they aim to predict. Computer simulations have become a useful tool for the mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), astrophysics, climatology, chemistry, biology and manufacturing, as well as human systems in economics, psychology, social science, health care and engineering. Simulation of a system is represented as the running of the system's model. It can be used to explore and gain new insights into new technology and to estimate the performance of systems too complex for analytical solutions.

Computer simulations are realized by running computer programs that can be either small, running almost instantly on small devices, or large-scale programs that run for hours or days on network-based groups of computers. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling. In 1997, a desert-battle simulation of one force invading another involved the modeling of 66,239 tanks, trucks and other vehicles on simulated terrain around Kuwait, using multiple supercomputers in the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program. Other examples include a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation; a 2.64-million-atom model of the complex protein-producing organelle of all living organisms, the ribosome, in 2005; a complete simulation of the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium in 2012; and the Blue Brain project at EPFL (Switzerland), begun in May 2005 to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level.

Because of the computational cost of simulation, computer experiments are used to perform inference such as uncertainty quantification.

Simulation versus model
A model consists of the equations used to capture the behavior of a system. By contrast, computer simulation is the actual running of the program that perform algorithms which solve those equations, often in an approximate manner. Simulation, therefore, is the process of running a model. Thus one would not "build a simulation"; instead, one would "build a model (or a simulator)", and then either "run the model" or equivalently "run a simulation".

History
Computer simulation developed hand-in-hand with the rapid growth of the computer, following its first large-scale deployment during the Manhattan Project in World War II to model the process of nuclear detonation. It was a simulation of 12 hard spheres using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Computer simulation is often used as an adjunct to, or substitute for, modeling systems for which simple closed form analytic solutions are not possible. There are many types of computer simulations; their common feature is the attempt to generate a sample of representative scenarios for a model in which a complete enumeration of all possible states of the model would be prohibitive or impossible.

Data preparation
The external data requirements of simulations and models vary widely. For some, the input might be just a few numbers (for example, simulation of a waveform of AC electricity on a wire), while others might require terabytes of information (such as weather and climate models).

Input sources also vary widely:
 * Sensors and other physical devices connected to the model;
 * Control surfaces used to direct the progress of the simulation in some way;
 * Current or historical data entered by hand;
 * Values extracted as a by-product from other processes;
 * Values output for the purpose by other simulations, models, or processes.

Lastly, the time at which data is available varies:
 * "invariant" data is often built into the model code, either because the value is truly invariant (e.g., the value of π) or because the designers consider the value to be invariant for all cases of interest;
 * data can be entered into the simulation when it starts up, for example by reading one or more files, or by reading data from a preprocessor;
 * data can be provided during the simulation run, for example by a sensor network.

Because of this variety, and because diverse simulation systems have many common elements, there are a large number of specialized simulation languages. The best-known may be Simula. There are now many others.

Systems that accept data from external sources must be very careful in knowing what they are receiving. While it is easy for computers to read in values from text or binary files, what is much harder is knowing what the accuracy (compared to measurement resolution and precision) of the values are. Often they are expressed as "error bars", a minimum and maximum deviation from the value range within which the true value (is expected to) lie. Because digital computer mathematics is not perfect, rounding and truncation errors multiply this error, so it is useful to perform an "error analysis" to confirm that values output by the simulation will still be usefully accurate.

Types
Models used for computer simulations can be classified according to several independent pairs of attributes, including:
 * Stochastic or deterministic (and as a special case of deterministic, chaotic) – see external links below for examples of stochastic vs. deterministic simulations
 * Steady-state or dynamic
 * Continuous or discrete (and as an important special case of discrete, discrete event or DE models)
 * Dynamic system simulation, e.g. electric systems, hydraulic systems or multi-body mechanical systems (described primarily by DAE:s) or dynamics simulation of field problems, e.g. CFD of FEM simulations (described by PDE:s).
 * Local or distributed.

Another way of categorizing models is to look at the underlying data structures. For time-stepped simulations, there are two main classes:
 * Simulations which store their data in regular grids and require only next-neighbor access are called stencil codes. Many CFD applications belong to this category.
 * If the underlying graph is not a regular grid, the model may belong to the meshfree method class.

For steady-state simulations, equations define the relationships between elements of the modeled system and attempt to find a state in which the system is in equilibrium. Such models are often used in simulating physical systems, as a simpler modeling case before dynamic simulation is attempted.
 * Dynamic simulations attempt to capture changes in a system in response to (usually changing) input signals.
 * Stochastic models use random number generators to model chance or random events;
 * A discrete event simulation (DES) manages events in time. Most computer, logic-test and fault-tree simulations are of this type. In this type of simulation, the simulator maintains a queue of events sorted by the simulated time they should occur. The simulator reads the queue and triggers new events as each event is processed. It is not important to execute the simulation in real time. It is often more important to be able to access the data produced by the simulation and to discover logic defects in the design or the sequence of events.
 * A continuous dynamic simulation performs numerical solution of differential-algebraic equations or differential equations (either partial or ordinary). Periodically, the simulation program solves all the equations and uses the numbers to change the state and output of the simulation. Applications include flight simulators, construction and management simulation games, chemical process modeling, and simulations of electrical circuits. Originally, these kinds of simulations were actually implemented on analog computers, where the differential equations could be represented directly by various electrical components such as op-amps. By the late 1980s, however, most "analog" simulations were run on conventional digital computers that emulate the behavior of an analog computer.
 * A special type of discrete simulation that does not rely on a model with an underlying equation, but can nonetheless be represented formally, is agent-based simulation. In agent-based simulation, the individual entities (such as molecules, cells, trees or consumers) in the model are represented directly (rather than by their density or concentration) and possess an internal state and set of behaviors or rules that determine how the agent's state is updated from one time-step to the next.
 * Distributed models run on a network of interconnected computers, possibly through the Internet. Simulations dispersed across multiple host computers like this are often referred to as "distributed simulations". There are several standards for distributed simulation, including Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol (ALSP), Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS), the High Level Architecture (simulation) (HLA) and the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA).

Visualization
Formerly, the output data from a computer simulation was sometimes presented in a table or a matrix showing how data were affected by numerous changes in the simulation parameters. The use of the matrix format was related to traditional use of the matrix concept in mathematical models. However, psychologists and others noted that humans could quickly perceive trends by looking at graphs or even moving-images or motion-pictures generated from the data, as displayed by computer-generated-imagery (CGI) animation. Although observers could not necessarily read out numbers or quote math formulas, from observing a moving weather chart they might be able to predict events (and "see that rain was headed their way") much faster than by scanning tables of rain-cloud coordinates. Such intense graphical displays, which transcended the world of numbers and formulae, sometimes also led to output that lacked a coordinate grid or omitted timestamps, as if straying too far from numeric data displays. Today, weather forecasting models tend to balance the view of moving rain/snow clouds against a map that uses numeric coordinates and numeric timestamps of events.

Similarly, CGI computer simulations of CAT scans can simulate how a tumor might shrink or change during an extended period of medical treatment, presenting the passage of time as a spinning view of the visible human head, as the tumor changes.

Other applications of CGI computer simulations are being developed to graphically display large amounts of data, in motion, as changes occur during a simulation run.

In science

Generic examples of types of computer simulations in science, which are derived from an underlying mathematical description:
 * a numerical simulation of differential equations that cannot be solved analytically, theories that involve continuous systems such as phenomena in physical cosmology, fluid dynamics (e.g., climate models, roadway noise models, roadway air dispersion models), continuum mechanics and chemical kinetics fall into this category.
 * a stochastic simulation, typically used for discrete systems where events occur probabilistically and which cannot be described directly with differential equations (this is a discrete simulation in the above sense). Phenomena in this category include genetic drift, biochemical or gene regulatory networks with small numbers of molecules. (see also: Monte Carlo method).
 * multiparticle simulation of the response of nanomaterials at multiple scales to an applied force for the purpose of modeling their thermoelastic and thermodynamic properties. Techniques used for such simulations are Molecular dynamics, Molecular mechanics, Monte Carlo method, and Multiscale Green's function.

Specific examples of computer simulations include:
 * statistical simulations based upon an agglomeration of a large number of input profiles, such as the forecasting of equilibrium temperature of receiving waters, allowing the gamut of meteorological data to be input for a specific locale. This technique was developed for thermal pollution forecasting.
 * agent based simulation has been used effectively in ecology, where it is often called "individual based modeling" and is used in situations for which individual variability in the agents cannot be neglected, such as population dynamics of salmon and trout (most purely mathematical models assume all trout behave identically).
 * time stepped dynamic model. In hydrology there are several such hydrology transport models such as the SWMM and DSSAM Models developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for river water quality forecasting.
 * computer simulations have also been used to formally model theories of human cognition and performance, e.g., ACT-R.
 * computer simulation using molecular modeling for drug discovery.
 * computer simulation to model viral infection in mammalian cells.
 * computer simulation for studying the selective sensitivity of bonds by mechanochemistry during grinding of organic molecules.
 * Computational fluid dynamics simulations are used to simulate the behaviour of flowing air, water and other fluids. One-, two- and three-dimensional models are used. A one-dimensional model might simulate the effects of water hammer in a pipe. A two-dimensional model might be used to simulate the drag forces on the cross-section of an aeroplane wing. A three-dimensional simulation might estimate the heating and cooling requirements of a large building.
 * An understanding of statistical thermodynamic molecular theory is fundamental to the appreciation of molecular solutions. Development of the Potential Distribution Theorem (PDT) allows this complex subject to be simplified to down-to-earth presentations of molecular theory.

Notable, and sometimes controversial, computer simulations used in science include: Donella Meadows' World3 used in the Limits to Growth, James Lovelock's Daisyworld and Thomas Ray's Tierra.

In social sciences, computer simulation is an integral component of the five angles of analysis fostered by the data percolation methodology, which also includes qualitative and quantitative methods, reviews of the literature (including scholarly), and interviews with experts, and which forms an extension of data triangulation. Of course, similar to any other scientific method, replication is an important part of computational modeling

In practical contexts
Computer simulations are used in a wide variety of practical contexts, such as:
 * analysis of air pollutant dispersion using atmospheric dispersion modeling
 * design of complex systems such as aircraft and also logistics systems.
 * design of noise barriers to effect roadway noise mitigation
 * modeling of application performance
 * flight simulators to train pilots
 * weather forecasting
 * forecasting of risk
 * simulation of electrical circuits
 * Power system simulation
 * simulation of other computers is emulation.
 * forecasting of prices on financial markets (for example Adaptive Modeler)
 * behavior of structures (such as buildings and industrial parts) under stress and other conditions
 * design of industrial processes, such as chemical processing plants
 * strategic management and organizational studies
 * reservoir simulation for the petroleum engineering to model the subsurface reservoir
 * process engineering simulation tools.
 * robot simulators for the design of robots and robot control algorithms
 * urban simulation models that simulate dynamic patterns of urban development and responses to urban land use and transportation policies.
 * traffic engineering to plan or redesign parts of the street network from single junctions over cities to a national highway network to transportation system planning, design and operations. See a more detailed article on Simulation in Transportation.
 * modeling car crashes to test safety mechanisms in new vehicle models.
 * crop-soil systems in agriculture, via dedicated software frameworks (e.g. BioMA, OMS3, APSIM)

The reliability and the trust people put in computer simulations depends on the validity of the simulation model, therefore verification and validation are of crucial importance in the development of computer simulations. Another important aspect of computer simulations is that of reproducibility of the results, meaning that a simulation model should not provide a different answer for each execution. Although this might seem obvious, this is a special point of attention in stochastic simulations, where random numbers should actually be semi-random numbers. An exception to reproducibility are human-in-the-loop simulations such as flight simulations and computer games. Here a human is part of the simulation and thus influences the outcome in a way that is hard, if not impossible, to reproduce exactly.

Vehicle manufacturers make use of computer simulation to test safety features in new designs. By building a copy of the car in a physics simulation environment, they can save the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would otherwise be required to build and test a unique prototype. Engineers can step through the simulation milliseconds at a time to determine the exact stresses being put upon each section of the prototype.

Computer graphics can be used to display the results of a computer simulation. Animations can be used to experience a simulation in real-time, e.g., in training simulations. In some cases animations may also be useful in faster than real-time or even slower than real-time modes. For example, faster than real-time animations can be useful in visualizing the buildup of queues in the simulation of humans evacuating a building. Furthermore, simulation results are often aggregated into static images using various ways of scientific visualization.

In debugging, simulating a program execution under test (rather than executing natively) can detect far more errors than the hardware itself can detect and, at the same time, log useful debugging information such as instruction trace, memory alterations and instruction counts. This technique can also detect buffer overflow and similar "hard to detect" errors as well as produce performance information and tuning data.

Pitfalls
Although sometimes ignored in computer simulations, it is very important to perform a sensitivity analysis to ensure that the accuracy of the results is properly understood. For example, the probabilistic risk analysis of factors determining the success of an oilfield exploration program involves combining samples from a variety of statistical distributions using the Monte Carlo method. If, for instance, one of the key parameters (e.g., the net ratio of oil-bearing strata) is known to only one significant figure, then the result of the simulation might not be more precise than one significant figure, although it might (misleadingly) be presented as having four significant figures.

title: Computer simulation


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Talk:Educating Rita

....

Just a note
Some of these scenes are in the play retold by the actors and some of them are not there at all. Scene three in act two begins with Frank cursing "Sod them-no *censored* them! Fuck them, eh, Rita? Neither Rita or the audience have the first clue as to what he is referring to. As the dialogue progresses they audience is informed that he is upset because the students reported him since he had been very drunk while giving his last lecture. The audience never get to see the actual scene where this happens. They never witness Frank staggering and slurring in front of the class.

 * It's been a while, but isn't the scene of people cycling in France actually UCD? Autarch 18:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I suppose the above comment refers to the film rather than the stage play. <K  F>  11:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Minor Question
Is there any established relation between this Rita and the "lovely Rita, meter-maid" of The Beatles?--Awaler (talk) 18:31, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Calling "Rita" a GIRL?
What's with this business of calling "Rita" a girl; I thought feminism ended junk such as this quite some time ago!

She's over 21 and she's married; that makes her a WOMAN.

Sheesh; certain prejudices, even in such a potentially politically-correct charged world as "Wikipedia" sure can take a long time to die!

Satchmo Sings (talk) 03:15, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Based on a book?
This article is in Category:Plays based on books, but nothing in the article indicates that the play was based on a book. Is there important information missing from the article, or is this category incorrect? --RL0919 (talk) 21:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:Educating Rita


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User talk:Badred5

Hi from Bubloo anna!!

title: User talk:Badred5


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Ambrose Philips

Ambrose Philips (1674 – 18 June 1749) was an English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of his time, resulting in Henry Carey bestowing the nickname "Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean affected, weak, and maudlin speech or verse.

Life
Philips was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in this period. He worked for Jacob Tonson the bookseller, and his Pastorals opened the sixth volume of Tonson's Miscellanies (1709), which also contained the pastorals of Alexander Pope.

Philips was a staunch Whig, and a friend of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. In Nos. 22, 23, 30 and 32 (1713) of The Guardian he was rashly praised as the only worthy successor to Edmund Spenser. The writer, probably Thomas Tickell, pointedly ignored Pope's pastorals. In The Spectator Addison applauded Philips for his simplicity, and for having written English eclogues unencumbered by the machinery of classical mythology. Pope's jealousy resulted in an anonymous contribution to the Guardian (No. 40), in which he drew an ironic comparison between his own and Philips's pastorals, censuring himself and praising Philips's worst passages. Philips is said to have threatened to hit Pope with a rod he kept hung up at Button's Coffee House for the purpose.

At Pope's request, John Gay burlesqued Philips's pastorals in his Shepherd's Week, but the parody was admired for the very quality of simplicity which it was intended to ridicule. Samuel Johnson describes the relations between Pope and Philips as a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. Pope lost no opportunity of mocking Philips, who figured in the Bathos and the Dunciad, as Macer in the Characters; and in the instructions to a porter how to find Edmund Curll's authors, Philips is a Pindaric writer in red stockings. Others who ridiculed him included Henry Carey, who coined the nickname "Namby-Pamby" in the 1725 poem of that name:

 All ye poets of the age, All ye witlings of the stage … Namby-Pamby is your guide, Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride. Namby-Pamby, pilly-piss, Rhimy-pim'd on Missy Miss Tartaretta Tartaree From the navel to the knee; That her father's gracy grace Might give him a placy place.

Pope's poem The Dunciad (1728) follows: "Beneath his reign, shall ... Namby Pamby be prefer'd for Wit!" Gay and Swift also picked up the nickname, which became a general term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech or verse.

In 1718, Philips started a Whig paper, The Free-Thinker, in conjunction with Hugh Boulter, then vicar of St Olave's, Southwark. Philips had been made justice of the peace for Westminster, and in 1717 a commissioner for the lottery, and when Boulter was made Archbishop of Armagh, Philips accompanied him as secretary. Between 1727 and 1749, he sat in the Irish House of Commons for Armagh Borough, was secretary to the lord chancellor in 1726, and in 1733 became a judge of the prerogative court. His patron died in 1742, and six years later Philips returned to London, where he died on 18 June 1749.

Works
His contemporary reputation rested on his pastorals and epistles, particularly the description of winter addressed by him from Copenhagen (1709) to the Earl of Dorset. In T. H. Ward's English Poets, however, he is represented by two of the simple and charming pieces addressed to the infant children of John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret, and of Daniel Pulteney. These were scoffed at by Jonathan Swift, and earned for Philips the nickname of "Namby-Pamby" as described above.

Philips's works include an abridgment of Bishop John Hacket's Life of John Williams (1700); The Thousand and One Days: Persian Tales (1722), from the French of F Pétis de la Croix; three plays: The Distrest Mother (1712), an adaptation of Racine's Andromaque; The Briton (1722); Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1723). Many of his poems, which included some translations from Sappho, Anacreon and Pindar, were published separately, and a collected edition appeared in 1748.

title: Ambrose Philips


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User:Sumeet

This is Sumeet Kulkarni

title: User:Sumeet


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François Pétis de la Croix

François Pétis de la Croix (1653–1713) was a French orientalist.

De la Croix was born in Paris, the son of the Arabic interpreter of the French court and author, also named François Pétis de la Croix (1622–1695) and inherited this office at his father's death, afterwards transmitting it to his own son, Alexandre Louis Marie, who also became a notable orientalist. At an early age, de la Croix was sent by Jean-Baptiste Colbert to the Middle East; during the ten years he spent in Syria, Persia and Turkey he learned Arabic, Persian and Turkish and collected materials which he would use in future writings.

Travel in the Middle East
In 1670 Pétis de la Croix, age seventeen, travelled to the Middle East on an extended language course as part of a program devised by Colbert to create a pool of capable foreign officials – les Jeunes de Langues. After a study period in Aleppo, he arrived in 1674 in Isfahan where he stayed until June 1676. From a short description of his stay we learn of his deep interest in the manners of the "dervish":"Having worked six full months on the Shahnama, together with Mulla Kerim, the extreme dedication made me fall into an illness lasting two months – on the brink of death – from which I hardly recovered to find that notwithstanding the twenty volumes of books I had read, I did not yet know the registers of the court, the patents of the king or the rules of the merchants (...) I still had to learn from a certain theological and very difficult book called Masnavi (comprising at least 90,000 verses – the good people of the country have it that it contains the Philosopher's stone). I looked for someone who knew the book, but against payment I found no one and was obliged to turn to a great superior of the Mevlevi. A friend conducted me there and I had hardly paid my respects or he offered me his services for the understanding of the Masnavi and he allowed me during four or five months to see him very frequently to study. I succeeded in this study (...) his name was Dervish Moqlas. Since he was capable of leading a party I knew he was under observation of the court and so I had to take my precautions. I did not hesitate to inform Monseigneur Murtaza, brother in law to the king, and Myrza Ali Reza, also from the king's family and Cheikh al Islam, the head of the law, that I only went there to read the Masnavi, which they approved."

In the same description, Pétis de la Croix tells of a prank played on him by his Agha who during a visit to a Bektashi convent caused him to pose as a shaykh: "I said them the fatha (first sura of the Qur'an) over the meat with the usual movements; after the meal I read extensively from the Qur'an and I chose the chapters dealing with morals and not with Mahomet which I explained according to the commentaries I had read. I also clarified some difficulties they had (...) of course my Agha could not help making a mockery of this; he almost choked laughing and told everyone I had come all the way from France to teach the Asian Muslims the Qur'an."

Despite the flourishing of Orientalism in France in the 17th century, and despite the fact that Antoine Galland, Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville and François Pétis de la Croix at one time frequented the Wednesday afternoon discussions – les Mercuriales – of Gilles Ménage together, little has remained of the explicit and detailed references to the Masnavi or Sufism in general one could have expected from Pétis de la Croix – or François Bernier for that matter.

One should however keep in mind the real risk run by deviating opinion. It was not until 1682 following the Versailles edict that only the intention to kill with poison and sacrilege coupled with that intention could be withheld as grounds for capital punishment over witchcraft. The proceedings against the Quietists thus only narrowly escaped the greater dangers of the lingering witch craze.

In 1685 concerted Catholic censorship became a matter of State after the edict of Fontainebleau; the opinion had by then developed that there was much resemblance between the Quietism of East and West (see: "Lettre sur le quiétisme des Indes" by François Bernier in Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans, Henri Basnage de Beauval (ed.), September 1688).

Later life
He served briefly as secretary to the French ambassador in Morocco, and was interpreter to the French forces sent against Algiers, contributing to the satisfactory settlement of the treaty of peace, which was drawn up by him in Turkish and ratified in 1684. He conducted the negotiations with Tunis and Tripoli in 1685, and those with Morocco in 1687; and in 1692 he was ultimately rewarded with an appointment to the Arabic chair in the Collège de France, which he held until his death in 1713.

Works
He published Contes Turcs (Paris, 1707), an Armenian Dictionary, and an Account of Ethiopia.

He also wrote The Thousand and One Days (Les mille et un jours), a collection of fairy tales based on the model of One Thousand and One Nights. It was published in five volumes between 1710 and 1712. He supposedly translated it from a Persian compilation titled Hazar u yek ruz (هزار و یک روز, lit. A Thousand and One Days) which he acquired from one 'Dervish Mocles' or 'Moklas' in Isfahan in 1675. In fact, it was a very free adaptation of the Turkish Ferec baʿd eş-şidde (Relief After Adversity). The book's publisher Barbin asked Alain-René Lesage to rework de la Croix's translations into marketable French. Barbin also included two of the stories at the end of the eighth volume of Antoine Galland's Les mille et une nuits (1709), outraging Galland, who switched publishers for subsequent volumes. Stories from The Thousand and One Days inspired other works including Carlo Gozzi's Il re cervo (The King Stag) and Turandot.

He edited and published in 1710 his father's authoritative biography of Genghis Khan, History of Genghizcan the Great, First Emperor of the Ancient Moguls and Tartars, translated into English by Penelope Aubin and published in 1722. This work was popularized in the American colonies by Benjamin Franklin and may have influenced Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

His best-known work is his French translation of Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi's Zafarnama, which was published after Pétis de la Croix's death (4 vols., Paris, 1722; Eng. trans. by J Darby, London, 1723). Although the translation is generally well-regarded, Pétis de la Croix erroneously identified Timur himself as the biography's sponsor, when in fact the book was commissioned by Timur's grandson Ibrahim Sultan.

title: François Pétis de la Croix