text:
The Pleasure of the Text

The Pleasure of the Text (Le Plaisir du Texte) is a 1973 book by the literary theorist Roland Barthes.

Summary
Barthes sets out some of his ideas about literary theory. He divides the effects of texts into two: plaisir ("pleasure") and jouissance, translated as "bliss" but the French word also carries the meaning of "orgasm".

The distinction corresponds to a further distinction Barthes makes between texte lisible and texte scriptible, translated respectively as "readerly" and "writerly" texts (a more literal translation would be "readable" and "writable"). Scriptible is a neologism in French. The pleasure of the text corresponds to the readerly text, which does not challenge the reader's position as a subject. The writerly text provides bliss, which explodes literary codes and allows the reader to break out of his or her subject position.

The "readerly" and the "writerly" texts were identified and explained in Barthes' S/Z. Barthes argues that "writerly" texts are more important than "readerly" ones because he sees the text's unity as forever being re-established by its composition, the codes that form and constantly slide around within the text. The reader of a readerly text is largely passive, whereas the person who engages with a writerly text has to make an active effort, and even to re-enact the actions of the writer himself. The different codes (hermeneutic, action, symbolic, semic, and historical) that Barthes defines in S/Z inform and reinforce one another, making for an open text that is indeterminant precisely because it can always be written anew.

As a consequence, although one may experience pleasure in the readerly text, it is when one sees the text from the writerly point of view that the experience is blissful.

Influences
Few writers in cultural studies and the social sciences have used and developed the distinctions that Barthes makes. The British sociologist of education Stephen Ball has argued that the National Curriculum in England and Wales is a writerly text, by which he means that schools, teachers and pupils have a certain amount of scope to reinterpret and develop it. On the other hand, artist Roy Ascott's pioneering telematic artwork, La Plissure du Texte ("The Pleating of the Texte", 1983) drew inspiration from Barthes' Le Plaisir du Texte. Ascott modified the title to emphasize the pleasure of collective textual pleating. In Ascott's artwork, the pleating of the text resulted from a process that the artist calls "distributed authorship," which expands Barthes' concept of the "readerly text." In Ascott's work, the text itself is the result of a collaborative reading/writing process among participants around the world, connected via computer networking (telematics). Ascott's work thus unravels the distinction between readers and writers, demonstrating a much greater degree of permeability than Barthes' distinction permits (and beyond Barthes' theory of the death of the author). Moreover, the mechanism of distributed authorship enabled Ascott's "planetary fairytale" to self-pleat in a way that, like a surrealist exquisite corpse, could not have been the product of a single mind. Rather, Ascott suggests, the work emerged as the result of an emergent field of collective intelligence that joined minds together in a global field of consciousness.

title: The Pleasure of the Text


text:
Provincial Reconstruction Team

A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) was a unit introduced by the United States government, consisting of military officers, diplomats, and reconstruction subject matter experts, working to support reconstruction efforts in unstable states. PRTs were first established in Afghanistan in early 2002, and were used in Iraq as well. While the concepts are similar, PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq had separate compositions and missions. Their common purpose, however, was to empower local governments to govern their constituents more effectively.

Structure
A PRT included a military component (Civil Affairs/Force Protection, etc.), civilian police advisors, and civilian representatives of US (or other national) government foreign affairs agencies. In a US-led PRT, this generally included a representative from USAID, the Department of State, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Justice. They were assisted by public diplomacy and reporting staff. The PRTs were the primary civil-military relations tool in Afghanistan and Iraq and have been described as "'a means to extend the reach and enhance the legitimacy of the central government'" into the provinces of Afghanistan.

A PRT in Afghanistan was commanded by a military officer, generally of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (USAF) or Commander (USN). The officer was supported by a team of various specialties including civil affairs, engineers, medical staff, public affairs, information operations, logistics and a platoon of National Guard soldiers for security. The staff generally numbered between sixty and one hundred persons and trained together as a unit prior to deployment. There was no lead agency or department; the US government civilians and the military commander form an executive committee of equals which developed a strategy for the PRT, drawing on the expertise of all contributing agencies. By 2009, the military still dominated the role within PRTs as only three to four civilians were posted to each team of eighty to two hundred and fifty personnel. The lack of civilian personnel civilian executive agencies was a serious concern of CENTCOM commanders. Activities in Afghanistan focused on extending the reach of the central government into the provinces.

In an Iraq PRT, the Team Leader was a civilian who reports to the US Department of State; the deputy team leader was generally a military officer. While civil affairs members were present on the team, there were more civilians than military personnel on the team. Functional areas included rule of law, reconstruction and development, agriculture, and governance. Some Iraq PRTs were embedded into the Brigade Combat Team (BCT) with which they are colocated (ePRT). The BCT retained responsibility for providing security for the civilian team members. While PRTs in Afghanistan focused on short-term effects and ensuring an attractive alternative to the insurgency was available, Iraq PRTs focused on building the governance capacity at the local levels of government.

Public Diplomacy
Public diplomacy was an essential element to successful Provincial Reconstruction Team projects. PRTs, in Afghanistan, were tasked with a specific area of a province and coordinate, develop, and fund local projects with the aid of the government. These projects enabled the local population to become familiar with and trust the U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan. Projects supported by PRTs were created and approved by the ranks of the entire provincial government in Afghanistan. The ability of PRTS to conduct Public diplomacy and their ability to work with the provincial government made counterinsurgency objectives obtainable.

The PRT's civil affairs line of operation exerted a large amount of public diplomacy. CA operations were responsible, along with the provincial government, for implementation and supervision of projects in the province. These projects included public affairs like humanitarian supply distribution, like school and medical supplies. Civil affairs operations were responsible for reaching out to the population to determine what is needed to make society stable and secure from the insurgent ideology. To do this they had to get to know the environment, including the people, places, and culture of their section of the province.

In addition to the military cooperation with the provincial government, civilian agencies like the U.S. department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development, had a strong hand in the projects structured by the PRTs. For example, these agencies worked together to improve farming techniques and introduce ways to bring goods to local markets to meet the increasing demand rather than taking them into Pakistan. PRTs' interaction with the Afghan people enhanced U.S. public relations and allow the civilians of Afghanistan to trust the American presence in their domain. The only way that the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan can achieve victory is through long-term patience and keeping the people's political will through the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the U.S. military.

Information operations associated with PRTs are also a vital aspect to conducting public diplomacy in order to defeat insurgencies. It is imperative that all actors in the counterinsurgency effort coordinate what they are relaying to the public that they are operating in. These operations can include psychological operations, operational security, and military deception operations to deceive the enemy. Information operations assist civil affairs, medical outreach, and agricultural projects by providing information to the local Afghani's about counterinsurgency projects and illustrating beneficial effects of them to the community. These operations, as a part of PRTs, enabled to the civilians to see how the U.S. military-civilian efforts work secure their society and defeat the insurgents influence. Information operations must be consistent between civilian and military operations.

The goal of the PRTs was to "enhance their popular legitimacy of the provincial government by developing their capacity to conduct reconstruction and provide effective governance." In order for the civilian population to feel secure the PRTs needed to enhance effectiveness and strength of the provincial government in the area. In order to support the counterinsurgency efforts PRTs built government legitimacy by reconstruction and development to separate the insurgents from the people and to instill trust in U.S. COIN operations. In order for these Provincial Reconstruction Teams to be successful at building the populations trust and security in the provincial government and not in the insurgents, the PRTs needed to utilize a large amount of public diplomacy to reach out to the civilians of these Afghan provinces.

Funding
The main funding for Afghan PRTs came from Provincial Reconstruction and Development Committee (PRDC) and Quick Response Fund (QRF) programs under the International Security Assistance Force. Also, some funding came from USAID; namely under the Community Stabilization Program (CSP); the Local Governance Program (LGP); Community Action Program (CAP); Izdihar Economic Growth Program; and the INMA Agri-business Program.

Additional sources were: the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF), the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) was the main fund used by the United States Army or USMC Civil Affairs Teams in both Iraq and Afghanistan. By the new regulations that came out in early 2009, the Iraqi Government has to pay half (50%) of projects above $750,000.

CERP Officers had authority to sign agreements with contractors up to $200,000. The Pay Agent disbursed cash or paid by electronic transfer (EFT) in Afghanistan. The PRT Commander (LTC or CDR) could approve projects up to $25,000. CERP guidelines required that development projects be coordinated through and sustained by local governments and prohibit the use of funding for the salaries of government officials. The monies could not be used by police or security forces. CERP projects from up to $200,000 had to be approved by the Task Force Commander. The contracts were written in US Engineering standards. The Army usually paid by electronic funds transfer as pay agents are discouraged from paying cash to contractors in Afghanistan. The projects were paid in phases. Engineers worked through project details with contractors. If the contractors failed the performance work standard, the engineer could recommend that the PRT withhold funds until project deficiencies were corrected. The project could also be cancelled.

One of the issues that held up a project was sustainability. If the project was not self-sustaining, such as an electric utility in a small village or town, it would not be approved by higher headquarters. Mandated 'Terms of Use' contracts were signed by the end user of the projects to insure PRTs were providing a self-sufficient resource and would not be responsible for its upkeep. One year guarantee on contractor workmanship was standard.

Other funds that were not used by the Civil Affairs Section: the Development Fund for Iraq. (DFI) and funding targeted specifically for USAID Focused Stabilization, Community Action and Local Governance Program (LGP) as well as PRT development funding.

Concept and history

The overall PRT concept in Afghanistan was to use relatively small joint civil-military units to achieve three objectives. PRT objectives were to improve security, to extend the authority of the Afghan central government, and finally to facilitate reconstruction.

The first PRT was located in Gardez in Paktia Province, co-located with US Special Forces "A" team members. A Civil Affairs team provided the daily contact with locals and tribal leaders. A contingent of the 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division provided security in and around the compound. The sole civilian when the PRT became fully operational on February 1, 2003, was Thomas Praster of the State Department. At the end of March, he was joined by US Army Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Hampton, who worked under contract with the USAID providing overwatch to the rebuilding of schools and medical clinics throughout Paktia, Khost, and Ghazni Provinces.

Security was always an issue as the 100 by 125 foot mud-walled compound was attacked over 35 times by 105 mm rockets and RPGs. The PRT initiative expanded throughout most of the provinces for the purpose of reconstruction and reconciliation programs throughout Afghanistan. The 1st Provincial Reconstruction Team laid the critical cornerstones to future PRT initiatives throughout Afghanistan. PRTs were part of the NATO-led ISAF mission beginning on October 5, 2006. The training for the majority of the American PRTs took place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was later moved to Camp Atterbury, Indiana. The training was overseen by the 189th Infantry Brigade, which specialized in training PRTs. Other units, including the 158th Infantry Brigade, supported the 189th as it trained the PRTs in groups of twelve at a time. The training took anywhere from six weeks to three months.

After returning from an international conference in Munich in mid-February 2011, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused foreign reconstruction teams of undermining efforts to build up the state's institutions, and said they would have to go as Afghan forces take over security. "Afghanistan clearly explained its viewpoint on Provincial Reconstruction Teams and structures parallel to the Afghan government - private security companies and all activities or bodies which are hindering the Afghan government's development and hindering the governance of Afghanistan," he said. Meanwhile, five rocket-propelled grenades hit a newly built South Korean military base in Parwan Province, northern Afghanistan, which housed hundreds of members of Korea's provincial reconstruction team and civilian aid workers. No one was injured in the attack, but it came hours after a visit by South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, raising suspicions of Taliban involvement. The opening ceremony of the base was postponed indefinitely.

Afghan PRTs
PRTs ceased operations by 2013 and are no longer operative in Afghanistan.

Regional Command North

 * PRT Badakhshan (Germany)
 * PRT Baghlan (Hungary)
 * PRT Balkh (Sweden)
 * PRT Faryab (Norway)
 * PRT Kunduz (Germany)

Regional Command East

 * PRT Bamiyan (New Zealand)
 * PRT Ghazni (Poland, USA)
 * PRT Khowst (Canada)
 * PRT Kunar (USA)
 * PRT Laghman (USA - USAF Lt Col Commander)
 * PRT Logar (Czech Republic)
 * PRT Nangarhar (USA)
 * PRT Kapisa (USA)
 * PRT Nurestan (USA)
 * PRT Paktia (USA)
 * PRT Paktika (Poland, South Korea, USA)
 * PRT Panjshir (USA)
 * PRT Parwan/Kapisa (USA)
 * PRT Wardak (Turkey)

Regional Command South

 * PRT Kandahar (Canada)
 * PRT Uruzgan (Australia, The Netherlands, USA)
 * PRT Zabol (Romania, USA)

Regional Command Southwest

 * Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (UK)
 * PRT LashKar Gah (Denmark, Estonia, UK, USA)

Regional Command West

 * PRT Badghis (Spain)
 * PRT Farah (USA)
 * PRT Gower (Lithuania)
 * PRT Herat (Italy)

Iraq PRTs
The PRT concept was imported from Afghanistan into Iraq in 2005. That year, 10 PRTs were established in Nineveh, at-Ta'Mim, Saladin, Diyala, Basra (UK), Dhi Qar (Italy), Erbil (South Korea), Baghdad, Anbar, and Babil. As part of the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, the number of PRTs was expanded to cover every province in the country. Additionally, ePRTs were rolled out to work with the sub-provincial levels of government. By 2008, there were 31 PRTs, including 13 ePRTs, located throughout Iraq. Beginning in 2008, a PRT including USDA agricultural advisers worked with Iraqi farmers and created the Green Mada'in Association for Agricultural Development, an agricultural cooperative of 800 farmers in Mada'in Qada. The book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for Iraqi Hearts and Minds, by former PRT Team Leader Peter Van Buren, covers the Green Mada'in and other reconstruction projects in Iraq. PRTs are no longer operative in Iraq.

Relationship with NGOs
Many NGOs were critical of PRT activity, claiming that the mixture of humanitarian and military operations had "blurred the line" between combatant and civilian. Organizations such as Save the Children, CARE International, and InterAction have all complained that PRTs put aid workers at risk. However, evidence of such a relationship has largely been anecdotal. Empirical studies on aid worker insecurity in Afghanistan have failed to show a statistically significant relationship between attacks on NGOs and their proximity to the military in general and PRTs specifically. Watts (2004) did not find evidence indicating heightened aid worker insecurity in provinces where the US military was present. Similarly, Mitchell (2015) was unable to discover a relationship between attacks against NGOs and their proximity to US-led PRTs.

In addition, Refugees International made the observation that the cost of PRTs undertaking small-scale reconstruction projects was far higher than the same projects could be accomplished by NGOs and development agencies and recommended that PRTs focus on maintaining security rather than acting as aid agencies.

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

title: Provincial Reconstruction Team


text:
Duke of Sieradz-Łęczyca

From 1138 to 1228, part of the Duchy of Kraków and Sandomierz, belonging to the high-dukes of Poland.

Dukes of Sieradz-Łęczyca
After 1305 parts of the united Kingdom of Poland initially as two vassal duchies, later incorporated as Łęczyca Voivodeship and Sieradz Voivodeship.
 * 1228–1232 Henry I the Bearded (Henryk I Brodaty)
 * 1232–1233 Konrad of Masovia (Konrad Mazowiecki)
 * 1234–1247 Konrad of Masovia (Konrad Mazowiecki)
 * 1247–1260 Casimir I of Kuyavia (Kazimierz I Mazowiecki)
 * 1260–1275 Leszek the Black (Leszek Czarny)
 * 1275–1294 divided into two duchies of Sieradz and Lęczyca (see below)
 * 1294–1297 Władysław I the Elbow-high (Władysław Łokietek)
 * 1297–1305 Wenceslaus II of Bohemia (Wacław II Czeski)

Dukes of Sieradz

 * 1233–1234 Boleslaus I of Mazovia (Bolesław I Mazowiecki)
 * 1275–1288 Leszek the Black (Leszek Czarny)
 * 1288–1294 Władysław I the Elbow-high (Władysław Łokietek )
 * 1327–1339 Przemysl of Cuiavia (Przemysł Kujawski)

After 1305 part of the united Kingdom of Poland as a vassal duchy, later after 1339 incorporated by the king Casimir III the Great as the Sieradz Voivodeship.

Dukes of Łęczyca

 * 1233–1234 Konrad of Masovia (Konrad Mazowiecki)
 * 1275–1294 Casimir II of Łęczyca (Kazimierz II)
 * 1329–1343 Ladislaus of Dobrzyn (Władysław Dobrzyński)

After 1305 part of the united Kingdom of Poland as a vassal duchy, later after 1343 incorporated by the king Casimir III the Great as the Łęczyca Voivodeship.

title: Duke of Sieradz-Łęczyca


text:
Hamamatsuchō Station

Hamamatsuchō Station (浜松町駅) is a major interchange railway station in Hamamatsuchō, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East) and also by Tokyo Monorail.

Lines
Hamamatsuchō Station is served by two JR East lines: the circular Yamanote Line and Keihin-Tōhoku Line. All trains on these lines stop at Hamamatsuchō.

It is also the terminus of the Tokyo Monorail line to Haneda Airport. The official name of the monorail station is Monorail Hamamatsuchō Station (モノレール浜松町駅).

JR East
The JR East station consists of two platforms serving four tracks, with cross-platform interchange in the direction of travel between the Yamanote line (tracks 2 and 3) and the Keihin-Tōhoku line (tracks 1 and 4).

Tokyo Monorail
The Tokyo Monorail platforms are located to the west of the JR station in a separate elevated structure. Two side platforms serve a single track, with one platform used for boarding passengers, and the other platform used for alighting passengers.

Japan's domestic airlines (JAL, ANA, Skymark Airlines, and Air Do) operate check in services for domestic flights from Haneda airport along with ticketing facilities just outside the main Monorail entrances.

Facilities

 * Japan Airlines at one time operated a domestic flights only ticketing facility on the third floor of the station.

History
The JR station opened on December 16, 1909, as an intermediate station on the newly opened Shinagawa to Karasumori section of the Japanese National Railways.

The Tokyo Monorail station opened on September 17, 1964.

Passenger statistics
In fiscal 2013, the JR East station was used by an average of 155,784 passengers daily (boarding passengers only), making it the sixteenth-busiest station operated by JR East. Over the same fiscal year, the Tokyo Monorail station was used by an average of 108,080 passengers daily (exiting and entering passengers), making it the busiest station operated by Tokyo Monorail.

The passenger figures for the JR East station (boarding passengers only) for previous years are as shown below.

Surrounding area

 * Daimon Station, served by the Toei Ōedo Line and the Toei Asakusa Line, is within easy walking distance, although some route maps do not mark them as an interchange. The 1-minute walk is fully signed and easy to locate. When arriving on a train from south, train cars at the front of the train are closest to the exit to Daimon station.
 * The station is partially under and directly connected to the World Trade Center (Tokyo).
 * Acty Shiodome, the fourth tallest residential building in Japan is a 3-minute walk to the north.
 * Hamarikyu Gardens - 1/2 mile north-east
 * Kyu Shiba Rikyu Garden - 1/8 mile east
 * Shiodome City Center Shopping Mall - 10-minute walk
 * Tsukiji Fish Market - 15-minute walk
 * Hato Bus Tour terminal

title: Hamamatsuchō Station


text:
Bobbio Orosius

The Bobbio Orosius (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS D. 23. Sup.) is an early 7th century Insular manuscript of the Chronicon of Paulus Orosius. The manuscript has 48 folios and measures 210 by 150 mm. It is thought to have been produced at the scriptorium of Bobbio Abbey, which was founded by Saint Columbanus in 612. It appears in an inventory of the monastic library done in 1461. The monks gave the manuscript to the Ambrosian Library when it was founded in 1606 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo.

Carpet page
It contains the earliest surviving carpet page in Insular art. The carpet page is on folio 1v. Although it is simpler in design than later carpet pages and contains motifs not found in later carpet pages, it shows a subtlety of pattern and alternation of colors common to Insular manuscripts. It consists of a large central rosette surrounded by four corner rosettes, all contained within a rectangular frame. The vertical panels of the frame contain cable motifs; the frame on the left has a single larger cable of white on pink, while the frame on the right has two smaller cables of white on pink separated by a yellow bar. The upper and lower panels are broken into smaller square panels separated by thin bars. The smaller panels are composed of chevrons and triangles that alternate in pink and yellow. The side top and bottom panels continue to the right edge of the frame. Above the left vertical frame there are two square frames containing circular motifs; the top with a cross inside a circle, and the bottom with a rosette. The cross within the circle in the top panel is similar to the cross within a circle found in the center of the carpet page on folio 192v of the Book of Durrow. Six concentric circles surround the central rosette. The page is faded and damaged so that it is difficult to be certain of its original appearance. It has been suggested that the carpet page is later addition to the manuscript.

The carpet page faces the first page of text in the manuscript. The initial P and the opening words Praeceptis tuis par(rui) are many times larger than the rest of the text and are of hollow shafted capitals, with stem of the P descending the entire length of the text block. The capitals are filled with pink and orange pigment. There is an initial D on folio 5 which is outlined by dots and is filled with orange. There is also a larger initial N on folio 33 that has a cable pattern in white on orange in the uprights. The crossing bar is green, while orange dots fill the background.

title: Bobbio Orosius


text:
Talk:Quentin Tarantino

Semi-protected edit request on 22 February 2024
X=As the page is. Y=Add "author" to the short description and main description. 82.21.83.129 (talk) 15:40, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: he is mainly known as a film-maker. M.Bitton (talk) 14:48, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2024
You need to add that he likes feet unironically. This is a travesty that this information is not available here. 24.29.243.127 (talk) 03:39, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Jamedeus (talk) 04:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

QT Intro
Quentin Tarantino intro includes an uncited qoute: "the single most influential director of his generation”. To date, I have been unable to find this exact quote referenced anywhere. At present, this quote should be tagged . Looking forclarity (talk) 13:54, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

 * Typically text in the article lead doesn't have inline citations, per MOS:LEADCITE. If you look under the Appraisals section you'll find two citations for the quotation. Ligaturama (talk) 14:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. Looking forclarity (talk) 13:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

suggested rewrite on sentence in the intro
"Tarantino's career, his films have garnered a cult following; as well as critical and commercial success, he has been considered "the single most influential director of his generation"."

this reads very weirdly to me. usually a semicolon placed like this implies that the following subsentence will build off the content before the semicolon, but here it seems to go off in another direction. 216.164.249.213 (talk) 20:59, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

"Identifies as having Cherokee descent"
This language is very pointlessly clunky and strange sounding. You don't "identify as" having Cherokee descent, you just have it, the same as any other race/ethnicity. It stands out as a counterproductive attempt at PC language. It especially stands out in the full sentence, "Tarantino identifies as having Cherokee descent through his mother, who is of Irish descent on her other side; his father is of Italian descent." Cherokee heritage is the only one with the "identifies as" added. It isn't claimed that his mother "identifies as having Irish descent" or his father "identifies as having Italian descent."

Proposed rewrite:

"Tarantino is of Cherokee descent through his mother, who is of Irish descent on her other side; his father is of Italian descent."

Alternatively:

"Tarantino has Cherokee descent through his mother, who is of Irish descent on her other side; his father is of Italian descent."

I wasn't sure which one sounded the most natural. Both sound a lot more natural than "identifies as having Cherokee descent," though. 2601:483:4B80:F480:0:0:0:BF0F (talk) 05:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Quentin Tarantino


text:
Lyman Spitzer

Lyman Spitzer Jr. (June 26, 1914 – March 31, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation and plasma physics and in 1946 conceived the idea of telescopes operating in outer space. Spitzer invented the stellarator plasma device and is the namesake of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. As a mountaineer, he made the first ascent of Mount Thor, with Donald C. Morton.

Early life and education
Spitzer was born to a Presbyterian family in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Lyman Spitzer Sr. and Blanche Carey (née Brumback). Through his paternal grandmother, he was related to inventor Eli Whitney. Spitzer graduated from Scott High School. He then attended Phillips Academy from 1929 to 1931 and went on to Yale College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1935 and was a member of Skull and Bones. During a year of study at St John's College, Cambridge, he was influenced by Arthur Eddington and the young Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Returning to the U.S., Spitzer received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1938 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "The spectra of late supergiant stars", under the direction of Henry Norris Russell.

Mountaineering
In 1965, Spitzer and Donald Morton became the first to climb Mount Thor 1675 m, located in Auyuittuq National Park, on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. As a member of the American Alpine Club, Spitzer established the "Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge Climbing Award" (Now called the "Cutting Edge Grant") which gives $12,000 to several mountain climbing expeditions annually.

Science
Spitzer's brief time as a faculty member at Yale was interrupted by his wartime work on the development of sonar. In 1947, at the age of 33, he succeeded Russell as director of Princeton University Observatory, an institution that, virtually jointly with his contemporary and friend Martin Schwarzschild, he continued to head until 1979.

Spitzer's research centered on the interstellar medium, to which he brought a deep understanding of plasma physics. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was among the first to recognize star formation as an ongoing contemporary process. His monographs, "Diffuse Matter in Space" (1968) and "Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium" (1978) consolidated decades of work, and themselves became the standard texts for some decades more.

Spitzer was the founding director of Project Matterhorn, Princeton University's pioneering program in controlled thermonuclear research, renamed in 1961 as Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He was an early proponent of space optical astronomy in general, and in particular of the project that became Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1981, Spitzer became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Death
Spitzer died suddenly on March 31, 1997, after completing a regular day of work at Princeton University. He was buried at Princeton Cemetery and was survived by wife Doreen Canaday Spitzer (1914-2010), four children, and ten grandchildren. Among Spitzer's four children is neurobiologist Nicholas C. Spitzer, who is currently the professor and vice chair in neurobiology at UC San Diego.

Honors
Awards
 * Fellow of the American Physical Society (1941)
 * Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1952)
 * Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1953)
 * Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1953)
 * Member of the American Philosophical Society (1959)
 * Bruce Medal (1973)
 * Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1974)
 * James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (1975)
 * Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1978)
 * National Medal of Science (1979)
 * Franklin Medal (1980)
 * Prix Jules Janssen of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society) (1980)
 * Crafoord Prize (1985)

Named after him
 * Asteroid 2160 Spitzer
 * Spitzer Space Telescope
 * Lyman Spitzer Library in Davenport College, Yale University
 * Lyman Spitzer Building at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ
 * Lyman Spitzer Planetarium at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, VT
 * Answer to the final question on NTN Buzztime's Showdown on September 16, 2008.
 * Spitzer Building in Toledo, Ohio.
 * Landau-Spitzer Award (American Physical Society)

title: Lyman Spitzer


text:
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/News style

Target audience
Who is the target audience for Wikipedia articles?

The answers to this question may resolve a dispute on the software engineering page. One author wants to remove some introduction content, because it is obvious (and it is obvious to professionals). Another wants to include the introductory content because non-software engineers (like high-school students and general public) may not know it very well. Articles could be targeted to experts, general public, or to high-school or college students writing papers on these topics. How should we balance the conflicting needs of different groups?

The SE page starts off with 3 very general and simple paragraphs that (hopefully) anyone can read. The rest of the article delves into complex detail. 204.134.9.1

 * See this very old post on the mailing list for the views of Larry and Jimbo. I think we need to assume people aren't stupid, so listing examples of software is unnecessary if you've stated that software engineers develop software, you can expect people to know what software is without giving examples of it. Angela 16:49, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

 * I always try to write the lead paragraph for a literate adult whose education somehow completely passed over the subject of the article, and rely on links in case the terms being used to define are themselves unfamiliar. So for software engineering, assume the reader has heard of both software and engineering in general, explain what "software engineering" is, and contrast with computer programming, which is what it's most frequently confused with. Stan 19:57, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I've taken my example from what seemed to be the best articles in the general field. I hope my articles would be intelligible to year six primary school (which by no coincidence I teach, age about 11 years) and useful to anyone without a major subject (ie including final year) in the field at pass level (or better) at an Australian university. That's an extra eight years education between the lower and upper marks but it's the standard I thought others were setting and I find it surprisingly achievable. It's also a good test of NPOV... year six are really good at cutting through weaselwords, and people who've studied the topic for two years at uni are pretty critical readers. So, if you can imagine your perspective being respected by both these extreme audiences, it's pretty safe, and otherwise an alarm bell should ring.

 * Having written that first and then checked Larry and Jimbo's views they seem to line up pretty well. Andrewa 20:18, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Our target audience is encyclopedia readers. Beyond that, I think Andrewa has the right approach. Martin 00:01, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I was wondering recently how many people (who don't edit and write for Wikipedia) use Wikipedia as a resource. It would be interesting to conduct some polls of those who don't edit here. Kingturtle 00:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I try to write in news style. If we all did this, then Wikipedia would be a concise, general and a whole bunch of specialized encyclopedias all in one. --mav 04:21, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

 * I think Stan Shebs has it right. The opening paragraphs of an article should give an overview, suitable for someone who has no knowledge of the subject, but can follow links. Experts are free to skip to the next section! ;) -- Tarquin 15:39, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Who is the target audience of the article parameter? Is anyone else floundering trying to read this article? Or should we all be able to read it from the word go? Would it not be a good idea to explain the terms such as "argument", "function", or even "parameter" itself. Or are we expected to jump into the deep end and come up swimmingly? As it is, we would need to schlep on a great technical dictionary/encyclopedia to see what it's about. Dieter Simon 02:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * The math articles are notoriously bad in this; I even have a minor in math, and there are many articles for which I have no idea what they're about. I've poked math writers a couple times in the past, but it doesn't seem to have much effect. Maybe someday I'll see what I can dredge up from my memory ("My God, it's full of holes!") and work over some of those, even though it's not as much fun as scanning in scrungy old postage stamps... :-) Stan 04:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Ouch, I've had a quick look around some Maths articles and you're right, there is some work needed. There are unclear explanations, there is bad grammar, and there are outright inaccuracies. But worst of all IMO, there are articles which assume prior knowledge but which don't provide clear and convenient links to the articles which cover this prior knowledge.

 * On the other hand, there's a WikiProject Mathematics, and a lot of great Maths articles. I believe many of them could be made more layperson-friendly and we'd have an awesome resource, we do already have an awesome resource in fact but could leverage it more. This issue doesn't seem to have been discussed by the project on a very quick first reading of their page, but perhaps I missed it. Or perhaps I should join the project... in my (-> spare time... Andrewa 20:11, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Yes I did miss it, because it's on the talk page. Very much a hot topic in the project, which I have joined. Have a look at my first attempts at parameter and argument. Any others that you think are particularly bad, Stan? Andrewa 00:46, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Many thanks, Andrewa, a great piece of work. Now we have the tools and with the right tools you can do anything. Hope other mathematicians will take this article as an example. Dieter Simon 01:14, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I bet that demographics will change. as Wikipedia matures. I bet that it will get as many junior-high and high-school students as readers as it gets adults.

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


text:
User talk:Bkell/November 2003 through January 2006

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

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

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

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

Dori | Talk 21:23, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

Hey there! Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like this place--I sure do--and want to stay. If you need help on how to title new articles check out Naming conventions, and for help on formatting the pages visit the manual of style. If you need help look at Help and The FAQ, plus if you can't find your answer there, check The Village pump or The Reference Desk! Happy wiki-ing! Alexandros

Welcome to the Wikipedia and thanks for pointing out and correcting the "acute" letter (circled U) and the ordering of the hacek letters in Czech alphabet. You were right, of course! -- Matt Borak 23:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Wow, an interesting choice of a language (I've read your reply)! :) Just one small technical: I noticed your changes to the QBasic programming language. When moving a page, please use the "Move this page" link instead of cutting and pasting the text, as it also moves the page history and discussion (see How to rename (move) a page). Thank you and have a good day! -- Matt Borak 09:49, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I understand your concern about the "click" text. But, doesn't "Click image for description" or "Click image to enlarge" make it very clear that there is an image that must be clicked on? They aren't just random "click here" captions with no context. They say to click on the image. If I'm using a text-only browser and read "Click image for description" it's clear that it's referring to an unrendered image. Are you saying that the text itself should be a link? --Minesweeper 21:10, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Reason for HTML's irrelevancy
Why do you say HTML entities for colon and semicolon are irrelevant? - Omegatron 21:27, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

 * The numeric HTML entities for colon and semicolon are highly irrelevant, because they are never, ever used. In fact, the only time I have ever seen a numeric entity used for either of these is in the Template:Punctuation_marks box, and that's only because Wikipedia attaches a special meaning to a colon, not because the HTML needed it for any reason. You can represent the character A in HTML by typing &#65;, but no one ever does, because it's never necessary or useful. The same goes for the numeric entities for the colon and the semicolon. —Bkell 21:35, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Right... But I needed to know it in order to put it in the punctuation box, and the information wasn't on WP.  :-)  I figured that was reason enough to include it.  Maybe it should just mention that HTML entities are the same number as ASCII for letters and punctuation? - Omegatron 21:38, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know anything about png. I made the map using Paint. Feel free to convert it to what ever you like. Incidentally, "procrastinate" is an intransitive verb. Adam 09:19, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that to me. I doubt I will remember any of it though. You need to remember that while people of my generation can be taught to perform certain functions, we rarely understand what we are doing, having been raised in the pre-computer world. (When I was your age computers filled entire rooms and were programmed by men in white coats using punch cards.) I didn't deliberately save the map as a bmp or a jpg or a gif, I just made it and saved it and uploaded up, so I'm pleased that I turn out to have done the right thing. I do use Irfanview for editing photos and I've sometimes wondered why the files are so much smaller when they have been edited with it, and now I know.

Anyway I'm glad you like my maps, they're a hobby of mine. See the country files at my website.

The OED says that the transitive use of procrastinate is "now rare," and I've certainly never seen it before. Whatever the practice in the US, here in the English-speaking world I think it is considered ungrammatical.

Adam 13:18, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

lousy English
I would like to express our (collective) great gratitude to all Wikipedians who correct grammatical errors and unidiomatic expressions from pages where ESL-wikipedians have put their mark on the prose. Some foreigners' English is worse than others' — this is not politically correct to state, but I do it anyways — and that of Finns belong to the worst. Thank you! Thank you very much!

If your work on Finland wasn't enough, or if you would like more praise, take a look at: User:Tuomas ;-))

/Tuomas 07:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Orphaned images
Hiya. I'm running a bot (with 30-second wait intervals) on your User:Bkell/Orphaned images page that deletes the images we no longer want. You can delete the page when it's finished. — Timwi 13:34, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Done. — Timwi 14:20, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

JPEGs to PNGs
I just wanted to say, I share your burning hate for JPEGs that should obviously have been PNGs. I once found an image on Wikipedia that was (no kidding) a scan of a document printed from Word, and it was a JPEG! I also recently found a giant two-colour logo that needed to be converted from JPEG to PNG (cleaning up artifacts isn't too hard with the magic wand tool). I will try to handle some of the ones you've listed, but please, if you find more, list them too. Such images must be abolished. Derrick Coetzee 00:55, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I wanted to ask your expert opinion on GIF files for black & white diagrams, since this is what I have always used (having been told GIF is better than JPEG for this purpose). This is prompted by the fact that I have just signed a legal document allowing me to be a webmaster for an organisation, and it states that I can ONLY use JPEG or GIF. Is there a problem with older browsers not being able to read PNG files?  Having read your comments I switched over to PNG in place of GIF on pages like copper(II) chloride, yet I wonder if I should switch back?  In tests I did, both GIF and PNG files came out as approximately the same size.

 * By the way, I hope that acenaphthylene isn't your last chemistry contribution! :) We had "High School Science Day" here at our college a while back, with use of indigo dye as one experiment, and the Wikipedia page on indigo dye that you rewrote was a major source of background information for me!
 * Thanks, Walkerma 18:33, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I changed the jpg UNL logo to a png. You have orphaned a second file: [[Image:USA_ne_UNLlogo.jpg|thumb|right]]

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Erdosville
Thanks for your help with cleaning up the article a bit. Your work is appreciated. The Chief (Pow Wow ) 21:26, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

PhotoLoader
I moved Photo loader to PhotoLoader per your comments on WP:RM. You kind of indicated that you weren't sure but that Photo loader was clearly wrong. By that logic, PhotoLoader was less wrong. Let me know if that wasn't what you wanted (from the absence of comments, I don't think anyone else is likely to care). –Hajor 19:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Fhqwhgads
I'm not sure if i agree with this edit. It seems that since the phrase "fhqwhgadshgnsdhjsdbkhsdabkfabkveybvf" is a used in place of a proper name in the e-mail, and written in all lowercase letters, the correct title would reflect that fact. Just like, for example, timecop. Whatever though, I really don't care enough about it to be risk being listed on WP:LAME. — F REAK OF N URxTURE  ( TALK )  05:39, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

PNG vs. JPG
Thanks for your note about changing the image Image:Cherokee-syllabary.jpg to a a PNG file. But I'm curious...what is the difference between the files? I'm not really a technical person when it comes to things like that. Thanks! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 05:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the explanation! It was most helpful! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 05:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Berkeley Systems logo
Regarding:

The source I got the image from had it as a JPEG, if I converted it to PNG format, I don't think it would make any positive change. I will look around for a better quality image, though. Thanks. Ouuplas 22:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:BadJPEG
I just realized that the two images you used as examples that were wrongly tagged badJPEG were your own. I apologize if I offended you in some way, but I don't think that calling for the template to be deleted altogether because I made a couple mistakes was the appropriate response. —Bkell 06:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I wasn't offended, and I assure you that I didn't nominate the template for deletion for any personal reasons. I used those images as examples because I noticed them on my watchlist.  (That's how I learned of this template's existence.)  I nominated the template for deletion because it appears as though it's being indiscriminately applied (both in wording and practice) to all non-photographic JPEG images.  (I have only two on my watchlist, and both were tagged, so I find it difficult to believe that  you "made a couple mistakes" when rapidly tagging over 1,800 images.)  As I said, many of these images undoubtedly are from JPEG sources (and cannot be visually improved).  If an existing image can be saved more efficiently as a PNG or SVG file, why not simply perform the conversion (instead of tagging it and waiting for someone else to do the real work)?  —Lifeisunfair 07:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * The reason is that none of the images that can be tagged can simply be resaved as a PNG or SVG file. That would defeat the entire purpose, since the JPEG compression artifacts would still be there, and the resulting file size would always be greater. In order to fix these JPEGs, someone has to either find that the original image was a GIF or PNG, and upload that instead, or get out some graphics software and redraw the image themselves. This is not a trivial task. Mysid has been doing some excellent work over the past few days redrawing JPEGs in SVG format, and I've done a few myself, although the best I can do with the software I have is to redraw them as PNGs. The tag exists for the same reason the Cleanup-image tag does: the actual cleanup process will take a while, and in many cases whoever tags the image does not have the resources to do the cleanup work themselves.
 * In response to your other concern, as you noted I have tagged about 1,800 images in the past week. I am currently going through the Logos category and finding inappropriate JPEGs there (I'm somewhere in the middle of the C's). Nearly all of the images in that category that are in JPEG format would be happier as PNGs, but there are a few that I have skipped because I felt that JPEG is the best choice: Image:05 WSOP logo edited.jpg, Image:103 qvgd millions.jpg, Image:114203.jpg, Image:17N-manifesto.jpg, Image:2005 wsop logo.jpg, Image:2005poster.jpg, Image:20th Television.jpg, Image:320kidzone.jpg, and so on, and we aren't even close to the letter A yet. So I have tried not to indiscriminately apply this tag to all JPEGs that are not photographs. But I am only human, after all, and what I'm doing isn't especially exciting, so occasionally I find that I've zoned out for the past few images. Maybe it was during one of those periods I tagged both of your images (they would have been right next to each other in the list, you know).
 * More likely what happened was something like this: Let's look at Image:Call for Help US.jpg. The orange square that contains the C does have a bunch of gradients and different colors, but on a quick glance I might have thought it was two big blocks of different shades of orange separated by that little squiggle. The same for the big blue square that contains HELP: in a quick glance I probably saw maybe eight or nine different shades of blue there, sharply separated, and missed the subtle gradients. So it's a more complex image than I originally saw, and that's why it was tagged. My two-second evaluation of the image was incorrect.
 * I would invite you to take a look at Category:Images with inappropriate JPEG compression if you haven't already, and see the images that have been tagged. You will see that the vast majority need to be redrawn. Images like the two you presented are exceptions, and were tagged because I made a mistake. The template itself is still valuable tool for identifying areas of Wikipedia that need improvement. —Bkell 18:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * The reason is that none of the images that can be tagged can simply be resaved as a PNG or SVG file. That would defeat the entire purpose, since the JPEG compression artifacts would still be there, and the resulting file size would always be greater.

 * The part about the compression artifacts is correct, but the part about the file size is not; it often would be increased in a straight conversion, but not "always." For example, see this image.  I just converted it to a  PNG file (without performing any other edits), and this reduced the file size by 49.6%.

 * In order to fix these JPEGs, someone has to either find that the original image was a GIF or PNG, and upload that instead,

 * Why would someone have converted a GIF file or PNG file to the JPEG format before uploading it?

 * or get out some graphics software and redraw the image themselves.

 * For the entries that I'm seeing in this category, that simply isn't a valid option (because they're copyrighted images from official sources).

 * So it's a more complex image than I originally saw, and that's why it was tagged. My two-second evaluation of the image was incorrect.

 * Perhaps you should spend more than two seconds evaluating each image. :)

 * I would invite you to take a look at Category:Images with inappropriate JPEG compression if you haven't already, and see the images that have been tagged. You will see that the vast majority need to be redrawn.

 * Again, logos should not be redrawn. —Lifeisunfair 20:37, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, I guess not "always." Perhaps that was hyperbole. Even if the file size is reduced, though, conversion to PNG won't get rid of any compression artifacts in the JPEG.
 * I don't know why people convert things to JPEGs, but it happens. Maybe they took a screenshot instead of just saving the image, and they saved the screenshot as a JPEG. Or maybe they have some mistaken idea that it would be better to convert the image to a JPEG, because JPEG always preserves colors better than GIF (which is generally true for things like photos, due to GIF's color depth limitations) or that JPEG is the "preferred" format for Wikipedia (which is not true). And even if the user performed no conversion, there still might be an "original" image in GIF or PNG format. For example, a corporation might have its logo in JPEG format on some Web pages and in GIF format on others.
 * I still don't understand why people insist that logos should not be redrawn. If a logo is redrawn by a Wikipedian to make the image clearer or the file size smaller, but the resolution is not changed, I don't see how this can affect the fair use status of the image. (In fact, I'm not even sure that the resolution of the image has anything to do with "fair use," but I'll play along.) And the JPEG compression artifacts that are present in a logo in JPEG format are obviously not part of the logo, so losing them is fine.
 * Frankly, I'm of the opinion that logos don't belong on Wikipedia at all, because I don't see what they add to articles, and they are certainly copyrighted and so invite intellectual property hassles. But the existence of thousands of them is a good indicator that I've been outvoted, so I won't fight that. If we're going to have them, though, we should get the crispest, cleanest versions we can. —Bkell 21:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * By "redrawn," do you mean "cleaned up and saved in a different file format" or do you mean "replicated from scratch"? The former is perfectly fine (in my assessment), and I was under the impression that we were discussing the latter.  —Lifeisunfair 23:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Excellent improvement of the wording of the template. —Bkell 23:08, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks! :)  —Lifeisunfair 23:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

PNG depths
Greetings. You asked about PNG depths at User talk:Dcoetzee, which I happen to be watching. The PNG spec itself says palette index options can be 1,2,4,8 bits per pixel. If you can't seem to get 2 bits per pixel then, yes, the limitation is in your software. You might want to try alternatives like The GIMP, which is free, reasonably powerful, and cross-platform. Also helpful are free PNG tools like OptiPNG. --KSmrqT 03:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

PNG Policy
I disagree with your taggging as bad because its JPG. You are cluttering up the page with a useless message. Please show me the Wikipedia policy page that says you should do this. What am I supposed to do? I have neither the financial interest, nor the skill to redraw somebody else's corporate logo. Jehochman 14:29, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I asked the company, and they sent me a PNG right away. How friendly. Now we can both be happy. Jehochman 21:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the recognition, I like doing the work, too. I'm taking a 4-week vacation now during which I won't have access to a powerful enough computer to do image manipulation. But keep up the work. –Mysid 14:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

no license notified
Since my purpose on Wikipedia is to disseminate knowledge and not to police the doings of other Wikipedians, I am at a loss here. Help me out, what is the labelling you want that will make the images appropriate? Chris 23:26, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Web-screenshot
I've tagged Image:Alisoncheney.jpg as software-screenshot, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either. I note that Flash-animated characters like Homestar Runner are also tagged as web-screenshot, and I would argue that is the closest thing we have to it. I would, of course, welcome any suggestions. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 00:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Image: Backround2.jpg
I don't really know what other thing to use besides fairuse, so if that doesn't cut it, either ask the web site for permission or delete (if there is no permission)--Zxcvbnm 02:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Buck Shaw Image
I'm going to retag it. While normally you'd be right, in this case that image was the whole webpage, hence the tag. The page consisted solely of that image as located here Buck Shaw. As you can see I took a screenshot of that page hence the crop of it.Gateman1997 19:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

CarteSundgau.jpg
Hi, This is in the public domain from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundgau and I presume it's somewhere in Commons. See on fr.wiki.

I'm not sure how to change the metadata (other than deleting and reloading the image). It seems best to point en.wiki at the same Commons image used by fr.wiki - can you advise how best to do that? Dl yo ns 493  Ta lk   19:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

 * It's in the public domain - see on fr.wiki as above. It's sitting somewhere on Commons but I'm not sure how to reference it from there.  thumb|right|340px|xxx doesn't seem to work.  Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk   19:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC) Dlyons493 00:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi, I've done some checking on this and it seems to be less clearcut than I thought. The background is that I raised the question of copyright with the user Lisandru68 on fr.wikipedia when I was translating the article and he told me that the site  was his and that he had rights to the image. You'll see this in a section called Sundgau on http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Lisandru68/Archives.  There's a previous section Licence des images where he was asked about copyright on other images in the article by Tipiac.  So I was under the impression that the images at  (which becamed an Article de qualité over there) had all been cleared for copyright.  I don't see any record though on Tipiac's pages around 22nd of June, 2005 that Lisandru68 actually answered him (but, if he didn't, wouldn't the images have been deleted?).  How best to proceed with this?  I can leave messages on their user pages on fr.wikipedia if that's any help.   Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk
 * I've contacted Lisandru68 and asked if he really has copyright and is prepared to put it in the public domain. Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk  19:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard anything back. The image on fr.wiki is copyright with permission which I interpret as permission for all wiki's rather than just fr.wiki.  I'll put a 'fair use' tag on it I think and if anyone objects we can just delete th image.   Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk

Erdal
Ah, what would you suggest? Erdal is unlikely to object to their german shoe polish getting a plug. The image came from their website, indicated in Shoe polish. I see that you don't like the category I gave it, but you give me no clue as to what you would accept. Have you visited Carhenge? Metarhyme 20:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * How about Promotional - for an image freely provided to promote an item, as in a promotional photo in a press packet? It's an accurate description - would that suit you? Didn't like the bouncing ball, I see. Carhenge can't be that far away! Metarhyme -- it's retagged so:

Web-screenshot tag
I've noticed you've uploaded some images tagged with web-screenshot. This tag is not meant to be used for images that came from Web pages; it's meant to be used for images of Web pages (such as Image:Wikipedia.PNG, for example). I've retagged the images below as having no license information. Please edit the image description pages to include information about the licenses these images are under. —Bkell 06:28, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Image:ClydeFitch.jpg
 * Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I did misunderstand the tag originally. I have relabled it as "fair use in" as the image is used on multiple webpages that reference the playwright. Doc 02:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks I've amended the tag on the other two as well Doc 15:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm not exactly sure what you mean by my using the wrong tag on the image I uploaded it. As per the Wikipedia policy I cited the source I got it from.
 * Apologies for not doing it correctly.Mike 23:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for making that clear. I will nominate the image I uploaded (Image:Khmer dance gestures.jpg) for deletion now. See here if I did anything wrong --Dara 08:02, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

What tag do you think I should use? Kingjeff 23:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Can I use the fact that there is no intended profit on either for either the website owner or wikipedia? Kingjeff 00:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi, first I'm sorry if I'm answering you in the wrong place. Well, that image was taken by me from the website that is linked in the article (Karnak (band)). The website owner probably took the image from the band's official website, that is no longer active (neither the website neither the band). So, I assume the band paid for someone to do the drawing and thus it is copyrighted... but as I think this kind of use does no harm to the artist, I think I can use it... if I'm wrong, please, tell me. Thanks! Ultranol 18:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry, I forgot to sign the comment above... :( Thanks for the explanation about the copyright. I'll fix it soon. Ultranol 18:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm having difficulty finding the right tag. The images were mione or used with permission. Please help.evrik 17:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Image:--Kyrgyzstan.jpg
You added the BadJPEG template to this. However, I don't think it fits since it doesn't contain material that could be easily changed into a vector. As I understand it BadJPEG is for images that are simple enough that some skilled user can convert them into vectors using Adobe Illustrator or somesuch. Could you review that images and maybe remove the tag? Thanks. gren グレン 08:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

The same goes for Image:130.jpg, Image:1klipermedium.jpg. gren グレン 08:28, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Kudamon1.jpg
Hello, I never used web-screenshot for any of my Digimon images, someone altered the copyright tag. I have used the fair use tag, as Kudamon1.jpg and Kyukimon.jpg were created from scans of Bandai Japan's Digimon cards. If fair use is not the appropriate tag either, I would love to hear your suggestions. Qilinmon

Web-screenshot tag
I uploaded a new image for Image:Betadine.jpg - it's a screenshot with the browser stuff cropped out. The net effect is a lower resolution image then if I just uploaded a copy of the picture from the web site. This begs the newbie question - why bother? If a screenshot of a web page is fair use why can't we use one picture from a web site for illustrative purposes and count that as fair use? Zaui 17:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. Now, how do I remove the image? Zaui 19:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Neowin image concerns
Hi, you recently sent me a on my talk page concerning an image I uploaded for the neowin article. The reason why the image was not in the article at the time was because a user was maliciously reverting the article back to a poorer version of the page which did not include the current screenshot. If you want to see more information about that, please see Talk:Neowin. The article has been reverted to the better page, and now has both images up (representing Neowin's present and future looks). Please make sure that the image is not deleted. It was difficult for me to make as I had to manually tie the pieces together and it is now being used in the article once again.

[edit]To clarify, I added the image you marked for replacement recently to show how the website is currently. The older image is one of how Neowin is going to look with the next site revision. Both images are now used in the article, but Doom127 kept reverting the page back the page to a much less developed version.[/edit]

Sincerly, Noneloud 01:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thank you! :)
 * -Noneloud 02:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

WHAT TAG DO YOU SUGGEST?
kindly tell me what appropriate tags should i put to those images you listed. thanks.

-->User:Kevin nico

[[Image:img001|img001]], AnnaSophia Robb, copyright, tags, etc. etc.
On my talk page, you pointed out my error in the web-screenshot template and showed me how to find a copyright or nominate it for deletion. I couldn't find the copyright information on the IMDb; although it is not entirely desirable that an image I uploaded should be deleted, I understand and agree, therefore you may delete it however you like, or (as I said on my talk page) simply let it delete itself. Please let me know how it is deleted when it is deleted - that is all I ask.

Why change?
why did you decide to change the "this user is a mathematician" template on Template:User mathematician? Gatherton 23:47, 25 January 2006 (UTC)


text:
Talk:List of Canadian historians

First Names
Could we be consistent with the first names? For example, Jack Saywell is listed as J.T. Saywell, but Jack Granatstein is not listed as J.L. Granatstein, the name under which he published all his work. I would suggest that we should prefer the name they used when publishing. Does anyone disagree? HistoryBA 20:36, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Conrad Black
Is Conrad Black really an historian? Or is there another Conrad Black? Adam Bishop 21:23, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is a list of Canadian historians and, aside from a few notable popular historians, should be confined to legitimate academic historians. Black is not a historian. Kscheffler 00:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Why not? HistoryBA 01:41, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Black is a historian, holding an MA in the subject and writing substantial biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Franklin Roosevlet and Richard Nixon. Lafarge Dodger 22:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Having an MA and writing a few biographies does not make you a historian. It makes you popular non-fiction writer. Black should be removed. So should Berton, as his popular history distorts Canada's collective understanding of its past. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.11.64.67 (talk) 12:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Berton may be a windbag, but not to the same degree as Black, and without the intellectual pretensions; he's also most noted as a writer of popular history. And "legitimate" historians like Jean Barman regularly distort or misinterpret history, too; it's not even a question of degree, but of prevailing prejudices; I'd be hard put to say that Pierre Berton is not an historian, given his public profile as such and the volume of works he's produced.  Barry Broadfoot, too, distorts and somewhat softsoaps the 1930s in his books, but is he a "popular non-fiction writer", too?  Black is a pompous ass; Berton an eyewitness and also someone who's spent time in the field gathering accounts, or researching them; that's a big difference and it's not fair to compare Black and Berton in the way you just have.Skookum1 (talk) 16:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Scholars routinely cite Black and include his Duplessis bio in their recommended reading (eg Linteau Quebec Since 1930; McRoberts Quebec; Fay,  A history of Canadian Catholics; Gwyn, The northern magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians and Canada, 1900-1945 by Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English.  Also Current biography yearbook, Volume 53 - Page 68  reports the Duplessis book got "generally favorable reviews." Rjensen (talk) 04:26, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Canadian Historians or Historians of Canada?
Can we specify if these are people (from anywhere) who study canada, or people from Canada who study history? -- TheMightyQuill 12:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I came here to ask that exact-same question. Hubert Howe Bancroft was an American yet his work on BC is "core material" in BC history; there are other examples, including come to think of if Marius Barbeau, Franz Boas etc (ethnographers being a kind of historian); wouldn't List of historians of Canada be more inclusive?Skookum1 (talk) 16:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Dead link Cleanup
Dead Links should be removed, if you wrote this article please add full articles for each new link, don't just list names where no information exists and please put dates with the names. Also there is a controversy concerning books published and publishers, so if possible add the ISBN to all books and add publishers names to books listed Thanks WayneRay 13:44, 20 April 2006 (UTC)WayneRay

Image copyright problem with File:Coat of arms of Canada.svg
The image File:Coat of arms of Canada.svg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --00:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Deletion?
This article has some problems i see that exist in a number of lists. the header is vague, and refers to the procedure for adding names, which i strongly believe should not be in the article itself. there are tags for dynamic lists and tags for the discussion page, as well as hidden comments which do this better. a few redlinks should be allowed if its likely to be added, and should have some indication of notability. "john smith. author of "the least known yet vitally important history of canada". i know people use lists as a parallel method of searching WP, next to the categories. for me, a list should provide something more than the category. so this list should have, say the authors birthdate, or area of speciality, or name of notable book, all of which are easily gotten from the articles on the authors. i also agree that the header needs to say if this is historians of canadian descent, or people writing on the history of canada. needless to say, this list needs to include all the names in the category of the same subject. but i see little value in this list over the category, so im not going to implement the above changes unless consensus is to keep. then i will. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 20:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I created this list way back in the day, before we had categories or anything. In its current form I don't think this page is very useful. This page could be helpful if it had some annotations, for instance listing the specific area of study for each historian. - SimonP (talk) 02:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * i agree, but i may not get to this with any urgency. i will do some tagging.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

recent tags
yep. i agree with all of them. hopefully someone will help to fix those, as the article was already nominated for deletion and (appropriately) allowed to stay. each author needs to have at least one fact pulled from their article. i think a major book, or their speciality. also, if the list is all authors of canadian history (which i think they are, but i havent checked) then the intro can include that. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:05, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of Canadian historians


text:
Carpool

Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. Carpooling is considered a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) service.

By having more people using one vehicle, carpooling reduces each person's travel costs such as: fuel costs, tolls, and the stress of driving. Carpooling is also a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way to travel as sharing journeys reduces air pollution, carbon emissions, traffic congestion on the roads, and the need for parking spaces. Authorities often encourage carpooling, especially during periods of high pollution or high fuel prices. Car sharing is a good way to use up the full seating capacity of a car, which would otherwise remain unused if it were just the driver using the car.

In 2009, carpooling represented 43.5% of all trips in the United States and 10% of commute trips. The majority of carpool commutes (over 60%) are "fam-pools" with family members.

Carpool commuting is more popular for people who work in places with more jobs nearby, and who live in places with higher residential densities. Carpooling is significantly correlated with transport operating costs, including fuel prices and commute length, and with measures of social capital, such as time spent with others, time spent eating and drinking and being unmarried. However, carpooling is significantly less likely among people who spend more time at work, elderly people, and homeowners.

Operation
Drivers and passengers offer and search for journeys through one of the several mediums available. After finding a match they contact each other to arrange any details for the journey(s). Costs, meeting points and other details like space for luggage are agreed on. They then meet and carry out their shared car journey(s) as planned. Carpooling is commonly implemented for commuting but is increasingly popular for longer one-off journeys, with the formality and regularity of arrangements varying between schemes and journeys.

Carpooling is not always arranged for the whole length of a journey. Especially on long journeys, it is common for passengers to only join for parts of the journey, and give a contribution based on the distance that they travel. This gives carpooling extra flexibility and enables more people to share journeys and save money.

Some carpooling is now organized in online marketplaces or ride-matching websites that allow drivers and passengers to find a travel match and/or make a secured transaction to share the planned travel cost. Like other online marketplaces, they use community-based trust mechanisms, such as user-ratings, to create an optimal experience for users.

Arrangements for carpooling can be made through many different media including public websites, social media, acting as marketplaces, employer websites, smartphone applications, carpooling agencies and pick-up points.

Initiatives
Many companies and local authorities have introduced programs to promote carpooling.

In an effort to reduce traffic and encourage carpooling, some governments have introduced high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in which only vehicles with two or more passengers are allowed to drive. HOV lanes can create strong practical incentives for carpooling by reducing travel time and expense. In some countries, it is common to find parking spaces reserved for carpoolers.

In 2011, an organization called Greenxc created a campaign to encourage others to use this form of transportation in order to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Carpooling, or car sharing as it is called in British English, is promoted by a national UK charity, Carplus, whose mission is to promote responsible car use in order to alleviate financial, environmental and social costs of motoring today, and encourage new approaches to car dependency in the UK. Carplus is supported by Transport for London, the British government initiative to reduce congestion and parking pressure and contribute to relieving the burden on the environment and to the reduction of traffic-related air-pollution, in London.

However, not all countries are helping carpooling to spread: in Hungary it is a tax crime to carry someone in a car for a cost share (or any payment) unless the driver has a taxi license and there is an invoice issued and taxes are paid. Several people were fined by undercover tax officers during a 2011 crackdown, posing as passengers looking for a ride on carpooling websites. On 19 March 2012 Endre Spaller, a member of the Hungarian Parliament interpellated Zoltán Cséfalvay, Secretary of State for the National Economy, about this practice who replied that carpooling should be endorsed instead of punished, however care must be taken for some people trying to turn it into a way to gain untaxed profit.

Cost sharing
Carpooling usually means to divide the travel expenses equally between all the occupants of the vehicle (driver or passenger). The driver does not try to earn money, but to share with several people the cost of a trip he/she would do anyway. The expenses to be divided basically include the fuel and possible tolls. But if we include in the calculation the depreciation of the vehicle purchase and maintenance, insurance and taxes paid by the driver, we get a cost around $1/mile. There are platforms that facilitate carpooling by connecting people seeking respectively passengers and drivers. Usually there is a fare set up by the car driver and accepted by passengers because they get an agreement before trip start.

The second generation of these platforms is designed to manage urban trips in real time, using the traveler's smartphones. They make possible to occupy the vehicle's empty seats on the fly, collecting and delivering passengers along its entire route (and not only at common points of origin and destination). This system automatically performs an equitable sharing of travel costs, allowing each passenger to reimburse the driver a fair share according to the benefit actually gained by the vehicle usage, proportional to the distance traveled by the passenger and the number of people that shared the car.

History
Carpooling first became prominent in the United States as a rationing tactic during World War II. Ridesharing began during World War II through “car clubs” or “car-sharing clubs”. The US Office of Civilian Defense asked neighborhood councils to encourage four workers to share a ride in one car to conserve rubber for the war effort. It also created a ride sharing program called the Car Sharing Club Exchange and Self-Dispatching System. Carpooling returned in the mid-1970s due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis. At that time the first employee vanpools were organized at Chrysler and 3M.

Carpooling declined precipitously between the 1970s and the 2000s, peaking in the US in 1970 with a commute mode share of 20.4%. By 2011 it was down to 9.7%. In large part this has been attributed to the dramatic fall in gas prices (45%) during the 1980s. In the 1990s it was popular among college students, where campuses have limited parking space. Together with Prof. James Davidson from Harvard, Dace Campbell, Ivan Lin and Habib Rached from Washington, and others, began to investigate the feasibility of further development although the comprehensive technologies were not commercially available yet at the time. Their work is considered by many to be a forerunner of carpooling & ridesharing systems technology used by Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan at Uber.

The character of carpool travel has been shifting from "Dagwood Bumstead" variety, in which each rider is picked up in sequence, to a "park and ride" variety, where all the travelers meet at a common location. Recently, however, the Internet has facilitated growth for carpooling and the commute share mode has grown to 10.7% in 2005. In 2007 with the advent of smart phones and GPS, which became commercially available, John Zimmer and Logan Green, from Cornell University and University of California, Santa Barbara respectively, rediscovered and created carpooling system called Zimride, a precursor to Lyft. The popularity of the Internet and smart phones has greatly helped carpooling to expand, enabling people to offer and find rides thanks to easy-to-use and reliable online transport marketplaces. These websites are commonly used for one-off long-distance journeys with high fuel costs.

In Europe, long-distance car-pooling has become increasingly popular over the past years, thanks to BlaBlaCar. According to its website,, Blablacar counted more than 80 million users, across Europe and beyond.

, Uber and Lyft have suspended carpooling services in the U.S. and Canada in efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic via social distancing.

Other forms
Carpooling exists in other forms:

 * Slugging is a form of ad hoc, informal carpooling between strangers. No money changes hands, but a mutual benefit still exists between the driver and passenger(s) making the practice worthwhile.
 * Flexible carpooling expands the idea of ad hoc carpooling by designating formal locations for travelers to join carpools.
 * Ridesharing companies allow people to arrange ad hoc rides on very short notice, through the use of smartphone applications or the internet. Passengers are simply picked up at their current location.

Challenges

 * Flexibility - Carpooling can struggle to be flexible enough to accommodate in route stops or changes to working times/patterns. One survey identified this as the most common reason for not carpooling. To counter this some schemes offer 'sweeper services' with later running options, or a 'guaranteed ride home' arrangement with a local taxi company.
 * Reliability - If a carpooling network lacks a "critical mass" of participants, it may be difficult to find a match for certain trips. The parties may not necessarily follow through on the agreed-upon ride. Several internet carpooling marketplaces are addressing this concern by implementing online paid passenger reservation, billed even if passengers do not turn up.
 * Riding with strangers - Concerns over security have been an obstacle to sharing a vehicle with strangers, though in reality the risk of crime is small. One remedy used by internet carpooling schemes is reputation systems that flag problematic users and allow responsible users to build up trust capital, such systems greatly increase the value of the website for the user community.
 * Overall efficacy - Though carpooling is officially sanctioned by most governments, including construction of lanes specifically allocated for car-pooling, some doubts remain as to the overall efficacy of carpool lanes. As an example, many car-pool lanes, or lanes restricted to car-pools during peak traffic hours, are seldom occupied by car-pools in the traditional sense. Instead, these lanes are often empty, leading to an overall net increase in fuel consumption as freeway capacity is possibly contracted, forcing the solo-occupied cars to travel slower, leading to reduced fuel efficiency.
 * In 2012, the Queensland government announced it would end carpool lanes (known as Transit Lanes) claiming they were creating congestion and delays. The move was supported by the RACQ motoring group.
 * No carpooling service provides the ability for drivers to declare the time range during which they provide services in advance. Although the majority of carpooling services use a mobile application, this is not the case for interurban carpooling services (i.e., Ride joy and Autostrade carpooling). In addition, no carpooling was found to guarantee a minimum delay for drivers or a single dropoff/pickup point. Some carpooling platforms (i.e., TwoGo and BlaBlaLines operated by BlablaCar) use an intelligent technology to analyze rides from all users to find the best fit for each user. This intelligent technology even factors in real-time traffic data to calculate precise routes and arrival times.

In popular culture

 * In the 1970s, the US Department of Transportation  released a humorous, animated public service announcement to promote carpooling entitled “Kalaka.” In the commercial, an interviewer is shown talking to Noah, "the original share-the-ride-with-a-friend man." Noah explains that carpooling is an economical way to get where you're going, but back in his time it was known as "kalaka."
 * Cabbing All the Way is a book written by author Jatin Kuberkar that narrates a success story of a carpool with twelve people on board. Based in the city of Hyderabad, India, the book is a real life narration and highlights the potential benefits of having a carpool.
 * The 2017 smartphone game Crazy Taxi Tycoon (formerly titled Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire) antagonizes ride-sharing as a threat to taxi business, as it becomes a powerful megacorporation that rips off those whom it serves. The player is tasked in hiring taxi drivers to establish a taxi service that offers a more legitimate, friendly and reliable transport experience.
 * Carpool Karaoke, best known as a recurring segment from The Late Late Show with James Corden.

title: Carpool


text:
Galloway

Galloway (Gall-Ghàidhealaibh ; Gallowa; Gallovidia) is a region in southwestern Scotland comprising the historic counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. It is administered as part of the council area of Dumfries and Galloway.

A native or inhabitant of Galloway is called a Gallovidian. The region takes its name from the Gall-Gàidheil, or "stranger Gaels", a people of mixed Gaelic and Norse descent who seem to have settled here in the 10th century.

Galloway is bounded by sea to the west and south, the Galloway Hills to the north, and the River Nith to the east; the border between Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire is marked by the River Cree. The definition has, however, fluctuated greatly in size over history.

A hardy breed of black, hornless cattle named Galloway cattle is native to the region, in addition to the more distinctive Belted Galloway or "Beltie".

Geography and landforms

Galloway comprises the part of Scotland lying southwards from the Southern Upland watershed and westward from the River Nith. Traditionally it has been described as stretching from "the braes of Glenapp to the Nith". The valleys of three rivers, the Urr Water, the Water of Ken and River Dee, and the Cree, all running north–south, provide much of the good arable land, although there is also some arable land on the coast. Generally however the landscape is rugged and much of the soil is shallow. The generally south slope and southern coast make for mild and wet climate, and there is a great deal of good pasture.

The northern part of Galloway is exceedingly rugged and forms the largest remaining wilderness in Britain south of the Highlands. This area is known as the Galloway Hills.

Land use
Historically Galloway has been known both for horses and for cattle rearing, and milk and beef production are both still major industries. There is also substantial timber production and some fisheries. The combination of hills and high rainfall make Galloway ideal for hydroelectric power production, and the Galloway Hydro Power scheme was begun in 1929. Since then, electricity generation has been a significant industry. More recently wind turbines have been installed at a number of locations on the watershed, and a large offshore wind-power plant is planned, increasing Galloway's 'green energy' production.

Galloway landmarks on Ptolemy's map

The 2nd century geographer Ptolemy produced a map of Britain in his Geography, in which he describes the landmarks and peoples of the island. The landmarks were identified long ago, and a number of them relate to Galloway:

In the west, the city of Rerigonium (literally 'very royal place'), shown on Ptolemy's map of the world, is a strong contender for the site of Pen Rhionydd, referred to in the Welsh Triads as one of the 'three thrones of Britain' associated with the legendary King Arthur, and may also have been the caput of the sub-Roman Brythonic kingdom of Rheged. Rerigonium's exact position is uncertain except that it was 'on Loch Ryan', close to modern day Stranraer; it is possible that it is the modern settlement of Dunragit (Dun Rheged).

Early Galloway

The earliest recorded inhabitants were Brythonic Celts, recorded by the Romans as the Novantae tribe. According to tradition, before the end of Roman rule in Britain, St. Ninian established a church or monastery at Whithorn, Wigtownshire, which remained an important place of pilgrimage until the Reformation. The county is rich in prehistoric monuments and relics, amongst the most notable of which are the Drumtroddan standing stones (and cup-and-ring carvings), the Torhousekie Stone Circle, both in Wigtownshire and Cairnholy (a Neolithic chambered cairn). There is also evidence of one of the earliest pit-fall traps in Europe which was discovered near Glenluce, Wigtownshire.

Middle Ages
A Brythonic speaking kingdom dominated Galloway until the late 7th century when it was absorbed by the English kingdom of Bernicia.

English prevalence was supplanted by Britons and Norse-Gaelic (Gall-Ghàidheal) peoples between the 9th and the 11th century. This can be seen in the context of both the vacuum left by Northumbria being filled by the resurgent Cumbric Britons and the influx of the Norse into the Irish Sea, including settlement in the Isle of Man and in the now English region of western Cumbria immediately south of Galloway.

If it had not been for Fergus of Galloway who established himself in Galloway, the region would rapidly have been absorbed by Scotland. This did not happen because Fergus, his sons, grandsons and great-grandson Alan, Lord of Galloway, shifted their allegiance between Scottish and English kings. During a period of Scottish allegiance, a Galloway contingent followed David, King of Scots, in his invasion of England and led the attack in his defeat at the Battle of the Standard (1138).

Alan died in 1234. He had three daughters and an illegitimate son Thomas. The "Community of Galloway" wanted Thomas as their "king". Alexander III of Scotland supported the daughters (or rather their husbands) and invaded Galloway. The Community of Galloway was defeated, and Galloway divided up between Alan's daughters, thus bringing Galloway's independent existence to an end.

Alan's eldest daughter, Derbhorgail (Latinized as Dervorguilla), married John de Balliol, and their son (also John) became one of the candidates for the Scottish Crown. Consequently, Scotland's Wars of Independence were disproportionately fought in Galloway.

There were a large number of new Gaelic placenames being coined post 1320 (e.g. Balmaclellan), because Galloway retained a substantial Gaelic speaking population for several centuries more. Following the Wars of Independence, Galloway became the fief of Archibald the Grim, Earl of Douglas. In 1369, he received the part of Galloway east of the River Cree, where he appointed a steward to administer the area, which became known as the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The following year, he acquired the part of Galloway west of the Cree, which continued to be administered by the king's sheriff, and so became known as the Shire of Wigtown. The two parts of Galloway thereafter were administered separately, becoming separate counties.

Whithorn remained an important cultural centre, and all the medieval kings of Scots made pilgrimages there.

Modern history
Galwegian Gaelic seems to have lasted longer than Gaelic in other parts of Lowland Scotland, and Margaret McMurray (d. 1760) of Carrick (outside modern Galloway) appears to have been the last recorded speaker.

In the years after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Galloway underwent radical change, during the War of the Three Kingdoms and Covenanter rebellion.

In modern times, Stranraer was a major ferry port, but the company have now moved to Cairnryan.

Galloway in literature
Galloway has been the setting of a number of novels, including Walter Scott's Guy Mannering. Other novels include the historical fiction trilogy by Liz Curtis Higgs, Thorn in My Heart, Fair is the Rose, and Whence Came a Prince. Richard Hannay flees London to lie low in Galloway in John Buchan's novel The Thirty-nine Steps. Five Red Herrings, a whodunit by Dorothy L. Sayers, initially published in the US as Suspicious Characters, sees Lord Peter Wimsey, on holiday in Kirkcudbright, investigating the death of an artist living at Gatehouse of Fleet; the book contains some remarkable descriptions of the countryside. S R Crockett, a bestselling writer of historical romances active before the First World War, set several novels in the region including The Raiders and Silver Sand.

Galloway is also the setting of several memoirs, including Devorgilla Days written by Wigtownshire author Kathleen Hart, an account of life in Wigtown, Scotland's national book town.

title: Galloway