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Reading School

Reading School is a state grammar school for boys with academy status in the English town of Reading, the county of Berkshire. It traces its history back to the school of Reading Abbey and is, thus, one of the oldest schools in England, although it closed for a few years in the 1860s. It is a state boarding school. There are no tuition fees for day pupils, and boarders only pay for food and lodging. Reading is one of the best state schools in the UK according to the GCSE and A-level tables and has consistently ranked in the top ten.

History
Reading School was founded as part of Reading Abbey. The date of the Abbey's charter, 29 March 1125, is taken as the foundation date, despite the closure of the school in the 1860s. This date makes it the 10th oldest school in England, although there are hints that there may have been a school running in Reading before this.

In 1486, the school was refounded as a "Free Grammar School" ("free" here meaning teaching the free, or liberal, arts, not that no fees were paid) by Henry VII on the urging of the then Abbot, John Thorne. From at least this time, the School was housed in the former Hospitium of St John. The main building of the hospitium still exists, but the refectory, which once housed the schoolroom, was demolished in 1785 and Reading Town Hall now stands on the site.

After the dissolution of Reading Abbey in 1539, the school fell under the control of the corporation of Reading, its status being confirmed by Letters Patent issued by Henry VIII in 1541. This was reconfirmed in the Royal Charter granted to the corporation of Reading by Elizabeth I in 1560, which made the corporation liable for the salary of the headmaster and gave them the power of appointing him.

There were interruptions to schooling in 1665, when Parliament, forced out of London by the Great Plague, took over the schoolhouse. The English Civil War also interrupted, with the school being used as a garrison by royalist forces. The school prospered at the start of the nineteenth century; in 1830, when Richard Valpy retired from the post of headmaster, there were 120 pupils. By 1866 disagreements between the town and school and problems with the lease on the school buildings had led to falling numbers. The school closed in the 1860s.

The school re-opened, however, with the Reading School Act (1867) setting out its administration and funding. The foundation stone for new buildings in Erleigh Road, designed by Alfred Waterhouse (who also designed the Natural History Museum, London), was laid by the Prince of Wales Edward VII in 1870, and in 1871 the school moved in. In 1915 Kendrick Boys' School (founded in 1875 from the legacy of John Kendrick), which had a large endowment but poor facilities, was taken over by Reading, which was poorly funded but had excellent facilities – this caused considerable controversy at the time but was ultimately seen as successful.

The 1944 Education Act saw the abolition of fees (apart from boarding charges), with the cost of education now being met by the local authority. The 1960s saw the rise of comprehensive education in England and Wales, but Reading was exempted in 1973 (along with the girls' grammar school in Reading, Kendrick) after a petition of over 30,000 local people (a third of the voters of Reading) was handed to the government.

On 6 July 2007 Reading School was officially designated as the landing site for the Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance when it needs to transport patients to the nearby Royal Berkshire Hospital. Previously, seriously injured or ill patients from the Reading area had to be flown either to Wexham Park Hospital near Slough, or to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for treatment. The new arrangement means that the school field can now be used for emergency touchdowns. Patients are transported by land ambulance from the school to the hospital's accident and emergency department across the road. While this arrangement was only made official in 2007, the school field had been unofficially used on several occasions by the Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance in previous years.

The school became an academy in 2012.

In 2020, the school was found to have discriminated against a visually-impaired child by not making adjustments to enable him to take the eleven-plus entrance examination.

School site

The current school site consists of a main block (with two wings), a Science block, the Page building, the John Kendrick building, South House, Music School (formerly known as Junior School) and a chapel. The main school building, the chapel, South House and the building to the east of South House have all been designated as Grade II listed buildings by English Heritage.

The chapel is where the school's Christmas, Remembrance and Easter services take place, and every student attends once a week. The chapel has four groups of pews, facing towards the central aisle. Above the entrance is the organ, and at the far end is the altar and vestry.

Plans have been developed for improved sports and science facilities as part of the "1125 campaign". Work on improving science facilities began in 2015 and was completed in Spring 2017 as stated above. Work on the new sports facilities has begun, with a new fitness suite made on the location of the old squash courts next to chapel, and refurbishments on the gym and changing rooms completed. Work to refurbish the Physics block began in 2022, finishing with an official reopening in early 2023.

International sites
The school established a subsidiary in 2018 to participate in its cooperation with Lunhua Education and Lujiazui Corporation to establish international schools with "fusion" curricula called Suzhou Reading School in China. The first school, located on plot 2 in the town of Xushuguan in Suzhou New District, was planned to have a site area of 35,100 and construction area of 50,772 m2. However, according to a report from Phoenix New Media, after completing construction in 2021, Reading School lost its license to operate there after failing its environmental assessment due to heavy soil pollution. The plot was reclassified as industrial land by the municipal Natural Resources and Planning Bureau in 2023.

Notable headmasters

 * 1588–1589: Thomas Braddock
 * 1781–1830: Richard Valpy (1754–1836)
 * 1871–1877: Thomas Henry Stokoe

Inspections and awards
An OFSTED report concluded that "examination results place the school in the top five per cent nationally", "Pupils' attitudes to learning are outstanding" and "The school goes to exceptional lengths to broaden and enrich the education of all pupils". The 2005 Key Stage 3 results were both the best in the country for value-added and for the average points score of each student. In the 2004 school league tables for England (including fee-paying schools), it came eighth for GCSE-level results (average 602.5 points), 106th for A-level results (average 409.3 points) and 170th for value-added between ages 11 and 16 (score of 1037.7 compared with a baseline of 1000). It has recently become a DFES specialist school for the Humanities, specialising in English, Geography and Classics – the first school to specialise in Classics – despite entry being selected by Mathematics and verbal and non-verbal logic ability.

In 2005 the school was awarded the Sportsmark gold award for a four-year period. In the same year Reading was one of just 35 schools nationally to be made a Microsoft Partner School.

In 2007, the school was identified by the Sutton Trust as one of only 20 state schools among the 100 schools in the UK responsible for a third of admissions to Oxford and Cambridge Universities over the five preceding years. 16.0% of pupils went to Oxbridge and a 62.1% in total went to universities identified by the Sutton Trust as "top universities". In July 2011, the school was further identified by the Sutton Trust as the third highest state school, and among the top 30 schools in the country, for proportion of higher education applicants accepted at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The report found that 16.7% of pupils were accepted to Oxbridge and 81.5% were accepted to the highly selective Sutton Trust 30 universities over the previous three years.

Reading School was given the "State School of the Year" award by The Sunday Times newspaper in 2010 and 2019, in recognition of the school's academic achievements and community orientated ethos.

Subjects taught
2. At least one ancient or modern language must be taken for the GCSEs.

3. Additional Maths is taken by the top four sets at the same time as their GCSEs. Further Maths is optional at A Level, with some students being able to take it in one block with Maths.

4. The top half of the year take an externally-assessed AS-level Philosophy exam at the end of Year 11. Those who score a B or higher can either opt-out of the subject, continue onto the A2 or redo the exam the following year. Those who didn't score a B or higher can redo the exam the following year.

5. In the sixth form, P.E. can optionally be taken as an examined A-Level. Those that do not do this must still take part in games weekly, though this is not examined or graded in any way, or must take part in Community Service during Games lessons. In Years 10 and 11, certain students are given the option of taking the GCSE as an additional subject. All students must complete Games lessons.

6. Not examined.

title: Reading School


text:
George Oppen

George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969.

Early life
Oppen was born in New Rochelle, New York, into a Jewish family. His father, a successful diamond merchant, was George August Oppenheimer (b. Apr. 13, 1881), his mother Elsie Rothfeld. His father changed the family name to Oppen in 1927. Oppen's childhood was one of considerable affluence; the family was well-tended to by servants and maids and Oppen enjoyed all the benefits of a wealthy upbringing: horse riding, expensive automobiles, frequent trips to Europe. But his mother committed suicide when he was four, his father remarried three years later and the boy and his stepmother, Seville Shainwald, apparently could not get along. Oppen developed a skill for sailing at a young age and the seascapes around his childhood home left a mark on his later poetry. He was taught carpentry by the family butler; Oppen, as an adult, found work as a carpenter and cabinetmaker.

In 1917, the family moved to San Francisco where Oppen attended Warren Military Academy. It is speculated that during this time Oppen's early traumas led to fighting and drinking, so that, while reaching maturity, Oppen was also experiencing a personal crisis. By 1925, this period of personal and psychic transition culminated in a serious car wreck in which George was driver and a young passenger was killed. Ultimately, Oppen was expelled from high school just before he graduated. After this period, he traveled to England and Scotland by himself, visiting his stepmother's relative, and attending lectures by C.A. Mace, professor in philosophy at St. Andrews.

In 1926, Oppen started attending Oregon State University. There he met Mary Colby, a fiercely independent young woman from Grants Pass, Oregon in a poetry class. Hearing Carl Sandburg read his poem "Fog" on campus, they took up poetry themselves. On their first date, the couple stayed out all night with the result that she was expelled and he suspended. They left Oregon, married, and started hitch-hiking across the country working at odd jobs along the way. Mary documents these events in her memoir, Meaning A Life: An Autobiography (1978).

Early writing
While living on the road, Oppen began writing poems and publishing in local magazines. In 1929 and 1930 he and Mary spent some time in New York, where they met Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, musician Tibor Serly, and designer Russel Wright, among others.

In 1929, George came into a small inheritance and relative financial independence. In 1930 George and Mary moved to California and then to France, where, thanks to their financial input, they were able to establish To Publishers and act as printer/publishers with Zukofsky as editor. The short-lived publishing venture managed to launch works by William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Oppen had begun working on poems for what was to be his first book, Discrete Series, a seminal work in early Objectivist history. Some of these appeared in the February 1931 Objectivist issue of Poetry and the subsequent An "Objectivist's" Anthology published in 1932.

Oppen the Objectivist
In 1933, the Oppens returned to New York. George Oppen, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky and Charles Reznikoff set up the Objectivist Press. The press published books by Reznikoff and Williams, as well as Oppen's first book Discrete Series, which included a preface by Ezra Pound.

Politics and war
Faced with the effects of the Depression and the rise of fascism, the Oppens were becoming increasingly involved in political action. Unable to bring himself to write verse propaganda, Oppen abandoned poetry and joined the Communist Party USA, serving as election campaign manager for Brooklyn in 1936, and helping organize the Utica New York Milk Strike. He and Mary were engaged and active in the cause of worker's rights, and Oppen was tried and acquitted on a charge of felonious assault on the police.

By 1942, Oppen was deferred from military service while working in the defense industry. Disillusioned by the CPUSA and willing to assist in the fight against fascism, Oppen quit his job, making himself eligible for the draft. Effectively volunteering for duty, Oppen saw active service on the Maginot Line and the Ardennes; he was seriously wounded near Bad Urach Germany. Shortly after Oppen was wounded, Oppen's division helped liberate the concentration camp at Landsberg am Lech. He was awarded the Purple Heart and returned to New York in 1946.

Mexico
After the war, Oppen worked as a carpenter and cabinet maker. Although now less politically active, the Oppens were aware that their pasts were certain to attract the attention of Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee and decided to move to Mexico. During these admittedly bitter years in Mexico, George ran a small furniture making business and was involved in an expatriate intellectual community. They were also kept under surveillance by the Mexican authorities in association with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were able to re-enter the United States in 1958 when the United States government again allowed them to obtain passports which had been revoked since 1950.

Return to poetry
In 1958, the Oppens considered becoming involved in Mexican real estate if their expatriate status was to continue. But they were contemplating a move back to the United States, which caused both of them considerable anxiety, prompting Mary to see a therapist. During one of her visits, George told the therapist about a dream he was having (the Oppens later referred to this incident as the "rust in copper" dream). The therapist persuaded George that the dream had a hidden meaning that would convince Oppen to begin writing poetry again. But Oppen also suggested other factors led to his return to the US and to poetry, including his daughter's well-being, because she was beginning college at Sarah Lawrence.

After a brief trip in 1958 to visit their daughter at university, the Oppens moved to Brooklyn, New York, in early 1960 (although for awhile, returning to Mexico regularly for visits). Back in Brooklyn, Oppen renewed old ties with Louis Zukofksy and Charles Reznikoff and also befriended many younger poets. The poems came in a flurry; within two years Oppen had assembled enough poems for a book and began publishing the poems in Poetry, where he had first published, and in his half-sister June Oppen Degnan's San Francisco Review.

Last years
In 1975, Oppen was able to complete and see into publication his Collected Poems, together with a new section "Myth of the Blaze." In 1977, Mary provided the secretarial help George needed to complete his final volume of poetry Primitive. During this time, George's final illness, Alzheimer's disease, began to manifest itself with confusion, failing memory, and other losses. The disease was eventually to make it impossible for him to continue writing. George Oppen, age 76, died of pneumonia with complications from Alzheimer's disease in a convalescent home in California on July 7, 1984.

Works

 * Discrete Series (1934), with a "Preface" by Ezra Pound
 * The Materials (1962)
 * This in Which (1965)
 * Of Being Numerous (1968)
 * Alpine (1969)
 * Seascape: Needle's Eye (1972)
 * The Collected Poems (1975) includes Myth of the Blaze
 * Primitive (1978)
 * Poems of George Oppen (1990); selected and introduced by Charles Tomlinson
 * The Selected Letters of George Oppen (1990); edited with an introduction and notes by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
 * New Collected Poems (2001, revised edition 2008); edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Davidson, w/ a preface by Eliot Weinberger
 * Selected Poems (2002), edited, with an introduction by Robert Creeley
 * Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers (2008); edited with an introduction by Stephen Cope
 * Speaking with George Oppen: Interviews with the Poet and Mary Oppen, 1968-1987 (2012), edited with an introduction by Richard Swigg
 * 21 Poems (2017); written 1929-30; edited with an introduction by David B. Hobbs

Posthumous publications
For more information on Oppen's posthumous publications, such as his Selected Letters and New Collected Poems, see Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Michael Davidson.

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

title: George Oppen


text:
Foundever

Foundever (previously known as Sitel and Sykes) is a privately owned customer experience technology company headquartered in Luxembourg City. It provides outsourced sales, technical support, customer service, and other business processes for large companies. The company has 170,001 employees and $4 billion in revenue.

Foundever started as a subsidiary of United Technologies before being bought by then-President James Lynch in 1985. It grew quickly and became the first telemarketing organization to go public in 1995. It expanded internationally in the 1990s and 2000s. Financial problems prompted layoffs and restructuring in 2001. In 2007, majority owner Onex Corporation de-listed Sitel from NASDAQ. Group Acticall, the current owner and operator, acquired Sitel in 2015.

Early history
Foundever started as a subsidiary of United Technologies called HQ800 and located in Omaha, Nebraska. Its then-President, James F. Lynch, bought the company for $165,000 in 1985. He renamed it "SITEL/Sitel," which stands for "System International TELemarketing." At the time, SITEL had about $100 million in annual revenue and 16 employees.

Sitel was listed on NASDAQ in 1995. Afterwards, it expanded internationally by opening new offices and acquiring other call center companies abroad. For example, in 1996 Sitel acquired London-based telemarketing company Mitre PLC for $230 million. Simultaneously, Sitel announced it bought a 69.2 percent interest in Teleaction, a Spanish-focused telemarketing company, for about $24 million. That same year, Sitel acquired Canadian Telephone Corporation.

In the 1990s, Sitel grew about twelve-fold to $600 million in revenues. Sitel had 24,000 employees and 70 call centers but was struggling to turn a profit. It had substantial debt from the cost of acquisitions and expenses related to closing unprofitable call centers it had acquired. In 2001, Sitel was restructured to reduce taxes and hundreds of middle-management positions were cut.

Ownership changes
By 2005, Sitel had $1 billion in annual revenue. The majority owner of Sitel Group, Onex Corporation, bought-out shareholders for $450 million in 2007, taking Sitel off NASDAQ and making it a privately-owned company. Sitel was merged with Onex Corporation's subsidiary ClientLogic Corporation. Onex paid an additional $51 million in 2008 and $60 million in 2014 to buy preferred shares, bringing its ownership of Sitel to 86 percent.

France-based Group Acticall, which was founded in 1995 by Laurent Uberti and Olivier Camino, acquired Sitel in 2015, valuing the company at $850 million.

In June 2021, Sitel acquired a public customer service company Sykes Enterprises for $2.2 billion. In March 2023, Sitel and Sykes fully merged to form Foundever.

2022 data breach
Okta, a large identity and access management company, had a security breach in early 2022 that it blamed on Sykes, one of many companies which provides customer support services for Okta. Documents leaked in May 2022 raised serious questions about Sitel/Sykes' security defenses, and gaps in Okta's response to being notified of the security breach by Sitel.

Products and services
Foundever provides out-sourced call center services, as well as consulting, analytics, and support for other business processes. The company operates out of large buildings with employees that speak different languages. Its call centers are used for things like sales, customer service, collections, and back-office work. For example, employees might take a phone order for a consumer product or troubleshoot problems with a bank account. It also operates sub-brands for things like training and IT software. It also develops customer service chatbots.

Initially, Sitel primarily did sales calls for insurance and credit card companies. It started specializing in different industries and services in 1990. Sitel started doing inbound calls in 1990 tech support in 1997 and customer relationship management in 2001.

title: Foundever


text:
Always Coming Home

Always Coming Home is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It is in parts narrative, pseudo-textbook and pseudo-anthropologist's record. It describes the life and society of the Kesh people, a cultural group who live in the distant future long after modern society has collapsed. It is presented by Pandora, who seems to be an anthropologist or ethnographer from the readers' contemporary culture, or a culture very close to it. Pandora describes the book as a protest against contemporary civilization, which the Kesh call "the Sickness of Man".

Setting
The book's setting is a time so post-apocalyptic that no cultural source can remember the apocalypse, though a few folk tales refer to our time. The only signs of our civilization that have lasted into their time are indestructible artefacts such as styrofoam and a self-manufacturing, self-maintaining, solar-system-wide computer network. There has been a great sea level rise since our time, flooding much of northern California, where the story takes place.

The Kesh use technological inventions of civilization such as writing, steel, guns, electricity, trains, and a computer network (see below). However, unlike one of their neighboring societies – the Dayao or Condor People – they do nothing on an industrial scale, reject governance, have no non-laboring caste, do not expand their population or territory, consider disbelief in what we consider “supernatural” absurd, and deplore human domination of the natural environment. Their culture blends millennia of human economic culture by combining aspects of hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and industrial societies, but rejects cities (literal “civilization”). In fact, what they call “towns” would count as villages for the reader – a dozen or a few-dozen multi-family or large family homes. What they call “war” is a minor skirmish over hunting territories, and is considered a ridiculous pastime for youngsters, since an adult person should not throw his life away.

Pandora observes that a key difference between the Kesh and the readers' [her?] society is the size of their population: "There are not too many of them.". Their low population density means that they can feed themselves from their land. The Kesh maintain this low population without coercion, which would be antithetical to their loosely organized society. They carry a large accumulation of genetic damage, which leads to fewer successful pregnancies and higher infant mortality. They also have social taboos against multiple siblings and early pregnancies; a third child is considered shameful, and the Dayao's practice of large families is referred to as "incontinence". Abortions are practiced freely.

Summary
The book is divided into two parts: The first part consists mostly of Kesh texts and records of oral performances, interspersed with Pandora's commentary, accounts of a few aspects of Kesh life, and personal essays. The longest text is a personal history narrated by a woman called Stone Telling. Stone Telling's autobiography fills less than a third of the book, told in three sections with large gaps filled with other material. The second part, called "The Back of the Book", contains a few Kesh texts but consists mostly of Pandora's accounts of various aspects of Kesh life.

Stone Telling recounts how she spent her childhood with her mother's people in the Valley, as a very young woman lived several years with her father's people in The City, and escaped from it with her daughter, who was born there. The two societies are contrasted through her narrative: the Kesh are peaceable and self-organized, whereas the Condor people of The City are rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical, militaristic, and expansionist. During the lifetime of Stone Telling, both The City and the Valley change, and for a time one changes the other. There are traces of this arc in other parts of the book.

The next longest piece in the main part, in the section "Eight Life Stories", is the novelette "The Visionary", which was published as a stand-alone story in Omni in 1984. This part also includes history and legends, myths, plays, a chapter of a novel, and song lyrics and poetry. Some editions of the book were accompanied by a tape of Kesh music and poetry.

A number of these are attributed by Pandora to a Kesh woman named Little Bear Woman; these are:
 * Shahugoten. As told by Little Bear Woman of Sinshan to the Editor pp. 57–59 [a legend]
 * Coming Home to Up the Hill House. By Little Bear Woman p. 258 [a poem]
 * The Writer to the Morning in Up the Hill House in Sinshan. By Little Bear Woman p. 258 [a poem]
 * A Song to Up the Hill House in Sinshan. By Little Bear Woman p. 259 [a poem]
 * Some of the paths around Sinshan Creek. A Kesh map of the watershed of Sinshan Creek, given to the Editor by Little Bear Woman of Sinshan.

"The Back of the Book", about a fifth of the number of pages, presents cultural lore, with the format and attributions or annotations that an ethnographic fieldworker might make. It includes discussions of village layout and landscaping, family and professional guilds, recipes, medical care, yearly ritual dances, and language.

Awards
The novel received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a runner up for the National Book Awards.

Literary significance and criticism
It has been noted that Always Coming Home underscores Le Guin's long-standing anthropological interests. The Valley of the Na [River] is modeled on the landscape of California's Napa Valley, where Le Guin spent her childhood when her family was not in Berkeley.

Like much of Le Guin's work, Always Coming Home follows Native American themes. According to Richard Erlich, "Always Coming Home is a fictional retelling of much in A. L. Kroeber's [Ursula's father] monumental Handbook of the Indians of California." There are also some elements retrieved from her mother's The Inland Whale (Traditional narratives of Native California), such as the importance of the number nine, and the map of the Na Valley which looks like the Ancient Yurok World. There are also Taoist themes: the heyiya-if looks like the taijitu, and its hollow center (the "hinge") is like the hub of the wheel as described in the Tao Te Ching. Le Guin had described herself "as an unconsistent Taoist and a consistent un-Christian".

One of its earliest reviews, by Samuel R. Delany in The New York Times, called it "a slow, rich read... [Le Guin's] most satisfying text among a set of texts that have provided much imaginative pleasure"

Dave Langford reviewed Always Coming Home for White Dwarf #82, and stated that "Among many rich strangenesses it also includes a critique of its own improbabilities (as seen through twentieth-century eyes)."

Box set and soundtrack
A box set edition of the book (ISBN 0-06-015456-X), comes with an audiocassette entitled Music and Poetry of the Kesh, featuring 10 musical pieces and 3 poetry performances by Todd Barton. The book contains 100 original illustrations by Margaret Chodos. As of 2017, the soundtrack can be purchased separately in MP3 format (ISBN 978-1-61138-209-9). A vinyl record was also released, together with a digital album for streaming and download in several formats. That combination sold out, but the digital album by itself remains available, and a second pressing of the vinyl, plus the digital, was scheduled to ship "on or around 25 May 2018".

Stage performance
A stage version of Always Coming Home was mounted at Naropa University in 1993 (with Le Guin's approval) by Ruth Davis-Fyer. Music for the production was composed and directed by Brian Mac Ian, although it was original music and not directly influenced by Todd Barton's work.

Publication history

 * Original hardcover release (boxed, with audiocassette), 1985 ISBN 0-06-015545-0
 * Original paperback (boxed, with audiocassette), 1985 ISBN 0-06-015456-X
 * Mass-market Bantam Spectra paperback, 1986 ISBN 0-553-26280-7
 * Trade paperback from the University of California Press, February 2001. Paperback, 534 pages. ISBN 9780520227354 (as part of a series of literature pieces set in California) - the book had been out of print for many years when this was released.
 * Library of America hardcover edition, 2019, 800 pages. ISBN 9781598536034 Features new excerpts from the Kesh novel Dangerous People and other new material.
 * Harper Perennial paperback, 2023 ISBN 0358726921

Influence
John Scalzi, one-time president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, wrote, in his introduction to the 2016 edition, that he discovered the book as a teenager, and calls it "a formative book...sunk deep in [his] bones", one to endlessly return to, always coming home.

title: Always Coming Home


text:
Randall Simon

Randall Carlito Simon (born May 25, 1975) is a Curaçaoan former professional baseball first baseman. He has played all or parts of eight seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), LVBP and one in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) between 1997 and 2006. Simon's debut season came with the Atlanta Braves in 1997, for whom he played until 1999. He also played for the Detroit Tigers (2001–2002), Pittsburgh Pirates (2003, 2004), Chicago Cubs (2003), Tampa Bay Devil Rays (2004), the NPB's Orix Buffaloes (2005), Texas Rangers (2006) Philadelphia Phillies (2006–2007). Upon his release from the Phillies in spring training, Simon played in the Mexican League, for the Rojos del Águila de Veracruz and Potros de Tijuana. He also played in the Northern League for the Gary SouthShore RailCats in 2010 and Rockford RiverHawks in 2011.

Playing career
Simon was born in Willemstad, Curaçao. Before signing with the Pirates, Simon signed with the Florida Marlins and New York Yankees in the 2000 season, but did not play in the majors for either franchise. In 2003, Simon was traded by Pittsburgh to the Chicago Cubs, where he had a productive postseason, helping the Cubs to the 2003 National League Championship Series. After the season, Simon was released by Chicago.

On February 19, 2004, the Pittsburgh Pirates signed Simon as a free agent to secure the team at first base for the upcoming season. After several months into his second tenure with the Pirates, he was released on August 18, 2004. Simon said, "I'm a fighter," Simon said. "I promise you're going to see me again. You don't have to worry about that."

One day after his release from the Pirates, he was acquired by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After less than a month with Tampa Bay he was released and signed with the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese Pacific League.

Randall represented his country in the 2006 World Baseball Classic for Netherlands along with his fellow country man and old teammate Andruw Jones who he played with the Atlanta Braves.

In 2008, Simon played for the independent Newark Bears of the Atlantic League.

In 2009, Simon played in the World Baseball Classic on the team representing the Netherlands.

The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks of the Northern League signed Simon to a contract for the 2009 season.

Simon played for the Truenos de Tijuana of the Northern Mexican League (Liga Norte de Mexico) in the 2011 season, which ended on July 17, 2011.

Coaching career
On March 4, 2024, Simon was hired by the Toros de Tijuana of the Mexican League to serve as an assistant batting coach.

Sausage race incident
On July 9, 2003, while playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, during the Milwaukee Brewers' "Sausage Race," in which four contestants wearing sausage costumes have a footrace on the field, Simon leaned over the dugout railing and hit college student Mandy Block (in the Italian sausage costume) with a bat, causing her to fall into the path of another racer. His bat struck only the top padded part of the costume, well above her head position, causing her to lose her balance. Block suffered only a scraped knee. Simon was questioned by police and later fined $432.10 for disorderly conduct. MLB suspended him for three games and fined him $2,000. He issued an apology to Block and sent her the bat, autographed, from the incident. When Simon returned to Miller Park later that year as a member of the Chicago Cubs, he purchased Italian sausages for an entire section, and during the race, his teammates playfully held him back until all the sausages passed the dugout, while manager Dusty Baker guarded the bat rack.

Mandy Block, who Simon knocked down and by then known by her married name Mandy Wagner, stated in a 2021 interview that she found the incident "hilarious" and avoided most publicity related to it, feeling uncomfortable with the media narrative that she considered to be criminalizing Simon. Block received a complimentary trip for two persons to Curaçao, Simon's home island, from the Curaçao Tourism Board; she traveled there with her mother in March 2004.

title: Randall Simon


text:
Region Stockholm

Region Stockholm is a region, a municipal body corresponding to the territory of Stockholm County in Sweden. Its main responsibilities are the public healthcare system and public transport.

New name
Starting from 2019, the Stockholm County Council changed its name to Region Stockholm.

Landsting
The regional assembly (regionfullmäktige) election results 2018:

title: Region Stockholm


text:
Jedem das Seine

"Jedem das Seine" is the literal German translation of the Latin phrase suum cuique, meaning "to each his own" or "to each what he deserves".

During World War II the phrase was contemptuously used by the Nazis as a motto displayed over the entrance of Buchenwald concentration camp. This has resulted in use of the phrase being considered controversial in modern Germany.

History
Jedem das Seine has been an idiomatic German expression for several centuries. For example, it is found in the works of Martin Luther and contemporaries.

It appears in the title of a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nur jedem das Seine (BWV 163), first performed at Weimar in 1715.

Some nineteenth-century comedies bear the title Jedem das Seine, including works by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz and Caroline Bernstein.

An ironic twist on the proverb, "jedem das Seine, mir das Meiste" ("to each his own, to me the most"), has been known in the reservoir of German idioms for a long time, including its inclusion in Carl Zuckmayer's 1931 play The Captain of Köpenick.

In 1937, the Nazis constructed the Buchenwald concentration camp, 7 km from Weimar, Germany. The motto Jedem das Seine was placed in the camp's main entrance gate. The gates were designed by Franz Ehrlich, a former student of the Bauhaus art school, who had been imprisoned in the camp because he was a communist.

Controversies
Several modern advertising campaigns in the German language, including ads for Nokia, REWE grocery stores, Burger King, and Merkur Bank, have been marred by controversy after using the phrase Jedem das Seine or Jedem den Seinen.

An ExxonMobil ad campaign in January 2009 touted Tchibo coffee drinks at the company's Esso stores with the slogan Jedem den Seinen!. The ads were withdrawn after protest from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and a company spokesman said its advertising contractor had been unaware of the proverb's association with Nazism.

In March 2009, a student group associated with the Christian Democratic Union used the slogan for an education campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), but later withdrew it due to public outcry.

In May 2018, Peek & Cloppenburg started a campaign using the motto and defended its use publicly after much criticism.

title: Jedem das Seine


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Tales from Earthsea

Tales from Earthsea is a collection of fantasy stories and essays by American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Harcourt in 2001. It serves as an accompaniment to the five novels (1968 to 2001) of the Earthsea cycle, all set in the fictional archipelago Earthsea.

Tales from Earthsea won the annual Endeavour Award, for the best book by a writer from the Pacific Northwest, and Locus Award, Best Collection, for speculative fiction collections. Two of the five collected stories were previously published, "Darkrose and Diamond" (1999) and "Dragonfly" (1998), and both had been nominated for annual awards.

Contents

 * Foreword
 * "The Finder". The school of magic is established on Roke island.
 * "Darkrose and Diamond" (1999). The daughter of a witch and the son of a rich merchant love each other.
 * "The Bones of the Earth". Ogion the Silent helps his wizard master deal with an earthquake.
 * "On the High Marsh". A mysterious healer arrives in a remote village threatened by a livestock epidemic.
 * "Dragonfly" (1998). This is a postscript to the novel Tehanu.
 * "A Description of Earthsea" (reference material)

"Darkrose and Diamond" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1999. "Dragonfly" was first published in Legends, October 1998.

Themes
All of the stories reinterpret the world of Earthsea. In the original trilogy, Earthsea society in general and the practice of magic in particular are dominated by men. Women can only be witches, which is the despised lowest rank of the magical world, as expressed in the proverb "Weak as women's magic, wicked as women's magic".

The Tales from Earthsea stories try to redress the balance. It is disclosed that the Roke school had been established by women who were later excluded from it; and that Ogion, Ged's beloved tutor and mentor, had learned his magic from a master who had learned from an "unauthorised" woman mage. Other stories feature strong and assertive women who in various ways challenge male dominance.

title: Tales from Earthsea


text:
Talk:Bibliophilia

Too much bolding
The first paragraph of the article has tons of bolded text. Normally this doesn't bother me, but every single sentence in the paragraph has at least one word bolded, which gets to be a distraction. Anyone mind if I remove some of the bolding? --Dr. WTF 02:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Not only do I not mind, I just did it. :) It was obnoxious! Aleta 07:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Redundant article?
This is semi-redundant with book collecting; not sure if separate articles have any particular value or not. Stan 15:12, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC) erm no, this is describing a word that means as such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:641:C080:520:7C25:26C4:108B:AC7 (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Computer screens?
I have added the disputed tag regarding the discussion on people abandoning books when some IBM screen arrives on the market. This is surely nonsense. rem120

 * I agree with you, about the IBM screen. Part of the love of books is through the actual object, the book.  The covers, the pages, the texture, print, smell, etc. Salanth

 * Agreed, when I read the part about the IBM stuff I instantally thought, B.S. [allranger]

 * Hmm. I must say I wonder why that part hasn't been thrown out a long time ago. Oh well, now its done. Greetings from a guy who loves books and hi-tech. No need for a schism there. :-) --Wernher 03:21, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I reading love books, but can't stand the feel of the paper... and the annoyance of trying to hold down a page/reading text next to the spine. If it wasn't for the glare I'd happily read books on the net all the time instead. Haha, I'm such a freak. ~ Francesca

You're a freak? I have gigabytes of books in many different formats for the PC. (as well as many real books.) Adjust your brightness and contrast levels correctly and you'll have no trouble reading from a CRT. I see nothing freakish about it, computers manipulate media quite readily, text is no exception! JubalHarshaw 04:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Lifestyle
But is it a lifestile? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lifestyles

I believe it is most defenitely a lifestlye. Book collecting is an addiction and literally takes over a life. --Da Kidd 14:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

 * That would be Bibliomania, the addiction or obsessive correcting of books 2601:641:C080:520:7C25:26C4:108B:AC7 (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Bibliophily vs. Bibliophilia
People of think that the latter is correct - and therefore, perhaps it is.
 * But it's not in my 10th edition of MW!
 * Yours truly,--Ludvikus 00:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Anime/manga-related links
The Read or Die and Private Sheska links seem out of place. Maybe they should be removed?

Merge into Book collecting?
I agree with Stan's "Redundant article?" comment above, and recommend this article be merged into Book collecting. I plan to edit that article, and will probably begin to edit and move some of this page over. -- Mukrkrgsj 02:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Some corrections required
SabreWolfy 20:39, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Not sure why the 'profile' section is so named, nor why it is in quotation marks and starts with a lowercase letter.
 * What is the purpose of all the Library of Congress data tacked on to the end of this article?

Bibliophily
I'm rather surprised that no one bothered to included it or define it in the opening paragraph. Will someone please come to the plate? --Ludvikus 02:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

People
I was wondering if maybe we should include a section on people who suffered from Bibliophly. (Sontag12 (talk) 22:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC))

Standard work, Classic, Definitive study
The first of these is currently under consideration for deletion. Can one and all please drop by a put his, her, or their two cents in before the standard works are wiped out? Now do I have your attention? --Ludvikus (talk) 00:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal
The result of the discussion was: Articles not merged.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  14:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

 * (This comment was copied from Talk:Book collector:) According to dictionaries bibliophilia is the most technical term for book collecting. The bibliophila article right now is no more than an unreferenced dictionary definition as far as I can tell. It should either be redirected here or this article should be moved over there. Which title should actually house the article?

 * (Copied from above:) This is semi-redundant with book collecting; not sure if separate articles have any particular value or not. Stan 15:12, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * (Copied from above as well:) I agree with Stan's "Redundant article?" comment above, and recommend this article be merged into Book collecting. I plan to edit that article, and will probably begin to edit and move some of this page over. -- Mukrkrgsj 02:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I compiled the three above comments here - in spite of their being a few years old - as I am in favor of a merge as well. Supertouch (talk) 20:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd agree. Needs to be done carefully though as they're definitely not always synonymous. Suggest merge from here to there, simply to keep the larger edit-history intact - once the content is all in one place it could then be pagemoved to a different title if deemed necessary. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:13, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

 *  Oppose merge: The two terms, while closely related, are not synonymous. Not all bibliophiles are book collectors, and while one might assume that all book collectors are bibiliophiles, that's not necessarily true either. There are some who engage in collecting for reasons not always strictly bibliophilic--for research; because of love of a particular topic that encompasses, but is not limited to, books; in order to appear cultured; or for investment. I think the two topics should remain separate.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  22:18, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Oppose. As Shelfskewed correctly states bibliophilia is only a certain form of book collecting, the two terms are not synonymous. --Saddhiyama (talk) 22:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Oppose. The terms are not synonymous. --Spacini (talk) 00:46, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Attribution
Text and references copied from Bookworm (insect) to Bibliophilia. See former article's history for a list of contributors. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 10:08, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Text and references copied from Bibliophilia to Bookworm (insect). See former article's history for a list of contributors.  7&6=thirteen (☎) 10:43, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bibliophilia


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Lichtenfels (district)

Lichtenfels is a Landkreis (district) in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Coburg, Kronach, Kulmbach, Bayreuth and Bamberg.

History
In medieval times the Main river served as the border between the two main states possessing lands in this territory: the Bishopric of Bamberg, and the County of Andechs. The castle of Lichtenfels was property of Andechs, which later fell under the Duchy of Merania. In 1248 the Dukes of Merania became extinct, and the entire region was annexed by the clerical state of Bamberg. In 1803 the clerical states of Germany were dissolved, and the Bishopric of Bamberg fell to Bavaria.

The district was established in 1972 by merging the former districts of Lichtenfels and Staffelstein.

Geography
The district is situated on both banks of the river Main in the hills of the Franconian Jura (Fränkische Alb).

Coat of arms
Yellow and blue were the colours of Andechs resp. Merania. The bishopric of Bamberg is symbolised by the heraldic lion of Bamberg. On the left side there are the orb and the crown of the Holy Roman Empire.

title: Lichtenfels (district)


text: User talk:212.219.164.30

title: User talk:212.219.164.30


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Young Törless

Young Törless (Der junge Törless) is a 1966 German drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, adapted from the 1906 novel The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil. It deals with the violent and sadistic tendencies of a group of boys at an Austrian military academy at the beginning of the 20th century.

Plot
At the beginning of the 20th century, Thomas Törless (Mathieu Carrière) arrives at the academy and learns how Anselm von Basini (Marian Seidowsky) has been caught stealing by fellow student Reiting (Fred Dietz). Basini is obliged to become Reiting's "slave", bowing to Reiting's sadistic rituals. Törless follows their relationship with intellectual interest but without emotional involvement.

Also partaking in these sessions is Beineberg (Bernd Tischer), with whom Törless visits Bozena (Barbara Steele), the local prostitute. Again, Törless is aloof and more intrigued than excited by the woman.

He is however very eager to understand imaginary numbers, which are mentioned in his maths lesson. The maths teacher is unwilling or unable to explain what these are, stating that in life, emotion is what rules everything – even mathematics.

After Basini is humiliated and suspended upside down in the school gym because of one of Reiting's intrigues, Törless realises intellectually that the other boys are simply cruel. He seems no more or less emotionally moved by this than by the revelation that he cannot understand imaginary numbers. He decides that he does not want to partake in cruelty, so decides to leave the academy. His teachers think that he is too "highly strung" for his own good, and do not want him to stay anyway – they are part of the system which can allow such terrible things to be done to the weak and vulnerable.

At the end of the film, Törless is dismissed from the school and leaves with his mother, smiling.

Cast

 * Mathieu Carrière – Thomas Törless
 * Marian Seidowsky – Anselm von Basini
 * Bernd Tischer – Beineberg
 * Fred Dietz – Reiting
 * Lotte Ledl – Gastwirtin / Innkeeper
 * Jean Launay – Mathematiklehrer / Maths Teacher
 * Barbara Steele – Bozena

Music
The film's significance as a cultural artifact of German post-World War II introspection is enhanced by the fact that its haunting medieval-sounding score was written by Hans Werner Henze, the German modernist composer. Henze, who came of age during the war, was prominent enough in this introspection by virtue of his left-political activism in the arts to feel driven to expatriation from Germany. Hans Werner Henze later arranged a suite from the original score, which was entitled Fantasia for Strings.

Release and awards
Young Törless was screened on 9 May 1966 at the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. It was also selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

In popular culture
Footage from the film was used in the 2023 music video for the song "The Lost Room" by the Pet Shop Boys.

title: Young Törless


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SoftBank Group

SoftBank Group Corp. (ソフトバンクグループ株式会社) is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a multitude of markets and industries ranging from the internet to automation. With over $100 billion in capital at its onset, SoftBank's Vision Fund is the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund. Fund investors included sovereign wealth funds from countries in the Middle East.

The company is known for the leadership of its controversial   founder and largest shareholder Masayoshi Son. Its investee companies, subsidiaries and divisions, including several unprofitable unicorns, operate in robotics, artificial intelligence, software, logistics, transportation, biotechnology, robotic process automation, proptech, real estate, hospitality, broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-commerce, information technology, finance, media and marketing, and other areas. Among its most internationally recognizable current stockholdings are stakes in Arm (semiconductors), Alibaba (e-commerce), OYO Rooms (hospitality), WeWork (coworking) and Deutsche Telekom (telecommunications). SoftBank Corporation, its spun-out affiliate and former flagship business, is the third-largest wireless carrier in Japan, with 45.621 million subscribers as of March 2021. Poor investment decisions of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group led to a panoply of losing investments across the history of the company.

SoftBank was ranked in the 2017 Forbes Global 2000 list as the 36th largest public company in the world and the second-largest publicly traded company in Japan after Toyota.

The logo of SoftBank is based on the flag of the Kaientai, a naval trading company founded in 1865, near the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, by Sakamoto Ryōma.

Although SoftBank does not affiliate itself to any traditional keiretsu, it has close ties with Mizuho Financial Group, its primary lender.

Founding and early years
SoftBank was founded in September 1981 as SOFTBANK Corp by then-24-year-old Masayoshi Son, initially as a software distributor. The company entered the publishing business in May 1982 with the launches of the Oh! PC and Oh! MZ magazines, about NEC and Sharp computers respectively. Oh!PC had a circulation of 140,000 copies by 1989. It would go on to become Japan's largest publisher of computer and technology magazines and trade shows.

In 1994, the company went public, valued at $3 billion. In September 1995, SoftBank agreed to purchase US-based Ziff Davis publishing for $2.1 billion.

1995–2009 expansion
In the 1990s, Son made large investments in Internet services and the so-called new economy in general. SoftBank bought COMDEX from The Interface Group on 1 April 1995 for $800 million and ZDI on 29 February 1996. SoftBank sold COMDEX to Key3Media, a spin-off of Ziff Davis, in 2001. In 1996, SoftBank formed a joint venture with American internet company Yahoo!, creating Yahoo! Japan (now LY Corporation), which would become a dominant site in the country.

In another highly publicized investment, SoftBank bought 80% of memory manufacturers Kingston Technology in 1996. When the owners-founders (John Tu and David Sun) announced plans to distribute $100,000,000 of the $1.5B windfall to Kingston employees, it created a very high-profile media stir that lasted well through the 1996 Christmas season; it was on all US networks, as well as international media. A few years later, in 1999, after the market for memory softened substantially, SoftBank sold the company back at a loss to the original owners for about a third of the original price.

In October 1999, SoftBank became a holding company. In 2000, SoftBank made its most successful investment – $20 million to a then-fledgling Chinese Internet venture called Alibaba. This investment turned into $60 billion when Alibaba went public in September 2014.

In February 2000, SoftBank Ventures Asia was founded under the leadership of Masayoshi Son to focus on investment in Korean-based Internet companies. On 28 January 2005, SoftBank became the owner of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a Nippon Professional Baseball team. On 17 March 2006, SoftBank announced its agreement to buy Vodafone Japan, giving it a stake in Japan's $78 billion mobile markets. In April 2006, SoftBank purchased a 23% stake in Betfair, an Internet betting exchange. In August 2006, SoftBank sold all its shares of SBI Group to a subsidiary of SBI's holding company, making SBI independent. On 1 October 2006, Vodafone Japan changed its corporate name and service brand name to "SoftBank Mobile" and "SoftBank" respectively.

On 28 January 2008, it was announced that SoftBank and Tiffany & Co. collaborated in making a limited 10 model-only phone. This phone contains more than 400 platinum diamonds, totaling more than 20 carats. The cost is said to be more than 100,000,000 yen.

2010–2016 acquisitions
On 3 February 2010, SoftBank acquired 13.7% in Ustream. On 1 October 2010, Ayumi Hamasaki became the commercial spokesperson.

On 3 October 2012, the takeover of competitor eAccess was announced. On 1 July 2013, SoftBank announced that Willcom was a wholly-owned subsidiary, after the termination of rehabilitation proceedings. eAccess was merged with Willcom, which resulted in a new subsidiary and brand from Yahoo! Japan, Ymobile Corporation.

On 15 October 2012, SoftBank announced plans to take control of American Sprint Nextel by purchasing a 70% stake for $20 billion. On 6 July 2013, the United States Federal Communications Commission approved SoftBank's acquisition for $22.2 billion for a 78% ownership interest in Sprint. On 6 August 2013, SoftBank bought 2% more shares of Sprint Corporation, increasing its ownership stake to 80%.

In October 2013, SoftBank acquired a 51% stake in Supercell for a reported $2.1 billion. Later on 25 October 2014, they invested $210 million in OlaCabs, $627 million in Snapdeal with a 30% stake in the company on 28 October 2014, and a $100 million investment in Housing.com for a 30% stake in November 2014.

In 2013, the company bought a controlling stake in French company Aldebaran Robotics, which was rebranded SoftBank Robotics. In 2014, teams from both companies co-designed Pepper, a humanoid robot. In 2015, SoftBank increased its stake to 95%.

In 2015, SoftBank acquired DramaFever. In May 2015, Masayoshi Son said he would appoint Nikesh Arora, a former Google executive, as Representative Director and President of SoftBank. Arora had been heading SoftBank's investment arm. On 1 June 2015, SoftBank acquired an additional 22.7% stake in Supercell, increasing its total stake to 73.2% and becoming the sole external shareholder of the company. In June 2015, SoftBank announced it would invest US$1 billion in the Korean e-commerce website Coupang as part of its overseas expansion plans.

In July 2015, SoftBank announced the renaming of the company from SoftBank Corp to SoftBank Group Corp. Meanwhile, SoftBank Mobile was renamed to SoftBank Corp, the now-former name of the company as a whole. On 16 February 2016, SoftBank announced they would repurchase a record 14.2% of shares, valued at $4.4bn, to boost investor confidence. On 31 March 2016, they announced they would sell shares worth $7.9 billion of their stake in Alibaba Group. On 21 June 2016, SoftBank sold its 84% stake in Supercell for a reported US$7.3 billion to Tencent. On 3 June 2016, Softbank agreed to sell most of its stake in GungHo Online Entertainment (approximately 23.47%) for about $685 million, ending Softbank's majority ownership. The offer was completed by 22 June.

In June 2016, Nikesh Arora stepped down amidst pressure from investors. Board member Ron Fisher and Baer Capital Partners founder Alok Sama undertook Arora's overseas investment duties. One month later, Son announced the company's largest deal ever to buy British chip designer Arm Holdings for more than US$32 billion. This acquisition was completed on 5 September 2016.

On 6 December 2016, after meeting with the then United States President-elect Donald Trump, chief executive Masayoshi Son announced SoftBank would be investing US$50 billion in the United States toward businesses creating 50,000 new jobs.

2017–2018
On 30 January 2017, the Wall Street Journal wrote that SoftBank Group was "weighing an investment of well over $1 billion in shared-office space company WeWork, in what could be among the first deals from its new $100 billion technology fund." On 20 March, SoftBank bought a $300m stake in WeWork. On 14 February 2017, SoftBank Group agreed to buy Fortress Investment Group LLC for $3.3 billion. In February 2017, it was announced that Social Finance Inc. was close to raising $500 million from an investor group led by Silver Lake, including Softbank. On 28 March 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that SoftBank Group Corporation had approached Didi Chuxing Technology Co. about investing $6 billion to help the ride-hailing firm expand in self-driving car technologies, with the bulk of the money to come from SoftBank's planned $100 billion Vision Fund.

On 18 May 2017, it was reported that Softbank had completed its single largest investment in India to date, investing $1.4 billion in Paytm. At the time, Softbank was also working on a takeover of Snapdeal by Flipkart. On 10 August 2017, Softbank invested $2.5 billion in Flipkart.

On 27 May 2017, Softbank and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF), the kingdom's main sovereign wealth fund, partnered to create the Softbank Vision Fund, the world's largest private equity fund with a capital of $93 billion. Softbank Group contributed $28 billion to the investment fund, of which $8.2 billion came from the sale of approximately 25% of British multinational Arm Holdings shares. Saudi Arabia is the principal investor in the fund, its Public Investment Fund (PIF) agreed to inject $45 billion into the Vision Fund over 5 years, becoming its largest investor. Other investors include Apple, Qualcomm, Arm, Foxconn, Sharp, Larry Ellison and Mubadala. The latter agreed to invest $15 billion dollars in the fund, targeting artificial intelligence, communications infrastructure, financial technology, consumer internet, mobile computing and robotics. Through Softbank Vision Fund, CEO Masayoshi Son explained his intent to invest in all companies developing technologies emphasizing global artificial intelligence, including sectors such as finance or transportation. In July 2019, SoftBank announced creating of a "Vision Fund 2", excluding participation from the Saudi Arabia government and including investors Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and others. The fund is reported to focus on AI-based technology and invest approximately $108 billion, including $38 billion of its own funds. In February 2020, however, a report from Wall Street Journal stated the fund would only up with less than half of that capital.

On 8 June 2017, Alphabet Inc. announced the sale of Boston Dynamics (robotics companies whose products include BigDog) to SoftBank Group for an undisclosed sum. On 25 August 2017, SoftBank finalized a $4.4 billion investment in WeWork. On 24 October 2017, Son announced the group would collaborate with Saudi Arabia to develop Neom, the new high-tech business and industrial city of the Saudi Kingdom. On 14 November 2017, Softbank agreed to invest $10 billion into Uber. On 29 December 2017, it was reported that a SoftBank-led consortium had invested $9 billion into Uber. The deal, to close in January 2018, would leave SoftBank as Uber's biggest shareholder, with a 15 percent stake. The deal was secured after Uber shareholders voted to "sell their shares to the Japanese conglomerate at a discounted price." Beyond SoftBank, consortium members included Dragoneer, Tencent, TPG and Sequoia.

On 14 January 2018, Softbank's Vision Fund announced to invest $560 million in the German used-car sales portal Auto1. On 1 March 2018, Softbank's Vision Fund led a $535 million investment in DoorDash. In May 2018, CEO Masayoshi Son revealed during an earnings presentation that Walmart had reached a deal to buy Flipkart. On 27 September 2018, Softbank announced the investment of $400 Million in Home-Selling Startup Opendoor.

In September 2018, Saudi government officials announced that a planned $200 billion project with SoftBank Group to build the world's biggest solar-power-generation project would be put on hold. In November 2018, SoftBank announced it would make an IPO of SoftBank Corp., the telecommunications operator, with the cost of share of $13.22 (which is 1,500 yen). The offer of the shares was going to last for a month. Regarding the number of shares, the total value of SoftBank Corp. will reach $21.15 billion, which would be the second-largest IPO ever made.

In December 2018, SoftBank invested in ParkJockey. The startup attempts to monetize parking lots. After the investment round, general valuation of the ParkJourney reached $1 billion.

In December 2018, SoftBank announced its intention to invest $1 billion on ride-hailing startup Grab. Some sources said that the total amount of investment could reach $1.5 billion.

2019–2021
On September 25, 2019, Softbank Robotics launched Whiz robotic vacuum cleaner in Singapore.

In September 2019, WeWork's IPO was canceled.

In December 2019, Softbank sold its interest in dog-walking startup Wag at a loss. Tadashi Yanai, Fast Retailing's CEO and Japan's richest man at the time, left the board after 18 years.

In January 2020, multiple Softbank-funded startups started cutting their staff, including Getaround, Oyo, Rappi, Katerra and Zume. In February 2020, Elliott Management, an activist hedge fund, bought a $2.5 billion stake in Softbank and pushed for restructuring and more transparency, especially regarding its Vision Fund. Consequently, plans for a second Vision Fund were pushed back.

In November 2019, it was announced that Line Corp. and Z Holdings were going to be a new subsidiary under Naver Corporation and SoftBank Group, their respective owners. The closing was delayed until March 2021 due to COVID-19]].

In March 2020, SoftBank announced that it was launching an emergency ¥4.5tn ($41bn) asset sale to fund a share buyback and debt reduction. The effort was initiated by Son in order to stem a collapse in the company’s share price due to the pandemic, "This programme will be the largest share buyback and will result in the largest increase in cash balance in the history of SBG [SoftBank Group], reflecting the firm and unwavering confidence we have in our business.". After the programme was unveiled, Softbank share price rose almost 19%. The program included a plan to repurchase ¥2tn of its shares in addition to the ¥500bn buyback it promised 10 days prior. Combined, SoftBank would be repurchasing 45% of its stock.

On April 1, 2020, Sprint completed its merger of Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US,, which was majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, leaving T-Mobile the parent company. The merger also led to Softbank holding 24% of the new T-Mobile's shares, while 43% of shares are held by Deutsche Telekom. The remaining 33% will be held by others. In May 2020, Alibaba's co-founder and former CEO Jack Ma resigned from the board.

In July 2020, SoftBank announced that it was considering selling or IPOing British chip designer Arm Holdings, which has been in a feud with the Chinese over control of its local subsidiary, but it did not have the majority ownership due to a decision made by Softbank to sell off the stake to the local partner. For Q2 of 2020, the company's revenues were $12 billion. The firm announced that it would be arranging a new fund worth $555 million. The fund will be used to invest in various companies, including Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

In September 2020, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $100 million Series C round in Biofourmis. Also in September 2020, Softbank was identified as the Nasdaq whale, where it bought stock options valued in the billions, betting on higher prices for the biggest technology companies. That month, SoftBank sold Brightstar Corporation to Brightstar Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount.

American chip design company Nvidia announced plans on September 13, 2020, to acquire ARM from SoftBank, pending regulatory approval, for a value of US $40 billion in stock and cash. This would become the largest semiconductor acquisition to date. SoftBank Group would retain a 10% share in the company, while ARM would maintain its headquarters in Cambridge]]. But this deal collapsed due to regulatory hurdles.

In December 2020, Hyundai Motor Group acquired an 80% stake of Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for approximately $880 million. SoftBank retains about 20% through an affiliate.

In January 2021, SoftBank sold $2 billion in Uber Technologies shares through affiliate firm SB Cayman.

In March 2021, SoftBank made a record $36.99 billion profit from its Vision Fund unit and investment gains via the public market debut of Coupang. SoftBank Group's net profit was $45.88 billion (¥4.99 trillion). It was the largest recorded annual profit by a Japanese company in history. The same month, Softbank's Vision Fund 2 announced investment in the eToro SPAC merger PIPE of $650 million.

In April 2021, Softbank announced plans to acquire a 40% stake in AutoStore for $2.8 billion and in July 2021, it announced it would invest $870 million in the Korean hotel booking platform Yanolja.

In May 2021, Softbank stated it would sell SB Energy India to Adani Green Energy, valuing the unit at $3.5 billion. The sale is speculated to mark a shift in the company's trajectory, moving away from investments in solar energy towards companies dealing with artificial intelligence. Later that month, Bloomberg reported that Vision Fund could go public via a $300 million SPAC in 2021, listing in Amsterdam.

In July 2021, Softbank announced that it would acquire the Yahoo Japan brand from Verizon Communications for $1.6 billion.

In August 2021, Son said he would begin to make personal investments alongside Softbank Group's Vision Fund 2.

2022–present
In August 2022, Softbank said that it sold its entire Uber holdings in April–July 2022. It was also reported that Softbank exited Opendoor in that quarter. Five years after Masayoshi Son’s $100 billion fund entered the financial world to much fanfare, Softbank’s venture firm was crumbling and on the verge of collapse. Its large venture vehicles struggled badly, performing in the bottom of the asset class, and many of Son’s closest associates in the effort had departed from the company.

In February 2023, Toyota Tsusho announced that it had bought the controlling interest in SB Energy, which would become a subsidiary, alongside Toyota Tsusho subsidiary Eurus Energy.

In April 2023, SoftBank Group Corp. announced it was selling to a Singapore-based company run by Masayoshi Son’s youngest brother its Korea-based early-stage venture capital arm SoftBank Ventures Asia Corp. after suffering billions of dollars in losses from failed startup bets.

In May 2023, the SoftBank Group announced that losses from the SoftBank Vision Fund had widened 70 percent to a record $32 billion from a year ago. In another divestiture of assets, SoftBank Group also sold the stake in Fortress Investment Group to Mubadala and Fortress' management.

SoftBank Group's Arm filed for an IPO on 21 August 2023 on the Nasdaq. A few days earlier, SoftBank bought back the 25% stake from Vision Fund for around $16 billion, valuing Arm at over $64 billion. Arm went public on 14 September 2023 raising $4.87 billion at a $54.5 billion valuation, with SoftBank continuing to own 90.6% of the company following the offering.

In December 2023, telecommunication and networking company SoftBank Corp, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp, paid 513 million dollars for a controlling stake in Irish technology company Cubic Telecom, in a deal that will net the company’s founders and its private backers a multimillion-euro payout.

On June 27, 2024, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank has invested in the AI search startup Perplexity AI, valuing the company at $3 billion. Perplexity AI, known for its advanced artificial intelligence technology, aims to revolutionize online search experiences. This investment aligns with SoftBank's ongoing strategy to support innovative AI companies, highlighting Perplexity AI's potential in the tech industry. The funding is expected to accelerate the startup's growth and development, further enhancing its AI capabilities and market reach.

2020
As of 30 September 2020, SoftBank ownership is as follows:
 * Masayoshi Son (21.25%)
 * The Master Trust Bank of Japan investment trusts (10.25%)
 * Japan Trustee Services Bank main investment trusts (5.87%)
 * JPMorgan Chase (7.45%)
 * Citibank (1.4%)
 * The Vanguard Group (2.19%)
 * Capital Group Companies (2.4%)
 * Baillie Gifford (1.36%)

2022
By December 2022, Masayoshi Son’s stake in the company he founded had risen to 34.2% from 32.2% as of the end of September.

Business units
SoftBank's corporate profile includes various other companies such as Japanese broadband company SoftBank BB, data center company IDC Frontier and the publishing company SB Creative. SBI Group is a Japanese financial services company that began in 1999 as a branch of SoftBank. Ymobile Corporation is another telecommunications subsidiary of SoftBank, established in 2014. In 2010, SoftBank founded Wireless City Planning (WCP), a subsidiary that planned the development of TD-LTE networks throughout Japan. SoftBank also operates SoftBank Capital, a US-based venture capital company. SoftBank owns the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks professional baseball team. SoftBank also operated in the eco-power industry through subsidiary SB Energy until its sale.

It has various partnerships in Japanese subsidiaries of foreign companies such as Yahoo! (which has resulted in Yahoo! Japan), E-Trade, Ustream.tv, EF Education First and Morningstar. It also has stakes in Alibaba Group and Sprint Corporation.

Other holdings include Softbank Corp., Softbank Vision Fund, Arm Holdings (90.6%), Fortress Investment Group, Boston Dynamics, T-Mobile US (3.3%), Alibaba (29.5%), Yahoo Japan (48.17%), Brightstar (87.1%), Uber (15%), Didi Chuxing (c. 20%), Ola (c. 30%), Renren (42.9%), InMobi (45%), Hike (25.8%), Snapdeal (c. 30%), Fanatics (c. 22%), Improbable Worlds (c. 50%), Paytm (c. 20%), OYO (42%), Ping An Insurance (7.41%), Slack Technologies (c. 5%), WeWork (c. 46%), ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance (5%), Compass, Inc. (c. 30.1%), AUTO1 Group (c. 20%), Wag (45%), Katerra (c. 28%), Cruise Automation (c. 19.6%), ParkJockey, Tokopedia (Indonesia), and many more companies.

SoftBank Corp.
SoftBank Corp. (ソフトバンク株式会社) is SoftBank's telecommunications subsidiary, providing both mobile and fixed-line services. It was called SoftBank Mobile until July 2015, when the Group merged SoftBank BB Corp., SoftBank Telecom Corp. and Ymobile Corporation to reflect its fixed-line and ISP operations.

J-PHONE
SoftBank's mobile communications arm began with the formation of Japan Telecom in 1984. The Digital Phone Group (デジタルホン, DPG, three local companies) mobile phone division was formed in 1994, and J-PHONE Co., Ltd. (J-フォン) was formed in 1999 by the DGP/ Digital TU-KA Group merger (DTG, six local companies, not to be confused with TU-KA). Japan Telecom owned a stake of 45.1%.

J-PHONE grew steadily for a decade by introducing new services and enhancements such as SkyWalker for PDC, SkyMelody ringtone download, the Sha-Mail picture mail introduced following camera phones developed by SHARP, the mobile multimedia data service J-Sky modeled after NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, and advanced Java services based on JSCL, modeled after NTT DoCoMo's DoJa based i-appli.

Vodafone
In October 2001, the British mobile phone group Vodafone increased its share to 66.7% of Japan Telecom and 69.7% of J-Phone. On 1 October 2003, the company's name and the service brand changed to Vodafone, while the division was called Vodafone K.K. or Vodafone Japan.

However, in January 2005, Vodafone Japan lost 58,700 customers and in February 2005 lost 53,200 customers, while competitors NTT DoCoMo gained 184,400 customers, while Au by KDDI gained 163,700, and Willcom gained 35,000. While as of February 2005, DoCoMo's FOMA 3G service had attracted 10 million subscribers and KDDI's 3G service had attracted over 17 million subscribers, Vodafone's 3G service only attracted 527,300 subscribers. Vodafone 3G failed to attract subscribers because Vodafone reduced investments in 3G services in Japan in 2002/3; handsets did not fully match the needs and preferences of Japanese customers. At the end of February 2005, Vodafone Japan had 15.1 million customers. By the end of October 2005, the number of subscribers had fallen below 15M. During the same period, NTT DoCoMo gained 1.65 million customers, and KDDI/AU gained 1.82 million customers. Vodafone-Japan had only 4.8% of Japan's 3G market.

Vodafone changed the name of its multimedia data services from J-Sky to Vodafone live! and used J-Sky's principles, technologies, and business models to introduce the WAP-based Vodafone live! in Vodafone's other markets. At the end of February 2005, Vodafone live! had 12.907 million subscribers in Japan. By the end of October 2005, the number of Vodafone live! subscribers had fallen by 138,000.

In March 2006, Vodafone began discussing the sale of the Vodafone Japan unit to SoftBank. Vodafone was unable to satisfy customers. Handsets had user interfaces that differed too much from the Japanese interface and lacked competitive features.

SoftBank Mobile

On 17 March 2006, Vodafone Group announced it had agreed to sell Vodafone Japan to SoftBank for about US$15.1 billion. On 18 May 2006, the unit was renamed "SoftBank Mobile Corp.", effective 1 October 2006.

On 4 June 2008, SoftBank Mobile announced a partnership with Apple and brought the iPhone (3G) to Japan later in 2008. SoftBank Mobile was the only official carrier of the iPhone in Japan until the release of iPhone 4S in 2011, when au by KDDI began to offer it.

Technology
SoftBank Corp.'s mobile network operates W-CDMA (UMTS 3G) network ("SoftBank 3G"). SoftBank's 3G network is compatible with UMTS and supports transparent global roaming for UMTS subscribers from other countries.

Timeline

 * 1981: SoftBank Corp. (currently SoftBank Group Corp.) Japan (Yombancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) established. Commenced operations as a distributor of packaged software
 * 1984: Japan Telecom was founded.
 * 1986: Japan Telecom launches leased circuit services.
 * 1986: Railway Telecommunication established.
 * 1989: Railway Telecommunication merges with Japan Telecom.
 * 1991: Tokyo Digital Phone established.
 * 1994: J-Phone starts PDC cellular service in the 1.5 GHz band, 10 MHz bandwidth.
 * 1997: J-Phone launches SkyWalker SMS service designed by Aldiscon and Ericsson for PDC
 * 1998: J-Phone launches SkyMelody ringtone download service
 * 1999: J-Phone launches J-Sky wireless Internet service ten months after NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, which was launched in February 1999.
 * 2000: J-Phone launches Sha-Mail (写メール) picture messaging service using the world's first camera phones developed by SHARP
 * 2001: J-Phone launches Java service with JSCL library
 * 2002: J-Phone launches W-CDMA 3G service for the first time
 * 2002: Company name was changed to Japan Telecom Holdings. The fixed-line telecommunications business was also separated to found a new Japan Telecom.
 * 2003: J-Phone company name is changed to Vodafone K.K., and J-Sky name is changed to Vodafone live!. Vodafone launches a Japan-nationwide Beckham campaign
 * 2003: Company name was changed to Vodafone Holdings K.K.
 * 2004: Vodafone K.K. merges with Vodafone Holdings K.K. and the company name is changed to Vodafone K.K.
 * 2004: Vodafone relaunches the 3G services in Japan a second time offering mobile phone handsets designed primarily for the European markets
 * 2005: Vodafone changes management and relaunches 3G services in Japan a third time
 * 2006: Vodafone officially announced it had agreed to sell Vodafone Japan (Vodafone K.K.) to SoftBank for a total of 1.75 trillion Japanese yen (approx US$15.1 billion) in one of the largest M&A transactions in Japan to date
 * 2006: SoftBank and Vodafone K.K. jointly announced, that the name of the company will be changed to a "new, easy-to-understand and familiar" company name and brand. Masayoshi Son became CEO and Representative Director of Vodafone K.K.
 * 2006: Headquarters moved from Atago Hills to Shiodome to integrate operations with other SoftBank group companies.
 * 2006: SoftBank announced that the name of the company will be changed to "SoftBank Mobile Corp." effective 1 October 2006
 * 2006: SoftBank started rebranding "Vodafone" to "SoftBank."
 * 2006: Vodafone Japan company name is changed to "SoftBank Mobile Corp."
 * 2008: SoftBank Mobile releases iPhone in Japan beating NTT DoCoMo
 * 2008: SoftBank Mobile joins Open Handset Alliance
 * 2010: Softbank purchased 100% of the PHS mobile operator Willcom.
 * 2012: SoftBank Mobile unveils the Pantone 5 107SH, a mobile phone with a built-in geiger counter.
 * 2015: Investment in US-based Social Finance, Inc (SoFi) announced
 * 2015: SoftBank Mobile was merged with SoftBank BB Corp., SoftBank Telecom Corp., and Ymobile Corporation to form a new subsidiary, SoftBank Corp., to reflect its new status of providing fixed-line and ISP operations.
 * 2018: SoftBank Corp. (TSE: 9434) listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange On 19 December 2018.

Marketing
Since May 2006, SoftBank's telecommunications marketing and commercials have principally revolved around "Otosan sujan karki", the canine patriarch of the otherwise human "Shirason, Kaito" family. "Otosan" translates to father, and the character, a Hokkaido dog, indeed acts as the father of the family, along with the son "Kojiro" (starred by Dante Carver), mom "Masako" (Kanako Higuchi), and daughter "Aya" (Aya Ueto). The advertising series proved to be popular: CM Research Center ranked the Otousan adverts as the most popular in Japan between 2007 and 2012, based on monthly surveys of 3,000 randomly selected adults.

SoftBank partnered with the Ingress augmented reality game, supporting the branded "SoftBank Ultra Link" in-game item.

Sponsorship
SoftBank bought a "team" for the America's Cup. The team was named SoftBank Team Japan, and Yanmar came on board. SoftBank Team Japan raced in the 2017 races held in Bermuda. The team members come from various backgrounds, most of whom were not Japanese.

The company was the official jersey sponsor of the Japanese national basketball team at the official 2017 Asian Basketball Championship in Lebanon as well as the 2019 FIBA World Cup.

SoftBank has also owned the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a Japanese professional baseball team based in Fukuoka, since 2005. The SoftBank logo appears on the jersey, and the team has won seven Japan Series championships under SoftBank, all of which came between and.

Baby bonus
In 2015, SoftBank, along with some other companies in Japan, offered a baby bonus for employees who have children. The payments range from US$400 for a first child to US$40,000 for a fifth child.

Vision fund investments
SoftBank Investment Advisers oversees SoftBank's Vision Fund, created in 2017, which invests in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. It intended to develop a portfolio of 125 AI companies. According to the fund and Son, it also invested in companies to revolutionize real estate, transportation, and retail. Son claimed he would make personal connections with the CEOs of all companies funded by Vision Fund in order to boost synergies among them. Son’s original plans were to raise $100 billion for a new fund every few years, investing about $50 billion a year in startups. By 2023, after the launch of Vision Fund 1 and 2, the dismal performance of SoftBank’s funds had cast a shadow over the initial exuberance of both Masayoshi Son and his company regarding its huge, largely unprofitable intercorporate investments that had become the main mission, vision and purpose of the entire SoftBank Group.

SoftBank Ventures Asia
SoftBank Ventures Asia (SBVA) was the global early-stage venture capital arm of the SoftBank Group The firm focused on early-stage ICT investments – including Artificial Intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and smart robotics. By October 2021, SBVA had backed more than 250 companies in 10 countries with US$1.3 billion fund under management.

SoftBank Ventures Asia (SBVA) was founded in 2000 as SoftBank Ventures Korea and began its focus on South Korean market and its early-stage ventures. SBVA’s one of the early investments in South Korea included Nexon Co, now a Korean-Japanese gaming publisher that was the largest IPO in Japan for 2011.

SoftBank Ventures Asia (SBVA) expanded its focus beyond South Korea since 2011 and made several notable investments in Southeast Asia, such as Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce platform, and Carro, Singapore's used-car platform. In 2018, SBVA launched a $300m venture fund ‘China Venture Fund I’, targeting Chinese start-ups, then immediately trailed by ‘SoftBank Acceleration Fund’ with $300M the following year. With continuous investment across Asia and beyond, the company renamed itself as SoftBank Ventures Asia to reflect its broadened focus on startups in the Asia-Pacific region beyond South Korea, and opened offices in Seoul, Singapore, and Beijing.

With the company’s extended expertise in ICT investment, SBVA is aiming towards two investment themes, which were ‘technology innovation’ in AI, Robotics, Semiconductor, Mobility, and AR/VR, and ‘market innovation’ in consumer, enterprise, shared economy, healthcare, etc. SBVA created $160M ‘future innovation fund’ in March 2021, focusing on AI start-ups and made investment in AI sector including VoyagerX, AI software developer, Upstage AI, AI solution provider, and MarqVision, AI-powered intellectual property (IP) protection platform.

In April 2023, it was known that Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group would sell its early-stage venture capital arm SoftBank Ventures Asia to Singapore-based The Edgeof, a newly formed investment firm led by Son's youngest brother, Taizo Son, as SoftBank Group grappled with steep losses in a myriad of investments made around the world. The operation raised governance concerns.

title: SoftBank Group


text:
Emma Willard

Emma Willard ( Hart; February 23, 1787 – April 15, 1870) was an American female education activist who dedicated her life to education. She worked in several schools and founded the first school for women's higher education in the United States, the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York. With the success of her school, Willard was able to travel across the country and abroad to promote education for women. The seminary was renamed the Emma Willard School in 1895 in her honor.

Early life
Emma Willard was born on February 23, 1787, in Berlin, Connecticut. She was the sixteenth of seventeen children from her father, Samuel Hart, and his second wife Lydia Hinsdale Hart. Her father was a farmer who encouraged his children to read and think for themselves. At a young age, Willard's father recognized her passion for learning. At that time women were only provided basic education, but Willard was included in family discussions such as politics, philosophy, world politics and mathematics that were primarily male subjects. At age 15, Willard was enrolled in her first school in 1802 in her hometown of Berlin. She progressed so quickly that just two years later at the age of 17 she was teaching there. Willard eventually took charge of the academy for a term in 1806.

Career
In 1807, Willard left Berlin and briefly worked in Westfield, Massachusetts, before accepting a job offer at a female academy in Middlebury, Vermont. She held the position of principal at the academy from 1807 to 1809. She was unimpressed by the material taught there and opened a boarding school for women, the Middlebury Female Seminary in 1814, in her own home. She was inspired by the subjects her nephew, John Willard, was learning at Middlebury College and strove to improve the curriculum that was taught at girls' schools.

Willard believed that women could master topics like mathematics and philosophy rather than just subjects taught at finishing schools. This passion for women's education led her to fight for the first women's school for higher education. Her success inspired her to share her ideas on education and to write A Plan for Improving Female Education in 1819, a pamphlet that she presented to the members of the New York Legislature. Her pamphlet rejected contemporary ideas that women did not need a literary or scientific education. For example, the year before, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter in which he suggested women should not read novels, calling them a "mass of trash" with few exceptions, and added that "For a like reason too much poetry should not be indulged."

In her speech to the legislature, Willard said that existing women's education was inadequate both in the amount girls received compared to boys and in its foundational principles. One issue she took was that women's education "has been too exclusively directed, to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty". Another was "it has been made the first object in educating our sex, to prepare them to please the other" while "reason and religion teach, that we too are primary existencies... not the satellites of men." Her plan included a proposal for a women's seminary to be publicly funded just as men's schools were.

Willard did not receive a response from the legislators, several of whom believed women's education to be contrary to God's will. Willard finally received support from New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, who invited her to open a school there. Originally Willard opened an institution in Waterford, New York but she did not receive the promised financial support and therefore moved her school to Troy, New York, where she received more support and funding.

The Troy Female Seminary opened in September 1821 for boarding and day students. This was the first school in the United States to offer higher education for women. The curriculum consisted of the subjects she had longed to include in women's education: mathematics, philosophy, geography, history, and science. Willard led the school to success, and in 1831, the school had enrolled over 300 students.

The school attracted students from wealthy families or families of high position. Although most of the students would still end up as housewives, Willard never hindered her students' pursuit towards women's education and continued to fight for their rights. Despite her reputation today in women's history, Willard was not a supporter of the women's suffrage movement during the mid-19th century. Willard believed that women's education was a much more important matter.

Marriage and family
While working at the academy in Middlebury, Willard met her future husband John Willard. He was a physician and 28 years her senior. John Willard brought four children to the marriage from his previous marriages. His nephew, also named John Willard, lived with them while attending Middlebury College, which gave Emma Willard much inspiration in forming her educational views. Emma Willard's younger sister, Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, joined Emma in 1823, after the death of her first husband, Simeon Lincoln, and taught at Troy Female Seminary for eight years.

Emma and John Willard had one son together, named John Willard Hart, who received the management of the Troy Female Seminary when Willard left it in 1838. Emma's first husband died in 1825, and in 1838, she married Christopher C. Yates but was divorced from him in 1843.

Works
Along with the profits made from the Troy Female Seminary, Willard also made a living from her writing. She wrote several textbooks throughout her lifetime, including books on history and geography. Some of her works are History of the United States, or Republic of America (1828), A System of Fulfillment of a Promise (1831), A Treatise on the Motive Powers which Produce the Circulation of the Blood (1846), Guide to the Temple of Time and Universal History for Schools (1849), Last Leaves of American History (1849), Astronography; or Astronomical Geography (1854), and Morals for the Young (1857). Willard's history and geography texts included women as well as men and emphasized the status of women as the primary determinant in whether a society could be described as civilized.

Willard also published a book of poetry, The Fulfilment of a Promise (1831), with her most popular poem entitled "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," which she reportedly wrote while on an ocean voyage in 1839. In 1830, she made a tour of Europe. Three years later, she donated the proceeds from her book about her travels to a school for women that she helped to found in Athens, Greece. This book Letters from France & Britain was reviewed alongside Abby Jane Morrell's account of her travels in the sub Antarctic, and they were described as "the productions of our self-taught countrywomen who [are] ... creditable to their sex".

Atlas and geography textbooks
Willard cowrote The Woodbridge and Willard Geographies and Atlases (1823) with American geographer William Channing Woodbridge. She co-authored with him A System of Universal Geography on the Principles of Comparison and Classification. Willard and Woodbridge created the first widely used historical atlas of the U.S. The maps, graphs, and pictures integrated the details of the nation's geography into the broad popular image of the country as a large, powerful complex nation. Her map-drawing geographic pedagogy became popular in the United States and also influential in American missionary schools in South Asia during the nineteenth century.

Later life and death
John Willard, Emma's husband, died in 1825. She headed the Troy Female Seminary until she remarried in 1838, and left the school in the hands of her son and daughter-in-law. She married Dr. Christopher Yates and moved to Boston with him. He gave up his career, but after nine months of marriage they separated, and a Decree nisi was granted in 1843.

She spent her later years traveling across America and throughout Europe to promote women's education. In support of her efforts, she published a number of articles and presented lectures across the country to promote the cause. Her personal assistant was Celia M. Burleigh. Willard's efforts helped to establish a school for women in Athens, Greece. Emma Willard died on April 15, 1870, in Troy, New York and was interred at Oakwood Cemetery.

Legacy and honors
The Troy Female Seminary was renamed the Emma Willard School in 1892 in her honor and today is still promoting her strong belief in women's education. A statue honoring her services to the cause of higher education was erected in Troy in 1895 and stands on what is now the Russell Sage College campus.

A marble memorial was erected in Middlebury in 1941. In 1905, Willard was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, New York. In 2013, Willard was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

She has been the subject of several biographies. Her geographies are discussed by Calhoun and her histories by Baym.

title: Emma Willard


text:
Fair Oaks

Fair Oaks may refer to:

Places in the United States

 * Fair Oaks, Arkansas
 * Fair Oaks, California, in Sacramento County
 * Fair Oaks, San Joaquin County, California, a place in California
 * Fair Oaks (VTA), a light rail station in Sunnyvale, California
 * Fair Oaks – Manhattan Manor, a neighborhood in Tampa, Florida
 * Fair Oaks, Georgia
 * Fair Oaks, Indiana
 * Fair Oaks (Natchez, Mississippi), a historic house
 * Fair Oaks, New York
 * Fair Oaks, Oklahoma
 * Fair Oaks, Oregon
 * Fair Oaks (Aldie, Virginia), a historic farmstead
 * Fair Oaks, Fairfax County, Virginia
 * Fair Oaks Mall, a mall in Fairfax, Virginia
 * Fair Oaks, Henrico County, Virginia
 * Fair Oaks, Wisconsin, a former village which was annexed by the city of Madison, Wisconsin, in 1913

Other uses

 * Fair Oaks, a 1957 novel by Frank Yerby

title: Fair Oaks


text:
Talk:Thames River (disambiguation)

on NPR today they said there are 3 Thames rivers - one in NZ it has since been renamed, but it needs to be added to this page.

title: Talk:Thames River (disambiguation)


text:
Willem Einthoven

Willem Einthoven (21 May 1860 – 29 September 1927) was a Dutch medical doctor and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiograph (ECG or EKG) in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it ("for the discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram").

Early life and education
Willem Einthoven was born in Semarang on Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the son of Louise Marie Mathilde Caroline de Vogel and Jacob Einthoven. His father, a doctor, died when Willem was a child. His mother returned to the Netherlands with her children in 1870 and settled in Utrecht. His father was of Jewish and Dutch descent, and his mother's ancestry was Dutch and Swiss. In 1885, Einthoven received a medical degree from the University of Utrecht.

Career
He became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1886. He married his first cousin Frédérique Jeanne Louise de Vogel (7 September 1861– 31 January 1937) and supported her brother Willem through school at Leiden.

In 1902, he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He died in Leiden in the Netherlands and is buried in the graveyard of the Reformed "Green Church" (Groene Kerk) at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest. It is encouraged to visit his grave and pay respects.

Work
Before Einthoven's time, it was known that the beating of the heart produced electrical currents, but the instruments of the time could not accurately measure this phenomenon without placing electrodes directly on the heart. Beginning in 1901, Einthoven completed a series of prototypes of a string galvanometer. This device used a very thin filament of conductive wire passing between very strong electromagnets. When a current passed through the filament, the magnetic field created by the current would cause the string to move. A light shining on the string would cast a shadow on a moving roll of photographic paper, thus forming a continuous curve showing the movement of the string. The original machine required water cooling for the powerful electromagnets, required five people to operate it and weighed some 270 kilograms. This device increased the sensitivity of the standard galvanometer so that the electrical activity of the heart could be measured despite the insulation of flesh and bones. This invention allowed transthoracic electrocardiogram.

Although later technological advances brought about better and more portable EKG devices, much of the terminology used in describing an EKG originated with Einthoven. His assignment of the letters P, Q, R, S and T to the various deflections are still used. The term Einthoven's triangle is named after him. It refers to the imaginary inverted equilateral triangle centered on the chest and the points being the standard leads on the arms and leg.

After his development of the string galvanometer, Einthoven went on to describe the electrocardiographic features of a number of cardiovascular disorders. Later in life, Einthoven turned his attention to the study of acoustics, particularly heart sounds which he researched with Dr. P. Battaerd.

In 1924, Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the first practical system of electrocardiography used in medical diagnosis.

Legacy
On 21 May 2019, on Einthoven's 159th birthday, he was honored with a Google Doodle.

title: Willem Einthoven