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General Mobile Radio Service

The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a land-mobile FM UHF radio service designed for short-range two-way voice communication and authorized under part 95 of the US FCC code. It requires a license in the United States, but some GMRS compatible equipment can be used license-free in Canada. The US GMRS license is issued for a period of 10 years by the FCC. The United States permits use by adult individuals who possess a valid GMRS license, as well as their immediate family members. Immediate relatives of the GMRS system licensee are entitled to communicate among themselves for personal or business purposes, but employees of the licensee who are not family members are not covered by the license. Non-family members must be licensed separately.

GMRS radios are typically handheld portable (walkie-talkies) much like Family Radio Service (FRS) radios, and they share a frequency band with FRS near 462 and 467 MHz. Mobile and base station-style radios are available as well, but these are normally commercial UHF radios as often used in the public service and commercial land mobile bands. These are legal for use in this service as long as they are certified for GMRS under USC 47 Part 95. Older radios that are certified under USC 47 Part 90 are "grandfathered in", and can also be used legally for GMRS.

GMRS licensees are allowed to establish repeaters to extend their communications range. GMRS repeaters are not authorized to connect to the public switched telephone network. Only Remote control can be used by the station owner.

Licensing
Any individual in the United States who is at least 18 years of age and not a representative of a foreign government may apply for a GMRS license by completing the application form, online through the FCC's Universal Licensing System. No exam is required. A GMRS license is issued for a 10–year term. The current fee was reduced to $35 for all applicants on April 19, 2022.

A GMRS individual license extends to immediate family members and authorizes them to use the licensed system. GMRS license holders are allowed to communicate with FRS users on those frequencies that are shared between the two services. GMRS individual licenses do not extend to employees.

New GMRS licenses are being issued only to individuals. Prior to July 31, 1987, the FCC issued GMRS licenses to non-individuals (corporations, partnerships, government entities, etc.). These licensees are grandfathered and may renew but not make major modifications to their existing licenses.

In any case, each GMRS station must be identified by transmission of its FCC-assigned call sign at the end of a transmission or a series of transmissions, and at least once every 15 minutes for a series lasting more than 15 minutes. The call sign may be spoken or sent with audible tones using Morse code. A repeater station handling properly identified transmissions of others is not required to send its own station identification.

Range
As with other UHF radio services, reliable range is considered to be line-of-sight and the distance to the radio horizon can be estimated based on antenna height. Theoretically, the range between two hand-held units would be about one or two miles (about 1.5–3 km); mobile units have higher antennas and a range of around 5 miles (8 km). A GMRS repeater with an antenna that is high above the surrounding terrain can extend the usable range over a wide area – for example, up to a 20–mile (32.2 km) radius around the repeater station. Obstructions such as hills and buildings can reduce range. Higher power does not necessarily give a proportional increase in range, although it may improve the reliability of communication at the limits of line-of-sight distance.

Frequency assignments
GMRS is allotted 30 frequency channels in the vicinity of 462 MHz and 467 MHz. They are divided into 16 main channels and 14 interstitial channels.

Licensees may use the eight main 462 MHz channels for simplex communication or repeater outputs.

The eight main 467 MHz channels may only be used as repeater inputs, in conjunction with the 462 MHz channels as outputs. The repeater input frequencies are exclusive to GMRS, and may be used only by licensed GMRS operators.

GMRS operators are permitted to transmit at up to 50 watts transmitter power output, on the 16 main channels, but transmitting 1 to 5 watts is more common in practice.

The interstitial frequencies are in-between the main channels, and the 462 MHz interstitial frequencies may be used for simplex as long as the effective radiated power does not exceed 5 watts. The 467 MHz interstitial frequencies have a power limit of 500 milliwatts ERP, and only hand-held portable units may transmit on these channels.

Sharing with FRS
All 22 Family Radio Service (FRS) frequencies are shared with GMRS, and users of the two services may communicate with each other. With the exception of FRS channels 8 through 14, GMRS licensees may use higher power radios with detachable or external antennas.

Frequency table

 * Table notes:(1) Shared FRS and GMRS simplex. (2) Shared FRS and GMRS simplex; GMRS repeater output. (3) GMRS repeater input. The output frequency of this repeater input is the input frequency minus 5 MHz. (4) FRS transmissions are limited to bandwidth of 11 kHz with a transmitter deviation of +/- 2.5 kHz. Channels are on 12.5 kHz centers. (5) GMRS transmissions may have a bandwidth of 16 kHz with a transmitter deviation of +/- 5.0 kHz. Channels are on 25 kHz centers. (6) GMRS transmissions are limited to a bandwidth of 11 kHz with a transmitter deviation of +/- 2.5 kHz. Channels are on 12.5 kHz centers. (7) National GMRS calling channel (CTCSS tone 141.3 Hz).

Note: Some inexpensive GMRS mobiles and portables do not fully comply with FCC permissible modulation bandwidth for GMRS and thus have weak transmitter audio and reduced range.

Conditions: Effective February 16, 1999, the GMRS rules have been amended and one may operate on any of the primary or interstitial channels shown in section 95.1763. Exception: Licensees who operate North of Line A and East of Line C may not operate on channels 462.650 MHz, 467.650 MHz, 462.700 MHz and 467.700 MHz (ch. 19 and 21), unless one's previous license authorized such operations.

Bandwidth vs channel spacing
The FCC stipulates a specific channel bandwidth for FRS and GMRS. The bandwidth is constrained by the modulation which is FM deviation (GMRS = +/- 5.0 kHz, FRS = +/- 2.5 kHz) plus the uncertainties of the filtering of the transmitter and receiver. Additionally receivers and transmitters may drift over time or temperature so the bandwidth is further constrained to prevent interference to the adjacent channel. Channel spacing is 25 kHz for GMRS and so a 20 kHz bandwidth fits into that channel with protection on each side. FRS channels are spaced within a 12.5 kHz space directly between two GMRS channels. FRS radios generally utilize an 11 kHz transmitter bandwidth and a power lower than GMRS so the interference to an adjacent GMRS channel is minimized.

History
The predecessor to GMRS was named Class A Citizens Radio Service when it was commissioned in the 1960s. Tube-type transceivers were used, and transmitter power was limited to 60 watts (plate input power to the final amplifier tube). The original service ran wideband FM with ±15 kHz transmitter deviation and 50 kHz channel spacing. At the time, this was the norm for all U.S. land mobile services. There was also a Class B Citizens Radio Service which used a different set of 461 MHz channels and was limited to five watts output. Business users were permitted to license in this radio service. Radios were built by consumer electronics firms and commercial two-way radio vendors.

In the 1960s, the UHF 450–470 MHz band was re-allocated to 25 kHz channels. This meant transmitter deviation was reduced to ±5 kHz. This doubled the number of channels available across the entire 450–470 MHz band. Class B Citizens Radio Service channels were re-allocated to other radio services.

In the 1970s, allowed power was again changed to 50 watts across the output terminals of the transmitter. In 1987, licensing of business users was discontinued and businesses were allowed to continue operating until their licenses expired. There was congestion on all channels in larger metropolitan statistical areas and moving businesses to Business Radio Service channels would provide some relief. The radio service was changed to its present name; General Mobile Radio Service or GMRS.

In 2010 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed removing the individual licensing requirement. In 2015, the FCC ruled to keep the license requirement, but to remove the regulator fee for licensing. Adopted on May 20, 2015, the ruling would be in effect after a 90–day notification period to Congress; the fee will not be eliminated before August 18, 2015. The fee for a 5–year license was $90, with the regulatory fee portion of the license at $5 per year (or $25 for the 5–year life of the license). After the notification period, the fee for a 5–year license was to become $65. The change became effective on September 3, 2015.

Effective September 28, 2017, FCC revised the definition of the FRS service. FRS operation is now permitted with up to 2 watts on the shared FRS/GMRS channels. The FCC will not grant certification for hybrid radios that would exceed the limits for the FRS service on the FRS channels. Current "hybrid" FRS/GMRS radios will not require a GMRS license for power up to 2 watts, but FRS radios will still not be permitted to use the input frequencies of GMRS repeaters. Any radio exceeding the limits of the new FRS service will be classified as a GMRS radio.

On September 30, 2019, it became unlawful in the United States to import, manufacture, sell, or offer to sell radio equipment capable of operating under both GMRS and FRS.

Use of GMRS equipment in other countries
The use of radio transmitters is regulated by national laws and international agreements. Often radio equipment accepted for use in one part of the world may not be operated in other parts due to conflicts with frequency assignments and technical standards. Some of the roles that the licensed GMRS service fills in the United States are, in other countries, filled by unlicensed or class-licensed services. Generally these services have strict technical standards for equipment to prevent interference with licensed transmitters and systems.

In Canada, hand-held GMRS radios up to 2 watts have been approved for use without a license since September 2004. Typically these are dual FRS and GMRS units, with fixed antennas, and operating at 2 watts on some GMRS channels and 0.5 watts on the FRS-only channels. Mobile units (permanently mounted in vehicles), base stations and repeaters are not currently permitted on the GMRS channels in Canada.

Other countries have licensed and unlicensed personal radio services with somewhat similar characteristics, but technical details and operating conditions vary according to national rules. Many European countries use a similar 16–channel system near 446 MHz known as PMR446, as well as a 69–channel low-power LPD433 which is shared with the 433.92 MHz ISM band. GMRS equipment that is approved for use in the United States will not communicate with PMR446 radios due to using different frequency ranges.

GMRS License fee change
Currently, the application fee for a GMRS license is $35. An FCC Report and Order released December 23, 2020, and in a subsequent notice issued by the FCC on March 23, 2022, the fee dropped from $70 to $35 starting on April 19, 2022. The license is still valid for 10 years and covers an entire family.

title: General Mobile Radio Service


text:
New Hampshire Grants

The New Hampshire Grants or Benning Wentworth Grants were land grants made between 1749 and 1764 by the colonial governor of the Province of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth. The land grants, totaling about 135 (including 131 towns), were made on land claimed by New Hampshire west of the Connecticut River, territory that was also claimed by the Province of New York. The resulting dispute led to the eventual establishment of the Vermont Republic, which later became the U.S. state of Vermont.

Background
The territory of what is now Vermont was first permanently settled by European settlers when William Dummer, acting governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, ordered the construction of a fort roughly where Brattleboro is located. Massachusetts laid claim to the territory west of the Merrimack River at the time, and it had settlers on the Connecticut River who were prepared to move further north. The border between Massachusetts and the neighboring Province of New Hampshire was fixed by royal decree in 1741 at a line 3 mi north of Pawtucket Falls, where the Merrimack River turns north. This decision eliminated claims by Massachusetts to the north of that line. The territory between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain, however, was also claimed by the Province of New York, the claims of which extended eastward to Connecticut.

Also in 1741, New Hampshire native Benning Wentworth was appointed the first governor of New Hampshire of the 18th century who was not also a governor of Massachusetts. Wentworth chose to read New Hampshire's territorial claims broadly. He construed the decree setting the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border to mean that New Hampshire's jurisdiction extended as far west as the jurisdiction of Massachusetts extended. Since the Massachusetts boundary extended to a point 20 mi east of the Hudson River, Wentworth assumed the area west of the Connecticut belonged to New Hampshire. New York based its claim on the letters patent, which granted Prince James, Duke of York, brother of King Charles II, all of the lands west of the Connecticut River to Delaware Bay.

New Hampshire
Wentworth made the first grant, Bennington, a township west of the Connecticut River, on January 3, 1749. Cautioned by New York to cease and desist, Wentworth promised to await the judgment of the king, and refrain from making more grants in the claimed territory until it was rendered, but in November 1753, New York reported that he continued to grant land in the disputed area. Grants briefly ceased in 1754, because of the French and Indian War, but in 1755 and 1757, Wentworth had a survey made 60 mi up the Connecticut River, and 108 grants were made, extending to the line 20 mi east of the Hudson, and north to the eastern shore of Lake Champlain.

The grants were usually six miles square (the standard size of a U.S. survey township, i.e. 23,040 acres or 93 km2) and cost the grantee(s) 20 pounds. The grants were then subdivided amongst the proprietors, and six of the lots were set aside—one for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (a missionary organization of the Church of England), one for the Church of England, one for the first clergyman to settle in the township, one for a school, and two for Wentworth himself. The permanent annual tax on each grant, called a quitrent, was one shilling, paid directly to the King or his representative.

New York
While Wentworth's land sales were underway, New York also issued land patents in the same area. However, in contrast to the New Hampshire grants, the New York patents were generally irregularly shaped and issued to wealthy landowners. The New Hampshire grants were "town-sized," and generally settled by middle-class farmers. Most of the New York boundaries were ignored in favor of the New Hampshire boundaries and designations once Vermont achieved statehood, and some of these New York patents are now referred to as paper towns because they existed only on paper.

Royal adjudication
In September 1762, New York found New Hampshire surveyors working on the east side of Champlain, provoking the former colony's government to reiterate its claim to the area, citing both its own patent and the New Hampshire letters patent of 1741. In March 1764, Wentworth released a statement to the effect that the resolution of jurisdictional dispute required a royal verdict, which he was certain would be made in his favor. Meanwhile, he encouraged his grantees to settle in the land and to cultivate and develop it.

New York appealed to the Board of Trade, requesting a confirmation of their original grant, which finally resolved the border dispute between New York and New Hampshire in favor of New York. The royal order of July 26, 1764, affirmed that "the Western bank of the Connecticut, from where it enters the province of Massachusetts Bay as far north as the 45th degree of northern latitude, to be the boundary line between the said two provinces of New Hampshire and New York." Wentworth issued his final two grants on October 17 of that year: Walker and Waltham.

Invalidation
New York interpreted the decision as invalidating Wentworth's grants entirely—to the great dismay of area residents—and subsequently divided the territory into four counties, Albany, Charlotte, Cumberland and Gloucester. New York required that grantees surrender their charters, and in many cases buy their lands back from New York at greatly increased prices. Those who would not pay lost legal title to their lands, which New York then reassigned to others. The people, who would later become Vermonters, petitioned the governor of New York to confirm the New Hampshire Grants; he complied, in part, by declaring that no other grants should be made until the King's wishes were known. Land not previously granted by New Hampshire was considered open for distribution by New York's government.

In 1770, the New York Supreme Court declared all of Wentworth's grants invalid, thereby asserting the province's de jure control over the region. This infuriated residents, including Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, who rose up to resist those efforts. While the resistance faded, so did New York's desire to assert its claim on the land around the Upper Connecticut, as a more pressing issue—revolution—moved to center stage.

Independence and statehood
In January 1775 Committees of Safety from over twenty towns in the New Hampshire Grants area met in Manchester to discuss the need for local self-governance independent from New York. The Manchester meeting created a "civil and political Body" to regulate their community. Two months later, another convention meeting at Westminster renounced the authority of New York's government. On March 13, 1775, two men were killed in Westminster by officers from New York. News of the first clash between American militia and British troops at Lexington and Concord interrupted the Westminster convention, but settlers gathered at yet another convention at Dorset in 1776 and petitioned the Continental Congress to recognize Vermont as a state and seat its delegates. The New York delegation convinced the Congress to deny the petition.

Some former Green Mountain Boys companies served in the American Revolutionary War, including in the effort to capture Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775, and the invasion of Canada later that year. Ethan Allen and his then subordinate, Seth Warner, induced the Continental Congress at Philadelphia to create a Green Mountain ranger regiment. Having no treasury, the Congress directed that New York's Provincial Congress pay for the newly authorized regiment; which it did.

In 1777 the citizens of Vermont declared their full independence from Great Britain and established a constitution. The first elections under this constitution were held on March 3, 1778, and on March 12, the new government was organized at Windsor.

During the later stages of the Revolutionary War (early 1780s) several Vermont officials engaged in negotiations with British officials, including Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Quebec, about Vermont officially returning to the British side. Just as Haldimand offered generous terms for reunion in 1781, the main British army surrendered at Yorktown, and it was clear that the United States would achieve independence.

Following the Revolutionary War, Vermont was excluded (primarily due to objections from New York) from the loose confederation established among the 13 former colonies. The state remained outside until 1791. In 1790 New York finally consented to Vermont's admission to the Union. New York ceded its New Hampshire Grants claim to Vermont for 30,000 dollars. A convention was held from January 6 through 10, 1791 at Bennington to consider joining the federal Union. The convention voted 105–2 in favor of seeking admission. Congress gave unanimous approval to Vermont statehood the following month, and on March 4, 1791, the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont, became the 14th state, the first admitted to the Union after adoption of the federal Constitution.

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

title: New Hampshire Grants


text:
User talk:M. E. Smith

Your scrupulousness w/ regards to Ronald Reagan set a great example. Keep up the good work. Welcome (I assume welcome, anyway, from the lack of a talk page)! Yours, Meelar 06:19, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hell on Wheels
(copied from talk page) THANK YOU! This is exactly the kind of clarification the article needed. I'll remove the scarlet template as soon as I finish this comment. My apologies if that notation seemed unduly harsh, but an anon user had nominated this article for featured status. Without references, it looked too much like folklore, similar to how "There's a sucker born every minute" is popularly (and erroneously) attributed to Barnum. iMeowbot~Mw 19:15, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Killian documents
I'm a bit worried, given that the move of the page was in two parts, that you did it by cutting and pasting rather than by 'moving the page. If I'm wrong,that's fine, but if I'm right, you need to find a friendly admin who can put it right for you. Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 23:22, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * And I'm a bit worried because the resolution of the name change vote last year was to not call the article "CBS Documents" or anything of the sort; and because this move was done, as far as I can tell, without any additional discussion. Has something significant happened recently that I am unaware of? --Ray Radlein 23:33, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

 * Mel Etitis is incorrect, I did move the page, using the correct procedure. I did not cut-and paste. You may have this impression because MediaWiki acted quirky for a while afterwards, but I definitely moved. As for the title change, the name change vote last year was followed by more discussion disagreeing with the few who took part in the vote, and in fact more voting occurred after the "votes" were counted.. There is no clear way to determine which thread of the discussion carries more weight. --M. E. Smith)

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Buddy film afd
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Proposed deletion of File:Plot of CRU Fudge Factors.png

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title: User talk:M. E. Smith


text:
User:Waltpohl

My name is Walter E. Pohl, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.

Links

 * Geography of Africa
 * List of lakes
 * List of rivers of Africa
 * List of mathematical topics (related changes)
 * List of mathematicians

 * Community Portal
 * WikiProject
 * WikiProject Countries
 * WikiProject Mathematics
 * WikiProject Rivers
 * Article series
 * Infobox
 * Requested articles
 * Requested articles/mathematics
 * New pages patrol
 * Edit Counts
 * Bad PlanetMath Links, Template:PlanetMath, PlanetMath
 * WP:RFU

Citations:
 * Help:Citation tools
 * User:Citation bot/use
 * WP:CT
 * Specific citation templates: Template:Harvtxt, Template:Sfnp

Help:Interlanguage links

To do
Math topics:

 * finite difference
 * Jet (mathematics) (also compare to jet bundle)
 * resolution of singularities
 * classifying space (I think the current definition is wrong.)
 * birational map
 * Cayley-Dickson construction -- move definition to the front?
 * symplectic representation
 * quaternion algebra, cyclic algebra
 * kernel (integral operator)
 * invariant theory
 * discriminant
 * resultant
 * comodule -- started, need to flesh out.
 * injective hull
 * Clifford algebra -- add section on generic Clifford algebras.
 * transcendental extension
 * move E. T. Whittaker?
 * potential theory
 * Hilbert series, Hilbert polynomial
 * Sort out differential equation, partial differential equation, linear differential equation, variation of parameters, autonomous system (mathematics)
 * Cleanup:
 * q-series
 * Other todo lists
 * Articles requested for more than a year

Some things I might want to do: Autopatrolled, ANEWS

Seifert–Van Kampen theorem has some broken links. PlanetPhysics is now here.

Some links: Alan Day []

Missing one big snowstorm: Megapolitan Blizzard. Possible model, here

Old Zürich War

Emilie Simon has a more up-to-date discography on her French page.

Split Rhubarb Triangle into that and forcing rhubarb?

. Also, this might be interesting:

Add Koopman's 1960 intertemporal choice paper to his page.

Adam Carter Rehmeier director.

Pasch Axiom mentions the plane separation axiom. What is that?

title: User:Waltpohl


text:
Socotra

Socotra (سُقُطْرَىٰ ) or Saqatri (Soqotri: ساقطْري ) is an island of Yemen in the Indian Ocean. Lying between the Guardafui Channel and the Arabian Sea and near major shipping routes, Socotra is the largest of the four islands in the Socotra archipelago. Since 2013, the archipelago has constituted the Socotra Governorate.

The island of Socotra represents around 95% of the landmass of the Socotra archipelago. It lies 380 km south of the Arabian Peninsula and 240 km east of Somalia; despite being controlled by Yemen, it is geographically part of Africa. The island is isolated and home to a high number of endemic species. Up to a third of its plant life is endemic. It has been described as "the most alien-looking place on Earth". The island measures 132 km in length and 42 km across at its widest. In 2008, Socotra was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Currently, the island is under the de facto control of the UAE-backed, pro-PLC, Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist faction in Yemen's ongoing civil war.

Etymology
Scholars' views vary regarding the origin of the name of the island. The name Socotra may derive from:
 * A Greek name that is derived from the name of a South Arabian tribe mentioned in Sabaic and Ḥaḑramitic inscriptions as Dhū-Śakūrid (S³krd).
 * The Arabian terms suq, market, and qutra, a vulgar form of qatir, which refers to dragon's blood.

History
There was initially an Oldowan lithic culture in Socotra. Oldowan stone tools were found in the area around Hadibo in 2008. Socotra played an important role in the ancient international trade and appears as Dioskouridou (Διοσκουρίδου νῆσος), meaning "the island of the Dioscuri" in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first-century CE Greek navigation aid.

The Hoq Cave contains a large number of inscriptions, drawings and archaeological objects. Further investigation showed that these had been left by sailors who visited the island between the first century BCE and the sixth century CE. The texts are written in the Indian Brāhmī, South Arabian, Ethiopic, Greek, Palmyrene and Bactrian languages. This corpus of nearly 250 texts and drawings constitutes one of the main sources for the investigation of Indian Ocean trade networks in that time period.

In 880, an Aksumite expeditionary force conquered the island, and an Oriental Orthodox bishop was consecrated. The Ethiopians were later dislodged by a large armada sent by Imam Al-Salt bin Malik of Oman. According to the Persian geographer Ibn al-Mujawir, who testifies having arrived in Socotra from India in 1222, there were two groups of people on the island, the indigenous mountain dwellers and the foreign coastal dwellers. There were large settlements of Indian traders from Sindh and Balochistan.

In 1507, a Portuguese fleet commanded by Tristão da Cunha with Afonso de Albuquerque landed at Suq and captured the port after a stiff battle against the Mahra Sultanate. Their objective was to set a base in a strategic place on the route to India. The lack of a proper harbor and the infertility of the land led to famine and sickness in the garrison, and the Portuguese abandoned the island in 1511. The Mahra sultans took back control of the island, and the inhabitants were converted to Islam.

In 1834, the East India Company stationed a garrison on Socotra, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra would accept an offer to sell the island. The lack of good anchorages proved to be as much a problem for the British as the Portuguese. The sultan refused to sell, and the British left in 1835. After the capture of Aden by the British in 1839, they lost interest in acquiring Socotra. In 1886, the British government decided to conclude a protectorate treaty with the sultan in which he promised this time to "refrain from entering into any correspondence, agreement, or treaty with any foreign nation or power, except with the knowledge and sanction of the British Government". In October 1967, in the wake of the departure of the British from Aden and southern Arabia, the Mahra Sultanate was abolished.

On 30 November of the same year, Socotra became part of South Yemen. Between 1976 and 1979, the island served as a base for the Soviet Navy.

Since Yemeni unification in 1990, Socotra has been a part of the Republic of Yemen, affiliated first to Aden Governorate. Then in 2004, it was moved to be a part of the Hadhramaut Governorate. Later in 2013, it became a governorate of its own.

Socotra was ravaged by the 26 December 2004 tsunami causing a child's death and the wreckage of 40 fishing boats although the island is 4600 km away from tsunami epicentre off the west coast of Aceh, Indonesia. In 2015, the cyclones Chapala and Megh struck the island, causing severe damage to its infrastructure.

United Arab Emirates takeover
Beginning in 2015, the UAE began increasing its presence on Socotra, first with humanitarian aid in the wake of tropical cyclones Chapala and Megh, and eventually establishing a military presence on the island. On April 30, 2018, the UAE, as part of the ongoing Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen, landed troops on the island and took control of Socotra Airport and seaport. On May 14, 2018, Saudi troops were also deployed on the island, and a deal was brokered between the UAE and Yemen for a joint military training exercise and the return of administrative control of the airport and seaport to Yemen.

In May 2019, the Yemeni government accused the UAE of landing around 100 separatist troops in Socotra, which the UAE denied, deepening a rift between the two nominal allies in Yemen's civil war. In February 2020, a regiment of the Yemeni army stationed in Socotra rebelled and pledged allegiance to the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Socotra, renouncing the UN-backed government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The STC seized control of the island in June 2020.

According to media reports in 2020 and 2022, the UAE is set to establish military and intelligence facilities on the Socotra Archipelago. Initially, the UAE were part of the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen launched in 2011. But this cooperation later showed cracks due to diverging geopolitical goals that led the UAE reducing its intervention forces in Yemen from 2019 onwards, while increasing its support to the STC and taking over Socotra in pursuing their own geostrategic interests to retain influence across Yemen's southern coastal areas. This take-over was declared illegitimate by Yemen President Hadi stating that the UAE was acting like an occupier.

Geography
Socotra is one of the most isolated landforms on Earth of continental origin (i.e. not of volcanic origin). The archipelago was once part of the supercontinent of Gondwana and detached during the Miocene epoch, in the same set of rifting events that opened the Gulf of Aden to its northwest. Politically, the Socotra archipelago is a part of Yemen, but geographically it belongs to Africa as it represents a continental fragment that is geologically linked to the continental African Somali Plate.

The archipelago consists of the main island of Socotra (3665 km2), three smaller islands, Abd al Kuri, Samhah and Darsa, and two rocky islets, Ka'l Fir'awn and Sābūnīyah, both uninhabitable by humans but important for seabirds. The main island is about 125 km long and 45 km north to south. and has three major physical regions:
 * The narrow coastal plains with its characteristic dunes, formed by monsoon winds blowing during three summer months. The wind takes up the coast sand in a spiral and, as a result, forms the snow-white Socotran sand dunes.
 * The limestone plateaus of Momi, Homhil and Diksam with its characteristic karst topography based on limestone rock areas intersected with inter-hill plains. For centuries until recently Socotra's main economic activity was subsistent transhumant animal husbandry, predominantly goats and sheep on these plateaus. The outcome is a unique and still active cultural landscape of agro-pastoralism with its characteristic rainwater harvesting systems.
 * A central massif, the Hajhir Mountains, composed of granite and metamorphic rocks. rising to 1503 m.

Climate
The climate of Socotra is classified in the Köppen climate classification as BWh and BSh, meaning a transitional hot desert climate and a semi-desert climate with a mean annual temperature over 25 °C. Yearly rainfall is light but is fairly spread throughout the year. Orographic lift provided by the interior mountains, especially during the northeast monsoon from October to December, results in the highest inland areas averaging as much as 800 mm per year and receiving over 250 mm per month during November and December. The southwest monsoon season from June to September brings strong winds and high seas. For many centuries, the sailors of Gujarat called the maritime route near Socotra as "Sikotro Sinh", meaning the lion of Socotra, that constantly roars—referring to the high seas near Socotra.

In an extremely unusual occurrence, the normally arid western side of Socotra received more than 410 mm of rain from Cyclone Chapala in November 2015. Cyclones rarely affect the island, but in 2015 Cyclone Megh became the strongest, and only, major cyclone to strike the island directly.

Flora and fauna

Socotra is considered the jewel of biodiversity in the Arabian Sea. In the 1990s, a team of United Nations biologists conducted a survey of the archipelago's flora and fauna. They counted nearly 700 endemic species, found nowhere else on earth; only New Zealand, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and the Galápagos Islands have more impressive numbers.

The long geological isolation of the Socotra archipelago and its fierce heat and drought have combined to create a unique and spectacular endemic flora. Botanical field surveys led by the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, indicate that 307 out of the 825 (37%) plant species on Socotra are endemic. The entire flora of the Socotra Archipelago has been assessed for the IUCN Red List, with three Critically Endangered and 27 Endangered plant species recognised in 2004.

One of the most striking of Socotra's plants is the dragon's blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari), which is a strange-looking, umbrella-shaped tree. Its red sap was thought to be the dragon's blood of the ancients, sought after as a dye, and today used as paint and varnish. Also important in ancient times were Socotra's various endemic aloes, used medicinally, and for cosmetics. Other endemic plants include the giant succulent tree (Dorstenia gigas), the cucumber tree (Dendrosicyos socotranus), the rare Socotran pomegranate (Punica protopunica), Aloe perryi, and Boswellia socotrana.

The island group has a rich fauna, including several endemic species of birds, such as the Socotra starling (Onychognathus frater), the Socotra sunbird (Nectarinia balfouri), Socotra bunting (Emberiza socotrana), Socotra cisticola (Cisticola haesitatus), Socotra sparrow (Passer insularis), Socotra golden-winged grosbeak (Rhynchostruthus socotranus), and a species in a monotypic genus, the Socotra warbler (Incana incana). Many of the bird species are endangered by predation by non-native feral cats. With only one endemic mammal, six endemic bird species and no amphibians, reptiles constitute the most relevant Socotran vertebrate fauna with 31 species. If one excludes the two recently introduced species, Hemidactylus robustus and Hemidactylus flaviviridis, all native species are endemic. There is a very high level of endemism at both species (29 of 31, 94%) and genus levels (5 of 12, 42%). At the species level, endemicity may be even higher, as phylogenetic studies have uncovered substantial hidden diversity. The reptile species include skinks, legless lizards, and one species of chameleon, Chamaeleo monachus. There are many endemic invertebrates, including several spiders (such as the Socotra Island Blue Baboon tarantula Monocentropus balfouri) and three species of freshwater crabs in the Potamidae (Socotra pseudocardisoma and two species in Socotrapotamon).

As with many isolated island systems, bats are the only mammals native to Socotra. The Socotran pipistrelle (Hypsugo lanzai) is the only species of bat, and mammal in general, thought to be endemic to the island. In contrast, the coral reefs of Socotra are diverse, with many endemic species. Socotra is also one of the homes of the brush-footed butterfly Bicyclus anynana.

Over the 2,000 years of human settlement on the islands, the environment has slowly but continuously changed, and, according to Jonathan Kingdon, "the animals and plants that remain represent a degraded fraction of what once existed." The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea states that the island had crocodiles and large lizards, and the present reptilian fauna appears to be greatly diminished since that time. Until a few centuries ago, there were rivers and wetlands on the island, greater stocks of the endemic trees, and abundant pasture. The Portuguese recorded the presence of water buffaloes in the early 17th century. Now there are sand gullies in place of rivers, and many native plants survive only where there is greater moisture or protection from roaming livestock. The remaining Socotran fauna is greatly threatened by goats and other introduced species.

As a result of the 2015 Yemen civil war in mainland Yemen, Socotra became economically isolated, and fuel gas prices spiked, causing residents to turn to wood for heat. In December 2018, UAE sent cooking gas to Socotra residents to curb deforestation caused by the cutting down of trees for fuel.

UNESCO recognition
The island was recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a world natural heritage site in July 2008. The European Union has supported such a move, calling on both UNESCO and the International Organisation of Protecting Environment to classify the island archipelago among the major environmental heritages.

Demographics

Most of the inhabitants are indigenous Soqotri people from Al-Mahrah tribe, who are of Southern Arabian descent from Al Mahrah Governorate, and are said to be especially closely related with the Qara and Mahra groups of Southern Arabia. Some of the inhabitants are African, descending from former slaves who settled on the island. The majority of male residents on Socotra are reported to be in the J* subclade of Y-DNA haplogroup J. Several of the female lineages, notably those in mtDNA haplogroup N, are unique to the island.

Almost all inhabitants of Socotra, numbering about 50,000, live on the main island of the archipelago. The principal city, Hadibu (with a population of 8,545 at the census of 2004); the second largest town, Qalansiyah (population 3,862); and Qād̨ub (population 929) are all located on the north coast of the island of Socotra. Only about 450 people live on 'Abd-al-Kūrī and 100 on Samha; the island of Darsa and the islets of the archipelago are uninhabited.

Language
The island is home to the Semitic language Soqotri, which is related to such other Modern South Arabian languages on the Arabian mainland as Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, Shehri, and Hobyot, which became the subject of European academic study in the nineteenth century.

There is an ancient tradition of poetry and a poetry competition is held annually on the island. The first attested Socotran poet is thought to be the ninth-century Fatima al-Suqutriyya, a popular figure in Socotran culture. Socotra Swahili is extinct.

Religion
The earliest account concerning the presence of Christians in Socotra stems from the early-medieval 6th century CE Greek merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes Later the Socotrans joined the Assyrian church. During the 10th century, Arab geographer Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani recorded during his visits that most of the islanders were Christian.

Christianity went into decline when the Mahra sultanate took power in the 16th century, and the populace had become mostly Muslim by the time the Portuguese arrived later that century. An 1884 edition of Nature writes that the disappearance of Christian churches and monuments can be accounted for by a Wahhabi excursion to the island in 1800. Today the only remnants of Christianity are some cross engravings from the first century CE, a few Christian tombs, and some church ruins.

Administrative divisions
Previously, the archipelago pertained to the Hadhramaut Governorate. In 2013, however, the archipelago was removed from the Hadramaut Governorate and the Socotra Governorate was created, consisting of the districts of:
 * Hidaybu, with a population of 32,285 and a district seat at Hadibu, consisting of the eastern two-thirds of the main island of Socotra;
 * Qalansiyah wa 'Abd-al-Kūrī, with a population of 10,557 and a district seat at Qulensya, consisting of the minor islands of the archipelago (the island of 'Abd-al-Kūrī chief among them) and the western third of the main island.

Economy
The primary occupations of the people of Socotra have traditionally been fishing, bee keeping, animal husbandry, and the cultivation of dates. Some residents raise cattle and goats. The chief export products of the island are dates, ghee, tobacco, and fish.

Monsoons long made the archipelago inaccessible from June to September each year. In July 1999, however, a new airport opened Socotra to the outside world all year round. There was regular service to and from Aden and Sana'a until the start of the civil war in 2015. All scheduled commercial flights made a technical stop at Riyan-Mukalla Airport. Socotra Airport is located about 12 km west of the main city, Hadibu, and close to the third-largest town in the archipelago, Qād̨ub. Diesel generators make electricity widely available in Socotra. A paved road runs along the north shore from Qalansiyah to Hadibu and then to the DiHamri area; and another paved road, from the northern coast to the south through the Diksam Plateau.

At the end of the 1990s, a United Nations Development Program was launched to provide a close survey of the island of Socotra. The project called Socotra Governance and Biodiversity Project have listed following goals from 2009:
 * Local governance support
 * Development and implementation of mainstreaming tools
 * Strengthening non-governmental organizations' advocacy
 * Direction of biodiversity conservation benefits to the local people
 * Support to the fisheries sector and training of professionals

Transport
Public transport on Socotra is limited to a few minibuses; car hire usually means hiring a 4WD car and a driver. Transport is a delicate matter on Socotra as road construction is considered locally to be detrimental to the island and its ecosystem. In particular, damage has occurred via chemical pollution from road construction while new roads have resulted in habitat fragmentation.

The only port on Socotra is 5 km east of Hadibu. Ships connect the port with the Yemeni coastal city of Mukalla. The journey takes 2–3 days, and the service is used mostly for cargo. The UAE funded the modernization of the port on Socotra.

Yemenia and Felix Airways flew from Socotra Airport to Sana'a and Aden via Riyan Airport. As of March 2015, due to ongoing civil war involving Saudi Arabia's Air Force, all flights to and from Socotra were cancelled. During the deployment of Emirati troops and aid to the Island, multiple flight connections were made between Abu Dhabi and Hadibu as part of Emirati effort to provide Socotra residents with access to free healthcare and provide work opportunities. Currently, there are scheduled flights from Cairo and Abu Dhabi to Socotra once per week.

Tourism
Among 19th-century visitors to the island came British celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, and their party, from mid December 1896 to mid February 1897.

Prior to the construction of the Socotra airport, the island could only be reached by a cargo ship. The ideal time to visit Socotra is from October to April; the remaining months usually have heavy monsoon rainfall, making it difficult for tourists; flights also usually get cancelled. The island lacks any well-established hotels, although there are a few guesthouses for the travelers to stay during their short visits. The island received over 1,000 tourists each year until 2014, which has since been affected by the civil war.

Tourism to the island has increased over the years as many operators have started offering trips to the island, which Gulf Today claimed “will become a dream destination despite the country's conflict”. In May 2021, the Ministry of Information stated that the UAE is violating the island and has been planning to control it for years. It is running illegal trips for foreign tourists without taking any permission from the Yemeni government.

title: Socotra


text:
User talk:Jerzy/Archive 00

Note to non-native speakers of English
Years ago, i got stuck in my brain the idea that there's something wrong about modern English singling out the first-person singular pronoun to be spelled with a capital letter. So i spell it without the capital -- except at the beginning of a sentence, or when i'm not the sole author. If you follow my example, native speakers will just figure you're ignorant of the basics.

Good Advice to Anyone
Hello Jerzy, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. You can learn more on the how to edit page. The naming conventions and style guide pages are also useful. There is a sandbox which you can use to experiment in.

If you have any questions, see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. Angela 07:19, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"As of"
If you've noticed weirdness in the form of links that include the words "as of", may i recommend reading As of.

Some interaction regarding it follows:

as of 2003
...[re Innocence Project ]... I restored the "as of 2003" link; its purpose is not widely understood, but it is discussed at length at Wikipedia talk:As of, which is can also be found by looking at the talk page of the Redirect page (instead of just the page redirected to) of any of the "As of ..." links. A little confusing, sorry about that. --Jerzy 06:22, 2003 Dec 17 (UTC)

Sorry again: better yet, As of; i'm trying to figure out why i didn't lead myself more naturally to that; maybe it was my own fault. --Jerzy

Reply
Ah, thanks! Didn't know about that practice. Good idea. Tualha 01:03, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Infinite monkey as-of
In the edit summary for Infinite monkey theorem, you wrote: (removed link to as of 2003. Anyone who wants to update it may, but the effort i could have spent elsewhere instead of checking is more valuable than an actual update)

I don't understand what this means (and I suspect that if I did I'd disagree with it). Could you explain it to me, please? —Paul A 02:37, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Paul. I'm answering here and will merely link to it from your talk: We may well not agree, and want to move our exchange from here to an article-talk page for a broader discussion. In that case, we'd probably find it easier to move an integrated block embodying the whole discussion, rather than pasting it back together.

I was of course very terse, and i've not yet mastered the haiku of the edit summary, tho i'm becoming a serious student of it. In the course of answering your question, i will have to first say why i devalue the "Attempts at simulation" section:
 * 1) It's seriously under-written; anyone who thinks it's worth the distraction from more useful information should be willing to write more than those two sentences.  It's in passive voice (always a trouble sign) because converting it to active voice would require the unencyclopedic word "somebody". It has only the when, and needs the who, the why, and most of the what.  As to what, it sounds like a distributed-computing exercise, especially in light of the "anyone" reference, but there is no information as to the technical aspects that would, for instance, make it a good section for a distributed computing article to link to.  Which is the thing "outlined above" that is being attempted? I also think the section is under some obligation to make clear that this is not what the silly short story suggests, "support[ing] the sciences" or "test[ing] that theory".  (Neither success nor failure would advance science, and this is a mathematical law, not a testable scientific theory.) What kind of attempt is this, the kind of attempt a 5-year-old makes at walking across a continent, or something that rests on a computation of the expected computer-years required to produce all of Shakespeare, and a plausible if optomistic plan for assembling and retaining those resources.  What counts as succeeding: does each play have to be typed by one simulated monkey without interruption? Do plays count when patched together out of complete acts or scenes, each by one monkey?  Or is every simulated page, or every speech sufficient? Oh, and is the keystroke rate 1 per nanosecond per monkey?  If this is an "attempt", it has to avoid fraudulent attempts to appear to be where success occurred, so we also need to know that serious efforts are being made to preclude fraud.
 * 2) What is being attempted and accomplished adds nothing to the article, which is about the history of a quirky idea that keeps recurring as a thought experiment and as mathematics, and they this section is, as far as it indicates, not about either of those, but about the utterly irrelevant stunt of going thru the motions without the charm or the rigor of its predecessors.  If there are articles being written about this, that would make the articles (in contrast to the attempt) interesting in the terms of the article's subject, but there is not the slightest hint of coverage beyond the fact that someone is able to get enough information somewhere to write, and to update, it.  I'm probably so out of the loop that my not having heard any slightest hint of it is of no weight, but i assume there would be some hint of coverage in the article if it were getting any; in the absence of serious coverage, this has no relationship to Kolmogorov, Swift, & Co.
 * 3) Even if the section had some value to the article or the world, the updates do not.  13 characters rather than just 10: I-S T-H-I-S A D-A-G-G-E-R.  I'll blow my brains out from boredom before this news even manages to distract me, let alone amuse me.
 * 4) The purpose of As of... entries is to facilitate updating by people who would not otherwise do it on the article with that link.  The phrase "As of" or equivalents can be used without linking it, and no one is going to update this who isn't already hooked on it -- not even if there were some means to verify the basic story, let alone update it (what would i search, "infinite monkeys" random Shakespeare, maybe?  I can't think of what exclusion to specify, to keep out the hundreds of years of more interesting history.  The link accomplishes nothing.
 * 5) Are we really going to expect even one update beyond 2004?  You expect this to last even 18 months?  If it does, the pathetic standards of people who can sustain that interest make it less significant,  and less worthy of coverage, year by year.
 * 6) The crux of this is that the effect the link does have is to take up the time of people who are trying to update As of...s that are worthwhile, in araticles that don't have an obsessive following.  This link is vandalism.

I don't personally begrudge the short time i devoted to my inspection and edit (or i'd have replied even more tersely, rather than at this length). But i object strenuously on behalf of the editor community.

I urge you to update the section to your heart's content, but stop pointlessly disrupting others' work by putting back the link. (And i'll refactor this out if i put it on an article- or meta-talk page, but have more respect for yourself than letting yourself be associated with a section that is allowed to stand with its lame current content.) --Jerzy 06:57, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to explain. Yes, you're right.

With regard to the "haiku of the edit summary", here's a suggestion: if one's explanation of an edit is too long or complicated to fit easily into the edit summary, an alternative is to summarise the edit as ([made an edit] - see talk page for details), and then put the explanation on the article's talk page. —Paul A 02:39, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Not to mention its being hard... "
An alert but confused user took issue with the phrase above (which appears on Jerzy), holding that an apostrophe is required and thus making the word it's. Hopefully i will, unlike Pascal, make it thru the day that it will take before i have time to point out in some detail why the apostrophe is not only unnecessary, but impermissible. Not to mention what is grammatically wrong with that sentence. --Jerzy 13:47, 2003 Nov 2 (UTC)

Wise use of sentence fragments
The rule i did violate calls for writing (outside of titles and direct quotations) in full sentences. (Both of my last two uses of "Not to mention..." are in sentence fragments, rather than in sentences.) I consider that rule important in formal writing (e.g, Wikipedia articles), but dispensible, as long as ambiguity is avoided, in informal writing (e.g. most Wikipedia talk). And violating it can keep the pace up. And draw attention, without extra words, to the relationship between one complete thought and an "afterthought" that could (in theory) have been included in the same sentence with it. Like this fragment, and the two immediately before it, not to mention both of the times i used "Not to mention..." to begin a sentence fragment.

The problem of "its"
The alert user in question may be confused about the meaning of "it's". One of the most common written-language errors in English is failure to distinguish between two identically pronounced words, namely: All the personal pronouns lack apostrophes, including By the way, the rule is "the possessives of personal pronouns lack apostrophes", but possessives of non-personal pronouns behave like nouns. Examples are
 * It's, which is always a contraction for "it is".
 * Its, which, with exceptions too rare to mention further, is always a possessive form of the personal pronoun "it".
 * adjectivial forms such as my, her, and your (and of course the sense of its that started this discussion), and
 * noun-like possessive forms, such as mine, hers, and yours (not to mention the other, noun-like sense of its).
 * everyone's head,
 * another's head,
 * one's head,
 * the other's head, and
 * the others' heads.

(It's not that important to ask why those are the rules. I lack formal linguistics training and don't know, beyond "that happens to be how this particular language evolved", but it's worth saying that that's all the justification such a rule needs:  this is the way educated English-speakers write when they are striving for clarity, and your best chance of making yourself understood is to avoid the confusion that goes with playing by a different set of language rules.  It takes some extra effort, but
 * with practice the effort gets less (for instance, if you spell i lowercased, as i do, enough times, it takes no effort at all to remember to do so),
 * it seems to involve less effort than ignoring the rules and having confusing meta-discussions to repair the important ambiguities that sometimes are introduced by so-called language errors, and
 * it is certainly less alienating than being the occasion for those meta-discussions.)

The gerund problem
The other thing that may have confused the alert user is especially confusing in English because we suffix verbs with -ing for two entirely different purposes. The corresponding words in as closely related a language as German are usually (almost always?) distinguishable: If you know a foreign language, you may have your own examples. The English gerund form of an verb, which serves the same grammatical roles as a noun, looks, but for syntax and other context, just like the present-participial form of the same verb, which serves the same grammatical roles as an adjective.
 * "Laughing is good.", using a gerund, is Das LachEN stimmt wohl. (Hmm, is the gerund distinguishable from the infinitive in German? I'd translate that back literally as "To laugh does you good."), but
 * "A laughing cow...", using a participle, is Ein lachENDes Kuh... (unless i've messed up on the gender)

I consider this possibility because the desire to put the apostrophe into "its being" may have reflected the idea that the pronoun it needs the auxiliary verb is to connect it to the participial verb being.

(I may get the terminology and the linguistic theory wrong here, so i don't hope for this treatment to be considered authoritative.) IIRC, i was taught 6 tenses (three of them "perfect" in the sense of the action being "perfected", meaning "completed", by the time-frame the sentence applies to.) To the great confusion of non-native speakers, we say "I'm repairing my car" in three senses. I think of one of them as the progressive (is the technical term "imperfect"?) tense: i have a wrench on a bolt, and five minutes ago i disconnected the battery, and in five minutes i'll lift the starter out. All of that is part of what i mean in saying "I'm repairing my car." It's probably the same tense when i say the same words while i'm on the front porch with a cold one in my hand, and the driveway is full of tools and auto parts. But clearly it's a second (or third) tense when, hearing the weather forecast say "cloudy tomorrow, snow the day after", my friend says "Let's go to the movies tomorrow" and i reply, shaking my head, "I'm shopping for snow tires, and restocking my emergency kit." The same tense is used by a high school student who says "I'm going to the U." I think of this usage, of supposed present- (or continued-) action language to describe future action, as a "bootleg future tense"; its odd status is highlighted by the bizarre alternative form "I'm going to go to the U". (In an area where i am even further from being an expert, i won't go into the analogous dialect usage "... fi'nn'a fix ...".)

I mention all of that last 'graph partly bcz i'm unsure whether using the participle as an adjective ("a continuing concern") derives from the "progressive tense". The alternative is that the so-called progressive tense is kind of a quasi-tense that we've ginned up just by using the linking verb "is" and participial adjectives such as "continuing" together often enough. We say say things like "Our concern about this is a continuing one" and then "Our concern about this is continuing" often enough that we perhaps start imagining there is another tense involved. (My understanding is that linguists actually regard such evolution as the way languages gain their valuable complexities, and are much more interested in which usage came first and evolved into the other, than in drawing a line between a tense-like construction and a true tense.  So maybe i shouldn't care about the answer to the question i just raised.)

To see that no apostrophe is required or pemitted, parallel "I regretted its being hard for you" with "He appreciated my baking him a cake." (And remember what it's means.)

In the case at hand, BTW, something else should (barring confusion) have tipped off the alert user, if "...it is being..." was the construction they intended. "Not to mention" must be followed by a noun (or a phrase serving the grammatical role of a noun), but "it is being hard..." is a full clause. It is able to stand alone as a sentence, and able to be combined into a larger sentence with a semicolon, a conjunction, or a relative prounoun like "that", but not able to serve the roles of a noun. (Writing "... [n]ot to mention that it's being hard..." is grammatical (except for the sentence fragment; see above), but it's lousy writing, and the alert user would be not only confused but uncharitable in attributing that intent to me.)

In any case, part of my concern is that, as William Safire wrote in his On Language column in the New York Times Sunday magazine section not too long ago (i.e., this year; maybe last month), the use of an adjectivial possessive pronoun before a gerund became standard relatively recently (i.e., well after Gutenberg). IMO that contributes to its being less well understood than other constructions.

I suspect the "possessive before gerund" rule is really aimed against a misleading construction: My mom appreciates my calling her, but she loves me calling her. She even loves me smashing her china. But she hates my smashing her china, and her smashing her (own) china, and i'm not sure whether i said she loves me when it's i or she who's smashing her china. IMO, the grammatical rules are that a noun or nominative pronoun precedes a participle (or should), and an adjective or adjectivial possessive pronoun precedes a gerund (or should). But maybe the usage rule should be
 * Avoid the noun- (or nominative-pronoun-) participle construction (in favor of, for instance, participle-noun), since it both is confusing and can be mistaken for the confusing and ambiguous noun-gerund construction;
 * conversely, avoid the ambiguous noun- (or nominative-pronoun-) gerund construction, even if you think it is grammatically sound, but
 * don't hesitate to use the adjective- (or adjectivial=possesive-pronoun-) gerund construction.

Articles?
I didn't cite the good WP page i found that comments on Its/It's, but i'll look for it again & add a link here.

I encourage someone better prepared than i to use this for text or ideas in WP article(s); the example of Pascal notwithstanding (i.e. unless someone sends me a round tuit, i may not get around to it for a while), they might do WP a solid by pre-empting me from doing so. [grin]

-- Jerzy 01:20, 2003 Nov 4 (UTC)

Like vs. As
I wrote "Like this fragment...", and then, much later, thought long and hard about whether i should instead have begun "As with this fragment". I ended up settling on using "as" rather than "like", but i found it interesting, and in the end illuminating, that i had so much trouble being sure.

The rule in question was "Like is a preposition, and its object must function as a noun; as is a subordinating conjunction, and what follows it must complete the clause by being a subject and a predicate." Superficially, the rule seems complied with: Like is followed by "this fragment", a noun phrase without a predicate. But the fact that "like" follows a period (or full stop) complicates the situation; in fact, i was in the midst of arguing that both my uses of like were in effect parts of an ungainly hypothetical sentence (of around a hundred words), beginning "I consider". In that context, what is like the two fragments has to be "violating [the rule]". And the only relevant way that violating the rule can be like the fragments is if (as my text claims) they all "keep the pace up, and draw attention [in a specified direction]. The fact that i could have said "as this fragment does," refering more explicitly to the parallel action, raises the question of what i was trying to communicate: was i really trying point out the abstract parallel between "violating" and "this fragment", because of what they do? Or was i counting on the reader to supply a missing verb, and interpret what i wrote as they would "like this fragment does"?

I think, on reflection, that comparing the abstraction of "violating" with the concrete fragments that do violate is demanding, and secretly i was counting on the reader to insert the predicate "does" in their own minds - which means i should have used "as" rather than "like". (Of course, constructions like "The balloons rose, as mist in the morning" only sound good in poetry, so in practice the only practical and grammatical approach (without changing the whole shape of the sentence and the fragments following it) is "As this fragment, and the two immediately before it, do...." ''More to follow (but i think so far so good).

Text i may need to quote further from:
 * The rule i did violate calls for writing (outside of titles and direct quotations) in full sentences. (Both of my last two uses of "Not to mention..." are in sentence fragments, rather than in sentences.) I consider that rule important in formal writing (e.g, Wikipedia articles), but dispensible, as long as ambiguity is avoided, in informal writing (e.g. most Wikipedia talk). And violating it can keep the pace up. And draw attention, without extra words, to the relationship between one complete thought and an "afterthought" that could (in theory) have been included in the same sentence with it.  Like this fragment, and the two immediately before it, not to mention both of the times i used "Not to mention..." to begin a sentence fragment.

Pascal
I mentioned Blaise Pascal bcz of Pascal's Last Theorem. That is the ironic (and presumably doubly inaccurate) standard name for a conjecture in mathematical number theory; it was formulated long before his time and proven (in the late 20th century) only long after it. Pascal thought (probably mistakenly) that he knew an elegant way to prove this conjecture, and wrote in his copy of a relevant book that its margin was too small to hold the proof. While he probably wrote that more than a day before his death, no proof of it by him has ever been found, he never corrected what he had written, and it seems like a natural parable about taking on responsibilities that take a lot longer than anticipated.

title: User talk:Jerzy/Archive 00


text:
Jook

Jook may refer to:
 * Congee, East Asian rice porridge, pronounced in Cantonese and romanized jook  in some Cantonese diasporic communities.
 * Juke joint, informal social establishment
 * Jook aka The Jook, a 1970s "junkshop glam" band including Chris Townson formerly of John's Children.

title: Jook