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War of the Worlds (2005 film)

War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction action-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, loosely based on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise stars in the main role alongside Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. It follows an American dock worker who must look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth and devastate cities with giant war machines.

Produced by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Cruise/Wagner Productions, the film was shot in 73 days, using five different sound stages as well as locations in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. It was surrounded by a secrecy campaign so few details would be leaked before its release. Tie-in promotions were made with several companies, including Hitachi.

War of the Worlds was released theatrically by Paramount Pictures on June 29, 2005, and received generally positive reviews. It was praised for effectively capturing the thrilling and suspenseful elements of Wells' novel while modernizing the action and effects to resonate with contemporary audiences. The film was also a commercial success, grossing over $603 million worldwide, making it the fourth most successful film of 2005. It earned Academy Awards nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing.

Plot
A narrator opens the film stating that extraterrestrials with immense intelligence have grown envious of humanity's dominion of Earth and are plotting against them.

Divorced longshoreman Ray Ferrier works as a crane operator at a dock in Brooklyn, New York and is estranged from his children, 10-year-old daughter Rachel and his teenage son Robbie. Ray's pregnant former wife, Mary Ann, drops the two off at his house in Bayonne, New Jersey on her way to visit her parents in Boston, Massachusetts. Later, a strange thunderstorm occurs, during which lightning strikes multiple times into the middle of a nearby intersection, causing an EMP that instantly disables almost all electronic devices. On his way to investigate the impacts, Ray suggests his mechanic friend Manny repair a customer's minivan by replacing the solenoid. He joins the crowd at the scene of the impacts, where a massive "tripod" war machine emerges from the ground following an earthquake and attacks the crowd using energy weapons to disintegrate most of the witnesses into ash.

Ray collects his children and commandeers the van Manny has repaired; he attempts to convince Manny to join them but is forced to leave him behind when a tripod attacks, resulting in Manny's death. Ray drives his children to Mary Ann's empty suburban New Jersey home to take refuge. Later, a Boeing 747 crashes into the neighborhood. Ray meets a wandering TV news team scavenging the wreckage for food, wherein a correspondent reveals that many tripods have attacked major cities around the world and that they have force shields that protect them from humanity's defenses. She adds that the tripods' pilots traveled to Earth within the lightning storms to enter their machines, presumed to have been buried underground long ago.

Ray transports his children to Boston to be with their mother, but a desperate mob swarms their vehicle, forcing them to abandon it. They eventually get on a ferry crossing over the Hudson River before tripods attack the refugees. Along the way, they then witness US Marines engaging in a battle with the tripods. To Ray's dismay, Robbie joins the futile fight out of hatred for the invaders, leaving Ray and Rachel to flee. The Marines are obliterated, with Robbie presumed dead along with them. Shortly afterward, the pair are offered shelter in a nearby house by a deranged former ambulance driver, Harlan Ogilvy.

The three remain undetected for several hours, even as a tripod's probe and a group of aliens explore the basement. They soon discover that the aliens have started cultivating a red-colored vegetation across the landscape that is quickly spreading. Later, Harlan suffers a mental breakdown after witnessing the tripods harvesting human blood and tissue to fertilize the alien vegetation. Fearing that his mad shouting will alert the aliens, Ray reluctantly kills him. A second tripod probe then catches the Ferriers sleeping, causing Rachel to flee outside only to be abducted by the tripod. Chasing after the tripod, Ray grabs a belt of grenades from an overgrown Humvee, then intentionally allows himself to be abducted. With the help of other abductees, Ray destroys the tripod from within with the grenades.

Ray and Rachel eventually reach Boston, where they find the alien vegetation withering and the tripods inexplicably collapsing. When an active tripod appears, Ray notices birds landing on it, indicating that its force shields have been disabled. He alerts the soldiers escorting the fleeing crowd, who shoot it down with Javelin missiles. As the soldiers advance on the downed tripod, a hatch opens, and a pale, sickly alien struggles halfway out before dying. Ray and Rachel finally approach Mary Ann's parents' house, where they are reunited with Mary Ann and Robbie, who have somehow survived.

In closing, the narrator explains that the aliens died because they were vulnerable to the countless microbes inhabiting the Earth that humanity has adapted to for millennia.

Cast

 * Tom Cruise as Ray Ferrier
 * Dakota Fanning as Rachel Ferrier
 * Miranda Otto as Mary Ann Ferrier
 * Tim Robbins as Harlan Ogilvy
 * Justin Chatwin as Robbie Ferrier
 * Rick Gonzalez as Vincent
 * Yul Vazquez as Julio
 * Lenny Venito as Manny The Mechanic
 * Lisa Ann Walter as Sheryl
 * Ann Robinson as Grandmother (she played the lead role of Sylvia van Buren in the 1953 film)
 * Gene Barry as Grandfather (he played the lead role of Dr. Clayton Forrester in the 1953 film)
 * David Alan Basche as Tim
 * Roz Abrams as Herself
 * Camillia Sanes as News Producer
 * Amy Ryan as Neighbor With Toddler
 * David Harbour as Dock Worker (deleted scene)
 * Danny Hoch as Policeman
 * Morgan Freeman as The Narrator (voice)
 * Dee Bradley Baker as Alien Vocals (uncredited)
 * Columbus Short as Soldier
 * Daniel Franzese as National Guardsman
 * Channing Tatum as The Boy In The Church

Development
After collaborating in 2002's Minority Report, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise were interested in working together again. Spielberg stated about Cruise, "He's such an intelligent, creative partner, and brings such great ideas to the set that we just spark each other. I love working with Tom Cruise." Cruise met with Spielberg during the filming of Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002) and gave three options of films to create together, one of them being an adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Spielberg chose The War of the Worlds and stated, "We looked at each other and the lights went on. As soon as I heard it, I said 'Oh my God! War of the Worlds – absolutely.' That was it."

The film is Spielberg's third on the subject of alien visitation, along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Producer and longtime collaborator Kathleen Kennedy notes that with War of the Worlds, Spielberg had the opportunity to explore the antithesis of the characters brought to life in E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "When we first started developing E.T., it was a much edgier, darker story and it actually evolved into something that was more benign. I think that the edgier, darker story has always been somewhere inside him. Now, he's telling that story." Spielberg stated that he just thought it would be fun to make a "really scary film with really scary aliens", something which he had never done before. Spielberg was intent on telling a contemporary story, with Kennedy stating the story was created as a fantasy, but depicted in a hyper-realistic way.

J. J. Abrams was asked by Spielberg and Cruise to write the script but had to turn down the film as he was working on the pilot for his television series Lost. Josh Friedman delivered a screenplay, which was then rewritten by David Koepp. After re-reading the novel, Koepp decided to do the script following a single narrator, "a very limited point of view, from someone on the very periphery of events rather than someone involved in events", and created a list of elements he would not use due to being "cliché", such as the destruction of landmark buildings. Some aspects of the book were heavily adapted and condensed: Tim Robbins' character was an amalgam of two characters in the book, with the name borrowed from a third. While changing the setting from 19th century to present day, Koepp also tried to "take the modern world back to the 1800s", with the characters being devoid of electricity and modern techniques of communication.

Spielberg accepted the script after finding it had several similarities to his personal life, including the divorce of his parents (Ray and Mary Ann's divorce), and because the plight of the fictional survivors reflects his own uncertainty after the devastation of the September 11 attacks. For Spielberg, the characters' stories of survival needed to be the main focus, as they featured the American mindset of never giving up. Spielberg described War of the Worlds as "a polar opposite" to Close Encounters, with that movie featuring a man leaving family to travel with aliens, while War of the Worlds focused on keeping the family together. At the same time, the aliens and their motivations would not be much explored, as "we just experience the results of these nefarious plans to replace us with themselves".

Although accepting the script, Spielberg asked for several changes. Spielberg had been against the idea of the aliens arriving in spaceships, since every alien invasion movie used such a vehicle. The original Martian cylinders were discarded and Spielberg replaced the origins of the tripods, stating they were buried underground in the Earth long ago.

Spielberg had Miranda Otto in mind for the part of Mary Ann, but at the time he called her she was pregnant and thought the opportunity would be missed. Spielberg then decided to incorporate Otto's pregnancy into the film, changing the part for her.

Filming

Filming took place in Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, and New York. The film shooting lasted an estimated 73 days. Spielberg originally intended to shoot War of the Worlds after Munich (2005), but Tom Cruise liked David Koepp's script so much that he suggested Spielberg postpone the former while he would do the same with Mission: Impossible III (2006). Most of Munich crew was brought in to work on War of the Worlds as well. In 2004, the production crews quickly were set up on both coasts to prepare for the start date, scouting locations up and down the Eastern Seaboard and preparing stages and sets which would be used when the company returned to Los Angeles after the winter holiday. Pre-production took place in only three months, essentially half the amount of time normally allotted for a film of similar size and scope. Spielberg notes, however, "This wasn't a cram course for War of the Worlds. This was my longest schedule in about 12 years. We took our time." Spielberg collaborated with crews at the beginning of pre-production with the use of previsualization, considering the tight schedule.

The scene depicting the first appearance of the Tripods was filmed at the intersection of Ferry Street, Merchant Street, and Wilson Avenue, in Newark, New Jersey. Later, Spielberg filmed several scenes in Virginia.

The ferry scene was filmed in the New York town of Athens, and Mary Ann's parents' house was located in Brooklyn (but was featured in the film in Boston). For the neighborhood plane crash scene, the production crew bought a retired Boeing 747 formerly operated by All Nippon Airways as JA8147, with transportation costs of $2 million, dismantled it into several pieces, and built houses around them. The destroyed plane was kept for the Universal Studios back-lot tour. Ferrier's house was filmed in Bayonne, New Jersey (with a soundstage doubling the interior); meanwhile, the valley war sequence was filmed in Lexington, Virginia and Mystery Mesa in California. The scene where the tripod is shot down and crashes through a factory was filmed in Naugatuck, Connecticut at an abandoned chemical plant. The scene of the bodies floating down the river was filmed on the Farmington River in Windsor, Connecticut by a second unit directed by Vic Armstrong using a stand in for Dakota Fanning shot from behind with the portion showing the faces of the credited actors cut in later. Some filming was shot on the Korean War Veterans Parkway in Staten Island, New York. The film used six sound stages, spread over three studio lots.

Principal photography began on November 8, 2004 and wrapped on March 7, 2005.

Design and visual effects
Industrial Light & Magic was the main special effects company for the movie. While Spielberg had used computers to help visualize sequences in pre-production before, Spielberg said, "This is the first film I really tackled using the computer to animate all the storyboards." He decided to employ the technique extensively after a visit to his friend George Lucas. In order to keep the realism, the usage of computer-generated imagery shots and bluescreen was limited, with most of the digital effects being blended with miniature and live-action footage.

The design of the Tripods was described by Spielberg as "graceful," with artist Doug Chiang replicating aquatic life forms. At the same time, the director wanted a design that would be iconic while still providing a tribute to the original Tripods, as well as intimidating so the audience would not be more interested in the aliens inside than in the vehicle itself. The visual effects crew tried to blend organic and mechanical elements in the Tripods depiction, and made extensive studies for the movements of the vehicle to be believable, considering the "contradiction" of having a large tank-like head being carried by thin and flexible legs. Animator Randal M. Dutra considered the movements themselves to have a "terrestrial buoyance", in that they were walking on land but had an aquatic flow, and Spielberg described the Tripods as moving like "scary ballet dancers". Most of the alien elements revolved around the number three – the Tripod had three eyes, and both the vehicle and the aliens had three main limbs with three fingers each.

Visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman considered depicting the scale of the Tripod as challenging, considering "Steven wanted to make sure that these creatures were 150 feet tall", as it was the height described by Wells in the novel. The aliens themselves had designs based on jellyfish, with movements inspired by red-eyed tree frogs, and an amphibian quality particularly on the wet skin. A styrofoam alien was used as a stand-in to guide the actors in the basement scene. Spielberg did not want any blood or gore during the Heat-Ray deaths; in the words of Helman, "this was going to be a horror movie for kids". So the effects crew came up with the vaporization of the bodies, and considering it could not be fully digital due to both the complexity of the effect and the schedule, live-action dust was used alongside the CGI ray assimilation and particles. Digital birds followed the Tripods in most scenes to symbolize the presence of death, which Chiang compared to vultures and added that "you don't know if these birds are going to the danger or away from it, if you should follow them or run away."

During the scene where Ferrier's stolen minivan is attacked by a mob, Janusz Kaminski and Spielberg wanted a lot of interactive lights, so they added different kinds of lights, including Coleman lamps, oil lanterns, flashlights and Maglights. The IL&M crew admitted that the destruction of the Bayonne Bridge was the toughest scene to be made with heavy usage mix of CGI effects and live action elements, and a four-week deadline so the shot could be used in a Super Bowl trailer. The scene originally had only a gas station exploding, but then Spielberg suggested blowing up the bridge as well. The scene involved Tripods shooting a Heat-Ray toward the minivan; the minivan's escape involved a lot of CGI layers to work out. Over 500 CGI effects were used in the film.

Costume designer Joanna Johnston created 60 different versions of Ferrier's leather jacket, to illustrate the degrees to which he is weathered from the beginning of the journey to the end. "He begins with the jacket, a hoodie, and two t-shirts," explains Johnston. One piece of Dakota Fanning's costume that takes on a special importance is her lavender horse purse: "I wanted her to have something that made her feel safe, some little thing that she could sleep with and put over her face," Johnston notes. "That was the lavender horse purse. We tied it up on a ribbon and Dakota hung it on her body, so it was with her at all times." Johnston dressed Robbie for an unconscious emulation of his father, "They're more alike than they realize, with great tension on the surface," Johnston says.

Music
Longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams composed the score. It was the first time he had to compose with an incomplete Spielberg film, as only the first six reels, totalling 60 minutes, were ready for him to use as reference. He considered the score "a very serious piece," which had to combine "necessary frightening atmosphere" with "propulsively rhythmic drive for the action scenes"– the music would be symbolically "pulling forward" vehicles in chase scenes, such as Ferrier driving out of Bayonne, or the Tripod attacking the Hudson ferry. Williams added small nods to classic monster movie scores by having orchestras doing a "grand gesture" in scenes overlooking Tripods. To increase the scariness of the Tripod attacks, Williams added a female chorus with a crescendo resembling a shriek, representing "victims that go out without saying an 'ouch'—they're gone before they can say that". He added a nearly inaudible male choir—which he compared to "Tibetan monks, the lowest known pitch our bodies can make", for the aliens exploring the basement. The only deviation from orchestras were electronic sounds for the opening and closing narrations.

A soundtrack album was released by Decca Records featuring the film's music and Morgan Freeman's opening and closing narrations. The songs "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Hushabye Mountain" are also featured in the movie, the former sung by Tom Cruise, and the latter by Dakota Fanning. An expanded "limited edition" soundtrack was released in 2020 through Intrada Records, with the full film score, a remaster of the 2005 album, and alternate cues as bonus material.

Themes
The film was described as an anti-war film, as civilians run and only try to save themselves and their family instead of fighting back against the alien Tripods. Debra J. Saunders of San Francisco Chronicle described the film as "If aliens invade, don't fight back. Run." Saunders compared the film to Independence Day, where the civilians do run, but they support the military efforts. Many reviewers felt that the film tried to recreate the atmosphere of the September 11 attacks, with bystanders struggling to survive and the usage of missing-persons displays. Spielberg declared to Reader's Digest that beside the work being a fantasy, the threat represented was real: "They are a wake-up call to face our fears as we confront a force intent on destroying our way of life." Screenwriter David Koepp stated that he tried not to put explicit references to September 11 or the Iraq War, but said that the inspiration for the scene where Robbie joins the Marines was teenagers fighting in the Gaza Strip – "I was thinking of teenagers in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks at tanks, and I think that when you're that age you don't fully consider the ramifications of what you're doing and you're very much caught up in the moment and passion, whether that's a good idea or not." Retained from the novel is the aliens being defeated, not by men's weapons, but the planet's smallest creatures, bacteria, which Koepp described as "nature, in a way, knowing a whole lot more than we do".

Lawrence Brown wrote: "Spielberg's decision to present the invaders' fighting machines as having been there all along, buried deep under the Earth, raises questions which did not exist in the original Wells book. In Spielberg's version, these invaders had been here before, long ago, in prehistoric times. They had set up their machines deep underground, and departed. Why? Why not take over the Earth right there and then? Spielberg does not provide an answer, and the characters are too busy surviving to wonder about this. An answer suggests itself – a very chilling answer. The invaders were interested in humans as food animals. When they came here before, humans were very scarce. The aliens left their hidden machines and departed, patiently observing the Earth until humans would multiply to the requisite numbers – and then they came back, to take over. Under this interpretation, all of us – all humans over the whole of history – have been livestock living in an alien food farm, destined to be 'harvested'".

Release
War of the Worlds premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on June 23, 2005. There, Tom Cruise revealed his relationship with Katie Holmes. Six days later, on June 29, the film was released in approximately 3,908 theaters across America. The home video was released on November 22, 2005.

Secrecy
Spielberg kept most of the parts secret in the filmmaking, as the cast and crew were left confused about how the aliens looked. When asked about the secrecy of the screenplay, David Koepp answered, "[Spielberg] wouldn't give [the screenplay] to anybody". Koepp explained he would e-mail it to him, and he would give a section of the script that was relating to whatever somebody was doing. Miranda Otto thought of not even discussing the story with her family and friends. Otto said, "I know some people who always say, 'Oh, everything's so secret.' I think it's good. In the old days people didn't get to know much about movies before they came out and nowadays there's just so much information. I think a bit of mystery is always really good. You don't want to blow all of your cards beforehand."

Spielberg admitted after keeping things secret for so long, there is in the end the temptation to reveal too much to the detriment of the story at the press conference of War of the Worlds. So, Spielberg only revealed the hill scene, where Ferrier tries to stop his son from leaving, stating "to say more would reveal too much." The actual budget of the film was $132 million.

According to Vanity Fair, Spielberg's relations with Cruise were "poor" during the film's release because Spielberg believed Cruise's "antics" at the time (such as an erratic appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show) had "hurt" the film; also, a doctor whose name Spielberg had given to Cruise was picketed by Scientologists.

Marketing and home media releases
Paramount Pictures Interactive Marketing debuted a human survival online game on its official website on April 14 to promote the film. Hitachi collaborated with Paramount Pictures for a worldwide promotional campaign, under the title of "The Ultimate Visual Experience". The agreement was announced by Kazuhiro Tachibana, general manager of Hitachi's Consumer Business Group. Kazuhiro stated, "Our 'The Ultimate Visual Experience' campaign is a perfect match between Spielberg and Cruise's pursuit of the world's best in film entertainment and Hitachi's commitment to the highest picture quality through its digital consumer electronic products."

The film was released on VHS and DVD on November 22, 2005, with both a single-disc edition and a two-disc special edition which included production featurettes, documentaries and various trailers. The film grossed $113 million in DVD sales, bringing its total film gross to $704,745,540, ranking tenth place in the 2005 DVD sales chart. Paramount released the film on Blu-ray Disc on June 1, 2010.

Box office
On June 29, 2005, the film grossed $81 million worldwide, and earned the 38th-biggest opening week by grossing $98.8 million in 3,908 theaters, an average of $25,288. On Independence Day weekend, it grossed $64.9 million, an average of $16,601, and gave Tom Cruise his biggest opening weekend, until the release of Top Gun: Maverick in May 2022. It was the second-biggest film opening on Independence Day weekend, after Spider-Man 2. During its first five days of release, it made $100.2 million, breaking The Lost World: Jurassic Park's record to become the fastest Steven Spielberg film to reach $100 million. It earned $200 million in 24 days, ranking 37th in the list of fastest films to gross $200 million. It went on to make a total gross of $603.9 million worldwide. The film would remain as Tom Cruise's highest-grossing film until 2011 when it was dethroned by Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Overall, it was the fourth highest-grossing film of 2005.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, War of the Worlds holds an approval rating of 75% based on 267 reviews, and an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus states: "Steven Spielberg's adaptation of War of the Worlds delivers on the thrill and paranoia of H.G. Wells' classic novel while impressively updating the action and effects for modern audiences." Review aggregator website Metacritic gave the film an average score of 73 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

James Berardinelli praised the acting and considered that focusing the narrative on the struggle of one character made the film more effective, but described the ending as weak, even though Spielberg "does the best he can to make it cinematically dramatic". Total Film review gave War of the Worlds four out of five stars, considering that "Spielberg finds fresh juice in a tale already adapted for film, TV, stage, radio and record", and describing the film as having many "startling images", comparing the first Tripod attack to the Omaha Beach landing from Saving Private Ryan.

Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan, who commended the film's special effects, stated that Spielberg may actually have done his job in War of the Worlds "better than he realizes". Turan claimed that, by "showing us how fragile our world is", Spielberg raises a provocative question: "Is the ultimate fantasy an invasion from outer space, or is it the survival of the human race?" However, Broomfield Enterprise Dan Marcucci and Nancy Serougi did not share Berardinelli and Turan's opinion. They felt that Morgan Freeman's narration was unnecessary, and that the first half was "great" but the second half "became filled with clichés, riddled with holes, and tainted by Tim Robbins".

Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, writing "War of the Worlds definitely wins its battle, but not the war." Wilmington stated that the film "takes [viewers] on a wild journey through two sides of [Spielberg]: the dark and the light." He also said the film contained a core sentiment similar to that of Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. About.com's Rebecca Murray gave a positive review, stating, "Spielberg almost succeeds in creating the perfect alien movie", with criticism only for the ending.

Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader praised the special effects and Cruise's performance. Roger Ebert criticized the "retro design" and considered that despite the big budget, the alien invasion was "rudimentary" and "not very interesting", regarding the best scenes as Ferrier walking among the airliner wreckage and a train running in flames, declaring that "such scenes seem to come from a kind of reality different from that of the tripods."

The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma ranked the film as 8th place in its list of best films of the 2000s. It is also Spielberg's first film to make the magazine's annual listings of the top 10 films of the year, which would be followed by Lincoln (2012), The Post (2017) and The Fabelmans (2022). Japanese film director Kiyoshi Kurosawa listed the film as the best film of 2000–2009.

Accolades
War of the Worlds was nominated for three Academy Awards: Sound Editing, Sound Mixing (Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Ron Judkins) and Visual Effects (Pablo Helman). It was nominated for six Saturn Awards, and won Best Performance by a Younger Actor (Dakota Fanning). It won a Golden Reel Award for Sound Effects & Foley, a World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Soundtrack, and three VES Awards for its visual effects, and was nominated for three Empire Awards,  two Satellite Awards, and an MTV Movie Award.

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Czerny

Czerny is a surname meaning "black" in some Slavic languages. It is one of many variant forms, including Czarny, Černý, Czernik, Cherney, and Čierny, among others.

People
Notable people with this surname include:
 * Adalbert Czerny (1863–1941), German pediatrician, co-founder of modern pediatrics
 * Carl Czerny (1791–1857), Austrian pianist, composer, and teacher
 * Joseph Czerny (1785–1842), composer and pianist
 * George Czerny (1766–1817), alternate name of Serbian political leader Karađorđe Petrović
 * Halina Czerny-Stefańska (1922–2001), Polish pianist
 * Henry Czerny (born 1959), Canadian actor
 * Leander Czerny (1859–1944), Czech entomologist
 * Ludwig Czerny (born 1941), German technician, film producer, and film director
 * Marianus Czerny (1896–1985), German experimental physicist
 * Michael Czerny (born 1946), Roman Catholic Cardinal
 * Sabine Czerny, Bavarian primary school teacher
 * Vincenz Czerny (1842–1916), German surgeon
 * Zygmunt Czerny (1888–1975), Polish romance philologist

Fictional characters

 * Tibor Czerny, a character in the 1939 film Midnight
 * Czerny, a dog owned by Kanako Sensei in the manga series Inubaka
 * Noah Czerny, a character in The Raven Cycle book series by Maggie Stiefvater

Other

 * 6294 Czerny, minor planet
 * Hofmann & Czerny (Hofmann-Wien), piano manufacturing company from Austria

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

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Hummel

Hummel may refer to:

People

 * Hummel (surname), origin and list of people with the surname Hummel

Companies

 * Hummel International, a Denmark-based sporting goods and apparel company
 * Hummel figurines
 * Hummel Aviation, American aircraft manufacturer based in Bryan, Ohio
 * Hummel Ultracruiser, an American amateur-built aircraft
 * Hummel Bird, an American amateur-built aircraft

Geography

 * Lordship of Hummel, historic landscape zone, now in Silesia, Poland
 * Hummel Field, a public use airport in Middlesex County, Virginia, United States
 * Hummel, Kentucky, a community in the United States
 * Mount Hummel, a summit of Grant Island, off the coast of Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica
 * Hümmel, municipality in the district of Ahrweiler, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Other

 * Hummels, an alien species in the Ron Goulart novel Shaggy Planet
 * Hummel (instrument), a musical instrument
 * Siebel Si 202 Hummel, a German light sportsplane of the late 1930s
 * Hummel, a male morph of red deer with no antlers, also known as a nott
 * Hummel, a name for dehulled barley grain; the process was called hummelling and mechanical devices used for this process were originally known as barley hummellers (now called hullers)
 * Hummel (vehicle), a German self-propelled artillery vehicle used in World War II

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Ezio Pinza

 Ezio Fortunato Pinza (May 18, 1892 – May 9, 1957) was an Italian opera singer. Pinza possessed a rich, smooth and sonorous voice, with a flexibility unusual for a bass. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. At the San Francisco Opera, Pinza sang 26 roles during 20 seasons from 1927 to 1948. Pinza also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.

After retiring from the Metropolitan Opera in 1948, Pinza enjoyed a fresh career on Broadway in musical theatre, most notably in South Pacific, in which he created the role of Emile de Becque. He was less successful in his appearances in Hollywood films.

Early years
Ezio Fortunato Pinza was born in modest circumstances in Rome in 1892. The seventh child born to his parents, he was the first to live past infancy. Pinza grew up on Italy's east coast, in the ancient city of Ravenna. He studied singing at Bologna's Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, making his operatic debut at age 22 in 1914, as Oroveso in Norma at Cremona.

As a young man, Pinza was a devotee of bicycle racing. "Although I did not know it at the time," he told an interviewer years later, "I was developing the lung power which now makes people hear my voice even in the top row of the peanut gallery." He also undertook four years of military service during World War I, prior to resuming his operatic career in Rome in 1919. He was then invited to sing at Italy's foremost opera house, La Scala, Milan, making his début there in February 1922. At La Scala, under the direction of the brilliant and exacting principal conductor Arturo Toscanini, Pinza's career blossomed during the course of the next few seasons. He became a popular favourite of critics and audiences due to the high quality of his singing and the attractiveness of his stage presence.

Although he attended the Bologna Conservatory, Pinza never learned to read music; he learned all his music by ear. He would listen to his part played on the piano and then sing it accurately. Pinza succeeded the great Italian basses Francesco Navarini and Vittorio Arimondi, both of whom enjoyed international opera careers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Nazzareno De Angelis, who arrived on the scene in the early 1900s. Another of his eminent predecessors in the Italian operatic repertoire was the Spaniard José Mardones, who had appeared regularly with the Boston and Metropolitan opera companies between 1909 and 1926. Tancredi Pasero, whose vibrant voice sounded remarkably similar to Pinza's, was his chief contemporary rival among Italian-born basses. Pasero, however, lacked Pinza's handsome looks and magnetic personality.

Operatic success
Pinza's Metropolitan Opera debut occurred in November 1926 in Spontini's La vestale, with famed American soprano Rosa Ponselle in the title role. In 1929, he sang Don Giovanni, a role with which he was subsequently to become closely identified. He subsequently added the Mozart roles Figaro (in 1940) and Sarastro (in 1942) to his repertoire, a vast number of Italian operatic roles of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (sung in Italian). Apart from the Met, Pinza appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1930–1939, and was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1934–1937 by the celebrated German conductor Bruno Walter.

Pinza sang once again under the baton of Toscanini in 1935, this time with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as the bass soloist in performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. One of these performances was broadcast by CBS and preserved on transcription discs; this recording has been issued on LP and CD. He also sang in Toscanini's February 6, 1938, NBC Symphony Orchestra's broadcast performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. These performances both took place in Carnegie Hall. In October 1947, he performed the role of Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust opposite his daughter, soprano Claudia Pinza Bozzolla, as Marguerite at the San Francisco Opera.

Pinza resigned from the Metropolitan Opera in 1948. He had sung opposite many celebrated singers at the Met during his heyday, including, among others, such international stars as Amelita Galli-Curci, Rosa Ponselle, Elisabeth Rethberg, Maria Jeritza, Giovanni Martinelli, Beniamino Gigli, Lawrence Tibbett, and Giuseppe De Luca. The Metropolitan Opera honored Pinza by dedicating all the water fountains at the new Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center) to him. Before his retirement from opera, his repertoire consisted of around 95 roles.

Arrest and detention by FBI
In March 1942, the FBI arrested Pinza at his New York home and unjustly detained him for nearly three months on Ellis Island with hundreds of other Italian-Americans who were suspected of supporting the Axis. Norman Cordon, a fellow basso at the Metropolitan Opera who was considered one of Pinza's rivals, boasted privately that he had informed the FBI that Pinza was a fascist sympathizer. At the time of his arrest and detention, Pinza was just four months away from obtaining US citizenship. The incident was extremely traumatic for Pinza, and he suffered from periods of severe depression for years afterward. Despite this, shortly after Pinza's release, Pinza and Cordon performed together in an ongoing Met production of Don Giovanni, with Pinza in the title role and Cordon as the Commendatore.

Later years and death
After his Met farewell, Pinza embarked on a second career in Broadway musicals. In April 1949, he appeared in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, originating the role of French planter Emile de Becque. His highly expressive performance of the hit song "Some Enchanted Evening" made Pinza a matinée idol and a national celebrity. In 1950, he received a Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical.

Pinza became a member of Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and lived in a house adjacent to the fifth golf hole of the South Course. In 1953, he had his own short-lived NBC situation comedy on TV, Bonino. In 1954, he appeared in the Broadway production of Fanny opposite Florence Henderson. On March 28, 1954, Pinza and Henderson were featured in the TV special General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein which was broadcast on all four American TV networks of the time.

Pinza's health began to decline during the mid-1950s; a series of heart attacks precipitated a stroke on May 1, 1957. Pinza died in his sleep of a heart attack on May 9, at the age of 64 in Stamford, Connecticut. His funeral was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He is interred at Putnam Cemetery, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Shortly before his death, Pinza completed his memoirs, which were published in 1958 by Rinehart & Company. Photos taken during his career, as well as images of his family, were included in the book.

Personal life
Pinza was married twice. With his first wife, Augusta Cassinelli, he had a daughter, Claudia Pinza Bozzolla, who became a celebrated opera singer, vocal coach, and director herself. After divorcing Cassinelli, in 1940 he married Doris Leak, described in The New York Times as "a member of the Metropolitan Opera's corps de ballet." They had three children: Clelia, Pietro, and Gloria. Clelia's daughter, journalist Sarah Goodyear, wrote about her father's wartime struggles in The Village Voice in 2000.

Films and television
Pinza appeared in several films, beginning with 1947's Carnegie Hall, which featured a number of famous classical singers, musicians, conductors, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He received a film contract from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and appeared in Mr. Imperium with Lana Turner and Strictly Dishonorable, both released in 1951; MGM cancelled his contract after both films turned out to be major box office failures. His final big-screen appearance was in the Twentieth Century-Fox film Tonight We Sing (1953), playing the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in a movie biography of impresario Sol Hurok. In this film, Pinza sings a portion of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in the original Russian. A recording of Pinza singing "Anema e core" is heard in the film The Blues Brothers (1980),  playing on a phonograph in the scene where Jake and Elwood visit landlady, Mrs. Tarantino.

Pinza hosted The RCA Victor Show during 1951–52, which for a time alternated with The RCA Victor Show Starring Dennis Day, later named The Dennis Day Show. In 1953, he starred in the NBC sitcom Bonino. Pinza continued to make appearances on American television until 1955.

Recordings
Pinza recorded extensively for The Gramophone Company/EMI and the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor during his prime in the 1920s and 1930s. These 78-rpm discs consist largely of individual operatic arias and some ensemble pieces (plus a complete Verdi Requiem conducted by Carlo Sabajno in 1927, and another with Tullio Serafin in 1939). They are prized by music critics and general listeners alike for the exceptional beauty of voice and the fine musicianship that Pinza displays on them. Most of them were reissued on LP, and today they are available on many CD reissues.

Pinza was still making operatic recordings in the 1950s, although his voice was now in obvious decline. In the mid-1940s, he had recorded for Columbia Records. He occasionally recorded popular songs, and was featured on Columbia's best-selling original cast recording of South Pacific with Mary Martin. Pinza returned to RCA Victor in the early 1950s and recorded several operatic arias and popular songs. Pinza can also be heard on the RCA Victor original cast album of Fanny, recorded in 1954.

title: Ezio Pinza


text:
Chebotarev's density theorem

Chebotarev's density theorem in algebraic number theory describes statistically the splitting of primes in a given Galois extension K of the field $$\mathbb{Q}$$ of rational numbers. Generally speaking, a prime integer will factor into several ideal primes in the ring of algebraic integers of K. There are only finitely many patterns of splitting that may occur. Although the full description of the splitting of every prime p in a general Galois extension is a major unsolved problem, the Chebotarev density theorem says that the frequency of the occurrence of a given pattern, for all primes p less than a large integer N, tends to a certain limit as N goes to infinity. It was proved by Nikolai Chebotaryov in his thesis in 1922, published in.

A special case that is easier to state says that if K is an algebraic number field which is a Galois extension of $$\mathbb{Q}$$ of degree n, then the prime numbers that completely split in K have density

 * 1/n

among all primes. More generally, splitting behavior can be specified by assigning to (almost) every prime number an invariant, its Frobenius element, which is a representative of a well-defined conjugacy class in the Galois group

 * Gal(K/Q).

Then the theorem says that the asymptotic distribution of these invariants is uniform over the group, so that a conjugacy class with k elements occurs with frequency asymptotic to

 * k/n.

History and motivation
When Carl Friedrich Gauss first introduced the notion of complex integers Z[i], he observed that the ordinary prime numbers may factor further in this new set of integers. In fact, if a prime p is congruent to 1 mod 4, then it factors into a product of two distinct prime gaussian integers, or "splits completely"; if p is congruent to 3 mod 4, then it remains prime, or is "inert"; and if p is 2 then it becomes a product of the square of the prime (1+i) and the invertible gaussian integer -i; we say that 2 "ramifies". For instance,

 * $$ 5 = (1 + 2i)(1-2i) $$ splits completely;
 * $$ 3 $$ is inert;
 * $$ 2 = -i(1+i)^2 $$ ramifies.

From this description, it appears that as one considers larger and larger primes, the frequency of a prime splitting completely approaches 1/2, and likewise for the primes that remain primes in Z[i]. Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions demonstrates that this is indeed the case. Even though the prime numbers themselves appear rather erratically, splitting of the primes in the extension

 * $$ \mathbb{Z}\subset \mathbb{Z}[i] $$

follows a simple statistical law.

Similar statistical laws also hold for splitting of primes in the cyclotomic extensions, obtained from the field of rational numbers by adjoining a primitive root of unity of a given order. For example, the ordinary integer primes group into four classes, each with probability 1/4, according to their pattern of splitting in the ring of integers corresponding to the 8th roots of unity. In this case, the field extension has degree 4 and is abelian, with the Galois group isomorphic to the Klein four-group. It turned out that the Galois group of the extension plays a key role in the pattern of splitting of primes. Georg Frobenius established the framework for investigating this pattern and proved a special case of the theorem. The general statement was proved by Nikolai Grigoryevich Chebotaryov in 1922.

Relation with Dirichlet's theorem
The Chebotarev density theorem may be viewed as a generalisation of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions. A quantitative form of Dirichlet's theorem states that if N≥2 is an integer and a is coprime to N, then the proportion of the primes p congruent to a mod N is asymptotic to 1/n, where n=φ(N) is the Euler totient function. This is a special case of the Chebotarev density theorem for the Nth cyclotomic field K. Indeed, the Galois group of K/Q is abelian and can be canonically identified with the group of invertible residue classes mod N. The splitting invariant of a prime p not dividing N is simply its residue class because the number of distinct primes into which p splits is φ(N)/m, where m is multiplicative order of p modulo N; hence by the Chebotarev density theorem, primes are asymptotically uniformly distributed among different residue classes coprime to N.

Formulation
In their survey article, give an earlier result of Frobenius in this area. Suppose K is a Galois extension of the rational number field Q, and P(t) a monic integer polynomial such that K is a splitting field of P. It makes sense to factorise P modulo a prime number p. Its 'splitting type' is the list of degrees of irreducible factors of P mod p, i.e. P factorizes in some fashion over the prime field Fp. If n is the degree of P, then the splitting type is a partition Π of n. Considering also the Galois group G of K over Q, each g in G is a permutation of the roots of P in K; in other words by choosing an ordering of α and its algebraic conjugates, G is faithfully represented as a subgroup of the symmetric group Sn. We can write g by means of its cycle representation, which gives a 'cycle type' c(g), again a partition of n.

The theorem of Frobenius states that for any given choice of Π the primes p for which the splitting type of P mod p is Π has a natural density δ, with δ equal to the proportion of g in G that have cycle type Π.

The statement of the more general Chebotarev theorem is in terms of the Frobenius element of a prime (ideal), which is in fact an associated conjugacy class C of elements of the Galois group G. If we fix C then the theorem says that asymptotically a proportion |C|/|G| of primes have associated Frobenius element as C. When G is abelian the classes of course each have size 1. For the case of a non-abelian group of order 6 they have size 1, 2 and 3, and there are correspondingly (for example) 50% of primes p that have an order 2 element as their Frobenius. So these primes have residue degree 2, so they split into exactly three prime ideals in a degree 6 extension of Q with it as Galois group.

Statement
Let L be a finite Galois extension of a number field K with Galois group G. Let X be a subset of G that is stable under conjugation. The set of primes v of K that are unramified in L and whose associated Frobenius conjugacy class Fv is contained in X has density
 * $$\frac{\#X}{\#G}.$$

The statement is valid when the density refers to either the natural density or the analytic density of the set of primes.

Effective Version
The Generalized Riemann hypothesis implies an effective version of the Chebotarev density theorem: if L/K is a finite Galois extension with Galois group G, and C a union of conjugacy classes of G, the number of unramified primes of K of norm below x with Frobenius conjugacy class in C is
 * $$\frac{|C|}{|G|}\Bigl(\mathrm{li}(x)+O\bigl(\sqrt x(n\log x+\log|\Delta|)\bigr)\Bigr),$$

where the constant implied in the big-O notation is absolute, n is the degree of L over Q, and Δ its discriminant.

The effective form of Chebotarev's density theory becomes much weaker without GRH. Take L to be a finite Galois extension of Q with Galois group G and degree d. Take $$\rho$$ to be a nontrivial irreducible representation of G of degree n, and take $$\mathfrak{f}(\rho)$$ to be the Artin conductor of this representation. Suppose that, for $$\rho_0$$ a subrepresentation of $$\rho \otimes \rho$$ or $$ \rho \otimes \bar{\rho}$$, $$L(\rho_0, s)$$ is entire; that is, the Artin conjecture is satisfied for all $$\rho_0$$. Take $$\chi_{\rho}$$ to be the character associated to $$\rho$$. Then there is an absolute positive $$c$$ such that, for $$ x \ge 2$$,
 * $$\sum_{p \le x, p \not\mid \mathfrak{f}(\rho)} \chi_{\rho}(\text{Fr}_p) \log p = rx + O\biggl(\frac{x^{\beta}}{\beta} + x\exp\biggl(\frac{-c(dn)^{-4} \log x }{3\log \mathfrak{f}(\rho) + \sqrt{\log x}}\biggr) (dn \log (x\mathfrak{f}(\rho))\biggr),$$

where $$r$$ is 1 if $$\rho$$ is trivial and is otherwise 0, and where $$\beta$$ is an exceptional real zero of $$L(\rho, s)$$; if there is no such zero, the $$x^{\beta}/\beta$$ term can be ignored. The implicit constant of this expression is absolute.

Infinite extensions
The statement of the Chebotarev density theorem can be generalized to the case of an infinite Galois extension L / K that is unramified outside a finite set S of primes of K (i.e. if there is a finite set S of primes of K such that any prime of K not in S is unramified in the extension L / K). In this case, the Galois group G of L / K is a profinite group equipped with the Krull topology. Since G is compact in this topology, there is a unique Haar measure μ on G. For every prime v of K not in S there is an associated Frobenius conjugacy class Fv. The Chebotarev density theorem in this situation can be stated as follows:

 * Let X be a subset of G that is stable under conjugation and whose boundary has Haar measure zero. Then, the set of primes v of K not in S such that Fv ⊆ X has density
 * $$\frac{\mu(X)}{\mu(G)}.$$

This reduces to the finite case when L / K is finite (the Haar measure is then just the counting measure).

A consequence of this version of the theorem is that the Frobenius elements of the unramified primes of L are dense in G.

Important consequences
The Chebotarev density theorem reduces the problem of classifying Galois extensions of a number field to that of describing the splitting of primes in extensions. Specifically, it implies that as a Galois extension of K, L is uniquely determined by the set of primes of K that split completely in it. A related corollary is that if almost all prime ideals of K split completely in L, then in fact L = K.

title: Chebotarev's density theorem


text:
Lois Hamilton

Lois Hamilton (October 14, 1943 – December 23, 1999) was an American model, author, aviator, artist and actress.

Life and career
Lois Hamilton was born Lois Irene Yanessa on October 14, 1943, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She studied at Temple University in her native Philadelphia before attending the University of Florence in Florence, Italy, where she received degrees in psychology and fine arts.

Her looks brought her an opportunity with the Ford Modeling Agency where she became one of its top models during the 1970s. Hamilton graced the covers of many magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Fortune, Mademoiselle, Vogue Italia, Prevue, Neue Revue Illustrierte, Newsweek, Paris Match, Hello!, Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, Glamour and Time. Some of her ad campaigns included those for Chanel, Clairol, Halston, Pucci, and Hermès; in all, she appeared in over 150 commercials worldwide during her career.

Hamilton moved to Hollywood, where she made a successful transition from model to actress. Within a year, she landed more TV stints than any other actress at her agency. She worked with such notables as Ivan Reitman, Neil Simon, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, John Candy, Roger Moore, Bill Murray, Jane Fonda, Dean Martin, Carl Reiner, David Carradine and Sammy Davis, Jr.. Under the name Lois Hamilton or Lois Areno, she appeared in films such as Stripes, The Cannonball Run and Honky Tonk Freeway and on television shows like Card Sharks, The Dukes of Hazzard and Three's Company.

When she was not involved in a feature film or television project, Hamilton took to the skies, where she was a licensed private pilot. She logged over 600 hours in the air and was an accomplished aerobatic pilot, flying her 1936 German biplane. Hamilton was also an accomplished sculptor, painter and writer. She exhibited her bronze sculptures and oil paintings in many one-woman shows in Los Angeles.

Death
On December 23, 1999, Hamilton locked herself in her hotel room at the Sheraton Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she consumed a fatal overdose of sleeping pills. She was 56 years old. She was interred in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, California.

title: Lois Hamilton


text:
Holst (surname)

Holst and von Holst are surnames. In Denmark and Norway they are of Medieval origin, meaning Holsatian (person from Holstein). They may refer to:

Holst

 * Alison Holst (born 1938), New Zealand food writer and television chef
 * Amalia Holst (1758-1829), German writer, intellectual, and feminist
 * Arne Holst (1904–1991), Norwegian bobsledder
 * Axel Holst (1860–1931), Norwegian professor of hygiene and bacteriology
 * Bodil Holst, Danish physicist
 * Carl Holst (born 1970), Danish politician
 * Christian Holst (born 1981), Danish/Faroese football player
 * Dagmar Holst, German rower
 * Eduard Holst (1843–1899), Danish actor, dancer, playwright and composer
 * Elise Holst (1811–1891), Danish stage actress.
 * Erika Holst (born 1979), Swedish ice hockey player
 * Ewout Holst (born 1978), Dutch swimmer
 * Frederik Holst (1791–1871), Norwegian medical doctor
 * Gilda Holst (born 1952), Ecuadorian writer
 * Gilles Holst (1886–1968), Dutch physicist
 * Gustav Holst (1874–1934), English composer
 * Hanne-Vibeke Holst (born 1959), Danish author
 * Hans Faye Holst (1788–1843), Norwegian politician
 * Hans Holst, 17th century Danish woodcarver
 * Henning Holst (1891–1975), Danish field hockey player
 * Imogen Holst (1907–1984), British conductor, composer and writer, daughter of Gustav Holst
 * Johan Jørgen Holst (1937–1994), Norwegian politician
 * Johan Throne Holst (1868–1946), Norwegian industrialist and politician
 * Kai Holst (1913–1945), Norwegian resistance fighter and member of Milorg
 * Knut Holst, Norwegian Nordic skier
 * Lars Holst (1848–1915), Norwegian journalist, newspaper editor and politician
 * Peter Theodor Holst (1843–1908), Norwegian politician
 * Poul Christian Holst (1776–1863), Norwegian government official
 * Spencer Holst (1926–2001), American writer and storyteller
 * Svea Holst (1901–1996), Swedish film actress
 * Theodor von Holst (1810–1844), English painter
 * Thomas Holst (born 1964), German serial killer
 * Timothy Holst (1947–2009), American ringmaster
 * Toke Holst (born 1981), Danish handballer
 * Waldemar Holst (1907–1975), German Korvettenkapitän

von Holst

 * Erich von Holst (1908–1962), German behavioral physiologist
 * Erik von Holst (1894–1962), Estonian/German ice yacht designer and sailor
 * Hermann Eduard von Holst (1841–1904), Estonian-German-American historian
 * Hermann V. von Holst (1874–1955), American architect
 * Johan Hübner von Holst (1881–1945), Swedish sport shooter

Other

 * Maria van der Holst-Blijlevens (born 1946), Dutch sprint canoer
 * Niels Holst-Sørensen (1922–2023), commander-in-chief of the Danish Air Force and European champion athlete
 * Jon Holst-Christensen (born 1968), Danish retired male badminton player
 * Joachim Holst-Jensen (1880–1963), Norwegian film actor
 * June Holst-Roness (1929–2008), mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone

title: Holst (surname)


text:
Dirichlet's theorem

Dirichlet's theorem may refer to any of several mathematical theorems due to Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.

 * Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions
 * Dirichlet's approximation theorem
 * Dirichlet's unit theorem
 * Dirichlet conditions
 * Dirichlet boundary condition
 * Dirichlet's principle
 * Pigeonhole principle, sometimes also called Dirichlet's principle
 * Dirichlet's test for convergence

title: Dirichlet's theorem


text: Talk:Dirichlet's theorem

title: Talk:Dirichlet's theorem


text:
Ella Grasso

Ella Rosa Giovianna Oliva Grasso (née Tambussi; May 10, 1919 – February 5, 1981) was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 83rd Governor of Connecticut from January 8, 1975, to December 31, 1980, after rejecting past offers of candidacies for Senate and Governor. She was the first woman elected Governor in Connecticut and the fourth woman to be elected governor of a U.S. state. Her supporters contend she is the first elected without having been the spouse or widow of a former governor. She resigned as governor due to her battle with ovarian cancer.

Grasso started in politics as a member of the League of Women Voters and Democratic speechwriter. She was first elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1952 and later became the first female Floor Leader in 1955. She was then elected as Secretary of the State of Connecticut in 1958 and served until 1971. Grasso went on to serve two terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1970 to 1974. Then she was elected Governor in 1974 and re-elected in 1978.

Early life
Ella Rosa Giovianna Oliva Tambussi was born in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, to Italian immigrant parents Maria Oliva and James Giacomo Tambussi, a mill worker. Ella Tambussi learned to speak fluent Italian from her parents. She attended Chaffee School in Windsor. Although she excelled at Chaffee and was named most likely to become mayor in the school year book, Tambussi claimed she often felt out of place as someone from a poor mill town. She went on to study sociology and economics at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she earned her B.A. in 1940. Two years later, she earned a master's degree, also from Mount Holyoke.

After graduation, Grasso served as a researcher for the War Manpower Commission in Washington, D.C., rising to the position of assistant director of research before leaving the Commission in 1946. She married Thomas Grasso, a school principal, in 1942; they had two children, Susanne and James. Together the Grassos owned a movie theater in Old Lyme. In the summers, the couple would operate the theater, with Ella Grasso selling tickets at the box office. During Grasso's tenure in the United States House of Representatives, her family remained in Connecticut while Grasso commuted home from Washington, D.C., on weekends. Thomas Grasso retired when his wife became governor.

Early politics
Grasso's entry into politics came in 1942 when she joined the League of Women Voters. In 1943, she became a speechwriter for the Connecticut Democratic Party. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College she joined the Republicans until she switched in 1951 to the Democratic Party to support incumbent Governor Chester Bowles. Through the Connecticut Democratic Party, she met and became an ally of John Moran Bailey. Bailey would become a key figure in Grasso's career, recognizing her as someone who could appeal to voters, particularly women and Italian voters in the state.

In 1952, Grasso was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives and served until 1957. She became first woman to be elected Floor Leader of the House in 1955. As a state representative, Grasso worked to eliminate counties as a level of government in Connecticut.

Secretary of State
In 1958, Grasso was elected Secretary of the State of Connecticut and was re-elected in 1962 and 1966. She was an architect of the state's 1960 Constitution. In 1961, Grasso chose not to attend the national convention for the National Association of Secretaries of State in Arizona despite the trip being state funded, as she considered it to be of negligible value and would only approve other officials to go to national conventions that would benefit the state.

In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr that the 14th Amendment applies to state apportionment and that federal courts are open to lawsuits challenging state legislative districts, leading to further lawsuits over redistricting. After Reynolds v. Sims, the Joint Committee on Constitutional Conventions convened to hear proposals for a constitutional convention by the Connecticut General Assembly to bring the state constitution in line with federal rulings. A special election was ordered to choose the eighty-four delegates who would attend the convention, and Grasso was elected as one of them. As Secretary of State, Grasso swore in the eighty-four delegates divided equally among both parties and was selected as Democratic floor leader by the forty-two Democratic delegates.

Grasso was the first woman to chair the Democratic State Platform Committee and served from 1956 to 1968. She served as a member of the Platform Drafting Committee for the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Grasso was the co-chairman for the Resolutions Committee for the Democratic National Conventions of 1964 and 1968.

U.S. House of Representatives
During the 1970 election cycle, Grasso was considered a candidate for higher statewide or federal office. After Senator Thomas J. Dodd was censured in 1967, his seat was left up and Ella was considered a possible candidate for the 1970 Senate race with the Democratic Town Committees of Windsor Locks, Glastonbury, and New Milford voting to endorse her if she would announce a Senate campaign. Thomas L. Loy, her Republican opponent for Secretary of State in 1962, asked her to run for governor. Stephen Minot, a novelist who had run for Congress in 1966, asked her to run for the Sixth House District. Sitting Sixth District Congressman Thomas Meskill chose to run for governor, leaving his district open and on March 17, 1970, Ella announced that she would run for the Democratic nomination for that district. Grasso faced Republican Richard Kilborn in the general election and narrowly defeated him by 4,063 votes.

During her tenure, Grasso served on the Veterans' Affairs and Education and Labor House committees. In December 1971, she and other House members signed a telegram to President Nixon protesting Operation Linebacker II and asking to halt all bombing in Vietnam; Grasso was the only representative from Connecticut to sign the telegram.

Grasso was reelected to the House in 1972 against John F. Walsh, with 140,290 votes to his 92,783 votes.

Governorship
In 1973, a gubernatorial poll conducted by the AFL–CIO projected that Grasso would defeat incumbent Governor Meskill by 46% to 39%, and a campaign committee was later organized, although Grasso had not yet announced her intention to run. On January 8, 1974, she announced that she would run for the governorship and filed with the secretary of state.

In order to secure the gubernatorial nomination, a candidate would need to receive the support of 607 out of 1,213 delegates to the state convention, with multiple primaries being held beforehand to select the delegates. Grasso participated in a difficult primary against Attorney General Robert Killian, who received the support of multiple party leaders, but after narrowly winning the seventy delegates of Hartford by two thousand votes, she effectively secured the nomination with her pledged delegates. Democratic Party leader John Moran Bailey preferred Killian as the party nominee, and hoping to avoid a primary that would negatively affect the Democratic nominee's chance in the general election, Bailey convinced Killian to drop out in exchange for the lieutenant gubernatorial nomination. By the time of the gubernatorial nomination balloting, all of her opponents had dropped out except for Norwalk Mayor Frank Zullo, who dropped out during the convention, and as she was the only candidate to receive at least twenty percent of the delegate votes appearing on the primary ballot, no primary was held. On July 20, 1974, Grasso was given the Democratic nomination by the delegates with acclamation. Her opponent was Republican Representative Robert Steele whom she defeated by 200,000 votes. Grasso became the first woman to be elected governor who was not the wife or widow of a previous governor.

Upon taking office, Connecticut had an $80 million budget deficit, so Grasso promised fiscal responsibility. In 1975, she laid off 505 state employees, decreased her promise of giving $25 million to cities with federal revenue sharing money to $6 million, returned to the state treasury a $7,000 raise she was legally required to take and sold the state's limousine and plane.

During the 1976 presidential election, Grasso supported Senator Henry M. Jackson in the primaries and was presented as a possible vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, with the Young Democrats of Connecticut attempting to convince her to present herself as a possible vice-presidential candidate, although municipal leaders angry over the decreased federal revenue sharing funds promised to prevent her nomination, and she stated that she was not interested. Grasso later served as co-chair of the national convention.

Following John Moran Bailey's death, there was no longer someone strong enough to forestall a primary challenge between Grasso and Lieutenant Governor Robert K. Killian. In December 1978, Killian announced his gubernatorial campaign, but after defeating her primary challenge, Grasso was re-elected in 1978 with little difficulty against Representative Ronald A. Sarasin.

A high point of Grasso's career was her decisive handling of a particularly devastating snowstorm in February 1978. Known as "Winter Storm Larry" and now known as "The Blizzard of '78" this storm dropped around 30 inches of snow across the state, crippling highways and making virtually all roads impassable. Grasso "Closed the State" by proclamation, forbade all use of public roads by businesses and citizens, and closed all businesses, effectively closing all citizens in their homes. This relieved the rescue and cleanup authorities from the need to help the mounting number of stuck cars and instead allowed clean-up and emergency services for shut-ins to proceed. The crisis ended on the third day, and she received accolades from all state sectors for her leadership and strength.

In March 1980, Grasso was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and resigned the governorship on December 31. Shortly before her resignation, the mayor and city council of Torrington, Connecticut, signed a proclamation thanking her for her service as governor, secretary of state, and representative.

Death and legacy
On February 5, 1981, less than a year after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer and less than six weeks after leaving office, Grasso died at Hartford Hospital after suffering a heart attack and organ failure after falling into a coma earlier in the day. She was survived by her husband and their two children. Following her death she was laid in state from February 8 to 9 at the Connecticut State Capitol and was later buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Windsor Locks.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded Grasso the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Women's Hall of Fame inducted her in 1993. She was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994; the Ella Tambussi Grasso Center for Women in Politics is located there.

Metro North named Shoreliner I car 6252 after her. Ella T. Grasso Southeastern Technical High School in Groton is named after her. The Ella T. Grasso Turnpike in Windsor Locks is named after her, as are Ella Grasso Boulevard in New Britain, the Ella T. Grasso building in the University of Connecticut's Hilltop Apartments, and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard (often referred to by New Haven locals simply as "The Boulevard") in New Haven.

Over two years after her death, Arch Communications Corp. won a construction permit for Hartford's channel 61 in September 1983; James Grasso was a minority partner in Arch Communications. Arch Communications Corp. planned to memorialize Grasso by using the call letters "WETG" for channel 61, as Grasso's initials were ETG; the station would go on the air September 17, 1984, as WTIC-TV, but was still dedicated in Grasso's honor.

title: Ella Grasso


text:
Spencer County

Spencer County is the name of two counties in the United States:

 * Spencer County, Indiana
 * Spencer County, Kentucky

title: Spencer County


text:
Talk:The Legendary Pink Dots

Untitled
This page does indeed need some work and I would be happy to help edit it with the permission of the creator/editor if they would email me at zorniod@hotmail.com The overview is pretty good. The related bands section needs a little work as it appears to be a bit arbitrary and a distinction must be made between bands that they have worked with and bands they have influenced. The two are not mutually exclusive, but can be organized better. Recurring themes could be expanded a little, though it could almost be an article in and of itself. The album list is frankly a bit of a mess. There should be no "experimental release" section as first off several of those albums are main studio releases and also removing several albums from the repetoire of the LPDs and calling them "experimental" is like removing some of your fingers and calling them human. Experimentalism is part and parcel of what they do and I think perhaps that a personal reflection on what seems more accessible to you is what is being shown here. The best discography to follow is indeed the one created I believe by Greg Clow and Jon Whitney from the Cloud Zero site - it is comprehensive and accurate. Thank you. signed -- Madprophet -- 70.147.242.234 (talk) 11:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably difficult to merge with the Edward Ka-Spel page since Edward is not only lead singer of the Dots, he is also a fairly well-respected poet in his own right. --Sjc 18:04, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK - if you know anything about him, can I encourage you to expand his page? Thanks! Mark Richards 18:06, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sure, I will ask my brother to also comment since he was the original bassist :) --Sjc 18:07, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Something might be worth saying about the genre confusion. The comparison to Pink Floyd is somewhat misleading, but for somewhat hard to define reasons---certainly musically LPD could reasonably be called "psychadelic" at most points in their career, but their general subject matter, circle of acquaintances and collaborators, and fan base, is more in tune with neofolk, industrial, and occasionally goth than with psychadelic music. --Delirium 21:25, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

```Edward Ka-Spel has said numerous times in interviews that he doesn't find the band to fit into any specific genre, but 'psychadelic' is the closest thing you could use to describe them. I would say that'd the only true genre to apply to them, while also mentioning their expansive nature (which Edward has claimed is part of being a psychadelic band) 24.113.73.112 21:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

--- Has Ka-spel released any poetry apart frpm the lyrics of Teargarden, LPD etc.? Any written poetry, that is. SzymonSpengler 01:35, Aug 24, 2005 (CET)
 * There is a book of "authorized" lyrics called Love and Loud Colours. --Kooky | Talk 04:39, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know who is in the band? Maybe it should have an "original line-up" then information on who left when and why following on to "current line-up". Gohst 04:20, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me, but where is Chemical Playschool 1 and 2 in the discography? Isn't that supposed to be their first release? Am I incorrent?

This page needs a lot of work

Could someone specify the discography (what are full lengths, what are demos, compilations, ect)? It badly needs it. --- What you all are talking about is hopeless, that band had so many changes and so many releases, that many people have tried to make a comprehensive discography and biography in vain. It would take ages to write it all up, it might be better to put in links to the bits and peaces of information that are scattered all over the internet..... who dares to add, the Traumstadt series was released by Mirrordot in 1988 and licensed to Jah music in Germany and to staalplaat in Amsterdam, as well as reissues of premonition, basilisk, chemical playschool 1/2 and chemical playschool 3+4; four days was originally a limited tape release of one copy for a collector named henk, who traded this unique tape with Phil Knight for original vinyl albums of lard free ( was very funny as edward and phil were obsessive record collectors at the time, and edward played a trick on phil pretending to be the trader who demanded a copy of narrow escapes first album in trade for the Lard free LPS. Narrow Escape was the unknown average blues band that niels van hoorn played in before joining the dots. later henk gave permission to an official release on cd of four days, which was released in 1995 on the dots own label terminal kaleidoscope.

In 1988 the line-up consisted of edward, phil, jason, barry white, patrick paganini, gaham whitehead. after the extremely successful tour for any day now, patrick, jason, barry and graham left the band and edward and phil were left over to see if they continue or give up. Thus they recorded the Golden Age and invited nils van hoorn into the band (their studio host) and toured as a threepiece in autumn 1988 in belgium. Next bob pistoor was invited for the tour in 1989. after recording two albums with the band bob died of cancer and left a huge hole behind. while bob was with the band they recorded a crushed velvet apocalypse and the maria dimension. (my favorite dots period)Bob had played in a local dutch psychedelic band called yaptah in the late 60ies and early 70ies, and was actually the guitarist who was invited to join pink floyd, when the PF managment thought that syd barret was becoming too unreliable. (yaptah had opened for pink floyd in the netherlands). I read the syd barret biography at the time in which this incident was mentioned and bob grinned as he admitted to me that it was him who had turned down playing with pink floyd back then. The band tried to deal with his loss while and by recording shadow weaver and malachai after touring the maria dimension in europe and america. for touring the maria dimension the band invited a local guitarist to step in for bob, his name was martijn de kleer.
 * whoever feels like getting this info into shape--feel free***

Large portions of this article is very misleading, such as the Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd comparison in highlight - only in brief moments, if even then, has this band sounded only slightly reminiscent. Furthermore, the statement that this band has influenced most of the experimental, alternative and original music being made today is a very bold and unfounded statement. It simply is not so. It is obvious that this article is a collaborative effort by members of the snowblind cult following that surrounds this band. The Legendary Pink Dots is a band that devoted fans seem to be easily get caught up in, probably because of their uniqueness, diversity and the myth surrounding them. The delusions of the bands grandeur that comes from this obsession does not make a valid source for encyclopedic contect. Back to the drawing board, people. 85.229.23.94 23:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That's rude, and an overstatement. You have a point, though, but I think the silly fanish-ness is limited to the passage starting near "... earned comparisons to Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett"; the "Bands influenced by the Pink Dots" section; and the "Recurring themes" section. Might be the work of one person (whose first language isn't English), but I can't be bothered to check the history. Remove those parts, and the article is fine (although a bit terse). JöG 21:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I reintroduced my photo of Edward for the article page. I do not feel the change, which was based on a users opinion that my photo was "a blurred low quality one" doesn't make alot of sense. Number one, it is not 'blurred' to the point of removing detail. Secondly, it is not low quality. Thirdly, the photo is descriptive of the band - not only does it have one of Edward's classic singing poses, it also has two pink lights as 'dots' so the image does have a creative, reinforcing tinge to it. The photo was replaced with a photo dominated by Niels who is not the band leader nor the most integral part of it. Although it is a larger, clearer photo, it was obviously of awkward composition and obscured 80% of Edward Ka-Spel in a 'duh?' kind of pose, even his eyes are closed. I do not object to replacing my fitting image with a larger, more whole-band describing one, but I do ask that it actually be warranted instead of based moreso on the premise of "I'd rather see my photo up there". A side profile of niels with a confused Edward in the background is not what people remember when they see the dots, whereas I'm sure people remember the pose I captured him in. I think I have offered a very reasonable opinion and reason for reverting back to the image which I provided. --Goneja Sunday, 2008-03-09 21:55 UTC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.189.155.131 (talk)

Some of these albums dates do not match up with the Brainwashed website which appears to be the most accurate and or official source of Legendary Pink Dots information. They are off sometimes by one or two years. --Pixel Eater (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Legendary Pink Dots


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Hulhulé Island

Hulhulé (ހުޅުލެ), located at 4.18333°N, 73.53333°W, is an island in the North Malé Atoll of the Maldives where the city's airport, Velana International Airport, is located. The island has no permanent population.

It is one of the islands closest to the capital island Malé. Hulhulé is considered a ward of Malé.

The 2.1 km Sinamalé Bridge links the island with Malé. The bridge, which has two car lanes and separate lanes for motorcycles and pedestrians, opened on 30 August 2018.

Velana International Airport
The Velana International Airport is located on this island along with some official premises, e.g. Maldives Meteorological Service. The airport is served internationally by various holiday charter flights (mostly from Europe) and several scheduled carriers including Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong Airlines, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways, British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines. In addition to serving as an international and domestic airport, Hulhulé is also home to the seaplane terminal operated by Trans Maldivian Airways. The island also serves as a hub for travellers wishing to connect to a domestic flight to the further outlying atolls, such as Laamu.

Before the airport was built, it was the home of the aboriginal Giraavaru people and other settlers who resided for convenience and agricultural purposes. People who lived in Hulhulé used to commute to Malé to sell their produce. In 1968, they were forced to abandon their ancestral home on Giraavaru island under an Islamic regulation that did not recognise communities with fewer than 40 adult males who could form a quorum at the Friday prayers.

The Giraavaru people were ferried across the atoll lagoon to Hulhulé Island. When the airport was extended, they were shifted across to Malé and housed in a few blocks in newly reclaimed areas in the Maafannu district.

Location within Malé City
The airport island Hulhulé is located northeast of Malé Island, between it and new artificial residential Hulhumalé Island, to which it is connected by a causeway.

Accommodation
One hotel, the Hulhule Island Hotel, is located on the island. This hotel is more for transit passengers over-nighting as opposed to a true resort hotel.

title: Hulhulé Island


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Talk:Ichthyostega

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gomezt2.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Recent work (2005)
The illustration is definitely out of date. Jenny Clack (Cambridge) and Henning Blom (Uppsala) have done significant work on Ichthyostega over the past few years, substantially altering ideas about it. See Jenny's web site at http://www.theclacks.org.uk/jac.

The manus is still unknown, but most of Jarvik's work has been extensively revised. I'm brand new to Wikipedia so mostly don't know how to do things, for instance, updating the picture. Rob Clack 12:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Redirect
Oops! In the edit summary field for the article I really meant 'avoid redirect', not disambig of course. Andrewa 18:07, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Land or swamps?
This article appears to disagree with itself on whether the Ichthyostega walked on land or not. At the start of the article, it says that the Ichtyostega probably didnt 'walk' with its limbs at all, but the rest of the article acts as if it did. I suppose there is disagreement regarding this, but the article should probably mention that rather than just being confusing. Is there anyone who actually knows anything about Ichthyostega who could clear this up? Oscar Evans 22:12, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I slightly remember a national geographic article (about a year (or 2?) ago) about Acanthostega and Ichthyostega that noted something like 'of course these animals didn't walk the land', they used their strong fins to move away plants in the shallow water'. I'll take a look at it. Phlebas 20:41, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The illustration
I doubt the illustration used in this article is correct. It gives the impression that the animal had well developed feet adapted for actual walking. Since newer evidence tells that Ichthyostega never looked like that, the illustration is probably a little too old.

I have added a more accurate image today. But I did not replace the one in the taxobox, below is the image:

Ichthyostega would probably slide on wet surfaces (i.e. mud) rather than walk. The image correctly shows that Ichthyostega's hind limbs were poorly developed. Giant Blue Anteater 23:00, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Edited a bit
"Amphibians gained a tremendous advantage by moving on land as they could avoid large predatory fish that ruled the rivers and lakes."

Most of the early tetrapods were large predators themselves, and Ichthyostega was not a true amphibian if I have understood it correctly. And there where other advantages by moving onto land than just avoiding predators, and just as important.

"The move also came with disadvantages such as the new requirement of a moist, gas-permeable skin in order to aid the inefficient lungs."

This only goes for modern amphibians. The first tetrapods had thick skin and their lungs where good enough to supply them with air.

Images Update
The old image in the template box was indeed outdated, based on a faulty sketch from the 60s. I re-drew it, based on |this reconstruction in 2005.

I also deleted Giant Blue Anteater's image, as it looked pretty unprofessional and cartoonish.

--Meneitherfabio 17:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That picture (the redrawn one) is more accurate. But thats the way I draw, but tried to make as accurate as possible. Sorry. Giant Blue Anteater 01:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Many thanks to both of you for improving on the accuracy of the illustration. As a professional involved in illustration, though not a professional illustrator, I'd point out that personal style is a matter of taste and very difficult to eliminate. The newer illustration is more in line with the "house style" of uncoloured line drawings used for most of these beasts, but the line weight of the outline appears too fine on my set up, and it would look more professional if thickened a bit. I'll incorporate the revised image into the fishapods illustration to the right, but having recently swapped over Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys on finding that the former was pelagic rather than air-breathing in the shallows as thought previously, I'd appreciate any comments on the sequence so that any necessary alterations can be made at the same time. ..dave souza, talk 08:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

New Image to Be Added
I am going to add a picture of what I presume a tadpole of Ichthyostega would look like. However, I am asking you guys wether I should add it. Giant Blue Anteater (talk) 01:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * What are you using as a reference? If there's no evidence of what a tadpole from an Ichthyostega would have looked like, and no published speculation, I'm not sure it's appropriate to simply make something up. Dinoguy2 (talk) 02:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I primarily based it on salamander tadpoles, but also used lungfish fry as a template. Giant Blue Anteater (talk) 02:45, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, but what source says Ichthyostega tadpoles looked like that? Dinoguy2 (talk) 00:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Not much is discussed about the larval forms of basal tetrapods. So, I can conclude that I made it up. Giant Blue Anteater (talk) 13:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, and that's fine--I've done images of creatures known from poor remains that are almost entirely educated speculation (like Unenlagia]. But it's not really appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Speculation about the appearance of an animal based on scrappy remains is one thing, but this is an animal (well, life stage) known from no remains at all! Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandilism that I Can't Get Rid Of
Someone that knows how, get the "BITCH" taxon off the page. I can't get it to show up in any of the editors. -- User:76.6.217.213

 * The what? Evercat (talk) 00:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Devonian origin of Fish, Bony Fish, Amphibians due to Jaws ?
The Devonian was the "Age of Fishes", due to their "quantum leap" in their evolution, of jaws. Jaws, enabling the mouth to be enlarged to eat bigger food items, made fish so successful, that they diversified worldwide. That geographic expansion & genetic diversification (including the archaic split between cartilaginous & bony fish) set the stage, for some small few (bony) fish to evolve into amphibians. Also, all early amphibians discussed in the article (Icthyostega, Acanthostega, Elginerpeton, Obruchevicthys) are known from fossils recovered from Greenland, Scotland, & Latvia. c.370Ma, those terranes were adjacent parts of the subsiding Caledonian mountains uplifted c.400Ma, on the northern Euramerica portion of Pangea; and all of those terranes were also adjacent to the then-rising  Variscan mountains to their immediate south:
 * http://s7.postimage.org/sldlakk0r/Amphibians.png

Somehow, the Caledonian mountains must have rapidly eroded, swiftly subsided, or world sea levels must have been higher, so as to make mountains into swamp shores, inhabitable by transitional pre-amphibians.66.235.38.214 (talk) 11:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Carboniferous period coal deposits, deriving from swamp forests, reside in regions uplifted by mountain-building events c.400-300Ma, e.g. Caledonian & Variscan orogenies between Euramerica & Gondwana; and the Urals between Siberia & Euramerica. Ipso facto, mountainous regions may have formed low-lying swamp islands, suggesting that then-global sea levels were higher than present epoch, and that much of the interiors of continents were flooded over, by inland seaways:
 * http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~leeman/CarbCoal.gif
 * 66.235.38.214 (talk) 11:50, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * All of the earliest reptile fossils have been found in the same region, as the earliest amphibian fossils, e.g.
 * Westlothiana, from 350 million years ago, either an early amniote or a sister group to the amniotes
 * Casineria, from 340 million years ago, a basal amniote.
 * Hylonomus, from 312 million years ago, another early anapsid reptile
 * Paleothyris, from 312 million years ago, an early sauropsid
 * Petrolacosaurus, from 302 million years ago, the first diapsid reptile
 * Archaeothyris, from 306 million years ago, an early synapsid (mammal-like reptile)
 * Ipso facto, the first amphibians waddled ashore, onto northern Euramerica, about 375Ma; and there they evolved, in situ, into the first reptiles, by about 300Ma. At no time did they disperse widely, nor did they surmount then then-young-and-tall Variscan mountains to the south; they never ventured into Gondwana.  Amphibians & primitive reptiles were slow, cold-blooded, crawlers.  They could not fly.  And they were hemmed in by mountains to the south, ocean to the north, and swamps on all sides.  Only in the Permian period did reptiles begin to expand across Pangea.66.235.38.214 (talk) 12:07, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Transitional reptilomorph Proterogyrinus lived 320Ma from Scotland to West Virginia. Full-fledged diapsid Petrolacosaurus lived 300Ma in Kansas.  Thus, a general Amphibian-cum-Reptilian expansion southwards, up the slopes of the Variscan mountains, between Euramerica (north) and Gondwana (south), can be construed:
 * http://s9.postimage.org/9az6hl7ov/Reptilians.png
 * 66.235.38.214 (talk) 12:30, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

 * Possibly so, but it's all "Original Research" (see WP:OR) unless you can find reliable sources for it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Operculum
In the Description section it says: The posterior margin of the skull formed an operculum covering the gills. It's my understanding that the gill-covering bones disappeared in the Elpistostegalians (the most tetrapod-like of the tetrapodomorph fishes) some time after Panderichthys. These bones are missing in Elpistostege and Tiktaalik. They are not present in any early tetrapods. There is an explanation of this in the tetrapod article, in the Tetrapod section. However, there would have been a flap of "skin" called the operculum. Zyxwv99 (talk) 23:23, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ichthyostega


text:
Firestarter (novel)

Firestarter is a science fiction-horror thriller novel by Stephen King, first published in September 1980. It tells the story of a young girl, Charlie McGee with the ability of pyrokinesis, whose destructive force a ruthless government agency tries to harness for their own purposes. In July and August 1980, two excerpts from the novel were published in Omni. In 1981, Firestarter was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award, Locus Poll Award, and Balrog Award. In 1984, it was adapted into a film. A miniseries follow-up to the film, Firestarter: Rekindled, was released in 2002 on the Sci-Fi Channel and a remake from Blumhouse Productions was released on 13 May 2022. The book is dedicated to author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."

Plot summary
Andrew "Andy" and Charlene "Charlie" McGee are a father/daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop. During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with "Lot 6", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria “Vicky” Tomlinson, minor telekinetic abilities and him a telepathic form of mind control he refers to as "the push". They both also developed telepathic abilities. Andy's and Vicky's powers were physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie develops a frighteningly strong pyrokinetic ability.

The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City, the latest in a series of attempts by the Shop to capture Andy and Charlie following a disastrous raid on the McGee family in suburban Ohio. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. He then uses his push ability to track the trail of Charlie and The Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. He uses the push to incapacitate the Shop's agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. Charlie and Andy flee, and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities. They move several times to avoid discovery before the Shop catches up to them in New York.

Using a combination of the push, Charlie's power, and hitchhiking, the pair escape through Albany, New York and are briefly taken in by a farmer named Irv Manders near the fictional town of Hastings Glen, New York; however, they are tracked down by Shop agents, who attempt to kill Andy and take Charlie at the Manders farm. At Andy's instruction, Charlie unleashes her power, incinerating the entire farm and fending off the agents, killing a few of them. With nowhere else to turn, the pair flees to the fictional town of Tashmore, Vermont and takes refuge in a cabin that had once belonged to Andy's grandfather.

With the Manders farm operation disastrously botched, The Shop's director, Captain James "Cap" Hollister, calls in a Shop assassin named John Rainbird to capture the fugitives. Rainbird, a Cherokee and a Vietnam War veteran, is intrigued by Charlie's power and eventually becomes obsessed with her, determined to befriend her and eventually kill her. This time the operation is successful, and both Andy and Charlie are taken by the Shop.

The pair are separated and imprisoned at the Shop headquarters, located in the fictional Washington, D.C. suburb of Longmont, Virginia. With his spirit broken, Andy becomes an overweight drug addict, seemingly loses his power, and is eventually deemed useless by the Shop. Charlie, however, refuses defiantly to cooperate with the Shop and does not demonstrate her power for them. Six months pass until a power failure provides a turning point for the two: Andy, sick with fear and self-pity, somehow regains the push - subconsciously pushing himself to overcome his addiction - and Rainbird, masquerading as a simple janitor, befriends Charlie and gains her trust.

By pretending to still be powerless and addicted, Andy manages to gain crucial information by pushing his psychiatrist. Under Rainbird's guidance, Charlie begins to demonstrate her power, which has grown to fearsome levels. After the suicide of his psychiatrist, Andy is able to meet and push Cap, using him to plan his and Charlie's escape from the facility, as well as to finally communicate with Charlie. Rainbird discovers Andy's plan, however, and decides to use it to his advantage.

Andy's plan succeeds, and he and Charlie are reunited in a barn for the first time in six months, but Rainbird is already there, planning to kill them both. A crucial distraction is provided by Cap, who is losing his mind from a side effect of being pushed. Andy pushes Rainbird into leaping from the upper level of the barn, breaking his leg. Rainbird then shoots Andy in the neck and fires another shot at Charlie, but she uses her power to melt the bullet in midair, and then sets Rainbird and Cap on fire. Mortally wounded, Andy then instructs Charlie to use her power to escape and to inform the public, to make sure the government cannot do anything like this ever again. After he dies, Charlie, grief-stricken and furious, sets the barn on fire; she then uses her pyrokinesis to kill the employees and blow up their getaway vehicles. The military is called, but Charlie obliterates their vehicles; when they fire at her, she melts their bullets. Charlie blows up the building, leaving the entire Shop facility burning, with almost everyone dead.

The event is covered up by the government and released to the media as a terrorist firebomb attack. The Shop quickly reforms, under new leadership, and begins a manhunt for Charlie, who has returned to the Manders farm. After some deliberation, she comes up with a plan and leaves the Manders', just ahead of Shop operatives, and heads to New York City. She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story.

Adaptations

 * Firestarter was adapted into a film of the same name in 1984. It was directed by Mark L. Lester and starred Drew Barrymore as Charlie, David Keith as Andy, and George C. Scott as Rainbird. It also starred Heather Locklear as Vicky and Martin Sheen as Cap.
 * On the February 3, 2007 episode of Saturday Night Live, host Drew Barrymore reprised her role as Charlie McGee, now an adult and married, in a fake commercial for "Firestarter Brand Smoked Sausages."
 * A TV movie sequel, Firestarter: Rekindled, was made in 2002. It starred Marguerite Moreau as a grown-up Charlie and Malcolm McDowell as Rainbird.
 * A second film adaptation was released in 2022 and was directed by Keith Thomas from a screenplay by Scott Teems.

title: Firestarter (novel)