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Sui Sin Far

Sui Sin Far (, born Edith Maude Eaton; 15 March 1865 – 7 April 1914) was an author known for her writing about Chinese people in North America and the Chinese American experience. "Sui Sin Far", the pen name under which most of her work was published, is the Cantonese name of the narcissus flower, popular amongst Chinese people.

Life account
Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, Eaton was the daughter of Englishman Edward Eaton, a merchant who met her Chinese mother Achuen Grace Amoy in Shanghai, China.

Eaton was the eldest daughter and second child of fourteen children born to the couple. In 1865, her family left England to live in Hudson, New York, United States, but stayed there only a short time before returning to England in 1868. The family returned to North America in 1872, relocating to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her father worked as a clerk for Grand Trunk Railway and perhaps for Hudon Mills. In 1882, he left his job and attempted to earn a living through his art. Nonetheless, the children were educated at home and raised in an intellectually stimulating environment that saw both Edith and her younger sister Winnifred, who wrote under the pen name Onoto Watanna, become successful writers.

Because of their poverty, at a young age, Edith Eaton left school to work in order to help support her family. By age 18, Eaton was setting type for the Montreal Star. She began writing as a young girl; her stories and poetry were accepted for publication in Montreal's Dominion Illustrated magazine, and, beginning in 1890, she published anonymous journalistic articles about the local Chinese community in Montreal's English-language newspapers, the Montreal Star and the Daily Witness. She also worked as a stenographer and legal secretary. She left Montreal first in 1891 to work as a stenographer and special correspondent in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. In 1896, she worked as a journalist for Gall's News Letter in Kingston, Jamaica, for about six months, and began to publish under her Chinese pen name. Eaton also published using a Chinese man's name, Wing Sing.

Later, she moved to San Francisco, Los Angeles then in Seattle, before going to the east coast to work in Boston. While working as a legal secretary she continued to write. Although her appearance and manners would have allowed her to easily pass as an Englishwoman, she asserted her Chinese heritage after 1896 and wrote articles that told what life was like for a Chinese woman in white America. First published in 1896, her fictional stories about Chinese Americans were a reasoned appeal for her society's acceptance of working-class Chinese at a time when the United States Congress maintained the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States.

Over the ensuing years, Eaton wrote a number of short stories and newspaper articles while working on her first collection of fiction. Published in June 1912, Mrs. Spring Fragrance was a collection that included some linked short stories that was marketed as a novel.

Eaton never married. She died in Montreal and is interred in Mount Royal Cemetery.

A study of Eaton and her life, Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography by Annette White-Parks, was published in 1995. Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton by Mary Chapman updates this earlier study.

Themes
As a child, Eaton witnessed hatred of and prejudice against Chinese people. This inclined her to write on the Chinese experience, with some of her works focusing on her own experiences as a Chinese person. In In the Land of the Free, Eaton writes about what it meant to be a Chinese woman in a white man's world. Many of Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton's unsigned works are about the daily lives of Chinese people in Canada and the United States. The topics of these pieces range from the food Chinese people eat to the things they do for fun.

Contemporary interests
Many academics cite Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton as one of the first North American writers of Chinese ancestry. For this reason, there has been recent interest in Sui Sin Far's works and their revival.

Mary Chapman, a professor in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, has published Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton, a collection of 70 of Eaton's early writings. Most of these pieces had not been republished since their first appearance in newspapers. She is also the director of the Winnifred Eaton Archive

Ying Xu, an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of New Mexico, has also been conducting scholarly work on Sui Sin Far. She contributed to the article "Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far)". In 2017, she published "Sui Sin Far’s “The Land of the Free” in the era of Trump", which makes connections between Far's writings and the current socio-political climate of the Trump era.

Published works

 * Far, Sui Sin. A Chinese Ishmael and Other Stories. Dodo Press, 2009.
 * Far, Sui Sin. Mrs. Spring Fragrance. A. C. McClurg, 1912.
 * Chan Hen Yen, Chinese Student (1912)
 * A Love Story from the Rice Fields of China (1911)
 * The Bird of Love (1910)
 * An Autumn Fan (1910)
 * Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian (1909)

Unnamed works
Mary Chapman's Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton includes a working bibliography of Eaton's unsigned works:
 * "The Land of the Free." Montreal Daily Witness, 15 March 1890: 8.
 * "The Ching Song Episode." Montreal Daily Witness, 17 April 1890: 6.
 * "A Chinese Party." Montreal Daily Witness, 7 November 1890: 7.
 * "Girl Slave in Montreal. Our Chinese Colony Cleverly Described. Only Two Women from the Flowery Land in Town." Montreal Daily Witness, 4 May 1894:10.
 * "Seventeen Arrests." Montreal Daily Witness, 10 July 1894: 1.
 * [Our Local Chinatown. Little Mystery of a St. Denis Street Laundry." Montreal Daily Witness, 19 July 1894: 10.
 * "No Tickee, No Washee." Montreal Daily Witness, 25 July 1894: 10.
 * "In the Chinese Colony." Montreal Daily Witness, 6 February 1895: 10.
 * "Dined by Hom Chong Long." Montreal Daily Witness, 12 February 1895: 1.
 * "The Lady and the Tiger." Montreal Daily Star, 23 March 1895: 1.
 * "Half-Chinese Children." Montreal Daily Star, 20 April 1895: 3.
 * "A Chinaman and His Bride." Montreal Daily Witness, 17 May 1895: 1.
 * "The Gambling Chinee." Montreal Daily Witness, 20 May 1895: 3.
 * "Abusing the Chinee: How Some White Christians Treat Them, Rotten Eggs and Stones." Montreal Daily Star, 5 July 1895: 8.
 * "Smuggled Chinese: The Last Batch Was Concealed in a Lumber Barge." ''Montreal Daily Star, 5 July 1895: 8.
 * "Chinese Visitors." Montreal Daily Star, 6 July 1895: 4.
 * "Thrilling Experience of a Band of Smugglers in the Lachine Rapids." Montreal Daily Star, 9 July 1895: 1.
 * "Smuggled Chinamen: Arrested and Sentenced to Terms of Imprisonment." Montreal Daily Star, 10 July 1895: 8.
 * "Beaten to Death." Montreal Daily Witness, 22 July 1895: 6.
 * "The Dead Chinaman." Montreal Daily Witness, 24 July 1895: 8.
 * "A Chino-Irish Family: The Father a Chinaman and the Mother an Irishwoman." Montreal Daily Star, 8 August 1895.
 * "They Are Going Back To China: Hundreds of Chinese at the CPR Station." Montreal Daily Star, 21 August 1895: 2.
 * "The Smuggling of Chinamen." Montreal Daily Star, 22 August 1895: 6.
 * "A Chinese Baby Accompanies a Party Now on Their Way to Boston." Montreal Daily Star, 11 September 1895: 6.
 * "Chinese Religion Information Given a Lady by Montreal Chinamen." Montreal Daily Star, 21 September 1895: 5.
 * "A Chinese Child Born At the Hotel on Lagauchetiere Street." Montreal Daily Star, 30 September 1895: 1.
 * "Chinese Entertainment." Montreal Daily Star, 11 October 1895: 4.
 * "Another Chinese Baby. The Juvenile Mongolian Colony in Montreal Receives Another Addition — It Is a Girl and There Are Schemes for Her Marriage." Montreal Daily Star, 12 October 1895: 6.
 * "Trouble Over an Opium Deal." Montreal Daily Star, 12 October 1895: 9.
 * "Completion of the Moon." Montreal Daily Star, 23 October 1895: 6.
 * "Chinese Changes." Montreal Daily Star, 9 November 1895: 9.
 * "Chinese Food." Montreal Daily Star, 25 November 1895: 4.
 * "The Baby Photographed." Montreal Daily Star, 28 November 1895: 8.
 * "The Ancestral Tablet: A Curious Feature of a Chinese Home." Montreal Daily Star, 3 December 1895: 5.
 * "Chinamen with German Wives." Montreal Daily Star, 13 December 1895: 5.
 * "Will Montreal Have a Chinatown?." Montreal Daily Star, 14 December 1895: 7.
 * "Chinese Gambling." Montreal Daily Star, 17 December 1895: 6.
 * "One Chinaman Arrested." Montreal Daily Star, 18 December 1895: 6.
 * "The Chinese and Christmas." Montreal Daily Star, 21 December 1895: 2.
 * "Chinese Entertainment, at which the Chinamen Did Their Share of the Entertaining." Montreal Daily Star, 31 December 1895: 2.
 * "The Chinese New Year." Montreal Daily Star, 11 February 1896: 7.
 * "John Chinaman Entertains." Montreal Daily Witness, 18 February 1896: 6.
 * "Bubble and Squeak Lotus 2" (October 1896): 216-17.
 * "Born a Britisher But Fifty Dollars Is the Tax on Him as a Chinaman" Montreal Daily Witness, 27 October 1896.
 * "A Visit to Chinatown." New York Recorder, 19 April 1896.

title: Sui Sin Far


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Luis Ramírez de Lucena

Luis Ramírez de Lucena (c. 1465 – c. 1530) was a Spanish chess player who published the first extant chess book. He is believed to be the son of humanist writer and diplomat Juan de Lucena.

Book
Lucena wrote the oldest surviving printed book on chess, Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con CL [150] Juegos de Partido ("Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess with 150 Games"), published in Salamanca around 1497. The book includes analysis of eleven chess openings but also contains many elementary errors that led chess historian H. J. R. Murray to suggest that it was prepared in a hurry. The book was written when the rules of chess were taking their modern form (see origins of modern chess), and some of the 150 positions in the book are of the old game and some of the new. Fewer than a dozen copies of the book exist.

Commentators have suggested that much of the material was copied from Francesc Vicent's now-lost 1495 work Libre dels jochs partits dels schacs en nombre de 100.

The Lucena position is named after him, even though it does not appear in his book. (It was first published in 1634 by Alessandro Salvio.) The smothered mate (later named Philidor's legacy) is in the book.

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

title: Luis Ramírez de Lucena


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Margaret Hendrie

Margaret Hendrie (née Griffith, 1935–1990) was a writer from the Oceanian nation of Nauru. Hendrie wrote the Nauruan language lyrics for "Nauru Bwiema", the country's national anthem. In preparation for the country's independence ceremonies celebrated in 1968, Hendrie's lyrics were adapted to music composed by the Australian musician Laurence Henry Hicks.

title: Margaret Hendrie


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Antarctic Plate

The Antarctic Plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. The Antarctic Plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems. The adjoining plates are the Nazca Plate, the South American Plate, the African Plate, the Somali Plate, the Indo-Australian Plate, the Pacific Plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia Plate.

The Antarctic Plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km2. It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.

The Antarctic Plate's movement is estimated to be at least 1 cm per year towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Subduction beneath South America
The Antarctic Plate started to subduct beneath South America 14 million years ago in the Miocene epoch. At first it subducted only in the southernmost tip of Patagonia, meaning that the Chile Triple Junction lay near the Strait of Magellan. As the southern part of the Nazca Plate and the Chile Rise became consumed by subduction the more northerly regions of the Antarctic Plate began to subduct beneath Patagonia so that the Chile Triple Junction lies at present in front of Taitao Peninsula at 46°15' S. The subduction of the Antarctic Plate beneath South America is held to have uplifted Patagonia as it reduced the previously vigorous down-dragging flow in the Earth's mantle caused by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath Patagonia. The dynamic topography caused by this uplift raised Quaternary-aged marine terraces and beaches across the Atlantic coast of Patagonia.

Land

 * Amsterdam Island (France)
 * Antarctica
 * East Antarctica
 * Transantarctic Mountains
 * West Antarctica
 * Antarctic Peninsula
 * Crozet Islands (France)
 * Heard Island and McDonald Islands (Australia)
 * Heard Island
 * McDonald Islands
 * Kerguelen Islands (France)
 * Peter I Island
 * Prince Edward Islands (South Africa)
 * Saint Paul Island (France)
 * South Orkney Islands
 * South Shetland Islands

title: Antarctic Plate


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Village college

The village college is an institution specific to Cambridgeshire, England, including the Peterborough unitary authority area. It caters for the education of 11- to 16-year-olds during the day, and provides educational and leisure facilities to the wider community out of school hours.

Village colleges were the brainchild of Henry Morris, the then Chief Education Officer for Cambridgeshire, who had a vision of a school that would serve the whole community, stem migration from the countryside to the towns, and provide a decent education to pupils who had previously only been served by the upper years of elementary schools. His original plan was that the site of the college would also be home to the village's other public services. The first, Sawston Village College, opened in 1930 with Bottisham, Linton, and Bassingbourn following a few years later. Under Morris' influence, many of the colleges have had distinguished architects, notably the one at Impington designed by Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry.

Between the implementation of the Education Act 1944 and Cambridgeshire's adoption of the Comprehensive school system in 1974, village colleges were effectively reduced to secondary modern schools, apart from Sawston which operated both a grammar and a secondary modern scheme. Since 1974 village colleges have returned to their original mission as schools for the whole community. Most of the colleges are now parts of larger, multi-academy trusts.

There are village colleges throughout Cambridgeshire, including Bassingbourn, Bottisham, Comberton, Cottenham, Impington, Linton, Melbourn, Sawston, Soham, Swavesey and Witchford. The most recent, Cambourne Village College, opened in September 2013.

title: Village college


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Soham Village College

Soham Village College is a secondary school with academy status located in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England. It has around 1,400 pupils, aged 11 to 16. Although its wide catchment area does not include Ely, some pupils from there and its neighbouring villages attend the college. It is split between two adjacent sites: Beechurst, formerly a large house, and Lodeside, built more recently.

History
The college has its origins in Soham Free School, established in 1686. It became known as Soham Grammar School from 1878 and occupied a site on Churchgate Street. In 1925 the grammar school moved to Beechurst House (built in 1901 and located in Sand Street, which had formerly been the home of the late Newmarket jockey, Charles Morbey. The grammar school took boys aged 11–18 from surrounding villages, and also had a few weekly boarders.

The name Soham Village College comes from the former secondary modern style village college, which was established in 1958. The original village college took boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 15, and was built on a 17 acre site next to the Soham Lode known as Moat Fields. It took in senior children from a number of "national schools" which were converted to junior or primary schools. The village college system was the brainchild of Henry Morris, the Chief Education Officer at Cambridgeshire County Council. The college was officially opened by the baronet and MP Sir Edward Boyle, a former Minister for Education. Morris's emphasis was on a community-based establishment, and the college was equipped with a public library and a youth leader.

The present village college emerged in 1972 when the modern co-educational village college and the long-established grammar school merged. The merger was a direct result of the government raising the school-leaving age to 16.

Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, building work was carried out under the headships of A. E. Lawrence (1972–85) and Dr A. W. Bullock (1985–99). This included the construction of the Ross Peers Sports Centre, a music block, and a science and technology block.

In 1993 the college gained grant-maintained status. This allowed for generous donations, such as the funds donated in the mid-1990s by Simon Gibson to extend the mathematics and English departments (known as the Gibson Block in his honour).

In June 1998, "M Block", which contains science, humanities, ICT and languages rooms, was opened by Princess Margaret.

In August 2002 the school became infamous as the place where a double child-killer, Ian Huntley, worked as school caretaker. Clothing from the murdered children was found in the school grounds, leading to Huntley's arrest and eventual conviction in the Soham murders case. Huntley's house on the school site, and the storage hangar where the clothing was found, were later demolished.

The school was previously a specialist Technology College and Language College before converting to academy status on 1 April 2011.

Since November 2019, a parkrun (a free, weekly timed 5 km run/walk event) has taken place at Soham Village College every Saturday morning at 9.00am.

Academic reputation
In the school's 2010 public exam results, 73 per cent achieved at least five grade A–C GCSEs. The school still attracts pupils from many schools within and outside the catchment area. Many take the opportunity of obtaining extracurricular GCSEs, including astronomy and statistics.

However, pupils wishing to continue onto sixth form studies must change schools, usually attending establishments in nearby Ely or Cambridge.

Awards
Soham Village College has received many awards. Currently the school has specialisms in technology and languages. The college has been awarded the Artsmark – Bronze Award, International School Award, School Achievement Award, Sport England SportsMark Award, Basic Skills Quality Mark, and the ICT Mark for excellence in ICT.

The school awards pupils for various achievements, such as outstanding attendance, distinctive progression and extra-curricular activities out of school, such as sport. Scarlet ties are awarded to pupils who excel in sport, both in school and at county level; emerald ties are awarded to pupils in the performing arts, in school or in county-level performance organisations; gold ties are awarded to pupils in the visual arts, in school or in community events. The Headteacher's Tie is awarded to pupils who display exceptional performance in and out of school.

Catchment area
The school has a wide catchment area, owing to its rural location. Pupils come mainly from the following areas: Soham, Barway, Wicken, Fordham, Isleham, Chippenham, Snailwell, Kennett, and Burwell.

However, some pupils come from other nearby settlements outside of the catchment area including: Stuntney, Ely, Littleport, Newmarket, Little Downham, Witchford, Stretham, Wilburton, and Haddenham.

The principal feeder primary schools are:
 * St Andrew's Church of England Primary (Soham)
 * The Weatheralls (Soham)
 * The Shade School (Soham)
 * Fordham Church of England Primary
 * Isleham Church of England Primary
 * Kennett Primary
 * Burwell Village College (Primary)
 * Ely St John's (Primary)
 * Ely St Mary's (Primary)

50th anniversary celebrations (1958–2008)
A weekend of celebrations was staged to mark the 50th anniversary of Soham Village College. Between 23 and 25 January 2009, displays of memorabilia and personal souvenirs provided a chronological account of past events and life at the Village College.

Soham Grammar School
Pupils of the former grammar school are known as Grammarians.
 * Robert Aspland, minister
 * Leslie Audus, botanist and Second World War veteran
 * Martin Brunt, news correspondent
 * Fred Hockley, Royal Navy pilot
 * Alfred Spinks, chemist and biologist
 * John W. R. Taylor, aviation expert
 * Victor Watson, children's writer and academic

title: Soham Village College


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Associated Press Athlete of the Year

The first Athlete of the Year award in the United States was initiated by the Associated Press (AP) in 1931. At a time when women in sports were not given the same recognition as men, the AP offered a male and a female athlete of the year award to either a professional or amateur athlete. The awards are voted on annually by a panel of AP sports editors from across the United States, covering mainly American sports. As a result, a large majority of the winners have been Americans. However, non-Americans are also eligible for the honor and have won on a few occasions.

title: Associated Press Athlete of the Year


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Gijs van Lennep

Jonkheer Gijsbert van Lennep (born 16 March 1942) is a Dutch racing driver who competed in eight Formula One races. However, his main achievements were in sports car racing. He is a member of the untitled Dutch nobility.

Career

Van Lennep drove for the Porsche sportscar team beginning in 1967. He shared the number 22 Martini Racing Porsche 917K with Helmut Marko, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1971. They set a distance record, covering 5335 km, which remained unbeaten until 2010.

Also in 1971, the Stichting Autoraces Nederland (Foundation for Car races in the Netherlands) hired a Surtees TS7 for him to make his F1 debut in his home GP where he finished a creditable eighth in a very wet GP. The following year Van Lennep won the 1972 Rothmans European Formula 5000 Championship driving a Surtees TS11 and a McLaren M18. He also drove twice for the Williams GP team, earning his first World Championship point with sixth place in the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix. With Ensign, he scored a second point in the 1975 German Grand Prix, making him the fifth most successful Dutch Formula One driver behind Max Verstappen, Jos Verstappen, Carel Godin de Beaufort and Christijan Albers.

In 1973, he won the last Targa Florio, sharing the Martini Porsche Carrera RSR with Herbert Müller. He continued with sportscar racing, sharing a Porsche 936 Turbo with Jacky Ickx to win Le Mans 24 for a second time in 1976, before retiring from racing.

Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key)

Complete Formula One Non-Championship results
(key)

Complete European F5000 Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

title: Gijs van Lennep


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Thimble

A thimble is a small pitted cup worn on the finger that protects it from being pricked or poked by a needle while sewing. The Old English word þȳmel, the ancestor of thimble, is derived from Old English þūma, the ancestor of the English word thumb.

Pre-17th century
As the purpose of a thimble is to prevent discomfort while sewing by providing a barrier between fingertips and the blunt end of a needle, it is likely that the earliest thimbles were created closely following the invention of sewing.

According to the United Kingdom Detector Finds Database, thimbles dating to the 10th century have been found in England, and thimbles were in widespread use there by the 14th century.

Although there are isolated examples of thimbles made of precious metals—Elizabeth I is said to have given one of her ladies-in-waiting a thimble set with precious stones—the vast majority of metal thimbles were made of brass. Medieval thimbles were either cast brass or made from hammered sheet. Early centers of thimble production were those places known for brass-working, starting with Nuremberg in the 15th century, and moving to Holland by the 17th.

17th century and later
In 1693, a Dutch thimble manufacturer named John Lofting established a thimble manufactory in Islington, in London, England, expanding British thimble production to new heights. He later moved his mill to Buckinghamshire to take advantage of water-powered production, resulting in a capacity to produce more than two million thimbles per year. By the end of the 18th century, thimble making had moved to Birmingham, and shifted to the "deep drawing" method of manufacture, which alternated hammering of sheet metals with annealing, and produced a thinner-skinned thimble with a taller shape. At the same time, cheaper sources of silver from the Americas made silver thimbles a popular item for the first time.

Thimbles are usually made from metal, leather, rubber, wood, and even glass or china. Early thimbles were sometimes made from whale bone, horn, or ivory. Natural sources were also utilized such as Connemara marble, bog oak or mother of pearl..

Advanced thimblemakers enhanced thimbles with semi-precious stones to adorn the apex or along the outer rim. Rarer works from thimble makers utilized diamonds, sapphires, or rubies. Cabochon adornments are sometimes made of cinnabar, agate, moonstone, or amber. Thimble artists would also utilize enameling, or the Guilloché techniques advanced by Peter Carl Fabergé.

As collectibles
Originally, thimbles were used simply solely for pushing a needle through fabric or leather as it was being sewn. Since then, however, they have gained many other uses. From the 16th century onwards silver thimbles were regarded as an ideal gift for ladies.

Early Meissen porcelain and elaborate, decorated gold thimbles were also given as keepsakes and were usually quite unsuitable for sewing. This tradition has continued to the present day. In the early modern period, thimbles were used to measure spirits and gunpowder, which brought rise to the phrase "just a thimbleful". Prostitutes used them in the practice of thimble-knocking where they would tap on a window to announce their presence. Thimble-knocking also refers to the practice of Victorian schoolmistresses who would tap on the heads of unruly pupils with dames thimbles.

Before the 18th century, the small dimples on the outside of a thimble were made by hand punching, but in the middle of that century, a machine was invented to do the job. A thimble with an irregular pattern of dimples was likely made before the 1850s. Another consequence of the mechanization of thimble production is that the shape and the thickness of the metal changed. Early thimbles tend to be quite thick and to have a pronounced dome on the top. The metal on later ones is thinner and the top is flatter.

Collecting thimbles became popular in the UK when many companies made special thimbles to commemorate the Great Exhibition held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London. In the 19th century, many thimbles were made from silver; however, it was found that silver is too soft a metal and can be easily punctured by most needles. Charles Horner solved the problem by creating thimbles consisting of a steel core covered inside and out by silver, so that they retained their aesthetics but were now more practical and durable. He called his thimble the Dorcas, and these are now popular with collectors. There is a small display of his work in Bankfield Museum, Halifax, England.

Early American thimbles made of whale bone or tooth featuring miniature scrimshaw designs are considered valuable collectibles. Such rare thimbles are prominently featured in a number of New England Whaling Museums.

During the First World War, silver thimbles were collected from "those who had nothing to give" by the British government and melted down to buy hospital equipment. In the 1930s and 1940s glass-topped thimbles were used for advertising.

Leaving a sandalwood thimble in a fabric store was a common practice for keeping moths away. Thimbles have also been used as love-tokens and to commemorate important events. People who collect thimbles are known as digitabulists. One superstition about thimbles says that if a person has three thimbles given to them, they will never be married.

Known thimble makers
Most of these thimble makers no longer create thimbles.

 * Avon Fashion Thimbles
 * Wicks (Inventor USA)
 * A Feaù and René Lorillon (French)
 * Charles Horner (UK) (1837–1896)
 * Charles Iles (UK)
 * Charles May
 * Anthony Stavrianoudakis (GR)
 * Gabler Bros (German)
 * Henry Fidkin (UK)
 * Henry Griffith (UK)
 * James Fenton (UK)
 * James Swann (UK)
 * Jean Levy (France)
 * Johan Caspar Rumpe (Germany)
 * Ketcham & McDougall (USA)
 * Meissen (German)
 * Roger Lenain (French)
 * Samuel & Foskett (UK)
 * Simons Bros Co (USA)
 * Stern Bros & Co (USA)
 * Uyu (USA)
 * Waite-Thresher (USA)
 * Webster (USA)
 * William Prym (Germany)

Thimblette
Thimblettes (also known as rubber finger, rubber thimbles and finger cones) are soft thimbles, made predominately of rubber, used primarily for leafing through or counting documents, bank notes, tickets, or forms. They also protect against paper cuts as a secondary function. Unlike thimbles, the softer thimblettes become worn over time. They are considered disposable and sold in boxes. The surface is dimpled with the dimples inverted to provide better grip. Thimblettes are sized from 00 through to 3.

A finger cot is a smooth rubber "glove finger" used to protect the finger or the item being handled.

Sewing palms
A variation on the thimble used by sailmakers and leather workers is the sail palm, also known as sailor's palm and sailmaker's palm. There are two variations, seaming palm which is used for light work, such as sewing canvas together and roping palm which is built for heavier work, such as sewing canvas and rope together. This item consists of a pitted hard plate set into a stiff leather band that is worn around the palm of the hand, with the plate resting against the first joint of the thumb. It is used by grasping a needle between the thumb and indexing finger, with the eye end of the needle against the pitted plate, and pushing the needle with the entire arm. Most palms are hand specific to give the user a better fit. This design permits the sewer to exert a great amount of force when pushing thick needles through very tough materials such as sail cloth, canvas or leather.

Cultural references
In the Parker Brothers board game Monopoly, first created in 1904, the thimble was one of the eight traditional metal game pieces used to mark a player's position on the game board. However, this piece is being replaced in the new versions of the board game in August 2017 following public consultation.

Thimbles are given as gifts in Peter Pan, who thinks thimbles are kisses.

In the 1992 movie Batman Returns, Catwoman, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, used thimbles to create the base of her claws.

The popular TV show and comic strip Popeye was originally called Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye.

The character Elizabeth in the video game BioShock Infinite uses a thimble to cover her severed little finger.

Video montages and series of clips are often called "thimble collections".

In the 2000 movie Chicken Run, Nick and Fetcher attempted to sell a couple of thimbles to Ginger as a "quality, hand crafted tea set", among a slew of other items.

Auction records
On December 3, 1979, a London dealer bid the sum of $18,000 USD for a dentil shaped Meissen porcelain thimble, circa 1740, at Christie's auction in Geneva, Switzerland. The thimble, just over 0.5 in high, was painted in a rare lemon-yellow color about the band. It also had tiny harbor scene hand painted within gold-trimmed cartouches. The rim was scalloped with fired gold on its bottom edge. The thimble now belongs to a Meissen collector in Canada.

During November 1994, Sirthey's saleroom yielded a one of a kind Meissen thimble bearing an armorial coat of arms at the price of £26,000.

On 13 June 1995, Sotheby's sold a Meissen thimble adorned with two pugs for £10,350.

title: Thimble


text:
Melpar

Melpar was an American government contractor in the 20th century Cold War period. At a time when most employment in Washington, DC was directly by the US federal government, Melpar became an early private sector contracting company training a high technology workforce in the area.

History
In 1945, after the conclusion of World War II, the founders of Melpar Inc (Thomas Meloy and Joseph Parks), at the suggestion of the United States Navy, moved from New York City to the Washington, DC area to obtain government contracts. Meloy had served as an assistant to Henry Stimson during the war. The company name was derived from the first syllable of their last names. In late 1945 Parks accidentally killed himself in a hunting accident; nevertheless Meloy continued to promote developing Melpar as an engineering and production company doing business with the Armed forces. He acquired the Carl Miller Engineering Company, a small firm that designed and produced electro-mechanical products. The new company took over a contract for airborne radar systems, and expanded. In the next few years Melpar moved to Alexandria, Virginia, added a second plant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a third plant in Alexandria. Within 15 years the company grew to more than 6,000 employees, and occupied ten facilities of more than 1000000 sqft throughout Northern Virginia.

Events such as the Berlin Airlift, the detonation of the nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, and the outbreak of the Korean War helped Melpar's business. In addition to military applications, technology began to play a role in nonmilitary areas. The US government had a pool of technical talent in its laboratories, and assumed an expanded role. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 further intensified competition with the Soviet Union.

Melpar embraced rather than shunned government work, as most other companies did. In 1951 Westinghouse Air Brake Company, a railway equipment producer founded in 1869, purchased the company for $1 million. It was a large sum for the time, despite typical profits on government contracts of only 1-2% of sales, which were generally reinvested in research.

The 1990s saw the development of the Internet, and its emphasis on computer science, information systems, and software technology. During the 1970s and 1980s a similar fervor was experienced in the telecommunications and biotechnology sectors. However, during the 1950s and 1960s the most exciting technical place to advance the knowledge was the fledgling aerospace and electronics industry. The 1950-60s had many new firms and people readily working long hours. A unique feature of the 1950s, however, was that the US government, not the commercial marketplace, was the prime source of funding for new technologies.

Melpar was located near its customers in Washington, DC. Other government contractors such as Atlantic Research, Vitro Laboratories, Page Communications Engineers, Hazleton Laboratories, COMSAT and the Applied Physics Laboratory also benefited. However, Melpar was the largest. In 1963, openings included astronomers, astrophysicists, microbiologists, entomologists, geophysicists and gas chromatographers. Melpar filled a void due to the lack of a technical university in the area (Melpar welcomed George Mason University in 1964).

In 1952 Melpar built an expensive, modern plant 10 mi from downtown on a 44 acre wooded tract near Seven Corners on Route 50. The new building, surrounded by fields in a campus-like setting 400 ft back from the road, had a pond, willow trees, a brick facade, and parking behind the plant. It was a contrast to the small buildings and warehouses located downtown, and was promoted as harmonizing industrial design with residential surroundings. To accommodate Melpar, Fairfax County revamped its zoning laws to help relieve the tax burden on property owners. Melpar employees could work near their homes. In development advertising the state of Virginia touted Melpar as a model. The decision to move to the country was made more than ten years before the "circumferential highway" was completed, and more than 15 years before a shopping mall now known as Tysons Corner Center was built at Tyson's Corner. Later known as the Capital Beltway, this highway led to the term beltway bandits for the contracting firms that later proliferated.

Melpar linked production facilities to its scientific and engineering capabilities. The company won two large contracts for B-58 aircraft electronics and Minuteman missile guidance components, requiring a buildup of manufacturing plants and an associated technical workforce in the Washington area. These facilities enabled scientists to test their laboratory research with prototype hardware. By 1960 the company assembled products such as missile equipment, flight simulators, radar beacons, fuses, data processing equipment, communications, antennas, electronic countermeasure and reconnaissance systems.

Managing manufacturing programs presented a different set of challenges. Since Washington did not have a workforce of electronic technicians Melpar had to build and train one. The Minuteman production line required 1,800 people and as many as 130 were hired in a single day. Technology schools such as the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute expanded to help train designers and draftsmen to build products for space and missile programs. Universities conducted technical courses in Melpar's facilities for employees on their own time, in programs praised by the Secretary of Education. Melpar instituted tuition-reimbursement policies with incentives for high grades in technical courses. Positions for minorities and females opened at unprecedented levels.

During this time the company also pioneered manufacturing technology. Unlike today when existing commercial off-the-shelf technology is available, manufacturing had to translate ideas quickly into producible reality. Intense development occurred in areas of microelectronics technology such as the fabrication and layout of miniature circuits, and the use of thin film devices and plastic components. Processes such as welding, plating, soldering and automatic component insertion were studied and improved. Melpar's manufacturing engineers often found themselves writing engineering process documents that eventually became the government standard.

Melpar performed diverse research in physical and life sciences over 40 years. One project begun in the late 1950s (foreshadowing artificial intelligence) linked biology and the design of electrical devices–computer programs that emulated artificial nerve cells and simulated functions such as learning ability and initiative. The intent was to construct a thinking machine, similar to a human nervous system that learned pattern recognition and avoided mistakes (e.g. programming a mobile satellite on the Moon to avoid a deep precipice). Studies on the nature of speech led to more efficient use of the radio spectrum through bandwidth compression, and improved long distance and coded communications–other related studies focused on the elimination of speech deficiencies and development of a phonetic typewriter. In medical research Melpar developed synthetic materials (tissue growth) to be compatible with the heart (later known as the Jarvik heart), and produced an electronic heart monitor (Cardiac Sentry) which detected out-of-norm variations, maintained hospital records and administered prescribed treatments. The company was a pioneer in plasma physics and developed materials for communicating with crewed space vehicles reentering the atmosphere. Using solar energy, desalinization experiments were conducted to make saline and brackish water drinkable. Detection systems to measure highway curves, motions and vibrations were developed to improvemass transit systems.

Melpar performed studies in cell biology, food chemistry, composite materials (light weight, high temperature), solar energy, meteorology, virology and immunology (cancer research), air and water pollution, air traffic control, global navigation (constructed a prototype map of the Global Positioning System), and underwater acoustics and optics. They studied methane detection in mines and conversion of coal to acetylene as a new source of energy. An antenna was placed on top of the Empire State Building to evaluate the feasibility of UHF broadcasting. Offshoot products from laboratory technology included resins, varnishes, foam, nonsmudge ink, adhesives, photoelectric readers and frequency standard instrumentation. Synthetic diamonds and emeralds were produced to test hardness in space age materials. While most of Melpar's efforts were technical, some involved the social sciences–creation of a stock index of S&P 500 companies for Business Week, and operation of a Job Corps center.

Melpar continued its work on military and space applications such as radar, communications, and electronic countermeasure systems as well as airborne and ground intelligence systems. Devices to detect lethal chemical and biological agents were developed. The company participated in early uncrewed (Vanguard and Explorer) and crewed space programs (Mercury and Apollo), providing antennas and semi-dried food for lunar missions. A quarantine facility was produced to insure the astronauts had not brought any contamination from the Moon.

Melpar also produced more than a dozen flight simulators, including many for the Air Force's century series fighters and helicopter systems for the Navy. These simulators enabled more realistic and demanding training, saving pilots' lives and reducing fuel consumption during the 1970s energy crisis.

A company newspaper editorial in 1957 stated, "We have sought the breeder job, the line of inquiry promising to expand a general field of engineering endeavor or open a new one."

However, in the mid-1960s Melpar's research, engineering and production began to decline. The government's budget priorities changed, with emphasis placed on solving the nation's social problems. The human spaceflight program had few follow-on missions after landing a man on the Moon. The military's budget was heavily dedicated to the Vietnam War. These budget trends reduced Melpar's programs.

Other factors contributed to the business decline. The government did not award follow-on manufacturing contracts, so layoffs of production workers took place. The American Standard Companies, bought the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, and immediately began to sell off the assets. Melpar's research programs were diverse, unprofitable, and had uncertain business prospects.

Some unfavorable publicity contributed to Melpar's misfortunes. In 1963 Bobby Baker was Secretary for the Majority Democratic caucus in the US Senate, and closely linked to Lyndon B. Johnson - he held perhaps the most powerful nonelected position in Congress. A Melpar vending machine contractor filed a lawsuit against Baker, accusing him of influence peddling to switch the contract to a competitor, with which he had financial ties. Within a few days Baker resigned his position. For almost two years there were headlines and congressional investigations into Baker's business deals and questionable relationships. Melpar's top management was called to testify before the Senate Rules committee, although ultimately the Melpar incident was settled out of court. Even so, the situation demoralized employees, did not enhance the company's ability to win new Government contracts, and changes in company management soon took place.

An investigation was also ordered into overpricing of the B-58 systems.

Some employees left Melpar to start new companies (usually in the Washington area). Over the next 20 to 30 years more than a dozen spin-offs generated millions of dollars in annual sales and employed thousands in the Washington area. One employee began a communications company in Florida that ultimately became the Harris Corporation. Two employees from a research division near Boston formed the data communications manufacturer Codex Corporation in 1962. Many prospered in the 1970s and 1980s, but then left the area, due to industrial consolidations, mergers, and acquisitions. Meloy Laboratories continued Melpar's biotechnical, pharmaceutical research until Rhône-Poulenc moved the operation to Philadelphia in the 1980s. A flight simulator spin-off named Simulation Engineering Corporation (Secor), went through four changes in ownership in Northern Virginia–from Sperry Rand to Honeywell to Hughes to Raytheon - before being moved to Texas in 1998. The same employees started a second company, Quintron, which was purchased by Loral for $22 million and later owned by Lockheed. A few companies still reside in Northern Virginia –VSE Inc in Alexandria (1300 employees), RSI Inc in Sterling (500 employees), ISOMET in Manassas, ST Research (now a division of Boeing called Argon ST ) in Newington, as well as half a dozen small machine shops.

For almost 50 years Melpar used the same facility on U.S. Route 50 in Virginia and had about 1,500 employees. The company went through several changes in ownership, being purchased by LTV Electrosystems in 1970 (changed to E-Systems in 1972) and the Raytheon Company in 1995. The name Melpar was discontinued in 1994 and the facility served as headquarters for Raytheon's Strategic Systems Division. Over the last 25 to 30 years the company performed some government electronics contracts, such as production and support of ground systems for the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Additionally this facility managed information systems for agencies such as the US Department of Education, and fabricated and tested electronic products. In 2010 Raytheon moved out of the building at 7700 Arlington Boulevard, and it was remodeled for Tricare.

title: Melpar


text:
User talk:Ian Maxwell

Hi, welcome to Wikipedia! Regarding the Björk article: please edit freely. I think the overhaul is more or less done. The old contents of the article are still at Talk:Björk/Temp, if you're interested in incorporating any of that stuff. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 19:16, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. I was mainly looking at the article as a translator into Esperanto, but I'll see if there's anything I can add to it as well. -- Ian Maxwell 2004-03-12-0304 (UTC)

Hi, Ian. I made a point on the discussion page of non-cognitivism that you might want to look at. One is tempted to rewrite the article again, despite the nice job you've done with it, based on these objections. On the other hand, I might be mistaken. --Dr. Ebola

Local meetups?
Hi Ian,

We have local meetups around Boston, and Wikimania is being planned for here... you should come hang out with us some time :-) +sj  +  20:01, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Grue
The text right now is

“Another possible resolution of the paradox is that "x is grue" is not solely a predicate of x, but of x and the time--we can know that an object is green without knowing the current time, but we cannot know that it is grue. If this is the case, we should not expect "x is grue" to remain true when the time changes.”

I understand that this is quite a strong argument, but it still does not answer fundamental problem of “the new puzzle of induction” namely: WHY do we know that green is independent of time while grue is not(especially considering that green can be defined as disjunction of grue and bleen)?

Is More NPOVing required?--Hq3473 04:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I've added a further comment to it on the disjunctive definition. I personally think that argument is ridiculous, because green can be defined without reference to the time, while grue cannnot, but... yeah. NPOV can get really hairy when it comes to matters of logic. --Ian Maxwell 04:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for a thoughtful edit. I think it should stay the way it is from now on. However I disagree that the argument is completely ridiculous, I agree that the usual definition of green does not require time, this however keeps begging the questions “WHY does not the definition of green require reference to time?” and “why does definition of grue REQUIRES reference time?”--Hq3473 07:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

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title: User talk:Ian Maxwell


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Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator. He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on aspects of Irish culture and history, criticism, long and short fiction (novels and short stories), biography, and travel books. He is most widely known for his more than 150 short stories and for his memoirs. The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was named in his honour.

Early life
Raised in Cork, he was the only child of Minnie (née O'Connor) and Michael O'Donovan. He attended Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner's Hill. One teacher, Daniel Corkery, introduced O'Connor's class to the Irish language and poetry and deeply influenced the young pupil. He later attended North Monastery Christian Brothers School.

O'Connor's early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. His childhood was strongly shaped by his mother, who supplied much of the family's income by cleaning houses, his father being unable to keep steady employment due to alcoholism. O'Connor adored his mother and was bitterly resentful of his father. In his memoirs, he recalled his childhood as "those terrible years", and admitted that he had never been able to forgive his father for his abuse of himself and his mother. When his mother was seventy, O'Connor was horrified to learn from his own doctor that she had suffered for years from chronic appendicitis, which she had endured with great stoicism, as she had never had the time nor the money to see a doctor.

Irish nationalism
In 1918 O'Connor joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and served in combat during the Irish War of Independence. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, working in a small propaganda unit in Cork City. He was one of twelve thousand Anti-Treaty combatants who were interned by the government of the new Irish Free State. In February 1923, O'Connor was imprisoned in Cork City Gaol and in April moved to Gormanston, County Meath where he was held until just before Christmas. War is a major theme in most stories of O'Connor's first published collection, Guests of the Nation, 1931.

Literary career
Following his release from Gormanston, O'Connor took various positions including that of teacher of Irish and theatre director. Thanks to his continuing connection with Corkery, he was introduced to Lennox Robinson, then the secretary for the Carnegie Trust. Robinson was organizing rural libraries and engaged O'Connor as a trainee. O'Connor worked first in Sligo and later under Geoffrey Phibbs in Wicklow.

Through Phibbs, he met and was befriended by George William Russell (Æ), who requested O'Connor to send him material for publication. Russell introduced O'Connor to most of the well-known Irish writers of the day, including W. B. Yeats, F. R. Higgins and Augusta Gregory. In his memoirs, he paid tribute to both Yeats and Russell for the help and encouragement they gave him.

In December 1928, he moved to Dublin to take up the position of librarian at the Pembroke District Library.

In 1935, O'Connor became a member of the board of directors of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, founded by Yeats and other members of the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1937, he became managing director of the Abbey. Following Yeats's death in 1939, O'Connor's long-standing conflict with other board members came to a head and he left the Abbey later that year.

In 1950, he accepted invitations to teach in the United States, where many of his short stories had been published in The New Yorker and won great acclaim. He spent much of the 1950s in the United States, although it was always his intention to return eventually to Ireland.

Death
O'Connor had a stroke while teaching at Stanford University in 1961, and he later died from a heart attack in Dublin, Ireland on 10 March 1966. He was buried in Deans Grange Cemetery on 12 March 1966.

Family
In 1939 O'Connor married Evelyn Bowen (who had previously been married to the actor Robert Speaight): they had two sons and a daughter. They were divorced in 1953. O'Connor married, secondly, Harriet Rich of Baltimore, whom he met while lecturing at Northwestern University. They had one daughter. Between his marriages to Bowen and Rich, he was romantically involved with Joan Knape, with whom he had a son, Oliver O'Donovan.

Work
O'Connor was perhaps best known for his varied and comprehensive short stories but also for his work as a literary critic, essayist, travel writer, translator and biographer. He was also a novelist, poet and dramatist.

O'Connor's career began in 1922 and accelerated with the appearance of poetry in translation, articles on early Irish poets, book reviews by stories and original poetry. Much of this material appeared in Æ's journal Irish Statesman.

From the early 1930s following the publication of his first volume of short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), to his death in 1966 he was a prolific writer of short stories (c. 160), translations of a wide range of Irish poetry (c. 120), plays, both alone and in collaborations (c.10), novels (2) as well as works in non-fiction covering topics in literary criticism and theory, travel, Irish culture, and biography. His work as an Irish teacher complemented his plethora of translations into English of Irish poetry, including his initially banned translation of Brian Merriman's Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court). Many of O'Connor's writings were based on his own life experiences – notably his well-known The Man of the House in which he reveals childhood details concerning his early life in County Cork. The Sullivan family in this short story, like his own boyhood family, is lacking a proper father figure.

In other stories, his character Larry Delaney, in particular, is reminiscent of events in O'Connor's own life. O'Connor's experiences in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Frank O'Connor – Collected Stories, published in 1981.

O'Connor's early years are recounted in An Only Child (1961), a memoir which has the immediacy of a precocious diary. U.S. President John F. Kennedy remarked anecdotally from An Only Child at the conclusion of his speech at the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center in San Antonio on 21 November 1963: "Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall—and then they had no choice but to follow them. This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it."

O'Connor continued his autobiography through his time with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which ended in 1939, in his book, My Father's Son, which was published in 1968, posthumously. It contains valuable character sketches of many of the leading Irish literary figures of the 1930s, in particular, Yeats and Russell (who wrote with the pseudonyms Æ and Æon).

Frank O'Connor Festival and Prize
Since 2000, The Munster Literature Centre in O'Connor's hometown of Cork has run a festival dedicated to the short story form in O'Connor's name. The longest established annual festival dedicated to the short story form in an English-speaking country, it regularly hosts readings, workshops and masterclasses for contemporary practitioners of the form, as well as celebrating the work of O'Connor and other local short fiction writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Seán Ó Faoláin and William Trevor.

The festival has hosted readings by: Richard Ford, Julia O'Faolain, James Lasdun, Alasdair Gray, Dan Rhodes, Eugene McCabe, Bernard MacLaverty, Desmond Hogan, James Plunkett, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Rebecca Miller, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Etgar Keret, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Cónal Creedon, Samrat Upadhyay, Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Rachel Sherman, David Marcus, Panos Karnezis, Nisha da Cunha, William Wall, Bret Anthony Johnston, David Means, Claire Keegan, Miranda July, Rick Moody, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Julie Orringer, ZZ Packer, Simon Van Booy, Wells Tower, Charlotte Grimshaw and Kevin Barry among others. It also has a tradition of encouraging younger writers at the start of their career, Jon Boilard for example.

The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, is awarded to the best short fiction collection published in English anywhere in the world in the year preceding the festival. The prize is also open to translated works and in the event of a translation winning the prize is divided equally between author and translator. The award is described as "the richest prize for the short story form" and at €35,000 in 2010 is one of the most valuable literary prizes for any category of literature.

In popular culture
O’Connor's short story "Guests of the Nation" has been the basis of several films. The story is set during the Irish War of Independence and chronicles the doomed friendship between the members of an I.R.A. unit and the two British Army hostages whom they are guarding. The first film was a silent one, directed in 1934 by Denis Johnston and featuring Barry Fitzgerald and Cyril Cusack. Neil Jordan's award-winning film The Crying Game was inspired in part by this story.

Short story collections

 * Guests of the Nation (1931), including the famous title story.
 *  Bones of Contention (1936), including the story "The Majesty of Law", a short story adapted as an episode of the 1957 film The Rising of the Moon.
 *  Crab Apple Jelly (1944)
 *  The Common Chord (1947)
 * Traveller's Samples (1951), including the classic story "First Confession".
 *  The Stories of Frank O'Connor (1952), including the first publication of perhaps his most popular story "My Oedipus Complex".
 * More Stories by Frank O'Connor (1954)
 *  Domestic Relations (1957)
 *  A Set of Variations (1969)
 *  The Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland (1981)
 * The Collected Stories (Edited by Richard Ellmann) (1981)
 *  The Collar: Stories of Irish Priests (1993)
 *  A Frank O'Connor Reader (1994)

Novels

 *  The Saint and Mary Kate (1932)
 *  Dutch Interior (1940)

Poetry

 * Three Old Brothers and Other Poems (1936)

Poetry from the Irish

 * The Wild Bird's Nest (1932)
 * Lords and Commons, Translations from the Irish (1938)
 * Lament for Art O'Leary (1940)
 * The Midnight Court (1945)
 * Kings, Lords, and Commons (1959)
 * The Little Monasteries (1963)

Irish history

 *  The Big Fellow, biography of Michael Collins (1937)

Travel writing

 * Irish Miles (1947)
 * Leinster, Munster and Connaught (1950)

Criticism

 *  The Road to Stratford (1948; revised edition published in 1960–61 in the US as Shakespeare's Progress)
 *  The Mirror in the Roadway: A Study of the Modern Novel (1956)
 *  The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1962)
 *  The Backward Look: A Survey of Irish Literature (1967; published in the US as A Short History of Irish Literature: A Backward Look)

title: Frank O'Connor


text:
Trait ascription bias

Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. More specifically, it is a tendency to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to them than those of others.

This attributional bias intuitively plays a role in the formation and maintenance of stereotypes and prejudice, combined with the negativity effect. However, trait ascription and trait-based models of personality remain contentious in modern psychology and social science research. Trait ascription bias refers to the situational and dispositional evaluation and description of personality traits on a personal level. A similar bias on the group level is called the outgroup homogeneity bias.

Overview
Trait ascription and the cognitive bias associated with it have been a topic of active research for more than three decades. Like many other cognitive biases, trait ascription bias is supported by a substantial body of experimental research and has been explained in terms of numerous theoretical frameworks originating in various disciplines. Among these frameworks are attribution theory (related to how people determine causes of observed events), theories of personality description such as the five factor model, and work regarding the circumstances under which personality assessments are valid. Seminal work includes Turner, Jones, Kammer, and Funder. Incorrectly ascribing traits to other persons based on limited information or observations intuitively plays a role in the formation and perpetuation of some social phenomena such as stereotypes and prejudice. As such, methods to mitigate the effect of trait ascription bias on personality assessments outside of the lab are also of interest to social scientists. Although trait-oriented theories of personality description, and indeed the very notion of universal, enduring traits themselves, have a natural appeal, some researchers are critical of their existence outside of the laboratory and present results which imply trait ascription, and consequently trait ascription bias, are simply residue of the methodologies historically used to "detect" them. Criticism is based either on the non-existence of personality traits (contrary to five factor descriptions), or suggest divergent interpretations of results and alternative mechanisms of ascription, limiting the scope of existing work.

Evidence
The empirical evidence supporting trait ascription and the psychological mechanisms underpinning it comes from a diverse body of research in psychology and the social sciences.

The actor and the observer
Jones and Nisbett were among the first to argue that people are biased in how they tend to ascribe traits and dispositions to others that they would not ascribe to themselves. Motivated by the classic example of the student explaining poor performance to a supervisor (in which the supervisor might superficially believe the student's explanations but really thinks the performance is due to "enduring qualities": lack of ability, laziness, ineptitude, etc.) their actor–observer asymmetry argument forms the basis of discourse on trait ascription bias.

Kammer et al.
In a 1982 study involving fifty-six undergraduate psychology students from the University of Bielefeld, Kammer et al. demonstrated that subjects rated their own variability on each of 20 trait terms to be considerably higher than their peers. Building on the earlier work of Jones and Nisbett, which suggests people describe the behaviour of others in terms of fixed dispositions while viewing their own behaviour as the dynamic product of complex situational factors, Kammer hypothesized that one's own behaviours are judged to be less consistent (i.e. not as predictable) but of higher intensities (with regard to particular traits) than the behaviour of others. The experiment had each student describe themselves as well as a same-sex friend using two identical lists of trait-descriptive terms. For example, for the trait of dominance the student was first asked "In general, how dominant are you?" and then "How much do you vary from one situation to another in how dominant you are?" Kammer's results strongly supported his hypothesis.

The "trait" of ascribing traits
David C. Funder's work on the "trait" of ascribing personality traits investigates the psychology of individuals who tend not to grant others the variability (i.e. lack of predictability) they grant themselves, instead preferring to ascribe traits and infer dispositional explanations of behaviour. It had been generally established that people ascribe more traits to others than to themselves, known as the actor–observer asymmetry in attribution, but Funder's hypothesis was that some individuals are more inclined to make dispositional trait attributions than others, regardless of who they are describing. In the experiment, sixty-three undergraduates filled out a series of questionnaires which asked them to describe themselves, their best friend, and an acquaintance. For each of twenty pairs of polar opposite trait terms (e.g. "friendly—unfriendly") subjects either ranked the person on a discrete scale or chose "depends on the situation", allowing the subject to "not make a dispositional ascription." Based on third-party Q-Sort personality descriptions of the subjects, certain negative personality traits were correlated with those subjects who tended to ascribe dispositions to others, while traits such as "charming", "interesting", and "sympathetic" were associated with those who preferred not to ascribe traits. This result is consistent with the type of personality commonly associated with promoting stereotypes and prejudice.

Theoretical basis
While trait ascription bias has been described by empirical results from various disciplines, most notably psychology and social psychology, explaining the mechanism of the bias remains a contentious issue in the theory of personality description literature.

The availability heuristic
Tversky and Kahneman describe a cognitive heuristic that suggests people make judgments (including about other people's personalities ) on the basis of how easily examples of their (other people's) behaviour come to mind. This would appear to be consistent with the arguments of Jones and Nisbett and the results observed by others which found that people ascribe fewer traits to friends than to acquaintances, and fewer still traits to themselves than to friends, implying ease of recall might be a factor.

Attribution theory
Attribution plays a role in how people understand and judge the causes of the behaviour of others, which in turn affects how they ascribe traits to others. Attributional theory is concerned with how people subsequently judge behavioural causes, which also bears relevance to trait ascription and related biases. In particular, attribution (and attributional) theory can help explain the mechanism by which individuals defer to ascribing dispositional traits vs. situational variability to observers.

Big Five personality traits
The big five personality traits (or five factor model) arguably provides a robust set of traits by which personalities can be accurately described. It supports the notion that there are cross-cultural, enduring traits which manifest in behaviour and can, if correctly ascribed to individuals, provide an actor with predictive power over an observer.

Mitigation
Trait ascription bias, regardless of the theoretical mechanisms underpinning it, intuitively plays a role in various social phenomenon observed in the wild. Stereotyping, attitudes of prejudice and the negativity effect, among others, involve ascribing dispositions (traits) to other people on the basis of little information, no information or simply "gut instincts", which amounts to trait ascription bias. As such, some researchers are interested in mitigating cognitive biases to reduce their effects on society.

Criticism
Trait ascription bias has received criticism on a number of fronts. In particular, some have argued that trait ascription, and the notion of traits, are merely artefacts of methodology and that results contrary to conventional wisdom can be achieved with simple changes to the experimental designs used. Furthermore, the theoretical bases for trait ascription bias are criticized for failing to recognize constraints and "questionable conceptual" assumptions.

title: Trait ascription bias


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Austin Stories

Austin Stories is an American sitcom that aired on MTV from September 10, 1997 until January 7, 1998. It aired Wednesday nights at 10:30 pm. The show aired twelve episodes filmed on location in Austin, Texas.

An MTV search brought executives James Jones and Lisa Berger to Austin in 1994. Jones had previously produced The Ben Stiller Show and Berger was vice-president and director of development at the network. MTV scouts were drawn to the city's emerging comedy scene and noticed Laura House, Howard Kremer and Brad "Chip" Pope. They were all discovered at a showcase for MTV at the Laff Stop for professional comics. All three had to pull strings to get on the showcase as none of them had been paid for their comedy. House was a junior high journalism teacher when she was cast on the show. Both she and Brad "Chip" Pope were University of Texas graduates. Originally, the show was only guaranteed 13 episodes on the channel. In March 1997, MTV flew House, Kremer and Pope to Los Angeles to write two scripts in three days. Austin Stories was green-lighted on March 20, 1997, and they often spent 16-hour days working on the show with taping wrapping in November.

Their contract expired on May 8, 1998, and MTV extended it for three more weeks before permanently canceling the show on June 1, 1998.

Cast

 * Laura House
 * Howard Kremer
 * Brad "Chip" Pope
 * Heather Kafka

Response
USA Today gave the show three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it, "one of the season's coolest, funniest and most genuinely offbeat treats." In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, "With its meandering style, and its sense of wry comic absurdities rather than yuck-it-up one-liners, the series owes almost everything to Richard Linklater's Slacker (including their shared Austin setting). What it hasn't got from that film it owes to Jim Jarmusch's work, especially Stranger Than Paradise. But instead of seeming derivative, Austin Stories comes across as a first-rate sequel, proof that this laid-back sensibility can thrive on television as well as in films."

title: Austin Stories


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Scarba

Scarba (Sgarba) is an island, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, just north of the much larger island of Jura. The island has not been permanently inhabited since the 1960s. Until his death in 2013 it was owned by Richard Hill, 7th Baron Sandys; its owner now is Shane Cadzow who farms Luing cattle on the nearby island of Luing and grazes some of the cattle on Scarba. Kilmory Lodge is used seasonally as a shooting lodge, the island having a flourishing herd of red deer.

The island's name is from the Norse and may mean "sharp, stony, hilly terrain" or "cormorant island".

Description
Scarba is not served by any public ferries, but access from Craobh Haven or Crinan Harbour is possible by arrangement with local boatmen. The rough summit ridge can be accessed from the harbour at the north end, from where a vehicle track leads up past Kilmory Lodge to a height of about 200 metres. After that, there are no paths or well defined routes, and the terrain becomes rough and boggy. The island rises steeply to a peak (Cruach Scarba) of 449 m. A cylindrical triangulation point marks the highest of several summits, which are surrounded by several small lochs.

Geology
The western two-thirds of Scarba is formed from the Neoproterozoic aged coarse-grained quartzites of the Jura Quartzite Formation ascribed to the Islay Subgroup of the Dalradian Argyll Group. Separated from these rocks by a north–south aligned geological fault, the bedrock of the eastern third is the Neoproterozoic Scarba Conglomerate Formation, and the subordinate Jura Slate Member belonging to the Easdale Subgroup of the Argyll Group. North-south aligned dykes of amphibolite are found throughout the Jura Quartzite whilst lamprophyre dykes of Siluro-Devonian age and basalt and micro-gabbro dykes forming part of the Palaeogene age ‘Mull Dyke Swarm’ cut through both the Quartzite in the west and the conglomerate in the east. Raised marine deposits of sand and gravel occur on the northeast coast, a legacy of late Quaternary changes in relative sea-level. Peat deposits are common within the island's interior.

Corryvreckan
Between Scarba and Jura lies the Gulf of Corryvreckan, known for its whirlpool. Writing in 1549, Dean Monro wrote of "Skarbay" that between it and "Duray": "Ther runnes ane streame, above the power of all sailing and rowing, with infinite dangers, callit Corybrekan. This stream is aught myle lang, quhilk may not be hantit bot be certain tyds. This Skarbay is four myles lange from the west to the eist, and an myle breadth, ane high rough yle, inhabit and manurit, with some woods in it."

Scarba and a few nearby islets (Lunga and the Garvellachs) are collectively the Scarba, Lunga and the Garvellachs National Scenic Area, one of 40 such areas in Scotland, which are defined so as to identify areas of exceptional scenery and to ensure its protection by restricting certain forms of development.

title: Scarba