text:
Valley of the Dolls (novel)

Valley of the Dolls is the first novel by American writer Jacqueline Susann. Published in 1966, the book was the biggest-selling novel of its year. By 2016 it had sold more than 31 million copies, making it one of the all-time best-selling fictional works in publishing history.

Plot
In 1945 beautiful ingenue Anne Welles moves to New York City to escape the ennui of her Massachusetts hometown. She finds work as a secretary to Henry Bellamy, an entertainment lawyer, and befriends Neely O'Hara, an ebullient vaudevillian and aspiring stage actress. Henry's employee, Lyon Burke, returns to the agency after World War II, and Anne quickly falls in love with him despite Henry's warning. Meanwhile Anne goes on some dates with a small-time salesman named Allen Cooper. Allen suddenly reveals that he is a millionaire pretending to be a normal person in order to make sure Anne's feelings are genuine. He proposes to Anne and their love story becomes a media sensation.

Anne befriends Helen Lawson, a brilliant, ruthless, unhappy Broadway legend. Neely is hired for Helen's latest show but Helen takes a dislike to her and minimizes her role. Anne uses her friendship with Lyon to secure Neely a bigger role, and Neely becomes a breakout star; Helen cruelly rejects Anne by revealing she was only interested in Anne's friendship for the chance at a sexual relationship with Allen's father. Anne also befriends Jennifer North, a kindhearted young actress famous for her attractive figure.

On the night of the show's opening, Anne and Lyon consummate their feelings, and Anne and Allen break up. The production is a massive success. Neely enjoys a meteoric rise to fame and moves to California to begin a film career. Anne's mother dies and she returns to her hometown with Lyon, who wants to quit the agency, live in Anne's family home, and write novels. Though Anne loves Lyon deeply, she refuses to move back to Massachusetts. Lyon breaks up with Anne and moves to England to write, leaving Anne heartbroken. Though Anne takes years to move on, she eventually becomes a model for beauty products and starts dating the cosmetics company owner, the older, wealthy Kevin Gillmore.

Meanwhile Jennifer begins a relationship with the childish, sex-obsessed singer Tony Polar, but their romance is frequently interrupted by his domineering older sister, Miriam. Jennifer pressures Tony into marrying her and quickly falls pregnant. After reuniting with an increasingly unsympathetic Neely, who is in the midst of an affair, Jennifer becomes dependent on ‘dolls’, amphetamines and barbiturates, to calm her frayed nerves. Finally Miriam reveals why she opposed Jennifer and Tony's relationship: Tony has developmental disabilities and the baby will likely inherit them. Devastated, Jennifer has an abortion and agrees to divorce Tony. Jennifer then moves to Europe and finds work in Art house films, which, owing to her nudity, are considered softcore pornography in the United States.

By 1950 Neely has become a celebrated actress enjoying a lucrative film career and twin sons with her second husband. However long workdays and the stress over her husband's infidelity (with both men and women) keep her dependent on ‘dolls’ and she is becoming increasingly unpopular with the studio because of her tantrums and walkouts. Neely accidentally overdoses on pills but makes a full recovery. Still, the studio fires her from the production and replaces her with the boss's young lover. Anne reconnects with Neely; Kevin suggests resurrecting Neely's career by having her sing on a televised spectacular for his brand. Neely at first refuses but following a successful supper-club performance and a run-in with a belligerent Helen she agrees. Unable to cope with the demands of the rehearsals, she overdoses to avoid performing. To Anne's distress Neely disappears to Europe.

Jennifer, in Europe, is pressured to undergo plastic surgery; as she has always lied about her true age she is now ten years older than her claimed age of 27. Unhappy with her European career and boyfriend, she returns to the United States. Three years later she becomes engaged to an older senator, who she believes loves her for more than her body, and she is excited to get married and have a child. But a routine test reveals that she has breast cancer and will require a mastectomy and the treatment will likely render her infertile. After her fiancé says he doesn't want children and makes a comment suggesting he's only interested in her body Jennifer becomes convinced that she will never be loved for who she is. She leaves the hospital and commits suicide.

Neely reappears in the midst of Jennifer's funeral. She has lost her voice, apparently from psychological issues. After bungling a self-harm attempt Neely becomes institutionalized, which a guilty Anne pays for. Meanwhile Lyon returns to New York and reconnects with Anne, much to the chagrin of Kevin. Anne is unable to overcome her passion for Lyon and the two begin an affair. Kevin eventually learns of this and breaks up with Anne. Some time later Neely finds her voice again after an impromptu sanitarium performance with a now-incompetent Tony Polar. Anne works with Henry to get Lyon to abandon his non-starter career as a writer and become a partner at the agency, with Henry lending Lyon money that secretly comes from Anne.

Lyon is initially put off by Neely, who has become obese, but successfully plots her career comeback. Anne and Lyon get married and Anne quickly becomes pregnant, but her happiness is short-lived when Neely demands that Lyon escort her everywhere on her comeback tour. Lyon learns from Neely about how Anne secretly lent him money and feels outraged and emasculated. He and Neely begin a brazen public affair. Henry persuades Anne to wait out the humiliation and pretend she knows nothing, assuring her that Lyon will grow tired of Neely and return to her. The affair stretches out for years, with Neely pressuring Lyon to end his marriage. Anne becomes dependent on the ‘dolls’ to relax, but Lyon reluctantly stays with Anne. After repaying Anne's loan he breaks off the affair (losing Neely as a client in the process)nbut quickly begins a new one with a teenaged up-and-coming singer. Though Anne finally admits to herself that Lyon will never stop having affairs, she assures herself that she will eventually fall out of love and become numb to all of her pain before reaching for her ‘dolls’ again.

Background
Susann had apparently been thinking about the novel for some time. Some years earlier, she had begun Underneath the Pancake, a show-business novel, with her actress friend Beatrice Cole (c. 1910–1999). Later, she considered writing a novel about drug usage in show business to be called The Pink Dolls.

Valley of the Dolls is considered a roman à clef, with its characters based on famous figures such as Judy Garland, Carole Landis, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman. In 1973, after the publication of her third novel, Susann said: "They can keep calling it that roman à clef. It'll only make my books sell. I don't care". Susann insisted that she began each book with a theme: "Then I start asking, what kind of a personality? And because I have a good ear, I unconsciously pick up certain people".

Susann dedicated the book to her poodle Josephine, and to her husband Irving Mansfield.

Reception
The book was published by Bernard Geis Associates on February 10, 1966, and "took off like a Cape Canaveral space shot".

Publishers Weekly, in an advance review, called the novel "big, brilliant and sensational", if "poorly written". The book received largely negative reviews. Feminist Gloria Steinem criticized the book in the New York Herald Tribune, as did The New York Times. Time magazine called it the "Dirty Book of the Month", and said: "It might more accurately be described as a highly effective sedative, a living doll".

Despite the poor reviews, the book was a runaway commercial success. On May 8, 1966, in its ninth week on the list, the book reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, where it remained for 28 consecutive weeks. With a total of 65 weeks on the list, the book became the best-selling novel of 1966. By the time of Susann's death in 1974, it had entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling novel in publishing history, with more than 17 million copies sold. By 2016, the book had sold more than 31 million copies.

In popular culture
In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, when Billy Pilgrim is brought to Tralfamadore for the first time and asks for reading material, he is given The Valley of The Dolls, which is the only physical copy of an English-speaking book the Tralfamadorians have aboard their spaceship.

In Black Mirror season 6 episode 3, Beyond the Sea, the character of Lana is seen reading the book.

In the Stephen King novel Billy Summers, the character Alice Maxwell makes reference to the book.

In State of Grace Season 2 Episode 12, main characters Hannah and Grace are at a bookstore looking at the book's cover and pondering what it's about. Just as they're starting to take a peek inside the book to find out, Grace's mother Tattie snatches the book away and scolds them, saying the book is a "trashy" one for adults and "not for children!"

In Malcolm in the Middle season 3 episode 5, Eric's bunk-mate criticizes the book's ending.

In 2012, MARINA (previously known as Marina and The Diamonds) released her Electra Heart album, the tenth song on the track is called 'Valley of the Dolls', one of the lyrics is as follows; "in the valley of the dolls, we sleep, got a hole inside of me".

Adaptations and character portrayals
In 1967, the book was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Mark Robson (Peyton Place), and starring Barbara Parkins as Anne, Patty Duke as Neely, Paul Burke (Lyon), Sharon Tate (Jennifer), and Susan Hayward (Helen). The screenplay was written by Helen Deutsch (National Velvet) and Dorothy Kingsley (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), and produced by Robson and David Weisbart. Like the book, although the reviews were scathing, the film was an enormous box-office hit, becoming the sixth most popular of the year with $44 million at the domestic box office. Susann, who had a cameo in the film as a news reporter, hated the film. The film became a celebrated cult classic in later years, often cited as a key example of camp in cinema.

Because of the success of the film adaptation, a sequel was rushed into development by Fox in early 1968. Susann provided a title for the film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and a treatment that involved Anne Welles moving into television journalism while attempting to raise her teenage daughter, Julie, as a single mother following another rocky love affair with Lyon Burke. After a year's work by two screenwriters did not result in a script Fox executives wanted to produce, Susann and her husband, Irving Mansfield, who was attached as producer, were removed from the project. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was instead made and released in 1970 as an unofficial sequel/musical-comedy parody of the first film. Sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer produced and directed Beyond from a screenplay by his friend, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert. While a modest box-office hit and later a cult classic, the X-rated film resulted in an ultimately successful lawsuit from Susann and varying levels of embarrassment from future Fox regimes over the film's uses of nudity and violence. Because of the legal issues with Susann, the characters of Anne and Lyon were renamed and recast without Parkins and Burke.

The novel was re-adapted by Fox for television in 1981 as Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls, a mini-series executive-produced by Susann's widower, Irving Mansfield, and directed by Walter Grauman. This version stars Catherine Hicks, Lisa Hartman, and Veronica Hamel. In 1994 a late-night, syndicated television soap opera, Valley of the Dolls, ran for one season and 65 episodes. The premise was a loose adaptation of the novel. BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 15-episode dramatisation scripted by Yvonne Antrobus over three weeks in August and September 2005. It was part of the Woman's Hour programme's ongoing fifteen-minute daily drama slot, and has been rebroadcast several times on BBC Radio 4 Extra in three 70-minute omnibus episodes.

The creation of the novel, film and the never-made film sequel meant to star Parkins and Burke are the subjects of an acclaimed 2020 non-fiction book written by Stephen Rebello, Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time.

title: Valley of the Dolls (novel)


text:
Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries/March 2

Nevada Territory is a stub. If and when it is expanded, it can be part of the rotation on this page.

 * 1861 - The United States organized Nevada Territory.

First edition of Time Magazine
Why does this anniversary appear on this day, when in the article itself (and on the cover of the first edition) the date is March 3? eman 01:44, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Dunno ... but many magazines and journals are published before the date of issue.... Anyway, I've moved it to March 3. -- PFHLai 11:13, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

2012 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 10:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * New articles (unused): Steel Workers Organizing Committee
 * Omitted: Convention of 1836, Pope Pius XII, Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Lucky Lady II, Soyuz 28
 * Included: League of Lezhë (first appearance), College of Arms (first appearance), Battle of the Rice Boats (first appearance), Founding Congress of the Comintern (first appearance), King Kong (1933 film) (first appearance)

2013 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 23:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Deleted: Ho Chi Minh (date not in article, also appears on May 19); Europa (moon) (date not in article, also appears on January 7)
 * Moved to Ineligible: Battle of the Bismarck Sea (TFA for March 3, 2013)
 * Omitted: League of Lezhë; Battle of the Rice Boats; King Kong (1933 film)
 * Included: Convention of 1836 (2nd appearance, last in 2011); Pope Pius XII (2nd appearance, last in 2011); Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game (first appearance)
 * Repeats: College of Arms (2nd consecutive appearance, 2 total); Founding Congress of the Comintern (2nd consecutive appearance, 2 total)

2014 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 11:26, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Rescued from Ineligible (unused): Semaphore line; King Kong (1933 film); Battle of the Bismarck Sea
 * Omitted: College of Arms; Convention of 1836/Texas Declaration of Independence; Founding Congress of the Comintern; Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game
 * Included: League of Lezhë (2nd appearance, last in 2012); Rutherford B. Hayes (first appearance); Operation Rolling Thunder (first appearance); Soyuz 28 (5th appearance, last in 2011)
 * Repeats: Pope Pius XII (2nd consecutive appearance, 3 total; 75th anniversary)

2015 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 11:57, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Omitted: League of Lezhë; Rutherford B. Hayes; Pope Pius XII
 * Included: College of Arms (3rd appearance, last in 2013); Semaphore line (3rd appearance, last in 2010); Steel Workers Organizing Committee (first appearance)
 * Repeats: Operation Rolling Thunder (2nd consecutive appearance, 2 total; 50th anniversary); Soyuz 28 (2nd consecutive appearance, 6 total)

Nineteen Day Fast

 * Next year, the Nineteen Day Fast will start on March 1st, rather than on March 2nd. This is due to a change in the Baha'i Calendar that aligns the start of the new year to the equinox in Tehran rather than the Gregorian date of March 21st.  I wonder if we should make the change now for March 1st and March 2nd, so that it is not mistakenly copied over from 2015.  Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 03:19, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I would add a note to the talk page. Is this a permanent move, or a one-time deal? — howcheng  {chat} 06:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It's going to be year by year. The Nineteen Day Fast will now start 19 days before the vernal equinox, not 19 days before March 21st.  Some years it's going to start on March 2nd, some on March 1st, and I can imagine in some years it could even be February 28th/29th.  Regards, -- 174.115.93.215 (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

2016 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 11:09, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Omitted: College of Arms; Semaphore line; Steel Workers Organizing Committee; Operation Rolling Thunder
 * Included: League of Lezhë (3rd appearance, last in 2014); Roberto Cofresí/Capture of the Anne (both: first appearance); 1st Congress of the Comintern (3rd appearance, last in 2013); Lucky Lady II (2nd appearance, last in 2011)
 * Repeats: Soyuz 28 (3rd consecutive appearance, 7 total)

League of Lezhë
"1444 – Skanderbeg organised the League of Lezhë, an alliance of Albanian principalities that is regarded as the first unified Albanian state."

This assertion is factually incorrect and violates NPOV. Multiple reliable sources used in the article explain that:
 * "Skanderbeg organised the League of Lezhë" - Skanderbeg did not organize the League of Lezhë. Venetians controlled Albania Veneta and organized this alliance in the Venetian-held town of Lezhë to create military alliance aimed against the Ottoman Empire. Skanderbeg was appointed as commander of this alliance, he did not organize it.
 * "an alliance of Albanian principalities" - This was not an alliance of Albanian principalities. Regional Albanian and Serbian chieftains concluded (along the Adriatic coast from southern Epirus to the Bosnian border) an alliance aimed against the Ottoman Empire.
 * "that is regarded as the first unified Albanian state" - Hipothesis about this alliance being a state has not received a significant scholarly support. Adjective "first unified Albanian" much less.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Please suggest some replacement text, as you seem to know more about the subject than I do. Thanks. — howcheng  {chat} 05:31, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I would suggest completely neutral text only with information supported by scholarly consensus. That text should be quite sufficient without disputable assertions connected with Albanian nationalistic myth-making which insists that this alliance of pure Albanian regional chieftains was (first unified state) of Albanian nation, consisting of unified principalities that were also Albanian. My proposal is (please copy edit if necessary):
 * 1444 – The League of Lezhë, an alliance of the regional chieftains, was established in Venetian Albania with Skanderbeg as its commander.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 10:00, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

2017 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 08:01, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Moved to Ineligible: Semaphore line (maintenance); King Kong (1933 film) (maintenance)
 * New articles (unused): U.S. Steel (moved from February 25)
 * Omitted: League of Lezhë; 1st Congress of the Comintern; Lucky Lady II
 * Included: College of Arms (4th appearance, last in 2015); Steel Workers Organizing Committee (2nd appearance, last in 2015; 80th anniversary); Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game (2nd appearance, last in 2013); Susanna M. Salter (first appearance); Dusty Springfield (first appearance)
 * Repeats: Roberto Cofresí/Capture of the Anne (both: 2nd consecutive appearance, 2 total); Soyuz 28 (4th consecutive appearance, 8 total)

2018 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 17:12, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Omitted: College of Arms; Roberto Cofresí/Capture of the Anne; Steel Workers Organizing Committee; Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game; Susanna M. Salter; Dusty Springfield
 * Included: League of Lezhë (4th appearance, last in 2016); Battle of the Rice Boats (2nd appearance, last in 2012); Battle of the Bismarck Sea (7th appearance, last in 2011; 75th anniversary); Charles I, Count of Flanders (first appearance); Bedřich Smetana (first appearance); Gisela Januszewska (first appearance)
 * Repeats: Soyuz 28 (5th consecutive appearance, 9 total; 40th anniversary)

2019 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 17:08, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Moved to Ineligible: Roberto Cofresí/Capture of the sloop Anne (dates are inconsistent)
 * Omitted: League of Lezhë; Battle of the Rice Boats; Battle of the Bismarck Sea; Charles I, Count of Flanders; Bedřich Smetana; Gisela Januszewska
 * Included: College of Arms (5th appearance, last in 2017); 1st Congress of the Comintern (4th appearance, last in 2016; 100th anniversary); Lucky Lady II (3rd appearance, last in 2016; 70th anniversary); William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (first appearance); Alexander Bullock (first appearance); Dusty Springfield (2nd appearance, last in 2017; 20th anniversary)
 * Repeats: Soyuz 28 (6th consecutive appearance, 10 total)

2020 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 16:55, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Deleted: Roberto Cofresí/Capture of the sloop Anne (moved to March 5)
 * Omitted: 1st Congress of the Comintern; Lucky Lady II; Soyuz 28/Vladimír Remek (Remek was previously ineligible); William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield; Alexander Bullock; Dusty Springfield
 * Included: Optical telegraph (4th appearance, last in 2015; rescued from from Ineligible); U.S. Steel (3rd appearance, last in 2016); Battle of the Bismarck Sea (8th appearance, last in 2018); Top quark (first appearance; 25th anniversary); Francesco Bianchini (2nd appearance, last in 2018; also appeared on December 13, his birthday); Louis-Gabriel Suchet (first appearance); Grete Hermann (first appearance)
 * Repeats: College of Arms (2nd consecutive appearance, 6 total)

2021 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 07:46, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * New articles (ineligible): Lionel Matthews (TFA for 2021)
 * Omitted: College of Arms; Optical telegraph; U.S. Steel; Battle of the Bismarck Sea; Top quark; Francesco Bianchini; Louis-Gabriel Suchet; Grete Hermann
 * Included: League of Lezhë (5th appearance, last in 2018); Carl Sylvius Völkner (first appearance); rescued from Ineligibleblurb previously featured Völkner incident, which remains ineligible, and is making its 3rd appearance, last in 2009); Steel Workers Organizing Committee (3rd appearance, last in 2017); Ne Win/1962 Burmese coup d'état (Ne Win: 2nd appearance, last in 2007; Coup: first appearance; rescued from Ineligible); Moscovium/Tennessine/Oganesson (all: first appearance); George Sandys (first appearance); Susanna M. Salter (2nd appearance, last in 2017); Selim Sırrı Tarcan (2nd appearance, last in 2019; also appeared on March 25, his birthday)

2022 notes
— howcheng  {chat} 08:05, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Omitted: Carl Sylvius Völkner; Steel Workers Organizing Committee; Moscovium/TennessineOganesson; George Sandys; Susanna M. Salter; Selim Sırrı Tarcan
 * Included: Great Slave Auction (first appearance); 1st Congress of the Comintern (5th appearance, last in 2019); Soyuz 28/Vladimír Remek (Soyuz: 11th appearance, last in 2019; Remek: first); Pope Adrian VI (first appearance); James A. Gilmore (first appearance); Lionel Matthews (first appearance)
 * Repeats: League of Lezhë (2nd consecutive appearance, 6 total); Ne Win/1962 Burmese coup d'état (both: 2nd consecutive appearance; NW: 3 total; Coup: 2 total; 60th anniversary)

Suggestion for the 2024 anniversary
Remove: 1919 – Communist, revolutionary-socialist, and syndicalist delegates met in Moscow to establish the Communist International., which has a main article of 1st Congress of the Comintern Add: 2022 – Russian forces capture the city of Kherson during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has a main article of the Battle of Kherson.

The battle article is in better shape than the 1919 article (it actually has pictures) & it is a recent event which had decent significance and attention across the world. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 21:25, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As this got no attention or comments for over 2 months, I went ahead and did the replacement. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 21:50, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hooks for OTD are usually swapped a couple days before the date. If you put it in the template now, future OTD swappers might think it ran the previous year and replace it. It is better to add new entries to the eligible list. Z1720 (talk) 22:42, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh got it. The swap was temporarily undone. If someone sees this discussion before March 2, 2024, please do the swap as I proposed. Cheers! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:11, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

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


text:
Sikander Bakht

Sikander Bakht (24 August 1918 – 23 February 2004) was an Indian politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as the 15th governor of Kerala from 2002 until his death. He was elected as the Vice President of the BJP, served as its leader in the Rajya Sabha, and as a cabinet minister in the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 2000, he was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour of the Government of India.

Early life
Sikander Bakht was born in Quresh Nagar in Delhi, India in 1918. He attended the Anglo Arabic Senior Secondary School, Delhi and completed his Bachelor of Science from the Anglo-Arabic College (now known as Zakir Husain College) in Delhi. During his school and college days he was a keen hockey player and represented Delhi University and Delhi in various tournaments. He also played and captained the Independents Hockey Club. He once said he is member of BJP and always maintained that India is land of secularism and supported the ethos of India.

Political career
In 1952, Bakht was elected to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi as a Congress candidate. In 1968 he was elected as the Chairman of Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking. In 1969 the Congress party split and Bakht stayed with Congress (Organisation). Bakht was then elected to The Metropolitan Council of Delhi as a Congress (O) candidate. On 25 June 1975, Emergency was declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Bakht along with other opposition leaders was imprisoned on 25 June 1975. He was lodged in the Rohtak Jail until his release in December 1976. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered General Elections in March 1977. As soon as the opposition leaders were released, they merged all opposition parties to form The Janta Party.

In March 1977, Bakht was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Indian Parliament) as a Janata Party candidate, from Chandni Chowk in New Delhi. Morarji Desai was appointed Prime Minister and he appointed Bakht as a Cabinet Minister for Works, Housing, Supply and Rehabilitation. He served in this capacity till July 1979.

In 1980 the Janta Party split and Bakht opted to be with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was appointed General Secretary of BJP. In 1984 he was made the Vice President of BJP.

In 1990 Bakht was elected to the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament) from Madhya Pradesh. In 1992 he became the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. (The Leader of Opposition is equivalent to Cabinet Minister's post.) On 10 April 1996 he was reelected from Madhya Pradesh to the Rajya Sabha.

In May 1996, Atal Bihari Vajpayee offered Bakht the post of Minister of Urban Affairs when he formed his government. Bakht, however, demanded a higher post, and on 24 May he was given the additional post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Vajpayee Government lasted only 13 days. Bakht was Foreign Minister for little more than a week, as he was forced to resign when Vajpayee's government collapsed on 1 June 1996. After the collapse of the Vajpayee government, Bakht became the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha once again.

In 1998 Vajpayee was again appointed Prime Minister and Bakht was appointed Industry Minister, a post he held until 2002. In addition, he was appointed the Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha. After serving an entire term as Industries Minister, Bakht retired from active politics and was appointed the Governor of Kerala in 2002. He was the first BJP leader ever to be appointed the governor of Kerala.

Awards
In 2000 Bakht was awarded the Padma Vibhushan. This is the second highest Indian civilian award. The four other persons from the BJP who have been awarded the Padma Vibhushan are Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani has since been awarded Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of India.

Death
Bakht finished his term in Rajya Sabha on 9 April 2002. 9 days later, he was sworn in as Governor of Kerala, succeeding Sukhdev Singh Kang. At the age of 83 years, 258 days, he was the oldest Governor of Kerala state. He was highly popular and served in this post until his death. Bakht died in the Medical College Hospital in Kerala's capital city Thiruvananthapuram on 23 February 2004, from complications of intestinal surgery which was performed on 19 February. He was the first Governor of Kerala who died in office. He was replaced two days later by Karnataka governor T. N. Chaturvedi. There was concern, particularly among BJP members, that Bakht might have died because of medical negligence, but nothing was proven. Chief Minister A. K. Antony, at the time of Sikander Bakht's death, had to give into popular demand to order an inquiry to examine if there was any lapse on part of doctors or any other motive.

The President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, said "In his death we have lost a prominent public personality and a statesman." Prime Minister Vajpayee said "Mr. Bakht was a freedom-fighter. He struggled for democracy and the nationalist cause with courage and conviction. He rendered distinguished service as a member of my Cabinet for sometime."

title: Sikander Bakht


text:
Talk:Confrontation (Rackham)

VfD

 * Confrontation - dictionary definition, nothing more. Fuzheado 00:09, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Should be redirected to conflict or argument or something similar. Mintguy (T) 00:17, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Too ambiguous to redirect. Anthony DiPierro 16:25, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Only a (useless) definition. Jacob1207 21:25, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep; this could be revised into an article on human response to conflict. -Branddobbe 22:58, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. What branddobbe said + how other species react to confrontations + witness confrontations. BL 10:37, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: Dictionary definition. Animals that have unique confrontational displays will have them listed in the animals site. Oberiko 19:56, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary Rossami 04:37, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete - move to wiktionary - Texture 00:07, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wiktionary
I moved the previous content to Wiktionary. Optim 07:34, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Expansion
This page could really do with some expansion and further information. The Warhammer pages contain tons of background info and helpful things like that, including races, geography, etc. If any can add similar information here (such as races, background story, etc) it would, in my opinion, add considerably to the article quality. Prophaniti 17:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Links
It seems the game has been discontinued in every sense. None of the sites behind external links (including the one to manufacturer's web site) is up any more (except for UK and Italian Conf'Federation of the Red Dragon sites). Maybe to add that note, and/or update the links accordingly. Aleks009 (talk) 08:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Confrontation (Rackham). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060912164220/http://www.metalforge.com.au/ to http://www.metalforge.com.au/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:04, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Confrontation (Rackham)


text:
Talk:Huckleberry Finn (disambiguation)

Why two different articles?
Why are there two articles about Huckleberry Finn? There's both Huckleberry finn and 'Huckleberry Finn'. Somebody should at least change the title on the articles.
 * Looks like its been taken care of. Propound 02:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Musical
"Huckleberry Finn, an opera, by Hall Overton commissioned by the Barney Jaffin Foundation, was presented by The Juilliard Opera Company just months before he died on November 24, 1972."

I think this sentence needs to be disambiguated. Is the "he" referring to the composer of the musical, or Twain? --xgravity23 02:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC) updated xgravity23 04:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The same exact same sentence was written on the composer's page, so I removed it from this one. Unclear and no need to have it on both. Propound 10:15, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Propound, I disagree, but only if that "he" refers to Twain. If it is referring to the composer, which I assume it is, since it appears on his page, then you are right. It is unnecessary on this page. xgravity23 22:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Primary topic
I believe "Huckleberry Finn" should redirect to the book and this page should be "Huckleberry Finn (disambiguation)." I've started a discussion at Talk:Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (John User:Jwy talk) 05:20, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Huckleberry Finn (disambiguation)


text:
T. N. Chaturvedi

Triloki Nath Chaturvedi (January 18, 1928—January 5, 2020) spent almost 70 years of his life in the administrative and political system of independent India. He was a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), held the constitutional position of Comptroller & Auditor General of India, was an elected member of the Indian Parliament, and was appointed by the President of India to the constitutional office of Governor of Karnataka and Kerala. He was honored with the Padma Vibushan for public service in 1991. He was associated with numerous academic, research, literary and philanthropic institutions as a member and in various leadership capacities.

Early life and education
Triloki Nath Chaturvedi was born in the village of Tirwa, in the Kannauj area of Uttar Pradesh on January 18, 1928. His father, Pandit Kamta Nath Chaturvedi, was a lawyer and homeopath. He lost his mother, Vidyavati, when he was less than a year old. After studying at the local village school and college he joined Christ Church College, Kanpur and subsequently Allahabad University, from where he obtained an MA LLB degree. He stood First Class throughout in MA, and was presented the University Gold Medal for Economics and Political Science. He sat for the Provincial Civil Service (PCS) examination and stood first in the entire nation. He also sat for the new Indian Administrative Service examination and was selected. He married Prakashvati Dubey (1933-89) in 1952. They had one daughter and three sons.

Civil service (1950-84)
In 1950, Triloki Nath Chaturvedi was inducted into the first batch of the IAS after the commencement of the Constitution of India. He trained at Metcalfe House in Delhi, and received in-service training in Allahabad and Moradabad. He was then attached to the Rajasthan cadre of the IAS, and served there in various capacities, such as Private Secretary to the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Collector and District Magistrate of Ajmer, and Secretary in the departments of Industries, Mines, Town Planning, and Tourism. He was also Chairman of the Jaipur Development Authority. During his stay in Ajmer, he was responsible for clearing the area around the historic dargah of Moinuddin Chisthi. After the slum and encroachments were cleared, a wide road was built as well as a market nearby. As a Fellow of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (an arm of the World Bank), he studied in the US in the 1950s. He visited Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. He met scholars and administrators such as Henry Kissinger, George F Kennan, and John Kenneth Galbraith. TN Chaturvedi was sent on deputation to the Central Government in 1967 by the Government of Rajasthan, after 17 years of service in the state administration. He was appointed Joint Director, National Academy of Administration (later Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration), Mussoorie, and served there from 1967 to 1971. The academy is the training centre for newly-inducted members of all Central Administrative Services such as the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service etc. Some of his illustrious trainees during this period were Gopal Gandhi, Wajahat Habibullah and Aruna Roy. He was posted as Chief Secretary, Delhi Administration, where he served from 1971 to 1973. He then served as Director, India Investment Centre from 1973 to 1976. He was appointed Chief Commissioner, Chandigarh in 1976, and was there till 1978, during the period of Internal Emergency. As Chief Commissioner, he was the administrative head of Chandigarh. During his tenure, among his achievements was the construction of quarters for the employees of Chandigarh Administration, thus fulfilling a long-standing demand. He also gave Nek Chand, an employee of the Chandigarh Administration, the founder of the Rock Garden, the full-time job of expanding and maintaining the garden. During this period he was made a member of a three-man committee to review the working of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. While the majority report recommended that the Institute be shut down as a waste of public money, TN Chaturvedi put in a minority report, in which he insisted that it was an institute of national importance, and should continue its work. He suggested ways and means by which reforms could improve its effectiveness. The minority report ensured that the Institute was not closed down. At the end of the Emergency period, he was transferred back to Rajasthan in 1978 as Chairman, Rajasthan Industrial and Minerals Development Corporation (RMIDC). A few months later, the Executive Council of the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) in Delhi requested the Central Government for his services as Director of the institute. The institute is a centre for academic research in administration. TN Chaturvedi recruited new staff, and encouraged the implementation of academic programs which served as mid-career refresher courses for administrators. Under his editorship, the Indian Journal of Public Administration became an internationally-recognized journal in its field. TN Chaturvedi joined the IIPA as a member in 1959. He was elected a member of the Executive Council of IIPA from 1970 to 2002. He was Editor of the prestigious Indian Journal of Public Administration from 1971 to 1997. He was elected Chairman of the Standing Committee from 1990 to 2002. He was elected Vice-President, IIPA, from 1994 to 2004. He was elected Chairman, IIPA in 2004 and served till his death in 2020. He was appointed Union Education Secretary in the Ministry of Education in 1982 for a brief period. The Education Ministry at the time incorporated the subsequent ministries of sports, women and child welfare, culture, and education. At the instance of the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, he was appointed as Union Home Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and remained in this position until 1984. As Home Secretary, he dealt with numerous issues of national importance, such as the insurgencies in Kashmir and Punjab, and the students’ movement against infiltrators in Assam.

Comptroller and Auditor General of India
He was deemed retired from the IAS upon his appointment as Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG, 1984-90). The CAG is a constitutional position, and the holder is appointed by the President. TN Chaturvedi began the process of modernization of the office of the CAG. He made the first changes in the administrative structure of the office since independence, which led to expansion of opportunities for officers of the CAG, and making it more efficient. New concepts, such as scientific audit, concurrent audit, and internal audit were introduced. Efforts were made at the international level to connect with the audit institutions of other countries which culminated in India offering training to audit officers of many countries, and being empanelled as a United Nations auditor. An effort was also made to make the audit reports more understandable to the layman. The traditionally low-key profile of the CAG was suddenly raised as these reports were brought into the public realm by media. The institution of the CAG, and Chaturvedi personally, came under attack inside and outside Parliament by the government and the Congress Party in 1989 after the release of an audit report of the purchase of the Swedish Bofors gun by the army, which pointed out lapses in the procurement process.

Political career
TN Chaturvedi joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1991, at the request of BJP leaders Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Kannauaj. He was twice elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in 1992 and 1998. He was a member of the National Council of the BJP, its highest policy-making body. An active parliamentarian, he was on the panel of vice-chairmen of the Rajya Sabha. He was Chairman of the Committee on Industry and of the Delhi Public Library. He was also a member of the Committees on external affairs, defence, public accounts, money laundering, patents, and on the securities scam. He was a member of Indian Council of Social Science Research, Indian Council of Historical Research, National Book Trust, and Asiatic Society (Kolkata). He was also Chancellor of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapith. He was Vice-Chairman, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) Society (now renamed Prime Mimisters’ Museum and Library) and the Chairman of its Executive Council (2001-04), He was elected as India’s representative on the Executive Board of UNESCO in 2001. He was the first pathak prahari (ombudsman) of the Hindi newspaper Navbharat Times in 1990. Prime Minister Chandrasekhar was the chief guest at the inaugural function.

Governor
TN Chaturvedi was appointed Governor of Karnataka by President APJ Abdul Kalam in August, 2002. In 2004, he was also briefly Governor of Kerala. Chaturvedi was praised for the manner in which he handled the situation when the coalition government in Karnataka of the Congress and the Janata Dal (S) broke down, and the Janata Dal (S) partnered with the BJP. He won the trust and respect of all political parties in the state. The historian Ramchandra Guha described him as one of the best governors that Karnataka had seen.

Publications
He published two books, Transfer of Technology, and Comparative Public Administration (in Hindi and English). He edited or co-edited over 30 books. Academically inclined, he wrote articles and gave lectures on subjects as varied as public administration, ethics in public life, accountability, good governance, the Renaissance in India, Sri Sarda Devi, etc. He was an accomplished writer and speaker in both English and Hindi. His editorials in Sahitya Amrit evoked great interest, with readers sending letters praising them, or asking further questions on the issues discussed.

Awards
He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan for public service in 1991. Among his many other awards were the Magsaysay Plaque for Distinguished Contributions to Public Service and Public Audit by EROPA, Manila (1987), and the first DAV Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017.

Personal life
TN Chaturvedi had always been interested in spiritual subjects since childhood. While open to all paths, he was particularly interested in Sai Baba, Sathya Sai Baba, Ramana Maharishi, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. A life-long lover of books, and a voracious reader, he amassed an immense collection of 1,20,000 books in Hindi and English. These cover all aspects of world history, and specifically Indian history and religion, spirituality, the Nationalist Movement, Indian Renaissance, public administration, economics, management. He had many rare books, including a first edition of Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi. After his death, his family donated them to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library, where an annual lecture in his memory is also held. The first lecture was delivered by His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet in January, 2023. He was also a great lover of dogs, having kept eight dogs at his house since 1984. He was a familiar and loved figure to stray dogs in his neighbourhood, and they adopted him, taking him for long walks and ensuring that he remembered to give them biscuits.

Last years
TN Chaturvedi led an active retirement. At the time of his death he was Chairman, IIPA; Chairman, Hindi Bhawan; Chairman, Institute for Studies in Industrial development, Chairman, Lala Diwan Chand Trust; Vice-Chairman, Rajendra Prasad Bhawan Trust. He was also Vice-President, DAV Managing Committee, and the Chairman of PGDAV College, Delhi. He was editor of the Hindi monthly Sahitya Amrit from 2007 till his death. He was Chairman of the Finance Committee of NMML at the time of his death.

Death
He died suddenly but peacefully on January 5, 2020 in Noida. He was described by the distinguished jurist Fali Nariman as one of the finest civil servants that independent India had seen.

title: T. N. Chaturvedi


text:
Talk:Vitreous ice

Huh! Is this a joke? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 07:39, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC) It's real Salsb 01:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Vitreous ice


text:
Electret

An electret (formed as a portmanteau of electr- from "electricity" and -et from "magnet") is a dielectric material that has a quasi-permanent electrical polarisation. An electret has internal and external electric fields, and is the electrostatic equivalent of a permanent magnet.

The term electret was coined by Oliver Heaviside for a (typically dielectric) material which has electrical charges of opposite sign at its extremities. Some materials with electret properties were already known to science and had been studied since the early 1700s. One example is the electrophorus, a device consisting of a slab with electret properties and a separate metal plate. The electrophorus was originally invented by Johan Carl Wilcke in Sweden in 1762 and improved by Alessandro Volta in Italy in 1775. The first documented case of production was by Mototarô Eguchi in 1925 who melting a suitable dielectric material such as a polymer or wax that contains polar molecules, and then allowing it to solidify in a powerful electric field. The polar molecules of the dielectric align themselves to the direction of the electric field, producing a dipole electret with a permanent polarization. Modern electrets are sometimes made by embedding excess charges into a highly insulating dielectric, e.g. using an electron beam, corona discharge, injection from an electron gun, electric breakdown across a gap, or a dielectric barrier.

Electret types
There are two types of electrets:
 * Real-charge electrets which contain excess free charges such as electrons or electron holes of one or both polarities which can move around, either
 * on the dielectric's surfaces (a surface charge)
 * within the dielectric's volume (a space charge)
 * Space charge electrets with internal bipolar charges known as ferroelectrets.
 * Oriented-dipole electrets contain oriented (aligned) dipoles. These contain bound charges at their surface, which are not free to move around. These are similar to ferroelectric materials, and are always in materials which have no inversion symmetry so would also display piezoelectricity.

Similarity to magnets
Electrets, like magnets, are dipoles. Another similarity is the fields: they produce an electrostatic field (as opposed to a magnetic field) outside the material. When a magnet and an electret are near one another, a rather unusual phenomenon occurs: while stationary, neither has any effect on one another. However, when an electret is moved with respect to a magnetic pole, a force is felt which acts perpendicular to the magnetic field, pushing the electret along a path 90 degrees to the expected direction of "push" as would be felt with another magnet.

Similarity to capacitors
There is a similarity between an electret and the dielectric layer used in capacitors; the difference is that dielectrics in capacitors have an induced polarisation that is only transient, dependent on the potential applied on the dielectric, while dielectrics with electret properties exhibit quasi-permanent charge storage or polarisation. Some materials also display ferroelectricity (i.e. they react to the external fields with a hysteresis of the polarisation). Ferroelectrics can retain the polarisation permanently because they are in thermodynamic equilibrium, and thus are used in ferroelectric capacitors. Although electrets are only in a metastable state, those fashioned from very low leakage materials can retain excess charge or polarisation for many years. An electret microphone is a type of condenser microphone that eliminates the need for a polarisation voltage from the power supply by using a permanently charged material.

Materials
Electret materials are quite common in nature. Quartz and other forms of silicon dioxide, for example, are naturally occurring electrets. Today, most electrets are made from synthetic polymers, e.g. fluoropolymers, polypropylene, polyethyleneterephthalate (PET), etc. Real-charge electrets contain either positive or negative excess charges or both, while oriented-dipole electrets contain oriented dipoles. The quasi-permanent internal or external electric fields created by electrets can be exploited in various applications.

Manufacture
Bulk electrets can be prepared by heating or melting the material, then cooling it in the presence of a strong electric field. The electric field repositions the charge carriers or aligns the dipoles within the material. When the material cools, solidification "freezes" the dipoles in position. Materials used for electrets are usually waxes, polymers or resins. One of the earliest recipes consists of 45% carnauba wax, 45% white rosin, and 10% white beeswax, melted, mixed together, and left to cool in a static electric field of several kilovolts/cm. The thermo-dielectric effect, related to this process, was first described by Brazilian researcher Joaquim Costa Ribeiro.

Electrets can also be manufactured by embedding excess negative charge within a dielectric using a particle accelerator, or by stranding charges on, or near, the surface using high voltage corona discharges, a process called corona charging. Excess charge within an electret decays exponentially. The decay constant is a function of the material's relative dielectric constant and its bulk resistivity. Materials with extremely high resistivity, such as PTFE, may retain excess charge for many hundreds of years. Most commercially produced electrets are based on fluoropolymers (e.g. amorphous Teflon) machined to thin films.

Patents

 * Nowlin, Thomas E., and Curt R. Raschke,, "A process for making polymer electrets"

title: Electret


text:
François Lonseny Fall

François Lonseny Fall (born 21 April 1949) is a Guinean diplomat and politician. He briefly served as Prime Minister of Guinea from February 23, 2004 to July 15, 2004, under authoritarian President Lansana Conté. Later, under democraticly elected President Alpha Condé, he was Secretary-General of the Presidency from December 2010 to October 2012 and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from October 2012 to January 2016.

Early life and career
Fall received a master's degree in law from the University of Conakry in 1976 and was Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the same university from 1977 to 1979.

Career in diplomacy
In 1979, Fall began a diplomatic career, holding diplomatic posts in Paris, New York City, Lagos, Cairo, and Conakry from 1982 to 1990; he was Director of the Department of Legal and Consular Affairs at the Guinean Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000.

Fall was Guinea's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2000 to 2002. In 2000, he was Vice-President of the Fifty-Fifth Session of the United Nations General Assembly. From 2000 to 2002, he was a member of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He was then appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs on June 10, 2002. As Foreign Minister, he was Guinea's delegate to the United Nations security council during the debate over the United States military action in Iraq, and he acted as President of the United Nations Security Council in March 2003. He was also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Ministerial Committee for Security and Mediation from 2002 to 2004.

Fall was appointed as Prime Minister on February 23, 2004. After only two months, Fall resigned as Prime Minister on April 30, saying that President Lansana Conté would not let him attempt to fix the economy. He was not replaced as Prime Minister until December 2004, and until July 2004 there was some dispute as to whether he had actually left office formally.

In May 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Fall to be his Special Representative for Somalia. In that capacity, Fall also assumed charge of the UN's Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), located in Nairobi, Kenya. From the date of his appointment through mid-2005, Fall's principal task was to persuade and assist rival Somali warlords to lay down their weapons, resolve their differences, and restore national government to a country that had not had one since 1992. On 21 February 2017, he was appointed Special Representative for Central Africa and Head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) by Secretary-General António Guterres, after serving in that capacity as Acting Special Representative since November 2016.

Lonseny Fall was a minor candidate in the first round of the 2010 presidential election. He then supported Alpha Condé in the second round. Condé won in the second round; shortly after he was sworn in as President, he appointed Lonseny Fall as Secretary-General of the Presidency on 23 December 2010. Lonseny Fall served in that post for nearly two years; he was then appointed to the government as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Guineans Abroad on 5 October 2012.

Fall was dismissed from the government in early 2016, but he remained involved in regional diplomacy through other roles. Beginning in January 2016, Fall served as Vice-Chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission of the South Sudan Peace Agreement (JMEC), under the leadership of Chairman Festus Mogae. On 14 October 2016, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as his Acting Special Representative for Central Africa and Head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA); he took up the post on 1 November.

In January 2022, Francois Lounceny Fall leaves his post as United Nations Special Representative for Central Africa.

title: François Lonseny Fall


text:
Ljupčo Jordanovski

Ljupčo Jordanovski (Љупчо Јордановски, ; 13 February 1953 – 7 October 2010 ) was a Macedonian seismologist and politician.

Education background
Jordanovski was born in Štip. He received his BEng in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zagreb. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1985.

Political activities
He was a member of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia party. He took office as Speaker of the Assembly on 18 November 2003. As Speaker of the Assembly, according to the Republic of Macedonia's constitution he was the successor to the president in the event of the president's inability to serve.

Acting President of Macedonia
Accordingly, when President Boris Trajkovski was killed in a plane crash on 26 February 2004, Jordanovski was sworn in as president.

He was the acting president of the Republic of Macedonia from 26 February 2004 to 12 May 2004. He left office after presidential elections in which he did not run. He continued in his role as Speaker after his time as acting president, until 2 August 2006.

Ambassador to the United States
On 6 July 2006 he was accredited as the Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to the United States of America, but at the end of December he was recalled by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. He died unexpectedly in Skopje.

title: Ljupčo Jordanovski


text:
Hans Vaihinger

Hans Vaihinger (September 25, 1852 – December 18, 1933) was a German philosopher, best known as a Kant scholar and for his Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of 'As if'), published in 1911 although its statement of basic principles had been written more than thirty years earlier.

Biography
Vaihinger was born in Nehren, Württemberg, Germany, near Tübingen, and raised in what he described as a "very religious atmosphere". He was educated at the University of Tübingen (the Tübinger Stift), Leipzig University, and the University of Berlin. He then became a tutor and later a philosophy professor at the University of Strasbourg, before moving in 1884 to the University of Halle, where from 1892 he was a full professor.

Philosophy of As If
In Die Philosophie des Als Ob, Vaihinger argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result people construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: they behave "as if" the world matches their models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena has been observed directly, but science assumes and pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs.

Vaihinger acknowledged several precursors, especially Kant, and Hermann Lotze and wrote he felt vindicated by Friedrich Albert Lange,  but had been unaware of Jeremy Bentham's Theory of Fictions until it was brought to his attention by his translator, C. K. Ogden, at the very end of his life.

In the preface to the English edition of his work, Vaihinger expressed his principle of fictionalism: "An idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted, is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity[,] may have great practical importance." Moreover, Vaihinger denied that his philosophy was a form of skepticism because skepticism implies a doubting, whereas in his 'as if' philosophy the acceptance of patently false fictions is justified as a pragmatic non-rational solution to problems that have no rational answers.

Fictions in this sense, however, Vaihinger considers to be only "half-fictions or semi-fictions". Rather, "real fictions" are those that "are not only in contradiction with reality but self-contradictory in themselves; the concept of the atom, for example, or the 'Ding an sich'." However, the two types "are not sharply divided from one another but are connected by transitions. Thought begins with slight initial deviations from reality (half-fictions), and, becoming bolder and bolder, ends by operating with constructs that are not only opposed to the facts but are self-contradictory."

This philosophy, though, is wider than just science. One can never be sure that the world will still exist tomorrow, but one usually assumes that it does. Alfred Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, was profoundly influenced by Vaihinger's theory of useful fictions, incorporating the idea of psychological fictions into his personality construct of a fictional final goal.

Vaihinger’s philosophy of 'as if' can be viewed as one of the central premises upon which George Kelly's personal construct psychology is based. Kelly credited Vaihinger with influencing his theory, especially the idea that our constructions are better viewed as useful hypotheses rather than representations of objective reality. Kelly wrote: "Vaihinger's 'as if' philosophy has value for psychology (...) Vaihinger began to develop a system of philosophy he called the "philosophy of 'as if' ". In it he offered a system of thought in which God and reality might best be represented as paradigms. This was not to say that either God or reality was any less certain than anything else in the realm of man’s awareness, but only that all matters confronting man might best be regarded in hypothetical ways".

Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (1967) was an early mention of Vaihinger as a useful methodologist of narrativity. He says that "literary fictions belong to Vaihinger’s category of 'the consciously false.' They are not subject, like hypotheses, to proof or disconfirmation, only, if they come to lose their operational effectiveness, to neglect."

Later, James Hillman developed both Vaihinger and Adler's work with psychological fictions into a core theme of his work Healing Fiction in which he makes one of his more accessible cases for identifying the tendency to literalize, rather than "see through our meanings", with neurosis and madness.

Critical reception and legacy
During his own lifetime Vaihinger's works were generally well received both in Germany and abroad, especially in America. When, in 1924, his Philosophy of As If was published in English, the original 1911 book was already in its sixth edition. However, the American journalist Mencken was scathing in his criticism of the book, which he dismissed as an unimportant "foot-note to all existing systems". Vaihinger was also criticised by the Logical positivists who made "curt and disparaging references" to his work.

After his death, and the intellectual sea change that followed the Second World War, Vaihinger's work received little attention from philosophers. It was left to psychologists such as Kelly and writers such as Kermode to draw upon his central ideas. However, the interest of literary scholars has continued modestly with the publication of some recent "Vaihinger-inflected critical literature". A reappraisal of Vaihinger by the American philosopher Arthur Fine concluded that Vaihinger was actually the "preeminent twentieth-century philosopher of modeling". Vaihinger's influence has since markedly increased, and the currently booming fictionalism movement in the philosophy of science takes his contributions as its main historical lead and inspiration.

Works

 * 1876 Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Hartmann, Dühring and Lange)
 * 1897–1922 Kant-Studien, founder and chief editor
 * 1899 Kant – ein Metaphysiker? (Kant – a Metaphysician?)
 * 1902 Nietzsche Als Philosoph (Nietzsche as Philosopher)
 * 1906 Philosophie in der Staatsprüfung. Winke für Examinatoren und Examinanden. (Philosophy in the Degree. Cues for teachers and students.)
 * 1911 Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of 'As if')
 * 1922 Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), edited by Raymund Schmidt
 * 1924 The Philosophy of 'As if': A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind, Translated by C. K. Ogden, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1968 (First published in England by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1924).

title: Hans Vaihinger


text:
Compass (drawing tool)

A compass, more accurately known as a pair of compasses, is a technical drawing instrument that can be used for inscribing circles or arcs. As dividers, it can also be used as a tool to mark out distances, in particular, on maps. Compasses can be used for mathematics, drafting, navigation and other purposes.

Prior to computerization, compasses and other tools for manual drafting were often packaged as a set with interchangeable parts. By the mid-twentieth century, circle templates supplemented the use of compasses. Today those facilities are more often provided by computer-aided design programs, so the physical tools serve mainly a didactic purpose in teaching geometry, technical drawing, etc.

Construction and parts
Compasses are usually made of metal or plastic, and consist of two "legs" connected by a hinge which can be adjusted to allow changing of the radius of the circle drawn. Typically one leg has a spike at its end for anchoring, and the other leg holds a drawing tool, such as a pencil, a short length of just pencil lead or sometimes a pen.

Handle
The handle, a small knurled rod above the hinge, is usually about half an inch long. Users can grip it between their pointer finger and thumb.

Legs
There are two types of leg in a pair of compasses: the straight or the steady leg and the adjustable one. Each has a separate purpose; the steady leg serves as the basis or support for the needle point, while the adjustable leg can be altered in order to draw different sizes of circles.

Hinge
The screw through the hinge holds the two legs in position. The hinge can be adjusted, depending on desired stiffness; the tighter the hinge-screw, the more accurate the compass's performance. The better quality compass, made of plated metal, is able to be finely adjusted via a small, serrated wheel usually set between the legs (see the "using a compass" animation shown above) and it has a (dangerously powerful) spring encompassing the hinge. This sort of compass is often known as a "pair of Spring-Bow Compasses".

Needle point
The needle point is located on the steady leg, and serves as the center point of the circle that is about to be drawn.

Pencil lead
The pencil lead draws the circle on a particular paper or material. Alternatively, an ink nib or attachment with a technical pen may be used. The better quality compass, made of metal, has its piece of pencil lead specially sharpened to a "chisel edge" shape, rather than to a point.

Adjusting nut
This holds the pencil lead or pen in place.

Uses
Circles can be made by pushing one leg of the compasses into the paper with the spike, putting the pencil on the paper, and moving the pencil around while keeping the legs at the same angle. Some people who find this action difficult often hold the compasses still and move the paper round instead. The radius of the intended circle can be changed by adjusting the initial angle between the two legs.

Distances can be measured on a map using compasses with two spikes, also called a dividing compass (or just "dividers"). The hinge is set in such a way that the distance between the spikes on the map represents a certain distance in reality, and by measuring how many times the compasses fit between two points on the map the distance between those points can be calculated.

Compasses and straightedge
Compasses-and-straightedge constructions are used to illustrate principles of plane geometry. Although a real pair of compasses is used to draft visible illustrations, the ideal compass used in proofs is an abstract creator of perfect circles. The most rigorous definition of this abstract tool is the "collapsing compass"; having drawn a circle from a given point with a given radius, it disappears; it cannot simply be moved to another point and used to draw another circle of equal radius (unlike a real pair of compasses). Euclid showed in his second proposition (Book I of the Elements) that such a collapsing compass could be used to transfer a distance, proving that a collapsing compass could do anything a real compass can do.

Variants
A beam compass is an instrument, with a wooden or brass beam and sliding sockets, cursors or trammels, for drawing and dividing circles larger than those made by a regular pair of compasses.

Scribe-compasses is an instrument used by carpenters and other tradesmen. Some compasses can be used to draw circles, bisect angles and, in this case, to trace a line. It is the compass in the most simple form. Both branches are crimped metal. One branch has a pencil sleeve while the other branch is crimped with a fine point protruding from the end. A wing nut on the hinge serves two purposes: first it tightens the pencil and secondly it locks in the desired distance when the wing nut is turned clockwise.

Loose leg wing dividers are made of all forged steel. The pencil holder, thumb screws, brass pivot and branches are all well built. They are used for scribing circles and stepping off repetitive measurements with some accuracy.

A reduction compass or proportional dividers is used to reduce or enlarge patterns while conserving angles.

Ellipse drawing compasses are used to draw ellipse.

As a symbol

A pair of compasses is often used as a symbol of precision and discernment. As such it finds a place in logos and symbols such as the Freemasons' Square and Compasses and in various computer icons. English poet John Donne used the compass as a conceit in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (1611).

title: Compass (drawing tool)


text:
Ruff (cards)

In trick-taking games, to ruff means to play a trump card to a trick (other than when trumps were led). According to the rules of most games, a player must have no cards left in the suit led in order to ruff. Since the other players are constrained to follow suit if they can, even a low trump can win a trick. In some games, like Pinochle and Preferans, the player who cannot follow suit is required to ruff. In others, like Bridge and Whist, he may instead discard (play any card in any other suit). Normally, ruffing will win a trick. But it is also possible that a subsequent player will overruff (play a higher trump). Historically, ruff meant to "rob" i.e. exchange a card with the stock.

Usage of the word "ruff" vs. "trump"
"Ruff" is normally a verb, meaning "to play a trump card when a non-trump suit was led". "To trump" can be used as a synonym of "to ruff", but "ruff" is normally preferred, for clarity. As a noun, "ruff" and "trump" are completely different – "a ruff" means only "an instance of ruffing", while "(a) trump" means only "the suit that outranks all other suits", or "a card in this suit". Hence:
 * One can "give a ruff" to partner but not "give a trump".
 * "Hearts are trumps" but not "Hearts are ruffs".
 * "Cross ruffing" and "cross trumping" are both correct, but "cross ruffing" is preferred.
 * "Ruff and discard" is common usage but "trump and discard" is not.

Ruffing and cross-ruffing in partnership games
West plays the grand slam of 7♠ despite having only 7 high card points. The declarer can draw the outstanding trump king, ruff the diamonds in dummy, going back to the hand by club ruffs. Unless both minor suits are divided 6-0, one of the minor suits will ultimately become high and provide the missing two tricks. In summary, the declarer took one trick by leading a high card (the ace of trumps) and 10 tricks by cross-ruffing; the remaining two tricks came as result of long suit establishment.
 * A player gives a ruff by leading a card of a suit in which partner is void, enabling the trick to be taken with a trump card. Partner will then attempt to get the lead back into the original hand, by leading a certain suit, so that the process can be repeated.
 * A crossruff is a play where tricks are made by taking alternate ruffs in each hand. In order to use a crossruff, each player in the partnership must have shortness in a non-trump suit, accompanied with appropriate length in the opposite hand. Also, each partner must be short in the suit that his partner is long in. It is preferable that both players have an equal number of cards in the trump suit, otherwise a regular ruff is usually more effective, as it has the added benefit of establishing the trump suit.
 * The mechanics of the crossruff are simple but the effect can be dramatic as this extreme example, from a bridge hand, demonstrates:

 * However, there are risks with crossruffing: when the opponents also run out of cards in the suit(s) being ruffed, they can overruff (play a higher trump card); also this play may leave the trump suit unestablished so that opponents may be able to steal back a trick or two using their trumps later. Crossruffing is therefore just one possible strategy for taking extra tricks, others are establishing the trump suit, traditional ruffing and finessing.
 * Bridge considerations: the additional information given by the existence of the "dummy" in bridge produces many opportunities for ruffing and cross-ruffing
 * It is often important to cash side-suit winners before commencing a cross-ruff, otherwise the opponents may discard in the side-suit, allowing them to trump the winner later.
 * In some cases, it is effective to cross-ruff after drawing the opponents' trumps, when this can be done with trumps remaining in both hands.
 * In other cases, it is effective to cross-ruff only until one opponent becomes likely to be void in a particular suit, and revert to drawing trumps thereafter.
 * The basic defense against crossruff is simple: lead trumps whenever possible, removing trumps from both opponent's hands. In bridge this may mean that, the defense must lead trumps from the opening lead in order to prevail. Thus, it is important to recognize the situations when a trump opening lead is called for – usually, they arise when both declarer and dummy have bid other suits but found the trump fit in the third one.

Ruff and discard
A ruff and discard (also known as ruff and slough or ruff and sluff) occurs when a player leads a suit that neither opponent has – typically in a suit contract, a defender leads a suit in which dummy and declarer are both void and dummy and declarer have at least one trump each. This gives declarer the option of discarding a losing card from one hand while playing a trump from the other, usually garnering an additional trick in the process. Thus, the ruff and discard is generally to be avoided by the defenders, except in rare cases where declarer has no side suit loser to discard. It is often inflicted upon the defence via an endplay.

In the position shown, West is on lead and spades are trumps: When West leads a heart, declarer can ruff in one hand and throw a club loser from the other, making both the remaining tricks. With any other player on lead, declarer would only make one trick.

However, if one of N-S hands had a diamond instead of a club, then West's lead would make no difference: the declarer can always take the remaining two tricks by crossruffing clubs and diamonds.

Similar events can occur in other trick taking games where partnerships exist (e.g. whist) and occasionally for the defending side in bridge.

Dummy reversal
Dummy reversal (also known as reverse dummy) is a technique in contract bridge whereby declarer uses trump cards to ruff from the hand with more (longer) trumps, and retains the trumps in the other (shorter) hand to draw the opponents' remaining trumps. Normally in play technique, ruffs are taken from the hand with shorter trumps, retaining trumps in the longer hand for control. Declarer, being the first to have bid the suit, usually has more trumps than his partner (the eventual dummy) and so the term "dummy reversal" is used to describe the case where during the play, dummy is made to have more.

The purpose of dummy reversal is to yield more tricks than the normal technique; the technique can be adapted for use in other trick-taking games.

Indicators
Some indicators that a hand may lend itself to dummy reversal are:
 * shortness (singleton or void) in declarer's hand with length in the same suit in dummy
 * loser(s) in declarer's hand that cannot be ruffed or discarded on a side suit
 * adequate trump strength and length in dummy (typically a three or four card trump suit with at least two honors for drawing the final trumps)
 * entries to dummy outside of the trump suit

Example
East is in 4♠ and receives a trump lead. There are five trump tricks, three aces and king of diamonds off the top, but there is no tempo to ruff a club in dummy, as the defenders will deprive it of the trumps after they regain the lead in clubs. The solution is to ruff hearts in hand instead – in trick two, East plays ♥ A, ruffs a heart, enters the dummy with ♣A, ruffs a heart, enters the dummy with ♦ A and ruffs a heart. In this way, the declarer took three ruffs in hand, and still has two trumps in dummy to take care of opponents' trumps (assuming that they are divided 3-2, which is the most common division of five cards).

Ruffing finesse
A finesse is an attempt to take a trick with a card, not the highest in the suit, by taking advantage of the lie of the cards. At its simplest a ruffing finesse involves a high sequence (e.g. KQJ) opposite a void in the same suit. The K is led and partner is prepared to ruff if the intervening player plays the ace, or discard if the ace is not played. Repetition of this will avoid the loss of a trick to the ace, but it only works when the ace is on the right side (i.e. 50%)

Trump promotion
A technique where one side creates an otherwise non-existing trump trick by ruffing high knowing it will be over-ruffed or, in other situations, by refusing to over-ruff.

Uppercut
A play that involves one player ruffing high in the hope that an overruff by an opponent will result in the promotion of a trump card in partner's hand into a winner. This is a type of trump promotion.

Trump coup
A play that substitutes for a direct finesse in the trump suit because the hand required to lead has no trumps. At the point of execution it is important that the hand being finessed and the next hand have only trumps so that the hand being finessed is forced to trump, allowing the next hand to over-ruff. A trump reduction play is sometimes a necessary precursor to a trump coup.

Coup en passant
A play where a trump trick is "stolen" by taking the opportunity to ruff after the player who has the master trump. This is a type of indirect finesse.

Trump squeeze
A play involving a simple squeeze where a side suit presents a menace which can be established by ruffing.

Bridge strategies
Normal suit play in bridge (as opposed to the play at no trumps) revolves around the trump suit. Usually the declarer and dummy together will have the majority of trumps, as they chose the suit in which to play. Declarer will attempt to draw the opponents' trumps, leaving them with none. Declarer's remaining trumps ensure that the opponents cannot establish long cards, as they will just be trumped.

Although drawing the opponent's trumps is usually to be recommended, there are occasions when other strategies yield more tricks. One is crossruffing – drawing the opponents trumps in this case reduces the number of trumps (and hence tricks) for the crossruff. Another case is when after drawing one or two rounds of trumps the opponents are left with one master trump. In this case drawing it will use two of declarer's trumps for one of the opponents'. Unless entry problems are feared, it is usually better to let the opponents take their trump when they will.

It is important to realize that trumping in the hand with more trumps does not add tricks, as these are long cards that will win anyway. In order to gain tricks by trumping, the ruff has to be taken in the short hand, or enough ruffs must be made in the hand that was originally longer in trumps to make it shorter than the other hand (dummy reversal, described above).

title: Ruff (cards)


text:
Compass (architecture)

In carpentry, architecture, and shipbuilding, a compass is a curved circular form.

Examples

 * A compass plane is a plane that is convex, length-ways, on the underside, for smoothing the concave faces of curved woodwork.
 * A compass saw is a narrow-bladed saw that cuts a curve.
 * A compass timber is a curved (or crooked) timber, sometimes used in shipbuilding.
 * A compass brick is a curved brick.
 * A compass wall is a curved wall.
 * A compass window is a circular bay window.
 * A surveyor's compass (or circumferentor) is a measuring instrument used in surveying horizontal angles.

title: Compass (architecture)


text:
Qibla compass

A qibla (qiblah) compass (sometimes also called qibla/qiblah indicator or qiblanuma) is a modified compass used by Muslims to indicate the direction to face to perform prayers. In Islam, this direction is called qibla, and points towards the city of Mecca and specifically to the Kaaba. While the compass, like any other compass, points north, the direction of prayer is indicated by marks on the perimeter of the dial, corresponding to different cities, or by a second pointer set by the user according to their own location. To determine the proper direction, one has to know with some precision both the longitude and latitude of one's own location and those of Mecca, the city toward which one must face. Once that is determined, the values are applied to a spherical triangle, and the angle from the local meridian to the required direction of Mecca can be determined.

The indicator usually consists of a round brass box with a hinged lid and an inset magnetic compass. A list of important Islamic places with their longitudes, latitudes, is inscribed in Arabic on all sides of the box. The compass has a blued steel needle with an open circle to indicate North. It is surmounted by a brass pyramidal pivot and a glass plate covers all. A brass ring over the rim of the compass carries a degree circle numbered in 'abjad' numerals and the cardinal points are marked. The folding triangular gnomon is supported by a decorative open-work motif. The lid of the box is secured by a hook fastener. The instrument serves the user to determine the correct 'qibla' - the direction to which Muslims turn in prayer to face the Ka'ba in Mecca. Ornate qibla compasses date back at least to the 18th century. Some recent versions use digital readout instead of a magnetic pointer.

Some qibla compasses also include a tally counter, used to count the repetition of various du'a said after prayer.

History

al-Ashraf Umar II (d. 1296), sultan of the Sunni Rasulid Yemeni Caliphate, described the use of the compass as a qibla indicator in the 13th century. In a treatise about astrolabes and sundials, al-Ashraf includes several paragraphs on the construction of a compass bowl (ṭāsa). He then uses the compass to determine the north point, the meridian (khaṭṭ niṣf al-nahār), and qibla. This is the first mention of a compass in a medieval Islamic scientific text and its earliest known use as a qibla indicator, although al-Ashraf did not claim to be the first to use it for this purpose.

title: Qibla compass


text:
Silphium laciniatum

Silphium laciniatum is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known commonly as compassplant or compass plant. It is native to North America, where it occurs in Ontario in Canada and the eastern and central United States as far west as New Mexico. Other common names include prairie compass plant, pilotweed, polarplant, gum weed, cut-leaf silphium, and turpentine plant. It is a rosinweed of genus Silphium.

Description
This plant is a taprooted perennial herb producing rough-haired stems usually one to three meters tall. The leaves are variable in shape and size, being 4 to 60 cm long and 1 to 30 cm wide. They are hairy, smooth-edged or toothed, and borne on petioles or not. The back of the flower head has layers of rough, glandular phyllaries. The head contains 27 to 38 yellow ray florets and many yellow disc florets. The fruit is a cypsela which can be almost 2 cm long and is tipped with a pappus of two short awns.

Biology
The common name compass plant was inspired by the "compass orientation" of its leaves. The large leaves are held vertically with the tips pointing north or south and the upper and lower surfaces of the blades facing east or west. A newly emerging leaf grows in a random direction, but within two or three weeks it twists on its petiole clockwise or counterclockwise into a vertical position. Studies indicate that the sun's position in the early morning hours influences the twisting orientation. This orientation reduces the amount of solar radiation hitting the leaf surface. Vertical leaves facing east-west have higher water use efficiency than horizontal or north-south-facing blades.

Early settlers on the Great Plains could make their way in the dark by feeling of the leaves.

An early, (if not the earliest) descriptive naming of the compass plant is found in the 1843 hunting trip of William Clark Kennerly, who upon leaving Westport Kansas in May 1843, observed the plant and began its description in his trip:  "Westward we went, and still westward, through a  flat, arid country with no verdure except the compass plant, which we named for the reason that its large, flat leaves always pointed north and south".

Ecology
Surveys of the insect fauna on typical compass plants have noted many different taxa, often present in large numbers. One plant can produce up to 12 stems. Surveys counted an average of nearly 80 insects on each stem or within its tissues. The vast majority of insects on the stems are the gall wasps Antistrophus rufus and A. minor, and the many types of parasitoids that attack them. The gall wasps, especially A. rufus, inject eggs into the stem, an action that induces the formation of a gall in the plant tissue. The larva of the wasp lives and feeds inside the gall, overwinters there, and emerges as an adult the following spring. Over 600 galls can be in a single stem. The galls are internal in this species, and generally not visible. The adult female A. rufus locates an appropriate site to oviposit by detecting plant volatiles emitted by the fresh growing stem of its host plant, a mix of monoterpenes. The male A. rufus also uses the volatiles in his search for mates. Females mate immediately upon emergence from the gall, and the male uses volatiles to find a gall containing a female, as evidenced by the movements of his antennae upon the plant's surface. He then waits there for her to emerge.

Other insects found in the plant include several species of parasitoid wasps that attack A. rufus larvae in the galls, the two most common being Eurytoma luta and Ormyrus labotus. Others include Eupelmus vesicularis and species of the genera Brasema and Homoporus. The beetle Mordellistena aethiops lives on the plant, its larvae boring into the stems, and it is attacked by parasitoid wasps of the genera Schizopyramnus, Heterospilus, and Tetrastichus.

Many birds and mammals feed on the fruits of the plant. The eastern kingbird perches on the tall plant to watch for insect prey. Livestock find it palatable.

Uses
The plant had a variety of uses among Native American groups. The bitter, resinous sap could be made into a chewing gum. The Pawnee made a tisane with it. Many groups burned the dried root as a charm during lightning.

The plant is cultivated in gardens.

Literature
In 1882 Benjamin Alvord reviewed the literature on the plant and offered his observations.

In the environmental classic, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold devotes much of the July entry to Silphium—its hardiness, but its slow disappearance nevertheless, a harbinger of the fate of the prairie. "It is easy now to predict the future. For a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch."

title: Silphium laciniatum


text:
COMPASS

COMPASS, COMPrehensive ASSembler, is any of a family of macro assembly languages for Control Data Corporation's 3000 series, and for the 60-bit CDC 6000 series, 7600 and Cyber 70 and 170 series mainframe computers. While the architectures are very different, the macro and conditional assembly facilities are similar.

COMPASS for 60-bit machines
There are two flavors of COMPASS on the 60-bit machines:
 * COMPASS CP is the assembly language for the CP (Central Processor), the processor running user programs. See CDC 6600 CP architecture.
 * COMPASS PP is the assembly language for the PP (Peripheral Processor), only running operating system code. See CDC 6600 PP architecture.

COMPASS is a classical two-pass assembler with macro and conditional assembly features, and generates a full listing showing both the source assembly code and the generated machine code (in octal). CDC's operating systems were written almost entirely in COMPASS assembly language.

Central processor (CP or CPU) hardware maintains 24 operational registers, named A0 to A7, X0 to X7 and B0 to B7. Registers X0 to X7 are 60 bits long and are used to hold data, while registers B0 to B7 are 18 bits long and their major purpose is to hold either addresses or be used as indexing registers, except that B0 is always zero. As a programming convention, B1 (or B7) often contains positive 1.

A or address registers are also 18 bits long. Each A register pairs with the corresponding X register. Whenever an address is set into any of A1 to A5 registers, the data at that memory location (address) is loaded into the corresponding X register. Likewise, setting an address into one of A6 or A7 registers stores the data held in the corresponding X6 or X7 register to that memory location. However, A0 can be used to hold any address without affecting the contents of register X0.

CP instructions are written in a particularly user-friendly form: "SA1 A0+B1" denotes set address register A1 to the sum of address register A0 and index register B1. The hardware then initiates a memory load from the computed address into register X1.

Peripheral processor (PP or PPU) instructions are completely different from CPU instructions. Peripheral processor hardware is simpler; it has an 18-bit A (accumulator register, a 12-bit Program Address register, a 12-bit Q register (not programmer-visible), and a 22-bit R register (used to accomplish address relocation during central memory read and write instructions on Cyber 180 systems). No special job validation was required to assemble peripheral processor programs, but to be executed, such programs were required to installed into the operating system via special system editing commands.

title: COMPASS


text:
Compass (disambiguation)

A compass is a navigational instrument that indicates the direction to the magnetic poles.

Compass may also refer to:

Tools

 * Compass calipers, a tool to measure distances on a chart or map
 * Compass (drawing tool), a tool to inscribe circles and arcs

Art and entertainment

 * Compass (novel), a 2015 novel by Mathias Enard
 * Compass (Hudson), a 2005 public artwork by American artist Jon Barlow Hudson
 * Compass (Simpson), a 2003 public art work by American artist Gail Simpson
 * Compass Players (or Compass Theater), a 1950s improvised cabaret revue in Chicago, Illinois

Music

 * Compass or range, of a voice or musical instrument
 * Compass (band), a Chinese rock band
 * Compass (Assemblage 23 album), 2009
 * Compass (Jamie Lidell album), 2010
 * Compass (Mark Vincent album), 2010
 * Compass (Mark Vincent song), 2010 (later recorded by Didrik Solli-Tangen, and Sam Bailey)
 * Compass (Joshua Redman album), 2013
 * Compass (Lady Antebellum song), 2013
 * Compass Records, an independent record label founded in 1995
 * "Compass", a song by Dala from the album Everyone Is Someone
 * "Compass", a song by Jonathan Thulin from the album Science Fiction
 * "Compass", a song by Rascal Flatts from the album Rewind
 * "Compass", a song by Zella Day from the album Kicker

Television

 * Compass (1965 TV program), a 1965–1966 Canadian documentary television program
 * Compass (1986 TV program), a 1986 local Canadian television news program about Prince Edward Island
 * Compass (Australian TV program), a 1988 Australian news-documentary television program
 * Compass (Falling Skies), an episode of the American television drama series Falling Skies

Business and organizations

 * Compass, Inc., an American real estate brokerage
 * Compass (think tank), a British left-wing political think tank
 * Compass Datacenters inc., a datacenter company
 * Compass Airlines (Australia), operated 1990–1993
 * Compass Airlines (North America), a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines
 * Compass Design Automation, a former integrated circuit design company
 * Compass Group, a British food-service and facilities-management company
 * Compass International Pictures, an American film-distribution company
 * Massachusetts Computer Associates, also known as COMPASS
 * Project Compass, a British programme to help ex-service personnel

Nature

 * Compass cactus or barrel cactus, members of the genera Echinocactus and Ferocactus
 * Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), a kind of sunflower
 * Pyxis, abbreviated from Pyxis Nautica, Latin for mariner's compass, southern constellation

Publications

 * The Daily Compass, a 1949–1952 New York City, New York, newspaper
 * Social Work (journal), an academic journal known as The Compass from 1920 to 1948

Navigation

 * Brunton compass, type of precision magnetic compass
 * Breithaupt compass or Geological compass
 * Hand compass, any compact magnetic compass capable of one-hand use
 * Radio direction finder, a tool used in direction finding that coincides with radio communications
 * An alternative name of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, which used the satellite Compass-M1

Traffic

 * Compass Card (San Diego), a contactless smart card used for public transit in San Diego, California
 * Compass Card (TransLink), an electronic payment system used for public transit in Vancouver, Canada
 * COMPASS, the Freeway Traffic Management System, a traffic management system in Canada

Other

 * COMPASS (computer system) used by Bank of England
 * Compass (architecture), a curved circular form
 * COMPASS or COMPrehensive ASSembler, a programming language for CDC mainframe computers in the 1960s and 1970s
 * COMPASS experiment or Common Muon and Proton Apparatus for Structure and Spectroscopy, a particle physics experiment at CERN
 * COMPASS tokamak, an experimental facility of Tokamak department of Institute of Plasma Physics AS CR
 * Grid Compass, the first laptop computer
 * Jeep Compass, a compact crossover SUV
 * Compass Project is the former name of Elasticsearch, a Java search engine framework
 * An alternative name of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, which used the satellite Compass-M1

Other uses

 * Compass (law), to purpose (or intend) something
 * Compass, Pennsylvania, United States
 * Operation Compass, a World War II military operation in the North African campaign
 * Political compass, a multi-axis model used to label or organize political thought

title: Compass (disambiguation)


text:
Compass (law)

In law, to compass is to purpose (or intend) something. It is an individual that is imagining something or to plot a plan. Compassing signifies a purpose (or design) of the mind (or will), and not carrying such design to effect.

title: Compass (law)