text:
Talk:List of Motorola products

Motorola Q
Motorola Q (http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details.jsp?globalObjectId=113) is missing.
 * And now it is added, especially considering an article exists for it. Spicy 14:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Mobile telephone split by OS?
Do you think that this should be disagregated by OS? Anlaoll 19:53, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I assume you refer to the mobile phones? For the time being I actually think the list is better as it stands, with OS related and other info behind each phone entry and an &ndash;. Such an easy scheme makes the barrier lower for people to contribute phones to the list without having to know the OS of each particular phone. Some time later I think your suggestion might be in order to realize, so thank you! --Wernher 20:19, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Add early cellular phones
The list is incomplete without mentioning the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the granddaddy of all handheld cellular telephones, and its "brick" derivatives, culminating in the 3000 series in 1994. Quicksilver 06:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

cable modems
Which processor is used by most of the cable modems being distributed around by the cable companies?

DVR boxes
The below is already on wikipedia at Motorola_6xxx shouldn't this be added to the list of Motorola Products and the Motorola_6xxx page be deleted?

The Motorola 6000 series of HDTV cable boxes includes several models:
 * Motorola 6200: HDTV Cable Box with no recording capabilities
 * Motorola 6208: Single tuner box with 80 GB hard drive
 * Motorola 6412: Dual tuner box with 120 GB hard drive

Diploid 22:34, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

DragonBall
DragonBall is listed under Microcontrollers here, but it really is a CPU. I know, it has several integrated functions beyond a CPU, but then again, Athlon64 has integrated memory controller, so does that make it a microcontroller? But seriously, I believe DragonBall should be moved to Microprocessors.

Nicely laid out site with iDEN phones.
http://kb.pcsintel.com/index.php?title=Nextel_Phones_Section 170.223.94.37 16:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone has put an ad for an half related product.
There is an ad for a 3rd party program for use with the security system. It should be removed.

Naming Issue
Internal Sprint/Nextel references call the two most-seen styles of phones "clamshell", with the flip cover, and "monolith"(what is called here the 'candybar').

Is it worth changing all instances of 'candybar' to 'monolith'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredrick Pendragon (talk • contribs) 16:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Mobile network carrier infrastructure - remove “carrier”
I think the word “carrier” should be removed from this section title. Dimetra and especially ASTRO systems are commonly owned by organizations, for example public safety agencies and government departments, who operate them directly, rather than by carriers. papageno (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Backflip
What about the Backflip? http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-BACKFLIP-with-MOTOBLUR-US-EN

Model number MB300 Miquel 'Fire' Burns (talk) 17:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Missing Motorola Spice???
I can't see why this would be missing, so I made the page, but would someone please make it conform with all the other cell phone pages? Or does someone see a reason this shouldn't be created? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_XT300 — Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertBorgersen (talk • contribs) 21:30, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

No MB series section?
Some of Motorola's Android devices, including incredibly high-powered and unusually form-factored ones (Backflip, Flipout, Flipside (MB508), Atrix 4G, Atrix 2, and Atrix HD (MB886), of all things), happen to belong to an MB series that there is NO reference to in this article. Please add it! Thanks. 69.108.65.222 (talk) 04:54, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

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Why does each product have its own page?
I don't see evidence of notability apart from the general series of having each phone have an individual page kinds of phones. Why is this done? Likeanechointheforest (talk) 17:43, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of Motorola products


text:
José María Garza Galán

José María Garza Galán (November 6, 1846 in Múzquiz, Coahuila – October 7, 1902 in Monterrey, Nuevo León) was a Mexican politician. Governor of Coahuila in 1885–1889, which gave tax exemption to the first Spinning and Weaving Factory Torreon "La Constancia".

Life
He was governor of the northern state of Coahuila during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. Garza Galán, native of Múzquiz, wanted to be again governor in 1893, but there were protests. Eventually, Porfirio Díaz asked Garza Galán to withdraw his candidacy.

Politician
Porfirista politician. He fought the Apaches to their extermination. He was elected governor of Coahuila in 1885. harassed the mayor of Cuatro Cienegas, Venustiano Carranza, to force him to resign. When he tried to reelect, the powerful families Madero and Carranza led a rebellion that ended with the intervention of Bernardo Reyes, who as representative of Porfirio Díaz deposed Garza Galan (1890).

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

title: José María Garza Galán


text:
Talk:Burning Times

factual accuracy dispute, copy from featured article candidature

 * (...)Worst however, is the question of accuracy. I suggest reviewers start by reading "Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt", a review article by a Wiccan who also has an M.A. in medieval history. One sentence summary: much of what was traditionally believed about witches and witch-hunting is now proven to be mythical. Much of the original part of the Burning Times article is based on this myth. A featureable article on this topic would include origins and early form of the myth, recent historical research which debunks it, what really happened, and attitudes and beliefs today (Wiccan and otherwise). Securiger 03:20, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Article offered by securiger is devastating. Author appears to be offering the foundation mythology of one of the religions invented in the 20th century as history; since it primarily libels another religion, needs strong evidence and balanced input to even belong in this encyclopedia. Alteripse 04:31, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Links that may help to rewrite the article

 * http://www.randi.org/jr/052804reggie.html
 * http://www.cog.org/witch_hunt.html (also mentioned above)

Merge with Witch Hunt article?
May be this article has to be merged with witch hunt? I put this article on the clean up page? Andries 09:46, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

New version
Created new accurate article some of the following may be worth merging with witchunt. --Machenphile 14:39, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The Burning Times, also known as the Women's Holocaust, began on 5 December, 1484 with a Papal Bull written by Pope Innocent VIII called Summis desiderantes which instigated very severe measures against witches in Germany. The principles enunciated by him were afterwards embodied in the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487. Summis desiderantes outsold every book in many following years except the Bible. It became a handbook for witch-hunters everywhere.

Witch Hunters
Witch hunters were average men who were paid a fee for each "Witch" they caught. In preparation for a trial, following the papal bull, they would torture the accused in hopes of finding a confession, and if none, the accused would face trial.

Witch hunters' common methods of "testing" to see if someone was a witch included stripping them naked and stabbing them with hot pokers, reading that the devil had given them a mark that was completely immune to pain. The people who would look for these marks would nearly always be men and there would always have to be at least one to three other men in the room recording thier findings.

Mock-Trials
When a "Witch" was put on trial, the whitness's testimony often involved phrases such as, "I saw her dancing with the devil" or "I saw her flying through the air on her broomstick" and that was considered "hard evidence". Andyone who spoke for the "Witch" was tried as a "Witch" soon after, and those who they had spoken against were happy to testify against them with thier "evidences".

Punishment for being a Witch
For being a Witch, most were either burned alive at the stake, hanged, or stoned. These were some of the more common ways, but some areas got more "creative" than that.

Witches Today
Witches today, many in the religion of Wicca or more generally Neo-Paganism, are much safer than they were before the Anti-Witch law in england was repealed in 1951, yet still face much persecution from the stereotypes that have surfaced thanks to the media and such.

"My POV good, your POV bad"
So we've gone from an inaccurate and POV article taking one side of a dispute to a possibly accurate but very POV article taking the other side. In order to make this an appropriate article, I believe the following would need to be addressed:

 * 1) Actual citation on Gerald Gardner, and preferably either his own acknoledgement or some other authority's statement that he invented the term.
 * 2) Phrases like "something which has no proved basis in fact", "the inaccurate views of Margaret Murray", etc. are nothing more than POV assertions on controversial matters. Cite specific authorities to this effect, don't just assert. In fact, the article does not cite a single authority in stating that the named writers are wrong, nor does it name even one of the "various American feminist historians" it says took up the idea. Certainly Mary Daly would be a good example. I suspect there are several others who should be cited as holding this view. I also think their sources should be alluded to and (if indeed their scholarship was poor) refuted rather than dismissed out of hand.
 * 3) Again, "Modern historians have shown" is hopelessly vague.

Jmabel 06:04, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

 * well, yes, I agree with Jmabel that the articles doesn't deal yet with the different view points in an accurate way, NPOV way. But I believe it has already improved greatly and I want to thank Machenphile for this. Andries 17:49, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Criticism noted and fair. Have added some references and reworded it. Still hunting out improved refs for feminist section. Daly is mentioned by Hutton amongst others. He also does not cite an exact ref for Gardner originating the term... but as he is the recognised authority and thats the earliest ref he has for it was probabally came from Gardner. It could be term he got from the "mysterious new forest coven" though I suppose.

Really what we need is a better witchhunt article. Then this could refer there.

--Machenphile 15:32, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Burning Times


text:
AltGr key

AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type special characters and symbols that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign currency symbols, typographic marks and accented letters. On a typical Windows-compatible PC keyboard, the AltGr key, when present, takes the place of the right-hand Alt key. The key at this location will operate as AltGr if a keyboard layout using AltGr is chosen in the operating system, regardless of what is engraved on the key. In macOS, the Option key has functions similar to the AltGr key.

The AltGr key is used as an additional Shift key, to provide a third and a fourth (when Shift is also pressed) grapheme for most keys. Most are accented variants of the letters on the keys, but also additional symbols and punctuation marks. Some languages such as Bengali use this key when the number of letters of their alphabet is too large for a standard keyboard. For example, on the US-International keyboard layout, the key can be used to insert four different characters:
 * → c (lowercase — first level)
 * → C (uppercase — second level)
 * → © (copyright sign — third level)
 * → ¢ (cent sign — fourth level)

History
IBM states that AltGr is an abbreviation for alternate graphic.

A key labelled with some variation of "Alt Graphic" was on many computer keyboards before the Windows international layouts. On early home computers the alternate graphemes were primarily box-drawing characters.

This likely was the intended purpose of the Alt key on PC keyboards, however software quickly used this as a combination key for shortcuts, requiring a new key for producing additional characters.

Ctrl+Alt
Windows interprets as, to accommodate some compact keyboards like those of netbooks which have neither the AltGr key nor a right-hand Alt key. Thus has the same effect as. Because of this feature, Microsoft advises that not be used as part of any application keyboard shortcut, as it would prevent typing the matching  character on such keyboards.

Function by default national keyboard
In most of the keyboard diagrams the symbol one gets when holding down AltGr is in blue in the lower-right of the corner. If different, the symbol for Shift+AltGr is shown in the upper-right.

Belgium

The Windows version of the Belgian keyboard may only support a subset of these characters. Several of the AltGr combinations are themselves dead keys, which are followed by another letter to produce an accented version of that letter.

Brazil

Some notes

 * The combination results in the (obsolete) symbol ₢ for the former Brazilian currency, the Brazilian cruzeiro.
 * The, , combinations are useful as a replacement for the "/?" key, which is physically absent on non-Brazilian keyboards.
 * Some software (e.g. Microsoft Word) will map to ® and  to ™, but this is not standard behavior and was likely an accident owing to the fact that the combinations  and  were intended.

Finland

The new Finnish keyboard standard of 2008 (SFS 5966) was designed for easily typing 1) Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian; 2) Nordic minority languages and 3) European Latin letters (based on MES-2, with emphasis on contemporary proper nouns), without needing engravings different from those on existing standard keyboards of Finland and Sweden. AltGr and dead diacritic keys are extensively used, although letters of Finnish and Swedish are mostly provided as normal keys.

France
On AZERTY keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the following characters:

Germany
On German keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the following characters, which are indicated on the keyboard:

Windows 8 introduced the ability of pressing to produce ẞ (capital ß). Even though this is usually not indicated on the physical keyboard—potentially due to a lack of space, since the ß-key already has three different levels ( → "ß", → "?", and, as shown above,  → "\")—, it can be seen in the Windows On-Screen Keyboard by selecting the necessary keys with the German keyboard layout selected. Some newer types of German keyboards offer the assignment → capital ß.

Greece

Some of these key combinations also result in different characters if the polytonic layout is used.

Hebrew
On Hebrew keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the Hebrew vowels and pronunciation marks. In addition, there are several combinations for special characters:

 * → €
 * → ₪
 * → °
 * → ֫
 * → ֽ
 * → ×
 * → LRM
 * → RLM

 * → ־
 * → –
 * → ÷
 *  → ”
 *  → “
 *  → „
 *  → ’

 *  → ‘
 *  → ‚
 * → ׳
 * → ״
 *  → ׆

Yiddish
Using a Hebrew keyboard, one may write in Yiddish as the two languages share many letters. However, Yiddish has some additional digraphs not otherwise found in Hebrew, which are entered via AltGr:

 *  →
 *  →
 *  →

Italy
On Italian keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the following characters:

 * → ]
 * → }
 * → }
 * → }

There is an alternate layout, which differ just in disposition of characters accessible through AltGr and includes the tilde and the curly brackets.

Latvia
The following letters can be input in the Latvian keyboard layout using AltGr:

Lowercase letters

 * → ā
 * → č
 * → ē
 * → ģ
 * → ī
 * → ķ
 * → ļ
 * → ņ
 * → ō
 * → ŗ
 * → š
 * → ū
 * → ž

Uppercase letters

 * → Ā
 * → Č
 * → Ē
 * → Ģ
 * → Ī
 * → Ķ
 * → Ļ
 * → Ņ
 * → Ō
 * → Ŗ
 * → Š
 * → Ū
 * → Ž

North Macedonia
On Macedonian keyboards, AltGr enables the user to type the following characters:

 * → Ђ
 * → ђ
 * → ђ

 * → ]
 * → Ћ
 * → ћ

 * → }
 * → }

Netherlands

 * Digits row
 * → ¹ and ¡
 * → £ and ¤
 * → × and ÷
 * → £ and ¤
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷
 * → × and ÷

 * Top letters row
 * → ä and Ä
 * → å and Å
 * → é and É
 * → þ and Þ (Icelandic and Old English thorn)
 * → ü and Ü
 * → ú and Ú
 * → í and Í
 * → ó and Ó
 * → ö and Ö
 * → ¬ and ¦
 * → ¬ and ¦
 * → ¬ and ¦
 * → ¬ and ¦

 * Middle letters row (Home row)
 * → á and Á
 * → ß (German eszett aka sharp s) and §
 * → ð and Ð (Icelandic edh)
 * → ø and Ø
 * → ¶ and °
 * → ´ and ¨

 * Bottom letters row
 * → æ and Æ
 * → © and ¢
 * → ñ and Ñ
 * → µ
 * → ç and Ç

Nordic countries and Estonia
The keyboard layouts in the Nordic countries Denmark (DK), Faroe Islands (FO), Finland (FI), Norway (NO) and Sweden (SE) as well as in Estonia (EE) are largely similar to each other. Generally the AltGr key can be used to create the following characters:

 * → µ
 * → µ
 * → µ
 * → µ
 * → µ

 * → ]
 * → }
 * → ~ (excluding EE)
 * → }
 * → ~ (excluding EE)

Other AltGr combinations are peculiar to just some of the countries:

 * → \ (EE, FI, SE)
 * → | (EE, FI, SE)
 * → \ (DK, FO)
 * → | (DK, FO)
 * → ´ (NO)
 * → ~ (FO)
 * → ¨ (FO)

 * → ^ (FO)
 * → € (NO, DK, FO, SE, sometimes FI)
 * → š (EE, sometimes FI)
 * → ž (EE, sometimes FI)
 * → § (EE)
 * → ½ (EE)

Finnish multilingual
The Finnish multilingual keyboard standard adds many new characters to the traditional layout via the AltGr key, as shown in the image below (the blue characters can be written with the AltGr key; several dead key diacritics, shown in red, are also available as an AltGr combination).

 * KB Finnish Multilingual.svg

Poland
Typewriters in Poland used a QWERTZ layout specifically designed for the Polish language with accented letters in the Polish alphabet obtainable directly. When personal computers became available worldwide in the 1980s, commercial importing into Poland was not supported by its communist government, so most machines in Poland were brought in by private individuals. Most had US keyboards, and various methods were devised to make available the accented Polish letters. An established method was to configure the rightAlt key as an AltGr key and to use it in combination with a Latin base letter to obtain the equivalent precomposed character (accented form of the letter). (Because there are two types of "z with diacritic" (ź and ż), is a special case.)
 * → ą
 * → ć
 * → ę
 * → ł
 * → ń
 * → ó
 * → ś
 * → €
 * → ź
 * → ż

At the time of the Fall of communism and opening of commercial import channels this practice was so widespread that it was adopted as the de facto standard. Nowadays nearly all PCs in Poland have standard US keyboards and use the AltGr method to enter Polish diacritics. This keyboard mapping is referred to as the Polish programmers' layout (klawiatura polska programisty) or simply Polish layout.

Another layout is still used on typewriters, mostly by professional typists. Computer keyboards with this layout are available, though difficult to find, and supported by a number of operating systems; they are known as Polish typists' layout (klawiatura polska maszynistki). Older Polish versions of Microsoft Windows used this layout, describing it as Polish layout. On current versions it is referred to as Polish (214).

Romania
The keymap with the AltGr key: < Romanian standard + the signs mostly pressed with prints the US keyboard signs Romanian standard> â ß  €  r  ț  y  u  î  o  §  „  ” ă ș  đ  f  g  h  j  k  ł  ; z x  ©  v  b  n  m  «  »
 * → ˇ
 * → ]
 * → ß
 * → đ
 * → Đ
 * → ł
 * → Ł
 * → ]
 * → ß
 * → đ
 * → Đ
 * → ł
 * → Ł
 * → ]
 * → ß
 * → đ
 * → Đ
 * → ł
 * → Ł
 * → Đ
 * → ł
 * → Ł

Russia
Since release 1903, versions of Windows 10 have the binding:
 * → ₽ (Ruble sign)

South Slavic Latin and Czech keyboards
On South Slavic Latin (used in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia) and on Czech keyboards, the following letters and special characters are created using AltGr:

 * → ]
 * → ł
 * → Ł
 * → ß
 * → ]
 * → ł
 * → Ł
 * → ß
 * → Ł
 * → ß

 * → }
 * → <
 * → >
 * → ˇ
 * → <
 * → >
 * → ˇ
 * → ˇ
 * → ˇ

 * Qwertz-si.svg

South Slavic cyrillic keyboards use a different layout.

Switzerland
On Swiss keyboards, AltGr in combination with the following keys types the following characters:

 * → ´ (dead key)
 * → ~ (dead key)
 * → ´ (dead key)
 * → ~ (dead key)

 * / → [  (See explanation below)
 * → ]
 * / → {  (See explanation below)
 * → }

Switzerland has four national Languages (German, French, Italian, and Romansh). The Swiss keyboard layout is therefore designed with compatibility in mind for all four languages. In German-speaking and Romansh-speaking Switzerland (as well as the Czech Republic), the Swiss German layout is used, while in the French-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzerland, the Swiss French layout is used. The two layouts only differ on three keys—OEM1, OEM5, and OEM7. On the Swiss German layout, these three keys are labelled, , and , respectively, while on the Swiss French layout, the labels are inverted as , , and ; namely, the base layer and the  layer are swapped. However, with respect to the layer, the region-specific layouts are irrelevant.

Swiss German: → {

Swiss French: → {

Turkey
In Turkish keyboard variants the AltGr can be used to display the following characters:

 * → æ
 * → ß
 * → ₺
 * → i
 * a → ã
 * a → ä
 * a → á
 * a → à
 * a → á
 * a → à

Ukraine
In Ukrainian (enhanced) keyboard, added in Windows Vista, combination (or as it is written in Cyrillic keyboards  gives letter ґ and Ґ.

United Kingdom and Ireland

 * → á and Á
 * → é and É
 * → í and Í
 * → ó and Ó
 * → ú and Ú

In UK and Ireland keyboard layouts, only two alternative use symbols are printed on most keyboards, which require the AltGr key to function. These are:
 * € the euro sign. Located on the "4/$" key.
 * ¦ the broken bar symbol. Located on the "`/¬" key, to the immediate left of "1".

Using the AltGr key on Linux produces many foreign characters and international symbols, e.g. ¹²³€½{[]}@łe¶ŧ←↓→øþæßðđŋħjĸł«»¢“”nµΩŁE®Ŧ¥↑ıØÞÆ§ÐªŊĦJ&Ł<>©‘’Nº×÷· (If reconfigured as a compose key, an even larger repertoire is available).

With the UK extended keyboard setting (below), ChromeOS offers a large repertoire of symbols and precomposed characters.

Scotland and Wales
For the diacritics used by Welsh (ŵ and ŷ) and Scottish Gaelic (à, è, ì, ò and ù), the UK extended keyboard setting is needed. This makes available (for circumflex accent) and  (for grave accent) as dead keys.

UK extended keyboard layout
The UK-Extended keyboard mapping (available with Microsoft Windows, Linux and ChromeOS) allows many characters with diacritical marks (including those used in other European countries) to be generated by using the AltGr key, dead keys or a compose key, in combination with others.

Notes: Dotted circle (◌) is used here to indicate a dead key, invoked using AltGr. The (grave accent) key is the only one that acts as a free-standing dead key and thus does not respond as shown on the key-cap. (For a complete list of the characters generated using dead keys, see QWERTY#ChromeOS.)

(°) is a degree sign;  (º) is a masculine ordinal indicator. is an em-dash; there is no provision for en-dash.

United States
Most keyboards sold in the US do not have an (engraved) key. However, if there is an right-hand key it will act as  if a layout using it is installed (conversely a foreign keyboard  will act like the right-hand  if the standard US keyboard layout is installed).

US-International
Microsoft provides a US-International keyboard layout that uses (or right-hand  or ) key to produce more characters:
 * KB US-International.svg

Red characters are dead keys; for example ä can be entered with.

Other operating systems such as Linux and ChromeOS follow this layout but increase the repertoire of glyphs provided.

X Window System
In the X Window System (Linux, BSD, Unix), AltGr can often be used to produce additional characters with almost every key on the keyboard. Furthermore, with some keys, AltGr will produce a dead key; for example on a UK keyboard, semicolon can be used to add an acute accent to a base letter, and left square bracket can be used to add a trema:
 * followed by → é
 * followed by → Ö

This use of dead keys enables one to type a wide variety of precomposed characters that combine various diacritics with either uppercase or lowercase letters, achieving a similar effect to the Compose key.

Keyboard maps
Below are some diagrams and examples of country-specific key maps. For the diagrams, the grey symbols are the standard characters, yellow is with, red is with , and blue is with.

Danish keyboard
The Danish keymap features the following key combinations:
 * → Ω
 * → œ
 * → µ

Italian keyboard
The Italian keymap includes, among other combinations, the following:

 * → ħ

Polish keyboard
The Polish keymap on X-based systems features changed combination for € sign: results in ↓ instead. It also introduces several symbols and characters from different languages, including among others:
 * → ß
 * → þ
 * → ð
 * → π
 * → Ω
 * → µ
 * → æ
 * → œ
 * → œ

title: AltGr key


text:
Gatemouth Moore

Arnold Dwight "Gatemouth" Moore (November 8, 1913 – May 19, 2004) was an American blues and gospel singer, songwriter, radio disc jockey, community leader and pastor, later known as Reverend Gatemouth Moore. During his career as a recording artist, Moore worked with Bennie Moten, Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes, and his songs were recorded by B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. He was noted for his mellow singing voice, much in the style of Billy Eckstine.

Biography
Moore was born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, where he sang ballads and spirituals in his youth. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis. Around 1930 he left home, joined F. S. Wolcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, and began performing with Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Bertha "Chippie" Hill. He toured widely but settled in Clarksdale, Mississippi, around 1934.

According to some sources his nickname was derived from his loud speaking and singing voice, but Moore himself repeated a story that at a performance in Atlanta a drunken woman told him to "sing it, you gatemouth sonofabitch". He sang with the bands of Bennie Moten and Walter Barnes. In 1940, he was working with Barnes but was outside the hall when Barnes and most of his band died in the Natchez Rhythm Club fire.

He made his first recordings in 1941 for the Gay Paree record label in Kansas City, Missouri, and moved between residencies in Kansas City, Memphis and Chicago. He recorded for Damon Records and National Records and then for King Records in Cincinnati, Ohio. His songs, often improvised and based on actual incidents in his life, included "I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby", "Did You Ever Love a Woman", and "Somebody's Got to Go". Several of his compositions were recorded by other performers, including Louis Jordan, Lonnie Johnson, Johnny Otis, Rufus Thomas, Jimmy Witherspoon, and B. B. King, who regarded Moore as a major influence and as "one of the greatest blues singers ever". Moore re-recorded many of his songs for King in 1947. He was also responsible for recruiting the blues singer Wynonie Harris to the label.

Moore was reportedly the first blues singer to perform at the Apollo Theater and many other theaters around the country, including Carnegie Hall in New York City. In Chicago, he appeared regularly at the Rhumboogie and at the Club DeLisa. At the latter club, in December 1948, he shocked clubgoers by stopping his performance of "I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby" and singing an old spiritual. Moore said, "Folks started screaming. They thought I had lost my mind. I just singing and crying 'Shine on Me'... I walked off [stage] and walked right out the club and folks were hollering and screaming. When I walked out to the bar, one of the greatest preachers in Chicago was sitting out there and said, 'Gate, I be waiting on you'."

In 1949, Moore was ordained as a minister of the First Church of Deliverance in Chicago, becoming a bishop. He maintained his flair for showmanship in his work as a minister and gospel singer, on one occasion delivering an Easter sermon from a funeral casket with hearse and pallbearers, to raise money for charity. He recorded gospel music for Chess and Coral and became a DJ at radio stations in Memphis, Birmingham, and Chicago. He also became the pastor of several churches in Mississippi and Louisiana, including in later years Yazoo City, Mississippi. According to his citation on the Mississippi Blues Trail, "His elegance and exuberance enabled him to easily cross social, racial, and religious lines, and though he devoted himself to the church, community work, charities, and education, he still enjoyed singing the blues on occasion." He became an MC at both blues festivals and religious conventions, president of the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team, and a leader of the "black Elks" (Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World).

He made his last recordings for Johnny Otis' Blues Spectrum label in 1977, including a new song, "Beale Street Ain't Beale Street No More". A brass note on Beale Street Walk of Fame was dedicated to Moore in 1996. He was also featured in the documentary film The Road to Memphis, directed and photographed by Richard Pearce), a part of the 2003 series The Blues, of which Martin Scorsese was the executive producer.

He died in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 2004 at the age of 90.

title: Gatemouth Moore


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X-COM: UFO Defense

UFO: Enemy Unknown (original European title), also known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America, is a 1994 science fiction strategy video game developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse. It was published by MicroProse for DOS and Amiga computers, the Amiga CD32 console, and the PlayStation. Originally planned by Julian Gollop as a sequel to Mythos Games' 1988 Laser Squad, the game mixes real-time management simulation with turn-based tactics. The player takes the role of commander of X-COM – an international paramilitary and scientific organization secretly defending Earth from an alien invasion. Through the game, the player is tasked with issuing orders to individual X-COM troops in a series of turn-based tactical missions. At strategic scale, the player directs the research and development of new technologies, builds and expands X-COM's bases, manages the organization's finances and personnel, and monitors and responds to UFO activity.

Despite its troubled development, including having been almost cancelled twice, the game received strong reviews and was commercially successful, turning into a runaway sleeper hit and acquiring a cult following among strategy fans; several publications have listed X-COM: UFO Defense as one of the best video games ever made, including IGN ranking it as the best PC game of all time in 2007. It was the first and best-received entry in the X-COM series and has directly inspired several similar games. An official remake of the game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, was published in 2012.

Plot
The story of X-COM, set in the near-future at the time of the game's release, begins in the year 1998. The initial plot centers on increased reports of UFO sightings as tales of abductions and rumors of attacks by mysterious aliens become widespread. The nations of the world come to perceive this as a threat and attempt to form their own forces – such as Japan's Kiryu-Kai force – to deal with the crisis, but these efforts are unsuccessful. On December 11, 1998, representatives from some of the most powerful nations in the world secretly meet in Geneva to discuss the issue. From this meeting is born the clandestine defense and research organization Extraterrestrial Combat (X-COM), over which the player assumes control at the start of the game.

In the beginning, the player will only have access to conventional weapons, but as the game progresses, the player learns more about the enemy, their species, mutated creations, and technology. It is ultimately revealed that the "leaders" behind the alien invasion are a race known as Ethereals which possess powerful mind control abilities and enslave other races of aliens to perform their bidding and that their main base in the Solar System is located in Cydonia region of Mars. The player must then prepare the final assault team, attack Cydonia and destroy the mastermind behind the alien invasion, the biocomputer Alien Brain.

The game may end in several ways. If the player's performance is poor or worse for two consecutive months, the player runs a deep deficit for two consecutive months, all the player's bases are captured, or the player mounts an assault on the aliens' Mars base and loses, the game ends in defeat (in the PC version, the funding nations sign pacts with the aliens promising peace, but the aliens instead destroy every city and poison the water and air to destroy any resistance, the remaining survivors are put in slave camps to help reverse-terraform Earth for future alien colonization; in the PlayStation version, the council of funding nations makes a futile attempt to negotiate with the aliens, who violently murder the negotiator). If, however, the player is victorious in the final attack, the game ends in mankind's victory.

Gameplay
The game takes place within two distinct views, called the Geoscape and the Battlescape. As described by GameSpy, "in effect, X-COM melds an SSI Gold Box RPG with a highly detailed 4X game like Master of Orion, making it in some ways two entirely different games."

Geoscape

The game begins on January 1, 1999, with the player choosing a location for their first base on the Geoscape screen: a global view representation of Earth as seen from space (displaying X-COM bases and aircraft, detected UFOs, alien bases, and sites of alien activity). The player can view the X-COM bases and make changes to them, equip fighter aircraft, order supplies and personnel (soldiers, scientists and engineers), direct research efforts, schedule manufacturing of advanced equipment, sell alien artifacts on black market to raise money, and deploy X-COM aircraft to either patrol designated locations, intercept UFOs, or send X-COM ground troops on missions using transport aircraft.

Simultaneously, the aliens may run various activities, from research missions designed to collect data about the Earth and its inhabitants, to searching for and attacking X-COM bases, to establishing their own bases, to terror attacks on cities with the aim of convincing governments to reduce X-COM's funding. The escalating alien activities need to be uncovered and countered, mostly by detecting and shooting down the alien crafts and sending ground troops to investigate and salvage the UFO landing and crash sites.

Funding is provided by the 16 founding nations of X-COM. At the end of each month, a funding report is provided, where nations can choose to increase or decrease their level of funding based on their perceived progress (or failure) of the X-COM project, in particular the UFO activities in their areas. Any of these nations may quit if the nation's government has been infiltrated by the invaders. Through reverse engineering of recovered alien artifacts, X-COM is able to develop better technology to combat the alien menace and eventually uncover how to defeat it.

Battlescape

Gameplay switches to the tactical combat phase whenever X-COM ground forces come in contact with aliens. Each ground mission takes place within a procedurally-generated, voxel-based 3D map, evenly divided into square-bottom cubes and vertical layers for gameplay purposes. However, the actual game world is only used internally by the game engine for line of sight and firing calculations and is hidden from the player. Instead, it is presented in a symbolic form using isometric-view 2D bitmap graphics. It also features a highly destructible environment where almost all game objects and the landscape itself can be damaged or destroyed by gunfire and especially by explosions.

The Battlescape's turn-based system uses action points, known in the game as Time Units (TUs), that are distributed between individual soldiers according to their statistics (including the total weight of carried equipment relative to their strength, and the top and current levels of stamina). Each turn, their TUs can be spent for movement and a variety of actions (through an icon-based GUI), such as firing weapons, managing their equipment including ammunition (items carried in hands, pockets, belt, and backpack), picking up or throwing objects (limited in this to friendly or enemy equipment or bodies), kneeling down, using items, reloading weapons, and priming explosives. Shooting options include a snap shot, an aimed shot, and possibly a burst if a given weapon has an autofire mode. Some weapons can also be loaded with non-standard types of ammunition (such as high-explosive rounds or incendiary rockets) and some are non-lethal for capturing aliens alive. A major feature called Opportunity Fire enables combatants to automatically shoot at a spotted hostile during the enemy turn if enough of their TUs have been reserved and left unspent.

The combat is highly unpredictable and often challenging, especially for new players. Soldiers are vulnerable to alien attacks even when armored (a single shot from an alien has a good chance of bringing a soldier in perfect condition to death), and the features such as night-time combat (when the battlefield needs to be illuminated by flares or fires or else the soldiers can only spot an alien at a very short range), fog of war, and Opportunity Fire allows for alien sniper attacks and ambushes. The enemy comes in numerous forms, and the players that are new to the game will run into new kinds of aliens without any knowledge of their characteristics and capabilities beforehand. The course of skirmishes is also dictated by the individual fatigue and morale levels of their participants on both sides; a low morale can result in them either dropping their weapons and fleeing in panic or going berserk and opening fire indiscriminately. Smoke obscures vision and drains stamina, and fires are a hazard for both sides. Injuries may be sustained to different body parts, differently affecting the wounded soldiers' statistics (and thus performance), and often result in the states of unconsciousness or bleeding, the latter leading to death if they are not treated or if the mission is not finished in time.

One of three mission outcomes is possible: either the human forces are eliminated, the alien forces are neutralized, or the player chooses to withdraw. The mission's score and the result are based on the number of X-COM operatives lost (either dead, unconscious, or under alien control), the AI-controlled civilians saved or perished, aliens killed or captured, and the number and quality of alien artifacts obtained. Troops may also increase in rank or abilities if they made successful use of their primary attributes (e.g. killing enemies). Instead of gaining experience points, surviving human combatants might get an automatic rise (a semi-random amount depending on how much of the action in which they participated) to their attributes, such as Psi or Accuracy. The soldiers who have been killed on a mission will remain dead, but can be replaced with raw recruits back at base. In addition to combat personnel, the player may use unmanned ground vehicles that are outfitted with heavy weapons and well armored but large, costly, and not gaining experience.

Recovered alien artifacts can then be researched and possibly reproduced. Captured live aliens may produce information, possibly leading to new technologies and even an access to psionic warfare. In it, some aliens possess mind control abilities that can be used to temporarily take control of human soldiers or cause them to panic. After capturing a mind control-capable alien, the player will be able to train soldiers in using these same abilities against the aliens.

Development
The game was originally conceived by a small British independent video game developer, Mythos Games – led by Julian Gollop – as a sequel to their 1988 science fiction tactical game Laser Squad, "but with much neater graphics using an isometric style very similar to Populous." The initial 1991 demo presented a relatively simple, two-player tactical game then known as Laser Squad 2 (or Laser Squad II), which ran on the Atari ST. Due to bad experiences with Blade Software in selling their previous game, Lords of Chaos, the Gollop brothers (Julian and Nick) approached three other video game publishers, British Krisalis Software and Domark and the international MicroProse, eventually brokering a deal with MicroProse. Julian Gollop was especially happy about it because he greatly respected MicroProse and believed it was probably the best video game company in the world at the time.

Although supportive of the project, the publisher expressed concerns that the demo lacked a grand scale in keeping with MicroProse's hit strategy game Civilization. The Civilopedia feature of Civilization also inspired an addition of the in-game encyclopedia, called the UFOpaedia. All that and the UFO theme was suggested by the MicroProse UK head of development Pete Moreland. Julian Gollop's personal inspirations included several traditional games, in particular, the board wargame Sniper! and the tabletop role-playing game Traveller.

Under MicroProse's direction and working at its Chipping Sodbury studio, Julian Gollop said that while the research and technology tree somewhat emulates the role of advances in Civilization, "it also helped to develop the storyline." He changed the setting to modern-day Earth and expanded the strategy elements, among them the ability to capture and reproduce alien technology. He has cited the 1970s British television series UFO as one of the influences for the game's storyline, in particular, an idea of an international counter-UFO organization and the psionic powers of some alien races, even as the series itself was "a bit boring". A book by Bob Lazar, where he describes his supposed work with recovered UFOs at Area 51, inspired the concept to reverse-engineer captured alien technology. Timothy Good's 1991 book Alien Liaison provided inspiration for several of Julian Gollop's revisions, such as the notion that world governments might seize alien technology or secretly conspire with the invaders (a negative result which can occur in-game). His sources of inspirations for the game also included Whitley Strieber's book Communion and other "weird American stories", as well as the Alien film series.

MicroProse UK graphics artists John Reitze and Martin Smillie provided what MicroProse described as "popular 'manga' look and feel" visuals. Julian Gollop credited Reitze, who also designed the alien races, with "a distinctive comic book style", and Smillie with "very detailed environment graphics". MicroProse musician John Broomhall, inspired by Bernard Herrmann's score in the film Psycho, composed the original soundtrack of the PC version while Andrew Parton handled the sound effects. Besides Moreland, there were other MicroProse employees not acknowledged in the game's credits despite having been major contributors to its development, such as assisting designers Mike Brunton and (especially) Steve Hand. Hand, a Laser Squad fan who helped the project get signed, put input into the "big game" concept by inventing the Geoscape interface, actually came up with the name X-COM (derived from Brunton's initial idea of X-CON, where "CON" originally stood for "contact"), and helped to define the comic book-like art style. Hand thought the initial artworks showed by Julian Gollop had aliens that were too "boring or comical", and that the original design document was poorly written, especially regarding the initial, more interactive and action-oriented UFO interception system; nevertheless, the final game turned out to be very close to it. Certain creature types deemed boring were removed during the development, as were the Men in Black, who have been left unused due to a perceived conflict with MicroProse's abortive project to make an MIB-themed standalone game.

A public demo of the game was released under the North American version's working title X-COM: Terran Defense Force. Despite numerous changes from the first demo, the tactical part of the game remains true to the turn-based layout of Laser Squad and the Gollop brothers' earlier Rebelstar series. The AI system of those games formed the basis for enemy tactics, with Julian Gollop programming his own unique algorithms for pathfinding and behavior; in particular, the aliens were purposely given an element of unpredictability in their actions. It was the first game programmed by them for the PC. In retrospect, Julian thought he should have concentrated on game design and left all of the programming work to Nick.

The original contract was for the game be completed within 18 months, granting the Gollops £3,000 per month. In the course of its development, the game was nearly canceled twice: in the first instance due to the company's financial difficulties, and the second time under the pressure from the American combat flight simulator company Spectrum HoloByte after it had acquired Bill Stealey’s shares in MicroProse in 1993. Julian Gollop said the MicroProse quality assurance team (testers Andrew Lucket, Phil McDonnel and Jason Thompson) helped save the game from its first would-be cancellation; their enthusiastic feedback also helped to polish the game. At one point, the game was in fact even officially ordered to be cancelled by Spectrum HoloByte. According to Moreland, Spectrum head Gilman Louie personally insisted on this order and rejected Moreland's objections. However, Moreland held a meeting with other MicroProse UK bosses Adrian Parr and Paul Hibbard, where they decided to ignore it and would simply not inform the Gollop brothers and others involved in the project about any of that. Thus, the development team continued their work without any knowledge of the parent company's executives. MicroProse producer Tim Roberts, assigned to oversee the game, was described by Julian Gollop positively as "very laid back" and for most of the time allowed them to work on the game without any interference and schedules, only checking in once in a month to conduct meetings in a pub.

During the final three months, after Spectrum HoloByte was eventually informed of the game still being in production, the Gollop brothers were forced to work 7–12 in order to finish it before the end of the fiscal year. The game was completed in March 1994, after 30 months in development since the initial contract and 12 months behind the schedule. The overall development of the PC version cost £115,000, alike vastly exceeding its budget.

Release
The finished product was marketed as UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe, Quebec and Australia and as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America. The latter features a different box cover, faithful to the game's contents (the original cover of UFO: Enemy Unknown depicts the aliens and their spacecraft design that are unlike anything actually seen in the game ). In Japan, the game was renamed by Culture Brain as X-COM Michi Naru Shinryakusha (X-COM 未知なる侵略者) and released with a cover using a different art style and better reflecting the actual game content.

Ports and re-releases
The Amiga conversion in multiple version was quickly created by Julian Gollop's brother Nick and "it was quite tough because the Amiga wasn’t quite as fast as PCs were becoming at that time." The Amiga OCS/ECS version displays lower quality graphics than the PC version and is missing light source shading during combat missions, but their sound quality is improved. The graphics are better in the AGA Amiga versions, including a CD-ROM variant for the Amiga CD32 that features new music composed by Matthew Simmonds. A limited edition of the Amiga 1200 release also came with a MicroProse travel alarm clock.

The 1995 PlayStation port, released in Europe as X-COM: Enemy Unknown, has retained most of the original PC graphics due to time restraints (adding only some textured 3D models as illustrations for the UFOpaedia) but features much higher quality music than the 8-bit MIDI music of the PC version, replacing it 55 minutes of CD-quality tracks and 8 minutes of 16-bit tracks. The new soundtrack was composed by Allister Brimble, who later also created the music for the first sequel, X-COM: Terror from the Deep. The game is compatible with the (highly recommended  ) PlayStation Mouse and requires five PlayStation memory card blocks for a Battlescape saved game.

The game was re-released as part of the compilations X-COM: Unknown Terror by MicroProse and Prima Games in 1996, X-COM (Collector's Edition) by MicroProse in 1998, X-COM Collection by Hasbro Interactive in 1999, X-COM: Complete Pack by 2K Games in 2008 and 2K Huge Games Pack in 2009, as well as in the "Classic Games Collection" CD featured with the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer. In X-COM: Complete Pack (also known as X-COM Collection ), all five X-COM games were released for paid download on Steam with added Windows XP and Windows Vista support.

Novelizations
Diane Duane's 1995 X-COM: UFO Defense – A Novel (ISBN 0-7615-0235-1) tells the story of Jonelle Barrett, commander of X-COM's newly established Swiss base. According to Rock, Paper, Shotgun's negative review of Duane's novel, it is hampered by a poor understanding of the game, a lack of focus, emotional resonance and tension, and an unstructured plot.

Another novelization of the game, Враг неизвестен ("Enemy Unknown") written by Vladimir Vasilyev, was published in Russia in 1997. The book tells the story of one of the original eight X-COM troops from beginning of the conflict to the final raid on Cydonia.

Fan-created content
Fan-made patches fix a notorious bug which results in the game always resetting to the easiest difficulty level ("Beginner") after completing the first Battlescape mission, no matter what difficulty level has been selected. This glitch was not noticed by MicroProse and was not fixed in the official patches, resulting in the very high difficulty of the sequel due to many complaints from veteran players who believed that the original game was still too easy even on seemingly higher levels. The original release also contained many other bugs such as civilians appearing in inappropriate places, units being placed outside of the playable map area, and players being assigned alien and civilian units as playable. IBM Master Inventor Scott T. Jones' noted 1995 patch-turned-mod, named XComUtil, fixes it as well as addressing interface problems and better balancing the game; in 2010, a task of its further development was given to David Jones.

OpenXcom is an open-source reimplementation of that game to fix all the known bugs and limits, improve the AI and user interface, localize in more languages, and to provide cross-platform builds, e.g. for Linux and Android. The second focus of OpenXcom is to enable customizing, modding and expansions, such as the total conversion X-Piratez.

Immediate
The game was released to very positive reviews and commercial success, selling more than 600,000 units (a large number at the time) on the PC DOS platform, not counting the later ports—for the Amiga platforms and the PlayStation—and re-releases. Half of the game's net sales were in the United States, a rarity for a European title at the time. Gollop has attributed the game's North American success to its title (X-COM), as the television series The X-Files had premiered a year earlier. More than 400,000 units were sold at full price, with little marketing from its publisher. Together with its sequel, X-COM: Terror from the Deep, its sales had passed 1 million copies by March 1997. The game earned the Gollop brothers just over £1 million in royalties. The game became very popular also in Russia, even as there were no royalties from that market as it was only distributed there via software piracy. In 1996, Computer Gaming World named it as the number one sleeper hit of all time.

Computer Gaming World rated the PC version of X-COM five stars out of five. Describing it as "one of those rare and dangerous games capable of drilling into your brain, putting a vice-grip on your imagination, and only releasing you when it has had enough," the magazine praised its detailed and varied combat system and lengthy gameplay, concluding "Resistance is futile". GameSpot review said, "put simply, X-COM is a bona fide modern classic, standing proudly alongside Civilization and Populous as a benchmark in the evolution of strategy gaming." A preview of the PlayStation version in Next Generation called it "one of the best PC strategy games ever."

Amiga ports received lower ratings than the PC original (holding an average score of 93.60% at GameRankings ), according to Amiga HOL database having averaged scores of 79% on the ECS/OCS Amigas, 82% on the AGA Amigas and 73% for the Amiga CD32 version. A common point of criticism for the floppy disk version was the need to frequently swap the disks in the Amiga systems not equipped with a hard disk drive, while the CD-ROM based CD32 version does not allow the users to save the progress of any other game without wiping out the save game of UFO. Nevertheless, a review in Amiga Action called it "easily the most original and innovative game in the history of the Amiga", a review in Amiga World called in "the shortest path to heaven" for a strategy gamer, and a review in CU Amiga of the 1997 budget range re-release called it the "game everyone loves".

Electronic Gaming Monthly stated of the PlayStation version that "any person who likes strategy games will fall in love with this title ... if you could afford to buy one game for the PS over the next year, X-COM would be it. It has it all and then some!" A reviewer for Next Generation criticized the PlayStation version for being little more than a straight port, arguing that the game could have been improved if the console's capabilities were used. However, he praised the game itself for sophisticated, enjoyable gameplay, and concluded, "X-COM was a smashing PC title, it's lost nothing of practical value in the translation, and makes a marvelous addition to the console market." GamePro disagreed: "You have to be a major sim-freak to enjoy X-COM. It's an interesting and complex game about planet colonizing, [sic] but the extensive manuals and one-dimensional music really bore you to alien tears after a while."

Computer Gaming World gave X-COM its Game of the Year award. PC Gamer US presented UFO Defense with its 1994 Best Strategy Game award. The editors wrote, "X-COM's classic mix of action and strategy will have you hooked for hours, and made this one of the finest games of the year."

Retrospective
Edge called X-COM "the title that first brought turn-based wargaming to the masses." Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civilization IV, called X-COM "one of the cornerstones of strategy gaming." In the words of the Xbox creator Seamus Blackley, the game "has changed entertainment forever." It has been inducted into several halls of fame, including by Computer Gaming World in 2005, by GameSpot in 2003 (featured among The Greatest Games of All Time as "one of the defining games of the turn-based strategy genre"), and by IGN in 2007 ("if this game were a woman, we'd marry it").

The first X-COM has often appeared in top video game lists by various publications. Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 22nd (1996) and third (2001) best computer game of all time; the magazine's readers also voted it for tenth place in 2001. It was also ranked as the 48th game of all time by GamesMaster in 1996, as the 35th best video game of all time by GameSpy in 2001 ("stellar game design can withstand the test of time"), as the second best video game since 1992 by Finnish magazine Pelit in 2007, and as the 78th best video game "to play today" by Edge in 2009.

IGN named it as the number one top PC game of all time in 2000 while calling it "the finest PC game we have ever played", and 2007 ("there's still no PC game that can compete with the mighty X-COM"), as well as ranking it as the second top "modern PC game" in 2009. IGN also included it on several lists of the best video games of all time on all platforms, including it at eighth place in 2003 ("a game that will live on in the annals of computer gaming history"), at 12th place in 2005 ("for us 1994 will always be remembered as the year of X-COM"), and at 21st place in 2007 ("one of the most memorable and perfectly executed strategy games ever seen"). PC Gamer ranked it as the seventh (1997), eighth (1998), third (2001), eighth (2005), tenth (in both 2007 and 2008, as a "truly groundbreaking game" that "still plays fresher than almost anything else that begs passage through these pages"), 11th (2010, the editors adding that everyone who would not vote for this game is "dead" to them) and 12th (2011, describing it as a "brilliant game whose individual elements have been copied many times but whose charm has never been duplicated") best PC game of all time; it was also voted at 15th place by the magazine's readers in 2000.

Polish web portal Wirtualna Polska listed it the 13th best Amiga game, as well as the third most addictive game "that stole our childhood"; it was also retrospectively ranked as the eighth best Amiga game by the Polish edition of CHIP. Next Generation listed X-COM as the 26th top console game of all time in 1996 ("breathed new live into turn-based strategy genre"), as well as the 37th in 1999 ("revamp[ed] the turn-based subgenre by strengthening the resource management elements and adding highly intuitive interface"). In 2012, while awaiting the remake, The Escapist ran a feature article about "why X-COM is the greatest game ever," while game designer Ken Levine named it as one of his all-time personal favorites. In 2015, Rock, Paper, Shotgun ranked it as the sixth best strategy game ever made ("in the thick of a terror mission, with [C]rysal[l]ids seeming to pour out of the walls, or in those last hours when you finally seem capable of taking the fight to the aliens, there's nothing else quite like X-COM").

One reason for the game's success is the strong sense of atmosphere it evokes. The game's Xenomorph-inspired alien race of Chryssalids was ranked as fourth on their 1999 list of best monsters in gaming by GameSpot, where X-COM was also described as "one of the scariest computer games ever." In 2012, including it among the most essential game of all time, 1UP.com commented that "with its unrivaled balance of tactics and tension, [X-COM] remains a masterpiece."

Legacy
The success of the game resulted in several sequels and spin-off games, as well as many unofficial remake and spiritual successor titles, both fan-made and commercial, such as UFO: Alien Invasion and UFO: Extraterrestrials. Julian Gollop himself designed the third game in the X-COM series, 1997's X-COM: Apocalypse, which was also developed together by Mythos Games and MicroProse. The game also received an unofficial sequel in the 1997 expansion set Civ II: Fantastic Worlds for MicroProse's Civilization II, in a scenario set on the Phobos moon of Mars.

Mythos Games' and Julian Gollop's own original spiritual successor project, The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge, was cancelled in 2001 and later partially turned into UFO: Aftermath by another developer. Gollop's new X-COM spiritual successor project, Phoenix Point, was released by Snapshot Games in 2019.

An official remake, titled XCOM: Enemy Unknown, was developed by Firaxis Games, led by MicroProse's co-founder Sid Meier. The game's prototype was actually a modernization of the original, with all the classic gameplay features, but then gradually evolved into a completely "reimagined" version, having abandoned the Time Units system for a simpler and more cinematic gameplay centered around class abilities and use of cover. The game was released by 2K Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2012, winning multiple Game of the Year awards. A retrospective article in Eurogamer compared both games with "a sort of objectivity (...) that hasn't been remotely possible over the last two decades of worshipping [X-COM] at its VGA shrine," seeing the original as "a game that can and will co-exist with rather than be supplanted by its remake. X-COM and XCOM are completely different games, both ingenious and both flawed in their own ways." In a positive review of the remake, GameSpy nevertheless left "the title of Best Game Ever with the original." Julian Gollop himself commented that "Firaxis did a terrific job with the new XCOM," although he "would have done things differently for sure. (...) I tried many times for many years to get a remake underway, but Firaxis finally did it. Also, there is a promising and more faithful remake called Xenonauts." The 2012 XCOM, too, was followed by its own sequel and spin-off games.

The game also had a big influence on the development team of the role-playing video game Fallout. Project director Tim Cain said they "all loved X-COM" and that the original version of Fallout (known as Vault 13, before the game was redesigned after they lost the GURPS license) had a very similar combat system.

title: X-COM: UFO Defense


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Permutation (music)

In music, a permutation (order) of a set is any ordering of the elements of that set. A specific arrangement of a set of discrete entities, or parameters, such as pitch, dynamics, or timbre. Different permutations may be related by transformation, through the application of zero or more operations, such as transposition, inversion, retrogradation, circular permutation (also called rotation), or multiplicative operations (such as the cycle of fourths and cycle of fifths transforms). These may produce reorderings of the members of the set, or may simply map the set onto itself.

Order is particularly important in the theories of composition techniques originating in the 20th century such as the twelve-tone technique and serialism. Analytical techniques such as set theory take care to distinguish between ordered and unordered collections. In traditional theory concepts like voicing and form include ordering; for example, many musical forms, such as rondo, are defined by the order of their sections.

The permutations resulting from applying the inversion or retrograde operations are categorized as the prime form's inversions and retrogrades, respectively. Applying both inversion and retrograde to a prime form produces its retrograde-inversions, considered a distinct type of permutation.

Permutation may be applied to smaller sets as well. However, transformation operations of such smaller sets do not necessarily result in permutation the original set. Here is an example of non-permutation of trichords, using retrogradation, inversion, and retrograde-inversion, combined in each case with transposition, as found within the tone row (or twelve-tone series) from Anton Webern's Concerto:

If the first three notes are regarded as the "original" cell, then the next 3 are its transposed retrograde-inversion (backwards and upside down), the next three are the transposed retrograde (backwards), and the last 3 are its transposed inversion (upside down).

Not all prime series have the same number of variations because the transposed and inverse transformations of a tone row may be identical, a quite rare phenomenon: less than 0.06% of all series admit 24 forms instead of 48.

One technique facilitating twelve-tone permutation is the use of number values corresponding with musical letters. The first note of the first of the primes, actually prime zero (commonly mistaken for prime one), is represented by 0. The rest of the numbers are counted half-step-wise such that: B = 0, C = 1, C♯/D♭ = 2, D = 3, D♯/E♭ = 4, E = 5, F = 6, F♯/G♭ = 7, G = 8, G♯/A♭ = 9, A = 10, and A♯/B♭ = 11.

Prime zero is retrieved entirely by choice of the composer. To receive the retrograde of any given prime, the numbers are simply rewritten backwards. To receive the inversion of any prime, each number value is subtracted from 12 and the resulting number placed in the corresponding matrix cell (see twelve-tone technique). The retrograde inversion is the values of the inversion numbers read backwards.

Therefore:

A given prime zero (derived from the notes of Anton Webern's Concerto):

0, 11, 3, 4, 8, 7, 9, 5, 6, 1, 2, 10

The retrograde:

10, 2, 1, 6, 5, 9, 7, 8, 4, 3, 11, 0

'''The inversion: 0, 1, 9, 8, 4, 5, 3, 7, 6, 11, 10, 2

The retrograde inversion:

2, 10, 11, 6, 7, 3, 5, 4, 8, 9, 1, 0

More generally, a musical permutation is any reordering of the prime form of an ordered set of pitch classes or, with respect to twelve-tone rows, any ordering at all of the set consisting of the integers modulo 12. In that regard, a musical permutation is a combinatorial permutation from mathematics as it applies to music. Permutations are in no way limited to the twelve-tone serial and atonal musics, but are just as well utilized in tonal melodies especially during the 20th and 21st centuries, notably in Rachmaninoff's Variations on the Theme of Paganini for orchestra and piano.

Cyclical permutation (also called rotation) is the maintenance of the original order of the tone row with the only change being the initial pitch class, with the original order following after. A secondary set may be considered a cyclical permutation beginning on the sixth member of a hexachordally combinatorial row. The tone row from Berg's Lyric Suite, for example, is realized thematically and then cyclically permuted (0 is bolded for reference): 5 4 0 9 7 2 8 1 3 6 t e 3 6 t e 5 4 0 9 7 2 8 1

title: Permutation (music)


text:
Michigan Senate

The Michigan Senate is the upper house of the Michigan Legislature. Along with the Michigan House of Representatives, it composes the state legislature, which has powers, roles and duties defined by Article IV of the Michigan Constitution, adopted in 1963. The primary purpose of the Legislature is to enact new laws and amend or repeal existing laws.

The Michigan Senate is composed of 38 members, each elected from a single-member district with a population of between approximately 212,400 to 263,500 residents. Legislative districts are drawn on the basis of population figures, provided by the federal decennial census. In January 2023, Democrats took the majority with 20 seats to Republicans' 18 seats. The Senate chamber is located in the State Capitol building.

Titles
Members of the Michigan Senate are called senators. Because this shadows the terminology used to describe members of the United States Senate, constituents and the news media, using The Associated Press Stylebook, often refer to members of the Michigan Senate as state senators when necessary to avoid confusion with their federal counterparts.

Terms
Senators are elected on a partisan basis for four-year terms, concurrent with the election of the Governor of Michigan. Terms for senators begin on January 1 at noon, following the November general election and end on January 1 when their replacements are sworn in.

Senate elections are always held two years after the election for President of the United States, with the next election scheduled for November 3, 2026.

Term limits
On November 3, 1992, almost 59 percent of Michigan voters backed Proposal B, the Michigan Term Limits Amendment, which amended the state constitution, to enact term limits on federal and state officials. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not enact congressional term limits, but ruled that the state-level term limits remain. Under the amendment, a person could be elected to the state senate two times. A provision governing partial terms was also included. These provisions became Article IV, section 54 and Article V, section 30 of the Michigan Constitution. On November 8, 2022, nearly 2 in 3 voters approved Proposal 1, limiting state legislators to 12 years combined in either chamber of the legislature, but incumbent senators re-elected in 2022 would remain eligible for their new terms even if it pushed them over the 12-year limit.

Qualifications
Each senator must be a citizen of the United States, at least 21 years of age, and an elector of the district they represent. Under state law, moving out of the district shall be deemed a vacation of the office. No person who has been convicted of subversion or who has within the preceding 20 years been convicted of a felony involving a breach of public trust shall be eligible for either house of the legislature.

Legislative session
For reckoning periods of time during which the legislature operates, each two-year period coinciding with the election of new members of the House of Representatives is numbered consecutively as a legislature, dating to the first legislature following Michigan's admission as a state. The current two-year term of the legislature (January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2024) is the 102nd Legislature.

Each year during which the legislature meets constitutes a new legislative session. According to Article IV Section 13 of the State Constitution, a new session of the legislature begins when the members of each house convene, on the second Wednesday of January every year at noon. A regular session of the legislature typically lasts throughout the entire year with several periods of recess and adjourns sine die in late December.

The Michigan legislature is one of ten full-time state legislative bodies in the United States. Members receive a base salary of $71,685 per year, which makes them the fourth-highest paid state legislators in the country, after California, Pennsylvania and New York. While legislators in many states receive per diems that make up for lower salaries, Michigan legislators receive $10,800 per year for session and interim expenses. Salaries and expense allowances are determined by the State Officers Compensation Commission.

Any legislation pending in either chamber at the end of a session that is not the end of a legislative term of office continues and carries over to the next legislative session.

Powers and process
The Michigan legislature is authorized by the Michigan Constitution to create and amend the laws of the U.S. state of Michigan, subject to the governor's power to veto legislation. To do so, legislators propose legislation in the forms of bills drafted by a nonpartisan, professional staff. Successful legislation must undergo committee review, three readings on the floor of each house, with appropriate voting majorities, as required, and either be signed into law by the governor or enacted through a veto override approved by two-thirds of the membership of each legislative house.

Leadership
The Michigan Senate is headed by the Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, who serves as President of the Senate but may cast a vote only in the instance of a tie. The presiding officers of the senate, apart from the president, are elected by the body at its first session and serve until their term of office is up. Majority and minority party officers are elected at the same time by their respective caucuses.

The senate majority leader controls the assignment of committees and leadership positions, along with control of the agenda in the chamber.

 * President: Garlin Gilchrist (D)
 * President Pro Tempore: Jeremy Moss (D)
 * Majority Leader: Winnie Brinks (D)
 * Assistant President Pro Tempore: Erika Geiss (D)
 * Associate President Pro Tempore of the Michigan Senate: Joe Bellino (R)
 * Assistant Majority Leader: Darrin Camilleri (D)
 * Majority Floor Leader: Sam Singh (D)
 * Assistant Majority Floor Leaders: Jeff Irwin, Kristen McDonald Rivet (D)
 * Majority Caucus Chairperson: Dayna Polehanki (D)
 * Assistant Majority Caucus Chairperson: Veronica Klinefelt (D)
 * Majority Whip: Mallory McMorrow (D)
 * Assistant Majority Whip: Mary Cavanagh (D)
 * Minority Leader of the Michigan Senate: Aric Nesbitt (R)
 * Assistant Minority Leader: Rick Outman (R)
 * Minority Floor Leader: Dan Lauwers (R)
 * Assistant Minority Floor Leader: Lana Theis (R)
 * Minority Caucus Chair: Kevin Daley (R)
 * Assistant Minority Caucus Chair: Jim Runestad (R)
 * Minority Whip: Roger Victory (R)
 * Assistant Minority Whip: Mark Huizenga (R)

Members, 2023–2026

 * ↑: First elected in a special election.

title: Michigan Senate


text:
Talk:List of baronetcies

Untitled
I'm currently compiling a list of the english baronets, extant and extinct. Mackensen 20:05, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Sir Denis Thatcher and Sir Mark Thatcher
A modern day creation of a baronetcy - Sir Denis Thatcher in 1991 (now passed on to his son, Sir Mark Thatcher, since 2003). Should this not be added to this list? I think it would come under "Baronetcy of the United Kingdom". David.
 * Yes, it should, but the list at present only includes baronetcies created in the Baronetage of England (1611-1707). Mackensen (talk) 21:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Extinct/dormant
This page ought to explain (or link to an explanation of) the difference. Noel (talk) 20:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It should refer to the Standing Council of the Baronetage and should be cross referenced with their list of dormancies.

Comprehensive list?
I'm sure the list is not complete, the UK section anyway. The Baronet page mentions some famous Baronets, yet the two I happened to check, Edward Elgar and Ranulph Fiennes weren't listed. I've added then, and I've yet to check any others. --JRawle 15:08, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

British Commonwealth Baronetcies
Has anyone thought of writing an article on British Commonwealth Baronetcies, as there are quite a few Baronets from Canada, New Zealand, & South Africa? I reckon that is worth an article by itself. What do you think? - (Aidan Work 02:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC))

The Commonwealth of Nations has not been "The British ..." since 1946 or 1949, depending on how you count. Hu 04:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

A bold proposal
Given the discussion here and the general support for moving the article to a more descriptive and accurate title, would anyone object if I moved the article to List of baronetcies in the peerages of the British Isles with a redirect from List of baronetcies? I'm going to propose this for the other peerage pages, as well. Fishhead64 20:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * that's not a more accurate title. A baronetcy is not a peerage title. Baronets are not peers. - Nunh-huh 20:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, how about List of baronetcies in the British Isles? Fishhead64 21:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Why? There are no non-British baronetcies... Proteus (Talk) 21:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Good point. Never mind. :) Fishhead64 01:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And of course there is the minor matter of the "British Isles" not being a reality as far as the vast majority of people in Ireland are concerned. El Gringo 14:32, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:List of baronetcies


text:
Geritol

Geritol is a United States trademarked name for various dietary supplements, past and present. Geritol is a brand name for several vitamin complexes plus iron or multimineral products in both liquid form and tablets, containing from 9.5 to 18 mg of iron per daily dose. The name conveys a connection with aging, as in "geriatric". The product has been promoted from almost the beginning of the mass media era as a cure for "iron-poor tired blood".

History
Geritol was introduced as an alcohol-based, iron and B vitamin tonic by Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in August 1950 and primarily marketed as such into the 1970s. Geritol was folded into Pharmaceuticals' 1957 acquisition of J. B. Williams Co., founded in 1885. J. B. Williams Co. was bought by Nabisco in 1971. In 1982, the Geritol product name was acquired by the multinational pharmaceutical firm Beecham (later GlaxoSmithKline). Geritol was acquired by Meda Pharmaceutical in 2011. Meda was acquired by Mylan in 2016.

The earlier Geritol liquid formulation was advertised as "twice the iron in a pound of calf's liver," and daily doses contained about 50–100 milligrams of iron as ferric ammonium citrate. The Geritol tonic contained about 12% alcohol and some B vitamins.

Federal Trade Commission investigation
Geritol was the subject of years of investigation starting in 1959 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In 1965, the FTC ordered the makers of Geritol to disclose that Geritol would relieve symptoms of tiredness only in persons who suffer from iron deficiency anemia, and that the vast majority of people who experience such symptoms do not have such a deficiency. Geritol's claims were discredited in court findings as "conduct amounted to gross negligence and bordered on recklessness," ruled as a false and misleading claim, and heavily penalized with fines totaling $812,000 (equivalent to $ in dollars), the largest FTC fine up to that date (1973). Although subsequent trials and appeals from 1965 to 1973 concluded that some of the FTC demands exceeded its authority, Geritol was already well known and continued to be the largest U.S. company selling iron and B-vitamin supplements through 1979.

A 1976 settlement agreement between J.B. Williams & Co. and the FTC had the company agreeing to pay $125,000 ($ in dollars).

Since then, supplemental iron products, including Geritol, have been contraindicated because of concerns over hemochromatosis, and serious questions raised in studies for men, postmenopausal women, and nonanemic patients with liver disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or cancer.

Media sponsorships
In the early days of television, the marketing of Geritol was involved in the quiz show scandal, as the sponsor of Twenty-One. For many years after that, Geritol was largely marketed on television programs that appealed primarily to older viewers, such as The Lawrence Welk Show, What's My Line?, The Red Skelton Show, To Tell the Truth, Hee Haw, and Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour, as well as Arthur Godfrey's daily show. It was also one of the sponsors of the original Star Trek series.

In popular culture
Geritol was often used in the 1960s as a punch line for a joke in sitcoms or in comedy routines; comic singer Allan Sherman referenced Geritol on his 1962 album My Son, the Folk Singer, singing "Yasha got a bottle of Geritol" to the tune of "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho".

Geritol is famous for a controversial 1972 television commercial tag line, "My wife, I think I'll keep her." This line, brought out during the height of the Women's Liberation Movement, was not appreciated by some women and was lambasted by news and comedy shows. Comedian Robert Klein commented on his 1972 album Child of the Fifties: "Where does he get the nerve?...  She has to keep begging him, "Will you keep me one more day?"  "All right, one more day:  now, get back to the kitchen!" The line was the inspiration for Mary Chapin Carpenter's 1993 song "He Thinks He'll Keep Her".

In 1992, George Jones used the line “I don't need your rockin' chair, your Geritol or your Medicare” in his hit song "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair".

In 1994, a reunion of members of Bill Haley & His Comets released the album You're Never Too Old to Rock (Hydra Records BCK 27013). One track, "Let's Rock and Roll Some More" features 70-year-old drummer Dick Richards singing "We've been away a while, but we ain't gone/Take a Geritol and put your dancin' shoes on."

In the 2002 stage musical Hairspray, Edna and Wilbur Turnblad sing to each other of love as they grow old in the song "Timeless to Me". In one line, Edna sings "Pass that Geritol!"

title: Geritol


text:
Mavis Hutchison

Mavis Hutchison (25 November 1924 – 19 May 2022) was a South African athlete, primarily known for running in ultramarathons.

Career
Born in South Africa, Hutchison's career began as a race walker, and her first record was in the 50-mile walk known as the Rand Daily Mail Big Walk in 1963 (9 hours 35 minutes). That same year she was timed over the standard marathon distance of 42.2 km, but took about ten minutes longer than Violet Piercy had done in 1926, and 13 minutes longer than Merry Lepper's time a few months later.

In 1965, she was (as an unofficial entrant) the third woman in history to finish the 90 km of the Comrades Marathon, and the first since the 1930s. In later years she completed the race seven more times (1966, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981).

Hutchison went on to set new women's world records for the 100-mile and 24-hour run in 1971, and for the 100-mile and 24-hour walk in 1973. In 1973 Hutchison became the first woman to run the 602 km from Germiston (near Johannesburg) to Durban in 1973, following this with the 'up' run from Durban to Germiston the following year. By this time she was well known in South Africa as the 'Galloping Granny'. In 1975 she took a bit over 22 days to run the 1000 miles from Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital, to Cape Town, the legislative capital. That same year she entered the Comrades for the first time as an official participant, even though the Pretoria to Cape Town run had left her in poor shape for the race, but dropped out toward the end when she realized she would finish outside the maximum allowed time of 11 hours. In 1976 she ran from Germiston to Cape Town (about the same distance), beating her previous time by more than three days, and in 1977 she ran from Messina, on South Africa's northern border, to Johannesburg.

Hutchison became famous as the first woman to run across the United States, from Los Angeles to New York City. Her route, run in 1978 as a 53-year-old grandmother, took her 2871 miles and 69 days, 2hours and 40 minutes. According to the Guinness Book of Records this record still stands, although there is a claim by Lorna Michael (age 34) in 1993, of 64 days as part of the Trans-America Footrace in 1993.

Two years later, Hutchison set a new women's record for the John O'Groats to Land's End, once more fighting extreme physical difficulties to reach her goal. Her last long runs were from Pretoria to Cape Town in 1982, and a circuitous 3200 km run around much of South Africa in 1985, starting in Kimberley and ending in Cape Town.

Hutchison first entered the World Master's Games in 1977 (Gothenburg Sweden), and subsequently entered the Master's Games in 1979 (Hanover Germany), 1993 (Maizaki Japan), 2006 (San Sebastian Spain) and 2007 (Riccione Italy), winning numerous medals.

From 2005, Hutchison set South African W80+ master records for 100 metres (18.84 sec), 200 metres (45.46 sec), 400 metres (1:52.88 min), and 800 metres (4:34.13 min).

Death
Hutchison died in Fish Hoek on 19 May 2022, at the age of 97.

title: Mavis Hutchison


text:
Michigan House of Representatives

The Michigan House of Representatives is the lower house of the Michigan Legislature. There are 110 members, each of whom is elected from constituencies having approximately 77,000 to 91,000 residents, based on population figures from the 2020 U.S. census. Its composition, powers and duties are established in Article IV of the Michigan Constitution.

Members are elected in even-numbered years and take office at 12 p.m. (EST) on January 1 following the November general election. Concurrently with the Michigan Senate, the House first convenes on the second Wednesday in January, according to the state constitution. Each member is limited to serving at most six terms of two years, but may not serve more than twelve years combined across the Michigan House and Michigan Senate. The House meets in the north wing of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing. The Democratic Party currently has a majority in the chamber.

In recent years, the Republican majority in the House has been widely attributed to Republican gerrymandering, implemented by the legislature after the 2010 census. In many legislative elections since then, the Democratic Party has won the popular vote, but nonetheless failed to attain a majority. However, after the passage of Proposal 2, a 2018 ballot initiative, redistricting in the state was instead delegated to a nonpartisan commission, which drew new maps after the 2020 census. Aided by the redrawn district lines, in 2022, Democrats won a majority in the House for the first time since 2008.

Qualifications
According to the constitution of Michigan, to be eligible for the office of State Representative a person must be a citizen of the United States, at least 21 years of age, and a registered and qualified elector of the district he or she wishes to represent by the filing deadline.

Title
Members of the Michigan House of Representatives are commonly referred to as representatives. Because this mirrors the terminology used to describe members of Congress, constituents and news media, abiding by the Associated Press guidelines for journalists, often refer to members as state representatives to avoid confusion with their federal counterparts. As elected officials, members of the Michigan House of Representatives also receive the courtesy title of the Honorable (abbreviated to Hon. or Hon'ble) for life.

Majority party

 * Speaker of the House: Joe Tate of Detroit (D-10)
 * Speaker pro tempore: Laurie Pohutsky of Livonia (D-19)
 * Majority Floor Leader: Abraham Aiyash of Hamtramck (D-9)

Minority party

 * Minority Leader: Matt Hall of Battle Creek (R-42)
 * Minority Floor Leader: Bryan Posthumus of Cannon Township (R-90)

Members

 * ↑: First elected in a special election.

Speaker of the House
The 76th and current Speaker of the House of Representatives is the presiding officer of the House and the leader of the majority party. The current Speaker is Joe Tate, a Democrat from Detroit.

The Speaker calls the House to order at the hour to which the House last adjourned, preserves order and decorum in the chamber, recognizes Members to speak, and puts all questions. The Speaker is the chief administrator of the House and is technically the employer of all legislative staff. There is also a Speaker pro tempore and two associate Speakers pro tempore who preside in the absence of the Speaker. The full duties of the Speaker are described in Chapter II of the Rules of the House.

Clerk of the House
The Clerk of the House of Representatives is elected by Members of the House at the beginning of each two-year term. The 33rd and current clerk is Gary L. Randall. Randall also served as clerk from 1999 to 2006. The assistant clerk is Richard J. Brown, who served as clerk from 2007 to 2010. Both Randall and Brown are former Members of the House.

Under the rules of the House, the clerk is the parliamentarian of the House, presides in the absence of the Speaker or any Speaker pro tempore, takes roll at the beginning of each session day and announces whether or not a quorum is present, prepares the official calendar and journal of the House, is responsible for the care and preservation of all bills introduced in the House, and for bills sent from the Senate until they are returned to the Senate.

Sergeant at Arms
The sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives is the chief police officer of the House, appointed by the Speaker. The current chief sergeant at arms is David D. Dickson Jr.

The chief sergeant and the assistant sergeants are empowered as law enforcement officers by statute. The sergeants at arms have authority to serve subpoenas and warrants issued by the House or any duly authorized officer or committee, see that all visitors are seated and at no time are standing on the floor or balconies of the House, ensure that reasonable decorum is maintained in the lobby immediately in front of the entrance to the chamber to ensure access for Members and to ensure equal treatment for all citizens.

Committees
Article IV of the Michigan Constitution authorizes each house of the Legislature to "establish the committees necessary for the conduct of its business." The House does much of its work in committees, including the review of bills, executive oversight, and the budget and appropriations process. Members of committees and their chairmen are appointed by the Speaker. Bills are referred to a committee by the Speaker, and the chairman of a committee sets its agenda, including whether or not a bill will be reported to the full House. The Committee on Appropriations divides its work among subcommittees ordinarily structured by state department or major budget area.

There are also four statutory standing committees: Joint Committee on Administrative Rules; House Fiscal Agency Governing Committee; Legislative Council; Michigan Capitol Committee. Currently, it would appear, the House committees meet on a 'year by year' basis. A full list may be accessed here.

Unlike the Senate, the House does not utilize the committee of the whole.

House Fiscal Agency
The House Fiscal Agency is a nonpartisan agency within the House of Representatives which provides nonpartisan expertise to members of the House Appropriations Committee, as well as all other Members of the House. Fiscal analysts review the governor's budget recommendation, review and prepare budget bills, supplemental appropriations, and certain transfer requests, provide fiscal impact statements on legislative proposals, monitor state and national situations that may have budgetary implications, research and analyze fiscal issues, prepare reports and documents to assist legislative deliberations, and prepare special reports at the request of Representatives. The economist analyzes legislation related to tax and lottery issues, respond to Representatives' inquiries regarding state tax revenue, revenue sharing, and other economic issues, monitors state revenue, tracks state, and national economic conditions, and prepares reports on revenue and other economic issues. Legislative analysts prepare concise, nonpartisan summaries and analyses of bills. Summaries, completed prior to committee deliberations, describe how a bill would change current law, including any fiscal impact. Analyses are prepared for bills reported to the full House from committee and include, with the summary information, a description of the problem being addressed, arguments for and against the bill, and positions of interested organizations.

The agency is governed by a six-member board consisting of the chairman and minority vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the Speaker of the House and the minority leader, and the majority and minority floor leaders. The governing committee is responsible for HFA oversight, establishment of operating procedures, and appointment of the HFA director. The director is one of three state officials charged with annually forecasting the state's revenues at the Consensus Revenue Estimating Conferences, which are held at least twice each year.

In January 1993, a front-page story in The Detroit News detailed a massive scandal in the House Fiscal Agency. For six years, the agency's imprest account was used to finance credit card payments, vacations, and property tax payments as well as payments to HFA employees and contract workers for non-existent workers. The scandal threatened to collapse the joint leadership agreement between the Democrats and Republicans brought about by a 55-55 partisan split in the House from the 1992 election. It resulted in Representative Dominic J. Jacobetti of Negaunee in the Upper Peninsula, the longest-serving Member in history, losing his position as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee; the conviction and imprisonment of HFA Director John Morberg; and the resignation of state representative Stephen Shepich as part of a plea bargain.

title: Michigan House of Representatives