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Yellow-dog contract

A yellow-dog contract (a yellow-dog clause of a contract, also known as an ironclad oath) is an agreement between an employer and an employee in which the employee agrees, as a condition of employment, not to be a member of a labor union. In the United States, such contracts were used by employers to prevent the formation of unions, most often by permitting employers to take legal action against union organizers. In 1932, yellow-dog contracts were outlawed in the United States under the Norris-LaGuardia Act.

Origin of term and brief history
In the 1870s, a written agreement containing a pledge not to join a union was commonly referred to as the "Infamous Document". This strengthens the belief that American employers in their resort to individual contracts were consciously following English precedents. This anti-union pledge was also called an "iron clad document," and from this time until the close of the 19th century "iron-clad" was the customary name for the non-union promise. Beginning with New York in 1887, sixteen states wrote on their statute books declarations making it a criminal act to force employees to agree not to join unions. The Congress of the United States incorporated in the Erdman Act of 1898 a provision relating to carriers engaged in interstate commerce.

During the last decade of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th, the individual, anti-union promise declined in importance as an instrument in labor warfare. Its novelty had worn off; workers no longer felt themselves morally bound to live up to it and union organizers, of course, wholly disregarded it. In the early 20th century, the individual, anti-union promise was resorted to frequently in coal mining and in the metal trades. And it was not membership in a union that was usually prohibited, but participation in those essential activities without which membership is valueless.

In 1910, the International United Brotherhood of Leather Workers on Horse Goods, following an unsuccessful conference with the National Saddlery Manufacturers' Association, called a national strike in the saddlery industry for the 8-hour day. The strike proved a failure, and a large number of employers required oral or written promises to abandon and remain out of the organization as a condition of re-employment.

In the case Adair v. United States, the United States Supreme Court's majority held that the provision of the Erdman Act relating to discharge, because it would compel an employer to accept or retain the personal services of another person against the employer's will, was a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that no person shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law. The court was careful, however, to restrict the decision to the provision relating to discharge, and to express no opinion as to the remainder of the law. The section of the Erdman Act making it criminal to force employees to sign anti-union agreements therefore remained unadjudicated.

The term yellow dog started appearing in the spring of 1921, in leading articles and editorials devoted to the subject which appeared in the labor press. Typical was the comment of the editor of the United Mine Workers' Journal: "This agreement has been well named. It is yellow dog for sure. It reduces to the level of a yellow dog any man that signs it, for he signs away every right he possesses under the Constitution and laws of the land and makes himself the truckling, helpless slave of the employer."

Even though they were forbidden in the private sector by the Norris–LaGuardia Act in 1932, yellow dog contracts were allowed in public sector, including many government jobs, such as teachers, until the 1960s, beginning with precedent established in 1915 with Frederick v. Owens.

In 1932, Joel I. Seidman wrote the first-ever book on the topic, The Yellow Dog Contract. It traced their history from the 1830s in the United Kingdom, the 1870s in the United States, the use of the term "yellow dog" following World War I, to a land-mark event when the U.S. Senate rejected the nomination of Judge John J. Parker to the United States Supreme Court.

title: Yellow-dog contract


text:
NCSA

NCSA may refer to:

 * National Cadet Special Activities, aviation programs run by the American Civil Air Patrol
 * National Center for Supercomputing Applications, a computer science research center in Urbana, IL
 * NCSA Common log format, a file format for log files produced by web server software
 * NCSA HTTPd, a web server that introduced the Common Gateway Interface
 * NCSA Mosaic, an early web browser instrumental to the popularization of the World Wide Web
 * NCSA Telnet, a software implementation of the Telnet protocol
 * University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License, a free software license
 * National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Bulgaria), a computer science research center in Sofia, Bulgaria
 * National Child Search Assistance Act, a United States federal law enacted in 1990
 * National Cyber Security Authority (Israel), a government organization merged into the Israeli National Cyber Directorate
 * NATO Communications and Information Systems Services Agency, a deactivated agency, formerly within NATO
 * Next College Student Athlete, a company facilitating collegiate athletic recruiting
 * North Central Sociological Association, a regional American professional organization

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

title: NCSA


text:
Reggie Fils-Aimé

Reginald Fils-Aimé (born March 25, 1961) is an American businessman best known for being the president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, the North American branch of the Japanese video game company Nintendo, from 2006 to 2019. Prior to his promotion to president and COO, Fils-Aimé was executive vice president of sales and marketing.

Fils-Aimé gained celebrity status among gamers following his appearance at Nintendo's E3 2004 press conference in May 2004, and helped to revitalize Nintendo's image as a major contender among the other video game console makers, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Microsoft. Fils-Aimé had held previous sales and marketing executive roles at Procter & Gamble, Pizza Hut, Guinness, Derby Cycle, Panda Express, and VH1.

Fils-Aimé retired as president of Nintendo of America on April 15, 2019 after an announcement on February 21, and was succeeded by Doug Bowser. He subsequently became a Leader in Residence at Cornell University and later named to the board of directors for Brunswick Corporation, GameStop, and Spin Master.

Early life
Reginald Fils-Aimé was born on March 25, 1961, in The Bronx, New York City. His parents had immigrated to the United States from Haiti in the 1950s due to conflicting political views of his grandparents; his paternal grandfather was a general when the Haitian military overthrew the democratically elected government, which included his maternal grandfather. Fils-Aimé's mother worked as a lead sales representative in a fine jewelry store and his father was a machinist. Fils-Aimé has said that he adopted his optimistic attitude from his mother. He was raised on Long Island, where he attended Brentwood High School; he described himself as the "lone minority" among his classmates. He was accepted into Cornell University in 1979, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in applied economics and management from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1983. He was president of the school's Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity chapter, where he was described as being neat and organized.

Career
Fils-Aimé took a job at Procter & Gamble in the company's brand management program. He also took a position as senior director of national marketing at Pizza Hut, where he launched the Bigfoot Pizza and the Big New Yorker.

Fils-Aimé served as the Head of Marketing for Guinness Imports Co. in the United States and was responsible for all brands. He also worked as chief marketing officer at Derby Cycle, directing sales and marketing efforts worldwide for eight brands. Fils-Aimé served as managing director and oversaw Raleigh U.K., Derby's British operations.

He then joined the American Chinese food company Panda Management Co. acting as senior vice-president. He also joined MTV's VH1 network in 2001 as senior vice-president and left in 2003. Fils-Aimé was responsible for a 30% increase in ratings for the VH1 network by shifting the channel's focus to appeal to younger viewers. As part of his role at VH1, Fils-Aimé also laid out and implemented a marketing strategy for The Concert for New York City, which garnered more than $35 million for disaster relief following the September 11 attacks.

Nintendo
Fils-Aimé joined Nintendo in December 2003 as the executive vice president of sales and marketing. Fils-Aimé had been recruited for the position, but during the interview period, he said that he had asked to see Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, which was considered highly unusual but was granted. His conversation with Iwata went far longer than planned and it helped to establish the friendly relationship Fils-Aimé had with Iwata for more than a decade which, according to Fils-Aimé, helped with open communications and understanding to help Nintendo improve overall as a business. Because of this, Fils-Aimé has called Iwata his mentor as well as a "dear friend" throughout his time at Nintendo.

Fils-Aimé was initially responsible for all sales and marketing activities for Nintendo in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. On May 25, 2006, Fils-Aimé became the president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America after former president, Tatsumi Kimishima, was moved to his new role as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Fils-Aimé was the first American to hold this position.

At the time Fils-Aimé was hired in 2003, the video game industry was stagnant in major markets, and Nintendo's competitors Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment were looking to regain interest by building more powerful home consoles. For Nintendo, it had recently come off re-organization of upper management, including Iwata being named its president only the year prior. The company was producing the GameCube, but Iwata and other Nintendo executives saw that most titles being produced were sequels with almost no new intellectual property. Fils-Aimé said that the decision for Nintendo to differ from its competitors and try to bring back fun into video games was made before he had been hired, and part of that was planned through Fils-Aimé's marketing skills and presence.

Fils-Aimé became a recognized public face for Nintendo at the 2004 E3. The year prior, Nintendo's press conference was considered a quiet and dry affair compared to the conferences given by Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment; while Iwata and other Japanese executives were present, the only American on stage was George S. Harrison and had remained stoic during the conference. Nintendo was also losing in the sixth console generation. The GameCube was struggling against the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox console, and long-time Nintendo fans were despondent over Nintendo's current state. Fils-Aimé served to lead off the 2004 conference as his first introduction to the public. He led off the conference with "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin' names, and we're about makin' games." His presentation was considered aggressive, and at one point directly attacked the approaches that Microsoft and Sony were taking with handling of video game content on their consoles. This message had been thoroughly planned by the upper management of Nintendo and Fils-Aimé had expressed caution to them about the tone of the message, but they still wanted him to deliver it. His theatrical antics, flying in the face of Nintendo's long-standing conservative image, gained a cult following soon after, with many gamers calling him the "Regginator", a play on the character of the Terminator.

Following the conference, many images of him spread across the Web. In interviews years after the 2004 event, Fils-Aimé said that his presentation was not his idea, but writing from the public relations department, and he himself had to be convinced to give the aggressive approach. Fils-Aimé's presentation was considered by others the right attitude that Nintendo needed to present at the time to show themselves still relevant in the current console generation and was no longer taking a conservative approach to gaming.

Fils-Aimé is considered to be responsible for revamping Nintendo's public relations in North America, leading many fans and members of the press to dub his arrival the "Reggielution" (after "Revolution", the code name for the Wii). He had not only considered the constantly-changing challenges of marketing to youth, but as well as continuing to address the older video game players, who were still a key market for Nintendo. He further believed that addressing all demographics would be like a rising tide for the industry with Nintendo positioned to capture that the best. While still in sales, Fils-Aimé rewrote how Nintendo worked with vendors; instead of having Nintendo try to seek vendors' favor and better in-store place by assuring Nintendo could meet demand, Fils-Aimé created agreements where vendors would only get Nintendo's stock in stores if vendors ordered high volumes of their product. This served to help with the success and popularity of the Nintendo DS. He has attributed the success of the Wii to a marketing strategy laid out by Clayton Christensen:

On July 11, 2007, while introducing the Wii Balance Board, Fils-Aimé walked up onto the stage and stated “My body is ready.” This quotation would eventually become a meme and Fils-Aimé acknowledged the phrase several times, including at the E3 2012 conference, his appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and his resignation announcement video. When Iwata implemented their Nintendo Direct online press conferences, Fils-Aimé would frequently participate in these alongside Iwata, including a mock Mii-avatar battle, which similarly became the subject of several memes. In other public press presentations for Nintendo, Fils-Aimé has been involved with skits with production support from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Mega64, and The Jim Henson Company.

On November 5, 2007, at the encouragement of marketing professor Ed McLaughlin in the department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, Fils-Aimé gave a guest lecture on Nintendo's marketing strategy targeted at gamers across a spectrum of demographics. Fils-Aimé is a member of the advisory council for Cornell's Communication department.

In 2016 and early 2017, Fils-Aimé was featured in two episodes of Deadlock, on the Game Theorists web show, debating about various Nintendo-related topics.

Fils-Aimé announced his resignation as the company's president and COO on February 21, 2019, which took effect on April 15, 2019. He was replaced by the company's then-head of sales, Doug Bowser. Fils-Aimé stated he started thinking about retirement after Iwata's death in 2015: "It also reinforced for me the legacy that he had built, and he had created for the company. And that really drove me to be introspective around, 'So what's the legacy that I want to build, that I want to leave?'" He waited until he felt Nintendo of America was on solid footing for positive growth, which occurred by early 2019, to begin the process of retiring. His decision to retire was emboldened by the success of the Nintendo Switch, a hybrid game console the company released in 2017 which by the end of 2018 had already reached over 32 million sales. He believed with the Switch, which he had compared to Nintendo's previously successful Wii and Nintendo DS consoles, "the company was going to be in great shape for at least a few years".

Post-Nintendo
After leaving Nintendo, Fils-Aimé created his own Twitter account under the name @Reggie and made his first tweet saying, "Hi Twitter community."

Fils-Aimé announced he had been brought on as the first Leader in Residence at Cornell University's Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management starting in October 2019. Fils-Aimé had already been on the advisory board for Dyson as well as for Cornell's department of communications prior to this appointment, and was approached by Cornell shortly after his retirement announcement about the opportunity. In addition, Fils-Aimé joined the board of directors for the New York Videogame Critics Circle, and became a managing partner in Brentwood Growth Partners, an equity firm based in Kirkland, Washington. Through his positions at Cornell and through the New York Videogame Critics Circle, he wants to provide mentorship opportunities for youth and young adults as to encourage them to grow and become "leaders across a range of as many different disciplines as possible". Through the Residence program he plans to present his "Seven Principles for Next Generation Leaders" that he had learned over his career, and will work with the New York Videogame Critics Circle to help younger students in programs like the DreamYard Academy at William Howard Taft High School to show the students "the work that's done through the power of video games, using video games as the medium to teach critical thinking, to teach writing skills". Fils-Aimé stated these also help him give back to both the community he was raised in and to his alma mater.

Fils-Aimé, who had participated in The Game Awards since its creation in 2015, presented at The Game Awards 2019. GameStop named Fils-Aimé along two others onto its board of directors in March 2020, replacing several directors that were leaving as part of the company's efforts to turn the company's profitability around. He and several of GameStop's board members were slated to resign around June 2021 based on SEC filings. He was also named to Spin Master's board of directors in May 2020.

After the COVID-19 pandemic began, Fils-Aimé announced that he and video games journalist Harold Goldberg would start a podcast, Talking Games with Reggie and Harold, in conjunction with the New York Video Game Critics Circle. The podcast is aimed to raise charitable funds for the non-profit group to help mentor lower-income and under-served students in New York City impacted by the pandemic. Fils-Aimé was added to the board of directors at Brunswick Corporation on October 27, 2020, and later authored a book titled Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo released in April 2022.

Accolades
Fils-Aimé has been recognized for his marketing expertise in the advertising industry, including receiving a Clio Award, two Gold Effie Awards, an Association of Independent Commercial Producers Award for advertising excellence, a Silver Edison from the American Marketing Institute, and was named one of the "Marketing 100" in 1998 by Advertising Age. From the video game industry, Fils-Aimé was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Video Game Hall of Fame and has received the Legend Award from the New York Videogame Critics Circle.

Personal life
Fils-Aimé is married to Stacey Sanner, his longtime girlfriend whom he met in his previous position at VH1. He has three children from a previous marriage. Fils-Aimé started playing video games with his children when they were 2 and 5 years old. he lived on the Eastside of Seattle.

title: Reggie Fils-Aimé


text:
Talk:Bedout

The depression was discovered in 1997 by Dr. Kenneth Rigsby of the University of Wisconsin River Falls. This seems to contradict information that shows that the site has been known since at least the 70s... Does anyone actually have a reference to this fact? I've removed it for now --Confuzion 23:27, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

cf. Bedout High
This article has the more complete information, but which is the more used name? --Wetman 01:05, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Gravity anomaly
This article doesn't make any mention of the negative gravity anomaly mentoined here, and probably should do! Thanks, Verisimilus  T  08:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bedout


text:
WCU

WCU may stand for:

 * Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina, a constituent campus of the University of North Carolina system
 * West Chester University of Pennsylvania, one of the 14 state universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
 * Western Colorado University
 * Working Class Union, an early 20th century organization most notably associated with the Green Corn Rebellion
 * World currency unit

title: WCU


text:
WSSU

WSSU may refer to:

 * Winston-Salem State University
 * WSSU (FM), a radio station (88.5 FM) licensed to serve Superior, Wisconsin, United States
 * WUIS, a radio station (91.9 FM) licensed to serve Springfield, Illinois, United States, which held the call sign WSSU from 1989 to 1995
 * KUWS, a radio station (91.3 FM) licensed to serve Superior, Wisconsin, which held the call sign WSSU from 1966 to 1988

title: WSSU


text:
Talk:Badakhshan

EB1911 article; needs update
This is largely a copy of the text in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (hence the "kafirs" reference); however, it is missing the second page of that article in the first place. Then it should be brought up to date - there are OCR errors and obviously dated information. See here and the Columbia encyclopedia. David Brooks 21:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a wrong sentence about Pashtu and it´s origine. The correct version of the state is An Iranian language of the east, perhaps a Saka dialect, Paṧtō originated in the northern part of the eastern Iranian area and borrowed a great deal from Indo-Aryan..... Someone with alian intentions changed it and added Badakhchan to it.--94.219.218.20 (talk) 13:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

 * The original source which was used was "Afghanistan, vi. Paṧtō, G. The position of Paṧtō within Iranic" from this article. I verified it was correct and restored. 119.152.246.179 (talk) 08:42, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Source for Badakhshan history, 1895 British "Asiatic quarterly review"
Also an old (obsolete?) source, but fascinating if anyone wants to add any historical details: *Revelations Regarding Badakhshan. The Asiatic quarterly review, Volume 9. Swan Sonnenshein & Co., 1895. All up on GoogleBooks. MatthewVanitas (talk) 02:28, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Improvement needed
The sections about the history of the region contains too many details and it's difficult not to loose the central theme while reading and that is especially, to which empires/states the region belonged throughout history.--Severino (talk) 12:12, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Badakhshan


text:
Comic Sans

Comic Sans MS (also known by its most common name Comic Sans) is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other casual environments, such as informal documents and children's materials.

The typeface has been supplied with Microsoft Windows since the introduction of Windows 95, initially as a supplemental font in Microsoft Plus! Pack and later in Microsoft Comic Chat. Describing it, Microsoft has explained that "this casual but legible face has proved very popular with a wide variety of people."

Its widespread use, often in situations for which it was not intended, has become the subject of criticism and mockery.

Development and release
Microsoft designer Vincent Connare began working on Comic Sans in 1994 after having already created other fonts for various applications. When he saw a beta version of Microsoft Bob that used Times New Roman in the word balloons of its cartoon characters, he believed the typeface gave the software an overly formal appearance. He believed this was inappropriate for the aesthetics of the program, which was created to introduce younger users to computers. In order to make Microsoft Bob look more suitable for its intended purposes, he decided to create a new typeface with only a mouse and cursor, based on the lettering style of comic books he had in his office, specifically The Dark Knight Returns (lettered by John Costanza) and Watchmen (lettered by Dave Gibbons).

He completed Comic Sans too late for inclusion in Microsoft Bob, and the typeface would go unreleased until the programmers of Microsoft 3D Movie Maker, which also used cartoon guides and speech bubbles, adopted it. The speech bubbles were eventually phased out and replaced by actual sound, but Comic Sans stayed for the program's pop-up windows and help sections. The typeface later shipped with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack, and was the primary font of the Travel desktop theme. It was later included as a system font for the OEM versions of Windows 95. Finally, it became one of the default fonts for Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Comic Sans is also used in Microsoft Comic Chat, which was released in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3.0.

Comic Sans is pre-installed in macOS and Windows Phone but not Android, iOS or Linux.

Comic Sans Pro (2011)
Comic Sans Pro is an updated version of Comic Sans created by Terrance Weinzierl from Monotype Imaging. While retaining the original designs of the core characters, it expands the typeface by adding new italic variants, in addition to swashes, small capitals, extra ornaments and symbols including speech bubbles, onomatopoeia and dingbats, as well as text figures and other stylistic alternatives. Originally appearing as part of Ascender 2010 Font Pack as Comic Sans 2010, it was first released on April Fools' Day, causing some to initially assume it was a joke.

The italicized variant later appeared in Windows 8.

Misuse

Comic Sans has become most infamous for its use in serious circumstances, such as warning signs and formal documents, in which it might appear too informal, unprofessional, or inappropriate.

During the summer of 2010, NBA superstar LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers in free agency, in a highly publicized media affair that culminated in a TV special called The Decision. The majority owner of the team (at the time), Dan Gilbert, reacted by posting a letter to Cavalier fans. The letter was criticized for its use of Comic Sans.

In October 2012, a Dutch World War II memorial called Verzoening ("Reconciliation") was revealed on which the names of Jewish, Allied and German military deaths alike were written alongside each other in Comic Sans. The names were eventually scraped off after complaints from Jewish organizations, but the rewritten message was once again in Comic Sans. According to the city government, this was done because the letters fit the shape of the stone and were easily visible from a distance. It was, however, criticized for making the memorial appear "ugly" and "cheap".

In September 2014, The Sydney Morning Herald printed a front page with Comic Sans, causing an uproar, despite its use being within speech bubbles in keeping with the origin of the typeface.

In August 2015, a number of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's Syriza party members split and formed a new party, headed by Panagiotis Lafazanis. The official document of resignation was allegedly written in Comic Sans.

In July 2018, a statue of former Chilean President Pedro Aguirre Cerda was inaugurated in Santiago. The plaques on the monument were written in Comic Sans, drawing negative attention on social media.

In October 2019, when the United States House Intelligence Committee requested that two of Rudy Giuliani's associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruma, present documentation regarding their involvement in the Ukraine scandal, former Trump attorney John Dowd penned a letter of explanation printed in Comic Sans.

That same month, as part of the United Kingdom's Brexit debate, the Conservative Party tweeted an image stating "MPs must come together and get Brexit done" using Comic Sans. The post was heavily mocked, but some commentators saw it as a deliberate attempt to use the typeface's notoriety in order to bring their message to a wider audience.

Legibility
A research article published by Cognition in 2010 showed disfluency could lead to improved retention and classroom performance. The article stated that disfluency can be produced merely by adopting fonts that are slightly more difficult to read. In the case studies cited in the article, Comic Sans was used to introduce disfluency. A 2010 Princeton University study involving presenting students with text in a font slightly harder to read found that they consistently retained more information from material displayed in fonts perceived as ugly or disfluent (Monotype Corsiva, Haettenschweiler, and Comic Sans Italic) than in a simpler, more traditional typeface such as Helvetica.

More often, however, Comic Sans is described as especially legible, and is frequently used in school settings or as an aid for people with dyslexia. Some people have reported that typing in Comic Sans has helped to clear writer's block, claiming that its casual appearance and high legibility create less mental tension. Compared to other typefaces, Comic Sans has fewer rotated and mirror-image glyphs (ex. the letters "b", "d", "p", and "q"), has particularly wide letter spacing, and is sans serif.

Reception and legacy
Several reinterpretations of Comic Sans have been created as a result of its popularity. In April 2014, font designer Craig Rozynski released a modernized version of Comic Sans called Comic Neue. In 2015, graphic designer Ben Harman created Comic Papyrus (later renamed "Comic Parchment" for legal reasons), which combines the features of Comic Sans with the similarly panned typeface Papyrus. In 2019, Tabular Type Foundry released Comic Code, a monospaced version of the typeface.

In 2017, it was reported that Vincent Connare, the typeface's designer, had only used it once.

Opposition
Because of its ubiquity and misuse, Comic Sans has received heavy disapproval from graphic and type designers. The Boston Phoenix reported on disgruntlement over the widespread use of the typeface, especially its incongruous use for writing on serious subjects, with the complaints urged on by a campaign started by two Indianapolis graphic designers, Dave and Holly Combs, via their website "Ban Comic Sans". The movement was conceived in 1999 by the two designers after an employer insisted that one of them use Comic Sans in a children's museum exhibit. The website's main argument is that a typeface should match the tone of its text and that the humorous appearance of Comic Sans often contrasted with a serious message, such as a "do not enter" sign. The movement ran until 2019, when it was renamed "Use Comic Sans," which was because Dave Combs believed the hatred had "gotten out of hand" and "it's gotten to be so bad that it's almost cool again."

Dave Gibbons, whose work was one of the inspirations for Comic Sans, said that it was "a shame they couldn't have used just the original font, because [Comic Sans] is a real mess. I think it's a particularly ugly letter form."

Film producer and The New York Times essayist Errol Morris wrote in an August 2012 posting, "The conscious awareness of Comic Sans promotes—at least among some people—contempt and summary dismissal." With the help of a professor, he conducted an online experiment and found that Comic Sans, in comparison with five other typefaces (Baskerville, Helvetica, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, and Computer Modern), makes readers slightly less likely to believe that a statement they are reading is true.

Defense
In the Netherlands, radio DJs Coen Swijnenberg and Sander Lantinga decided to celebrate the typeface by having a Comic Sans day on the first Friday of July. Comic Sans Day has been held since 2009. Some Dutch companies have their website in Comic Sans on this day.

According to a 2020 Twitter poll held by TES, 44% of teachers sampled used Comic Sans in their teaching resources. Comic Sans is widely used in schools due to its high legibility. Other reasons include:

 * It is more suitable for dyslexic students.
 * It is well-suited for modeling handwriting, due to the single-story lowercase "a" and "g", and distinct appearances of the letters  and.
 * It is aesthetically pleasing to some children.

Vincent Connare is reportedly not offended by the negative backlash over Comic Sans. At the Fourth Annual Boring Conference, he claimed to find the contempt for his work to be "mildly amusing." He has stated that he is proud of his creation, offering different rationales. One of these was that "Comic Sans does what it was commissioned to do, it is loved by kids, mums, dads and many family members. So it did its job very well. It matched the brief!" He has also referred to it as "the best joke I've ever told." In 2014, commenting on Comic Sans' critics and fans alike, Connare said, "If you love it, you don't know much about typography, [but] if you hate it, you really don't know much about typography either, and you should get another hobby."

Lauren Hudgins of The Establishment argued that people who use Comic Sans should be treated with respect, not mockery, because "people without dyslexia need empathy for those who need concessions to manage the disability."

In popular culture
In the 2005 session of the youth model parliament in Ontario, Canada, the New Democratic Party included the clause, "Ban the font known as Comic Sans" in an omnibus ban bill.

On May 22, 2012, The Comic Sans Song was released by YouTube content creator and musician Gunnarolla, in collaboration with musician Andrew Huang. The song makes reference to Comic Sans and features commentary around the impact the font has had on pop-culture.

In July 2012, when the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced at CERN, Fabiola Gianotti, the spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment, attracted comment by using Comic Sans in her presentation of the results. As a 2014 April Fools' Day joke, CERN claimed that it would be switching all its publications to Comic Sans.

The Internet meme Doge, which became popular in late 2013, consists of different colored sets of words in broken English written in Comic Sans around the head of a Shiba Inu dog.

In April 2014, OpenBSD announced the LibreSSL project in Comic Sans, claiming to be the first to "weaponize" it as a means for soliciting donations.

In the 2015 video game Undertale and its followup Deltarune, the character Sans is a comic (i.e. comedian) named after the typeface. His dialogue is displayed in lowercase Comic Sans. He is paired with his brother named Papyrus, in reference to the typeface of the same name.

In October 2022, Comic Sans became the representative of Dyslexia Scotland and their ad campaign, There's Nothing Comic About Dyslexia. The campaign's purpose is to inform people on the typeface's benefits among dyslexic people, and to encourage the creation of typefaces that are more formal, but also dyslexic-friendly.

The song "Tacky" by Weird Al Yankovic, a parody of "Happy" by Pharrell Williams, features Yankovic listing a number of "tacky" behaviors ranging from stylish faux pas to obnoxious and rude behaviors as examples of what makes a person potentially "tacky." Among them is writing a résumé in Comic Sans.

Comic Sans Pro

 * Linotype page
 * Comic Sans Pro Information on the website of Terrance Weinzierl

title: Comic Sans


text:
Talk:WSSU

Does there exist a radio or television station with call letters WSSU?? (Please don't simply assume there isn't one just because you don't know one.) 66.245.117.53 23:31, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:WSSU


text:
Phone fraud

Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.

Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce their losses. Communications operators tend to keep their actual loss figures and plans for corrective measures confidential.

According to a 2011 survey by CFCA, an industry group created to reduce fraud against carriers, the five top fraud loss categories reported by operators were:
 * $4.96 billion – compromised PBX/voicemail systems
 * $4.32 billion – subscription/identity theft
 * $3.84 billion – International Revenue Share Fraud
 * $2.88 billion – by-pass fraud
 * $2.40 billion – cash fraud

Fraud against users by phone companies

 * Cramming is the addition of charges to a subscriber's telephone bill for services which were neither ordered nor desired by the client, or for fees for calls or services that were not properly disclosed to the client. These charges are often assessed by dishonest third-party suppliers of data and communication service that phone companies are required, by law, to allow the third-party to place on the bill.
 * Slamming is any fraudulent, unauthorized change to the default long-distance/local carrier or DSL Internet service selection for a subscriber's line, most often made by dishonest vendors desiring to steal business from competing service providers.
 * False Answer Supervision is a misconfiguration of telephone company equipment, by negligence or design, which causes billing to start as soon as the distant telephone begins ringing, even if a call is busy or there is no answer. The cost is typically subtle but recurring as subscribers repeatedly pay some small amount for calls which were never completed.

Fraud against customers by third parties

 * PBX dial-through can be used fraudulently by placing a call to a business then requesting to be transferred to "9-0" or some other outside toll number. (9 is normally an outside line and 0 then connects to the utility's operator.) The call appears to originate from the business (instead of the original fraudulent caller) and appears on the company's phone bill. Trickery (such as impersonation of installer and telecommunications company personnel "testing the system") or bribery and collusion with dishonest employees inside the firm may be used to gain access.
 * A variant is a call forwarding scam, where a fraudster tricks a subscriber into call forwarding their number to either a long-distance number or a number at which the fraudster or an accomplice is accepting collect calls. The unsuspecting subscriber then gets a huge long-distance bill for all of these calls.
 * A similar scheme involves forwarding an individual PBX extension to a long-distance or overseas number; the PBX owner must pay tolls for all of these calls. Voice over IP servers are often flooded with brute-force attempts to register bogus off-premises extensions (which may then be forwarded or used to make calls) or to directly call SIP addresses which request outside numbers on a gateway; as they are computers, they are targets for Internet system crackers.
 * Autodialers may be used for a number of dishonest purposes, including telemarketing fraud or even as wardialing, which takes its name from a scene in the 1983 movie WarGames in which a 'cracker' programs a home computer to dial every number in an exchange, searching for lines with auto-answer data modems. Sequential dialing is easy to detect, pseudo-random dialing is not.
 * In the US, owners of customer-owned coin-operated telephones (COCOTs) are paid sixty cents for every call their users make to a toll-free telephone number, with the charges billed to the called number. A fraudulent COCOT provider could potentially auto-dial 1-800 wrong numbers and get paid for these as "calls received from a payphone" with charges reversed.
 * Autodialers are also used to make many short-duration calls, mainly to mobile devices, leaving a missed call number which is either premium rate or contains advertising messages, in the hope that the victim will call back. This is known as Wangiri (literally, "One (ring) and cut") from Japan where it originated.
 * 809 scams take their name from the former +1-809 area code which used to cover most of the Caribbean nations, since split into multiple new area codes, adding to the confusion. The numbers are advertised as offering services to callers in, typically, North America; they look like Canadian or US telephone numbers but are actually costly premium international calls that bypass consumer-protection laws that regulate premium numbers based in the victim's home country. Some advertise phone sex or other typically premium content. Ways to elicit calls include leaving unsolicited messages on pagers, or making bogus claims of being a relative in a family emergency to trick users into calling the number, then attempting to keep the victim on the expensive call for as long as possible. A later version of the 809 scam involves calling cellular telephones then hanging up, in hopes of the curious (or annoyed) victim calling them back. This is the Wangiri scam, with the addition of using Caribbean numbers such as 1-473 (Grenada) which look like North American domestic calls.
 * Pre-paid telephone cards or "calling cards" are vulnerable to fraudulent use. These cards show an access number that can be dialed to bill worldwide toll calls to the card via a passcode printed on a particular card. Anyone who obtains the passcode can make calls charged to the card.
 * Carrier access codes were widely misused by phone-sex scammers in the early days of competitive long distance; the phone-sex operations would misrepresent themselves as alternate long-distance carriers to evade consumer protection measures which prevent US phone subscribers from losing local or long-distance service due to calls to +1-900 or 976 premium numbers. This loophole is now closed.
 * In the US, area code 500 and its overlays permit a "follow-me routing" in which, if the number has been forwarded to some expensive and arbitrary destination, the caller is billed for the call to that location. Similar issues existed with area code 700 as the numbers are specific to long-distance carriers (except 1-700-555-4141, which identifies the carrier). Because of the unpredictable and potentially costly rate for such a call, these services never gained widespread use.
 * Telemarketing fraud takes a number of forms; much like mail fraud, solicitations for the sale of goods or investments which are worthless or never delivered and requests for donations to unregistered charities are not uncommon. Callers often prey upon sick, disabled and elderly persons; scams in which a caller attempts to obtain banking or credit card information are also common. A variant involves calling a number of business offices, asking for model numbers of various pieces of office equipment in use (such as photocopiers), sending unsolicited shipments of supplies for the machines, and then billing the victims at inflated prices.

 * Caller ID spoofing is a technique used with many frauds to impersonate a trusted caller such as a bank or credit union, a law enforcement agency, or another subscriber. When the telephone rings, the number displayed as caller is the faked trusted number. These calls may be used for vishing, where a scammer impersonates a trusted counterparty in order to fraudulently obtain financial or personal information.
 * Call clearing delays, in some United Kingdom exchanges, could be abused to defraud. For many years only the caller could disconnect a call; if the called party hung up the call it would not be disconnected. A thief would call a household and impersonate, for example, a bank or the police, and encourage them to call back, using a trusted number known to the victim. The caller could then play a recording of dial tone to trick the victim into thinking they were making a new call, while actually remaining connected to the original call; someone impersonating a bank or police officer would then come on the line.

 * Cordless phones had additional vulnerabilities; with some models a scanner radio could intercept analogue conversations in progress, or a handset of the same or a similar model as the target system may be usable to make toll calls through a cordless base station which does not authenticate calls. Obsolete analogue mobile telephones have stopped working in areas where the AMPS service has been shut down, but obsolete cordless phone systems may remain in service as long as analog telephony is supported.
 * A scam involving Indian call centers targeting American or Canadian customers demanding "unpaid taxes" by impersonating government officials was reported in 2016. Similar government impersonation scams include the SSA impersonation scam.
 * Every day, hundreds of scam calls are received on the US mainland which offer the recipients grant money from the Federal Government, but requesting a "small administration fee", although there are no fees associated with applying for or receiving a government grant.
 * During the 1980s, a common form of premium-rate fraud involved manipulating children (often through television commercials, such as during Saturday morning cartoons) to call a premium-rate number without their parents' knowledge or permission, sometimes going so far as to ask a child to hold the phone receiver up to the television set as it played DTMF tones to automatically trigger the dialing of a premium number. Such practices are now illegal in the United States.
 * The Can You Hear Me? telephone scam was alleged to be used in North America in 2017: the caller would ask a question with the answer "yes", then use a recording of the "yes" to make telephone transactions.

Fraud between phone companies

 * Interconnect fraud involves the falsification of records by telephone carriers in order to deliberately miscalculate the money owed by one telephone network to another. This affects calls originating on one network but carried by another at some point between source and destination.
 * Refiling is a form of interconnect fraud in which one carrier tampers with CID (caller-ID) or ANI data to falsify the number from which a call originated before handing the call off to a competitor. Refiling and interconnect fraud briefly made headlines in the aftermath of the Worldcom financial troubles; the refiling scheme is based on a quirk in the system by which telecommunications companies bill each other – two calls to the same place may incur different costs because of differing displayed origin. A common calculation of payments between telecommunications companies calculates the percentage of the total distance over which each telecommunications company has carried one call to determine division of toll revenues for that call; refiling distorts data required to make these calculations.
 * Grey routes are voice over IP gateways which deliver international calls to countries by mislabeling them as inbound local mobile telephone calls at destination. These "SIM box" operations are common in third world nations with exorbitant official international rates, usually due to some combination of tight control by one state-supported monopoly and/or excessive taxation of inbound overseas calls. Governments who believe themselves entitled to charge any arbitrary inflated price for inbound international calls, even far above the cost of domestic calls to the same destinations, will legislate against any privately owned, independent, competitive VoIP gateway, labeling the operations as "bypass fraud" and driving them underground or out of business. As a VoIP gateway in such a regulatory environment typically does not have access to T-carrier primary rate interface or PBX-style trunks, its operator is forced to rely on a hardware configuration with Internet telephony on one side and a large number of mobile SIM cards and handsets on the other to place the calls as if they were from individual local mobile subscribers.

Fraud against phone companies by users

 * Subscription fraud: for example, signing up with a false name, or no intention to pay.
 * Collect call fraud: most automated collect call systems allow the caller to record a short audio snippet, intended to identify the caller so that the recipient can decide whether or not to accept the charges. With the system being automated, the caller could insert any message they want, free of charge, as long as it fit within the short allotted time, and the recipient could refuse charges. A variant is to refuse a collect call at the higher operator-assisted rate, then call the person back at a lower price.
 * Person-to-person call fraud: Under archaic operator assistance systems, a person-to-person call only charged a caller if they could reach a specific person at the other end of the line. Thus, if coordinated beforehand, a caller could use a false name as a code word, with the recipient rejecting the call, and no one would be charged.
 * Intentional non-return of rental equipment (such as extension telephones) when relocating to a new address. The equipment would then be used at the new location without paying a monthly equipment rental fee. This has become rare as most telephones are now owned outright, not rented.

Frauds against phone companies by third parties

 * Phreaking involves obtaining knowledge of how the telephone network operates, which can be (but is not always) used to place unauthorized calls. The history of phone phreaking shows that many 'phreaks' used their vast knowledge of the network to help telephone companies. There are, however, many phreaks who use their knowledge to exploit the network for personal gain, even today. In some cases, social engineering has been used to trick telecommunications company employees into releasing technical information. Early examples of phreaking involved generation of various control tones, such as a 2600 hertz blue box tone to release a long-distance trunk for immediate re-use or the red box tones which simulate coins being inserted into a payphone. These exploits no longer work in many areas of the telephone network due to widespread use of digital switching systems and out-of-band signaling. There are, however, many areas of the world where these control tones are still used and this kind of fraud still continues to happen.
 * A more high-tech version of the above is switch reprogramming, where unauthorized "back door" access to the phone company's network or billing system is used to allow free telephony. This is then sometimes resold by the 'crackers' to other customers.
 * Caller name display (CNAM) is vulnerable to data mining, where a dishonest user obtains a line (fixed or mobile) with caller name display and then calls that number repeatedly from an autodialer which uses caller ID spoofing to send a different presentation number on each call. None of the calls are actually answered, but the telephone company has to look up every number (a CNAM database "dip") to display the corresponding subscriber name from its records. The list of displayed names and numbers (which may be landline or wireless) is then sold to telemarketers.
 * Payphones have also been misused to receive fraudulent collect calls; most carriers have turned off the feature of accepting incoming calls or have muted the payphones internal ringing mechanism for this very reason.
 * Cloning has been used as a means of copying both the electronic serial number and the telephone number of another subscriber's phone to a second (cloned) phone. Airtime charges for outbound calls are then mis-billed to the victim's cellular phone account instead of the perpetrator's.

title: Phone fraud


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Imperial Oil

Imperial Oil Limited (Compagnie Pétrolière Impériale Ltée) is a Canadian petroleum company. It is Canada's second-largest integrated oil company. It is majority-owned by American oil company ExxonMobil, with a 69.6% ownership stake in the company. It is a producer of crude oil, diluted bitumen, and natural gas. Imperial Oil is one of Canada's major petroleum refiners and petrochemical producers. It supplies Esso-brand service stations.

Imperial owns 25% of Syncrude, which is one of the world's largest oil sands operations. It also has holdings in the Alberta Oil Sands, and operates an oil sands mining operation with ExxonMobil, called Kearl Oil Sands.

Imperial Oil is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. It was based in Toronto, Ontario, until 2005. Most of Imperial's production is from its natural resource holdings in the Alberta oil sands and the Norman Wells oil field in the Northwest Territories.

Imperial Oil was ranked 34th in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI) for 2021 out of 120 mining, oil, and gas corporations that extract resources north of the Arctic Circle.

Founding and early years
In April 1880, Jacob Lewis Englehart and 16 prominent oil refiners in London, Ontario, and Petrolia, Ontario, formed Imperial Oil in response to Standard Oil's growing dominance of the oil market. Englehart aimed to emulate John D. Rockefeller and merge the entire Canadian oil industry into one conglomerate. Although the majority of Ontario's top oil producers agreed to join in the enterprise, exceptions included John Henry Fairbank, who was then Canada's largest oil producer, and James Miller Williams, founder of the Canadian Oil Company. Englehart and the refiners established Imperial Oil as a joint-stock company with a capitalized value of $500,000. In addition to Englehart, the original shareholders included Frederick A. Fitzgerald, Isaac and Herman Waterman, William Spencer and his sons William and Charles, Thomas and Edward Hodgins, John Geary, Joseph Fallows, John Minhinnick, William English and John Walker. Together, the shareholders possessed twelve oil refineries and controlled 85% of the refining capacity in Canada. Fitzgerald and Englehart were the two largest stakeholders in the company and were named the president and vice president, respectively. Imperial Oil's charter noted that its goal was to "find, produce, refine and distribute petroleum and its products throughout Canada."

Despite its early successes, Imperial Oil struggled to make a profit and issue dividends in the early 1880s. The discovery of new oil fields in Pennsylvania and New York drove down the price of oil, and the creation of the Standard Oil Trust resulted in an increase of American oil imports into Canada. In a move to boost kerosene prices, Imperial closed down ten of the twelve refineries it had acquired through the merger, leaving only the Silver Star refinery in Petrolia and the Victor works in London. In 1883, the Victor works was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, and under Englehart's direction, the company concentrated its refining efforts at Petrolia.

Herman Frasch and the sulphur dilemma
In 1884, Imperial Oil purchased the exclusive use of Herman Frasch's fractional distillation patent, which was more efficient at separating crude oil into usable products. Imperial initially offered Frasch $10,000 and Imperial Oil stock, but he persuaded the company to offer him a salary that matched Fitzgerald's and a seat on the Board of Directors. Frasch had taken the position primarily to supervise the installation of his refining method at the Silver Star refinery and resigned in February 1885 once the work was complete. Frasch then joined John Minhinnick in forming a separate venture called the Empire Oil Company. The pair purchased an idle refinery in London, and Frasch began experimenting on a way to remove the sulphur content in the oil pumped at Lambton County. The high sulphur content in Canadian oil placed it at a disadvantage compared to the oil mined at Pennsylvania due to its "distinctive odour" when burned. Canadians called the product "skunk oil". Between 1885 and 1887, Frasch discovered that mixing copper oxide with the oil during the distilling process would remove the sulphur content and odour from the refined product.

By this time, Standard Oil had also become interested in the desulphurization process after moving production to oil fields in Ohio that had a similar sulphur content to Lambton County. In 1886, Standard Oil persuaded Frasch to return to the United States and join their company by offering "a salary higher than that of any other scientist in the country" and an exchange of his shares in the Empire Oil Company for an equivalent amount in Standard Oil. After returning to the United States, Frasch perfected his desulphurization strategy, and Standard Oil held a monopoly on the process until 1905.

The 1890s and the Standard Oil buyout
Despite rising revenue and growth in the 1890s, Imperial Oil faced continuing challenges in its markets, primarily from Standard Oil, which operated a series of subsidiary companies across Canada. Although Imperial dominated the Western Canadian market, the company could not establish a strong foothold in the Maritimes or Quebec as Standard supplied these regions through long-term contracts with local companies. While the Conservative Party's National Policy had stopped Standard Oil from fully entering the Canadian market, the economic policy came under attack by Standard Oil lobbyists and Canadian consumers, who asked for a cheaper and higher quality product. In 1893, Ottawa reduced import duties on refined oil products from 7.2 cents to 6 cents per wine gallon, and in 1896, Wilfrid Laurier's government reduced the tariff again to 5 cents. Additionally, Laurier removed restrictions on tank cars and tank steamers, allowing foreign companies to bulk ship oil into Canada by rail or sea. Before, foreign companies had to repackage their product into oil barrels before entering Canada, adding roughly five cents in shipping and handling charges to each gallon of imported oil.

In 1895, Imperial Oil's Board of Directors began negotiations to sell the company to the Colonial Development Corporation, a British company. After three years, the deal collapsed, and the Board of Directors instead chose to sell the company to Standard Oil. The agreement specified that Standard Oil would acquire 75% of Imperial Oil's shares, Imperial Oil would acquire all of Standard Oil's Canadian subsidiary companies, Imperial's capitalization would be increased to $1 million, and Imperial shareholders would receive a dividend of $93,000. Following the deal, Imperial Oil shut down the Silver Star refinery in Petrolia and moved its refining operations to Sarnia, Ontario.

Later years
In a landmark 1911 anti-trust case, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil to break up into 34 separate companies. Ownership of Imperial Oil, as well Standard Oil's other subsidiaries outside the U.S., were all transferred to only one of those 34 successor firms, Jersey Standard (later renamed Exxon).

Imperial Oil discovered the Leduc Woodbend Devonian oil reef in 1947, marking the beginning of the contemporary period in Canadian oil and gas development. Drilling began on the landmark discovery well Leduc No. 1 on November 20, 1946.

In 1989, Imperial Oil acquired Texaco's Canadian operations.

When Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999 to form ExxonMobil, the combined company continued to maintain Mobil's Canadian operations as a separate subsidiary, independent of Imperial Oil.

Film and television
From the 1934-35 season through the 1975-76 season, Imperial Oil was a sponsor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program Hockey Night in Canada for both radio and television broadcasts. Esso, which had three stars on their signs, sponsored Hockey Night in Canada 's three stars of the game.

In the same era, the company was also involved in film production, providing funding for independent documentary films. Glenbow Museum in Calgary holds a large collection of Imperial Oil's film inventory.

President
Frederick A. Fitzgerald, 1880–1889 Frank Q. Barstow, 1889–1908 Horace Chamberlain, 1908–1911 Walter C. Teagle, 1914–1918 William J. Hanna, 1918–1919 Charles O. Stillman, 1919–1933 G. Harrison Smith, 1933–1944 Richard V. LeSueur, 1944–1945 Henry H. Hewetson, 1945–1949 George L. Stewart, 1949–1953 John R. White, 1953–1960 William O. Twaits, 1960–1970 John A. Armstrong, 1970–1979 James R. Livingstone, 1979–1982 Arden R. Haynes, 1982–1988 Robert B. Peterson, 1988–1992 Ronald A. Brenneman, 1992–1994 Robert B. Peterson, 1994–2001 Timothy J. Hearn, 2001–2007 Bruce H. March, 2007–2013 Richard M. Kruger, 2013–2019 Bradley W. Corson, 2019–

Chairman of the Board
Frederick A. Fitzgerald, 1889–1905 G. Harrison Smith, 1944–1945 Richard V. LeSueur, 1945 Frank W. Pierce, 1945–1947 George L. Stewart, 1947–1949 Henry H. Hewetson, 1949–1950 George L. Stewart, 1953–1955 John R. White, 1960–19?? William O. Twaits, 1970–1974 John A. Armstrong, 1974–1981 Donald K. McIvor, 1981–1985 Arden R. Haynes, 1985–1992 Robert B. Peterson, 1992–2002 Timothy J. Hearn, 2002–2008 Bruce H. March, 2008–2013 Richard M. Kruger, 2013–2019 Bradley W. Corson, 2019–

Retail
Imperial Oil supplied more than 2,000 service stations as of October 2020, all of which were owned by third parties. It sold its remaining 497 stations in 2016 to retailers such as Alimentation Couche-Tard (mostly Ontario and Quebec), 7-Eleven (mostly Alberta and British Columbia), Parkland, Harnois (Quebec) and Wilson Fuel (Atlantic Canada). In the late early 1990s Imperial Oil had acquired retail operations from Texaco's Canadian unit Texaco Canada Incorporated.

With ExxonMobil having majority ownership, Imperial Oil licences its parent company's brands, including the Esso and Mobil names for service stations, and the Speedpass electronic payment system.

Until 2018, Imperial Oil was a member of the rewards program Aeroplan. On March 13, 2018, Loblaw Companies announced that it had reached a deal for the Esso-branded stations to join the PC Optimum rewards program, beginning on June 1, 2018. Loblaw Companies had sold its network of 213 gas stations (all of which are attached to its various grocery store locations) to Brookfield Business Partners in 2017; Brookfield entered into an agreement with Imperial Oil to use the Mobil brand for these stations. As part of the sale agreement, these stations also continue to participate in PC Optimum.

title: Imperial Oil


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User:MykReeve/Diagrams

My diagrams on Wikipedia:

Formula One

title: User:MykReeve/Diagrams


text:
Irad

Irad (, Irad) is a name in Hebrew. In the Book of Genesis, the grandson of Cain is Irad.

Genesis 4:18, in a genealogical passage about the descendants of Cain, contains the only reference to Irad in the Bible: "To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech" (New Revised Standard Version).

The lineage of Cain in Genesis 4:17-22 closely parallels the lineage of Cain's brother Seth found in Genesis 5:1-32. In terms of the Documentary hypothesis, the genealogy of Cain is attributed to the Jahwist source, while the genealogy of Seth is attributed to the Priestly source. The J list and P list contain seven pairs of similar names, and the "Irad" of the Jahwist source is parallel to the "Jared" of the Priestly source.

title: Irad


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Zillah

Zillah may refer to:

Geography

 * Zillah (country subdivision), a country subdivision in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan
 * Zillah, Washington, United States, a city

People

 * Zillah Smith Gill (1859–1937), New Zealand local politician and community leader
 * Cecilia "Zillah" Andrén, winner of Talang 2007, a Sweden TV talent show - see Zillah & Totte
 * Zillah Minx, a member of Rubella Ballet, a gothic anarcho-punk band

Fictional characters

 * Zillah, a vampire from Lost Souls, by Poppy Z Brite
 * Zillah, the wife of Abel in Cain, by Lord Byron
 * Zillah, from Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford
 * Zillah, from Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Brontë
 * Zillah, a Native American princess in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the fourth book of Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet

Other uses

 * Zillah (biblical figure), a wife of Lamech, a descendant of Cain
 * USS Zillah (SP-2804), a patrol vessel that served in the United States Navy in 1918
 * Zilla, a 19th-century wooden steamboat - see Miztec (schooner barge)
 * Zillah High School, Zillah, Washington
 * Zillah (Senatorius Sacerdos Harpyiae) name given to sigil verve referring to Obsession (and division). Published circa 2005 - 2006.

title: Zillah


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Wang Meng (Former Qin)

Wang Meng (325 – August or September 375 ), courtesy name Jinglüe (景略), formally Marquess Wu of Qinghe (清河武侯), was a Chinese military general and politician. He served as a chancellor of the Former Qin dynasty of China and under the Emperor Xuanzhao in the fourth century AD. Under his governance, the Former Qin expanded from encompassing only most of Shaanxi, eastern Gansu, and extreme western Shanxi and Henan, to covering nearly all of then-Chinese territory north of the Huai River and the southwest. He is commonly regarded as one of the greatest statesmen in Chinese history. Wang Meng is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.

Early life
Wang, was poor in his youth, when he lived in the Later Zhao capital Yecheng, and he made a living by making bamboo grain containers for threshing. Despite his intelligence, his talents were not discovered by Later Zhao officials. The intelligentsia also largely refused to associate with him, since he was unkempt in his appearance. He later became a hermit at Huayin Mountain, in the territory of Former Qin, ruled by the Fu clan of Di ethnicity, after Later Zhao's collapse.

When the Jin general Huan Wen made a major attack on Former Qin in 354 and reached all the way to Ba River (灞水), in the vicinity of Former Qin's capital Chang'an, Wang went to meet Huan. Wang, as unkempt as he was, was using his hand to slap at fleas and ticks during the conversation, but impressed Huan with his knowledge and tactics. Huan then asked him why the people of the Qin lands were not shifting their allegiance to Jin, and Wang pointed out that the people were not sure what Huan's intentions were, given that he hesitated at crossing the Ba River. As the situation stalemated, Huan began to run out of food supplies and was forced to withdraw. He invited Wang to withdraw with him, but Wang declined, apparently believing that Huan was not the right person to follow.

After Fu Sheng, the son of Former Qin founding emperor Fu Jiàn, became emperor in 355, he ruled the empire with stern cruelty and arbitrariness, slaughtering officials and nobles at will. His cousin Fu Jiān (note different tone) the Prince of Donghai feared that he would be the next target, and secretly plotted with a number of people. At Lü Polou (呂婆樓)'s suggestion, Fu Jiān met Wang, and they became friends immediately, and Fu Jiān compared their meeting to Liu Bei's meeting of Zhuge Liang.

In 357, after finding out that Fu Sheng was ready to kill him and his brother Fu Fa (苻法) the Prince of Qinghe, Fu Jiān acted preemptively, overthrowing and killing Fu Sheng. He assumed the throne under the title "Heavenly Prince" (Tian Wang), and he made Wang one of his key advisors, along with his brothers Fu Fa and Fu Rong, his son Fu Pi, and his mother Empress Dowager Gou's lover Li Wei (李威).

Early career
Under Li's suggestion, however, Fu Jiān increasingly entrusted greater and greater responsibility to Wang, and Wang handled the responsibility capably. When he got into a conflict of words with the general Fan Shi (樊世), angering Fan so much that Fan physically attacked him, Fu put Fan to death. Wang was named the mayor of Chang'an in 359, and quickly arrested and executed the founding emperor Fu Jiàn's brother-in-law Qiang De (強德), who had previously robbed the people of possessions and children unpunished. Quickly, the noble families curbed their behavior, and social order was well established, in Chang'an. Late that year, Fu Jiān promoted him to prime minister, despite his initial refusal and recommendation of Fu Rong for that post.

Wang Meng, as prime minister, organized the Former Qin government into a model of efficiency and honesty—sometimes to the degree of ruthlessness. In 364, for example, after Fu Sheng's brother Fu Teng (苻騰) the Duke of Ru'nan rebelled and was executed, Wang suggested to Fu Jiān that Fu Sheng's four remaining brothers be killed as well, a suggestion that Fu Jiān rejected. Wang also showed military talent, in addition to talent in governance. In 366, for example, Fu Jiān sent him, Yang An, and Yao Chang to make a successful raid against Jin's Jing Province (荊州, modern central and southern Hubei). In 367, Wang also led an army against the warlords Lian Qi (斂岐) and Li Yan (李儼), who occupied modern eastern Gansu and who had vacillated between Former Qin and Former Liang. At that time, however, Wang avoided a direct confrontation with Former Liang's ruler Zhang Tianxi, as he negotiated a compromise in dividing Li's territory and followers.

In late 367, Fu Sheng's remaining brothers—Fu Liu (苻柳) the Duke of Jin, Fu Sou (苻廋) the Duke of Wei, and Fu Wu (苻武) the Duke of Yan, along with Fu Jiān's brother Fu Shuang (苻雙) the Duke of Zhao, rebelled. Fu Jiān sent separate forces against each of the rebellious dukes, and Wang was sent to attack Fu Liu, whom he defeated easily. Wang then turned his attention against Fu Sou, and eventually, all four dukes were defeated and killed.

In 369, when Huan Wen launched a major attack against Former Yan, the Former Yan emperor Murong Wei and regent Murong Ping panicked and sought assistance from Former Qin, promising to cede the Luoyang region to Former Qin if it rendered assistance. Most Former Qin officials suggested a refusal, but Wang reminded Fu Jiān that if Huan conquered Former Yan and added its territory to Jin's, Former Qin would not be able to stand. Fu Jiān therefore sent a force commanded by Shi Yue (石越) to relieve Former Yan, whose general Murong Chui defeated Huan, with Shi's assistance. However, Former Yan refused to cede Luoyang, and Fu Jiān commissioned Wang to lead a 60,000-men force against Former Yan later that year. Wang's campaign seemed even more promising after Murong Chui, fearful of Murong Ping's jealousy and the emperor Murong Wei's mother Empress Dowager Kezuhun's hatred toward him, defected to Former Qin. Fu Jiān greeted Murong Chui with great honors, but Wang distrusted Murong Chui.

In early 370, Wang attacked Luoyang, forcing its surrender. He then carried out a plot to try to put Murong Chui to death—as he bribed one of Murong Chui's guards Jin Xi (金熙) into giving Murong Chui's heir apparent Murong Ling (慕容令), who was serving as Wang's guide, a false message that Murong Chui had heard that Empress Dowager Kezuhun had regretted her actions and that, therefore, he was defecting back to Former Yan. Murong Ling, unable to verify either the truth or the falsehood of the message, decided to defect back to Former Yan. Wang immediately accused Murong Ling of treason, and Murong Chui, in fear, fled, but was captured, although Fu Jiān believed that Murong Ling was acting independently and therefore pardoned Murong Chui. (Historians such as Sima Guang, the author of Zizhi Tongjian, and Bo Yang, have criticized Wang as driven by jealousy of how honored Murong Chui was by Fu Jiān, although this point is disputed by other historians.)

Wang continued his campaign against Former Yan, and he advanced on Hu Pass (壺關, in modern Changzhi, Shanxi), defeating all Former Yan resistance on the way. He then captured Jinyang (晉陽, in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi). Murong Ping led a 300,000-men strong force against Wang, but apprehensive of Wang, he stopped at Lu River (潞川, in modern Changzhi as well). Wang soon arrived to prepare to face off against him. Meanwhile, Murong Ping made the worst display of his corruption at this time—keeping guards at forests and streams, disallowing commoners and even his own soldiers from cutting firewood or fishing unless they paid a usage fee in either money or silk. He soon had a stash of wealth, but completely lost the morale of his soldiers. Murong Wei, hearing this, sent a messenger to rebuke him and ordering him to distribute the wealth to the soldiers, but the damage was done. In winter 370, the armies engaged, and despite the numerical advantage that Murong Ping had, Wang crushed him, and Murong Ping fled back to the Former Yan capital Yecheng by himself. Murong Wei abandoned Yecheng and tried to flee to the old capital Helong (和龍, in modern Jinzhou, Liaoning), but was captured on the way. Fu Jiān pardoned him but had him formally surrender with his officials, ending Former Yan.

Late career
Fu Jiān made Wang Meng the viceroy over six provinces—the former territory of Former Yan. In those six provinces, Wang had full imperial authority, an authority that Wang tried to decline repeatedly, but eventually exercised. In 371, he wrote to Zhang Tianxi and persuaded him to submit to Former Qin authority as a vassal. Later that year, he again tried to decline the responsibilities of viceroy over six provinces, and offered to govern just one province. Fu Jiān refused.

In 372, Fu Jiān summoned Wang back to Chang'an to again be prime minister. Fu Rong succeeded him as viceroy over the six provinces. It was described that during this time, Wang was so capable that Fu Jiān barely had to carry out any duties of his own. Sima Guang had this description of Wang's abilities:

 * Wang was strong in personality and understanding, honest and resolute, clean and solemn, and he understood right and wrong very well. He deposed incompetent officials and promoted the talented people who were hidden in the lower ranks due to their lack of connections.  He supervised the people to tend their fields, plant mulberries, and keep silkworms, in addition to strengthening the battle training of the troops.  Each official was competent in tasks that he was given.  Each penalty fit the evidence of the crime.  Therefore, the empire became rich and powerful and undefeatable.  It was during this time that Former Qin was a most well-run state.

In summer 375, Wang grew ill. In order to try to appease the spirits to save Wang's life, Fu Jiān ordered a general pardon. However, by autumn, Wang was near death. On his deathbed, he warned Fu Jiān against campaigns to conquer Eastern Jin, and stated that he believed that the Xianbei (the people of Former Yan's nobility) and the Qiang would create trouble in the future and should be watched against. He then died. However, Fu Jiãn failed to take in this last advice, and launched a major offensive against Eastern Jin in the autumn of 383, but was badly defeated at the Battle of Fei River in winter that year, severely weakening Former Qin and eventually led to its collapse in 394.

Wang Meng's sons Wang Yong (王永) and Wang Pi (王皮) would serve as Former Qin officials, and Wang Yong would eventually be prime minister during the reign of Fu Pi, but was unable to reverse Former Qin's collapse at that time. One of Wang Meng's grandsons, Wang Zhen'e (王鎮惡), would later be a Jin general under Liu Yu.

title: Wang Meng (Former Qin)


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Michie Stadium

Michie Stadium is an outdoor football stadium on the campus of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. The home field for the Army Black Knights, it opened 100.64674448303526 years ago in 1924 and has a current seating capacity of 42,765.

The stadium sits at the upper portion of campus, directly west of Lusk Reservoir. The field is at an elevation of 335 ft above sea level and runs in the traditional north–south configuration, with the press box above the west sideline. Due to the view offered by its location overlooking the Hudson River and the Neo-Gothic architecture of the campus below, it was rated as Sports Illustrated's #3 sports venue of the 20th century.

Dennis Michie
Michie Stadium is dedicated to the memory of Dennis Michie (1870–1898), who was instrumental in starting the football program while a cadet at the Academy. A member of the Class of 1892, Michie organized, managed, and coached the first football team at West Point in 1890. Six years after graduation, he was killed in Cuba during the Spanish–American War. There have been several renovations since the stadium's first game in October 1924, when Army defeated Saint Louis, 17–0.

Blaik Field
In 1999, the football field at Michie Stadium was named "Blaik Field" on September 25, in honor of Earl "Red" Blaik, West Point's all-time leader in wins during a 17-year tenure from 1941 to 1958. Blaik led Army to three consecutive national titles from 1944 to 1946.

Playing surface
Since 2008, the playing surface has been FieldTurf. This replaced AstroPlay, which had been used since 2001. The stadium's playing field was natural grass until AstroTurf was installed in 1977.

Army–Navy Game
Michie Stadium first hosted the Army–Navy Game in 1943 during World War II, after it was played at Thompson Stadium at Annapolis the year before. Neither Army nor Navy had played at an on-campus facility since very early in the rivalry, since teams' home stadiums are not nearly large enough to accommodate the crowds and media that usually attend the rivalry games. Their rivalry game is normally played at a neutral site between the campuses on the East Coast, usually in Philadelphia in early December. In 2020, the Army–Navy Game was moved from Philadelphia to Michie Stadium due to state-imposed attendance limits on outdoor events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

title: Michie Stadium


text: Soup du jour

title: Soup du jour