text:
Wikipedia:Half-million pool

This was a pool to guess when Wikipedia would hit 500,000 articles. The person who came closest to the correct date was the winner. Wikipedia currently has  articles. It reached 500,000 on March 17, 2005 at 20:54:46 (UTC). Congratulations go to User:Llywrch, the winner!

'''This pool is closed. Any further votes will be reverted.'''

June 2004

 * June 16 - anthony (see warning)

September 2004

 * September 19 - sannse (talk) 20:26, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

October 2004

 * October 8 - Tuf-Kat 14:49, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * October 30 - Stargoat 15:12, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

November 2004

 * November 1 - Everyking 23:54, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * November 11 00:00:01 (UTC) - Alex.tan 04:43, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * November 11 11:11:11.11 (UTC) (according to server clock) - Cimon 15:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * November 16 - Lan3y 19:01, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * November 25 - bbx 02:26, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * November 26 14:23 UTC - Seth Ilys
 * November 30 - Mushroom 15:24, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

December 2004

 * December 1 - Niteowlneils
 * December 14, 0947:10 UTC - Yath
 * December 24 - Timwi
 * December 31 - Burgundavia

January 2005

 * January 1 - Cyrius|✎ 03:49, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 3 - TheCustomOfLife 15:23, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 5 - Meelar 20:44, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 6 - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 18:33, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 15 - blankfaze | •• 03:05, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 20 - Ilyanep 18:51, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * January 25 - Waerth 04:50, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

February 2005

 * February 1 - denny vrandečić 00:03, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * February 2 - Taxman 22:21, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * February 7   — Lady Lysine Ikinsile 00:33, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
 * February 8 - gadfium 22:00, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 9 - Angela. 02:25, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 15 - Denelson83 07:04, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 18 - BCorr | Брайен 19:04, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 21 - hike395 08:46, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 25 - Isam 06:56, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 27 - Ambivalenthysteria 13:55, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * February 28 - MykReeve 20:26, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

March 2005

 * March 1 - EmRick 02:42, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 6 -    ALargeElk | Talk 15:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 7 - Etaoin 20:30, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 12 - Morwen - Talk 20:25, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 15 - dml 01:53, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 18 - llywrch 00:08, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC) - winner!
 * March 20 - MHardwick 15:59, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 21 - webkid 13:40, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 22 - RedWolf 22:00, Jun 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * March 25 - KIZU 09:31, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 29 - mkrohn 21:12, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * March 31 - James F. (talk) 05:28, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

April 2005

 * April 1 - Steven jones 04:23, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * April 3 - Jeff8765 23:36, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * April 4 - Dysprosia 07:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * April 19 - ✏ Sverdrup 20:39, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * April 21 - David Remahl 20:44, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * April 23 - Michael Warren 20:56, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * April 30 - nadavspi 20:23, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

May 2005

 * May 1 - –Hajor 19:09, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 5 - Adam Bishop 20:22, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 8 - Kpjas ☤ 21:26, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 13 - bdesham 14:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 16 - →Raul654 03:07, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * May 21 - Nommo 01:52, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 24 - Gentgeen 20:57, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 27 - Jniemenmaa 08:43, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * May 28 - seng-ming tan 09:35, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

June 2005

 * June 7 - Gregb 21:00, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * June 9 - David Gerard 13:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * June 17 - Slowking Man 03:11, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * June 30 - \Mikez 09:07, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

July 2005

 * July 16 - Radagast 14:55, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * July 22 - Ram-Man 12:20, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

August 2005

 * August 17 - haavis 16:28, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * August 20 - Vitaleyes 21:00, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * August 24 - Muriel G 09:58, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC) (a nice birthday present for me)

September 2005

 * September 1 - Arwel 21:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * September 28 - Jwrosenzweig 17:49, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

October 2005

 * October 11 - Dori | Talk 16:30, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)
 * October 22 - jredmond 04:10, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

November 2005

 * November 8 - Fuzheado | Talk 05:24, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

December 2005

 * December 7 - Timc 14:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * December 27 - pir 00:49, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

January 2006

 * January 4 - Jrincayc 13:12, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

February 2006

 * February 17 - Jeff Q 19:55, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

March 2006

 * March 1 — Viajero

April 2006

 * April 1 - Chucker 13:14, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)
 * April 2 - — Matt 13:37, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

July 2006

 * July 1st, if not sooner. KirbyMeister 15:40, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

August 2006

 * August 14 - Buster 20:47, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

September 2006

 * September 7 – Darrien 20:19, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

January 2010

 * January 1 - Olathe 20:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Never

 * Maximus Rex

title: Wikipedia:Half-million pool


text:
Category:.hack

__NOGALLERY__

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

title: Category:.hack


text:
Category:Presidents of Ireland

Former presidents are ex officio members of the Council of State. The only presidents to whom this has not applied are Erskine Hamilton Childers, who died in office, and Michael D. Higgins, the incumbent. Childers had previously served on the Council of State as Tánaiste.

title: Category:Presidents of Ireland


text:
Category:Ceremonial heads of state

Heads of state that do not control policy in any aspect of the executive government of a state. Heads of state with some discretionary powers, such as the power to veto legislation, should not be included here.

The category may contain articles about individual monarchs in the modern era, but should not contain subcategories of monarchs because monarchs usually were absolute rulers up to the 18th/19th century.

title: Category:Ceremonial heads of state


text:
Template talk:Washington

protection
Why is this page protected? --- hike395 03:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * When I read your message, it wasn't protected. I just protected then unprotected it.  Did you see a message that said it was protected when you tried to edit it?  Just wondering... Could be a bug related to the recent software update.  It isn't protected now in any case. Tuf-Kat 05:14, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, I saw a message that said it was protected. In fact, it still tells me that it is protected! --- hike395 05:21, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Note about which cities to include
Major cities must have 100,000+ residents, okay? Minor cities must have more than 10,000, okay? We don't need Finley, Washington in there. And no matter if you think ... Puyallup, Washington is a major city... if we're going to have divisions, they can't just be based on personal opinion. Right? Matt Yeager ♫ ( Talk? ) 05:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Sounds reasonable, but 10,000 might be setting the bar too low for minor cities. List of cities in Washington (by population) gives the top 30 (which cuts out at just under 30,000).  A more complete list might give a better idea of how "minor" a city we ought to include. — Jeff | (talk) | 06:17, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Federal Way: Smaller City & Tri-Cities (city vs. region)
Kent has a larger city population than Federal Way, but Kent is listed as a smaller city whereas Federal Way as a major one. The Federal Way article mentions that if the surrounding unincorporated area were included, Federal Way's population would be 110,000. However, Federal Way borders Kent and the even "smaller" city of Auburn. Why would these unincorproated areas be included in Federal Way's total population and not in those of Kent and Auburn elevating their status on this template? Kent is claimed to be the largest city in south King County, and furthermore Everett is listed as one of the smaller cities but it is perceived to be much more major than Federal Way. Federal Way's perceived standing, regardless of it's actual numbers, is at the same level as Kent and Renton.

I have moved Federal Way to the list of smaller cities. --Westonmr 17:02, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

You two are wrong, Federal Way is the 7th largest city in Washington. Kent is the 8th. Federal Way SHOULD be put up as a larger city since there are seven slots and Federal Way is the 7th largest city. And "Tri-Cities" isn't actually a city itself, it's a region that consists of several smaller independent cities including Kenniwick, Pasco, and Richland. You really should look up what a twin city is, although it is commonly looked at as a whole they are actually separate but due to being close to each other they "grow into" each other. But the reality is that they can be demographically, economically, and politically independent. This is because they are still separate cities, even if they have been twinned. It's called Tri-Cities because the identity of these cities have been blurred due to the close proximity and intertwined nature. That's why it's called Tri-Cities instead of Tri-City. So Federal Way should be considered a larger city and the Tri-Cities should be taken off as a city because it isn't actually a real city, it's a region, and we already have it listed as a region. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right, the Tri-Cities is technically a "metropolitan area." But we don't have a line for metro areas on this template. Given the categories we have to work with, the Tri-Cities is more of a "city" than it is a "region." In terms of its economic, social, and cultural importance in Washington, it's considered a city, although legally it is not. It should be on the list of major cities. Northwesterner1 (talk) 05:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Each city (Kenniwick, Pasco, and Richland) in this region/area is already represented as a smaller city already. It wouldn't make sense to represent them all as individual cities and then to also represent them together as a big city esp when they are not an individual city. By letting these individual cities remain as three small cities it gives them representation and a resource for people interested in looking them up, all the while giving the Tri-Cities region representation as a region without contradicting what these three small cities actually are. And being considered a city by common public misconception rather than legal status wouldn't be encyclopedic. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 13:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No, we actually tend to classify things by what they are considered to be by the general public, not by legal status. For an example just off the top of my head, take the artist Elton John. You'll find that that is where the Wikipedia article about him is located. Not at Sir Elton John. Not at Sir Elton Hercules John or even just plain Elton Hercules John. Not even at Reginald Kenneth Dwight, his given name. Why at Elton John? That's the public's conception of his name. Is it accurate? Does it matter? Not when it comes to classification as a way of letting people find things easily.
 * Let's take that back to the Tri-Cities. Say that someone's thinking, "Gee whiz, I just read this lovely article on Tacoma, Washington. What else is there in the state? That Tri-Cities region, maybe I'll go look it up. Surely it will be located in the template, alongside other major metropolitan areas and cities, like Spokane and Vancouver." It won't suffice to have just Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick down below. The Tri-Cities are a region which isn't even neatly encapsulated by the three cities, as the article itself will tell you.
 * Put simply, by slightly expanding our definition of "cities", we can make the template a whole lot neater. (We could just as well change the title of that section to "Major cities and metropolitan regions", but why bother? If I'd thought there would be some disagreement over an area like the Tri-Cities fitting in the "cities" section, I'd have rewritten the template years ago.)  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  06:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * AGREE I agree with Matt Yeager. The Tri-Cities is culturally defined as the fourth-largest city in Washington, and including it as such provides the greatest service to Wikipedia readers. Northwesterner1 (talk) 06:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I have posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Washington asking other editors to weigh in here. Northwesterner1 (talk) 23:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * For reference, I looked at a few other state templates to see how comparable regions are recorded. All direct comparables seem to classify them as a region, such as Illinois has the Quad Cities, Minnesota has the Twin Cities metropolitan area.  However, I also found several state templates that use a "metro area" category which contains regions that would be comparable; some of the states with that additional category are Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.
 * After looking through those, I would support removing Tri-cities from the "largest city" section, and instead insert it in either the region section, or if enough consensus exists then to create a new metro area section and include it in that. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support adding a new metro area section, which would include at least the Tri-Cities and the Seattle metropolitan area. Travisl (talk) 16:40, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This may be a good solution, but the problem is that we currently don't have good articles to use without duplicating existing city articles in the template. I see three options, none of them ideal.
 * If we simply add a metro area section, then it would probably have to be Seattle metro | Portland (Vancouver) | Spokane | Tri-Cities. But the Portland and Spokane articles are about the cities themselves; there is no metro area article for those two places. We could create articles to fill those holes but unless somebody really invested some work into those articles, they would be meager, and then we would end up having a template that links to stubs. Not good.
 * We could delete the "larger cities" row and replace it with "metro areas." In that case, it would read: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue-Everett | Portland-Vancouver | Spokane | Tri-Cities. That seems pretty clunky to me.
 * We could simplify it to Seattle-Tacoma | Portland-Vancouver | Spokane | Tri-Cities, and move Bellevue and Everett to the smaller cities list. That might be best, I guess, but we may have complaints from Bellevue/Everett fans. Northwesterner1 (talk) 16:57, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I have a simple solution. Move the Tri-Cities to the region section and add Federal Way to the larger city section. Check the List of regions of the United States and you'll find the Tri-Cities already listed as a region under Washington. We already have a section that it belongs in and already does qualify for, there is no need to start reforming this template. And other users must think the Tri-Cities fit since it was already listed as a region a long time ago. We are making this whole thing too complicated. So, Tri-Cities go in the region section and Federal Way goes into the larger city section. Does this work for everyone? QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 05:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * First, I'm opposed to Tri-Cities as a region. As stated above, I think it is culturally considered more a "city" than a "region" and it doesn't match at all with the other "regions" in the Washington template. Second, I don't understand why Federal Way is tied in with the Tri-Cities issue. If we move Tri-Cities, why do we have to add Federal Way to the larger cities list?Northwesterner1 (talk) 05:38, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with this change, it matches how other states handle compable situations - as I said above, all direct comparables seem to classify them as a region, such as Illinois has the Quad Cities, Minnesota has the Twin Cities metropolitan area. I see no real need to treat the Tri-Cities different than how other states handle comparable regions. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The Tri-Cities are a region, I don't think this is debatable. Facts are facts. The individual cities that make up this region are already represented as individual cities, and this region should be represented as a region. I don't see how several cities that are known as being very close and connected is any different from the San Juan Islands or the many other cases of Twin Cities known as regions. Barek and I have both presented factual evidence supporting the changes, and all you've presented is that "it is culturally seen as a city" And that you don't like it. This is a weak argument, and based off of the publics misconception. And you can't even prove that this "cultural preference" of sorts is even strong enough to make this a viable point. I'm from Washington, and I've never considered the Tri-Cities a city because I've always been geographically aware. Your argument supports presenting an article in its popular form based off of a misconception instead of its factual reality as a region, this does not enhance an encyclopedia. I don't mean to be rude, but I do feel like you're wasting time on this issue based on a preference instead of factual evidence, as an editor you're expected to be objective.

1) This area has already been listed as a region by other users in the List of regions of the United States which demonstrates that other users have logically come to the conclusion that this is indeed a region.

2) Other states consider similar areas to be regions.

3) Other states that don't consider similar areas to be regions consider them "metropolitan areas" not cities.

4) This area is not legally considered a city and does not meet the qualifications as a city including but not limited to governmental powers and legal entity.

I DISAGREE with Matt Yeager and support the Tri-Cities being moved to the region section. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 01:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Every other article listed in the regions section of the Washington template is a feature of physical geography. The Puget Sound article is not about the Puget Sound metropolitan area but about the arm of the Pacific Ocean known as Puget Sound. The San Juan Islands article is not about the cities of the San Juan Islands but about the rocks they sit on. Meanwhile, Tri-Cities, Washington is an article about the combined political/cultural/economic entity known as the "Tri-Cities." It is an article about industry, infrastructure, population statistics, TV stations, etc. As such, it resembles other articles about cities or metropolitan areas -- not articles about features of physical geography. My goal is to make the template useful for a reader trying to learn about Washington state. Look at the list of articles in regions: Cascade Range, Columbia Gorge, Kitsap Peninsula. Tri-Cities just doesn't fit. I have listened to you and Barek and Travis1, and I support the Tri-Cities being included as a metropolitan area. In fact, I was trying to move us in that direction when you came along trying to shut off conversation. You are being rude, but I'll let that go if you're willing to also be productive. Northwesterner1 (talk) 03:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I don't mean to be rude, I just got frustrated because I just can‘t stand the idea of keeping things as they are. It just doesn’t make sense to me. We could create a metro area and include Seattle metro | Portland (Vancouver) | Spokane | Tri-Cities like you had said. We could probably just put up the metro are names for Portland and Spokane and have them auto-direct to the existing articles for these cities because they already have all the information we need about the metro status, and I don't see any reason to create separate articles esp since the existing ones would already have so much information, no need to cannibalize them. I checked out the articles, they seem perfectly setup for this. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 02:47, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This seems like a workable solution to me. Until someone creates a separate metro article, we would have Spokane on the template twice, unfortunately, but that seems okay... Northwesterner1 (talk) 02:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The awkward thing with the metro section is that there are only the two articles (Tri-Cities, Seattle metro area) that deal with metro areas/regions. I really don't think we should invent a Spokane Metro Area article (it probably could be written, but not easily) or one for Portland (which only barely has to do with WA at all). And putting Seattle's side-by-side with the TC one... with nothing else there... would look pretty weird... I dunno.  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  06:01, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Quick add-on to that... Just to make sure we're all clear on everything, I think we all agree that Tri-Cities, Washington should be in there somewhere, and that they really aren't so much a city as a metropolitan region. (Well, more bluntly, they really aren't a city at all.) We can talk about a compromise if we start from those basic points, so if anyone objects, speak now...  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  06:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary break for TOC purposes
Thanks, Matt. If we can all agree to those basic points, here are the options we have on the table. If I'm missing any, please add them here.
 * 1. Rename the larger cities row to "larger cities and metro areas." Otherwise, the template stays the same.
 * 2. Move the Tri-Cities from "larger cities" to "regions." Otherwise, the template stays the same. (compare Template:Minnesota)
 * 3. Add a "metro areas" row in addition to the "larger cities" row. (compare Template:Ohio)
 * (a) Metro Areas: Seattle Metro, Tri-Cities. Larger Cities: Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Vancouver, Bellevue, Everett
 * (b) Metro Areas: Seattle Metro, Portland/Vancouver, Spokane, Tri-Cities. Larger Cities: Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Vancouver, Bellevue, Everett
 * 4. Delete the "larger cities" row and replace it with "metro areas." (compare Template:Oregon)
 * (a) Metro Areas: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue-Everett | Vancouver | Spokane | Tri-Cities
 * (b) Metro Areas: Seattle-Tacoma | Vancouver | Spokane | Tri-Cities. (Bellevue and Everett moved to "smaller cities," which could be renamed "cities" or something else.)

Strong Support 4(a), 4(b), or 1. Willing to Support 3(a), 3(b). Oppose (2). Northwesterner1 (talk) 10:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Support 1 (perhaps adding Seattle Metro Area, which keeping Seattle itself). I'm waiting to see some arguments in favor of the others before I commit myself to anything else. Good job moving on this, Northwesterner1.  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  02:53, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Strong Support 1. Oppose 2-4. Washington state really doesn't have the same "type" of regions as other areas in the country - the only place that's really known by its region more than city is Tri-Cities. Most people even in the Seattle Metro area refer to the individual cities far more often than the region, and then you have to define what's included in the "Seattle Metro" area - sure, Kent/Auburn/FW fit this...but does everyone agree that Bellevue is included? How about Issaquah? Marysville? For purposes of clarity and cleanliness, I think that 1 is really the best solution - it lets Tri-Cities be discoverable, but doesn't require significant restructuring just to fit some concept of a "template", rather than for actual, usable reasons. Snarky Boy (talk) 17:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Support 1, 2, or 3 Oppose 4 (also oppose option 0=leave it as-is). I find that option 4 has the least "clean" fit for Washington. Either 1, 2, or 3 can work with little to no difficulty in fitting those solutions into the structures that exist for Washington articles. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Done -- for now. I implemented option 1 for now, which seems to have broad support. Not closing the conversation, though, so continue to weigh in... Northwesterner1 (talk) 21:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Support 2, 3, 4 Oppose 1, 4 I feel that option 1 just brings us back to the same place, Tri-Cities being put in with other cities. The name is confusing and might lead people into thinking it's a city instead of a metro area, which is confusing. Option 3(a) is basically this but making a distinction between metro and large cities, one that would be helpful to users without being confusing. I think that might be a good choice. Esp since option 1 doesn't differentiate between city or metro area, which is one of the problems that started everything. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 05:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

U.S. state templates
WikiProject U.S. states/state templates lists and displays all 50 U.S. state (and additional other) templates. It potentially can be used for ideas and standardization. //MrD9 07:26, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Watch for Major City of Bellingham
Watch in the years to come... Bellingham will be a major city in 3 years. (Currently 73,000+ population, 3 years, will be 100,000+ :)

--Iain 03:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Standardization of state templates
There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding standardization of state templates (primarily regarding layout and styling) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates. An effort was made earlier this year to standardize Canadian province templates (which mostly succeeded). Lovelac7 and I have already begun standardizing all state templates. If you have any concerns, they should be directed toward the discussion page for state template standardization. Thanks! — Webdinger BLAH 23:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I just converted this and all state and territory template to use the standard Template:US state navigation box. Feel free to discuss and edit the master template all you like (I only converted them to that standard, I'll leave it to others to discuss and decide what that standard should be).  The purpose of the standardization was to make Wikipedia more encyclopedic and to make it much easier to add new features to all of the templates at the same time (for example, adding the View/Talk/Edit tag could easily be done to all of them via the master template, I just don't really know how to make it look good).  It is also to reduce maintainence time by having to only maintain the style of 1 master template rather than 56 individual state and territory templates.  --CapitalR 05:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

10,000 as a minimum?
Okay, I'm thinking 10,000 was definitely too small a limit for cities (and I'M the one who set it!). This template's getting uglified by having just so many cities in there. I never dreamed we had so many cities over 10,000 people... we may have to set it at 30,000 or something. I don't know... does anyone care? Matt Yeager ♫ ( Talk? ) 01:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Whatever limit is chosen should also be noted IN the template, otherwise it makes people think that every city is listed; the template should also link to the list of cities, etc. --Notmyhandle 04:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Could the limit be tolerant of status such as county seats? Seeing "Battle Ground" here, but not being able to list "Port Orchard" is a little annoying, since PO is the county seat for Kitsap, but within the city limits has ~8,000 people.  Maybe define "smaller cities" as all cities > 30,000 population OR that are county seats (thus, politically important, if not important by size).  I do think the list looks cluttered as-is, though.   - Snarky Boy 21:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds right. I added Port Orchard. County seats certainly deserve a spot.  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  04:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Larger cities
I added Vancouver, Washington to the Larger cities section. As of 2000 it is the 4th largest city in the state, larger than Bellevue or Everett. And speaking of, do we really want to include more than the 4 or 5 largest cities? Perhaps five is sufficient. VanTucky (talk) 04:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that the six cities are ok for the larger cities section as all of the cities have a current population of over 100,000 people. None of them need to be removed and we definitely do not need any more. --Hdt83 Chat 05:15, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * There are only 4 cities as is, three are metro areas. This doesn't help people find large cities easily. And finding information easily is the whole point in creating categories. ElmerBront (talk) 10:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think five cities is enough. Spokane Valley, Washington is larger than Federal Way, Washington FWIW, so I've swapped them around to make it accurate. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Federal Way is much larger than the current stats show, here are more current ones: http://www.cityoffederalway.com/Page.aspx?id=706 I think it should be included it's pretty large. ElmerBront (talk) 01:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Spokane Valley is still larger by a couple hundred. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I know it's larger but what I'm saying is that there are many large cities, we should include a few (maybe three) more to be complete. How can Federal Way be considered a small city when it's only a couple hundred less than one of the large cities? I feel the large city group isn't complete ElmerBront (talk) 04:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Criterion of 100,000 was enunciated in 2006. I've added Kent, and retained Yakima, Washington; Yakima passes the 100,000 threshold when you include two unincorporated suburbs as explained at Yakima, Washington. Brianhe (talk) 05:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Likewise added Wenatchee – East Wenatchee metropolitan area as it is now over pop. 110,000. Brianhe (talk) 05:29, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

template body color
I've reverted the color change to a less obnoxious shade of green - any opinions on the two versions? The version that I restored uses color code (here), while the other version contained color code  (here). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Idk... I think a greener shade of green would fit the state better but that's just my opinion.  Matt Yeager   ♫  (Talk?)  00:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * On the two monitors I've looked at - the 70FF95 color has a slight fluorescent look, and a bit too much blue in it ... although I can see where the earthier original color may appear too brown to some people. Maybe what's needed is a third alternative? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's always seems greener on the other side of the color spectrum haha. But yeah the brighter one is too bright. Maybe a third option would be nice, if not go with the first. ElmerBront (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there a particular reason why this template is green? I understand the general idea here is to try to match the state flag or something, but we aren't using the same color. Wouldn't it be better to just go with the default used by navbox to avoid having a rainbow at the bottom of the page when this navbox is next to another one and per WP:ACCESSIBILITY? Please let me know if there is a strong reason to have it a particular color. I noticed this was attempted recently, but was reverted, so I thought I would be proactive and start a thread here to avoid an edit war. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 21:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Many of us like it as green. Nyttend (talk) 22:32, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Washington
This template has been added to the WikiProject Washington by me using AWB because it is in category:Washington (U.S. state) templates if you believe this to be an error just revert my addition, or you can ask me at my talk page or the WikiProject Washington Talk Page, and check that this template is not in or remove it from the Washington (U.S. state) templates category -- Gold Man60  Talk

Alternative approach to cities
There's been more than one discussion about which cities should be included in this template. Generally the approach has been to set a cutoff on absolute population (i.e., ≥ 10,000 or 30,000 etc.). I suggest instead that the important limitation here is the desired size of the template; thus we should cutoff on relative population to maintain a consistently-sized template even through population changes (i.e., link the top 25 most populous in the state). It would look like this. Also: Keep the metro areas; don't keep certain county seats (the links to every county get close enough). Thoughts? —Mrwojo (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. —Mrwojo (talk) 21:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Somehow, despite the discussion on this talk page, Omak has made it onto this list, despite its population of 8,466 people. Is there any justification for this? — Brianhe (talk) 19:20, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Deleted Omak per earlier consensus. — Brianhe (talk) 00:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Remove legislative and congressional districts
They have their own templates now, Washington legislative districts and USCongDistStateWA, so there's no need to also include them in this (very large) template. As this is widely used, I wanted to ask for objections to the removal here on the talk page for a few days, before going ahead with it. If no-one has objected within a week, I encourage anyone coming across this to execute the removal. JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Support removal I mostly edit Oregon stuff, but I'll voice my opinion that overly large templates make my brain melt down (i.e. tl;dr), so any pruning would be welcome. Valfontis (talk) 06:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Given that it has now been more than a week, I've made the removal. JesseW, the juggling janitor 17:19, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

title: Template talk:Washington


text:
Category:Scientific method

A scientific method is a sequence or collection of processes that are considered characteristic of scientific investigation and the acquisition of new scientific knowledge based upon physical evidence.

title: Category:Scientific method


text:
Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank

The Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank (NIHB, lit. 'Dutch [East] Indies Trade Bank') was a Dutch bank established in 1863 to finance trade between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. During most of the colonial period, it was the second-largest of the “big three” commercial banks, behind the Netherlands Trading Company and ahead of the Nederlandsch-Indische Escompto Maatschappij, that dominated the Dutch East Indies’ financial system alongside the note-issuing Bank of Java.

In 1950 following Indonesian independence, the bank was renamed the Nationale Handelsbank (NHB, lit. 'National Trade Bank'). In 1959, its Indonesian activities were nationalized, and later contributed to the formation of the state-owned Bank Mandiri in 1998. In 1960, the NHB's remaining activities were acquired by the Rotterdamsche Bank, and were subsequently involved in the series of mergers that created ABN AMRO.

Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank
In 1863, the Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank was established in order to finance and deal with trade between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. The bank's head office was located in Amsterdam, unlike the Bank of Java whose head office was in Batavia. In turn, the NIHB's local branches within the Dutch colony reported to the main office in Batavia.

Between 1901 and 1950, Netherlands India Commercial Bank opened and closed various branches in third countries. In 1901 it opened a branch in Singapore, which played a key role in Dutch East Indies trade. The bank also established a branch in Hong Kong in 1906, which before World War I was a major transshipment point for raw sugar going from the Dutch East Indies to refineries in Britain. In 1920 the bank opened branches in Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, and Kobe to aid in cotton trading with Japan. From 1921 to 1923 branches were opened in the Japanese prefectures of Tokyo and Yokohama. Additional branches were also opened in the Chinese provinces of Amoy and Swatow. Although, in 1924 the branch in Yokohama closed after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and the Chinese branch in Swatow closed after operating for only a few years. The bank continued expanding in the 1930 and 1940s though. In 1938 a new branch was opened in Manila and in 1948 it established a branch in Bangkok to aid with the rice, tea, shellac trades. After 1949 the branches in China closed after the defeat of the Kuomintang government.

Under the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies during World War II, the occupation authorities first closed all Dutch and other Western banks in March 1942, starting with the Bank of Java, and sequestered them to seize as much as possible of their assets. Among the three largest commercial banks, the Japanese authorities determined that the Netherlands Trading Company had assets of more than 280 million Dutch guilders, the NIHB had 158 million, and the Nederlandsch-Indische Escompto Maatschappij had 99 million. Of these, the Japanese occupiers were able to seize 27 million guilders in total. The banks could only reopen after the surrender of Japan in the late summer of 1945.

Nationale Handelsbank
In 1950, the bank's name was changed to Nationale Handelsbank (NHB). It closed the branch in Manila, which had enjoyed a brief boom after World War II but now was no longer promising. In 1952 the branch in Kobe was still functioning, but it closed sometime thereafter. By 1953, the NHB had branches throughout Indonesia in Java (Bandoeng, Banjoewangi*, Gambir (Weltevreden), Malang, Probolinggo, Samarang, Soerabaja, Tegal*, and Tjirebon*), Soematra (Djambi, Medan, Palembang, Telok-Betoeng), Bandjarmasin, Pontianak, and Macassar. The branches marked with * dealt with warehousing and shipping matters. Prior to the Japanese invasion in 1942, the bank had also maintained branches at Pasoeroean, Tjilatjap, Pekalongan, Menado, Tandjoengbalai, and Gorontalo. Also in 1953, the NHB established Mercantile Bank of Canada, with offices in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In 1959, the Indonesian government nationalized the bank's operations in the country to create Bank Umum Negara, one of the predecessors of Bank Mandiri. This deprived the NHB of much of its operations. The next year, the Rotterdamsche Bank acquired the NHB, and in 1962 it sold its branches in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo to Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1963, it also sold 50% of Mercantile Bank to Citibank, and the other 50% in 1965 - giving rise to the “Mercantile Bank Affair”. Also in 1965, Nationale Handelsbank again changed its name to Nationale Bank voor Middellang Krediet (NBMK, lit. 'National Bank for Medium-Term Credit'). AMRO Bank, which had been formed in the meantime by the merger of Rotterdamsche Bank with Amsterdamsche Bank in 1964, fully absorbed NBMK in 1967.

title: Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank


text:
Weehawken Cove

Weehawken Cove is a cove on the west bank of the Hudson River between the New Jersey municipalities of Hoboken to the south and Weehawken to the north. At the perimeter of the cove are completed sections the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, offering views of Manhattan and the Palisades. The name Weehawken comes from the Lenape, and can translate as "at the end of", either the Hudson Palisades or the stream which flowed from them into the cove, later the site of the nearby Lincoln Tunnel.

Half Moon
The first European to record visiting the cove was Robert Juet, first mate of the Half Moon captained by Henry Hudson, who anchored his ship in the cove on October 2, 1609.

He wrote: "We got down two leagues beyond that place and anchored in a bay clear from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a good piece of ground, and hard by it there was a cliff that looked of the colour of white-green, as though it was either a copper or silver mine, and I think it to be one of them by the trees that grow upon it, for they are all burned, and the other places are green as grass." The cliff described is now known as Castle Point.

Lipton Tea and Lincoln Harbor
A prominent landmark on the south side of the cove is the Hudson Tea Buildings, a converted residential complex in former plant and warehouse of Lipton Tea. Additional apartment complexes have been built along the cove in the last decade. The cove is two blocks north of 14th Street. On the north of the Cove is Lincoln Harbor, a residential, commercial, and recreational area on the site of the former Erie Railroad Weehawken Yard, which had partially filled the cove to be built.

Proposals to build residential buildings along the southern perimeter of the cove have been met with local opposition, including city officials in Hoboken, who contend the waterfront area is better used for public open space.

A proposal to build two 18-story buildings at the northwest corner of the cove were rejected by Weehawken.

Hudson River Waterfront Walkway
In September 2010 county officials announced construction of an 800 foot section of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway (HRWW) along the western perimeter of the cove, adjacent to the proposed Hoboken Cove Park. The walkway, which connects Weehawken and Hoboken, was completed in April 2012.

title: Weehawken Cove


text: Category:Dragon Ball

title: Category:Dragon Ball


text:
William Medill

William Medill (February 1802 –September 2, 1865) was a 19th-century American lawyer and Democratic politician from Ohio. He was the 22nd governor of Ohio from 1853 to 1856. He had previously served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1839 to 1843.

Biography
Born in White Clay Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, William was the son of Irish immigrants, William and Isabelle Medill. He grew up on the family farm, in the rural outskirts of Newark. He attended the Newark Academy and graduated in 1825. After graduation, he read law and was admitted to the bar in Delaware in 1830. Medill moved to Ohio in 1830 and was admitted to the bar in Ohio in 1832.

Career
Medill was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives, where he served from 1835 to 1838, serving as speaker of the House from 1836 to 1837. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1838, serving from 1839 to 1843. He lost a bid for a third term in 1842. After briefly serving as the second assistant postmaster general, Medill was appointed by President Polk as commissioner of Indian Affairs. He returned to Ohio in 1850 to serve as the president of the 1850–1851 Constitutional Convention. Elected to the new post of lieutenant governor of Ohio in 1851, Medill entered office in 1852, serving until the resignation of Governor Reuben Wood on July 13, 1853 to take up a Consular office in Chile. Medill was re-elected in his own right in 1853, but was defeated in a bid for a second full term in 1855 by the anti-slavery Salmon P. Chase. He was First Comptroller of the United States Treasury from 1857 to 1861.

Death
Medill died in Lancaster in 1865, and was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Lancaster, Ohio. Medill never married. A nephew inherited his property.

title: William Medill


text: Category:Computing

title: Category:Computing


text:
The Academia Waltz

The Academia Waltz was Berkeley Breathed's first comic strip, published daily from 1978 to 1979 in The Daily Texan at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student. The strip focused primarily on college life, although it sometimes made references to big news stories of the time (such as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979).

Characters

 * Steve Dallas: an arrogant, obnoxious fraternity member preoccupied with the pursuit of sex. He became an icon in many circles at the University of Texas, which was not Breathed's intent.
 * Kitzi: Steve's sorority girlfriend. She often finds ways to bend Steve to her will, a fact not always clear to Steve. She and Steve were married in the comic's penultimate strip.
 * Rabies: Steve's reluctant canine friend.
 * Saigon John: a wheelchair-using Vietnam War veteran who frequently attends protest marches. He does not often see "eye to eye" with the conservative Steve.
 * Val Blain: Kitzi's lovelorn best friend.

Two of the characters from The Academia Waltz would be resurrected for Breathed's next strip, Bloom County: Steve Dallas and Saigon John (renamed "Cutter John"). Rabies also became a character early on in the strip, but disappeared around the time that Opus the Penguin (who would later become Breathed's most popular character) appeared; Breathed cites one reason for Rabies being "retired" is that there was "no shortage of cartoon dogs".

Kitzi later made a guest appearance in Bloom County in 1985, although the character had been altered to be Steve's younger sister rather than his girlfriend (jailed for protesting Apartheid, even though their sorority doesn't even admit blacks).

Collections
Two collections featuring the comic were published. They are currently out of print and extremely rare, or as Breathed's website claims, "eBay is your only hope." A few Academia Waltz comics were also reprinted in the Bloom County collection Classics of Western Literature (1990), as well as in Bloom County: The Complete Library: Volume One: 1980–1982 (2009).
 * The Academia Waltz (1979)
 * The Academia Waltz: Bowing Out (1980)

In August 2015, IDW Publishing released an anthology titled "Berkeley Breathed’s Academia Waltz & Other Profound Transgressions." The anthology collects work from Breathed's college days, publishing his strips from The Daily Texan, his college newspaper from 1978 to 1979, along with scanned original art from his personal archives featuring Academia Waltz strips (with author's margin notes) and political cartoons.

title: The Academia Waltz


text: Category:AC/DC

title: Category:AC/DC


text:
Arctic Circle Restaurants

Arctic Circle Restaurants is an American chain of burger and shake restaurants based in Midvale, Utah, Utah, United States.

Description
there were 71 restaurants in seven states, about half are company-owned and the rest are owned by franchisees and about half of the restaurants are in Utah. They serve typical fast food such as burgers, sandwiches, shakes, salads, fries and fish and chips.

The company claims to have invented the regional condiment fry sauce, and that it was the first burger chain to invent and sell the kids' meal.

Origins
In 1924, Don Carlos Edwards established a small refreshment stand at a Pioneer Day celebration. By 1941 it had grown into a thriving BBQ restaurant. Edwards subsequently opened the first Arctic Circle restaurant in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1950. Shortly after opening Arctic Circle, Edwards introduced “pink sauce,”, a thousand island dressing-like combination of mayonnaise and ketchup. This later became known as “fry sauce.”

title: Arctic Circle Restaurants


text:
Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Ross-Næss ( Simpson; born October 3, 1984),    known professionally as Ashlee Simpson, is an American singer, songwriter, actress and television personality. The younger sister of singer and actress Jessica Simpson, she began her career as a back-up dancer for her sister and appeared in television commercials at the age of 15. She later pursued a career as an actress and had a main role on the family drama 7th Heaven. She appeared on the reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, broadcast on MTV between 2003 and 2005, which focused on Ashlee's older sister Jessica and Jessica's then-husband Nick Lachey. While working on her debut studio album, Simpson became the star of a spin-off reality series, The Ashlee Simpson Show, which was broadcast on MTV between 2004 and 2005. Like her sister before her, Simpson became the center of considerable media attention.

Her breakout came with her debut single, "Pieces of Me", which was released in 2004, became a top-five hit in the United States and topped the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart based on radio airplay. The success of the single and her reality show helped propel her debut album, Autobiography, also released in 2004, to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart. The project sold over five million copies worldwide, making it her most successful album to date. Simpson had a leading role in the film Undiscovered (2005), which became a critical and commercial flop. The failure of the film, along with multiple critically panned performances, led to media scrutiny. Despite that, Simpson's second studio album, I Am Me (2005), debuted atop the Billboard 200, becoming her second album to do so. The album went on to receive a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Following her appearance as Roxie Hart in the West End production of Chicago, Simpson announced that she had begun working on her third studio album. The album differed from the pop-rock sound of her previous efforts, featuring a dance-pop and 1980s-themed sound. Bittersweet World was released in 2008 to positive critical reception, but it saw a decline in sales. The effort reached number 4 on the Billboard 200. The following year, Simpson joined the main cast of the Melrose Place revamp, which was met with harsh critical reception. Later that year, she made her Broadway debut reprising her role as Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway.

Simpson announced a fourth studio album that same year. She independently released the single "Bat for a Heart" (2012), though it failed to have success. Simpson eventually scrapped the album and focused on her child. Simpson reprised her role as Roxie Hart for the third time in a 2-dates special production in Hollywood Bowl in July 2013 directed by Brooke Shields. In October 2018, Simpson and her husband Evan Ross released their debut extended play (EP) by Ashlee + Evan through Access Records, which was supported by a tour in select cities across North America, and their TV-reality show.

1984–2002: Early life and career beginnings
Born as Ashley Nicolle, Simpson's parents are Tina and Joe Simpson. She has one older sister, Jessica Simpson. Both she and Jessica attended Prairie Creek Elementary and North Junior High, located in Richardson, Texas, where the girls were raised. When she was three years old, she began studying classical ballet. She enrolled at the School of American Ballet in New York City when she was eleven, becoming the youngest person ever to be admitted into the school. Though the age requirement for the school was twelve, Simpson's father admitted to lying about her age. During this time, Simpson suffered from an unnamed eating disorder for about six months, eventually receiving treatment from her parents. The Simpson family relocated to Los Angeles, California, in 1999, as Jessica pursued a singing career. While Jessica launched her career, Ashlee began appearing in television commercials. Her father, Joe, served as her agent.

Following the commercial success of Jessica's debut album Sweet Kisses (1999), Ashlee became one of her back-up dancers on tour. Hoping to pursue a career in acting, Simpson had a minor guest appearance on an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. The following year, Simpson had a small role as Monique in the Rob Schneider comedy film The Hot Chick (2002). She joined the seventh season of the family drama 7th Heaven as Cecilia Smith, a role which she continued to portray in the eighth season. Simpson appeared in a total of forty episodes as Cecilia. That same year, Ashlee recorded a song titled "Christmas Past, Present, and Future" for the holiday album ''School's Out! Christmas; the song was later re-released on Radio Disney Jingle Jams'' following Simpson's musical breakthrough. She later recorded the song "Just Let Me Cry" for the soundtrack to the film Freaky Friday (2003). Simpson later began writing and recording demos, in hopes of finding a record label. It was confirmed a month after the release of the Freaky Friday soundtrack that Simpson had signed with Geffen Records to release her debut studio album.

2003–2004: Breakthrough, Autobiography and Saturday Night Live incident
It was announced that Jessica Simpson and then-husband Nick Lachey would star in their own MTV reality series, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. The series, which chronicled Simpson and Lachey's life as a married couple, became a pop culture phenomenon and helped draw attention to the Simpson sisters. Ashlee was a VJ on TRL on MTV in the United States during the summer of 2003. Following the success of the series, it was confirmed that Simpson would receive her own series, The Ashlee Simpson Show. Hoping to end comparisons between her and her sister, Ashlee wanted the series to focus on the recording of her debut album. During this time, Simpson also dyed her naturally blonde hair brown, a decision that received media attention. While filming the show, Simpson appeared in the music video for musician Ryan Cabrera's debut single "On the Way Down" (2004), portraying herself as Cabrera's love interest. The couple later began a romantic relationship, with Cabrera inspiring multiple songs for Simpson's album.

Simpson wanted her debut album to consist of pop-rock music, as she did not listen to pop music. The project was produced by John Shanks, while Simpson co-wrote all of the songs on the album. She also worked with songwriter Kara DioGuardi on the album, with DioGuardi receiving credits on seven of the album's tracks. The album's lead single, "Pieces of Me", became a hit in the United States. The song reached the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and topped the Mainstream Top 40 chart based on pop radio airplay. "Pieces of Me" earned a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting 500,000 copies of the single being sold. Her debut album, Autobiography, was released on July 20, 2004, to a generally mixed critical reception. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States, selling an estimated 398,000 copies in its first week of release. It was the highest-selling debut album by a female artist that year, going on to sell over 2.5 million copies in the United States by January 2005. The success of the album and its lead single was attributed to the exposure from her reality television series. The album sold over five million copies worldwide.

On October 23, 2004, Simpson appeared as a musical guest on an episode of Saturday Night Live to promote the album. After suffering from vocal cord inflammation caused by acid reflux on the day of the live broadcast, she lost her voice and was unable to complete the final rehearsals. She decided to use a pre-recorded vocal track as support in the two scheduled performances for the evening.

Her first performance, "Pieces of Me," went smoothly. However, when the band prepared to play the second song, the title track "Autobiography", an incorrectly played vocal track from the previously performed song was mistakenly triggered before Simpson reached the microphone. The vocal track was promptly lowered, but in the meantime, the band also synchronized with the notes of Pieces of Me to mitigate the error, causing even more confusion. Simpson initially reacted with a brief jig, but after about 30 seconds she left the stage. Her band continued playing, prompting the production to initiate a commercial break. Later, Simpson reappeared during the closing credits with the evening's host, Jude Law, saying: "My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoedown. I'm sorry. This is live TV. These things happen!"

The incident triggered a strong backlash from the audience and media, and Simpson was accused of lip-syncing. Days later, Simpson called music video series Total Request Live and said that she had almost completely lost her voice. Her drummer had accidentally pressed the wrong button, playing the incorrect track and causing the technical error.

A 60 Minutes segment on Saturday Night Live, recorded behind the scenes on the same night as the incident and broadcast the following week, supported Simpson's account, showing her suffering voice loss during the dress rehearsals, and eventually leaving the studio in tears. However, Simpson continued to face criticism. SNL's producer Lorne Michaels stated that he was unaware of the plans of using lip-synching and that if he had known, he would never have allowed it. He also said that Simpson was the only musical guest ever to have walked off stage during a live performance. Simpson said of the incident, "I made a complete fool of myself."

Despite the negative media attention surrounding the incident, Simpson released "Shadow" as the second single from Autobiography in the United States. The song did not receive a release in European territories. It failed to have the success of its predecessor, though it did reach the top twenty of the Mainstream Top 40 chart, becoming her second hit on the chart. The song lyrically spoke of her views towards her older sister's success. The song received a positive critical reception, with some praising it as a highlight for the album. "La La" was released as the album's third and final single in January 2005, and again failed to match the success of "Pieces of Me". Despite a low peak on the Hot 100 chart, the song received a gold certification from the RIAA. The song served as only the second single in European territories. Simpson and Cabrera ended their relationship, though the two remained friends. At the Teen Choice Awards on August 8, 2004, Simpson received the "Song of the Summer" Teen Choice Award for "Pieces of Me", as well as the "Fresh Face" Award. She also won the Billboard Award for New Female Artist of the Year in December, and in the same month, Entertainment Weekly named her one of its Breakout Stars of 2004.

2005–2007: I Am Me, media scrutiny, and Broadway
In January 2005, gossip news outlets began speculating that Simpson and actor Wilmer Valderrama were romantically involved, leading to rumors of a "love triangle" between the pair and Valderrama's ex-girlfriend Lindsay Lohan. Despite this, representatives for Simpson claimed that the two had been friends for years, and there was no romantic interest. Simpson appeared as a musical guest during halftime at the 2005 Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. Her performance of "La La" garnered a negative reception from the crowd, leading to boos. In February 2005, Simpson embarked on her Autobiography Tour throughout North America. Featuring a total of thirty-seven shows, the tour saw Simpson performing songs from her debut album, as well as covers and a previously unreleased song. While on tour, Simpson wrote material for her second studio album. Simpson had a supporting role in the film Undiscovered, portraying an aspiring actress named Clea, but the film was a critical and commercial failure, and it earned Simpson a nomination for Worst Supporting Actress at the 2005 Golden Raspberry Awards.

Simpson released her second studio album, I Am Me, in October 2005. The album featured similar pop-rock themes as found on her debut effort, though Simpson hoped to incorporate the feel of music from the 1980s into her sound. Much like her previous release, Simpson co-wrote all of the songs on the album. It became her second album to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 220,000 copies in the United States. The album failed to match the success of Autobiography, though it went on to sell over three million copies worldwide. The album's lead single, "Boyfriend", was written and composed about the rumors between Simpson and Valderama, and it became her second top-twenty hit in the United States. For the release of the album, Simpson went back to her blonde hair. The album's second and final single, "L.O.V.E.", entered the top forty in the United States. Simpson appeared for a second time as a musical performer on Saturday Night Live, performing the song "Catch Me When I Fall", which was inspired by her previous appearance on the series, as well as "Boyfriend". This time, both songs were performed without any adverse incident. In mid-December, Simpson collapsed after performing in Japan and was briefly hospitalized, consequently canceling an appearance at the Radio Music Awards. The collapse and her subsequent hospitalization were attributed to exhaustion as a result of her busy work schedule.

Simpson embarked on her I Am Me Tour in the final months of 2005 and began dating her drummer Braxton Olita. In March 2006, Simpson won an MTV celebrity surfing invitational competition, which also featured celebrities such as Meagan Good, Jack Osbourne, Ashley Parker Angel, and Tony Hawk. On April 12, 2006, she hosted and performed at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards, where she won "Best Female Artist" and "Best Pop Video" for the single "Boyfriend". Simpson had a nose job in April 2006. In the May 2007 issue of Harper's Bazaar, she said that she was neither insecure about her appearance nor had been so beforehand. She said that plastic surgery was a "personal choice" that one should only decide to do for oneself and not for others. In a September 2007 interview, her father, Joe Simpson, explained of the surgery Ashlee had undergone: "There was a real problem with her breathing and that was cured." In the middle of 2006, Simpson gave an interview to Marie Claire magazine, in which she was said to have "had it with Hollywood's twisted view of feminine beauty" and was photographed painting a pro-female mural with a group of underprivileged girls from Los Angeles' Green Dot Public School. By the time the magazine hit newsstands, Simpson had already had her nose job, and some Marie Claire readers complained that this was hypocritical. The magazine received over 1,000 letters of complaint and the magazine's new editor expanded the letters section of the September issue of the magazine to give readers a chance to vent their frustrations.

Simpson embarked on her third North American tour, the L.O.V.E. Tour, to further promote her sophomore album. It was announced that I Am Me would be re-released in the following months featuring a new single "Invisible", a cover of a Jaded Era song. The single was released in June 2006 and went on to peak at number 21 on the Hot 100. It became her second single to enter the top ten of the Mainstream Top 40 chart based on pop radio airplay. Eventually, it was confirmed that a re-release of I Am Me had been scrapped. In 2006, Simpson was cast as Roxie Hart in the West End musical production of Chicago from September 25 to October 28, 2006. She received mostly positive reviews. Her performance in the show was described as "dazzling and near flawless". Following her split with Olita, it was confirmed that Simpson was in a relationship with Fall Out Boy band member Pete Wentz.

2007–2011: Bittersweet World, motherhood, marriage and return to Broadway

Following her appearance as Roxie Hart, Simpson confirmed that she had begun working on her third studio album, initially slated for release in late 2007. Geffen Records chairman Ron Fair said in December 2006 that working on Simpson's next album would be "very tricky" because of press scrutiny and "prejudices", but that Geffen would work with her to overcome that, "because she deserves to be heard and she deserves a shot." Hoping to transition to a new sound, Simpson enlisted producers Timbaland and The Neptunes to provide "beat-oriented" songs for the project. Simpson released the album's lead single, "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)", in December 2007. The song featured elements of synthpop and was heavily influenced by the pop-music scene of the 1980s. The single failed to chart on the Hot 100 chart in the United States, though it had moderate success in international territories. Bittersweet World, Simpson's third studio album, was released on April 19, 2008. The album saw a decline for Simpson, debuting at number 4 on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 47,000 copies. Simpson launched a collection of tops in partnership with the clothing retailer Wet Seal on April 22, 2008, the same day Bittersweet World was released in the United States. The album went on to sell 126,000 copies within the first year of its release, making it her lowest-selling album to date. The release served as Simpson's final album through Geffen Records.

In February 2008, Simpson began wearing a diamond ring. She later explained that it was a promise ring from Wentz. In April 2008, Simpson and Wentz confirmed their engagement, and they wed on May 17, 2008, at Simpson's parents' residence in Encino, California, with her father officiating the ceremony. She changed her surname from Simpson to Wentz, and during the marriage was known professionally as Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. It was during this time that Simpson released the song "Little Miss Obsessive" as the second single from Bittersweet World. The song did not receive a European release and hit a peak of 96 on the Hot 100 chart in the United States. She also began appearing in commercials for Canadian retailer Zellers to promote their independent clothing line, Request, in mid-2008. Two weeks after her wedding, Simpson announced her pregnancy, thus ending promotion of "Little Miss Obsessive" and the parent album. Simpson gave birth to a son named Bronx born November 20, 2008.

In 2009, Simpson returned full-time to television episodes by playing the role of Violet Foster in Melrose Place, The CW's revamp of the 1990s series of the same name. She was originally signed to the show as a regular, but producers and CW executives decided to write out her character. Simpson left the show after twelve episodes and stated that she had known all along that her character would leave the show once the murder mystery storyline had concluded. Despite this, Ashlee's sister has spoken out against the series, claiming that Simpson brought the show free press. After her departure from Melrose Place, Simpson reprised her role in the Broadway musical production of Chicago. She began her Broadway run on November 30, 2009, and performed in New York for eight shows a week until February 7, 2010. On February 9, 2011, Simpson filed for divorce from Wentz, citing irreconcilable differences, and asked that her maiden name be restored. The divorce was finalized on November 22, 2011. The former couple released a joint statement following the announcement, stating "We remain friends and deeply committed and loving parents to our son Bronx, whose happiness and well-being remains our number one priority." Simpson appeared on the second episode of The CW's America's Next Top Model, Cycle 17 as a guest judge. She created a fashion line aimed at girls aged seven to sixteen in collaboration with her sister's successful brand. Simpson is the co-creative director of the line, which was released in the winter of 2011.

2012–present: second marriage and television projects
Shortly after her separation from Wentz, it was confirmed that Simpson was in a relationship with actor Vincent Piazza, though the two ended their relationship nearly a year and a half after they started dating. Simpson confirmed during an interview in 2011 that she had begun working on her fourth studio album, which she described as having a "folk feel". In 2012, Simpson independently released the single "Bat for a Heart". Though the single featured explicit lyrics and a racy music video, it failed to have any success. The track was written and composed by renowned songwriter Linda Perry. The song received a mixed reception upon its release. Simpson later claimed that the album was developing more of an electronic sound. However, "Bat for a Heart" served as Simpson's final musical release for several years afterward, with no future musical plans announced and her music website being shut down. In June 2012, it was announced that Simpson was filming Pawn Shop Chronicles in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a comedy movie released in 2013.

Simpson portrayed the character of Roxie Hart for a third time in the musical Chicago, this time in the Hollywood Bowl production of the show. Simpson's performance received mixed reviews, though she was described as an "audience favorite". In July 2013, it was reported that Simpson had begun dating actor Evan Ross, son of singer Diana Ross. Simpson and Ross became engaged in January 2014, and married on August 30, 2014, at Diana Ross's estate in Connecticut. The couple welcomed a daughter named Jagger Snow on July 30, 2015. The same month, Simpson and her husband filed requests to change their surname to Ross-Næss. Næss was her husband's original legal surname (from his father, businessman Arne Næss Jr.), while Ross was his mother's surname. In May 2016, Simpson said she was eschewing a possible return to acting in order to focus on making a new album: "I've been writing music with my husband and that's been so much fun, we've just been [trying to] find our sound, we've written like 10 songs but we're going to write a whole bunch more." But in early 2005, her music website went offline—with an error—for months and, as of early September 2018, it remained offline despite her claims to return to music. In 2018, Simpson and Evan Ross teamed up with French brand Zadig & Voltaire and designed a unisex clothing collection titled "Jagger Snow".

That same year, Simpson voiced Strelka in the animated movie Space Dogs Adventure to the Moon, alongside Alicia Silverstone. Simpson also confirmed to Us Weekly that new music would be released in 2019, which appeared to suggest she was working on her upcoming fourth studio album after an eleven-year hiatus.

On September 9, 2018, she was slated to return to the world of TV-reality shows with Ashlee+Evan, on E! Entertainment Television. Simpson and Ross released their debut duet single, "I Do", on September 7, 2018. The couple was expected to release a full-length album later that year, but instead released an extended play record, Ashlee + Evan.

In April 2020, Simpson announced she was pregnant with her third child, a son. She gave birth to Ziggy Blu on October 29, 2020.

She played Kate in the Christmas film The Recipe Files, aired on QVC+ on November 24, 2023.

Public image
Simpson has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines, including the USA's Women's Health, Jane, CosmoGirl, Shape, Allure, YM, Marie Claire, Redbook and Seventeen; Germany's Glamour; Japan's Blenda and Elle; and Russia's Elle Girl. She has appeared on several international editions of Cosmopolitan, such as Georgia, Serbia, Russia, Italy, Greece, Ukraine, Slovenia, Netherlands, US and Australia. She has appeared in television commercials for Liquid Ice, HP, Zellers and Pizza Hut. She appeared in print ads for Skechers and ThermaSilk.

Forbes listed Simpson as one of the "Richest Young Celebrities", it is reported she earned $8.3 million in 2005. Forbes placed Simpson and her then-husband Pete Wentz at No. 20 on their list of "Top 20 Celebrity Cash Couples" with their $9.5 million combined income.

With the release of Autobiography, Simpson instantaneously became marketed as an "anti-Britney", drawing comparisons to artists such as Avril Lavigne and Fefe Dobson. The media noted her "punk-rock" image and style as a contrast to her sister Jessica. With the success of Jessica's reality television series Newlyweds, the sisters became household names in the media and became the focus of much attention. She cites her childhood as being the time when she began to sing and admits that she dreamed of being on Broadway and did not expect to break into the pop music scene.

Vocally, Simpson is an alto with a two-octave vocal range. She trains with a vocal coach, and studies Etta James and Aretha Franklin albums for vocal inspiration. She has cited Guns N' Roses, Gwen Stefani, No Doubt, Joan Jett, The Runaways, Madonna, Pat Benatar, Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Chrissie Hynde, and Debbie Harry from Blondie as her musical influences.

Concert tours

 * Autobiography Tour (2004)
 * L.O.V.E. Tour (2005–2006)
 * Club Tour (2008)

Discography

 * Autobiography (2004)
 * I Am Me (2005)
 * Bittersweet World (2008)

Awards and nominations

 * List of awards and nominations received by Ashlee Simpson

title: Ashlee Simpson


text:
Tatsumi Hijikata

Tatsumi Hijikata (土方 巽) was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home. It is this style which is most often associated with Butoh by Westerners.

Life and Butoh
Tatsumi Hijikata was born Kunio Yoneyama on March 9, 1928 in Akita prefecture in northern Japan, the tenth in a family of eleven children. After having shuttled back and forth between Tokyo and his hometown from 1947, he moved to Tokyo permanently in 1952. He claims to have initially survived as a petty criminal through acts of burglary and robbery, but since he was known to embellish details of his life, it is not clear how much his account can be trusted. At the time, he studied tap, jazz, flamenco, ballet, and German expressionist dance. He undertook his first Ankoku Butoh performance, Kinjiki, in 1959, using a novel by Yukio Mishima as the raw input material for an abrupt, sexually-inflected act of choreographic violence which stunned its audience. At around that time, Hijikata met three figures who would be crucial collaborators for his future work: Yukio Mishima, Eikoh Hosoe, and Donald Richie. In 1962, he and his partner Motofuji Akiko established a dance studio, Asbestos Hall, in the Meguro district of Tokyo, which would be the base for his choreographic work for the rest of his life; a shifting company of young dancers gathered around him there.

Hijikata conceived of Ankoku Butoh from its origins as an outlaw form of dance-art, and as constituting the negation of all existing forms of Japanese dance. Inspired by the criminality of the French novelist Jean Genet, Hijikata wrote manifestoes of his emergent dance form with such as titles as 'To Prison '. His dance would be one of corporeal extremity and transmutation, driven by an obsession with death, and imbued with an implicit repudiation of contemporary society and media power. Many of his early works were inspired by figures of European literature such as the Marquis de Sade and the Comte de Lautréamont, as well as by the French Surrealist movement, which had exerted an immense influence on Japanese art and literature, and had led to the creation of an autonomous and influential Japanese variant of Surrealism, whose most prominent figure was the poet Shuzo Takiguchi, who perceived Ankoku Butoh as a distinctively 'Surrealist' dance-art form.

Especially at the end of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Hijikata undertook collaborations with filmmakers, photographers, urban architects and visual artists as an essential element of his approach to choreography's intersections with other art forms. Among the most exceptional of these collaborations was his work with the Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe on the book Kamaitachi, which involved a series of journeys back to northern Japan in order to embody the presence of mythical, dangerous figures at the peripheries of Japanese life. The book references stories of a supernatural being — 'sickle-weasel' — said to have haunted the Japanese countryside of Hosoe's childhood. In the photographs, Hijikata is seen as wandering the stark landscape and confronting farmers and children.

From 1960 onward, Hijikata funded his Ankoku Butoh projects by undertaking sex-cabaret work with his company of dancers, and also acted in prominent films of the Japanese 'erotic-grotesque' horror-film genre, in such works as the director Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men and Blind Woman's Curse, in both of which Hijikata performed Ankoku Butoh sequences.

Hijikata's period as a public performer and choreographer extended from his performance of Kinjiki in 1959 to his famous solo work, Hijikata Tatsumi and Japanese People: Revolt of the Body (inspired by preoccupations with the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus and the work of Hans Bellmer ) in 1968, and then to his solo dances within group choreography such as Twenty-seven Nights for Four Seasons in 1972. He last appeared on stage as a guest performer in Dairakudakan's 1973 Myth of the Phallus. During the years from the late 60's through 1976, Hijikata experimented with using extensive surrealist imagery to alter movements. Then, Hijikata then gradually withdrew into the Asbestos Hall and devoted his time to writing and to training his dance-company. Throughout the period in which he had performed in public, Hijikata's work had been perceived as scandalous and the object of revulsion, part of a 'dirty avant-garde ' which refused to assimilate itself to Japanese traditional art, power or society. However, Hijikata himself perceived his work as existing beyond the parameters of the era's avant-garde movements, and commented: 'I've never thought of myself as avant-garde. If you run around a race-track and are a full circuit behind everyone else, then you are alone and appear to be first. Maybe that is what happened to me... '.

Hijikata's period of seclusion and silence in the Asbestos Hall allowed him to mesh his Ankoku Butoh preoccupations with his memories of childhood in northern Japan, one result of which was the publication of a hybrid book-length text on memory and corporeal transformation, entitled Ailing Dancer (1983); he also compiled scrapbooks in which he annotated art-images cut from magazines with fragmentary reflections on corporeality and dance. By the mid-1980s, Hijikata was emerging from his long period of withdrawal, in particular by choreographing work for the dancer Kazuo Ohno, with whom he had begun working in the early 1960s, and whose work had become a prominent public manifestation of Butoh, despite deep divisions in the respective preoccupations of Hijikata and Ohno. During Hijikata's seclusion, Butoh had begun to attract worldwide attention. Hijikata envisaged performing in public again, and developed new projects, but died abruptly from liver failure in January 1986, at the age of 57. Asbestos Hall, which had operated as a drinking club and film venue as well as a dance studio, was eventually sold-off and converted into a private house in the 2000s, but Hijikata's film works, scrapbooks and other artefacts were eventually collected in the form of an archive, at Keio University in Tokyo. Hijikata remains a vital figure of inspiration, in Japan and worldwide, not only for choreographers and performers, but also for visual artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, architects, and digital artists.

Origins of Butoh
Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. It was based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima. It explored the taboo of homosexuality and ended with a live chicken being smothered between the legs of Kazuo Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chasing Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Mainly as a result of the audience outrage over this piece, Hijikata was banned from the festival, establishing him as an iconoclast.

The earliest butoh performances were called (in English) "Dance Experience ". In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term "Ankoku-Buyou" (暗黒舞踊 – dance of darkness) to describe his dance. He later changed the word "buyo," filled with associations of Japanese classical dance, to "butoh," a long-discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing.

In later work, Hijikata continued to subvert conventional notions of dance. Inspired by writers such as Yukio Mishima (as noted above), Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet and de Sade, he delved into grotesquerie, darkness, and decay. At the same time, Hijikata explored the transmutation of the human body into other forms, such as those of animals. He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language, butoh-fu (fu means "word" in Japanese), to help the dancer transform into other states of being.

title: Tatsumi Hijikata


text: Category:Australian academics

title: Category:Australian academics


text:
Disinflation

Disinflation is a decrease in the rate of inflation – a slowdown in the rate of increase of the general price level of goods and services in a nation's gross domestic product over time. It is the opposite of reflation.

If the inflation rate is not very high to start with, disinflation can lead to deflation – decreases in the general price level of goods and services. For example if the annual inflation rate one month is 5% and it is 4% the following month, prices disinflated by 1% but are still increasing at a 4% annual rate. If the current rate is 1% and it is the -2% the following month, prices disinflated by 3% and are decreasing at a 2% annual rate.

title: Disinflation


text:
Category:Christian mythology

A Christian myth is a religious story that Christians consider to have deep explanatory or symbolic significance.

title: Category:Christian mythology