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Alstom Citadis

The Alstom Citadis is a family of low-floor trams and light rail vehicles built by Alstom. , over 2,300 Citadis trams have been sold and 1,800 tramways are in revenue service throughout the world, with operations in all six inhabited continents. An evolution of Alstom's earlier TFS vehicle, most Citadis vehicles are made in Alstom's factories in La Rochelle, Reichshoffen and Valenciennes, France, and in Barcelona, Spain, and Annaba, Algeria.

Citadis types
The Citadis family includes both partial and fully low-floor trams and LRVs, in versions with three (20x), five (30x), seven (40x), and nine (50x) sections. It comprises the following standard variants:

Urban tramway vehicles
Citadis X00: Citadis X01 (First generation): Citadis X02 (Second generation): Citadis X03 (Third generation): Citadis X04 (Fourth generation): Citadis X05 (Fifth generation):
 * Citadis 100 – three section, 70% low floor, originally designed and manufactured by Konstal in Chorzów for the Polish market (Katowice, Gdańsk)
 * Citadis 301 – three section, 70% low floor (Orléans)
 * Citadis 301 CIS – 100% low floor version with IPOMOS bogies on gauge (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg ). Also designated 71-801 according to the Russian unified system of rolling stock classification (71=trams, 8=manufacturer code (Alstom), 01=model code).
 * Citadis 401 – five sections, 70% low floor (Montpellier and Dublin, some converted from 301s)
 * Citadis 202 – three section, 100% low floor (Melbourne)
 * Citadis 302 – five sections, 100% low floor (Algiers, Adelaide, Angers, Lyon, Bordeaux, Paris T2, T7 and T8, Valenciennes, Rotterdam, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Melbourne, Nice, Murcia, Barcelona, Jerusalem, Le Havre and Nottingham)
 * Citadis 402 – seven sections, 100% low floor (Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lyon, Paris T3, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, Oran, Constantine)
 * Citadis 502 – nine sections, 100% low floor (Dublin, some converted from 402s)
 * Citadis 403 – seven sections, 100% low floor (Strasbourg)
 * Citadis 304 – 100% low floor, next generation design for Central and Eastern Europe (Istanbul)
 * Citadis 205 or Compact – three sections, 100% low floor (Aubagne, Avignon)
 * Citadis 305 – five sections, 100% low floor (Sydney, Lusail, Caen, Kaohsiung, Athens)
 * Citadis 405 – seven sections, 100% low floor (Nice, Paris line T9, T10)

Light-rail transit vehicles

 * Regio-Citadis – three sections, 70% low floor LRV (Kassel, The Hague)
 * Citadis Dualis – four or five sections, 100% low-floor LRV (operated by the SNCF, see below)
 * Citadis Spirit – three or four sections, 100% low floor LRV designed for the North American market (Ottawa, Toronto)

Power supply
Like most trams, Citadis vehicles are usually powered by overhead electric wires collected by a pantograph, but the trams in several places do not use pantograph current collection entirely. Other places, such as Toronto, use a trolley pole.

The most popular solution is Alstom's proprietary ground-level power supply (APS, first used in Bordeaux and subsequently in Angers, Reims, Orleans, Tours, Dubai, Rio, and Sydney), consisting of a type of third rail which is only powered while it is completely covered by a tram so that there is no risk of a person or animal coming into contact with a live rail. On the networks in France and in Sydney, the trams switch to conventional overhead wires in outer areas, but the Dubai vehicles are the first to employ APS for its entire passenger length (although they are still equipped with pantographs for use in the maintenance depot).

Another option is to use on-board batteries to store electrical power, allowing brief periods of catenary-free operation without the need to install special infrastructure. The Citadis trams in Nice operate off a set of nickel metallic hydride batteries in two large open spaces where overhead wires would be an eyesore. This has since been superseded by a supercapacitor-based energy storage system (SRS) which is in use in Rio de Janeiro (alongside APS), Kaohsiung, and along a new line in Nice. The Regio-Citadis can also be built as a dual-voltage or electro-diesel vehicle with various configurations.

North America
The main article provides vehicle and order descriptions.

title: Alstom Citadis


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Greater Vitória

Greater Vitória (Região Metropolitana da Grande Vitória) is a metropolitan area in Espírito Santo, Brazil. It is made up of the following municipalities: Cariacica, Fundão, Guarapari, Serra, Vitória, Vila Velha, and Viana and according to IBGE it covers an area of 2,331.01 km2 with 1,880,828 inhabitants (2022). It was established on February 21, 1995, when it was known as the Metropolitan Region of Vitória (RMV, Região Metropolitana de Vitória), and later modified in 1999 and 2001, when it was renamed and it incorporated the municipalities of Guarapari and Fundão respectively. These seven municipalities are home to almost half of the total population of Espírito Santo (49%) and 57% of the state's urban population. They produce 58% of the wealth and consume 95% of the electricity.

The term "Greater Vitória" corresponds mainly to the area centered on Vitória, the capital of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Today, the greatest part of industrial development is occurring in the Serra municipality, where many industries are building depots and factories. Those take advantage of the 3 Ports, Vitória Airport and the proximity to the ring road, which goes right though Serra, to distribute their products.

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

title: Greater Vitória


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Paraguayan National Anthem

The "Paraguayan National Anthem" (Himno Nacional Paraguayo, Tetã Paraguái Momorãhéi) is the national anthem of Paraguay. The lyrics were written by Francisco Acuña de Figueroa (who also wrote "Orientales, la Patria o la tumba", the national anthem of Uruguay) under the presidency of Carlos Antonio López, who at the time delegated Bernardo Jovellanos and Anastasio González to ask Figueroa to write the anthem (Jovellanos and González were commissioners of the Paraguayan government in Uruguay).

History
The lyrics to the song were officially finished by Francisco Acuña de Figueroa on May 20, 1846.

It still remains unclear who was responsible for the creation of the music. Some sources claim that Frenchman Francisco Sauvageot de Dupuis was the composer, while others claim it to be the work of the Hungarian-born Francisco José Debali (Debály Ferenc József), who composed the music for the Uruguayan national anthem. What it is known for sure is that it was the Paraguayan composer Remberto Giménez who in 1933 arranged and developed the version of the national anthem that remains in use by Paraguay today.

Lyrics
Though the national anthem has many verses, usually only the first verse followed by the chorus are sung on most occasions. Due to the song's length, the wordless introductory section and the latter half of the first verse are often omitted for brevity when the national anthem is played before a sporting event such as a soccer game.

title: Paraguayan National Anthem


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Graham Linehan

Graham George Linehan (born May 1968) is an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist. He created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted (1995–1998), Black Books (2000–2004), and The IT Crowd (2006–2013), and he has written for shows including Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. Early in his career, he partnered with the writer Arthur Mathews. Linehan has won five BAFTA awards, including Best Writer, Comedy, for The IT Crowd in 2014.

After an episode of The IT Crowd was criticised as transphobic, Linehan became involved in anti-transgender activism. He argues that transgender activism endangers women, and he has likened the use of puberty blockers to Nazi eugenics. Linehan says his views have lost him work and ended his marriage.

Early life
Linehan was born in Dublin in 1968. He attended Catholic University School, a Roman Catholic secondary school for boys in Dublin.

Comedy career
In the 1980s, Linehan joined the staff of the Dublin politics and music magazine Hot Press, where he met his future writing partner, Arthur Mathews. In their early collaborations, they created segments in sketch shows including Alas Smith and Jones, Harry Enfield & Chums, The All New Alexei Sayle Show, The Day Today and the Ted and Ralph characters in The Fast Show. They continued their collaboration with Paris (one series, 1994), Father Ted (three series, 1995–1998),  and the first series of the sketch show Big Train. They also wrote the "Dearth of a Salesman" episode for the series Coogan's Run, which featured the character Gareth Cheeseman. In late 2003, Linehan and Mathews were named one of the 50 funniest acts to work in television by The Observer. Father Ted won BAFTA awards for Best Comedy in 1996 and 1999.

Linehan wrote for the satirical series Brass Eye (1997), Blue Jam (1997—1999) and Jam (2000). With the actor Dylan Moran, he created the sitcom Black Books (2000—2004). Linehan wrote and directed the 2006 Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, in which he sought to move away from the British trend towards mockumentary comedies. Unlike many series of the time, it was recorded before a studio audience. In November 2008, he was awarded an International Emmy for The IT Crowd. In 2013, he wrote and directed the sitcom The Walshes. He co-wrote the first series of the BBC sitcom Motherland and directed its pilot episode. In 2014, Linehan won his fifth BAFTA, for Best Writer, Comedy, for his work on The IT Crowd. He was also nominated for Count Arthur Strong.

In 2018, Linehan and Mathews announced plans for a Father Ted musical. Linehan said it would finish the series as they had planned it before the death of the lead actor, Dermot Morgan. The musical was cancelled by producers following the controversy over Linehan's views on transgender rights.

Television appearances
Both Linehan and Mathews have made cameos in programmes they have written. They also made an appearance in the sitcom I'm Alan Partridge as two Irish TV producers considering Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) for a contract.

Linehan has also appeared in The Day Today and in two episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and has had cameos in Black Books (series one, episode two, as "I love books" Guy, and series one, episode five as Fast Food Customer), and the Father Ted episodes "Good Luck Father Ted", "Entertaining Father Stone", "Flight Into Terror", "Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading" and "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep". He had cameos in four episodes of The IT Crowd: as Messy Joe's Restaurant Musician, in series one, episode three; the blind sorcerer, in series two, episode six; as a member of the audience for Jen's speech, in series three, episode four; and as Beth Gaga Shaggy, in series four, episode three. He appeared in the Identity Parade round of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also appeared in the pilot of Little Britain, as well as in series one, episode four, as a bystander who gets in the way of character Kenny Craig when he is attempting to hypnotise, from a distance, a man whose car he has crashed into. He also appeared in series one, episode five, in which he played a journalist called Roy Sloan (from Whizzer and Chips) during a conference with Prime Minister Michael Stevens (Anthony Head).

In 2007, a documentary about Linehan, his life and his career was produced by Wildfire Films for RTÉ One. This documentary explored the art, craft and deeply competitive business of creating contemporary television comedy. The programme featured interviews with several of the UK's most successful television comedy writers and performers including Steve Coogan, Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Paul Whitehouse, Griff Rhys Jones and Ardal O'Hanlon, all of whom have worked with Linehan. It was directed by Adrian McCarthy and produced by Martha O'Neill and Adam Rynne.

Linehan was one of the writers interviewed by Charlie Brooker in 2008 in a special interview episode of the fifth series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe programme, and again on Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe in 2010. In 2011, Linehan appeared with several members of the cast in Channel 4's Father Ted Night, an evening of the writer's favourite episodes and two retrospective documentaries. He also appeared as a guest panellist on Have I Got News for You in 2011 and again in 2012, and he made his debut as a guest on the BBC show QI in the 11th series (K series) in 2013, receiving a score of −19.

Radio
On 6 June 2011, Linehan appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss his adaptation of the Ealing comedy film The Ladykillers for the West End stage. During this appearance, he took issue with Today presenter Justin Webb over what he saw as the attempted staging of an artificial argument between himself and the critic Michael Billington. He later expanded on this criticism in an article published in The Guardian, saying, "I'm talking about that very specific, very artificial, very Today programme format of a presenter acting as referee between two people who have been chosen to represent the opposing sides of a manufactured argument. It is a binary view of politics, of life and, as a result, it is also a dishonest one. Replace it with anything—anything—because anything would be better".

Memoir
Linehan's memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, was published in October 2023. The month before publication, it had the second-highest number of pre-orders for a book on Amazon. It reached number ten on the Sunday Times bestseller list after it was published. Linehan wrote of his childhood, career, and his five years as an anti-transgender activist.

Reviewing Tough Crowd in The Guardian, Fiona Sturges wrote that while Linehan's account of his comedy career has "verve and charm", the memoir "reads less like the story of a man heroically cleaving to his principles than a document of a peculiar and self-defeating obsession, a sad coda to a once towering talent". In a review in The Critic, Ben Sixsmith described Tough Crowd as "very entertaining" with "some valuable insights into comedy", but that Linehan "admits to losing his rag in a way that might not always be productive". In The Irish Times, Houman Barekat wrote that the memoir had "two distinct narratives", concluding that "Tough Crowd is a discomfiting read not because it contains hard-hitting home truths, but because its author clearly hasn’t worked through his issues". For The Spectator Debbie Hayton wrote that "This is a book of two halves" and that it "may well appeal to two completely different audiences", concluding that "if they want to understand the man they need to read it all." Louis Chilton of The Independent described the book as "a strange, sad read... that crumbles under the slightest scrutiny".

Other work
Linehan's children voiced characters in the 2012 Adventure Time episode "Goliad", with Linehan directing the children while taking the producers' instructions over the phone. He planned to write a sequel episode, and sent versions of the story to the production team. The episode was never made as Adventure Time ended in 2018. In 2023, Linehan performed a stand-up comedy set at the Backyard Comedy Club in London.

Anti-transgender activism
Linehan is involved in anti-transgender activism. Sources covering Linehan's anti-transgender views:
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.
 * He began making anti-trans statements online after the 2008 episode "The Speech" of The IT Crowd, written by Linehan, was widely criticised as transphobic and sexist. Critics said it used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. The episode features a man who learns that his girlfriend is transgender and gets into a fight with her. Channel 4 removed the episode from syndication and streaming in 2020. Linehan felt the joke was "harmless" and says he did not understand the "ferocity" of the response, arguing that a transphobic character did not make him or the episode transphobic.

Linehan said he was sceptical of gender self-identification, objecting to "privileged white people saying you must accept anyone who says they are a woman". He said that "anyone suffering from gender dysphoria needs to be helped and supported", but he voiced concern over early transgender intervention for children. He used the social network Twitter to criticise "trans ideology", which he believes misrepresents transgender people and lesbians.

Before first Twitter ban
In 2018, Linehan praised anti-transgender protesters at that year's London Pride event who had carried banners and flyers saying that "transactivism erases lesbians", calling them "heroes". Later that year, Stephanie Hayden, a transgender woman, sued Linehan for harassment. Hayden alleged that Linehan had shared photos on Twitter of Hayden's family and her life before transition, suggested she was a criminal, and repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed her. Linehan in turn alleged that Hayden publicised several private addresses linked to his family to silence him. Police issued Linehan a verbal warning not to contact Hayden.

In a December 2018 interview with Derrick Jensen, Linehan said: "I'm now in a position where I can answer the question honestly of 'if you were around at the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, or whatever it happened to be, would you be one of the people who said "no, this is wrong", despite being opposed?'" He also said the trans movement provides "cover" for "fetishists, con men, and simply abusive misogynists". In an interview with the BBC television programme Newsnight in February 2020, Linehan said that the Tavistock Centre's practice of treating children with puberty blockers such as Lupron was comparable to Nazi eugenics and experiments on children. Following this interview, Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues, accused Linehan of trivialising the Holocaust.

In January 2019, Linehan expressed concern over the news that Mermaids, a charitable advocacy organisation for transgender children and teenagers, was to receive a £500,000 lottery grant to open clinics around the United Kingdom. He posted to the blogging website Mumsnet encouraging its users to lobby the National Lottery Community Fund to reverse its decision. The grant was reviewed and went ahead. In response to Linehan, YouTuber Hbomberguy held a 57-hour fundraising livestream that raised £270,000 more for Mermaids. The same year, British journalist Dawn Foster accused Linehan and others of targeting a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) employee who had been responsible for hiring model and activist Munroe Bergdorf, a transgender woman. Foster called the online abuse "transphobic" and "flatly homophobic". Journalist Chris Godfrey called the treatment of the employee "insidious homophobia".

In June 2020, Linehan criticised comments about author J. K. Rowling after she made comments that were called transphobic. He linked to a blog post featuring screenshots of abuse Rowling had received, describing those who wrote them as "ignoring the abuse received by women who speak out against gender ideology" and "literally useless". Hozier, tagged in Linehan's tweets due to his trans-rights advocacy, responded by saying Linehan was conducting an "obsessive little culture war".

Twitter ban and evasions
On 27 June 2020, Linehan's Twitter account was permanently suspended after what Twitter called "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation". In December, Linehan evaded the suspension with an account posing as a transgender man. He used the account to call Colm O'Gorman "a traitor to women, gay people and yourself" for signing an open letter published by the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland. The account was banned but Linehan said he had created another.

In February 2021, Linehan created a fake account on the lesbian dating app Her and publicly posted screenshots of non-binary people and trans women using it. The developers of Her clarified that transgender women are welcome on the app.

In an interview in the Irish Independent that month, Linehan ruled out working with Channel 4 again as they would not return the controversial IT Crowd episode to broadcast, and he said he would not work with the BBC as they had depicted a transgender lesbian couple, which Linehan described as "a heterosexual couple", in a CBeebies video. Ahead of the 2022 Australian federal election in May, Linehan used his online platforms to rally international support for the Liberal Party candidate Katherine Deves, who had attracted controversy for anti-trans comments. In September 2022, Linehan said that his anti-transgender activism had led him to question the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations and the scientific consensus on climate change "because I've been lied to so conclusively by all the people I used to trust".

In interviews in 2022 and 2023, Linehan said the debate over transgender issues had "consumed his life": it had lost him work, made him financially destitute, and ended his marriage. He said the Father Ted musical, on which he had been depending financially, was cancelled when the production company decided his involvement would make it impossible to stage. He had previously called for all people working on the musical to sign a declaration agreeing with some of his views on trans people while describing clashes he was having with colleagues over their views on trans rights, and read out a letter he had written to collaborators saying: "I don’t think you all have my back as collaborators or as business partners or as friends. Far from being on the wrong side of history, JK Rowling and I have been proved right over and over again that this is a poisonous ideology that is destroying lives."

Linehan blamed cancel culture for his situation, and said: "Every comedian at the moment is living under a kind of state of permanent blackmail ... There's a few hot-button issues where you have to follow a certain line, and if you don't, you'll be destroyed." In 2023, he denied disliking transgender people, but said using their preferred pronouns was "immoral". He said he did not have a problem with "men calling themselves women" and that "as we keep pointing out, we are only talking about places where conflict arises".

Post-Twitter reinstatement
Linehan's Twitter account was restored in December 2022, following the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, who relaxed many of Twitter's content policies and announced an amnesty to restore suspended accounts. He also attacked Ian "H" Watkins of Steps, tweeting: "What may connect him to a man serving 22 years for raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl?", on the basis that Watkins had used a tool to block transphobes.

In April 2023, Linehan was again banned from Twitter, following his appearance at an anti-trans event called Let Women Speak in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He had tweeted the words "Durr imm gonna kill em" in response to a Twitter user who referenced counter-protestors at the Belfast event. Linehan's account was reinstated days later.

In July 2023, Linehan tweeted that David Tennant was an "abusive groomer" after Tennant wore a T-shirt saying "Leave Trans Kids Alone You Absolute Freaks". In August, during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Linehan and other comedians performed a stand-up comedy show outside the Scottish Parliament after his original venues cancelled his booking over his views. Some supporters of Linehan attended the show and criticised the Edinburgh Fringe as oversensitive. Linehan also threatened to sue the first venue that cancelled his gig. On 1 October, he attended the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, stating in a speech that he was "the most cancelled person in this room". On 3 October, he said he had been dropped by his television agent, Independent Talent, which also represented Tennant. On 12 November 2023, he appeared on This Week on Ireland's national radio station, RTÉ, to talk about his claim of being cancelled, defend his anti-trans activism, and to promote his memoir Tough Crowd.

Personal life
Linehan married English writer Helen Serafinowicz, the sister of the actor Peter Serafinowicz, in 2004. They have two children and lived in Norwich. In October 2015, the couple worked with Amnesty International on a campaign film calling on the Irish government to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which "acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right". The couple revealed their decision for Helen to abort a foetus with acrania while living in England in 2004, and their discovery that undergoing the procedure in Ireland would have been an offence carrying a maximum 14-year prison sentence.

Linehan's marriage to Serafinowicz ended in 2020 as a result of his anti-transgender activism, and he moved to London. He said the relationship had suffered because of his legal and financial problems and visits from the police. In 2023, Linehan said he had been on anti-anxiety medication for "five or six years" since having first received legal threats from trans rights activists. He said he had contemplated suicide in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as he had lost work and relationships and was "completely alone".

Linehan is an atheist. In January 2009, he helped to publicise the Atheist Bus Campaign. He is also an honorary associate of the National Secular Society. In 2018, Linehan underwent successful surgery for testicular cancer.

Linehan has been an active Twitter user, calling it "part of [his] nervous system" in a 2015 interview. On 13 February 2009, Linehan hosted the first BadMovieClub on Twitter which repeated the next day at midnight, hosted by Phill Jupitus. In August 2009, in response to criticism of the National Health Service by the US Republican Party, Linehan created the #welovetheNHS campaign on Twitter. In 2011, he perpetrated a Twitter hoax that Osama bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd.

Television writer
Linehan was also an executive producer of the first series of The IT Crowd, and an associate producer of one episode of Father Ted.
 * The Day Today (2 episodes, "additional material by", 1994)
 * Paris (6 episodes, 1994)
 * The Fast Show (9 episodes, 1994-1996)
 * Father Ted (25 episodes, 1995-8) (Also co-creator)
 * Brass Eye (6 episodes, "additional material by", 1997)
 * Big Train (12 episodes, 1998) (Also co-creator)
 * Black Books (6 episodes, 2000) (Also co-creator, director)
 * The IT Crowd (25 episodes, 2006–13) (Also creator, director)
 * Count Arthur Strong (20 episodes, 2013–17) (Also creator, director)
 * The Walshes (3 episodes, 2013) (Also director)
 * Shrink (3 episodes, 2017)
 * Motherland (pilot episode, 2016)

Television director

 * Black Books (6 episodes, 2000) (Also co-creator, writer)
 * Little Britain (1 episode, 2003)
 * The IT Crowd (25 episodes, 2006–13) (Also creator, writer)
 * The Walshes (3 episodes, 2013) (Also writer)
 * Count Arthur Strong (20 episodes, 2013–17) (Also creator, writer)
 * Motherland (pilot episode, 2016)

Film director

 * Hello Friend (short, also co-writer, 2003)

Film writer

 * Never Mind the Horrocks (television movie, 1996)
 * The Matchmaker (1997)

Book writer

 * Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy (2023 memoir)

title: Graham Linehan


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Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun

The Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun was an anti-tank gun designed by Swedish manufacturer Bofors in the early 1930s originally for Swedish use. It was exported to several countries during the 1930s of which several bought licences to produce it themselves. The gun was used in several conflicts but most of its fame comes from its use in the Spanish Civil War and the Winter War where it was used very successfully against light tanks and armored cars among other targets. Beyond its use as an infantry gun it was also used as the main armament in several armored cars and tanks such as the Dutch M39 Pantserwagen and the Polish 7TP to name a few. As the armor of tanks was increased during World War II the gun very quickly became obsolete as an anti-tank gun but was still used effectively as an infantry support gun for the entirety of the war, and well into the Cold War. This was due to its high fire rate, great mobility and effective high explosive shells.

Development history
The gun was initially designed by Swedish manufacturer Bofors, mainly for export purposes. It was likely derived from Rheinmetall's 3,7-cm Tak, the predecessor of 3.7 cm Pak 36. The first prototype was built in 1932; the development process continued until 1934. The Netherlands were the first to purchase the gun (order for 12 pieces was placed in 1935) and were followed by many other countries. Licensed copies were produced in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland.

The barrel was of monobloc type, with semi-automatic vertical sliding breech block and small muzzle brake. It was mounted on a split trail carriage which had suspension and metal wheels with rubber tires. To give the crew some protection from firearms and shell fragments, the gun was equipped with a 5 mm thick shield, with a folding lower plate.

Operational history

The Bofors gun saw combat for the first time in Spanish Civil War, where it could easily pierce the armor of contemporary light tanks. The Polish guns were actively used during the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Wołyńska Cavalry Brigade equipped with the Bofors 37 mm antitank gun beat the German Panzer Divisions in one of the first battles of the invasion; the Battle of Mokra. At that time, the armored forces of the Wehrmacht consisted mainly of light Panzer I and Panzer II tanks, which were vulnerable to the Bofors gun. Early models of the Panzer III and Panzer IV could also be penetrated at ranges up to 500 m. After Poland was occupied, most of the guns fell into the hands of the German and Soviet armies. The weapon was proven obsolete by 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Even though only one Bofors AT-gun was in action in the invasion of Denmark, it damaged two tanks, and shot the tracks off another tank, before its crew were either wounded or killed by a German tank destroyer which drove over the gun. The gun is now at the Tøjhusmuseet in Copenhagen.

During the Winter War, the Finnish guns were successfully used against Soviet tanks such as T-26, T-28 and BT. However, in the Continuation War the gun was found to be ineffective against the T-34 and KV and was relegated to an infantry support role.

The gun was used to equip the British forces in North Africa, where it made up for the lack of the QF 2-pounder anti-tank guns after the Fall of France. It was often carried portee on the back of a vehicle.

Bofors guns were also employed in World War II by Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Yugoslavia and USSR, but there are no detailed reports of their use.

Summary
When it was introduced, the Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun was an effective weapon, able to deal with contemporary tanks. Its performance, light weight and high rate of fire made it a popular anti-tank weapon in the pre-war Europe. Introduction of better armored tanks early in World War II, however, made the gun obsolete (as with other similarly performing weapons such as the German 3.7 cm Pak 36 and the United States 37 mm Gun M3).

Ammunition
There were many different ammunition types available for the Bofors 37 mm at gun. It could fire all common types of ammunition and some rare types such as APDS and white phosphorus incendiary.

Operators

 * A version with slightly more powerful cartridge was manufactured by the Danish state arsenal Hærens Vaabenarsenal in 1936-37 as 37 mm fodfolkskanon M. 1934. In 1945 Danish units returning to their homeland brought with them a few Swedish model 1938 guns.
 * 🇫🇮: As 37 PstK/36. 114 pieces were bought from Bofors in 1938–39 (some of them were returned to Sweden in 1940), 42 Polish-made guns were received from Germans in 1940–41 and 355 were produced by local manufacturers Tampella and VTT (Valtion Tykkitehdas – State Artillery Factory) in 1939–41. When the Winter War began in November 1939, the Finnish Army had 98 guns of the type. A tank version was also used to equip Finnish 6-tonne tanks. The gun remained in the Finnish Army inventory listings until 1986.
 * 🇩🇪 Germany: Used Polish guns captured in 1939 as 3,7 cm PaK 36(p) and Danish guns captured in 1940 as 3,7 cm PaK 157(d).
 * 🇳🇱: 12 pieces were ordered from Bofors in 1935. Later another 24 (or more) were procured. All these were used for Dutch armoured cars: 24 Landsverk types L180 and L181 as well as 12 DAF Pantrado cars.
 * 🇵🇱: As wz.36. 300 guns were bought in Sweden and hundreds more were produced by SMPzA (Stowarzyszenie Mechaników Polskich z Ameryki) in Pruszków, some of them exported. When World War II began, the Polish Army had 1,200 pieces. A tank variant, designated wz.37, was mounted in 7TP (single-turret version), 9TP (prototypes) and 10TP tanks. 111 of them were produced before the war.
 * 🇷🇴: 669 pieces (former Polish ones) were bought from Germany.
 * Spanish Republic: Some guns bought by the Republicans were used during the Spanish Civil War.
 * 🇸🇪: Adopted in 1937 as 37 mm infanterikanon m/34 (infantry gun model 1934). Modernized version was adopted in 1938 as 37 mm pansarvärnskanon m/38 (anti-tank gun model 1938) and 37 mm pansarvärnskanon m/38 F. The latter was also produced in a tank gun variant – 37 mm Kanon m/38 stridsvagn; it was fitted to Landsverk Strv m/38, Strv m/39, Strv m/40 light tanks and to the Strv m/41, a Swedish version of the Czech TNH light tank.
 * A number of Swedish m/34 ordered by Anglo-Egyptian Sudan were adopted as "Ordnance QF 37 mm Mk I".
 * Several dozen Polish guns fell into Soviet hands. Late in 1941 these pieces were issued to Red Army units to make up for the lack of anti-tank guns.
 * Several dozen Polish guns fell into Soviet hands. Late in 1941 these pieces were issued to Red Army units to make up for the lack of anti-tank guns.

title: Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun


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Talk:Lew Rywin

Wrong Agora
The current link to Agora is misleading. I think someone who knows anything about the company Agora should add an entry for it to Agora (disambiguation) and change the link from this article to that one. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:01, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Lew Rywin


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User:Olive~enwiki

I am Olive.

title: User:Olive~enwiki


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Districts of Thailand

An amphoe (sometimes also amphur, อำเภอ, )—usually translated as "district"—is the second level administrative subdivision of Thailand. Groups of amphoe or districts make up the provinces, and are analogous to counties. The chief district officer is Nai Amphoe (นายอำเภอ). Amphoe are divided into tambons, (ตำบล), or sub-districts.

Altogether Thailand has 928 districts, including the 50 districts of Bangkok, which are called khet (เขต) since the Bangkok administrative reform of 1972. The number of districts in provinces varies, from only three in the smallest provinces, up to the 50 urban districts of Bangkok. Also the sizes and population of districts differ greatly. The smallest population is in Ko Kut (Trat province) with just 2,042 citizens, while Mueang Samut Prakan (Samut Prakan province) has 509,262 citizens. The khet of Bangkok have the smallest areas—Khet Samphanthawong is the smallest, with only 1.4 km2—while the amphoe of the sparsely populated mountain regions are bigger than some provinces. Umphang (Tak province) at 4,325.4 km2 is the largest and also has the lowest population density. The average area of a district in Thailand is about 552.93 km2, while its average population of a district in Thailand is about 75,345 people.

The names of amphoe are usually unique, but in a few cases different Thai names have the same form in English due to the flaws of the romanization system. The notable exception, however, is the name Amphoe Chaloem Phra Kiat, which was given to five districts created in 1996 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's accession to the throne. Chaloem Phra Kiat (เฉลิมพระเกียรติ) means 'in commemoration of' or 'in honour of' a royal family member.

Local administration
Each district is led by a district chief officer (nai amphoe, นายอำเภอ), who is appointed by the Ministry of Interior. The officer is a subordinate of the provincial governor.

Amphoe mueang
The district which contains the administrative office of the province is the amphoe mueang (lit. town district). The district is not to be confused with the capital town itself, which is a different administrative entity usually much smaller than the district. Until the 1930s, most of the capital districts had names just like other districts, whereas districts dating back to old provinces had the word mueang in their name. In 1938 all the capital districts were renamed amphoe mueang, whereas in all non-capital districts mueang was removed from the name. The notable exception to this rule is Ayutthaya, where the capital district is named Amphoe Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya (instead of Amphoe Mueang Ayutthaya), the same as the province, which is fully named Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya. Also the capital districts of Thonburi and Phra Nakhon Provinces had the same name as the province, which they kept when the two provinces were merged to form Bangkok metropolis.

In most cases the capital district is also the most populous district of the province, as the provincial administration is usually in the largest town of the province. Songkhla province is the most striking exception, as the town (and thus also the district) Hat Yai grew much faster than the capital Mueang Songkhla due to its better transport connections.

There are four districts in Thailand (Chan, Pan, Suang, and Yang) which contain the term mueang in their name as well, even though they are not capital districts. All of these were created relatively recently, between 1973 and 1995.

King amphoe
Minor districts (king amphoe, กิ่งอำเภอ — กิ่ง literally 'branch') are set up when the administration of areas remote from the district center is inconvenient for citizens. Most of the tasks of the amphoe are transferred to the king amphoe, but it is still partially a subordinate of the amphoe it was created from. When the king amphoe meets the necessary qualifications to become an amphoe, it is usually promoted. However, not every newly created amphoe begins as a king amphoe: if the qualifications are met directly, this phase is skipped. While usually a minor district is upgraded after a few years, in some cases it remains a minor district for decades. For example, Ko Yao was a minor district for 85 years until it was upgraded in 1988. Sometimes a district is downgraded to a minor district. Thung Wa lost a lot of its population to neighboring La-ngu minor district, so finally La-ngu was upgraded and Thung Wa downgraded. Another example is Chumphon Buri, which was reduced after the more developed part was split off to form a new district and the remaining district was downgraded.

The criteria required for an amphoe are a population of at least 30,000 people and at least five tambon, or, if the area is more than 25 km from the district office, a population of at least 15,000 and four tambon.

A minor district is led by a chief officer (Hua Na King Amphoe, หัวหน้ากิ่งอำเภอ).

The Thai word king (กิ่ง) means 'branch' and should not be confused with the English word "king". The officially recommended translation is "minor district" —however they are also quite commonly translated as sub-district, which is the recommended translation for tambon, and also wrongly suggests that they are at a lower administrative level than the amphoe.

The Thai government upgraded all remaining 81 minor districts to full districts on 15 May 2007 in order to streamline administration. With publication in the Royal Gazette on 24 August the order became official.

District office
The administration of the district is housed in an office building called thi wa kan amphoe (ที่ว่าการอำเภอ), which also marks the center of each district. Distances on road signs are always calculated to this office building. The office is usually in the largest settlement of the district, to make it easily accessible to the majority of the population —one of the tasks of the amphoe is the civil registry, which makes the district the most important of the administrative levels for the Thai public.

title: Districts of Thailand


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Adenosine deaminase deficiency

Adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA deficiency) is a  metabolic disorder that causes immunodeficiency. It is caused by mutations in the ADA gene. It accounts for about 10–20% of all cases of autosomal recessive forms of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) after excluding disorders related to inbreeding.

ADA deficiency can present in infancy, childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Age of onset and severity is related to some 29 known genotypes associated with the disorder. It occurs in fewer than one in 100,000 live births worldwide.

Signs and symptoms
The main symptoms of ADA deficiency include pneumonia, chronic diarrhea, widespread skin rashes, jaundice (from hepatic infections), and candidiasis of the mouth and esophagus. Affected children also grow much more slowly than healthy children, commonly referred to as "failure to thrive," which may lead to other developmental delays.

These symptoms are not due to the enzyme deficiency itself, but rather to the effects of frequent severe infections from viruses, bacteria, and certain fungi. Children are particularly vulnerable to repeated infections from the same organisms, as their lack of B-cells means they cannot produce IgG antibodies in significant amounts, which protect most people from pathogens that have infected them before. Most individuals with ADA deficiency are diagnosed with SCID in the first 6 months of life. The large majority of cases of ADA deficiency are identified and diagnosed in children. However, a small minority have a less-severe form of the disease and remain undiagnosed until childhood, adolescence, or adulthood.

An association with polyarteritis nodosa has been reported.

Genetics
The enzyme adenosine deaminase is encoded by the ADA gene on chromosome 20. ADA deficiency is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner. This means the defective gene responsible for the disorder is located on an autosome (chromosome 20 is an autosome), and two copies of the defective gene (one inherited from each parent) are required in order to be born with the disorder. The parents of an individual with an autosomal recessive disorder both carry one copy of the defective gene, but usually do not experience any signs or symptoms of the disorder.

Age of onset and severity is related to some 29 known genotypes associated with the disorder.

Pathophysiology
ADA deficiency is due to a lack of the enzyme adenosine deaminase. This deficiency results in an accumulation of deoxyadenosine, which, in turn, leads to: Because T cells undergo proliferation and development in the thymus, affected individuals typically have a small, underdeveloped thymus. As a result, the immune system is severely compromised or completely lacking.
 * A buildup of dATP in all cells, which inhibits ribonucleotide reductase and prevents DNA synthesis, so cells are unable to divide. Since developing T cells and B cells are some of the most mitotically active cells, they are highly susceptible to this condition.
 * An increase in S-adenosylhomocysteine since the enzyme adenosine deaminase is important in the purine salvage pathway; both substances are toxic to immature lymphocytes, which thus fail to mature.
 * Complete or near-complete absence of T-cells, B-cells, and NK cells.

Diagnosis
Diagnosis in developed nations is usually done through standardized newborn screening tests for a range of congenital diseases, including ADA deficiency. Most newborns with SCID, including those with ADA deficiency as an underlying cause, can be identified before the onset of major infections due to their decreased levels of T-cell receptor excision circles (TRECs). TRECs are a normal product of T-cell development, and a deficit of them indicates a problem with lymphocyte maturation.

In the absence of newborn screening or to differentiate from other causes of SCID, some (but not all) children will display one or more of these features which are sometimes seen in ADA deficiency but not other forms of SCID:

 * Earlier onset of failure to thrive
 * Respiratory distress in an infant that is not caused by an infection
 * Abnormal rib cage development
 * Neurologic disorders, especially hearing loss

When ADA deficiency is suspected, the diagnosis may be confirmed through several lab tests of the patient's red blood cells, or via genetic testing.

Treatment
Treatment of ADA deficiency focuses on reducing the frequency and severity of infections. Antibiotics are typically prescribed as a prophylactic measure to make the body more difficult for pathogenic organisms to colonize. Due to the frequency it is encountered and its indifference to most antibiotics, clinicians must be careful to include a medication that can prevent Pneumocystis pneumonia.

In addition to antibiotics, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy is also provided when available. This treatment provides a layer of humoral immunity from healthy plasma donors.

Enzyme replacement therapy is provided to newborns until a definitive therapy plan can be implemented. There is some evidence that ERT also prevents tissue damage related to accumulated dATP and other molecules.

Stem cell transplantation
Long-term definitive treatment of ADA deficiency is typically achieved by transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells from a matched family member donor, preferably a sibling. Before transplantation, testing must be done to ensure that human leukocyte antigen (HLA) properties of the donor and the transplant recipient align, to avoid transplant rejection.

Gene therapy
The other definitive therapy available for ADA deficiency is gene therapy. These therapies use a viral vector to integrate a working copy of the gene into the patient's genome.

In September 1990, the first gene therapy to combat this disease was performed by Dr. William French Anderson on a four-year-old girl, Ashanti DeSilva, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A. In April 2016 the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency endorsed and recommended for approval a stem cell gene therapy called Strimvelis, for children with ADA-SCID for whom no matching bone marrow donor is available.

History
ADA deficiency was discovered in 1972 by Eloise Giblett, a professor at the University of Washington. The ADA gene was used as a marker for bone marrow transplants. A lack of ADA activity was discovered by Giblett in an immunocompromised transplant candidate. After discovering a second case of ADA deficiency in an immunocompromised patient, ADA deficiency was recognized as the first immunodeficiency disorder.

title: Adenosine deaminase deficiency


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North Ronaldsay sheep

The North Ronaldsay or Orkney is a breed of sheep from North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland. It belongs to the Northern European short-tailed sheep group of breeds, and has evolved without much cross-breeding with modern breeds. It is a smaller sheep than most, with the rams (males) horned and ewes (females) mostly hornless. It was formerly kept primarily for wool, but now the two largest flocks are feral, one on North Ronaldsay and another on the Orkney island of Auskerry. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust lists the breed as a priority on its 2021–2022 watchlist, and they are in danger of extinction, with fewer than 600 registered breeding females in the United Kingdom.

The semi-feral flock on North Ronaldsay is the original flock that evolved to subsist almost entirely on seaweed – they are one of few mammals to do this. They are confined to the foreshore by a 1.8 m drystane dyke, which completely encircles the island, forcing the sheep to evolve this unusual characteristic. The wall was built as kelping (the production of soda ash from seaweed) on the shore became uneconomical. Sheep were confined to the shore to protect the fields and crofts inside, and afterwards subsisted largely on seaweed.

This diet has caused a variety of adaptations in the sheep's digestive system. These sheep have to extract the trace element copper far more efficiently than other breeds as their diet has a limited supply of copper. This results in them being susceptible to copper toxicity, if fed on a grass diet, as copper is toxic to sheep in high quantities. Grazing habits have also changed to suit the sheep's environment. To reduce the chance of being stranded by an incoming tide, they graze at low tide and then ruminate at high tide.

A range of fleece colours are exhibited, including grey, brown and red. Meat from the North Ronaldsay has a distinctive flavour, described as "intense" and "gamey", possibly in part due to the high iodine content in their diet of seaweed.

Origin

The sheep are descended from the Northern European short-tailed sheep. Their arrival onto North Ronaldsay is not known precisely but it may have been as early as the Iron Age, or possibly even earlier, which would make them potentially the earliest ovines to arrive in Britain. Because of their isolated location, they have evolved without much admixture from imported Roman and European breeds. They share some characteristics, including their colour range and short tails, with Scandinavian sheep introduced when the islands were under Norse control, between the 9th and 15th centuries.

Enclosure
In 1832, a drystane dyke was erected on the island. Its construction was part of the response to the collapse of the kelping industry, which was the production of soda ash by the burning of seaweed. To provide a livelihood for those previously employed in kelping, the inland farmlands were reorganized, and the sheep kept away from the fields or crofts. Since then, the flocks on the island have been feral. The wall also unintentionally reduced the chances of crossbreeding, which would have diluted the gene pool of an already vulnerable breed. The wall circles the entire coast of the island, 19 km, and is 1.8 m high, making it one of the largest dry stone walls in the world. In 1999, Historic Scotland described it as a "unique and important structure" and designated it an 'A'-list site requiring conservation. This status affords it special protection; any development has to be approved with conservation in mind.

Since the wall was erected, the human population of North Ronaldsay has fallen from 500 to around 50, and current residents lack the manpower to maintain the wall. Successive storms, the most damaging of which was in December 2012, have created large holes in the structure. The cost of repairs has been estimated at several million pounds. In 1902, it cost only 4 pence per hour to repair the wall, using stone taken from the shore. In 2015, Orkney Islands Council reported that some 4.7 km of the wall was in need of work, and that the rate of damage exceeded that of repair.

Punds
The punds, or pounds, also listed with Historic Scotland, are nine small enclosures situated across the island to contain the sheep for shearing, counting, lambing and slaughtering. The sheep are herded inside these punds twice a year, the only time they have access to grass feed. Between February and August, the sheep are brought into the punds, once for lambing and once for shearing. The lambs are born on the grass between February and May. At this time, the sheep are counted, lambs are given ear tags, and records are entered with the island's sheep court to record ownership. Shearing takes place in July and August, and the whole island community is involved in herding and shearing the sheep. Slaughtering takes place only in winter when the meat is needed, and when the animals are fatter and yield more meat, since seaweed is more abundant in winter.

Sheep court
In 1839, just after the wall was erected, the North Ronaldsay Sheep Court was created. A group of eleven appointed islanders were responsible for the maintenance of the wall, the health of the sheep flock, and recording ownership of the sheep. Today, the Sheep Court remains the regulatory body responsible for organising ownership of the sheep.

Conservation
The North Ronaldsay Sheep Fellowship is one of several organisations concerned with the survival of the breed. They maintain the flock book, established in 1974, which is the breed registry containing all purebred animals. This book reports that there are fewer than 600 breeding females and roughly 3700 sheep in total. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) lists the North Ronaldsay as "vulnerable".

Other island-based organisations include The North Ronaldsay Trust and the Orkney Sheep Foundation, who run an annual Sheep Festival (SheepFest) inviting volunteers to the island for a fortnight of sheepdyke rebuilding.

There are only two main populations of the breed. The primary one is on the island of North Ronaldsay itself; the other is on the island of Auskerry, which was established in 1983 by Teresa Probert and Simon Brogan. Modern DNA analysis has shown little crossbreeding with other sheep breeds from mainland Britain. Testing carried out under the National Scrapie Plan looked for the ARQ allele, which protects against the scrapie disease and is present in modern selectively bred sheep, and found it in only 1.3 per cent of North Ronaldsay sheep.

Further DNA studies comparing the bones of the North Ronaldsay with remains of North European short-tailed sheep found on a Skara Brae site dating from around 3000 BCE have shown a very close match, suggesting that the North Ronaldsay has not genetically mixed with other breeds.

Physical
North Ronaldsays are very small sheep, an adaptation to the harsh, cold environment. Rams typically weigh around 30 kg, and ewes rarely exceed 25 kg, both standing around 41 cm high at the withers (shoulders). The sheep are slow-growing and a full-size carcass may weigh only 13.6 kg.

The North Ronaldsay is a descendant of the primitive European short-tailed sheep breed. As the name of the descent parent would suggest, they have naturally short tails. Their bones are finer than other breeds and their head is dished (sloping inwards). Rams are all horned; these horns are typically ridged and spiraled. Only 20 per cent of the ewes are horned; the rest are polled (hornless).

Diet
North Ronaldsay sheep have a highly unusual diet consisting almost solely of seaweed. This has evolved due to their unique location, confined to the shoreline by a 1.8 m dry stone wall, leaving only seaweed for food. Apart from the marine iguana, native to the Galapagos Islands, it is the only land animal known to have such a diet. Studies have shown that, due to preference and availability, the sheep eat mainly kelps (Laminaria digitata and Laminaria hyperborea). This discovery led to suggestions that these kelps may be of use as an alternative food source for other livestock.

The grazing habits of the sheep have also adapted to their unusual diet: instead of grazing during the day and ruminating (digesting) at night as other sheep generally do, the North Ronaldsays graze as the tide uncovers the shore (twice in 24 hours), ruminating at high water. Feeding begins around 3.5 hours after high tide as the areas of kelp and seaweed are exposed. Four hours later, which is just after the low tide, feeding ends, allowing rumination to begin. This cycle reduces the chance of the sheep becoming stranded at sea by the incoming tide.

In spring, mother ewes are taken to grasslands without access to seaweed for lambing, and are only returned to the shore around August. The other sheep (males and non-pregnant females) remain on the shore, primarily consuming seaweed, throughout the year. Unusually for sheep, the North Ronaldsay fattens in winter when storms throw larger amounts of kelp and seaweed onto the shore and food is abundant.

The sheep's source of fresh water is limited to the few freshwater lochs and ponds along the seashore. This has led them to become very salt tolerant, as their diet is salt-rich, and access to fresh water is limited. Compared with other breeds of sheep, they can far better handle elements present in the sea salt. These empirical conclusions were drawn in a 1997 study, but the underlying biological mechanism has yet to be understood.

Scientific analysis
The sheep have evolved a somewhat different physiology from other sheep, due to their unusual diet: their digestive system has adapted to extract the sugars in seaweeds more efficiently. A 2005 study at the University of Liverpool found that they have a greater susceptibility to copper toxicity, when compared with a more traditional breed such as the Cambridge. This is because seaweed has a chemical which inhibits the absorption of copper, so the sheep have to absorb copper more efficiently to obtain the required amount. The levels of copper found in typical sheep feed, including grass, are toxic for this breed. Studies at the Universities of Liverpool and Minnesota suggest that they can extract four times more copper from their diet than more traditional breeds.

Stable isotope ratio analysis of bone collagen and tooth enamel from seaweed-eating North Ronaldsay sheep have revealed elevated stable carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) compared to sheep feeding on C3-vegetation. This difference in stable carbon isotope ratios (arising from dietary differences), discovered by studying North Ronaldsay sheep, is made use of in archaeological studies, which have shown the existence of seaweed-eating sheep on Orkney around 5000 years ago.

Meat
When the United Kingdom was in the European Union, lamb and mutton from the sheep could be marketed as "Orkney Lamb", which had Protected Designation of Origin status. The meat has a unique, rich flavour, which has been described as "intense and almost gamey", and has a darker colour than most mutton, due in part to the animals' iodine-rich diet.

Wool
Despite their slight size, North Ronaldsay sheep were historically raised for their wool. It comes in a variety of colours and is very similar to the Shetland breed, due to their common ancestor. More common typical colours are the whites and greys, but browns, beiges, reds (also called tanay) and blacks, with coarser hair, are all exhibited. A full fleece weighs about 1 kg.

The North Ronaldsay is a double-coated breed, meaning they have a wool undercoat and overcoat. The undercoat tends to be finer and soft, suitable for garments that would touch the skin, whereas the overcoat is coarser, with long hair that protects the sheep from the cold, wet weather of their natural environment. This fibre is more durable and tends to be used in overgarments.

title: North Ronaldsay sheep


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Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.

Early life
Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Judith Frank Lethem, a political activist, and Richard Brown Lethem, an avant-garde painter. He was the eldest of three children. His father was Protestant (with Scottish and English ancestry) and his mother was Jewish, from a family with roots in Germany, Poland, and Russia. His brother Blake became an artist involved in the early New York hip hop scene, and his sister Mara became a photographer, writer, and translator. The family lived in a commune in Brooklyn, in the northern section of the neighborhood of Gowanus (now called Boerum Hill). Lethem's fourth grade teacher at P.S. 29 in nearby Cobble Hill was future New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, whom he called the "perfect" teacher and to whom he dedicated his first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music. Despite the racial tensions and conflicts, he later described his bohemian childhood as "thrilling" and culturally wide-reaching. He gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the music of Bob Dylan, saw Star Wars twenty-one times during its original theatrical release, and read the complete works of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Lethem later said Dick's work was "as formative an influence as marijuana or punk rock—as equally responsible for beautifully fucking up my life, for bending it irreversibly along a course I still travel."

His parents divorced when Lethem was young. When he was thirteen, his mother Judith died from a malignant brain tumor, an event which he has said haunted him and has strongly affected his writing. (Lethem discusses the direct relation between his mother and the Bob Dylan song "Like a Rolling Stone" in the 2003 Canadian documentary Complete Unknown.) In 2007, Lethem explained, "My books all have this giant, howling missing [center]—language has disappeared, or someone has vanished, or memory has gone."

Intending to become a visual artist like his father, Lethem attended the High School of Music & Art in New York, where he painted in a style he describes as "glib, show-offy, usually cartoonish". At Music & Art he produced his own zine, The Literary Exchange, which featured artwork and writing. He also created animated films and wrote a 125-page novel, Heroes, still unpublished.

After graduating from high school, Lethem entered Bennington College in Vermont in 1982 as a prospective art student. At Bennington, Lethem experienced an "overwhelming. ... collision with the realities of class—my parents' bohemian milieu had kept me from understanding, even a little, that we were poor. ... at Bennington that was all demolished by an encounter with the fact of real privilege." This, coupled with the realization that he was more interested in writing than art, led Lethem to drop out halfway through his sophomore year. He hitchhiked from Denver, Colorado, to Berkeley, California, in 1984, across "a thousand miles of desert and mountains through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, with about 40 dollars in my pocket", describing it as "one of the stupidest and most memorable things I've ever done."

Lethem lived in California for twelve years, working as a clerk in used bookstores, including Moe's and Pegasus & Pendragon Books, and writing on his own time. Lethem published his first short story in 1989 and published several more in the early 1990s.

First novels
Lethem's first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, is a merging of science fiction and the Chandleresque detective story, which includes talking kangaroos, radical futuristic versions of the drug scene, and cryogenic prisons. The novel was published in 1994 by Harcourt Brace, in what Lethem later described as a "delirious" experience. "I'd pictured my first novels being published as paperback originals", he recalled, "and instead a prestigious house was doing the book in cloth. ... I was in heaven." The novel was released to little initial fanfare, but an enthusiastic review in Newsweek, which declared Gun an "audaciously assured first novel", catapulted the book to wider commercial success. Gun, with Occasional Music was a finalist for the 1994 Nebula Award, and placed first in the "Best First Novel" category of the 1995 Locus Magazine reader's poll. In the mid-1990s, film producer-director Alan J. Pakula optioned the novel's movie rights, which allowed Lethem to quit working in bookstores and devote his time to writing.

His next book was Amnesia Moon (1995). Partially inspired by Lethem's experiences hitchhiking cross-country, this second novel uses a road narrative to explore a multi-post-apocalyptic future landscape rife with perception tricks. After publishing many of his early stories in a 1996 collection, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, Lethem published his third novel, As She Climbed Across the Table (1997). It starts with a physics researcher who falls in love with an artificially generated spatial anomaly called "Lack", for whom she spurns her previous partner. Her ex-partner's comic struggle with this rejection, and with the anomaly, constitute the majority of the narrative.

In 1996, Lethem moved from the San Francisco Bay Area back to Brooklyn. His next book, published after his return to Brooklyn, was Girl in Landscape. In the novel, a young girl must endure puberty while also having to face a strange and new world populated by aliens known as Archbuilders. Lethem has said that Girl in Landscape's plot and characters, including the figures of a young girl and a violently protective father figure, were "very strongly influenced" by the 1956 John Wayne Western The Searchers, a movie with which he is "obsessed".

Mainstream success and "genre bending"

The first novel Lethem began after returning to New York City was Motherless Brooklyn, a return to the detective theme. He maintained objective realism while exploring subjective alterity through Lionel Essrog. His protagonist has Tourette's syndrome and is obsessed with language. Lethem later said that Essrog

"... obviously [is] the character I've written with whom I most identify ... [the novel] stands outside myself ... It's the only one which doesn't need me, never did. It would have found someone to write it, by necessity."

Upon its publication in 1999, Motherless Brooklyn won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, The Macallan Gold Dagger for crime fiction, and the Salon Book Award; it was named book of the year by Esquire. In 1999, actor Edward Norton announced that he was planning to write, direct and star in a film adaptation of the novel. Norton's film was released in 2019.

According to The New York Times, the mainstream success of Motherless Brooklyn made Lethem "something of a hipster celebrity", and he was referred to several times as a "genre bender". Critics cited the variety of Lethem's novels, which were alternately hard-boiled detective fiction, science fiction, and autobiographical. Lethem credited his comfort in genre-mixing to his father's art, which "always combined observed and imagined reality on the same canvas, very naturally, very un-self-consciously." In Time magazine, Lev Grossman classed Lethem with a movement of authors similarly eager to blend literary and popular writing, including Michael Chabon (with whom Lethem is friends), Margaret Atwood, and Susanna Clarke.

In 2003, Lethem commented on the concept of "genre bending":

"The fact is, I used to get very involved, six or seven years ago, and before that, in questions of taxonomy of genre, and in the idea—which is ultimately a political idea—that a given writer, perhaps me, could in some objective way alter or reorganize the boundaries between genres. ... Nowadays, I've come to feel that talking about categories, about 'high' and 'low', about genre and their boundaries and the blurring of those boundaries, all consists only of an elaborate way to avoid actually discussing what moves and interests me about books—my own, and others'. What I like are books in their homely actuality—the insides of the books, the mysterious movements of characters and situations and the emotions that accompany those movements. The play of sentences, their infinite variety."

In the early 2000s, Lethem published a story collection, edited two anthologies, wrote magazine pieces, and published the 55-page novella This Shape We're In (2000). This Shape We're In was one of the first offerings from McSweeney's Books, the publishing imprint that developed from Dave Eggers' McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.

In November 2000, Lethem said that he was working on an uncharacteristically "big sprawling" novel, about a child who grows up to be a rock journalist. The novel was published in 2003 as The Fortress of Solitude. The semi-autobiographical bildungsroman features dozens of characters in a variety of milieus, but features a tale of racial tensions and boyhood in Brooklyn during the late 1970s. The main characters are two friends of different backgrounds who grew up on the same block in Boerum Hill. It was named one of nine "Editor's Choice" books of the year by The New York Times and has been published in fifteen languages.

Lethem's second collection of short fiction, Men and Cartoons, was published in late 2004. In March 2005, The Disappointment Artist, his first collection of essays, was released. On September 20, 2005, Lethem received a MacArthur Fellowship. In an interview with Armchair/Shotgun in 2009, Lethem said of short fiction:

"I'm writing short stories right now, that's what I do between novels, and I love them. I'm very devoted to it. You know, it's funny. There seems to be some sort of law that you only get to be celebrated for one or the other. And then a couple of people will break it. Updike did. They didn't review his story collections by saying, 'Well, these are nice, but he's a novelist.' Or review his novels by saying, 'Well, too bad he can't do the longer stuff.' Other people tend to get patronized on one end or the other—and I'll take it. I have a very happy life as a novelist. But the story collections I've published are tremendously important to me. And many of the uncollected stories—or yet-to-be-collected stories—are among my proudest writings. They're very closely allied, obviously, to novel writing. But also very distinct, and, you know, there's no need to choose."

2005–present

In September 2006, Lethem wrote the article "The Genius of Bob Dylan", a lengthy interview with Bob Dylan, which was published in Rolling Stone. The interview contained Lethem's reflections on Dylan's artistic achievements. It revealed Dylan's dissatisfaction with contemporary recording techniques and his thoughts on his own status.

After Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem decided that "[i]t was time to leave Brooklyn in a literary sense anyway ... I really needed to defy all that stuff about place and memory." In 2007, he returned as a novelist to California, where some of his earlier fiction had been set, with You Don't Love Me Yet, a novel about an upstart rock band. The novel revolves around a woman in the band, Lucinda, who answers phones for her friend's complaint line and uses some of a caller's words as lyrics. According to Lethem, the book was inspired by the years he spent as the lead singer in an upstart California band in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during what he called "the unformed posturing phase of life". The novel takes its title from two (otherwise unconnected) songs of the same title by Roky Erickson and The Vulgar Boatmen. The original title was Monster Eyes, but Lethem was convinced to change it by his publisher. He later admitted to an interviewer that the association with the two songs "made it feel very lucky to me to put it on the book," and that even though the new title "isn’t my phrase, for a book about appropriated language and the way things can be repurposed, it seemed okay. And, it’s a beautifully passive-aggressive title." The novel received mixed reviews.

In 2005, Lethem had announced that he was planning to revive the Marvel Comics character Omega the Unknown in a ten-issue series to be published in 2006. After hearing of the project, Omega co-creator Steve Gerber expressed personal outrage over the use of the character without his participation, though he later discussed the project with Lethem and admitted that he had "misjudged" him. In May 2006, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada explained that the series had been delayed to 2007, saying that "winning the MacArthur Grant put additional and unexpected demands on [Lethem's] time." The revamped Omega the Unknown series was published in ten monthly issues from October 2007 to July 2008; the issues were published in a single volume in October 2008.

In early 2007, Lethem began work on Chronic City, which was published on October 13, 2009. In July 2008, Lethem said that Chronic City is "set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it's strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles G. Finney and Hitchcock's Vertigo and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official. And it's long and strange."

His essay, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism" (2007), is a passionate defense of plagiarism and a call for a return to a "gift economy" in the arts. He writes,

"The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism ... Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All. You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you."

The essay was included in his 2011 collection, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.

In 2011, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, edited by Pamela Jackson and Lethem, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Among other projects, Lethem published short books about John Carpenter's film They Live (published in October, 2010 as They Live) and the Talking Heads album Fear of Music. Starting in 2011, he served as the Roy E. Disney Professor in Creative Writing at Pomona College, a position formerly held by the late David Foster Wallace.

Lethem's ninth novel, entitled Dissident Gardens, was released on September 10, 2013. According to Lethem in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the novel concerns "American leftists", very specifically "a red-diaper baby generation trying to figure out what it all means, this legacy of American Communism." Regarding the novel's setting, Lethem said in the same interview that it is

"set in Queens and Greenwich Village, another New York neighborhood book, very much about the life of the city ... writing about Greenwich Village in 1958 was really a jump for me, it was as much of an imaginative leap as any of the more fantastical things I've done. But really exciting, too."

Dissident Gardens was quickly followed up in February 2015 with Lucky Alan and Other Stories, Lethem's fifth short story collection.

Lethem's tenth novel, A Gambler's Anatomy (or, alternatively, The Blot in the United Kingdom), published in October 2016, concerns "an international backgammon hustler who thinks he's psychic". After changing publishers from Doubleday to Ecco, Lethem followed A Gambler's Anatomy/The Blot with The Feral Detective in November 2018, Lethem's first foray back into the detective novel genre since the acclaimed Motherless Brooklyn.

Lethem's twelfth novel, The Arrest - an "utterly original postapocalyptic yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car," according to the publishers - was published in November 2020.

Lethem co-wrote six out of nine songs on the Lee Ranaldo album Electric Trim, released in 2017. He wrote the introduction to David Bowman's 2019 novel, Big Bang.

Personal life
In 1987, Lethem married the writer and artist Shelley Jackson; they were divorced by 1997. In 2000, he married Julia Rosenberg, a Canadian film executive; they divorced two years later. As of 2007, Lethem lived in Brooklyn and Berwick, Maine, with his third wife, the filmmaker Amy Barrett. He has two sons.

Novels

 * Gun, with Occasional Music (1994)
 * Amnesia Moon (1995)
 * As She Climbed Across the Table (1997)
 * Girl in Landscape (1998)
 * Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
 * The Fortress of Solitude (2003)
 * You Don't Love Me Yet (2007)
 * Chronic City (2009)
 * Dissident Gardens (2013)
 * A Gambler's Anatomy (2016)
 * The Feral Detective (2018)
 * The Arrest (2020)
 * Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023)

Novellas

 * This Shape We're In (2000)
 * The Collapsing Frontier (2024)

Short story collections

 * The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (1996)
 * Kafka Americana (1999) (with Carter Scholz)
 * Men and Cartoons (2004)
 * How We Got Insipid (2006)
 * Lucky Alan and Other Stories (2015)

Comics

 * Omega the Unknown (2007)

Non-fiction

 * "Monstrous Acts and Little Murders" (Salon.com essay, January 1997)
 * The Vintage Book of Amnesia (editor, 2001)
 * Da Capo Best Music Writing: The Year's Finest Writing on Rock, Pop, Jazz, Country and More (editor, 2002)
 * "You Don't Know Dick" (Bookforum essay, Summer 2002)
 * The Disappointment Artist (2005)
 * "The Beards" (The New Yorker February 28, 2005)
 * Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets with Christopher Sorrentino, as "Ivan Felt and Harris Conklin" (2006)
 * The Subway Chronicles (contributor, 2006)
 * "Being James Brown" (Rolling Stone essay, June 2006)
 * "The Genius of Bob Dylan" (Rolling Stone interview, September 2006)
 * "The Ecstasy of Influence" (Harper's Magazine essay, February 2007)
 * Brooklyn Was Mine (contributor, 2008)
 * They Live (2010)
 * The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. (2011)
 * The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011, co-editor with Pamela Jackson)
 * Talking Heads' Fear Of Music (2012) (for 33⅓ series)
 * More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers (2018)
 * More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers (2018)

Film adaptations

 * Light and the Sufferer (2009) – screenplay by Christopher Peditto based on a short story by Lethem
 * The Epiphany (2011) – short film by SJ Chiro based on a short story by Lethem
 * Motherless Brooklyn (2019) – screenplay by Edward Norton

title: Jonathan Lethem


text:
Pizza Delight

Pizza Delight is a Canadian pizza restaurant franchise. It was founded in 1968 in Shediac, New Brunswick by Léandre Bourque and Allard Robichaud and then later purchased by Bernard Imbeault and two of his friends. The chain's head offices are now located in Moncton. The restaurant primarily serves pizza, pasta and salad dishes. Today, it has over 70 restaurants, and operates in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, with almost half of its locations in New Brunswick.

Imvescor
In 2000, Pizza Delight purchased Mikes, a prominent chain in Quebec and Ontario, for $15 million. Further acquisitions followed; the company acquired Scores in 2005, and Bâton Rouge in 2006. In 2006, it changed its name to Imvescor, to reflect its larger stable of restaurants. At its peak, the company owned and operated over 350 restaurants across Canada under four different banners. These included:

 * 95 Pizza Delights
 * 94 Mikes Restaurants
 * 28 Bâton Rouge Restaurants
 * 40 Scores Restaurants

In December 2017, MTY Food Group acquired Imvescor (including Pizza Delight) for $248 million.

title: Pizza Delight


text:
Amerind languages

Amerind is a hypothetical higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 and elaborated by his student Merritt Ruhlen. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—otherwise classified by specialists as belonging to dozens of independent families—as Amerind. Due to a large number of methodological flaws in the 1987 book Language in the Americas, the relationships he proposed between these languages have been rejected by the majority of historical linguists as spurious.

The term Amerind is also occasionally used to refer broadly to the various indigenous languages of the Americas without necessarily implying that they are a genealogical group. To avoid ambiguity, the term Amerindian is often used for the latter meaning.

Background
The idea that all the languages of the Americas are related goes back to the 19th century when early linguists such as Peter Stephen DuPonceau and Wilhelm von Humboldt noticed that the languages of the Americas seemed to be very different from the better-known European languages, yet seemingly also quite similar to each other. When studies of American Indian languages began in earnest in the early 20th century linguists quickly realized that the indigenous languages were in fact not all that similar, but had a diversity much greater than among the languages of Europe. After a period of uncertainty about whether indigenous languages could be described and investigated by the methods applied to European languages, the first linguists began the daunting task of trying to classify the languages of the Americas by using the comparative method.

Among the most prolific and gifted linguists of his times was Edward Sapir, who was among the first to apply the comparative method to Native American languages. However, contrary to current practice in historical linguistics, Sapir also often relied on "hunches" and "gut feeling" when proposing new language families. Some of these suggestions have been proven correct while others have not. Sapir entertained the idea that ultimately all languages of the Americas might turn out to be provably related and such a phenomenon as the apparent Pan-American tendency to have first person forms with a prefixed n- was suggestive for this line of thought.

Since Sapir's death in 1939, linguists have spent their time researching his proposals; typically, there have been two opposing camps in this endeavor: the so-called "lumpers" who usually look towards notions of genetic relationships, and the "splitters" who are widely critical of such proposals and expect successful family relations to be proven by the most rigorous standards of scholarship. Joseph Greenberg worked in the tradition of "lumpers" and following Sapir, was mindful of evidence not generally acceptable to those who hold that only actual linguistic reconstruction—through the comparative method—can yield reliable proof of genetic relationships between languages. In elaborating his classification of the Amerind languages, Greenberg relied heavily on Sapir's early work on the North American languages and the highly impressionist classification of South American languages by Paul Rivet.

Pronouns
The main argument for the validity of Amerind is a pronominal pattern in many Native American languages that have first person forms with n and second person forms with m. This pattern was first noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. Sapir suggested that it indicated that ultimately all Native American languages would turn out to be related. However, it is not universal, being confined primarily to western North America and to a lesser extent Mesoamerica; the incidence elsewhere is not statistically significant, and in western North American it is more an argument for the Hokan and Penutian phyla than for Amerind.

Gender
Ruhlen reconstructed a morphological (ablaut) gender system for proto-Amerind, with masculine kinship terms containing the vowel *i and feminine the vowel *u, that he claims proves Greenberg's reconstruction. This is based on Greenberg's *t'a'na 'child', to which Ruhlen adds a masculine derivation *t'i'na 'son, boy' and a feminine *t'u'na 'daughter, girl'.

Unlike the n-/m- pattern in the pronouns, an intact i/u gender system is not attested across language families, and the consensus is that the pattern is a spurious one.

Reception
The consensus among historical linguists specializing in Native American languages is that the Amerind hypothesis is unsupported by valid evidence, particularly because the basis for the proposal is mass comparison, but also because of many other methodological flaws made by Greenberg in the elaboration of the hypothesis. Critics regard this technique as fundamentally flawed, unable to distinguish chance resemblances from those due to a historical relationship among the languages and providing no means of distinguishing resemblances due to common descent from those due to language contact. In addition, critics have pointed out errors in the citation of data, including erroneous forms, erroneous glosses, unjustified morphological segmentation, attribution to the wrong language, and citation of entirely spurious forms.

A further criticism is that, contrary to normal scholarly practice, no source references are given for the data, which in most cases come from languages for which there is no standard, authoritative source. In addition, Greenberg does not normalize the spelling of the data, so it is impossible without knowing the source of each form to know what the notation represents.

While sympathetic to the idea of an Amerind language family, Morris Swadesh was critical of many of Greenberg's subdivisions and believed it was due to an insufficient number of comparisons by Greenberg.

Classification
The 1960 proposal, in its outlines, was as follows:

 * Amerind
 * Almosan-Keresiouan
 * Hokan
 * Penutian(incl. Macro-Mayan)
 * Aztec-Tanoan
 * Oto-Manguean
 * Purépecha
 * Macro-Chibchan
 * Chibchan
 * Paezan
 * Andean–Equatorial
 * Andean
 * Jivaroan
 * Macro-Tucanoan
 * Equatorial (with Macro-Arawakan and Tupian)
 * Ge–Pano–Carib
 * Macro-Ge
 * Macro-Panoan
 * Macro-Carib
 * Nambikwara
 * Huarpe
 * Taruma

Below is the current state of Amerindian classification, as given in An Amerind Etymological Dictionary, by Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, Stanford University, 2007.

 * Amerind
 * North–Central Amerind
 * Northern Amerind
 * Almosan–Keresiouan
 * Almosan
 * Algic
 * Kutenai
 * Mosan
 * Chimakuan
 * Salishan
 * Wakashan
 * Keresiouan
 * Caddoan
 * Iroquoian
 * Keresan
 * Siouan–Yuchi
 * Siouan
 * Yuchi
 * Penutian–Hokan
 * Penutian
 * Tsimshian
 * Chinook
 * Oregon
 * Plateau
 * California
 * Maiduan
 * Miwok–Costanoan
 * Wintun
 * Yokutsan
 * Zuni
 * Gulf
 * Atakapa
 * Chitimacha
 * Muskogean
 * Natchez
 * Tunica
 * Yukian
 * Yuki
 * Wappo
 * Mexican Penutian
 * Huave
 * Mayan
 * Mixe–Zoque
 * Totonac
 * Hokan
 * Northern Hokan
 * Karok–Shasta
 * Karok
 * Chimariko
 * Shasta–Achomawi
 * Shasta
 * Achomawi
 * Yana
 * Pomoan
 * Washo
 * Salinan–Chumash
 * Salinan
 * Chumash
 * Esselen
 * Seri–Yuman
 * Seri
 * Yuman
 * Waicuri–Quinigua
 * Waicuri
 * Maratino
 * Quinigua
 * Coahuiltecan
 * Tequistlatec
 * Subtiaba
 * Jicaque
 * Yurumangui
 * Central Amerind
 * Tanoan
 * Uto-Aztekan
 * Oto-Manguean
 * Southern Amerind
 * Andean–Chibchan–Paezan
 * Chibchan–Paezan
 * Macro-Chibchan
 * Cuitlatec
 * Lenca
 * Chibchan (including Misumalpan)
 * Paya
 * Purépecha
 * Yanomam
 * Yunca–Puruhan
 * Macro-Paezan
 * Allentiac
 * Atacama
 * Betoi
 * Chimu
 * Itonama
 * Jirajara
 * Mura
 * Paezan
 * Timucua
 * Warrao
 * Andean
 * Aymara
 * Itucale–Sabela
 * Itucale
 * Mayna
 * Sabela
 * Cahuapana–Zaparo
 * Cahuapana
 * Zaparo
 * Northern Andean
 * Catacao
 * Cholona
 * Culli
 * Leco
 * Sechura
 * Quechua
 * Southern Andean
 * Qawasqar
 * Mapudungu
 * Gennaken
 * Chon
 * Yamana
 * Equatorial–Tucanoan
 * Equatorial
 * Macro-Arawakan
 * Guahibo
 * Katembri
 * Otomaco
 * Tinigua
 * Arawakan
 * Arawa
 * Maipuran
 * Chapacura
 * Guamo
 * Uro (including Puquina)
 * Cayuvava
 * Coche
 * Jivaro–Kandoshi
 * Cofán
 * Esmeralda
 * Jivaro
 * Kandoshi
 * Yaruro
 * Kariri–Tupi
 * Piaroa
 * Taruma
 * Timote
 * Trumai
 * Tusha
 * Yuracaré
 * Zamuco
 * Macro-Tucanoan
 * Auixiri
 * Canichana
 * Capixana
 * Catuquina
 * Gamella
 * Huari
 * Iranshe
 * Kaliana–Maku
 * Koaia
 * Movima
 * Muniche
 * Nambikwara
 * Natu
 * Pankaruru
 * Puinave
 * Shukuru
 * Ticuna–Yuri
 * Tucanoan
 * Uman
 * Ge–Pano–Carib
 * Macro-Carib
 * Andoke
 * Bora–Uitoto
 * Carib
 * Kukura [spurious]
 * Yagua
 * Macro-Panoan
 * Charruan
 * Lengua
 * Lule–Vilela
 * Mataco–Guaicuru
 * Moseten
 * Pano–Tacanan
 * Macro-Gê
 * Bororo
 * Botocudo
 * Caraja
 * Chiquito
 * Erikbatsa
 * Fulnio
 * Ge–Kaingang
 * Guató
 * Kamakan
 * Mashakali
 * Opaie
 * Oti
 * Puri
 * Yabuti

authors: ਪਿੰਡ ਮੌੜੇ ਖੁਰਦ

title: Amerind languages