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Chaotic

Chaotic was originally a Danish trading card game. It expanded to an online game in America which then became a television program based on the game. The program aired on 4Kids TV (Fox affiliates, nationwide), Jetix, The CW4Kids, Cartoon Network and Disney XD. It was brought over to the United States from Denmark by Bryan C. Gannon and Chaotic USA Entertainment Group, and produced by Chaotic USA Entertainment Group, 4Kids Productions and Bardel Entertainment. The trading card game came out 6 September 2006 in the U.S. and Canada.

Each card comes with a unique code which the owner can upload onto the Chaotic website. This allows the owner to trade and play online using their own card collection. The game was well known to be the only game with a TV show, an online game, and a TCG that were all integrated. However, the online game is currently closed.

History
Chaotic started out as a trading card game known as "Grolls and Gorks" and an idea for a cartoon series of the same name co-authored by Merlin P. Mann, co-author of the Taynikma graphic novels, in December 2000 as 20 years, to be produced by Solit Entertainment. The name of the manuscript was changed to Chaotic in early 2001. Before any episodes were made, Dracco Company Ltd. bought the rights to Chaotic from Solit Entertainment. The original storyline featured Tom Majors and Kaz Kalinkas, who were enemies, instead of friends as in the 4Kids animated series. Dracco Company Ltd. with Apex Marketing then created the online version of the game and established the basic universe of Chaotic. In September 2003 trading card Executive Bryan C. Gannon signed a worldwide Licensing and Distribution agreement with Henrik Andersen and his brother Jacob Anderson at Dracco to bring the Chaotic game to North America and to the world. Gannon created Chaotic USA Entertainment Group and, in August 2005, licensed the patented technology, (US Patents 5,810,666 & 5,954,332) from Cornerstone Patent Technologies, LLC to bring the property up to the standards required for a global brand. He teamed with John Milito and in 2006, 4Kids Entertainment signed a Joint Marketing Agreement with Chaotic USA Entertainment (CUSA) to produce the cartoon and bring the property to market, both on TV and for licensed products. When 4Kids Entertainment teamed with CUSA, the work of CUSA was continued and included many additional improvements. The original cards were redesigned (and some renamed) along with the online game platform to give it a more mature look as well as the creation of a new animated series (with redesigned versions of Tom and Kaz) to promote the game. CUSA has been developing the online game experience for Chaotic named. A video game called Chaotic: Shadow Warriors was released on 30 December 2009.

Sam Murakami, a 4Kids employee, and Martin Rauff, the original designer with Bryan C Gannon and TC Digital Games, adapted the card game to the U.S.

Animated series
The TV series is based on the storyline of the original Chaotic TCG. The main protagonist is a teenager named Tom, whose friend Kaz constantly tells him of his adventures in Chaotic. Tom, who believes that Chaotic is only a card game, thinks that Kaz is making things up, until he entered a password he received from the game, transporting him to the world of Chaotic. It was then Tom knew that Kaz wasn't lying. In Chaotic, he also met some new friends, like the courageous Sarah and the comic Peyton, and new enemies, like the arrogant duo Klay and Krystella.

Players in Chaotic go to Perim, scan new creatures and use them to battle. In Perim, Tom also got to meet many creatures, including his favorite, Maxxor. The battles between players take place in dromes, which are virtual battles where players become the creatures they choose and fight for the right to battle against the drome master (code master). In Perim, the four tribes are currently at war for the Cothica, the power that controls all of Perim. In the second season, the fifth tribe, the M'arrillians, escapes from the Doors of the Deepmines and takes over the other four tribes by brainwashing other creatures. The second season featured true cel animation and manga/anime-styled artwork. Season three, although subtitled "Secrets of the Lost City," was actually a set of differently themed mini-stories, only a few episodes of which involved the so-called "Lost City".

Trading card game
In the Chaotic Trading Card Game there are 5 different types of cards: Creatures,, Attacks, Mugic, and Locations. Creatures are the cards players control to do battle. is a specific item each creature is equipped with when it starts battle. Attacks are exactly that, they are used to do damage to the opponent's creatures. Mugic is a combination of music and magic, it is used by creatures who have mugic counters. Locations are the places where creatures can battle at, they are all places in Perim.

There are five tribes of creatures in Chaotic: OverWorld, UnderWorld, Danian, Mipedian and M'arrillian. The OverWorld is a tribe made of various humanoid creatures and creatures which resemble real animals. The UnderWorld is a tribe which consists of creatures which resemble various monsters. Danians are usually made to resemble ants but there are some creatures based on other insects found within the tribe. Mipedians are a tribe which is made of creatures who resemble various lizards. The M'arrillians are a tribe which resembles various deep sea creatures, some of which have a transparent appearance such as that found in a jellyfish.

The game is played by two players who control an army of creatures. The object of the game is to lower the energy of that player's opponent's creatures to 0 by way of attacks, mugic, or creature abilities. The game can be played with a varying amount of creatures in each army (1vs1, 3vs3, 6vs6, 10vs10) and with a varying amount of complexity. The game can be played in the advanced apprentice ruleset where no mugic is used and combat is only attacks. Masters is the next step up where mugic and activated abilities are used. Masters games take longer and require full knowledge of the rules.

The rules of Chaotic are basic; each player starts the game with his creatures face-down and their face-down as well. When the game begins the creatures are flipped up and the which indicates to do so is as well. There can only be two of the same card in each army, unless specified as otherwise, cards that are limited to one per army are called unique. When the game begins the starting player (which can be chosen by who is the youngest, a coin toss, etc.) starts by flipping their top location card face-up. The other player then can move a creature to an unoccupied space on the mat, or move a creature into an opponent's occupied space. Doing this will initiate combat, this is the only way to defeat a player's opponent's creatures in advanced apprentice seeing as no mugic or abilities are used. When combat begins the players see which creature has gained initiative, initiative is dependent on the location and the creatures that are battling in that location. Initiative can be anything from a stat to a certain tribe or an element. The player with the initiative gets to play the first attack.

Each player starts the game with an attack deck of 20 attacks and the game is started with 2 of these attacks in the hand, at the beginning of each player's turn during combat an attack is drawn. The attack cards each have build points which when added up equal 20. This prevents the hogging of good cards. During a player's turn they must play an attack, which sends it to the discard pile. By playing attacks the player decreases the energy of the opponent's creature. This is the key to winning the game.

title: Chaotic


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Stable marriage problem

In mathematics, economics, and computer science, the stable marriage problem (also stable matching problem) is the problem of finding a stable matching between two equally sized sets of elements given an ordering of preferences for each element. A matching is a bijection from the elements of one set to the elements of the other set. A matching is not stable if:

1. There is an element A of the first matched set which prefers some given element B of the second matched set over the element to which A is already matched, and

2. B also prefers A over the element to which B is already matched.

In other words, a matching is stable when there does not exist any pair (A, B) which both prefer each other to their current partner under the matching.

The stable marriage problem has been stated as follows: "Given n men and n women, where each person has ranked all members of the opposite sex in order of preference, marry the men and women together such that there are no two people of opposite sex who would both rather have each other than their current partners. When there are no such pairs of people, the set of marriages is deemed stable."

The existence of two classes that need to be paired with each other (heterosexual men and women in this example) distinguishes this problem from the stable roommates problem.

Applications
Algorithms for finding solutions to the stable marriage problem have applications in a variety of real-world situations, perhaps the best known of these being in the assignment of graduating medical students to their first hospital appointments. In 2012, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Lloyd S. Shapley and Alvin E. Roth "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design."

An important and large-scale application of stable marriage is in assigning users to servers in a large distributed Internet service. Billions of users access web pages, videos, and other services on the Internet, requiring each user to be matched to one of (potentially) hundreds of thousands of servers around the world that offer that service. A user prefers servers that are proximal enough to provide a faster response time for the requested service, resulting in a (partial) preferential ordering of the servers for each user. Each server prefers to serve users that it can with a lower cost, resulting in a (partial) preferential ordering of users for each server. Content delivery networks that distribute much of the world's content and services solve this large and complex stable marriage problem between users and servers every tens of seconds to enable billions of users to be matched up with their respective servers that can provide the requested web pages, videos, or other services.

The Gale-Shapley algorithm for stable matching is used to assign rabbis who graduate from Hebrew Union College to Jewish congregations.

Different stable matchings
In general, there may be many different stable matchings. For example, suppose there are three men (A,B,C) and three women (X,Y,Z) which have preferences of:

 * A: YXZ  B: ZYX   C: XZY
 * X: BAC  Y: CBA   Z: ACB

There are three stable solutions to this matching arrangement:

 * men get their first choice and women their third - (AY, BZ, CX);
 * all participants get their second choice - (AX, BY, CZ);
 * women get their first choice and men their third - (AZ, BX, CY).

All three are stable, because instability requires both of the participants to be happier with an alternative match. Giving one group their first choices ensures that the matches are stable because they would be unhappy with any other proposed match. Giving everyone their second choice ensures that any other match would be disliked by one of the parties. In general, the family of solutions to any instance of the stable marriage problem can be given the structure of a finite distributive lattice, and this structure leads to efficient algorithms for several problems on stable marriages.

In a uniformly-random instance of the stable marriage problem with $n$ men and $n$ women, the average number of stable matchings is asymptotically $$e^{-1}n\ln n$$. In a stable marriage instance chosen to maximize the number of different stable matchings, this number is an exponential function of $n$. Counting the number of stable matchings in a given instance is #P-complete.

Algorithmic solution
In 1962, David Gale and Lloyd Shapley proved that, for any equal number of men and women, it is always possible to solve the stable marriage problem and make all marriages stable. They presented an algorithm to do so.

The Gale–Shapley algorithm (also known as the deferred acceptance algorithm) involves a number of "rounds" (or "iterations"):
 * In the first round, first a) each unengaged man proposes to the woman he prefers most, and then b) each woman replies "maybe" to her suitor she most prefers and "no" to all other suitors. She is then provisionally "engaged" to the suitor she most prefers so far, and that suitor is likewise provisionally engaged to her.
 * In each subsequent round, first a) each unengaged man proposes to the most-preferred woman to whom he has not yet proposed (regardless of whether the woman is already engaged), and then b) each woman replies "maybe" if she is currently not engaged or if she prefers this man over her current provisional partner (in this case, she rejects her current provisional partner who becomes unengaged). The provisional nature of engagements preserves the right of an already-engaged woman to "trade up" (and, in the process, to "jilt" her until-then partner).
 * This process is repeated until everyone is engaged.

This algorithm is guaranteed to produce a stable marriage for all participants in time $$O(n^2)$$ where $$n$$ is the number of men or women.

Among all possible different stable matchings, it always yields the one that is best for all men among all stable matchings, and worst for all women.

It is a truthful mechanism from the point of view of men (the proposing side), i.e., no man can get a better matching for himself by misrepresenting his preferences. Moreover, the GS algorithm is even group-strategy proof for men, i.e., no coalition of men can coordinate a misrepresentation of their preferences such that all men in the coalition are strictly better-off. However, it is possible for some coalition to misrepresent their preferences such that some men are better-off and the other men retain the same partner. The GS algorithm is non-truthful for the women (the reviewing side): each woman may be able to misrepresent her preferences and get a better match.

Rural hospitals theorem
The rural hospitals theorem concerns a more general variant of the stable matching problem, like that applying in the problem of matching doctors to positions at hospitals, differing in the following ways from the basic $n$-to-$n$ form of the stable marriage problem: In this case, the condition of stability is that no unmatched pair prefer each other to their situation in the matching (whether that situation is another partner or being unmatched). With this condition, a stable matching will still exist, and can still be found by the Gale–Shapley algorithm.
 * Each participant may only be willing to be matched to a subset of the participants on the other side of the matching.
 * The participants on one side of the matching (the hospitals) may have a numerical capacity, specifying the number of doctors they are willing to hire.
 * The total number of participants on one side might not equal the total capacity to which they are to be matched on the other side.
 * The resulting matching might not match all of the participants.

For this kind of stable matching problem, the rural hospitals theorem states that:
 * The set of assigned doctors, and the number of filled positions in each hospital, are the same in all stable matchings.
 * Any hospital that has some empty positions in some stable matching, receives exactly the same set of doctors in all stable matchings.

Related problems
In stable matching with indifference, some men might be indifferent between two or more women and vice versa.

The stable roommates problem is similar to the stable marriage problem, but differs in that all participants belong to a single pool (instead of being divided into equal numbers of "men" and "women").

The hospitals/residents problem – also known as the college admissions problem – differs from the stable marriage problem in that a hospital can take multiple residents, or a college can take an incoming class of more than one student. Algorithms to solve the hospitals/residents problem can be hospital-oriented (as the NRMP was before 1995) or resident-oriented. This problem was solved, with an algorithm, in the same original paper by Gale and Shapley, in which the stable marriage problem was solved.

The hospitals/residents problem with couples allows the set of residents to include couples who must be assigned together, either to the same hospital or to a specific pair of hospitals chosen by the couple (e.g., a married couple want to ensure that they will stay together and not be stuck in programs that are far away from each other). The addition of couples to the hospitals/residents problem renders the problem NP-complete.

The assignment problem seeks to find a matching in a weighted bipartite graph that has maximum weight. Maximum weighted matchings do not have to be stable, but in some applications a maximum weighted matching is better than a stable one.

The matching with contracts problem is a generalization of matching problem, in which participants can be matched with different terms of contracts. An important special case of contracts is matching with flexible wages.

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

title: Stable marriage problem


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Idol (franchise)

Idol (also known as SuperStar in some countries) is a reality television singing competition format created by British television producer Simon Fuller and developed by Fremantle. The format began in 2001 with the British television series Pop Idol; its first adaptation was the South African series Idols in 2002. It has since become the world's most widely watched television franchise, as well as one of the most successful entertainment formats, adapted in over 56 regions around the world, with its various versions broadcast to 150 countries with a worldwide audience of roughly 3.2 billion people. The franchise has generated more than US$2.5 billion in revenue.

Each season, the series aims to find the most outstanding unsigned solo recording artist (or "idol") in a region. Originally aimed for pop singers, the series has since evolved to accept singers from different genres of music, such as rock, R&B, and country. Through a series of mass auditions, a group of finalists are selected by a panel of judges (which usually consists of artists and record producers) who offer critiques on their performances. The finalists then advance to the weekly live shows. On each live show, the contestants all sing, the television audience votes (by telephone, SMS Internet, and via apps), and then the contestant who receives the fewest votes gets eliminated. The final episode is the grand finale episode, when usually two, but sometimes three or four, finalists are left, and the contestant who gets the largest number of votes is declared the winner. The winner receives a recording contract, monetary prizes, and a title as their nation's "Idol", "SuperStar" or "Star". Sometimes one or more of the runners-up get recording contracts as well.

The various series have launched the careers of a number of highly successful recording artists around the world, including Idol winners Will Young of the United Kingdom, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Scotty McCreery, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, David Cook, and Phillip Phillips of the United States, Kurt Nilsen of Norway, Ryan Malcolm and Kalan Porter of Canada, Loreen of Sweden, Guy Sebastian of Australia, and Elvis Blue of South Africa. Contestants who did not win but have still gone on to prominence include Anthony Callea, Ricki-Lee Coulter and Jessica Mauboy of Australia, Jacob Hoggard and Carly Rae Jepsen of Canada, and Clay Aiken, Chris Daughtry, Gabby Barrett, Lauren Alaina, and Adam Lambert of the United States, among many others. Some Idol contestants have also achieved success in acting and musical theater such as Melissa O'Neil of Canada, and most notably Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson of American Idol.

Origin and background
In 2001, British talent manager and television producer Simon Fuller created the British television series Pop Idol. The series was developed by production company Fremantle and was broadcast on ITV on 6 October 2001. Fuller, along with television producer Nigel Lythgoe, was inspired to create the series by the New Zealand television series Popstars, which was adopted in the United Kingdom as Popstars in January 2001. The first series of Pop Idol proved to be more popular than Popstars, in part due to the chemistry of the judges and the success of its first winner Will Young.

Pop Idol's success led to an interest for adaptations in other countries. Before selling the format, Fuller reached out for an out-of-court settlement with Popstars creator Jonathan Dowling, in which international versions of Idols will be prohibited to use the prefix Pop in their local titles. As such, Poland, the first country to adapt the format, named their version as simply Idol. Idol was launched in 2002, months after the first series of Pop Idol ended.

Fuller, Lythgoe, and Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell attempted to sell the format in the United States in 2001, but the idea was met with poor response from major networks. Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, persuaded her father to buy the rights for an American adaptation. The series, American Idol: The Search for a Superstar, debuted on the Fox network on 11 June 2002. American Idol went on to become the all-time most dominant show in the U.S. TV ratings, due to the popularity of the judges (particularly Simon Cowell) and its contestants, which were led by its first winner, Kelly Clarkson.

The success brought by American Idol led to even more adaptations in other countries, where the Dutch Idols became the top television series in the Netherlands during its airing.

There has been a global version of the franchise, called World Idol. The show was a television special, where winners of national Idol shows will compete against each other. The special was won by Kurt Nilsen, a singer from Norway. A current World version of Idol acts as a YouTube channel, called Idols Global. The channel uploads clips of Idol shows from around the world. The channel currently has over 1 million subscribers. There are many more channels like this. Additionally, many individual Idol shows have their own YouTube channels.

Concept
The show is a reality television singing competition where the winner is selected by the audience voting. The show combines a number of elements previously used by other shows such as Popstars – mass auditioning, the search of a new star, and the use of a judging panel that critiques the audtioners' performance and selects the contestants. An important element is audience participation, where the audience may vote by telephone or text to decide which contestant can proceed further each week and ultimately win. According to the show creator, Simon Fuller, "the interactivity was important because this would allow the audience to tell me who they liked best and this, in turn, would indicate to me who would have the most fans and eventually sell the most music and become the biggest stars." To this is added "the drama of backstories and the real-life soap opera of the unfolding real-time events" as the show is presented as a live competition event which drew "more from a sporting concept of true competition".

Hosts
Each show has at least one host that directs the show, introduces the singers and delivers the results of each episode including the finale. While some countries have one host (Ryan Seacrest in American Idol, Boy William in Indonesian Idol, Dominic Bowden in New Zealand Idol, ProVerb in Idols SA, IK Osakioduwa in Nigerian Idol and Phan Anh, Huy Khánh, Duy Hải and Đức Bảo in Vietnam Idol since the third season), most shows have two co-hosts. As well as judges, some countries have adopted new members to the hosting/jury party.

Judges/jury
A preselected panel of music industry representatives tour some, if not all audition cities (depending on which show) to observe and advance those auditioning throughout the show up to and including the Grand Finale. The judges offer critiques and/or advice after each contestant performance, which can be positive or negative; Nouvelle Star 4 for the first time in any country introduced a red and blue "score card" type system where the jury award a blue "positive" or red "negative" rating and in Nouvelle Star 14, they introduced a scoring system where the jury give a point from a range of 1 to 10 after every mottoshow performance.

As many as five stable jury members have appeared in any one Idol season (Idol Poland 3, Indonesian Idol 9), though some versions offer "guest judges" or special musical guests on the program to also offer advice.

The judges of some shows gain a lot of popularity outside of the show as well as the contestants, due to their being collectively known to have a "caustic" or raw & blunt attitude towards contestants' performances, notably Simon Cowell from American Idol and Pop Idol, Rossa, Judika, Bunga Citra Lestari, Ari Lasso, Anang Hermansyah, Agnez Mo, Ahmad Dhani, Titi DJ, and Indra Lesmana from Indonesian Idol, Amy Shark, Ian "Dicko" Dickson, and Kyle Sandilands from Australian Idol, Neha Kakkar, and Sonu Nigam, also Anu Malik from Indian Idol amongst others, and Mỹ Tâm and Maia Estianty in Vietnam Idol and Indonesian Idol.

Performance stages
Auditions are held in numerous places in any particular region or country that give most people (audition entry is bound by certain legal requirements such as age and citizenship for example) the chance to sing in front of musical/television producers and if successful, they advance to a recorded televised audition where the show "judges" advance up to 300 people in some countries to the next round.

The Theatre round is where a specially selected group of auditioners from all regional auditions converge (always in the host city) to perform in three sub stages: a chorus line in groups of 10 where free song choices are allowed, a trio (or less commonly a duo or quartet) where contestants must memorize a preselected song to perform and choreograph together, and finally a solo a cappella round where contestants sing a song of their own choice without musical backing in front of friends, family, judges & fellow contestants.

Each stage of the theatre round, a number of contestants are eliminated and sent home by the judges, though in some countries there have been very few contestants brought back during the Wildcards show or by the disqualification or resignation of another contestant.

In American Idol, this stage was expanded to five stages (three in Hollywood, two in Las Vegas) from seasons 10 to 12.

The semi-finals occurs usually live or pre-recorded (in some countries) where contestants sing in a television studio fully televised; again judges give critiques but beginning at this stage, home viewers vote via telephone and SMS (and in some countries other voting mechanisms including via Internet or via Red Button) who they want to stay in the competition. During the "semi-final" weeks, contestants receive a workshop tuition with a vocal coach to prepare their song of choice. The format started out with contestants only singing along to a piano, though other instruments & even a live band have been introduced to some versions.

An average semi-final usually consists of 18 to 50 contestants where they either perform in an even group of contestants (three groups of ten for example) or in a "heat" type semi-final where the contestants sing every week until all finalists have been chosen. During the format, a Wildcards feature was introduced which re-introduced past semi-finalists to receive a second chance to become a finalist, in some shows – the judges sometimes pick one or more contestants to advance as well as the viewers' vote. As of late, live audiences have been incorporated into the semi-final round.

A results show of the semi-finals usually airs either a few hours after the performance show or the night after where the results are given. Three or four contestants are told that they may have received highest votes, though only a selected two or three are put through to the finals.

The Live shows (a.k.a. Mottoshows, Spectacular shows or theme shows) are an elaborate and spectacular version of the semi-final. There is a weekly theme on which contestants must base their song choices, such as "80s Hits" or "Hits of Elton John" for example. In a bid to counter sagging ratings, contestants on Australian Idol were allowed to bring instruments on stage with them and had the opportunity to sing original material from the 2006 season, a world first. Since then America and Canada have followed Australia's lead. Again a results show follows the show; this time it may include group performances, musical guests or extra footage of the contestants' time on the show. The contestant/s with the lowest polled votes leaves the competition. The live shows continue until there are only two contestants left in the competition or three contestants in some cases.

The Grand Finale occurs when there are two (or, rarely, three and only once so far four) contestants left in the competition. This is the pinnacle of the entire series and often highest rated show; also for some countries, it is venued in a prestigious location (American Idol: Dolby Theatre/Nokia Theatre, Canadian Idol: John Bassett Theatre, Australian Idol: Sydney Opera House, Philippine Idol: Araneta Coliseum, Indonesian Idol: Ecovention Ocean Ecopark/Hall D2 JIExpo/RCTI+ Studios, Idol Sweden: Ericsson Globe, Singapore Idol: Singapore Indoor Stadium). In this final stage a specially awarded song is sung by both remaining contestants which is ultimately slated to be released as the winner's debut single though recently in some countries this has been phased out.

During the extended results show, there are usually group performances and/or special musical guests. Also, it has the best moments of the series which leads up to the announcement of the winner, which is determined by the highest number of votes. When that happens, he or she will perform an encore of the coronation single which sometimes includes pyrotechnics/fireworks.

While the show's premise is to find one winner with promises of a recording deal and other frugal benefits, the Idol series often has several contestants who go onto the same route of fame, whether they be finalists, semi-finalists, or even auditioners. Key examples of this from American Idol include Clay Aiken (second place, season 2) and Chris Daughtry (fourth place, season 5, through his band Daughtry), who have each outsold all American Idol winners except Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood; Jennifer Hudson (seventh place, season 3), who would later win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; and William Hung, who turned his off-key season 3 audition into a recording career and has outsold some finalists.

Releases
Often, a studio compilation album and/or a CD single is made to promote the show. In some cases, DVDs of highlights of the show will be released. While these releases have sold well in countries including the United States and Australia, many countries did not release CDs after the first series.

Since season 6, American Idol has sold only promotional downloads instead of CDs. For season 6, it sold studio-recorded MP3 and performance video downloads of the finalists on its website; no CDs were sold prior to the post-Idol releases of winner Jordin Sparks and runner-up Blake Lewis. For season 7, audio and video downloads are sold exclusively through the iTunes Store, which became a sponsor in that season; the iTunes downloads have included audio of all semi-finalist performances, studio recordings and performance videos for all finalists, videos of finalist group performances, and audio and video performances from the Idol Gives Back episode.

Media/sponsorship
Sony Music is the general record company associated and affiliated with the Idols format in most countries, though countries like Iceland, Vietnam and Kazakhstan have affiliate labels as they do not have a local Sony Music subsidiary. FremantleMedia and Sony Music were related through common parent Bertelsmann, which owns 90.4% of FremantleMedia's immediate parent RTL Group and previously owned 50% of joint venture Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008. Since 2011, Universal Music Group replaced Sony Music Entertainment as the general record company associated and affiliated with the Idols format in most countries.

Idols around the world

International versions

 * Currently airing franchise
 * Franchise with an upcoming season
 * Franchise with an unknown status
 * Franchise no longer aired

Winner competitions

In popular culture

 * American Dreamz – a Universal Pictures film, a satire on pop entertainment, including American Idol
 * From Justin to Kelly – a 20th Century Studios film, starring Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, winner and runner-up of American Idol 2002
 * Instant Star – a Canadian television series, following the life of a winner of a singing contest
 * Realiti – a Malaysian television series, features the lives and secrets of contestants of a fictional reality TV singing competition
 * Vina Bilang Cinta (Vina Says Love) – an Indonesian film, starring Indonesian Idol 2004 runner-up Delon Thamrin
 * Idolos de Juventud – a Telemundo television series, following the lives of the contestants and promoters of a fictional reality TV singing competition
 * Rock Rivals – British drama series on ITV, based on a fictional Pop Idol–style show.
 * Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice – British spoof of Pop Idol / The X Factor by comedian Peter Kay, screened on Channel 4, featuring the original Pop Idol judging panel (minus Simon Cowell).
 * Táo Idol/Gặp nhau cuối năm 2011 – Gặp nhau cuối năm is an annual comedy produced by Vietnam Television. In 2011, the show was partially based on the format of Idol and Top Model series. It also has its own Idol's Tunnel intro with the Táo Idol logo without the dark blue background spinning similar to the American Idol and Canadian Idol's Tunnel intro.

title: Idol (franchise)


text:
Paul Langevin

Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an anti-fascist organization created after the 6 February 1934 far right riots. Being a public opponent of fascism in the 1930s resulted in his arrest and being held under house arrest by the Vichy government for most of World War II. Langevin was also president of the Human Rights League (LDH) from 1944 to 1946, having recently joined the French Communist Party.

He was a doctoral student of Pierre Curie and later a lover of widowed Marie Curie. He is also known for his two US patents with Constantin Chilowsky in 1916 and 1917 involving ultrasonic submarine detection. He is entombed at the Panthéon.

Life
Langevin was born in Paris, and studied at the École de Physique et Chimie and the École Normale Supérieure. He then went to the University of Cambridge and studied in the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir J. J. Thomson. Langevin returned to the Sorbonne and obtained his PhD from Pierre Curie in 1902. In 1904, he became Professor of Physics at the Collège de France. In 1926, he became director of the École de Physique et Chimie (later became École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la Ville de Paris, ESPCI ParisTech), where he had been educated. He was elected in 1934 to the Académie des sciences.

Langevin is noted for his work on paramagnetism and diamagnetism, and devised the modern interpretation of this phenomenon in terms of spins of electrons within atoms. His most famous work was in the use of ultrasound using Pierre Curie's piezoelectric effect. During World War I, he began working on the use of these sounds to detect submarines through echo location. However the war was over by the time it was operational. During his career, Paul Langevin also spread the theory of relativity in academic circles in France and created what is now called the twin paradox.

In 1898, he married Emma Jeanne Desfosses, and together they had four children, Jean, André, Madeleine and Hélène.

In 1910, he reportedly had an affair with the then-widowed Marie Curie;   some decades later, their respective grandchildren, grandson Michel Langevin and granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot married one another. He was also noted for being an outspoken opponent of Nazism, and was removed from his post by the Vichy government following the occupation of the country by Nazi Germany. He was later restored to his position in 1944. He died in Paris in 1946, two years after living to see the Liberation of Paris. He is buried near several other prominent French scientists in the Panthéon in Paris.

In 1933, he had a son with physicist Eliane Montel (1898–1993), Paul-Gilbert Langevin, who became a renowned musicologist.

His daughter, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, was arrested for Resistance activity and survived several concentration camps. She was on the same convoy of female political prisoners as Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier and Charlotte Delbo.

Submarine detection
In 1916 and 1917, Paul Langevin and Chilowsky filed two US patents disclosing the first ultrasonic submarine detector using an electrostatic method (singing condenser) for one patent and thin quartz crystals for the other. The amount of time taken by the signal to travel to the enemy submarine and echo back to the ship on which the device was mounted was used to calculate the distance under water.

In 1916, Lord Ernest Rutherford, working in the UK with his former McGill University PhD student Robert William Boyle, revealed that they were developing a quartz piezoelectric detector for submarine detection. Langevin's successful application of the use of piezoelectricity in the generation and detection of ultrasound waves was followed by further development.

title: Paul Langevin


text:
Paul Andreu

Paul Andreu (10 July 1938 – 11 October 2018) was a French architect, known for his designs of multiple airports such as Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and multiple prestigious projects in China, including the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

Early life and education
Andreu was born at Caudéran (Gironde), in southwest France. He graduated in 1958 from the École Polytechnique and continued his studies at the École des ponts ParisTech, graduating in 1961. He next studied under architect Paul Lamarche in the École des Beaux-Arts, graduating in 1968.

Projects
Andreu was responsible for the design of numerous airports, including Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Manila), Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Jakarta), Shanghai Pudong International Airport in China, Abu Dhabi International Airport, Dubai International Airport, Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, Cairo International Airport, Brunei International Airport, and the Charles de Gaulle Airport, and Orly Airport in Paris. He was in charge of planning and constructing Charles de Gaulle Airport (Roissy) in Paris from 1967 on. On 23 May 2004 a portion of Terminal 2E collapsed, killing four people. Terminal 2E, inaugurated in 2003, is the seventh terminal at Roissy by Andreu, and has been described as one of Andreu's boldest designs. The collapse was attributed by the ad hoc administrative enquiry commission to a variety of technical causes and the lack of margins of safety in the design. Andreu blamed the collapse on poor execution by the building companies.

Andreu's other projects included the Grande Arche at La Défense in Paris (as associate of Johann Otto von Spreckelsen) and the National Grand Theater of China enclosed in a titanium and glass shell near Beijing's Tiananmen Square which was inaugurated on 22 December 2007.

In 2008, Andreu was hired to design a cultural centre and ticket office in Montreal's new Quartier des Spectacles entertainment district.

Other activities
In 2011, Andreu became dean emeritus and chair professor of the Architecture Department at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, where he taught three months per year. In 2015 and 2016, he was a member of the Prix Versailles judges panel.

title: Paul Andreu


text:
James Roberts

James, Jamie, Jim, or Jimmy Roberts may refer to:

Entertainment and journalism

 * James Roberts (printer) (1564–1606), English printer of Elizabethan literature
 * James Roberts (painter) (1753-ca.1809), English portrait painter
 * James C. Roberts (born 1946), founder of Radio America
 * Jimmy Roberts (born 1957), sports broadcaster for NBC
 * Jimmy Roberts (composer), composer of the musical I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
 * Jimmy Roberts (musician), saxophonist and member of rock groups Young and Truck,
 * Jimmy Roberts (singer) (1924–1999), American singer, featured on the Lawrence Welk Show
 * Jim Roberts, singer/songwriter/lyricist in 1960s and 1970s, member of Seatrain

Football and rugby

 * James Roberts (footballer, born 1878) (1878–?), Bradford City A.F.C. and Wales international footballer
 * James Roberts (footballer, born 1891) (1891–?), Wrexham A.F.C. and Wales international footballer
 * James Roberts (footballer, born 1996), Oxford United F.C. footballer
 * Jamie Roberts (born 1986), rugby union player
 * James Roberts (football and futsal) (born 1948), Australian footballer and national futsal coach
 * James Roberts (rugby league) (born 1993), Australian rugby league footballer
 * Jimmy Roberts (Australian footballer) (1883–1961), Australian rules footballer for Geelong
 * Jim Roberts (Australian footballer) (1931–2013), Australian rules footballer for Geelong
 * James Soto Roberts (born 1992), Liberian footballer
 * Jim Roberts (rugby union) (1932–2020), English rugby union player

Other sports

 * Jim Roberts (baseball) (1895–1984), former MLB player
 * James Roberts (cricketer) (1864–1911), English cricketer
 * James Roberts (Liberian athlete) (born 1936), Liberian sprinter
 * Jim Roberts (ice hockey, born 1940) (1940–2015), NHL player for Montreal and St. Louis
 * Jim Roberts (ice hockey, born 1956), retired NHL player for Minnesota
 * James Roberts (British athlete) (born 1986), wheelchair basketball player
 * James Roberts (swimmer) (born 1991), Australian swimmer

Government and politics

 * James C. Roberts (politician) (1822–1872), American politician and businessman from Pennsylvania
 * James A. Roberts (1847–1922), American lawyer and politician
 * James Roberts (trade unionist) (1878–1967), New Zealand trade unionist and member of Legislative Council
 * James L. Roberts Jr. (born 1945), justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi

Other people

 * James Roberts (slave narrative) (1753–?), American slave
 * James Reynolds Roberts (1826–1859), English recipient of the Victoria Cross
 * Sir James Roberts, 1st Baronet (1848–1935), Yorkshire industrialist and businessman
 * J. O. M. Roberts (1916–1997), British mountaineer and explorer
 * Jim Roberts (architect) (1922–2019), British architect
 * James E. Roberts (1930–2006), American engineer
 * Jimmie T. Roberts (1939–2015), founder of The Brethren cult
 * J. J. M. Roberts (Jimmy Jack McBee Roberts, born 1939), American theologian
 * James Roberts (Medal of Honor) (1837–?), United States Navy seaman and Medal of Honor recipient

title: James Roberts


text:
Talk:Chelation therapy

Is chelation commonly used for horses or other animals? Any research on animals?
If we find out for example that chelation of cadmium prevents many cases of prostate in laboratory animals, then it might work for humans also.

128.214.78.210 (talk) 17:37, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Virtually all drugs are tested on animals as part of the clinical trials process, at least in the EU and the USA. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to place a drug on the market that *hasn't* been tested on animals. Note that it is only one stage (not the first, or last) of the process - meany drugs that are effective on surrogate animals are not effective in humans.

NB: before anyone gets in a huff about animals testing, clinical trials must pass an ethics board and animal testing is only approved where necessary for human health. It is very difficult these days, for example, to get approval for animal testing for perfumes or cosmetic compounds. 212.194.114.50 (talk) 13:42, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
 * wp:notforum

not MEDRS
Under "Society and culture - Use in alternative medicine - Cardiovascular disease" 4th paragraph

"In 1988, a retrospective study of 2870 patients treated with EDTA chelation found that 77% of patients with ischemic heart disease showed "marked" improvement and 91% of patients with peripheral heart disease also showed "marked" improvement.[19] A 1993 retrospective study of 470 patients who underwent EDTA chelation noted that 80% had objective evidence of improvements of their symptoms.[40]"

I would be highly surprised if "Medical Hypotheses" and "Journal of Advancement in Medicine" adhere to MEDRS and should be removed. 2A02:A210:A001:A380:6435:5369:3F04:B220 (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. remove it and some other primary/unreliable sources. Jytdog (talk) 21:05, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

What is MEDRS ? I have tried to look it up, and expected that to be easy, as the un-named commentator who used it wrote as if it referred to a common research protocol. I note that the reference numbers, 19 and 40, provided in the comment are not functional, here or on the article page, so I have no convenient way to look up these reports. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 22:52, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

 * See WP:MEDRS. The journal Medical Hypotheses is especially suspect, having a (ahem) unconventional approach to peer-review and having published crap from anti-vaxxers and AIDS denialists. Famous  dog   (c) 07:55, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

 * This is further non-MEDRS content and sources, so is removed to here for discussion, if warranted. The edit contains trademarks, dubious content in low-quality sources, and promotional, misleading quackery. Zefr (talk) 22:20, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Chelation for Autism
There is actually evidence that chelation can help for people with authism: Conclusion: Overall, both one and seven rounds of DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe in children with ASD who have high urinary excretion of toxic metals, and possibly helpful in reducing some of the symptoms of autism in those children. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19852790/ 31.165.215.228 (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Iron and Chronic Heart failure - Iron chelation to the rescue
Iron induces chronic heart failure in half of heart attack survivors, according to landmark study

"....iron chelators reduce iron content within the heart tissue."

https://www.mbi.ucla.edu/in-the-spotlight

Sometime in the near future, the section on Iron and Heart may have to be revised and updated. 104.35.48.79 (talk) 05:52, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Alternative? Really?
I find it... disturbing to see, "This article is part of a series on Alternative medicine" displayed so prominently on the page. Chelation therapy is an effective, main-stream treatment for several different kinds of metal poisoning. Whether or not autism and heart disease and cancer are caused by low-level metal poisoning that goes unrecognized by main-stream medicine, and whether or not those conditions can be reversed by chelation therapy is a different question.

If a meme catches fire on the internet saying that Penicillin cures warts, will we then label Penicillin as "alternative medicine?" 151.201.129.79 (talk) 23:33, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have removed the sidebar as it gives too much weight to the alternative use. (That will likely be reverted.) This article, unfortunately, deals with both mainstream and alternative/quack uses. We normally have separate articles for alternative medical articles. Not sure what happened here. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 02:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree. -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Dustfreeworld, I see you left an edit summary at Template:Alternative medicine sidebar when you deleted Chelation therapy from the sidebar:
 * "Changed my mind and self-revert. Sorry I was wrong. It’s not alternative https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=27199065"

Please explain what you mean. -- Valjean (talk) ( PING me ) 20:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Chelation therapy


text:
Talk:Portuguese language/Archive 1

Problem of "Adeus" and "tchau"
I constatly put in the article that the use of "Adeus" can be seen has offensive. And all In my life, i only heard this word when someone doesnt like someone else. And people say "Adeus!" to them (meaning: I dont want to see you no longer). I use it with the same meaning. In fact, the use of "tchau" is more aprreciated by Portuguese people. I attested that when a british in Portugal said "tchau"; everyone was astonished with the man saying "at least this one tries to speak Portuguese". Almost noone uses, normally, the word "Adeus" because it is offensive. Everyone uses daily "tchau". It is obvious that the word "Adeus" can have better meanings. -Pedro 11:03, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I am an American-born son of natives of Serra do Bouro, Caldas da Rainha. I have always used adeus to mean good-bye, and 'tchau' (which seems derived from the Italian ciao) seems like Brazilian usage to me.  Perhaps things have changed since my parents lived in Potugal. Nelson Ricardo 17:07, Aug 1, 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes. "Ciao" is hello in Italian and “tchau” is derived from it. "Adeus" is linked with immigrants. Many believe that when people were departing to immigrate to other countries, people used "Adeus" thinking they would return, but they never returned. So the word started to mean “goodbye forever”. When Brazilian soap operas started transmitting in Portuguese TV the word “tchau “ was used, influenced by Italians there, possibly. So people in Portugal started using it, because it means “see you later” or something similar, but not goodbye forever what mostly Adeus now means. But it really depends on the tone that a person talks. -Pedro 22:42, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * FWIW, I'm from Lisbon and I have to add that this is a non-issue. Although "Adeus" can be used in a dismissive way, so can "tchau" and this isn't portuguese-specific. You can see americans doing it on TV all the time. FYI, I use "Adeus" on a daily basis and no one was ever offended. - Jorge Lima
 * you're wright. --Pedro 13:05, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The discussion about adeus and tchau reflects diferences between Brazilian and European Portuguese. In Brazil, when someone says "adeus" in a colloquial conversation, he expects (or hopes) not to see the other person again.-Mauro1

 * No it doesnt. It is quit the same. Read the conversation bellow. -Pedro 20:22, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'm Brazilian and I can safely say we all speak the SAME language albeit with minor differences. In the case of "adeus", it's not normally used in Brazil and as far as I know it's not that popular in Portugal either. That said, it's not an offensive word at all and you'll hear Brazilians use the diminutive "adeuzinho" a lot, in very informal contexts. I also don't believe that the word means that someone doesn't expect to see the other person again.

Some Brazilians, especially when they come in contact with non-portuguese speakers, seem to have the habit of exaggerating the differences between Portuguese as spoken in Brazil and in Portugal when in fact you can mostly talk about accents and not different forms or 'dialects' in most cases. Apart from some tell-tale words that have minor spelling differences, written Portuguese is undistinguishable (between Brazilian and European 'forms') and citizens of either country would be hard pressed to spot any differences at all - unless, as I said, the tell-tale words are there.

Again, I believe this is a non-issue that only comes into discussion because non-native Portuguese speakers (who may justifiably have difficulties understanding either major accent) like to stress these differences; also, some Brazilians (especially) and some Portuguese also like to exaggerate certain distinctions.

We all speak and write the same language and the next ortographic reform should address most of the 'tell-tale' words I have mentioned.

If you're Brazilian and cannot understand a Portuguese person, or vice-versa, that's probably because you don't speak the language all that well, being native or not. This is a matter of deficiencies in both countrie's educational systems and not an evidence that there are "BP" and "EP" are drifting apart - something cannot drift apart from itself! [User = Livino]

PedroPVZ, do you still not realise that however much you insist, BP and EP will never be the same? you make some claims as if they were valid for both brazil and portugal just because you think/WANT them to be the same for both. what Mauro1 said is true, adeus in brazil is only used (if ever used) when you do not expect to see someone [ever] again. and even so, the word has a quite archaic feeling attached to it, and is generally not used in brazil. Vbs 08:45, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'm Brazilian and I can safely say we all speak the SAME language albeit with minor differences. In the case of "adeus", it's not normally used in Brazil and as far as I know it's not that popular in Portugal either. That said, it's not an offensive word at all and you'll hear Brazilians use the diminutive "adeuzinho" a lot, in very informal contexts. I also don't believe that the word means that someone doesn't expect to see the other person again.

Some Brazilians, especially when they come in contact with non-portuguese speakers, seem to have the habit of exaggerating the differences between Portuguese as spoken in Brazil and in Portugal when in fact you can mostly talk about accents and not different forms or 'dialects' in most cases. Apart from some tell-tale words that have minor spelling differences, written Portuguese is undistinguishable (between Brazilian and European 'forms') and citizens of either country would be hard pressed to spot any differences at all - unless, as I said, the tell-tale words are there.

Again, I believe this is a non-issue that only comes into discussion because non-native Portuguese speakers (who may justifiably have difficulties understanding either major accent) like to stress these differences; also, some Brazilians (especially) and some Portuguese also like to exaggerate certain distinctions.

We all speak and write the same language and the next ortographic reform should address most of the 'tell-tale' words I have mentioned.

If you're Brazilian and cannot understand a Portuguese person, or vice-versa, that's probably because you don't speak the language all that well, being native or not. This is a matter of deficiencies in both countrie's educational systems and not an evidence that there are "BP" and "EP" are drifting apart - something cannot drift apart from itself!

 * "Adeus" can be compared to the English "farewell". Both express departure, and it's somewhat hard to hear any of them nowadays. The word means "que Deus te acompanhe" (something like "May God look after you" in English). It is expected from someone a "goodbye forever" sense when "adeus" is said, at least in Brazil. It is very formal, yes, yet it doesn't mean "I don't want to see you anymore". That's nonsense. By the way, the word itself is not offensive. People might look weird at you and misunderstood you if you use the word in an inappropriate way (depends on many things), but the word alone is not offensive. Too much bias on this talk page. The "adeuzinho" expression mentioned above has nothing to do with this, either. That's slang, and the sense is milder.

 * As for "tchau", it's often used, and it can be compared to something like "goodbye", or even "see you later" in some cases. It can be used for departure situations as well, so it's more versatile than "adeus".

 * The information I'm sharing here comes both from common sense (my life experience) and from what I just checked in the Aurélio dictionary, the most famous one in Brazil. – Kaonashi 15:23, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

okay, im not a native portuguese speaker, but i did however go to brasil for 6 months on a student exchange, and i remember that after the first day that i went to school over there i said "Adeus", to all the people that i met, and at the time i didnt understand it, but they all got very aggitated and started saying a whole heap of shit in portuguese (at the time i think i knew probably 20 or 30 wrods), later when id (more-or-less) learnt the language, one of them explained to me why they acted like that the first day. It was becuase they thought that i wasnt going to come back the next day (or ever), because i had said "Adeus" and not "tchau". Now this was in salvador, and from what i understand bahianos, have a slightly different dialect to other brazilians, so i dunno, thats just my experience. The bellman 02:38, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

I live in Lisbon and from my experience (I know that's not very scientific) "tchau" has a more limited set of situations in which it is used. It is _only_ used informal contexts. Rarely will one say "Tchau. Até amanhã" in place of "Adeus. Até amanhã" or similar to a person that one doesn't treat by "tu" (tuteia). It is completely innapropriate. Otherwise, if two people say good-bye, eg, two friends, colleagues, or young people, etc., they'll probobly use "tchau", "fica bem" or other similar informal expressions, as "adeus" could sound a bit, say, dull. However, it does occurr in such situations, it's not just that frequent as "tchau". As for the '"adeus" meaning "Que Deus vos acompanha"', so does good-bye (contraction of "God be with ye"). --212.113.164.102 22:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Eu sou brasileiro e aqui no Brasil usa-se tchau para se despedir, e adeus para se despedir em casos que as pessoas nunca mais vão se ver na vida.

Hugo (Brasil)

What to do with Galician?
Most Linguists (but some do not agree) say Portuguese and Galician are the same language - there are even dialectal maps. But politically they are separated languages, with very different ortography, w/strong spanish influence in sounds and lexicon, especially in the cities. Instituto Camões(organization of the Portuguese language, studying it) does not comment about Galicia. How should we treat this language in the article in order to be Neutral? Ethnologue is ambiguous in this, including it has a Portuguese dialect or as a language. The government of Galicia itself is ambiguous. -Pedro 11:02, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The article should say the truth: even though the government and many people say that Galician is a separate language from portuguese, there are many people who think that Galician and Portuguese is the same language, including linguists from Galicia, Portugal and Brasil. Galicia was even present in both portuguese spelling reforms (see ), and there are teachers, writers and many people in Galicia who write everyday using the portuguese ortography. So I think it's something important and it should be shown in the article. That doesn't mean that the article should say that it's the same language (for many people it isn't), but there are too many supporters of this theory to be just ignored. -SugarKane 20:00, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Catalan Portuguese

 * but by the 14th century Portuguese had become a mature language with a rich literary tradition, becoming a popular language for poetry in Iberia, adopted by many Leonese, Castilian, Aragonese and Catalan poets.

Probably this belongs more to Galician-Portuguese, but I doubt that there was significant activity in Galician-Portuguese in Aragon and Catalonia. They already had Occitan as a poetry language! Can you cite some examples? -- Error
 * Nops, the language was understood has Portuguese then (at least since 1290) - that is 13th century. Galician-Portuguese is a modern denomination for a common language. BTW Galician-Portuguese is understood has Old Portuguese.

Com efeito, o galego-português, língua falada, com pequenas diferenças, no noroeste da Península Ibérica, aquém e além do rio Minho, tornou-se, até cerca de 1350, a língua literária de toda a Peninsula, pois foi o idioma adoptado pelos poetas leoneses, castelhanos, aragoneses, catalães e, naturalmente, também pelos galegos e portugueses, perdurando isoladamente até cerca de 1450, data aproximada da sua substituição pelo castelhano. - Maria Ema T. Ferreira (Portuguese Romance Philologist) - If you dont understand I'll translate, about names that's the hardest thing, I know many names (many not tipical of Portugal nor Galicia), but were they were from, i dont know. -Pedro 01:25, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Barbarians

 * As each barbarian tribe spoke Latin in a different way, the uniformity of the Peninsula was soon disrupted, leading to the formation of well-differentiated languages (Portuguese-Galician, Spanish and Catalan).

Is that a mainstream theory? I understand that the influence of Barbarians may be limited to some words and maybe opening or closing communications among certain areas. The number of Barbarians was too low to impose their patterns on the Ibero-Romans. -- Error
 * I dont know, but yes it is a theory. Do you know a better hypotisis? I'm thinking and I'm starting to agree with you. I read in some places that it is just a temporal and natural alteration of Spoken Latin. What do you think? But, remember, the Barbarians became kings and rulled Iberia. But they were seen has barbarian and they adopted Latin culture and language. Why There was formed 3 different languages then? And for what I've seen of Spanish, it was even in the middle Ages very different from Portuguese, although much more similar than today. It is better to change the article. -Pedro 01:32, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Only Galician MEP

 * The only Galician deputy in the European Union Parliament, Camilo Nogueira, speaks in Portuguese

Is he the only Galician MEP or just the only Galician nationalist MEP? -- Error 00:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC) Camilo Nogueira is no longer in the European Union Parliament. In 2004 elections his party (BNG) did not get enough votes. By the way, he was not the first to speak portuguese in the EU Parliament. José Posada had done it before - 19:30, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * If there are Galicians in other parties, you're correct! -Pedro 10:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

the 3 missing sounds
I've changed the sounds section. The article still misses three sounds: b, g and d between vowels (not very clear info about these sounds to be systematic and standarized). I dont know if I should put the diphtongs in the article. -Pedro 23:06, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Alterations in the article
someone added info about Galicia in the article. Possibly a Galician (because of some of the added info). Should I delete it or place it in some specific area of the article? BTW I dont believe that 100% of people in Galicia speaks Galician. It is a very high number, but not 100%. And if it should continue in the table it should go with a notice.-Pedro 19:25, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Lusitanic Romance
Are you sure that the Romance from Galicia and N Portugal is called Lusitanic Romance? Lusitania is more Southwards than that. Do we have maps? -- Error 23:04, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Yups thats the name. The Callicians (like many others) also adopted the name "lusitanian" when the Romans conquered the area during the Lusitanian war. That is also the named used when studying Portuguese lang. History.-Pedro 23:51, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Arabic loans

 * But there is no loan word in lexicon related to human feelings, all remaining of Latin origin

Isn't alboroço a Portuguese word? --- Error 23:08, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, it means confusion, fight. What that has to do with feelings? -Pedro 23:58, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Alborozo in Spanish means "happiness", "joy". "Confusion" would be alboroto. But I checked a dictionary and while the Portuguese word is cognate of one of them (the dictionary is confusing), it doesn't seem to have evolved in the same way. I checked the Spanish al- words and there are no "feelings" words but for alborozo. Interesting. -- Error 00:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

portuguese domination on wikipedia

 * this discussion started here. some related discussions have also been going on here.

i just had to get this off my chest. i've been away for a while and realise now that things seem to be getting worse. PedroPVZ just can't help himself. oh yes, he is a two-face indeed. he posts flames and insults, and deletes them as soon as the addressee has read them. later, he writes flowery posts to try and keep his image clean. in that way i guess he has really succeeded, cos by doing so he has made it virtually impossible to find all the compromising posts he might have written. also, he disrupted the chronological order of the posts, making it look like he'd written some "nice things" before i had posted criticisms to him, which can fool people into thinking that some things i wrote were not necessary (as nobody checks the timestamps anyway even though they're in most signatures). not to mention his "NPOV" reverts/deletions, which is when someone posts something he doesn't like and/or he wants to hide, and so he deletes the contributions claiming "NPOV". now, as "NPOV" reverts seems to have become slightly outdated after i first pointed it out, he became doing something more serious, which is "vandalism" reverts/deletions. that's right, as you guessed it, he will delete things he doesn't like and claim "vandalism", and as most people assume "vandalism" really means vandalism, they alsmost never bother to see what was the "vandalism" (they might check the particular version changes if it's been marked as "NPOV", but not as "vandalism"). a recent example of "vandalism" deletion is here (more details on the brazilian portuguese talk page). only now i realise PedroPVZ knows a lot less about brazilian portguese (BP) than i expected and that PedroPVZ's knowledge of BP is seriously questionable. i'm saying this after just having read his claim in the BP article (this claim was actually added a while ago but i only noticed it after someone deleted it and PedroPVZ readded it) that "vou convosco" is "standard" in brazil and "vou com vocês" is "vernacular". that is just plain absurd!! just ask any brazilian! as i mentioned on the BP talk page, not even the most purist brazilian would claim "convosco" is standard, that's something you will only get in the bible!!!!! PedroPVZ writes things that he thinks are the same or WANTS THEM TO BE THE SAME in both brazil and portugal without actually knowing it's the case. one example is the problem with "adeus" and "tchau". he first tried to claim "adeus" was an "offensive" term in both portugal and brazil but declined after many portuguese people pointed it wasn't true. the word "adeus" (not that commonly used in brazil) is not exactly offensive in BP, but has a strong meaning similar to the english "farewell" and that's probably what PedroPVZ meant originally, in an attempt to unify BP and EP. then, as some brazilian guy later posted explaining what it meant in brazil, PedroPVZ came again, this time claiming that "adeus" isn't a strong word after all, and that "It is quit the same". this rambling isn't finished yet! PedroPVZ claims all websites in english about BP are wrong (in his own [deleted] words "stupid", "crazzy", "nationalist" and "anti-brazilian", etc <-- the last two adjectives sometimes even come close together!). it's obviously clear that since it's so difficult for PedroPVZ to try and hide the existence of such websites having content he dreads so much, that the only thing he can do is claim everything in english not written by himself is wrong. that's also why he claims the whole message boards of brazzil.com are wrong/"questionable", because unlike here in wikipedia, where he deletes everything he doesn't-like/wants-to-hide, he can't do that in a public message board, where people post whatever they like and everyone else is free to read. AT THE MOMENT: i have made some small edits in both the "Portuguese language" and "Brazilian Portuguese" articles, and i wish i could do it more often and also had enough strength to argue with this kind of people. it's very hard when someone dominates articles like this and nobody else is allowed to contribute to it, but i realise i am not completely alone and there are some people like 195.29.131.90 (i wish they were registered) also trying to stop this domination. CONCLUSION: PedroPVZ is a brazilian wannabe, but that probably cannot be helped. Vbs 12:17, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * did anyone see this??!!
 * "Written varieties - revert lusophobic and fake edit. If there were real linguists agreeing with that, we could consider putting that in the article."
 * PedroPVZ is out of control!! it's virtually impossible add anything to the article without going through an edit fight with him. the information i added (as i hope who's reading this has checked) was that "Although Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are generally cosidered to be dialects of the same language, there are those who disagree ". that doesn't in any way assert or claim that BP is a separate language, but only that some people believe it could be, something PedroPVZ strongly disagrees and so PedroPVZ simply wants to hide the existence of such people!!!!! and yes PedroPVZ, if you read the article that i pointed, you will see it was indeed written by a brazilian linguist!. besides, PedroPVZ's claim that "The differences are somewhat less than those between American English and British English" is at least strongly disputed if not plain biased, as there has been shown so many obvious differences even in basic words such as "you" and "good bye". for the latter word, hasn't anyone realised what PedroPVZ did?? he decided himself to abandon the real meaning of the word "adeus" in his own native dialect/language just to be able to claim it meant the same thing in both brazil and portugal!!! and some time ago, the american linguist Steven Roger Fischer (the guy who cracked the easter island scripts), in an interview to Veja (one of brazil's most important journalistic magazines), said BP is strongly influenced by spanish, and that the differences between BP and EP are bigger than those between american english (AE) and british english (BE). he also said that BP and EP are getting further and further appart, and that the opposite is happening to AE and BE. I KNOW WELL WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN!! anyone strong enough to try and fight (probably alone) against PedroPVZ will probably end up in a silly edit fight and then perhaps some third party will decide to lock the article obviously leaving PedroPVZ happy, since his biased claims have already infested everything, and so nobody would be able to change "his" article. Vbs 09:11, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * WILL SOMEONE PLEASE HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE!! what PedroPVZ is doing is really serious please have a look at this! i tried editing the article again, but PedroPVZ keeps reverting it! Vbs 10:11, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

PedroPVZ has no limits whatsoever!! now he wants an edit war even over a "disputed" template!!!!! Vbs 15:55, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC) fortunatelly, the edit war over the "disputed" template stopped quickly after somebody else interfered. Vbs 12:25, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * for anyone reading this, a couple of the links i had posted were pointing to wrong edits, but i've corrected them now. Vbs 12:40, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * For what it's worth, I haven't been involved at all in this discussion/article, but after my poking around into the histories involved, it looks like PedroPVZ has been acting inappropriately for Wikipedia. PedroPVZ, please remember that Wikipedia is a communal effort, and that neither these articles nor these topics are yours. You do have a number of good contributions to Wikipedia, and that's a wonderful thing, but please try to play nicer with others and especially avoid personal attacks. --Improv 23:17, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

American and British--just not true
The statement "The differences are somewhat less than those between American English and British English" is not backed up by any sources that I know of. "Somewhat" means a lot and the statement is not confirmed by reality. British and American English have few syntactic differences (placement or use of pronouns, use of verb tenses etc.), some lexical differences recognized by most speakers, and some phonetical differences, based on regions (Scotland, Ireland, Liverpool, Birmingham, East London, Southern American, Black American English etc.). The problem is one of contact. English and Americans are in great contact with each other by way of travelling, mass media, and mutual reading of literature. Such is not the case with Brazil and Portugal. While Portuguese have been exposed to the Brazilian accent through music, soap operas, artistic performers, commercials on television, and Brazilian immigrants, the opposite is not true. Few Brazilians have ever heard a Portuguese person speak, fewer have seen a Portugese film or TV program, and even fewer have read Portuguese literature (Curiously, in Portugal a tiny percentage of the population has read anything from Brazil, a country of 175 million people). In conclusion, the two varieties might not be that different in their essence, but lack of contact with one or the other makes them appear very different and creates problems of communication.

Ray Vogensen

P.S. Please keep any disagreeing comments to the above on an educated level with valid arguments. I.E. no insults like "velho caduco" or "fulano nem sabe falar português". Allthough there are few good sources on the net, I found this: http://www.linguist.de/reese/intonation-brief.html The most unified international language would be Spanish, in my oppinion and the most diversified German. -Pedro 00:27, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Good point. The fact, is that an American linguist (researching in Brazil) said that were less, I put the "somewhat" to be a bit NPOV. That is due to the phonetic structure of American and Brittish English, both are very free from the written language, unlike Portuguese. Portuguese dialects and variants have a very wide pronunciation on certain vowels: A, E and O. But almost the same on I and U (not allways!!). Portuguese dialects have also different approches in diacritic sounds and that's it.
 * Ray, problem of communication between Portuguese and Brazilians? Are you saying that they do not uderstand or they think some word is odd? I really doubt that any Brazilian and any Portuguese do not understand a written text from the other country, but they see an use has odd, but understand it fully. Brazilians grow up reading Fernando Pessoa. -Pedro 02:09, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

understanding written texts doesn't necessarily prove anything. if that was the case why isn't spanish treated as a dialect of portuguese then? actually, there are even brazilians like me who have less trouble understanding spoken spanish than spoken iberian portuguese. and did you know brazilian portuguese is strongly syllable timed (as spanish is), while european portuguese is strongly stress timed? that is a very significant difference between BP and EP. another thing is, while some brazilian/portuguese people might not have too much difficulty understanding spanish speakers, the opposite is not true. spanish pronunciation is kind of "simple" (note the QUOTES), but both BP or EP have a lot of complicated stuff (nasals, less consistent spelling, etc) which makes them quite hard for spanish speakers to understand. in a similar way, just because EP speakers can understand BP speakers, it simply doesn't mean that the opposite is true. and did you know that not too long ago, before a spelling reform, spanish used to be even more similar to "portuguese"? it used to have double esses and cedillas, for example. this shows that similarities in written texts are not necessarily the best proof of similarities between languages. some portuguese books brazilian kids have to read in school can be quite hard to follow without the aid of a dictionary. besides, i have also made reference to a recognised linguist (Steven Roger Fischer), who said the differences are bigger than those between BE and AE. nobody should have to deppend on "PedroPVZ's kind permission" to make changes to the article, that's pretty outraging. Vbs 10:49, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I am from Brazil, and I think I can say with enough safety that it's pretty obvious for everyone here (people that speak those languages) that the differences between the Brazilian Portuguese and the European Portuguese are far larger than the differences between the American English and the British English. You see, just think of all those sites and computer programs where you can choose different languages for the interface (Google, for instance). What are you most likely to find? A way of switching between BP and EP, or a way of switching between American English and British English?

 * Weird example, I know, but those two kinds of Portuguese are "almost" treated like different things. Sure, it's still the same language (despite all the crazy people that say they aren't), and I believe most Portuguese speakers are able to understand the opposite version without much trouble (both reading and talking). I do know not everybody can understand, and a lot of people have problems with it, but both versions are very, very close. However, they're not as close as those two kinds of English. I think that what the dude who posted the first comment said is very much true. It's hard to make non-Portuguese speakers understand this (and sometimes, European Portuguese speakers as well, it seems), but I don't think I'm being far-fetched with this.

 * For that matter, I do wonder why that small comment was added to the article. I can't see anything to back up that theory. – Kaonashi 23:27, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

i deleted it again. hopefully it won't come back from death anymore. Vbs 09:41, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Portuguese language/Archive 1


text:
Talk:The Crow (1994 film)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

However, they unknowingly left the live primer in place at the rear of the cartridge. At some point during filming, the revolver was apparently discharged with one of these improperly-deactivated cartridges in the chamber, setting off the primer with enough force to drive the bullet partway into the barrel, where it became stuck (a condition known as a squib load). The prop crew either failed to notice or failed to recognize the significance of this issue.

He was rushed to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, where he underwent six hours of surgery. However, attempts to save him were unsuccessful, and Lee was pronounced dead at 1:03 pm EST on March 31, 1993, at the age of 28. The shooting was ruled an accident. Nightscream (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Genre
Every notable site lists it as Action, and then alternately crime, drama, fantasy, thriller, and horror. Not one lists "superhero" once. Superhero is such a reductive and incorrect assessment of the film purely because it's based on a comic book. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 21:48, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109506/
 * https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0109506/?ref_=bo_rl_ti
 * https://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-crow-vm434236
 * https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_crow
 * https://www.avclub.com/film/reviews/the-crow-1994
 * https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-crow/
 * https://movieweb.com/movie/the-crow/
 * https://www.primevideo.com/detail/The-Crow/0HOLEPPZO3JB645FH6FXVN6X6A
 * https://letterboxd.com/film/the-crow/genres/

 * Superhero as a genre is more speicifc and the movie actually falls into the genre. Additionally, it's sourced in the article, and The Independent is very reliable source. Sources you've linked have genres as tags (it should be noted that the "superhero" tag doesn't exist on most of these sites; Allmovie, for example, does, and it's listed), while those that call The Crow a superhero film actually call it a superhero film in the text. Also, AV Club has an article that calls it a superhero film too... I've seen many reliable websites and books that refer to The Crow as a work within the superhero genre.

31.41.60.15 (talk) 22:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The independent is talking about the film in 2023 post MCU where every comic book film is apparently a "superhero" film. The overuse of superhero film across Wikipedia is a negative trait, boiling an action thriller like Captain America: The Winter Soldier down to the equivalent of a science-fiction comedy like Ant-Man. A gothic crime action drama like The Crow is not a superhero film, Eric Draven is not a superhero, he's a vengeful spirit and at best an anti-hero. Darkman's a superhero film according to Wikipedia, it's a joke. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 22:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Darkwarriorblake, it is weird and reductive to try and put this film into the superhero box (it fits better in the revenge thriller Death Wish box IMO). That you can fit squeeze it into that box doesn't make it a good fit or the primary genre. The genre in the lead section has fluctuated over the years(diff 2015) but seems to have been mostly supernatural action. (The AV Club is retrospectively decades after the fact categorising the film as superhero so that Tom Breihan has an excuse to cover that week it in his recurring column.) WP:FILMGENRE That a few sources stick it in the superhero box anyway doesn't mean that this encyclopedia has to give more WP:WEIGHT to those sources. Editors really need to think more carefully about writing the lead section in a way that is useful to help introdcue _encyclopedia readers_ to the subject, and I am not convinced that the labelling genre of as a superhero is the most useful thing for readers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.76.192.119 (talk) 00:35, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting, and the argument that the film isn't being described as such by various sources carries real weight, though the point that "superhero" isn't a recognized category by some of those sources is also a pretty solid rebuttal. I think I would be likely to classify it as a superhero film, in large part because I would classify the character as part of the superhero genre, which I think is the wider perception in the comic book community. He's rather reminiscent of Jim Corrigan's Spectre in that sense, in that he's a spirit of vengeance whose origin story involves his own murder; after taking vengeance on those who killed them, each move on to pursue vengeance against other wrongdoers. The comic character of the Crow follows the usual comic book superhero tropes (with a darker, Goth-inspired facade) and would, at the very least, be considered an antihero in the vein of someone like the Punisher. Are there comic book antiheroes who have had film adaptations that were not classified as superhero movies?
 * When we identify comic book characters with film/television adaptations who are clearly not classified as superheroes, we usually move into territory like Sandman or Tintin or Jesse Custer or Michael Sullivan--characters whose stories are told in the comic book medium, but who have no real connection to classic superhero story structure (though Custer could certainly still be accurately classified as an antihero). Grandpallama (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Sleeper hit claim
The claim that his film was a sleeper hit is nonsense. The film opened at number 1 in the box office! The claim is entirely unsourced original research, and was added without any explanation by anon an IP in January 2015.(diff)

"Sleeper hit" much is much like "cult classic" in that for years editors added it all over Wikipedia without any factual basis, merely because they happened to like a film.

If for some reason editors actually believe this claim please note that because it has been in the article for so long someone out there has probably copied from this article and repeated the bogus claim. WP:CITOGENESIS is real.

Now I'm going to remove the claim from the article, it's only about a decade overdue. -- 109.76.192.119 (talk) 01:07, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Crow (1994 film)


text:
Death poem

The death poem is a genre of poetry that developed in the literary traditions of East Asian cultures—most prominently in Japan as well as certain periods of Chinese history and Joseon Korea. They tend to offer a reflection on death—both in general and concerning the imminent death of the author—that is often coupled with a meaningful observation on life. The practice of writing a death poem has its origins in Zen Buddhism. It is a concept or worldview derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印), specifically that the material world is transient and impermanent (無常), that attachment to it causes suffering (苦), and ultimately all reality is an emptiness or absence of self-nature (空). These poems became associated with the literate, spiritual, and ruling segments of society, as they were customarily composed by a poet, warrior, nobleman, or Buddhist monk.

The writing of a poem at the time of one's death and reflecting on the nature of death in an impermanent, transitory world is unique to East Asian culture. It has close ties with Buddhism, and particularly the mystical Zen Buddhism (of Japan), Chan Buddhism (of China) and Seon Buddhism (of Korea). From its inception, Buddhism has stressed the importance of death because awareness of death is what prompted the Buddha to perceive the ultimate futility of worldly concerns and pleasures. A death poem exemplifies the search for a new viewpoint, a new way of looking at life and things generally, or a version of enlightenment (satori in Japanese; wu in Chinese). According to comparative religion scholar Julia Ching, Japanese Buddhism "is so closely associated with the memory of the dead and the ancestral cult that the family shrines dedicated to the ancestors, and still occupying a place of honor in homes, are popularly called the Butsudan, literally 'the Buddhist altars'. It has been the custom in modern Japan to have Shinto weddings, but to turn to Buddhism in times of bereavement and for funeral services".

The writing of a death poem was limited to the society's literate class, ruling class, samurai, and monks. It was introduced to Western audiences during World War II when Japanese soldiers, emboldened by their culture's samurai legacy, would write poems before suicidal missions or battles.

Yuan Chonghuan
Yuan Chonghuan (袁崇煥, 1584–1630) was a politician and military general who served under the Ming dynasty. He is best known for defending Liaodong from Jurchen invaders during the Later Jin invasion of the Ming. Yuan met his end when he was arrested and executed by lingchi ("slow slicing") on the order of the Chongzhen Emperor under false charges of treason, which were believed to have been planted against him by the Jurchens. Before his execution, he produced the following poem.

Xia Wanchun
Xia Wanchun (夏完淳, 1631–1647) was a Ming dynasty poet and soldier. He is famous for resisting the Manchu invaders and died aged 17. He wrote the poem before his death.

Zheng Ting
Zheng Ting (郑颋; died 621) was a politician in the end of the Sui dynasty. He was executed by Wang Shichong after trying to resign from his official position under Wang and become a Buddhist monk. He faced the execution without fear and wrote this death poem, which reflected his strong Buddhist belief.

Wen Tianxiang
Wen Tianxiang (文天祥; June 6, 1236 – January 9, 1283) was a Chinese poet and politician in the last years of the Southern Song dynasty. He was executed by Kublai Khan for the uprisings against Yuan dynasty.

Tan Sitong
Tan Sitong (譚嗣同; March 10, 1865 – September 28, 1898) was a well-known Chinese politician, thinker, and reformist in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). He was executed at the age of 33 when the Hundred Days' Reform failed in 1898. Tan Sitong was one of the six gentlemen of the Hundred Days' Reform, and occupies an important place in modern Chinese history.

Style and technique
The poem's structure can be in one of many forms, including the two traditional forms in Japanese literature: kanshi or waka. Sometimes they are written in the three-line, seventeen-syllable haiku form, although the most common type of death poem (called a jisei 辞世) is in the waka form called the tanka (also called a jisei-ei 辞世詠) which consists of five lines totaling 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7)—a form that constitutes over half of surviving death poems (Ogiu, 317–318).

Poetry has long been a core part of Japanese tradition. Death poems are typically graceful, natural, and emotionally neutral, in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism and Shinto. Excepting the earliest works of this tradition, it has been considered inappropriate to mention death explicitly; rather, metaphorical references such as sunsets, autumn or falling cherry blossom suggest the transience of life.

It was an ancient custom in Japan for literate persons to compose a jisei on their deathbed. One of the earliest was recited by Prince Ōtsu, executed in 686. More examples of jisei are those of the famous haiku poet Bashō, the Japanese Buddhist monk Ryōkan, Edo Castle builder Ōta Dōkan, the monk Gesshū Sōko, and the woodblock master Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. The custom has continued into modern Japan. Some people left their death poems in multiple forms: Prince Ōtsu made both waka and kanshi, and Sen no Rikyū made both kanshi and kyōka.

Fujiwara no Teishi, the first empress of Emperor Ichijo, was also known as a poet. Before her death in childbirth in 1001, she wrote three waka to express her sorrow and love to her servant, Sei Shōnagon, and the emperor. Teishi said that she would be entombed, rather than be cremated, so that she wrote that she will not become dust or cloud. The first one was selected into the poem collection Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.

On March 17, 1945, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander-in chief during the Battle of Iwo Jima, sent a final letter to Imperial Headquarters. In the message, General Kuribayashi apologized for failing to successfully defend Iwo Jima against the overwhelming forces of the United States military. At the same time, however, he expressed great pride in the heroism of his men, who, starving and thirsty, had been reduced to fighting with rifle butts and fists. He closed the message with three traditional death poems in waka form.

In 1970, writer Yukio Mishima and his disciple Masakatsu Morita composed death poems before their attempted coup at the Ichigaya garrison in Tokyo, where they committed seppuku. Mishima wrote:

Although he did not compose any formal death poem on his deathbed, the last poem written by Bashō (1644–1694), recorded by his disciple Takarai Kikaku during his final illness, is generally accepted as his poem of farewell:

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, some Japanese poets have employed levity or irony in their final compositions. The Zen monk Tokō (杜口; 1710–1795) commented on the pretentiousness of some jisei in his own death poem:

This poem by Moriya Sen'an (d. 1838) showed an expectation of an entertaining afterlife:

The final line, "hopefully the cask will leak" (mori ya sen nan), is a play on the poet's name, Moriya Sen'an.

Written over a large calligraphic character 死 shi, meaning Death, the Japanese Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴; 1685–1768) wrote as his jisei:

Korean death poems
Besides Korean Buddhist monks, Confucian scholars called seonbis sometimes wrote death poems (절명시 jeol myeong si). However, better-known examples are those written or recited by famous historical figures facing death when they were executed for loyalty to their former king or due to insidious plot. They are therefore impromptu verses, often declaring their loyalty or steadfastness. The following are some examples that are still learned by school children in Korea as models of loyalty. These examples are written in Korean sijo (three lines of 3-4-3-4 or its variation) or in Hanja five-syllable format (5-5-5-5 for a total of 20 syllables) of ancient Chinese poetry (五言詩).

Yi Gae
Yi Gae (이개; 1417–1456) was one of "six martyred ministers" who were executed for conspiring to assassinate King Sejo, who usurped the throne from his nephew Danjong. Sejo offered to pardon six ministers including Yi Gae and Seong Sam-mun if they would repent their crime and accept his legitimacy, but Yi Gae and all others refused. He recited the following poem in his cell before execution on June 8, 1456. In the following sijo, "Lord" (임 im) actually should read someone beloved or cherished, meaning King Danjong in this instance.

Seong Sam-mun
Like Yi Gae, Seong Sam-mun (성삼문, 1418–1456) was one of "six martyred ministers", and was the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Sejo. He refused the offer of pardon and denied Sejo's legitimacy. He recited the following sijo in prison and the second one (five-syllable poem) on his way to the place of execution, where his limbs were tied to oxen and torn apart.

Jo Gwang-jo
Jo Gwang-jo (조광조; 1482–1519) was a neo-Confucian reformer who was framed by the conservative faction opposing his reforms in the Third Literati Purge of 1519. His political enemies slandered Jo to be disloyal by writing "Jo will become the king" (주초위왕 走肖爲王, ju cho wi wang) with honey on leaves so that caterpillars left behind the same phrase as if in supernatural manifestation. King Jungjong ordered his death by sending poison and abandoned Jo's reform measures. Jo, who had believed to the end that Jungjong would see his errors, wrote the following before drinking poison on December 20, 1519. Repetition of similar looking words is used to emphasize strong conviction in this five-syllable poem.

Chŏng Mong-ju
Chŏng Mong-ju (정몽주; 1337–1392) was an influential high minister of the Goryeo dynasty when Yi Sŏng-gye sought to overthrow it and establish a new dynasty. When Yi Pang-wŏn, the son of Yi Sŏng-gye, asked Chŏng to support the founding of a new dynasty through a poem, Chŏng answered with a poem of his own reaffirming his loyalty to the falling Goryeo dynasty. Just as he suspected, he was assassinated the same night on April 4, 1392. Chŏng's death poem is the most famous in Korean history.

title: Death poem


text:
Total return swap

In finance, a total return swap (TRS), total rate of return swap (TRORS), or cash-settled equity swap is a financial contract that transfers both the credit risk and market risk of an underlying asset.

Contract definition
A swap agreement in which one party makes payments based on a set rate, either fixed or variable, while the other party makes payments based on the return of an underlying asset, which includes both the income it generates and any capital gains. In total return swaps, the underlying asset, referred to as the reference asset, is usually an equity index, loans, or bonds. This is owned by the party receiving the set rate payment.

Total return swaps allow the party receiving the total return to gain exposure and benefit from a reference asset without actually having to own it. These swaps are popular with hedge funds because they get the benefit of a large exposure with a minimal cash outlay.

In a total return swap, an investment bank could buy assets for a hedge fund, which is paid returns from the assets. The hedge fund can thereby remain anonymous insofar as the investment bank is the owner. If the value of the assets drop considerably, and the hedge fund is unable to provide more collateral on a margin call from the investment bank, the investment bank can sell the assets.

High-cost borrowers who seek financing and leverage, such as hedge funds, are natural receivers in Total Return Swaps. Lower cost borrowers, with large balance sheets, are natural payers.

Less common, but related, are the partial return swap and the partial return reverse swap agreements, which usually involve 50% of the return, or some other specified amount. Reverse swaps involve the sale of the asset with the seller then buying the returns, usually on equities.

Advantage of using total return swaps
The TRORS allows one party (bank B) to derive the economic benefit of owning an asset without putting that asset on its balance sheet, and allows the other (bank A, which does retain that asset on its balance sheet) to buy protection against loss in its value.

TRORS can be categorised as a type of credit derivative, although the product combines both market risk and credit risk, and so is not a pure credit derivative.

Users
Hedge funds use total return swaps to obtain leverage on the reference assets: they can receive the return of the asset, typically from a bank (which has a funding cost advantage), without having to put out the cash to buy the asset. They usually post a smaller amount of collateral upfront, thus obtaining leverage.

Hedge funds (such as The Children's Investment Fund (TCI)) have attempted to use total return swaps to side-step public disclosure requirements enacted under the Williams Act. As discussed in CSX Corp. v. The Children's Investment Fund Management, TCI argued that it was not the beneficial owner of the shares referenced by its total return swaps and therefore the swaps did not require TCI to publicly disclose that it had acquired a stake of more than 5% in CSX. The United States District Court rejected this argument and enjoined TCI from further violations of Section 13(d) Securities Exchange Act and the SEC-Rule promulgated thereunder.

Total return swaps are also very common in many structured finance transactions such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDO Issuers often enter TRS agreements as protection seller in order to leverage the returns for the structure's debt investors. By selling protection, the CDO gains exposure to the underlying asset(s) without having to put up capital to purchase the assets outright. The CDO gains the interest receivable on the reference asset(s) over the period while the counterparty mitigates their credit risk.

title: Total return swap