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Hot flash

Hot flashes (also known as hot flushes) are a form of flushing, often caused by the changing hormone levels that are characteristic of menopause. They are typically experienced as a feeling of intense heat with sweating and rapid heartbeat, and may typically last from two to 30 minutes for each occurrence.

Signs and symptoms
Hot flashes, a common symptom of menopause and perimenopause, are typically experienced as a feeling of intense heat with sweating and rapid heartbeat, and may typically last from two to thirty minutes for each occurrence, ending just as rapidly as they began. The sensation of heat usually begins in the face or chest, although it may appear elsewhere such as the back of the neck, and it can spread throughout the whole body. Some people feel as if they are going to faint. In addition to being an internal sensation, the surface of the skin, especially on the face, becomes hot to the touch. This is the origin of the alternative term "hot flush", since the sensation of heat is often accompanied by visible reddening of the face.

The hot-flash event may be repeated a few times each week or every few minutes throughout the day. Hot flashes may begin to appear several years before menopause starts and last for years afterwards. Some people undergoing menopause never have hot flashes. Others have mild or infrequent flashes. Those most affected experience dozens of hot flashes each day. In addition, hot flashes are often more frequent and more intense during hot weather or in an overheated room, the surrounding heat apparently making the hot flashes themselves both more likely to occur, and more severe.

Severe hot flashes can make it difficult to get a full night's sleep (often characterized as insomnia), which in turn can affect mood, impair concentration, and cause other physical problems. When hot flashes occur at night, they are called "night sweats". As estrogen is typically lowest at night, some people get night sweats without having any hot flashes during the daytime.

Young females
If hot flashes occur at other times in a young female's menstrual cycle, then it might be a symptom of a problem with the pituitary gland; seeing a doctor is highly recommended. In younger females who are surgically menopausal, hot flashes are generally more intense than in older females, and they may last until natural age at menopause.

Males
Hot flashes in males could have various causes. It can be a sign of low testosterone. Males with prostate cancer or testicular cancer can also have hot flashes, especially those who are undergoing hormone therapy with antiandrogens, also known as androgen antagonists, which reduce testosterone to castrate levels. Males who are castrated can also get hot flashes.

Types
Some menopausal females may experience both standard hot flashes and a second type sometimes referred to as "slow hot flashes" or "ember flashes". The standard hot flash comes on rapidly, sometimes reaching maximum intensity in as little as a minute. It lasts at full intensity for only a few minutes before gradually fading.

Slow "ember" flashes appear almost as quickly but are less intense and last for around half an hour. Females who experience them may undergo them year round, rather than primarily in the summer, and ember flashes may linger for years after the more intense hot flashes have passed.

Mechanism
Research on hot flashes is mostly focused on treatment options. The exact cause and pathogenesis, or causes, of vasomotor symptoms (VMS)—the clinical name for hot flashes—has not yet been fully studied.

Hot flashes are associated with declining levels of estrogen (estrogen withdrawal) and other hormonal changes. It does not appear that low levels of estrogen are the sole cause of hot flashes, as women who experience hot flashes have around the same plasma estrogen levels as women who do not have them, and prepubertal girls do not have hot flashes despite low estrogen levels.

There are indications that hot flashes may be due to a change in the hypothalamus's control of temperature regulation.

Transgender men also commonly report experiences of hot flashes. This is linked to hormonal changes possible from many aspects of masculinizing gender-affirming care, including the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists as puberty blockers, reduction of estrogen levels after having undergone oopherectomy, and long term testosterone use reducing production of estradiols.

Hormone replacement therapy
Hormone replacement therapy may relieve many of the symptoms of menopause. However, oral HRT may increase the risk of breast cancer, stroke, and dementia and has other potentially serious short-term and long-term risks. Since the incidence of cardiovascular disease in women has shown a rise that matches the increase in the number of post menopausal women, recent studies have examined the benefits and side effects of oral versus transdermal application of different estrogens and found that transdermal applications of estradiol may give the vascular benefits lowering the incidences of cardiovascular events with fewer adverse side effects than oral preparations.

Women who experience troublesome hot flashes are advised by some to try alternatives to hormonal therapies as the first line of treatment. If a woman chooses hormones, they suggest she take the lowest dose that alleviates her symptoms for as short a time as possible. The US Endocrine Society concluded that women taking hormone replacement therapy for 5 years or more experienced overall benefits in their symptoms including relief of hot flashes and symptoms of urogenital atrophy and prevention of fractures and diabetes.

When estrogen as estradiol is used transdermally as a patch, gel, or pessary with micronized progesterone this may avoid the serious side effects associated with oral estradiol HRT since this avoids first pass metabolism (Phase I drug metabolism). Women taking bioidentical estrogen, orally or transdermally, who have a uterus must still take a progestin or micronized progesterone to lower the risk of endometrial cancer. A French study of 80,391 postmenopausal women followed for several years concluded that estrogen in combination with micronized progesterone is not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. The natural, plant-derived progesterone creams sold over the counter contain too little progesterone to be effective. Wild yam (Dioscorea villosa) extract creams are not effective since the natural progesterone present in the extract is not bioavailable.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
SSRIs are a class of pharmaceuticals that are most commonly used in the treatment of depression. They have been found efficient in alleviating hot flashes. On 28 June 2013 FDA approved Brisdelle (low-dose paroxetine mesylate) for the treatment of moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms (e.g. hot flashes and night sweats) associated with menopause. Paroxetine became the first and only non-hormonal therapy for menopausal hot flashes approved by FDA.

Clonidine
Clonidine is a blood pressure-lowering medication that can be used to relieve menopausal hot flashes when hormone replacement therapy is not needed or not desired. For hot flashes, clonidine works by helping reduce the response of the blood vessels to stimuli that cause them to narrow and widen. While not all women respond to clonidine as a hot flash medication, it can reduce hot flashes by 40% in some peri-menopausal women.

Isoflavones
Isoflavones are commonly found in legumes such as soy and red clover. The two soy isoflavones implicated in relieving menopausal symptoms are genistein and daidzein, and are also known as phytoestrogens. The half life of these molecules is about eight hours, which might explain why some studies have not consistently shown effectiveness of soy products for menopausal symptoms. Although red clover (Trifolium pratense) contains isoflavones similar to soy, the effectiveness of this herb for menopausal symptoms at relatively low concentrations points to a different mechanism of action.

Other phytoestrogens
It is believed that dietary changes that include a higher consumption of phytoestrogens from sources such as soy, red clover, ginseng, and yam may relieve hot flashes.
 * Ginseng: Very few studies exist on the effect of ginseng for relief of menopausal symptoms. In a large double-blinded randomized controlled trial, reduction in hot flashes was not statistically significant but showed a strong trend towards improvement. Lack of statistical significance suggests future research, but does not meet the scientific bar for ginseng to be deemed effective.
 * Flaxseed: There have also been several clinical trials using flaxseed. Flaxseed is the richest source of lignans, which is one of three major classes of phytoestrogen. Lignans are thought to have estrogen agonist and antagonist effects as well as antioxidant properties. Flaxseed and its lignans may have potent anti-estrogenic effects on estrogen receptor positive breast cancer and may have benefits in breast cancer prevention efforts. One recent study done in France, looked at four types of lignans, including that found in flaxseed (Secoisolariciresinol) in a prospective cohort study to see if intake predicted breast cancer incidence. The authors report lowered risk of breast cancer among over 58,000 postmenopausal women who had the third highest quartile of lignan intake. There have been a few small pilot studies that have tested the effect of flaxseed on hot flashes. Currently there is a large study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute that is ongoing, but not accepting any new participants. The rationale for the study is that estrogen can relieve the symptoms of menopause, but can also cause the growth of breast cancer cells. Flaxseed may reduce the number of hot flashes and improve mood and quality of life in postmenopausal women not receiving estrogen therapy.

Acupuncture
Acupuncture has been suggested to reduce incidence of hot flashes in women with breast cancer and men with prostate cancer, but the quality of evidence is low.

Epidemiology
It has been speculated that hot flashes are less common among Asian women.

Menopausal women who have more hot flashes have a higher risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

title: Hot flash


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title: User:Tillwe/monobook.css


text: Category:Countries

title: Category:Countries


text:
Verus

Verus may refer to:

People

 * Verus (gladiator) (fl. 80), Roman gladiator
 * Verus (senator) (died 219), Roman centurion and senator
 * Gnaeus Julius Verus (born c. 112), Roman general and senator
 * Lucius Verus (130–169), Roman co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius
 * Marcus Annius Verus (disambiguation)
 * Marcus Annius Verus, birth name of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180)
 * Marcus Annius Verus (praetor) (died 124), Roman politician and father of Marcus Aurelius
 * Marcus Annius Verus (grandfather of Marcus Aurelius) (died 138), Roman consul

Other uses

 * Alex Verus, a series by Benedict Jacka

title: Verus


text:
Frank Lane

Frank Charles Meyers Lane (February 1, 1895 – March 19, 1981) was an American executive in professional baseball, most notably serving as a general manager in Major League Baseball for the Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics and Milwaukee Brewers for over fifteen seasons between and.

Biography
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Lane's first involvement with professional sports came in American football, where he played guard for a number of "Ohio League" teams prior to the creation of the National Football League. After his attempt at playing professional baseball fell short, Lane shifted to officiating, serving as a referee in both football and basketball.

Baseball front offices
In 1933 he was named as traveling secretary for the Cincinnati Reds, while continuing to spend his offseasons as an official. After later spending one season as general manager of the team's Durham, North Carolina minor league club, Lane was elevated to assistant general manager for the Reds under Warren Giles on November 17, 1936.

After the U.S. entered World War II, Lane joined the Navy and spent the next four years in the service before returning in 1946 as general manager of the Kansas City Blues, a top farm club of the New York Yankees. One year in that position led to a two-year stretch as president of the minor league American Association.

Chicago White Sox
Lane then resigned that post in 1948 to become general manager of the White Sox. Over the next seven years, he shaped the team into a contender after more than two decades of mediocrity, acquiring Baseball Hall of Famers Nellie Fox and Minnie Miñoso, and All-Stars Chico Carrasquel, Sherm Lollar and Billy Pierce, among many others. Fox, a future 15-time All-Star and American League MVP, was acquired from the Philadelphia Athletics at age 21, straight-up for backup catcher Joe Tipton; the price of the Detroit Tigers' Pierce (also 21), a future seven-time AL All-Star who would win 186 games in a White Sox uniform, was another catcher, 33-year-old Aaron Robinson, who had only three major-league seasons left in his tank. In his seven years in Chicago, Lane made 241 trades. The ChiSox made their league's first division in 1951, and topped the one-million mark in attendance each year for the remainder of Lane's tenure.

St. Louis Cardinals
After resigning in September 1955, Lane quickly found work again in St. Louis, signing a three-year contract as general manager of the Cardinals on October 6. His first controversial move was to introduce new home and away uniforms of which the pair of redbirds on a bat was removed in favor of only the name "Cardinals" in red script edged with navy blue. In what he subsequently referred to as "the worst trade [he] ever made," Lane sent Bill Virdon, recipient of the previous season's National League Rookie of the Year Award, to the Pirates for Bobby Del Greco and Dick Littlefield on May 17, 1956. When Lane tried to trade superstar hitter Stan Musial to the Philadelphia Phillies for pitcher Robin Roberts—both future Hall of Famers—news of the proposed transaction was leaked to the radio and Cardinals' owner August A. Busch Jr. stopped the deal.

Cleveland Indians
The Cardinals finished second in their league in, eight games out, but Lane moved on to Cleveland in November to take the reins of the Indians' front office. There he gained infamy in April 1960 by trading popular star slugger Rocky Colavito, who co-led the Junior Circuit in home runs in 1959, to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn, the defending American League batting champion, whom Lane would trade to the San Francisco Giants on December 3 for John Antonelli and Willie Kirkland; this was the final trade for Lane as GM of the Indians.

Kansas City Athletics
Lane left Cleveland in January 1961 to become general manager of the Kansas City Athletics, but the combination of Lane and volatile owner Charlie Finley led to an early end to Lane's employment just eight months later, and a lawsuit ensued. Due to his uncertain contract status, Lane was forced out of baseball during this period, but found employment in early 1962 as general manager of the National Basketball Association's Chicago Packers. He did not join the team when they moved to Baltimore after the 1963 season. The following year, the lawsuit finally went to trial.

On January 8, 1965, Lane settled his lawsuit with Finley, accepting $113,000 plus the freedom to take another baseball front-office position. Early reports of his being part of an ownership group to buy the Boston Red Sox, as well as potentially serving as president of the Texas League, proved to be unfounded. Instead, he was appointed as a special assistant to the president with the Baltimore Orioles two months later on March 6, handling the duties of a scout, field representative and traveling ambassador. He served in that capacity for nearly six years.

Milwaukee Brewers
Shortly before his 76th birthday, Lane was hired as director of player personnel with the Milwaukee Brewers on January 23, 1971. He took advantage of the rain postponement of Game 2 of the 1971 World Series on October 10 to acquire George Scott, Jim Lonborg, Ken Brett, Billy Conigliaro, Joe Lahoud and Don Pavletich in a ten-player blockbuster that also sent Tommy Harper, Marty Pattin, Lew Krausse Jr. and minor-league outfielder Pat Skrable to the Red Sox. Lane ended his career as a scout for both the California Angels and Texas Rangers.

Death and reputation
Lane gained fame (and sometimes infamy) for his many transactions, earning nicknames such as "Trader Frank", "Frantic Frank", "Trader Lane" and "The Wheeler Dealer" for having made over 400 trades in his career, including 241 with the White Sox alone. Lane traded star players, such as Norm Cash, Rocky Colavito and Roger Maris, as well as future Hall of Famers Red Schoendienst and Early Wynn.

Yet players were not the only people involved in Lane's transactions – in 1960, during his tenure with the Indians, he dealt manager Joe Gordon in exchange for Detroit Tigers skipper Jimmy Dykes. He died in a Dallas, Texas nursing home at 86 years of age. In Bobby Bragan's book You Can't Hit the Ball With the Bat On Your Shoulder, Bragan wrote that he was asked by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's office to represent Major League Baseball at the funeral. He was the lone baseball official to attend.

title: Frank Lane


text: Category:Middle-earth Rohirrim

title: Category:Middle-earth Rohirrim


text:
Category:Middle-earth Men

__NOGALLERY__ The magic word __NOGALLERY__ is used in this category to turn off thumbnail display since this category list unfree images, the display of which is restricted to certain areas of Wikipedia.

This category lists members of the race of Men (that is, human beings) in the fictional works of J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's Middle-earth, Men refers to all human beings; men refers to adult males of any race.

title: Category:Middle-earth Men


text:
Category:Middle-earth Dwarves

This category lists Dwarves from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

__NOGALLERY__ The magic word __NOGALLERY__ is used in this category to turn off thumbnail display since this category list unfree images, the display of which is restricted to certain areas of Wikipedia.

title: Category:Middle-earth Dwarves


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Steve Gorn

Steve Gorn (born 1944) in New York City) is a bamboo flautist and saxophone player.

Gorn has performed Indian classical music, jazz and new American music on the bansuri bamboo flute and soprano saxophone in concerts and festivals throughout the world. A disciple of the late bansuri master, Sri Gour Goswami of Calcutta, as one of the few westerners recognized to have captured the subtlety and beauty of Indian music. He also has composed numerous works for theatre, dance and television and has recorded and performed with a wide range of artists including Paul Simon, Tony Levin, Jack DeJohnette, Glen Velez, Karl Berger, Alessandra Belloni, Layne Redmond, Simon Shaheen and Mick Karn.

Discography

 * Asian Journal (Music of the World, 1979)
 * Bansuri Bamboo Flute (Music of the World, 1980, 1982)
 * Yantra: Flute and Tabla with Badal Roy (Music of the World, 1983)
 * Luminous Ragas with Marc Levinson, 1991
 * Steel & Bamboo with Robert Dick, 1993
 * From the Caves of the Iron Mountain with Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta, 1997
 * Wings and Shadows with Warren Senders
 * Pampara: In Memory of Gour Goswami with Annalisa Adami, Samir Chatterjee, 1996
 * Pranam with Samir Chatterjee, Barun Kumar Pal, David Taylor, 1999
 * The Green Bird, Elliot Goldenthal musical in which he performed, 2000
 * 2000 live with Bill Buchen, Hallie Laxmi, 2000
 * Drala with Anandi, Bill Buchen, Amitava Chatterjee, Randy Crafton, Mark Egan, Cyndi Lee, David Nichtern 2001
 * Colors of the Mind with Kevin Bents, David Marino, Barun Kumar Pal, Falguni Shah, Stomu Takeishi, Gordon Titcomb, 2002
 * Midnight Flower with Keven Bents, Ty Burhoe, Clifford Carter, Mark Egan, Jamey Haddad, Matt Kilmer, Falguni Shah, Shane Shanahan, 2003
 * Dreaming Mexico with Georg Hofmann, Raul Tudon, 2004
 * Priyagitah: The Nightingale with David Michael, Michael Stirling, Benjy Wertheimer, 2004
 * Meditate with Pamela Miles, 2007
 * Rasika with Samir Chatterjee, Hallie Laxmi, 2007
 * Song of the Swan with Natraj, 2008
 * Luminosity with Len & Vani Greene, 2011
 * So Beautiful or So What with Paul Simon, 2011

title: Steve Gorn


text:
User talk:No logo

Hello No logo, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Drop us a note at New user log so we can meet you and help you get started.

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I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use if you release it under the GNU Free Documentation License,  if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 21:53, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

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title: User talk:No logo


text:
Paris Store

Paris Store or Paristore is an Asian supermarket situated in France in the regions of Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Roubaix, Strasbourg, Toulouse, and Tours. It has more than 20 branches, including one in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, situated near Tang Frères, another supermarket selling Asian food.

title: Paris Store


text:
County of Namur

Namur (Namen) was a county of the Carolingian and later Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries, a region in northwestern Europe. Its territories largely correspond with the present-day French-speaking Belgian arrondissement Namur together with the northwestern part of the arrondissement Dinant, which are both part of the modern province of Namur. The modern provincial boundaries are based on the French Republican department of Sambre-et-Meuse.

Prehistory to the Roman period
The city of Namur most likely arose around 'the Champeau', a rocky hill between the Sambre and Meuse rivers. Numerous prehistoric flint weapons have been found in the area. During Roman times, the region around Namur was first mentioned in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico in the second half of the 1st century BC. To the west of Namur were the Nervii, and to the east the Germani cisrhenani, but it has been suggested that Namur itself may have been home to the Aduatuci who Caesar described as descendants of the Cimbri and Teutons. (Today it is considered more likely to have been at Thuin. ) In Caesar's wars, the Roman legions conquered numerous Belgic cities and settlements. After this defeat, the Belgae and their territory were incorporated into the Roman Empire.

The Medieval period
The first mention of a region ruled by Namur (in pago Namurcensis) treated it as a part of the older Lommegau (pagus or comitatus Lommensis) in the year 832 in a document by Emperor Louis the Pious. In 992, Emperor Otto III described Albert I as a count of Namur for the first time.

The first count of note was Albert III (1063–1102), who held the office of advocate of the Princely Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy. Until the start of the 12th century, Namur was threatened by its powerful neighbours Brabant, Hainaut and Liège. Important parts of the county were annexed. The city of Dinant, for example, came into possession of Liège. From the 12th century on, the counts of Namur managed to more or less compensate for the losses they had suffered. Count Godfrey, for example, acquired the county of Longwy, thanks to his marriage with Ermesinde of Luxembourg. The last important figure from the first house that ruled Namur was Henry I (1139–96). Henry I also inherited the counties of Durbuy, La Roche-en-Ardenne and Luxembourg. After Henry's death, a fierce succession war broke out between Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut, and Henry's daughter Ermesinde. Baldwin V eventually received the county of Namur, while Ermesine received Luxembourg, Laroche and Durbuy. The situation remained more or less stable until 1263. In this year, the count of Namur, Baldwin II of Courtenay, sold his county to the count of Flanders, Guy of Dampierre. The house of Dampierre would rule until 1421, when the county of Namur was sold to the Burgundian duke Philip the Good.

The Burgundian and Habsburg periods
After the county of Namur was bought by Philip the Good, he integrated it into a large territorial and political union, called the Burgundian Netherlands. From the 15th century on, the Southern Netherlands (and with it the county of Namur) were ruled by the Habsburgs. Under their new rule, the military importance of the city of Namur steadily grew. The Burgundians and Habsburgs strengthened the city and built new walls around it. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the city became an important military stronghold, and was repeatedly besieged for this reason.

The Spanish period
During the Spanish period (16th and 17th century), Namur received a bishopric's seat. The Spanish king Philip II wanted to turn Namur into a Roman Catholic bastion as a bulwark against the rise of Calvinism. Thus, Philip II required several religious orders to establish themselves in Namur. In consequence, the city gained a specific Catholic character. Philip II also managed to make considerable reinforcements to the Citadel of Namur. In 1577, Philip II sent Don Juan of Austria to the Netherlands as the new governor. In Namur, Don Juan received Margaret of Valois (the sister of the French king), and organised a magnificent celebration in her honor.

Troubled times and changing rulers
Namur has had a crucial military role throughout history. After the Spanish period, the strategically important city was repeatedly besieged. In 1692, the troops of Louis XIV of France took the city after a lengthy and furious siege. Louis and his legendary military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban personally oversaw the siege. Three years later, in 1695, William III of Orange retook Namur. But the Dutch occupation did not last long. At the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, the Southern Netherlands came under the rule of the Austrian house of Habsburg. Though the Austrians ruled over the city, the strategically important citadel remained in the hands of the Dutch. The Austrian rule returned peace and calm to the Netherlands.

The French revolutionists and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
In 1790 the county of Namur was one of the founders of the United States of Belgium. In 1794 the revolutionary France occupied Namur, immediately introducing a repressive regime. Namur became part of the French department of Sambre-et-Meuse. The French occupation was abruptly ended following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In the Congress of Vienna that followed, the southern and Northern Netherlands were combined to form the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In this period, the citadel was again rebuilt and more or less received its present-day looks. The kingdom of the Netherlands would not last long. In 1830 the Belgian Revolution broke out, in which Belgium became independent from the Netherlands. The strategically important bastion of Namur played a decisive role in the battles associated with the Belgian Revolution.

Economic activities
The economic activities of the County of Namur were diverse. Next to the cultivation of grapes in the river valleys, the agriculture also cultivated flax, that formed the basis of the wool industry. Clay formed the raw materials for the ceramic-production and for the making of molds for the so-called dinanderie, the overall name for the yellow copper brass art objects such as lecterns, candleholders, tableware and others. The metal industry was also important: in the 16th century the mouth of the Meuse (Dinant, Bouvignes, Namur, but also Huy and Liège) was the central region for metallurgy in the Southern Netherlands. Along the banks of the Meuse, limestone was mined and exported.

title: County of Namur


text:
Category:Chemical elements

A chemical element is a substance that cannot be divided or changed into different substances by ordinary chemical methods. The smallest particle of such an element is an atom, which consists of electrons centered around a nucleus of protons and neutrons.

title: Category:Chemical elements


text:
Isabel Jewell

Isabel Jewell (July 19, 1907 – April 5, 1972) was an American actress who rose to prominence in the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of her more famous films were Ceiling Zero, Marked Woman, A Tale of Two Cities, and Gone with the Wind.

Early life
Born in Shoshoni, Wyoming on July 19, 1907, Jewell was the daughter of Emory Lee Jewell and Livia A. Willoughby Jewell. Her father was "a prominent...doctor and medical researcher." She was educated at St. Mary's Academy in Minnesota and at Hamilton College in Kentucky.

Career
After years in theatre stock companies, including an 87-week stint in Lincoln, Nebraska, she got a part on Broadway in Up Pops the Devil (1930). She received glowing critical reviews for Blessed Event (1932) as well.

Jewell's film debut came in Blessed Event (1932). She had been brought to Hollywood by Warner Brothers for the film version of Up Pops the Devil. Jewell gained other supporting roles, appearing in a variety of films in the early 1930s. She played stereotypical gangsters' women in such films as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and Marked Woman (1937). She was well-received playing against type as the seamstress sentenced to death on the guillotine with Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman in A Tale of Two Cities (1935). Her most significant role was Sally Bates in She Had to Choose. Jewell's films included Gone with the Wind (1939) (in the role of "that white trash, Emmy Slattery"), Northwest Passage (1940), High Sierra (1941), and the low-budget The Leopard Man (1943).

By the end of the 1940s, her roles had reduced in significance to the degree that her performances often were uncredited, e.g. The Snake Pit. She performed in radio dramas in the 1950s, including This Is Your FBI.

In February 1965, she played Madame Ahr, a member of a bank-robbing circus troupe, in an episode of Gunsmoke entitled "Circus Trick."

In 1972, Jewell appeared opposite Edie Sedgwick in the film Ciao! Manhattan. Her final film was the B movie Sweet Kill (1973), the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson.

Personal life
Jewell's first marriage (which "was not generally known during Jewell's lifetime...[nor] mentioned in the press during her heyday in American films") occurred when she wed Lovell "Cowboy" Underwood when she was 19.

In the mid to late 1930s, Jewell was seen at nightclubs with actor William Hopper. In 1936, she married Owen Crump, divorcing in 1941 to facilitate her next wedding.

In 1941, Jewell married actor Paul Marion, who was then a private in the Army. They separated in 1943 and were divorced on May 12, 1944.

Jewell was a Democrat who supported Adlai Stevenson's campaign during the 1952 presidential election. She was also a practicing Episcopalian.

Death
Jewell died in Los Angeles, California on April 5, 1972, aged 64, from suicide after taking an overdose of barbiturates. Her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

Legacy
In 1960, Jewell was recognised with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to motion pictures. The star is located at 1560 Vine Street.

title: Isabel Jewell


text:
Category:Harry Potter characters

Characters in J. K. Rowling's series of fantasy novels Harry Potter and their adaptations.

title: Category:Harry Potter characters


text:
Category:Ecology

Ecology is the branch of science that studies the distribution and interactions between living things and the physical environment.

title: Category:Ecology


text: Category:Harry Potter

title: Category:Harry Potter


text: Category:Babylon 5

title: Category:Babylon 5


text:
Gladys Cardiff

Gladys Cardiff (born 1942) is a poet and academic, with interests in Native American, African-American and American literature. She was an associate professor at Oakland University from 1999 to 2013.

Early life
Cardiff was born in Browning, Montana. She is of Irish and Welsh descent on her mother's side, and she is descended from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on her father's side. She makes use of her cultural heritage in her work, referencing especially Cherokee place names in her poetry.

She attended the University of Washington, where she studied with Theodore Roethke.

Published works
Cardiff won the 1976 Washington State Governor's Award for her first book of poetry, To Frighten a Storm. She published A Bare Unpainted Table in 1999. She received awards from the Seattle Arts Commission in 1985 and 1986. "In 1988 she was a co-recipient of the University of Washington's Louisa Kerns Award for literary endeavors." Her poetry has been featured by The Poetry Foundation.

title: Gladys Cardiff


text:
Quantity

Quantity or amount is a property that can exist as a multitude or magnitude, which illustrate discontinuity and continuity. Quantities can be compared in terms of "more", "less", or "equal", or by assigning a numerical value multiple of a unit of measurement. Mass, time, distance, heat, and angle are among the familiar examples of quantitative properties.

Quantity is among the basic classes of things along with quality, substance, change, and relation. Some quantities are such by their inner nature (as number), while others function as states (properties, dimensions, attributes) of things such as heavy and light, long and short, broad and narrow, small and great, or much and little.

Under the name of multitude comes what is discontinuous and discrete and divisible ultimately into indivisibles, such as: army, fleet, flock, government, company, party, people, mess (military), chorus, crowd, and number; all which are cases of collective nouns. Under the name of magnitude comes what is continuous and unified and divisible only into smaller divisibles, such as: matter, mass, energy, liquid, material—all cases of non-collective nouns.

Along with analyzing its nature and classification, the issues of quantity involve such closely related topics as dimensionality, equality, proportion, the measurements of quantities, the units of measurements, number and numbering systems, the types of numbers and their relations to each other as numerical ratios.

Background
In mathematics, the concept of quantity is an ancient one extending back to the time of Aristotle and earlier. Aristotle regarded quantity as a fundamental ontological and scientific category. In Aristotle's ontology, quantity or quantum was classified into two different types, which he characterized as follows:

"Quantum means that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts, of which each is by nature a one and a this. A quantum is a plurality if it is numerable, a magnitude if it is measurable. Plurality means that which is divisible potentially into non-continuous parts, magnitude that which is divisible into continuous parts; of magnitude, that which is continuous in one dimension is length; in two breadth, in three depth. Of these, limited plurality is number, limited length is a line, breadth a surface, depth a solid."

- Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book V, Ch. 11-14

In his Elements, Euclid developed the theory of ratios of magnitudes without studying the nature of magnitudes, as Archimedes, but giving the following significant definitions:

"A magnitude is a part of a magnitude, the less of the greater, when it measures the greater; A ratio is a sort of relation in respect of size between two magnitudes of the same kind."

- Euclid, Elements

For Aristotle and Euclid, relations were conceived as whole numbers (Michell, 1993). John Wallis later conceived of ratios of magnitudes as real numbers:

"When a comparison in terms of ratio is made, the resultant ratio often [namely with the exception of the 'numerical genus' itself] leaves the genus of quantities compared, and passes into the numerical genus, whatever the genus of quantities compared may have been."

- John Wallis, Mathesis Universalis

That is, the ratio of magnitudes of any quantity, whether volume, mass, heat and so on, is a number. Following this, Newton then defined number, and the relationship between quantity and number, in the following terms:

"By number we understand not so much a multitude of unities, as the abstracted ratio of any quantity to another quantity of the same kind, which we take for unity."

- Newton, 1728

Structure
Continuous quantities possess a particular structure that was first explicitly characterized by Hölder (1901) as a set of axioms that define such features as identities and relations between magnitudes. In science, quantitative structure is the subject of empirical investigation and cannot be assumed to exist a priori for any given property. The linear continuum represents the prototype of continuous quantitative structure as characterized by Hölder (1901) (translated in Michell & Ernst, 1996). A fundamental feature of any type of quantity is that the relationships of equality or inequality can in principle be stated in comparisons between particular magnitudes, unlike quality, which is marked by likeness, similarity and difference, diversity. Another fundamental feature is additivity. Additivity may involve concatenation, such as adding two lengths A and B to obtain a third A + B. Additivity is not, however, restricted to extensive quantities but may also entail relations between magnitudes that can be established through experiments that permit tests of hypothesized observable manifestations of the additive relations of magnitudes. Another feature is continuity, on which Michell (1999, p. 51) says of length, as a type of quantitative attribute, "what continuity means is that if any arbitrary length, a, is selected as a unit, then for every positive real number, r, there is a length b such that b = ra". A further generalization is given by the theory of conjoint measurement, independently developed by French economist Gérard Debreu (1960) and by the American mathematical psychologist R. Duncan Luce and statistician John Tukey (1964).

In mathematics
Magnitude (how much) and multitude (how many), the two principal types of quantities, are further divided as mathematical and physical. In formal terms, quantities—their ratios, proportions, order and formal relationships of equality and inequality—are studied by mathematics. The essential part of mathematical quantities consists of having a collection of variables, each assuming a set of values. These can be a set of a single quantity, referred to as a scalar when represented by real numbers, or have multiple quantities as do vectors and tensors, two kinds of geometric objects.

The mathematical usage of a quantity can then be varied and so is situationally dependent. Quantities can be used as being infinitesimal, arguments of a function, variables in an expression (independent or dependent), or probabilistic as in random and stochastic quantities. In mathematics, magnitudes and multitudes are also not only two distinct kinds of quantity but furthermore relatable to each other.

Number theory covers the topics of the discrete quantities as numbers: number systems with their kinds and relations. Geometry studies the issues of spatial magnitudes: straight lines, curved lines, surfaces and solids, all with their respective measurements and relationships.

A traditional Aristotelian realist philosophy of mathematics, stemming from Aristotle and remaining popular until the eighteenth century, held that mathematics is the "science of quantity". Quantity was considered to be divided into the discrete (studied by arithmetic) and the continuous (studied by geometry and later calculus). The theory fits reasonably well elementary or school mathematics but less well the abstract topological and algebraic structures of modern mathematics.

In science
Establishing quantitative structure and relationships between different quantities is the cornerstone of modern science, especially but not restricted to physical sciences. Physics is fundamentally a quantitative science; chemistry, biology and others are increasingly so. Their progress is chiefly achieved due to rendering the abstract qualities of material entities into physical quantities, by postulating that all material bodies marked by quantitative properties or physical dimensions are subject to some measurements and observations. Setting the units of measurement, physics covers such fundamental quantities as space (length, breadth, and depth) and time, mass and force, temperature, energy, and quanta.

A distinction has also been made between intensive quantity and extensive quantity as two types of quantitative property, state or relation. The magnitude of an intensive quantity does not depend on the size, or extent, of the object or system of which the quantity is a property, whereas magnitudes of an extensive quantity are additive for parts of an entity or subsystems. Thus, magnitude does depend on the extent of the entity or system in the case of extensive quantity. Examples of intensive quantities are density and pressure, while examples of extensive quantities are energy, volume, and mass.

In natural language
In human languages, including English, number is a syntactic category, along with person and gender. The quantity is expressed by identifiers, definite and indefinite, and quantifiers, definite and indefinite, as well as by three types of nouns: 1. count unit nouns or countables; 2. mass nouns, uncountables, referring to the indefinite, unidentified amounts; 3. nouns of multitude (collective nouns). The word ‘number’ belongs to a noun of multitude standing either for a single entity or for the individuals making the whole. An amount in general is expressed by a special class of words called identifiers, indefinite and definite and quantifiers, definite and indefinite. The amount may be expressed by: singular form and plural from, ordinal numbers before a count noun singular (first, second, third...), the demonstratives; definite and indefinite numbers and measurements (hundred/hundreds, million/millions), or cardinal numbers before count nouns. The set of language quantifiers covers "a few, a great number, many, several (for count names); a bit of, a little, less, a great deal (amount) of, much (for mass names); all, plenty of, a lot of, enough, more, most, some, any, both, each, either, neither, every, no". For the complex case of unidentified amounts, the parts and examples of a mass are indicated with respect to the following: a measure of a mass (two kilos of rice and twenty bottles of milk or ten pieces of paper); a piece or part of a mass (part, element, atom, item, article, drop); or a shape of a container (a basket, box, case, cup, bottle, vessel, jar).

Further examples
Some further examples of quantities are:

 * 1.76 litres (liters) of milk, a continuous quantity
 * 2πr metres, where r is the length of a radius of a circle expressed in metres (or meters), also a continuous quantity
 * one apple, two apples, three apples, where the number is an integer representing the count of a denumerable collection of objects (apples)
 * 500 people (also a type of count data)
 * a couple conventionally refers to two objects.
 * a few usually refers to an indefinite, but usually small number, greater than one.
 * quite a few also refers to an indefinite, but surprisingly (in relation to the context) large number.
 * several refers to an indefinite, but usually small, number – usually indefinitely greater than "a few".

title: Quantity


text:
Tantrix

Tantrix is a hexagonal tile-based abstract game invented by Mike McManaway from New Zealand. Each of the 56 different tiles in the set contains three lines, going from one edge of the tile to another. No two lines on a tile have the same colour. There are four colours in the set: red, yellow, blue, and green. No two tiles are identical, and each is individually numbered from 1 through 56.

Gameplay
In the multiplayer version of the game, each player chooses a colour, so there are between two and four players. Each draws one tile from the bag, and the person who draws the highest number goes first.

Each player then takes five more tiles from the bag, and places all six tiles face up in front of them. The first person plays one tile, usually with their colour on it. Play then rotates clockwise. After playing a tile, each player takes a replacement tile from the bag, so that they always have six in front of them. Tiles played must match the colour of the edges adjoining it.

When three tiles surround an empty space so that it is effectively half covered this is called a forced space. If the person whose turn it is has a tile that fills that space they must play it. The player repeats this process until there are no more forced spaces that they can fill, at which stage they make a free move, where they can play any tile as long as they don't breach the three restriction rules given below. Once they have had a free move, they must then fill any more forced spaces that they can. Thus one player's turn can consist of several moves.

The three restriction rules are: 1. You cannot create a forced space with the same colour leading into it three times.

2. You cannot create a four-sided forced space.

3. You cannot play along an edge that, when forced spaces are filled, will create a four-sided forced space.

Once there are no tiles left in the bag, the three restriction rules do not apply.

The aim of the game is to get the longest line or loop in your colour. Each tile in a line counts as one point, and in a loop is two points. Only the highest-scoring line or loop counts.

Online play
Although quiet and underpopulated compared to the standards of Yahoo! Games and the like, playing Tantrix online has gained a dedicated following with players from all over the world competing against each other or against computer robots. Players are rated out of 1000 points according to their wins and losses and taking into account of their opponents rank. The aim of top players is to get to 1000 points (which only three players have managed so far). The goal of a regular player is to reach the score of 950 which is difficult to reach. Once this score has been attained the player can gain Tournament Rankings (ELO) and eventually earn the title "Master". Masters can then play "master games" which have a different scoring system. Only a few players achieve master status, with a limit of 120 total imposed.

Serious players of Tantrix take part in a number of structured tournaments each year. Although the winners only play for bragging rights, and in the major tournaments a small trophy to keep for a year, these events are taken seriously, and are the ultimate challenge for tantricists.

The WORLD TANTRIX CHAMPIONSHIP begins every August, and takes nearly four months to complete. Only 47 competitors took place in the second WTC in 1998, but that number had grown to 200 by 2006. The tournament starts in a qualifying round, where the lower-ranked players compete for selection into the main draw (128-player knockout tournament).

There are three other "world-wide" tournaments held online each year:

 * The World Team Tantrix Championship (WTTC) involving teams of five from one country or region, first in held in 2002
 * The World Junior Tantrix Championship (WJTC) a world championship for players under 16, first held in 2002
 * The World Doubles Tantrix Championship (WDTC) first played in 2005

There are also three continental tournaments each year:

 * The European Championship (Euro) the major dedicated continental tournament, first run in 1999
 * The Pan-American Tantrix Championship (Pan-Am) first held in 1999
 * The Afro-Asian Championship (AsAf) the African Championship was first held in 1999 once, then re-established in 2004, incorporating Asian competitors at the same time

And many national online tournaments:
 * The New Zealand Tantrix Championship first held in 2000
 * The Australian Tantrix Championship  first held in 2001
 * The Hungarian Tantrix Championship first held in 2002
 * The Hungarian Masters Tournament first held in 2002
 * The Swedish Tantrix Championship  first held in 2003
 * The French Tantrix Championship  first held in 2007
 * The Dutch Tantrix Championship first held in 2008
 * The German Tantrix Championship first held in 2008
 * The Spanish Tantrix Championship first held in 2008
 * The Polish Tantrix Championship first held in 2008
 * The Norwegian Tantrix Championship first held in 2009
 * The Czech Tantrix Championship first held in 2010

Face-to-face play
In addition to these online tournaments, offline tournaments (referred to as 'Table Opens') are growing in popularity. The first Table tournament was the 2002 British Open and was mostly a local affair with 13 of the 14 entrants from Britain. As the player base widened, players started traveling more. Table Opens in Europe soon became the most popular because of the larger playing population. By 2009 there was enough demand to hold a World Tantrix Open.

World Opens
 * 2014 World Tantrix Table Open (Bischoffen, Germany)
 * 2013 World Tantrix Table Open (Trosa, Sweden)
 * 2011 World Tantrix Table Open (Almere, Netherlands)
 * 2010 World Tantrix Table Open (Budapest, Hungary)
 * 2009 World Tantrix Table Open (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)

National Opens
 * The British Table Open, first held in 2002
 * The New Zealand Table Open, first held in 2004
 * The Swedish Table Open, first held in 2004
 * The German Table Open, first held in 2005
 * The French Table Open, first held in 2005
 * The Spanish Table Open, first held in 2005
 * The Hungarian Table Open, first held in 2005
 * The Dutch Table Open, first held in 2006
 * The Polish Table Open, first held in 2007
 * The Australian Table Open, first held in 2007
 * The Israeli Table Open, first held in 2007

History
The first version of Tantrix was created by Mike McManaway in 1988 and was called Mind Game. It used 56 cardboard pieces with only two coloured lines, red and black. Owning a games shop, McManaway sold the game directly and following customer feedback continued to change the rules and design. In 1991, the tiles were changed to plastic and two more colours were added, allowing for four-player games.

The tiles were (and still are) hand-painted, featuring different colours to those now used, even pink. The early form of the game featured eight "triple intersections", but these were found to slow the game play as they only fitted into three different forced spaces (compared to six for all other tiles). So in 1993, the triple intersections were removed from the game.

Along with the multiplayer version of the game, McManaway created smaller solitaire puzzles using 10 or 12 tiles that required the player to put the tiles together to create loops of certain colours.

McManaway has also created many solitaire puzzles, including 3-D versions, match only versions (requiring players to colour match tiles within a confined space) and loop and line versions (requiring players to use all the nominated tiles to complete a loop or line in a specific colour). However many of the editions are no longer available.

The main versions sold in most countries are:

Tantrix got its first big contract in 1994 when Air France bought the game to give to children on its flights. In 2003 Tantrix was named Toy of the Year in Hungary and won the British National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries gold award in the games category.
 * A solo version, consisting of 10 tiles, where players attempt puzzles that take between 30 seconds and 45 minutes.
 * A set of 14 tiles designed to play Tantrix Solitaire combined with expanded Tantrix Discovery puzzles.
 * Tantrix meets sudoku. A number of pre-placed clues controls the difficulty of each puzzle.
 * A bag with all 56 Tantrix tiles, with which players can play all editions of Tantrix.

title: Tantrix


text:
Coupe de la Ligue

The Coupe de la Ligue, known outside France as the French League Cup, was a knockout cup competition in French football organized by the Ligue de Football Professionnel. The tournament was established in 1993 and, unlike the Coupe de France, was only open to professional clubs in France which play in country's top three football divisions, though the third is not fully professional.

The most successful team in the competition was Paris Saint-Germain with nine wins, including the last edition in 2019–20. The LFP voted to suspend the competition indefinitely to "reduce the season schedule".

Precursors
Another competition named Coupe de la Ligue existed from 1963 to 1965. In 1982, a Coupe d'Eté (Summer cup) was held before the start of the French league season; the cup was won by Laval. This tournament continued under the name of Coupe de la Ligue, until 1994, before the beginning of the French season. (The 1991 edition was open only for Division 2 Teams).

History
The tournament in its last format started in 1994 and was initiated by the professional teams because of their displeasure with the Coupe de France, thanks to its built-in home advantage for teams playing in the lower leagues. Entrance to the UEFA Cup, now called the UEFA Europa League, was offered to the winning team. Its first winner was Paris Saint-Germain, after their 2–0 victory over Bastia. The first final decided by a penalty shootout was in 1996 when Metz beat Lyon. The first three finals were held at Parc des Princes; from 1998 edition until 2015, the finals have been held at the Stade de France. Strasbourg and Paris Saint-Germain won the competition at both stadiums. Gueugnon became the first team below the top division of France to win the cup after beating Paris Saint-Germain in the 2000 final. Overall, there were 14 winners of the competition since its inception.

For over 20 years from its inception, finals of the tournament were only held in the Paris area: the first three were at the Parc des Princes and the rest at the Stade de France. This changed in September 2016 when the LFP announced that the next three finals would be held in Lyon, Bordeaux and Lille respectively. The LFP suspended the competition indefinitely after the 2019–20 season, to reduce fixture congestion. In the last final in 2020, Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon drew 0–0 and the former won 6–5 on penalties.

Records

 * Most tournament wins (team): 9, Paris Saint-Germain
 * Most final appearances (team): 10, Paris Saint-Germain
 * Most tournament wins (player): 6, Edinson Cavani, Marquinhos, Thiago Silva and Marco Verratti (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020)
 * Most tournament wins (manager): 4, Didier Deschamps (2003, 2010, 2011 and 2012) and Laurent Blanc (2009, 2014, 2015 and 2016)
 * All-time top goalscorer (player): Edinson Cavani and Pauleta, 15 goals each
 * Most goals scored in a season (player): 7, Stéphane Guivarc'h (1997–98)
 * Most goals scored in the final (player): 8, Edinson Cavani (2 in 2014, 2 in 2015, 2 in 2017, 2 in 2018)

title: Coupe de la Ligue


text:
Sevillanas

Sevillanas are a type of folk music and dance of Sevilla and its region. They were derived from the Seguidilla, an old Castilian folk music and dance genre. In the nineteenth century they were influenced by Flamenco. They have a relatively limited musical pattern but are rich in lyrics based on country life, virgins, country towns, neighborhoods, pilgrimage, and love themes.

Sevillanas can be heard mainly in fairs and festivals, including the famous Seville Fair (Feria de abril de Sevilla). Among local groups that perform it are the Los Romeros de la Puebla, Los Amigos de Gines, Las Corraleras de Lebrija, Cantores de Hispalis, and Los del Río.

Sevillanas Rocieras are a religiously oriented genre of the Sevillana, with a particular emphasis on the Virgin of El Rocío. They are sung in numerous religious and cultural events in the South of the country.

The dance

Sevillanas are danced by couples of all ages and sexes during celebrations (fiestas or ferias), often by whole families and towns. Sevillana choreography is characterized by stability and functionality, since it is a festival dance. This is why those intending to dance flamenco usually start by learning sevillanas; they are easier to master and there are more occasions for practice and training.

The rhythm of Sevillanas can be interpreted as 3/4, although it is generally 6/8. Each sevillana is composed of four or sometimes seven parts, with each part divided into three coplas and with each copla made up of six movements. During festivals and shows, it is often the Sevillana dancing visitors to Andalusia mistakenly take as Flamenco, as it is a vivid style, full of turns.

title: Sevillanas


text:
Category:Discworld books

All books in Discworld

title: Category:Discworld books


text:
Émile de Laveleye

Émile Louis Victor de Laveleye (5 April 1822 – 3 January 1892) was a Belgian economist. He was one of the co-founders of the Institut de Droit International in 1873.

Biography
De Lavaleye was born in Bruges, and educated there and at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, a celebrated establishment in the hands of the Oratorians.

He continued his studies at the Catholic University of Louvain and afterwards at Ghent, where he came under the influence of François Huet the philosopher and Christian Socialist. In 1844 he won a prize with an essay on the language and literature of Provence. In 1847, he published L'Histoire des rois francs, and in 1861 a French version of the Nibelungenlied, but though he never lost his interest in literature and history, his most important work was in the domain of economics.

He was one of a group of young lawyers doctors and critics, all old pupils of Huet, who met once a week to discuss social and economic questions and thus was led to publish his views on these subjects. In 1859 some articles by him in the Revue des deux mondes laid the foundation of his reputation as an economist. In 1864 he was elected to the chair of political economy at the state University of Liège. Here he wrote his most important works:
 * La Russie et l'Autriche depuis Sadowa, 1870.
 * Essai sur les Formes de Gouvernement dans les Sociétés Modernes, 1872.
 * Des Causes Actuelles de Guerre en Europe et de l'Arbitrage, 1874.
 * De la Proprieté et de ses Formes Primitives, 1874 (dedicated to the memories of John Stuart Mill and François Huet)

Death and legacy
He died at the Doyon Castle (in present-day Havelange), near Liège on 3 January 1892.

Laveleye's activity included the whole realm of political science, political economy, monetary questions, international law, foreign and Belgian politics, questions of education, religion and morality, travel and literature. He had the art of popularizing even the most technical subjects, owing to the clearness of his view and his firm grasp of the matter in hand. He was especially attracted to England, where he thought he saw many of his ideals of social, political and religious progress realized. He was a frequent contributor to the English newspapers and leading reviews. The most widely circulated of his works was a pamphlet on Le Parti clérical en Belgique, of which 2,000,000 copies had been circulated in ten languages by the beginning of the 20th century.

Works in English translation

 * Protestantism and Catholicism in their Bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations. Toronto: Belford Bros., 1876.
 * The New Tendencies of Political Economy. New York: The Banker's Magazine and Statistical Register, 1879.
 * International Bimetallism and the Battle of the Standard. London: P.S. King, 1881.
 * Regulated Vice in Relation to Morality. London: K. Paul, Trench, 1884.
 * The Elements of Political Economy. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1886.
 * Letters from Italy. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1886.
 * The Socialism of Today. London: Field and Tuer, 1886.
 * Luxury. London: George Allen & Company, 1920.
 * Letters from Italy. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1886.
 * The Socialism of Today. London: Field and Tuer, 1886.
 * Luxury. London: George Allen & Company, 1920.
 * Luxury. London: George Allen & Company, 1920.

Selected articles

 * "Land System of Belgium and Holland." In: Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries. London: Macmillan & Co., 1870.
 * "The Future of France," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XIV, 1870.
 * "On the Causes of War, and the Means of Reducing their Number." In: Cobden Club Essays. London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1872.
 * "The Clerical Party in Belgium," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XVIII, 1872.
 * "Causes of War in the Existing European Situation," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XIX, 1873.
 * "The Provincial and Communal Institutions of Belgium and Holland." In: Local Government and Taxation. London: Cassell Petter & Galpin, 1875.
 * "Commonplace Fallacies Concerning Money," Part II, The Contemporary Review, Vol. XL, July/December 1881.
 * "The Progress of Socialism," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLIII, January/June 1883.
 * "The Congo Neutralized," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLIII, January/June 1883.
 * "The Prospects of the Republic in France," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLIV, December 1883.
 * "Würzburg and Vienna," Part II, The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLVI, November/December 1884.
 * "A Criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLVII, January/June 1885.
 * "Pessimism on the Stage," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLVIII, July/December 1885.
 * "The Economic Crisis and its Causes," The Contemporary Review, Vol. XLIX, January/June 1886.
 * "Civil Government and the Papacy," The Forum, Vol. V, April 1888.
 * "The Future of Religion," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LIV, July/December 1888.
 * "Perils of Democracy," The Forum, Vol. VII, 1889.
 * "Two New Utopias," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LVII, January/June 1890.
 * "Communism," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LVII, January/June 1890.
 * "The Division of Africa," The Forum, Vol. X, 1891.
 * "The Foreign Policy of Italy," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LXI, February 1892.
 * "The Foreign Policy of Italy," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LXI, February 1892.

title: Émile de Laveleye


text:
Uranius

Uranius is the name of two possible Roman usurpers of the third century AD.

The first Uranius is mentioned only by Zosimus, and was briefly active during the latter part of the reign of Alexander Severus. He was chosen by dissatisfied soldiers along the Danube and from a lowly background. There is little confirmatory evidence of his existence.

A second, and better attested usurper was Lucius Julius Aurelius Sulpicius Severus Uranius Antoninus, who appears to have been active in Syria in the early 250s AD. Coins minted in Emesa have been found bearing his name, and invoking the local deity Sol Invictus. Some scholars have connected him to an Emesan priest active in this period, known as Sampsiceramus.

It is not clear whether the coins that were struck in Syria belong to the same man (or men) spoken about in the texts. If the later date is correct Uranius might have helped defend the Roman Empire against Shapur I, the Sassanid king of Persia.

What happened to him after his claim on the throne is not known.

title: Uranius


text:
Category:Discworld

The fictional universe of Discworld, as portrayed in the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett.

title: Category:Discworld


text: Category:Discworld peoples

title: Category:Discworld peoples


text:
Category:Discworld games

This category is for the licensed Discworld games, including computer games, board games, and the role playing game.

title: Category:Discworld games


text:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus) is a book written by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. It began as a series of essays, the original German text was composed in 1904 and '05, and was translated into English for the first time by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in 1930. It is considered a founding text in economic sociology and a milestone contribution to sociological thought in general.

In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern capitalism. In his book, apart from Calvinists, Weber also discusses Lutherans (especially Pietists, but also notes differences between traditional Lutherans and Calvinists), Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, and Moravians (specifically referring to the Herrnhut-based community under Count von Zinzendorf's spiritual lead).

In 1998, the International Sociological Association listed this work as the fourth most important sociological book of the 20th century, after Weber's Economy and Society, Mills' The Sociological Imagination, and Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure. It is the eighth most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.

Basic concepts
Although not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics (The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism 1915, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism 1916, and Ancient Judaism 1917), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. The 'spirit of capitalism' does not refer to the spirit in the metaphysical sense but rather a set of values, the spirit of hard work and progress.

Religious devotion, Weber argues, is usually accompanied by a rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions. To illustrate his theory, Weber quotes the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin:

"Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. [...] Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding-sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds."

Weber notes that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement laden with moral language. Indeed, Franklin claims that God revealed the usefulness of virtue to him.

The Reformation profoundly affected the view of work, dignifying even the most mundane professions as adding to the common good and thus blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling (German: Ruf). A common illustration is that of a cobbler, hunched over his work, who devotes his entire effort to the praise of God.

To emphasize the work ethic in Protestantism relative to Catholics, he notes a common problem that industrialists face when employing precapitalist laborers: Agricultural entrepreneurs will try to encourage time spent harvesting by offering a higher wage, with the expectation that laborers will see time spent working as more valuable and so engage it longer. However, in precapitalist societies this often results in laborers spending less time harvesting. Laborers judge that they can earn the same, while spending less time working and having more leisure. He also notes that societies having more Protestants are those that have a more developed capitalist economy.

It is particularly advantageous in technical occupations for workers to be extremely devoted to their craft. To view the craft as an end in itself, or as a "calling" would serve this need well. This attitude is well-noted in certain classes which have endured religious education, especially of a Pietist background.

He defines the spirit of capitalism as the ideas and esprit that favour the rational pursuit of economic gain: "We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression 'spirit of capitalism' for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling [berufsmäßig], strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin."

Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture if one considers it as the attitude of individuals, but that such individuals – heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them – could not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism). He further noted that the spirit of capitalism could be divorced from religion, and that those passionate capitalists of his era were either passionate against the Church or at least indifferent to it. Desire for profit with minimum effort and seeing work as a burden to be avoided, and doing no more than what was enough for modest life, were common attitudes. As he wrote in his essays:

 * "In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of the capitalism… could come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to the whole groups of man."

After defining the "spirit of capitalism," Weber argues that there are many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation. Many others like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry Thomas Buckle, John Keats have noted the affinity between Protestantism and the development of commercialism.

Weber shows that certain branches of Protestantism had supported worldly activities dedicated to economic gain, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance. This recognition was not a goal in itself; rather they were a byproduct of other doctrines of faith that encouraged planning, hard work and self-denial in the pursuit of worldly riches.

Origins of the Protestant work ethic
Weber traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Reformation, though he acknowledged some respect for secular everyday labor as early as the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church assured salvation to individuals who accepted the church's sacraments and submitted to the clerical authority. However, the Reformation had effectively removed such assurances. From a psychological viewpoint, the average person had difficulty adjusting to this new worldview, and only the most devout believers or "religious geniuses" within Protestantism, such as Martin Luther, were able to make this adjustment, according to Weber.

In the absence of such assurances from religious authority, Weber argued that Protestants began to look for other "signs" that they were saved. Calvin and his followers taught a doctrine of double predestination, in which from the beginning God chose some people for salvation and others for damnation. The inability to influence one's own salvation presented a very difficult problem for Calvin's followers, who, in Weber's view, considered it an absolute duty to believe that one was chosen for salvation and to dispel any doubt about that: lack of self-confidence was evidence of insufficient faith and a sign of damnation. So, self-confidence took the place of priestly assurance of God's grace.

Worldly success became one measure of that self-confidence. Luther made an early endorsement of Europe's emerging divisions. Weber identifies the applicability of Luther's conclusions, noting that a "vocation" from God was no longer limited to the clergy or church, but applied to any occupation or trade. Weber had always detested Lutheranism for the servility it inspired toward the bureaucratic state. When he discussed it in the Protestant Ethic, he used Lutheranism as the chief example of the unio mystica that contrasted sharply with the ascetic posture. Later he would associate "Luther, the symbolic exponent of bureaucratic despotism, with the ascetic hostility to Eros — an example of Weber's sporadic tendency to link together bureaucratic and ascetic modes of life and to oppose both from mystical and aristocratic perspectives."

However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity. The trend was carried further still in Pietism. The Baptists diluted the concept of the calling relative to Calvinists, but other aspects made its congregants fertile soil for the development of capitalism—namely, a lack of paralyzing ascetism, the refusal to accept state office and thereby develop politically, and the doctrine of control by conscience which caused rigorous honesty.

What Weber argued, in simple terms:

 * According to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation (German: Beruf) with as much zeal as possible. A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money.
 * The new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant sects) effectively forbade wastefully hard earned money and identified the purchase of luxuries as a sin. Donations to an individual's church or congregation were limited due to the rejection by certain Protestant sects of icons. Finally, donation of money to the poor or to charity was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God.

The manner in which this dilemma was resolved, Weber argued, was the investment of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent capitalism.

Protestant work ethic in Weber's time
By the time Weber wrote his essay, he believed that the religious underpinnings of the Protestant ethic had largely gone from society. He cited the writings of Benjamin Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work and thrift, but were mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass production partly to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were disdained could individuals accept the uniform products, such as clothes and furniture, that industrialization offered.

In his conclusion to the book, Weber lamented that the loss of religious underpinning to capitalism's spirit has led to a kind of involuntary servitude to mechanized industry.

"The Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force.  Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the 'saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage. (Page 181, 1953 Scribner's edition.)"

Weber maintained that while Puritan religious ideas had significantly impacted the development of economic systems in Europe and United States, there were other factors in play, as well. They included a closer relationship between mathematics and observation, the enhanced value of scholarship, rational systematization of government administration, and an increase in entrepreneurship ventures. In the end, the study of Protestant ethic, according to Weber, investigated a part of the detachment from magic, that that could be seen as a unique characteristic of Western culture.

Conclusions
In the final endnotes Weber states that he abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area, which is laying groundwork for comparative analysis of religion and society. Weber moved beyond Protestantism with his research but would continue research into sociology of religion within his later works (the study of Judaism and the religions of China and India).

This book is also Weber's first brush with the concept of rationalization. His idea of modern capitalism as growing out of the religious pursuit of wealth meant a change to a rational means of existence, wealth. That is to say, at some point the Calvinist rationale informing the "spirit" of capitalism became unreliant on the underlying religious movement behind it, leaving only rational capitalism. In essence then, Weber's "Spirit of Capitalism" is effectively and more broadly a Spirit of Rationalization.

Reception
The essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber's criticism of Karl Marx and his theories. While Marx's historical materialism held that all human institutions – including religion – were based on economic foundations, many have seen The Protestant Ethic as turning this theory on its head by implying that a religious movement fostered capitalism, not the other way around.

Other scholars have taken a more nuanced view of Weber's argument. Weber states in the closing of this essay, "it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and history. Each is equally possible, but each if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth." Weber's argument can be understood as an attempt to deepen the understanding of the cultural origins of capitalism, which does not exclude the historical materialist origins described by Marx: modern capitalism emerged from an elective affinity of 'material' and 'ideal' factors.

Table of contents
Table of contents from the 1958 Scribner's edition, with section titles added by Talcott Parsons:

'''Part 1. The Problem'''

 * I. Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification

 * II. The Spirit of Capitalism

 * III. Luther's Conception of the Calling. Task of the Investigation.

'''Part 2. The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of Protestantism.'''

 * IV. The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism

 * A. Calvinism

 * Predestination; Elimination of Magic; Rationalization of the World; Certainty of Salvation; Lutheranism vs. Calvinism; Catholicism vs. Calvinism; Monasticism vs. Puritanism; Methodical Ethic; Idea of Proof.

 * B. Pietism

 * Emotionalism; Spener; Francke; Zinzendorf; German Pietism.

 * C. Methodism

 * D. The Baptism Sects

 * Baptist and Quaker; Sect Principle; Inner Worldly Asceticism; Transformation of the World.

 * V. Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

 * Richard Baxter; Meaning of Work; Justification of Profit; Jewish vs. Puritan Capitalism; Puritanism and Culture; Saving and Capital; Paradox of Asceticism and Rich; Serving Both Worlds; Citizenry Capitalistic Ethic; Iron Cage of Capitalism.

Methodology
Weber's causal claim that the Protestant ethic led to capitalism has been criticized for endogeneity problems and case selection problems. Rather than Protestantism leading to capitalism, it may be the case that individuals and communities who were more prone to capitalism were also more likely to adopt Protestantism.

Economic criticism
The economist and historian Henryk Grossman criticises Weber's analysis on two fronts. Firstly, Grossman refers to Karl Marx's work to show that the stringent legal measures that were taken against poverty and vagabondage were a reaction to the massive population shifts caused by the enclosure of the commons, which evicted many peasants from the common land on which they had lived. Secondly, Grossman's own work shows how this "bloody legislation" against evicted peasants was implemented across Europe, especially in France. Grossman asserts that this legislation physically forced people from serfdom into wage-labor. This history is unrelated to Protestantism. Thus, capitalism came about largely by force, and not by any vocational training regarding an inner-worldliness of Protestantism. It remains possible that the "Protestant work ethic" socially legitimized or otherwise reinforced the legal measures that Grossman details, within a larger cultural context.

In a 2015 study, Davide Cantoni tested Weber's Protestant hypothesis on German cities over the period 1300–1900, finding no effects of Protestantism on economic growth.

Historian Laurence R. Iannaccone has written that "Ironically, the most noteworthy feature of the Protestant Ethic thesis is its absence of empirical support", citing the work of Swedish economic historian Kurt Samuelsson that "economic progress was uncorrelated with religion, or was temporally incompatible with Weber's thesis, or actually reversed the pattern claimed by Weber."

Other recent scholarship has found some valid Protestant ethic effects both in historical and contemporary development patterns. Dudley and Blum, using city growth as a proxy for wages growth, write:

"Evidence of falling wages in Catholic cities and rising wages in Protestant cities between 1500 and 1750, during the spread of literacy in the vernacular, is inconsistent with most theoretical models of economic growth. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber suggested an alternative explanation based on culture. Here, a theoretical model confirms that a small change in the subjective cost of cooperating with strangers can generate a profound transformation in trading networks. … A re-examination of Weber’s Protestant Ethic indicates that what was important for long-term economic growth was not a greater propensity to save and work of individual Protestants but rather the manner in which a group of Protestants interacted compared with a group of Catholics."

- Ulrich Blum, Leonard Dudley

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in their book Why Nations Fail reject the relationship between economic progress and Protestantism writing: "What about Max Weber’s Protestant ethic? Though it may be true that predominantly Protestant countries, such as the Netherlands and England, were the first economic successes of the modern era, there is little relationship between religion and economic success. France, a predominantly Catholic country, quickly mimicked the economic performance of the Dutch and English in the nineteenth century, and Italy is as prosperous as any of these nations today. Looking farther east, you’ll see that none of the economic successes of East Asia have anything to do with any form of Christian religion, so there is not much support for a special relationship between Protestantism and economic success there, either."

Revisionist criticism
Hector Menteith Robertson, in his book Aspects of Economic Individualism (1933), argued against the historical and religious claims of Weber. Robertson pointed out that capitalism began to flourish not in Britain, but in 14th-century Italy, so the rise of capitalism cannot be attributed to Adam Smith, the Protestant Reformation, etc. Robertson goes further, and states that what happened in Britain was rather a retrogression from what was achieved in Italy centuries earlier.

Robertson shows that Adam Smith and David Ricardo did not found economic science de novo. In fact, liberal economic theory was developed by French and Italian Catholics, who were influenced by the Scholastics. The British economic thought was rather a step backwards since it espoused the labor theory of value, which had already been proved incorrect by the School of Salamanca.

Other criticism
It has recently been suggested that Protestantism has indeed influenced positively the capitalist development of respective social systems not so much through the "Protestant ethics" but rather through the promotion of literacy. Sascha Becker and Ludger Wossmann of the University of Munich showed that literacy levels differing in religious areas can sufficiently explain the economic gaps cited by Weber. The results were supported even under a concentric diffusion model of Protestantism using distance from Wittenberg as a model.

Weber's conclusion has also been criticized for ignoring the ethnic dimensions. Weber focused on religion, but ignored the fact that Germany contained a large Polish minority (due to the partitions of Poland); and Poles were primarily Catholic and Germans, Protestant. As such, scholars have suggested that what Weber observed was in fact "anti-Polish discrimination" visible in the different levels of income, savings and literacy between Germans and Poles.

The noted French historian Fernand Braudel, considered one of the greatest of the modern historians, vigorously criticized Weber's theory, noting its lack of foundation and veracity, stating: "All historians have opposed this tenuous theory, although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had so long and so brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or in business management. Amsterdam copied Venice, as London would subsequently copy Amsterdam, and as New York would one day copy London."

Support
In 1958, American sociologist Gerhard Lenski conducted an empirical inquiry into "religion's impact on politics, economics, and family life" in the Detroit, Mich., area. It revealed, among other insights, that there were significant differences between Catholics on the one hand and (white) Protestants and Jews on the other hand with respect to economics and the sciences. Lenski's data supported basic hypotheses of Weber's work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to Lenski, "the contribution of Protestantism to material progress have been largely unintended by-products of certain distinctive Protestant traits. This was a central point in Weber's theory." Lenski noted that more than a hundred years prior to Weber, John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist church, had observed that "diligence and frugality" made Methodists wealthy. "In an early era, Protestant asceticism and dedication to work, as noted both by Wesley and Weber, seem to have been important patterns of action contributing to economic progress. Both facilitated the accumulation of capital, so critically important to the economic growth and development of nations."

German theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf notes: "Sociologists of religion like Peter L. Berger and David Martin have interpreted the Protestant revolution in Latin America as implicit support of basic elements of Weber's thesis. [...] At any rate, many pious persons there interpret their transition from the Roman Catholic church to Protestant Pentecostal congregations in terms of a moral idea that promises long-term economic gains through strong innerworldly asceticism. The strict ascetic self-discipline that has been successfully institutionalized in the Pentecostal congregations, the readiness to work more and with greater effort and to take less leisurely attitudes lead many Pentecostal Christians to believe that their new faith in God is supported by their economic successes."

In a journal article published in 2019, scholar of religion Benjamin Kirby critiques Peter L. Berger's analysis for its over-emphasis on the influence of Holiness-oriented Pentecostal churches, neglecting the growing influence of neo-Pentecostal churches across the globe. Kirby argues that it is difficult to draw parallels between contemporary neo-Pentecostals and Weber's ascetic Protestants, specifically because the former group of practitioners, many of whom espouse Prosperity theologies, often do not exhibit the same commitment to "sober economic virtue" and "rational bourgeois economic life" as Weber's Calvinistic Puritans. Nevertheless, Kirby stresses that Weber's text remains important for understanding enduring affinities between Christianity and capitalism. Kirby posits a "new elective affinity" between contemporary Pentecostalism and neoliberal capitalism, suggesting that neo-Pentecostal churches may act as vehicles for embedding neoliberal economic processes, for instance by encouraging practitioners to become entrepreneurial, responsibilised citizens.