text:
Alldays & Onions

Alldays & Onions was an English engineering business and an early automobile manufacturer based at Great Western Works and Matchless Works, Small Heath, Birmingham. It manufactured cars from 1898 to 1918. The cars were sold under the Alldays & Onions name. Alldays also built an early British built tractor, the Alldays General Purpose Tractor. After the First World War the cars were sold under the name Enfield Alldays. Car production seems to have ceased in the 1920s but the manufacture of many other items continued. The company became part of the Mitchell Cotts Group.

History
Engineering businesses: Onions (formed by John Onions in 1650) and William Allday & Co. (formed by William Allday in 1720) joined in 1889 under the ownership of Alldays & Onions Pneumatic Engineering Company Limited. They made engineering and blacksmithing equipment. Like many such companies at the time they turned to bicycle manufacture and sold a range under the Alldays name. They also started making motorcycles in 1903 under the Alldays-Matchless name; these had no connection with the London-based Matchless company, and in 1915 presumably following representations from them, the name was changed to Allon. Manufacture of these continued until 1927.

Alldays and Onions produced its first car in 1898. The Traveller, a quadricycle made in private and commercial forms, was steered by a wheel. It had an unsprung rear end, power generated by a 4 hp De Dion single-cylinder motor. However, series production did not start until 1903/4 with the 7 hp model. Larger commercial vehicles of up to 5 tons were also made in the years preceding the first World War and saw service during the conflict. Alldays hit commercial success with the 1.6-litre, vertical-twin side-valve 10/12, which was made from 1905 to 1913. It was popular with commercial drivers and did well in period formula events and hill-climbs. A 16 hp 4-cylinder joined the lineup in 1906, and in 1908, the Enfield Autocar Co. was acquired. Shortly afterward, the range was rationalized, with most models being sold under both brand-names. The Alldays contribution to the equation was the well-established twin- and four-cylinders that put out 14 and 20 hp, always shaft-driven. A 30/35 hp six-cylinder was listed from 1911 to 1914, compressed-air starters being optional in 1911. In 1913, the 990 cc V-twin Midget cyclecar was introduced, featuring air cooling and shaft drive, selling at £138.10s. (About £ today). An 1100 cc 4-cylinder version with a bullnose radiator appeared in 1914, popular at the price of £175. (About £ today). Pair-cast side-valve four-cylinders rated at 12/14, 16/20, and 25/30 hp filled out the immediate pre-war offerings. Alldays & Onions had merged in 1908 with the short lived Enfield Autocar Company which had been formed to take over the car making interests of the Enfield Cycle Company. They produced cars called Enfield-Allday until 1925.

Alldays and Onions also manufactured railway inspection cars for the Great Eastern and London, Brighton and South Coast Railways. At least one of these found its way to Australia for use on the Wolgan Valley Railway. Another was built in 1906 for the extensive three foot gauge system of the County Donegal Railways in Ireland. It later went into passenger service and became their Railcar Number 1. Although small, its success led to larger vehicles being built and contributed to the introduction of internal combustion railcars and multiple units across Ireland. It is preserved at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

Product range
On flotation as a public company in 1916 the following products were manufactured: motor lorries, cars and vans, cycles and motor cycles, complete outfits for foundries, engineers' and railway workshops, pneumatic power hammers, drop and lifting stamps, oil, gas and fuel furnaces, hardening shop equipment, Roots blowers, blacksmiths' shops, exhaust and blowing fans, smiths' hearths, portable forges, anvils and vises, cranes, pulley blocks, bellows, etc.

Tractor Models

 * The Alldays General Purpose Tractor - only a couple of examples survive in the UK of this early internal-combustion-engined model. The tractor had advanced features such as sprung axles, enclosed engine and a basic canopy for the operator.

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

title: Alldays & Onions


text:
Lee Adams

Lee Richard Adams (born August 14, 1924) is an American lyricist best known for his musical theatre collaboration with Charles Strouse.

Biography
Born in Mansfield, Ohio, Adams is the son of Dr. Leopold Adams, originally of Stamford, Connecticut, and Florence Ellis (originally Elishack) Adams, originally of Racine, Wisconsin. His family is Jewish. He is a graduate of Mansfield Senior High School. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio State University and a Master's from Columbia University. While attending Ohio State University he was a brother of the Nu chapter of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. He worked as a journalist for newspaper and magazines. He met Charles Strouse in 1949, and they initially wrote for summer-time revues.

Adams won Tony Awards in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie, the first Broadway musical he wrote with Strouse, and in 1970 for Applause and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965 for Golden Boy. In addition, he wrote the lyrics for All American, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, Bring Back Birdie, and A Broadway Musical, and the book and lyrics for Ain't Broadway Grand. Additionally, Strouse and Adams co-wrote "Those Were the Days", the opening theme to the TV situation comedy All in the Family. Adams was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

Adams and his wife, Dr. Kelly Wood Adams, have lived in Briarcliff Manor, New York since 2007. He has two daughters and three grandchildren.

Nonmusical writing
In addition to his work with lyrics, Adams "had a lifelong fascination with words," which led to his being an editor for the Sunday newspaper magazine supplement This Week and a member of the staff of Pageant magazine.

Works

 * ''A Pound in Your Pocket (1958)
 * Bye Bye Birdie (1960)
 * All American (1962)
 * Golden Boy (1964)
 * It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman (1966)
 * Applause (1970)
 * I and Albert (1972)
 * Bring Back Birdie (1980)
 * A Broadway Musical (1982), contributed the song Dancing
 * Ain't Broadway Grand! (1993)

title: Lee Adams


text:
Category:Embedded systems

This category includes articles about all aspects of embedded systems: various systems, constituent components, uses, development tools, etc. For classes of software/devices, the category, if existent, or the relevant general article, is preferably included instead of each actual item.

title: Category:Embedded systems


text:
Allen (1913 Philadelphia automobile)

The Allen was a short-lived American automobile manufactured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1913 to 1914.

The early models featured a two-cylinder engine, while later ones had a water-cooled four-cylinder version. These models also had a friction transmission and shaft drive, a 9 ft wheelbase, and a 3 ft track, costing $450.

title: Allen (1913 Philadelphia automobile)


text:
Ingo Friedrich

Ingo Friedrich (born 24 January 1942 in Kutno-Wartheland) is a former German (Bavarian) Member of the European Parliament. He was elected on the CSU ticket and sits with the EPP-ED Group. Friedrich holds a University degree in Economics. He was a member of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district council (1972–1996) and was the head of the CSU delegation to the European Parliament between 1992 and 1999. He has been awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit, and the Federal Cross of Merit, first class.

From July 2004 to January 2007 Friedrich was one of the 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament. From October 2002, he holds the position of Treasurer of the European People's Party (EPP). On 16 January 2007 he was elected one of the 6 Quaestors of the European Parliament. Since September 2009 he has been President of the European Economic Senate. On 20 February 2013 Friedrich became Honorary Member of SME Europe, the pro-business organization within the European People's Party, which aims at improving the situation of small and medium-sized enterprises all across Europe.

title: Ingo Friedrich


text:
Stephen Flaherty

Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards (with Lynn Ahrens) for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.

Biography
Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying piano at the age of seven. When he was twelve, he knew he wanted to write musicals and by age fourteen he had already composed his first musical score. He attended South Hills Catholic High School in Pittsburgh and later studied musical composition and piano at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1982. with a B.M. in Musical Composition. He did additional graduate studies in Musical Theater at New York University.

Career
As a college student, Flaherty played ragtime piano in a dance band. This early job would serve Flaherty well later in life when he had the opportunity to compose the score for the Broadway musical Ragtime.

He moved to New York City in 1982 and joined the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, founded by music director Lehman Engel, where he met Lynn Ahrens, who was to become his longtime collaborator. He also studied Musical Theater in the graduate program at New York University during this time, where his teachers included Richard Maltby, Jr. and Arthur Laurents, among others. The first Ahrens and Flaherty collaboration that was produced was a one-act children's show, The Emperor's New Clothes, for TheatreWorks USA in 1985. Their next produced musical was Lucky Stiff, produced Off-Broadway in 1988 at Playwrights Horizons.

Their first Broadway musical was Once on This Island, in 1990, which transferred from Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons. The musical was nominated for 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score. The London production of the show won the Olivier Award (London's Tony) for Best Musical in 1995. The show was later revived on Broadway in an immersive production at Circle in the Square in December 2017, where it was again nominated for 8 Tony Awards, winning for Best Revival of a Musical. The cast recording of the revival was nominated for the Grammy in 2019. It was Flaherty's first Grammy nomination as a producer.

In 1992, Flaherty and Ahrens were signed by Disney to write the animated musical Song of the Sea, a coming of age story about a humpback whale. Though the film was never produced, several key development executives on the project would play a part in Flaherty and Ahrens' later film musical, Anastasia.

Also in 1992, Flaherty and Ahrens wrote the musical My Favorite Year, based on the film of the same title, with a book by Joseph Dougherty. It was notably the first original American musical to be produced by Lincoln Center Theatre. Flaherty would eventually go on to write three additional original musicals for Lincoln Center Theatre, all in collaboration with Ms. Ahrens: A Man of No Importance (2002, with a book by Terrence McNally), Dessa Rose (2005) and The Glorious Ones (2007). He was nominated for Outstanding Music by the Drama Desk Awards on all three of these shows.

The critically acclaimed Ragtime (also with a book by Terrence McNally) had its world premiere in Toronto in December 1996, its American premiere in Los Angeles in June 1997 and its Broadway premiere in January 1998, where it ran for two years. It won four Tony Awards, including Best Book and Best Score (for Flaherty and Ahrens), the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical and was also nominated for two Grammy Awards for its two cast recordings. Its London production (2003) was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Musical. The show was revived on Broadway in November 2009, where it was again critically acclaimed and nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.

Following the success of Ragtime, Flaherty and Ahrens returned to Broadway in 2000 with Seussical, based on the works of Dr. Seuss, and co-conceived with Eric Idle.

The original Broadway cast album was nominated for a Grammy, and Flaherty also received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Music.

When the stock and amateur rights to the show were released following the Broadway run and its subsequent national tour, Seussical immediately became the most performed show in America. In 2008, there was a critically acclaimed off-Broadway revival directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who would also go on to direct the Tony-nominated revival of Ragtime the following year.

After writing three shows for Lincoln Center Theatre, Flaherty and Ahrens next returned to Broadway with the musical Rocky the Musical. The show premiered in Hamburg, Germany in October 2012. The musical has a book by Thomas Meehan and Sylvester Stallone, based on Stallone's original screenplay. Rocky premiered on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre, officially opening on March 13, 2014. The musical was directed by Alex Timbers, with choreography by Steven Hoggett and Kelly Devine. The show was nominated for 4 Tony Awards and 7 Drama Desk Awards including Outstanding Musical.

Flaherty and Ahrens’ next musical, Little Dancer, featured direction and choreography by Susan Stroman. Inspired by the famous sculpture, Little Dancer, Aged 14 by Edgar Degas, the musical had a reading in 2010 at Lincoln Center Theater and a developmental lab production in June 2010. The show premiered at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater in October 2014. The cast included Rebecca Luker, Boyd Gaines and Tiler Peck. The musical is inspired by true events and focuses on the relationship between a young ballerina and 19th century French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas. Much of the action is set in the Paris Opera Ballet. A re-working of the show, titled Marie, Dancing Still (after the name of the young ballerina), had its west coast premiere at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre in March 2019.

Flaherty's next Broadway musical was Anastasia, featuring lyrics by Ms. Ahrens, a book by Terrence McNally, and based on the 1956 and 1997 films. The show premiered on Broadway in April 2017 after premiering at Hartford Stage in Connecticut the previous year. The show was subsequently produced internationally in Madrid, Stuttgart, The Netherlands, São Paulo, Mexico City, and Tokyo, and has had several US tours.

During the 2017—2018 Broadway season Flaherty and Ahrens had the rare honor of having two shows running on Broadway at the same time, Anastasia and the revival of Once on This Island.

For his work in film, Flaherty was nominated for two Academy Awards with lyricist Ahrens (for Best Song and Best Score, the latter shared with David Newman) and two Golden Globe Awards for his first film, Anastasia (1997). He also composed the film score and wrote the songs for its animated sequel, Bartok the Magnificent (1999). He wrote the original film score for the documentary After the Storm (2009), which follows a group of teenagers as they perform Ahrens and Flaherty's Once On This Island in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. He composed the song score and co-wrote the film score for Lucky Stiff (2014), which was based on his and Ms. Ahrens' stage musical of the same name. In 2020, he and Ms. Ahrens contributed a song to the documentary Nasrin, which was nominated for the Hollywood Music In Media Award.

Occasionally Mr. Flaherty writes with other collaborators. His "chamber-scale musical," Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein, written with his Ragtime director, Frank Galati, premiered in Chicago in February 2006, in a co-production between the About Face Theatre and the Museum of Contemporary Art.[11] The musical won Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Award as the “Best New Work” of the year. An earlier version of the show was initially titled A Long Gay Book, and had its premiere at Northwestern University in May 2003.[12]

Flaherty collaborated with the director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli on a new "dance-theatre musical", In Your Arms, which premiered at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, California, September 24, 2015. The show consists of 10 vignettes on the topic of “romantic destiny”, which were written by Douglas Carter Beane, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Carrie Fisher, David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage and Alfred Uhry, all of which were set to music by Flaherty. All the vignettes are danced without words. Lynn Ahrens wrote the lyrics for the title song. The show starred Donna McKechnie and George Chakiris and eighteen powerhouse dancers. The musical had a staged workshop during the summer of 2014 at New York Stage and Film & Vassar's Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College..

For the concert hall, Flaherty wrote the music for "With Voices Raised" (text by Lynn Ahrens), which was commissioned by the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1999. It had its world premiere in Boston on July 4, 1999, which was nationally televised, featuring Senator Ted Kennedy as one of the speakers. It was subsequently released on the Pops' recording "A Splash of Pops" on the RCA Victor Label, July 13, 1999. He also wrote the music for the "American River Suite", with lyrics by Bill Schermerhorn and commissioned by Macy's. The piece premiered in April 2009 at Carnegie Hall by the New York Pops and sung by Idina Menzel, Anika Noni Rose, and the children's chorus from the Choir Academy of Harlem. It was broadcast nationally on the Fourth of July of that same year.

He has received several commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum and the Boston Pops Orchestra, among others. His most recent concert commission was from the Boston Pops Orchestra for "A Soldier's Carol" (2014, text by Ms. Ahrens), which was his final collaboration with orchestrator William David Brohn, who won the Tony Award for his orchestrations to Ragtime.

With Lynn Ahrens, Flaherty received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014, was inducted into the Theater Hall Of Fame in 2015 and was nominated to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.

Flaherty and Ahrens wrote the musical stage adaptation of James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family and its subsequent stage adaptation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play All the Way Home by Tad Mosel, with Ragtime director Frank Galati, who adapted the text and directed. The new musical, titled Knoxville, was originally to have had its world premiere at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in April 2020. The production was halted, however, due to the pandemic. It was finally produced two years later, in April 2022, at the Asolo. It starred Jason Danieley as the Author.

Personal
Flaherty married Trevor Hardwick on October 26, 2016, in New York City.

Works
Sources:
 * Musicals
 * Lucky Stiff (1988)
 * Once on This Island (1990; Broadway revival 2017)
 * My Favorite Year (1992)
 * Ragtime (1998; Broadway revival 2009)
 * Seussical (2000; revival 2007)
 * A Man of No Importance (2002)
 * A Long Gay Book (2003), an early version of Loving Repeating
 * Dessa Rose (2005)
 * Loving Repeating (2006)
 * Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (2005), music also by others
 * The Glorious Ones (2007)
 * Rocky the Musical (2012)
 * Little Dancer (musical) (2014)
 * In Your Arms (2015)
 * Anastasia (2016), stage version of film
 * Knoxville (2022)

 * Incidental music
 * Proposals (1997)

 * Contributions
 * "I Eat", contribution to The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle for Audra McDonald, performed at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on June 2, 2004

 * Film scores
 * Anastasia (1997)
 * Buster & Chauncey's Silent Night (1998)
 * Bartok the Magnificent (1999)
 * After the Storm (2009)
 * Lucky Stiff (2014)

Awards and nominations
Sources:

title: Stephen Flaherty


text:
Lynn Ahrens

Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime. Together with Flaherty, she has written many musicals, including Lucky Stiff, My Favorite Year, Ragtime, Seussical, A Man of No Importance, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, Rocky, Little Dancer and, recently on Broadway, Anastasia and Once on This Island.

She was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the animated Twentieth Century Fox film Anastasia. She wrote the teleplay of her 1994 musical adaption of A Christmas Carol, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Ahrens. She was a mainstay writer and performer for ABC-TV's Schoolhouse Rock! Ahrens also wrote lyrics for the title song for After the Storm, the documentary film about young Hurricane Katrina survivors putting on Once On This Island.

Biography
Ahrens was born in New York City. She grew up in Neptune Township, New Jersey, where she graduated from Neptune High School on the Jersey shore in 1966. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Journalism and English. She is Jewish.

She then began a career in advertising as a copywriter for McCaffrey and McCall. It was her first job out of college. She was living with her ex-husband in Flushing, sleeping on the floor of his sister's apartment. While working as a secretary/copywriter, she would bring her guitar to play and write songs during lunch. George Newall was passing by and asked her casually to write a song for Schoolhouse Rock!. She wrote "The Preamble", and it went on the air with Ahrens singing it. After that she began regularly writing songs for the show. She subsequently worked as a freelance composer and singer of commercial music, and wrote and produced a number of songs for children's television, particularly Captain Kangaroo. She began writing for the musical theater in 1982.

She married Neil Costa in 1989.

Theatre
Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty at the BMI Workshop in 1982 and they started working together the following year. Their first collaboration was Bedazzled, based on the 1967 film of the same name, but had to abandon it when they could not secure the rights. They did some workshops, where Ira Weitzman noticed them and he was able to get the pair a NEA grant. Weitzman also connected the pair with George C. Wolfe, and they collaborated on a piece called Antler, but according to Ahrens, "no one could figure it out." The pairs' first produced musical was a children's musical, The Emperor's New Clothes for Theatreworks USA.

Their first professionally produced musical together was Lucky Stiff, which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 1988. Their next musical was Once on This Island, which premiered on Broadway in 1990 and which was nominated for eight Tony Awards. My Favorite Year opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center in October 1992 and ran for 36 performances, winning the Tony Award for Andrea Martin as Best Supporting Actress.

Ragtime followed, opening on Broadway in January 1998 and running for 834 performances. Ragtime was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won the Best Original Score for Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty in addition to the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Ragtime was revived on Broadway in 2009, and was nominated for seven Tony Awards.

Seussical opened on Broadway in November 2000, and received a Grammy nomination. The musical later ran Off-Broadway in 2007, where it was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Revival and the Drama League Award as Distinguished Revival of a Musical. This is one of the most performed musicals in the US.

Ahrens and Flaherty's next musicals, A Man of No Importance (2002), Dessa Rose (2005), and The Glorious Ones (2007) were produced at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center. They have frequently worked with director and choreographer Graciela Daniele.

They wrote original songs for the Chita Rivera autobiographical show, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life, in 2005.

Their musical version of Rocky the Musical premiered in Hamburg, Germany in October 2012. The show is based on the film Rocky and has a book by Thomas Meehan.

Rocky the Musical opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on February 11, 2014 (previews), and officially opened on March 13, 2014. The musical is directed by Alex Timbers, with boxing choreography by Steven Hoggett and choreography by Kelly Devine. The former occupant of the Winter Garden Theatre, the musical Mamma Mia!, transferred to the Broadhurst Theatre in November 2013. Andy Karl and Margo Seibert are featured as Rocky Balboa and Adrian.

They have written a dance musical, Little Dancer, with direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, about a ballerina and Edgar Degas, which had a reading in 2010 at Lincoln Center Theater and a developmental lab production in June 2012. Little Dancer premiered at the Kennedy Center, Eisenhower Theater in October 2014 and closed on November 30, 2014. The cast starred Rebecca Luker, Boyd Gaines and Tiler Peck. The musical had a private reading on March 28, 2016, after having been revised.

Ahrens and Flaherty wrote the songs for the stage adaptation of the film Anastasia. The musical premiered at Hartford Stage (Connecticut) from May 12, 2016, to June 12. Director Darko Tresnjak said, "We've kept, I think, six songs from the movie, but there are 16 new numbers. We've kept the best parts of the animated movie, but it really is a new musical." The book is by Terrence McNally.

With a book by Frank Galati, music by Flaherty, and lyrics by Ahrens, Knoxville premiered at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in spring 2020, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book A Death in the Family by James Agee and Pulitzer Prize winning play All the Way Home by Tad Mosel. It will star Jason Danieley as Author.

On her working relationship with Flaherty, Ahrens has commented, "Our lives have been very different ... But our sensibilities are very similar."

Film and television
In 1992, Flaherty and Ahrens were signed by Disney to write Song of the Sea, a coming of age story about a whale, in the era of Disney films known as the Disney Renaissance. The project stalled and was never completed.

Ahrens and Flaherty also collaborated on songs for the animated movie Anastasia (1997), receiving two Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Song and Best Score. The end title song "At The Beginning" went to Number One, and the soundtrack went Gold.

Ahrens has written music and lyrics for and performed on the animated television series Schoolhouse Rock from 1973 to 2009.

Ahrens has also written a few songs for Captain Kangaroo since the mid 1970s, including the 1982 theme song, "Here Comes Captain Kangaroo".

Ahrens wrote the teleplay for the 2004 television musical A Christmas Carol, starring Kelsey Grammer, Jane Krakowski, and Jason Alexander.

With composer Michael Gore, she contributed two songs, "Here's Where I Stand" and "I Sing For You", to the IFC feature film, Camp (2003).

With Stephen Flaherty, she wrote lyrics for the title song for After the Storm, the documentary film about young Hurricane Katrina survivors putting on Once On This Island.

Other
Ahrens writes short stories which have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Calyx, Glimmer Train Stories and others. Her personal essays have appeared in Narrative Magazine and have been nominated for "Best American Essays" and the "Pushcart Anthology".

Ahrens and Flaherty gave a series of concerts of their work in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia from September 4 to 13, 2009.

Ahrens is a lifetime member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America, and is a founder and co-chair of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program for Emerging Writers.

She wrote text for the concert piece With Voices Raised (composer, Stephen Flaherty), which was commissioned by the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2000.

She wrote text for the concert piece The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers (composer, Peter Boyer), which was commissioned and performed by the Boston Pops in 2009, and narrated by Robert De Niro, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman and Cherry Jones.

She wrote lyrics for the choral piece, "The Song I Sing" (music composed by Stephen Flaherty), commissioned by the Young People's Chorus of New York, and performed at Carnegie Hall by a chorus of 1000 children.

Musicals

 * Lucky Stiff (1988) (book and lyrics)
 * Once on This Island (1990) (book and lyrics)
 * My Favorite Year (1992) (lyrics)
 * A Christmas Carol (1994–2004) (co-book and lyrics) (produced as a TV film in 2004) (teleplay)
 * Ragtime (1998) (lyrics)
 * Seussical (2000) (book and lyrics)
 * A Man of No Importance (2002) (lyrics)
 * Dessa Rose (2005) (book and lyrics)
 * Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (2005) (lyrics—special material)
 * The Glorious Ones (2007) (book and lyrics)
 * Rocky the Musical (2012) (lyrics)
 * Little Dancer (2014) (book and lyrics)
 * Anastasia (2016) (lyrics)
 * Knoxville (2022) (lyrics)

Contributions

 * "I Eat", contribution to The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle for Audra McDonald
 * Music and lyrics for "Interplanet Janet", "No More Kings", "The Preamble", "The Great American Melting Pot", "A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing", and many others, contributions to Schoolhouse Rock!
 * Songs for Captain Kangaroo, notably "There's So Much To Do" and the 1982—85 theme song, "Here Comes Captain Kangaroo"

Awards and nominations

 * Emmy Award Best Informational Daytime Program "H.E.L.P" — (winner)
 * Tony Award Best Book of a Musical (1991) Once on This Island — (nominee)
 * Tony Award Best Original Score (1991) Once on This Island — (nominee)
 * Olivier Award, London West End — Once on This Island — Best Musical (1995) — (winner)
 * Academy Award, Anastasia (1998) — Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score (with Stephen Flaherty and David Newman) and Best Original Song (with Stephen Flaherty) — two nominations
 * Golden Globes, Anastasia (1998) — Best Original Song — Motion Picture (for "Journey to the Past" and "Once Upon a December") (with Stephen Flaherty) — two nominations
 * Annie Award, Anastasia (1998) — Music in a Feature Production (with Stephen Flaherty and David Newman) — (nomination)
 * Tony Award Best Original Musical Score (1998) Ragtime (winner)
 * Grammy nomination — Songs from Ragtime concept album
 * Grammy nomination — Ragtime Original Broadway Cast Recording
 * Drama Desk Award Outstanding Lyrics (1998) Ragtime (winner)
 * Grammy nomination — Seussical Original Broadway Cast Recording
 * Drama Desk, Outstanding Lyrics — A Man of No Importance (2003) — (nomination)
 * Outer Critics Circle Award — A Man of No Importance (2003) Best Musical, (winner)
 * Drama Desk, Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Lyrics, The Glorious Ones (2008) — (nomination)
 * Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical (2008) The Glorious Ones — (nomination)
 * Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Revival — Seussical (2008) — (nomination)

Legacy
Charles Isherwood wrote of Ahrens and Flaherty: "a few composers and lyricists continue to risk irrelevance by pursuing their own lonely paths. Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens are among them. Mr. Flaherty and Ms. Ahrens, best known for their score for Ragtime, continue to see the humanist potential in the medium. They insist on writing musicals that explore the struggles of men and women, as opposed to the synthetic creatures razzle-dazzling Broadway audiences with their preening vulgarity and self-devouring jokes."

title: Lynn Ahrens


text:
John Francis Bentley

John Francis Bentley (30 January 1839 – 2 March 1902) was an English ecclesiastical architect whose most famous work is the Westminster Cathedral in London, England, built in a style heavily influenced by Byzantine architecture.

Life
Bentley was born in Doncaster. In 1839, he was associated with the firm of Holland & Hannan. He was an apt modeller and had tried his hand with success at stone carving. He studied under Henry Clutton before branching out on his own in 1868.

His first important commission was from Cardinal Manning, for the seminary at Hammersmith. Examples of his work include Holy Rood Church, Watford, St John's Beaumont School, Corpus Christi Church, Brixton, St Mary's, Cadogan Street, Chelsea (1879), the high altar at St Gabriel's, Warwick Square, and St Luke's Church, Chiddingstone Causeway (1897), and the Sacred Heart Chapel at the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street. Though much of his work was in the neo-Gothic style, he was selected to create a Byzantine Revival design for Westminster Cathedral.

The great opportunity of Bentley's career came in 1894, when he was commissioned to design a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Westminster, London. After deciding on a Byzantine Revival design, Bentley travelled to Italy to study some of the great early Byzantine-influenced cathedrals, such as St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Because of illness and an outbreak of cholera in Istanbul, he was unable to complete his tour with a study of the Hagia Sophia. Bentley ended his tour in Venice and returned to London to begin work on Westminster Cathedral.

George Williamson describes him as a person of brusque, reserved manner, but kind and friendly to those who knew him. He had the strongest dislike to the preparation of show drawings and to the system of architectural competition and, being a man wholly lacking in self-assertion, and reticent in conversation, was never as well known in general circles as he deserved to be. His great characteristics as an architect were his careful attention to detail, his solicitude that all the fittings should be in perfect harmony with the building.

In 1874 he married Margaret Annie Fleuss; they had 4 sons and 7 daughters. Their house in Clapham has a blue plaque.

Bentley was awarded the gold medal of the Institute of Architects in February, 1902, but never received it, as on 1 March he was seized with paralysis and died the following morning in Clapham. He is buried at St Mary Magdalen Church, Mortlake.

Architectural work
Also St Francis of Assisi London W11

title: John Francis Bentley


text:
David Korn (computer scientist)

David Gerard Korn (August 28, 1943 ) is an American UNIX programmer and the author of the Korn shell (ksh), a command line interface/programming language.

Education and work
David Korn received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1965 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1969. After working on computer simulations of transsonic airfoils and developing the Korn airfoil, he switched fields to computer science and became a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories in 1976. He developed Korn shell in response to problems he and his colleagues had with the most commonly used shells at the time, Bourne shell and C shell. The Korn shell pioneered the practice of consultative user interface design, with input from Unix shell users, and from mathematical and cognitive psychologists. The user interface, which included a choice of editing styles (the choices included styles based on vi and on two variants of Emacs) was incorporated into, or copied by, most subsequent Unix shells. The Korn shell is backward-compatible with Bourne shell, but takes a lot of ideas from C shell, such as history viewing and vi-like command line editing.

Korn shell and Microsoft
Microsoft once included a version of the Korn shell produced by Mortice Kern Systems (MKS) in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT. This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1998. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was none other than the eponymous David Korn.

Other software projects
Along with Korn shell, he is also known as the creator of UWIN, an X/Open library for Win32 systems, similar to the later Cygwin. Korn and Kiem-Phong Vo also co-developed sfio, a library for managing I/O streams.

Korn became a Bell Labs fellow in 1984. He currently lives in New York City, and until 2013 worked for AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park, New Jersey, and he retired from Google in early February 2018.

Family
His parents were Florence and Nathaniel Korn. The Korn family moved to Monroe in 1947 where they raised five children.

In 1967 he married Susan Lyn Weiner.

David Korn's son Adam used to work at Goldman Sachs.

title: David Korn (computer scientist)


text: User talk:128.100.5.203

title: User talk:128.100.5.203


text:
Allen (1913 Ohio automobile)

The Allen was an American automobile built in Fostoria, Ohio between 1913 and 1921. The company used 3.1 liter four-cylinder side-valve Sommers engines, and acquired said company in 1915. The 1920 the Allen 43 was made, featuring bevel-sided touring coachwork and a high-shouldered radiator. Ultimately, sales of this vehicle were not enough to avert the company's bankruptcy, which followed in 1921. Willys acquired what little was left. In total, 20,00 vehicles were sold.

title: Allen (1913 Ohio automobile)


text:
Snail darter

The snail darter (Percina tanasi) is a small species of freshwater ray-finned fish, a darter from the subfamily Etheostomatinae, part of the family Percidae, which also contains the perches, ruffes and pikeperches. It is found in East Tennessee freshwater in the United States and in small portions of northern Alabama and Georgia. First recorded in 1973, the snail darter was listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 by 1975. The species was at the center of a major environmental law controversy that involved a lawsuit seeking to halt the completion of Tellico Dam, which posed a risk of extinction for the snail darter by blocking its migratory route. The case was eventually appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on it in its 1978 decision Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill.

In 1978, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency launched a recovery plan to preserve the snail darter by transferring the species to other river systems. Its native range was originally in the lower parts of the Little Tennessee River, the Sequatchie River, and in Chickamauga Creek, but was later eliminated from the Little Tennessee River by the completion of Tellico Dam. The species was then transplanted into the Hiwassee River in southeastern Tennessee.

The species inhabits large creeks or deeper portions of rivers and reservoirs with gravel and sand shoals substrate. The snail darter spawns between February and mid-April with the female producing 600 eggs which drift downstream. Juveniles occupy slack water habitats and migrate upstream to the breeding ground. The lifespan of the snail darter ranges between 2 and 4 years. The snail darter adult length ranges between 55 and 90 mm. The species’ diet consists mostly of snails and insects (caddisflies, midges, and blackflies). Snail darters have camouflage dorsal patterns and burrow in the substrate to conserve energy and hide from predators. They are largely preyed upon by banded sculpin (Cottus carolinae). The specific name tanasi derives from capital of the Cherokee Nation located on the Little Tennessee River where the species was first recorded. The species was relisted as threatened in 1984 after being successfully transplanted into other river systems. In 2022, it was delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to recovery.

Geographic distribution
The original range of the snail darter was thought to be strictly in the lower portion of the Little Tennessee River with a few individuals dispersing into the headwaters of Watts Bar Lake below Fort Loudon Dam. Prior to the completion of the Tellico Dam in 1979, TVA biologists made several efforts to relocate the remaining individuals of the species into other river systems. In 1975 the species was successfully transplanted to the Hiwassee River, where the population has risen to about 2,500 individuals. Another transplant attempt was made to the Nolichucky River in 1975, but was later stopped by the discovery of another federally protected species, the sharphead darter (Etheostoma acuticeps). Other unsuccessful transplant locations included lower parts of the Holston River, French Broad River, and middle Elk River. With the completion of the Tellico Dam, the snail darter was extirpated from the Little Tennessee River. In 1980, additional populations of snail darters were discovered in South Chickamauga Creek in Chattanooga, the lower portion of Big Sewee Creek in Meigs County, the lower Sequatchie River in Marion County, Little River in Blount County, and the lower portion of Paint Rock River in Madison County, Alabama. These discoveries indicated the snail darter's possible range as being from the lower reaches of major tributaries of the Tennessee River from the northward bend in Alabama upstream; the snail darter was reclassified from endangered to threatened in July 1984.

Additional populations were identified prior to the species' 2022 delisting, including in the Flint River, although the snail darter has not been found there since 2012, in the Elk River and in Bear Creek, all tributaries of the Tennessee River. TVA surveys have located the snail darter in Chickamauga Lake, Nickajack Lake, Guntersville Lake, Wheeler Lake, the Pickwick Reservoir and part of the Fort Loudoun Lake, as well as a finding of juveniles in Watts Barr Reservoir. Reproduction is believed to be occurring in Chickamauga Lake, Nickajack Lake and Wheeler Lake.

Ecology
The snail darters are found in gravel shoals free of silt and aquatic plants, with moderate to strong currents, and moderate depths. The substrate generally consists of dark micaceous sand, with little to no silt, and 25 to 50 percent of the area scattered with gravel. Agricultural development has also affected the water clarity, and silt run-off causes problem for reproduction and migration. In 1976, the winter temperature ranged from 41° to 54 °F, and summer temperature averaged near 64 °F in the Little Tennessee River. These temperature fluctuations are due to impoundments, resulting in colder water when the dam is discharging and warming water when flow is diminished. Current velocities ranged from a moderate 0.25 m/s to nearly 0.7 m/s. The snail darter actively feeds in spring and winter with a diet consisting of 60% small gastropods (5mm or less in diameter) and other prey such as caddisflies, midges, and blackflies. Snails are the preferred food source until late spring when they outgrow the gape size of the fish, resulting in a diet change to insect larvae. The most effective predator on adult snail darters is Cottus carolinae while Salmo trutta, Morone chrysops, Sizostedion canadense, and other darters would prey on eggs and juveniles. The snail darters’ dorsal patterns and coloration allow the fish to camouflage with the substrate to avoid detection from predators. Burrowing behavior also is a defense mechanism and can help conserve energy for the current.

Life history
The snail darter spawning occurs in early February through April when water temperatures range from 12°-13 °C. The female produces over 600 eggs and has multiple mates over the course of two weeks. The snail darter does not display territorial behavior during the breeding, unlike other species of darters. The eggs are deposited on the shallowest portion of gravel shoals and hatch after 15–20 days. Silt run-off can deprive eggs of oxygen, leading to higher mortality. When eggs hatch, the larvae drift downstream to deeper, calmer water and feed on zooplankton. The larvae are phototaxic (attracted to light) which may have implications regarding diurnal movements in the water column or depth maintenance. After 3 to 4 months of age, the juveniles migrate upstream during spring, and remain at the breeding shoal areas. The snail darter reaches sexual maturity at one year. The snail darter life span is 2 to 4 years, depending on predation and access to the breeding ground. More research on the snail darter life history is needed.

Current management
The snail darter was a federally protected species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 between 1975 and 2022 as a result of habitat destruction from the completion of the Tellico Dam. Another factor in the decline of snail darters is siltation, which degrades spawning habitat and food availability. Other influences include agricultural development, environmental contamination and pollution, and channel modification, which affect water clarity, reproduction success, and migration patterns. A recovery plan was made and completed on May 5, 1983. The recovery efforts focused on finding and transplanting individuals to suitable habitat areas in the Tennessee River, continuing research to locate already-existing populations, and maintaining current populations of snail darters. Programs are in progress to educate the public and to work with state officials and local citizens to broaden protection efforts. However, more recent research on snail darters is still needed to better manage and protect the species and its habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, TVA, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, and other law enforcement agencies are utilizing legislation and regulations to protect the snail darter during the recovery effort. It is recommended that at least five separate viable populations should be maintained, the species should be kept on the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife, and federal permits to collect the species should be required.

On October 5, 2022, the US Fish and Wildlife ruled that the species is no longer threatened. It was removed from the Federal List of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife on November 4, 2022.

Taxonomy
The snail darter was first formally described in 1976 by the American ichthyologist David A. Etnier with the type locality given as the Little Tennessee River near mouth of Coytee Spring in Loudon County, Tennessee. The specific name refers to the settlement of Tanasi in Monroe County, Tennessee which was the capital of the Cherokee Nation until 1725 And which is the origin of the name Tennessee. It is placed in the subgenus Imostoma and appears to be closely related to the stargazing darter (Percina uranidea).

title: Snail darter


text: User talk:64.40.54.253

title: User talk:64.40.54.253


text:
Understanding Media

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a 1964 book by Marshall McLuhan, in which the author proposes that the media, not the content that they carry, should be the focus of study. He suggests that the medium affects the society in which it plays a role mainly by the characteristics of the medium rather than the content. The book is considered a pioneering study in media theory.

McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as an example. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence".

More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.

The book is the source of the well-known phrase "the medium is the message". It was a leading indicator of the upheaval of local cultures by increasingly globalized values. The book greatly influenced academics, writers, and social theorists. The book discussed the radical analysis of social change, how society is shaped, and reflected by communications media.

Summary
Throughout Understanding Media, McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to probe the ways in which new forms of media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the effects of each medium as opposed to the content that is transmitted by each medium. McLuhan identified two types of media: "hot" media and "cool" media, drawing from French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss' distinction between hot and cold societies.

This terminology does not refer to the temperature or emotional intensity, nor some kind of classification, but to the degree of participation. Cool media are those that require high participation from users, due to their low definition (the receiver/user must fill in missing information). Since many senses may be used, they foster involvement. Conversely, hot media are low in audience participation due to their high resolution or definition. Film, for example, is defined as a hot medium, since in the context of a dark movie theater, the viewer is completely captivated, and one primary sense—visual—is filled in high definition. In contrast, television is a cool medium, since many other things may be going on and the viewer has to integrate all of the sounds and sights in the context.

In Part One, McLuhan discusses the differences between hot and cool media and the ways that one medium translates the content of another medium. Briefly, "the content of a medium is always another medium".

In Part Two, McLuhan analyzes each medium (circa 1964) in a manner that exposes the form, rather than the content of each medium. In order, McLuhan covers:

 * The Spoken Word;
 * The Written Word (i.e., manuscript or incunabulum);
 * Roads and Paper Routes;
 * Numbers;
 * Clothing;
 * Housing;
 * Money;
 * Clocks;
 * The Print (i.e., pictorial lithograph or woodcut);
 * Comics;
 * The Printed Word (i.e., typography);
 * The Wheel;
 * The Bicycle and Airplane;
 * The Photograph;
 * The Press;
 * The Motorcar;
 * Ads;
 * Games;
 * The Telegraph;
 * The Typewriter;
 * The Telephone;
 * The Phonograph;
 * Movies;
 * Radio;
 * Television;
 * Weapons; and
 * Automation.

Concept of "media"
McLuhan uses interchangeably the words medium, media, and technology.

For McLuhan a medium is "any extension of ourselves" or, more broadly, "any new technology". Contrastly, in addition to forms such as newspapers, television, and radio, McLuhan includes the light bulb, cars, speech, and language in his definition of media: all of these, as technologies, mediate our communication; their forms or structures affect how we perceive and understand the world around us.

McLuhan says that conventional pronouncements fail in studying media because they focus on content, which blinds them to the psychic and social effects that define the medium's true significance. McLuhan observes that any medium "amplifies or accelerates existing processes", introducing a "change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into human association, affairs, and action", which results in "psychic, and social consequences". This is the real "meaning or message" brought by a medium, a social and psychic message, and it depends solely on the medium itself, regardless of the 'content' emitted by it. This is basically the meaning of "the medium is the message".

To demonstrate the flaws of the common belief that the message resides in how the medium is used (the content), McLuhan provides the example of mechanization, pointing out that regardless of the product (e.g., corn flakes or Cadillacs), the impact on workers and society is the same.

In a further exemplification of the common unawareness of the real meaning of media, McLuhan says that people "describe the scratch but not the itch". As an example of "media experts" who follow this fundamentally flawed approach, McLuhan quotes a statement from "General" David Sarnoff (head of RCA), calling it the "voice of the current somnambulism". Each medium "adds itself on to what we already are", realizing "amputations and extensions" to our senses and bodies, shaping them in a new technical form. As appealing as this remaking of ourselves may seem, it really puts us in a "narcissistic hypnosis" that prevents us from seeing the real nature of the media. McLuhan also says that a characteristic of every medium is that its content is always another (previous) medium. For an example in the new millennium, the Internet is a medium whose content is various media which came before it—the printing press, radio and the moving image.

An overlooked, constantly repeated understanding McLuhan has is that moral judgement (for better or worse) of an individual using media is very difficult, because of the psychic effects media have on society and their users. Moreover, media and technology, for McLuhan, are not necessarily inherently "good" or "bad" but bring about great change in a society's way of life. Awareness of the changes are what McLuhan seemed to consider most important, so that, in his estimation, the only sure disaster would be a society not perceiving a technology's effects on their world, especially the chasms and tensions between generations.

The only possible way to discern the real "principles and lines of force" of a medium (or structure) is to stand aside from it and be detached from it. This is necessary to avoid the powerful ability of any medium to put the unwary into a "subliminal state of Narcissus trance", imposing "its own assumptions, bias, and values" on him. Instead, while in a detached position, one can predict and control the effects of the medium. This is difficult because "the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody". One historical example of such detachment is Alexis de Tocqueville and the medium of typography. He was in such position because he was highly literate. Instead, an historical example of the embrace of technological assumptions happened with the Western world, which, heavily influenced by literacy, took its principles of "uniform and continuous and sequential" for the actual meaning of "rational".

McLuhan argues that media are languages, with their own structures and systems of grammar, and that they can be studied as such. He believed that media have effects in that they continually shape and re-shape the ways in which individuals, societies, and cultures perceive and understand the world. In his view, the purpose of media studies is to make visible what is invisible: the effects of media technologies themselves, rather than simply the messages they convey. Media studies therefore, ideally, seeks to identify patterns within a medium and in its interactions with other media. Based on his studies in New Criticism, McLuhan argued that technologies are to words as the surrounding culture is to a poem: the former derive their meaning from the context formed by the latter. Like Harold Innis, McLuhan looked to the broader culture and society within which a medium conveys its messages to identify patterns of the medium's effects.

"Hot" and "cool" media
In the first part of Understanding Media, McLuhan also states that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium. Some media, such as film, were "hot" - that is, they enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with "cool" TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part of viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which due to their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition", requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value.

"Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue."

Hot media usually, but not always, provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus. For example, print occupies visual space, uses visual senses, but can immerse its reader. Hot media favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photography.

Cool media, on the other hand, are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Therefore, according to McLuhan cool media include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons. McLuhan describes the term "cool media" as emerging from jazz and popular music and, in this context, is used to mean "detached".

Critiques of Understanding Media
Some theorists have attacked McLuhan's definition and treatment of the word "medium" for being too simplistic. Umberto Eco, for instance, contends that McLuhan's medium conflates channels, codes, and messages under the overarching term of the medium, confusing the vehicle, internal code, and content of a given message in his framework.

In Media Manifestos, Régis Debray also takes issue with McLuhan's envisioning of the medium. Like Eco, he too is ill at ease with this reductionist approach, summarizing its ramifications as follows:

"The list of objections could be and has been lengthened indefinitely: confusing technology itself with its use of the media makes of the media an abstract, undifferentiated force and produces its image in an imaginary 'public' for mass consumption; the magical naivete of supposed causalities turns the media into a catch-all and contagious 'mana'; apocalyptic millenarianism invents the figure of a homo mass-mediaticus without ties to historical and social context, and so on."

Furthermore, when Wired interviewed him in 1995, Debray stated that he views McLuhan "more as a poet than a historian, a master of intellectual collage rather than a systematic analyst.... McLuhan overemphasizes the technology behind cultural change at the expense of the usage that the messages and codes make of that technology."

Dwight Macdonald, in turn, reproached McLuhan for his focus on television and for his "aphoristic" style of prose, which he believes left Understanding Media filled with "contradictions, non-sequiturs, facts that are distorted and facts that are not facts, exaggerations, and chronic rhetorical vagueness".

Additionally, Brian Winston’s Misunderstanding Media, published in 1986, chides McLuhan for what he sees as his technologically deterministic stances. Raymond Williams and James W. Carey further this point of contention, claiming:

"The work of McLuhan was a particular culmination of an aesthetic theory which became, negatively, a social theory ... It is an apparently sophisticated technological determinism which has the significant effect of indicating a social and cultural determinism ... If the medium - whether print or television – is the cause, of all other causes, all that men ordinarily see as history is at once reduced to effects. (Williams 1990, 126/7)"

David Carr states that there has been a long line of "academics who have made a career out of deconstructing McLuhan’s effort to define the modern media ecosystem", whether it be due to what they see as McLuhan's ignorance toward socio-historical context or the style of his argument.

While some critics have taken issue with McLuhan's writing style and mode of argument, McLuhan himself urged readers to think of his work as "probes" or "mosaics" offering a toolkit approach to thinking about the media. His eclectic writing style has also been praised for its postmodern sensibilities and suitability for virtual space.

Exploring theories
McLuhan's theories about "the medium is the message" link culture and society. A recurrent topic is the contrast between oral cultures and print culture.

Each new form of media, according to the analysis of McLuhan, shapes messages differently thereby requiring new filters to be engaged in the experience of viewing and listening to those messages.

McLuhan argues that as "sequence yields to the simultaneous, one is in the world of the structure and of configuration". The main example is the passage from mechanization (processes fragmented into sequences, lineal connections) to electric speed (faster up to simultaneity, creative configuration, structure, total field).

Howard Rheingold comments upon McLuhan's "the medium is the message" in relation to the convergence of technology, specifically the computer. In his book Tools for Thought Rheingold explains the notion of the universal machine - the original conception of the computer. Eventually computers will no longer use information but knowledge to operate, in effect thinking. If in the future computers (the medium) are everywhere, then what becomes of McLuhan's message?

Historical examples
According to McLuhan, the French Revolution and American Revolution happened under the push of print whereas the preexistence of a strong oral culture in Britain prevented such an effect.

title: Understanding Media


text:
Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 3

Anybody who removes material from this article should explain here why s/he does that. Those are rules from the Wikipedia. Otherwise I will revert it. Andries 12:10, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please take a deep breath and read the NPOV guidelines before posting--Jossifresco 23:56, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Original formulation of NPOV
The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologies in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points.

[...]

Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view. -- Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder

From NPOV page
We could sum up human knowledge (in this sense) in a biased way: we'd state a series of theories about topic T, and then claim that the truth about T is such-and-such. But again, consider that Wikipedia is an international, collaborative project. Nearly every view on every subject will be found among our authors and readers. To avoid endless edit wars, we can agree to present each of these views fairly, and not assert any one of them as correct. That is what makes an article "unbiased" or "neutral" in the sense we are presenting here. To write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them; to do that, it generally suffices to present competing views in a way that is more or less acceptable to their adherents, and also to attribute the views to their adherents.

To sum up the primary reason for this policy: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a compilation of human knowledge. But since Wikipedia is a community-built, international resource, we surely cannot expect our collaborators to agree in all cases, or even in many cases, on what constitutes knowledge in a strict sense. We can, therefore, adopt the looser sense of "human knowledge" according to which a wide variety of conflicting theories constitute what we call "knowledge." We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them.

There is another reason to commit ourselves to this policy. Namely, when it is clear to readers that we do not expect them to adopt any particular opinion, this leaves them free to make up their minds for themselves, and thus to encourage in them intellectual independence. Totalitarian governments and dogmatic institutions everywhere might find reason to be opposed to Wikipedia, if we succeed in adhering to our nonbias policy: '''the presentation of many competing theories on a wide variety of subjects suggests that we, the creators of Wikipedia, trust readers' competence to form their own opinions themselves. Texts that present multiple viewpoints fairly, without demanding that the reader accept any one of them, are liberating. Neutrality subverts dogmatism, and nearly everyone working on Wikipedia can agree this is a good thing.''' (highlight is mine)--jossi 17:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC).

....

Now an important qualification. Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views. We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by only a small minority of people deserved as much attention as a majority view. That may be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. None of this, however, is to say that minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can possibly give them on pages specifically devoted to those views. There is no size limit to Wikipedia. But even on such pages, though a view is spelled out possibly in great detail, we still make sure that the view is not represented as the truth.(highlight is mine)--jossi 17:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC).

Please read the NPOV page and be civilized in your postings here.

Working Together
I read the NPOV in its entirety and I have to say I am impressed. You guys could probably help the Middle East sort out their problems!

Coming from 30 years in a cult where critical thinking was discouraged, and only being out 2 years, then a few months realizing what happened, I have to say I am new to critical thinking.

Sure, I used critical thinking all the time in my business career. But not when it came to areas where there was passionate feeling involved, anything to do with Maharaji.

I think this is the essence of why it is hard to get concensus from followers and ex-followers of a guru. The relationship that is formed between a guru and devotee is one of the most authoritarian that there is. And someone criticizing your guru is like someone insulting your spouse, only worse, because a devotee identifies with his guru even more than with his spouse. So, you insult the guru, you insult the devotee himself.

Once emotions get into the mix, it's very difficult to be rational. One just digs one's heels in deeper.

And ex-followers can be just as emotional about it as the followers. This because they did care deeply at one point and now feel betrayed. We are hurt most deeply by those that we care about, not perfect strangers.

That being said, I am happy that Jossi has decided to take a step back. It's frustrating to engage in these debates.

I would really like to see a neutral, scholarly article about this subject. I encourage Jim, Mike, and John to come up with something that has an even, factual tone to it that all can live with, followers and ex-followers.

Mary Moore 20:05, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)Mary

Let's follow the rules
As a senior admin, I'd like to weigh in with the request that we all follow the rules.
 * 1) Be courteous to the other contributors.
 * 2) Don't replace the entire article with your own biased point of view.

Jim here --

I added the DUO Proclamation to the page. This is Rawat's public announcement when he was 15 that he was indeed planning to bring peace on earth by turning the whole world into his followers:

Whereas, Knowledge of the aim of human life is being revealed to all people of the world by the living Perfect Master and spiritual head of Divine Light Mission, Paramhans Satgurudev Shri Sant Ji Maharaji, thus eliminating the cause of ignornance and misery;

It was an important, public event in the history of Rawat and cannot rationally be disputed. It happened, Rawat read this same proclamation out himself verbatim in a movie he made and had distributed in order to confirm his intentions with as much public exposure as possible. Its inclusion might be emabarrassing to current followers but I submit that it is entirely relevant to Rawat's current portrayal of himself as a man with a "message about peace". Here's a link to the proclamation and more in the archival section of EPO:

http://www.ex-premie.org/papers/duo_satsang.htm

Jim here --

I also added a copy of the letter that all new followers were given upon initiation. It was written and signed by Rawat and it's important for two reasons: one, it confirms that Rawat taught that the mind was bad (hence the need for an "antidote") and two, it confirms that Rawat was indeed the head of Divine Light Mission.

Critics / Controversy
I can see that the controversy aspects have their own section. I like that. Good to differenciate between the two. The critics section is becoming hefty and I am sure that there is more to come given the claims and counter-claims. I also see that the Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat article has been neglected: there are a lot of dups between what is in the Critics section in this article and that article. I would suggest a good summary of the criticisms and move the rest to the Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat article. I will be calling the Prem rawat foundation today to see if they can provide some numbers and stats. That is an important omission from this article. --Zappaz 15:19, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Renamed Controversial Aspects to Controversial Beginnings as all the material there relates to the early days of Prem (then known as Sant Ji Maharaj according to recent contribution by anon). Agree with zappaz that we need to summarize critics section and consolidate criticism article. I will try to work on this later on, but if someone else wants to undertake this, pls go ahead--141.76.1.122 16:08, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Use of Quotes
User 24.64.223.203: Use of so many quotes does not help this article. There is a page for quotes in wikiquote. If you want to add a point, make it and give external references. Also note that you have to respect copyrights. Otherwise it will be deleted. See -Copyrights for details.--64.81.88.140 00:48, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You

Who removed Rawat's letter and why?
Earlier today I added an important document to the article, the letter that every new follower in the early and mid-70's received from Maharaji. His words over his signature, distributed by his mahatmas under the auspices of his organization. As I said earlier, the article's important for two reasons: it reflects Rawat's anti-mind orientation and proves that he was indeed the leader of DLM despite Jossi's earlier denial of this fact.

Now someone has deleted this addition and offered no explanation. Who did it and why?
 * I removed it,. Explanation is above.--64.81.88.140 00:53, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Jim here --

Who the hell are you to decide what "helps" or doesn't help an article? Are things really that capricious here that you can make these decisions from the hip like that?I say that you're wrong, that Rawat's own greeting to all new followers is incredibly illustrative of his real teachings -- not the glossed-over description he spouts today, the one that current followers only learn implicitly now unlike yesterday. Plus it's interesting. And as for copyright, give me a break, please! This is all fair comment.

So what's your bias anyway? I'm Jim Heller, a Canadian lawyer and ex-devotee of this man who once called himself the Lord of the Universe. And you? Some faceless anonymous busybody? A member of some other cult for all I know? Hey, maybe you're even a member of THIS one.

 * Please keep the rhetoric down, and remain civil. As I said, the article is already becoming too big. You can make your point and link to an external page where the quote can be found. Otherwise supporters will add their own quotes and so on and on. Regarding copyright, I kindly ask you to read Copyrights We all understand fair use but there are some specifics in Wikipedia. --64.81.88.140 01:31, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Jim here -- As a matter of fact, you did not say that the article was becoming too big. Is it? How about taking all the advertising out? That should shorten it immensely. As for supporters' quotes, why not worry about that if and when? It's not as if there were some other letters Rawat used to give new devotees that counter this one. And as for copyright, there is no concern here.

But, having said all that, would you agree with the following addition then:

In early days, new initiates were given a letter from Rawat in which he warned them about the mind, saying that it was bound to "freak out" but that Knowledge was its "antidote" and would eventually make it "go away".

 * If we can stay within the boundaries of a civilized discussion we can easily resolve this. By going through the references and biblio, the picture being painted is one of evolution. Undoubtedly Prem has evolved since he was 13 both in the ways in which he presents his teachings and the way the organizations are setup and run. We could have a new section called "Evolution of Teachings", in which we could write about these aspect, including the ones suggested above. There is excellent material about this evolution in the references provided. I agree with .140 that quotes should be relegated to external references. And Jim, please keep the tone down, it will really help. --Zappaz 02:00, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be rude, just clear. Current followers still think Rawat's divine. They still think he's awaiting them when they die, that at that final moment he will take them into the same divine breath he's been putting in their body since they were born and take them back into his holy perfection. They still think he's God.

And yes, I can prove that. I can show, for one thing, current speeches of Rawats where he talks about remembering him in the final moment so that one doesn't leave this world empty-handed etc.

But the whole thing is that, because this fiction was so clearly debunked decades ago, Rawat's gone underground with his real message. It's all code now. Winks and nudges. You might not see that.

Beyond that, though, there's another dimension to this picture. In 'real life', off stage, Rawat is a venal, duplicitous alcoholic. He exploits people in a way, on a level, that only a false God can get away with.

But why am I explaining this to you anyway? Who are you, what's your interest, background, all that? You seem to be very biased in favour of excusing Rawat -- my opinion, of course -- and I wonder why.

 * All what you say above is your POV. What we are trying to do here is to write an article in a neutral voice. FYI, my interest in this subject is academic. I have read a substantial portion of the materials posted on the ex-follower's website, as well as materials provided in the follower's websites, grassroots and official. I have researched both web indexed materials as well as off-line materials. I have also contacted the prem rawat foundation via email and received information from them that I am still trying to corroborate with other sources before posting. Note that the fact that you are an ex-follower does not give you a monopoly of knowledge in this subject, quite the contrary. So, feel free to collaborate in this article, but expect your contributions to be discussed, edited and NPOV'ed, and do not get upset when that happens.--Zappaz 04:00, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Page protected due to vandalism
user:RickK protected this page, most probably due to ongoing vandalism by anonymous users. -- jossi 06:13, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * It didn't seem like vandalism to me, so I unlocked the page and restored the edits which .104 and .140 had made. --Uncle Ed 14:22, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Please avoid personal remarks
Comments like the following add nothing to the discussion, and indeed can sidetrack it into petty squabbling and bickering. I'd prefer for us to remain on track.

 * You don't have a clue.

I'm going to use strike-out markup to indicate some remarks like this which border on -- or go beyond -- our no personal attacks policy statement. --Uncle Ed 14:27, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If there are no strong objections, I will go ahead and delete the marked passages. But if anyone objects to their comments being edited, I probably will leave them as they currently are. --Uncle Ed

 * Ed. Removed the edit about forums not being public. They are, see upcoming events in North America http://contactinfo.net/events.cfm. --jossi 15:27, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Jossi, I hadn't noticed that. Maybe to accommodate anon's view, we should say that some critics claim that the forums are not public. Anonymous, do you have a source for that claim? --Uncle Ed 00:50, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I think that they are referring to the fact that the organizers (like in any other type of event) reserves the rights to deny access to people that make public their intentions to disrupt the event,--jossi 04:15, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm done too
This is the last thing I'll ever post here. As far as I'm concerned, you guys are seriously misguided about how one finds facts, sorts through competing claims and presents the truth about controversial subjects like the Rawat cult. For one thing, I'm appalled that not only did you not confront Jossi, the main author of the current version of the piece, about his false accusation about my forging source material, you now choose to censor my efforts to do so. You have, in my opinion, a very superficial view of civility, good for appearances only.

The article as it now stands is simply a revisionistic infomercial for the cult interspersed with a few jarring criticisms. It reads terribly and reflects poorly on your entire online encyclopedia project. For example, it relies on Ron Geaves' amongst others as an expert but, were this a court of law, let's say, Geaves would be entirely discredited. Not because he's a current devotee of Rawat but because of various unsustainable things he's written or said about the man and the organization.

Anyway, that's it. You guys do what you want. It's just a waste of time for me to say anymore. I iwsh your entire project good riddance.

 * To say that I am the main author of this article is not accurate to say the least. Go back to the history of this page and compare. it is not my article. The article incorporates hundreds of edits and additions by at least a dozen contibutors including you and other ex-followers. And by the look of it, it will continute to evolve thanks to the effort of these and other contributors.--jossi 15:32, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Now that Jim has decided to go, I would want to clarify that I never said he forged materials. What I said was that he posted "heavily edited transcripts" and that he knew about that fact. I stand by that assessment. These transcripts were published in India 30 years ago and undoubtedly were heavily edited and "interpreted" by whoever transcribed it, given the heavy Hindu context in which Maharaji lived at that time. The reason I did not respond to Jim directly is because of his abrassive style, and the personal attacks he mounted against me.--jossi 23:40, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Teachings, evolution/current
Andries: Teachings have remained the same. Practice of Knowledge, keeping in touch and participation. In the 70's this was called meditation, satsang and service respectively. What has evolved is the way it is presented without any Hindu religion connotations when presenting it in western countries. It seems that In India, maharaji keeps using the original words 'satsang, seva, bhajan"--Zappaz 19:22, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Zappaz, may be you are right with regards to the four meditation techniques and Knowledge but I think that the claims about himself in an earlier period were an important part of his teachings too. Andries 19:43, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, I agree. But the interesting thing is that the core message remains the same: he claims that his teachings can bring about peace to people. So I am not so sure about "current teachings" as the section name, and would prefer just "Teachings", particularly as there is already a section about the evolution of these. Maybe you can write up something to add to the "evolution of teachings" section, if you see the need. The other interesting aspect is that the critics POV is that the evolution is bad and the supporters POV is that the evolution is commendable. I think that the article, in this respect, provides a good NPOV. Let reader's decide is this evolution is a good or a bad thing.--Zappaz 19:56, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Article status
As it stands now, the most substancial sections of the article are "Controversial Beginings" and "Critics" taking approximately 50% of the whole article. I am not 100% happy with this, but I can see that at least the text is writtent in a neutral manner. Given that there were so many edits, some of the narrative is now a bit choppy. Hopefully there are editors out there that can work on the continuity of the text.--jossi 22:05, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Creation of DLMs, and other incorrectly reported items
While some of the founders of the DLMs in the West sought Maharaj Ji's blessings on their endeavors many, if not almost all of them, were created spontaneously, tho within a "cultural context" were this was felt an appropriate behavior. I state this as a fact because: 1) I am 1 of 2 co-founders of 1 of the Caribbean DLMs, 2) know the lady who was the coordinator for all of Latin America (a "title" that arose because it accurately described how she was operating - without prior instruction or request from Maharaj Ji, tho he did validate her after the fact, by showing his appreciation of her efforts), 3) got to know 4 of the 6 who invited him to America in the beginning, 4) know the 2 who founded DLM in Japan, 5) know several of the ones who created DLM in England.

Jim and I have had disputes about this before. But the fact is that his assertions about Maharaj Ji having some kind of centrist control are a fantasy that supports his shifting of responsibility away from Self to Other. The fact that his mother and elder brother felt free to deny him, and that many mahatmas/instructors went along with them, is indicative of this.

Incidentally, the "Guru is God and is greater than God" quote is from an ancient Hindu scripture, the Svestara Upanishad (if I'm spelling it correctly; its been over 30 years since I last read it! Every Guru is so regarded, at least metaphorically, as fulfilling this. The way it was usually interpreted, in the teachings I checked out before becoming a student of Maharaj Ji's, was that God could do everything except reveal himself. Therefore the Aspect of God who could reveal Him to you was more powerful than He. Since all who believed this believed in a Universe comprised of God, in omni-presence being 1 of God's qualities, perhaps a less confusing way of putting it would have been that everything, everybody, is God, and that the Aspect of God who can show you where God is within yourself, who can show you how to find God in a way that lets you merge with Him, is the most important Aspect of God for you.

Also, while Maharaj Ji certainly lets us know his thinking about his planning, I've actually been involved in the process of inviting him to come somewhere - something Jim never was. We weren't at a point where it would have benefited his work to come there yet - this was in early '74, and there were only about 300 of us in the Caribbean island where I was working to assist his work, where I'd founded a DLM (and where the 1st ashram was in my family condo).

I bring these points up not seeking for their inclusion in the article, but to correct some distortions of fact Jim brought forward. In the early days many things had his approval, because he'd give his blessing to anything you wanted to do to help his work that wasn't to outrageous, if he saw sincerity. And it was much easier to see him personally back then. But every single bureaucracy we ever created eventually got too good at building a box to restrain him as he did his work. Those who REALLY look at how things happened in the various major non-profits have been unanimous about 1 thing. That he'd ask us to change things when we started to get in his way, and let us do our thing up to that point. 12.72.25.80

Guru is greater than God according to Svestara Upanishad?

 * "If one has supreme devotion to God,
 * and for one's teacher as much as for God,
 * to this one these teachings which have been declared
 * may become manifest in a great soul,
 * yes, may become manifest in a great soul."

This is not the text I was referring to, but I believe it dfemonstrates that regarding Guru and God as equivilants is/was a common teaching in Hindhu "circles".

Zappaz and others: No, IMO you aren't missing anything. The problem Jim et al had with your aproach to NPOV is that they are used to an assertion by a single individual, without corroberation or documentation, being taken as fact. This is a pattern I've seen for the around 4 years I've been participating in the Maharaji-friendly, neutral and opposed BBs, and is further born out by the archives of their earlier BBs.

Three persons gave up editing because of the behavior here
Three knowledgeable, motivated persons tried to contribute to the article but gave up because of unconstructive behavior by other. Those people are ex-followers Dr. Mike Finch, Mary Moore , and Jim Heller. Something has to improve here otherwise editing this article doesn't make sense. Andries 13:43, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I totally disagree with you, Andries. The destructive behavior was mostly due to Jim. What you are saying is incorrect, and your intention to dismiss the work of many editors in tis article, is all too transparent. Your bias towards the ex-follower's campaign is too transparent as well. Why don't you also quote from the ex-follower's forum when the speak about the "stupidity of the Wikipedia concept"? Why don't you quote from the personal attacks against you, by other ex-followers? You are so biased that you only see what you want.--64.81.88.140 15:19, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Andries: What are you implying here? I do not understand your point. Wikipedia is an open source, collaborative encyclopaedia project, that enjoys the contributions of thousands of editors. If some people do not find the methods and ideals of Wikipedia to their liking, that is unfortunate. Form looking at the article's history I can see that many of the contributions of these three have remained, after being NPOVed by me and other editors. So I do not understand your complaint. Also, I disagree with your assessment of "unconstructive behavior by other". Who's behaviour? I do not see any one editor fitting that categorization.--Zappaz 15:53, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * What about the criticism that the article is nothing more than "a revisionistic infomercial for the cult interspersed with a few jarring criticisms"? Those who know something about Prem Rawat (Maharaji), please write what you know; and provide sources for everything. Also, please try to find a phrasing which you can reasonably believe will be acceptable to people who hold opposite beliefs. That is, if you're an ex-premie, try to word your criticisms such that none of Rawat's followers would want to revert your criticism: like, some ex-followers believe their whole experience with DLM was a waste of time. --Uncle Ed 18:36, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Well Ed, in reading the article I see that more than half of it is dedicated to critics and the controversy. There is also a full page Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat. Hence, I would argue that it is far from being a revisionistic infomercial. I fact, I have been NPOVing many of the contributions made by the ex-followers, and do not understand why they have chosen not to continue (unless they found the NPOVing unacceptable). If you look at, let say, the Scientology article, you would see that this article follows quite closely that format. That is: a short intro, origins, practices, critics, controversy, etc. My feeling is that the article as it stands now, contains probably too much of the controvery and criticism, not too little as claimed by the ex-followers. I have re-read the article and I can see that there are sources and references for every single statement. Also, each statement is clearly labelled as "critics say" or "these websites say", etc.  So, I do not see what is the problem. Am I missing something? --Zappaz 21:33, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I dunno. When I have a chance I'll re-read Prem Rawat and Criticism_of_Prem_Rawat carefully. If it's as you say, then perhaps the quitters are disgruntled because their POV didn't end up endorsed as objective fact. This is the commonest reason people give up on collaborative editing which I have seen in my nearly three years at Wikipedia. --Uncle Ed 12:50, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Ed, Is it the general practice of Wikipedia to give more weight to the opinions of someone from academia than to someone who has first-hand experience of a phenomenon but who does not have academic credentials in the field? Not a challenge, just trying to understand how this works... Thanks. Mary Moore 14:15, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * That's rather a big question. We need a weight of opinions article to do it justice.

 * For now, I'll just say that the Wikipedia is not supposed to take sides on a question. IMHO, that means not endorsing any side in a controversy, whether it's academic vs. first-hand or "politically correct" vs. "skeptics". How this works out in practice is still not as easy as smoothing out the wrinkles in a bedsheet. Articles on Middle East conflicts and US politics are the most difficult. --Uncle Ed 14:31, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Ed. I'll take a look at some of those articles. Regards, Mary Mary Moore 14:55, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Ed. Please re-read and let me know what you think. My feeling is that a little editing can really help the article. In regard to Mary's question, it is a rather difficult one. Let's revise the issue of "first-hand". A "first-hand" account of a Palestinian living in the territories brings one aspect. A "first hand" account of a Israeli living in Jerusalem, is another. But also you have historians, scholars, sociologists, politicians POVs as well. Is it one more important than the other. I don't think so. All are. But for Mary, her point of view is more valid and more relevant, of course (particularly in cases of apostasy, when a believer quits a practice after 25 years and losing faith requires a lot of emmotional ground to cover) That is to be expected. NPOVing in these cases in which feelings/beliefs run high, it is very difficult, although not impossible. --Zappaz 16:31, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Prem Rawat/Archive 3


text:
Raphah

Raphah - tall - is a name in the Bible.

It is used at least four times:
 * 1) 2 Samuel 21:16 - "and Ishbi-benob tried to kill David.-He was a descendant of the Raphah(f);" (The Jewish Publication Society Hebrew/English Tanakh, 1999 No. 5759).  Footnote f ("Apparently a race of giants")
 * 2) 1 Chr. 8:2, 37 - A Benjamite, the son of Benjamin, a descendant of Saul.
 * 3) 1 Chr. 20:4, 6 - In a margin-note, where "giant" is given in the text.
 * 4) Psalm 42:6 - a Hebrew word meaning to sink, relax, sink down, let drop, be disheartened (Strong Corcondance Entry No.7503)

title: Raphah


text:
Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann

Dr. Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann (born 23 January 1955) is a German politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 to 2009, and from 2014 to 2019. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party, part of the Party of European Socialists.

Kaufmann is a qualified Japanologist. She was Deputy Chairman of the PDS 1993–2000 and sat in the Volkskammer of the German Democratic Republic before reunification and the Bundestag thereafter.

From 20 July 2004 to January 2007 Kaufmann served as one of the 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament.

On 14 May 2009 she left the Left Party after she failed to be reselected for the list of candidates for the European elections and joined the Social Democrats.

Kaufmann is member of the executive board of Europa-Union Deutschland, the German section of the Union of European Federalists.

title: Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann