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The Royal Book of Oz

The Royal Book of Oz (1921) is the fifteenth book in the Oz series, and the first to be written after L. Frank Baum's death. Although Baum was credited as the author, it was written entirely by Ruth Plumly Thompson. It was followed by Kabumpo in Oz (1922).

Plot summary
The Scarecrow is upset when Professor Woggle-bug tells him that he has no family, so he goes back to the corn-field where Dorothy Gale found him to trace his "roots." When he fails to return, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion set out to search for him. They meet an elderly knight, Sir Hokus of Pokes. They also meet the Doubtful Dromedary and the Comfortable Camel. Together, they have several curious adventures while searching for the Scarecrow.

In this novel the Scarecrow discovers that, in a previous incarnation, he was human. More specifically, he was the Emperor of the Silver Islands, a kingdom located deep underground beneath the Munchkin region of Oz, inhabited by people who resemble Chinese people. When Dorothy first discovered the Scarecrow (in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) he was hanging from a beanpole in a cornfield; it now develops that this pole descends deep underground to the Silver Islands. The Emperor of the Silver Islands had been transformed into a crocus by an enemy magician; this magical crocus had sprouted and grown into the beanpole all the way up to the surface of the earth. When the farmer placed his scarecrow on the beanpole, the spirit of the transformed Emperor entered the Scarecrow's body, causing him to come to life.

The Scarecrow digs at the base of the beanpole and slides down the beanpole to the Silver Islands. The islanders hail him as the Emperor, returned to save his people. After spending some time in his former kingdom ruling the quarrelsome Silver Islanders, the Scarecrow decides to return to Oz and continue his carefree existence there. The islanders, however, are reluctant to let him go, and plot to change him back into his human form, an 85-year-old man. Dorothy and her party reach the Silver Islands, rescue the Scarecrow from the islanders, and accompany him back to the Emerald City. Sir Hokus, the Comfortable Camel, and the Doubtful Dromedary become residents of the Emerald City.

Authorship
The original introduction claimed that the book was based on notes by Baum, but this claim has been contested and disproven. The notes, titled "An Oz Book", are known from four typewritten pages found at his publisher's, but their authenticity as Baum's work has been disputed. Even if genuine, they are tied to John Dough and the Cherub and bear no resemblance to Thompson's book.

In 1964, Thompson, in a letter, claimed that this note idea was fabricated by the publishers "to bridge the gap between Baum's books and" hers. Thompson also asserted that she did not utilize any notes of Baum's. After submission of the manuscript, the publisher requested the story be completely rewritten. However, Thompson threatened to publish the book elsewhere without the Oz elements, and the publisher decided to publish the book as written.

Beginning in the 1980s, some editions have correctly credited Thompson, although the cover of the 2001 edition by Dover Publications credits only Baum.

Later Oz Stories
Sir Hokus and the Comfortable Camel return as principal characters in The Yellow Knight of Oz.

title: The Royal Book of Oz


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User:Hugus

Started contributing on August 17, 2004.

PhD in Materials Science, rock music addict.

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

title: User:Hugus


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Mark Tewksbury

Mark Roger Tewksbury, (born February 7, 1968) is a Canadian former competitive swimmer. He is best known for winning the gold medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1992 Summer Olympics. He also hosted the first season of How It's Made, a Canadian documentary series, in 2001.

Tewksbury was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (Civil Division) in 1993 for being a "motivational speaker and a gifted athlete."

Competitive swimming
Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Tewksbury trained at the University of Calgary.

He competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and won a silver medal as a member of Canada's relay team. For some years he ranked as one of the top backstrokers in the world; never a strong below-the-water swimmer, he was unmatched on the surface, but, as the importance of below-the-water swimming increased, Tewksbury's ranking began to fall.

Going into Barcelona, Tewksbury was ranked fourth in the world and most pundits picked one of the powerful American swimmers to win gold. American Jeff Rouse, world record holder in the 100m backstroke, had beaten Tewksbury at the 1991 Pan Pacific Games and 1991 World Aquatics Championships the year before and was heavily favored to win gold. Using an underwater dolphin kick start Rouse took off to an early lead, leaving Tewksbury to play catch-up on both laps. Tewksbury would pass Rouse on the last stroke of the race, beating the American by just six one hundredths of a second—the same margin of victory Rouse had bested Tewksbury the year before at World Championships. Tewksbury would credit using visualization during his preparation to help instill self-belief and calm in the moments before the Olympic final.

Tewksbury's gold medal was Canada's first at the Barcelona games and the first Canadian gold in swimming since the Communist-boycotted 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Tewksbury also won a bronze medal in the relay event in Barcelona. He made the cover of Time magazine. He was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame and was named Canada's Male Athlete of the Year. After the Barcelona games, Tewksbury retired from swimming.

Post-swimming career
After retirement, Tewksbury received a number of high-profile endorsement deals and worked as an athlete representative with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a position from which he resigned in disenchantment in 1998, accusing the IOC of rampant corruption. He was also part of the group of former Olympic athletes that was pushing for the resignation of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. Only months after the scandal surrounding the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic winter Games broke, Tewksbury became prominent around the world as a critic of the IOC and demanded reforms to the system.

In 1993, Tewksbury and Mark Leduc both gave interviews about their homosexuality to the CBC Radio series The Inside Track for "The Last Closet", a special episode about homophobia in sports; however, as neither was ready to fully come out at the time, both interviews were given anonymously and recorded through voice filters. In December 1998, Tewksbury officially came out as gay; he subsequently lost a six-figure contract as a motivational speaker because he was "too openly gay."

Tewksbury was also highly critical of Swimming Canada's organization in the wake of the national team's poor performance at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where they failed to medal. He suggested that there was a lack of accountability within Swim Canada, and that head coach Dave Johnson was given too much power.

Tewksbury became a prominent advocate for gay rights and gay causes in Canada and the world. On May 16, 2003, Tewksbury joined the board of directors for the 2006 World Outgames in Montreal and was named co-president. He was a panelist at the 2003 National Gay and Lesbian Athletics Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a panel of LGBT Olympians that also included rower Harriet Metcalf and high jumper Brian Marshall.

Tewksbury was the narrator for the TV show How It's Made during the first season. In 2006, he published his second book, an autobiography entitled Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock. Tewksbury remains a public figure working as a motivational speaker, a television commentator for swimming events, and a continued activist. He is a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.

On November 30, 2006 Tewksbury was the Master of Ceremonies for the Tribute to former Prime Minister Paul Martin at the Liberal Party of Canada's Leadership and Biennial Convention in Montreal.

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Tewksbury served as CBC Sports' swimming analyst alongside play-by play announcer Steve Armitage.

In December 2008 Tewksbury was invited by the government of France to speak at the United Nations in New York City on the day that a declaration was introduced that affirms gay rights and seeks to decriminalize homosexuality.

On September 19, 2009, Tewksbury was inducted into Canada's LGBT Human Rights Hall of Fame, the Q Hall of Fame Canada, in honour of his outstanding achievements and efforts to end discrimination in the sports world.

On August 5, 2010, he was named the chef de mission of the 2012 Canadian Summer Olympic team.

In 2015, Tewksbury was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.

On July 23, 2015, Tewksbury presented his gold medal to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg for an exhibit promoting the power of sport to influence positive change.

In 2017, Tewksbury was chosen as a Grand Marshal for the Fierté Canada Pride Montreal.

In May 2019, Tewksbury performed an autobiographical one-man show called Belong, which was produced by Wordfest and staged at the DJD Dance Centre in Calgary. The performance was a spin-off of his 2018 staged reading called 50 & Counting at Buddies in Bad Times theatre in Toronto. Belong was then restaged in January 2020 as part of One Yellow Rabbit theatre’s 34th annual High Performance Rodeo in Calgary.

In 2020, he became a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 2022, he appeared as a panelist in Canada Reads, advocating for Esi Edugyan's novel Washington Black.

title: Mark Tewksbury


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PPG Industries

PPG Industries, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 company and global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials. With headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PPG operates in more than 70 countries around the globe. By revenue it is the largest coatings company in the world followed by Sherwin-Williams. It is headquartered in PPG Place, an office and retail complex in downtown Pittsburgh, and is known for its glass facade designed by Postmodern architect Philip Johnson.

19th century
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company was founded in 1883 by Captain John Baptiste Ford and John Pitcairn, Jr., at Creighton, Pennsylvania.

PPG soon became the United States' first commercially successful producer of high-quality, thick flat glass using the plate process. PPG was also the world's first plate glass plant to power its furnaces with locally produced natural gas, an innovation which rapidly stimulated widespread industrial use of the cleaner-burning fuel.

PPG expanded quickly. By 1900, known as the "Glass Trust", it included 10 plants, had a 65 percent share of the U.S. plate glass market, and had become the nation's second largest producer of paint. Today, known as PPG Industries, the company is a multibillion-dollar, Fortune 500 corporation with 150 manufacturing locations around the world. It now produces coatings, glass, fiberglass, and other chemicals.

Pitcairn served as a director of PPG from its start, its president from 1897 to 1905, and chairman of the board from 1894 until his death in 1916.

20th century
Ditzler Color Company, established in 1902 in Detroit as an automotive color concern, was purchased by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG) in 1928. On 19 December 1968 the company changed its name to PPG Industries, Inc., to show its diverse offerings. In the mid-1980s, Cipisa, a Spanish paint company was acquired and renamed PPG Ibérica and its CEO, Pere Nadal Carres, became CEO of PPG Ibérica. In 1990 PPG founded Transitions Optical as a joint venture with Essilor.

In October 2000, PPG Industries announced it had agreed to buy Courtaulds Aerospace for $512.5 million. Based in Glendale, California, the aerospace business has annual sales of approximately $240 million, employs 1,200 people. It manufactures sealants in Glendale, California and Shildon, England; coatings and sealants in Mojave, California; glazing sealants at Gloucester City, New Jersey; and coatings at Gonfreville, France. The business also operates 14 application-support centers located in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

2000s
In 2006, the company rolled out a two-tiered pay system which resulted in massive strikes at union locations across the country. The system, now in place company-wide for non-salaried employees, provides lower rates of pay and fewer benefits to those employed after the roll-out than those employed before the roll-out. In West Virginia, after a bitter five-month strike, the company still refused to eliminate the two-tiered system. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the employment contracts of union employees had to be extended during a strike regarding the two-tiered system.

In 2007, the company was involved in a lawsuit on failing to disclose a purchase reduction of its two major auto glass customers.

In 2007, PPG in Australia acquired Barloworld Coatings (Australia) Pty Limited, producer of the Taubmans, Bristol, and White Knight brands of paint.

On 2 January 2008, PPG acquired the SigmaKalon Group of companies for $3.2 billion from private investment firm Bain Capital, strongly increasing its paint and specialty coatings business.

In 2008, PPG renamed their automotive glass division PGW (Pittsburgh Glass Works) and sold a majority of it to Kohlberg & Company. PPG retained 40% ownership of PGW until March 2016 when they sold their stake to automotive parts salvage company LKQ Corporation.

2010s
In 2012, PPG acquired Dyrup A/S, founded in Denmark in 1928 as S. Dyrup & Co A/S by Sigurd Dyrup and Axel Monberg and Ejnar Thorsen of MT Højgaard, some of whose brands are Dyrup, GORI (outdoor woodcare paint), and Bondex.

In April 2013, PPG completed the acquisition of AkzoNobel North American architectural coatings business including Glidden, Liquid Nails, and Flood brands. 2013 revenue was US$15.1 billion, while assets were US$15.9 billion.

On April 1, 2014, PPG finalized the sale of Transitions Optical to its joint venture partner, Essilor International of France; however, PPG’s technical center in Monroeville will continue to provide research and development services for Transitions. On November 5, 2014 PPG closed a deal, to purchase Mexican Consorcio Comex, S.A. de C.V. (“Comex”) for $2.3 billion

In April 2015, PPG Industries completed the acquisition of REVOCOAT, a global supplier of sealants. Chuck Bunch remains Executive Chairman, while Michael McGarry serves as President & CEO.

In July 2016, PPG announced its sale of the flat glass business to Vitro, a glass manufacturer based in Mexico, for $750 million.

In October 2016, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced the acquisition of the naming rights to Consol Energy Center by PPG; the facility will be known as PPG Paints Arena.

In September 2017, PPG announced the sale of its remaining fiberglass operations to Nippon Electric Glass for $541 million. This was following PPG's 2016 sale of its European fiberglass operations to NEG, and divesting its ownership in two other Asian fiberglass joint ventures.

Attempted acquisition of AkzoNobel
In March 2017, the company launched an unsolicited takeover bid of €20.9 billion, which was promptly rejected by AkzoNobel’s management. Days later, the company launched an increased bid of €24.5 billion, which was again rejected by AkzoNobel’s management. A number of shareholders urged AkzoNobel to explore the offer and subsequent negotiations. In April, activist investor Elliott Investors called for the removal of the Chairman of Akzo, Antony Burgmans, following Akzo's refusal to enter talks with PPG. Elliott, which has a 3.25% stake in the company, claimed it was one of a group of investors that met the Dutch legal threshold of 10% voting-share support, which is needed to call an extraordinary meeting to vote on a proposal to remove Burgmans. On April 13, Templeton Global Equity said it was among another group of investors calling for an extraordinary meeting of AkzoNobel shareholders to discuss Burgmans' continued tenure as Chairman. Later in the same month Akzo outlined its plan to separate its chemicals division and pay shareholders €1.6 billion in extra dividends, in order to attempt to hold off PPG. The new Akzo strategy was dismissed by PPG, which claimed that their offer represented better value for shareholders, supported by activist Akzo shareholder Elliot Advisors. On April 24, a day before Akzo's annual meeting of shareholders, PPG increased its final offer by approximately 8% to $28.8 billion (€26.9 billion, €96.75 per share), with Akzo's share price rising 6% to a record of €82.95 per share. Akzo shareholder Columbia Threadneedle Investments urged the company to open dialogue with PPG, whilst PPG claimed that the deal would add to earning within its first year. Great Britain's largest pension scheme investors, Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), urged Akzo to engage with PPG. On 2 May, Reuters revealed that the supervisory board of Akzo was meeting to discuss how to deal with PPG's third offer, still maintaining it did not value the company highly enough. In early May, Akzo again rejected PPG's bid, citing the deal still undervalues the company, as well as potentially facing antitrust risks, and not addressing other concerns such as "cultural differences". Under Dutch company law, PPG must now decide to either make a formal bid or walk away. In early June PPG chose to abandon pursuit.

2020s
In 2020, PPG won an Adhesives and Sealants Council (ASC) Innovation Award for "High Strength, Highly Ductile Structural Adhesive PR 2930". In May 2021, PPG completed the acquisition of Wörwag, a German coating manufacturer.

Financial record
PPG reported a net profit for each fiscal year in the period 2013 to 2022.

Environmental record
In November 2010, PPG agreed to remove 700,000 tons of toxic waste from Canal Crossing, a brownfield site in Jersey City, New Jersey where the company operated a chromium processing plant between 1954 and 1963. Stringent standards were agreed to in a federal court settlement.

Lime Lake Reclamation Project of PPG Industries in Barberton, Ohio, received special awards in the National Beneficial Use of Biosolids Program from Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) region 5 in 1998.

According to the book Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Pittsburgh Plate Glass ordered employees to dump toxic tar in Bayou D'Inde in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

In sports
PPG has been involved in sports for numerous years, including being the primary sponsor for the CART Indy car series from 1980 to 1997. The company has been a partner of Team Penske in CART, IndyCar Series and NASCAR Cup Series since 1984. Since the race's inception in 1994, PPG has sponsored the trophy for the Brickyard 400.

On October 4, 2016, it was announced that The Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh would be giving up its naming rights, and transferred to PPG, making the arena named the PPG Paints Arena.

PPG also partners with Formula 1 racing teams. They have a partnership with Williams F1 Team since 2017.

PPG is the prime sponsor of John Force Racing and makes all their cars and paints and decals them before each NHRA race.

title: PPG Industries


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Christopher Greenup

Christopher Greenup (c. 1750 – April 27, 1818) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative and the third Governor of Kentucky. Little is known about his early life; the first reliable records about him are documents recording his service in the Revolutionary War where he served as a lieutenant in the Continental Army and a colonel in the Virginia militia.

After his service in the war, Greenup helped settle the trans-Appalachian regions of Virginia. He became involved in politics, and played an active role in three of the ten statehood conventions that secured the separation of Kentucky from Virginia in 1792. He became one of the state's first representatives, and served in the Kentucky General Assembly before being elected governor in a race where, due to his immense popularity, he ran unopposed.

Greenup's term in office was marred by accusations that he had participated in the Burr Conspiracy to align Kentucky with Spain prior to the former's separation from Virginia, but he vigorously and successfully rebutted these charges. Following his term as governor, he became less active in the political arena. He died on April 27, 1818. Greenup County, Kentucky and its county seat were both named in his honor.

Early life in Virginia
Christopher Greenup was most likely born in Fairfax County in the Virginia Colony around 1750. His parents were John and Elizabeth (Witten) Greenup. His early education was attained at the local schools of the area. He learned surveying and studied law under Colonel Charles Binns at Charles City County, Virginia. During the American Revolutionary War, he served in Grayson's Additional Continental Regiment as a lieutenant, and may have seen action at Brandywine and Germantown. He resigned his commission during the Valley Forge encampment in 1778, but later served as a colonel in the Virginia militia.

In 1781, Greenup helped settle the area now known as Lincoln County, Kentucky where he spent time as a surveyor and a land speculator. He was admitted to practice law in the county court in 1782. Following Virginia's creation of Kentucky County in 1783, he was admitted to the bar of the district court of Harrodsburg and served as clerk from 1785 to 1792. In 1783, he became one of the original trustees of Transylvania Seminary (later to become Transylvania University.) He purchased two lots of land in Lexington and served as the clerk of the town's trustees.

In 1785, Greenup was elected to represent Fayette County for a single term in the Virginia House of Delegates. During his service, he was appointed to a committee with Benjamin Logan and James Garrard to make recommendations on ways to further divide the area that would become Kentucky. The committee was also responsible for revising acts and surveys related to land and water surveys in the area. The committee ultimately recommended the creation of three new counties – Bourbon, Madison, and Mercer. When Mercer County was created later that year, Greenup was appointed a justice there. In 1786, Greenup served as a quartermaster in Benjamin Logan’s expedition against the Shawnees in the Ohio country.

During this time, Greenup continued to practice law in Fayette County and pursued various other interests. He was a founding member of the Danville Political Club and in 1787, he joined the Kentucky Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Future Kentucky Governors Isaac Shelby and James Garrard, as well as future Supreme Court justice Thomas Todd were also members of the Society. In 1789, he helped organize the Kentucky Manufacturing Society. Later, he was appointed to the Kentucky River Company, a group dedicated to improving infrastructure on the Kentucky River.

On July 9, 1787, during a brief return to Virginia, Greenup married Mary Catherine ("Cathy") Pope of Hanover County, Virginia; the couple had two children – Nancy and William.

Political career in Kentucky
Greenup served as clerk of the first Kentucky statehood convention in Danville in 1784. He was elected as a delegate to the second and sixth statehood conventions in 1785 and 1788, respectively, and was a trustee of the city of Danville in 1787. H.E. Everman, biographer of fellow delegate James Garrard, noted that despite Greenup's excellent legal background and legislative experience, his lack of oratorical skills prevented him from taking more of a leadership role in the conventions.

When Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792, Greenup moved to Frankfort where he was rewarded for his efforts on behalf of the state by being chosen as an elector for the state's senators and governor. He also served in the first Kentucky Senate. Following this, he was appointed to the court of oyer and terminer, but resigned immediately to accept a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was one of Kentucky's first two representatives in the House, and was elected to three successive terms, serving from November 9, 1792, to March 3, 1797. In 1798, he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing Mercer County. He also served as clerk of the state senate from 1799 to 1802.

Greenup was a candidate for governor of Kentucky in 1800, but was runner-up to James Garrard in a four-man race that also included Benjamin Logan and Thomas Todd. Greenup garnered a majority of the vote in fifteen counties, just one fewer than Garrard, but Garrard enjoyed strong support in the populous central Kentucky counties and received 8,390 votes, compared with 6,746 for Greenup, 3,996 for Logan, and 2,166 for Todd. Garrard appointed Greenup judge of the circuit court in 1802. After the Kentucky Senate refused to confirm Garrard's Secretary of State, Harry Toulmin, as registrar of the land office, Garrard nominated Greenup. Greenup, however, intended to make another run at the governorship, and at his request, Garrard withdrew the nomination days later.

Greenup resigned his circuit judgeship on June 5, 1804, to make another run for governor. Immensely popular, he ran unopposed, and served as governor from September 4, 1804, to September 1, 1808. During Greenup's administration, the state chartered the Bank of Kentucky and the Ohio Canal Company; Greenup became a director of the former in 1807. Despite his popularity, however, he was unable to pass much of his proposed agenda, which included provision of public education and reforms to the militia, courts, revenue system, and penal system.

A partisan Frankfort newspaper implicated Greenup in the Burr conspiracy, but he successfully defended himself and preserved his reputation. He deployed the Kentucky militia along the Ohio River to defend the state from any threat that might result from the Burr conspiracy, but that threat had largely dissipated by 1807.

Following his term as governor, Greenup was chosen as a presidential elector for the ticket of James Madison and George Clinton. In 1812, he became a justice of the peace in Franklin County. In August 1812, Kentucky Secretary of State Martin D. Hardin recommended to Governor Isaac Shelby that Greenup be appointed Assistant Secretary of State. Shelby made the appointment, and when Hardin, resigned December 15, 1812, Shelby nominated Greenup as his replacement. The Kentucky Senate approved the nomination on February 3, 1813, and Greenup served until his resignation on March 13, 1813.

Personal life and death
On October 22, 1807, Greenup's wife Mary died in the Governor's Mansion. According to legend, her ghostly image has appeared in clock faces and mirrors inside the mansion.

Greenup died April 27, 1818, at Blue Lick Springs Resort, where he had traveled seeking relief from his rheumatism. He is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery. Greenup County, Kentucky was named in his honor, as was its county seat of Greenup, Kentucky.

title: Christopher Greenup


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Category talk:Science fiction novels

=Discussion=

Untitled
Folks, I don't know what you were taught in school, but I was always taught that you do NOT alphabetize based on the 'T' in 'the' or 'A' or 'An.' The definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an, and their equivalents in other languages) are ignored for the purpose of alphabetization.
 * This is an issue with the people who categorised those novels, not with the category. If you wish, you can find the articles and change the category such that they read instead of just plain  . -- Grunt (talk) 02:51, 2004 Aug 17 (UTC)

Genre includes books that don't belong
About half of these books are FANTASY, not SF! John Carter and the martian princesses of E. R. Burroughs DO NOT belong here! 195.70.32.136 16:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

 * As you find them correct them - thanks :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  19:18, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Haruhi Suzumiya
I know next to nothing about it, but I do know that Haruhi Suzumiya is neither science-fiction nor a series of novels. --Philo 16:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

 * removed :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page) / (Desk)  16:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Category talk:Science fiction novels


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Human height

Human height or stature is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body, standing erect. It is measured using a stadiometer, in centimetres when using the metric system or SI system, or feet and inches when using United States customary units or the imperial system.

In the early phase of anthropometric research history, questions about height measuring techniques for measuring nutritional status often concerned genetic differences.

Height is also important because it is closely correlated with other health components, such as life expectancy. Studies show that there is a correlation between small stature and a longer life expectancy. Individuals of small stature are also more likely to have lower blood pressure and are less likely to acquire cancer. The University of Hawaii has found that the "longevity gene" FOXO3 that reduces the effects of aging is more commonly found in individuals of small body size. Short stature decreases the risk of venous insufficiency.

When populations share genetic backgrounds and environmental factors, average height is frequently characteristic within the group. Exceptional height variation (around 20% deviation from average) within such a population is sometimes due to gigantism or dwarfism, which are medical conditions caused by specific genes or endocrine abnormalities.

The development of human height can serve as an indicator of two key welfare components, namely nutritional quality and health. In regions of poverty or warfare, environmental factors like chronic malnutrition during childhood or adolescence may result in delayed growth and/or marked reductions in adult stature even without the presence of any of these medical conditions.

Determinants of growth

The study of height is known as auxology.

Growth has long been recognized as a measure of the health of individuals, hence part of the reasoning for the use of growth charts. For individuals, as indicators of health problems, growth trends are tracked for significant deviations, and growth is also monitored for significant deficiency from genetic expectations. Genetics is a major factor in determining the height of individuals, though it is far less influential regarding differences among populations. Average height is relevant to the measurement of the health and wellness standard of living and quality of life of populations.

Humans grow fastest (other than in the womb) as infants and toddlers, rapidly declining from a maximum at birth to roughly age 2, tapering to a slowly declining rate, and then, during the pubertal growth spurt (with an average girl starting her puberty and pubertal growth spurt at 10 years and an average boy starting his puberty and pubertal growth spurt at 12 years ), a rapid rise to a second maximum (at around 11−12 years for an average female, and 13−14 years for an average male), followed by a steady decline to zero. The average female growth speed trails off to zero at about 15 or 16 years, whereas the average male curve continues for approximately 3 more years, going to zero at about 18−19, although there is limited research to suggest minor height growth after the age of 19 in males. These are also critical periods where stressors such as malnutrition (or even severe child neglect) have the greatest effect.

Moreover, the health of a mother throughout her life, especially during her critical period and pregnancy, has a role. A healthier child and adult develops a body that is better able to provide optimal prenatal conditions. The pregnant mother's health is essential for herself but also the fetus as gestation is itself a critical period for an embryo/fetus, though some problems affecting height during this period are resolved by catch-up growth assuming childhood conditions are good. Thus, there is a cumulative generation effect such that nutrition and health over generations influence the height of descendants to varying degrees.

The age of the mother also has some influence on her child's height. Studies in modern times have observed a gradual increase in height with maternal age, though these early studies suggest that trend is due to various socio-economic situations that select certain demographics as being more likely to have a first birth early in the mother's life. These same studies show that children born to a young mother are more likely to have below-average educational and behavioural development, again suggesting an ultimate cause of resources and family status rather than a purely biological explanation.

In 1988 it was observed that first-born males were shorter than later-born males. However, in 2013 the reverse observation was made. The study authors suggest that the cause may be socio-economic in nature.

Genetics
The precise relationship between genetics and environment is complex and uncertain. Differences in human height is 60−80% heritable, according to several twin studies and has been considered polygenic since the Mendelian-biometrician debate a hundred years ago. A genome-wide association (GWA) study of more than 180,000 individuals has identified hundreds of genetic variants in at least 180 loci associated with adult human height. The number of individuals has since been expanded to 253,288 individuals and the number of genetic variants identified is 697 in 423 genetic loci. In a separate study of body proportion using sitting-height ratio, it reports that these 697 variants can be partitioned into 3 specific classes, (1) variants that primarily determine leg length, (2) variants that primarily determine spine and head length, or (3) variants that affect overall body size. This gives insights into the biological mechanisms underlying how these 697 genetic variants affect overall height. These loci do not only determine height, but other features or characteristics. As an example, 4 of the 7 loci identified for intracranial volume had previously been discovered for human height. Height, like other phenotypic traits, is determined by a combination of genetics and environmental factor. A child's height based on parental heights is subject to regression toward the mean, therefore extremely tall or short parents will likely have correspondingly taller or shorter offspring, but their offspring will also likely be closer to average height than the parents themselves. Genetic potential and several hormones, minus illness, is a basic determinant for height. Other factors include the genetic response to external factors such as diet, exercise, environment, and life circumstances.

Environmental and epigenetic effects
The effect of environment on height is illustrated by studies performed by anthropologist Barry Bogin and coworkers of Guatemala Mayan children living in the United States. In the early 1970s, when Bogin first visited Guatemala, he observed that Mayan Indian men averaged 157 cm in height and the women averaged 142 cm. Bogin took another series of measurements after the Guatemalan Civil War, during which up to a million Guatemalans fled to the United States. He discovered that Maya refugees, who ranged from six to twelve years old, were significantly taller than their Guatemalan counterparts. By 2000, the American Maya were 10.24 cm taller than the Guatemalan Maya of the same age, largely due to better nutrition and health care. Bogin also noted that American Maya children had relatively longer legs, averaging 7.02 cm longer than the Guatemalan Maya (a significantly lower sitting height ratio).

The Nilotic peoples of Sudan such as the Shilluk and Dinka have been described as some of the tallest in the world. Dinka Ruweng males investigated by Roberts in 1953−1954 were on average 181 cm tall, and Shilluk males averaged 182 cm. The Nilotic people are characterized as having long legs, narrow bodies and short trunks, an adaptation to hot weather. However, male Dinka and Shilluk refugees measured in 1995 in Southwestern Ethiopia were on average only 176 cm and 172 cm tall, respectively. As the study points out, Nilotic people "may attain greater height if privileged with favourable environmental conditions during early childhood and adolescence, allowing full expression of the genetic material." Before fleeing, these refugees were subject to privation as a consequence of the succession of civil wars in their country from 1955 to the present.

Attributed as a significant reason for the trend of increasing height in parts of Europe are the egalitarian populations where proper medical care and adequate nutrition had been relatively equally distributed as of 2004. The uneven distribution of nutritional resources makes it more plausible for individuals with better access to resources to grow taller, while individuals with worse access to resources have a lessened chance of growing taller.

Changes in diet (nutrition) and a general rise in quality of health care and standard of living are the cited factors in Asian populations. Malnutrition including chronic undernutrition and acute malnutrition is known to have caused stunted growth in various populations. This has been seen in North Korea, parts of Africa, certain historical Europe, and other populations. Developing countries such as Guatemala have rates of stunting in children under 5 living as high as 82.2% in Totonicapán, and 49.8% nationwide.

Average height in a nation is correlated with protein quality. Nations that consume more protein in the form of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish tend to be taller, while those that obtain more protein from cereals tend to be shorter. Therefore, populations with high cattle per capita and high consumption of dairy live longer and are taller. Historically, this can be seen in the cases of the United States, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia in the beginning of the 19th century. Moreover, when the production and consumption of milk and beef is taken to consideration, it can be seen why the Germanic people who lived outside of the Roman Empire were taller than those who lived at its heart.

Connection to health
Studies show that there is a correlation between small stature and a longer life expectancy. Individuals of small stature are also more likely to have lower blood pressure and are less likely to acquire cancer. The University of Hawaii has found that the "longevity gene" FOXO3 that reduces the effects of aging is more commonly found in individuals of a small body size. Short stature decreases the risk of venous insufficiency. Certain studies have shown that height is a factor in overall health while some suggest tallness is associated with better cardiovascular health and shortness with longevity. Cancer risk has also been found to grow with height. Moreover, scientists have also observed a protective effect of height on risk for Alzheimer's disease, although this fact could be a result of the genetic overlap between height and intracraneal volume and there are also genetic variants influencing height that could affect biological mechanisms involved in Alzheimer's disease etiology, such as insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1).

Nonetheless, modern westernized interpretations of the relationship between height and health fail to account for the observed height variations worldwide. Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza note that variations in height worldwide can be partly attributed to evolutionary pressures resulting from differing environments. These evolutionary pressures result in height-related health implications. While tallness is an adaptive benefit in colder climates such as those found in Europe, shortness helps dissipate body heat in warmer climatic regions. Consequently, the relationships between health and height cannot be easily generalized since tallness and shortness can both provide health benefits in different environmental settings.

In the end, being excessively tall can cause various medical problems, including cardiovascular problems, because of the increased load on the heart to supply the body with blood, and problems resulting from the increased time it takes the brain to communicate with the extremities. For example, Robert Wadlow, the tallest human known to verifiable history, developed difficulty in walking as his height increased throughout his life. In many of the pictures of the latter portion of his life, Wadlow can be seen gripping something for support. Late in his life, although he died at age 22, he had to wear braces on his legs and walk with a cane; and he died after developing an infection in his legs because he was unable to feel the irritation and cutting caused by his leg braces.

Sources are in disagreement about the overall relationship between height and longevity. Samaras and Elrick, in the Western Journal of Medicine, demonstrate an inverse correlation between height and longevity in several mammals including humans.

Women whose height is under 150 cm may have a small pelvis, resulting in such complications during childbirth as shoulder dystocia.

A study done in Sweden in 2005 has shown that there is a strong inverse correlation between height and suicide among Swedish men.

A large body of human and animal evidence indicates that shorter, smaller bodies age more slowly, and have fewer chronic diseases and greater longevity. For example, a study found eight areas of support for the "smaller lives longer" thesis. These areas of evidence include studies involving longevity, life expectancy, centenarians, male vs. female longevity differences, mortality advantages of shorter people, survival findings, smaller body size due to calorie restriction, and within-species body size differences. They all support the conclusion that smaller individuals live longer in healthy environments and with good nutrition. However, the difference in longevity is modest. Several human studies have found a loss of 0.5 years/centimeter of increased height (1.2 yr/inch). But these findings do not mean that all tall people die young. Many live to advanced ages and some become centenarians.

In medicine, height is measured to monitor child development, this is a better indicator of growth than weight in the long term. For older people, excessive height loss is a symptom of osteoporosis. Height is also used to compute indicators like body surface area or body mass index.

Occupational success
There is a large body of research in psychology, economics, and human biology that has assessed the relationship between several physical features (e.g. body height) and occupational success. The correlation between height and success was explored decades ago. Shorter people are considered to have an advantage in certain sports (e.g. gymnastics, race car driving, etc.), whereas in many other sports taller people have a major advantage. In most occupational fields, body height is not relevant to how well people are able to perform; nonetheless several studies found that success was positively correlated with body height, although there may be other factors such as sex or socioeconomic status that are correlated with height which may account for the difference in success.

A demonstration of the height-success association can be found in the realm of politics. In the United States presidential elections, the taller candidate won 22 out of 25 times in the 20th century. Nevertheless, Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was 150 cm and several prominent world leaders of the 20th century, such as Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Joseph Stalin were of below-average height. These examples, however, were all before modern forms of multimedia, i.e. television, which may further height discrimination in modern society. Further, growing evidence suggests that height may be a proxy for confidence, which is likewise strongly correlated with occupational success.

Extremes
The tallest living man is Sultan Kösen of Turkey at 251 cm, and the tallest living woman is Rumeysa Gelgi, also of Turkey, at 215 cm. The tallest man in modern history was Robert Wadlow (1918−1940), from Illinois, United States, who was 272 cm at the time of his death. The shortest adult human on record was Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal at 55 cm. The shortest woman is Jyoti Amge with 63 cm.

The tallest living married couple are ex-basketball players Yao Ming and Ye Li (both of China) who measure 229 cm and 190 cm respectively, giving a combined height of 419 cm. They married in Shanghai, China, on 6 August 2007.

Pre-modern period

In general, modern humans living in developed countries are taller than their ancient counterparts, but this was not always the case.

Pre-modern times
Certain ancient human populations were quite tall, even surpassing the average height of the tallest of modern countries. For instance, certain hunter-gatherer populations living in Europe during the Paleolithic Era and India during the Mesolithic Period averaged heights of around 183 cm for males, and 172 cm for females.

Human height worldwide sharply declined with the advent of the Neolithic Revolution, likely due to significantly less protein consumption by agriculturalists as compared with hunter-gatherers.

During the Bronze Age, height varied significantly by region. The people of the Indus Valley Civilization were among the tallest in the world, with an average height of 176 cm for males and 166 cm for females. The people of Ancient Egypt stood around 167 cm for males and 157 cm for females. The Ancient Greeks averaged 166 cm for males and 154 cm for females. The Romans were slightly taller, with an average height of 169 cm for males and 158 cm for females.

18th century
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the average height of an English male was 165 cm, and the average height of an Irish male was 168 cm, according to a study by economist John Komlos and Francesco Cinnirella. The estimated mean height of English, German, and Scottish soldiers was 163 cm − 165 cm for the period as a whole, while that of Irish was 167 cm. The average height of male slaves and convicts in North America was 171 cm.

Before the mid-nineteenth century, there were cycles in height, with periods of increase and decrease; however, apart from the decline associated with the transition to agriculture, examinations of skeletons show no significant differences in height from the Neolithic Revolution through the early 1800s.

19th century
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people of European descent in North America were far taller than those in Europe and were one of the tallest in the world. The original indigenous population of Plains Native Americans was also among the tallest populations of the world at the time. Some studies also suggest that there existed the correlation between the height and the real wage, moreover, the correlation was higher among the less developed countries. The difference in height between children from different social classes was already observed by the age of two.

The average height of Americans and Europeans decreased during periods of rapid industrialization, possibly due to rapid population growth and broad decreases in economic status. This has become known as the early-industrial growth puzzle (in the U.S. context the Antebellum Puzzle). In England during the early nineteenth century, the difference between the average height of English upper-class youth (students of Sandhurst Military Academy) and English working-class youth (Marine Society boys) reached 22 cm, the highest that has been observed.

In general, there were no significant differences in regional height levels throughout the nineteenth century. The only exceptions of this rather uniform height distribution were people in the Anglo-Saxon settlement regions who were taller than the average and people from Southeast Asia with below-average heights. However, at the end of the nineteenth century and in the middle of the first globalization period, heights between rich and poor countries began to diverge. These differences did not disappear in the deglobalization period of the two World wars. In 2014, Baten and Blum found that in the nineteenth century, important determinants of height were the local availability of cattle, meat and milk as well as the local disease environment.In the late twentieth century, however, technologies and trade became more important, decreasing the impact of local availability of agricultural products.

Netherlands
Data derived from burials show that before 1850, the mean stature of males and females in Leiden, the Netherlands was respectively 167 cm and 156 cm. The average height of 19-year-old Dutch orphans in 1865 was 160 cm.

From 1830 to 1857, the average height of a Dutch person decreased, even while Dutch real GNP per capita was growing at an average rate of more than 0.5% per year. The worst decline was in urban areas that in 1847, the urban height penalty was 2.5 cm. Urban mortality was also much higher than in rural regions. In 1829, the average urban and rural Dutchman was 164 cm. By 1856, the average rural Dutchman was 162 cm and urban Dutchman was 158 cm.

In the late nineteenth century, the Netherlands was a land renowned for its short population, but as of 2012 Dutch people were among the world's tallest, with young men averaging 183 cm tall.

Modern period
In the 150 years since the mid-nineteenth century, the average human height in industrialised countries has increased by up to 10 cm. However, these increases appear to have largely levelled off.

A 2004 report citing a 2003 UNICEF study on the effects of malnutrition in North Korea, due to "successive famines," found young adult males to be significantly shorter. In contrast South Koreans "feasting on an increasingly Western-influenced diet," without famine, were growing taller. The height difference is minimal for Koreans over forty years old, who grew up at a time when economic conditions in the North were roughly comparable to those in the South, while height disparities are most acute for Koreans who grew up in the mid-1990s a demographic in which South Koreans are about 12 cm taller than their North Korean counterparts as this was a period during which the North was affected by a harsh famine where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died of hunger. A study by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who had defected to China found that eighteen-year-old males were 5 in shorter than South Koreans their age due to malnutrition.

The height of British children growing up during the years of austerity has decreased: As of 2019, the average five-year-old boy measured 112.5 cm and the average girl 111.7 cm. They were shorter and more obese than many of their European peers.

Adult height between populations often differs significantly. For example, the average height of women from the Czech Republic is greater than that of men from Malawi. This may be caused by genetic differences, childhood lifestyle differences (nutrition, sleep patterns, physical labor), or both.

Depending on sex, genetic and environmental factors, shrinkage of stature may begin in middle age in some individuals but tends to be universal in the extremely aged. This decrease in height is due to such factors as decreased height of inter-vertebral discs because of desiccation, atrophy of soft tissues, and postural changes secondary to degenerative disease.

Working on data of Indonesia, the study by Baten, Stegl and van der Eng suggests a positive relationship of economic development and average height. In Indonesia, human height has decreased coincidentally with natural or political shocks.

Average around the world

As with any statistical data, the accuracy of the findings may be challenged. In this case, for the following reasons:

 * Some studies may allow subjects to self-report values. Generally speaking, self-reported height tends to be taller than measured height, although the overestimation of height depends on the reporting subject's height, age, gender and region.
 * Test subjects may have been invited instead of random sampling, resulting in sampling bias.
 * Some countries may have significant height gaps between different regions. For instance, one survey shows there is 10.8 cm gap between the tallest state and the shortest state in Germany. Under such circumstances, the mean height may not represent the total population unless sample subjects are appropriately taken from all regions with using weighted average of the different regional groups.
 * Different social groups can show different mean height. According to a study in France, executives and professionals are 2.6 cm taller, and university students are 2.55 cm taller than the national average. As this case shows, data taken from a particular social group may not represent a total population in some countries.
 * Height measurement can vary over the course of a day, due to factors such as a decrease from exercise done directly before measurement (i.e. inversely correlated), or an increase since lying down for a significant period of time (i.e. positively correlated). For example, one study revealed a mean decrease of 1.54 cm in the heights of 100 children from getting out of bed in the morning to between 4 and 5 p.m. that same day. Such factors may not have been controlled in all of the following studies.

Men from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, Montenegro and Serbia have the tallest average height.

A 2005 study found teenagers from the Dinaric Alps to be the tallest people in the world.

Dinka people are sometimes noted for their height, with the Tutsi of Rwanda believed to be the tallest people in Africa. In a sample of 52 Dinka Agaar, Roberts and Bainbridge reported a mean height of 182 cm. In 227 Dinka Ruweng, they reported 181 cm. Both figures derived from 1953 to 1954. In Tibet, the Khampas are known for their great height. Mean height of male Khampas is 180cm.

Measurement
Height measurements are by nature subject to statistical sampling errors even for a single individual. In a clinical situation, height measurements are seldom taken more often than once per office visit, which may mean sampling taking place a week to several months apart. The smooth 50th percentile male and female growth curves illustrated above are aggregate values from thousands of individuals sampled at ages from birth to age 20. In reality, a single individual's growth curve shows large upward and downward spikes, partly due to actual differences in growth velocity, and partly due to small measurement errors.

For example, a typical measurement error of plus or minus 0.5 cm may completely nullify 0.5 cm of actual growth resulting in either a "negative" 0.5 cm growth (due to overestimation in the previous visit combined with underestimation in the latter), up to a 1.5 cm growth (the first visit underestimating and the second visit overestimating) in the same elapsed period between measurements. Note there is a discontinuity in the growth curves at age 2, which reflects the difference in recumbent length (with the child on his or her back), used in measuring infants and toddlers, and standing height typically measured from age 2 onwards.

Crown-rump length is the measurement of the length of human embryos and fetuses from the top of the head (crown) to the bottom of the buttocks (rump). It is typically determined from ultrasound imagery and can be used to estimate gestational age.

Until two years old, recumbent length is used to measure infants. Length measures the same dimension as height, but height is measured standing up while the length is measured lying down. In developed nations, the average total body length of a newborn is about 50 cm, although premature newborns may be much smaller.

Standing height is used to measure children over two years old and adults who can stand without assistance. Measure is done with a stadiometer. In general, standing height is about 0.7 cm less than recumbent length.

Surrogate height measurements are used when standing height and recumbent length are impractical. For sample Chumlea equation use knee height as indicator of stature. Other techniques include: arm span, sitting height, ulna length, etc.

General and cited bibliography

 * (for heights in Germany)
 * (for heights in U.S. and Japan)
 * A collection of data on human height, referred to here as "karube" but originally collected from other sources, is archived here. A copy is available here (an English translation of this Japanese page would make it easier to evaluate the quality of the data...)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * (for heights in Germany)
 * (for heights in U.S. and Japan)
 * A collection of data on human height, referred to here as "karube" but originally collected from other sources, is archived here. A copy is available here (an English translation of this Japanese page would make it easier to evaluate the quality of the data...)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * (for heights in U.S. and Japan)
 * A collection of data on human height, referred to here as "karube" but originally collected from other sources, is archived here. A copy is available here (an English translation of this Japanese page would make it easier to evaluate the quality of the data...)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)
 * Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics, 1996 (for average heights)

title: Human height


text:
Talk:World records at the 2004 Summer Olympics

Untitled
This page needs to be clearer in what record was broken "Men's Individual (70m): South Korea's Dong Hyun Im, 687" - I a not sure what this is saying - what is the 687? It would also be interesting to have information on the previous record, when it was set - by how far it was exceeded. I have no information, and so cannot do this myself--[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 02:50, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I've added "points" after the archery results to address this concern; a fuller explanation (how points are awarded in archery, etc.) seems out of place for this page. I'm ambivalent about the idea of listing the records that were broken, as it runs the risk of cluttering up the page. If it can be done without becoming obtrusive, that'd be fine, but I don't otherwise see a strong necessity for it.  --Shmuel 20:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I've tried one method of presenting the previous record with the new shooting record. Should we apply this to the rest, or yank that one out? Any other opinions? --Shmuel 22:35, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia have a convention regarding the style for Chinese names? At issue is, for example, "Liu Chunhong" vs. "Chunhong Liu." Shmuel 04:43, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)


text: Category:Soviet Army

title: Category:Soviet Army


text:
Talk:Acquifer

From VfD:

The article title is misspelled. It's an orphan and isn't wikified. As far as I can see, it doesn't have anything in it that isn't in the correctly spelled article, Aquifer. --Aqua 02:56, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Aquifer. Postdlf 03:11, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Simple misspellings get redirected. Merge as appropriate. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:38, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Redirect: Misspelling might be made by otthers.  (Oh, no! Russ's paradox!).  Geogre 13:18, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Redirect to aquifer. Nothing to merge. Andrewa 14:05, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Merge as appropriate and delete. The suggestion that we should have redirects because people cannot spell is ludicrous. Does this mean we are going to permit articles such as Geogre Warshington (sorry, Geogre, nothing personal;) ) to be maintained as a redirect? How about Britain and Linkin' Memorial. This =is= asking for a headache. If someone can't find an article on their first try, how about employing the Google approach: "Did you mean 'xxxx'?" Denni ☯ 01:38, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)
 * Misspellings are one of the explicitly stated uses of redirects. -- Cyrius|✎ 02:50, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * To some degree, Denni, I agree with you: we can end up using redirects to duplicate our search logic, and on VfD we can be a little liberal.  Back in the old days, I remember "full text searching has been disabled, please try Google" coming up rather more often than it does now.  As Wikipedia gets better and better and stronger and stronger, redirects for misspellings will be less and less needed.  I think it's up to us to figure out if we're dealing with an extremely common misspelling or just a nutty one.  In this case, "acquifer" is pretty common, I'd say (and Geogres are a dime a dozen at the vacant lot). Geogre 12:35, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

end moved discussion

title: Talk:Acquifer


text:
TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, encrypt a partition, or encrypt the whole storage device (pre-boot authentication).

On 28 May 2014, the TrueCrypt website announced that the project was no longer maintained and recommended users find alternative solutions. Though development of TrueCrypt has ceased, an independent audit of TrueCrypt (published in March 2015) has concluded that no significant flaws are present. Two projects forked from TrueCrypt: VeraCrypt (active) and CipherShed (abandoned).

History
TrueCrypt was initially released as version 1.0 in February 2004, based on E4M (Encryption for the Masses). Several versions and many additional minor releases have been made since then, with the most current version being 7.1a.

E4M and SecurStar dispute
Original release of TrueCrypt was made by anonymous developers called "the TrueCrypt Team". Shortly after version 1.0 was released in 2004, the TrueCrypt Team reported receiving email from Wilfried Hafner, manager of SecurStar, a computer security company. According to the TrueCrypt Team, Hafner claimed in the email that the acknowledged author of E4M, developer Paul Le Roux, had stolen the source code from SecurStar as an employee. It was further stated that Le Roux illegally distributed E4M, and authored an illegal license permitting anyone to base derivative work on the code and distribute it freely. Hafner alleges all versions of E4M always belonged only to SecurStar, and Le Roux did not have any right to release it under such a license.

This led the TrueCrypt Team to immediately stop developing and distributing TrueCrypt, which they announced online through usenet. TrueCrypt Team member David Tesařík stated that Le Roux informed the team that there was a legal dispute between himself and SecurStar, and that he received legal advisement not to comment on any issues of the case. Tesařík concluded that should the TrueCrypt Team continue distributing TrueCrypt, Le Roux may ultimately be held liable and be forced to pay consequent damages to SecurStar. To continue in good faith, he said, the team would need to verify the validity of the E4M license. However, because of Le Roux's need to remain silent on the matter, he was unable to confirm or deny its legitimacy, keeping TrueCrypt development in limbo.

Thereafter, would-be visitors reported trouble accessing the TrueCrypt website, and third-party mirrors appeared online making the source code and installer continually available, outside of official sanction by the TrueCrypt Team.

In the FAQ section of its website, SecurStar maintains its claims of ownership over both E4M and Scramdisk, another free encryption program. The company states that with those products, SecurStar "had a long tradition of open source software", but that "competitors had nothing better to do but to steal our source code", causing the company to make its products closed-source, forcing potential customers to place a substantial order and sign a non-disclosure agreement before being allowed to review the code for security.

Le Roux himself has denied developing TrueCrypt in a court hearing in March 2016, in which he also confirmed he had written E4M.

Version 2.0
Months later on 7 June 2004, TrueCrypt 2.0 was released. The new version contained a different digital signature from that of the original TrueCrypt Team, with the developers now being referred to as "the TrueCrypt Foundation." The software license was also changed to the open source GNU General Public License (GPL). However, given the wide range of components with differing licenses making up the software, and the contested nature of the legality of the program's release, a few weeks later on 21 June, version 2.1 was released under the original E4M license to avoid potential problems relating to the GPL license.

Version 2.1a of the software was released on 1 October 2004 on  sub-domain. By May 2005, the original TrueCrypt website returned and  redirected visitors to.

End of life announcement
On 28 May 2014, the TrueCrypt official website,, began redirecting visitors to   with a HTTP 301 "Moved Permanently" status, which warned that the software may contain unfixed security issues, and that development of TrueCrypt was ended in May 2014, following Windows XP's end of support. The message noted that more recent versions of Windows have built-in support for disk encryption using BitLocker, and that Linux and OS X had similar built-in solutions, which the message states renders TrueCrypt unnecessary. The page recommends any data encrypted by TrueCrypt be migrated to other encryption setups and offered instructions on moving to BitLocker. The SourceForge project page for the software at  was updated to display the same initial message, and the status was changed to "inactive". The page also announced a new software version, 7.2, which only allows decryption.

Initially, the authenticity of the announcement and new software was questioned. Multiple theories attempting to explain the reason behind the announcement arose throughout the tech community.

Shortly after the end of life announcement of TrueCrypt, Gibson Research Corporation posted an announcement titled "Yes... TrueCrypt is still safe to use" and a Final Release Repository to host the last official non-crippled version 7.1a of TrueCrypt. They no longer host the final release repository as of 2022.

Truecrypt.org has been excluded from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Their exclusion policy says they exclude pages at site owner request.

Operating systems
TrueCrypt supports Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of these operating systems are supported, except for Windows IA-64 (not supported) and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (runs as a 32-bit process). The version for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP can encrypt the boot partition or entire boot drive.

Independent implementations
There is an independent, compatible implementation, tcplay, for DragonFly BSD and Linux.

The Dm-crypt module included in default Linux kernel supports a TrueCrypt target called "tcw" since Linux version 3.13.

Algorithms
Individual ciphers supported by TrueCrypt are AES, Serpent, and Twofish. Additionally, five different combinations of cascaded algorithms are available: AES-Twofish, AES-Twofish-Serpent, Serpent-AES, Serpent-Twofish-AES and Twofish-Serpent. The cryptographic hash functions available for use in TrueCrypt are RIPEMD-160, SHA-512, and Whirlpool.

Modes of operation
TrueCrypt currently uses the XTS mode of operation. Prior to this, TrueCrypt used LRW mode in versions 4.1 through 4.3a, and CBC mode in versions 4.0 and earlier. XTS mode is thought to be more secure than LRW mode, which in turn is more secure than CBC mode.

Although new volumes can only be created in XTS mode, TrueCrypt is backward compatible with older volumes using LRW mode and CBC mode. Later versions produce a security warning when mounting CBC mode volumes and recommend that they be replaced with new volumes in XTS mode.

Keys
The header key and the secondary header key (XTS mode) are generated using PBKDF2 with a 512-bit salt and 1000 or 2000 iterations, depending on the underlying hash function used.

Plausible deniability
TrueCrypt supports a concept called plausible deniability, by allowing a single "hidden volume" to be created within another volume. In addition, the Windows versions of TrueCrypt have the ability to create and run a hidden encrypted operating system whose existence may be denied.

The TrueCrypt documentation lists many ways in which TrueCrypt's hidden volume deniability features may be compromised (e.g. by third-party software which may leak information through temporary files, thumbnails, etc., to unencrypted disks) and possible ways to avoid this. In a paper published in 2008 and focused on the then latest version (v5.1a) and its plausible deniability, a team of security researchers led by Bruce Schneier states that Windows Vista, Microsoft Word, Google Desktop, and others store information on unencrypted disks, which might compromise TrueCrypt's plausible deniability. The study suggested the addition of a hidden operating system functionality; this feature was added in TrueCrypt 6.0. When a hidden operating system is running, TrueCrypt also makes local unencrypted filesystems and non-hidden TrueCrypt volumes read-only to prevent data leaks. The security of TrueCrypt's implementation of this feature was not evaluated because the first version of TrueCrypt with this option had only recently been released.

There was a functional evaluation of the deniability of hidden volumes in an earlier version of TrueCrypt by Schneier et al. that found security leaks.

Identifying TrueCrypt volumes
When analyzed, TrueCrypt volumes appear to have no header and contain random data. TrueCrypt volumes have sizes that are multiples of 512 due to the block size of the cipher mode and key data is either 512 bytes stored separately in the case of system encryption or two 128 kB headers for non-system containers. Forensics tools may use these properties of file size, apparent lack of a header, and randomness tests to attempt to identify TrueCrypt volumes. Although these features give reason to suspect a file to be a TrueCrypt volume, there are, however, some programs which exist for the purpose of securely erasing files by employing a method of overwriting file contents, and free disk space, with purely random data (i.e. "shred" & "scrub" ), thereby creating reasonable doubt to counter pointed accusations declaring a file, made of statistically random data, to be a TrueCrypt file.

If a system drive, or a partition on it, has been encrypted with TrueCrypt, then only the data on that partition is deniable. When the TrueCrypt boot loader replaces the normal boot loader, an offline analysis of the drive can positively determine that a TrueCrypt boot loader is present and so lead to the logical inference that a TrueCrypt partition is also present. Even though there are features to obfuscate its purpose (i.e. displaying a BIOS-like message to misdirect an observer such as, "Non-system disk" or "disk error"), these reduce the functionality of the TrueCrypt boot loader and do not hide the content of the TrueCrypt boot loader from offline analysis. Here again, the use of a hidden operating system is the suggested method for retaining deniability.

Performance
TrueCrypt supports parallelized encryption for multi-core systems and, under Microsoft Windows, pipelined read/write operations (a form of asynchronous processing)  to reduce the performance hit of encryption and decryption. On newer processors supporting the AES-NI instruction set, TrueCrypt supports hardware-accelerated AES to further improve performance. The performance impact of disk encryption is especially noticeable on operations which would normally use direct memory access (DMA), as all data must pass through the CPU for decryption, rather than being copied directly from disk to RAM.

In a test carried out by Tom's Hardware, although TrueCrypt is slower compared to an unencrypted disk, the overhead of real-time encryption was found to be similar regardless of whether mid-range or state-of-the-art hardware is in use, and this impact was "quite acceptable". In another article the performance cost was found to be unnoticeable when working with "popular desktop applications in a reasonable manner", but it was noted that "power users will complain".

Incompatibility with FlexNet Publisher and SafeCast
Installing third-party software which uses FlexNet Publisher or SafeCast (which are used for preventing software piracy on products by Adobe such as Adobe Photoshop) can damage the TrueCrypt bootloader on Windows partitions/drives encrypted by TrueCrypt and render the drive unbootable. This is caused by the inappropriate design of FlexNet Publisher writing to the first drive track and overwriting whatever non-Windows bootloader exists there.

Security concerns
TrueCrypt is vulnerable to various known attacks which are also present in other disk encryption software releases such as BitLocker. To prevent those, the documentation distributed with TrueCrypt requires users to follow various security precautions. Some of those attacks are detailed below.

Encryption keys stored in memory
TrueCrypt stores its keys in RAM; on an ordinary personal computer the DRAM will maintain its contents for several seconds after power is cut (or longer if the temperature is lowered). Even if there is some degradation in the memory contents, various algorithms can intelligently recover the keys. This method, known as a cold boot attack (which would apply in particular to a notebook computer obtained while in power-on, suspended, or screen-locked mode), has been successfully used to attack a file system protected by TrueCrypt.

Physical security
TrueCrypt documentation states that TrueCrypt is unable to secure data on a computer if an attacker physically accessed it and TrueCrypt is used on the compromised computer by the user again (this does not apply to a common case of a stolen, lost, or confiscated computer). The attacker having physical access to a computer can, for example, install a hardware/software keylogger, a bus-mastering device capturing memory, or install any other malicious hardware or software, allowing the attacker to capture unencrypted data (including encryption keys and passwords), or to decrypt encrypted data using captured passwords or encryption keys. Therefore, physical security is a basic premise of a secure system. Attacks such as this are often called "evil maid attacks".

Malware
TrueCrypt documentation states that TrueCrypt cannot secure data on a computer if it has any kind of malware installed. Malware may log keystrokes, thus exposing passwords to an attacker.

The "Stoned" bootkit
The "Stoned" bootkit, an MBR rootkit presented by Austrian software developer Peter Kleissner at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference USA 2009, has been shown capable of tampering TrueCrypt's MBR, effectively bypassing TrueCrypt's full volume encryption. Potentially every hard disk encryption software is affected by this kind of attack if the encryption software does not rely on hardware-based encryption technologies like TPM, or if the attack is made with administrative privileges while the encrypted operating system is running.

Two types of attack scenarios exist in which it is possible to maliciously take advantage of this bootkit: in the first one, the user is required to launch the bootkit with administrative privileges once the PC has already booted into Windows; in the second one, analogously to hardware keyloggers, a malicious person needs physical access to the user's TrueCrypt-encrypted hard disk: in this context this is needed to modify the user's TrueCrypt MBR with that of the Stoned bootkit and then place the hard disk back on the unknowing user's PC, so that when the user boots the PC and types his/her TrueCrypt password on boot, the "Stoned" bootkit intercepts it thereafter because, from that moment on, the Stoned bootkit is loaded before TrueCrypt's MBR in the boot sequence. The first type of attack can be prevented as usual by good security practices, e.g. avoid running non-trusted executables with administrative privileges. The second one can be successfully neutralized by the user if he/she suspects that the encrypted hard disk might have been physically available to someone he/she does not trust, by booting the encrypted operating system with TrueCrypt's Rescue Disk instead of booting it directly from the hard disk. With the rescue disk, the user can restore TrueCrypt's MBR to the hard disk.

Trusted Platform Module
The FAQ section of the TrueCrypt website states that the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) cannot be relied upon for security, because if the attacker has physical or administrative access to the computer and you use it afterwards, the computer could have been modified by the attacker e.g. a malicious component—such as a hardware keystroke logger—could have been used to capture the password or other sensitive information. Since the TPM does not prevent an attacker from maliciously modifying the computer, TrueCrypt will not support the TPM.

Security audits
In 2013 a graduate student at Concordia University published a detailed online report, in which he states that he has confirmed the integrity of the distributed Windows binaries of version 7.1a.

A crowdfunding campaign attempting to conduct an independent security audit of TrueCrypt was successfully funded in October 2013. A non-profit organization called the Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP) was formed, calling itself "a community-driven global initiative which grew out of the first comprehensive public audit and cryptanalysis of the widely used encryption software TrueCrypt". The organization established contact with TrueCrypt developers, who welcomed the audit. Phase I of the audit was successfully completed on 14 April 2014, finding "no evidence of backdoors or malicious code". Matthew D. Green, one of the auditors, added "I think it's good that we didn't find anything super critical."

One day after TrueCrypt's end of life announcement, OCAP confirmed that the audit would continue as planned, with Phase II expected to begin in June 2014 and wrap up by the end of September. The Phase II audit was delayed, but was completed 2 April 2015 by NCC Cryptography Services. This audit "found no evidence of deliberate backdoors, or any severe design flaws that will make the software insecure in most instances". The French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) stated that while TrueCrypt 6.0 and 7.1a have previously attained ANSSI certification, migration to an alternate certified product is recommended as a precautionary measure.

According to Gibson Research Corporation, Steven Barnhart wrote to an email address for a TrueCrypt Foundation member he had used in the past and received several replies from "David". According to Barnhart, the main points of the email messages were that the TrueCrypt Foundation was "happy with the audit, it didn't spark anything", and that the reason for the announcement was that "there is no longer interest [in maintaining the project]."

According to a study released 29 September 2015, TrueCrypt includes two vulnerabilities in the driver that TrueCrypt installs on Windows systems allowing an attacker arbitrary code execution and privilege escalation via DLL hijacking. In January 2016, the vulnerability was fixed in VeraCrypt, but it remains unpatched in TrueCrypt's unmaintained installers.

Operation Satyagraha
In July 2008, several TrueCrypt-secured hard drives were seized from Brazilian banker Daniel Dantas, who was suspected of financial crimes. The Brazilian National Institute of Criminology (INC) tried unsuccessfully for five months to obtain access to his files on the TrueCrypt-protected disks. They enlisted the help of the FBI, who used dictionary attacks against Dantas' disks for over 12 months, but were still unable to decrypt them.

United States v. John Doe
In 2012 the United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a John Doe TrueCrypt user could not be compelled to decrypt several of his hard drives. The court's ruling noted that FBI forensic examiners were unable to get past TrueCrypt's encryption (and therefore were unable to access the data) unless Doe either decrypted the drives or gave the FBI the password, and the court then ruled that Doe's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent legally prevented the Government from making them do so.

David Miranda
On 18 August 2013 David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained at London's Heathrow Airport by Metropolitan Police while en route to Rio de Janeiro from Berlin. He was carrying with him an external hard drive said to be containing sensitive documents pertaining to the 2013 global surveillance disclosures sparked by Edward Snowden. Contents of the drive were encrypted by TrueCrypt, which authorities said "renders the material extremely difficult to access". Detective Superintendent Caroline Goode stated the hard drive contained around 60 gigabytes of data, "of which only 20 have been accessed to date." She further stated the process to decode the material was complex and "so far only 75 documents have been reconstructed since the property was initially received."

Guardian contributor Naomi Colvin concluded the statements were misleading, stating that it was possible Goode was not even referring to any actual encrypted material, but rather deleted files reconstructed from unencrypted, unallocated space on the hard drive, or even plaintext documents from Miranda's personal effects. Greenwald supported this assessment in an interview with Democracy Now!, mentioning that the UK government filed an affidavit asking the court to allow them to retain possession of Miranda's belongings. The grounds for the request were that they could not break the encryption, and were only able to access 75 of the documents that he was carrying, which Greenwald said "most of which were probably ones related to his school work and personal use".

James DeSilva
In February 2014, an Arizona Department of Real Estate IT department employee, James DeSilva, was arrested on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor through the sharing of explicit images over the Internet. His computer, encrypted with TrueCrypt, was seized, and DeSilva refused to reveal the password. Forensics detectives from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office were unable to gain access to his stored files.

Lauri Love
In October 2013, British–Finnish activist Lauri Love was arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) on charges of hacking into a US department or agency computer and one count of conspiring to do the same. The government confiscated all of his electronics and demanded he provide them with the necessary keys to decrypt the devices. Love refused. On 10 May 2016 a District Judge (Magistrate's Court) rejected a request by the NCA that Love be forced to turn over his encryption keys or passwords to TrueCrypt files on an SD card and hard drives that were among the confiscated property.

Druking
In the special prosecutor investigation for Druking in South Korea, the special prosecutor decrypted some of the files encrypted by TrueCrypt by guessing the passphrase.

The special prosecutor said the hidden volumes were especially difficult to deal with. He decrypted some of encrypted files by trying words and phrases the druking group had used elsewhere as parts of the passphrase in order to make educated guesses.

License and source model
TrueCrypt was released as source-available, under the "TrueCrypt License," which is unique to the TrueCrypt software. As of version 7.1a (the last full version of the software, released Feb 2012), the TrueCrypt License was version 3.0. It is not part of the panoply of widely used open source licenses. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) states that it is not a free software license.

Discussion of the licensing terms on the Open Source Initiative (OSI)'s license-discuss mailing list in October 2013 suggests that the TrueCrypt License has made progress towards compliance with the Open Source Definition but would not yet pass if proposed for certification as Open Source software. According to current OSI president Simon Phipps:

"...it is not at all appropriate for [TrueCrypt] to describe itself as 'open source'. This use of the term 'open source' to describe something under a license that's not only unapproved by OSI but known to be subject to issues is unacceptable. ... As OSI director and open source expert Karl Fogel said, 'The ideal solution is not to have them remove the words 'open source' from their self-description, but rather for their software to be under an OSI-approved open source license.'"

As a result of its questionable status with regard to copyright restrictions and other potential legal issues, major Linux distributions do not consider the TrueCrypt License free: TrueCrypt is not included with Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE.

End of life and license version 3.1
28 May 2014 announcement of discontinuation of TrueCrypt also came with a new version 7.2 of the software. Among the many changes to the source code from the previous release were changes to the TrueCrypt License — including removal of specific language that required attribution of TrueCrypt as well as a link to the official website to be included on any derivative products — forming a license version 3.1.

Cryptographer Matthew Green, who had help raise funds for TrueCrypt's audit noted a connection between TrueCrypt's refusal to change the license and their departure-time warning. "They set the whole thing on fire, and now maybe nobody is going to trust it because they'll think there's some big evil vulnerability in the code."

On 16 June 2014, the only alleged TrueCrypt developer still answering email replied to a message by Matthew Green asking for permission to use the TrueCrypt trademark for a fork released under a standard open source license. Permission was denied, which led to the two known forks being named VeraCrypt and CipherShed as well as a re-implementation named tc-play rather than TrueCrypt.

Trademarks
In 2007 a US trademark for TrueCrypt was registered under the name of Ondrej Tesarik with a company name TrueCrypt Developers Association and a trademark on the "key" logo was registered under the name of David Tesarik with a company name TrueCrypt Developers Association.

In 2009 the company name TrueCrypt Foundation was registered in the US by a person named David Tesarik. The TrueCrypt Foundation non-profit organization last filed tax returns in 2010, and the company was dissolved in 2014.

Archives

 * Past versions on FileHippo
 * Past versions on GitHub
 * Past versions on truecrypt.ch
 * Last version on Gibson Research Corporation website
 * Partial mirror of the original TrueCrypt 7.1a online manual

title: TrueCrypt


text: Category:Sailboats

title: Category:Sailboats


text:
Open Water (film)

Open Water is a 2003 American survival horror thriller film. The story concerns an American couple who go scuba diving while on vacation, only to find themselves stranded miles from shore in shark-filled waters when the crew of their boat accidentally leaves them behind.

The film is loosely based on the true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who in 1998 went out with a scuba diving group, Outer Edge Dive Company, on the Great Barrier Reef, and were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount.

The film was financed by the husband and wife team of writer/director Chris Kentis and producer Laura Lau, both avid scuba divers. It cost $120,000 to make and was bought by Lions Gate Entertainment for $2.5 million after its screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Lions Gate spent a further $8 million on distribution and marketing. The film ultimately grossed $55.5 million worldwide (including $30 million from the North American box office alone).

Before filming began, the Lonergans' experience was re-created for an episode of ABC's 20/20, and the segment was repeated after the release of Open Water. Clips from the film were also featured on NBC in "Troubled Waters", a Dateline episode (July 7, 2008) with Matt Lauer interviewing two professional divers, Richard Neely and Ally Dalton, who were left adrift at the Great Barrier Reef by a dive boat on May 21, 2008.

Plot
Daniel Kintner and Susan Watkins are frustrated that their hard-working lives do not allow them to spend much time together. They go on a scuba-diving vacation to help improve their relationship. On their second day, they join a group scuba dive. A head count is taken, and the passenger total is recorded as 20. Daniel and Susan decide to separate briefly from the group while underwater. Half an hour later, the group returns to the boat; two members of the group are inadvertently counted twice, so the dive master thinks that everyone is back on board, and the boat leaves the site. However, Daniel and Susan are still underwater, unaware that the others have returned to shore. When they resurface, the boat has gone. They believe that the group will soon return to recover them.

Stranded at sea, it slowly dawns on Daniel and Susan that their boat is not coming back for them. They bicker, battle bouts of hunger and mental exhaustion, and realize they have probably drifted far from the dive site. They also realize that sharks have been circling them below the surface. Soon, jellyfish appear, stinging them both, while sharks come close. Susan receives a small shark bite on the leg but does not immediately realize it. Daniel goes under and discovers a small fish feeding on the exposed flesh of her bite wound. Later, a shark bites Daniel, and the wound begins to bleed profusely. Susan removes her weight belt and uses it to apply pressure to Daniel's wound, but he appears to go into shock. After night falls, sharks return and attack Daniel during a storm, killing him. The next morning, Daniel and Susan's belongings are finally noticed on the boat by a crew member, and he realizes that they must have been left at the dive site. A massive search for the couple begins immediately.

Susan realizes that Daniel is dead and releases him into the water, where sharks pull him down in a feeding frenzy. After putting on her mask, she looks beneath the surface and sees several large sharks circling her. Susan looks around one last time for any sign of coming rescue. Seeing none, she removes her scuba gear and disappears below the water. Sometime later, a fishing crew cuts open a newly caught shark's stomach, finding a diving camera (apparently that of Daniel and Susan). One of the fishermen asks offhandedly to another, "Wonder if it works?"

Cast

 * Blanchard Ryan as Susan Watkins
 * Daniel Travis as Daniel Kintner
 * Saul Stein as Seth
 * Michael E. Williamson as Davis
 * Cristina Zenato as Linda
 * John Charles as Junior
 * Estelle Lau as Affected-Ear Diver

Production
The filmmakers used live sharks, as opposed to the mechanical ones used in Jaws or the computer-generated fish in Deep Blue Sea. The film strives for authentic shark behavior, shunning the stereotypical exaggerated shark behavior typical of many films. The movie was shot on digital video. As noted above, the real-life events that inspired this story took place in the southern Pacific Ocean, and this film moves the location to the Atlantic Ocean, being filmed in The Bahamas, the United States Virgin Islands, the Grenadines, and Mexico.

During the audition, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau made it clear to Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis that they would work with real sharks in the film and that it was non-negotiable. "So I was like 'okay, that's fine' and I hadn't been offered the part or anything yet, and then when I was offered the part, that had already been negotiated," said Blanchard.

Reception
Open Water received mostly positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 196 reviews with an average rating of 6.57/10. The consensus reads: "A low-budget thriller with some intense moments." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 63 out of 100, based on reviews from 38 critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Most critics praised the film for its intensity and minimalist filmmaking, while the audience did not well receive it. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert praised the film highly: "Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the 'it's only a movie' reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real". In a much less favorable review, A. O. Scott in The New York Times lamented that it "succeeds in mobilizing the audience's dread, but it fails to make us care as much as we should about the fate of its heroes".

Box office
Open Water was made for a budget recorded by Box Office Mojo as $120,000, grossed $1 million in 47 theaters on its opening weekend, and made a lifetime gross of $55 million.

Sequels
In 2006, a film marketed as a sequel titled Open Water 2: Adrift was released, although its plot is unrelated to Open Water. A third film in the series titled, Open Water 3: Cage Dive was released in 2017, following the first film's plot of being a survival shark film, although unrelated in continuity.

title: Open Water (film)


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Average height

I don't believe this deserves an article to itself. -- Grunt (talk) 02:53, 2004 Aug 17 (UTC) --Ianb [Myg0t] 05:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Give it to cleanup. Neutrality 02:54, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment: It looks like it's trying to be an article on average heights by county, gender, and age—this could be useful information if compiled and organized properly. Postdlf 03:09, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. There's no need to keep an empty husk of would-be data.  Even if it were a real article, a collage of statistical snapshots would have dubious encylopaedic value: Average height of various demographic groups as of August 2004.  It would be better suited to a medical database. -- WOT 04:14, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. --Dittaeva 08:51, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: If all the information for every nation were compiled, we would have a list of facts -- exactly what you expect to find in a gazette.  The concept of average height, what it means, the things that affect it are encyclopedic.  A table of facts, on the other hand, is the function of an atlas or almanac.  That, however, is assuming a perfect version of this article.  The present case is incomplete, uncited, and US only (and yet labeled as if it were about the concept).  Geogre 13:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Unless someone can figure out how to turn this into a real article, delete. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:10, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, as per Cyrius|✎. Average and normal are both concepts subject to a considerable number of factors. "Average" in North America, for instance, is rarely "average" in Africa. If someone can fulfil the potential of this topic, I applaud them, but this effort is pathetic. Denni ☯ 01:45, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)
 * Delete. Appropriately quoted information (preferably also in a system of weights and measures understandable to people who can never remember how many ounces to a furlong, or whatever), might be useful in an article on human physiology or what ever, but not like this. I see someone coming and adding stuff like the average height of buildings in Venezuela, Pokemons etc.
 * Hmph, I'm below average. Delete! Rhymeless 22:10, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)