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Disjunctive pronoun

A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed form of a personal pronoun reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts.

Examples and usage
Disjunctive pronominal forms are typically found in the following contexts. The examples are taken from French, which uses the disjunctive first person singular pronoun moi. The (sometimes colloquial) English translations illustrate similar uses of me as a disjunctive form.
 * in syntactically unintegrated disjunct (or "dislocated") positions
 * Les autres s'en vont, mais moi, je reste.
 * The others are leaving, but me, I'm staying.

 * in elliptical constructions (often "sentence fragments") with no verb (e.g. short answers)
 * Qui veut du gâteau ? Moi.
 * Who wants cake? Me. (cf. "I do")
 * Il est plus âgé que moi.
 * He is older than me. (cf. "I am")

 * in the main clause of a cleft sentence
 * C'est moi que vous cherchez.
 * It's me that you're looking for.

Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For example, in a language with grammatical gender, there may be a tendency to use masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns primarily for referring to animate entities.
 * Si l'on propose une bonne candidate, je voterai pour elle.
 * If someone proposes a good candidate, I'll vote for her.
 * Si l'on propose une bonne loi, je voterai pour elle.
 * If someone proposes a good law, I'll vote for her (it).

"It's me"
In some languages, a personal pronoun has a form called a disjunctive pronoun, which is used when it stands on its own, or with only a copula, such as in answering the question "Who wrote this page?" The natural answer for most English speakers in this context would be "me" (or "It's me"), parallel to moi (or C'est moi) in French. Unlike in French, however, where such constructions are considered standard, English pronouns used in this way have caused dispute. Some grammarians contend that the correct answer should be "I" or "It is I" because "is" is a linking verb and "I" is a predicate nominative, and up until a few centuries ago spoken English used pronouns in the subjective case in such sentences. However, since English has lost noun inflection and now relies on word order, using the objective case me after the verb be like other verbs seems natural to modern speakers.

"It is I" developed from the Old and Middle English form "It am I". "It" was used as the complement of "am", but in modern English "it" is the subject.

title: Disjunctive pronoun


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Mark Farina

Mark Farina is an American disc jockey and musician, known for his Chicago house, acid jazz and downtempo works. His notable releases include Mood (KMS Records, 1989) and the Mushroom Jazz series (Om Records, 1996–2011). He is primarily identified with the house music scenes in his hometown of Chicago, and San Francisco, California.

Biography
Shortly after Farina became friends with Derrick Carter in 1988 at a record store in Chicago, he developed an interest in house music. Farina experimented with a deeper style, dropping De La Soul, disco classics and other styles not being played in the main rooms of nightclubs. While exploring purist forms of house music, Farina developed his trademark style, known as "mushroom jazz": acid jazz infused with the West Coast's jazzy, organic productions along with urban beats.

Fans embraced Farina's downtempo style, and he started in 1992 a weekly Mushroom Jazz club night in San Francisco with Patty Ryan. In 3 years at the club, Farina and Mushroom Jazz established a following. When the club closed, Farina continued the tradition by releasing a series of CDs under the same name, Mushroom Jazz. His house sets have been described as the jazzy side of Chicago House mixed San Francisco style. URB, MUZIK and BPM magazines have all had him on their 'Top DJs in the World' lists. In 2000, Farina was ranked at number 72 on the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs list.

Discography (selected releases)

 * Geograffiti EP (Great Lakes Audio)
 * Mushroom Jazz series
 * Mushroom Jazz 8 (Innercise/MRI)
 * Mushroom Jazz 7 (Innercise/MRI)
 * Mushroom Jazz 6 (Om)
 * Mushroom Jazz 5 (Om)
 * Mushroom Jazz 4 (Om)
 * Mushroom Jazz 3 (Om)
 * Mushroom Jazz 2 (Om)
 * Mushroom Jazz 1 (Om)
 * Fabric 40 (Fabric)
 * Live in Tokyo (Om)
 * House of OM (Om)
 * Sessions (MOS)
 * Seasons (Moonshine)
 * Imperial Dub (Imperial)
 * United DJs of America (DMC)
 * San Francisco Sessions (Om)
 * Connect (Om)
 * Live at Om w/Derrick Carter (Om)
 * Air Farina (Om)
 * Bes' Enatainment EP (Great Lakes Audio)

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

title: Mark Farina


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Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation

Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) was a government company that provided telecommunication and postal services across Kenya. In 1999, the KPTC was separated into three separate entities - Telkom Kenya, Kenya Postal Corporation and the Communication Commission of Kenya,(CCK) the licensing and regulatory authority of the government.

History
From 1948 to 1977, postal service in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda was provided by the East African Posts and Telecommunications Corporation. The dissolution of the first East African Community since that era forced Kenya to establish its own monopoly communications company, KPTC.

New government economic policies in the mid 1990s were developed and adopted, supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Recommendations of that process included separation of the postal and telecommunication operations. An IMF loan arrangement also depended on privatisation of KPTC, but IMF suspended this in July 1997 over reported concerns of government corruption.

Controversy over IMF telecommunications privatisation policies continued. KPTC's Board of Directors was terminated by the Kenyan government in February 1999 prior to an IMF visit to the country.

In 1999, the corporation was broken up into three entities:

 * 1) Telkom Kenya providing telecommunications services,
 * 2) Postal Corporation of Kenya to offer postal services,
 * 3) Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), a separate national regulatory authority.

Service provision and quality
Telephone service quality in Kenya remained problematic at times. Official waiting lists of customers seeking telephone service increased almost fourfold to almost 79 000 between 1977 and 1983, but had been reduced to less than 50 000 by 1986. These waiting lists only applied to areas where telephone service is available.

In 2003, years after the division of KPTC, CCK Board Chairman Peter Kariuki noted the total number of people remaining to be connected to telephone service in Kenya stood at 7 million. Emerging private mobile telephone companies provide service capacity, but remained too expensive for many citizens.


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Lumidee

Lumidee Cedeño (born October 13, 1984), known mononymously as Lumidee, is an American singer-songwriter and rapper. She is best known for her 2003 single "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)", which peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and led her to sign with Universal Records. The song preceded the release of her debut studio album Almost Famous (2003), which saw mixed to negative critical reception and moderate commercial performance. Her second album, Unexpected (2007) saw a critical improvement despite a commercial decline, and was supported by the cover single "She's Like the Wind" (featuring Tony Sunshine).

Early life
Cedeño was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, of Puerto Rican descent. After her father died in 1995, she and her four siblings were raised by their grandparents. She began singing and rapping at the age of twelve. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of fourteen, after she was misdiagnosed with lupus.

2003–2006: Almost Famous
After graduating high school, she collaborated with a local neighborhood producer named DJ Tedsmooth to record her debut single for an independent record label called Straight Face. She signed with Universal Records, where she released her debut album titled Almost Famous on June 24, 2003. Her debut single, "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)", peaked at number 3 in the United States and number 2 in the United Kingdom, but it was her only hit until the 2007 release of "She's Like the Wind". According to Nielsen SoundScan, Almost Famous sold 276,000 copies in the U.S.

For the next few years, Lumidee was not in the mainstream music industry in the U.S., instead veering more towards reggaeton and dancehall music. After her hit single "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)" faded, Lumidee went overseas to continue her musical career in Belgium, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. She released multiple mixtapes during the years, which was a mixtape consisting of new material, freestyles, and tracks from Lumidee was also featured on several tracks in this area, having some success in Europe.

In 2006, Lumidee released a song for the FIFA World Cup album soundtrack entitled "Dance!". It featured a sample of Whitney Houston's song, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)". The song was a club hit around Europe, successfully entering the charts in the countries where it was officially released. In the summer of 2006, Lumidee was featured on Frankie Cutlass' 2006 remix of his classic club hit anthem, "Puerto Rico" (featuring Joell Ortiz, Voltio, and Yomo Toro).

2007: Unexpected
In 2007, Lumidee was named youth ambassador of the New York Arthritis Foundation's Arthritis Walk. On April 17, she released her second album, Unexpected, under TVT Records. In an interview with Vibe, Lumidee spoke about signing with TVT stating, "TVT Records is the perfect way for me to come back and again I'm coming out of left field, just like with "Never Leave You (Uh Oh)," Nobody ever thought of me coming back on a street credible label like TVT, alongside acts like Pitbull, Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins. Actually, nobody ever thought of me really even coming back, period." The U.S. single, "She's Like the Wind", peaked at 43, but it was not released in Europe. There, the label released the single "Crazy" (featuring Pitbull), which had moderate chart success in Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Lumidee made an appearance on MTV Cribs, showing her New Jersey home, which aired on August 6, 2007.

2009–present
On May 13, 2009, Lumidee released a mixtape called I'm Up, Vol. 1 from her label, Logy Music Entertainment. In late 2009, Lumidee worked on another mixtape entitled Luminadee, which was released exclusively on Coast2CoastMixtapes.com in early January 2010. Lumidee was working on an album which was set to be released sometime in 2010, but ultimately it did not materialize. In 2011, she appeared in a re-work of Remady's dance hit "No Superstar". In 2011, she collaborated with rapper Somaya Reece on the single "Dale Mami". The video debuted on mun2's The Urban Tip on January 11, 2012. Universal Australia, Toughstuff Germany, and Sony Scandinavia signed "Ring My Bell" by Michael Fall (featuring Lumidee, Rick Elback, and Aziza) for release in 2014. On June 24, 2014, in an interview with Kevin Apaza of Directlyrics.com, Lumidee mentioned starting her own label Logy Music Entertainment. After leaving her previous major label, she will release her EP La Luz through her label Logy Music Entertainment.

Artistry
Lumidee cites Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, and Mary J. Blige as her major influences.

Discography

 * Almost Famous (2003)
 * Unexpected (2007)
 * 10 13 (2021)

title: Lumidee


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Red Bee (character)

Red Bee is the name of two fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books.

The first Red Bee debuted in Hit Comics #1, published in July 1940 by Quality Comics. The character was obtained by DC Comics in 1956 and has since fallen into public domain.

The second, written as the grandniece or granddaughter of the original, first appeared in Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #5.

Richard Raleigh
The Red Bee's secret identity is Rick Raleigh, assistant district attorney in Superior City, Oregon. His superhero modus operandi is to put on a red and yellow costume and, with his trained bees and "stinger gun", fight Nazis and gangsters. His favorite bee is named Michael and lives inside his belt buckle for use in special circumstances. He has a series of adventures which lasts until issue #24 (Oct 1942).

According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "he fights enemies like the evil spiritualist Dr. Marah, the Swordsmen (who use electrified swords), and Yellow Peril hatchet men".

The character never became very popular, and was largely forgotten until reappearing in DC Comics' All-Star Squadron. In the 'Squadron', it is learned he was killed by the Nazi supervillain Baron Blitzkrieg while saving the lives of Hourman and other allies. The group Freedom Fighters was formed out of the Squadron and the Red Bee was made an honorary member.

Red Bee appears as a ghost in the pages of Starman. The focus of this appearance is a dinner party attended by many deceased heroes. Other heroes in attendance include the original Mr. Terrific and Hourman. The topic discussed is the intense appeal of the superhero life.

Other post-Crisis appearances include a cameo in Animal Man in which the character resides in a canceled characters' "limbo", and in Bizarro World, where he and his agent attempt to improve his marketability. He is mentioned by Plastic Man as having been a friend and drinking buddy in an issue of JLA.

During the "Dark Nights: Death Metal" storyline, Red Bee is among the superheroes that were revived by Batman using a Black Lantern ring.

A panel in "The New Golden Age" one-shot revealed that Red Bee had a sidekick named Ladybug where she gained her size-shifting powers and Ladybug costume from Red Bee after he restored her to normal size during an attack from Professor Pollen. She proved to be a morale booster for Red Bee during their adventures until she vanished one day. Following Red Bee's death, it was revealed that Ladybug's parents watched over the farm until they sold it to his granddaughter Rachel. She is still running it in her 70s as Stargirl plans to have Rachel meet Ladybug.

Jenna Raleigh
Rick's grandniece, Jenna, takes up the mantle of the Red Bee. She uses a mechanized battle suit and two robotic bees that can fire electricity. She assists the group in fighting S.H.A.D.E., an evil governmental organization. She soon learns that the leader of the Freedom Fighters Uncle Sam has assisted with the development of her technology. She decides to stay and fight with the group. Moments after this, she sees the death of the Invisible Hood, another ally, killed by a S.H.A.D.E.-influenced Ray.

Over the course of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters vol. 2 (2007), Jenna is mutated by an alien insect colony into a human/bee hybrid, with enhanced physical abilities, pheromone production capabilities, and antennae on her head.

However, her mind is later completely circumvented by the mutation. After trying to colonize the entire Earth, she is cured of her affliction when Lanford Terrill uses his new Neon powers to destroy the insect influence. By the series' end, Jenna feels guilt over her actions, and she eschews the superhero life to continue her work in the research field.

Powers and abilities
Richard Raleigh had no superpowers but carried a special "Stinger Gun" and he specialized in the use of trained bees.

Jenna Raleigh possesses a human/insect biology which grants her enhanced physical attributes, pheromone production and the ability to "mark" people for later tracking. She formerly wore a mechanized battle suit which granted her enhanced strength and flight and used two large robotic bees that could fire electricity blasts.

Reception
In American Comic Book Chronicles: 1940-1944, comics historian Kurt Mitchell calls the Golden Age strip "inane", and describes it in a dismissive way: "... a masked mystery-man aided by the trained bees he stored in his belt buckle. No, that's not a typo. Bees. Trained bees. In his belt buckle".

In other media
The Richard Raleigh incarnation of Red Bee appears in Teen Titans Go! #3.

title: Red Bee (character)


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Talk:Collinsville

Full list from maps.yahoo.com:
 * COLLINSVILLE, AL
 * COLLINSVILLE, CA
 * COLLINSVILLE, CT
 * COLLINSVILLE, GA
 * COLLINSVILLE, IL
 * COLLINSVILLE, MA
 * COLLINSVILLE, MS
 * COLLINSVILLE, NY
 * COLLINSVILLE, NC
 * COLLINSVILLE, OH
 * COLLINSVILLE, OK
 * COLLINSVILLE, PA
 * COLLINSVILLE, TX
 * COLLINSVILLE, VA

title: Talk:Collinsville


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R. Scott Bakker

Richard Scott Bakker (born February 2, 1967) is a Canadian fantasy author. He grew up on a tobacco farm in the Simcoe area. In 1986 he attended the University of Western Ontario to pursue a degree in literature and later an MA in theory and criticism. Since the late 1990s, he has been attempting to elucidate theories of media bubbles and the intellectual alienation of the working class. After all but dissertation in a PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt University he returned to London, Ontario, where he now lives with his wife and daughter. He spends his time writing split between his fiction and his ongoing philosophic inquiry.

Early life
Bakker was born on February 2, 1967, in Simcoe, Ontario.

The Second Apocalypse
R. Scott Bakker's work is dominated by a sprawling series informally known as The Second Apocalypse which he began developing while in college in the 1980s. The series was originally planned as a trilogy with the first two books entitled The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor. The third book has been referred to as The Book That Shall Not Be Named by Bakker, since the title of this book is considered to be a spoiler for the preceding volumes.

When Bakker began writing the series in the early 2000s, however, he found it necessary to split each of the three novels into its own sub-series to incorporate all of the characters, themes and ideas he wished to explore. Bakker originally conceived of seven books: a trilogy and two duologies. This later shifted to two trilogies and one duology, with the acknowledgment that the third series may also expand to a trilogy.

The Prince of Nothing trilogy was published between 2003 and 2006. It depicts the story of the Holy War launched by the Inrithi kingdoms against the heathen Fanim of the south to recover the holy city of Shimeh for the faithful. During the war, a man named Anasûrimbor Kellhus emerges from obscurity to become an exceptionally powerful and influential figure, and it is discovered that the Consult, an ancient alliance of forces united in their worship of the legendary No-God, a nihilistic force of destruction, are manipulating events to pave the way for the No-God's return to the mortal world, a Second Apocalypse to succeed the First.

The sequel series, the Aspect-Emperor quartet, picks up the story twenty years later with Kellhus leading the united Zaudunyani kingdoms in directly seeking out and confronting the Consult. The first novel in this new series, The Judging Eye, was published in January 2009 and the fourth, The Unholy Consult, was published in July 2017.

Neuropath
While working on the Prince of Nothing series, Bakker was prompted by a crux of events to write a thriller dealing with the cognitive sciences. He produced a near future science fiction novel involving a serial killer whose knowledge allows them to influence and control the human brain. This book is called Neuropath and was published in 2008.

The Disciple of the Dog
Shortly before The Aspect-Emperor 's second book, The White-Luck Warrior, was published, Bakker released a second novel outside of his main fantasy series. Titled Disciple of the Dog, it features the private investigator, Disciple Manning, who suffers from a condition reminiscent of hyperthymesia. The story revolves around Disciple's recounting of a case involving a missing girl, a cult, and the small-town drama of Ruddick. It was published in November 2010. Bakker has planned a number of follow up novels to Disciple of the Dog, including The Enlightened Dead, but due to the first novel's poor reception and very few reviews the sequels have not been pursued.

Other works
Bakker also has a number of unreleased works in progress, aside his fantasy opus, most notably Light, Time, and Gravity as well as an eventual anthology of short stories, Atrocity Tales, set within The Second Apocalypse fantasy narrative. A draft of Light, Time, and Gravity was released serially on Bakker's blog, Three Pound Brain, but has since been removed. It is described by a defunct Amazon.ca link as a "novel told from the perspective of a suicidal English professor, recalling his experiences as a seventeen-year-old working on a Southwestern Ontario tobacco farm in the summer of 1984. Part essay, part narrative, part present, part history, Light, Time, and Gravity is a kind of Notes from the Canadian Underground, a portrait of our culture’s abject failure to create a genuine Canadian identity, as well as a stinging indictment of Canada’s literary and intellectual elites."

Two other unreleased works of fiction in progress include the SF novellas Semantica and The Lollipop Factory. The former has been referenced by Bakker a number of times on his blog  and is described by fans as a "rumoured title set in a world where nootropic and neurocosmetic techniques have created a class division between those with enhancements and those without, where superhuman Tweakers rebel and are hunted like animals by an oppressive government." The latter, The Lollipop Factory, has only been mentioned once by Bakker in a Reddit r/Fantasy AMA in 2017. Aside that it is a "short SF novel," nothing is yet known about this title.

Philosophy
As The Prince of Nothing trilogy was being published circa. 2003-06 and Bakker experienced his initial rise in popularity, he participated frequently with fans at the now read-only Three-Seas forum. During this time Bakker consistently began to formulate and popularize what would eventually become the foundation for his Blind Brain Theory and Heuristic Neglect Theory then focusing on how studies of human cognitive biases generally and eventually on their impact on academic Philosophy and the greater humanities.

Blind Brain Hypothesis
In 2008, Bakker published Neuropath, a near future SF psychothriller which thematically continued Bakker's elucidation of human cognitive biases and their implications regarding human meaning, purpose, and morality, whatever form they may take. While the narrative events of the book make for a compelling thought experiment, Bakker included as an Author Afterword a short essay regarding the blending of factual and fictive premises therein and the eventual advent of the narrative's villain in our own world. The essay marks Bakker first formal mention of his Blind Brain Hypothesis, beyond its use in the narrative proper.

Narrative aside, in the Author Afterword Bakker sources two real world examples concerning illusory consciousness, the inner human experience of temporality and the imperceptible limits of field of vision. In the essay, as in the book via the character Thomas, Bakker argues that the human sense of the "Now," this very moment, might be symptomatic of perceptual thresholds akin to the human inability to perceive beyond the field of vision, certain colours outside within that field, or the perceptual blind spot caused by the lack of receptors in a portion of the back of the eye. Bakker cites the inability of consciousness to experience and perceive but a sliver of all the brain's processing as indicative of consciousness experience being totally illusory, rather than only sometimes in some contexts. As per the world of Neuropath's narrative, Bakker also argues that in time non-invasive brain scanning, via something like the narrative conceit of "low-field fMRI," may result in an entirely new scale of institutional manipulation, moving beyond efforts of associative conditioning given the wealth of data prevalent real-time brain imaging could provide. Finally, central to the essay is Bakker's assertion that the scientific method and its progress would eventually yield unfathomable insights into human behavior and cognition such that the existence of the narrative's villain and his futuristic brain–computer interface are inevitable in real life as well.

The Semantic Apocalypse
Shortly thereafter in 2008, Bakker presented The End of the World As We Know It: Neuroscience and the Semantic Apocalypse at Western University's Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, which was rebutted by then students Nick Srnicek and Ali McMillan. The title of Bakker's lecture, familiar to readers of Neuropath, references the Semantic Apocalypse, a theory attributed to one of the protagonist's professors.

Bakker begins the talk with a call to writers in the audience to reach beyond the confines of academia and their peers and instead write to challenge audiences who don't share the author's values and attitudes. He then summarizes again the narrative underpinnings of Neuropath 's world where the technologies of neuroscience have reached technical and social maturity and prevalence.

The Semantic Apocalypse continues with a number of secondary arguments concerning pessimistic induction and what Bakker calls "Cognitive Closure FAPP." Regarding the former, Bakker explains that in all arenas historically science has replaced "intentional [or folk] explanations of natural phenomena with functional explanations." For Bakker it follows that this will inevitably extend to the brain and human cognition. On the latter, Bakker suggests that human culture and society have continually ignored the facts of our cognitive biases without due consideration of their impact. This gives rise to what Bakker refers to as the "Magical Belief Lottery:" the ignorance of a growing battery of confirmation biases concerning how humans rationalize behaviour and thought leading to conviction in long-held intentional or folk explanations of humans and their place in the world.

Building on his elucidations from Neuropath 's Author Afterword, Bakker presents the metaphor of the Blind Brain Hypothesis as a magician's coin trick. By Bakker's argument the brain has evolved to process a prodigious amount of perceptual information regarding its local environment tracking natural objects with causal histories. Coin tricks through sleight of hand or misdirection exploit the brain's need for that causal history, confounding the brain's ability to process the coin's causal history. Given the central assumption of Blind Brain Hypothesis, that "information that finds its way to consciousness represents only a small fraction of the brain’s overall information load," humans are likely likewise unable to account for the causal history of thoughts and behaviours. It supposes that our conscious awareness of information processed by the brain is preceded by what Bakker calls here information horizons. Again Bakker draws upon the analogy of the eye's perceptual thresholds, this time highlighting that half of all the retinal nerves process information exclusively from the receptor rich fovea, and also extends that metaphor to speculate about the information horizons of our temporal field and the experience of the "Now."

Finishing his lecture and corresponding transcript, Bakker speaks on the money invested into using the advances in neuroscience to improve marketing techniques. Bakker also uses a metaphor on alien cognition describing beings whose brains and nervous systems had evolved to track their brain's causal history.

Three Pound Brain
In May 2010, Bakker began a blog entitled Three Pound Brain, in order to grow his presence online following a period of inactivity after years of engaging on the defunct Three-Seas forum. Over the years, Bakker has billed the blog as "a crossroads between incompatible empires," a crux for disparate ideologies to engage each other. While the content of Bakker's posts has varied greatly over the years, the enduring theme has been the slow and steady digestion of topics through versions of Bakker's Blind Brain Hypothesis, which comes to be called the Blind Brain Theory on his blog over years. Along with blog post content ranging from sociocultural commentary to writing fiction and philosophy, Bakker also uses Three Pound Brain to host paper drafts, copies of his past academic work, speculative pieces, and samples and drafts of his fiction writing. Over time, he has engaged a wide variety of disparate interlocutors and his blog content has become more technical, resembling some of his earlier academic projects, as Bakker increasingly tackled the philosophical work of noteworthy philosophers, historical and contemporary, using the blog as his philosophic workshop.

The Future of Literature In the Age of Information
Blog post from Three Pound Brain, October 2011.

The Last Magic Show
In April 2012, Bakker added to Three Pound Brain a link to a draft of a paper he called The Last Magic Show: A Blind Brain Theory for the Appearance of Consciousness. The Last Magic Show was the first cumulative result of Bakker's efforts on Three Pound Brain and consolidated many terms invented or cited and appropriated across the previous two years of philosophic inquiry and analysis. The draft marked the first formal mention of Blind Brain Theory, as evolved from the Blind Brain Hypothesis. In his abstract Bakker describes the paper as addressing "[p]uzzles as profound and persistent as the now, personal identity, conscious unity, and most troubling of all, intentionality, could very well be kinds of illusions foisted on conscious awareness by different versions of the informatic limitation expressed, for instance, in the boundary of your visual field."

The title of Bakker's paper, A Blind Brain Theory for the Appearance of Consciousness, reflects his assertion therein that the Blind Brain Theory serves as a vehicle to describe and distinguish the features of how conscious experience appears to self-reflection rather than the actual specific systems and functioning underlying consciousness. To begin, Bakker imagines an explanatory vehicle he refers to as a Recursive System, the brain architecture which has evolved to track even more the basic architecture of itself, possibly akin to the relationship between the frontal cortex to the rest of the brain. Bakker suggests two parts to a Recursive System, the system "open," all the information processed by the brain, and the system "closed," referring to the information accessible to consciousness. The basic assumption regarding the existence of a Recursive System implies a limit on the information available to the RS-closed, conscious awareness, which Bakker dubs Informatic Asymmetry and its Asymptotic Limit. As specific examples Bakker refers to the cognitive psychology literature citing change blindness and inattentional bias (cognitive bias), wherein there are clear divergences between the information processed by the brain and information from the self-reports of perception.

As Bakker continues he expands on Informatic Asymmetry and the Asymptotic Limits of different Recursive Systems writing of information horizons, "the boundaries that delimit the recursive neural access that underwrites consciousness." Describing consciousness as encapsulated by the global limit of information horizons, Bakker highlights consciousness' inability to perceive any absence of information, that is processing outside of the RS-closed, as in some anosognosias. The information provided to consciousness is perceived as sufficient because the RS-closed is unable to track the discrepancy of the information processed by the whole brain. Bakker returns to the Coin Trick analogy from Neuropath's Author Afterword, using the magician as an extended explanatory metaphor to further elucidate Asymptotic Limits of specific Recursive Systems and the Asymptotic Complex of encapsulation regarding the experience of persistent global sufficiency, from where the paper almost certainly gets the former part of its title.

As before, Bakker builds on previous exposition reframing the experience of "the Now," with a portion of the draft directly referencing an older blog post. Likewise, he again uses the example of the visual field to propose a similar temporal explanation for the conscious experience the Now. Blind Brain Theory, Bakker writes, argues seemingly natural occurring anosognosias but maintains that this becomes ultimately problematic for our experience of identity and intentions.

Further elaborating, Bakker cites the phenomenon in psychophysics known as flicker fusion (or flicker fusion threshold), the point at which consciousness perceives a light as steady. This phenomenon is widely exploited in the modern human environment from light bulbs to screened devices and brings about similar explanatory power akin to Bakker's use of the visual field metaphor.

Nearing the close of The Last Magic Show, Bakker delves into the highly speculative implications of Blind Brain Theory 's argument for the appearance of consciousness regarding the use and reference of Intentionality in academic philosophy, as well as, the very underpinnings of humanity's scientific and philosophic endeavours, logic and math, the latter of which might reference an earlier essayistic work posted to Three Pound Brain. He also writes of the "First-person Perspective Show," which almost definitely precedes his draft paper, The Introspective Peep Show. In the footnotes of The Last Magic Show, Bakker mentions that threads of his consideration have found themselves in every novel he's written, but that specifically "[o]nly Neuropath deals with the theory in any sustained manner." Bakker also takes care to distinguish Blind Brain Theory from eliminativism generally, in that, his theory "allows for a systematic diagnosis of the distortions and illusions belonging to the first person perspective."

The Introspective Peepshow
Draft paper posted to Three Pound Brain, January 2013. Reposted as a reworked blog post, April 2013.

Through the Brain Darkly
A proposed anthology of Three Pound Brain 's essays and articles named for a fictional book that appears in Neuropath, mentioned on Three Pound Brain in April 2013. Later in September, 2013, Bakker later posted a draft essay possibly serving as the last piece to be included in Through the Brain Darkly.

Back to Square One
An essay published on Scientia Salon, November 2014.

Crash Space
A near future SF short announced on Three Pound Brain, November 2015, and released in Midwest Studies in Philosophy.

The Digital Dionysus
An anthology of essays published in September 2016 examining "the importance of Nietzsche's thought for decoding the vicissitudes of our digital age" (Keith Ansell-Pearson); Bakker contributed a chapter based on the talk that he presented to the annual Nietzsche Workshop @ Western -- a conference which he had regularly attended in London, the final year of which took place at The New School in New York City..

From Scripture to Fantasy
A paper published in Cosmos and History, January 2017.

On Alien Philosophy
While an earlier draft of On Alien Philosophy was published on Three Pound Brain, August 2015, Bakker ultimately published the paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Feb 2017.

The Prince of Nothing

 * The Darkness That Comes Before (2004)
 * The Warrior-Prophet (2005)
 * The Thousandfold Thought (2006)

The Aspect-Emperor

 * The Judging Eye (2009) ISBN 978-0-14-305160-2
 * The White-Luck Warrior (2011) ISBN 978-0-14-305162-6
 * The Great Ordeal (2016) ISBN 978-1-4683-0169-4
 * The Unholy Consult (2017) ISBN 978-1468314861

Atrocity Tales

 * The False Sun, Three Pound Brain, published in 2017 in The Unholy Consult
 * The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin, Three Pound Brain, published in 2017 in The Unholy Consult
 * The Knife of Many Hands, published in two parts in Grimdark Magazine #2 & #3, 2015
 * The Carathayan, published in Evil is a Matter of Perspective

Short stories

 * Light, Time, and Gravity, Three Pound Brain
 * The Long Held Breath, Three Pound Brain
 * Reinstalling Eden, Nature (2013)
 * What Was...And What Will Never Be, Three Pound Brain
 * Crash Space, Midwest Studies in Philosophy (2015)
 * The Dime Spared, Three Pound Brain

Disciple Manning novels

 * Disciple of the Dog (2010)
 * The Enlightened Dead (forthcoming)

Stand-alone novels

 * Neuropath (2008)

Essay-collections

 * Through the Brain Darkly: The Blind Brain Theory of R Scott Bakker (2013)
 * The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & the Network-Centric Condition (2016)

R. Scott Bakker Official, Fan, and Resource sites

 * Bakker's blog
 * Second Apocalypse Forum Independently maintained fan forum endorsed by R. Scott Bakker.
 * R. Scott Bakker's The Devil's Chirp (Ambrose Bierce homage)
 * Bakkerfans Facebook
 * R. Scott Bakker's old SFF Forum at SFFWorld
 * The Three-Seas Forum read-only archive
 * Bakker Subreddit
 * Bakker Subreddit

Interviews, Articles, Podcasts, and Presentations

 * The Skeptical Fantasist: In Defense of an Oxymoron an essay by R. Scott Bakker for Heliotrope Magazine
 * Scarlett Johansson Leaps to Your Lips. Interview with R. Scott Bakker on his Blind Brain Theory. Šum, June 2018
 * early Interview with Jay Tomio, 1 April 2006
 * The End of the World As We Know It: Neuroscience and the Semantic Apocalypse
 * Why Fantasy and Why Now?
 * Interview with R. Scott Bakker at SFFWorld
 * Addendum to the Bakker Interview: The Monkey Question (wotmania.com)
 * 1st Q&A on wotmania.com
 * 2nd Q&A on wotmania.com
 * Interview at Blogcritics, 12 June 2008]
 * Video interview for Fantasy Hrvatska
 * Interview with Grimdark Magazine
 * Sci-Fi Fan Letter: R. Scott Bakker Interview
 * The SF Site: A Conversation With R. Scott Bakker
 * SFFWorld: Interview with R. Scott Bakker, March 2008
 * SFFWorld: Interview with R. Scott Bakker, December 2005
 * Dog to Dog: A Conversation with Scott Bakker and James Sallis
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: New R. Scott Bakker Interview, January 2008
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: New R. Scott Bakker Interview, April 2008
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: New R. Scott Bakker Interview, January 2009
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: New R. Scott Bakker Interview (part 1), June 2011
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: R. Scott Bakker Interview (part 2) July 2011
 * Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: New R. Scott Bakker Interview, June 2016
 * Stuff to Blow Your Mind: R. Scott Bakker: On Alien Philosophy and Fantasy
 * Stuff to Blow Your Mind: Bonus: R. Scott Bakker, Consciousness & Consult
 * Grim Tidings Podcast: Interview with R. Scott Bakker
 * CBC Ideas: The Fool's Dilemma

title: R. Scott Bakker


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Soft independent modelling of class analogies

Soft independent modelling by class analogy (SIMCA) is a statistical method for supervised classification of data. The method requires a training data set consisting of samples (or objects) with a set of attributes and their class membership. The term soft refers to the fact the classifier can identify samples as belonging to multiple classes and not necessarily producing a classification of samples into non-overlapping classes.

Method
In order to build the classification models, the samples belonging to each class need to be analysed using principal component analysis (PCA); only the significant components are retained.

For a given class, the resulting model then describes either a line (for one Principal Component or PC), plane (for two PCs) or hyper-plane (for more than two PCs). For each modelled class, the mean orthogonal distance of training data samples from the line, plane, or hyper-plane (calculated as the residual standard deviation) is used to determine a critical distance for classification. This critical distance is based on the F-distribution and is usually calculated using 95% or 99% confidence intervals.

New observations are projected into each PC model and the residual distances calculated. An observation is assigned to the model class when its residual distance from the model is below the statistical limit for the class. The observation may be found to belong to multiple classes and a measure of goodness of the model can be found from the number of cases where the observations are classified into multiple classes. The classification efficiency is usually indicated by Receiver operating characteristics.

In the original SIMCA method, the ends of the hyper-plane of each class are closed off by setting statistical control limits along the retained principal components axes (i.e., score value between plus and minus 0.5 times score standard deviation).

More recent adaptations of the SIMCA method close off the hyper-plane by construction of ellipsoids (e.g. Hotelling's T2 or Mahalanobis distance). With such modified SIMCA methods, classification of an object requires both that its orthogonal distance from the model and its projection within the model (i.e. score value within the region defined by the ellipsoid) are not significant.

Application
SIMCA as a method of classification has gained widespread use especially in applied statistical fields such as chemometrics and spectroscopic data analysis.


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Tetrahedrane

Tetrahedrane is a hypothetical platonic hydrocarbon with chemical formula C4H4 and a tetrahedral structure. The molecule would be subject to considerable angle strain and has not been synthesized. However, a number of derivatives have been prepared. In a more general sense, the term tetrahedranes is used to describe a class of molecules and ions with related structure, e.g. white phosphorus.

Organic tetrahedranes
In 1978, Günther Maier prepared tetra-tert-butyl-tetrahedrane. The bulky tert-butyl (t-Bu) substituents envelop the tetrahedrane core. Maier suggested that bonds in the core are prevented from breaking because this would force the substituents closer together (corset effect) resulting in Van der Waals strain. Tetrahedrane is one of the possible platonic hydrocarbons and has the IUPAC name tricyclo[1.1.0.02,4]butane.

Unsubstituted tetrahedrane (C4H4) remains elusive, although it is predicted to be kinetically stable. One strategy that has been explored (but thus far failed) is reaction of propene with atomic carbon. Locking away a tetrahedrane molecule inside a fullerene has only been attempted in silico. Due to its bond strain and stoichiometry, tetranitrotetrahedrane has potential as a high-performance energetic material (explosive). Some properties have been calculated based on quantum chemical methods.

Tetra-tert-butyltetrahedrane
This compound was first synthesised starting from a cycloaddition of an alkyne with t-Bu substituted maleic anhydride, followed by rearrangement with carbon dioxide expulsion to a cyclopentadienone and its bromination, followed by addition of the fourth t-Bu group. Photochemical cheletropic elimination of carbon monoxide of the cyclopentadienone gives the target. Heating tetra-tert-butyltetrahedrane gives tetra-tert-butylcyclobutadiene. Though the synthesis appears short and simple, by Maier's own account, it took several years of careful observation and optimization to develop the correct conditions for the challenging reactions to take place. For instance, the synthesis of tetrakis(t-butyl)cyclopentadienone from the tris(t-butyl)bromocyclopentadienone (itself synthesized with much difficulty) required over 50 attempts before working conditions could be found. The synthesis was described as requiring "astonishing persistence and experimental skill" in one retrospective of the work. In a classic reference work on stereochemistry, the authors remark that "the relatively straightforward scheme shown [...] conceals both the limited availability of the starting material and the enormous amount of work required in establishing the proper conditions for each step."

 * [[Image:Tetra-tert-butyl-tetrahedrane synthesis.svg|thumb|none|600px|Tetra-tert-butyl-tetrahedrane synthesis 1978]]

Eventually, a more scalable synthesis was conceived, in which the last step was the photolysis of a cyclopropenyl-substituted diazomethane, which affords the desired product through the intermediacy of tetrakis(tert-butyl)cyclobutadiene:  This approach took advantage of the observation that the tetrahedrane and the cyclobutadiene could be interconverted (uv irradiation in the forward direction, heat in the reverse direction).

 * Tetrahedrane from diazo.png

Tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)tetrahedrane
Tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)tetrahedrane can be prepared by treatment of the cyclobutadiene precursor with tris(pentafluorophenyl)borane and is far more stable than the tert-butyl analogue. The silicon–carbon bond is longer than a carbon–carbon bond, and therefore the corset effect is reduced. Whereas the tert-butyl tetrahedrane melts at 135 °C concomitant with rearrangement to the cyclobutadiene, tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)tetrahedrane, which melts at 202 °C, is stable up to 300 °C, at which point it cracks to bis(trimethylsilyl)acetylene.

The tetrahedrane skeleton is made up of banana bonds, and hence the carbon atoms are high in s-orbital character. From NMR, sp-hybridization can be deduced, normally reserved for triple bonds. As a consequence the bond lengths are unusually short with 152 picometers.

Reaction with methyllithium with tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)tetrahedrane yields tetrahedranyllithium. Coupling reactions with this lithium compound gives extended structures.

A bis(tetrahedrane) has also been reported. The connecting bond is even shorter with 143.6 pm. An ordinary carbon–carbon bond has a length of 154 pm.

 * [[Image:Tetratrimethylsilyltetrahedrane.svg|thumb|none|600px|Synthesis of tetrakis(trimethylsilyl)tetrahedrane and its dimer.]]

Tetrahedranes with non-carbon cores
In tetrasilatetrahedrane features a core of four silicon atoms. The standard silicon–silicon bond is much longer (235 pm) and the cage is again enveloped by a total of 16 trimethylsilyl groups, which confer stability. The silatetrahedrane can be reduced with potassium graphite to the tetrasilatetrahedranide potassium derivative. In this compound one of the silicon atoms of the cage has lost a silyl substituent and carries a negative charge. The potassium cation can be sequestered by a crown ether, and in the resulting complex potassium and the silyl anion are separated by a distance of 885 pm. One of the Si−–Si bonds is now 272 pm and the tetravalent silicon atom of that bond has an inverted tetrahedral geometry. Furthermore, the four cage silicon atoms are equivalent on the NMR timescale due to migrations of the silyl substituents over the cage.

 * [[Image:Tetrasilatetrahedrane.png|thumb|none|800px|Tetrasilatetrahedrane]]

The dimerization reaction observed for the carbon tetrahedrane compound is also attempted for a tetrasilatetrahedrane. In this tetrahedrane the cage is protected by four so-called supersilyl groups in which a silicon atom has 3 tert-butyl substituents. The dimer does not materialize but a reaction with iodine in benzene followed by reaction with the tri-tert-butylsilaanion results in the formation of an eight-membered silicon cluster compound which can be described as a Si2 dumbbell (length 229 pm and with inversion of tetrahedral geometry) sandwiched between two almost-parallel Si3 rings.

 * [[Image:SilatetrahedraneDimer.png|thumb|none|660px|Silicon cluster compound]]

In eight-membered clusters of in the same carbon group, tin Sn8R6 and germanium Ge8R6 the cluster atoms are located on the corners of a cube.

Inorganic and organometallic tetrahedranes

The tetrahedrane motif occurs broadly in chemistry. White phosphorus (P4) and yellow arsenic (As4) are examples. Several metal carbonyl clusters are referred to as tetrahedranes, e.g. tetrarhodium dodecacarbonyl.

Metallatetrahedranes with a single metal (or phosphorus atom) capping a cyclopropyl trianion also exist.

title: Tetrahedrane


text:
Talk:Degree (mathematics)

This article should probably be merged with Degree. - dcljr 02:48, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I do not think so Tosha 11:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Okay, I agree. - dcljr

Degree (angle)
It would surely seem strange to most readers of Wikipedia that the geometrical measurement of angle taught in elementary school mathematics is not mentioned here. I have therefore added it. --RichardVeryard 21:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge with degree
I think this article should be merged with the disambiguation page degree since it already has a section for math. Squandermania (talk) 17:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:Degree (mathematics)


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Ed Walsh

Edward Augustine Walsh (May 14, 1881 – May 26, 1959) was an American pitcher and manager in Major League Baseball, nicknamed "Big Ed". From 1906 to 1912, he had several seasons where he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Injuries shortened his career. Walsh holds the record for lowest career earned run average, 1.82. He is one of two modern (post-1901) pitchers to win 40 or more games in a single season, and the last pitcher to do so. He is the last pitcher from any team to throw more than 400 innings in a single season, a feat he accomplished in 1907 and 1908. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

Early life
Walsh was born in Plains Township, Pennsylvania, to Michael and Jane Walsh. He worked in the Luzerne County coal mines when he was young. Walsh started his professional baseball career with the 1902 Meriden Silverites of the Connecticut State League. After playing the 1903 season with the Meriden Silverites and Newark Sailors of the Eastern League, the Chicago White Sox purchased Walsh's contract for $750 ($0 in today's dollars).

Peak years
Walsh made his major league debut in 1904 with the Chicago White Sox and pitched his first full season in 1906, going 17–13 with a 1.88 ERA and 171 strikeouts. In Game Three of that year's World Series, which the White Sox won over the Chicago Cubs in six games, Walsh struck out a then-World Series record 12 batters. He also struck out at least one batter each inning of that game; this feat has since been duplicated only once, by Bob Gibson in the 1968 World Series opener. From this season through 1912, Walsh averaged 24 victories and 220 strikeouts and posted an ERA below 2.00 five times. He also led the league in saves five times in this span. His finest individual season came in 1908 when he went 40–15 with 269 strikeouts, 6 saves and a 1.42 ERA, leading the American League in wins and strikeouts. In 1910, he posted the lowest ERA (1.27) for a pitcher with at least 20 starts and a losing record. Walsh also set an American League record by pitching 464 innings in a season. On August 27, 1911, Walsh no-hit the Boston Red Sox 5–0.

Interviewed for the 1966 book The Glory of Their Times, Hall of Famer Sam Crawford referred to Walsh's use of a pitch that was later outlawed: "Big Ed Walsh. Great big, strong, good-looking fellow. He threw a spitball. I think that ball disintegrated on the way to the plate, and the catcher put it back together again. I swear, when it went past the plate, it was just the spit went by".

In 1910, the White Sox opened White Sox Park, which was soon nicknamed Comiskey Park by the press in honor of team owner Charles Comiskey. The name was officially changed to Comiskey Park in 1913. An apocryphal story goes that architect Zachary Taylor Davis consulted Walsh in setting the park's field dimensions. Choosing a design that favored himself and other White Sox pitchers, rather than hitters, Walsh made Comiskey Park a "pitcher's park" for its entire 80-year history.

Later career
Walsh was a workhorse who pitched an average of 375 innings annually during the six seasons of 1907 through 1912. After the 1912 season, Walsh reportedly requested a full year off to rest his arm. Nevertheless, he showed up for spring training the following season, contending, "The White Sox needed me—implored me to return—so I did". Walsh inherited 24 runners in 1912 and allowed none of them to score, setting a Major League record that stands.

Walsh's playing time began dwindling in 1913. It has been claimed that he came into spring training in poorer physical shape than other members of the White Sox pitching staff, and his pride led him to try to keep up with the other pitchers in terms of pitch speed before getting into adequate shape, thereby causing damage to his pitching arm. "I could feel the muscles grind and wrench during the game, and it seemed to me my arm would leap out of my socket when I shot the ball across the plate", Walsh later recalled. "My arm would keep me awake till morning with a pain I had never known before". He pitched only 16 games during the 1913 season, and a meager 13 games over the next three years.

By 1916, Walsh's arm was dead. He wanted a year off, but Charles Comiskey released him instead. He attempted a comeback with the Boston Braves in 1917, but was let go, ending his major league career. He later did some pitching in the Eastern League, and gave umpiring a try (he umpired 87 American League games during the 1922 season), after which he was a coach for the White Sox for several seasons (1923–1924, 1928–1929).

Walsh retired with 195 wins, 126 losses, and 1736 strikeouts. His career ERA of 1.82 is the lowest major league ERA ever posted. He has the third-lowest career WHIP in MLB history (1.00) and the lowest ever for someone with 10 or more seasons pitched.

As a hitter, Walsh posted a .194 batting average (210-for-1,085) with 92 runs, 3 home runs, 68 RBI, 14 stolen bases and 46 bases on balls.

Later life and legacy
Walsh was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. He died on May 26, 1959, 12 days after his 78th birthday.

In 1999, Walsh was ranked number 82 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2011, he was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame.

Walsh's son Ed Walsh Jr. played for the White Sox from 1928 to 1932.

title: Ed Walsh


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Jada Rowland

Jada Rowland (born February 23, 1943) is an American actress.

Early life
A native of Staten Island, Rowland was born into a family of actors and artists. Rowland is the sister of actor Jeffrey Rowland and actress Gigi Anderson. Her brother played her husband on As the World Turns (Dr. Dan Stewart), although they appeared on the show in different years. Rowland's sister appeared on The Secret Storm as Peggy Bennett during the time Rowland was working on the show.

Career
She has appeared on Broadway and television daytime soap operas. She has appeared as Dr. Susan Stewart on As the World Turns and Carolee Simpson Aldrich, R. N. #2 on The Doctors starting September 6, 1976, until the final episode on December 31, 1982. She later appeared on the prime-time serial The Hamptons. She was offered an audition for the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie, since that feature film incorporated a fictional soap opera, Southwest General, but she rejected it.

In her signature role, Rowland portrayed Amy Ames Britton Kincaid on The Secret Storm for most of its 20-year run. This character grew up in real time instead of the common soap-opera "rapid aging", where a young actor is replaced by an older one to age the character more quickly.

Published children's books she has illustrated include Bringing the Farmhouse Home (by Gloria Whelan, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1992); Miss Tizzy (by Libba Moore Gray, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1993); The Statue of Liberty (by Lucille Recht Penner, Random House, 1995); and Raising the Roof (by Ronald Kidd, Habitat for Humanity International, 1995).

title: Jada Rowland


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Africa Online

Africa Online Holding Ltd., sometimes abbreviated to AFOL, is the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Africa. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, it offers Internet access and operates in ten African countries, including Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Namibia, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Services provided by Africa Online include dial-up Internet access, leased line services, e-mail accounts, VSAT connectivity, DSL, WAN and VPN for private and business customers. In 2007 it has become a subsidiary of Telkom South Africa.

History
The company was started in 1994 by Ayisi Makatiani, Karanja Gakio and Amolo Ng'weno, three Kenyans who met each other while students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Makatiani and Gakio were at MIT while Ng'weno was at Harvard. The basic idea for an online news service for Kenyans developed from an online community hosted at MIT called KenyaNet. KenyaNet was one of several Africa-focused online communities (the others were Okyeame in Ghana, Naijanet in Nigeria, and Salonet in Sierra Leone) formed and run by MIT students and hosted on MIT servers.

With the commercialization of the internet, Africa Online moved its focus away from providing news to connecting Africans on the continent to the Internet. In 1995, the company was bought by International Wireless of Boston, which ultimately became Prodigy. During this period, Africa Online began operating as the first Kenyan ISP, and later expanded to Cote d'Ivoire (1995) to Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, with the three Kenyans continuing to manage the operation. In the process, Africa Online acquired several ISPs, such as Pipex Internet Solution (Swaziland), Net2000 (Kenya), UUNET (Namibia) and Swift Global (Uganda).

In 1998, Prodigy sold the company to the African Lakes Corporation. African Lakes had been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1877 and was now moving away from its traditional background in agriculture and mining. For a while the company enjoyed favor from investors, listing on the Nairobi Stock Exchange in 2001, but its stock subsequently lost ground and it was delisted in both London and Nairobi in 2003. By that time, the 3 founders had departed Africa Online.

Africa Online was bought by Telkom South Africa in 2007.

title: Africa Online


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Serotta

Serotta is an American bicycle builder located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Named after founder Ben Serotta, the company was founded in 1972.

Serotta built frames for the Coors, Crest and 7-Eleven pro teams, although Team 7-Eleven bikes were branded as Murray and later Huffy. Serotta also built bikes for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Serotta was known in the industry for its proprietary tube designs and revolutionary titanium bicycle building. Serotta sold the company in 1989 to Archibald Cox Jr., son of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox Jr. Cox later purchased Fat City Cycles and merged it with Serotta in response to growing interest in mountain biking. In 1997, Ben Serotta and his wife Marcie bought the company back from Cox.

Serotta also has a bicycle-fitting system. The Serotta Fit School, started in 1998, trains retailers, coaches and clinicians in a system that incorporates the rider's life, goals, fitness, body, flexibility, motion, experience, injuries, surgeries and physical concerns. In the past, a fitting system that included a Size Cycle with quick release levers on all adjustable parts of a bicycle frame. The customer would come prepared for a cycling workout. As the cyclist pedaled, the fitter would measure and adjust the frame, based on the factors listed above. When the workout was over, the frame measurements were taken and the bicycle was custom-ordered for the cyclist. Today, Serotta runs the Serotta International Cycle Institute where his staff teaches bicycle fit concepts that are now significantly more advanced than the days of the Size Cycle.

In June 2013, Serotta merged with Blue Competition Cycles and Mad Fiber Wheels under the name of Divine Cycling Group. In July 2013, Serotta ceased manufacturing bicycles, but Ben Serotta resumed sales of own-brand bicycles in 2017 and launched a direct-to-consumer business in 2020.

2015
Ben Serotta helped redesign the Citi Bike for New York City's bike sharing system.

2017
Ben Serotta returned to selling bicycles under the name of Serotta Design Studio.

2020
Ben Serotta announced the return of Serotta branded bicycles. The new Serotta re-launch is built upon on a direct-to-consumer strategy, as opposed to its former small network of bicycle shops throughout the country. Serotta's focus on fit and custom-built frames is still at the core of what the company is built upon.

Available bicycles include Duetti for road cycling, Modomio for pavement, dirt, and gravel, and Scappero, mainly for dirt, gravel, and trail. Serotta plans to launch a new offering to their line every six months and Ben Serotta has said that this plan will inevitably include an e-bike.

title: Serotta