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text:
History of Russia (1796–1855)

The period from 1796 to 1855 in Russian history (covering the reigns of Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I) saw the Napoleonic Wars, government reform, political reorganization, and economic growth.

War and peace, 1796–1825
Catherine II died in 1796, and her son Emperor Paul I (r. 1796–1801) succeeded her. Painfully aware that Catherine had considered bypassing him to name his son, Alexander, as tsar, Paul instituted primogeniture in the male line as the basis for succession. It was one of the lasting reforms of Paul's brief reign. He also chartered a Russian-American Company, which eventually led to Russia's acquisition of Alaska. Paul limited landowner's right to serf labour to three days in a week, alleviating the condition of the serfs.

As a major European power, Russia could not escape the wars involving revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Paul became an adamant opponent of France, and Russia joined Britain and Austria in a war against France. In 1798–1799 Russian troops under one of the country's most famous generals, Aleksandr Suvorov, performed brilliantly, driving the French from Italy. On December 18, 1800, Paul unilaterally declared the neighboring kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti annexed to the Russian Empire. Paul's support for the ideals of the Knights Hospitaller (and his acceptance of the position of Grand Master) alienated many members of his court. He made peace with France in 1800 and established Second League of Armed Neutrality. Paul, who seems to have already been mentally unstable, alienated the powerful anti-French faction, and in March 1801, Paul was deposed and assassinated.

The new Tsar Alexander I of Russia (r. 1801–1825) came to the throne as the result of his father's murder, which he was implicated in. Groomed for the throne by Catherine II and raised in the spirit of enlightenment, Alexander also had an inclination toward romanticism and religious mysticism, particularly in the latter period of his reign. Alexander reorganized the central government, replacing the colleges that Peter the Great had set up with ministries, but without a coordinating prime minister.

Alexander was, perhaps, the most brilliant diplomat of his time, and his primary focus was not on domestic policy but on foreign affairs, and particularly on Napoleon. Fearing Napoleon's expansionist ambitions and the growth of French power, Alexander joined Britain and Austria against Napoleon. Napoleon defeated the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz in 1805 and defeated the Russians at Friedland in 1807. After the Russian armies officially liberated allied Georgia from Persian occupation earlier in 1801, making Persia officially lose control over Georgia which it had been ruling for centuries, Alexander fought the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813), the first full-scale war against neighbouring Persia starting in 1804, over control and consolidation over Georgia, but also eventually Azerbaijan, Dagestan and the entire Caucasus in general, which was for large swaths of it an integral territory of Persia. With France Alexander was forced to sue for peace, and by the Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, he became Napoleon's ally. Russia lost little territory under the treaty, and Alexander made use of his alliance with Napoleon for further expansion. By the Finnish War he annexed the eastern portion of Sweden, thereby forming the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809, and acquired Bessarabia from Turkey as a result of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812).

Alexander was determined to acquire the disputed territories of major importance in the Caucasus and beyond. His predecessors had already waged wars against Persia, but they had not been able to consolidate Russian authority over the regions, resulting in the regions either being ceded back or being conquered back. After nine years of battle, Russia managed to bring the war to an end on highly favourable terms, completing Russian consolidation and suzerainty over major parts of the Caucasus including the gains of Dagestan, Georgia, most of Azerbaijan and other regions and territories in the Caucasus over Persia. By now, Russia had both full comfortable access to the Black Sea, and Caspian Sea and it would use these newly gained grounds for further wars against Persia and Turkey.

The Russo-French alliance gradually became strained. Napoleon was concerned about Russia's intentions in the strategically vital Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. At the same time, Alexander viewed the Duchy of Warsaw, the French-controlled reconstituted Polish state, with suspicion. The requirement of joining France's Continental Blockade against Britain was a serious disruption of Russian commerce, and in 1810 Alexander repudiated the obligation. In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 troops—a force twice as large as the Russian regular army. Napoleon hoped to inflict a major defeat on the Russians and force Alexander to sue for peace. As Napoleon pushed the Russian forces back, however, he became seriously overextended. Obstinate Russian resistance, members of which declared the Patriotic War, brought Napoleon a disastrous defeat: Less than 30,000 of his troops returned to their homeland. Victory came at a high cost though, as the areas of the country that the French army had marched through lay in ruins.

Congress of Vienna 1814–1815
As the French retreated, the Russians pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris. After the allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the savior of Europe, and he played a prominent role in the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In the same year, Alexander initiated the creation of the Holy Alliance, a loose agreement pledging the rulers of the nations involved—including most of Europe—to act according to Christian principles. More pragmatically, in 1814 Russia, Britain, Austria, and Prussia had formed the Quadruple Alliance. When Napoleon suddenly reappeared, Russia was part of the alliance that chased him down. The conservative Bourbons were back in power in Paris and on good terms with Russia. The allies created an international system to maintain the territorial status quo and prevent the resurgence of an expansionist France. The Quadruple Alliance, confirmed by a number of international conferences, ensured Russia's influence in Europe.

At the same time, Russia continued its expansion. The Congress of Vienna created the Congress Poland, to which Alexander granted a constitution. Thus, Alexander I became the constitutional monarch of Poland while remaining the autocratic tsar of Russia. He was also the monarch of Finland, which had been annexed in 1809 and awarded autonomous status.

Despite the liberal, romantic inclinations of his youth, Alexander I after 1815 grew steadily more conservative, isolated from the day-to-day affairs of the state, and inclined to religious mysticism. The lofty hopes that the tsar had once held for his country were frustrated by the immense size and backwardness of it. While vacationing on the Black Sea in 1825, Alexander fell ill with typhus and died at only 47, although there were unfounded stories that he faked his own death, became a monk, and wandered the Siberian wilderness for many years afterwards.

Decembrist revolt, 1825
A revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I. The Decembrist revolt was an aristocratic movement, whose chief actors were army officers and members of the nobility. The reasons for Decembrist Uprising were manifold: opposition on part of the nobility to the regime that successfully limited their privileges through its peasant policy, spread among a section of young officers of liberal and even radical ideas, fears among nationalist section of society, inspired by Alexander perceived Polonofile policy (officers were particularly incensed that Alexander had granted Poland a constitution while Russia remained without one). Several clandestine organizations were preparing for an uprising after Alexander's death. There was confusion about who would succeed him because the next in line, his brother Constantine Pavlovich, had relinquished his right to the throne. A group of officers commanding about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander's brother Nicholas, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. Because these events occurred in December 1825, the rebels were called Decembrists. Nicholas easily overcame the revolt, and the surviving rebels were exiled to Siberia.

Nicholas I, 1825–1855
Tsar Nicholas I (1796–1855) succeeded his brother to the throne in 1825. He was completely devoid of Alexander's mystical, romantic pretensions, instead being a soldier at heart who felt most comfortable when reviewing troops. A cold, no-nonsense autocrat, Nicholas gave no serious thought to any sort of liberalism or political reforms, preferring to rule through the bureaucracy. Alexander had taken steps to improve and modernize the structure of the Russian state, adding a variety of new governmental departments to oversee agriculture, internal security, industrial and infrastructure development, and public health. He had also given thought at various times to creating a representative Parliament, which would not see fruition for a century. As noted above however, Russia proved such an immense, impoverished, and backwards nation that these departments had very little actual authority, in part due to lack of funds, also because of being stonewalled by the landowning nobility.

Nicholas continued these administrative innovations, but made the ministers responsible solely to him. Overall, the effect was to steadily centralize more and more power in the tsar's hands. In particular, the state security department (the Third Section) became an almost notorious symbol of repression as its primary aim was to prosecute subversive political activities. Nicholas for his part envisioned the Third Section as the champion of the poor and discriminated against the abuses of the wealthy and privileged, but although some men in the department were honest and took this duty seriously, most of them merely used it as a license to beat up and harass political and religious dissidents. The Third Section was also notorious for the bad relations it had with other governmental departments. Overall, the attempt at building a modern-style European bureaucracy that had begun under Peter the Great was a partial success. Bureaucrats believed that service to the state and the tsar constituted the highest possible calling, the result being that the ranks of the bureaucracy continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Prestige was the main attraction of employment in the bureaucracy, as salaries were small, and advancement through the ranks deliberately kept limited to prevent too many people, especially those of humble birth, from rising too fast. Only the most educated, cultured, and informed men became part of the tsar's inner circle of advisers.

The bureaucracy's numbers increased by threefold during the first half of the 19th century. Pay continued to be low due to the overall poverty of the Russian state. This was not only due to the country's backwards economy, but also because the nobility were tax-exempt and free from the expense of waging wars, not only the great ones, but the smaller campaigns in the Caucasus. Bureaucrats were for the most part uneducated, uninformed of their departments' respective tasks, and also phenomenally corrupt. Most hesitated to make decisions and preferred to push themselves up through the ranks, with the result that the tsar himself was forced to micromanage thousands of trivial affairs. Russia also suffered from a multitude of antiquated, contradictory, and discriminatory laws against Jews and minority Christian sects. Since not all minorities were part of the lower classes and many officials could not afford to feed their families, bribery was extremely widespread, and yet was probably the only thing that kept the Russian state from being even slower, more corrupt, and oppressive than it was.

The Decembrist uprising had increased Nicholas's distrust of the nobility and dislike of anything resembling political reform, even among the upper classes. Education gradually continued to improve after Alexander's creation of a universal educational system in 1804, although due to lack of funds the emphasis tended to be on the creation of universities rather than on primary and secondary schools. In the latter part of his reign, the Minister of Education, A.N. Golistyn, moved to censor and exclude the dangerous revolutionary and anti-clerical ideas coming from Western Europe. He encouraged college students to report their professors to the authorities if they expressed subversive views. Those professors so exposed were either fired or threatened with prosecution. In 1833, Count Sergey Ugarov took over as Minister of Education and pursued a more tolerant policy at the expense of excluding the children of the lower classes from universities.

Despite this, school attendance and literacy in Russia continued to increase and there began to form a rising middle class that was cosmopolitan in its outlook and connected with European culture and ideas. State censorship barred direct political dissent and the police were prone to harass even writers who did not involve themselves in politics. The great poet Alexander Pushkin was questioned by authorities in 1824 in part because he had befriended certain Decembrists. Eventually, despite some mistrust from the police, Pushkin was allowed to publish his works until he met an untimely end in 1837 after fighting a duel. The writers Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol were also viewed with suspicion.

Censorship was not totally effective, especially as it varied depending on the personal views of each censor, some of whom tolerated liberal ideas. Philosophical arguments and literary criticism were popular ways of subtly expressing political opinions, and it was during this time that the great debate between "Westernizers" and "Slavophiles" emerged. This debate started in 1836 when Pyotr Chaadayev wrote a philosophical letter in the periodical Teleskop, which declared that:

"Standing alone in the world, we have given nothing to the world, we have learned nothing from the world, we have not added a single idea to the mass of human ideas, we have made no contribution to the progress of the human spirit, and everything that has come to us from that spirit, we have disfigured. Today we form a gap in the intellectual order."

Nicholas argued that Chaadayev must be insane to make such claims and sentenced him to house imprisonment with periodic visits from a doctor. This embarrassing but fairly mild treatment silenced him.

Nicholas appointed the veteran statesman count Speransky to preside over a commission for legal reform. This group in 1832 published the Russian Code of Law. Another of the measures was the reorganization of the State Bank and a general reform of financial matters. This was carried out by finance minister Yegor Kankrin. A secret police, the so-called Third Section, ran a network of spies and informers. The government exercised censorship and other controls over education, publishing, and all manifestations of public life.

In 1833, Minister of Education Sergey Uvarov devised a program of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" as the guiding principle of the national education. The official emphasis on Russian nationalism contributed to a debate on Russia's place in the world, the meaning of Russian history, and the future of Russia. One group, the Modernizers, believed that Russia remained backward and primitive and could progress only through more Europeanization. Another group, the Slavophiles, enthusiastically favored the Slavs and their culture and customs, and had a distaste for Modernizers and their culture and customs. The Slavophiles viewed Slavic philosophy as a source of wholeness in Russia and looked askance at rationalism and materialism in the west part of Europe. Some of them believed that the Russian peasant commune, or mir, offered an attractive alternative to modern capitalism and could make Russia a potential social and moral savior. The Slavophiles could therefore be said to represent a form of Russian messianism.

Russia experienced a flowering of literature and the arts. Through the works of Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, and numerous others, Russian literature gained international stature and recognition. Ballet took root in Russia after its importation from France, and classical music became firmly established with the compositions of Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857).

Saint Petersburg – Tsarskoe Selo Railway and Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway were constructed.

Nicholas I made some efforts to improve the lot of the state peasants with the help of the minister Pavel Kiselev and set up committee to prepare a law liberating serfs, but did not abolish serfdom during his reign.

In foreign policy, Nicholas I acted as the protector of ruling legitimism and guardian against revolution. In 1830, after a popular uprising had occurred in France, the Poles in Russian Poland revolted. Poles resented limitation of the privileges of the Polish minority in the lands, annexed by Russia in the 18th century and sought to reestablish the 1772 borders of Poland. Nicholas crushed the rebellion, abrogated the Polish constitution, and reduced Congress Poland to the status of a Russian province, Privislinsky Krai.

In 1848, when a series of revolutions convulsed Europe, Nicholas intervened on behalf of the Habsburgs and helped suppress an uprising in Hungary, and he also urged Prussia not to accept a liberal constitution. Having helped conservative forces repel the specter of revolution, Nicholas I seemed to dominate Europe.

While Nicholas was attempting to maintain the status quo in Europe, he adopted an aggressive policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Nicholas I was following the traditional Russian policy of resolving the so-called Eastern Question by seeking to partition the Ottoman Empire and establish a protectorate over the Orthodox population of the Balkans, still largely under Ottoman control in the 1820s. Russia fought a successful war with the Ottomans in 1828 and 1829. Russia attempted to expand at the expense of the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia by using Georgia at its base for the Caucasus and Anatolian front. In 1826 another war was fought against Persia, and despite losing almost all recently consolidated territories in the first year of the battle in the first year of the Persian invasion, Russia managed to bring an end to the war on highly favourable terms in the second part of the war, including the official gains of Armenia, Nakhchivan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır Province, having by now conquered most of the Persian territories in the Caucasus and therefore setting the way fully open to push deeper into Persia and Ottoman Turkey. In 1828 in the same year the war with Persia ended, another war against Turkey, its other territorial rival, started. Nicholas invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns of Erzurum and Gumushane and, posing as protector and saviour of the Greek Orthodox population, receiving extensive support from the region's Pontic Greeks. Following a brief occupation, the Russian imperial army withdrew back into Georgia.

By the London Straits Convention of 1841, the Western powers affirmed Ottoman control over the straits and forbade any power, including Russia, to send warships through the straits. Based on his role in suppressing the revolutions of 1848 and his mistaken belief that he had British diplomatic support, Nicholas moved against the Ottomans, who declared war on Russia in 1853. Fearing the results of an Ottoman defeat by Russia, in 1854 Britain and France joined the Crimean War on the Ottoman side. Austria offered the Ottomans diplomatic support, and Prussia remained neutral, leaving Russia without allies on the continent. The European allies landed in Crimea and laid siege to the well-fortified Russian base at Sevastopol. After a year's siege the base fell. Nicholas I died before the fall of Sevastopol', but he already had recognized the failure of his regime. Russia now faced the choice of initiating major reforms or losing its status as a major European power.

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

title: History of Russia (1796–1855)


text:
Plonsters

Plonsters is an animated children's television program produced by Anima Studio für Film & Grafik GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, and Bettina Matthaei for Egmont Imagination. Each episode is about 3 minutes and 30 seconds long and is produced using stop motion animation done with plasticine, also called claymation. The title is a portmanteau of "plasticine" and "monsters".

Plot
The show features three small clay monsters, the Plonsters. They are Plif (the green plonster), who likes to play practical jokes, Plops (the blue plonster) who is the cranky one and Plummy (the orange plonster) who is the cheerful one. They can morph themselves into anything, and their language is some kind of gibberish. The plot of the show is usually that Plif and Plops bully Plummy by ruining everything he does (as well as excluding him from some activities whenever possible), but he gets back at them every time, and every episode ends with the three of them playing together peacefully.

Season 1 (1979 to 1980)

 * 1) The Cottage
 * 2) The Butterfly
 * 3) The Rocket
 * 4) The Wilde West
 * 5) The bee
 * 6) The Tiny red balloon
 * 7) The record
 * 8) The meeting
 * 9) Pudding
 * 10) Empathy
 * 11) Box of bricks
 * 12) Privacy
 * 13) The Cookies
 * 14) Fishing
 * 15) The Robot
 * 16) Blind
 * 17) The Kiosk
 * 18) Coin
 * 19) Clowns
 * 20) The Frogs
 * 21) Music
 * 22) Grapes
 * 23) The Machine
 * 24) The Cookies
 * 25) Means of Transport
 * 26) Bowling Ball
 * 27) The Sleeping Beauty
 * 28) The Hiccups
 * 29) The Wall
 * 30) The Sack
 * 31) No Fear of Large Animals
 * 32) Limbo
 * 33) The Carpet
 * 34) The Simulant
 * 35) The Pretzels
 * 36) First Aid
 * 37) The Dog
 * 38) The Meeting
 * 39) The Snowman
 * 40) The Pipe
 * 41) The Automobile
 * 42) The Birthday
 * 43) The Thistle

Season 2 (1993 to 1997)

 * 1) Snow Hunt
 * 2) The Beautiful Garden
 * 3) Gone Fishin'
 * 4) The Lonely Island
 * 5) Home Sweet Home
 * 6) Chaos at the Museum
 * 7) Fata Morgana
 * 8) Fashion Show
 * 9) Checkmate
 * 10) The Fruit Market
 * 11) Going to Sleep
 * 12) Feeding the Ducks
 * 13) Safari
 * 14) At the Fairground
 * 15) Paddling
 * 16) Running Up That Hill
 * 17) Baking Cookies
 * 18) The Treasure Hunter
 * 19) At the Supermarket
 * 20) Camping Adventure
 * 21) Chaos and Untidiness
 * 22) The Plonsters Fire Brigade
 * 23) The Snake Charmers
 * 24) Gold Diggers
 * 25) Sports Weekend
 * 26) The Dinner Party
 * 27) On Thin Ice
 * 28) Racecar Drivers
 * 29) Honey Honey
 * 30) Chemical Experiments
 * 31) The Sculpture Comes Alive
 * 32) At the Circus
 * 33) At the Hospital
 * 34) Bewitched Scarecrow
 * 35) The Raspberry Bush
 * 36) Playground Attractions
 * 37) Dance with Plonsters
 * 38) Surfing with Plonsters
 * 39) Miniature Golf
 * 40) Arctic Adventure
 * 41) The Haunting Of Knight's Castle
 * 42) Goin to Venice
 * 43) Merry Plonsters-Mas
 * 44) Picnic At The Beach
 * 45) Plonsters Of The Caribbean
 * 46) The Pear Tree
 * 47) The Cuckoo Eggs
 * 48) How The West Was Really Won
 * 49) I Want To Ride My Bike
 * 50) In Outer Space
 * 51) Collecting Shells

Credits

 * Idea and characters (creator): Bettina Matthaei
 * Animators: Isolde Bayer, Axel Nicolai
 * Model makers: Katja Calvasova, Eva Galova, Beate Bojanowska, Anke Greß, Sandra Schießl, Lene Markusen
 * Production coordinators: Torben Köster, Astrid Olthoff, Kerstin Sprenger
 * Editor: Marco Rönnau
 * Voices: Ralph Thiekötter
 * Music: Petar Vanek
 * Sound recording: STUDIO FUNK NG, Christoph Welsche, STUDIO NAMU PRAHA, Adam Memens, Jiři Jahl
 * Executive producers: Ulla Brockenhuus-Schack, Christian Lehmann
 * Director: Alexander Zapletal

International distribution
The show aired in Australia on ABC (9 April 2001 - 31 October 2014) and in Norway on TV3. It has also aired on Malaysia narrowcaster Asia Media TransNet, showing in RapidKL coaches.

The show also aired in Canada on YTV between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The shorts were also shown on Eureeka's Castle under the title Plastinots.

In Brazil, the show aired on TV Cultura during the 90s on the Glub Glub program under the title Plastinots.

In Italy, the show aired on Rai 3 sometimes during 2000s/2010s.

In Ireland, the show aired on RTÉ as an integral part of the Bosco show sometimes during 1980s/1990s.

In Japan, the show aired on Fuji TV as part of Hirake! Ponkikki.

In Norway, the show aired on TV3 Norway under the title, Plipp, plopp og plomma, likely during 2008.

In Slovenia, the show aired on TV Slovenia under the title, Plastelinca.

title: Plonsters


text:
Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. Categorized as an encyclopedic novel, Infinite Jest is featured in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

The novel has an unconventional narrative structure and includes hundreds of extensive endnotes, some with footnotes of their own.

A literary fiction bestseller after having sold 44,000 hardcover copies in its first year of publication, the novel has since sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Development
Wallace began Infinite Jest, "or something like it", at various times between 1986 and 1989. His efforts in 1991–92 were more productive; by the end of 1993, he had a working draft of the novel.

From early 1992 until the novel's publication, excerpts from various drafts appeared sporadically in magazines and literary journals including Harvard Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Harper's Magazine, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker  and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

The book was edited by publisher Little, Brown and Company's Michael Pietsch. Pietsch made suggestions and recommendations to Wallace, but every editing decision was Wallace's. He accepted cuts amounting to around 250 manuscript pages from his original submission. He resisted many changes for reasons that he usually explained.

The novel gets its name from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1, in which Hamlet holds the skull of the court jester, Yorick, and says, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"

Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest was A Failed Entertainment.

Setting
In the novel's future world, the United States, Canada, and Mexico together compose a unified North American superstate known as the Organization of North American Nations, or O.N.A.N. (an allusion to onanism).

Corporations are allowed the opportunity to bid for and purchase naming rights for each calendar year, replacing traditional numerical designations with ostensibly honorary monikers bearing corporate names. Although the narrative is fragmented and spans several "named" years, most of the story takes place during "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" (Y.D.A.U.).

On the orders of U.S. President Johnny Gentle (a "clean freak" who campaigned on the platform of cleaning up the US while ensuring that no American would be caused any discomfort in the process), much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a giant hazardous waste dump, an area "given" to Canada and known as the "Great Concavity" by Americans due to the resulting displacement of the border.

Plot
There are several major interwoven narratives, including:
 * A fringe group of Québécois radicals, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (lit. 'The Wheelchair Assassins'; A.F.R.), plans a violent geopolitical coup, and is opposed by high-level US operatives.
 * Various residents of the Boston area reach "rock bottom" with their substance abuse problems, and enter a residential drug and alcohol recovery program (Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House) where they progress in recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA).
 * Students train and study at the Enfield Tennis Academy (E.T.A.) run by James and Avril Incandenza and Avril's adopted brother Charles Tavis.
 * The history of the Incandenza family unfolds, focusing on the youngest son, Hal.

These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest, also called "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so compelling that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die. It was James Incandenza's final work. He completed it during a period of sobriety that was insisted upon by its lead actress, Joelle van Dyne. The Québécois separatists seek a replicable master copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (O.U.S.) aims to intercept the master copy to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations, or else to find or produce an anti-entertainment that can counter the film's effects. Joelle seeks treatment for substance abuse problems at Ennet House. A.F.R. member (and possible O.U.S. double agent) Rémy Marathe visits Ennet House, aiming to find Joelle and a lead to the master copy of "the Entertainment".

The Incandenza family

 * Hal Incandenza is the youngest of the Incandenza children and arguably the novel's protagonist, as its events revolve around his time at E.T.A. Hal is prodigiously intelligent and talented, but insecure about his abilities (and eventually his mental state). His friend Michael Pemulis calls him Inc, and his favorite thing to do is secretly smoke marijuana in the seclusion of the E.T.A. tunnels. He has difficult relationships with both his parents. He has an eidetic memory and has memorized the Oxford English Dictionary, and like his mother often corrects his friends' and family's grammar. Hal's mental degradation and alienation from those around him culminate in his chronologically last appearance in the novel, in which his attempts at speech and facial expressions are incomprehensible to others. The origin of Hal's final condition is unclear; possible causes include marijuana withdrawal, a drug obtained by Michael Pemulis, a patch of mold Hal ate as a child, and a mental breakdown from years of training to be a top junior tennis player.
 * Avril Incandenza, née Mondragon, is the domineering mother of the Incandenza children and wife of James. A tall (197 cm, or 6 ft. 5.5 in.), beautiful francophone Quebecer, she becomes a major figure at Enfield Tennis Academy after her husband's suicide and begins, or perhaps continues, a relationship with Charles Tavis, the school's new head, also a Canadian and Avril's either adoptive or half-brother. Her sexual relationships with men are a matter of some speculation/discussion; one with John "No Relation" Wayne is depicted. Avril has phobias about uncleanliness and disease, closed doors, and overhead lighting, and is also described as agoraphobic. She has an obsessive-compulsive need to watch over E.T.A. and her two youngest sons, Hal and Mario, who live at the school; Avril and Orin are no longer in contact. James Incandenza believes that he can connect with his children only through her. Orin believes she runs the family with ingrained manipulation and the illusion of choice. Her family nickname is "the Moms".
 * James Orin Incandenza Jr., Avril's husband and Orin's, Mario's and Hal's father, is an optics expert and filmmaker as well as the founder of Enfield Tennis Academy (though he increasingly leaves E.T.A. business to Charles Tavis). The son of small-time actor James O. Incandenza Sr. (who played "The Man from Glad" in the 1960s), James Jr. created Infinite Jest (also known as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat"), an enigmatic and fatally seductive film that was his last work. He used Joelle van Dyne, his son Orin's strikingly beautiful girlfriend, in many of his films, including the fatal "Entertainment". He appears in the book mainly either in flashbacks or as a "wraith", having killed himself at the age of 54 by placing his head in a microwave oven. He is an alcoholic who drinks Wild Turkey whiskey. His family nickname is "Himself". Orin also calls him "the Mad Stork" or (once) "the Sad Stork".
 * Mario Incandenza is the Incandenzas' second son, although his biological father may be Charles Tavis. Severely deformed since birth—he is macrocephalic, homodontic, bradykinetic, and stands or walks at a 45-degree angle—as well as mentally "slow", he is nonetheless perennially cheerful and kind. He is also a budding auteur, having served as James's camera and directorial assistant and later inheriting the prodigious studio equipment and film lab his father built on the Academy grounds. Somewhat surprisingly, he is an avid fan of Madame Psychosis's dark radio show, partly because he finds her voice familiar. Hal, though younger, acts like a supportive older brother to Mario, whom Hal calls "Booboo".
 * Orin Incandenza is the Incandenzas' eldest son. He is a punter for the Phoenix Cardinals and a serial womanizer, and is estranged from everyone in his family except Hal. It is suggested that Orin lost his attraction to Joelle after she became disfigured when her mother threw acid in her face during a Thanksgiving dinner, but Orin cites Joelle's questionable relationship with his father as the reason for the breakup even though he later admits he knows there was no romance. Orin focuses his subsequent womanizing on young mothers; Hal suggests that this is because he blames his father's death on his mother. Molly Notkin, a friend of Joelle's, says that Orin has numerous "malcathected issues with his mother". Orin's relationship with his father was tense. His father tells Joelle "he simply didn't know how to speak with either of his undamaged sons without their mother's presence and mediation. Orin could not be made to shut up."

The Enfield Tennis Academy

 * Michael Pemulis, a working-class teenager from an Allston, Massachusetts family, and Hal's best friend. A prankster and the school's resident drug dealer, Pemulis is also very proficient in mathematics. This, combined with his limited but ultraprecise lobbing, made him the school's first master of Eschaton, a computer-aided turn-based nuclear wargame that requires players to be adept at both game theory and lobbing tennis balls at targets. Although the novel takes place long after Pemulis's Eschaton days (the game is played by 12- to 14-year-olds), Pemulis is still regarded as the game's all-time greatest player, and he remains the final court of appeal for the game. His brother, Matty, is a gay hustler who as a child was sexually abused by their father.
 * John "No Relation" Wayne, the top-ranked player at E.T.A. He is frighteningly efficient, controlled, and machine-like on the court. Wayne is almost never directly quoted in the narrative; his statements are either summarized by the narrator or repeated by other characters. His Canadian citizenship has been revoked since he came to E.T.A. His father is a sick asbestos miner in Quebec who hopes John will soon start earning "serious $" in "the Show" (professional tennis) to "take him away from all this". Pemulis discovers Wayne is having a sexual relationship with Avril Incandenza, and it is later revealed that Hal is also aware of the relationship. Wayne may be sympathetic to, or actively supporting, the radical Quebec separatists.
 * Ortho "The Darkness" Stice, another of Hal's close friends. His name consists of the Greek root ortho ("straight") and the anglicized suffix -stice ("a space") from the noun interstice, which originally derived from the Latin verb sistere ("to stand"). He endorses only brands that have black-colored products, and is at all times clothed entirely in black, hence his nickname. Late in the book Stice nearly defeats Hal in a three-set tennis match, shortly after which his forehead is frozen to a window and his bed appears either bolted or mysteriously levitated to the ceiling. There are indications that Stice is being visited by the ghost of James Incandenza.

Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House

 * Don Gately, a former thief and Demerol addict, and current counselor in residence at Ennet House. One of the novel's primary characters, Gately is physically enormous and a reluctant but dedicated Alcoholics Anonymous member. He is critically wounded in an altercation with several Canadian men, and much of the later part of the novel involves his inner monologue while he recuperates in a Boston hospital. Gately had a complicated childhood. His stepfather abused his mother. During his middle-school and high-school years, Gately's size made him a formidable football talent. During his period as an addict and burglar, he accidentally kills M. DuPlessis, a leader of one of the many separatist Québécois organizations featured in the novel. Gately is visited by the ghosts of James O. Incandenza and Lyle.
 * Joelle van Dyne, also known as "Madame Psychosis" (cf. metempsychosis), a stage name she received from James Incandenza when she starred in his films (and later her on-air name in her radio show "60+/−"). She became acquainted with James through her college relationship with Orin Incandenza, who referred to her as "The Prettiest Girl of All Time", or P.G.O.A.T. She appears in the lethally addictive Entertainment, reaching down toward a wobbly "neonatal" lens as if it were in a bassinet and apologizing profusely, her face blurred beyond recognition. Extremely beautiful as a young woman, Joelle later becomes a member of the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (U.H.I.D.), and wears a veil to hide her face. According to Molly Notkin, Joelle's face was disfigured by a beaker of acid her mother threw, intending to hit Joelle's father, who had just revealed he was in love with her (Joelle). Joelle says she wears the veil because her superlative attractiveness plagued her throughout her life, causing her to suffer social and romantic isolation until she met Orin. Joelle tries to "eliminate her own map" (that is, suicide) in Notkin's bathroom by massive ingestion of freebase cocaine, which lands her in Ennet House as a resident. Gately and Joelle develop a mutual attraction.

Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents
Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.), the Wheelchair Assassins, are a Québécois separatist group. (The use of "rollents" where "roulants" would be correct is in keeping with other erroneous French words and phrases in the novel.) They are one of many such groups that developed after the United States coerced Canada and Mexico into joining the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), but the A.F.R. is the most deadly and extremist. While other separatist groups are willing to settle for nationhood, the A.F.R. wants Canada to secede from O.N.A.N. and to reject America's forced gift of its polluted "Great Concavity" (or, Hal and Orin speculate, is pretending that those are its goals to put pressure on Canada to let Quebec secede). The A.F.R. seeks the master copy of Infinite Jest as a terrorist weapon to achieve its goals. The A.F.R. has its roots in a childhood game in which miners' sons would line up alongside a train track and compete to be the last to jump across the path of an oncoming train, a game in which many were killed or rendered legless (hence the wheelchairs).

Only one miner's son ever (disgracefully) failed to jump—Bernard Wayne, who may be related to E.T.A.'s John Wayne. Québécoise Avril's liaisons with John Wayne, and with A.F.R.'s Guillaume DuPlessis and Luria Perec, suggest that Avril may have ties to the A.F.R. as well. There is also evidence linking E.T.A. prorector Thierry Poutrincourt to the group.
 * Rémy Marathe is a member of the Wheelchair Assassins who secretly talks to Hugh/Helen Steeply. Marathe is a quadruple agent: the A.F.R. thinks that he is a triple agent, only pretending to betray the A.F.R., while Marathe and Steeply know that he only pretends to pretend to betray them. He does this in order to secure medical support for his wife (who was born without a skull) from the Office of Unspecified Services. Late in the novel, Marathe is sent to infiltrate Ennet House in the guise of a Swiss drug addict.

Other recurring characters
These characters cross between the major narrative threads:
 * Hugh Steeply, an agent who assumes a female identity ("Helen") for an operative role, with whom Orin Incandenza becomes obsessed. Hugh works for the government Office of Unspecified Services and has gone undercover to get information out of Orin about the Entertainment. He is the U.S.O.U.S.'s contact with the A.F.R. mole Marathe.
 * Lyle, E.T.A. weight room guru. He spends most of his time perched atop the towel dispenser in the lotus position. Lyle licks the sweat off the boys' bodies after they work out and in turn gives them life advice. His behavior is described by the narrator as unusual but "nothing faggy". Lyle is close to Mario, whom he sometimes employs to speak to players who struggle with self-esteem.
 * "Poor Tony" Krause, a cross-dressing junkie and thief who steals a woman's exterior heart, causing her death, and later robs Ennet House residents.
 * Randy Lenz, a "small time organic-coke dealer who wears sportcoats rolled up over his parlor-tanned forearms and is always checking his pulse on the inside of his wrists". An Ennet House resident, he constantly asks the time but refuses to wear a watch and regularly violates the sobriety rule.
 * Geoffrey Day, an Ennet House resident who struggles with the clichés of AA. He comes to Ennet House after putting his car through a sporting-goods store window.
 * Marlon Bain, a former E.T.A. student who was close to Orin. His obsessive-compulsive disorder has made it nearly impossible for him to leave his apartment. Steeply contacts him for information about Orin and the Incandenzas.

Style
Infinite Jest is a postmodern encyclopedic novel, famous for its length, detail and digressions involving 388 endnotes, some of which themselves have footnotes. It has also been called metamodernist and hysterical realist. Wallace's "encyclopedic display of knowledge" incorporates media theory, linguistics, film studies, sport, addiction, science, and issues of national identity. The book is often humorous yet explores melancholy deeply. The novel's narration mostly alternates between third-person limited and omniscient points of view, but also includes several first-person accounts.

Eschewing chronological plot development and straightforward resolution—a concern often mentioned in reviews—the novel supports a wide range of readings. At various times Wallace said that he intended for the novel's plot to resolve, but indirectly; responding to his editor's concerns about the lack of resolution, he said "the answers all [exist], but just past the last page". Long after publication Wallace maintained this position, stating that the novel "does resolve, but it resolves ... outside of the right frame of the picture. You can get a pretty good idea, I think, of what happens". Critical reviews and a reader's guide have provided insight, but Stephen Burn notes that Wallace privately conceded to Jonathan Franzen that "the story can't fully be made sense of".

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized the novel's heavy use of endnotes as a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining some sense of narrative cohesion. In a separate interview on Michael Silverblatt's radio show Bookworm, Wallace said the plotting and notes had a fractal structure modeled after the Sierpiński gasket.

Themes
The novel touches on many topics, including addiction (to drugs, but also to sex and fame), withdrawal, recovery, death, family relationships, absent or dead parents, mental health, suicide, sadness, entertainment, film theory, media theory, linguistics, science, Quebec separatism, national identity, and tennis as a metaphysical activity.

Literary connections
Infinite Jest draws explicitly or allusively on many previous works of literature.

As its title implies, the novel is in part based on the play Hamlet. Enfield Tennis Academy corresponds to Denmark, ruled by James (King Hamlet) and Avril (Queen Gertrude). When James dies, he is replaced by Charles (Claudius), the uncle of Avril's gifted son Hal (Prince Hamlet). As in the play, the son's task is to fight incipient mental breakdown in order to redeem his father's reputation.

Another link is to the Odyssey, wherein the son Telemachus (Hal) has to grow apart from his dominating mother Penelope (Avril) and discover the truth about his absent father Odysseus (James). (That pattern is also reproduced in the novel Ulysses, set in a realistic version of Dublin populated by a wide range of inhabitants, just as Infinite Jest is mostly in a realistic Boston with a varied population. ) In one scene, Hal, on the phone with Orin, says that clipping his toenails into a wastebasket "now seems like an exercise in telemachry.” Orin then asks whether Hal meant telemetry. Christopher Bartlett has argued that Hal's mistake is a direct reference to Telemachus, who for the first four books of the Odyssey believes that his father is dead.

Links to The Brothers Karamazov have been analyzed by Timothy Jacobs, who sees Orin representing the nihilistic Dmitri, Hal standing for Ivan and Mario the simple and good Alyosha.

The film so entertaining that its viewers lose interest in anything else has been likened to the Monty Python sketch "The Funniest Joke in the World", as well as to "the experience machine", a thought experiment by Robert Nozick.

Critical reception
Infinite Jest was marketed heavily, and Wallace had to adapt to being a public figure. He was interviewed in national magazines and went on a 10-city book tour. Publisher Little, Brown equated the book's heft with its importance in marketing and sent a series of cryptic teaser postcards to 4,000 people, announcing a novel of "infinite pleasure" and "infinite style". Rolling Stone sent reporter David Lipsky to follow Wallace on his "triumphant" book tour—the first time the magazine had sent a reporter to profile a young author in 10 years. The interview was never published in the magazine but became Lipsky's New York Times-bestselling book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010), of which the 2015 movie The End of the Tour is an adaptation.

Early reviews contributed to Infinite Jest 's hype, many of them describing it as a momentous literary event. In the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Steven Moore called the book "a profound study of the postmodern condition." In 2004, Chad Harbach declared that, in retrospect, Infinite Jest "now looks like the central American novel of the past thirty years, a dense star for lesser work to orbit." In a 2008 retrospective by The New York Times, it was described as "a masterpiece that's also a monster—nearly 1,100 pages of mind-blowing inventiveness and disarming sweetness. Its size and complexity make it forbidding and esoteric."

Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

As Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest is at the center of the new discipline of "Wallace Studies", which, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, "... is on its way to becoming a robust scholarly enterprise."

Not all critics were as laudatory. Some early reviews, such as Michiko Kakutani's in The New York Times, were mixed, recognizing the inventiveness of the writing but criticizing the length and plot. She called the novel "a vast, encyclopedic compendium of whatever seems to have crossed Wallace's mind." In the London Review of Books, Dale Peck wrote of the novel, "... it is, in a word, terrible. Other words I might use include bloated, boring, gratuitous, and—perhaps especially—uncontrolled." Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, called it "just awful" and written with "no discernible talent" (in the novel, Bloom's own work is called "turgid"). In a review of Wallace's work up to the year 2000, A. O. Scott wrote of Infinite Jest, "[T]he novel's Pynchonesque elements...feel rather willed and secondhand. They are impressive in the manner of a precocious child's performance at a dinner party, and, in the same way, ultimately irritating: they seem motivated, mostly, by a desire to show off."

Some critics have since qualified their initial stances. In 2008, A. O. Scott called Infinite Jest an "enormous, zeitgeist-gobbling novel that set his generation's benchmark for literary ambition" and Wallace "the best mind of his generation". James Wood has said that he regrets his negative review: "I wish I'd slowed down a bit more with David Foster Wallace." Infinite Jest is one of the recommendations in Kakutani's book Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread.

Adaptations
Playwright Ken Campbell worked on an adaptation of Infinite Jest for the Millennium. His concept was to have 1,000 performers who each paid $23 to take part in the event, which would last a week. It did not come to fruition. German theatrical company Hebbel am Ufer produced a 24-hour avant-garde open-air theatre adaptation in 2012.

Infinite Jest was adapted in Finnish for radio and broadcast in six episodes by Yle in January 2023.

In popular culture

 * The Parks and Recreation episode "Partridge" contains various references to the novel. For example, Ann and Chris take the "Incandenza-Pemulis Parenting Compatibility Quiz", and Ann's fertility counselor, Dr. Van Dyne, works at the C.T. Tavis Medical Center.
 * The video for The Decemberists' "Calamity Song" recreates the novel's Eschaton chapter.
 * The music video for MC Lars and Wheatus's "Finite Jest" recounts the plot of Wallace's novel from Hal's perspective, recreating scenes from the book.
 * The Infinite Summer project, an online book group with the goal of reading Infinite Jest over a single summer, took place in 2009. It included daily commentary from well-known writers, musicians and media personalities.
 * The rock band We Are the Fury named its 2006 EP Infinite Jest after the novel.
 * The hardcore punk band Fury named its album Failed Entertainment after the novel's working title.
 * The indie pop rock band The 1975's song title "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies" was inspired by the novel's opening line. The band's lead singer, Matty Healy, was reading the book while in rehab.

Translations
Infinite Jest has been translated:
 * In 2010, Blumenbach received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the Kurd Laßwitz Award for the translation.
 * Polyarinov, Alexey; Karpov, Sergey (2018). Бесконечная Шутка (in Russian). AST. ISBN 978-5-17-096355-3.
 * Valkonen, Tero (2020). Päättymätön riemu (in Finnish). Siltala / Sanavalinta. ISBN 978-952-234-653-7.
 * In 2021, Valkonen was awarded the Mikael Agricola Prize.
 * Kozak, Jolanta (2022). Niewyczerpany żart (in Polish). Wydawnictwo W.A.B. ISBN 978-83-83180-26-7.
 * Polyarinov, Alexey; Karpov, Sergey (2018). Бесконечная Шутка (in Russian). AST. ISBN 978-5-17-096355-3.
 * Valkonen, Tero (2020). Päättymätön riemu (in Finnish). Siltala / Sanavalinta. ISBN 978-952-234-653-7.
 * In 2021, Valkonen was awarded the Mikael Agricola Prize.
 * Kozak, Jolanta (2022). Niewyczerpany żart (in Polish). Wydawnictwo W.A.B. ISBN 978-83-83180-26-7.
 * Valkonen, Tero (2020). Päättymätön riemu (in Finnish). Siltala / Sanavalinta. ISBN 978-952-234-653-7.
 * In 2021, Valkonen was awarded the Mikael Agricola Prize.
 * Kozak, Jolanta (2022). Niewyczerpany żart (in Polish). Wydawnictwo W.A.B. ISBN 978-83-83180-26-7.

In-depth studies

 * Bartlett, Christopher. "'An Exercise in Telemachry': David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Intergenerational Conversation". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 57.4 (2006), 374–389.
 * Burn, Stephen. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. New York, London: Continuum, 2003 (Continuum Contemporaries)ISBN 0-8264-1477-X
 * Bresnan, Mark. "The Work of Play in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 50:1 (2008), 51–68.
 * Carlisle, Greg. Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest'. Hollywood: SSMG Press, 2007.
 * Cioffi, Frank Louis. "An Anguish Becomes Thing: Narrative as Performance in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". Narrative 8.2 (2000), 161–181.
 * Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Put the Book Down and Slowly Walk Away': Irony and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction47.3 (2006), 309–328.
 * Hering, David. "Infinite Jest: Triangles, Cycles, Choices and Chases". Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays. Ed. David Hering. Austin/Los Angeles: SSMG, 2010.
 * Holland, Mary K. "'The Art's Heart's Purpose': Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 47.3 (2006), 218–242.
 * Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.3 (2007): 265–292.
 * Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 271. Ed. Jeffrey Hunter. New York: Gale, 2009. 313–327.
 * Jacobs, Timothy. "American Touchstone: The Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace." Comparative Literature Studies 38.3 (2001): 215–231.
 * Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." The Explicator 58.3 (2000): 172–175.
 * Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System." Ed. Alan Hedblad. Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction. Vol 15. New York: Thomson-Gale, 2001. 41–50.
 * LeClair, Tom. "The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38.1 (1996), 12–37.
 * Nichols, Catherine. "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.1 (2001), 3–16.
 * Pennacchio, Filippo. "What Fun Life Was. Saggio su Infinite Jest di David Foster Wallace". Milano: Arcipelago Edizioni, 2009.

Interviews

 * Lipsky, David, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace. New York: Broadway, 2010.
 * NPR interview about Infinite Jest
 * Wallace talking about his novel on Michael Silverblatt's "Bookworm" radio show
 * NPR interview about Infinite Jest
 * Wallace talking about his novel on Michael Silverblatt's "Bookworm" radio show

title: Infinite Jest


text:
Talk:Llangrannog

Cardiganshire or Ceredigion?
Llangrannog is indeed in Ceredigion. However, it is also in Cardiganshire and best practice would tend to favour the latter. I changed it to Cardiganshire because local government in this country is subjected to such frequent and arbitrary reorganisation that it makes far more sense to give the location of places with their traditional county which they always have been in and always will be in. Ceredigion is an artificial county invented in 1996, if my memory serves me correctly. Most of these made up administrative divisions are here today, gone tomorrow. It's also important to note that the traditional counties were never abolished (and whatever government is in power at the time of a shake-up is always at pains to emphasise this), it's just that they cease to correspond to local authority areas. See Traditional counties of Wales for a bit more on all this. It's essentially your article so I won't change it again. Just thought I'd leave a note to explain myself. Trilobite 01:10, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * (William M. Connolley 10:08, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)) Fair comment. I went on holiday there this summer which I why I wrote the page (and intend to expand it Real Soon Now). If you go there, the signs say Ceredigion. More, (and here I am on shaky ground and am guessing) I think Ceredigion is Welsh but Cardiganshire English; and its a Welsh speaking area.

To Say that Llangrannog is in Cardiganshire is to say that Salisbury is in Wessex. It is the historical context of the entity that is important and in this case it relates to the status of Llangrannog today (at time of publishing) and not historically. We cannot anticipate future council or government changes in policy on naming (or indeed anything) and should look to capture the facts as they are now. Llangrannog is in Ceredigion (Ceredigion County Council). If this changes then we should amend the article at the time of change. Also from a quick google, I believe Cardigan was an anglicization for the kingdom of Ceredigion. L Palframan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.12.218.218 (talk) 10:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Surely the current Unitary Authorities are no more 'artificial' than those the traditional boundaries! They're all man-made! Only Anglesey can be argued to have a 'natural' boundary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.92.66.232 (talk) 14:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Infobox adjustment
Need help with postcode district, and postcode area for the Infobox. Thanks. ~ Geaugagrrl talk 02:24, 23 February 2009 (UTC) schools also visit Llangranog such as NEATH PORT TALBOT SCHOOLS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.11.215.176 (talk) 16:25, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Statue
wrth cwrs Ceredigion. there is now a noteable statue of the saint, by a local artist, on the headland to the right of the panorama. does anyone reading this know enough about it to add to article? if not i will researc further in the pub next visit. Daiyounger (talk) 09:27, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Help
My link isn't working. I've put the around it as usual. Why isn't it working? Jwpkanutin (talk) 13:14, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You used a return in between the two words, which causes the fault. I've repaired the link. FruitMonkey (talk) 18:24, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Llangrannog


text: File:Snellen-myopia.png

title: File:Snellen-myopia.png


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Georgi Yartsev

Georgi Aleksandrovich Yartsev (Гео́ргий Алекса́ндрович Я́рцев; 11 April 1948 – 15 July 2022) was a Russian football coach and player. He was the head coach of the Russia national team between 2003 and 2005.

Club career
He learned to play football in the Tekmash Kostroma football school. Played forward for Spartak Kostroma (1965–1967, 1975–1976), Iskra Smolensk (1968–1972), CSKA Moscow (1970), Gomselmash Gomel (1973–1974), Spartak Moscow (1977–1980), Lokomotiv Moscow (1981), Moskvich Moscow (1982). Played 82 games and scored 38 goals in the premier league of the USSR championship. USSR champion in 1979. He was the top scorer at the USSR championship in 1978 (19 goals). He played five (5) games for the USSR national team. His playing career was unusual in that he only got to the highest level of club football in USSR when he was 29 years old. He achieved highest level success quickly once he got to Spartak Moscow. However, that sudden late-career revival did not last for too long and he retired soon thereafter.

Managerial career
After finishing his playing career, he became a coach at the Kapotnya Moscow football school (1982–1984), Krasnaya Presnya Moscow (1984–1985), SC Krasny Bogatyr Moscow (1985–1988), pop singers team that played exhibition games, Zvezdy Sporta (1993–1994).

In 1994, he was hired as an assistant coach for the top Russian club at the time, Spartak Moscow. When Oleg Romantsev, who was head coach of Spartak and of the Russian national team, decided to focus on the national team in 1996, Yartsev was appointed the head coach of Spartak. Spartak was rebuilding at the time, but even with many young players in the lineup, they won the league that year. They did so in a "golden game" which had to be played because Spartak and Alania Vladikavkaz were level on points after the championship. How much of that team's success was due to Yartsev is still questioned, because Romantsev never really left the team and some say he continued to make all the important decisions behind the scenes. Romantsev took back his head coach position in 1997, moving Yartsev back into the assistant position.

In June 1998 Yartsev was appointed the head coach of Spartak's cross-city arch-rival, Dynamo Moscow. Despite getting to the Russian Cup final in the spring of 1999, generally he did not have much success with that team and was fired in June 1999. Before one of the Dynamo games that was played on Yartsev's birthday, Sergei Stepashin, who was the Prime Minister of Russia at the time, gave Yartsev a sabre as a birthday gift in a sideline pre-game ceremony. Yartsev got another head coach position soon enough, when he joined Rotor Volgograd in January 2000. However, he could not do much with that team either and was fired in June of same year. For the next three years he was the manager of the Spartak Moscow veterans team.

In August 2003, Russia was very close to elimination from their Euro 2004 preliminary qualification group and the coach Valery Gazzayev, was fired. Most of the other high-level Russian coaches have already coached the national team at one point or another, so unexpectedly Russian soccer federation decided to put Yartsev in charge. Under Yartsev's management, Russia qualified for the playoff preliminary qualification matches, in which they beat Wales. That series ended with controversy. First Russia asked UEFA to disqualify Wales midfielder Ryan Giggs for elbowing a Russian defender in the first leg of the playoffs, which UEFA refused to do. Later key Russian midfielder Egor Titov was disqualified for testing positive for an illegal performance-enhancing drug, Wales asked to be declared winners because of that, but that request was ultimately denied and their court case dismissed.

In UEFA Euro 2004 Russia lost the first two games to Spain and Portugal 1–0 and 2–0 and was the first team to be eliminated. After the first game Yartsev sent home one of the most experienced Russian midfielders, Alexander Mostovoi, after Mostovoi complained to the press that Yartsev is overworking players in training sessions, so they do not have any energy left for the games. Yartsev changed lineup extensively in every game, first because some key defenders were injured and he had to play the reserves and young players, and then because of disqualifications to Roman Sharonov and Sergei Ovchinnikov, who were sent off in the first two games. In their third and final game, Russia defeated Greece 2–1. That ended up being the only Greek loss in the whole tournament as Greece eventually won it all, defeating Portugal in the finals (Russia was not very lucky in getting drawn into the same group as two eventual finalists). Yartsev was not fired despite not coming out of the group stage.

After a 7–1 loss to Portugal in the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualifying Yartsev kept his job, but then resigned after a 1–1 draw with Estonia.

In early 2007, he was hired as a coach for FC Torpedo Moscow, who got relegated in 2006 from the Russian Premier League for the first time in its history. He was fired on June 20, 2007, Torpedo was in 7th place in First Division at the time (only the top 2 teams get promoted into the Premier League).

Personal life
Yartsev was married, and has two daughters. His son Alexander was murdered 18 February 2007 in his own home.

Yartsev was a member of the United Russia party. During the 2018 presidential election, he became part of the PutinTeam movement, which supported Vladimir Putin.

title: Georgi Yartsev


text:
Blind Idiot God

Blind Idiot God is an American instrumental rock trio formed in 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, by guitarist Andy Hawkins, bassist Gabriel Katz and drummer Ted Epstein. The phrase "blind idiot god" comes from horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's description of the god Azathoth. Their often improvisational musical style combines influences from punk rock, noise music, 20th-century classical music, heavy metal, dub, free jazz, and funk. They are currently based in New York City and have often collaborated with musicians Bill Laswell and John Zorn.

Their self-titled debut album, Blind Idiot God, was issued by SST Records in 1987 and was well received critically. Brian Olewnick described it as "an extraordinary debut [...] the three musicians exhibited startling originality and impressive technique both on their instruments and in the depth and style of their compositions". With bassist Bill Laswell handling production duties, Undertow was released in 1988 and was followed by Cyclotron in 1992. Ted Epstein left the band in 1996 and the remaining members put Blind Idiot God on hiatus as they searched for his replacement.

In 2001, Blind Idiot God reunited after roughly a decade of inactivity, with Tim Wyskida (of Khanate) replacing Epstein. Between 2008 and 2010, Blind Idiot God recorded the material at studios in New Jersey; Barber Shop; and Orange Sound that would comprise their fourth album, Before Ever After. Gabriel Katz departed in 2012 and was replaced by New York veteran bassist Will Dahl, making Andy Hawkins the only original member still performing in the band. Before Ever After was released on February 24, 2015, with the new lineup performing three live shows in New York to coincide with the release. In 2017, The band announced that they would be re-issuing their back catalog on multiple formats and that they had started work on a new album.

Early years (1982–1986)
Blind Idiot God was formed in 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri when its members were teenagers. Before adopting free jazz and dub influences, they essentially played hardcore punk, with their songs being roughly one minute in length. During this time, they socialized within the St. Louis hardcore scene, including members of Drunks with Guns and Ultraman. After failing to find a vocalist that shared their musical aspirations, the band opted to continue as an instrumental outfit. Their first live performance came in September 1983 at a basement party. After playing the first song of their set, a reggae version of "Hava Nagila", they were interrupted by the police who shut the party down after receiving complaints from the neighbors. After hearing their self-produced cassette demo, Greg Ginn of Black Flag signed them to SST Records, and the band moved to Brooklyn in 1986.

Debut album and critical acclaim (1987–1988)
The band began searching for a producer who would be willing to work with their mixture of noise, dub and heavy metal. Originally, Hawkins wanted to enlist the aid of British producer Adrian Sherwood, known for his work with numerous reggae groups as well as his contributions to the industrial hip hop ensemble Tackhead. In January 1987, Blind Idiot God entered B.C. Studios to record with producer Martin Bisi, who they had met through composer Bill Laswell. Their debut album, the eponymously titled Blind Idiot God, was released on SST Records in 1987 and received critical acclaim. While categorized as heavy metal and noise rock, the music made use of distortion techniques while hinting at free jazz and European classical music influences, with its final three tracks ostensibly belonging to the dub genre. The virtuosity of the band's players was praised in an article for Electronic Musician, which said "Andy Hawkins' guitar dips and swirls, chases its tail, and ultimately screams its existence, while Ted Epstein and Gabriel Katz lend form and substance on bass and drums respectively. At 19, 20, and 21, the trio is young enough to dazzle with potential. Jazz, heavy metal, reggae, art music - B.I.G. has elements of all of these, yet establishes their very own recipe."

Underground success and second album (1988–1992)
The success of Blind Idiot God's first album coupled with powerful live performances earned them recognition in underground music circles. The band soon began collaborating with avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn. Zorn contacted the band after attending one of their performances at CBGB's and professed his enthusiasm for their work along with his desire to collaborate with the group. The band joined him onstage on numerous occasions to perform improvised music, Zorn compositions and even in his John Coltrane cover band "Ascension" which featured infamous 2 minute versions of Coltrane compositions like A Love Supreme and Ascension.

The Blind Idiot God's second album Undertow was issued the following year by Enemy Records and produced by Bill Laswell. The style remained similar to what had been represented on the band's debut, with excursions into dub territory interposing bludgeoning noise rock. Noted musical departures included the heavy metal/funk hybrid "Alice in My Fantasies", a George Clinton cover, and "Purged Specimen", a short piece composed for them by John Zorn that also featured him on alto saxophone. Praising the Blind Idiot God's knack for memorable melodies and rapid tempo-changes combined with Laswell's production, EAR Magazine declared Undertow superior to their debut and "as addictive as a pot of strong coffee."

Third album and hiatus (1992–1996)
Released four years later, the band's 1992 album Cyclotron was seen by some as lackluster due to the reliance on ideas previously explored and absence of distinct experimentation. In 1993, Blind Idiot God and Henry Rollins wrote and recorded the title song for the movie Freaked, marking the first and only time the band collaborated with a vocalist. The entire band performed on Praxis' album Sacrifist, released in 1993.

After Cyclotron was released, the members began pursuing their own separate musical endeavors. Andy Hawkins began a solo guitar project named Azonic, under which he released Halo in 1994 and Skinner's Black Laboratories with Justin Broadrick of Godflesh in 1995. Gabriel Katz collaborated with Bill Laswell on Dub Terror Exhaust, for which he composed music and contributed bass parts. In 1996, Ted Epstein left the band to pursue other interests. Unwilling to continue without a drummer, the remaining members placed Blind Idiot God on hiatus.

Return and new album (2001–present)
Drummer Tim Wyskida, known for his work in Khanate, joined in 2001 and Blind Idiot God began work on their fourth studio album. However, setbacks and delays occurred as Gabriel Katz encountered problems with tendinitis and hearing loss. The line-up finally began performing in a live setting in 2006, playing a series of well-received gigs in New York City. In 2012, Gabriel Katz left the band and was replaced by Will Dahl.

In 2013, three newly recorded tracks appeared in the HBO documentary Downloaded, a film by Alex Winter detailing the history of Napster. It marked the first time new material by Blind Idiot God had been made available to the public in over twenty years. The band's fourth full-length album, an accumulation of thirteen years worth of recorded material, was announced in 2014. Titled Before Ever After, it was the debut release of Indivisible Music, a label founded by Andy Hawkins. Before Ever After was issued on vinyl on February 24, 2015, followed by a Compact Disc release on April 6, 2015.

On April 13, 2016 the Blind Idiot God embarked on their "Raise the Titanic" tour, which marked the band's first live shows outside of the United States. Concurrent with their tour, Before Ever After was reissued for worldwide distribution. In 2017, the band announced the re-issue of their second album Undertow. Set to be released on October 13, the newly remastered release is to include two versions of "Freaked", a collaboration with former Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins and Blind Idiot God's sole composition to feature vocals. They also announced plans to re-issue Cyclotron.

Musical style
Though at its core heavy metal, Blind Idiot God's music is informed by punk rock, dub, and classical music composers, notably György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki and Igor Stravinsky. In a 1997 Guitar Player interview, Hawkins explained one reason he drew inspiration from classical music was to use more advanced harmony: "When I listen to a lot of metal and hard rock, I think 'Great Intensity! Boring chords!'" The band's music also heavily drew from free jazz, with its members citing Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane as being early musical influences. Former drummer Ted Epstein has also commented on the role funk music plays in his music, saying "something that has been with me since I was 15 or 16 is the idea of funk as a concept, the syncopation and the push/pull thing that exists in funk, embodied in Funkadelic, Grandmaster Flash, Sly and the Family Stone, and The Meters." Comparisons have also been made to Blue Cheer, Last Exit, the Sex Pistols, Glenn Branca and Jimi Hendrix. In reviewing the band's debut, a critic of Electronic Musician noted that "if you took original Hendrix multi-track tapes, wiped the vocals off, and handed them to Scientist, the reggae dub-mixer, the result might sound like B.l.G."

Since its inception, Blind Idiot God's music has been entirely instrumental, with its members stating their unanimous disinterest with incorporating vocals into their arrangements. Andy Hawkins has explained "when you hear a voice, it usually has such a distinct emotional quality to it. It speaks in a whole different kind of way then the music does, so it just interferes with what we are trying to do musically." However, during the early nineties the band expressed a desire to form a separate project that integrated vocals into their music.

Legacy
Filmmaker and actor Alex Winter is a long-time admirer of Blind Idiot God, having used their music in his debut feature film Freaked and again in his 2013 documentary Downloaded. In 2014 he described them as "one of the most revered and influential bands to come out of the SST era [...] they are as great and bold today, as ever." Former Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins professed himself as being a fan of their work and felt honored in having collaborated with them.

Band members
Current members
 * Will Dahl – bass guitar (2012–present)
 * Andy Hawkins – lead guitar (1982–1996, 2001–present)
 * Tim Wyskida – drums (2001–present)

Former members
 * Ted Epstein – drums (1982–1996)
 * Gabriel Katz – bass guitar (1982–1996, 2001–2012)

 * Timeline

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * Blind Idiot God (SST, 1987)
 * Undertow (Enemy, 1988)
 * Cyclotron (Avant, 1992)
 * Before Ever After (Indivisible, 2015)

 * EPs
 * Purged Specimen (Enemy, 1989)
 * Sawtooth (Enemy, 1989)

title: Blind Idiot God


text:
Aircraft safety card

An aircraft safety card is a document instructing passengers on an aircraft about the procedures for dealing with various emergency conditions that might arise during the flight.

General information

The safety cards are usually provided by airlines on all commercial flights, usually located in the back of the seat in front of each passenger, or alternatively a placard on the back of seats. Pre-flight safety demonstrations, either conducted by the flight attendants or through a video presentation, instruct passengers to familiarize themselves with the safety cards prior to take-off.

The cards are frequently laminated or made of plastic and contain instructions that are specific to the model of the airplane in which they are found. The contents are usually in the form of pictures, graphically illustrating such procedures as buckling the seat belts, bracing for impact in an airplane crash, dealing with depressurization, opening the emergency exit door or inflating life rafts in the event of a water landing. The graphic representation allows the cards to be accessible to those speaking a different language from the flight attendants, as well as to children and illiterate passengers. Braille cards are also offered on many mainstream airlines.

Collectibles
Aircraft safety cards are a collectible item among the aviation enthusiast community since they are a reflection of an airline, an aircraft type, a culture, and a historical period. Safety cards are collected from civil and military aircraft, rare cards have been known to fetch over US$1,000 at auction.

title: Aircraft safety card


text:
Category talk:Space launch vehicles

Actual hardware only
I strongly propose we only ever add flown hardware (success or failure) to this category. Otherwise the category will get swamped and overwhelmed with pipe dreams. I've just removed two nonexistant (or never flown) rockets for which someone felt they could use this category as an advertising platform (even quoting prizes).

It possible of course to make a second list which could include everything ever planned, but this one just shouldn't. Ropers 01:18, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure about this theory. The name implies *all* space launch vehicles, not just those that have launched; that means lots of people will misunderstand it anyway. Wouldn't it be better to make this the superset, and create subcategories for actual and proposed vehicles (or somesuch)?WolfKeeper 21:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I've added Category:Proposed spacecraft to this category. It seems both correct and proportionate.WolfKeeper 02:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Is it better to have this category called "Space launch vehicles" or "Space launch systems"? I noticed that reusable launch vehicle redirects to reusable launch system. --NeuronExMachina 05:39, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree to the change in catelogue name to vehicles but a system might be part of tha catelogue--aceslead 03:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Clutter
Maybe all vehicles that have a RLV, ELV, or PRLV, should be removed from the SLV category to reduce the clutter. So that only none categorized vehicles, that don’t yet have a category are just left under the SLV category.--aceslead 18:37, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

title: Category talk:Space launch vehicles