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Max Hastings

Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings (born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist and military historian, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, and editor of the Evening Standard. He is also the author of thirty books, most significantly histories, which have won several major awards. Hastings currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times.

Early life
Hastings' parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar. He was educated at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.

Career
Hastings moved to the United States, spending a year (1967–68) as a Fellow of the World Press Institute, following which he published his first book, America, 1968: The Fire This Time, an account of the US in its tumultuous election year. He became a foreign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC1's Twenty-Four Hours current affairs programme and for the Evening Standard in London.

Hastings was the first person accompanying the British Task Force to enter Port Stanley on the last day of the 1982 Falklands War. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he returned to the Evening Standard as editor in 1996 and remained there until his retirement in 2002. Hastings was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2002 Birthday Honours for services to journalism. He was elected a member of the political dining society known as The Other Club in 1993.

He has presented historical documentaries for the BBC and is the author of many books, including Bomber Command, which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction in 1980. Both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year prize. He was named Journalist of the Year and Reporter of the Year at the 1982 British Press Awards, and Editor of the Year in 1988. In 2010 he received the Royal United Services Institute's Westminster Medal for his "lifelong contribution to military literature", and the same year the Edgar Wallace Award from the London Press Club.

In 2012, he was awarded the US$100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award, a lifetime achievement award for military writing, which includes an honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation. Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Historical Society. He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England from 2002 to 2007.

In his 2007 book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (known as Retribution in the United States), the chapter on Australia's role in the last year of the Pacific War was criticised by the chief of the Returned and Services League of Australia and one of the historians at the Australian War Memorial, for allegedly exaggerating discontent in the Australian Army. Dan van der Vat in The Guardian called it "even-handed", "refreshing" and "sensitive" and praised the language used. The Spectator called it "brilliant" and praised his telling of the human side of the story.

Hastings wrote a column for the Daily Mail between 2002 and 2008 and often contributes articles to other publications such as The Guardian, and The Sunday Times. He also currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion.

Personal life
Hastings lives near Hungerford, Berkshire, with his second wife, Penelope (Levinson), whom he married in 1999. Hastings has a surviving son and daughter by his first wife, Patricia Edmondson, to whom he was married from 1972 until 1994. In 2000, his 27-year-old first son, Charles, died by suicide in Ningbo, China. He dedicated his book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944–45, which was published in 2007, to Charles's memory.

Political views
Hastings has at different times voted for all three major British political parties. He announced his support for the Conservative Party at the 2010 general election, having previously voted for the Labour Party at the 1997 and 2001 general elections. He said that "four terms are too many for any government" and described Gordon Brown as "wholly psychologically unfit to be Prime Minister". At elections since he has voted for the Liberal Democrats.

In August 2014, Hastings was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

In June 2019, Hastings described Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party leadership candidate, as "unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification ... [his] premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability ... If the price of Johnson proves to be Corbyn, blame will rest with the Conservative party, which is about to foist a tasteless joke upon the British people – who will not find it funny for long." He continued along this line of argument throughout the Johnson premiership and he said that "the experiment in celebrity government to which the Conservative Party committed us has failed, and is seen by the world to have failed. The foremost task for a successor is to restore Britain's reputation as a serious country."

In his Bloomberg column on 14 February 2021, Hastings wrote that the United Kingdom's future was unlikely to be long-term. He advocated a United Ireland but said he was against Scottish and Welsh independence. Hastings was widely criticised for stating in the article that the Welsh language was of "marginal value" and that Wales could not succeed as an independent country because it was "dependent on English largesse". Huw Edwards said there were several factual errors in Hastings' points, while Fergus Llewelyn Turtle responded: "For the non-English part of the UK that is ... the most integrated with England, it's pretty astonishing how many English commentators have exactly zero political clue about Wales."

In March 2021, Hastings wrote that the prospect of a showdown between the United States and China over Taiwan was becoming increasingly likely.

Reportage

 * America 1968: The Fire this Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4
 * Ulster 1969: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7
 * The Battle for the Falklands (with Simon Jenkins) (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3, (Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3

Biography

 * Montrose: The King's Champion (Gollancz, 1977) ISBN 0-575-02226-4
 * Yoni: Hero of Entebbe: Life of Yonathan Netanyahu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980) ISBN 0-297-77565-0

Autobiography

 * Going to the Wars (Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 0-333-77104-4
 * Editor: A Memoir (Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-90837-6
 * Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable (London, HarperPress, 2010) ISBN 978-0-00-727171-9

History

 * Bomber Command (Michael Joseph, 1979) ISBN 0-7181-1603-8
 * The Battle of Britain (with Len Deighton) (Jonathan Cape, 1980) ISBN 0-224-01826-4
 * Das Reich: Resistance and the March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Michael Joseph, 1981) ISBN 0-7181-2074-4, (Henry Holt & Co, 1982) ISBN 0-03-057059-X
 * Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) ISBN 0-671-46029-3
 * Victory in Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) ISBN 0-297-78650-4 (Little Brown & C, 1992) ISBN 0-316-81334-6
 * The Korean War (Michael Joseph, 1987) ISBN 0-7181-2068-X, (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 0-671-52823-8
 * Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (Macmillan, 2004) ISBN 0-333-90836-8
 * Warriors: Exceptional Tales from the Battlefield (HarperPress [UK], 2005) ISBN 978-0-00-719756-9
 * Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944–45 (HarperPress [UK], October 2007) ISBN 0-00-721982-2 (re-titled Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 for US release Knopf ISBN 978-0-307-26351-3)
 * Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45 (London, HarperPress, 2009) ISBN 978-0-00-726367-7 (re-titled Winston's War: Churchill, 1940–1945 for US release by Knopf, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-26839-6)
 * All Hell Let Loose: The World At War 1939–1945 (London, HarperPress, 29 September 2011) ISBN 978-0-00-733809-2 (re-titled Inferno: The World At War, 1939–1945 for US release by Knopf, 1 November 2011, ISBN 978-0-307-27359-8. 729 pp)
 * Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 (London, Knopf Press, 24 September 2013) ISBN 978-0307597052, 640 pp.
 * The Secret War: Spies, Codes And Guerrillas 1939–45 (London: William Collins, 2015) ISBN 9780007503742
 * Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945–1975 (William Collins, 2018) ISBN 978-0062405678
 * Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 (William Collins, 2019) ISBN 9780008280529
 * Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta 1942 (William Collins, 2021) ISBN 978-0008364946
 * Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (William Collins, 2022) ISBN 978-0008364991
 * Operation Biting: The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar (William Collins, 2024) ISBN 978-0008642167

Countryside writing

 * Outside Days (Michael Joseph, 1989) ISBN 0-7181-3330-7
 * Scattered Shots (Macmillan, 1999) ISBN 0-333-77103-6
 * Country Fair (HarperCollins, October 2005) ISBN 0-00-719886-8. 288 pp

Anthology

 * The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1985) ISBN 0-19-214107-4
 * Soldiers: Great Stories of War and Peace (William Collins, 2021) ISBN 978-0008454227

Filmography

 * Wellington Bomber, 2010 BBC documentary
 * The Necessary War, 2014 BBC documentary on the Centennial of the beginning of the First World War.

title: Max Hastings


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User:Charles Matthews/Cold War

Ignazio Silone – Arthur Koestler – John Strachey – Richard Lowenthal – Manes Sperber – Milovan Djilas - Andras Hegedus -  Leo Labedz – Adam Ulam – Zbigniew Brzezinski – Francois Bondy – Richard Pipes – Dean Rusk -  Sidney Hook – Hugh Trevor-Roper – Karl Popper – Otto von Habsburg – Elie Kedourie – Bernard Levin – Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Lord Chalfont  - George Will -  Joseph Kraft – Robert Novak – Rowland Evans, Jr. – Vladimir Bukovsky – Patrick Buchanan – Kenneth Minogue – David Gress

Congress for Cultural Freedom

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

title: User:Charles Matthews/Cold War


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Gaius Julius Marcus

Gaius Iulius Marcus is the name of one of the early governors of Britannia Inferior, c. 213 -214.

His name is recorded on a milestone on the Military Way at Hadrian's Wall although it has been partially erased, suggesting that he had brought disfavour on himself sometime later. He also undertook building work at the forts of Old Carlisle and Netherby.

Iulius Marcus' troops sided with Caracalla in the dispute over the throne that followed the death of Septimius Severus and erected their own dedications to their chosen candidate. The damnatio memoriae that their governor suffered may have been connected with this.

title: Gaius Julius Marcus


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User:DemonKnight713

I am a student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, majoring in Anthropology and Spanish, and whatever else I decide to add (or subtract) later.

title: User:DemonKnight713


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Osbert Sitwell

Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet CH CBE (6 December 1892 – 4 May 1969) was an English writer. His elder sister was Edith Sitwell and his younger brother was Sacheverell Sitwell. Like them, he devoted his life to art and literature.

Early life

Sitwell was born on 6 December 1892 at 3 Arlington Street, St James's, London. His parents were Sir George Reresby Sitwell, fourth baronet, genealogist and antiquarian, and Lady Ida Emily Augusta (née Denison). He grew up in the family seat at Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, and at family mansions in the region of Scarborough, and went to Ludgrove School, then Eton College from 1906 to 1909. For many years his entry in Who's Who contained the phrase "Educ[ated]: during the holidays from Eton."

In 1911 he joined the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry but, not cut out to be a cavalry officer, transferred to the Grenadier Guards at the Tower of London from where, in his off-duty time, he could frequent theatres and art galleries.

Army
Late in 1914 Sitwell's civilised life was exchanged for the trenches of France near Ypres in Belgium. It was here that he wrote his first poetry, describing it as "Some instinct, and a combination of feelings not hitherto experienced united to drive me to paper". "Babel" was published in The Times on 11 May 1916. In the same year, he began literary collaborations and anthologies with his brother and sister, the trio being usually referred to simply as the Sitwells.

Political and other activity
He acted as best man at the wedding of Alexander, 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke, son of Prince Henry of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, on 19 July 1917 at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, London.

In 1918 Sitwell left the Army with the rank of Captain, and contested the 1918 general election as the Liberal Party candidate for Scarborough and Whitby, finishing second.

Later he moved towards the political right, though politics were very seldom explicit in his writings. In Who's Who he ultimately declared of his political views: "Advocates compulsory Freedom everywhere, the suppression of Public Opinion in the interest of Free Speech, and the rationing of brains without which innovation there can be no true democracy."

Sitwell campaigned for the preservation of Georgian buildings and was responsible for saving Sutton Scarsdale Hall, now owned by English Heritage. He was an early and active member of the Georgian Group.

He also had an interest in the paranormal and joined the Ghost Club, which at the time was being relaunched as a dinner society dedicated to discussing paranormal occurrences and topics.

Writing career
Sitwell devoted himself to poetry, art criticism and controversial journalism. Together with his brother, he sponsored a controversial exhibition of works by Matisse, Utrillo, Picasso and Modigliani. The composer William Walton also greatly benefited from his largesse (though the two men afterwards fell out) and Walton's cantata Belshazzar's Feast was written to Sitwell's libretto. He published three books of poems: Argonaut and Juggernaut (1919); At the House of Mrs Kinfoot (1921); and Out Of The Flame (1923).

Works
Sitwell's first work of fiction, Triple Fugue, was published in 1924, and visits to Italy and Germany produced Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (1925). His first novel, Before the Bombardment (1926), set in an out-of-season hotel, was well reviewed – Ralph Straus writing for Bystander magazine called it 'a nearly flawless piece of satirical writing', and Beverley Nichols praised 'the richness of its beauty and wit'. His subsequent novel The Man Who Lost Himself (1929) did not receive the same critical acclaim. However, for Osbert Sitwell it was an attempt to take further the techniques that he had experimented with in his début, and he ventured to explain this in one challenging sentence in his Preface when he said: "Convinced that movement is not in itself enough, that no particular action or sequence of actions is in itself of sufficient concern to dare lay claim to the intelligent attention of the reader, that adventures of the mind and soul are more interesting, because more mysterious, than those of the body, and yet that, on the other hand, the essence does not reside to any much greater degree in the tangle of reason, unreason, and previous history, in which each action, event and thought is founded, but is to be discovered, rather, in that balance, so difficult to achieve, which lies between them, he has attempted to write a book which might best be described as a Novel of Reasoned Action". Re-edited over three quarters of a century after its initial publication, The Man Who Lost Himself has found new popularity as an idiosyncratic mystery novel.

Sitwell went on to write several further novels, including Miracle on Sinai (1934) and Those Were the Days (1937) neither of which received the same glowing reviews as his first. A collection of short stories Open the Door (1940), his fifth novel A Place of One's Own (1940), his Selected Poems (1943) and a book of essays Sing High, Sing Low (1944) were reasonably well received. His "The Four Continents" (1951) is a book of travel, reminiscence and observation.

Rat Week
Sitwell was a close friend of the Duke and Duchess of York, future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. In December 1936, when the abdication of King Edward VIII was announced, he wrote a poem, Rat Week, attacking principally the former king and Wallis Simpson but also those friends of Edward who deserted him when his alliance with Simpson became common knowledge in England. Because of its libellous content it was not published but Sitwell ensured that it was circulated privately. In February 1937, a version appeared in Cavalcade, which Sitwell described as a "paper, which confounded liveliness with mischief". The Cavalcade version omitted the "offensive" references to Edward and Wallis. This resulted in the poem's gaining an unwarranted reputation as being sympathetic to the Windsors over the way some of their friends had treated them. Cavalcade also missed out a verse in which a number of the "rats" were named explicitly, as to publish this would have been libellous.

Sitwell sued Cavalcade for breach of copyright. He obtained an interim injunction preventing further publication in Cavalcade, which ensured further surreptitious circulation of the poem. When the full case came to court, Cavalcade tried to get Sitwell to produce the missing verse. Sitwell resisted on the grounds that he could not be forced to make a criminally libellous statement. The case ended up in the Appeal Court, where Sitwell won and obtained damages and costs.

Sitwell knew that, because of the libel issue, the poem could not be published in his lifetime; he decided that publication should wait even longer than that to avoid "pain to those still living". The poem was first published posthumously in 1986, the year the Duchess of Windsor (as Wallis had become) died, in a book entitled Rat Week: An Essay on the Abdication. Sitwell then explained the background to the poem in some detail because he recognised that the long delay in publication would result in many readers being unfamiliar with the characters. The book also contains a foreword by John Pearson, explaining some of the background to the publication of the book.

Autobiography
In 1943 he started an autobiography that ran to four volumes: Left Hand, Right Hand! (1943), The Scarlet Tree (1946), Great Morning (1947) and Laughter in the Next Room (1949). The first volume includes a chapter on "The Sargent Group" a humorous account of John Singer Sargent's group portrait of the Sitwells (Sitwell family), and the adjustments that Sargent made to Edith's and her father's noses.

Writing in The Adelphi, George Orwell declared that, "although the range they cover is narrow, [they] must be among the best autobiographies of our time." Sitwell's autobiography was followed by a collection of essays about various people he had known, Noble Essences: A Book of Characters (1950), and a postscript, Tales my Father Taught Me (1962).

The sometimes acidic diarist James Agate commented on Sitwell after a drinking session on 3 June 1932, in Ego, volume 1, "There is something self-satisfied and having-to-do-with-the-Bourbons about him which is annoying, though there is also something of the crowned-head consciousness which is disarming."

In Who's Who, he summed up his career: "For the past 30 years has conducted, in conjunction with his brother and sister, a series of skirmishes and hand-to-hand battles against the Philistine. Though outnumbered, has occasionally succeeded in denting the line, though not without damage to himself."

Baronetcy and honours
After Sitwell's father died, in 1943, Osbert succeeded to the baronetcy.

Sitwell was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1956 and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1958.

Personal life
In the mid-1920s he met David Stuart Horner (1900 – 1983) who was his lover and companion for most of his life.

Death

Sitwell suffered from Parkinson's disease from the 1950s; by the mid-1960s his condition had become so severe that he had to abandon writing. He spent his last years in Italy, at the Castle of Montegufoni, in Montespertoli near Florence, which his father had bought derelict and restored as his personal residence; he died there on 4 May 1969.

The castle was left to his nephew, Reresby; his money was left to his brother Sacheverell. Sitwell was cremated and his ashes buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in Florence, together with a copy of his first novel, Before the Bombardment.

Select bibliography

 * Triple Fugue (stories) (1924)
 * Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (essays) (1925)
 * Before the Bombardment (novel) (1926)
 * The Man Who Lost Himself (novel) (1929)
 * Dumb-Animal and Other Stories (1930)
 * Collected Poems and Satires (1931)
 * Winters of Content, More Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (1932)
 * Dickens (1932)
 * Miracles on Sinaï (novel) (1934)
 * Penny Foolish: A Book of Tirades and Panegyrics (1935)
 * Those Were the Days (novel) (1937)
 * Escape With Me - An Oriental Sketch-book (travels, China) (1939)
 * A Place of One's Own (novel) (1940)
 * Selected Poems (1943)
 * Left Hand! Right Hand! (autobiography, vol. 1) (1944)
 * Sing High, Sing Low (essays) (1944)
 * The Scarlet Tree (autobiography, vol. 2) (1946)
 * Great Morning (autobiography, vol. 3) (1947)
 * Laughter in the Next Room (autobiography, vol. 4) (1948)
 * Four Songs of the Italian Earth (1948)
 * The Death of a God and Other Stories (1949)
 * Noble Essences (autobiography, vol. 5) (1950)
 * Wrack at Tidesend (poetry) (1954)
 * Tales My Father Taught Me (1962) (adapted for radio in 1990)
 * Pound Wise (final complete work) (1963)
 * Rat Week: An Essay on the Abdication (posthumously published) (1986)

title: Osbert Sitwell


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Type 12 frigate

Type 12 frigate refers to several ship classes, most commonly the three ship classes of the Royal Navy designed during the 1950s and constructed during the 1960s.
 * The first Type 12 frigates, designed as convoy escorts, were later named the Whitby-class frigate. Six operated in the Royal Navy, with one loaned to the Royal New Zealand Navy, and two built for the Indian Navy.
 * The design of the Type 12 Modified (Type 12M) or Rothesay-class frigate was optimised towards anti-submarine warfare and fleet escort duties, and fitted with the Sea Cat missile system. Nine were built for the Royal Navy, two for the Royal New Zealand Navy, and three (as the 'President class') for the South African Navy.
 * The third class, designed as an all-purpose warship, was known as the Type 12 Improved (Type 12I) or the Leander-class frigate. The class was made up of three 'batches'; the main differences between each batch being variations in propulsion machinery and weapons outfit. 26 were built for the Royal Navy, some of which later saw service in the navies of Chile, Ecuador, New Zealand, and Pakistan.

The Type 12 designation is sometimes used to refer to warship classes based on the Type 12 design, but constructed or operated by other naval forces. Some of these are still in service as of 2009:
 * The Condell-class frigates of the Chilean Navy. Based on the Leander class, this class consisted of four ships, two purpose-built, and two former Royal Navy Leanders.
 * The River-class destroyer escorts of the Royal Australian Navy. Six were constructed: two to the Rothesay design, two to the same design but modified to carry a variable-depth sonar and an Ikara missile system (which was retrofitted to the first two), and two to an Australian-designed Leander variant.
 * The Nilgiri-class frigates of the Indian Navy. Six were constructed to an updated design based on the Leanders.
 * The Godavari-class frigate and Brahmaputra-class frigates of the Indian Navy. An enlarged Nilgiri design was used as the basis for six ships (three of each class), with the weapons outfit the main difference between them.
 * The Van Speijk-class frigates of the Royal Netherlands Navy. Based on the Leander design but with Dutch radars, six ships were built. All six were later transferred to the Indonesian Navy and become Ahmad Yani-class frigate. All of them are renamed with Indonesian National Heroes.

title: Type 12 frigate


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Mahasweta Devi

Mahasweta Devi (14 January 1926 – 28 July 2016) was an Indian writer in Bengali and an activist. Her notable literary works include Hajar Churashir Maa, Rudali, and Aranyer Adhikar. She was a leftist who worked for the rights and empowerment of the tribal people (Lodha and Shabar) of West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. She was honoured with various literary awards such as the Sahitya Akademi Award (in Bengali), Jnanpith Award and Ramon Magsaysay Award along with India's civilian awards Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan.

Early life and education
Mahasweta Devi was born in a Brahmin family on 14 January 1926 in Dacca, British India (now Dhaka, Bangladesh). Her father, Manish Ghatak, was a poet and novelist of the Kallol movement, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa (যুবনাশ্ব). Ghatak's brother was filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak. Devi's mother, Dharitri Devi, was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers include sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury.

Devi's first schooling was in Dhaka, Eden Montessori School (1930). After that, she moved to West Bengal (now in India). Then she studied in Midnapore Mission Girls High School (1935). After that she was admitted to Santiniketan (1936 to 1938). After that, she studied at Beltala Girls' School (1939-1941) where she finished her matriculation. Then in 1944 she got I.A. from Asutosh College. She attended Rabindranath Tagore-founded Visva-Bharati University and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University.

Literary works
Devi wrote over 100 novels and over 20 collections of short stories primarily written in Bengali but often translated to other languages. Her first novel, titled Jhansir Rani, based on a biography of the Rani of Jhansi was published in 1956. She had toured the Jhansi region to record information and folk songs from the local people for the novel.

Mahasweta Devi's specialisation lay in the studies of Adivasi, Dalit and Marginalized citizens with a focus on their women. They were associated as protestor in the face of British colonialism, the Mahajanas and upper class corruption and injustice. She lived in the Adivasi villages in West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh years after years, befriending them and learning from them. She has embodied their struggles and sacrifices in her words and characters. She had claimed that her stories aren't her creation, they are the stories of the people of her country. Such an example is her work "Chotti Mundi Ebong Tar Tir".

In 1964, she began teaching at Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College (an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta system). In those days Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College was an institution for working-class women students. During that period she also worked—as a journalist and as a creative writer. She studied the Lodhas and Shabars, the tribal communities of West Bengal, women and dalits. In her elaborate Bengali fiction, she often depicted the brutal oppression on the tribal people and untouchables by the powerful authoritarian upper-caste landlords, money-lenders, and venal government officials. She wrote of the source of her inspiration: "I have always believed that the real history is made by ordinary people. I constantly come across the reappearance, in various forms, of folklore, ballads, myths and legends, carried by ordinary people across generations. ... The reason and inspiration for my writing are those people who are exploited and used, and yet do not accept defeat. For me, the endless source of ingredients for writing is in these amazingly noble, suffering human beings. Why should I look for my raw material elsewhere, once I have started knowing them? Sometimes it seems to me that my writing is really their doing." Postcolonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has translated Devi's short stories into English and published three books Imaginary Maps (1995, Routledge), Old Woman (1997, Seagull), The Breast Stories (1997, Seagull).

Social activity
Mahasweta Devi raised her voice several times against the discrimination suffered by tribal people in India. Devi's 1977 novel Aranyer Adhikar (Right to the Forest) was about the life of Birsa Munda. And in June 2016, consequent to Devi's activism, the Jharkhand State Government finally saw to the removal of the manacles from the figure of Munda, which had been part of the commemorative sculpture of the notable young tribal leader due to its having been based on a photograph dating from the era of British rule.

Devi spearheaded the movement against the industrial policy of the earlier Communist Party of India (Marxist) government of West Bengal. Specifically, she stridently criticized confiscation from farmers of large tracts of fertile agricultural land by the government which then ceded it to industrial houses at throwaway prices. She supported the candidature of Mamata Banarjee in the 2011 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election which resulted in the end of the 34-year long rule of CPI(M). She had connected the policy to the commercialization of Santiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore, where she spent her formative years. Her lead in the Nandigram agitation resulted in a number of intellectuals, artists, writers and theatre workers joining in protest of the controversial policy and particularly its implementation in Singur and Nandigram.

She is known to have helped the noted writer Manoranjan Bypari to come into prominence as his initial writings were published in her journal and as prompted by her.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006, when India was the first country to be the Fair's second time guest nation, she made an impassioned inaugural speech wherein she moved the audience to tears with her lines taken from the famous film song "Mera Joota Hai Japani" by Raj Kapoor. "This is truly the age where the Joota (shoe) is Japani (Japanese), Patloon (pants) is Englistani (British), the Topi (hat) is Roosi (Russian), But the Dil... Dil (heart) is always Hindustani (Indian)... My country, Torn, Tattered, Proud, Beautiful, Hot, Humid, Cold, Sandy, Shining India. My country."

In 1997, president Shankar Dayal Sharma commuted two death sentences after Devi led a petition campaign. In 2012, she was one of more than 215 signatories, along with Nandita Das, Aamir Bashir, and Anusha Rizvi, to a petition delivered to president Pranab Mukherjee that opposed the death penalty after the conviction of Ajmal Kasab following the 2008 Mumbai attacks and instead favored life imprisonment. The letter stated, "In the land of Buddha, Mahavira and Gandhiji, let it not be said there is no place in our hearts for mercy."

Personal life
On 27 February 1947, she married renowned playwright Bijon Bhattacharya, who was one of the founding fathers of the Indian People's Theatre Association movement. In 1948, she gave birth to Nabarun Bhattacharya, who became a novelist and political critic. She worked in a post office but was fired for her communist leaning. She went on to do various jobs, such as selling soaps and writing letters in English for illiterate people. In 1962, she married author Asit Gupta after divorcing Bhattacharya. In 1976, the relationship with Gupta ended.

Death
On 23 July 2016, Devi suffered a major heart attack and was admitted to Belle Vue Clinic, Kolkata. Devi died of multiple organ failure on 28 July 2016, aged 90. She had suffered from diabetes, sepsis and urinary infection.

On her death, Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal tweeted "India has lost a great writer. Bengal has lost a glorious mother. I have lost a personal guide. Mahasweta Di rest in peace." Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted "Mahashweta Devi wonderfully illustrated the might of the pen. A voice of compassion, equality & justice, she leaves us deeply saddened. RIP."

Awards and recognition

 * 1979: Sahitya Akademi Award (Bengali): – Aranyer Adhikar (novel)
 * 1986: Padma Shri for Social Work
 * 1996: Jnanpith Award – the highest literary award from the Bharatiya Jnanpith
 * 1997: Ramon Magsaysay Award – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts for "compassionate crusade through art and activism to claim for tribal peoples a just and honorable place in India's national life."
 * 2003: Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
 * 2006: Padma Vibhushan – the second highest civilian award from the Government of India
 * 2007: SAARC Literary Award
 * 2009: Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize
 * 2010: Yashwantrao Chavan National Award
 * 2011: Banga Bibhushan – the highest civilian award from the Government of West Bengal
 * 2012: Nominated for Nobel Prize for Literature
 * 2014 : Mamoni Raisom Goswami National Award for Literature constituted by Asam Sahitya Sabha and sponsored by Numaligarh Refinery Ltd., Assam
 * On 14 January 2018, Google honored Mahasweta Devi on her 92nd birth anniversary, celebrating her work by creating a doodle on her.

Major works
Devi's major works include:
 * Jhansi Rani (1956, biography)
 * The Queen of Jhansi, by Mahasweta Devi (translated by Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta). This book is a reconstruction of the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai from extensive research of both historical documents (collected mostly by G. C. Tambe, grandson of the Queen) and folk tales, poetry and oral tradition; the original in Bengali was published in 1956; the English translation by Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2000, ISBN 8170461758
 * Mastar Saab also known as Massaheb (The School Teacher), which is based on Bihar's communist led armed revolution for land reforms. This novel is said to be based on life of naxal leader Jagdish Mahto, who became a well known figure in Bhojpur for his contribution to armed struggle of the poor against the landlords.
 * Hajar Churashir Maa (1974, novel, Mother of 1084)
 * Aranyer Adhikar (1979, novel Right to the Forest)
 * Agnigarbha (1978, short stories collection)
 * Murti (1979, short stories collection)
 * Neerete Megh (1979, short stories collection)
 * Stanyadayani (1980, short stories collection)
 * Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Tir (1980, short stories collection)

Film adaptations

 * Sunghursh (1968), Hindi film based on short story Layli Asmaner Ayna
 * Rudaali (1993)
 * Bayen (Hindi) (1993) a film based on Short story Directed by Gul Bahar singh
 * Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (1998)
 * Maati Maay (2006), Marathi film based on short story Baayen
 * Gangor (2010), Italian film based on short story Choli Ke Peeche
 * Ullas (Bengali film based on three short stories— Daur, Mahadu Ekti Rupkatha and Anna Aranya) directed by Ishwar Chakraborty, released in 2012.

In popular culture
Mahananda, a Bengali film based on her life and works, directed by acclaimed director Arindam Sil was released in 2022. Gargi Roychowdhury essayed the titular role in the film.

title: Mahasweta Devi


text:
Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge

The Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge is part of the United States system of national wildlife refuges. It is located in Alfalfa County in northern Oklahoma, north of Jet (pop. 230), along Great Salt Plains Lake, which is formed by a dam on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River.

The refuge was established March 26, 1930, by executive order of President Herbert Hoover, and contains 32080 acre of protected land as habitat to about 312 species of birds and 30 species of mammals. It was designated a national natural landmark in June 1983.

Refuge description
The Salt Plains were a favorite hunting ground for American Indians. Bison and other game came to the area to eat the salt and the heavily wooded and well-watered area along the Salt Fork River was like an oasis in the surrounding grassland of the Great Plains. Salt Plains refuge is divided into almost equal areas of nonvegetated salt flat, open water, and vegetated land. Marshes, woods, grasslands, and croplands dot the refuge. Management tools used to enhance the habitat for wildlife include farming, grazing, prescribed burns, construction of ponds, and wetland draining and flooding.

The refuge was created to be a resting and breeding ground for migratory waterfowl especially during fall and spring. The entire refuge is designated as critical habitat for the endangered whooping crane, which is mostly seen during fall migration. In addition, the refuge is home to endangered least terns, threatened snowy plovers, threatened bald eagles, and peregrine falcons. Large populations of American white pelicans migrate through between August and September, staying on the Great Salt Plains Reservoir. Great Salt Plains is one of the most important habitats for shorebirds in the Western Hemisphere.

Ralstin Island
Ralstin Island (closed to the public) is an important rookery in the Great Salt Plains Lake. The island was originally 25 acre, but has eroded to about 6 acre. It hosts more than 30,000 birds during breeding season. Over 30 species nest in the colony, including the white-faced ibis, great blue herons, and most notably, the tricolored heron.

Osage control of Great Salt Plains
According to Historian Louis F. Burns, the Osage Indians used the salt found in the Great Salt Plains to bleach deer-skins and the Great Salt Plains gave the Osages a surplus of salt to trade with other tribes. According to Burns, the Osage were firmly in control of the Great Salt Plains by 1760 and because of a favorable combination of geographical factors, the Osages became the dominant force in mid—America. "In a one hundred twenty-five year period, 1678-1803, the Osages performed a feat no other American Indians duplicated," writes Burns. "They stopped the west-ward expansion of the Euro-American peoples and simultaneously tripled the size of their own domain."

Sibley Expedition
George Champlin Sibley was appointed head trader at the Indian Factory at Fort Osage, Missouri, when it opened in 1808. While at Fort Osage, Sibley quickly engaged in creating relationships with the neighboring Osage tribes. In May 1811 Sibley's expedition left Fort Osage to examine the hunting grounds of the Osage. In 1811 his expedition was said to be the first white men to visit the plains. Sibley's expedition, leaving from Fort Osage, Missouri was guided by an Osage Indian named Sans Orielle. Sibley named the area the Grand Saline. Sibley cut short his expedition when informed by reports that bands of Comanche were nearby. Sibley returned to Fort Osage on July 11, 1811 and reported that the salt deposits would eventually prove commercially profitable.

Native American usage
The Great Salt Plains have been the scene of many Indian Councils, both of war and peace. Because animals flocked to the area for the salt, the Great Salt Plains made for excellent hunting and it became obvious that any tribe that controlled the Salt Plains would have to contend with intrusions by other tribes. Therefore the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, provided the Cherokee Nation with ownership of the Cherokee Outlet but declared that the saline areas were to be accessible to use by other tribes. In drafting the treaty the United States Government withheld the Salt Plains area with the provision that, "The right is reserved to the United States to allow other tribes of red men to get salt on the Great Salt Plains in common with the Cherokee Tribe."

Chemical weapons discovery
In 2007, a Boy Scout digging for crystals uncovered a collection of 7.5-inch vials containing chemical agents such as mustard gas, lewisite, chloropicrin, and phosgene. The vials were part of World War II-era military chemical agent identification sets. The burial of vials was standard procedure for removing them from service at that time. No record of a disposal site was reported at the salt plains. Crystal digging was suspended from April 2007 until April 2009, while the risk of allowing digging again was evaluated; 171 vials and at least a dozen incendiary devices were removed from the location. The salt plains were also used as a bombing and strafing range during World War II. Remnants of this use are still left on the plains.

Recreation
Driving tour: The Harold F. Miller Auto Tour begins near the nature center. It is 2.5 mi long and ends at Highway 11. The dirt road passes by ponds and fields where crops for wildlife are cultivated. White-tailed deer and other wildlife are common. A trail of 0.25 mi leads to Casey Marsh Tower, where waterfowl are abundant and bald eagles can be seen in fall and winter.

Hiking: The Sandpiper Trail begins near the nature center and refuge office and leads 0.35 mi to the edge of the salt flats and a birding observation platform. The Eagle Roost Nature Trail is a 1.25 mi loop also beginning near the nature center. The trail goes through wooded and open areas, beneath towering cottonwood trees, past marshes and ponds, and to a shore and waterfowl watching area on Sand Creek Bay.

Selenite crystals: A designated area of the 11000 acre of salt flats at the refuge has gypsum concentrations high enough to grow selenite, a crystalline form of gypsum. The selenite crystals found there have an hourglass-shaped sand inclusion that is not known to occur in selenite crystals found elsewhere in the world. Digging for crystals is allowed, but only from April 1 through October 15 to protect this vital Whooping Crane habitat.

Hunting: About 1250 acre of the refuge north of Highway 11 are open for hunting. State laws apply, except deer may be hunted by permit only. Hunting is permitted for pheasant, northern bobwhite quail, mourning dove, ducks, geese, and sandhill cranes.

Fishing: According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the extreme drought of 2011 and 2012 has almost ended fishing as a recreational activity at the refuge. These conditions caused very large fish kills in the reservoir and restocking has been suspended. Fishing downstream of the dam is still permitted, but is greatly affected by local precipitation and the flow of the Great Salt River.

Information that follows indicate the practices in force prior to the 2011 drought, and may no longer apply: Fishing is permitted from April 1 to October 15 on most of the refuge. Closed areas are marked by buoys or signs. Fishing in Bonham Pond is permitted only for children under 14 and mobility-handicapped persons and is catch-and-release. Salt Plains Lake is noted for large channel and other catfish. Other game fish include striped bass, largemouth bass, crappie, white bass, panfish, and walleye. State laws apply for bag limits and seasons, and the use of boats in the river and creeks is prohibited.

Informational videos
Official Great Salt Plains videos have been created and are hosted on YouTube. They are part of a short series, which includes:
 * Let's Go Crystal Digging
 * Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge
 * Let's Explore a Birding Paradise
 * Parks, Trails and Memorials of Alfalfa County
 * Byron State Fish Hatchery
 * Oklahoma Great Salt Plains State Park

title: Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge


text:
Talk:Placebo effect (disambiguation)

I'm somewhat concerned...
I'm somewhat concerned this article doesn't conform to NPOV. The section titled "does the placebo effect exist" comes down pretty hard against the existence of the effect, seemingly on the basis of th authors. Does anyone else-- and especially User:Cacycle, who originally wrote that section-- have comments about this? I'm inclined to temper the conclusions of the discussion, but also shade it back somewhat toward the earlier scientific consensus. Tobacman 19:34, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Actually I haven't read those two articles and the published replies to them, but I will do that soon. Both publications are metastudies that merely review previously published studies. To me it looks like there was no real scientific consensus before based on facts and data. It was more an unsupported and unquestioned belief into this effect. Those metastudies seem to be the first attempts to verify the effect.
 * If there are serious reasons to question the importance of the placebo effect then this must be adequately reflected in the article. Somehow 'softening' the well substantiated arguments of this party would clearly be against the NPOV. Moreove, in its current revision this sceptical standpoint is clearly separated from several other sections that assume the existence of the placebo effect. There is also no biased final conclusion.

 * Cacycle 21:59, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Good!-- It sounds like we agree on the criteria for what should be included and why. Now we both need to do our homework...
 * But in the past there certainly has been a scientific consensus about the existence of the placebo effect, cf the fda, the nih, the skepdic, a book by a Harvard prof, and the fact that placebo controls are generally still required in clinical drug trials. Interestingly, Anne Harrington indicates in her book that there was a long period of denial about the placebo effect before people began to control for it.
 * Three last comments:
 * Some recent research (and cites therein) identifies neurological mechanisms that could underlie the placebo effect.
 * One way that perhaps ALL of these researchers (ie, Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche, and the others cited in the article) could be right, is if the size of the placebo effect has fallen over time. That would also be consistent with the sensible conjecture that patients now expect more treatment and medication than they used to. (I'll look for a citation for this hypothesis, since this speculation is obviously inappropriate for the article.)
 * Last, it seems plausible that there are some circumstances in which large placebo effects can reliably be generated and other circumstances where they can't; and there are some methodologies that are useful for measuring placebo effects and others that are deeply confounded. In the end, presumably a really good article will discuss size of placebo effect as a function of these characteristics, rather than (as we've both been doing) just asking whether or not the effect exists. Tobacman 09:37, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * One possible improvement would be to move up the sections on 'Placebo and Pain' and 'Placebo and Depression' so that they come before 'Does the placebo effect exist?'. This would emphasise the relative importance of the two points of view within the relevant scientific community. The section questioning the orthodoxy would thus remain, but would not have undue importance.  --John G Walker 14:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Sounds like a good idea. --JWSchmidt 15:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I've changed the order. Does this look more NPOV now? --John G Walker 09:45, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

More content
Please take a look at this new content.

Living in Denmark, I have followed this research from when it was in progress. Very interesting! It explains a lot of things that the old views didn't do very well. To maintain a NPOV, I have attempted to limit my comments to explanations of that research. -- Fyslee 22:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I am not a doctor
I am not a doctor, but I think it should be clear that for some illnesses the placebo effect can not possible be effective. The organism can only do so much to heal itself. There must be some problems that can't be fixed, no matter what signals the brain sends out. Paranoid 10:30, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree that this article is a bit POV. My impression (true or not) is that after most of the article was written, someone who believe the placebo effect does not exist came by and added the "does the placebo effect exist" section. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having the info in the article, but that section should also refer to studies that support the existance of the placebo effect (for example: ). As it is now, the article feels like a debate rather than an encyclopeic article. --Apoc2400 19:23, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

 * As someone who have experienced the healing effects of self-suggestion and meditation (immideate healing of minor physical diseases, such as sore throat and cardiac symptoms), there can be no doubt that the so-callled placebo effect indeed exists, but that the strenght of the effect varies greatly between individuals, wherein those with the most pronounced efficiency (and thus important in medical treatment) usually comprise a definite minority (such as those with IQ's above 120, or below 60, etc.). I think thus it will be impossible to draw clear conclusions from the trials referenced in the article, as most of the casual study participants would statistically have somewhat under-developed psychic healing abilities. Sort of conducting a casual population intelligence trial and expecting "significant" percentage of IQ's above 140, for instance. -- User:152.94.19.164 13:17, 26 January 2006

NPOV
As you can see, I made a bunch of edits (one I accidentally marked as minor, sorry). This is an initial shot at NPOVing the article without getting into a massive edit war. The most basic problems are that: a) the placebo effect is NOT controversial, it's widely accepted in the scientific community and b) the "placebo effect is fake" view is represented even more than the prevailing scientific view (that 99% of scientists support). That's a clear violation of NPOV.

NPOV can preserve old errors

 * If the conclusions of this large study of the literature is correct (and there is nothing to indicate otherwise), then it should be better represented. Otherwise a strict adherence to the NPOV will be a biased support for old misunderstandings, IOW it won't be neutral at all, but simply conservative resistance to change, and impediment to progress.

 * If correct, it should, with time, become the predominant viewpoint, with the old viewpoint remaining in its invaluable role as a tool for quackery. Quacks will not relinquish the old viewpoint, for obvious reasons. -- Fyslee 22:45, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

continued...
At some point later I may expand the section supporting the placebo effect, because I know there have been NUMEROUS studies on it on many scales in many countries. The attribution of it mostly to a single 1955 study is just a *wee bit* misleading.

I've looked at the abstract for the article in question, and I suppose it should be kept in to support the minority view, but I must say, it is very pseudo-scientific and its conclusions don't support its data at all.
 * side tangent--you may ignore*

Many large scale studies have shown improvements from the placebo groups. These are for disorders people have had for years, so it can't be explained away simply by saying that that they simply naturally healed or any such nonsense. The hawthorne effect also can't seem to explain away the nocebo effect, nor why such a large number of people in a large study would be eager to please researchers to the point that they'd lie.

Not just that, but biofeedback techniques have been shown to reduce severity many kinds of symptoms, including pain. Since biofeedback is entirely mind-controlled, it makes no sense to discount the phenomenon.

It seems to me it's just a few quacks who are trying to become famous that are trying studies like this.
 * end tangent*

Nathan J. Yoder 04:17, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

My first time using thie edit function, appoligies if I am making a mistake. I wanted to point out that the assertion that a placebo, or anything at all can result in "objectivly quantifiable analgesia" is incorrect. There is no objective measure of pain in existance. All a doctor can do is ask a patient about their pain, but he can never measure it directly as he can measure swelling or inflamation directly. One of the central problems regarding pain management is the fundamentaly subjective nature of pain. I susspect what was meant was merely that the patients reported less pain, which is subjective and therfore impossible to prove or disprove.

Major rewrite
Major rewrite I thought there were POV problems, although it was hard to exactly put my finger on it. I started a minor rewrite and it turned into a major one, with a lot of checking the PubMed database to make sure I was up to date. I found it very difficult to find a way that felt right to keep all the pro-placebo stuff at the top and all the anti-placebo stuff at the bottom, as was suggested here previously. I think I'm being up front and NPOV to say that many studies see a placebo effect, but few studies have studied the placebo effect, and then to lay out the pros and cons. (In fact, I am a medical researcher and I would never think of doing a study without some kind of control group.) For better housekeeping I incorporated the outside links into the article rather than a separate section at the end, and I pared down the References a bit as it seemed topheavy with placebo effect opponents. Thatcher131 03:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * "Major"....? No joke! Even if you are 100% right, and your rewrite were a 1000% improvement, it's still a bad idea to do such major rewrites, and it could be considered vandalism of other's work. You are undoing the work of many others who have used weeks, days, and hours to arrive at agreement on the existing article, often struggling over details of exact wording and shades of wording. Please show a little consideration for others next time (hopefully no "next time"). I see that you are doing this on other articles, and you're going to create a lot of hard feelings. You aren't the only one here, nor the only expert.

 * I'd suggest you undo your major rewrite immediately and start editing more carefully, a little bit at a time.

 * Instead use this page to discuss such major editing (and minor editing) before deleting the work of other editors. -- Fyslee 11:22, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I think the compare function is somewhat misleading and does not reflect that I did preserve nearly all of the concepts and thoughts expressed by others before me, if not their exact language. The article also had a NPOV tag for more than a year, and there were definitely still parts of the "anti" section that sounded like advocacy.  I was also having problems with the WP servers so I marked up the article in a word processor and loaded it in all at once (that's not an excuse but an explanation).  I will consider your recommendation but I would like to see other's comments first.  Thatcher131 12:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree about the "compare" function. It makes it very difficult to see precisely what's going on. This fact is sometimes used by unscrupulous (I am definitely not accusing you!) editors who wish to sneak significant (but small) changes "under the radar." They then claim that they have preserved everything, but a careful analysis reveals that they have changed significant words, or deleted viewpoints wish they find objectionable. To avoid such problems and suspicions, it is usually best to make edits gradually. Take a sentence or paragraph at a time, then wait for reactions before proceeding. Major edits should be discussed first here on the talk page.

 * I'm speaking from experience. When I started here I took the "edit boldly" policy quite literally. Not understanding the background for an article's creation, I unwittingly showed great disrespect for all the other editors who had sweat blood and tears in the creation of the article. Fortunately they usually simply reverted all of my edits and I had to proceed more carefully, sometimes arguing my position point by point. -- Fyslee 15:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't really appreciate the use of the term "vandalism." After thinking about it I have decided to revert the article and work on it more incrementally. Thatcher131 19:46, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I take my hat off to you! I do apologize for the use of the term, and I wasn't accusing you, just stating that "it could be considered"...... I am convinced that your major rewrite was done in good faith, and therefore the term vandalism certainly doesn't apply in this case. Your willingness to start over, and still contribute to this project, reinforces my opinion that you not only mean well, but can be a valuable contributor here. Thanks for your understanding. Good luck! -- Fyslee 20:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Starting over
I reverted to the last version before I posted my major rewrite. I will do a series of incremental changes and explain any time I change someone else's comments. I will watch this space and respond politely to polite comments.

In the "Placebo and pain section" changed the intro sentence; "best research" is a matter of opinion. Removed the redundant statement about schizophrenia. Removed the statement added by DanielCD about needing to be able to control the body in order to control the mind as it seemed more like a personal conclusion/POV than an encyclopedia-style summary of the field. Thatcher131 19:59, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, its 20:25 on Sunday and I added everything I thought was important and cleaned up the links. The only thing I have left to do is tackle the Hróbjartsson & Götzsche section. I will wait at least a day and really think about it. (Check my edits one at a time because the compare function makes it look like I took out other people's writing when I just moved it a bit.) Thatcher131 20:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I can't put my finger exactly on why the H&G "no placebo" section seems wrong, maybe its not really an NPOV problem but it isn't really written like an encyclopedia. I will try a test rewrite and post it here first for consideration. Thatcher131 20:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I didn't consider the formerly implied "either/or" situation as being viable. That was implied in the former heading - "Does the placebo effect exist?" - and was basically a straw man argument. I changed it to the current "Objective or subjective effects?"

 * The placebo effect exists, but its nature (objective or subjective) has been the subject of much confusion, with quacks claiming its physiological healing effects to be so strong as to justify its exploitation in the use of worthless and dangerous "remedies."

 * It's not so much that H&G's conclusions are at all new - scientists have been working with this assumption all along - but that they base their conclusions on a thorough analysis of the available literature, exposing the weak basis for many if not most of the claims made for placebo's "powerful"(!) effects. Those effects must be reckoned with, but being primarily subjective, should not be exploited in clinical practice, but be fully understood and accounted for in research settings.

 * You removed your important thoughts, which were good observations:

 * "....rather, let me say that I think the placebo effect seen in clinical studies is a combination of many factors, including regression to the mean, poor study design, the natural history of the disease, the attention/reward phenomenon identified by H&G, and (sometimes but not always) a real placebo effect."

 * You're quite right, and that is a problem, since any effect that can be explained by any other name shouldn't be classified as part of the placebo effect: regression to the mean is just that; poor study design is just that; natural history of disease is just that; etc.

 * When all those factors have been ruled out, what's left is the true placebo effect. In practice this is nearly impossible to achieve, but a serious attempt should be made to reach this ideal. Such efforts will be rewarded with more reliably consistent - and consistently reliable - results. -- Fyslee 21:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I looked over the Hróbjartsson & Götzsche/subjective effect section, and I think there are basically two problems that relate to POV. First, the section gave the conclusion before the results. So I wrote it to describe clearly (I hope) what they did, and what they found (no objective effects, only subjective effects).

The second problem was that there was a lot of material that related to the fact that there was a controversy without actually saying there is a controversy. Especially in the section "Implications" where the text was really trying to draw conclusions and make statements about the use of placebos. What I intend to do is solve this problem by adding more factual information about the controversy. You can describe a controvsery from a NPOV if you fairly report facts from both sides. I have read the original articles and the followups and I think I can explain the issue fairly. Thatcher131 16:59, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I will finish up placebo in medicine in the next 12 hours, with references. Thatcher131 17:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I am very impressed with your thoroughness and attention to detail! This is going to be a good article, in large part thanks to your efforts, so congratulations are in order. It's looking really good. You are keeping a good balance and I haven't noticed any grating POV problems. -- Fyslee 23:24, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I very much appreciate the kind words. I hope others agree.  I'm pretty much done for now.  I think there is a possibility to write a section on alternative medicine--for example, the assertion of some homeopaths that since homeopathy works no better than placebo, therefore they both work--but I'm not moved to write it at the moment.  Thatcher131 00:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Concerns
I have some concerns about one section:

 * The use of placebos in medical practice

 * "The ethics of prescribing placebos in medical practice is highly debated. The use of placebos is often justified because it will do no harm and may do some good. With the publication studies by Hróbjartsson and Götzsche and others, the proposition that placebos may do some good is under fire."

Below is something I wrote in an article about so-Called "Alternative" Medicine (sCAM) some years ago. I believe that especially the second paragraph speaks to this point. Is there some way these concerns can be included in a NPOV way?

 * Poor ethics can reveal themselves in everything from the frequent and well-intentioned use of undocumented methods and ideas to direct swindle and deception. Self-deception, with a suppression of the conscience, is an important factor here. "The end justifies the means" is a common rationalization. As long as something "works" it makes no difference if it is objectively proven or not. Subjective experience is considered to be adequate, with abundant anecdotes considered as sufficient and absolute proof. Thus empiricism is weighted too heavily and the placebo effect is exploited for all it is worth. Such a person wouldn’t dream of refusing to fulfill a patient’s wish to receive an undocumented form of treatment.

 * Consequently, the practitioner loses track of what it is that really "works" with a treatment. The patient is deceived and the practitioner deceives himself. This is not a professional way to act. By thus losing touch with reality, serious illness may continue to go undiagnosed and improperly treated, while both the practitioner and the patient put their confidence in the undocumented treatment. -- Fyslee 22:51, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Quick change because what I wrote is not what I meant to write. I will think about it in depth later (I have about a half inch thick stack of articles on this now) Thatcher131 23:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I have bestowed a barnstar on your blessed head! Look at your User page.....;-) -- Fyslee 23:14, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

self-proving!!??
in "Conditioning" section, there is an example for conditional responce.

 * For example, a person who routinely takes aspirin for pain may experience pain relief when given a pill that looks and tastes like aspirin.

isn't it a self-proving example for Placebo effect? a better example is needed.

--Hkchan123 13:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I took it out. It seems fine without any "layman's example" since the results of a study is described right after. Thatcher131 03:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Objective or subjective effects?
In the article, it said:
 * They performed a meta-analysis of 156 clinical trials in....

However, according to the source quoted
 * RESULTS: We identified 130 trials that met our inclusion criteria. After the exclusion of 16 trials without relevant data on outcomes, there were 32 with binary outcomes (involving 3795 patients, with a median of 51 patients per trial) and 82 with continuous outcomes (involving 4730 patients, with a median of 27 patients per trial).

130 vaild trials + 16 invaild trials....it should be146.

Here I corrected it. --Hkchan123 12:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * That may have just been a typo when I went over that section. [User:Thatcher131|Thatcher131]] 12:07, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * If I interpret it correctly, the actual number was 114 (130 minus 16, which leaves 32 plus 82 -- which equals 114):
 * We identified 130 trials that met our inclusion criteria. After the exclusion of 16 trials without relevant data on outcomes, there were 32 with binary outcomes (involving 3795 patients, with a median of 51 patients per trial) and 82 with continuous outcomes (involving 4730 patients, with a median of 27 patients per trial).
 * That number could be used with some rewording to account for the discrepancy between 130 and 114. -- Fyslee 17:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

 * 156 is correct.  If you look at the two studies cited in the footnotes, the first is 130 minus 16 unusable, for 114.  The second adds 42 more valid studies, for a total of 156 in the second meta-analysis. Thatcher131 18:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Once again you reveal your excellent grasp of these things. Good going! I have now fixed the links so they are proper references, and the References section actually works! -- Fyslee 19:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Except that the reference section is now a mixture of styles. Although I am a supporter of cite.php, I think this article would do better with Harvard-style references. I can convert tonight if you don't object. The other option is to convert all the reference links to cite.php refs and then label the ones which are not cited in the article as "For additional reading" or some such. Thatcher131 19:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Fine with me. We just need to get the references working so they don't fill as much in the text area and are clickable. I think we should also provide URLs as much as possible. The way I've done it is just copied from another article, but the Harvard system looks good too. Go for it! -- Fyslee 19:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

 * This is how the harvard style should be done in my opinion. There is a place for cite.php style notes when a comment needs to be made that doesn't easily fit into the author-date format, and then the references in author-date format organized alphabetically.  They all have URLs or PMID links (that's PubMed ID; clicking on it will take you to the abstract in PubMed.  The PMID is a permanent number assigned to each published manuscript, unlike urls that could change or get put behind subscription walls).  I also reverified and added PMID and ISBN links to the additional references.  I think Senn is way over-cited, but it's not a battle I want to pursue at the moment.

 * It is possible to convert the Harvard citations in the text to blue links that, when clicked, will take the reader to the full citation at the bottom of the page. I'm not sure that's necessary, since its a relatively short article.  However, I can add them if you feel strongly it should have them.  (There is an example at WP:HARVARD.)  It should be less work than tonight since everything is basically formatted and its a matter of adding the right tags. Thatcher131 03:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The article seems to cover the topic in an informative and balanced way. One comment: The first section states that "Recently, it has even been shown that 'mock' surgery can have similar effects". This isn't exactly correct. The study that examined whether surgeries should be subjected to placebo-controls -- the mock knee surgery study -- has been widely misinterpreted because of multiple/sloppy definitions of the placebo effect and some unfortunate (easily misinterpreted) language choices by the authors in the conclusion. The authors of the study allude to the Hrobjartssen results, pointing out that the improvements in the placebo group (which were as great as in the two groups given surgery) are not the result of the patient belief in the treatment but something else about the placebo. Well, interestingly, all three groups were given a fairly strict regimen of rest, analgesics, and rehabilitation, including the placebo group. There was unfortunately no comparison group given nothing, as it would have been interesting to know whether the "placebo" (the rest, analgesics, and rehabilitation) was the reason for the improvement. Reading the study leaves the strong impression (though not concluded) that the regimen of rest, analgesics and rehabilitation had a larger effect than the surgeries, hence the similar results for all three groups. Unfortunately, the language used by the authors in the conclusion, to say that the placebo effect was large in this study, has been misinterpreted by others as saying that patients' belief in surgery can cause a measurable clinical effect in surgical trials. The study doesn't say that at all. The authors seem to define the placebo effect as basically anything that happens to alter clinical condition that isn't the result of the actual procedure. This is a legitimate and important reason to use a placebo control, to root out researcher interpretation bias, patient reporting bias (which could be the underlying reason for both placebo and nocebo effects observed in other research), natural changes in condition, unknown influences, etc. However, this study scope was not sufficient to fully answer the question of whether placebos should be used in surgical trials, a question that should be answered more convincingly given the serious ethical considerations. That many people interpreted the study with old biases about the placebo effect and an unwillingness to fully consider the Hrobjarssen results objectively has led to widespread misinterpretation of the study's implications.

Spelling of Hrobjartsson, Methodology of Administration section
Good work, everyone! I learned a lot. I had no objection to the point of view, just the spelling of Hrobjarttson. Apparently it's an Icelandic name and in Icelandic, it's spelled Hróbjartsson. However, the scientist himself is lives in Denmark and Danish has no ó. Also, the Danish version of this article doesn't spell it with an accent, so I think it's more correct without.

I do have a problem with the "Methodology of Administration" section. It seems like an early version of this article. It makes some good points but jumps all over the place. Anyone interested in rewriting (or even deleting) it? Dblomgren 04:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Methodology of Administration

That section was a split from a similar artice Hawthorne Effect and probably does need some reworking. It was IMO out of place in the Hawthorn Effect article and I thought I would throw it too the wolves to break out what should be kept, modified, or deleted.M jurrens 23:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Placebo effect (disambiguation)


text:
Surfer (EP)

Surfer is a 2001 EP by NOFX.

The record was released on Fat Mike's record label, Fat Wreck Chords. The methodology for writing and recording the songs was much the same as the band's Fuck the Kids EP. Fat Mike wrote all of the songs in a limited amount of time, claiming to have only given himself ten minutes to finish each one, and did not teach the songs to the rest of the band until the day of recording. The EP was recorded in two full-day sessions, making it one of the band's fastest-completed EP or album recording, second to Fuck the Kids which was recorded and mixed in a day and a half.

The EP was later included on the second disc of 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records, but with one track omitted ("Three Shits to the Wind") in order to preserve something unique about the original 7" release.

The album cover, painted by Mark deSalvo, and lyric sheet were inspired by Bad Religion's 1988 record Suffer. Another reference to Suffer is etched into the vinyl: "THE MASSES OF HUMANITY HAVE ALWAYS HAD TO SURF," as opposed to "THE MASSES OF HUMANITY HAVE ALWAYS HAD TO SUFFER" which is etched on the Bad Religion album. The artwork of the lyrics being written on a wall was also replicated for Surfer.

The record is 13 minutes in length. The first 500 copies were pressed on blue vinyl, while subsequent pressings were released on black vinyl.

Track listing
Side A Side B
 * 1) "Fun Things to Fuck (If You're a Winner)"
 * 2) "Juice Head"
 * 3) "Three on Speed"
 * 4) "New Happy Birthday Song"
 * 5) "Talking 'Bout Yo Momma"
 * 6) "Party Enema"
 * 7) "Can't Get the Stink Out"
 * 1) "Go to Work Wasted"
 * 2) "Fuck da Kids"
 * 3) "Whoa on the Whoas"
 * 4) "Three Shits to the Wind"
 * 5) "Puke on Cops"
 * 6) "I Gotta Pee"
 * 7) "Totally Fucked"

title: Surfer (EP)


text:
Talk:Hosur Narasimhaiah

Untitled
BM, this is a prominent person in India. Please do not remove information from the article. He is very respected. When I chatted with a person from India, one guy spontaneously mentioned and praised him. Andries 19:36, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No problem, Andries. But what information did I remove from the article? It seems to me mainly that I just tightened up the text. If I dropped something important, let me know, and I'll work it back in. By the way, I don't suppose he isn't prominent. But just from the content of article, to be honest, you wouldn't get that idea. The only claim to prominence would seem to be the "god-man" investigation 30 years ago. The only other specific thing that is mentioned is that he runs some kind of science lecture series in Bangalore. I'm not very impressed by those two things, although perhaps the "god-man" thing was bigger than it seems. If he is prominent, maybe it would be good for someone who knows more about him, to put that information into the article. --BM 20:02, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * BM, you are right, you did not remove contents from the article. I got a bit scared after I noticed what you had done to Abraham Kovoor. Andries 10:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In lieu of clarification
I just cannot understand what this question of prominence is about. What precisely does it mean? A person could be prominent in a specific field. It doesn’t mean that he should necessarily be known to every individual in the whole world. What criteria one should employ to judge whether some one is prominent or not? As far as Dr. Narasimhaiah is concerned, he is definitely a prominent figure amongst Skeptic circles in India. For instance, if the topic of discussion is godmen and spurious paranormal topics, none in India can ignore Dr. Narasimhaih and the investigation committee he set up as Vice-chancellor of Bangalore University. That is sufficient for me to write a brief sketch about his life. Every Tom, Dick and Harry need not know him.

Again, I highlighted the awards he received because they were at least indicative of other fields in which he was prominent, especially when the awards are some of the top civilian awards in India. I don't have much information about these facets of his life and I expect other users of wikipedia to fill the gaps.

The reason for giving the details of the Investigation Committee members was that it would, I thought, give the readers an idea of the competency of the committee to investigate such matters. My experience is that the adherents of various cults and believers in paranormal phenomena (in which I would include BM too – I may be wrong) normally question the competency of people challenging their heroes.

The petty tricksters such as Sai Baba, Amrithanandmayi etc still hold sway over the masses in India. It was appropriate then, I thought, to give some additional details of the Committee’s investigation, which was why I quoted part of the first letter of the Committee to Sai Baba at length.

I don’t agree with all the changes made by BM in the article (as I don’t agree with changes made by him in the article on Abraham Kovoor) but I don’t want to reverse it to the previous version.

MANOJ

Fulbright scholar?
Until someone provide a source, I shall delete the text:

During 1967–68, as a Fulbright Scholar, he taught as a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Illinois.

Maybe someone confused him with C.D. Narasimhaiah, an English Professor, who was a Fulbright scholar. Chhandama (talk) 14:28, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Hosur Narasimhaiah