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Donald E. Westlake

Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12, 1933 – December 31, 2008) was an American writer with more than one hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction and other genres. Westlake created two professional criminal characters who each starred in a long-running series: the relentless, hardboiled Parker (published under the pen name Richard Stark), and John Dortmunder, who featured in a more humorous series.

He was a three-time Edgar Award winner and, alongside Joe Gores and William L. DeAndrea, was one of few writers to win Edgars in three different categories (1968, Best Novel, God Save the Mark; 1990, Best Short Story, "Too Many Crooks"; 1991, Best Motion Picture Screenplay, The Grifters). In 1993, the Mystery Writers of America named Westlake a Grand Master, the highest honor bestowed by the society.

Personal life
Westlake was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lillian (Bounds) and Albert Joseph Westlake, and was raised in Albany, New York.

Westlake wrote constantly in his teens, and after 200 rejections, his first short story sale was in 1954. Sporadic short story sales followed over the next few years, while Westlake attended Champlain College (a now defunct college created in the post WWII GI Bill boom) of Plattsburgh, New York, and Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. He also spent two years in the United States Air Force.

Westlake moved to New York City in 1959, initially to work for a literary agency while writing on the side. By 1960, he was writing full-time. His first novel under his own name, The Mercenaries, was published in 1960; over the next 48 years, Westlake published a variety of novels and short stories under his own name and a number of pseudonyms.

He was married three times, the final time to Abigail Westlake (also known as Abby Adams Westlake and Abby Adams), a writer of nonfiction (her two published books are An Uncommon Scold and The Gardener's Gripe Book). The couple moved from New York City to Ancram in upstate New York in 1990.

Westlake died of a heart attack on December 31, 2008, while on the way to a New Year's Eve dinner in Mexico, where he and his wife were on vacation.

Pseudonyms
In addition to writing consistently under his own name, Westlake published under several pseudonyms. In the order they debuted:

 * Rolfe Passer: An early Westlake story was published under this name in Mystery Digest in 1958. Rolfe Passer was actually the assistant editor of the magazine at the time.  It is not known why the story was published under Passer's name; frequent Westlake collaborator Lawrence Block has suggested "editorial incompetence".
 * Richard Stark: Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym was that of Richard Stark. The Stark pseudonym was notable both for the sheer amount of writing credited to it (far more than any other except Westlake's real name itself), as well as for Stark's particular style of writing, which was colder, darker, less sentimental, and less overtly humorous than Westlake's usual prose. For a period in the late 1960s, the popularity of the Parker series made Stark's name more well-known and more lucrative for Westlake than his real name. According to Westlake, he chose the name "Richard Stark" for actor Richard Widmark, whose performance in the film Kiss of Death impressed Westlake: "part of the character's fascination and danger is his unpredictability. He's fast and mean, and that's what I wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fat, trimmed down ... stark." Westlake described the difference between Stark's style and his usual style in a 2001 article for the New York Times Book Review: "Stark and Westlake use language very differently. To some extent they're mirror images. Westlake is allusive, indirect, referential, a bit rococo. Stark strips his sentences down to the necessary information." Stark debuted in 1959, with a story in Mystery Digest. Four other Stark short stories followed through 1961, including "The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution", later the title story in Westlake's first short-story collection. Then, from 1962 to 1974, sixteen novels about the relentless and remorseless professional thief Parker and his accomplices (including larcenous actor Alan Grofield) appeared and were credited to Richard Stark. After Butcher's Moon in 1974, Westlake unexpectedly found himself unable to tap into what he called Stark's "personality." Despite repeated attempts to bring him back, Westlake was unsatisfied. Years later, when Westlake had been hired to write the screenplay for The Grifters, director Stephen Frears was so impressed by its lean, cold attitude that he insisted that the screenplay had been written by Stark, not Westlake, and even tried to get Stark's name officially credited as the writer. Westlake said that "I got out of that one by explaining Richard Stark wasn't a member of the Writer's Guild. I don't think he's a joiner, actually." Stark was inactive until 1997, when Westlake once again began writing and publishing Parker novels under Stark's name beginning with Comeback.  The University of Chicago began republishing the Richard Stark novels in 2008.
 * Alan Marshall (or Alan Marsh): Westlake acknowledged writing as many as 28 paperback soft-porn titles from 1959 to 1964 under these names; titles include All My Lovers, Man Hungry, All About Annette, Sally, Virgin's Summer, Call Me Sinner, Off Limits, and three featuring the character of Phil Crawford: Apprentice Virgin, All the Girls Were Willing, and Sin Prowl.  Westlake was not the only author to work under Marshall's name, claiming: "The publishers would either pay more for the names they already knew or would only buy from (those) names…so it became common practice for several of us to loan our names to friends…. Before…the end of 1961…six other people, friends of mine, published books as Alan Marshall, with my permission but without the publishers' knowledge."  Two novels published in 1960 by Midwood Books were co-authored by Westlake and Lawrence Block (who used the pen-name "Sheldon Lord") and were credited to "Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall": A Girl Called Honey, dedicated to Westlake and Block, and So Willing, dedicated to "Nedra and Loretta," who were (at that time) Westlake and Block's wives.
 * James Blue: one-shot pseudonym, used as a third name circa 1959 when both Westlake and Stark already had stories in a magazine issue. In actuality, the name of Westlake's cat.
 * Ben Christopher: one-shot pseudonym for a 1960 story in 77 Sunset Strip magazine, based on the characters from the TV show of the same name.
 * John Dexter: a house pseudonym used by Nightstand Books for the work of numerous authors. The very first novel credited to John Dexter is a soft-core work by Westlake called No Longer A Virgin (1960)
 * Andrew Shaw: pseudonym used by Westlake and Lawrence Block for their 1961 collaborative soft-core novel Sin Hellcat. Like John Dexter (above), "Andrew Shaw" was a house pseudonym used by a wide variety of authors.
 * Edwin West: Brother and Sister, Campus Doll, Young and Innocent, all 1961; Strange Affair, 1962; Campus Lovers, 1963, one 1966 short story.
 * John B. Allan: Elizabeth Taylor: A Fascinating Story of America's Most Talented Actress and the World's Most Beautiful Woman, 1961, biography.
 * Don Holliday: pseudonym used by Westlake for two collaborative soft-core novels (with various authors, including Hal Dresner and Lawrence Block) in 1963/64.
 * Curt Clark: debuted in 1964 with the short story "Nackles". Novel: Anarchaos, 1967, science fiction.
 * Barbara Wilson: one co-authored novel with Laurence Janifer (The Pleasures We Know, 1964); Janifer also used this name for at least one solo novel with no involvement from Westlake.
 * Tucker Coe: five mystery novels featuring the character of Mitch Tobin: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, 1966; Murder Among Children, 1967; Wax Apple and A Jade in Aries, both 1970; Don't Lie to Me, 1972.
 * P. N. Castor: pseudonym used for one 1966 short story co-authored with Dave Foley.
 * Timothy J. Culver: Ex Officio, 1970, thriller.
 * J. Morgan Cunningham: Comfort Station, 1971, humor. Cover features the blurb, "I wish I had written this book! –  Donald E. Westlake."
 * Samuel Holt: four mystery novels featuring the character of Sam Holt, 1986-1989: One of Us is Wrong and I Know a Trick Worth Two of That, both 1986; What I Tell You Three Times is False, 1987; The Fourth Dimension is Death, 1989. Westlake used the Holt pseudonym as an experiment to see if he could succeed as an author under a new name; he was dismayed when his publisher revealed the true identity of "Holt" simultaneously with the release of the first book. Westlake subsequently delivered all four books he had contracted for as Holt, but abandoned plans to write at least two further books in the series.
 * Judson Jack Carmichael: The Scared Stiff, 2002, mystery; UK editions dropped the pseudonym.

Westlake sometimes made playful use of his pseudonyms in his work:
 * John Dortmunder and associates plan a kidnapping based on a mythical Richard Stark/Parker novel in Westlake's Jimmy The Kid. Stark himself makes an appearance in the novel.
 * Richard Stark's character of Parker has ID that gives his name as "John B. Allan".
 * In the film version of The Grifters (for which Westlake wrote the screenplay), a key scene takes place at the firm of Stark, Coe and Fellows. Westlake explains the in-joke in the film's DVD commentary track, noting that he wrote books as "Richard Stark, Tucker Coe and some other fellows." Westlake had been asked to write the script for The Grifters using the pen-name "Richard Stark" as an in-joke, but insisted on using his own name.
 * A character in Timothy J. Culver's Ex Officio works for Coe-Stark Associates.
 * In the Mitch Tobin novel A Jade in Aries, Tobin phones a friend, who briefly mistakes Tobin for somebody named Don Stark.

Additionally, Westlake conducted a mock "interview" with Richard Stark, Tucker Coe and Timothy J. Culver in an article for the non-fiction book Murder Ink: The Mystery Reader's Companion.

Writing style
Donald Westlake was known for the great ingenuity of his plots and the audacity of his gimmicks. Westlake's most famous characters include the hard-boiled criminal Parker (appearing in fiction under the Richard Stark pseudonym) and Parker's comic flip-side John Dortmunder. Westlake was quoted as saying that he originally intended what became The Hot Rock to be a straightforward Parker novel, but "It kept turning funny," and thus became the first John Dortmunder novel.

Most of Donald Westlake's novels are set in New York City. In each of the Dortmunder novels, there is typically a foray into a particular city neighborhood. He wrote just two non-fiction books: Under an English Heaven, regarding the unlikely 1967 Anguillan "revolution", and a biography of Elizabeth Taylor.

Westlake was an occasional contributor to science fiction fanzines such as Xero, and used Xero as a venue for a harsh announcement that he was leaving the science fiction field.

Literary crossovers
Westlake and Joe Gores wrote the same encounter between two of their characters from different perspectives in two different novels. In chapter 18 of Gores' 1972 novel Dead Skip, San Francisco detective Dan Kearney meets Westlake's amoral thief Parker while looking for one of Parker's associates. The sequence is described from Parker's viewpoint in the 1972 book Plunder Squad, which Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark. Gores hints further at the connection between the two books by referring to Parker's associates as "the plunder squad." Additionally, earlier in the novel, the book's protagonist Larry Ballard is described as being a reader only of Richard Stark novels.

Gores and Westlake also wrote a shared chapter in Westlake's Drowned Hopes and Gores' 32 Cadillacs, having the characters in those books influenced by the same event.

Motion pictures and television
Several of Westlake's novels have been made into motion pictures: 1967's Point Blank (based on The Hunter) with Lee Marvin as Parker (changed to Walker); ' (based on The Score) with Michel Constantin as Parker (changed to Georges), also in 1967; 1968's The Split (from the book The Seventh) with Jim Brown as Parker (changed to McClain); The Hot Rock in 1972 with Robert Redford; Cops and Robbers in 1973; 'The Outfit with Robert Duvall as Parker (changed to Macklin), also in 1973; Bank Shot in 1974 with George C. Scott; The Busy Body (with an "all-star cast") in 1967; Slayground with Peter Coyote as Parker (changed to Stone) in 1983; Why Me? with Christopher Lambert, Christopher Lloyd, and J. T. Walsh in 1990; Payback in 1999, the second film made from The Hunter, with Mel Gibson as Parker (changed to Porter); What's the Worst That Could Happen? in 2001 with Martin Lawrence as Dortmunder (changed to Kevin Caffery); Constantin Costa-Gavras adapted The Ax for the European screen in 2005, to great critical and public acclaim – entitled Le Couperet, the film takes place in France and Belgium rather than the novel's setting of New England; Parker in 2013, based on Flashfire, with Jason Statham as Parker.

In his introduction to one of the short stories in Thieves' Dozen, Westlake mentioned legal troubles with Hollywood over his continued use of the Dortmunder novel characters; the movie studios attempted to assert that he had sold the rights to the characters to them permanently as a result of the Redford film.

The novel Jimmy the Kid has been adapted three times: in Italy as  in 1976; in the U.S. as Jimmy the Kid in 1982, starring Gary Coleman; and in Germany as Jimmy the Kid in 1998, starring Herbert Knaup.

The novel Two Much! has been adapted twice: in France as Le Jumeau (The Twin) in 1984; and in the U.S. as Two Much in 1995, starring Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.

Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A. in 1966 was an extremely loose adaptation of The Jugger. Neither the film's producer nor Godard purchased the rights to the novel, so Westlake successfully sued to prevent the film's commercial distribution in the United States.

His novel Memory, published posthumously in 2010, was adapted into the upcoming film The Actor, directed by Duke Johnson and starring André Holland and Gemma Chan.

Westlake was himself a screenwriter. His script for the 1990 film The Grifters, adapted from the novel by Jim Thompson, was nominated for an Academy Award. Westlake adapted Jim Thompson's work in a straightforward manner, but Westlake the humourist played on Thompson's name later that year in the Dortmunder novel Drowned Hopes by featuring a character named "Tom Jimson" who is a criminal psychopath. Westlake also wrote the screenplay for the film The Stepfather (from a story by Westlake, Brian Garfield and Carolyn Lefcourt), which was popular enough to inspire two sequels and a remake, projects in which Westlake was not involved.

In 1987 Westlake wrote the teleplay Fatal Confession, a pilot for the TV series Father Dowling Mysteries based on the novels by Ralph McInerny. He also appeared in a small role (as the mystery writer Rich Vincent) in the third-season episode, "The Hardboiled Mystery."

Westlake wrote an early draft of the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, which was later scrapped because of difficulties in filming in the script's original setting in China. Westlake adapted the script into the novel Forever and a Death, which was published posthumously in 2017 by Hard Case Crime.

Westlake wrote an unproduced screenplay adapting the Dashiell Hammett crime novel Red Harvest, which changed the story considerably to refocus the ending on solving the original murder for which the detective had been hired, which is solved relatively early in the original book and which Westlake felt made the detective's continuing involvement in the story hard to justify.

Westlake co-wrote the story for the pilot of the ill-fated 1979 TV series Supertrain with teleplay writer Earl W. Wallace; Westlake and Wallace shared "created by" credit.

In 2022, Variety (magazine) reported that Robert Downey, Jr. and Shane Black were working together on multiple movie and television projects for Amazon Studios based on the Parker series.

Collections

 * The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution (1968)
 * Enough ("A Travesty" & "Ordo") (1977) - reissued as Double Feature by Hard Case Crime in 2020
 * Levine (1984)
 * Tomorrow's Crimes (1989), includes the novel Anarchaos
 * Horse Laugh and Other Stories (1991)
 * The Parker Omnibus, Volume 1 (1997), published in UK, containing The Man with the Getaway Face, The Outfit, and The Deadly Edge.
 * The Parker Omnibus, Volume 2 (1999), published in UK, containing The Split (alternate name for The Seventh), The Score, and The Handle.
 * A Good Story and Other Stories (1999)
 * Thieves' Dozen (2004), a collection of ten Dortmunder short stories and one related story.
 * Transgressions (2005), Ed McBain-edited collection of 10 novellas, including Westlake's Dortmunder novella "Walking Around Money"

Non-fiction

 * Elizabeth Taylor: A Fascinating Story of America's Most Talented Actress and the World's Most Beautiful Woman (1961, as "John B. Allan")
 * Under an English Heaven (1972)
 * The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany (2014) ISBN 9780226121819

Produced screenplays

 * Cops and Robbers (1973)
 * Hot Stuff (1979) co-written with Michael Kane
 * The Stepfather (1987)
 * Why Me? (1990) – based on Westlake's novel, co-written with Leonard Maas, Jr. (pseudonym of David Koepp)
 * The Grifters (1990) – based on the novel by Jim Thompson
 * Ripley Under Ground (2005) – based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, co-written with William Blake Herron

Unpublished/unproduced works

 * The Score (1965–1967) – screenplay based on Westlake's Richard Stark novel (later adapted as Alain Cavalier's Mise à sac)
 * Murder at the Vanities (1990–1991) – mystery stage musical; libretto by Westlake, music and lyrics by Donald Oliver & David Spencer
 * God's Pocket (1996–1997) – screenplay based on the Pete Dexter novel (later adapted as God's Pocket)
 * Maximum Bob – screenplay based on the Elmore Leonard novel (later adapted as a TV series, Maximum Bob)
 * Arms of Nemesis – screenplay based on the novel by Steven Saylor
 * Absolute Faith – original screenplay co-written with Ghasem Ebrahimian
 * Red Harvest – screenplay based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

Legacy
Westlake has been acknowledged by many writers and fans of crime fiction as one of the masters of the genre.

The central villain of Stephen King's novel The Dark Half, George Stark, was named in honor of Richard Stark. King telephoned Westlake personally to ask permission. King's own "Richard Bachman" pseudonym was also partly named for Stark: King had been reading a Richard Stark novel at the time he chose the pen name.

Writer Duane Swierczynski named his first-born son Parker, in honor of the Richard Stark character as well as Spider-Man's secret identity, Peter Parker.

In addition to Darwyn Cooke's graphic-novel adaptations of Parker, Cooke also homaged Westlake in his earlier work Catwoman: Selena's Big Score by giving one of the characters, an old flame and mentor of Selina Kyle, the name "Stark" as well as the face of Lee Marvin, who played the Parker character in Point Blank.

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Carmine Persico

Carmine John Persico Jr. (August 8, 1933 – March 7, 2019), also known as "Junior", "The Snake" and "Immortal", was an American mobster and the longtime boss of the Colombo crime family in New York City from 1973 until his death in 2019. He had been serving 32 years in federal prison from 1987 until his death on March 7, 2019.

Background
Carmine Persico was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Carmine John Persico Sr. and Assunta "Susan" Plantamura. His father was a legal stenographer for several law firms in Manhattan. His brothers Theodore Persico and Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico (died 1989) also became caporegimes in the Colombo crime family. His son, named Alphonse after the boy's uncle and commonly known as "Little Allie Boy", eventually became a capo as well. He was the uncle of Theodore Persico Jr. The family lived in the Carroll Gardens and Red Hook sections of Brooklyn.

Persico dropped out of high school at age 16. By then he was a leader of the Garfield Boys, a Brooklyn street gang. However, one contemporary source says that in 1950 he had actually belonged to the South Brooklyn Boys, a successor gang to the Garfield Boys. In March 1951, 17-year-old Persico was arrested on charges of fatally beating another youth in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. However, all charges were eventually dropped. In the early 1950s, Persico was recruited into the Profaci crime family, the forerunner of the Colombo family, by longtime capo Frank Abbatemarco. At first Persico did bookmaking and loan-sharking, then moved into burglaries and hijackings. During this decade he was arrested over 12 times but spent only a few days in jail. He also started working with Joe Gallo and his brothers, Albert Gallo and Larry Gallo.

Anastasia murder
In 1957, Persico allegedly participated in the murder of Albert Anastasia, the former leader of Murder, Inc. and the boss of what was then the Anastasia family. Anastasia's underboss Carlo Gambino wanted control of the family and conspired with his allies, Genovese family boss Vito Genovese and Profaci boss Joe Profaci, to kill Anastasia. Profaci allegedly gave the job to Persico and the Gallo brothers.

On October 25, 1957, Anastasia entered the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. As he relaxed in the barber chair, two men—with scarves covering their faces—rushed in, shoved the barber out of the way and fired at Anastasia. After the first volley of bullets, Anastasia allegedly tried to lunge at his killers. However, the stunned Anastasia had actually attacked the gunmen's reflections in the wall mirror of the barber shop. The gunmen continued firing, finally killing Anastasia. No one was ever charged in the Anastasia killing, and there is an alternative theory that gunmen from the Patriarca crime family of New England performed the hit.

The Gallo faction
By the late 1950s, Persico and the Gallos were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Profaci's leadership. Profaci demanded high tribute payments from family members and was viewed as a wealthy autocrat. The First Colombo War started on November 4, 1959, when Profaci's gunmen murdered Abbatemarco on a Brooklyn street. Abbatemarco had stopped paying tribute to Profaci earlier that year with the support of the Gallo faction. It is speculated that Carlo Gambino and Lucchese family boss Tommy Lucchese were encouraging the Gallos to challenge Profaci, their enemy. When Profaci took Abbatemarco's lucrative rackets away from the Gallos, the warfare began.

On February 27, 1961 the Gallos, led by Joe Gallo, kidnapped four of Profaci's top men: underboss Joseph Magliocco, Frank Profaci (Joe Profaci's brother), capo Salvatore Musacchia and soldier John Scimone. Profaci himself eluded capture and flew to sanctuary in Florida. While holding the hostages, Larry and Albert Gallo sent Joe Gallo to California. Profaci's Capo & later underboss John ‘Sonny’ Franzese negotiated with the Gallos and all the hostages were released peacefully.

Changing sides
On August 20, 1961 Joe Profaci ordered the murder of Gallo members Joseph "Joe Jelly" Gioielli and Larry Gallo. Gunmen allegedly murdered Gioielli after inviting him to go deep sea fishing. Gallo survived a strangulation attempt in the Sahara club of East Flatbush by Persico and Salvatore "Sally" D'Ambrosio after a police officer intervened. The Gallos then began calling Persico "The Snake"; he had betrayed them, the war continued on resulting in nine murders and three disappearances. Persico was indicted later that year for the attempted murder of Gallo, but the charges were dropped when Gallo refused to testify.

On June 6, 1962, Profaci died of cancer and Magliocco became the new family boss. However, the war with the Gallo faction continued. In early 1963, Persico survived a car bombing and his enforcer Hugh McIntosh was shot in the groin as he attempted to kill Larry Gallo. On May 19, 1963, Gallo gunmen ambushed Persico in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A panel truck pulled alongside Persico's car and two men shot him in the face, hand and shoulder. Persico reportedly spat out the bullet that had entered his face. Soon after this attempt on his life, Persico was imprisoned on extortion charges. By the fall of 1963, with Joey Gallo also imprisoned, the shooting war had ended with Magliocco the winner.

In late 1963, after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the Commission, Magliocco was forced into retirement. He was replaced by Colombo, who had alerted the Commission to Magliocco's plot. The Profaci crime family was now the Colombo crime family. In turn, Colombo rewarded the imprisoned Persico by naming him a capo.

Profitable crew
After being promoted to capo, Persico was constantly on the streets. He was involved in labor racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking, hijacking, illegal gambling, and especially murder for hire. By the late 1960s, Persico's crew was one of the most profitable in the Colombo family. In 1968, Persico was convicted on federal hijacking charges after five separate trials dating back to 1960. On January 27, 1972, he was finally sent to prison on these charges, where he would spend eight years. The trial was noted for the only appearance of former mobster Joseph Valachi as a prosecution witness.

Colombo and Gallo shootings
In February 1971, Joey Gallo was released from prison. On June 28, Colombo was shot and severely wounded at the second annual Italian-American Civil Rights League rally in Manhattan. The shooter, a black ex-convict named Jerome Johnson, was immediately shot dead by Colombo's bodyguards. Colombo survived in a paralyzed state until his death on May 22, 1978. Police concluded that Johnson was the sole shooter. Both law enforcement and the Mafia assumed Gallo had organized the hit; he had built ties with black gangsters while in prison and, upon his release, threatened to start another gang war unless he received $100,000 compensation.

On November 11, 1971, Persico went on trial in state court on 37 counts of extortion, usury, coercion, and conspiracy, all stemming from a loan-sharking operation out of a Manhattan fur shop. On December 8 a jury acquitted him of all charges; all 12 prosecution witnesses said they could not identify Persico.

After the Colombo shooting, underboss Joseph Yacovelli assumed the role of acting boss. On April 7, 1972, Joey Gallo was shot and killed by Persico gunmen as he was celebrating his birthday at Umberto's Clam House in Manhattan's Little Italy. Looking for revenge, Albert Gallo sent a gunman from Las Vegas to the Neapolitan Noodle restaurant in Manhattan, where Yacovelli, Alphonse Persico, and Gennaro Langella were dining one day. However, the gunman did not recognize the mobsters and shot four innocent diners instead, killing two of them. After this assassination attempt, Yacovelli fled New York, leaving Persico as the new boss, with Perisco himself coordinating the suppression of the Gallos.

Prison
In 1973, Persico was imprisoned on hijacking and loan-sharking charges, and sentenced to eight years in prison. His incarceration coincided with the release of his brother Alphonse from 17 years in prison. Persico designated Alphonse as acting boss with support as underboss from Gennaro Langella and Carmine's other brother, Theodore. Langella supervised various labor rackets for the family, including their stake in the "Concrete Club", and exerted control over various labor unions, including Cement and Concrete Workers District Council, Local 6A. In 1979, Persico was released from federal prison.

On August 11, 1981, Persico pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge of attempting to bribe an IRS agent from 1977-78 while in federal custody. The evidence included a recording of Persico offering the agent $250,000 in exchange for getting him an early release from prison. On November 9, 1981, Persico was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Federal fugitive

On October 14, 1984, Persico and the rest of the Colombo family leadership were indicted on multiple racketeering charges as part of the "Colombo Trial". After the indictment was published, Persico went into hiding. On October 26, the FBI began a national manhunt for Persico, and soon named him as the 390th fugitive to be added to their Ten Most Wanted list.

Persico hid in the home of his brother in law and minor mob associate Fred DeChristopher, in Hempstead, New York. Unbeknownst to Persico, DeChristopher had been relaying information to the FBI for the previous two years after being caught up in a sting operation, and had already told the Bureau of Persico's whereabouts. The FBI concocted the fake "manhunt" to shield DeChristopher, who would later provide damning testimony against Persico as a key witness for the prosecution. Persico was arrested on February 15, 1985 at the home of DeChristopher. An FBI agent actually called the residence and spoke with Persico, telling him the house was surrounded. Persico and another mob associate that had been visiting him surrendered peacefully. Persico, the only head of a mafia family to ever make the Ten Most Wanted list, later autographed one of the posters for an FBI agent.

On July 1, Persico pleaded not guilty along with 11 other New York Mafia leaders, after a previous indictment on a second set of racketeering charges as part of the Mafia Commission Trial. Prosecutors aimed to strike at all the crime families at once using their involvement in the commission. According to Colombo hitman and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa, Persico and Gambino boss John Gotti backed a plan to kill the lead prosecutor, and future New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani in late 1986, but it was rejected by the rest of the commission.

Colombo and Commission trials
At the start of the commission trial Persico decided to serve as his own lawyer. He believed that his history of convictions gave him sufficient experience to defend himself. His co-defendants vehemently disagreed with this decision, and the judge warned Persico that he would be waiving "incompetent counsel" as the grounds for an appeal. Persico received counsel from lawyers to help guide him when the prosecutors questioned him. He tried to project a friendly image to the jury and urged them to put aside any preconceptions about "the Mafia" or "Cosa Nostra". Many believe that Persico inadvertently sabotaged his own defense by acknowledging criminal activities during his cross-examinations of prosecution witnesses.

On June 14, 1986, Persico was convicted of racketeering in the Colombo Trial. On November 17, he was sentenced to 39 years in prison. The sentencing judge, John F. Keenan, nonetheless praised Persico's performance as his own lawyer in the commission trial and said, "Mr. Persico, you're a tragedy. You are one of the most intelligent people I have ever seen in my life." On November 19, Persico and the other commission trial defendants were convicted on all charges. On January 13, 1987, Keenan sentenced Persico to 100 years in prison, to run consecutively with his 39-year sentence in the Colombo trial, a $240,000 fine, and given no option for parole.

The New York Times organized crime writer Selwyn Raab thought the Colombos were the most damaged by the trial, even though most of the top leaders of New York's Mafia families were sent to prison, with the Luccheses losing their entire hierarchy. In his book Five Families, Raab noted that Persico was only 53 years old at the time of the commission trial, making him by far the youngest boss in New York. However, Raab noted, Persico had already led the family for 14 years and was "at the peak of his abilities." He believed Persico would have potentially had a long reign ahead of him had he not been taken off the streets. By comparison, the other bosses were in their 70s, and would have likely passed the reins to men of Persico's generation even without the trial intervening. Persico was sent to United States Penitentiary near Marion, Illinois, to serve his combined 139-year sentence.

By 2017, Persico was in the medium-security Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina. The facility has medical facilities for elderly inmates. Press reports indicated he had become friends with convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff.

Revenge
In June 1987, Persico ordered acting boss Joel Cacace to kill lawyer William Aronwald, a retired prosecutor who had allegedly been disrespectful to the Mafia. Cacace delegated the job to two hitmen who mistakenly killed Aronwald's father George. In response to outrage from the other New York families, Cacace recruited two more gunmen to kill the first hit team. After those murders were accomplished, Cacace killed the second set of gunmen. In 2004, Cacace would plead guilty to the Aronwald murder. No charges were filed against Persico.

Brooklyn rivalry
Persico realized that he would likely die in prison, and would thus never be able to resume active control of the family. He was, however, determined to ensure that his cut of the Colombo rackets continued to flow to his relatives. To that end, soon after he was sentenced, he named his brother, Allie Boy, as acting boss. Allie Boy did not reign long, however; he was arrested for loansharking and averted bail. Persico then named a three-man ruling panel to run the family. In 1988, he dissolved the panel and named Victor "Little Vic" Orena, a loyal capo from Brooklyn, as temporary acting boss. While giving Orena the power to induct members and order murders on his own authority—unusual for an acting boss—Persico made it clear that Orena was merely a placeholder until Persico's son, Little Allie Boy, was released from prison. Indeed, Persico picked Orena in part because he was the capo of Little Allie Boy's old crew. Knowing that Little Allie Boy would be 40 years old by the time he was paroled, Perisco wanted to ensure that his son would be able to inherit the family's riches as soon as he was released. In 1990, the government transferred Persico to what was then the United States Penitentiary in Lompoc, California. There he established an Italian Cultural Club for the inmates. He socialized with people such as Patriarca family consigliere Joseph Russo and Lucchese family associate Anthony Senter. Persico formed the "Lompoc Four", a band in which Russo played guitar and Persico played drums.

By 1991, Orena had become disgruntled with the current leadership scheme and was tired of the constant stream of orders that he received from Persico in prison. He also grew to resent that he would have to turn over the family to Little Allie Boy. John Gotti encouraged Orena's rebellion, since he and Persico had long been enemies, and went so far as to label Persico a "rat", the worst possible accusation for a Cosa Nostra figure.

In the spring of 1991, Orena made a push to become boss in his own right. He requested that consigliere Carmine Sessa quietly poll all the Colombo capos as to whom they wanted as boss. Orena believed that if he had enough support from the capos, it would strengthen his argument that the Commission should recognize Orena, not Persico, as the rightful leader of the family. However, Sessa instead told Persico about Orena's plot. Persico then allegedly ordered Sessa to lead a team to kill Orena. On June 20, Sessa took a five-man hit team and parked on the street close to Orena's residence on Long Island, waiting for his return home. As Orena drove down the street, he recognized the men in the car and quickly sped away. For the next several months, the Persico and Orena factions engaged in peace negotiations brokered by the Commission. Despite Persico's claim as the legitimate boss, the Commission refused to take sides in the Colombo conflict.

Third Colombo war
On November 18, 1991, the Third Colombo War started when Orena lieutenant William Cutolo sent a hit team to try to kill Scarpa, a Persico loyalist, in Brooklyn. By the end of 1991, the two Colombo factions had traded several successful murder attempts. Responding to public outrage over the carnage, law enforcement threw resources into prosecuting the Colombo mobsters, resulting in 68 indictments, 58 convictions and ten mobsters turning state's evidence. In December 1992, Orena was convicted of racketeering and murder and was sentenced to life in prison, dissolving his belligerent faction and leaving the Persicos in control again.

Changing family structure
With the end of the war with Orena, Persico had to set up another ruling structure for the family. Since Little Allie Boy was facing prosecution on new charges, Persico installed a ruling committee comprising his brother, Theodore, mobster Joseph Baudanza and Joseph Tomasello. In 1994, when Andrew Russo was released from prison, Persico disbanded the committee and designated Russo as acting boss. In 1996, Russo went to prison and Persico replaced him with his son, Little Allie Boy, who by now had been released from prison. In early 1999, with Alphonse in legal trouble, Persico made Cacace the acting boss.

However, later in 1999, either Carmine or Alphonse Persico ordered Cutolo's murder. The recently released Alphonse was facing new federal charges that threatened to send him back to prison, and the Persicos were worried about Cutolo seizing control of the family. On May 26, 1999, Alphonse ordered Cutolo to meet him at a Brooklyn park. Cutolo was then taken to a mob associate's apartment and murdered, and his body was buried in Long Island. Police would not recover the remains until November 2008.

Life sentence for Alphonse Persico
On December 20, 2001, Alphonse Persico pleaded guilty to the loan-sharking charges, accepted a 13-year prison sentence and agreed to forfeit $1 million. On October 14, 2004, he was indicted on federal racketeering charges, including conspiring to murder Cutolo and Joe Campanella. No charges were filed against Carmine Persico. However, the Cutolo murder trial ended in a mistrial due to juror deadlock.

In 2004, with the conversion of Lompoc into a different correctional facility, the government transferred Carmine Persico to the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner, a medium-security correctional facility in North Carolina.

On December 28, 2007, in a second trial, Alphonse Persico and DeRoss were convicted of Cutolo's murder. Like his father, Alphonse Persico was sentenced to life in prison.

Later leadership
In 2011, Carmine Persico was still the official boss of the Colombo crime family. His street boss at the time was Andrew Russo, his official underboss, John Franzese, the acting underboss Benjamin Castellazzo and the consigliere Richard Fusco.

In March 2010, the Reuters News Agency reported that Carmine Persico had been socializing in prison with convicted swindler Bernard Madoff. The New York Post further reported that Persico loved to play pinochle and bocce with other mobsters and regale them with stories from his past.

Persico's projected release date was March 20, 2050—when he would have been 117 years old. Raab wrote in Five Families that Persico's attempts to protect his own position and ensure that his son succeeded him nearly destroyed the Colombo family. By Raab's estimate, Persico's "deceitful schemes" led directly to 70 of his fellow mobsters and associates being sent to prison, as well as 12 deaths.

Death
On March 7, 2019, Persico died at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

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

title: Carmine Persico


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The League of Distinguished Gentlemen

The League of Distinguished Gentlemen
Reason(s) I recommended this article for VfD This article smacks of vanity by college kids, and a group in existence for the last few months could hardly have gained significant notability to be mentioned herein. The mere existence of something does not make it notable. The description of the group presented in this article is vain, and sounds like college kids trying to justify their existence by another tried-and-true rendition of the "we're alienated" and "we yearn for the old British imperialist culture" rap.

For the sake of keeping this discussion regimented, I've taken the liberty to organize it as laid out below. —ExplorerCDT 19:18, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Further proof of vanity. The entry creating the article on December 1st 2004 was a user named "Bhankey".  Reading the article, one of the founders of this "club" was "B. Conrad Hankey."  Coincidence.  Methinks not. —ExplorerCDT 20:19, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * P.S. Further proof, the IP addresses 70.182.38.207, 70.182.38.20, and 70.182.34.104 which are the sole editors after Bhankey but before the VfD notice are registered to Cox Communications (as per ) who has reallocated the IPs and provides internet services for use by Creighton University. —ExplorerCDT 20:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Votes to Delete
 * Delete for reasons stated above. —ExplorerCDT 19:18, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete for this statement alone: "Members of the League do not admit as such, as they in fact deny the very existence of such an organization." --Mceder 19:21, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. No none seems to even be able to verify this exists. "Secretive vanity" is bound to fail, and, if it were to succeed, would still be vanity. -R. fiend 18:27, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: Unverifiable, probably vanity. Geogre 21:32, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Unverifiable. Articles about secret societies that assert that the society is truly secret, and do not cite any verifiable sources, are borderline speedy deletion candidates as patent nonsense. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity. Indrian 00:13, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Insignificant, brand new, possibly non-existant organization at a minor university. Gamaliel 08:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Seems absolutely unimportant.-- Etaonish  18:41, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete vanity - Cdc 21:47, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete clear vanity entry. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 15:57, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete unverifiable vanity. Since it is brand new, none of the members of the organisation can have gone on to do anything significant yet (such as being elected President, thereby sparking media interest in their college secret society). Average Earthman 22:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity, self promotion. I challenge you, sir, to justify this article by demonstrating (in a reasonable and gentlemanly manner), that anyone aside from your distinguished and Edwardian selves gives a flying fook about your poxy club, but do let us know when you've got a twittering prince or two in the bag. Wyss 00:17, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * '''Delete'. --JuntungWu 03:45, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete unless sourced. And "...inurbane and cavalier provisos..." has to be the worst piece of pretentious tosh I've read in months. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:21, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, as non-notable, vanity, &c. Dear God, though, how I laughed. This would have seemed mildly silly in the 1880s Home Counties, much less the US today... dashed colonials, always a bit behind. Nice to see them aping their betters, though, what? Shimgray 20:47, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. It's taking all my willpower not to add the word "secret" fifteen more times to that article. - Lifefeed 02:02, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: just some college kids doing pretty typical college-kid things. Iralith 17:26, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Even if this society was doing something big like is often alleged with the Illuminati, the article's topic is unverifiable. Until then, this is most definitely not an encyclopedic topic. Johnleemk | Talk 17:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete:, vanity/nonsense article. Blorg 13:48, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Cribcage 20:57, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity. --PJF (talk) 21:04, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Well, they're not the first or last to use the name. I just hope we don't wake up tomorrow to find they turned up in the college cafeteria with automatic weapons. --PoleyDee 23:07, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Votes to Keep
 * Keep - The group's notability will certainly grow. -- Crevaner 21:50, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * And when they do grow, they can come back and rebuild the article. This isn't a chicken and egg question.  Notability is established through a prerequisite, one that is here lacking. —ExplorerCDT 22:29, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep - I question the resolve with which their notability has been adequately researched. Simply deleting an article because you didn't care to examine the results of your Google search by no means constitutes a respectable degree of scholarship.  Instead, it rather smacks of the alienation and snobbery this article stands charged with.- Postmodernscrew 07:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * User's first edit.
 * Comment: I did do a google search. Rather funny. It came back with a copious results saying Your search - "League of Distinguished Gentleman"+Creighton University - did not match any documents. See... I think that's irrefutable proof of their indubitably awe-inspring notability. NOT! Your defence smacks of opening your mouth before you know what it is you're talking about.—ExplorerCDT 17:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment: Again, sir, I ask that you take note of your own methods. If you impugn this entry as lacking notability, the consequences may be more far-reaching than you currently reckon. A great number of the articles here draw their only notability from the other assorted online encyclopedias that mimic or carry verbatim the Wikipedia entry. Can a topic's (especially one of a "secretive" nature) legitimacy really be established by the presence of multiple online entries, each one the mirror of the other? Leave this entry here long enough to be copied and entered into other encyclopedias and it shall have your "notability." -- Postmodernscrew 19:43, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Retort That's a bunch of circular post hoc, ergo propter hoc nonsense, and further validation for how petty and insignificant your cause is. Save it because someday someone somewhere will think it's notable. I'd laugh if I didn't immediately recognize how dumb that vagary sounds. My methods are sound, backed up by Wikipedia's bureaucratic policies (policy and bureaucracy being something the Victorian gentlemen loved, by the way), there is no slippery slope to be reckoned with merely by taking out the trash. Nice try on appealing to emotion through the ominous threat of impending doom as a rhetorical flourish. I doubt deleting one insignificant article (vide supra) will lead to the four horsemen of the apocalypse ravaging the land. —ExplorerCDT 20:12, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Keep - Doesn't sound like anymore of a vanity project than any other "secret societies". If other college secret societies get their own postings then there is no reason why these guys shouldn't. As far as the '"we yearn for the old British imperialist culture" rap' goes, I wasn't aware that imitating Victorian England was a craze sweeping college campuses. Much of it may seem tongue-in-cheek, but it seems like there is some legitimate academic and social purpose within the organization.- Goaway110
 * User's first edit.
 * Comment: No, it's not a fad sweeping college campuses, but there just a few too many kids who think they're special just because they identify with Rudyard Kipling or yearn for the glory of Gordon's failed conquest of the Sudan. It's pathetic that one can ascribe the moniker "distinguished" to themselves, not by committing worthy deeds in the words of Thomas Carlyle, but because of some fetishistic interest in half-assed mimicry of ill-perceived notions of Victorian gentlemanry. I don't even know CBE's today who think themselves "distinguished" because they get pin from QEII that is nothing more than a obsolete throw-back from the Victorian era. Oh, the vanity. —ExplorerCDT 17:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment: Kipling. Hmm. Hast thou given a peacock goodly wings / To please his foolishness? It's all there, sooner or later... (I doubt they identify with RK, at least not consistently or with any consideration; he always esteemed those who did, not talked - the soldiers, the engineers, the sailors, the clerks... one of his more endearing features) Shimgray 21:09, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment: Kipling? Sudan? Carlyle? It sounds like you want to be a part of this group. Jealous?Goaway110
 * Your ideas intrigue me. Please subscribe me to your newsletter. Gamaliel 21:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Goaway110, I must decline however do know that I appreciate the offer. First, I doubt I'd get along with the Jesuit mentality of such an esteemed institution of learning like Creighton. Secondly, I've never been partial to Omaha. Thirdly, an educated man does not associate with mere dilletantes. Lastly, and moreover, I do not deign to enjoy acquaintanceship with members of the lower classes, especially those who cling to such a futile, deluded hope as social promotion—not that social promotion is achieved by wishing it so, relying on a pair of ruby slippers and a mantra of "There's no place like home." Wait, sorry, that was in Kansas...quite a few steps up from lowly Omaha. —ExplorerCDT 22:16, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Sidenote: Dilettante...one that dabbles in the realm of knowledge. Rather telling, isn't it, that you misspelled the word? -- Postmodernscrew 0:38, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Retort: The detriment of not having spellcheck attached to this edit function. Mind you, it also means superficial and amateurish which in addition to the dabbling denotation is concisely appropriate. However, tomorrow, I'll be the wiser and probably will not spell the word incorrectly again, but in that same tomorrow you'll still be a dilettante,  your little club still insignificant, and this article another day away from being deleted. —ExplorerCDT 01:46, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment - Yeats couldn't spell for toffee, but he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. An ability to demonstrate pedantic snobbery does not make someone notable (or demonstrate that they are not a dilettante), otherwise we would have to write an article for everyone who writes a letter to the Daily Telegraph. Average Earthman 16:35, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Touche. I can spell, just I'm editorially lazy sometimes. Thanks. —ExplorerCDT 16:51, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep -It is with great humeur d'amusant that I regard this argument. Vanity seems to play a great deal in a particular individual's quest to have this article removed.  It is hardly a surprise that this article would draw the attentions of just such an individual who's motives are quite a bit more questionable than the mission of any college secret society, namely the stated mission of the aforementiontioned League.  I vote for the retention of this article.   -- Erostratus 21:50, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * NOTE: User's only edit as of this response ,—ExplorerCDT 23:56, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Retort: Not everyone's against you and your petty, pseudo-sophisticated League, Erostratus. My motives not even close to being questionable and secretive, unlike what you ascribe. Simply, when doing a massive edit on the Secret societies page (where your precious League was listed), I sought to categorize the societies so people knew what they were clicking (Student groups, fraternal orgs, etc.).  Don't believe me?  Read the article's talk page, I gave about two weeks warning. If you notice, I removed quite a lot of insignifant societies from the list (mostly redlinks), and yours was merely one with dubious claims with an article I sought to see the consensus of the VfD request before I removed from the list. I'd like to see how many more of your drinking buddies will jump on here to give a one-time-edit (and thus uncounted) Keep. Enjoy. —ExplorerCDT 23:56, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Xtreme! 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Note that this user is most likely a sock, as his first edit was about 2 hours before this one and has made several single-word VfD votes within the span of a couple minutes. [[User:Livajo|力伟|☺]] 01:31, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Abstain

Comments

 * User Goaway110, while voting to "keep," has recently made two edits to the article, e.g. reducing it to a single sentence:
 * The League of Distinguished Gentlemen does not exist.

Since he presents no evidence for this (e.g. if he knows its a hoax because he knows who perpetrated it), I think this probably counts as vandalism. It certainly doesn't help with the VfD process. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:02, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Page now protected

Due to repeated recent edits which I regard as vandalism, by Goaway110, User:70.182.37.148 and User:70.182.35.191, the page has been protected. I intend to keep it protected for the duration of VfD discussion. Each incident consists of replacing the entire page contents except for the VfD notice with either
 * The League of Distinguished Gentlemen does not exist.

or, in one case,
 * The League of Distinguished Gentlemen does not exist. There is no such organization.

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 13:38, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text: User talk:207.224.170.235

title: User talk:207.224.170.235


text:
Wilton Diptych

The Wilton Diptych (made c. 1395–1399) is a small portable diptych of two hinged panels, painted on both sides, now in the National Gallery, London. It is an extremely rare survival of a late medieval religious panel painting from England. The diptych was painted for King Richard II of England, who is depicted kneeling before the Virgin and Child in what is known as a donor portrait. He is presented to them by (left to right) the English saints King Edmund the Martyr, King Edward the Confessor and patron saint, John the Baptist. The painting is an outstanding example of the International Gothic style, and the nationality of the unknown artist is probably French or English.

Description
The Wilton Diptych is painted on two panels of Baltic oak, set in frames of the same material and joined by two hinges so that it may be closed to protect the inner painting. The inner faces of the panels are in excellent condition for their age, though some glazes have been lost, and the outer faces have paint losses from handling.

The painting is in tempera, the ground paint being mixed with egg yolk and laid in thin glazes. The background and many details are inlaid with gold leaf and in places the panel has been tooled beneath the gilding to enhance the decorative quality. In the panel with the Virgin and Christ Child, the garments are universally blue, the pigment coming from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Richard's robe uses vermilion, another expensive pigment. Some colours have faded; the roses in the angels' hair would originally have been a much deeper pink, and the green grass of the outer hart panel is now much darker than when painted.

Although the figures of the two inner scenes face each other, and interact by gaze and gesture, they are set in different backgrounds. The human figures are on bare rocky ground, with a forest behind, and a gold leaf "sky" decorated with a pattern made by a metal punch. The heavenly figures stand in a flowery meadow, behind which is a gold background patterned by a different punch.

In the left inner panel the kneeling King Richard II is presented by Saints John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr, each holding their attribute. In the right-hand panel the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her arms is surrounded by eleven angels, against a golden background and field of delicately coloured flowers.

Richard's outer robe is of cloth of gold and red vermilion, the fabric decorated with his personal device of the white harts and sprigs of rosemary, the emblem of his wife Anne of Bohemia, who died in 1394. Around his neck is a gold collar with broomscods, seed-pods of Cytisus scoparius, the common broom, which is the planta genista that gave Richard's Plantagenet dynasty its name. They were also the emblem of Charles VI of France, whose daughter he married in 1396. Richard had been given such a collar by Charles in 1393, and wearing one here may indicate a date for the work after Richard's second marriage to the six-year-old Isabella of Valois in 1396. The livery badges worn by both Richard and the angels appear to be made in the fashionable and expensive technique of ronde bosse white enamel on gold; they are comparable to the surviving Dunstable Swan Jewel, probably given by one of Richard's cousins in the House of Lancaster. Richard's badge, but not those of the angels, has pearls tipping the antlers, and may perhaps be based on one of several examples recorded in his treasure roll of 1397, which had pearls and a bed of emeralds for the hind to sit on. A hart badge of Richard's inventoried in the possession of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1435 was set with 22 pearls, two spinels, two sapphires, a ruby and a huge diamond.

Although thematically linked, the composition of the two pictures is quite different in feeling. The scene of Richard and his patrons is very sedate, but full of rich contrasts in colour and texture. The scene of the Virgin and Child is full of energetic movement created by the angels who encircle the mother and child. The predominant brilliant blue gives a precious quality, symbolising the heavenly nature of this apparition. The flowery ground also symbolises the gardens of Paradise. The strong tonal contrast of the angels' wings throw the figures into relief against the background.

When closed, the diptych reveals on one side a white hart or stag, Richard's emblem "gorged" with a golden coronet around its throat and a golden chain, "lodged" (the heraldic term for sitting) on a grassy meadow with branches of Anne's rosemary, with a gold "sky". On the other is a coat of arms with arms associated with King Edward the Confessor impaled with the arms of the Kings of England. These arms were adopted by Richard in about 1395. The arms of Edward were a later invention, as coats of arms had not been invented in the eleventh century when he lived.

Iconography and date
The identity of the kneeling king is certain because he and the angels surrounding the Virgin are wearing badges with Richard's livery, the White Hart, which also appears in the brocade of the left panel and the outside of the diptych. As Richard kneels, the Christ Child reaches towards him in benediction and also reaches towards the pennant held by an angel, and significantly placed between them. This pennant is the symbol of Richard's kingship and of the Kingdom of England as a whole. It bears the Cross of St George, the symbol of England, and surmounting the staff is an orb on which is a tiny map of England, or Ireland, where Richard was campaigning in 1394–95. The probable sense is that the pennant has just been presented by Richard. The liveried angels, iconographically very unusual, are a strangely precise anticipation of the lines from Shakespeare's Richard II of two hundred years later:
 * The breath of worldly men cannot depose
 * The deputy elected by the Lord:
 * For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd
 * To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
 * God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
 * A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,
 * Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right. (Act III Scene 2)

It is possible that Shakespeare had seen the picture, then still in the Royal Collection.

Apparently beginning relatively harmlessly in the reign of Richard's grandfather Edward III in a context of tournaments and courtly celebrations, by Richard's reign livery badges had come to be seen as a social menace, and were "one of the most protracted controversies of Richard's reign", as they were used to denote the small private armies of retainers kept by lords, largely for the purpose of enforcing their lord's will on the less powerful in his area. Though they were surely a symptom rather than a cause of both local baronial bullying and the disputes between the king and his uncles and other lords, Parliament repeatedly tried to curb the use of livery badges.

The issuing of badges by lords was attacked in the Parliament of 1384, and in 1388 they made the startling request that "all liveries called badges [signes], as well of our lord the king as of other lords ... shall be abolished", because "those who wear them are flown with such insolent arrogance that they do not shrink from practising with reckless effrontery various kinds of extortion in the surrounding countryside ... and it is certainly the boldness inspired by these badges that makes them unafraid to do these things". Richard offered to give up his own badges, to the delight of the House of Commons of England, but the House of Lords refused to give up theirs, and the matter was put off. In 1390 it was ordered that no one below the rank of banneret should issue badges, and no one below the rank of esquire wear them.

The issue was apparently quiet for a few years, but from 1397 Richard issued increasingly large numbers of badges to retainers who misbehaved (his "Cheshire archers" being especially notorious), and in the Parliament of 1399, after his deposition, several of his leading supporters were forbidden from issuing "badges of signes" again, and a statute was passed allowing only the king (now Henry IV) to issue badges, and only to those ranking as esquires and above, who were only to wear them in his presence. In the end it took a determined campaign by Henry VII to largely stamp out the use of livery badges by others than the king, and reduce them to things normally worn only by household servants.

All three saints who present the kneeling Richard to the Virgin and Child are believed to have been venerated by the king, as each has his own chapel in Westminster Abbey. Each saint holds the symbolic attribute by which they are recognised in art. Edmund the Martyr, who stands to the left, holds the arrow which killed him in 869, while Edward the Confessor, at the centre, holds the ring he gave to a pilgrim who transpired to be the disguised John the Evangelist. John the Baptist (right) holds his symbol, the Lamb of God.

The scene makes reference to King Richard's birth on 6 January, the feast of Epiphany, when Christ was adored by three kings, often depicted in similar compositions to this. At this date the feast of the Baptism of Christ by John the Baptist was celebrated on the same day and the figure of John in his usual hermit's dress, carrying a lamb, recalls the shepherds, whose visit after the birth of Christ was often combined in the same scene as the visit of the Magi or three kings. That two of the presenting saints are kings may also evoke a contemporary story that Richard's birth in Bordeaux in France was attended by the Kings of Castile, Navarre, and Portugal. John the Baptist was Richard's patron saint, and Saint Edward and Saint Edmund had both been English kings. Richard had a special devotion to Edmund, who with St. George is one of the patron saints of England.

The diptych also serves as a family portrait of Richard's family and immediate antecedents. There is a strong resemblance between the three saints, and it has been suggested they represent not just Saints Edmund, Edward the Confessor, and John the Baptist, but also either Edward III (Richard's immediate predecessor) with his sons Edward the Black Prince (Richard's father) and John of Gaunt (Richard's uncle, and a powerful figure during Richard's youth); or, alternatively, the Black Prince doubled with the Baptist (the Black Prince, like John the Baptist, was never a king, and the Baptist takes the most paternal role in the scene), Edward III doubled with the Confessor, and Edward III's father Edward II doubled with Edmund the Martyr (like Edmund, Edward II was a murdered king; Richard revered Edward, and tried to have him canonised in 1395). The Virgin Mary is considered to represent Richard's mother, Joan of Kent, and the infant Jesus to be Edward of Angoulême, Richard's older brother who died in childhood.

The date of the Wilton Diptych has been the subject of considerable controversy among art historians. The National Gallery follow a broad current consensus in dating the painting to the last five years of Richard's reign, but dates between 1377 and about 1413 have been proposed. Richard was born in 1367, and the portrait seems to be of a younger man than the twenty-eight-year-old he was in 1395. It has been suggested that the eleven angels each represent a year of his age at the start of his actual reign, which began in 1377, when he gave eleven of the coins called angels to "Our Lady of the Pew" at Westminster Abbey. The painting would then have been made more than fifteen years later to commemorate the moment. Alternatively the painting might represent Richard's reception into heaven after his death in 1400, though given the circumstances of his deposition, who would have commissioned such a work in the next reign is unclear.

The number of angels (eleven) is unusual and has still not been satisfactorily explained. It is in contradiction with the iconography of the heavenly court of the Virgin, because in medieval iconography the number eleven has extremely negative symbolism. Considering the Biblical exegesis and medieval number symbolism, a possible interpretation of the enigmatic number of angels can be found in the Biblical motif of the second dream of young Joseph (Genesis 37:9) in which the number eleven exceptionally has a positive meaning because it implicates the celestial twelve. The sun, the moon and eleven stars that in Joseph's dream are bowing down to him are completed by Joseph himself, who according to medieval exegesis is to be taken for a twelfth star. Having in mind the historical evidence of Richard II's personal regal iconography of the anointed king and the documented Biblical allusions, it seems that the motif of youthful Joseph honoured in his dream by the sun, representing the Christ, the moon, representing the Virgin and eleven stars representing his brothers offers a significant parallel to the vision of the heavenly court with Jesus Christ, the Virgin and eleven angelic courtiers appearing in front of the eyes of King Richard II.

The painting is indicative of both Richard's belief in his divine right to rule and his genuine Christian devotion. It also importantly symbolises (in the form of the Pennant), Richard II giving his kingdom into the hands of the Holy Virgin, thereby continuing a long tradition by which England was known as "Our Lady's Dowry" and was thought to be specially under her protection. Another painting, now lost, showed Richard and Anne offering the Virgin an orb representing England, with the inscription "This is your dowry, O Holy Virgin, wherefore, O Mary, may you rule over it".

Authorship

The artist, sometimes referred to as the "Wilton Master", has never been identified, or associated with other panel paintings, and the closest resemblances to his style come in some illuminated manuscripts from the 1410s. At this period it was common in Northern Europe for panel paintings, still made in very small numbers, to be made by artists with a background in illumination. The date of the painting, at a time when the International Gothic style was at its most similar in several courts in Europe, makes identifying the nationality of its painter more difficult. It is possible that the painter was English, but apart from the Westminster portrait of Richard, now unlike the Diptych much overpainted, there are too few comparable works to establish in what style the recorded English painters worked.

The artist has been proposed as coming from "every possible nation", but France seems the most likely, with Italy another possibility, and some art historians point to the possibility of a Bohemian artist, perhaps brought to England by Richard II's first wife, Anne of Bohemia. The exquisite quality of the painting is thought by most art historians to indicate that the artist was probably from northern France. It shows similarities to the manuscript painting of Pol de Limbourg, but like the other surviving portrait of Richard, in Westminster Abbey, is also closely related in themes to paintings made in Prague for Anne's father Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and her brother Wenceslas, King of the Romans.

Provenance
The painting was drawn and issued as a print by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1639, with a dedication to King Charles I. It was documented in 1649 in an inventory of the art collection of King Charles I who had been given it by Sir James Palmer, a Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber. It passed to the Earls of Pembroke who kept it at Wilton House, from which it takes its name, until it was bought by the National Gallery in 1929. That it remained intact is remarkable because little religious pictorial art survived the Puritan iconoclasm that followed the execution of Charles I.

title: Wilton Diptych


text:
User talk:BlueNovember

Projects

 * Requested articles: CompSci/Computing/Internet
 * User:BlueNovember/Shogi template.
 * Template_talk:Formal_languages_and_grammars
 * Chess variant
 * This investigation over this and this edit

Articles I will eventually start or am working on
Primarily a note to myself, but please message me if you want input and came here from special:link

Graphics

 * CgFX
 * COLLADA FX Cg
 * up tack
 * Cutset conditioning
 * Gupta-Sproull antialiasing
 * viewport (redirects to window, for some strange reason)
 * affine case
 * Chain code

IR

 * Hough transform

Compiler Design

 * Sentential form
 * Screener (Parsing). (=Tokeniser/Tokenizer? Ie Lexical_analysis. )
 * Attribute (Parsing). Fix Property (programming) and Attribute (computing). (Attribute (computer science) and some redirects?)
 * Tombstone diagram

Agents, Deals, & Negotiation

 * Auction_theory -> Expand
 * Continuous double auction, + redirect Continuous double auctions
 * Simultaneous ascending auction, + redirect Simultaneous ascending auctions
 * Concurrent MetateM
 * Gabbay's separation theorem
 * AAII -> AAII (disambiguation), AAII (agent)
 * Gaia disambig addition for Gaia (agent)
 * MAXIMS / Pattie Maes

Auction & Argumentation theory

 * Conflict deal / The conflict deal +case redirections
 * Product maximising mechanism
 * Mixed deal encounter & General mixed deal encounter
 * Visceral argument
 * Viscus/Visceral redirect note once above is made
 * Add derogation rate discussion to Vickery auction.
 * Monotonic concession protocol
 * Zeuthen Strategy

Scripting languages

 * Safe Tcl (and update Tcl page)

Logic

 * S1S
 * Monadic second-order logic -> Partial link in Second-order_logic

Search

 * Minimax
 * Alpha-beta pruning
 * Quiescence search, Killer heuristic
 * Transposition table, Zobrist hashing
 * Expectiminimax

AI

 * DHP
 * Dynamic itemset counting

Game Theory

 * (WikiProject Game theory)
 * Lemke-Howson / Lemke-Howson algorithm
 * Best response condition - The best response condition says: any i in the support of x must be a pure best response to the mixed strategy y if x is to be a best response against y . An equilibrium (x,y) is given if x is a best response to y and y is a best response to x.source.
 * Connect4 Perfect play stuff (fhourstone, Valena, Mustrum)
 * Kuhn’s theorem (a player who has perfect recall can always replace a mixed strategy by an equivalent behaviour strategy)
 * Perfect recall (Game theory) Player has total recall if all of his nodes in any information set are preceeded by the same set of moves.
 * Information set (game theory) - Really needs a better picture and a re-write.
 * Klee-minty cube
 * Gale evenness condition
 * Pigou bound

History

 * Create Birkbeck College Project.
 * Stub section in Birkbeck College. Update Andrew Donald Booth accordingly.
 * See: 1, 2, 3, "A history of Computing Technology, Michael R, 2nd ed, section 8.3.1 page 321".
 * Link Colossus_computer and Max_Newman
 * Create Newman's "Computing Machine Laboratory" article. More correctly named "Royal Society Computer Laboratory"?
 * Contact RC re: IBM Hursley. See also Hursley House.
 * Add redirects at Hursley Laboratories, Hursley Laboratoratory, etc.
 * IBM's John Haanstra and his role in the 1401 deployment, GPD's president, and System/360 deployment. Linkify his name in IBM 1401.

Misc

 * Loose coupling / Coupling_(computer_science)

Tech

 * Portal:Technology and applied sciences
 * Portal:Information technology
 * Portal:Computer science
 * Portal:Computer security
 * Portal:Artificial intelligence

Culture

 * WikiProject Board and table games
 * Category:WikiProject Games
 * Portal:Constructed languages
 * WikiProject Languages
 * Pages needing attention/Linguistics
 * WikiProject Languages/Template
 * Category:Wikipedia articles with nonstandard pronunciation

Tagging

 * Template_messages
 * user name or IP

Stubs

 * WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types

Antivandal Tools

 * Administrator intervention against vandalism – for quick action in clear cases
 * Abuse reports – for reporting abusive IP addresses to ISPs
 * Cleaning up vandalism
 * Template messages/User talk namespace – a grid of templates that may be used on user talk pages
 * Vandal Templates

Icarus Paradox
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Icarus Paradox, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add  to the top of Icarus Paradox. Blanchardb- Me • MyEars • MyMouth -timed 00:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Rawr, someone kindly restored/expanded the page with citations. Thanks for the heads up anyway. --BlueNovember (talk) 14:46, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Klee-Minty cube
Hi! You indicated an interest in the Klee-Minty cube. A variant of this cube appears as an example on which the Criss-cross algorithm for linear optimization visits all the corners (like Dantzig's simplex algorithm does). The criss-cross article is new, and it has been nominated for Did You Know?. Your comments and suggestions and corrections would be especially valuable. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 03:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You've done a great job! Very speedy work. I don't think I have anything to add to this variation. -- BlueNovember (talk • contribs) 22:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

 * Thanks! If the spirit moves you to introduce the KM inequality for 3 dimensions or to generate a graphic, then I would celebrate your contributions.

 * For a shorter project, maybe you could check whether the updated DYK nomination has been approved?

 * Thanks again! Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 14:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Dynamic itemset counting

The article Dynamic itemset counting has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
 * WP:NOTABILITY, orphan, stub

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. 178.2.54.39 (talk) 21:02, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of XConsortium for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article XConsortium is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/XConsortium until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Rathfelder (talk) 22:26, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

title: User talk:BlueNovember


text:
Theodor Innitzer

Theodor Innitzer (25 December 1875 – 9 October 1955) was Archbishop of Vienna and a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Early life
Innitzer was born in Neugeschrei (Nové Zvolání), part of the town Weipert (Vejprty) in Bohemia, at that time Austria-Hungary, (now Czech Republic). He was the son of a passementier Wilhelm Innitzer in Vejprty, later a textile factory worker, and his wife Maria born Seidl, daughter of a mining clerk. After completing the minimum mandatory school, Innitzer became an apprentice in a textile factory. The dean of his home parish supported young Theodor, thus paving the way for him to attend higher schools (Gymnasium) in Kaaden.

Ecclesiastical career

 * 1898 – entered the seminary in Vienna
 * 1902 – priestly ordination
 * 1906 – doctorate in theology
 * 1908 to 1911 Privatdozent at the University of Vienna
 * 1911 to 1932 professor and (from 1913) chair for New Testament Exegesis
 * 1928 to 1929 rector of the University of Vienna
 * 1929 to 1930 Minister of Social Affairs in the third government of Chancellor Johann Schober
 * 1932 consecrated archbishop of Vienna
 * 1933 name a cardinal

The Anschluss
Innitzer's role in early 20th century Austrian history remains disputed because of his involvement in politics. Despite early support for the Anschluss, Innitzer became a critic of National Socialism and was subject to further violent intimidation.

This assessment stems from his cooperation with the Austro-fascist government of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt Schuschnigg from 1934 to 1938, which based many of its economic and social policies on the teachings of the Catholic Church. He and the other Austrian Catholic bishops signed a declaration endorsing the Anschluss, set up by Gauleiter Josef Bürckel, and signed by Innitzer with "Heil Hitler!". Without the bishops' consent, the Nazi regime disseminated this statement throughout the German Reich.

Vatican Radio had recently broadcast a vehement denunciation of the Nazi action, and Cardinal Pacelli (soon to become Pope Pius XII) ordered Innitzer to report to the Vatican. Before meeting with Pius XI, Innitzer met with Pacelli, who had been outraged by Innitzer's statement. He made it clear that Innitzer needed to retract and was made to sign a new statement, issued on behalf of all the Austrian bishops, which asserted that "the solemn declaration of the Austrian bishops ... was clearly not intended to be an approval of something that was not and is not compatible with God's law." The Vatican newspaper also reported that the bishops' earlier statement had been issued without the approval of the Holy See.

Nazi intimidation
In April 1938, in honour of Hitler's birthday, Cardinal Innitzer had ordered that all Austrian churches fly the swastika flag, ring bells, and pray for Hitler. Innitzer also called a day of prayer in the Cathedral of St. Stephen of Vienna for 7 October 1938, which was attended by almost 9,000 people, mostly young people. In the sermon, Innitzer declared that "we must confess our faith in our Führer, for there is just one Führer: Jesus Christ." Nazi leaders were angered: about 100 Nazis, among them many older members of the Hitler Youth, ransacked the archbishop's residence the next day. In Britain, the Catholic Herald provided the following contemporary account on 14 October 1938:

World War II
Innitzer's ambiguous relationship with the Nazi regime brought him a lot of criticism after World War II (he was referred to as the "Heil Hitler Cardinal"). During the war, Innitzer was critical of the anti-Semitic and racist policies of the Nazis towards the Austrian Jews and the Catholic gypsies of the Austrian countryside.

He openly, though moderately, supported the war effort against the Soviet Union, however. Years before, he had campaigned against Soviet policies. In 1933, based on data collected by undercover investigation and photographs, Innitzer sought to raise awareness in the West of the Holodomor and even cases of cannibalism that were occurring in Ukraine and the North Caucasus at that time.

In October 1944, Innitzer preached in the parish of Vienna-Reindorf, which also included members of the NSDAP local group who listened and wrote a report about it. They reported that Innitzer attributed the war to God directly; he saw it as a punishment for lukewarm participation in church life: children not receiving Communion, absolution in confession, or religious instruction at school. Seminaries were closing, and only one sixth of Catholics attended Holy Mass. The report understood this as indirect criticism of the National Socialist government, since their measures had suppressed the church's influence.

Writings

 * John the Baptist. Illustrated according to the scriptures and tradition by Theodor Innitzer. Mayer, Vienna 1908.
 * Commentary on the Gospel of Healing Luke, excluding the story of suffering. (Revised by Franz Xaver Pölzl. 2nd edition, especially by Theodor Innitzer.) Graz u. Vienna 1912.
 * Court Councilor Dr. Ms. X. Pölzl. Styria, Graz 1915.
 * Commentary on the Gospel of St. Mark, excluding the history of suffering. (Founded by Franz Xaver Pölzl. 3rd revised edition, especially by Theodor Innitzer.) Graz u. Vienna 1916.
 * Brief commentary on the Four Holy Gospels. (Founded by Franz Xaver Poelzl continued by Theodor Innitzer. 4 verb. Edition) Graz 1928.
 * The Religion of the Earth in detail. (Together with Fritz Wilke.) Leipzig u. Vienna 1929.
 * The Holy Year and Peace. In: Hermann Hoffmann: The Church and Peace. 1,933th
 * He is risen! Pictures by Josef von Führich. Statement by Theodor Innitzer. Bernina, Vienna 1949.
 * Letter of Faith. Herder, Vienna 1939–40
 * "What are we doing ourselves?" Cardinal Archbishop Theodor Innitzer u. Archbishop coadjutor Franz Jachym call for help for young families. Catholic family work of the Archdiocese of Vienna, Vienna 1951.

Kardinal Innitzer Prize
The Archdiocese of Vienna annually awards the Kardinal-Innitzer-Preis to scientists and scholars.

Cultural references
In the 1963 movie The Cardinal, Innitzer was played by Josef Meinrad. The film portrays the Anschluss, the bishops' statement, and Nazis looting Innitzer's residence.

title: Theodor Innitzer


text:
User talk:ABraidotti

Graduate student of literature. I like to learn.

title: User talk:ABraidotti


text:
User:EventHorizon

About me
After an absence lasting about a year and a half, I reintroduced myself to Wikipedia on December 3, 2004. As of February 11, I have 653 edits on this account.

I have strong views on ethical issues related to the Internet and Wikipedia. Forgive me if I voice them loudly; it's nothing personal.

I recently completed a month's worth of research on the "Ambition controversy" to satisfy my curiosity about the matter. The findings are below, and I believe them to be a neutral presentation of the facts. Feel free to comment if you disagree.

Mission statement
I was a Wikipedia contributor during 2003, and left that summer because of building incivility. Wikipedia ceased to be what it once was, a wonderful idea in practice, but increasingly over-run by the barbarians.

I've come back because I've realized that this project is important and that, really, the only way to fix it is to fight. By proving myself a valuable contributor, I will gain the recognition, then respect, of this community so I can right it.

I will be harshly critical of users, particularly sysops, who I judge to be detrimental to civility and the Wikipedia community. I hope no one takes this too personally.

Created article

 * 1993 North American storm complex1
 * Common knowledge
 * Energy (motivational)
 * Human extinction
 * I'd Hit It
 * January thaw
 * Little Nicky (disambiguation)
 * Pet cloning
 * Pressure system
 * Singularity (climate)
 * Sept (slang)
 * Split dollar game
 * Sucks
 * Texas hold 'em hands
 * Winter storm1

1 Used one or more pre-existing articles, major revisions and page moving.

Major revisions

 * Black cat
 * Celebrity
 * Class in the contemporary United States
 * Foot binding
 * Gin rummy
 * Necrophilia
 * Nouveau riche
 * Numeracy
 * Social hierarchy
 * Suction
 * Vitality curve

Mid-size revisions

 * Fuck
 * Grade (education)
 * Matias Reyes
 * Rape

Hall of shame
Users who have vandalized my user page:

 * User:Zipper (Dec. 13, 2004)
 * User:Scluum (Feb. 1, 2005)

Discussions and other topics

 * Ask an Expert? (December 26, 2004)
 * Findings on Ambition Controversy (January 19, 2005)
 * Next danger to United States (February 7, 2005)

title: User:EventHorizon


text:
Orthostatic intolerance

Orthostatic intolerance (OI) is the development of symptoms when standing upright that are relieved when reclining. There are many types of orthostatic intolerance. OI can be a subcategory of dysautonomia, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system occurring when an individual stands up. Some animal species with orthostatic hypotension have evolved to cope with orthostatic disturbances.

A substantial overlap is seen between syndromes of orthostatic intolerance on the one hand, and either chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia  on the other. It affects more women than men (female-to-male ratio is at least 4:1), usually under the age of 35. OI can also be a symptom of mitochondrial cytopathy.

Orthostatic intolerance occurs in humans because standing upright is a fundamental stressor, so requires rapid and effective circulatory and neurologic compensations to maintain blood pressure, cerebral blood flow, and consciousness. When a human stands, about 750 ml of thoracic blood are abruptly translocated downward. People who have OI lack the basic mechanisms to compensate for this deficit. Changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and cerebral blood flow that produce OI may be caused by abnormalities in the interactions between blood volume control, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, and circulation control system.

Signs and symptoms
Orthostatic intolerance is divided, roughly based on patient history, in two variants: acute and chronic.

Acute OI
Patients who have acute OI usually manifest the disorder by a temporary loss of consciousness and posture, with rapid recovery (simple faints, or syncope), as well as remaining conscious during their loss of posture. This is different from a syncope caused by cardiac problems because the triggers for the fainting spell (standing, heat, emotion) and identifiable prodromal symptoms (nausea, blurred vision, headache) are known. As Dr. Julian M. Stewart, an expert in OI from New York Medical College states, "Many syncopal patients have no intercurrent illness; between faints, they are well."

Symptoms:
 * Altered vision (blurred vision, "white outs"/gray outs, black outs, double vision)
 * Anxiety
 * Exercise intolerance
 * Fatigue
 * Headache
 * Heart palpitations, as the heart races to compensate for the falling blood pressure
 * Hyperpnea or sensation of difficulty breathing or swallowing (see also hyperventilation syndrome)
 * Lightheadedness
 * Sweating
 * Tremulousness
 * Weakness

A classic manifestation of acute OI is a soldier who faints after standing rigidly at attention for an extended period of time.

Chronic OI
Patients with chronic orthostatic intolerance have symptoms on most or all days. Their symptoms may include most of the symptoms of acute OI, plus:
 * Nausea
 * Neurocognitive deficits, such as attention problems
 * Pallor
 * Sensitivity to heat
 * Sleep problems
 * Other vasomotor symptoms.

Causes
Symptoms of OI are triggered by:
 * An upright posture for long periods (e.g. standing in line, standing in a shower, or even sitting at a desk)
 * A warm environment (e.g. hot summer weather, a hot crowded room, a hot shower or bath, after exercise)
 * Emotionally stressful events (seeing blood or gory scenes, being scared or anxious)
 * Return from an extended stay in space, when the body is not yet readapted to gravity
 * Extended bedrest
 * Inadequate fluid and salt intake.

Diagnosis
Many patients go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and either untreated or treated for other disorders. Current tests for OI (tilt table test, NASA Lean Test, adapted Autonomic Profile (aAP), autonomic assessment, and vascular integrity) can also specify and simplify treatment. Patients with dysautonomia symptoms can be referred to a cardiologist, neurologist, or even a gastroenterologist for treatment and management.

Management
Most patients experience an improvement of their symptoms, but for some, OI can be gravely disabling and can be progressive in nature, particularly if it is caused by an underlying condition that is deteriorating. The ways in which symptoms present themselves vary greatly from patient to patient; as a result, individualized treatment plans are necessary.

OI is treated pharmacologically and non-pharmacologically. Treatment does not cure OI; rather, it controls symptoms.

Physicians who specialize in treating OI agree that the single most important treatment is drinking more than 2 liters (8 cups) of fluids each day. A steady, large supply of water or other fluids reduces most, and for some patients all, of the major symptoms of this condition. Typically, patients fare best when they drink a glass of water no less frequently than every two hours during the day, instead of drinking a large quantity of water at a single point in the day.

For most severe cases and some milder cases, a combination of medications is used. Individual responses to different medications vary widely, and a drug that dramatically improves one patient's symptoms may make another patient's symptoms much worse. Medications focus on three main issues:

Medications that increase blood volume:
 * Fludrocortisone (Florinef)
 * Erythropoietin
 * Hormonal contraception

Medications that inhibit acetylcholinesterase:
 * Pyridostigmine

Medications that improve vasoconstriction:
 * Stimulants: (e.g., Ritalin or Dexedrine)
 * Midodrine (ProAmatine)
 * Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (Sudafed)
 * Theophylline (low-dose)
 * Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs - Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil)

Behavioral changes that patients with OI can make are:
 * Avoiding triggers such as prolonged sitting, quiet standing, warm environments, or vasodilating medications
 * Using postural maneuvers and pressure garments
 * Treating co-existing medical conditions
 * Increasing fluid and salt intake
 * Physical therapy and exercise

Notable case
A notable person with OI is Greg Page, founding member and original lead singer of the Australian children's music group The Wiggles. Due to being diagnosed with this illness, Page left the group in late 2006, and was replaced by his understudy, Sam Moran. Two years later in late 2008, he went on to create his own fund for OI to help fund research into this then-little known disorder. Page recovered enough to temporarily return to The Wiggles in early 2012 to help with the transition to the next generation of Wiggles, after which he again left the group at the end of 2012 and was replaced by Emma Watkins and again by Tsehay Hawkins.

title: Orthostatic intolerance


text:
New Communist Party of the Netherlands

The New Communist Party of the Netherlands (Nieuwe Communistische Partij Nederland, NCPN) is a communist party in the Netherlands. The NCPN was founded in 1992 by the former members of the Communist Party of the Netherlands to oppose CPN's merger into the left-wing GroenLinks. These members have been known as "the Horizontals". Through the Stichting HOC (Foundation HOC), the NCPN releases the monthly newspaper Manifest.

The NCPN actively supports the socialist government of Cuba. The party opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and is against Dutch military intervention through NATO or other military alliances. The party considers itself anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist. It opposes both the active intervention of the EU and NATO in Ukraine but also the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It believes that a Leninist view of anti-imperialism is not choosing sides in a inter-imperialist conflict.

The NCPN claims to work to preserve the heritage of the Dutch communist movement through commemoration of events like the February strike, holding that anti-communist laws in Europe and the normalisation of far-right ideas are erasing this legacy. The party also participates in the struggle against discrimination towards women and minorities with a migrant background, and is against homophobia and transphobia.

Although the party only has limited electoral successes to date, it claims not to shun elections and instead purports to work with trade unions and other similar organisations to advance its agenda. According to a party report, "the NCPN participates in elections to the best of its ability" and views "bourgeois representative bodies" as platforms to promote its agenda.

In 2003, the Communist Youth Movement (CJB) was founded as the NCPN's political youth organization. According to a statement from the NCPN after its 7th conference, the CJB contributed to a revival of the party in terms of membership and lowered the average age of its members.

History
In 1982, a group of members of the Communist Party of the Netherlands founded the newspaper Manifest, out of discontent with the CPN leadership. In 1984 this group founded the League of Communists in the Netherlands (VCN). The CPN dissolved in 1992 in order to make place for a new political party, GreenLeft, an alliance in which the CPN had participated since the 1980s. Subsequently, the VCN, together with many former members of the CPN, founded the NCPN.

In 1999, the local branch of the NCPN in the municipality of Scheemda split from the party and continued as the United Communist Party (VCP), which has since won city council seats in Oldambt and Pekela.

Elections
The NCPN has participated in elections to the Tweede Kamer, Provinciale Staten and gemeenteraden, but never in elections to the European Parliament. In the period between 1994 and 2002, the NCPN was part of the governing majority coalition in the municipality of Reiderland.

International activity
The NCPN has participated in the annual International Communist Seminar and the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. The NCPN also often cooperates with fraternal parties like the Communist Party of Greece, Communist Party of Turkey, Communist Party of Cuba,  Communist Party of Belgium, German Communist Party and the Communist Party of Luxembourg.

title: New Communist Party of the Netherlands


text:
User:Vampyre

User :: Vampyre
This page is about me and my contributions to WikiPedia.

This page is still being written. Please click reload in 5 seconds, and then every 5 seconds after that, until I've added something. In the meantime, I'm taking a nap. Good luck!

Preamble
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Construction
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Personalia
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Interests
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title: User:Vampyre


text: User talk:199.80.146.101

title: User talk:199.80.146.101


text: User talk:199.80.146.107

title: User talk:199.80.146.107