text:
Talk:Kusarigama

I went ahead and rewrote most of this.
The Inuyasha stuff was nice, especially since I wrote it three months ago on an anime discussion board, but I'm not entirely sure why it was placed here, so I got rid of that.

I could go into a paragraph or two about *why* you can't swing the sickle-end around and expect to hit anything, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the article.

Question for previous editor: How is the kusarigama *not* derived from the kama?

Scribe--69.168.38.86 07:15, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

since it was apparently stolen

i think that you statement about throwing only the weight is incorrect. iseing the Kama end gives it a 10 foot reach AND the chance to entangle. Oh, well.
 * It just not practical. The way it spins in mid-air (around its axis, rather than along it) severely reduces any chance of cutting or piercing the target.  Plus, if the blade wraps around an opponent's arm, you've given them a weapon to use against you.  Also, per the above statement, I think it IS worth mentioning that the blade isn't commonly thrown, as depicted in fiction, but specific examples aren't necessary. --71.176.47.75 (talk) 17:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Question about name
I did a bit of editing and clean-up, but I didn't add any text/info. One question, though.... The article uses two different ways to spell/punctuate the name of this weapon:  "kusarigama" and "kusari-gama". Is one more correct than the other? Does it matter? It would be good to be consistant within the article, but I have little/no expertise in the subjects of Japanese language (or translation thereof) OR martial arts weapons, I don't know what to do. Any suggestions? Mutableye 02:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think "Kusarigama" is better than "Kusari-gama" as the latter could be mistaken to be a combined form of "kusari" and "gama". --Revth 03:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * As with most issues of Romanizing Japanese, it's essentially a moot issue. The only truly correct way to write a Japanese word is with Japanese orthography, so the best we can do without learning kana and kanji is to approximate.  Now, on the one hand, the word is compounded using regular, systematic rules.  On the other hand, it is a fixed phrase that regularly applies to a very similar and recognizable object every time it is used.  It's probably also important that -gama isn't a regularly suffixed form to other words, like -shi (city) or similar classifiers that normally tend to take hyphens when Romanized.  Ultimately, all those facts remain fairly pointless, as I still can't conclude whether the sum of various factors prefers for or against the hyphen.  I really don't think it's wrong either way.  Tsunomaru (talk) 07:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure how to change this, but a Kama isn't the same as a sickle, despite the remark in the opening paragraph. If anyone knows how to change opening paragraphs, would you mind doing so?

tomAto/tomOto
I was under the impression that it was Kasurigama. I've seen it spelled this way before but which way is right? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stupidninja (talk • contribs) 19:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC).
 * "kusarigama". People who know no or little Japanese often commit typographical errors when copying Romanized Japanese they've seen somewhere -- since that's a lot of letters, and native English speakers don't have any good self-correcting instincts for foreign words -- and that's most likely what happened when you saw it the wrong way.  Tsunomaru (talk) 16:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Fortification Weapon
Is this really a "Fortification weapon"? I was thinking it was more of a "Personal Weapon". 24.10.168.198 (talk) 05:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

 * Sure; as the articles says, "Kusarigama have also been employed as anti-siege weapons, with the chain allowing the weapon to be retrieved after it was thrown downwards at an attacking force." --Gwern (contribs) 02:22 7 June 2008 (GMT)

In popular culture (WAY too much trivia, needs to be selected and re-edited)

 * In InuYasha, Sango's brother, Kohaku, uses the kusarigama as his weapon.
 * Axl Low from the Guilty Gear series uses a kusarigama, though his has two sickles on the chain.
 * Hattori Hanzo from the Samurai Warriors series is portrayed as a ninja who uses a kusarigama, albeit using the aforementioned "sickle as the primary weapon" form. He also appears with this weapon in Warriors Orochi.
 * In the anime/manga series, Bleach, Mayuri Kurotsuchi uses a kusarigama, which he pulls from his ear.
 * In the anime/manga series, Bleach, Jinnai Doukou uses a kusarigama bakkōtō which he devours to unleash its power.
 * In the anime/manga series, Bleach, Shuhei Hisagi's zanpakutō is a kusarigama-like weapon that uses an extra sickle instead of a weighted chain. The two blades of each end of the weapon also resemble axial fans, in that they can rotate freely.
 * Kusari from Sluggy Freelance is a female ninja/assassin named after the weapon, and wields either a kama or a kusarigama as her weapon of choice.
 * Vagabond depicts a 'Tsujikaze Kōhei' (in-universe, the successor to the real Shishidō Baiken and responsible for the weapon's notoriety) wielding the kusarigama with the weighted end as the primary attack, and the mechanical aspects of the technique (in particular the reach and range) are crucial to his duel with Musashi; his defeat comes not from the use of a throwing knife, but from Musashi surprising him by intentionally drawing both swords; Musashi simply allowed the short sword to be the one entangled and then struck Baiken with the long sword. (In the historical encounter between Baiken and Musashi, Baiken died.)
 * In the manga Soul Eater, a kusarigama that uses an extra sickle instead of a weighted chain is the primary weapon form of Black Star's weapon Tsubaki — though she often takes the forms of other ninja weapons and tools.
 * Leinheart from Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom can wield kusarigama as one of his main weapons.
 * Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden 2 can wield a kusarigama as one of his weapons.
 * Anubis from Ronin Warriors uses a kusarigama with a bladed weight as his weapon of choice.
 * in Ruronuni Kenshin, during the Shishio Arc, the crossdresser Honjō Kamatari uses a large very heavy version of a kusarigama, called a Ogama.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.58.180.16 (talk) 22:47, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * In Curse of the Golden Flower, the emperors assassins wielded a Chinese version of these
 * Kusari-Gama is an Equipment card in the trading card game Magic: the Gathering.
 * The kusarigama is the weapon of choice for the female Backlash character in the Wildstorm Comics universe and upcoming WildC.A.T.s World's End
 * In Bobobo, the kusarigama is often used as comic relief
 * In Samurai Showdown, the character Earthquake wields an enormous kusarigama.
 * In the anime Samurai Champloo, the character Umanosuke uses a special sickle which turns into an incredibly long kusarigama when fighting the character Mugen.
 * In the video game of the manga/anime series One Piece, (One Piece: Unlimited Adventure and One Piece: Unlimited Cruise), Luffy has an attacks that is Gomu Gomu no Kusarigama (English: Gum Gum Sickle).
 * In the anime series and video game Naruto, Tenten uses a Kusarigama on some occasions
 * "Kusarigama" is the name of one of Aoi Umenokouji's kicking moves in the Virtua Fighter series. It is basically an Aikido axe kick.
 * On SpikeTV's Deadliest Warrior, the kusarigama was one of the Ninja's weapons. It was tested against the Spartan's shield. The sickle couldn't penetrate the armor of the Spartan, but the ball & chain could provide enough force to kill the Spartan. The Kusarigama provided the ninja 220 kills for it's 347 kills in 1,000 simulated battle against the Spartan.
 * Kenji from the game Red Earth uses the Kusarigama in several of his attacks.
 * On the show Deadliest Warrior, the Kusarigama is said to be disguised as a Sickle when in use by a ninja.
 * In the 1989 video game Budokan: The Martial Spirit, an opponent named "Hiroshi Ikeda" uses Kusarigama as his weapon.

See what I did with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuriken#In_popular_culture or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sai_(weapon)#In_popular_culture for example.

Okay, I guess I already did it :) --Ostateczny Krach Systemu Korporacji (talk) 15:19, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The most effective of the ninja weapons tested on deadliest warrior?
Didn't the kusarigama earn the ninja the majority if their kills on deadliest warrior. If so shouldn't it be mentioned that it was the most effective of all their weapons on the show in its trivia entry? --WikiDonn (talk) 22:31, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Kusarigamajutsu Merge
I think that Kusarigamajutsu should be merged into this article because it doesn't really add anything new, but just regurgitates what was said in this article's summary. Ora Stendar 23:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

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Oh-Gama (Big Sickle)
Variation or different weapon? 89.201.199.104 (talk) 20:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, the weapon is said to have the highest mortality rate of any and all weapons of its time.
For whom? The users? The opponents? If the latter: what is "mortality rate" based on? This feels less like an encyclopedic entry than a fanboi addition. 165.1.194.41 (talk) 08:41, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That was there before I expanded the article and I assumed good faith that this part matched the page number. Though, anyone is fully capable of removing it per Wikipedia being the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. SL93 (talk) 13:48, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Weapon names
Tell me weapons names 175.157.249.231 (talk) 12:28, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Kusarigama


text:
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is a 2002 racing video game, the sixth installment in the Need for Speed series and the sequel to 1998's Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. It was developed by EA Black Box for the PlayStation 2, and by EA Seattle for GameCube, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows. It features cars from various high-performance and exotic car manufacturers. Players can compete in races using these cars, or opt to play as a police officer and pursue speeders.

The game features several popular recording artists from its time such as Uncle Kracker, The Humble Brothers and Hot Action Cop. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 received "generally favorable" reviews on the PS2 and Xbox, while the PC and GameCube versions received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. In 2002, the game was awarded Console Racing Game of the Year at the 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Gameplay
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is a racing game with an emphasis on evading the police and over-the-top courses featuring lengthy shortcuts. It draws primarily from the gameplay and style of one of its predecessors, Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. Two primary game modes are offered: World Racing Championship, in which the player competes against other drivers in a series of races, and Hot Pursuit Ultimate Racer, which adds police to the races. In the latter players must complete the races while also evading capture.

There are several a la carte race types in Hot Pursuit 2. Delivery is a timed point-to-point dash, with the police in pursuit. This is similar to the delivery mission in Porsche Unleashed while the police pursuit makes it more challenging. Sprint is a point-to-point race where competitors try to get from one end to the other before their opponent. Time Trial gives players three laps on a level with the goal being to beat the required time to get the gold, silver, or bronze medal. Lap Knockout eliminates the last racer in each lap until one player remains the victor. Knockout follows a similar principle, but eliminations are made to the last racer at the end of each race. Races are usually restricted to a certain class of cars. Faster cars are used near the end of the Championship and Ultimate Racer modes.

The player also has the option to play as a police officer trying to arrest speeders. The player must disable speeders by ramming the speeding vehicle multiple times to disable it, akin to a PIT maneuver. The player must turn on their lights and sirens while in pursuit. As a police officer, the player can call for a barricade, additional units, spike strips, and request help from a helicopter to assist in chasing the target vehicle. At the end of each event, the player is awarded for the number of arrests. In the PlayStation 2 version, this mode is called "You're the Cop" mode while in the Windows, GameCube, and Xbox versions, it is called "Be the Cop".

The game features cars from a variety of manufacturers. One or more cars are available from the following manufacturers: Aston Martin, BMW, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ferrari, Ford, HSV, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Lotus, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Porsche, and Vauxhall Motors. Many vehicles have an unlockable police variant for their respective mode. Hot Pursuit 2 also contains Need for Speed Edition cars, which are upgraded versions of some of the stock vehicles.

Races take place in four environments that differ in atmosphere, each with a few unique courses. The courses in an environment are formed by different roads being connected or separated by roadblocks:
 * The Tropical environment, reminiscent of the Oahu island of Hawaii, is the most varied environment; the track traverses a city as well as near a volcano, waterfall, beach, rainforest, and two villages
 * The Coastal environment, reminiscent of the Washington or Maine coast because of its forest and nature
 * The Mediterranean environment, reminiscent of the Greek coast because of the stadium, a building which resembles Parthenon and architecture that resembles Santorini
 * The so-called Alpine environment, which is more similar to Colorado, Idaho or Wyoming than its namesake, is more homogeneous, with little variation except for the occasional shortcut

The PlayStation 2 version also includes a Desert environment that resembles the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and occasionally has thunderstorms in the North American Monsoon.

The PlayStation 2 version did not feature a career mode. Instead, there is a point system where cars are purchased from winning races. Points are determined by laps led and finishing position. In the Championship and Hot Pursuit trees, extra points are awarded if a medal is won. If the tree is completed, extra bonus races are unlocked. These races include the hardest competitors and the hardest courses. For the multiplayer mode of the Windows version, players can host a game server for LAN or internet-based playing. In addition to this, the GameSpy internet matchmaking system can be used to publish and locate such servers.

Development

Different versions of the game were produced for each game platform; the Xbox, GameCube, and Microsoft Windows versions were developed in EA Seattle, a subsidiary of EA Canada, while the PlayStation 2 version was developed by EA Black Box in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The PlayStation 2 was the lead console during development, and due to this several differences exist between it and other versions of the game. It is powered by EA Graphics Library (EAGL), which was used in several other Need for Speed games, as well as the driving sequences for James Bond 007: Nightfire and James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire. It was unveiled in October 2001. Hot Pursuit 2 also was present at the Electronic Arts booth during E3 2002.

Many of the cars featured in the game were not available to the world market until close to the game's release. Because of this cars were modeled by mapping photographs to a front, top, and side plane of the art program used. 3D artists then extrapolated the shape from those references. Consultants, such as stunt drivers, were brought in to help the team understand how drivers and vehicles would behave in given situations. This in turn allowed the team to more effectively set up the AI racers. Motion capture was used to animate characters during the arrest sequences. Near the end of development Electronics Arts revealed that only the PlayStation 2 version would receive features such as the desert courses and mirrored tracks, as these were added late in development and there was not enough time for EA Canada to prepare these assets on the other platforms.

Soundtrack
Hot Pursuit 2 is the first Need for Speed game to feature licensed rock music, along with techno music composed by contract artists. The game features several popular recording artists from its time such as Uncle Kracker, The Humble Brothers, and Hot Action Cop. The game's soundtrack consists of eight vocal rock songs and seven instrumental rock and electronic songs, all fast-paced with elements of grunge, hip-hop, and rap. The vocal songs are also featured in a second, instrumental version. In the Be the Cop and Hot Pursuit game modes, the instrumental versions replace the vocal ones, which avoids obscuring the police radio messages by the song lyrics. In the PlayStation 2 version, there is the option to change whether or not certain songs are played in normal races, hot pursuit races, the game menus, or if they are not to be played at all. The Xbox version also allows custom soundtracks.

Reception
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 received "generally favorable" reviews on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, while the Windows and GameCube versions received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. In 2003, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Hot Pursuit 2 with "Console Racing Game of the Year". It was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Best Driving Game on GameCube" award, which went to NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona.

The game received praise during its E3 debut and prior to its release. GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann noted that "fans of the original Hot Pursuit will likely find a whole lot to like in Hot Pursuit 2 when it ships". David Smith of IGN lauded the return to the police chase action. He stated that Black Box "went right back to the best game in the Need for Speed series (c'mon, it was) and decided to create a sequel to it."

Maxim gave the PlayStation 2 version a perfect five out of five stars and stated that it "not only gives you the keys to more than 20 exotic cars, it also gives you the unsurpassed joy of leaving traffic cops in the dust." Entertainment Weekly gave the game a B+ and stated, "Killer aerial shots, intense chases, and a rock-infused soundtrack make for a heart-pounding ride." BBC Sport gave the GameCube version a score of 80% and stated that "With plenty of racing challenges it should have a decent amount of longevity but their repetitive nature might grate for some." AllGame also gave the PlayStation 2 version a score of four stars out of five and said that it "offers an impressive amount of arcade-style fun bolstered by the number and variety of courses, challenging Hot Pursuit mode, and excellent lineup of vehicles."

Legacy
A reboot of the Hot Pursuit sub-series, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, was developed by Criterion Games, which previously created the Burnout franchise. The game was released in November 2010.

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

title: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2


text:
Fritz Muliar

Fritz Muliar, born as Friedrich Ludwig Stand (December 12, 1919 – May 4, 2009), was an Austrian actor who, due to his huge popularity, is often referred to by his countrymen as Volksschauspieler.

Biography
Born in Neubau, Vienna as the stepson of a jeweller, Muliar became a cabaret artist in the late 1930s. He was a Boy Scout in his youth. After serving in the Second World War, he was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1942 and spent seven months in solitary confinement for Betätigung zur Wiederherstellung eines freien Österreich (activities to restore Austrian independence—see Anschluss).

After the war, Muliar started his career as a stage actor. Of small build, he once said that his ambitions had never included playing parts such as that of Othello. Rather, he had always preferred comic roles and traditional Austrian fare (Johann Nestroy, Ferdinand Raimund). Muliar also excelled in imitating various accents, in particular those used by Czech and Yiddish speakers of German. In 1990, he had enormous success in Felix Mitterer's play for one person, Siberia (televised in 1991), a study in ageism about an old man who has been abandoned by his family in a retirement home and his struggle for dignity.

While he also performed regularly at the Salzburg Festival in the play Jedermann (a version of Everyman), Muliar was associated with two Viennese theatres in particular: the Burgtheater (whose tenured member he was until his retirement), and the Theater in der Josefstadt, where he worked until his death in 2009. He was one of the severest critics of Claus Peymann (born 1937), director of the Burgtheater between 1986 and 1999 whose leadership polarized Austrian theatregoers by its focus on controversial playwrights such as Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek. Musical theatre saw Muliar in the non-singing role of Frosch in Die Fledermaus. At Theater in der Josefstadt, Muliar was perhaps best known for the role of Mr. Green in Jeff Baron's Visiting Mr. Green (Besuch bei Mr Green). Muliar, Michael Dangl the theater and Jeff Baron were awarded the 2001 Kulturpreis Europa for this production, which ran for several seasons and was nationally telecast.

Muliar appeared in numerous films and in some television series such as Kir Royal (alongside Franz Xaver Kroetz) and Kommissar Rex. He is best remembered beyond the boundaries of his native Vienna for playing the title role in the 13-part TV series, Die Abenteuer des braven Soldaten Schwejk, which was filmed in German and broadcast by the Austrian state TV (ORF) in 1972.

Muliar was a committed Social Democrat who publicly supported various Austrian Social Democratic politicians during their election campaigns. He was married from 1955 to Franziska Kalmar, Austria's first television presenter. In January 2006 he was elected to the position of a public advisor in the Austrian state TV (ORF). He died in Vienna, aged 89.

Awards

 * Decoration for Services to the Liberation of Austria
 * Gold Medal for services to the City of Vienna
 * Medal of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation
 * Professor by the Republic of Austria (1975)
 * Merit Cross 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1977)
 * Kainz Medal for Peachum in Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera (1978)
 * Nestroy Ring (1984)
 * Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class (1984)
 * Gold Medal of Styria (1985)
 * Kammerschauspieler ("Chamber actor") (1985)
 * Gold Medal of Salzburg (1989)
 * Naming of a street in Grossenzersdorf after Fritz Muliar in 1994
 * Honorary member of the Burgtheater (1995)
 * Honorary member of the Theater in der Josefstadt (1996)
 * Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna (1999)
 * European Culture Prize (2001)
 * Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria (2002)
 * Grand Golden Decoration for services to the province of Lower Austria (2002)
 * Platinum Romy for lifetime achievement (2004)
 * Ferdinand Raimund-Ring 2008
 * Ring of honour of Grossenzersdorf

title: Fritz Muliar


text:
Licence Renewed

Licence Renewed, first published in 1981, is the first novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. It was the first proper James Bond novel (not counting novelizations and a faux biography) since Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun in 1968. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Richard Marek, a G. P. Putnam's Sons imprint.

The release of Licence Renewed successfully relaunched the Bond literary franchise, being the first of 14 original novels by Gardner until his retirement in 1996. In that time frame Gardner also wrote two novelizations.

Updating James Bond
In 1979 Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications) approached Gardner and asked him to revive Ian Fleming's James Bond series of novels.

When hired to begin a new series of James Bond novels, author John Gardner was tasked with updating James Bond and his allies and transporting them into the 1980s. "I described to the Glidrose Board how I wanted to put Bond to sleep where Fleming had left him in the sixties, waking him up now in the 80s having made sure he had not aged, but had accumulated modern thinking on the question of Intelligence and Security matters. Most of all I wanted him to have operational know-how: the reality of correct tradecraft and modern gee-whiz technology." Updating the time frame to the 1980s, Gardner's series picks up the career of James Bond some years after the Fleming novels ended. Due to the time frame change Gardner's series suggests that Fleming's stories took place in the 1960s and 70s, rather than the 1950s and 60s.

Likewise with James Bond, his companions and allies, specifically those working for the British Secret Service such as M, Bill Tanner, Miss Moneypenny, and Q are also all transported to the 1980s, although Q is rarely mentioned and is mostly substituted by Ann Reilly, a genius of gadgetry who is promptly nicknamed "Q'ute" by fellow workers as well as Bond, not long before being added to Bond's long list of romantic conquests.

The novel was initially titled Meltdown during the manuscript stage.

Plot summary
When Licence Renewed begins, M reminds Bond that the "00" section has in fact been abolished; however, M retains Bond as a troubleshooter (pun intended), telling him, "You'll always be 007 to me". Bond is assigned to investigate Dr. Anton Murik, a brilliant nuclear physicist who is thought to have been having meetings with a terrorist named Franco. Franco is identified and tracked by MI5 to a village in Scotland called Murcaldy. Since Murcaldy is outside of MI5's jurisdiction, the Director-General of MI5, Richard Duggan, requests that M send Bond to surveil Murik. Relying on information that MI5 did not have, M orders Bond to instead infiltrate Murik's castle and gain his confidence.

Bond makes contact with Murik at Ascot Racecourse, where he feigns a coincidental meeting, mentioning to Murik that he is a mercenary looking for work. Later, Bond joins Murik in Scotland at Murik's behest and is hired to kill Franco, for reasons at the time unknown. Franco in turn has been tasked by Murik to kill his young ward, Lavender Peacock, because she is the true heir to the Murik fortune, which could only be proved by secret documents Murik keeps hidden in a safe within his castle.

Murik's plan is to hijack six nuclear power plants around the world simultaneously with the aid of bands of terrorists supplied by Franco. To ensure that Murik can never be associated with this deal, he attempts to use Bond to assassinate Franco. Ultimately terrorists do take over six nuclear power plants, but are prevented from starting a meltdown when they are given an abort code by Bond, whom they believe to be Murik. Murik is eventually defeated by Bond and Lavender before his demands can be met.

Characters

 * James Bond - agent 007
 * M - head of the British Secret Intelligence Service
 * Bill Tanner - M's Chief of Staff
 * Miss Moneypenny - M's secretary
 * Ann Reilly aka Q'ute - Q Branch
 * Dr. Anton Murik: the current Laird of Murcaldy, owning the village of Murcaldy as well as most of the land surrounding it. Murik is a brilliant nuclear physicist who had been kicked out of the Atomic Energy Commission for his radical beliefs on the safety of nuclear power. Murik had claimed to have designed a nuclear reactor that was as powerful as a standard nuclear power plant, but safely disposed of the nuclear waste - a view debunked by many other nuclear physicists. To make a point to the world that the current nuclear power plants in use around the world were unsafe, Murik planned to have terrorists infiltrate six plants simultaneously and start a global meltdown.
 * Mary Jane Mashkin: Murik's mistress who attempts to become "more than friends" with James Bond to see if Bond was lying to Murik about being a mercenary looking for work.
 * Lavender Peacock: Dr. Anton Murik's ward. Unbeknownst to her, she is the true heir to the Murik family fortune.
 * Caber: Murik's personal bodyguard and the "Champion of Murcaldy". He especially dislikes Bond for beating him in a wrestling match in which Bond cheated to ensure victory.
 * Franco Oliveiro Quesocriado: an international terrorist leader wanted in most European countries as well as some in the Middle East. He aids Murik by supplying willing terrorists for his meltdown operation and additionally accepts the task of assassinating Murik's ward, Lavender.

The Silver Beast
In Licence Renewed Bond drives a Saab 900 Turbo. For some editions of the book, the car is shown as black or red on the book cover; however, in the book the car's colour is not mentioned. It only became silver and took on the nickname the "Silver Beast" in the follow-up Gardner novel, For Special Services.

The car is Bond's personal vehicle, updated at his own expense by Communication Control Systems Ltd (CCS), a real-life company (now known as Security Intelligence Technology Group) that provided author John Gardner with ideas about feasible gadgets to be used. Consequently, Gardner gave them the credit in the book and not Q Branch.

With the release of Licence Renewed Saab Automobile took the opportunity to launch a Bond themed promotional campaign complete with an actual car outfitted like the one in the book (but using smoke instead of tear gas).

Influence on future Bond films
Some key plot elements in Licence Renewed may have had some influence on subsequent Bond films; most notably Anton Murik's plot of a nuclear disaster with the aid of an infamous terrorist which was the basis of The World Is Not Enough. Other key elements from Renewed that appeared in future Bond films were Anton's cheating at horse racing, which Max Zorin did in A View to a Kill, and the obsession with weapons, not unlike Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights.

New 30th Anniversary reprints
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Licence Renewed, all fourteen of John Gardner's James Bond books were republished by Orion in the UK starting in June 2011. The first five titles were released in hardback featuring their original covers. The rest of John Gardner's Bond books were released in the UK as paperbacks in 2012 as a redesigned collection. In the US, Pegasus released the first three John Gardner titles in newly designed paperback in the autumn of 2011. The editions featured new introductions from luminaries in the world of Bond, and were followed by a complete re-issue of all 14 titles in the US.

Publication history

 * UK first hardback edition: May 1981 Jonathan Cape.
 * US first hardback edition: April 1981 Richard Marek/G. P. Putnam's Sons.
 * UK first paperback edition: 1982 Coronet Books.
 * US first paperback edition: May 1982 Berkley Books.

The U.S. hardcover edition sold more than 130,000 copies.

Reviews
Reviews of the novel were mostly mixed.

Poet Philip Larkin writing in The Times Literary Supplement, felt that the book had no life of its own and lacked Fleming's compelling readability.

For Kingsley Amis, the book was "So sodding tame" and Gardner "can't write exciting stories." Later, Amis was to say the novel "was bad enough by any reasonable standard."

Listener crime critic Marghanita Laski, a long-time admirer of Gardner's books, said Licence Renewed "is competent and has its funny moments. But this fine thriller-writer can't perfectly adjust down to the simpler genre, and the world-destructive plot is a waste of Gardner, without ever really convincing as Bond."

Novelist Jessica Mann said in the British Book News that "Ian Fleming's James Bond books were never as crass as Licence Renewed. Writing for himself, Gardner is intelligent and original. In this Fleming rip-off, he reproduces Fleming's faults without their saving charms, except that he has cut down on the sex and sadism. Fleming's plots were always preposterous, but they carried a crazy, unifying conviction. Gardner's is just illogical. And how the mighty Bond is fallen; he has become a dull, dim — too many knocks on the head in the past, perhaps? — middle-aged man who chooses the wrong trade-names to advertise."

Nicholas Shrimpton, in the New Statesman, argued that Bond was best left in his own era. "What John Gardner has failed to realise is that the charm of Bond is as strictly related to a sense of period as that of Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe. Removed from this distinctive environment, Bond is a fish out of water. The glamour shrivels, the self-indulgence becomes apologetic, and the atmosphere seems absurd."

Robin W. Winks said in the Library Journal that "Gardner lacks the sparkle of Fleming's truly original plotting and humor, and Lavender Peacock simply is not Pussy Galore. What's sound here isn't very new and what's new isn't very sound. 007's license is best left unrenewed."

The Globe and Mail crime fiction critic Derrick Murdoch complained that the villains were weak especially compared to Fleming's own, and that love interest Lavender Peacock is "a schoolgirl next to Pussy Galore." Murdoch also criticized the plot saying, "The story line is also a bit cluttered. There's one sub-plot about an international terrorist that seems derived indirectly from Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, and another about a stolen birthright that could come directly from Victorian melodrama. In his Liquidator series, Gardner showed that he can be much slyer, funnier and bawdier than he has allowed himself to be here. It almost seems he has approached his task too respectfully in Licence Renewed."

People Magazine's anonymous reviewer felt that "Gardner's approach is sometimes too tame — as in the uninspiring title — but, on the whole, it's a treat to have Bond working again. Welcome back, old friend."

Novelist Michael Malone commented in The New York Times that "in License Renewed, the whole world seems scantier and blander, as if Bond could not shake off the malaise of those intervening years when the Government abolished his license to kill and stuck him in a desk job. He has less wit, less wardrobe and less sex drive. Miss Moneypenny even has difficulty arousing him. With his mechanized swashbuckling and elegant machismo, Bond was so suited to his time, so right in that age of astronauts and Thunderbirds, perhaps he should have decided you only live once."

Time Magazine praised Gardner's "way around military hardware, neo-villainy and a plot whose absurdity even Ian Fleming might admire. In classic style, Gardner piles picaresque on bizarre: Neanderthal henchmen, a medieval castle equipped with radar, cars that repel attackers with clouds of tear gas."

Kirkus Reviews believed Gardner was equal to the task. "More tongue-in-cheek than Fleming, but mindless fun as usual: savory fluff for the curious and the old fans too."

title: Licence Renewed


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Zimbabwe African National Union – Ndonga

Zimbabwe African National Union – Ndonga (ZANU–Ndonga; formerly officially ZANU and unofficially ZANU Mwenje or ZANU Sithole ) is a minor political party in Zimbabwe. Its members were originally part of Zimbabwe African National Union, but split with what would become ZANU–PF over tribal tensions. A portion of the party reunified with ZANU-PF in 2015.

History
The Zimbabwe African National Union was a political party during the Rhodesian Bush War, formed as a split from the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. Its founders were the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and Herbert Chitepo, who were dissatisfied with the militant tactics of Nkomo in ZAPU.

After Chitepo's assassination on 18 March 1975, Robert Mugabe, in Mozambique at the time, unilaterally assumed control of ZANU. Later that year there was a factional split along tribal lines caused the Ndebele to follow Sithole into the moderate ZANU–Ndonga party, who renounced violent struggle, while the Shona followed Mugabe with a more militant agenda.

Sithole joined a transitional government of whites and blacks in 1979, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. When sanctions remained in place, he joined Muzorewa for the Lancaster House Agreement in London, where a new constitution and elections were prepared. ZANU–Ndonga failed to win any seats in independent elections that swept Mugabe under the ZANU flag to power in 1980.

Declaring that his life was in danger from political enemies, Sithole went into self-imposed exile in the United States city of Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1983, returning to Zimbabwe nine years later to re-enter the political arena.

Sithole was elected a lawmaker for his tribal stronghold of Chipinge in southeastern Zimbabwe in 1995, as was a colleague. In December 1997 he was tried and convicted for conspiring to kill Mugabe and disqualified from attending the Harare parliament. He was granted the right to appeal, but no appeal was filed.

Sithole again won the Chipinge seat in June 2000, as ZANU–Ndonga's only representative. Sithole died on 12 December 2000, aged 80, in Philadelphia, after going there for medical treatment.

ZANU–Ndonga's candidate, Wilson Kumbula, won 1.0% in the March 2002 presidential election. After the parliamentary election held on 31 March 2005, the party remained without parliamentary representation.

Along with three other minor opposition parties, ZANU–Ndonga was a member of the Zimbabwe Organisation of Opposition Political Parties.

In 2015, some leaders of ZANU–Ndonga reunified with ZANU–PF, and called for supporters to "leave the opposition" and join the newly unified party.


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Gérald Larose

Gérald Larose (born October 24, 1945) is a Quebec activist, professor, and former President of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux labour union. He is currently head of the Conseil de la Souveraineté du Québec, a Quebec independence organization.

Larose defended Jacques Godbout's novel Une histoire américaine in Le Combat des livres, the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on the radio of Société Radio-Canada in 2004. He was awarded the title of Patriote de l'année ("Patriot of the Year") by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society in 1996.

title: Gérald Larose


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An American Story

An American Story (Une histoire américaine) is a novel published in 1986 by Canadian writer Jacques Godbout. Its English translation, by Yves Saint-Pierre, was published in 1988.

Plot summary
Grégory Francœur, a brilliant professor from Quebec, leaves his family and political career behind to become the assistant to a distinguished academic in San Francisco. Because of a misunderstanding, typical of the ambiguity that has been Francœur's lot in life, he becomes involved in a dangerous case of illegal immigration.

Impact
Une histoire américaine was one of the novels chosen for inclusion in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Première Chaîne in 2004, where it was championed by trade unionist Gérald Larose.

title: An American Story


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User talk:Peacecorps

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~ ~ ~. Four tildes (~ ~ ) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Lst27 ( t a l k )  22:56, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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May 2007
If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
 * 1) editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,
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Accounts used solely for blatant self-promotion may be blocked indefinitely without further warning.

For more details, please read the Conflict of Interest guideline. Thank you. ST47 Talk 22:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Peacecorps


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Cognitive development

Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged (such as object permanence, the understanding of logical relations, and cause-effect reasoning in school-age children). Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch TV, anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.

Jean Piaget was a major force establishing this field, forming his "theory of cognitive development". Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational period. Many of Piaget's theoretical claims have since fallen out of favor. His description of the most prominent changes in cognition with age, is generally still accepted today (e.g., how early perception moves from being dependent on concrete, external actions. Later,  abstract understanding of observable aspects of reality can be captured; leading to the discovery of underlying abstract rules and principles, usually starting in adolescence)

In recent years, however, alternative models have been advanced, including information-processing theory, neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, which aim to integrate Piaget's ideas with more recent models and concepts in developmental and cognitive science, theoretical cognitive neuroscience, and social-constructivist approaches. Another such model of cognitive development is Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory. A major controversy in cognitive development has been "nature versus nurture", i.e., the question if cognitive development is mainly determined by an individual's innate qualities ("nature"), or by their personal experiences ("nurture"). However, it is now recognized by most experts that this is a false dichotomy: there is overwhelming evidence from biological and behavioral sciences that from the earliest points in development, gene activity interacts with events and experiences in the environment. While naturalists are convinced of the power of genetic mechanisms, knowledge from different disciplines, such as Comparative psychology, Molecular biology, and Neuroscience, shows arguments for an ecological component in launching cognition (see the section "The beginning of cognition" below).

History
Jean Piaget is inexorably linked to cognitive development as he was the first to systematically study developmental processes. Despite being the first to develop a systemic study of cognitive development, Piaget was not the first to theorize about cognitive development.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote Emile, or On Education in 1762. He discusses childhood development as happening in three stages. In the first stage, up to age 12, the child is guided by their emotions and impulses. In the second stage, ages 12–16, the child's reason starts to develop. In the third and final stage, age 16 and up, the child develops into an adult.

James Sully wrote several books on childhood development, including Studies of Childhood in 1895 and Children's Ways in 1897. He used a detailed observational study method with the children. Contemporary research in child development actually repeats observations and observational methods summarized by Sully in Studies of Childhood, such as the mirror technique.

Sigmund Freud developed the theory of psychosexual development, which indicates children must pass through several stages as they develop their cognitive skills.

Maria Montessori began her career working with mentally disabled children in 1897, then conducted observation and experimental research in elementary schools. She wrote The Discovery of the Child in 1950 which developed the Montessori method of education. She discussed four planes of development: birth to 6 years, 6 to 12, 12 to 18, and 18 to 24. The Montessori method now has three developmentally-meaningful age groups: 2–2.5 years, 2.5–6, and 6–12. She was working on human behavior in older children but only published lecture notes on the subject.

Arnold Gesell was the creator of the maturational theory of development. Gesell said that development occurs due to biological hereditary features such as genetics and children will reach developmental milestones when they are ready to do so in a predictable sequence. Because of his theory of development, he devised a developmental scale that is used today called the Gesell Developmental Schedule (GDS) that provides parents, teachers, doctors, and other pertinent people with an overview of where an infant or child falls on the developmental spectrum.

Erik Erikson was a neo-Freudian who focused on how children develop personality and identity. Although a contemporary of Freud, there is a larger focus on social experiences that occur across the lifespan, as opposed to childhood exclusively, that contribute to how personality and identity emerge. His framework uses eight systematic stages that all children must pass through.

Urie Bronfenbrenner devised the ecological systems theory, which identifies various levels of a child's environment. The primary focus of this theory focuses on the quality and context of a child's environment. Bronfenbrenner suggested that as a child grows older, their interaction between the various levels of their environment grows more complex due to cognitive abilities expanding.

Lawrence Kohlberg wrote the theory of stages of moral development, which extended Piaget's findings of cognitive development and showed that they continue through the lifespan. Kohlberg's six stages follow Piaget's constructivist requirements in that those stages can not be skipped and it is very rare to regress in stages. Notable works: Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-Development Approach (1976) and Essays on Moral Development (1981)

Lev Vygotsky's theory is based on social learning as the most important aspect of cognitive development. In Vygotsky's theory, adults are very important for young children's development. They help children learn through mediation, which is modeling and explaining concepts. Together, adults and children master concepts of their culture and activities. Vygotsky believed we get our complex mental activities through social learning. A significant part of Vygotsky's theory is based on the zone of proximal development, which he believes is when the most effective learning takes place. The zone of proximal development is what a child cannot accomplish alone but can accomplish with the help of an MKO (more knowledgeable other). Vygotsky also believed culture is a very important part of cognitive development such as the language, writing and counting system used in that culture. Another aspect of Vygotsky's theory is private speech. Private speech is when a person talks to themselves in order to help themselves problem solve. Scaffolding or providing support to a child and then slowly removing support and allowing the child to do more on their own over time is also an aspect of Vygotsky's theory.

Beginning of Cognition
In cognitive development, the essential issue in beginning cognition is how the nervous system grasps perception and shapes intentionality in the sensorimotor stage (or before) when organisms only demonstrate simple reflexes (see articles perception, cognition, binding problem, multi sensory integration). The significance of this knowledge is that the mode to cognize at the stage without communication and abstract thinking, being a pre-requisite of social reality formation, determines the development of everything from cooperative interactions and knowledge assimilation to moral identity and cultural evolution that provides building societies (see also Social cognition and Collective behaviour). The contemporary academic discussion on a controversy in cognitive development (whether cognitive development is mainly determined by an individual's innate qualities or personal experiences) is still in progress.

Many influential scientists argue that the genetic code is no more than a rule of causal specificity based on the fact that cells use nucleic acids as templates for the primary structure of proteins. However, it is unacceptable to say that DNA contains the information for phenotypic design. The epigenetic approach to human psychological development – that cascading phenotypic effects are not encoded directly in the genes – contrasts sharply with many so-called nativist approaches. Opponents of innate knowledge discuss four problems in appearance of the perception of objects.

The binding problem – According to cognitive psychologist Anne Treisman, the binding problem can be divided into three separate problems. (1) How are relevant elements that should be related as a whole selected and separated from elements that belong to other objects, ideas, or events? (2) How is the binding encoded so it can be transferred to other brain systems and used? (3) How are the correct relationships between related elements within the same object defined? This problem is also connected to the problem of multisensory integration in perception.

The perception stability problem – According to research professor of Liepaja University Igor Val Danilov, newborns and infants cannot capture the same picture of the environment as adults because of their immature sensory systems. They cannot sense environmental stimuli from social phenomena to the same extent as adults. The outcomes of processing similar sensory stimuli in immature and mature organisms differ. The corresponding holistic representations of objects can hardly occur in these organisms.

The excitatory inputs problem – According to the received view in cognitive sciences, cognition develops due to experience-dependent neuronal plasticity, e.g.,. Neuronal plasticity refers to the capacity of the nervous system to modify itself, functionally and structurally, in response to experience and injury. However, the structural organization of excitatory inputs supporting spike-timing-dependent plasticity remains unknown. How is the relation between a specific sensory stimulus and the appropriate structural organization of the excitatory inputs in specific neurons formed?

The problem of Morphogenesis – Cell actions during an embryo formation, including shape changes, cell contact remodeling, cell migration, cell division, and cell extrusion, need control over cell mechanics. This complex dynamical process is associated with protrusive, contractile, and adhesive forces and hydrostatic pressure, as well as material properties of cells that dictate how cells respond to active stresses. Precise coordination of all cells is a necessary condition. Moreover, such a complex dynamical process likely requires clear parameters of the final biological structure – the complete developmental program with a template for accomplishing it. Collinet and Lecuit (2021) pose a question: what forces or mechanisms at the cellular level manage four very general classes of tissue deformation, namely tissue folding and invagination, tissue flow and extension, tissue hollowing, and, finally, tissue branching? They challenge the nativists' notion that shape is fully encoded and determined by genes: how are cell mechanics and associated cell behaviors robustly organized in space and time during tissue morphogenesis? They argue that not only gene expression and the resulting biochemical cues but also mechanics and geometry act as sources of morphogenetic information to ultimately define the time and length scales of the cell behaviors driving morphogenesis. Thus, it is not only the interaction of gene activity with events and experiences in the environment that contributes to the formation of tissues in morphogenesis. Because the nervous system structures operate over everything that makes us human, the formation of neural tissues in a certain way is essential for shaping cognitive functions. According to research professor Igor Val Danilov, such a complex process of shaping the determined structure of the nervous system requires a complete developmental program with a template for accomplishing the final biological structure of the nervous system. Indeed, because even processes of the cell coupling for shaping a nervous system during embryonal development challenge the naturalistic approach, how the nervous system grasps perception and shapes intentionality (independently, i.e., without any template) seems even more complicated.

So, the fact that gene activity interacts with events and experiences in the environment (as noted above) may not fully explain the integrative complexity of intentionality-perception development for beginning cognitive development. Nowadays, the Shared intentionality hypothesis is the only one that attempts to explain neurophysiological processes at the beginning of cognitive development at different levels of interaction, from interpersonal dynamics to neuronal interactions. It also solves the above noted problems. Professor of psychology Michael Tomasello hypothesised that social bonds between children and caregivers would gradually increase through the essential motive force of shared intentionality beginning from birth. The notion of Shared intentionality, introduced by Michael Tomasello, was developed by Research Professor Igor Val Danilov, expanding it to the intrauterine period. The Shared intentionality approach also points out that "an innate sensitivity to specific patterns of information" mentioned in the section "Speculated core systems of cognition" is also the outcome of Shared intentionality with caregivers, who obviously participated in the experiments.

Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was the first psychologist and philosopher to brand this type of study as "cognitive development". Other researchers, in multiple disciplines, had studied development in children before, but Piaget is often credited as being the first one to make a systematic study of cognitive development and gave it its name. His main contribution is the stage theory of child cognitive development. He also published his observational studies of cognition in children, and created a series of simple tests to reveal different cognitive abilities in children. Piaget believed that people move through stages of development that allow them to think in new, more complex ways.

Criticism
Many of Piaget's claims have fallen out of favor. For example, he claimed that young children cannot conserve numbers. However, further experiments showed that children did not really understand what was being asked of them. When the experiment is done with candies, and the children are asked which set they want rather than having to tell an adult which is more, they show no confusion about which group has more items. Piaget argues that the child cannot conserve numbers if they do not understand one-to-one correspondence.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development ends at the formal operational stage that is usually developed in early adulthood. It does not take into account later stages of adult cognitive development as described by, for example, Harvard University professor Robert Kegan.

Additionally, Piaget largely ignores the effects of social and cultural upbringing on stages of development because he only examined children from western societies. This matters as certain societies and cultures have different early childhood experiences. For example, individuals in nomadic tribes struggle with number counting and object counting. Certain cultures have specific activities and events that are common at a younger age which can affect aspects such as object permeance. This indicates that children from different societies may achieve a stage like the formal operational stage while in other societies, children at the exact same age remain in the concrete operational stage.

Sensorimotor stage
Piaget believed that infants entered a sensorimotor stage which lasts from birth until age 2. In this stage, individuals use their senses to investigate and interact with their environment. Through this they develop coordination between the sensory input and motor responses. Piaget also theorized that this stage ended with the acquisition of object permanence and the emergence of symbolic thought.

This view collapsed in the 1980s when research was put out showing that infants as young as five months are able to represent out-of-sight objects, as well their properties, such as number and rigidity.

Preoperational stage
Piaget believed that children entered a preoperational stage from roughly age 2 until age 7. This stage involves the development of symbolic thought (which manifests in children’s increased ability to ‘play pretend’). This stage involves language acquisition, but also the inability to understand complex logic or to manipulate information.

Subsequent work suggesting that preschoolers were indeed capable of taking others' perspectives into account and reasoning about abstract relationships, including causal relationships marked the demise of this aspect of stage theory as well.

Concrete operational stage
Piaget believed that the concrete operational stage spanned roughly from age 6 through age 12. This stage is marked by the development and achievement of skills such as conservation, classification, serialism, and spatial reasoning.

Work suggesting that much younger children reason about abstract ideas including kinds, logical operators, and causal relationships rendered this aspect of stage theory obsolete.

Formal operational stage
Piaget believed that the formal operational stage spans roughly from age 12 through adulthood, and is marked by the ability to apply mental operations to abstract ideas.

Erik Erickson
Erikson worked with Freud but unlike Freud, Erikson focused on Biological, Psychological, and social factors in human development. Each stage is rooted in some kind of competence, or perceived ability to do things.

Each stage is defined by 2 conflicting psychological tendencies and by what traits develop in the stage dependent on how much of each tendency was experienced. There are virtues that develop in healthy circumstances and maladaptations that develop in unhealthy circumstances. It consists of 8 stages. While the conflicting tendencies may appear to be good versus bad. They can be considered as a balance where most healthy individuals experience some of each.

Stage 1-Infancy- Trust Versus Mistrust
A baby has very little ability to do anything for themself. As such infants develop according to whether they learn to trust or distrust the world around them. The virtue that arises during this stage is hope and the maladaptation is withdrawal.

Stage 2-Early Childhood- Autonomy Versus Shame
As a child starts to explore the world the conflict they experience is autonomy or a feeling of being able to do things themselves, verses shame or doubt, which is a feeling of being unable to do things themselves and fear of making mistakes. The virtue that arises during this period is will, suggesting a control over one's actions. The maladaptation for this stage is compulsion, or lack of control over one's actions.

Stage 3-Play Age- Initiative Versus Guilt
As a child grows from the stage of autonomy verses shame, they experience the conflict of initiative vs guilt. Initiative or having the ability to act in a situation against guilt or feeling bad about their actions or feeling incapable of acting. The virtue that develops in this stage is purpose and the maladaptation is inhibition.

Stage 4-School Age- Industry Versus Inferiority
As a child's awareness of their effect on the world around them grows they come to the conflict of industry and inferiority. Industry meaning ability and willingness to proactively interact with the world around them and Inferiority meaning incapability or perceived incapability to interact with the world. The virtue that is learned in this stage is competence and the maladaptation is inertia or passivity.

Stage 5-adolescence- Identity Versus Identity Confusion
As a child grows into adolescence, their ability to interact with the world starts to interact with their perceptions of who they are, and they find themselves in a conflict between identity and identity confusion. Identity means knowledge of who they are and developing their own sense of right and wrong. Identity confusion meaning confusion over who they are and what right and wrong is to them. The virtue that is developed is fidelity and the maldevelopment is repudiation.

Stage 6-Young Adulthood- Intimacy Versus Isolation
During young adulthood, people find themselves in a place where they are looking for belonging in a small number of close relationships. Intimacy suggests finding very close relationships with other people and isolation is a lack of such a connection. The virtue that can arise from this is love and the maladaptation is distantiation.

Stage 7-Adulthood- Generativity Versus Stagnation
In this stage of life people find that along with accomplishing personal goals, they are either giving to the next generation, whether as a mentor or a parent or they turn towards themselves and keep a distance from others. The virtue that arises in this stage is caring and the maladaptation is rejectivity.

Stage 8-Old Age- Integrity Versus Despair
Those in the twilight of their life look back at their lives and either are satisfied with their life's work or feel great regret. This satisfaction or regret is a large part of their identity at the end of their lives. The virtue that develops is wisdom and the maldevelopment is disdain.

Core Knowledge Theory
Empiricists study how these skills may be learned in such a short time. The debate is over whether these systems are learned by general-purpose learning devices or domain-specific cognition. Moreover, many modern cognitive developmental psychologists, recognizing that the term "innate" does not square with modern knowledge about epigenesis, neurobiological development, or learning, favor a non-nativist framework. Researchers who discuss "core systems" often speculate about differences in thinking and learning between proposed domains.

Research suggests that children have an innate sensitivity to specific patterns of information, referred to as core domains.The discussion of “core knowledge” theory focuses on a few main systems, including agents, objects, numbers, and navigation.

Agents
It is speculated that a piece of an infants’ core knowledge lies in their ability to abstractly represent actors. Agents are actors, human or otherwise, who process events and situations, and select actions based on goals and beliefs. Children expect the actions of agents to be goal-directed, efficient, and understand that they have costs, such as time, energy, or effort. Children are importantly able to differentiate between actors and inanimate objects, proving a deeper understanding of the concept of an agent.

Objects
Within the theorized systems, infants’ core knowledge of objects has been one of the most extensively studied. These studies suggest that young infants appear to have an early expectation of object solidity, namely understanding that objects cannot pass through one another. Similarly, they demonstrate an awareness of object continuity, expecting objects to move on continuous paths rather than teleporting or discontinuously changing their locations. They also expect objects to follow the laws of gravity.

Numbers
Evidence suggests that humans utilize two core systems for number representation: approximate representations and precise representations. The approximate number system helps to capture the relationship between quantities by estimating numerical magnitudes. This system becomes more precise with age. The second system helps to precisely monitor small groups (limited to around 3 for infants) of individual objects and accurately represent those numerical quantities.

Place
Very young children appear to have some skill in navigation. This basic ability to infer the direction and distance of unseen locations develops in ways that are not entirely clear. However, there is some evidence that it involves the development of complex language skills between 3 and 5 years. Also, there is evidence that this skill depends importantly on visual experience, because congenitally blind individuals have been found to have impaired abilities to infer new paths between familiar locations.

One of the original nativist versus empiricist debates was over depth perception. There is some evidence that children less than 72 hours old can perceive such complex things as biological motion. However, it is unclear how visual experience in the first few days contributes to this perception. There are far more elaborate aspects of visual perception that develop during infancy and beyond.

Shared Intentionality
This approach integrates Externalism (a group of positions in the philosophy of mind: embodied cognition, embodied embedded cognition, enactivism, extended mind, and situated cognition) with the Empiricist ideas about the beginning of cognition only from learning in the environment. According to the Externalism approach, communicative symbols are encoded into the local topological properties of neuronal maps, which reflect a dynamical action pattern. The sensorimotor neuronal network enables pairing the relevant cue with a particular symbol saved in the sensorimotor structures and processes that reveals embodied meanings. In this sense, the Shared intentionality theory does not contradict the Core Knowledge Theory while complements it.

Based on evidence of child cognitive development, experimental data from research on child behavior in the prenatal period,        and advances in inter-brain neuroscience research,      research professor at Liepaja University Igor Val Danilov introduced the notion of non-local neuronal coupling of the mother and fetus neuronal networks. The term non-local neuronal coupling refers to the pre-perceptual communication provided by copying adequate ecological dynamics by one biological system from another, both indwelling one environmental context. The naive actor (fetus) replicates information from the experienced agent (mother) due to the synchronization of intrinsic processes of these dynamic systems (embodied information). This non-local neuronal coupling succeeds due to a low-frequency oscillator (mother's heartbeats) that coordinates relevant local neuronal networks in specific subsystems of these two organisms, which already exhibit gamma activity (similar embodied information in both). The registered cooperative neuronal activity in inter-brain research, so-called mirror neurons, is probably the manifestation of this non-local neuronal coupling. In such a manner, the experienced agent ensures one-direction conveying information about an actual cognitive event toward an organism at the simple reflexes stage of cognitive development without interacting through sensory signals. Obviously, any sensory communication between the mother and fetus is impossible. Therefore, non-local neuronal coupling mediates environmental learning early in cognition.

The notion of non-local neuronal coupling filled a gap in knowledge both in the Core Knowledge Theory and the group of positions in Externalism about the very beginning of cognition, which has also been shown by the binding problem, the perception stability problem, the excitatory inputs problem, and the problem of Morphogenesis. The nervous system of the young organism at the prenatal stage of development cannot alone solve the complexity of intentionality-perception development for beginning cognitive development. For the innate sensitivity to specific patterns of information (referred to as core domains according to the Core Knowledge Theory) or for pairing the relevant cue with a particular symbol saved in the sensorimotor structures (embodied information according to Externalism), the organism only with an ability of reflex responses should distinguish the relevant stimulus (an informative cue) from the environment with the cacophony of stimuli: electromagnetic waves, chemical interactions, and pressure fluctuations. The notion of non-local neuronal coupling explains the neurophysiological processes of Shared intentionality at the cellular level that reveal in young organisms the innate sensitivity and/or embodied meanings during cognition. The Shared intentionality approach shows how, at different levels of interaction, from interpersonal dynamics to neuronal coupling, the collaborative interaction emerges in the mother-child pairs for sharing the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive event. Finally, research has already shown that the Shared intentionality magnitude can be assessed by emulating the mother-fetal communication model in dyads of mothers and children from 2 to 10 years old.

Language Acquisition
A major, well-studied process and consequence of cognitive development is language acquisition. The traditional view was that this is the result of deterministic, human-specific genetic structures and processes. Other traditions, however, have emphasized the role of social experience in language learning. However, the relation of gene activity, experience, and language development is now recognized as incredibly complex and difficult to specify. Language development is sometimes separated into learning of phonology (systematic organization of sounds), morphology (structure of linguistic units—root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation, etc.), syntax (rules of grammar within sentence structure), semantics (study of meaning), and discourse or pragmatics (relation between sentences). However, all of these aspects of language knowledge—which were originally posited by the linguist Noam Chomsky to be autonomous or separate—are now recognized to interact in complex ways.

It was not until 1962 that bilingualism had been accepted as a contributing factor to cognitive development. There have been a number of studies showing how bilingualism contributes to the executive function of the brain, which is the main center at which cognitive development happens. According to Bialystok in "Bilingualism and the Development of Executive Function: The Role of Attention", children who are bilingual have to actively filter through the two different languages to select the one they need to use, which in turn makes the development stronger in that center.

Whorf's hypothesis
While working as a student of Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf posited that a person's thinking depends on the structure and content of their social group's language. Per Whorf, language determines our thoughts and perceptions. For example, it used to be thought that the Greeks, who wrote left to right, thought differently than Egyptians since the Egyptians wrote right to left. Whorf's theory was so strict that he believed if a word is absent in a language, then the individual is unaware of the object's existence. This theory was played out in George Orwell's book, Animal Farm; the pig leaders slowly eliminated words from the citizen's vocabulary so that they were incapable of realizing what they were missing. The Whorfian hypothesis failed to recognize that people can still be aware of the concept or item, even though they lack efficient coding to quickly identify the target information.

Quine's bootstrapping hypothesis
Willard Van Orman Quine argued that there are innate conceptual biases that enable the acquisition of language, concepts, and beliefs. Quine's theory follows nativist philosophical traditions, such as the European rationalist philosophers, for example Immanuel Kant.

Neo-Piagetian theories
Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development emphasized the role of information processing mechanisms in cognitive development, such as attention control and working memory. They suggested that progression along Piagetian stages or other levels of cognitive development is a function of strengthening of control mechanisms and is within the stages themselves.

Neuroscience
During development, especially the first few years of life, children show interesting patterns of neural development and a high degree of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, as explained by the World Health Organization, can be summed up in three points.

 * 1) Any adaptive mechanism used by the nervous system to repair itself after injury.
 * 2) Any means by which the nervous system can repair individually damaged central circuits.
 * 3) Any means by which the capacity of the central nervous system can adapt to new physiological conditions and environment.

The relation of brain development and cognitive development is extremely complex and, since the 1990s, has been a growing area of research.

Cognitive development and motor development may also be closely interrelated. When a person experiences a neurodevelopmental disorder and their cognitive development is disturbed, we often see adverse effects in motor development as well. Cerebellum, which is the part of brain that is most responsible for motor skills, has been shown to have significant importance in cognitive functions in the same way that prefrontal cortex has important duties in not only cognitive abilities but also development of motor skills. To support this, there is evidence of close co-activation of neocerebellum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in functional neuroimaging as well as abnormalities seen in both cerebellum and prefrontal cortex in the same developmental disorder. In this way, we see close interrelation of motor development and cognitive development and they cannot operate in their full capacity when either of them are impaired or delayed.

Cultural influences
From cultural psychologists' view, minds and culture shape each other. In other words, culture can influence brain structures which then influence our interpretation of the culture. These examples reveal cultural variations in neural responses:

Figure-line task
Behavioral research has shown that one's strength in independent (tasks which are focused on influencing others or oneself) or interdependent tasks (tasks where one changes their own behavior to favor others) differ based on their cultural context. In general, East Asian cultures are more interdependent whereas Western cultures are more independent. Hedden et al. assessed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses of East Asians and Americans while they performed independent (absolute) or interdependent (relative) tasks. The study showed that participants used regions of the brain associated with attentional control when they had to perform culturally incongruent tasks. In other words, neural paths used for the same task were different for Americans and East Asians.

Transcultural neuroimaging studies
New studies in transcultural neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that one's cultural background can influence the neural activity that underlies both high (for example, social cognition) and low (for example, perception) level cognitive functions. Studies demonstrated that groups that come from different cultures or that have been exposed to culturally different stimuli have differences in neural activity. For example, differences were found in that of the pre motor cortex during mental calculation and that of the VMPFC during trait judgements of one's mother from people with different cultural backgrounds. In conclusion, since differences were found in both high-level and low-level cognition one can assume that our brain's activity is strongly and, at least in part, constitutionally shaped by its sociocultural context.

Understanding of others' intentions
Kobayashi et al. compared American-English monolingual and Japanese-English bilingual children's brain responses in understanding others' intentions through false-belief story and cartoon tasks. They found universal activation of the region bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex in theory of mind tasks. However, American children showed greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus during the tasks whereas Japanese children had greater activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus during the Japanese Theory of Mind tasks. In conclusion, these examples suggest that the brain's neural activities are not universal but are culture dependent.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing
Being deaf or hard-of-hearing has been noted to impact cognitive development as hearing loss impacts social development, language acquisition, and the culture reacts to a deaf child. Cognitive development in academic achievement, reading development, language development, performance on standardized measures of intelligence, visual-spatial and memory skills, development of conceptual skills, and neuropsychological function are dependent upon the child's primary language of communication, either American Sign Language or English, as well as if the child is able to communicate and use the communication modality as a language. There is some research pointing to deficits in development of theory of mind in children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing which may be due to a lack of early conversational experience. Other research points to lower scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, especially in the Verbal Comprehension Index due differences in cultural knowledge acquisition.

Transgender people
Since the 2010s there has been an increase in research into how transgender people fit into cognitive development theory. At the earliest, transgender children can begin to socially transition during identity exploration. In 2015, Kristina Olson and colleagues studied transgender youth in comparison to their cisgender siblings and unrelated cisgender children. The students participated in the IAT, a test that measures how one may identify based on a series of questions related to memory. Overall it determines a child's gender preference. It showed that the transgender children's results correlated with their desired gender. The behaviors of the children also related back to their results. For instance, the transgender boys enjoyed food and activities typically associated and enjoyed by cisgender boys. The article reports that the researchers found that the children were not confused, deceptive, or oppositional of their gender identity, and responded with actions that are typically represented by their gender identity.

title: Cognitive development


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Snowbird (person)

A snowbird is a person who migrates from the colder northern parts of North America to warmer southern locales, typically during the winter. The southern locales include the Sun Belt and Hawaii in the United States, as well as Mexico and the Caribbean. Snowbirds used to primarily be retired or older, but are increasingly of all ages.

Conversely, a sunbird is one who leaves warmer locales in the summer, migrating to cooler locales such as higher elevations or more northerly regions.

Profile
Snowbirds are typically retirees who wish to avoid the snow and cold temperatures of northern winter, but maintain ties with family and friends by staying there the rest of the year. In recent years, younger people with jobs tied to seasonal tourists often migrate southward, following the tourist season, to southern resorts. Some are also business owners who have a second home in a warmer location or whose business can be easily moved from place to place. Many families in the United States often spend their Christmas holiday time (up to 2 weeks) at beach resorts in Florida, California, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Some are people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder who wish to enjoy the longer daylight hours in the southern latitudes in winter. Some snowbirds bring their homes with them, as campers (mounted on bus or truck frames) or as boats following the East Coast Intracoastal Waterway southward.

RVers
A significant portion of the snowbird community is made up of recreational vehicle users (RVers). Many own a motorhome for the sole purpose of traveling south in the winter. Often they go to the same location every year and consider the other RVers that do the same a "second family". Many RV parks label themselves "snowbird friendly" and get the majority of their income from the influx of RVing snowbirds. Several areas in Florida and Arizona have large RV communities that appear and disappear seasonally. Quartzsite, Arizona, has been labeled "white city", because from a bird's-eye view all the motorhomes cover the landscape in white and then in the summer are gone. While historically Florida and Arizona have been the top RV snowbird locations, other southern U.S. states are experiencing a boom from snowbirds enjoying desert and tropical climates.

Legal status
Many American snowbirds also use their vacation time to declare permanent residency in low- or no-tax income tax states and claim lower non-resident income taxes in their home states. By contrast, Canadian snowbirds usually retain residency in Canada in order to retain health benefits. Due to the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act there are now additional implications for Canadian snowbirds in the United States.

title: Snowbird (person)


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Zbigniew Messner

Zbigniew Stefan Messner (13 March 1929 – 10 January 2014) was a Polish communist politician and economist. His ancestors were of German Polish descent who had assimilated into Polish society. In 1972, he became Professor of Karol Adamiecki University of Economics in Katowice. In the 1980s, Messner held numerous high ranking posts within communist party apparatus. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) from 1981 to 1990, when PZPR was dissolved, member of the PZPR Politburo from 1981 to 1988, Deputy Prime Minister from 1983 to 1985, member of Sejm from 1985 to 1989, Prime Minister of Polish People's Republic from 1985 to 1988 and member of the State Council of the Polish People's Republic from 1988 to 1989. Additionally in the 1960s Messner was the chairman of Piast Gliwice football club.

Early life
Messner was born on 13 March 1929 in Stryj, then located in Poland (now Stryi, Ukraine). After Soviet annexation of former Polish eastern regions in 1945, his family decided to leave Stryj and move to Gliwice. In 1953 Messner graduated Karol Adamiecki University of Economics in Katowice, where he continued to work in the following years as an academic worker.

Political career
In 1954 Messner joined PZPR. In 1980 he became the chairman of the Katowice Voivodeship National Council. In the following year Messner was appointed First Secretary of the Voivodeship Committee of the PZPR in Katowice and member of PZPR Central Committee and Politburo. There he started to collaborate with Wojciech Jaruzelski, then prime minister and leader of the PZPR, who in 1983 made Messner his Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for economic affairs. When in 1985 Jaruzelski became the Chairman of the Council of State and resigned from the Prime Minister's office, he appointed Messner as his successor. This move was not caused by Messner's competence, but his loyalty and subjugation to Jaruzelski.

As economist and now Prime Minister, Messner was tasked by Jaruzelski with the implementation of some market elements into planned economy system in order to save Polish economy from collapse, while preventing political liberalization. Messner's cabinet work led to adaptation of several bills, which included e.g. increasing the independence of state enterprises, allowing for the creation of private banks and privatisation, etc.

However Messner's reforms coincided with drastic price increases and further economic recession. Moreover, the referendum on economic reforms in 1987, proposed by the government turned out to be a failure, because it did not receive enough votes to make its result binding. In 1988, a wave of strikes organized by the opposition's "Solidarity" trade union spread throughout the country. Messner came under pressure of both opoposition and other factions within PZPR. In the Sejm (Parliament), members of pro-communist All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ), started to speak against Messner. The criticism within communist party forced Jaruzelski to pressure Messener to resign. Messner eventually resigned in September 1988, justifying his decision with "health problems", and had to transfer power to Mieczysław Rakowski. After his resignation Jaruzelski gave him a seat in Council of State, in which Messner remained until the abolishment of the Council, creation of the office of President of Poland and presidential election in July 1989.

Later life
After 1989 Messner retreated from political life and returned to academic career. He died in Warsaw on 10 January 2014.

title: Zbigniew Messner


text: User talk:82.43.133.29

title: User talk:82.43.133.29


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Cecil Howard Green

Cecil Howard Green (August 6, 1900 – April 11, 2003) was a British-born American geophysicist, electrical engineer, and electronics manufacturing executive, who trained at the University of British Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was a cofounder of Texas Instruments. He and his wife Ida Green were philanthropists who helped found the University of Texas at Dallas, Green College at the University of British Columbia, St. Mark's School of Texas, and Green College at the University of Oxford. They were also major contributors to the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University, the Cecil H. & Ida Green Graduate and Professional Center at the Colorado School of Mines, the Cecil H. & Ida Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California San Diego, the Cecil & Ida Green Building for earth sciences at MIT (designed by I.M. Pei), and the Cecil and Ida Green Tower (the headquarters of the international Society of Exploration Geophysicists in Tulsa, OK).

Biography
Born in Whitefield, England, in 1900, Green and his family migrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and San Francisco, United States, where he witnessed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where Green attended UBC for two years before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning both a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering in 1924.

Green met Ida Flansburgh in 1923 while working on his master's thesis at the General Electric Research Center in Schenectady, New York. They were married for 60 years, until her death in 1986.

In 1941, Green and his partners J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott and H.B. Peacock bought Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI), primarily a petroleum exploration company. GSI began to manufacture a broader range of electronics equipment and instruments during World War II, including anti-submarine sonar detectors. In 1951 GSI spun off Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) to pursue the manufacture of a broader range of electronics equipment and instruments, while GSI, now as a wholly owned subsidiary of TI, continued to focus solely on oil exploration services.

Green was vice president (1941–1951), president (1951–1955) and chairman of GSI (1955–1959). He was vice president and a director of Texas Instruments and in 1976 was named an honorary director of the company. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970. In 1978, he was given the inaugural Maurice Ewing Medal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, its highest award. In 1979 Green and his wife were awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1985, Green received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Cecil Howard Green died in 2003 at the age of 102.

Philanthropy
The growth of TI made Green an enormously wealthy man, and he and Ida quickly set about giving his wealth away. The Greens' philanthropic efforts totalled over $200 million, and most of this money was given to education and medicine. He was given an honorary knighthood in 1991 (at age 91) by Queen Elizabeth II.

One gift was the founding of the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green branch of the University of California Systemwide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP). This branch is located at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

It was because of Green's gift that Green College, Oxford was founded in 1979. Green College merged with Templeton College in 2008 to become Green Templeton College, on the site of what was previously Green College.

Some of Green's philanthropy at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was encouraged by William Carleton Gibson, a neurologist in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Both Gibson and Green referred to Gibson as "Cecil Green's most expensive friend" due to his encouragement to fund the Cecil and Ida Green Visiting Professorship and Green College, University of British Columbia. In 1998, the UBC Alumni Association gave Green and Gibson alumni "Lifetime Achievement Awards" in recognition of their support for the university.

title: Cecil Howard Green


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Laure Waridel

Laure Waridel, (born January 10, 1973) is a social activist, a writer, a professor of environment at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and a radio and TV commentator.

Early years
Laure Waridel was born in Switzerland, in the village of Chesalles-sur-Oron just north of Lake Geneva in the Canton of Vaud. She has three sisters and a brother. When she was two, their new home was a dairy farm in Mont-Saint-Grégoire, Quebec, in the Montérégie region. It was not long before Laure became aware of the shift towards industrial farming methods and the vulnerability of farm producers. As a young girl, she worked at a local organic farm, the Cadet Roussel farm in Mont-Saint-Grégoire, Quebec. She lives in Montreal and is the mother of two children, Colin and Alphée; Alphée was the subject of a 2012 documentary film, Alphée of the Stars (Alphée des étoiles), by her father and Waridel's then-spouse Hugo Latulippe. Waridel is now married to Bruce Johnston.

Education
From 1990 to 1992, Waridel studied social sciences at the Cégep Lionel-Groulx. Subsequently, she earned a degree in sociology and international development from McGill University. She completed her university studies with a communications certificate from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a Master's degree in law and environmental studies from the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Waridel earned a doctorate degree at the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

Social activist
After the Earth Summit (1992) in Rio, Waridel became one of the founders of Équiterre, a non-profit organisation based in Montreal and dedicated to promoting ecological and socially responsible choices through action, education and research. It focuses on four issues: fair trade, ecological agriculture, energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, energy conservation, and ecological and socially just choices.

Laure Waridel was the president of Équiterre. Her collaborators are quick to say that Waridel's considerable charm and communication skills were instrumental in getting Equiterre off the ground and in the success of the fair trade. Waridel is no longer an employee of Equiterre, but continues as its most public representative. She remains with the non-profit organization today as a consultant.

In 2002, she was named by Maclean's Magazine as one of 25 Canadian personalities who are making a difference.

Waridel defended Gil Courtemanche's novel Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004. This novel eventually won the competition.

In 2012, she was made a member of the Order of Canada "for her contributions as a writer, commentator and social activist on environmental issues, notably as co-founder of Équiterre". In 2016, she was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec.

Works

 * L'envers de l'assiette (1998, 2003)
 * Une cause café (1997)
 * Coffee with Pleasure (2001)
 * Acheter c'est voter (2005)

title: Laure Waridel