text:
Talk:OpenAL

Listing game engines
Would it be better to just list the game engines instead of games used? It'll scale better and is a bit more informative. ENGIMa 04:52, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree with this. There are good reasons to not list games. At best, technology shall be listed. This boils down to Doom3, UnrealTechnology2, Quake3 (merge Q3 and D3 with "id technology"?). I'm not sure about America's Army: Operations, Hitman 2, Freedom Fighters, Psychonauts. Because those are just mere products and doesn't add anything useful, I suggest to just pull em out. Personally I believe this is just mere marketing which is not going to add useful content to wiki.

 * My proposal is to change:

''The following games make use of OpenAL: Doom 3, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Postal 2, America's Army: Operations, Hitman 2, Freedom Fighters, Psychonauts.
 * to:

''Many games used OpenAL, notably those based on Unreal Technology 2 and games from ID-software based engines. Other games also employed this technology.''

 * Considering wiki's policy however, this change will possibly be undone in future.
 * By the way, maybe it's a nice idea to say that first AL implementations were really bad and doppler effects are still broken (if you read last mails on the mailing list, you know how much Creative is done to get it work in 1.1).
 * Please also suggest your opinion on the AL extension issue and the lack of recording.

 * MaxDZ8 12:27, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

 * According to various feedback [here] the list shall be mantained. I disagree with that but I respect Wiki's policy so I've used the compromise solution of grouping everything in a list. This should give us the best of both worlds. MaxDZ8 15:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

History of development section
Anyone interested in a history of development section? Loki, Creative, SWeng, the "lost" OpenAL version of Alpha Centauri? Why the Linux version uses Lisp for its config file? Ah, good times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.77.144.8 (talk) 02:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Creative or Loki?
I don't think it's right to say that Creative developed OpenAL. They currently host the web site and developer resources - but the original API was developed by Loki in order to port Windows games to Linux - and much of the development work was done by OpenSource enthusiasts and by Apple.

IMHO, the credit in the opening paragraph should go to Loki.

SteveBaker 13:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Questionable "Portability" and Other Criticisms
I am not sure if this is appropriate to place in the main page, but OpenAL's "portability" is quite poor in my opinion. Since Creative took hold of OpenAL, development of this library has been pretty much been developed directly for Windows by Creative employees, while the ever dwindling open-source community around OpenAL takes this code and makes it work for Linux, OS X, etc. I do have experience in using the OpenAL library in the development of an audio engine simulatenously across three platforms (Linux, Windows, OS X), and that engine does not fit my definition of "cross-platform" at all in its current state. I make this claim for the following reasons:

 * The trend seems to be that once a new version of OpenAL is released for Windows, the same version is not seen for other platforms for a period of months
 * The library does not behave consistently across platforms for the same version (this is based on personal experience)
 * Documentation for older versions of OpenAL is totally absent from the OpenAL website, despite that those older versions are the most current versions for many systems
 * Function definitions are usually, but not always, consistent across platforms
 * Because of many of the above issues, the source code for a "working" OpenAl engine has to be littered with #ifdef macros to ensure correct operation

I have personally brought these issues forth to the OpenAL community (including Creative) on their mailing list, and no one there refuted my claims.

http://opensource.creative.com/pipermail/openal-devel/2006-April/004278.html

I am not sure if such criticisms (which although stated as my own, are shared by many others) belongs on the main page for this topic, as it may be seen as slanderous or as a non-neutral-point-of-view. But I am interested in discussing a proposal of putting these criticisms on the main page for OpenAL.

--RootsLINUX 03:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Unluckily, mailing lists are to be taken with extra care, especially when you are the one posting in the mailing list, as that can be considered original research. I suggest trying to find reliable sources that verify the suggested information and cite them in the article. We need third-parties to report about this, like CNN, Ars Technica, eWeek, etc. Hope it is a bit clearer now. -- ReyBrujo 04:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

 * (I'm the author of the second revision of the ALUT library that is shipped with the latest versions of OpenAL - so you can't regard me as an NPOV source here!) I agree that since Creative (and to a lesser degree, Apple) took the reins, the main thrust of the development has been in support of Windows...and even more specifically - for Creative's own hardware under Windows. To some degree the API has been directed towards the hardware features that Creative's hardware has. However, in the absence of these two companies, OpenAL was a dead project. There was very little work done on it between Loki's sad demise and Creative picking it up. The Linux version certainly lags the Windows/MacOS versions quite severely and the root cause of that is that there is a separate code base for the two implementations. What really needs to be done to fix this problem is to merge the Linux, MacOSX and Windows versions into a single source base and use conditional compilation for the OS-specific differences.  This would tend to make developers think about the impact of their changes on the other platforms rather than (as now) simply diving in and changing code as if no other platforms existed. However, there are quite a few other problems with OpenAL that aren't going to get fixed unless there is a large influx of developers who don't work for either Apple or Creative. OpenGL gets around this commercial driving of the API by having an active ARB composed of hardware vendors, OS developers and application developers. OpenAL's charter says there should be an ARB - but it does not exist and has never met. SteveBaker 14:18, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Disagreeing history
http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html Clearly states that both Creative and Loki started it together, and straight from the horses mouth. -74.118.188.16 17:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Sound card support
Would it be an idea to list (at least particially) what soundcards do work with OpenAL? If such a list exists, would someone link to it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.130.70.253 (talk) 11:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Wrong WikiProject?
Why is this in the VideoGames WikiProject? Shouldn't it be, just like OpenGL, in the WikiProject Computing? --DanielPharos (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

EAX?
One thing I've never understood is what the relation between EAX and OpenAL is. Is EAX still an extension to OpenAL? If I'm not mistaken, EAX 2.0 is basically a part of DirectSound3D hence it's supported by many non Creative products. EAX 3.0 - 5.0 are just extensions to DirectSound3D. If it is just an extension, has there been any effort by non Creative developers to "Extensions can be promoted to ARB (Architecture Review Board) status, indicating a standard extension which will be maintained for backwards compatibility. ARB extensions have the prospect of being added to the core API after a period of time." since it would seem to me this would make it easier for them to support EAX 5.0 in their hardware (although they may still have patent issues to contend with) Nil Einne (talk) 17:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

 * To make things more complicated i'd like to add EFX to the discussion. It was only mentioned on the EAX page, so i added a link from EFX to the OpenAL page and a redirect from Effects Extension. I also edited this page to shortly mention EFX and EAX, but sincerely invite anyone who understands more of it than I to change my line in a decent paragraph about the subject. Pizzaman79 (talk) 14:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Implementations
Would it be useful to have a section listing the current implementations of OpenAL? Although with OpenGL this would be unreasonable, since there must be thousands (one for each driver). But OpenAL there is only a handful: The original OpenAL SI (the reference implementation) and OpenAL Soft. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiplingw (talk • contribs) 22:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be such a list because this comment is very misleading in suggesting that there are only two. Other quite distinct implementations on Windows alone include Rapture3D and specific hardware ones for NForce (OpenAL 1.0), X-Fi (OpenAL 1.1 with EFX), Audigy and other sound-cards. There's also an implementation for XBox360 which (while restricted to developers, like all console APIs) has shipped with millions of games like Race Driver GRID, DiRT, F1 2010, Fable, Brian Lara international Cricket, etc and been implemented on top of both the original console-specific XAudio and the more recent multiplatform XAudio2. Simon N Goodwin (talk) 09:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Last open source release / internal algorithm
I closely inspected the code in the final open source release.

That version actually does something extremely simple - it doesn't do ANY fancy effects with the audio, time delay, doppler, what-have-you - assuming you have four speakers, all it does is weight the emission of sound from an object between the speakers depending on its position relative to the listener. That's it!

Toby Douglass (talk) 09:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Open Source
How can an API be open/closed source. surely it's whether the API is a closed or open standard. It is irrelevant if implementations themselves are open/closed. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

 * It's certainly a borderline issue right now. Originally, OpenAL had a single implementation - and it was OpenSource - so at the time the article was started, OpenAL was an actual library, and it was 100% true to say that "OpenAL is an OpenSourced library".  However, relatively recently, one branch of the implementation has become closed-source - while the other remains open.  Is OpenAL now an API specification which happens to have two implementations?  Or is OpenAL still that same OpenSourced library...which now happens to have a closed source 'clone'?  I don't think it's clear at this point. SteveBaker (talk) 15:58, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

You can't call a PROPRIETARY Audio Library OPEN SOURCE Audio Library no more than you than you can call a round wheel square! What Creative has now is ClosedAL which happens to use OpenAL's API. Creative has no legal control over the True OpenAL, only the Architecture Review Board does as per the charter, and if that board doesn't truly exist then maybe OpenGL's Architecture Review Board could assume that role for audio as well as graphics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sly Snake (talk • contribs) 14:59, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The standard libraries included in the OpenAL 1.1 redistributable installer are NOT closed source. https://github.com/rpavlik/openal-svn-mirror/tree/master/OpenAL-Windows This is dated from 2006 and can be compiled fully from source. 80.162.33.59 (talk) 23:00, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Disadvantages
Currently the disadvantages is stated to be misleading. It describes that OpenAL is not fit for multi-listener and time difference of arrival applications. Please, feel free to adjust the wording such that the reader of this article knows what the scope/extend of OpenAL is, not erroneously given the reader the idea that it can be used for such applications.

Maybe it is an idea to start the page (or create a separate page) for a generic description of 3D audio rendering software: Andy (talk) 11:35, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Direction (heading) effects
 * Doppler effects
 * Time difference of arrival effects (propagation delays)
 * Interaural time difference and level difference effects
 * HRTF effects (modeling human perception by head-related transfer functions)
 * Obstruction, occlusion, diffraction, reflection, scattering
 * Reverberation effects from physical objects and surfaces
 * Physical collision effects (coupling with collision detection in a physics engine: hear a ball bouncing/towards towards you)
 * Source radiation patterns
 * Spreading loss / distance attenuation
 * Atmospheric effects (humidity, temperature)
 * Multiple listeners

Drjoms (talk) 14:40, 8 January 2014 (UTC) My first on Wikipedia, so I am a bit nervous. if OpenAL is just API - it's not API's fault that nothing implemented mufti listener perspective. In fact, define mufti listener. Two people from two different computers playing networked OpenAL enabled game that use same API can be considered as multi listener? Two people playing same game from SAME computer but from 2 different processes are multi listeners? I believe this option is supposedly must be implemented in client software if different hardware is involved. At least, this is how it was originally intended. Anything that uses second set of hardware for multiplexing signal is acting as second server that takes advantage of specific API in a way. In a simplier example, I see it, this way: "This car's model has major disadvantage, it can't fly". Technically speaking it's correct, but it breaks assumption of cars, that they(generally) can't, at this moment of history, fly. API describes how something can be achieved, not code for implementation. drjoms GMT+2 15:39 7 January 2014

DevMaster.net OpenAL Tutorials
This link doesn't actually go to any OpenAL tutorials. I believe it should be removed. Any reason why it shouldn't? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Topsfield99 (talk • contribs) 21:47, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

OpenAL.org is blank and pending deletion
The page is listed in status AUTORENEWPERIOD and the contents are blank. Is this project discontinued? Anybody knows what would be the replacement front page? Yurivict (talk) 22:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Notability discussion
What evidence is there that OpenAL meets WP:Notability? If there is none, then it should be deleted per Wikipedia guidelines, as I don't see any rationale for this unverified article to exist. An editor has made an analogy to OpenSL ES, but I also don't seen any evidence OpenSL ES passes notability, so that doesn't help me understand why this article should remain. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 07:11, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

 * OpenAL is included in a large number of games, both open-source and commercial, as one of the audio options. I have played some of them. Yes, it might not be as popular as the graphical equivalent it is named after, OpenGL, but along with DirectSound on Windows and CoreAudio on macOS and ALSA on Linux and OSS on BSD operating systems (the OS-level audio APIs) there are quite a number of audio APIs such as OpenAL, PulseAudio, JACK, Gstreamer, SDL/SDL2, etc. A lot of the open-source software that uses OpenAL uses it via another multimedia library called SFML that has OpenAL as a dependency. One thing I use that uses OpenAL for its audio output is the VisualBoyAdvance-M emulator for GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy, where OpenAL gets better results than DirectSound... it happens to be the best emulator for those handheld Nintendo game systems. Also there are many games listed on here that use OpenAL.

 * What I would ask you is how can such a widely used audio library as OpenAL NOT be considered notable, especially given its many years of history, the different companies involved, the fact that OpenAL support is built-in to certain operating systems like Apple macOS if I recall correctly, that it is a major product of Creative Labs which is the biggest manufacturer of sound cards and has been for decades, the large variety of software that uses it, and so on? If it is not notable we might as well remove all the other articles about cross-platform APIs and software libraries too from Wikipedia since apparently you don't think those are notable. Even if OpenAL development has stalled, it is a fairly stable API and quite a number of projects use it as a dependency and as an audio option and in many of them it works better than other options for audio output. I would say if there is any reason development on it stalled it is because their work is pretty much complete and all they need to do is fix any bugs that may arise.

 * Anyway it is nonsensical to me that you are even considering OpenAL to possibly not be notable. OBVIOUSLY it is notable. Maybe not as important as OpenGL, but still, plenty of notable software uses it for audio output and would have to use something else for audio output if OpenAL did not exist. This isn't to say that I use OpenAL personally when I code. I added audio to a game myself and I used SDL2_mixer... although SDL2_mixer has its own problems... for me the major one being difficulty getting its dependency libvorbisfile (which is part of libvorbis that is not usually installed if someone installs libvorbis). There are a lot of cross-platform audio frameworks and it is hard to find one of them that really works quite well at A) being the same across all operating systems, B) being easy to use as a dependency that can be compiled and built, C) figuring out and using its API correctly, D) actually having the features you need and not having important features missing, and E) getting the bloody thing to actually work correctly without any problems in your software that uses it as a dependency. There isn't really ANY cross-platform audio framework that meets all of those criteria well for most projects. For instance, in the game where I used SDL2_mixer for audio, it was the least worst option for my use case (which involved MIDI music among other things and many audio frameworks lack that feature which was necessary to me along with working on both Windows and all the UNIXes), I would not call it the best option. Some people find that OpenAL is the least worst option for their particular use cases, it really depends on what software you are trying to write and what meets your requirements the best. As a programmer I just find your proposal to delete this article absurd, even if OpenAL is not my audio library of choice (in fact I rejected it out of hand for the game I was working on because it did not fit the criteria for my project, namely its API was not the right sort of API that I wanted, providing features I didn't want instead of the features I did want, whereas I found SDL2_mixer was perfect for my particular use case).

 * Wikipedia is used as a resource by many programmers. Notable software libraries used by a lot of software all have articles here, any library of that kind that I can think of has an article here. Deleting this article makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, what next, are you going to delete the article on the Open Sound System still used by BSD operating systems due to the fact that OSS is old and there are better audio libraries and APIs now such as PulseAudio? Anyway, look at the list of games on OpenAL's official site that they talk about: https://openal.org/games/ Many of the top games that are considered some of the best open-source games that can be played on Linux are on that list, plus that list is incomplete, there are actually plenty of others they don't mention there. The official game of the U.S. Army, America's Army, is one of the games that uses OpenAL. How on Earth is OpenAL possibly not notable? This just makes no sense. Countless popular games that are quite notable use it and they would not have any audio were it not for OpenAL (well OK they probably would but the developers would have had to pick another audio library instead). Look at this list of games that use OpenAL: http://www.blueripplesound.com/compatible-games It has Minecraft on it among other top-ranked games! A popular game with many clones that got bought out by Microsoft! Seriously, OpenAL is used by a lot of games and it is DEFINITELY notable. You have got to be kidding me with this nonsense about it not being notable. Sure, lots of people might like it, but even in this blog post: http://camlorn.net/posts/april2014/shortcomings-of-openal.html the person complaining about OpenAL admits at the end that OpenAL is the only free/open source way to get anything like surround sound audio that they know of, and all their frustrations with OpenAL are compounded by the fact that they don't see any other option they can use for their use case (3D audio, or HRTF as the technical term goes).

 * And if something is the only open-source library providing 3D audio effects (HRTF or Head-Related Transfer Function) in widespread use, and it is used by countless popular games, obviously it is notable. I mean COME ON, you have got to be kidding me saying it's not notable. We should just get rid of the silly tag questioning OpenAL's notability, this is obviously notable. And I am someone who has called for other articles to be removed for not being notable in the past, and successfully gotten Wikipedia to take several down, I don't think everything is notable, but this DEFINITELY is. Maybe it is not the best written article on Wikipedia with the best citations to PROVE it is notable beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, but that is no reason to accuse it of not being notable and take it down. Anyway, I would like to know what possible reasoning you or anyone else might have for claiming OpenAL is not notable. A lack of newspaper articles from the local Podunk Gazette about it? Gimme a break, that's an absurd justification. The sources Wikipedia likes best, such as newspapers and magazines, do not tend to write about software libraries that are simply used as dependencies by other software. Most reporters for such publications are completely uninformed about the subject matter. This doesn't mean we should delete articles on this topic. Then again, we shouldn't create a Wikipedia article for every single project any random person starts on GitHub, we don't need a separate Wikipedia article for every single variant/fork of NetHack for instance, NetHack has its own wiki that does that. There has to be a balance. But OpenAL is widely used in enough popular software, with enough of a history, and enough of a unique niche as the only free cross-platform 3D audio library, that I think it is clearly notable enough for our general-purpose Wikipedia. Even if programmers do find OpenAL annoying to code with, that does not make it any less notable... web developers find Internet Explorer 6 annoying to code for but it is still notable. Plus OpenAL actually does work really great once programmers write code that correctly works with it... writing the code is the hard part... OpenAL produces better quality audio than the DirectSound that Microsoft uses as part of DirectX. At least, it has less of a latency problem and the buffering system works better so there is less staticky noise, in software where that can be an issue (e.g. the emulator VisualBoyAdvance-M, which lets users choose between OpenAL and DirectSound, which I have personal experience using). Plus DirectX is Windows-only... another reason OpenAL is important, it helps games be more portable, even if there are differences between the Creative Labs version of OpenAL for Windows and the OpenAL-Soft version of OpenAL for UNIX-based operating systems. Differences between Windows and UNIX-based OSes happen with all sorts of things, for instance curses libraries, with the PDcurses on Windows versus ncurses on UNIX-based OSes, but curses libraries are still notable on Wikipedia.

 * Anyway I am removing the notability tag for these reasons, as no credible argument has been made that OpenAL is not notable, and indeed, none could possibly be made because it IS notable. It is just one user tagging an article as not being notable because they don't understand why it is notable, without putting forth any reasonable arguments to justify said tagging. I have also looked at your history and you seem to be really into the OpenAI article, and it appears you stumbled by chance onto the similarly-named OpenAL article. While I do believe your edits to say that OpenAL is not notable were made in good faith, I don't think that you have any knowledge whatsoever of the subject matter of cross-platform audio libraries and APIs. This is relevant because knowledge of this topic is absolutely necessary to knowing whether or not OpenAL is a notable cross-platform audio library and API. --Yetisyny (talk) 05:23, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

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你好
你好 103.134.96.143 (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Trading
Trading — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2402:8100:26E3:FEF1:CCD6:9AB4:3591:919 (talk) 18:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:OpenAL


text:
Blow

Blow commonly refers to:
 * Cocaine
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Blow, Blew, Blowing, or Blown may also refer to:

People

 * Blew (surname)
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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Blow


text:
Vincent Lo

Vincent Lo Hong-sui, GBM, GBS, JP (born 18 April 1948) is the chairman of Hong Kong-based Shui On Group, a building-materials and construction firm. He graduated from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 1969. Upon returning to Hong Kong, started business with the sum of HK$100,000 (US$16,700) borrowed from his father, Hong Kong property tycoon Lo Ying-shek.

In 1984, Lo began investing in Shanghai and constructed a hotel in partnership with the Communist Youth League. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre caused occupancy to plunge, and the league could not repay its construction loan. Lo assisted the league in dealing with the loan: Han Zheng was the Youth League secretary at the time, and is now mayor of Shanghai.

In association with Xu Kuangdi, a former Shanghai mayor, Han assisted Lo in gaining the right to develop a piece of land surrounding the hall where the Chinese Communist Party held its first meeting, now known as Xintiandi. The $170 million property development project is a 20,000 square meter complex of restaurants, bars and shops and is a prime entertainment spot in Shanghai.

In 1995, he acquired his first cement plant in Chongqing, which has allowed the Shui On Group to become one of China's top three cement companies. Under Lo's direction, the Shui On Group is carrying out property development projects in other Chinese cities, such as Wuhan, Dalian, Foshan and Hangzhou, as well as Chongqing.

He was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal (GBM) by the Hong Kong SAR Government in 2017.

Family
Vincent Lo married his ex-wife Jean Ho (何晶潔) in 1985, they had 2 children together.

Vincent Lo and his current wife Loletta Chu married at 27 November 2008.

title: Vincent Lo


text:
Talk:West Maui Mountain

I would like to discuss the latest article rename. I believe that "West Maui Mountains" is the prevalent English name (note the plural). "West Maui Mountains" returns 17,300 hits on Google, while "West Maui Mountain" returns only 981. I know it is awkward that the Hawaiian name is singular (Mauna), while the English name is plural. But, Wikipedia guidelines (Naming conventions (common names)) make it clear to use the most common name. Thanks! -- hike395 04:53, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * That is a bogus use of the arguement or policy. If 10,000 people are wrong and only one person is right, that (according to you) makes it 10,000 to one so change the facts. What is correct in this or any instance is what is meant by mountains or moutain. Since there is but one mountain, telling me that Google (which is counting touristy web sites) becomes some kind of authority. No encyclopedia (or peoples, for that matter) can achieve any form of competancy following that logic - Marshman 20:13, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:West Maui Mountain


text:
Inagaki Manjirō

Inagaki Manjirō (稲垣 満次郎) was a Japanese diplomat and political theorist who was active during the Meiji period of Japan.

Early life
Inagaki was born in Nagasaki, as the son of a samurai of the Hirado Domain. As a young man he was a warder of the Satsuma men imprisoned in Nagasaki after the unsuccessful Satsuma Rebellion and gained their respect and affection.

After studying at the clan-established Ishinkan and Kagoshima Shigakko (private school), he entered the Department of Literature of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1882. Sent down from Tokyo University with many others after the Incident of 1883, when the student body rebelled and boycotted the graduation ceremonies because the time of the ceremony was changed, he never returned, unlike most of the others. Instead, Inagaki went to Britain from January 1888 to December 1890 and studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He also founded the Japanese Club at Cambridge University to study the ways of English gentlemen. He also studied classical literature and is the first Japanese known to have learned Greek. He became a very popular figure at the University, especially with the Master of Pembroke College and the Vice-Chancellor, the Reverend Dr. Charles Edward Searle.

Later life
After graduating Inagaki returned to Japan, and became a temporary professor at Gakushuin Higher Commercial School. He entered the Foreign Ministry and became Japan's first deputy Minister Resident to the Kingdom of Siam on March 31, 1897. He was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary on 19 November 1899 and envoy extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in 1903. He continued in that role until July 1907, when he was transferred to Madrid, Spain, where he died of illness in 1908.

Inagaki wrote a number of scholarly books in English and Japanese on international affairs but died relatively young with his potential unfulfilled. His writings urging Japanese expansionism into the South Pacific were part of the theoretical basis of the Southern Expansion Doctrine of the Imperial Japanese Navy and certain factions in the government in the early 20th century.

English

 * Japan and the Pacific and the Japanese View of the Eastern Question, 1890 (London: T. Fisher Unwin) - dedicated to John Robert Seeley who taught Inagaki at Gonville and Caius College.

Japanese

 * Tohosaku (Policy for the East) (1891).
 * Shiberia tetsudoron (On the Siberian railways) (1891).
 * Kizokuron (On the nobility) (1891, 1893, 1894)
 * Kyoiku no Omoto (Great Fount of Education) (1894)
 * Nanyo Chosei dan (Expedition to the South seas) (1893)
 * Gaiko to Gaisei (Diplomacy and Foreign Campaigns) (1896)

title: Inagaki Manjirō


text: Category:People from Iowa

title: Category:People from Iowa


text:
Talk:Pastorita Huaracina

Untitled
I'll tackle it in the next couple days, though it really needs someone more familiar with Peru. It's interesting, but way too much of a "fan letter" to be an encyclopedia entry as is. Doovinator 04:55, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pastorita Huaracina


text:
Mākii

Mākii (マーキー) (born August 23, 1987, in Okinawa, Japan) is a Japanese musician who was formerly the vocalist and songwriter for the Okinawa-based band High and Mighty Color. She was the youngest member of the band. She has an older brother who introduced her to the world of music and anime. When she performed at a concert in Okinawa in 2003, a scout for a record label noticed her and Anti Nobunaga. Mākii refused the offer at first, wanting to pursue her career in Canada as a solo artist and to master the English language, but she ultimately joined the band. In 2007, she debuted in her first film, Anata wo Wasurenai.

On July 1, 2008, it was announced that Mākii had married Dreams Come True bassist & producer Masato Nakamura on June 22 and would be leaving the band by the end of 2008. In her parting message, Mākii thanked her fellow band members and all of their fans for supporting her and the group for such a long time.

She resumed musical activities in 2013 under the stage name MAAKIII with her first single "Chokankakutekichikaku" (超感覚的知覚).

In 2017, she formed a new band DracoVirgo with several of her former High and Mighty Color band members.

MAAKIII voiced one of the racing teams in the video game "get REKTorized" which was released on July 7 of 2022.

title: Mākii


text:
Category:Historical legislatures

Historical legislatures, deliberative assemblies with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. Legislatures form important parts of most governments; in the separation of powers model, they are often contrasted with the executive and judicial branches of parliamentary government.

title: Category:Historical legislatures


text: User talk:66.143.107.193

title: User talk:66.143.107.193


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sail Inn

Sail Inn was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete

Sail Inn
This is a local bar in Arizona, with no evidence provided that it is significant at all. - Cdc 04:56, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Abstain. I haven't heard of it either, but I'm not going to say it's not notable.  A Google search wouldn't be the most likely candidate to research this for notability, so that's out.  Can any Arizonians vouch for this?  —[[en:RaD Man|RaD Man (talk)]] 07:28, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete unless revised to demonstrate notability. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:05, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely with Radman. Is this significant in its area? Apparently it has a "unique character". Does it? If it really does, it should be in. If it's just another bar, probably not. Dr Zen 08:31, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * At most, worth maybe a mention in Tempe, Arizona (if even that) and delete - Skysmith 10:11, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: Wikipedia is not the Tempe Yellow Pages. Geogre 15:23, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Notable bar. anthony 警告 15:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Notable for what? Are you just saying that because you think every single bar is notable, or because you know this specific bar? Unless you can actually say why it is notable, my vote is delete Average Earthman 16:11, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whether every bar is notable (I mean, I could serve drinks in my backyard and call myself a bar), but this one seems to be big in the music scene in Arizona. anthony 警告 17:42, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree with RaD man and Dr Zen for now and am holding off. Anthony, can you please provide some conclusive information on this location? [[User:GRider|GRider\talk]] 17:46, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I could, but I wouldn't provide any more information than a simple google search can. anthony 警告 17:42, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * In that case, delete. [[User:GRider|GRider\talk]] 17:10, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Comment A search in Google Groups, which I personal regard as more useful for this kind of search, yields 34 hits for "Sail Inn" Tempe. Mostly music-related, and the main theme is that the bar is notable, if it's notable at all, for a Grateful Dead cover band called The Noodles. By comparison, Regattabar Boston gives 353 and Passim Cambridge gives 1290. Many of the Sail Inn hits are simply event mentions. One says "Check out the Noodles for a better than the usual GD cover band at Sail Inn," one says " spent a few days in Scottsdale/Tempe Phoenix last month and the Sail Inn was one of my favorite bars," one says "I was at the Sail Inn, a small little dive of a bar seeing a local dead cover group called the Noodles." I think this one should probably stand or fall on the strength of The Noodles. If they're not notable enough for an article, then surely the bar where they perform is not notable enough. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 03:11, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Doesn't meet the very high bar (hehe) for notability for bars. --Improv 06:23, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Doesn't seem notable to me. A little POVish as well. -R. fiend 21:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Articles on commercial establishments ought to be subject to extra scrutiny on the notability front, and this one doesn't demonstrate any. RadicalSubversiv E 23:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete... if this bar is notable, then so is Thirty North, in St. Louis Missouri, because Jake's Leg plays there. Pedant 00:25, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


text:
Project G.e.e.K.e.R.

Project G.e.e.K.e.R. is an animated television series that premiered on CBS on September 14, 1996. It was created by Douglas TenNapel, creator of Earthworm Jim, and Doug Langdale, the developer of Earthworm Jim the animated series, and was a production of Columbia TriStar Television under Adelaide Productions, with original music by Shawn Patterson (main title theme by Terry Scott Taylor). TenNapel and Taylor also collaborated on the video games The Neverhood, Boombots and Skullmonkeys, and in 2005, re-united for the Nickelodeon cartoon Catscratch.

The show was cancelled after only one season, as CBS cancelled all of their Saturday morning schedule in 1997 to stop their downward-spiraling ratings.

The Federal Communications Commission also rejected CBS's attempt to classify the show as educational and informational under that fall's strengthened requirements for children's programming.

Synopsis
The titular character, Project GKR (Geno-Kinetic Research), is an artificial shapeshifting being created by Mister Moloch and Dr. Maston of Moloch Industries and intended to be used as a weapon. However, the cyborg Lady MacBeth and her Tyrannosaurus rex companion Noah rescue him before he can be finished, leaving him a moronic, cartoonish being with little control of his powers. Subsequently, the three must work together to evade capture and prevent Moloch from re-obtaining GeeKeR.

Cast

 * Billy West as G.e.e.K.e.R., Additional Voices
 * Cree Summer as Lady MacBeth, Nanny, Sonny, Additional Voices
 * Charles Adler as Dr. Maston, Jake Dragonn, Gene Damage, Additional Voices
 * Jim Cummings as Mister Moloch, Will Dragonn, Cosmotto, Additional Voices
 * Brad Garrett as Noah, Captain Wormhole

Additional voices

 * Danny Mann as Redjack
 * Ed Gilbert as Dinosaur Leader
 * Jeff Bennett as Larry the Virus
 * Charity James
 * Kath Soucie
 * Dee Dee Rescher as Female Junker
 * Joe Alaskey
 * Jason Marsden as Kid Dinosaur
 * Kevin Michael Richardson as Stonebender/"Mr. Smiley", Additional Voices
 * Joe Lala
 * Michael Bell as Toxic Moose
 * Lisa Kaplan

Credits

 * Executive Producers: Douglas TenNapel and Douglas Langdale
 * Supervising Producer: Richard Raynis
 * Producer: Audu Paden
 * Associate Producers: Monique Beatty and Greg Chalekian
 * Production Coordinator: Luke Wasserman
 * Original Music: Shawn Patterson
 * Theme Song: Terry Scott Taylor
 * Color Designer: Don W. Kim
 * Music Editor: Bradford Cox
 * Dialogue Editor: Thomas Kearney
 * Digital Compositor (Opening Titles): Andy Jolliff
 * Background Designers: Vince Toyama and David James
 * Storyboard Revisor: Charles Garcia

Music
Terry Scott Taylor (friend of creator Doug TenNapel) was contracted to write the main title theme for the show, while Shawn Patterson was selected to be the series score composer. Two days before the show was set to air, Columbia TriStar discovered a licensing issue with Terry and Patterson was asked by the producers to compose and produce a main title theme to go on the air. Shawn completed this and Project GeeKeR aired with Shawn's original main title music. Weeks into the series, the licensing problem with Terry Scott Taylor was cleared up and the show's creator Doug TenNapel requested that Terry's original main title theme be reinserted into the series. Patterson's main title music was then removed from the remainder of the series.

title: Project G.e.e.K.e.R.


text:
Helen Morlok

Helen Morlok (May 19, 1930, in Lansing, Michigan – October 31, 2003, in Lansing, Michigan) is one of the four sisters listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's oldest identical quadruplets. Her sisters were Edna, Wilma, and Sarah. The sisters performed tap dance and comedy routines throughout the mid-east U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s. Her sister Wilma died in 2002. Helen died on October 31, 2003, at the age of 73. Edna died on April 10, 2015, at the age of 84. As of 2016, Sarah Morlok Cotton was still alive. Cotton published a book on the girls' childhood called The Morlok Quadruplets: The Alphabet Sisters.

title: Helen Morlok


text:
Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are is a 1963 children's picture book written and illustrated by American writer and illustrator, Maurice Sendak, originally published in hardcover by Harper & Row. The book has been adapted into other media several times, including an animated short film in 1973 (with an updated version in 1988); a 1980 opera; and a live-action 2009 feature-film adaptation. The book had sold over 19 million copies worldwide as of 2009, with 10 million of those being in the United States.

Sendak won the annual Caldecott Medal from the children's librarians in 1964, recognizing Wild Things as the previous year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It was voted the number one picture book in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for the first time.

Plot
The story focuses on a young boy named Max who, after dressing in his wolf suit, wreaks such havoc through his household that he is sent to bed without his supper. Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by monsters, simply called the Wild Things. The Wild Things try to scare Max, but to no avail. After stopping and intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects. Finally, he stops them and sends them to bed without their supper. However, to the Wild Things' dismay, he starts to feel lonely and decides to abdicate and return home. The creatures do not want him to go and throw themselves into fits of rage as Max calmly sails away home. Upon returning to his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him.

Development
Sendak began his career as an illustrator, but by the mid-1950s he had decided to start both writing and illustrating his own books. In 1956, he published his first book for which he was the sole author, Kenny's Window (1956). Soon after, he began work on another solo effort. The story was supposed to be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children.

He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth as an escape from their chaotic weekly visits, on Sunday afternoons, to his family's Brooklyn home. Sendak, as a child, had observed his relatives as being "all crazy – crazy faces and wild eyes", with blood-stained eyes and "big and yellow" teeth, who pinched his cheeks until they were red. These relatives, like Sendak's parents, were poor Jewish immigrants from Poland, whose remaining family in Nazi-occupied Europe were killed during the Holocaust while Sendak was in his early teens. As a child, however, he saw them only as "grotesques".

When working on the 1983 opera adaptation of the book with Oliver Knussen, Sendak gave the monsters the names of his relatives: Tzippy, Moishe, Aaron, Emile, and Bernard.

Analysis
In Selma G. Lanes's book The Art of Maurice Sendak, Sendak discusses Where the Wild Things Are along with his other books In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There as a trilogy centered on children's growth, survival, and fury. He indicated that the three books are "all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings – danger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy – and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives". Fundamental to Sendak's work for over fifty years is his trust in the validity of children's emotions.

Dr. Kara Keeling and Dr. Scott Pollard, both English professors, assess the role that food plays in the book, arguing that food is a metaphor for Max's mother's love based on the idea that Max comes home to a "still hot" supper, which suggests that his mother "loves him best". Going along with this, Mary Pols of Time magazine wrote that "[w]hat makes Sendak's book so compelling is its grounding effect: Max has a tantrum and in a flight of fancy visits his wild side, but he is pulled back by a belief in parental love to a supper 'still hot', balancing the seesaw of fear and comfort".

Where the Wild Things Are is a story that shows children's resilience through their "spirit" and "pluck". Max is able to stand up to the Wild Things with their "terrible teeth" and "terrible claws" using "the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once".

Professor Liam Heneghan describes Max's dream as one of mastering the wild, from which he also learns to master his "inner tumult". It sets forth the unrestrained rowdiness of the Wild Things and enlightens the reader to the idea that one cannot live in the wild forever. In her words: "In this notion of wilderness, there is a heightened reminder that after our fill of wilderness, one can, or perhaps even should, return, replenished, to the comforts of home". Heneghan concludes that "the overarching thought is an old one: a human engages with Wild Things and in so doing comes into accord with the world and gains a measure of self-mastery".

Reception
Where the Wild Things Are has received high critical acclaim. Francis Spufford suggests that the book is "one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate and beautiful use of the psychoanalytic story of anger". New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis noted that "there are different ways to read the wild things, through a Freudian or colonialist prism, and probably as many ways to ruin this delicate story of a solitary child liberated by his imagination". Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". Five years later, School Library Journal sponsored a survey of readers which identified Where the Wild Things Are as a top picture book. Elizabeth Bird, the librarian from the New York Public Library who conducted the survey, observed that there was little doubt that it would be voted number one and highlighted its designation by one reader as a watershed, "ushering in the modern age of picture books". Another critic called it "perfectly crafted, perfectly illustrated ... simply the epitome of a picture book" and noted that Sendak "rises above the rest in part because he is subversive". President Barack Obama read it aloud for children who were attending the White House Easter Egg Roll in multiple years.

New York Times writer Bruce Handy brought up the idea that "as a child myself, without benefit of personal insights subsequently gleaned from more than a decade of talk therapy, I had been left cold by Where the Wild Things Are". Deborah Stevenson, a writer for The Horn Book Magazine, talks about the effects the book had on a child who "screamed, apparently not with delight, every time Where the Wild Things Are was read to him. It is quite possible for some young readers or listeners to be moved to alarm by a book, just as they can be moved to joy or excitement or boredom". Sendak responded to this criticism in an interview, asking: "Did she hate her kid? Is that why she was tormenting her with this book?"

Despite the book's popularity, Sendak refused to produce a sequel; four months before his death in 2012, he told comedian Stephen Colbert that a sequel would be "the most boring idea imaginable". Where the Wild Things Are was number four on the list of "Top Check Outs OF ALL TIME" by the New York Public Library.

Adaptations
An animated short adaptation which had taken five years to complete was released in 1973, directed and animated by Gene Deitch and produced at Krátký film, Prague, for Weston Woods. It had narration by Allen Swift and a musique concrète score composed by Deitch himself; an updated version, which featured a new musical score and narration both by Peter Schickele, was released in 1988. This revised version was featured in a Children's Circle video titled The Maurice Sendak Library.

In the 1980s, Sendak worked with British composer Oliver Knussen on a children's opera based upon the book. The opera received its first (incomplete) performance in Brussels in 1980; the first complete performance of the final version was given by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera in London in 1984. This was followed by its first U.S. performance in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1985 and the New York City premiere by New York City Opera in 1987. A concert performance was given at The Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2002. A concert production was produced by New York City Opera in spring 2011.

In 1981, the New England Dinosaur Dance Company turned the book into a dance piece with choreography by Toby Armour and music by Ezra Sims. The piece debuted at Boston's Wilbur Theatre on December 22, 1981.

In 1983, Walt Disney Productions conducted a series of tests of computer-generated imagery created by Glen Keane and John Lasseter using as their subject Where the Wild Things Are.

In 1999, Isadar released a solo piano musical composition titled "Where the Wild Things Are" which appeared on his album Active Imagination, inspired by the Sendak book. The composition was revisited and re-recorded in 2012 on Isadar's album, Reconstructed, with Grammy winner and founder of Windham Hill Records, William Ackerman, producing.

The 2005 Simpsons episode, "The Girl Who Slept Too Little", features a spoof of Where the Wild Things Are entitled "The Land of the Wild Beasts".

A live-action film version of the book was released on October 16, 2009. Directed by Spike Jonze and co-produced by Sendak, the film stars Max Records as Max and features Catherine Keener as his mother, with Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara and Forest Whitaker providing the voices of the principal Wild Things. The soundtrack was written and produced by Karen O and Carter Burwell. The screenplay was adapted by Jonze in collaboration with Dave Eggers, who also novelized the screenplay as The Wild Things, published in 2009.

In 2012, indie rock quartet alt-J released the song "Breezeblocks", inspired in part by the book. Alt-J keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton said the story and the song share similar ideas about parting with a loved one. "Breezeblocks" reached certified ARIA Gold status in Australia.

In 2016, Alessia Cara released her second single, "Wild Things", which charted at number fifty on the Billboard Hot 100. In an interview with ABC News Radio, Cara stated she took inspiration from Where the Wild Things Are, saying "each 'Thing' represents an emotion and kinda escapes into this world ... and that's kinda what I wanted to do".

title: Where the Wild Things Are


text: Category:New Hampshire Supreme Court

title: Category:New Hampshire Supreme Court


text:
Talk:Mathematical notation/to do

 * Give proper definition. ---> added a first cut at it.
 * some of this properly belongs in History of mathematics, but
 * The first use of a symbol for free variables (Egyptian heap)
 * Diophantine equations
 * Ratios and proportions
 * symbols for Integrals and sums -- when they first arose
 * Hindu-Arabic notation for numbers
 * Knuth arrow notation - Graham's number
 * O notation

title: Talk:Mathematical notation/to do


text: Category:People from New Hampshire

title: Category:People from New Hampshire


text:
Dynamite Kid

Thomas Wilton Billington (5 December 1958 – 5 December 2018), best known by the ring name the Dynamite Kid, was a British professional wrestler.

Trained by former wrestler "Dr Death" Ted Betley, he competed in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), Stampede Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). With his cousin Davey Boy Smith, he was also known for being one half of the tag team The British Bulldogs.

He had notable feuds with Tiger Mask in Japan and Bret Hart in Canada.

Billington is considered by many, including Bret Hart, to have been one of wrestling's most influential in-ring performers, having increased the level of athleticism involved in the art, bringing together styles from Britain, Mexico, Canada and Japan.

Early life
Billington was born in Golborne, Lancashire, England. He had two sisters and a younger brother named Mark. His father Bill and uncle Eric Billington were boxers in their youth and his grandfather Thomas Billington was a bare-knuckle boxer. He was a member of the Billington family. One of his ancestors James Billington was also a wrestler.

Academic work was not a priority to him, but he was drawn to sports at his comprehensive school; his adherence to it, particularly wrestling and gymnastics, helped him develop a relatively small but powerful and agile shape. In addition, he had also received training in boxing during his formative years, which helped instill toughness in him before his career.

Early career (1975–1984)
Billington was trained by former wrestler "Dr. Death" Ted Betley after a meeting at his father’s workplace introduced the two. He trained with Betley for three years starting at 13, and attended Riley's Gym, known as The Snake Pit, where he learned freestyle wrestling. Dynamite Kid made his debut working in 1975 for Max Crabtree. Kid's first match filmed for TV was taped 30 June 1976 in Lincoln (and transmitted 30 October by which time another match against Pete Meredith had been filmed and screened) saw him lose by technical knockout to veteran heel "Strongman" Alan Dennison after injuring his throat on the top ring rope. However, Dennison was so impressed by the technical skill of his young opponent that he refused the win and consequently changed his ways and became a blue-eye and a friend of Kid.

During his early days, he won the British Lightweight title on 23 April 1977, and the Welterweight title on 25 January 1978. He was also instrumental in starting the career of then-Judo star Chris Adams while still competing in the UK, was scouted and moved to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1978.

Dynamite made a big impact in his matches for Stampede Wrestling with the increasingly popular Bruce Hart and rookie Bret Hart. Despite differences between them due to comments Dynamite Kid made about Stu Hart in his autobiography, Bret still regards him as "pound-for-pound, the greatest wrestler who ever lived." Dynamite Kid began taking steroids in 1979, when Big Daddy Ritter, aka the Junkyard Dog, introduced Billington to the anabolic steroid Dianabol. Billington was also introduced to speed during his stay in Canada by Jake Roberts.

After doing big business in Canada, Dynamite was booked on his first tour of Japan, working for International Wrestling Enterprise from 19 to 25 July 1979. Stu Hart and Stampede Wrestling switched their business relationship from IWE to New Japan Pro-Wrestling shortly after Dynamite's first tour, and he wrestled for New Japan from 4 January 1980 to 2 August 1984. Perhaps the most memorable matches that came out of Dynamite's run in New Japan were from his now legendary feud against Tiger Mask; Tiger Mask's debut was against Dynamite, in which Tiger Mask shocked the wrestling world by gaining the victory over Dynamite. The two would compete against one another several more times in a feud that is often credited as putting Junior Heavyweight wrestling on the map, as well as setting the standard for future generations. Both the NWA and WWF Junior Heavyweight titles were vacated after Tiger Mask was injured by Dynamite Kid in a tag match on 1 April 1983. Dynamite and Kuniaki Kobayashi competed for the vacant titles, but no winner was decided. On 21 April 1983, Dynamite and Tiger Mask met for the vacant WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship, but no winner was decided after the match ended up as a draw three consecutive times.

In 1983, Kid made his debut to the United States working for Pacific Northwest Wrestling where he feuded with Curt Hennig. Eventually he won the NWA Pacific Northwest Heavyweight title from Hennig on 7 September. A month later he dropped the title from Billy Jack Haynes. Then in November he teamed up with The Assassin and won the Pacific Northwest Tag titles from Curt Hennig and Buddy Rose. A month later they dropped the belts to Hennig and Scott McGhee.

On 7 February 1984, Billington captured the WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship by winning a tournament in New Japan Pro-Wrestling; although it was a WWF Title, it was primarily defended in Japan. He defeated Davey Boy Smith earlier in the tournament and would go on to defeat The Cobra in the finals.

World Wrestling Federation (1984–1988)
Dynamite Kid made his WWF television debut on 29 August 1984, where he and Bret Hart defeated Iron Mike Sharpe and Troy Alexander in a match eventually shown on 15 September 1984, on the Maple Leaf Garden broadcast. In 1985, Billington would end up teaming with Davey Boy Smith as the British Bulldogs, while Bret would turn heel and team with Jim Neidhart as The Hart Foundation, and it led to matches between the two teams that usually ended in No-Contests. On 7 April 1986, accompanied by Captain Lou Albano and Ozzy Osbourne, the British Bulldogs won the WWF World tag team title from Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake at WrestleMania II.

Dynamite Kid would suffer a serious injury in a tag-team match that took place in December 1986 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, against Don Muraco and Bob Orton, Jr. and several wrestlers including Roddy Piper, Junkyard Dog and Billy Jack Haynes would substitute for him when tag title defenses were made. While recovering in the hospital from back surgery, Billington would later recount that Bret Hart showed up and stated that Vince McMahon had sent him to get Dynamite's tag belt; Billington refused. Shortly after checking himself out of the hospital (against doctors' orders), Billington met with McMahon, who requested that the Bulldogs drop the tag titles to the team of The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff; Billington refused, saying that he would only drop the belts to The Hart Foundation.

McMahon acquiesced and at a TV taping on 26 January 1987, The British Bulldogs wrestled a match to drop the titles to The Hart Foundation; the match would air on 7 February edition of WWF Superstars of Wrestling. The match itself was an odd sight, as Dynamite could barely walk due to back surgery. Dynamite was knocked out by Jimmy Hart's megaphone early in the match, avoiding him having to wrestle much in the match for story purposes. From that point forward, the Bulldogs would not be a top-tier team anymore, and while they would not become straight jobbers, they would mostly wrestle to double disqualifications, double countouts or time-limit draws against the top teams in the WWF.

Billington was known for being a tough guy and for his stiffness as a worker. Mick Foley reported that, when he and Les Thornton (another British wrestler) wrestled the Bulldogs in a tag-team match early in Foley's career, Billington manhandled him so badly in the ring that he tore a ligament in Foley's jaw with his signature Hook Clothesline, preventing Foley from eating solid food until his recovery. Outside of the ring, WWF-champion Randy Savage once specifically asked for him to watch his back when he went drinking in a hotel bar frequented by NWA wrestlers, including Ric Flair. He was also involved in heated backstage fights with Jacques Rougeau, one of which led to Rougeau hitting him with a fistful of quarters as he opened a door holding a cup of coffee, knocking several of his teeth out. Billington claimed the Rougeau incident was not the final straw that drove him to leave the WWF, but rather a dispute with WWF management over the issuance of complimentary plane tickets, over which he resigned from the company on principle and which to his surprise in retrospect, Smith followed suit.

The Bulldogs wrestled their last WWF match at the 1988 Survivor Series. Although their team would win the match after team captains The Powers of Pain (The Barbarian and The Warlord) eliminated the last remaining opponents The Conquistadores, the Bulldogs had earlier been eliminated when Billington had been pinned by Smash of the tag team champions Demolition.

Return to Stampede Wrestling, England and Japan (1988–1996)
After leaving the WWF, the Bulldogs returned to Stampede Wrestling to win the International Tag Team Titles. The Bulldogs also competed frequently in All-Japan Pro Wrestling where they were paid $20,000 each by Giant Baba, along with the liberty of choosing which tours they wanted to participate in. Upon returning to Stampede, the Bulldogs were involved in a feud with Karachi Vice over the Stampede International Tag Team Championship. However, by February 1989, Dynamite became involved in a brutal feud with Johnny Smith after Johnny interfered and attacked the Dynamite Kid, before cutting his hair. In May 1989, the Bulldogs split up in Stampede, but remained a team in AJPW. Over in Stampede, the Bulldogs feuded with each other, with Dynamite forming The British Bruisers with Johnny Smith and Davey Boy Smith teaming with a young Chris Benoit.

In 1990, Davey Boy Smith abruptly withdrew the Bulldogs from AJPW's annual World's Strongest Tag Determination League by returning to the WWF, and fabricating a story to the All-Japan office that Billington was in a serious car accident and was unable to compete. Back home in the UK, from 1991 onward, he would regularly appear for local promotions All Star Wrestling and Orig Williams' BWF where, due to his WWF success, he was a headline attraction this time around. Since Davey Boy Smith had trademarked the term "The British Bulldog" during the Bulldogs' previous run in WWF, he decided to return to the WWF as The British Bulldog and would send people to the United Kingdom to warn the promoter every time a flyer was distributed promoting Dynamite Kid as a "British Bulldog".

Johnny Smith would end up taking Davey Boy Smith's spot in the World's Strongest Tag Determination League, and the duo (known as the British Bruisers) continued to compete in All Japan Pro Wrestling. The duo managed to capture the All Asia Tag Team Championship, but the partnership was short-lived; the years of steroid abuse (including an incident in which he used horse steroids), working a high impact style, and cocaine usage caught up with Billington as he suddenly announced his retirement on 6 December 1991, immediately after the Bruisers defeated Johnny Ace and Sunny Beach at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. He returned to Japan as a special guest with Lord James Blears on 28 February 1993 and claimed that he was going to send his 17-year-old brother to All Japan's Dojo, but it wasn't realized. He returned again for a tag team match with Johnny Smith on 28 July 1993 and was planning to promote an All-Japan show in his country in 1994, but it wasn't realized either.

In January 1994, he returned to England and worked for All Star Wrestling.

Before embarking on another All-Japan tour, he visited Dan Spivey and stayed in his home in Florida for a week, while Spivey went on holiday. When Spivey came back, he and Billington took hits of LSD, which resulted in Billington coming close to death twice in one day, but he was revived with adrenaline shots by paramedics both times.

His final wrestling match took place on 10 October 1996, at a Michinoku Pro event called These Days. The match was promoted as a "Legends of High-Flying" six-man tag featuring Dynamite paired with Dos Caras and Kuniaki Kobayashi against the Great Sasuke, Mil Máscaras, and Tiger Mask. Dynamite's body had degenerated to the point where he was "practically skin and bones", as the bottom portion of his tights were very loose. In the end, Dynamite delivered his trademark tombstone piledriver on Great Sasuke, leading Dos Caras to powerbomb Sasuke for the pin. While at the airport to return home on the next day, Dynamite had a second seizure (the first one was in 1987) and was sent to the hospital immediately.

Personal life
In 1991, he was divorced from his first wife Michelle Smadu (the sister of Bret Hart's then-wife Julie), with whom Billington had one son and two daughters (Marek, Bronwyne and Amaris). Following the end of his marriage to Michelle, he moved from Canada back home to Golborne with his parents. There he married for a second time to a woman named Dot; with her he had three stepsons; John, Steven and Mark. Dot passed away on July 9th 2024. Before his death Billington had two granddaughters, Miami and Taya. He is now survived by two more grandchildren, Madix and Harlow.

Billington was a close friend of Wayne Hart. When Billington was living in Calgary, they co-owned an apartment together where they lived with their respective girlfriends.

Altercations with other wrestlers
Billington had several violent interactions with fellow wrestlers. One such event was with Bruce Hart, in which Billington broke Hart's jaw. Another was while in WWF, where wrestler Jacques Rougeau Jr. felt that Billington had bullied him and punched Billington in the face with a fist holding rolled up quarters, knocking out Billington's front teeth.

Health problems
In 1997, after having a great deal of complications he was experiencing with walking due to the large number of back and leg injuries he sustained during his career, Billington lost the use of his left leg. Using a wheelchair for mobility, he was cared for by his second wife, Dot. Billington was told he would never be able to walk again. Harley Race, the inventor of the diving headbutt (a move Chris Benoit also used frequently), stated that he regretted ever inventing the move due to its ostensible causation of spinal problems, concussions, and that it may have contributed to Billington's disability. In addition to his paralysis, Billington also had heart problems. In November 2013, Billington reportedly had a stroke.

In 2015, he was named in a lawsuit filed by WWE after the organization received a letter from him indicating that he intended to sue them for concussion-based injuries sustained during his affiliation with WWE. He was represented by attorney Konstantine Kyros, who is involved in several other lawsuits involving former WWE wrestlers. Billington's lawsuit was dismissed by US District Judge Vanessa Lynne Bryant in September 2018.

Death
Billington died on 5 December 2018, his 60th birthday. The exact cause of death remains unconfirmed, but the BBC report of his death placed it in the context of the above-mentioned health issues. At the time of his death Billington’s siblings stated that his health issues resulted in him being depressed and that he took numerous medications for his health conditions.

Legacy
Billington's British training, combined with an aerial arsenal honed during numerous tours in Japan, influenced a generation of later wrestling stars, especially those normally associated with Stu Hart's "Dungeon". A follower was Chris Benoit, who idolized Billington while growing up and adopted a similar moveset that included the swandive headbutt and the Snap suplex.

In February 2013, Highspots.com released a documentary named Dynamite Kid: A Matter of Pride on the Dynamite Kid.

In October 2014, Billington was presented with a lifetime achievement award at Gloucester Leisure Centre by Superstars of Wrestling UK.

Billington is featured in the 2016 documentary Nine Legends.

The playable character "Dynamite Tommy" in the Mat Mania/Mania Challenge/Exciting Hour arcade games of the mid-1980s is often presumed to be modeled after Billington. The artwork for the game features the character wearing a championship belt which is almost exactly like the WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship which Billington held.

Billington's nephews Thomas and Mark have become professional wrestlers, having been trained by Marty Jones and have formed a tag team, The Billington Bulldogs.

On 16 September 2021, Vice TV aired (as part of their series Dark Side of the Ring) a retrospective of Billington's life, both in and out of the ring. Included in that program are interviews with Dynamite's widow, daughters, and wrestlers Dan Spivey and WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley.

Championships and accomplishments

 * All Japan Pro Wrestling
 * All Asia Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Johnny Smith
 * NWA International Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
 * World's Strongest Tag Determination League Fighting Spirit Award (1984, 1985) – with Davey Boy Smith
 * World's Strongest Tag Determination League Skills Award (1989) – with Davey Boy Smith
 * World's Strongest Tag Determination League Fair Play Award (1990, 1991) – with Johnny Smith
 * Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling
 * AGPW International Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
 * Canadian Wrestling Hall of Fame
 * Class of 2001
 * Joint Promotions
 * British Welterweight Championship (1 time)
 * British Lightweight Championship (1 time)
 * European Welterweight Championship (1 time)
 * New Japan Pro-Wrestling
 * WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
 * Greatest Gaijin Junior Section (2002)
 * Pacific Northwest Wrestling
 * NWA Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
 * NWA Pacific Northwest Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with The Assassin
 * Pro Wrestling Illustrated
 * Ranked # 5 of the 100 best tag teams of the "PWI Years" with Davey Boy Smith in 2003.
 * Ranked #41 of the top 500 singles wrestlers of the "PWI Years" in 2003
 * Stampede Wrestling
 * Stampede British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Championship (4 times, inaugural)
 * Stampede International Tag Team Championship (6 times) – with Sekigawa (1), Loch Ness Monster (1), Kasavudo (1), Duke Myers (1), Davey Boy Smith (2)
 * Stampede North American Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
 * Stampede World Mid-Heavyweight Championship (4 times)
 * Stampede Wrestling Hall of Fame (Class of 1995)
 * Tokyo Sports
 * Lifetime Achievement Award (1991)
 * World Wrestling Federation
 * WWF Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Davey Boy Smith
 * Wrestling Observer Newsletter
 * Best Flying Wrestler (1984)
 * Best Technical Wrestler (1984) - tied with Masa Saito
 * Best Wrestling Maneuver (1984) Power clean dropkick
 * Hardest Worker (1983)
 * Match of the Year (1982) vs. Tiger Mask on 5 August, Tokyo, Japan
 * Most Underrated (1983)
 * Most Impressive Wrestler (1983-1985)
 * Tag Team of The Year (1985) - with Davey Boy Smith
 * Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)

title: Dynamite Kid


text:
Hawes Junction rail crash

The Hawes Junction rail crash occurred at 5.49 am on 24 December 1910, just north of Lunds Viaduct between Hawes Junction (now known as Garsdale station) and Aisgill on the Midland Railway's Settle and Carlisle main line in the North Riding of Yorkshire (now Cumbria), England. It was caused when a busy signalman, Alfred Sutton, forgot about a pair of light engines waiting at his down (northbound) starting signal to return to their shed at Carlisle. They were still waiting there when the signalman set the road for the down Scotch express. When the signal cleared, the light engines set off in front of the express into the same block section. Since the light engines were travelling at low speed from a stand at Hawes Junction, and the following express was travelling at high speed, a collision was inevitable. The express caught the light engines just after Moorcock Tunnel near Aisgill summit in Mallerstang and was almost wholly derailed.

Casualties were made worse by the telescoping (over-riding) of the timber-bodied coaches, and by fire which broke out in the coaches, fed by the gas for the coaches' lights leaking from ruptured pipes. Twelve people lost their lives as a result of this accident, some of whom were trapped in the wreckage and were burned to death.

The accident
Hawes Junction station was approximately 3.5 mi south of Ais Gill summit, the highest point on the steeply graded Settle and Carlisle line. The Midland Railway, who owned and operated the line, had a policy of using small engines only, and many trains (both northbound and southbound) required assistance from pilot engines to climb the "big hump" to Ais Gill summit. At Ais Gill summit the pilot engines were uncoupled and ran on the up (southbound, towards London) line to Hawes Junction, where there was a turntable accessed from the up main line via a trailing slip or from the back platform line (a loop line alongside the up main line which served the branch line to Hawes). Having been turned, light engines were usually coupled together to return to their depots (usually Leeds to the south or Carlisle to the north).

In the hour preceding the accident, signalman Sutton at Hawes Junction had to deal with nine light engines and a heavy load of scheduled traffic and some unscheduled special trains as part of the holiday traffic. At 5:20 am, the last two northbound light engines (rebuilt Midland Railway Class 2 4-4-0 Nos. 448 and 548, under drivers Edwin Scott and George William Bath) had been turned and coupled together, and were waiting on the "lie-bye" road alongside the down (northbound, away from London) line. After a down special express passed, Sutton signalled them onto the down main line where they halted at the advance starting signal, waiting for the express to clear Aisgill. Normally, this took between four and six minutes. However, Scott and Bath were still waiting twenty minutes later. Sutton had been busy handling two express up goods and trying to dispatch three light engines to the south between them. At 5.39, Sutton was offered the midnight sleeping car express, St.Pancras-Glasgow, which he offered forward to Ais Gill. It was accepted at once and at 5:44 he pulled all his signals "off" i.e. set them to clear. Scott and Bath briefly "popped" their whistles and set off. Barely two minutes later the express passed through. It consisted of four timber-bodied coaches, two sleeping cars and two brake vans, hauled by "Kirtley" 2-4-0 No. 48 and rebuilt Class 2 No. 549, under drivers Richard Johnston Oldcorn and Henry Wadeson. It was running sixteen minutes late due to signal and other delays at Leeds and Skipton, but was running at 60 mph and accelerating before making the final ascent to Ais Gill.

The two light engines were running at only an easy 25 mph. They had cleared Moorcock tunnel just over a mile north of Hawes Junction and were running across the Lunds viaduct 500 yd north of the tunnel when driver Bath glanced back and saw the express as it emerged from the tunnel. He opened his regulator and whistle. At the same time, driver Oldcorn on the leading engine of the express saw the red tail light on Bath's tender and applied the express's continuous brake. Driver Oldcorn estimated that the distance between the speeding express and the light engine was only 6 yard, so neither measure had time to take effect, and the express struck the light engines from behind. Bath's locomotive was derailed and lost its front bogie, but his and Scott's locomotives carried on for over 200 yd before Bath's locomotive came to rest against the side of a cutting. The two locomotives of the express were also derailed, and the coaches piled up behind them. The first two coaches were badly telescoped, and the twelve passengers who died were in these two coaches.

Except for two electrically lit sleeping cars, the coaches were lit by the Pintsch oil gas system. The main gas pipe on the leading coach was broken off in the impact, and the entire contents of the pressurised gas cylinders escaped in under two minutes. The gas then ignited in a single flash. Driver Bath had been injured in the leg but made his way on foot to the Ais Gill signal box a mile and a half north to summon help. The signalman there, Benjamin Bellas, sent another light engine under driver John William Judd, with Bath, along the up line. Judd attempted to put out the fire by bucketing water from his tender. Another light engine had been sent from Hawes Junction and its crew tried to drag the rear coaches away from the fire but could move only the brake vans at the rear of the train. The six leading coaches were immovable. The engine crews and the express train's guards, the sleeping car attendants, some platelayers from a hut a short distance up the line and a shepherd whose home was nearby tried desperately to rescue the trapped passengers but were eventually driven back by thick smoke. Because a strong wind was fanning the flames, the fire could not be extinguished and all six coaches were burned out.

The bodies of the dead were taken to the nearby Moorcock Inn. The Board of Trade Inquiry into the crash commenced on 27 December 1910 in the same inn.

The writer John Francon Williams and his son John Jr, were thought to have been passengers on the train but were discovered safe two days after the accident having not caught the train in Manchester as they had intended.

Causes
The immediate cause of the accident was that signalman Sutton forgot that he had moved the two light engines to the down line, waiting there to proceed to Carlisle. He later improperly cleared the down line signals without ascertaining that the line was clear.

George Tempest, the driver of another light engine waiting at Hawes Junction to return south to Leeds, witnessed Scott's and Bath's engines depart followed closely by the express. After he and his fireman heard the whistle of Bath's locomotive, he went to the signalbox and related what he had seen. Sutton refused to believe him until he had checked his train register, and then telephoned signalman Bellas at Aisgill to ask whether the two light engines had gone through. Bellas replied that none had been offered to him; nor had the express passed. Sutton had apparently been under the mistaken impression that he had despatched the two light engines to Carlisle some time earlier. By this time, the glare of the fire to the north was visible. Simpson, the signalman sent to relieve Sutton, then arrived for his shift, whereupon Sutton asked him to "go to Bunce [the stationmaster] and tell him I am afraid I have wrecked the Scotch Express".

Railway Inspectorate Report
Since the earliest days of public railways in the UK, railway accidents were investigated by Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate, an independent body of experts, mostly from the Royal Engineers. In the case of the Hawes Junction collision, the investigating officer was Major John Wallace Pringle, who opened a private court of investigation initially operating from the waiting room at Hawes Junction station. He naturally judged that Sutton's admitted mistake was the primary cause of the accident, but made a number of observations on the conduct of others and several recommendations.

Pringle considered that drivers Scott and Bath were also at fault for failing to carry out the requirements of Rule 55, which was created to remind signalmen in this situation. Under this rule, they should have sounded their engine whistles on coming to a stop, and when the signal was not cleared they should have sent one of their firemen to the signal box to remind the signalman personally. In 1910, the time after which this should be done was not specified, but was generally accepted to be two or three minutes. The engines were actually detained for twenty minutes. O.S. Nock states that ten minutes was allowed, but does not give a source for this.

Scott and Bath stated that they had sounded their whistles as they moved off, and this was confirmed by Tempest. Sutton had not been alerted by this, probably because the two locomotives were halted at the advanced starting signal 270 yd from the signal box rather than the much closer home signal, driving rain was being blown against the windows of the box, making it hard to hear sounds outside, and other engines were moving around the station and yard at the same time, so that Sutton would not have attached any particular significance to a train whistle from some distance away.

The issue arose of whether the signalman was overworked. The large number of light engine movements would naturally increase the total amount of traffic at Hawes Junction, but Pringle's report specifically rejected the assertion that overwork was a factor. However, between moving the two light engines onto the down line and accepting the express, the signalman had to deal with two up goods trains and several up light engines, movements which would require all his concentration to avoid delay, and make it easy to forget about the down line. The accident also occurred near the end of Sutton's 10-hour shift, which would make a lapse of memory easier.

Many railways had adopted reminder appliances, simple mechanical collars that the signalmen were required to place on signal levers to remind them that trains were stopped at signals, as a back-up to prevent them clearing the signals by mistake. The Midland Railway had not adopted these simple devices.

The accident would have been prevented if track circuits had been installed to detect the presence of a train (or in this case the light engines) on the main lines, and interlocking with the signals would have prevented them being cleared by the signalman. Track circuits had been invented in the 1870s and had proved to be very successful; unfortunately most British railway companies were slow to install them. The high level of traffic movements made Hawes Junction a prime location for the use of reminder appliances. The Board of Trade accident report unequivocally recommended this, and the Midland Railway rapidly complied both here and at 900 other locations on their network.

Since the outbreak of the fire and its intensity was undoubtedly caused by escaping gas from the Pintsch lighting system, the report recommended measures such as automatic shut-off valves and safer placement of cylinders. However, Pringle recommended that electricity be adopted as the universal method for lighting coaches, although he allowed that it would take many years for such a change to take effect fully.

Similar accidents

 * Quintinshill rail crash – also involved a signalman forgetting about a train on the main line.
 * Thirsk rail crash (1892) – a bereaved and overtired signalman fell asleep, forgetting about a train waiting at his signals.
 * Winwick rail crash – signalman and booking boy forgot about train on main line.

title: Hawes Junction rail crash


text:
User talk:KevinISlaughter

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title: User talk:KevinISlaughter


text:
Ephraim H. Foster

Ephraim Hubbard Foster (September 17, 1794 – September 6, 1854) was an American politician, who twice served as a United States Senator from Tennessee. During his political career, he was a member of the Whig Party.

Biography
Foster was born near Bardstown, Kentucky, in Nelson County, the son of Robert Coleman Foster and the former Ann Hubbard. In 1797 he moved with his parents to Tennessee, where they settled in the Nashville area. He later graduated from Cumberland College (1813) and later studied law, being admitted to the bar in 1820. He owned slaves. He also served in the Creek War and was for a time private secretary to General Andrew Jackson.

He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1829 to 1831 and again from 1835 to 1837, serving each time as Speaker. Upon the resignation from the U.S. Senate of Felix Grundy to accept appointment as United States Attorney General, the Tennessee General Assembly elected Foster his successor. He served in the Senate for the first time from September 17, 1838, to March 3, 1839. The legislature elected him to continue in the new term, but he declined, refusing to take their instruction in how to vote while a Senator; the legislature then turned to Grundy, still Attorney General, to succeed him, which (controversially) Grundy agreed to do.

However, Grundy died in office about a year later. Alfred O. P. Nicholson agreed to serve on an interim basis; then for a period the seat was vacated entirely, but eventually the legislature agreed to elect Foster again to the seat and he agreed to serve. His second period of service in the Senate was from October 17, 1843, to March 3, 1845. During this time he chaired the Senate Committee on Claims. Later in 1845 Foster received the nomination of the Whig party for Governor of Tennessee, but was defeated in the election by Aaron V. Brown of the Democratic Party. Following this, Foster returned to his Nashville law practice until shortly before his death. He is buried in the old City Cemetery in Nashville.

His only daughter Sallie married Benjamin F. Cockrill, the son of planter Mark R. Cockrill, and they had a son, Benjamin F. Cockrill Jr.

title: Ephraim H. Foster


text:
NLG

NLG may refer to:

 * Dutch guilder, former currency with the ISO 4217 code "NLG"
 * Natural language generation
 * National Lawyers Guild
 * Next Level Games
 * Nose landing gear - a landing gear in the nose of an airplane; see also tricycle landing gear

title: NLG


text:
Giovanni Bisignani

Giovanni Bisignani (born 1946) is an Italian businessman, who was Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the International Air Transport Association from 2002 to 2011.

Education
Bisignani was born in Rome, and received an undergraduate degree from the Sapienza University of Rome. He later studied as graduate student at Harvard Business School.

Career
Bisignani has managerial and business advisory experience, mostly in the transportation field, including:
 * ENI, a European energy company
 * Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, an Italian industrial group
 * Tirrenia di Navigazione, Italy's largest ferry company (President)
 * SM Logistics, a group of companies involved in logistics and freight forwarding (CEO)
 * Alitalia, Italy's largest airline company (CEO and Managing Director)
 * IATA's Board of Governors (member)
 * Association of European Airlines (Chairman)
 * Pratt & Whitney Advisory Board (member)
 * National Air Traffic Services Advisory Board (member).

Bisignani was Director General and CEO of IATA from 2002 to 2011. He was succeeded by Tony Tyler, who joined IATA from Cathay Pacific Airways where he was the CEO.

Publications
After retiring from IATA, Bisignani published Shaking the Skies, a book covering his experience there, focussing on leadership issues, governance and the role of executives in executing a strategic vision for their industry

Policies
Since 2002, Bisignani has led a number of initiatives reshaping air transport:

 * Safety: the IATA Operational Safety Audit is an internationally recognized and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline.
 * Environment: while air transport’s contribution to climate change is limited to 2% of global carbon emissions Bisignani is driving the industry to achieve carbon neutral growth by 2020 and to cut aviation’s carbon emissions by half in 2050. www.iata.org/environment
 * Simplifying the Business (Stb): Bisignani initiated this program using technology to improve customer convenience and reduce costs in 2004. In 2008, 100% e-ticketing was achieved throughout the industry. The StB project is now targeting industry savings of $17 billion with initiatives ranging from bar coded boarding passes to Fast Travel, Baggage Improvement Program and e-freight.

Personal life
Born in Rome in 1946, Bisignani speaks Italian, English, and Spanish. He is married with one daughter and enjoys golf, tennis and riding. Giovanni Bisignani is the brother of Luigi, Italian businessman and professional journalist which was closely friend of Andreotti, and for 20 years worked for ANSA, the national centralized Agency Press.

Awards

 * Honorary Doctorate from Cranfield University, UK in 2008, for his work in the air transport industry.
 * L. Welch Pogue Award for Lifetime Achievement in Aviation, 2011.
 * ATW's 2012 Airline Industry - Decade of Excellence Award

title: Giovanni Bisignani


text:
Asymmetric relation

In mathematics, an asymmetric relation is a binary relation $$R$$ on a set $$X$$ where for all $$a, b \in X,$$ if $$a$$ is related to $$b$$ then $$b$$ is not related to $$a.$$

Preliminaries
A binary relation on $$X$$ is any subset $$R$$ of $$X \times X.$$ Given $$a, b \in X,$$ write $$a R b$$ if and only if $$(a, b) \in R,$$ which means that $$a R b$$ is shorthand for $$(a, b) \in R.$$ The expression $$a R b$$ is read as "$$a$$ is related to $$b$$ by $$R.$$"

Definition
The binary relation $$R$$ is called  if for all $$a, b \in X,$$ if $$a R b$$ is true then $$b R a$$ is false; that is, if $$(a, b) \in R$$ then $$(b, a) \not\in R.$$ This can be written in the notation of first-order logic as $$\forall a, b \in X: a R b \implies \lnot(b R a).$$ A logically equivalent definition is:
 * for all $$a, b \in X,$$ at least one of $$a R b$$ and $$b R a$$ is ,

which in first-order logic can be written as: $$\forall a, b \in X: \lnot(a R b \wedge b R a).$$ A relation is asymmetric if and only if it is both antisymmetric and irreflexive, so this may also be taken as a definition.

Examples
An example of an asymmetric relation is the "less than" relation $$\,<\,$$ between real numbers: if $$x < y$$ then necessarily $$y$$ is not less than $$x.$$ More generally, any strict partial order is an asymmetric relation. Not all asymmetric relations are strict partial orders. An example of an asymmetric non-transitive, even antitransitive relation is the relation: if $$X$$ beats $$Y,$$ then $$Y$$ does not beat $$X;$$ and if $$X$$ beats $$Y$$ and $$Y$$ beats $$Z,$$ then $$X$$ does not beat $$Z.$$

Restrictions and converses of asymmetric relations are also asymmetric. For example, the restriction of $$\,<\,$$ from the reals to the integers is still asymmetric, and the converse or dual $$\,>\,$$ of $$\,<\,$$ is also asymmetric.

An asymmetric relation need not have the connex property. For example, the strict subset relation $$\,\subsetneq\,$$ is asymmetric, and neither of the sets $$\{1, 2\}$$ and $$\{3, 4\}$$ is a strict subset of the other. A relation is connex if and only if its complement is asymmetric.

A non-example is the "less than or equal" relation $$\leq$$. This is not asymmetric, because reversing for example, $$x \leq x$$ produces $$x \leq x$$ and both are true. The less-than-or-equal relation is an example of a relation that is neither symmetric nor asymmetric, showing that asymmetry is not the same thing as "not symmetric".

The empty relation is the only relation that is (vacuously) both symmetric and asymmetric.

Properties
The following conditions are sufficient for a relation $$R$$ to be asymmetric:
 * $$R$$ is irreflexive and anti-symmetric (this is also necessary)
 * $$R$$ is irreflexive and transitive. A transitive relation is asymmetric if and only if it is irreflexive: if $$aRb$$ and $$bRa,$$ transitivity gives $$aRa,$$ contradicting irreflexivity. Such a relation is a strict partial order.
 * $$R$$ is irreflexive and satisfies semiorder property 1 (there do not exist two mutually incomparable two-point linear orders)
 * $$R$$ is anti-transitive and anti-symmetric
 * $$R$$ is anti-transitive and transitive
 * $$R$$ is anti-transitive and satisfies semi-order property 1

title: Asymmetric relation