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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Varun Chandra

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. 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 speedy delete. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:19, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Varun Chandra
Some fellow rambling on some other fellow he knows, the kind of stuff you'd find at urbandictionary To quote, for instance, "Varun Chandra synonyms - Wanker/ cock face / loves to be liked"
 * Delete or even speedy delete, clearly a personal attack. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:49, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Unequivocal speedy material. Samaritan 05:29, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, personal attack/rant. Megan1967 07:54, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Speedy deleted as libelous patent nonsense. -- Curps 08:03, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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


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Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo

Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo García (born 12 April 1943 in Coria del Río) is a Spanish politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, part of the Party of European Socialists. In 1977 he entered national politics when he was elected to the Spanish national parliament as a deputy for Badajoz Province and was re-elected at the 1979 election as a deputy for Seville Province, representing that district until 2004. From 1985 to 1991, he served as Secretary of State for International Cooperation and for Ibero-America of Spain.

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

title: Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo


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St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway

The St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The StL&H arose out of a corporate reorganization at CPR that was announced on November 21, 1995. CPR wished to spin off its "eastern operating unit" into an operating railway company as a means to control poor financial performance of its assets in eastern North America.

A new management group responsible for the company's operations in the east, including the Delaware & Hudson Railway, will be headquartered in Montreal. The eastern unit will be responsible for turning the railway's operations between Montreal to Chicago and the U.S. Northeast into the most efficient, low-cost provider of railway services in the region. The new eastern unit will allow the railway to aggressively address the persistent losses it has sustained on its operations in the region. Its creation follows earlier efforts to merge with CN in the east and to acquire CN's eastern operations. The new unit will have autonomy to determine its own equipment requirements, network rationalization and labour relationships.

The new wholly owned subsidiary was named the St. Lawrence & Hudson Railway Company Limited and became operational on October 1, 1996, taking control of all CPR assets from Quebec City to Chicago (CPR trackage and trackage rights), and from Montreal to Washington, D.C. (Delaware and Hudson Railway), thus the D&H became a StL&H subsidiary.

The company name reflected its geographic region of operations - the St. Lawrence River valley and the Hudson River valley.

The StL&H was given a dedicated management team and the authorization to undertake radical measures to reverse financial losses. Within one year the financial picture was reversed and CPR announced its intention to continue ownership of the SL&H assets.

On January 1, 2001, the StL&H assets were transferred back to CPR ownership and the StL&H was dissolved. The D&H, being the CPR's corporate face in the northeastern United States, remained legally intact.

title: St. Lawrence and Hudson Railway


text:
Platinum (Mike Oldfield album)

Platinum is the fifth studio album by English multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mike Oldfield, released on 23 November 1979 on Virgin Records. It was Oldfield's first album to include shorter songs and music written by others. A modified version of the album was released in the United States and Canada and titled Airborn.

The In Concert 1980 tour, which ran from April to December of that year, was in promotion of the album. In Germany the album peaked at number 11. The album has since been reissued with bonus material.

Side one
The first side contains the 19-minute title track that is divided into four parts: "Airborne", "Platinum", "Charleston", and "North Star/Platinum Finale". The first two sections rely on melody played mostly with electric guitar; the first is slow in tempo and has many changes, while the second introduces a simple groove rhythm and a more repetitive song structure. "Airborne" was the theme tune for the 1980s BBC children's quiz show First Class. "Charleston" is a humorous piece with a simple rhythm and swinging melody that features a horn section. A female vocalist adds wordless vocals while Oldfield contributes some scat vocals in a whispering voice. "North Star/Platinum Finale" includes an excerpt from the 1977 Philip Glass composition "North Star". The lead melody is not borrowed from Glass but the choir's part is. The constant bass drum beat and octave-jumping bass line start the section and guitar enters with the melody later. A funky guitar riff and chorus appear, and the lead guitar continues to play the melody over them. Engineer Kurt Munkacsi was a frequent collaborator with Glass.

Side two
"Woodhenge" is an instrumental track named after the Neolithic monument of the same name located close to Stonehenge. On Airborn, the alternate version of Platinum only released in North America, the track was replaced by the track "Guilty".

"Sally"/"Into Wonderland"
"Sally" is a song written and sung by Oldfield and Nico Ramsden as a tribute to Sally Cooper, Oldfield's girlfriend at the time, who plays the tubular bells on the album. Shortly after the album's release, "Sally" was replaced with a different track, "Into Wonderland", sung by Wendy Roberts. The earliest pressings of the LP and cassette still show "Sally" in the track listing on the label and the sleeve even when the record had the new song. Later copies and subsequent reissues of Platinum correctly list "Into Wonderland".

Part of the song survives on the second version of the album, as the first 50 seconds of "Punkadiddle" is actually the last part of "Sally". This fast part, with the same melody of the song's chorus, served as a musical bridge to "Punkadiddle", so it was kept. "Sally" can often be found as part of bootleg issues.

Oldfield wrote "Punkadiddle" as a parody on punk rock. On stage, he and his band performed the song bare-chested.

"I Got Rhythm" is a cover version of the song by George and Ira Gershwin, featuring Oldfield's arrangement from the jaunty original into a Broadway-style ballad with harmonised vocals from Roberts and orchestration, mostly performed on keyboards.

Critical reception
The Globe and Mail called the songs "a logical extension of the Tubular Bells-type material, generally a consecutive layering of synthesizers, guitars and percussive effects, but taken at a quicker clip than one might have expected." The Boston Globe wrote that Oldfield "shows his increasing adeptness at orchestration."

Track listing
Side one
 * 1) "Platinum Part One: Airborne" – 5:05
 * 2) "Platinum Part Two: Platinum" – 6:06
 * 3) "Platinum Part Three: Charleston" – 3:17
 * 4) "Platinum Part Four: North Star/Platinum Finale" – 4:49

Side two
 * 1) "Woodhenge" – 4:05
 * 2) "Into Wonderland" (originally "Sally") – 3:46
 * 3) "Punkadiddle" – 5:46
 * 4) "I Got Rhythm" – 4:44

Airborn
Airborn is an alternate version of the Platinum album by Mike Oldfield released in North America in 1980. It is identical except that "Woodhenge" is replaced by "Guilty", a fast-paced live track based on a theme from Incantations. Certain tracks appear to be pressed at arbitrarily higher speeds than on the original pressing of Platinum and the track Platinum Part Two: Platinum is edited down by a minute (certain parts were cut out from the original track), so it only runs 5:04 on Airborn instead of 6:06. The artwork depicts a triangular shape formed from sections of tubular bell overlaid on a landscape of what appears to be a coastline and mountain range.

Single LP
Side one
 * 1) "Platinum Part One: Airborne" – 4:59
 * 2) "Platinum Part Two: Platinum" – 4:36
 * 3) "Platinum Part Three: Charleston" – 3:11
 * 4) "Platinum Part Four: North Star/Platinum Finale" – 4:36

Side two
 * 1) "Guilty" – 3:48
 * 2) "Into Wonderland" – 3:36
 * 3) "Punkadiddle" – 5:39
 * 4) "I Got Rhythm" – 4:35

Double LP version
There is also a double LP release, with one LP being a version of Platinum (as above), the other having an alternate live version of Tubular Bells side one from the same tour that produced Exposed, and a mix of studio and live elements of Incantations and Tubular Bells side 2. This also came out in on cassette in 1980 as a Limited Edition Double Play Tape.

Side three
 * 1) "Tubular Bells (Part 1)" (Live) (European Tour March–April 1979) – 23:40

Side four
 * 1) "Incantations" (Studio & live) (European Tour March–April 1979) – 19:26

Reissue
The album was re-released by Mercury Records on 30 July 2012, again with "Into Wonderland" replacing "Sally". This came as part of a deal in which Oldfield's Virgin albums were transferred to the label. It was released on the same day as QE2 and a year after the last Universal reissue of Incantations. The first disc is the original recording remastered with bonus material, and the second disc (available in the deluxe edition) is a live concert recorded during the two concerts at the Wembley Arena, London as part of the In Concert 1980 tour.

The reissue charted at 100 on the UK Albums Chart on 5 August 2012.

Disc 1
 * 1) "Platinum {Part One}: Airborne" (2012 remaster) 5:06
 * 2) "Platinum {Part Two}: Platinum" (2012 remaster) 6:06
 * 3) "Platinum {Part Three}: Charleston" (2012 remaster) 3:17
 * 4) "Platinum {Part Four}: North Star/Platinum Finale" (2012 remaster) 4:44
 * 5) "Woodhenge" (2012 remaster) 4:05
 * 6) "Into Wonderland" (2012 remaster) 3:46
 * 7) "Punkadiddle" (2012 remaster) 5:46
 * 8) "I Got Rhythm" (2012 remaster) 4:50
 * 9) "Platinum" (Live studio session) 5:12
 * 10) "North Star" (2012 stereo mix) 8:07
 * 11) "Blue Peter" 2:06

Disc 2 – Live at Wembley Arena, May 1980
 * 1) "Platinum" 20:43
 * 2) "Punkadiddle" 5:17
 * 3) "I Got Rhythm" 4:59
 * 4) "Polka" 3:42
 * 5) "Incantations" 22:14
 * 6) "Tubular Bells {Part Two}" 8:53
 * 7) "Guilty/Tubular Bells {Part One} Finale" 5:45
 * 8) "Blue Peter/Portsmouth" 3:38
 * 9) "William Tell" 2:27

Instruments and recording
Synthesizers that appear on the album include a Roland SH-2000 and Sequential Circuits Prophet 5.

When Oldfield was in New York City recording Platinum and "Guilty" he recorded a disco arrangement of his first album, Tubular Bells, but he decided not to release it. Oldfield has not said whether this version still exists or whether it will ever see release. A version of Free's "All Right Now" was also recorded during these sessions. It was used as the theme for a television music programme also called Alright Now. The vocals are by Wendy Roberts, while Pierre Moerlen and Tom Newman also contributed.

The album was recorded at Electric Lady and Blue Rock in the United States, and in Througham, Denham, and The Manor in the UK. The album was mixed at AIR Studios in London.

Personnel

 * Mike Oldfield – acoustic and electric guitars, marimba, piano, synthesizers, vibraphone and vocals
 * Francisco Centeno – bass guitar
 * Hansford Rowe – bass
 * Neil Jason – bass
 * Nico Ramsden – keyboards
 * Peter Lemer – keyboards
 * Sally Cooper – tubular bells
 * Demelza – congas (credited as "Demalza")
 * Pierre Moerlen – drums and vibraphone (credited as "Pierre Moerlin")
 * Morris Pert – drums (credited as "Maurice Pert")
 * Allan Schwartzberg – drums
 * David Bedford – vocal arrangements
 * Wendy Roberts – vocals on Wonderland and I Got Rhythm
 * Peter Gordon – horn arrangements
 * Michael Riesman – horn arrangements

Technical staff

 * Kurt Munkacsi – engineer
 * Tom Newman – producer and engineer
 * Richard Manwaring – assistant engineer
 * Renate Blauel – assistant engineer

Covers and remixes
Röyksopp adapted and remixed two sections of Platinum - "Platinum Part Three" and "Platinum Part Four", the latter retitled "Meatball" - on Back to Mine: Röyksopp.

Charts
It spent 6 weeks on the Norwegian charts, peaking at No. 24, and also peaked at No. 24 on the UK Albums Chart.

title: Platinum (Mike Oldfield album)


text: User talk:70.49.136.66

title: User talk:70.49.136.66


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Rosa Díez

Rosa María Díez González (born 27 May 1952) is a Spanish politician from Union, Progress and Democracy, UPyD deputy in the Congress of Deputies from 2008 to 2016.

When she was a member of the PSOE, she defined herself as a social democrat exclusively. However, her way of thinking evolved towards both social democracy and political liberalism and, consequently, she defined herself as a social liberal politician who endorses free-market economics, civil liberties and the welfare state when she was UPyD's leader and spokesperson. Likewise, Rosa Díez went from being an autonomist for most of her socialist period to defending centralism, thereby being this difference regarding the form of State, as well as her rejection of anti-terrorist policy of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's socialist government, the main reason why she left the PSOE. Although she claimed to be a republican both in the PSOE and in UPyD, she ended up proclaiming herself a monarchist person "in self-defence". In addition, Rosa Díez is a secularist politician who stands up for secularity as "respect for all religious beliefs, with the exception of Islam and any other religion which isn't respectful of human rights". She also professes herself to be a constitutionalist, a feminist, a pro-Europeanist, a progressive, a Spanish patriot, a reformist and an upholder of liberal democracy.

She positioned herself on the centre-left unequivocally throughout her time as a socialist activist. Nevertheless, Rosa Díez has located herself on the centre-left and cross-sectionalism simultaneously since she left the PSOE, defending what she deems progressive from anywhere on the left–right political spectrum vehemently and asseverating that the political centre, which can only be understood, to her mind, as moderation and equidistant space between left and right, is nothingness. Furthermore, she defines herself as a "radical democrat who strives for democracy's regeneration by playing according to the rules"; expressed differently, as a "pro-institutional leader whose radical politics, moderate in form and revolutionary in essence, bothers the establishment", for she wants to "transform politics by bringing off substantial, in-depth changes from within institutions". Hence, owing to her self-proclaimed cross-sectionalism and radicalism, Rosa Díez has been linked to radical centrism.

Career
She was a former Member of the European Parliament for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), integrated in the Party of European Socialists. In 2007 she gave up her seat and left the PSOE particularly due to disagreement on what she perceived to be the Socialists' drift on individual liberties.

She founded a new political party called Unión, Progreso y Democracia in Spanish and Union, Progress and Democracy in English (UPyD), based on the existing movement of Basque citizens against ETA violence ¡Basta Ya!. In 2008 and 2011, she was elected to the Congress of Deputies representing Madrid district. In the Spanish General Elections of 2011, she was re-elected and her party was the fourth most voted party in Spain.

Díez personally advocates for lower public wages. Subsequently, and although she was the UPyD spokesperson on five committees, she was only paid for one of them.

On 24 May 2015, she announced she would not seek reelection as spokesperson of UPyD due to the party's poor performance in the regional and municipal elections.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she was proposed as prospective cabinet member in a "Salvation Government" by far-right Vox.

title: Rosa Díez


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Huhu beetle

The huhu beetle (Prionoplus reticularis) is a longhorn beetle endemic to New Zealand. It is the heaviest beetle found in New Zealand.

Māori name
To Māori, the larval form is known as huhu (also tunga haere, tunga rākau) with the adult stage known as pepe-te-muimui. However, the larval and adult forms are commonly referred to as the huhu grub and huhu beetle, respectively.

As the huhu larva reaches maturity it ceases to bore in wood and casts its skin. This still edible stage is known in Māori as tataka. It then develops wings and legs, and while it is still white, it is known as pepe. Finally, it emerges and flies off to reproduce and is known as tunga rere.

Life cycle
Female adult huhu beetles oviposit their 3mm cigar-shaped eggs in clutches of 10–50, though up to 100 may be found. Eggs are laid in cryptic sites or in cracks in the bark of fallen wood. In laboratory conditions of 20°C ± 2°C and a relative humidity of c. 75%, eggs hatched in 23 ± 2 days.

Before hatching, the larva can be seen to move inside the egg and will break free from the egg using its mandibles to pierce the chorion of the egg and then enlarging the opening by chewing, although the chorion itself is not ingested. Setae that are found on abdominal segments 1-6 assist in providing support as the larva leaves the egg and excavates the initial gallery.

The whitish-coloured larvae measure up to 70 mm long and normally feed on dead wood of gymnosperms (mainly native and introduced conifers) associated with lowland podocarp forest. Larval duration of P. reticularis is two to three years in the wild. Under laboratory conditions, larval duration has been reduced to c. 250 days using an artificial diet and maintaining a temperature of 20°C. In its final instar the larva moves to within 7.5 - 10cm of the surface of the wood before constructing the pupal chamber. The pupal chamber is constructed by enlarging the diameter of the normal gallery over a period of one to three days. This process creates fragments of wood similar to wood shavings about 3cm by 1cm in size which are then packed into the larval gallery to form a plug. Once the plug is completed the larva lines the walls of the pupal chamber with the last frass voided from its gut. The larva then undergoes a resting period of around ten to fifteen days where the abdominal segments contract and the body darkens slightly whereupon it moults into a pupa.

The pupal phase lasts around 25 days with gametogenesis being completed during this stage. Eclosion occurs with a rupture along the frontal suture followed by a longitudinal rupture to the posterior border of the mesothorax. The head, feet and wings are freed during arching movements of the body through the ruptured cuticle. The emerged adult may then enter an inactive period of three to five days prior to creating an exit tunnel out of the pupal cavity.

Following pupation and emergence, the adult beetle does not eat and lives for approximately two weeks.

Behaviour
The beetles are nocturnal and are attracted by the lights of dwellings as noted by Hudson in 1892 "it is greatly attracted to light, and this propensity frequently leads it on summer evenings to invade ladies' drawing-rooms, when its sudden and noisy arrival is apt to cause much needless consternation amongst the inmates". They have powerful mandibles, which can produce a painful bite.

Adult females of P. reticularis produce an olfactory cue which attract adult males to the female. Adult individuals of both sexes will show a display behaviour if disturbed with the head jutting forward, mandibles opening to their full extent, antennae flailing and the head being raised and lowered. High intensity displays between individuals may lead to combat with preliminary grappling occurring with fore legs which usually results in an individual being thrown onto its back. Any object coming into contact with the mandibles is seized frequently resulting in the loss of appendages.

As food
The larvae of P. reticularis are edible to humans, with a long history of indigenous consumption, and their flavour has been described as like buttery chicken or peanut butter. There are different names in Māori for grubs at different stages of development, for example young larvae still actively feeding on timber are called tunga haere or tunga rākau, while full grown grubs which have ceased to feed and are preparing to pupate are called tataka and are the most prized (because there is no undigested wood pulp inside of them at this point). Huhu grubs may be consumed either raw or traditionally cooked in a Hāngī, and are an especially rich source of fat in the New Zealand wilderness. P. reticularis contains substantial amounts of nutrients. The larvae and pupae are relatively high in fat (up to 45% and 58% dry weight in large larvae and pupae respectively). The fat in huhu grubs is mostly oleic acid and palmitic acid. The second most abundant nutrient is protein, which is present at 30% dry weight in the large larvae, and close to 28% dry weight in the pupae. Protein extracts from huhu larvae and pupae are high in essential amino acids such as isoleucine, lysine, leucine, and valine. The total essential amino acid content of huhu grubs meets the WHO essential amino acid requirements for human nutrition. The essential amino acid content of huhu is significantly higher than that of mealworms, and is comparable to beef and chickpeas. When reconstituted in water, the protein powders of huhu larvae and pupae are able to form stable foams and emulsions. The ash content (representing minerals) of huhu grubs is 1.8% dry weight in large larvae, and 2.2% in pupae. The minerals include manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, copper, and zinc.

title: Huhu beetle


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Iratxe García

Iratxe García Pérez (born 7 October 1974) is a Spanish politician of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). She has served as Member of the European Parliament since 2004, and has served as the Leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats parliamentary group since 2019.

Early life
Born on 7 October 1974 in Barakaldo, Biscay, she obtained a diplomature in Social Work at the University of Valladolid in 1995. A resident of Laguna de Duero, she served as municipal councillor of Laguna de Duero and as member of the Valladolid Provincial Deputation from 1995 to 2000.

Member of the Spanish Parliament, 2000–2004
García became a member of the Congress of Deputies after being elected in the 2000 general election in representation of Valladolid.

Member of the European Parliament, 2004–present
In her first parliamentary term between 2004 and 2009, García served on the Committee on Regional Development (REGI), the Delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA), and the Delegation for Relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union (including Libya).

She also serves on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) and the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with the Arab Peninsula. In addition, she is a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights and of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Western Sahara.

In July 2014, García was elected chairwoman of the European Parliament Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM). In September 2014, PSOE chairman Pedro Sánchez appointed her as head of the party's delegation of MEPs in the S&D Group, replacing Elena Valenciano. Following the 2019 European Parliament election, the S&D Group chose García as new leader, a day after incumbent Udo Bullmann withdrew his candidacy. In March 2021, as leader of the S&D Group, she together with the parliamentary group opposed a debate on the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and corruption revelation in Maltese politics.

title: Iratxe García


text:
John Mills-Cockell

John Mills-Cockell (born 19 May 1943) is a Canadian composer and multi-instrumentalist, perhaps best known for his ground-breaking work with progressive / avant garde Canadian groups Intersystems and Syrinx, and for his numerous works for radio, television, film, ballet, and stage.

Mills-Cockell was one of the earliest adopters of the Moog synthesizer, and is generally regarded as a pioneer in the field of electronic music.

Early life
Mills-Cockell was born in Toronto, Ontario. His mother passed away when he was six months old. His father, whose work often required him to spend extended time overseas, found it necessary to place Mills-Cockell in an orphanage for a time shortly thereafter. Eventually, Mills-Cockell's father remarried and the family was reunited. Mills-Cockell has two younger brothers.

Mills-Cockell was introduced to music at the age of 5, when his father, a devoted amateur musician and choir singer, encouraged him to join a church choir. At the age of fifteen, he heard his first piece of electronic music and found himself "hooked."

Formal musical education
Mills-Cockell studied music at the University of Toronto from 1963 to 1967.

He studied piano under John Coveart, and composition under Dr. Samuel Dolin, at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto from 1964 to 1968, where he also taught electronic music.

He undertook graduate studies under Gustav Ciamaga at the University of Toronto's Electronic Music Studio in 1967 and 1968.

Intersystems
In Toronto in the fall of 1967, Mills-Cockell joined forces with light sculptor Michael Hayden, poet Blake Parker, and architect Dik Zander to form Intersystems, an arts collective and multimedia performance group. Intersystems' multimedia presentations were a classification-defying juxtaposition of Mills-Cockell's music, Hayden's light shows, Parker's spoken-word poetry readings, with Zander's engineering skills underlying the construction of the presentations.

Intersystems performed extensively in Canada and the US, including in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, New York City, Pittsburgh, and, at the invitation of Buckminster Fuller, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Intersystems released three LP recordings: Number One Intersystems (1967), Peachy (1968), and Free Psychedelic Poster Inside (1968). These original releases have become collector's items and are exceedingly difficult to find.

In late 2015, all three Intersystems albums were remastered and reissued, together with a 132-page bound booklet containing photos, essays, and reproductions of vintage press coverage, on Italian label Alga Marghen, to widespread acclaim.

The band made a surprise comeback in March 2021, with the announcement of their 4th album, titled #4. The album is set to release on 31 April of the same year.

Syrinx
After the dissolution of Intersystems in 1968, Mills-Cockell continued to compose, working with a number of other established musicians, including Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, and Murray McLauchlan.

His next major visible milestone came in 1970, when, together with percussionist Alan Wells and saxophonist Doug Pringle, Mills-Cockell formed Syrinx, a progressive music trio whose body of work incorporated elements of electronica, classical and world music, and psychedelic rock. Syrinx played the Toronto coffee-house circuit. After a time, Canadian music executive and talent manager Bernie Finkelstein signed the trio to his newly created True North Records.

1970: First album and growing notice
Syrinx released its first (eponymous) album in 1970.

The album garnered an enthusiastic response from critics, and in its wake, the group found itself newly in demand from a variety of quarters.

Syrinx opened for jazz legend Miles Davis on his Bitches Brew tour, and played bills with Ravi Shankar.

In addition, the first release attracted the attention of executives from CTV, which commissioned a theme song for its forward-looking television series Here Come the Seventies. This commission resulted in Mills-Cockell composing Tillicum, which was later released as a single and was included on Syrinx's second album.

The first album also resulted in a 1971 commission, from the respected Toronto Repertory Orchestra, of Stringspace, which Mills-Cockell composed for Syrinx, the TRO, and additional percussion. Stringspace is a 26-minute composition in four movements: December Angel, Syren, Ibisitx, and Field Hymn (Epilogue). Stringspace was performed live by Syrinx and the TRO, conducted by Milton Barnes, and broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's program Music to See in 1971.

1971: Long Lost Relatives
Riding the wave of notice and critical approval that arose from their first album, Syrinx returned to the studio in late 1970 to record a second album. However, after weeks of recording, a fire destroyed the studio, the group's instruments – including Mills-Cockell's Moog Mark II – and the master tapes of the recordings for their new album.

Undeterred, and with fundraising support from the Toronto musical community, the group purchased new instruments and pressed on to record the album.

Long Lost Relatives was issued in 1971 on Finkelstein's True North label. The album included Mills-Cockell's Tillicum and the four Stringspace pieces (which, owing to the space restrictions of the LP medium, spanned both sides of the LP), rounded out by three additional Mills-Cockell compositions: Tumblers to the Vault, Better Deaf and Dumb from the First, and Aurora Spinray. Tillicum was also released as a single, and peaked at #38 on the Canadian charts in 1971.

The group disbanded in 1972 as Mills-Cockell, Wells, and Pringle went on to pursue other projects.

2016: Tumblers from the Vault (1970–1972)
On 24 August 2016, RVNG Intl. announced the release of Tumblers from the Vault, a remastered collection including Syrinx's entire released repertoire, together with some previously unreleased tracks, including the audio recording of the CBC Music to See performance of Stringspace. Tumblers from the Vault has been released on 14 October 2016.

Solo albums and collaborations
In the years following the 1972 break-up of Syrinx, Mills-Cockell released a number of solo efforts, including Heartbeat (True North, 1973), A Third Testament (True North, 1974), Gateway (Anubis, 1977), and Do Your Hear the Rushing River? (1995).

He also released a cassette of Stella in Black and White, a collaboration with poet Blake Parker, in 1994.

In 2004, Mills-Cockell released on CD his seven-movement Concerto of Deliverance, an "extended tone poem with words," with libretto by Blake Parker.

Theatre and dance
Mills-Cockell has been active throughout his career in musicals, and has composed over 100 scores for plays in theatres across Canada. Many of his works not specifically created for dance have been adapted by dance troupes, including Belong, by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Ariel Ribbon, by the Anna Wyman Dance Theatre, and Journey Tree and Chant for Your Dragon King by the National Ballet of Canada.

He is currently working on bringing Savitri and Sam, a full-length opera he composed, with libretto by Ken Gass, to the stage.

He is also working on his latest opera, Kid Catastrophe, with librettist France Ducasse.

Film, television and radio
Mills-Cockell has composed scores for such feature films as The Clown Murders (1976), Deadly Harvest (1977), Terror Train (1980), Humongous (1982), and Striker's Mountain (1985).

He has also been active as a composer for short film and television, and has created original scores for such productions as Packing Up, Reverse, The Italians, Stationary Ark, and The Little Vampire.

He has scored dozens of radio productions for the CBC.

Association with Robert Moog
During his tenure with Intersystems, Mills-Cockell was one of the first artists to adopt the Moog Modular synthesizer as a performance musical instrument, meeting several times with Robert Moog before finally purchasing an early model.

He describes first learning of the instrument:

Before long, we got wind of this instrument called a Moog synthesizer, and it seemed like a dream come true, as far as I was concerned. We had been making our own electronic instruments: playing with tape recorders, jerry-rigging things together.

It turned out [Dr. Moog] was in upstate New York, which is not that far from Toronto, and we drove there in our Volkswagen psychedelic van to see him.

[. . . . .]

The keyboard was very important to [the Moog synthesizer], and he had this ribbon controller so you could actually play melodies. I was a fairly conventional musician, even though I was doing "avant garde" music, and I wanted to be able to play rock songs."

Mills-Cockell made several trips to Trumansburg to meet with Dr. Moog, and ultimately purchased a Moog Mark II synthesizer, which he proceeded to employ in Intersystems' performances:

We played across the country in Canada, we went into the States, we played in Illinois and Washington, and did that for about 2 years.

The Moog Mark II was destroyed in the same fire that consumed Syrinx's master tapes for Long Lost Relatives. Mills-Cockell soldiered on, replacing the Moog with an ARP 2500 in late 1971.

Awards
Mills-Cockell's work has been the subject of numerous awards and grants.

In 1966, his Fragments for Orchestra, Study for Bassoon, Prepared Piano and Magnetic Tape won a BMI Student Composers' Award.

Since 1968, he has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

His score for Half a Lifetime, a 1-hour drama directed by Daniel Petry for Astral Films & HBO was nominated for best musical score in the American Cable Awards.

His 1978 score for The Newcomers: The Italians received the CFTA award for Best Musical Score.

In 1981, his score for Terror Train received a Genie Award nomination for Best Music Score.

In 1989, he was awarded the ProCan award for "Outstanding Contribution to Music for Film".

Personal life
Mills-Cockell lives on Vancouver Island with his partner, Jean.

He remains active in musical composition.

title: John Mills-Cockell


text:
Talk:Ace Books

Needs pruning
This is intermittently fascinating, but it needs pruning. Consider for example this chunk:

 * A dos-à-dos book has the two titles bound upside-down with respect to one another, so that there are two front covers and the two texts meet in the middle (perhaps with some advertising pages in between). This format has been generally regarded as an innovation of Ace's; for example, James Corrick (the author of a reference work on Ace Doubles) quotes the October 18, 1952 issue of Publisher's Weekly as noting that although previous books had been published dos-à-dos, Ace was the first to put different authors in the same volume in this format. The format itself was certainly not Ace's invention—there had long been devotional books bound dos-à-dos — but in fact there had also been earlier examples of books by different authors bound in this way.  For example, Irvin S. Cobb's Oh! Well! You Know How Women Are! bound dos-à-dos with Mary Roberts Rinehart's Isn't That Just Like A Man!, was published by George Doran in 1920. However, Ace published hundreds of titles bound in this way over the next twenty years, and became much the best known publishers of the format.

[Sorry about the odd formatting there: it's what happens when you try to precede " " with a colon.]

This sends the reader to dos-à-dos, which actually gives the reader no additional encyclopedic information. (It does provide minor etymological information, which was hilariously wrong till I fixed it just now: look at this goofy edit, look at the edit summary, and consider that this silliness lasted almost two months.) Then well-documented mis information about the significance of Ace gets us into a miniature essay about dos-à-dos binding that's pretty tangential to Ace, though this is indeed rescued at the end.

I suggest instead that somebody better informed about bibliographic matters than I am creates Dos-à-dos binding, sticks what's necessary there, and then writes in this article something like:

 * Although dos-à-dos binding (back-to-back binding with two front covers) had long predated its use by Ace, Ace greatly increased its salience in US mass culture, to the point where it was thought of as an Ace innovation.

. . . adding a brief note with the Publisher's Weekly misinformation, stating that Garrick relates this on page six.

A lot shorter! -- Hoary 09:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the detailed suggestion -- very helpful. I've created dos-à-dos binding as you suggest, and moved some of the material there; I left a bit more in this article than you suggested.  Let me know whether you think this is enough pruning.  I'd also be interested to hear any other suggestions on the rest of the article  -- is there other pruning that could take place?  Thanks -- Mike Christie 14:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization
1. Given a choice, I usually plump for lowercase, but I'm surprised by the use of "sf" for "science fiction". As this is (I believe!) pronounced /esef/ rather than /sf/, wouldn't "SF" be better? -- Hoary 23:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right about the pronunciation, but this is quite a common form in my experience -- for example, it's the preferred usage in the Nicholls/Clute "Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction", which is the most widely respected encyclopaedia. I prefer "sf" myself, though on other pages I've seen other forms used.  Mike Christie 00:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, but see what an E-E dictionary says. I think you'll find that it will suggest "SF" (perhaps instead/also "S.F." if US). An encyclopaedia of SF might prefer "sf" as thousands of instances of "SF" would become visually tiresome. Note that the WP article on Science fiction systematically uses "SF" (though it does mention "sf"). -- Hoary 04:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

2. I've changed Too Hot F or Hell (my emphasis) to Too Hot for Hell. It's odd to capitalize prepositions (unless you're running a traditional US newspaper); see any style guide about this. A lot more such, er, decapitalization is needed. -- Hoary 23:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've fixed two or three; let me know or fix anything else you see. I think the title lists are probably infested with this mistake too; I'll get to those eventually. Mike Christie 00:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[moved 2012 comment down the page. Drmies (talk)]

Rings copyright
We read:
 * In 1965 Wollheim discovered a copyright loophole in the American edition of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Houghton Mifflin edition had been bound using pages printed in the United Kingdom for the George Allen & Unwin edition. This placed them outside of US copyright law as it stood at the time.

My underlining. But whatever them refers to, either the meaning of the whole remains obscure or my brain isn't firing on all cylinders today. Could you elaborate a little? -- Hoary 04:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

 * This text predates my involvement in the article, but I'm pretty sure the referent is intended to be "pages" -- no doubt the wording could be clarified. Can't stop to fix it now, but will have a crack at it if you don't.  Mike Christie 11:12, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I've had a go at rewording it. Mike Christie 17:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

FA nomination?
What would it take for this article to be ready to go to a featured article nomination? I've done a fair amount of work on it and would like to try to push it to the next level; I'd be interested in any criticisms or suggestions for improvement. Mike Christie 17:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Firstly, I am a new editor of wikipedia (started editing this month) trying to find a good articles to look up to. Secondly, it is a bit of surprise to see this article on Featured articles. The article is well referenced and contains a lot of useful information but I find it hard to read. Paragraphs need some restructuring I think so a person not into sci fi can still read quickly through it and understand the main points. For example, a paragraph on history with a list of main events in company's history would be a good idea. The article is obviously written by somebody who knows a lot about sci fi and this company but it is important to keep a general public in mind when writing an article. Gpeja (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. I agree it's not a very good example of a featured article right now; it's undergoing a review for just that reason.  I'm currently engaged in trying to improve it back to the current featured standards; I hope to get a chance to complete work on it in the next week or two.  I'll leave a note in the section at the bottom of this page; if you'd like to copyedit or help with improving the article that would be great.  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 03:15, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

references "not seen"?
"The following references have not been seen". Seen by who? How do you know that no one who has worked on this article has seen any of those references?? The usual convention is to put unused and/or uncited reference works into a Further reading section. Kaldari 01:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I was the one who introduced them to the article, and I haven't ever seen copies; they weren't consulted in the course of making the article. However, I agree that my phrasing was poor; it implies an individual article author, which wasn't what I meant.  What I was trying to indicate was that I only had secondary sources to vouch for the existence/usefulness of the references.  I'm happy with the way your last edit leaves it.  Mike Christie (talk) 01:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I fixed a link that now leads directly to Harry Whittington, the author of several important juvenile delinquent novels in the 1950s.

(This is quoted from Mike Christie's talk page and continues here for the benefit of other interested parties.) "One thing did occur to me; your additions are around importance, rarity and collectability. Material of that kind is now rather distributed around the article; see the section on prices in the titles section, for example. Would a new section be worth it? I am torn because I think if we did create a special section, we'd still want to refer to rare and important titles in the historical narrative and also in the discussion of title numbering. What do you think?"

 * I too am torn, but I think it's more appropriate to refer to rare and important titles in the historical narrative. A reference to Harry Whittington's "juvie" novels doesn't make a lot of sense outside of the context of Ace's genre specialization in the 1950s -- they are only valuable and important to people interested in the US in the 1950s OR to collectors who are trying to collect a numbered range of Ace paperbacks.  So I think you're definitely right to have the section on prices in the titles section, because that's where that second kind of collector would expect to find it.  For the rest of it -- well, my own experience of reading Wikipedia articles is that I enjoy coming across nuggets of interesting information studded throughout the article at points where they relate directly, rather than bunched into, say, a "trivia" section.  However, you have done so much good work on this article and obviously know much more about the topic than I, so I think I should defer to your opinion on what would work best and merely offer what I can.  Accounting4Taste 20:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Wolheim theory of LoTR copyright
The article grossly misrepresented Eisen, Durwood & Co. v. Christopher R. Tolkien et alii. That decision was reached in '93, based upon copyright law in the wake of 1992 amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976. The 1992 amendments restored copyrights lost by such failures to include notices. Wolheim's theory was valid for the law as it stood from some time before he produced it until those 1992 amemdments went into effect. —SlamDiego←T 17:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

ERB books
One thing I fail to see any mention of here, and which I at least consider important, is that Ace published a large number of Edgar Rice Burroughs books during the 1960s. Ballantine did also, although I don't recall if there was any controversy a la the LOTR flap. Anyway, I think this needs some mention here. Wschart (talk) 00:34, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you know of a source that regards these books as notable -- e.g. a source on Burroughs' publication history, or on Ace itself? Ace published so much it's hard to know what to pick out and say is important without a separate secondary source asserting that importance. Mike Christie (talk) 01:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's notable in that Ace and Ballantine split the rights to reprint ERB's books (which are definitely notable!) -- Ballantine got Mars and Tarzan, Ace got Venus and Pellucidar, and they divvied up all of the others. 216.255.171.122 (talk) 14:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Staff names and dates
Per Susan Allison at Ace Books, Anne Sowards has been an executive editor there since June 2009. I've been unable to source that date, and have put in "from September 2010" instead, based on a press release that names her in that role, but if anyone can find an earlier source from sff or Locus that names her titles between June 2009 and August 2010 it would be good to improve the date in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

SF?
"Sf" is used throughout the article, which is odd to me. At least once the abbreviation appears as "S.F". Are these abbreviations even necessary, and if they are used, should they be consistent? -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 00:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * They should be consistent; I hadn't realized they weren't. I changed the instance of "S.F." to "science fiction"; there was no need to abbreviate at that point.
 * I think it's a matter of opinion whether they're necessary, but my feeling is that without some abbreviation paragraphs such as this one would feel very repetitive. Some form of abbreviation is standard in the literature, and "sf" is the form used in the standard reference, the Nicholls/Clute Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 00:34, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

[moved from old section above by Drmies:] I've changed the references sf to scifi which I thing is a better term than using the capitalization. I made the changes before reading the talk page. If the consensus is something else, we can change it.Vettrock (talk) 15:48, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've changed it back to "sf" because "scifi" is widely regarded within the field as a pejorative term. "SF" would be OK, if "sf" isn't acceptable, but I don't think "scifi" should be used.  I prefer "sf" because it's common within the secondary sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 16:14, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

 * "'scifi' is widely regarded within the field as a pejorative term" - care to provide a citation for this? I've been a sci-fi reader for several decades and have never heard this term used as a pejorative, nor is it mentioned in the science fiction article, and one would think this a significant point to be reported there due to it being a redirect. Yworo (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

 * Here are a couple; I can find more if you want.
 * "Some critics within the genre, Terry Carr and Damon Knight among them, decided that, since the term [sci fi] was commonly derogatory, it might be critically useful in distinguishing sf hack-work – particularly ill written, lurid adventure stories – from sf of a more intellectually demanding kind." SFE3
 * "... [sci fi's] perceived overuse by the media and non-science fiction readers has caused many fans to disdain its use, and its use may brand the user as an outsider" Brave New Words, Jeff Prucher, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 178.
 * "By the seventies [sci fi] was a disparaging term used by people who didn't read science fiction to refer to the whole field, and so as a sort of protective reaction, people who did read science fiction as derogatory short-hand for hack science fiction, whether written or filmed." "The Matrix as Sci Fi", by Joe Haldeman, in Exploring the Matrix, ed. Karen Haber, 2004, Macmillan,.
 * I agree that this should probably be covered in the article on science fiction, though I don't think it's that important a point.
 * -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

 * Just as I thought, a couple of individuals foisted their personal preferences onto a gullible audience which swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. As both individual are now deceased, I say let's trash their personal preference: "sci fi" was never a pejorative term until they made it so, and there was no damn reason to do so in the first place. People who think it was ever intended perjoratively should simply grow up. Yworo (talk) 00:14, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we have to rely on the secondary sources, and the ones I listed are neither out of date nor irrelevant sources. If you really are curious I am pretty sure I could find half a dozen more similar quotations without much effort -- I recall something to that effect from Isaac Asimov, for example. It appears that the term has historically been regarded as derogatory by many professionals and many fans in the field.  But unless you're proposing that we should change the article to use "sci fi", I don't think there's a need to debate it.  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 00:28, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. I think you may be misreading the SFE3 quote; Carr and Knight were responding to the fact that "sci fi" was regarded as derogatory; they took advantage of that to redefine the term for use in criticism. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * No date is provided for Carr and Knight, but I heard "'sci-fi' is pejorative" well before 2000, probably as early as the '70s.

SF vs. sf
Splitting from the topic above since it's really a separate point. I see you changed "sf" to "SF" throughout. This is fine if you feel strongly about it, but "sf" is quite common usage in the secondary sources, and I'd like to change it back. Some example sources that use lower-case "sf": These are all books I can reach without getting up from my chair. There are certainly some that use "SF", too, but I think "sf" is a better representation of the secondary source usage. Any objections if I change it back? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:28, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Tuck, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy
 * Nicholls/Clute, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
 * Kyle, A Pictorial History of Science Fiction (Kyle actually uses "s-f")
 * Ashley's series of magazine histories: The Time Machines, Transformations, and Gateways to Forever.
 * Greenland, The Entropy Exhibition
 * various, Hell's Cartographers.

Maybe we should just change all of the references to "science fiction" which clearly defines what we are refering to, and doesn't have the issue of which shortened version is most appropriate? sf/SF/SciFi/scifi are all just short for science fiction. Sound reasonable?Vettrock (talk) 15:45, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think so -- there are some paragraphs where it would appear so frequently as to be quite annoying without an abbreviation. This paragraph, for example, would be harder to read if "science fiction" were spelled out in full each time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 15:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've reverted Yworo's change of "sf" to "SF", per the above comments; it's the usual form in the sources, and there have been no comments for close to a week. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think changing it to science fiction would make it any harder to read. references to westerns, mysteries, or fiction in general don't have any type of abbreviation, and that seems to flow just fine. I don't think SciFi is bad, but since some people don't like it, I vote for "science fiction" .Vettrock (talk) 14:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

 * Mysteries and westerns are the special cases, I believe.
 * At wikipedia mystery fiction, science fiction, and western fiction are parallel terms. In this sense the adjectives mystery and western are well established in ordinary english as nouns with naturally formed plurals "mysteries" and "westerns" (as you say). We don't have any such short form of science fiction (or speculative fiction or supernatural fiction). Lack of a short form supports the initialism SF and ambiguity undermines it.
 * Contrast fantasy fiction, a redirect to fantasy, which ordinary English supports. But the natural plural "fantasies" is not much used for works of fantasy fiction.
 * Cf crime fiction and detective fiction (where "detective story" redirects).
 * Cf horror fiction --where "horror" names the genre but there is no short form for single works afaik.
 * --P64 (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

FA article problems
This article was promoted on 4 September 2006. It currently has some serious issues: Crispulop (talk) 08:13, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Tag of written like an advertisement
 * Whole paragraphs without citations
 * General shortage of citations and prose issues
 * Some unrealiable sources

 * A couple of the sources I used for this are in boxes in my basement so I may have some trouble there; and I am also concerned that a lot of what's there is original research -- I wrote this article early in my Wikipedia career, and I would do it rather differently now. I'll make a pass through in the next few days and fix up what I can and leave notes here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 10:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I've made some changes that address quite a few of the issues. I've ordered another source that should help and may also find some more in Corrick that I can use. More in the next week or two. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:49, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

 * Thanks on the start to improve this article. Crispulop (talk) 07:15, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think everything is now cited; let me know what else needs to be done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

See also section should be part of references (added as inline citation)? Gpeja (talk) 20:06, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Re-arranged some headings
It is easier to read this way. I am not sure about Ace nomenclature as it may not be relevant at all. I suggest we delete this or put it somewhere under history.Gpeja (talk) 16:57, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Current events
Ace is now part of Penguin. Should we add here a new editor in chief (under People) or under Penguin Books? There is no mention of Ace Books in Penguin Books article.Gpeja (talk) 16:57, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * If you have a citation, it can be added in both places. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Ace Books


text:
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sikkim

Sikkim
I am nominating for the featuring of this article. It is well written, and very informative. --Mr Tan 11.05, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Support Excellent article! I once read about Sikkim before, the history is of this former country is fascinating... Squash 05:12, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support Interesting article. Pretty graphics, too. Thc420 05:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Great article. If anything is wrong here, it would be that there may just be too many images. Jeronimo 07:31, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Well done, User:Nichalp, who rewrote most of it in the last few weeks. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:51, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support -- Oops! Looks like I'm beaten to the nomination. Nichalp 18:51, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support . Maybe the layout would look more balanced if some images were floated to the left side. Otherwise excellent . Phils 20:43, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I am currently re-reading and copy-editing the article and have decided to withdraw my support. My hasty support was inconsiderate: this article was not written by a native English speakers and needs some clarifying before I can support it. Phils 13:39, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support the article as it stands now. Phils 22:24, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Good work, Phil. -- Sundar 06:16, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Only one objection: caption to the picture of the statue reads: "Statue of Guru Rinpoche, the patron saint of Sikkim in Namchi is the tallest statue of saint in the world".  Is that supposed to be "tallest statue of a saint" or "tallest statue of the saint"?  →mathx314(talk)(email)  20:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Done Nichalp
 * Support, when the above point is fixed. Wow that's a great article. Learn new stuff every day here. 1) Still could use inline citations, especially for any potentially contentious or important facts. I suppose there wouldn't be that many contentious ones for this type of article, but the more citations the better. 2) Don't you dare take any of those images out of the article. They are not in the way and are very well done. The elaichi picture could be better though to show what the plant and the useful part really looks like. - Taxman 22:19, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Object Comment. Minor objections to an otherwise good article:
 * I have withdrawn my objection, because my points have been addressed sufficiently, but I think it still could use some improvement, so neither will I throw my support behind it. The history section still seems somewhat jumbled, and the prioritization of information in it seems a little odd.  That said, it does a sufficient job of providing an overview that I no longer feel I can reasonably object to it.  The fact that the references are limited to tourist ones is not good--not because the tourist references themselves are necessarily bad, but simply because it indicates a lack of serious research behind the subject (e.g., a trip to the library).  I would like to see the article mature quite a bit more--which it will--yet I also recognize that if the bar for featured articles is set too high, we will have nothing for our main page.
 * Given that there is a page with a more comprehensive history of Sikkim, the one on the Sikkim page could be more consise and more generalized. We're looking for an overview of the history of Sikkim, and the present overview contains too much detailed information and the overall sense of the history is kind of lost.  Something along the lines of "from 1203-1456, Sikkim was controlled by this family/group of people.  In 1456, the capital was moved to someplace."  What we have now is like short snippets of little stories that don't really belong on this larger picture (e.g., " Phunstok Namgyal, the illegitimate child of Gurmed, succeeded his father in 1733.").  What we want is a timeline of who controled Sikkim and who lived in Sikkim, with a sprinkling of only the most important leaders (and why they are important should be immediately obvious, like "John Doe reunited East Sikkim and West Sikkim after 20 years of war," whereas what we have now are sort of incomplete and circuitous details.  This section has improved, but is still in pretty poor shape.
 * The problems with the Culture section, which are minor, are the same as the problems that the Gangtok section had. "Residents of Sikkim are music lovers," is not a good way to start off an encyclopedic sentence.  I see a lot of unnecessary redundancy here with the Gangtok article.  If the Gangtok culture section is going to mostly information about Sikkim culture, then it should simply refer to the Sikkim culture section and add any cultural details that are specific to the Sikkim section (this latter comment, of course, is in reference to the Gangtok entry and doesn't really affect the Sikkim entry).
 * "Unlike other parts of India, which have switched over to the metric system of measurement, Sikkim continues to measure elevation in feet, though distances are in kilometres." <-- Does this belong in the "Infrastructure" section, and is it really relevant enough to belong to the article at all?

It doesn't belong and hence removed. -- Sundar 09:57, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Given that the article is fairly young, I'd like to see it mature a bit more before becoming a featured article. If the above issues are addressed (along with any others that come up), however, I will withdraw my objection (part of the maturity of the article will probably come through being a featured article  :)). Jun-Dai 00:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Think, it has matured a lot after nomination. -- Sundar 06:16, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Most of the content is done by Nichalp. Well, go ahead and question him more about the article. Mr Tan 9:27, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * History section is now shortened; it still looks lengthy because of the images. The non-metric measurements are peculiar to Sikkim only and therefore included. The article has been around for sometime — I guess you fold find it mature now, especially after a lot of copyediting. Nichalp 18:55, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * It is more mature :), but everything outside of the history section is less than 6 months old, and it seems like the majority of the non-history content was written by a small number of individuals, which for an article about an entire state with a population of 500k+ people, is not a lot. Granted, the wikipedia itself is only a few years old as far as the bulk of its content is concerned, but I would like to see a day where any featured article has to meet much more rigid standards, including, among other things, the bulk of its content being over a certain age (the wiki philosophy requires time to function--the "accuracy" of an article is determined by (a) how long it has been there, (b) how many people have visited and contributed to it, and (c) how well-known or well-understood the article is by most of the people visiting/contributing to it).  But this is clearly a larger discussion that I'm not ready to jump into (I'm still formulating my ideas).  For now, the article is acceptable, but not the best that the wikipedia has to offer, and certainly not up to the standards of something like the Britannica (which we would ultimately like to measure up to and exceed).
 * As for the metric comment, it may be unique to Sikkim, but how important is it? I'm sure that many things are unique to Sikkim, enough to cover the wikipedia, and many places have their own peculiarities regarding how they have, or have not, adopted international standards.  Also, what does it have to do with the infrastructure?  I left it, because I felt that others might disagree with me.  I may be bold in modifying or adding, but I try to avoid being too bold in my deleting  :)
 * Fixed. -- Sundar 09:57, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Last but not least, I'm not trying to be mean. I think the article is a good one, and I think that your (Nichalp) writing is good, even if some of it isn't appropriate for encyclopedic content.  It's just that I'm pushing for a day when we can say that all of our featured articles are as good as any print encyclopedia--not just in broadness or depth of content, but also in our fact-checking, consistency, and standards of quality.  In a few specific regards we are superior to any print encyclopedia (this is in part due to the medium in which we are working), but there's no reason that we can't be better than them in all regards, and that's what I want to work towards.  I have learned from the article, I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad that the work has been done, but it simply would not make it past an editor's desk at any reputable publication in its current state. Jun-Dai 08:13, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, u must be a professional editor if this does not qualify as a print version. Do you have any articles in mind currently on wikipedia so that I can refer to in the future; the crème de la crème according to you? I have added a lot of inline reference links, so maybe u can authenticate my claims. Nichalp 20:03, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 *  Crème de la crème, eh? Not especially.  The article on Belgium I would have no hesitation supporting for FA-status (it has it already), though it is not perfect either, and would probably need a little bit of revision for publication.  What you can take from that article, however, is its comprehensiveness, and the way that each section has its own almost narrative structure.  It helps that each section is essentially a synopsis of another entire entry (e.g., Belgian culture).
 * The Sikkim article, in contrast, doesn't seem as thorough, and it is sort of awkwardly constructed--as though certain sentences were set down independently of one another without any sense of phrasing on a "paragraphic" level. The worst example of this is the history section, which I gave some comment about above.  The Belgium history section, on the other hand, manages to tell the story of the history of this country without leaving out critical details (as far as I know) or large gaps in the history, and without ever focussing on isolated moments that aren't entirely relevant to the whole history of Belgium.  More importantly, it almost tells the history as a simple story, which is much more appropriate to its format, rather than listing facts and events, which cn be found on the larger history article.  Even though the Belgium history section is larger, it probably contains the same number or fewer dates.
 * Also, the Sikkim article contains too many pictures (this, and many other things, will probably be fixed once it enters FA-status), whereas the Belgium article contains almost none (a picture of it's current leader, or a satellite picture of the whole country wouldn't hurt, but a picture of a Belgian mountain shack would certainly be out of place). On the whole, the Sikkim article seems too much the product of too few minds with too little research, and not enough interest in creating enyclopedia material.  What exists there now is some sort of encyclopedia-travel guide hybrid that is in need of a few revisions (especially with regard to the prioritization of information and the phrasing).  An article probably halfway between the Sikkim and the Belgium articles in writing quality is the Isan article.  There is in that article perhaps an even greater sense that an exotic culture is being summarized for a Western audience (notice how the culture section significantly outweighs the rest of the article), but it is a little more refined in its language and presentation of information.  While the Isan article might be more suitable for publication, and is better written, I think the Sikkim article is in some ways a better read.
 * If this were a serious print encyclopedia, I imagine the Sikkim article would have been written by an expert on the subject--someone who has studied Sikkim, or something that encompasses Sikkim (e.g., Northern India), and they would have done their best to summarize their vast knowledge of the subject into a very small space, while making it an interesting read. I get a sense that something similar has happened with the Belgium article, but not with the Sikkim article, which seems much more like the best a couple people could come up with if they had a weekend of research and some personal experience there.
 * I hope you don't mind my being frank. You've certainly made more valuable contributions to the wikipedia than I have.  Jun-Dai 21:05, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * There are huge differences between Sikkim and Belgium, the main difference being wikipedians who know about the place and can write from the "insider" angle. I tried to write my best on the state as I was there last December and as far as my knowledge goes, only one other wikipedian has been to the state (I hope there are more). I also agree that this may not exceed the standards that Belgium has set for the time being. Its anyway more informative that what it was though, and over time (??) it would match and exceed the print encyclopedias. I disagree with your point that there less pictures would be better; most of the pictures are relavent to the corresponding text (such as the bear, rhododendron, Guru Rinpoche) and as the adage goes speak a thousand words. Perhaps what you meant was better captioning? Another thing that hampered me was the lack of early history on the state. I did my best to add the salient points from the information I had on hand. Lastly I'm glad you are frank, the more critique an article gets, the more chances it has of being one of the best wikipedia has on offer. I don't take negative criticisms on the article personally; to me it means that the reviewer has spent a lot of time on the page and also feels that it is one of the best, once his objections raised are dealt with. Nichalp 21:11, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * Object. This in an informative article with great photos, but it requires a copyedit. While "The state enjoys four seasons: Winter, summer, spring, autumn and the monsoon season." is the only error I saw, some of the language and grammar raised eyebrows. For example "His appointment is largely ceremonial, and oversees the swearing in of the Chief Minister.", "Among the fauna species include the snow leopard...", "Owing to the hilly terrain, and difficult transportation, the state lacks the large-scale industries.", the lack of commas before clauses starting with "which", "Noodle based victuals such as...are relished in these parts." etc.  Also, the references appear to be tourist guides, which is not ideal.  - BanyanTree 03:40, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * The references may be tourist guides, but even tourist guides have information regarding the history and economy of a place. Since I've referenced matter from there, I can honestly say that the resources are in line with encylopedic information rather than tourist information. Nichalp 18:55, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Nichalp, I have removed your strikethrough of my text. The normal procedure is to state that the issues have been resolved, so the commentator knows to check the article again and modify their own comments.  I will do a second reading soon and see for myself what changes have been made.  - BanyanTree 19:21, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Now that is a remarkably better article. Some relatively minor issues that I noticed now that I was no longer distracted by the language:
 * There appears to be ambiguity about the etymology of the name. The statement, "Sikkim means crested land in Nepali.", is followed by a list of other possible origins.  Either one is correct and other are folklore, or there is a real argument and the first sentence should be qualified.  Either way it should be explicit.  Also, the sentence about the Tibetan name seems to be in the wrong section, or at least should not be mixed in with the various theories about the origin of "Sikkim".
 * A brief Google search comes up with info that the tribes "Naong, Chang and the Mon" were absorbed by the later immigration of the Lepcha prior to the start of the monarchy. There must be some anthropological research of the people and societies prior to the start of the monarchy.  This would not be an major issue if History of Sikkim had pre-historical information, but it looks like the two articles both start in 1642.
 * There is very little sense of the arc of historical trends or tendencies. About a fifth of the current section should be cut.  Also, statements such as "On 13 August 1979, the Assembly was dissolved and the government was forced to resign a few days later." cry out for some explanation.
 * In "Flora and Fauna": In the sentence "Sikkim is situated in an ecological hotspot of the lower Himalayas, one of only three in India.", I don't know what "ecological hotspot" means and the link doesn't help. Also, the phrase, "perhaps the only region in the world to exhibit such a diversity within such a small area," needs to be referenced.
 * Rephrased. -- Sundar 05:03, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * As for using tourist guides as sources, sentences such as "Dwellings are aesthetically designed" (recently deleted) sounds exactly like a tourist guide was the reference work. It's not so much the validity of the data, as the tone that has to be filtered to be encyclopedic.  The recent edits have corrected much of the tone I was concerned with and it's not by itself at an objectionable level any longer.
 * BanyanTree 02:30, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I have changed my vote to abstain. The article is vastly improved and I like its breadth.  However, I am still concerned about a lack of historical depth, which means that superficial questions like "Who lived in Sikkim before the monarchy began and what sort of people were they? and "Why was the government dissolved in 1979?" are unanswered either in the article or its sub pages. - BanyanTree 18:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Good issues raised, I'll try and resolve them, though early history on Sikkim is still sketchy. Nichalp 19:49, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * I have addressed most of the above issues raised, about specific dates, the origin of names. I hope that it is now better. Nichalp 18:50, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * The etymology has been cleared up. However, the response to my concerns relating to the description of the 1979 dissolution of the government was to remove all the details and replace it with In 1979, after a period of instability,..., rather than add some background.  If anything, I have been moved farther away from support, though continue to abstain. - BanyanTree 19:53, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Object. I'd agree with most of the above, especially the need for the copyedit.  Someone also needs to decide if Gangtok is the "largest" or the "only" city in the state. Mark1 06:16, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Done Nichalp 18:55, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Not done- the lead conflicts with the text of the article. Mark1 04:36, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Hopefully, my edit did that. -- Sundar 05:07, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Substantial copy-editing done. Someone else should look into it, as I left some dubious formulations in the article because I wasn't sure what the original author meant. Phils 13:55, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Way too many pictures for my tastes, looks like a travel guide. Junes 16:29, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * A picture speaks a thousand words. How can it be said that it is a "looks" like a tavelogue?
 * Support Good article. Some constructive comments: The last paragraph under "History" slightly confused me - who was the Kazi? It would be useful to put in the article what the title "Kampara" means. It would be interesting to know how conclusive the referendum was - did 51% want to join India, or 75% or 90%? I was also surprised at the usage of the word "transportation" rather than "transport". I thought usually Indian English followed British English, but with a few different words, but am happy to be proven wrong, jguk 21:02, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Votes on the referendum added, transport corrected and the Kazi is the PM (added). Nichalp 19:36, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * Comment: How about putting the flag on top of the infobox like on the real country pages? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 06:03, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)
 * No, the flag is not flown anymore. Nichalp 19:36, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * Support. Minor copyediting here and there is needed, but it's already being taken care of by many. -- Sundar 06:16, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Support But I don't understand the last sentences of the "History" section:
 * "In 2000, relations turned cold after the displuted 17th Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje, fled to the Rumtek Monastery near Gangtok. The Chinese government was in a quandary, as any protest to India would be an implicit recognition of the status of Sikkim as a state of India, which they only recognised in 2003.'
 * There had been no mention either of Tibet or China to this point, and now we're in the middle of Tib-Sik-Ind-Chi dispute. Perhaps other readers knew who the Karmapa was and why it upset the Chinese? Just a trifle though, in a fine piece of work. Sfahey 04:07, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Karmapa was chosen by the Chinese establishment as a way of showing authority superceding that of the Dalai Lama. When he defected (or did he just flee?) to the Monastery here, China couldn't lodge a protest with India or ask India for deportation without recognising the fact that Sikkim belongs to India. Eventually China did recognise this fact. See Sino-Indian relations for more details. If someone can add this clarification into the Sikkim article, it would be appreciated. -- Sundar 04:34, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * I've rephrased the ambiguous sentences. Someone please lookover and copyedit if necessary. -- Sundar 04:46, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

 * I have a problem with a passage of the Geology section of this article, which reads: "A large portion of the Sikkim territory is covered by the pre-Cambrian rock and is much younger in age than the hills." I am not a geology whiz, but I do know that pre-Cambrian outcroppings are considered the oldest rocks on earth; this would mean that the hills consist of rocks that are even older, perhaps the most ancient rocks on earth, & worth a mention. Because of this implication, I'd feel more comfortable with this article if someone could verify that (1) this is what the author intended to convery, & (2) that it can be verified. -- llywrch 00:21, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I referenced it from here:, which is an official Sikkim government site. I too have a poor knowledge in geology, but after reading the article on Cambrian rocks, I understand that there were five periods before the Cambrian era, which would suggest that the text on the rocks it is not really a big matter. Nichalp 21:11, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * PS Gilbert Hill in my city Bombay is even older than the pre-Cambrian age. Nichalp 21:36, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

 * I took a look at your authority, Nichalp, & the relevant passage on the government site is more confusing to me than what is in the article. Both of these passages have the same non sequitor that (1) the land is covered with pre-Cambrian rock, (2) which is younger than the hills. Are we to understand that the hills are outcroppings of older formations? Or that the Law of Superposition (see Geology for an explanation of this term) is not valid here, & that older rocks lie upon younger ones in this area -- which form the hills.

 * Sadly, Wikipedia lacks any geographical survey of this portion of the world, which would allow us to untangle this knot quickly. Hopefully some editor with geological training could help with this (or side with you by saying this issue is not significant). -- llywrch 00:23, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I have absolutely no idea on the rocks to conclude if this is a unique feature or not. I've put up a help message on Talk:geology, maybe someone else can make sense of its significance. Nichalp 18:12, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

 Congratulations, Nichalp! It looks like your hard work has been recognized.


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SEALAB

SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed and deployed by the United States Navy during the 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge gained from the SEALAB expeditions helped advance the science of deep sea diving and rescue, and contributed to the understanding of the psychological and physiological strains humans can endure.

United States Navy Genesis Project
Preliminary research work was undertaken by George F. Bond, who named the project after the Book of Genesis, which prophesised humans would gain dominion over the oceans. Bond began investigations in 1957 to develop theories about saturation diving. Bond's team exposed rats, goats, monkeys, and human beings to various gas mixtures at different pressures. By 1963 they had collected enough data to test the first SEALAB habitat.

At the time, Jacques Cousteau and Edwin A. Link were pursuing privately funded saturation diving projects to study long-term underwater living. Link's efforts resulted in the first underwater habitat, occupied by aquanaut Robert Sténuit in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of 61 m for one day on September 6, 1962. Cousteau's habitats included Conshelf I, with a 2-person crew at a depth of 10 m near Marseilles, placed on September 14, 1962, and Conshelf II, placed in the Red Sea at depths of 11 and 27 m on June 15, 1963. Later that year, the Kennedy administration decided to open a new "race" frontier, directing the navy to begin the SEALAB program.

SEALAB I

SEALAB I was commanded by Captain Bond, who became known as "Papa Topside". SEALAB I proved that saturation diving in the open ocean was viable for extended periods. The experiment also offered information about habitat placement, habitat umbilicals, humidity, and helium speech descrambling.

SEALAB I was lowered off the coast of Bermuda on July 20, 1964 to a depth of 192 ft below the ocean surface. It was constructed from two converted floats and held in place with axles from railroad cars. The experiment involved four divers (LCDR Robert Thompson, MC; Gunners Mate First Class Lester Anderson, Chief Quartermaster Robert A. Barth, and Chief Hospital Corpsman Sanders Manning), who were to stay submerged for three weeks. The experiment was halted after 11 days due to an approaching tropical storm. SEALAB I demonstrated the same issues as Conshelf: high humidity, temperature control, and verbal communication in the helium atmosphere.

The astronaut and second American to orbit the Earth, Scott Carpenter, was scheduled to be the fifth aquanaut in the habitat. Carpenter was trained by Robert A. Barth. Shortly before the experiment took place, Carpenter had a scooter accident on Bermuda and broke a few bones. The crash ruined his chances of making the dive.

SEALAB I is on display at the Man in the Sea Museum, in Panama City Beach, Florida, near where it was initially tested offshore before being deployed. It is on outdoor display. Its metal hull is largely intact, though the paint faded to a brick red over the years. The habitat's exterior was restored as part of its 50th anniversary, and now sports its original colors.

SEALAB II

SEALAB II was launched in 1965. It was nearly twice as large as SEALAB I with heating coils installed in the deck to ward off the constant helium-induced chill, and air conditioning to reduce the oppressive humidity. Facilities included hot showers, a built-in toilet, laboratory equipment, eleven viewing ports, two exits, and refrigeration. It was placed in the La Jolla Canyon off the coast of Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UCSD, in La Jolla, California, at a depth of 205 ft. On August 28, 1965, the first of three teams of divers moved into what became known as the "Tilton Hilton" (Tiltin' Hilton, because of the slope of the landing site). The support ship Berkone hovered on the surface above, within sight of the Scripps pier. The helium atmosphere conducted heat away from the divers’ bodies so quickly temperatures were raised to 30 C to ward off chill.

Each team spent 15 days in the habitat, but aquanaut/former astronaut Scott Carpenter remained below for a record 30 days. In addition to physiological testing, the 28 divers tested new tools, methods of salvage, and an electrically heated drysuit. They were aided by a bottlenose dolphin named Tuffy from the United States Navy Marine Mammal Program. Aquanauts and Navy trainers attempted, with mixed results, to teach Tuffy to ferry supplies from the surface to SEALAB or from one diver to another, and to come to the rescue of an aquanaut in distress. When the SEALAB II mission ended on 10 October 1965, there were plans for Tuffy also to take part in SEALAB III. A sidenote from SEALAB II was a congratulatory telephone call that was arranged for Carpenter and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Carpenter was calling from a decompression chamber with helium gas replacing nitrogen, so Carpenter sounded unintelligible to operators. The tape of the call circulated for years among Navy divers before it was aired on National Public Radio in 1999.

In 2002, a group of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network boarded the MV Kellie Chouest and used a Scorpio ROV to find the site of the SEALAB habitat. This expedition was the first return to the site since the habitat was moved.

SEALAB III
With naval research funding constrained by Vietnam War combat requirements, it was four years later before SEALAB III used the refurbished SEALAB II habitat placed in water three times deeper. Five teams of nine divers were scheduled to spend 12 days each in the habitat, testing new salvage techniques and conducting oceanographic and fishery studies. Preparations for such a deep dive were extensive. In addition to many biomedical studies, work-up dives were conducted at the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard. These “dives” were not done in the open sea, but in a special hyperbaric chamber that could recreate the pressures at depths as great as 1025 ft of sea water.

According to John Piña Craven, the U.S. Navy's head of the Deep Submergence Systems Project of which SEALAB was a part, SEALAB III "was plagued with strange failures at the very start of operations". USS Elk River (IX-509) was specially fitted as a SEALAB operations support ship to replace Berkone; but the project was 18 months late and three million dollars over budget when SEALAB III was lowered to 610 feet off San Clemente Island, California, on 15 February 1969. SEALAB team members were tense and frustrated by these delays, and began taking risks to make things work. When a poorly sized neoprene seal caused helium to leak from the habitat at an unacceptable rate, four divers volunteered to repair the leak in place rather than lifting the habitat to the surface. Their first attempt was unsuccessful, and the divers had been awake for twenty hours using amphetamines to stay alert for a second attempt, during which aquanaut Berry L. Cannon died. It was found that his rebreather was missing baralyme, the chemical necessary to remove carbon dioxide. Surgeon commander John Rawlins, a Royal Navy medical officer assigned to the project, also suggested that hypothermia during the dive was a contributing factor to the problem not being recognized by the diver.

According to Craven, while the other divers were undergoing the week-long decompression, repeated attempts were made to sabotage their air supply by someone aboard the command barge. Eventually, a guard was posted on the decompression chamber and the men were recovered safely. A potentially unstable suspect was identified by the staff psychiatrist, but the culprit was never prosecuted. Craven suggests this may have been done to spare the Navy bad press so soon after the USS Pueblo incident.

The SEALAB program came to a halt, and although the SEALAB III habitat was retrieved, it was eventually scrapped. Aspects of the research continued, but no new habitats were built.

NCEL (now a part of Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center) of Port Hueneme, California, was responsible for the handling of several contracts involving life support systems used on SEALAB III.

A model of SEALAB III can be found at the Man in the Sea Museum in Panama City Beach, Florida.

title: SEALAB


text:
Talk:New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad: History

Any reason why we can't merge this page in with New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad? That article doesn't seem to be so large that this history wouldn't fit there, so I'm not sure why we have a separate page for the history. JYolkowski 03:05, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Since no-one objected, I'm going to do that. JYolkowski 21:32, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


text:
Javier Moreno (politician)

Javier Moreno Sánchez (born 12 March 1965 in Switzerland) is a Spanish politician who has served as Member of the European Parliament for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party from 2004 until 2009 and since 2019, part of the Party of European Socialists. From 2014 until 2019, he was the Secretary General of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats' parliamentary group.

In his first term as Member of the European Parliament, Moreno served on the Committee on International Trade (2004–2007) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (2007–2009). In addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the Parliament's delegation for relations with Mercosur.

Since the 2019 European elections, Moreno has been leading the Spanish delegation within the S&D Group. In addition, he again joined the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. In 2021, he also joined the parliament's working group on Frontex, led by Roberta Metsola.

title: Javier Moreno (politician)


text:
CBF

CBF may refer to:

Aviation

 * Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (IATA: CBF)
 * China Northern Airlines (ICAO: CBF)

Organisations

 * Catholic Biblical Federation, a Roman Catholic Church organization for biblical translation and worldwide distribution
 * Central British Fund for German Jewry, the original name of World Jewish Relief
 * Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a conservation organization dedicated to the restoration and protection of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers
 * Community Broadcasting Foundation, a funding organisation in Australia
 * Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

Radio stations in Canada

 * CBF-FM, a French-language Canadian radio station in Montreal, Quebec
 * CBF-4, a transmitter of CHLM-FM in Matagami, Quebec
 * CBF-FM-8, a French-language Canadian radio station in Trois-Rivières, Quebec
 * CBF-FM-10, a French-language Canadian radio station in Sherbrooke, Quebec

Science and medicine

 * Cerebral blood flow, the blood supply to the brain in a given period of time
 * Ciliary beat frequency; see Cilium
 * Core binding factor, a type of transcription factor
 * C-Repeat Binding Factor, transcription factors in plants

Sport and games

 * Brazilian Football Confederation (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol), national governing body for football (soccer) in Brazil
 * Cambodian Basketball Federation, the governing body for the Cambodia national basketball team
 * Canadian Bridge Federation, the governing body for contract bridge in Canada
 * ChessBase format, for storing chess games in handheld computer memory
 * China Bandy Federation, the governing body for bandy in China
 * College Baseball Foundation, Lubbock, Texas, U.S.
 * Cyprus Basketball Federation, the governing body for basketball on the island of Cyprus
 * Czech Basketball Federation (ČBF), the governing body of basketball in the Czech Republic

Other uses

 * Creeping Bellflower, a perennial plant native to central and southern Europe and west Asia, and highly invasive in parts of North America.
 * Commander British Forces in Hong Kong (1843–1997), a senior British Army officer
 * Honda CBF series, a series of motorcycles
 * "C.B.F (Chrome Black Future)", a Nevermore song from the 1995 album Nevermore

title: CBF


text: File:Blur Bang.jpg

title: File:Blur Bang.jpg


text:
Elena Valenciano

María Elena Valenciano Martínez-Orozco (born 18 September 1960) is a Spanish politician of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, part of the Party of European Socialists.

Member of the European Parliament, 1999–2008
Following the 1999 European elections, Valenciano became a Member of the European Parliament, where she served as Deputy Secretary-General and spokesperson of the Spanish Socialist Delegation. In addition, she was the Socialist Group coordinator in the Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI).

Member of the Spanish Parliament, 2008–2014
Valenciano resigned from the European Parliament in 2008 when she was elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies in the national elections, representing Madrid. As member of parliament, she served as the Socialist Party's spokesperson on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. From 2012 to 2014, she was also the Socialists' deputy secretary general, under the leadership of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

Member of the European Parliament, 2014–2019
In February 2014, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party chose Valenciano as its lead candidate for the European elections; at the time, PSOE was the second biggest Socialist party delegation in the European Parliament's S&D Group, with 23 MEPs. On 14 May 2014, Valenciano and her Conservative counterpart Miguel Arias Cañete were featured in Spanish television's first live debate between the country's leading candidates for a European Parliament election. Valenciano was widely perceived to have beaten Arias in the debate, yet the PSOE returned just 14 MEPs to the Parliament, nine fewer than it had in 2009.

Following the elections, Valenciano reentered the European Parliament and assumed the position of chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI). In this capacity, she was also a member of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG), which oversees the Parliament's election observation missions. In addition, she served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), the delegation for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union, and the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean. She was also a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Western Sahara.

In September 2014, PSOE chairman Pedro Sánchez replaced Valenciano as head of the party's delegation of MEPs and instead appointed Iratxe García.

During the 2015 presidential elections in Haiti, Valenciano headed the European Union's observation mission to monitor the preparations and organization of the vote.

Other activities

 * Member of the Strategic and Advisory Committee, European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES)
 * European Endowment for Democracy (EED), member of the board of governors
 * EU Women Caucus, member of the board
 * Fundacion IDEAS, member of the board of trustees

title: Elena Valenciano


text:
User:Pstigi

User name: pstigi Gender: Male Occupation: Executive in the National Oil comany of INDIA Interests:History and evolution of the social fabric of KERALA, History, Archeology. Technology and its evolution. Contact email: pstigi[at]rediffmail.com

title: User:Pstigi