text:
Action League Now!

Action League Now! (advertised as Action League Now!: The Series when packaged into a half-hour block) is a series of stop motion shorts that aired as part of both All That and KaBlam! on Nickelodeon. It was made using "chuckimation", a combination of stop-frame animation and live-action shots where things are simply thrown ("chucked") or dropped into frame to simulate movement, and wiggled around to simulate talking. The series follows the adventures of a superhero league, composed of various action figures, toys, and dolls. The show was created by Robert Mittenthal, Will McRobb, and Albie Hecht.

Most episodes took place in a house of an unseen resident. Many of the characters were voiced by radio personalities from Pittsburgh.

From 1998 to February 10, 2002, Nickelodeon briefly ran Action League Now! shorts on their own, combined to fill a half-hour timeslot. These standalone edits are available on Paramount+.

Characters

 * The Flesh (Jim Krenn): "He's super strong and super naked!" – A blonde, muscular bodybuilder who never wears clothes. His catchphrases include simple, immature terms such as "Ouchies!", "Oopsies!". The Flesh is sometimes clumsy, but he doesn't get in the way of the other Action Leaguers when they're trying to save the day. His superpower is super strength, and he has been shown capable of lifting things many times his sizes such as buses and bricks. That really impressive Thundergirl. The figure used for Flesh was a modified Conan the Adventurer action figure.

 * Thundergirl (Cris Winter): "She flies ... like thunder!" – The only female member of the team, as well as the only one with the ability to fly. She usually accompanies her flight with a song similar to the tune of John Williams' Star Wars theme with the lyrics, "Thundergirl flying like thunder," (This was dropped later on in the series). The figure used for Thundergirl was a Sindy doll's head on a Wonder Woman-esque figure body. Her image is a combination of Barbie and She-Ra.

 * Stinky Diver (Jim Krenn): "A former navy commando with an attitude as bad as his odor!" – A mustachioed diver who is often seen in or around toilets. He speaks with an Australian-type accent, even though an episode title ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen") suggested him being English. In that episode, it is revealed that he became cold after his mom ratted him out to the enemy during the Gulf War for money. As his name makes obvious, Stinky has a foul odor, but the Action League seems to have gotten used to it and don't mind it most of the time. Owns a beach house (in reality, a life-size portable toilet) and a vast collection of toilet paper, which come in many different colors. He is the most frequent driver of the Action Mobile, the League's official transportation device (a big, red remote-control car). Although he lacks any superpowers, he has the ability to pull a spear gun out of thin air and can fire a seemingly endless amount of plastic missiles. Stinky is an altered 1994 G.I. Joe Shipwreck action figure.

 * Meltman (Scott Paulsen): "With the power to... melt!" – Meltman has the "power" to melt and is the smallest and weakest member of the Action League. He doesn't like the Flesh's long-running crush on Thundergirl, who does not reciprocate Meltman's feelings for her. As melting is his only ability, Meltman is quite unhelpful and a borderline burden and is considered by the rest of the League to be their personal servant, often fulfilling such chores as getting them sodas, donuts, and other things. For this reason, Meltman is always looking for ways to get the League to appreciate him. In two different episodes, it is revealed that his full name is Barry Meltfarb, although he claims to have changed the surname to his superhero name. As he once stated to a viewer he has never used his power since there is no need for it. The Chief considers him to be "as yellow as a jar of mustard at a jaundice convention." Meltman is a Robin Hood figure that was melted with a blow torch.

 * The Chief (Collin M. McGee, majority; Victor Hart, first few episodes): The head of the Action League, the Chief is an angry, frustrated man who frequently yells at the Action League for their mistakes and unintended backtalk. His catchphrase is "Blast it!" and "You morons!" He once got a heart transplant from Bill the Lab Guy. He also once successfully awoke from a coma, induced by the Flesh's carelessness, after having had to listen to all of the incidents in which the League had injured him during his extended sleep. The Chief was made by putting together and modifying parts from Playskool "Play People" dollhouse figures.

 * Justice (Alyssa Grahm): The Chief's beloved Golden Retriever and best friend. Technically a member of the Action League, Justice serves as the Lassie of the show, warning fellow members of the League of dangers that they were otherwise unaware of. Featured in almost every episode as a background character, with its only starring role being in "Dog Day Afterschool."

 * The Mayor (Jim Krenn): "His dishonor" – The Action League's archenemy. The reasons for his dislike of the Action League are unknown, but his hatred is obvious. His catchphrase is "Uh oh, here's trouble" or "I hate Mondays" whenever he's about to be defeated. Instances in which the mayor attempts to destroy the League include sucking them up with a massive vacuum cleaner, and blowing them away with a giant fan. Many of his schemes revolve around making money. In one episode, his pseudonym was revealed to be "Louis D. Mayor" (a reference to Louis B. Mayer). He also appears to have a fixation with becoming a celebrity, a successful musician, or a National Football League player. In the episode, "Sinkhole of Doom" it was revealed that the Mayor has a son. The Mayor was pieced together from various Playskool dollhouse figures. The voice that Jim Krenn used for the character was initially used by Krenn as a parody of then-Pittsburgh mayor Tom Murphy.

 * Bill the Lab Guy (Jim Krenn): A scientist who often messes up his experiments and predicaments. During every appearance, he is guaranteed to be heard saying, "There's nothing I can do," or, "I was afraid of this!" and "I don't see any connection." Bill has a monotone voice and takes himself very seriously as a scientist, even though his experiments almost always go awry. He has a teenage daughter named Quarky who helps him around the lab. He appears to have a love for oldies music and is a personal friend of late musician Lou Rawls. Bill, along with the Mayor and the Chief, was pieced together in part from various Playskool dollhouse figures. His name is a reference to Bill Nye the Science Guy.

 * Hodge Podge (Jim Krenn): The Action League's former accountant, Hodge Podge was accidentally thrown into and chopped up in a blender, then horribly rebuilt by Bill the Lab Guy against his will, making him a freak with parts of random toys and household objects (such as a claw for a hand, taken from a crab toy and the top portion of a fork attached to his chest). Hodge Podge appears to be more hands-on and successful than the Mayor with his initial tactics, even though neither of them ever get their way. He specifically works with mechanics to get his way (brainwashing radio station, custom-built remote control, modified voicebox, etc.).

 * Quarky (Cris Winter): Bill the Lab Guy's teenage daughter who helps him around the lab. Occasionally, she gets into situations that the Action League has to rescue her from. She is the focus in one episode, "The Quarky Syndrome," where she was involved in a nuclear waste accident and goes by the alias Superteen.

 * The Announcer (Scott Paulsen): The narrator of the program, using various alliterations and overreactions often before and after the short's commercial bridge. He sometimes breaks the fourth wall during an episode. He has a deep, monotone voice, not unlike Bill the Lab Guy's and is never seen, only heard.

The Action League have had various other villains throughout the show's run, including (but not limited to) a gigantic baby simply named "Big Baby", a Mesozoic monster (in reality, a dog Jack Russell Terrier) called Spotzilla, a rival superhero league known as the Danger Society, a bald genius known as Smarty Pants, an enemy of Stinky's past called Red Ninja, a group of evil aliens, a gypsy who cursed The Chief, a married couple who pretended to be Flesh's parents and a mummy brought to life by The Mayor. Sometimes, due to their own collective stupidity, even the League themselves can be the main cause of a problem.

Guest appearances

 * There have been numerous guest appearances, including National Football League quarterbacks Brett Favre, John Elway, Kordell Stewart, Troy Aikman, and coach Bill Cowher, the rock band Kiss, musician-actor Harry Connick, Jr., pop singer Robyn, and musician Lou Rawls. All voiced themselves on the program (with the exception of Robyn and Connick, who voiced Blandi and Big Baby, respectively, in the episode "Rock-a-big Baby" which was paired theatrically with Good Burger).

Banned episodes
Some episodes of Action League Now! are banned in the United States. One specific episode to be put under this ban was the season 2 episode "ThunderFlesh" due to its romantic intimacy. Due to this, the KaBlam! episode it was aired with titled "I Just Don't Get It" was put under a ban after the 9/11 attacks. The Action League Now!: The Series episode "Thunder Girl: Tracking the Storm" which also contained the short was put on a ban after its initial broadcast in 2002, only being re-shown in 2016 on the late night TV block "The Splat" on TeenNick. The episode can still be watched on Paramount+.

Reception
In a Chicago Tribune article, Jennifer Mangan complimented the series' originality, calling it "the most innovative entrant in KaBlam!'s cartoon catalog." Jane Hall of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Action League Now! "has the weird, aggressive humor of the old 'Mr. Bill' pieces on Saturday Night Live." Naming the show among other KaBlam! segments, Deadline Hollywood's Mike Fleming wrote positively of its "absurdly unforgettable characters."

title: Action League Now!


text: File:Proud as a Peacock (1979 logo).jpg

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

title: File:Proud as a Peacock (1979 logo).jpg


text:
Talk:Operator norm

Some rewriting needed?
I wonder if this article needs some rewriting.

First, the article starts with a very technical "all operator norm definitions money can buy", which is certainly not encouraging.

Also, the first section does not tie in well with the remainder of the article in general.

Looking down below, one uses the words "bounded linear transformation" to introduce the notion of norm. Some care is needed here, as a bounded linear operator is not implying it to be a bounded linear function.

What could maybe make this article better is to split it into two articles. One main one about linear bounded operators where one focuses on linear operators and not as much on fine details about their norms, and a shorter article on operator norms, which could be more techical.

Other ideas? Oleg Alexandrov 03:30, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree, really. The edit from last June which introduced the definition by symbols is not really in the right place. It should go after the more verbose definition. Also the first paragraph should be expanded with some gentle introduction to the general idea: the norm of an operator gives us a specific way to talk about its 'size', operator norms apply to matrices but also are particularly useful in picturing the case of spaces of infinite dimension, if the operator norm fails to be defined because the sup is unbounded that indicates the operator is not continuous.

Charles Matthews 09:15, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see that bounded operator redirects here. Well, that is a self-link that needs to be fixed. So, Oleg's idea maybe to split that into a separate article seems quite promising. Charles Matthews 09:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I will get to it by this weeked. It would be not easy to separate linear operator from operator norm, as these go hand in hand. However, the way things are now is not so good, so two articles, even with a small amount of repetition among them, should be better. Oleg Alexandrov 19:05, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Infimum and minimum
Just a minor thing: the second section says that $\{c : \|Av\| \leq c\|v\| \forall v \in V\}$ may have no minimum, but I dispute that. It's the intersection over all nonzero $v\in V$ of the closed set $[\|Av\| / \|v\|, \infty]$, and an abritrary intersection of closed sets is closed. David Bulger 00:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

 * You are right, I reworded the text appropriately. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistency between operator norm and induced norm article
In the section about induced norms it says that the induced norm is the same as the operator norm. Then one definition is given, which is not the same definition given in this article about operator norms. This is a bit confusing. Is it possible to coordinate this information so both of the articles give the same information? Also, the information given in the latter article, does not seem to correspond to the information given in the WolframMathWorld articles about Operator norm and Induced norm. Mårten Berglund (talk) 15:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Table of common operator norms
Some common operator norms are easy to calculate, and others are NP-hard. There's a very nice table in section 4.3.1 of Joel Tropp's PhD thesis from 2004. I think this might make a nice addition to the main article. (This could be made more complete by discussing which of the NP-hard norms allow quick approximations).

Except for the NP-hard norms, all these norms can be calculated in N^2 operations (for a NxN matrix), with the exception of the l2-l2 norm (which requires N^3 operations for the exact answer, or less if you approximate it with the power method or Lanczos iterations).

Lavaka (talk) 14:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Error in "Operators on a Hilbert space" section?
Maybe I'm missing something, but this passage seems wrong: If I choose H= R2 with standard inner product and $$     A = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 2 \\           3 & 4  \\         \end{bmatrix}, $$ then $$\|A\|_{1} = 6$$, but $$\|A^*\|_{1} = 7$$.
 * Suppose H is a real or complex Hilbert space. If A : H → H is a bounded linear operator, then we have
 * $$\|A\|_{op} = \|A^*\|_{op}$$
 * $$\|A\|_{op} = \|A^*\|_{op}$$

Sorry for any mistakes and thanks for any clarifications.

Saung Tadashi (talk) 21:25, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

 * I think the resolution is that your example isn't in Hilbert space! With H= R2 with standard inner product, then we're forced to use the 2 norm, not the 1 norm. 128.138.65.148 (talk) 22:44, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's true! Thanks for clarifying :)
 * Saung Tadashi (talk) 07:58, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Operator norm


text:
Pata (musician)

Tomoaki Ishizuka (石塚 智昭), known exclusively by his stage name Pata, is a Japanese musician. He is best known as rhythm guitarist of the visual kei rock band X Japan. He joined the band in 1987, stayed with them until their dissolution in 1997, and rejoined when the band reunited in 2007.

A year after their breakup, he formed the short-lived duo P.A.F. with singer NoB and created the band Dope HEADz with X Japan bassist Heath and former Spread Beaver percussionist/programmer I.N.A. in 2000. Right after they ceased activity, Pata formed the instrumental band Ra:IN in 2002, which still tours extensively to this day.

His stage name is taken from the manga Patalliro!, as he was said to resemble the title character.

1980–1997: Early bands and X Japan
Little is known about Pata's early years as he tends to keep his past and personal life to himself. He first played a guitar in junior high school. It was an acoustic one that his younger sister bought, and which he still owns. He taught himself to play guitar on a Fender Stratocaster. He formed his first band in 1980, and two years later created the band Black Rose, later known as Judy, but chose to disband it in 1985 or 1986. Prior to disbanding, Yoshiki filled in on drums at several performances. Pata actually asked Yoshiki to join Judy, as at the time X Japan was going through member changes, but he declined. According to Yoko of United, Pata was a roadie for brief X member Hally and used Hally's guitar when he joined X himself.

Pata first played with X Japan (then named X) in 1987 as a session musician, on the songs "Stab Me in the Back" and "No Connexion" for the sampler Skull Thrash Zone Volume I. After supporting them at a couple live shows, he officially joined the band later that year. They released their first album Vanishing Vision in 1988 and toured extensively in support of the record. They would become one of the first Japanese acts to achieve mainstream success while on an independent label, and later widely credited as one of the pioneers of visual kei.

X 's major label debut album, Blue Blood, was released in April 1989 and debuted at number six on the Oricon chart. Its success earned the band the "Grand Prix New Artist of the Year" award at the 4th annual Japan Gold Disc Awards in 1990. Their third album Jealousy was released in 1991 and debuted at number one, selling over 600,000 copies. It was later certified million by the RIAJ. Shortly after the release of 1993's Art of Life, which also topped the Oricon, the members of X Japan took a break to start solo projects. Dahlia, which would become the band's last album, was released on November 4, 1996, and once again, it reached the number one spot. In September 1997, it was announced that X Japan would disband, they performed their farewell show, aptly titled The Last Live, at the Tokyo Dome on December 31, 1997.

1993–present: Solo career, Ra:IN and other work
In 1993, while still in X Japan, Pata released his first self-titled solo album, which featured many veteran American musicians such as Tommy Aldridge, Tim Bogert, Mike Porcaro and James Christian. His second, Raised on Rock, was released two years later and again featured Christian, as well as Chuck Wright and Ken Mary. He also played at a number of concerts for fellow X Japan lead guitarist Hide's solo career from 1994 to 1998. A year after X Japan's breakup, he formed P.A.F. (standing for "Patent Applied For", named after the PAF guitar pickups) with singer NoB. In about one year's time they released: two albums, one mini album, one live album and two singles. For the 1999 Hide tribute album, Tribute Spirits, Pata teamed up with X Japan bassist Heath and former Spread Beaver percussionist/programmer I.N.A. to cover the X Japan song "Celebration". He would reunite with them again in 2000 when they formed Dope HEADz, adding vocalist Jo:Ya. They released two singles and an album, when in 2002 they recruited new singer Shame and released Planet of Dope. Soon after its release they would cease activity.

The same year he formed the instrumental rock band Ra:IN (standing for "Rock and Inspiration"), with bassist Michiaki and drummer Tetsu (he later having previously played with him in P.A.F.). In 2007, after three albums, former Spread Beaver member DIE joined Ra:IN as keyboardist. They tour extensively, having performed quite a few overseas shows, including a lengthy European tour in 2009.

In 2003, Pata played live support for Miyavi at a couple of his concerts, along with former Spread Beaver bassist Chirolyn, Seikima-II guitarist Luke Takamura and Luna Sea drummer Shinya. In 2005, Pata appeared on Nanase Aikawa's album R.U.O.K.?!, as did DIE, Shinya, Dead End bassist Crazy Cool Joe and former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman, they all supported her on the album's tour.

2007–present: X Japan reunion
According to a report by the newspaper Sponichi, X Japan vocalist Toshi visited drummer Yoshiki in Los Angeles in November 2006 to work on a song as a tribute to Hide. In March 2007, Toshi announced on his website that he and Yoshiki had recently resumed working together, stating that a "new project" would commence soon. Rumors of a X Japan reunion subsequently began, and in June Yoshiki was reported as having expressed interest in a tour and that he was in talks with Heath and Pata regarding their participation. On October 22, 2007, X Japan announced their reunion and released the Saw IV theme song, "I.V.".

In 2010, they went on their first North American tour from September 25 to October 10. Their first world tour began with four gigs in Europe from June 28 to July 4, 2011, and was resumed from September to October with five shows in South America and five in Asia.

On September 22, 2013, Pata appeared at a concert in memory of Hide, hosted by Sexxx George (Ladies Room), performing in a special band with George, Eby (ex-Zi:Kill), Yoshihiko (heidi.) and Cutt. For the Hide tribute album Tribute VII -Rock Spirits-, released on December 18, 2013, Pata reunited with Spread Beaver members Joe, INA and Chirolyn and Dope HEADz vocalist Shame to record a new version of "Pink Spider" under the name The Pink Spiders.

On January 15, 2016, Pata was rushed to the intensive care unit of a Tokyo hospital. He was diagnosed with colon diverticulitis and a severe blood clot in his portal vein, but in stable condition. In June, Yoshiki stated that Pata was discharged in March, but had to go back for surgery in August. Pata announced he was discharged on August 10. X Japan ended up postponing their album release and March 12, 2016, concert at the Wembley Arena in London for a whole year; the latter being held on March 4, 2017.

Rittor Music published Pata's autobiography, Pata: Yopparai no Kaikoroku (PATA 酔っ払いの回顧録), on February 13, 2024.

Equipment
Pata is noted as the only member of X Japan who plays American-made instruments, almost always seen playing a vintage Gibson Les Paul. Previously, he often used a yellow 1959 Les Paul Standard nicknamed "Ichi-Gō" (1号) or his "Honsai" (本妻). Although he still uses it for recording, it has been retired from live performances since 2008 due to its value, which is reportedly enough to buy a house. He now mainly uses a 1955 Goldtop or a black 1975 Les Paul Custom. The Goldtop's paint is rubbed down to the wood, earning it the nickname "Hage" (ハゲ). Its pickups and tailpiece were already altered when he acquired it, the former having been swapped out for humbuckers. The black 1975 Custom is nicknamed "Jōmu" (常務) or "Kuroi Kasu" (黒カス), and he has owned it since his amateur days. Since X Japan's reunion, Pata occasionally uses a wine red 1976 Custom, which has a Tom Holmes 453 pickup in the rear. He has owned several other Les Paul Customs, including a white one nicknamed "Shiroi Kasu" (白カス).

In addition to his lineup of Les Pauls, Pata owns several other guitars such as an acoustic-electric by Takamine. His 1990s Gibson EDS-1275 double neck guitar has had all of its pickups changed, including the 12-string side to Burstbuckers, and its tailpiece changed to "Jimmy Page specifications". As of 2022, he had recently stopped using it live due to its heavy weight. In the mid-1990s, Pata received a signature model guitar made by Burny, the EX-85P or its higher-end EX-240P, based on the Gibson Explorer. Pata's own copy of the guitar is made of korina and has Tom Holmes pickups. Before X Japan's 2014 concert at Madison Square Garden, Burny presented Pata with the prototype of his former bandmate Hide's signature Kujira model.

Pata prefers to change guitars on stage as little as possible. He uses four or five with X Japan due to their different tunings, but only about two for Ra:IN; one for regular tuning and one for drop tuning. Pata previously used D'Addario 011-049 strings, but found it difficult to bend the top string. While recording Art of Life (1993) in America, he happened to buy La Bella HRS-010-048 strings at a local music shop and has used them ever since. Similarly, he bought a Dunlop 0.73mm nylon guitar pick at the same time, and has used them ever since. Although he sometimes uses a slightly stiffer one for acoustic guitar. Pata uses two old Marshall guitar amplifiers, which originally did not have master volume knobs, but have been altered to have them. Because the bass tends to get "muddy" when using distortion, the older amp on top is used for the main melody, while the bottom amp is used to correct the bass. Pata uses minimal effects pedals. As of 2022, he had an MXR Phase 100 phaser, an MK.4.23 booster, a Free the Tone delay, and a Vox wah pedal. Toru Saito has been his guitar tech since X Japan's 1991 Violence in Jealousy Tour.

Discography

 * Pata (November 4, 1993), Oricon Peak Position: #11
 * Pata's Bootleg (1994, VHS)
 * "Fly Away" (September 21, 1994) #35
 * "Shine on Me" (January 21, 1995) #94
 * Raised on Rock (July 5, 1995) #33
 * Improvisation Guitar Style (August 20, 2007, DVD)

 * With P.A.F.
 * "Love & Fake" (February 21, 1998)
 * Patent Applied For (March 25, 1998)
 * "Slapstick Life" (October 21, 1998)
 * "The Big Time" (January 21, 1999)
 * Pat.#0002 (February 24, 1999)
 * Live (July 23, 1999)

 * With Dope HEADz
 * "Glow" (February 21, 2001) #35
 * "True Lies" (April 25, 2001) #35
 * Primitive Impulse (June 6, 2001) #20
 * Planet of the Dope (July 24, 2002) #59

Ra:IN discography
 * With Rain

 * With X Japan

Other work

 * Sound Locomotive (Motoaki Furukawa, June 24, 1992, guitar solo (left) on "Fantastic Offroader")
 * Overdoing (Tokyo Yankees, October 20, 1992, guest guitar on "Drugstore Cowboy")
 * Char Tribute: Psyche-Delicious (Various artists, June 18, 1997, "You Keep Snowin'")
 * Ja, Zoo (hide with Spread Beaver, November 21, 1998, guitar on "Fish Scratch Fever" and "Hurry Go Round")
 * Tribute Spirits (Various artists, May 1, 1999, "Celebration")
 * R.U.O.K.?!, (Nanase Aikawa, November 19, 2005, guitar on "Foolish 555", "Rock Star's Steady" and "Everybody Goes")
 * "In Motion" (hide, July 10, 2002, guitar)
 * Psyence a Go Go (hide, March 19, 2008, guitar)
 * Hide Our Psychommunity (hide, April 23, 2008, guitar)
 * Attitude (film, July 19, 2009, cameo appearance)
 * Second Live 「Nariagari (Shaku)」 2003.10.19 at Hibiya Yagai dai Ongakudou (セカンドライブ「成り上がり（借）」 2003.10.19at日比谷野外大音楽堂)
 * Samurai Japan (Toshi, February 24, 2010)
 * Tribute VII -Rock Spirits (Various artists, December 18, 2013, "Pink Spider")
 * Junk Story (hide documentary film, May 23, 2015, as himself)
 * Music Not Fade Away (Seizi Kimura, 2018, guitar)
 * "Red Swan" (Yoshiki feat. Hyde, October 3, 2018, guest guitar)
 * Issay Gave Life to Flowers - A Tribute to Der Zibet - (Various artists, July 6, 2024, guitar solo on "Akari o Keshite")

title: Pata (musician)


text:
Proud as a Peacock

"Proud as a Peacock" was the advertising campaign used by the NBC television and radio networks from 1979 to 1981. The campaign was used to promote NBC's programming and to introduce the "Proud N", a logo that would be used until 1986.

The campaign
By 1979, NBC was deeply mired in third place in the Nielsen ratings. Fred Silverman, who joined the network a year earlier, could not bring the same ratings success he had as programming whiz at ABC and CBS, resulting in a string of programs (such as Supertrain) that were derided by critics and/or tuned out by viewers.

In an attempt to present a positive image in the face of this failure, Silverman and NBC developed an ad campaign called "Proud as a Peacock". The campaign featured a revised version of the famous NBC Peacock logo, billed as the "Proud N", along with a catchy high-energy jingle (written for NBC by Joey Levine (then known for singing "Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)" in 1974 and in the 1960s, sang lead vocals on bubblegum pop sound music from Crushing Enterprises) that promotes a network ready to shed its losing reputation and project an image of excitement in its programming. Future R&B singing legend Luther Vandross was among the artists who performed on the jingle.

The 1979–1980 season's "Proud" campaign promos were produced in New York City for NBC's radio and television networks, and customized versions were produced for the network's affiliates. The campaign was introduced on May 14, 1979, to promote the network's Fall lineup, and was used again in the 1980–1981 season with a revised jingle - "We're Proud!"

Despite the network's effort at "puttin' on a whole new face", NBC's difficulties continued unabated. Successes such as Little House on the Prairie and Diff'rent Strokes and the miniseries Shogun were countered by a flood of failed new programming (such as Pink Lady), which led to near-daily schedule changes. NBC continued to lag in last place behind CBS and ABC, producing only three Nielsen Top 20 shows in both the 1979-1980 and 1980–1981 seasons.

NBC was also forced to cancel plans to cover the 1980 Summer Olympics in the wake of the United States' boycott of the Moscow Games, resulting in many millions of dollars lost in rights fees, facility/equipment investments, and potential ad revenue.

The continued failures led to ridicule of the "Proud" campaign from both within the network and without (see below). Silverman would leave NBC in the summer of 1981; that fall the network adopted a slightly new campaign ("Our Pride Is Showing") with little difference in ratings. (By the mid-1980s, NBC's fortunes finally began to turn around, due to changes made by Silverman's replacement, Brandon Tartikoff, and his boss, former producer Grant Tinker; they were responsible for such now-legendary programs as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, and Cheers, among many others.)

The "Loud" parody
The moves (and failures) of NBC under Fred Silverman's management generated a feeling of frustration and embarrassment among many of the network's employees; they were not as proud of the network as the "Proud" campaign suggested, and a few inside staffers composed an alternative jingle to express their disappointment.

"We're Loud - Proud as a Peacock" was a radio-style parody of NBC's 1980-1981 "We're Proud" campaign, recorded by the same production studio the network employed for "Proud" and using the same voice cast used for the original "Proud" campaign. "Loud" voiced the disappointment that many of NBC's employees felt under Silverman's leadership. The jingle was widely circulated to network staff and even sent out to local affiliates on cassettes as a joke at Christmastime.

The joke ended when Don Imus, then the morning host at WNBC radio in New York City, played the parody on-air. Angered by Imus' move, Silverman ordered a search-and-destroy mission to purge the network of any remaining copies of the parody. However, many copies remained, albeit with poor audio quality and therefore were not fit for broadcast. However, just as how "Proud as a Peacock" was parodied, so was "Our Pride Is Showing". It was spoofed at the beginning of a October 3, 1981 episode of Saturday Night Live as "Our Age Is Showing" and the spoof featured an aged and disoriented NBC logo. "Proud as a Peacock" was also parodied at the beginning of a October 13, 1979 episode of Saturday Night Live as "Smart as a Peacock", which was meant as a way for SNL staff to ridicule NBC for causing the sketch variety series's disputes and problems during that time.

Meaning of the phrase
"Proud as a peacock" is a saying that is used to mean a vain or self-centered person. The phrase comes from the plumage of the male peafowl (females are peahens). When a male is courting, he spreads his tail feathers, sometimes five feet in length, out in a fan pattern to attract a female. Thus, someone who is "proud as a peacock" is similarly "strutting his stuff".

title: Proud as a Peacock


text:
Rhizoid

Rhizoids are protuberances that extend from the lower epidermal cells of bryophytes and algae. They are similar in structure and function to the root hairs of vascular land plants. Similar structures are formed by some fungi. Rhizoids may be unicellular or multicellular.

Evolutionary development
Plants originated in aquatic environments and gradually migrated to land during their long course of evolution. In water or near it, plants could absorb water from their surroundings, with no need for any special absorbing organ or tissue. Additionally, in the primitive states of plant development, tissue differentiation and division of labor were minimal, thus specialized water-absorbing tissue was not required. The development of specialized tissues to absorb water efficiently and anchor the plant body to the ground enabled the spread of plants onto land.

Description
Rhizoids absorb water mainly by capillary action in which water moves up between threads of rhizoids; this is in contrast to roots in which water moves up through a single root. However, some species of bryophytes do have the ability to take up water inside their rhizoids.

Land plants
In land plants, rhizoids are trichomes that anchor the plant to the ground. In the liverworts, they are absent or unicellular, but they are multicellular in mosses. In vascular plants, they are often called root hairs and may be unicellular or multicellular.

Algae
In certain algae, there is an extensive rhizoidal system that allows the alga to anchor itself to a sandy substrate from which it can absorb nutrients. Microscopic free-floating species, however, do not have rhizoids at all.

Fungi
In fungi, rhizoids are small branching hyphae that grow downwards from the stolons and anchor the fungus to the substrate, where they release digestive enzymes and absorb digested organic material.

title: Rhizoid


text:
Talk:Bishop of Aberdeen

Isn't there a Bishop of Aberdeen in the Scottish Episcopal Church as well? john k 03:34, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Hi john k,
 * There is an Episcopal bishop of Aberdeen, the bishop of Diocese of Aberdeen & Orkney. I haven't got round to that yet, though.  --JohnArmagh 11:33, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, this article should be moved to Bishop of Aberdeen (Roman Catholic) and Bishop of Aberdeen turned into a disambiguation, don't you think. Presumably beyond just the modern Roman Catholic and the Scottish Episcopal there would also be Bishops of Aberdeen in the Church of Scotland before it abolished bishops, and also medieval bishops. john k 15:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I anticipated that you may be of that opinion (in fact I initially went as far as including the suggestion in my earlier reply but deleted it before saving it).

 * Certainly I have no objection. --JohnArmagh 20:55, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I object. The Episcopalian bishop is not called simply "Bishop of Aberdeen"; if that were not enough, the bishop of Aberdeen is an ancient bishopric predating the modern catholic resurrection of the diocese, and certainly the modern Anglican bishopric that doesn't even bare that name, serving as it does only a tiny proportion of the area's christian community, can hardly be said to rival the historical bishopric in topical importance. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

 * There should at least be some mention of the Protestant Bishops of Aberdeen in this article. There were Protestant Bishops of Aberdeen from at least 1721 (when Archibald Campbell was elected) until the diocese was united to that of Orkney in 1864 - a period of 143 years or more, as opposed to the 128 years the Catholic diocese has been in existence. Opera hat 15:23, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Reformation
According to the article on the Diocese of Aberdeen, there was a time of no Catholic bishop, and the list includes bishops during this supposed time of no bishop. Does this mean that they are Episcopal bishops? If so, should some diffrentiation be made, or at least a mention of when the Episcopal Church disenfranchized the Catholics there in addition to the restoration in the 1800s?

Furthermore, the Bishop Ronald MacDonald is linked to a Scotish-American... I am guessing not the bishop intended. CJJDay 21:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

James Kyle is an incorrect link too.

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Bishop of Aberdeen. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070310212515/http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/History/Scottish/Level1/level1C-material.htm to http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/History/Scottish/Level1/level1C-material.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 02:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bishop of Aberdeen


text:
User talk:Dr. Nick Riviera

Hi Dr Nick!-gadfium 03:36, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

zomg!
Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style
 * Transparent paper pwns. — flamingspinach | (talk) 03:53, 2005 May 4 (UTC)

title: User talk:Dr. Nick Riviera


text:
Talk:George Boolos

Untitled
The following was presented by Boolos in the Harvard Review of Philosophy, 1996.

Three Gods, A B and C, are called, in some order, True False and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one God. The Gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for 'yes' and 'no' are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Now can anyone figure out the answer? (c; If anyone needs a hint, let me know on my talk page. - Eric Herboso 03:36, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * also available in Logic, Logic, and Logic, in case anyone finds it easier to looks for it there, under the title, "The Hardest Logic Problem in the World." The puzzle itself is credited to Raymond Smullyan, if I am not mistaken. (For the record, I don't think it's the hardest logic problem in the world, though it is a pretty good one.  And yes, I did solve it myself.  That strikes me as the best evidence that it's no that difficult: I'm just not that smart.) Captain Wacky 07:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Frege's Basic Law V
In the article, the 3rd paragraph of the section Work mentions Boolos' work on Frege's Grundgesetze and the influence of Russell's paradox on it. At the end, the sentence "The resulting system [Frege Arithmetic, i.e., Frege's logic of Grundgesetze with Basic Law V replaced with Hume's Principle] has since been the subject of intense work" has the tag. Would a reference to, for instance, Richard Heck's book Frege's Theorem (Book info // list of Heck's publications) — which discusses Frege Arithmetic almost exclusively — be considered as a suitable citation? YuujiSajaki (talk) 11:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:George Boolos


text:
Talk:Polycystine

Untitled
Any explanation for this unusually name? It suggests, of course, a chain of cystine amino acids. Does this organism produce something like this? ike9898 03:37, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

It would be neat, but the name really comes from many cysts, plus a Latinate suffix.

Size?
I'm missing a mention of the size of these creatures - small, yes, but how small? A rough size range (in micrometers) might be useful... --Janke | Talk 16:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Polycystine


text:
Sango, Tennessee

Sango is an unincorporated community in the southeastern corner of Montgomery County, Tennessee, about 5 miles east of Clarksville. It is located near Interstate 24, 30 minutes northwest of Nashville.

Once primarily a rural community consisting largely of prime farmland, many new housing developments have gone up in the past few years.

From before the Civil War to at least 1990, tobacco was the main cash crop in Sango. Besides burley and some flue-cured tobaccos, high-quality dark-fired (wood smoke-cured) tobacco was grown in Sango, as well as throughout Montgomery County. During the tobacco wars of 1904 to 1908 (between the farmers and the Duke tobacco monopoly), a key battle between the "Night Riders" (farmers) and agents of the tobacco monopoly took place at the intersection of Bagwell and Sango Roads, in eastern Sango.

As Sango is neither an incorporated community nor a census-designated place, it has no clearly defined boundaries. It roughly covers an area stretching from U.S. Route 41A to just beyond Interstate 24. Sango is a much higher quality of living when compared similar towns like Ashland City.

title: Sango, Tennessee


text:
Talk:James Rolph, Jr.

 * This is barely worth having unless it adds some more content- it's essentially a duplicate of the info in List of SF mayors with the addition of his nickname. -Fernando Rizo 03:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:James Rolph, Jr.


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laforet

 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 keep. - Mailer Diablo 02:48, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Laforet
A department store in Tokyo, no claim to notability. Tokyo has probably lots of them. JoaoRicardo 03:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

they also have an art gallery event space where many artist all over the world come to http://www.lapnet.jp/event_info/lm/index.html
 * Yes, Tokyo does. However, though it's pretty clumsily expressed in the article, Laforet is fairly well-known as part of youth-culture fashion. See some of the 5,030 hits it gets on Google ("Laforet+Tokyo-Hotel"). Keep and clean up. --Calton 03:47, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Everyking 09:04, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. A Tokyo and Harajuku landmark which does have claims to notability.   Exploding Boy 15:41, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: This was apparently never listed on vfd, so I'm putting it on today's page. —Korath (Talk) 03:07, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep: Seems notable but needs to be expanded. --Fuzzball! (talk) 04:43, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Japanese department stores are every bit as notable as american ones. Dave the Red (talk) 05:03, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Having lived in Tokyo, I know this to be a signifigant part of the culture. --Halidecyphon 07:43, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Other articles link to this article. Capitalistroadster 11:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Not a valid reason to keep (if people can say "not a valid reason to delete", I can do the same :-). However, "could be worthy of inclusion, keep if expanded" is. Chris talk back 16:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable Japanese Store. Klonimus 02:10, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable department store. Mike H 03:20, Apr 12, 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.

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laforet


text:
Aphorismus

Aphorismus (from the ἀφορισμός, aphorismós, "a marking off", also "rejection, banishment") is a figure of speech that calls into question if a word is properly used ("How can you call yourself a man?"). It often appears in the form of a rhetorical question which is meant to imply a difference between the present thing being discussed and the general notion of the subject.

Examples

 * "For you have but mistook me all this while. / I live with bread like you, feel want, / Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, / How can you say to me I am a king?" William Shakespeare, Richard II Act 3, scene 2, 174-177
 * "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton, August 17, 1998

title: Aphorismus


text:
Talk:Golden algae

Requested move
Golden alga → Golden algae … Rationale: common plural is better than uncommon singular; match other algae pages. Blocked by minor edit history at Golden algae. … Please share your opinion at Talk:Golden alga. --R. S. Shaw 21:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Survey

 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with  ~

 * Support We should match the other algae pages. Evertype 15:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Moved. — Nightst a  llion  (?) 11:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Crysophyta
From user talk:Josh Grosse:

I have noticed your article on Golden Algae is a redirected from Chrysophyta. But your taxonomy box is not correctly indicating your text. From your article, you refer to the phylum Chrysophyta and NOT the class Chrysophyceae. If you want to have a look at the table of classifications you are welcome. Askewmind 02:29, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

You can see it more clearly at. That is why I changed the redirect earlier I thought the page was about Chrysophyceae only, and not general phylum Chrysophyta. So I think you should change your taxobox accordingly. --LexCorp 02:54, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Sorry seems this is more up to date . --LexCorp 03:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Someone else changed the taxobox to give Chrysophyta instead of Chrysophyceae. This was a mistake on their part, since it is not compatible with including them in a division like Heterokontophyta, and I have reverted it.

However, this does not mean the Chrysophyta are a different group. They used to be more inclusive, including for instance the yellow-green algae and perhaps even diatoms, but these sets are paraphyletic. Nowadays when the division is still used, it tends to be identical to the Chrysophyceae, only promoted in rank. So it makes perfect sense that Chrysophyta would redirect here.

The classification of heterokonts in general is variable. I think the system given on that page does a reasonable job reflecting the sort of systems that are current, and the discussion at least gives the idea that it is not authoritative. However, I would be happy if you had any ideas about how to make the difficulties more transparent. Josh

 * Well I've been doing some searching and I think we could use this site Integrated Taxonomic Information System to consult on currently accepted taxonomy. granted there are bits and pieces that are debatable, but in lack of agreement within the community, the ITIS kees a standard reference for quoting until the comunity agrees to a change.

 * Even better, there is a template to use as the reference or source of infortation for example. What do you think? AskewMind 14:11, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the idea. We shouldn't blindly trust ITIS, which is sometimes idiosyncratic and is totally obsolete as far as protists are concerned. Right now we're using whatever system best reflects the current understanding of protistologists, as far as possible, and leaving out taxa where there is no consensus. It's true there are disagreements about the new systems, but to go from those to a system that nobody really accepts is a mistake. It might be more work to go through the different alternatives than to take one source as authoritative, but it's a lot more valuable. Note many of the currently accepted groups, like Amoebozoa and Euglenozoa, don't even show up under ITIS. Josh

 * Ok, I hear what you saying, then we have two options, we either try to set an agreed taxon (something corrected, taking into account the protist kingdom and maybe like you say, excluding the disputed entries) and maybe even build it onto wikispecies. Or we have to build our taxon from a reference source, after all wikipedia is a reference source, not a debate forum. We are not here to set canon, only to present know information.

 * Personally I would prefer to follow the first route, and since i'm no biologist ot taxonimist I would have rely on experts to decide what is correct. To be honest the taxonomy bussiness is all new to me. So if you think this is the right course, i would go for it. AskewMind 17:49, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Golden algae. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080922122718/http://www.cs.cuc.edu/~tfutcher/Chrysophyta.html to http://www.cs.cuc.edu/~tfutcher/Chrysophyta.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:56, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Does the extensive history of taxonomy really belong here?
The page currently has *9* separate taxonomies, going back to the year 1914. This feels like a lot of unnecessary information for this page and would be a better fit for Wikispecies. Can we migrate most of these taxonomies there and decide on a single one to stick to, at least within the page and then refer to wikispecies for more detailed taxonomic analyses? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daemyth (talk • contribs) 02:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Golden algae


text:
AOHell

AOHell was a Windows application that was used to simplify 'cracking' (computer hacking) using AOL. The program contained a very early use of the term phishing. It was created by a teenager under the pseudonym Da Chronic, whose expressed motivation was anger that child abuse took place on AOL without being curtailed by AOL administrators.

History
AOHell was the first of what would become thousands of programs designed for hackers created for use with AOL. In 1994, seventeen year old hacker Koceilah Rekouche, from Pittsburgh, PA, known online as "Da Chronic", used Visual Basic to create a toolkit that provided: a new DLL for the AOL client, a credit card number generator, email bomber, IM bomber, Punter, and a basic set of instructions. It was billed as, "An all-in-one nice convenient way to break federal fraud law, violate interstate trade regulations, and rack up a couple of good ol' telecommunications infractions in one fell swoop". When the program was loaded, it would play a short clip from Dr. Dre's 1993 song "Nuthin but a G Thang".

Most notably, the program included a function for stealing the passwords of America Online users and, according to its creator, contains the first recorded mention of the term "phishing". AOHell provided a number of other utilities which ran on top of the America Online client software. Though most of these utilities simply manipulated the AOL interface, some were powerful enough to let almost any curious party anonymously cause havoc on AOL. The first version of the program was released in 1994 by hackers known as The Rizzer, and The Squirrel.

Features
Hi, this is AOL Customer Service. We're running a security check and need to verify your account. Please enter your username and password to continue.
 * A fake account generator which would generate a new, fully functional AOL account for the user that lasted for about a month. This generator worked by exploiting the algorithm used by credit card companies known as the Luhn algorithm to dynamically generate apparently legitimate credit card numbers. The account would not be disabled until AOL first billed it (and discovered that the credit card was invalid). The generator could also generate fake addresses and phone numbers, resembling on their surface legitimate personal information.  One example of a fake account generator was a Macintosh One-click based piece of software called Fake Maker written by a user known as McDawgg within the AOL Macwarez community.  This software ran in parallel with the AOL program to create fake accounts based upon generated legitimate credit card account numbers.  This software ultimately released 3 versions and helped to create thousands of fake accounts before AOL weakened its ability through more expedient account verification.
 * Phishing tools. The program included a "fisher" tool in 1995 that enabled hackers to steal passwords and credit card information through automated social engineering. The program would barrage random AOL users with instant messages like:
 * A punter (IM-bomber), which would send malicious Instant Message(s) to another user that would sign them off.
 * A mail bomb script which would rapidly send e-mails to a user's inbox until it was full.
 * A flooding script that would flood a chat room with ASCII art of an offensive nature, such as the finger or a toilet.
 * An 'artificial intelligence bot', which did not really contain artificial intelligence, but had the ability to automatically respond to a message in a chatroom upon identification of keywords. (For example, a 'profane language' autoresponse was built into the program.)
 * An IM manager, which provided facilities to automatically respond to or block IMs from certain users.
 * A Steve Case cloak, which allowed users to pose as AOL founder Steve Case in chat rooms.

Motives and legacy
The existence of AOHell and similar software even allowed AOL to develop its own warez community. Lurking in secret chat rooms with names such as 'AirZeraw', mm, cerver, 'wArEzXXX', g00dz, 'punter', 'gif', 'coldice', 'GRiP', and 'trade', AOHell created bots, often referred to as 'servers', which would send out a list of warez (illegally copied software) contained in their mailbox. Simply messaging the bot with the titles of the desired software packaging would result in those packages being forwarded to one's mailbox. Since the data merely had to be copied into another user's mailbox (while still residing on an AOL server), the piracy was only limited by how fast messages could be forwarded, with AOL paying for all the cost of the bandwidth. One additional limitation included an allotted number of email messages which could be sent per day by a particular user account. Botters were able to circumvent this limitation by signing up for a white-list account which was subjected to an unknown probationary period where AOL administrators monitored the account.

The existence of software like AOHell provided a parallel 'lite' version of the hacker underground that had existed for years before, based around bulletin board systems. Programs like AOHell played an important part in defining the 'script kiddie', a user who performs basic cracking using simple tools written by others, with little understanding of what they are doing. These types of programs had a tendency to have AOL accounts banned; and so most users were logged on to accounts they had acquired illicitly, either by phishing or a fake account generator.

In the manual, the creator of AOHell claims that he created the program because the AOL administrators would frequently shut down hacker and warez chatrooms for violation of AOL's terms of service while refusing to shut down the pedophilia chat rooms which regularly traded child pornography. "Da Chronic" claimed that when he confronted AOL's TOSAdvisor about it, he was met with an account deletion: AOL constantly closed the "Hackers" Member room, but refuses to do anything about all the pedophilia rooms. I once IMed TOSAdvisor and asked him why he closes the Hacker room, but does not close the kiddie porn rooms. He did not reply, instead he cancelled my account. I guess we see where AOL's priorities lie.

He also stated that his goal was: [To have] 20,000+ idiots using AOHell to knock people offline, steal passwords and credit card information, and to basically annoy the hell out of everyone.

The program was last compatible with AOL version 2.5.

title: AOHell


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melvin and Teddy

 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 delete. --Rhobite 21:34, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Melvin and Teddy
Subpage of Peanut Foot - badly written article about a non-notable web cartoon. Zetawoof 03:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, not notable, fancruft. Megan1967 04:45, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not notable. See Votes for deletion/Peanut Foot for details. Zzyzx11 06:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Not Notable? It exists, doesn't it? That should make it notable. 70.57.72.83 16:31, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Not everything that exists is notable. Similarly, not everything that is notable actually exists (e.g. unicorn). Delete. Radiant! 18:11, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Huh. Well, you got me there. 70.57.72.83
 * Short-running, poorly read web comic. I'll eat my words when its widely read and reasonably well established, until then delete - TB 12:51, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Delete, as per above. vlad_mv 01:26, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * How come they deleted Peanut Foot but not Melvin and Teddy? 70.57.72.83
 * We're working on it.Zetawoof 05:51, 28 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.


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Capitolo Otto/Archive

 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 delete. --Rhobite 22:00, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Capitolo Otto
Patent nonsense. Talk page has a student confirming that he's heard of it; that's it. Absent published external verification, this should be deleted. jdb ❋ (talk) 03:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Secret society cruft. jni 14:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Aren't all but a few of these societies impossible to prove? This one seems as credible as any other. AppleTop 12:12, 22 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes; that's rather the problem. Delete.  --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 19:04, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. It's not a secret society if everybody's heard of it. Not a notable conspiracy theory. Radiant! 13:13, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Unconfirmed claims at best, patent nonsense at worst. Delete. - Mike Rosoft 13:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Restoring my vote, which has been "accidentally" deleted by AppleTop. - Mike Rosoft 17:19, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, not notable. Or did they just make me say that to preserve their secrecy?  Who can tell? - TB 13:10, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Delete as probable hoax (some of it is almost certainly hoax or such), unless solid reference provided. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:01, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep It's a real society; I know that much. 05:01, Mar 1, 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.


text:
Vincent Ebrahim

Vincent Ebrahim (born 1951 ) is a South African actor and comedian. He is known for portraying the roles of Ashwin in the BBC later Sky One comedy series The Kumars at No. 42 (2001–2006, 2014), pub landlord Bobby in the BBC One comedy series After You've Gone (2007–2008), Robert "Big Bob" Gupta in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks (2014) and Hashim Elamin in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street (2021).

Early life
Ebrahim studied drama at the University of Cape Town. He immigrated to England in 1976, where he began an acting career. He is the brother of actress Vinette Ebrahim.

Career
Ebrahim spent a decade with community theatre companies performing in plays such as Away From It by the Common Stock Theatre Company, Borderline by Hanif Kureishi and the Joint Stock Theatre Company and infamous stage play Tartuffe. Since 1990, he has worked with Tara Arts, performing in such plays as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Tartuffe, Oedipus Rex, Troilus and Cressida, and Antigone. He has also performed in many radio plays for BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 in the UK. He also appeared on stage at the Tricycle Theatre in the critically praised play The Great Game. Ebrahim is probably best known for playing Ashwin Kumar, the finance-obsessed father on The Kumars at No. 42. In March 2013, he won the Safta for Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film for his work in Material, which won the best film award.

title: Vincent Ebrahim


text:
Martin Litton (environmentalist)

Clyde Martin Litton (February 13, 1917 – November 30, 2014) was a Grand Canyon river runner and a longtime conservationist, best known as a staunch opponent of the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and other dams on the Colorado River.

Litton grew up in Gardena, California, not too far from Alondra Park. Although not a well-known environmental activist until the 1950s, as early as October 1935 he wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times at the age of 18, which read in part: "The people of the entire state should rise up against the destruction of Mono Lake. Mono Lake is a gem-among California's greatest scenic attractions."

Litton and his wife Esther first floated the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1955 with Plez Talmadge "Pat" Reilly, at the time joining the first 200 to 300 people known to have made the trip down the river from Lee's Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs, first pioneered by John Wesley Powell. He ran the river again in 1956, rowing one of Pat's fiberglass Cataract boats, and again in 1962, rowing a modified McKenzie River dory. Litton continued to run the Colorado for decades afterward, founding Grand Canyon Dories in 1971 and running commercial river trips through the 1970s and 1980s. Litton showed a contrarian preference for using small wooden boats, known as dories, at a time when other river runners had mostly switched to inflatable rubber rafts. These boats were originally used in Oregon; and it was Litton who adapted their use to the Colorado River commercial river trips. He sold the business in 1988.

Litton was a close friend of David Brower, Edward Abbey, and other major figures in the conservation movement. Brower first recruited him in 1952 for a campaign to oppose the construction of two dams in Dinosaur National Monument. Congress voted down approval for the dams in 1956. This began a longtime association with the Sierra Club and a lifelong opposition to dam-building on the Colorado. He was active in the fight to stop dams from being constructed within Grand Canyon National Park. A 1964 river trip led by Martin Litton, which included David Brower, Philip Hyde and author Francois Leydet, led to the publication of the 1964 book authored by Leydet, Time and the River Flowing, with photographs by Ansel Adams, Philip Hyde and others, which helped galvanize opposition to the proposed dams within the Grand Canyon.

Between 1954 and 1968 he was the travel editor for Sunset magazine. In 1960, Sunset ran a cover story entitled "The Redwood Country," which is credited with launching a campaign which eventually led to the establishment of Redwood National Park.

Litton was the author of the 1968 book The Life and Death of Lake Mead. He has been featured in documentary films including Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America and River Runners of the Grand Canyon.

Litton served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1964 to 1973. In 1990 he convinced Harriet Burgess to found the American Land Conservancy and served on the executive committee for ten years. Litton founded the organization Sequoia ForestKeeper® in 2001 and served as president until his death. He served on the Advisory Committee of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and on the Honorary Board of Directors of the Glen Canyon Institute. On November 30, 2014, he died at his home in Portola Valley, California, aged 97.

title: Martin Litton (environmentalist)


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Top 500 Rock n' Roll Songs

 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 delete. --Rhobite 21:36, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Top 500 Rock n' Roll Songs
This list is a mess and unencyclopedic anyway. -- Riffsyphon1024 03:47, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Delete. Article does not establish that this is a notable list.  This is a notable list, for example. Gamaliel 03:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Isn't this a clear copyright violation? It's just copy pasted from here Preisler 04:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Under Feist v. Rural, I don't think you can copyright a simple list of songs. Gamaliel 04:22, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * This isn't just a simple list of songs, it's one source's own critical desicison as to the best 500 songs of all time. That makes it a copyright violation.  If it were a neutral listing of the 500 biggest-selling songs of all time, then it would not be a copyright violation.  Delete RickK 21:19, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. This is pretty embarrasing since IAALS but American copyright is not exactly covered in Danish law school. Removing my copyvio warning Preisler 04:28, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Don't quote me on this, all I know about this is what I read on Wikipedia. ;) Gamaliel 05:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * This is a clearly different case to Feist v. Rural - I believe that this is copyrightable as a collection of information. In Feist v. Rural, the names and addresses of telephone subscribers were a simple matter of fact.  This is someone's opinion on what are the 500 Greatest Rock 'n Roll Songs, and I believe as such is copyrightable.  "Information [...] cannot contain any of the "expressive" content added by the source author. That includes not only the author's own comments, but also his choice of which facts to cover, [...] his order of presentation (unless it is something obvious like an alphabetical list), any evaluations he may have made about the quality of various pieces of information, or anything else that might be considered "original creative work" of the author rather than mere facts." - the Feist_v._Rural page.  I believe that under this, this page is copyrightable and therefore a copyright violation.  Oh, and delete whether we decide it's copyright or not :-) TSP 11:20, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete regardless. It's going to be POV no matter the source. – flamurai (t) 04:14, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * I don;t think you can copyright a list like this, but since it doesn't agree with what I think the top 500 rock 'n' roll songs are it's clearly just plain wrong. Delete. -R. fiend 04:16, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Non-notable list. Jayjg (talk) 04:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, POV list, does not establish notability. Megan1967 04:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, I made the list more readable though. --Tezeti 05:00, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep it: I'm for the article. I was the one that put it there and I think it should stay. I wasn't sure that it would be considered an article by the wikipedia community. I think it should stay.--Rentastrawberry 05:35, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course you would want it to stay. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:51, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Inherently POV. Carrp | Talk 05:55, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Just only using one list for that article is POV. Why does it have to be about.com's list and not from somebody else? Zzyzx11 06:25, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete under this name. Rolling Stone has just published a list of its greatest 500 songs and it is a common radio statio feature. There have been two run in Canberra in the past year. We would need to be convinced that About.com has a special status in determining such things and it should be described in the total. Capitalistroadster 10:04, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete as inherently POV. What might be a good alternative article, though, would be a list of songs considered the greatest of all time (with verifiable sources for each one), similar to our List of movies that have been considered the greatest ever Andrew Lenahan - St ar bli nd  12:44, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete since this is just a list copied from a book. Other Top 100/Top 500 lists exist and feature different songs. I'm not against the concept of such an article, however it needs to come from a more "scientific" source such as Billboard which bases its list upon imperical evidence such as sales or airplay. 23skidoo 15:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete because they gave Bruce Springsteen a better rank than Blue Öyster Cult. Ha ha, only serious. Delete it because it's a POV magnet, a list, and a probable copyvio. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:35, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete non-authorative list. What Billboard or Rolling Stone mags consider the top-500, maybe, but about.com? I don't think so. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll seems to cover the topic sufficiently. Niteowlneils 18:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe redir to reduce the chances of going thru this again? Niteowlneils 18:37, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Delete inherently POV list. Fire Star 20:40, 21 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.


text:
Nikolai Schedrin

Nikolay Pavlovich Schedrin (Николай Павлович Щедрин in Russian) (1858 — 10 January 1919) was a Russian revolutionary and narodnik.

Biography
Nikolay Schedrin graduated from a military gymnasium in Omsk. In 1876, he joined Zemlya i volya in St. Petersburg.

After its split in 1879, Schedrin became a member of the Black Repartition. Together with Yelizaveta Kovalskaya, he organized the Workers' Union of Southern Russia in the spring of 1880 and composed its program and numerous leaflets.

Schedrin was arrested in October 1880 and sentenced to death by the district military court in Kiev on 29 May 1881. His sentence was later exchanged for eternal katorga. Schedrin was first sent to the Kara katorga, then Alekseyevsky ravelin in 1882, and later Shlisselburg fortress in 1884.

He soon became mentally ill and was finally transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Kazan in 1896, where he would die two years after the October Revolution.

title: Nikolai Schedrin


text:
File:Studepackardlogo.jpg

Summary
Studebaker Packard Company Logo

title: File:Studepackardlogo.jpg


text:
CNN Türk

Cable News Network Türk (known as CNN Türk) is a Turkish pay television news channel, launched on 11 October 1999 as the local affiliate of American channel CNN. It broadcasts exclusively for Turkey and it is owned by Demirören Group. Its headquarters are in Istanbul.

CNN Türk Radio
CNN Türk Radio, went on the air on November 22, 2001. Last minute developments, in-depth analyses, economic agenda, evaluations by experts, important names of the business world and economic staff, sports news from Turkey and the world can be listened to at any time, and programs of special interest can also be followed via radio.

CNN TÜRK Radio is the audio broadcasting company of CNN TÜRK, which was established as a joint venture between Demirören Holding and Time Warner. As of September 21, 2020, the radio frequency in Istanbul has been changed to 92.6.

Controversies
CNN Türk was one of the Turkish news channels which were criticised for not covering the Gezi Park protests. On June 2, 2013, at 1:00am, CNN Türk was broadcasting a documentary on penguins while CNN International was showing live coverage of the protests in Turkey.

"[On the afternoon of Friday, May 31, 2013] CNN Turk was broadcasting a food show, featuring the “flavors of Niğde.” Other major Turkish news channels were showing a dance contest and a roundtable on study-abroad programs. It was a classic case of the revolution not being televised. The whole country seemed to be experiencing a cognitive disconnect, with Twitter saying one thing, the government saying another, and the television off on another planet."

In 2014, it showed a documentary on bees as Turkish Kurds undertook major protests about Ankara's refusal to support Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State in Kobanê.

On 15 July 2016, CNN Turk was forced to shut down by soldiers during the 2016 Turkish coup attempt.

In February 2020, the Republican People's Party (CHP) announced a boycott of CNN Türk. Tuncay Özkan from the CHP alleged that the TV channel acts like a publicity agency for the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). No politicians from the CHP would take part in any debate of CNN Türk and the CHP also advised not to watch CNN Türk at all.

Notable anchors

 * Ahmet Hakan Coşkun

title: CNN Türk


text:
Ravelstein

Ravelstein is Saul Bellow's final novel. Published in 2000, when Bellow was eighty-five years old, it received widespread critical acclaim. It tells the tale of a friendship between a university professor and a writer, and the complications that animate their erotic and intellectual attachments in the face of impending death. The novel is a roman à clef written in the form of a memoir. The narrator is in Paris with Abe Ravelstein, a renowned professor, and Nikki, his lover. Ravelstein, who is dying, asks the narrator to write a memoir about him after he dies. After his death, the narrator and his wife go on holiday to the Caribbean. The narrator catches a tropical disease and flies back to the United States to convalesce. Eventually, on recuperation, he decides to write the memoir.

The title character, Ravelstein, is based on the philosopher Allan Bloom, who taught alongside Bellow at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. Remembering Bloom in an interview, Bellow said, "Allan inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air. ... People only want the factual truth. Well, the truth is that Allan was a very superior person, great-souled. When critics proclaim the death of the novel, I sometimes think they are really saying that there are no significant people to write about", but "Allan was certainly one."

Characters

 * Abe Ravelstein, a 6 ft tall, renowned professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, based on Allan Bloom. Ravelstein studied under Felix Davarr and Alexandre Kojève.
 * Nikki, Abe's Singapore-born Malaysian lover, modeled on Bloom's real life lover, Michael Wu.
 * The narrator, a long-time friend of Ravelstein's who is somewhat older than him. Ravelstein refers to him by the nickname "Chick", but he otherwise remains nameless.
 * Vela, the narrator's previous wife, a beautiful Romanian chaos theorist. Vela is based on Alexandra Bellow.
 * Rosamund, the narrator's current wife. Based on Bellow's wife Janis Freedman.
 * Rakhmiel Kogon, another professor who is a colleague of Ravelstein. The character is based on Bellow's friend Edward Shils.
 * Marla Glyph, the wife (dead before the main action of the novel begins) of the chair of Ravelstein's university department.
 * Ruby Tyson, Ravelstein's cleaning lady.
 * Felix Davarr, a now-deceased academic and teacher/mentor of Ravelstein, based on Leo Strauss.
 * Dr. Schley, cardiologist to both the narrator and Ravelstein.
 * Professor Radu Grielescu, a Jungian professor rumoured to have been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, who is modeled directly on Bellow's friend and colleague, the Romanian historian Mircea Eliade.
 * Morris Herbst, a professor friend of Ravelstein's, based on Bloom's friend, Werner Dannhauser.
 * Battle, a British professor who moves to Wisconsin with his wife to retire; based on the British geographer Paul Wheatley.
 * Sam Partiger, a friend of the narrator's who is introduced to Ravelstein.
 * Roxie Durkin, a friend of Rosamund's.
 * Dr. Bakst, the narrator's neurologist.
 * Phil Gorman, Ravelstein's former student and now "one of the Secretary [of State]'s closest advisers", modeled on Paul Wolfowitz.

Literary reception
Describing the novel in his memoir Experience, Martin Amis wrote: "Ravelstein is a full-length novel. It is also, in my view, a masterpiece with no analogues. The world has never heard this prose before: prose of such tremulous and crystallized beauty. ... [Ravelstein is] numinous. It constitutes an act of resuscitation, and in its pages Bloom lives."

The literary theorist John Sutherland wrote: "The novel explores, in its attractively rambling way, two dauntingly large and touchy themes: death and American Jewishness. ... Not quite American (as the Canadian-born Jew Bellow is not quite American), Abe Ravelstein is the American mind and Bellow its finest living (thank God) voice. We should all have such friends."

The literary critic Sir Malcolm Bradbury stated: "Just when we didn't expect it, there now wonderfully comes a large new novel from the master. ... Our world is a world of ideas, pervaded by minds, thoughts, notions, beyond which lies what we seek with such difficulty: wholeness, silence and love. Via print, Ravelstein survives; and Bellow survives. So does fiction itself."

William Leith, writing in The Independent, argued: "As you would expect, Ravelstein, as a character, is beautifully drawn. He is 'impatient with hygiene'. He smokes constantly. 'When he coughed you heard the sump at the bottom of a mine shaft echoing.' His 'biological patchiness was a given'. Those who invite him to dinner must reckon with 'the spilling, splashing, crumbling, the nastiness of his napkin after he had used it, the pieces of cooked meat scattered under the table'. Like many Bellow characters, he has developed a mean streak. 'Nothing,' he declares, 'is more bourgeois than the fear of death.' ... This is the late late message from Bellow: death is humiliating. But there might be consolations. I almost forgot to say that Ravelstein is a brilliant novel"

For Ron Rosenbaum, Ravelstein is Bellow's greatest novel: "It's a rapturous celebration of the life of the mind, as well as a meditation on the glory of sensual life and on the tenebrous permeable boundary we all eventually pass over, the one between life and death. ... a novel Bellow wrote in his 80s, which I found absolutely, irresistibly seductive, both sensually and intellectually, one in which the sublimity and pathos of life and art are not joined to each other with heavy welds but transformed into a beautiful, seamless, unravelable fabric."

On its publication, the Harvard literary critic James Wood wrote: "How extraordinary, then, that Bellow's substantial new novel, Ravelstein, written in his 85th year, should be so full of the old, cascading power. ... Ravelstein ... is large, flamboyant, and excessively clumsy. When he laughs, he throws his head back 'like Picasso's wounded horse in Guernica.' He loves fine clothes, Lanvin jackets, Zegna ties, but tends to spill food on them. Hostesses know to put newspaper underneath Ravelstein's chair at a dinner party. At home, he wanders around in an exquisite silk dressing gown, chain-smoking. His apartment is stuffed with beautiful glass and silverware, with the finest Italian and French linens, and thousands of CDs. He reclines on a black leather couch, listening to Baroque music, is enormously learned, and given to oration on a thousand subjects. ... By all accounts, including Bellow's, this is Allan Bloom as his friends knew him."

Controversy
On its publication, the novel caused controversy because of its frank depiction of Ravelstein's (and therefore Allan Bloom's) love of gossip, free spending, political influence, and homosexuality, as well as the revelation, as the story unfolds, that he is dying from AIDS.

Bellow claimed that Bloom, a philosopher and social critic who was ostensibly aligned with many American conservative ideas and ambitions, was anything but conservative in his private life or in many of his philosophical views. As the journalist Robert Fulford pointed out: "Remarkably, no reference to Bloom's homosexuality has previously appeared in print — not in the publicity that surrounded his best-seller, or his obituaries, or even his posthumously published book, Love and Friendship." Accordingly, some took Ravelstein as a betrayal of Bloom's private life. However, Bellow vigorously defended his claims, citing private conversations between Bloom and himself in which Bloom urged Bellow to tell it all. Bloom was not a "closeted" homosexual: although he never spoke publicly of his sexual orientation, he was openly gay, and his close friends, colleagues, and former students all knew of it. He was a bachelor and never married or had children.

In his most famous book, The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom criticized homosexual politics in American universities on an issue relating to his core concern, liberal arts education, or the "Great Books" liberal arts curriculum, making a distinction between a politically self-defined group of homosexual activists and homosexuality per se. Although Bloom, in the wake of his literary stardom, explicitly stated, at a Harvard University gathering (published in Giants and Dwarfs), that he was not a conservative, he was much admired by writers in conservative publications such as William F. Buckley, Jr's National Review.

Arguing in support of Bloom in The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan wrote: "Bloom was gay, and he died of AIDS. The salience of these facts is strengthened, not weakened, by Bloom's public silence about them. Of all people, he knew the centrality of the things about which we remain silent. ... Retaining the purity of that longing was his life's work. The reason he disliked the modern cult of easy sex was not because he scorned or feared the erotic life, but because he revered it. He saw sexual longing as supremely expressed in individual love, and he wanted his students to experience both to the fullest. He not merely understood Nietzsche; he imbibed him. But this awareness of the abyss moved Bloom, unlike Nietzsche, toward love. ... One day, one hopes, there will be a conservatism civilized enough to deserve him ..."

Text
Typical of Bellow's most accessible fiction, and resembling his short novel Seize the Day, Ravelstein mixes dialogue, narration, and unanswered questions. Abe Ravelstein is a paradox - the serious and mundane, the corporeal and spiritual, the conservative and radical. The one constant is the kindly friendship between "Chick" and Ravelstein. Few intellectual or personal subjects are taboo. Chick makes it clear that Ravelstein thinks he is too old to become a philosopher.

Adaptations
In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of Ravelstein, narrated by Peter Ganim, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

title: Ravelstein


text:
Citroën FAF

The Citroën FAF is a small utility vehicle produced by the French manufacturer Citroën from 1973 until 1981. It was built using a combination of imported and locally sourced components in various developing countries. The body was made of easy to produce, folded steel panels, giving an appearance resembling a metal-bodied version of the Méhari. The flat metal panels and simple components were meant to allow for easier production, mostly in developing countries.

Origin
The origin of this idea was the privately built 1963 Baby-Brousse from Ivory Coast, and its many derivatives. Notably these include La Dalat (Vietnam), Pony (Greece), Jyane-Mehari (Iran), and Yagan (Chile).

The various Baby-Brousse cars were quite successful, selling over 30,000 units.

Both the FAF and Baby-Brousse are derived from the 2CV. The concept predates the FAF name, so it is often erroneously reported that some of Baby-Brousse vehicles were based on the FAF.

Name and target market
FAF stood for the French Facile à Fabriquer and Facile à Financer (Easy to Manufacture, Easy to Finance).

The primary target market for the FAF was Africa. However, the concept of a "second-class" car that was connected with the FAF seems to have affected its manufacture and sales remained low.

Pre-FAF cars
The FAF idea coincided with the widespread production of Baby Brousse 2CV-based vehicles in many countries, so the two often overlap.

In 1969, Citroën's Vietnamese subsidiary began building La Dalat, the first automobile manufactured in Vietnam. Production ended when Americans departed Saigon in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War. In total, 3880 Dalats were built.

In 1972, the Greek firm Namco began production of the Pony. This was the most successful version of these 'simplified' 2CV utility vehicles, selling 30,000 units. The Pony was exported as well, including to the United States of America. Production of this "poor man’s jeep," that benefitted from special tax rules, ended in 1983, two years after Greece joined the European Union. 67% of the parts were of Greek origin.

An attempt to start production in Sri Lanka by the Ceylon Transport Board in the early 1970s failed due to a dispute over royalties, but a prototype was displayed at the Republic Day celebrations in 1974.

Various kit car style bodies inspired by the FAF and Méhari, such as Belgium's VanClee, were also developed.

title: Citroën FAF


text:
Albert Mackey

Albert Gallatin Mackey (March 12, 1807 – June 20, 1881) was an American medical doctor and author. He is best known for his books and articles about freemasonry, particularly the Masonic Landmarks.

Biography
Albert Gallatin Mackey was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of John Mackey (1765 – December 14, 1831), a physician, journalist and educator. His father published The American Teacher's Assistant and Self-Instructor's Guide, containing all the Rules of Arithmetic properly Explained, etc. (Charleston, 1826), the most comprehensive work on arithmetic that had been published in the United States. His son was Edmund William McGregor Mackey who became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina.

After completing his early education, Albert Mackey taught school for some time to earn money for medical school. He graduated from the medical department of the College of South Carolina in 1832. He settled in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1838 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in that institution.

In 1844 he abandoned the practice of medicine. For the rest of his life, he wrote on a variety of subjects, but specialized in the study of several languages, the Middle Ages, and Freemasonry. After being connected with several Charleston journals, he established in 1849 The Southern and Western Masonic Miscellany, a weekly magazine. He maintained it for three years, mostly by his own expense. He conducted a Quarterly 1858-1860 which he devoted to the same interests.

He acquired the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and continental languages almost unaided, and lectured frequently on the intellectual and moral development of the Middle Ages. Subsequently, he turned his attention exclusively to the investigation of abstruse symbolism, and to cabalistic and Talmudic researches.

Mackey was the Master of Solomon's Lodge No.1 in 1843. He served as Grand Lecturer and Grand Secretary of The Grand Lodge of South Carolina, as well as Secretary General of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.

Mackey was a Union sympathizer during the Civil War and in July, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed him Collector of the Port of Charleston. He was a delegate and president of the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention. He ran for the United States Senate in South Carolina in 1868, but was narrowly defeated by Republican Frederick A. Sawyer.

Mackey moved to Washington, D.C. in 1870. He died in Fortress Monroe, Virginia in 1881.

title: Albert Mackey


text:
Forestiere Underground Gardens

The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California are a series of subterranean structures built by Baldassare Forestiere, an immigrant from Sicily, over a period of 40 years from 1906 to his death in 1946. The gardens are operated by members of the Forestiere family through the Forestiere Historical Center, and can be considered a spectacular and unconventional example of vernacular architecture.

History
Baldassare Forestiere (July 8, 1879 – November 10, 1946) was born in the hamlet of Filari, near Rometta on the northeastern tip of Sicily. He immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s after a conflict with his father, and after time on the East Coast purchased land in Fresno. He found the hardpan soil unsuitable for citrus trees, and the weather punishingly hot during the summer.

Baldassare dug a small cellar to escape the summer heat. He was likely influenced by Roman catacombs and wine cellars he had seen in Italy. Finding it effective and comfortable, he carved a series of attached rooms and took up residence there. Baldassare then began experimenting with growing trees in underground chambers with skylights, and found that with care they would grow well, and being below ground protected them from frost. Baldassare continued expanding and improving these underground gardens until his death in 1946, using hand tools and a pair of mules.

The gardens were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and registered as No. 916 on the list of California Historical Landmarks in 1978.

Design

There are 65 rooms in the Forestiere Underground Gardens. It has a summer bedroom, a winter bedroom, a bath, a functional kitchen, a fishpond, and a parlor with a fireplace. Interspersed amongst the stone walls and archways are grottoes and courtyards that allow for pockets of light. The intricate pathways were created section by section, over a span of 10 acre, without the aid of blueprints. There are three levels within the underground structure, one 10 ft deep, one 20 ft deep, and one 23 ft deep.

The gardens have skylights and catch basins for water. The dirt that was moved to create the large structure was used elsewhere to fill planters, create stones placed within the catacombs, and to level out other parts of the land. The hardpan he excavated was reused as bricks for archways and supports. The pathways and rooms were constructed with various widths to help direct airflow by creating pressure as it moves through narrower portions and maintain movement as it bounces off the slants and curves of the cavernous walls. The conical skylights allow for the hot air to be pushed out more quickly and the cool air to remain below.

The plants and trees, some of which are over 100 years old, are protected from the frost in the winter months by virtue of construction. Each level was planted at different times, so they bloom in succession, in order to lengthen the growing season. It houses a variety of fruit ranging from citrus and berries to exotic fruits like the kumquat, loquat, and jujube. The trees have been grafted to bear more than one kind of fruit, allowing for a larger variety to be grown throughout the space. Trees and vines were also planted above the dwelling, acting as insulation and forming canopies that provide protection from the elements.

Depictions

T. Coraghessan Boyle wrote a fictionalized account of Forestiere, the short story "The Underground Gardens," which was published in The New Yorker in 1998.

title: Forestiere Underground Gardens


text:
Phase problem

In physics, the phase problem is the problem of loss of information concerning the phase that can occur when making a physical measurement. The name comes from the field of X-ray crystallography, where the phase problem has to be solved for the determination of a structure from diffraction data. The phase problem is also met in the fields of imaging and signal processing. Various approaches of phase retrieval have been developed over the years.

Overview
Light detectors, such as photographic plates or CCDs, measure only the intensity of the light that hits them. This measurement is incomplete (even when neglecting other degrees of freedom such as polarization and angle of incidence) because a light wave has not only an amplitude (related to the intensity), but also a phase (related to the direction), and polarization which are systematically lost in a measurement. In diffraction or microscopy experiments, the phase part of the wave often contains valuable information on the studied specimen. The phase problem constitutes a fundamental limitation ultimately related to the nature of measurement in quantum mechanics.

In X-ray crystallography, the diffraction data when properly assembled gives the amplitude of the 3D Fourier transform of the molecule's electron density in the unit cell. If the phases are known, the electron density can be simply obtained by Fourier synthesis. This Fourier transform relation also holds for two-dimensional far-field diffraction patterns (also called Fraunhofer diffraction) giving rise to a similar type of phase problem.

Phase retrieval
There are several ways to retrieve the lost phases. The phase problem must be solved in x-ray crystallography, neutron crystallography, and electron crystallography.

Not all of the methods of phase retrieval work with every wavelength (x-ray, neutron, and electron) used in crystallography.

Direct (ab initio) methods
If the crystal diffracts to high resolution (<1.2 Å), the initial phases can be estimated using direct methods. Direct methods can be used in x-ray crystallography, neutron crystallography, and electron crystallography.

A number of initial phases are tested and selected by this method. The other is the Patterson method, which directly determines the positions of heavy atoms. The Patterson function gives a large value in a position which corresponds to interatomic vectors. This method can be applied only when the crystal contains heavy atoms or when a significant fraction of the structure is already known.

For molecules whose crystals provide reflections in the sub-Ångström range, it is possible to determine phases by brute force methods, testing a series of phase values until spherical structures are observed in the resultant electron density map. This works because atoms have a characteristic structure when viewed in the sub-Ångström range. The technique is limited by processing power and data quality. For practical purposes, it is limited to "small molecules" and peptides because they consistently provide high-quality diffraction with very few reflections.

Molecular replacement (MR)
Phases can also be inferred by using a process called molecular replacement, where a similar molecule's already-known phases are grafted onto the intensities of the molecule at hand, which are observationally determined. These phases can be obtained experimentally from a homologous molecule or if the phases are known for the same molecule but in a different crystal, by simulating the molecule's packing in the crystal and obtaining theoretical phases. Generally, these techniques are less desirable since they can severely bias the solution of the structure. They are useful, however, for ligand binding studies, or between molecules with small differences and relatively rigid structures (for example derivatizing a small molecule).

Multiple isomorphous replacement (MIR)
Multiple isomorphous replacement (MIR), where heavy atoms are inserted into structure (usually by synthesizing proteins with analogs or by soaking)

Multi-wavelength anomalous dispersion (MAD)
A powerful solution is the multi-wavelength anomalous dispersion (MAD) method. In this technique, atoms' inner electrons absorb X-rays of particular wavelengths, and reemit the X-rays after a delay, inducing a phase shift in all of the reflections, known as the anomalous dispersion effect. Analysis of this phase shift (which may be different for individual reflections) results in a solution for the phases. Since X-ray fluorescence techniques (like this one) require excitation at very specific wavelengths, it is necessary to use synchrotron radiation when using the MAD method.

Refining initial phases
In many cases, an initial set of phases are determined, and the electron density map for the diffraction pattern is calculated. Then the map is used to determine portions of the structure, which portions are used to simulate a new set of phases. This new set of phases is known as a refinement. These phases are reapplied to the original amplitudes, and an improved electron density map is derived, from which the structure is corrected. This process is repeated until an error term (usually $$R_\textrm{free}$$) has stabilized to a satisfactory value. Because of the phenomenon of phase bias, it is possible for an incorrect initial assignment to propagate through successive refinements, so satisfactory conditions for a structure assignment are still a matter of debate. Indeed, some spectacular incorrect assignments have been reported, including a protein where the entire sequence was threaded backwards.

title: Phase problem