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Biostimulation

Biostimulation involves the modification of the environment to stimulate existing bacteria capable of bioremediation. This can be done by addition of various forms of rate limiting nutrients and electron acceptors, such as phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen, or carbon (e.g. in the form of molasses). Alternatively, remediation of halogenated contaminants in anaerobic environments may be stimulated by adding electron donors (organic substrates), thus allowing indigenous microorganisms to use the halogenated contaminants as electron acceptors. EPA Anaerobic Bioremediation Technologies Additives are usually added to the subsurface through injection wells, although injection well technology for biostimulation purposes is still emerging. Removal of the contaminated material is also an option, albeit an expensive one. Biostimulation can be enhanced by bioaugmentation. This process, overall, is referred to as bioremediation and is an EPA-approved method for reversing the presence of oil or gas spills. While biostimulation is usually associated with remediation of hydrocarbon or high production volume chemical spills, it is also potentially useful for treatment of less frequently encountered contaminant spills, such as pesticides, particularly herbicides.

The primary advantage of biostimulation is that bioremediation will be undertaken by already present native microorganisms that are well-suited to the subsurface environment, and are well distributed spatially within the subsurface. The primary disadvantage is that the delivery of additives in a manner that allows the additives to be readily available to subsurface microorganisms is based on the local geology of the subsurface. Tight, impermeable subsurface lithology (tight clays or other fine-grained material) make it difficult to spread additives throughout the affected area. Fractures in the subsurface create preferential pathways in the subsurface which additives preferentially follow, preventing even distribution of additives.

Recently a number of products have been introduced which allow popular use of bioremediation using biostimulative methods. They may harness local bacteria using biostimulation by creating a hospitable environment for hydrocarbon-devouring microorganisms, or they may introduce foreign bacteria into the environment as a direct application to the hydrocarbon. While the jury is out as to whether either is particularly more effective than the other, prima facie consideration suggests the introduction of foreign bacteria to any environment stands a chance of mutating organisms already present and affecting the biome.

Investigations to determine subsurface characteristics (such as natural groundwater velocity during ambient conditions, hydraulic conductivity of the subsurface, and lithology of the subsurface) are important in developing a successful biostimulation system. In addition, a pilot-scale study of the potential biostimulation system should be undertaken prior to full-scale design and implementation.

However, some biostimulative agents may be used in chaotic surfaces such as open water and sand so long as they are oleophilic, meaning that they bond exclusively to hydrocarbons, and basically sink in the water column, bonding to oil, where they then float to the water's surface, exposing the hydrocarbon to more abundant sunlight and oxygen where greater micro-organic aerobic activity can be encouraged. Some consumer-targeted biostimulants bond possess this quality, others do not.

title: Biostimulation


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Skull Island (King Kong)

Skull Island is the name most often used to describe a fictional island that first appeared in the 1933 film King Kong and later appearing in its sequels, the three remakes, and any other King Kong-based media. It is the home of the eponymous King Kong and several other species of creatures, mostly prehistoric and in some cases species that should have been extinct long before the rise of mammalian creatures, along with a primitive society of humans.

In the 1962 film King Kong vs. Godzilla and the 1967 film King Kong Escapes, the comparable islands are called "Farou Island" and "Mondo Island", respectively. Kong plays a similar role in these islands as the god-like being of the land, a role he plays in all versions of the King Kong story. Skull Island's origins are unknown, but Kong appears to be the only giant gorilla known to exist on the island. However, the 2005 remake shows other skeletons of Kong-sized gorillas, indicating that there was once a group of such creatures of an unknown number living on the island. Additionally, 2017's Kong: Skull Island depicts the skeletons of Kong's parents.

Appearance in the 1933 films
In King Kong, the island is never mentioned by name and is located at approximately -12°N, 78°W – 2000 miles west from the coast of Periuk, Indonesia. There is a distinctive rocky knoll in the center of the island that is shaped like a human skull, which is referred to as "Skull Mountain".

According to the first film, the captain of a Norwegian barque discovered a canoe blown off course with only one native left alive. Before the native died, the captain of the barque was able to get a rough location of the island and some details on it, including its most distinctive feature - a huge wall built by the ancestors of the natives back when they had high civilization. When the protagonists of the picture arrive at the island and examine it they find, in addition to the expected natives, prehistoric creatures of all sorts and one extremely large ape, known by those on the island as "Kong".

Other than being the "slipped back" descendants of a high civilization, the ancestry of the natives is never explained.

In the sequel film Son of Kong, Carl Denham returns to Skull Island when there was a mention of some treasure that was hidden there. He also encounters a large white gorilla who is thought to be the son of King Kong which he names Little Kong. Skull Island sinks into the sea during a powerful earthquake. Because his foot is caught in a collapsed mound, Little Kong drowns while holding Carl Denham above the water. Denham survives unscathed, while the treasure is claimed by him and the other three survivors.

The term "Skull Island" is never used in the original films. In King Kong, only "Skull Mountain" is named, while in the sequel Son of Kong, its simply referred to as "Kong's island". In the novelization of King Kong by Delos Lovelace, it is called "Skull Mountain Island", but RKO referred to it as "Skull Island" in some of their publicity materials.

1976 remake
In the 1976's King Kong, Skull Island is mentioned as being "the beach of the skull". It is located somewhere in Indian Ocean south of Java, covered by a permanent cloud bank. Various people are said to have visited the island through the centuries but returned with no clear proof. By the 1970s, it is an urban legend whose only evidence is in government secret files. It is also revealed to have a huge deposit of oil, which led a greedy oil company executive to go in search of it. Besides featuring a primitive native tribe and the giant, bipedal gorilla Kong, there is also a giant snake who appeared in Kong's lair and wanted to kill him and Dwan, but it was killed by the former.

In 1986 sequel film King Kong Lives, Skull Island does not appear but it was mentioned by adventurer Hank Mitchell (mistakenly calling it Kong Island) who believed that the islands Borneo and Skull Island were once a part of the same landmass in the past. The fate of this incarnation is unknown.

Kong: The Animated Series
In Kong: The Animated Series, the island was named Kong Island. Unlike previous incarnations, Kong Island was situated in the infamous Bermuda Triangle, not the Indian Ocean. Although various prehistoric creatures are seen living there, Kong Island also contains some ruins where one of them serves as the prison of the demon Chiros.

It is also where Jason Jenkins and his grandmother Dr. Lorna Jenkins also live along with Jason's friend Tan. Another human inhabitant is Lua, the sole survivor of the native people of the island and a female shaman.

Kong: King of Skull Island
Skull Island appears in a 2004 illustrated novel that serves as both prequel and sequel of the original "King Kong" story, conceived by Merian C. Cooper and novelized by Delos Lovelace in 1932, and authorized by the Cooper family. Created and illustrated by Joe DeVito, and novelized by Brad Strickland and DeVito, with John Michlig, Kong: King of Skull Island depicts a Skull Island far larger than originally thought. It is either the last vestige of a volatile volcanic series of islands or the remnant of a larger landmass. Skull Island is located in the Indian Ocean, west of Sumatra, and has several much smaller islands in various locations around its perimeter, with the most prevalent of these off a small peninsula on its southeastern corner. Skull Island contains two main mountains, the larger being shaped in the visage of a human skull. Skull Mountain is riddled with caves and passageways carved out by natural erosion, but also man-made. In earlier times, these were often used by islanders to avoid the monsters on the surface, but proved to have a multitude of dangerous denizens of their own. These include previously unknown species such as snake-like amphibians with enormous heads capable of swallowing a human whole; foot-long creatures that combine squid and crustacean characteristics with bio-luminescent sails tipped with poisonous stingers; giant spiders with 7-foot bodies and 8-foot-long legs ending in hand-like appendages. The human civilization that inhabits Skull Island at least through the 20th century is the last remnant of a previously unknown super-race called the Tagatu (a combination of two formerly separate tribes: the Tagu and the Atu). The original culture is believed to have Asian origins that bled into an island group west of Sumatra that no longer exists. As a result of a natural disaster, they were forced to migrate to Skull Island untold millennia ago. Drawn to its spectacular makeup by their insatiable curiosity, the Tagatu believed their mastery of biological and organic sciences could overcome Skull Island's dangers. It was they who originally brought the gigantic simian Kongs there for protection and who, with the help of the Kongs, built the iconic wall across the Skull Island's peninsula for protections against Skull Island's prehistoric denizens. Among the many mysteries revealed in the work is the reality that on Skull Island the dinosaurs never died out, but continued to evolve over the intervening 65 million years. This has resulted in strange variations on previously known species, as well as many new ones. Chief among the latter is a race of sentient dinosaurs, called Deathrunners. Bipedal, extremely aggressive and 6 to 9 feet tall, they once ruled the island and were at war with the Tagatu and the Kongs. Their race is propagated every few generations by one queen that grows to gigantic size. It is one of these, called "Gaw", that ruled Skull Island when King Kong was born and who Kong had to defeat in order to become a king. In the story, Carl Denham's son Vincent (now a paleontologist) and an older Jack Driscoll return to Skull Island in 1957 to discover pieces of the earlier civilization's history and relationship to the island through an enigmatic Tagatu elder simply called the "Storyteller" as well as in the form of archaeological discoveries such as specially pigmented paintings in underground passageways that move when illuminated by torchlight to reveal past events on Skull Island. Primary among these is the discovery of remnants of "the Old City", which was established by the Tagatu at the zenith of their civilization in the center of the island in an ideal valley between the two mountains. The Storyteller's tale, along with Vincent and Driscoll's findings, suggest that the eerie skull visage that gave the island its name may have been the work of human hands. These and other discoveries hint that the true extent of Skull Island's secrets have yet to be revealed.

2005 remake
In Peter Jackson's remake, Skull Island's position west of Sumatra remains the same, in a region afflicted by magnetic anomalies and violent sea storms. According to the book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, Skull Island was geologically unstable and has been slowly sinking into the sea for the past thousand years. By 1933, the island was on the verge of destruction. Fifteen years after its discovery to the modern world, Skull Island finally sank into the ocean.

In its prehistory, Skull Island was a refuge for a variety of prehistoric creatures. Over time, more and more species arrived either by swimming, flying, rafting, or migrating through temporary land bridges. As the island slowly receded into the sea, life was forced to adapt, resulting in an ecosystem of bizarre and nightmarish creatures.

Three thousand years before, an advanced civilization from Southeast Asia migrated to Skull Island, bringing with them domesticated animals such as Gaur and the giant ancestors of Kong. This culture eventually died off, leaving behind only gigantic eroding ruins scattered around the island (such as the enormous wall) and a small society of primitive people that became the Skull Island natives.

Altus Press
To coincide with the 80th anniversary of both characters, Altus Press released an officially sanctioned novel titled Doc Savage: Skull Island in March 2013, which sees King Kong meeting pulp hero Doc Savage, written by Will Murray and artist Joe DeVito, who made the cover artwork. Set in 1920, shortly after returning from military service during World War I, Doc Savage searches for his long-lost grandfather (the legendary mariner Stormalong Savage) with his father, the explorer Clark Savage, Sr., that ultimately leads father and son to the mysterious Skull Island and its prehistoric denizens, including King Kong. In his review for the New York Journal of Books, playwright-author Mark Squirek concluded:
 * Across close to 400 pages Doc Savage: Skull Island takes us not only on a journey to Skull Island, but to the beginnings of a young man's rise to greatness. Mr. Murray has created a new classic of the genre – all the while staying completely true to the legends of both Kong and Doc Savage.

Altus Press also released an authorized crossover novel, King Kong vs. Tarzan, in the summer of 2016. Written by Will Murray, it tells the previously untold story of the transportation by cargo ship of Kong from Skull Island to America, and King Kong's inevitable encounter with Tarzan of the Apes.

MonsterVerse
Skull Island is the main setting of Kong: Skull Island, which is set in the same universe of the 2014 film Godzilla. Kong is 104 ft tall in the film and there is evidence that more of Kong's species once existed on the island. The island is located in the South Pacific and sits in the eye of a massive swirling storm system that conceals it from the outside world. This version of the island resembles a human skull when seen from the air. The island is situated atop an entrance to the Hollow Earth, which is home to large, bipedal, lizard-like predators known as "Skullcrawlers" that are referred to as the island's "devils". The Skullcrawlers wiped out King Kong's family, making him the last of his kind.

There is also evidence of dinosaurs living, or having lived, on the island, in the form of a Triceratops skull found in the "graveyard" of the island. A number of other species are referred to as "florafauna" for displaying physiological traits of plants. Similar to previous incarnations, there is a human native tribe present (characterized as Iwis) who are much less hostile than in previous versions, mainly because a stranded air pilot from World War II named Hank Marlow makes peace between them and modern-day humans. The film sees an expedition in 1973 landing upon the island after Skull Island is detected by Landsat. The animated series Skull Island sees castaways arriving on the island in the 1990s, contending with the island's wildlife and an invasive Kraken that has come to the island to challenge Kong for control of the island.

During the credits of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a newspaper clipping states that the awakened Titans are converging on Skull Island, which is becoming unstable. It is also revealed that Monarch has an outpost on Skull Island. Between the events of the film and Godzilla vs. Kong, the island's climate deteriorated, with a remnant of King Ghidorah's global superstorm merging with Skull Island's pre-existing storm system causing it to move inwards and make it uninhabitable, save for a domed habitat created to contain Kong.

Island wildlife
Besides King Kong and the natives, much of the wildlife on Skull Island consists of many kinds of prehistoric animals from each different era, such as dinosaurs. However, some of them are fictional descendants of real animals.

Appearing in King Kong and The Son of Kong

 * Stegosaurus – A Stegosaurus appears in a sequence in which it is disturbed by Carl Denham's crew. It charges the men and they fell it with a gas-bomb. As they walk by, it starts to get up again and is shot. Orville Goldner, who worked on the film, described the film's Stegosaur as a combination of two genera: Stegosaurus ungulatus and the less well-known Kentrosaurus. Another appeared in a deleted scene when Denham ran back to the village, after Kong's battle with the Tyrannosaurus.
 * Brontosaurus – A Brontosaurus is disturbed by the rescue party's raft as it crosses a swamp and capsizes it, attacking the men in the water. Several of them are chased onto land, and one fellow is cornered while climbing a tree and maimed to death by the animal. A common misconception is that the sauropod actually eats the sailor, but it is stated in the script and observed in the film that the dinosaur kills and then abandons the body of a sailor identified as "Tim". The creature reappears in Son of Kong, crying out as the island is sinking.
 * A large two-legged "lizard" – This unidentified reptilian creature climbs up a vine from the crevasse to attack Jack Driscoll. It falls back into the pit when Jack cuts the vine it is climbing. Other than the two limbs, the other distinct feature of this creature is the iguana-like ridge of spikes down its back. Orville Goldner said that it was loosely based on the features of the Desmatosuchus. In Peter Jackson's re-creation of the "spider pit sequence", it is among the monsters eating the sailors who survived the fall. This creature would inspire the Monsterverse's Skullcrawlers.
 * Tyrannosaurus – A great carnivorous dinosaur which tries to eat Ann, but is fought and killed (or, at least, overpowered) by Kong, who breaks its jaw open. The dinosaur was modeled after Charles R. Knight's depiction of a Tyrannosaurus, but it possesses three fingers per hand, unlike Tyrannosaurus which had only two (the number of fingers in Tyrannosaurus was disputed at the time, as a complete manus was not discovered until the mid-1990s). In the documentary I'm King Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper, included on the 2 disk DVD release of King Kong, Cooper refers to this beast as an Allosaurus, not a Tyrannosaurus, which would help explain the number of fingers. The creature was originally intended to be a Tyrannosaurus designed for the cancelled Willis O'Brien film Creation (1931). It may also be worth noting that the Tyrannosaurus present in Willis O'Brien's earlier project The Lost World (1925) also had a third finger. The 1932 King Kong screenplay refers to the dinosaur only as a "Meat Eater".
 * Tanystropheus – A highly stylized, serpentine aquatic reptile with a long neck and tail as well as two pairs of flippers. It inhabits the bubbling swamp area inside King Kong's cave. Goldner describes the Tanystropheus as being designed as more slender than the ones known to science, and its swimming limbs are less prominent. It battles Kong in the style of a giant, constricting snake.
 * Archaeopteryx – The tiny birds are seen flying around in the jungle. Most notably a few fly by when the Stegosaurus enters the clearing, and one flies out of the dead tree that Kong puts Ann in before he goes to fight the sailors on the log bridge. According to Goldner, they "were made to flit among the trees on invisible wires".
 * Arsinoitherium – This huge prehistoric mammal was to chase the men onto the log bridge and corner them between itself and the enraged Kong in the test reel. According to Goldner, Cooper had second thoughts about the Arsinotherium and "ordered the action to be re-filmed using a Styracosaurus. Both versions were eventually thrown out because they captured too much audience attention". This can be attested to by the fact that the sailors did not just run back across the log when Kong appeared.
 * Gigantophis garstini – According to Goldner, "this huge snake that appeared in one scene and later cut out of the film, had its living prototype in Egypt". This giant snake frightens Ann at the base of the dead tree that Kong puts her in before he battles the sailors on the log bridge. It was in the test reel, but later cut. However, Ann Darrow's reaction to it being below her just before the Tyrannosaurus shows up in the clearing remains in the film.
 * Erythrosuchus – It was created and then re-created for the "spider-pit sequence" and portrayed as a stout reptilian predator. Goldner stated that it was loosely adapted, as many of the creatures of the pit were imaginative.
 * A giant crab, giant spider, and giant tentacled "bug" – They all appear in the original notes, script, and re-created "spider pit sequence", eating the surviving crewmen in the crevasse.
 * Triceratops – in the original script only, it was encountered by Kong on volcanic flats. He hurls boulders at a herd of them and drives them into a stampede, impaling one of the crew of the Venture. It was also seen in a deleted scene in Son of Kong.
 * Cave Bear – A gigantic bear that attacks Denham and Hilda, but is driven off by the Son of Kong.
 * Styracosaurus – this ceratopsian corners Hellstrom, Englehorn and Charlie into a cave in Son of Kong, destroying one of their guns. This dinosaur was originally slated to appear in King Kong, chasing the crew onto the log bridge and keeping them trapped there.
 * Nothosaurus – A reptile that threatens Denham and Hilda, but is fended off and killed by the Son of Kong. King Kong: A History of a Movie Icon calls the creature 'The Dragon' all through its review of Son of Kong.
 * Elasmosaurus – A large marine reptile, it eats Hellstrom as he attempts to flee at the end of Son of Kong. The 'snapping' version that grabbed Hellstrom was actually the revamped Brontosaurus from the original film; the same holds for the armature version seen briefly snarling in predatory glee.

Appearing in the 2005 remake
All the creatures in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong are established in the companion book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island to be fictional descendants of real animals.

Among the creatures in the 2005 remake are:

 * Brontosaurus baxteri – A large Brontosaurus-like sauropod which (despite the name) is more similar in size and appearance to Apatosaurus that appears early in the film. They are attacked by a pack of Venatosaurus and cause a stampede. They trample several of the crew and some of the Venatosaurus. Like real sauropods, they are social animals that organize in herds led by a dominant bull. Unlike all real sauropods, Brontosaurus give birth to between one and three live young rather than reproducing with eggs like their ancestors and other Dinosaurs did. As Skull Island's largest herbivore, they are responsible for keeping the jungle from overrunning the remaining grasslands.
 * Brutornis – A phorusrhacid that is seen in the extended cut of King Kong and in The World of Kong. In the extended cut, the crew of the Venture mistake one for Ann and Lumpy shoots it by mistake when he loses his nerves. After being discovered by the crew, the dying terror bird is then killed by Lumpy.
 * Ferrucutus cerastes – A giant ceratopsian. It appears only in the extended cut and in a cameo as Kong climbs to his lair. In the extended cut, a large male attacks the crew and almost kills Jack Driscoll before being killed by Hayes. Ferrucutus is an aggressive herbivore that dwells in small family groups. Like their ancestors, Ferrucutus bulls spar violently, even to the point of killing their rivals.
 * Foetodon ferrus – A terrestrial notosuchian about 20 ft long that appears in both the film and the companion book. In the film, Ann stumbles across a mated pair of Foetodon feeding on a dead Ligocristus. The predators pursue her into a hollow log, and a subadult V. rex appears by killing and eating one of the pursuing Foetodon, forcing its mate to flee. Foetodon is an ambush predator that hides in deep piles of leaves, waiting for small dinosaurs and large flightless birds to wander past.
 * Giant arthropods – Several species of giant arthropods appear at the bottom of the Ravine. The World of Kong names these insects as:
 * Abyscidis - Crustaceans that can grow to the size of dogs.
 * Arachnocidis – A giant arachnid.
 * Carnictis sordicus – A fluke-like creature that can grow to be several feet long. Several of them eat Lumpy.
 * Decarnocimex – A giant carnivorous cricket. Denham fights several of them.
 * Deinacrida rex – A giant species of wētā. Several tried to make a meal out of Driscoll, but were defeated by Jimmy.
 * Deplector – A giant cave-dwelling crustacean. The females are large, while the males are smaller. The arms of a female was seen shooting out of a cliff and pulling a sailor in to be devoured.
 * Ligocristus – A hadrosaur that is fed upon by a Foetodon. They resemble Saurolophus, a hadrosaur from the Cretaceous.
 * Megaprimatus Kong - A huge species of gorilla, they were the largest primates to have ever lived, even bigger than Gigantopithecus, the previous record holder. The average M. Kong could stand up to 6-8 m and possibly weighed 6 tons. By 1933, there was only one of them left. This specimen, an old male, was captured and brought back to New York City by Carl Denham, but escaped and was shot down off the top of the Empire State Building, rendering the species of Megaprimatus Kong extinct.
 * Moonspider - Not a true spider (it is really a member of the Solifugae), the Moonspider is a nocturnal creature that lives in the Lowlands. It appeared briefly in the film when Ann Darrow made her escape from King Kong.
 * Piranhadon titanus – Only appearing in The World of Kong and more prominently in the extended cut, Piranhadon is a 50 ft fish. In the extended cut, a Piranhadon attacked the rescue team led by Hayes, Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll, killing three sailors and very nearly swallowing Driscoll whole. Piranhadon has poor vision, only being able to discern prey's silhouettes, using the barbels on its chin to sense vibrations and the light from the surface to detect passing prey.
 * Terapusmordax obscenus – A giant bat-like rodent. A swarm of them appear in the film roosting in Kong's lair. When Jack Driscoll attempts to save Ann, he awakens Kong. The Terapusmordax then attack Kong; he fends them off while Jack and Ann escape by climbing down a vine. When one of the Terapusmordax attempts to kill Jack and Ann, Jack grabs the wing and the Terapusmordax lowers them down. They then fall into the river below. They also appear in the associated video game where they gain juvenile forms and a bluish, airplane-sized species. Terapusmordax evolved from hairless rodents that developed wings. They measure about 3 – in body length and 8 – in wingspan.
 * Vastatosaurus rex – A descendant of Tyrannosaurus, but much bigger with three fingers unlike its ancestors during the Cretaceous. It appears in the film in a scene where three of them fight Kong. Vastatosaurus are the top apex predator of Skull Island. They can grow up to 50 ft long. Juveniles hunt separately from the adults in the jungle, often coming into conflict with Venatosaurus.
 * Venatosaurus saevidicus – A slender dromaeosaur, measuring about 24 ft long and surpassing the length of a Utahraptor. In the film, they ate Carl Denham's cameraman Herb and caused a Brontosaurus stampede. Venatosaurus hunt in packs and are also one of only two predators on Skull Island capable of taking down an adult Brontosaurus, the other being the V. Rex. They are also highly intelligent and cunning, able to chase prey through ruins and into planned traps. Another smaller Venatosaurus species called Venatosaurus impavidus is also present on the island.

MonsterVerse
The MonsterVerse's version of Skull Island does not appear to be inhabited by any living dinosaurs, though an oversize Triceratops skull can be seen in the Valley of Fallen Giants, which indicates that there were dinosaurs living on the island. Much of the island's ecosystem in the film and supplementary material is populated by naturally-evolved hybrids of plant and animal, referred to as "Florofauna" by Monarch scientists.

 * Apus Giganticus / Titanus Kong - A race of giant apes that live on Skull Island. By the events of Kong: Skull Island, Kong was the only Apus Giganticus living on Skull Island. He was assumed to be the last of his kind until more Apus Giganticus were found in Hollow Earth by Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
 * Skullcrawlers - Giant carnivorous amphibians with two large forelimbs and a superficially skull-like face. Possessing voracious appetites fueled by a never-ending hunger, the Skullcrawlers drove the Kong species into extinction. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Skullcrawler eggs were smuggled off the island by the Apex Corporation and bred to serve as test subjects to prove the effectiveness of Mechagodzilla's weaponry.
 * Mother Longlegs - A giant spider with legs resembling bamboo stalks.
 * Sker Buffalo - A giant amphibious water buffalo with long branching horns and a coral shaped structures on their back.
 * Spore Mantis - A massive stick insect resembling a fallen log.
 * Leafwing - A green pterosaur-like creature with wings that allow it to camouflage in the trees and a sharp beak for cutting prey into pieces. They can also be seen living in Hollow Earth in Godzilla vs. Kong.
 * Psychovulture - A relative of the Leafwing (resembling an oversized Anurognathus). Much more bat-like and capable of generating electrical breath weapons, their diet of poisonous pufferfish has increased their aggression to an almost psychopathic level, compelling them to kill creatures they have no intention of consuming.
 * Death Jackal - A mammalian predator resembling a Dromaeosaur/Gorgonopsid hybrid that has a tendency to engage in cannibalism.
 * Magma Turtle - A large tortoise with palm trees growing out of its stony shell, they live around a series of hot springs on the island and possess lava-like blood.
 * Sirenjaw - A giant crocodilian-like creature covered in a thicket of brambles and trees it uses to camouflage itself as islands to lure in prey.
 * Swamp Locust - A giant aquatic insect with branch-like legs it uses to camouflage as sunken trees to grab unsuspecting prey.
 * Vinestrangler - A giant tree-dwelling katydid that camouflages among the branches and vines of its habitat to ambush its prey.
 * Spirit Tiger - An oversized white tiger with elk-like antlers.

Popular culture

 * In Peter Jackson's 1992 film Braindead, the zombie virus originates from a Skull Island creature referred to as a Sumatran rat monkey.
 * The Universal Orlando Resort location Islands of Adventure features an attraction called "Skull Island: Reign of Kong" which is based on Peter Jackson's remake.
 * In the 2021 television series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson compares the fictional island nation of Madripoor, known to harbor a dangerous underworld, to Skull Island.

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

title: Skull Island (King Kong)


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Binary economics

Binary economics, also known as two-factor economics, is a theory of economics that endorses both private property and a free market but proposes significant reforms to the banking system.

Louis Kelso theorized that widespread use of central bank-issued, interest-free loans to fund employee-owned firms could simultaneously finance economic growth and widen stock ownership in a way which binary economists believe would be non-inflationary.

The term "binary" derived from its heterodox treatment of labor and capital (but not in the sense of binary opposition). Kelso claimed that in a truly free market wages would tend to fall over time, with all the benefits of technological progress accruing to capital owners.

Overview
Binary economics rejects the claim that neoclassical economics alone promotes a 'free market' which is free, fair and efficient. (e.g., as an interpretation of the classical First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics). Binary economists believe freedom is only truly achieved if all individuals are able to acquire an independent economic base from capital holdings, and that the distribution of ownership rights can "deepen democracy".

Binary economics argues financial savings prior to investment are not required on the basis that the present money supply is mostly created credit anyway. It argues that newly minted money invested on behalf of those without access to existing cash savings or collateral can be adequately repaid through the returns on those investments, which need not be inflationary if the economy is operating below capacity. The theory asserts that what matters is whether the newly created money is interest-free, whether it can be repaid, whether there is effective collateral and whether it goes towards the development and spreading of various forms of productive (and the associated consuming) capacity.

Another contrast is that, in evidence-based economics, interest (as distinct from administration cost) is practically always necessary; in Binary Economics theory it isn't (not in relation to the development and spreading of productive capacity). Conventional economics accounts for the observed time value of money, whereas binary economics does not.

Background
The theory behind Binary Economics was proposed by American lawyer Louis Kelso and philosopher Mortimer Adler in their book The Capitalist Manifesto (1958). The book's title could be seen as a Cold War reference in opposition to communism.

Kelso and Adler elaborated on their proposals in The New Capitalists in 1961. Then Kelso worked with political scientist Patricia Hetter Kelso to further explain how capital instruments provide an increasing percentage of the wealth and why capital is narrowly owned in the modern industrial economy. Their analysis predicted that widely distributed capital ownership will create a more balanced economy. Kelso and Hetter proposed new "binary" share holdings which would pay out full net earnings as dividends (with exceptions for research, maintenance and depreciation). These could be obtained on credit by those not possessing savings, with a government-backed insurance scheme to protect the shareholder in the event of loss.

Kelso's writings were not well received by academic economists. Milton Friedman said of The Capitalist Manifesto "the book's economics was bad ... the interpretation of history, ludicrous; and the policy recommended, dangerous" and recalls a debate where even the moderator Clark Kerr "lost his cool as a moderator and attacked [Kelso's arguments] vigorously". Paul Samuelson, another Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner, told the U.S. Congress that Kelso's theories were a "cranky fad" not accepted by mainstream economists, but Kelso's ideas on promoting wider capital ownership nevertheless significantly influenced the passing of legislation promoting employee ownership.

Aims and programme
The aim of binary economics is to ensure that all individuals receive income from their own independent capital estate, using interest-free loans issued by a central bank to promote the spread of employee-owned firms. These loans are intended to: halve infrastructure improvement costs, reduce business startup costs, and widen stock ownership.

Binary economics is not mainstream and does not fit easy into the left–right spectrum. It has variously been characterized as an extreme right-wing ideology and as extremely left-wing by its critics. The 'binary' (in 'binary economics') means 'composed of two' because it suffices to view the physical factors of production as being but two (labour and capital (which includes land). It recognises only two ways of genuinely earning a living − by labour and by productive capital ownership. In its theory humans own their labour, but also productive capital.

Binary economics is partly based on belief that society has an absolute duty to ensure that all humans have good health, housing, education and an independent income, as well as a responsibility to protect the environment for its own sake. The interest-free loans proposed by binary economics are compatible with the traditional opposition of the Abrahamic religions to usury.

Proponents of binary economics claim that their system contains no expropriation of wealth, and much less redistribution will be necessary. They argue that it cannot cause inflation and is of particular importance as more of the physical contribution to production is automated. and that the Binary economics paradigm is particularly helpful in addressing the issue of why developing countries languish. Advocates contend that implementing their system will lessen national debt and encourage national unity. They believe binary economics could create a stable economy.

Productiveness vs. productivity
Binary productiveness is distinctly different from the conventional economic concept of productivity. Binary productiveness attempts to quantify the proportion of output contributed by total labor input and total capital input respectively, Adding capital inputs to a production process increases labor productivity, but binary economic theory argues that it decreases labor productiveness (i.e. the proportion of the total output with the support of both labor and capital that the labor inputs could have produced alone). For example, if the invention of a shovel allows a laborer to dig a hole in quarter of the time it would take him without the spade, binary economists would consider 75% of the "productiveness" to come from the shovel and only 25% from the laborer.

Roth criticised the shovel example on the basis that the shovel is not a factor of production independent of human capital because somebody invented it, and the shovel cannot act independently: the physical productiveness of the shovel before labour is added to it is zero.

Kelso used the concept of productiveness to support his theory of distributive justice, arguing that as capital increasingly substitutes for labor: "workers can legitimately claim from their aggregate labor only a decreasing percentage of total output", implying they would need to acquire capital holdings to maintain their level of income. In The Capitalist Manifesto, Kelso boldly asserted: "It is, if anything an underestimation rather than an exaggeration to say that the aggregate physical contribution to the production of the wealth of the workers in the United States today accounts for less than 10 percent of the wealth produced, and that the contribution by the owners of capital instruments, through their physical instruments, accounts in physical terms for more than 90 percent of the wealth produced"

Whilst the increased importance of capital as a factor of production following the Industrial Revolution has long been accepted even by those believing economic value derives from labour such as Marx, Kelso's figures suggesting that value was created almost entirely by capital were dismissed by academic economists like Paul Samuelson. Samuelson asserted that Kelso's had not used any econometric analysis to arrive at his figures, which completely contradicted economists' empirical findings on the contribution of labour. The Capitalist Manifesto did not provide detailed calculations to support Kelso's claim, although a footnote suggested that it was based on a simple comparison with 1850s labour productivity figures.

Employee stock ownership plan (ESOPs) and other plans
Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are compatible with some of the principles of binary economics. These stem originally from Louis Kelso & Patricia Hetter Kelso (1967)Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality; the founding of Kelso & Company in 1970; and then from conversations in the early 1970s between Louis Kelso, Norman Kurland (Center for Economic and Social Justice), Senator Russell Long of Louisiana (Chairman, USA Senate Finance Committee, 1966–81) and Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska. There are about 11,500 ESOPs in the USA today covering 11 million employees in closely held companies.

Uses of central bank-issued interest-free loans
Binary economics proposes that central bank-issued interest-free loans should be administered by the banking system for the development and spreading of productive (and the associated consuming) capacity, particularly new capacity, as well as for environmental and public capital. While no interest would be charged, there would be an administrative cost as well as collateralization or capital credit insurance.

Proponents of binary economics are dissatisfied with fractional-reserve banking, arguing that it "creates new money out of nothing". The supply of interest-free loans would place in circumstances of a move (over time) towards banks maintaining reserves equal to 100% of their deposits; in practice, the large-scale interest-free lending desired by binary economics is compatible with the widespread reduction in money supply that would be caused by increased reserve requirements only if the government takes over the banks' role in credit creation.

Investments eligible for interest-free loans
Binary economics suggests that ownership of productive (and the associated consuming) capacity, particularly new capacity, could be spread by the use of central bank-issued interest-free loans. Interest-free loans should be allowed for private capital investment IF such investment creates new owners of capital and is part of national policy to enable all individuals, over time, on market principles, to become owners of substantial amounts of productive, income-producing capital. By using central bank-issued interest-free loans, a large corporation would get cheap money as long as new binary shareholders are created.

title: Binary economics


text:
User talk:Bebelush

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! And if it makes matters simpler, you can leave me a note in Romanian (but don't do that on the Pump!) -- Jmabel | Talk 06:12, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
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Cimislia
You pasted a mass of of unwikified Romanian-language material, with no cited source, into the article Cimislia and its talk page. Expressions like "Elevii nostri" and "Ne bucuram mult" make me suspect that this may be copyrighted material. Where does this come from? Do we have the rights to use it? Also, why are you pasting this into the English-language Wikipedia instead of the Romanian-language Wikipedia?

Please comment at Talk:Cimislia. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:12, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hello. this material is copyrighted by me. i have made www.cimislia.com wich now is blocked, i have the source code from that site. it's a php and mysql site. it was registered by me and the second, all this material wich is on this site is from my site, i have put on it, but then i was unregistred. so if u don't believe i can send u original site to look in it and i have many pictures from this site

 * If you hold the copyright, that much is good. If you want to place this material in Wikipedia, it has to be rewritten from neutral point of view; and if you want to place it here in the English Wikipedia it will have to be in English. You can probably more quickly prepare it in Romanian for the Romanian Wikipedia. - Jmabel | Talk 03:37, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Image:Casa creatie.jpg
Please verify the copyright information on Image:Casa creatie.jpg, I placed GFDL-presumed on the page, please correct it if nessisary. -- light darkness (talk) 03:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Mon_vit_1.jpg
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Orphaned non-free image (Image:Licteo.jpg)
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Image:Licteo.jpg
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title: User talk:Bebelush


text:
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir

The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir is a Canadian large vocal ensemble based in Toronto, Ontario. It was co-founded in 1894 by Augustus S. Vogt and W. H. Hewlett to celebrate the opening of the Massey Hall. The ensemble was originally an extension of the choir of Jarvis St. Baptist Church in Toronto which Vogt directed and Hewlett accompanied. It is named after the German composer, Felix Mendelssohn.

The choir comprises 160 voices, among them a professional core of 24 singers known as the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, who also perform independently

The choir performs secular and sacred choral masterpieces in its own annual concert series, as well as regular performances with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The choir has toured in the United States and Europe, performing at the Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Kennedy Center, and major venues in Vienna, Salzburg and Prague. In January 2010, the choir travelled to Vancouver to perform in the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir's outreach programs include Singsation Saturday Choral Workshops for singers, and an annual Choral Conductors' Symposium for emerging conductors.

Recordings
Since 1926, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir has made or been featured in 20 recordings, the most popular being Handel's Messiah with Kathleen Battle, Florence Quivar, John Aler, Samuel Ramey and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis (1987). The choir has appeared on movie soundtracks including Agnes of God and the award-winning soundtrack to Schindler's List (uncredited) under the direction of John Williams. Recent albums under conductor Noel Edison include Berlioz: Requiem (1998) and A Festival of Carols (2006).

Conductors

 * Augustus Vogt (1894–1917)
 * Herbert A. Fricker (1917–42)
 * Sir Ernest MacMillan (1942–57)
 * Frederick Silvester (1957–60)
 * Walter Susskind (1960–64)
 * Elmer Iseler (1964–97)
 * Noel Edison (1997–2018)
 * Jean-Sébastien Vallée (2021– )

title: Toronto Mendelssohn Choir


text:
Transcend Information

Transcend Information, Inc. is a Taiwanese company headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan that manufactures and distributes memory products. Transcend deals in over 2,000 products including memory modules, flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, multimedia products, solid-state drives, dashcams, body cameras, personal cloud storage, card readers and accessories.

It has offices in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, China and South Korea. It was the first Taiwanese memory module manufacturer to receive ISO 9001 certification.

History
Transcend Information. Inc. was founded in 1988 by Mr. Chung-Won Shu, Peter, with its headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan. Today, Transcend has become a global brand of digital storage, multimedia and industrial products with 13 offices worldwide. The design, development, and manufacture all their products is done in-house, as well as the marketing and sales.

Product lines
Transcend manufactures memory modules, flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, external hard drives, solid state drives and industrial-grade products.

 * Memory cards – SD / CF / micro SD
 * USB flash drives – USB 3.0 / USB 2.0
 * External hard drives – Rugged series / Classic series / 3.5" Desktop storage
 * Solid-state drives – 2.5" SSDs / M.2 SSDs / mSATA SSDs / Portable SSDs
 * Card readers – USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 / USB Type - C
 * Dashcams
 * Body cameras
 * Personal cloud storage
 * Apple solutions - Lightning / USB 3.1 flash drives / SSD upgrade kit / Expansion cards for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro / Portable hard drive and portable SSD for Mac
 * Multimedia products - Digital media players / DVD writers
 * Memory modules - For Desktop / Notebook / Server
 * Embedded solutions
 * Flash: SSD / CF / SD / MMC / eMMC / SATA Module / PATA Module / USB Module
 * DRAM: Industrial temperature / Workstation / Server / Standard / Low voltage / Low profile

JetFlash

JetFlash are a series of flash based USB drives designed and manufactured by Transcend. In addition to USB flash drives, Transcend has also created different JetFlash software to maximize the usage of the flash drives. Types include:
 * Hi-Speed Series - Performance-focused flash drives
 * V Series - Design-oriented flash drives
 * T Series - USB flash drives designed for replacing floppy/CD/DVD media
 * Security Series - USB flash drives designed for security

Transcend, working in collaboration with Bharti Enterprises, has donated 500 2GB JetFlash V33 USB flash drives through the Bharti Foundation in order to support the Satya Bharti School Program in India.

Transcend has worked with Trend Micro to launch USB flash drives with preloaded anti-virus software exclusively in India.

Transcend's Jetflash 160 won the flash drive test conducted by German magazine ComputerBild.

title: Transcend Information


text:
Benoît Sokal

Benoît Sokal (28 June 1954 – 28 May 2021) was a Belgian comic artist and video game developer, best known for his comics series Inspector Canardo, and the Syberia adventure game franchise.

Biography
Benoît Sokal was born in Brussels in 1954. According to him, his grandfather was an Austrian General of the cavalry of Ukrainian Jewish origin who had fled to Belgium in 1939 with the help of a German officer he knew since 1914, crossing all of Eastern Europe while surviving the Nazis. Sokal studied at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Brussels, together with many contemporary Belgian comic artists like François Schuiten. He began drawing for À Suivre magazine in 1978. He created the Inspector Canardo series, featuring a depressed anthropomorphic duck detective with a penchant for cigarettes, alcohol and femmes fatales, before working on other titles.

In 1983 he moved to Reims, France. Later he joined the software developer Microïds and designed the adventure games Amerzone, Syberia and Syberia II (published by Microïds, the adventure game label of Anuman Interactive). He then founded his own game company, White Birds Productions, where he created the adventure game Paradise published through Ubisoft.

He died on 28 May 2021 after a battle with long-term illness.

Video games

 * Amerzone (1999)
 * Syberia (2002)
 * Syberia II (2004)
 * Paradise (2006)
 * Last King of Africa (2008) (Nintendo DS version of Paradise)
 * Sinking Island (2007)
 * Aquarica (2008) (canceled)
 * Syberia 3 (2017)
 * Syberia: The World Before (2022, posthumous)

Awards

 * 1999: Prix Pixel-INA (category "Games") at the Imagina 99 festival, Monaco
 * 2002: GameSpy PC Adventure Game of the Year
 * 2003: nominated for the Award for Best Dialogue at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, France

title: Benoît Sokal


text:
Workers' Party of Ethiopia

The Workers' Party of Ethiopia (የኢትዮጵያ ሠራተኞች ፓርቲ, WPE) was a Marxist–Leninist communist party in Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991 led by General Secretary Mengistu Haile Mariam. The Workers' Party of Ethiopia was founded in 1984 by the Derg, the ruling provisional government of Ethiopia, as the vanguard party for a planned future socialist state. In 1987, the WPE became the ruling party after the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and the only legal political party until it was disbanded in 1991. A party was attempted to be formed with the same name in August 2022, but the application was rejected.

COPWE
In 1974, the Derg, a committee of low-ranking officers and enlisted men in the Ethiopian Army, overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie and the government of the Ethiopian Empire during the mass discontent in the country at the time. Originally a non-ideological representative committee for the military, the Derg became the de facto government of Ethiopia in the form of a military junta, and the following year it formally abolished the monarchy and declared itself socialist. The Derg received backing from the Soviet Union, who soon afterwards began to pressure them to create a civilian-based vanguard party, and styled themselves as a provisional government under the name Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia. Mengistu Haile Mariam became Chairman of the Derg in 1977 and argued against such a party, stating that the revolution had succeeded without one and that there was no need. However, by the late 1970s, the Derg faced increasing armed opposition to their rule, and it became apparent that a civilian party would be required to gain any measure of control over the population.

In December 1979, Mengistu formed the Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia (COPWE), a temporary political organization that served as a vanguard party for Ethiopia until a permanent one was created. A number of other pre-party mass organisations were also established, such as the Revolutionary Ethiopia Youth Association, hoping that these organisations would help lead to a unified party that would eliminate sectarianism and be based on broad yet clearly defined class interests. The organisations were also intended to act as a conduit for political consciousness at a more personal level by representing Ethiopians at congresses, in the workplace, and at educational institutes, and membership in multiple of the mass organizations was encouraged. The COPWE held three congresses for the mass organisations it had set up, and despite the best efforts of the government to encourage diversity, more than one third of those present at the first congress in 1980 were either soldiers or Addis Ababa residents. The 1980 congress unveiled the membership of the COPWE's Central Committee and Secretariat. The Secretariat, which controlled the more day to day aspects of the Central Committee's business and was supervised by the top Derg leadership, was composed of mainly civilian ideologues. Regional branches of the Secretariat coordinated by army officers helped complement the COPWE's central leadership. The organisation became more powerful in 1981 with the creation of separate offices for administrator and COPWE representatives in each region. By 1983, there were about 50,000 COPWE members and approximately 6,500 party cells.

Mengistu's earlier calls for ideological purity and "committed communists" soon became a simple façade for the Derg's efforts to eliminate its political opponents regardless of actual beliefs. Loyalty to the Derg was preferred over dedication to Marxism-Leninism or certain ideological ideals in considerations for party membership. By this time, the military and police had also become the majority in the membership of the Central Committee, with 79 of its 123 members being soldiers, twenty of whom were also Derg members.

Formation
The Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE) was finally established on 12 September 1984, to mark the tenth anniversary of the revolution in which the Derg came to power, replacing the COPWE which was dissolved. Mengistu became the party leader under the title general secretary. The WPE's Politburo replaced the COPWE's executive committee as Ethiopia's chief decision-making body, featuring eleven members: seven of them were the surviving members of the Derg, while the other four were civilian ideologues and technocrats. The Central Committee was expanded to 183 members, with party congresses every five years. Generally, Mengistu's wishes prevailed over any opposition, and the nepotism involved in the selection of Politburo members meant that opposition was usually marginal anyway, leading the entire council to serve more as a mouthpiece for Mengistu's wishes than as a legitimate government body. At a national level, membership of the WPE was heavily slanted towards soldiers and members of certain ethnic groups that had, historically, endorsed the concept of a unified "Greater Ethiopia", such as the Tigray and Amhara. However, at regional and local levels, ethnicity and military service became less relevant, with large numbers of civilians and members of various ethnicities in positions of power.

The adoption of the 1987 Constitution of Ethiopia established the WPE as the official ruling party of Ethiopia, dissolving the Derg and renamed the country the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The WPE's position as "formulator of the country's development process and the leading force of the state and in society" was enshrined into law by the 1987 constitution, and as in most communist countries, the constitution gave the party more political power than the government itself, with local party leaders given almost free rein provided their policies did not conflict with the party's Central Committee.

Demise
By the time the WPE came to power in the late-1980s, Ethiopia had been ravaged by droughts and the Derg's mismanagement of the country, and the world's communist movement was declining. By the turn of the 1990s, the WPE's power began to unravel amidst the end of Soviet support in 1990, a concurrent move towards multi-party politics across Africa, and increasing armed insurrection during the Ethiopian Civil War. Mengistu then fled the country, fleeing one week before rebels defeated the government and took power in Ethiopia in 1991. The WPE was dissolved in May 1991, by the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia, and most of its leaders were imprisoned for alleged crimes they had committed in their positions during the party's rule.

title: Workers' Party of Ethiopia


text:
Kate Duignan

Kate Duignan is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, reviewer and teacher.

Background
Kate Duignan was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She grew up in Wellington and London. She completed an MA in creative writing at Victoria University of Wellington in 2000, and a PhD in creative writing, also from VUW, in 2017. The critical component of her PhD explored narration in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Duignan now lives in Wellington with her partner and three children, and in 2018 is teaching fiction at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.

Works
Kate Duignan's debut novel Breakwater was published by Victoria University Press in 2001. Breakwater was reissued as part of the VUP Classics series in 2018. Her second novel, The New Ships was published in 2018. Duignan has published short fiction and poetry in Sport, Landfall and takahē.

Duignan reviews for Landfall and New Zealand Books.

Fellowships and awards
The New Ships was long listed for the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize in the 2019 Ockham Awards.

Duignan was awarded the Louis Johnson New Writers' Bursary in 2002. She held the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 2004. She was the Massey University Writer in Residence in 2006.

title: Kate Duignan


text:
Talk:Marina Sirtis

Husband
There is buzz on Facebook that her husband has passed away last night. Just a heads up.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2685167708208210&id=100001450220184 B.Valley (talk) 00:23, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

 * I hope someone can find a more acceptable source than a Facebook post which cites a Twitter post (both of which are not generally considered reliable sources here on Wikipedia). Playing by the rules probably dictates removing this item from Marina's article until a better source can be found.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 03:40, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Her Twitter confirmation should be good enough. GenQuest  "Talk to Me" 03:47, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Seeing Ear Theater
Not sure where this information would be placed in this page, but Marina Sirtis starred in an internet show called "Seeing Ear Theater" in an episode called "Death of Captain Future" 23.244.199.22 (talk) 17:42, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Marina Sirtis


text:
Talk:President Street Power Station, Johannesburg

Permission
This has prevoiusly been published for free as a sample in a electrical engineering publication. We the authors of the turbine hall report give permission for it to be used. the following reference should be added.

J Shorten, The Johannesburg Saga, ‘The City Electricity Department’, page 599 ff.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ninalewin (talk • contribs) 06:23, 19 April 2005

Closed deletion listing
This article was listed for deletion on 16 April, 2005. The result of the discussion was no consensus'. The discussion is now closed, but can still be viewed: Votes for deletion/The First President Street Power Station South Africa. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:51, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)


text:
Norwegian Dawn

Norwegian Dawn is a cruise ship that entered service in 2002 and is in operation with Norwegian Cruise Line.

History
The ship was completed on 4 December 2002 at the Meyer Werft Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany and sailed her maiden voyage in Europe on 7 December 2002. She was intended to operate with Star Cruises under the name SuperStar Scorpio, but it was decided that she would be delivered to Star's subsidiary, Norwegian Cruise Line as Norwegian Dawn. Norwegian Dawn was christened 16 December 2002, in an elaborate ceremony in Manhattan by actress Kim Cattrall.

Norwegian Dawn was the first NCL vessel to carry hull art. Planned as a way to promote the vessel, the concept was well received and hull art was incorporated on most other NCL vessels, with the exception of those vessels scheduled to transition out of the fleet within the next few years.

Incidents
On 16 April 2005, after sailing into rough weather off the coast of Georgia (U.S. state), Norwegian Dawn encountered a series of three 70 ft rogue waves. The third wave damaged several windows on the ninth and tenth decks and several decks were flooded. Damage, however, was not extensive and the ship was quickly repaired. Four passengers were slightly injured in this incident.

On 27 November 2009, Norwegian Dawn lost all power while returning to Miami. United States Coast Guard ships and helicopters were dispatched to the scene to assist. During the power outage, the more than 2,000 passengers on the ship had no access to running water, electricity, air conditioning or toilet services in the hot Caribbean environment. The temperatures in the area at the time were around 85 °F with 67% relative humidity. At least some power was restored and the ship was able to make port in San Juan, PR, not Miami as the itinerary dictated, to allow repairs to be made.

On 27 August 2010, Norwegian Dawn experienced engine problems. The ship had to leave Bermuda early to return to New York at a slower speed.

On 19 May 2015, Norwegian Dawn ran aground in Bermuda shortly after leaving port. The incident was attributed to a minor malfunction in the ship's steering, sending her off course to hit a sandbar. The ship was floated off the sandbar six hours later with the high tide, and allowed to continue to Boston after underwater surveys showed no damage.

On 9 December 2021, Norwegian Dawn was met with a large protest in Key West

In February 2024 ,the Mauritius government stopped the ship from docking in its ports. The ship had just arrived from nearby Reunion Island; where it had also been refused permission to dock. There was heavy media speculation that there were cases of Cholera onboard, but tests proved negative and on 26th February the vessel was granted permission to dock in Mauritius.

In March 2024, eight passengers were left behind in Santo António do Príncipe in São Tomé and Príncipe. The passengers took a private tour and failed to return to the ship before the last boarding call. The São Toméan Coast Guard attempted to bring the passengers to the ship, but for reasons that are unclear, they were refused boarding.

Vessel class
Norwegian Dawn was the second in a line of two ships with this design, constructed at Meyer Werft Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Her sister ship is Norwegian Star, which entered service in November 2001. At the time of their order with Meyer Werft, these two ships were designated as Libra-class (Dawn-class in NCL publicity, as the Libra-class designation was because of its original assignment by Star Cruises until they were assigned to NCL operations). NCL continued using the same class designation for these ships.

title: Norwegian Dawn


text:
Georgia Rugby Union (United States)

The Georgia Rugby Union (GRU) is the geographical union (GU) for rugby union clubs in the U.S. state of Georgia and other parts of the Southeastern United States. Founded in 1977 the GRU is part of USA Rugby. It is the governing body of rugby union in the state of Georgia.

Under the 2022-23 restructure the GRU is divided into three oversight sections: Senior Men, Senior Women (development), and Youth (development). Each section having individual elected directors. The union includes clubs from across Georgia and South Carolina.

Beginning in 2022 the GRU developed a men's state select side, the Georgia Barbarians. Players from any Georgia Rugby Union member club are eligible for selection. Also in 2022 the GRU announced plans for both women's, and youth Barbarians sides.

In recent years the GRU has developed very strong ties with the Georgian Rugby Union in the country of Georgia. GRU executives having been the invited guests of the Georgian Rugby Union for a match held between the USA Eagles and the Georgian national team in Tbilisi, Georgia, on August 19, 2023. Plans for player and tour exchanges between the GRU and Georgian Rugby Union have also been announced via GRU social media. The GRU Barbarians will tour the country of Georgia in early 2024 by invite of the Georgian Rugby Union, and the United States Embassy, Tbilisi.

Related links

 * Georgia Rugby Union Officials
 * GRU member clubs

title: Georgia Rugby Union (United States)


text: User talk:68.5.104.58

title: User talk:68.5.104.58


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Microids

Microids (formerly Microïds) is a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris. Founded in 1985 by Elliot Grassiano, it attained early success with games published through Loriciel in France and other partners (including Activision and Broderbund) in international markets. Through expanding its staff and development teams, Microïds generated funds to expand from just development to publishing and distribution and opening international offices. The company merged with MC2 in 2003 to create MC2-Microïds, whereafter it acquired publishers Wanadoo Edition and Cryo Interactive. Grassiano left MC2-Microïds in 2005; under new management, MC2-Microïds was briefly renamed MC2 before returning to the old Microïds name. It was then acquired by Anuman Interactive in 2010, which itself was renamed Microïds (then simplified to Microids) in 2019.

Background and early years (1985–2003)
Microïds was founded by Elliot Grassiano, a French programmer. He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand school from 1972 to 1974 and later studied engineering, electronics, and computers at the École nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers. He started working as an engineer for the defence system company SAGEM in 1979. By the 1980s, Grassiano had become interested in telecommunications, consumer electronics, and video games. He acquired a Thomson MO5-model home computer, which he used to create his first game, Space Shuttle Simulator. The game was published by Loriciel and released to both critical and commercial success. Subsequently, Grassiano quit his job to establish his own company. He formally founded Microïds in 1985, setting it up in Vélizy-Villacoublay, a suburb of Paris. He was aided in these efforts by Loriciel's founders, Laurent Weill and Marc Bayle, as well as Patrick Le Nestour, another engineer. The name "Microïds" was a portmanteau of "microinformatique" ("micro-informatics") and "androids". Within its first year of operation, the company grew to five people, with Grassiano in the managerial role.

Initially, Microïds set out to create consumer robotics projects before shifting its focus solely to video games. The first Microïds-developed game was Air Attack, released by Loriciel for the Thomson MO5 to moderate commercial success. Early adventure games developed by Microïds include Oceania (developed by Le Nestour and released in 1985 for the Thomson MO5 and TO7) and Les Pyramides D'Atlantys (developed by Luc Thibaud and released for the Amstrad CPC in 1986). Air Attack provided the groundwork for subsequent Microïds games, such as 500 cc Grand Prix for the Amstrad CPC, which debuted in 1986. This game was the company's first breakthrough title, partially driven by the CPC's success in France. By way of a deal between Loriciel and Activision, the game was also released in the UK, it was also released in the US, and it was later ported to other systems, such as the Atari ST. The American market appeared especially viable for Microïds, who believed that game sales would vastly outnumber the domestic ones. For this reason, it partnered with the American publisher Broderbund in 1987, which released several Microïds games in the country, partially under altered names. In return, Microïds managed sales of Broderbund's games, notably Prince of Persia and Karateka in France.

Throughout the 1990s, Microïds underwent expansion, increasing both staff count and development team sizes. Development operations were accelerated to output more games, leading to increased profits. Through the new-earned funds, the company commenced operations in both video game publishing and distribution in 1995, and between then and 1997 opened three international subsidiaries: Microïds Italia in Milan, Microïds UK in Milton Keynes, and Microïds Canada in Montreal. By 1997, Microïds had 20 employees and a turnover of 20 million French francs. Both increased tenfold by 2002 and the Canadian studio alone housed 105 of Microïds' 200 employees by 2003.

Later years (2003–present)
In 2003, Microïds merged with MC2, a French software company, with the amalgam assuming the name MC2-Microïds. In September that year, it acquired Wanadoo Edition, the games division of Wanadoo, which itself had been created through a September 2000 merger between Index+ and France Telecom Multimedia in exchange, Wanadoo received a 12% stake in MC2-Microïds. In 2004, MC2-Microïds proceeded to close Microïds UK, while Microïds Italia spun off as Blue Label Entertainment. Microïds Canada was sold off to Ubisoft in March 2005, with the studio's 50 employees integrated into Ubisoft's own Ubisoft Montreal studio. Later that year, Grassiano left MC2-Microïds due to internal disagreements. He was succeeded by Index+ founder Emmanuel Olivier, who was named chief executive officer (CEO). With this management change, MC2-Microïds shortened its name to just "MC2". This decision was reversed in November 2007, when it returned to the original "Microïds" name. In 2008, Microïds further acquired the assets and intellectual property of bankrupt publisher Cryo Interactive.

In 2009, the publisher Anuman Interactive, while in the process of being acquired by Média-Participations, began looking for possible acquisitions of its own. That November, the company announced its intent to acquire Microïds. The acquisition was completed on 1 January 2010, after which Microïds continued operating as a division of Anuman. Alongside the acquisition, Olivier left the company. A sub-label for non-adventure games, Microïds Games for All, was launched the same year. In 2013, Grassiano joined Anuman and became the vice-president for Microïds. Additionally, an indie game label, Microïds Indie, was opened in September 2016. In July 2019, the Microïds label name was simplified to "Microids". That October, Microids announced that Anuman would be renamed "Microids", with Anuman CEO Stéphane Longeard becoming the CEO of Microids, co-managing it with Grassiano. Microids also opened a Japanese office run by Martial Meyssignac and Yves Bléhaut, and strengthened the Microids Indie label with a dedicated team managed by Vincent Dondaine. A distribution arm, Microids Distribution France, was established in December 2020.

Investments
Microids has had a minority stake in OSome Studio since April 2022.

title: Microids


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Megaminx

The Megaminx or Mégaminx is a dodecahedron-shaped puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has a total of 50 movable pieces to rearrange, compared to the 20 movable pieces of the Rubik's Cube.

History
The Megaminx, or Magic Dodecahedron, was invented by several people independently and produced by several different manufacturers with slightly different designs. Uwe Mèffert eventually bought the rights to some of the patents and continues to sell it in his puzzle shop under the Megaminx moniker. It is also known by the name Hungarian Supernova, invented by Dr. Christoph Bandelow. His version came out first, shortly followed by Mèffert's Megaminx. The proportions of the two puzzles are slightly different. The Supernova is cut in such a way that the cuts on each face meet at the edges, forming a pentagram. Mèffert's Megaminx has somewhat wider edges relative to the corners.

Speed-solving the Megaminx became an official World Cube Association event in 2003, with the first official single-solve record set by American Grant Tregay with a time of 2 minutes 12.82 seconds during the World Rubik's Games Championship in Canada. The first sub-minute solve in official competition was achieved by Japanese solver Takumi Yoshida with a time of 59.33s at the January 2009 Amagasaki Open, and the first sub-30-second single solve was achieved by Peruvian solver Juan Pablo Huanqui at a 2017 Santiago event with a time of 29.93 seconds. The current world record time for a Megaminx solve is 23.18 seconds, set by Leandro Martín López of Argentina on 13 April 2024

Description
The Megaminx is made in the shape of a dodecahedron, and has 12 faces and center pieces, 20 corner pieces, and 30 edge pieces. The face centers each have a single color, which identifies the color of that face in the solved state. The edge pieces have two colors, and the corner pieces have three. Each face contains a center piece, 5 corner pieces and 5 edge pieces. The corner and edge pieces are shared with adjacent faces. The face centers can only rotate in place, but the other pieces can be permuted by twisting the face layer around the face center.

There are two main versions of the Megaminx. The 6-color variant uses the 6 colors common to puzzle cubes - white, yellow, blue, green, red and orange - with opposite faces having the same color. The 12-color variant uses a unique color for each face of the puzzle. The most common 12-color scheme starts with white bordered by yellow, dark blue, red, dark green and purple. Directly opposite each of these faces, respectively, are gray, beige, light blue, orange, light green and pink. Black is a common alternate face color, either replacing gray which improves color contrast on what is typically the last layer solved, or replacing beige, which typically shares two neighbors (red and green) with the white face which can make piece identification challenging in certain lighting conditions. The 12-color Megaminx is the only type legal in official WCA competitions (color scheme variations are legal as long as each face is uniquely-colored), and is therefore much more popular than the 6-color version.

The objective of the puzzle, similar to that of a Rubik's Cube or related puzzles, is to scramble the colors, and then restore it to its original state of having one color per face by turning each face in sequence to reorient/reposition the edge and corner pieces adjacent to that face's center piece.

Solutions
Regardless of color variant, the most common solution strategy shares qualities with common methods for solving a Rubik's Cube. The solution begins with one face (most often white), where the solver will reconstruct the "star" formed by the edge pieces adjacent to that face, each one properly paired with the neighboring center color (analogous to the "white cross" of the beginner and CFOP methods for a Rubik's Cube). Once this is done, the five white corner pieces are maneuvered into place, commonly paired with the appropriate edge piece on the opposing side of each corner from the starting face. The star, first five corners and first five edges are known as the "first two layers", similar to those of a 3x3 cube. From here, the solver will typically proceed to the "second two layers", which involves a similar process of joining and positioning corner and edge pieces around the equator of the puzzle, and then the corners and edges in the hemisphere opposite the starting face. This is all typically done "intuitively", turning faces of the puzzle based on where the solver wishes the pieces to move, with the result of each move being predictable given some experience manipulating the puzzle.

This leaves the solver with the "last face", most commonly grey (opposite the white starting face), which will require a series of more complicated move sequences to orient (flip/rotate) and permute (rearrange) the pieces of the last layer in predefined ways without disturbing the solved lower layers. These "algorithms" are similar to those used on a Rubik's Cube and thus familiar to those experienced in solving one, with the obvious allowance made for the extra side of each face and thus the extra turn possible as part of a full revolution of the face. These differences require minor changes in notation of the algorithms compared to those commonly used for a cube-shaped puzzle. The "beginner" method of solving the Megaminx requires only four or five algorithms of between three and six moves each to be memorized, which will be used to orient and then permute the last layer's edge pieces to form the last layer star, followed by orienting and permuting last layer corners. More complicated algorithm sets require memorization of a wider variety of distinct sequences of longer length, which nevertheless are more efficient solutions for each of a more specific set of possible permutations of the latest layer's pieces, performing orientation and permutation of both edges and corners in fewer sequences (and total moves) than the shorter but more repetitive beginner algorithms.

The 6-color Megaminx comes with an additional challenge which is not immediately obvious (and which does not occur on the 12-color puzzle). Its edge pieces come in visually identical pairs, because of the duplicated colors of opposite faces. However, although visually indistinguishable, they are nevertheless mathematically bound in a parity relationship. In any legal position (reachable from the solved state without disassembling the puzzle), there is always an even number of swapped pairs of edges. However, since swaps may be between visually identical edges, one may find that having solved almost the entire puzzle, one is left with a pair of swapped (distinct) edges that seems to defy all attempts to exchange them. The solution is to swap a single pair of 'identical' edges to resolve the parity issue, and then restore the rest of the puzzle. The corners are all visually distinct, as the two corners with the same three colors are mirror images of each other.

This property is absent in the 12-color Megaminx, because all its edges are distinguishable, and it would be immediately obvious that there is another pair of swapped edges besides the pair one is working with. "Impossible" permutations of a 12-color Megaminx, causing behaviors inconsistent with the expectations of a solving method, are the result of manipulations not possible solely by turning the faces during a scramble or solve. The most common is a "corner twist", an often-necessary side effect of puzzles designed to allow some misalignment of a face when beginning rotation of an adjacent face (so-called "corner-cutting"). The looser tolerances allow a corner to be rotated in place, independent of any other face or corner, placing the puzzle in a permutation that face turns alone cannot solve. Most other "impossible" permutations of the puzzle are the result of improper assembly, and are avoided by always reassembling the puzzle into a solved state after disassembly for cleaning, maintenance or adjustment.

Variations
The Megaminx puzzle itself is produced in several variations by many different manufacturers, most of which also produce other types of WCA and similar rotating puzzles. Among the most common areas of variation in construction are puzzle/piece size and weight, specific shades of the face colors, the presence and prominence of tactile aids such as ridges or dimples to aid grip and rotation, the ability and method of adjusting the puzzle's tolerance and tension between pieces and, as has become common in rotating puzzles of this type, the presence and strength of magnets within the pieces, which aid in keeping the various faces of the puzzle aligned to reduce lock-ups due to multiple faces being partially rotated.

Color variations of the Megaminx are common, to the extent that WCA rules for scrambling the Megaminx detail how to proceed if the default starting orientation (white on top, green in front) is not possible due to color replacement or rearrangement. A popular modification on 12-color Megaminxes is to change the color of the face opposite the white face from its default grey to black. This is a trivial modification for traditional "stickered" puzzles with a black base color for pieces (simply remove the stickers and, if each face must have stickers for competition use, replace them with a set of black stickers cut to fit); for "stickerless" puzzles using multiple colored plastics, most manufacturers produce a set of the required pieces in black plastic, and the puzzle can be partially disassembled to replace the pieces of any face. This color change increases the contrast between this face, which usually forms the last unsolved layer, and the colors of adjacent faces, which aids in pattern recognition and thus the correct selection of algorithms to solve the last layer. Other color modifications are less common, but as long as each face has a visually unique uniform color, the puzzle is legal, so solvers are free to rearrange puzzle colors at their discretion.

There are many similar 12-sided puzzles with different numbers of layers, most of which change the "mega" in the puzzle's name to another metric prefix. They are the Kilominx (2 layers), Master Kilominx (4 layers), Gigaminx (5 layers), Elite Kilominx (6 layers), Teraminx (7 layers), 8×8 Kilominx (8 layers), Petaminx (9 layers), Examinx (11 layers), Zettaminx (13 layers), Yottaminx (15 layers), and Atlasminx Or Quettaminx (19 layers). The highest order mass-produced variant of the Megaminx is the Zettaminx, which was released by ShengShou in 2021, and the highest order variant of the Megaminx ever made to date is the Minx of Madness, created by Corenpuzzle using 3D printing. The Minx of Madness was revealed in May 2022. It is the dodecahedral equivalent to a 21x21x21 Rubik's cube.

Alexander's Star is equivalent to solving only the edges of a six-color Megaminx.

The Impossiball and Kilominx are equivalent to solving only the corners of a Megaminx, but are very different mechanically. The Impossiball is available with either six or twelve colors.

The Pyraminx Crystal is a modified Megaminx with deeper turning planes.

Tony Fisher has produced a shape modification of the Megaminx into a cube form which he called the Hexaminx. Another variant is the Holey Megaminx, which has no center pieces, like the Void Cube. It is being produced by Mèffert as of July 2009. Other variants include the Flowerminx, Megaminx Ball, and Crazy Megaminx.

Number of combinations
The Megaminx has 20 corners and 30 edges. It is possible on a Rubik's Cube to have a single pair of corners and a single pair of edges swapped, with the rest of the puzzle being solved. The corner and edge permutations are each odd in this example, but their sum is even. This parity situation is impossible on the Megaminx. For both types of pieces, only even permutations are possible, regardless of the position of the other set of pieces. There are 20!/2 ways to arrange the corners and 319 ways to orient them, since the orientation of the last corner depends on that of the preceding ones. There are 30!/2 ways to arrange the edges and 229 ways to flip them.

$$20! \times 3^{19} \times 30! \times 2^{27} \approx 1.01 \times 10^{68}$$ The full number is 100 669 616 553 523 347 122 516 032 313 645 505 168 688 116 411 019 768 627 200 000 000 000 (roughly 101 unvigintillion on the short scale or 101 undecillion on the long scale).

The corners are distinguishable on a 6-color Megaminx because two corners with the same three colors will be mirror images of each other. There are 15 pairs of identical edges. It would not be possible to swap all 15 pairs, since this would be an odd permutation of the edges, so a reducing factor of 214 is applied to the preceding figure.

 * $$20! \times 3^{19} \times 30! \times 2^{13} \approx 6.14 \times 10^{63}$$

The full number is 6 144 385 775 971 883 979 645 753 925 393 402 415 081 061 792 664 780 800 000 000 000 (roughly 6.1 vigintillion on the short scale or 6.1 decilliard on the long scale).

For the larger size variations (gigaminx, teraminx, petaminx etc.), the general number of combinations is $$\frac{30! \times 20! \times 60!^{n^2-1} \times 2^{28-n} \times 3^{19}}{5!^{12n(n-1)}}$$ where $$n = 1,2,3,4,...$$ respectively for megaminx, gigaminx, teraminx, petaminx, etc. The number of combinations evaluates to $$3.65\times 10^{263}$$ for gigaminx, $$1.15\times 10^{573}$$ for teraminx, $$3.16\times 10^{996}$$ for petaminx, $$7.58\times 10^{1533}$$ for examinx, $$1.58\times 10^{2185}$$ for zettaminx, $$2.87\times 10^{2950}$$ for yottaminx, etc.

Records
The world record time for a Megaminx solve is 23.18 seconds, set by Leandro Martín López of Argentina on 13 April 2024 at the Di Tella Inspira 2024, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The world record average of five solves (excluding best and worst) is 26.84 seconds, set by Leandro Martín López on 3 September 2023 at the Nacionales Argentinas in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with times of 25.22, 26.31, 26.55, 27.67 and 28.15 seconds.

title: Megaminx


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Swoosie Kurtz

Swoosie Kurtz (born September 6, 1944) is an American actress. She is the recipient of an Emmy Award and two Tony Awards.

Kurtz made her Broadway debut in the 1975 revival of Ah, Wilderness. She has received five Tony Award nominations, winning for both Fifth of July (1981) and The House of Blue Leaves (1986); her other nominations were for Tartuffe (1988), Frozen (2004), and Heartbreak House (2007).

For her television work, she has received eight Emmy Award nominations, with one win for Carol and Company in 1990. Other television credits include the NBC drama Sisters (1991–1996), Huff (2004–2006), Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), and the hit CBS sitcom Mike & Molly (2010–2016). Her films include Wildcats (1986), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Stanley & Iris (1990), Citizen Ruth (1996), Liar Liar (1997) and Bubble Boy (2001).

Early life
Kurtz was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the only child of author Margaret "Margo" (née Rogers) and Air Force Colonel Frank Allen Kurtz Jr., a decorated World War II American bomber pilot. She got her first name "Swoosie" (which rhymes with Lucy, rather than woozy) from her father. It is derived from the B-17D Flying Fortress bomber which her father piloted during World War II, which was named "The Swoose" (half swan, half goose).

Career
Kurtz's first television appearance at age 17 was on The Donna Reed Show 4th-season episode "The Golden Trap" (February, 1962). She also appeared on To Tell the Truth at eighteen, identifying her father from two impostors. She made her debut as a series regular on the daytime drama As The World Turns in 1971. Kurtz began her career in theater, making her Broadway debut in the 1975 revival of Ah, Wilderness! She first gained wide recognition in 1978 for two theatrical productions, Uncommon Women and Others, the breakthrough play by Wendy Wasserstein in which she appeared in a 1977 workshop at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and then Off-Broadway, and the musical A History of the American Film for which she won a Drama Desk Award. Kurtz was soon awarded Broadway's "triple crown" (the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards) for her portrayal of Gwen in Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July. She won a second Tony for her performance as Bananas in a 1986 revival of The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare. She starred as playwright Lillian Hellman in the 2002 Nora Ephron play Imaginary Friends.

In 1978, Kurtz was part of the ensemble cast of Mary Tyler Moore's short-lived variety series Mary, that also included David Letterman and Michael Keaton. In 1981, Kurtz began two seasons alongside Tony Randall in the sitcom Love, Sidney, in a role that earned her the first of her 10 Emmy Award nominations. In 1990, she won her first Emmy for a guest-starring role on Carol Burnett's comedy series Carol & Company.

From 1991 to 1996, Kurtz had her longest-running television role, starring as wealthy divorcee Alex Reed Halsey on the NBC drama Sisters, a role that earned her two more Emmy Award nominations. She also starred in the ABC television series Pushing Daisies as Lily Charles.

In recent years, Kurtz has guest-starred on the hit series ER and Lost and Desperate Housewives and has also had recurring roles as Valerie on the drama That's Life, as Judy's mother Helen on the sitcom Still Standing, as Madeleine Sullivan on the Showtime drama series Huff, and most recently as part of a lesbian married couple with Blythe Danner on the drama series Nurse Jackie. In 2010, Kurtz began starring on the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly as Joyce Flynn. Kurtz has also appeared in a recurring part as Matt LeBlanc's mother in the comedy series Man with a Plan. In 2021, she began appearing as Mayim Bialik's mother in the comedy series Call Me Kat.

Although her main focus has been television, Kurtz has starred in several major Hollywood films including the Agatha Christie drama Caribbean Mystery (1983), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), its remake Cruel Intentions (1999), as a lesbian activist in the acclaimed indie film Citizen Ruth (1996), and alongside Jim Carrey in Liar Liar (1997).

Personal life
From 1964 to 1970, Kurtz was romantically involved with Joshua White of The Joshua Light Show.

title: Swoosie Kurtz


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Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash)

The Syrian Communist Party (الحزب الشيوعي السوري) is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in Syria. The party emerged from a split in the Syrian Communist Party in 1986, as formed by the anti-Perestroika faction led by Khalid Bakdash. Khalid Bakdash died in 1995 and was succeeded as secretary of his party faction by his widow, Wisal Farha Bakdash. At the time of the 2000 Damascus Spring, the party was able to publish a newspaper called Sawt al-Shaab ("Voice of the People").

Currently, the party's secretary general is Ammar Bakdash, who succeeded his mother in the party's leadership.

Mohammad Fayez al-Barasha is the party's only cabinet minister.

title: Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash)


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User talk:Sokol

Welcome to the Wikipedia
I noticed you were new, and wanted to share some links I thought useful:

 * Tutorial
 * Help desk
 * Foundation issues
 * Policy Library

For more information click  here . You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~.

Sam Spade 06:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image
Thunderbrand 16:03, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Sokol