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Talk:Before Present

Resuming the discussion about BP, Radiocarbon years, and BCE
I'm not a scientist, just someone who is interested in pre-history in the Americas. There's a lot of confusion and contradictions in Wikipedia articles dating pre-historic human activities in the Americas. For example, in the scholarly and popular literature and in Wikipedia articles, I found three different -- and often contradictory -- dating systems used for the Folsom tradition and related articles: first, radiocarbon years (or uncalibrated radiocarbon years) which date the Folsom tradition between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago; second, more recent and presumably more accurate calibrated radiocarbon years which date Folsom from 13,000 to 12,000 years ago; and third, Before Present (BP) which cites either of the two ranges of dates. BP will also become more inaccurate with time if one doesn't know (and most don't) that BP doesn't mean "before present" but before 1950.

One example of why trying to get dating right is important is the transition of the Clovis culture (mammoth hunting) to the Folsom tradition (bison hunting) and the ongoing controversy about the role of humans in the extinction of many species of megafauna in the Americas. Was the extinction due to human hunting or climate change or something else? Did mammoths become extinct at the same time as the end of mammoth hunting by the Clovis people or a thousand years earlier or later? Did the Clovis people hunt the mammoth to extinction? Accurate dating is crucial to answering that question.

Moreover, for the average reader the different dates in Wikipedia articles for prehistoric events are confusing. All three dating systems -- radiocarbon years, calibrated radiocarbon years, and BP -- are cited and "reliable sources" exist for all.

If my understanding of the issue of three dating systems is correct, I would advocate that BCE (or BC) based on calibrated radiocarbon dates be the preferred usage in Wikipedia articles rather than BP or uncalibrated radiocarbon dating. BCE is more familiar to the reader and avoids the now mostly minor but increasing inaccuracy of BP. Smallchief (talk) 11:55, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure this is the right place to discuss this, though I agree it's worth discussing. FWIW I've previously tried to summarise the current rough consensus at User:Joe Roe/Archaeology conventions with a view to eventually turning it into a guideline.
 * That's a very useful summary of issues and practices which I will keep on my watchlist. Thanks. Smallchief (talk) 12:53, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's just because I work with this on a day to day basis, but I don't find (calibrated) BP to be particularly technical or confusing. It's essentially just a scientific way of saying "years ago", which I think is the way most people intuitively think about the distant past. And given that prehistory is usually narrated in steps of a 1000 years (at best), it'll be a long time before the discrepancy between BP's Present and the actual present makes a significant difference. – Joe (talk) 12:34, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @Joe Roe I think any guideline should start with a discussion of calibrated and uncalibrated dates. Editors need to understand that before they can decide how to use them.
 * And maybe mention other dating methods and how to handle them? Should we ever convert dendro dates to BP? I don't think we should. Doug Weller  talk 12:58, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

CETERUM CENSEO
ceterum censeo ... that - the "present" ever meant and still means "today" and not 1950, - which latter, in case of radiocarbon dating, might be named "BL" in honour of Libby, otherwise "BFN" (Before Nineteen-Fifty), similar to "b2k" in icecore datigs, - consequently, those "intelligent" "scientists" would live today in the year 60 AP (after present)! In addition, and usually in the same papers, the time scales - if only for better comparability - must run chronologically from left to right, i.e. from the older to the more recent data (unfortunately, too many people seem to be completely incapable of using their plotting programs correctly). Further: Please note that neither ky nor kya are allowed SI-units of time. The only correct ones are "a" for year, or "ka" for thousand years. Please refer to "Unified code for Units of Measure at http://unitsofmeasure.org.HJJHolm (talk) 15:15, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect ("Radiocarbon dating") date
As of the current revision of the article ("Before_Present"), the first sentence in the section "Before Present" says:"Radiocarbon dating was first used in 1940."That does not seem to be correct.

For one reason, the article about "Radiocarbon dating" -- (which that sentence itself contains a link to, and seems to rely upon) -- says (in the first sentence of its second paragraph) "The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby."

For another reason, the article about "Willard Libby" says, in its FIRST sentence, that "Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology."

It seems obvious to me that something (radiocarbon dating) which did not exist until its "1949 development", did not get used in 1940.

Perhaps it was a TYPO? Maybe it should have said "1950" -- ? --

Any advice or other comments? Thanks, from Mike Schwartz (talk) 06:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

 * 1940 is clearly wrong. But what is the correct answer? 1949? 1950? 1950s? No citation for first use is given. So you just volunteered to find the citation! 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 07:57, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It was 1949. I've corrected the date and added citations, taken from the radiocarbon dating article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 11:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you ... e.g. for this prompt [and helpful] response:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Before_Present&diff=1164473263&oldid=1164183773
 * --Mike Schwartz (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * --Mike Schwartz (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Link to egocentrism
This article should link to the page egocentrism as the likely cause for the appearance of this time scale. Should we create a dedicated section on the causes, or put it near the beginning of the article? 2A01:CB08:5F:8700:329C:23FF:FEA2:DF4F (talk) 15:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We would need a reliable source to do this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:54, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

AD vs CE
Should the references to AD (Anno Domini, a religious designation) be changed to CE (Common Era, a more neutral one), or is this appropriate when talking about the Gregorian calendar, created by the Catholic Church? Scyg (talk) 12:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

 * See MOS:ERA. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Before Present


text: Category:Math

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

title: Category:Math


text:
Ray Stevenson (political activist)

Raymond Leslie Stevenson (December 17, 1919 – August 24, 2004 ) was a Canadian writer and political activist. He was an executive member of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People and Associate and Editor of Northstar Compass – the organization's print publication. Stevenson worked on Northstar Compass for over thirteen years. Stevenson was an executive member of the World Peace Congress and a trade union organizer.

Stevenson was a member of the Communist Party of Canada from 1940 to 1998, serving for many years on its Central Committee and many of its Commissions.

Early life and military service
Stevenson was born near Virden, Manitoba. He began working in the gold mines of north-eastern Manitoba in 1938 but moved to Kirkland Lake, Ontario, after being fired for being an "undesirable element". In Ontario, he worked for Upper Canada Mines and joined Local 240 of the militant Mine, Mill, and Smelters Union and participated in its 1941–1942 recognition strike.

He served in the Canadian Army from 1942 to 1946, as a first lieutenant. Due to his affiliations, he was not permitted to serve overseas during World War II. Though Stevenson requested that he be sent overseas several times, his requests were denied. He learned through "a clandestine source in army intelligence," that he "would not be shipped overseas for political reasons." "There was a long delay in sending us through [ officer training] while HQ was making up its mind what to do with some of us," recalled Stevenson. Ultimately, he was assigned to develop a curriculum for soldiers facing overseas deployment, educating them on the nature of fascism. While warned not to teach the communist party line, he was allowed to choose fellow communist Sam Walsh as an aide and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain.

Political career and activism
He was active in the Communist Party's Dominion Communist-Labor Total War Committee, which campaigned for a "yes" vote in the 1942 referendum on conscription, i.e. in favour of its introduction (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).

Stevenson was a candidate for the Communist Party of Ontario (known as the Labor-Progressive Party) in the 1945 Ontario provincial election. Following the war, Stevenson became the educational director for the Workers Co-op in northern Ontario and was also a political organizer for the Labor-Progressive Party, running for the party in Timmins in the 1949 federal election.

Soon after joining mining firm Inco, he was, in 1951, elected to the executive of Local 598 in Sudbury. He served on the Canadian executive board of Mine, Mill until 1961, when he became editor of the Mine Mill Herald. In 1967, Mine Mill was taken over by the United Steel Workers of America and Stevenson served as editor of the USWA's Information until 1972. From 1972 until 1978 he was the public relations director for USWA Canada. Stevenson left the USWA in 1978 when he accepted a position as the Canadian Secretary for the World Peace Council in Finland, he subsequently served as the WPC's Trade Union Secretary and helped establish the International Union Committee for Peace and Disarmament in 1980. He was also active with the Canadian Peace Congress.

Stevenson opposed what he viewed as the Communist Party of Canada's tendency towards revisionism. After concluding that the CPC was no longer a Marxist party, he resigned from it, after more than 60 years of membership. He was a founding editor of the anti-revisionist magazine Northstar Compass in 1991 until 1995. In his final years, he was an executive member of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People.

Death
Stevenson died on August 24, 2004, at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto after a long illness, at the age of 84. His ashes were scattered in his native Manitoba at the site of his first school. He was survived by his wife Lil Greene. Stevenson left $5,000 to Northstar Compass; the publication used it to start the "Ray Stevenson Sustaining Fund", taking donations to keep the publication going.

title: Ray Stevenson (political activist)


text: User talk:67.149.59.148

title: User talk:67.149.59.148


text:
1,2-rearrangement

A 1,2-rearrangement or 1,2-migration or 1,2-shift or Whitmore 1,2-shift is an organic reaction where a substituent moves from one atom to another atom in a chemical compound. In a 1,2 shift the movement involves two adjacent atoms but moves over larger distances are possible. In the example below the substituent R moves from carbon atom C2 to C3.

The rearrangement is intramolecular and the starting compound and reaction product are structural isomers. The 1,2-rearrangement belongs to a broad class of chemical reactions called rearrangement reactions.

A rearrangement involving a hydrogen atom is called a 1,2-hydride shift. If the substituent being rearranged is an alkyl group, it is named according to the alkyl group's anion: i.e. 1,2-methanide shift, 1,2-ethanide shift, etc.

Reaction mechanism
A 1,2-rearrangement is often initialised by the formation of a reactive intermediate such as:
 * a carbocation by heterolysis in a nucleophilic rearrangement or anionotropic rearrangement
 * a carbanion in an electrophilic rearrangement or cationotropic rearrangement
 * a free radical by homolysis
 * a nitrene.

The driving force for the actual migration of a substituent in step two of the rearrangement is the formation of a more stable intermediate. For instance a tertiary carbocation is more stable than a secondary carbocation and therefore the SN1 reaction of neopentyl bromide with ethanol yields tert-pentyl ethyl ether. Carbocation rearrangements are more common than the carbanion or radical counterparts. This observation can be explained on the basis of Hückel's rule. A cyclic carbocationic transition state is aromatic and stabilized because it holds 2 electrons. In an anionic transition state on the other hand 4 electrons are present thus antiaromatic and destabilized. A radical transition state is neither stabilized or destabilized.

The most important carbocation 1,2-shift is the Wagner–Meerwein rearrangement. A carbanionic 1,2-shift is involved in the benzilic acid rearrangement.

Radical 1,2-rearrangements
The first radical 1,2-rearrangement reported by Heinrich Otto Wieland in 1911 was the conversion of bis(triphenylmethyl)peroxide 1 to the tetraphenylethane 2.

The reaction proceeds through the triphenylmethoxyl radical A, a rearrangement to diphenylphenoxymethyl C and its dimerization. It is unclear to this day whether in this rearrangement the cyclohexadienyl radical intermediate B is a transition state or a reactive intermediate as it (or any other such species) has thus far eluded detection by ESR spectroscopy.

An example of a less common radical 1,2-shift can be found in the gas phase pyrolysis of certain polycyclic aromatic compounds. The energy required in an aryl radical for the 1,2-shift can be high (up to 60 kcal/mol or 250 kJ/mol) but much less than that required for a proton abstraction to an aryne (82 kcal/mol or 340 kJ/mol). In alkene radicals proton abstraction to an alkyne is preferred.

1,2-Rearrangements
The following mechanisms involve a 1,2-rearrangement:
 * 1,2-Wittig rearrangement
 * Alpha-ketol rearrangement
 * Beckmann rearrangement
 * Benzilic acid rearrangement
 * Brook rearrangement
 * Criegee rearrangement
 * Curtius rearrangement
 * Dowd–Beckwith ring expansion reaction
 * Favorskii rearrangement
 * Friedel–Crafts reaction
 * Fritsch–Buttenberg–Wiechell rearrangement
 * Halogen dance rearrangement
 * Hofmann rearrangement
 * Lossen rearrangement
 * Pinacol rearrangement
 * Seyferth–Gilbert homologation
 * SN1 reaction (generally)
 * Stevens rearrangement
 * Stieglitz rearrangement
 * Wagner–Meerwein rearrangement
 * Westphalen–Lettré rearrangement
 * Wolff rearrangement

title: 1,2-rearrangement


text: User talk:84.66.157.94

title: User talk:84.66.157.94


text: User talk:71.107.146.143

title: User talk:71.107.146.143


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City of Ottawa

The City of Ottawa is the corporate entity of municipal government in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The corporation is responsible for provision of services to the public as well as enforcement of municipal by-laws. It is overseen by the City Manager (Wendy Stephanson), and responsible to the Mayor of Ottawa (Mark Sutcliffe) and City Council.

History
Founded in 1826 as Bytown and later renamed Ottawa and incorporated as a city in 1855.

The City of Ottawa Act, 1999 (Loi de 1999 sur la ville d'Ottawa) is an act of the legislature of Ontario which created the City of Ottawa. The Act was first passed in 1999 to provide for the 2001 amalgamation of the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton, the former cities of Ottawa, Nepean, Kanata, Gloucester, Vanier and Cumberland, the former townships of West Carleton, Goulbourn, Rideau, and Osgoode, and the former village of Rockcliffe Park into the new City of Ottawa.

City of Ottawa Departments
The City of Ottawa’s organizational structure consists of City Council, City Manager Wendy Stephanson and the following City departments and offices:

 * City Manager's Office
 * Community and Social Services
 * Emergency and Protective Services
 * Finance and Corporate Services
 * Infrastructure and Water Services
 * Office of the City Clerk
 * Office of the City Solicitor
 * Planning, Development and Building Services
 * Public Works
 * Recreation, Cultural and Facility Services
 * Strategic Initiatives
 * Transit Services

City of Ottawa Facilities
The City operates two main administrative buildings and six client service centres.

City Hall
The current Ottawa City Hall is the chief administrative building of the City. The downtown complex consists of two connected buildings: a modern wing located on Laurier Avenue and a 19th-century heritage wing located on Elgin Street. Although City Hall has frontage on two major streets, the main entrance is on Laurier Avenue, and the municipal address is 110 Laurier Avenue West.

Mary Pitt Centre
Located at 100 Constellation Drive in the west end neighbourhood of Centrepointe, the Mary Pitt Centre houses the administrative offices of Ottawa Public Health, the Ontario Court of Justice, Community and Social Services, and Finance and Corporate Services. The nine-storey former Nortel Networks office complex is named after former City of Nepean mayor Mary Pitt.

Client Service Centres
The City operates six satellite public service counters in addition to the one found at City Hall.
 * Nepean Client Service Centre, located inside Ben Franklin Place.
 * Kanata Client Service Centre
 * Orleans Client Service Centre
 * Metcalfe Client Service Centre
 * West Carleton Client Service Centre
 * North Gower Client Service Centre

title: City of Ottawa


text: User talk:82.36.143.65

title: User talk:82.36.143.65


text:
Talk:List of Universities in the United Arab Emirates

VfD archived discussion
Votes for deletion/List of Universities in the United Arab Emirates Jinian 22:43, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


text:
Talk:City of Ottawa

Untitled
Work in progress! Add as you please! -Joshuapaquin 22:43, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Why have this article and Ottawa
Shouldn't this page just be a redirect like other cities (see City of Toronto)? Some people might come here thinking this is all we have on wikipedia for the city of Ottawa! Mattximus (talk) 20:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * This isn't an article on Ottawa the place, but rather on the corporate entity that serves as municipal government in Ottawa. The lead paragraph is quite clear that this is about the organization, not the place, and there is a clear link to the Ottawa article in the first sentence.  I doubt anyone who reads this article would think this is the article on the place.  If someone wanted to write up an article on the municipal body corporate for Canada's most populous city at City of Toronto, it would be open for them to do so. Having said all that about the distinction between the two articles, this article doesn't have much content and probably could be merged.  We could also look to see if there are other articles on the municipal level of government for other cities, and see if the article names use a different naming convention.  --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the best way is to summarize as much information as possible into the "Local government and politics" category of the main Ottawa page, and then create a page called Municipal government of Ottawa, similar to Municipal government of Toronto. Although there is no standard, I think this is more clear than calling the page "City of Ottawa" when talking about the municipal government of Ottawa. What do you think? Mattximus (talk) 00:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello. Sorry for the delay in responding.  I somehow missed noticing your reply.  I have no real strong opinion either way on this issue, and have no objection to moving this to Municipal government of Ottawa.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with the proposed move as well. Newwhist (talk) 18:55, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Proposed addition: Municipal finances
Information to be added or removed: The City of Ottawa is expected to spend CAD $3.764 billion on operational expenditures in 2020. Primary sources of funding will include: 46.7% from property taxes, 24.8% from fees and services charges and 18.9% from government grants. As of 2020, the municipal residential tax rate for the City of Ottawa was 0.515820%. The municipal commercial property tax rate was 0.931752%. The municipal industrial property tax rate was 1.290727%. Additional taxes such as the Transit Zone levy, Ottawa Police Services levy, and Fire Services levy are also charged, but may vary between different regions, service areas, and property types. As of 2019, residents in the City of Ottawa can expect to pay a total property tax of close to 0.7571% of their home’s market value.

An additional CAD $813.8 million is expected to be spent on capital improvements and programs. Primary sources of funding will include: 68.5% from reserves, 14.5% from development charges and 15.5% from debt.

Explanation of issue: Additional information regarding the municipal government of Ottawa's finances, especially in regards to property tax. I have included a picture sourced from my company that illustrates the changes in the property tax rates of Ottawa in the past 10 years. It has no visual attribution to my company, so I believe it can add value without stepping into the bounds of advertising. I have also included information regarding property tax rates relative to the market prices of properties. Property assessments in Ontario are conducted only once every 4 years and can significantly deviate from market prices of properties. The inclusion of a residential property tax rate relative to property prices helps readers get a better understanding of property tax rates relative to numbers (property prices) that are publicly available rather than private (assessed values). Our company established this finding through an analysis of over 60,000 property listings and sales throughout Ontario.

References supporting change: I have included references in my post. Let me know if different formatting is required. Residential property taxes relative to market prices were obtained from Wowa Leads' Ottawa Property Tax page. The domain has been unfairly blacklisted. I request that you review my request impartially on the basis of its content and value rather than the blacklist consideration.

COI Disclosure: I am an employee of Wowa Leads, Inc., a real estate and financial services company in Canada that aims to promote transparency in the real estate industry.

P.S. If you have any suggestions for the formatting of this section, or suggestions in general, please let me know. Bsl4canadian (talk) 17:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC) Bsl4canadian (talk) 17:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

 * Hi I'm declining this request for two reasons: (1) I personally don't feel this would improve the article, and (2) the sources you've suggested appear to be primary sources (see that link for why that's an issue).
 * (1) Your suggested edit appears to be a quite in-depth description of taxes in Ottawa. Although a short, well-sourced summary of the city's taxes may have a place in this article, I feel that your proposed addition is too detailed (see WP:TMI for a short explanation of why I think that's an issue).
 * (2) See WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTSTATS (especially point no.3). Although your proposed addition appears to just be a statement of fact; I don't think that these statistics should necessarily be added to the article. If you can find secondary sources that discuss Ottawa's taxes, then that may be a useful addition to the article.
 * If you want more help, you can try asking at the help desk, or you can, or just leave a message on my talk page.  Seagull123  Φ  17:17, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

current municipal master plan and the direction the city gov is heading in (essentially a "modern history" section, opening up easy oppurtinity to add past history, too~)
i plan on adding this regardless myself and this is meawnt to serve as a reminder. if its been a couple months since i posted this, and still havent gotten to it, please give me a message :) 🥰🥰 Lynxano (talk) 10:07, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:City of Ottawa


text: Category:Chutney musicians

title: Category:Chutney musicians


text: User talk:24.151.29.113

title: User talk:24.151.29.113


text:
Jaak Jõerüüt

Jaak Jõerüüt (born 9 December 1947 in Tallinn) is an Estonian writer and politician. He was the defense minister of Estonia from November 2004 to 10 October 2005.

Jõerüüt first came to political prominence when he became one of the voters for the Estonian restoration of Independence. He was then appointed to be Minister of Defence in November 2004 in Juhan Parts's government. When Parts resigned in April 2005, Jaak Jõerüüt was one of the few ministers retained in Andrus Ansip's government.

In September 2005, Jõerüüt resigned voluntarily over the so-called "T-Shirt Affair". (A T-shirt was produced with a list of the names of several Estonian politicians, including Jõerüüt, who are former members of the communist party; it was headed "Commies into the Oven!")  At a soccer match, this was worn by several people who were in the employment of his ministry. Jõerüüt was succeeded by Jürgen Ligi.

Jõerüüt previously served as Estonia's ambassador to the United Nations in 2004. He served as ambassador to Italy and Malta from 1998 through 2002, and ambassador to Cyprus from 1999 through 2004. From 1993 to 1997, Jõerüüt was ambassador to Finland and from 2006 to 2010 to Latvia and now to Sweden from 2011 to 2014.

title: Jaak Jõerüüt


text:
User talk:Tj raza

Do not vandalize others' user pages or you will be blocked from editing. Only warning. Meelar (talk) 22:44, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

 * You suck. Do something useful please. - Ken Bogan 22:49, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tj raza


text: Category:Chutney music

title: Category:Chutney music


text:
Pedro Teixeira

Pedro Teixeira (b.1570-1585 - d.4 July 1641), occasionally referred to as the Conqueror of the Amazon, was a Portuguese explorer and military officer, who became, in 1637, the first European to travel up and down the entire length of the Amazon River, he also headed the government of the captaincy of Pará in two different periods, one in 1620-1621 and another in 1640–1641.

Teixeira was born either in 1570 or 1585 at the Vila of Cantanhede, born to a noble family, he was a Knight of the Order of Christ and a Portuguese nobleman in service of the royal family, he married Ana Cunha in Praia, Azores, daughter of Sargento-Mor Diogo de Campos Moreno, with whom Teixeira fought together in Maranhão

First arriving in Brazil on 1607, Teixeira participated in Portugal's campaign against French Maranhão, he fought in the Battle of Guaxenduba and distinguished himself commanding either the fort of Natividade or Santa Maria.

Because of Teixeira and other Portuguese who pushed into the depths of the Amazon, Portugal was able to obtain far more of South America from their Spanish competitors than the Treaty of Tordesillas had granted in 1494. Teixeira's expedition became the first simultaneously to travel up and down the Amazon River. He was called by the Indian natives Curiua-Catu, meaning The Good and Friendly White Man.

Early Colonization of Pará
Pedro Teixeira was part of Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco's expedition to found the city of Belém. On 9 August 1616, by orders of Francisco Caldeira, he left with two armed canoes to fight the Dutch and English, which had established positions in the northern shore of the Amazon River, where he captured a Dutch ship in the Xingu estuary and brought its artillery guns to Belém. In 1617, he also led attacks against the Tupinambás, aiding an ongoing campaign by Portuguese settlers in Maranhão, with the goal of a clearing a land road between Belém and São Luis.

In 1620, when Custodio Valente, the Capitão-Mor in charge of Pará left for Portugal. Teixeira, his adjunct, became interim governor of the Captaincy. During this period, Bento Maciel Parente made an attempt to take the captaincy for himself by force, but facing resistance by Pedro Teixeira, left for Maranhão. However, Parente is later given the position by the Governor of Brazil, and immediately gave orders for Teixeira to leave and lead another expedition against the natives.

In 1623, he commanded a large-scale operation to destroy the Dutch fort of Mariocai, where he and Bento Maciel Parente raised the fort of Santo Antônio to protect the surrounding area against foreign incursions, the settlement around the fort would later be known as the town of Gurupá.

He also lead several more campaigns and expeditions in the Amazon defeating the Dutch in their forts of Orange and Nassau, both in the Xingu River, and on 23 May 1625 assaulted the shared Dutch and English fortress of Mandiatuba(Maniutuba?) on the Xingu River, facing the forces of Dutch commander Nicolau Ouaden, who briefly fled to the Island of Tucujus where he and the English commander Philip Pursell, both of whom were killed by Teixeira's forces in Tucujus, in the same month he stops a new attempt by the Dutch to occupy the islands in the Amazon Delta and on 21 October 1625 he defeated the Dutch in the fort of Taurege(Tourege/Torrego), expelling the Dutch from their holdings in the Amazon basin.

In 1626, Manuel de Sousa d'Eça, Capitão-Mor of Pará, ordered Pedro Teixeira to procure native slaves. Teixeira left Belém with 26 soldiers and a Capuchin friar, visiting two native villages, one of Tapuyusús Indians which he bribed, and another of Tapajós Indians, who refused to trade men for goods.

In September 1629, Teixeira besieged the English Fort of Taurege, where he defeated two enemy sorties and on 24 October 1629 the help that was sent to relieved the fort's forces, with the garrison led by James Pursell surrendering in the same day and being sent to Belém. This earned a reprisal on 26 October 1629, led by the English Captain, Roger North, who attacked Teixeira in the Fort of Santo Antônio in Gurupá, where Teixeira triumphed and rebuked the English assault, North, defeated left to found the fort of Camaú.

1637: Upriver Journey
In 1637, two Franciscan friars, André de Toledo and Domingos de La Brieba, under threats from nearby natives, abandoned their mission on the Amazon River and, with six soldiers, paddled a canoe up the entire length of the river to the Portuguese settlement of Gurupá, from where they left to Belém, and later to São Luís.

Their arrival led the Portuguese to seriously consider an expedition against the current of the Amazon River. Consequently, the governor of Maranhão, Jácome Raimundo de Noronha, commissioned an expedition with the goal of discovering the river all the way to Quito, learning the best places to establish fortifications, securing through the good conduct of the expeditionaries and small gifts the peace and friendship of the indigenous tribes, and founding a settlement to mark the limit, in the Amazon, of Portuguese control. And so did Pedro Teixeira.

On 25 July 1637 Pedro Teixeira's fleet arrived in Guajará, from where it left to Cametá to secure more crewmates and ships, with everything ready Teixeira left on 28 October 1637, his expedition consisted of 47 large canoes, with 70 soldiers, a few clergymen, and 1,200 Natives, his guide was the friar Domingos de La Brieba.

In January 1638, the expedition found the mouth of the Rio Negro, and on 3 July 1638 the mouth of the Napo River, finally reaching the Quijos river on 15 August 1638, crossing the Spanish settlement of Baeza, and from there arrived in Quito in September 1638.

1639: Return Journey
Completed the initial journey, on 16 February 1639, Teixeira and his expedition left Quito for Belém. Six months later, on 16 August 1639, they founded the settlement of Franciscana, whose name was chosen in honor of the Franciscan friars whose initial journey served as the impetus for Teixeira's expedition, on the River Ouro (theorized to be the Aguarico River). Of Franciscana little remains to this day, and the Portuguese didn't manage to keep that border, with it later being fixed on the Javary River.

Teixeira's expedition arrived back in the city of Belém on 12 December 1639, for his merits he was promoted to Capitão-Mor. He accepted the post of governor of Pará on 28 February 1640, a position in which he would remain in for a year and three months, until 26 May 1641. He died on 4 July 1641. His ashes rest on the Belém Metropolitan Cathedral in the city of Belém.

Legacy
Teixeira's grand expedition and the founding of the settlement of Franciscana to mark the limit between the Portuguese and Spanish Crown would be used extensively by the Portuguese to sustain their claims to Upper Amazonas, including in the negotiations for the Treaty of Madrid, over a hundred years afterwards.

On 10 December 2009, the Brazilian Senate made a tribute to Pedro Teixeira, celebrating the 370 years since Teixeira's Amazon Expedition.

title: Pedro Teixeira


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Inertia (comics)

Inertia, in comics, may refer to:

 * Inertia (Marvel Comics), Edith Freiberg, a lesbian Army private
 * Inertia (DC Comics), Thaddeus Thawne, a supervillainous clone of Bart Allen

title: Inertia (comics)


text:
User talk:Din123

the Buddhas of Bamyan.
Do you remember the picture of the ancient Buddha statue from Aukana that you posted on the Buddhism in Sri Lanka page. Is that the statue of Buddha that was meant to resemble the Buddhas of Bamyan. Please Ansewer, and thank you. 69.18.107.111 (talk) 14:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Photo request
Hi,

You uploaded File:Sri lanka aukana buddha statue.jpg quite a long time ago - do you happen to have a different photo that has humans in the picture so the reader can see the scale of the statue? Thanks - Tempshill (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Din123


text:
Clotel

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867.

The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America." Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families.

Background
The novel played with known 19th-century reports that Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered several children with her. Of mixed race and described as nearly white, she was believed to be the half sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, the youngest of six children by her father John Wayles with his slave Betty Hemings. Members of the large Hemings family were among more than 100 slaves inherited by Martha and Thomas Jefferson after her father's death. Martha died when Jefferson was 40 and he never remarried.

Although Jefferson never responded to the rumors, some historians believe that his freeing of the four Hemings children as they came of age is significant: he may have let Beverly (a male) and certainly let his sister Harriet Hemings "escape" in 1822 from Monticello, and freed two by his will in 1826, although he was heavily in debt. His daughter gave Hemings "her time" (meaning that she freed her), so she may have been able to live freely in Charlottesville with her two youngest sons, Madison and Eston Hemings, for the rest of her life. Except for three other Hemings men whom Jefferson freed in his will, the rest of his 130 slaves were sold in 1827. A 1998 DNA study confirmed a match between the Jefferson male line and Eston Hemings' direct male descendant. Based on this and the body of historic evidence, most Jeffersonian scholars have come to accept that Jefferson did father Hemings's children over an extended period of time.

As an escaped slave, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, William Wells Brown was at risk in the United States. While in England on a lecture tour in 1849, he decided to stay there with his two daughters after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, as he was at risk of being taken by slave catchers. He published Clotel in 1853 in London; it was the first novel published by an African American. In 1854 a British couple purchased freedom for Brown, and he returned with his daughters to the US.

Plot summary

The narrative of Clotel plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young mixed-race slave Currer and her two light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Because the mother is a slave, according to partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662, her daughters are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery. Currer, described as "a bright mulatto" (meaning light-skinned) gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa.

After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold as slaves. Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife. They cannot legally marry under state laws against miscegenation.

Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever, shortly before Peck's daughter was preparing to emancipate her.

Althesa marries her white master, Henry Morton, a Northerner, by passing as a white woman. They have daughters Jane and Ellen, who are educated. Although supporting abolition, Morton fails to manumit Althesa and their daughters. After Althesa and Morton both die, their daughters are enslaved. Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement, and Jane dies in slavery from heartbreak.

Green and Clotel have a daughter Mary, also mixed race of course, and majority white. When Green becomes ambitious and involved in local politics, he abandons his relationship with Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child."

Clotel is sold to a planter in Vicksburg, Mississippi. There she meets William, another slave, and they plan a bold escape. Dressing as a white man, Clotel is accompanied by William acting as her slave; they travel and gain freedom by reaching the free state of Ohio. (This is based on the tactics of the 1849 escape by Ellen Craft and William Craft). William continues his flight to Canada (an estimated 30,000 fugitive slaves reached there by 1852). Clotel returns to Virginia to try to free her daughter Mary. After being captured in Richmond, Clotel is taken to Washington, DC for sale at its slave market. She escapes and is pursued through the city by slave catchers. Surrounded by them on the Long Bridge, she commits suicide by jumping to her death in the Potomac River.

"Thus died Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States."

Mary is forced to work as a domestic slave for her father Horatio Green and his white wife. She arranges to trade places in prison with her lover, the slave George. He escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe. Ten years later, after the Frenchman's death, George and Mary reunite by chance in Dunkirk, France. The novel ends with their marriage.

Primary characters

 * Currer – Semi-autonomous slave of Thomas Jefferson; mother of Clotel and Althesa. Currer is "Sally Hemings fictional counterpart." Instead of serving Jefferson directly, she works as a laundress, giving him her pay. She exchanges her income for a "pseudo-freedom" for her and her daughters, and gets them educated. She is purchased by Rev. Peck.
 * Clotel – Daughter of Currer and Jefferson; sister to Althesa. At 16 years old, she is purchased by Horatio Green, with whom she has a daughter Mary. Later she is sold again, ending up in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She escapes from there with the slave William, while disguised and traveling as a white gentleman, Mr. Johnson.
 * Althesa – Daughter of Currer and Jefferson; sister to Clotel. Purchased at 14 years old by James Crawford and resold to Dr. Morton. She passes as white so they can be married; they have two daughters, Jane and Ellen, and her life looks hopeful.
 * Mary – Daughter of Clotel and Horatio Green. She becomes the lover of the slave George Green, jailed as an insurgent after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831. She switches places with him in prison, allowing him to escape dressed as a woman. She is eventually sold to a French man who takes her to Europe. After his death, she encounters George by chance, and they marry.
 * George Green – Slave in the service of Horatio Green; becomes Mary's lover. After escaping prison with her help, he flees to the free states, evading recapture in Ohio with the help of a Quaker. He reaches Canada and migrates to Great Britain. Ten years after arriving in England, he travels to Dunkirk, France, where he re-encounters Mary, and they marry.
 * Horatio Green – He is the first to buy Clotel after Jefferson's death, and takes her as a concubine. He is Mary's biological father. He sells Clotel and enslaves Mary after marrying a white woman.
 * Georgiana Peck – Daughter of Reverend Peck.
 * Reverend Peck – Father of Georgiana Peck. He buys Currer, assigning her to kitchen and household affairs.
 * William – An enslaved mechanic who is hired out to work alongside Clotel in Vicksburg. While paying his master from his earnings, he saved $150 in secret. He and Clotel use this to support their bold escape.

Critical reception
The novel has been extensively studied in the late 20th and early 21st century. Kirkpatrick writes that Clotel demonstrates the "pervasive, recurring victimization of black women under slavery. Even individuals of mixed-race status who attempt to pass as white nevertheless suffer horrifically." It exposes "the insidious intersection of economic gain and political ambition—represented by founding fathers such as Jefferson and Horatio Green." It is a "scathing, sarcastic, comprehensive critique of slavery in the American South, race prejudice in the American North, and religious hypocrisy in the American nation as a whole." The novel and the title "walk a precarious line between oral history, written history, and artistic license." Mitchell said that Brown emphasized romantic conventions, dramatic incident and a political view in his novel.

Recent scholars have also analyzed Clotel for its representations of gender and race. Sherrard-Johnson notes that Brown portrayed both the "tragic central characters " and the "heroic figures" as mulattoes with Angloid features, similar to his own appearance. She thinks he uses the cases of "nearly white" slaves to gain sympathy for his characters. She notes that he borrowed elements from the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child's plot in her short story, "The Quadroons" (1842). He also incorporated notable elements of recent events, such as the escape of the Crafts, and the freedom suit court case of Salome, an enslaved woman in Louisiana who claimed to be an immigrant born in Germany.

Martha Cutter notes that Brown portrayed his women characters generally as passive victims of slavery and as representations of True Women and the cult of domesticity, which were emphasized at the time for women. They are not portrayed as wanting or seeking freedom, but as existing through love and suffering. Cutter asks, if Mary could free George, why did she not free herself? Although Brown published three later versions of Clotel, he did not seriously change this characterization of the African-American women. Slave women such as Ellen Craft were known to have escaped slavery, but Brown did not portray such women fully achieving freedom.

Mitchell, in contrast, believes that Brown portrays his women as acting heroically: she notes that Clotel escapes and goes back to Virginia to rescue her daughter, and more than one escape is described. She thinks he emphasizes adventure for the sake of character development. Even after heroic action, Brown's women are subject to the suffering of slavery. He emphasizes its evil of illegitimacy, and the arbitrary breakup of families.

Influence
In addition to being the first novel published by an African American, Clotel became a model that influenced many other nineteenth-century African-American writers. It is the first instance of an African-American writer "to dramatize the underlying hypocrisy of democratic principles in the face of African American slavery."

Through Clotel, Brown introduces into African-American literature the "tragic mulatto" character. Such characters, representing the historical reality of hundreds of thousands of mixed-race people, many of them slaves, were further developed by "Webb, Wilson, Chesnutt, Johnson, and other novelists", writing primarily after the American Civil War.

Style
According to Brown in its preface, he wrote Clotel as a polemic narrative against slavery, written for a British audience:

"If the incidents set forth in the following pages should add anything new to the information already given to the Public through similar publications, and should thereby aid in bringing British influence to bear upon American slavery, the main object for which this work was written will have been accomplished."

It is also considered a propagandistic narrative, in that Brown leveraged "sentimentality, melodrama, contrived plots, [and] newspaper articles" as devices "to damage the 'peculiar institution' of slavery."

Chapters predominantly open "with an epigraph underscoring the romance’s urgent message: 'chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man.' "

Clotel is told through the use of a "third-person limited omniscient narrator." The narrator is "morally didactic and consistently ironic." The narrative is fragmented, in that it "combines fact, fiction, and external literary sources." It presents the reader with a structure that is episodic and is informed by "legends, myths, music, and concrete eye-witness accounts of the fugitive slaves themselves." It also "draws on antislavery lectures and techniques," such as "abolitionist verse and fiction, newspaper stories and ads, legislative reports, public addresses, private letters, and personal anecdotes."

title: Clotel


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Phil Cantillon

Phil Cantillon (born 2 June 1976) is an England and Ireland dual international former professional rugby league footballer who played professionally from 1992 to 2007. He successfully captained Ireland and broke numerous try-scoring world records at club and international level.

Early career
Cantillon started his career at his hometown club Wigan in 1992. He captained the Great Britain Academy team while at Wigan, taking part in the 1994 tour to Australia. He was released by Wigan in 1995 without playing a first team game for the club.

With the launch of Super League in 1995 and the move from winter to summer sport, Great Britain coach Phil Larder signed Cantillon for the then star studded Keighley Cougars – becoming an immediate star with his no nonsense style and try scoring ability. He scored a hat trick on his début against Wakefield, gaining star status and quickly gaining full international honours by the end of the year.

Cantillon went on to play for England in the 1996 Super League World Nines in Fiji under Phil Larder eventually losing to Australia. He scored a memorable full-length solo try in the 1996 Divisional Premiership Final at Old Trafford against the Salford Reds. Keighley went into administration in 1997, and Cantillon was one of several players sold to the Leeds Rhinos to clear the club's debt. He quickly made his impact scoring on his debut against Wigan in August 1997. He was part of the 1998 squad that were runners up in the inaugural Super League final loss to Wigan at Old Trafford. He then signed for the Widnes Vikings for the start of the 1999 season.

Widnes Vikings
The hooker and utility star became a firm favourite of the fans with cult figure status gained with spectator chants of "Oh ah Cantillon" in place at grounds everywhere. His electrifying burst of speed, leadership and superb balance served him well during a long and illustrious career, which saw him successfully captain Ireland Rugby League and break many try scoring records including world records, at club and international level. In doing so, Cantillon is recognised has an iconic and the greatest try scoring forward to have ever played the game. He also scored one of fastest tries in the history of the game in 2000, scoring after 18 seconds of play. He was named in the top five best hookers in the world during 1999–2004.

He was credited for the evolution of the modern day hooker role during the nineties and noughties by Rugby League media through his captaincy, support play, evasive running, try scoring ability and defensive qualities.

Cantillon played for Widnes where he ran up a remarkable tally of 117 tries in five years, playing over 100 consecutive games. Cantillon took out the Tom Bergin Trophy as man of the match in the 2001 Grand Final victory. Cantillon is placed ninth in the all-time list of club try scorers which features many legends from the Widnes cup kings and world champions era of dominance, with the highest ever for a forward. Cantillon was also selected for England for the World Sevens in Australia in 2003, taking them to the final loss against the Parramatta Eels with two tries in a man of the match performance in both the semi-final against Manly and France in the quarter finals.

During his five seasons at Widnes, Cantillon broke many try scoring records including a world record for most tries in a season with 48 in 2001 surpassing the legendary and iconic Great Britain captain Ellery Hanley in doing so. He is the only player to have scored five tries in a match more than once, doing so three times in 1999, 2000 and  2001. Cantillon went on to smash the record with seven in one match, holding the world record for most tries in a match by a forward. He scored a total of 115 tries from 152 appearances placing him in the top ten all time try scorers for Widnes. Cantillon's try scoring exploits catapulted Widnes back into Super League where they narrowly missed out on the top five. Cantillon broke the world record in 2000 for most tries by a hooker with 30, before yet another try scoring world record breaking season in 2001, where he displayed exceptional leadership and durability in leading the Vikings to success. After several years away, Cantillon returned to Wigan in July 2002 in the runup to the Super League playoffs.

Cantillon retired from professional rugby league in 2007 after a 16-season professional career, with spells at Wigan, Keighley Cougars, Leeds Rhinos, Widnes Vikings, Halifax, Rochdale Hornets and finally a player coach role at the now defunct Blackpool. Cantillon went on to play in 2011 with other Rugby League legends from over the past years in an effort to raise money for charity with Great Britain All Stars.

Whilst still playing professionally in the early 2000s, and following his retirement, Cantillon was appointed in a number of general manager positions in the commercial, not for profit and local government sector.

International career
Cantillon was named captain of the Ireland national rugby league team in 2003, qualifying for under the grandparent rule after firstly representing England. Ireland enjoyed an outstanding European Nations tournament, finally losing to France in Dublin, with firstly an away win versus Scotland in which Cantillon scored his first try for Ireland.

Cantillon led Ireland to the European Nations Final against England in 2004 scoring a record four tries in a semi-final victory over Scotland and to World Cup qualifying wins against Russia and Lebanon in 2005 and 2006, ensuring they booked their place for the 2008 World Cup in Australia, signing of his performances by holding the record for number of tries scored by any player for Ireland R.L with ten and most tries in a match with four, taking them to be ranked 2nd best international team in Europe. He was named as one of the greatest players to play for Ireland Rugby League. He was the European Nations Tournaments top try scorer in 2004 with five tries.

Cantillon also represented England in the inaugural World Nines in 1996 in Fiji, and represented England in the World Sevens in 2003 in Australia, and Great Britain Academy from 1992-1995 which he captained.

title: Phil Cantillon


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Cocktail dress

A cocktail dress is a dress suitable at semi-formal occasions, sometimes called cocktail parties, usually in the late afternoon, and usually with accessories.

After World War I, the idea of the "working woman" became popular. After 1929, it was more common to see women in a social context. With the help of liberation organizations, the idea of a "modern woman" began to emerge, and soon the "drinking woman" could be seen in business settings. Companies increasingly hosted cocktail parties to have an entertaining environment for employees and customers to mingle. These parties usually began after 5:00 P.M. Since guests are expected to walk around and meet people, clothes made for these occasions are often functional and comfortable. This practical and fashionable garment became a popular uniform for progressive elite women in the 1920s.

19th century
A dinner dress was a gown that was worn by ladies in the Victorian era for dinners and parties at homes. It could be very elaborate, but often had long sleeves, a high neck, or a narrow skirt to set them apart from evening gowns. In the 20th century however, dinner dresses went out of fashion and were replaced by evening gowns for formal dinners.

20th century
During the 1920s, French couture's clientele consisted mainly of American department stores that reproduced French designs and promoted French designers. This led French designers to create dresses to appeal to American buyers. Since cocktail parties originated in the United States, French designers created their own version of a cocktail dress. However, unlike the strict, professional cuts of American-styled dresses, the French designed much looser and free flowing beach pajamas, consisting of a silk top and palazzo pants, usually paired with a mid-calf-length wrap jacket or sheath. These clothes were usually worn for more exclusive and intimate gatherings. The French style valued simplicity and elegance in their designs, while American-styles valued functionality and efficiency. American clients wanted a single dress that could be modified to fit several times of the day with the use of accessories. The fabric of the dress and whether it was worn with a cocktail hat differentiated a day dress from a cocktail dress. By the mid-1920s, hemlines of dresses were just below the knee rather than ankle-length, which was more common for evening gowns.

The Great Depression
To take account of the economic crisis, designers such as Muriel King emphasized the importance of accessories by designing simple dresses, which also helped the market for jewelry, hats, gloves, and sheaths. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, private cocktail parties became more popular than corporate gatherings, as luxurious lifestyles were no longer seen as fashionable. These elite gatherings helped the rise of day-to-evening fashion.

Post–World War II
After World War II, Dior came out with the "New Look", which consisted of a tight waistline, long hemlines, and fuller skirts. This style flattered the female silhouette and created a romantic aura around the aesthetic. Since cocktail parties were so popular, American designers such as Anne Fogarty began to create cocktail dresses that revolved around the "New Look" using less expensive fabrics. French designers, such as Dior and Jacques Fath, saw the high market for cocktail dresses and began to design dresses for American department stores.

With the increasing feasibility and popularity of air travel, French cocktail dresses became popular globally. As French women traveled to wealthy resort cities, the designs of their cocktail dresses spread among the American elite. While French couture relied on travel and American department stores, American designers relied on fashion magazines, such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, and the need to dress semi-formally for cocktail hour.

In 1948, Christian Dior labeled this business-casual dress "cocktail dress", which allowed department stores to advertise specifically "cocktail" garments and accessories, increasing the growth of fashion stores. The craze for cocktail culture drove sales in cocktail merchandise as well, such as cocktail and martini-printed fabrics.

Composition
The American cocktail dress could be anything from a "little black dress" to a floral-printed dress or a plain, short evening gown, as long as it was worn with accessories. These might be earrings, pearl necklaces, bracelets, or brooches (stylish in the 1950s). However, it was most common to wear costume jewelry. Although they were inexpensive, wearing large amounts was seen as daring and luxurious, especially when wearing a modest dress. In addition, the jewelry would be worn along with hats: velvet, lace, or horsehair; little turbans or close-fitting caps of brocade, taffeta, or satin. Gloves were mandatory, needed to be fashionably up-to-date, and could be any length, material, or color. Shoes were usually high heels, but evening satin sandals were also common and could be dyed to match the color of the dress.

Etiquette
As cocktail parties became more high-end, the attire became subject to stricter guidelines, which allowed people to easily differentiate between the different identities at the party: the organizer, hostess, and wife. There were strict rules of etiquette as women needed to wear gloves, hostesses were not allowed to wear accessories, and guests were required to wear cocktail hats, but never indoors.

title: Cocktail dress


text:
Visual Prolog

Visual Prolog, previously known as PDC Prolog and Turbo Prolog, is a strongly typed object-oriented extension of Prolog. It was marketed by Borland as Turbo Prolog (version 1.0 in 1986 and version 2.0 in 1988). It is now developed and marketed by the Danish firm PDC that originally created it. Visual Prolog can build Microsoft Windows GUI-applications, console applications, DLLs (dynamic link libraries), and CGI-programs. It can also link to COM components and to databases by means of ODBC.

Visual Prolog contains a compiler which generates x86 and x86-64 machine code. Unlike standard Prolog, programs written in Visual Prolog are statically typed. This allows some errors to be caught at compile-time instead of run-time.

Hanoi example
In the Towers of Hanoi example, the Prolog inference engine figures out how to move a stack of any number of progressively smaller disks, one at a time, from the left pole to the right pole in the described way, by means of a center as transit, so that there's never a bigger disk on top of a smaller disk. The predicate  takes an integer indicating the number of disks as an initial argument.

Reception
Bruce F. Webster of BYTE praised Turbo Prolog in September 1986, stating that it was the first Borland product to excite him as much as Turbo Pascal did. He liked the user interface and low price, and reported that two BYU professors stated that it was superior to the Prolog they used at the university. While questioning the market demand for the language, Webster concluded that "Turbo Prolog may be as significant a leap in software design as Turbo Pascal represented three years ago", and recommended it to those "at all interested in artificial intelligence, databases, expert systems, or new ways of thinking about programming". Another author in the magazine that month wrote that the language's nonstandard, more structured syntax as making "source listings much more readable than those of standard Prolog". While stating that it had "many good features", he stated that Turbo Prolog's "Turbo Pascal flavor in its compiler and strong data typing ... create an identity problem for the language". Describing it as "Turbo Paslog", the author concluded that he does "not recommend it if you are seriously considering becoming a Prolog programmer". The magazine in 1989 listed Turbo Prolog 2.0 as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards, approving of how Borland had "developed a system for real-world applications programming".

Books about Visual Prolog

 * Thomas W. de Boer, A Beginners Guide to Visual Prolog
 * Chinese translation
 * Eduardo Costa, Visual Prolog for Tyros
 * Russian translation
 * Chinese translation
 * Giovanni Torrero, VISUAL PROLOG PER PRINCIPIANTI Italian 113 pages (pdf)
 * Randall Scott, A Guide to Artificial Intelligence with Visual Prolog, ISBN 978-1-4327-4936-1

title: Visual Prolog


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ipsegensphobia

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete (pending; block-compress error). Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:13, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ipsegensphobia
I believe this is a neologism, as the only mentions I see online are at Wikipedia mirrors. Without any further documentation, delete. Joyous 22:50, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, neologism. Megan1967 08:12, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 17 googles. NNneologism. Delete. Radiant_* 08:18, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


text:
Talk:Pedro Teixeira

Untitled
First article I've written, needs to be classified, expanded, etc K_R 22:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

moved
realized that teixiera was spelled incorrectly on this page, as well as most of the links to this page, so I moved the article and updated the links -K_R 21:38, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further reading, 1 false
Please delete the entry for

as this item is just "the other" Pedro Teixeira, not our "bandeirante". Check page 1, maybe you can cite this. --Emeritus (talk) 10:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * (+ Index via Hathi Trust)

Date of birth: 1585

Unfortunately there has been much confusions of the persons with the same name, this happened in Worldcat and other catalogues. I think, there is agreement now, even if the very exact date of his birth (day, month) is not given, that he has been born 1585 in Cantahede. So does his town of birth and we should take is as stated for example by Senat of Brazil.

We should not use "b.1570-1585" any more. I'm presently correcting and adding german WP and WD (awful!). --Emeritus (talk) 10:59, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to affirm a specific birthyear for Teixeira because my sources differ. A lot of the more biographical information I've added regarding Pedro Teixeira came from Ernesto Cruz's History of Pará and he gives it as 1570. Navios e Portos' entry on Teixeira gave both dates as possible. Both portuguese and spanish wikipedias add 1587 as a possible birth date - though I couldn't find a source for that claim, so I didn't add it as a possible year.

I've briefly considered just leaving it as "b. 16th century" because that's the only certainty, but in the end I've decided that leaving it as "b.1570-1585" is the lesser evil. Should you find sources that make year 1585 the more probable one, I'd suggest you add a footnote explaining that there is a divergence as well.-- MosesNotProphet (talk) 00:17, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

 * 1587–1641 is given by Biblioteca Pública Arthur Vianna in Belém within their catalogue entries, which is against dates given by E. H. da Cruz of their Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Pará. Cruz, while president of IHGP, also created a condecorative medal "A Medalha Pedro Teixeira" with 1570 - 1641 on it. But, caveat, Cruz never cites any source. (But all cites him, maybe he is not a reliable source). --Emeritus (talk) 09:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pedro Teixeira


text:
Talk:Aonach Eagach

Most difficult?
I would suggest that An Teallach is a more difficult and more serious day out than the Aonach Eagach, or Lliathach, especially in winter. Linuxlad 22:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I can;t really comment - having wimped out and taken the traverse path on both Liathach and An Teallach! The Aggy ridge was undoubtedly my scariest day in the hills, and I saw a guy fall off, needing rescued. A scrambler I am not. I took the quote direct from the SMC Munros book, I think perhaps that the way it is phrased there makes the distiction that you don't need to go over (or round) the Corrag Bhuidhe buttresse to do An Teallach as both the munros are to the north, whereas on Liathach and AE you have to 'do' the ridge, unless you bag 'em in a straight up and down fashion. Grinner 09:24, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * To my mind, knowing when to take a traverse path is, especially in winter, part of the 'fun' Linuxlad
 * Hope you don't mind me chippin' in but Crowberry ridge on the "Bookle" has to be the beast. I've done Am Fasarinan (Liathach), Corrag Bhuidhe and the AE but I lost my bottle on Crowberry and turned back. It's a bloody steep drop off on top of Rannoch wall.-Gillean666 22:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * But you're not comparing like with like, surely. CR and Tower Ridge are graded even in summer. AE and friends are 'sporting' walking routes in summer; (their usual winter grade is a slightly equivocal 1/2). Linuxlad
 * Yeah you're right, I think CR and Tower should be classed as rock climbs not scrambles. Gillean666 23:17, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Descents
The clachaig gulley path needs a large 'health warning' - (it certainly wrecked the end of my day (and my knees) last week!) Of the alternatives, the path from the col below the Pap is the recommended route in most guidebooks (IIRC); it's also possible to turn down soon after the final top (Sgur nam Fiannaidh)is reached and descend steep grass to the slopes above the junction of the minor road to Glencoe village and the A82 - (the old (1972) SMC guidebook describes this as descending 'by screes and grass, easily though steeply towards Loch Antriochtan'). Linuxlad 09:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC).

"Scrambling Guidebook"
Methinks this article needs trimming. It's gone from being encyclopaedic to being more like a personal view of the walk/scramble. I'd have a go myself but it's been 20 years since I was on the ridge and a lotta detail's been forgotten. Gillean666 12:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Having looked at the additions of 22 September properly for the first time today, I'd say that what was there before was good enough, and the additions, while very useful for anyone wanting to scramble the ridge, contain very little content suitable for an encyclopedia. In any case I imagine at least some of it violates No original research. I've therefore reverted the additions (but incorporated an important correction) and moved the section wholesale to User:Blisco/Salvage pending a possible transwiki to Wikibooks. There may well be the odd fact or two that can be re-incorporated into the article, but it's easier to do things this way round. --Blisco 20:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

 * It seemed to me important to retain mention of the dangers of descending the slopes to either side of the central ridge: if there's concern about OR, a photo of a sign warning against such descent appears in Poucher – not sure if I've got it in the house, or if my son's pinched it. .. dave souza, talk 13:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Dating the Devil's staircase
The article says that the Devil's Staircase was used as approach route at the Glencoe massacre in 1692. But [http://www.ourscotland.co.uk/southerFile:Aonach eagah.jpg nhighlands/glencoe.htm Scotland from the roadside] says 'built by General Caulfield's men in 1750'.

The route itself did of course exist before the road was built. Abu ari 09:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

 * The reference in Scotland from the roadside concerns the building of the military road, which probably followed an existing route across Aonach Eagach! 92.236.110.119 (talk) 22:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

? slightly better photo
I've been trawling through my photos today and found this. its from a really ancient slide. Dave59 (talk) 18:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Changed rating to C
I've changed the rating of this article to C as, having no references, it clearly doesn't begin to meet the criteria for a B rating and a lot of it reads more like a guidebook than an encyclopaedia. Richerman (talk) 16:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Aonach Eagach


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Löwchen

The Löwchen or Little Lion Dog (German: Löwchen, "little lion"; French: Petit chien lion, "little lion dog") is a breed of small dog. The Löwchen once had the dubious distinction, like the Portuguese Water Dog and the Havanese, of being the rarest dog in the world. In 1973 there were only 65 registered examples of the breed. Even today, the breed generally has fewer than a few hundred new registrations each year worldwide.

Description

The Löwchen is a compact companion breed with slightly off square proportions and balanced moderate angles in the front and rear. The silhouette of the breed calls for a long mane in the front with a flat topline. The Löwchen tail should be set coming off the topline and be over the back in the shape of a tea cup handle in movement.

The Löwchen's coat is long and flowing and comes in many colours. The coat should not be thin and fluffy like a Bichon Frise, but fairly straight with waves. It is a multi-texture coat with a 50/50 mix of silkier thicker hairs and softer hair. This allows for an easy to maintain coat that is silky to the touch. Löwchen coat should not be harsh, wooly or cottony. The Löwchen does not shed, and this breed has very low allergic effects, and are considered hypoallergenic. It is important to note, however, that there is no such thing as a completely hypoallergenic dog. The saliva and skin or dander, of a dog can still trigger an allergic event in sensitive people.

The head of the Löwchen is one of its most important features, with its relatively wide muzzle, broad skull, lively round eyes, and pendulant ears. They can come in all colours with dark pigmentation around the eye rings and nose. The head, when in proportion to the body, is neither too big nor too small, but helps to emphasize the friendly, regal, and leonine personality of the Löwchen. The litter size is usually between two and five puppies. The Löwchen's life span is around 14 to 18 years.

Lion cut

The Löwchen's long and wavy coat can be presented in a lion cut. This means that the rear, back legs (except the hocks), front legs (except 1/2 bracelets around the forearm), and the 1/3–1/2 of the tail closest to the body are shaved, and the rest of the coat is left natural to give the dog the appearance of a male lion. The lion cut is the traditional way of presenting these dogs. It is speculated that the lion clip was to allow the naked areas to provide warmth to their owners while the long coat would collect lice and nits from their owners. Dogs in lion clip may need some protection in wintertime on the shaved parts.

Colour
Löwchen can come in a variety of colors, and their colors can change throughout their lives. Many that are born dark will lighten up into cream or silver. You will also find a variety of colors within a single litter. Common colors are sable, silver, cream, white, parti, Irish pied, chocolate, and red/gold. A less common color is brindle. The American Kennel Club standard does not give preference to any color.

Temperament
The Löwchen is a friendly, healthy, and happy dog. Dogs of this breed are both active and playful, and very intelligent. The Löwchen is an excellent house pet. The Löwchen makes also a good pet for families with children. This breed has a history as a companion dog and the dogs need the attention of humans and they are not happy left alone for longer periods of time. The Löwchen can be vocal in excitement or demands, though some can be quiet.

Health
A 2024 UK study found a life expectancy of 13.9 years from a sample of 50 deaths for the breed compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds.

History
The breed is found in many countries as far back as the sixteenth century. The little 'lion dog' is seen in many art pieces featuring dogs as far back as the sixteenth century, but it is unclear whether these were all dogs like the Löwchen, or simply small dogs of the Bichon type that were trimmed in a lion cut. Although this dog may be related to the Bichon Frise, the Löwchen's history remains obscure.

The Löwchen has a history as a companion dog to the wealthy and elite. It is possible to trace the modern history of the breed to late-19th-century enthusiasts in what are now Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. It is thought the breed's ancestors were dogs that were brought in by travelers from the far eastern lands of Tibet and mingled with local dogs such as Spitz and terrier-type dogs. Occasionally a genetic throw-back is found. Madame Bennerts started a breeding program in 1944, later with the help of veterinarian Dr. Rickert.

Lowchen were imported into Britain in 1968 and the breed was accorded Kennel Club (UK) recognition in 1971. The Lowchen would finally make an appearance in America in 1971, by way of England. At this time, the Löwchen was still known as the “Little Lion Dog”. Also in 1971, The Löwchen Club of America (LCA) was formed and the breed's name was officially changed to “Löwchen ”. The Lowchen was accepted into the American Kennel Club Miscellaneous class in 1996, and then fully recognized into the non-sporting group in 1999. The number of Lowchen worldwide continues to fall with the breed being listed as at risk for extinction. An effort to keep the breed from becoming extinct was started along with efforts across other rare breeds.

title: Löwchen


text: User talk:68.110.216.198

title: User talk:68.110.216.198


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Mehrauli

Mehrauli is a neighbourhood in South Delhi, Delhi, India. It represents a constituency in the legislative assembly of Delhi. The area is close to Gurugram and next to Vasant Kunj.

History

Mehrauli is one of the seven medieval cities that make up the present union territory of Delhi. The Lal Kot fort was constructed by the Tomar chief Anangpal I around 731AD and expanded by AnangPal II in the 11thcentury, who shifted his capital to Lal Kot from Kannauj.The Tomars were defeated by the Chauhans in the 12th century. Prithviraj Chauhan further expanded the fort, which is now Qila Rai Pithora. He was defeated and killed in 1192 by Mohammed Ghori, who put his general Qutb-ud-din Aybak in charge and returned to Afghanistan. Subsequently in 1206, after the death of Mohammed Ghori, Qutubuddin enthroned himself as the first Sultan of Delhi. Thus Delhi became the capital of the Mamluk dynasty of Delhi (Slave dynasty), the first dynasty of Muslim sultans to rule over northern India. Mehrauli remained the capital of the Mamluk dynasty which ruled until 1290. During the Khilji dynasty, the capital shifted to Siri.

In 12th-century Jain scriptures, the location is also mentioned as Yogninipura, now noticeable by the presence of the "Yogmaya Temple", near the Qutub Minar complex, believed to have been built by the Pandavas.

It was also the execution place of Banda Singh Bahadur after he sacked the regional Mughal capital of Samana.

Geography and climate
Mehrauli lies in the South district of Delhi at 28.51583°N, 77.1775°W. To its north lies Malviya Nagar. Vasant Kunj lies to its West and Tughlakabad to its south.

Like the rest of Delhi, Mehrauli has a semi-arid climate with high variation between summer and winter temperatures. While the summer temperatures may go up to 46 °C, the winters can seem freezing to people used to a warm climate with near 0 °C.

The soil of Mehrauli consists of sandy loam to loam texture. The water level has gone down in the recent past hovering between 45 m to 50 m due to rise in population.

Architecture
Though Mehrauli is like any ordinary neighborhood today, its past is what distinguishes it in terms of architecture.

Ahinsa Sthal is a Jain temple in Mehrauli. The main deity of the temple is Mahavira, the 24th and last Tirthankara (human spiritual guide) of a present half cycle of time. A magnificent statue of Tirthankara Mahavira is installed here.

Even though the capital shifted from Mehrauli after the Mamluk dynasty rule came to an end, many other dynasties contributed significantly to Mehrauli's architecture.

The most visible piece of architecture remains the Qutub Minar which was built by Qutb ud-Din Aibak with subsequent additions by Iltutmish and Alauddin Khalji. The Qutb Minar complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and also the venue for the annual Qutub Festival.Mausoleum of a 13th-century Sufi saint, Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, is also situated near the Qutub Minar Complex and the venue for the annual Phoolwalon-ki-sair Festival. The dargah complex also houses graves of later Mughal emperors, Bahadur Shah I, Shah Alam II, and Akbar II, in an adjacent marble enclosure. To the left of the dargah, lies Zafar Mahal, the summer palace of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar along with Moti Masjid, a small mosque, built for private prayer by the son of Aurangzeb, Bahadur Shah I.

Balban's tomb belonging to Balban, Mamluk dynasty ruler of Delhi Sultanate was constructed here in the 13th century can still be seen through in a dilapidated condition. The architecturally important structure as it is the first true arch in Indo-Islamic architecture. Another tomb, that of Balban's son, Khan Shahid, who died before he could be crowned, is also located nearby in Mehrauli Archeological Park.

A baoli or stepwell known as Rajon Ki Baoli was constructed in 1506 during Sikandar Lodhi's reign. It was used to store water though it is now completely dried and is now known as Sukhi Baoli (dry well).

The Jamali Kamali Mosque was built in 1528, in honour of the Sufi saint Shaikh Hamid bin Fazlullah, also known as Dervish Shaikh tahaJamali Kamboh Dihlawi or Jalal Khan. The saint's tomb built-in 1536 upon his death is adjacent to the mosque.

Near the Jamali Kamali lies the tomb of Quli Khan, which during the British period was converted into a country house by the Metcalfe family. Known as 'the retreat' or 'Dilkhusha', this was built by Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe in true English style as a pleasure retreat by surrounding it with many rest houses, follies, and gardens. 'Dilkhusha' in Urdu means "Delight of the Heart".

The Adham Khan's Tomb was constructed by Mughal Emperor Akbar in memory of his foster brother and general Adham Khan in 1566. The tomb, also known as Bhulbhulaiyan, as one could get lost in the labyrinth of its passages, it was later used by the British as a residence, rest house and even as a police station. Close to Adham Khan's tomb, lies that of another Mughal General, Muhammad Quli Khan, later it served as the residence of Sir Thomas Metcalfe, governor-general's agent at the Mughal court. The Mehrauli Archaeological Park spread over 200 acres, adjacent to Qutb Minar site was redeveloped in 1997.

Most of the monuments and heritage buildings in Mehrauli today lie in a state of despair. Due to unplanned urban sprawl especially after the Partition of India, most havelis, mosques and baolis were occupied and razed to build houses. Poor restoration and conservation have led to the disappearance, encroachment and vandalization of many heritage buildings.

In February 2024, a controversy erupted after the Delhi Development Authority demolished a 600-year-old mosque, madrasa and several graves without any prior notice. The demolition was criticized by several historians and scholars.

Politics
In the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election, Parvesh Verma of BJP was elected as the MLA of Mehrauli. He succeeded Yoganand Shastri, former Delhi Assembly Speaker affiliated to the Indian National Congress.

Mehrauli Assembly Constituency comprises four municipal wards, namely, ward 169 Lado Sarai (W), ward 170 Mehrauli (GEN), ward 171 Vasant Kunj (SCW) and wards 172 Kishangarh (W). All four wards are represented by women councilors in the Municipal Corporation. Rekha satbir Chaudhary is elected new councillor of Mehrauli.

Schools

 * UDAAN play school Mehrauli
 * St. John's School
 * St.Maria School
 * Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Memorial School
 * Lareesa Public School
 * I.G. Delhi Public School
 * Saraswati Bal Vidya Mandir
 * Ramanujan Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya
 * Government Boys' Senior Secondary School-2
 * Government Boys' Senior Secondary School-3
 * Suryathan Play School
 * Prince Public School
 * Dargah wala school

2008 blasts
Concealed in a black polythene bag, a bomb was dropped by two unidentified persons riding a motorcycle In Sarai Electronic Market in New Delhi on 27 September 2008. A fortnight after three of the capital's top markets were targeted by terrorists, a medium-intensity blast ripped through the congested flower market in South Delhi's Mehrauli area killing at least two and injuring 22 others.

Accessibility

 * Indira Gandhi International Airport is approximately 17 km.
 * 18 km approximately from New Delhi Railway Stations
 * Nearest metro station is Qutab Minar Metro Station.
 * Adam Khan Tomb - Also known as Bhool Bhulaiya is situated next to Aggarwal Sweets and near Bus Stand.
 * Gandhak ki Baoli - It is an ancient step well located near Mehrauli Post Office.
 * Rajon Ki Baoli - 16th century stepwell near Gandhak ki Baoli
 * Yogmaya Temple - Around 1 km from Qutub Minar and about 100 meters prior to Bus Stand.
 * Village Roads - Village roads in Mehrauli are known in the neighborhood as narrow poorly maintained roads. Non-licensed street vendors/hawkers are very common sites on these roads.
 * Zafar Mahal (Mehrauli) is situated adjacent to the shrine of Hazrat Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Qaki R.A.
 * Dadabari Jain Mandir is situated on Sri Dev Puri Ashram marg, Opposite Qutub Minar Metro station.
 * Madhi Masjid - A Remnant Of The Lodhi Era, Madhi Masjid is a 15th Century fortified mosque.

Areas in South Delhi
• Greater Kailash

• Chanakyapuri

• Gausiya Masjid

• Lajpat Nagar

• Nehru Place

• Safdarjung New Delhi

• South Extension

• Kishangarh Village

• Vasant Kunj

• Shahpur Jat

• Khanpur

• Sanjay Van

title: Mehrauli


text:
User talk:Kaydavy

The People of Sparks is the sequel to the best-selling The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.

title: User talk:Kaydavy


text: User talk:24.34.25.8

title: User talk:24.34.25.8


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Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews (February 14, 1930 – January 25, 2017) was an American writer, the author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays. Mathews was also a translator of the French language.

Life
Born in New York City to an upper-middle-class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts, before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947. He left Princeton in his sophomore year for a tour in the United States Navy, during the course of which (in 1949) he eloped with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, a childhood friend. His military service completed, Mathews transferred to Harvard University in 1950; the couple's first child, Laura Duke Condominas, was born the following year. After Mathews graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, the family moved to Paris, where he continued studies in conducting at I’École Normale de Musique.

A second child, their son Phillip, was born in Majorca, Spain in 1955. Mathews and de Saint Phalle separated in 1960, with the two children remaining under his care.

Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences ) from 1961 to 1962.

Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and textual algorithms. The late French writer Georges Perec, likewise a member, was a good friend, and the two translated some of each other's writings. Mathews considered many of his works to be Oulipian in nature, but even before he encountered the group he was working in a parallel direction.

In the 1960s Mathews had a relationship of several years' duration with Paris Review editor Maxine Groffsky. Mathews was later married to the writer Marie Chaix, and divided his time among Paris, Key West, and New York City.

Novels
Mathews's first three novels share a common approach, though their stories and characters are not connected. Originally published as separate works (the third in serialization in The Paris Review), they were gathered in one omnibus volume in 1975 as The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels, but have since been reprinted as individual volumes. Each novel displays the author's taste for improbable narrative invention, his humor, and his delight in leading the reader down obscure avenues of learning.

At the outset of his first novel, The Conversions, the narrator is invited to an evening's social gathering at the home of a wealthy and powerful eccentric named Grent Wayl. During the course of the evening he is invited to take part in an elaborately staged party game, involving, among other things, a race between several small worms. The race having apparently been rigged by Wayl, the narrator is declared the victor and takes home his prize, an adze with curious designs, apparently of a ritual nature, engraved on it. Not long after the party, Wayl dies, and the bulk of his vast estate is left to whoever possesses the adze, providing that he or she can answer three riddling questions relating to its nature. The balance of the book is concerned with the narrator's attempts to answer the three questions, attempts that lead him through a series of digressions and stories-within-a-story, many of them quite diverting in themselves. The book has some superficial affinities with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; the reader, like the narrator, is never sure to what extent he has fallen victim to a hoax. Much of the material dealing with the ritual adze, and the underground cult that it is related to, borrows from Robert Graves's The White Goddess. Mathews's novel concludes with two appendices, one being in German.

His next novel, Tlooth, begins in a bizarre Siberian prison camp, where the inmates are divided according to their affiliation with obscure religious denominations (Americanist, Darbyist, Defective Baptist, and so on), and where baseball, dentistry, and plotting revenge against other inmates are the chief pastimes. A small group of inmates, including the narrator, plot their escape, which they carry out by constructing an ingenious getaway vehicle. After fleeing south and over the Himalayas, they split up; the later sections of the novel, which take place in various locales (chiefly Italy), are concerned with the narrator's attempts to track down and do away with another inmate, Evelyn Roak, who had been responsible for mutilating the narrator's fingers. Most of the major characters have sex-equivocal names, and it is only towards the end of the book that we are given some indication of whether they are actually male or female. As in The Conversions, there are numerous subplots that advance the main action only minimally.

The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, like The Conversions, is the story of a hunt for treasure, this time told through a series of letters between a Southeast Asian woman named Twang and her American husband, Zachary McCaltex. The couple are researching the fate of a vanished cargo of gold that once belonged to the Medici family. As in the earlier novels, there are various odd occurrences and ambiguous conspiracies; many of the book's set-pieces revolve around a secret society (The Knights of the Spindle), which Zachary is invited to join. Reflecting the author's interest in different languages, one pivotal letter in the book is written in the (fictitious) idiom of Twang's (fictitious) homeland, and to translate it the reader must refer back to earlier chapters to find the meanings of the words. In a typical Mathews conceit, the title of the novel is apparently meaningless until the reader reaches the final pages, at which point it reveals an important twist in the story that is nowhere revealed in the text of the book itself. The novel is provided with an index, which may be deliberately unreliable. David Maurer's The Big Con provided Mathews with a number of slang terms, and possibly some plot elements as well. Another apparent source was The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494 by Raymond de Roover; Mathews implicitly acknowledged his debt by introducing de Roover and his wife in the text as minor characters.

Mathews's next novel, Cigarettes, marked a change in his work. Less whimsical but no less technically sophisticated than his first three novels, it consists of an interlocking series of narratives revolving around a small group of interconnected characters. The book's approach to narrative is generally realistic, and Cigarettes is ultimately moving in a way that none of his previous books attempted to be.

My Life in CIA, the last published novel in his lifetime (if it is indeed fiction), was purportedly Mathews's memoir of a period in his life in which he was rumored to be a CIA agent and decided to play along and pretend that he in fact was one.

His final novel, The Solitary Twin, was published posthumously in March 2018 by New Directions.

Other works
Mathews's shorter writings frequently cross or deliberately confuse genres. A case in point is the piece entitled "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)." Originally included in an issue of the literary magazine Antaeus devoted to travel essays, it is ostensibly a recipe with extended commentary. Another example is the title section of Armenian Papers: Poems 1954 - 1984: actually prose, this purports to be (but evidently is not) a translation from a fragmentary medieval manuscript. American conductor David Woodard praised Mathews' Plaisirs singuliers (1983) as "a long prose piece about masturbation."

Mathews used proverbs in many creative ways in his book Selected Declarations of Dependence, which was based on the words found in 46 common English proverbs. He used them to write poems, following self-invented rules. He also created "Perverbs and Paraphrases", complex riddles based on proverbs. In addition, he created anti-proverbs that he called "snips of the tongue", such as "Look before you leave."

Among the more important collections of his miscellaneous works are Immeasurable Distances, a gathering of his essays; The Human Country: New and Collected Stories; and The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose. Other works by Mathews include Twenty Lines a Day, a journal, and The Orchard, a brief memoir of his friendship with Georges Perec. A piece by Mathews was published in 0 to 9 magazine, a 1960s journal which experimented with language and meaning-making.

Other
Mathews invented "Mathews's Algorithm", a method for producing literary works by transposing or permuting elements according to a predetermined set of rules.

Death
Mathews died on January 25, 2017, in Key West, Florida from natural causes, aged 86.

Appearances in fiction
Mathews, along with his second wife Marie Chaix, appears as a minor character in the novels What I Have Written by John A. Scott, The Correspondence Artist by Barbara Browning, and The Hidden Keys by André Alexis. Mathews, among other literary luminaries, makes an appearance as a party guest in Paul Auster's novel 4321.

Collaborations

 * S: Semaines de Suzanne (1997), with Jean Echenoz, Mark Polizzotti, Florence Delay, Olivier Rolin, Sonja Greenlee, & Patrick Deville
 * Oulipo Compendium (1998), as editor, with Alastair Brotchie. ISBN 0-947757-96-1

Works or texts by Mathews

 * Digital version of Mathews's Epithalamium for Judith Kazantzis and Irving Weinman, with introductory note
 * Mathews, Harry Translation and the Oulipo: The Case of the Persevering Maltese
 * "Observations of a Crab," a short story by Harry Mathews on UpRightDown
 * Podcast of "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)" as read by Isaiah Sheffer

Conversations

 * A Conversation with Harry Mathews. By John Ashbery
 * Harry Mathews: A Meal Should Last Forever. Interview at Ioggernaut
 * An Interview with Harry Mathews by Alexander Laurence from The Portable Infinite

Other

 * Composing: Harry Mathews' Words & Worlds
 * Harry Mathews / bibliographie (in French, on the OuLiPo website)
 * Harry Mathews / bibliographie (in French, on the OuLiPo website)

title: Harry Mathews