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Seán Russell

Seán Russell (13 October 1893 – 14 August 1940) was an Irish republican who participated in the Easter Rising of 1916, held senior positions in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, and was Chief of Staff of the IRA from c. 1938 to April 1939 upon the onset of World War II. It was under Russell's leadership that the IRA began the Sabotage Campaign, in which the group began bombing civil, economic and military infrastructure in the United Kingdom, primarily England, between 1939 and 1940. In the same period, Russell actively collaborated with Nazi Germany; in early 1940 he travelled to Germany, where he personally met with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and spent three months training in the use of explosives. In August 1940 Russell was to return to Ireland as part of a joint IRA/German plan entitled Operation Dove, however, Russell died aboard a Kriegsmarine U-boat transporting him home following a sudden stomach illness and he was subsequently buried at sea.

Early life
Born John Angelo Russell at 41 Lower Buckingham Street, Dublin, in 1893, he was one of the ten children of James Russell, a clerk, and Mary L'Estrange, both of whom were originally from County Westmeath.

Irish revolutionary period
Russell joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913. He participated in the 1916 Easter Rising as the section commander in Dublin Brigade's 2nd Battalion E Company, under Thomas MacDonagh. During the rising he fought at the Metropole Hotel where he was appointed second-in-command by Oscar Traynor. Following the Rising he was interned in Frongoch and Knutsford. He joined the Irish Republican Army in 1919.

After the Irish War of Independence began, he was attached to the IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) and became IRA Director of Munitions in 1920 following the death of Peadar Clancy. Prior to this he was Vice-Brigadier of the Dublin Brigade, again appointed by Oscar Traynor. Russell was involved in the planning of the execution of the Cairo Gang which took place on Bloody Sunday, 1920.

During the Irish Civil War, he fought against the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the Anti-Treaty IRA. Russell was interned along with Ernie O'Malley (the assistant chief of staff of the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War) in the Curragh Camp and was released on 17 July 1924, well over a year after the end of hostilities. During his imprisonment he undertook a 41 day hunger strike In 1925, after the civil war, he was jailed in Mountjoy Prison but escaped on 25 November in a breakout he helped organise.

Post-Civil War activism
Russell was one of those within the much-reduced IRA pushing for more revolutionary activities in 1925. That year, he and Gerald Boland travelled to the Soviet Union on an IRA weapons-buying mission. On his return from Moscow, Russell reported back to Seán Lemass. He was appointed IRA quartermaster general in 1927 and held that position until 1936. From 1929 to 1931, he travelled widely throughout Ireland, reorganising the IRA. Russell was due to give the oration at the 1931 Bodenstown commemoration but was arrested on its eve.

He visited the United States in the autumn of 1932. During the Northern Ireland rail strike of 1933, he organised IRA intervention from Belfast. Russell remained aloof from the IRA's political debates and, following the split of 1934, chaired the court-martial of Mick Price and Peadar O'Donnell who had left the IRA to form the left-wing Republican Congress. He met Éamon de Valera, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State at Government Buildings during 1934, to discuss potentially uniting the IRA and Fianna Fáil. In return for political support, De Valera asked for the IRA to lay down their arms and cease any overt actions. Russell was open to the idea, but would only agree to IRA inactivity for 5 years, believing that sufficient time for Fianna Fáil to declare an outright Irish Republic. De Valera turned down the time-bound offer.

In October 1936 Russell wrote to the German ambassador to the United States, and apologised on behalf of the Irish people for the refusal of the de Valera government to grant landing rights to the German air service. In the same communication, Russell informed the ambassador that he would be willing to cooperate with the Germans in any future military conflicts they found themselves in.

While in the United States during 1936, he seems to have conceived, along with Joseph McGarrity, the plan for the bombing campaign in England. In January 1937, Russell was accused by the IRA leadership of misappropriating funds and was court martialled. He had also embarked on his American tour without Army Council permission. He stayed out of Dublin until October 1937, when he approached the IRA leadership in an attempt to convince them that the campaign in England should go ahead.

Chief of Staff of the IRA
In April 1938, an IRA General Army Convention was held, and Russell and his supporters, including McGarrity and IRA members from Northern Ireland, secured enough support to get a majority on the IRA Army Executive and to have him re-instated in the organisation and elected to the Army Council in what has been described as a takeover by historian Brian Hanley. Following Russell's election, Tom Barry, John Joe Sheehy, and Tomás Óg MacCurtain immediately resigned from the IRA, with Barry denouncing Russell's planned bombing campaign as "doomed to failure as the Fenian dynamite campaign" and "unethical and immoral", while subsequently, more conservative Republicans such as Patrick McGrath and Seamus O'Donovan returned to the fold. Barry would later claim that Russell and his supporters had said that the German American Bund would fund their planned attack on the United Kingdom.

Before starting the bombing campaign, Russell moved to shore up the political credibility of the IRA in January 1939. As Chief of Staff, he was able to secure a powerful symbolic gesture from the "rump" of the second Dáil, that is to say, elected members of the Second Dáil who remained hardline Republicans. Seven of these former TDs transferred what authority they believed they had as representatives of the second Dáil to the IRA army council, thus, in their minds, rendering it the legitimate governing body of Ireland. The IRA felt this move gave them the authority to formally declare war on the United Kingdom, which they would almost immediately do. The Sabotage Campaign commenced some days later with bombing attacks on a number of English cities. In February 1939 Russell was also involved in a meeting with German Intelligence (Abwehr) agent Oscar Pfaus.

Activity in the United States, 1939
To pursue the propaganda arm of the S-Plan, Russell travelled to the United States in April 1939. Prior to leaving, he stood down as IRA chief of staff and was replaced by Stephen Hayes. The aim of his journey was to 'show the flag' and place himself in the public mind as the leader of militant Irish nationalism. While there Russell made several public addresses. He was trailed by Federal Bureau of Investigation "G-Men" at the request of Scotland Yard, and then detained by the United States Immigration Service at the Detroit border with Windsor, Ontario during the American visit of King George VI. The incident immediately aroused enormous indignation among Irish-Americans, culminating in a protest by 76 Irish-descended members of Congress. They demanded an explanation from President Roosevelt about the 'Russell Case', failing which they would not participate in the Congressional reception for the King.

While in the United States, Russell met with his Clan na Gael host Joseph McGarrity and Robert Monteith, one of Casement's colleagues in 1916 and, at that time, director of Father Charles Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice. Anxious to skip his bail, which expired on 16 April, Russell made contact, through the offices of McGarrity, with German agent 'V-Rex', also known as Carl Rekowski. 'V-Rex' contacted John McCarthy, a steward on the steamer George Washington, berthed in Tampa, Florida. The George Washington then sailed to fascist Italy. McCarthy met Abwehr agent 'Professor' Franz Fromme in Genoa on 19 and 30 March 1940. That meeting arranged for Russell's journey across the Atlantic, arrival in Genoa on 1 May, and reception in Berlin four days later.

Nazi Germany
Arriving in Berlin in May 1940, Russell was informed of Operation Mainau, the plan to parachute Hermann Görtz into Ireland. Russell was asked to brief Görtz on Ireland before his departure that night, but missed his takeoff from the Kassel-Fritzlar airfield.

Accorded the privileges of a diplomat and provided with a villa and a chauffeur-driven car, Russell's liaison officer while in Nazi Germany was SS-Standartenführer Edmund Veesenmayer. Veesenmayer indicated particular interest that the IRA had no clear idea of what form an Irish government would take in the event of a German victory. During Russell's time in Berlin, he would have at least one personal meeting with the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

By 20 May 1940, Russell began training with Abwehr in the use of the latest German explosive ordnance at the training area for the Brandenburg Regiment, the 'Quenzgut', where he observed trainees and instructors working with sabotage materials in a field environment. As he received explosives training, his return to Ireland with a definite sabotage objective was planned by German Army Intelligence. His total training time with German Intelligence was over three months.

Operation Dove and death aboard U-65
On 15 July 1940, Frank Ryan – an IRA man who had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and was captured by Franco forces – was handed over to the Abwehr and taken to Germany. The capture of the German agents from Operation Lobster I did not prevent Abwehr Chief Wilhelm Canaris sanctioning the transport of Russell to Ireland. Both Russell and Frank Ryan, who had arrived in Berlin on 4 August, departed from Wilhelmshaven on 8 August, aboard U-65 – the mission was titled Operation Dove ("Unternehmen Taube" in German).

Russell became ill during the journey and complained of stomach pains. The crew of U-65 did not include a doctor and Russell died on 14 August, 100 mi short of Galway. He was buried at sea and the mission was aborted. Following the return of the submarine to Germany, an inquiry was set up by the Abwehr into Russell's death. The inquiry included the interrogation of U-65's crew and Frank Ryan. The conclusion was that Russell had suffered a burst gastric ulcer and, without medical attention, he had died.

A number of conspiracy theories arose around the subject of Russell's death, including that he was poisoned on board the ship, shot by the British Secret Service in France, or murdered by Kurt Haller. However, Russell's brother, Patrick, confirmed after the war that Russell suffered from pre-existing stomach problems.

Legacy
Russell's legacy is deeply contested. He became an idol of traditionalist republicanism during the 1950s, and numerous republican organisations continue to commemorate him as an Irish patriot; Sinn Féin (its O'Malley/Russell cumann is his namesake ), Republican Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Socialist Party and Saoradh have all spoken in defence of Russell. Conversely, many other groups from across the political spectrum have condemned him as a Nazi collaborator. It has been claimed he "cared little for Nazi ideology" and he was accused of being a communist spy in the 1920s. Irish historian Brian Hanley states that while Russell was uninterested in political debate and was committed to the use of armed force, Russell's leadership unquestionably saw the IRA shift to the political right and become permeated with those with pro-fascist and pro-German sentiments. Journalist and IRA Chief of IRA during the late 1950s Seán Cronin said that of "all the IRA leaders of the 1920s and 30s…, [he was] probably the most conservative, politically and socially".

Speaking in 1958, Erwin Lahousen, whom Russell engaged with in Germany, said that Russell disagreed with Nazi philosophy and strongly rejected attempts to convert him. Lahousen stated that Russell told him "I am not a Nazi. I’m not even pro-German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland." and that "If it suits Germany to give us help to achieve independence, I am willing to accept it, but no more, and there must be no strings attached" In August 1940 an open letter was published by the IRA leadership while Russell was still alive, stating that if "German forces should land in Ireland, they will land...as friends and liberators of the Irish people". Readers were informed that Germany desired neither "territory nor...economic penetration" in Ireland but simply wanted Ireland to play its part in the "reconstruction" of a "free and progressive Europe". The Third Reich was also praised as the "energising force" of European politics and the "guardian" of national freedom.

Historian Caoimhe Nic Dhaibheid states that Russell's motivation was to obtain arms and money from Germany to further Irish republican aims. Historian Brian Hanley has opined that "Sean Russell was not a Nazi, but he was politically blind to the realities and to what it meant to collaborate with the Nazis", a view echoed by historian Gerard Shannon who has described Russell as politically naïve, and also by the one-time editor of An Phoblacht Mícheál Mac Donncha who has called Russell "extremely naïve" and "narrow-minded in his approach" but also "courageous and selfless". The National Graves Association has defended Russell from accusations of fascism saying "He went to Germany, the Soviet Union and the US seeking arms. If people want to call him a fascist they would also have to claim he was a communist."

In September 2003 Mary Lou McDonald spoke at a rally to commemorate Russell held at the memorial site. The same rally was also addressed by then Provisional IRA Army Council member Brian Keenan who said: I don't know what was in the depth of Seán Russell's thinking down the years, but I am sure he was never far from Pearse's own position, who said, as a patriot, preferring death to slavery, I know no other way. There are things worse than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them. We are not and will not be slaves. In 2020, McDonald was retroactively criticised for her attendance at the rally by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who stated "The idea someone was working with the Nazis to undermine Britain when Europe was in great peril and [that] he should be commemorated is something that Sinn Féin need a wake-up call on" as well as adding that he thought Russell was "wrong" and that "collaborating with the Nazis should not be condoned in any way". MacDonald stated that Russell was "misguided" but said she did not regret her attendance at the rally and stated that Russell was a "militarist" and not a "Nazi collaborator". In 2022, politician and journalist Shane Ross condemned Russell as one of "the most unsavoury supporters of terrorism in the history of the republican movement".

Attacks on memorial to Russell
A statue commemorating Russell was elected by republicans in Fairview Park, Dublin on 9 September 1951. It is reported 1,000 Irish republicans attended the unveiling of the statue, including future IRA Chiefs of Staff Cathal Goulding and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, as well as members of Clan na Gael and Cumann na mBan. The event was monitored by the Garda Special Branch.

The statue has since been subject to vandalism; In May 1952 paint was smeared on the statue and in July 1953, the raised right arm was broken off by right-wing radicals, who explained the vandalism by claiming the arm had been raised in a communist salute rather than oratorical pose. The damaged arm was replaced posed downward instead of raised. The 31 December 2004 attack saw the decapitation of the memorial by an unnamed group, described by the Sunday Independent as anti-fascist. The memorial's right forearm was also removed. A statement issued to the press in justification of the vandalism read (verbatim):

Six million Jews, thousands of political dissidents, homosexuals, Roma people, Soviet prisoners of war and the disabled were put to death by the fascist hate machine that overran and terrified Europe from 1939 to 45. Sean Russell was one of many nationalist fanatics who looked to Hitler for political and military support in the IRA's quest to reunify Ireland at the point of the bayonets of the Gestapo. At the Wannsee Conference, the infamous Nazi gathering that planned the "Final Solution", the Jewish community in Ireland was marked down for annihilation. Having freed Ireland from British rule, the Nazis expected their collaborators to help them round up Dublin's Jews and ship them off to Auschwitz. That was the price Sean Russell was prepared to pay to end partition.

Ógra Shinn Féin condemned the vandalism saying "Those who carried it out clearly know very little about Seán Russell or what he stood for."

After the missing pieces of the memorial proved difficult to retrieve, a spokesman for The National Graves Association announced that the memorial to Seán Russell would be rebuilt in more permanent bronze to deter vandals. In May 2009, the plinth was cleaned and the new bronze was erected. Allegedly, the new statue has alarms to detect attempted vandalism, as well as a GPS tracker. According to historian Gerard Shannon, the original pieces of the statue were eventually recovered and reconstructed in Cashel folk village in Cashel, County Tipperary, where it stands as a duplicate.

On 9 July 2009, the plinth of the memorial was again vandalised with graffiti proclaiming Russell to have been a Nazi.

In June 2020, Leo Varadkar suggested that the statue of Seán Russell may need to be removed because of his collaboration with the Nazis.

Later, on 23 June 2020 the base of the statue was painted in the colours of the Rainbow flag. The paint was later removed. Fianna Fáil Lord Mayor Tom Brabazon condemned the painting of the base.

title: Seán Russell


text:
User talk:Silles Sellis

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Hi and welcome to wikipedia. I hope you like it and decide to stay. Here are some handy links for newcomers. Also you can sign your name on talk pages and vote pages with three tildes like this ~~~, and your name with a time stamp with four like this ~~~~. If you have any questions, ask me on my talk page. Howabout1 Talk to me! 17:19, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
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CSD expansion closed yet?
''I'm just curious if any of the proposals for speedy deletion criteria have closed yet, just because this edit, seems to have already integrated two of the proposals, and I hadn't thought they were yet ratified. Thanks, Silles Sellis 13:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)''

 * No, not for another day yet. There's discussion about the diff you cite at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. —Cryptic (talk) 13:18, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:Silles Sellis


text: File:LoveYouCover.jpg

title: File:LoveYouCover.jpg


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Talk:Tag system

Example of cyclic tag system simulation
The cyclic tag system does not properly emulate the halt. It treats H just like any other symbol. It might be better to change the H to a neutral letter like c.

GuenterRote (talk) 07:36, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Deletion number
Current version of the article does not explicitly state what is the role of m number. Only through the examples it is possible to guess its role. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.69.161.56 (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Merging "Post machine" page into this one
Wikipedia also has an article on Post machines, which seem virtually identical to Tag systems, except for the way they are described. It would probably be a good idea to merge/link these two articles somehow. --Chris Pressey 17:20, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I finally got around to incorporating a brief abstract machine description into Tag system, and have now redirected Post machine to this article.--r.e.s. (Talk) 21:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Empty word
Hi, In the traditionnal tag system definition, can we include the empty word in the alphabet, like in automatons ? I mean, for letter 'A', P(A)=(empty), so that nothing is added at the end when 'A' is read.

King Mike 23:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, the empty word is a valid production.
 * --r.e.s. (Talk) 11:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Rewording to better integrate cyclic tag systems
I hope JohnnyNyquist will not be too annoyed by my editing -- it seemed a good idea to make the description of cyclic tag systems use more of Rogozhin's terminology for tag systems. Also, although I tried to make the emulation section as brief as I could, it still seems a bit bulky -- but the example seems worth the space, imo.

--r.e.s. (Talk) 11:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Rename?
Perhaps this page should be renamed "Post tag system"? Cosma Shalizi's review of NKS claims that "Post tag system" is the normal term for such things, but Wolfram omits "Post" in his book. I note that he also systematically omits most names of other people in the work he describes, presumably in order to claim credit for things he didn't invent. Perhaps we should not encourage him by accepting his terminology? Or was it often used by other people before him? Kragen Sitaker 21:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Well before NKS, the simple term tag system was used by Minsky, Rogozhin, Wang, and other published authors in this field (all of whom of course credit Post as the inventor). Although it would certainly be correct to say Post tag system in the title, I don't think it would be an improvement, since there seems to be no need for disambiguating against some other meaning of the simpler term.  (Compare, for example, lambda calculus versus Church lambda calculus.) --r.e.s. 05:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Minsky 1967 indexes this notion as "tag system". Also, he says that:
 * "While agraduate student at Princeton in 1921, Post [1965] studied a class of appraently simple but cursiously frustrating problems..." (p. 267)

 * "Post [1965]" is to the following reference:
 * Post, Emil L. (1965), "Absolutely unsolvable problems and relatively undecidable propostiions -- account of an anticipation," Martin Davis, The Undecidable (m.s. unpublished, 1941).

 * I have this, will research. Bill Wvbailey 17:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Weighted, Viral, Population, Tagging, Mechanisms
Viral tagging ftw!

I would like to propose a new spin on the old TAG SYSTEM. I call it VIRAL TAGGING. The basics of it are on my website which is redonkulicity.com/theory.html

I don't know how to use wikipedia to add articles, but would LOVE anyone to create a stub linked to the TAG SYSTEM, and VIRAL kinds of categories, or even understand what I'm saying and put that on the page.

The most specific and useful type of VIRAL TAGGING would be WEIGHTED ITERATIVE VIRAL TAGGING. And the coolest thing I could think of at the moment would be a webcrawler designed as a WIVT machine. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wubitog (talk • contribs) 16:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

Intractability? proof of impossibility or undecidability?
Does anyone out there know the status of the problem (see the annotation of the Minsky 1967 reference) w.r.t. undedicability and intractability? This fact should be prominent in the article. . My only reference to the "tag" problem is Minsky 1967, i.e. pretty ancient.

 * I think you're referring to this ad hoc test-case from Post 1943 (which is somewhat misstated by Minsky): Given the 3-tag system with production rules (0 -> 00, 1 -> 1101) on alphabet {0,1}, determine whether iteration of the tag operation eventually terminates in an empty string when started with an arbitrary initial word. (Where, in keeping with Post, the tag operation is as I paraphrase it in the Historical note section of the article, not as Minsky misstates it.) AFAIK, it's still an open question whether this is an unsolvable halting problem, in contrast to certain known 2-tag systems whose halting problem is provably unsolvable. --r.e.s. 22:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Although I agree the test-case might deserve a brief mention merely because it has resisted attempts to prove anything about its solvability, it certainly should not be more prominent than the following point already in the article (in the Definition section): "For each m > 1, the set of m-tag systems is Turing-complete." E.g., we know how to convert any Turing machine into an equivalent 2-tag system. (If you're curious, you can find all the gory details of converting any binary TM to a 2-tag system here, which is a subsection of a webpage about Bitwise Cyclic Tag.) Maybe these points about Turing completeness (which to my mind are the really important ones) should be made more prominent. --r.e.s. 22:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem has an unsettling and uncanny similarity to (but I don't believe is identical to) the Collatz conjecture. In particular, I believe that the one-way, one-tape two-headed monogenic/tag Turing machine shown in Minsky 1967:269 can also be used to do computations of the Collatz algorithm (and, lo and behold, some forms of the Conjecture such as 5*N+3 result in loops for a collection of certain numbers). To do Collatz all that is required is the restricted form of Turing machine, the "Minsky" two-counter counter-machine with only { CLR r, INC r, DEC r, JZ yyy, J yyy }. It computes the Collatz { 3*N+1, N/2 } in less than 16 instructions. Lemme know what you know. Thanks, Bill Wvbailey 15:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

 * In my opinion, about all that can be said concerning the test-case in question is that, so far, everyone has found it to be "intractable" -- it might, or might not, actually be an unsolvable halting problem. I don't think speculations or original work on suspected possible "connections" to Collatz should be discussed in the article. --r.e.s. 22:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

 * No, no... I totally agree with you, such speculations would have no place here unless they were corroborated in the literature. I was just hoping it might trigger in someone's mind an association to other work, seemingly unrelated. Early this past winter I spent about 3 months fiddling with the Collatz Conjecture and arrived at a dead end. I was more interested in a possible example for proof of impossibility. Thanks, Bill wvbaileyWvbailey 03:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Following up a bit on the connection between the Collatz problem and tag systems ... An online article by L. De Mol points out that the extremely simple 2-tag system (a -> cb, b -> aaa, c -> a) computes the Collatz sequences for the Collatz function in the form C(n) = (if n is even then n/2 else (3n+1)/2). In this tag system, a positive integer n is represented by the word aa...a with n a's.  If the author had used Post's original definition (i.e. halting only on the empty word), the tag system would never halt, and the endless cycle (... -> 1 -> 2 -> 1 -> ...) would be faithfully simulated; however, since she uses the alternative halting criterion, the tag system halts on 1 (i.e. when the word has fewer than 2 letters), which in a way is more convenient.--r.e.s. 06:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

 * The above is very interesting. And exciting: I'm glad to see some sharp minds tackling the problem from this angle. The mathematicians I was corresponding with winter were unaware of this "tag" business, and Minsky's 1961 paper "Recrusive Unsolvability of Post's Problem of "tag" and other Topics in Theory of Turing machines" in particular. I'll enter this paper into the article's bibliography. Thanks, Bill Wvbailey 15:42, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I've expanded the Definition section of this article to clarify the types of tag system that don't use a halting symbol, and added a worked example of De Mol's 2-tag system for Collatz sequences (and of course cited her article in References). I also slightly expanded the Turing-completeness portion as a separate section. --r.e.s. 17:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC) PS: I've also added an entry and citation on this tag system in the Collatz conjecture article, with a link to this one. --r.e.s. 19:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Your example is really neat. I was gonna suggest the link but you beat me to it. Wow. Bill Wvbailey 22:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * As De Mol's article points out, it's notable that the "smallest" known universal tag system has an alphabet of around 500 symbols, and a value of (deletion_number * number_of_symbols) that's correspondingly huge, whereas one might expect universality to crop up in tag systems not much larger (if at all) than the ones capable of computing Collatz sequences — like the present example, where that product is a mere 6. As an aside, FWIW, I've managed to slightly reduce the size of the monster universal tag system cited by De Mol, by removing redundancies in the Cocke-Minsky machine used to simulate the UTM (and have also extended the formalism to simulate any given TM — not just 2-symbol ones — by a tag system); but as it's my "original research", and not peer reviewed, I can only point any interested readers to it by this link. --r.e.s. (talk) 03:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: Discussion on Counter Machines moved to Talk:Counter machine. --r.e.s. (talk) 01:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Bill, may I suggest that our discussion about counter machines — everything beginning roughly with "I ran into something important with regards to the inadequacies of a 2-counter Collatz counter-machine", down to here — be removed from this page and inserted in Talk:Counter machines? There are some interesting questions that I'd like to pursue, but which seem likely to be more-and-more inappropriate here. What do you think? --r.e.s. (talk) 19:24, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I've wondered the same. I don't know if we should go to the counter machine page or the Collatz tallk-page or where exactly. Off wikipedia ? -- we're probably into O.R. Wherever you're comfortable I'm comfortable. (I did this 2nd drawing fast -- drawing is easy to fix... it doesn't look quite right. The left head's rollers move the tape to the left e.g. 2 'symbols' erasing as it goes but also 'determining' what these symbols are, by counting blank squares between the marks. The right head's rollers also move the tape to left but only after the determination about which symbols are to be written has been made, at which time it then prints the symbols based on the symbols erased. The symbols are encoded as e.g. a = 10, b = 100, c = 1000, etc. (or could be 10, 110, 1110, 11110, given a blank tape to start with). These restrictions on the machine design are very interesting... different than the 2-Collatz machine's srestrictions. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 01:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Alright, I'm moving it to Talk:Counter machine and will try not to butcher it in the process. --r.e.s. (talk) 01:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

-

Image inserted. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 18:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC) drawing corrected. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 01:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The following is the two-counter Collatz algorithm but run on a one-way-only (left), two-headed tag-capable machine like the one shown in the drawing -- the left-hand head is read-only, the right-hand head is write only. The instruction set is { LEFT_A, LEFT_B, PRINT_B, JUMP_IF_A_blank(address), JUMP(address) }i.e. abbreviated { LA, LB, PB, Jb(address), J(address), H }. The tape never goes right, and all the previous calculations etc disappear off to the left.

The tape is assumed blank at the start excepting the starting number in unary N=5 wedged between the two heads (shown as bold-faced 0's) ...0000111110000... i.e. the left head to the left of the string of one's (e.g. N=5) and the right head to the right of the string of ones. To the right of the string N the next steps print EVEN(N/2). After this (even part of the) division by 2 is complete the string looks like this ..000111110110000... . The decision EVEN means that the algorithm is "done" and thus it is ready to repeat the above steps. The decision ODD causes the right head to print 2 ones; then left rollers/head shifts left and tests the EVEN(N/2) string 11 for blank and if not then the right rollers/head add three more ones to the number on the right; this continues until the EVEN(N/2) string is on the separator blank between EVEN(N/2) and the string 2+3*EVEN(N/2).

Thus the tag machine is perfectly happy playing tag without erasing the left-most symbols and always moving stuff left, and has only the 5 instructions, plus halt. Again, am not sure what all this means, excepting that the algorithms are very simple. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 18:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

 * What you've created is a nice programming language for controlling the read/write heads of the machine in a way that allows it to operate much differently than a tag machine (which has only one state). Your machine, with arbitrarily many states (instructions in a program) can probably simulate binary k-tag for any k, but it can do many other things a k-tag machine cannot do — most importantly, it can freely write any word at any time, and isn't constrained to always perform just the single composite operation of a tag system (i.e., read one symbol and advance the tape a fixed number k of squares at the read-head when appropriate, always writing just the fixed word specified for the symbol that was read, etc.). --r.e.s. (talk) 20:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, now I understand better. Here is a version of the Collatz algorithm that you presented in the article, to be "computed" by a slightly "augmented" machine. This machine has the same instructions as before excepting the right head can print any symbol "s" and the left head can test for any symbol "s":
 * { LA, LB, PB(symbol), Js(symbol,address), J(address), halt }.

This simulator does only one symbol-compare at a time. So there are three of them, instructions #1, #2, #3, and three "state executions" as indicated by the colors (the "operations" are assumed to be occurring on the transitions but each is shown as a sequence of instructions). Thus "blue" prints "bc" and moves two symbols right into the string, "purple" prints "a" and moves two symbols into the string, and "orange" prints "aaa" and moves two symbols into the string.

My working through this and your pointing out that the tag "machine" is a one-state machine (with e.g. three transitions for the Collatz sequence) helped me understand this a lot.

I'd suggest that this state-machine aspect of the tag machine become more prominent in the article. I will mull over how to do a state-machine drawing of the Collatz machine; the only "complication" is that a whole lot of stuff happens on a transition. This is a quibble with "true" Turing machines too, that "shift" and "print" or vice versa, are not atomic (i.e. they occur in a sequence. And printing a symbol string is even less a single state if we assume one symbol per square of tape). So, I suppose we might think of the above little machine's actions as representing an "atomization" of the (one-state) tag machine's various actions in a state-transition. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 23:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm responding here to a question you asked over in Talk:Counter machines: "can a tag machine calculate 2N given N encoded as unary on its tape??". For machines that correspond to Post's tag systems (i.e. not multi-state machines), istm that the answer might well be "no", where the "unary" encoding of N would be a same-letter string of length N*k for a k-tag system. (But then, I don't claim to be adept at even elementary number theory, which is what these systems inherently involve — Post called it "the intrusion of number theory".) However, I think it's worth noting that even the simple 1-tag system (a -> aa) computes the function n → 2n (n ≥ 0) starting with the initial word 'a'. Just as Turing's original computing machines compute the nth digit of a (computable) real number as the nth figure written on the tape — without ever halting — here the nth term of the infinite sequence 20, 21, 22 ... is the nth term produced by the tag system, coded in "unary" as a string of 'a's.--r.e.s. (talk) 01:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Question: I've played around a bit now with the 2-tag system, in particular the Collatz algorithm and a "decrement". Question: have you seen a 2-tag algorithm to decrement a string such as aaaaa to aaaa to aaa to aa to a to a' etc ? I've not had as good luck figuring this out as I'd hoped. If you know of one don't tell me how to do it (it's a great puzzle, if nothing else), just let me know its doable. Thanks. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 21:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * No, I'm unaware of such a tag system, which is exactly why I replied 'istm that the answer might well be "no"' to your question above. --r.e.s. (talk) 23:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Tag systems vs. (Multi-state) Post machines
About the terminology ... (1) To my knowledge, the term "tag system" always refers to essentially the kind of system described by Emil Post, in which a single "tag operation" with its fixed set of productions is applied repeatedly to a word. (This corresponds to there being exactly one state when viewed as a "tag machine".) (2) On the other hand, some authors use the term "Post machine" in reference to a multi-state "tag machine", e.g. J. Nievergelt's lectures, http://www.jn.inf.ethz.ch/education/script/chapter8.pdf — but not Uspensky's "A Post Machine", as I'd mistakenly thought (Uspensky's "Post Machine" is in fact Post's Formulation 1). There's probably no way to avoid ambiguity, but I suggest that the article reserve the term tag system for Post's version with a single tag-operation, and use the term multistate tag machine to distinguish from the several other kinds of "Post machine" in the literature. --r.e.s. (talk) 05:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

About two years ago, I merged what had been a separate "Post Machine" article (barely a stub, as I recall, but definitely about tag machines) into this one. If tag machines (single- or multi-state) are now to be discussed in any detail in the article, I think a separate section should be created for them. --r.e.s. (talk) 05:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Tag system versus Thue- and semi-Thue systems and "word problems with cancellation": Maybe we can nail down Post's and Markov's algorithms (re one- or multi-state) with a bit of historical research. I'm not familiar with much of this, and I notice that you've been working on other articles. According to Kleene 1952:382-386 all this comes from a problem posed by Thue 1914 (the Thue 1914 reference is in Kleene 1952, in what looks like German). Is that your understanding too? Didn't Post fiddle with this as a young man? (I can look that up in Davis Engines of Logic, I believe).

 * People were surely formalising various kinds of "word derivation" problems in the early 1900's before Thue — but R. Murawski ("E. L. Post and the development of mathematical logic and recursion theory") writes that it was Post's work on canonical systems in 1920-21 that "founded the the theory of formal languages". It seems that Post didn't work on Thue's problem until much later.--r.e.s. (talk) 03:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Can I infer here that a tag system is a simpler form of Thue system?

 * I don't think it's correct to say that a tag system is a form of Thue system, though each class can model the other. Both can be regarded as special types of Post canonical system.--r.e.s. (talk) 03:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Thue problems don't cancel, do they? I also see that Kleene states that "Turing 1950 shows that the ''word problem for semi-groups with cancellation... is likewise unsolvable...."(p. 386)
 * Turing 1950. The word problem in semi-groups with cancellation. Ann. of Math., 2s., vol. 52, pp. 491-505.
 * Have you seen Turing's paper? (I just ran into this today, so I haven't). Where's the best place to see where Post posed his problem? The paper in The Undecidable? There's also Post's weird paper at the very end of The Undecidable.

 * Cancellation is a property of the semigroups in the word problem that Turing 1950 proved unsolvable, and to my knowledge has no counterpart in the "problem of Thue" that Post 1947 proved unsolvable.  --r.e.s. (talk) 03:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * 1914: Axel Thue's paper (cf bibliographic reference in Kleene 1952:536). In German.
 * 1921: Post's PhD thesis published (appears in van Heijenoort p. 264ff): Explores (i) truth table derivations of propostional calculus and (ii) axiomatic approach to propositional calculus Principia Mathematica
 * 1921: "While a graduate student at Princeton in 1921" (Minsky says) that Post [1965] studied what became known as the "tag" problem. Post [1965] is actually unpublished Post 1941 Absolutely Unsolvable Problems and Relatively Undecidable Propostions: account of an Anticipation" that appears in Davis 1965 The Undecidable''. See below.
 * 1927: Hilbert's talk where he describes an axiomatic system. I have this paper in English but it's translation and quality is suspect. Was gotten off the net. Based on this it seems Kleene 1952 develops almost the identical axiomatic system in his CHAPTER IV: A FORMAL SYSTEM (p. 69ff). Goedel does the same in his 1931.
 * 1928: Hilbert & Ackermann's Principles of Mathematical Logic, translated into English and published in 1950.
 * 1930: Goedel references Hilbert and Ackermann 1928 (cf van Heijenoort 1967:583) and proves that their 'restricted functional calculus' [restricted predicate calculus] is complete. The notion of "provable" versus "true".
 * 1931: Goedel adopts Hilbert's 1927 system together with a [primitive] recursive axiom schema to formally axiomatize a system powerful enough to express the notion of "v is a provable formula" within the system itself. He emphasizes the notion of a "finite sequence of primitive signs... and it is easy to state with complete precision which sequences of primitive signs are meaninful formulas and which are not. Similarly, proofs, from a formal point of view are nothing but finite sequences of formulas with certain properties." (van H. p. 597). He formally defines notions of "immediate consequence" and "provable formulas" (ibid).
 * 1936: Post's Formulation I (cf The Undecidable 1965:288ff)
 * 1941: Post's Absolutely Unsolvable Problems and Relatively Undecidable Propostions: account of an Anticipation" is rejected. Published in 1965 by Martin Davis in The Undecidable. In his 3. The problem of "tag" Post attributes the name "tag" to "B. P. Gill" (p. 370). He states that he "made [it] the major project of the writer's tenure of a Proctor fellowship in mathematics at Princeton dduring the academic year 1920-21" (p. 372). He began with the question of if, and how, to go from one expression in (~,V) of PM (Principia Mathematica) to another expression in (~,V) and proved in "an early unpublished method" that this could be "completely solved" (p. 370 ibid). But when he tried to embrace all of PM (i.e. predicate calculus) "the general problem proving intractable, successive simplifications thereof where considered, one of the last being this problem of "tag" ... . The solution of this problem thus appeared as a vital stepping stone in any furhter progress to be made." (p. 371 ibid). His formualtion of "tag" is the same as in the wikipedia article.

 * Tag systems, as Post created them, differ slightly from those defined in the main section of the article; his are as described in the "Historical note..." section. Post himself points out that by his definition, tag systems are almost but not quite monogenic normal canonical systems. Apparently, virtually all later writers simply adjusted the definition so as to make them monogenic normal canonical systems, and the main article does likewise. --r.e.s. (talk) 03:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * He mentions the 0 --> 00, 1 --> 1101, v=3 (i.e. erase or pass over 3 symbols on the left) to be "intractable". "This frustration, however, was largely based on the assumption that "tag" was but a very minor, if essential, stepping stone... ." Au contraire: "In the late summer of 1921, how3ever, the reductions carried through at Princeton in proving the equivalence of canonical forms A and B suggested a further transformation of canonical form B, and, indeed, led to a whole series of reductions with the final canonical form very close to the seemingly special form of "tag"."(p. 373, ibid). This is his form C that he arrives at (long) last at " giP produces Pg'i ", or what he calls his "normal system" (p. 409, ibid). It is this that Minsky 1967 calls "one of the most beautiful theorems in mathematics" (p. 240) and writes as g$ --> $h.
 * 1943: "Post mentions the (00, 1101) problem in passing, in his [1943] paper -- the one that announces the nromal-form theorem" (Minsky 1967:268).
 * Post 1943, Formal reductions of the general combinatorial decision problem," Am. Journal of Math. 65, 197-268. [?? p. 197-215 per the citation in The Undecidable'']. This paper is referenced by Minsky 1967 and by Kleene 1952.
 * 1944: Emil Post 1944, Recursively Enumerable sets of Positive Integers and their Decision Problems cf Undecidable p. 305. Post references his own paper 1943. Discussions in this paper incorporate the notions of 1943.
 * 1947: Emil Post 1947, Recursive Unsolvability of a Problem of Thue, cf Undecidable p. 292ff. He references Thue 1914, above. "The word problem for semigroups." Independently proved by Markov in the same year. Post makes use of a Turing machine in this proof. He goes one direction (semi-Thue) from a starting string to an end string hqr+2h [state qr+2 results with head wedged between two special symbols "h"]. But then in the converse direction, starting with hQ'h can he produce the starting string? In a footnote he comments that the reverse process leads to "a tree of assertions, elements not necessarily distinct, The exact same tree occurs with the Collatz sequence is run in reverse. "Certainly then, a solution of the problem of Thue in its full generality would thus lead to a solution of the "decision problem for the class of normal systems on a, b."" (p. 298, The Undecidable). This is a proof that appeared in his:
 * 1946: Post 1946, A variant of a recursively unsolvable problem, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 52 (1946), pp. 264-268.
 * 1950: Turing 1950. The word problem in semi-groups with cancellation. Ann. of Math., 2s., vol. 52, pp. 491-505. [??]
 * 1952: Kleene 1952 discusses "§71. The word problem for semi-groups" on pp. 382-386.
 * 1958: Martin Davis 1958, Computability and Unsolvability McGraw-Hill. I've seen the book but haven't explored whether "tag" is discussed.
 * 1961: Minsky 1961, Recursive unsolvability of Post's problem of "tag" and other topics in theory of Turing machines". I have this paper.
 * 1965, 1941: Martin Davis publishes Emil Post 1941 in his Undecidable p. 338ff. Tag is mentioned directly by Davis; this is a long and tedious paper. A search for tag will be necessary. Davis notes that "The equivalence proofs given between Canonical forms A, B, and C are of historical interest, showing as they do the evolution of Post's ideas from his early work on the propositional calculus.
 * 1967: Marvin Minsky 1967, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, McGraw-Hill, NJ. Discusses this stuff with particular reference to the notion of "Axiomatic Systems and the Logistic Method", "Effective computability as a Prerequisite for proof" and "Proof-finding procedures" (p. 221-224), Post's symbol manipulation systems, his normal-form theorem, tag, "monogenic Canonical Systems".

--- End time line.
 * In particular I'm missing Thue 1914 (in German, couldn't read it anyway), Post 1943, Hilbert-Ackermann 1928 in the 1950 English translation, Turing 1950, Davis 1958 (but have seen in library). I have seen and cc'd part of Markov (ca 1950's) but probably not enough to be useful. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 04:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I moved a Question by Wvbailey (and my reply) to the previous section, where I think it belongs as follow-up to what was already posted there. --r.e.s. (talk) 23:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment: I would agree with Post's algorithm that tacks on the next symbol(s) then deletes the front symbols. Thus this is a two-state machine.

 * No, it isn't — just as a single TM state involves a compound operation and is nevertheless a single state. --r.e.s. (talk) 23:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I am not convinced that a most-generalized n-tag machine can be built that, under all conditions, can do the whole job in one "state" (where a state transition occurs at one tick of a clock), even if the "delete" and "concatenate" operations are done in parallel. The case of concern is when you start with a single symbol, e.g. "a". For example: { a --> bc }. Start with the single symbol "a". You have to write the bc after the "a" before you can strike out "ab"
 * a --> abc --> ab c --> c

I'd argue that in this example (at least) two clock pulses are required, or a single clock plus a delay that acts as a 2nd state. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 21:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * It's not a matter of clock pulses or any other "implementation issue". A tag system (or the equivalent "tag machine") is an abstract system whose definition is in terms of a single compound operation — what Post called the tag operation. Viewed in terms of an abstract machine, that operation constitutes just one state, in exactly the same sense as the compound operation involved in a single TM state. --r.e.s. (talk) 23:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Implementation issues still apply to abstract computations. The only "abstraction" is their unlimited memory capacity. Do you have a cc of Minsky 1967? If so see 2.0.1 Moments of Time and 2.1 States and Signals(p. 12ff). I've noticed that the computer-science notion of "state" differs very much from that of the engineer's and physicist's notions. While I too have written thousands of lines of code that simulate "state machines" I recognize that each "state" is equipped with many true internal states and any notion that these compound events represent a single "state" is flat-out wrong with respect to the physics of the events and the engineering behind them. Minsky defines "state" satisfactorily enough for an engineer and physicist (they include both position and velocity of all the elements in the system -- Minsky is saying that the velocity of all the elements is 0 during what he calls a "state" between ticks of a clock); he then observes that the output state at the moment t must not depend on the input state at that same time t" in order to "prevent unrealizable -- paradoxical -- descriptions of situtaions..." (p. 14)

In support of my complaint I'd also recommend the paper by Robin Gandy where he addresses this same issue of the speed of light:
 * Robin Gandy 1980, Church's Thesis and the Principles for Mechanisms in J. Barwise, H. J. Keisler and K. Kunen, eds., ''The Kleene Symposium", North-Holland Publishing Company (1980) 123-148.

I prefer the Post implementation that you describe. It's clear, clean and correct. In his rejected 1941 -- which he clearly rewrote for his 1943 -- he stated the tag system this way:
 * "...we set up the following operation for obtaining from any given non-null sequence
 * "B = b1 b2 ... bl
 * " on the symbols 0, 1, ..., u-1, a unique derived sequence B' on those symbols. To the right end of B adjoin the sequence associated with the symbol b1 in the given basis, and from the left end of this augmented sequence remove the first v elements -- all if there be less than v elements....51" (The Undecidable p. 371)

 * "51. In an early formulation of this problem, b1 was first checked off, the corresponding associated sequence added, then the v-th element after b1 was checked off, corresponding associated sequence added, and so on. Whether the iterative process terminated or not then depended on whether the ever advancing check mark did or did not overtake the usually advancing right end of the sequence, whence the suggestive name proposed by Gill for the problem." (The Undecidable p. 371)

'nuf said about this. I had no luck on the state-machine page trying to make a similar point: that the C-S definition of "state" is misleading and in the eyes of an engineer and physicist flat wrong, even with the definitions and quotations in hand from a variety of books. Bill Wvbailey 17:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

 * When formulated as an abstract machine, it's immediately clear that the "tag machine" equivalent of a tag system has only one state in its "controller logic". A computation by an abstract machine is typically described as a sequence of transitions from one "complete configuration of the system" to another — i.e., a "trajectory" in the set C of all possible complete configurations of the system, according to some fixed transition function. (Input & output functions being appropriately defined w.r.t. C, as well.)  For example, the complete configuration of a Turing machine is typically specified by a triplet (q, A, bB), where q is the "controller state" and A/B are the finite tape contents to the left/right of the current cell, whose content is b. Similarly, the complete configuration of a tag machine is specified simply by (W) (the current tag-word) alone — there are no multiple states of the controller.  In programming terms, the tag-system controller logic is a program that's just a single case-statement that's always the "current state(ment)", by definition of the tag operation.  OTOH, a "variant-tag machine" with multiple controller states might have its complete configuration specified by (q, W, j), where q is an instruction pointer to the current state(ment) in the controller program (now having possibly a number of more-primitive instructions, etc.), and j is a pointer to the current letter of the current word W. --r.e.s. 20:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

 * A possible source of confusion about the term "state" is that the complete system-configuration of an abstract machine is sometimes called the system state. A physicist might want to compare the set C, of complete configurations of such a machine, to the phase space of a physical system (although C is a countable set, whereas the latter typically isn't).  An abstract machine's controller-state is a component of its system state, analogous to a physical system's spatial configuration (say) being a component of its physical system state. In this analogy, a computation of an abstract machine is a trajectory in its configuration space C under the action of the machine's transition function, similar to a physical system having a trajectory in phase space under the action of physical laws. --r.e.s. 20:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

n-tag definition
When it says 2-tag system, what does the 2 refer to? It seems to be the halting length, but the article doesn't seem to explicitly say, and I'm new to this topic, so I'm not positive. — Olathe (talk) 01:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

change this to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_system_(mathematics)
We should clearly disambiguate this from tag systems in the non-mathematical sense.

For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35597934 (https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/tag-systems/) is not related. 2403:6200:8851:D9B4:4843:9546:EBBC:EB0A (talk) 11:20, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tag system


text:
User talk:Netmendo~enwiki

Camões
Greetings. You contributed to Luís de Camões recently.

 * "No other modern epic compares to it, as no other modern history displays the resourcefulness of Portugal, the first global country"

This is an encyclopedia, so it is important to remain neutral in tone. This sentence is in my opinion too biased and adds no information, so I deleted it.

I also believe from the sources I've read on the net that there are no documents confirming Camões' presence in Coimbra, hence I deleted your changes to that paragraph too, but if you have any better sources, do state them in the talk page and we'll work that out.

Any questions, leave them in my talk page.

Happy wikiing! --koenige 17:21, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

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title: User talk:Netmendo~enwiki


text:
1939–40 NHL season

The 1939–40 NHL season was the 23rd season for the National Hockey League. Of the league's seven teams, the Boston Bruins were the best in the 48-game regular season, but the Stanley Cup winners were the New York Rangers, who defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs in the best-of-seven final series 4–2 for their third Stanley Cup in 14 seasons of existence. It would be another 54 years before their fourth.

League business
In June 1939, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association notified the NHL of the request for development fees when signing amateur players to contracts, after the existing professional-amateur deal expired in 1940.

Regular season
Tragedy struck the Montreal Canadiens when Babe Siebert, named coach of the struggling club, drowned along with his daughter in August. It put a big hole in the Habs defence and the team finished last under Pit Lepine. An all-star benefit was held in Siebert's memory.

The New York Americans, in financial trouble, decided to trade their star left wing Sweeney Schriner to Toronto for Harvey "Busher" Jackson, Buzz Boll, Murray Armstrong, and minor-leaguer Jimmy Fowler. Late in the season, they traded Eddie Wiseman and $5000 to Boston for Eddie Shore. The Americans then managed to make the playoffs by finishing a poor sixth. They also obtained Charlie Conacher and used him as a defenceman.

The first place Boston Bruins had a new coach in Cooney Weiland, their one-time captain, and were once again led by their Kraut Line, Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart, and Bobby Bauer as they finished 1–2–3 in overall league scoring. Unfortunately, the potent three were unable to help the Bruins get past the first round of the playoffs as the Bruins lost in six games to the Rangers.

The New York Rangers were coasting in first place and went 19 consecutive games without a loss. They slumped in the second half, though, and Boston edged them out for first place.

The first NHL game broadcast on television was between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens on February 25, 1940. The game was seen by only 300 people in a small area in the United States. This, though, was not the first ice hockey game broadcast on television, as a broadcast had been made in England in 1938. The CBC's first hockey broadcast was in 1952 between the Montreal Canadiens and Detroit Red Wings.

Playoffs
The Boston Bruins were expected to make the Stanley Cup Finals after a first overall finish during the regular season riding the shoulders of the "Kraut Line", but the New York Rangers were too much for the Bruins who lost in six games, got out-scored 14 to 8, and got shut-out twice in the Semifinals. The third seed Toronto Maple Leafs swept the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks en route to the Stanley Cup Finals. The Rangers Cup win would begin the 54 Year Curse, and they would not win another Cup until 1994.

Player statistics

 * Regular season

Scoring leaders
Note: GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points Source: NHL

Leading goaltenders
Note: GP = Games played; Min = Minutes played; GA = Goals against; GAA = Goals against average; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; SO = Shutouts
 * Playoffs

Playoff scoring leaders
Note: GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; PIM = Penalty minutes

Playoff leading goaltenders
Note: GP = Games played; Min = Minutes played; GAA = Goals against average; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; SO = Shutouts

Coaches

 * Boston Bruins: Cooney Weiland
 * Chicago Black Hawks: Paul Thompson
 * Detroit Red Wings: Jack Adams
 * Montreal Canadiens: Babe Siebert and Alfred Lepine
 * New York Americans: Red Dutton
 * New York Rangers: Frank Boucher
 * Toronto Maple Leafs: Dick Irvin

Debuts
The following is a list of players of note who played their first NHL game in 1939–40 (listed with their first team, asterisk(*) marks debut in playoffs):
 * Doug Bentley, Chicago Black Hawks
 * Johnny Mowers, Detroit Red Wings
 * Pat Egan, New York Americans
 * Kilby MacDonald, New York Rangers

Last games
The following is a list of players of note that played their last game in the NHL in 1939–40 (listed with their last team):
 * Tiny Thompson, Detroit Red Wings
 * Cecil Dillon, Detroit Red Wings
 * Hec Kilrea, Detroit Red Wings
 * Cy Wentworth, Montreal Canadiens
 * Earl Robinson, Montreal Canadiens
 * Armand Mondou, Montreal Canadiens
 * Marty Barry, Montreal Canadiens
 * Doc Romnes, New York Americans
 * Art Chapman, New York Americans
 * Nels Stewart, New York Americans
 * Eddie Shore, New York Americans
 * Cliff Barton, New York Rangers, last active player form the Pittsburgh Pirates (NHL) franchise.
 * Johnny Gagnon, New York Rangers
 * Red Horner, Toronto Maple Leafs

title: 1939–40 NHL season


text: User talk:71.1.58.24

title: User talk:71.1.58.24


text:
Talk:List of literary initials

Untitled
I've collected close to a hundred initials here.. if you know of any that I haven't covered, please do let me know. Thanks! --Peripatetic 17:24, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of literary initials


text:
Cupressus atlantica

Cupressus atlantica, the Moroccan cypress, is a rare coniferous tree endemic to the valley of the Oued n'Fiss river in the High Atlas Mountains south of Marrakech in western Morocco. The majority are old, with very little regeneration due to overgrazing by goats, and they are critically endangered.

This species is distinct from the allied Cupressus sempervirens (Mediterranean cypress) in its much bluer foliage with a white resin spot on each leaf, the smaller shoots often being flattened in a single plane. It also has smaller, globose cones, only 1.5-2.5 cm long. Cupressus dupreziana (Saharan cypress) is more similar, and C. atlantica is treated as a variety of it (C. dupreziana var. atlantica) by some authors. Moroccan cypress does not however share the unique reproductive system of male apomixis found in Saharan cypress.

title: Cupressus atlantica


text:
Talk:Imaginations from the Other Side

Wizard of Oz
It is not clear from the article if the lyrical references would best be linked to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the book), The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) (the most famous movie), or something else. Right now the link is to a disambiguation page. Dpv 18:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

"Another Holy War"
I have to disagree with the current article's statement that "Another Holy War" is about the Crusades. As I read the lyrics, it seems to be written from Jesus' POV just before his crucifixion. Troy Baer 03:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

 * "The Script for my Requiem" seems to be about a disillusioned former crusader, but I concur that "Another Holy War" is not. Perhaps the two should just be directly swapped? 68.35.129.180 03:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Correct me ,please, if I'm wrong, but as I know "Another Holy War" is not on Jesus, but just any other fake messiah. Damaged brain (talk) 23:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

"And the Story Ends"
How is this song linked to the Neverending Story?? The title might seem to be inspired by it, but I can't spot any direct references to these stories. I'm changing this, for now.Cyanid (talk) 14:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Indented line It's not based on the neverendingstory, but it's inspired by it. The general arc of the story has some similarities, although the charachter and the world are actually different. --87.208.18.2 (talk) 07:51, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

"Born in a Mourning Hall"
A criticism to religious fanaticism nowadays? There is some of it in the very beginning of the song, but imho not enough to explain the whole lyrics. I think it's more about the hypocrisy of people, about someone realizing this but not feeling able to counter it because of inside fear and weakness. Then again, http://www.kulichki.com/fantasy/bg/analyre.htm gives a different analysis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.45.182.248 (talk) 11:01, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm Alive
The statement that "I'm Alive" is about the Death Gate Cycle is unsupported. It needs a reference, or, in the event that no such reference exists because that is not what the song is about, the statement needs to be changed. "I'm Alive" is plainly about a video game, probably Nethack or Diablo, but that's just what I've gathered from listening to the lyrics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.103.74.231 (talk) 05:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "I'm alive" is about "The Sunset Warrior" by "Eric Van Lustbader".

Imaginations From The Other Side
Well, I always believed that this song was about Michael Ende's "Neverending Story". In any case, even though its not cited in the reference, the lines "and see the tale that never ends" is a clear reference to the The Old Man of Wandering Mountain of Ende's book. --187.15.132.10 (talk) 00:59, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Indented line The song is about the significance of fantasy and fairytales in general. The Neverending Story is references, as are a lot of other famous stories. --87.208.18.2 (talk) 07:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:Imaginations from the Other Side


text:
Antônio Ermírio de Moraes

Antônio Ermírio de Moraes (June 4, 1928 – August 24, 2014) was a Brazilian billionaire businessman and the chairman of the Votorantim Group, one of the country's largest companies, focused on metals, paper, cement and frozen orange juice. He was the grandfather of IndyCar Series driver Mario Moraes.

Moraes was also the president of the Beneficência Portuguesa Hospital – located in São Paulo – which provides 60% of its services to citizens below the poverty line. His grandson Artur Freitas was recently announced as his successor in the presidency. As of 2014, Moraes was ranked 520th on the Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated fortune of $3.1 billion. During the course of his career, Moraes has had direct political involvement with campaigns to promote democracy, the improvement of the national health system and the generation of job opportunities. He ran for governor of São Paulo State in 1986, but lost the elections. He frequently published articles in newspapers and magazines of national circulation and is a member of the Academia Paulista de Letras.

On his death in 2014, ownership of Votorantim Group passed jointly to his two children, Maria Helena de Moraes and Ermirio Pereira de Moraes.

title: Antônio Ermírio de Moraes


text:
User talk:Emanekaf

Welcome
Hi and welcome to wikipedia. I hope you like it and decide to stay. Here are some handy links for newcomers. Also you can sign your name on talk pages and vote pages with three tildes like this ~~~, and your name with a time stamp with four like this ~~~~. If you have any questions, ask me on my talk page. Howabout1 Talk to me! 17:25, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
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title: User talk:Emanekaf


text:
Talk:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Plan For Themes Section
My friend and I plan to create a themes section within the article that will be split into two topics. One will focus on themes of religion throughout the novel, and the other will focus on themes of politics and The Cold War. Here are the citations of some possible sources we may use in our editing process:

Possible sources: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Demetrarain (talk • contribs) 21:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Russell, James. "Narnia as a Site of National Struggle: Marketing, Christianity, and National Purpose in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Cinema Journal, vol. 48 no. 4, 2009, pp. 59-76. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cj.0.0145
 * Chapman, Roger. "The Lion, the Witch and the Cold War: Political Meanings in the Religious Writings of C.S. Lewis1." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 24.1 (2012): 1-14. ProQuest. W"Communist Spy Jailed for 14 Years." BBC News. BBC, 01 Mar. 1950. Web.
 * Ezard, John. "Narnia Books Attacked as Racist and Sexist." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 03 June 2002. Web.
 * Leith, Sam. "CS Lewis's Literary Legacy: 'dodgy and Unpleasant' or 'exceptionally Good'?" The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 Nov. 2013. Web.
 * Lindskoog, Kathryn Ann. "Article by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick, vol. 27, Gale, 1984. Contemporary Literary Criticism Online. Accessed 16 Oct. 2017. Originally published in The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land: The Theology of C S Lewis Expressed in His Fantasies for Children, by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, Eerdmans, 1974.
 * Schakel, Peter J. "Hidden Images of Christ in the Fiction of C. S. Lewis." Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 46, no. 2, 2013, pp. 1-18.
 * Team, Novelguide. “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Theme Analysis.” Novelguide, Novelguide.com, www.novelguide.com/the-lion-the-witch-the-wardrobe/theme-analysis

 * This is a good plan of attack. I'm noticing some sources are older and some are contemporary. Keep this in mind as you write; it could be worth commenting on, the way in which critics read the book differently over time. You might also look for more sources to fill in any "gap" years. And I'm a bit skeptical of your final source. It might be a good frame of reference for you, but I don't know that it counts as a verifiable source. Aschuet1 (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

 * So far the Cold War section has only one source, seems tendentious, and – though I'd have to look this up – also seems out of line with what Lewis is known to have written about politics. (Maugrim as Gestapo / Stalinist police?  Perfectly plausible.  Aslan as the US?  Not so much.) —VeryRarelyStable (talk) 01:24, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Original research
Much of the analysis appearing in the "Writing section" is WP:Original research—rather than presenting what authors writing about Lewis' writing of this book have said, we are reading things Lewis has written (primary sources), and presenting our own analyses. My understanding is that this is contrary to the spirit (as well as policies and guidelines) of Wikipedia. Registered editors should take this in hand, and return this to being a presentation of what others have concluded about Lewis' writing (rather than present WP editor's ideas). With regard to their novelty and originality—it is possible that we might see such, but the more likely, so dense is this literary area with activity, any association we might make, any inference we might draw—most likely someone else has before us, and we need only do the looking to find it. [a former professor, sans wardrobe or Lewis' generally good humour] 2601:246:C700:558:1868:955:8901:9E69 (talk) 05:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Unsourced material
Below information was tagged for needing sources long-term. Feel free to reinsert with appropriate references. DonIago (talk) 15:58, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Intro
What's the point of stating that it's a children's book in the intro when that's already stated in the page image and the body text? There are plenty of Wikipedia pages for children's books that don't mention that they're for children in the intro. 2001:5B0:4DC1:9C88:462:EF68:61EC:C62B (talk) 17:18, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Per MOS:LEAD "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic. It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points". The fact that this is a children's book is mentioned several times in the body text. The lead should reflect the main points in the article. We don't change it because WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Fieryninja (talk) 21:54, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

"The Lion, The Witch,and The Wardrobe" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Lion,_The_Witch,and_The_Wardrobe&redirect=no The Lion, The Witch,and The Wardrobe] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 21:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)


text:
User talk:NYnascar

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! And, as a fellow sports fan, I congratulate you on a well written article on 1939-40 NHL season Sam Vimes 17:26, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
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title: User talk:NYnascar


text:
Talk:John Hales (theologian)

Untitled
There must be an error. One can't be Lord Privy Seal between 1470 and 1471, when his lifedate lasts from 1584 to 1656. I defenitely know that he was secretary of exchequers under the rule of Henry VIII of England and Edward VI of England. --Rosa Lux 17:26, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

It's actually quite simple. There are several John Hales, this one isn't the bishop that was Lord Privy. The same odd linkerror is made all over the internet. --Lomedae 22:53, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear. On further investigation I have found 3 to 4 John Hales in history, all of them linking to this one bio. I have renamed/relinked all instances of John Hales that should link to another bio. I am confident all links to this John Hales are correct. --Lomedae 23:37, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 07:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:John Hales (theologian)


text:
Talk:Battalions of Fear

Unfair Album Review by allmusic
I don't think that the allmusic review is quite fair, because there is no review. Just a rating. Perhaps the link to that review should be removed. 75.166.62.78 (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You are right. If there is no review then it should be removed. An album rating is not a review. Also, I checked if the other types had reviews on them but found nothing. FireCrystal (talk) 22:21, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Battalions of Fear


text:
Talk:Follow the Blind

Untitled
I have to say that I believe that most of the songs on this album are indeed about Elric/the eternal champion, even if they aren't named specifically. For example, in Valhalla: "Magic is in me I'm the last magic man/Never found what I was looking for/Now I found it but it's lost" would refer to Elric in the end of Stormbringer, where Elric is indeed the last magic-user alive, and he tortures his enemy, embracing his heritage after many years of self-exile and soul-searching. Another example is in Follow the Blind: "The queen is lying far behind in an endless dream", which would be Cymoril, Elric's first love, who was captured by Yyrkoon and enchanted to sleep forever. If Elric had married her before she died, she would have been Empress. There are more instances of lyrics that stand out to me as very Elric-like, though I haven't read Corum or Hawkmoon, I can't say for sure about them. I just thought I should get a second opinion before any edits were made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.235.208.75 (talk • contribs) 06:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Thrash Metal?
I was reading that article and the only mention of thrash metal is that they listened to it while making that album, there is no mention of them being thrash metal, so im removing it from the genre section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.116.10.54 (talk • contribs) 20:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Guest on Barbara-Ann
Does anyone know who the guest-vocalist in Barbara Ann is? It isn't listed in the booklet and I'm pretty sure it's neither Hansen or Kürsch; he sounds kinda like Tobias Sammet to me, although I somehow doubt it's him considering he'd only have been 12 at the time.  Alphathon  /'æɫfə.θɒn/ ( talk ) 20:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Follow the Blind


text:
User:Pilon

Kratek opis
Moje ime je Lea, in po internetu se ponašam s čudovitim priimkom, ki je bil nekoč Winter, sedaj pa je Vinter. Rodila sem se leta tisoč devetsto oseminosemdeset v četrtem največjem slovenskem mestu Kranj, poimenovanem Prešernovo mesto.

Sodobne manire
Večino svojega otroštva je preživela pri starem očetu, sicer človeku s pravo izobrazbo in odličnim vedenjem, Antonu Winterju. S prilagajanjem v šoli je imela vedno probleme; bila je v treh vrtcih, preden se je 'ustalila', kasneje še v dveh osnovnih šolah, kjer je zelo pogosto menjavala družbo in izoblikovala svoj krog prijateljev. Obiskovala je krožke filozofije, novinarstva, astronomije in geografije, nekaj časa pa je hodila tudi k umetnosti. Leto 2003 je bilo prelomno - vpisala se je na splošno gimnazijo, kot učenki ji gre dobro, želi pa ostati predvsem anonimna.

Revije
Obsedena je z revijami, z listanjem po revijah, če smo natančni. Vsak mesec porabi kar nekaj denarja za modne, poljudnoznanstvene revije in drugo čtivo, povezano z navtiko, oblikovanjem notranjih prostorov ali pa arhitekturo.

Najraje prebira:

 * Arhitektura in oblikovanje notranjih prostorov (Ambient, Hiše, Pri nas doma)
 * Poljudnoznanstvene in podobno (Gea, Horizont, National Geographic)
 * Navtika (Navtika, Navtika kapital, Val navtika)
 * Moda (Elle, Gloss, Modna)
 * Mešano (Art.si in Mladina)

Digitalna fotografija
Ko je prvič prijela v roke digitalni fotoaparat, je vedela, da je čisto poseben predmet. Kmalu po nakupu prvega digitalnega fotoaparata je ustvarila svoj digitalni portfolio z zbirko najboljših digitalnih fotografij, ki jih je v posnela med določenimi obdobji. Zdaj ima v svoji zasebni zbirki več kot tisoč fotografij, tako digitalnih kot tudi klasičnih. Seveda pa je vse povezano s potovanji, kar je tudi ena njenih najljubših stvari.

Za fotografiranje uporablja dva čisto navadna digitalna fotoaparata: Sony DSC-P71 in Olympus AZ-2 Zoom.

Med stvari, ki jih je v fotografijah upodobila v letih med 2000 in 2005, spadajo tudi svetovno znani in mondeni kraji, kot so San Marino, Monako in Monte Carlo ter še drugi:

 * Francija
 * Arles
 * Avignon
 * Cannes
 * Nica

 * Provansa
 * Grasse

 * Italija
 * Padova
 * Ravenna
 * Rim

Digitalni portfolio.

title: User:Pilon


text:
Talk:Tales from the Twilight World

Lost in the Twilight Halls
Can someone cite references on where this song is said to be about Gandalf? I personally am an avid reader of the Middle-earth writings but I can find nothing in the lyrics that supports this connection. Instead I much rather think this song is about someone being lost between two lives (as in reïncarnation or different selves). Cyanid (talk) 12:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Run for the Night Live
The 2013 box-set "A Travveller's Guide..." gives information, that Run for the Night was recorded in Braunschweig in 1989, the only concert they played there in 1989 was on 10th June 1989, so you can add this date. Below is the source: http://en.blind-guardian.fr/tours.php#date17

178.43.220.10 (talk) 22:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tales from the Twilight World


text:
Sean Russell

Sean Russell may refer to:

 * Seán Russell (1893–1940), Irish republican
 * Sean Russell (author) (born 1952), Canadian author of fantasy literature and historical novels
 * Sean Russell (rugby league), Australian rugby league player

title: Sean Russell


text:
Catemaco

Catemaco is a city in the south of the Mexican state of Veracruz. It serves as the municipal seat for the municipality of the same name. The city is located on Lake Catemaco, with the municipality stretching north to the Gulf of Mexico. Catemaco is a tourist destination, with its main attractions being the lake, remnants of the region's rainforest and a tradition of sorcery/witchcraft that has its roots in the pre-colonial period and is mostly practiced by men. This tradition is well-known in Mexico and attracts clients from various walks of life, including businessmen and national-level politicians. Catemaco holds an annual event in March dedicated to sorcery, which can draw up to 5,000 visitors.

The city
The city of Catemaco is located in southern Veracruz, about 160 km from the port of Veracruz and 220 km from the state capital at Xalapa. It is located inland, extending 2.5 km along the shore of Lake Catemaco, a large freshwater lake, which is one of the city's main tourist attractions, along with its cuisine and its tradition of sorcery. Along the lake, the city has a 1.5 km breakwater/boardwalk, which is frequently crowded with both visitors and vendors, especially those selling charms and a local freshwater snail called tegogolo. The city's docks are located in the center of this area, classified as a fishing and tourism port by the federal government. Most of the boat traffic is for tourism, especially during vacation periods.

The other main section of the city is the main plaza, popular with both residents and visitors. The main structure here is the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Veneration of this version of the Virgin Mary, the patroness of the municipality, began in the early colonial period, as a substitute for the local worship of Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of water and fishermen. This basilica contains an image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which has been credited with miracles. It is rivaled in devotion only by a shrine on an island in Lake Catemaco called El Tegal, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared. The current structure was begun in 1799 but was not finished until 1961. The church is a combination of Baroque and Neoclassical with a cupola 21 meters high. The surrounding stained glass windows depict the lives of Jesus and Mary. Each year, Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated at this basilica, a launching of boats in procession to Agaltepec Island and traditional music including danzón, Son Jarocho and other tropical music, using guitars, violins, the vihuela and double bass.

Other landmarks in the city include the Statue of the Fisherman, the Torre del Reloj (Clock Tower), the Brizuela Absalón House, the Gasca Blanco House and the Herrera García House. The Casa de los Tesoros is a large gift shop, which offers bagels, bizcochos and Mexican handcrafts and folk art.

There is a bus station principally connecting the city with the ports of Veracruz and Coatzacoalcos.

The "witches" of Catemaco
Catemaco is known in Mexico for its community of brujos and brujas, which can be translated as 'witches' or 'sorcerers', as most are men but some are woman. The history of magical practices here extends back to the pre-Hispanic period and may have survived because of its relative isolation, but Lake Catemaco is said to emit a kind of energy, along with the Mono Blanco Mountain that rises above it.

These magical practices are an uneasy mix of Catholic rite, especially the invocation of saints and pre-Hispanic beliefs and rituals. Though many tourists are simply amused by the kitschy T-shirts of witches or other souvenirs or attractions, some do take the practice seriously. There are practitioners of both “white” and “black” magic, with the white version being more acceptable. Those who practice the black version charge more.

Sorcery is one of the main attractions of Catemaco. The belief in magical practices has attracted people from all walks of life, from waiters and taxi drivers to national-level politicians. Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera Beltrán even pushed for a national school for sorcery in Catemaco, without success and is a regular at the annual event. Visitors usually seek limpias (ritual cleansings), healing or something to give them an edge in business. These magical practices have also migrated out of the Catemaco area as residents move to other places such as Ciudad Juárez to work.

Although the sorcery is a main attraction, it is not promoted as part of Halloween or Day of the Dead. The main event for practitioners is the annual Congreso Nacional de Brujos de Catemaco (officially called the Ritos, Ceremonias y Artesanías Mágicas because of objections from the Catholic Church). The main event is the opening, on the first Friday of March. This begins with a “black mass” held at midnight, formerly held on the edge of Lake Catemaco by the “brujo mayor” (loosely translated as “high witch or sorcerer”), which has attracted up to 5,000 people. More recently this large public black mass has been replaced by private ceremonies held separately by each of the main brujos in the grounds of their own property. The next afternoon there is a public procession where each brujo and their followers process through the town, culminating in a public celebration involving traditional dance. The event was founded in the 1970s by former brujo mayor Gonzalo Aguirre and today attracts around 200 shamans, healers (curanderos), herbalists, psychics and fortune tellers. It also brings in as much as three million pesos to the local economy.

The popularity of the brujos and the event has created problems as well. Many con artists have taken advantage of the situation, making the finding of genuine practitioners difficult. There have been disputes among the practitioners over clients, tourism, and who leads the rites at the annual gathering. There has also been controversy related to those who sacrifice animals or petition Santa Muerte or the Devil.

History
In the early pre Hispanic period, the area was dominated by the Olmecs, but the name is derived from Nahuatl, meaning "place of the burned houses". This name is probably in reference to an eruption of the San Martin Volcano. However, the assumed meaning “place of the burned houses” is grammatically impossible per Nahuatl. Consider Alexis Wimmer’s basic form ācaltēma to mean ‘load (something) into a boat’ to produce a derived but unattested form *[a]ca[l]tema[h]co ‘at the place where boats are loaded’. Another but less likely idea is that Catemaco is from Nahuatl cal-temactli ‘a house/houses that is/are given to someone’. Caltemaco would then be the nonactive form of the verb.

From the 16th century, the area was part of the province of Santiago Tuxtla, which became a municipality after Independence. The city itself was founded in 1774. In 1881, it officially became a town and in 1966 it was declared a city.

title: Catemaco


text:
Talk:Tokyo Tales

Personally, I think that there should have been written date and place of recording thic album, I aslo think, that it have happened in Tokyo, Japan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.239.216.21 (talk) 11:40, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tokyo Tales


text: User talk:84.13.9.99

title: User talk:84.13.9.99


text: Talk:Mirror Mirror (Blind Guardian song)


text:
Talk:Nightfall in Middle-Earth

Recorded digitally?
Does anyone know if this album was recorded digitally? It sounds too "tight" for an analog recording.--76.181.120.0 (talk) 05:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Nightfall in Middle-Earth


text:
Talk:The Forgotten Tales

Newer 2007 Remasters - No Videos?
I purchased Blind Guardian's The Forgotten Tales CD from Amazon on January 20, 2021 and just found out through this Wikipedia page that there were supposed to be two bonus videos. My copy has no videos and I have looked. It clearly states on the tray insert "REMASTERED 2007" and the date on the back of the insert states "2017 Nuclear Blast Records". Did Nuclear Blast remove the bonus videos? It seems like this should be mentioned somewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.55.155.6 (talk)

title: Talk:The Forgotten Tales


text:
Talk:And Then There Was Silence

Untitled
While highly comical, are the lego videos really notable? 65.6.213.12 (talk) 06:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:And Then There Was Silence


text:
Talk:The Bard's Song (In the Forest)

Lyrics - I don't think they're copyright-free
Are you sure that inserting the lyrics is a good idea. I'm not sure if it even qualifies for the "fair use" copyright rule. I have heard much about lyric-sites being sued by the RIAA. I think that we should delete the lyrics just to be sure ;-) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.11.204.199 (talk) 20:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

Removed tabs
Recently the Music Publishers' Association has been blocking many sites containing guitar tabs(complaints from copyright holders).Amenifus (talk) 10:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Power Metal!?
Id like to know how is this song power metal.Yes,BG is a power metal band,but this song isn't power metal;its not even metal!Metal relies heavily on distorted electric guitars,drums and bass guitar,yet there are none of those instruments to be found in this song,so it clearly isn't power metal.

title: Talk:The Bard's Song (In the Forest)


text: Talk:Live (Blind Guardian album)

title: Talk:Live (Blind Guardian album)


text:
Talk:Imaginations Through the Looking Glass

Fair use rationale for Image:Imaginations through the looking glass.jpg
Image:Imaginations through the looking glass.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 08:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


text: Template:Atlanta Hawks roster

title: Template:Atlanta Hawks roster


text:
Talk:Sirens (Savatage album)

Untitled hidden acoustic track
There's some confusion as to what exactly the hidden acoustic track is. There is no evidence to suggest this is anything other than Criss Oliva messing around in the studio and tape was rolling, as Savatage's producer was known to do. The acoustic track is almost a minute shorter and is in a completely different key. This is not the lost Streets track, because *this* is "Island Of The Kings": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec-r2Ifrszc

title: Talk:Sirens (Savatage album)