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Olivia Benson

Olivia "Liv" Margaret Benson is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the NBC police procedural drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrayed by Mariska Hargitay. Benson holds the rank and pay-grade of Captain and is the Commanding Officer of the Special Victims Unit of the New York City Police Department, which operates out of the 16th Precinct. She investigates sexual offenses such as rape and child sexual abuse.

When the series began, Benson held the rank of detective. Benson was partnered with Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), serving as the junior member of the pair. Following Stabler's departure at the end of the 12th season after a deadly shootout in the precinct, she is partnered with Detective Nick Amaro (Danny Pino) and becomes the senior member. During the 15th season, Benson is promoted to sergeant and appointed as squad supervisor in the wake of the retirement of Sergeant John Munch (Richard Belzer). Soon afterward, Captain Donald Cragen (Dann Florek) retires, and appoints Benson acting commanding officer of SVU until Lieutenant Declan Murphy (Donal Logue) comes to the squad. In Season 17, she is promoted to Lieutenant and becomes the squad's official commanding officer. She is promoted to captain in the 21st season.

The character first appeared in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit pilot episode, "Payback", which aired September 20, 1999. Hargitay remains the only original cast member still present on the series. As of season 24, Benson has been credited in 538 episodes of SVU (559 in the franchise/universe). With the premiere of season 21, Hargitay's Benson became the longest running prime-time live-action character of all time, surpassing the 20 season record (but as of yet not its 635 episode count) held by Gunsmoke's Marshall Matt Dillon and Kelsey Grammer's character Frasier Crane from Cheers and Frasier, as well as Belzer's John Munch, who was a regular character for 22 seasons (7 on Homicide: Life on the Street and 15 on SVU).

Character overview
Series creator Dick Wolf named his two lead detectives after his son, Elliot, and his daughter, Olivia. Wolf conceived Benson as a detective in the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes. For the first 12 seasons of the show, she is partnered with Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni); after he resigns (offscreen) at the beginning of season 13, she is partnered with Nick Amaro (Danny Pino) until season 15, where Benson becomes the commanding officer of Manhattan SVU; first as Sergeant, then Lieutenant, and finally Captain.

Personality
Benson is tough but empathetic, getting emotionally involved in cases. Executive producer and head writer Neal Baer has explained that Benson is "the empathetic, passionate voice for these victims," in contrast to Stabler, who embodies "the rage we feel, the 'How can this happen?' feeling." Of their partnership, Baer assessed that: "They both represent the feelings that we feel simultaneously when we hear about these cases. That's why they work so well together."

Family
Born February 7, 1968, Benson was conceived by her mother's rape. Her mother's rapist, Joseph Hollister, later committed suicide. Benson's mother, Serena (Elizabeth Ashley), an English professor, was an alcoholic who abused Olivia emotionally and physically. In the season 2 episode "Taken", Serena dies falling down a flight of subway stairs outside the entrance to a bar. In a later episode, "Intoxicated", Benson mentions being engaged briefly when she was 16 to one of her mother's students; when her mother found out, she broke a bottle of vodka and went after her with it. Benson fought back, kicked her mother twice, hard, and ran out of the house. Years later, Benson reunites with her former fiancé, true crime podcaster Burton Lowe (Aidan Quinn), while they are both investigating a cold case, and they sleep together. When Lowe is accused of taking advantage of several young women, Benson gradually comes to believe that despite its consensual nature, their relationship was actually sexual abuse, due to the power differential and age difference. A woman later reports to Benson that Lowe, who is in a 12-step program for his alcoholism, tried to make amends to her for drunkenly raping her six months earlier. Benson helps Lowe accept responsibility for what he did, and he pleads guilty to sexual misconduct to spare his victim the trauma of a trial.

Benson is a graduate of Siena College. While there, she held a membership in a sorority. In addition to English, Benson speaks some Italian, Russian, some Spanish and French, and is able to recite the Miranda warnings in at least two other languages. She owns a black 1965 Ford Mustang convertible, but rarely drives it.

Benson had a younger half-brother named Simon Marsden (Michael Weston). Simon, whom she found by illegally running her DNA through the system, was a suspect in a rape case. However, his name was cleared after it is revealed that he was framed by Captain Julia Millfield (Kim Delaney), who believed (incorrectly) that he sexually assaulted her sister when they were in high school. In the season 13 episode "Child's Welfare", Simon reveals to Benson that he is planning to marry a woman named Tracy (Nicole Beharie), with whom he has a daughter and a stepson; he named his daughter Olivia after Benson. When the children are taken by the City because of Simon's criminal background, Benson calls defense attorney Bayard Ellis (Andre Braugher), an old friend of hers, to help Simon and Tracy get the children back. When a judge denies the Marsdens custody of their children, Simon panics and kidnaps them. Ellis makes a deal to have Simon serve a 60-day sentence, knocking his charge down from kidnapping to a misdemeanor, custodial interference. One of the conditions of the reduced charges is that he must give up his custody petition and agree to visit his daughter only in a supervised setting for the next three years. Simon is reluctant, but Benson tells him that the deal is better than his daughter visiting him in jail.

In the season 21 episode "Murdered at a Bad Address", Simon reaches out to Benson for the first time in years as his only remaining family, Tracy having left him and taken their children. She hesitantly agrees to meet with him, but when he doesn't show up, she leaves him a voicemail cutting him out of her life for good. Shortly afterward, he is found dead of a heroin overdose; she feels responsible, believing that he overdosed out of despair after she disowned him. A year later, however, she learns that he was in fact murdered by a gang of prostitutes who rob and kill their clients with heroin and fentanyl which happened before Benson left that voicemail.

In season 12, Benson is named the legal guardian of a young boy named Calvin Arliss (Charlie Tahan). Calvin's mother, Vivian (Maria Bello), abandons him and flees when Benson's investigation uncovers that Vivian (also a child of rape) may have killed her mother's rapist, Walter Burlock (R. Lee Ermey). Vivian names Benson as Calvin's legal guardian. Calvin lives with her for a while, until she finds Vivian and her lover Sara Hoyt (Kat Foster) have relapsed into drug use. Sara confesses to murdering Burlock, and is then murdered herself by Calvin's father. Vivian revokes Benson's guardianship, and sends Calvin to live with his grandparents in Vermont. Both Calvin and Benson are devastated by the separation. In season 13, she is seen with Calvin and his grandparents during or right before Halloween.

At the conclusion of the season 15 finale, Benson becomes the court-appointed custodial guardian of Noah Porter, an orphaned baby. The appointment is for a trial period of one year, with the option to apply for legal adoption at the end of that period. Although the year is rocky due to Noah's health issues and the demands of her job, Benson grows to love Noah and begins formal adoption proceedings a year later. After taking custody of Noah, Benson learns that Noah's biological father is a pimp and serial rapist named John "Johnny D" Drake (Charles Halford), who trafficked, raped and murdered Noah's mother, Ellie Porter (Emma Greenwell). Drake sues for custody as a ploy to get out of prison, imperiling Benson's chances of adopting Noah. Benson's problems are solved when Drake is killed during a courtroom shootout, but she still occasionally worries that Noah (played as an older child by Ryan Buggle) has inherited his father's violent tendencies.

At the end of the season 19 premiere "Gone Fishin'", Benson learns that she is being investigated by the DA's office on suspicions of abusing Noah. The investigation is dropped in "Mood". In "Contrapasso", her lawyer Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann, Hargitay's real-life husband) returns to tell her that Noah has a grandmother, Sheila Porter (Brooke Shields), Ellie's mother. In "No Good Reason", Porter brings Benson to family court, accusing her of being an unfit parent; the case is dismissed, but Benson agrees that it's in Noah's best interest that they stop fighting. In "Unintended Consequences", Benson lets Porter visit and spend time with Noah. At the end of "Intent", Benson gets a call from Porter telling her that Noah has been kidnapped in the mall. In "Gone Baby Gone", it is revealed that Sheila was behind the kidnapping, and that she intends to take Noah to live with her in Derry, New Hampshire. Benson goes to Sheila's cabin in Franconia, New Hampshire to rescue Noah. When Sheila attacks her, Benson subdues her, arrests her, and takes Noah home.

In the season 23 episode "Burning With Rage Forever", Noah tells Olivia that he stood up to a bully who was picking on him and a non-binary classmate. Benson tells Noah she is proud of him for standing up for himself and his friend.

Elliot Stabler
Benson's partnership with Elliot Stabler is a major focal point of her character. The relationship has gone through many stages that have been major plot points of both Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Organized Crime. Their relationship has had times of normal emotions as partners, to extreme emotions and dealing with loss, and even times of the two being openly hostile to each other.

Hargitay has characterized Benson and Stabler's relationship as "very complicated". Her assessment is that:

"Sometimes it's very much like brother and sister, and I think the reason that they're so close is that they share a passion for their jobs and for the people. They have a mutual respect for one another. I think that the average lifespan of an SVU detective is four years because of the difficulty and stress involved. They've been doing it for longer than that, so they feel like they're in their own world almost. There's also sexual chemistry between them, it's so loaded and layered. People ask me if they'll ever get together—and people want that, and sometimes I think even Olivia wants that—but I don't think that will ever happen."

Baer agrees that a romantic relationship between the two is unlikely, though commented: "You never can say never".

Hargitay has stated that her favorite SVU scene occurs in the season 7 episode "Fault", when Benson is faced with the possibility of losing Stabler: "Lou Diamond Phillips [a murderous kidnapper] has a gun to Elliot's head. I'm negotiating [with him to drop the gun]. It was a painful, high-stakes scene. Elliot and I have to admit what we mean to each other... He is everything that [my character] Olivia has. So this was where we really got that to pay off." In an episode in which Stabler goes undercover to catch an animal-smuggling ring, Benson shows up at his house and tries to talk him out of it; when they are interrupted by Stabler's targets, she undresses and pretends to be a prostitute.

Benson takes it hard when Stabler resigns from SVU (offscreen) in the 13th season opener, "Scorched Earth", and takes a while to warm up to her new partner, Nick Amaro. Benson frequently mentions Stabler in both a professional and personal context; she tells the squad's newer detectives what Stabler would do in a given situation, and says more than once that she is "getting over someone". In the Season 22 episode "Return of the Prodigal Son", Benson and Stabler see each other again for the first time in 10 years when Stabler's wife Kathy (Isabel Gillies) is severely injured in a car bombing apparently meant for Stabler. Benson is forced to keep Stabler, who is now working in Rome in an organized crime task force, out of the investigation. They have a brief, quietly emotional conversation in which Benson tells him how hurt she was over the way he left SVU. When Kathy dies of her injuries, however, Benson puts her resentment aside to help her grieving friend get justice for his late wife.

Upon renewing her relationship with Stabler, Benson recognizes that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the bombing and Kathy's death. When she tries to talk to him about it, however, he becomes defensive and tells her to "back off". She ultimately joins Stabler's children in staging an intervention for him. He again rejects Benson's attempt to help him, but first blurts out that he loves her in front of his children.

Romantic relationships
In season 1, Benson has a drunken one-night stand with one of her SVU colleagues, Detective Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters). Comments in the episode "Disrobed" imply that the relationship continued. Cassidy leaves the precinct at the end of that episode. In the season 5 episode "Lowdown", it is revealed Benson had a relationship with a murder victim who turned out to be gay and HIV positive. Medical Examiner Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie) immediately tests Benson and the results come back negative. In the season 9 episode "Closet", the SVU squad are surprised to find out that Benson has been in a relationship with journalist Kurt Moss (Bill Pullman) for several months. It comes out only because Internal Affairs is investigating Benson and Stabler in a case in which the department accidentally outed a professional football player. By the end of the episode, she breaks up with Moss.

While Benson has only been portrayed in relationships with men, she has, according to lesbian entertainment website AfterEllen.com, "attracted a large lesbian following". Fan speculation exists over alleged sexual tension between Benson and Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), which Baer admits to indulging: "We read the fan sites. We know that people are into the Alex-Olivia thing. All the codes are in there."

In the middle of season 13, Benson enters into a relationship with a new prosecutor to the District Attorney's Office, Executive ADA David Haden (Harry Connick Jr.). Hargitay has said that Connick, who is a friend of hers, improved the show to a more romantic advanced stance. "This is a home run on so many levels," she said. "The show is very fortunate to have Harry's extraordinary talent, and I'm lucky because I get to work with my friend. I think Olivia couldn't have asked for a better companion to take her through a new stage in her life and career." Haden and Benson begin their relationship at the end of the episode, "Official Story". In the episode "Hunting Ground", she decides to take it slow with Haden, claiming she needs time to see if their relationship will last. That night, they end up sleeping together in her apartment. This makes her late for a case, which is frowned upon in the NYPD. In the episode "Justice Denied", Benson and Haden end their relationship due to a conflict of interest.

In the season 14 premiere, Benson shares a kiss with Cassidy after she tells him she is not the same person from 13 years before, when they had a brief sexual relationship. Later that season, in the episode "Undercover Blue", it is revealed that Cassidy and Benson had been seeing each other for quite some time. Their relationship hits a rough patch in the episode when Cassidy is accused of rape, which results in their relationship becoming public. The charges against Cassidy are later dropped when the SVU detectives discover that he was being set up. In season 15, Benson stays with Cassidy as she recovers from her imprisonment by a serial rapist. A few months after she returns to work, they get a new apartment together. They break up in the episode "Downloaded Child", however, upon realizing that they want different things. They nevertheless remain on good terms, especially after Benson gives him the courage to testify against Gary Dolan (William Sadler), the man who sexually abused him as a child.

In "Chicago Crossover" and "They'll Have to Go Through Me", Benson strikes up a friendship with Sergeant Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) of the Chicago Police Department, despite their differing methodologies when it comes to solving crime. Upon the conclusion of their joint operation, the two share drinks before Benson returns to New York.

It is suggested throughout season 17 that Benson is in a relationship with Capt. Ed Tucker (Robert John Burke) of Internal Affairs. In "Manhattan Transfer", they are forced to confirm their relationship when Tucker is accused – by his own cousin, a priest – of being complicit with a sex trafficking ring that has ties to Vice and the Catholic Church. Tucker is eventually cleared, and he continues his relationship with Benson. In season 18, Tucker tries to convince Benson to retire with him, though at the conclusion of the episode "Next Chapter", Benson realizes she is not ready to do so, as being a cop and a mother are parts of who she is. As a result, Benson breaks up with Tucker at the end of the episode "Chasing Theo". Even though their relationship does not work out, however, Benson is still saddened when Tucker commits suicide after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

Sexual assault storylines
In the season 9 episode "Undercover", Benson poses as an inmate in a women's prison to investigate an alleged rape by a corrections officer. While there, the corrections officer in question, Captain Lowell Harris (Johnny Messner), attacks her and attempts to force her to perform oral sex on him. She is rescued by SVU colleague Fin Tutuola (Ice-T), who gets there just in time to stop Harris from raping her. Later, Benson helps convict Harris by questioning his earlier victim about distinguishing features on his penis, prompting the victim to recall a mole on it, which Benson later explains to medical examiner Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie) that she had also seen. When Warner asks Benson if she had been raped, she replies, "It was the closest I've ever come."

In season 10, Benson is seen struggling with now being a victim of sexual assault herself. She is attending group therapy, something she has not shared with anyone but Tutuola. In the episode "PTSD," while investigating the rape and murder of a female Marine, she is pushed against a wall while trying to break up a fight between suspect Master Sergeant Dominic Pruitt (Ryan Kwanten) and Lieutenant Gary Rosten (Dominic Fumusa), who is eventually revealed to be the killer. She subsequently breaks up the fight by holding her weapon to the back of Pruitt's head. Later, as he is being interrogated, Rosten tells Tutuola that, "That broad [Benson] has PTSD, I would know that glassy-eyed look anywhere." At the end of the episode, after Rosten is imprisoned, Benson apologizes to Pruitt, admitting that she was a victim of sexual assault.

In the season 11 episode "Perverted", Benson becomes the prime suspect in the sexual mutilation and murder of a biker gang member. As more evidence is found linking her to the crime, an Internal Affairs detective insinuates that she may have committed it while suffering from a flashback to the assault. The other detectives eventually discover that Benson has been framed by Brady Harrison (Patrick Heusinger), a rapist she sent to prison years earlier.

William Lewis storyline
At the end of the season 14 finale "Her Negotiation", Benson is kidnapped by serial rapist/murderer William Lewis (Pablo Schreiber). During the season 15 premiere "Surrender Benson", Lewis makes her watch while he rapes and tortures the mother of his own attorney and kills a police officer who attempted to pull him over. He then holds her hostage for four days, burning her with cigarettes and wire hangers. Just as he is about to rape her, she breaks free, handcuffs him, and holds him at gunpoint. When he taunts her that she doesn't "have the balls" to kill him, she loses control and beats him within an inch of his life with an iron rod. She is rescued by her fellow detectives moments later, and Cragen puts her on mandatory leave so she can recover. She returns to work in the following episode, "Imprisoned Lives", which takes place two months later, but is still haunted by the experience. She begins seeing a therapist, Dr. Peter Lindstrom (Bill Irwin), to cope with the trauma. It is later revealed that Lewis survived and is in prison awaiting trial.

In "Psycho/Therapist", a visibly injured and still-recovering Lewis fires his new attorney and chooses to represent himself. He calls Benson as a witness and accuses her of assaulting him because he rejected her sexual advances. She vehemently denies it, and lies under oath that he had broken free of his restraints and lunged at her. Lewis is found guilty of kidnapping and assaulting a police officer, but the jury voices doubts about Benson's story and acquits him of attempted rape. The episode closes with Benson weeping on the courthouse stairs and, four months later, Lewis being wheeled away on a stretcher.

In "Beast's Obsession", Lewis uses the distraction caused by his (self-induced) cardiac incident to escape from prison. He then rapes a teenage girl, kidnaps her younger sister, and threatens to kill her unless Benson tells the truth about her testimony. Benson holds a press conference and admits that she lied on the witness stand. When Lewis does not release the girl, Benson tracks him down and surrenders to him. With his hostage watching, Lewis at first attempts to rape Benson, but changes his mind when she refuses to show him fear; instead, he forces her to play Russian roulette with him. As a police squad closes in, Lewis shoots himself in the head right in front of her, while making it look like she killed him in cold blood. In "Post-Mortem Blues", she is brought before a grand jury to explain her admission and Lewis' death. Her career is threatened until SVU's temporary commanding officer, Lt. Declan Murphy (Donal Logue), tells the grand jury that he instructed Benson to lie in her press conference, thus clearing her of Lewis' death and possible perjury charges. Murphy then makes Benson his second-in-command up until his transfer to an undercover assignment.

In subsequent seasons, Lewis' name becomes a kind of code for an intensely dangerous situation, and Benson admits that her trauma and ordeal with him will always be a part of her. During a heated exchange with Amaro, he pointedly asks her whether she can ever forgive Lewis; she does not answer, and he apologizes.

Character development
Hargitay has deemed the storyline which saw Benson find her paternal family "probably the biggest thing that's ever happened to Olivia". She feels her character is a role model for teenage girls, revealing:

"I get letters saying, 'I want to do the right thing like Olivia. I want to be strong like Olivia. My friend did this, but I didn't do it because of Olivia.' For me, when a television show has that kind of positive effect on young people, it is great. I think it is a good thing that we are shedding light on darkness. I think it is a good thing to make teenage girls aware."

Service
Benson joined the NYPD in 1992, and was trained by Sergeant Karen Smythe (Khandi Alexander) at the 55th Precinct in the Bronx. After completing her probationary period, Smythe recommended that Benson be transferred to the Sex Crimes Unit (later renamed the Special Victims Unit) because of her talent for dealing with victims. From 1992 to May 1998, she was partnered with older officer Patrick Griffin (Anthony Edwards), who in 1992 testified on her behalf when she was accused of taking money and drugs during her first bust. However, he lied for her, as he had not actually been with her in the same room at the time.

By May 1998, she had received her detective's shield and was assigned to the 16th Precinct as a Detective 3rd Grade, and was partnered with Det. Elliot Stabler. She is promoted to Detective 2nd Grade in 2001, and Detective 1st Grade in 2011. In 2006, she is temporarily reassigned to the Computer Crimes Unit; later that year, she does a stint undercover for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Unit at the request of her friend, Special Agent Dana Lewis (Marcia Gay Harden).

Benson and Stabler work together for over 12 years, until Stabler quits SVU in 2011 after he is forced to kill a 16-year-old girl who shot up the SVU squad room. Following Stabler's resignation, she is partnered with Det. Nick Amaro.

Cragen asks Benson to take the Sergeant's exam following the retirement of Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), and she gets the promotion soon afterward; Cragen congratulates her for placing 48th out of 8,000 applicants. Cragen announces that Benson has been approved to remain at SVU (it was feared she would be reassigned); at the end of the episode, Cragen reveals his impending retirement from the NYPD, making Benson SVU's acting commanding officer. Benson remains in command until Lieutenant Declan Murphy (Donal Logue) takes over the squad; he makes her his second-in-command. When Murphy returns to undercover work, he appoints her acting commander.

Lt. Ed Tucker (Robert John Burke), representing 1 Police Plaza, asks Benson to take the Lieutenant's exam in order to officially take command of SVU before the NYPD appoints another officer to the position. She passes the Lieutenant's exam with flying colors, and is officially promoted to Lieutenant after some politicking by her boss, Deputy Chief William Dodds (Peter Gallagher). Benson had wanted Detective Fin Tutuola as her second-in-command, but Dodds arranges for the politically unsavvy Benson to be assigned a Sergeant who does know how to play the game – his own son, Mike (Andy Karl).

Following the events of "Manhattan Transfer", Benson is relieved of her duties as Commanding Officer of SVU, largely due to her (personal) involvement with now-Captain Tucker, who becomes a person of interest in a complex sex trafficking case SVU stumbled upon. Mike Dodds is made Acting Commanding Officer. In spite of this, Benson quietly continues to call the shots at SVU, as Dodds disagrees with her suspension and continues to seek her advice in secret. Benson is reinstated after SVU breaks up the sex trafficking ring and Tucker is cleared.

In "Heartfelt Passages", Benson and Mike Dodds, on the latter's last day at SVU, are involved in a hostage situation involving corrupt Rikers Island corrections officer Gary Munson (Brad Garrett) holding his wife hostage. Benson takes Munson's children out of the house and Dodds tried to resolve the situation, but Munson shoots Dodds while the latter is trying to take his weapon. Dodds suffers a stroke after surgery and dies. Benson blames herself for Dodds' death because she did not initially search Munson for a weapon.

Benson is promoted to captain in the episode "I'm Going to Make You a Star", the final act of Deputy Chief Dodds before his transfer to Staten Island.

As commanding officer, Benson has worked cases frequently with each of the detectives under her command: Tutuola, Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) and Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano) as of 2021.

Benson is forced to kill a suspect on four separate occasions during her tenure on the show: in season 1's "Disrobed", she shoots and kills domestic abuser Roger Silver (Jack Gwaltney) in self-defense during a hostage situation; in season 3's "Wrath", serial killer Eric Plummer (Justin Kirk) commits suicide by cop by attacking a woman and forcing Benson to shoot him; in season 18's "Next Chapter", she shoots and kills rapist (and retired corrections officer) Tom Cole (Chris Bauer) during a hostage situation when Cole attacks her SVU colleague Detective Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino); and in season 23's "Silent Night, Hateful Night", she shoots and kills white supremacist Robert Paul Byers (Michael Laurence) to stop him from detonating a bomb in Washington Square Park. Also, in season 6's "Rage", she shoots and wounds serial killer Gordon Rickett (Matthew Modine) to prevent Stabler from killing him in cold blood. She has also been stalked by several of the rapists and child molesters she has investigated over the years, which complicates her role as a mother after she adopts Noah.

List of assignments

 * Patrol Officer, NYPD 55th Precinct (1992)16th Precinct (1993)
 * Junior Detective, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (May 1998–May 18, 2011)
 * Senior Detective, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (September 21, 2011 – January 15, 2014)
 * Acting Commanding Officer (Sergeant), NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (January 22, 2014 – April 9, 2014)
 * Sergeant—Supervisor Detective Squad, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (April 9, 2014 – May 21, 2014)
 * Acting Commanding Officer (Sergeant), NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (May 21, 2014 – October 7, 2015)
 * Lieutenant—Commander Detective Squad, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (October 7, 2015 – September 26, 2019)
 * Captain, Commanding Officer, NYPD 16th Precinct (Special Victims Unit) (September 26, 2019—Present)

Temporary assignments

 * Detective, NYPD Computer Crimes Unit (May 2, 2006 – May 9, 2006)
 * Undercover operative, FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit (September 19, 2006 – October 31, 2006)
 * Special Deputy United States Marshal for the Eastern District of New York (October 6, 2010)
 * Public Relations Officer, NYPD One Police Plaza (Public Relations) (March 2, 2016 – March 23, 2016)

Ranks

 * Officer
 * Detective 3rd Grade
 * Detective 2nd Grade
 * Detective 1st Grade (Shield number 40115)
 * NYPD Sergeant Stripes.svg Sergeant (Shield number 01139)
 * US-O1 insignia.svg Lieutenant
 * Captain_insignia_gold.svg Captain

Partners

 * Sergeant Karen Smythe, NYPD (Khandi Alexander) – Training officer (1992–1993)
 * Detective Patrick Griffin, NYPD (Anthony Edwards) – First partner (1993–98)
 * Detective Elliot Stabler, NYPD Special Victims Unit (Christopher Meloni) (1998–2011)
 * Detective Nick Amaro, NYPD Special Victims Unit (Danny Pino) (2011–2014)
 * None (Squad Supervisor) (2014–15)
 * None (Commanding Officer) (2015–present)

As a sergeant
The following are the medals and service awards worn by then-Sergeant Benson, as seen in "Betrayal's Climax" and "Beast's Obsession".

As a lieutenant
The following are the medals and service awards worn by then-Lieutenant Benson, as seen in "Heartfelt Passages".

Development and casting
Casting for the lead characters on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit occurred in spring 1999. Dick Wolf, along with officials from NBC and Studios USA, were at the final auditions for the two leads at Rockefeller Center. The last round had been narrowed down to six finalists. For the female lead – Benson – Samantha Mathis, Reiko Aylesworth, and Hargitay were being considered. For the male role – Stabler – the finalists were Tim Matheson, John Slattery, and Christopher Meloni. Meloni and Hargitay had auditioned in the final round together and after the actors left, there was a moment of dead silence, after which Wolf blurted out, "Oh well. There's no doubt who we should choose – Hargitay and Meloni." The duo, who Wolf believed had the perfect chemistry from the first time he saw them together, were his first choice. Garth Ancier, then head of NBC Entertainment, agreed, and the rest of the panel assembled voiced their assent. Hargitay trained as a rape crisis advocate to prepare for the role of Benson.

During the last months of her pregnancy in 2006, Hargitay took maternity leave from SVU, and was temporarily replaced by Connie Nielsen.

In May 2009, after the show's tenth season, Hargitay and Meloni's contracts expired when they were reportedly making $375,000 –$385,000 per episode. During negotiations in April for a new contract, the duo attempted to receive a percentage of the show's profits as other high-profile Law & Order actors had done in the past. It was rumored that NBC threatened to replace Hargitay and Meloni if they persisted in their demands. However, two months later it was officially reported that both their contracts had been renewed for two more years. When the thirteenth season was about to air, initial reports indicated that Hargitay would appear in only the first 13 episodes. However, NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt later clarified that she would be in every episode of the season.

Since 2012, Hargitay earns approximately $400,000 to $500,000 per episode.

Reception
Hargitay has won a number of awards for her role as Benson: 'Individual Achievement for Best Female Lead' and 'Outstanding Female Lead' Gracie Awards in 2004 and 2009 respectively, an Emmy for 'Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series' in 2006, a Prism Award for 'Performance in a Drama Series Episode' in 2006, and a Golden Globe for 'Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series' in 2005. Of her Emmy win, Hargitay commented: "It makes me only want to be better. Now I'm an Emmy winner. I have to step it up."

The San Francisco Chronicle ' s John Carman called Hargitay "the show's weakest performer" when the series originally premiered in 1999. In 2006, however, fellow San Francisco Chronicle writer Jean Gonick deemed Benson a suitable role model for teenage girls, calling her "courageous and strong, and unspeakably gorgeous", and writing that "Olivia Benson is our own special hero. She battles evil, avenges her mother, faces her demons but refuses to date them." In 2001, Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker criticized Benson and Stabler as "the most naive, bleeding heart molester busters in America."

A poll on the Hallmark Channel voted her second-greatest detective in the Law & Order franchise, only being beaten by Law & Order: Criminal Intent's Robert Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio). Benson appeared in Comcast's list of TV's Most Intriguing Characters and also in the website's list of TV's Top Cops. She was included in TV Guide's list of "TV's Sexiest Crime Fighters". UGO Networks placed "the hard-charging detective" among the "fifty greatest fictional detectives of all time". A 2015 poll released by Trailer Park, Inc. in conjunction with QC Strategy ranked Benson as the No. 1 "favourite female television character".

Appearances on other shows
Benson appears on five episodes of Law & Order, one episode of Law & Order: Trial by Jury, three episodes of Chicago P.D. and one episode of Chicago Fire.

 * Law & Order: "Entitled: Part 2" (February 18, 2000)
 * Law & Order: "Fools for Love" (February 23, 2000)
 * Law & Order: Trial by Jury: "Day" (May 3, 2005)
 * Law & Order: "Flaw" (September 28, 2005)
 * Chicago P.D.: "They'll Have to Go Through Me" (November 12, 2014)
 * Chicago Fire: "We Called Her Jellybean" (April 28, 2015)
 * Chicago P.D.: "The Number of Rats" (April 29, 2015)
 * Chicago P.D.: "The Song of Gregory William Yates" (February 10, 2016)
 * Law & Order: "Black and Blue" (May 19, 2022)
 * Law & Order: "Gimme Shelter – Part Three" (September 22, 2022)

Law & Order: Organized Crime
To date, Benson further appears recurringly as a special guest in thirteen episodes of the spin-off Law & Order: Organized Crime:

 * "What Happens in Puglia" (April 1, 2021)
 * "Not Your Father's Organized Crime" (April 8, 2021)
 * "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" (April 22, 2021)
 * "An Inferior Product" (May 13, 2021)
 * "Forget It Jake; It's Chinatown" (June 3, 2021)
 * "The Outlaw Eddie Wagner" (September 30, 2021)
 * "The Good, The Bad, and The Lovely" (October 14, 2021)
 * "The Christmas Episode" (December 9, 2021)
 * "Takeover" (March 10, 2022)
 * "Lost One" (May 5, 2022)
 * "Gimme Shelter – Part One" (September 22, 2022)
 * "Shadowërk" (May 11, 2023)
 * "With Many Names" (May 18, 2023)

title: Olivia Benson


text:
Henlow

Henlow is a village and civil parish in the Central Bedfordshire district of the county of Bedfordshire, England, about 11 mi south-east of the county town of Bedford. The name Henlow is believed to derive from the old English henna hlaw, meaning in old English "hill of birds" or “hill frequented by birds”.

At the 2011 census the population of the village was 2,253, and 3,815 for the parish.

Village
Henlow is mentioned (with a degree of dispute recorded) in the Domesday Book. The entry reads: ''Haneslau(ue)/Hanslau(e): Herfast from Nigel d'Aubigny; Hugh from Walter of Flanders; Widder and Bernard from Azelina, Ralph Tailbois' wife (Hugh de Beauchamp claims from her, stating it was never in her dowry); Alric. 2 mills.''

The parish includes RAF Henlow and that part of Henlow Camp situated east of the A600 road. While RAF Henlow is located near Henlow, it is nearer to the village of Stondon. The civilian settlement of Henlow Camp has grown up near to the RAF station.

There is a health farm in Henlow at Henlow Grange, part of the Champneys group. The parish church, Grade I listed, and parts of which are from the 12th century, is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.

The Henlow greyhound racing track closed permanently on 21 January 2024.

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

title: Henlow


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beatbotika

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete. Sjakkalle (Check!)  08:52, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Beatbotika
Non-notable, unverifiable dance non-craze. the wub  "?/!"  07:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete unverifiable. JamesBurns 09:27, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete: Unverifiable by its own admission. -- CABHAN   TALK   CONTRIBS  13:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. Friday 14:06, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Two things:
 * There aren't any artists who use the Beatbotika style--or at least any notable ones--so it's of no use to anyone;
 * Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Doesn't matter how much the contributor thinks it'll be a craze, it shouldn't be here. --JB Adder | Talk 04:48, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
User talk:80.207.151.201

Please do not remove other people's comments from talk pages. Evil Monkey∴Hello 07:53, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Please do not change numbers in articles unless you have verifiable source, more valid that the others listed. Also be aware that whole Wikipedia including Roma people is encyclopedia based on currently believed scientific facts, not on fringe theories without wide support. The theory of origin is based on both linguistic and genetics and these are pretty respectable sciences. Pavel Vozenilek 04:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: Are you honest?
You wrote:

''If you are truly honest, you must admit that you are violating the Wikipedia policy by adding statements like "It was suggested that..." If you have some PROOF that Roma have in early times practised some form of Hinduism, please PROVIDE the RELIABLE sources, otherwise, don't mislead people with UN-SCIENTIFIC statetments! If you don't like that Roma are NOT HINDU and HAVE NEVER BEEN, there's nothing we can do for you, as we don't intend to adopt such religion.''

 * I am out of context here. I didn't add anything about Hindus anywhere.

 * PS: please sign your edits with ~ . Thanks for undarstanding. Pavel Vozenilek 18:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:80.207.151.201


text: NCAA taekwondo championships

title: NCAA taekwondo championships


text:
Talk:Great Renaming

Move
Can we change the name of the article to "The Great Renaming" of Usenet? This phenomenon is not popular to just name it without reference to what it comes from 69.17.59.230 19:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Quibble
A minor quibble:

I was responsible for initiating the newsgroup misc.education which I can assure you was created well after the great renaming. The k12 groups were not in existence at that time either. This account makes it seem as though those groups all resulted from the great renaming.

I guess the cited groups are being used here simply to exemplify the hierarchies. However that is funny too. Many people thought I had pulled a fast one with misc.education since I switched the proposed name from talk.education right at the very end of the discussion period just before the start of the vote. At that time the talk groups were not propogated as widely and were regarded as second rate. Some of these groups were always attempting to escape from the talk hierarchy creating a great deal of suspicion towards groups that were naturally `talk' trying to call themselves something else.

I do confess I WAS just a touch sneaky. By switching the name from talk to misc right at the very end of the required discussion period I bypassed what would have been almost certain loud objections from those who saw their role in life as keeping the talk groups confined. However in my opinion a talk.education group would not have been nearly as successful as misc.education subsequently turned out to be. I therefore find it quite amusing to see misc.education today cited as the very archetype of a misc group. It wouldn't have been misc at all if I hadn't connived and bent the rules to make it so.

Ian H
 * The poster is right on k12.*, I was around when this renaming occurred, and they did not exist. I suggest removing that reference. 148.87.67.139 (talk) 01:06, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Ditto. I was around on USENET starting in mid-1980's into the 2000's. I have no memory of a high level hierarchy called K12.* back at that time. Gcronau (talk) 00:20, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

 * I need a fat hairy linux dude to be my dad — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.113.175.73 (talk) 03:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

faq in french?
The link to the faq on this subject is a page in french, or some other romantic language. I really think English would be far more appropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thaddeus Slamp (talk • contribs) 17:01, 26 March 2007 (UTC). Thaddeus Slamp 17:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Great Renaming FAQ (in English)
Great Renaming FAQ

Scanlyze 17:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

A published reference which should replace dead link in reference 2
A published reference is:

Hardy, Henry Edward, 1993. The Usenet System, ITCA Teleconferencing Yearbook 1993, ITCA Research Committee, International Teleconferencing Association, Washington, DC. pp 140-151, esp. p 146 at subheading "The Great Renaming" and "The Breaking of the Backbone Cartel".

NB I have not put this in the main body of the article as I am the author of the reference provided above from the ITCA Yearbook, and therefore will leave the determination about including it to others.

Scanlyze 17:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Reference note two which is a dead link (not made by me) to some of my academic papers which were once at http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/hardy/ should be replaced with the reference above.

Scanlyze (talk) 07:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Is "alt" an acronym or abbreviation?
In the "Post-Renaming" section of this article, the following is stated:

"An additional hierarchy, alt.*, was also created shortly after the Renaming. The term alt is short for 'alternative'"

Yet the article referenced by the link states:

"Contrary to popular belief, the name does not stand for 'alternative', but rather is an acronym for for 'Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists'."

I have no idea which is accurate, but the discrepancy should probably be taken care of by someone who does. --71.240.159.90 (talk) 17:44, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

 * From my experience, Alt has always just been short for "alternate". The idea that it's short for "anarchists...",etc, is funny(and spot on, BTW), but I'm fairly certain it's just a backronym/joke. Gcronau (talk) 00:24, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

definition of abbreviation
I worked the text (and cite) from the other article in....so if I've just fallen for an urban legend, at least the wiki is consistent! We should find some better cites and attach them to both articles, though. Oregonerik (talk) 18:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

K-12 did not pre-exist the Great Renaming. Needs a reference.
Scanlyze (talk) 07:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Great Renaming


text:
Talk:Justice League Elite

Superteam of Superhero Comic infobox?
This edit switched the former to the latter. I am unsure if there is a prefered hierarchy of these things but I'd think team would beat comic book. Thoughts? (Emperor 20:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC))
 * I'm not sure what "beats" means in this context. This is an article about a comic book, and now it has an infobox to match. --Chris Griswold (  ☎  ☓  )
 * By beats I mean which gets priority if there is a clash. This is a superhero team that has a comic book named after themselves - I'd have thought superhero team would then "win" over comic book. Just a thought really. (Emperor 23:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC))
 * It really comes down to what the article is about. This is about the series, although it mentions related history of the team. --Chris Griswold (  ☎  ☓  ) 02:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
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text:
Lager Helgoland

Lager Helgoland was a labour camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland (in German, Helgoland), formerly a Danish and then British possession located 46 km off the German North Sea coastline and belonging to Germany since 1890.

The Germans built four camps, two of which became concentration camps on Alderney, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (located in Hamburg, Germany). Each camp was named after one of the Frisian Islands: Lager Norderney located at Saye, Lager Borkum at Platte Saline, Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and Lager Helgoland, situated in the northwest corner of the island. 700 workers died in the Alderney camps and in shipping moving them to or from the Island (out of a total inmate population of about 6,000).

Camp
The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps.

Little remains of Lager Helgoland now.

It was built in January 1942 and was used by the Nazi Organisation Todt, a forced labour programme, to house the labourers to build fortifications including bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and tunnels.

Lager Helgoland was situated in the northwest corner of Alderney. The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. The prisoners in Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney were slave labourers. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers. Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Republican) and Russian enforced labourers. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers.

title: Lager Helgoland


text:
User talk:Damdamdam~enwiki

Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles will be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks, Evil Monkey∴Hello 07:56, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Damdamdam. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Damdamdam~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:18, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Damdamdam~enwiki


text:
Manor Park, Nuneaton

Manor Park was the former stadium of Nuneaton Borough A.F.C. 22,114 spectators packed into the ground for an FA Cup tie against Rotherham United in 1967. The club moved away from Manor Park at the beginning of the 2007–08 season to a new home at Liberty Way which they share with Nuneaton R.F.C. In 2008 Manor Park was demolished and housing was built on the site.

Manor Park staged the first ever official home match of the England women's national team on 23 June 1973, an 8–0 victory over Scotland watched by a crowd of 1,310.

title: Manor Park, Nuneaton


text: Category:Bays of Guangdong

title: Category:Bays of Guangdong


text:
Paragonimus

Paragonimus is a genus of flukes (trematodes) and is the only genus in the monotypic family Paragonimidae. Some tens of species have been described, but they are difficult to distinguish, so it is not clear how many of the named species may be synonyms. The name Paragonimus is derived from the combination of two Greek words, “para” (on the side of) and “gonimos” (gonads or genitalia). Several of the species are known as lung flukes. In humans some of the species occur as zoonoses; the term for the condition is paragonimiasis. The first intermediate hosts of Paragonimus include at least 54 species of freshwater snails from superfamilies Cerithioidea and Rissooidea.

The most prominent species of Paragonimus in human medicine is Paragonimus westermani, an infectious lung fluke originating in eastern Asia. Worldwide, about nine species of Paragonimus are known to cause human paragonimiasis in which many of the species reside in East Asia, West Africa, and in North and South America.

Morphology
[[File:Paragonimus westermani adult.jpg|thumb|Morphology of typical Paragonimus:

AC: acetabulum (ventral sucker)

CE: cecum, EB: excretory bladder

OS: oral sucker, OV: ovary

TE: testes, UT: uterus ]] Species of Paragonimus vary in size; the adult stage might attain a length of up to 15 mm and a width of up to 8 mm. The adult flatworm has an oval shape body with spines covering its thick tegument. Both the oral sucker and acetabulum are round and muscular. The acetabulum is slightly bigger than the oral sucker – 0.19 mm and 0.12 mm, respectively. Ovaries are located behind the acetabulum and posterior to the ovary are the testes. The seminal receptacle, the uterus and its metraterm, the thick-walled terminal part, lie between the acetabulum and the ovary.

Life cycle
The parasite passes through two intermediate hosts, an aquatic snail and a crustacean. It enters its mammalian definitive hosts when they eat infected freshwater crustaceans. Typical hosts include dogs, cats, and humans. Humans usually contract paragonimiasis when they eat undercooked freshwater crabs (for instance species of the genus Nanhaipotamon) or crayfish, that contain live metacercariae. In the intestine, the parasite will move into the abdomen and commonly into the lungs. In the lung, the parasites encyst and cross fertilize each other. The cyst eventually ruptures in the lungs and the eggs may be coughed up or swallowed and excreted in the feces. An egg landing in fresh water hatches and releases a ciliated miracidium. A successful miracidium swims about until it finds an intermediate host, usually an aquatic snail. A crustacean in turn becomes infected by eating infected snails. The definitive host completes the cycle if it eats infected crustaceans.

Epidemiology
Worldwide roughly 20 million people are infected with Paragonimus. Human infections are most common in regions with many human and animal reservoir hosts plus an abundance of intermediate hosts, such as snails, crabs, or crayfish, and where in addition consumption of raw or undercooked seafood is common. Consumption of insufficiently cooked meat from infected land animal hosts, such as wild boar, commonly transmits the infection. The domestic cat is a reservoir for a variety of lung flatworms and can transmit the infection to humans.

Symptoms
Symptoms of paragonimiasis may include abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, and hives. If the infection remains untreated, the symptoms may diminish or disappear after only few months, but sometimes they last for decades. Paragonimiasis is caused by the body's natural immune response to the worms and eggs that are present and also migrating from the intestines to the lungs.

As a rule, the parasites begin to cause symptoms about three weeks after ingesting live metacercariae. After about eight weeks, they begin to produce eggs in the lungs. Some patients develop brain damage if parasites establish in the brain and produce eggs. The brain damage commonly causes headache, vomiting, and seizures. Untreated cerebral paragonimaisis commonly results in death from increased intracranial pressure.

Treatment
Praziquantel has been used to effectively treat paragonimiasis by separating the tegument. An effectively complete rate of cure may be expected after three days of treatment if there has not been too much permanent damage, such as from intracranial effects. Other medications can also be used such as bithionol, niclofan, and triclabendazole with high cure rates.

Prevention
Thorough cooking of an infected crustacean kills all stages of the parasite. Crab meat should not be eaten raw, even if pickled, because the pickling solution often fails to kill all the parasites. Utensils and cutlery boards should be cleaned thoroughly before and after food preparation.

title: Paragonimus


text: Category:Rivers of Guangdong

title: Category:Rivers of Guangdong


text:
Mark Arm

Mark Arm (born Mark Thomas McLaughlin; February 21, 1962) is an American singer and songwriter, best known as the vocalist for the grunge band Mudhoney. His former group, Green River, was one of the first grunge bands, along with Malfunkshun, Soundgarden, Skin Yard, the U-Men, and others. He is also the manager of the Sub Pop warehouse and previously worked at Fantagraphics Books.

Early life
Arm was born February 21, 1962, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and was raised in Kirkland, Washington. As a child, he was a member of Boy Scouts of America. He graduated from Bellevue Christian High School in Bellevue, Washington.

In 1985, Arm earned an English degree with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Washington.

Early career
Arm first entered the Seattle rock scene in 1980, when he formed a band while still in high school, called "Mr. Epp and the Calculations" with singer Jo Smitty, and Peter Wick, who wrote and recorded their first song,"The Pigeon in the Fountain bed," which caused local radio DJ Stephen Rabow to declare them, "The worst band in the world." The band played its first show in 1981, opening for the band Student Nurse. In 1982 they released a 7-inch EP entitled "Mohawk Man", produced by Johnny Rubato (of Rubato Records, a local used record shop for more than 30 years). The next year they added a second guitarist, Steve Turner, and released a cassette described on the lyric sheet as a "combination of art and hardcore." The cassette featured one side of live recordings and a flip-side of studio recordings and experimental sounds; a sonic amalgamy described in a 1984 issue of Revenge Against Boredom 'zine (produced by notable skateboarding historian Jocko Weyland ), as "45 or so minutes of Pillow Fights, Jokes, some songs, preachers' garbled talking. And you get to find out what you get if you give up your personality."

Mr. Epp and the Calculations also played with Ten Minute Warning and the Dead Kennedys at the Eagles Auditorium in April. The band came to an end the following year.

After Mr. Epp and the Calculations ended, Mark Arm and Steve Turner (who had become close friends) joined the band Limp Richerds for a few weeks. Afterward, Arm and Turner took on future Pearl Jam members Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, as well as Alex Vincent, to form the band Green River. Green River released two EPs and a full length album before disbanding. Steve Turner left the band to finish college, and Arm was forced to find a new band again. After Turner returned from schooling, they resumed their Green River side project, The Thrown Ups.

Mudhoney
Arm and Turner took on drummer Dan Peters, and bassist Matt Lukin, formerly of Melvins. The new band renamed themselves Mudhoney. In 1988, Sub Pop released Mudhoney's first single, "Touch Me I'm Sick". After extensive touring and an EP album, Mudhoney released their self-titled full length debut in 1989. Their next album, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge came out soon after, just before the explosion of grunge spearheaded by Nirvana's seminal Nevermind. At the time, Sub Pop, their record label, was "on the verge of bankruptcy, having trouble paying its flagship band, severely delaying the release of the album to July 1991." In 1992, they signed to a major record label, Reprise and released Piece of Cake. The album did not sell well, due to a combination of the band's uncompromising sound and an oversaturation of the genre; according to Stephen Turner, the album references "how easily things had come to them...the songs were kinda half-baked... and Mark wasn't at his best."

Although they never achieved the fame of some of their contemporaries, Arm and Mudhoney have made significant contributions to grunge music. Mudhoney is one of the few grunge bands that continue to release albums; in 2002 they released Since We've Become Translucent, Under a Billion Suns in 2005, The Lucky Ones followed in May 2008, Vanishing Point came in April 2013, Digital Garbage came out in September 2018 and, most recently, Plastic Eternity in 2023. All of these releases have been on the Sub Pop record label.

Solo and side projects
Arm released "The Freewheelin' Mark Arm", a solo single in 1990.

He was a singer and guitarist for the group Bloodloss and singer for the Seattle supergroup The Monkeywrench. Monkeywrench members include Arm, Turner, Tim Kerr (Lord Hi Fixers, Big Boys, Poison 13), Tom Price (Gas Huffer) and Martin Bland (Bloodloss). He has also made guest appearances on several albums, most notably on Alice in Chains' 1992 EP Sap.

In 1998, he made an appearance on the motion picture soundtrack for the film Velvet Goldmine with Ron Asheton, Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, and Steve Shelley under the name Wylde Ratttz.

In 1999, he recorded the vocals for the song "I Need Somebody", a cover of the song by The Stooges, featured on Nebula's first album, To the Center.

In 2000, Arm, Turner, Peters, Scott McCaughey, Tom Price and Bill Henderson recorded the album "The New Original Sonic Sound" under the band name The New Strychnines. they recorded a compilation of 16 songs by the legendary mid-1960's Seattle garage band The Sonics. The album was released by Book Records.

In 2004, he toured with MC5, standing in for the late Rob Tyner on vocals.

In 2013, he contributed vocals on a cover version of The Scientists' "Set It on Fire" for the Melvins' album Everybody Loves Sausages.

Personal life
Mark Arm lives in Seattle with his wife Emily Rieman and their little dogs.

title: Mark Arm


text:
User:Xuanyou

Tan Xuan You is an average homo sapien born in the country of Singapore. He's nothing more than a grain of sand in this society

title: User:Xuanyou


text:
NCAA softball championships (Philippines)

The NCAA softball championship was the softball tournament of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in the Philippines. The tournament was discontinued in 1986.

Number of championships by school
NOTE
 * LSGH won its six (6) championships under DLSU. It now plays under CSB.


text:
Orcadian

Orcadian may refer to:

 * Something of, from, or related to Orkney
 * Orcadians
 * Orcadian dialect of Scots

title: Orcadian


text:
Parallel (manga)

Parallel (ぱられる) is a Japanese shōnen manga by Toshihiko Kobayashi. It tells the story of two high school students, Shinnosuke Nekota and Sakura Hoshino, who are forced to live together in the same house when their parents become unofficially engaged and leave the country for their work. The manga spans four volumes, comprising a total of 19 chapters as well as a one-chapter special.

Characters

 * Shinnosuke Nekota (猫田 信之介) – The fifteen-year-old male protagonist of the series. He is a baseball star of the school and is considered to be the leader among the boys of the class.  He is often in fights with the female lead, whom he secretly liked since the first time he met her nine years ago. Because his mother died when he was five years old, he really does not know how to maturely express himself around the opposite sex; nor does he understand them. Most of the time he behaves himself, but he is not above looking up girls' skirts, by the end of the manga, when Nekota and Hoshino's parents decide not to marry, they start their own romantic relationship.
 * Sakura Hoshino (星野 桜) – The sixteen-year-old female protagonist of the series. She is the smart, serious girl who is considered the leader among the girls of the class. She is the girl who punishes Nekota when he does something wrong.  She is a good cook and has natural acting ability. When she was younger she admired her older sister and blames herself for the change of her sister’s personality. By the end of the manga, when Nekota and Hoshino's parents decide not to marry, they start their own romantic relationship.
 * Momoko Haruno (春野 桃子) – Sakura’s elder sister of four years. The rebellious daughter of the family, she chose to live with their father after the divorce, thus preserving her father's family name, Haruno, rather than changing to her mother's maiden name like Sakura. She likes to play practical jokes and often exploits Sakura's being a deep sleeper by dressing her in cosplay.  She often tries to help move along the main characters' relationship, but ends up making things worse.  Although she has a carefree personality, she becomes an accomplished commercial and soap actress and is part of the prestigious Black Box theater group.
 * Rina Aihara (相原 理奈) - The fourteen-year-old manager of the baseball team who takes a liking to Nekota. In fact, she became the manager position just to be closer with him. She is energetic and cute, but is also aggressive when trying to show her feelings toward Nekota in various ways.
 * Touko Kanno (菅野 塔子) – The female childhood friend of Nekota. She is a tomboy, but her developed body does not show it.  Her looks change so much that Nekota later on does not recognize her. She is kind and gentle and still helps out Nekota’s Grandmother.  She rides her father’s motorcycle and can cook, even though her cooking does not look appetizing. At the age of five, she fell out of a tree while playing with Nekota, and he promised her that if the injury left a scar he would marry her.  She still remembers that promise and hopes that one day Nekota will fulfill it.
 * Kitamura (北村) – Nekotas’s best friend and pitcher for the baseball team. He is intelligent, good looking, athletic, and popular with all the girls.  He is the mediator between the divided sexes in the class. He is the only one in the class who knows the main characters' secret living arrangement, and also the only one to have figured out that Nekota has feelings for Hoshino. He is dating Nishikawa.
 * Nishikawa (西川) – Hoshino’s best friend and a big fan of the theater. She is dating Kitamura.

Volumes

 * 1) Secret Battle
 * 2) Love Harassment
 * 3) A Brief and Blunt Emotion
 * 4) Love Triangle at the Beach

title: Parallel (manga)


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Lithiophilite

Lithiophilite is a mineral containing the element lithium. It is lithium manganese(II) phosphate with chemical formula LiMnPO4. It occurs in pegmatites often associated with triphylite, the iron end member in a solid solution series. The mineral with intermediate composition is known as sicklerite and has the chemical formula Li(Mn,Fe)PO4). The name lithiophilite is derived from the Greek philos (φιλός) "friend", as lithiophilite is usually found with lithium.

Lithiophylite is a resinous reddish to yellowish brown mineral crystallizing in the orthorhombic system often as slender prisms. It is usually associated with lepidolite, beryl, quartz, albite, amblygonite, and spodumene of pegmatitic origin. It rather readily weathers to a variety of secondary manganese phosphates and oxides. It is a late-stage mineral in some complex granite pegmatites. Members of the triphylite-lithiophilite series readily alter to secondary minerals.

The type locality is the Branchville Quarry, Branchville, Fairfield County, Connecticut where it was first reported in 1878. The largest documented single crystal of lithiophilite was found in New Hampshire, US, measured 2.44×1.83×1.22 m3 and weighed about 20 tonnes.

The synthetic form of triphylite, lithium iron phosphate, is a promising material for the production of lithium-ion batteries.

title: Lithiophilite


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User talk:Anshulsushil

Currently woring in a Brand Consultancy firm in Mumbai

title: User talk:Anshulsushil


text:
Triphylite

Triphylite is a lithium iron(II) phosphate mineral with the chemical formula LiFePO4. It is a member of the triphylite group and forms a complete solid solution series with the lithium manganese(II) phosphate, lithiophilite. Triphylite crystallizes in the orthorhombic crystal system. It rarely forms prismatic crystals and is more frequently found in hypidiomorphic rock. It is bluish- to greenish-gray in color, but upon alteration becomes brown to black.

Etymology and history
The mineral was first discovered and examined in 1834 by German mineralogist Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs at Hennenkobel Mine in the Bavarian Forest. The name derives from the Greek words tri ("three") and phulon ("family"), referring to the three cations found in natural samples of triphylite (Li+, Fe2+, Mn2+).

Crystal structure

 * Crystal_structure-Triphylite.png

Triphylite crystallizes in an orthorhombic crystal system. The lithium coordinates to six oxygen atoms in a distorted octahedron. Likewise, the iron centers are octahedrally coordinated. The structure contains isolated phosphate tetrahedra.

Properties
Triphylite is soluble in hydrochloric and sulfuric acid. Under a blowpipe, it melts to form a dark gray, magnetic ball. Over time, the mineral undergoes alteration by oxidation, increasing the oxidation state of iron from +2 to +3 and allowing the lithium to escape, forming heterosite, FePO4.

Triphylite forms a complex solution series with lithiophilite, LiMnPO4, so that natural sources of triphylite usually contain manganese. The structures of members within this series are similar to olivine-type silicates.

title: Triphylite


text:
Quartiere

A quartiere (: quartieri) is a territorial subdivision of certain Italian towns. The word derives from quarto (lit. 'fourth') and was thus properly used only for towns divided into four neighborhoods by the two main roads. It has been later used as a synonymous of neighbourhood, and an Italian town can be now subdivided into a larger number of quartieri. The Swiss town of Lugano (in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino) is also subdivided into quarters.

The English word quarter to mean an urban neighbourhood (e.g. the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana) is derived from the cognate old French word quartier.

Other Italian towns with other than four official neighbourhoods are frequently divided into analogous terzieri (3) or sestieri (6); some towns merely refer to these neighborhoods by the non-number-specific rioni. Quartieri, terzieri, sestieri, rioni, and their analogues are usually no longer administrative divisions of these towns, but historical and traditional communities. Sometimes towns maintain traditional cultural events linked to quartieri: a notable case is the Palio di Siena. Only in a few Italian cities, like in Florence and Bologna, a quartiere is also an administrative subdivision.

title: Quartiere


text:
Audeli Air

Audeli (Gestair Airlines) is an aircraft operator based in Madrid, Spain. It operates passenger aircraft on a wet-lease (ACMI - Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) basis for Iberia Airlines. It also manages a corporate aircraft for Inveravante. It is owned by Cygnus Air (Gestair Cargo) (99%), a member company of Grupo Gestair.

The airline is no longer operating.

Destinations
Gestair Airlines operates daily to Santo Domingo and 4 times per week to Rio de Janeiro.

Fleet
The Gestair Airlines fleet consists of the following aircraft (at March 2009):

 * 2 Airbus A340-300 (which are operated for Iberia)
 * 1 Embraer Legacy 600

title: Audeli Air


text:
Zig

Zig may refer to:

Places

 * Zığ, Baku, Azerbaijan
 * Zig, Iran, a village in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran

Fictional entities

 * Zig, the spaceship from the video game Zero Wing
 * Zig, one half of the puppet comedy duo puppets Zig and Zag
 * Zig, one of the main characters from the French comic strip Zig et Puce
 * Zig, one of the main characters from the French animated series Zig & Sharko
 * Zigs (film), a 2001 gambling film directed by Mars Callahan

People

 * Zig, one half of Australian comedy duo Zig and Zag, played by Jack Perry (1916–2006)
 * Zig Jackson (born 1957), Native American (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara) photographer
 * Zig Ziglar (1926–2012), American self-help author and speaker
 * Eliza Archard Conner (pen name Zig; 1838–1912), American writer

Other uses

 * Ziz or Zig, a giant griffin-like bird in Jewish mythology
 * Zig (programming language), a general-purpose programming language
 * Zoster immunoglobulin, an immune system medication
 * Zig (album), 2023 studio album by Poppy
 * Zig Media, American mobile-media technology company
 * Zimbabwe Gold, planned currency of Zimbabwe (abbreviated as ZiG)

title: Zig


text:
HNoMS Pol III

Pol III was a patrol boat of the Royal Norwegian Navy, used for guarding the inlet of the Oslofjord in early April 1940. She was a small vessel, originally a whaler, of 214 tons. She is best known for being the first Norwegian unit to engage the German invasion forces during the 1940 Operation Weserübung.

Operational history
Pol III was built by Akers mekaniske verksted as build no. 429 in 1926. She was requisitioned by the Royal Norwegian Navy in 1939 and pressed into service as a guard vessel in the Oslofjord. Late on 8 April 1940 the guard vessel spotted the German Kampfgruppe 5 heading north as part of the German invasion of Norway. Despite being seriously outnumbered - the Kampfgruppe consisted of the heavy cruiser Blücher, the heavy cruiser Lützow, the light cruiser Emden, three torpedo boats and eight minesweepers carrying 2,000 troops to Oslo - Pol III engaged the German forces. After firing a warning shot, Pol III closed with the German torpedo boat Albatros. Realising that the enemy would not turn away, but was going to violate Norwegian neutrality, Pol III fired flares to alert Norwegian coastal batteries and rammed Albatros in the side. From Albatros it was clear that the guns on Pol III were manned, and that the Norwegians intended to fight. Albatros hit the small Norwegian vessel with anti aircraft fire, wounding the captain, Leif Welding-Olsen, and starting several fires. As Pol III was burning, her crew abandoned the vessel and was captured. Leif Welding-Olsen, weakened by blood loss, did not manage to enter the lifeboat and drowned, becoming the first Norwegian fatality in open war between Norway and Nazi Germany. Kampfgruppe 5 was temporarily turned back by Oscarsborg Fortress a few hours later, with the loss of the heavy cruiser Blücher.

The next day, 9 April, Pol III was towed to Tønsberg. The German Kriegsmarine captured her on 14 April, and after repairs utilised the vessel as a Vorpostenboot under several names (NO-05 Samoa, V-6105 and NH-05). After the war, Pol III became part of the Norwegian mine sweeping fleet before she was sold off. Later Pol III had several different owners and names, the engines replaced and her structure rebuilt. In 1949 she was sold to Hareid where she was rebuilt as a fishing vessel and given the name Johan E. In 1978 she was sold to Ørnes and rebuilt as a fish transport vessel and named Odd Oscar. Five years later she was sold to Bodø and given the name Fisktrans. Although in essence a different vessel than in 1940, the hull of Pol III remained afloat and in use for many years. In her last guise, she was owned in Salten and had the name Arnøytrans. She ran as a fish transport vessel along the Norwegian coast.

On 1 October 2011, she was sailed on own power to Fosen Gjenvinning breaker's yard at Revsnes in Sør-Trøndelag for scrapping.

Some of her hull plates survived and are in the care of the Larvik Maritime Museum.

title: HNoMS Pol III


text:
User:Be~enwiki

Member of Mensa in Germany

MinD e.V.

M1225

www.mensa.de

title: User:Be~enwiki


text:
Lempel–Ziv–Storer–Szymanski

Lempel–Ziv–Storer–Szymanski (LZSS) is a lossless data compression algorithm, a derivative of LZ77, that was created in 1982 by James A. Storer and Thomas Szymanski. LZSS was described in article "Data compression via textual substitution" published in Journal of the ACM (1982, pp. 928–951).

LZSS is a dictionary coding technique. It attempts to replace a string of symbols with a reference to a dictionary location of the same string.

The main difference between LZ77 and LZSS is that in LZ77 the dictionary reference could actually be longer than the string it was replacing. In LZSS, such references are omitted if the length is less than the "break even" point. Furthermore, LZSS uses one-bit flags to indicate whether the next chunk of data is a literal (byte) or a reference to an offset/length pair.

Example
Here is the beginning of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, with character numbers at the beginning of lines for convenience. Green Eggs and Ham is a good example to illustrate LZSS compression because the book itself only contains 50 unique words, despite having a word count of 170. Thus, words are repeated, however not in succession.

0: I am Sam 9: 10: Sam I am 19: 20: That Sam-I-am! 35: That Sam-I-am! 50: I do not like 64: that Sam-I-am! 79: 80: Do you like green eggs and ham? 112: 113: I do not like them, Sam-I-am. 143: I do not like green eggs and ham. This text takes 177 bytes in uncompressed form. Assuming a break even point of 2 bytes (and thus 2 byte pointer/offset pairs), and one byte newlines, this text compressed with LZSS becomes 95 bytes long: 0: I am Sam 9: 10: (5,3) (0,4) 16: 17: That(4,4)-I-am!(19,15) 32: I do not like 46: t(21,14) 50: Do you(58,5) green eggs and ham? 79: (49,14) them,(24,9).(112,15)(92,18).

Note: this does not include the 11 bytes of flags indicating whether the next chunk of text is a pointer or a literal. Adding it, the text becomes 106 bytes long, which is still shorter than the original 177 bytes.

Implementations
Many popular archivers like ARJ, RAR, ZOO, LHarc use LZSS rather than LZ77 as the primary compression algorithm; the encoding of literal characters and of length-distance pairs varies, with the most common option being Huffman coding. Most implementations stem from a public domain 1989 code by Haruhiko Okumura. Version 4 of the Allegro library can encode and decode an LZSS format, but the feature was cut from version 5. The Game Boy Advance BIOS can decode a slightly modified LZSS format. Apple's Mac OS X uses LZSS as one of the compression methods for kernel code.

title: Lempel–Ziv–Storer–Szymanski


text:
Teachings of Opus Dei

Teachings of Opus Dei are the teachings of the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.

The following are the main features of Escrivá's spiritual teachings, the basis of the message Opus Dei was tasked to spread. Another exposition of these main teachings, expressed as "the main features of the spirit of Opus Dei," can be found in the Opus Dei website.

General considerations
In his Apostolic Constitution Ut Sit, John Paul II declared that "this Institution has in fact striven, not only to illuminate with new lights the mission of the laity in the Church and in society, but also to put it into practice; it has also endeavored to put into practice the teaching of the universal call to holiness, and to promote at all levels of society the sanctification of ordinary work, and by means of ordinary work."

According to Dr. Pedro Rodriguez, an Opus Dei priest who specialized in studying the theology of the Roman Catholic Church (ecclesiology), Opus Dei is all about a message and an institution bearing that message. "The message of St Josemaría," says José Saraiva Martins, Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, "belongs to the perennial patrimony of the Roman Church." The following are the main features of Escrivá's spiritual teachings, the core message of Opus Dei.

Ordinary life and the "universal call to holiness"
One central feature of Opus Dei's theology is its focus on the lives of the ordinary Catholics who are neither priests nor monks. Opus Dei emphasizes the "universal call to holiness": the belief that everyone should aspire to be a saint, not just a few special individuals. Opus Dei does not have monks or nuns, and only a minority of its members are part of the priesthood. Whereas the members of some religious orders might live in monasteries and devote their lives exclusively to prayer and study, most members of Opus Dei lead ordinary lives, with traditional families and conventional careers, and strive to "sanctify ordinary life". Indeed, Pope John Paul II called Escrivá "the saint of ordinary life".

One of the distinctive features of Opus Dei is its stress of lay spirituality - a spiritual life for lay people living an everyday life and doing ordinary work. Escriva takes decided position against the concept of having an interior spiritual life and a separate "not spiritual" professional, social, and family life. According to Opus Dei, Opus Dei's spirituality commits lay people to sanctify themselves in the same place where they were before they met Opus Dei and their place in the world is the means for their sanctification.

"There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations," Escriva preached, "and it is up to each of you to discover it."

According to Escrivà, Christians can become saints and apostles right there where they work and live. Whatever work they do is to be done with a spirit of excellence as an effective service for the needs of society. Their work then becomes a fitting offering to God. Sanctifying work means to work with the spirit of Jesus Christ, to work competently and ethically, with the aim of loving God and serving others, and thus to sanctify the world from within, making the Gospel present in all activities whether they be outstanding or humble and hidden. In the eyes of God what matters is the love that is put into work, not its human success.

Unity of Life
A related characteristic is Opus Dei's emphasis on uniting spiritual life with professional, social, and family life.

A Christian who practices these teachings has no double life, a life of faith divorced from daily work. Instead, he has a "unity of life"—a profound union with Jesus Christ, both fully God and fully man, one person in whom divine power is fused with ordinary human activity. A Christian's work should be God's work, opus Dei. This Christian, despite all his defects, which he humbly tries to remove, is alter Christus, ipse Christus, another Christ, Christ himself.

St Josemaría said: “There is just one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is this life which has to become, in both soul and body, holy and filled with God.”

Work
Since the Bible stated that man was created "to work" (Gen 2:15) and that Jesus "did all things well" (Mk 7:37), Escrivá encouraged Christians to work excellently out of love. By doing so, their work is a service to society and a fitting offering to God. "'Great' holiness consists in carrying out the 'little duties' of each moment", says Escrivá.

Love for freedom
Escriva preached that Christians should love freedom because God the Son himself, on becoming man, took on human freedom. He sanctified mankind through love: by freely giving himself, "obeying" his Father's will throughout his ordinary life, "until death on the cross." (Phil 2,8) Escriva notes that Jesus "gave himself, because he wanted to." (Is 53,7) Through his freedom, each man controls and shapes his life, being responsible for cooperating or not with God's loving plan of holiness. Recognizing such great dignity, Christians should therefore delicately respect the freedom of others, be open to a pluralism of opinions, and give themselves, with full freedom and personal responsibility, to God and neighbor.

Prayer and mortification
Love, the essence of sanctity and apostolate, is nurtured by constant childlike prayer which is supported by norms of piety involving the Eucharist, the Bible, and the Virgin Mary. Mortification, "prayer of the senses," is especially done by striving to practice all the human virtues, such as being kind, hardworking, sincere and cheerful despite difficulties and failures. "Do everything for Love. Thus there will be no little things: everything will be big...'Great' holiness consists in carrying out the 'little duties' of each moment." These actions are co-offered in the Holy Mass, the same redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Sanctifying grace flows down especially through communion and confession.

Charity and apostolate
Christians are to give the highest importance to the virtue of charity: being understanding and caring for each person. Included are service towards the needy in society and the practice of human courtesy, refinement, warmth, affection and fraternal correction. Love, which should be orderly, starts by performing one's duties well and is first directed towards the Pope. And it overflows when one generously gives the best to people, bringing them closer to their Father God, source of peace and joy.

Foundation: divine filiation
According to Escrivá, the foundation of Opus Dei's spirit is a personal awareness of the Christian's "divine filiation". Divine filiation is the Christian's fundamental state as a daughter or son of God in Christ, a deep awareness of which brings about immense happiness: "Joy comes from knowing we are children of God." Opus Dei, in the words of Escrivá, is "a smiling asceticism." (See )

Opus Dei teachings and Vatican II
William E May, professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America, writes that the Second Vatican Council took from Escriva the teaching that men and women are called to be saints in the midst of everyday life and cites a passage from Lumen gentium by Pope Paul VI which expresses that idea. One such passage is the following: "Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history. (Lumen Gentium, 39)" Many Council Fathers visited and talked to St. Josemaría, who was living in Rome during the time of the Council.

On the other hand, Henri Denis, professor for dogmatics at the University of Lyon and specialist regarding Vatican II theology holds that the teachings of Vatican II and Opus Dei are incompatible, specially referring "reconstitution of Christianity" and the theology of Gaudium et Spes regarding the legitime autonomy of terrestrial realities.

Call and demands: theological basis
In his opening message for the theological symposium Holiness and the World, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stressed that the teachings on sanctity of the founder of Opus Dei are "Christ-centred".

The message Opus Dei is called to proclaim, that all Christians can and should become a saint, is grounded in the following premises: Christians believe that (1) they are "poor creatures" made of nothing "whose pride leads (them) to rise up against God;" (2) Christ is the almighty God, who "has created us and maintains us in existence," and is the "only one who can satisfy the longings of the human heart;" (3) Christ is a Savior who is "madly in love" with us and who is the one most interested in that we live in communion with him in infinite bliss: "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, to be saints and blameless in his sight" (Eph 1:4). Through his love and redemption, he has given us the immense dignity of being "children of God"; (4) "This Christ who is alive is also a Christ who is near," says Ratzinger of Escrivá's thought, "a Christ in whom the power and majesty of God make themselves present through ordinary, simple, human things."

The theological basis then is a God who is always at work in the world, who waits as a Merciful Father in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and personally searches for man through the Eucharist. This God makes himself "totally available," says Escrivá, to nourish the Christian so as to become "one single thing with him." Given the gift of this "divinization" in grace, "a new principle of energy," and with the support of "Christ's family," the Church, Escrivá states that the difficult ideal of becoming a saint, another Christ, is "also easy. It is within our reach." For this, he refers to Christ's famous "My yoke is easy and my burden light." (Mt 11:30) Thus, according to Ratzinger (2002), becoming a saint is shunned when there is a "mistaken concept of holiness...as something reserved for some 'greats'...who are completely different from us ordinary sinners. But this is a wrong perception which has been corrected precisely by Josemaría Escrivá." Even if he "can be very weak, with many mistakes in his life," a saint has heroic virtue "because he has been transparent and available for the work of God. In other words, a saint is nothing other than to speak with God as a friend speaks with a friend...the Only One who can really make the world both good and happy," according to the theological analysis of the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As Pope he stated: "it is not a burden to be carried by a great love and a revelation, but it is like having wings."

Sanctification is a repayment of love for God's tender fatherly love and is the work of the Holy Spirit, Infinite Love, according to Catholic doctrine. This person resides in a Christian who is willing to correspond, and thus the human spirit which was created to love, says Escrivá, is led along an "inclined plane," which starts with the fervent repetition of short prayers and then "gives way to intimacy with God, looking at God without needing rest or feeling tired." And so, one of his favourite teachings is the biblical injunction that all should love God with their whole heart, soul, might, and mind. This is a love which does not keep anything back, a kind of love which parents are supposed to transmit all day long to their children (Deut 6:4-9: Shema Yisrael), and which Christ called the "greatest commandment" (Mt 22:37-40). Escrivá also points to Jesus' "new commandment" to love one another "as I have loved you" (Jn 13:34), "greater love" than which "no man has" for he "lays down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13). According to the Catechism, this "effective self-offering" is "our model of holiness" (no. 459). For Escrivá this is "the level of what can be demanded" of all Christians.

Affirming that the "Church's first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God" (CCC 775), John Paul II, in the Apostolic Letter At the Beginning of the New Millennium, placed sanctity, "this high standard of ordinary Christian living," as the single most important priority of all pastoral activities in the universal Church "for all times." And for this, Catholics are to live a "life distinguished above all in the art of prayer" and should proclaim God's word "without ever hiding the most radical demands of the Gospel message."

However, some critics refer to the late Hans Urs von Balthasar, considered one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, who discussed Opus Dei in an article entitled "Fundamentalism." There he described it as "a concentration of fundamentalist power in the Church." (article in Wort und Wahrheit, 1963). He based his negative views on his reading of some points of Escriva's main book, The Way, which von Balthasar did not consider of sufficient spiritual depth for its worldwide goals. On the other hand, V. Messori, who studied the von Balthasar issue, says that the theologian later retracted his views after more in-depth study and after meeting members of Opus Dei. He even defended Opus Dei against attacks.

Training and "Plan of Life"
A Christian becomes a saint, according to Opus Dei's founder, principally through God's mercy, and thus he emphasised frequent confession and other means of sanctification: Escrivá says one cannot love someone who is not known. Thus he says Christians should have "the piety of children and the sure doctrine of theologians".
 * 1) Interior life, activities turned into contemplation, which Jesus Christ calls "the one thing necessary" (Lk 10:42), and,
 * 2) Doctrinal training, a well-reasoned understanding of God and his ordered work as revealed in the Catholic faith, now presented by Benedict XVI as the religion of the Logos (the Word: meaning and reason).

He holds that the "paramount means" of training is one-on-one coaching through spiritual direction, a practice which has its roots in the early Church. According to Cornelio Fabro, eminent Italian philosopher, Opus Dei's training fosters the human virtues, habits which are developed through the repetition of free decisions in one's activities and professional work. These habits of human excellence, including love for the truth, courage, and generosity, are the "foundation", Escrivá says, of the supernatural virtues of faith and love for God. Training in Opus Dei is based on the single-sex education model.

Members of Opus Dei (numeraries as well as supernumeraries) follow the Opus Dei "Plan of Life"—a daily regimen of prayer, meditation, and religious ceremonies. The specific practices in the "plan of life" are referred to as "norms". The plan consists of the following norms:

 * Morning Offering
 * Mental prayer, also known as meditation
 * Daily Mass, Communion, and Thanksgiving after Communion
 * Rosary, a set of prayers which are typically said with the aid of prayer beads. A saying of the rosary consists (in total) of 53 recitations of the Hail Mary, six recitations of the Our Father, six instances of the Glory Be to the Father,  one saying of the Apostles' Creed, and one saying of the Hail Holy Queen. Additionally, each saying of the rosary involved a private meditation upon one of the Mysteries. The Plan of Life calls for members of Opus Dei to say the rosary once each day.
 * Spiritual reading. Reading of the Gospel and some spiritual book
 * Penance. Some small act of penance or mortification.
 * A short visit to the tabernacle.
 * The Preces, a prayer which is specific to Opus Dei. It is said in Latin once each day by members.
 * Angelus, a prayer in memory of the Incarnation. Members of Opus Dei say the Angelus each day at noon (or as close to noon as possible). During the Easter season, the Catholic Church replaces the Angelus with the Regina Caeli.
 * Examination of Conscience. According to the Plan of Life, members of Opus Dei should take time out of their day to examine their conscience and reflect upon the day's events, where the members asks themselves questions such as "Did I treat anyone badly? Did I work hard?"
 * Three Hail Marys at bedtime
 * The Sign of the Cross with holy water

Studies about St. Josemaria's teachings
Escriva's teachings were analyzed, studied and endorsed in a theological symposium held in Rome, Holiness and the World. Together with an address by John Paul II, several theologians contributed their studies, including the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Georges Cottier, Theologian of the Papal Household, and noted American moral theologian Prof. William May.

Some critics belittle the writings of the founder, saying that they are "less than scintillating." In Opus Dei in the United States, Jesuit scholar, Fr. James Martin (1995), says that Escriva's maxims range "from traditional Christian pieties...to sayings that could easily have come out of Poor Richard’s Almanack." Critics also say that the teachings are Escriva-centred.

In contrast, Catholic officials, specifically the Vatican's theological consultors for Escriva's canonization gave another assessment of Escriva's works. One said that Escriva is "like a figure from the deepest spiritual sources"; another stated that he "possesses the force of the classic writers, the temper of a Father of the Church."

Thus, these teachings do not lie outside mainstream traditional Roman Catholic spiritual and ascetic theology. According to Le Tourneau in What is Opus Dei?, these teachings "belong to the common patrimony of the Catholic Church, throwing a special light on secular realities." These teachings then form a lay spirituality, and help build the spirit or culture which is practised in the Work.

title: Teachings of Opus Dei