text:
AtariWriter

AtariWriter is a word processor program for the Atari 8-bit computers released by Atari, Inc. as a 16 kB ROM cartridge in 1983. The program was fast and easy to use, while still allowing for the creation of fairly complex documents. It was a success for the platform, with at least 800,000 units initially sold, not including international versions and later updates.

Atari introduced Atari Word Processor, its first branded word processor, in 1981. Reviews unanimously praised its features but also noted its usability problems, including its difficulty and demanding system requirements. When the new models of the XL series were introduced, Word Processor was abandoned in favour of a simpler program that would run on any machine. William Robinson, author of Datasoft's Text Wizard, was hired for the new software project, with him modifying the program to run from a cartridge.

Positive reviews followed its release, with concerns also raised about the lack of mail merge and a spell checker, and the absence of printer drivers for any printers other than Atari's. To meet the demand for non-Atari printers, at least 25,000 copies of an add-on printer pack were sold through direct sales and the Atari Program Exchange. In 1986, Atari released the AtariWriter Plus, with new features along with a spell checker and mail merge available on floppy disk. AtariWriter 80, the final version of the software released in 1989, added support for the XEP80 80-column display. AtariWriter also spawned a port to the Atari ST with the ST Writer program, which was offered free on early models of the ST.

Before AtariWriter
Atari's original marketing plan for the 8-bit family of machines, which includes the Atari 400 and 800, was to market the 400 to the education and games sector, and the 800 to small-office settings where CP/M and the Apple II were successful. Unfortunately, the lack of useful business software hindered any sales to the office market, and the machine quickly garnered a reputation as a glorified games box.

In 1980, Atari addressed this problem by introducing their own Atari Word Processor. It shipped on a copy protected floppy disk and required 48 kB of RAM. These requirements meant that the user had to have, at a minimum, a fully-expanded 800 and an Atari 810 disk drive. The machines lacked a parallel port and Atari did not sell printers with the SIO adaptor built-in, so printing required the Atari 850 interface and a parallel printer like the Atari 825 or the widely recommended Epson MX-80.

While the software program was feature-packed, including support for things like two-column layout and super- and sub-scripting, reviewers pointed out that it was difficult to use. In addition to an extensive set of editing commands using control keys, including cursor commands that did not use the system's own cursor keys, more complex operations like loading documents or printing required trips through multi-level text menus. As these were essentially impossible to remember, a quick-reference sheet was included and the documentation was designed to stand up on a desk for continual use.

Word Processor was one of three major word processing software programs in the early days of the platform, with reviews from 1982 including Text Wizard from Datasoft and Letter Perfect from LKJ. These programs were much simpler than AtariWriter in terms of features, could run on any machine in the lineup, and were far easier to use. For all of these reasons, they easily outsold Atari Word Processor. Text Wizard was often considered the best-buy, and Letter Perfect the best overall; Atari's was never recommended.

AtariWriter
Sometime in late 1981, Gary Furr left his job at GTE where he wrote application software specifications for government contractors. Moving to Atari, Furr and product manager Peggy Allen soon began planning to replace Word Processor. Instead of modifying the software, they decided to abandon it entirely, but not before Furr wrote the design specification for AtariWriter using Word Processor in March or April 1982.

A month or two later, they found that there were not enough programmers available in the company to write the program they specified. To bridge this gap, they hired 15-year-old William Robinson, the author of Text Wizard, to modify that program to run in a ROM cartridge. Robinson had previously written Text Wizard for the LA-based software company Datasoft, and it had garnered good reviews while running in very little RAM.

At the time, bank switching cartridges were uncommon, but Atari machines had always included the little-used ability to include up to 16 kB in a single cart. This would allow it to run on any machine in the lineup, even early-model 400's and the later 600XL which came with only 16 kB of RAM. It also meant there was no requirement for a floppy disk, and documents could be saved to the Atari 410 cassette drive. A huge advantage over Word Processor was that the program did not load into RAM and thus left much more memory free; on an 800, Word Processor had only about 10 kB free, enough for about one page of text, but AtariWriter had roughly 20 kB free even with DOS loaded, allowing small documents up to about six pages to be held entirely in memory.

Programming occurred during the summer of 1982, with internal testing in the fall of that same year, continuing into early 1983. Final testing and documentation was largely complete by the February–March time frame, when a status meeting of the Home Computer division was held. At the meeting, Furr described how they handled printers—the program would load a single printer driver at a time, with all four Atari printers supported and others available on disk. The manager refused to support non-Atari printers, and Furr had to call Robinson and tell him to remove the extra drivers. A short section was added to the manual stating additional drivers would be available from the Atari Program Exchange (APX).

AtariWriter 1.0 was released to production in the spring of 1983. The software is copyrighted 1982. Furr left Atari shortly thereafter and took a position with Datasoft. Three additional minor upgrades were released over the next year, culminating in Version C. The program was an enormous success, becoming one of Atari's best-selling products of all time. Furr was later told that the original cartridge version had sold approximately 800,000 copies, not including any foreign language versions, French, Spanish, German and Italian, or the later versions like Plus and 80. Given that there were about 4 million machines sold in total, this represents a significant portion of the entire Atari fleet. For comparison, the most popular word processor on the IBM PC during this era, WordStar, had sold 650,000 copies across all platforms by the fall of 1983.

Printer drivers
The management decision to only support Atari printers was criticized by every product review as bad judgment on the part of Atari. Furr began writing drivers on his own at home, and a selection of 10 to 11 of these first appeared in the Fall 1983 APX catalog. When APX folded in 1984, Furr took over and began direct sales from his home. Furr found these were being purchased by users' groups who would distribute them to their members. He nevertheless sold 25,000 copies between 1983 and 1993 directly, not including the additional sales through APX. The last copy was sold in 1993. Several years later, Furr was contacted by a user group in Pennsylvania, leading to him shipping all the disks with source code to the group. Through this period the number of drivers expanded from the original 10 to as many as 159 by the time he delivered the code.

AtariWriter Plus
After the purchase of Atari by Jack Tramiel in 1984, the new Atari Corporation introduced cost-reduced versions of the XE series in the 8-bit lineup. Among these was the 130XE model, which used bank switching to support 128 kB of RAM. For these machines, a new version of AtariWriter was introduced in November 1985, AtariWriter Plus. By this time, Robinson had left Datasoft and started his own company, Micro Fantasy. He continued to be the primary programmer on the core program, while Ron Rosen handled the mail merge, and R. Stanley Kistler the spell checker. Jeffrey Bass wrote the documentation.

AtariWriter Plus added a number of new features, giving it parity with the original Atari Word Processor in terms of power. Practically every part of the program changed in some way. Adding all of this functionality meant it no longer fit on a 16 kB cartridge, and it instead shipped on two flippy disks, one of them with the "normal" version on one side and the 130XE version on the other. In contrast to the original, which booted in less than a second, loading the new version from disk took almost a minute.

The main difference compared to the original version was support for horizontal scrolling, which allowed direct editing of wider documents. This had been one of the notable features of the original Atari Word Processor, which used the platform's hardware assisted scrolling system to rapidly move the entire document horizontally to allow editing at up to 132 columns. The new version of AtariWriter worked in the same way, but expanded it even further to a maximum of 249 columns. Another notable change was that formatting options were set through a global menu, rather than on-screen within the document. A new save-as-plain-ASCII option allowed one to easily strip these codes out to send plain text to other users. Another major feature taken from Word Processor was the two-column layout. Dozens of other more minor changes were also included that made common operations much easier.

The new version also greatly expanded printer support. In addition to the original set of Atari printers and the ones added later like the XMM 801 dot-matrix printer and XDM 121 daisy wheel printer, selecting "other" showed drivers for the Epson FX-80, MicroPrism 480 and Juki 6100. This menu had another "other" selection which allowed you to load a driver from disk. The manual included an entire section on how to create your own printer driver, although the ones from the original APX disks continued to work.

Other new options were available as load-on-demand subprograms which were included on the program disk. Most notable was Atari Proofreader, a spell checker with 36,000 word library that took up both sides of the second disk. Selecting Verify Spelling from the main menu exited AtarWriter and ran Proofreader, which then loaded a selected document and continued. Another was the Mail Merge option, which worked in a similar fashion and could merge with up to 255 records of up to 15 fields stored in a second file. Because these were all disk based, they were quite slow; a 3,000 word document took about 15 minutes to spell check.

One downside to the new program was that it left only 12 kB free on an original 48 kB machine, only slightly more than the 10 kB of the original Word Processor. On the 130XE, running the custom version, 47,616 bytes were available. This was arranged as three banks of 15,872, but the program attempted to make this invisible by loading and saving all three from a single file. However, during editing one had to manually jump from bank to bank using a function key.

AtariWriter 80
After years of complaints that the platform did not have any official 80-column support, Atari released the XEP80 in 1987, a plug-in display module that connects one of the Atari joystick ports to a composite monitor. Any program wishing to use this option had to be re-written to support the new mode, which was entirely unrelated to the built-in display hardware. Atari used AtariWriter Plus to produce AtariWriter 80, which was otherwise identical. The only major change was that the column display in the editor, formerly along the bottom of the screen, was now repositioned to the top. The XEP communicated in serial, so some delays are seen when the complete screen is redrawn, like when switching to the menu and back to the document, but the system is otherwise similar to Plus. The program was apparently completed in November 1987, but for unknown reasons was not released until well into the late summer of 1988.

ST Writer
After taking over Atari, the Tramiel family wanted to introduce an entirely new GUI-based computer, which emerged as the Atari ST in the summer of 1985. Concerned that the new system would lack useful software at its launch, which could lead to the same issues that caused people to dismiss the Atari 800, they decided to port AtariWriter to the ST. Programmer Dan Oliver ported the existing assembly language AtariWriter screen editor code to the ST while John Feagans converted the layout and formatting handlers to the C programming language. In two weeks, a version of AtariWriter Plus was up and running as ST Writer.

Running on the new machine gave the program many advantages. Memory was no longer limited, and the program was capable of handling very large documents. It also had a natural 80-column display, and was extremely fast. The program was so similar to the original it could exchange files with no edits.

As useful as the program was, it was not GUI-based, and was released for free while Atari began the search for a GUI program to replace it. By the end of 1985, several GUI word processors emerged, and ST Writer development at Atari came to an end. By this time it had garnered a major following of its own, and the replacements were seen as second rate in comparison. The company eventually allowed avid user Bruce Noonan to take over development. He continued releasing the product through a number of major versions, even adding a limited GUI for menu access, with the last releases in the 1990s.

Reception
Reviews of AtariWriter were generally positive, with critics pointing out a lack of features like printer drivers, mail merge and spell checking.

ANALOG magazine's review describes how easy the program is to use, noting the review itself is being completed on the program only hours after it arrived. After noting that other printers, like the Epson in particular, were not supported, the article concludes "The AtariWriter has good documentation, is reasonably easy to learn and to use, doesn't seem to leave you hung up anywhere and has sufficient commands and flexibility to meet the needs of those who are most likely to use it... After a series of strikeouts, Atari has a hit on their hands."

Antic magazine lauded its speed, simplicity, and undo command, calling AtariWriter "fool proof". The only concerns were the lack of 3rd party printer support, overstrike mode, and mail merge. It concluded that "AtariWriter is the best non-game program Atari has released... Compared to the other word processors available, it is clearly superior on price and performance."

Creative Computing published a more extensive review, calling it "a candidate for Best Atari Product in a Long Time." The product is described as being easy to use and foolproof due to the many checks to prevent data loss. The lack of printer drivers is pointed out, but this is solved somewhat by allowing the user to embed printer control characters directly in the text. It concludes "My overall impression of AtariWriter is positive. It has good error trapping, is very easy to use and understand, and can be used with the cassette recorder. Powerful features like file merging and chain printing are supported... AtariWriter will be the best Atari word processor for the majority of Atari computer owners."

InfoWorld also reviewed it, giving it a less stellar rating of fair to good. It starts "Given the limitations of Atari hardware, AtariWriter is a good word processor. But if you write documents larger than your computer's memory, or if you need to display 80 columns of text on the screen, forget AtariWriter, stick to your typewriter or buy a more expensive computer." It later notes that documents can be strung together and printed as a single document using a code at the bottom of an individual document, avoiding the memory limitation. It goes on to point out a number of minor annoyances, including that there is no money-back guarantee.

The Addison-Wesley Book of Atari Software 1984 gave the software an overall A rating. The book stated that it "heralds a new era in word processing" for Atari 8-bit owners, and "a good reason in itself to purchase an Atari". It praised AtariWriter's ease of use and print preview, and concluded that the software was "a must for every serious writer and Atari owner."

Consumer Reports rated the combination of an Atari 800XL, AtariWriter and the Atari 1027 printer as the best word processing system for the price.

Advertising
Shortly after AtariWriter was released, the last episode of M*A*S*H was aired in February 1983. Subsequently, Steve Ross hired M*A*S*H leading actor Alan Alda as a spokesperson for Atari in a five-year contract worth $10 million that would have produced television commercials for the company until 1988. Alda's relationship with Atari was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983, with a successful series of commercials on television launched that same year. Atari explained their decision to use Alda as their spokesperson, noting that Alda had a high Q Score, making him the "best known, best liked television personality in America" at the time, and described their ambitious plan for advertising their hardware and software products across the print and television spectrum with a massive campaign.

Alda made at least two television advertisements about AtariWriter, as well as written copy. In one print ad, the software was promoted with the headline "AtariWriter makes it easier to be a better writer", with an image of Alda sitting in front of the computer holding the software. Alda offered a celebrity testimonial for the product, telling readers, "You get to spend your energy on ideas rather than typing". AtariWriter was advertised for about US $99.95, which was considered half the cost of one of its competitors, LetterPerfect, which retailed for US $200. This "under $100" price point was marketed to consumers as a "family budget price", with one ad saying "You can't find a friendlier, more powerful word processor at twice the price".

Description
The program has two main modes, the menu and the editor. The user can switch from the menu to the editor using the E command, and switch back by pressing.

The main menu includes only eight options: Create File, which erases any text in memory and creates a new one; Delete File, to remove a file from disk; Edit File, Format Disk, Index of Disk Files (Directory), Load File, Print File and Save File. If a file is Created or Loaded, the user then selects Edit to enter the editor.

The editor displays the document text in the upper portion of the screen, and a four-line status area at the bottom. Prominently displayed in this status area is "PRESS ESC TO RETURN TO MENU". Above this is the indication of the current line and column, and a display of the tab stops rendered as up-arrows. At the very top of every document is a line of control characters that sets things like the tab spacing, margins and total document width. These are stored as text in the document, and are edited by cursoring over them and changing the values.

AtariWriter includes automatic word wrap, full-screen editing, dual-column printing, search and replace, undo, block editing and a print preview feature that allows users to view a printable page by scrolling across the screen. Printing attributes are set directly into the document using control characters. This allows direct changes to formatting such as margins, spacing, and justification.

title: AtariWriter


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neptune Ice

 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. Woohookitty 11:42, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Neptune Ice
Non-notable forum. Can't get an alexa ranking, and throwing out a lot of false hits in Google ('"Neptune Ice" -tea -"ice giant" -carpet -planet') still comes up with a lot of false positives but only shows 74 unique hits. Zoe 23:59, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - I get 50 unique hits, nothing much relating to this. Non-notable. Rob Church Talk 00:02, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity/"under construction" message/amateurish. Andrew pmk | Talk 01:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete and place author in reeducation.  Paul Klenk 03:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Let's not forget to be civil, now. -- Visviva 04:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Blanked by author. -- Visviva 04:34, 29 August 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.

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


text: Category:Paleoclimatology

title: Category:Paleoclimatology


text: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 August 28


text:
Richard Ayoade

Richard Ayoade (born 23 May 1977) is a British comedian, actor, writer and director. He played the role of socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss in Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd (2006–2013), for which he won the 2014 BAFTA for Best Male Comedy Performance.

Ayoade was the president of the Footlights club whilst a student at the University of Cambridge. He and Matthew Holness debuted their respective characters Dean Learner and Garth Marenghi at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000, bringing the characters to television with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004) and Man to Man with Dean Learner (2006). He appeared in the comedy shows The Mighty Boosh (2004–2007) and Nathan Barley (2005). After directing music videos for Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, he wrote and directed the comedy-drama film Submarine (2010), an adaptation of the 2008 novel by Joe Dunthorne. He co-starred in the American science fiction comedy film The Watch (2012) and his second film, the black comedy The Double (2013), drew inspiration from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella of the same title.

Ayoade has frequently appeared on panel shows, most prominently on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and served as a team captain on Was It Something I Said? (2013). He presented the factual shows Gadget Man (2013–2015), its spin-off Travel Man (2015–2019), and the revival of The Crystal Maze (2017–2020). He has also voiced characters in a number of animated projects, including the films The Boxtrolls (2014), Early Man (2018), The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019), Soul (2020), and The Bad Guys (2022), as well as the series Strange Hill High (2013–2014), Apple & Onion (2018–2021), and Krapopolis (2023–present).

Ayoade has written three comedic film-focused books: Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey (2014), The Grip of Film (2017), and Ayoade on Top (2019), as well as the children's book The Book That No One Wanted to Read (2022), illustrated by Tor Freeman.

Early life
Ayoade was born on 23 May 1977, the son of a Norwegian mother and Nigerian father. The family moved to Ipswich when he was young. At the age of 15, he developed an interest in film "beyond Star Wars and Back to the Future" and began exploring the works of directors Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini. He studied at the independent St Joseph's College in Ipswich, where he recalls being "obsessed" with J. D. Salinger's book The Catcher in the Rye. He was so obsessed with the book that he started to dress like its protagonist, Holden Caulfield.

From 1995 to 1998, Ayoade studied law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he won the Martin Steele Prize for play production and was president of the amateur theatrical club Footlights. He and Footlights vice-president John Oliver wrote and performed in several productions together, appearing in both Footlights' 1997 and 1998 touring shows: Emotional Baggage (directed by Matthew Holness) and Between a Rock and a Hard Place (directed by Cal McCrystal). Ayoade says that his parents would not approve of studies considered to be of the "Regency era", adding that "a non-vocational degree seemed such an outlandish indulgence". He said that his degree in law was no longer a viable "fallback" for him and that he would need to "go back to square one".

2000–2006: Garth Marenghi shows and The Mighty Boosh
Ayoade co-wrote the stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight with Matthew Holness, whom he also met at the Footlights, appearing in the show with Holness at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2000 where it was nominated for a Perrier Award. The show saw the debut of Holness' character Garth Marenghi, a fictional horror writer, and Ayoade's character Dean Learner, Marenghi's publisher. In 2001, he won the Perrier Comedy Award for co-writing and performing in Garth Marenghi's Netherhead, the sequel to Fright Knight. In 2004, Ayoade and Holness took the Marenghi character to Channel 4, creating the spoof horror comedy series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Ayoade wrote, directed and appeared in the series, which saw Marenghi and Learner star in a 1980s television drama that was never broadcast. Learner played Thornton Reed, a hospital administrator. Along with Matt Berry, Ayoade directed, co-wrote and co-starred in AD/BC: A Rock Opera, which parodies life-of-Christ rock operas and aired on BBC Three in December 2004. Ayoade was also a writer on the sketch show Bruiser in 2000, which starred former Footlights president David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and featured Holness. Ayoade was featured in a bit-part as a reporter in the HBO television film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004).

After appearing in Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding's radio series The Boosh, Ayoade was part of the original cast of Barratt and Fielding's The Mighty Boosh television show. He was originally selected to play the role of dangerous villain Dixon Bainbridge. However, by the time the radio series transferred to television he was under contract by Channel 4 and was only able to act in the pilot before leaving The Boosh. The part was taken by fellow Darkplace actor and eventual IT Crowd co-star Matt Berry. He later returned in the second series in 2005, to play the part of the belligerent shaman Saboo. Ayoade continued his association with The Mighty Boosh in the third series, reprising his role and acting as script editor. In 2005, he played the role of Ned Smanks in Chris Morris' and Charlie Brooker's sitcom Nathan Barley. Ayoade's Dean Learner character was resurrected in 2006 to host a comedy chat show, Man to Man with Dean Learner, on Channel 4. The different guests were played each week by Holness. Ayoade appeared in the satirical comedy series Time Trumpet in 2006, which is set in the year 2031 and saw Ayoade and other celebrities reminiscing about the year 2007 onwards.

2006–2010: The IT Crowd, music videos, and Submarine
In February 2006, Ayoade began playing technically brilliant, but socially awkward, IT technician Maurice Moss in the sitcom The IT Crowd on Channel 4, appearing with Chris O'Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, Chris Morris, and later on, Matt Berry. The series' creator Graham Linehan wrote the part specifically for Ayoade. In 2008, Ayoade won the award for an outstanding actor in a television comedy series at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival for his performance. In 2009, Ayoade co-starred with Joel McHale in the pilot for an American version of The IT Crowd, reprising his role with the same appearance and personality; however, no series was commissioned, and the pilot never aired. The original The IT Crowd ran for four seasons until 2010, with a special airing in 2013, for which Ayoade won a BAFTA for Best Male Comedy Performance.

In 2007, he directed the music videos for the songs "Fluorescent Adolescent" by Arctic Monkeys and Super Furry Animals's "Run-Away", which starred Matt Berry. The former received a UK Music Video Award nomination, attributed by Ayoade only to the song being "so good". Ayoade has frequently appeared as a panellist on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, often with Noel Fielding, making his first appearance on The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz in 2007, which marked Channel 4's 25th anniversary.

In 2008, Ayoade directed the music videos for two Vampire Weekend singles: "Oxford Comma", filmed in one long take, and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". That year he also directed videos for The Last Shadow Puppets songs "Standing Next to Me" and "My Mistakes Were Made for You", the latter of which was inspired by Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit. He directed a live Arctic Monkeys DVD, At the Apollo (2008), recorded at the Manchester Apollo on super 16mm film. It was previewed at Vue cinemas across the UK in October 2008 and released on DVD the next month. Ayoade was featured in Paul King's 2009 film Bunny and the Bull, playing an extremely boring museum tour guide. That year he also directed two music videos for the Arctic Monkeys, "Crying Lightning" and "Cornerstone", and videos for Kasabian's "Vlad the Impaler", starring Fielding, and "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

In 2010, Ayoade made his debut directorial feature, Submarine, a coming-of-age comedy-drama he adapted from Joe Dunthorne's 2008 novel of the same name. The film stars newcomers Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige with Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, and Paddy Considine. It follows Welsh teenager Oliver Tate (Roberts) as he becomes infatuated with a classmate (Paige) and the turmoil of his parents' failing relationship. Produced by Warp Films and Film4, it premiered at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival in September 2010, had a general release in the UK in March 2011, and was released in June in the US after being picked up by the Weinstein Company for North America. Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets frontman Alex Turner contributed five original songs to the soundtrack, inspired by Simon & Garfunkel's music in The Graduate (1967). The film was positively received by critics, with The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw calling Ayoade a "tremendous new voice in British film". Ayoade was nominated for a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer at the 65th British Academy Film Awards.

2011–present: Mainstream cinema, satirical writing, and television presenting
In 2011, Ayoade directed the Community episode "Critical Film Studies" in the comedy show's second season. The episode pays homage to the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre and was named the "most brilliant half-hour of TV to arrive in this century" by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield. Ayoade then directed a performance of comedian Tommy Tiernan's world stand-up tour, Crooked Man, which was released in November 2011. Ayoade provided his voice to the main cast of Channel 4's ill-received animated sitcom Full English, which aired for just five episodes in 2012 before being cancelled. Ayoade starred opposite Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill in the science fiction comedy The Watch as a neighbourhood watch group that uncovers alien forces threatening the world. The film was not well received by critics, although Ayoade's performance was praised. Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club felt the film's "brightest spots" came courtesy of Ayoade, while Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune felt Ayoade was "the reason it's not entirely lame". Also in 2012, Ayoade began voicing Todd Lagoona, an anthropomorphic hammerhead shark who was a recurring character in Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy.

From 2013 to 2014, Ayoade voiced Templeton, the class nerd, in the CBBC animated series Strange Hill High. He replaced Stephen Fry as presenter in the second series of Channel 4's Gadget Man in September 2013, and also presented a third and fourth season. The series featured Ayoade presenting a variety of innovative products and gadgets. He was also the host of the spin-off series Travel Man, where he spent 48 hours in a different location each episode with a celebrity guest. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 panel show Was It Something I Said?, which began airing October 2013 and co-starred David Mitchell as host and Micky Flanagan as fellow team captain. Also in 2013, Ayoade read Roald Dahl's children book The Twits for Penguin Audio's audiobook collection and Virgin Media launched an advertising campaign starring the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt featuring the voice of Ayoade. He provided the voice-over for Apple's iPhone 6 UK campaign with Chris O'Dowd in 2014. He also appears on Channel 4's 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, usually at least once per season.

Ayoade's second feature film, the black comedy thriller The Double, was based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1846 novella The Double; it was written by Ayoade and Avi Korine and stars Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska. It concerns a timid man who becomes frustrated by the appearance of his charming doppelgänger, both of whom are played by Eisenberg. It was released in April 2014 to generally positive reviews, drawing comparisons to Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) in its visuals and narrative. In the stop-motion animated fantasy film The Boxtrolls (2014), Ayoade voiced Mr. Pickles, a henchman to the film's antagonist Snatcher (voiced by Ben Kingsley).

Ayoade's first book, Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey, was published by Faber and Faber in October 2014. It parodies Faber's Directors on Directors series, where critically celebrated filmmakers discuss their work, and sees Ayoade conduct several fictional interviews with himself where he discusses his work and enthusiasm for the world of cinema. Ayoade voiced a villainous snowman in several episodes of the 2015 reboot of the animated series Danger Mouse. In June 2016, he directed a short music video for the Radiohead song "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief", as part of a series of video vignettes to promote their album A Moon Shaped Pool.

Ayoade took over as host of the Channel 4 game show The Crystal Maze in 2017, following the success of a celebrity charity special revival hosted by Stephen Merchant. His style of presenting has been described as being "a more cerebral and intense version" of his IT Crowd character, Maurice Moss. Ayoade made a cameo appearance in the comedy sequel Paddington 2 as a forensic investigator in 2017 and was amongst the voice cast for Vampire Weekend Ezra Koenig's animated series Neo Yokio in the same year. His second book, The Grip Of Film, was published in October 2017. Written in the perspective of clueless film fanatic Gordy LaSure, in its canon is an A-Z of films and what makes them good with footnotes by Ayoade. Beginning in late 2017, he has guest hosted a number of episodes of the panel show Have I Got News for You. Ayoade starred in an advertisement for HSBC in 2018, which addressed other countries' cultural impact on the United Kingdom ahead of Brexit; appearing in four more in the following years Ayoade voiced Treebor, a Stone Age caveman, in the Aardman Animations stop-motion comedy Early Man (2018).

Since February 2018, Ayoade has voiced Onion, one of the title characters in the Cartoon Network animated series Apple & Onion. He also returned to music video directing in 2018, helming the science fiction-inspired video for The Breeders song "Spacewoman". Ayoade was featured in a supporting role as a pompous artist in both parts of Joanna Hogg's two-part drama The Souvenir. He lent his voice as a talking ice cream cone to the animated comedy sequel The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)–which also featured Noel Fielding– and the English version of the Finnish series Moominvalley. Ayoade provided voice work for the Star Wars Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019) where he voiced the droid Zero in a recurring role. He also lent his voice for the animated adult fantasy sitcom Disenchantment (2021) on Netflix where he voiced the character Alva Gunderson.

Ayoade on Top, his third book published by Faber and Faber, is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the critically maligned romantic comedy View from the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The Financial Times included Ayoade on Top in its collection of the best books of 2019 and Ayoade was ranked 33rd of the 50 best comedians of the 21st century in a 2019 list published by The Guardian.

In May 2020, it was announced that Ayoade would host the 2020 British Academy Television Awards, which was held behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He returned to host the 2021 and 2022 ceremonies.

In September 2023, Ayoade received backlash on social media after endorsing the memoir of television writer and anti-transgender activist Graham Linehan, with whom he had worked on The IT Crowd.

Influences
Ayoade is a fan of French New Wave cinema and said in an interview with The Guardian that Louis Malle's Zazie dans le Métro was the film that sparked his interest in filmmaking. His favourite filmmakers include Malle, Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Ayoade participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound directors' poll, where he listed his 10 favourite films: The Apartment, Badlands, Barry Lyndon, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Make Way for Tomorrow, Contempt, Ordet, Persona, Raging Bull, and Tokyo Story.

Personal life
In 2007, Ayoade married Lydia Fox, a member of the Fox family of actors. They have three children and live in the East Dulwich area of London. Ayoade and his brother-in-law, actor Laurence Fox, engaged in a public vocal feud in 2020, when Fox asked Ayoade to announce his support for him on Twitter after a controversial appearance on Question Time. The episode in question was condemned for allowing Fox on as a guest, in particular for when he told a black woman in the audience that discussing racism was "boring". According to Fox, Ayoade told him that "You have never encountered racism." Fox stated that he had told Ayoade he had, because "he worked in Kenya once" and "racism can be deferential".

title: Richard Ayoade


text:
File:Desertfury.jpg

Summary
Poster for film: Desert Fury.

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039311/

Fair use in Desert Fury article
Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
 * 1) It's a low resolution copy of a Film Poster / VHS or DVD Cover.
 * 2) It doesn't limit the copyright owner's rights to sell the film in any way, in fact, it may encourage sales.
 * 3) Because of the low resolution, copies could not be used to make illegal copies of the artwork/image.
 * 4) The image is itself a subject of discussion in the article or used in the infobox thereof.
 * 5) The image  is significant because it was used to promoted a notable film.

Source

 * 1) Derived from a digital capture (photo/scan) of the Film Poster/ VHS or DVD Cover (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party). Copyright held by the film company or the artist.  Claimed as fair use regardless.

title: File:Desertfury.jpg


text:
User talk:Eyelinerboy

A welcome from Sango123
Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; I hope you like the place and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:

 * If you haven't already, drop by the New user log and tell others a bit about yourself.
 * Always sign your posts on talk pages! That way, others will know who left which comments.
 * The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
 * Simplified Ruleset
 * How to edit a page
 * Editing, policy, conduct, and structure tutorial
 * Picture tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style
 * Wikipedia Glossary
 * If you're ready for the complete list of Wikipedia documentation, there's also the Topical index.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Though we all make goofy mistakes, here is what Wikipedia is not. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. The Community Portal can also be very useful.

Happy Wiki-ing!

-- Sango  123  00:00, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you need help with anything or simply wish to say hello. :)

title: User talk:Eyelinerboy


text:
Melonpan

Melonpan (メロンパン), also called melon bun or melon bread, is a Japanese sweetbun covered in a layer of crispy cookie dough. The texture resembles that of a melon, such as a cantaloupe. They are not traditionally melon flavored.

Melonpan and pineapple bun from Hong Kong are very similar. By comparison, the Japanese style is lighter in weight and taste, slightly drier and has a firmer outer layer (including top cookie crust) which resists flaking, unlike its Hong Kong counterpart, whose top cookie crust tends to flake easily. The Hong Kong version is also moister, and is generally soft on the outside and inside, with a stronger butter flavour.

Etymology
Melonpan consists of two loanwords: the English word melon and the Portuguese word pan, meaning "bread". It is called that because the grid or net-like pattern of the crispy surface looks like the skin of some melons.

History
There are several competing theories about melonpan's origin.
 * One theory is that after World War I, Okura Kihachiro brought an Armenian baker, Hovhannes Ghevenian, also known as Ivan Sagoyan, to Tokyo. Sagoyan worked at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and invented the bread following Russian, French, and Viennese baking techniques. However, if Sagoyan was indeed the inventor, he did not refer to the bread as "melonpan".
 * Alternatively, the bread (specifically its shape and method of production) invented by the bakery owner Kikujiro Mitsugawa in 1930 could have been melonpan. Records from the time describe covering the bread dough with cake dough and adding flavors like coffee or banana, albeit with no mention of the bread's name.
 * Another theory states that the round bread with biscuit dough on top called "Sunrise" sold by Kinseido's Obama branch in Kobe in the 1930s was the first melonpan in Japan.
 * Other theories point to origins in the Mexican pastry conchas and the German pastry Streuselkuchen, which were introduced to Japan from the United States following World War II.

Variations
Many variations of melonpan exist. Though not originally melon-flavored, it has become popular for manufacturers to actually add melon flavoring to melonpan.

They can be baked with caramel or chocolate, and filled or covered with cream or custard. Some contain chocolate chips between the cookie and bread layer. In the case of such variations, the name may drop the word "melon", instead replacing it with the name of the contents (such as "maple pan" for a maple syrup flavored bread) or may keep it despite the lack of melon flavor (such as "chocolate melon pan").

In parts of the Kansai, Chūgoku, and Shikoku regions, a variation with a radiating line pattern is called "sunrise", and many residents of these regions call even the cross-hatched melon pan "sunrise".

title: Melonpan


text:
Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 August 28

Category:Fantasy spoofs

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was rename as nominated --Kbdank71 13:18, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Rename to "Fantasy parodies". Radiant_ >|< 19:33, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * rename as per nom. --Sherool 15:25, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Rename. No argument. siafu 18:40, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Rename. -- Reinyday, 23:50, 31 August 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:Seiyu to Category:Japanese voice actors

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was rename as nominated --Kbdank71 13:16, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

 * This is the English Wikipedia, not the Japanese one, only devote fans (and people who understand Japanese) would understand the current name. To say nothing of consistency. Rename --Sherool 17:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Definitely. Radiant_ >|< 19:33, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * I can definately agree with this, there are quite a few, and it would be a waste to delete. However, I think we'll eventually run into making subs for the rest under Category:Voice actors. Which is fine, I see someone took some steps, but still a lot to be sorted.  ∞ Who ? ¿ ?  20:20, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Move as proposed. CalJW 22:06, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Move as proposed. --FuriousFreddy 14:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Rename. No argument. siafu 18:41, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * COMMENT if this is renamed then Seiyu should remain as a CategoryRedirect. 132.205.3.20 19:48, 29 August 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:Artist Groups

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Kbdank71 13:15, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Redundant to Category:Artist groups and collectives. >>sparkit| TALK << 17:38, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * And also miscapitalized. Merge please. Radiant_ >|< 19:33, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, merge into Category:Artist groups and collectives (then delete Category:Artist Groups). --Sherool 18:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge. No argument. siafu 00:19, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete as it has been emptied. - choster 19:14, 1 September 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category: Human monster

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Kbdank71 13:14, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

 * "The following lists on the men who are monster in human body". About as POV as you can get. Calton | Talk 17:24, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. There is no way the POV-ness of this could be redeemed.  Joyous  (talk) 17:35, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. POV cat. Shanes 18:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete POV. --Sherool 18:04, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Confusion between life and comic-books. Meggar 18:11, 2005 August 28 (UTC)
 * Delete Rather redundant with other more NPOV categories already in existence. DreamGuy 18:34, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete; no way could it ever be made NPOV. Antandrus (talk) 18:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Patent nonsense. siafu 18:43, 29 August 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:American lawyers

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep --Kbdank71 13:13, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

The category itself is inherently vague and unnecessary. There is no possible way for anything to list all practicing lawyers, or all American lawyers regardless. There is a constant influx of lawyers who practice law after getting a law degree, and an outflux who die or no longer practice law. Are we to list every single American lawyer ever, from law school professors at obscure colleges to long-dead attorneys from the 19th century? The list would be endless, ridiculously difficult to compile, and impractical. Not to mention that not everyone with a law degree/bar admission practices law, and America has millions of lawyers who practice law in many fields, from corporate law to divorce law to international law. Are we to list all them, too?

I propose Wikipedia create (or if it already exists, merge with) an article of Notable American Lawyers. This category would not include every notable person with a law degree/bar admission, and restrict subjects to those who are icons in the American legal field: Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall, Johnnie Cochran, and the like, while restricting unneccessary politicians and celebrities whose only qualification is they got a law degree. Howard Cosell and Star Jones for example, do NOT belong in this category. This article is impractical and should be removed offkilter 22:39, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment As I mentioned in my vote using adjectives (famous, notable etc) in names are against wikipedia policy. If you feel some of the articles in the category are non-notable then suggest them for deletion. If you feel that notable people listed in the category are not well enough known as lawyers just be bold and remove the category link from the article (or discuss it on the talk page of the article if you are unsure). The category itself is however fine. --Sherool 18:12, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

While a renaming of the category to "Noteworthy American Lawyers" or "Notable American Attorneys" is advisable, and a paring down of the list to exclude unfamiliar or those without significant accomplishment, to delete the category entirely is too extreme.

Obviously, the towering figures in the field like Marshall and Darrow belong, but, yes, it is also interesting to note that celebrities who make their name in other fields hold a law degree. Where to draw the line can be up to wikipedians in the usual manner. Coolshoes

My main issue with this article is that it is hardly a category at all. The list is so broad that it contains so many members from so many categories that it fails to be a category on lawyers; rather, it is a category on famous people with a law degree. Just as George Washington belongs primarily in the "presidents" or "American Generals" category, a great many members of this group should be removed from this and placed in their rightful place. Politicians, commentators, jurists, and actors don't belong in the lawyer category, they belong in the politician, commentator, jurist, and actor category. I think that deleting this article is preferable because, short of renaming and paring it, the category is far too broad and too inclusive. Frankly, I think that creating a new category for "Notable American Lawyers" and placing members who fit strictly by that definition, notable in the field of LAW, is far simpler and easier than a mass reorganization of a chaotic category.--Offkilter 08:21, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Strong Keep! This is one of hundreds (thousands?) of categories deliniating people by occupaction and nationality. See Category:Nationalities by occupation and Category:Occupations by nationality. I can see that there are disputes about this particular category, but it necessary in the general category sorting scheme. Because the category is so large, I would suggest it be sorted into subcategories as much as possible. -- Reinyday, 21:46, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Strong keep Naming conventions spesificaly says you should not use words like famous, notable or importhant in titles, this goes doubely for categories wich only list existing articles. It goes without saying that if they have an article in the Wikiedia they are notable (if not the article should be deleted). So the category is not for listing all lawyers, but rather notable people who happen to be lawyers. --Sherool 17:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Strong keep, but rename to US lawyers or US attorneys. "Notable" and "icon" designations are just highly POV, and often time-limited even with general concensus, hyperbole.  Idea of Wikipedia is anyway to cover broadly the numbers of persons (and events and products and....) past and present who cannot be accommodated by the limits of paper-print resources but can within cyberspace.  Obviously, people with law degrees who never practiced as attorneys belong elsewhere but can be moved within Wikipedia without removing the entire category in which they've been misplaced.  Broad coverage of artists, writers, actors, scientists, politicians, countries, cultures, inventions, theories, mechanisms, etc. - no reason to discriminate against lawyers, even if we don't think much of them personally. 12.73.194.8 02:39, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * We don't use the abbreviation US. See Category titles.  I personally prefer "American" to United States", but this is still being debated. -- Reinyday, 00:35, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * A "U.S. Attorney" is a federal prosecutor, so using anything other than "American" is ambiguous. Postdlf 08:47, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep but Rename per Category titles; also, might be better named "Attorneys" as a subcat of "Jurists". siafu 18:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Rename to what, exactly? -- Reinyday, 00:35, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I see what you mean by the NPOV violation. I still think that the category itself is too broad, and subcategorization is the best action if not deletion outright. Possibly subcategories by their specialization or occupation? --Offkilter 21:13, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Do not rename, unless someone actually wants to bother with just switching "lawyer" for attorney, though what that would get accomplish, I honestly can't say; lawyer is probably used more in American English, though both are equally understood.  I'd recommend against any subcategorization (or for proceeding only after discussion) simply because in American legal practice, there really are no specialties to speak of that would work well in a category system.  Law degrees are general, and except for patent practice, admission to the bar permits one to take on any subject.  As for occupation, few lawyer "job titles" would be clear (only for certain government lawyers, perhaps), and few do only one thing at one time let alone during their career.  Postdlf 08:47, 4 September 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

merge Category:Birth control into Category:Contraception

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus (no change) --Kbdank71 13:10, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

 * These categories are more or less duplicates of each other. Jdavidb 01:34, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge. -- Reinyday, 16:39, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Contraception is merely one kind of birth control, I think the current structure with Category:Contraception as a subcat of Category:Birth control makes the most sence. If articles are duplicated between the two simply be bold and sort it out, it's not like there are hundreds of articles in either of them. --Sherool 21:41, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per Sherool. siafu 18:48, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, I don't think these two are similar enough to merge. -Splash 23:45, 29 August 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:Saturday Night Live Hosts

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Kbdank71 13:12, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Or everybody who has ever been a guest presenter on Saturday Night Live. This can be safely deleted as a comprehensive list already exists. JW 11:26, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, the list if far more useful. - SimonP 17:03, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete and list. siafu 18:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete and listify definitely. -Splash 23:46, 29 August 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 category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
Talk:Sears Canada

Merge with Simpsons-Sears Limited
I am treating this as a formality more than anything else, because the Simpsons-Sears article is basically a stub, and contains nothing that the full-length Sears Canada article does not already contain. Schuminweb 00:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Cutting of Benefits Citation
Recent information added is sourced with a blog. A blog is not a reliable source and it is not an appropriate source for the information. --A new name 2008 (talk) 00:10, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

313 Walmart and 301 Sears locations
If anyone wants to mention that in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grmike (talk • contribs) 08:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Dubious
The article says that when Eaton's went bankrupt, Sears Canada got control of "a number of prime downtown locations in Toronto (Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Mall), Vancouver (Pacific Centre), Victoria, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Calgary". Yorkdale might be considered inner-suburban these days, but it's certainly not downtown.

I would guess that the other locations mentioned are all downtown -- I know the Vancouver and Calgary ones are -- but I don't know about all the others, so I don't know how best to correct the wording. --208.76.104.133 (talk) 04:06, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

- Actually, the Winnipeg location was at Polo Park. The downtown store was abandoned, razed, and became the MTS Centre. --24.79.68.105 (talk) 03:27, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 December 2017
Campbellbob (talk) 00:25, 23 December 2017 (UTC) The title paragraph "Liquidation" is missing a special character, now we see at the left of the word "Liquidation" the symbol "=". This error is clearly visible. I think also that a file has been removed without reason.

Partly done: Header error fixed. File change not done since I have no idea what file you are talking about. Meters (talk) 01:11, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 January 2018
Georgemoum (talk) 08:14, 17 January 2018 (UTC) At the section of online shopping, at the last sentence the date should be written January 15, 2018, now we see the year 2017, which is wrong year.
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: The Thank You's been up since December 2017 - I've not checked through all the months but the message could've been added far back as April, Not done, – Davey 2010 Talk 10:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC) – Davey 2010 Talk 10:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

 * Sort of done: For October 19 2017, archive.org shows an active site: . For October 21 2017, the next archive.org snapshot available, the "Thank you" message is shown: . I've checked one snapshot from each of the nine months before October, and several from November and December, and they're all consistent with the message being added in late October 2017. That's also pretty consistent with the article, which says: "On October 10, 2017, Sears Canada announced it would seek court approval to shut down all of its remaining stores in Canada and layoff of 11,240 remaining staff. This was granted by the Ontario Superior Court on October 13, 2017." and "After October 19, 2017, the website was no longer available for online purchases and directed shoppers to the remaining stores undergoing liquidation." We have no referenced support for the "January 15, 2017" sentence, nor to alter it to 2018, so I've made this edit, mainly on the basis that if we're not sure about the statement, and have no source, it's better not to say it at all. -- Begoon 15:10, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to note I was in a rush to leave the house so the above was just a quick reply...., Thanks for investigating and updating it accordingly. – Davey 2010 Talk 15:34, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Heh, I guessed as much,, and I assumed that was why you left the request open, for another pair of eyes. I'm not entirely happy, still, because the sentence is still unsourced, and using the 2 archive.org links to source it feels too "original researchey". I'm confident what we do say is now correct, though... -- Begoon 15:43, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Haha I'd completely forgot to press the answer thing!, Glad I'm did tho as I probably would've forgot to check on this later, Tbh I think it looks a lot better than what it did, Meh I don't think it looks researchy tbh, Anyway thanks again for your help much appreciated :), – Davey 2010 Talk 15:52, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:52, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Simpsons-Sears logo.png

title: Talk:Sears Canada


text:
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against Jimbo's beard

 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 with a copy to BJAODN.

In evaluating this discussion, I merged the three related discussions. Given the topic, it seems to me that an inconsistent result would be the worst possible choice.
 * Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians who frankly don't care about Jimbo's beard
 * Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians for Jimbo's beard
 * Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against Jimbo's beard

By strict vote-counting, I get the following: The last line represents the opinions if you took all three discussions and merged them, then eliminated duplication. The fractions come from 2 people who voted differently in the different discussions.

I should also note that 5 of the "keep" voters did so with comments that make it very difficult to tell if they were being serious. Their stated reasons appear to have no connection to the discussion. My hypothesis is that the discussion is about a joke and they consider surreal comments to be humorous and therefore appropriate. Not every culture shares that view, however. I was within a hair's-breadth of putting those comments in the "could not call" column.

Noting that a synopsis is already in the BJAODN archive, I am going to take the last step to delete the pages and the related redirects. Rossami (talk) 02:52, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Wikipedians against Jimbo's beard
Funny but lame. Move to Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense. BJAODN Andrew pmk | Talk 00:02, 28 August 2005 (UTC) Move to BJAODN and delete redirect. Andrew pmk | Talk 01:13, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * As above BJAODN Cdyson37 00:15, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Move to BJAODN. This misdirection will confuse our opponents, allow project members to work in greater secrecy, and provide plausible deniability.  ‣ ᓛᖁ  [[Image:Venus symbol (blue).gif|♀]] [ ᑐ ] 00:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Please do not merely vote BJAODN. There is at least one administrator who interprets such votes as keeps. Please be clear whether you mean to keep and copy to BJAODN or delete and copy to BJAODN. -Splash 01:06, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Could someone please explain to me what the D stands for, then? Grutness...  wha?  08:46, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The confusion has already begun! ‣ ᓛᖁ  [[Image:Venus symbol (blue).gif|♀]] [ ᑐ ] 01:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Weee! What harm does this do to wikipedia, really... --Cool Cat My Talk 15:59, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * First, merge all "Beard" VFD's together. Second, keep (and BJAODN) all of them. I'd like to see where this ends up if it's allowed to go on. --Tito xd 01:13, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Temporarily, that is... --Tito xd 01:14, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. non-encyclopedic. Elfguy 01:15, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * BJAODN. Delete the redirect, is of course implicit, see Guide_to_Votes_for_deletion. --Mysidia (talk) 01:21, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * BJAODN. *drew 02:27, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * BJAODN works for me, and yes I mean with the redirect deleted. FreplySpang (talk) 03:52, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Was never more than mildly amusing. --Tony Sidaway Talk  08:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * BJAODN, nice parody of the censorship/countercensorship Wikiproject debacle. Radiant_ >|< 08:55, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * BJAODN. The D stands for delete! Proto t c 10:21, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with WikiProject Wikipedians for Jimbo's beard and rename WikiProject Wikipedians maintaing NPOV on Jimbo's beard --Doc (?) 13:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC) That was a joke, delete of course (neutral on the BJAODN) --Doc (?) 16:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge per Doc G. Sdedeo 19:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep but Merge all the Beard projects into one and put into category:Wikipedia:Humour. Thryduulf 10:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete all Jimbo-beard-cruft. --Scimitar parley 16:14, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting that Jimbo has cruft in his beard? He might not like that... ;) Splash 17:10, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. --  user:zanimum
 * Speedy keep, Leviticus 19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:08, 2005 August 29 (UTC)
 * KEEP where it is, BJAODN (OBVIOUSLY). Also read why this wikiproject came about in talk. Wikiprojects, no matter how silly they are should NOT be VfDed. --Cool Cat My Talk 15:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - since when is humor not permitted? — Dan | Talk 23:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep I'm violent opposed to Jimbo's beard. I'd support a move to commons though. --fvw *  00:17, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete all joke wikiprojects. (In this case, I also mean delete all the related pages including WikiProject Wikipedians who frankly don't care about Jimbo's beard, WikiProject Wikipedians for Jimbo's beard and all the associated redirects.)  As someone on one of the Talk pages said, this was a good joke that served a short-term purpose to defuse a very tense and emotional dispute.  The crisis has passed and now this is starting to have negative consequences.  People who don't appear to understand that it was a joke are using it as a "precedent" for decision-modeling.  Time to let it die.  Rossami (talk) 13:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Jimbo's got a bit of a weak chin, he needs the beard. The Hokkaido Crow 13:36, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge, BJAODN, and definitely delete redirect -- I endorse Rossami's general summary, but prefer a slightly different remedy. — Xiong 熊 talk * 20:26, 2005 September 2 (UTC)
 * Keep per Lulu. ~ Syrae Faileas - « Talk » 21:16, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per Lulu Ryan Norton T 07:18, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep all beard projects. They show Wikipedia isn't as boring as you'd think. :) - ulayiti (talk)   (my RfA)  13:32, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Its run its course. -- DS1953 03:37, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Shave --Arm 17:46, 5 September 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: Template:Card-game-stub

title: Template:Card-game-stub


text:
Talk:Gabriel Mouton

Dispute
A dispute tag has been placed here by User:Rktect but no discussion of this dispute has been forthcoming on this discussion page.... Ian Cairns 00:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the tags here to enable any discussion to take place. Ian Cairns 13:24, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed the tags and will just edit the articleRktect 13:28, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

 * I have now added a dispute tag, since the article is now in accordance to the views of User:rktect, where he has removed information from cited sources. I have no interest in engaging in an edit war, and untill such time that the arbitration against rktect is settled with a satisfactory result, I will just keep a copy of the article in my user pages, User:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton. Since the outcome of the VfD seems to be keep, I see no other way. The disputed issues can be found one this talk page (if you can find your way around it) and by comparing the two articles or by examining the rktekt changes . There is additional comment about the references on the user talk page. -- Egil 18:39, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not interested in any edit war either but I've reverted to Ian Cairns' last version minus VfD. However, I've left the disputed tag in anticipation of the next edit by Rktect. Jimp 7Oct05

Measures
I've removed the comparisons to ancient Greek and Roman measures, because there is no indication that Abbé Mouton (or anyone at the time) was using them. Please provide a specific cite if they are added back. Ken talk 14:43, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Responded on your talk page to the effect that there was considerable evidence Abbe Mouton and others were using them Rktect 09:52, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * At that time fluency in Greek and Latin and a familiarity with the writings of the Greeks and Romans was considered necessary for any well educated person. See also the references to Vitruvious and Palladio Rktect 10:37, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * However, when the Royal Society was established in 1662, one of the first tasks it sets to itself was that of determining the length of the pendulum that beats the second; to this purpose John Evelyn, one of the founders, in his trip to Italy, not only took the usual measurernents of standards of the Roman foot, but also of the braccio of Florence and of the braccio of Bologna, used respectively by Galileo and Riccioli in the calculation of the pendulum. But under the influence of the Academie des Sciences and the Academie des Inscriptions, established in the same decade as the Royal Society, the matter of fixed standard was settled in France by reforming the pied de roi, so as to make it 12/11 of Roman foot.
 * [Galileo and Riccoli]
 * "Riccioli conducted free fall experiments in which he dropped balls of different weights from different heights. Riccioli found that the heavier ball actually does land a bit sooner, but that the time to fall is not directly proportional to weight. His results confirmed Galileo's claim that weight is only a secondary factor, but showed that weight had more of an effect than Galileo believed it would. Riccioli also provided evidence for the 1, 3, 5, ¼ progression; his values were 15 Roman feet in the first second, 60 feet in the second, 135 in the third, and 240 in the fourth."

 * Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

references placed on Ken's page
In your edits of the above article, you specifically left the values 1 virga = 0.001 minutes of arc = 1.85 m etc intact, even though the article originally specified that the virga of Mouton was ~2.04 m. Is there a special reason for this? You also left intact the statement What's interesting about this is that Mouton was proposing that there be a relation between time and space.. Is there a special reason for this? Is this sentence in your opinion meaningfull and relevant? -- Egil 17:42, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Honestly, I simply did a little cleanup, in particular removing the references to Greek and Roman units of measure, for which I can find no evidence of use at that time. If you have a good reference for the 2.04 meter value, by all means change it. As for Abbé Mouton proposing a relation between time and space, that happens to be exactly what he did, IMO. His method of establishing the relationship was shaky, in that there are many variables not taken into account that affect the swing of a pendulum, but by saying that a particular unit was exactly the length required for a pendulum to swing with a particular frequency, he effectively did establish that relationship. If you can think of a better way to phrase it, though, please do so.
 * And please, don't abandon the article. It's not hopeless at all... Ken talk 18:18, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

 * The reason is its the correct data. Klein "World of Measurement" chapter 9 pp 108-109. Citing a reference helps others know where your ideas are coming from. Rktect 19:02, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Klein chapters 4 and 5 should provide you adequate information regarding Greek and Roman measures and their Medieval descendents in Europe. Rktect 19:02, August 28, 2005 (UTC) If you need more specific information as to which medieval and renaissance scholars studied which classical measures and when, a good reference would be any book on Thomas Jefferson, Jeffersonian Classical or Greek Revival Architecture, or [Vitruvius Pollio on Doric, Ionic and Corinthian Orders] or [A Sampling of Drawings from Andrea Palladio's The Four Books of Architecture 1738 Edition originally published by Isaac Ware]Rktect 19:02, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * I have edited it so it makes some sense and removed my objections but don't know if I can remove the tags. Rktect 19:02, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * First, no you shouldn't remove the VfD tags. The decision will certainly be Keep, so the article won't be going away. But once an article has been tagged, it's up to the closing admin to remove the tags.
 * Second, you've been told this before, but I'll tell you again. Don't intercalate your comments into someone else's on talk pages, and pay attention to indents. I understand why you do it, but it makes following the conversation almost impossible. See Talk page and Talk page guidelines for the usual ettiquette. I have fixed this conversation this time, but I'm getting tired of it. This is part of the problem people have with you, BTW. By continuing with an idiosyncratic style on talk pages, it's as if you're intentionally making it difficult to understand you.
 * Third, I challenged the relevance of some material you added to Gabriel Mouton and removed it.

Without addressing the relevance you added that material back in, along with a bunch more material that looks irrelevant. I'm not questioning the conversions from one system to another, I'm questioning why anyone looking for information on Mouton would care how many pes make up a milliare.

The references you provide above are very nice (particularly Palladio), but they also don't address the relevance. So, here's a simple request: Please provide one or more specific cites that indicate that Mouton was working with the Greek or Roman measuring systems, not the ones that were in common use in France and Italy at the time. If a particular piece of information isn't relevant to Mouton, it just shouldn't be in an article about him.

 * Ken talk 02:56, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

 * your Responses 1 and 2 are constructive criticism so no response from me is required other than to attempt to comply with your wishes.

 * Response 3A might have worked better if you asked why, waited for response then decided what to do.

 * I don't think you should judge what is irrelevant without asking first. (Myle for example).

 * Response 3B Mouton doesn't base his system on the milliare or make it 10 stadiums such that the Roman Milliare is 8 by some sort of coincidence. Its important for people not to confuse Greek and Roman stadia. Both are 185 m but the Greek stadion has 600 pous and the Roman stadium has 625 pes.

 * That's a very dumbed down answer because there are several Greek pous, remen, cubits and even nibw or ellen that become the basis of some famous geographers stadia. I have gone into detail regarding stadia on other pages so I won't repeat myself here. A lot of this is kind of basic for anyone familiar with the subject matter and arcane and confusing for anyone who isn't so excuse me if I do a data dump with the references.

 * 3C his units are increments of Greek and Roman measuring systems as I indicated. Please put back whatever you removed Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

 * Reference 1
 * [Roman and Egyptian foot]

 * Here we have Stecchini chastising (Reference 4)Petries pyramidite ideology of the pendulum because he knows that the Egyptian foot is not based on the pendulum its related to body measures and agricultural units. In this article he talks about Gallileo and Riccoli (Reference 2) influencing Mouton with their value for the Roman foot or pes (Reference 3).

 * Though I find the worst thing about Stecchini to be his run on sentences, I'm probably just as bad.
 * "A special aspect of the pyramidite ideology is the problem of the pendulum. After Burattini was robbed of the not he had taken in Egypt, he suggested that his metro cattolico should be based on the length of the pendulum that beats the second.

 * This idea of Burattini was implemented by Jonas Moor, one of the original members of the Royal Society, who calculated that the metrum catholicum equal to 1/3 of the length of the pendulum that beats the second at the latitude of London, to be 4/3 of palmo of Genova (1089 /1000 of English foot or 331.9268 mm., reckoning by the English foot of 1824;that is essentially a trimmed barley foot.

 * The pendulum that beats the second at the latitude of London reduced to sea level has a length of 995.1806 mm.

 * For a period the standard of Moore was considered the solution to the problem of the fixed standard of length; but soon it was found out that this method of establishing a standard, first suggested by Gabriel Mouton, on the basis of Riccioli’s calculations, while perfect in theory, was most difficult to apply in practice, since the length of the pendulum not only varies according to latitude, but is substantially affected by the elevation above sea level, the presence of dense landmasses, and the difference between physical and mathematical pendulum. For this reason, the standard of the new Toise du Châtelet imposed itself as the scientific standard of Europe.

 * However, when the Royal Society was established in 1662, one of the first tasks it sets to itself was that of determining the length of the pendulum that beats the second; to this purpose John Evelyn, one of the founders, in his trip to Italy, not only took the usual measurernents of standards of the Roman foot, but also of the braccio of Florence and of the braccio of Bologna, used respectively by Galileo and Riccioli in the calculation of the pendulum. But under the influence of the Academie des Sciences and the Academie des Inscriptions, established in the same decade as the Royal Society, the matter of fixed standard was settled in France by reforming the pied de roi, so as to make it 12/11 of Roman foot.Rktect 04:41, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Reference 2
 * [Galileo and Riccoli]
 * "Riccioli conducted free fall experiments in which he dropped balls of different weights from different heights. Riccioli found that the heavier ball actually does land a bit sooner, but that the time to fall is not directly proportional to weight. His results confirmed Galileo's claim that weight is only a secondary factor, but showed that weight had more of an effect than Galileo believed it would. Riccioli also provided evidence for the 1, 3, 5, ¼ progression; his values were 15 Roman feet in the first second, 60 feet in the second, 135 in the third, and 240 in the fourth."

Reference 3 brought by the colonists from England. '''These measures had their origins in a variety of cultures –Babylonian, Egyptian, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French'''. The ancient "digit," "palm," "span" and "cubic" units of length slowly lost preference to the length units "inch," "foot," and "yard." and the words from which we derive many of our present measurement unit names. For example, the 12 divisions of the Roman "pes," or foot were called unciae. Our words "inch" and "ounce" are both derived from that Latin word." ago. Gabriel Mouton''', Vicar of St. Paul's Church in Lyons and an astronomer, proposed in 1670 a comprehensive decimal measurement system based on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the Earth. Mouton also proposed the swing length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length. A pendulum with this beat would have been fairly easily reproducible, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. Other proposals were made, but more than a century elapsed before any action was taken."
 * [NASA on the history of measures]
 * "The measurement system commonly used in the United States today is nearly the same as that
 * '''"Roman contributions include the use of 12 as a base number (the foot is divided into 12 inches)
 * "Tradition holds that King Henry I decreed that a yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched thumb. The length of a furlong (or furrow-long) was established by early Tudor rulers as 220 yards. This led Queen Elizabeth I to declare in the 16th century, that henceforth the traditional Roman mile of 5000 feet would be replaced by one of 5280 feet, making the mile exactly eight furlongs and providing a convenient relationship between the furlong and the mile."
 * "The need for a single worldwide coordinated measurement system was recognized over 300 years

Reference 4
 * [Petrie and the Pendulum]

If we take the natural standard of one day divided by 105, the pendulum would be 29.157 inches at lat 30 degrees. Now this is exactly the basis of Egyptian land measures, most precisely known through the diagonal of that squared, being the Egyptian double cubit. The value for this cubit is 20.617 inches, while the best examples in stone are 20.620±0.005inches. On this basis, Petrie suggests that the Egyptians were responsible for inventing both the time pendulum and metric divisions of the day."
 * "the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, who wrote to Nature that very same year:

Comments regarding the references
Please see User talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel Mouton. -- Egil 12:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC) (I put them on my user pages as an attempt to avoid having them distorted)
 * Since Egil insists on misrepresenting what the mainstream academic thought is regarding Mouton, its probably best to list some of the facts here.
 * Moutons's work doesn't come out of a vacuum. He was influenced by Galileo and Riccioli who were as most well educated scholars of the time fluent in greek and latin and conversant with both the pous and pes. Riccioli used the Roman pes or foot for measurement and so did Mouton.
 * Consequently it is germane to the discussion that the value of the Greek stadion which was 600 pous, and the Roman stadium which was 625 pes were both 185 meters in length.
 * It is raised as an objection by some that the value of the pous and pes in meters is irrelevant as they did not exist yet. Mouton's system and his value for the arc of the earths great circle are based on decimal multiples and divisions of a length of 185 m equal to the Greek and Roman stadia.
 * Mouton used what is known as a second pendulum. He did not invent it but he used it. Petrie "The father of Modern Egyptology" has proposed the antiquity of the second pendulum goes back to the use of plumb bobs. It is at any rate certain that second pendulums were known and used before the time of Mouton and continued in use for a long time after his death being incorporated into grandfather clocks.
 * It is also germane that he proposed it could define its own length. This concept relates time, space and gravity. Rktect 12:47, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
 * The Bologna foot Riccioli and Mouton used was different from the pes Rktect used. Gene Nygaard

 * "Riccioli and Gosselin calculate the pes Cossutianus as 130.6 Paris lines. Greaves took this foot as the standard Roman one and calculated it as something more than 293.968 mm"

[Roman foot]

 * The pes Cossutianus is about 2 mm less
 * The Bologna pes is 1 mm less
 * The range of accuracy and precision in making pes rules varies.
 * At 625 pes to a stadium the variation is about 2 feet in a stadium.
 * At 600 stadia to a degree the variation is about 1200 feet in a degree
 * in 1 minute of arc the variation is 20 feet

 * "A clear illustration of the use of the Roman foot as a septenary unit is provided by builder’s markings on the Roman aqueduct of Bologna. Some Egyptian archeologists have paid attention to the marks made by builders In measuring constructions, obtaining thereby absolutely certain evidence for the units of measure used, but scholars of Roman archeology have completely neglected this datum. The only exception I know of is due to the alertness of a French scholar, E. Pélagaud, who happened to be in Bologna in 1879, when the Roman aqueduct was being cleaned and restored in order to supply the city. He noted that for a great length the inside mortar coating of the aqueduct is marked by lines made with a sharp metal point. On one wall the marks are spaced 295 mm.,"

Rktect 21:03, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Vote for Deletion
This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 02:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Comments about the references
The references used for this article have certain discrepancies which should be mentioned. Some of this material may belong in the article proper. (See also User_talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton):
 * 1) Connor and Robertson claims that the milliare unit is based on the degree, but this is most likely an error. It is contrary to all other sources, and does also not match the pendulum definition or the similarity to the toise.
 * 2) Bigourdan says that the virgula pendulum would oscillate 3959.2 times in half an hour (une demi-heure). If one interprets oscillation as full cycle, which is the current understanding, this would make the length of the pendulum ~5.1 cm, which is clearly incorrect. The likely explanation is that oscillation should be interpreted as change of direction, i.e. twice the number of cycles, just like the historical one second pendulum which has a period of 2 seconds. In this case, the resulting pendulum length becomes ~20.5 cm, which matches other findings.
 * 3) The NASA/NIST document with John Quincy Adams on the history of measures in its previous form claims Mouton used a one second pendulum, but other sources, including Bigourdan, who writes about Mouton in much more detail, says otherwise. Using a one second pendulum would complicate matters, since the length of a one second pendulum would correspond to 4.846 virgulas, which would make construction of a virgula standard beam based on a pendulum hard to do with a high level of accuracy. Using the pendulum described by Bigourdan, one would arrive at the desired length directly. (The NASA document is now updated).
 * 4) The pendulum calculation presented is based on a g of 9.80665, which is a standard for 45.542 degrees of latitude . The city of Lyon (the location of the Saint-Paul cathedral where Moutone worked) is very close to this latitude (at 45.76694°N, 4.83417°W), and at suffiently low altitude to make the result accurate to more than 4 digits.
 * 5) There are sources that claims that a virgula is 18.5 cm. This seems to be a case of a historian's fallacy. It would have been a likely value if Moutons definition was made at a time when the Earths circumference was known to a high accuracy. But as Bigourdan points out, the figure Mouton used was from Riccioli, and the pendulum used as the practical embodiment confirms the length of Moutons virgula as ~20.5 cm. The virgula lived only as a proposal, and there has been no attempt to redefine the virgula after Mouton.
 * 6) Ferdinand Hoefer: Historie de l'astronomie, Paris 1873, confirms that the error of Ricicoli was more than 10000 meters per degree . Assuming a Bologna foot is 38 cm, Ricicolis result was 122 km per degree (compared to 111 km), which matches this claim well. One can say that Mouton was unfortuneate to have used the figures from Riccioli, which turned out to be ~10% in error. But again, this is hindsight. At the time, the results of Riccoli, published in Geographiae et hydrographiae reformatae libri (1661), must have appeared as the more authorative.
 * 7) Arthur D. Butterfield: A History of the Determination of the Figure of the Earth from Arc Measurements, Davis Press in Worcester, Massachusetts 1906, quotes an Earth radius of 4265.9 miles for Riccioli, which would result in a virgula of ~19.97 cm. It has been noted that Butterfields unit conversion factors are not always very accurate.
 * 8) The Galileo project at Rice says this about Moutons suggestion :
 * A fraction of the terrestrial meridian would be adopted as the universal unit of length. The measuring procedures at the time were too unsatisfactory. The topic wouldn't be taken up again until 1790.

-- Egil 07:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Dispute tag removed
Based on the findings of the arbitration commity (see Requests_for_arbitration/Rktect), it seems consensus is reached with regards to this article, and I have thus removed the disputed tag. -- Egil 16:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Format changes
Goodness what a furor. I made some format changes so the article will be formatted more in line with other developed articles and also I added the measurement box at the bottom, as this article as it NOW is appears to be a measurement article. There is one slight content change. Almost in the same breath the article says the Metric System of 1799 was based on Mouton, but a similar system was proposed two years earlier. Also, Leibnitz proposed a similar system independently. Evidemtly Mouton contributed to the two ideas about natural standards of length, Earth's circumference and pendulum, but the case would need to be made that the National Assembly was influenced by Mouton in its vote of 1799, which adopted the Metric System. So I made a slight alteration in wording. Too bad I could not find a nice portrait of Mouton. There might be a painting listed under the painter but not Mouton.Branigan 10:22, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Table of units
I added a table, in an attempt to improve readability. Then I noticed that there is confusion over the approximate values, which should be tidied up -- I mean, we may not know which was the "correct" value, but there should not be different figures in different places without explanation. Please (whoever you are, you surely know more about this than I do) feel free to update the table. Thanks. Imaginatorium (talk) 16:54, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Redirects from entries for units
Someone created an entry for each of these units, which I am in the process of redirecting here. The articles are full of inaccuracy and confusion, and in any event since the units were never adopted it makes sense to have them all within a coherent explanation of the system. That's: Milliare Centuria (unit) Decuria (unit) Virga (unit) Virgula (omitted) Decima Centessima (misspelt) Millesima(Somewhere it told me to put a note on the target talk page!) Imaginatorium (talk) 17:03, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Discrepancy accounted for
Robert Nord Eckert (talk) 03:41, 2 December 2017 (UTC) The discrepancy between Mouton's stated intention and the calibration he offered is readily explained: the virgula was to be 1/10000 of a minute of latitude that is 18.52 centimeter with frequency 4169.3 (in full cycles per hour, or direction changes per half-hour). The ratio to his given 3959.2 is 1.053; now the standard toise was 12x12x6=864 lignes or 1.949 meters (the meter was defined as 443.296 lignes, ) thus 1.0524 virga. It appears then that Mouton determined the ratio of toise to virga with tolerable accuracy, measured the frequency of a pendulum of length one-tenth toise, and instead of multiplying by the square root of 1.053 as he should have, he divided by the square root of 1.053 (the period of a pendulum is *proportional* to the square root of the length, the frequency therefore *inversely proportional*). This hypothesis accounts for the discrepancy without assuming that Mouton was intending any reference to any other unit system.

title: Talk:Gabriel Mouton


text: Category:Paleoclimatologists

title: Category:Paleoclimatologists