Act II, Signature xvii

Transcription

We can also trace that peculiar social movement which led some factories, ships,
restaurants, and households to clean up their backstages to such an extent that, like
monks, Communists, or German aldermen, their guards are always up and there is no
place where their front is down, while at the same time members of the audience become
sufficiently entranced with the society's id to explore the places that had been cleaned up
for them [Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self (New York: Anchor Press, 1959), p.
247].
II — xvii — What Was That Good For?
Coalition forces pour into Ossian. In Las Vegas, Roveretto Messimo ponders taking on a new client to pay his bills. A
U.S. detachment breaks into the Impersonal Terrace while Fuald, deported back to Ossian, plots revenge by organizing
the looting of the Hermitage. Charles, drugged by Ferguson’s alien soporifics, agrees to print an article exposing the eco–
terrorist aims of the Founder’s League. In the 13th century, the fanatical inquisitor Conrad prepares to declare
anathema against Fr. Anselm.
~ page 215 ~
This is the cover art for the single "War" by the artist Edwin Starr. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to
the label, Gordy, or the graphic artist.*
"War"
Act II, Signature xvii - (1)
*[Image & caption credit and following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:
"War" is a soul song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for the Motown label in 1969. Whitfield first
produced the song — a blatant anti-Vietnam War protest — with The Temptations as the original vocalists. After
Motown began receiving repeated requests to release "War" as a single, Whitfield re-recorded the song with Edwin
Starr as the vocalist, deciding to withhold the Temptations' version so as not to alienate their more conservative fans.
Starr's version of "War" was a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970, and is not only the most
successful and well-known record of his career, but is also one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded. Its
power was reasserted when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band took their rendition into the U.S. Top 10 in
1986. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11
inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.
The Temptations' version of "War," featuring Paul Williams and Dennis Edwards on lead vocals, was much less
intense than the Edwin Starr version. Williams and Edwards deliver the song's anti-war, pro-peace message over a
stripped-down instrumental track, with bass singer Melvin Franklin chanting a repeated recruit training-like "hup,
two, three, four" in the background during the verses.
The song was included as a track on the March 1970 Psychedelic Shack album, which featured the title track as its
only single. The track's direct message, summarized by its chorus ("War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!"),
struck a chord with the American public and resonated with growing public opposition to the war in Vietnam. Fans
from across the nation, many of them college students and other young people, sent letters to Motown requesting the
release of "War" as a single. The label didn't want to risk the image of its most popular male group, and the
Temptations themselves were also apprehensive about releasing such a potentially controversial song as a single. The
label decided to withhold "War"'s release as a single, a decision that Whitfield fought until the label came up with a
compromise: "War" would be released, but it would have to be re-recorded with a different act.
Edwin Starr, who had become a Motown artist in 1968 after his former label, Ric-Tic, was purchased by Motown
founder Berry Gordy, Jr., became "War's" new vocalist. Considered among Motown's "second-string" acts, Starr had
only one major hit, 1968's number-six hit "Twenty-Five Miles," to his name by this time. He heard about the conflict
surrounding the debate of whether or not to release "War," and volunteered to re-record it. Whitfield re-created the
song to match Starr's James Brown-influenced soul shout: the single version of "War" was dramatic and intense,
depicting the general anger and distaste the antiwar movement felt towards the war in Vietnam. Unlike the
Temptations' original, Starr's "War" was a full-scale Whitfield production, with prominent electric guitar lines,
clavinets, a heavily syncopated rhythm accented by a horn section, and with Whitfield's new act, The Undisputed
Truth, on backing vocals.
Upon its release in June 1970, Starr's "War" became a runaway hit, and held the #1 position on the Billboard Pop
Singles chart for three weeks, in August and September 1970. It replaced "Make It With You" by Bread, and was
replaced by another Motown single, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross.
Notable as the most successful protest song to become a pop hit, earning compliments from contemporary protester
John Lennon, "War" became Edwin Starr's signature song. Rather than hindering his career (as it might have done
for the Temptations), "War" buoyed Starr's career, and he adopted the image of an outspoken liberal orator for many
of his other early-1970s releases, including the similarly themed "Stop the War Now" from 1971. It and another
1971 single, "Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On", continued Starr's string of Whitfield-produced psychedelic soul
hits. After 1971, Starr's career began to falter, and, citing Motown's reliance on formulas, he departed the label in the
mid-1970s.
Later in his career, after moving to the United Kingdom, Starr re-recorded several of his hits with British band Utah
Saints. Starr's new version of "War" in 2003 was his final piece; he died on April 2 of the same year of a heart attack.
Starr won a Grammy in 1971 for "War" for best R&B Male Vocal [citation needed]. In 1999, Edwin Starr's "War"
was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
de rigueur
Main Entry: de ri£gueur
Pronunciation: d„-(ƒ)r‡-‚g„r
Function: adjective
Etymology: French
Date: 1833 : prescribed or required by fashion, etiquette, or custom : proper
Rising smoke in Lochcarron forms a ceiling over the valley due to a temperature inversion (photo by S/V Moonrise,
author JohanTheGhost), January 30, 2006.*
inversion
In meteorology, an increase of air temperature with altitude.
Such an increase is a reversal of the normal temperature condition of the troposphere, where temperature usually
decreases with altitude. Inversions play an important role in determining cloud forms, precipitation, and visibility.
An inversion acts as a lid, preventing the upward movement of the air below it. Where a pronounced inversion is
present at a low level, convective clouds cannot grow high enough to produce showers and, at the same time,
visibility may be greatly reduced by trapped pollutants (see smog). Because the air near the base of the inversion is
cool, fog is frequently present there.
In meteorology, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It
almost always refers to a temperature inversion, i.e. an increase in temperature with height, or to the layer (inversion
layer) within which such an increase occurs [http://www.nws.noaa.gov/glossary/]. An inversion can lead to pollution
such as smog being trapped close to the ground, with possible adverse effects on health. An inversion can also
suppress convection by acting as a "cap." If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any moisture
present can then erupt into violent thunderstorms. Temperature inversion can notoriously result in freezing rain in
cold climates.
Under certain conditions, the normal vertical temperature gradient is inverted such that the air is colder near the
surface of the Earth. This can occur when, for example, a warmer, less dense air mass moves over a cooler, denser
air mass. This type of inversion occurs in the vicinity of warm fronts, and also in areas of oceanic upwelling such as
along the California coast. With sufficient humidity in the cooler layer, fog is typically present below the inversion
cap. An inversion is also produced whenever radiation from the surface of the earth exceeds the amount of radiation
received from the sun, which commonly occurs at night, or during the winter when the angle of the sun is very low in
the sky. This effect is virtually confined to land regions as the ocean retains heat far longer. In the polar regions
during winter, inversions are nearly always present over land.
A warmer air mass moving over a cooler one can "shut off" any convection which may be present in the cooler air
mass. This is known as a capping inversion. However, if this cap is broken, either by extreme convection overcoming
the cap, or by the lifting effect of a front or a mountain range, the sudden release of bottled-up convective energy —
like the bursting of a balloon — can result in severe thunderstorms. Such capping inversions typically precede the
development of tornadoes in the midwestern United States. In this instance, the "cooler" layer is actually quite warm,
but is still denser and usually cooler than the lower part of the inversion layer capping it.
Consequences. With the ceasing of convection, which is normally present in the atmosphere, a number of phenomena
are associated with a temperature inversion. The air becomes stiller, hence the air becomes murky because dust and
pollutants are no longer lifted from the surface. This can become a problem in cities where many pollutants exist.
During a severe inversion, trapped air pollutants form a brownish haze that can cause respiratory problems. The
Great Smog of 1952, one of the most serious examples of such an inversion, occurred in London and was blamed for
an estimated 11,000 to 12,000 deaths.
Sometimes the inversion layer is higher so that the cumulus clouds can condense but then they spread out under the
inversion layer. This cuts out sunlight to the ground and prevents new thermals from forming. A period of cloudiness
is followed by sunny weather as the clouds disperse. This cycle can occur more than once in a day.
The index of refraction of air decreases as the air temperature increases, a side effect of hotter air being less dense.
Normally this results in distant objects being shortened vertically, an effect that is easy to see at sunset (where the
sun is "squished" into an oval). In an inversion the normal pattern is reversed, and distant objects are instead
stretched out or appear to be above the horizon. This leads to the interesting optical effects of Fata Morgana or
mirage.
Electromagnetic Radiation (Radio-TV). Similarly, very-high frequency (above ca. 90 MHz) radio waves (being part
of the electromagnetic spectrum, like light) can be refracted by such inversions. This is why it is possible to
sometimes hear FM radio (or watch VHF-LO band TV) broadcasts from otherwise impossible distances as far as a
few hundred miles on foggy nights. The signal, still powerful enough to be received even at hundreds or rarely,
thousands, of miles, would normally be refracted up and away from the ground-based antenna, is instead refracted
down towards the earth by the temperature-inversion boundary layer. This phenomenon is called tropospheric
ducting. It is also referred to as skip by small radio operators and ham radio operators. Along coast lines during
Autumn and Spring many FM radio stations are plagued by severe signal degradation causing them to sound like
"scrambled eggs."
Inversions can magnify the so called "green flash:" a phenomenon occurring at sunrise/sunset, usually visible for a
few seconds, in which the sun's green light is isolated due to dispersion - the shorter wavelength is refracted most, so
it is the first/last light from the upper rim of the solar disc to be seen.
Sound. In addition, when an inversion layer is present (for example early in the morning when ground-level air
temperatures are cool, and high-level air temperatures are warmer), if a sound or explosion occurs at ground level,
the sound wave can get totally reflected from the warmer upper layer (in which the sound travels faster, i.e. the air
has lower acoustic refractive index, so the sound can undergo total internal reflection) and return back to ground
level; the sound, therefore, travels much farther than normal. The shock wave from an explosion can be reflected by
an inversion layer in much the same way as it bounces off the ground in an air-burst and can cause additional damage
as a result.
In an inversion, vertical motion in the atmosphere is suppressed because the atmosphere is stable. Hence vertical heat
transport by eddies is suppressed; this reduced (downwards) heat transport leads to further cooling of the lower
surface. This can lead to an effective decoupling of the atmosphere from the surface in extreme conditions, such as
may be found in Antarctica during the polar night, where inversions greater than 25°C commonly occur. When it
happens the sky is a reddish color.
American troops of Troop E, 7th Cavalry Regiment, advance towards San Jose on Leyte Island, Philippine Islands,
20 October 1944 [http://www.army.mil/cmh/art/A&I/SC197533.jpg].*
7th Cavalry
Military force mounted on horseback, formerly an important element in the armies of all major powers. When used
in combination with other military forces, its main duties included gathering information about the enemy, screening
movements of its own army, pursuing a defeated enemy, striking suddenly at detected weak points, turning exposed
flanks, and exploiting a penetration or breakthrough. In the late 19th century, largely because of the introduction of
repeating rifles and machine guns, cavalry lost much of its former value. By World War I, a cavalry charge against a
line of entrenched troops with rapid-firing small arms was suicidal. Armoured vehicles soon replaced horses, and by
the 1950s no modern army had horse-mounted units. Today's units designated “cavalry” employ helicopters and light
armoured vehicles in ways analogous to horse cavalry.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment is a United States Army Cavalry Regiment, whose lineage traces back to the mid-19th
century. Its official nickname is "Garryowen [United States Army Center of Military History, "Special Unit
Designations," 21 April 2010, http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/spdes-123-ra_ar.html]," in honor of the
Irish air Garryowen that was adopted as its march tune.
Following its activation the Seventh Cavalry Regiment patrolled the Western plains for raiding native Americans and
to protect the westward movement of pioneers. From 1866 to 1881, the regiment marched a total of 181,692 miles
(292,342 km) across Kansas, Montana, and the Dakota Territories.
Indian Wars. The regiment was constituted on July 28, 1866 in the regular army as the 7th Cavalry. It was organized
on September 21, 1866 at Fort Riley, Kansas as part of an expansion of the regular army following the
demobilization of the wartime volunteer and draft forces. From 1866 through 1871, the regiment was posted to Fort
Riley and fought in the Indian Wars.
Its most notorious action of the Indian Wars was at the Battle of the Washita (also known as the Washita Massacre)
in 1868, in which the regiment sustained 21 losses, while inflicting more that 150 deaths on a Cheyenne encampment
composed largely of elderly men, as well as women and children [http://www.themennonite.org/issues/1401/articles/Lawrence_Harts_visions_of_ peace].
Typical of post-Civil War cavalry regiments, the Seventh was organized as a twelve-company regiment without
formal battalion organization. However, battalions—renamed "squadrons" in 1883—did exist. Companies A–D were
assigned to 1st Battalion; Companies E–H were assigned to 2nd Battalion; and Companies I–M (no company J in
Regiment) were assigned to 3rd Battalion. Throughout this period, the cavalryman was armed with Colt Single
Action Army .45 caliber revolvers and single-shot Springfield carbines, caliber .45–55 until 1892. They used one of
the many variants of the McClellan saddle. Sabres were issued but not carried on campaign. The Seventh Cavalry,
like the other U.S. Army regiments of the time had a band, which performed mounted as well as on foot, and seated
for concerts. Initially established with the support of Major Alfred Gibbs, the 7th's band adopted "Garryowen" as
their favorite tune and thus gave the Seventh their nickname among the rest of the Army. The troopers in the Wild
West didn't only fight Indians: on July 17, 1870 in Hays, Kansas, a shoot-out between Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and
two troopers resulted in one soldier dying of his wounds and the other wounded.
From 1871 through 1873, 7th Cavalry companies participated in constabulary duties in the deep South in support of
the Reconstruction Act, and, for half the regiment, again in 1874–1876. In 1873 the 7th Cavalry moved its garrison
post to Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory. From here, the regiment carried out the historic reconnaissance of
the Black Hills in 1874, making the discovery of gold in the Black Hills public and starting a gold rush that
precipitated the Great Sioux War of 1876–77. Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer was killed at the Battle of the
Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876 with 211 men of the 7th Cavalry. Although the Seventh is best known for its famous
"last stand" made at the Little Bighorn, the Regiment also participated in lesser known battles, such as the capture of
Chief Joseph's Nez Perce at the Battle of Bear Paw in 1877. The regiment committed the Wounded Knee Massacre
on December 29, 1890, signaling the end of the Indian Wars.
Before World War IIIn 1892, the Army replaced the Springfield .45–70 Rifle with the U.S. Magazine Rifle, Model
1892, also known as the .30–40 Krag-Jorgensen Rifle. A carbine version, the M1896, was issued in 1896.
From 1895 until 1899, the Regiment served in New Mexico (Fort Bayard) and Oklahoma (Ft. Sill), then overseas in
Cuba (Camp Columbia) from 1899 to 1902. An enlisted trooper with the Seventh Cavalry, "B" Company, from May
1896 until March 1897 at Fort Grant Arizona Territory was author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In 1903, the Army replaced the Krag .30–40 with the M1903 Springfield Rifles, initially in caliber .30–03 and later
in its more familiar .30–06 form. In 1911, the Army adopted the M1911 Automatic Colt Pistol, replacing the Colt
single and double action .45 and .38 caliber revolvers.
The Regiment served in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War from 1904 through 1907, with a second
tour from 1911 through 1915. Back in the United States, the Regiment was once again stationed in the southwest, in
Arizona (Camp Harvey J. Jones), where it patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border and later was part of the Mexican
Punitive Expedition of 1916 to 1917.
In December 1917, 7th Cavalry was assigned to the 15th Cavalry Division, an on-paper organization designed for
service in France during World War I that was never more than a simple headquarters. This was because no
significant role emerged for mounted troops on the Western Front during the nineteen months between the entry of
the United States into the War and the Armistice of 11 November 1918 [Randy Stern, The Horse Soldier: 17761943]. The 7th Cavalry was released from this assignment in May 1918.
On September 13, 1921, 7th Cavalry Regiment was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, which assignment was
maintained until 1957. The Division and its 2nd Cavalry Brigade was garrisoned at Fort Bliss, Texas, while the 1st
Cavalry Brigade was garrisoned at Douglas, Arizona. Additional garrison points were used as well. The 7th Cavalry
Regiment continued to train as horse cavalry right up to World War II, including participation in several training
maneuvers at the Louisiana Maneuver Area on April 26, 1940–May 28, 1940; August 12–22, 1940; and August 8,
1941–October 4, 1941.
Pacific Theater Service. The 7th Cavalry Regiment was dismounted on February 28, 1943, and started packing up
for deployment to the Pacific Theater, still part of 1st Cavalry Division. The 7th Cavalry staged at Camp Stoneman,
California on June 18, 1943, and departed the San Francisco Port of Embarkation on June 26, 1943. It arrived in
Australia on July 11, 1943, where it trained for combat, and then participated in the New Guinea campaign, which
began on January 24, 1943, and did not end until December 31, 1944.
The regiment was relieved from duty in this campaign, and moved on to be reorganized under special Cavalry and
Infantry Tables of Organization & Equipment on December 4, 1943, and then trained for combat and participated in
the Bismarck Archipelago campaign, which started on December 15, 1943, and did not end until November 27,
1944. The 7th Cavalry moved to Oro Bay, New Guinea on February 22, 1944, and moved by landing craft to Negros
Island to reinforce the units there on March 4, 1944, securing Lombrum Plantation. The 7th Cavalry moved on to
Hauwei Island, which it secured on March 12–13, 1944. The regiment continued on, and arrived at Lugos Mission
on Manus Island on March 15, 1944.
The Leyte campaign started on October 17, 1944, and 7th Cavalry moved on towards the Philippines, and assaulted
Leyte on October 20, 1944. 7th Cavalry reached the Visayan Sea in late December, 1944, and reassembled with the
1st Cavalry Division near Tunga on January 7, 1945. Leyte did not end until July 1, 1945, but 7th Cavalry was
needed for the Luzon campaign, which started on December 15, 1944.
Deploying again by landing craft, 7th Cavalry landed at Luzon on January 27, 1945, where the regiment engaged
until the end of the Luzon campaign on July 4, 1945. 7th Cavalry again reorganized—this time entirely under
Infantry Tables of Organization & Equipment, but still designated as a Cavalry Regiment, on July 20, 1945 to
prepare for the invasion of the main Japanese islands. However, the invasion was not to be. 7th Cavalry Regiment
was at Lucena, Batangas in the Philippines until September 2, 1945, when it was moved to Japan to start Occupation
duty.
The 7th Cavalry fought in the Korean War's bloodiest battles. These include Hwanggan, Poksong-Dong, Kwanni,
and Naktong River Defense (Battle of Pusan Perimeter). When the 1st Cavalry Division attacked north, the 7th
Cavalry was in front, smashing 106 miles behind enemy lines in an historic 24 hours. Three more Presidential Unit
Citations were added to the colors.
The conduct of 7th Cavalry soldiers with respect to their involvement with the massacre at No Gun Ri during the
early part of the Korean War has come under fire. Their story is most fully told by a veteran of the regiment,
historian and Army LTC Robert Bateman, who wrote a book on the event using veterans accounts and military
records [citation needed]. The credibility of witness in the AP report revealed fraudulent claims about what
happened at No Gun Ri (Korea). 7th Cavalry Regiment was reorganized under a new Table of Organization &
Equipment on March 25, 1949, when the Troops were once again designated as Companies.
Cold War. The regiment was relieved from its assignment to the 1st Cavalry Division on October 15, 1957, and then
reorganized under the Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS) on November 1, 1957. HQ & HQ Company
transferred to the control of the Department of the Army. November 1, As part of this reorganization, Company "A"
redesignated, 1st Battle Group, 7th Cavalry and assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. Company "B" redesignated 2nd
Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry and Company "C" redesignated, 3d Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry
and assigned to the 10th Infantry Division.
After the Korean War, 7th Cavalry was used mainly in a reconnaissance role. It received the M14 rifle, along with
various other new weapons and equipment (including the Patton tank). Also, a few OH-13s were used by the
reconnaissance squadrons.
Three battalions, the 1st, 2nd and 5th served during the Vietnam War as the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division.
3rd Brigade often self-referred itself as the "Garryowen Brigade". These troopers were armed with the new M16
rifle, the M203 grenade launcher replacing the M79 grenade launcher. Claymore mines, and Bell UH-1B helicopters
were also used extensively. Seven men earned the Medal of Honor while serving with the 7th Cavalry in Vietnam:
Private First Class Lewis Albanese, Company B, 5th Battalion; First Lieutenant Douglas B. Fournet, Company B, 1st
Battalion; Sergeant John Noble Holcomb, Company D, 2nd Battalion; Second Lieutenant Walter Joseph Marm, Jr.,
Company A, 1st Battalion; Private First Class William D. Port, Company C, 5th Battalion; Specialist Four Héctor
Santiago-Colón, Company B, 5th Battalion; and First Lieutenant James M. Sprayberry, Company D, 5th Battalion
[United States Army Center of Military History, August 3, 2009 "Medal of Honor Recipients - Vietnam (A-L)",
http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/vietnam-a-l.html; "Medal of Honor Recipients - Vietnam (M-Z)," .
http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/vietnam-m-z.html]. The other 2 units, the 3rd and 4th reconnaissance
squadrons, were based in Germany and Korea.
The 1st, 2nd, and 5th battalions were deactivated after the Vietnam War, and only the 3rd and 4th squadrons
remained as divisional reconnaissance squadrons assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Infantry Division
respectively. Both the 3rd and 4th squadrons were aviation-tank cavalry squadrons using the M551 Sheridan
AR/AAV vehicle (later replaced by the M48 Patton tank), M113 & M114 Armored Personnel Carriers. Both
squadrons had an air cavalry "Delta" Troop, that had both reconnaissance & gunship UH-1B's. The gunships were
armed with M-5 rocket launchers, and M-22 anti-tank guided missiles. In 1963 the 3rd Squadron became the
divisional cavalry squadron for the 3rd Infantry Division and was stationed at Ledward & Conn Barracks
Schweinfurt West Germany. The Squadron consisted of three ground troops, one aviation troop and a headquarters
troop. The ground troops were equipped with M60A3 tanks, M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, ITV (Improved
TOW Vehicle, an M113 variant) and a mortar section with 4.2-inch (110 mm) mortars mounted in an M113 variant.
In 1989 the M60 tanks were replaced with M1A1 Abrams tanks. The aviation troops were equipped with OH-58
scout helicopters and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. On November 16, 1992, the Squadron was inactivated in
Germany and relieved of assignment to the 8th Infantry Division. The Headquarters and Headquarters Troop
consolidated on December 16, 1992 with the 3rd Reconnaissance Company and designated as Headquarters and
Headquarters Troop, 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry. On February 16, 1996, the squadron was assigned to the 3rd
Infantry Division and activated at Fort Stewart, Georgia as the Division Cavalry Squadron and became the "Eyes and
Ears" of the Marne Division, the "Iron Fist" of the XVIII Airborne Corps. The Squadron has been involved in
several deployments since then including Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait, Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia, and
Operation Iraqi Freedom.
fedayeen
Main Entry: fe£da£yee
Pronunciation: fi-ƒda-‚(y)‡, -ƒdäFunction: noun
Inflected Form: plural fe£da£yeen \-‚(y)‡n\
Etymology: Arabic fid†'ˆ, literally, one who sacrifices himself
Date: 1955 : a member of an Arab commando group operating especially against Israel — usually used in plural
[Following text courtesy of Wikipedia]:
Fedayeen (Arabic: bc‫ا‬ef, fidā'ī, plural Arabic: ‫ن‬jّlc‫ا‬eِf fidā'īyūn, or in certain contexts Arabic: olّlc‫ا‬eِf fidā'īyīn: meaning
"those who sacrifice [derives from the word ‫اء‬ef, which means redemption. Literally, someone who redeems himself
by risking or sacrificing his life; Tony Rea and John Wright, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press,
1993), p. 43];" Armenian: Ֆէտայի Fētahi, Hebrew: ‫ ַפדַאיוּן‬referring only to the 1950s groups) is a term used to
describe several distinct, militant groups and individuals in the Arab world at different times in history. It is
sometimes used colloquially to refer to suicide squads, especially those who are not bombers.
Overview. Fedayeen are any of various groups of people known to be volunteers, not connected to an organized
government or military, in the Arab and Muslim world. They are usually deployed for a cause where the government
has been viewed as failed or non-existent. They are associated with the role of resistance against occupation or
tyranny. The name "fedayeen" is used to refer to armed struggle against any form of enslavement with actions based
on resistance. The word "fedayeen" is the Arabic plural to "feda'iy," which comes from the verb "fada" (infinitive:
"fidaa,'" which means "redemption;" thus the literal translation of "fedayeen" is those who redeem themselves by
sacrificing themselves. It is widely understood in the Arabic world to mean those willing to sacrifice themselves for
God.
Palestinians. Armed militias known as the fedayeen, grew from militant elements within the Arab Palestinians. The
Fedayeen made efforts to infiltrate territory in Israel in order to strike targets in the aftermath of the 1948 ArabIsraeli War. Members of these groups were largely based within the refugee communities living in the Gaza Strip
(then controlled by Egypt), and the West Bank (then controlled by Jordan), or in neighboring Lebanon, and Syria.
During this time (1948-c.1980), the word entered international usage and was frequently used in the Arab media as a
synonym for great militancy. In the Israeli Hebrew press of this time the term ("‫ " ַפדַאיוּן‬with soft ‫ )פ‬had highly
negative connotations and was associated with terrorism. Since the mid-1960s and the rise of more organized and
specific militant groups, such as the PLO, the word has fallen out of usage, but not in the historical context.
Egypt. During the 1940s, a group of civilians volunteered to fight the British control of Egyptian land around the
Suez Canal. The British had deployed military bases along the coast of the Suez Canal under the claim of protection.
Many Egyptians viewed this as an invasion against their sovereign power over their country. While the Egyptian
government didn't refuse the action, the people's leaders organized groups of Fedayeen who were trained to combat
and kill British soldiers everywhere in Egypt, including the military bases. Those groups were viewed very highly
among the Egyptian population.
Iran. Two very different groups used the name Fedayeen in recent Iranian history. Fadayan-e Islam has been
described as "one of the first real Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the Muslim world". It was founded by
Navab Safavi in 1946 for the purpose of demanding strict application of the sharia and assassinating those it believed
to be apostates and enemies of Islam [Abrahamian, Ervand, A Modern History Of Iran (Cambridge University Press,
2008), p. 116]. After several successful assassinations it was suppressed in 1956 and several leading members were
executed. It continued on under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and helped bring about the Islamic Revolution
of Iran [Moin, Khomeini (2000), p. 224; Taheri, Amir, Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Adler
and Adler, 1985), p. 187]. A Marxist-leaning activist group known as the Fedayeen (Fedayân in Persian language)
was founded in 1971 and based in Tehran. Operating between 1971 and 1983, the Fedayeen carried out a number of
political assassinations in the course of the struggle against the Shah, after which the group was suppressed. That
struggle continued however and eventually culminated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In 1979 the Iranian
People's Fedâi Guerrillas split from the Organization of Iranian People's Fedaian (Majority).
Iraq. Beginning in 1995, Iraq established a paramilitary group known as the Fedayeen Saddam, loyal to President
Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist government. The name was chosen to imply a connection with the Palestinian
Fedayeen. In July 2003, personnel records for the Fedayeen organization in Iraq were discovered in the basement of
the former Fedayeen headquarters in east Baghdad near the Al-Rashid Airfield. At the time of the discovery, an Iraqi
political party occupied the building; after an extensive cataloging process, an operation was conducted in Baghdad
resulting in several individuals being detained.
Armenia. In the 19th century, the similar name "Fedayee" (meaning freedom fighter), with the same etymology, was
used by Armenians who formed guerrilla organizations and armed bands in reaction to the oppression and unchecked
murder of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. In the early 1990s, when the dispute with Azerbaijan over NagornoKarabakh erupted into the Nagorno-Karabakh war, the term was used by Armenians to describe Armenian irregular
units operating in the region. The term was widely used and is still used to describe the volunteers, and can be found
in literature and Armenian Revolutionary songs.
Eritrea. Known by the same name, they operated inside the capital city, Asmara, during the last 15-20 years of the
armed struggle in Eritrea. They operated secretly and eliminated people who were considered dangerous to the
struggle to free Eritrea.
~ page 216 ~
barrio
Main Entry: bar£rio
Pronunciation: ‚b‫ن‬r-‡-ƒ‹, ‚barFunction: noun
Inflected Form: plural -ri£os
Etymology: Spanish, from Arabic barrˆ of the open country, from barr outside, open country
Date: 1841 1 : a ward, quarter, or district of a city or town in Spanish-speaking countries 2 : a Spanish-speaking
quarter or neighborhood in a city or town in the U.S. especially in the Southwest.
In its formal usage in English, barrios are generally considered cohesive places, sharing, for example, a church and
traditions such as feast days. In Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain, the term barrio is also used to denote a subdivision of a
municipio (or municipality); the barrios are further subdivided into sectors. In the Philippines, the term may also
simply refer to a rural village and is spelled in Filipino as baryo. In Argentina and Uruguay, a barrio is a traditional
division of a municipality officially delineated by the local authority at a later time, and sometimes keeps a distinct
character from others (as in the barrios of Buenos Aires though they have been superseded by larger administrative
divisions). Here, the word does not have a special socioeconomic connotation, except that it is used in contrast to the
centro (city center or downtown). The expression barrio cerrado (translated "closed neighborhood") is employed for
small, upper-class, residential settlements, planned with an exclusive criterion and often literally enclosed in walls (a
kind of gated community).
More commonly, however, in the United States, barrios refer to lower-class neighborhoods with largely Spanishspeaking residents, basically the Latino equivalent of a "ghetto". The word often implies that the poverty level is
high in such a neighborhood, but this inference is not universal. While there are many so-called barrios in the United
States, Roma Creek, Texas; Avondale, Arizona; Coachella, California; La Puente, California; Lawrence,
Massachusetts; and Huron, California are among the largest and most well-known, and are simply referred to as "El
Barrio" by natives of the surrounding areas. But the urban barrios most portrayed in national media and pop culture
include Spanish Harlem, East Los Angeles; Pilsen, Chicago; North East Side (Denver) in Denver, Colorado;
Washington Heights; Jackson Heights in New York City; Mission District, San Francisco; parts of West Oakland in
Oakland, California; East San Jose in San Jose, California; Segundo Barrio in El Paso; and others across the country.
In communities with Hispanic (in this case, Mexican-American) majorities or pluralities such as Dallas, Houston,
San Antonio and El Paso of Texas; the unincorporated community of East L.A. and Santa Ana, California among
others in Southern California; and South Phoenix and South Tucson in Arizona - "barrio" may refer to
neighborhoods with a long history of being ethnic enclaves, as opposed to middle class or suburban residential
districts that merely have many Hispanic residents.
In the United States barrios can also refer to the geographical "turf" claimed by a Latino gang; this usage is generally
limited to the Chicano gangs of California. The dramatization of gang life in music videos and movies has
popularized this usage among the general population. Some gangs spell the word varrio, a common variant as some
Spanish speakers (such as Mexicans) pronounce the letter "v" like the English "b". In yet another colloquial usage of
the term, ethnic "ghettos" and "-towns" are often referred to by Spanish speakers as barrios appended with the
appropriate qualifying adjective. For example, Chinatowns are known as barrios chinos.
The United States usage is also seen in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, where barrio is commonly given to
slums in the outer rims of big cities such as Caracas and Santo Domingo, as well as lower to middle class
neighborhoods in other cities and towns. The word barrio was used to refer to the locality-based campsite sectors of
the Camp for Climate Action in 2007 [citation needed].
See also Colonia — A Concept Based on a Modern Standard. Speaking strictly about the word coloinia and the
concept as defined (at the Wikipedia site), colonias are a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S.
The word colonia itself originally comes from Spanish for "neighborhood" or "community". In Spanglish, the
English-Spanish mix, colonia began to be used to refer primarily to Mexican neighborhoods about thirty years ago.
In 1977, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, UT Austin, published the first manuscript using "colonia"
to describe rural desert settlements with inadequate infrastructure and unsafe housing stock. In this way, the word
"colonia" acquired the specific meaning for which it is used herein [Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public
Affairs, Policy Research Report No. 124: Colonia Housing and Infrastructure: Vol. 1, "Current Characteristics and
Future Needs," Vol. 2, "Water and Wastewater," Vol. 3, "Regulatory Issues and Policy Analysis," (Austin:
University of Texas, 1997)]. Since these Hispanic neighborhoods were less affluent, the word also connoted poverty
and substandard housing [42 U.S.C. § 1479 (f)(8)].
In the 1990s, colonias became a common American English name for the slums that developed on both sides of the
U.S.–Mexican border. Colonias have existed along the border for decades, but since the passage of the North
American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the number of people living in colonias has increased significantly, due, in
part, to the increase in low-skilled jobs created on both sides of the border through the maquiladora industry [Ward,
Peter, Ed., Self-Help Housing: A Critique (London: Mansell Press, 1982); Colonias and Public Policy in Texas and
Mexico: Urbanization by Stealth (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), http://www.netlibrary.com/Reader/ (27
May 2008); United Nations Center for Human Settlements (UNCHS), An Urbanizing World: Global Report on
Human Settlements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Turner, John, "Dwelling Resources in South America,"
Architectural Design 37: 360-93 (1963); Mangin, William and J. F. C. Turner, "Barrida Movement," Progressive
Architecture, Vol. 37-56 (1968), pp. 154-62]. The extent to which general world globalization, growing populations,
and other economic or political factors have influenced this growth has yet to be quantified.
As of 2007, Texas has the largest concentration of people (approximately 400,000) living in over 2,000 colonias on
the U.S. side of the border [Texas Secretary of State, "Colonias FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions),"
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/border/colonias/faqs.shtml]. New Mexico has the second largest, followed by Arizona and
California [United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Homes and Communities, "Designated
Colonias in New Mexico," http://www.hud.gov/local/nm/groups/coloniasnm.cfm]. However, remote location and
stealthy development characterize many colonias. It is therefore unlikely that an exact count is valid for an extended
period of time.
An imprimi potest, a nihil obstat and an imprimatur (by Richard Cushing) on a book published by Random House in 1953. The
book in question is the English translation by Louis J. Gallagher, S.J., of De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas by Matteo Ricci,
S.J. and Nicolas Trigault, S.J.*
imprimatur
Main Entry: im£pri£ma£tur
Pronunciation: ƒim-pr„-‚m‫ن‬-ƒt|r, im-‚pri-m„-ƒt|r, -ƒty|r
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, let it be printed, from imprimere to print, from Latin, to imprint, impress— more at impress
Date: 1640 1 a : a license to print or publish especially by Roman Catholic episcopal authority b : approval of a
publication under circumstances of official censorship 2 a : sanction, approval b : imprint c : a mark of approval or
distinction.
An imprimatur (from Latin, "let it be printed") is, in the proper sense, a declaration authorizing publication of a
book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement.
In the Catholic Church an imprimatur is an official declaration by a Church authority that a book or other printed
work may be published ["imprimatur," Word of the Day,
http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/08/19.html; Code of Canon Law, canon 830 §3,
http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM]. Since, according to canon law, this permission must be
preceded by a declaration (known as a nihil obstat) by a person charged with the duties of a censor that the work
contains nothing damaging to faith or morals [The America Heritage Dictionary,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nihil%20obstat], the bishop's authorization of publication is implicitly a
public declaration that nothing offensive to Catholic teaching on faith and morals has been found in it. The
imprimatur is not an endorsement by the bishop of the contents of a book, not even of the religious opinions
expressed in it, being merely a declaration about what is not in the book ["imprimatur," Encyclopaedia Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/284204/imprimatur]. In the published work, the imprimatur is
sometimes accompanied by a declaration of the following tenor:
The nihil obstat and imprimatur are declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is
contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat or imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements
expressed.
The person empowered to issue the imprimatur is the local ordinary of the author or of the place of publication
[Code of Canon Law, canon 824, http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM]. If he refuses to grant an
imprimatur for a work that has received a favourable nihil obstat from the censor, he must inform the author of his
reasons for doing so [Code of Canon Law, canon 830 §3, http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM].
This enables the author, if he wishes, to make changes so as to overcome the ordinary's difficulty ["Censorship of
Books," in Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03519d.htm].
If further examination shows that a work is not free of doctrinal or moral error, the imprimatur granted for its
publication can be withdrawn. This happened three times in the 1980s, when the Holy See judged that complaints
made to it about religion textbooks for schools were well founded and ordered the bishop to revoke his approval
["Vatican orders bishop to remove imprimatur," National Catholic Reporter, February 27, 1998,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_n17_v34/ai_20358695]. The imprimatur granted for a publication is
not valid for later editions of the same work or for translations into another language. For these, new imprimaturs are
required [Code of Canon Law, canon 824, http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM].
The permission of the local ordinary is required for the publication of prayer books [Code of Canon Law, canon 826
§3, http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM], catechisms and other catechetical texts [Code of Canon
Law, canon 827 §1, http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM], and school textbooks on Scripture,
theology, canon law, church history, or religious or moral subjects [Code of Canon Law, canon 827 §2,
http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM]. It is recommended, but without obligation, that books on the
last-mentioned subjects not intended to be used as school textbooks and all books dealing especially with religious or
moral subjects be submitted to the local ordinary for judgement [Code of Canon Law, canon 827 §3,
http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P2P.HTM]. In 2010, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades was the first bishop to
grant an imprimatur to an iPhone application ["iPhone Confession App Receives Imprimatur," Zenit,
http://www.zenit.org/article-31640?l=english].
English law. English laws of 1586, 1637 and 1662 required an official licence for printing books. The 1662 act
required that, according to their subject, books needed to receive the authorization, known as the imprimatur, of the
Lord Chancellor, the Earl Marshall, a principal Secretary of State, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of
London. This law finally expired in 1695 ["imprimatur," in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford
University Press, 2005)]. Other senses: In commercial printing, the term is used, in line with the meaning of the Latin
word, of final approval by a customer or his agent, perhaps after review of a test printing, for carrying out the
printing job.
As a metaphor, the word "imprimatur" is used loosely of any form of approval or endorsement, especially by an
official body or a person of importance [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/], as in the newspaper
headline, "Protection of sources now has courts' imprimatur [Irish Times, February 15, 2010,
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0215/1224264466584.html]," but also much more vaguely as in
"Children, the final imprimatur to family life, are being borrowed, adopted, created by artificial insemination [New
York Times, June 19, 1988, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=
940DE3D91330F93AA25755C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3]."
"Self-portrait" (1837). "Eugène Delacroix was a curious mixture of skepticism, politeness, dandyism, willpower,
cleverness, despotism, and finally, a kind of special goodness and tenderness that always accompanies genius
[Baudelaire, quoted in Jobert (1997), p. 27]."
Delacroix, Eugène
born April 26, 1798, Charenton-Saint-Maurice, France
died Aug. 13, 1863, Paris
French painter. As a young man he was strongly influenced by the Romanticism of the painter Théodore Géricault
and the Polish-born composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin. In 1822 he exhibited the painting Dante and Virgil in
Hell, a landmark in the development of French 19th-century Romanticism. In his subsequent choice of subjects,
Delacroix often showed an affinity with Lord Byron and other Romantic poets of his time. His work was
characterized by an uninhibited expression of energy and movement, a fascination with violence, destruction, and the
more tragic aspects of life, and a sensuous use of colour. After his success at the Paris Salon, he was commissioned
to decorate government buildings; he became one of the most distinguished monumental mural painters in the history
of French art. He explored the new medium of lithography and in 1827 executed 17 lithographs for an edition of
Faust. In 1830 he painted Liberty Leading the People to commemorate the July Revolution that brought LouisPhilippe to the French throne. His use of colour influenced the development of Impressionism.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from
the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school [Noon, Patrick, et al., Crossing the Channel:
British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism (Tate Publishing, 2003), p. 58]. Delacroix's use of
expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the
Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer,
Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Walter Scott and the German writer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of
Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than
clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his
maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of
the exotic [Gombrich, E. H., The Story of Art (Phaidon Press Limited, 1995), pp. 504-6]. Friend and spiritual heir to
Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with
the "forces of the sublime," of nature in often violent action [Clark, Kenneth, Civilization (Harper and Row, 1969),
p. 313].
However, Delacroix was given neither to sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an
individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to
express passion as clearly as possible [Wellington, Hubert, "Introduction," The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
(Cornell University Press, 1980), p. xiv]."
Delacroix was born at Charenton (Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne), in ‫خ‬le-de-France, near Paris.
A popular opinion held that his father, Charles-François Delacroix, was infertile at the time of Eugène's conception
and that his real father was Talleyrand, who was a friend of the family and successor of Charles Delacroix as
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and whom the adult Eugène resembled in appearance and character [Web Gallery of Art,
"Eugène Delacroix biography," http://www.wga.hu/bio/d/delacroi/biograph.html; André Castelot (Talleyrand ou le
cynicisme [Paris: Librairie Perrin, 1980]) discusses and rejects the theory, pointing out that correspondence between
Charles and his wife during the pregnancy shows no sign of tension or resentment]. Throughout his career as a
painter, he was protected by Talleyrand, who served successively the Restoration and king Louis-Philippe, and
ultimately as ambassador of France in Great Britain, and later by Talleyrand's grandson, Charles Auguste Louis
Joseph, duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III and speaker of the French House of Commons. His father,
Charles Delacroix, died in 1805, and his mother in 1814, leaving 16-year-old Eugene an orphan.
His early education was at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen [Lycée Pierre
Corneille de Rouen, "History," http://lgcorneille-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/spip.php?article6], where he steeped himself in
the classics and won awards for drawing. In 1815 he began his training with Pierre-Narcisse Guérin in the
neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David. An early church commission, "The Virgin of the Harvest" (1819),
displays a Raphael-esque influence, but another such commission, "The Virgin of the Sacred Heart" (1821),
evidences a freer interpretation [Jobert, Barthélémy, Delacroix (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 62]. It
precedes the influence of the more colorful and rich style of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), and
fellow French artist Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), whose works marked an introduction to Romanticism in art.
The impact of Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa" was profound, and stimulated Delacroix to produce his first
major painting, "The Barque of Dante," which was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1822. The work caused a
sensation, and was largely derided by the public and officialdom, yet was purchased by the State for the Luxembourg
Galleries; the pattern of widespread opposition to his work, countered by a vigorous, enlightened support, would
continue throughout his life [Wellington (1980), p. xii].
Legacy. At the sale of his work in 1864, 9,140 works were attributed to Delacroix, including 853 paintings, 1,525
pastels and water colours, 6,629 drawings, 109 lithographs, and over 60 sketch books [Wellington (1980), p. xxviii].
The number and quality of the drawings, whether done for constructive purposes or to capture a spontaneous
movement, underscored his explanation, "Colour always occupies me, but drawing preoccupies me." Delacroix
produced several fine self-portraits, and a number of memorable portraits which seem to have been done purely for
pleasure, among which were the portrait of fellow artist Baron Schwiter, an inspired small oil of the violinist Nicolٍ
Paganini, and "Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand," a double portrait of his friends, the composer Frédéric
Chopin and writer George Sand; the painting was cut after his death, but the individual portraits survive.
On occasion Delacroix painted pure landscapes ("The Sea at Dieppe," 1852) and still lifes ("Still Life with
Lobsters," 1826-7), both of which feature the virtuoso execution of his figure-based works [Jobert (1997), p. 99]. He
is also well known for his Journals, in which he gave eloquent expression to his thoughts on art and contemporary
life. A generation of impressionists was inspired by Delacroix's work. Renoir and Manet made copies of his
paintings, and Degas purchased the portrait of Baron Schwiter for his private collection. His painting at the church of
St. Sulpice has been called the "finest mural painting of his time [Wellington (1980), p. xxiii]."
Manqu Qhapaq mit seiner Schwester und Ehefrau Mama Uqllu, um 1200. Zeichnung von Waman Puma de Ayala,
Anfang 17. Jh.*
Inca
Group of South American Indians who ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andes Mountains
from what is now northern Ecuador to central Chile. According to tradition (the Inca left no written records), the
founder of the Incan dynasty led the tribe to Cuzco, which became their capital. Under the fourth emperor, they
began to expand, and under the eighth they began a program of permanent conquest by establishing garrisons among
the conquered peoples. Under Topa Inca Yupanqui and his successor, the empire reached its southernmost and
northernmost extent. By the early 16th century the Inca controlled an empire of some 12 million subjects. They
constructed a vast network of roads, their architecture was highly developed, and the remains of their irrigation
systems, palaces, temples, and fortifications are still in evidence throughout the Andes. Incan society was highly
stratified and featured an aristocratic bureaucracy. Their pantheon, worshiped in a highly organized state religion,
included a sun god, a creator god, and a rain god. The Incan empire was overthrown in 1532 by the Spanish
conquistadores, who made great use of the Incan road system during their conquests. The Inca's descendants are the
Quechua-speaking peasants of the Andes (see Quechua). In Peru nearly half the population is of Incan descent. They
are primarily farmers and herders living in close-knit communities. Their Roman Catholicism is infused with belief
in pagan spirits and divinities. See also Andean civilization; Atahuallpa; Aymara; Chimْ; Francisco Pizarro.
The Inca Empire [Namnama, Katrina; DeGuzman, Kathleen, "The Inca Empire," K12 (USA), http://www.k12.hi.us/
~jowalton/inca.ppt], or Inka Empire (Quechua: Tawantinsuyu) [see Wikipedia cite, "Quechuan and Aymaran
spelling shift," for more information], was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America [Terence D'Altroy, The
Incas, pp. 2–3]. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day
Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century. From 1438 to 1533,
the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western
South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, including large parts of modern Ecuador, Peru, western
and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, north and north-central Chile, and southern Colombia into a state
comparable to the historical empires of the Old World.
The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local languages and dialects of Quechua
were spoken. The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu [Tawantin suyu derives from the Quechua "tawa"
(four), to which the suffix "-ntin" (together or united) is added, followed by "suyu" (region or province), which
roughly renders as "The four lands together." The four suyos were: Chinchay Suyo (North), Anti Suyo (East. The
Amazon jungle), Colla Suyo (South) and Conti Suyo (West)] which can be translated as The Four Regions or The
Four United Provinces. There were many local forms of worship, most of them concerning local sacred "Huacas,"
but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti — the sun god — and imposed its sovereignty above other
cults such as that of Pachamama [http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=inca]. The Incas considered their
King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun [http://www.nflc.org/reach/7ca/enCAInca.htm]."
Language. Since the Inca Empire lacked a written language, the empire's main form of communication and recording
came from quipus, ceramics and spoken Quechua, the language the Incas imposed upon the peoples within the
empire. The plethora of civilizations in the Andean region provided for a general disunity that the Incas needed to
subdue in order to maintain control of the empire. While Quechua had been spoken in the Andean region, like central
Peru, for several years prior to the expansion of the Inca civilization, the type of Quechua the Incas imposed was an
adaptation from the Kingdom of Cusco (an early form of "Southern Quechua" originally named Qhapaq Runasimi =
The great language of the people) of what some historians define as "Proto-Quechua" or Cusco dialect (the original
Quechua dialect) [http://www.macalester.edu/linguistics/endangered/Quechua/Quechua.htm;
http://www.quechua.org.uk/Eng/Sounds/Quechua/QuechuaOriginsAndDiversity.htm].
The language imposed by the Incas further diverted from its original phonetic tone as some societies formed their
own regional varieties, or slang. The diversity of Quechua at that point and even today does not come as a direct
result from the Incas, who are just a part of the reason for Quechua's diversity. The civilizations within the empire
that had previously spoken Quechua kept their own variety distinct to the Quechua the Incas spread. Although these
dialects of Quechua have a similar linguistic structure, they differ according to the region in which they are spoken.
Although most of the societies within the empire implemented Quechua into their lives, the Incas allowed several
societies to keep their old languages such as Aymara, which still remains a spoken language in contemporary Bolivia
where it is the primary indigenous language and various regions of South America surrounding Bolivia. The
linguistic body of the Inca Empire was thus largely varied, but it still remains quite an achievement for the Incas that
went beyond their time as the Spanish continued the use of Quechua [ibid]. It is proposed that the actual name of the
spoken language of the Incan Empire was called Qhapaq Runasimi and that the Incan ruling elite spoke both Puquina
and Qhapaq Runasimi (Quechua). However, Pukina ceased to be used in the 19th century. Under this proposed idea,
the root meaning of Quechua was "taken by force, stolen" and a Dominican monk (Pedro Aparicio) mistakenly
taught that the Peruvians referred to themselves as Quechuas when it was actually the actions of the Spaniards the
people were referring to [citation needed].
The most powerful figure in the empire was the Sapa Inca ('the unique Inca'). Only descendants of the original Inca
tribe ascended to the level of Inca. Most young members of the Inca's family attended Yachay Wasis (houses of
knowledge) to obtain their education.
The Inca Empire was a federalist system which consisted of a central government with the Inca at its head and four
provinces: Chinchay Suyu (NW), Anti Suyu (NE), Kunti Suyu (SW), and Qulla Suyu (SE). The four corners of these
provinces met at the center, Cusco. Each province had a governor who oversaw local officials, who in turn
supervised agriculturally productive river valleys, cities and mines. There were separate chains of command for both
the military and religious institutions, which created a system of partial checks and balances on power [citation
needed]. The local officials were responsible for settling disputes and keeping track of each family's contribution to
the mita (mandatory public service).
Ceramics were painted using the polychrome technique portraying numerous motifs including animals, birds, waves,
felines (which were popular in the Chavin culture) and geometric patterns found in the Nazca style of ceramics. In
place of a written language Ceramics portrayed the very basic scenes of everyday life, including the smelting of
metals, relationships and scenes of tribal warfare, it is through these preserved Ceramics that we know what life was
like for the ancient South Americans. The most distinctive Inca ceramic objects are the Cusco bottles or ¨aryballos¨
[Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum, The Spirit of Ancient Peru: Treasures from the Museo Arqueol gico Rafael
Larco Herrera (New York: Thames and Hudson)]. Many of these pieces are on display in Lima in the Larco
Archaeological Museum and the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History.
Life restoration of Mammut americanum (original uploader was Dantheman9758, February 8, 2008).*
mastodon
Any of several extinct elephant species (genus Mastodon) that lived worldwide 23.7 million–10,000 years agoor later
in North America,where they were contemporaneous with historic American Indian groups.
Well-preserved remains are quite common. Mastodons ate leaves and had small grinding teeth and long, parallel,
upward-curving upper tusks; males also had short lower tusks. Shorter than modern elephants, they had long, heavily
built bodies and short, pillarlike legs. Their long hair was reddish brown.The skull was similar to that of modern
elephants but lower and flatter, and the ears were small. Human hunting may have played a role in the mastodon's
extinction. See also mammoth.
Mastodons (Greek: µαστός "breast" and ὀδούς, "tooth") were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus
Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through
Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago ["Mammut, basic info, in PaleoBiology Database, http://paleodb.org/cgibin/bridge.pl?action=checkTaxonInfo&taxon_no=43274&is_ real_user=1]. The American mastodon is the most
recent and best known species of the group. Confusingly, several genera of proboscids from the gomphothere family
have similar-sounding names (e.g., Stegomastodon) but are actually more closely related to elephants than to
mastodons.
The genus gives its name to the family Mammutidae, assigned to the order Proboscidea. They superficially resemble
members of the proboscidean family Elephantidae, including mammoths; however, mastodons were browsers while
mammoths were grazers. Mastodons first appeared almost 40 million years ago; the oldest fossil (Mastodon sp.) was
unearthed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fossils have also been found in England, Germany, the
Netherlands, North America, Romania [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap
/20080808/ap_on_sc/sci_romania_prehistoric_mammal; _ylt=AlYtIl467zvEgv7FtdxB8hBxieAA] and northern
Greece.
While mastodons had a size and appearance similar to elephants and mammoths, they were not particularly closely
related. Their teeth differ dramatically from those of members of the elephant family; they had blunt, conical, nipplelike projections on the crowns of their molars [http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/mammut.html], which
were more suited to chewing leaves than the high-crowned teeth mammoths used for grazing; the name mastodon (or
mastodont) means "nipple teeth" and is also an obsolete name for their genus [Agusti, Jordi, and Mauricio Anton,
Mammoths, Sabretooths, and Hominids (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 106]. Their skulls are
larger and flatter than those of mammoths, while their skeleton is stockier and more robust [Kurtén and Anderson, p.
345 (incomplete cite)].
The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), the most recent member of the family, lived from about 3.7 million
years ago until it became extinct about 10,000 years BCE. It is known from fossils found ranging from present-day
Alaska and New England in the north, to Florida, southern California, and as far south as Honduras [Polaco, O. J.,
Arroyo-Cabrales, J., Corona-M., E., Lَpez-Oliva, J. G.,"The American Mastodon Mammut americanum in Mexico,"
in Cavarretta, G., Gioia, P.; Mussi, M. et al., The World of Elephants - Proceedings of the 1st International
Congress, October 16–20, 2001 (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 2001), pp. 237–242
http://www.sovraintendenzaroma.it/content/download/4787/62368/.../237_242.pdf ]. The American mastodon
resembled a woolly mammoth in appearance, with a thick coat of shaggy hair [Palmer, D., Ed., The Marshall
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals (London: Marshall Editions, 1999), p. 124]. It had
tusks that sometimes exceeded five meters in length; they curved upwards, but less dramatically than those of the
woolly mammoth [Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345 (incomplete cite)]. Its main habitat was cold spruce woodlands, and
it is believed to have browsed in herds [8]. They are generally reported as having disappeared from North America
about 10,000 years ago [BBC News, "Greek mastodon find 'spectacular,'" July 24, 2007,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6913366.stm], as part of a mass extinction of most of the Pleistocene megafauna.
Paleo-Indians entered the American continent and expanded to relatively large numbers 13,000 years ago [Beck,
Roger B., Linda Black, Larry S. Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor, Dahia Ibo Shabaka, World History: Patterns of
Interaction (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 1999)], and their hunting may have caused a gradual attrition of the
mastodon population [Ward, Peter, The Call of Distant Mammoths (Springer, 1997), p. 241; Fisher, Daniel C.,
"Paleobiology and Extinction of Proboscideans in the Great Lakes Region of North America," in Haynes, Gary,
American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene (Springer, 2009), pp. 55–75, doi:10.1007/978-14020-8793-6_4, http://www.springerlink.com/content/m39544m241500322/fulltext.pdf].
Delila schert Simson die Haare (Delilah cuts Samson's hair), by Master, E. S., cirac 1460-1465
(http://myra.hem.nu/costume/Documentation/Artist/MasterES.htm).*
Samson
Israelite warrior hero of the Old Testament Book of Judges. His mother had been told by an angel that she would
bear a son whose life would be dedicated to God and whose hair must never be cut. Samson performed many
powerful acts, including slaying a lion and moving the gates of Gaza. When he revealed to a Philistine woman,
Delilah, that his hair was the source of his strength, she shaved his head while he was sleeping, leaving him
powerless. He was blinded and enslaved by the Philistines, but later his strength was restored and he pulled down the
pillars of a temple where 3,000 Philistines had gathered, killing them and himself.
Samson, Shimshon (Hebrew: ‫שמשון‬, Modern ὀimὀon Tiberian ὀimὀ‫פ‬n, meaning "man of the sun" [Van der Toorn,
et al., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Google Books), p. 404]); Shamshoun (Arabic: ‫ن‬j) or
Sampson (Greek: ‫ي‬
ّ ) is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh (the
Hebrew Bible) (Book of Judges chapters 13 to 16) [Comay, Joan, Ronald Brownrigg, Who's Who in the Bible: The
Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament (New York: Wing Books, 1993); Rogerson, John W.,
Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Ancient Israel (London: Thames
& Hudson, 1999), p. 58; Porter, J. R., The Illustrated Guide to the Bible (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000),
p. 75].
Academics have interpreted Samson as a demi-god (such as Hercules or Enkidu) enfolded into Jewish religious lore,
or as an archetypical folklore hero, among others. These views sometimes interpreted him as a solar deity,
popularized by "solar hero" theorists and Biblical scholars alike [Morris Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and
Assyria (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1898); Charles Fox Burney, The Book of Judges, with Introduction and Notes
(London: Rivingtons, 1918); Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths cf Herakles (1955)]. The name Delilah may also
involve a wordplay with the Hebrew word for night, 'layla,' which of course consumes the day ["Delilah," in
Eerdmans Dictionary of The Bible, David Noel Freedman, Ed. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), p. 336].
Samson bears many similar traits to the Greek Herakles (and the roman Hercules adaptation), inspired himself
partially from the mesopotamian Enkidu tale: Herakles and Samson both battled a Lion bare handed (Lion of Nemea
feat), Herakles and Samson both had a favorite primitive blunt weapon (a club for the first, an ass's jaw for the
latter), they were both betrayed by a woman which led them to their ultimate fate (Hercules by Dejanira, while
Samson by Delilah). Both heroes, champion of their respective people, die by their own hand: Herakles ends his life
on a pyre while Samson makes the Philistine temple collapse upon himself and his enemies. There are many more
similitudes which point towards the herculean myth and anecdotes (and moreover indo-european heroes) as well as
local semitic deities.
These views are much disputed by traditionalist and conservative biblical scholars who consider Samson to be a
literal historical figure and thus absolutely refute any connections whatsoever to similar mythological heroes
[Mobley, Gregory, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2006), p. 5]; that Samson was a "solar hero" has been described as "an artificial ingenuity [George Albert
Cooke, The Book of Judges (Cambridge University Press, 1913)]."
Some biblical scholars suggest that Samson's home tribe of Dan might have been related to the Philistines
themselves. "Dan" might be another name for the tribe of Sea Peoples otherwise known as the Denyen, Danuna, or
Danaans. If so, then Samson's origin might be entirely Aegean [Greenberg, Gary, 101 Myths of the Bible
(Sourcebooks, Inc., 2000), pp. 171–172]. These speculations are in stark contrast to the historical depictions
expressed in the Bible and are therefore mutually exclusive.
Joan Comay, co-author of Who's Who in the Bible: The Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament,
believes that the biblical story of Samson is so specific concerning time and place that Samson was undoubtedly a
real person who pitted his great strength against the oppressors of Israel [Comay (1993)]. In contrast, James King
West finds that the hostilities between the Philistines and Hebrews appear to be of a "purely personal and local sort."
He also finds that Samson stories have, in contrast to much of Judges, an "almost total lack of a religious or moral
tone [West, James King, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: MacMillan Company, 1971), p. 183]."
Line dancing at a Country Western Dance Hall and Saloon.*
line dancing
A line dance is a choreographed dance with a repeated sequence of steps in which a group of people dance in one or
more lines or rows without regard for the gender of the individuals, all facing the same direction, and executing the
steps at the same time. Line dancers are not in physical contact with each other. Older "line dances" have lines in
which the dancers face each other, or the "line" is a circle, or all dancers in the "line" follow a leader around the
dance floor; while holding the hand of the dancers beside them [Cecile Gilbert, International Folk Dance at a
Glance, 2d Ed. (Burgess Publishing Company, 1974)].
Although line dancing is associated with country-western music and dance, it has a similarities to folk dancing
[Christy Lane, Christy Lane's Complete Book of Line Dancing (Human Kinetics, 2000 [1995]), pp. 3-4]. Many folk
dances are danced in unison in a single, nonlinear "line", and often with a connection between dancers. The Balkan
countries, among others, have a rich tradition of line dance surviving to the present. These folk line dances are also
performed in the international folk dance movement. Folk line dances have many forms: pairs of lines in which the
dancers face each other, or a line formed into a circle, or the line follows around the dance floor. The dancers may
hold hands with their neighbors, or use an arm-on-shoulder hold, or hold their neighbor's belts [Gilbert (1974)]. The
absence of a physical connection between dancers is, however, a distinguishing feature of country western line
dance. Line dances have accompanied many popular music styles since the early 1970s including pop, swing, rock
and roll, disco, Latin (Salsa Suelta), and Jazz [Lane (2000)].
The Madison was a popular line dance in the late 1950s. The 1961 "San Francisco Stomp" meets the definition of a
line dance [Virgil L. Morton, Teaching of Popular Dance (J. Lowell Pratt & Company, 1965), pp. 50-52;
http://www.renez.com/Dancing/danceinfo.htm#Dance_History_]. At least five line dances that are strongly
associated with country-western music were written in the 1970s, two of which are dated to 1972: "Walkin' Wazi
["Step sheet," http://www.kickit.to/ld/List.html?json=1&PHPSESSID=33e1419079c18f1f104e32dba3 29c2ff&rt=0
&t=1&n=41193; "More on Walkin' Wazi," http://www.dorisvolz.com/3rdannualboots&bucklesworkshop.htm]" and
"Cowboy Boogie [http://www.dorisvolz.com/pdf/cowboyboogie.pdf; "Kentucky Ken resume,"
http://www.dorisvolz.com/kenengelresume.pdf; "Doris Volz presents a note from Kentucky Ken," June 1, 1999,
http://www.dorisvolz.com/kennethengel.htm]," five years before the disco craze created by the release of Saturday
Night Fever in 1977, the same (approximate) year the "Tush Push" was created ["Original step sheet,"
http://www.dorisvolz.com/pdf/tushpush.pdf]. The "L.A. Hustle" began in a small Los Angeles disco in the Summer
of 1975, and hit the East Coast (with modified steps) in Spring of '76 as the "Bus Stop [Karen L. Lustgarten, The
Complete Guide to Disco Dancing (Warner Books, 1978), p. 86; "The Bus Stop is a new version of a group dance
called the Madison," Ebony Jr., November, 1978, p. 27]." Another 70s line dance is the "NutBush [Marayong,
"History & definition of linedancing," http://www.roots-boots.net/ldance/history.html]."
Over a dozen line dances were created during the 1980s for country songs [http://www.rootsboots.net/ldance/history.html; "Doris Volz line dance step sheets + free video dance clips,"
http://www.dorisvolz.com/]. The 1980 film Urban Cowboy reflected the blurring of lines between country music and
pop, and spurred renewed interest in country culture, and western fashion, music, and dance [Lane (2000)]. Many
early line dances, though, were adaptations of disco line dances [Joel Ruminer with Jimmie Ruth White, Boot
Scootin' (Rose Publishing Company, 1981), p. 48]. "Boot Scootin' Boogie" was choreographed by Bill Bader ["Bill
Bader's Website for Linedancers," http://www.billbader.com/] in October 1990 for the original Asleep at the Wheel
recording of the song of the same name ["Boot Scootin' (Vancouver) Boogie - a line dance by Bill Bader," March 7,
2004, http://www.billbader.com/billsteps /bootscootinboogie.htm]. The Brooks and Dunn version of the song has
resulted in there being at least 16 line dances with "Boot Scootin' Boogie" in the title ["'Boot Scootin' Boogie' step
sheets," http://www.kickit.to/ld/List.html...], including one by Tom Maddox and Skippy Blair under contract to the
recording company ["See Blair statement," October 1, 1988, http://www.wcsdancer.com/SkippyBlairDanceDictionary.html].
Billy Ray Cyrus' 1992 hit "Achy Breaky Heart", helped catapult western line dancing into the mainstream public
consciousness [Lane (2000)]. In 1994 choreographer Max Perry had a worldwide dance hit [citation needed] with
"Swamp Thang" for the song "Swamp Thing" by The Grid. This was a techno song that fused banjo sounds in the
melody line and helped to start a trend of dancing to forms of music other than country. In this mid 1990s period
country western music was influenced by the popularity of line dancing. This influence was so great that Chet Atkins
was quoted as saying "The music has gotten pretty bad, I think. It's all that damn line dancing [Life Collectors
Edition, The Roots of Country Music, September 1, 1994]."
Step descriptions. Descriptions of some dance steps in their typical form are below. They are subject to variations in
particular dances, where a stomp or a point may occur instead of a touch, for example, in the grapevine.
•
Chasse: One foot moves to the side, the other foot is placed next to it, and the first foot moves again to the
side. Technically, a chasse step can move any direction, but line dance choreographers more often use it as
a side movement. This is the same as the movement some choreaographers call a "side shuffle". It can be
called "side, together, side" or "side, close, side."
•
Grapevine: One foot moves to the side, the other moves behind it, the first foot moves again to the side, and
the second touches next to the first. There are variations: the final step can consist of a hitch, a scuff,
placement of weight on the second foot, and so forth. The name of the step is sometimes abbreviated to
vine.
•
Weave: To the left or the right. This is similar to a grapevine, but starting with a cross in front or a cross
behind; it will obviously have another cross either in front or behind. Creates a slight zig zag pattern on the
floor.
•
Triple step: This is 3 steps being taken in only 2 beats of music. Can move forward, backward, left, right or
on the spot.
•
Shuffle step: A triple step to the front or the back, left or right side, starting on either foot. The feet slide
rather than being given the staccato (short and sharp) movement of the cha-cha. There is a slight difference
in the interpretation of the timing to give the element its distinctive look. It is counted as 1 & 2, 3 & 4, etc.
However, the actual amount of time devoted to each of the 3 steps in the shuffle is 3/4 of a beat, 1/4 of a
beat, then one full beat of music. A chasse (normally used for sideways movement) is sometimes called a
side(ways) shuffle. It can be called "step, together, step" or "step, close, step."
•
Lock step: A triple step backwards or forwards, starting on either foot, with the second foot slid up to and
tightly locked in front of or behind the first foot before the first foot is moved a second time in the same
direction as for the first step.
Other steps include applejack, botafogo, butterfly, coaster step, heel grind, hitch, jazz box, kick ball change, kick ball
step, lunge, mambo step, military turn, Monterey turn, paddle, pivot turn, rock step, sailor step, scissor step, scuff,
spiral turn, stamp, stomp, sugarfoot, swivet and vaudeville.
Eridu Genesis
Sumerian creation epic.
It recounted the origins of the world and humanity, the founding of cities, and the great flood sent by the gods to
destroy humanity. Forewarned by the god Ea, a man named Ziusudra, known for his humility and obedience, built a
huge boat in which to ride out the flood. As a reward for his good life, the gods later granted him immortality.
See also Act II, Signature iv - (10).
~ page 217 ~
Une surfaceuse nettoyant et lissant la glace d'une patinoire (work by Myrabella, December 22, 2010.*
Zamboni
An ice resurfacer is a truck-like vehicle or smaller device used to clean and smooth the surface of an ice rink. The
first ice resurfacer was developed by Frank J. Zamboni in 1949 in the city of Paramount, California. Zamboni
(pronounced /z‫و‬mὀboὀni/) is an internationally registered trademark, though the term is often used as a generic
colloquialism for ice resurfacing vehicles. The heart of an ice resurfacer is the 'conditioner', a large device dragged
behind the vehicle. A large, very sharp blade, similar to those used in industrial paper cutters, shaves the surface off
the ice, and an auger in front of the blade sweeps the accumulating shavings to the center of the conditioner, where a
second auger (or, in early models, a paddle-and-chain conveyor) picks them up.
Directly in front of the blade, wash water is often sprayed on the ice by nozzles at either end of the conditioner. This
wash water is confined inside the conditioner by the runners on either end and a rubber squeegee at the rear of the
conditioner. The wash water is picked up by a vacuum nozzle, filtered through a screen, and recirculated. This
washing process removes any foreign material that might otherwise become embedded in the ice surface. At the rear
of the conditioner, a sprinkler pipe wets a cloth towel that lays down fresh water to fill the residual grooves, and
forms a new ice surface.
Hot water (140°F to 160°F, 60°C) is frequently used where available because it melts and smooths the rough top
layer of ice to create a flat, smooth surface. This water in many rinks is filtered and treated before being heated to
remove any residual minerals and chemicals in the water. These chemicals and minerals could otherwise make the
ice brittle or soft, give it pungent odors, or make it cloudy.
The rest of the machine exists to support the conditioner. An engine or electric motor provides propulsion (four-
wheel drive occasionally equipped with carbide-tipped tire studs) and hydraulic power. The main tank holds clean
water for making new ice. The wash tank holds a supply of water for the optional wash function. The 'dump tank'
holds the shaved ice picked up by the augers. The conditioner and dump tank are raised and lowered by hydraulic
lifts, while the augers are powered by hydraulic motors. Most ice resurfacers run on natural gas,
propane/LPG/autogas or electric power, or less commonly on gasoline.
Many ice resurfacers are fitted with a 'board brush', a rotary brush powered by a hydraulic motor. The board brush is
extended and retracted on the left side of the machine by a hydraulic arm. The brush sweeps into the conditioner the
bits of loose ice that accumulate along the kick plates below the dasher boards of the rink. The use of a board brush
can dramatically reduce the need for edging of the rink.
Smaller scale devices and vehicles classified as ice resurfacers have also been designed to provide a smooth ice
surface in a manner similar to a traditional resurfacer, but are smaller and less expensive. These smaller vehicles can
be classified as devices that are self-propelled or devices that are pushed by the operator. Self-propelled vehicles
typically incorporate the elements of an ice resurfacer, including an ice-cutting blade and water tank, but on a smaller
scale, and are usually mounted to an ATV or golf cart vehicle. The other group of ice resurfacers are pushed along
the ice to create an even layer of smooth ice, but at a cost suitable for home use.
Ice edgers. The ice around the edges of a rink has a tendency to build up because the conditioner blade does not
extend all the way to the outer edges of the conditioner and it is unwise to "ride" (drive with the conditioner
touching) the dasherboards. An ice edger, a small device similar to a rotary lawn mower, is used to cut down the
edges of the ice surface that the ice resurfacer cannot cut. An ice edger can not shave ice that has an overall bowl or
mushroom shape. Drivers using latest model ice resurfacing equipment can effectively cut ice edges within
millimeters of the dasherboard.
Frank J. Zamboni & Co., Inc. has taken a strong stance against its trademark dilution, the Zamboni name being used
as a genericized trademark for ice resurfacers. On August 15, 2000, Frank J. Zamboni & Co, Inc. was awarded a
registered trademark on the design and configuration of the Zamboni Ice Resurfacer by the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office [citation needed]. There is a band by the name of The Zambonis, which they use under the terms
of a licensing agreement from the Zamboni corporation [Branch, John, "As Economy Stumbles, the Zamboni Glides
On," New York Times, May 23, 2009, p. A1, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/sports/hockey/23zamboni.html].
Gram-positive anthrax bacteria (purple rods) in cerebrospinal fluid sample. If present, a Gram-negative bacterial species would
appear pink (the other cells are white blood cells), from Anthrax Bioterrorism Investigation Team, "Bioterrorism-Related
Inhalational Anthrax: The First 10 Cases Reported in the United States," Emerging Infectious Diseases 7: 6 (December 2001),
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol7no6/jernigan.htm.*
anthrax
Infectious disease of warm-blooded animals, caused by Bacillus anthracis, a bacterium that, in spore form, can retain
its virulence in contaminated soil or other material for many years. A disease chiefly of herbivores, the infection may
be acquired by persons handling the wool, hair, hides, bones, or carcasses of affected animals. Infection may lead to
death from respiratory or cardiac complications (within 1–2 days if acute), or the animal may recover. In humans,
anthrax occurs as a cutaneous, pulmonary, or intestinal infection. The most common type, which occurs as an
infection of the skin, may lead to fatal septicemia (blood poisoning). The pulmonary form of the disease is usually
fatal. Sanitary working environments for susceptible workers are critical to preventing anthrax; early diagnosis and
treatment are also of great importance. In recent decades, various countries have attempted to develop anthrax as a
weapon of biological warfare; many factors, including its extreme potency (vastly greater than any chemical-warfare
agent), make it the preferred biological-warfare agent.
Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it
affects both humans and other animals. There are effective vaccines against anthrax, and some forms of the disease
respond well to antibiotic treatment. Like many other members of the genus Bacillus, Bacillus anthracis can form
dormant endospores (often referred to as "spores" for short, but not to be confused with fungal spores) that are able
to survive in harsh conditions for decades or even centuries ["Crossrail work stopped after human bones found on
site," London Evening Standard, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23689394-details/...]. Such spores
can be found on all continents, even Antarctica [Hudson, J. A., Daniel, R. M., Morgan, H. W. "Acidophilic and
thermophilic Bacillus strains from geothermally heated antarctic soil," FEMS Microbiol Lett 60 (3): 279–282
(2006)]. When spores are inhaled, ingested, or come into contact with a skin lesion on a host they may reactivate and
multiply rapidly.
Anthrax commonly infects wild and domesticated herbivorous mammals that ingest or inhale the spores while
grazing. Ingestion is thought to be the most common route by which herbivores contract anthrax. Carnivores living in
the same environment may become infected by consuming infected animals. Diseased animals can spread anthrax to
humans, either by direct contact (e.g., inoculation of infected blood to broken skin) or by consumption of a diseased
animal's flesh. Anthrax spores can be produced in vitro and used as a biological weapon. Anthrax does not spread
directly from one infected animal or person to another; it is spread by spores. These spores can be transported by
clothing or shoes. The body of an animal that had active anthrax at the time of death can also be a source of anthrax
spores.
Bacillus anthracis is a rod-shaped, Gram-positive, aerobic bacterium about 1 by 9 micrometers in length. It was
shown to cause disease by Robert Koch in 1876 [Koch, R., "Untersuchungen über Bakterien: V. Die ‫ؤ‬tiologie der
Milzbrand-Krankheit, begründet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus anthracis," Beitrage zur Biologie der
Pflanzen 2 (2): 277–310 (1876), http://edoc.rki.de/documents/rk/508-5-26/PDF/5-26.pdf]. The bacterium normally
rests in endospore form in the soil, and can survive for decades in this state. Herbivores are often infected whilst
grazing or browsing, especially when eating rough, irritant, or spiky vegetation: the vegetation has been hypothesized
to cause wounds within the gastrointestinal tract permitting entry of the bacterial endo-spores into the tissues, though
this has not been proven. Once ingested or placed in an open cut, the bacterium begins multiplying inside the animal
or human and typically kills the host within a few days or weeks. The endo-spores germinate at the site of entry into
the tissues and then spread via the circulation to the lymphatics, where the bacteria multiply.
It is the production of two powerful exo-toxins and lethal toxin by the bacteria that causes death. Veterinarians can
often tell a possible anthrax-induced death by its sudden occurrence, and by the dark, non-clotting blood that oozes
from the body orifices. Most anthrax bacteria inside the body after death are out-competed and destroyed by
anaerobic bacteria within minutes to hours postmortem. However, anthrax vegetative bacteria that escape the body
via oozing blood or through the opening of the carcass may form hardy spores. One spore forms per one vegetative
bacterium. The triggers for spore formation are not yet known, though oxygen tension and lack of nutrients may play
roles. Once formed, these spores are very hard to eradicate.
Overview. Until the twentieth century, anthrax infections killed hundreds and thousands of animals and people each
year in Australia, Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe, particularly in the concentration camps during WWII
[Cherkasskiy, B. L., "A national register of historic and contemporary anthrax foci," Journal of Applied
Microbiology 87 (2): 192–195 (1999), doi:10.1046/j.1365-2672.1999.00868]. French scientist Louis Pasteur
developed the first effective vaccine for anthrax in 1881 [David V. Cohn, "Life and Times of Louis Pasteur,"
University of Louisville: School of Dentistry, February 11, 1996,
http://web.archive.org/web/20080408070236/http://louisville.edu/library/ekstr om/special/pasteur/cohn.html;
Mikesell, P., Ivins, B. E., Ristroph, J. D., Vodkin, M. H., Dreier, T. M., Leppla, S. H., "Plasmids, Pasteur, and
Anthrax," ASM News 49: 320–2 (1983), http://www.asm.org/ASM/files/CCLIBRARYFILES
/FILENAME/0000000221/490783p320.pd f; "Robert Koch (1843-1910),"
http://german.about.com/library/blerf_koch.htm].
Thanks to over a century of animal vaccination programs, sterilization of raw animal waste materials and anthrax
eradication programs in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia,
anthrax infection is now relatively rare in domestic animals, with only a few dozen cases reported every year.
Anthrax is especially rare in dogs and cats, as is evidenced by a single reported case in the USA in 2001 ["Can Dogs
Get Anthrax?" Canine Nation, October 30, 2001, http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0110/articles /011030a.htm].
Anthrax typically does not cause disease in carnivores and scavengers, even when these animals consume anthraxinfected carcasses. Anthrax outbreaks do occur in some wild animal populations with some regularity [Dragon, D.
C., Elkin, B. T., Nishi, J. S., Ellsworth, T. R., "A review of anthrax in Canada and implications for research on the
disease in northern bison," Journal of Applied Microbiology 87 (2): 208 (1999), doi:10.1046/j.13652672.1999.00872.x]. The disease is more common in developing countries without widespread veterinary or human
public health programs.
Bacillus anthracis bacterial spores are soil-borne, and, because of their long lifetime, they are still present globally
and at animal burial sites of anthrax-killed animals for many decades; spores have been known to have reinfected
animals over 70 years after burial sites of anthrax-infected animals were disturbed [Guillemin, Jeanne, ANTHRAX:
The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (University of California Press, 1999), p. 34].
The virulent Ames strain, which was used in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, has received the most
news coverage of any anthrax outbreak. The Ames strain contains two virulence plasmids, which separately encode
for a three-protein toxin, called anthrax toxin, and a poly-glutamic acid capsule. Nonetheless, the Vollum strain,
developed but never used as a biological weapon during the Second World War, is much more dangerous. The
Vollum (also incorrectly referred to as Vellum) strain was isolated in 1935 from a cow in Oxfordshire, UK. This is
the same strain that was used during the Gruinard bioweapons trials. A variation of Vollum known as "Vollum 1B"
was used during the 1960s in the US and UK bioweapon programs. Vollum 1B is widely believed [Scott Shane,
"Army harvested victims' blood to boost anthrax," Boston Sun, December 23, 2001; UCLA Dept. of Epidemiology
site, http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/armyanthraxvictimsblood.html] to have been isolated from William A.
Boyles, a 46-year-old scientist at the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp (later Fort) Detrick
(precursor to USAMRIID) who died in 1951 after being accidentally infected with the Vollum strain. The Sterne
strain, named after the Trieste-born immunologist Max Sterne, is an attenuated strain used as a vaccine, which
contains only the anthrax toxin virulence plasmid and not the poly-glutamic acid capsule expressing plasmid.
Biological warfare. Anthrax was first tested as a biological warfare agent by Unit 731 of the Japanese Kwantung
Army in Manchuria during the 1930s; some of this testing involved intentional infection of prisoners of war,
thousands of whom died. Anthrax, designated at the time as Agent N, was also investigated by the allies in the 1940s.
Weaponized anthrax was part of the U.S. stockpile prior to 1972, when the United States signed the Biological
Weapons Convention [Croddy, Eric, Wirtz, James J., Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide
Policy, Technology, and History (ABC-CLIO, 2005), p. 21].
Anthrax spores can and have been used as a biological warfare weapon. Its first modern incidence occurred when
Scandinavian freedom fighters ("the rebel groups") supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with
unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916 [Bisher, Jamie, "During World War I,
Terrorists Schemed to Use Anthrax in the Cause of Finnish Independence," Military History, August 2003, pp. 17–
22, http://www.geocities.com/jamie_bisher/anthrax.htm]. There is a long history of practical bioweapons research in
this area. For example, in 1942 British bioweapons trials [http://www.sonicbomb.com/v1.php?
vid=military/anthrax_island.wmv&id=533&ttitl e=Anthrax%20Island] severely contaminated Gruinard Island in
Scotland with anthrax spores of the Vollum-14578 strain, making it a no-go area until it was decontaminated in 1990
[Cole, Leonard A., Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas (Rowman and
Littlefield, 1990), http://leonardcole.com/otherworks.htm; "Saddam's germ war plot is traced back to one Oxford
cow," The Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1726745,00.html]. The Gruinard trials involved testing
the effectiveness of a submunition of an "N-bomb"—a biological weapon. Additionally, five million "cattle cakes"
impregnated with anthrax were prepared and stored at Porton Down for "Operation Vegetarian" — an anti-livestock
weapon intended for attacks on Germany by the Royal Air Force ["UK planned to wipe out Germany with anthrax,"
Sunday Herald (Glasgow), October 14, 2001, http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/WSC/Bwar2.html]. The infected
cattle cakes were to be dropped on Germany in 1944. However neither the cakes nor the bomb was used; the cattle
cakes were incinerated in late 1945. More recently, the Rhodesian government used anthrax against cattle and
humans in the period 1978–1979 during its war with black nationalists [Southern African News Feature, "The plague
wars," http://www.sardc.net/editorial/sanf/2001/iss21/specialreport.html].
American military and British Army personnel are routinely vaccinated against anthrax prior to active service in
places where biological attacks are considered a threat. The anthrax vaccine, produced by BioPort Corporation,
contains non-living bacteria, and is approximately 93% effective in preventing infection [citation needed].
Weaponized stocks of anthrax in the US were destroyed in 1971–72 after President Nixon ordered the dismantling of
US biowarfare programs in 1969 and the destruction of all existing stockpiles of bioweapons.
Alpha hemolytic S. viridans (left) and Beta (right) hemolytic S. pyogenes streptococci growing on blood agar (work
by GrahamColm, July 17, 2010).*
streptococcus
Main Entry: strep£to£coc£cus
Pronunciation: -‚k‫ن‬-k„s
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural strep£to£coc£ci \-‚k‫ن‬-ƒkˆ, -(ƒ)k‡; -‚k‫ن‬k-ƒsˆ, -(ƒ)s‡\
Etymology: New Latin
Date: 1877 : any of a genus (Streptococcus) of spherical or ovoid chiefly nonmotile and parasitic gram-positive
bacteria that divide only in one plane, occur in pairs or chains, and include important pathogens of humans and
domestic animals; broadly : a coccus occurring in chains.
Streptococcus is a genus of spherical Gram-positive bacteria belonging to the phylum Firmicutes [Ryan, K. J., Ray,
C. G., Ed., Sherris Medical Microbiology, 4th Ed. (McGraw Hill, 2004)] and the lactic acid bacteria group. Cellular
division occurs along a single axis in these bacteria, and thus they grow in chains or pairs, hence the name — from
Greek st?ept?? streptos, meaning easily bent or twisted, like a chain (twisted chain). Contrast this with staphylococci,
which divide along multiple axes and generate grape-like clusters of cells. Most streptococci are oxidase- and
catalase-negative, and many are facultative anaerobes. In 1984, many organisms formerly considered Streptococcus
were separated out into the genera Enterococcus and Lactococcus [Facklam, R., "What happened to the streptococci:
overview of taxonomic and nomenclature changes," Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 15 (4): 613–30 (October 2002),
doi:10.1128 /CMR.15.4.613-630.2002, http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=12364372].
In addition to streptococcal pharyngitis (or strep throat), certain Streptococcus species are responsible for many
cases of meningitis, bacterial pneumonia, endocarditis, erysipelas and necrotizing fasciitis (the 'flesh-eating' bacterial
infections). However, many streptococcal species are non-pathogenic. Indeed, Streptococci are a necessary
ingredient in Emmentaler ("Swiss") cheese. Streptococci are also part of the normal commensal microbiome of the
mouth, skin, intestine, and upper respiratory tract of humans.
As a rule, individual species of Streptococcus are classified based on their hemolytic properties [Patterson, M. J.
"Streptococcus," in Baron's Medical Microbiology, Baron, S., et al, Eds., 4th Ed. (Univ of Texas Medical Branch,
1996), via NCBI Bookshelf, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=mmed.section.824]. Alpha hemolysis is
caused by an oxidation of iron in hemoglobin, giving it a greenish color on blood agar. Beta-hemolysis is complete
rupture of red blood cells, giving distinct, wide, clear areas around bacterial colonies on blood agar. Other
streptococci are labeled as gamma hemolytic, actually a misnomer, as no hemolysis takes place.
In the medical setting, the most important groups are the alpha-hemolytic streptococci, S. pneumoniae and
Streptococcus Viridans-group, and the beta-hemolytic streptococci of Lancefield groups A and B (also known as
"Group A strep" and "Group B strep"). Beta-hemolytic streptococci are further characterised via the Lancefield
serotyping – based on specific carbohydrates in the bacterial cell wall [Facklam (2002)]. These are named Lancefield
groups A to V (except I and J).
Strychnos toxifera (Curare) from Koehler's Medicinal-Plants (1887), http://pharm1.pharmazie.unigreifswald.de/allgemei/koehler/koeh-eng.htm (image processed by Thomas Schoepke at www.plant-pictures.de).*
curare
Main Entry: cu£ra£re
Variant: also cu£ra£ri \ky|-‚r‫ن‬r-‡, k|-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Portuguese & Spanish curare, from Carib kurari
Date: 1777 : a dried aqueous extract especially of a vine (as Strychnos toxifera of the family Loganiaceae or
Chondodendron tomentosum of the family Menispermaceae) used by So. American Indians to poison arrow tips and
in medicine to produce muscular relaxation.
Curare /kju?'r??ri?/["curare," in Oxford English Dictionary, 2d Ed. (Oxford University Press, 1989),
http://oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=curare] is a common name for various arrow poisons originating
from South America. The three main types of curare are:
•
tubocurare (also known as tube or bamboo curare, because of its packing into hollow bamboo tubes; main
toxin is D-tubocurarine). It is a mono-quaternary alkaloid, an isoquinoline derivative;
•
calebas curare (also called "gourd curare" by older British classifications, being packed into hollow gourds;
main toxins are alloferine and toxiferine);
•
pot curare (packed in terra cotta pots; main toxins are protocurarine, protocurine, and protocuridine);
Of these three types, some formulas belonging to the calebas curare are the most toxic, relative to their LD50 values.
Pharmacological properties. Curare is an example of a non-depolarizing muscle relaxant that blocks the nicotinic
acetylcholine receptor (nAChR), one of the two types of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors. The main toxin of curare, dtubocurarine, occupies the same position on the receptor as ACh with an equal or greater affinity, and elicits no
response, making it a competitive antagonist. The antidote for curare poisoning is an acetylcholinesterase (AChE)
inhibitor (anti-cholinesterase), such as physostigmine or neostigmine. By blocking ACh degradation, AChE
inhibitors raise the amount of ACh in the neuromuscular junction; the accumulated ACh will then correct for the
effect of the curare by activating the receptors not blocked by toxin at a higher rate.
History. Curare has been used historically as a paralyzing poison by South American indigenous people. The prey is
shot by arrows or blowgun darts that are dipped in curare, which leads to asphyxiation as the respiratory muscles of
the hunted animal are unable to contract. The word curare is derived from wurari, a word from the Carib language of
the Macusi Indians of Guyana [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=curare].
In 1596 Sir Walter Raleigh mentioned the arrow poison in his book Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful
Empire of Guiana (now Guyana), though it is possible that the poison he described was not curare at all [Carman, J.
A., Anaesthesia 23 (1968), p. 706]. In 1780, Abbe Felix Fontana discovered that it acted on the capability of
voluntary muscles rather than on nerves and the heart [The Gale Encyclopedia of Science, 3rd Ed.]. In 1800,
Alexander von Humboldt gave the first western account of how the toxin was prepared from plants by Orinoco River
natives [Humboldt, Alexander von, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the
Year 1799-1804, Vol. 2, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7014].
During 1811-1812 Sir Benjamin Collins Brody (1783–1862) experimented with curare [Phil. Trans. 101 (1811) p.
194; 102 (1812), p. 205]. He was the first to show that curare does not kill the animal and the recovery is complete if
the animal’s respiration is maintained artificially. In 1825 Charles Waterton described a classical experiment in
which he kept a curarized female donkey alive by artificial respiration with a bellows through a tracheostomy
["Arrow Poison to Surgical Muscle Relaxant," http://www.yeoldelog.com/medicinal/curare.shtml%7CFrom].
Waterton is also credited with bringing curare to Europe [reprinted in "Classical File," Survey of Anesthesiology 22
(1978), p. 98]. Robert Hermann Schomburgk, who was a trained botanist, identified the vine as one of the Strychnos
genus and gave it the now accepted name Strychnos toxifera [Waterton and Wouralia, British Journal of
Pharmacology 126 (1999), 1685–1689, http://www.nature.com/bjp/journal/v126/n8/full/0702409a.html%
7CWaterton].
George Harley (1829–1896) showed in 1850 that curare (wourali) was effective for the treatment of tetanus and
strychnine poisoning [Paton A., Practitioner 223 (1979), p. 849;
http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/3230.html%7CGeorge]. From 1887 the Burroughs Wellcome catalogue
listed under its 'Tabloids' brand name, tablets of curare at 1/12 grain (price 8 shillings) for use in preparing a solution
for hypodermic injection. In 1914 Henry Hallett Dale (1875–1968) described the physiological actions of
acetylcholine [Dale H. H., J. Pharmac. Exp. Ther. 6 (1914), p. 147]. After twenty years he showed that acetylcholine
is responsible for neuromuscular transmission which can be blocked by curare [Dale H. H., Br. Med. J. 1 (1934), p.
835].
The best known and historically most important toxin (because of its medical applications) is d-tubocurarine. It was
isolated from the crude drug (from a museum sample of curare) in 1935 by Harold King (1887–1956) of London,
working in Sir Henry Dale’s laboratory. He also established its chemical structure [King H. J., Chem. Soc. 57 (1935),
p. 1381; Nature, Lond. 135 (1935), p. 469]. It was introduced into anesthesia in the early 1940s as a muscle relaxant
for surgery. Curares are active — toxic or muscle-relaxing, depending on the intention of their use — only by an
injection or a direct wound contamination by poisoned dart or arrow. It is harmless if taken orally
[http://www.yeoldelog.com/medicinal/curare.shtml%7CFrom; "Curare - Chondrodendron tomentosum,"
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/curare.htm] because curare compounds are too large and too highly charged to
pass through the lining of the digestive tract to be absorbed into the blood. For this reason, native tribes are able to
safely eat curare-poisoned prey. In medicine, curare has been superseded by a number of curare-like agents, such as
rocuronium, which have a similar pharmacodynamic profile but fewer side effects.
~ page 218 ~
Blake's "Ancient of Days," described in Chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel.*
Blake, William
born Nov. 28, 1757, London, Eng.
died Aug. 12, 1827, London
English poet, painter, engraver, and visionary.
Though he did not attend school, he was trained as an engraver at the Royal Academy and opened a print shop in
London in 1784. He developed an innovative technique for producing coloured engravings and began producing his
own illustrated books of poetry with his “illuminated printing,” including Songs of Innocence (1789), The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell (1793), and Songs of Experience (1794). Jerusalem (1804–20), his third major epic treating the
fall and redemption of humanity, is his most richly decorated book. His other major works include The Four Zoas
(1795–1804) and Milton (1804–08). A late series of 22 watercolours inspired by the Book of Job includes some of
his best-known pictures. He was called mad because he was single-minded and unworldly; he lived on the edge of
poverty and died in neglect. His books form one of the most strikingly original and independent bodies of work in
the Western cultural tradition. Ignored by the public of his day, he is now regarded as one of the earliest and greatest
figures of Romanticism.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake, "The Tiger," lines 1-4 (1794), in An Anthology of English Literature, R. P. McCutcheon, W. H.
Vann, Eds. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1931), p. 537
William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick St) in the Soho district of
London. He was the third of seven children [http://www.poets.org/poet.php /prmPID/116], two of whom died in
infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier [Bentley (1995)]. William attended school only long enough to learn
reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Wright
Armitage Blake [Raine, Kathleen, World of Art: William Blake (Thames & Hudson, 1970)]. The Blakes were
Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church. The Bible was an early and profound
influence on Blake, and would remain a source of inspiration throughout his life.
On 4 August 1772, Blake became apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, for the term of seven
years [Bentley, Gerald Eades, and Bentley Jr., G., William Blake: The Critical Heritage (1995), pp. 34-5]. At the
end of this period, at the age of 21, he was to become a professional engraver. No record survives of any serious
disagreement or conflict between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship. However, Peter Ackroyd's
biography notes that Blake was later to add Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries—and then cross it out [Peter
Ackroyd, Blake (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), p. 43]. This aside, Basire's style of engraving was of a kind held to be
old-fashioned at the time [Blake, William, The Poems of William Blake (1893)], and Blake's instruction in this
outmoded form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life.
After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (perhaps to settle a
quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). His experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form
his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, and
varicoloured waxworks. Ackroyd notes that "...the most immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness
and colour [Ackroyd (1995), p. 44]." In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally
interrupted by the boys of Westminster School, one of whom "tormented" Blake so much one afternoon that he
knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence [Blake, William, and
Tatham, Frederick, The Letters of William Blake: Together with a Life (1906), p. 7]." Blake beheld more visions in
the Abbey, of a great procession of monks and priests, while he heard "the chant of plain-song and chorale."
On 8 October 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near the Strand. While
the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six-year
period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens,
championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude
towards art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that the
"disposition to abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake
responded, in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone
Distinction of Merit [E691. All quotations from Blake's writings are from Erdman, David V., The Complete Poetry
and Prose of William Blake, 2d Ed., http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/Blake/blaketxt1/home.html; subsequent
references follow the convention of providing plate and line numbers where appropriate, followed by "E" and the
page number from Erdman, and correspond to Blake's often unconventional spelling and punctuation]."
Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynolds'
fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael.
David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the president's opinions
(like Blake, Reynolds held history painting to be of greater value than landscape and portraiture), but rather "against
his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice [Bindman, D., "Blake as a Painter" in The Cambridge Companion
to William Blake, Morris Eaves, Ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 86]." Certainly Blake was
not averse to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between 1780 and 1808. Blake
became friends with John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland during his first year at the Royal
Academy. They shared radical views, with Stothard and Cumberland joining the Society for Constitutional
Information [Ackroyd (1995), pp. 69–76].
Blake met Catherine Boucher in 1782. At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a
refusal of his marriage proposal. He recounted the story of his heartbreak for Catherine and her parents, after which
he asked Catherine, "Do you pity me?" When she responded affirmatively, he declared, "Then I love you." Blake
married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate,
Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. The original wedding certificate may still be viewed at the church,
where a commemorative stained-glass window was installed between 1976 and 1982 ["St Mary's Modern Stained
Glass," http://home.clara.net/pkennington /VirtualTour /windows_modern.htm#Blake]. Later, in addition to teaching
Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver. Throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aid
to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.
Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed around 1783 [reproduction of 1783 edition
(London: Tate Publishing)]. After his father's death, William and former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a
print shop in 1784, and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson [Ackroyd (1995), p. 96]. Johnson's
house was a meeting-place for some of the leading English intellectual dissidents of the time: theologian and scientist
Joseph Priestley, philosopher Richard Price, artist John Henry Fuseli ["Biographies of William Blake and Henry
Fuseli," http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/romanticism/Henry-Fuseli-William- Blake.html], early feminist
Mary Wollstonecraft and Anglo-American revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and
William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the French revolution and American revolutions and wore a Phrygian
cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
in France. In 1784, Blake also composed his unfinished manuscript An Island in the Moon.
Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (1788; 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem to have shared
some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence proving without doubt that
they actually met. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced
chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment.
Relief etching. In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began to experiment with relief etching, a method he would use to
produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing,
and final products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on
copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in
the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid to dissolve the untreated copper and
leave the design standing in relief (hence the name).
This is a reversal of the normal method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate
printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching (which Blake also referred to as "stereotype" in The Ghost of Abel)
was intended as a means for producing his illuminated books more quickly than via intaglio. Stereotype, a process
invented in 1725, consisted of making a metal cast from a wood engraving, but Blake’s innovation was, as described
above, very different. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-coloured in water colours and stitched
together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of
Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem [Viscomi, J., Blake
and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Phillips, M., William Blake: The
Creation of the Songs (London: The British Library, 2000)].
Engravings. Although Blake has become most famous for his relief etching, his commercial work largely consisted
of intaglio engraving, the standard process of engraving in the eighteenth century in which the artist would incise an
image into the copper plate. This was a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to
complete, but as Blake's contemporary, John Boydell, realised, such engraving offered a "missing link with
commerce," enabling artists to connect with a mass audience and so becoming an immensely important activity by
the end of the eighteenth century [Eaves, Morris, The Counter Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 68-9].
Blake also employed intaglio engraving in his own work, most notably for the illustrations of the Book of Job,
completed just before his death. Most critical work has tended to concentrate on Blake's relief etching as a technique
because it is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study draws attention to Blake's surviving plates,
including those for the Book of Job: these demonstrate that he made frequent use of a technique known as
"repoussage," a means of obliterating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting the back of the plate. Such
techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different to the much faster and fluid way of drawing on a
plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates why the engravings took so long to complete [Sung,
Mei-Ying, William Blake and the Art of Engraving (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009)].
See also Act I, Signature iv - (26).
Airborne troops seated in an Airspeed Horsa of the Heavy Glider Conversion Unit at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire,
ready for take off. By RAF Official photographer Goodchild, A. (P/O), 28 May 1943 (Imperial War Museum ref CH
10208).*
Normandy Campaign
Allied invasion of northern Europe in World War II that began on June 6, 1944, with the largest amphibious landing
in history in Normandy, France. Also called Operation Overlord, the landing transported 156,000 U.S., British, and
Canadian troops across the English Channel in over 5,000 ships and 10,000 planes. Commanded by Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the Allied forces landed at five beaches on the Normandy coast and soon established lodgement areas,
despite stiff German resistance and heavy losses at the code-named Omaha Beach and Juno Beach. Allied air
supremacy prevented rapid German reinforcements, and discord between Adolf Hitler and his generals stalled crucial
counterattacks. Though delayed by heavy fighting near Cherbourg and around Caen, the Allied ground troops broke
out of the beachheads in mid-July and began a rapid advance across northern France. The Normandy Campaign is
traditionally considered to have concluded with the liberation of Paris on Aug. 25, 1944.
Cornelius Ryan (5 June 1920 – 23 November 1974), was an Irish journalist and author mainly known for his writings
on popular military history, especially his World War II books: The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 D-Day (1959), The
Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974). Ryan was born in Dublin and educated at Synge Street CBS,
Portobello. He was an altar boy at St. Kevin's Church, Harrington Street and studied the violin at the Irish Academy
of Music in Dublin ["Milestones," TIME, December 9, 1974, http://www.time.com/time/printout
/0,8816,908994,00.html]. Ryan moved to London in 1940, and became a war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph
in 1941.
He initially covered the air war in Europe, flew along on fourteen bombing missions with the Eighth and Ninth
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), and then joined General George S. Patton's Third Army and covered its
actions until the end of the European war. He transferred to the Pacific theater in 1945, and then to Jerusalem in
1946. Ryan emigrated to the United States in 1947 to work for TIME, where he reported on the postwar tests of
atomic weapons carried out by the United States in the Pacific. He then reported for TIME on the Israeli war in 1948
[ibid]. This was followed by work for other magazines, including Collier's Weekly and Reader's Digest.
The Longest Day is a book by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959, telling the story of D-Day, the first day of the
World War II invasion of Normandy. It includes details of Operation Deadstick, the coup de main operation by
gliderborne troops to capture both Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge before the main assault on the Normandy
beaches. It sold tens of millions of copies in eighteen different languages [Michael Shapiro, "The Reporter Who
Time Forgot," Columbia Journalism Review, May-June 2010].
The Normandy landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the landing operations of the Allied invasion of
Normandy, in Operation Overlord, during World War II. The landings commenced on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (DDay), beginning at 6:30 AM British Double Summer Time (GMT+2). In planning, D-Day was the term used for the
day of actual landing, which was dependent on final approval.
The landings were conducted in two phases: an airborne assault landing of 24,000 British, American, Canadian and
Free French airborne troops shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured
divisions on the coast of France starting at 6:30 AM. There were also decoy operations under the codenames
Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable to distract the German forces from the real landing areas [Hakim, Joy, A
History of Us: War, Peace and All That Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 157–161].
Airborne operations. The success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgement
from which to expand the beachhead to allow the build up of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The
amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the build up of sufficient forces
in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy's ability to organize and launch counterattacks during this critical period, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives, such as bridges, road
crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne
landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the
beaches, and in some cases to neutralize German coastal defence batteries and more quickly expand the area of the
beachhead. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach. The
British 6th Airborne Division was assigned to similar objectives on the eastern flank. In Operations Dingson and
Samwest, 530 Free French paratroopers from the British Special Air Service Brigade were assigned to objectives in
Brittany from 5 June to August [see Free French SAS lieutenant veteran Corta, Henry (1921-1998), Les bérets
rouges (1952); Qui ose gagne (Who dares wins) (1997)].
British Airborne Operations. The first Allied action of D-Day was Operation Deadstick a glider assault at 00:16 on
the bridges over the Caen canal and the River Orne. These were the only crossings of the river and canal north of
Caen around 7 kilometres (4.5 mi) from the coast, near Bénouville and Ranville. For the Germans, the crossing
provided the only route for a flanking attack on the beaches from the east. For the Allies, the crossing also was vital
for any attack on Caen from the east. The tactical objectives of the British 6th Airborne Division were (a) to capture
intact the bridges of the Bénouville-Ranville crossing, (b) to defend the crossing against the inevitable armoured
counter-attacks, (c) to destroy German artillery at the Merville battery, which threatened Sword Beach, and (d) to
destroy five bridges over the Dives River to further restrict movement of ground forces from the east.
Airborne troops, mostly paratroopers of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades, including the 1st Canadian Parachute
Battalion, began landing after midnight, 6 June and immediately encountered elements of the German 716th Infantry
Division. At dawn, the Battle Group von Luck of the 21st Panzer Division counterattacked from the south on both
sides of the Orne River. By this time the paratroopers had established a defensive perimeter surrounding the
bridgehead. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the airborne troops held. Shortly after noon, they were
reinforced by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade. By the end of D-Day, reinforced by Operation Mallard
the 6th Airborne had accomplished all of its objectives. For several days, both British and German forces took heavy
casualties as they struggled for positions around the Orne bridgehead. For example, the German 346th Infantry
Division broke through the eastern edge of the defensive line on 10 June. Finally, British paratroopers overwhelmed
entrenched panzergrenadiers in the Battle of Breville on 12 June. The Germans did not seriously threaten the
bridgehead again. 6th Airborne remained on the line until it was evacuated in early September.
U.S. Airborne Operations. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, numbering 13,000 paratroopers delivered
by 12 troop carrier groups of the IX Troop Carrier Command, were less fortunate in completing their main
objectives. To achieve surprise, the drops were routed to approach Normandy from the west. Numerous factors
affected their performance, the primary of which was the decision to make a massive parachute drop at night (a tactic
not used again for the rest of the war). As a result, 45% of units were widely scattered and unable to rally. Efforts of
the early wave of pathfinder teams to mark the landing zones were largely ineffective, and the Rebecca/Eureka
transponding radar beacons used to guide in the waves of C-47 Skytrains to the drop zones were the main component
of a flawed system.
Three regiments of 101st Airborne paratroopers were dropped first, between 00:48 and 01:40, followed by the 82nd
Airborne's drops between 01:51 and 02:42. Each operation involved approximately 400 C-47 aircraft. Two pre-dawn
glider landings brought in anti-tank guns and support troops for each division. On the evening of D-Day two
additional glider landings brought in two battalions of artillery and 24 howitzers to the 82nd Airborne. Additional
glider operations on 7 June delivered the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment to the 82nd Airborne, and two large supply
parachute drops that date were ineffective.
After 24 hours, only 2,500 troops of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd were under the control of their divisions,
approximating a third of the force dropped. The dispersal of the American airborne troops, however, had the effect
of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response. In addition, the Germans' defensive flooding, in the early
stages, also helped to protect the Americans' southern flank. Paratroopers continued to roam and fight behind enemy
lines for days. Many consolidated into small groups, rallied with NCOs or junior officers, and usually were a
hodgepodge of men from different companies, battalions, regiments, or even divisions. The 82nd occupied the town
of Sainte-Mère-‫ة‬glise early in the morning of 6 June, giving it the claim of the first town liberated in the invasion.
U.S. paratroopers were issued tin crickets for communication. See also A. C. Brown, Bodyguard of Lies ...
~ page 219 ~
Mah-jongg
Game of Chinese origin usually played by four persons with 144 domino-like tiles that are drawn and discarded until
one player secures a winning hand. The object of play is similar to that of the rummy card games. It is probably of
19th-century origin. The name was coined by J. P. Babcock, who introduced the game to the West after World War
I. The mah-jongg set includes a pair of dice, a quantity of tokens or chips used for scorekeeping, and a rack for
keeping tiles upright and keeping their faces hidden from other players.
Harbour, Algeri, Algeria, August 26, 2005 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/damouns/).*
Casbah
Main Entry: Cas£bah
Pronunciation: ‚kaz-ƒb‫ن‬, ‚k‫ن‬zFunction: noun Etymology: French, from Arabic dialect qavbah
Date: 1944 1 : a North African castle or fortress 2 : the native section of a North African city.
The Casbah (Arabic: ¡¢£¤, qasba, meaning citadel (fortress)) is specifically the citadel of Algiers in Algeria and the
traditional quarter clustered around it. More generally, a kasbah is the walled citadel of many North African cities
and towns. The name made its way into English from French in the late 19th century (as the Oxford English
Dictionary states in 1895), and continues to be spelled as acquired from that language.
History. The Casbah of Algiers is founded on the ruins of old Icosium. It is a small city which, built on a hill, goes
down towards the sea, divided in two: the High city and the Low city. One finds there masonries and mosques of the
17th century; Ketchaoua mosque (built in 1794 by the Dey Baba Hassan) flanked of two minarets, mosque el Djedid
(1660, at the time of Turkish regency) with its large finished ovoid cupola points some and its four coupolettes,
mosque El Kébir (oldest of the mosques, it was built by Almoravid ruler Yusuf ibn Tashfin and rebuilt later in 1794),
mosque Ali Betchnin (Raïs, 1623), Dar Aziza, palate of Jénina.
The Casbah played a central role during the Algerian struggle for independence (1954–1962). The Casbah was the
epicenter of the insurgency planning of the National Liberation Front (FLN) and gave them a safe haven to plan and
execute attacks against French citizens and law enforcement agents in Algeria at the time. In order to counter their
efforts, the French had to focus specifically on the Casbah. The counter-insurgency efforts of General Jacques Massu
and Major Paul Aussaresses included torture and violent martial law [Aussaresses, General Paul, The Battle of the
Casbah (New York: Enigma Books, 2002), p. vii]. They were especially effective in fighting the FLN during the
week-long strike ordered by Mohammed Larbi Ben M'hidi.
As Reuters reported in August 2008, the Casbah is in a state of neglect and certain areas are threatening collapse
["William Maclean, Aug 31, 2008," http://www.reuters.com/article /inDepthNews/idUSLB44107820080901?
pageNumber=1& virtualBrandChannel=0]. Algerian authorities list age, neglect and overpopulation as the principal
contributors to the degeneration of this historic neighborhood. Overpopulation makes the problem especially difficult
to solve because of the effort it would take to relocate everyone living there. Estimates range from 40,000-70,000
people, though it is difficult to track because of the number of squatters in vacant buildings [Algeria Channel,
http://www.algeria.com/blog/renewal-of-the-algiers-casbah]. One reason that the government wants to improve the
condition of the Casbah is that it is a potential hideout for criminals and terrorists as it once was in the late 1950s and
during the Civil insurrection of the 1990s.
Preservationist Belkacem Babaci described the situation as difficult, but not insurmountable, saying: "I still believe
it’s possible to save it, but you need to empty it and you need to find qualified people who will respect the style, the
materials. It’s a huge challenge [http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/07/05/the-casbah-crumbles-amid-alge
rias-turmoil/]."
In popular culture. The 1938 movie Algiers (a remake of the French film Pépé le Moko of the previous year) was
most Americans' introduction to the picturesque alleys and souks of the Casbah. In 1948 a musical remake, Casbah,
was released. The invitation "Come with me to the Casbah," which was heard in trailers for Algiers but not in the
film itself, became an exaggerated romantic overture, largely owing to its use by Looney Tunes cartoon character
Pepé Le Pew, himself a spoof of Pépé le Moko. The amorous skunk used "Come with me to ze Casbah" as a pickup
line. In 1954, the Looney Tunes cartoon, "The Cats Bah," specifically spoofed Algiers, with the skunk
enthusiastically declaring, "You do not have to come with me to ze Casbah... we are already 'ere!"
In the 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers, all the main characters (other than Col. Mathieu) live in the Casbah. In 1982
the English London-based punk rock group The Clash released the single "Rock the Casbah", about Iran's outlawing
of music, particularly disco [Segal, David, "No Average Joe: Fronting the Clash, Strummer Turned Punk Into a
Platform," The Washington Post, December 24, 2002: p. C01,
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/270967621...; "and for some reason I started to think about what
someone had told me earlier, that you got lashed for owning a disco album in Iran"]. The song reached #15 in the
UK music charts. The following year the single was released in the U.S., reaching #8 in the charts
[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1549]. "Rock the Casbah" was also the first song played on the Armed
Forces Radio during Operation Desert Shield. It became the unofficial anthem for the U.S. Armed Forces during the
Gulf War operations. Rachid Taha, an Algerian singer based in France closely connected to The Clash, recorded
"Rock el Casbah" in Arabic.
~ page 220 ~
Cities of Ancient Sumer. Map prepared by John D. Croft, from multiple sources, including a base map from
Bartholemews World Atlas, and the Times Atlas of the World, supplemented from various historical atlases,
Decemeber 18, 2006.*
Sumer
Region of southern Mesopotamia and site of the earliest known civilization. It was first settled c. 4500–4000 BC by a
non-Semitic people called the Ubaidians. They were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for
agriculture and developing trade. TheSumerians, who spoke a Semitic language that came to dominate the region,
arrived c. 3300 BC and established the world's first known cities. These polities evolved into city-states, which
eventually developed monarchical systems that later came to be loosely united under a single city, beginning with
Kish c. 2800 BC. Thereafter, Kish, Erech, Ur, Nippur, and Lagashvied for ascendancy for centuries. The area came
under the control of dynasties from outside the region, beginning with Elam (c. 2530–2450 BC) and later Akkad, led
by the Akkadian king Sargon (r. 2334–2279 BC). After the Akkadian dynasty collapsed, the city-states were largely
independent until they were reunified under the 3rd dynasty of Ur (21st–20th centuries BC). That final Sumerian
dynasty declined after being weakened by foreign invasions, and the Sumerians as a distinct political entity
disappeared, becoming part of the Babylonia in the 18th century BC. The Sumerian legacy includes a number of
technological and cultural innovations, including the first known wheeled vehicles, the potter's wheel, a system of
writing (see cuneiform), and written codes of law.'
Sumer (from Akkadian ‫ٹ‬umeru; Sumerian ὀὀὀ ki-en-ĝir15, approximately "land of the civilized lords" or "native
land [ĝir15 means "native, local", in some contexts also is "noble], literally, "land of the native (local, noble) lords,
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e2182.html; Stiebing (William, Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture
(1994)) has "Land of the Lords of Brightness;" Postgate (John Nicholas, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy
at the Dawn of History (Routledge, 1994) takes en as substituting eme "language", translating "land of the Sumerian
tongue," and believes it likely that eme, 'tongue', became en, 'lord', through consonantal assimilation); "Sumerian
Questions and Answers," http://www.sumerian.org /sumerfaq.htm#s37)]" was a civilization and historical region in
southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age.
Sumer was first settled between 4500 and 4000 BC by a non-Semitic people who did not speak the Sumerian
language [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/573176/Sumer]. These people are now called proto-
Euphrateans or Ubaidians [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/573176/Sumer], and had evolved from the
Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia [http://books.google.com/books]. The Ubaidians were the first civilizing
force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including
weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery
[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/573176/Sumer]. However, some, such as Piotr Michalowski and Gerd
Steiner, contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language.
Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period (4th millennium BC), continuing into the Jemdat Nasr and Early
Dynastic periods. It was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC (short
chronology). Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the third dynasty of Ur (Sumerian Renaissance)
of the 21st to 20th centuries BC.
The cities of Sumer were the first civilization to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, by perhaps c. 5000 BC
showing the use of core agricultural techniques, including large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping,
organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized labour force. The surplus of storable food created by this economy
allowed the population to settle in one place, instead of migrating after crops and grazing land. It also allowed for a
much greater population density, and in turn required an extensive labour force and division of labour. Sumer was
also the site of early development of writing, progressing from a stage of proto-writing in the mid 4th millennium BC
to writing proper in the third millennium (see Jemdet Nasr period).
Population. In spite of the importance of this region, genetic studies on the Sumerians are limited and generally
restricted to analysis of classical markers due to Iraq's modern political instability. It has been found that Y-DNA
Haplogroup J2 originated in Northern Mesopotamia [DNA Forums, "Sumerians and haplogroup J." http://dnaforums.org/index.php?showtopic=4514; N. Al-Zahery, et al., "Y-chromosome and mtDNA polymorphisms in Iraq, a
crossroad of the early human dispersal and of post-Neolithic migrations," Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
(2003)]. The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people, and spoke a "language isolate;" a number of linguists believed
they could detect a substrate language beneath Sumerian.[citation needed]. However, the archaeological record
shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the time of the Early Ubaid period (5300 – 4700 BC C-14)
settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here farmed the lands in this region that
were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
It is speculated by some archaeologists that Sumerian speakers were farmers who moved down from the north, after
perfecting irrigation agriculture there [note there is no consensus among scholars on the origins of the Sumerians].
The Ubaid pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami Transitional ware to the pottery of
the Samarra period culture (c. 5700 – 4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of
irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell
Awayli (Oueilli, Oueili) near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where 8 levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery
resembling Samarran ware. Farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a
temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive
and prosper in a difficult environment [citation needed].
Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with
the Arabian bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian litorial. The Sumerians themselves claimed kinship with the
people of Dilmun, associated with Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. Juris Yarins has suggested that they may have been
the people living in the region of the Persian Gulf before it flooded at the end of the Ice Age [citation needed].
Language and writing. The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of tablets written
in Cuneiform. Sumerian writing is the oldest example of writing on earth. Although pictures - that is, hieroglyphs
were first used, symbols were later made to represent syllables. Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write
on moist clay. This is called cuneiform. A large body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language
have survived, such as personal or business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, stories, daily records,
and even libraries full of clay tablets. Monumental inscriptions and texts on different objects like statues or bricks are
also very common. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes-intraining. Sumerian continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had
become the ruling race. The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it
belongs to no known language family; Akkadian, by contrast belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic
languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language groups. It is an
agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words, unlike
analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences.
Understanding Sumerian texts today can be problematic even for experts. Most difficult are the earliest texts, which
in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language. During the third millennium BC, they
developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread
bilingualism [Deutscher, Guy, Syntactic Change in Akkadian: The Evolution of Sentential Complementation (Oxford
University Press US, 2007), pp. 20–21]. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all
areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence [ibid].
This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund [ibid].
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd
millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate) [Woods, C., "Bilingualism, Scribal Learning, and the
Death of Sumerian," in S. L. Sanders, Ed., Margins of Writing (Chicago: Origins of Culture, 2006), pp. 91-120,
http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/OIS2.pdf], but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and
scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century CE [Campbell, Lyle, Mauricio J. Mixco, A
Glossary of Historical Linguistics (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 196].
The underside and mouth of a sturgeon (photo by Cacophony at the Oregon Zoo, August 6, 2006).*
sturgeon
Any of about 20 species (family Acipenseridae) oflarge, primitive fishes that live mainly in southern Russia,
Ukraine, and North America.
Most species live in the sea and ascend rivers to spawn; a few live permanently in fresh water. Four tactile barbels
near the toothless mouth detect invertebrates and small fishes on the mud bottom. Sturgeon flesh and eggs, or roe
(caviar), are sold for food. The swim bladder is used in isinglass, a gelatin. The Baltic sturgeon (Acipenser sturio)
and several other species are endangered. The Atlantic sturgeon (A. oxyrhynchus),however, is common along the
eastern coast of North America and generally is about 10 ft (3 m) long and weighs about 500 lb (225 kg). See also
beluga.
Sturgeon is the common name used for some 26 species of fish in the family Acipenseridae, including the genera
Acipenser, Huso, Scaphirhynchus and Pseudoscaphirhynchus. The term includes over 20 species commonly referred
to as sturgeon and several closely related species that have distinct common names, notably sterlet, kaluga and
beluga. Collectively, the family is also known as the True Sturgeons. Sturgeon is sometimes used more exclusively to
refer to the species in the two best-known genera; Acipenser and Huso.
One of the oldest families of bony fish in existence, sturgeon are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic
rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. They are distinctive for their elongated bodies, lack of
scales, and occasional great size: Sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3½ m) in length are common, and some
species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m). Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders, spawning upstream and feeding
in river deltas and estuaries. While some are entirely freshwater, very few venture into the open ocean beyond near
coastal areas.
Evolution. Sturgeon and related paddlefish appeared in the fossil record approximately 200 million years ago,
making them among the most ancient of actinopterygian fishes. In that time they have undergone remarkably little
morphological change, indicating that their evolution has been exceptionally slow and earning them informal status
as living fossils [B. G. Gardiner, "Sturgeons as living fossils," in N. Eldredge and S. M. Stanley, Eds., Living Fossils
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984), pp. 148-152; J. Krieger and P. A. Fuerst, "Evidence for a Slowed Rate of
Molecular Evolution in the Order Acipenseriformes," Molecular Biology and Evolution 19: 891-897 (2002)]. This is
explained in part by the long inter-generation time, tolerance for wide ranges of temperature and salinity, lack of
predators due to size, and the abundance of prey items in the benthic environment.
Despite the existence of a fossil record, it has been difficult to fully classify the sturgeon species or unambiguously
determine their phylogeny. This is in part due to the high individual and ontogenic variation, including geographical
clines in certain features, such as rostrum shape, number of scutes and body length. A further confounding factor is
the peculiar ability of sturgeons to produce reproductively viable hybrids, even between species assigned to different
genera. The wide range of the Acipenserids and their endangered status have made collection of systematic materials
difficult. These factors have led researchers in the past to identify over 40 additional species that were rejected by
later workers [W. E. Bemis, E. K. Findeis, and L. Grande, "An overview of Acipenseriformes," Environmental
Biology of Fishes 48: 25–71 (1997)]. It is still unclear whether the species in the Acipenser and Huso genera are
monophyletic (descended from one ancestor) or paraphyletic (descended from many ancestors)—though it is clear
that the morphologically motivated division between these two genera is not supported by the genetic evidence.
There is an ongoing effort to resolve the taxonomic confusion using a continuing synthesis of systematic data and
molecular techniques [Krieger (2002); F. Fontana, J. Tagliavini, L. Congiu, "Sturgeon genetics and cytogenetics:
recent advancements and perspectives," Genetica 111: 359–373 (2001)].
Physical Characteristics. Along with other members of the Chondrostei and the Acipenseriformes order, sturgeon are
primarily cartilaginous, lack a vertebral centrum, and are covered with bony plates called scutes rather than scales.
They also have four barbels—tactile organs that precede their toothless mouth and are dragged along often murky
river bottoms. Sturgeon are distinctly and immediately recognizable for their elongated bodies, flattened rostra,
distinctive scutes and barbels, and elongated upper tail lobes.
They are primarily benthic feeders. With their projecting wedge-shaped snout they stir up the soft bottom, and use
the barbels to detect shells, crustaceans and small fish, on which they feed. Having no teeth, they are unable to seize
prey, though larger specimens can swallow very large prey items, including whole salmon [Sergei F. Zolotukhin and
Nina F. Kaplanova, "Injuries of Salmon in the Amur River and its Estuary as an Index of the Adult Fish Mortality in
the Period of Sea Migrations," NPAFC Technical Report No. 4 (2007),
http://www.npafc.org/new/publications/Technical%20Report/TR4/page%2067-69 (Zolotukhin).pdf].
Sturgeon have been referred to as both the Leviathans and Methuselahs of freshwater fish. They are among the
largest fish: some beluga (Huso huso) in the Caspian Sea reportedly attain over 5.5 m (18 ft.) and 2000 kg [Frimodt,
C., Multilingual Illustrated Guide to the World's Commercial Coldwater Fish (Oxford, England: Osney
Mead/Fishing News Books, 1995)] (4400 lbs.) while for kaluga (H. dauricus) in the Amur River similar lengths and
over 1000 kg (2200 lbs.) weights have been reported [Krykhtin, M. L. and V. G. Svirskii, "Endemic sturgeons of the
Amur River: kaluga, Huso dauricus, and Amur sturgeon, Acipenser schrenckii," Environ. Biol. Fish 48 (1/4): 231239 (1997)]. They are also probably the longest-lived of the fishes, some living well over 100 years and attaining
sexual maturity at 20 years or more [Berg, L. S., Freshwater Fishes of the U.S.S.R. and Adjacent Countries, Vol. 1,
4th Ed. (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations Ltd., 1962 [Russian version published 1948])]. The
combination of slow growth and reproductive rates and the extremely high value placed on mature egg-bearing
females make sturgeon particularly vulnerable to overfishing.
Sturgeons are polyploid; some species have 4, 8, or 16 sets of chromosomes [Anderson, Rachel, "Shortnose
Sturgeon," McGill University (2004), http://web.archive.org/web/
20071024153413/http://biology.mcgill.ca/undergra/c 465a/biodiver/2000/shortnose-sturgeon/shortnosesturgeon.htm, http://biology.mcgill.ca/undergra/c465a/biodiver/2000/shortnose-sturgeon/shor tnose-sturgeon.htm].
Range and Habitat. Sturgeon range from subtropical to subarctic waters in North America and Eurasia. In North
America, they range along the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of Mexico to Newfoundland, including the Great Lakes
and the St. Lawrence, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as along the West coast in major rivers from
California to British Columbia. They occur along the European Atlantic coast, including the Mediterranean basin, in
the rivers that flow into the Black, Azov and Caspian seas (Danube, Dnepr, Volga and Don), the north-flowing rivers
of Russia that feed the Arctic Ocean (Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Kolyma), in the rivers of Central Asia (Amu Darya and Syr
Darya) and Lake Baikal. In the Pacific Ocean, they are found in the Amur River along the Russian-Chinese border,
on Sakhalin island, and in the Yangtze and other rivers in northeast China [Berg (1962); Froese, Rainer, and Daniel
Pauly, Eds., "Acipenseriformes," in FishBase, December 2007,
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/OrdersSummary.cfm?order=Acipenseriformes].
Throughout this extensive range, almost all species are highly threatened or vulnerable to extinction due to a
combination of habitat destruction, overfishing and pollution [ibid]. No species are known to naturally occur south of
the equator, though attempts at sturgeon aquaculture are being made in Uruguay, South Africa and other places [L.
A. Burtzev, "The History of Global Sturgeon Aquaculture," Journal of Applied Ichthyology 15 (4-5), 325–325
(1999), doi:10.1111/j.1439-0426.1999.tb00336.x].
Most species are at least partially anadromous, spawning in fresh water and feeding in nutrient rich brackish waters
of estuaries or undergoing significant migrations along coastlines. However, some species have evolved purely
freshwater existences, such as the lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) and the Baikal sturgeon (A. baerii
baicalensis), or have been forced into them by anthropogenic or natural impoundment of their native rivers, as in the
case of some subpopulations of white sturgeon (A. transmontanus) in the Columbia River [S. Duke, P. Anders, G.
Ennis, R. Hallock, J. Hammond, S. Ireland, J. Laufle, R. Lauzier, L. Lockhard, B. Marotz, V. L. Paragamian, R.
Westerhof, "Recovery plan for Kootenai River white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus)," Journal of Applied
Ichthyology 15: 4-5, 157–163 (1999)] and Siberian sturgeon (A. baerii) in the Ob basin [G. I. Ruban, The Siberian
Sturgeon Acipenser baerii Brandt: Structure and Ecology of the Species (Moscow: GEOS, 1999)].
The nutmeg tree is any of several species of trees in genus Myristica (photo by Azhar feder, July 15, 2011).*
nutmeg
Spice made from the seed of a tropical tree (Myristica fragrans), native to the Moluccas of Indonesia. It has a
distinctive pungent fragrance and is used in cooking and sachets and as incense. The tree yields fruit eight years after
sowing, reaches its prime in 25 years, and bears fruit for 60 years or longer. The name nutmeg is also applied in
different countries to other fruits or seeds, including the Brazilian nutmeg (Cryptocarya moschata), the Peruvian
nutmeg (Laurelia aromatica), and the California nutmeg (Torreya californica).
The nutmeg tree is any of several species of trees in genus Myristica. The most important commercial species is
Myristica fragrans, an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia, or Spice
Islands. The nutmeg tree is important for two spices derived from the fruit, nutmeg and mace
[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked /topic/422816/nutmeg].
Nutmeg is the actual seed of the tree, roughly egg-shaped and about 20 to 30 mm (0.8 to 1 in) long and 15 to 18 mm
(0.6 to 0.7 in) wide, and weighing between 5 and 10 g (0.2 and 0.4 oz) dried, while mace is the dried "lacy" reddish
covering or aril of the seed. The first harvest of nutmeg trees takes place 7–9 years after planting, and the trees reach
full production after 20 years. Nutmeg is usually used in powdered form. This is the only tropical fruit that is the
source of two different spices.
The common or fragrant nutmeg, Myristica fragrans, native to the Banda Islands of Indonesia, is also grown in
Penang Island in Malaysia and the Caribbean, especially in Grenada. It also grows in Kerala, a state in southern
India. Other species of nutmeg include Papuan nutmeg M. argentea from New Guinea, and Bombay nutmeg M.
malabarica from India, called jaiphal in Hindi; both are used as adulterants of M. fragrans products. Nutmeg and
mace have similar sensory qualities, with nutmeg having a slightly sweeter and mace a more delicate flavour. Mace
is often preferred in light dishes for the bright orange, saffron-like hue it imparts. Nutmeg is usually used in ground
or grated form, and is best grated fresh (see nutmeg grater).
Nutmeg is used for flavouring many dishes in all countries where it is available. In Penang cuisine, dried shredded
nutmeg rind with sugar coating is used as toppings on the uniquely Penang ais kacang. Nutmeg rind is also blended
(creating a fresh, green, tangy taste and white colour juice) or boiled (resulting in a much sweeter and brown juice) to
make iced nutmeg juice or, as it is called in Penang Hokkien, "lau hau peng." In Indian cuisine, nutmeg is used in
many sweet as well as savoury dishes (predominantly in Mughlai cuisine). It is known as jaiphal in most parts of
India, In Kannada, nutmeg is called 'Jaayi-kaayi/Jaaipatre' "jathikai"(சாதிகா) in Tamil and as jatipatri
(
) and jathi (
) seed in Kerala.
In Telugu, nutmeg is called jaaji kaaya (జ ాయ) and mace is called jaapathri (జప
). It is also added in small
quantities as a medicine for infants (janma ghutti). It may also be used in small quantities in garam masala. Ground
nutmeg is also smoked in India [citation needed].
In Middle Eastern cuisine, ground nutmeg is often used as a spice for savoury dishes. In Arabic, nutmeg is called
jawzat at-tiyb (©lª«‫زة ا‬j). In Greece and Cyprus, nutmeg is called ‫ى‬ïَ÷ïêoُ‫ٌـ‬ï (moschokarydo) (Greek: "musky nut")
and is used in cooking and savoury dishes [The Merck Index, 12th Ed. (1996)].
In originally European cuisine, nutmeg and mace are used especially in potato dishes and in processed meat
products; they are also used in soups, sauces, and baked goods. In Dutch cuisine, nutmeg is added to vegetables such
as Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and string beans. Nutmeg is a traditional ingredient in mulled cider, mulled wine,
and eggnog. Japanese varieties of curry powder include nutmeg as an ingredient.
In the Caribbean, nutmeg is often used in drinks such as the Bushwacker, Painkiller, and Barbados rum punch.
Typically it is just a sprinkle on the top of the drink. The pericarp (fruit/pod) is used in Grenada to make a jam called
morne delice. In Indonesia, the fruit is also made into jam, called selei buah pala, or is finely sliced, cooked with
sugar, and crystallised to make a fragrant candy called manisan pala (nutmeg sweets).
It is known to have been a prized and costly spice in European medieval cuisine as a flavouring, medicinal, and
preservative agent. Saint Theodore the Studite (ca. 758 – ca. 826) allowed his monks to sprinkle nutmeg on their
pease pudding when required to eat it. In Elizabethan times, it was believed nutmeg could ward off the plague, so
nutmeg was very popular [citation needed].
The small Banda Islands were up to the mid-19th century the world's only source of nutmeg and mace. Nutmeg is
noted as a very valuable commodity by Muslim sailors from the port of Basra, such as Sinbad the Sailor in the One
Thousand and One Nights. Nutmeg was traded by Arabs during the Middle Ages and sold to the Venetians for very
high prices, but the traders did not divulge the exact location of their source in the profitable Indian Ocean trade, and
no European was able to deduce their location.
In August 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca, which at the time was the hub of Asian trade, on behalf
of the king of Portugal. In November of that year, after having secured Malacca and learning of the Bandas' location,
Albuquerque sent an expedition of three ships led by his friend Antَnio de Abreu to find them. Malay pilots, either
recruited or forcibly conscripted, guided them via Java, the Lesser Sundas and Ambon to Banda, arriving in early
1512 [Hannard (1991), p. 7 (incomplete cite); Milton, Giles, Nathaniel's Nutmeg (London: Sceptre, 1999), pp. 5-7].
The first Europeans to reach the Bandas, the expedition remained in Banda for about a month, purchasing and filling
their ships with Banda's nutmeg and mace, and with cloves in which Banda had a thriving entrepôt trade [ibid]. The
first written accounts of Banda are in Suma Oriental, a book written by the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires, based
in Malacca from 1512 to 1515. Full control of this trade by the Portuguese was not possible, and they remained
participants without a foothold in the islands themselves.
The trade in nutmeg later became dominated by the Dutch in the 17th century. The English and Dutch engaged in
prolonged struggles to gain control of Run Island, then the only source of nutmeg. At the end of the Second AngloDutch War, the Dutch gained control of Run, while England controlled New Amsterdam (New York) in North
America. The Dutch managed to establish control over the Banda Islands after an extended military campaign that
culminated in the massacre or expulsion of most of the islands' inhabitants in 1621. Thereafter, the Banda Islands
were run as a series of plantation estates, with the Dutch mounting annual expeditions in local war-vessels to
extirpate nutmeg trees planted elsewhere. As a result of the Dutch interregnum during the Napoleonic Wars, the
English took temporary control of the Banda Islands from the Dutch and transplanted nutmeg trees to their own
colonial holdings elsewhere, notably Zanzibar and Grenada. The national flag of Grenada, adopted in 1974, shows a
stylised split-open nutmeg fruit.
Connecticut gets its nickname ("the Nutmeg State", "Nutmegger") from the legend that some unscrupulous
Connecticut traders would whittle "nutmeg" out of wood, creating a "wooden nutmeg" (a term which came to mean
any fraud) [Connecticut State Library: Nicknames for Connecticut, http://www.cslib.org/nicknamesCT.htm].
Medical research. One study has shown that the compound macelignan isolated from Myristica fragrans
(Myristicaceae) may exert antimicrobial activity against Streptococcus mutans, but this is not a currently used
treatment [B. Parimala Devi, et al., Journal of Pharmacy Research 2 (11), 1669-1675 (2009),
http://jpronline.info/article/view/906/708]. Nutmeg has been used in medicine since at least the seventh century. In
the 19th century it was used as an abortifacient, which led to numerous recorded cases of nutmeg poisoning.
Although used as a folk treatment for other ailments, nutmeg has no proven medicinal value today [Shafer, Jack,
"Stupid drug story of the week: The nutmeg scare," Slate.com, December 14, 2010,
http://www.slate.com/id/2277917/pagenum/all/].
Psychoactivity and toxicity. In low doses, nutmeg produces no noticeable physiological or neurological response, but
in large doses, raw nutmeg has psychoactive effects. In its freshly-ground (from whole nutmegs) form, Nutmeg
contains myristicin, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor and psychoactive substance. Myristicin poisoning can induce
convulsions, palpitations, nausea, eventual dehydration, and generalized body pain ["Low cost, high risk: accidental
nutmeg intoxication," Emerg Med J 22: 223-225, (2005), http://emj.bmj.com/cgi/content /full/22/3/223]. It is also
reputed to be a strong deliriant and psychoactive ["Nutmeg," Erowid, http://www.erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/].
Fatal myristicin poisonings in humans are very rare, but two have been reported, in an 8-year-old child [Andrew T.
Weil, "The Use of Nutmeg as a Psychotropic Agent," Bulletin on Narcotics 4: 2 (1966),
http://www.erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/nutmeg_journal1.shtml] and a 55-year-old adult, the latter case attributed to a
combination with flunitrazepam ["Nutmeg (myristicin) poisoning--report on a fatal case and a series of cases
recorded by a poison information centre," http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11343860 ]. It should also be noted
that the recreational properties of nutmeg can take about four hours to take effect, and large enough doses have been
reported to cause severe tiredness, uncontrollable and prolonged sleep coupled with dehydration. The effects have
been known to last longer than 72 hours, depending on the size of the dose ["The Nutmeg Trip that sent me to the
hospital - A first hand experience," http://nutmeghigh.com/].
Myristicin poisoning is potentially deadly to some pets and livestock, and may be caused by culinary quantities of
nutmeg harmless to humans. For this reason, for example, it is recommended not to feed eggnog to dogs ["Don't
Feed Your Dog Toxic Foods," http://www.dog-first-aid-101.com/toxic-foods.html].
zero-sum
Main Entry: zero–sum
Function: adjective
Date: 1944: of, relating to, or being a situation (as a game or relationship) in which a gain for one side entails a
corresponding loss for the other side.
In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a
participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the
participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Cutting a cake is zero-sum game,
because taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others. In contrast, non-zero-sum describes a
situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses is either less than or more than zero. A zero-sum
game is also called a strictly competitive game. Zero-sum games are most often solved with the minimax theorem
which is closely related to linear programming duality [Ken Binmore, Playing For Real: A Text on Game Theory
(Oxford University Press, US, 2007), Ch. 1 & 7], or with Nash equilibrium.
The zero-sum property (if one gains, another loses) means that any result of a zero-sum situation is Pareto optimal
(generally, any game where all strategies are Pareto optimal is called a conflict game) [Bowles, Samuel,
Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 33–36].
Situations where participants can all gain or suffer together are referred to as non-zero-sum. Thus, a country with an
excess of bananas trading with another country for their excess of apples, where both benefit from the transaction, is
in a non-zero-sum situation. Other non-zero-sum games are games in which the sum of gains and losses by the
players are sometimes more or less than what they began with.
Psychology. The most common or simple example from the subfield of Social Psychology is the concept of "Social
Traps". In some cases we can enhance our collective well-being by pursuing our personal interests — or parties can
pursue mutually destructive behavior as they choose their own ends.
Complexity. It has been theorized by Robert Wright in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that society
becomes increasingly non-zero-sum as it becomes more complex, specialized, and interdependent. As former US
President Bill Clinton states ["Wired 8.12: Bill Clinton," Wired.com, January 4, 2009,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/clinton.html]:
"The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and
national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win–win solutions
instead of win–lose solutions.... Because we find as our interdependence increases that, on the whole, we do better when other
people do better as well — so we have to find ways that we can all win, we have to accommodate each other..."
Extensions. In 1944 John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any zero-sum game involving n players
is in fact a generalized form of a zero-sum game for two players, and that any non-zero-sum game for n players can
be reduced to a zero-sum game for n + 1 players; the (n + 1) player representing the global profit or loss [Theory of
Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton University Press, 1953),
http://www.archive.org/stream/theoryofgamesand030098mbp#page/n70/mode/1 up/search/reduce].
Misunderstandings. Zero–sum games and particularly their solutions are commonly misunderstood by critics of game
theory, usually with respect to the independence and rationality of the players, as well as to the interpretation of
utility functions. Furthermore, the word "game" does not imply the model is valid only for recreational games
[Binmore (2007)].
~ page 221 ~
DVD
in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc
Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Like a CD drive,
a DVD drive uses a low-power laser to read digitized (binary) data that have been encoded onto the disc in the form
of tiny pits. Because it uses a digital format, a DVD can store any kind of data, including movies, music, text, and
graphical images. DVDs are available in single- and double-sided versions, with one or two layers of information per
side.Single-sided DVDs have become standard media for recorded motion pictures, largely replacing videotape in
the home market. A double-sided, dual-layer version can store about 30 times as much information as a standard CD.
DVDs are made in a ROM (read-only memory) format as well as in erasable (DVD-E) and recordable (DVD-R)
formats. Though DVD players can usually read CDs, CD players cannot read DVDs. It is expected that DVDs will
eventually replace CDs, especially for multimedia workstations.
See also Act I, Signature xiii - (9).
United States Marine Corps (USMC) World War I recruiting poster, circa 1918. A Marine bulldog chases a German dachshund,
taking advantage of the German nickname for Marines as "Devil Dogs." Source: University Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/41944/100.html.*
United States Marine Corps
Separate military service within the U.S. Department of the Navy (see U.S. Navy), charged with providing marine
troops for seizure and defense of advanced bases and with conducting operations on land and in the air in connection
with naval campaigns. It is also responsible for providing detachments for service aboard certain types of naval
vessels, as well as security forces for naval shore installations and U.S. diplomatic missions in foreign countries. The
corps specializes in amphibious landings, such as those on Japanese-held islands in World War II. Marines have
served in every major U.S. naval action since 1775, usually being the first or among the first to fight. In 2000 there
were some 175,000 Marines on active duty.
The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing
power projection from the sea [Gen. Charles C. Krulak, Operational Maneuver from the Sea (Headquarters Marine
Corps, 1996), http://www.dtic.mil/jv2010/usmc/omfts.pdf], using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver
combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States. In the civilian
leadership structure of the United States military, the Marine Corps is a component of the United States Department
of the Navy [United States Navy, "U.S. Navy Organization: An Overview,"
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/organization/org-over.asp; "National Security Act of 1947, SEC. 206. (a) (50 U.S.C.
409(b))," http://intelligence.senate.gov/nsaact1947.pdf], often working closely with U.S. naval forces for training,
transportation, and logistic purposes; however, in the military leadership structure the Marine Corps is a separate
branch ["National Security Act of 1947, SEC. 606. (50 U.S.C. 426)," http://intelligence.senate.gov/nsaact1947.pdf].
Captain Samuel Nicholas formed two battalions of Continental Marines on 10 November 1775 in Philadelphia as
naval infantry ["Chapter 14: United States Marine Corps," in Naval Orientation (Integrated Publishing), pp. 14–1 to
14-11, http://www.tpub.com/content/administration/12966/css/12966_273.htm]. Since then, the mission of the
Marine Corps has evolved with changing military doctrine and American foreign policy. The Marine Corps has
served in every American armed conflict and attained prominence in the 20th century when its theories and practices
of amphibious warfare proved prescient and ultimately formed the cornerstone of the Pacific campaign of World
War II [Warren, James A., American Spartans: The U.S. Marines: A Combat History From Iwo Jima to Iraq (New
York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2005)]. By the mid-20th century, the Marine Corps had become the dominant
theorist and practitioner of amphibious warfare [Hough, Col Frank O. (USMCR), Ludwig, Maj Verle E. (USMC),
and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., "Part I, Chapter 2: Evolution of Modern Amphibious Warfare, 1920–1941," in History of
U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. I: Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal (Historical Branch, HQMC,
United States Marine Corps), http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/I/USMC-I-I-2.html; Garand, George W. and
Truman R. Strobridge, "Part II, Chapter 1: The Development of FMFPac," History of U.S. Marine Corps Operation
in World War II, Vol. IV: Western Pacific Operations (Historical Branch, HQMC, United States Marine Corps,
1971), http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/IV/USMC-IV-II-1.html; Frank, Benis M. and Henry I. Saw, Jr., "Part
VI, Chapter 1: Amphibious Doctrine in World War II," in History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War
II, Vol. V: Victory and Occupation (Historical Branch, HQMC, United States Marine Corps, 1968),
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/V/USMC-V-VI-1.html]. Its ability to rapidly respond on short notice to
expeditionary crises gives it a strong role in the implementation and execution of American foreign policy [John
Howard Dalton, Secretary of the Navy, Jeremy Michael Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, Carl E. Mundy,
Commandant of the Marine Corps, Forward... From the Sea (United States Department of the Navy, 9 November
1994), http://www.navy.mil/navydata/policy/fromsea/forward.txt].
The United States Marine Corps includes just under 203,000 active duty Marines (as of October 2010)[U.S.
Department of Defense, "Armed Forces Strength Figures for October 31, 2010," Military Personnel Statistics:
Active Duty Military Strength by Service (October 2010),
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/ms0.pdf] and just under 40,000 reserve Marines (as of 2010)
[Marine Forces Reserve, "Reserve Force Figures," The Continental Marine Magazine - Almanac 2010, p. 9,
http://www.marines.mil/unit/marforres/MFRNews /ConMar/Almanac10.pdf: "The Selected Marine Corps Reserve
has approximately 41,600 Marines; the Individual Ready Reserve has approximately 60,000 Marines"]. It is the
smallest of the United States' armed forces in the Department of Defense (the United States Coast Guard is smaller,
about one-fifth the size of the Marine Corps, but is normally under the Department of Homeland Security). The
Marine Corps is nonetheless larger than the armed forces of many significant military powers; for example, it is
larger than the active duty Israel Defense Forces and the active duty British Army [CSIS, "Israeli Defense Forces,"
25 July 2006, p. 12, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/050323_memilbaldefine%5B1%5D.pdf; DOD, "United
States Armed Forces," 25 July 2006, http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/MILITARY/ms0.pdf].
The Marine Corps accounts for around six percent of the military budget of the United States. The cost per Marine is
$20,000 less than the cost of a serviceman from the other services, and the entire force can be used for both hybrid
and major combat operations [Samantha L. Quigley, "Marine Corps Ready for Review’s Scrutiny, Commandant
Says," http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54372]; that is, the Marines cover the entire Three Block
War. However, the per capita costs may be misleading due to being shifted to other branches, such as the Navy's
amphibious warfare ships [Donnelly, Thomas, "Misguided Military Talk," The Weekly Standard (NPR), February
10, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133648331/weekly-standard-misguided-military-talk].
Rhode Island
officially Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
State (pop., 2000: 1,048,319), northeastern U.S.
One of the New England states and the smallest U.S. state, it covers 1,212 sq mi (3,139 sq km); its capital is
Providence. Rhode Island is bordered by Massachusetts on the north and east, and Connecticut on the west. The
Rhode Island Sound on the south is the basis of the state's fishing industry. The original inhabitants of the area were
Narragansett Indians. The first European settlement was in 1636 by Roger Williams and his followers, who were
banished from Massachusetts; in 1663 King Charles II granted a charter to Williams. Though it never officially
joined the New England colonies in King Philip's War, it suffered greatly when many settlements were burned. It was
at the forefront of the fight against British customs laws that led to the American Revolution. An original state of the
Union, in 1790 it was the 13th state to ratify the Constitution, agreeing only after the Bill of Rights was included.
The state's original charter remained in effect until Dorr's Rebellion (see Thomas W. Dorr) in 1842 led to extension
of suffrage. The cotton-textile mill built by Samuel Slater in Pawtucket in 1790 initiated the Industrial Revolution in
the U.S. Manufacturingis still important to the economy, and products include jewelry and silverware, textiles and
clothing, and electrical machinery and electronics.
French cuirassiers in Paris, August 1914. These regiments wore cloth-covered cuirasses and helmets during the early months of
World War I [Louis Delperier, Les Cuirassiers 1845-1918 (Paris: Argout-Editions, 1981), pp. 60-67].*
cuirass(iers)
Main Entry: cui£rass
Pronunciation: kwi-‚ras, ky|Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English curas, from Middle French curasse, from Late Latin coreacea, feminine of coreaceus
leathern, from Latin corium skin, leather; akin to Old English heortha deerskin, Latin cortex bark, Greek keirein to
cut— more at shear
Date: 15th century 1 : a piece of armor covering the body from neck to waist; also : the breastplate of such a piece 2 :
something (as bony plates covering an animal) resembling a cuirass –cui£rassed adjective.
Cuirassiers (from French cuirassier [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cuirassier]) were mounted cavalry soldiers
equipped with armour and firearms, first appearing in late 15th-century Europe. They were the successors of the
medieval armoured knights. This French term means "the one with a cuirass (cuirasse)," the breastplate armour
which they wore [Angus Konstam, William Younghusband, Russian Army of the Seven Years War (Osprey
Publishing, 1996)].
The first cuirassiers did not appear very different from the fully armoured Late Medieval man-at-arms. They wore
three-quarters armour that covered the entire upper body as well as the front half of the legs down to the knee. The
head was protected by a close helm, burgonet or lobster tail pot helmet, usually worn with a gorget for the neck. The
torso was protected by a breast and back plate, sometimes reinforced by a 'placate.' The arms and shoulders were
fully armoured with pauldrons, rerebraces, elbow couters and vambraces. Armoured gauntlets were often abandoned,
particularly for the right hand, as they interfered with the loading of pistols. Long tassets, instead of a combination of
short tassets with cuisses, protected the front of the thighs and knees, Riding boots were substituted for lower leg
armour (greaves and sabatons) [Tincey, J., "Ch. II, Cavalry," in Soldiers of the English Civil War, McBride, A., illus.
(Osprey Publishing, 1990), pp. 31, 45]. Weapons included a pair of pistols in saddle holsters, these were the primary
weapons instead of a lance, a 'horseman's pick (a type of war hammer)' was sometimes employed and a sword. Horse
armour was not used. The armour of a cuirassier was very expensive; in England, in 1629, a cuirassier's equipment
cost four pounds and 10 shillings, whilst a harquebusier's (a lighter type of cavalry) was a mere one pound and six
shillings [Haythornthwaite, P., The English Civil War, An Illustrated History (Blandford Press, 1983), pp. 45, 49].
During the latter half of the 16th century the heavy "knightly" lance gradually fell out of use, perhaps because of the
widespread adoption of the infantry pike. The lancer or demi-lancer, when he had abandoned his lance, became the
pistol-armed cuirassier or reiter. The adoption of the pistol as the primary weapon led to the development of the
stately caracole tactic where cuirassiers fired their pistols at the enemy, then retired to reload whilst their comrades
advanced in turn to maintain the firing.
The first recorded cuirassiers were formed as 100-strong regiments of Austrian kyrissers recruited from Croatia in
1484 [citation needed] to serve the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. They fought the Swedes and their allies
in 1632 in Lützen and killed the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus. Only two cuirassier regiments were raised during
the English Civil War, the Lifeguard of the Earl of Essex and the 'London lobsters,' though individuals within other
regiments did serve in full armour. With the refinement of infantry firearms, especially the introduction of the
powerful musket, the usefulness of the protection afforded by full armour became greatly lessened. By the mid 17th
century the fully armoured cuirassier was becoming increasingly anachronistic. The cuirassier lost his limb armour
and entered the 18th century with just the breast and backplate.
18th and 19th century. Body armour, restricted to a breast and backplate, fell in and out of use during the 18th
century; for example British cavalry entered the War of the Spanish Succession without body armour, although they
readopted it during the conflict. Cuirassiers played a prominent role in the armies of Austria, and of Frederick the
Great of Prussia. By the time of the French Revolutionary War, few heavy cavalry regiments, excepting those of
Austria, wore the cuirass on campaign. Most heavy cavalry of this time wore the bicorne or cocked hat rather than a
helmet.
A resurgence of armoured cavalry took place in France under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, who increased the
number of armoured regiments from one to, ultimately, sixteen (fourteen cuirassier regiments plus two Carabiniers-àCheval regiments). During the first few decades of the 19th century, most of the states of Europe, excepting Austria,
which had retained its armoured cavalry, readopted the cuirass for some of their heavy cavalry in emulation of the
French. Helmets, often of hardened leather with brass reinforcement (though the French used iron-skulled helmets
for their cuirassiers), replaced the bicorne hat.
In 1914 the German Army still retained cuirassiers (ten regiments including the Gardes du Corps and the Guards
Cuirassiers); as did the French (twelve regiments) and the Russian (four regiments, all of the Imperial Guard) armies.
The Austrians dispensed with heavy breastplates in the 1860s [Rothenburg, G., The Army of Francis Joseph (West
Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1976), p. 63]. By the end of the 19th century, the German and Russian
cuirassiers used the breastplates only as part of their peacetime parade dress, but the French regiments still wore the
cuirass (with a cloth cover) and plumed helmet on active service during the first weeks of World War I. The three
Household Cavalry regiments of the British Army (1st and 2nd Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards) adopted
cuirasses after the Napoleonic Wars as part of their full dress uniforms, but never had occasion to wear the armour in
battle.
The retention of cuirasses as part of their field uniform by the French Army in 1914 reflected the historic prestige of
this branch of the cavalry, dating back through the Franco-Prussian War to the campaigns of Napoleon. Before the
war, it had been argued within the army that the cuirass should be limited to parade dress but upon mobilisation in
1914 the only concession made to active service was the addition of a cover of brown or blue cloth over the shining
steel and brass to make the wearer less visible. Within a few weeks, most French regiments stopped wearing the
cuirass, as it served no real purpose in this new war. It was not however formally withdrawn until October 1915
[Delperier (1981), pp. 34, 60].
Greek Hoplites. The warriors are shown in two attack positions, with both an overhand and underhand thrust (an EDSITEment
(http://edsitement.neh.gov/PersiaGreeceWars01.asp) reconstruction based on sources from The Perseus Project,
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plb.%2B18.29).*
hoplite
Heavily armed foot soldier of ancient Greece whose function was to fight in close formation. They probably first
appeared in the late 8th century BC. They were equipped with new and heavier armour, including a metal helmet,
breastplate, and shield; each had a sword and a 6-ft (2-m) spear for thrusting rather than throwing. From then on,
battles were won not by individual champions but through the weight of massed hoplite phalanxes breaking through
enemy ranks. Though the phalanx was unwieldy and the equipment cumbersome, Greek hoplites were the best
fighters in the Mediterranean world.
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spear-men and
fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" (Greek: ὀπλίτης hoplitēs; pl. ὀπλίται hoplitai) derives from
"hoplon" (ὀπλον, plural hopla ὀπλα), the type of the shield used by the soldiers [Diodorus Siculus, XV. xxxxiv. 3:
"hoi [men] proteron apo tôn aspidôn hoplitai kaloumenoi tote [de] apo tês peltês peltastai metônomasthêsan"],
although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even full armament. In later texts, the term hoplite is
used to denote any armored infantry, regardless of armament or ethnicity.
A hoplite was primarily a free citizen who was usually individually responsible for procuring his armor and weapon.
In most Greek city-states, citizens received at least basic military training, serving in the standing army for a certain
amount of time. They were expected to take part in any military campaign when they would be called for duty. The
Lacedaemonian citizens (Sparta) were renowned for their lifelong combat training and almost mythical military
prowess, while their greatest adversaries, the Athenians, were exempted from service only after the 60th year of their
lives.
The exact time when hoplitic warfare was developed is uncertain, the prevalent theory being that it was established
sometime during the 8th or 7th century BCE, when the "heroic age was abandoned and a far more disciplined system
introduced [Peter Connoly, Greece and Rome at War, p. 37]" and the Argive shield became popular. Peter Krentz
argues that "the ideology of hoplitic warfare as a ritualized contest developed not in the 7th century, but only after
480, when non-hoplite arms began to be excluded from the phalanx [Peter Krentz, Fighting by the Rules: The
Invention of the Hoplite Agon]." Anagnostis Agelarakis based on recent archaeo-anthropological discoveries of the
earliest monumental polyandrion (communal burial of male warriors) at Paros Island in Greece, unveils a last quarter
of the 8th century BCE date for a hoplitic phalangeal military organization [F. Zafeiropoulou and A. Agelarakis,
"Warriors of Paros," Archaeology 58: 1 (2005): 30-35].
After the Macedonian conquests of the 4th century BCE, the hoplite was slowly abandoned in favor of the
phalangite, armed in the Macedonian fashion, in the armies of the southern Greek states Many famous personalities,
philosophers, artists and poets, fought as hoplites [Socrates as a hoplite: Plato, Symposium, 219e-221b].
Altocumulus castellanus clouds over New South Wales, Australia (photo by Bidgee, 2005).*
castellanus cloud
Any visible mass of waterdroplets, ice crystals, or a mixture of the two thatis suspended in the air, usually at a
considerable height.
Clouds are usually created and sustained by upward-moving air currents. Meteorologists classify clouds primarily by
their appearance. The 10 main cloud families are divided into three groups on the basis of altitude. High clouds,
which are found at mean heights of 45,000–16,500 ft (13–5 km), are, from highest to lowest, cirrus, cirrocumulus,
and cirrostratus. Middle clouds, at 23,000–6,500 ft (7–2 km), are altocumulus, altostratus, and nimbostratus. Low
clouds, at 6,500–0 ft (2–0 km), are stratocumulus, stratus, cumulus, and cumulonimbus. A shallow layer of cloud at
or near ground level is called fog.
Altocumulus Castellanus (ACCAS) is named for its tower-like projections that billow upwards from the base of the
cloud. The base of the cloud can form as low as 2,000 metres (6,500 feet), or as high as 6,000 metres (20,000 feet).
Castellanus clouds are evidence of mid-atmospheric instability and a high mid-altitude lapse rate
[http://www.weather.com/glossary /a.html#accs]. They may be a harbinger of heavy showers and thunderstorms and,
if surface-based convection can connect to the mid-tropospheric unstable layer, continued development of
Castellanus clouds can produce cumulonimbus clouds.
Altocumulus Castellanus clouds are typically accompanied by moderate turbulence as well as potential icing
conditions. For these reasons, flight through Altocumulus Castellanus clouds is often best avoided by aircraft
[http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/virtual/demo/weather/tutorial/tutorial5c.html ]. The appearance of Altocumulus
Castellanus early in a sunny day may indicate a high probability the formation of thunderstorms in the afternoon, as
they may develop into cumulonimbus storm clouds ["Clouds," Aeronautics Learning Laboratory for Science
Technology, and Research, http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/fltenv3.htm].
Fiber dosimeter (see below for view through dosimeter). Photo by Prolineserver, 2007.*
dosimeter
Main Entry: do£sim£e£ter
Pronunciation: d‹-‚si-m„-t„r
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin dosis + International Scientific Vocabulary -meter
Date: 1938: a device for measuring doses of radiations (as X rays) –do£si£met£ric \ƒd‹-s„-‚me-trik\ adjective –do
£sim£e£try \d‹-‚si-m„-tr‡\ noun
Dosimeters measure an individual's or an object's [Mejdahl, V., A. G. Wintle, "Thermoluminescence applied to age
determination in archaeology and geology," in Thermoluminescence and Thermoluminescent Dosimetry (Boca
Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1984), pp. 133–190, http://www.bcin.ca/Interface/openbcin.cgi?submit=submit&Chinkey=
39511: Abstract: Thermoluminescent (TL) dating is used on non-pottery materials, including burnt flints and stones,
calcareous deposits, volcanic lavas, and geological sediments. The development of new TL dosimeters and new
detectors for radioactivity measurements has increased the ability to measure accurately the dose rate experienced by
the samples today"] exposure to something in the environment — particularly to a hazard inflicting cumulative
impact over long periods of time, or over a lifetime. This article concentrates on the radiation dosimeter, which
measures exposure to ionizing radiation, but other dosimeters also exist, such as sound dosimeters, ultraviolet
dosimeters, and electromagnetic field dosimeters.
Ionizing radiation, such as X-rays, alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays, remains undetectable by the senses, and
the damage it causes to the body is cumulative, related to the total dose received. Therefore, workers who are
exposed to radiation, such as radiographers, nuclear power plant workers, doctors using radiotherapy, workers in
laboratories using radionuclides, and some HAZMAT teams are required to wear dosimeters so their employers can
keep a record of their exposure, to verify that it is below legally prescribed limits.
Crew members aboard NASA Space Shuttle missions had access to four types of active dosimeters should a radiation
contingency occur. Crew members were required to wear passive dosimeters at all times throughout the mission
["Radiation Equipment," http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/crew/radiation.html]. Common types of
wearable dosimeters for ionizing radiation include:
•
Quartz fiber dosimeter;
•
Film badge dosimeter;
•
Thermoluminescent dosimeter;
•
Solid state (MOSFET or silicon diode) dosimeter.
The quartz fiber dosimeters have to be prepared, usually daily, with a positive charge from either a hand-wound or
battery-powered charging unit. As the gas in the dosimeter chamber becomes ionized by nuclear radiation the charge
leaks away causing the fiber indicator to rise up the graduated scale [Frame, Paul, Oak Ridge Associated
Universities, "Pocket Chambers and Pocket Dosimeters," Health Physics Historical Instrument Museum Collection,
July 25, 2007, http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/dosimeters/pocketchamdos.htm].
Readout of a radiation protection dosimeter (photo by Wusel007).*
Factories prepare film-badge dosimeters for one-time use. The level of radiation absorption is indicated by a change
of color on the film badge's surface, which is compared to an indicator chart. Manufacturing processes that treat
products with ionizing radiation, such as food irradiation, use dosimeters to calibrate doses. These are different from
personal dosimeters because they usually must have a greater range. They often consist of small blocks of material
such as perspex. One can also carry out the dosimetry of neutron radiation with a few specialised devices such as
superheated drop detectors.
Der Westwall als Biotop-Kette (upload February 12, 2004 by Markus Schwei‫)ك‬.*
Siegfried Line
or Sigurd
Hero of German and Old Norse mythology noted for his outstanding strength and courage.
He is one of the heroes of the Poetic Edda and the Nibelungenlied, and he figures in many different, sometimes
inconsistent, legends. In the earliest stories, Siegfried is presented as a boy of noble lineage who grew up without
parental care, but other accounts provide elaborate detail of a courtly upbringing. One legend tells of his battle with a
dragon, and another of his acquiring treasure. He also plays a part in the story of Brunhild, in which he meets his
death. He is the hero of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung. See also Kriemhild.
The original Siegfried line (German: Siegfriedstellung) was a line of defensive forts and tank defences built by
Germany as a section of the Hindenburg Line 1916–1917 in northern France during World War I. In English,
Siegfried line more commonly refers to the similar World War II defensive line, built during the 1930s, opposite the
French Maginot Line, which served a corresponding purpose. The Germans themselves called this the Westwall, but
the Allies renamed it after the World War I line. This article deals with this second Siegfried line.
The Siegfried Line was a defence system stretching more than 630 km (390 mi) with more than 18,000 bunkers,
tunnels and tank traps. It went from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the western border of the old
German Empire as far as the town of Weil am Rhein on the border to Switzerland. More with propaganda in mind
than for any strategic reason, Adolf Hitler planned the line from 1936 and had it built between 1938 and 1940.
With the D-Day landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, war in the west broke out once more. On 24 August 1944,
Hitler gave a directive for renewed construction on the Siegfried Line. 20,000 forced laborers and members of the
Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service), most of whom were 14-16-year-old boys, attempted to reequip the line
for defence purposes. Local people were also called in to carry out this kind of work, mostly building anti-tank
ditches. During construction, it was already clear that the bunkers could no longer withstand the newly developed
armour-piercing weapons. At the same time as the Siegfried Line was reactivated, small concrete "Tobruk" bunkers
were built along the border to the occupied area. These bunkers were mostly dugouts for single soldiers.
In August 1944, the first clashes took place on the Siegfried Line; the section of the line where most fighting took
place was the Hürtgenwald area in the Eifel, 20 km (13 miles) southeast of Aachen. An estimated 120,000 troops —
plus reinforcements—were committed to Hürtgen. The battle in this confusing, heavily forested area claimed the
lives of 24,000 troops plus 9,000 non-battle casualties [MacDonald, Charles B., The Roer River Dams: The Siegfried
Line Campaign (1961)]. The German death toll is not documented.
After the Battle of Hürtgenwald, the Battle of the Bulge began, starting at the area south of the Hürtgenwald,
between Monschau and the Luxembourgish town of Echternach. This offensive was a last-ditch attempt by the
Germans to reverse the course of the war. It cost the lives of many without producing any lasting success. There were
serious clashes at other parts of the Siegfried Line and soldiers in many bunkers refused to surrender, often fighting
to the death. By early 1945 the last Siegfried Line bunkers had fallen at the Saar and Hunsrück.
Nature conservation at the Siegfried Line. Nature conservationists consider the remains of the Siegfried Line
valuable as a chain of biotopes where, thanks to its size, rare animals and plants can take refuge and reproduce. This
effect is magnified because the concrete ruins can not be used for farming or forestry purposes.
George Smith Patton, 1945.
U.S. Army photo
born Nov. 11, 1885, San Gabriel, Calif., U.S.
died Dec. 21, 1945, Heidelberg, Ger.
U.S. army officer. He graduated from West Point and fought in World War I with the newly formed tank corps. He
was later promoted to major general and given command of the 2nd Armored Division (1940). In World War II he
led military operations in Morocco (1942) and Sicily (1943) and then commanded the 3rd Army in its sweep across
northern France (1944) into Germany (1945). His strategy of bold and highly mobile operations in tank warfare,
coupled with his strict, highly disciplined leadership, earned him his troops' respect and the nickname “Old Bloodand-Guts.” Criticized for striking a hospitalized soldier he suspected of malingering, he later publicly apologized. He
died in a car crash in Germany. See also Battle of the Bulge.
Like his rival, F.M. Montgomery, Gen. Patton was reputed to have criticized Ike's broad front strategy, promising, if
issued extra fuel supplies in September 1944, "I'll be through the Siegfried Line like shit through a goose."
~ page 222 ~
Royal Navy crewmen aboard the Invincible-class aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious (R06), prepare a 801 Naval Air
Squadron BAe Sea Harrier FA2 for take off from the flight deck in the Persian Gulf, March 12, 1998. Photo by PHC
Alexander C. Hicks, USN (U.S. Defense Imagery photo VIRIN: DN-SD-01-04910, http://www.defenseimagery.mil/,
US Navy photo 980312-N-1055H-008).*
Harrier (Sopwith, Sir Thomas)
born Jan. 18, 1888, London, Eng.
died Jan. 27, 1989, Compton Manor, near Winchester, Hampshire
British aircraft designer. He taught himself to fly in 1910 and won a prize for the longest flight to the European
continent. In 1912 he founded Sopwith Aviation Company, Ltd., which in World War I built such planes as the
Camel, the Pup, and the Triplane. His Hawker Aircraft Company produced the Hurricane fighter of World War II
and later the Harrier, a vertical-takeoff jet fighter. He was chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Group, successor to his
earlier company, until 1963.
Background. Following an approach by the Bristol Engine Company in 1957 that they were planning a directed
thrust engine, Hawker Aircraft came up with a design for an aeroplane that could meet the NATO specification for a
"Light Tactical Support Fighter." There was no financial support for the development from HM Treasury, but aid
was found through the Mutual Weapon Development Project (MWDP) of NATO.
The P.1127 was ordered as a prototype and flew in 1960. NATO developed a specification (NBMR-3) for a VTOL
aircraft, but one that was expected to have the performance of an aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II. Hawker drafted a
supersonic version of the P.1127, the P.1150, and also the Hawker P.1154 which would meet NBMR-3. The latter
was a winner of the NATO competition and development continued until cancelled at the point of prototype
construction in 1965.
Operation. The Harrier Jump Jet, capable of taking off vertically, can only do so at less than its maximum weight. In
most cases the aircraft does a short take off where it gains forward speed and thus aerodynamic lift, saving fuel. On
aircraft carriers a ramp is frequently employed at the end of the carrier which allows the aircraft to accelerate along
the carrier and then use a lower amount of fuel to take to the air. Landings are also typically performed very
differently. Although a conventional landing is possible, the range of speeds that this can be done over is narrow
(due to relatively vulnerable outrigger undercarriage). Operationally the aircraft therefore usually does a near vertical
landing with some forward speed.
First-generation Harriers. The Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.1/GR.3 and the AV-8A Harrier were the first generation
of the Harrier series, the first operational close-support and reconnaissance attack aircraft with vertical/short takeoff
and landing (V/STOL) capabilities. These were developed directly from the Hawker P.1127 prototype and the
Kestrel evaluation aircraft. The British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval V/STOL jet fighter, reconnaissance and
attack aircraft, a development of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. The first version entered service with the Royal
Navy's Fleet Air Arm in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS.1, and was informally known as the Shar. The upgraded
Sea Harrier FA2 entered service in 1993. It was withdrawn from Royal Navy service in March 2006. The Sea Harrier
FRS Mk.51 is in active service with the Indian Navy, which operates the jet from its aircraft carrier INS Viraat.
Second-generation Harriers. The Harrier was extensively redeveloped by McDonnell Douglas and British
Aerospace, leading to the AV-8B Harrier II [Norden, Lon O., Harrier II: Validating V/STOL (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2006)]. Both were built by companies that are now parts of Boeing and BAE Systems. The
Boeing/BAE Systems AV-8B Harrier II is a family of second-generation V/STOL jet multi-role aircraft of the late
20th century. British Aerospace license-built the Harrier GR5/GR7/GR9. The AV-8B is primarily used for light
attack or multi-role tasks, typically operated from small aircraft carriers. Versions are used by several NATO
countries, including Spain, Italy, and the United States. The BAE Systems/Boeing Harrier II is a modified version of
the AV-8B Harrier II that was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy until 2010. Between 1969 and
2003, 824 Harrier variants were delivered. While manufacture of new Harriers concluded in 1997, the last
remanufactured aircraft (Harrier II Plus configuration) was delivered in December 2003 which ended the Harrier
production line [http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/harrier/].
Bermuda from space (July 2011); topographic data SRTM from NASA and World Imagery.*
Bermuda
British colony (pop., 2002 est.: 63,600), western Atlantic Ocean. Comprising about 300 islands, of which only some
20 are inhabited, it lies about 570 mi (920 km) southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., U.S. The archipelago has a total
land area of about 20 sq mi (52 sq km). Its capital is Hamilton on Bermuda Island. It was named for Juan de
Bermْdez, who may have visited the islands in 1503. Colonized by the English in 1612, Bermuda became a crown
colony in 1684. Its economy is based on tourism and international finance; its gross national product per capita is
among the world's highest.
Bermuda (officially, the Bermudas or Somers Isles) is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about 1,030
kilometres (640 mi) to the west-northwest. It is about 1,373 kilometres (853 mi) south of Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada, and 1,770 kilometres (1,100 mi) northeast of Miami, Florida. Its capital city is Hamilton.
Bermuda was discovered in 1505 by Spanish navigator Juan de Bermْdez (who claimed to find the island inhabited
only by pigs) after whom the islands are named, who claimed it for the Spanish Empire. Unoccupied, the island was
settled by England in 1609, making it the oldest and most populous remaining British overseas territory. Its first
capital, St George's, was established in 1612 and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the Americas
["Bermuda – History and Heritage," Smithsonian.com, November 6, 2007,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/destination-hunter/bermuda-history-herit age.html].
Bermuda has an affluent economy, with off-shore finance as its largest sector followed by tourism [Smithsonian.com,
November 6, 2007; Tayfun King, "Bermuda's Tourism Industry," BBC World News: Fast Track, November 3,
2009,http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_8330000...]. In 2005, Bermuda was once even claimed to have the
world's highest GDP per capita, yet these statistics are hard to verify as Bermuda is not classified as a country but
rather as a territory of the U.K. It has a subtropical climate [Forbes, Keith, "Bermuda Climate and Weather," The
Royal Gazette, http://www.bermuda-online.org/climateweather.htm]. Bermuda makes up the easternmost point of the
so-called "Bermuda Triangle," a region of sea in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels have allegedly
disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings [CochranSmith, Marilyn, "Bermuda Triangle: dichotomy, mythology, and amnesia," Journal of Teacher Education 54: 275
(2003), doi:10.1177/0022487103256793]. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the
incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerous official agencies have stated that
the number and nature of disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean
[http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq8-1.htm; http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq8-3.htm;
http://www.uscg.mil/history/faqs/triangle.asp].
An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a
form of natural gas) on the continental shelves [Monash University, "Could methane bubbles sink ships?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3226787/]. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles
can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water [ibid]; any wreckage consequently rising
to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane
eruptions (sometimes called "mud volcanoes") may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of
providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to
sink very rapidly and without warning.
Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area, off
the southeastern United States coast [Paull, C. K. and W. P., D., "Appearance and distribution of the gas hydrate
reflection in the Blake Ridge region, offshore southeastern United States," Gas Hydrates at the USGS (Woods Hole,
MF-1252, 1981), http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/usgspubs.html]. However, according to
another of their papers, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for
the past 15,000 years ["Bermuda Triangle," Gas Hydrates at the USGS (Woods Hole),
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/bermuda.html].
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea/Family: Asteraceae). Wild purple coneflower plants photographed at Winfield IL by
Bruce Marlin, June 22, 2003. The genus name is from the Greek echino, meaning "hedgehog," an allusion to the spiny central
disk pictured here (http://www.cirrusimage.com/flower_purple_coneflower.htm).*
echinacea
Any member of the coneflower genus Echinacea. Commonly called the purple coneflower, echinacea is used as a
border plant. The leaves and roots are used in herbal remedies to boost the immune system and in the treatment of
colds and flu.
Echinacea (/ὀὀkὀὀneὀὀὀə/)[Sunset Western Garden Book (1995), pp. 606–607] is a genus of herbaceous
flowering plants in the daisy family, Asteraceae. The nine species it contains are commonly called purple
coneflowers. They are endemic to eastern and central North America, where they are found growing in moist to dry
prairies and open wooded areas. They have large, showy heads of composite flowers, blooming from early to late
summer. The generic name is derived from the Greek word ὀχὀνος (echino), meaning "hedgehog," due to the spiny
central disk. Some species are used in herbal medicines and some are cultivated in gardens for their showy flowers.
A few species are of conservation concern.
History. Echinacea angustifolia was widely used by the North American Plains Indians for its general medicinal
qualities [Wishart, David J., Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 156].
Echinacea was one of the basic antimicrobial herbs of eclectic medicine from the mid 19th century through the early
20th century, and its use was documented for snakebite, anthrax, and for relief of pain. In the 1930s echinacea
became popular in both Europe and America as a herbal medicine. According to Wallace Sampson, MD, its modern
day use as a treatment for the common cold began when a Swiss herbal supplement maker was "erroneously told"
that echinacea was used for cold prevention by Native American tribes who lived in the area of South Dakota
["Study: Echinacea Cuts Colds by Half," WebMD Health News, June 26, 2007, http://www.webmd.com/cold-andflu/news/20070626 /study-echinacea-cuts-colds-by -half].
Although Native American tribes didn't use echinacea to prevent the common cold, some Plains tribes did use
echinacea to treat some of the symptoms that could be caused by the common cold: The Kiowa used it for coughs
and sore throats, the Cheyenne for sore throats, the Pawnee for headaches, and many tribes including the Lakotah
used it as an analgesic [Moerman, Daniel E., Native American Ethnobotany (Timber Press, 1998), p. 205]. Native
Americans learned of E. angustifolia by observing elk seeking out the plants and consuming them when sick or
wounded, and identified those plants as elk root [Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West]. See
also Caruso, T. J., Gwaltney, J. M., "Treatment of the common cold with echinacea: a structured review," Clin.
Infect. Dis. 40 (6): 807–10 (March 2005), doi:10.1086/428061.
Marketed and studied medicinal products contain different species (E. purpurea, E. angustifolia, E. pallida),
different organs (roots and herbs) and different preparations (extracts and expressed juice). Their chemical
composition is very different [Barnes, J., Anderson, L. A., Gibbons, S., Phillipson, J. D., Echinacea species
(Echinacea angustifolia (DC) Hell., Echinacea pallida (Nutt.) Nutt., Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench): a review of
their chemistry, pharmacology and clinical properties," J Pharm Pharmacol 57 (8): 929-54 (August 2005);
Laasonen, M., Wennberg, T., Harmia-Pulkkinen, T., Vuorela, H., "Simultaneous analysis of alkamides and caffeic
acid derivatives for the identification of Echinacea purpurea, Echinacea angustifolia, Echinacea pallida and
Parthenium integrifolium roots," Planta Med 68(6): 572-4 (June 2002)].
Multiple scientific reviews and meta-analyses have evaluated the published peer reviewed literature on the
immunological effects of Echinacea. Reviews of the medicinal effects of Echinacea are often complicated by the
inclusion of these different products [Hart, A., Dey, P., "Echinacea for prevention of the common cold: an
illustrative overview of how information from different systematic reviews is summarised on the internet,"
Preventive Medicine 49 (2-3): 78–82 (2009), doi:10.1016/j.ypmed.2009.04.006]. Evaluation of the literature within
the field suffers generally from a lack of well-controlled trials, with many studies of low quality [Hart (2009);
Sachin, A. Shah, Stephen Sander, C. Michael White, Mike Rinaldi, Craig I. Coleman, "Evaluation of echinacea for
the prevention and treatment of the common cold: a meta-analysis," The Lancet Infectious Diseases 7 (7): 473–480
(July 2007), doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(07)70160-3; Woelkart, K., Linde, K., Bauer, R., "Echinacea for preventing
and treating the common cold," Planta Medica 74 (6): 633–7 (May 2008), doi:10.1055/s-2007-993766; Linde, K.,
Barrett, B., Wِlkart, K., Bauer, R., Melchart, D., "Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold," Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews (1): CD000530 (2006), doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000530.pub2].
A 2007 study by the University of Connecticut combined findings from 14 previously reported trials examining
Echinacea and concluded that Echinacea can cut the chances of catching a cold by more than half, and shorten the
duration of a cold by an average of 1.4 days [Sachin (2007); "Echinacea may halve the risk of catching cold," New
Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12126-echinacea-may-halve-the-risk-of-c atching-cold.html].
However, Dr. Wallace Sampson, an editor of Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and a Stanford University
emeritus clinical professor of medicine, says that the referenced trials lack the similarities necessary to provide
definitive results when combined into one report. "If you have studies that measure different things, there is no way
to correct for that. These researchers tried, but you just can’t do it [WebMD Health News, June 26, 2007]."
A 2003 controlled double-blind study from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and documented in the
New England Journal of Medicine [Turner, Ronald B., Rudolf Bauer, Karin Woelkart, Thomas C. Hulsey, and J.
David Gangemi, "An Evaluation of Echinacea angustifolia in Experimental Rhinovirus Infections," The New
England Journal of Medicine 353 (4): 341–348 (July 28, 2005), doi:10.1056/NEJMoa044441] stated that echinacea
extracts had "no clinically significant effects" on rates of infection or duration or intensity of symptoms. The effects
held when the herb was taken immediately following infectious viral exposure and when taken as a prophylaxis
starting a week prior to exposure. In a press release, Dr. Michael Murray, the Director of Education for Factors
Group of Nutritional Companies, a manufacturer of Echinacea-related products, calls the study "faulty and inaccurate
["New Study on Echinacea is Faulty, says Canadian-Based Company," Medical News Today, August 15, 2005,
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/29145.php ]." According to Dr. Murray, none of the three extracts used
on the 399 study participants contained all three of the components of Echinacea responsible for its immuneenhancing effects: polysaccharides, alkylamides and cichoric acid. In addition, Dr. Murray said "the standard dosage
for dried Echinacea angustifolia root is normally three grams per day or more and this study used less than one
gram."
An earlier University of Maryland review based on 13 European studies concluded that echinacea, when taken at
first sign of a cold, reduced cold symptoms or shortened their duration [Paul Bergner, Healing Power of Echinacea
and Goldenseal and Other Immune System Herbs (The Healing Power, 1997)]. The review also found that three of
four published studies concluded that taking echinacea to prevent a cold was ineffective.
The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) assessed ["Human Medicines – Herbal Medicinal Products,"
Emea.europa.eu, April 3, 2009, http://www.emea.europa.eu/htms/human
/hmpc/monograph/echinaceae_purpureae_herb a.htm] the body of evidence and approved the use of expressed juice
and dried expressed juice from fresh flowering aerial parts of Echinacea purpurea for the short-term prevention and
treatment of the common cold. According to their recommendations [European Medicines Agency, "Community
Herbal Monograph on Echinacea Purpurea," May 8, 2008,
http://www.emea.europa.eu/pdfs/human/hmpc/echinaceae_purpureae_herba/10494506 enfin.pdf]:
It should not be used for more than 10 days. The use in children below 1 year of age is contraindicated, because of theoretically
possible undesirable effect on immature immune system. The use in children between 1 and 12 years of age is not recommended,
because efficacy has not been sufficiently documented although specific risks are not documented. In the absence of sufficient
data, the use in pregnancy and lactation is not recommended.
Cannon in front of the Nature Center & Veteran's Memorial in Covington, Tennessee. Marker in the background
shows Nathan Bedford Forrest's last speech (photo by Thomas R. Machnitzki, December 2007).*
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Nathan Bedford Forrest was born to a poor family in Chapel Hill, Tennessee. He was the first of blacksmith William
Forrest's twelve children with wife Miriam Beck. After his father's death, Forrest became head of the family at age
17. In 1841 Forrest went into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando, Mississippi. His uncle was killed
there in 1845 during an argument with the Matlock brothers. In retaliation, Forrest shot and killed two of them with
his two-shot pistol and wounded two others with a knife which had been thrown to him. One of the wounded Matlock
men survived and served under Forrest during the Civil War ["Confederate silver dollar site,"
http://www.csasilverdollar.com/forrest.html].
Forrest became a businessman, a planter who owned several cotton plantations in the Tennessee Delta, and a slave
owner. He was also a slave trader, with a business based on Adams Street in Memphis. In 1858, Forrest (a
conservative Democrat), was elected as a Memphis city alderman
[http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm;jsessionid=803057024112183120 4263?migration=3&topic=5
&id=342018&type=image&metadata=show&page=&bhcp=]. Forrest supported his mother and put his younger
brothers through college. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he was a millionaire and one of the
richest men in the South, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million [Winik, Jay,
April 1865: The Month That Saved America (Harper Perennial, 2002), p. 176]. Before the Civil War ["Obituary:
Nathan Bedford Forrest," The New York Times, October 30, 1877]:
"Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler. He was for some time captain of a boat which ran
between Memphis, Tennessee and Vicksburg, Mississippi. As his fortune increased he engaged in plantation speculation, and
became the nominal owner of two plantations not far from Goodrich's Landing, above Vicksburg where he worked some hundred
or more slaves," according to his obituary. "He was known to his acquaintances as a man of obscure origin and low associations,
a shrewd speculator, negro trader, and duelist, but a man of great energy and brute courage."
Fort Pillow. On April 12, 1864, General Forrest led his forces in the attack and capture of Fort Pillow on the
Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee. Many African-American Union troops were killed in the battle. A
controversy arose about whether Forrest conducted or condoned a massacre of African Americans who had
surrendered there.
Forrest's men insisted that the Federals, although fleeing, kept their weapons and frequently turned to shoot, forcing
the Confederates to keep firing in self defense [Bailey, Ronald H., and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Battles for
Atlanta: Sherman Moves East (Time-Life Books, 1985), p. 25]. Confederates said the Union flag was still flying
over the fort, which indicated that the force had not formally surrendered. A contemporary newspaper account from
Jackson, Tennessee, stated that "General Forrest begged them to surrender," but "not the first sign of surrender was
ever given." Similar accounts were reported in many Southern newspapers at the time [Cimprich, John, and
Mainfort, Robert C., Jr., Eds., "Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence About An Old Controversy," Civil War History
4 (Winter 1982), pp. 293-306].
These statements, however, were contradicted by Union survivors, as well as the letter of a Confederate soldier who
recounted a massacre. Achilles Clark, a soldier with the 20th Tennessee cavalry, wrote to his sister immediately after
the battle: "The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor, deluded, negroes would run up to
our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then
shot down. I, with several others, tried to stop the butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded, but General
Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the
firing ceased [Clark, Achilles V., "A Letter of Account," Dan E. Pomeroy, Ed., Civil War Times Illustrated 24(4):
24-25 (June 1985)]."
Historians have differed on interpretation of events. Richard Fuchs, author of An Unerring Fire, concludes, "The
affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct – intentional
murder – for the vilest of reasons – racism and personal enmity [Richard Fuchs, An Unerring Fire: The Massacre At
Fort Pillow (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2002), p. 14]." Andrew Ward downplays the controversy, “Whether the
massacre was premeditated or spontaneous does not address the more fundamental question of whether a massacre
took place... it certainly did, in every dictionary sense of the word [Andrew Ward, River Run Red: The Fort Pillow
Massacre in the American Civil War (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 227]." John Cimprich states, "The new
paradigm in social attitudes and the fuller use of available evidence has favored a massacre interpretation... debate
over the memory of this incident formed a part of sectional and racial conflicts for many years after the war, but the
reinterpretation of the event during the last thirty years offers some hope that society can move beyond past
intolerance [John Cimprich, Fort Pillow: A Civil War Massacre and Public Memory (Louisiana State University
Press, 2005), pp. 123-124]."
Forrest's farewell address to his troops, May 9, 1865. The following text is excerpted from Forrest's farewell address
to his troops [Foote, Shelby, The Civil War: A Narrative - III: Red River to Appomattox (Random House, 1974), p.
1002]:
Civil war, such as you have just passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to
divest ourselves of all such feelings; and as far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings towards those with
whom we have so long contended, and heretofore so widely, but honestly, differed. Neighborhood feuds, personal animosities,
and private differences should be blotted out; and, when you return home, a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure
the respect of your enemies. Whatever your responsibilities may be to Government, to society, or to individuals meet them like
men. The attempt made to establish a separate and independent Confederation has failed; but the consciousness of having done
your duty faithfully, and to the end, will, in some measure, repay for the hardships you have undergone. In bidding you farewell,
rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the
merits of the Cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields,
has elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to
the officers and men of my command whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success
in arms. I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course
which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your
honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous." N. B. Forrest,
Lieutenant-General, Headquarters, Forrest's Cavalry Corps, Gainesville, Alabama, May 9, 1865.
Impact of Forrest's doctrinesForrest was one of the first men to grasp the doctrines of "mobile warfare [Heidler,
David Stephen, Heidler, Jeanne T., Coles, David J., Eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political,
Social, and Military History (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002), p. 722]" that became prevalent in the 20th
century. Paramount in his strategy was fast movement, even if it meant pushing his horses at a killing pace, which he
did more than once. Noted Civil War scholar Bruce Catton writes [Catton, Bruce, The Civil War (New York:
American Heritage Press, 1971), p. 160]:
"Forrest... used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. He liked horses because he liked fast movement,
and his mounted men could get from here to there much faster than any infantry could; but when they reached the field they
usually tied their horses to trees and fought on foot, and they were as good as the very best infantry. Not for nothing did Forrest
say the essence of strategy was 'to git thar fust with the most men.'"
Forrest is often erroneously quoted as saying his strategy was to "git thar fustest with the mostest." Now often recast
as "Getting there firstest with the mostest [e.g. http://mason .gmu.edu/~fdillon/military.htm]," this misquote first
appeared in print in a New York Tribune article written to provide colorful comments in reaction to European interest
in Civil War generals. The aphorism was addressed and corrected by a New York Times story in 1918 to be: "Ma'am,
I got there first with the most men [New York Times, May 28, 1918]." Though a novel and succinct condensation of
the military's principles of mass and maneuver, Bruce Catton writes [Catton (1971), pp. 160-61]:
"Do not, under any circumstances whatever, quote Forrest as saying 'fustest' and 'mostest'. He did not say it that way, and nobody
who knows anything about him imagines that he did."
Forrest became well-known for his early use of "maneuver" tactics as applied to a mobile horse cavalry deployment.
He sought to constantly harass the enemy in fast-moving raids, and to disrupt supply trains and enemy
communications by destroying railroad track and cutting telegraph lines, as he wheeled around the Union Army's
flank.
Ku Klux Klan involvement. John Coski, who is a historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia
is quoted as saying: "Was Forrest the founder of the Klan? No
[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0211/KKK-leader-on-specialty-licen se-plates-Plan-in-Mississippiraises-hackles]." Forrest was, however, an early member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Civil War historian, author
and Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills writes, “While there is no doubt that Forrest joined the Klan, there is some
question as to whether he actually was the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan [Wills, Brian Steel, A Battle from the
Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), p. 336]." The KKK (the
Klan) was formed by veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 and soon expanded
throughout the state and beyond. Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867. A common report is
that Forrest arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel, probably at
the encouragement of a state Klan leader, former Confederate general George Gordon. The organization had grown
to the point where an experienced commander was needed, and Forrest fit the bill. In Room 10 of the Maxwell,
Forrest was sworn in as a member [Hurst, Jack, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography (1993), pp. 284-285; Wills
(1992), p. 336: Wills quotes two KKK members who identified Forrest as a Klan leader. James R. Crowe stated,
"After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We
chose General Forrest." Another member wrote, "N. B. Forest of Confederate fame was at our head, and was known
as the Grand Wizard. I heard him make a speech in one of our Dens"].
According to Wills, in the August 1867 state elections the Klan was relatively restrained in its actions. White
Americans who made up the KKK hoped to persuade black voters that a return to their state of repression and nearslavery, as it existed before the war, was in their best interest. Forrest assisted in maintaining order. It was only after
these efforts failed that Klan violence and intimidation escalated and became widespread [Wills (1992), p. 338].
Author Andrew Ward, however, writes, "In the spring of 1867, Forrest and his dragons launched a campaign of
midnight parades; 'ghost' masquerades; and 'whipping' and even 'killing Negro voters and white Republicans, to scare
blacks off voting and running for office [Ward (2005), p. 386].'"
In an 1868 interview by a Cincinnati newspaper, Forrest claimed that the Klan had 40,000 members in Tennessee
and 550,000 total members throughout the Southern states. He said he sympathized with them, but denied any formal
connection. He claimed he could muster thousands of men himself. He described the Klan as "a protective political
military organization... the members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States... its objects
originally were protection against Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic..." Forrest dissolved the first
incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1869, although many local groups continued their activities for several years
[Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Duke University Press, 2003), p.
354].
Forrest testified before the Congressional investigation on Klan activities on June 27, 1871. Forrest denied
membership, but his individual role in the KKK was beyond the scope of the investigating committee which wrote
[Report of the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary
States (1872) p. 12, available at googlebooks.com]:
"When it is considered that the origin, designs, mysteries, and ritual of the order are made secrets; that the assumption of its
regalia or the revelation of any of its secrets, even by an expelled member, or of its purposes by a member, will be visited by 'the
extreme penalty of the law,' the difficulty of procuring testimony upon this point may be appreciated, and the denials of the
purposes, of membership in, and even the existence of the order, should all be considered in the light of these provisions. This
contrast might be pursued further, but our design is not to connect General Forrest with this order, (the reader may form his own
conclusion upon this question,) but to trace its development, and from its acts and consequences gather the designs which are
locked up under such penalties."
The committee also noted, "The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime; hence it was that
General Forrest and other men of influence in the state, by the exercise of their moral power, induced them to
disband [ibid, p. 463]."
In 1875, Forrest demonstrated that his personal sentiments on the issue of race now differed from that of the Klan,
when he was invited to give a speech before an organization of black Southerners advocating racial reconciliation,
called the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association. At this, his last public appearance, he made what the New
York Times described as a "friendly speech ["Obituary: Nathan Bedford Forrest," The New York Times, October 30,
1877]," during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a black woman, he accepted them as a token of
reconciliation between the races and espoused a radically progressive (for the time) agenda of equality and harmony
between black and white Americans [Memphis Appeal, July 5, 1875].
~ page 223 ~
Officers and men of the 13th Light Dragoons, British Army, Crimea. Rostrum photograph of photographer's original
print, uncropped and without color correction, by Roger Fenton, 1855 (Library of Congress).*
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to
create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm. It may be distinguished from prose by
its compression, frequent use of conventions of metre and rhyme, use of the line as a formal unit, heightened
vocabulary, and freedom of syntax. Its emotional content is expressed through a variety of techniques, from direct
description to symbolism, including the use of metaphor and simile. See also prose poem; prosody.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," lns 26-30, in An Anthology of English Literature, R.P.
McCutcheon & W.H. Vann, ed. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1931), p. 784].
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during
the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge was the result of a miscommunication in
such a way that the brigade attempted a much more difficult objective than intended by the overall commander Lord
Raglan. Blame for the miscommunication has remained controversial, as the original order itself was vague. The
charge produced no decisive gains and resulted in very high casualties, and is best remembered as the subject of the
poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose lines emphasize the valour of the cavalry
in carrying out their orders, even "tho' the soldier knew/Some one had blunder'd".
War correspondent William Russell, who witnessed the battle, declared "our Light Brigade was annihilated by their
own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy [Correspondent, "The Cavalry Action at Balaclava, 25
October," The Times (21898), November 14, 1854, pp. 7–8 (albeit unnamed, the correspondent was William Howard
Russell)]." Cardigan survived the battle. Although stories circulated afterwards that he was not actually present
[Woodham Smith, Cecil, The Reason Why (Constable, 1953), p. 258], he led the charge from the front and, never
looking back, did not see what was happening to the troops behind him. He reached the Russian guns, took part in
the fight, and then returned alone up the valley without bothering to rally or even find out what had happened to the
survivors. He afterwards said all he could think about was his rage against Captain Nolan, who he thought had tried
to take over the leadership of the charge from him. After riding back up the valley, he considered he had done all that
he could and then, with considerable sang-froid, left the field and went on board his yacht in Balaclava harbour,
where he ate a champagne dinner [Woodham Smith (1953), p. 262]. He subsequently described the engagement in a
speech delivered at the Mansion House in London that was afterwards quoted in length in the House of Commons
[http://www.crimeantexts.org.uk/sources/hansard/h550329a.html]:
"We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile, with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and
shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with
the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been
hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen
upon our flanks.
As we ascended the hill, the oblique fire of the artillery poured upon our rear, so that we had thus a strong fire upon our front,
our flank, and our rear. We entered the battery—we went through the battery—the two leading regiments cutting down a great
number of the Russian gunners in their onset. In the two regiments which I had the honour to lead, every officer, with one
exception, was either killed or wounded, or had his horse shot under him or injured. Those regiments proceeded, followed by the
second line, consisting of two more regiments of cavalry, which continued to perform the duty of cutting down the Russian
gunners.
Then came the third line, formed of another regiment, which endeavoured to complete the duty assigned to our brigade. I believe
that this was achieved with great success, and the result was that this body, composed of only about 670 men, succeeded in
passing through the mass of Russian cavalry of—as we have since learned—5,240 strong; and having broken through that mass,
they went, according to our technical military expression, "threes about," and retired in the same manner, doing as much
execution in their course as they possibly could upon the enemy's cavalry. Upon our returning up the hill which we had
descended in the attack, we had to run the same gauntlet and to incur the same risk from the flank fire of the Tirailleur as we had
encountered before. Numbers of our men were shot down—men and horses were killed, and many of the soldiers who had lost
their horses were also shot down while endeavouring to escape.
But what, my Lord, was the feeling and what the bearing of those brave men who returned to the position. Of each of these
regiments there returned but a small detachment, two-thirds of the men engaged having been destroyed? I think that every man
who was engaged in that disastrous affair at Balaklava, and who was fortunate enough to come out of it alive, must feel that it
was only by a merciful decree of Almighty Providence that he escaped from the greatest apparent certainty of death which could
possibly be conceived."
Aftermath. The brigade was not completely destroyed, but did suffer terribly, with 118 men killed, 127 wounded and
about 60 taken prisoner. After regrouping, only 195 men were still with horses. The futility of the action and its
reckless bravery prompted the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet to state "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre
(it is magnificent, but it is not war)." He continued, in a rarely quoted phrase: "C'est de la folie" — "it is madness
[Raugh, Harold E., The Victorians at War, 1815-1914: An Encyclopedia of British Military History (Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC CLIO, 2004), p. 93]."
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the then Poet Laureate, wrote evocatively about the battle in his poem "The Charge of the
Light Brigade." Tennyson's poem, published on December 9, 1854 in The Examiner, praises the Brigade ("When can
their glory fade? O the wild charge they made!") while trenchantly mourning the appalling futility of the charge
("Not tho' the soldier knew, someone had blunder'd... Charging an army, while all the world wonder'd"). Tennyson
wrote the poem inside only a few minutes after reading an account of the battle in The Times, according to his
grandson Sir Charles Tennyson. It immediately became hugely popular, even reaching the troops in the Crimea,
where it was distributed in pamphlet form. Forty years later Kipling wrote "The Last of the Light Brigade",
commemorating the visit of the last twenty survivors to Tennyson (then in his eightieth year) gently to reproach him
for not writing a sequel about the way in which England was treating its old soldiers [Kipling, Rudyard, "The Last of
the Light Brigade," St James's Gazette (London), April 28, 1890]. Some sources treat the poem as an account of a
real event [Staff writer, "Last 'Light Brigade' officer dies; Kipling poem discovered," New York Times, November 2,
1913, p. SM8, http://query.nytimes.com /gst/abstract.html...] but other commentators class the destitute old soldiers
as purely illusive, with the visit invented by Kipling to draw attention to the poverty in which the real survivors were
living, in the same way as he evoked Tommy Atkins in "The Absent Minded Beggar [Brighton, Terry, Hell Riders:
The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), pp. 229–234; Lootens, Tricia,
"Victorian poetry and patriotism," in Bristow, Joseph, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), pp. 269–270]."
See also Act II, Signature xiii - (33).
US Marine Corps (USMC) Marines assigned to C/Company, 5th Regimental Combat Team (RCT-5) 1st Battalion, 5th Marines,
man defensive fighting position in Northern Kuwait, wearing Mission-Oriented Protective Posture response level 4 (MOPP-4)
gear. The Marines of RCT-5 moved north from Kuwait into Iraq in the first phase of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (photo by Sgt
Kevin R. Reed, USMC, March 20, 2003, http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/2004/Marines/DM-SD-04-01649.JPEG).*
chemical warfare (MOPP)
Use of lethal or incapacitating chemical weapons in war, and the methods of combating such agents.
Chemical weapons include choking agents such as the chlorine and phosgene gas employed first by the Germans and
later by the Allies in World War I; blood agents such as hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen gas, which block red blood
cells from taking up oxygen; blister agents such as sulfur gas and Lewisite, also dispensed as a gas, which burn and
blister the skin; and nerve agents such as Tabun, Sarin, Soman, and VX, which block the transmission of nerve
impulses to the muscles, heart, and diaphragm. The horrific casualties suffered in World War I led to the 1925
Geneva Protocol, which made it illegal to employ chemical weapons but did not ban their production. Chemical
weapons were used a number of times afterward, most notably by Italy in Ethiopia (1935–36), by Japan in China
(1938–42), by Egypt in Yemen (1966–67), and by Iran and Iraq against each other (1984–88). During the Cold War
the Soviet Union and U.S. built up enormous chemical arsenals; these were dismantled under the terms of the 1993
Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits all development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, or transfer of
such weapons. Not all countries have signed the convention, and many are suspected of pursuing clandestine
chemical programs. Many military forces have adopted various defensive measures, including chemical sensors,
protective garments and gas masks, decontaminants, and injectable antidotes, and some have reserved the option of
retaliating in kind to any chemical attack. In 1995 a religious cult killed 12 civilians and injured thousands more with
Sarin gas in Tokyo; this pointed out the power of chemical agents as weapons of terror as well as the difficulty of
protecting civilian populations. See also biological warfare.
MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) (acronym pronounced as "mop") is a military term used to describe
protective gear to be used in a toxic environment, i.e., during a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN)
strike:
•
Protective mask — Commonly referred to as a gas mask or pro mask. It is designed to filter harmful
chemical and biological agents, as well as irradiated particles from the air to allow the wearer to breathe
safely. No protective masks filter out gasses such as carbon monoxide, and in situations requiring that level
of protection, external breathing apparatus is employed.
•
Mask carrier — Protects the mask from damage. It is usually worn as part of battle gear for easy access and
usually contains a technical manual, extra filter, spare parts, chemical detection papers, and nerve agent
antidote kits (NAAK).
•
Over garments — Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) Specially designed
clothing to be worn over the normal uniform. These garments are designed to allow maximum airflow for
cooling while keeping chemical and biological agents from reaching the skin of the wearer. Some are
equipped with a charcoal lining to neutralize some agents. Military personnel often equip over garments
with strips of M9 Detector Paper to identify chemical agents on the battlefield they might come in contact
with.
•
Gloves and overboots — (JSLIST) Highly durable rubber, designed with combat operations in mind. Used
to prevent contact with agents.
Each MOPP level corresponds to an increasing level of protection. The readiness level will usually be dictated by the
in-theatre commander [http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/khamisiyah_ii/khamisiyah_ii_refs/n15en246/Ch2.ht m;
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/cbrn/5-le vels-of-mopp.shtml].
•
MOPP Ready — Protective mask worn in carrier, at side. Overgarments, gloves, and overboots stored at a
nearby location;
•
MOPP Level 0 — Protective mask worn in carrier, at side. Overgarments, gloves, and overboots accessible;
•
MOPP Level 1 — Overgarments worn, chemical agent detectors worn, mask worn in carrier at side. Gloves
and overboots readily accessible;
•
MOPP Level 2 — Overgarments and overboots worn. Gloves and mask readily accessible;
•
MOPP Level 3 — Mask, overgarments, and overboots worn. Gloves kept ready;
•
MOPP Level 4 — All protection worn.
U.S. Army Pvt. Raef Hardin (right) and Spc. Jade Harris (second from left) help crew chief Staff Sgt. Brian Ogle (left) load
hundreds of meals, ready to eat and water onto a CH-47 Chinook helicopter at Ellington Field, Texas, on September 27, 2005.
DoD units were mobilized as part of Joint Task Force Rita to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disasterrelief efforts in the Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricane Rita (DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Cherie A. Thurlby, U.S. Air Force,
http://www.defenselink.mil//photos/newsphoto.aspx?newsphotoid=7139).*
MRE
The Meal, Ready-to-Eat — commonly known as the MRE — is a self-contained, individual field ration in
lightweight packaging bought by the United States military for its service members for use in combat or other field
conditions where organized food facilities are not available. The MRE replaced the canned MCI or Meal, Combat,
Individual rations in 1981 [Mason, V. C., Meyer, A. V., and Klicka, M. V., Technical Report TR-82/013: Summary
of Operational Rations (Natick, MA: U.S. Army Natick Research & Development Laboratory, June 1982). The MRE
was officially type-classified for adoption in 1975 but due to budget cuts was not officially placed into production
until 1981; stocks of the MCI continued to be issued until exhausted] and is the intended successor to the lighter LRP
ration developed by the United States Army for Special Forces and Ranger patrol units in Vietnam.
History. The first soldier ration established by a Congressional Resolution during the Revolutionary War consisted
of enough food to feed a man for one day, mostly beef, peas, and rice [Jones, Nicole, "The Evolution of the MRE,"
Whole Latte Love, http://www.wholelattelove.com/articles/evolution_of_mre.cfm]. During the Civil War, the
military moved toward canned goods. Later, self-contained kits were issued as a whole ration, and contained canned
meat,pork, bread, coffee, sugar and salt. During the First World War, canned meats were replaced with lightweight
preserved meats (salted or dried), to save weight and allow more rations to be carried by soldiers carrying their
supplies on foot. At the beginning of World War II, a number of new field rations were introduced, including the
Mountain ration and the Jungle ration. However, cost-cutting measures by Quartermaster Command officials during
the latter part of World War II and the Korean War again saw the predominance of heavy canned C rations issued to
troops, regardless of operating environment or mission [ibid]. The use of canned wet rations continued through the
Vietnam War, with the improved MCI field ration.
Development. After repeated experiences dating from before World War II, Pentagon officials ultimately realized
that simply providing a nutritionally balanced meal in the field was not adequate. Servicemembers in various
geographic regions and combat situations often required different subsets of ingredients for food to be considered
palatable over long periods. Moreover, catering to individual tastes and preferences would encourage
servicemembers to actually consume the whole ration and its nutrition. Most importantly, the use of specialized
forces in extreme environments and the necessity of carrying increasingly heavy field loads while on foot during
extended missions required significantly lighter alternatives to standard canned wet rations.
In 1963, the Department of Defense began developing the "Meal, Ready to Eat", a ration that would rely on modern
food preparation and packaging technology to create a lighter replacement for the canned Meal, Combat, Individual
ration. This led in 1966 to the Long Range Patrol or LRP ration, a dehydrated meal stored in a waterproof canvas
pouch. However, just as with the Jungle ration, its expense compared to canned wet rations, as well as the costs of
stocking and storing a specialized field ration, led to its limited usage and repeated attempts at discontinuance by
Quartermaster Command officials [Kearny, Cresson H., Major, Jungle Snafus... And Remedies (Oregon Institute,
1996), pp. 286-291]. In 1975, work began on a dehydrated meal stored in a plastic retort pouch. It went into special
issue starting in 1981 and standard issue in 1986, using a limited menu of 12 entrees.
The MRE has been in continual development since 1993. In an array of field tests and surveys, servicemembers
requested more entree options and larger serving sizes. By 1994, commercial-like graphics were added to make the
packets more user-friendly, while biodegradable materials were introduced for nonedible components, such as
spoons and napkins.
The number of entrées expanded to 16 by 1996 (including vegetarian options), 20 entrées by 1997 and 24 entrées by
1998. Today, servicemembers can choose from up to 24 entrées, and more than 150 additional items ["MRE Info,"
http://www.mreinfo.com/us/mre/mre-menus.html]. The variety allowed servicemembers from various cultures and
geographical regions to find something palatable. In 1992, a Flameless Ration Heater (FRH), a water-activated
exothermic reaction product that emits heat, allowed a servicemember in the field to enjoy a hot meal.
A flameless ration heater included with the MRE.*
A flameless ration heater, or FRH, is a water-activated exothermic chemical heater included with Meals, Ready-toEat (MREs), used to heat the food. US military specifications for the heater require that it be capable of raising the
temperature of an eight-ounce entree by 100° F in twelve minutes, and that it display no visible flame.
The ration heater contains finely powdered iron and magnesium metals, and table salt. To activate the reaction, a
small amount of water is added, and the boiling point of water is quickly reached as the reaction proceeds
[http://science.howstuffworks.com/mre4.htm]. Ration heaters generate heat in an electron-transfer process called an
oxidation-reduction reaction. Water oxidizes magnesium metal, according to the following chemical reaction:
Mg + 2H2O ? Mg(OH)2 + H2 + heat
This reaction is analogous iron being rusted by oxygen, and proceeds at about the same slow rate. On their own, the
reaction between magnesium and water is too slow to generate usable heat. To accelerate the reaction, the developers
(see US Patents 4,017,414 and 4,264,362) mixed metallic iron particles and table salt (NaCl) with the magnesium
particles.
Iron and magnesium metals, when suspended in an electrolyte (such as salt water), form a galvanic cell - a "battery" that can generate electricity (for an example of how to build such a battery, see
http://www.miniscience.com/link/Airbattery.htm). When water is added to a ration heater, it dissolves the salt to
form a salt-water electrolyte, thereby turning each particle of magnesium and iron into a tiny battery. Because the
magnesium and iron particles are in contact, they become thousands of tiny short-circuited batteries, which quickly
burn out, producing heat in a process the patent holders call "Supercorroding Galvanic Cells."
The FAA Testing. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
conducted testing and released a report which in summary states "...the release of hydrogen gas from these flameless
ration heaters is of a sufficient quantity to pose a potential hazard on board a passenger aircraft [Summer, Steven M.,
"DOT/FAA/AR-TN06/18: The Fire Safety Hazard of the Use of Flameless Ration Heaters Onboard Commercial
Aircraft," Federal Aviation Administration, June 2006, http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/TN06-18.pdf]." This testing
was performed on commercial grade 'heater meals' which consisted of an unenclosed flameless heat pouch, a bag of
salt water, a styrofoam saucer/tray and a meal in a sealed, microwavable/boilable bowl.
Front view of an A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog) showcasing the 30mm forward cannon and offset front landing gear
(photo by Steelerdon, September 14, 2009).*
A-10
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II is an American single-seat, twin-engine, straight-wing jet aircraft
developed by Fairchild-Republic in the early 1970s. The A-10 was designed for a United States Air Force
requirement to provide close air support (CAS) for ground forces by attacking tanks, armored vehicles, and other
ground targets with a limited air interdiction capability. It is the first U.S. Air Force aircraft designed solely for close
air support.
The A-10 was designed around the GAU-8 Avenger, a heavy rotary cannon which forms the aircraft's primary
armament (and is, to date, the heaviest rotary cannon ever mounted on an aircraft). The aircraft's hull incorporates
over 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of armor and was designed with survivability as a priority, with protective measures in
place which enable the aircraft to continue flying even after taking significant damage.
The A-10's official name comes from the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt of World War II, a fighter that was particularly
effective at close air support. The A-10 is more commonly known by its nickname "Warthog" or simply "Hog." As a
secondary mission, it provides airborne forward air control, guiding other aircraft against ground targets. A-10s used
primarily in this role are designated OA-10. The A-10 is expected to be replaced in 2028 or later.
The so-called Daniel Stone, cross slab fragment found at Rosemarkie, Easter Ross. Photographed by F. Lamiot at the Exhibition
"Celts and Scandinavians, artistic encounters, 7th-12th century," October 1, 2008 - January 12, 2009, Musée National du MoyenÀge - Thermes et hôtel de Cluny (photography allowed in the museum and the exhibition, with a no flash restriction). Loaned by
the Groam House Museum in Rosemarkie, Scotland (photo by F. Lamiot).*
Pict
Any member of an ancient people of what is now eastern and northeastern Scotland. The name (from Latin picti,
“painted”) referred to their body painting or tattooing. They were probably descended from pre-Celtic peoples. They
attacked Hadrian's Wall in 297 and warred constantly with the Romans. They united their two kingdoms by the 7th
century and converted to Christianity, and in 843 Kenneth I, king of the Scots, included them in the kingdom of
Alba, later Scotland.
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern
Scotland [Foster, Sally M., Picts, Gaels, and Scots: Early Historic Scotland (London: Batsford, 2004 [1996]), p. 1113]. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, Pit-names, for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones.
They are recorded from before the Roman conquest of Britain until the 10th century, when they merged with the
Gaels. They lived to the north of the rivers Forth and Clyde, and spoke the extinct Pictish language, thought to have
been related to the Brythonic languages spoken by the Britons to the south. Pictish society was typical of many Iron
Age societies in northern Europe, having "wide connections and parallels" with neighbouring groups [ibid, p. 17].
Although very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the late 6th century is known
from a variety of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints' lives such as that of
Columba by Adomn‫ل‬n, and various Irish annals. Although the popular impression of the Picts may be one of an
obscure, mysterious people, this is far from being the case. When compared with the generality of Northern, Central
and Eastern Europe in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Pictish history and society are well attested
[sources for Pictish history include Irish Annals - the Annals of Ulster, Tigernach, Innisfallen, Ireland (the Four
Masters), and Clonmacnoise all report events in Scotland, some frequently; the Lebor Bretnach, Scottish recension
of the Historia Britonum of Nennius; the continuation of Bede; the Historia Regum of Symeon of Durham; the
Annales Cambriae; saints' lives; and others].
The name the Picts called themselves is unknown [it has been proposed that albidosi, found in the Chronicle of the
Kings of Alba under the reign of M‫ل‬el Coluim mac Domnaill, may be intended to represent the Pictish name for
Picts, but this is disputed (Broun, Dauvit, "Alba: Pictish homeland or Irish offshoot?" in O'Neill, Pamela, Exile and
Homecoming: Papers from the Fifth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, Sydney Series in Celtic Studies 8
(Sydney: The Celtic Studies Foundation, University of Sydney, 2005), pp. 234–275, p. 258, fn 95; Woolf, Alex,
"From Pictland to Alba, 789–1070," in The New Edinburgh History of Scotland, Vol. II (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2007), pp. 177–181].
The Latin word Picti first occurs in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean "painted or
tattooed people" (Latin pingere, 'to paint ["pingo," Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, on Perseus
Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3A entry%
3Dpingo];' pictus, "painted," cf. Greek "πυκτίς" - puktis, 'picture)[πυκτίς, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A
Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%
3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3A entry%3Dpukti%2Fs1]. As Sally M. Foster noted, "Much ink has been spilt over
what the ancient writers meant by Picts, but it seems to be a generic term for people living north of the Forth-Clyde
isthmus who raided the Roman Empire [Foster (2004 [1996]), p. 11]."
Their Old English name [the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has pihtas and pehtas] gave the modern Scots form Pechts and
the Welsh word Fichti [citation needed]. In writings from Ireland, the name Cruthin, Cruthini, Cruthni, Cruithni or
Cruithini (Modern Irish: Cruithne) was used to refer to the Picts and to a group of people who lived alongside the
Ulaid in eastern Ulster [‫ س‬Crَin‫ي‬n, D‫ل‬ibh‫ي‬, A New History of Ireland: Prehistoric and Early Ireland (Oxford
University Press, 2008), p. 213]. It is generally accepted that this is derived from *Qritani, which is the Goidelic/QCeltic version of the Britonnic/P-Celtic *Pritani [Chadwick, Hector Munro, Early Scotland: The Picts, the Scots &
the Welsh of Southern Scotland (CUP Archive, 1949), pp. 66-80]. From this came Britanni, the Roman name for
those now called the Britons [‫ س‬Crَin‫ي‬n (2008); Chadwick (1949); Dunbavin, Paul, Picts and Ancient Britons: An
Exploration of Pictish Origins (Third Millennium Publishing, 1998), p. 3]. It has been suggested that Cruthin was a
name used to refer to all the Britons who were not conquered by the Romans; those who lived outside Roman
Britannia, north of Hadrian's Wall [Dunbavin (1998)].
History. The means by which the Pictish confederation formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes is
unknown, although there is speculation that reaction to the growth of the Roman Empire was a factor [see the
discussion of the creation of the Frankish Confederacy in Geary, Patrick J., Before France and Germany: The
Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford U.P., 1988), Ch. 2]. Pictland had previously been
described as the home of the Caledonii [e.g., Tacitus, Ptolemy, and as the Dicalydonii by Ammianus Marcellinus.
Note that Ptolemy refers to the sea to the west of Scotland as the Oceanus Duecaledonius]. Other tribes said to have
lived in the area included the Verturiones, Taexali and Venicones [ibid]. Except for the Caledonians, the names may
be second- or third-hand: perhaps as reported to the Romans by speakers of Brythonic or Gaulish languages
[Caledonii is attested from a grave marker in Roman Britai].
Pictish recorded history begins in the Dark Ages. It appears that they were not the dominant power in Northern
Britain for the entire period. The Gaels of D‫ل‬l Riata controlled their own region for a time, but suffered a series of
defeats in the first third of the 7th century [at Degsastan in the first decade of the century and several times under
Domnall Brecc in the third and fourth decade]. The Angles of Bernicia overwhelmed the adjacent British kingdoms,
and the neighbouring Anglian kingdom of Deira (Bernicia and Deira later being called Northumbria), was to become
the most powerful kingdom in Britain [for the kingdoms of Bernicia, and Northumbria, see Higham, N. J., The
Kingdom of Northumbria, AD 350–1100 (Sutton: Stroud, 1993)]. The Picts were probably tributary to Northumbria
until the reign of Bridei map Beli, when the Anglians suffered a defeat at the battle of Dunnichen that halted their
northward expansion. The Northumbrians continued to dominate southern Scotland for the remainder of the Pictish
period.
In the reign of ‫س‬engus mac Fergusa (729–761), D‫ل‬l Riata was very much subject to the Pictish king. Although it had
its own kings from the 760s, it appears that D‫ل‬l Riata did not recover [Broun, Dauvit, "Pictish Kings, 761–839:
Integration with D‫ل‬l Riata or Separate Development," in Sally M. Foster, Ed., The St Andrews Sarcophagus: A
Pictish Masterpiece and its International Connections (Four Courts, Dublin, 1988) attempts to reconstruct the
confused late history of D‫ل‬l Riata. The silence in the Irish Annals is ignored by Bannerman, John, "The Scottish
Takeover of Pictland and the relics of Columba," in Dauvit Broun & Thomas Owen Clancy, Eds., Spes Scotorum:
Hope of Scots (Saint Columba, Iona and the Scotland. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1999)]. A later Pictish king,
Caustant‫ي‬n mac Fergusa (793–820), placed his son Domnall on the throne of D‫ل‬l Riata (811–835) [after Broun,
"Pictish Kings", but the later history of D‫ل‬l Riata is very obscure]. Pictish attempts to achieve a similar dominance
over the Britons of Alt Clut (Dumbarton) were not successful [Cf. the failed attempts by ‫س‬engus mac Fergusa].
The Viking Age brought great changes in Britain and Ireland, no less in Scotland than elsewhere. The kingdom of D
‫ل‬l Riata was destroyed, certainly by the middle of the 9th century, when Ketil Flatnose is said to have founded the
Kingdom of the Isles. Northumbria too succumbed to the Vikings, who founded the Kingdom of York, and the
Kingdom of Strathclyde was also greatly affected. The king of Fortriu Eَgan mac ‫س‬engusa, the king of D‫ل‬l Riata ‫ء‬ed
mac Boanta, and many more, were killed in a major battle against the Vikings in 839 [Annals of Ulster (s.a. 839):
"The (Vikings) won a battle against the men of Fortriu, and Eَgan‫ل‬n son of Aengus, Bran son of ‫س‬engus, Aed son of
Boanta, and others almost innumerable fell there"]. The rise of C‫ي‬naed mac Ailp‫ي‬n (Kenneth MacAlpin) in the
840s, in the aftermath of this disaster, brought to power the family who would preside over the last days of the
Pictish kingdom and found the new kingdom of Alba, although C‫ي‬naed himself was never other than king of the
Picts [citation needed].
In the reign of C‫ي‬naed's grandson, Caustant‫ي‬n mac ‫ء‬eda (900–943), the kingdom of the Picts became the kingdom
of Alba. The change from Pictland to Alba may not have been noticeable at first; indeed, as we do not know the
Pictish name for their land, it may not have been a change at all. The Picts, along with their language, did not
disappear suddenly. The process of Gaelicisation, which may have begun generations earlier, continued under
Caustant‫ي‬n and his successors. When the last inhabitants of Alba became fully Gaelicised Scots, probably during the
11th century, the Picts were soon forgotten [Broun, Dauvit, "Dunkeld and the origin of Scottish identity," in Broun &
Clancy (1999); Broun, Dauvit, "National identity: early medieval and the formation of Alba," in Lynch, Michael,
Ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford UP, 2001); Forsyth, Katherine, "Origins: Scotland to
1100," in Jenny Wormald, Ed., Scotland: A History (Oxford UP, 2005), pp. 28–32; Woolf, "Constantine II"
(incomplete cite); cf. Bannerman, "Scottish Takeover," passim, representing the "traditional" view]. Later they
would reappear in myth and legend [for example, Pechs, and perhaps Pixies. However, Sally Foster quotes John
Toland in 1726: "they are apt all over Scotland to make everything Pictish whose origin they do not know." The
same could be said of the Picts in myth].
Operation Desert Storm as captured live on a CNN night vision camera with reporters narrating (http://www2.tvark.org.uk/news/gulf_war.html).*
CNN
or Cable News Network
Subsidiary company of Turner Broadcasting Systems. It was created by Ted Turner in 1980 to present 24-hour live
news broadcasts, using satellites to transmit reports from news bureaus around the world. CNN became prominent in
1991 with its coverage of the Persian Gulf War. The company also operates the news channels Headline News and
CNN International. See also cable television.
Cable News Network (CNN) is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner ["Reese Schonfeld Bio,"
MeAndTed.com, January 29, 2001, http://meandted.com/author.htm; "Charles Bierbauer, CNN senior Washington
correspondent, discusses his 19-year career at CNN," CNN.com, May 8, 2000,
http://cnn.com/COMMUNITY/transcripts/2000/5/8/bierbauer/]. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to
provide 24-hour television news coverage ["CNN changed news – for better and worse," Taipei Times, May 31,
2005, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/05/31/2003257358], and the first all-news
television channel in the United States [Kiesewetter, John, "In 20 years, CNN has changed the way we view the
news," Cincinnati Enquirer, May 28, 2000, http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2000/05/28/loc_kiesewetter.html].
While the news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from its headquarters at the CNN Center
in Atlanta, the Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. CNN is
owned by parent company Time Warner, and the U.S. news channel is a division of the Turner Broadcasting System
[http://www.timewarner.com/corp/businesses/detail/turner_broadcasting/index.h tml].
CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U.S. to distinguish the American channel from its international counterpart,
CNN International. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100 million U.S. households ["This date in deal
history: CNN begins broadcasting," Deal Magazine, May 31, 2006, http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/2006/05
/this_date_in_deal_history_cnn.php]. Broadcast coverage extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms [ibid], and
the U.S broadcast is also shown in Canada. Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can
be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories ["CNN is Viewers Cable Network of Choice for Democratic
and Republican National Convention Coverage," Timewarner.com, August 18, 2000,
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,667801,00.html]. Starting late 2010, the domestic version
CNN/U.S., is available in high definition to viewers in Japan under the name CNN HD.
The Gulf War. The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the channel past
the "big three" American networks for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop:
CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of the
Coalition bombing campaign, with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw,
John Holliman, and Peter Arnett. The moment when bombing began was announced on CNN by Bernard Shaw on
January 16, 1991 as follows ["The Gulf War and its consequences,"
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1996/2/96.02.08.x.html]:
"This is Bernie Shaw. Something is happening outside...Peter Arnett, join me here. Let's describe to our viewers what we're
seeing...The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated...We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky."
The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of
previously obscure reporters. Many of these reporters now comprise CNN's "old guard." Bernard Shaw became
CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer (now host
of The Situation Room) and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was
caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as the ruthless reporter "Adriana Cruz" in the film Three Kings (1999). Time
Warner later produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about the channel's coverage of the first Gulf War,
which aired on HBO.
Controversy. CNN has been accused of perpetrating media bias for allegedly promoting both a conservative and a
liberal agenda based on previous incidents. Accuracy in Media and the Media Research Center have claimed that
CNN's reporting contains liberal editorializing within news stories ["CNN and the Liberal Propaganda Machine,"
http://www.aim.org /media_monitor/A3962_0_2_0_C/; Media Research Center CyberAlert, "Slant of CNN's
Tuesday night town meeting, February 17, 1999, http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts
/1999/cyb19990217.asp].
CNN is one of the world's largest news organizations, and its international channel, CNN International is the leading
international new channel in terms of viewer reach ["About Us," CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/about/; "CNN tops
European news channels according to EMS," Brand Republic News,
http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/media/article/563911/cnn-tops-european -news-channels-according-ems/].
Unlike the BBC and its network of reporters and bureaus, CNN International makes extensive use of affiliated
reporters that are local to, and often directly affected by, the events they are reporting. The effect is a more
immediate, less detached style of on-the-ground coverage. This has done little to stem criticism, largely from Middle
Eastern nations, that CNN International reports news from a pro-American perspective. This is a marked contrast to
domestic criticisms that often portray CNN as having a "liberal" or "anti-American" bias. In 2002, Honest Reporting
spearheaded a campaign to expose CNN for pro-Palestinian bias, citing public remarks in which Ted Turner equated
Palestinian suicide bombing with Israeli military strikes ["CNN chief accuses Israel of terror,"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/jun/18/terrorismandthemedia.israel].
As said by CNN founder Mr. Turner in the Chicago Sun-Times, June 5, 2007, "There really isn't much of a point
getting some Tom, Dick or Harry off the streets to report on when we can snag a big name whom everyone identifies
with. After all, it's all part of the business." However, in April 2008, Turner criticized the direction CNN has taken
["Ted Turner: Global warming could lead to cannibalism," ajc.com,
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/news/stories/2008/04/03/turner_0404.html]. Others have echoed that criticism,
especially in light of CNN's drop in the ratings.
A Chinese website, anti-cnn.com ["CNN: The world's leader of liars...," http://www.anti-cnn.com/], has accused
CNN and western media in general of biased reporting against China, with the catch-phrase "Don't be so CNN"
catching on in the Chinese mainstream as jokingly meaning "Don't be so biased". Pictures used by CNN are
allegedly edited to have completely different meanings from the original ones. In addition, the channel was accused
of largely ignoring pro-China voices during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco.
~ page 224 ~
Inside the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (photo by Saad Akhtar from New Delhi, India, December 19, 2004,
http://flickr.com/photos/17155762@N00).*
Temple of Heaven
Large religious complex in the old outer city of Beijing, considered the supreme achievement of traditional Chinese
architecture. Its layout symbolizes the belief that heaven is round and earth square. The three buildings are built in a
straight line. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (1420) has three concentric circles of massive wood columns
symbolizing the four seasons, 12 months, and 12 daily hours; in a remarkable feat of engineering, they support the
three roof levels and, in succession, a huge square brace (earth), circular architrave (heaven), and vast interior
cupola. The Imperial Vault of Heaven (1530; rebuilt 1572) is a smaller circular building constructed without
crossbeams; its dome is supported by complicated span work. The Circular Mound Altar (1530; rebuilt 1749) is a
triple-tiered white stone terrace enclosed by two sets of walls that are square outside and round inside.
The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven (simplified Chinese:
; traditional Chinese:
; pinyin:
Tiāntán; Manchu: Abkai mukdehun) is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in the southeastern part of central
Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer
to Heaven for good harvest. It is regarded as a Taoist temple, although Chinese Heaven worship, especially by the
reigning monarch of the day, pre-dates Taoism.
History. The temple complex was constructed from 1406 to 1420 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, who was
also responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The complex was extended and renamed
Temple of Heaven during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor in the 16th century. The Jiajing Emperor also built three
other prominent temples in Beijing, the Temple of Sun ( )in the east, the Temple of Earth ( )in the north, and
the Temple of Moon ( )in the west. The Temple of Heaven was renovated in the 18th century under the Qianlong
Emperor. Due to the deterioration of state budget, this became the last large-scale renovation of the temple complex
in the imperial time.
The temple was occupied by the Anglo-French Alliance during the Second Opium War. In 1900, during the Boxer
Rebellion, the Eight Nation Alliance occupied the temple complex and turned it into the force's temporary command
in Beijing, which lasted for one year. The occupation desecrated the temple and resulted in serious damage to the
building complex and the garden. Robberies of temple artifacts by the Alliance were also reported. With the
downfall of the Qing, the temple complex was left unmanaged. The neglect of the temple complex led to the collapse
of several halls in the following years [http://58.30.231.66:8008/cn/tabs/showdetail.aspx?tabid=710017&iid=1777].
In 1914, Yuan Shikai, then President of the Republic of China, performed a Ming prayer ceremony at the temple, as
part of an effort to have himself declared Emperor of China. In 1918 the temple was turned into a park and for the
first time open to the public.
The Temple of Heaven was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and was described as "a
masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great
importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations..." as the "symbolic layout and design of the
Temple of Heaven had a profound influence on architecture and planning in the Far East over many centuries
[http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/881]." The surroundings of the Temple of Heaven is now a very popular park for
exercising.
The Temple grounds cover 2.73 km² of parkland and comprises three main groups of constructions, all built
according to strict philosophical requirements:
•
The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (
) is a magnificent triple-gabled circular building, 36 metres in
diameter and 38 metres tall, built on three levels of marble stone base, where the Emperor prayed for good
harvests. The building is completely wooden, with no nails. The original building was burned down by a
fire caused by lightning in 1889. The current building was re-built several years after the incident.
•
The Imperial Vault of Heaven (
) is a single-gabled circular building, built on a single level of marble
stone base. It is located south of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and resembles it, but is smaller. It is
surrounded by a smooth circular wall, the Echo Wall, that can transmit sounds over large distances. The
Imperial Vault is connected to the Hall of Prayer by the Vermilion Steps Bridge, a 360 meter long raised
walkway that slowly ascends from the Vault to the Hall of Prayer.
•
The Circular Mound Altar (
) is the altar proper, located south of the Imperial Vault of Heaven. It is an
empty circular platform on three levels of marble stones, each decorated by lavishly carved dragons. The
numbers of various elements of the Altar, including its balusters and steps, are either the sacred number nine
or its nonuples. The center of the altar is a round slate called the Heart of Heaven(
) or the Supreme
Yang(
), where the Emperor prayed for favorable weather. Thanks to the design of the altar, the sound
of the prayer will be reflected by the guardrail, creating significant resonance, which was supposed to help
the prayer communicate with the Heaven. The Altar was built in 1530 by the Jiajing Emperor and rebuilt in
1740.
In ancient China, the Emperor of China was regarded as the Son of Heaven, who administered earthly matters on
behalf of, and representing, heavenly authority. To be seen to be showing respect to the source of his authority, in the
form of sacrifices to heaven, was extremely important. The temple was built for these ceremonies, mostly comprising
prayers for good harvests.
Twice a year the Emperor and all his retinue would move from the Forbidden city through Beijing to encamp within
the complex, wearing special robes and abstaining from eating meat. No ordinary Chinese was allowed to view this
procession or the following ceremony. In the temple complex the Emperor would personally pray to Heaven for
good harvests. The highpoint of the ceremony at the winter solstice was performed by the Emperor on the Earthly
Mount. The ceremony had to be perfectly completed; it was widely held that the smallest of mistakes would
constitute a bad omen for the whole nation in the coming year.
Northeastern fragment of a map of China (in Italian), showing the "Tartari del Kin o dell'Oro (i.e., the Jin Tartars, or the Golden
Tartars)," populating the "Regno del Niulhan," a.k.a. "Regno del Niuche (i.e. the Kingdom of the Nüzhen, a.k.a Jurchen)," who
are further described as "The Tartars who have occupied, and at present are ruling, China." Further northeast, the "Tartari de
Yupy (i.e., Fishskin Tartars - the generic name of the Tungusic people of the Amur)" are shown. Map drawn in 1682 [reprint
1689] by Giacomo Cantelli (1643-1695), Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi (17th century).*
Qing dynasty
or Ch'ing dynasty or Manchu dynasty (1644–1911/12)
Last of the imperial dynasties in China. The name Qing was first applied to the dynasty established by the Manchu in
1636 in Manchuria and then applied by extension to their rule in China. During the Qing dynasty, China's territory
and population expanded tremendously. Cultural attitudes were strongly conservative and Neo-Confucianism was the
dominant philosophy. The arts flourished: literati painting was popular, novels in the vernacular developed
substantially, and jingxi (Peking opera) developed. Qing porcelain, textiles, tea, paper, sugar, and steel were
exported to all parts of the world. Military campaigns in the latter part of the 18th century depleted government
finances, and corruption grew. These conditions, combined with population pressures and natural disasters, led to the
Opium Wars and the Taiping and Nian rebellions, which in turn so weakened the dynasty that it was unable to rebuff
the demands of foreign powers. The dynasty ended with the republican revolution of 1911 and the abdication of the
last emperor in 1912.
Originally established as the Later Jin Dynasty (simplified Chinese:
; traditional Chinese:
; pinyin: Hٍu Jīn)
Amaga Aisin Gurun in 1616, it changed its name to "Qing," meaning "clear" or "pellucid" in 1636. In 1644, the
Ming Dynasty's capital of Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming
official who became the leader of the peasant revolt. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed
suicide when the city fell, marking the official end of the dynasty. The Manchus then allied with Ming general Wu
Sangui and seized control of Beijing and overthrew Li Zicheng's short-lived Shun Dynasty.
During its reign the Qing Dynasty became highly integrated with Chinese culture. The dynasty reached its height in
the 18th century, during which both territory and population were increased. However, its military power weakened
thereafter and, faced with massive rebellions and defeat in wars, the Qing Dynasty declined after the mid-19th
century. The Qing Dynasty was overthrown following the Xinhai Revolution, when Empress Dowager Longyu
abdicated on behalf of the last emperor, Puyi, on February 12, 1912.
The Qing Dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who form the majority of the Chinese population, but a hunting,
fishing, and farming people who would come to be known as the Manchus, and who are today an ethnic minority of
China. The Manchus believed themselves to be descended from Jurchens (Chinese:
; Man: Jušen), a Tungusic
people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. What was to
become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe in Jianzhou, in the early
17th century. Originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, Nurhaci in 1582 embarked on an inter-tribal feud that
escalated into a campaign to unify the Jianzhou Jurchen tribes. By 1616 he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou
region to proclaim himself Khan of "Great Jin" in reference to the previous Jurchen dynasty. Historians refer to this
pre-Qing entity as "Later Jin" to distinguish it from the first Jin Dynasty. Two years later, Nurhaci announced the
Seven Grievances and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of
those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles he relocated his capital
from Hetu Ala to successively bigger captured Ming cities in the province of Liaodong, first Liaoyang (Man: dergi
hecen) in 1621 and again in 1625 to Shenyang (later renamed Shengjing; Chinese:
; Man: Mukden)[Patricia
Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd, 2010),
pp. 220-224].
Nurhaci's policy towards the Mongols was to seek their friendship and cooperation against their common foe the
Ming Dynasty, thus securing the Jurchens' western front from a powerful potential enemy. Furthermore, the Mongols
proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their traditional expertise as cavalry archers. To cement this new
alliance Nurhaci initiated a policy of inter-marriages between Jurchen and those Mongol nobility compliant to
Jurchen leadership, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhaci's
many initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing Dynasty the
Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus [Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, Amir Harrak-Contacts Between
Cultures, Vol. 4, p. 25].
Nurhaci's unbroken series of military successes came to an end in January 1626 when he was dealt his first major
military defeat by general Yuan Chonghuan while laying siege to the Ming city of Ningyuan. He died a few months
later [officially Qing court history states that Nurhachi died from illness. However because the cause of death
mentioned is unusually vague, some historians[citation needed] propose that based on historical circumstantial
evidence and through reading official Ming court history (Chinese:
) Nurhaci might have died from
cannon wounds sustained at the siege of Liaoning], and was succeeded by his eighth son, Abahai, and later known as
Hong Taiji, who emerged after a short political struggle amongst other potential contenders as the new Khan.
Although he was an experienced general and the commander of two Banners at the time of his succession, Hong
Taiji's reign did not start well on the military front. The Jurchens suffered yet another defeat in 1627 at the hands of
Yuan Chonghuan. As before, this defeat was the result of the superior firepower of the Ming forces' newly acquired
Portuguese cannons. To redress the technological and numerical disparity Hong Taiji in 1634 created his own
artillery corps (Chinese:
; Man: ujen chooha) from amongst his existing Han troops who cast their own cannons
from European design with the help of captured Chinese artisans.
The Mandate of Heaven. Hong Taiji died suddenly in September 1643 without a designated heir. As the Jurchens
had traditionally "elected" their leader through a council of nobles, the Qing state did not have in place a clear
succession system until the reign of the Kangxi Emperor. The leading contenders for power at this time were Hong
Taiji's oldest son Hooge and Hong Taiji's agnate half brother Dorgon. In the ensuing political impasse between the
two bitter political rivals, a compromise candidate in the person of Hong Taiji's five-year-old son Fulin, was installed
as the Shunzhi Emperor, with Dorgon as regent and de facto leader of the Manchu nation. The Manchus' nemesis, the
Ming Dynasty, was fighting for its own survival against a long peasant rebellion and was unable to capitalise on the
Qing court's political uncertainty over the succession dispute and installation of a minor as emperor. The Ming
Dynasty's internal crisis came to a head in April 1644, when the capital at Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel
forces led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt and established a
short-lived Shun Dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when the city fell,
marking the official end of the dynasty.
After easily taking Beijing, Li Zicheng led a coalition of rebel forces numbering 200,000 [the exact figure of Li
Zicheng's forces at the battle of Shanhai Pass is disputed. Some primary sources, such as the official Qing and Ming
court histories (Chinese:
,
), cite 200,000. Modern historians [who?] generally estimate Li
Zicheng's army to be no larger than 100,000] to confront Wu Sangui, the general commanding the Ming garrison at
Shanhai Pass. Shanhai Pass is a pivotal pass of the Great Wall, located fifty miles northeast of Beijing, and for years
its defenses were what kept the Manchus from directly raiding the Ming capital. Wu Sangui, caught between a rebel
army twice his size and a foreign enemy he had fought for years, decided to cast his lot with the Manchus with whom
he was familiar, and made an alliance with Dorgon to fight the rebels. Some sources suggested that Wu Sangui's
actions were influenced by news of mistreatment of his family and his concubine Chen Yuanyuan at the hands of the
rebels when the capital fell. Regardless of the actual reasons for his decision [the motivation for Wu Sangui's actions,
apart from obvious self-preservation, was never fully explained. Most primary sources including the Ming and Qing
official court histories are understandably biased against a person who turned "traitor" to both parties], this awkward
and some would say cynical alliance between Wu Sangui and his former sworn enemy was ironically made in the
name of avenging the death of the Chongzhen Emperor. Together, the two former enemies met and defeated Li
Zicheng's rebel forces in battle on May 27, 1644. After routing Li Zicheng's forces, the Manchus captured Beijing on
June 6, where the Shunzhi Emperor was installed as the "Son of Heaven" on October 30. The Manchus who had
positioned themselves as political heir to the Ming emperor by defeating Li Zicheng, completed the symbolic act of
transition by holding a formal funeral for the Chongzhen Emperor. However the process of conquering the rest of
China took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. It also involved huge loss of
life, including the infamous Yangzhou massacre of 1645, when a ten-day rampage by troops in the city with the
permission of Prince Dodo resulted in an estimated 800,000 deaths. The last Ming pretender, Prince Gui, sought
refuge with the King of Burma, but was turned over to a Qing expeditionary army commanded by Wu Sangui, who
had him brought back to Yunnan province and executed in early 1662.
The Manchus found controlling the "Mandate of Heaven" a daunting task. The vastness of China's territory meant
that there were only enough banner troops to garrison key cities forming the backbone of a defence network that
relied heavily on surrendered Ming soldiers. In addition, three surrendered Ming generals were singled out for their
contributions to the establishment of the Qing dynasty, ennobled as feudal princes ( ), and given governorships
over vast territories in Southern China. The chief of these was Wu Sangui, who was given the provinces of Yunnan
and Guizhou, while generals Shang Kexi (
) and Geng Jingzhong (
) were given Guangdong and Fujian
provinces respectively.
As the years went by, the three feudal lords and their territories inevitably became increasingly autonomous. Finally,
in 1673, Shang Kexi petitioned the Kangxi Emperor, stating his desire to retire to his hometown in Liaodong
province and nominating his son as his successor. The young emperor granted his retirement, but denied the heredity
of his fief. In reaction, the two other generals decided to petition for their own retirements to test Kangxi's resolve,
thinking that he would not risk offending them. The move backfired as the young emperor called their bluff by
accepting their requests and ordering all three fiefdoms to be reverted back to the crown.
Faced with the stripping of their powers, Wu Sangui felt he had no choice but to rise up in revolt. He was joined by
Geng Zhongming and by Shang Kexi's son Shang Zhixin (
). The ensuing rebellion lasted for eight years. At the
peak of the rebels' fortunes, they managed to extend their control as far north as the Yangtze River. Ultimately,
though, the Qing government was able to put down the rebellion and exert control over all of southern China. The
rebellion would be known in Chinese history as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories.
To consolidate the dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against the Dzungars,
and later the Russian Empire. He arranged the marriage of his daughter to the Mongol leader Galdan Boshugtu Khan
to avoid a military conflict. Galdan's military campaign against the Qing Empire failed, further strengthening the
power of the dynasty. During Kangxi's reign, Outer Mongolia and Tibet were invaded by the Dzungars and asked for
help from China. The Kangxi Emperor was able to successfully expel Galdan's invading forces from these regions,
which were then incorporated into the empire. Taiwan was also conquered by Qing forces in 1683 from Zheng
Keshuang, grandson of Koxinga. Koxinga had conquered Taiwan from the Dutch colonists to use it as a base against
the Qing Dynasty. By the end of the 17th century, China was at its greatest height of power since the Ming Dynasty.
The Kangxi Emperor also handled many Jesuit missionaries that came to China. A series of missionaries, including
Tom‫ل‬s Pereira, Martino Martini, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest and Antoine Thomas, also held
significant positions as mathematicians, astronomers and advisers to the emperor. An astronomical observatory was
an essential part of the cosmological temple.
See also Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know his world and himself (New York:
Random House, 1982), p. 74, and pp. 57-62 for accounts of Christianity in medevial China.
~ page numbers refer to topic's appearance within main text ~
End Notes
Ready Reference Library from Encyclop‫و‬dia Britannica Ready Reference 2005 CD-ROM (unless
otherwise indicated). Copyright 1994-2003 Encyclop‫و‬dia Britannica, Inc.
* Image & caption credit and text (if indicated): courtesy of Wikipedia].

Act II, Signature xvii

Transcription

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