AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
In 2005, Card made a magazine called "Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show". He edited the first two magazines, but he was too busy to keep up with it. Edmund R. Schubert was one of Card’s former students. Schubert took over the magazine and became the editor in 2006.
Card also wrote the dialog and screenplay for the Xbox video game "Advent Rising'’.
In 2008, Card's short book"Hamlet's Father" was published in "The Ghost Quartet" collection (Tor Books). “Hamlet’s Father” was a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Genius Squad is a book that was written by Catherine Jinks in 2008. It was published by Allen & Unwin, Australia. It is the second book in a series that follows the main character Cadel Piggot.
Evil Genius (book)
Evil Genius is a book written by Catherine Jinks in 2005. It was published by Allen & Unwin, Australia. The book is the first in a series that follows the story of "Cadel Piggot".
Catherine Jinks
Public speaking is speaking to a group of people in an organized way: to give information, influence or persuade, or to entertain the listeners.
In public speaking there are five important questions, which are often expressed as ""who" is saying "what" to "whom", using "which medium", with what "effects"?"
The Ancient Greeks called public speaking rhetoric; the Romans called it oratory. Until the late 20th century it was also called "forensic speaking", or "forensics". Propaganda is an another name for speech for or against some point of view. In George Orwell's words propaganda is a reflection of prejudices and beliefs that colors people's [or societies] aesthetic judgements. Often they are simply fallacies or conjectures.
Professional public speakers may use storytelling techniques or humor as a communication tool. A public speaker who is strong at using comedy might have more success adding a joke into a speech than one who is weak in that area.
A speaker's guideline is given in "TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking".
Their information includes:
Other guidelines exist.
Models in public speaking.
The 6 I model of credibility for public speaking are:
The AIDA model is about designing the message and delivering it effectively to the target audience. It says the speaker should first get attention, hold the interest level of the audience, arouse desire for the solution or the objective (appeal, theme, etc.) desired to communicate, and finally obtain action or actionable commitment from the audience.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) is a university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was founded in 1789. UNC is one of three schools that claim to be the oldest public university in the United States. To be more exact, UNC is the first school in the U.S. to hold classes and graduate students as a public institution; it began teaching students in 1795 and graduated its first students in 1798. (The University of Georgia was founded in 1785, but did not start teaching classes until 1801; The College of William & Mary was founded in 1693 and taught students at that time, but did not become a public school until 1906.)
Michigan State University (or "MSU" for short) is a public university in East Lansing, Michigan.
The Michigan State Spartans are the athletic team of the university. The school's athletic program includes 23 varsity sports teams. The school colors are green and white. They play in NCAA Division I, with almost all of their teams playing in the Big Ten Conference. In 2010, the MSU football team won a share of the Big 10 title, and played in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The men's ice hockey team plays in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, but will leave that conference in July 2013 when the Big Ten starts a men's hockey league.
Established in 1855, MSU was originally an agricultural college. Students were known as "Aggies," but are now known as the "Spartans." Currently, Michigan State University has the largest single campus student body of any university in the state of Michigan, and is one of the largest universities in the country.
The mascot of the university is called "Sparty". He is mostly shown as a muscular male Spartan warrior/athlete dressed in a stylish Greek costume.
Big Ten (disambiguation)
Big Ten could mean:
Athletic
Athletic could mean:
Big Ten Conference
The Big Ten Conference is the United States' oldest Division I college athletic conference. Most of its 14 member institutions are in the Midwestern United States.
The Big Ten gained its first "associate member"—i.e., a school playing only a small number of sports (in this case, one) in the conference—in 2014. The same school brought a second sport into the Big Ten in 2016. A second school became an associate member in 2017.
Asteroid spectral types
Asteroids are assigned a type based on spectral shape, color, and sometimes albedo. These types are thought to correspond to an asteroid's surface composition. For small bodies which are not internally differentiated, the surface and internal compositions are presumably similar, while large bodies such as 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta are known to have internal structure.
A list of types can be found at .
The present-day classification was initiated by Clark R. Chapman, David Morrison, and Ben Zellner in 1975 with three categories: C for dark carbonaceous objects, S for stony (silicaceous) objects, and U for those which did not fit into either C or S. This classification has since been expanded and clarified.
A number of classification schemes are currently in existence , and while they strive to retain some mutual consistency, quite a few asteroids are sorted into different classes depending on the particular scheme. This is due to the use of different criteria for each approach. The two most widely used classifications are described below:
The most widely used taxonomy for over a decade has been that of David J. Tholen, first proposed in 1984. This classification was developed from broad band spectra (between 0.31μm and 1.06μm) obtained during the Eight-Color Asteroid Survey (ECAS) in the 1980s, in combination with albedo measurements . The original formulation was based on 978 asteroids.
This scheme includes 14 types with the majority of asteroids falling into one of three broad categories, and several smaller types. They are, with their largest exemplars:
and the small classes:
Objects were sometimes assigned a combined type such as "e.g." CG when their properties were a combination of those typical for several types.
This is a more recent taxonomy introduced by Schelte J. Bus and Richard P. Binzel in 2002, based on the Small Main-Belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey (SMASS) of 1447 asteroids . This survey produced spectra of a far higher resolution than ECAS, and was able to resolve a variety of narrow spectral features. However, a somewhat smaller range of wavelengths (0.44μm to 0.92μm) was observed. Also, albedos were not considered.
While attempting to keep to the Tholen taxonomy as much as possible given the differing data, asteroids were sorted into the 24 types given below. The majority of bodies fall again into the three broad C, S, and X categories, with a few unusual bodies categorized into several smaller types:
A significant number of small asteroids were found to fall in the Q, R, and V types, which were represented by only a single body in the Tholen scheme.
In this Bus and Binzel SMASS scheme only a single type was assigned to any particular asteroid.
A few Near-Earth objects have spectra which differ strongly from any of the SMASS classes. This is presumably because these bodies are much smaller than those detected in the Main Belt, and as such may have younger less-altered surfaces or be composed of a less varied mix of minerals.
These classification schemes are expected to be refined and/or replaced as further research progresses. However, for now, the spectral classification based on the two above coarse resolution spectroscopic surveys from the 1990s is still the standard. Scientists have been unable to agree on a better taxonomic system, largely due to the difficulty of obtaining detailed measurements consistently for a large sample of asteroids (e.g. finer resolution spectra, or non-spectral data such as densities would be very useful).
The three main groupings of asteroids are thought to be related to the three basic meteorite types:
Saturn's Gallic group of satellites
The Gallic group is a dynamical grouping of the prograde irregular satellites of Saturn following similar orbits. Their semi-major axes range between 16 and 19 Gm, their inclinations between 35° and 40°, and their eccentricities around 0.53.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) reserves names taken from Gallic mythology for these moons.
Similar mean orbital elements led the discoverers to postulate a common origin for the group in a break up of a larger body.
The diagram illustrates the Gallic group in relation to other irregular satellites of Saturn. The eccentricity of the orbits is represented by the yellow segments (extending from the pericentre to the apocentre) with the inclination represented on Y axis.
The four members of the group are (in order of increasing distance from Saturn):
The group was later found to be physically homogenous, all satellites displaying "light-red" colour (colour indices B − V = 0.91 and V − R = 0.48)
and similar infrared indices
Remarkably, recent observations revealed that the largest member of the group, Albiorix, displays actually two different colours: one compatible with Eriapo and Tarvos, and another less red. Instead of the common progenitor, it was postulated that Tarvos and Erriapus could be fragments of Albiorix, leaving a large, less red crater.
Such an impact would require a body with the diameter in excess of 1 km and relative velocity close to 5 km/s, resulting in a large crater with the radius of 12 km. Numerous, very large craters observed on Phoebe, prove the existence of such collisions in the Saturnian system's past.
Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes) is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia, and is between Borneo and the Maluku Islands.
Sulawesi is the world's eleventh-largest island, covering an area of 174,600 km. The island is surrounded by Borneo to the west, by the Philippines to the north, by Maluku to the east, and by Flores and Timor to the south. It has a distinctive shape, dominated by four large peninsulas: the Semenanjung Minahassa; the East Peninsula; the South Peninsula; and the South-east Peninsula. The central part of the island is ruggedly mountainous, such that the island's peninsulas have traditionally been remote from each other, with better connections by sea than by road.
These are the ten largest cities in Sulawesi by population in 2010.
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc. Its area is about . It goes east from the island of Java. There are about 1.5 million people in Flores. The largest town is Maumere.
Flores is east of Sumbawa and Komodo. It is west of Lembata and the Alor Archipelago. To the southeast is Timor. To the south is the Sumba strait. The Flores Sea is to the north.
On December 12 1992, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale occurred. It killed 2,000 people in the town of Maumere.
Sumbawa
Sumbawa is an Indonesian island in the middle of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain. It has Lombok to the west, Flores to the east, and Sumba farther to the southeast. It is in the province of West Nusa Tenggara.
Sumbawa is 15,448 km² (three times the size of Lombok). About 1.5 million people live there. It marks the boundary between the islands to the west, which were influenced by religion and culture spreading from India, and the region to the east that was not so influenced.
Sumbawa is inside the Pacific Ring of Fire. It is a volcanic island, including Mount Tambora (8°14’41”S, 117°59’35”E) which exploded in 1815, the most destructive volcanic eruption in modern history (roughly four times larger than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra, in terms of volume of magma ejected). The eruption killed as many as 92,000. It also apparently destroyed a small culture of Southeast Asian affinity, known to archaeologists as the Tamboran kingdom. It launched 100 cubic kilometers of ash into the upper atmosphere, which caused 1816 to be the "year without a summer."
Clothing in Ancient Rome
Clothing in Ancient Rome is most commonly known by the toga and stola.
The cloth was made from wool, linen or hemp. Cotton and silk were also used, more rarely. Leather was also used. The kind of clothing showed status.
Tibia (video game)
Tibia is a MMORPG video game released in 1997. Three German science students, Stephan Börzsönyi, Guido Lübke, Ulrich Schlott and Stephan Vogler, thought of the idea for the game. It was made by the German company CipSoft.
Royal Library of Turin
The Royal Library of Turin is an important museum in Turin, Italy.
It was started by King Charles Albert of Sardinia in 1839.
Now it has 187,987 print volumes, 4,403 hand-written volumes (manuscripts), 3,000 drawings, 188 books made before 1501 (incunabula), 5,029 books from the 16th century, 20,987 pamphlets, and many engravings and maps. These works come mainly from collections from Savoy.
The most important antique is a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. This self-portrait is in an underground vault that is resistant to fires, earthquakes, and even airplane crashes.
The tibia, also known as the shinbone, or shankbone is the larger and stronger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates. It connects the knee with the ankle bones and is parallel to the fibula. Additionally it is the second largest bone in the body as its supports a significantly large portion of the human bodyweight. The tibia is essential to everyday movement such as standing and walking as well as jumping and running.
Chauzon
Chauzon is a commune of the Ardèche "département" in the southern part of France.
Chazeaux
Chazeaux is a commune of the Ardèche "département" in the southern part of France.
Cheminas
Cheminas is a commune of the Ardèche "département" in the southern part of France.
Le Cheylard
Le Cheylard is a commune of the Ardèche "département" in the southern part of France.
Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours (original German title, Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1810. It contains some of the earliest and most accurate descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.
Its influence extends primarily to the art world, especially among the Pre-Raphaelites. Turner studied it comprehensively, and referred to it in the titles of several paintings. Wassily Kandinsky considered Goethe's theory "one of the most important works".
Although Goethe's work was never well received by physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have been known to have concerned themselves with it, including Arthur Schopenhauer, Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Mitchell Feigenbaum even convinced himself that "Goethe had been right about colour!"
In his book, Goethe shows how colour is perceived in a variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases. Goethe's concern was not so much with the measurement of colour phenomenon, but with how qualities of colour are perceived. Science has come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe.
For Goethe, "the highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. "The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory."
Goethe's studies of colour began with subjective experiments which examined the effects of turbid media on the perception of light and dark. He observed that lights seen through a turbid medium would appear yellowish, and darkness seen through a turbid medium that had been lightened would appear blue.
Starting from these observations, he began numerous experiments, observing the effects of darkening and lightening on the perception of colour in many different circumstances.
For Goethe, light is ""the simplest most undivided most homogenous being that we know. Confronting it is the darkness"" (Letter to Jacobi). Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe did not see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light.
Based on his experiments with turbid media, Goethe characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. The editor of the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works gives the following analogy:
Goethe writes:
When viewed through a prism, the orientation of a light-dark boundary with respect to the prism is significant. With white above a dark boundary, we observe the light extending a blue-violet edge into the dark area; whereas dark above a light boundary results in a red-yellow edge extending into the light area.
Goethe was intrigued by this difference. He felt that this arising of colour at light-dark boundaries was fundamental to the creation of the spectrum (which he considered to be a compound phenomenon).
Since the colour phenomenon relies on the adjacency of light and dark, there are two ways to produce a spectrum: with a light beam in a dark room, and with a dark beam (i.e. a shadow) in a light room.
Goethe recorded the sequence of colours projected at various distances from a prism for both cases (see Plate IV, "Theory of Colours"). In both cases, he found that the yellow and blue edges remain closest to the side which is light, and red and violet edges remain closest to the side which is dark. At a certain distance, these edges overlap. When these edges overlap in a light spectrum, green results; when they overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results.
With a light spectrum, coming out of the prism, one sees a shaft of light surrounded by dark. We find yellow-red colours along the top edge, and blue-violet colours along the bottom edge. The spectrum with green in the middle arises only where the blue-violet edges overlap the yellow-red edges.
With a dark spectrum (i.e. a shadow surrounded by light), we find violet-blue along the top edge, and red-yellow along the bottom edge – where these edges overlap, we find magenta.
Due to their different approaches to a common subject, many misunderstandings have arisen between Newton's mathematical understanding of optics, and Goethe's experiential approach.
Because Newton understands white light to be composed of individual colours, and Goethe sees colour arising from the interaction of light and dark, they come to different conclusions on the question: is the optical spectrum a primary or a compound phenomenon?
For Newton, all the colours already exist in white light, and the prism merely fans them out according to their refrangability. Goethe sought to show that, as a turbid medium, the prism was an integral factor in the arising of colour.
Whereas Newton narrowed the beam of light in order to isolate the phenomenon, Goethe observed that with a wider aperture, there was no spectrum. He saw only reddish-yellow edges and blue-cyan edges with white between them, and the spectrum arose only where these edges came close enough to overlap. For him, the spectrum could be explained by the simpler phenomena of colour arising from the interaction of light and dark edges. Goethe's reification of darkness has caused almost all of modern physics to reject Goethe's theory.
Newton explains the appearance of white with colored edges by saying that due to the differing overall amount of refraction, the rays mix together to create a full white towards the centre, whereas the edges do not benefit from this full mixture and appear with greater red or blue components.
Orthodox is a word about beliefs. It is made from two Ancient Greek words, ὀρθός "orthós" „correct, straight“ and δόξα "dóxa" „teaching, worship". Orthodoxy means a teaching that is supposed to be close to the original.
In particular:
in Christianity:
in Judaism:
Jewish organisations:
William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was a Cherokee-American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor.
Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a well off Indian Territory family and learned to ride horses and use a lariat so well that he was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing three ropes at once—one around the neck of a horse, another around the horse's rider, and a third around all four legs of the horse. During his life he traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, making him a world-famous figure.
By the mid-1930s, Rogers was loved by the American people, and was the highest-paid movie star in Hollywood at the time. During an around-the-world trip with pilot Wiley Post, Rogers died when their small airplane crashed near Barrow, Alaska Territory in 1935.
Tetris DX
Tetris DX is a video game released in 1998 for the Game Boy Color console. It is a remake of the Game Boy game "Tetris". The game can save high scores, has two new modes, and three profiles for three separate players.
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
In 1994, "" was released. It is the sequel to "Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins".
Before "Super Mario Land", Mario had went away. While he was away, Wario took over Mario's castle. He takes the six golden coins from the castle and scatters them around to all the various worlds. When Mario comes back, he must travel to each world, get the coins back to open the door, and then face off against Wario.
This game features a save function and an easy mode. The game is a platforming game, with Mario running around six worlds (areas of the game) The game's power-ups are the Super Mushroom, (makes Mario big), Fire Flower, which lets Mario throw fire balls, the Super Star, and a new item called the Carrot, which turns Mario into a rabbit that can fly.
Alkene
In organic chemistry, an alkene, olefin, or olefine is an unsaturated chemical compound containing at least one carbon-to-carbon double bond. The simplest alkenes, with only one double bond, no rings, and no other functional groups, are hydrocarbons with the general formula CH.
Aromatic compounds are often drawn as cyclic alkenes, but their structure and properties are different and they are not considered to be alkenes.
The double bond in the middle makes them more reactive because the molecule is not saturated. An alkene's unsaturation means that it will take the color out of bromine. The names of alkenes always end with -ene.
The following is a list of the first 9 alkenes:
The physical properties of alkenes are comparable with those of alkanes. The main differences between the two are that the acidity levels of alkenes are much higher than the ones in alkanes. The physical state depends on molecular mass (gases from ethene to butene - liquids from pentene onwards). The simplest alkenes, ethene, propene and butene are gases. Linear alkenes of approximately five to sixteen carbons are liquids, and higher alkenes are waxy solids.
Alkenes are not used as fuels because:
Afrodisiac is the fourth studio album by American R&B/pop singer Brandy Norwood, released by Atlantic Records on June 28, 2004 outside North America and on June 29, 2004 (see 2004 in music) in Canada and the United States. It was mostly produced by Timbaland, with more production from Warryn Campbell, Organized Noise, Walter Millsap, Ron Feemster, Big Chuck, and Kanye West. A lot of critics liked the album, but it did not sell a lot of copies. It has sold less copies than any other album she has made so far.
Boy (disambiguation)
A boy is a young male, usually human, or may refer to a man regardless of age.
Boy, Boys, The Boy, or The Boys may also mean:
Speaker for the Dead (1986) is a science fiction book by Orson Scott Card. It is a sequel to the novel "Ender's Game", and takes place around the year 5135, some 3,000 years after the events in "Ender's Game". Because of space travel, the main character Ender is only about 35 years old.
Like "Ender's Game", the book won the Hugo Award (1987) and Nebula Award (1986) for outstanding science fiction novel, making Card the first writer to win both of these awards two times in a row. "Speaker for the Dead" was updated in 1991. It was followed by "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind".
Children of the Mind
Shadow of the Hegemon
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink (b. March 4, 1929, Amsterdam) is a famous Dutch conductor.
Haitink studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam, the town where he was born. He started his career playing the violin in orchestras. Then he learned to conduct.
He became second conductor of the Netherlands Radio Union Orchestra in 1955. He then became chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1957. On 7 November 1956 the famous conductor Carlo Maria Giulini was not able to conduct a concert of the Concertgebouw Orchestra so the young Bernard Haitink conducted instead. This helped him to become famous. Three years later he became a conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and he stayed with them for a quarter of a century. In 1963 he became the main conductor of that orchestra, and in 1999 they gave him the title of honorary conductor.
Haitink has also had jobs outside the Netherlands. He was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1967 to 1979, music director at Glyndebourne Opera from 1978 to 1988 and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 1987 to 2002. He also held posts with the Dresden Staatskapelle and Boston Symphony Orchestra, and conducted many other great orchestras of the world.
In 1977, he was given an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire
Haitink has conducted music by many composers from different periods. He has recorded many great works for Phillips, Decca and EMI. In 2004 his recording of Janáček’s opera "Jenufa" was given the Grammy Award for the best opera recording.
Haitink has five children from his first marriage. He lives in Switzerland with his fourth wife, who used to be a viola player in the orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
Libération
Justice is a concept on ethics and law that means that people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.
Governments, and especially the police and courts, see that the laws are obeyed in most societies. Because they can punish a person for not obeying the law, most people agree that laws should be fair and the same for everyone. But governments sometimes make laws that many people believe are not just. If many people believe this, people may lose respect for the law and may even disobey it. However, in democratic societies, the law itself has ways to change or get rid of these unjust laws.
Major (disambiguation)
Major derives from Latin maior, which means "greater". It is used in many contexts:
Shadow of the Giant
Metropolitan Tabernacle
The Metropolitan Tabernacle is a large Reformed Baptist church in the Elephant and Castle in London. It was Charles Spurgeon's church for many years.
The Icemark Chronicles
Songmaster (1980) is a science fiction book by Orson Scott Card. The story of the "Songmaster" occurs in a future human empire, and follows Ansset, a young boy whose singing voice has the power of making people's feelings stronger. This makes him both a possible healer and destroyer. He is trained in the art of singing so perfectly that his songs can show ideas and feelings better than words. This book was based on Card's short story "Mikal's Songbird".
One reviewer said that "Songmaster" was "Quite possibly Card's best published work, ever." The publisher described the story as "...a haunting story of power and love—the tale of the man who would destroy everything he loves to preserve humanity's peace, and the boy who might just sing the world away".
As with some other Card novels ("Ender's Game", for example), this book started out as a shorter story "Mikal's Songbird", which was a Nebula Award finalist in 1978. "Songmaster" got the Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award in 1981.
College football
College football is American football played by teams of students from different American universities, colleges, and military academies. Play between colleges first made American football popular in the United States. College football is still popular today among students, alumni, and other fans of the sport.
American Football is variation of Rugby introduced by Walter Camp.
The very first match between two college teams using new "American" variation of Rugby was played between Princeton and Rutgers University in 1869. First season of college football had only two matches played. The game became popular quickly in coming years.
Eye for Eye (1987) is a science fiction novella (or short book) by Orson Scott Card. It first began in the March 1987 issue of "Asimov's Science Fiction" magazine. In 1990 it appeared in Card’s short story collection "Maps in a Mirror" and also as a Tor double novel, with "The Tunesmith" by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1988.
Seventh Son (book)
Seventh Son (1987) is an alternate history fantasy book written by Orson Scott Card. It is the first book in Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series about Alvin Miller, the seventh son of a seventh son. "Seventh Son" was nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The idea that the seventh son of a seventh son may have special powers is common in folklore around the world.
Seventh sons have strong "knacks" (magical powers or skills), and seventh sons of seventh sons are both very rare and powerful. In fact, young Alvin appears to be the only one in the world. His powers make him the target of The Unmaker. After he recognizes Alvin's powers as those of a Maker, he attempts to kill Alvin.
Locus Award
The Locus Awards were started in 1971 and are given to winners of "Locus Magazine's" yearly readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are given at a yearly banquet. Unusually, the publishers of winning works are given a certificate.
The first Locus Award was given in 1971 for works published in 1970.
The following writers have won the most awards in the "fiction" sections as of July 2005:
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction written in the United States.
The fiction Nebulas are awarded in the following categories:
Allergen
An allergen is something that causes allergies in humans.
Dust, pollen and pet dander are all common allergens. It is possible to be allergic to anything from chlorine to perfume. Food allergies are not as common, but some foods, like peanuts, nuts, seafood and shellfish cause serious allergies in lots of people.
Some common allergens could be:
Big Six
The term Big Six could mean:
The Big Six is the name of:
Bix Six is a nickname for:
Kurt Masur
Kurt Masur (18 July 1927 – 19 December 2015) was a German conductor. He conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras. He especially likes conducting German Romantic music.
Masur was born in Brieg, which was then part of Germany but is now called Brzeg and lies in Poland. He studied piano, composition and conducting in Leipzig.
His first important conducting job was with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he worked from 1955 to 1958 and again from 1967 to 1972. He also worked with the Komische Oper of East Berlin. From 1970 to 1996 he was the Kapellmeister (musical director) of the famous Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.
Dresden and Leipzig both lie in what used to be the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). For years Masur worked faithfully for the communist leaders of that country. When the political situation started to change in 1989, he helped to keep the demonstrations peaceful by talking to the politicians and the people and stopping them from fighting.
In 1991, Masur became music director of the New York Philharmonic. He stayed there for over a decade, helping to make them one of the world’s finest orchestras.
From 2000 to 2007, Masur was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2002 to 2008, Masur was music director of the Orchestre National de France.
On his 80th birthday (18 July 2007), Masur conducted musicians from both these orchestras at a Proms concert in London, conducting music by Tchaikovsky and Bruckner.
Masur enjoyed working with young musicians, conducting youth orchestras and giving masterclasses. He has given lessons on the art of conducting Beethoven’s music.
Masur has been married three times. His first wife, with whom he had a daughter, died in 1972 in a car accident. Masur himself was badly injured in that accident. Until his death, he lived with his third wife, Tomoko. They have a son, Ken-David, who has also become a conductor.
On 26 April 2012 Masur fell off the podium while he was conducting the National Orchestra of France at a concert in Paris. He was taken to hospital to recover from his injuries.
Masur died of Parkinson's disease at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut on December 19, 2015 at the age of 88.
Province of Lecco
Lecco is a province in the region of Lombardy in italy.
Province of Lodi
Lodi is a province in the region of Lombardy in Italy.
Province of Mantua
Mantua (or ) is a province in the region of Lombardy in Italy.
2008 Sichuan earthquake
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake () was a big earthquake in China on May 12, 2008. Thousands of people were killed, thousands more people were missing and thousands were hurt. Millions of people were left homeless after their houses fell down. The earthquake could be felt 58 of kilometres away.
The earthquake was measured at 8.0M and 8.3 M by the China Seismological Bureau.
The earthquake happened at 2:d, at a depth of . The earthquake was felt in Beijing away and in Shanghai away. Tall office buildings in those cities shook with the tremor. The earthquake was also felt in nearby countries.
It is believed that 69,227 people died, 374,176 people were hurt, and 18,222 people listed as missing.(July 2008 numbers) The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless, though the number could be as high as 11 million. Approximately 15 million people lived in the affected area. It was the deadliest and strongest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 240,000 people.
52 big aftershocks, ranging in size from 4.4 to 6.0, were recorded within 72 hours of the main tremor.
Scientists worked out that the earth moved up to along the Longmen Shan Fault. This fault is about long and deep. The earthquake made the ground on the surface move more than . Japanese seismologist, Yuji Yagi, said that the earthquake took place in two parts. The fault tore in two sections, the first one moving about . In the second part of the quake the fault moved another .
The earthquake lasted about two minutes. It was powerful because it did not happen very deep under the ground. Many people were killed because there were so many people living above the epicenter. Teruyuki Kato, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, said that the shock waves traveled a long way. The waves did not lose their power because of the hardness of the ground in central China.
A list of places that felt the earthquake::
The quake happened because a part of the earth's surface, called the "Indian plate", is slowly moving north. It is moving about every year. It crashes into the "Eurasian plate". This has pushed up the ground and made the Himalaya mountains. Some of the earth's crust gets pushed into Sichuan and southern China. This pushing has caused many earthquakes in China. The epicentre was in the mountains on the eastern edge of the Qing-Tibet Plateau. This is on the north west edge of the Sichuan Basin. The earthquake was caused by movement on a north east fault. This is the Longmen Shan fault, that runs along the edge of the basin.
Office buildings in Shanghai, including the Jin Mao Tower and the Hong Kong New World Tower, were evacuated (all the people were made to leave). Emergency services in Chengdu could not answer all the phone calls . Workers at a Ford plant in Sichuan were evacuated for about 10 minutes. The Chengdu airport was shut down. One SilkAir flight was sent to land in nearby Kunming instead. Cathay Pacific flights from Hong Kong to London were stopped. Chengdu airport reopened as the airport was used for relief operations.
Reporters in Chengdu said they saw cracks in walls of some buildings. In Beijing many office buildings were evacuated. This included the building with the media offices for the 2008 Summer Olympics. None of the Olympic venues were damaged. A train with 13 petrol tanks came of the railway tracks in Huixian County, Gansu Province, and caught on fire. The earthquake had twisted the rails.
All of the highways into Wenchuan, and others across Sichuan province, were damaged. This slowed down arrival of the rescue troops. In Beichuan county, 80% of the buildings collapsed. In Shifang, 2 chemical factories were damaged and leaked 80 tons of liquid ammonia. The Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site was damaged. This is an ancient water system which is still in use. The famous Fish Mouth was cracked.
Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange stopped trading in companies based in south west China. The price of copper rose because production stopped. Oil prices dropped because people thought China would not need as much oil.
Half of the wireless communications were lost in the Sichuan province. China Mobile had lost more than 2,300 base stations due to lack of power and too many phone calls. China Unicom's service in Wenchuan and nearby areas were cut off, with more than 700 phone towers out of action.
Two pandas at a Giant Panda reserve were injured. Two others went missing after the quake.
The Zipingpu hydro power station, east of the epicenter, was destroyed. The dam wall cracked, and the buildings collapsed. The Tulong dam was in danger of bursting. About 2,000 troops were sent to Zipingpu, to try and release the pressure through spillway. In total, 391 dams, were damaged by the quake.
By May 18, 2008, 21 new lakes had formed in the Sichuan. This was because the earthquake blocked rivers. Villages had to be evacuated because of the flooding.
The Chinese government said the quake killed 69,181 people, including 68,636 in Sichuan province. There are 18,498 people listed as missing; 374,171 people were injured. This includes 158 workers who were killed in landslides as they tried to fix roads.
One rescue team found only 2,300 people still alive in Yingxiu. Before the quake there had been about 9,000 people there. In Beichuan county, 3,000 to 5,000 people were killed, 10,000 injured and 80% of the buildings were destroyed. Eight schools fell down in Dujiangyan.
A 56-year-old Taiwanese tourist was killed in Dujiangyan. He was trying to rescue 11 tourists trapped on the Lingyanshan Ropeway. Because of the earthquake, they had been trapped inside the cable cars.
Thousands of school children died because of badly built schools.
least 1,700 people. At least 7,000 school buildings collapsed. Another 700 students were buried in a school in Hanwang. At least 600 students and staff died at Juyuan Elementary School. Up to 1,300 children and teachers died at Beichuan Middle School.
Because of China's one-child policy, many families lost their only child. Officials in Sichuan province have removed the limit of one child for families whose only child was killed or badly injured. So-called "illegal children" under 18 years of age may be made a legal replacement for their dead brother or sister. This may be too late for some, as many of the parents are too old or unable to have children again.
On May 29, 2008, officials began looking at the ruins of thousands of schools that collapsed. They were searching for clues about why they fell down. Thousands of parents have said the government and builders did not build schools properly. Many other nearby buildings were not damaged. Parents of children killed in the schools say they have yet to receive any reports. Local officials told them not to protest but the parents demonstrated and demanded an investigation. The government censors have stopped stories of badly built schools from being published in the media. There has been an incident where police drove away the protestors.
Liu Shaokun (刘绍坤), a Sichuan school teacher, was arrested on June 25, 2008. He had been spreading "rumors and destroying social order" about the Sichuan Earthquake. Liu had gone to the Shifang (什邡) area, taken photos of collapsed school buildings, and put them online. He had also said he was angry at “the shoddy tofu buildings” in a media interview. He has been ordered to serve one year of re-education through labor (劳动教养) (RTL). Because of complaints from the other countries, Liu has been released to serve his RTL sentence outside of the labor camp.
Safety checks are to be carried out at schools across China. The National Development and Reform Commission are making new laws to improve building standards for primary and middle schools in rural areas.
Insurance companies have put their losses at US$1 billion from the earthquake. The total cost of damage could be more than US$20 billion. Chengdu, a city of 4.5 million people, had a value of about US$115 billion. Only a small part was insured.
The damage to buildings in the earthquake was because of Chinese building designs. China did not have earthquake building rules until after the big Tangshan earthquake in 1976. Older buildings, built before 1976, were not designed to stay up in an earthquake. News reports showed that the poorer, rural villages were hardest hit.
Chinese Communist Party's general secretary Hu Jintao said that help and assistance would be quick. Premier Wen Jiabao, immediately flew to the earthquake area to plan the rescue work.
The China's Health Ministry sent 10 emergency medical teams. The Chengdu Military Area Command sent 50,000 troops and police to help in Wenchuan County. A relief team of 184 people left Beijing:
Because of the mountains, the soldiers found it very difficult to get help to the rural areas.
Many rescue teams, including the Taipei Fire Department from Taiwan, said they were ready to help. It was difficult to move people into the hardest hit areas closest to the epicenter. It was not possible to reach the area because roads were damaged and blocked by landslides. People needed tents, medical supplies, drinking water and food. .
The small village of Sier could only be reached by walking. Landslides were a danger to a search and rescue group of 80 men. Each man carried about of relief supplies. The village is above sea level. The extreme mountain conditions meant they could not use helicopters. Over 300 Tibetan villagers were stranded in the ruined village without food and water. Commander Yang Wenyao's rescue group arrived after walking for 5 days, and helped the injured and stranded villagers down the mountain
Heavy rain and landslides made rescue efforts difficult. 20 helicopters were used on the first day to deliver food, water, emergency aid and carry injured people. The next day, 15,600 troops from the Chengdu Military Region joined the rescue force. Within 2 days telephones in the major town of Wenchuan were being fixed. 100 soldiers, along with relief supplies, parachuted into inaccessible Maoxian County, northeast of Wenchuan.
Three days after the quake, China's Premiere Wen Jiabao ordered another 90 helicopters. A total of 150 aircraft were used in relief work. This is China's largest ever non-combat airlifting operation.
After the earthquake, donations were made by people from all over China. People gave money at schools, banks, and gas stations. People also donated blood, resulting in long line-ups in most major Chinese cities.
China stated it would gratefully accept international help to cope with the quake. The Tzu Chi Foundation arrived from Taiwan on May 13. This was the first force from outside the People's Republic of China to join the rescue effort. 100 tons of relief supplies donated by the Tzu Chi Foundation and the Red Cross Society of Taiwan arrived in Chengdu by May 15.
Francis Marcus of the International Federation of the Red Cross praised China's rescue effort as "swift and very efficient". He said the size of the disaster was so big that "we can't expect that the government can do everything and handle every aspect of the needs". The "Economist" said that China reacted to the disaster "rapidly and with uncharacteristic openness". This was different to Myanmar's secretive response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck the country 10 days before the earthquake.
On May 16, rescue groups from South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Russia and Taiwan arrived to join the rescue effort. The United States shared some of its satellite images of the quake-stricken areas with the Chinese government. The US sent two U.S. Air Force C-17's carrying supplies, which included tents and generators.
The Internet has been used for passing information to help rescue and recovery in China. For example, the official Xinhua set up an online rescue request center in order to find the problems in disaster recovery. When rescue helicopters had trouble landing near the epicenter in Wenchuan, a student proposed a new landing spot online. Volunteers have also set up several websites to help store contact information for victims.
The State Council declared 3 days of national mourning (sadness) for the quake victims starting on May 19, 2008. The Chinese National Flag was raised to half-mast. It is the first time China had national mourning days for something other than the death of a state leader. Many people say it the biggest display of mourning since the death of Mao At 14:28 CST on May 19, 2008, one week after the earthquake, the Chinese public held a moment of silence. People stood silent for 3 minutes. Air defense, police and fire sirens, and the horns of vehicles, vessels and trains sounded. Cars on Beijing's roads stopped. After the silence, in Tiananmen Square, crowds began calling out "Long Live China".
The Ningbo Organizing Committee of Beijing Olympic torch relay stopped the relay for 3 days.
Chinese websites changed their front pages to black and white. Sina.com and Sohu, changed their homepage to news items only, and removed all advertisements. Chinese video sharing websites, youku and Tudou, had a black background and only showed videos about the earthquake. Other entertainment websites, including gaming sites, were blacked out. Other websites had links to earthquake donations.
Chinese TV stations made their logo in gray. They showed non-stop earthquake footage from CCTV-1. Even pay television channels, such as Channel V China, also showed earthquake footage. Some TV stations stopped showing commercials.
On May 18, CCTV-1 had a special 4 hour TV show called "The Giving of Love" (爱的奉献). Many famous people from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan were on the show. People watching gave about 1.5 billion Chinese Yuan ($US 208 million) for the victims. The entertainers sang "Tomorrow Will be Better", followed by Faye Wong singing "Wishing We Last Forever".
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