AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
The orchestra started in 1930. Sir Adrian Boult was the main conductor until 1950, when Sir Malcolm Sargent took over until 1957. Since then there have been several conductors. Now the orchestra is conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek.
As well as these principal conductors there have been others, including the famous Arturo Toscanini, who made a series of recordings with the orchestra in the Queen's Hall from 1937 to 1939.
The BBC often ask composers of today to write music for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Composers whose new works they have performed include Sally Beamish, Harrison Birtwistle Elliott Carter, James MacMillan, John Tavener and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
The orchestra plays a big part in the BBC Proms, the season of concerts played every summer at the Royal Albert Hall. It plays on both the first and last nights of the prom season. It also plays several concerts in the Barbican during the year. They often make recordings in the BBC studios. They can often be seen on BBC Television. Sometimes they go on tour to other countries. They also play concerts for young people as part of an education programme.
There are other professional BBC orchestras and groups: the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC Big Band and the BBC Singers. There are also two amateur choruses: the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC National Chorus of Wales.
Jiří Bělohlávek
Jiří Bělohlávek (24 February 1946 – 31 May 2017) was a Czech conductor. He was the principal (main) conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. His name "Bělohlávek" means "Whitehead". It is pronounced "Bye-lo-hla-vek". He was born in Prague.
Bělohlávek studied conducting with Sergiu Celibidache. He went to the Prague Conservatory and Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He won the 1970 Czech National Conducting Competition and soon became famous in his country and abroad.
Bělohlávek was chief conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra from 1977-1989. He became principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990 for a short time. Then he founded the Prague Philharmonia "(Pražskou komorní filharmonii)" in 1994, They gave concerts all over the world together and made many recordings. He is still their conductor laureate (honorary conductor).
From 1995-2000, Bělohlávek was principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2006 he became their principal conductor. He conducted them at the Proms that year. In 2007 he conducted at the Last Night of the Proms.
Bělohlávek also conducts in the United States. He first conducted at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) in December 2004, conducting Leoš Janáček's "Káťa Kabanová" with Karita Mattila in the title role. He returned to the Met in January and February of 2007 for the same composer's "Jenůfa", once again with Mattila, and with Anja Silja as the Kostelnička. Other guest conducting appearances in the US have been with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Bělohlávek died on 31 May 2017 in Prague from cancer at the age of 71.
Arturo Toscanini (25 March 1867 – 16 January 1957) was an Italian conductor. Most musicians think he was the greatest conductor of his time. His fame was legendary: he was probably the first conductor to become a world superstar. He had an incredibly good memory and could remember every single note of the large number of works he conducted. He had a photographic memory so that he could remember what the pages looked like. Sometimes he found little mistakes in the scores which no one else had ever noticed. He had a very keen sense of hearing and knew exactly what each instrument was doing. He also had a fiery temperament and there are movies of him shouting angrily at his orchestra in rehearsals. In the early days of gramophone recordings he made some of the first recordings of famous orchestral works.
Toscanini was born in Parma in Italy. He won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he learned to play the cello. He joined the orchestra of an opera company and he toured South America with them in 1886. While performing Verdi’s opera "Aida" in Rio de Janeiro the audience did not like the conductor and they booed him so that he had to leave the stage. No one knew what to do at first, but then they persuaded Toscanini, who was only 19 years old, to put down his cello and conduct the orchestra. He did this brilliantly from memory (without looking at the music) and that night he became famous.
When he got back to Italy Toscanini returned to his chair in the cello section, and took part as cellist in the first performance of Verdi's "Otello" (La Scala, 1887). Verdi was there and was very impressed when Toscanini asked him about a mistake he noticed in the score.
Soon the young musician's reputation as a brilliant conductor of opera grew. He conducted the first performances of Puccini's "La Bohème" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci". In 1896 he conducted his first symphonic concert (works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner), in Turin. By 1898 he was conductor at La Scala, Milan and he stayed there until 1908, but returned during the 1920s. He took the Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour in 1920-21; it was during that tour that Toscanini made his first recordings (for the Victor Talking Machine Company).
Toscanini started conducting outside Europe: at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City (1908–1915) as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1926–1936). He toured Europe with the New York Philharmonic in 1930 and always had great success. Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to conduct at Bayreuth (1930–1931). In the 1930s he conducted at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937) and the first concert in 1936 of the newly formed Palestine Symphony Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in Tel Aviv, and later performed with them in Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria.
At first Toscanini agreed with Fascism but later, when the dictator Mussolini came to power, he became against it. He refused to perform an opera at La Scala and was beaten up, so he left Italy and went to the United States.
There was no orchestra for him in the USA so they made a new orchestra for him to conduct. This was the NBC Symphony Orchestra, created for him in 1937. He conducted the first broadcast concert on December 25, 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in New York City's Rockefeller Center.
Toscanini was often criticized for not performing much American music and contemporary music (music by living composers). However, in 1938, he conducted the world premieres of two orchestral works by Samuel Barber, "Adagio for Strings" and "Essay for Orchestra (Barber)|Essay for Orchestra". In 1945, he led the orchestra in Carnegie Hall recording sessions of American music including "An American in Paris" by George Gershwin. He also conducted broadcast performances of Copland's "El Salon Mexico" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" with soloists Earl Wild and Benny Goodman and "Concerto in F" with pianist Oscar Levant, as well as music by other American composers, including two marches of John Philip Sousa.
In 1940, Toscanini had a disagreement with the NBC and he threatened to move to CBS. Although they agreed in the end it was this time that Leopold Stokowski began conducting some of the concerts and continued to appear sometimes as a guest conductor of the orchestra.
In July 1942 Toscanini conducted the American premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's "Symphony no 7". Due to World War II, the score was microfilmed in the Soviet Union and brought by courier to the United States. At first Stokowski wanted to conduct it but then he agreed that Toscanini would. Unfortunately for New York listeners, a big thunderstorm made it difficult to hear the music on the radio. Later the performance was reissued.
The orchestra went all over the world with Toscanini. In 1950 the NBC concerts moved to Carnegie Hall. In a programme of music by Richard Wagner in 1954 Toscanini was not well and forgot how the music went. He never conducted in public again after that.
Toscanini married Carla De Martini on June 21, 1897, when she was not yet 20 years old. They had four children although one died. He worked with many great singers and musicians, including the pianist Vladimir Horowitz who was a great friend. Horowitz married one of Toscanini’s daughters.
When he died of a stroke in New York City at the age of 89, his body was returned to Italy and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.
Many years after his death, in 1987, Toscanini was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer. He is mostly known for his works of science fiction. In addition to his published novels, Dick wrote "approximately 121 short stories. He wrote most of them for science fiction magazines." At least eight of his stories have been adapted into movies.
Philip K. Dick developed what would later be called cyberpunk. Many of his works are about themes from sociology. Often, politics also play an important role. Very often there are Authoritarian Governments, and very powerful companies in his books. In his later books, Dick writes about drug use. He writes about characters that have paranoia or schizophrenia. In novels such as "A Scanner Darkly" or "VALIS" he uses his own experiences.
He was awarded the Hugo Award for his novel, "The Man in the High Castle", in 1963. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." Dick spent most of his career as a writer. He did not have much money.
Dick died of a stroke. In 2007, he became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series (#173).
"The Man in the High Castle" (1962) takes place in an different universe. There the United States is ruled by the Axis powers, who have won the Second World War. Many people consider it to be one of the important novels about a different view on history. It is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award. Philipkdickfans.com recommends this novel, along with "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Ubik" as an introductory novel to readers new to the writing of Philip K. Dick.
"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965) uses many concepts from science fiction. It has several layers of reality and unreality. It is also one of Dick’s first works to explore religious themes.
"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" takes place in the twenty-first century. Under the supervision of the United Nations authority, mankind has colonized the solar system's every habitable planet and moon. Life is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous for most colonists, so the UN must draft people to go to the colonies. Most entertain themselves using "Perky Pat" dolls and accessories manufactured by Earth-based "P.P. Layouts". The company also secretly creates "Can-D", an illegal but widely available hallucinogenic drug allowing the user to "translate" into Perky Pat (if the drug user is a woman) or Pat's boyfriend, Walt (if the drug user is a man). This recreational use of Can-D allows colonists to experience a few minutes of an idealized life on Earth by participating in a collective hallucination.
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is the story of a bounty hunter policing the local android population. It occurs on a dying, poisoned Earth. All "successful" humans have left, the only remaining inhabitants of the planet are people with no prospects off-world. Androids, also known as andys, all have a preset "death" date. However, a few andys seek to escape this fate and supplant the humans on Earth.
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968) is well known as the literary source of the influential 1982 movie "Blade Runner." It is about the question "What is real, what is fake? Are the human-looking and human-acting androids fake or real humans? Should we treat them as machines or as people? What important factor defines humanity as distinctly alive, versus those merely alive only in their outward appearance?
"Ubik" (1969) uses big networks of psychics and a suspended state after death in creating a state of eroding reality. In 2005, "Time Magazine" listed it among the All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels.
"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" (1974) is about Jason Taverner, a television star living in a dystopic near-future police state. After being attacked by an angry ex-girlfriend, Taverner awakens in a dingy hotel room. He still has his money in his wallet, but his identification cards are missing. This is no minor inconvenience, as security checkpoints manned by pols and Nats, the police and National Guard) are set up throughout the city to stop and arrest anyone without valid ID.
Jason at first thinks that he was robbed, but soon discovers that his entire identity has been erased. There is no record of him in any official database, and even his closest associates do not recognize or remember him. For the first time in many years, Jason has no fame or reputation to rely on. He has only his charisma to help him when he tries to find out what happened to his past and avoid the attention of the pols.
"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" was Dick's first published novel after years of silence. In these years, his critical reputation had grown, and this novel was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It is the only Philip K. Dick novel nominated both for a Hugo and for a Nebula Award.
In an essay written two years before dying, Dick described how he learned from his Episcopalian priest that an important scene in the novel was very similar to a scene in the Acts of the Apostles. Richard Linklater talks about this novel in his movie Waking Life, which begins with a scene reminiscent of another Dick novel, Time out of Joint.
"A Scanner Darkly" (1977) is a bleak mixture of science fiction and police procedural novels. In its story, an undercover narcotics police detective begins to lose touch with reality. This is because he becomes a victim of the drug he should have fought against. This drug is called "SubstanceD". It permanently changes the mind of the people who take it. Substance D is instantly addictive. It starts with a pleasant euphoria. This feeling is quickly replaced with increasing confusion, hallucinations and eventually total psychosis. It was adapted to movie by Richard Linklater.
"VALIS," (1980) is perhaps Dick’s most postmodern and autobiographical novel. It looks at his own unexplained experiences. Some people also see it as his most academic work. It was made into an opera by Tod Machover. "VALIS" was voted Philip K. Dick‘s best novel at the website philipkdickfans.com.
His later works, especially the "VALIS trilogy", were heavily autobiographical.The word "VALIS" is the acronym for "Vast Active Living Intelligence System"; it is the title of a novel. The theme can be found in at least three more novels. Later, PKD thought that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication.
Dick has had a big impact on modern philosophy. The things he wrote about postmodernity have been noted by many philosophers. Among them were Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Žižek is especially fond of using Dick's short stories to articulate the ideas of Jacques Lacan. For Baudrillard, Dick is the ultimate articulation of hyperreality:
"It is hyperreal. It is a universe of simulation, which is something altogether different. And this is so not because Dick speaks specifically of simulacra. SF has always done so, but it has always played upon the double, on artificial replication or imaginary duplication, whereas here the double has disappeared. There is no more double; one is always already in the other world, an other world which is not another, without mirrors or projection or utopias as means for reflection. The simulation is impassable, unsurpassable, checkmated, without exteriority. We can no longer move "through the mirror" to the other side, as we could during the golden age of transcendence."
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Renewable energy commercialization
Renewable energy commercialization involves many different technologies, including solar photovoltaics, solar thermal power plants, solar heating and cooling systems, wind power, hydroelectricity, geothermal power, biomass, and ocean energy systems. Each is at a different stage of development, yet the market is growing for many renewables.
Renewables contributed 19 percent to our energy consumption and 22 percent to our electricity generation in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Both, modern renewables, such as hydro, wind, solar and biofuels, as well as traditional biomass, contributed in about equal parts to the global energy supply. Worldwide investments in renewable technologies amounted to more than US$214 billion in 2013, with countries like China and the United States heavily investing in wind, hydro, solar and biofuels.
Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation, and economic benefits. In international public opinion surveys there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power and wind power. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the world already have renewable energy contributing more than 20 percent of energy supply. National renewable energy markets are projected to continue to grow strongly in the coming decade and beyond.
While many renewable energy projects are large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development. Globally, an estimated 3 million households get power from small solar PV systems. Micro-hydro systems configured into village-scale or county-scale mini-grids serve many areas. More than 30 million rural households get lighting and cooking from biogas made in household-scale digesters. Biomass cookstoves are used by 160 million households.
Climate change, pollution, and energy insecurity are significant problems and addressing them requires major changes to energy supply and use. Renewable energy technologies are essential contributors to the energy supply portfolio, as they contribute to world energy security, reduce dependency on fossil fuels, and help to reduce greenhouse gases. Climate-disrupting fossil fuels are being replaced by clean, climate-stabilizing, non-depletable sources of energy:
In global public opinion surveys there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power and wind power, requiring utilities to use more renewable energy, and providing tax incentives to encourage the development and use of such technologies.
EU member countries have ambitious renewable energy goals. In 2010, Eurobarometer polled the twenty-seven EU member states about the target "to increase the share of renewable energy in the EU by 20 percent by 2020". Most people in all twenty-seven countries either approved of the target or called for it to go further.
As of 2011, new evidence has shown that there are large risks associated with traditional energy sources, and that major changes to the mix of energy technologies is needed. Several mining tragedies globally have underscored the human toll of the coal supply chain. New EPA initiatives targeting air toxics, coal ash, and effluent releases highlight the environmental impacts of coal and the cost of addressing them with control technologies. Events at the Fukushima nuclear plant have renewed doubts about the ability to operate many nuclear plants safely over the long term. Cost estimates for “next generation” nuclear units continue to climb, and lenders are unwilling to finance these plants without taxpayer guarantees.
Mapudungun
Mapudungun is a language isolate spoken by Mapuche people, in Chile and Argentina. Even after the arrival of the Spaniards, ethnic groups in Argentina adopted Mapudungun, for instance Patagonians or Tehuelche. This process is named araucanization. Today, its speakers number 260,000, with 250,000 in the Central Valley of Chile and 10,000 in the Argentinian region of Patagonia.
The name of the boldo tree comes from the Mapudungun word "foldo". The word "Poncho" was adopted by Spanish and many other languages. It may have come from the Mapudungun word "pontro" or from the Quechua word "punchu".
Something that has impurity is not pure. For example, water that is clean would be called pure water. Water that is dirty would be called impure water. This may result in a change in melting point or boiling point.
Impurities may be harmful. For example, an engine works bad when its fuel is not pure.
Impure materials are useful sometimes. Alloys are metals with impurities. Solar cells are made of silicon crystals, but a very small amount of impurity (0.001% to 0.01%) is needed in them to work.
Queen's Hall
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Central London, England. It opened in 1893. It is best known for being where the Promenade Concerts were started by Robert Newman in 1895.
The Queen's Hall was built because London needed a new concert hall in the centre of the town. It stood in Langham Place, just next to where BBC Broadcasting House stands today. The Queen's Hall had seating for up to 3,000 people (including the orchestra). The arena (downstairs) had removable seating. The polished floor could be used for dancing. The acoustics of the hall were excellent. There was also a smaller hall, The Queen's Small Hall, which seated 500 people. This was used for chamber music. In later years it was used as a recording studio. The architect who designed the hall was Thomas Edward Knightley.
The first time The Queen's Hall was used was on 25 November 1893 when Newman gave a children's party in the afternoon. In the evening about 2000 ladies and gentlemen came to a concert given by the Band of the Coldstream Guards, which included vocal music, piano and organ solos. At 11.00pm the seats in the arena were removed and the dancing began. The official opening of the hall took place on 2 December. On 10 August 1895 the first Promenade concert was given with Henry Wood conducting.
On January 14, 1896, the first public movie show was given at the Queen's Hall to members and wives of the Royal Photographic Society.
The seats were uncomfortable because there was not enough leg room, so in 1913 and 1919 some changes were made, after which the hall could seat 2400 people.
From 1930 to 1941, the BBC Symphony Orchestra regularly gave broadcast concerts in the hall. Arturo Toscanini, who guest conducted the orchestra during the 1930s, made some famous recordings in the Queen's Hall in the late 1930s.
On 10 May 1941 (during the World War II) the Royal Choral Society gave a concert in the Queen's Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra. They performed Elgar's oratorio "Dream of Gerontius" under the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent. It was the last concert ever given there because, later that night, the hall was completely destroyed by bombs.
After the destruction of Queen's Hall, the BBC Symphony Orchestra moved its broadcast concerts and recording sessions to Bedford School. Among the great recordings made at the school was Sir Adrian Boult's recording of Elgar's second symphony. The Proms continued in the Royal Albert Hall. They also took place in Bristol and Bedford, but after the war they settled in the Royal Albert Hall where they continue today.
Avesta
Avesta is the holy book of Zoroastrianism. It is written in the Avestan language. The Avesta has also been translated into other languages including Farsi and English. The oldest portion, the Ghathas, are the religious songs composed by Zoroaster himself. Other parts of Avesta are named Yasna, Yashts, Visperad, Vendidad and Khordeh Avesta. There are two other religious texts in Zoroastrianism which are named Denkard and Ardaviraf Namak.
Darius I of Persia
Darius the Great (c. 549 BC– 486/485 BC) was the son of Hystaspes and Shah of Iran from 522 BC to 485 BC. After Darius became Shah of Iran, he divided the Persian Empire into twenty provinces, and appointed a governor for each province. He introduced golden coins and developed commerce within the empire and trade without. Darius allowed Jews to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. He also built many temples in Egypt. The largest building that was built by Darius, is the new capital of Persepolis, near Pasargadae. Darius died in Persepolis. His tomb was cut into a rock face near Persepolis. After his death, Xerxes became the Shah of Iran.
Pasargadae was a city in ancient Persia, and is today a historical site in Fars,Iran. Pasargadae was the first capital of the Persian Empire. The building of the capital city by Cyrus the Great, begun in 546 BCE, but was left unfinished, for Cyrus died in 530 BCE. Pasargade remained the Persian capital unti Darius I built the Persepolis. The tomb of Cyrus the Great is in this city.
Pasargadae is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
American Staffordshire Terrier
The American Staffordshire terrier is a breed of dog.
It was first bred in British colonies of North America in the nineteenth century. Its early ancestors are the bulldog and the terrier, and used to be called the Blue Paul terrier. In the 1930s, dogbreeders bred it with the Pit bull terrier. Its name was changed to the American Staffordshire Terrier in 1972.
Persepolis (Old Persian: 'Pars', New Persian: تخت جمشید, 'Takht-e Jamshid') was an ancient capital of the second Iranian dynasty, the Achaemenid Empire. Ancient Persians called it Parsa, meaning "the city of Persians". Persepolis () is the Greek translation of the name. In modern Iran, the city is known as Takht-e-Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid). The largest building in Persepolis is the Apadana Hall with 72 columns. The Tachara palace built by Darius I is also an important building. The Hadish palace in Persepolis was started by Xerxes and finished by his son Artaxerxes.
Persepolis has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
Xerxes the Great was a Shah of Iran (485–465 BC) of AchaemenidEmpire. Xerxes was son of Darius I and Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus the Great. After Darius died, Xerxes became the Shah of Iran. At the Battle of Thermopylae, Xerxes defeated Greek warriors. After winning at Thermopylae, Xerxes then took control of Athens with his army. Finally, Greek warriors won the Battle of Salamis against Xerxes in 480 BC.
The movie "300" is based on Xerxes.
Shell (zoology)
A shell is a hard outer layer, which has evolved in a very wide variety of different animals, including molluscs, sea urchins, crustaceans, turtles and tortoises, armadillos, etc.
Seashells are perhaps the most familiar and most common shells, both in the wild and for sale as decorative objects. They are usually composed of calcium carbonate, in the form of calcite or aragonite. This can have different forms, one is nacre or mother of pearl. Other kinds of animal shells are made from chitin, bone and cartilage, or silica.
Shells of many types were popular as human decorations, either used whole or cut into pieces. One used them for all kinds of pendants, beads, buttons, brooches, rings, and hair combs.
Small pieces of colored shell and iridescent shell have been used to create mosaics and inlays which have been used to decorate larger items such as boxes and furniture. Large numbers of whole seashells, arranged to form patterns, have been used to decorate man-made grottos.
Several kinds of sea animals have exoskeletons which one can find after their death in beach drift. Often beachcombers pick them. But usually only those of molluscs (also spelled "mollusks") are known as seashells.
The majority of shell-forming molluscs belong to two classes: Gastropoda (univalves, or snails) and Bivalvia (bivalves or clams, oysters, scallops, etc.).
A tortoise is a reptile of the order Testudines which lives on land. Like their aquatic cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. Most are quite small, but island tortoises have several times evolved to a large size: those on the Galapagos are famous. Darwin made one of his rare mistakes when he did not note which island each of them came from. Later it became clear that they were slightly different on different islands.
Tortoise (disambiguation)
Tortoise may mean:
Sea turtle
Sea turtles ("Chelonioidea") are turtles found in all the world's oceans except the Arctic Ocean, and some species travel between oceans. The term is US English. In British English they are simply called "turtles"; fresh-water chelonians are called "terrapins" and land chelonians are called tortoises.
The earliest known turtles are from the Middle Jurassic. So, turtles are one of the oldest surviving reptile groups: they are more ancient than snakes or crocodiless.
There are seven species of sea turtle: Kemp's ridley sea turtle, the olive ridley, the flatback, the green, the loggerhead, the hawksbill and the leatherback.
All but the leatherback are in the family Chelonioidea. The leatherback belongs to the family Dermochelyidae and is its only member. The leatherback sea turtle is the largest, measuring six or seven feet (2 m) in length at maturity, and three to five feet (1 to 1.5 m) in width, weighing up to 2000 pounds (about 900 kg). Most other species are smaller, being two to four feet in length (0.5 to 1 m) and proportionally less wide. The flatback turtle is found only on the northern coast of Australia.
Report of 1800
The Report of 1800 was first written by James Madison. It argued for the sovereignty of the individual states under the United States Constitution. It argued against the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Virginia General Assembly adopted the Report in January 1800. The document mostly makes small changes to arguments from the 1798 Virginia Resolutions. The main reason for making the Report was to respond to criticism of the Resolutions. The Report was the last important writing by Madison meant to explain the Constitution in great detail, until the 1817 Bonus Bill Veto Message.
The arguments made in the Resolutions and the Report were used many times during the nullification crisis of 1832. In this crisis, South Carolina said that federal tariffs were unconstitutional and not valid within the state. Madison, however, did not agree. He said that the report did not support nullification. Modern historians debate whether Madison's theory of republicanism really supported the nullification movement. More broadly, historians debate whether the ideas Madison expressed between 1798 and 1800 agree with his work before and after this period. Election of 1800 was significant because it marked the first peaceful change in power from one political party to another.
Madison, a member of the Republican Party, was elected to the Virginia General Assembly from Orange County in 1799. At this time, most members of the General Assembly were Republicans. A major item on his agenda was the defense of the General Assembly's 1798 Virginia Resolutions, of which Madison had been the draftsman. The Resolutions, usually discussed together with Thomas Jefferson's contemporaneous Kentucky Resolutions, were a response to various perceived outrages perpetrated by the Federalist-dominated national government. The most significant of these were the Alien and Sedition Acts, four laws that allowed the President to deport aliens at will, required a longer period of residence before aliens could become citizens, and made it a crime to publish malicious or defamatory material against the government or its officials. Republicans were outraged by the legislation, and Madison and Jefferson drafted the highly critical Resolutions adopted in response by the Virginia and Kentucky state legislatures.
The Virginia Resolutions had in the year since publication received highly critical replies from state legislatures, including those of New York, Delaware, and the five New England states. The reason for the criticism was that the General Assembly, led in the effort by state-sovereignty advocate John Taylor of Caroline, had put a state-sovereignty spin on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 despite Madison's hopes. These replies contended that the Supreme Court of the United States had the ultimate responsibility for deciding whether federal laws were constitutional, and that the Alien and Sedition Acts were constitutional and necessary. The Federalists accused the Republicans of seeking disunion, even contemplating violence. At the time, leading Virginia Republican figures such as Rep. William Branch Giles (in public) and Sen. John Taylor of Caroline (in private) actually were contemplating disunion, and the Virginia General Assembly chose this juncture for finally constructing a new state armory in Richmond, so there was some truth to the charge.
Jefferson, the leader of the Republican Party and then–Vice President, wrote to Madison in August 1799 outlining a campaign to strengthen public support for the principles expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (commonly referred to as "the principles of '98"):
That the principles already advanced by Virginia & Kentucky are not to be yielded in silence, I presume we all agree. I should propose a declaration of Resolution by their legislatures on this plan. 1st. Answer the reasonings of such of the states as have ventured in the field of reason, & that of the Committee of Congress. ... 2. Make a firm protestation against the principle & the precedent; and a reservation of the rights resulting to us from these palpable violations of the constitutional compact by the Federal government, ... 3. Express in affectionate and conciliatory language our warm attachment to union with our sister-states, and to the instrument & principles by which we are united; … fully confident that the good sense of the American people and their attachment to rally with us round the true principle of our federal compact. But determined, were we to be disappointed in this, to sever ourselves from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self government which we have reserved, & in which alone we see liberty, safety & happiness.
In response to this letter, Madison visited Jefferson at Monticello during the first week of September. Their discussion was important in that it persuaded Jefferson to depart from his radical stance on dissociation from the Union, which is expressed at the end of the excerpt above. At the very least, Virginia or Kentucky taking such a stance publicly would have justified the Federalist attacks against the secessionist tendencies of the Republicans. Madison won over Jefferson, who shortly thereafter wrote to Wilson Cary Nicholas that: "From [this position] I retreat readily, not only in deference to [Madison's] judgment but because as we should never think of separation but for repeated and enormous violations, so these, when they occur, will be cause enough of themselves." Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, examining Jefferson's later writing, conclude that Madison had a significant role "in softening Jefferson's more extreme views."
Jefferson hoped for further involvement with the production of the Report and planned to visit Madison at Montpelier on his way to Philadelphia, the national capital, for the winter session of the United States Congress. However, James Monroe, who would become Governor of Virginia before the end of the year, visited Jefferson at Monticello and cautioned him against meeting with Madison, since another meeting between two of the most important Republican leaders would provoke significant public comment. The task of writing the Virginia Report was left solely to Madison. Jefferson underlined the importance of this work in a November 26 letter to Madison in which he identified "protestations against violations of the true principles of our constitution" as one of the four primary elements of the Republican Party plan.
The Assembly session began in early December. Once at Richmond, Madison began drafting the Report, though he was delayed by a weeklong battle with dysentery. On December 23, Madison moved for the creation of a special seven-member committee with himself as chairman to respond to "certain answers from several of the states, relative to the communications made by the Virginia legislature at their last session." The committee members were Madison, John Taylor, William Branch Giles, George Keith Taylor, John Wise, John Mercer, and William Daniel. The next day, Christmas Eve, the committee produced a first version of the Report. The measure came before the House of Delegates, the lower house of the General Assembly, on January 2.
Though certain to pass due to the Republican majority, which had recently been solidified by the election of a Republican clerk and speaker of the House, the Report was debated for five days. The main point of contention was the meaning of the third of the Virginia Resolutions:
…this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact to which the states are parties; … and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by said compact, the states who are parties thereto have the right … to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil…the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.
This resolution had been the principal target of the Federalist attack on the Resolutions. Particularly at issue was the sense in which the states were parties to the federal compact. The Report was ultimately amended to provide greater clarity on this issue by emphasizing that it was the people themselves, acting through the states in their sovereign capacity, who were parties to the Constitution. The amended Report passed the House of Delegates on January 7 by a margin of 60 to 40. At some point in the next two weeks, it passed the Senate by a margin of 15 to 6.
Virginia Republicans were happy with the Report. The General Assembly arranged for five thousand copies to be printed and distributed in the state, but there was not much public response to the Report, and it appears to have had relatively little impact on the presidential election of 1800 (which was, nevertheless, a major victory for the Republicans and a repudiation of Federalist policies). Parties outside Virginia seemed uninterested in the rehashing of the 1798 Resolutions, and in other states there was very little public comment. Jefferson eagerly sought copies for distribution to Republican members of Congress departing for their home states, and when they failed to arrive he entreated Monroe for at least one copy that he could reproduce. Despite Jefferson's approval of and attempt to distribute Madison's work, the national reaction was tepid. Though it had little impact on the immediate election, Madison's Report clarified the legal argument against the Acts and for states' rights in general, particularly in its advancement of the Tenth Amendment rather than the Ninth as the main bulwark against federal encroachment on state autonomy.
The general purpose of the Report was the affirmation and expansion of the principles in the Virginia Resolutions. The first major goal of the Resolutions was to bring about the repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts by generating public opposition that would be expressed through the state legislatures. Madison sought to accomplish this by demonstrating conclusively that the Acts violated the constitution. Laying into the Acts in his Report, Madison described many breaches of constitutional limits. The Alien Act granted the President the unenumerated power of deporting friendly aliens. Contrary to the Sedition Act, the federal government had no power to protect officials from dissent or libelous attack, beyond the protection it accorded to every citizen; indeed, such special intervention against the press was "expressly forbidden by a declaratory amendment to the constitution." As well, Madison attacked Federalist carriage laws and bank laws as unconstitutional.
To remedy the defects revealed by the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Madison called for citizens to have an absolute right to free speech. Madison writes that the ability to prosecute speech amounts to "a protection of those who administer the government, if they should at any time deserve the contempt or hatred of the people, against being exposed to it." Freedom of the press was necessary, because "chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted to the press for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." The Report supported a strict interpretation of the First Amendment. While the Federalists interpreted the amendment as limiting the power of Congress over the press, but implying that such power existed, Madison argued that the First Amendment wholly prohibited Congress from any interference with the press.
More generally, the Report made the argument in favor of the sovereignty of the individual states, for which it is best known. The basic message was that the states were the ultimate parties constituting the federal compact, and that therefore the individual states were ultimate arbiters of whether the compact had been broken by the usurpation of power. This doctrine is known as the compact theory. It was the presence of this argument in the Resolutions that had allowed the Federalists to paint the Republicans as leaning toward secession; in the amended Report the line is moderated, with an emphasis that it is the states as political societies of the people (and therefore, one reads in, not the state legislatures alone) which possess this power. Either formulation would help the Republican cause by refuting the finality of any constitutional interpretation advanced by the Congress and federal judiciary, both of which were dominated by Federalists.
In defense of Virginia Republicans and the Resolutions, Madison emphasized that even if one disagreed with the compact theory, the Virginia Resolutions and the Report of 1800 themselves were simply protests, which states were surely entitled to produce. They were "expressions of opinion, unaccompanied with any other effect than what they may produce on opinion by exciting reflection." By eschewing direct action in favor of influencing popular opinion, Madison tried to make clear that the Republicans were not moving toward disunion.
The Report was regarded in the early 19th century as among the more important expressions of Republican principles. Spencer Roane described it as "the "Magna Charta" on which the republicans settled down, after the great struggle in the year 1799." Henry Clay said on the floor of the House of Representatives that it was from the Report of 1800, above other documents, that he had developed his own theories on constitutional interpretation. H. Jefferson Powell, a modern jurist, identifies three persistent themes of Republican constitutionalism which emerged from the Resolutions and the Report: (1) a textual approach to the Constitution, (2) the compact theory, and (3) that caution, not trust, should characterize our approach to those who hold political power.
In more recent years, the main practical interest in the Report has been its absolutist understanding of the First Amendment. Multiple Supreme Court decisions have cited the case as evidence of the Framers' ideas on free speech. In the 1957 "Roth v. United States" opinion by William Brennan, Madison's Report is cited as evidence that "the fundamental freedoms of speech and press have contributed greatly to the development and well-being of our free society and are indispensable to its continued growth." Other cases to cite the Report for a similar purpose include "Thornhill v. Alabama" (1940) and "Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC" (2000).
In modern scholarship outside the legal arena the Report is mostly studied for its discussion of states' rights with regard to federalism and republicanism. According to Kevin Gutzman, the Report, together with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, forms a foundation for the "radical southern states' rights tradition." However, Madison rebuffed charges that his writings supported the constitutional interpretation advanced by pro-nullification Southerners. The Report of 1800, Madison argued, did not say the government was a compact of the individual states, as the pro-nullification elements suggested. Rather the Report of 1800 described a compact of "the people in each of the States, acting in their highest sovereign capacity." The state governments themselves, no less than the federal judiciary, possess only delegated power and therefore cannot decide questions of fundamental importance. Madison thought the Resolutions and Report were consistent with this principle while the Ordinance of Nullification was not.
Gutzman rejects Madison's gloss of the Report as a "specious distinction," saying it is reasonable to read into the Resolutions and the Report an "ominous challenge to federal supremacy." Drew McCoy, however, has argued that Madison indeed developed a moderate stance which stood between the nationalists and the pro-nullification camp. Koch and Ammon agree, stating that "Nowhere in American political literature does there exist a more careful, precise and mature reiteration of the principles of republican self-government; and nowhere is it clearer that the intermediate existence of state governments between the people and the 'General Government' should function to prevent a totalitarian imbalance in any one center of authority."
Baykal (port)
Baykal (port) () is a rural locality in Russia, Irkutsk oblast, Sliudanskyy region.
The village is near Lake Baikal and setted in left coast of river Angara. In the right coast is Listvianka. The administrative centre Irkutsk is 60 kilometers north. There is an automobile ferry to Listvianka.
In 2005, there were 400 people living in Baikal village. In USSR times there were about 10000 humans.
Drumstick (disambiguation)
Drumstick can mean:
Rudder
A rudder is used to steer ships, boats, submarines, aircraft, hovercraft or other conveniences that move through air or water.
Oars mounted on the side of ships for steering are documented from the 3rd millennium BC in Persia and Ancient Egypt in artwork, wooden models, and even parts of actual boats of that times. An early example of an oar mounted on the stern is found in the Egyptian tomb of Menna (1422-1411 BC). Stern-mounted oars were also quite common in Roman river navigation as proved from reliefs more than a millennium later.
A depiction of a sternpost-mounted rudder can be seen on a pottery model of a Chinese junk dating from the 1st century AD during the Han Dynasty, predating their appearance in the West by a thousand years. The technology of stern-mounted rudder in Europe and Islam World, which was introduced by travelers in the Middle Ages, was transferred from China
Exploration of Neptune
The Exploration of Neptune started on August 25, 1989, when "Voyager 2" became the first and so-far only spacecraft to visit the planet. Like the other gas giants, Neptune has no solid land on its surface so landing on Neptune would be impossible.
NASA is thinking to send another spacecraft known as the "Neptune Orbiter" to study more about Neptune; the spacecraft is planned to be probably launched on 2035. It would release atmospheric probes, and possibly release a Triton Lander. NASA has said the earliest possible launch date is 2030. Budget cuts may eliminate this proposal.
In Voyager 2's last visit with a planet before leaving the solar system, Voyager 2 came 3000 miles (5000 km) above Neptune's north pole, the closest approach it made to any planet after it left Earth. Voyager 2 studied Neptune's atmosphere, its rings, its magnetosphere, and its moons. Several discoveries were made, including the discovery of the Great Dark Spot and Triton's geysers.