title: Conservatism in the United States

text: The federalist structure of joint sovereigns preserves to the people numerous advantages. It assures a decentralized government that will be more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society; it increases opportunity for citizen involvement in democratic processes; it allows for more innovation and experimentation in government; and it makes government more responsive by putting the States in competition for a mobile citizenry.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: From the left, law professor Herman Schwartz argues that Rehnquist's reliance on federalism and state's rights has been a "Fig Leaf for conservatives":


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Today's conservative Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, has imposed limitations on federal power to curtail the rights of women, religious groups, the elderly, racial minorities, and other disadvantaged groups. ... The conservatives have shrunk the scope of the commerce clause, developed implied limitations on federal authority, and narrowly construed the Civil War amendments.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Conservatives have used the word "Socialist" as a "rhetorical weapon" against political opponents. David Hinshaw writes that William Allen White, editor of a small-town newspaper in Kansas from 1895, used "socialistic" as "his big gun to blast radical opposition." White set "Americanism" as the alternative, warning: "The election will sustain Americanism or it will plant Socialism." White became famous when Mark Hanna, campaign manager for Republican candidate William McKinley distributed upwards of a million or more copies of one White editorial to rally opposition to William Jennings Bryan, the nominee of both the Democratic and Populist parties.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: By the 1950s, the conservative press had discovered that "socialism" "proved to be a successful derogatory epithet rather than a descriptive label for a meaningful political alternative." At the 1952 Republican national convention, former President Herbert Hoover repeated his warnings about two decades of New Deal policies, denouncing, says Gary Best, "The usurpation of power by the federal government, the loss of freedom in America, the poisoning of the American economy with fascism, socialism, and Keynesianism, the enormous growth of the federal bureaucracy". In 1960, Barry Goldwater called for Republican unity against John F. Kennedy and the "blueprint for socialism presented by the Democrats". In 1964, Goldwater attacked central planners like fellow Republican Nelson Rockefeller, implying he was a socialist in a millionaire's garb: "The Democratic party believes in what I call socialism: and if that upsets anybody's stomach, let me remind you that central planning of our economy is socialism." Ronald Reagan often quoted Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist nominee for president in the New Deal era, as allegedly saying: "The American people would never knowingly vote for Socialism, but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program." In 2010, Newt Gingrich defined "socialism in the broad sense" as "a government-dominated, bureaucratically-controlled, politician-dictated way of life." Gingrich stated that President Barack Obama was "committed to socialism."


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Conservatives gained a major new communications medium with the resurgence of talk radio in the late 1980s. William G. Mayer, reports that "conservatives dominate talk radio to an overwhelming, remarkable degree." This dominance enabled them to spread their message much more effectively to the general public, which had previously been confined to the major Big Three television networks. Political scientists Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj conclude that, "conservatives like talk radio because they believe it tells them the truth. Liberals appear to be much more satisfied with the mainstream media and are more likely to believe that it is accurate."


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Rush Limbaugh proved there was a huge nationwide audience for specific and heated discussions of current events from a conservative viewpoint. Other major hosts who describe themselves as conservative include: Michael Peroutka, Jim Quinn, Dennis Miller, Ben Ferguson, William Bennett, Andrew Wilkow, Lars Larson, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, Mike Church, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Kim Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Michael Reagan, Jason Lewis, Ken Hamblin, and Herman Cain. The Salem Radio Network syndicates a group of religiously oriented Republican activists, including Roman Catholic Hugh Hewitt, and Jewish conservatives Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. One popular Jewish conservative, Laura Schlessinger, offers parental and personal advice, but is outspoken on social and political issues. In 2011, the largest weekly audiences for talk radio were 15 million for Limbaugh and 14 million for Hannity, with about nine million each for Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Mark Levin. The audiences overlap, depending on how many each listener dials into every week.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Fox News features conservative hosts. One such host is Sean Hannity, who also has a talk radio program. One former host is Matt Drudge; prior, and after his time on Fox News Drudge has operated "Drudge Report", a news aggregation website, and is a self-professed conservative. It is more conservative than other news sources in the United States, such as National Public Radio and CNN. Canadian-American political commentator David Frum has been a critic of this development, and has argued that the influence of conservative talk radio and Fox News has harmed American conservatism, turning it from "a political philosophy into a market segment" for extremism and conflict making "for bad politics but great TV."


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Whereas liberals and conservatives held similar attitudes towards science up until the 1990s, conservatives in the United States subsequently began to display lower levels of confidence in science. Conservatives are substantially more likely than moderates and liberals to reject the scientific consensus on climate change. Conservatives are also more likely than liberals to hold anti-vaccine views.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Liberal and leftist viewpoints have dominated higher education faculties since the 1970s, according to many studies, whereas conservatives are better represented in policy-oriented think tanks. Data from a survey conducted in 2004 indicated that 72% of full-time faculty identify as liberal, while 9–18% self-identify as conservative. Conservative self-identification is higher in two-year colleges than other categories of higher education but has been declining overall. Those in natural sciences, engineering, and business were less liberal than those in the social sciences and humanities. A 2005 study found that liberal views had increased compared to the older studies. 15% in the survey described themselves as center-right. While the humanities and the social sciences are still the most left leaning, 67% of those in other fields combined described themselves as center-left on the spectrum. In business and engineering, liberals outnumber conservatives by a 2:1 ratio. The study also found that more women, practicing Christians, and Republicans taught at lower ranked schools than would be expected from objectively measured professional accomplishments.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: A study by psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammars, of the Netherlands' Tilburg University, published in September 2012 in the journal "Perspectives on Psychological Science", found that, in social and personality psychology, about a third of those surveyed say that they would to a small extent favor a liberal point of view over a conservative point of view. A 2007 poll found that 58% of Americans thought that college professors' political bias was a "serious problem". This varied depending on the political views of those asked. 91% of "very conservative" adults agreed compared with only 3% of liberals. That same year a documentary, "Indoctrinate U", was released which focuses on the perceived bias within academia.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: On the other hand, liberal critic Paul Krugman wrote in "The New York Times" that this phenomenon is more due to personal choice than some kind of discrimination or conspiracy, noting that, for example, vocations such as military officers are much more likely to be filled by conservatives rather than liberals. Additionally, two studies published in the journal of the American Political Science Association have suggested that the political orientations of college students' professors have little influence or "indoctrination" in terms of students' political belief.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Postmodernism is an approach common in the humanities at universities that greatly troubles conservative intellectuals. The point of contention is the debate over moral relativism versus moral absolutism. Ellen Grigsby says, "Postmodern perspectives contend that any ideology putting forward absolute statements as timeless truths should be viewed with profound skepticism." Kellner says, "Postmodern discourse frequently argues that all discourses and values are socially constructed and laden with interests and biases. Against postmodern and liberal relativism, cultural conservatives have argued for values of universal truth and absolute standards of right and wrong."


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Neoconservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has energetically rejected postmodern academic approaches:


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: [Postmodernism in history] is a denial of the objectivity of the historian, of the factuality or reality of the past, and thus of the possibility of arriving at any truths about the past. For all disciplines it induces a radical skepticism, relativism, and subjectivism that denies not this or that truth about any subject but the very idea of truth—that denies even the ideal of truth, truth is something to aspire to even if it can never be fully attained.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Jay Stevenson wrote the following representative summary of postmodern literary studies of the sort that antagonize conservatives:


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: [In the postmodern period,] traditional literature has been found to have been written by "dead white males" to serve the "ideological" aims of a conservative and repressive Anglo "hegemony". ... In an array of reactions against the race, gender, and class biases found to be woven into the tradition of Anglo lit, multicultural writers and political literary theorists have sought to expose, resist, and redress injustices and prejudices. These prejudices are often covert—disguised in literature and other discourses as positive ideals and objective truths—but they slant our sense of reality in favor of power and privilege.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Conservative intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny the existence of universal truths. Many argued that natural law was the repository of timeless truths. Allan Bloom, in his highly influential "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987) argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. His book was widely cited by conservative intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: In recent years, historians have agreed that they need to rethink the role of conservatism in recent American history. An important new approach rejects the older consensus that liberalism was the dominant ethos. Labor historians Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore argue the New Deal was a short-term response to the depression and did not mark a permanent commitment to a welfare state, claiming that America has always been too individualistic and too hostile to labor unions to ever embrace liberalism for any extended period of time. This new interpretation argues that conservatism has largely dominated American politics since the 1920s, with the brief exceptions of the New Deal era (1933–1938) and the Great Society (1964–1966). However, historian Julian Zelizer argues that "The coherence of conservatism has been exaggerated. The movement was as fragile as the New Deal coalition that it replaced. ... Policy change has thus proved to be much more difficult than conservatives hoped for." Zelizer does find four areas where conservatives did make major changes, namely retrenchment of domestic programs, lowering taxes, deregulation, and opposition to labor unions. He concludes, "The fact is that liberalism survived the rise of conservatism."


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: American conservatives typically promote American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations and has a duty to take the lead in spreading democracy and free markets to the world. Reagan especially articulated this role (and many liberals also agree with it). They see American values emerging from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation" and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, "laissez-faire" capitalism and Judeo-Christian values.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the U.S. is like the biblical "City upon a Hill"—a phrase evoked by Puritan settlers in Massachusetts as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Scholars have argued that British and European conservatism has little or no relevance to American traditions. According to political scientist Louis Hartz, because the United States skipped the feudal stage of history, the American community was united by liberal principles, and the conflict between the "Whig" and "Democratic" parties were conflicts within a liberal framework. In this view, what is called "conservatism" in America is not European conservatism (with its royalty, landowning aristocracy, elite officer corps, and established churches) but rather 19th century classical liberalism with an emphasis on economic freedom and entrepreneurship. This is in contrast to the view that Burkean conservatism has a set of universal principles which can be applied to all societies. In "The Conservative Mind", Russell Kirk argued that the American Revolution was "a conservative reaction, in the English political tradition, against royal innovation". Liberal historian Richard Hofstader criticized modern American conservatives as "pseudo-conservatives" because their negative reaction to the policies of Truman showed "dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions" and because they had "little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism".


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Clinton Rossiter, a leading expert on American political history, published his history of "Conservatism in America" (1956) and also a summary article on "The Giants of American Conservatism" in "American Heritage". His goal was to identify the "great men who did conservative deeds, thought conservative thoughts, practiced conservative virtues, and stood for conservative principles". To Rossiter, conservatism was defined by the rule of the upper class. He wrote, "The Right of these freewheeling decades was a genuine Right: it was led by the rich and well-placed; it was skeptical of popular government; it was opposed to all parties, unions, leagues, or other movements that sought to invade its positions of power and profit; it was politically, socially, and culturally anti-radical." His "giants of American conservatism" were John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Elihu Root, and Theodore Roosevelt. He added that Washington and Lincoln transcend the usual categories, but that conservatives "may argue with some conviction that Washington and Lincoln can also be added to his list".


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: Rossiter went to note the importance of other conservative leaders over the past two centuries. Among the fathers of the Constitution, which he calls "a triumph of conservative statesmanship", Rossiter said conservatives may "take special pride" in James Madison, James Wilson, Roger Sherman, John Dickinson, Gouverneur Morris and the Pinckneys of South Carolina. For the early 19th century, Rossiter said the libertarians and constitutionalists who deserve the conservative spotlight for their fight against Jacksonian democracy include Joseph Story and Josiah Quincy in Massachusetts; Chancellor James Kent in New York; James Madison, James Monroe, and John Randolph of Roanoke in Virginia.


title: Conservatism in the United States

text: In the decades around 1900, Rossiter finds that Grover Cleveland, Elihu Root, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt "were most successful in shaping the old truths of conservatism to the new facts of industrialism and democracy". In what Rossiter called the "Great Train Robbery of Intellectual History", the "laissez-faire" conservatives appropriated the themes of classical liberalism—especially liberty, opportunity, progress, and individualism, and packaged them into an ideology that supported the property rights of big corporations. Writing in 1955, Rossiter suggests that Robert A. Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Dwight D. Eisenhower may someday be added to the list.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Ford Fiesta is a supermini car marketed by Ford since 1976 over seven generations. Over the years, the Fiesta has mainly been developed and manufactured by Ford's European operations, and has been positioned below the Escort (later the Focus).


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Ford has sold over 22 million Fiestas since 1976, making it one of the best-selling Ford marques behind the Escort and the F-Series. It has been manufactured in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Taiwan, China, India, Thailand, and South Africa.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta is planned to be discontinued in June 2023, after 20 million have been made; it had been largely displaced by newer models. The hybrid Ford Puma became the more affordable option with the approach of bans on internal-combustion-engined cars.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta was originally designed by the project "Bobcat" team headed by Trevor Erskine (not to be confused with the badge-engineered Mercury variant of the Ford Pinto) and approved for development by Henry Ford II in September 1972, just after the launch of two comparable cars – the Fiat 127 and Renault 5. More than a decade earlier, Ford had decided against producing a new small car to rival BMC's Mini, as the production cost was deemed too high, but the 1973 oil crisis caused a rise in the already growing demand for smaller cars.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta was an all new car in the supermini segment, and was the smallest car yet made by Ford. Development targets indicated a production cost US$100 less than the current Escort. The car was to have a wheelbase longer than that of the Fiat 127, but with overall length shorter than that of Ford's Escort. The final proposal was developed by Tom Tjaarda at Ghia, overseen by Ford of Europe's then chief stylist Uwe Bahnsen. The project was approved for production in late 1973, with Ford's engineering centres in Cologne and Dunton (Essex) collaborating.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Ford estimated that 500,000 Fiestas a year would be produced, and built a new factory near Valencia, Spain; a transaxle factory near Bordeaux, France; factory extensions for the assembly plants in Dagenham, UK. Final assembly also took place in Valencia.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: After years of speculation by the motoring press about Ford's new car, it was subject to a succession of carefully crafted press leaks from the end of 1975. A Fiesta was on display at the Le Mans 24 Hour Race in June 1976, and the car went on sale in France and Germany in September 1976; to the frustration of UK dealerships, right-hand drive versions only began to appear in January 1977. Its initial competitors in Europe, apart from the Fiat 127 and Renault 5, included the Volkswagen Polo and Vauxhall Chevette. Chrysler UK were also about to launch the Sunbeam by this stage, and British Leyland was working on a new supermini, which was launched as the Austin Metro in 1980.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The name "Fiesta" (meaning "party" in Spanish) belonged to General Motors when the car was designed, used as a trim level on Oldsmobile station wagons, and was freely given for Ford to use on their new B-class car. Ford's marketing team had preferred the name "Bravo", but Henry Ford II chose "Fiesta".


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta was initially available in Europe with the Valencia inline-four engine (I4) with high- and low-compression options, and engines and in Base, Popular, Popular Plus, L, GL (1978 onward), Ghia, and S trim levels, as well as a van. The US Mark I Fiesta was built in Cologne, but to slightly different specifications; US models were Base, Decor, Sport, and Ghia, with the Ghia having the highest level of trim. These trim levels changed very little in the Fiesta's three-year run in the US, from 1978 to 1980. All US models featured the more powerful engine, (which was the older "Crossflow" version of the Kent, rather than the Valencia) fitted with a catalytic converter and air pump to satisfy strict Californian emission regulations), energy-absorbing bumpers, side-marker lamps, round sealed-beam headlamps, and improved crash dynamics and fuel system integrity, as well as optional air conditioning (which was not available in Europe). In the US market, the North American Ford Escort replaced both the Fiesta and the compact Pinto in 1981, competing with the Chevrolet Chevette and Chevrolet Cavalier.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: A sporting derivative (1.3 L Supersport) was offered in Europe for the 1980 model year, using the Kent Crossflow engine, effectively to test the market for the similar XR2 introduced a year later, which featured a 1.6-litre version of the same engine. Black plastic trim was added to the exterior and interior. The small, square headlights were replaced with larger circular ones, with the front indicators being moved into the bumper to accommodate the change.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: For the 1979 auto-show season, Ford in conjunction with its Ghia Operations in Turin, Italy, produced the Ford Fiesta Tuareg off-road car. It was touted in press materials as "a concept vehicle designed and equipped for practical, off-road recreational use."


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Minor revisions appeared across the range in late 1981, with larger bumpers to meet crash-worthiness regulations and other small improvements in a bid to maintain showroom appeal ahead of the forthcoming second generation.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta Mark II appeared in August 1983 with a revised front end and interior, and a bootlid mirroring the swage lines from the sides of the car. The 1.3 L OHV engine was dropped, being replaced in 1984 by a compound valve-angle hemispherical combustion chamber (CVH) powerplant of similar capacity, itself superseded by the lean burn 1.4 L two years later. The 957 and 1,117 cc Kent/Valencia engines continued with only slight alterations and for the first time a Fiesta diesel was produced with a 1,600 cc engine adapted from the Escort.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The new CTX continuously variable transmission, also fitted in the Fiat Uno, eventually appeared early in 1987 on 1.1 L models only.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Mk2 Fiesta core range (excluding special editions) was made up of these model variants; Popular, Popular Plus, L, Ghia, 1.4S (1986 onwards), and finally, the XR2.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The second-generation Fiesta featured a different dashboard on the lower-series trim levels compared to the more expensive variants.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The XR2 model was thoroughly updated with a larger body kit. It also featured a 1.6 L CVH engine as previously seen in the Ford Escort XR3, and five-speed gearbox (also standard on the 1.3 L CVH models), rather than the four-speed gearbox, which had been used on the previous XR2 and on the rest of the Fiesta range. The engine was replaced by a lean-burn variant in 1986, which featured a revised cylinder head and carburettor; it was significantly cleaner from an environmental viewpoint, but was slightly less powerful as a result ().


title: Ford Fiesta

text: A truly "hot" Fiesta was never produced by the factory to avoid impacting sales of performance Ford Escort variants, but many aftermarket conversions were available, the best-known being that by the English firm Turbo Technics boosting power to a well-documented , which easily outclassed its "standard" rivals. Ford appreciated the high quality of this conversion, and was keen to look after its customers; the installation was undertaken by approved fitting centres and all the warranties remained valid after.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The facelifted Fiesta, facing competition from the Austin Metro, Fiat Uno, Nissan Micra, Peugeot 205, Toyota Starlet, Vauxhall Nova, and Volkswagen Polo, was one of the UK's top superminis. In its best-ever year, 1987, over 150,000 Fiesta models were sold in the UK, though it finished second in the sales charts to the Ford Escort. It was available in Japan, sold at Ford/Mazda dealerships called "Autorama"; it complied with Japanese government dimension regulations, and the engine displacement was in the more favourable Japanese road tax bracket, which helped sales.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The third-generation Fiesta Mark III, codenamed "BE-13", was unveiled at the end of 1988 and officially went on sale in February 1989. The car was based on a new platform, ditching the old car's rear beam axle for a semi-independent torsion beam arrangement, and looked radically different, addressing the principal weakness of the previous generation – the lack of a five-door version, which was by then available in its major rivals such as the Fiat Uno, Peugeot 205 and 106, and Opel Corsa/Vauxhall Nova. The other main change was to the running gear – the improved high-compression swirl version of the Kent/Valencia powerplant. The CVH units from the second generation were carried over largely unmodified. The diesel engine was enlarged to a 1.8 L capacity.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The first sports model was the 1.6S CVH 90BHP which had a twin choke Weber carburettor with no CAT and was still on sale until August 1991. It was replaced by the fuel injection XR2i.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The sports-model XR2i was launched in August 1989 with an eight-valve CVH engine with . This was the first Fiesta to have a fuel-injected engine. This was then replaced by a Zetec 16-valve version in 1992, which also had the RS Turbo being supplanted by the RS1800, as the CVH engine was being phased out. The RS1800 shared its 1.8-litre Zetec fuel-injected engine with the version of the then-current Ford Escort XR3i, and had a top speed of . The XR2i name was also dropped in early 1994, and the insurance-friendly "Si" badge appeared in its place on a slightly less sporty-looking model with either the 1.4 L PTE (a development of the CVH) or the 1.6 L Zetec engine.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: With the introduction of the successor Mark IV, the Mark III was built and sold at the same time. To distinguish the car, trim levels were revised, and it was marketed as the "Fiesta Classic". This version continued until production finally ceased in 1997.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta Mark IV (internal code name was "BE91") was launched in October 1995 and became Britain's best-selling car from 1996 to 1998, when it was overtaken by the all-new Ford Focus, a replacement for the Escort.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Mark IV benefited from new interior and exterior styling. It maintained similar dimensions to the Mark III, along with the platform and the basic body structure, most noticeably the side door openings. The RS1800 and RS Turbo models were not carried over to the updated Fiesta range.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The model featured a range of new Zetec-SE engines, available in 1.25 L and 1.4 L forms, the 1.8-litre Diesel engine was slightly modified for the Mark IV, now marketed as the "Endura DE". Lower-specification models remained available with what was the final edition of the Kent 1.3 L OHV engine, now known as Endura-E.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: As an exercise in badge engineering, the Mazda 121 and Ford Fiesta Mark IV shared their design, were built on the same production lines, and used almost all the same parts. In the JD Power reliability surveys at the time, the Mazda was reported to be significantly more reliable and attracted higher levels of customer satisfaction, despite it being a slower seller than the Fiesta.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: On April 1, 2002, the Fiesta Mark V was unveiled. This generation of the Ford Fiesta (Mk5) is often referred to as Mk6. This is because the previous model, the Mk4 Fiesta, was often called the Mk5 after it received a facelift in 1999. In other words, the 2002-2008 Fiesta is the fifth generation model, and what is often referred to as Mk5 is just a facelift model of the Mk4 – different looking front but still the same car. Production at Almussafes Plant started on April 29, 2002. Most engines were carried over from the previous Fiesta, but renamed "Duratec", as the "Zetec" name was now solely used for sportier models. The previous push-rod 1.3 L engine was initially available in the UK, but this was quickly replaced with a Rocam 1.3 L, both under the name Duratec 8v.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Trim levels available initially were Finesse, LX, Zetec, and Ghia, with limited-edition variants soon following. The fifth generation was also the first Fiesta to feature the antilock braking system and passenger airbags as standard. This generation became the best-selling Ford Fiesta generation to date.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Engines available include 1.25, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, and 2.0 L petrol engines, plus 1.4 L 8v and 1.6 L 16v Duratorq TDCi common-rail diesels built in a joint venture with PSA. There was also a Supercharged 1.0 L in the Brazilian market.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: This was the first Fiesta to be sold in Asia and Australasia (all 1.6 L LX three-door/five-door, Zetec three-door, Ghia five-door), replacing the Kia-based Festiva. In Brazil and Argentina, a Fiesta saloon version was introduced in late 2004. A similar Fiesta saloon model, with a different front end, was released in India in late 2005. This Fiesta generation was ergonomically and mechanically more advanced than any previous generation. The 2005 facelift came with an improved exterior.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The sixth-generation Fiesta, also known as Mark VI or Mark VII in the UK, was shown in concept form as the Ford Verve at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2007, and marketed in principal European markets, Australia and the United States. Developed under the project code B299 and B409, this model uses the new Ford global B-car platform.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The model was launched under the company's new "One Ford" strategy, which called for single models to be manufactured and sold globally to achieve efficiency and economies of scale, instead of making regional models. Production started at Ford's Cologne plant in Germany in August 2008. A second plant in Valencia, Spain, started production in early 2009. Production in China, Thailand, and Mexico started from late 2008 to 2010. In Brazil, the production of the hatchback version started in 2013.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: In late September 2012 at the Paris Motor Show, the facelifted Fiesta for the European market went on sale in 2013. It was the first to use Ford's latest corporate front end, which included the newly introduced trapezoidal grille.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: On November 29, 2016, the seventh-generation Fiesta (Mark VII, or Mark VIII in UK) was announced in Germany. It is said to be larger, roomier, safer, more efficient, and more upmarket compared to its predecessor. The Fiesta range expanded to include new additions - a crossover-styled variant called the Fiesta Active, and the luxury Fiesta Vignale.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta was withdrawn from North America, South America, Australasia, and Asia, according to Ford in 2017, due to the popularity of SUVs and pickup trucks, such as the Ranger and Escape. However, the Fiesta ST continued to be sold in Australia due to its popularity and larger profit margin.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: All seven generations of the Fiesta have been available in sedan delivery/panel van format, although not in all markets. The Mark I, II, and III versions feature the standard three-door bodyshell with the rear side glass replaced by body-coloured metal and a flat floor pan instead of the rear seats.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: In 1991, a "high-cube"-style van based on the Mark III front bodyshell, but with longer wheelbase and Renault-derived rear torsion bar suspension, was introduced and was named the Ford Courier. The Courier continued in the Mark IV style through 2002, when it was replaced by the Ford Transit Connect.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: For the Mark V, the standard Fiestavan version was based on the three-door bodyshell rather than the taller five-door version. The Mark VI Fiesta van was first introduced in the European market in mid-2009, a year after the original launch.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Two Ford Fiestas starred in the 1979 Monte Carlo Rally — the British entry driven by Roger Clark and aided by co-driver Jim Porter, and a German entry piloted by Ari Vatanen and co-driven by David Richards. Both cars were highly modified with special motorsport components throughout and featured pioneering limited-slip differential technology. The cars were powered by competition tuned versions of the 1,600 cc Kent crossflow engine — a later version of which appeared in the Mk 1 Fiesta XR2. The two rally cars performed well in the arduous ice and snow that year. Roger Clark did not set any records but the German car achieved 9th position overall — a very encouraging result, which sparked demand for sportier Fiestas.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Since this, sporting and "hot hatch" editions have been introduced, including Supersport, XR2, S(Sport), XR2i, Si, RS Turbo, RS1800, Zetec S, Zetec RS, and ST. All of these were powered by a range of engines from the Ford Kent to the Ford Duratec engines.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Ford RallyeConcept in 2002 has been realised through an intensely close collaboration between Ford RallyeSport, the motorsport experts behind the Puma Super 1600 and the Focus WRC rally cars, and Ford Design Europe, the creative team responsible for the new three-door Fiesta on which the RallyeConcept is based. Ford RallyeConcept's marriage of the motorsport engineer's objective for performance functionality with the eye for detail of the designer has been so effective that Ford has committed to an engineering development programme to bring a Fiesta-based rally car to reality. Aiming for FIA homologation by mid-2003, Ford RallyeSport is hoping that it will become Ford's next success story in national and international rallying. The Fiesta Super 1600 debuted at Rally Greece 2004.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The "Fiesta Sporting Trophy" is a "One Make" Championship; beginning its first season in March 2006, it combines keen competition with equal performance and leaves the decision about winning or losing to the drivers and co-drivers' capabilities. The driver, co-driver, and mechanics work as a team to compete against the toughest adversary of all—the clock.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta Sporting Trophy is based around the Fiesta ST Group N car. The car has from the 2 L Duratec ST engine, which when combined with the conversion kit from M-Sport, has been designed to provide all of the safety equipment and performance upgrades to enable the car to be competitive and reliable at any event around the world.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: In March 2007, the Pirtek Rally Team introduced the Ford Fiesta Super 2000 rally car, which was to compete in the Australian Rally Championship.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: On November 18, 2009, Ford with M-Sport unveiled the Ford Fiesta S2000 Mark VI. Although not due for homologation until January 2010, it was set to make its debut as course car on the final round of the IRC series, Rally Scotland. The car had been built to compete mainly in the Super 2000 World Rally Championship. In 2013, M-Sport developed the Ford Fiesta R5, the successor of the Fiesta S2000; this was based on the 1.6 litre Fiesta ST, and was designed for the Group R5 class of rallying. Fiesta R5 got Evo update in early 2016.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: With new WRC regulations coming in 2011, M-Sport developed the Fiesta RS WRC, based on Fiesta S2000. It won six WRC rounds in 2011 and 2012, driven by Jari-Matti Latvala, Mikko Hirvonen and Mads Ostberg, but since M-Sport lost most of its manufacturer support for the 2013 season the car hasn't been able to win. In 2013, Thierry Neuville was the world championship runner-up, being a M-Sport junior works driver. Fiesta RS WRC has been very popular among private drivers, due to its good driveability, reasonable price and good availability.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The WRC regulations will be altered for 2017 and M-Sport has thus started developing the Mk7 Fiesta World Rally Car.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta Rallycross Supercars version is a racecar with a 2.0 L Duratec turbocharged four-cylinder engine, running on petrol or E85 (85% ethanol/15% petrol). It produces over and . That propels the rallycross-prepped Fiesta up to sixty in 2.2 seconds. The cars were more powerful (another 200 bhp) than WRC cars.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta Mk6 Rallycross cars made their US debuts in the 2009 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado. Swedish team Olsbergs MSE announced the cars would later appear in ESPN's X Games 15 on 2009-08-02. The two Olsbergs MSE Fiesta Mk7 Rallycross cars were based on the Fiesta hatchback model road cars, one with 3 doors, the other one a 5-doors version, but with all-wheel drive, powered by 2.0 L Duratec Ford engines capable of more than (for PPIHC only).


title: Ford Fiesta

text: British company M-Sport also builds Fiesta Rallycross Supercars to Global Rallycross Championship teams Hoonigan Racing Division, Chip Ganassi Racing and Bryan Herta Autosport.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Driving a Fiesta, Tanner Foust won the 2011 and 2012 Global RallyCross Championship and was runner-up in the 2011 and 2012 FIA European Rallycross Championship. Toomas Heikkinen won the Global RallyCross Championship in 2013 and Joni Wiman and 2014. Other notable drivers include Marcus Grönholm, Ken Block and Brian Deegan.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: In the UK, the Fiesta is commonly used in club level motorsport series but has its national one-make series called the "Ford Fiesta Championship". During its peak in the 1980s and 1990s, it had manufacturer support and it even was a support race to the British Grand Prix and numerous British Touring Car Championship rounds. The series has gone through numerous name changes including "Ford Credit Fiesta Championship", "Ford Fiesta Zetec Championship" and "BRSCC Ford Si Challenge" and is nowadays run by the BRSCC (British Racing and Sports Car Club) as a club racing championship. The organisation also run the other series that consists of Fiestas.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Fiesta drivers won the Super 1600 class of the European Touring Car Cup seven times from 2008 to 2016.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The Fiesta has been Britain's most popular new car in 1990, 1991, 1996, 1997, 1998 and each year from 2009 to 2020, by the time of the MK2 Fiesta's demise in early 1989, just under 1,300,000 had been sold in Britain since its launch 12 years earlier, In June 2014 Ford claimed the largest market share in the UK, of 12.87% – and almost half of those registrations belonged to the Fiesta. By July 2014, the Fiesta became the UK's best-selling car of all time, with 4,115,000 sold, and its shown in The following table.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: The 2011 Fiesta was one of the five finalists for the 2011 Green Car of the Year awarded by the Green Car Journal in November 2010, competing with two plug-in electric vehicles, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt (the winner), and two hybrid electric vehicles.


title: Ford Fiesta

text: Ford executives in October 2022 announced that the Fiesta is set to be discontinued by mid-2023, as costs of parts rise and drivers opt for SUVs, and the company wants to focus on electrification of its vehicles.


title: Prosciutto

text: Prosciutto crudo, in English often shortened to prosciutto ( , ), is Italian uncooked, unsmoked, and dry-cured ham. "Prosciutto crudo" is usually served thinly sliced.


title: Prosciutto

text: Several regions in Italy have their own variations of "prosciutto crudo", each with degrees of protected status, but the most prized are Prosciutto di Parma PDO from Emilia-Romagna and Prosciutto di San Daniele PDO from Friuli Venezia Giulia. Unlike Speck (Speck Alto Adige PGI) from the South Tyrol region, prosciutto is not smoked.


title: Prosciutto

text: In Italian, "prosciutto" means any kind of ham, either dry-cured ("prosciutto crudo" or simply "crudo") or cooked ("prosciutto cotto"), but in English-speaking countries, it usually means either Italian "prosciutto crudo" or similar hams made elsewhere. However, the word "prosciutto" itself is not protected; cooked ham may legally be, and in practice is, sold as "prosciutto" (usually as "prosciutto cotto", and from Italy or made in the Italian style) in English-speaking regions.


title: Prosciutto

text: The word "prosciutto" derives in turn from Italian "asciutto" ("dry"), with prefix substitution, or from Vulgar Latin "pro" (before) + "exsuctus" (past participle of "exsugere" "to suck out [the moisture]"); the Portuguese "presunto" has the same etymology. It is similar to the modern Italian verb "prosciugare" "to dry thoroughly" (from Latin "pro" + "exsucare" "to extract the juices from").


title: Prosciutto

text: Prosciutto is made from either a pig's or a wild boar's hind leg or thigh, and the base term prosciutto specifically refers to this product. Prosciutto may also be made using the hind leg of other animals, in which case the name of the animal is included in the name of the product, for example "prosciutto cotto d'agnello" ("lamb prosciutto"). The process of making prosciutto can take from nine months to two years, depending on the size of the ham.


title: Prosciutto

text: Today, the ham is first cleaned, salted, and left for about two months. During this time, the ham is pressed, gradually and carefully so as to avoid breaking the bone, to drain all blood left in the meat. Next, it is washed several times to remove the salt, and is hung in a dark, well-ventilated environment. The surrounding air is important to the final quality of the ham; the best results are obtained in a cold climate. The ham is then left until dry. The time this takes varies, depending on the local climate and size of the ham. When the ham is completely dry, it is hung to air, either at room temperature or in a controlled environment, for up to 18 months.


title: Prosciutto

text: Prosciutto is sometimes cured with nitrites (either sodium or potassium), which are generally used in other hams to produce the desired rosy color and unique flavor, but only sea salt is used in Protected Designation of Origin hams.


title: Prosciutto

text: Such rosy pigmentation is produced by a direct chemical reaction of nitric oxide with myoglobin to form nitrosomyoglobin, followed by concentration of the pigments due to drying. Bacteria convert the added nitrite or nitrate to nitric oxide.


title: Prosciutto

text: Sliced "prosciutto crudo" in Italian cuisine is often served as an antipasto, wrapped around "grissini", or accompanied with melon or figs. It is also eaten as accompaniment to cooked spring vegetables, such as asparagus or peas. It may be included in a simple pasta sauce made with cream, or a Tuscan dish of tagliatelle and vegetables. It is used in stuffings for other meats, such as veal, as a wrap around veal or steak, in a filled bread, or as a pizza topping.


title: Prosciutto

text: Saltimbocca is an Italian veal dish in which escalopes of veal are topped with a sage leaf before being wrapped in prosciutto and then pan-fried. Prosciutto is often served in sandwiches and panini, sometimes in a variation on the Caprese salad, with basil, tomato and fresh mozzarella.


title: Prosciutto

text: Under the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (EU), certain well-established meat products, including some local prosciutto, are covered by a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) – DOP in Italian – and other, less stringent designations of geographical origin for traditional specialties. Various regions have their own PDO, whose specifications do not in general require ham from free-range pigs. The simple Italian description "prosciutto", used alone or with "crudo" or "cotto" is not in itself a protected term.


title: Prosciutto

text: The two famous types of Italian "prosciutto crudo" are: "prosciutto crudo di Parma", from Parma, and "prosciutto crudo di San Daniele", from the San Daniele del Friuli area, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. The "prosciutto di Parma" has a slightly nutty flavor from the Parmigiano Reggiano whey that is sometimes added to the pigs' diet. The "prosciutto di San Daniele" is darker, and sweeter in flavor. For both of them, the product regulations allow salt as the only additive to the meat, prohibiting additives such as nitrite and nitrate that are often used in unprotected products.


title: Prosciutto

text: European Protected Designations of Origin (PDO) and Geographical indications and traditional specialities (PGI) apply for several prosciutto varieties in Italy, each slightly different in color, flavor, and texture:


title: Prosciutto

text: "" is similar to prosciutto but is made from the filet or loin of the hind leg. It is aged in a beef or hogs bladder as a casing to prevent spoilage and contamination. "Culatello di Zibello" possesses PDO status. It is commonly served as a starter.


title: Prosciutto

text: In Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia (especially the Karst Plateau and the Vipava Valley), Serbia, and Croatia (Dalmatia, the island of Krk and Istria), "pršut" is a common form of dry-cured ham. "Pršut" from Dalmatia, Herzegovina and Serbia is smoked, unlike the Italian product, while that from Slovenia, Istria and Krk is not smoked. The mountain village of Njeguši in Montenegro produces the smoked "njeguški pršut".


title: Terence McKenna

text: Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the "I Ching", which he called novelty theory, proposing that this predicted the end of time, and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012. His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about the 2012 phenomenon. Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna developed a hobby of fossil-hunting in his youth and from this he acquired a deep scientific appreciation of nature. He also became interested in psychology at a young age, reading Carl Jung's book "Psychology and Alchemy" at the age of 14. This was the same age McKenna first became aware of magic mushrooms, when reading an essay titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" which appeared in the May 13, 1957 edition of LIFE magazine.


title: Terence McKenna

text: At age 16 McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, California. In 1963, he was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell" by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of "The Village Voice" which published articles on psychedelics.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna said that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing", and in interviews he claimed to have smoked cannabis daily since his teens.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley and was accepted into the Tussman Experimental College. While in college in 1967 he began studying shamanism through the study of Tibetan folk religion. That same year, which he called his "opium and kabbala phase", he traveled to Jerusalem where he met Kathleen Harrison, an ethnobotanist who later became his wife.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism. He sought out shamans of the Tibetan Bon tradition, trying to learn more about the shamanic use of visionary plants. During his time there, he also studied the Tibetan language and worked as a hashish smuggler, until "one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs." He then wandered through southeast Asia viewing ruins, and spent time as a professional butterfly collector in Indonesia.


title: Terence McKenna

text: After his mother's death from cancer in 1970, McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of "oo-koo-hé", a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Instead of oo-koo-hé they found fields full of gigantic "Psilocybe cubensis" mushrooms, which became the new focus of the expedition. In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, McKenna was the subject of a psychedelic experiment in which the brothers attempted to bond harmine (harmine is another psychedelic compound they used synergistically with the mushrooms) with their own neural DNA, through the use of a set specific vocal techniques. They hypothesised this would give them access to the collective memory of the human species, and would manifest the alchemists' Philosopher's Stone which they viewed as a "hyperdimensional union of spirit and matter". McKenna claimed the experiment put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience. McKenna also often referred to the voice as "the mushroom", and "the teaching voice" amongst other names. The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar psychedelic experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the "I Ching", which led to his "Novelty Theory".


title: Terence McKenna

text: In 1972, McKenna returned to U.C. Berkeley to finish his studies and in 1975, he graduated with a degree in ecology, shamanism, and conservation of natural resources. In the autumn of 1975, after parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year, McKenna began a relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children, Kathleen Harrison.


title: Terence McKenna

text: Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by their Amazon experiences, "The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching". The brothers' experiences in the Amazon were the main focus of McKenna's book "True Hallucinations", published in 1993. McKenna also began lecturing locally around Berkeley and started appearing on some underground radio stations.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna, along with his brother Dennis, developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms using spores they brought to America from the Amazon. In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned in the book "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide", under the pseudonyms "O.T. Oss" and "O.N. Oeric". McKenna and his brother were the first to come up with a reliable method for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms at home. As ethnobiologist Jonathan Ott explains, "[the] authors adapted San Antonio's technique (for producing edible mushrooms by casing mycelial cultures on a rye grain substrate; San Antonio 1971) to the production of "Psilocybe [Stropharia] cubensis". The new technique involved the use of ordinary kitchen implements, and for the first time the layperson was able to produce a potent entheogen in his [or her] own home, without access to sophisticated technology, equipment, or chemical supplies." When the 1986 revised edition was published, the "Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide" had sold over 100,000 copies.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, becoming one of the pioneers of the psychedelic movement. His main focus was on the plant-based psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms (which were the catalyst for his career), ayahuasca, cannabis, and the plant derivative DMT. He conducted lecture tours and workshops promoting natural psychedelics as a way to explore universal mysteries, stimulate the imagination, and re-establish a harmonious relationship with nature. Though associated with the New Age and Human Potential Movements, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities. He repeatedly stressed the importance and primacy of the "felt presence of direct experience", as opposed to dogma.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on a wide array of subjects, including shamanism; metaphysics; alchemy; language; culture; self-empowerment; environmentalism, techno-paganism; artificial intelligence; evolution; extraterrestrials; science and scientism; the Web; virtual reality (which he saw as a way to artistically communicate the experience of psychedelics); and aesthetic theory, specifically about art/visual experience as "information" representing the significance of hallucinatory visions experienced under the influence of psychedelics.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna soon became a fixture of popular counterculture with Timothy Leary once introducing him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet" and with comedian Bill Hicks' referencing him in his stand-up act and building an entire routine around his ideas. McKenna also became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, documented in the book "Tripping" by Charles Hayes.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna published several books in the early-to-mid-1990s including: "The Archaic Revival"; "Food of the Gods"; and "True Hallucinations". Hundreds of hours of McKenna's public lectures were recorded either professionally or bootlegged and have been produced on cassette tape, CD and MP3. Segments of his talks have gone on to be sampled by many musicians and DJ's.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna was a colleague and close friend of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, and author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. He conducted several public and many private debates with them from 1982 until his death. These debates were known as "trialogues" and some of the discussions were later published in the books: "Trialogues at the Edge of the West" and "The Evolutionary Mind".


title: Terence McKenna

text: In 1985, McKenna founded Botanical Dimensions with his then-wife, Kathleen Harrison. Botanical Dimensions is a nonprofit ethnobotanical preserve on the Big Island of Hawaii, established to collect, protect, propagate, and understand plants of ethno-medical significance and their lore, and appreciate, study, and educate others about plants and mushrooms felt to be significant to cultural integrity and spiritual well-being. The botanical garden is a repository containing thousands of plants that have been used by indigenous people of the tropical regions, and includes a database of information related to their purported healing properties. McKenna was involved until 1992, when he retired from the project, following his and Kathleen's divorce earlier in the year. Kathleen still manages Botanical Dimensions as its president and projects director.


title: Terence McKenna

text: After their divorce, McKenna moved to Hawaii permanently, where he built a modernist house and created a gene bank of rare plants near his home. Previously, he had split his time between Hawaii and Occidental, CA.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna was a longtime sufferer of migraines, but on 22 May 1999 he began to have unusually extreme and painful headaches. He then collapsed due to a seizure. McKenna was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. According to "Wired" magazine, McKenna was worried that his tumor may have been caused by his psychedelic drug use, or his 35 years of daily cannabis smoking; however, his doctors assured him there was no causal relation.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In late 1999, McKenna described his thoughts concerning his impending death to interviewer Erik Davis:


title: Terence McKenna

text: On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library of over 3000 rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. An index of McKenna's library was made by his brother Dennis. His daughter, the artist and photographer Klea McKenna, subsequently preserved his insect collection, turning it into a gallery installation, and then publishing it in book form as "The Butterfly Hunter", featuring her selected photos of 122 insects119 butterflies/moths and three beetles or beetle-like insectsfrom a set of over 2000 he collected between 1969 and 1972, as well as maps showing his collecting routes through the rainforests of Southeast Asia and South America. McKenna had intensively studied Lepidoptera and entomology in the 1960s, and as part of his studies hunted for butterflies primarily in Colombia and Indonesia. McKenna's insect collection was consistent with his interest in Victorian-era explorers and naturalists, and his worldview based on close observation of nature. In the 1970s, when he was still collecting, he became quite squeamish and guilt-ridden about the necessity of killing butterflies in order to collect and classify them, and that's what led him to stop his entomological studies, according to his daughter.


title: Terence McKenna

text: Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances; for example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, ayahuasca, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience.


title: Terence McKenna

text: He was less enthralled with synthetic drugs, stating, "I think drugs should come from the natural world and be use-tested by shamanically orientated cultures ... one cannot predict the long-term effects of a drug produced in a laboratory."


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna always stressed the responsible use of psychedelic plants, saying: "Experimenters should be very careful. One must build up to the experience. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power and beauty. There is no set rule to avoid being overwhelmed, but move carefully, reflect a great deal, and always try to map experiences back onto the history of the race and the philosophical and religious accomplishments of the species. All the compounds are potentially dangerous, and all compounds, at sufficient doses or repeated over time, involve risks. The library is the first place to go when looking into taking a new compound."


title: Terence McKenna

text: He also recommended, and often spoke of taking, what he called "heroic doses", which he defined as five grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms, taken alone, on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, and with eyes closed. He believed that when taken this way one could expect a profound visionary experience, believing it is only when "slain" by the power of the mushroom that the message becomes clear.


title: Terence McKenna

text: Although McKenna avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel". He proposed that DMT sent one to a "parallel dimension" and that psychedelics literally enabled an individual to encounter "higher dimensional entities", or what could be ancestors, or spirits of the Earth, saying that if you can trust your own perceptions it appears that you are entering an "ecology of souls". McKenna also put forward the idea that psychedelics were "doorways into the Gaian mind", suggesting that "the planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being" and that the psychedelic plants were the facilitators of this communication.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna spoke of hallucinations while on DMT in which he claims to have met intelligent entities he described as "self-transforming machine elves".


title: Terence McKenna

text: In a more radical version of biophysicist Francis Crick's hypothesis of directed panspermia, McKenna speculated on the idea that psilocybin mushrooms may be a species of high intelligence, which may have arrived on this planet as spores migrating through space and which are attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. He postulated that "intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have come here [to Earth] in this spore-bearing life form". He said, "I think that theory will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred years if people do biology they will think it quite silly that people once thought that spores could not be blown from one star system to another by cosmic radiation pressure," and also believed that "few people are in a position to judge its extraterrestrial potential, because few people in the orthodox sciences have ever experienced the full spectrum of psychedelic effects that are unleashed."


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna was opposed to Christianity and most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening, favouring shamanism, which he believed was the broadest spiritual paradigm available, stating that:


title: Terence McKenna

text: What I think happened is that in the world of prehistory all religion was experiential, and it was based on the pursuit of ecstasy through plants. And at some time, very early, a group interposed itself between people and direct experience of the 'Other.' This created hierarchies, priesthoods, theological systems, castes, ritual, taboos. Shamanism, on the other hand, is an experiential science that deals with an area where we know nothing. It is important to remember that our epistemological tools have developed very unevenly in the West. We know a tremendous amount about what is going on in the heart of the atom, but we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the mind.


title: Terence McKenna

text: During the final years of his life and career, McKenna became very engaged in the theoretical realm of technology. He was an early proponent of the technological singularity and in his last recorded public talk, "Psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines", he outlined ties between psychedelics, computation technology, and humans. He also became enamored with the Internet, calling it "the birth of [the] global mind", believing it to be a place where psychedelic culture could flourish.


title: Terence McKenna

text: Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Plato, Gnostic Christianity, and Alchemy, while regarding the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna also expressed admiration for the works of writers including Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, whose book "Finnegans Wake" he called "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century," science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who he described as an "incredible genius," fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, with whom McKenna shared the belief that "scattered through the ordinary world there are books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth" and Vladimir Nabokov; McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna's hypothesis concerning the influence of psilocybin mushrooms on human evolution is known as "the 'stoned ape' theory."


title: Terence McKenna

text: In his 1992 book "Food of the Gods", McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans' early ancestors "Homo erectus" to the species "Homo sapiens" mainly had to do with the addition of the mushroom "Psilocybe cubensis" in the diet, an event that according to his theory took place in about 100,000 BCE (which is when he believed that the species diverged from the genus "Homo"). McKenna based his theory on the main effects, or alleged effects, produced by the mushroom while citing studies by Roland Fischer et al. from the late 1960s to early 1970s.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna stated that, due to the desertification of the African continent at that time, human forerunners were forced from the increasingly shrinking tropical canopy into search of new food sources. He believed they would have been following large herds of wild cattle whose dung harbored the insects that, he proposed, were undoubtedly part of their new diet, and would have spotted and started eating "Psilocybe cubensis", a dung-loving mushroom often found growing out of cowpats.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna's hypothesis was that low doses of psilocybin improve visual acuity, particularly edge detection, meaning that the presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack hunting primates caused the individuals who were consuming psilocybin mushrooms to be better hunters than those who were not, resulting in an increased food supply and in turn a higher rate of reproductive success. Then at slightly higher doses, he contended, the mushroom acts to sexually arouse, leading to a higher level of attention, more energy in the organism, and potential erection in the males, rendering it even more evolutionarily beneficial, as it would result in more offspring. At even higher doses, McKenna proposed that the mushroom would have acted to "dissolve boundaries," promoting community bonding and group sexual activities. Consequently, there would be a mixing of genes, greater genetic diversity, and a communal sense of responsibility for the group offspring. At these higher doses, McKenna also argued that psilocybin would be triggering activity in the "language-forming region of the brain", manifesting as music and visions, thus catalyzing the emergence of language in early hominids by expanding "their arboreally evolved repertoire of troop signals." He also pointed out that psilocybin would dissolve the ego and "religious concerns would be at the forefront of the tribe's consciousness, simply because of the power and strangeness of the experience itself."


title: Terence McKenna

text: According to McKenna, access to and ingestion of mushrooms was an evolutionary advantage to humans' omnivorous hunter-gatherer ancestors, also providing humanity's first religious impulse. He believed that psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst" from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna's "stoned ape" theory has not received attention from the scientific community and has been criticized for a relative lack of citation to any of the paleoanthropological evidence informing our understanding of human origins. His ideas regarding psilocybin and visual acuity have been criticized as misrepresentations of Fischer et al.'s findings, who published studies about visual perception in terms of various specific parameters, not acuity. Criticism has also been expressed because, in a separate study on psilocybin-induced transformation of visual space, Fischer et al. stated that psilocybin "may not be conducive to the survival of the organism". There is also a lack of scientific evidence that psilocybin increases sexual arousal, and even if it does, it does not necessarily entail an evolutionary advantage. Others have pointed to civilisations such as the Aztecs, who used psychedelic mushrooms (at least among the Priestly class), that didn't reflect McKenna's model of how psychedelic-using cultures would behave, for example, by carrying out human sacrifice. There are also examples of Amazonian tribes such as the Jivaro and the Yanomami who use ayahuasca ceremoniously and who are known to engage in violent behaviour. This, it has been argued, indicates the use of psychedelic plants does not necessarily suppress the ego and create harmonious societies.


title: Terence McKenna

text: One of the main themes running through McKenna's work, and the title of his second book, was the idea that Western civilization was undergoing what he called an "archaic revival".


title: Terence McKenna

text: His notion was that Western society has become "sick" and is undergoing a "healing process": In the same way that the human body begins to produce antibodies when it feels itself to be sick, humanity as a collective whole (in the Jungian sense) was creating "strategies for overcoming the condition of disease" and trying to cure itself, by what he termed as "a reversion to archaic values." McKenna pointed to phenomena including surrealism, abstract expressionism, body piercing and tattooing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, rock and roll and catastrophe theory, amongst others, as his evidence that this process was underway. This idea is linked to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of human evolution, with him viewing the "archaic revival" as an impulse to return to the symbiotic and blissful relationship he believed humanity once had with the psilocybin mushroom.


title: Terence McKenna

text: In differentiating his idea from the "New Age", a term that he felt trivialized the significance of the next phase in human evolution, McKenna stated that: "The New Age is essentially humanistic psychology '80s-style, with the addition of neo-shamanism, channeling, crystal and herbal healing. The archaic revival is a much larger, more global phenomenon that assumes that we are recovering the social forms of the late neolithic, and reaches far back in the 20th century to Freud, to surrealism, to abstract expressionism, even to a phenomenon like National Socialism which is a negative force. But the stress on ritual, on organized activity, on race/ancestor-consciousness – these are themes that have been worked out throughout the entire 20th century, and the archaic revival is an expression of that."


title: Terence McKenna

text: Novelty theory is a pseudoscientific idea that purports to predict the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time, proposing that time is not a constant but has various qualities tending toward either "habit" or "novelty". Habit, in this context, can be thought of as entropic, repetitious, or conservative; and novelty as creative, disjunctive, or progressive phenomena. McKenna's idea was that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty and that as novelty increases, so does complexity. With each level of complexity achieved becoming the platform for a further ascent into complexity.


title: Terence McKenna

text: The basis of the theory was originally conceived in the mid-1970s after McKenna's experiences with psilocybin mushrooms at La Chorrera in the Amazon led him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the "I Ching".


title: Terence McKenna

text: In Asian Taoist philosophy the concept of opposing phenomena is represented by the yin and yang. Both are always present in everything, yet the amount of influence of each varies over time. The individual lines of the "I Ching" are made up of both Yin (broken lines) and Yang (solid lines).


title: Terence McKenna

text: When examining the King Wen sequence of the 64 hexagrams, McKenna noticed a pattern. He analysed the "degree of difference" between the hexagrams in each successive pair and claimed he found a statistical anomaly, which he believed suggested that the King Wen sequence was intentionally constructed, with the sequence of hexagrams ordered in a highly structured and artificial way, and that this pattern codified the nature of time's flow in the world. With the degrees of difference as numerical values, McKenna worked out a mathematical wave form based on the 384 lines of change that make up the 64 hexagrams. He was able to graph the data and this became the "Novelty Time Wave".


title: Terence McKenna

text: Peter J. Meyer (Peter Johann Gustav Meyer) (born 1946), in collaboration with McKenna, studied and improved the foundations of novelty theory, working out a mathematical formula and developing the "Timewave Zero" software (the original version of which was completed by July 1987), enabling them to graph and explore its dynamics on a computer. The graph was fractal: It exhibited a pattern in which a given small section of the wave was found to be identical in form to a larger section of the wave. McKenna called this fractal modeling of time "temporal resonance", proposing it implied that larger intervals, occurring long ago, contained the same amount of information as shorter, more recent, intervals. He suggested the up-and-down pattern of the wave shows an ongoing wavering between habit and novelty respectively. With each successive iteration trending, at an increasing level, towards infinite novelty. So according to novelty theory, the pattern of time itself is speeding up, with a requirement of the theory being that infinite novelty will be reached on a specific date.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna believed that notable events in history could be identified that would help him locate the time wave's end date and attempted to find the best-fit placement when matching the graph to the data field of human history. The last harmonic of the wave has a duration of 67.29 years. Population growth, peak oil, and pollution statistics were some of the factors that pointed him to an early twenty-first century end date and when looking for an extremely novel event in human history as a signal that the final phase had begun McKenna picked the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This worked out to the graph reaching zero in mid-November 2012. When he later discovered that the end of the 13th baktun in the Maya calendar had been correlated by Western Maya scholars as December 21, 2012, he adopted their end date instead.


title: Terence McKenna

text: McKenna saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a teleological attractor at the end of time, which increases interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity. He also frequently referred to this as "the transcendental object at the end of time." When describing this model of the universe he stated that: "The universe is not being pushed from behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal that is as inevitable as a marble reaching the bottom of a bowl when you release it up near the rim. If you do that, you know the marble will roll down the side of the bowl, down, down, down – until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest energy state, which is the bottom of the bowl. That's precisely my model of human history. I'm suggesting that the universe is pulled toward a complex attractor that exists ahead of us in time, and that our ever-accelerating speed through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor." Therefore, according to McKenna's final interpretation of the data and positioning of the graph, on December 21, 2012, we would have been in the unique position in time where maximum novelty would be experienced. An event he described as a "concrescence", a "tightening 'gyre'" with everything flowing together. Speculating that "when the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection...It will be the entry of our species into 'hyperspace', but it will appear to be the end of physical laws, accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination."


title: Terence McKenna

text: Novelty theory is considered to be pseudoscience. Among the criticisms are the use of numerology to derive dates of important events in world history, the arbitrary rather than calculated end date of the time wave and the apparent adjustment of the eschaton from November 2012 to December 2012 in order to coincide with the Maya calendar. Other purported dates do not fit the actual time frames: the date claimed for the emergence of "Homo sapiens" is inaccurate by 70,000 years, and the existence of the ancient Sumer and Egyptian civilisations contradict the date he gave for the beginning of "historical time". Some projected dates have been criticised for having seemingly arbitrary labels, such as the "height of the age of mammals" and McKenna's analysis of historical events has been criticised for having a eurocentric and cultural bias.


title: Terence McKenna

text: The British mathematician Matthew Watkins of Exeter University conducted a mathematical analysis of the "Time Wave", and claimed there were various mathematical flaws in its construction.


title: Terence McKenna

text: Judy Corman, vice president of the Phoenix House of New York, attacked McKenna for popularizing "dangerous substances". In a 1993 letter to "The New York Times", he wrote that: "surely the fact that Terence McKenna says that the psilocybin mushroom 'is the megaphone used by an alien, intergalactic Other to communicate with mankind' is enough for us to wonder if taking LSD has done something to his mental faculties." The same year, in his "True Hallucinations" review for "The New York Times", Peter Conrad wrote: "I suffered hallucinatory agonies of my own while reading his shrilly ecstatic prose".


title: Terence McKenna

text: Reviewing "Food of the Gods", Richard Evans Schultes wrote in "American Scientist" that the book was "a masterpiece of research and writing" and that it "should be read by every specialist working in the multifarious fields involved with the use of psychoactive drugs." Concluding that, "[i]t is, without question, destined to play a major role in our future considerations of the role of the ancient use of psychoactive drugs, the historical shaping of our modern concerns about drugs and perhaps about man's desire for escape from reality with drugs."


title: Terence McKenna

text: In 1994, Tom Hodgkinson wrote for "The New Statesman and Society", that "to write him off as a crazy hippie is a rather lazy approach to a man not only full of fascinating ideas but also blessed with a sense of humor and self-parody".


title: Terence McKenna

text: In a 1992 issue of "Esquire Magazine", Mark Jacobson wrote of "True Hallucinations" that, "it would be hard to find a drug narrative more compellingly perched on a baroquely romantic limb than this passionate Tom-and-Huck-ride-great-mother-river-saga of brotherly bonding," adding "put simply, Terence is a hoot!"


title: Terence McKenna

text: "Wired" called him a "charismatic talking head" who was "brainy, eloquent, and hilarious" and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead also said that he was "the only person who has made a serious effort to objectify the psychedelic experience."


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but older samples tend to be yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available nitric acid has a concentration of 68% in water. When the solution contains more than 86% , it is referred to as "fuming nitric acid". Depending on the amount of nitrogen dioxide present, fuming nitric acid is further characterized as red fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 86%, or white fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 95%.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid is the primary reagent used for nitration – the addition of a nitro group, typically to an organic molecule. While some resulting nitro compounds are shock- and thermally-sensitive explosives, a few are stable enough to be used in munitions and demolition, while others are still more stable and used as pigments in inks and dyes. Nitric acid is also commonly used as a strong oxidizing agent.


title: Nitric acid

text: Commercially available nitric acid is an azeotrope with water at a concentration of 68% . This solution has a boiling temperature of 120.5 °C (249 °F) at 1 atm. It is known as "concentrated nitric acid". The azeotrope of nitric acid and water is a colourless liquid at room temperature.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid is subject to thermal or light decomposition and for this reason it was often stored in brown glass bottles:


title: Nitric acid

text: This reaction may give rise to some non-negligible variations in the vapor pressure above the liquid because the nitrogen oxides produced dissolve partly or completely in the acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: The nitrogen dioxide () and/or dinitrogen tetroxide () remains dissolved in the nitric acid coloring it yellow or even red at higher temperatures. While the pure acid tends to give off white fumes when exposed to air, acid with dissolved nitrogen dioxide gives off reddish-brown vapors, leading to the common names "red fuming nitric acid" and "white fuming nitric acid". Nitrogen oxides () are soluble in nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Commercial-grade fuming nitric acid contains 98% and has a density of 1.50 g/cm. This grade is often used in the explosives industry. It is not as volatile nor as corrosive as the anhydrous acid and has the approximate concentration of 21.4 M.


title: Nitric acid

text: Red fuming nitric acid, or RFNA, contains substantial quantities of dissolved nitrogen dioxide () leaving the solution with a reddish-brown color. Due to the dissolved nitrogen dioxide, the density of red fuming nitric acid is lower at 1.490 g/cm.


title: Nitric acid

text: An "inhibited" fuming nitric acid, either White Inhibited Fuming Nitric Acid (IWFNA), or Red Inhibited Fuming Nitric Acid (IRFNA), can be made by the addition of 0.6 to 0.7% hydrogen fluoride (HF). This fluoride is added for corrosion resistance in metal tanks. The fluoride creates a metal fluoride layer that protects the metal.


title: Nitric acid

text: White fuming nitric acid, pure nitric acid or WFNA, is very close to anhydrous nitric acid. It is available as 99.9% nitric acid by assay. One specification for white fuming nitric acid is that it has a maximum of 2% water and a maximum of 0.5% dissolved . Anhydrous nitric acid has a density of 1.513 g/cm and has the approximate concentration of 24 molar. Anhydrous nitric acid is a colorless mobile liquid with a density of 1.512 g/cm that solidifies at to form white crystals. As it decomposes to and water, it obtains a yellow tint. It boils at . It is usually stored in a glass shatterproof amber bottle with twice the volume of head space to allow for pressure build up, but even with those precautions the bottle must be vented monthly to release pressure.


title: Nitric acid

text: Two of the N–O bonds (two N–O bonds with terminal O atoms) are equivalent and relatively short. This can be explained by theories of resonance; the two major canonical forms show some double bond character in these two bonds, causing them to be shorter than single N–O bonds. The third N–O bond is elongated because its O atom is bonded to H atom.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid is normally considered to be a strong acid at ambient temperatures. There is some disagreement over the value of the acid dissociation constant, though the p"K" value is usually reported as less than −1. This means that the nitric acid in diluted solution is fully dissociated except in extremely acidic solutions. The p"K" value rises to 1 at a temperature of 250 °C.


title: Nitric acid

text: The nitronium ion, , is the active reagent in aromatic nitration reactions. Since nitric acid has both acidic and basic properties, it can undergo an autoprotolysis reaction, similar to the self-ionization of water:


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid reacts with most metals, but the details depend on the concentration of the acid and the nature of the metal. Dilute nitric acid behaves as a typical acid in its reaction with most metals. Magnesium, manganese, and zinc liberate :


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid can oxidize non-active metals such as copper and silver. With these non-active or less electropositive metals the products depend on temperature and the acid concentration. For example, copper reacts with dilute nitric acid at ambient temperatures with a 3:8 stoichiometry:


title: Nitric acid

text: The nitric oxide produced may react with atmospheric oxygen to give nitrogen dioxide. With more concentrated nitric acid, nitrogen dioxide is produced directly in a reaction with 1:4 stoichiometry:


title: Nitric acid

text: Upon reaction with nitric acid, most metals give the corresponding nitrates. Some metalloids and metals give the oxides; for instance, Sn, As, Sb, and Ti are oxidized into , , , and respectively.


title: Nitric acid

text: Some precious metals, such as pure gold and platinum-group metals do not react with nitric acid, though pure gold does react with "aqua regia", a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. However, some less noble metals (Ag, Cu, ...) present in some gold alloys relatively poor in gold such as colored gold can be easily oxidized and dissolved by nitric acid, leading to colour changes of the gold-alloy surface. Nitric acid is used as a cheap means in jewelry shops to quickly spot low-gold alloys (< 14 karats) and to rapidly assess the gold purity.


title: Nitric acid

text: Being a powerful oxidizing agent, nitric acid reacts with many non-metallic compounds, sometimes explosively. Depending on the acid concentration, temperature and the reducing agent involved, the end products can be variable. Reaction takes place with all metals except the noble metals series and certain alloys. As a general rule, oxidizing reactions occur primarily with the concentrated acid, favoring the formation of nitrogen dioxide (). However, the powerful oxidizing properties of nitric acid are thermodynamic in nature, but sometimes its oxidation reactions are rather kinetically non-favored. The presence of small amounts of nitrous acid () greatly increases the rate of reaction.


title: Nitric acid

text: Although chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), and aluminium (Al) readily dissolve in dilute nitric acid, the concentrated acid forms a metal-oxide layer that protects the bulk of the metal from further oxidation. The formation of this protective layer is called passivation. Typical passivation concentrations range from 20% to 50% by volume (see ASTM A967-05). Metals that are passivated by concentrated nitric acid are iron, cobalt, chromium, nickel, and aluminium.


title: Nitric acid

text: Being a powerful oxidizing acid, nitric acid reacts with many organic materials, and the reactions may be explosive. The hydroxyl group will typically strip a hydrogen from the organic molecule to form water, and the remaining nitro group takes the hydrogen's place. Nitration of organic compounds with nitric acid is the primary method of synthesis of many common explosives, such as nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluene (TNT). As very many less stable byproducts are possible, these reactions must be carefully thermally controlled, and the byproducts removed to isolate the desired product.


title: Nitric acid

text: Reaction with non-metallic elements, with the exceptions of nitrogen, oxygen, noble gases, silicon, and halogens other than iodine, usually oxidizes them to their highest oxidation states as acids with the formation of nitrogen dioxide for concentrated acid and nitric oxide for dilute acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Concentrated nitric acid oxidizes , , and into , , and , respectively. Although it reacts with graphite and amorphous carbon, it does not react with diamond; it can separate diamond from the graphite that it oxidizes.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid reacts with proteins to form yellow nitrated products. This reaction is known as the xanthoproteic reaction. This test is carried out by adding concentrated nitric acid to the substance being tested, and then heating the mixture. If proteins that contain amino acids with aromatic rings are present, the mixture turns yellow. Upon adding a base such as ammonia, the color turns orange. These color changes are caused by nitrated aromatic rings in the protein. Xanthoproteic acid is formed when the acid contacts epithelial cells. Respective local skin color changes are indicative of inadequate safety precautions when handling nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Normally, the nitric oxide produced by the reaction is reoxidized by the oxygen in air to produce additional nitrogen dioxide.


title: Nitric acid

text: Commercial grade nitric acid solutions are usually between 52% and 68% nitric acid. Production of nitric acid is via the Ostwald process, named after German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. In this process, anhydrous ammonia is oxidized to nitric oxide, in the presence of platinum or rhodium gauze catalyst at a high temperature of about and a pressure of .


title: Nitric acid

text: The nitric oxide is cycled back for reoxidation. Alternatively, if the last step is carried out in air:


title: Nitric acid

text: The aqueous obtained can be concentrated by distillation up to about 68% by mass. Further concentration to 98% can be achieved by dehydration with concentrated . By using ammonia derived from the Haber process, the final product can be produced from nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen which are derived from air and natural gas as the sole feedstocks.


title: Nitric acid

text: In the laboratory, nitric acid can be made by thermal decomposition of copper(II) nitrate, producing nitrogen dioxide and oxygen gases, which are then passed through water to give nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Alternatively, the reaction of equal moles of any nitrate salt such as sodium nitrate with sulfuric acid (), and distilling this mixture at nitric acid's boiling point of 83 °C. A nonvolatile residue of the metal hydrogen sulfate remains in the distillation vessel. The red fuming nitric acid obtained may be converted to the white nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: The dissolved is readily removed using reduced pressure at room temperature (10–30 minutes at 200 mmHg or 27 kPa) to give white fuming nitric acid. This procedure can also be performed under reduced pressure and temperature in one step in order to produce less nitrogen dioxide gas.


title: Nitric acid

text: Dilute nitric acid may be concentrated by distillation up to 68% acid, which is a maximum boiling azeotrope. In the laboratory, further concentration involves distillation with either sulfuric acid or magnesium nitrate, which serve as dehydrating agents. Such distillations must be done with all-glass apparatus at reduced pressure, to prevent decomposition of the acid. Industrially, highly concentrated nitric acid is produced by dissolving additional nitrogen dioxide in 68% nitric acid in an absorption tower. Dissolved nitrogen oxides are either stripped in the case of white fuming nitric acid, or remain in solution to form red fuming nitric acid. More recently, electrochemical means have been developed to produce anhydrous acid from concentrated nitric acid feedstock.


title: Nitric acid

text: The main industrial use of nitric acid is for the production of fertilizers. Nitric acid is neutralized with ammonia to give ammonium nitrate. This application consumes 75–80% of the 26 million tonnes produced annually (1987). The other main applications are for the production of explosives, nylon precursors, and specialty organic compounds.


title: Nitric acid

text: In organic synthesis, industrial and otherwise, the nitro group is a versatile functional group. A mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids introduces a nitro substituent onto various aromatic compounds by electrophilic aromatic substitution. Many explosives, such as TNT, are prepared this way:


title: Nitric acid

text: The nitro group can be reduced to give an amine group, allowing synthesis of aniline compounds from various nitrobenzenes:


title: Nitric acid

text: The precursor to nylon, adipic acid, is produced on a large scale by oxidation of "KA oil"—a mixture of cyclohexanone and cyclohexanol—with nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid has been used in various forms as the oxidizer in liquid-fueled rockets. These forms include red fuming nitric acid, white fuming nitric acid, mixtures with sulfuric acid, and these forms with HF inhibitor. IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid) was one of three liquid fuel components for the BOMARC missile.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid can be used to convert metals to oxidized forms, such as converting copper metal to cupric nitrate. It can also be used in combination with hydrochloric acid as aqua regia to dissolve noble metals such as gold (as chloroauric acid). These salts can be used to purify gold and other metals beyond 99.9% purity by processes of recrystallization and selective precipitation. Its ability to dissolve certain metals selectively or be a solvent for many metal salts makes it useful in gold parting processes.


title: Nitric acid

text: In elemental analysis by ICP-MS, ICP-AES, GFAA, and Flame AA, dilute nitric acid (0.5–5.0%) is used as a matrix compound for determining metal traces in solutions. Ultrapure trace metal grade acid is required for such determination, because small amounts of metal ions could affect the result of the analysis.


title: Nitric acid

text: It is also typically used in the digestion process of turbid water samples, sludge samples, solid samples as well as other types of unique samples which require elemental analysis via ICP-MS, ICP-OES, ICP-AES, GFAA and flame atomic absorption spectroscopy. Typically these digestions use a 50% solution of the purchased mixed with Type 1 DI Water.


title: Nitric acid

text: In electrochemistry, nitric acid is used as a chemical doping agent for organic semiconductors, and in purification processes for raw carbon nanotubes.


title: Nitric acid

text: In a low concentration (approximately 10%), nitric acid is often used to artificially age pine and maple. The color produced is a grey-gold very much like very old wax- or oil-finished wood (wood finishing).


title: Nitric acid

text: The corrosive effects of nitric acid are exploited for some specialty applications, such as etching in printmaking, pickling stainless steel or cleaning silicon wafers in electronics.


title: Nitric acid

text: A solution of nitric acid, water and alcohol, nital, is used for etching metals to reveal the microstructure. ISO 14104 is one of the standards detailing this well known procedure.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid is used either in combination with hydrochloric acid or alone to clean glass cover slips and glass slides for high-end microscopy applications. It is also used to clean glass before silvering when making silver mirrors.


title: Nitric acid

text: Commercially available aqueous blends of 5–30% nitric acid and 15–40% phosphoric acid are commonly used for cleaning food and dairy equipment primarily to remove precipitated calcium and magnesium compounds (either deposited from the process stream or resulting from the use of hard water during production and cleaning). The phosphoric acid content helps to passivate ferrous alloys against corrosion by the dilute nitric acid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid can be used as a spot test for alkaloids like LSD, giving a variety of colours depending on the alkaloid.


title: Nitric acid

text: Nitric acid plays a key role in PUREX and other nuclear fuel reprocessing methods, where it can dissolve many different actinides. The resulting nitrates are converted to various complexes that can be reacted and extracted selectively in order to separate the metals from each other.