title: Submarine sandwich

text: Shortly after World War II, there were numerous varieties of the term in use throughout Philadelphia. By the 1940s, the spelling "hoagie" had come to dominate less-used variations like "hoogie" and "hoggie". It is never spelled hoagy. By 1955, restaurants throughout the area were using the term "hoagie". Listings in Pittsburgh show hoagies arriving in 1961 and becoming widespread in that city by 1966.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: Former Philadelphia mayor (and later Pennsylvania governor) Ed Rendell declared the hoagie the "Official Sandwich of Philadelphia". However, there are claims that the hoagie was actually a product of nearby Chester. DiCostanza's in Boothwyn claims that the mother of DiConstanza's owner originated the hoagie in 1925 in Chester. DiCostanza relates the story that a customer came into the family deli and through an exchange matching the customer's requests and the deli's offerings, the hoagie was created.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: The New York term "hero" is first attested in 1937. The name is sometimes credited to the "New York Herald Tribune" food writer Clementine Paddleford in the 1930s, but there is no good evidence for this. It is also sometimes claimed that it is related to the "gyro", but this is unlikely as the "gyro" was unknown in the United States until the 1960s.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: "Hero" (plural usually "", not "heroes") remains the prevailing New York City term for most sandwiches on an oblong roll with a generally Italian flavor, in addition to the original described above. Pizzeria menus often include eggplant parmigiana, chicken parmigiana, and meatball , each served with sauce.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: A common term in New England, especially Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, is "grinder", but its origin has several possibilities. One theory has the name coming from Italian-American slang for a dock worker, among whom the sandwich was popular. Others say that it was called a grinder because the bread's hard crust required much chewing.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: In Pennsylvania, New York, and parts of New England, the term "grinder" usually refers to a "hot" submarine sandwich (meatball, sausage, etc.), whereas a cold sandwich (e.g., cold cuts) is usually called a "sub". In the Philadelphia area, the term "grinder" is also applied to any hoagie that is toasted in the oven after assembly, whether or not it is made with traditionally hot ingredients.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: The term "Italian sandwich" or simply "Italian" is used in Maine. Local folklore claims that a baker named Giovanni Amato invented the Italian in 1899.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: The traditional Maine Italian sandwich is prepared using a long, soft bread roll or bun with meats such as salami, mortadella, capocollo or ham along with provolone, tomato, onion, green bell pepper, Greek olives, pickles, olive oil or salad oil, salt and cracked black pepper. Additional ingredients, such as pepperoni, banana pepper, or lettuce may be added to the sandwich. The sandwich is often cut in half to make it easier to handle.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: The term "wedge" is used in the New York counties of Dutchess, Putnam, and Westchester, as well as the Connecticut county of Fairfield – four counties directly north of New York City.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: Some base the name "wedge" on a diagonal cut in the middle of the sandwich, creating two halves or "wedges", or a "wedge" cut out of the top half of the bread with the fillings "wedged" in between, or a sandwich that is served between two "wedges" of bread. It has also been said "wedge" is just short for "sandwich", with the name having originated from an Italian deli owner located in Yonkers, who got tired of saying the whole word.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: The term "spukie" ("spukkie" or "spuckie") is unique to the city of Boston and derives from the Italian word "spuccadella", meaning "long roll". The word "spuccadella" is not typically found in Italian dictionaries, which may suggest that it could be a regional Italian dialect, or possibly a Boston Italian-American innovation. Spukie is typically heard in parts of Dorchester and South Boston. Some bakeries in Boston's North End neighborhood have homemade spuccadellas for sale.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: Rolls filled with condiments have been common in several European countries for more than a century, notably in France and Scotland.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: In the United States, from its origins with the Italian-American labor force in the northeast, the sub began to show up on menus of local pizzerias. As time went on and popularity grew, small restaurants, called hoagie shops and sub shops, that specialized in the sandwich began to open.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: Subs or their national equivalents were already popular in many European, Asian, and Australasian countries when late 20th-century franchisee chain restaurants (such as Subway) and fast food made them even more popular and increased the prevalence of the word "sub". Many outlets offer non-traditional ingredient combinations.


title: Submarine sandwich

text: In the United States, there are many chain restaurants that specialize in subs. Major international chains include Firehouse Subs, Quiznos, Mr. Sub, Jimmy John's, and the largest restaurant chain in the world, Subway. The sandwich is also often available at supermarkets, local delis, and convenience stores. These include Wawa, which annually runs a sub promotional event during the summer called Hoagiefest, and Publix, whose sandwiches are often referred to as "pub subs".


title: Anise

text: Anise (; ), also called aniseed or rarely anix is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to Eurasia.


title: Anise

text: The flavor and aroma of its seeds have similarities with some other spices and herbs, such as star anise, fennel, licorice, and tarragon. It is widely cultivated and used to flavor food, candy, and alcoholic drinks, especially around the Mediterranean.


title: Anise

text: Anise is an herbaceous annual plant growing to or more. The leaves at the base of the plant are simple, long and shallowly lobed, while leaves higher on the stems are feathery pinnate, divided into numerous small leaflets. The flowers are either white or yellow, approximately in diameter, produced in dense umbels. The fruit is an oblong dry schizocarp, long, usually called "aniseed".


title: Anise

text: The name "anise" is derived via Old French from the Latin word, "anisum", or Greek, "anison", referring to dill.


title: Anise

text: Anise is a food plant for the larvae of some Lepidoptera species (butterflies and moths), including the lime-speck pug and wormwood pug.


title: Anise

text: Anise was first cultivated in Egypt and the Middle East, and was brought to Europe for its medicinal value. It has been cultivated in Egypt for approximately 4,000 years.


title: Anise

text: Anise plants grow best in light, fertile, well-drained soil. The seeds should be planted as soon as the ground warms up in spring. Because the plants have a taproot, they do not transplant well after being established so they should either be started in their final location or be transplanted while the seedlings are still small.


title: Anise

text: Western cuisines have long used anise to flavor dishes, drinks, and candies. The word is used for both the species of herb and its licorice-like flavor. The most powerful flavor component of the essential oil of anise, anethole, is found in both anise and an unrelated spice indigenous to northern China called star anise ("Illicium verum") widely used in South Asian, Southeast Asian and East Asian dishes. Star anise is considerably less expensive to produce and has gradually displaced "P. anisum" in Western markets. While formerly produced in larger quantities, by 1999 world production of the essential oil of anise was only 8 tons, compared to 400 tons of star anise.


title: Anise

text: As with all spices, the composition of anise varies considerably with origin and cultivation method. These are typical values for the main constituents.


title: Anise

text: In particular, the anise seeds products should also contain more than 0.2 milliliter volatile oil per 100 grams of spice.


title: Anise

text: Anise is sweet and aromatic, distinguished by its characteristic flavor. The seeds, whole or ground, are used for preparation of teas and tisanes (alone or in combination with other aromatic herbs), as well many regional and ethnic confectioneries, including black jelly beans (often marketed as licorice-flavored), British aniseed balls, aniseed twists and "troach" drops, Australian humbugs, New Zealand aniseed wheels, Italian "pizzelle" and "biscotti", German "Pfeffernüsse" and "Springerle", Austrian "Anisbögen", Dutch "muisjes", New Mexican "bizcochitos" and Peruvian "picarones."


title: Anise

text: The culinary uses of anise are not limited only to sweets and confections, as it is a key ingredient in Mexican "atole de anís" and "champurrado", which is similar to hot chocolate. In India and Pakistan, it is taken as a digestive after meals, used in brines in the Italian region of Apulia and as a flavoring agent in Italian sausage, pepperoni and other Italian processed meat products. The freshly chopped leaves are added to cheese spreads, dips or salads, while roots and stems impart a mild licorice flavor to soups and stews.


title: Anise

text: The ancient Romans often served spiced cakes with aniseed called "" at the end of feasts as a digestive. This tradition of serving cake at the end of festivities is the basis for the tradition of serving cake at weddings.


title: Anise

text: Anise is used to flavor Greek "ouzo and mastika"; Italian "sambuca"; French "absinthe", "anisette", and "pastis"; Spanish "anis de" "chinchón," "anís" , "anísado" and "Herbs de Majorca"; Turkish and Armenian "rakı"; Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli "arak"; and Algerian "Anisette Cristal". Outside the Mediterranean region, it is found in Colombian "aguardiente" and Mexican "Xtabentún". These liquors are clear, but on addition of water become cloudy, a phenomenon known as the ouzo effect.


title: Anise

text: Anise is used together with other herbs and spices in some root beers, such as Virgil's in the United States.


title: Anise

text: The main use of anise in traditional European herbal medicine was for its carminative effect (reducing flatulence), as noted by John Gerard in his "Great Herball", an early encyclopedia of herbal medicine:


title: Anise

text: The seed wasteth and consumeth winde, and is good against belchings and upbraidings of the stomach, alaieth gripings of the belly, provoketh urine gently, maketh abundance of milke, and stirreth up bodily lust: it staieth the laske (diarrhea), and also the white flux (leukorrhea) in women.


title: Anise

text: According to Pliny the Elder, anise was used as a cure for sleeplessness, chewed with alexanders and a little honey in the morning to freshen the breath, and, when mixed with wine, as a remedy for asp bites (N.H. 20.72). In 19th-century medicine, anise was prepared as ' ("Water of Anise") in doses of an ounce or more and as ' ("Spirit of Anise") in doses of 5–20 minims. In Turkish folk medicine, its seeds have been used as an appetite stimulant, tranquilizer or diuretic.


title: Anise

text: Anise essential oil can be obtained from the fruits by either steam distillation or extraction using supercritical carbon dioxide. The yield of essential oil is influenced by the growing conditions and extraction process, with supercritical extraction being more efficient. Regardless of the method of isolation the main component of the oil is anethole (80–90%), with minor components including 4-anisaldehyde, estragole and pseudoisoeugenyl-2-methylbutyrates amongst others. (Alternately found by Orav et al. 2008 to be 2-6% extracted oil by weight of raw seed material, 74-94% being "trans"-anethole and the remaining fraction estragole (methylchavicol), anisaldehyde and γ-himachalene.) Anethole is responsible for anise's characteristic odor and flavor.


title: Anise

text: Builders of steam locomotives in Britain incorporated capsules of aniseed oil into white metal plain bearings so the distinctive smell would give warning in case of overheating. Anise can be made into a liquid scent and is used for both drag hunting and fishing. It is put on fishing lures to attract fish.


title: Anise

text: Anise is the main ingredient used by Bilbo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" (1935) for his seed cakes served before the dwarves and Gandalf in the beginning of the novel's main story in his household from the Shire.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas) is an extra-canonical sayings gospel. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture. Scholars have proposed dates of composition as early as 60 AD and as late as 250 AD. Since its discovery, many scholars have seen it as evidence in support of the existence of a "Q source" which might have been very similar in its form as a collection of sayings of Jesus without any accounts of his deeds or his life and death, referred to as a sayings gospel.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Coptic language text, the second of seven contained in what modern-day scholars have designated as Nag Hammadi Codex II, is composed of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Almost two-thirds of these sayings resemble those found in the canonical gospels and its "editio princeps" counts more than 80% of parallels, while it is speculated that the other sayings were added from Gnostic tradition. Its place of origin may have been Syria, where Thomasine traditions were strong. Other scholars have suggested an Alexandrian origin.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The introduction states: "These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Didymus (Koine Greek) and Thomas (Aramaic) both mean "twin". Modern scholars do not consider the Apostle Thomas the author of this document and the author remains unknown.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Because of its discovery with the Nag Hammadi library, and the cryptic emphasis on "gnosis" in some of the sayings, it was widely thought that the document originated within a school of early Christians, proto-Gnostics. However, critics have questioned whether the description of Thomas as an entirely gnostic gospel is based solely upon the fact that it was found along with gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Gospel of Thomas is very different in tone and structure from other New Testament apocrypha and the four canonical Gospels. Unlike the canonical Gospels, it is not a narrative account of the life of Jesus; instead, it consists of "logia" (sayings) attributed to Jesus, sometimes stand-alone, sometimes embedded in short dialogues or parables; 13 of its 16 parables are also found in the Synoptic Gospels. The text contains a possible allusion to the death of Jesus in logion 65 (Parable of the Wicked Tenants, paralleled in the Synoptic Gospels), but does not mention his crucifixion, his resurrection, or the final judgement; nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Origen condemned a book called "Gospel of Thomas" as heretical; however, it is not clear that it is the same gospel of Thomas, as he possibly meant the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The manuscript of the Coptic text (CG II), found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, is dated at around 340 AD. It was first published in a photographic edition in 1956. This was followed three years later (1959) by the first English-language translation, with Coptic transcription. In 1977, James M. Robinson edited the first complete collection of English translations of the Nag Hammadi texts. The Gospel of Thomas has been translated and annotated worldwide in many languages.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The original Coptic manuscript is now the property of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt, Department of Manuscripts.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: After the Coptic version of the complete text was discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, scholars soon realized that three different Greek text fragments previously found at Oxyrhynchus (the Oxyrhynchus Papyri), also in Egypt, were part of the Gospel of Thomas. These three papyrus fragments of Thomas date to between 130 and 250 AD.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Prior to the Nag Hammadi library discovery, the sayings of Jesus found in Oxyrhynchus were known simply as Logia Iesu. The corresponding Uncial script Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, found in Oxyrhynchus are:


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The wording of the Coptic sometimes differs markedly from the earlier Greek Oxyrhynchus texts, the extreme case being that the last portion of logion 30 in the Greek is found at the end of logion 77 in the Coptic. This fact, along with the quite different wording Hippolytus uses when apparently quoting it (see below), suggests that the Gospel of Thomas "may have circulated in more than one form and passed through several stages of redaction."


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Although it is generally thought that the Gospel of Thomas was first composed in Greek, there is evidence that the Coptic Nag Hammadi text is a translation from Syriac (see Syriac origin).


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The earliest surviving written references to the "Gospel of Thomas" are found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome ("c." 222–235) and Origen of Alexandria ("c." 233). Hippolytus wrote in his "Refutation of All Heresies" 5.7.20:


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: This appears to be a reference to saying 4 of Thomas, although the wording differs significantly. As translated by Thomas O. Lambdin, saying 4 reads: "Jesus said, 'the man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same". In this context, the preceding reference to the "sought-after reign of the heavens within a person" appears to be a reference to sayings 2 and 3. Hippolytus also appears to quote saying 11 in "Refutation" 5.8.32, but without attribution.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Origen listed the "Gospel according to Thomas" as being among the heterodox apocryphal gospels known to him ("Hom. in Luc." 1).


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: In the 4th and 5th centuries, various Church Fathers wrote that the Gospel of Thomas was highly valued by Mani. In the 4th century, Cyril of Jerusalem mentioned a "Gospel of Thomas" twice in his "Catechesis": "The Manichaeans also wrote a Gospel according to Thomas, which being tinctured with the fragrance of the evangelic title corrupts the souls of the simple sort." and "Let none read the Gospel according to Thomas: for it is the work not of one of the twelve Apostles, but of one of the three wicked disciples of Manes." The 5th-century "Decretum Gelasianum" includes "A Gospel attributed to Thomas which the Manichaean use" in its list of heretical books.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Valantasis and other scholars argue that it is difficult to date Thomas because, as a collection of "logia" without a narrative framework, individual sayings could have been added to it gradually over time. Valantasis dates Thomas to 100 – 110 AD, with some of the material certainly coming from the first stratum which is dated to 30 – 60 AD. J. R. Porter dates the Gospel of Thomas to 250 AD.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Scholars generally fall into one of two main camps: an "early camp" favoring a date for the core "before the end of the first century," prior to or approximately contemporary with the composition of the canonical gospels; and a more common "late camp" favoring a date in the 2nd century, after composition of the canonical gospels.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Theissen and Merz argue the genre of a collection of sayings was one of the earliest forms in which material about Jesus was handed down. They assert that other collections of sayings, such as the Q source and the collection underlying Mark 4, were absorbed into larger narratives and no longer survive as independent documents, and that no later collections in this form survive. Marvin Meyer also asserted that the genre of a "sayings collection" is indicative of the 1st century, and that in particular the "use of parables without allegorical amplification" seems to antedate the canonical gospels.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Stevan L. Davies argues that the apparent independence of the ordering of sayings in Thomas from that of their parallels in the synoptics shows that Thomas was not evidently reliant upon the canonical gospels and probably predated them. Several authors argue that when the logia in Thomas do have parallels in the synoptics, the version in Thomas often seems closer to the source. Theissen and Merz give sayings 31 and 65 as examples of this. Koester agrees, citing especially the parables contained in sayings 8, 9, 57, 63, 64 and 65. In the few instances where the version in Thomas seems to be dependent on the Synoptics, Koester suggests, this may be due to the influence of the person who translated the text from Greek into Coptic.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Koester also argues that the absence of narrative materials, such as those found in the canonical gospels, in Thomas makes it unlikely that the gospel is "an eclectic excerpt from the gospels of the New Testament". He also cites the absence of the eschatological sayings considered characteristic of Q source to show the independence of Thomas from that source.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Another argument for an early date is what some scholars have suggested is an interplay between the Gospel of John and the "logia" of Thomas. Parallels between the two have been taken to suggest that Thomas' "logia" preceded John's work, and that the latter was making a point-by-point riposte to Thomas, either in real or mock conflict. This seeming dialectic has been pointed out by several New Testament scholars, notably Gregory J. Riley, April DeConick, and Elaine Pagels. Though differing in approach, they argue that several verses in the Gospel of John are best understood as responses to a Thomasine community and its beliefs. Pagels, for example, says that the Gospel of John states that Jesus contains the divine light, while several of Thomas' sayings refer to the light born 'within'.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Gospel of John is the only canonical one that gives Thomas the Apostle a dramatic role and spoken part, and Thomas is the only character therein described as being "apistos" (unbelieving), despite the failings of virtually all the Johannine characters to live up to the author's standards of belief. With respect to the famous story of "Doubting Thomas", it is suggested that John may have been denigrating or ridiculing a rival school of thought. In another apparent contrast, John's text matter-of-factly presents a bodily resurrection as if this is a "sine qua non" of the faith; in contrast, Thomas' insights about the spirit-and-body are more nuanced. For Thomas, resurrection seems more a cognitive event of spiritual attainment, one even involving a certain discipline or asceticism. Again, an apparently denigrating portrayal in the "Doubting Thomas" story may either be taken literally, or as a kind of mock "comeback" to Thomas' logia: not as an outright censuring of Thomas, but an improving gloss. After all, Thomas' thoughts about the spirit and body are really not so different from those which John has presented elsewhere. John portrays Thomas as physically touching the risen Jesus, inserting fingers and hands into his body, and ending with a shout. Pagels interprets this as signifying one-upmanship by John, who is forcing Thomas to acknowledge Jesus' bodily nature. She writes that "...he shows Thomas giving up his search for experiential truth – his 'unbelief' – to confess what John sees as the truth...". The point of these examples, as used by Riley and Pagels, is to support the argument that the text of Thomas must have existed and have gained a following at the time of the writing of the Gospel of John, and that the importance of the Thomasine logia was great enough that John felt the necessity of weaving them into his own narrative.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: As this scholarly debate continued, theologian Christopher W. Skinner disagreed with Riley, DeConick, and Pagels over any possible John–Thomas interplay, and concluded that in the book of John, Thomas the disciple "is merely one stitch in a wider literary pattern where uncomprehending characters serve as foils for Jesus's words and deeds."


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Albert Hogeterp argues that the Gospel's saying 12, which attributes leadership of the community to James the Just rather than to Peter, agrees with the description of the early Jerusalem church by Paul in Galatians and may reflect a tradition predating AD 70. Meyer also lists "uncertainty about James the righteous, the brother of Jesus" as characteristic of a 1st-century origin.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: In later traditions (most notably in the Acts of Thomas, Book of Thomas the Contender, etc.), Thomas is regarded as the twin brother of Jesus. Nonetheless, this gospel holds some sentences (log. 55, 99, and 101), that are in opposition with the familial group of Jesus, which involves difficulties when it tries to identify him with James, brother of Jesus, quoted by Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews. Moreover, there are some sayings, (principally log. 6, 14, 104) and Oxyrhinchus papyri 654 (log. 6) in which the Gospel is shown in opposition to Jewish traditions, especially in respect to circumcision and dietary practices (log. 55), key issues in the early Jewish-Christian community led by James (Acts 15: 1–35, Gal. 2:1–10).


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: In saying 13, Peter and Matthew are depicted as unable to understand the true significance or identity of Jesus. Patterson argues that this can be interpreted as a criticism against the school of Christianity associated with the Gospel of Matthew, and that "[t]his sort of rivalry seems more at home in the first century than later", when all the apostles had become revered figures.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: According to Meyer, Thomas's saying 17: "I shall give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard and no hand has touched, and what has not come into the human heart", is strikingly similar to what Paul wrote in (which was itself an allusion to ).


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The late camp dates "Thomas" some time after 100 AD, generally in the early second century. They generally believe that although the text was composed around the mid-second century, it contains earlier sayings such as those originally found in the New Testament gospels of which "Thomas" was in some sense dependent in addition to inauthentic and possibly authentic independent sayings not found in any other extant text. J. R. Porter dates Thomas much later, to the mid-third century.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Several scholars have argued that the sayings in "Thomas" reflect conflations and harmonisations dependent on the canonical gospels. For example, saying 10 and 16 appear to contain a redacted harmonisation of , and . In this case it has been suggested that the dependence is best explained by the author of "Thomas" making use of an earlier harmonised oral tradition based on Matthew and Luke. Biblical scholar Craig A. Evans also subscribes to this view and notes that "Over half of the New Testament writings are quoted, paralleled, or alluded to in Thomas... I'm not aware of a Christian writing prior to AD 150 that references this much of the New Testament."


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Another argument made for the late dating of Thomas is based upon the fact that Saying 5 in the original Greek (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654) seems to follow the vocabulary used in the Gospel according to Luke (), and not the vocabulary used in the Gospel according to Mark (). According to this argument – which presupposes firstly the rectitude of the two-source hypothesis (widely held among current New Testament scholars), in which the author of Luke is seen as having used the pre-existing gospel according to Mark plus a lost Q source to compose his gospel – if the author of Thomas did, as Saying 5 suggests – refer to a pre-existing Gospel according to Luke, rather than Mark's vocabulary, then the Gospel of Thomas must have been composed after both Mark and Luke, the latter of which is dated to between 60 and 90 AD.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Another saying that employs similar vocabulary to that used in Luke rather than Mark is Saying 31 in the original Greek (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1), where Luke 4:24's term "dektos" (acceptable) is employed rather than 's "atimos" (without honor). The word "dektos" (in all its cases and genders) is clearly typical of Luke, since it is only employed by him in the canonical gospels ; ; ). Thus, the argument runs, the Greek Thomas has clearly been at least influenced by Luke's characteristic vocabulary.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: J. R. Porter states that, because around half of the sayings in Thomas have parallels in the synoptic gospels, it is "possible that the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas were selected directly from the canonical gospels and were either reproduced more or less exactly or amended to fit the author's distinctive theological outlook." According to John P. Meier, scholars predominantly conclude that Thomas depends on or harmonizes the Synoptics.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Several scholars argue that Thomas is dependent on Syriac writings, including unique versions of the canonical gospels. They contend that many sayings of the Gospel of Thomas are more similar to Syriac translations of the canonical gospels than their record in the original Greek. Craig A. Evans states that saying 54 in "Thomas", which speaks of the poor and the kingdom of heaven, is more similar to the Syriac version of Matthew 5:3 than the Greek version of that passage or the parallel in Luke 6:20.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Klyne Snodgrass notes that saying 65–66 of "Thomas" containing the Parable of the Wicked Tenants appears to be dependent on the early harmonisation of Mark and Luke found in the old Syriac gospels. He concludes that, ""Thomas", rather than representing the earliest form, has been shaped by this harmonizing tendency in Syria. If the "Gospel of Thomas" were the earliest, we would have to imagine that each of the evangelists or the traditions behind them expanded the parable in different directions and then that in the process of transmission the text was trimmed back to the form it has in the Syriac Gospels. It is much more likely that Thomas, which has a Syrian provenance, is dependent on the tradition of the canonical Gospels that has been abbreviated and harmonized by oral transmission."


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Nicholas Perrin argues that "Thomas" is dependent on the "Diatessaron", which was composed shortly after 172 by Tatian in Syria. Perrin explains the order of the sayings by attempting to demonstrate that almost all adjacent sayings are connected by Syriac catchwords, whereas in Coptic or Greek, catchwords have been found for only less than half of the pairs of adjacent sayings. Peter J. Williams analyzed Perrin's alleged Syriac catchwords and found them implausible. Robert F. Shedinger wrote that since Perrin attempts to reconstruct an Old Syriac version of Thomas without first establishing Thomas' reliance on the "Diatessaron", Perrin's logic seems circular.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Bart D. Ehrman argues that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, and that his apocalyptic beliefs are recorded in the earliest Christian documents: Mark and the authentic Pauline epistles. The earliest Christians believed Jesus would soon return, and their beliefs are echoed in the earliest Christian writings. The Gospel of Thomas proclaims that the Kingdom of God is already present for those who understand the secret message of Jesus (Saying 113), and lacks apocalyptic themes. Because of this, Ehrman argues, the Gospel of Thomas was probably composed by a Gnostic some time in the early 2nd century. Ehrman also argued against the authenticity of the sayings the Gospel of Thomas attributes to Jesus.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Elaine Pagels points out the Gospel of Thomas promulgates the Kingdom of God not as a final destination but a state of self-discovery. Additionally, the Gospel of Thomas conveys that Jesus ridiculed those who thought of the Kingdom of God in literal terms, as if it were a specific place. Pagels goes on to argue that, through Saying 22, readers are to believe the "Kingdom" symbolizes a state of transformed consciousness.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: John P. Meier has repeatedly argued against the historicity of the Gospel of Thomas, stating that it cannot be a reliable source for the quest of the historical Jesus and also considers it a Gnostic text. He has also argued against the authenticity of the parables found exclusively in the Gospel of Thomas. Bentley Layton included the Gospel of Thomas into his list of Gnostic scriptures.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Craig A. Evans has argued that the Gospel of Thomas represents the theological motives of 2nd century Egyptian Christianity and is dependent on the Synoptic Gospels and the Diatesseron.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: N.T. Wright, Anglican bishop and professor of New Testament history, also sees the dating of Thomas in the 2nd or 3rd century. Wright's reasoning for this dating is that the "narrative framework" of 1st-century Judaism and the New Testament is radically different from the worldview expressed in the sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas makes an anachronistic mistake by turning Jesus the Jewish prophet into a Hellenistic/Cynic philosopher. Wright concludes his section on the Gospel of Thomas in his book "The New Testament and the People of God" in this way:


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Although arguments about some potential New Testament books, such as the "Shepherd of Hermas" and Book of Revelation, continued well into the 4th century, four canonical gospels, attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were accepted among proto-orthodox Christians at least as early as the mid-2nd century. Tatian's widely used "Diatessaron", compiled between 160 and 175 AD, utilized the four gospels without any consideration of others. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote in the late 2nd century that: "since there are four-quarters of the earth ... it is fitting that the church should have four pillars ... the four Gospels." and then shortly thereafter made the first known quotation from a fourth gospel – the now-canonical version of the Gospel of John. The late 2nd-century Muratorian fragment also recognizes only the three synoptic gospels and John.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The question also arises as to various sects' usage of other works attributed to Thomas and their relation to this work.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Book of Thomas the Contender, also from Nag Hammadi, is foremost among these, but the extensive Acts of Thomas provides the mythological connections. The short and comparatively straightforward Apocalypse of Thomas has no immediate connection with the synoptic gospels, while the canonical Jude – if the name can be taken to refer to Judas Thomas Didymus – certainly attests to early intra-Christian conflict.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, shorn of its mythological connections, is difficult to connect specifically to the Gospel of Thomas, but the Acts of Thomas contains the Hymn of the Pearl whose content is reflected in the Psalms of Thomas found in Manichaean literature. These psalms, which otherwise reveal Mandaean connections, also contain material overlapping the Gospel of Thomas.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Considered by some as one of the earliest accounts of the teachings of Jesus, the "Gospel of Thomas" is regarded by some scholars as one of the most important texts in understanding early Christianity outside the New Testament. In terms of faith, however, no major Christian group accepts this gospel as canonical or authoritative. It is an important work for scholars working on the Q document, which itself is thought to be a collection of sayings or teachings upon which the gospels of Matthew and Luke are partly based. Although no copy of Q has ever been discovered, the fact that Thomas is similarly a 'sayings' Gospel is viewed by some scholars as an indication that the early Christians did write collections of the sayings of Jesus, bolstering the Q hypothesis.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Modern scholars do not consider Thomas the Apostle the author of this document and the author remains unknown. J. Menard produced a summary of the academic consensus in the mid-1970s which stated that the gospel was probably a very late text written by a Gnostic author, thus having very little relevance to the study of the early development of Christianity. Scholarly views of Gnosticism and the Gospel of Thomas have since become more nuanced and diverse. Paterson Brown, for example, has argued forcefully that the three Coptic Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Truth are demonstrably not Gnostic writings, since all three explicitly affirm the basic reality and sanctity of incarnate life, which Gnosticism by definition considers illusory and evil.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: In the 4th century Cyril of Jerusalem considered the author a disciple of Mani who was also called Thomas. Cyril stated:


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Many scholars consider the "Gospel of Thomas" to be a gnostic text, since it was found in a library among others, it contains Gnostic themes, and perhaps presupposes a Gnostic worldview. Others reject this interpretation, because "Thomas" lacks the full-blown mythology of Gnosticism as described by Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 185), and because Gnostics frequently appropriated and used a large "range of scripture from Genesis to the Psalms to Homer, from the Synoptics to John to the letters of Paul." The mysticism of the "Gospel of Thomas" also lacks many themes found in second century Gnosticism. According to David W. Kim, the association of the Thomasines and Gnosticism is anachronistic and the book seems to predate the Gnostic movements.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: Some modern scholars (most notably those belonging to the Jesus Seminar) believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written independently of the canonical gospels, and therefore is a useful guide to historical Jesus research. Scholars may utilize one of several critical tools in biblical scholarship, the criterion of multiple attestation, to help build cases for historical reliability of the sayings of Jesus. By finding those sayings in the "Gospel of Thomas" that overlap with the Gospel of the Hebrews, Q, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Paul, scholars feel such sayings represent "multiple attestations" and therefore are more likely to come from a historical Jesus than sayings that are only singly attested.


title: Gospel of Thomas

text: The material in the comparison chart is from "Gospel Parallels" by B. H. Throckmorton, "The Five Gospels" by R. W. Funk, "The Gospel According to the Hebrews" by E. B. Nicholson and "The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition" by J. R. Edwards.


title: Think tank

text: A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government or are associated with particular political parties, businesses or the military. Think-tank funding often includes a combination of donations from very wealthy people and those not so wealthy, with many also accepting government grants.


title: Think tank

text: Think tanks publish articles and studies, and even draft legislation on particular matters of policy or society. This information is then used by governments, businesses, media organizations, social movements or other interest groups. Think tanks range from those associated with highly academic or scholarly activities to those that are overtly ideological and pushing for particular policies, with a wide range among them in terms of the quality of their research. Later generations of think tanks have tended to be more ideologically oriented. Modern think tanks began as a phenomenon in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with most of the rest being established in other English-speaking countries. Prior to 1945, they tended to focus on the economic issues associated with industrialization and urbanization. During the Cold War, many more American and other Western think tanks were established, which often guided government Cold War policy. Since 1991, more think tanks have been established in non-Western parts of the world. More than half of all think tanks that exist today were established after 1980.


title: Think tank

text: This article lists global policy institutes according to continental categories and then sub-categories by country within those areas. These listings are not comprehensive; there are at least 11,175 think tanks around the world.


title: Think tank

text: According to historian Jacob Soll, while the term "think tank" is modern, its concept "can be traced to the humanist academies and scholarly networks of the 16th and 17th centuries." Soll writes that "in Europe, the origins of think tanks go back to the 800s when emperors and kings began arguing with the Catholic Church about taxes. A tradition of hiring teams of independent lawyers to advise monarchs about their financial and political prerogatives against the church spans from Charlemagne all the way to the 17th century, when the kings of France were still arguing about whether they had the right to appoint bishops and receive a cut of their income." Soll cites as an early example the , created in Paris around 1620 by the brothers Pierre and and also known after 1635 as the . The Club de l'Entresol, active in Paris between 1723 and 1731, was another prominent example of an early independent think tank focusing on public policy and current affairs, especially economics and foreign affairs.


title: Think tank

text: Several major current think tanks were founded in the 19th century. The Royal United Services Institute was founded in 1831 in London, and the Fabian Society in 1884. The oldest American think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1910 by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie charged trustees to use the fund to "hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization." The Brookings Institution was founded shortly thereafter in 1916 by Robert S. Brookings and was conceived as a bipartisan "research center modeled on academic institutions and focused on addressing the questions of the federal government."


title: Think tank

text: After 1945, the number of policy institutes increased, with many small new ones forming to express various issues and policy agendas. Until the 1940s, most think tanks were known only by the name of the institution. During the Second World War, think tanks were often referred to as "brain boxes".


title: Think tank

text: Before the 1950s, the phrase "think tank" did not refer to organizations. From its first appearances in the 1890s up to the 1950s, the phrase was most commonly used in American English to colloquially and pejoratively refer to the human brain itself when commenting on an individual's failings (in the sense that something was wrong with that person's "think tank"). Around 1958, the first organization to be regularly described in published writings as "the Think Tank" (note the capitalization and the use of the definite article) was the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. However, the Center does not count itself as and is not perceived to be a think tank in the contemporary sense. During the 1960s, the phrase "think tank" was attached more broadly to meetings of experts, electronic computers, and independent military planning organizations. The prototype and most prominent example of the third category was the RAND Corporation, which was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of Douglas Aircraft and became an independent corporation in 1948. In the 1970s, the phrase became more specifically defined in terms of RAND and its ilk. During the 1980s and 1990s, the phrase evolved again to arrive at its broader contemporary meaning of an independent public policy research institute.


title: Think tank

text: For most of the 20th century, such institutes were found primarily in the United States, along with much smaller numbers in Canada, the UK, and Western Europe. Although think tanks had also existed in Japan for some time, they generally lacked independence, having close associations with government ministries or corporations. There has been a veritable proliferation of "think tanks" around the world that began during the 1980s as a result of globalization, the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of transnational problems. Two-thirds of all the think tanks that exist today were established after 1970 and more than half were established since 1980.


title: Think tank

text: The effect of globalisation on the proliferation of think tanks is most evident in regions such as Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, where there was a concerted effort by other countries to assist in the creation of independent public policy research organizations. A survey performed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program underscores the significance of this effort and documents the fact that most of the think tanks in these regions have been established since 1992. , there were more than 4,500 of these institutions worldwide. Many of the more established think tanks, having been created during the Cold War, are focused on international affairs, security studies, and foreign policy.


title: Think tank

text: Think tanks vary by ideological perspectives, sources of funding, topical emphasis and prospective consumers. Funding may also represent who or what the institution wants to influence; in the United States, for example, "Some donors want to influence votes in Congress or shape public opinion, others want to position themselves or the experts they fund for future government jobs, while others want to push specific areas of research or education."


title: Think tank

text: A new trend, resulting from globalization, is collaboration between policy institutes in different countries. For instance, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace operates offices in Washington, D.C., Beijing, Beirut, Brussels and Moscow.


title: Think tank

text: The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania, led by James McGann, annually rates policy institutes worldwide in a number of categories and presents its findings in the Global Go-To Think Tanks rating index. However, this method of the study and assessment of policy institutes has been criticized by researchers such as Enrique Mendizabal and Goran Buldioski, Director of the Think Tank Fund, assisted by the Open Society Institute.


title: Think tank

text: In some cases, corporate interests, military interests and political groups have found it useful to create policy institutes, advocacy organizations, and think tanks. For example, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was formed in the mid-1990s to dispute research finding an association between second-hand smoke and cancer. Military contractors may spend a portion of their tender on funding pro-war think tanks. According to an internal memorandum from Philip Morris Companies referring to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "The credibility of the EPA is defeatable, but not on the basis of ETS <nowiki>[</nowiki>environmental tobacco smoke<nowiki>]</nowiki> alone... It must be part of a larger mosaic that concentrates all the EPA's enemies against it at one time."


title: Think tank

text: According to the progressive media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, both left-wing and right-wing policy institutes are often quoted and rarely identified as such. The result is that think tank "experts" are sometimes depicted as neutral sources without any ideological predispositions when, in fact, they represent a particular perspective. In the United States, think tank publications on education are subjected to expert review by the National Education Policy Center's "Think Twice" think tank review project.


title: Think tank

text: A 2014 "New York Times" report asserted that foreign governments buy influence at many United States think tanks. According to the article: "More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors' priorities."


title: Think tank

text: Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, set up various state-supported think tanks in the 1960s. By the 1990s, a variety of policy research centers sprang up in Africa set up by academics who sought to influence public policy in Ghana.


title: Think tank

text: One such think tank was The Institute of Economic Affairs, Ghana, which was founded in 1989 when the country was ruled by the Provisional National Defence Council. The IEA undertakes and publishes research on a range of economic and governance issues confronting Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa. It has also been involved in bringing political parties together to engage in dialogue. In particular it has organised Presidential debates every election year since the Ghanaian presidential election, 1996.


title: Think tank

text: Afghanistan has a number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations.


title: Think tank

text: Bangladesh has a number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations.


title: Think tank

text: In the People's Republic of China a number of think tanks are sponsored by governmental agencies such as Development Research Center of the State Council, but still retain sufficient non-official status to be able to propose and debate ideas more freely. In January 2012, the first non-official think tank in China, South Non-Governmental Think-Tank, was established in the Guangdong province. In 2009 the China Center for International Economic Exchanges was founded.


title: Think tank

text: In Hong Kong, early think tanks established in the late 1980s and early 1990s focused on political development, including the first direct Legislative Council members election in 1991 and the political framework of "One Country, Two Systems", manifested in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. After the transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997, more think tanks were established by various groups of intellectuals and professionals. They have various missions and objectives including promoting civic education; undertaking research on economic, social and political policies; and promoting "public understanding of and participation in the political, economic, and social development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region".


title: Think tank

text: India has the world's second-largest number of think tanks. Most are based in New Delhi, and a few are government-sponsored. There are few think tanks that promote environmentally responsible and climate resilient ideas like Centre for Science and Environment, Centre for Policy Research and World Resources Institute. There are other prominent think tanks like Observer Research Foundation, Tillotoma Foundation and Centre for Civil Society.


title: Think tank

text: In Mumbai, Strategic Foresight Group is a global think tank that works on issues such as Water Diplomacy, Peace and Conflict and Foresight (futures studies). Think tanks with a development focus include those like the National Centre for Cold-chain Development ('NCCD'), which serve to bring an inclusive policy change by supporting the Planning Commission and related government bodies with industry-specific inputs – in this case, set up at the behest of the government to direct cold chain development. Some think tanks have a fixed set of focus areas and they work towards finding out policy solutions to social problems in the respective areas.


title: Think tank

text: Initiatives such as National e-Governance Plan (to automate administrative processes) and National Knowledge Network (NKN) (for data and resource sharing amongst education and research institutions), if implemented properly, should help improve the quality of work done by think tanks.


title: Think tank

text: Think tanks in India are growing across the length and breadth of the country as they are no longer limited to metro cities. Think tanks for the young, like RisingIndia ThinkTank, have emerged from one of the smallest city in Rajasthan state of India.


title: Think tank

text: Over 50 think tanks have emerged in Iraq, particularly in the Kurdistan Region. Iraq's leading think tank is the Middle East Research Institute (MERI), based in Erbil. MERI is an independent non-governmental policy research organization, established in 2014 and publishes in English, Kurdish, and Arabic. It was listed in the global ranking by the United States's Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania as 46th in the Middle East.


title: Think tank

text: Japan has over 100 think tanks, most of which cover not only policy research but also economy, technology and so on. Some are government related, but most of the think tanks are sponsored by the private sector.


title: Think tank

text: Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP) at the Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan was created in 2003. IWEP activities aimed at research problems of the world economy, international relations, geopolitics, security, integration and Eurasia, as well as the study of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and its contribution to the establishment and strengthening of Kazakhstan as an independent state, the development of international cooperation and the promotion of peace and stability.


title: Think tank

text: The Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the RK (KazISS) was established by the Decree of the President of RK on 16 June 1993. Since its foundation the main mission of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as a national think tank, is to maintain analytical and research support for the President of Kazakhstan.


title: Think tank

text: Most Malaysian think tanks are related either to the government or a political party. Historically they focused on defense, politics and policy. However, in recent years, think tanks that focus on international trade, economics, and social sciences have also been founded.


title: Think tank

text: Pakistan's think tanks mainly revolve around social policy, internal politics, foreign security issues, and regional geo-politics. Most of these are centered on the capital, Islamabad. One such think tank is the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), which focuses on policy advocacy and research particularly in the area of environment and social development.


title: Think tank

text: Another policy research institute based in Islamabad is the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) which works in the fields of education, health, disaster risk reduction, governance, conflict and stabilization. Since 2007 - 2008, I-SAPS has been analyzing public expenditure of federal and provincial governments.


title: Think tank

text: Think tanks in the Philippines could be generally categorized in terms of their linkages with the national government. Several were set up by the Philippine government for the specific purpose of providing research input into the policy-making process.


title: Think tank

text: Sri Lanka has a number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental and corporate organizations.


title: Think tank

text: There are several think tanks in Singapore that advise the government on various policies and as well as private ones for corporations within the region. Many of them are hosted within the local public educational institutions.


title: Think tank

text: Among them are the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.


title: Think tank

text: In 2017 Taiwan had 58 think tanks. As in most countries there is a mix of government- and privately-funded think tanks.


title: Think tank

text: The UAE has been a center for political oriented think tanks which concentrate on both regional and global policy. Notable think tank have emerged in the global debate on terrorism, education & economical policies in the MENA region. Think tanks include:


title: Think tank

text: Key projects: Preparation of the National human development report for Uzbekistan, Sociological "portrait" of the Uzbek businessman, Preparation of an analytical report on export procedures optimization in Uzbekistan,


title: Think tank

text: Most Australian think tanks are based at universities – for example, the Melbourne Institute – or are government-funded – for example, the Productivity Commission or the CSIRO.


title: Think tank

text: Private sources fund about 20 to 30 "independent" Australian think tanks. The best-known of these think tanks play a much more limited role in Australian public and business policy-making than do their equivalents in the United States. However, in the past decade the number of think tanks has increased substantially. Prominent Australian conservative think tanks include the Centre for Independent Studies, the Sydney Institute and the Institute of Public Affairs. Prominent leftist Australian think tanks include the McKell Institute, Per Capita, the Australia Institute, the Lowy Institute and the Centre for Policy Development. In recent years regionally-based independent and non-partisan think tanks have emerged.


title: Think tank

text: Some think tanks, such as the Illawarra's i-eat-drink-think, engage in discussion, research and advocacy within a broader civics framework. Commercial think tanks like the Gartner Group, Access Economics, the Helmsman Institute, and others provide additional insight which complements not-for-profit organisations such as CEDA, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors to provide more targeted policy in defence, program governance, corporate governance and similar.


title: Think tank

text: Brussels hosts most of the European Institutions, hence a large number of international think tanks are based there. Notable think tanks are Bruegel, the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Centre for the New Europe (CNE), the European Centre of International Political Economy (ECIPE), the European Policy Centre (EPC), the Friends of Europe, the Global Governance Institute (GGI), Liberales, and Sport and Citizenship, among others.


title: Think tank

text: Bulgaria has a number of think tanks providing expertise and shaping policies, including Institute of Modern Politics.


title: Think tank

text: Finland has several small think tanks that provide expertise in very specific fields. Notable think tanks include:


title: Think tank

text: In addition to specific independent think tanks, the largest political parties have their own think tank organizations. This is mainly due to support granted by state for such activity. The corporate world has focused their efforts to central representative organization Confederation of Finnish Industries, which acts as think tank in addition to negotiating salaries with workers unions. Furthermore, there is the Finnish Business and Policy Forum ("Elinkeinoelämän valtuuskunta", EVA). Agricultural and regional interests, associated with The Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners ("Maa- ja metsätaloustuottajain Keskusliitto", MTK) and the Centre Party, are researched by Pellervo Economic Research ("Pellervon taloustutkimus", PTT). The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions ("Suomen Ammattiliittojen Keskusjärjestö", SAK) and the Social Democratic Party are associated with the Labour Institute for Economic Research ("Palkansaajien tutkimuslaitos", PT). The Finns Party established its own think tank, "Suomen Perusta", in 2012. Each of these organizations often release forecasts concerning the national economy.


title: Think tank

text: The French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) was founded in 1979 and is the third oldest think tank of western Europe, after Chatham House (UK, 1920) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sweden, 1960). The primary goals of IFRI are to develop applied research in the field of public policy related to international issues, and foster interactive and constructive dialogue between researchers, professionals, and opinion leaders. France also hosts the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), a Paris-based agency of the European Union and think tank researching security issues of relevance for the EU. There are also a number of pro-business think tanks, notably the Paris-based Fondation Concorde. The foundation focuses on increasing the competitiveness of French SME's and aims to revive entrepreneurship in France.


title: Think tank

text: On the left, the main think tanks in France are the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, which is organizationally linked to the French Socialist Party, and Terra Nova. Terra Nova is an independent left-leaning think tank, although it is nevertheless considered to be close to the Socialists. It works on producing reports and analyses of current public policy issues from a progressive point of view, and contributing to the intellectual renewal of social democracy.


title: Think tank

text: The only French Think Tank mentioned in the "think tanks to watch" list of the 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report is a French think tank created by Gaspard Koenig in 2013, independent from all political parties, which aims at promoting freedoms in France, in terms of fundamental rights, economics and societal issues. GenerationLibre is described as being able to connect to the right on pro business freedom and regulations issues but also to the left on issues such as basic income, gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana.


title: Think tank

text: In Germany all of the major parties are loosely associated with research foundations that play some role in shaping policy, but generally from the more disinterested role of providing research to support policymakers than explicitly proposing policy. These include the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Christian Democratic Union-aligned), the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Social Democratic Party-aligned), the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (Christian Social Union-aligned), the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (aligned with the Greens), Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Free Democratic Party-aligned) and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (aligned with Die Linke).


title: Think tank

text: The German Institute for International and Security Affairs is a foreign policy think tank. Atlantic Community is an independent, non-partisan and non-profit organization set up as a joint project of Atlantische Initiative e.V. and Atlantic Initiative United States. The Institute for Media and Communication Policy deals with media-related issues. Transparency International is a think tank on the role of corporate and political corruption in international development.


title: Think tank

text: While think tanks are not widespread in Latvia, as opposed to single-issue advocacy organizations, there are several noticeable institutions in the Latvian think tank landscape:


title: Think tank

text: Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis (VIPA) is an independent non-governmental, non-profit, non-partisan policy think tank in Lithuania whose mission is to stand for the principles of open society, liberal democracy, rule of law and human rights. VIPA acts via advocacy for strong and safe European Union, analyzing and advocating for anti-authoritarian, transparent, and open governance ideas in Central and Eastern Europe, is an opinion leader offering an alternative opinion to the public versus populism, radicalism, and authoritarian trends, reinforcing active citizens' participation in decision making, analyzing fake news, disinformation, and offering media literacy initiatives, putting forward solutions to improve the accountability, transparency, and openness of Lithuania's public sector, building a network of open society values oriented experts, civil activists and NGO's.


title: Think tank

text: All major political parties in the Netherlands have state-sponsored research foundations that play a role in shaping policy. The Dutch government also has its own think tank: the Scientific Council for Government Policy. The Netherlands furthermore hosts the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, or Clingendael Institute, an independent think tank and diplomatic academy which studies various aspects of international relations.


title: Think tank

text: There is a large pool of think tanks in Poland on a wide variety of subjects. The oldest state-sponsored think tank is The Western Institute in Poznań (Polish: "Instytut Zachodni"). The second oldest is the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) established in 1947. Another notable state-sponsored think tank is the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), which specializes in the countries neighboring Poland and in the Baltic Sea region, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Among the private think tanks notable organizations include the Institute for Structural Research (IBS) on economic policy, The Casimir Pulaski Foundation on foreign policy, the Institute of Public Affairs (ISP) on social policy, and the Sobieski Institute.


title: Think tank

text: Founded in 1970, the SEDES is one of the oldest Portuguese civic associations and think tanks. Contraditório think tank was founded in 2008. Contraditório is a non-profit, independent and non-partisan think tank.


title: Think tank

text: The Foundation for the Advancement of Economics (FREN) was founded in 2005 by the Belgrade University's Faculty of Economics.


title: Think tank

text: The Elcano Royal Institute was created in 2001 following the example of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in the UK, although it is closely linked to (and receives funding from) the government in power.


title: Think tank

text: More independent but clearly to the left of the political spectrum are the Centro de Investigaciones de Relaciones Internacionales y Desarrollo (CIDOB) founded in 1973; and the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE) established in 1999 by Diego Hidalgo and main driving force behind projects such as the Club de Madrid, a group of democratic former heads of state and government, the Foreign Policy Spanish Edition and DARA.


title: Think tank

text: Former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar presides over the Fundación para el Analisis y los Estudios Sociales (FAES), a policy institute that is associated with the conservative Popular Party (PP). Also linked to the PP is the Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos (GEES), which is known for its defense- and security-related research and analysis. For its part, the Fundación Alternativas is independent but close to left-wing ideas. The Socialist Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) created Fundación Ideas in 2009 and dissolved it in January 2014. Also in 2009, the centrist Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD) created Fundación Progreso y Democracia (FPyD).


title: Think tank

text: In Britain, think tanks play a similar role to the United States, attempting to shape policy, and indeed there is some cooperation between British and American think tanks. For example, the London-based think tank Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations were both conceived at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and have remained sister organisations.


title: Think tank

text: The Bow Group, founded in 1951, is the oldest centre-right think tank and many of its members have gone on to serve as Members of Parliament or Members of the European Parliament. Past chairmen have included Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet Minister Geoffrey Howe, Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont and former British Telecom chairman Christopher Bland.


title: Think tank

text: Since 2000, a number of influential centre right think tanks have emerged including Policy Exchange, Centre for Social Justice and most recently Onward.


title: Think tank

text: The government closed the Noravank Foundation, a government-affiliated think tank, in 2018 after almost two decades of operation. However, other think tanks continue to operate, include the Caucasus Institute, the Caucasus Research Resource Center-Armenia (CRRC-Armenia) (which publishes the "Caucasus Barometer" annual public opinion survey of the South Caucasus, the "Enlight" Public Research Center, and the AMBERD research center at the Armenian State University of Economics.


title: Think tank

text: According to research done by the University of Pennsylvania, there are a total of 12 think tanks in Azerbaijan.


title: Think tank

text: The Center for Economic and Social Development, or CESD; in Azeri, Azerbaijan, İqtisadi və Sosial İnkişaf Mərkəzi (İSİM) is an Azeri think tank, non-profit organization, NGO based in Baku, Azerbaijan. The center was established in 2005. CESD focuses on policy advocacy and reform, and is involved with policy research and capacity building.


title: Think tank

text: The Economic Research Center (ERC) is a policy-research oriented non-profit think tank established in 1999 with a mission to facilitate sustainable economic development and good governance in the new public management system of Azerbaijan. It seeks to do this by building favorable interactions between the public, private and civil society and working with different networks both in local (EITI NGO Coalition, National Budget Group, Public Coalition Against Poverty, etc.) and international levels (PWYP, IBP, ENTO, ALDA, PASOS, WTO NGO Network etc.).


title: Think tank

text: The Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Azerbaijan is a governmental, non-profit think tank founded in 2007. It focusses on domestic and foreign policy.


title: Think tank

text: According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Russia has 112 think tanks, while Russian think tanks claimed four of the top ten spots in 2011's "Top Thirty Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe".


title: Think tank

text: Turkish think tanks are relatively new. There are at least 20 think tanks in the country, both independent and supported by government. Many of them are sister organizations of political parties, universities or companies some are independent and others are supported by government. Most Turkish think tanks provide research and ideas, yet they play less important roles in policy making than American think tanks. Turksam, Tasam and the "Journal of Turkish Weekly" are the leading information sources.


title: Think tank

text: The oldest and most influential think tank in Turkey is ESAM (The Center for Economic and Social Research; ) which was established in 1969 and has headquarters in Ankara. There are also branch offices of ESAM in Istanbul, Bursa, Konya and elsewhere. ESAM has strong international relationships, especially with Muslim countries and societies. Ideologically it performs policies, produces ideas and manages projects in parallel to Milli Görüş and also influences political parties and international strategies. The founder and leader of Milli Görüş, Necmettin Erbakan, was very concerned with the activities and brainstorming events of ESAM. In The Republic of Turkey, two presidents, four prime ministers, various ministers, many members of the parliament, and numerous mayors and bureaucrats have been members of ESAM. Currently the General Chairman of ESAM is Recai Kutan (former minister for two different ministries, former main opposition party leader, and founder and General Chairman of the Saadet Party).


title: Think tank

text: The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) is another leading think thank. Established in 1994, TESEV is an independent non-governmental think tank, analyzing social, political and economic policy issues facing Turkey. TESEV has raised issues about Islam and democracy, combating corruption, state reform, and transparency and accountability. TESEV serve as a bridge between academic research and policy-making. Its core program areas are democratization, good governance, and foreign policy.


title: Think tank

text: Other notable Turkish think tanks are the International Strategic Research Organisation (USAK), the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), and the Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BİLGESAM).


title: Think tank

text: Canada has many notable think tanks (listed in alphabetical order). Each has specific areas of interest with some overlaps.


title: Think tank

text: As the classification is most often used today, the oldest American think tank is the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910. The Institute for Government Research, which later merged with two organizations to form the Brookings Institution, was formed in 1916. Other early twentieth century organizations now classified as think tanks include the Hoover Institution (1919), The Twentieth Century Fund (1919, and now known as the Century Foundation), the National Bureau of Economic Research (1920), the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), and the Social Science Research Council (1923). The Great Depression and its aftermath spawned several economic policy organizations, such as the National Planning Association (1934), the Tax Foundation (1937), and the Committee for Economic Development (1943).


title: Think tank

text: In collaboration with the Douglas Aircraft Company, the Air Force set up the RAND Corporation in 1946 to develop weapons technology and strategic defense analysis.


title: Think tank

text: The Hudson Institute is a conservative American think tank founded in 1961 by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation. Recent members include Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Donald Trump who joined in 2021.


title: Think tank

text: More recently, progressive and liberal think tanks have been established, most notably the Center for American Progress and the Center for Research on Educational Access and Leadership (CREAL). The organization has close ties to former United States President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats.


title: Think tank

text: Think tanks help shape both foreign and domestic policy. They receive funding from private donors, and members of private organizations. By 2013, the largest 21 think tanks in the US spent more than US$1 billion per year. Think tanks may feel more free to propose and debate controversial ideas than people within government. The progressive media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has identified the top 25 think tanks by media citations, noting that from 2006 to 2007 the number of citations declined 17%. The FAIR report reveals the ideological breakdown of the citations: 37% conservative, 47% centrist, and 16% liberal. Their data show that the most-cited think tank was the Brookings Institution, followed by the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.


title: Think tank

text: In 2016, in response to scrutiny about think tanks appearing to have a "conflict of interest" or lack transparency, executive vice president, Martin S. Indyk of Brookings Institution – the "most prestigious think tank in the world" admitted that they had "decided to prohibit corporations or corporate-backed foundations from making anonymous contributions." In August 2016, "The New York Times" published a series on think tanks that blur the line. One of the cases the journalists cited was Brookings, where scholars paid by a seemingly independent think tank "push donors' agendas amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington." For example, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars the Brookings Institution provided Lennar – one of the United States' largest home builders – with a significant advantage in pursuing a US$8 billion revitalization project in Hunters Point, San Francisco. In 2014, Lennar's then-regional vice president in charge of the San Francisco revitalization, Kofi Bonner was named as a Brookings senior fellow – a position as 'trusted adviser' that carries some distinction. Bruce Katz, a Brookings vice president, also offered to help Lennar "engage with national media to develop stories that highlight Lennar's innovative approach."


title: Think tank

text: Government think tanks are also important in the United States, particularly in the security and defense field. These include the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University, the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College.


title: Think tank

text: The government funds, wholly or in part, activities at approximately 30 Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs). FFRDCs, are unique independent nonprofit entities sponsored and funded by the United States government to meet specific long-term technical needs that cannot be met by any other single organization. FFRDCs typically assist government agencies with scientific research and analysis, systems development, and systems acquisition. They bring together the expertise and outlook of government, industry, and academia to solve complex technical problems. These FFRDCs include the RAND Corporation, the MITRE Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Aerospace Corporation, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and other organizations supporting various departments within the United States Government.


title: Think tank

text: Similar to the above quasi-governmental organizations are Federal Advisory Committees. These groups, sometimes referred to as commissions, are a form of think tank dedicated to advising the US Presidents or the Executive branch of government. They typically focus on a specific issue and as such, might be considered similar to special interest groups. However, unlike special interest groups these committees have come under some oversight regulation and are required to make formal records available to the public. As of 2002, about 1,000 of these advisory committees were described in the FACA searchable database.


title: Think tank

text: Research done by Enrique Mendizabal shows that South American think tanks play various roles depending on their origins, historical development and relations to other policy actors. In this study, Orazio Bellettini from Grupo FARO suggests that they:


title: Think tank

text: How a policy institute addresses these largely depends on how they work, their ideology vs. evidence credentials, and the context in which they operate including funding opportunities, the degree and type of competition they have and their staff.


title: Think tank

text: This functional method addresses the inherit challenge of defining a think tank. As Simon James said in 1998, "Discussion of think tanks...has a tendency to get bogged down in the vexed question of defining what we mean by 'think tank'—an exercise that often degenerates into futile semantics." It is better (as in the Network Functions Approach) to describe what the organisation should do. Then the shape of the organisation should follow to allow this to happen. The following framework (based on Stephen Yeo's description of think tanks' mode of work) is described in Enrique Mendizabal's blog "onthinktanks":


title: Think tank

text: According to the National Institute for Research Advancement, a Japanese policy institute, think tanks are "one of the main policy actors in democratic societies ..., assuring a pluralistic, open and accountable process of policy analysis, research, decision-making and evaluation". A study in early 2009 found a total of 5,465 think tanks worldwide. Of that number, 1,777 were based in the United States and approximately 350 in Washington, DC, alone.


title: Think tank

text: As of 2009, Argentina is home to 122 think tanks, many specializing in public policy and economics issues. Argentina ranks fifth in the number of these institutions worldwide.


title: Think tank

text: Working on public policies, Brazil hosts, for example, Instituto Liberdade, a University-based Center at Tecnopuc inside the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, located in the South Region of the country, in the city of Porto Alegre. Instituto Liberdade is among the Top 40 think tanks in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the 2009 Global Go To Think Tanks Index a report from the University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP).


title: Think tank

text: Fundação Getulio Vargas (Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV)) is a Brazilian higher education institution. Its original goal was to train people for the country's public- and private-sector management. Today it hosts faculties (Law, Business, Economics, Social Sciences and Mathematics), libraries, and also research centers in Rio, São Paulo and Brasilia. It is considered by "Foreign Policy" magazine to be a top-five "policymaker think tank" worldwide.


title: Mae Martin

text: Mae Martin (born 2 May 1987) is a Canadian-born comedian, actor, and screenwriter based in England. They wrote and starred in the Netflix comedy series "Feel Good" and won two Canadian Comedy Awards as part of the comedy troupe The Young and the Useless. They received a nomination for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance for their work on "Feel Good".


title: Mae Martin

text: Mae Martin was born in Toronto on 2 May 1987, the child of Canadian writer and teacher Wendy Martin and English food writer James Chatto. James, whose parents were actor Tom Chatto and talent agent Ros Chatto, appeared in the 1963 film adaptation of "Lord of the Flies" as a child and on the West End stage in "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the 1980s. Martin has an elder brother who is an academic. Their paternal uncle is an artist and actor Daniel Chatto, who is married to Queen Elizabeth II's niece Lady Sarah Chatto.


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin was baptised in a village on the Greek island of Corfu, where their family lived for several years. James and Wendy were ex-hippies and comedy fans and the family home was filled with recordings of British classics ("Monty Python’s Flying Circus", "The Goon Show", "Blackadder") as well as Americans such as Steve Martin.


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin attended an all-girls school and performed on stage wearing the school's uniform. The atmosphere growing up was—according to Martin—a "liberal utopia" in terms of sexuality, in that James and Wendy were open-minded and Toronto was an accepting city.


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin's career started in Canada, where they were involved in the comedy troupe "The Young and the Useless". At the age of 16, Martin was the youngest-ever nominee for the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award. Martin's work in Canada includes writing for the sketch comedy series "Baroness von Sketch Show." They are a two-time Canadian Screen Award winner for Best Writing in a Variety or Sketch Comedy Series for the work they did with that show's writing team.


title: Mae Martin

text: In 2011, Martin moved to London for a fresh start, falling in love with the city, and at first working dead-end jobs in order to focus on breaking in to British comedy. Their 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival show was entitled "Mae Martin: Us", which led to the BBC Radio 4 series "Mae Martin's Guide to 21st Century Sexuality". Martin has appeared on the British television and radio programme "The Now Show", and has co-hosted "GrownUpLand".


title: Mae Martin

text: "Dope", the 2017 Edinburgh show, was titled in reference to recreational drugs as well as to dopamine, the brain chemical associated with compulsive behaviour: love can also be a drug. It was based on years of research, drawing on the work of Dr Gabor Maté, who defines addiction as any behaviour or substance that a person uses to relieve pain in the short term, but which leads to negative consequences in the long term. Without addressing the root cause of the pain, a person may try to stop but will ultimately crave further relief and be prone to relapse. By this definition there are many things in modern culture that have the potential to become addictive such as gambling, sex, food, work, social media, and of course, drugs. Maté featured in the 2017 two-part "Mae Martin's Guide to 21st Century Addiction".


title: Mae Martin

text: "Dope", which is about Martin's addictive personality—they described it as like having "an easily-awoken psychopathic shrimp" in their head—was modified into a half-hour Netflix comedy special, released in January 2019 as part of the Comedians of the World collection. This led to "Feel Good", the Channel 4/Netflix comedy series which Martin co-created, wrote, and starred in. The second season was released in 2021. (The other co-creator is Joe Hampson; the pair have worked together on and off since 2012.) "Guardian" interviewer Simon Hattenstone identified one of the underlying themes being the guilt of coming from privilege, as opposed to the many addicts Martin met in rehab, who had grown up in poor or addicted families and never had a chance. In the same paper, Lucy Mangan praised the series as "immaculately written" and "properly funny". In 2019, Martin also released a YA book entitled "Can Everyone Please Calm Down? A Guide to 21st Century Sexuality".


title: Mae Martin

text: In 2022, they appeared in "LOL: Last One Laughing Canada". Later that year, they appeared in the HBO Max series "The Flight Attendant" on a recurring role as Grace St. James. In progress is a "teen thriller comedy" with Nextflix. Martin is also working on two films with writing partner Hampson: a rom-com and a thriller called "Gene".


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin describes childhood obsessions with Bette Midler, The Kids in the Hall, Pee-wee Herman and the "Rocky Horror Show". At 11 years old, Martin was taken to a comedy club, and at that point the addiction became stand-up comedy. Martin and two friends became known as "the Groupies" for going to see "Family Circus Maximus" (a play from The Second City improv troupe) 160 times in a year. Embracing being "a weird kid" helped ease the path to a comedy career.


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin became addicted to drugs and consequently underwent rehabilitation, using stories of this as the basis for some stand-up routines. Addiction made Martin leave home at 16. Abusive relationships were normalised in the night-time scene: Martin said, "If you put a teenage girl in any industry like that, there are going to be people taking advantage."


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin's cultural influences include "Stand by Me", a 1986 American coming-of-age comedy-drama adventure film based on Stephen King's 1982 novella "The Body"; the people-pleasing "maitre d" character in "Beauty and the Beast", the 1991 adaptation as a Disney animated feature film; "Waiting for Guffman", a 1996 American mockumentary comedy film following a troupe of actors using improvised dialogue; and the Spice Girls, specifically the video from the 1997 song "Viva Forever".


title: Mae Martin

text: Martin came out publicly as non-binary in 2021. Martin uses they/them and she/her pronouns, saying, "I love it when people say 'they' but I don't mind 'she' at ALL." They have dated both men and women, stating in April 2021 that they are bisexual after previously resisting labelling their sexuality. In June 2021, Mae described themself as "a queer person". Martin shared that they had top surgery in late 2021.


title: Italia Ricci

text: Stephanie Italia Ricci (; born October 29, 1986) is a Canadian-American actress. She's known for starring as April Carver in the 2014–2015 ABC Family television series "Chasing Life", and for playing White House Chief of Staff and Special Advisor Emily Rhodes in the television drama series "Designated Survivor" from 2016 to 2019.


title: Italia Ricci

text: Ricci made her major acting debut in 2007, in the "American Pie" direct-to-video film, "". She then went on to have a recurring role on the Disney XD series "Aaron Stone". Ricci also appeared in the music video "Hate" by Plain White T's as the ex-girlfriend.


title: Italia Ricci

text: During 2009, Ricci began appearing in American productions with minor roles in "How I Met Your Mother", "House," and "Greek". During that same year, she had a recurring role in the Comedy Central series "Secret Girlfriend" as Sasha. In 2010, she co-starred in the Cartoon Network live-action series "Unnatural History" as Maggie Winnock. She also appeared in a Clean & Clear commercial as herself. In 2011, she appeared in the short film "Valediction". In 2013, Ricci appeared in a small role in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut film "Don Jon".


title: Italia Ricci

text: From 2014 to 2015, she starred as April Carver in the ABC Family series "Chasing Life". Ricci joined the cast of "Supergirl" in December 2015 as Siobhan Smythe / Silver Banshee. In September 2016, Ricci joined the ABC political drama "Designated Survivor", as Emily Rhodes. The show was renewed by Netflix for a third season which was released on June 7, 2019. It was not renewed by Netflix for a fourth season.


title: Italia Ricci

text: She has also appeared in films for the Hallmark Channel, including "Rome in Love" and "Love in Winterland".


title: Italia Ricci

text: In 2022, Ricci starred in The Imperfects as Dr. Sydney Burke. The ten-episode first season premiered on Netflix on September 8 in the United States.


title: Italia Ricci

text: Italia Ricci was born Stephanie Ricci in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and is of Italian descent. She graduated from Queen's University, where she undertook charitable work for causes such as Water Can, a non-profit, creating waterholes in Africa. Ricci was a Stand Up To Cancer ambassador and supporter of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.


title: Italia Ricci

text: Ricci began dating Canadian actor Robbie Amell in July 2008. They became engaged on August 19, 2014, and were married on October 15, 2016. Their first child, a son, was born in September 2019. Ricci and Amell both became United States citizens in January 2020.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychokinesis (from and ), or telekinesis (from and ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person to influence a physical system without physical interaction.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychokinesis experiments have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no good evidence that psychokinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience.


title: Psychokinesis

text: The word "psychokinesis" was coined in 1914 by American author Henry Holt in his book "On the Cosmic Relations". The term is a compound of the Greek words ψυχή ("psyche") – meaning "mind", "soul", "spirit", or "breath" – and κίνησις ("kinesis") – meaning "motion" or "movement". The American parapsychologist J. B. Rhine coined the term "extra-sensory perception" to describe receiving information paranormally from an external source. Following this, he used the term "psychokinesis" in 1934 to describe mentally influencing external objects or events without the use of physical energy. His initial example of psychokinesis was experiments that were conducted to determine whether a person could influence the outcome of falling dice.


title: Psychokinesis

text: The word "telekinesis", a compound of the Greek τῆλε ("tēle") – meaning "distance" – and κίνησις ("kinesis") – meaning "motion", was first used in 1890 by Russian psychical researcher Alexander N. Aksakof.


title: Psychokinesis

text: In parapsychology, fictional universes and New Age beliefs, psychokinesis and telekinesis are different: psychokinesis refers to the mental influence of physical systems and objects without the use of any physical energy, while telekinesis refers to the movement and/or levitation of physical objects by purely mental force without any physical intervention.


title: Psychokinesis

text: There is a broad scientific consensus that psychokinetic research has not produced a reliable demonstration of the phenomenon.


title: Psychokinesis

text: A panel commissioned in 1988 by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded that "despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or 'mind over matter' exercises... Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the contention that these phenomena exist."


title: Psychokinesis

text: In 1984, the United States National Academy of Sciences, at the request of the US Army Research Institute, formed a scientific panel to assess the best evidence for psychokinesis. Part of its purpose was to investigate military applications of PK, for example to remotely jam or disrupt enemy weaponry. The panel heard from a variety of military staff who believed in PK and made visits to the PEAR laboratory and two other laboratories that had claimed positive results from micro-PK experiments. The panel criticized macro-PK experiments for being open to deception by conjurors, and said that virtually all micro-PK experiments "depart from good scientific practice in a variety of ways". Their conclusion, published in a 1987 report, was that there was no scientific evidence for the existence of psychokinesis.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Carl Sagan included telekinesis in a long list of "offerings of pseudoscience and superstition" which "it would be foolish to accept ... without solid scientific data". Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman advocated a similar position.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Felix Planer, a professor of electrical engineering, has written that if psychokinesis were real then it would be easy to demonstrate by getting subjects to depress a scale on a sensitive balance, raise the temperature of a waterbath which could be measured with an accuracy of a hundredth of a degree centigrade, or affect an element in an electrical circuit such as a resistor, which could be monitored to better than a millionth of an ampere. Planer writes that such experiments are extremely sensitive and easy to monitor but are not utilized by parapsychologists as they "do not hold out the remotest hope of demonstrating even a minute trace of PK" because the alleged phenomenon is non-existent. Planer has written that parapsychologists have to fall back on studies that involve only statistics that are unrepeatable, owing their results to poor experimental methods, recording mistakes and faulty statistical mathematics.


title: Psychokinesis

text: According to Planer, "All research in medicine and other sciences would become illusionary, if the existence of PK had to be taken seriously; for no experiment could be relied upon to furnish objective results, since all measurements would become falsified to a greater or lesser degree, according to his PK ability, by the experimenter's wishes." Planer concluded that the concept of psychokinesis is absurd and has no scientific basis.


title: Psychokinesis

text: PK hypotheses have also been considered in a number of contexts outside parapsychological experiments. C. E. M. Hansel has written that a general objection against the claim for the existence of psychokinesis is that, if it were a real process, its effects would be expected to manifest in situations in everyday life; but no such effects have been observed.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Science writers Martin Gardner and Terence Hines and the philosopher Theodore Schick have written that if psychokinesis were possible, one would expect casino incomes to be affected, but the earnings are exactly as the laws of chance predict.


title: Psychokinesis

text: Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey argues that many experiments in psychology, biology or physics assume that the intentions of the subjects or experimenter do not physically distort the apparatus. Humphrey counts them as implicit replications of PK experiments in which PK fails to appear.


title: Psychokinesis

text: The ideas of psychokinesis and telekinesis violate several well-established laws of physics, including the inverse square law, the second law of thermodynamics, and the conservation of momentum. Because of this, scientists have demanded a high standard of evidence for PK, in line with Marcello Truzzi's dictum "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". The Occam's razor law of parsimony in scientific explanations of phenomena suggests that the explanation of PK in terms of ordinary ways—by trickery, special effects or by poor experimental design—is preferable to accepting that the laws of physics should be rewritten.