title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: The cover sleeve and images were shot by Ellen von Unwerth. The cover was released by Jive Records on October 12, 2007. It features Spears sporting black hair and wearing a pink (blue in the rear cover) dress, and a white fedora. A reviewer for the "Ottawa Citizen" felt the design was "horrendous". The centerfold pictures feature Spears and a priest in suggestive poses in a confessional. The first image shows Spears, who wears a cross and fishnet stockings, sitting on the priest's lap, while in the second one she leans suggestively against the confessional with the priest sitting on the other side of the partition. After the album was released, the Catholic League's director of communications Kiera McCaffrey stated that the group considered the photos a "cheap publicity stunt" to promote the album and condemned Spears for "mocking a Catholic sacrament". McCaffrey added: "All we see is how troubled this girl is now, especially with her family, losing her kids, with her career on a downward slide. And now she's put out this album and this is her tactic to promote it?" Gil Kaufman of MTV said that the images were reminiscent of Madonna's music video for "Like a Prayer" (1989). The booklet also contains pictures of empty chairs with ripped tabloid pages and still images from the music video for "Gimme More". The album does not include a thank-you list, unlike her previous albums.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Blackout" was set to be released on November 13, 2007. However, Jive announced on October 10, 2007, that the release date would be moved up two weeks, to October 30, 2007, due to unauthorized leaks. The following day, Zomba Label Group filed a lawsuit against Perez Hilton claiming he illegally obtained and posted on his gossip blog at least ten songs and unfinished demos of the album. Zomba representatives alleged the posts had taken place over the course of the previous three months, and requested real and punitive damages as well as legal costs. On June 30, 2009, the parties submitted a stipulation to dismiss the case, pursuant to an undisclosed settlement agreement. The following month, The District Court judge dismissed the case, with prejudice.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: After days of media speculation, it was confirmed on September 6, 2007, that Spears would open the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards at the Pearl Theatre in the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on September 9, 2007. It was also announced that she was going to perform "Gimme More", with a magic act from illusionist Criss Angel in some parts of the performance. However, the bit is thought to have been rejected by the show's organisers at the last minute. The performance began with Spears singing the first lines of Elvis Presley's 1958 song "Trouble". "Gimme More" began, and the camera panned out to reveal Spears wearing a black, jewel-encrusted bikini and black boots. She was accompanied by male and female dancers dressed in black outfits. Several pole dancers danced in smaller stages around the audience. The performance was universally panned by critics. Jeff Leeds of "The New York Times" said that "no one was prepared for Sunday night's fiasco, in which a listless Ms. Spears teetered through her dance steps and mouthed only occasional words in a wan attempt to lip-synch her new single". Vinay Menon of the "Toronto Star" commented Spears "looked hopelessly dazed. She was wearing the expression of somebody who had been deposited at the Palms Casino Resort by a tornado, one that promptly twisted away, taking her clothing and sense of purpose. [...] [She was] lumbering, in slow motion, as if somebody had poured cement into her streetwalker boots". David Willis of BBC stated her performance would "go down in the history books as being one of the worst to grace the MTV Awards".


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: Unlike Spears' previous albums, "Blackout" was not heavily promoted through magazine interviews, talk-show appearances or televised performances besides the performance at the Video Music Awards and was not accompanied by a tour either. On November 27, 2007, MTV launched the contest "Britney Spears Wants a Piece of You", in which fans could direct a separate video for "Piece of Me", using footage of interviews and performances from Spears. Using the MTV Video Remixer, fans could mix and create a mashup of the footage. The winning video premiered on "TRL" on December 20, 2007, and MTV, Jive Records, and Spears herself picked the winner. The winner also received a Haier Ibiza Rhapsody device along with a one-year subscription to Rhapsody, as well as Spears' entire discography released in the United States.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Gimme More" was released as the album's lead single to positive reviews. It peaked at number three on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, becoming her fifth top-ten entry and also her second highest-peaking single at the time. It also peaked at the top of the charts in Canada and reached top five positions in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The accompanying music video premiered on October 5, 2007. It displayed Spears as a stripper and featured a break from Spears' highly choreographed music videos. The video received mixed to negative reviews from critics, who panned Spears' pole dancing as well as the lack of storyline.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Piece of Me" was released as the second single from the album. Critics gave the song positive reviews, praising its production and defiant lyrics, while citing it as one of the highlights from "Blackout". "Rolling Stone" ranked the song at number fifteen on their list of the 100 Best Songs of 2007. It peaked at number one in Ireland and reached top ten positions in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it became the second single from the album to have peaked atop the Dance Club Songs, and peaked at number eighteen on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The music video, directed by Wayne Isham, portrayed Spears' life at the time and showed her with her friends disguising themselves in order to confuse the paparazzi. Isham's concept was to have Spears confidently parodying her situation. It received mixed reviews from critics, most arguing her body was digitally altered. The video was nominated in three categories at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards and won all of them – Video of the Year, Best Female Video and Best Pop Video.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Break the Ice" was released as the third and final single from "Blackout". Critics praised the track, with some calling it an album highlight. The song reached the top ten in Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland and Sweden and charted within the top forty in Australia, New Zealand and many European countries. In the United States, the song reached number forty-three on the "Billboard" Hot 100, while peaking at number one on the Hot Dance Club Songs. An accompanying music video, directed by Robert Hales, was released on March 12, 2008. The anime video was based on the superheroine character of Spears' "Toxic" music video, and portrays her destroying a highly secured laboratory with several clones, including one of herself.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Radar" was originally planned to be released as the third single from "Blackout", according to Ezekiel Lewis of the Clutch. "Break the Ice" was released instead and "Radar" was chosen as the fourth single. However, the release was pushed back when Spears began recording new material for her sixth studio album, "Circus". It was later released as a bonus track and the fourth single from "Circus".


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Blackout" received mixed to positive responses from music critics. On music review aggregator Metacritic, the album holds a score of 61 out of 100 (indicating "generally favorable reviews") based on 24 reviews. Retrospective reviews, however, have praised the album and cited it as a strong influence over the music of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor of AllMusic, described the album as "state-of-the-art dance-pop, a testament to skills of the producers and perhaps even Britney being somehow cognizant enough to realize she should hire the best, even if she's not at her best." Dennis Lim of "Blender" deemed it as "her most consistent [album], a seamlessly entertaining collection of bright, brash electropop." Margeaux Watson of "Entertainment Weekly" commented that while the album is not poetry, "there is something delightfully escapist about "Blackout", a perfectly serviceable dance album abundant in the kind of bouncy electro elements that buttressed her hottest hits." A reviewer for "NME" said that the heavily treated vocals make Spears sound robotic, adding that "it could really do with a few more human touches."


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Pitchfork"'s Tom Ewing called "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" the centerpiece of the album, and added that "like most of "Blackout", is superb modern pop, which could probably only have been released by this star at this moment. Britney as walking catastrophe makes for great car-crash copy and her record can fit into that if you want it to." Ewing also compared the relationship between Spears and "Blackout" with American television series "Twin Peaks", saying that what made the show "so great wasn't the central good-girl-gone-bad story, it was the strangeness that story liberated. And Britney's off-disc life is both distraction from and enabler for this extraordinary album". Mike Schiller of "PopMatters" said that "Right down to its utterly garish cover, "Blackout" is utterly disposable and ultimately forgettable." Melissa Maerz from "Rolling Stone" explained that "Blackout" "is the first time in her career that she's voiced any real thoughts about her life" and that "she's gonna crank the best pop booty jams until a social worker cuts off her supply of hits." Rob Sheffield of the same magazine described "Blackout" as "one of the most influential albums in modern pop". "Slant Magazine" writer Sal Cinquemani compared the album unfavorably to "In the Zone", saying that although "Blackout" "scores well, and its hotness quotient is remarkably high, [it] isn't much of a step forward for Britney following 2003's surprisingly strong "In the Zone", for which she received a writing credit on a majority of the songs (as opposed to a scant three here)."


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: Andy Battaglia of "The A.V. Club" said "Blackout" "counts both as a significant event and as a disquieting aberration that couldn't be more mysteriously manufactured or bizarrely ill-timed" in which "every song counts as markedly progressive and strange." Alexis Petridis from "The Guardian" called it "a bold, exciting album: the question is whether anyone will be able to hear its contents over the deafening roar of tittle-tattle." He elaborated that when faced with a public image in freefall, an artist has two options: making music "that harks back to your golden, pre-tailspin days" to "underlin[e] your complete normality" or "to throw caution to the wind: given your waning fortunes, what's the harm in taking a few musical risks?" Petridis commented that Spears opted for the latter and the results were "largely fantastic." Kelefa Sanneh of "The New York Times" said, "The electronic beats and bass lines are as thick as Ms. Spears's voice is thin, and as the album title suggests, the general mood is bracingly unapologetic." Sanneh added that said Spears became a spectral presence in her own album, explaining that when compared to her previous records, "[she] cuts a startlingly low profile on "Blackout" [...] Even when she was being marketed as a clean-cut ex-Mouseketeer, and even when she was touring the country with a microphone that functioned largely as a prop, something about her was intense."


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: Peter Robinson of "The Observer" stated that Spears "delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's "Shock Value" and her own back catalogue." "The Phoenix"s Ellee Dean said the album "may be more a tribute to the skills of the A-list producers who guided her through the disc than to any of her own talents. But at least she was smart enough to accept that guidance." In his consumer guide for MSN Music, critic Robert Christgau gave the album a B+ and said that "From 'Gimme More's 'It's Britney bitch' hiya to 'Piece of Me's single-of-the-year sonics, from 'Ooh Ooh Baby's 'feel you deep inside' to 'Perfect Lover's 'touch me there', this album is pure, juicy, plastic get-naked." In a retrospective review published in 2017, Alim Kheraj of "Dazed" called "Blackout" "one of the most inventive pop records in recent history", the record that "forevermore proved that [Spears'] career was way more than just an 'inept pantomime'[.]" Kheraj also said that the album "was the result of a hazardous moment in pop culture history that saw a serendipitous and symbiotic relationship between an artist eroding her past and producers forging their future that payed off." "Blackout" was ranked by "Rolling Stone" at number fifty on their list of the 100 Best Albums of 2007. The album topped "Billboard"s Reader's Choice poll as the best album of the year. In 2020, "Blackout" placed at number 441 on "Rolling Stone" 2020 revision of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: According to Nielsen SoundScan, "Blackout" sold 124,000 copies during its first day of availability in the United States. Jessica Letkemann of "Billboard" compared the sales favorably to those of the number-one album of the previous week, Carrie Underwood's "Carnival Ride", which sold 49,000 copies. Letkemann also estimated that "Blackout" would possibly debut atop the "Billboard" 200.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: On November 6, 2007, "Billboard" announced that even though the Eagles's first-week sales of "Long Road Out of Eden" had handily surpassed Spears, they would not debut atop the chart because of rules forbidding albums exclusively sold at one retail outlet (Walmart in this case) from entering the "Billboard" 200. The magazine's senior analyst and director of charts Geoff Mayfield explained he was frustrated by the situation, saying: "I can believe the Eagles sold more, but I'm not seeing anything that verifies for me that they outsold her and anything we see otherwise might be from people with a stake in suggesting that." During the afternoon of the same day, Walmart issued a press release announcing that "Long Road Out of Eden" had sold 711,000 copies. At night, it was announced through an article on "Billboard.biz" that after an agreement with Nielsen SoundScan, "Billboard" would allow exclusive album titles that were only available through one retailer to appear on the charts, effective that same week. Hence "Long Road Out of Eden" would top the "Billboard" 200, while "Blackout" would debut at number two, with sales of 290,000 copies. It became Spears' first studio album not to debut at number one. The album, however, set the record as the best-selling digital album debut by a female artist in a week at the time. Following the release of "Circus" in December 2008, "Blackout" re-entered the chart at number 198, with sales of 4,600 copies. As of March 2015, the album had sold one million copies in the United States, and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: In Canada, "Blackout" debuted atop the Canadian Albums Chart with sales of 29,000 units, becoming her first number-one album there since "Britney" (2001). It was certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) for shipments of 100,000 copies. In Australia and New Zealand, "Blackout" debuted at numbers three and eight on the official charts, respectively. It was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) indicating shipments of 70,000 units. "Blackout" debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart with sales of 42,000 units, behind "Long Road Out of Eden". It stayed on the chart for twenty-eight weeks. It was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipments of 300,000 copies. In Ireland, the album debuted atop the Irish Albums Chart, replacing Bruce Springsteen's "Magic". "Blackout" also debuted atop the European Top 100 Albums, holding off "Long Road Out of Eden" and Eros Ramazzotti's "e²" from reaching the top of the chart. The album reached the top ten in ten European markets, including debuting at number four in Switzerland, number six in Austria, Italy and Denmark, and number ten in Germany and Portugal. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the album was the thirty-second best-selling album of 2007. By the end of 2008, "Blackout" had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide.


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: When "Blackout" was released, Spears' behavior in public began to clash with her image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that Spears was an artist that always relied on her "carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona", but for "Blackout" "those images [we]re replaced by images of Britney beating cars up with umbrellas, wiping her greasy fingers on designer dresses, and nodding off on-stage, each new disaster stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image." Erlewine added that the album served as a soundtrack "for Britney's hazy, drunken days, reflecting the excess that's splashed all over the tabloids", while noting that the album had a coherence that the public Spears lacked. "When she dropped "Blackout" in 2007, the music industry scoffed, but then proceeded to spend the next few years imitating it to death, to the point where everything on pop radio sounded like "Blackout"," said Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone".


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Blackout" has been referred by contemporary critics and fans as the "Bible of Pop" for its impact on the music industry, and is considered one of the most influential albums of all time. English singer and songwriter Sam Smith wrote on their Instagram page, "One of the greatest fucking albums of all time. No arguments". Tom Ewing of "Pitchfork" noted that after "Freakshow" leaked online, a dubstep forum thread on the song hit seven pages in twenty-four hours, generating mixed reactions and exemplifying that "it still seems [that] when the mainstream borrows underground music, [it] brings it into the wider pop vocabulary." He also attributed the quality of every track of "Blackout" to economic reasons, since one of the main causes album sales began to suffer during the digital era is due to the "unbundling" of albums in online stores – making it easier for consumers to buy some tracks rather than the entire album. Ewing explained that "The "Revolver" blueprint for pop albums – every track good, every track a potential hit – makes more sense than ever. Especially if a star can keep sonically up-to-date in a fast-moving market."


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: Reviewers noted the use of Auto-Tune in Spears' voice. Ewing said that "Blackout" serves as a reminder of how instantly recognizable Spears' vocals are, saying that "treated or untreated: her thin Southern huskiness is one of the defining sounds of 00s pop." He noted that the album "is a masterclass in autotune and vocal treatment as a studio instrument, disrupting and jamming the songs as much as it helps them." While reviewing Spears' demo of "Telephone", Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" compared it to "Piece of Me", "proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if 'Telephone' proves anything, it's that "Blackout" may be the most influential pop album of the past five years." In June 2012, "Blackout" was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's musical library and archive. Calling it a "mutant pop classic", "Dazed" cited "Blackout" as one of the most influential albums of the last decade for the way it suffused hip hop, pop, R&B and EDM, and further said "Spears once lamented that she wasn't a girl but not yet a woman... "Blackout" was the signal that this transition had reached its climax. Yet rather than emerging as a Stepford pop princess, the Britney that appeared was disruptive and peddling demented pop music."


title: Blackout (Britney Spears album)

text: "Blackout" also appeared on "Rolling Stone"s decade-end poll, where it was voted the seventh best album of the decade by readers. In 2020, "Blackout" was ranked at number 441 on their list "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". They described it as the "weirdest, wildest music of her life", an "avant-disco concept album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust".


title: Adrian Chase

text: Adrian Chase is an antihero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is the second DC character to bear the name Vigilante.


title: Adrian Chase

text: The character made his live-action debut in the Arrowverse series "Arrow", portrayed by Josh Segarra. In the DC Extended Universe television series "Peacemaker", he is played by Freddie Stroma.


title: Adrian Chase

text: Created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, Adrian Chase first appeared in his civilian identity in "The New Teen Titans" #23 (September 1982), before debuting as Vigilante in "The New Teen Titans Annual" #2 (August 1983). Chase later appeared in his own "Vigilante" series.


title: Adrian Chase

text: Adrian Chase was a New York City district attorney working on part with the resident team, the Teen Titans. He sought justice his own way as the anti-hero Vigilante after his wife Doris Chase and their children were killed by Scarapelli mobsters. Chase was initially shown taking pains to make sure he did not kill his enemies (unlike the Punisher from Marvel Comics) and would regularly use non-lethal weapons to disable his opponents.


title: Adrian Chase

text: Throughout the "Vigilante" series, Chase was tormented over the justice of his actions and the pain brought to others. Chase flirted with abandoning his Vigilante identity after he savagely beat an ex-convict who turned out to be innocent. Eventually, Chase did abandon his Vigilante identity, believing that he could be both more effective and happier as a judge. But during his absence, the Vigilante identity was assumed by two of his friends (fellow judge Alan Wells and then bailiff Dave Winston respectively) without his knowledge.


title: Adrian Chase

text: After Wells killed a police officer and Winston died at Peacemaker's hands, Chase once again assumed the Vigilante role, believing it was the only way to protect his loved ones. However, his experiences with Welles and Winston had damaged his fragile psyche beyond repair, causing him to adopt more vicious tactics in his war on crime. Seeking revenge on Peacemaker, the out of shape Adrian gets beaten in a fight and unmasked on live TV, thereby ending Chase's secret identity and forcing him even further into the Vigilante role.


title: Adrian Chase

text: Eventually, Chase became ever more conflicted over the violence he engaged in and the harm he caused to those around him. He also became increasingly mentally unstable—alternating between bouts of enraged violence, paranoia and terrible remorse for his actions, even resorting to murdering innocent police officers who got in his way. His mounting guilt culminated in Chase contemplating the course of his life and then completing suicide.


title: Adrian Chase

text: Chase appeared in the "Day of Judgment" limited series, as one of the dead heroes in Purgatory. He and the others run interference, battling the guardians of the realm, so other living heroes can escape with the soul of Hal Jordan. When the crisis concluded with Jordan assuming the Spectre mantle, Jim Corrigan appeared briefly on Earth, stating that the efforts of Chase and other heroes in Purgatory had earned an appeal in the shining city.


title: Adrian Chase

text: As the Vigilante, Adrian Chase is a superb hand-to-hand combatant, a brilliant marksman, and a master of the lariat. He also possessed the ability to heal quickly and regenerate his body from injuries as serious as stabbings or gun shot wounds, although he is capable of dying if the injuries are severe enough.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: On August 16, 1987 a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, operating as Northwest Airlines Flight 255, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, about 8:46 pm EDT (00:46 UTC August 17), resulting in the deaths of all six crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers, along with two people on the ground. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl who sustained serious injuries. It was the second-deadliest aviation accident at the time in the United States. It is also the deadliest aviation accident to have a sole survivor.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The aircraft involved in the crash was a twin-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-82 (registration number N312RC), a derivative of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series of aircraft. The jet was manufactured in 1981, entered service with Republic Airlines, and was acquired by Northwest Airlines in its merger with Republic in 1986. The aircraft was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-217 turbofan engines. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was painted in a hybrid livery between Northwest Airlines and Republic Airlines, featuring blue Republic striping with red Northwest titles and a white tail.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Flight 255's captain was 57-year-old John R. Maus, from Las Vegas, Nevada. Maus was an experienced pilot who had worked for the airline for 31 years, flying Fairchild F-27, Boeing 727, Boeing 757, McDonnell Douglas DC-9, and McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft. Maus had logged 20,859 flight hours during his career, including 1,359 hours on the MD-82. Other pilots who had flown with Maus described him as a "competent and capable pilot" who had a reputation for operating "by the book".


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The flight's first officer was 35-year-old David J. Dodds, from Galena, Illinois. Dodds had logged 8,044 flight hours during his career (including 1,604 hours on the MD-82), and had worked for the airline for more than eight years. Other than one training report during his probationary period, all of the airline's captains with whom Dodds had flown graded him as average or above average. Other pilots who had recently flown with Dodds later described his performance


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The flight crew began August 16, 1987, by operating the incident aircraft as Northwest Flight 750 from Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, flying to MBS International Airport in Saginaw, Michigan. Departing Saginaw, the flight crew operated the same aircraft as Flight 255, flying to John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, with intermediate stops scheduled at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan (near Detroit), and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona. Other than a minor problem taxiing to the arrival gate, the flight from Saginaw to Detroit was uneventful. During the stopover in Detroit, a Northwest Airlines mechanic inspected the aircraft and the logbook. Around 20:29, the flight crew took their seats. At roughly 20:32 EDT, Flight 255 departed the gate in Detroit with 149 passengers (including 21 children) and six crew members. The crew read out the before-start checklist, and started the engines at 20:33:04. The total weight of the airliner was with a maximum allowable weight of .


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: At 20:34:40, the pushback tug was disconnected from the aircraft and at 20:34:50, the controller cleared Flight 255 to taxi to runway number 3C (center). The crew was also informed about the update of the automatic terminal information service information, to which Dodds reported on weather data update. At 20:35:43, the ground controller instructed to use taxiway C and switch to frequency 119.45 MHz to communicate with another controller. Dodds acknowledged the instructions to follow the taxiways, but did not repeat the new frequency and did not tune the radio to it. The dispatch packet provided by the airline included takeoff performance data based on using runways 21L or 21R, but the flight was cleared for takeoff on Detroit's runway 3C, the shortest available runway. The flight crew had to reconfigure the on-board computer for taking off on runway 3C. Dodds also recalculated the allowable takeoff weight for the flight, and concluded that it was within normal limits. In the process of taxiing, Flight 255 missed the required turn, so Dodds contacted the ground controller and received instructions on how to proceed to runway 3C, and also to switch to 119.45 MHz. Dodds again acknowledged the instructions and this time acknowledged the new frequency and switched to it. The second ground controller specified the route to runway 3C. The crew also received a brief weather report.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: At 20:42:11, Flight 255 was instructed to line up and wait at the beginning of runway 3C. The controller advised that a 3-minute delay was needed to allow the wake turbulence from the previous aircraft that had taken off to dissipate. At 20:44:04, Flight 255 was cleared for takeoff.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Flight 255 made its takeoff roll on Detroit's runway 3C at 20:44:21, with Maus at the controls, as recorded on the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR):


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The plane lifted off the runway at , and began to roll from side to side just under above the ground. The MD-82's rate of climb was greatly reduced as a result of the flaps not being extended, and about past the end of runway 3C, the plane's left wing struck a light pole in an airport rental car lot. The impact caused the left wing to start disintegrating and catch fire. The plane rolled 90° to the left, striking the roof of an Avis Car Rental building. The plane (now uncontrolled) crashed inverted onto Middlebelt Road and struck vehicles just north of its intersection with Wick Road, killing two people on the ground in a car. It then broke apart, with the fuselage skidding across the road, disintegrating and bursting into flames as it hit a Norfolk Southern railroad overpass and the overpass of eastbound Interstate 94. The crash was witnessed from the air traffic control tower, and almost immediately the airport was shut down.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: All of the 6 crew and 148 of the 149 passengers are killed in the crash. Many of the passengers were from the Phoenix metropolitan area, one of them was Nick Vanos, an NBA center for the Phoenix Suns. Two motorists on nearby Middlebelt Road also perished and five people on the ground were injured, one seriously. The bodies were moved to the Northwest hangar at the airport, which served as a temporary morgue.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Of the 149 passengers aboard, 21 were children, the youngest being six months old. The sole survivor of the crash was Cecilia Cichan, a four-year-old girl from Tempe, Arizona, who was returning home alongside her mother, Paula, father, Michael, and a six-year-old brother, David, after visiting relatives in Pennsylvania. Romulus firemen found Cichan still belted in her seat, which was faced down. She was found several feet from the bodies of her family. She sustained severe burns and fractures to her skull, collarbone, and left leg. After the crash, Cichan moved to live with her maternal aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Alabama. She spoke to the media about her experience for the first time in 2011.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Eyewitnesses stated that Flight 255's takeoff roll was longer than usual and that the aircraft took off at a steeper angle. Their statements on whether or not the flaps and slats were extended varied, but most responded that they were extended, although they could not tell how far.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The CVR provided evidence of the flight crew's omission of the taxi checklist. Although the stall warning was annunciated, investigators determined from the CVR that the aural takeoff warning was not annunciated by that warning system. The NTSB was unable to determine a cause for the electrical-power failure in the central aural warning system (CAWS):


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The investigators had spoken with other MD-80 pilots, and learned that many pilots found it a nuisance to hear a take-off configuration warning ("Slats ... Slats... Slats...") while they were simply taxiing. It was so common for pilots to pull the P-40 circuit breaker that the area around the circuit breaker was smudged from routinely being manipulated. This circuit breaker also controls some of the stall warning sounds. This coincided with the missing sounds from the CVR of the incident flight.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: While the investigators felt that the P-40 circuit breaker probably had been pulled by the pilot on the incident flight, they could not definitely confirm if the circuit breaker had been tripped, intentionally opened, or if electric current failed to flow through the breaker to the CAWS while the breaker was closed:


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The NTSB published its final report on May 10, 1988, in which it concluded that the accident was caused by pilot error:


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: After the crash, Northwest retired the flight number 255 along with its counterpart flight number 254, which was the outbound flight from Phoenix to Detroit. They were changed to Flights 260 and 261 beginning in September 1987 until the company merged with Delta Air Lines in early 2010. It was still operated by MD-82 alongside DC-9 and Boeing 727 but were replaced by Boeing 757 and Airbus A320 in the 1990s. Delta continues the retirement of 255 by Northwest; , Delta has no flight 255.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: In memory of the victims, a black granite memorial was erected in 1994; it stands (surrounded by blue spruce trees) at the top of the hill at Middlebelt Road and I-94, the site of the crash. The memorial has a dove with a ribbon in its beak reading, "Their spirit still lives on ..."; below it are the names of those who perished in the crash. Another monument to the victims (many of whom were from the Phoenix area) stands next to Phoenix City Hall.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Also, a marker stone is located at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, MI, in memory of the 14 GM employees and seven family members who were killed in the crash. Most were traveling to the GM Desert Proving Ground in Mesa, Arizona.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: On August 16, 2007, the 20th anniversary of the crash, a memorial service was held at the site. For some people affected by the incident, this was their first return to the site since the crash.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: On August 16, 2012, the 25th anniversary of the crash, another memorial service was held at the crash site. Family and friends of the victims and others from across the Metro Detroit area (including local media) attended, and a local priest read each victim's name aloud. Another was held there on August 16, 2017, the 30th anniversary. Annual meet-ups had become a tradition.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255 was covered in 2010 in "Alarming Silence", a season-9 episode of the internationally syndicated Canadian TV documentary series "Mayday".


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: The sole survivor of the crash was a four-year old child who appeared in the 2013 documentary "Sole Survivor". She did not speak publicly about the crash until 2013, when the documentary was released.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: Around the August NASCAR weekend at nearby Michigan International Speedway, Tom Higgins posted his recollections of Northwest 255. Higgins, then of "The Charlotte Observer," and fellow NASCAR beat reporters Steve Waid and Gary McCredie (of "Grand National Scene") arrived at a hotel near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport awaiting a Monday morning flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, after finishing coverage of the Champion Spark Plug 400 that afternoon, and were witnesses to the plane crash.


title: Northwest Airlines Flight 255

text: In Busy Philipps' 2018 memoir "This Will Only Hurt a Little", Philipps mentioned that her friend Megan Briggs died the summer going into 5th grade on this plane crash. Her friend was just 8 years old and died alongside her parents and older brother.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: José Alvarado Martínez (born April 12, 1998) is an American professional basketball player for the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is nicknamed "Grand Theft Alvarado" due to his abilities in stealing. Alvarado represents Puerto Rico internationally. He played college basketball for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: Alvarado played football in his childhood but quit after injuring his neck. He played basketball for Christ the King Regional High School in Middle Village, Queens in New York City. As a junior, Alvarado averaged 17 points and 6.5 assists per game and was named Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA) Player of the Year. As a senior, he recorded 18 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals, the first quadruple-double in school history, in a December 22, 2016, win over Xaverian High School. In his senior season, Alvarado averaged 17.9 points per game and led Christ the King to the CHSAA intersectional quarterfinals. He was named TimesLedger Player of the Year.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: Alvarado was considered a four-star recruit by ESPN and Rivals and a three-star recruit by 247Sports in the 2017 class. On September 15, 2016, he committed to play college basketball for Georgia Tech over offers from Rutgers and Seton Hall, among others. Georgia Tech head coach Josh Pastner had first seen Alvarado at the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: As a freshman, Alvarado started in all 25 of his games and averaged 12.1 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. He became the fourth Georgia Tech freshman to average at least 12 points, 3.5 rebounds, and two assists per game. He suffered a season-ending left elbow fracture against Duke on February 11, 2018. Alvarado had an increased role in his sophomore season with the early departure of Josh Okogie. On February 20, 2019, Alvarado scored a career-high 29 points to go with six rebounds and five assists in a 73–65 win over Pittsburgh. As a sophomore, Alvarado averaged 12.5 points, 3.9 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game, leading his team in scoring, assists and steals. Georgia Tech was banned from the postseason by the NCAA during his junior season due to several infractions. He missed seven games early in his junior season due to an ankle injury. On January 25, 2020, Alvarado scored a season-high 26 points and recorded eight rebounds and a school-record nine steals in a 64–58 victory over NC State. In his junior season, he averaged 14.4 points, four assists, 3.4 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game and was named to the Third Team All-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). In his senior year, Alvarado and Moses Wright led Georgia Tech to its first ACC title since 1993, by defeating Scottie Barnes and Florida State in the championship game of the ACC tournament. At the end of the season, was named the ACC Defensive Player of the Year.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: Alvarado passed on gaining an additional year in college due to COVID-19 game cancellations and declared himself eligible for the 2021 NBA draft. After being undrafted, on August 19, 2021, he signed a two-way contract with the New Orleans Pelicans. Under the terms of the deal, he split time with the Pelicans and their NBA G League affiliate, the Birmingham Squadron.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: During a game against the Philadelphia 76ers on January 25, 2022, Alvarado was issued a technical foul after an in-game verbal altercation with Philadelphia center Joel Embiid. The incident received press coverage after Embiid praised Alvarado and paid the $2,000 league fine associated with it.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: On March 28, 2022, Alvarado's two-way deal was converted into a standard 4-year, $6.5 million contract. This signing made him eligible for post-season play.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: On December 4, 2022, Alvarado scored a career-high 38 points in a 121–106 win over the Denver Nuggets.


title: Jose Alvarado (basketball)

text: Alvarado is of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage. He and his girlfriend have a daughter who was born in 2020.


title: Fiqh

text: Fiqh (; ) is Islamic jurisprudence. "Fiqh" is often described as the human understanding and practices of the "sharia," that is human understanding of the divine Islamic law as revealed in the Quran and the "Sunnah" (the teachings and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his companions). Fiqh expands and develops Shariah through interpretation ("ijtihad") of the Quran and "Sunnah" by Islamic jurists ("ulama") and is implemented by the rulings ("fatwa") of jurists on questions presented to them. Thus, whereas "sharia" is considered immutable and infallible by Muslims, Fi"qh" is considered fallible and changeable. "Fiqh" deals with the observance of rituals, morals and social legislation in Islam as well as political system. In the modern era, there are four prominent schools ("madh'hab") of "fiqh" within Sunni practice, plus two (or three) within Shi'a practice. A person trained in "fiqh" is known as a "faqīh" (plural "fuqaha").


title: Fiqh

text: Figuratively, "fiqh" means knowledge about Islamic legal rulings from their sources. Deriving religious rulings from their sources requires the "mujtahid" (an individual who exercises "ijtihad") to have a deep understanding in the different discussions of jurisprudence. A "faqīh" must look deep down into a matter and not content himself with just the apparent meaning, and a person who only knows the appearance of a matter is not qualified as a "faqīh".


title: Fiqh

text: The studies of "fiqh", are traditionally divided into "Uṣūl al-fiqh" (principles of Islamic jurisprudence, lit. the roots of fiqh, alternatively transliterated as "Usool al-fiqh"), the methods of legal interpretation and analysis; and "Furūʿ al-fiqh" (lit. the branches of fiqh), the elaboration of rulings on the basis of these principles. "Furūʿ al-fiqh" is the product of the application of "Uṣūl al-fiqh" and the total product of human efforts at understanding the divine will. A "hukm" (plural "aḥkām") is a particular ruling in a given case.


title: Fiqh

text: The word "fiqh" is an Arabic term meaning "deep understanding" or "full comprehension". Technically it refers to the body of Islamic law extracted from detailed Islamic sources (which are studied in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence) and the process of gaining knowledge of Islam through jurisprudence. The historian Ibn Khaldun describes "fiqh" as "knowledge of the rules of God which concern the actions of persons who own themselves connected to obey the law respecting what is required ("wajib"), sinful ("haraam"), recommended ("mandūb"), disapproved ("makrūh"), or neutral ("mubah")". This definition is consistent amongst the jurists.


title: Fiqh

text: In Modern Standard Arabic, "fiqh" has also come to mean Islamic jurisprudence. It is not thus possible to speak of Chief Justice John Roberts as an expert in the common law "fiqh" of the United States, or of Egyptian legal scholar Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri as an expert in the civil law "fiqh" of Egypt.


title: Fiqh

text: The commands and prohibitions chosen by God were revealed through the agency of the Prophet in both the Quran and the Sunnah (words, deeds, and examples of the Prophet passed down as hadith).


title: Fiqh

text: The first Muslims (the Sahabah or Companions) heard and obeyed, and passed this essence of Islam to succeeding generations ("Tabi'un" and "Tabi' al-Tabi'in" or successors/followers and successors of successors), as Muslims and Islam spread from West Arabia to the conquered lands north, east, and west, where it was systematized and elaborated


title: Fiqh

text: The formative period of Islamic jurisprudence stretches back to the time of the early Muslim communities. In this period, jurists were more concerned with issues of authority and teaching than with theory and methodology.


title: Fiqh

text: Progress in theory and methodology happened with the coming of the early Muslim jurist Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i (767–820), who codified the basic principles of Islamic jurisprudence in his book "ar-Risālah". The book details the four roots of law (Qur'an, Sunnah, "ijma", and "qiyas") while specifying that the primary Islamic texts (the Qur'an and the hadith) be understood according to objective rules of interpretation derived from scientific study of the Arabic language.


title: Fiqh

text: Secondary sources of law were developed and refined over the subsequent centuries, consisting primarily of juristic preference ("istihsan"), laws of the previous prophets ("shara man qablana"), continuity ("istishab"), extended analogy ("maslaha mursala"), blocking the means ("sadd al-dhari'ah"), local customs ("urf"), and sayings of a companion of the Prophet ("qawl al-sahabi").


title: Fiqh

text: The Quran set the rights, responsibilities, and rules for people and societies to adhere to, such as dealing in interest. Muhammad then provided an example, which is recorded in the hadith books, showing people how he practically implemented these rules in a society. After the passing of Muhammad, there was a need for jurists, to decide on new legal matters where there is no such ruling in the Quran or the Hadith, example of Islamic prophet Muhammad regarding a similar case.


title: Fiqh

text: In the years proceeding Muhammad, the community in Madina continued to use the same rules. People were familiar with the practice of Muhammad and therefore continued to use the same rules.


title: Fiqh

text: The scholars appearing in the diagram below were taught by Muhammad's companions, many of whom settled in Madina. Muwatta by Malik ibn Anas was written as a consensus of the opinion, of these scholars. The Muwatta by Malik ibn Anas quotes 13 hadiths from Imam Jafar al-Sadiq.


title: Fiqh

text: Aisha also taught her nephew Urwah ibn Zubayr. He then taught his son Hisham ibn Urwah, who was the main teacher of Malik ibn Anas whose views many Sunni follow and also taught Jafar al-Sadiq. Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, Hisham ibn Urwah and Muhammad al-Baqir taught Zayd ibn Ali, Jafar al-Sadiq, Abu Hanifa, and Malik ibn Anas.


title: Fiqh

text: Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, Imam Abu Hanifa and Malik ibn Anas worked together in Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. Along with Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, Muhammad al-Baqir, Zayd ibn Ali and over 70 other leading jurists and scholars.


title: Fiqh

text: Al-Shafi‘i was taught by Malik ibn Anas. Ahmad ibn Hanbal was taught by Al-Shafi‘i. Muhammad al-Bukhari travelled everywhere collecting hadith and his father Ismail ibn Ibrahim was a student of Malik ibn Anas.


title: Fiqh

text: In the books actually written by these original jurists and scholars, there are very few theological and judicial differences between them. Imam Ahmad rejected the writing down and codifying of the religious rulings he gave. They knew that they might have fallen into error in some of their judgements and stated this clearly. They never introduced their rulings by saying, "Here, this judgement is the judgement of God and His prophet." There is also very little text actually written down by Jafar al-Sadiq himself. They all give priority to the Qur'an and the Hadith (the practice of Muhammad). They felt that the Quran and the Hadith, the example of Muhammad provided people with almost everything they needed. "This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion" Quran 5:3.


title: Fiqh

text: These scholars did not distinguish between each other. They were not Sunni or Shia. They felt that they were following the religion of Abraham as described in the Quran "Say: Allah speaks the truth; so follow the religion of Abraham, the upright one. And he was not one of the polytheists" (Qur'an 3:95).


title: Fiqh

text: Most of the differences are regarding Sharia laws devised through Ijtihad where there is no such ruling in the Quran or the Hadiths of Islamic prophet Muhammad regarding a similar case. As these jurists went to new areas, they were pragmatic and continued to use the same ruling as was given in that area during pre-Islamic times, if the population felt comfortable with it, it was just and they used Ijtihad to deduce that it did not conflict with the Quran or the Hadith. As explained in the Muwatta by Malik ibn Anas. This made it easier for the different communities to integrate into the Islamic State and assisted in the quick expansion of the Islamic State.


title: Fiqh

text: To reduce the divergence, ash-Shafi'i proposed giving priority to the Qur'an and the Hadith (the practice of Muhammad) and only then look at the consensus of the Muslim jurists ("ijma") and analogical reasoning ("qiyas"). This then resulted in jurists like Muhammad al-Bukhari dedicating their lives to the collection of the correct Hadith, in books like Sahih al-Bukhari. Sahih translates as authentic or correct. They also felt that Muhammad's judgement was more impartial and better than their own.


title: Fiqh

text: These original jurists and scholars also acted as a counterbalance to the rulers. When they saw injustice, all these scholars spoke out against it. As the state expanded outside Madina, the rights of the different communities, as they were constituted in the Constitution of Medina still applied. The Quran also gave additional rights to the citizens of the state and these rights were also applied. Ali, Hassan and Hussein ibn Ali gave their allegiance to the first three caliphs because they abided by these conditions. Later Ali the fourth caliph wrote in a letter "I did not approach the people to get their oath of allegiance but they came to me with their desire to make me their Amir (ruler). I did not extend my hands towards them so that they might swear the oath of allegiance to me but they themselves extended their hands towards me". But later as fate would have it (Predestination in Islam) when Yazid I, an oppressive ruler took power, Hussein ibn Ali the grandson of Muhammad felt that it was a test from God for him and his duty to confront him. Then Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr's cousin confronted the Umayyad rulers after Hussein ibn Ali was betrayed by the people of Kufa and killed by Syrian Roman Army now under the control of the Yazid I the Umayyad ruler. Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr then took on the Umayyads and expelled their forces from Hijaz and Iraq. But then his forces were depleted in Iraq, trying to stop the Khawarij. The Umayyads then moved in. After a lengthy campaign, in his last hour Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr asked his mother Asma' bint Abu Bakr the daughter of Abu Bakr the first caliph for advice. Asma' bint Abu Bakr replied to her son, she said: "You know better in your own self, that if you are upon the truth and you are calling towards the truth go forth, for people more honourable than you have been killed and if you are not upon the truth, then what an evil son you are and you have destroyed yourself and those who are with you. If you say, that if you are upon the truth and you will be killed at the hands of others, then you will not truly be free". Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr left and was later also killed and crucified by the Syrian Roman Army now under the control of the Umayyads and led by Hajjaj. Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr the son of Abu Bakr the first caliph and raised by Ali the fourth caliph was also killed by the Umayyads. Aisha then raised and taught her son Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr who later taught his grandson Jafar al-Sadiq.


title: Fiqh

text: During the early Umayyad period, there was more community involvement. The Quran and Muhammad's example was the main source of law after which the community decided. If it worked for the community, was just and did not conflict with the Quran and the example of Muhammad, it was accepted. This made it easier for the different communities, with Roman, Persian, Central Asia and North African backgrounds to integrate into the Islamic State and that assisted in the quick expansion of the Islamic State. The scholars in Madina were consulted on the more complex judicial issues. The Sharia and the official more centralized schools of fiqh developed later, during the time of the Abbasids.


title: Fiqh

text: Majority of Sunni Muslims view "Qiyas" as a central Pillar of "Ijtihad". On the other hand; Zahirites, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Al-Bukhari, early Hanbalites, etc. rejected "Qiyas" amongst the Sunnis. Similarly, the "Shi’a" jurists almost unanimously reject both pure reason and analogical reason; viewing both these methods as subjective.


title: Fiqh

text: The Qur'an gives clear instructions on many issues, such as how to perform the ritual purification (') before the obligatory daily prayers ('). On other issues, for example, the Qur'an states one needs to engage in daily prayers (') and fast (') during the month of Ramadan but further instructions and details on how to perform these duties can be found in the traditions of Muhammad, so Qur'an and Sunnah are in most cases the basis for ("").


title: Fiqh

text: Some topics are without precedent in Islam's early period. In those cases, Muslim jurists (') try to arrive at conclusions by other means. Sunni jurists use historical consensus of the community ('); a majority in the modern era also use analogy (') and weigh the harms and benefits of new topics ('), and a plurality utilizes juristic preference ('). The conclusions arrived at with the aid of these additional tools constitute a wide array of laws, and its application is called fiqh. Thus, in contrast to the "sharia", "fiqh" is not regarded as sacred and the schools of thought have differing views on its details, without viewing other conclusions as sacrilegious. This division of interpretation in more detailed issues has resulted in different schools of thought (').


title: Fiqh

text: This wider concept of Islamic jurisprudence is the source of a range of laws in different topics that guide Muslims in everyday life.


title: Fiqh

text: There are different approaches to the methodology used in jurisprudence to derive Islamic rulings from the primary sources of "sharia" (Islamic law). The main methodologies are those of the Sunni, Shi'a and Ibadi denominations. While both Sunni and Shi'ite (Shia) are divided into smaller sub-schools, the differences among the Shi'ite schools is considerably greater. Ibadites only follow a single school without divisions.


title: Fiqh

text: While using court decisions as legal precedents and case law are central to Western law, the importance of the institution of fatawa (non-binding answers by Islamic legal scholars to legal questions) has been called "central to the development" of Islamic jurisprudence. This is in part because of a "vacuum" in the other source of Islamic law, "qada`" (legal rulings by state appointed Islamic judges) after the fall of the last caliphate the Ottoman Empire. While the practice in Islam dates back to the time of Muhammad, according to at least one source (Muhammad El-Gamal), it is "modeled after the Roman system of "responsa"," and gives the questioner "decisive primary-mover advantage in choosing the question and its wording."


title: Fiqh

text: Each school ("madhhab") reflects a unique "al-urf" or culture (a cultural practice that was influenced by traditions), that the classical jurists themselves lived in, when rulings were made. Some suggest that the discipline of "isnad", which developed to validate "hadith" made it relatively easy to record and validate also the rulings of jurists. This, in turn, made them far easier to imitate ("taqlid") than to challenge in new contexts. The argument is, the schools have been more or less frozen for centuries, and reflect a culture that simply no longer exists. Traditional scholars hold that religion is there to regulate human behavior and nurture people's moral side and since human nature has not fundamentally changed since the beginning of Islam a call to modernize the religion is essentially one to relax all laws and institutions.


title: Fiqh

text: Early "shariah" had a much more flexible character, and some modern Muslim scholars believe that it should be renewed, and that the classical jurists should lose special status. This would require formulating a new fiqh suitable for the modern world, e.g. as proposed by advocates of the Islamization of knowledge, which would deal with the modern context. This modernization is opposed by most conservative "ulema". Traditional scholars hold that the laws are contextual and consider circumstance such as time, place and culture, the principles they are based upon are universal such as justice, equality and respect. Many Muslim scholars argue that even though technology may have advanced, the fundamentals of human life have not.


title: Fiqh

text: The schools of Sunni Islam are each named by students of the classical jurist who taught them. The Sunni schools (and where they are commonly found) are


title: Fiqh

text: Entirely separate from both the Sunni and Shia traditions, Khawarij Islam has evolved its own distinct school.


title: Fiqh

text: These schools share many of their rulings, but differ on the particular hadiths they accept as authentic and the weight they give to analogy or reason (qiyas) in deciding difficulties.


title: Fiqh

text: The relationship between (at least the Sunni) schools of jurisprudence and the conflict between the unity of the Shariah and the diversity of the schools, was expressed by the 12th century Hanafi scholar Abu Hafs Umar an-Nasafi, who wrote: `Our school is correct with the possibility of error, and another school is in error with the possibility of being correct.”


title: Fiqh

text: A number of important legal institutions were developed by Muslim jurists during the classical period of Islam, known as the Islamic Golden Age. One such institution was the "Hawala", an early informal value transfer system, which is mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. "Hawala" itself later influenced the development of the agency in common law and in civil laws such as the "aval" in French law and the "avallo" in Italian law.


title: Fiqh

text: The "Waqf" in Islamic law, which developed during the 7th–9th centuries, bears a notable resemblance to the trusts in the English trust law. For example, every "Waqf" was required to have a "waqif" (settlor), "mutawillis" (trustee), "qadi" (judge) and beneficiaries. The trust law developed in England at the time of the Crusades, during the 12th and 13th centuries, was introduced by Crusaders who may have been influenced by the "Waqf" institutions they came across in the Middle East.


title: Fiqh

text: In classical Islamic jurisprudence, litigants in court may obtain notarized statements from between three and twelve witnesses. When the statements of all witnesses are consistent, the notaries will certify their unanimous testimony in a legal document, which may be used to support the litigant's claim. The notaries serve to free the judge from the time-consuming task of hearing the testimony of each eyewitness himself, and their documents serve to legally authenticate each oral testimony. The Maliki school requires two notaries to collect a minimum of twelve eyewitness statements in certain legal cases, including those involving unregistered marriages and land disputes. John Makdisi has compared this group of twelve witness statements, known as a "lafif", to English Common Law jury trials under Henry II, surmising a link between the king’s reforms and the legal system of the Kingdom of Sicily. The island had previously been ruled by various Islamic dynasties.


title: Fiqh

text: Several other fundamental common law institutions may have been adapted from similar legal institutions in Islamic law and jurisprudence, and introduced to England by the Normans after the Norman conquest of England and the Emirate of Sicily, and by Crusaders during the Crusades. In particular, the "royal English contract protected by the action of debt is identified with the Islamic "Aqd", the English assize of novel disseisin is identified with the Islamic "Istihqaq", and the English jury is identified with the Islamic "lafif"." John Makdisi speculated that English legal institutions such as "the scholastic method, the licence to teach", the "law schools known as Inns of Court in England and "Madrasas" in Islam" and the "European commenda" (Islamic "Qirad") may have also originated from Islamic law. The methodology of legal precedent and reasoning by analogy ("Qiyas") are also similar in both the Islamic and common law systems. These influences have led some scholars to suggest that Islamic law may have laid the foundations for "the common law as an integrated whole".


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Ram Boolchand Jethmalani (14 September 1923 – 8 September 2019) was an Indian lawyer and politician. He served as India's Union minister of law and justice, as chairman of the Indian Bar Council, and as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. He was noted in the Indian legal fraternity for his forte in criminal law and high-profile civil cases.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani obtained his LL.B. degree at the age of 17 and started practising law in his hometown, Shikarpur, until the partition of India. The partition led him to move to Mumbai as a refugee where he began his life and career afresh. He announced his retirement from judicial profession in 2017.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Throughout his political career, Jethmalani worked for improving the relations between India and Pakistan, owing to his experiences as a refugee post-partition. He was elected as member of the Lok Sabha twice, on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tickets, from the Mumbai North West constituency. He also served as the union minister of urban development in the first Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry, against whom he later contested election in the 2004 Indian general elections from the Lucknow constituency. He later returned to BJP in 2010, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha on its ticket.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani was awarded the Human Rights Award by World Peace Through Law in 1977. He authored books such as "Big Egos, Small Men"; "Conscience of a Maverick"; and "Maverick: Unchanged, Unrepentant"; among others. He also co-authored legal scholarly books on different fields of law.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani was born on 14 September 1923 in Shikarpur, Sindh in the Sindh division of the then Bombay Presidency (today a part of Pakistan) to Boolchand Gurmukhdas Jethmalani and Parbati Boolchand. He got a double promotion in school and completed matriculation at the age of 13. At the age of 17 he secured an LL.B. degree from the Bombay University with a first class distinction. At that time, the minimum age for becoming a lawyer was 21, but a special exception (resulting from an application that he made to the court contesting the rule regarding minimum age) allowed him to become a lawyer at the age of 18. He received his LL.M. from Bombay University, since Sindh did not have a university of its own at that time.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani married his first wife, Durga, in a traditional Indian arranged marriage, around the age of 18. In 1947, just before partition, he married his second wife, Ratna Shahani, a lawyer by profession. His family includes both of his wives and four children – three by Durga (Rani, Shobha, Mahesh) and one by Ratna (Janak).


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Among his two sons and two daughters, Mahesh and Rani have been supreme court lawyers while Mahesh is also a BJP leader, and Rani a social activist.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani died on 8 September 2019 in New Delhi at his home at the age of 95. According to his son Mahesh Jethmalani, he was unwell for the last few months and died at 7:45 AM (IST), six days short of his 96th birthday.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Ram Jethmalani started his career as a lawyer and Professor in Sindh before partition. He started his own law firm in Karachi with his friend A.K. Brohi who was senior to him by seven years. In February 1948, when riots broke out in Karachi, he fled to India on the advice of his friend Brohi and when he came to India in that day he had only INR 10 in his pocket and with that note he stayed in the refugee camp for few days.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani fought his first case at the age of 17 in the court of Sindh under Justice Godfrey Davis, contesting the rule regarding minimum age passed by the Bar Council of Sindh. In a talk at Algebra in June 2017, Jethmalani recounted his first case fought in India as a refugee. The newly introduced Bombay Refugees Act treated refugees in an inhumane manner, against which Jethmalani filed a case in the Bombay High Court, praying for the law to be declared unconstitutional; a case he won.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani later came to be noted for his appearance in the Nanavati case in 1959 with Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud, who later to become the Chief Justice of India. His defence of a string of smugglers in the late 1960s established his image as a "smuggler’s lawyer", to which he mentioned that he was only doing his duty as a lawyer.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: In 1954, he became a part-time Professor at the Government Law College, Mumbai for both graduate and post graduate studies. He also taught comparative law at the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He has been the Chairman of Bar Council of India for four tenures, before as well as after the emergency. In 1996, he also became a member of the International Bar Association. He has served as the Professor Emeritus for Symbiosis International University law schools. In 2010, he was also elected as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: During his career he was involved in a number of high-profile defence cases as lawyer – people involved in market scams (Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh), and a host of gangsters and smugglers including the British citizen Daisy Angus who was acquitted of hashish smuggling after serving five years in jail. He also defended L. K. Advani in the Hawala scam. He was in the news for taking up the defence of Manu Sharma, prime accused in the Jessica Lall murder case; however, he failed to get Manu Sharma acquitted. He was to be defending Lalit Modi, former Indian Premier League chairman and commissioner. Some of the cases Jethmalani appeared in include — the defence of Indira Gandhi's alleged assassins, challenging the medical evidence deposed of dr. t d dogra, a forensic expert of aiims, on record; defending Harshad Mehta in a stock market scam and the Narasimha Rao bribery case; defending Ketan Parekh in a stock market scam; appearing in a case involving Mumbai mafia gang leader, Haji Mastan; speaking on record against the death sentence of Afzal Guru, though he had not taken up the case; defending L K Advani in the Hawala scam; defending Manu Sharma in Jessica Lall's murder; defending Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin encounter case; defending Amit Jogi in the Jaggi murder case; appearing for Sanjay Chandra's bail in the 2G spectrum case; appearing for Kulbhushan Parashar's bail in the navy war room leak case; defending Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum case; appearing in Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy's special leave petition on stay for C.B.I. probe into money laundering in his companies; appearing in Yeddyurappa's case on an illegal mining scam; defending A. G. Perarivalan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan, and Sriharan alias Murugan, all convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case; defending Ramdev in case of allaged use of force on his followers at Ramlila grounds on 4 June 2011; defending Shiv Sena in Krishna Desai's murder; defending Asaram Bapu in the Jodhpur sexual assault case; defending Lalu Prasad Yadav in the supreme court and appearing for his bail in the fodder scam case, on 13 December 2013; appearing for Subrata Roy in the Sahara-SEBI case; appearing for AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa, convicted in a disproportionate assets case by the Karnataka High Court; and, appearing for AAP president Arvind Kejriwal, in a defamation case filed by Arun Jaitley, amongst others.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani's experience during the partition as a refugee led him to advocate for better relations between India and Pakistan, which he sought throughout his political career. He contested as an independent candidate from Ulhasnagar supported both by the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Jan Sangh but he lost the elections. During the emergency period of 1975–1977, he was the chairman of the Bar Association of India. He heavily criticised then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. An arrest warrant was issued against him from Kerala which was stayed by the Bombay high court when over three hundred lawyers, led by Nani Palkhivala, appeared for him. However, the stay was nullified by the "habeas corpus" judgment in Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla. Jethmalani exiled himself in Canada carrying on his campaign against the emergency. He returned to India ten months later after the emergency was lifted. While in Canada, his candidature for the Parliament was filed from the Bombay North-West constituency. He won the election and retained the seat in 1980 general elections, but lost to Sunil Dutt in 1985. In the 1977 general elections after the emergency, he won against then serving Union law minister H. R. Gokhale from Bombay in the Lok Sabha elections, and hence started his political career as a parliamentarian. However he was not made law minister himself as Morarji Desai disapproved of his lifestyle.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: He became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1988 and the Union minister of law, justice and company affairs in 1996, in the cabinet of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. During the second tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in 1998, he was given the portfolio of Union minister of urban affairs and employment. But on 13 October 1999 he was again sworn in as the Union minister for law, justice and company affairs. He was asked to resign by the prime minister following differences with then chief justice of India Adarsh Sein Anand and Attorney General of India Soli Sorabjee. He was inducted into the cabinet on home Minister Lal Krishna Advani's insistence.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: He had also announced his candidature for President of India stating: "I owe it to the nation to offer my services". He launched his own political fronts, the Bharat Mukti Morcha, as a "mass movement" in 1987. In 1995, he launched his own political party called the Pavitra Hindustan Kazhagam, with the motto to achieve "transparency in functioning of Indian democracy".


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: In the general elections of 2004, he contested against Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the Lucknow constituency as an independent candidate. The Indian National Congress did not field their candidates in this election; however, he lost. Later on, in 2010, he was given a Rajya Sabha ticket by Bharatiya Janta Party from Rajasthan and he was elected. He was also a member of the Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice. Jethmalani has been criticised as being "opportunistic" as a result of this. Jethmalani was noted for speaking his mind; at a reception hosted by the Pakistan High Commission for the Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar who was on a visit to India on 28 July 2011, Jethmalani in the presence of the Chinese ambassador called China an enemy of both India and Pakistan and warned the Indians and Pakistanis to beware of the Chinese.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: In December 2009, the Committee on Judicial Accountability stated that it considered that recommendations for judicial appointments should only be made after a public debate, including review by members of the bar of the affected high courts. This statement was made in relation to controversy about the appointments of justices C. K. Prasad and P. D. Dinakaran. The statement was signed by Jethmalani, Shanti Bhushan, Fali Sam Nariman, Anil B. Divan, Kamini Jaiswal and Prashant Bhushan.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: In 2012, Jethmalani wrote to then Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari, accusing opposition BJP leaders of being "silent against the huge corruption" within the ruling UPA-II government, and stated that BJP "is sick". Jethmalani's letter became public on the internet. The same year, in November, Jethmalani wrote a letter to BJP leader L.K. Advani asking for the removal of Nitin Gadkari as the president of the BJP. He cited the allegations of corruption levelled against Gadkari as the reason for his demand. He had stated "When there are serious allegations against Gadkari, he should have stayed away, if only to raise his stature in the public eye,". He publicly criticised Gadkari, even though Gadkari continued to be the BJP president. When Jethmalani was questioned if the BJP's parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that had been supporting Gadkari, was controlling BJP, Jethmalani had replied "I am sure the RSS is trying to influence the functioning of the BJP. After all, BJP leaders have grown up with the RSS,".


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: In May 2013, BJP expelled Jethmalani from the party for six years, for having made anti-party statements. In October 2013, defamation charges were framed against BJP seeking as "null and void and damages" for making a statement that he was not a fit person to be member of the party.


title: Ram Jethmalani

text: Jethmalani had also co-authored various legal scholarly books on fields of law such as criminal law, administrative law, and media law.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Kevin Whately (born 6 February 1951) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Neville "Nev" Hope in the British comedy drama "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet", Robert "Robbie" Lewis in the crime dramas "Inspector Morse" 1987–2000 and "Lewis" 2006–2015, and his role as Jack Kerruish in the drama series "Peak Practice", although he has appeared in numerous other roles.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately is from Humshaugh, near Hexham, Northumberland. His mother, Mary (née Pickering), was a teacher and his father, Richard, was a Commander in the Royal Navy. His maternal grandmother, Doris Phillips, was a professional concert singer and his great-great-grandfather, Richard Whately, was Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. The BBC documentary "Who Do You Think You Are?", broadcast on 2 March 2009, also revealed that Whately is a descendant, on his paternal side, of Thomas Whately of Nonsuch Park (father of Thomas Whately), a leading London merchant, English politician and writer who became a director of the Bank of England, and of Major Robert Thompson, a staunch supporter of the Parliamentarian cause at the time of the English Commonwealth who later settled in Virginia, where he became a pioneer tobacco plantation owner.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately was educated at Barnard Castle School, and went on to study accounting and finance at Newcastle Polytechnic, graduating in 1969. He then trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1975 after having partly supported himself by working for the National Theatre at The Old Vic. Before going professional, Whately was an amateur actor at the People's Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne during the 1970s. His brother, Frank, is a lecturer at Kingston University in London.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Before turning to professional acting, Whately began his working life as a folk singer, and still plays the guitar, performing for charity concerts. Along with other "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" stars, he makes an appearance at the biennial benefit concert "Sunday for Sammy" in Newcastle. Before becoming an actor, he started training as an accountant.


title: Kevin Whately

text: His acting career includes several stage plays, among them an adaptation of "Twelve Angry Men", and film appearances in "The Return of the Soldier", "The English Patient", "Paranoid" and "Purely Belter".


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately's television appearances include episodes of "Shoestring", "Geordie Racer", "Angels", "Juliet Bravo", "Strangers", "Coronation Street", "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", "Alas Smith and Jones", "Look and Read", "You Must Be The Husband", "B&B", "Peak Practice", "Skallagrigg", "The Broker's Man", "Murder in Mind", "Inspector Morse", 2003 Comic Relief "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", "Lewis", "New Tricks", "Who Gets the Dog?", "The Children" and "Silent Cry". Whately provided one of the voices for the English-language version of the 1999 claymation Children's television series "Hilltop Hospital". He has also done voiceovers for a WaterAid advertisement.


title: Kevin Whately

text: In 1985, Whately appeared in a 3-part "Miss Marple" adaptation ("A Murder Is Announced") for the BBC. His part, Detective Sergeant Fletcher, opposite John Castle as Inspector Craddock, was very similar to what became the career-defining role he took two years later, when he was cast as Detective Sergeant Lewis, the down-to-earth complement to the eponymous "Inspector Morse" played by John Thaw. Whately starred opposite Thaw in 32 episodes over 13 years in the hugely successful series that established him as a household name in the UK.


title: Kevin Whately

text: He reprised the role in the spin-off series "Lewis", in which Lewis returns to Oxford as a full Inspector. With his new partner, the Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), Inspector Lewis solves murder mysteries while trying to rebuild his life after his wife's sudden death in a hit-and-run accident and to gain recognition from his initially sceptical new boss.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Richard Marson's book celebrating fifty years of "Blue Peter" comments that Whately auditioned as a presenter for the show in 1980 but lost out to Peter Duncan.


title: Kevin Whately

text: In 2010 Whately played the lead in the television film "Joe Maddison's War" about strained family and social relations in wartime. Directed by Patrick Collerton, it presented a view of World War II through the eyes of shipyard worker and World War I veteran Joe Maddison (Kevin Whately) who serves in the Home Guard during the Blitz.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Upon the conclusion of filming the seventh series of "Lewis", at the end of 2012, both Whately and Laurence Fox announced that they would take a break of at least a year before appearing in any more episodes. ITV indicated a continuing commitment to the series and that they wished to produce additional episodes of the programme. On 4 November 2012, Whately performed in a radio drama on BBC3 called "The Torchbearers", which chronicles the circumstances of several UK citizens whose lives are changed through contact with the Olympic Torch. In 2013, the Live Theatre of Newcastle upon Tyne produced a series of performances of the unique, acclaimed one-person play, "White Rabbit, Red Rabbit", which is enacted as a cold reading with no sets or costumes by a different performer each night. Whately was the actor for the sold-out performance of 10 March 2013. Following the end of the ninth and final series of "Lewis", Whately announced his retirement from acting. He had played the character Lewis over a span of 28 years.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately was the patron of the Central School of Speech and Drama Full House Theatre Company for 2011.


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately lives in Woburn Sands near Milton Keynes with his wife, actress Madelaine Newton, who starred in the 1970s BBC drama "When the Boat Comes In". Madelaine starred as Morse's love interest in the Inspector Morse episode entitled "Masonic Mysteries" (1990; series 4, episode 4).


title: Kevin Whately

text: Whately enjoys rock music and plays the guitar; he has cited Pink Floyd and Dire Straits as bands he has particularly enjoyed. He is a fan of Newcastle United on the football field, but says that he prefers rugby league, and as a cricketer admitted to "Inspector Morse" writer Colin Dexter that he would like to have played cricket professionally for England. Dexter devised the storyline for the "Inspector Morse" episode "Deceived by Flight" (1989; series 3, episode 3) in which Sergeant Lewis had to go undercover in a cricket team to investigate drug smuggling.


title: Kevin Whately

text: In August 2014, Whately was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's independence referendum.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: In its original sense, a shaggy dog story or yarn is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of joke-telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner. A lengthy shaggy dog story derives its humour from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all, as the long-awaited resolution is essentially meaningless, with the joke as a whole playing upon humans' search for meaning. The nature of their delivery is reflected in the English idiom "spin a yarn", by way of analogy with the production of yarn.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: The eponymous shaggy dog story serves as the archetype of the genre. The story builds up a repeated emphasizing of the dog's exceptional shagginess. The climax of the story culminates in a character reacting to the animal, stating "That dog's not so shaggy." The expectations of the audience that have been built up by the presentation of the story, both in the details (that the dog is shaggy) and in the delivery of a punchline, are thus subverted. Ted Cohen gives the following example of this story:


title: Shaggy dog story

text: However, authorities disagree as to whether this particular story is the archetype after which the category is named. Eric Partridge, for example, provides a very different story, as do William and Mary Morris in "The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins".


title: Shaggy dog story

text: According to Partridge and the Morrises, the archetypical shaggy dog story involves an advertisement placed in the "Times" announcing a search for a shaggy dog. In the Partridge story, an aristocratic family living in Park Lane is searching for a lost dog, and an American answers the advertisement with a shaggy dog that he has found and personally brought across the Atlantic, only to be received by the butler at the end of the story who takes one look at the dog and shuts the door in his face, saying, "But not so shaggy as "that", sir!" In the Morris story, the advertiser is organizing a competition to find the shaggiest dog in the world, and after a lengthy exposition of the search for such a dog, a winner is presented to the aristocratic instigator of the competition, who says, "I don't think he's so shaggy."


title: Shaggy dog story

text: Humanities scholar Jane Marie Todd observed that the shaggy dog story demonstrates the nature of desiring humor and how that process occurs.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: A typical shaggy dog story occurs in Mark Twain's book about his travels west, "Roughing It". Twain's friends encourage him to go find a man called Jim Blaine when he is properly drunk, and ask him to tell "the stirring story about his grandfather's old ram." Twain, encouraged by his friends who have already heard the story, finally finds Blaine, an old silver miner, who sets out to tell Twain and his friends the tale. Blaine starts out with the ram ("There never was a bullier old ram than what he was"), and goes on for four more unparagraphed pages.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: Along the way, Blaine tells many stories, each of which connects back to the one before by some tenuous thread, and none of which has to do with the old ram. Among these stories are a tale of boiled missionaries; of a lady who borrows a false eye, a peg leg, and the wig of a coffin-salesman's wife; and a final tale of a man who gets caught in machinery at a carpet factory and whose "widder bought the piece of carpet that had his remains wove in ..." As Blaine tells the story of the carpet man's funeral, he begins to fall asleep, and Twain, looking around, sees his friends "suffocating with suppressed laughter." They now inform him that "at a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep [Blaine] from setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram—and the mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had heard him get, concerning it."


title: Shaggy dog story

text: A lengthy shaggy dog story (roughly 2,500 words in English translation) takes place in chapter 10 of Nikolai Gogol's novel "Dead Souls", first published in 1842. The novel's central character, Chichikov, arrives in a Russian town and begins purchasing deceased serfs ("souls") from the local landowners, thus relieving the landowners of a tax burden based on an infrequent census. As confusion and suspicion about Chichikov's motives spreads, local officials meet to try to discern Chichikov's background and purpose. At one point, the local postmaster interrupts: "He, gentlemen, my dear sir, is none other than Captain Kopeikin!" None of the others in the room are familiar with a Captain Kopeikin, and the postmaster begins to tell his story.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: Captain Kopeikin was seriously wounded in battle abroad during military conflict with Napoleonic France in 1812. He was sent back to St. Petersburg due to the severity of his injuries, which include the loss of an arm and a leg. At the time, financial or other support was not readily provided to soldiers in such condition as a result of combat wounds, and Captain Kopeikin struggles to pay for room and board with his quickly-depleted funds. As his situation becomes more and more dire, Kopeikin takes it upon himself to confront the leader of "a kind of high commission, a board or whatever, you understand, and the head of it is general-in-chief so-and-so." It is understood that this senior military figure might have the means to assist Kopeikin or put in a word for a pension of some kind. This is followed by a lengthy summary of Kopeikin's meetings and repeated attempts to solicit help from this leader over a period of time. Eventually the postmaster states, "But forgive me, gentlemen, here begins the thread, one might say, the intrigue of the novel" and begins to introduce a band of robbers into the story.


title: Shaggy dog story

text: At this point, a listener interrupts apologetically, "You yourself said that Captain Kopeikin was missing an arm and a leg, while Chichikov..." The postmaster suddenly slaps himself on the head and admits this inconsistency had not occurred to him at the start and "admitted that the saying 'Hindsight is the Russian man's forte', was perfectly correct."


title: Shaggy dog story

text: In the collection of stories by Isaac Asimov titled "Buy Jupiter and Other Stories", is a story titled "Shah Guido G." In his background notes, Asimov identifies the tale as a shaggy dog story, and explains that the title is a play on "shaggy dog".


title: Indo people

text: The Indo people (, or Indos) are Eurasian people living in or connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but were of mixed Dutch and indigenous Indonesian descent as well as their descendants today.


title: Indo people

text: In the broadest sense, an Indo is anyone of mixed European and Indonesian descent. Indos are associated with colonial culture of the former Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony in Southeast Asia and a predecessor to modern Indonesia after its proclamation of independence shortly after World War II. The term was used to describe people acknowledged to be of mixed Dutch and Indonesian descent, or it was a term used in the Dutch East Indies to apply to Europeans who had partial Asian ancestry. The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, German, British, French, Belgian and others.


title: Indo people

text: The term "Indo" is first recorded from 1898, as an abbreviation of the Dutch term "Indo-European". Other terms used at various times are 'Dutch Indonesians', 'Eurasians', 'Indo-Europeans', 'Indo-Dutch' and 'Dutch-Indos'.


title: Indo people

text: In the Indonesian language, common synonymous terms are "Sinjo" (for males), "Belanda-Indo", "Indo-Belanda", "Bule", and Indo means Eurasian: a person with European and Indonesian parentage. "Indo" is an abbreviation of the term "Indo-European" which originated in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th century as an informal term to describe the Eurasians. "Indische" is an abbreviation of the Dutch term "Indische Nederlander". Indische was a term that could be applied to everything connected with the Dutch East Indies. In the Netherlands, the term "Indische Nederlander" includes all Dutch nationals who lived in the Dutch East Indies, either Dutch or mixed ancestry. To distinguish between the two, Eurasians are called "Indo" and native Dutch are called "Totok". In the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia), these families formed "a racially, culturally and socially homogeneous community between the Totoks (European newcomers) and the indigenous population". They were historically Christians and spoke Dutch, Portuguese, English and Indonesian.


title: Indo people

text: They were compared to Afrikaners from South Africa, who also share Dutch ancestry and culture, but are not mixed-race.


title: Indo people

text: In the 16th-18th centuries, Eurasians were referred to by a Portuguese term "mestiço" (Dutch: "Mesties") or as "coloured" (Dutch: "Kleurling"). Additionally, a wide range of more contumelious terms, such as "liplap", can be found in the literature.


title: Indo people

text: Eurasians in the Dutch East Indies were descendants of Europeans who travelled to Asia between the 16th and the 20th century. The earliest Europeans in South East Asia were Portuguese and Spanish traders. Portuguese explorers discovered two trade routes to Asia, sailing around the south of Africa or the Americas to create a commercial monopoly. In the early 16th century the Portuguese established important trade posts in South East Asia, which was a diverse collection of many rival kingdoms, sultanates and tribes spread over a huge territory of peninsulas and islands. A main Portuguese stronghold was in the Maluku Islands (the Moluccas), the fabled "Spice Islands". The Spanish established a dominant presence further north in the Philippines. These historical developments were instrumental in building a foundation for large Eurasian communities in this region. Old Eurasian families in the Philippines mainly descend from the Spanish. While the oldest Indo families descend from Portuguese traders and explorers, some family names of old Indo families include Simao, De Fretes, Perera, Henriques, etc.


title: Indo people

text: During the 1620s, Jan Pieterszoon Coen in particular insisted that families and orphans be sent from Holland to populate the colonies. As a result, a number of single women were sent and an orphanage was established in Batavia to raise Dutch orphan girls to become East India brides. Around 1650, the number of mixed marriages, frequent in the early years of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), declined sharply. There was a large number of women from the Netherlands recorded as marrying in the years around 1650. At least half the brides of European men in Batavia came from Europe. Many of these women were widows, already previously married in the Indies, but almost half of them were single women from the Netherlands marrying for the first time. There were still considerable numbers of women sailing eastwards to the Indies at this time. The ships' passenger lists from the 17th century also evidence this. Not until later in the 17th century did the numbers of passengers to Asia drop drastically.


title: Indo people

text: Given the small population of their country, the Dutch had to fill out their recruitment for Asia by looking for overseas emigration candidates in the underprivileged regions of north-western Europe. Originally, most Dutch VOC employees were traders, accountants, sailors and adventurers. In 1622, over half the Batavia garrison of 143 consisted of foreigners (Germans were the majority among them), there were also French, Scots, English, Danes, Flemings, and Walloons (they were half of the VOC overall). Europeans living in Batavia also included Norwegians, Italians, Maltese, Poles, Irish, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Swedes. The number of Swedes travelling to the East on Dutch ships numbered in the thousands. Many settled in Batavia for long periods. Some of the settlers in the 18th and early 19th centuries were men without wives, and intermarriage occurred with the local inhabitants; others brought their families. The VOC and later the colonial government to a certain extent encouraged this, partly to maintain their control over the region. The existing Indo (or Mestizo) population of Portuguese descent was therefore welcome to integrate. An Indo-European society developed in the East Indies. Although most of its members became Dutch citizens, their culture was strongly Eurasian in nature, with focus on both Asian and European heritage. 'European' society in the Indies was dominated by this Indo culture into which non-native born European settlers integrated. The non-native born (totok) Europeans adopted Indo culture and customs. The Indo lifestyle (e.g. language and dress code) only came under pressure to westernise in the following centuries of formal Dutch colonisation. This would change after the formal colonisation by the Dutch in the 19th century.


title: Indo people

text: Eurasian men were recruited by the colonial regime as go-betweens in both the civil administration and the military, where their mastery of two languages was useful. Few European women came to the Indies during the Dutch East India Company period to accompany the administrators and soldiers who came from the Netherlands. There is evidence of considerable care by officers of the Dutch East India Company for their illegitimate Eurasian children: boys were sometimes sent to the Netherlands to be educated, and sometimes never returned to Indonesia.


title: Indo people

text: Using the evidence of centuries old Portuguese family names many Indos carried matriarchal kinship relations within Eurasian communities, it has been argued by Tjalie Robinson that the origin of the Indo was less of a thin facade laid over a Dutch foundation, but sprang from an ancient mestizo culture going back all the way to the beginning of the European involvement in Asia.


title: Indo people

text: In 1720, Batavia's population consisted of 2,000 Europeans, mainly Dutch merchants (2.2 percent of the total population), 1,100 Eurasians, 11,700 Chinese, 9,000 non-Indonesian Asians of Portuguese culture (mardijkers), 600 Indo-Arab Muslims, 5,600 immigrants from a dozen islands, 3,500 Malays, 27,600 Javanese and Balinese, and 29,000 slaves of varying ethnic origins including Africans.


title: Indo people

text: By the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were new arrivals of Europeans in Malacca who made it their new home and became part of the Malacca Dutch community.


title: Indo people

text: In 1854, over half of the 18,000 Europeans in Java were Eurasians. In the 1890s, there were 62,000 civilian 'Europeans' in the Dutch East Indies, most of them Eurasians, making up less than half of one per cent of the population. Indo influence on the nature of colonial society waned following World War I and the opening of the Suez Canal, when there was a substantial influx of white Dutch families.


title: Indo people

text: By 1925, 27.5 percent of all Europeans in Indonesia who married chose either native or mixed-blood spouses, a proportion that remained high until 1940, when it was still 20 percent. By 1930, there were more than 240,000 people with European legal status in the colony, still making up less than half of one percent of the population. Almost 75% of these Europeans were in fact native Eurasians known as Indo-Europeans. The majority of legally acknowledged Dutchmen were bi-lingual Indo Eurasians. Eurasian antecedents were no bar to the highest levels of colonial society. In 1940, it was estimated that they were 80 per cent of the European population, which at the previous census had numbered 250,000.


title: Indo people

text: An Indo movement led by the Indo Europeesch Verbond (Indo European Alliance) voiced the idea of independence from the Netherlands, however only an Indo minority led by Ernest Douwes Dekker and P.F.Dahler joined the indigenous Indonesian independence movement. Examples of famous Indo people in the Dutch East Indies include Gerardus Johannes Berenschot.