title: Hilary Hahn

text: In 1991, at age 11, Hahn made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Soon thereafter she debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She made her international debut in 1994 performing the Bernstein "Serenade" in Hungary with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Her German debut came in 1995 with a performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The concert was broadcast in Europe.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: In 1996, she debuted at Carnegie Hall in New York City as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Saint-Saens’s third violin concerto. In a 1999 interview with "Strings Magazine", she cited people influential to her development as a musician and a student, including David Zinman, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and Hahn's mentor since she was ten, and Lorin Maazel, with whose Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra she performed in Europe.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn began recording in 1996. Her earlier television appearances include "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" in 2000 (episode 1755), where Mr. Rogers visits a local music store and she plays for him. She has released 16 albums on the Deutsche Grammophon and Sony labels, three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. Her recordings often blend newer and traditional pieces. Her albums include pairings of Beethoven with Bernstein, Schoenberg with Sibelius, Brahms with Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky with Jennifer Higdon.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn has played with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In 2007 she debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and played in Vatican City as part of the celebrations for Pope Benedict XVI with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The concert was recorded and released by Deutsche Grammophon.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: She has also performed as a chamber musician. Since 1992 she has performed nearly every year with the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival in Skaneateles, New York. From 1995 to 2000 she performed and studied chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and in 1996 she was an artist and a member of the chamber music mentoring program of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2004 she toured Saint Petersburg, Russia, with the Poulenc Trio.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn has been interested in cross-genre collaboration and pushing musical boundaries. She began performing and touring in crossover duos with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter in 2007 and with singer-songwriter Tom Brosseau in 2005. She has recorded songs with "…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead". In 2012 she released an album with German pianist and composer Hauschka titled "Silfra". The songs on the disc were completely improvised. "Silfra" was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson. According to her, "Other musicians cross genres all the time. For me it's not crossover—I just enter their world. It frees you up to think in a different way from what you've been trained to do."


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Since 2016, she has piloted free concerts for parents with infants, a knitting circle, a community dance workshop, a yoga class, and art students. She plans to continue these community-oriented concerts, encouraging people to combine live performances with their interests outside the concert hall and providing opportunities for parents to hear music with their infants, who might be barred from traditional concerts.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: In 2020, Hahn and AI roboticist and tech entrepreneur Carol E. Reiley cofounded DeepMusic.ai to work with artists and AI companies to amplify human creativity.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn is a noted champion of new works. In 1999 she commissioned Edgar Meyer to write a concerto. She later recorded the piece with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. In 2010 a concerto written for Hahn by Jennifer Higdon and recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: She commissioned 26 contemporary composers to write short encore pieces for "In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores". Among the composers are David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, Du Yun, Elliott Sharp, David Lang, Nico Muhly, James Newton Howard, Valentyn Silvestrov, and Max Richter. For the 27th encore she held an open contest that drew more than 400 entries and was won by Jeff Myers. The international premiere tours, from 2011 to 2013, met with wide critical and audience acclaim. In November 2013 these 27 short pieces were released on Deutsche Grammophon. The recording won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: After playing Einojuhani Rautavaara's violin concerto, Hahn commissioned another concerto from Rautavaara, but due to his weak condition the project was thought to be forgotten. But after his death, it was revealed to conductor Mikko Franck, a friend of Rautavaara's, that Rautavaara had written two serenades for violin and orchestra. The serenades were premiered on Hahn's album "Paris".


title: Hilary Hahn

text: In 2016 and 2017, in recital tours across the U.S., Europe, and Japan, she premiered six new partitas for solo violin by Antón García Abril, her first commissioning project for solo violin, as well as her first commission of a set of works from a single composer. She forged a relationship with García Abril during "In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores". Digital and physical editions of the complete sheet music for these 27 encores have been released by Boosey & Hawkes. In 2019 Hahn and Lera Auerbach premiered Auerbach's sonata for violin and piano "Fractured Dreams".


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn began her film recording career as the soloist for James Newton Howard's score for M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" in 2004. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. Her recording of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto was used extensively in "The Deep Blue Sea", starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. The film uses the piece's second movement to accompany a nine-minute sequence. In 2013 she was the soloist on Andrew Hewitt's score for the film "The Sea".


title: Hilary Hahn

text: In 1999 Hahn said that she played Bach more than any other composer and had played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: In a segment on NPR titled "Musicians in Their Own Words", she spoke about the surreal experience of playing the Bach "Chaconne" (from the Partita for Violin No. 2) alone on the concert stage. In the same segment she discussed her experiences emulating a lark while playing "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Her violin is an 1864 copy of Paganini's "Cannone" made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. In an interview on Danish television, Hahn said she almost never leaves her instrument out of sight. She uses bows by American bow maker Isaac Salchow and French bow makers Émile Ouchard, Paul Jombar, and Emil Miquel. For her strings, she uses Thomastik-Infeld Dominants for the A (aluminum wound), D and G (silver wound) and a Pirastro Gold Label Steel E.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: She has also acquired a second Vuillaume, an 1865 model loosely based on the 1715 Alard Stradivarius, and has used both in recent years for recording and performing.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Hahn's website includes a section titled "By Hilary." In a "Strings Magazine" interview, she said that the idea for her "Postcards from the Road" feature originated during an outreach visit to a third-grade class in upstate New York. The class was doing a geography project in which the students asked everyone they knew who was traveling to send postcards from the cities they were visiting to learn more about the world. She decided to participate after receiving a positive reaction to her suggestion that she take part. She enjoyed her first year's experience with the project so much that she decided to continue it on her new website. A few years later she expanded the postcards to a journal format. Journal entries usually include photographs from her tours and rehearsals.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: Since 2016, Hahn and her husband have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts after having lived in New York City for several years. They have two daughters.


title: Hilary Hahn

text: On September 1, 2019, she announced that she was taking a year-long sabbatical and would resume performing in the 2020–21 season.


title: Everything Sucks!

text: Everything Sucks! is an American comedy-drama streaming television series created by Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan that parodies teen culture of the mid-1990s. Ten half-hour episodes were ordered by Netflix and the series was released on February 16, 2018. The series is set in the real-life town of Boring, Oregon in 1996, and focuses on a group of teenagers who attend the fictional Boring High School as they proceed to make a movie together while dealing with issues such as finding their sexualities, mental health, and growing up.


title: Everything Sucks!

text: "Everything Sucks!" revolves around students at Boring High School in Oregon in 1996; centering around the A/V Club, and the Drama Club, with both groups seen as misfits. Luke O'Neil is a freshman at Boring, along with his best friends, McQuaid, a pessimistic geek, and Tyler Bowen, a squeaky-voiced, immature teen. Immediately, the boys are seen as social outcasts and join the A/V Club, where Luke develops a crush on Kate Messner, the principal's daughter and a sophomore at Boring. Kate, however, starts questioning her sexuality and develops a crush on drama student Emaline Addario, who is dating fellow drama student Oliver Schermerhorn. However, Kate starts dating Luke after rumors of her being gay are spread around the school.


title: Everything Sucks!

text: When an accidental destruction of the sets, inadvertently caused by Kate, causes the play to be cancelled, Luke and his friends suggest the A/V Club and Drama Club make a movie together, which would then be screened to the whole high school. Meanwhile, Luke deals with discovering VHS tapes that his father made before leaving him and his mother years prior. Throughout the season, Luke's mother, Sherry, begins to grow close to Ken Messner, Kate's father and the principal of Boring, and Kate is struggling with her identity and sexuality, Tyler struggles with his friends' interest in girls, and McQuaid develops a crush on Emaline, only to be rejected.


title: Everything Sucks!

text: Filming for the series took place in Oregon in the towns of Boring, Oregon City, Portland and at Fort Rock State Natural Area near Bend in summer 2017. The crew managed to film in a real Blockbuster in Sandy which eventually closed after they finished shooting.


title: Everything Sucks!

text: "Everything Sucks!" received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave the first season an approval rating of 72% based on 47 reviews, and an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus states, "A flawed series that ticks off all the nostalgia boxes, "Everything Sucks!" still manages to tug at the heartstrings." Metacritic gave the first season a weighted average score of 62 out of 100 based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The series is frequently compared to "Stranger Things", "Freaks and Geeks", as well as "".


title: Everything Sucks!

text: "Everything Sucks!", although well received, was criticized for its over-the-top use of tropes, sometimes unrealistic situations, as well as not developing its supporting characters. However, the coming out storyline and the performances of the ensemble cast, particularly Winston and Kennedy, received much praise. Emine Saner from "The Guardian" wrote that the creators "took the idea of nostalgia and teenhood so far they just ended up repeating tropes", however praised Kate's storyline as well as Winston and Kennedy's performances. On the other hand, Jen Chaney of "Vulture" gave "Everything Sucks!" a positive review, praising its "treatment of its young characters", and once again, praised Kennedy and Winston's performances. However, she did criticize some dialogue choices, some of the music, and the under developed supporting characters. Caroline Framke of "Vox" said, that it "takes too long to figure out its twist on a typical coming-of-age romance. But once it gets there, it’s great" and gave particular praise to Kate's storyline.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: James Dixon "Jimmy" Barnes (née Swan; born 28 April 1956) is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer. His career, both as a solo performer and as the lead vocalist with the rock band Cold Chisel, has made him one of the most popular and best-selling Australian music artists of all time.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes has achieved 15 solo number one albums in Australia, more than any other artist. Additionally Barnes achieved 5 more as lead singer of Cold Chisel, bringing his combined sum to 20 number one albums in Australia, comfortably eclipsing the Beatles (with 14), Madonna (12), Eminem and U2 (11).


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes was born James Dixon Swan in the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow, the son of Dorothy and Jim Swan. His father was a prizefighter. His maternal grandmother was Jewish, but he was raised Protestant. He called his childhood environment a "slum" of alcohol and violence, saying that his mother had him and his four siblings (John, Dorothy, Linda, and Alan) before she was 21. His older brother, John, also later became known as a singer under the name Swanee. John encouraged and taught Barnes how to sing, as he was not initially interested. He and his family arrived in Australia when he was five years old on 21 January 1962, originally in Adelaide, though they eventually settled in nearby Elizabeth. Another sister, Lisa, was born later that year. Shortly afterwards, their parents divorced. Dorothy remarried, to a clerk named Reg Barnes, who died on 3 September 2013. Jimmy adopted the name James Dixon Barnes, after his stepfather.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes took up an apprenticeship in a foundry with the South Australian Railways in 1973, but the love he and his brother had for music led him to join a band. In 1974, his brother Swanee was playing drums with Fraternity, which had just parted ways with the singer Bon Scott. Barnes took over the role but his tenure with the band was brief and, in December 1975, he joined a harder-edged band called Orange, with the organist and songwriter Don Walker, guitarist Ian Moss, drummer Steve Prestwich and bass guitarist Les Kaczmarek.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 1974, Orange had changed its name to Cold Chisel and began to develop a strong presence on the local music scene. Barnes' relationship with the band was often volatile and he left several times, leaving Moss to handle vocal duties until he returned. After a temporary move to Armidale, New South Wales while Walker completed his engineering studies there, Cold Chisel moved to Melbourne in August 1976, and then three months later shifted base to Sydney. Progress was slow and Barnes announced he was leaving once again in May 1977 to join Swanee in a band called Feather. However, his farewell performance with Cold Chisel went so well that he changed his mind and decided to stay in the band. A month later, WEA signed the band.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Between 1978 and 1984, Cold Chisel released five studio albums and won numerous "TV Week" / "Countdown" Awards. The band broke up in December 1983, its final performances at the Sydney Entertainment Centre running from 12 to 15 December 1983.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In November 1979, Barnes met Jane Mahoney (born 1958 as Jane Dejakasaya in Bangkok, Thailand), the stepdaughter of an Australian diplomat. Barnes began a relationship with her. They married in Sydney on 22 May 1981 and Jane gave birth to their first child, Mahalia, named after Mahalia Jackson, on 12 July 1982. They have four children (Mahalia, Eliza-Jane, Elly-May and Jackie).


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes launched his solo career less than a month after Cold Chisel's "Last Stand" tour came to an end in December 1983. He assembled a band that included Arnott, the former Fraternity bass guitar player Bruce Howe and guitarists Mal Eastick (ex-Stars) and Chris Stockley (ex-The Dingoes) and began touring and writing for a solo album. Signing to Mushroom Records, Barnes released his first single, "No Second Prize", in August 1984, which peaked at number 12 on the Australian charts. His first solo album, "Bodyswerve", was released in September 1984 and debuted at Number One on the Australian charts. On 22 December 1984, days after Barnes had begun that year's "Barnestorming" tour, his second daughter, Eliza-Jane ("E.J.") was born.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes' second album, "For the Working Class Man", was released in December 1985 and included the tracks "I'd Die to Be with You Tonight" and "Working Class Man". "For the Working Class Man" debuted on the Australian national chart at No. 1 in December 1985 and it remained at No. 1 for seven weeks. Titled simply "Jimmy Barnes" in the US, the album was issued in February to tie in with the release of the Ron Howard film "Gung Ho", which used "Working Class Man".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The Jimmy Barnes band that toured Australia in support of the album included Howe and Arnott, with the keyboardi player Peter Kekell, the former Rose Tattoo guitarist Robin Riley and the American guitarist Dave Amato. With the release of the album in America, Barnes and a band of Canadian musicians hand-picked by his North American management team toured with ZZ Top. It was the first time since 1981 that he had toured without his family, as Jane was pregnant. Shortly after their son Jackie (named after Jackie Wilson) was born on 4 February 1986, she and the children joined him in the US for the rest of the tour.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 1986, Barnes recorded two songs with INXS, an cover version of the Easybeats' "Good Times" and "Laying Down The Law", which he co-wrote with INXS members Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence. "Good Times" was used as the theme song for the Australian Made series of concerts that toured the country in the summer of 1986–87. Australian Made was the largest touring festival of Australian music talent that had ever been attempted to that point. Barnes and INXS headlined and the rest of the line-up was Mental as Anything, Divinyls, Models, The Saints, I'm Talking and The Triffids. The shows began in Hobart, Tasmania, on 26 December and concluded in Sydney on Australia Day, 26 January 1987. A concert film of this event was made by Richard Lowenstein and released later that year. "Good Times" peaked at No. 2 on the Australian chart.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In October 1987, Barnes released "Too Much Ain't Enough Love", which became his first solo number-one single. His third album, "Freight Train Heart", was released in December 1987 and peaked at number one. "Freight Train Heart" had moderate success outside Australia and as recently as 2003 was named as one of the top 100 rock albums of all time by the British magazine "Powerplay".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In November 1988, Barnes released his first solo live album, "Barnestorming", which became his fourth solo number one album. A version of the Percy Sledge standard "When a Man Loves a Woman" released from the album peaked at number 3.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In the middle of 1989, Jane Barnes went into Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney with pregnancy complications. Elly-May Barnes was born almost three months prematurely on 3 May. Her father stopped further writing and recording until she was released from a humidicrib several months later.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 1990, Barnes recorded his fourth studio album and featured songwriting contributions from the likes of Desmond Child, Diane Warren and Holly Knight. "Two Fires" was released in August 1990 and debuted at number one on the Australian chart. The album featured the top twenty singles "Lay Down Your Guns", "Let's Make it Last All Night" and "When Your Love is Gone".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In November 1991, Barnes released his fifth studio album, "Soul Deep", an album of soul covers. Barnes had long fostered a love for soul and black music, naming his children after influential black artists and including songs by Sam Cooke and Percy Sledge on previous albums. "Soul Deep" became Barnes' sixth Australian number one album and included the track "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby" with John Farnham.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In March 1993, Barnes released "Heat" which was influenced by the then-current grunge trend and the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "Heat" peaked at number two on the ARIA charts, becoming his first solo album, not to peak at number one. The album contained the song "Stone Cold", written by former Cold Chisel bandmate Don Walker. It marked the first time Jimmy Barnes had worked with any member of his old band for almost a decade. The pair teamed up for an acoustic version of the track for an unplugged album "Flesh and Wood", which was released in December 1993 and peaked at number two. The album included a version of The Band's "The Weight", recorded with The Badloves, which became a top ten hit. Also in 1993, Barnes teamed up with Tina Turner for a duet version of "The Best" in the form of a TV promotion for rugby league's Winfield Cup. The single also reached the top ten in 1993.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In the mid-1990s, Barnes' career suffered a slump. He faced financial ruin as his music publishing company Dirty Sheet Music and his wife's children's fashion label both went broke. He was pursued by both the ANZ Bank and the Australian Taxation Office for amounts exceeding $1.3 million. The family sold their property in Bowral, New South Wales and settled for some time in Aix-en-Provence, France, attracting some adverse publicity when he assaulted a television crew from Channel 7. While there, Barnes did considerable live work throughout Britain and toured with the Rolling Stones.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In June 1995, Barnes released his eighth studio album, "Psyclone" which peaked at number 2 in Australia and featured the top-twenty single "Change of Heart".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In September 1996, Barnes released "Lover Lover", which peaked at number 6 on the singles chart. This was followed in October 1996, with Barnes' first greatest hits compilation, "Barnes Hits Anthology", becoming Barnes' seventh solo number one album.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 1998, Cold Chisel reformed and Barnes returned to Australia with his family after three years in France. In March 1999 Barnes performed the 1978 Sylvester hit "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" live onstage at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras' annual party.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Later that year Barnes released the heavy rock single "Love and Hate", followed by its parent album "Love and Fear". An autobiographical record combining hard rock with electronic music, "Love and Fear" was Barnes' first album to miss the Australian top ten, peaking at number 22.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In October 2000, Barnes performed at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. In November 2000, Barnes released a second album of soul tunes, titled "Soul Deeper... Songs From the Deep South". The album peaked at number 3 on the ARIA charts. A number of live albums followed with little commercial success.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 2004, Barnes recorded an album with Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse, Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake, bass player Bob Daisley and keyboard player Don Airey under the name "Living Loud". The self-titled album featured a number of songs originally written and recorded with Ozzy Osbourne by Kerslake, Daisley, and Airey.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In July 2005, Barnes released his eleventh studio album, "Double Happiness", which debuted at number one on the ARIA Charts. "Double Happiness" was an album of duets, including several with his children, daughters Mahalia and Elly-May, son Jackie and oldest son, entertainer David Campbell. After its initial success, it was re-released as a double CD/DVD package featuring many of his duets from previous albums, including those with INXS, John Farnham, Joe Cocker, and Tina Turner.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame on 23 October 2005 for his solo career efforts. In late 2006, Barnes became patron of the Choir of Hard Knocks, a choral group formed by Jonathon Welch and consisting of homeless and disadvantaged people in Melbourne. The formation of the choir was documented by the ABC as a five-part series aired in May 2007. Barnes took an active part in the teaching of the choir despite his health problems and has even busked with them. Barnes or a member of his extended family have regularly performed "Flame Trees" with the Choir at their concerts including those at Melbourne Town Hall on 24 June and the Sydney Opera House on 17 July 2007.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In a January 2007 interview with "The Bulletin", Barnes spoke passionately about Australian rock musicians saying: "Australian bands for me will always have the grunt. Grunt is what gives you longevity, strength, the power to believe in yourself. We have great bands here because they play live, they cut their teeth playing to people.".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes underwent heart surgery in February 2007.Barnes under the knife On 7 July 2007 Barnes was a presenter at the Australian leg of Live Earth. In August he became a regular presenter on "The Know", a pop culture program on the pay-TV channel MAX and has also been a presenter of the "Planet Rock" program on the Austereo network.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In September 2007 he started recording his twelfth studio album, "Out in the Blue". Produced by Nash Chambers, it was released on 14 November and debuted at number 3 on the ARIA chart. The songs were written while he recovered from his heart surgery, and displayed a more subdued mood than much of his previous output. "When Two Hearts Collide" was a duet with Kasey Chambers. The album was promoted with a performance at the Sydney Opera House, which was released on CD and DVD. In March 2008, Barnes appeared as a special guest during soul singer Guy Sebastian's tour.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: November 2008 saw the release of a duet with son David Campbell, a cover of The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" that featured on Campbell's album "Good Lovin'".


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In September 2009, Barnes released his thirteenth studio album "The Rhythm and the Blues" which became Barnes' ninth Australian number one album; thus giving him more No. 1 albums than any other Australian artist.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In August 2010, Barnes released his fourteenth solo studio album, "Rage and Ruin". Barnes stated that the ideas for most of the lyrics and song themes came from a journal he kept during a period in his life (late 1990s to early 2000s) when he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. "Rage and Ruin" debuted at number 3 on the ARIA Charts on 5 September 2010.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: On 14 March 2011 he planted a flame tree, made famous in Cold Chisel's 1984 song "Flame Trees", at the National Arboretum Canberra. Barnes then headlined at Celebrate in the Park, playing a 90-minute set which included his solo hits and some Cold Chisel greats. He was joined by daughter Mahalia in a soulful rendition of "When the War Is Over", which he dedicated to the memory of Steve Prestwich.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In August 2014, Barnes released, "", which is an anniversary album, celebrating 30 years since his chart-topping debut solo album, "Bodyswerve". The album debuted at No. 1 in Australia, becoming Barnes' 10th solo No. 1 album.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 2015, Barnes asked the Reclaim Australia Political Party to stop playing his music at their Rallies. In July 2015, it was announced that Barnes would release "Best of the Soul Years" compilation. The album would be compiled of soul and R&B classics, from his three soul albums; "Soul Deep" (1991), "Soul Deeper" (2000) and "The Rhythm and the Blues" (2009). A fourth album of soul covers was released in June 2016 called, "Soul Searchin'", which became Barnes' 11th number one album in Australia and tied Barnes the equal second-most (with Madonna and U2) of all time behind The Beatles at 14.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 2016, Barnes released his autobiography, "Working Class Boy", which explored his traumatic childhood experiences. In 2017, he featured in the song "Big Enough" by Kirin J. Callinan, alongside Alex Cameron and Molly Lewis. The song was featured on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" in a comedic skit. In addition to this, his cameo in the song's music video became a popular internet meme in late 2017. In March of the same year, Barnes released a children's album called "Och Aye the G'nu". It won the ARIA Award for Best Children's Album at the ARIA Music Awards of 2017, although the brand that appeared on the album, as well as the poetry books that were released on the first of April are related to The Wiggles.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In November 2017, Barnes released a second memoir; a sequel to "Working Class Boy" titled "Working Class Man". On 3 May 2018, Barnes won the biography of the year award at the Australian Book Industry Awards for the second year in a row.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes also guest-starred in the television comedy "These New South Whales" based on the Australian band.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: His autobiography Working Class Boy was adapted into a film by Universal Pictures. Directed by Mark Joffe, the film premiered in Australian cinemas on 23 August 2018. A soundtrack was released on 17 August 2018.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In January 2019, Barnes announced his forthcoming eighteenth solo studio album "My Criminal Record". It was released on 17 May 2019. It was Barnes's 12th solo number-one album, and 16th including releases with Cold Chisel on the Australian albums chart, making him the artist with the most chart-topping albums in Australian chart history, having previously tied at 11 number ones with Madonna and U2. At the APRA Music Awards of 2020, "Shutting Down Our Town" was nominated for Most Performed Rock Work of the Year.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In April 2022, Barnes announced the forthcoming release of "Soul Deep 30", celebrating the 30th anniversary of "Soul Deep", alongside a national tour. In November 2022, Barnes released his first Christmas album, "Blue Christmas". It became his fifteenth number-one solo album.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes is a practising Buddhist. He has seven children, four with his wife Jane: Mahalia, Elly-May, Eliza-Jane and Jackie, one with Kim Campbell (a previous relationship): David Campbell, and two daughters from earlier relationships: Amanda Bennett and Megan Torzyn.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: He is brother-in-law to fellow musician and long time collaborator, Diesel, who married Jane Barnes's sister, Jep, in 1989.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: In 2017 Barnes was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the performing arts as a musician, singer and songwriter, and through support for not-for-profit organisations, particularly to children with a disability.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The Australian Independent Record Awards (commonly known informally as AIR Awards) is an annual awards night to recognise, promote and celebrate the success of Australia's Independent Music sector.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The APRA Awards are held in Australia and New Zealand by the Australasian Performing Right Association to recognise songwriting skills, sales and airplay performance by its members annually.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: Barnes has won seven Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Awards, including his induction into their Hall of Fame in 2005.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The Country Music Awards of Australia (CMAA) (also known as the Golden Guitar Awards) is an annual awards night held in January during the Tamworth Country Music Festival, celebrating recording excellence in the Australian country music industry. They have been held annually since 1973.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The Helpmann Awards is an awards show, celebrating live entertainment and performing arts in Australia, presented by industry group "Live Performance Australia" since 2001. Note: 2020 and 2021 were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: The Rolling Stone Australia Awards are awarded annually in January or February by the Australian edition of "Rolling Stone" magazine for outstanding contributions to popular culture in the previous year.


title: Jimmy Barnes

text: "Countdown" was an Australian pop music TV series on national broadcaster ABC-TV from 1974 to 1987, it presented music awards from 1979 to 1987, initially in conjunction with magazine "TV Week". The TV Week / Countdown Awards were a combination of popular-voted and peer-voted awards.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselves, these two terms are often used synonymously. Furthermore, in probability theory, the formal concept of a "stochastic process" is also referred to as a "random process".


title: Stochastic

text: Stochasticity is used in many different fields, including the natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, ecology, neuroscience, and physics, as well as technology and engineering fields such as image processing, signal processing, information theory, computer science, cryptography, and telecommunications. It is also used in finance, due to seemingly random changes in financial markets as well as in medicine, linguistics, music, media, colour theory, botany, manufacturing, and geomorphology.


title: Stochastic

text: The word "stochastic" in English was originally used as an adjective with the definition "pertaining to conjecturing", and stemming from a Greek word meaning "to aim at a mark, guess", and the Oxford English Dictionary gives the year 1662 as its earliest occurrence. In his work on probability "Ars Conjectandi", originally published in Latin in 1713, Jakob Bernoulli used the phrase "Ars Conjectandi sive Stochastice", which has been translated to "the art of conjecturing or stochastics". This phrase was used, with reference to Bernoulli, by Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, who in 1917 wrote in German the word "Stochastik" with a sense meaning random. The term "stochastic process" first appeared in English in a 1934 paper by Joseph Doob. For the term and a specific mathematical definition, Doob cited another 1934 paper, where the term "stochastischer Prozeß" was used in German by Aleksandr Khinchin, though the German term had been used earlier in 1931 by Andrey Kolmogorov.


title: Stochastic

text: In the early 1930s, Aleksandr Khinchin gave the first mathematical definition of a stochastic process as a family of random variables indexed by the real line. Further fundamental work on probability theory and stochastic processes was done by Khinchin as well as other mathematicians such as Andrey Kolmogorov, Joseph Doob, William Feller, Maurice Fréchet, Paul Lévy, Wolfgang Doeblin, and Harald Cramér. Decades later Cramér referred to the 1930s as the "heroic period of mathematical probability theory".


title: Stochastic

text: In mathematics, the theory of stochastic processes is an important contribution to probability theory, and continues to be an active topic of research for both theory and applications.


title: Stochastic

text: The word "stochastic" is used to describe other terms and objects in mathematics. Examples include a stochastic matrix, which describes a stochastic process known as a Markov process, and stochastic calculus, which involves differential equations and integrals based on stochastic processes such as the Wiener process, also called the Brownian motion process.


title: Stochastic

text: One of the simplest continuous-time stochastic processes is Brownian motion. This was first observed by botanist Robert Brown while looking through a microscope at pollen grains in water.


title: Stochastic

text: The Monte Carlo method is a stochastic method popularized by physics researchers Stanisław Ulam, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, and Nicholas Metropolis. The use of randomness and the repetitive nature of the process are analogous to the activities conducted at a casino.


title: Stochastic

text: Methods of simulation and statistical sampling generally did the opposite: using simulation to test a previously understood deterministic problem. Though examples of an "inverted" approach do exist historically, they were not considered a general method until the popularity of the Monte Carlo method spread.


title: Stochastic

text: Perhaps the most famous early use was by Enrico Fermi in 1930, when he used a random method to calculate the properties of the newly discovered neutron. Monte Carlo methods were central to the simulations required for the Manhattan Project, though they were severely limited by the computational tools of the time. Therefore, it was only after electronic computers were first built (from 1945 on) that Monte Carlo methods began to be studied in depth. In the 1950s they were used at Los Alamos for early work relating to the development of the hydrogen bomb, and became popularized in the fields of physics, physical chemistry, and operations research. The RAND Corporation and the U.S. Air Force were two of the major organizations responsible for funding and disseminating information on Monte Carlo methods during this time, and they began to find a wide application in many different fields.


title: Stochastic

text: Uses of Monte Carlo methods require large amounts of random numbers, and it was their use that spurred the development of pseudorandom number generators, which were far quicker to use than the tables of random numbers which had been previously used for statistical sampling.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic resonance: In biological systems, introducing stochastic "noise" has been found to help improve the signal strength of the internal feedback loops for balance and other vestibular communication. It has been found to help diabetic and stroke patients with balance control. Many biochemical events also lend themselves to stochastic analysis. Gene expression, for example, has a stochastic component through the molecular collisions—as during binding and unbinding of RNA polymerase to a gene promoter—via the solution's Brownian motion.


title: Stochastic

text: Simonton (2003, "Psych Bulletin") argues that creativity in science (of scientists) is a constrained stochastic behaviour such that new theories in all sciences are, at least in part, the product of a stochastic process.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic ray tracing is the application of Monte Carlo simulation to the computer graphics ray tracing algorithm. "Distributed ray tracing samples the integrand at many randomly chosen points and averages the results to obtain a better approximation. It is essentially an application of the Monte Carlo method to 3D computer graphics, and for this reason is also called "Stochastic ray tracing"."


title: Stochastic

text: In artificial intelligence, stochastic programs work by using probabilistic methods to solve problems, as in simulated annealing, stochastic neural networks, stochastic optimization, genetic algorithms, and genetic programming. A problem itself may be stochastic as well, as in planning under uncertainty.


title: Stochastic

text: The financial markets use stochastic models to represent the seemingly random behaviour of assets such as stocks, commodities, relative currency prices (i.e., the price of one currency compared to that of another, such as the price of US Dollar compared to that of the Euro), and interest rates. These models are then used by quantitative analysts to value options on stock prices, bond prices, and on interest rates, see Markov models. Moreover, it is at the heart of the insurance industry.


title: Stochastic

text: Non-deterministic approaches in language studies are largely inspired by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, for example, in functionalist linguistic theory, which argues that competence is based on performance. This distinction in functional theories of grammar should be carefully distinguished from the "langue" and "parole" distinction. To the extent that linguistic knowledge is constituted by experience with language, grammar is argued to be probabilistic and variable rather than fixed and absolute. This conception of grammar as probabilistic and variable follows from the idea that one's competence changes in accordance with one's experience with language. Though this conception has been contested, it has also provided the foundation for modern statistical natural language processing and for theories of language learning and change.


title: Stochastic

text: Manufacturing processes are assumed to be stochastic processes. This assumption is largely valid for either continuous or batch manufacturing processes. Testing and monitoring of the process is recorded using a process control chart which plots a given process control parameter over time. Typically a dozen or many more parameters will be tracked simultaneously. Statistical models are used to define limit lines which define when corrective actions must be taken to bring the process back to its intended operational window.


title: Stochastic

text: This same approach is used in the service industry where parameters are replaced by processes related to service level agreements.


title: Stochastic

text: The marketing and the changing movement of audience tastes and preferences, as well as the solicitation of and the scientific appeal of certain film and television debuts (i.e., their opening weekends, word-of-mouth, top-of-mind knowledge among surveyed groups, star name recognition and other elements of social media outreach and advertising), are determined in part by stochastic modeling. A recent attempt at repeat business analysis was done by Japanese scholars and is part of the Cinematic Contagion Systems patented by Geneva Media Holdings, and such modeling has been used in data collection from the time of the original Nielsen ratings to modern studio and television test audiences.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic effect, or "chance effect" is one classification of radiation effects that refers to the random, statistical nature of the damage. In contrast to the deterministic effect, severity is independent of dose. Only the "probability" of an effect increases with dose.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic processes may be used in music to compose a fixed piece or may be produced in performance. Stochastic music was pioneered by Iannis Xenakis, who coined the term "stochastic music". Specific examples of mathematics, statistics, and physics applied to music composition are the use of the statistical mechanics of gases in "Pithoprakta", statistical distribution of points on a plane in "Diamorphoses", minimal constraints in "Achorripsis", the normal distribution in "ST/10" and "Atrées", Markov chains in "Analogiques", game theory in "Duel" and "Stratégie", group theory in "Nomos Alpha" (for Siegfried Palm), set theory in "Herma" and "Eonta", and Brownian motion in "N'Shima". Xenakis frequently used computers to produce his scores, such as the "ST" series including "Morsima-Amorsima" and "Atrées", and founded CEMAMu. Earlier, John Cage and others had composed "aleatoric" or indeterminate music, which is created by chance processes but does not have the strict mathematical basis (Cage's "Music of Changes", for example, uses a system of charts based on the "I-Ching"). Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Issacson used generative grammars and Markov chains in their 1957 "Illiac Suite". Modern electronic music production techniques make these processes relatively simple to implement, and many hardware devices such as synthesizers and drum machines incorporate randomization features. Generative music techniques are therefore readily accessible to composers, performers, and producers.


title: Stochastic

text: Stochastic social science theory is similar to systems theory in that events are interactions of systems, although with a marked emphasis on unconscious processes. The event creates its own conditions of possibility, rendering it unpredictable if simply for the number of variables involved. Stochastic social science theory can be seen as an elaboration of a kind of 'third axis' in which to situate human behavior alongside the traditional 'nature vs. nurture' opposition. See Julia Kristeva on her usage of the 'semiotic', Luce Irigaray on reverse Heideggerian epistemology, and Pierre Bourdieu on polythetic space for examples of stochastic social science theory.


title: Stochastic

text: The term "Stochastic Terrorism" has fallen into frequent use with regard to lone wolf terrorism. The terms "Scripted Violence" and "Stochastic Terrorism" are linked in a "cause <> effect" relationship. "Scripted Violence" rhetoric can result in an act of "Stochastic Terrorism." The phrase "scripted violence" has been used in social science since at least 2002.


title: Stochastic

text: When color reproductions are made, the image is separated into its component colors by taking multiple photographs filtered for each color. One resultant film or plate represents each of the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black data. Color printing is a binary system, where ink is either present or not present, so all color separations to be printed must be translated into dots at some stage of the work-flow. Traditional line screens which are amplitude modulated had problems with moiré but were used until stochastic screening became available. A stochastic (or frequency modulated) dot pattern creates a sharper image.


title: 38th AVN Awards

text: The 38th AVN Awards officially the 38th AVN Awards presented by MyFreeCams.com was a pornography awards ceremony held on January 23, 2021. The 38th edition of the ceremony which began in 1984 encompassed 120 categories involving content creation, production, retail and web/tech forums in the adult industry. Due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic the ceremony was held virtually and streamed on Adult Video News' AVNStars.com.


title: 38th AVN Awards

text: In July 2020 it was announced the award ceremony and related events typically held in Las Vegas would instead be held virtually due to the ongoing pandemic. "“The health and safety of our attendees and exhibitors is our top priority, so out of an abundance of caution we’ve made the difficult decision to not hold our January events in-person, but instead create a digital experience that will give industry professionals and the fans of adult entertainment unique opportunities to interact online,"” said Tony Rios, chief executive officer of AVN Media Network. The award ceremony was held January 23, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo was also held on the AVN Stars platform the leading up to the ceremony. As well as the GayVN Awards was held the 18th of January exclusively on the GayVN Stars website.


title: 38th AVN Awards

text: On January 8, 2021, adult performers Kira Nior and Skyler Lo were announced as co-hosts for the show.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Caves ( : Pathumalai) is a mogote (a type of karst landform) that has a series of caves and cave temples in Gombak, Selangor, Malaysia. It takes its name from the Malay word "batu", meaning 'rock'. The hill was originally known as "Kapal Tanggang" from the legend of Si Tanggang. The town nearby is named after the Batu Caves limestone formation.


title: Batu Caves

text: The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, and is dedicated to Lord Murugan. It is the focal point of the Tamil festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Caves in short also referred as 10th Caves or Hill for Lord Murugan as there are six important holy shrines in India and four more in Malaysia. The three others in Malaysia are Kallumalai Temple in Ipoh, Tanneermalai Temple in Penang and Sannasimalai Temple in Malacca.


title: Batu Caves

text: The limestone forming Batu Caves is said to be around 400 million years old. Some of the cave entrances were used as shelters by the indigenous Temuan people (a tribe of Orang Asli).


title: Batu Caves

text: As early as 1860, Chinese settlers began excavating guano for fertilising their vegetable patches. However, they became famous only after the limestone hills were recorded by colonial authorities including Daly and Syers as well as American Naturalist, William Hornaday in 1878.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Caves was promoted as a place of worship by K. Thamboosamy Pillai, an Indian Tamil trader. He was inspired by the "vel"-shaped entrance of the main cave and was inspired to dedicate a temple to Lord Murugan within the caves.


title: Batu Caves

text: In 1890, Pillai, who also founded the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur, installed the "murti" (consecrated statue) of Sri Murugan Swami in what is today known as the Temple Cave. Since 1892, the Thaipusam festival in the Tamil month of Thai (which falls in late January/early February) has been celebrated there.


title: Batu Caves

text: Wooden steps up to the Temple Cave were built in 1920. In the 1930s, the stairs began to show signs of wear and tear, and then temple chairman Ramachandran Naidu proposed to build two flights of concrete stairs to the upper caves. The proposal was forwarded to Sorobgom in 1939. The work was completed in 1940, just in time for the Thaipusam celebration that year according to current temple Chairman R. Nadarajah. Currently there are 272 concrete steps. Of the various cave temples that comprise the site, the largest and best known is the Temple Cave, so named because it houses several Hindu shrines beneath its high vaulted ceiling.


title: Batu Caves

text: On 1 September 1942, a village near the Caves was the site of a Communist Party of Malaya meeting convened by Lai Teck, which included the CPM's Central Executive Committee, state party officials, and a group leaders of the MPAJA. However, Lai Teck betrayed the meeting to the Japanese, whom staged a surprise raid at dawn, destroying most of the CPM and MPAJA high command.


title: Batu Caves

text: In August 2018 the 272 steps were painted, each set of steps painted in a different range of colours. However, accusations were almost immediately made by the National Heritage Department for a breach of law requiring authorisation for renovations within 200 metres of a heritage site. The temple's management disputed their failure to receive authorisation.


title: Batu Caves

text: At the base of the hill are two more cave temples, Art Gallery Cave and Museum Cave, both of which are full of Hindu statues and paintings. This complex was renovated and opened as the Cave Villa in 2008. Many of the shrines relate the story of Lord Murugan's victory over the demon Soorapadman. An audio tour is available to visitors.


title: Batu Caves

text: The Ramayana Cave is situated to the extreme left as one faces the sheer wall of the hill. On the way to the Ramayana Cave, there is a tall statue of Hanuman and a temple dedicated to Lord Hanuman, devotee and aide of Lord Rama. The consecration ceremony of the temple was held in November 2001.


title: Batu Caves

text: The Ramayana Cave depicts the story of Rama in the manner of a chronicle along the irregular walls of the cave.


title: Batu Caves

text: A 43 metre (140 ft) high statue of Lord Murugan was unveiled in January 2006, having taken three years to construct. It is the second-tallest Lord Murugan statue in the world.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Malai Sri Murugan Temple is managed by the Board of Management of Sri Maha Mariamman Temple Devasthanam, which also manages the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur and the Kortumalai Pillaiyar Temple. It also performs the role of Hindu Religious Consultant to the Government of Malaysia in determining the Hindu yearly calendar.


title: Batu Caves

text: The Batu Cave hill and its numerous caverns contain a wealth of plants and animals, many of which are specialised for limestone environments. A total of 269 species of vascular plants have been recorded from the site, including 56 species (21%) which are obligate calciphiles (found only on limestone).


title: Batu Caves

text: There are various undeveloped caves which contain a diverse range of cave fauna, including some unique species, such as trapdoor spiders ("Liphistius batuensis"). The caves have some 21 species of bats, including several species of fruit bats ("Eonycteris"). The site is also well known for its numerous long-tailed macaques, which visitors feed — sometimes involuntarily. These monkeys may also pose a biting hazard to tourists (especially small children) as they can be quite territorial.


title: Batu Caves

text: Below the Temple Cave is the Dark Cave, with rock formations and a number of animals found nowhere else. It is a two-kilometer network of relatively untouched caverns. Stalactites jutting from the cave's ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor form intricate formations such as cave curtains, flowstones, cave pearls and scallops which took thousands of years to form.


title: Batu Caves

text: In order to maintain the cave's ecology, access is restricted. The Malaysian Nature Society organises regular educational and adventure trips to the Dark Wet Caves.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Caves is also the centre of rock climbing development in Malaysia for the past 10 years. Batu Caves offers more than 160 climbing routes. The routes are scattered all around the side of Batu Caves, which is made up of limestone hills rising to . These climbing routes are easily accessed, as most crags start from ground level. These climbing routes often start from the North Eastern side of the cave complex whereas the staircase and temple entrance faces South. This Northeastern area is known as the Damai caves. Abseiling and spelunking trips can be organised with some local adventure companies.


title: Batu Caves

text: The Batu Caves serve as the focus of the Tamil community's yearly Thaipusam () festival. They have become a pilgrimage site not only for Malaysian Hindus, but Hindus worldwide.


title: Batu Caves

text: A procession begins in the wee hours of the morning on Thaipusam from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur leading up to Batu Caves as a religious undertaking to Lord Muruga lasting eight hours. Devotees carry containers containing milk as offering to Lord Murugan either by hand or in huge decorated carriers on their shoulders called 'Kavadi'.


title: Batu Caves

text: The "kavadi" may be simple wooden arched semi-circular supports holding a carrier foisted with brass or clay pots of milk or huge, heavy ones which may rise up to two metres, built of bowed metal frames which hold long skewers, the sharpened end of which pierce the skin of the bearers torso. The "kavadi" is decorated with flowers and peacock feathers imported from India. Some "kavadi" may weigh as much as a hundred kilograms.


title: Batu Caves

text: After bathing in the nearby Sungai Batu (Rocky River), the devotees make their way to the Temple Cave and climb the flights of stairs to the temple in the cave. Devotees use the wider centre staircase while worshippers and onlookers throng up and down those balustrades on either side.


title: Batu Caves

text: When the "kavadi" bearer arrives at the foot of the 272-step stairway leading up to the Temple Cave, the devotee has to make the arduous climb.


title: Batu Caves

text: Priests attend to the "kavadi" bearers. Consecrated ash is sprinkled over the hooks and skewers piercing the devotees' flesh before they are removed. No blood is shed during the piercing and removal.


title: Batu Caves

text: Housing development began around 1970 with housing estates such as Taman Batu Caves, Taman Selayang, Taman Amaniah, Taman Sri Selayang, Taman Medan Batu Caves, and Taman Gombak Permai.


title: Batu Caves

text: In the last decade, the surrounding area has changed from a small village to industrial estates, new housing, and retail. There is also an elevated flyover across the highway. A new 515-million-ringgit KTM Komuter rail extension from Sentul to Batu Caves began operations in July 2010, serving the rebuilt Batu Caves Komuter station.


title: Batu Caves

text: Batu Caves is easily reached by commuter train at the Batu Caves Komuter station, costing RM 2.6 for a one-way journey from KL Sentral. Batu Caves may also be reached by bus 11/11d from Bangkok Bank Terminus (Near to Puduraya Terminus) or bus U6 from Titiwangsa. Batu Caves is also easily reached by travelling by car.


title: Truth serum

text: "Truth serum" is a colloquial name for any of a range of psychoactive drugs used in an effort to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. These include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, midazolam, flunitrazepam, sodium thiopental, and amobarbital, among others.


title: Truth serum

text: Although a variety of such substances have been tested, serious issues have been raised about their use scientifically, ethically and legally. There is currently no drug proven to cause consistent or predictable enhancement of truth-telling. Subjects questioned under the influence of such substances have been found to be suggestible and their memories subject to reconstruction and fabrication. When such drugs have been used in the course of investigating civil and criminal cases, they have not been accepted by Western legal systems and legal experts as genuine investigative tools. In the United States, it has been suggested that their use is a potential violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (the right to remain silent). Concerns have also been raised through


title: Truth serum

text: the European Court of Human Rights arguing that use of a truth serum could be considered a violation of a human right to be free from degrading treatment, or could be considered a form of torture. It has been noted to be a violation of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.


title: Truth serum

text: "Truth serum" was abused against psychotic patients as part of old, discredited practices of psychiatry and is no longer used. In a therapeutic context, the controlled administration of intravenous hypnotic medications is called "narcosynthesis" or "narcoanalysis". Such application was first documented by Dr. William Bleckwenn. Reliability and suggestibility of patients are concerns, and the practice of chemically inducing an involuntary mental state is now widely considered to be a form of torture.


title: Truth serum

text: Sedatives or hypnotics that alter higher cognitive function include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, potent short or intermediate acting hypnotic benzodiazepines such as midazolam, flunitrazepam, and various short and ultra-short acting barbiturates, including sodium thiopental (commonly known by the brand name Pentothal) and amobarbital (formerly known as sodium amytal).


title: Truth serum

text: While there have been many clinical studies of the efficacy of narcoanalysis in interrogation or lie detection, there is dispute whether any of them qualify as a randomized, controlled study, that would meet scientific standards for determining effectiveness.


title: Truth serum

text: India's Central Bureau of Investigation has used intravenous barbiturates for interrogation, often in high-profile cases. One such case was the interrogation of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive by police in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. Kasab was a Pakistani militant and a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. On 3 May 2010, Kasab was found guilty of 80 offences, including murder, waging war against India, possessing explosives, and other charges. On 6 May 2010, the same trial court sentenced him to death on four counts and to a life sentence on five counts.


title: Truth serum

text: The Central Bureau of Investigation also conducted this test on Krishna, a key witness and suspect in the high-profile 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj Murder Case to seek more information from Krishna and also determine his credibility as a witness with key information, yet not known to the investigating authorities. Per unverified various media sources, Krishna had purported to have deemed Hemraj (the prime suspect) as not guilty of Aarushi's murder, claiming he [Hemraj] "treated Aarushi like his own daughter".


title: Truth serum

text: On May 5, 2010 the Supreme Court Judge Balasubramaniam in the case "Smt. Selvi vs. State of Karnataka" held that narcoanalysis, polygraph and brain mapping tests were to be allowed after consent of accused. The judge stated: "We are of the considered opinion that no individual can be forced and subjected to such techniques involuntarily, and by doing so it amounts to unwarranted intrusion of personal liberty."


title: Truth serum

text: In Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh High Court permitted narcoanalysis in the investigation of a killing of a tiger that occurred in May 2010. The Jhurjhura Tigress at Bandhavgarh National Park, a mother of three cubs, was found dead as a result of being hit by a vehicle. A Special Task Force requested the narcoanalysis testing of four persons, one of whom refused to consent on grounds of potential post-test complications.


title: Truth serum

text: In 2004, "Novaya Gazeta", with reference to KGB General Oleg Kalugin, published an article that said that since the end of the 1980s the First and Second Directorates of the KGB had used, in exceptional cases and mostly on foreign citizens, a soluble odourless, colourless and tasteless substance code-named SP-117, an improved successor to similar drugs used by the KGB prior, that was effective in making a subject lose control of oneself 15 minutes after intake. Most importantly, a person who would be given, consecutively, two parts of the drug, i.e. both the "dote" and "antidote", would have no recollection of what had occurred in between and feel afterward as though he had suddenly fallen asleep, the preferable way to administer the "dote" being in an alcoholic drink as the latter would serve as a specious explanation of the sudden onset of drowsiness.


title: Truth serum

text: Other reports state that SP-117 was just a form of concentrated alcohol meant to be added to alcoholic drinks such as champagne.


title: Truth serum

text: According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) officer, Alexander Kouzminov, who quit the service in the early 1990s, the officers of SVR′s Directorate S, which runs SVR′s "illegals", primarily used the drug to verify fidelity and trustworthiness of their agents who operated overseas, such as Vitaly Yurchenko. According to Alexander Litvinenko, Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin was drugged with the same substance by FSB agents during his kidnapping in 2004.


title: Truth serum

text: Scopolamine was promoted by obstetrician Robert Ernest House as an advance that would prevent false convictions, beginning in 1922. He had noted that women in childbirth who were given scopolamine could answer questions accurately even while in a state of twilight sleep, and were oftentimes "exceedingly candid" in their remarks. House proposed that scopolamine could be used when interrogating suspected criminals. He even arranged to administer scopolamine to prisoners in the Dallas County jail. Both men were believed to be guilty, both denied guilt under scopolamine, and both were eventually acquitted. In 1926, the use of scopolamine was rejected in a court case, by Judge Robert Walker Franklin, who questioned both its scientific origin, and the uncertainty of its effect.


title: Truth serum

text: The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the use of mescaline, scopolamine, and marijuana as possible truth drugs during World War II. They concluded that the effects were not much different from those of alcohol: subjects became more talkative but that did not mean they were more truthful. Like hypnosis, there were also issues of suggestibility and interviewer influence. Cases involving scopolamine resulted in a mixture of testimonies both for and against those suspected, at times directly contradicting each other.


title: Truth serum

text: LSD was also considered as a possible truth serum, but found unreliable. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out a number of investigations including Project MKUltra and Project MKDELTA, which involved illegal use of truth drugs including LSD. A CIA report from 1961, released in 1993, concludes:


title: Truth serum

text: In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in "Townsend v. Sain", that confessions produced as a result of ingestion of truth serum were "unconstitutionally coerced" and therefore inadmissible. The viability of forensic evidence produced from truth sera has been addressed in lower courts – judges and expert witnesses have generally agreed that they are not reliable for lie detection.


title: Truth serum

text: In 1967, Perry Russo was administered sodium pentothal for interrogation by District Attorney Jim Garrison in the investigation of JFK's assassination.


title: Truth serum

text: More recently, a judge approved the use of narcoanalysis in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting trial to evaluate whether James Eagan Holmes's state of mind was valid for an insanity plea. Judge William Sylvester ruled that prosecutors would be allowed to interrogate Holmes "under the influence of a medical drug designed to loosen him up and get him to talk", such as sodium amytal, if he filed an insanity plea. The hope was that a 'narcoanalytic interview' could confirm whether or not he had been legally insane on 20 July, the date of the shootings. It is not known whether such an examination was carried out.


title: Truth serum

text: William Shepherd, chair of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association, stated, with respect to the Holmes case, that use of a 'truth drug' as proposed, "to ascertain the veracity of a defendant's plea of insanity... would provoke intense legal argument relating to Holmes's right to remain silent under the fifth amendment of the US constitution." Discussing possible effectiveness of such an examination, psychiatrist August Piper stated that "amytal's inhibition-lowering effects in no way prompt the subject to offer up true statements or memories." "Psychology Today" Scott Linfield noted, as per Piper, that "there's good reason to believe that truth serums merely lower the threshold for reporting virtually all information, both true and false."


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama superhero television series that aired on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour pilot movie on March 18, 1981, and ran until February 2, 1983. The series features William Katt as teacher Ralph Hinkley, Robert Culp as FBI agent Bill Maxwell, and Connie Sellecca as lawyer Pam Davidson. The lead character's surname was changed from "Hinkley" to "Hanley" for the latter part of the first season, immediately after President Ronald Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981. The character's name was reverted to "Hinkley" after a few months had passed.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The series chronicles Ralph's adventures after a group of aliens gives him a red and black suit that grants him superhuman abilities. Unfortunately for Ralph, who hates wearing the suit, he immediately loses its instruction booklet, and thus has to learn how to use its powers by trial and error, often with comical results.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Ralph Hinkley (Katt) is a Los Angeles public school substitute teacher of remedial education high school students. During a school field trip, Ralph encounters extraterrestrials who give him a suit which endows him with superhuman abilities. Also during the encounter, he is instructed by the aliens to thereafter collaborate with FBI Special Agent Bill Maxwell (Culp). Their instructions are to use the suit as a means to fight crime and injustice in the world.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Subsequently, attorney Pam Davidson (Sellecca), who handled Ralph's divorce, also encounters the aliens. Through some coercion, she eventually agrees, on occasion, to join Ralph and Bill during missions.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Also seen regularly were Rhonda Blake (Faye Grant), Tony Villicana (Michael Paré), and Cyler Johnson (Jesse D. Goins), three of Ralph's students; and Bill's FBI supervisor Les Carlisle (William Bogert).


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Ralph's uniform grants him the powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability, invisibility, precognition, telekinesis, X-ray vision, super speed, pyrokinesis, shrinking, psychometry ("holographic vision"), and even the ability to detect the supernatural. As Ralph lost the suit's instruction manual, his discovery of these different powers often come as a surprise even to himself. Notably, while the suit enables Ralph to fly, it does not endow him with any particular skill at landing, so he frequently crashes in an undignified (though uninjured) heap. In the episode "Fire Man" he displays resistance to fire/heat and uses "super exhalation" (the ability to blow out a flamethrower, or any other large source of fire); he also uses this ability in the episode "There's Just No Accounting ...", to extinguish a Molotov cocktail. Ralph also shows signs of being able to control minds after he is exposed to high doses of plutonium radiation. In the season two final episode, "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", Ralph is shown to control a dog via a hologram. This may have been an improvisational power of the suit, but is not tried again in later episodes. In "The Shock Will Kill You", he (or the suit) becomes strongly magnetized.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: In the season two episode "Don't Mess Around with Jim", Ralph and Maxwell learn they are not the first duo who received such a uniform. Jim "J.J." Beck had received the suit, and Marshall Dunn was his partner, much like Ralph and Maxwell operated. But Jim was overwhelmed with the power of the suit, and he used it selfishly and for ill-gotten gains, until the aliens discovered this and took the suit away. It is unknown whether or not there were others before Jim who were visited by the aliens. In "Divorce Venusian Style", the pair meet one of the aliens, whose world was apparently destroyed (which hints as to why the aliens want to protect humanity) and calls Earth one of the few remaining "garden planets". Ralph is given another instruction book during this encounter—supposedly the aliens' last copy, but he loses it as well. When he shrinks to a fraction of normal size, he places it on a large boulder which is actually a grain of sand given his reduced size, and forgets to pick it back up before returning to normal size.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: In the episode "Vanity, Says the Preacher", it is also revealed there are several humans in seeming "suspended animation" aboard the aliens' ship (Bill speculates that they are possible replacements for them).


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Hinkley's hero persona never receives an actual "superhero name" either, although Joey Scarbury sings the Elton John song "Rocket Man" in the pilot. In the pilot episode, Ralph sarcastically refers to himself as "Captain Crash" in reference to his terrible flying ability; and later "Captain Gonzo" in the episode "The Shock Could Kill You".


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Like his character, William Katt found the suit very uncomfortable and hated wearing it. Producers made various modifications to the suit to help him, and accommodated him by scheduling filming so he would not have to wear it all day during a shoot.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On the Season 1 DVD, Stephen J. Cannell notes that the symbol design on the front of the suit is actually based on a pair of scissors that he had on his desk during the design of the uniform. He said that the costume designer asked him what he wanted the suit's chest emblem to look like. He said he had not really thought about it. The designer then picked the scissors up off the desk, held them upside down, and said "That's your emblem". Cannell was fine with that decision.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The symbol on Ralph's uniform resembles the Chinese character for "center" . As the symbol is red in color with white background, Hong Kong television station TVB titled the Cantonese-dubbed version of the show "Fēi Tīn Hùhng Jūng Hahp" (), meaning "Flying Red Center Hero", in reference to the red center mahjong tile. An alternate translation of "jūng" in Cantonese is "justice", which gave the other meaning for the title of the show "Flying Red Justice Hero". This alternate translation of the show title allude to the mandate by the alien grantor to use the suit as a means to fight crime and injustice in the world.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The symbol's bilateral symmetry seemingly avoided the "backward S" problem encountered on the "Adventures of Superman". For the low-budget 1950s series, editors would on occasion "flop" stock footage of George Reeves in flight, causing the "S" shield to appear reversed. However, in many "Greatest American Hero" composite flying sequences, Ralph wore a watch and the timepiece alternates from one wrist to the other, especially during extended flying sequences.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The main character's name was originally Ralph Hinkley, but after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981, the character's last name was hurriedly changed to "Hanley" in two episodes. In "Saturday on Sunset Boulevard", aired within days of the incident, this was accomplished by overdubbing dialogue (i.e. "Hinkley" to "Hanley") whenever the character's last name was spoken aloud. For the rest of the first season, the character was generally referred to as either "Ralph" or "Mister H", although in "The Best Desk Scenario", when Ralph is given a promotion and his own office space, we see the name "Ralph Hanley" on the door plaque. By the season 2 premiere, "The Two-Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Fast Ball", the show's producers returned the character's surname to the original Hinkley.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On the series' season 1 DVD set Stephen J. Cannell explained that he had planned "The Greatest American Hero" as a series emphasizing real-life problems, whereas when a change of management occurred in ABC, they requested more heroic, save-the-day-type episodes. As agreed originally between Cannell and then ABC executives Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, the powers would be in the suit, not the man (though the suit would only work for him) and Ralph would try to solve ordinary-type problems, such as trying to stop corruption in Major League Baseball ("The Two Hundred Miles-Per-Hour Fastball") or an assassination attempt ("The Best Desk Scenario"). The series initially emphasized what Cannell referred to as "character comedy" based on human flaws such as envy (in the aforementioned "The Best Desk Scenario") or hypochondria ("Plague"). The series differed from previous superhero shows because of the emphasis on (especially Ralph) "rising above" superhero antics and instead exploring what it was like to live in that environment.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Cannell was trying to avoid save-the-day-type episodes, as per the original "Adventures of Superman" television series, but according to Cannell on the DVD set, when Carsey and Werner left ABC (soon after the show was purchased by the network) the new network executives wanted the show to be more like a children's show than an adults' show. So they pushed for the types of shows that Cannell did not want, shows that involved Ralph trying to stop some sort of calamity from happening, including nuclear war ("Operation Spoilsport") and even a Loch Ness Monster-type of creature ("The Devil in the Deep Blue Sea"). For the season two finale, a serious and appropriate for the time (considering the Cold War) episode was produced; "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", written and directed by Robert Culp. The episode's story concerns a KGB mole-agent (played by guest actor Dixie Carter) placed into the FBI with the sole purpose of discovering the methods used by agent Bill Maxwell in catching spies and other assorted villains. Cannell gave Culp free rein to produce the episode.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: This was also the first of Cannell's series to feature the "Stephen J. Cannell Productions" logo. The production company's first series "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe" did not feature the logo.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The theme song (and variants of it) have been used frequently outside of the show. "Believe It or Not" was composed by Mike Post (music) and Stephen Geyer (lyrics) and sung by Joey Scarbury. The theme song became well known during the show's run. "Believe it or Not" debuted in the Top 40 of the "Billboard" Hot 100, peaking at No. 2. It also peaked at the No. 1 position on the "Record World" chart.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The powers of the red suit were somewhat general, but still were similar enough to the abilities of Superman that Warner Bros., the owners of DC Comics, filed a lawsuit against ABC. "Warner Bros. Inc. v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc." was ultimately dismissed. However, the series has more inspiration owed to another DC property, "Green Lantern", in that it shares the basic concept of an ordinary human being given a powerful weapon granting extraordinary abilities by extraterrestrials, including the later appearance in the series of an alien who is loosely reminiscent of the Green Lantern Corps' administrators, the Guardians of the Universe. The series is also very similar to Nova from Marvel Comics, in that it shares the basic concept of an ordinary person attending school being given a powerful weapon granting extraordinary abilities by extraterrestrials, including the later appearance in the series of an alien who is loosely reminiscent of the Nova Corps' administrators, the Xandarians. The concept was also very similar to Frog-Man, a former supervillain, and now one of Spider-Man's allies, as well as the superhero by the name of Ant-Man, Scott Lang (all three of them, also created by Marvel Comics), to which a non-superpowered person attending school is given a red costume that grants them extraordinary abilities and superpowers to fight off crime and bring evil to justice.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: In the pilot episode, while Ralph ponders whether to accept the suit, he observes his son watching the "Super Friends" cartoon. Batman is heard to say, "We need one more Super Friend who can fly!" In a later scene, having yet to convince Pam he really is a superhero, Ralph jokes, "Look at it this way. You're one step ahead of Lois Lane: she never found out who Clark Kent really was." In "Saturday on Sunset Boulevard", Ralph needs to change his clothing quickly. Seeing a telephone booth, he grumbles, "No! Never!", but ends up using it. Later, while Ralph struggles to get changed in the back of Bill's car, Bill notes "We need to get you a bigger phone booth."


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Anchor Bay Entertainment company released the complete series in DVD format in Region 1 for the first time during 2005. Additionally, on October 3, 2006, they released a special 13-disc boxed set that includes all 43 episodes of the series as well as other bonus material. However, both the individual DVD sets and the complete boxed set are missing original performances by Mike Post and Joey Scarbury whenever the song concerned originated by another artist.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On October 14, 2009, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment company had acquired the rights to several Stephen J. Cannell series, including "The Greatest American Hero". They subsequently re-released the first season as well as a complete series box set on May 18, 2010. Season 2 was re-released on October 12, 2010.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On November 10, 2011, Mill Creek Entertainment released "The Greatest American Heroine" TV movie on DVD.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On September 26, 2017, Cinedigm re-released "The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Series" on DVD in Region 1.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Shout! Factory acquired the distribution rights to "The Greatest American Hero" and "The Greatest American Heroine" along with several other Stephen J. Cannell series on March 11, 2020.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On June 30, 2022, Visual Entertainment released "The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Collection" on DVD in Region 1.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: During 1986, the original principal cast reunited for a pilot movie for a new NBC series to be named "The Greatest American Heroine", which did not result in a new series, and the pilot was never broadcast by NBC. Ultimately, the pilot was re-edited as an episode of the original series (complete with original opening credits and theme), and added to syndication sets of the original series aired on several local television stations in the late 1980s, for which it is the final episode. Immediately after the beginning credits, the episode's title card is superimposed over a nighttime view of the Los Angeles skyline, reading "The Greatest American Hero" before appending the letters "i n e" individually to the sound of the NBC chimes. The chimes were a nod to NBC and its president, Brandon Tartikoff, who had expressed interest in reviving the series.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The pilot movie reveals that, several years after the final episode, Ralph's secret identity was finally revealed to the public, resulting in his becoming a celebrity. This angers the aliens who gave him the suit, and they charge him with finding a new hero to wear the costume and use its powers for fighting evil. Once the transfer is made, they explain, all memory of Ralph's exploits will be purged from the world's memory and remembered only by Ralph, Pam, and Bill.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Bill begins their search by researching people with desired hero qualities, but Ralph finds a young woman named Holly Hathaway (Mary Ellen Stuart), an elementary school teacher who spends her off-hours time looking for lost kittens, raising environmental awareness, and serving as a foster mother. Bill, Pam, and Ralph meet in the desert, where Ralph tells Bill about Holly. He reacts visibly to his new partner being a "skirt" before Holly arrives, flying in wearing a new version of the suit made for her, and she pledges to help Bill. The original trio say their final farewells, and even the stoic Maxwell reveals his true emotions as he says goodbye to Ralph and calling Pam a trooper—"...one of the best!" Holly reacts emotionally to the fond farewells, but breaks the somber mood as she accidentally pulls the door off of Bill's sedan.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: The rest of the episode deals with Holly learning how to use the suit with Bill Maxwell's guidance, and the pair trying to develop a working relationship. It ends with Bill overhearing a conversation between Holly and her foster daughter in which Holly refers to Bill as a good person. Bill is then shown speaking into a recorder he uses as his "diary" to suggest that maybe Holly is the right person to wear the suit after all.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On August 29, 2014, "Deadline Hollywood" published an article reporting that the Fox Network had ordered a pilot for a new version of the show. The pilot was to be produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, both of whom wrote and directed "The Lego Movie".


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: Deadline reported on September 8, 2017, that Rachna Fruchbom and Nahnatchka Khan will produce a female-led remake for 20th Century Fox TV and ABC Studios. The suit will be donned by Meera, an Indian-American woman. Actress Hannah Simone was cast as the lead for the reboot.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: On February 12, 2018, Simone was announced as the lead in ABC's reboot; however, ABC declined to pick up the series.


title: The Greatest American Hero

text: During July 2008, it was announced that Katt was writing a comic book series based on the television series for his publishing company, Catastrophic Comics, in conjunction with Arcana Studios. The three-issue mini-series debuted later that year, featuring an updated retelling of the original pilot episode set in the present. Katt also contributes to the show's Facebook page.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Emomali Rahmon (; born Emomali Sharipovich Rahmonov, ; ; born 5 October 1952) has been the 3rd President of Tajikistan since 16 November 1994. Previously he was the Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of Tajikistan, as the de facto head of state from 20 November 1992 to 16 November 1994 (the post of president was temporarily abolished during this period). Since 18 March 1998, he has also served as the leader of the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan, which dominates the Parliament of Tajikistan. On 30 September 1999, he was elected vice-president of the UN General Assembly for a one-year term.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: He became widely known in 1992 after the abolition of the post of president in the country, when at the dawn of the civil war (1992–1997) he became Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) of Tajikistan as a compromise candidate between communists and neo-communists on the one hand and liberal-democratic, nationalist and Islamist forces (the United Tajik Opposition) on the other.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Five times (in the elections of 1994, 1999, 2006, 2013 and 2020), Rahmon won undemocratic presidential elections; in addition, he extended and reformed his powers based on the results of the national constitutional referendums of 1999 and 2003. Since 25 December 2015, Emomali Rahmon has held the lifetime title of "Peshvoyi Millat" (), which means “Leader of the Nation”, in full — “Founder of peace and national Unity — Leader of the Nation”. Following the results of the last national constitutional referendum in 2016, amendments were adopted that lifted the restrictions on the number of re-elections to the post of President of Tajikistan and lowered the age limit for those running for the post of president from 35 to 30 years.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Rahmon heads an authoritarian regime in Tajikistan with elements of a cult of personality. Political opponents are repressed, violations of human rights and freedoms are severe, elections are not free and fair, and corruption and nepotism are rampant. His family members occupy various important government positions, such as his 35-year-old son Rustam Emomali, who is the chairman of the country's parliament and the mayor of its capital city, Dushanbe.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Rahmon was born as Emomali Sharipovich Rakhmonov to Sharif Rahmonov (–1992) and Mayram Sharifova (1910–2004), a peasant family in Danghara, Kulob Oblast (present-day Khatlon Region). His father was a Red Army veteran of World War II, being a recipient of the Order of Glory in the 2nd and 3rd degrees. From 1971-74, Rahmon served in the Soviet Union's Pacific Fleet, during which he was stationed in the Primorsky Krai. After completing the military service, Rahmon returned to his native village where he worked for some time as an electrician.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: As a rising apparatchik in Tajikistan, he became a chairman of the collective state farm of his native Danghara. According to his official biography, Rahmon graduated from the Tajik State National University with a specialist's degree in economics in 1982. After working for several years in the Danghara Sovkhoz, Rahmon was appointed chairman of the sovkhoz in 1987.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In 1990, Rahmon was elected a people's deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik SSR. President Rahmon Nabiyev was forced to resign in the first months of the Civil War in August 1992. Akbarsho Iskandrov, Speaker of the Supreme Soviet, became acting president. Iskandarov resigned in November 1992 in an attempt to end the civil unrest. That same month, the Supreme Soviet met in Khujand for its 16th session and declared Tajikistan a parliamentary republic. Rahmon was then elected by the members of the Supreme Soviet as its chairman—as the Parliamentary republican system adopted by Tajikistan did not provide for a ceremonial president, he was also Head of State—and the head of government. Former Interior Minister Yaqub Salimov later recalled that Rahmon's appointment was made because he was “nondescript”, in which other field commanders thought that he could be cast aside "when he had served his purpose."


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In 1994, a new constitution reestablished the presidency. Rahmon was elected to the post on 6 November 1994 and sworn in ten days later. During the civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1997, Rahmon's rule was opposed by the United Tajik Opposition. As many as 100,000 people died during the war. He survived an assassination attempt on 30 April 1997 in Khujand, as well as two attempted coups in August 1997 and in November 1998.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Following constitutional changes, he was reelected on 6 November 1999 to a seven-year term, officially taking 97% of the vote. On 22 June 2003, he won a referendum that would allow him to run for two more consecutive seven-year terms after his term expired in 2006. The opposition alleges that this amendment was hidden in a way that verged upon electoral fraud. Rahmon was reelected to a seven-year term in a controversial election on 6 November 2006, with about 79% of the vote, according to the official results. On 6 November 2013, he was reelected for the second seven-year term in office, with about 84% of the vote, in an election that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said lacked "genuine choice and meaningful pluralism". In October 2020, he was once again re-elected as president for a fifth term with a margin of 90.92%, amid allegations of fraud.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: On 22 May 2016, a nationwide referendum approved a number of changes to the country's constitution. One of the main changes lifted the limit on presidential terms, effectively allowing Rahmon to stay in power for as many terms as he wishes. Other key changes outlawed faith-based political parties, thus finalizing the removal of the outlawed Islamic Revival Party from Tajikistan's politics, and reduced the minimum eligibility age for presidential candidates from 35 to 30, enabling Rahmon's older son, Rustam Emomali, to run for president any time after 2017. In January 2017, Rustam Emomali was appointed Mayor of Dushanbe, a key position, which some analysts see as the next step to the top of the government.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Tajikistan under Rahmon is a neopatrimonial regime, characterized by a high degree of clientelism, corruption, and poor governance. In a diplomatic cable that was leaked in 2010, the U.S. ambassador in Tajikistan, reported that Rahmon and his family control the country's major businesses, including the largest bank. In November 2018, Rahmon launched a hydroelectric station to solve energy problems.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In July 2021, over 1,000 Afghan troops and civilians fled to Tajikistan after the Taliban insurgents took control of many parts of Afghanistan. In response, Rahmon ordered 20,000 reserve servicemen of the country's Ground Forces to be sent to the Afghan–Tajik border.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In December 2015, a law passed by Tajikistan's parliament gave Rahmon the title "Founder Of Peace and National Unity, Leader of the Nation" (Tajik: Асосгузори сулҳу ваҳдати миллӣ – Пешвои миллат, "Asosguzori sulhu vahdati millî – Peshvo‘i millat"; Russian: Основатель мира и национального единства – Лидер нации, "Osnovatel mira i natsionalnogo yedinstva – Lider natsii"). A shorter version of the title, "Leader of the Nation," is used frequently. In addition to granting Rahmon lifelong immunity from prosecution, the law also gave him a number of other lifelong privileges, including veto powers over all major state decisions, the freedom to address the nation and parliament on all matters he deems important, and the privilege of attending all government meetings and parliament sessions.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Rahmon is a Sunni Muslim and has frequently stressed his Muslim background even though his administration is engaged in a relentless campaign against public displays of Islamic devotion. His suppression of Islamic expression includes banning beards, attendance at mosque for women and children under 18, hajj for people under 40, studying in Islamic schools outside Tajikistan, the production, import or export of Islamic books without permission (implemented in 2017), using loudspeakers to broadcast the adhan, veils, madrassas, Islamist political parties and Arabic-sounding names (implemented in 2016). Furthermore, mosques are heavily regulated, providing unofficial Islamic teaching can lead to up to 12 years of imprisonment, and an arduous process is required to obtain a permit to establish an Islamic organisation, publish an Islamic book, or go on pilgrimage to Mecca. In January 2016, Rahmon performed an Umrah with a number of his children and senior members of his government. That was Rahmon's fourth pilgrimage to Mecca.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: During a 2010 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation session in Dushanbe, Rahmon spoke against what he called the misuse of Islam for political ends, claiming that "Terrorism, terrorists, have no nation, no country, no religion... Using the name 'Islamic terrorism' only discredits Islam and dishonors the pure and harmless religion of Islam."


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: Membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a militant Islamic party that aims to overthrow secular governments and unify Tajiks under one Islamic state, is illegal and members are subject to arrest and imprisonment.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRP) is a banned Islamist political party and has been designated a terrorist organization since 2015.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In 2017 the government of Tajikistan passed a law requiring people to "stick to traditional national clothes and culture", which has been widely seen as an attempt to prevent women from wearing Islamic clothing, in particular the style of headscarf wrapped under the chin, in contrast to the traditional Tajik headscarf tied behind the head.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: He is married to Azizmo Asadullayeva and has seven daughters and two sons. Two of his children, Rustam Emomali and Ozoda Rahmon, are senior officials in his administration, while another, Zarina Rahmon, was appointed deputy head of Orienbank in January 2017. Rustam is believed to be prepared by his father to succeed him as leader of Tajikistan.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In the summer of 2021, coronavirus ravaged the country, and Emomali Rahmon's sister reportedly died in a hospital of COVID-19 on 20 July. According to local media, her sons physically assaulted the national health minister and a senior doctor.


title: Emomali Rahmon

text: In March 2007, Rahmonov changed his surname to "Rahmon", getting rid of the Russian-style "-ov" ending. He also removed the patronymic, "Sharipovich", from his name altogether. Rahmon explained that he had done so out of respect for his cultural heritage. Following the move, scores of governments officials, members of parliament, and civil servants around the country removed Russian-style patronymics and "-ov" endings from their surnames. In April 2016, Tajikistan officially banned giving Russian-style patronymics and surnames to newborn children.


title: Meniscus (anatomy)

text: A meniscus is a crescent-shaped fibrocartilaginous anatomical structure that, in contrast to an articular disc, only partly divides a joint cavity. In humans they are present in the knee, wrist, acromioclavicular, sternoclavicular, and temporomandibular joints; in other animals they may be present in other joints.


title: Meniscus (anatomy)

text: Generally, the term "meniscus" is used to refer to the cartilage of the knee, either to the lateral or medial meniscus. Both are cartilaginous tissues that provide structural integrity to the knee when it undergoes tension and torsion. The menisci are also known as "semi-lunar" cartilages, referring to their half-moon, crescent shape.


title: Meniscus (anatomy)

text: The menisci of the knee are two pads of fibrocartilaginous tissue which serve to disperse friction in the knee joint between the lower leg (tibia) and the thigh (femur). They are concave on the top and flat on the bottom, articulating with the tibia. They are attached to the small depressions (fossae) between the condyles of the tibia (intercondyloid fossa), and towards the center they are unattached and their shape narrows to a thin shelf. The blood flow of the meniscus is from the periphery (outside) to the central meniscus. Blood flow decreases with age and the central meniscus is avascular by adulthood, which slows healing.


title: Meniscus (anatomy)

text: The menisci act to disperse the weight of the body and reduce friction during movement. Since the condyles of the femur and tibia meet at one point (which changes during flexion and extension), the menisci spread the load of the body's weight. This differs from sesamoid bones, which are made of osseous tissue and whose function primarily is to protect the nearby tendon and to increase its mechanical effect.